The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Stephen Janis:

At the Real News Network, we have been covering the threat to midterm elections. Now, we came to the Networks Conference here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to speak to Congressman Jamie Raskin. When he told us about what he thinks might happen in November should scare all of us. You know, you introduced a Blanche Act, is that what it’s called? Yes. Yeah. So the Senate just passed the reconciliation bill and did nothing to it. So what are your thoughts at this moment that can be done to prevent it and what are your concerns about this slush fund that has been proposed by the Trump administration?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, the vast majority of Americans reject the idea that the Trump regime should be able to take 1.776 billion of taxpayer money and give it to convicted criminals, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and other extremists who tried to storm or who stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow a presidential election. It’s outrageous and it violates about a dozen different federal laws and constitutional provisions. So we need to pass legislation to block it and also to block the other part that they’re trying to sneak through, which is a lifelong immunity from criminal civil tax prosecution of Donald Trump or his family or his businesses for crimes and civil offenses that they’ve committed up until this point.

Stephen Janis:

Is this personal for you? I mean, you were there and the idea that they would pay the people that tried to overturn the election. Does this affect you in a personal way?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Democracy is personal to me and fascism is personal to me and I think it should be personal to everybody. I mean, they want to destroy our basic institutions in the country. They want to destroy the freedom of press. They want to control the media. So they put minders and spies into CBS in 60 minutes. They want to take over. They denounced the mainstream of media just so they could take over the mainstream media and make it their official state propaganda apparatus. They’re trampling the freedom of press. They’re attacking the separation of church and state. I was on the floor. One of their guys got up and said the moral downfall of America was 1962 when the Supreme Court banned prayer in the public schools. And I got up and I said, the Supreme Court never banned prayer in the public schools. As long as there are pop math quizzes, there will be prayer in the public schools.

Anybody can pray whenever he or she wants to, but what they want is the government writing out religious scripts and then compelling your children to participate in it. So literally our entire Constitution and Bill of Rights are being demolished by these people and they want to turn us into a mafia state, a gangster state.

Stephen Janis:

Now, looking forward to the midterms. There’s a lot of pretextual stuff, the Trump administration, subpoenaing ballots in Wayne County or taking ballots in Fullton County. Is that a playbook they’re trying to roll out by having all these pre-elections sort of cast enough doubts so they can so chaos? What are your concerns about the midterm election and Trump administration interference?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Yeah. I mean, people ask me like, “Are they going to try and steal the election?” I say, “No, they’re not going to try and steal the election.” They’re trying to steal the election. Every day we’ve got lawyers all over America from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, ACLU, Mark Elias fighting every one of these operations, which is an attempt to steal the election when they say, “Oh, we’re going to throw everybody off the rolls who missed voting an election, or when they’re closing polling places throughout Texas.” All of these voter suppression mechanisms are an attempt to steal the election. But I also want to say we have never been better mobilized and we’ve never had better lawyers engaged out in the field. We’ve never had a stronger civil society infrastructure fighting back, which is why they’re attacking the civil society infrastructure. We just had a hearing two weeks ago.

We’ve got another hearing this week. They’re trying to bring down the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is our major group fighting the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan nations and the neo-Nazi right. They’re trying to destroy it saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center defrauds its own donors because they send people undercover into the extremist groups to find out what’s happening so they can prevent the next attack on a church or a synagogue or the Oklahoma federal building or what have you. That’s who the Trump Department of Justice is going after. That’s who Todd Blanche wants to attack the anti-Klan fighters.

Stephen Janis:

Now let me ask you a question. We spent a lot of time covering this reconciliation. They gave ICE and CBP $70 billion with no explanation. We ask Republicans why. What do you think that money’s for? Because I still has like $70 billion in the bank. Why do they need $70 billion? What are your concerns about that?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, this is what’s very concerning because if you talk to historians of fascism, they will tell you that what authoritarians do, what fascists try and do is build up a paramilitary force within the government and also one outside of the government. So that’s the meaning of this $1.8 billion political slush fund meant for the extreme right political foot soldiers who attacked our police officers on January 6th, 2021, attacked the Congres, attacked the vice president. That’s the outside version, but ICE is acting like a paramilitary secret police force reporting to the president of the United States and they have killed American citizens like Renee Goode and Alex Pretty. And just like we know dozens of people have died in ICE detention. So that is not a decent sane civilized immigration policy. We’ve got to make it a lot harder for people to get into the country illegally, but a lot easier for people to get into the country legally and we cannot use the immigration crisis the Republicans have created as the excuse for them to set up a paramilitary police force inside our government.

Stephen Janis:

So from the Epstein perspective, Estee files, you’ve been intimately involved in that. What do you think we haven’t seen yet? What do you think could be coming? We had that crucial testimony coming on Tuesday before the oversight committee. What do you think we haven’t seen or what’s to come?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, we need further legislation to strengthen the Epstein-Files Transparency Act. We need legislation that is going to actually make them turn over the documents and to stop hiding them. We have to keep passing laws to try to get them to comply with the law. It is difficult, but we’ve got to keep this very much in the forefront of people’s consciousness. There’s a culture to authoritarianism. There’s a politics to it, but there’s a culture to it. And the culture to it is all about authoritarian misogyny and sexual violence and sexual harassment and sexual assault. And this administration has been doing everything in their power to dismantle the infrastructure that we have to try to support victims of sexual violence and victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment. So the Epstein case is critical for us to keep moving forward on exposing this culture and then standing by the victims and the survivors of sexual violence and sexual assault.

Stephen Janis:

And do you think there’s something in the other three million files that is going to be important for the public to see and do you think there’ll be evidence there they’re hiding right now?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Absolutely. They were supposed to turn over six million files. They’ve withheld three million. There are completely scandalous and outrageous things we’re finding in the three million. They did turn over, but the files that they haven’t turned over undoubtedly contain more information that will implicate this administration and lots of names that we know in truly shameful and scandalous actions. But we’ve got to make sure that the victims are heard and the victims and the survivors have been critical in moving this process along. That’s a model, by the way, for every sector of public life. We’ve got to hear from the people who are being hurt, the millions of people being hurt by being thrown off of Medicaid or being thrown off of the Affordable Care Act, tax credits. We’ve got to hear from the people in the media about the crackdown like at ABC with Jimmy Kimmel.

People have got to speak up. The victims and the targets of government oppression have got to strike the first blow against this onslaught.

Stephen Janis:

Last question. Grand Planner, did you endorse him? Are you going to endorse him? And if so, why do you think people are … A lot of progressives, the Democrats get skittish about progressives you have not been. How do you feel about Grand Platner now? What are your thoughts?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, I’ve not made formal endorsements there. I would say I think that Graham Platner’s politics are right for this time. They are a working class centered politics of progressive change. That’s what we need. He has spoken about how damaging his time was psychologically and emotionally, and he came back a damaged person and damaged people, damage other people. And so there have been problems with that. But having said that, this is really a question for the people of Maine. Has Graham been able to show people that he’s been able to learn from the experiences that he’s had and the transgressions that he’s committed? And that’s what we can demand of him. That’s what we can expect from him. I mean, he said he’s interested in transformational politics and that means not just for society but for each person and he is pledging to continue that process of transformation for himself.

So the people of Maine have got, luckily they’ve got a small state. They can go out and talk to him and he’s been nothing if not open to taking questions and he’s at, I think, like 80 town hall meetings. And so I hope that he continues on that journey and the people of Maine reached the right solution for the rest of the country because it’s a critical race.

Stephen Janis:

Have you ruled out endorsing him or would you consider endorsing him in the future?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

So I don’t know that I’ve been specifically asked to endorse him and I would not rule it out. If he’s our Democratic nominee, I’m certain I will endorse him and do everything in my power to get him elected. But at this point, I think there are elections coming up in a week or two. The people are working it out and I’m following it closely and I really wish the best for everybody involved in this situation.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. As a writer, podcaster and a columnist for us here at The Real News, Adam Johnson has been one of the fiercest, sharpest and most consistent critics of legacy in Western media’s roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying and manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by Israel with the full support of the United States. Crimes committed in our name and with our tax dollars and the media cannot be let off the hook for its despicable role in all of this. As Adam writes in his new book, How to Sell a Genocide, the media’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza, “It took deliberate choices by deliberate moral actors, editors, reporters, bookers, producers, and TV personalities who decided early on in the so- called Israel-Hamas war that defending the powerful and spinning a fictional narrative to soothe Western liberal audiences was more important than speaking plain truths than defending a dispossessed people from a holy asymmetric campaign carried out by Israel with the full backing of the US to destroy in whole or in part the Palestinians of Gaza.” Listen, critique is not enough anymore.

If we are going to ensure that these horrific crimes don’t continue, then we need accountability for the political actors and the media organizations that made it happen or helped. We need a reckoning, but we’re not going to get one if we don’t fight for it. And Adam’s new book, in my opinion, gives us the data and the receipts and the analysis that we need to fight better and to actually win. I cannot recommend it enough and I am so proud to call Adam a friend and a colleague. He is a vital member of the Real News team and he has done a vital service to all of us in writing this book. So go check it out yourself and let us know what you think and let me know what you think about this conversation that I had with Adam Johnson about his new book at a live event at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse here in Baltimore on May 23rd.

Well, again, welcome, welcome everyone. Thank you so much to Red Emmas for hosting this important discussion tonight about Brother Adam Johnson’s vital new book, How to Sell a Genocide, The Media’s Complicity and the Destruction of Gaza Out Now with Pluto Press. It is an invaluable read and I cannot stress enough the duty that we have to know what’s in this book. I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say it to just chuck my buddy up. Adam, I’ve gotten the pleasure and honor of growing up with you over the past 10 or so years in the media ecosystem, the left media ecosystem, and then get to know you, get to be friends with you, get to work together. I wanted to say first that I know we joke a lot that what are we doing? We’re just podcasters. We’re not that out there doing the real work, but I wanted to thank you for doing the work that you do at Citations Needed and Everywhere Else.

Thank you for writing this book because even if you on your side through the microphone don’t see it or you on your phone tweeting at people and Dunking on people don’t see it, so often you and Nima, especially through citations needed, but now with this all your writing, you give us so many of us the language that we’re looking for to articulate what we’re feeling and sensing, but don’t have the time to process and don’t have the ability to find those words. And in this book, you have given us a tremendous amount of necessary ammunition to focus what we have known and sensed but not been able to fully articulate. And so I wanted to first acknowledge that. Second, I wanted to acknowledge here at the top that of course both of us as journalists here in the United States, a media critic journalist, however Adam wants to identify himself, we of course must have a moment of silence to honor those of our journalists and media making colleagues who have been slaughtered in this genocide and who continue to be slaughtered in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran.

So can you please join me in just a quick moment of silence to honor our fallen comrades and to thank them for their invaluable sacrifice.

Okay. Thank you all so much. All right, brother out. Like I said, your podcast and my podcast started around the same time. We got into this game around 10 or so years ago and we’ve gotten to working with each other. We publish your invaluable column at the real news now and for a few years now and you guys should absolutely read it. So I wanted to start there and ask if you could talk about how you got into media criticism and why. But then let’s talk about that growth process and let’s talk about what it was like to be a media critic as a genocide was unfolding in Gaza and what about all of that propelled you to move beyond podcasting and article writing into writing this book?

Adam Johnson:

Well, thank you for that introduction and thank you for having me here. Right Emma’s is of course a write a passage. You’re not really a leftling writer if you don’t come here. So I’m glad to be here. It’s huge, but it’s a very well organized operation, so thank you. Yeah, so I don’t talk about myself a lot, mostly because I don’t know, I feel like it’s genuinely quite boring, but I’ve always been interested in language and how language can shape our reality and my entry point into the left such as it was, the immortal science, whatever you wish to call it, I was late to the game. I mean, I was basically 29, 30 years old when I started exploring those ideas and media was a way I was like the entry point into that. And I’ve always thought media criticism is an entry point into asking bigger questions.

It’s a gateway drug. The podcast is meant to be a gateway drug. I’m like in the school yard pedaling left wing ideology like, “Come here kid, listen to citations needed.” It’s sort of vaguely liberal coded, but it’s not. So my goal is to be on one of those Glen Beck chalkboards. And so that’s how I, as an entry point into asking bigger questions because I think once one erodes the artifice of media, which we kind of imperfectly refer to as small L liberal media or center left media or mainstream media, I think it’s a gateway to ask bigger questions because once the artifice begins to crumble, I think you sort of ask yourself, well, okay, if this kind of officialdom, if the thing that is these very important people behind desks and these kind of prestigious institutions are basically full of shit, then you have to ask yourself, what do we build as an alternative to that?

And then in some senses, the whole institute, because this book is fundamentally a book about the hypocrisy and the enforcement status of so- called liberal institutions and liberalism. And that’s why chapter seven is basically about that and how Gaza and the liberal response to Gaza and the liberal promotion of genocide, I should say elite liberal promotion of genocide was fundamentally a liberal project for that first year we were documenting. Obviously they were partnered and helped by the right and Republicans in Fox News, but fundamentally would not have been possible without liberal buy-in. And so obviously it very much falls into the wheelhouse of the Citations Deeded Podcast, which obviously critiques the ways in which liberals promote reactionary ideas and indeed work to launder reactionary ideas and make them seem palatable. And so it was a natural fit. And then obviously I had been writing ferociously from the beginning of it because as anyone who knows anything about Gaza knew precisely what was going to happen, it was very clear that on October 8th, when Tony Blinken tweeted out a call for a ceasefire and then subsequently deleted it a couple hours later that this was going to be at best killing an arbitrarily high number of Palestinians in the figures and at worst a genocide.

And of course it largely was a genocide and of course they ended up killing almost certainly over six figures. And so from the beginning, you and I were writing about it and you were letting me use obviously your platform to write about it and write media criticism about it. Much of the book is, not much, but some percentage of the book is readapting writing I did for y’all. So thank you for that because there was not a ton of outlets who were willing to do that, especially in a kind of existential way. And then once we started going, it was like, well, we need to quantifiably show this. So it’s a very data driven book, which is something I hadn’t previously had the time to do and that was central to how we did the book because I didn’t want to just assert it or cherry pick headlines.

I wanted to quantitatively show and establish bias and then from there in double standards and from there we can ask bigger questions once one accepts the premise of that, what is the implications of that? Because it’s a book much like citations needed. It’s a book for liberals. It’s not a book for the left who obviously by definition agrees with me, although I want them to be able to use the data and research and arguments in their daily lives. But it’s a book that is supposed to take someone who’s vaguely liberal or vaguely liberal left or progressive and senses something was wrong and then slowly and meticulously walk them to the water that there’s a larger critique of Zionism and US imperialism and that the media operates as an organ of those institutions not as any kind of neutral or objective, certainly not a counter or an adversary to those institutions.

And so again, I’m pedaling the drugs trying to get people addicted. First one’s always free and that’s kind of the way I approached the book. Now obviously the title’s provocative, but the word genocide I believe is more or less mainstream now. And you can’t get around that word because to do so is genocide denial. It’s something like I think 60 or 70% of Democrats, depending on the poll, believe it’s a genocide. So that itself is no longer even that provocative. What I believe is maybe more novel and useful to liberals in liberal left adjacent types is the concept that they were sold to genocide, that it wasn’t this bumbling accident that kind of happened or this one-off dictator who forced people to do it, but actually had ideological and narrative antecedents that were being pushed by so- called liberal media. So by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC were the primary targets of my inquiry and criticism.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and that tees up kind of like my next question because that was awesome, it was thoughtful. I really appreciated that answer, but I also know the entire time you were screaming and ripping your hair out and like these fucking people look at the lies that I know because Adam would be pitching me. He’s like, “Hey, I got to write about this. ” I was like, “All right, go for it. ” And I knew so much was going through your mind and so much like the rest of us. We were seeing these sort of double standards. We were sort of seeing the kind of dual realities on the TV and on our phones, but again, it needed to go beyond just that sort of sense and needing to quantify and needing to name. And so I wanted to sort of unleash the attack dog, Adam Johnson we all know and love a second.

Let’s name some names here. Who are the worst offenders and why?

Adam Johnson:

Yeah. And I want to preface this by saying that that is the next stage of this project where I’m doing basically taking the 10 worst and we’re naming names and going to try to reach out to them and do more aggressive targeted criticism with like maybe in parallel campaignse because I do think when you criticize the media or the New York Times, it can be a little bit abstract, that which is owned by everyone is cared for by no one to paraphrase libertarians, but I think in some senses you can be too abstract. So the book does name names in retrospect as I’m rereading it, I felt like I probably should have made that more central, a little bit more ad hominem, a little more personal. And that’s kind of the next stage because we need to have accountability. And in parallel, I know others who I’ve spoken to are working on a project to hold Democrats accountable because now as you know, I’m a little bit off topic here, but indulge me.

You have Tony Blinken who covered up war crimes at the State Department. He’s now at Center for American Progress just down the road in DC. Obviously John Finer is at Center for American Progress, which if anyone knows what that is, it’s a ostensibly progressive think tank that’s basically the government in waiting for the next Democratic administration. John Feiner and Jake Sullivan, who also covered up war crimes and sold weapons to a country that knew was committing genocide, have a cheeky little foreign policy podcast on Fox. So what we’re working on with that is what we’re trying to come up with a branding for, but it’s going to be the Genocide 10 or the Genocide 20 where you’re basically pressuring organizations to remove these people from polite society, which of course is a bar that’s below the mantle of the earth. I mean, it’s the lowest bar possible, but right now everyone’s just vibing through it.

Progressives and liberals in Congress are doing events now with Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken. So really it’s a project fundamentally about accountability. And the reason why that is, and again, it’s going to be an upward battle, but I do think that you can build pressure, especially as every four years when Democrats have to act like they care what progressives or liberals think or even liberals, to be honest, that there needs to be a sense that these people need to be non-grada at the very least. So obviously you would refer them to the ICC for criminal arrest and prosecution for their role and complicity and genocide along with some of these media organs we can talk about. But at the very least, they need to be removed from polite society. And so fundamentally it just becomes a book about accountability because there’s not much else you can do.

And the conclusion I say I’m like the drummer boy and the drummer boy Christmas song. “What is he doing? Plays the drums. That’s all he can do. All I can do is media criticism. And I think like everyone else, as this was unfolding, you felt completely helpless. But I think the lesson you can take away from this and the lesson that Palestinian organizers and BDS organizers always tell you is that you can always contest in the way you can and the spaces you can. Whether you’re a tech worker, you can go on strike or boycott or try to … There’s always something you can do and it’s like, this is the only thing I’m able to do. I don’t have any other skillset or talent. I just know how to do media criticism. So that’s what I did and I tried to do it to the best of my ability.

That’s a very convoluted way of answering your question, but I think what you’re talking about is, what you allude to is the idea of accountability. So who are the worst? The worst were Jake Tapper and Joe Scarborough are featured heavily in this book as just outright genocidal propagandists, outwardly lying, smearing anyone opposing the war. Obviously New York Times, Patrick Kingsley, others, editors at the New York Times were probably certain writers who laundered Israeli intelligence over and over again, which we can get into. Those were the primary offenders. Actually, one of the things I try to do in the book and all the subsequent interviews I’ve done is I try not to flatten the difference that there are some that are worse than others. The New York Times is meaningfully worse than the Washington Post. Washington Post is not good, but they didn’t engage in what I would consider outright genocide incitement.

The New York Times would constantly intervene right when there was some pressure to push Biden for a ceasefire with the most obvious lies and bullshit. I’ll give you an example if you’ll indulge me.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I was going to say, keep rolling and let’s talk about some of the worst offenses. If we could give in an ode to citations needed, give me your top three worst tropes or your top three most eye-popping stats from this book.

Adam Johnson:

Maybe let’s start at the beginning then if you’ll indulge me. So very quickly, the idea of a ceasefire needed to be removed from the realm of capital V capital S very seriousness, right? It had to be considered a far left fringe position, despite the fact that every other mowing the lawn episode, which is what Israel calls it when they kill civilians in Gaza as a part of collective punishment, had had a ceasefire. 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, obviously 2009 cast led. But very early on when again, Blinken sends out the tweet and subsequently deletes it, it’s very clear a decision is made that they’re going for it all. They’re going for full-blown ethnic cleansing genocidal acts and at worst from their perspective, killing an arbitrarily high number of Palestinians as medieval reconpense and collective punishment to humiliate them so they will self-deport or leave because Palestinians are a fundamentally inconvenient people to the national methos and mythology of Zionism and anyone who knew anything about Gaza knew that was going to happen.

So within the first few days, you get this what I call isisification of Hamas in the first chapter, which is Hamas cannot have any secular grievances or political causes. They have to be mindless Jihadist cartoons who are just mindless anti-Semites, which as far as … Biden says they had the ancient hatred of Jews, which again, bad luck that the people who drove them off their land happened to have that as their national religion, out of all the gin joints and all the towns and all the world. But the idea that you would provide context was anathema. And so this was disciplined and enforced in a very documented way. First up was MSNBC. So on the morning of October 7th, Ali Valshi is running the desk at MSNBC and he brings in Iman Moihadine who had lived in Gaza for two years. He was by far the most qualified person to talk about it.

And so live on air as the attack is unfolding and we’re kind of getting information trickling in, they do what all journalists are supposed to do. They begin to provide context. They don’t cheer it on. They’re not for it. They’re not like saying, isn’t Hamas great? They’re saying talking about the Nakba, the dispossession, how 75% of the people in Gaza are refugees who were kicked out of their homes and what is today Israel. They’re talking about protective edge in 2014, putting them on a diet, the siege, the lack of being able to travel, all that. All hell breaks loose.

We reported this from two internal sources at MSNBC, which as I’m sure you would imagine was much easier to get sources in than say the New York Times, because a lot of people were ashamed of their role in this and were happy to talk. And this was later vaguely confirmed by the New York Times as well, but they bring in, they being Comcast, it’s the first and since last time they ever directly intervene in MSNBC’s coverage. They bring in Rashida Jones and Caesar Conde, who are the head of MSNBC and NBC News respectively and they say,” Never do that again. “That was terrorism apology. You’re not allowed to provide context for what happened on October 7th and indeed history has to start on October 7th. Nothing can precede it, right? It’s like the big bang. There’s nothing that precedes it. It’s like asking what’s north of the North Pole.

It’s ontologically impossible. And that was reflected in the coverage. Then on March 9th, there’s a company-wide call at MSNBC according to our two of our sources where they bring in Martin Fletcher, who’s the longtime NBC news correspondent who has since retired and he had family who were injured on October 7th. He himself had served in the IDF and he jumps on a conference call with all of MSNBC and NBC News and gives the playbook. He says,” Palestinians aren’t real. They weren’t a people until 1967. They’re invented by Arab nations. Jews are the real Palestinians. These are direct quotes, more or less. And Israel left greenhouses in Gaza. You’re kind of typical really racist anti-Palestinian vomit. And that becomes the official line in MSNBC. And if they say, if you have any questions, you go to Martin Fletcher because he’s the longtime NBC correspondent. CNN does something quite similar where Mark Thompson issues a memo on October 26th where he affirms an existing policy, which was probably more informal saying, you cannot mention the suffering of Palestinians or these Palestinian death counts without prefacing it with October 7th.

So that way it has to be framed by definition as defensive and you can’t talk about anything that basically comes before it. And so you would have a story, you were allowed to say, “Isn’t it sad this Palestinian died or there was this explosion that killed 15 people, but you always have to say as a military response to October 7th.” And so these policies very initially make it so you cannot provide context. Context is anathema. It is not allowed because it’s viewed as Hamas propaganda or terrorism apologea. And this therefore reduces, and of course you have the parallel atrocity of propaganda with the beheaded babies on October 11th. A story completely invented out of whole cloth that’s spread by everyone from Nick Robertson at CNN to Sarah Sidner who says it live on CNN where she says, “The Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office has confirmed that there were several beheaded babies at the Kabutsum.” Now the Prime Minister can’t confirm his own racist propaganda.

That’s absurd, but that was the editorial standard. You could basically say whatever you wanted about Palestinians. And then once the story was … And then of course Biden says he saw video of it, which he of course did not because it never happened and slowly tweets are deleted, people kind of issue very opaque apologies, but very early on they had to be this cartoon ISIS-like entity because you had to make a ceasefire impossible. And this was affirmed by progressives in Congress who refused to call for a ceasefire for months. Obviously Rokana, Elizabeth Warren, I think most cynically and most, I think high leverage was Bernie Sanders who went on CNN and CBS News in November and December of 2023 respectively and said, “I don’t know how you have a ceasefire with a group like Maas who seeks Israel’s destruction.” Now nevermind, of course, that Israel seeks Palestinians destructions.

Nevermind that a call for a ceasefire is not a moral endorsement of an organization. It’s just a call for a ceasefire. And this was affirmed by CIP, Matt Duss, who was like supposedly the far left progressive poll of so- called progressive foreign policy. He goes on democracy now and says, “Bernie Sanders has a good point. I’m paraphrasing, but something to that effect.” He basically affirms the logic of that. So it’s a far left position, a radical pie in the sky. You get a dozen articles in the Atlantic saying a ceasefire is impossible. Meanwhile, we’re getting 300 day dead, 500 dead a day. They kill almost 6,000 people in the first 11 days. They’re averaging about 550 dead people a day, 30% of whom are children. And you could not talk about a ceasefire mainstream media. There was no mention of it in New York Times.

The New York Times editorial board and Washington Post editorial board supported. Everyone is in this stories about how it’s eight billion, nine elevens or some kind of fatuous nonsense like that. And it’s immediately indexed in this kind of war on terror civilization versus this vague Asiatic ward who again are presented as this cartoon villain with no political grievances. And that right there cements creates the inevitability of genocide because if you have to defeat Hamas, you by definition cannot do that. They are a gorilla force, an indigenous guerrilla force. Unlike ISIS, they’re not who are foreign mercenaries. They are of Gaza. They live in Gaza. They are Palestinians in Gaza and they support hovers between 40 and 55% in Gaza. It’s a litle higher in the West Bank, but they’re Palestinians, like all grill military movements that are national liberation movements, again, whether you like them or not, doesn’t matter.

They’re not going to just surrender. And this is something Tony Blinken himself affirms behind closed doors in January of 2024 when Andrea Mitchell reports that Blinken tells Nanyahu that Hamas cannot be defeated militarily. Now, a reporter worked their salt would say, “Well, wait a second, then why are we arming and funding this extensively military operation?” But this is the kind of Orwellian inverse reality we operated in for several months where everything is a contradiction. And then of course, which we can get into, and I’ll maybe let you interject here so I’m not droning on, but then you get into the ceasefire redefinition in late February, early March of 2024 where ceasefire is polling at about 75% Democrats don’t even bother at that point defending the genocide on first principles or as such. Then they move into the helpless Biden fuming Biden. We’re actually working on a ceasefire.

Okay, what’s your definition of ceasefire? And then you hear their definition and it’s simply reasserting terms of capitulation, reasserting demands of surrender by Hamas, which of course has not been the definition of ceasefire for 5,000 years of human warfare. Ceasefires, both sides ceasefire and you come to a political solution, not I win and you surrender. That’s just you winning. But then that becomes the oralian definition that’s broadly adopted by the media. And this goes on for months and months and months and months and months. It was based on a fundamental contradiction and the only people who ever pointed it out were people like left wing critics on like, “This doesn’t make any sense.” And so that’s all documented in the book. Basically with the argument is that within the first few weeks really, the White House doesn’t even defend it as such. They simply try to move it into the non-sequitur by playing up this idea that Biden is either helpless, which again, the media assisted these laundering operations or that he’s very mad.

He was always sort of vaguely upset all the time. It’s what I call the asymptotic break with Netanyahu. I can read you some examples if you’ll indulge me. I know I’ve been rambling here for a bit, but I do think these are very illustrative.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Bro, people literally came out in the rain to listen to you talk.

Adam Johnson:

There’s talking and then there’s talking. But sorry, I’m going to make sure I get … So this is, I think, critical and this is when you get these, I think, fairly sophisticated liberal interventions of inventing reality, which I think was one of the reasons people felt like they were going insane at the time because it was all premised on a contradiction. So you had this idea of the helpless Biden, which I’ll skip and get to the fuming Biden. So this was a media trope. There’s literally dozens of these articles, but I documented the top 10 and then we did a source analysis. So 94% of the sourcing for these stories are White House aids and very quickly one can realize why they would be painting this narrative because they themselves know it’s indefensible. They themselves want to go in and out of liberal and progressive circles.

So the decision is made to distance the White House in some kind of narrative or abstract sense while painting them as working towards a ceasefire or some peaceful resolution, sufficiently removing them from the genocide that they themselves are arming, supporting and diplomatically providing cover for. So you have November of 2023, it begins in earnest with NBC news. The gap between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government over Gaza future is widening. Ooh, it’s widening. CNN, December of 2023, unprecedented tensions, unprecedented. Watch out. Between White House and Netanyahu as Biden feels political price for standing with Israel. Axios, our friend Barack Rive, who we can get into January of 2024. Biden, running out of patience with Bibi as Gaza war, it’s a hundred days. Washington Post the next month, Biden moving closer than ever to a breach with Netanyahu over a war in Gaza. CNN March of 2024, how a brief exchange and a call explains the strained Biden Netanyahu relationship associated press, Biden cajoles Netanyahu with top talk.

Ooh. Politico, March of 2024, from I love you to asshole how Joe gave up on BB after decades of building a close personal friendship with Netanyahu, Joe Biden has had it with the Israeli Prime Minister and he’s hitting him hard and it may be working spoiler. He did not hit him hard and it did not work. So there’s this alternate reality where Biden, who’s the most powerful person on earth, is somehow unable to get a country the size of New Jersey who’s 75% of their weapons company in the United States, 100% of their weapons arms reshipments come from the United States, cannot operate militarily for more than a week or two without support from the United States because obviously because of a tax in Yemen and Lebanon and elsewhere is bumbling, simply just a dottering old man who’s working really hard for a ceasefire for fucking ostensibly for nine months and he just darn it Chucks can’t get one.

And what we later learned, which I think is important is that Israeli prime minister at the time, Michael Hertzog, tells Israeli media in April of 2025 that Biden quote, “Never asked for a ceasefire not once.” He never asked for a ceasefire. And we know that because there wasn’t a ceasefire and he’s the most powerful person in the world. So there was this alternate reality that had to be painted where he was working for a ceasefire, but really what he was working for was, “Hey, Nanyahu, I’m not going to use any leverage, but would you mind?” And so the analogy I use is it’s like LA Dodgers, I know you’re an LA Dodgers fan, Dave Roberts right before the World Series saying, “I’m going to bench Shohei Otani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freedman and all my all stars, and we’re going to put in the AAA baseball team, but I’m tirelessly working to win the World Series.” I don’t think anyone would find that to be credible.

He would be committed and people would think he’d lost his mind, but Biden repeatedly said, “I’m not going to condition military support, but I’m working for … ” That’s literally the only leverage that would do that. And everybody knew this at the time and there was precedent for it in 2021, Biden pressured Netanyahu to stop. And so it all got sort of mystified. Aaron David Miller shows up, he’s one of these Biden Hacks, one of these pro- Israel hacks who shows up and says, “Well, Biden couldn’t do it even if he wanted to. ” And then every time he shows up in the New York Times or Foreign Policy Magazine or Washington Post to kind of give this pat line about how Biden, because you had in parallel with fuming, you had helpless. So he was also helpless. He would always end it by saying, “But even if he could, he wouldn’t.” And you’re like, “Wait, what?

” So he doesn’t want to, because they’d say, “Oh, but he’s a hardcore supporter of Israel.” And it’s like, yeah, that’s the point. And so this was obviously crazy making for a lot of people who were reading this thing, pointing out that it didn’t make any sense and had all these contradictions and was based on the analogy I give is it’s like theater 101, the difference between a sketch and a plot is a sketch. A plot moves forward, it has beats, things change. A sketch is the same gag three or four times that you get out in under four minutes. This was a sketch.This went on for 10 months. You had these articles, literally over a hundred of these articles, you can find them. And you would think an editor worked their salt after the 70th fuming Biden story would raise their hands and say, “Wait, is Biden changing any policy?” No, but he’s generally mad.

Okay. Well, how is that a story? Because these were curated by the White House. All the sources are Biden aids or phone calls they know are recorded. It’s obviously-

Maximillian Alvarez:

Biden pops can of spinach and like Shakesphist at Netanyahu.

Adam Johnson:

And that’s why they have to use these meaningless puffy language about unprecedented about to. So you have this asymptotic break that always approaches zero but mysteriously never gets to zero. And then they do what they were trying to do, which is wait it out. And this is a book about buying time and about liberal hand waving and time wasting and pseudo savvy negotiations. It was about maintaining the status quo and buying time. And the reason why you buy time as any good public relations person will tell you is because you cannot defend the actual thing that’s happening. And that was the theme that we saw over and over and over again. And mainstream media just laundered that obvious self-serving bullshit over and over and over again.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well put. And obviously the whole while you’ve got this historical rupture that is occurring in large part because of media and our relationship to media, right? The disconnect between this reality obscuring power serving, genocide enabling, like all of that is being undercut by the innocence destroying images that we’ve all been bombarded with on our phones, not just the younger generation, but yeah, of course a lot more in the younger generation, which is why right now TikTok fucking sucks. You know why? Because in 24, Biden and the Democrats answer to like, what are we going to do about the public turning on us about because we’re selling a genocide that they’re not buying, we’re going to take over the fucking platform that they’re seeing it on.

Adam Johnson:

Well, they forced to sell to the Ellison family who are the single biggest donors of the IDF.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Which is, there you go. So that’s what we got. Thank Biden for that too. But I wanted to kind of ask a question here, Adam, about the why. There are a lot of potential whys here, right? But it’s obviously something we all need to be empowered with to talk with clarity but nuance about because as all of this is unfolding, regular people who are trying to make sense of the horrific reality that they’re seeing and the lies that they’re being told or the obscuring that’s being done in front of them, if they’re not getting the answers that they’re looking for, a lot of horrible ideas and conspiracies fester. A lot of hatreds and prejudices emerge. It is no coincidence that there has been rises in antisemitism while this is all happening because people are being told if you are opposed to this, you’re against all Jews.

And so a lot of people are saying, “Well, I’m opposed to that. ” So I don’t know what to tell you, but I don’t want to see a child be cut in half, blown to bits, crying over- That’s obviously because

Adam Johnson:

You’re a racist.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. So the point being is that amidst all of that crap, there are very real truths here about CNN’s like Jerusalem Bureau, everything basically being reviewed and rubber stamped by the IDF. But that itself is not the whole of the explanation, right? It’s not just a sort of like Israel is telling all these newsrooms what to do, but I wanted to ask if you could sort of help us navigate the why this is being done and where it’s coming from. I’ll put it

Adam Johnson:

In these terms. And this is where I think a dialectical criticism is useful because the book is not called How to Sell Genocide because I’m trying to be provocative. It is a genocide was decided in Washington and in Tel Aviv and in the halls of power and then liberals are fundamentally a broker between the ruling class and the plebs, right? They come in and say, “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to sell what you got and meanwhile I’m going to tell them I’m going to sell them what you got.” So this is fundamentally about a decision was made, then it had to be sold and it’s an unseemly business, but once that decision’s made, what other option is there? You think they’re going to criticize, I mean, you think they’re going to criticize the genocide? You think they’re going to suddenly start putting their support behind Palestine?

No. So everyone, again, eventually around the margins, you have some pushback, but fundamentally on a structural level, the US media, whether it’s Vietnam or Iraq, is liberal, imperialist at its core, that’s its primary function. If the New York Times didn’t help sell the genocide, then there would be no New York Times. That is their social function. By definition, that’s what they exist to do. And so the decision was made and it was bipartisan and the worst place to be in the world is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus in Washington because what is the mechanism of pushback? There isn’t one. What a bunch of crusty leftists in a bookstore somewhere, they don’t get shut. You have no power didn’t fucking matter. And though by the way, you have to vote for us anyway because something, something Trump, right? And they knew that and this is under … Which I understand is that the engine that drives this is elite immunity.

When Barack Obama says, “We’re not going to prosecute torture under Bush. We have to move forward, look forward, not backwards.” When we, again, prosecute nobody for Vietnam except for some half-ass reforms, that’s a cycle of elite immunity. And every decision that was made by Tony Blinken and John Feiner in the fateful days in October and November of 2023, they knew they could just bypass it. No future administration’s going to hold them accountable. Certainly Republicans aren’t going to hold Cabo because they agree. And so they were banking on that. They were banking on Israel committing a very two, three month mass expulsion, genocide, getting their recompense and then vibing past it to the presidential election and extorting people with the specter of Trump, albeit a real specter, but nevertheless, that was part of the plan. So there’s a cycle of elite immunity that makes it so, who’s going to hold these people accountable?

Again, Tony Blinken has the most cushy job right now in liberal politics and he knew that was going to happen. So what’s the pressure, what’s the mechanism to actually push back on this from their perspective? Well, the primary fulcrum of rebellion was college campuses, which is why you had to have this campus anti-Semitism narrative, which was a complete fiction, a complete concoction of these Zionist crime bully groups like the ADL, because that was the one space where there was genuine momentum to create both the spectacle and energy and moral narratives to push back against the genocide, which is why you saw, again, I dedicated an entire chapter to it. I think it’s chapter eight, why you saw these high profile kangaroo trials in Congress where they would bring the president of Harvard and Princeton up. There’s a really clever thing the ADL does where they create what I call meta scandals where it’s all smoke and no fire, kind of like a version what they did to Jeremy Corbin.

They would ask the president of Harvard and Princeton and Yale, they would say, “Do you condemn the term globalize the Intifada?” And they would say, “Well, no, because that just means struggle and it’s a little more complex than that. ” Obviously we would not allow speech that intimidated any group of people, but we don’t condemn that phrase. And then literally the headline the Washington Post is university presidents refuse to condemn calls for genocide of Jewish students. And the average person reads that and says there were calls on campus to genocide Jewish students. There of course was no calls. We had our fact checker look for weeks. There was no such call. It did not exist. It never happened. But the way you do it is you gen up these false scandals and everyone runs for the fucking hills. And this is, if you can check out Steve Thrasher’s book, this is all explained in his book, the overseer class, which came out last week.

I just did an event with him in Chicago and he was kicked out of his teaching job, his 10-year trek job at Northwestern and he now is looking for work and has to freelance because he tried to protect his students on the campus of Northwestern and was beaten by a cop and made a villain by Republicans in Congress and later sold out by all of his supposed friends, several of whom are anti-apartheid scholars and James Baldwin scholars. Excellent book, please read it. And we can talk about the crisis of liberalism because Gaza exposed the vacuousness and uselessness of liberal and liberal institutions. But I’m sorry, I digress. I was talking about the weaponization of the antisemitism charge and how effective it was, but that’s discussed in detail and you can look at the data of … I’m going to mind if I read some data here to sort of cement this a little bit and- Read some data maybe.

Making these claims.

Yeah, here it is. So the mentions of antisemitism versus Islamophobia. So after the antisemitism scandals, which there were dozens on all these campuses, these universities and state legislators would force studies to document this. So even taking the ADLs juiced up stats, which literally say free Palestine is a basically a hate crime, even if you accept that, they were always roughly comparable to episodes of Islamophobia. Yet this was not reflected in the media. So the New York Times made reference to antisemitism on college campuses in our hundred day survey period 412 times and made mention of Islamophobia in and of itself five times and 31 they would mention both. There was sometimes it was like liberal box checking. These are all liberal box joking. Washington Post mentioned antisemitism 197 times and Islamophobia or anti-Arab hatred one time AP News 154 versus four, Politico 370 versus three for a grand total of 1,865 mentions to about 32 mentions of Islamophobia.

So the narrative was entirely one way and I’ll give you another example of this asymmetry and this double standard. I’ll give you one example in Chicago. So DePaul University, there was two students who were active members of the IDF who were on the corner every day doing this like debate me thing, I’m going to defend Israel, defend the idea. They have big Israeli flag and they were there every day. Again, after human rights watch and the International Court of Justice and Amnesty International all confirmed and found that Israel was committing genocide. So they were supporting a genocide, right? Some guy takes it into his own hands and punches him in the face. And what’s the headline the next day in local media? Jewish student attacked an anti-Semitic hate crime. Now it’s possible as an anti-Semitic hate crime, but that would be the worst coincidence ever because the guy was actively engaging in active, visible, pro- Israel activity, but then what the story becomes is about ethnic hatred.

Meanwhile, you had two major incidences, one at UCLA where these pro- Israel vigilantes came in with clubs and beat people, pro- Palestine and Palestinian protestors on campus again, attacked them with wrenches causing severe injury. And then you had the chemical attacks in Columbia in late 2023. Now, no one ever referred to that as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab racism. So any attacks or counter protests of pro- Israel students was always framed in the mobius sectarian terms whereas any attack on Palestinians was purely put in secular ideological terms and that double standard is quantifiable. You can show it and there’s no reason why that should be the case. There’s no legitimate editorial reason why there should be that asymmetry. And this book is about pointing out and quantifying and showing those asymmetries and then going up to editors and saying, “Why did you do this? ” Because we went to the New York Times and said, “Why do you use the word slaughter for the killing of Israelis 140 times, but you never use it for the killing of Palestinians?

How is it that Israel killed 20,000 children?” Again, the numbers probably double that, but they killed 20,000 children and somehow managed to never commit a slaughter or a massacre not once. Doesn’t that feel statistically unlikely? And they say, “Oh, it’s different.” Well, why is it different? It just is. But why? Because it has to be, because my entire ideology falls apart if it’s not. So that’s why they create these ontological nonsensical concepts like terrorism. There’s those sort of buzzwords because they’re meant to shut your brain off and to not do critical thinking. And so that asymmetry is, again, extremely quantifiable beyond a reasonable doubt and our numbers are conservative. We didn’t even include opinion columns. That’s how conservative we were. So if you include opinion columns, it’s probably 100% worse. And so that was what people were up against and there was very sophisticated turnkey mechanisms to use basically liberalism against itself.

So anti-hate rules on campus or Title IX or other federal legislation against discrimination was turnkey used against Palestinians, pro- Palestine protestors because to stand up for Palestine was per se, somehow a form of racism. This is why groups like the ADL have ingratiated themselves into anti-racist spaces for so long because they need to use that to defend the left blank of Zionism and Israel, which they’ve done to tremendous effect.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, we could be talking about this for two more hours and I would love to, but I wanted to just sort of talk about accountability and what that looks like and what this book empowers us to do to get it. Because I think we must acknowledge that for three plus years we tried. Not everyone can say that. I imagine if you’re all here, you did. I know and can quantify how much we tried at the real news hundreds of interviews or documentary reports or like original work on the genocide in Gaza Adam column after column interviewed like podcasts, like we post, do what people in Gaza have been asking us to do. Just like, please get our stories out there. Please don’t let people forget about us. Please do something to stop this. And for the rest of our lives, we’re all going to have to be haunted with the reality that we didn’t.

Adam Johnson:

Yeah. Well, one thing is for Israel and the US we’re banking on is that people would grow numb to it. And I think that to some extent that was a correct assumption

Maximillian Alvarez:

That in itself could lead to a very big discussion about why, because I actually think it goes beyond Gaza and it wasn’t lost on me as I was reporting from East Palestine, Ohio around the same time the train in that Ohio town derailed in 2023. And when I was there trying to get their stories up, I noticed that the algorithms they saw the name, a lot of the stories aren’t getting out there. So I’m trying to explain to these Trump voting white working class people who have been poisoned why the internet is suppressing their stories. And so there’s a lot here and again, our goal is not to explain everything in Adam’s book. You got to go read the book and I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be infuriated, but you’ll be empowered by it. But again, the fact is that from algorithmic suppression and platform specific suppression and all these goddamn Trump loving oligarchs owning the media platforms as well as gobbling up the media companies and whether from CBS to HBO to TikTok.

So we got a lot on our plate here and a lot to deal with, but I wanted to ask Adam like, what accountability looks like here because we name names we have thanks to you in this book and everyone who contributed to it, the ammunition that we need to hold people accountable. But I guess I wanted to ask how we do that.

Adam Johnson:

Yeah, because I think that’s obviously the next step. Again, I’m working on projects with that. I know other people are as well. I will say that the writers against the war in Gaza has organized the boycott against the New York Times that I think we should wholly support. It’s been signed by 300 pro- Palestine and Palestinian writers and academics. It’s a subscription and a writing boycott. I know it may seem a little like boycotts can feel a little maybe not that impactful, but I think at the very least that’s a good place to start delegitimizing the New York Times as an institution because I think there’s this idea that you can reform and I think an institution like New York Times is fundamentally unreformable. So seeking to delegitimize it, not like again, indulging it, not when someone gets a job or places an op-ed, you go, “Ooh, you in New York Times.” I think that mentality that we’re going to change it from the inside with an institution like that has to be gone.

So I would check out the writers against the war in Gaza and their boycott on New York Times. Actually going to do an interview with them on Tuesday talking about it because it is like a very, very, very first step. It’s obviously not like in and of itself that, but I think delegitimizing the institutions like the New York Times who, again, we can talk about their interventions where they, I believe, crossed the line into outright genocide, whether it was accusing Honorah, which does the aid and provides food and shelter of being Hamas by laundering bogus Israeli intelligence that fell apart in two weeks, whether it was again, promoting atrocity propaganda, whether it was doing the Al-Shifa hospital command and control center that looked like a bun villain layer and then they got there, nothing was there. The Washington Post debunked it. The New York Times kept trying to put lipstick on the pig for months.

But then this outright genocide denial on healthcare workers, they repeatedly militarized schools, places where people were sheltering children. Everything was a Hamas bunker or … So that would be the first step in my opinion. Secondly would be maybe doesn’t work towards accountability, but again, reach out to your local BDS coordinator, reach out to people who are attempting to delegitimize these institutions that seek their destruction and genocide and it starts there. But unfortunately we just need to be armed with the data and be armed with the critical analysis and seek to, within our own spaces, to push back on those narratives and to delegitimize platforms like the New York Times, who I thought who are uniquely high leverage and uniquely pernicious in selling this genocide.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s give it up for Adam Johnson, everyone. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Real News Network Podcast and thank you to the great Adam Johnson for this incredible discussion. Again, Adam’s new book is called How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza and it’s out now with Pluto Press, so go get yourself a copy and thank you to Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse for organizing this really great event. If you want to get more coverage and hear more important conversations just like this, then we need you to become a supporter of The Real News Now. Share this podcast with people in your circles, your friends, your family, and your coworkers. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story and go to the realnews.com/donate and become a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really does make a difference.

For the Real News Network, this Maximillian Alvarez signing off from Baltimore. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Michael Fox: Hi Mark.

Marc Steiner: Hey Mike, how you doing? Good to see you.

Michael Fox: Good to see you.

Marc Steiner: What do you got for us today?

Michael Fox: All right. So late last fall I visited this place that I think you’ll appreciate for this episode. Sprout Plaza at the University of California campus.

Marc Steiner: I know exactly where you were.

Michael Fox: So it’s a beautiful blue sky out. Leaves are changing colors. It’s a crisp autumn afternoon and in front of me is this big long stoic building marble, four big long Roman columns at the top of a row of stairs. This is the administration building here at the University of California Berkeley and this is called Sproul Hall. And that is important because this was literally ground zero for the free speech movement of 1964 here at the University of California Berkeley. Like the Plaza where I’m at right now, which is Sprout Plaza, was where you just had daily marches, protests, speeches just constantly happening.

I think it is really poignant that on the ground in front of Sprout Hall, someone has written in chalk, Trump must go now, refuse fascism. And it’s chalked up in two different locations here. People still staking out their territory, demanding their right to speak their voice. I was there to get a sense of the feeling being there and kind of the legacy today. And of course this was ground zero for the free speech movement. And Mark, that’s something you know a couple things about.

Marc Steiner: A little.

Michael Fox: So just to kick this off, how would you define the free speech movement for those that don’t know or don’t remember?

Marc Steiner: Well, I think you got to take a step back with the free speech movement, Mario Savio and the rest because they came out of the civil rights movement. That’s the roots of this. The roots of this is in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana and SNCC, the student unviolent coordinating committee and people putting their lives on the line to end segregation in the south and to register people to vote. So those are the roots of the people who created the free speech movement. And people came out of that movement in the south with black and white in different parts of the country and created things that were spawned by their work in the south
As with Mary Osavio was as well, who was a philosophy graduate student at Berkeley. And so that was also all throughout the country at that moment on the campus as I was and on the East Coast and around the country universities were clamping down on the ability for students and faculty to speak out against the war in Vietnam, which was just beginning and to talk about civil rights and racism and more. And so the locus of that, the central part of that erupted on Berkeley’s campus with a free speech movement that kind of gave birth to free speech movements across the country. So it was the beginning of the volatile 60s given birth by the civil rights movement.

Michael Fox: I was trying to make this connection to the past, right? What does it mean for people there today?

Yaseli Mendez: Yeah, I mean it’s very impactful.

Michael Fox: And so I spoke with this one student, Yaseli Mendez. She grew up in Mexico. She’s a third year psychology student. It is scary at

David Hollinger: Times.

Michael Fox: I asked her, what does it mean to be studying here and to be on this campus in this place that was so important for free speech and for this movement around the country?

Yaseli Mendez: So crazy. I was raised in Mexico and free speech is not very tolerated there. There’s a lot of violence against speaking out. And so being in a country specifically Berkeley where it’s like, wow, free speech was born, I feel very lucky to be here. Yeah.

David Hollinger: That’s awesome.

Michael Fox: I spoke with another really interesting student.

Gabriel Alou: Gabriel Alou, L-O-U.

Michael Fox: He’s a senior history student and he told me how history is still so important. Clearly he’s a history student, but not just for the free speech movement, but he made this connection to what free speech means, but also the history of struggle in the United States.

Gabriel Alou: We talk about woman suffrage movement. We talk about Malcolm X. We talk about Martin Luther King about the black rights. And also we talk about the fundamental human rights. I feel like everybody has the right to like freedom of speech. Everybody could express their ideas and thoughts. I feel like-

Michael Fox: And he said, “We still need freedom of speech. We still need a free speech movement.” It’s something that he still appreciates today. And he said something that I thought was really interesting in that everybody should be able to have their own political opinions.

Gabriel Alou: Give opinion, but you do not need to raise it to a level of conflict. Our speeches should not be something that’s division or more of a unity. Yeah, because United States is a country of immigrants. Yeah. So the main goal of free speech is for us to have different opinions from different countries. We’re coming together to make the country better but not worse.

Michael Fox: But his analysis I thought was really, really powerful and so important because he’s talking about we should be coming together, we should be focusing on the positive. And I think that’s such a great segue for this episode, Mark, because a lot of what we’re going to be doing today is talking about the powerful and the positive stories of the past and how movements have stood up and lifted up the voice and shared their voices and lifted up and stood for free speech going back hundreds of years.

Marc Steiner: I think one of the things people have to recognize though is that the battle for free speech and the belief in freedom of speech has been at the core of the fundamental debates on what democracy should be in this country from the beginning,
Whether it was the differences between Adams and others in the founding father, if they call the founding fathers or whether it’s going down to Trump wanting to arrest people and filing all these ridiculous lawsuits to stop people from speaking or this tradition act of 1798 all throughout American history, this has been a battle. And I think that there’s precedence for limiting speech and there’s precedence for expanding speech in the history of this country. And I think we are now at the precipice in the beginning, not in the beginning, I think we’re in the middle of the start of a major battle over free speech in America and this time being pushed to limit it by the right wing in America and unless they’re criticizing you because you’re black or you’re left.
And I think that that’s why this discussion is so timely and important because we’re in the throes of a battle to protect freedom and speech in this country and it’s flying under the radar for most people. It’s not being seen at all. I want to welcome everybody to a special podcast series that I’m co-hosting with my colleague and dear friend, journalist Michael Fox, about one of the core freedoms of our nation, our freedom of speech. The right to speak one’s mind is a cornerstone of our democratic principles. That precious freedom is under assault, under threat and this series is the battle for free speech, a new multi-part narrative podcast series brought to you by the real news with your hosts. I’m Mark Steiner And

Michael Fox: I’m Michael Fox. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be taking you on a journey to understand the important role that free speech has played in US history and the fight being waged over it today.

Marc Steiner: And in our last episode, we looked at the attacks by this administration of President Donald Trump on our free speech. People are being silenced, fired, even jailed for voicing their opinions and their views. This is a threat. Today, our country faces the greatest threat of free speech in decades and in this series, we’ll cover the battles being waged over free speech here in the United States, at home, and abroad.

Michael Fox: In today’s episode, we’re diving into the past to look at how the fight for free speech has been at the core of organizing and struggle for change in the United States. From

Marc Steiner: The abolitionist movement to end slavery and the civil rights to end segregation to the free speech movement of the 1960s.

Michael Fox: So Mark, I’ll be honest, I’m particularly excited to have this conversation with you today because you actually lived some of these moments actively. For those who don’t know your work or history, can you just give us a quick sense of who you are?

Marc Steiner: I’m old. No. So I started my activism when I was like 13, 14, 1960, when I was first in the civil rights movement here in Maryland, in Cambridge, Mississippi in the South with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committe. And in 65 when I went to college, I was part of Students for Democratic Society leading the chapter at College Park in Maryland and we were taking the message from and the struggle from the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and bringing it East to have that same fight in College Park at American University at Georgetown and George Washington to bring that fight to the East Coast that took place also in Columbia when the Columbia University was taken over by Mark Rudd and the free speech movement there. So this is essential to what developed the movement of the 1960s was a battle for free speech on campuses and in the civil rights movement and to end segregation.
So the roots run deep and now we’re facing it again.

Michael Fox: Yeah. I want to continue where we started at the top amid the free speech movement at Sprout Plaza at the University of California, Berkeley. I want to go back to that moment and I don’t know if you know this, but I got my start in journalism over two decades ago, just up the street from there at KPFA. It’s the Pacifica Radio Station in Berkeley. And many, many years ago they produced this pretty incredible audio documentary about the free speech movement. They were on the ground recording and I just want to play a clip or two for you really quick right now. Yeah,

Marc Steiner: Of course. Please do. Yeah.

Recording: If you have the strength here, which you have to stand in the administration and say, “We want free speech on campus, you can have for the rest of your lives the strength to stand up whenever you say, whenever you see something you don’t like, you don’t believe in segregation or to say to the government, I don’t believe in war.” And you really have to do it
You could never believe such a thing could happen at the University of California where this many students would said they’ve had enough and they’re going to stand up right now. This university is so rough and so corrupt at its base that a simple demonstration by students asking for free speech will cause this university to collapse on outside pressure. I asked you if you can stand there and so listen my support for it.

Michael Fox: You know Mark, you and I interviewed UC Berkeley history professor David Hollinger.

Marc Steiner: Yes,

Michael Fox: Right. And he was a student at the university at the time and I asked him to take us back to that moment.

David Hollinger: Well, okay. The Sproul Plaza where Alsavio and various other worthies would be speaking And the

Speaker 3: University which is the complainant will not press charges.

David Hollinger: Now you’d have several thousand, of course proud assessments are often contested, but I can remember times when it was shoulder to shoulder all the way from Bancroft, which is the closest street to the south all the way up to say their gate, which is the part of the campus that enters the other buildings back to where the stairwell goes down to the lower level. So I don’t know, were there five or 6,000 people at those rallies? I think there might have been, but it was this feeling that we really did have this act together and there were a number of rallies like that. I would say the anti-war rallies were bigger than the free speech rallies, but they were part of the same thing. The free speech rallies began small and gradually increased over time and among the things that helped them actually, helped them grow
Were these faculty members that used to show up and speak. The issue that brought it up was the remarkably myopic perspective of the regents of the University of California and the administration, which was to prevent speech on campus that advocated political action. And so as a result, all these rallies would occur right at the edge of the campus. So you’d stand up like on the street and then you’d have a couple thousand people on the campus listening. And so the idea was this is absurd. We ought to be able to speak on the campus about political advocacy. So this is what triggered it and more and more people got involved and it’s true that the civil rights movement experience of the south was very important. There were lots of people, not only Mario Savio, but others who’d been involved in Mississippi summer so the connection was there because what kind of political adequacy did you want?
Well, we were advocating against racism.

Recording: I’m not here to destroy something. We’re all here to try to build something. Why don’t you help us?

Marc Steiner: And then that movement spread across the country. It was in Chicago. It was College Park, Maryland. It was at NYU in Columbia. It was across the United States of America that spread like wildfire, which is not often reported enough. It wasn’t just Berkeley. It took over campuses across the country and that melded into not just free speech, but free speech when it came to standing up against the Vietnam War. So all those things are really connected and there’s one piece of this people don’t talk about a lot, which is when in the student nonviolent coordinating committee in the south and SNCC, when Stokely Carmichael and some of the other leaders told the white folks who were in the Civil Rights Movement to go back to your campuses, go back home and organize and that’s part of what gave birth to all of this. And so it’s a rich history and it’s sadly relevant to this moment we’re facing today.

Michael Fox: What you brought up, Mark, what you bring up about how this spread at other universities campuses and people who were protesting elsewhere is so profound. When you saw this kind of erupt from the East Coast where you were and you saw this kind of blowing up in Berkeley, what was the context? What did you feel kind of on the other side of the country that this was happening in Northern California?

Marc Steiner: It was an inspiration I think for people across America. It was the beginnings, not the really beginning because the beginnings really weren’t with the Civil Rights Movement, but it was part of the explosion out of that movement, especially in majority white campuses across the country and white communities to stand up to the war and to stand up for free speech. And so really it was the birth of what we call the movement and the anti-war movement, all came out of this. And I remember as a young person just being enthralled by it and part of it

Recording: Is a possibility of reconciliation.

Michael Fox: You know what’s fascinating, Mark, because it seems like 60 years later people are still grappling with the same question, kind of the same struggle. Students and teachers on university campuses block from protesting or being silenced and fired over Palestine or Charlie Kirk like what we looked at in the last episode. Mark, what came out of the free speech movement? What was one and what did it mean for civil rights, the anti-war movement that would kind of explode across the country?

Marc Steiner: It gave birth to a number of things. The leading student force of the 60s, the late 60s, mid late 60s was the students for Democratic Society, SDS. And in many ways it was born out of the Port Yuran statement and Tom Hayden and all that rest, but it was born out of free speech movements.That’s what exploded the student movement across country. Part of the birth of it was a free speech movement that was deeply connected to the civil rights movement. And I think that the changes we saw in America in part came out of that time and out of that movement. It also was the reason we had this reaction today to fight back against free speech.

Recording: We have breaking news just into our newsroom this morning. Leaders at the University of Tennessee have fired a professor for her social media posts. Taken to jail, is included in a federal law. Are saying something about the deceased Charlie Kirk.

Marc Steiner: They wouldn’t say that directly on the right, but that’s what’s happening. So this is like taking America back, we’re breaking America backwards. And as a reaction to what the free speech movement gave birth to.

Michael Fox: One of the things I’ve been grappling with for this series, in particular this episode is the definition of a free speech. What does that actually mean? Today, while we’re looking back at social movement and activist organizing the free speech movement, abolitionist movement, how would you describe, what would you define free speech as taking this kind of historical look back?

Marc Steiner: We can say a lot of things about American democracy and its flaws. It’s always in a battle with itself. Freedom of speech is one of those things, one of those ideas, one of those principles that has unleashed revolutionary forces not just in America, but across the globe. The right to say what to organize and stand up, the right to say what you want to say, the right to use that to build movements. And I think that it is really at the core. Part of the essence of the early movements in the ’60s was a concept called participatory democracy that really galvanized both SNCC and SDS and other movements of people in their teens and 20s. The idea that the core of our country starts from the community, starts from the ability for everybody to say what they want and participate in this democracy as an equal.
Democracy in the beginning of this country was a democracy for white men of property, but the principles they believed in for themselves were universal. I mean, it inspired the abolition movement. It inspired the free speech movement. It inspired early union organizing in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Those principles, these white men who kept for themselves were actually universal principles.
And gave birth to all the movements who we see.

Michael Fox: Mark, let’s dive into this past. Let’s dive further into this past. Can you take us back to the 1800s to the abolitionist movement? How were people organizing demanding the end of slavery and what did free speech have to do with this?

Marc Steiner: Well, I mean, I’m not that old. I wasn’t there then, but I fantasized that I was. And so the battles that took place, especially from say 1830s to the Civil War, even earlier than that, free speech was under attack, especially when it came to the enslaved of Africans in our country. And it led to real violence. When people stood up to talk about ending slavery, they were attacked. They were killed. They were beaten. They were jailed. Thanksgiving. Free speech was dangerous to your life being a person who stood up and talked against enslavement.
And I think though that what the abolition movement did was take the words of the founding fathers of America and made them universal. Didn’t quite include women yet, but it made them universal. And I think people don’t realize that the movement to abolish slavery, the abolitionist movement in America really changed democracy forever. It was one of the major turning points. We’re still battling it in some ways, but I think that, look, I mean newspapers that came out to fight against slavery in America were burned to the ground. People were tarred and feathered. People were killed, but it gave birth to something that changed America fundamentally. And people, I think, don’t realize how deeply important the abolitionist movement was to our democracy, to our future, to our country.

Michael Fox: But even in the north, and that’s been something like researching for this podcast, Mark, which was kind of shocking to me is that you even had situations where people were in the north and they were still being attacked abolitionists in the north calling for an end of slavery all over. I interviewed this woman recently and I’ll mention her several times in today’s episode. Her name is Marianne Franks.

Mary Anne Frank…: I’m a law professor at the George Washington Law School and I’m also the president and the legislative and tech policy director of a nonprofit organization called the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.

Michael Fox: And she talks a litle bit about this. She wrote a book in 2024 called Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment in which she talks about how during the abolitionist movement it was really abolitionists who were pushing the definition of free speech were rethinking of it in different ways because up until then, basically the First Amendment basically said, “Well, Congress shall pass no law prohibiting the freedom of speech.”

Mary Anne Frank…: So the assumption that everyone made based on that reading, and that’s a fair reading, is that it only applies to the federal government and it only applies in this really narrow sense that Congress literally can’t pass laws that say, “You can’t say that or you can’t say this. ” So that when you had states saying, “We don’t like this kind of activism or these kinds of expression that suggests that slavery is wrong or bad,” that was not really seen as a First Amendment issue because it wasn’t even conceptually or doctrinally possible.

Michael Fox: So that’s why you had states, for instance, that were banning abolitionist literature. There’s the great postal campaign where abolitionists send hundreds of thousands of material to Southern states, basically demanding the end of slavery, et cetera. And then states started to ban this material. They were literally prohibiting abolitionist from sending abolitionist material in the mail. But since it was the state and not Congress, then the state said, “Well, we can do this because it doesn’t fall under First Amendment.” But then abolitionists were pushing it to this other level. And so Marianne Franks talked about this one story about Elijah Lovejoy, abolitionists, Presbyterian minister, newspaper editor, journalist.

Mary Anne Frank…: He very firmly read the First Amendment as a protection of his free speech. One of the most poignant things about his story as he is continuing to move states, move cities because every time he establishes his newspaper and writes about the horrors of slavery and advocates for abolition, he’s attacked and he has to move again

Michael Fox: And so on November 7th, 1837, a mob catches up with him at his home in Alton, Illinois.

Mary Anne Frank…: And they are at his doorstep and they are saying, “You have to stop writing about slavery.” And I can’t remember the exact quotation, but he says that he has the freedom to speak in this way and he will use that freedom as he sees fit. And he says that right before the mob shoots him to death.

Michael Fox: This was the violent retribution for speaking out, but there was this new vision of what free speech should mean or what it could mean for others for change for social justice in the United States.

Marc Steiner: And I think that the newspapers that were printed at that time, like The Liberator or Freedom’s Journal were attacked violently. They were abolitionist papers, but they aren’t really at the core of what really led to freedom of the press, really led to the battle for free speech because they stood up against a horrendous violence and a horrendous nature of slavery to push the boundaries of free speech to end enslavement of African people in our country. And I think that people don’t always get that connection between free speech and the abolitionist movement. And also what you described are also the roots of the Trumpian right in the struggle that we’re facing today. What we’re facing today is like not so much of a redux as it is the growth of both moments in our country and we’re at that place. We’re head to head.

Michael Fox: Mark, I want to bring us to just the year after Elijah Lovejoy was killed Philadelphia and just to set the scene to remind people Philadelphia at the time just wasn’t just another city on the East Coast. Before 1800, it was the capital of the United States. It’s where the founders signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and they did that all in a place called the Pennsylvania State House or what we now call Independence Hall. It’s in downtown Philadelphia and just two blocks away in 1838, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society built Pennsylvania Hall.

Mary Anne Frank…: Where you had all of these luminaries coming together who were staunch anti-slavery advocates and they were also advocates for women’s rights. And those are two of the most controversial positions you can take at the time, but you had all of these people wanting to come together, use their own money to build this incredible building that was supposed to become a communal hall for speaking freely and they referred to the freedom of speech in that way.

Michael Fox: And this was of course to be a place for abolitionists to come and meet and debate because at the time, like what you were talking about there, it was hard to find places to have large meetings because there was so much backlash against the abolitionist movement. So it was a big three-story building, several stores on the first floor. There was an abolitionist bookstore, another store that sold products not produced by slave labor. There were meeting rooms, a large auditorium, and it opened in May 1838, this is another one of those stories that I talked with Maryanne Franks about.

Mary Anne Frank…: And that it was going to be for the first time that the America would really speak freely. Black people and white people would mingle together, women and men would mingle together. There would be lectures, there’d be discussions, there’d be a bookstore. And it was such an incredible moment in American history that I think most people never read about because what happened when the people of Pennsylvania, and not just in Pennsylvania, there was all of these white-owned presses that were speaking about the abomination of Pennsylvania Hall in their Southern newspapers and advocating for people to go and fight for their rights against what was happening in Pennsylvania and all these flyers that were put up around Philadelphia by people who were saying that there are Obama and Nations going on at this particular hall and you should do something to stop it. And so for the first week or so when they were having their incredible lectures and there were all of this incredible progressive mingling of society, again, kind of living up to the aspirations that the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights actually articulated and people were furious about it.
The white mobs were furious about it. White businessmen were furious about it. And what happens as I recount is that they get so agitated that they burn the entire building down and they break in, they’re breaking in with stones. They start helting the building with stones as some of the speakers are speaking.

Michael Fox: And in her book, Mary Anne Franks talks about this one moment where Angelina Grimke, she was an important abolitionist and women’s rights activist. And she was literally speaking as mobs are trying to break in to stop her and she kept going.

Mary Anne Frank…: And she just incorporates it into her speech and talks about how we, she says, that we who are speaking the truth have nothing to fear. They’re the ones who should fear and tremble. But when they leave, the mob breaks in and sets and opens all the gas jets. And before you know it, this incredible monument to true free speech, expression, equality has been burned to the ground.

Michael Fox: This monument of free speech went up in smokes at the hands of white mobs and white supremacists and supporters of slavery. It’s just this crazy moment where you see this glimmer of hope of what could be, of people coming together to stand for what we dreamed the United States could actually represent literally almost 200 years ago and it’s burned to the ground within days of being built.

Marc Steiner: And what was the consequence? What happened of that act?

Michael Fox: I mean, the abolitionist movement clearly continued to organize, but there was fear around speaking out.

Mary Anne Frank…: And I think to some extent that was a very powerful kind of dampening of this moment that free speech and democracy were intertwined. I think it really did a lot to erase that from memory or put such a scar on that memory that that really wasn’t the way it was articulated for some time. And even when you saw the later abolitionist movements taking up the cause, I don’t think they so much talked about it in terms of free speeches. They just said, “This is about humanity. This is about evil. This is about a compact with the devil,” as they called the Constitution for its concessions to slavery.

Michael Fox: What’s so important is for us to remember these moments, to champion these moments, and also remember the backlash, which has been continual, but how people have continued to respond and continue to organize and would not bow down to the powers that be or the violence pushed by white supremacists, which has continued to be pushed by white supremacists in the United States.

Marc Steiner: Right. And I think that when you talk about Maryanne Franks, it’s interesting. When you mentioned her name, I remember her book, Fearless Speech. And I think that is the battle of the moment that we face in terms of fighting for free speech in America. I mean, I don’t think people realize how under threat it really is at this moment. I think that we are in a moment where as happened before in American history where freedom of speech is under attack. And I think that this notion of fearless speech is an important one to wrestle with.

Michael Fox: It is. And I want to take a second to dig in a litle bit deeper before we move on. Sure, please do. Yeah. About what this idea of fearless speech actually means. So she got this idea actually from lectures from Michel Fuku in the 1980s where he talks about the Greek concept of Paracia, which basically means saying it all. It’s freedom of speech, but speaking truth for the common good and speaking truth in a moment that it could potentially even put myself into danger. So the idea is that an ancient Greece mark, this was the most important speech that was needed to preserve democracy.

Mary Anne Frank…: It’s not just that you get to say whatever you want. The Greeks did have a word for that too, this kind of idea that you could just say things without consequences, but the Greeks didn’t seem to think that that was the particularly valuable form of speech. They thought the most valuable form of speech was the kind of speech where you had to speak in your own voice. That was the first qualification, which is you can’t pretend to be a devil’s advocate or take on a role or just do it for rhetorical purposes. You had to commit to it. And they said you also had to be speaking to or about something that was more powerful than yourself as the speaker, someone in power, some force in power and you could not be praising it because praising it is possible, of course, you can do that, but that isn’t fearless.
To be fearless about the way you speak about power is to criticize it. And it’s fearless because that creates a risk to you because once you criticize people in power, you are in danger that the people in power are going to hurt you.

Michael Fox: And so she says, “This is so important because usually kind of like in society, we kind of lump all forms of speech together.”This is in particular, we’ll talk about this in the next episode, but over social media, this is a big deal. Oh, everyone has their right to speech. But what she says is that we need to understand fearless speech juxtaposed with reckless speech. And what she describes as reckless speech is all of kind of the famous free speech cases you could imagine, KKK’s right to spread their message, Larry Flint, Neo-Nazi speech, whatever it might be, it is not fearless.

Mary Anne Frank…: These are not people who are taking a burden of speech upon themselves and actually taking a risk that they will be hurt by the people in power because they’re reinforcing power.

Michael Fox: And often people actually get hurt from their speech, but they’re not the ones who are getting hurt. So one example she gives here is the famous 1969 Supreme Court case of Clarence Brendanburg.

David Hollinger: The honorable the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Mary Anne Frank…: Where he is full clan regalia doing a march around a burning cross, got the Bible at hand talking about how black people and Jews need to be removed from the country. Now that is not the kind of speech. I mean, literally someone in a mask who is proclaiming these things and stirring up dehumanization and rhetoric against people who are objectively speaking more vulnerable in society. And in the wake of those kinds of rallies, people did get lynched. They did get attacked. And the entire question of Brandenburg was how closely related do his words have to be to the attacks for it to be illegal and the answer that his words weren’t close enough. But forgetting the doctrine for a moment, that’s reckless. You are putting this out into the world fully knowing that the people that it’s going to hurt or the people that it puts in danger is not you, it’s someone else.
And there I thought that is a really important distinction that I would like to emphasize.

Michael Fox: And so what her book really emphasizes and what we see time and time again is how fearless speech is actually attacked or silenced or pushed aside or banned, whereas reckless speech is then supported again and again. But her book is interesting because she tries to kind of get away from our understanding of free speech as kind of first amendment, because there’s been a lot written. If you look at most of the books that are written about free speech today, and I have been reading many of them lately, Mark.

Marc Steiner: I’m sure you have.

Michael Fox: But if you look at most of the books that have been written about free speech, they’re all talking about, well, what’s constitutional, what’s not constitutional, what’s defended by the First Amendment, what’s not defended by the First Amendment. And what she tries to do in her book is say, “Okay, that’s all good and well, but let’s actually talk about what free speech should mean beyond the First Amendment. And how do we define this in a different way? And how do we then kind of support and champion those struggles that are standing up for fearless speech?

Marc Steiner: People kind of whittle down free speech meaning I can belittle you if I want to. It’s my right to do. ” And I think that not to go too far afield here, but I remember back in the ’80s, in my days in graduate school when I was still too old to be there, that we were wrestling with Michelle who calls fearless speech and the lectures he gave at Berkeley and how that really is at the heart of her work and at the heart of what it means to be able to stand up and fight for human rights and justice and a democratic and free world in fearless speech.

Michael Fox: Were you having conversations then about Fuko and his lectures in the 1980s? Were you all talking about that and kind of what that meant?

Marc Steiner: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, not to digress into this too deeply, but my intellectual mentor back then was a Holocaust survivor named Avram Engelman who founded Antioch here on the East Coast who actually lived in Paris and was in one of Stalin’s camps as well. So this was a major part of his being and he actually studied and worked for Co. So it was like I was one step away with my mentor, Al Engelman. Yeah, so I’m very familiar with all that.

Michael Fox: Wow, amazing, Mark. Amazing. So I want to start to move us slowly in the timeline, the chronological timeline, because there’s another important episode that happens. This is after the Civil War that I think is really important in terms of understanding this question of fearless speech, reckless speech, and how people have used free speech in the past to stand up. And so I want to go to 1890s Memphis, Tennessee.

Marc Steiner: Okay.

Michael Fox: Population, roughly 65,000 people, a third of the residents are black and there is of course incredible racism. This is Jim Crow laws are mandating segregation across the Southern United States and lynchings against black men are just so common. And just to put this into perspective, during the 1890s, someone is being lynched somewhere in the Southern US every other day.

Marc Steiner: That’s right.

Michael Fox: So it’s just a terrifying moment and one woman in particular is pushing back. Her name is Ida B. Wells.

Marc Steiner: And

Michael Fox: Again, I spoke with Mary Anne Franks about her story as well because she was a black teacher, turned journalist and really a muck rager and her focus was on denouncing the lynchings.

Mary Anne Frank…: She got really consumed by the horrors of lynching because she experienced what had happened to some people that she knew and in neighborhoods that she lived in and suddenly that became what she really felt that she needed to communicate to the public. And as you might imagine, this was not received well and it was particularly an editorial that she wrote about the horrors of lynching where she wasn’t just talking about how lynching was a bad thing. She was saying, “Here’s what I think is actually going on with the problem of lynching.” And this was something I think had not really been expressed before, certainly not by a black female journalist, but she says the story that we keep hearing about these lynchings is that the men we’re told, the black men who are usually the subject of these lynchings that they’ve done something horrible to white women, that they’re raping white women.
And she says, “Here’s what my research has shown,” because she went and she would follow on these incidents and she would gather information about them and ask questions. And she said, “What I think is happening and what seems to be happening in these places is that there’s a problem of competition.” And she says, “And it’s not just economic competition, but that’s a big part of it. It just so turns out that many of the victims of lynching are people who are black men who were running businesses that were in competition with white businesses.” But then she suggests there’s a much more intimate form of competition when she says it’s not about, in many cases, sexual violence against these white women, it was consensual relationships. And that I think is really what drove the mob around her at this time from being very angry with what she was saying to being enraged in a way that was incredibly destructive.
It was because she said, “I believe that black men are not raping white women. I believe that there are consensual relationships happening between black men and white women, and that is why lynching is actually happening. It’s a sexual vengeance project. It is why so often we see that these men are tortured in these ways that are very sexual and very physical. And it really did seem to just animate the worst possible forces where she was in Memphis to drive them to that same kind of mob rage that we saw with Pennsylvania Hall.

Michael Fox: She’s writing these stories for her paper, The Memphis Free Press, and a series of white newspapers responded with editorials advocating a violent response or calling for people to do something about it. And in the end, they burn the Memphis free press to the ground.

Mary Anne Frank…: So again, you see that same sense of all- consuming rage about the publication of this idea and you can certainly see it in the way that the white newspapers talked about her editorial. They would reprint her editorial and talk about how unbelievable it was that somebody would make such horrific accusations. And it’s so reminiscent in ways of the Pennsylvania Hall reporting after Pennsylvania Hall was burned, there were a lot of editorials in Southern newspapers where they might say something about how well it’s a shame that this incredible building was burned to the ground, but not only were these radical ideas being stated in this hall, but also white women and black men were seen leaving together and sitting together. And you could see that this was really something that was animating so much of a part of what was animating this kind of mob hatred, this real censorship was that sense of you cannot speak to that.
You cannot speak to this idea that the black races and the white races might be mingling voluntarily together.

Michael Fox: I think this is another such powerful message and reminder of regardless of the response and the violent backlash, people are standing up, people are speaking their voices, people are demanding to be heard and this is clearly fearless, fearless speech.

Marc Steiner: Now when you mentioned her, I’m just going to throw this in as well. I mean, she was one of the most amazing Americans that ever walked the face of the earth. She was fearless. I mean, in what she wrote in the movement she helped build, she helped found the NAECP. She stood up … Lynchbobs tried to kill her. They killed people around her and lynched them, but she never stopped. I mean, this is a woman who I think most Americans don’t know but should know. She was one of the great heroes of our entire history and just fearless, a woman, a black woman in that period to stand up the way she did. So yeah, I mean, she’s one of those people, whenever hear her name, Ida B. Wells, my next line is say her name.

Michael Fox: Mark, bring us up in the decades, right? Walk us into the 1950s, into the 1960s and the civil rights movement. You participated directly. How important was free speech for the civil rights movement? What did this mean?

Marc Steiner: Two things. I mean, A, the roots of the civil rights movement people don’t really often give credit to was World War II. And Truman announced the official surrender.

Recording: This is a solemn but glorious hour.

Marc Steiner: It was Black men coming back from the war throughout the South and throughout the United States standing up saying, “We just fought for this country. We’re not going to live in segregation.” Those are the roots of the movement where black veterans of World War II. We often forget that. That led to Little Rock in 1954 to start slamming down racial segregation of schools. When I was a kid in the 1950s, Baltimore, we were all in segregated schools. And I remember the first time black kids came into our elementary school. I was in the sixth grade. And so it’s not ancient history. Well, maybe some people might think I’m ancient, but it’s not ancient history.

Michael Fox: That’s incredible. For other generations, that seems like that was lifetimes

Marc Steiner: Ago. Yeah. I mean, I was just very lucky to have been living then and have the mother that I had who stood up to racism and crossed the line early and my father, who was the first white doctor in Baltimore to integrate his waiting room and it was that recent. White doctors made black patients come in at the end of the day or early in the morning and leave. So it’s a history that has defined this country and the battle against it has defined this country, the struggle for a different world. But I think that what we’re seeing in America now is really a pushback against all of that. That’s what the Trumpian right is. It’s a decisive pushback against free speech and against civil rights and how those two worlds are intermarried. As I said before, the free speech movement in America was born of the civil rights movement.
The struggles are connected, which is why the battle against racial equality and the battle against free speech are also connected.

Michael Fox: Mark, I want to dig just a little bit deeper into this because what is it about free speech that was so important for the civil rights movement, for the anti-war movement? Is it the idea that we should be allowed to stand up and to speak for what we believe? We should be allowed to protest and to change the structure, the inherently racist structure of the country. What is it about free speech in particular that is so important to these movements at the time?

Marc Steiner: That’s a really interesting question. I mean, again, I may go back to start what I said a little while ago. When America started with free speech, it was free speech for white men of property.
That’s how it began. But it was such a universal principle that everybody embraced it and fought for the right to have free speech. And I think that’s something we forget. What the founding fathers did was unleash a democracy for themselves, but what the unleashed was a passion for democracy among everybody else and that redefined … It was a long struggle. And I think people know often make that connection. And I think that what you talked about earlier, which was the violence against those who really pushed it in the early part of the late 19th century, something most people don’t see or know the deaths that came place for fighting for free speech.
I think now we’re in that battle again. We really are. I mean, for me, it’s not a question of Republicans or Democrats. It’s a question of the anti-free speech movement, the anti-free speech movement, the racist movement, capturing one of the America’s parties and pushing this very dangerous agenda for the future. Let South be confused, the Democrats are all good and Republicans are all bad, but we have to be realistic about what’s happening to us right now. It almost seems to me to be, in terms of free speech, akin to when the right wing in Germany ceas power in 1933. And I think that we have to look at that history and understand what we’re facing.

Michael Fox: When we spoke with David Hollinger, he had this really interesting thing to say exactly about this is how Trump today is using the narrative of free speech to censor and using the narrative of free speech for his own means, attempting to derail our definition of free speech when it’s only for himself. Well,

David Hollinger: What happens is that Trump uses a lot of generic ideals like merit and free speech and diversity and he claims that he represents them and that the academic establishment has betrayed those ideals. And so free speech is somehow that’s not allowed unless it’s enunciating the stuff that he wants to advance.

Michael Fox: So free speech for my people is what Trump is saying, but if you’re not one of me, if you’re not with me, then you’re against me and you don’t deserve to have free speech. And of course, I think this is part of that same contradiction, this same push and pull that you talked at the beginning that goes, that is historic throughout the history of the United States. But I think it is fascinating today how Trump’s attempts to take the universities for himself and use this discourse around free speech, his own definition in order to support himself or bolster himself weaponizing the different departments of the country. It is clearly a terrifying moment and another reason why this moment of free speech of trying to define what this is and remember the movements that have stood up and fought for everything that’s made the United States great in our history and why it’s so important now.

Marc Steiner: People have to realize also it’s a constant struggle. It’s never over and it never will be over probably and that the movements you’ve raised here, like the abolitionist movement was so key to expanding our democracy. It was such a threat to people in power and the destruction of that movement, I always say the destruction of freedom in the South and its roots in the abolitionist movement in the 1870s gave birth to 90 years of sheer terror against the black world in America. And it was the civil rights movement that went back to the roots of America, freedom of speech for everybody to break the back of that and try to build new America. And what we’re seeing now is a reaction to that. Was it in Spanish. It’s not over. It’s never over.

Michael Fox: Mark, I have a question about the legacy of the free speech movement today and thinking about, particularly around universities and campuses, would you say that we’ve actually been rolled back some of the gains, the rights to be able to stand up and speak out at university campuses, which were one, which were so important clearly during the anti-war movement, anti-Vietnam movements, what that’s always meant up until now, but it almost feels as though all of that has been rolled back so much in terms of like the government backlash against pro- Palestine protests on campus or saying anything about Charlie Kirk clearly. Would you say that things have been rolled back to even before the time of the free speech movement in the 1960s?

Marc Steiner: I would say they are attempting to roll it back. It has been rolled back completely, but universities are running scared. They’re terrified. I mean, huge chunks of money for universities comes from the federal government and that’s what Trump is threatening them with, taking that money away. And so the university systems either have to stand up and fight it with a threat of losing their money or cowtow to it and roll over.

Michael Fox: This is interesting because this is one of the things that David Hollinger brings in. He says, “This is the hill to die on.

David Hollinger: Given what the Trump administration is trying to do to universities to reduce them to vocational and technical institutions, to deprive them of the critical role that universities have traditionally played in fomenting democracy, they really are trying to do that. So that means that this is the hill to die on. The universities are right. This is the hill to die on. This is the worst crisis that we’ve had since 1916, 17, 18, in terms of the political opposition to universities when Charles Beard resigned at Columbia and there were a whole series of quarrels over World War I. This is by far the worst thing that’s happened since then and universities are much more central to American life than they were at that time. They have a lot more authority, they affect many more things. So it’s important that we take a stand and I’m very glad to see that many of them are, but not all.

Marc Steiner: This is the tip of the iceberg because Trump and his minions on the right see attacking the university systems, not just as killing freedom of speech, which is the subtext to it, but as a first salvo in controlling their power by limiting and shutting down freedom of speech in universities. And it’s not really given enough play in the press.
When the National Socialist Party took power in 1933 with a minority of the vote, I might add, but they built a broad coalition, everything they did in the beginning was subtle. They didn’t come in one fell swoop and turn the whole place into a dictatorship overnight. They built it slowly and they created one of the most horrible societies the world has ever seen, killing 11 million people in Europe, in concentration camps. So what I’m saying that is, is that we have to be really very watchful and careful about what we’re facing. This is just the beginning. It’s not the end. And people say it can’t happen here. Well, it can happen here and it has happened here before, especially if you’re black or indigenous. And so I think we are, as I said before, we’re on a precipice and I think we cannot underestimate the moment that we face.

Michael Fox: Mark, I want to Bring in Mary Anne Franks one more time.

Marc Steiner: Please do. Yeah.

Michael Fox: And I want to talk about the First Amendment because for me, this was a really powerful … It’s a controversial point in her book, I feel like, but I think we need to discuss it and I think it’s important to grapple with because in our conversation and in her book, she talks about how racial justice advocates and social moments have succeeded in the history of the United States, have succeeded in the past despite rather than because of the First Amendment or First Amendment protections. And so she says, imagine an alternative America.

Mary Anne Frank…: Where from the beginning we took the concept of free speech in the way that Elijah Lovejoy took it, which is to say, we have to recognize if freedom of speech means anything, it is the freedom to criticize what we are doing, what the powerful people are doing in our society. And the most important thing for us to articulate at that time is slavery. And close on its heels is the subjugation of women. Imagine if that had really been allowed to sort of take … If Pennsylvania Hall had never burned down and it really did become a temple of humanity where people began to see that things that they were deeply wedded to, ideas that they had always grown up thinking were correct if they really had been challenged by other ways of thinking if that had been allowed to flourish. I mean, think about how radical and revolutionary that would’ve been.

Michael Fox: Could that and so many other experiences have actually shifted the discourse within the United States enough to stop the Civil War, she asks. Instead, you have the Clarence Brandenburg version of what it means to be radical. So KKK, Neo-Nazi, those are the guys who are embraced and protected.

Mary Anne Frank…: We skipped the part where it actually becomes the norm that slavery and all forms of racism and sexism are evil and wrong. Instead, it goes from becoming the way that society’s constructed to, “Oh, he’s saying something very edgy that’s probably making you uncomfortable, but for that reason, we should protect it. ” And it’s like there’s nothing in between. And so at that point it gets quite literally the KKK gets a second life and a third life. And it’s partly because it’s revitalized through these perversions of the concept of free speech to say, “Well, we must be allowed to say these things now that slavery has been abolished. We fixed things in terms of racial injustice and now it’s all gone too far. And so we are going to be the old guard who is going to be talking about how things used to be. ” And then immediately that’s what gets so much protection, gets so much rhetorical resources and protection.

Michael Fox: And she brings this one other moment. She talks about this, which I think is important. She talks about the white supremacist play and then movie, the 1915 movie, The Birth of a Nation, right? Yeah. So it sparks riots every place and lynchings.

Mary Anne Frank…: And you get one of the first sort of showdowns between the NAACP and the ACLU, where the NAACP is saying, “This is going to get people killed.” And the ACLU saying, “You really need to understand that if you’re trying to advocate for censorship, it’s going to hurt you too at some point.” And it’s one of those moments in the book where I’m trying to articulate the expression on my face when I read this, this idea of the NAACP being lectured by the ACLU, by the white director of the ACLU saying, “It’s going to come around and hurt black people. The law isn’t going to work for you if you advocate for restrictions now.” And the obvious point being that the law has never really worked for black people. Of course, it’s going to be used against them. It has been this entire time. That whole premise of the, well, don’t censor the radical white supremacist speech because it’s going to mean that you’ll get censored too, completely erases the fact that radical abolitionist speeches we were just talking about has always been censored, has always been suppressed.
So it’s this kind of retelling of history that is so perverse because it’s also this kind of lecturing that says, if you just had a sophisticated enough view of speech and just enough confidence in the American people, you would understand that we just need to allow this kind of material to flourish so that you will be saved as much as the white supremacist will be saved.

Michael Fox: And so I feel like this is such an important point and really powerful because she said this and it had to take a double take. The fact that social movements, abolitionist movement, the fact that the civil rights movement, the fact that they were successful not because of the First Amendment, but actually despite the First Amendment, but because of free speech, but free speech the way that we consider free speech, not free speech as according to say the Constitution and whatnot and that white supremacists have always gotten the benefit of the doubt and everyone else has gotten shut down, but people continue to stand up.

Marc Steiner: That’s interesting. It really is. It would take a lot to explore what you just said and what she said because the alternative theory is if you shut that down, then we’re next to be shut down.

Michael Fox: Exactly.

Marc Steiner: It’s really difficult. I mean, I know that battle around the ACLU and the NAACP and it’s a core battle and I understand both positions. The oppression of black people in America saying this has to be banned and stopped because it’s attacking us and formating violence against us and the ACLU saying one of the bedrock rights in America is the right to say what you want to say, even if it’s disgusting and full of hate. So it’s a difficult discussion. We could do a whole series just on that. Really? You know? I mean-

Michael Fox: Totally.

Marc Steiner: I’ve had this debate over decades around the First Amendment, what’s the First Amendment say? Congress shall make no law representing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That’s pretty broad. So that’s a very difficult question. I’ve been fighting racist and neofascist my whole life since I was a boy, since I was maybe 11, 12, 13 years old. And so I’m passionate about it, but it’s a really difficult nut to crack.

Michael Fox: What I come back to here is what you said at the beginning about the contradiction at the root, at the core of free speech in the United States and the conflict and the battle over what it means today, but what it’s meant and what it’s always meant and how there has always been this push and pull. I think what’s the most important thing for me now is for us to understand what is at the root of this battle and for us to be able to define it like when we talk about fearless versus reckless speech,
This is not a concept that people understand, but it’s a concept that we should understand because when we go out and speak truth to power or people are standing up in the streets, they should understand and know that they are participating in something that goes back, this idea of speaking out goes back thousands of years. It’s not just right now and that they have this support and this backing even if the First Amendment hasn’t always worked in their favor or has often supported white supremacists at the same time as it’s silenced those fighting for social justice or those fighting for equality. So I think you’re absolutely right that this is a hard, hard nut to crack, but it’s still a conversation we have

Marc Steiner: To have. We do. Because the reckless think they’re fearless.

Michael Fox: Yes.

Marc Steiner: I mean, it really is tough. It really is. So now I have to go home and think about all this.

Michael Fox: Mark, I want to close with someone else I spoke with recently.

Fara Dabhoiwala: Fara Dabhoiwala. Well, I’m a historian at Princeton, but I used to teach at Oxford University in England.

Michael Fox: His book, What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea was published last year. I’ll be bringing him in more in future episodes, but I really appreciate his analysis for this episode and where we’re headed. He told me free speech has always been about power.

Fara Dabhoiwala: Both in the theory and in practice, we see that today, what voices are silenced or elevated is about power. It’s a noble ideal because everyone can appeal to it and throughout history, as my book shows, those without power and those who are attempted to be silenced have also appealed to it from abolitionists and early feminists onwards into the present day. So that’s the good side of why it’s a dangerous idea. And we should all be shouting from the rooftops that right now free speech rights are being trampled upon. The First Amendment is being completely disregarded in the United States and the rest of it. But I think that the real global battle here is about how to deal with the communications revolution that we’re living through and how to deal with the power of media companies, the unfettered transnational power of basically of American media companies.

Michael Fox: And I’d say not just media companies, but tech companies, social media, AI firms, and that’s where we’re headed next time.

Marc Steiner: And next week we go to Silicon Valley. Look at the internet, social media, artificial intelligence are transforming the way we communicate and what it all means for our right to free speech.

Michael Fox: Hi folks. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s podcast and you like this series, please do us a favor, go to your podcasting app and give us a like, a follow, a subscribe, or tell a friend about it and leave us a comment or a review. It really helps to spread the word about the show and the state of free speech in the United States today. You can find more of my work on my Patreon page at patreon.com/mfox. Also, please make sure to sign up for the Real News Network’s newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com or you can click on the link in the show notes. If you’d like to find out more about the stories we talked about today in this episode, we’ve added some links in the show notes there as well. The Battle for Free Speech is a production of The Real News.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.

The following rushed transcript may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. After 78 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing in historic Palestine and after three years of all out genocide in Gaza, Israel’s government and military continued to display to the world what it looks like when a settler colonial ethnationalist and increasingly and openly fascist regime is openly allowed to rule and operate and slaughter and bomb with geopolitical impunity and without any accountability to international law, reason or human morality. This has been on full display from Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza in the occupied West Bank, regardless of the so- called ceasefire that’s supposed to be in effect, to Israel’s aggression and reckless violence in Iran and Lebanon to its illegal abductions and torture of peace activists sailing with the global Samud Flotilla to break the siege of Gaza and bring lifesaving aid to Palestinians. And the latest convoy of the humanitarian age ships was intercepted by Israeli forces in late April and in early May.

And activists sailing with the global Samuel Flotilla were captured in prison for days in Israel and eventually deported. But the testimonies and affidavits coming from flotilla members who have been released are frankly horrific. They describe days of targeted torture, abuse, broken bones, unauthorized injections of undisclosed substances and sexual violence by Israeli soldiers. And these stories along with the viral videos of Israeli national security minister, Itmar Ben Gavier, taunting detained flotilla activists and the videos showing Basque police officers violently beating flotilla activists returning to Spain at Bilbao Airport have rightly sparked global outrage. And as we always do here at the real news, we’re going to take you to the front lines of this struggle so that you can hear directly from folks at the center of it. And I am really grateful to be joined today by three guests. Tiago Avila is a member of the Global Samuel Flotilla Steering Committee who was abducted in international waters by the Israelis in late April off the coast of the Greek island of Crete.

At the time, Avila was one of two Flotilla participants and leaders forcibly transported to Israel where he was held as a political prisoner for 10 days. We are also joined by Katrina Graham. The Flotilla activists who while being detained by Israel shouted free Palestine in Benjavier’s face and was subsequently shoved down to the floor and the video that Ben Gavier posted of that exchange has gone globally viral. And we are also joined today by Ariaj Nitelis, a global Samud Flotilla participant who also experienced abuse during this latest round of detentions. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I want to start by just going around the table and giving y’all the floor. And I want to ask if you can describe for viewers and listeners what you yourself experienced on this latest mission with the Global Samud Flotilla from the time that you set sail to now.

Catríona Graham:

So for myself, I was sailing from the Italy port and it was a few smooth days of sailing. And then shockingly, we were intercepted on the waters just off Crete, which really spoke to us. Usually we have what we call this orange zone, which is just much, much closer to Gaza waters. But this time the IOF came all the way into European waters for the interception, which I think speaks to how the Greater Israel Project is not only being seen as being taken into Lebanon, but also right across the Mediterranean. We were kidnapped in the open seas illegally and we were held in detention on a makeshift prison vote for two nights. After being released into Crete, we continued on our mission and we sailed to Marmorous and then set sail towards the shores of Gaza, where once again, we were intercepted illegally in international waters.

The first time we were about 145 participants that were kidnapped and detained and the second was over 420 participants. We were subjected to extreme violence. I think it was very clear there is a marked escalation. This was the third time that I had been kidnapped also with the 2025 mission with the global smooth flotilla. And each time there’s been a marked increase in aggression, the scale of aggression, the extent. This time, as soon as the IOF rib was approaching the boat I was on, they started firing rubber bullets immediately. They pulled somebody out and subjected them to violence to having their hands cable tied to blindfolding and from there the violence continued to escalate. Within 20 minutes of being put on a prison boat, one of the others already on the boat was shot with a pellet gun. She did not have adequate treatment until we arrived in Istanbul.

And while we were in the port at Ashdod and in Ketziak prison in the desert, we started to hear more and more accounts of the extent of violence, of people being tasered, people being stabbed, shootings, rape. So this really showed a marked increase in the kinds of violence, but we’re very clear that we were there for a few days, whereas there are still more than 9,600 Palestinian political prisoners and hostages being subjected to far worse forms of torture in Palestine right now.

Ariadne Teles:

Yeah, we suffer the same. I have a fist bone, a hand actually. My radial bone in the left end is fractured and I have smashed nerves. It’s just one of all the fractures that our volunteers have. We have people inject with substance like cats say it. We have testimony of people listening to the soldiers make pleasure noises when they are without clothes. So this experience was very different and like Kat say, they improve the violence and they improve the violence because they still in punity for all the crimes that they are committed with the Palestinian people and against the Flagilias and other things that we pass through is nothing. It’s not 0.01% of the Palestinian people facing every day. Actually now we have kids in the same position that we are days ago. So just when I was in the prison car that they used to transport us to the prison, to the porch, to the prison, I saw draws of a smiley face, a sad face, and I scared phrase drugs that obviously was made for a kid.

So everything that you saw in the videos, everything we talk about our experience in this moment that I saw the draws, I just feel that all the feelings that I have some kids was passing through this too. And we in our position, we know that we have people outside, we have lawyers, we have our governments and our investors trying to make something, but the Palestinian kids, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian hostage, they are kidnapped by Israel all these days until today and maybe now, actually certainly now, they don’t have anyone. They don’t know how long they are being in this prison.

I think that the world cannot allow anymore. It’s not because we like people Western people. I’m from Global South. I know the difference that European pasta pots had in our mission too, because they are very racist and we still have people struggle for us in outside and it’s because of this that we need to be stand with the Palestinian people too and we surfer all of these things, but how my comrade Casio from Brazilian delegation say our morality was intact. We have breaking bombs, we have injuries, we have people that are hated, but our morality and our conscience are very impacted and actually we are more strong. I came from Amazoni and the struggles are very similar in my place. My place was occupied with this slogan that we need people and lands that don’t have anyone like they said about Palestine for the creation of this so- called state.

So it’s the same struggle for lands and territory and we know that we need to continue because the future of Gaza is the future of the entire humanity and we from Global South. We know what is colonization, what is imperialism when we see and definitely this is the most cruel face of the colonization in our time and I think it’s our duty, historical jury in this time, you struggle against this until Palestine will be free and all the people can be free too.

Thiago Ávila:

Yeah. Thank you Ari. Thank you, Kat. Thank you Maximillian for bringing this important subject. I was part of the first interception on April the 29th along with 180 other people on 22 boats, over 30 other boats managed to get to Greek territorial waters and escape this illegal interception, 700 narcical miles from Gaza. From there, they were testing the waters and the methods of violations that they escalated a lot three weeks later against the second wave of our global smooth flotilla. We got intercepted and sent to a prison boat and that prison boat, there were many people assaulted, very precarious place where people were put. So many psychological violence, so many physical violence after that they transferred the people, transferred 179 people to a Greek boat and then to Greek, to Greece territory. But me and Saifa Bukeshek, Spanish, Swedish, Palestinian origin, were taken illegally and kidnapped, taken to occupied Palestine.

We were taken to Ashkall and prison to a interrogation and tortured facility from Shabbat, the Israeli internal intelligence. That was a very troubled moment as well because the first three days on the transit there, we were severely assaulted. I could barely see from my right eye because I was beaten up so hard. I passed out twice while being assaulted by them. They put ropes on my neck and said that now they were allowed legally to hang people. They pretended they would throw me from the boat. They did so many violations. They would put me in stressful positions for a long, long time. They would close so tight the handcuffs that until today it’s been more than a month and I still cannot feel this part of the palm of my hand. I don’t know if it’s ever coming back because there were obviously some nerve damage.

And then after that, in this 10 days in interrogation facility, they were saying that they would kill us or would put us for a hundred years imprisonment and there was torture everywhere. We were in solitary confinement, not the first time in other flotilla missions. I was already put in solitary confinement before, but this time it was more intense, like 18 hours interrogation some days, many court hearings where they would always try to extend, extend, extend the stay and would threaten all the time. They would question about every single aspect of life. They would show everyday photos of my wife and my baby and asking what the context of the photo was, but it was not like a photo from social media. So just to show that they had the capacity to spy and to do surveillance over our families, they did so many violations. But the problem is that despite all they did with us, the first group intercepted got severely beaten more than 30 people have to get hospitalized, but then in the second moment in May the 18th, they put not 30 people they put dozens and dozens and dozens of people to get hospitalized, 30 broken bones and a lot of people under severe violations.

And the problem is that despite all this that they did with us, we’ve seen and we heard they’re doing a lot worse with the Palestinians themselves. At the interrogation and tortured facility that I was for 10 days, my neighbors were Palestinians being tortured every day and every night. So the violations that they make us go through like losing a family member and not being able to say goodbye to them, Palestinians goes through every single day like Hussama Busafia, who’s been more than 500 days being tortured in Israeli dungeons, also lost his mother like me and could not say goodbye to her. Marijuan Barguti has been arrested for so long, also lost family members, could never say goodbye to them. So the problem is that they violate international people because they only don’t do the same that they do to Palestinians because of the political cost that it has, but they wanted to do the same because they are say this.

This is a fascist supremacist regime and that needs to be defeated. But the reason why they don’t do is because they cannot pay the political cost, but they dehumanize Palestinians so much that with Palestinians, they believe they can pay the political costs. So that’s why they’ve been doing the most horrific things with the almost 10,000 Palestinians, almost 400 of them children under these Israeli dungeons. And it’s for them that we must scream and that we must keep on mobilizing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I appreciate all three of you so much for sharing that with us. I know that there’s so much more to say and so much more that you and other members of the Flotilla have said, and I would just encourage folks out there, this is not private information. If you want to learn what these folks went through at the hands of Israel with the support of our government here in the United States, you can go listen to more of their testimonies. You can read these affidavits. It is horrific. And rather than just kind of going deeper into those horrific details, I want to use the remaining time that we have to sort of take a step back here because we’ve been covering these flotilla missions and speaking to participants for years, from union organizers like Chris Smalls to military veterans from the United States, part of different peace groups, all manner of folks who have joined these important flotilla missions and our viewers and listeners have told us how much these missions mean to them, but they’ve also asked us questions about what the ultimate mission is, what the ultimate goals are and what has and hasn’t been achieved over the course of the past nearly 20 years from the first missions in 2008 to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, which included six ships that were raided by Israeli forces and 10 participants killed to this latest voyage and all the other voyages that were intercepted or raided or captured by Israel.

So I want to go back around the table and ask you three to respond to that and give folks your perspective on this years long mission and movement and what is being achieved even if it feels like a defeat every time Israel and the IDF prevent one of these voyages from reaching the shores of Gaza.

Catríona Graham:

So of course our ultimate goal is to support the Palestinian people in their leadership and their struggle for liberation, specifically with the Flotela missions. It is to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza, to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza that has been held for nearly 20 years. We know that Qaza should not be dependent on aid. What we bring on our boats is a token amount of aid trying to bring some support that we can to those in Gaza, but ultimately we need to make sure that the siege is ended and that the people of Gaza are able to have self-agency, be able to live for themselves, work for themselves, no longer to be dependent on aid. While we are working to break the siege, there is so much else that we are working to do. So we know that at the moment since the so- called ceasefire agreement was brought in, Is are no longer on Gaza, on the daily realities being experienced not only in Kaza, but also in the West Bank.

We know, for example, on the first day of Eat, there were 10 Palestinian people murdered, including five children. We know that the violence continues, the bombing continues, the lack of access to food and resources and medical care continues. So we need to do whatever we can to raise our voices to draw attention back to Haza to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We’ve seen as a result of this flotilla, there has been widespread condemnation. So we know that Benjavier posted this video and it received widespread condemnation from many global leaders, but this is the kind of action he has been taking for years posting videos attempting to humiliate Palestinian prisoners speaking about his intention to execute them under the new legislation that is coming through and this doesn’t receive the same kind of condemnation. Even when Netanyahu spoke out and said that he wasn’t representing the values of Israel by posting this video, it’s very clear that was more about the tone and that he shared the video rather than the extent of violence that was perpetrated against us under Flotilla, but also showing the real values of Israel, the continued abuses that are well documented being committed against Palestinian people for many, many decades, which is why we need to move beyond words of condemnations from our government leaders into real actions, into sanctions, into divestment, making sure that Israel is isolated on the international stage and finally they are forced to follow international law.

Ariadne Teles:

Maybe we cannot until now break the physical siege, the physical illegal siege. Actually, one of our boats or part of our boats reached the shore of Gaza in these days with penal solars and some food and material for the people that they are very happy to receive just because it’s important because the research are so low and a minimal thing that we arrive Gaza, it’s a good thing, but actually what’s reach Gaza with this part of our vote was hope that people, the Palestinian always says this, they feel they are not alone and the world are talking about and they have people fight for them. Like I said before, when we are in the prison, we know they’ll have people outside of the prisons fight for us and this is about humanity solidarity too. We cannot break the physical illegal siege now, but we break a lot of other seeds now I am Amazonian person talk to you right now because of this movement and we are talking about Palestine and we are talking about the liberation of the people for other people can hear and join us to what the Flotillas are.

For me, it’s an instrument of struggle for liberation for the Palestinians and the entire world. We are a global operas in this moment, it’s happening and this was built since the first Platilla create these we just not accept that Israel commit crimes. And if the government are complicit, we are not. And we just saying because the governments are doing nothing like in all the history of the humanity we see like this, all our rights we need to fight for them. And in our training we studied about the legacies of the nonviolence techniques like in the independence of the India we have Ganji make marks and struggle against the more armed in the time, the British arm and they just walk. But this cause mobilization, this cause strike, this cause and this is what we need. We need not just Platillas, we need all the people trying to do something because like we always say this is our historical duty.

So I think in the history of the Flotillas, we just create more and more united, we create solidarity, can see each other like human beings and people that need to free themselves like people, people for the people.

Yeah. I think it’s very connected with all the struggles in the entire world and it’s just an instrument, but it makes some noise and not just break the physical seats, but all the other seeds. And for me, we have a lot of seas, like Kat says in the next Fuchila, we have the Caesar fire, but we still was a victory and in this time we already have UN pronuciate against Vishal and now it’s proven they use sex of violence against the Palestinian and we don’t know if was the Flitilla that make this more in the media right now, but I think it’s a movement, a global movement and you just need to increase this solidarity how much we can.

Thiago Ávila:

I’m very satisfied with the answers of my comrades. I’d just like to add that whenever we are mobilizing solidarity with people, we need to be at the service of these people. The Palestinian people have been very clear on their callings for solidarity. They need people to stand side by side with them in their struggle for liberation. They need to stop the genocide. They need to break the siege, this illegal siege of 19 years by sea by land and by Air of Gaza and they need the internationalists of the world, the free people of the world to break their country’s complicity with the genocide. So this is being very clear calling that the Palestinian people made and that have been our line of action since day one, since the very first people that started mobilizing 18 years ago to break this siege by sea missions by using boats, it has always been the goal to break this illegal siege, to create this humanitarian corridor, but most about to be solidarity, Palestinians in their struggle for liberation.

The tactic is one with many, like all my comments said before, the boats are not more important than the massive demonstrations in the streets, not more important than the boycott campaigns, not more important than the people disrupting the armed factories and facing huge criminalization than the people spreading real news like you do here on this media, like people sharing knowledge, historical knowledge, like people doing the grassroots work, banging door to door, talking to people. So all of this is part of the same struggle to defeat Zionism, this racism supremacist ideology, to defeat their alliance with United States imperialism that uses the Israeli regime as a mean to produce and to maintain his Gemini over that region and over the world. So it’s important for us to be there doing all the actions that we can with the people that go on Flotillas, they don’t do just that.

They do all the other actions of solidarity actions with Palestine and they’re not mobilized only for Palestine. We do Flotillas to Cuba as well. We’ll be doing mobilizations for all the oppressed people in the world. So we believe in a better society free of exploitation, free of oppression, free of the destruction of nature. The Flotillas are a mean to bring more people together to push for Palestinian solidarity and hopefully to achieve concrete victories. Like Ariadne said, the last mission in October 2025 was a key factor to convince Trump that they will never succeed in implementing the complete ethnic lensing of Palestine. So Trump came from a person that four months before October was saying that they would displace Palestinians to Eritrea, South Sudan, to Congo, to Somali land, to a person say, “No, we need a peace. Israel cannot fight the whole world by himself.” So that was the mobilization of the people, the public, the global uprising that promoted that.

So we need to do this again when we decided that we would sail again, it’s not that the conditions were easier in this almost eight months of the so- called ceasefire, people are still getting killed, they’re still being restricted, but land is being stolen with the so- called yellow line and their plans are the worst by the land being ruled by war criminals like Trump and Netanyahu, by the big text with techno authoritarian regimes or by the industrial military complex that profits from war. We don’t want any of that. We decided that we would sail because the Palestinian people are saying, “Please expose that there’s no real cis fire. Please expose that the genocide is ongoing.” And we decided that we would do that despite the hard conditions, despite the increasing and escalating use of force and violence against our fotilla. And we did our best with the resources that we had.

We are very proud of what we did, but it’s an incomplete task because the genocide is still going on and we still need to defeat Zionism and imperialism, which is the key task, the historical task of this generation.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I think that was really powerfully put by all of you and I know I’ve got to let you go and I wanted to just sneak in one final question here, a sort of rapid fire around the table, final message that you want to share with folks watching and listening because obviously the common feeling for people with a beating heart these days is everything is getting worse and there’s nothing I can do about it, right? The bastards are winning the genocide is continuing the wars are proliferating the fascists are rising. There’s a lot to be despondent about right now, but I know from what our viewers and listeners have told me that they see so much hope in the global Samuel Flotilla in the Palestine solidarity movement around the world, even in spite of things objectively getting worse in the world. And so I wanted to sort of bring things back down to like the ground level and ask you all if you had any messages to folks out there who were feeling despondent hopeless and they feel like they don’t have the strength to fight back right now, I want them to hear from y’all about how you find the strength, Katrina, to stare Itmar Ben Gaver in the face and shout free palace Stein.

I want to hear where you find the strength, Tiago and Ariajni to be beaten and tortured in these prisons and to still stand up and speak out for what’s right. So I wanted to just have that be our concluding question. Any final messages you want to share with folks out there about how to find that strength and how to keep going even when all seems dark and hopeless?

Catríona Graham:

Thank you for this really important question. I think we need to be clear that this is the moment to claim our collective power. There are imperialist forces trying to silence us and we need to absolutely refuse this. We need to continue resisting and we need to make sure that across the world we rise together. There is so much power in collective action and there’s so much power in our communities. Love we know will win out overall. So when we lean into these kinds of actions, when we come into community with each other and claim our power, whether it’s through going to demonstrations, participating in direct action, speaking out to political leadership, driving and pushing for change wherever we can, we can have an impact. We have had an impact and we will continue to do this until Palestine is free.

Ariadne Teles:

Yeah. I want to tell about something that happened with me in the immigration process when we are beaten, when we are arriving Ashdad and they ask us if we try to enter in Israel illegally and break and attempted to decid to Gaza. And I interrupt the soldier and I say, “First of all, it’s not Israel. It’s occupied Palestine.” And they, “What?” And I say, “Okay, Palestine.” I say, “What?” And I say, “Okay, Palestine.” And then a woman that was in the side, first of all, they asked me where I’m from and I just point to my passport and they say, “Oh, Brazil to Dubai or Brigado.” They say in Portuguese, something like that. And this woman says, “Brazil, did you know that Brazil’s occasion and you are a colonizer?” And I say, “No, I am from Amazonia and I’m life proof that the original people always win and you know that you are in the wrong side of the history.” And when I talk to the people, just to continue the story, the other one says, “Amazon, I make indigenous people.

” And I call him racist and the other God that take me to the other step. But I can say these things in his face and something that I always say is when I have conversation my side, they are question because it’s not an easy ask. We question all the time. We obeducate our families, we have educate our times, but we did this because we are on the right side of the history and when you fight the right side of the history, you already win. And when we win, we win two times. So every time that we just organize ourselves, we already work for ourselves, not for other person. It’s a work that go back to us 100% and this is very pleasure, this is joy, stay in community and fight for the liberation, fight for the future, fight for the present, fight for the person on your side, but it’s fight for you too and make your life more meaning and we can recognize ourself and stay a little bit off of this system that exploit us at 24 hours that we need to work a lot to survive, to see that a person in our side is our competitor and not a comrade and not a brother, a sister.

When you are organizing a struggle in solidarity with the people of the child work, you are in a community and you are acting like a human being, a collective person that we are a collective person. And these give us not just hope, but purpose in our life. So I just want to say that come to join us because it’s amazing what they did with us, I don’t know, it’s not compared like all the strength, all the power that we feel when we are in a collective and the power of the people and the power of the survey director can change the world and this is beautiful and this is amazing. I want to say come to join us. It’s not necessarily that you went in a vote, but you can support in many, many, many ways, but just being collective in community because this can change the world.

Thiago Ávila:

Thank you, Ariajin. Thank you, Kat, for bringing this up as well. I understand that situation is really not easy. Whenever we are analyzing the international conjuncture, we need to be very concrete in our analysis and the truth is that our enemies are getting bolder and sometimes they’re getting stronger. They are more willing to cause harm. They’re more willing to commit genocide. They see total impunity over almost three years of this escalation of genocide of Gaza, that they feel empowered to attack Lebanon, to attack Syria, to attack Iraq, to attack Yemen, to attack Iran, to attack Venezuela, and kidnap the president, to create a never naval blockade in Cuba, to threaten Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, to intervene in elections. So we are going to a very hard moment of world politics and international relations. But on the other hand, thanks to the gift that the Palestinian people gave to humanity, people woke up billions of people understood what imperialism is by the lenses of the communicators from Gaza who gave their lives to livestream of genocide and to counter the lives of the mainstream media that was saying that that was not happening, that there was no starvation, that these homes were actually tunnels below, that these hospitals actually had weapons hidden.

They gave their lives to show that that was false, that was simply wrong. There was a genocide regime bombing hospitals, schools, shelters, residential areas, all in the name of a racist and supremacist ideology called Zionism, which was not actually new. This was part of eight decades of genocide and ethnic lensing that structured itself into an apartheid colonial state. So this factor changed things because people, once they became aware, they started mobilizing as well. So that for the first time we saw a general strike based on an international topic in Italy, for example, we’ve seen the history of revolutions, many general strikes in many countries, but never for an international topic like this, like the Italians went to the street to port Palestine. We’ve seen millions and millions of people in so many countries breaking the narrative of the governments, deteriorating their image with their complicity, challenging the mainstream media point of view and winning in public opinion when they challenge that.

So that is something that shows the power. It’s not like this battle is won. Actually, we have a long way ahead. It’s a long march to freedom, but we see the means. We see the popular mobilization can defeat even the most powerful empire of our generation. Can defeat Donald Trump? Can defeat Penjamini Taniau and can corner them so much that they need to change their strategy, that they need to find other ways. So we need to do this all of our lives all the time, every time more aligned, more together, every time more courageous, more bold, because this is the mission that we have. So it’s not that it’s easy, but we’ve seen that it work and the people together, they are more powerful than any army. All they have is their violence, their hate, their bombs, and their weapons. We have all the rest.

We have solidarity. We have love. We have the history of anti-colonial struggle that shows when people are decided to take this long march of freedom. They are unstoppable and we have the idea that all people deserve to be free and equal, deserve to have the right to live in peace, but not abstract peace, but a peace with justice, peace where people can live despite their religion, despite their ethnicity, despite their race, despite their gender, people can live with all their rights guarantee. And that’s what we are aiming for. That’s what we keep mobilizing. And that’s why we know that despite being very hard way, we see that we are advancing. Our enemies advancing one way, we advance in another. And if we organize better, if we mobilize more and more, we will be victorious.

The following rushed transcript may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Today, this is just a political conversation that we’ll be having about fascism, but more importantly, talking about the works of Antonio Gramsci. Joining me today is Alberto Toscano. Welcome to Rattling the Bars Alberto.

Alberto Toscano:

Thanks for having me.

Mansa Musa:

First, explain to our audience who Antonio Gramsci was.

Alberto Toscano:

So Gramsci is best known as former secretary of the Italian Communist Party and one of the most significant Marxist and communist theorists of the 20th century. And most of his theorizing, such as we know today, was done in prison in a series of no books, his prison notebooks that were published after his death and after the end of World War II. It’s actually this year is the 100th anniversary of his arrest, which took place on the 8th of November, 1926. He was arrested while a member of parliament for Italy by the fascist state under direct orders of the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in fact breaching his parliamentary immunity, which he still had at the time. Before that, Gramsci had been a communist militant, but had also been a journalist. That was his trade and also that was one of the principle ways in which he engaged in political organizing first in the Italian Socialist Party and then in 1921 in the Communist Party, when there was a split from the Socialist Party to the left.

And so he only became a member of Parliament in 1924. So he was only in Parliament for a year and a half. And of course this was a very anomalous parliament because fascism had already

Come to power in 1922, but had become increasingly more repressive. And by the time of Gramsci’s arrest, then you essentially have in the wake of that, the formation of a one party state and the abolition of any kind of multiparty system.

Mansa Musa:

So to respond to him was predict based on not only so much of his being in the parliament, but based on his writing and his journalist and what he was reporting on is that what caused him to ultimately be arrested because in a parliamentary setting, you don’t have but so much power or you don’t have so much control over information. You either going to articulate your party position. I’m a communist or you going to advocate for policy change. But in a journalist capacity, you’re hitting home with information, educating people about repression and the disconnect between the government and people. Is that what led to his ultimate aggress?

Alberto Toscano:

Well, I think both those elements at once. So on the one hand, Gramsci was the leader of the most significant and most combative group among anti-fascist forces in Italy. He was very well known internationally, of course, in the context of the communist movement. He was the head of the party. And what fascism did from before it came to power until it really fully came to control Italy was to try to destroy and neutralize all forms of working class and popular opposition and resistance. So of course the papers, whether public or indeed clandestine, all forms of education, all forms of working class organizing. And so Gramsci in many ways brought together all of those figures. The journalist, the educator, the party leader, the organizer. And so the idea was that really to arrest them was to decapitate the

Mansa Musa:

Communist

Alberto Toscano:

Movement and the anti-fascist movement. And the famous sentence I believe voiced by Mussolini, but I think also spoken by the judge at his final trial, which was in 1928, was that we’re going to stop this brain from thinking. So the idea was not just the problem of organization, not just a problem of the political and even militant power of the communist movement. The idea was that their very ideas, their ideology, their capacity to organize the worldviews of the working and popular classes in Italy had to be quashed. And so that was key. And so along with a whole number of communist party leaders and militants, Gramsci was arrested on the basis that he was leading an insurrection. I think this was the crime, let’s say, for which he was convicted was the attempt to overthrow the Italian state because shortly before his arrest, there had been a botched assassination attempt on Mussolini.

So that was kind of used as a pretext.

Mansa Musa:

And let’s unpack the stop his brain from thinking because when you look at that particular sentiment, this is what Corntell Pro was designed for in the United States specifically to stop any, who would say the rise of a Black Messiah as it related to Black people. But his overall goal was to stop brains from thinking, stop people from organizing. Talk about how Gramsky, in terms of the abolition, mirrors what we see today, a lot of the theory and a lot of the perspective about abolishing prison come out of prison, come out of the thinking and what it looked like and what it will look like, come out of the space where people are incarcerated or people are in prison. Can you make a connection between the two?

Alberto Toscano:

Yeah. I think the connection is a connection we can make, but it’s also a tricky connection to the extent that certainly in the 1920s and ’30s, the communist movement or the socialist movement, or even the anti-fascist movement more broadly, did not in any straightforward way ascribe to an abolitionist position as part of its program. And in the case of Gramsci, of course, we do have this very strong parallel that imprisoned intellectuals have played an enormous role in political education and political organization

Mansa Musa:

Across

Alberto Toscano:

Anti-colonial, across anarchists, across communists, across black liberation movements, and of course into contemporary abolitionist thought. Just the other day I was looking at the list of the books in George Jackson’s prison cell, right? I think number 82 was a collection by Gramsci, the modern prince. So amongst other things, he was also reading Gramsci. And in fact, if we look at Jackson’s Blood in My Eye, there’s a remarkable amount of detailed writing in the chapters on fascism about the emergence of Italian fascism

Mansa Musa:

In

Alberto Toscano:

The early 1920s. So I think there’s really important links and also Gramsci, I think among Marxist theorists, even though I wouldn’t go as far as calling him an abolitionist, he certainly had a very complex and developed thinking around the nature of the police and policing, right?

Mansa Musa:

And

Alberto Toscano:

About thinking about the relationship between policing, repression, the modern state and fascism. And one thing I think we have to keep in mind is that the prison notebooks, which incidentally, Gramsci only started writing when he was allowed to have a pen and a notebook in his cell, which was, I think, three years into his imprisonment. So for the first two and a half, three years, these were thoughts that he could only sketch out in letters to his family. He was only allowed to write to his family, not to comrades. And only after a lot of work mainly by his sister-in-law, Tanya, was he allowed finally to have notebooks? He couldn’t keep the notebooks all in his cell. So he had to have a complex way of organizing his thoughts because then they would be stored by the prison warden. So he had this very, aside from having extremely difficult health conditions that eventually led to his very early death, of course, worsened by the fascist prison system, he was also working against all odds as most imprisoned intellectuals and most imprisoned people have in terms of writing, reading.

The most basic things become huge struggles. But Gramsci’s notebooks were there in many ways to try to figure out the nature and the causes of the defeat, at least partial or temporary defeat of the anti-fascist movement. And that’s, I think, partly the reason why he was so interested in thinking in this expansive and complex way about the police as something that reproduced the social order, but also, and this is key for Gramsci, the police as that which disorganizes or neutralizes the opposition to a dominant or hegemonic power. And in many ways, fascism’s success as well as a result of the weakness perhaps or the failures of anti-fascist forces was also a result of its ability in disorganizing the working class and disorganizing the parties of the left and disorganizing the anti-fascist front. There was a contemporary of Gramsci who started out in the fascist movement, ended up much later in the Communist Party.

Kutzio Malapalta wrote a famous book called The Technique of the Cudita, and he talks about the fascist march on Rome in 1922. And he says that fascism’s singular ability is, as he put it, to make a void around itself. So to disorganize and in that sense, going back to what you were mentioning before about Kointel Pro, this idea of stopping thought, of stopping the relationship between intellectuals, organizations and resistance is absolutely key to fascism, which is after all a counter-revolutionary movement. And so as a counter-revolutionary movement or a counter-revolutionary regime, it’s also always a form of counterinsurgency or Angela Davis and Marcusek borrowing from an Italian anarchist from the 1920s use this term, preventive counter-revolution. So that in many ways is what policing is, right? Including for Gramsci, the police in one of its aspects is this complex practice of preventing the possibilities for successful social transformation or revolutionary change.

And Gramsci, because he had this very expansive notion of the state, also argued that the work of policing is not necessarily just done by the police, like by the uniformed police,

Mansa Musa:

By police as

Alberto Toscano:

A branch of the state. It can also be done by all kinds of private, commercial, paramilitary, NGO, all sorts of different bodies can fulfill this function of reproducing a dominant order and preventing the emergence of its challenger.

Mansa Musa:

And to show you how study was, when you look at today, we talk about creating a disorganizing, we look at today, everything you just outlined, you got private police, you got private prison industries, you got everything that’s designed around this organized or keeping people disorganized is being perpetuated today through this system as we see it. A lot of misinformation, a lot of heavy-handed policing when we see what’s going on with ICE. So his perspective as it relates to this being a wing or armor of fascism is very astute. And I like the fact that how he look at the police because Hoover and that administration, they use every level of the police in this country to eradicate any opposition. They completely destroyed the Black Panther Party as a result of infiltration or just like what they did with Fred Hampton coming to kill you or send information, misinformation, create beefs between opposing parties, individuals, right?

But talk about Grumpy wrote on Foudism, viewing it not just as a factory system, but as a project to create a new type of man through disciplined labor and regulated private lives as that industrial mold collapse, how did the transition away from Foudism help pave the way for the castle system as we see it today?

Alberto Toscano:

Yeah, that’s a really complex question. I wanted to take a step back first just to make a quick comment about what you just said regarding the dismantling by Hoover and the FBI and the infiltration of the Panthers and of course of other movements as well. Actually, Gramsci’s arrest, and there’s still a lot of debate by historians about this, was seen by Gramsci himself and by many of his comrades as a result precisely of forms of infiltration. And we now know that high level members of the Italian Communist Party, including somebody who then became a very famous anti-communist writer in Yazosilone, were paid informants,

Mansa Musa:

Right?

Alberto Toscano:

And the problem already was a similar experience as that of other movements and parties that have been subjected to counterinsurgency practices and infiltration is that if you read biographies of Gramsci, you can see that for good reason he’d become extremely suspicious

Mansa Musa:

Of

Alberto Toscano:

A number of his comrades and the fascist infiltration had led to a lot of bad blood. Some of it, it’s like fed jacketing, right? Some of it was people who actually weren’t infiltrators, but who their comrades thought were. So that dynamic was something that the fascist secret police had very much implemented already in the 1920s and 30s and it was part and parcel even of the process that led to Gramsci’s arrest.

Now, to answer your question, even though Gramsci had never been to the United States and was writing all of this material with a trickle of books and newspaper, he was reconstructing the nature of what was to become the capitalist hegemon in the United States from the confines of his prison cell under these extremely trying conditions, but he became convinced in many ways in a fairly prescient or kind of prophetic way that the reorganization of labor, capital and society in the States around the time of course of the Great Crash of 29 and then of the beginning of the New Deal under Roosevelt was a kind of pioneering transformation. So he used this terminology of Americanism and then of course used the term Fordism after Henry Ford and after the forms of labor organization, but also the efforts by Ford to really transform the private, moral, social, even sexual lives of workers in Ford factories.

And this is what Gramsci’s getting at when he’s talking about the way in which capitalism is also tandentially creating a kind of new man or a new worker or a new person and so on.

Mansa Musa:

And so

Alberto Toscano:

Many people after World War II developed these insights to talk about the regime of accumulation and the regime of labor organization pioneered by the United States as a form of fortism often linked to relatively high wages for workers in exchange for their abstention from excessive forms of class struggle, the idea that workers could also become consumers rights, so the two car nuclear family and so on and so forth. So that whole kind of norm and also kind of vision of consumer society linked to mass production

And what people have been arguing since the crises of the 1970s has been that that arrangement which was just being formed around the time that Gramsci was writing his notebooks and then becomes really pervasive and dominant in the United States, but also in the so- called global north in the post-war period comes into a kind of crisis in the 1970s, a crisis that now people talk about in terms of the emergence of neoliberalism and so on and that the norm of fortism, which had to do with mass production, mass consumption, and what the geographer, Marxist geographer, David Harvey, called a kind of almost a pact or truce between big labor, big unions, big capital in the state, this kind of phrase and you have high inflation, unemployment, and then this move to withdraw the state from social welfare, social reproduction, to limit people’s social and civic rights and so on and so forth and to give much more liberty to capital,

Mansa Musa:

To

Alberto Toscano:

Accumulation, to markets and so on and so forth. And so many people read Gramsci’s analysis of fortism as a way by contrast to think about the crisis of fortism in the 1970s, which is of course in the United States, not just in the United States, but in the United States in particular, then sets the conditions, it’s not immediate, but sets the conditions for what will become the question of mass incarceration as a form

Mansa Musa:

Of

Alberto Toscano:

Class warfare against surplus and racialized populations. And that’s what’s interesting is that when Gramsci’s writing in the 1930s, late 20s, 1930s, he’s saying, “Well, Europe can’t really do fortism properly because we have this demographic issue

Mansa Musa:

And the

Alberto Toscano:

Demographic issue in Europe is that there’s large peasantry, but there’s also old classes of landowners and there’s a kind of like- Landmarks. Yeah. And then the United States from a European standpoint, a more modern country doesn’t have those issues, right? But in fact, when you look at the crisis of fortism, then the problem of surplus populations, unemployment as linked to these questions that we’re just talking about, like mass movements for emancipation, black liberation and left wing movements, that kind of comes together. And so on can see the emergence of what then comes to be called the prison industrial complex as a kind of confluence and articulation of a counterinsurgency project on the one hand to break the back of movements, challenging capitalism, white supremacy, so on. But then on the other hand, also as a question of political economy and labor, as a question of what to do with increasing deindustrialization with the desire by the capitalist class to break that postwar arrangement because it’s no longer attractive or feasible for them and therefore to shrink manufacturing labor to reduce social rights and so on.

So I think we can use Gramsci. Of course, he’s talking about a very different moment. He’s talking about the emergence, the moment of emergence of something

That then enters into crisis in the 1970s and creates the conditions, the social and political conditions for what will become the prison industrial complex, what people call mass incarceration and so on

Mansa Musa:

And so forth. And that’s the natural outcome of that contradiction, forwardism, industrialization, but the means of production versus how do you treat people that’s producing? And you create this illusion that they had what they call Leavitown where they create these massive housing projects, they call Leavitown for World War II and when they was coming back from the war, but at the same token, your income or what you’re getting to live this lifestyle cease to exist because to your point, greed is dominant. Capitalism, they’re not trying to share the wealth. They not sitting back saying,” Well, we’re going to give you equal pay for equal labor.

Once you unionize, we going to bust that, we’re going to subjugate you. We’re going to create factories that dehumanize you, which ultimately the contradiction will become so antagonicity that the work is going to respond and respond to that repression and respond to the repression is the prison industrial complex. Some way to contain that is going to be kill you or imprison you, and that’s the natural outcome of capitalism and imperialism. But Grumsky also talked about the contradiction between, or as far as in how rural produces and then the urban consumes, can you make a comparison between that and what we see today in this country as far as how that move into that particular part of the narrative goes into the prison industrial complex or how is it that is it a relationship between the two?

Alberto Toscano:

Well, Gramsci in the Italian context of the 1920s and ’30s, he’s also somebody who comes from, even though it’s an island, Saldania, what was considered part of the South. So an area that was viewed as underdeveloped and also Sardinians themselves in a way that’s of course different from Black and Brown folk in the United States, but they were certainly in the 19th century, kind of racialized as semi-savage, partly barbarian, backward,

Mansa Musa:

Same thing

Alberto Toscano:

With Sicilians and Southerners and so on. So for Gramsci, but also for the whole socialist and communist and workers movement, there was this issue which took the name of the Southern question. It was very common in the 19th century and 20th century in the workers movement to talk about, you would have the women question, the southern

Mansa Musa:

Question,

Alberto Toscano:

All these questions. But the southern question was a way for Gramsci to think both about this geographical differentiation in Italian capitalism, but also about the fact that there were forms of so to speak internal colonialism. And Gramsci does use this language, right? He says the relationship of northern capitalists to southern peasants is like a semicolonial relationship. He talks about the role of the police and of police violence in managing and reproducing this internal colonial relationship so much so that recently an American theorist, Michael Denning has made really interesting parallels between the prison notebooks and actually what Du Bois was writing about northern capital and southern black labor and black reconstruction, which is a text written at the same time, like pretty much contemporaneous with Gramshi. As a political analyst, as a journalist and as an organizer, the question for Gramsci who was based in Italy’s the center of Italy’s car industry, like Italy’s Detroit, so to speak, which is Turin, where the Fiat Factory was, was to think about how could the industrial workers movement and the proletarian movement make links to a peasantry that was much less politically organized, but of course was being massively exploited

Mansa Musa:

Through this form

Alberto Toscano:

Of internal colonism. So part of his issue, which was it’s like the issue of all communists and socialist movements that start out like the Russian Revolution in situations where you have high proportion of workers are still tied to the soil or tied to rural forms of life, was how to make this alliance, this like worker peasant alliance.

Now, if we fast forward to the 1970s, and I’m thinking here of the work on the emergence of the prison industrial complex in California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, we can think how the rural and the urban in moments of crisis enter into a particular articulation that creates this kind of racialized prison fix. So in the case of 1970s to 1980s California as mapped out by Gilmore, this is the situation where you have surplus capital, you have surplus land because there is a There’s a crisis or partial crisis of agribusiness and certainly of rural employment because of mechanization. And then of course you also have this through the crises of the ’70s, this expansion in surplus labor, which is also racialized and criminalized in the kind of last hired first fired situation of racialized workers. And so it’s in that context that then prison building is presented and advanced as a way of linking what to do with the surplus labor, which is to say incarcerated or incarcerate some of it and threaten the rest surplus capital to then invest in these projects of prison building that are largely taking place in kind of rural context.

So I mean, that’s just one very sketchy presentation of what is a very complicated geographic and political and political economic argument by Gilmore. But I do think that that geographical dimension is really significant for thinking about the dynamics of domination, exploitation and resistance. And that’s also why Gramsci’s own kind of form of geographical thinking was significant to so many ant-colonial scholars. So the Gramsci’s writings in the Southern question are very significant for radical Indian historians. They’re very significant for the Palestinian American

Mansa Musa:

Critic,

Alberto Toscano:

Edward Said when he writes about culture and imperialism. So that geographic dimension I think is a really unique aspect of Gramsci’s thinking, but also comes from his personal experience as somebody who comes from this semi-internal colony, but who then moves as a very young man to become a journalist and a militant in the most industrial and most advanced center of Italian capitalism. So he experiences these multiple worlds and these juxtapositions in his own person. So I think that’s also significant. And I imagine one can also make links to all of the debates that took place in the history of US Black liberation movements around this theme of internal colonialism, going back to arguments about the Black Belt and the communist movement and so on.

Mansa Musa:

And you see the Southern question when he talks about, as you articulated, how the industrialization and then the decline of the industry in rural America, you see a good example here in Maryland. In Maryland they had in the western part of Maryland, they had the upper western part of Maryland, they had industry. When all their industry closed down, prior to their industry closing down, they was talking about building prisons in that part of the state and everybody in Western Maryland was opposed to it because they had a number of prisons in different parts already. So they was like, “Nah, we’re not having that. ” But a year or two later when the industry closed down, they were begging for them to build a prison. They literally begged for them to build a prison. And now when you get to western part of Maryland, as far as your eye can see, it’s nothing but prisons.

And this come out of the analysis you just made was like how at one point you had industry, you had this industrialization, you had money, but now the shift is you shift from agribusiness to concrete and steel that becomes your product and your product is human beings and you ain’t picking cotton there, you picking up human beings and that’s your product in that narrative, right?

The following rushed transcript may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got a really special episode for y’all today, which is a recording of a live event that I recently hosted at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse here in Baltimore. And for that event, I got to sit down in front of a big, lively audience and have a real deep and wide ranging conversation with Chris Smalls, co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union. Chris has a new book out called When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class.

And that book recounts the incredible story of how a young working class Black man from Hackensack, New Jersey led a walkout from his Staten Island Amazon warehouse during COVID-19 got fired and then with hardly any resources banded together with a scrappy group of Staten Island warehouse workers to form the independent Amazon Labor Union to fight this epic David and Goliath battle against Amazon, the second largest private employer in the United States and Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, and to win and successfully unionize the first Amazon warehouse in the United States. And the book also traces Chris’s life story before the Amazon Labor Union and his journey from warehouse worker and labor organizer to becoming this internationally recognized public figure and a human rights activist who has sailed with humanitarian glotilla missions to Gaza and to Cuba, even facing detainment and harassment from ICE and imprisonment and abuse from the Israeli military because of it.

I’ve done a number of events with Chris over the years. I’ve interviewed him outside of the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island and I interviewed him as he was sailing to Gaza with the Global Samuel Flotilla right before they were captured by the Israeli military last year. I’ve seen both up close and from afar what he, his story and the story of ALU mean to working people out there, young and old people across this country and beyond. I’ve seen up close and from afar how the media’s good and awful and obsessive coverage of Chris and ALU, how that’s all affected Chris and different members and factions within ALU. And I’ve watched them all try to do their best to navigate a situation and a spotlight that I don’t think any of them ever expected to be in and that most of us will frankly never be able to fully understand from the outside.

I’ve seen and learned about many of the struggles that Chris has been through. I’ve seen and learned about the things that he’s done to help others. I’ve seen and learned about mistakes that he’s made and regretful things that he’s done and said. I know he’s a controversial figure to different people for different reasons and I know that he’s an inspiration to different people for different reasons. I know that he’s a complex and imperfect person, like you, like me, and like the hundreds and hundreds of working people that I’ve interviewed on this show over the years. And I’ve said from the beginning of this show that the whole point of this project was to honor the full and beautiful and complex humanity of our fellow workers to lift up the unheard voices of working class people and to help them and us and others see ourselves as full people with important lives and stories, not just stereotypes, not just name tags and job titles.

We’re so much more than that. And as a fellow worker, Chris is no different. And whatever your thoughts are about him, I think we all need to remember that because I see a lot of people forgetting that and that is not to excuse or downplay any concerns that folks have about Chris, ALU, or the complicated relationship between media celebrity and political movements today. And of course, no one is above critique, not public figures like Chris and certainly not journalists like me and anyone who is part of the labor movement must hold themselves and be held accountable to that movement. I know that and I believe that, but I also know that movements don’t move and history doesn’t happen without people and people are complicated. And if we don’t have a healthy way as working people of talking and listening to each other and working through our shit, if the world is burning all around us and we cannot find ways to work together or work alongside each other for our common goals and common good, even if we don’t like each other, then to put it bluntly, we’re cooked.

And so with all that said, it was in that full spirit and with that same mission that I’ve had since I started this podcast eight years ago that I sat down with Chris Smalls for this important conversation that we had at Red Emma’s in Baltimore. I hope you guys enjoy it and I want to know what you think, but please first take a listen.

All right. Well, thank you so much to Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse for hosting us for this great event. I want y’all to give a proper Baltimore welcome to Brother Chris Smalls, the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union here with us tonight. So we are of course here to talk about Chris’s new book, When the Revolution Comes, the Fight for the Future of the Working Class, but we’re also going to talk about so much more. And by way of getting us into this discussion, I wanted to just roll the clock back a second, right? Let’s go back five years, 2021, right? Feels like forever ago, but let’s not forget how crazy of a year that was. We had all just watched the batshit January 6th insurrection still in the middle of COVID, no vaccines yet. And out of this dark swamp in time, an unexpected source of light emerged in worker struggles and a sort of revived labor movement.

Everyone was talking about the Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama who were trying to unionize with the retail wholesale and department store union down there. I went down there. That was actually my first field shoot for the real news. And of course those workers lost that election and it was very heartbreaking for a lot of us and it was really incredible to see that heartbreak turn into the energy that we would see later in the year with the first Starbucks store to unionize in Buffalo, New York and the emergence of this ragtag group of badass workers from Staten Island who were trying to unionize their Amazon warehouse. And so it can be easy to forget all that we were going through in that moment. And so I wanted that to sort of be the start. And Chris, I wanted to ask you to take us back there.

Remind us who Chris Smalls was before COVID and then talk us through, because I think we need a refresher. Talk us through the incredible saga from the walkout that you led to you guys winning that first union election.

Chris Smalls:

And thank you all for being here. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Baltimore, so I’m glad and honored to be back and good company and some good comrades, familiar faces in the crowd. So thank you all once again for showing up and supporting my book and being here tonight. I really appreciate that. Yeah. As you said, we have amnesia in America. We all know that. One thing being a news cycle for a few weeks and then it’s always something else, especially under this Trump administration. And ironically, six years ago when I got fired from Amazon, that was also an election year. Trump was still in the headlines still. So we wasn’t garnishing any attention. As you mentioned, leading up to 2021, 2020, COVID was the peak at its peak, especially in New York City being one of the epic centers of the world.

Yeah, workers were afraid, workers were catching COVID. I remember walking into my warehouse and how seeing my comrades at work just really sick and not really themselves. So it’s a really eerie moment. But for those who don’t know, I was an assistant manager at Amazon for four and a half years. I opened up three warehouses in the tri-state area, New Jersey, Connecticut, Staten Island New York was my last building. People’s person always, the same way you see me today, it was the same way I went to work at Amazon. Definitely loved my people. I spent 70 hours a week with them. They were like my extended family. And when COVID hit, I definitely was afraid for all of us and I wanted to speak up on their behalf as well, which led to my firing after I led the walkout on March 30th, 2020, which once again was six years ago.

Seems like it was a long time ago, but it was six years ago it flew. It flew past. But just giving you a background about myself, what you’re going to read about in the book if you haven’t already, is that I’m just like anybody else in this crowd. I’m a single parent. My twins at the time was, well, damn, they were maybe eight or nine years old. And yeah, you can imagine how much time that I’ve lost spending with them over the last years, especially during COVID, the years of COVID, if I was lucky to see them half a year, that was a thing as well. And I love sports, grew up playing basketball, football, track. You going to see that in the book. I also was a rapper. I

Maximillian Alvarez:

Was going to say, don’t bury the lead. There’s a little juicy story about your rap history in there.

Chris Smalls:

Yeah, yeah. There’s a little rap stink that I had briefly after college, dropped out of college because I wanted to pursue music. I thought I was going to blow up overnight and then I got hit with reality getting back into the workforce. I got married and divorced at a young age, but I was married for eight years and during that hardship, working at Amazon was our main source of income for my household, one of them at least. And having healthcare as well. Healthcare Amazon provided for me and my kids and my wife at the time. So when I lost all of that during the pandemic, it really showed me how much the company didn’t really care about anybody. After I poured five years of my blood, sweat and tears into the company after I’ve done so much opening up these warehouses for them, training thousands of Amazon workers, hundreds of their upper management, the companies just say, “You know what?

We don’t care. We’re going to fire you. ” And not only fire you, they did it in a way that martyred me by Jeff Bezos, who was the richest man in the world, signing off on the smear campaign, which basically said to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against Amazon, which is a good idea. But at the same time, the racist part in the beginning saying that I’m not smart or articulate, something that they use in these corporate settings to put upon Black people and Brown people, saying that we’re not smart enough or we’re not articulate enough to even talk about anything when it comes to work related issues. So that was really the catalyst of a moment right there where I embraced it and I said, “You know what? Even though I no longer work for the company, I’m going to continue fighting for the workers inside the building.” Ultimately, for a whole year from 2020 to 2021, we traveled the country protesting in front of debt bases, mansions and penthouses while Bessemer, Alabama was trying their efforts and we all was paying attention.

My folks in Staten Island, we were paying attention, but we took it a step further. We did drive down there. We drove 16 hours from New York City down to Bessemer in a car, one car squished up and we stayed about a week connecting with workers there, connecting with the union, trying to figure it out because we didn’t know what we wanted to do. We wanted to do something, but we didn’t really have all the answers. But unfortunately, yes, like Max said, when they lost, it was definitely devastating for everybody. We felt that because of several reasons. Number one, that building investment Alabama has about 6,000 employees, five, 6,000 employees. Majority of them are black people. 85% of the building is black, 80% of the workforce there are black women. So when Amazon spent millions of dollars stopping that campaign, that was a direct attack on black and brown people and that’s something that we resonated with in Staten Island, New York where the demographics are similar to our building as well.

So the next day after the results came out, it just so happened to be our birthday, four 20, four / 20 / 2021 is when we started our campaign the next day after those results came out. We didn’t even wait.

And yeah, that year was like a blur as well, but it was 11 months, over 300 plus days I set up an encampment outside of the building that fired me at a public bus stop talking to workers every single day, rain shine, how to call night or day about why we need to start a union. And originally we sent out the Olive branch to the established unions. We wanted some support. We wanted some resources, some help, but we got nothing in return because a lot of people didn’t believe in us. A lot of people thought that it wasn’t going to work. Who are you guys to unionize when y’all don’t have any resources, y’all don’t have any knowledge, experience, et cetera. But one thing we did know is that we’re Amazon workers. Whether we’re fired or not, we know the ins and out of the company better than Jeff Basils.

So we felt that was the only way, and I still believe that till this day that the only way it could have been done was grassroots, gorilla style tactics in the trenches every day, meeting your workers face-to-face. That was the only way it was going to work. We couldn’t take the shortcut routes. We couldn’t do the traditional style organizing methods that most unions use. We had to think outside of that box and also sacrifice. Sacrifice was one of the things that we all had to do as a collective. And yeah, it was successful. 11 months, hard blood sweat and tears into the campaign and it paid off to become the first union in American history for Amazon workers. And still, till this day, that building is the only unionized building in this country and that’s what people got to understand. And it’s pro and con to that.

Yes, it’s great that we still are standing, but it shouldn’t take four years for us to have a contract. Keep that in mind that even when I was the president for three years, the first thing we did when we won was demand the bargaining order from Amazon, or at least from the National Labor Relation Board so that we can negotiate with Amazon. We didn’t hear anything under the Biden administration. I don’t know what happened, but there was some magic in the air. We got a bargaining order in April of this year, but Amazon has already appealed it because they’ve been spending millions of dollars holding things up for the last four years. So for those and everybody who’s been questioning like, “Why don’t you guys have a contract or you guys are not getting a contract?” It’s not because of us. It’s literally because the system is broken.

The system is not worker friendly. As much as these progressives and politicians say that the system are usher us to the system that’s supposed to work for us, it doesn’t. It’s not in our favor. So we have to continue to fight every step of the way. And actually when we won in 2021, that was just the beginning of the fight. This fight is a lifetime struggle and now the only thing that I can see that our union can do, and not just our union, because there’s other unions out here, Starbucks workers, all these other unions that emerge, they’re still fighting for contracts too and negotiating their way through it. But the only thing I can see that’ll work for all of us is if we withhold our strongest weapon, which is our labor and go on strike.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it was wild too reporting on Bessemer and then reporting on you guys and sort of seeing how the things that worked for Amazon Imbessemer weren’t working on Staten Island. I think that was a real sort of moment of insurgent energy because in Bessemer, when the workers brought in the RWDSU, Amazon did what union busting employers always do where they’re like, “Oh, this is an outside force that’s trying to come in and get in between our relationship.” They couldn’t do that with you guys because it was like, no, these are literally just the workers in the warehouse. And so I wanted to touch on that because it was such a big debate at the time because of Bessemer and ALU especially, but everyone was talking about, is it better to go the independent route like Amazon Labor Union, Trader Joe’s United, the Home Depot workers who tried to unionize in Philly, or is it better to go with an established union like the Teamsters of the RWDSU?

And so with five, again, like you said, five, four years of experience since we were having those debates, I think it’s important for us to sort of revisit and update that and you know better than us. I wanted to ask after all that you’ve been through in this struggle, where have you landed on the independent or established union debate, especially in light of the AOU affiliating with the Teamster?

Chris Smalls:

Yeah. I mean, I still stick by my original sentiment that there was no other way that we was going to get it done, not with any established union. Didn’t matter how long they’ve been around, how powerful they are. The way we organize is completely against any type of style. You can’t read about it because it hasn’t been done before. And yeah, I still believe that independent unions are something that we still need to push. Not saying that established unions can’t support, but what’s happening over the last few years, to be honest, after we won in 2021, well, let me take it to the day of. The day we beat Amazon, we had $2.50 in our account. Now it’s funny because we were broke as hell. We didn’t have dudes paying members. We still don’t have dues paying members. We don’t have a contract. So I can’t ask for workers who are making $20 an hour to pay union dues.

I wasn’t going to do that as the union president. The next day we had almost half a million dollars because the bandwagon came, the unions, “Oh yeah, we supported. Oh yeah.” But they really, really didn’t. Actually, there was a reporting that all the established unions combined only contributed after we all won, talk about Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, you name it, they only contributed 3% of their resources into these campaigns. And I can tell you we didn’t get one of those 3%. We got zero. Literally nobody offered us anything before we won. And after we won, the bandwagon came and everybody said, “Oh yeah, we had some resurgence in the labor movement,” which is great. It was. It was definitely headlines, it was definitely international news and resonated with millions of workers around the world. The problem is that established unions didn’t use that opportunity to double down and really invest into grassroots movements because they was embarrassed.

We weren’t the first people who tried to unionize Amazon. Absolutely not. Actually, established unions have been trying to unionize Amazon for over a decade, even before Bessemer, Alabama. And guess what? You guys never heard about it. I never heard about it. It was actually a campaign at GFK8 while I was working there, didn’t even hear about it until we started and that was ran by the established union of the Teamsters. So when it comes to which side do I really ride with, I’m going to say the one that works and I know that there’s pros and cons to everything. The thing about independent unions and grassroots efforts, as we all know, if you’re grassroots, it’s a struggle. You’re not going to have all the tools and resources given to you all the time. You got to scrap, you got to sacrifice, you got to crowdfund, you got to have mutual aid.

We literally had a GoFundMe, which it’s sad to say, but that was our only lifeline of how we were able to feed our comrades and our workers there. So the reason why we had to affiliate with the Teamsters, which I signed by the way, is because we’re going up against a $2.2 trillion company like Amazon that has all the money to hold things up in federal court for four or five years like they have it, which you guys are not privy to this all the time, but Amazon has million dollar lawyers and while I was the president, I’ve been to federal court against Amazon. I lost count how many times over the years and all they do every time we do something, they appeal it into a federal court to try to get it to a right wing Supreme Court and try to get us decertified.

That is their game plan. They’re not trying to come to the table. They still don’t even want to recognize that we won. So the affiliation with the Teamsters was so that my union doesn’t go bankrupt because if we don’t have dues paying members and people are not going to continuously donate, we have to give resources to stay alive and stay afloat. The Teamsters was going to offer that. The affiliation agreement that I signed was something that I and my executive board negotiated along with our legal counsel and it was one that we benefited from the most. We have full autonomy with our local ALU, IBT, local one, full autonomy, full jurisdiction on Amazon. And the most important thing that I got in that contract was they have strike benefits. They can offer the workers at JFKA right now a thousand dollars a week to go on strike if they wanted to.

I’m not the president anymore, but this is something that I set up to help them succeed in that journey. It’s up to the workers, it’s up to the current leadership of the union. It’s up to them to take that initiative and utilize it. And hopefully they do because the clock is ticking. Right now since we’ve been issued a bargaining order, Amazon has already appealed it, but the clock is ticking for them to come to the table. They have about a year to do so. Otherwise, the game plan that Amazon is going to run is going to try to decertify the union. So hopefully they get their stuff together and they get it done. I’m always going to support my union, whether I have a position or not. And that’s what we all have to do in solidarity. We all have a role to play because our fight is absolutely your fight.

A lot of people don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes at Amazon are within these campaigns. So the reason why we’re here today, the reason why you guys are picking up this book is because this book is also not just a memoir, but it’s also a how-to. It’s going to give you some tools on how we can all fight back against the system that’s oppressing us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Hell yeah.

So I really want to talk before we get to Q&A about your life, your work, your mission beyond ALU. And the last time we did an interview, you were sailing to Gaza for Christ’s sake. So I want us to get there, but before we do, just to pick up on what you were saying there, I think it’s really important for us to in this space, model a real, honest, no BS discussion about what we can learn from the beautiful, complicated, heartbreaking, inspiring story of the first Amazon union. Because so many struggles before you and there are going to be plenty after you, you guys faced a lot of external pressure and internal debates, division. This stuff happens and you write about some of that in the book and there’s a time and place to talk about that stuff and it’s not here. We’re not here to sort of air dirty laundry and point fingers.

Everyone knows Chris isn’t perfect. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. And that’s, I think the point is that whether you’re organizing your shop or trying to build a political movement, you can’t do anything without the messy realities of messy human beings who make the movement. So our humanity is always part of the story and none of us is perfect. And so I wanted to ask you, Chris, again, not for us to get sucked into the … She said … I’ve talked to other Amazon members who have different versions of the story and I always tell them, like I told you, I was like, “It’s not my place to pick sides here. I’m not in this union. I’m a fucking journalist.” And it breaks my heart when I see these divisions because I want the best for everybody, but life doesn’t work out like the fairytales in our heads.

So what can we learn from y’all’s experience that can help others out there who are going through these struggles and it’s getting tough and the company, the employers appealing every victory, it’s like one step forward, three steps back. You’re losing friendships because shit just gets really tough. You have no money. What can folks out there who are experiencing that learn from what y’all went through in ALU?

Chris Smalls:

Yeah, great question. I mean, once again, when you’re taking on one of the most powerful companies in the world, you’re trying to bring people together from all different backgrounds, all different creeds, you’re going to have disagreements, you’re going to have different political ideologies, you’re going to have infighting, every union, every organization does. We just were under a microscope because of our historical victory and the mistake that the media Yeah, sort of did was comparing us to established unions that’s been around for a hundred years. We weren’t that. We’re grassroots organizers. Most of them weren’t even organizers. They were just everyday civilians that were inspired, that were passionate, that wanted to do something. Even myself as the leader at the time, I didn’t have all the answers as well. I had to learn and I’m still learning every day. I’m a sponge. I’m learning new what’s going on overseas is affecting us here.

The things that I’m doing with Palestine, Cuba, wherever I’m going, it affects us here. I try to connect those dots. Some people just can’t think that big and unfortunately it leads to disagreements, but the disagreements are that’s a democracy. That’s exactly what a democracy is.

Unfortunately, the movement has its way of weaning people out. It’s not for everybody. It’s just real. A lot of people will see social media posts or see something happening, protests, whatever it is. Even going back to George Floyd days when there was millions of people taken to the streets in America. But where are these millions of people now? They’re back at work. A lot of people see things for the moment they get involved and then they get burnt out. They get weeded out or they realize this is too tough for me. And a lot of it is what happened to our union. A lot of folks thought that it’s a lot easier than what it is. Yes, I do make things look cool sometimes. That’s intentional because organizing is stressful as shit. I know we all know that. Organizing hard, stressful, tiring, exhausting, all of the above.

And I tried to make it as simple, as cool, as fun as possible because I know what workers are dealing with working at Amazon. That was one of my biggest things is making sure that everybody around me was always good in some capacity. Unfortunately, once again, the movement is going to be the movement. And for those who jump into this movement or this type of work or any type of work, you got to know what you signed yourself up for. This is a lifetime struggle. Our ancestors paved the way and not only that lost their lives, some are incarcerated right now as we speak so that we can have the right to organize, that we can have a reason to organize. So when these type of movements, you can’t have one foot in, one foot out. You got to be fully committed for the long haul and you got to be fully committed to sacrificing something because if you spoke out about Palestine, you lost something.

I know I did. If you spoke out at your workplace, you’re going to be targeted. If not worse, you’re going to get terminated. If you speak out against all of the injustices that we’re seeing right now in this country, you’re going to lose friends. You’re going to lose loved ones. I know a lot of us in here that probably when they started talking about October 7th, it was tough conversations in the beginning because I could tell you I lost 10,000 followers on Instagram instantly when I posted about Palestine over three years ago. And it was the same people that said in my DMs, “Chris, we supported you for Amazon workers, but this is where I draw the line.” What? In return, you know what I said? Fuck you.

Because if you can’t make the relationship between Amazon and genocide, then I can’t help you. And I don’t give a damn if you one of my organizers or not. If you fighting over some petty shit when Jeff Bezos is flying in space on the penis rocket, you missing the plot. So people want to attack the wrong things and that happens a lot on the left. We’re talking about the character, the person, the individual, how I look, how I talk, where I’m going, what headlines I’m gathering. Meanwhile, Amazon is firing 30,000 people next week. And that was what I always tell my organizers. We’re fighting about what we doing next when Amazon is winning. They are in the building union busting and y’all worried about the wrong things. So for me, the biggest lesson I learned is you got to stay true to the mission. And I don’t debate too much.

I mean, I do sometimes because I have to defend myself in certain cases, but I’ve never played into the naysay about myself or about my union because I let the work speak for itself. We made history, unprecedented history, and people that were there, they know. That’s all I care about. My day ones that walked out of the building six years ago with me, they know. Everybody else that came afterwards that’s going to jump on board later on, that’s going to look back, reflect back, that none of that matters. What matters is what are you willing to do to get Amazon to come to the table? What are you willing to do to liberate the people of Palestine? And more importantly, if you don’t get up and do the work, who’s going to do it because there’s no calvary coming for us?

Maximillian Alvarez:

One of the things that has sort of always colored the way that I have watched your journey is the fact that I always think that I was working in warehouses back in Southern California 15 years ago in the depths of the Great Recession. Our family was losing our house like millions of others. It was awful. And the thought of one of us having the cultural international statue that you do that one of us would be giving so much hope to people around the country and around the world is just mind boggling to me, but it’s also like that’s got to be a lot to go through as a working warehouse guy to then kind of be catapulted to that. So that’s not to excuse anything. It’s just to be like, we should give each other as much grace as we possibly can while holding ourselves accountable to each other.

Do our best. That’s the best that we can do for each other. And I say that to say by getting us to your activism beyond the warehouse, because what is it about your story, ALU’s story that has spoken to so many people around the world? And how did that lead you to becoming a global activist for human rights from Gaza to Cuba?

Chris Smalls:

Great question. I mean, well, number one, if you’d have told me that I could look as cool as a rapper, as a union organizer, I’d have been doing this shit a long time ago, would have saved you some

Maximillian Alvarez:

Years.

Chris Smalls:

I don’t look like your typical union president. My union doesn’t look like your typical union. My executive board didn’t look like your typical union executive board. So culturally, we gravitated to the younger generation. They looked at us and said, “Oh wow, they look cool. Amazon Labor Union, oh man, they’re wearing sweats and T-shirts and hat backwards and whatever else.” And we did something at a time where once again, the world was watching and we captivated that moment in time. But the international piece came when I got a passport because I just got a passport when I became the president three, four years ago. I didn’t even have a passport and 70% of Americans don’t have a passport.

I encourage you, number one, get one because since I got a passport, I’ve been to 45 different countries around the world and counted. And when I go to these countries, I’m not on vacation. I’m not on tourist trips sort of because I need to learn some things, I need to see some things, but I’m meeting with Amazon workers and I’ll give you the best example that I have as far as how much dedication or how dedicated I am to the movement. I was invited two years ago when I was the president still. I was invited to Paris by Pharrell and Rihanna to walk in the Louis Vuitton runway for this grand opening. And the same day I was invited to the White House again for the second time from Kamala Harris while she was running for president. I declined both of those and went to an Amazon warehouse in Canada, literally.

And guess what? I’m proud to say that that Amazon warehouse in Canada is the first unionized building in Canada’s history. So once again, people could say what they want about me. I know how I move. I know I’m very conscious about what’s going on, what’s being out there, what’s put out there and those around me, once again, they know if you’ve met me in the past, if you’ve been around me, if you hung around, what you see is what you get. I don’t really have to put on a facade and I think that’s what really resonates with people is that they can relate to me and that they feel comfortable talking and actually working alongside or working with me in some way. I think the international piece, the international solidarity that I’ve shown is also shown other people that what’s happening abroad is coming back home to roots, especially when it comes to Palestine.

There was several reasons why I got on that flotilla. Number one, I’m an Amazon worker, sure. Amazon has invested $7.2 billion into project numbers. The technology that’s being used to target and surveil and kill innocent Palestinians is powered by Amazon Web Services, number one. Number two, I’m a black man and I have kids. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world where we’re watching, scrolling every day, seeing dead people. I don’t know about you guys, but that shit is enough, traumatizing. And number three, I’m a taxpayer citizen, American taxpayer citizen like all of us. We all should be outraged where our taxpaying dollars are going. And I could tell you what I saw in Gaza is there’s no comparison. Less than a hundred miles away from Gaza Strip. I’ll never forget before we got … Well, we were already intercepted, but I will never forgive me crying on the ship because I was so angry that we didn’t make it, but just knowing that we were so close, 60 miles away from Gaza Strip, our boat got swarmed with flies and I’ll never forget I asked one of my comrades, “Where the hell did all these flies come from?” And it’s because there was so much death and so much bodies under rubble, vermin, whatever you want to call it, that the flies flew a hundred miles away from land to find food from our garbage and we were swarmed and I said, “Whatever we’re seeing on Instagram, it’s actually just a glimpse.

It’s not even close to how bad it is over there.” And I hear testimonies from doctors all the time. It’s beyond what I could put into words and obviously what happened to me is just confirmation that Israel is a racist apartheid state. That being said, spreading awareness, going back to who I am and why I do what I do and how I move.

What other labor leader in this country that you know is banned from Israel for a hundred years? That’ll be me. When it comes to Cuba, I brought 25 people from the Amazon Labor Union to Cuba three, four years ago, first labor delegation to Cuba and we delivered humanitarian aid back then. We graduated from Fidel Castro University. We stayed in bootcamp. We were disciplined. We learned the Cuban way and I’ve never looked back, been to Cuba every year since. And you may have saw that I was detained two months ago. I took my phone and they worry about the 16 other people that they took their phones from. They gave them their phones back, but some of the comrades that I was with heard the ICE agents talking about, “Oh, that’s the Amazon guy. We got the Amazon guy.” So the target on my back is very much real and they’re detaining other people questioning about me right now as we speak.

It’s just happened. So I think it’s important and then I know y’all saw me crash the Med Gala. I wasn’t invited. I wasn’t invited to the Med Gala so I had to crash the party, but we crashing the Med Gala was the spread awareness and it worked because if I would’ve sat home 20 minutes away from where Jeff Babes was about to walk the red carpet, 40 minutes away from the building where they have a negotiated contract in four years, I’m doing a disservice to myself and to my entire union and the working class as a labor leader. I do the things that I do because I ask myself this question, if Chris Smalls doesn’t do this work, who’s going to do it? And that answer sometimes is very scary because the answer is nobody. And that’s the same question that each and every one of y’all got to ask yourselves.

If you don’t get up and do this work, who’s going to do it? And hopefully that motivates you to continue in doing what you’re doing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Give it up for Chris. Well, and I think that’s a perfect lead into a final question before we get to Q&A, because your book is called When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class. And I want to talk about what that fight like, what’s really at stake and how big it is because right now from the excitement we felt when you guys won to the depression we feel that you still don’t have a contract to Trump strangling Cuba, invading Venezuela, kidnapping its president, going to war with Iran, the climate spiralantic in control, we tried and we failed to stop a genocide. It feels so hopeles sometimes, but the fight is where we actually have the chance to change the outcome and it’s not just in our workplaces and it’s not just in Gaza, but I wanted to ask you what your sort of final message is for a working class struggle and movement that can actually turn this tide and bring us back to a future that we can give to our kids that’s still worth living in.

Chris Smalls:

Yeah. Great question. And I mean, when I say a fight for the future of the working class, I mean, we’re fighting for humanity right now. There is no Calvary coming to save us. I’m going to tell you now, politicians are not our savior and in the history of the human race, we never voted our way to liberation. We always had to fight most of it with our lives. And when I’m talking about the revolution, well, the revolution starts with yourself. The times that we’re in right now, as you mentioned, they’re terrible. Society, things that are normalized, being desensitized, all of these things that are happening real time in our faces. Every day there’s something new on the headlines distracting us from the bigger picture. The way we was able to beat this $2.2 trillion company because we came together for one common cause the same way that people were coming together for Palestine because it wasn’t like this three years ago until we saw the student encampments, the protests in the streets, the flotillas, all of the different things that we’re seeing because people are fed up, young people, young people are fed up.

I knew one day when I walked into a middle school and this 10-year-old kid said, “Jeff Bezos is a bad man,” I said, “I’m doing something right.” Because I couldn’t imagine myself at 10 years old and I encourage teachers and many educators in the room, “Bring some of your labor leaders. I’ll come to your classroom. I will definitely come out. I’ve been to elementary schools, you name it. I’ve been there. University, I will be there because I know the importance of getting to the youth. We don’t want them to continue to praise these celebrities and athletes and musicians. We want them to praise the people that’s actually doing some great work and that’s people right here in our own community and reminding ourselves where we came from because society has changed because of companies like Amazon who’s forcing us to hit one click buy. Stay home, stay isolated, just audio package.

It shows up to your door. You see one person deliver it, but you never see the 10 or 12 people that that box done touched before it got there. Six of them got injured. One of them possibly could have got killed, but you would never hear about it. And that’s the message that we all have to spread because somebody in your household, somebody in your neighborhood doesn’t know this, doesn’t know what’s happening at these warehouses, doesn’t know what’s happened with the Amazon Labor Union. As big as that victory was, you already know we in a country that is very, very retroactive and a lot of people here got amnesias are living worse, living in their own bubbles. That’s saying you’re in your own bubble, but that’s not a good thing. That’s up to us to find these people, to meet them where they at, mainly work and to get them organized because when I say a fight for the future of the working class, and I say the revolution comes once again, that’s everybody in this room coming together for one common cause for the greater good of humanity.

And I’ll give you this last gem.

The fight for Palestine is going to liberate the world, but the fight for black and brown indigenous people is going to liberate everybody.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s give it up for Chris Malls, everyone. All right, gang. That’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guest, Chris Smalls, co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union. Go check out Chris’s new book, When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class. And thank you to Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse for hosting this amazing event. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Check us out across our YouTube channel, our different podcast feeds, our website, and our social media pages, and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.

I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

The following rushed transcript may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Could President Trump and his MAGA Congress be planning to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections? Well, we have some evidence that might surprise you, which we will unpack on this episode of the Capitol Hill React Report. Hello, this is Taya Graham, myself, along with my reporting partner, Steven Janice, our Capitol Hill correspondence for the Real News Network. We report regularly on what’s happening in the nation’s Capitol, but with a twist. We examine the process of governance through the prism of the most powerful force in today’s politics, economic inequality. Now, before you say, tell you that seems sort of limited. Just let me explain a little bit before we get to the first video. Economic inequality is at its highest point in recent history. Just take a look at the latest report that showed American workers’ share of the economy has fallen to its lowest level since 1947.

That’s right. In 2025, the share of the economy that went to the people who actually make it run was 54% a historic low. Okay. So why is this context essential for reporting on politics? Well, because all that wealth accumulating in fewer and fewer hands translates into concentrated power and that power now flows into our elections in the form of cash. Cash, which translates into victories at the ballot box for the purveyors of an increasingly extractive economy, insulating it from ballot box accountability, which ultimately means that you can’t understand politics on Capitol Hill unless you comprehend what currently defines it, namely the rich getting richer. Stephen, how am I doing?

Stephen Janis:

So you’re doing great. I mean, one of the things we have to think about is we got to look at democracy as a whole here functioning through this prism of inequality. The idea of democracy that delivers a certain amount of freedom to the people who are part of it. Now, freedom is a limited resource. So as people get richer and richer, they hoard that freedom. And so there’s less freedom to go around. Freedom to do what you want, freedom to educate yourself, freedom to live where you want. All those things sort of translate into the affordability crisis we’re seeing now, which means that there’s less freedom for the working people and more and more freedom for the richest 1% and more and more freedom to control how we live. And that’s why we have this sort of crisis on Capitol Hill and that’s how we have to view what goes on on Capitol Hill.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, that is such a great point and brings us right back to the topic at hand. The incredibly tense state of American elections and why wealth inequality will play a key role in that autocratic calculus. So first, let’s be honest, Steven, the mainstream media has, in my opinion, been misreading Trump, specifically his pronouncements that he doesn’t care about gas prices or the quagmire in Iran. Let’s listen to him talk about it and then discuss. When you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make it?

Donald Trump:

Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about American financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivated.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So the interpretation from the TV pundits has been that President Trump is just inexplicably tone deaf or detached or just disinterested, but we think Trump is telegraphing something much more insidious. So Steven, let me ask you a question after watching this video. Is Trump just really disengaged as the mainstream media says, or as they say he’s unhinged, or is there something else a little more troubling going on here?

Stephen Janis:

Well, Ted, this is one of many clips where Trump has kind of downplayed midterm elections or voters concerns or gas prices or whatever. He does it consistently. And of course it would be suicide for a politician in a functioning democracy to say something like that, right? Because this would directly affect how people vote. I really think for some reason gas prices, well, I kind of understand that gas prices are one of the biggest motivators for people when it comes to elections. And so it would be suicide, but what he’s really trying to say is, “I’m not worried about the midterms because I got this locked out. ” And look at what happened in the last presidential election. He tried to overturn it with a lost, but he wasn’t really prepared. He has been preparing for two years now to be able to interfere with the elections.

He subpoenaed ballots all over the country, including Fulton County and Georgia. He has set up this election integrity system run by a person who actually denied the 2020 election. He has increased the funding for ICE and Border Patrol, which we’ll talk about later. He has just simply put people in place who will be able to do what he needs to do. The Justice Department itself does whatever he wants. They’ll prosecute anybody. Very true. So they will certainly be willing to weigh in on this. He is prepared. He’s declared emergencies in so many situations. He is prepared and he is trying to say, “I’m not worried about it because no matter what happens, I’m going to make sure that I come out on top.” And I think that’s what we’re missing here. When he says he’s disinterested, what he’s saying is, “I’ve got this in the bag.”

Taya Graham:

Steven, I think you put your finger right on it here. The real danger here isn’t just what Trump is saying, but the fact that everyone keeps dismissing it. And you know what Trump hasn’t even ruled out paying the people who stormed the Capitol and those who tried to halt the counting of the electoral votes in 2020, despite the fact that his administration said the fund is dead, he was literally just quoted as saying, “I think they should be reimbursed by a crooked government.” Now, his remarks regarding the controversial $1.7 billion weaponization fund bolster, I think the case that he believes he can alter the midterm outcome. It would’ve set aside money for people who believe they were unjustly prosecuted, namely the Jan six insurrectionists. I mean, critics say if Trump has his way, he will literally be able to assemble a pratorian guard to disrupt the elections.

And I’m alluding to the elite core of Roman military officers who guarded the emperor, but who eventually just took power themselves. Steven, what does it mean if he gets his way?

Stephen Janis:

Well, what it means is because ways he has what you need the first … The most important element of any sort of autocratic takeover is having the money to pay people and having the freedom to pay people any way you want. Now this $1.7 billion fund would be an easy way just to dole out cash to people who had done his bidding before. Now he has other ways of doing this that we’ll talk about. But the main thing is it gives them the power of the purse in a way that’s totally up to his discretion and the Justice Department, which is an extension of him. Now what’s interesting about it is I don’t really think they need a fund. Those J6 is going to just sue and then Trump can approve the payouts. That’s right. So he’ll get it one way or another. But the point is he wants to signal to the people, “Hey, if you help interfere with an election, I will pay for it and I’ll reward you because these settlements could be huge.

$1.7 billion is a lot of money.” Sure is. So I think that’s what he’s trying to telegraph is saying, “Help me out with this and you’ll get paid.”

Taya Graham:

Steven, that is not only spot on, but it’s actually really scary. But what’s even more concerning to me is how much this election interference plan is hiding in plain sight with little or no pushback because he can’t do this alone. He needs help from his ever loyal contingent in Congress. And for the most part, they are in lockstep with Trump. And that was more than evident when the MAGA Congress started to plot a strategy to get more money to ice customs and border patrol for purposes that we’re going to touch on a litle bit later. Now their plan was to use a tactic called reconciliation, which allows legislation to bypass the filibuster provided it has significant fiscal impact on federal spending. Now, this was an unprecedented power grab because the funding bill was intended to provide routine annual appropriations and that’s a measure that is usually passed with bipartisan support, which brings me to an interesting encounter we had on Capitol Hill with Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, who didn’t seem to want to answer our question when we asked why ICE and CBP needed an additional $70 billion in funding, but his reluctance is also revealing.

Let’s take a listen to what happened.

Rep. Mike Lawler:

Fuck that up.

Stephen Janis:

Congressman, why does ICE need an additional $75 billion? Why is that funding? How do you justify that to the American people who now are suffering with high gas prices and things like that? Why is that even more money?

Rep. Mike Lawler:

Well, that’s the cost of funding the department. Are you for abolishing ICE?

Stephen Janis:

I’m just asking the question. They already have $14.

Rep. Mike Lawler:

Well, you understand that that is the- I’m not

Stephen Janis:

For against anything.

Rep. Mike Lawler:

You understand that’s the appropriated amount, right? Yes. That’s been appropriated.

Stephen Janis:

Of course, but I’m asking

Rep. Mike Lawler:

Questions. So the reason additional funds, that’s the base budget for ICE and CBP, right? You understand that?

Stephen Janis:

I do.

Rep. Mike Lawler:

Okay. So the additional funds that came through the Working Family’s tax cut bill were to increase border security. Why? Because Joe Biden let in 10 and a half million people into the country.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Steven, just for the record, are you for abolishing ICE? Because you didn’t answer the congressman’s question.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I’m for abolishing politicians to be able to answer a question with a question and evade answering the question I ask. I’m for abolishing that. But one thing I want to just say before we move on is that his sort of argument that that’s the appropriate amount for ICE is actually wildly inaccurate. I look back into the ICE funding and what ICE and CPB have been spending roughly eight to $10 billion a year. They already have $140 billion. This is not an appropriate amount for anything. That’s an absolute freaking lie. ICE and CBT do not need that much money. This is excess cash. Taxpayer cash, your taxpayer dollars that are simply being spent without accountability. I think there’s a reason for that we’ll talk about in a second, but really he was just FOS on that. And I just want to point that out because it really was infuriating.

I was trying to get his answer, but I couldn’t sit there and get into an argument with him about what he was saying was actually patently false.

Taya Graham:

Personally, when a politician answers a question with a question, in my opinion, that is a sign they don’t have an answer or they have an answer, they don’t want the public to know. And he

Stephen Janis:

Definitely didn’t have an answer in this point. So good point, Teo.

Taya Graham:

Thank you. But I mean, the question you were asking was not insignificant. I mean, in fact, it was a really big piece of the puzzle, led us to think that the threats to the midterm elections are widely underestimated. Now, the crux of the matter is funding. Now what you asked is why Republicans want to give ICE, customs, and Border Patrol another $70 billion. And what makes this so unusual is that the big beautiful bill dropped roughly $140 billion on both agencies just last year. But with ICE and CBP spending at best $20 billion annually, it begs the question, why so much? What is it really for? And Steven, you have a theory about this. Tell me about it.

Stephen Janis:

Well, I think the thing you have to think about is that they’re moving towards a more autocratic form of government. Autocracies and democracies have different incentives, basically, different incentive systems. Technically speaking, a democracy wants to award beneficial policy for constituents. So to get elected, you got to do stuff that people like. Autocracies don’t work that way. They need to punish people who might push back. They need to crush dissent and that’s through a system of incentivization of punishment. And so in my opinion, this money, which can, I guess when you add up $210 billion for a law enforcement agency is about constructing a great American punishment regime to prepare Americans for a more autocratic government.

When I looked into the records and tried to figure out how much money does ICE and CPP still have on the books, it’s really hard to figure out because the federal government really isn’t oriented towards reporting on multifiscal year cycles about how much money they have. But I looked, I found at least $73 billion that had been unallocated so far. And that’s after they’ve already built all these warehouses, these prisons where they’re incarcerating people. So they literally have what would be for those agencies unlimited funding. And unlimited funding for law enforcement gives you a way to institute punishment throughout all levels of governance. I mean, those detention centers can be used to detain people for a variety of reasons. They’ve already detained Americans. They’ll detain more. Having an unlimited amount of money to swarm CPB and swarm ICE into cities gives you this ability to do what Trump did in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago.

And when these elections come and when Trump is trying to say, Hey, they weren’t fair, they’re going to need these guys and women to come into cities and to try to disrupt the people who will be pushing back or to seize ballot box. I really think this excess money is insulating both institutions and that’s for a reason to create a punishment regime that will be reflective of the autocratic values that the Trump administration is espousing through their policy choices.

Taya Graham:

Steven, you did the classic thing every reporter should do and actually anyone watching should do, which is follow the money. You follow the money, you figure out what’s really going on. So let me just ask you a question about this. I was thinking back to the first time it really hit home with us that something was afoot with regard to democracy during the shutdown last year. So last year, Democrats wanted to extend the Obamacare tax credits and Republicans refused. But what struck me at the time was how the majority party approached the entire conflict. They simply shut down Congress. They simply stopped town halls and talking to their constituents. No debate, no work, just silence. And of course, all of that was just to deny people healthcare. And that seems like a pretty anti-Democratic strategy. So how does it play into that theme you’re talking about, about the punishment regime theme?

What do you think?

Stephen Janis:

Well, the thing is if you shut it down, you’re kind of punishing people because you’re taking away the deliberative legislative body that’s supposed to represent their interests where you are supposed to hash these things out and figure out how to get people healthcare. So what you’re saying is, we don’t care. You don’t have healthcare, you’re being punished. We’re going to punish you by not doing anything and showing you that we don’t have to do anything and disengaging from our constituents. And so I think it’s a big part of that. I mean, a functioning legislative body should be an accountability mechanism to make sure things like ICE and CBP don’t get out of control. But now when they shut it down and turn it into this absolute desert of democracy, well, then you don’t have a limited legislative body to represent you. Without representation, you’re done.

I mean, what people don’t understand, and I think you’ve talked about this really, really well, is that democracy is a culture that infiltrates all levels of government governance. When you change that to a punishment regime, to an autocratic culture, everything changes.Your ability as a constituent and to vote and to have some impact and some say in how you live diminishes quite quickly. And I think that’s what we’re seeing here.

Taya Graham:

Steven, that’s a really, really good point. And you touched on constituents actually having a voice and this is something we caught at a press conference where that idea that you’re touching on right there was absolutely front and center. Now it was an announcement by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Summer Lee to announce a bill that would shut down super PACS. Now Super PACS are of course the campaign behemoths that can spend unlimited amounts of money basically to buy elections. Super PACS are like the corporate love child of Citizens United, that famous decision that allowed corporations to also spend unlimited amounts on electing people to subject us the working class to the extractive tendencies of our current economy. Now this union between them was so fruitful that it gave birth to political organizations with unlimited spending power and an insatiable appetite for television ads, digital marketing, robocalls, and anyone who’s willing to rent out a swing state’s airwaves.

Now, Sanders and Lee basically want to undo all that with a limit on how much Super PACS can raise. Their bill with limit contributions to $5,000 per individual or corporation, essentially disabling the Super PAC system that allowed Elon Musk to dump $280 million over a quarter of a billion dollars into President Trump’s campaign, which resulted in the mess that we’re currently living with. But I asked Senator Sanders a question and he had an interesting answer. Let’s take a listen and you can react on the other side.

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

I don’t want people to think this is just another issue. What somebody said is right. It is the most important issue. If we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare at all, why is that? You think it may have something to do with the power of the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance companies who spend zillions of dollars making sure we don’t move to a Medicare for all system? Do you think the fact that we have a starvation minimum wage has something to do with the fact that a lot of these corporations and business people don’t want to pay their workers a living wage, don’t want workers to join unions. The point here, this is not another issue. This is an issue that touches every bloody issue facing working people in this country.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Steven, I really want to hear your thoughts here. Is Senator Sanders connecting the right dots?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, absolutely. Because money, cash, power, adulterates, democracy. And the way you adulterate it is to be able to deliver, to allow people who have the concentrated wealth to throw it all into the election. Now the whole idea of campaign laws is to limit influence of one individual or corporation. You can only donate so much no matter how rich you are. Now with super PACS, you can put everything you have into it if you want and that gives you disproportionate power and that creates an inequality basis for elections. So absolutely. And I want to point out one thing. You were the one who asked the question that set off that answer and I think it’s really vitally important because Sanders is connecting the dots. You can’t afford housing. Look at the super PAC. You can’t afford healthcare super PACs. All these super PACs create disproportionate influence for the smallest number of people possible.

It turns an election into really a choice of the oligarchy to decide who’s going to be in power and what policies they will implement. So it was a great answer and it’s absolutely spot on.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I asked the question because I felt like sometimes we, meaning journalists, don’t really connect the dots. And as we’ve discussed, as you’ve said, the great American punishment regime is a product of President Trump’s desire to diminish democracy, but it’s a political transformation that wouldn’t be happening if the system itself hadn’t failed to deliver for the majority of people who live under it. So what Sanders did is make the connection between big money and bad economics palpable and easy to see. He cut through the noise and made the argument that the wealth imbalance and the cash hoarding that it enables is cycled back into elections and fines forms and things like the affordability crisis or the housing shortage and of course our unresponsive and overly expensive healthcare system. These connections are crucial if political mechanisms like super PACS are both to be understood and mitigated.

If you don’t connect the accumulation of obscene wealth with the fact that you can’t pay your monthly utility bill, then it will be nearly impossible to sustain a movement to reform all of this. So Steven, how does Sanders and Lee’s idea fit into your theory of a punishment regime?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I want to say one thing first though before I answer that question, because it’s a great question, but I want to say this, I want to be the boy who cried wolf here. I am not saying this to be some sort of paranoid conspiracy theorist. I just see the tea leaves sitting up on Capitol Hill, like we talked about how they shut down Congress, like we talk about how Republicans don’t show up on the triangle anymore where most press conferences are held. I want to be wrong in this case, but I can’t ignore what I’m seeing. And when Senator Sanders talked about super PACs, there wasn’t that much media there and there really wasn’t that much media coverage of what he did and what Summer Lee was proposing, Congresswoman Summer League, excuse me. So I really think these elements are all connected.That’s why we did this show to connect them.

The super PACs fuel the oligarchy and the oligarchy fuels autocracy. You can’t have dissent when few people want to hold onto all the wealth. It’s not just and people are going to push back against it, but the only way you can stop it is to incentivize punishment to say, “You know what? You speak up, you’re in trouble.” And the way to use that mechanism is to diminish the value, the integrity, and of course just create uncertainty around elections. Trump has sort up a lot of uncertainty. He’s got unlimited amount of cash to spend to bolster it. I am extremely concerned. I just wish more people would listen to Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Lee on this issue. It’s critically important and you’re right.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I’m so glad you connected the dots for us in this way because once you see it like this, you can’t unsee it. So thank you so much, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

You’re welcome.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So that’s the end of this edition of the Capitol Hill Inequality Watch React. So thank you so much for joining us. We are going to keep reporting for you on Capitol Hill while discussing how wealth inequality influences our politics, our economy, and our lives. I’m Taya Graham, along with my reporting partner, Steve and Janice. People please keep fighting, keep voting, and most of all, please keep caring. Our democracy needs you.

MICHAEL FOX:  OK. One, two. OK. Yeah, we’re good. All right, I will start it off.

MARC STEINER:  OK, you want to start it off? Oh yeah. Then I’ll throw this out.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah, exactly.

MARC STEINER:  All right.

SPEAKER 1 [CLIP]:  …Under arrest.

SPEAKER 2 [CLIP]:  Turn around, turn around, turn around. Turn around [crosstalk].

SPEAKER 3 [CLIP]:  OK, let’s not — OK, OK. He’s not resisting.

SPEAKER 2 [CLIP]:  Stop resisting, stop resisting.

MICHAEL FOX:  Mahmoud Khalil was detained and arrested on March 8, 2025, outside of his Manhattan apartment. It’s a chilling video. Plainclothes agents are there. They refuse to give their names. He’s handcuffed and shoved into the back of a car. His wife, eight months pregnant, watches and tries to understand what’s happening. 

This is not a scene from some dark chapter of a distant past filled with black and white photos of bygone dictatorships. This happened here in the United States of America. Mahmoud Khalil is a graduate student from Columbia University. He led protests in 2024 against Israel’s US-backed occupation of Palestine and the genocide there. 

But speaking out today has a high price. Mahmoud Khalil is a US resident, born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, but Trump officials said they stripped him of his green card. They held him for months at an ICE jail in Louisiana, far from his home in New York, far from his wife and newborn son.

He was finally released after 100 days in prison and widespread condemnation, just one highly visible victim of so many attacks on free speech in the United States today. And it’s getting worse.

MARC STEINER:  This is The Battle for Free Speech, a new multipart narrative podcast series brought to you by The Real News. We’re your hosts. I’m Marc Steiner.

MICHAEL FOX:  And I’m Michael Fox. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to take you on a journey to understand the important role free speech has played in US history.

MARC STEINER:  From the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights organizing to the threats facing free speech today and how battles are being waged over free speech at home and abroad. 

Today, we want to set the scene by beginning in the present. We met a pretty disturbing assault on First Amendment rights here in the United States. Mike is taking lead in reporting here, so why don’t you take off?

MICHAEL FOX:  Excellent, Marc. Thank you so much. So I wanted to start off today. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in recent weeks, victims and lawyers about this current moment and the attacks on free speech rights. It’s harrowing hearing their stories, but also the context of looking at where we are today. And I wanted to kick us off with a conversation I had with a woman named Lisa Femia.

LISA FEMIA:  I am a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting civil liberties and civil rights online and in the face of new and emerging technologies.

MICHAEL FOX:  And she’s been looking at all of this stuff, and in particular the Trump crackdown on noncitizens, residents within the United States, stripping them of their visas, the same thing we saw with Mahmoud Khalil.

Just for context, she said that obviously we’ve seen this increasing attack on free speech rights in recent years, but this massive uptick within Trump’s second administration, and that’s not a surprise to anyone. 

But she in particular underscored this question of Trump targeting noncitizens, visa holders, and how they’re clearly trying to censor and deport noncitizens for speaking out, particularly around the question of Palestine.

LISA FEMIA:  Yeah. I mean, in terms of specific numbers, it’s broad reaching because you have both people who have been arrested, been deported, had other negative actions taken against them, and some of them have been quite public, like Mahmoud Khalil, for example. But then you also have the mass chilling effect that happens for everybody’s speech.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, her organization has launched a lawsuit with the support of three different unions.

LISA FEMIA:  United Auto Workers, Communication Workers of America, and American Federation of Teachers.

MICHAEL FOX:  And what’s interesting here is that it’s specifically looking at the administration’s social media surveillance program against noncitizens.

LISA FEMIA:  And they each surveyed their members before we filed about how has this surveillance program affected your activity online and your willingness to express yourself? And overwhelming amounts of members said, yes, I have changed my behavior, especially the noncitizen members, but citizen members as well. Of the respondents aware of the surveillance program of the UAW, 85% of the visa holders said that they had changed their activity online, including just eliminating their presence online entirely.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, what does that mean? That means that, in some cases, they’ve just gotten offline altogether. They’ve deleted accounts. In other cases, they’ve changed the way they communicate online, what they post, what they don’t post, who they communicate with, who they retweet, how they talk about things. And this is interesting because oftentimes we hear about the high-profile cases and the situations which we’re going to dig into today, but this looks at the minutia of what happens when you’re censoring people, when you’re attempting to deport people or lock them up, when you’re firing teachers.

LISA FEMIA:  And I think maybe some people hear this and like, OK, but that’s just online speech. But you have to remember how much speech happens online now, how much political organizing happens online now. For the unions, how much labor organizing and being able to literally just communicate with their members happens online now. And people are just shutting down. They’re just locking down and keeping quiet because they’re scared. So, it’s almost hard to measure the effect of this because there’s so many people that are chilled even if they haven’t had a direct action against them yet.

MICHAEL FOX:  And what that means is then what we see online and what we see, the speech that becomes online and the speech that’s allowed to remain the way it is or becomes even more viral or becomes even more outspoken are those people who are in support of Donald Trump and far-right policies. And the other speech, say it’s in defense of Palestine or speaking out about Trump’s policies, becomes minimized because people are afraid to speak out. That’s literally what this one lawsuit is talking about. I just thought that was so fascinating because it’s not something that we’re hearing at all. It’s just this unprecedented moment that we’re seeing in the United States right now.

MARC STEINER:  I’m a huge student of what happened in Germany in World War II in the Third Reich. I’ve covered it a lot, done podcasts about the history, and it feels as if we are in 1930, as an analogous period, where the authoritarian forces of the right are really gaining strength. They have their figurehead at the top in Donald Trump, and he is mouthing the words that they want him to say so they can begin this authoritarian push in America to shut opposition down, to shut voices down, to kill the independent press, and to bring everybody in line to where they want to take America. 

I think we are in the most dangerous place we’ve been in the history of this country, unless you happen to be Indigenous or Black and living in the 19th century, even the 20th century in this country. 

I think that we can take lessons from Reconstruction. The lessons when there was this huge gasp of fresh air and people believing in freedom and building a new kind of democracy that was absolutely crushed by the forces in Washington, DC, and former Confederates that killed the rights of Black people in America and changed America for the next 90 years, became an oppressive nation for Black people in this country, and Indigenous and other people.

And what we’re facing now is broader, even. We’re facing a threat to the democracy that we have, and we’re facing a threat to freedom in general, and it’s building slowly. As a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather, I am absolutely worried for all of my children and their friends and their peers and what they’re going to face because I see the right growing in power and I see the oppositional forces in absolute disarray. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole now. I just wanted to lay that out, but I think we’re in a very dangerous moment.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah. You know what’s fascinating, Marc, is obviously I agree with you and I see the question of free speech and I think that’s why this podcast that we’re embarking on is so important, because it’s almost as if this is the canary in the coal mine in a lot of ways with people being silenced, with people being fired, with people being deported for speaking out and the increasing attacks on this.

MARC STEINER:  For context, just to put it in everybody’s head who’s listening right now, because we take for granted the founding documents of our country — And those founding documents, yes, they were written by a slave owner, no question. He wrote them for white people, but they’re universal in terms of what they mean. And let me just read for all of us what the First Amendment says:

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press and the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government. Our democracy has flaws, but it has helped make the democracy we have what it is. The right to speak your mind, say what you want, assemble and fight for your rights, assemble to protest is fundamental to this country. That’s what they’re eroding. That’s what they want to take away. That’s my fear.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s a perfect segue into this next world I want to take you. Because one of the places they have been most trying to silence people from speaking out and from standing up is around Palestine. And so I spoke recently with a woman named Corinna Mullin. She is a professor at CUNY, the City University of New York, or at least she was.

CORINNA MULLIN:  I’ve been teaching at CUNY for eight years, and also I teach about Palestine. I teach about settler colonialism. I teach about US imperialism. And the two Title VI investigations I was subjected to had to do with false accusations of antisemitism. And the university, rather than defend me from these accusations — And not only that, from the doxxing — And instead of defending us, they have contributed to it. They’ve thrown us under the bus.

MICHAEL FOX:  She is currently a member of the Fired Four. So, she and three colleagues were all fired for very similar situations. They all were very active in the pro-Palestine movement on campus. They were all very active [in] standing up and defending students and speaking out, and all four of them were fired.

CORINNA MULLIN:  In our cases of the Fired Four, we haven’t actually been given the reason for our firing. There’s almost no due process and very little in terms of contractual protections because we’re all adjuncts, and we could be fired for any reason or no reason at all. What we share in common is that we have all been outspoken in solidarity with Palestine in contesting the genocide and in challenging also the role of our institution in its complicity, its collusion with that genocide through its investments and contracts with companies that benefit from settler colonialism, war, and genocide.

MICHAEL FOX:  Now, they’ve had a big campaign to try and get them reinstated by the union, which has been really pushing this, which is exciting and important, but her situation and her case I think is so… it’s just one case of so many that we’ve seen around the country. So, both of those investigations against her were found to be unsubstantiated, but regardless, she talks about how her academic freedom was undermined.

CORINNA MULLIN:  Because when I am in class and I’m teaching a course on the politics of the Middle East, for example, and I’m talking about [Palestine] because I can’t teach a course on the politics of the Middle East without talking about the history of settler colonialism in Palestine, then of course that’s in the back of my head. There’s always going to be this fear that there might be another investigation despite the fact that these two investigations have been found to be unsubstantiated. So there’s that. 

The fact that the university allows for what is really a form of harassment, and many of these students might even be paid by Zionist organizations. They might have their own political agenda. So, to allow that to take place already and to pursue these investigations itself is a form of violation of academic freedom

MICHAEL FOX:  Again, the teachers union has stood up. Many students have defended her, and, in fact, the union president himself has called this a McCarthyite political purge.

SPEAKER 4 [CLIP]:  So we will not allow for these disingenuous McCarthy-like attacks on higher education. We will not allow it on CUNY. We will fight for the professors, for the students, for the people that make CUNY great every step of the way.

MICHAEL FOX:  And I think that connection to the past, to McCarthy, to remembering what has happened in the past when people stood up or spoke out, and what’s happening now clearly on university campuses. I mean, that’s like the big image around the country where people are being purged, where people are being attacked and undermined, and people are being fired or silenced.

CORINNA MULLIN:  And it’s only escalated since Trump has come to power. And now with the congressional hearings, for example, there’s the congressional hearing on higher education, so-called claims of antisemitism in higher education, which really are just conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

SPEAKER 5 [CLIP]:  We’ll hear today about antisemitism at three institutions: Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

CORINNA MULLIN:  That all of this has really escalated and pushed the administration or emboldened the administration to really crack down on academic freedom and the rights of students to organize and speak out against settler colonialism and genocide on campus.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s a really concerning and terrifying moment that I know I haven’t seen in my lifetime. Marc, have you ever seen something like this at this level?

MARC STEINER:  At this level, I mean… I grew up in the shadow of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee.

SPEAKER 6 [CLIP]:  The question is, have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

SPEAKER 7 [CLIP]:  I’m framing my answer in the only way in which any American citizen can frame his —

SPEAKER 6 [CLIP]:  Then you deny it —

SPEAKER 7 [CLIP]:  Which invades his absolutely…

MARC STEINER:  Family, friends, and some of my peers, a couple of my closest friends, their parents were dragged before HUAC for being allegedly communists or having been a member of the Communist Party, being active in trade unions, being active in progressive politics. And so that period was a very frightening moment. 

That period, and as I said, that and the end of Reconstruction are emblematic of what we face today, but it’s even more serious because I think the power of the right, the authoritarian nature of the power of the right is in ascendancy in some ways because the opposition is in disarray. I don’t mean to sound as if I think it’s all over. It’s not. But I’m saying that we’re facing a threat that authoritarianism will mask itself as freedom and take hold of the country.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, have you met or do you know many individuals who have seen, have been the victims of this backlash either at university campuses or elsewhere around the country?

MARC STEINER:  There are people I know who I’ve talked to around the country who are feeling immense pressure. Where we broadcast from in Maryland, we live in a state that has a pretty powerful progressive movement inside the Democratic Party and outside. And I think that’s a little different here. But around the country, there are people that are just terrified to open their mouths, to say anything. I think we take these things for granted because we live here and we think it’s inviolable. Nothing can stop it.

MICHAEL FOX:  I want to take this to Charlie Kirk because of the big issues that we’ve seen this year where there’s been silencing free speech and backlash, people losing their jobs, like the top two cases I think are around obviously Palestine and pro-Palestinian activism and around the fallout over Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

So, just for context here, for those who are listening, remember, Charlie Kirk was a right-wing political activist. He was the founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA. He did these tours on college campuses across the United States, and he had very radical extreme views. Hateful views, many would say.

CHARLIE KIRK [CLIP]:  Strong men built the West and won the wars and built the building that we’re in right now. And without strong men, then you all of a sudden see civilization unfold upon itself, and we’re seeing that happen in real time.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he was killed on Sept. 10, 2025, literally while he was speaking out in public, while he was doing one of these tours on a university campus. And I feel like in so many ways that upended so many things. 

A, it’s so important to say, and it’s so defining for free speech. It’s so important to say, first off, there’s no excuse for violence like this. There’s none. It has to be denounced from every place, particularly in a podcast about free speech where the whole idea is everyone has the right to speak their minds. Everyone has their right to speak. 

But what we saw in the backlash against those commenting on Charlie Kirk’s murder has been really shocking. The highest profile case, Marc, was clearly the whole firing and scandal and then rehiring of the comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

JIMMY KIMMEL [CLIP]:  Thank you. Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted [audience laughs], if you’re just joining us, we are preempting your regularly scheduled encore episode of Celebrity Family Feud [audience laughs] to bring you this special report. I’m happy to be here tonight with you all [audience cheers]…

MICHAEL FOX:  Did you watch this unfold? Did you follow Jimmy Kimmel’s work?

MARC STEINER:  I don’t follow religiously, but when this happened, I took a deep dive, yes.

MICHAEL FOX:  What did you find? Tell me about what did you see happening there?

MARC STEINER:  Given everything that’s coming out of the Trump administration, I think it was a fear among the people who own some huge broadcast stations that they were going to be attacked. They were going to be investigated. They were going to have their licenses removed. I think that Jimmy Kimmel was a test to see how far they could go in stopping freedom of speech in our country. It didn’t work, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work. It was a test run. I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that people are organizing their resistance to how America has changed. And Jimmy Kimmel was a test run. I see him as a test run.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s interesting how other comedians have spoken out, obviously clearly in defense of Jimmy Kimmel in the days and the weeks afterwards.

NEWS REPORT 1 [CLIP]:  Late night hosts are coming to Jimmy Kimmel’s defense tonight.

NEWS REPORT 2 [CLIP]:  In fact, both Stephen Colbert and John Stewart unloaded tonight on ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel’s show, and both claim it’s part of a campaign by President Trump to limit free speech and silence his critics.

JON STEWART [CLIP]:  We have another fun, hilarious… administration-compliant show.

STEPHEN COLBERT [CLIP]:  Well, you know what my community values are, Buster? Freedom of speech [audience cheers].

MICHAEL FOX:  Obviously, it wasn’t just Jimmy Kimmel. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs: university professors, federal employees, private business, mostly for what they posted online or what they spoke out against, but clearly the backlash was shocking. 

So, I wanted to understand this from behind the scenes, what was happening with Jimmy Kimmel, but was always happening in the wake of Charlie Kirk. And so, recently I went to the offices of FIRE in Washington, DC. Do you know this organization? It’s the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It’s a free speech organization in downtown DC, big office. I was impressed by the amount of staffers and people who are there. And they’re doing incredible work all in defense of free speech today. So, I met with staff attorney David Rubin.

DAVID RUBIN:  I work on the litigation team, so we’re filing lawsuits in court and challenging speech-restrictive statutes and stuff like that. And then we also have a ton of other really smart lawyers who work here and nonlawyers who are doing a lot of different kind of advocacy work.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he has this really interesting background, Marc, because his background is actually in comedy.

DAVID RUBIN:  And so before law school, I worked in Los Angeles in the business of standup comedy for four or five years. I worked for Budd Friedman, who founded the Hollywood Improv and discovered Rodney Dangerfield, Bette Midler. And Lenny Bruce used to go there. But anyways, I have this longstanding love of comedy.

MICHAEL FOX:  So of course, the connection to Jimmy Kimmel and comedy in the United States historically today was really interesting to talk with him about that. Because he told me he only did stand-up a couple of times. It wasn’t really his thing [Steiner laughs]. But he worked in the stand-up world in Los Angeles for several years before becoming an attorney. And that’s really his passion. People like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin, which for him are like the exemplification of free speech.

DAVID RUBIN:  Comedy has a big role in First Amendment protection and just in building a free speech culture, like George Carlin and the seven dirty words and all that.

GEORGE CARLIN [CLIP]:  Nobody even tells you when you’re a kid what the words are that you’re supposed to avoid. You have to say them to find out which ones they are. Shit [smack]! Oh, fuck [audience laughs]! That’s two!

MICHAEL FOX:  For him, these folks exemplify what free speech should be, because you’re up there on stage and you’re making your own critique of the reality in the United States, whatever that might be, and it’s your freedom to be able to speak out in public or make jokes in public about this. So, that was like one just fascinating anecdote of speaking with David. 

Did you follow these people like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin or some of these other comedians?

MARC STEINER:  All my life, Richard Pryor, all of them. They pushed humor to the cutting edge of America, almost at the abyss, and they were funny. But to some people, they were really dangerous and they had to be stopped. And they used sometimes not just their politics, but also the sexual content was too much for uprighteous Americans to take, at least some of them. It’s not surprising comedians, people in the creative world, are among the first to be attacked. It happened in Nazi Germany and it’s happening here.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah. So the main reason I actually went to speak with David was about this very specific case in Tennessee. Have you heard about the case of Larry Bushart Jr.?

MARC STEINER:  No. Tell us, what’s the case?

MICHAEL FOX:  OK. So it’s wild and it’s shocking because it’s one of those situations that just got to this extreme that it’s hard to even believe it’s happened within the United States.

DAVID RUBIN:  It was a speech chilling environment. It was a very crazy time for a week or two, but this happened in the late stage of that big wave.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, Larry Bushart Jr., he’s a retired police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years. And between late September until the very end of October, he spent more than a month in jail for posting a meme on Facebook in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

MARC STEINER:  Oh, yes. Right.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, this story first went viral over The Intercept. FIRE was following it closely as well as David Rubin. Bushart Jr. was vocal on Facebook about Donald Trump, has been for a very long time. He called Trump and his supporters a cult. He was active online after Kirk’s killing about why he shouldn’t be praised, basically saying, look, we can’t praise this guy. And he was very active particularly on Facebook, but it was one meme in particular that got him in trouble.

DAVID RUBIN:  It’s just a picture of then-President Trump saying, after a shooting at an Iowa high school named Perry High School, after a shooting there, the day after he said, we’re all going to have to get over this, something to that effect, with the obvious implication that it meant perhaps we might be being a little hypocritical here where if we have to get over it the day after a bunch of kids get killed, and we’re still firing people nine days later because they say something bad about this one person.

MICHAEL FOX:  Underneath this quote were the words “Donald Trump on Perry High School mass shooting one day after.” And in the image that Bushart Jr. posted on Facebook, he wrote “seems relevant today.” So that was it. 

But the posts caught the attention of Perry County Sheriff. And that night at almost midnight, four officers came to his door, to the door of Bushart Jr. They had a warrant, they handcuffed him, and drove him to jail. And this video was released by The Intercept showing him as he’s arriving at the jail. An officer reads the warrant.

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  Threatening mass violence at a school.

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  At a school?

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  It’s referring to a school. I have no idea [crosstalk].

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  [Inaudible].

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  That’s what they’ve called us for. And I ain’t getting to it.

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  I played on Facebook. I threatened no one. I know you don’t give a —

DAVID RUBIN:  They arrested him and charged him with making a threat of mass violence on a school, which is like a class E felony or something like that. So they put him in jail. The judge set a $2 million bond, which is pretty insanely high for any crime.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, essentially the sheriff said that people could read Bushart Jr.’s post as a possible future threat on a local school. And it’s just this shocking moment in America where someone can go to jail for more than 30 days for posting a meme on Facebook. I mean, it’s like we’ve reached another level. And it was so shocking that The Intercept, when it published this article on Oct. 23 and then there was clearly a backlash, and the charges were finally dropped in the very end of October, and he was released from jail the following week after Oct. 23.

DAVID RUBIN:  So they dropped the charges, and now he’s free.

SPEAKER 8 [CLIP]:  How do you feel right now?

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  Thanks to all and any supporters out there, and very happy to be going home. I didn’t seek to be a media sensation, but here we are. But that’s about all I can say right now.

MICHAEL FOX:  And the folks at FIRE believe it was in large part due to the pressure, both the media pressure from continued reporting on this case, but also the reality that there was nothing to stand on. It’s just somebody posting a meme.

Have we ever seen anything at this level before?

DAVID RUBIN:  I have not seen anything like this.

MICHAEL FOX:  This is the new world order almost that we’ve entered. Had you ever heard of anything like this before, Marc?

MARC STEINER:  I mean, not since I was really young during the Red Scare of the ’50s. When people I know whose parents were fired from their jobs, whether they were airline mechanics or physicians or whatever, they were teachers, were being fired here in Baltimore. And the only thing that stopped it was the end of McCarthy and, oddly enough, the beginning of Eisenhower began to change what was happening. 

But I think that we are facing something, that a similar moment is happening now, and I think that it’s creeping. This is not something that is overt and in your face every day, but it’s undermining our educational institutions. It’s undermining our freedoms, and it’s seeping in with the power of the right taking over the country.

So, I think it’s almost like, again, if you go back — And I don’t deal with hyperbole — But if you go back to 1931 Germany and study how slowly it moved and what it did, who they went after, the same process is happening now in this country. We’re on a cusp. 

Look, our broadcast, where we are now, The Real News, places like this, this is under threat, and I think that’ll be the first line. So, I think that one of the most important parts for me in doing this work with you at this moment is beginning to really sound the alarm, but also talk about people who are standing up to it and how you organize and fight against it.

MICHAEL FOX:  Well, we’ll get to organizing and fighting against it. We will get there, folks.

So, when I spoke with David, part of my question for him was what do we know about what’s behind the scenes about these situations? So we know that, for instance, hundreds of people have lost their jobs or faced backlash for their response to the Charlie Kirk assassination. We know that nearly 300 people have been investigated at the Pentagon. So, Pentagon employees who were investigated for their own response or their own views. We know that [the] State Department revoked the visas of several people who spoke out against Kirk. 

And Marc, did you follow this at all? It’s really crazy because they’re totally blatant where the State Department is actually retweeting tweets by people, other things that people have posted online, and it basically says, don’t like it? Visa revoked. It’s almost like this viral amusing joke meme, but they’re actually responding to what people have posted online in response to Kirk.

And we know that at least six people have lost their visas this way. Someone from Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, and Paraguay.

MARC STEINER:  And they’ve been shipped out.

MICHAEL FOX:  I don’t know the… but that’s what at least the State Department said online.

SPEAKER 9 [CLIP]:  I’m sure we should not be giving visas to people who are going to come to the United States and do things like celebrate the murder, the execution, the assassination of a political figure. We should not. And if they’re already here, we should be revoking their visa.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, I wanted to understand what’s behind the scenes here. How are people being targeted? And this is something we don’t hear a lot about in the news. We hear a lot about this professor was fired or [these] other people [are] trying to create a lawsuit to get their jobs back, or these other people from these different employment were fired for this, but we don’t necessarily understand what the minutia is behind this that’s driving these firings, because they’re not by accident. 

And in many cases, they’re these coordinated campaigns. I’m not saying nationally coordinated, but it’s a process that is actually happening and coordinated so that people then get to a place in which they are fired or so that powerful people take these decisions. 

So, this is what I sat down, part of what I sat down with David Rubin about, and I really wanted to understand what was actually happening, how were people being targeted.

And David Rubin said, no, this isn’t by accident.

DAVID RUBIN:  I would say there is a campaign, or many multiple smaller campaigns, certain influencers like Libs of TikTok or like Scott Pressler or like Robby Starbuck. If you look at them, they were crowdsourcing comments from people that they disagreed with that said something about Charlie Kirk, and then all their followers were going and tweeting to that person’s boss and saying, oh, you employ this person? You should fire him. You have to fire him.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he explained to me that this is very much a coordinated campaign, which he called it a heckler’s veto. Do you know this term?

MARC STEINER:  Yes, go ahead.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, it’s basically the idea that individuals who aren’t directly impacted by these professors, so they’re not necessarily the professor’s students. It might be a student or another student, but it’s usually individuals that have nothing to do with that local situation who then find something online, or they find a tweet online from these professors, and then they start to push it out virally and promote this to then more powerful people. Then it gets picked up by viral right-wing or conservative influencers, usually on Twitter but sometimes elsewhere like Libs of TikTok and other things. 

And this is how many of these firings have actually happened, where we’ve seen this coordinated campaign against left individuals speaking out in the wake of Kirk’s assassination or standing up in defense of Palestine

DAVID RUBIN:  And that’s one area in First Amendment law that needs to be addressed is this heckler’s veto that happens when politically interested but otherwise diffuse groups get really interested and keyed in on something. And if a teacher says something and their students’ parents have a problem with it, maybe that’s one thing. But if some random right-wing or whatever, left-wing podcaster and all their fans don’t like it, and then they send a bunch of emails and make a bunch of calls to the school, that is very anti-free speech culture.

MICHAEL FOX:  I think it’s interesting that, for instance, Charlie Kirk’s own group that he founded, Turning Point USA, has its own professor watch lists. So, these are professors, left and progressive professors. Some of these individuals who were then pointed out, detailed online, and then the campaigns raised for their firing are individuals who are on this Turning Point USA watch list.

SPEAKER 10 [CLIP]:  Turning Point USA leaders continue to publish an online database of university professors they say advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.

DAVID RUBIN:  I fear that this is the start of some kind of new wave of political violence on college campuses and that folks, for instance, on the professor watch list could be targeted as well.

MICHAEL FOX:  And it’s important to point out that there isn’t just one group that’s doing this. It’s being pushed by many different groups, by many different far-right social media influencers, but it is happening, and it’s in many ways coordinated. 

So here’s one very, very specific example, Marc, that I’m going to take you to Clemson University for a second.

MARC STEINER:  OK.

MICHAEL FOX:  I spoke with Allen Chaney.

ALLEN CHANEY:  I’m the legal director at the ACLU of South Carolina.

MICHAEL FOX:  And they’ve been very focused on this one case around a professor named Joshua Bregy. Bregy is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. And then following Charlie Kirk’s murder, he reposted a friend’s post on Facebook.

ALLEN CHANEY:  That was vehemently nonviolent but, at the same time, pointed out the conflict between, on the one hand, the insistent lack of empathy by Mr. Kirk, and on the other hand, the militant demand for empathy by Mr. Kirk’s supporters in the wake of his death.

MICHAEL FOX:  What’s interesting about this case is that it’s so benign. The post first denounces Kirk’s assassination and clearly the violence. It expresses grief for Kirk’s friends and family, but it also points out the hypocrisy of Kirk’s own violent discourse, which is something we’ve seen a lot online by people in the response, right?

MARC STEINER:  Right.

MICHAEL FOX:  And so the post said, in one quote, “It sounds to me like karma is sometimes swift and ironic. As Kirk said, play certain games, win certain prizes.” And that’s probably the most demonizing phrase in the post.

ALLEN CHANEY:  Now, immediately after Dr. Bregy posted that on Facebook, nothing happened. Dr. Bregy does not have a particularly large Facebook profile. He’s a climate scientist, not a huge online presence really at all. And as news was starting to break about some of the retaliation against folks for their speech, Dr. Bregy went ahead and made his post private just in an abundance of caution. 

A few hours after that happened, Clemson College Republicans, which is an on-campus student group, reposted a portion of Dr. Bregy’s Facebook post, describing it as a now-deleted post, along with some old profile pictures of his, one of which had a “climate change is real” sign, and the other one which had a Black Lives Matter banner, and tagged Libs of TikTok as well as some other political profiles and demanded that Clemson fire him.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, this then makes its way all the way up to the South Carolina State House Rep. Thomas Beach, who also adds fuel to the campaign. Before you know it, it’s powerful elected representatives who are lobbying leaders at Clemson University.

ALLEN CHANEY:  That’s exactly right. And so, the Clemson College Republicans’ post and their tagging of Libs of TikTok is really what ignited this social media firestorm that was directed at Dr. Bregy, as well as one other Clemson professor, and then really at Clemson itself. 

And so you see some posts like — Give me a second, I can pull them up. So you see folks like Rep. Thomas Beach, who’s there in the Pickens area reposting the Clemson College Republicans’ post and saying, “Another leftist indoctrinator has been identified in the Clemson faculty. This is whose salary your dollars are paying for. We can do better. Take action, fire these radicals.” And when that doesn’t work, the threats become increasingly more explicit and they become more official as well. 

And so you no longer just have fringe Freedom Caucus folks like April Kromer and Thomas Beach and Jordan Pace. You see a letter from the speaker of the House, the president of the Senate on official General Assembly letterhead going to the Clemson University decision makers saying, your funding depends on you making the quote “right decision” here, and encouraging them to take decisive action.

And so, there was really no question that lawmakers were giving Clemson an ultimatum — Fire these professors, or we’re going to pull your funding.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, it’s this fluid, sometimes clear, sometimes unclear campaign whereby certain local groups, in some cases it might be the local university Republicans group, and in other cases it might be other groups online, who find these or who are actively looking for these types of posts and then making it, building a whole campaign. Then it’s getting pushed by social media influencers online to powerful right-wing or conservative Republican leaders who are then lobbying those schools or offices or businesses or whatever it might be to get these people fired.

ALLEN CHANEY:  But over the course of five days, you see the coercive tactics of lawmakers really start to erode Clemson’s commitment to the First Amendment. And then about five days later, before Dr. Breggie showed up to teach his first class after the Facebook post, he was fired. He was dismissed for cause and in a manner that really directly conflicts with Clemson’s own faculty manual.

MICHAEL FOX:  So it’s this fascinating thing that’s actually happening against left and progressive in particular professors, but also we’ve seen this elsewhere, singled out by these smaller groups. And what’s interesting is that in a lot of cases, like for instance this one, not necessarily did Professor Bregy do anything. He didn’t post. He reposted somebody else’s post that really wasn’t that damning. But the fact that he’s a professor that is probably on their watch list already, that is left a progressive, he’s a climate scientist in the environmental department, which is clearly proenvironment and whatnot. And so this is an individual they had clearly pointed out as someone they want to get removed. 

And this is like the epitome of what the heckler’s veto is. None of Professor Bregy’s… His students stood beside him. They stood up for him. The union stood up for him. His colleagues at Clemson University stood up in defense, and most of this campaign against him was from groups or individuals from outside Clemson University who have a clear political plan to try and get him fired or removed because of his views.

And what does this do? Again, it goes back to what we were talking [about] at the very beginning, Marc, where it’s not just the individual who has spoken up or spoken out or has posted something online, but it creates this chilling effect throughout the university and throughout other places where people are afraid to speak out. People are afraid to speak out against Trump, against the Trump administration, against other issues because they think, well, I might be next.

ALLEN CHANEY:  The disruption is not internal to these universities or colleges, nor is it organic. It’s manufactured. So, we see a coordinated effort to identify people within academia who made posts about Charlie Kirk that could be used as ammunition to push the universities to fire these people, not really for their comments about Charlie Kirk. 

I mean, you see it in my case where it’s really more about the Black Lives Matter and the climate science is real positions, and the Charlie Kirk comment is just the mechanism by which they can push their agenda into the universities and push out people who carry views that they don’t like anymore. 

And so it was political opportunism of the most discouraging sort where you have a national tragedy — Regardless of how you feel about Charlie Kirk and his views, the idea that someone was gunned down at a public event because of those views should be frightening to all of us — But then to in the hours following that, see an opportunity and seize on an opportunity to, because of public employees’ views, drive them out of the public workforce.

MICHAEL FOX:  And that’s the goal, really. The bottom line is to take out these professors, but also to create this chilling effect around speech so that people are not as vocal online and that people restrict their speech. We saw it from what I mentioned [at] the very beginning of that one situation of this one survey of individuals who were visa holders where 85% had changed their habits online. But I’m sure that if we were to look at some sort of other survey or other analysis that I don’t have in front of me, but if there was something like that done, we would see a huge difference in how people are interacting online over social media and what they are posting, what people are afraid to post, and how that’s impacting academic freedom at universities.

MARC STEINER:  And I think that one of the things we have to take into account here are the people who are in power in Washington now. When you look at Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, as much as some people who are liberal on the left don’t want to admit it, these are really, really brilliant men who are highly organized, and that’s what’s pushing this right-wing takeover of everything going on and the killing of free speech. I think that that is something that really has to be delved into deeply to understand who these people are and the powers behind the throne, what policies they’re putting in place, how they support what’s going on in these universities. I think that people have to connect these dots to understand what we’re up against and what we’re facing. 

As I said earlier, I think this is the most dangerous moment in American history in a long time. And I think what you just described is the tip of the iceberg, and it’s going to get deeper and more intense over the next several years in this administration. 

And in a pure political sense, one of the things that I’ve been reading a lot about, writing about, and thinking about how to produce is how weak the opposition is, how disorganized the opposition is, how there’s no game plan among people on the left or about Democrats about how to confront this and stop it. 

And I think that what you were just describing, again, if you go back to the 1930s and the early part of this in this country in the 1910s and the 1930s in Germany, this is how it began. You target what would be a weak link: universities. You target to begin the process, and that’s what we’re witnessing. That’s why what you just described is really critically important to understand in the context of how the right pushes power.

MICHAEL FOX:  Two things I want to say that I think are a little hopeful within this context, particularly —

MARC STEINER:  I didn’t mean to be so Mister Negative [laughs].

MICHAEL FOX:  No, of course. So first off, the ACLU has this case.

ALLEN CHANEY:  Yeah, we filed a complaint, and shortly thereafter we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction which asked the court to rule that we are likely to prevail on the merits of our First Amendment claim and to order Clemson to reinstate Dr. Bregy as faculty, put him back on the payroll, remove any adverse employment findings, and treat him as if he’s not done anything wrong, which we don’t think he’s done anything wrong, and we think that the First Amendment agrees with us.

MICHAEL FOX:  The timeline is slow. I asked them about the timeline. They said, well, we wish it was faster. I wish I could define the timeline, but it’s happening, and that’s what’s important. And that lawsuits like this are happening and pushing back around the country. 

I thought it was really interesting because I’ve been Googling this in recent days, and if you Google for “Charlie Kirk firing,” if you Google those words right now, it’s article after article of people pushing back, of lawsuits against universities, against school districts, of lawyers picking up people’s cases of trying to get people rehired. I think it’s really hopeful that if you had Googled the same thing just a couple months ago, then you would’ve seen story after story of people being fired, and now you’re seeing story after story of people of fighting back and trying to be rehired because they’re standing up for their free speech rights.

So I think that’s one thing that is really, really key. There’s a couple of the things that… Like I mentioned, Marc, I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in recent days and one of the things that was that almost everyone told me was that yes, of course, cancel culture happens on both the right and the left, and that’s what we’ve seen in recent administrations in recent years, but that this, what we’re seeing now is a whole new level and that things are bad and getting worse. Like you’ve mentioned McCarthyism, and the McCarthyist moment is the closest reference that almost all these people, all these different staff attorneys and victims and any people that I’ve been speaking with, this is like the main moment that so many of them reference of being particularly a US reference of where we are now and what this looks like.

JOSEPH MCCARTHY [CLIP]:  One communist on the faculty of one university is one communist too many. One communist among the American advisors at Yalta was one communist too many. And even if there were only one communist in the State Department, even if there were only one communist in the State Department, there would still be one communist too many.

MICHAEL FOX:  And Marc, I wanted to come back to Lisa Femia just for a second — Remember, she’s from EFF, this free speech rights organization out in the Bay Area — Because I asked her one specific thing about our definition of free speech because for me, I’ve for a long time felt like we’re seeing an attempt to redefine free speech in America where it’s not just your right to say anything you want, where it’s clearly not right now your right to protest because we’ve seen these attacks against pro-Palestinian protests, and obviously Trump is calling out the National Guard against protests and things. 

So, clearly there’s this push to try and almost redefine what we understand as free speech. And I think Trump’s first day in office was a really clear moment in defining that. This is when he signed his executive order, which was called “Restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” He spoke about this in his inauguration.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [CLIP]:  After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.

LISA FEMIA:  Yeah. I think that there was a moment where you saw Trump and allies make these free speech arguments in a way that meant free speech for them, but not necessarily for people they disagreed with. I think in that early executive order on free speech, you could tell it wasn’t, for a variety of reasons, you could probably tell this wasn’t like a fully thought out full protection of free speech because it talked only about speech from the previous administration as if this hasn’t been a push and pull in American history since the founding. 

But recently, I’m not even sure, I think the administration in some ways has dropped the guise and has talked about speech in a way that is now categorizing speech they don’t like as potential domestic terrorism or threats trying to push speech into national security area, which is sort of an easier area of the law for the administration to get away with what it wants to. 

And I’m not sure I’m even seeing the administration talk about speech in the way that it did even last year anymore. And you see this with even Trump discussing his executive order on flag burning.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [CLIP]:  And we’ve made it a one-year penalty for inciting riots. We took the freedom of speech away because that’s been through the courts and the court said you have freedom of speech. But what has happened is when they burn a flag, it agitates and you end up with riots. So we’re going on that basis. We’re looking at it from not from the freedom of speech, which I always felt strongly about but never passed the courts.

LISA FEMIA:  It’s like, maybe we don’t need free speech. I think the tone has shifted, and we’ve almost moved beyond some of the ideas that they were expressing before into a new area where they treat speech that is against their policies or their administration as a direct threat to the United States.

MICHAEL FOX:  Lisa’s quote on this, what she said to me, I think, was just so powerful. She’s like, we’re at a whole new level. It’s not just about the discourse or justification of free speech for my people, not for your people. It’s now just an open attack on free speech itself, and Trump feels like he doesn’t even have to [pay] lip service to it.

LISA FEMIA:  It’s a concerning shift. I’ve found it troubling, to say the least.

MARC STEINER:  Right. No, I think that first of all, the whole burning of the American flag, A, it is against the law, and you can use that law to attack people, arrest them, and go after them. It hasn’t been done in a long time. It was done in the ’60s, and I had friends of mine who were arrested for burning a flag in protest in this country. Then when you add that to this administration’s Orwellian speak about free speech, they’re at the doorstep. 

I think that as I said earlier, Trump is a figurehead. He’s not the danger. He’s an idiot, but he’s surrounded by brilliant minds who are organizing this push. I’m spelling it like the German push takeover of this country. I think that one of the things that’s really important for this particular series we’re doing, and for all of us to do, is to begin to bring it to light, to bring the stories to light so people know what’s happening around this country at this moment that no one sees.

Because the stories you just told, the examples you gave, most people aren’t thinking about them because they’re tucked away. They’re not in front of you. I think that it has to be exposed and we have to raise the alarm and talk to people who are fighting and organizing against it.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, Marc, we did that recording quite a few months ago, and since then there’s been quite a few updates, and I want to run through some of these things because it’s important for several reasons. First off, according to a Reuters investigation from November 2025, roughly 600 people were fired, disciplined, investigated, or suspended due to online posts following Charlie Kirk’s murder. 600. In fact, they compared it to an ideological purge. But many of those victims have been pushing back and it has made a difference.

SPEAKER 11 [CLIP]:  So didn’t you see this? A professor who was fired over a social media post about the killing of Charlie Kirk is now being reinstated…

SPEAKER 12 [CLIP]:  Newark six, a FWC biologist will receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement money after she was punished for sharing a social media post about Charlie Kirk’s death…

[Several clips overlap]

MICHAEL FOX:  So, if you remember Joshua Bregy, he’s the professor from Clemson University. He was fired on Sept. 26. He sued the university through the ACLU, saying that his termination was a violation of the First Amendment. And then in early January, he settled with Clemson University. They agreed to rescind his termination, pay his salary and benefits throughout the original term of his employment. He didn’t teach this last semester, but he received payment. He agreed to drop his lawsuit and resign from his position as of May 15, just last month. And the Clemson provost also agreed to provide letters of recommendation. 

Allen Chaney, who I interviewed, he’s the legal director of the ACLU in South Carolina. He said, “We’re honored to represent Dr. Bregy and to reach an agreement that restores his employment.” So good news, clearly, in the case of Joshua Bregy because he pushed back and fought for it. 

Also in January in New York, the movement to reinstate the Fired Four at CUNY, the City University of New York, was partially successful. So, the university found that three of the four adjuncts were once again eligible for employment at Brooklyn College. And that includes Corinna Mullin. She was one of the professors I spoke with at the beginning of this episode. She too was reinstated. They’re still fighting, however, to get the last of the Fired Four reinstated. 

And the last person that I wanted to bring in here an update was about Larry Bushart Jr. Marc, I don’t know if you remember, he was the retired policeman from Tennessee who was jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook following Kirk’s killing. So, he settled, again in May, an “unlawful incarceration” lawsuit for $835,000.

So, these are all really hopeful steps. You also have the former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil. He’s free. He’s not in jail, but of course he’s battling in the courts to remain free. 

I guess the overall vision here, Marc, is just the simple fact that organizing, fighting, pushing back can make a difference. And I think that’s just such an important theme to end up on here is that despite the attacks on free speech that are clearly happening throughout the United States that are being pushed by the Trump administration, what you have and what we’ve seen over the last six, seven, eight months are people standing up, people fighting back. And of course, not in all cases, but in many cases they’re being successful, and their rights are being defended.

MARC STEINER:  I’m glad you let all that out. I think that it’s really incredibly important for people to understand that it’s not just about people limiting our free speech. It’s about the struggle to fight for free speech and people standing up to it and not letting that go, and the bravery of people to lose their livelihood, to lose the life that they created because they stood up for free speech. It’s the most fundamental right in this country to stand up and be heard, to say what you believe and not be afraid that the law is going to come against you because you did. 

And I think that the more examples that we can give as in these podcasts that we do to tell the stories of people fighting for their free speech, that where it’s under attack, where it’s won, it’s fight back, or important for people to learn and understand, to keep that in front, because most people don’t see it because it’s not there. But the people you describe, their voices have to be heard. Their stories have to be heard because you’re next. Your name won’t be known, but you’re next if you don’t stand up.

MICHAEL FOX:  Hi, folks. Thanks for listening. We are so excited to have this series up and running. We’ve been working on it for a year.

MARC STEINER:  And next week we look back into the past at how free speech battles of the past help define the abolitionist and civil rights movements and what they mean today. That’s the next time on The Battle for Free Speech.

MICHAEL FOX:  If you enjoyed today’s podcast and you liked this series, please do us a favor, go to your podcasting app and give us a like, follow, a subscribe, or tell a friend about it and leave us a comment or a review. It really helps to spread the word about the show and the state of free speech in the United States today. 

Also, please make sure to sign up for The Real News Network’s newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com or you can click on the links in the show notes. 

If you’d like to find out more about the stories we talked about today in this episode, we’ve added some links also in the show notes. The Battle for Free Speech is a production of The Real News. Thanks for listening. See you next time.