Iran Under Attack by the Fourth Reich

All right welcome everybody welcome some things up front as people continue to Come into the chat. This is I mean our first time really doing I think in any reasonable time frame our first time doing You two live stream. We've done some on other people shows We've never quite done one just through our channel with just Allison and I so You know work with us here if we have to work through some some Kingston stuff It should be pretty easy It sounds pretty boomerish of me that I'm struggling with just a YouTube live stream But it looks like everything's going good. Everybody in the chat is being supportive. So that's good I also wanted to say the upfront that I think both both Allison and I are kind of recovering from some viral infections You know she's an L.A. I got mine in New York City. So coast to coast germs Right we we are healing and But my throat in particular still very dry so you know Apologies if there's any issues with that. I'm drinking green tea and all of that So hopefully that that helps and it won't be an issue We're gonna aim for about an hour hour and a half um and in the comment section we're gonna continue to look at the comments There is a little bit of a lag but Allison and I are both going to kind of keep it a goal of ours to Engage with the chat throughout so if you have specific questions in particular We'll keep an eye out for those and if if we miss it just ask it again and hopefully we'll we'll catch it in one of the iterations So yeah, so yeah, if this is successful. I want to I want to do this more I think it's something that people have actually explicitly asked that we should do more more live streaming And I think it's a really cool way to not only keep up with our community in real time and have that back and forth but also with all the events happening like We need each other to work through the issues right we need to be in communal relationship with one another and figure this stuff out It's not just Allison and I handing down knowledge right like especially with with the situation is complex As as what's happening now in West Asia it takes all of us to kind of to kind of work through these issues So um all that out of the way this is already looking nice So hopefully we can keep keep doing this throughout the year But it's it's some dark times and I don't know. I think if you're roughly around Allison and our eyes age Most of our lives has been in kind of dark global times Nothing compared to what the people of West Asia are going through nothing compared to what people of Palestine have been going through and continue to go through Of course, but we're human beings and we're invested in the human condition and we're invested in the human story And we all feel deeply The the pains of of human suffering happening around the globe at the hands of the most evil and dumbest people on the planet right at them The most grotesque human beings that this earth has ever vomited out The most are also the wealthiest most powerful people bringing hell on earth to large swaths of the planet most of whom are completely innocent human beings who just want to live their lives Just want to get by Take care of their families and you know enjoy the the coming spring and just be a human being But they can't because this evil death machine of imperialism and colonialism insists on dominating the entire planet and the the attacks on Iran or just the latest iteration Of this 500 year death machine And it's I believe it's terminal stages, but that makes it only the more dangerous So I'll hand it over to Alasin and you can give your opening thoughts maybe Walk us through the the sort of situation as we see it with with the foreknowledge That even in the best of times we talk about the fog of war And now we have this fragmented social media smashed black mirror version of reality that we're all trying to pier through with the fog of war and the irony of being Exposed to so much information in real-time Real-time events also makes it harder to sort of parse through what's true and what's not people just straight up lying online Now we have a i to contend with so you know It is very hard to know exactly what's happening in the best of times And it's certainly hard at the moment, but Alasin what are your opening thoughts and kind of where we at Yeah, I mean, I think that's just like a framing thing upfront I want to say that I really strongly agree with your take about like we all need to be able to talk about this together because obviously Bret and I have our experience and we have our analysis, but I'm very curious to hear from you all too. I think the last year um in terms of the forum US imperialism has taken global responses to blatant acts of aggression Have all really like actually destabilize some of my long-standing analysis about Kind of imperial stability and all of that So I think that it will be important for us to dialogue back and forth here if we can because we're in times that feel somewhat unprecedented at least in terms of the post-war world in terms of how the US actions have been met And I think that that's worth you know going back and forth about but to summarize kind of the situation for people who didn't see I believe it was late Friday night that the first strikes occurred Um, I've been trying to get a clear timeline But they're not it was Israel or the US who struck first or whether or not it was coordinated simultaneously But the first headlines that broke or if it is really a real airstrike against iran actually Which was at the very least quickly followed up by US airstrikes against iran This has been referred to by both regimes the United States and Israel as decapitation strikes with this claim that the focus is on taking out leadership There's been some discussion from the you know both of these imperialist states about the idea of Appetitating the government taking out the ideological heads and then not leading to the possibility of regime change Which is pretty openly disgusted this point as a motivation behind this these strikes Did succeed in killing quite a few people According to reports so far they did kill Iatola Kamini and also several other military and political leaders in iran They also struck a girl's school and killed it looks like at this point I think 150 school girls Maybe higher numbers than that the civilian casualties have been massive this act of imperialist aggression has as always Not just hit the people that they are claiming to target but more broadly civilians within iran And then on top of all this we are now seeing Uh kind of the situation escalating last night uh by us time Iran basically said that it was going to engage in retaliatory strikes and did seem to engage in retaliatory strikes We confirmed hits probably drone hits at a US military base in Bahrain I believe three dead as of this morning was confirmed from what I was seeing on CNN There were successful strikes in Tel Aviv There were strikes in Dubai there were strikes in a couple other locations as well Specifically targeting American infrastructure throughout the Arab world seems to be the focus US bases there But also we've seen footage of smoke this morning rising over the port of Dubai and again this kind of retaliatory wave It seems pretty clear at this point that the government in iran is not rolling over in the face of this and sees this as a situation where it is necessary To continue with a counter offensive Exactly what the continued extent of that is going to be uh remains to be seen Similar to what we've seen from iran You know over the last few years has been this massive mobilization of drone waves as a way of overwhelming air defenses and getting through as well as traditional missile strikes that have occurred Again, we're still trying to get some of the details But there's some pretty wild footage of iranian missiles being able to obey interception over Tel Aviv There seems to be yeah, just quite a barrage that has happened as of I think about like 10 minutes ago net and yahu has said more waves of Israeli strikes are likely I don't know if the US has confirmed more waves But again the situation does not seem to be quieting down at the present moment And it appears that there may be some level of escalation which is occurring We obviously have to wait and see what that looks like but based on everything that I've seen That's about where we stand at the current moment Yeah, I mean there's a way in which this is already a regional war The iranian response has been regional in scope as I mean honestly it has to be as it as it probably should be and needs to be it necessitates itself to be You know the old meme of all the American bases surrounding surrounding iran is now in real kinetic play with regards to them being being bombed directly And you know I mean it goes without saying iran has a right to protect itself from this obvious war of aggression That has been ramping up for decades. This is the regional endgame from Libya and Palestine the the attacks on hezbollah Ansara law and Yemen who are still fighting back hezbollah still exists in some capacity to fight back Hamas never stops fighting But the toppling of Syria and the replacement of the Assad government with the puppet al-Qaeda state that they've formed now and the goal You know ideally the goal for the US and Israel Would of course be to install some sort of puppet government But what though most likely settle for is destruction of iranian civil society and the fracturing of the state apparatus in some form of vulcanization with You know various forms of ethnic tension or sectarianism Filling the void destabilizing the country perhaps they'll send ISIS in at some point to further destabilize it from within But that still serves the greater israel project and there are there are interests that abound here right this is clearly You know people talk about this is a war for israel and I think that's a fair way to talk about it There is no like really clear-sighted American need to go to war with iran right now with all of the problems that the US faces But this is an empire in decline. It is going to lash out and try to reestablish You know hegemony that it's actively sort of losing and in a lot of ways this is how Dying or declining hegemon's have to act and it's also decisive What exactly will happen here what the outcome will be will determine the state of and among many other things US imperial hegemony at least at least in the region So this is this is of course, um, you know high stakes But the US has interests in the region. I've talked about it in our last episode About the interest in having some sort of presence or at least destabilizing the region in response to China's belt and road initiative Which in a lot of ways goes through iran iran has always been geopolitically important for its geographical location on the map at the crossroads of three Um continents and of course this is punishment for standing up against US imperialism for decades and decades and decades You know anybody that stands up no matter what the nature of your government is no matter what the nature of your economic system is If you stand up to total global domination by western imperialism you are on the list to be toppled and destroyed So whether this is a serious situation for iran or a Libya situation. That's what the US and Israel clearly want And from from israel's perspective of course they want the number one Opponents in the region defeated and they want the number one obstacle to the greater israel project Which is israeli labens round they want that defeated So I've you know somebody in the chat mentioned I think of the US and israel as one entity I think there's still something analytically to be gained from thinking about them sort of separately in their own unique interest But functionally materially concretely in the region for what it actually is worth They operate as a single entity and it is as I've said the fourth rike This is the legacy up to third rike. This is the fourth rike It has is fully equipped with ethnic cleansing with a full on industrial genocide and with labens around with the expansion of territory into neighboring territories With complete belligerent aggression No attempt to do diplomacy whatsoever in fact now diplomacy is used as a fig leaf under which Kinetic assaults can occur now that the US strategy under trump is to lure you into negotiations so that they can attack you Which probably has some downstream effects um with international relations uh going forward But there's a lot at stake and I don't I don't mean to say any of that with with Assurances that this is going to be a victory Iran is a tough tough Country full of people who understand the the mac machinations of israel and western imperialism who have been educated through decades of struggle No matter what their differences with their own government may be they understand that the toppling and pillaging and plundering And decimation of their amazing civilizational country by the us in israel is not going to be good for any regular Iranian person and already the economic woes that they're facing in Iran is a result of these brutal sanctions imposed on them by the us Which itself is a crime against humanity So this is the fourth rike death machine. It is marching on Iran um, you know If I had my way, Iran would magically get a an array of 10,000 nuclear weapons and China and Russia would come to its aid I'm not so sure what the moves of China and Russia are going to be I don't personally think that either of them are going to jump headlong into this war But I do think there's going to be intelligence sharing and probably some weapon sharing. We'll see how far that goes But it's it's uh It's a it's a dark time for sure and um, yeah, so Allison any any I don't really I'm kind of just Figuring out where to go with this because it is hard to kind of think about but yeah, we'll bounce it back over to you Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things to kind of expand on there So one is in terms of like is the US pursuing its own interest? Is it pursuing Israeli interests? The other kind of thing that I want to add to the table is Saudi interests as well Right because some of the reporting that we've seen in the last 24 hours points out that in particular On Trump to engage in the strikes was pretty heavy alongside Israeli pressure And that is not surprising to me I think the Trumps foreign policy in the region has been focused on basically Trying to create cooperation between Israel and the you know various Arab states that have traditionally not had a very positive relationship with it This has been kind of the whole focus of the Abraham Accords moving in this direction And so Trump wants a unified imperialist block in the region that Includes both Israel and states like the Saudis right and so this mixed pressure that is trying to be developed here Does I think indicate some interesting things the other thing that I want to bring up is it's always like difficult because I don't want to treat Trump as overly Anomalous because I think you can fall into this kind of personality Anti-structuralist understanding of what's going on And at the same time I do often feel like Trump's foreign policy is somewhat anomalous right traditionally I think what people have jokingly called like the unsinkable aircraft carrier thesis of Israel i.e Israel is fully subservient to US interests And is essentially just an American proxy in the region and America is fully in control I think that has been the best descriptive paradigm for most of recent history But under Trump it does feel like that may not necessarily be the case It's a little complicated because we've both seen Trump willing to put Israel in its place and away Biden wasn't willing to and sometimes He's willing to kind of yank the leash when he thinks it's strategically necessary for his goals But we've also seen Israel willing to force his hand in ways that I don't think we've necessarily seen under other presidents So there's a higher level of instability to that relationship under Trump I think part of this I think has to do with his just like own open corruption and just open clientelism Where people who can get close to him and can get the conversations they want with him Are able to push him to do what you know they want him to do and we know his Israel on voice like Whitcoff Are engaged in kind of this personal politicking back and forth That seems more capable of moving Trump than most presidents that we've seen in the past So that might be a part of it But yeah distinguishing American interests is really interests Saudi interests And then I think this fourth thing which is like Trump's interests Which I think often are somewhat distinct from what the US military industrial complex might consider its interests Makes this very hard to untangle and I think as we're moving into I you know as I've said over and over again Declining US unipolarity and declining US hegemony this more corrupt clientelist relationship That is increasingly unstable that is increasingly handled through weird personal Connection back channels is going to make some of those more long standing analytic frameworks Like the unsinkable aircraft carrier framework Less tenable because they're hard to map on to very rapidly changing situations So that's kind of one of the directions that I'm looking in here And I think the Saudi direction is the other thing it really needs to get picked up I think Saudi influence on US politics and foreign policy has been huge for a long time I think you cannot understand much of the war on terror without the question of some Saudi interference And so there are these various factors that are pulling and I think the president who is just happy to play game with the highest bidder at the moment And that creates the situation that we're in that's at least somewhat how I'm reading it Again, I think there's a risk of falling into an anti-structuralist Just oh Trump is uniquely insane kind of thing and I don't want to do that I think this is more a result of the kind of president you get during a period of unipolar collapse And exactly what that shift in imperialist policy looks like For sure and this is speculative but I think it would be interesting to explore the dynamic of Of what how can you actually get Trump to do this you've mentioned some you know very sober thoughts about you know How things might go but there's also a bunch of reasons why This is stupid from a purely Trump personal advancement perspective the midterms are coming up you have historically low polling Trump has low pull lower polling now than at any time during his first administration And at any time during Biden's entire term right so your polling is low your constituencies increasingly fractured You have this Epstein thing hanging over your head In midterms are coming up and if the Democrats have a victory for all the weaknesses of the Democrats It's just going to mean hearings and and you know holding people To account on the Epstein thing perhaps or releasing more files forcing the DOJ to release more files They're going to really put a A stick in the road with regards to what you want to do on the second half of the Trump's you know second term And so this so this comes into play why would you do this? Well, there's this long standing military industrial reason to do it. There's this long standing Imperial reason to do it There's this long standing friendship with Israel. I'm not taking off the board the possibility That there is some sort of Compromot that Israel has on Trump not that you need that for Trump to do evil and stupid things That's Trump's whole thing. He is an evil stupid man. And so this is not necessarily. I'm not I'm not advancing this as a as a For sure thing. I'm just advancing this as a possibility that Epstein and Trump were best friends for 15 years If anybody if if Trump did anything at all at Epstein had right at the end of their friendship They were pretty bitter at each other the emails and the Epstein files reveals that Epstein pretty much hated Trump and Trump Talk shit about Epstein now their friendship is over so years and years of friendship years and years of almost certainly Crimes that were committed on be that Trump did do people right to children perhaps If Epstein has has that he has these connections to Israel Israel would have that if anybody has the smoking gun on Trump Right to hold over his head as ultimate leverage. It would be Israel probably through Epstein and there is a world in which He is you having that leveraged against him behind the scenes that we and we will never know and Israel says as long as you do it We want this will never come out We will give you the narrative terrain to say that you're a hero you can frame this however you want We can talk about this being quick and not a forever war no boots on the ground We'll we'll you will come out and tell that you're the best president we've ever had You know you'll go down and at least Israeli history as the best American president US history that's done with regards to anything positive coming out historically in retrospect on Trump But there's a world in which that happens so then somebody asking the comments And this is connected I think how could this lead to a police state here? So I'm just talking about the midterms and I was just talking about how Democrats coming in and winning the Senate and the House could functionally put an end to Trump's second term This happens often in presidencies when you have a huge swing in the midterms that you are now just fighting an uphill battle all the time to do anything at all Under a state of war Trump has explicitly talked about this There's a state of exception That if you can be in a war when when the voting thing comes plus you've planted these seeds about how these voting machines are rigged and they they stole it in 2020 you could use the Extravagant conditions of war to seize the voting machines and Somehow some way refused to accept the results of the midterms election It would be an immediate constitutional crisis, but under the fog of war, which is much easier I think to deal with and look at what Netanyahu's done He right before October 7th. He was being mass protested in the streets. He had these corruption charges. He very well could be facing Conviction possible prison time war gave him the ultimate out. I think Trump looks at that and sees that is obviously a path to him Not you know basically relinquishing the second half of his second term So I think how this relates to a police state here. We already functionally live in a police state The the the emergence of the data centers and the AI backbone is the new techno surveillance state that is now making all the data Easily accessible instantaneously through these AI You know machines basically and that there is a world in which the midterms more or less don't happen Are too contested to go through or where emergency powers under a state of war are declared that functionally stop the midterms from proceeding More or less as usual. I don't see how Trump gets out of this in any other way Right, I mean to sit back and just let the midterms come you now you're in a fucking middle eastern war Your polling is even lower than it's ever been and just let the Democrats come in and totally win and then just make you a fucking joke for the rest of your term I mean Trump's not gonna let that happen So I believe the police state is already being built up This has always been a police state for marginalized communities for poor people for black people for indigenous people And in times of crisis we saw the red scares in American history certainly during periods of war There's been huge crackdowns on immigrant communities. We're already seeing that on the radical left You know red scare shit. We've already seen that on any unions that try to strike Especially in a context of war. There's new powers to crack down on that So I think the the baseline of a police state is already there. It's being fortified and technified by the AI backbone and emergence Which is why they're hitting the gas pedal on that Um and thropic and and chat gpt open AI. I mean have already had this little jostling with the Pentagon Where in thropic was like our red line is like using autonomous robots with no human oversight to kill people And also using our AI to do mass surveillance those two things and thropic said hey, can you have humans control who dies with these machines instead of AI And can you not use AI to create mass surveillance the Pentagon said fuck you We're not doing business with you anymore. So what does that tell you those two things are red line for the Pentagon So the police state is here. It's only going to get more and in a state of war every single time in American history There was a state of war the president used that crisis to a mass upon himself more and more power Every single time from Lincoln in the civil war FDR world war two um Vietnam more world war one and right now We're seeing the exact same thing instead of FDR or Lincoln for all their flaws. We have fucking Trump So the police state is here. This will be used to consolidate it and I think it's going to Show its true face during the midterms Yeah, I think I strongly agree with that. I think very clearly there has to be some level of domestic motivation towards this action right I think it is just true that Trump is unbelievably unpopular at the moment and that there is this floundering fear going into the midterms And when you think about it Starting wars is not popular right it is not actually something that is likely to give him a rebound So in terms of trying to take an action that is going to increase his chances of winning a fair midterm I don't think you could really explain this I don't think you could really explain the Venezuela situation either both of those are actions that I think Traditionally are very risky in terms of public perception So that does leave us asking what is it that Trump is trying to accomplish and I do think setting up the conditions The declaration of some sort of state of emergency seems likely You know we talk a lot about the way that you know a lot of the power that Trump has exercised in terms of cracking down on an eternal descent Was actually built under Democrats and one of the cases where this is very true Is that even under the Biden administration a lot of the discussion from Zionist lobbying and also even from some aspects of domestic intelligence was these attempts to tie the pro-Palestine movement to Iranian proxies Right and to say oh this is in some way being funded by Iran or influenced by Iran and this discussion of like domestic Iranian influence networks came up under Biden even Obviously became much more intense under Trump and no prosecution has taken place under that but the accusation has continually been thrown around And so given some of that framework which has been laid as a justification for crushing student descent and descent in the streets around Palestine Over the last several years it does feel like then an expanding regional war with Iran does give some of the domestic clearance to be able to make that Framing right of an internal threat or internal enemy that requires some sort of extraordinary use of powers Such that the midterms could be voided. It's hard to say necessarily You know the midterms are going to happen or something like that But the conditions to muddy them sufficiently such that there can't be a transition of power Within the legislature does seem possible and I do think that that is likely related to this again It's hard to kind of say exactly what is motivating Trump here because wars are particularly unpopular The White House is already trying to paint this as anti-war. There's this tweet that I saw that was like Trump is ending Iran's forever war on America was like the framing the they are trying to use for this Which I don't think will land even with their base right? I think the parts of their base that care about anti-interventionism Which is a component of some of their base are not going to buy that are not going to be interested in that and so that shift In unpopularity around foreign policy and particulars going to continue forcing the regime to take some sort of action domestically We'll have to see wait and see what that looks like But I do think the domestic picture really is a part of understanding the calculus that is being made here as well Yeah, and somebody asked in the in the comments And I think this feeds right into what we're talking about here is do you do y'all think Something is fundamentally different now compared to Iraq in terms of descent on the right But even that question of what's different now with with regards to Iraq I was talking about this over at the workers lit podcast which will come out tomorrow I was blooming into political consciousness during the Iraq war I remember sitting in seventh grade watching the second plane hit the tower and you know Even though I was a teenager when the 2003 surge and shock and awe happened I remember seeing it on tv I remember it being ambient in the culture. I remember by the time I'm 16 17 Listening like conscious hip-hop and stuff. I'm like out in Omaha with the sign protesting the Iraq war There was I mean it's grotesque to say it widespread bipartisan popular support for the Iraq war and there was a there was a dissonant left for sure There always is in every single war in American history It's the left that is dissident But you know relatively powerless especially back then think about how powerless the American left is today like 2003 2005 You know Not non-existent. It's always been there but very very small But because of 9/11 and because of two years from 9/11 to the to the war the invasion of Iraq in 2003 There was an ongoing effort with limited information streams too We just had the corporate media at that time to sell the American people and the international world on the fact that there were WMD's Which we now know was a lie and everybody who supported it from Tucker Carlson to Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump All have to come back around and say that they were wrong My dumbass is 17 years old like smoking weed and holding up a no-war sign was more politically advanced than the highest echelon of thinkers and academics and scholars in the United States Which says something about the ruling class not about me necessarily Um, but there was real support when I went out and held up my fucking sign I was getting flipped off people were throwing shit at me There was a real sense of like you know those yellow ribbons were everywhere support our troops Stand behind our troops are standing in front of um, you know if you were Anti-war and you had a big enough platform you'd go on Bill Riley and he'd scream at you for an hour and everybody would seal clap There was like if you go back and check the polls too I would not be surprised 70 especially in the early days by the end of the Bush administration it was done right But in the early days I would not be surprised at 60 70 perhaps at some points 80 high watermark percentage of support for the Iraq war at some point because they sold it because there was limited information and because the US population Had it learned the lessons from Iraq yet right the ruling class has learned one lesson from the Iraq war It's not to not do war It's that hey these this nation building Is annoying putting boots on the ground for years and years and trying to build up a nation like the neocons thought we could do and Build democracy that doesn't work, but we're still totally down for like the toppling of regimes and bombing societies and and destroying them So I think what trump trump's um shift here is I'm not going to do necessarily boots on the ground. We're not going to have Hundreds of thousands of American troops in Badi Ron. We're going to use our air power and our missiles and our ships and our carriers And our allies in the region and we're going to pelt and destroy and fundamentally Eradicate the state stability the economy the infrastructure civil society and the goal here is just to have Bolcanization chaos etc The difference here though is that there is limited support. I mean not that it matters 80% the latest latest pull I saw 80% 85% of Americans full on against any war with Iran. It doesn't matter What's happened between the Iraq war and and the Iranian war many things One thing is that there has been a dismantling of even the pretext of represented representational government There has been citizens united There's been a flooding and a legitimization of outright corruption and bribery of which the trump administration is this colman This growth test culmination of where it's like it's a joke to even Think that you have a say average American. There's been scholarly studies that have come out and objectively and empirically shown That the once in needs and interests of of the American voter has zero percent representation in actual policy The once in needs of the donor class the military industrial complex A pack and all its adjacent things monopoly capital techno oligarchs That is who the banks financial institutions that is who this government is of by and for And and it's always been that way but even the pretext of democracy has been completely shattered. So What are the differences between the Iraq war much less popular support that fact matters even less than it did back then And and so that's just I perhaps one of the differences but having lived through both of them It's shocking to see the amount of people that still Are just open to it. I mean they have a financial interest the corporate media we can talk about this more But the amount of people that just get sucked into it and with regards to the right and I'll show up after this and hand it back over to Allison There are real fishers on the right right what what has happened on the left since Bernie has been this constituency this the what the democratic base for all of its flaws and and heterodox character It is at fundamental odds with the democratic leadership that contradiction is heightening and heightening and heightening and heightening That same thing is happening to a lesser degree on the right but it is happening in a lagged way And Trump is the only thing holding that coalition together Who is like the biggest right wing dissident against Israel and the Iran war right now is Tucker Carlson Who is the one person Tucker Carlson never ever ever ever criticizes Donald Trump go to all of his interviews Tucker will spend an hour Talking about everything this administration and doing how it is bad how it is evil he doesn't understand his blah blah blah The moment somebody says yeah, but you know like Trump is the leader here and like the buck stops with him Oh, you know Trump is doing his best Trump is hearing a lot of different stuff like Trump will listen to it It's amazing, but once Trump's gone I really do think you know somebody said like somebody laughed at the idea that there was dissent on the right There is there are real splits Trump is holding it together through his pure fascism and personality and ego and sanity But even that is severely weakening and you can see that in the polls Post Trump nothing's holding this thing together. So I do think there's a reckoning on the on the American right and I'm not exactly sure how that will play out But the longer this goes on the more those fishers erupt Allison Yeah, no, I think this is a very useful framing on the question of dissent on the right I think it's complicated right during the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan There was this kind of like right wing libertarian anti-war position that you saw So I actually think like the website like anti-war.com was run by like libertarians right? So one of these big voices that was out in the street at protests and stuff was run by right wingers actually interestingly though I think that type of anti-war right wing anti-interventionist like ideology is dead at this point basically I do think that has essentially disappeared from the landscape To the extent that there's an anti-interventionist position on the right is primarily articulated in nationalist terms Like rather explicitly at this point and a focus on how interventionism is disastrous for a national interest position So that is a shift that's occurred But I do think around the fringes generally of the right wing coalition There are just people who hold that kind of tacit nationalism who are like why the fuck are we spending money on this right? So it's not the same kind of principled position that you saw from certain like right wing friends underbush But it is still kind of present The other thing is I think Israel is a fracture point in the coalition under Trump right now Right There is just realistically a Nazi faction of that coalition that hates Israel on kind of anti-subundant grounds In addition to their general nationalist grounds And I think we've seen that fracturing point really kind of blow up a little bit more Is any of that going to matter? I don't really know but I do think that some of that dissent is there The thing that I find worrying about you know war with Iran in particular Is that some of the consent manufacturing around it seems to have persuaded some of the center left That regime change within Iran would be a good thing So whatever dissent there might be at the fringes of the right wing coalition Unfortunately may be made up for by tacit liberal acceptance of this And we've seen this already the democratic responses so far have been more or less to grant the premise that overthrowing the government of Iran is a good thing And to more or less grant the premise that the justifications for this war are legitimate But to argue essentially that there's a procedural issue I.e. it's a war power question or Congress was not brief on this And so on the center left there is still I think some support for like the general idea of what is happening right now They just want the Democrats to get to rubber stamp it along the way unfortunately So that is what worries me that some of that shift you know in terms of right wing dissent really won't matter Kind of hard to say But thinking about the difference between this and the Iraq war generally I do think that the thing that you hit on that's really important Is that there I do not think we will see a follow up with boots on the ground or sustained occupation here One of the things that the US seems to have landed on is that that is not tenable after the failure in Iraq the failure in Afghanistan I mean really the quite dramatic failure in Afghanistan That does not seem like something that the United States is likely to engage in again Which means the question is what is the long term goal here? Is it to put in a US puppet overseeing by US troops on the ground which is what we saw during the earlier iterations of the war on terror Or something else and I think that just throw things into chaos position has become more and more what the US is interested in I don't think the US really cares who fills power vacuums at this point if they can get rid of Governments that stand up to them in one form or another That seems sufficient to them even if other actors that come in play Including non-state actors aren't necessarily friendly to the United States as long as they're destabilizing that situation That was a bulwark against American imperialism We as a country seem pretty much okay with it Again, Syria I think shows like the very big example of this But even later developments in Iraq I think show the US being sort of willing to accept some of that chaos And so that strikes me as very likely what is being developed here and what the long term goal is I.e. not much of a clear strategy for where Iran goes after this Because it doesn't really matter in the calculations to the US It's fine with general bulk indization in chaos And that speaks directly to a commenter's question deep in history what's up Do you agree with the current conventional wisdom on the left that the goal is not regime change But rather turning Iran into Libya serious since that can be achieved with only air power And I think that's right because the alternative to that would kind of be boots on the ground Or this sort of fever dream idea of reinstalling the Shah Which again we just have to point out We're going to democracy and freedom to you're installing a monarchy Like it's just fucking insane that that's now like even center left people like You know like we're kind of cool like these guys seems to have uh it's the one got wide out thing all the time Or all over again I don't think he has um I don't think he has the political support on the ground to to make that happen Although that is kind of what they're floundering as the alternative Because they can't just come out and say our goal here just to devastate the country Destroy this beautiful shining country and it's you know for all of its flaws It's gorgeous civilizational culture going back to the very beginning of human civilization Our goal is to bomb and destroy these sites these people And and totally turn this into a shell a a haunted shell of its former self Like we did in in Libya they can't come out and say that so They have this pretext of like well this this guy we used to be in power is dad did maybe we can reinstall him And like these people like go on like Pierce Morgan and support this Have the flag of the Shah behind them like we're doing monarchy again There's nobody in mainstream media that calls out the cognitive dissidents of like oh we're reinstalling a monarchist Hereditary line as our liberation of the Iranian people like it's it really is grotesque Um, so I think that that addresses that question Mm-hmm Um and so with regards to the right you mentioned like there's like straight-up Nazi anti-Semitism That that is definitely present I do think there is also like genuine conservatives who aren't necessarily anti-Semitic Who just like see this clearly like there's some anti-Semitism probably inherent in it But there's also just like genuine people that like hey like what the fuck are we doing All these problems at home and we're fighting these wars And they learn a little bit about some history And they start thinking about whose interests are actually at play They see how much money we give how all of our politicians are bought out by by A-Packen Regardless of your political opinions a reasonable person can look at that and say Fuck this and then on top of that two years of murdering children and women and innocent men In a fucking horrific genocide that taxpayers who are barely surviving in many cases in the working class Here at home are funding while we can't even go see a fucking dentist Like there's a reasonable way that no matter where you are in the political spectrum you look at that and say that's bullshit So as I've always said Israel knows this is probably their last chance Israel knows that the Trump administration is their last chance To actually get the full support of the American military empire To go and do its from its perspective it's bidding in Iran Which is also the military apparatus the military industrial complexes Goal in so many ways and the neo-conservative goal for so long But the fissures on the right with regards to Israel the left is gone Right so if you're gonna if you're gonna have an Israel pro-Israel camp in the United States It's a dwindling faction of the right But with with the Adelson money that got pumped in to the Trump campaign with with a Jared Kushner Being an agent kind of in the administration itself with the control they still have They are going to they they see this as their last their last hurrah and they're going full steam ahead And if they can make that happen without leveraging some Compromot on Trump they would But if they have to assert that they they can and they will do they have to that's the big question Doesn't even matter in the end probably not in any meaningful way that that matters with regards to What the Iranians have to do to to fight for their survival. So There's another question though. I'll ask it and toss it over to you to give a first stab at a question a commenter question My big question is what's going on with Iran's defense strategy? Are they holding back or were the people touting their ability to inflict real damage just wish casting I was always skeptical but it seems like they can barely even touch the US or Israel right now No reports of of casualties. I believe they're trying to say that I've seen So Allison you want to take a stab at that? Yeah great question shada tassaya for putting that one in the chat because I think it does get at like a really Important thing. So yeah, I've been kind of trying to ask this right so As I mentioned kind of upfront trying to summarize the situation. There's a pretty clear Counter-offensive that has gone on attacking US bases in multiple states in the region So Iranian action has taken place, but yeah, I mean right now we're talking. I think six Israelis dead Five or no maybe three Americans dead at this point. It is not massive casualties And so I think that does raise this question of is this holding back what are we seeing exactly and my first thought is that this actually probably is Strategically holding back somewhat if I'm trying to imagine what the Iranian state is trying to figure out right now It's basically what are the next steps for the US and Israel? What are their actual goals? The what we have seen from Trump pretty consistently is strike attack and then try to create negotiations He loves this thing where he says I've now made negotiations easier And so I think that they are probably waiting to see what the US move is going to be whether or not a line of communication is open to there Rather than going all out and so one reason might just be yeah lack of clarity around what the US is actually planning and trying to Buy their time to be able to see but then the other thing is that this may be a kind of long-term regional conflict Potentially right with Netanyahu this morning saying that there will be more strikes on the way I can imagine this being drawn out beyond just like a few day situation And so the Iranian states other calculation might be not using the entirety of its air and ballistic offensive capabilities right away But being able to sustain a more long-term struggle now This is like I think a big open question for what war means these days at all because what war seems to mean is pretty much just Contesting tests of air superiority right now that really is what it has felt like other than obviously on the ground operations and Gaza But that's a slightly different situation than this war between formal states with formal armies that have you know more established capabilities militarily and so I would guess that Iran is kind of playing into the unknown as much as most states are right now and holding back in order to be as Adaptable as possible which makes sense again whether or not sustained long-term war if possible Is yet to be seen But if it is a question of air superiority air defenses and your ability to have air offenses then yeah Not just using everything right away and inflexing maximum damage But taking a slightly more cautious approach seeing how things develop make sense strategically That is my best guess about it just in terms of thinking of Iran operating rationally in terms of its decision making But it's hard to say right. I mean, I think there is the Duma read that I've already seen online of like Oh well, Iran maybe is not as powerful as they've oh we've always thought they weren't they landed some drones and some missiles and telebeave But it's never been the massive amounts I'm more skeptical of that just in terms of I think states tend to play it more conservatively with these questions Because it is better for their long-term survival and that's kind of where I tend to lean unless I think I agree and you got to think from their perspective This is like you know not to be vulgar or silly about it, but like You're in a bar by yourself and three of the biggest dudes come up and get ready to fight you like you got to be strategic You can't just go all out this whole lead up Iran knows that it is fundamentally outgunned you have israel and iran I mean, I think iran can fucking take those assholes But the United States is just the biggest Most overwhelming military force in human history and so you got to kind of play your cards Right like you the strategy matters more than ever here right when you're in this asymmetrical fight And so what we've seen in the lead up is this complete And it's almost like from you know far be it from us sitting in our arm chairs to tell iran what to do But there's this restraint that we've seen over and over again even after you know all these belligerent strikes on iran Iran comes back through probably back channels and says hey We're gonna do this this and this just to show that we're fighting back But and not in a cynical way, but just in a way like we're not trying to move up the escalatory ladder Because it doesn't serve iran to escalate But here's the thing that iran probably also knows There's no way to de-escalate with these flocks They're gonna do whatever they want they don't care about negotiations Their their goal is to fucking destroy they already took out your head of state And they took out multiple of your high-level figures in the military in the political state And they'll take out as many more as they possibly can their goal for you is complete devastation So this is a now an existential threat that has been proven so so you know like from a vague abstract like moving pieces on a chessboard around you could say What iran needed to do when israel and the us first started testing it is just Go hard as fuck right to like establish real motherfucking deterrence but from and you know instead of this little tit for tat thing they did Um, but that would make them even more easily Pariah in the international media, but more than that they could then blame iran for the escalation So if if iran did establish hardcore deterrence and these early phases of this aggression Then the us and israel would just pointed at them and said hey, they're escalating. Let's go all in But the thing is they're going all in anyway. So it's like then what do you do now now you now they're in a real situation where they've The decapitation strikes have occurred and now you're in a fight for your life And now the calculation is like You know, what do we do what do we do here do we go all out and even if you're trying to go all out There's you still got to be strategic You don't just push all the buttons and let all the missiles fly and then the next day you got nothing So they got to send out some of their older stuff They got to begin waves of sort of like light strikes in a sense right holding back your your bigger weaponry And I'm no military expert. So you know take that with the grain of salt But kind of just logically you got to hold back some of your your bigger stuff your more powerful stuff As this war continues on then you got to go back into that and dig in and start launching them and kind of have your own ability to Escalate in response to their escalation. So this is an impossible situation to be in my heart truly breaks for the Iranian people and the Iranian state who was like in this literally impossible situation no matter what you do Your fucked and these people have no conscious. They're coming after you no matter what they use negotiations as a pretext to assault and and destroy you So it's really really difficult now they've closed down the straight of our moves What is going to be the impact of that that is one of their You know pardon the pun trump cards And it's always has been predicted as one of their main trump cards in the case of exactly this happening Well, if they keep that shut down Prices around the world are going to go crazy oil is not just the gas you put in your cards The stuff that goes in plastics and is really the the the baseline of any functioning economy is the energy source You get to make your products and fuel your industries now, you know, US has some of that But still it's going to throw global markets in the chaos So that's a real pressure point they have on the global economy They've already kind of they're using that but as time goes on that hits harder and harder right those teeth dig in with each passing day That the straight stays shut down on sarah law launching You know their attacks now and the and the the see off their coasts So it's again, it's really hard to be in their position and think critically we would love to see them go hole hog We would you know part in the vulgarity love to see Tel Aviv be rained down upon with Iranian missiles And give Israel a little bit of what the fuck they deserve But they have to be strategic because it's not only their leadership is gone But it's like what is the what will we walk out of this with Right and but even that I feel bad saying it because that's pessimistic I still hold out genuine hope that Iran can inflict real mother fucking damage That Iran can really come strong with some shit and and and and pose real costs on the US and Israel at least is real You know and and if and if your government is going out and not only your government But the end game of your enemies is to destroy your society What is left to hold you back from going all out? We already know that Israel has the Samson option If Israel were in a spiss in a similar situation as Iran is right now and as Iran will continue to be in Israel will nuke the fucking world right Iran doesn't have nukes But it has lots of fucking weapons and it has a country of 93 million human beings Um that are within Striking marching distance of of Israel So I'm just I just want to assert like there's reasons why they aren't going hard as fuck that does not Necessarily mean they aren't equipped to do that or that they are fundamentally like overestimated in their abilities They're trying to be strategic and you also have to think They've made contingency plans for these these decapitation decapitation strikes But a lot of your leadership is either gone or under serious existential threat or in some level of chaos And no matter how much contingency you have in place there's still some Chain of command Confusion and chaos that will occur when top generals get killed the head of state gets killed and those things happen even with contingency plans at hand So who knows what's gonna happen who knows how long this is going to to go but again Iran is in a incredibly difficult situation and just like with the Nazis like the world has to come together to put down this menace and We're just not at a point where Countries are really gonna do that quite yet and who knows where this will go as I said in my previous conversation on the workers lit pod What started World War one was one assassination one guy with the gun came up and shot, you know France Fernodad and that started that started the domino effect for World War one We're already in a situation much more intense than that and We think about World War three. Well, we have Ukraine and Russia at war right now Pakistan and Afghanistan are now at war We have the entire West Asian region in in full on regional war We have the US acting belligerently in the hemisphere starving Cuba decapitation kidnapping in Venezuela And in some practical way this is World War three But to formally get there. I think we're right on the precipice and almost anything Can can explode this and and with an economic collapse brought on in part by continued Strangulation of the straight-off hormones like who knows what the fuck can happen. We saw what was it in Karachi? People storming the US Embassy I bet that wasn't on the trajectory card of the guys in Washington and Virginia trying to figure this out Chaos creates more chaos and you can never fully Understand where all these Shrapnel pieces of human misery are going to fly and that is always the chaos of war So as much control as Israel and the US think they have they don't Yeah, no, I think the street of her news is the really important thing that needs to get brought up here right because that is the Powerful leverage point that Iran has besides air offensive capabilities the ability to close that straight is going to have Massive economic consequences globally right not just on the United States But on Europe and on really the entire world and so in terms of thinking about what Iran can do long term I actually think their ability to apply that economic pressure by closing the straight is significantly greater than their ability to do some sort of slower smaller waves of air offense against other regions again I think someone posted in the chat that people are talking about crude oil going to a hundred dollars a barrel tomorrow So this spike in oil prices seems very possible in relation to this and Leeds to I think much much more instability and so Iran will probably continue to lean on that the other thing that people in the chat have been Pointing out is that Trump is now saying that negotiations are going to presume and that Iran has reached back out Be interesting to see I'm never super trustable of anything that Trump says or any way that he frames it But again, I think even if negotiations are occurring that doesn't mean that these regional back-and-forths are going to stop I also think Israel as basically a loose cannon that might just continue to push its Uh kind of offensive does create a destabilization for any talks the US might want to have So we will need to see what things look like moving forward and I think it's a fair Question but I do think the straight of horror news is huge and I do think that we are going to see by and large Massive economic disruptions and it'll be interesting to see whether or not that causes other countries to turn against the US at all Because they see the US as perpetuating a situation that is keeping trade to read that region down Hard to say I always want to be optimistic about these things But also every other country in the US we are influenced does seem to be willing to more or less out US increasingly to range forms of imperialism So it's hard to know exactly what that might look like But I do think we have to talk about the straight of horror news as the other point of strategic leverage It's not purely just about military offense for Iran the economic damage they can do is massive and probably their most important tool And honestly I I mean I hope That they can create economic Ripples throughout the rest of the world As an American with kids barely keeping my head above water in many ways um I think that we should have to deal with the repercussions of our government's actions And if that means higher gas and and costs shoot through the fucking roof The American people need to feel the consequences of their actions to have any sort of waking up moment To fight against this insanity as long as the you the average American Can live in relative comfort like like a frog in the boiling water slowly gets worse and worse But as long as they can be in relative comfort have their netflix and their little treats and their phone addiction Things can keep going on when they can't go to fucking work And I'm not trying to say I want misery and pose on like me and my family and my community But at some point the US has to feel these repercussions and if one of the trump cards of the Iranian Government is to like create economic chaos throughout the world That should happen the world should feel this insanity that that that the you that the world is so interdependent now is so interconnected Um, not only environmentally Existentially but economically politically socially like these reverberations should impact us all Um, and as as long as the average American can more or less escape Feeling anything from this war like the the baseline urgency for them to do anything about it Um is just not going to be there. I remember during um The Iraq war I was delivering pizzas and I was broke as fuck I would like break down on the way to deliver pizzas because I was trying to get the tip to put three dollars in my car So I get to the next thing and I remember paying five dollars a gallon for gas and I don't know you live in a LA So maybe in California that's normal And in Omaha it's not normal and I was just like fighting for my life Um, and you know, I had my own politics and my blossoming political consciousness and all that but like And even that wasn't enough to create like a widespread opposition to the war right so I don't I don't I don't know what to say on that point But um, yeah, it's just it's just it's it's really heartbreaking to see the position Iran is in and and this little 250 year old shit country that Europe shat out and it's it's it's high Watermark of colonialism is like devastating this thousands and thousands year old. Yeah gorgeous Persian culture You know of religious a unique religious cultural sites, you know Israel makes it a point. This is part of genocide right to to obliterate You know long-standing centuries and millennia old cultural sites of of their perceived enemies And so there's no doubt that it will never get coverage because there might be like a mosque here or some ruins here No doubt that Israel makes that part of their war plan against Iran to to really undermine the historical and cultural basis of a society If not to destroy the entire culture which Israel and US will never be able to do to undermine and just Attack the psychology of a culture at its core and we've seen Israel do this time and time again throughout the region There's no reason to think it won't happen now Here's another question and I'll bounce it over to you Allison Can you share your thoughts on the way the US media has been framing intervention as a way to liberate women in Iran? Yeah, I could share some thoughts um so a couple things one This is what I was talking about with like the consent manufacturing that seems more oriented towards the center left and liberals in the US You know Let me just say that for those of us who were alive for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars we've heard this before right? This is not a new talking point Liberation of women was one of the major Justifications for intervention in Afghanistan in particular and as we know that was bullshit look at Afghanistan today Look at the Taliban back in power, you know Everything that has resulted from the US intervention in Afghanistan did not lead to the liberation of women It led to worsening conditions and it led to instability and then the reestablishment of it even More outright reactionary state and so I think that that just needs to be rejected on face We've heard it before we know these justifications we have to say no to them And this is I think a thing that's particularly frustrating to me one of the things that I've seen you know on social media from some of those who are more on like the social democratic left So a little left of left of center, but not necessarily full on radical has been like well We have to hold two things or true Which is that like the Iranian regime is illegitimate and does need to be replaced But that the US isn't the one who should do it and it shouldn't be through war And I just think there is no space for that right now right now what needs to happen is Dignanation of regime change efforts a rejection of all of the ideological Framings arguing for that regime change and to understand that those framings are Fundamentally dishonest in terms of their motivations and that their purpose is for generating broad support for what would be an otherwise Popular war the question of the status of women in Iran is not the thing that needs to be debated while US and Israeli bombs are falling on Tehran right there is an immediate existential threat that is not just to the government of Iran But to the people of Iran as well if you want to talk about the status of women in Iran I would say let's talk about the 150 schoolgirls who were killed by US and Israeli strikes That is the immediate relevant question right now and I think it is very important For the left that takes a strong anti imperialist stance to say we've heard this rhetoric before we heard it with Afghanistan It was bullshit then it made women's lives worse than and that is the same thing here And again if you really want to get into the details the fact that the US You know probably choice for regime change is a fucking ironian monarchy is not really the kind of thing that gives hope about improving the status for women in Iran or leading to some sort of like Standard liberal notion of human rights in the region in line will Western democracy We have to just reject that on face strongly Not capitually inning ground to it whatsoever because that manufacturing of consent can work We saw it with bipartisan support for the Iraq War for the Afghanistan war early on and later on people realized their mistake But the damage had already been done so there's no room for it has to be rejected out of hand And I think essentially in transigence from the left on this just a refusal to budge is the correct response And from the people that brought you the genocide of Gaza for two years murdering mothers and grandmothers and women and blowing up NICU units and killing journalists and doctors They're going to tell you they care about women's rights. It's pathetic We should spit in the face of anybody who uses that as a pretext to do this shit. We know who you are We've seen what you've done us in Hiroshima, Nagasaki. We've seen what you've done in Korea We saw what you've done in Vietnam none of those things are to help the fucking people We mock the idea freedom and democracy we're going into spread freedom and democracy Everybody like laughs and mocks that idea women's rights is the same shit They did it with with gay rights with trying to like make tele-televi this epicenter of gay, you know, celebration And like, you know, if you were gay and in Gaza you get thrown off a roof and then they just murder everybody And you got these fucking rad lips sitting back talking about like well, I really care about these rights It's like you are a fucking pawn in their game. You are a mark. You are a fucking idiot The way that you protect women and children and anybody you get fucking give a fuck about is to get Israel in the US as far the fuck away from them as you can That is how you protect people literally Um, these people even in the US. How does the US treat its own fucking people? You know, I mean just fucking a couple weeks ago shot when they good in the face several times We would stand up for women's rights fucking bitch. This is America. What are you talking about? So anybody that talks like that they should be fucking ridiculed and mocked and and the the sickening thing is this like liberal moralism Where they think they're good people They've attached themselves to this decaying rotten fucking monster corpse death machine And they think they have the right to continue to wag their figure in the face of the world and of you and I And tell us what is right and wrong in the world You are a part of this death machine a democratic party there could be no genocide in In Palestine there could be no fucking Trump administration. There could be no rise of fascism There could be no Iranian war right now as we speak without the democratic party playing its fucking role perfectly over decades You know, this is what this part this whole system leads to and these fucking people online is like well I voted for Kamala and Biden so my conscious is clear you're a corpse of a human being You have been dehumanized and hollowed out by your identification with this system And thinking that siding with the left hand of the serial killer instead of the right puts you in any moral high ground is a fucking delusion And delusions don't break by telling somebody that they'll just like scoff at us and like whatever call us Whatever tankies or whatever new word they have for us Um, but history will destroy them history will We'll will will tear us under their cognitive dissidents and their their entire identity structure Because their entire identity structure is formed in the crucible of US colonialism and imperialism and to be a liberal in the United States in 2026 is to be functionally a fascist and they'll they don't see that and and you and I won't convince them of that But history will I truly believe that No, I agree. I mean, I think the liberal opposition position is just basically a call for really a return to all this like neo conservative style imperialism That's what we saw under Kamala was warming up to and inviting in people who had been part of Bush's coalition in terms of foreign policy Right, and so there is no question of whether or not liberalism represents some sort of anti-war anti-interventionist position It's just whether or not we will go back to 2000's era imperialism or not and that is why it is necessary for the left to articulate something much broader and much bigger that Represents a fundamental break with that liberal view of the world ultimately Yeah, um absolutely so we have about 20 to 30 more minutes um And I would love to take some questions so if or even just comments people can just give their give their two cents I'm gonna scroll through here a little bit. I don't know Alice and if you've seen anything I've been doing less than anymore questions. Let me take a look as well Maybe we should keep a general strike in the backdrop at all time international level also. That's the ultimate solution I always say that this system speaks two languages violence and money and if you can't speak to them and though one of those two languages They do not listen and right now they have a monopoly on violence and they have a monopoly on money literally monopoly capitalism But if we can shut down um their economy the way that they make money we that's the only leverage point that we truly have Which again? I mark said the revolutionary force in capitalist society is the working class not because it's magical Not because there's something particularly Noble and dignified about the worker necessarily but because that is the leverage point in the economy that can be leveraged for Demands and emancipation and every successful socialist movement and and socialist strike and socialist government Has been started or or brought forward or advanced by versions of the general strike even in the u.s. His own sorted history our best moments Where the militant unionism that gave that helped give rise to the the communist party after you know in the in the late stages of the guilded age This is an absolutely essential aspect and to see you know Minnesotans fighting ice and going to the general strike immediately All this organization on the ground taking that spontaneous energy and funneling it into a general strike in and of itself It fizzles out of course we should expect it to but that is a an objective and subjective step forward For the American working class of how we can actually do fucking something because protesting Posting they've already accounted for all of that if we don't speak money or violence We don't speak to them and we can't speak violence. They'll crush us. They'll destroy us They'll obliterate us But we can still speak money if we if we organize our numbers just right Yeah, I think it's tricky right because I do think there was I think you're right like an actual qualitative step forward And what happened in Minneapolis with you know, there was this discussion of a national general strike And I don't think there was any national general strike But there was something close to it at a city level that day right again I don't think quite of the same size but getting close to it and it did seem to really change the calculus The question that I think is always difficult is could you mobilize American workers around foreign policy right around people in other countries And that's where you have to confront I think Just the frustrating level of which American chauvinism is built into the populace generally I don't think that's unique to the working class in any way like some people might want to suggest I think it is built into how American ideology functions writ large and so that becomes this broader problem that we need to overcome But I do think that that is where like political education Integrated into all of the different types of work that people are doing is important right? I think if you are doing labor organizing including political education about imperialism is necessary If you are doing tenant organizing you need to include that as well in the tenant union here We talk about Venezuela. We talk about US expression We talk to our base about these things in order to try to build that broad base for anti-imperialist resistance And so it's necessary I think for us to infuse the political education and kind of the like ideological disruption Into all of those kinds of organizing so that labor can be something other than what it currently is Which is I think a fairly tamed force by US ideology unfortunately And so that is where I think the political and the ideological struggle really still matters It's just a tough thing to overcome that kind of American chauvinism that I think is broadly Integrated within the population in this country on the whole And you know, it's still is the spectrum. I'm in a I'm in a trading right and there is pros and cons to it I mean that I've never been so Intimately involved with the contradictions of trade union consciousness at some at some points It's elevating and uplifting and other points. It's incredibly disappointing But we have the Chicago's teachers union who you know seems pretty far on the left has come out Speaking out against the Iran war speaking about against the the genocide in in Gaza I saw some liberal repost them and say why is the Chicago teachers union talking about foreign policy and it's like oh What what an anti-diological thing to say like as if these things are totally says like nauseating But on the other hand, you have Sean O'Brien from the teamsters who cozyed up to the Trump administration and got fucking cut Right this idea that like Trump is speaking the truth He came out on some anti-trans bullshit Josh Holly wrote some anti-trans Creed and and Sean O'Brien came out and said yeah, you know, this is this is true You can't deny it and cozyed up with the Trump regime thinking he's gonna get something and you have one of the most anti-union Presidents in human history and just fucking humiliated you and your union the teamsters Which my god? It's one of the big unions in the United States and and you've just totally cut them out to one of the most anti-union Presidents and in fucking American history It's despicable you should be humiliated that will be your fucking legacy as a labor union fucking leader in the United States at this moment in fucking history But there are still hopeful trends the general strike Chicago's teachers union teachers are on strike right now I believe in New York nurses just went on strike um There is a response it's slow going But but there is there is a response by the American working class But let's keep getting some questions. So I don't talk too long um What do you both think maybe the tipping point to enable Americans to finally wake up and organize and then the other question You can take either one Allison do you think the US will be emboldened with taking out homine to escalate With the situation in Cuba Yeah, I'll take the second one just because I think it's pretty brief and then I'll also touch on the first one real quick But on the second one my worry is yes, right? I think what we are seeing is that Trump has realized that you can basically take actions like this without any serious retaliation from the international order right Obviously Iran is retaliating as a national actor in this case But no one else has really retaliated on their side no one else has taken any action Which I do think will emboldened the United States and Trump's decision making calculus unfortunately which is Very scary for Cuba now at the end of the day whether or not Trump feels like he can open up this kind of conflict on multiple fronts Is maybe a question and is one of the ways where Iranian retaliation and the ability to draw this out with the straight-of-war moves shut down Might really be a saving grace for Cuba by keeping the US focused there and pushed in another direction So we can hope that that buys some breathing room But I would not be surprised if this is you know emboldening in that particular way I really do think the US clearly wants to overthrow the state in Cuba and we are seeing a move towards an escalation there Then in terms of you know What will the tipping point in the US be people have said this in the chat But I think like all of this needs to start to materially impact the lives of Americans right and I think you said that as well Brett oil prices all of those things But also I think you know one of the interesting things watching interviews with people who are on the streets and Minneapolis particularly like middle-aged white people who are like I'm not a political person But I'm out here is the thing that they said over and over again is well It's one thing when it's all on TV, but when I'm seeing this happening on my street outside of my home That's different. I'm gonna come out. I'm gonna do something I'm gonna say something and so Americans I think because of all that ideological shovonism struggle to see Solidarity beyond what's immediately in front of them But then as soon as the issue is in their face I think that another side of American ideology which is kind of this like rugged. I fight back I'm not gonna take it attitude can kind of come to the forefront a little bit more in some ways And so it really is gonna take issues starting to impact Americans directly I think in order for them to want to dismantle the system in the US and I that is going to happen Things are going to continue to be more unstable The government is going to continue to engage in forms of domestic repression that are horrific to normal people But then the populace and that will probably increase if some of what we talked about around the midterms happens So we are moving in that direction. I think where this has to confront this the Americans to their face But I think it has to be that kind of in your face confrontation for Americans to begin to politicize around it Unfortunately, yeah mark my words. We're gonna see federal agents and polling stations We're gonna have this double-sided thing about if they get the save act passed We need to check IDs plus our legals voting plus we're in a state of war Iran is trying to hack our You know voting machines. We're gonna see all that stuff marshalled to kind of have a crack down on the elections That's speculative, but that is my genuine prediction Somebody asks in the comments. There's lots of questions here too. We'll try to keep up with them Somebody asked in the comments how Marxists should view the Iran the Iranian state My answer is as fighting for its life Right like it doesn't matter what your critiques of the Iranian state are as an American or somebody in the imperial core I've always said this the only people who have a right to overthrow the Iranian government are the Iranian people Totally unmolested from us in Israel and western colonial and imperial forces and the first step in that in in that process is to Defeat the imperialist colonial forces the primary contradiction in the global order right now is imperialism The states arrayed against imperialism run the gamut all different types of governments all different types of economic structures and orders You know varying degrees of good and bad about how how you might in a vacuum assess them But they are the only material forces standing against the imperial hegemon and that has to be the primary thing in which we're analyzing Exact same thing with Syria right and we're not talking about the Assad government being the template for our futures societies But we're saying that when Assad goes under when his government is destroyed by Israel in the US What will rise in its place is not only Worse for the people in Syria in so many ways we have ethnic tensions we have murders mass mass murders killings It's brutal in Libya. We have open slave markets But also they do the bidding and advance the interest of that exact monstrous machine that toppled them in the first place So there's no time to waste on what your opinions on the Iranian state are if the Iranian people want to overthrow their government Hell yes, if there's a socialist revolution in Iran in a vacuum We would support it But that is not what's happening right now right now We have Israel in the US leading western imperial colonial forces trying to drown in blood a Government and a society that stands in their way of total domination and that is the contradiction that is worth focusing on You can't do shit about the Iranian government if you're sitting in the United States Your enemy is the American fucking ruling class and the American mother fucking government Who is taking your money and turning it into dead bodies around the world right and there's something grotesque about an American sitting in relative comfort Opining on their abstract views about what this government or that government under the fucking boot of your government Shoulder should not be doing and I'm not saying you're doing that question or I'm just talking to a broader trend that I see On the left and in American show venous colonialist society which is really where the entitlement comes from So so that's my answer to that Yeah, can I weigh in there real quick as well I think the one thing that I want to add to you is just like this comes down to a question of like the primacy of different contradictions right and imperialism just is the primary contradiction in this context Let's imagine right now that there were socialist revolution that happened in Iran today What would happen to that newly formed socialist state? I think it is that fucking simple the US would crush it It would do everything it could to crush it. It would probably come down harder than it is coming down on the currently existing government in Iran And so given that reality if you believe in the necessity of worldwide socialism and global socialist revolution the conditions for that to exist at all Required the defeat of American imperialism, which is what makes that the primary contradiction So if you are talking about oh well, I would rather have a socialist government you are talking about meaningless hypotheticals You are engaging in the epitome of what Marx and Ingalls denounced as just as utopian socialism right trying to just from first principles Build what the world should look like rather than looking at the existing conditions and teasing out what forces are Progressive within those conditions. And so I think we absolutely have to say yes Of course a socialist the thing that we want is to see socialist government Glovely and everywhere, but what prevents that it is American imperialism And so in order to be scientific socialist we have to start with the conditions on the ground We have to start with material reality that prevents socialism from developing and that in particular is imperialism And therefore we need to not do stupid meaningless hypotheticals about what kind of governments we would like to exist and deal with reality in facts on the ground That's kind of I think you know the it dialectical materialist way of looking at this Somebody in the comment section said I just have to throw my my two shots at this asshole Ethan Klein from H3H3 came out and literally posted a shot flag on his insta That's the first time in my life where I've from my personal account responded to that asshole I'm like you're posting a fucking monarchist flag you absolute fucking dipshit I mean Ethan Klein is an absolute nobody We you know I've already wasted too much breath on him But I also saw that post where he's like a rainy and freedom and women's rights and the the thing he reposted just had a huge Flag of the shaw. I'm like you fucking idiot, but part for the course for Ethan Ethan fucking glass Um, yeah, and what other things do we how much more time do you have Allison realistically? I can be going ten more minutes So maybe there's more questions coming up But one question we didn't get to is my question is what can Iran possibly do in israel in the us stop again in order to continue to let Sanctions and protests continue to drag them down and is this a new strategy for regime change or is that strike and wait strike and wait Happened before um, that's a good question. I don't think it represents a wholly new strategy for regime change I think we've seen this before I mean back in you know 1970s with Chile Um, you know with Salvador Yende there was a Kissinger saying make the economy scream as a sort of pretext This strike and wait thing. I think is acutely a response to Not wanting to do boots on the ground right as I said earlier That's what the Trump administration has more or less learned from these forever wars is that boots on the ground in nation building is bad So in lieu of that this seems to be kind of the only strategy you can do um Obama kind of pioneered the drone more fair strategy As in in the wake of the failures of the iraqan Afghanistan wars as well as another way to kind of do something a little bit like this But sanctions overall have really risen over the past 20 years as a main mechanism um of imperial Assault particularly in the context of the dollar being a hegemonic currency and being able to weaponize the dollar as the global currency To inflict economic damage and then you get the dialectical rise of you know uh trading blocks and bricks and stuff like that Which are imperfect and still emerging but our attempts to try to divorce these various seaged countries from Dollar hegemonia for precisely that region. So I wouldn't say it's a new strategy But I would say acutely it's a response to Not having the stomach or maybe even just seeing the failures of boots on the ground nation building Um that that necessitates this sort of of approach I think Yeah, and yeah, I don't necessarily think it's new either But I do think it represents probably like a shift in what the go to strategy is and what the new normal is right? I do think like Post bush it really does just feel like there is an allergy towards any tor form of like long-term occupation right both The right and the left in terms of the voting base seem to have concluded boots on the ground staying around Stabilization missions are a nightmare. They do not work. They spin out And so there's the attempt I think to try to figure out exactly what this kind of imperialist aggression needs to look like now And this strike and way to approach seems to be it who knows maybe if Trump is given any kind of like particular innovation it will be stabilizing not as this strategy if US imperialism Unfortunately, but you know I think at the end of the day things are in a kind of a weird situation because I do think we do continue to see The US position globally slipping and this renegotiation of what it is actively happening here And in my mind that is kind of the room for hope right like we do not know that the US is capable or willing to commit to the kinds of long-term Aggression that it has in the past and so that is why I think the Iranian state potentially taking a militarily more conservative approach not going all out immediately does give some hope about you know a calculus of perhaps it is possible to weather this storm We'll have to wait and see what that looks like, but I do think you know I feel some sense that this is just not the end of everything I think that's easy to do more out a little bit here, but I don't think that that is an appropriate response Much is up in the air things are very unstable and that is always scary But that is always also the possibility for change that is always also the space in which global dynamic shift And we just kind of need to ride it out and see and I think that is really what Iran is trying to do again by not going immediately all out on an offensive What forms that will take I do not know, but I don't feel like you know This is necessarily a situation to give up hope in Somebody in the comments section asked I mean, this is a totally legitimate question And I and I encourage people to try to do your best to learn about Iranian history and culture It's important in these moments to kind of educate yourself on that history because this history is inseparable from the present moment But they they asked a totally legitimate question which is what what do you mean by the Shah what what is the Shah And the Shah is basically you know, there was a Iranian revolution in 1979 that you know basically installed the modern Iranian government and it's in its current form and the Shah was this sort of monarch before that So from 1941 until the revolution in 79 The Shah is basically a monarchy the monarchist Dominator of Iran, but they had a prime minister in there as many of you with your history You know hats on will remember in in 1953 I'm probably minister Mosadek tried to nationalize British I believe British and American oil companies in Iran try to nationalize their oil resources I'm on behalf of the Iranian people basically just take what what these Shah visa revolution in Venezuela try to do Take back your resources from western imperial and colonial forces and corporations and the UK and the US Of course With with the help of Israel of always always um, you know over through Um, they they could Mosadek and um and the Shah was basically the dictator the monarch of Iran during that period of time leading up to the 1979 Iranian revolution That basically was a US Western puppet or served their interests in a very similar way that Batista in Cuba before the Cuban revolution served western imperial interest and was overthrown by a revolution there The revolution in that case was led by Fidel and Shay and turned into socialism You know Cuban Cuban socialism and in the case of a ronik gave rise to the Ayatollahs and the Iranian government that we've had ever since then and ever since 1949 There's been a desire on behalf of western imperial colonial powers to reinstall the Shah But it was it's a lot like trying to reinstall the grandson of Batista and Cuba like you know there's The diaspora loves the idea because the diaspora from Cuba and Iran have a similarity here too the diaspora Of Iranian Cuba often come from the national compredor class or the elite class under the previous dictatorship in Iran's case the Shah in Cuba's case Batista who benefited from those dictators and who lived nice lives right in Cuba had plantations had fucking slaves treated the the local population as indentured servants of one form or another brutal dictators brutal forms of punishment Against anybody who tried to rise up and speak out and they were overturned in these grassroots revolutions and western powers never forgive these societies for doing that and seek to if they can't reinstall the Shah They'll settle for a complete vulcanization and destruction of the society very hard for me to imagine them reinstalling You know the the Shah and fucking monarchy in Iran, but as we said earlier in the conversation they'll settle for a total obliteration of civil society and Balkanization I think that's what they're going for mostly and they're holding up the Shah in a similar way that they're held up Juan Guaidó or all these other figures Machado in Venezuela as like Maybe this person could do it, you know like we have a plan we it's not just we don't want to just destroy the society We'll put this person who's actually you know they actually have the right to this and in a monarchist sense you're just going back to like This is the right hereditary bloodline so they actually have the right to rule you're like going back to like feudalists and monarchical concepts of divine rights of rule to establish your puppet dictator It's all it's all quite farcical, but that is what the Shah is and that is why those Figures that we see on Western mainstream media advocating often in the diaspora advocating for the rape and pillage and plunder of their country by a US and Israel Fly the flag of the Shah And that's what they're that's what they're kind of getting at and gesturing towards is like we want to go back because you know our grandparents benefited quite heavily From having that dictator and charge instead of you know this government so I hope that clears it up for you Yeah, it's good little educational bit and I hate that fucking flag I love an apartment of LA where unfortunately you see that flag quite a bit just because what the diaspora population is and that Yeah, that kind of rabid crusano Ideology in the case of ear Ron is like quite intense actually so You know, yeah, I think it's good to give that education I think it's good to give that background I think it's easy for us to take for granted that like everyone knows the decades and decades long histories of these regions And that's not necessarily the case and I think it's a good reminder that like Socialist education like can come down to like doing some of that historical work, right? That might not necessarily be there because god knows I doubt US education system is giving people an honest summary of that history if any whatsoever Yeah, somebody said the Dalai Lama was used kind of like this too into bet I do agree that this is the figure this is a sort of figure that emerges When there's when there's a certain imperial interest at play You can get off. I know Allison you're still recovering and I have another interview I'm actually after this interviewing Torco Lawson on unequal exchange So the history present and future of unequal exchange which is a really important core sort of Marxist economic political economic concept But that's that noon. So I do have a little bit more time Allison you're free to stick around free to go I know you're still healing from I believe COVID So I appreciate you taking the time already But somebody asked an interesting question and I kind of wanted to play with it a little bit They said can you define left versus right? I do not use these terms I think that's interesting because one thing you'll see a lot in in discourse is like it's no longer right versus left It's bottom-verse stuff And I think there's something rhetorically powerful about that when I'm talking to like conservative co-workers and stuff I will sometimes even lean on that rhetoric as a way of kind of like creating solidarity where they they see that it might not exist But left and right goes back to the French Revolution Right who sat on which side of the of the stand during I forget the exact details of it I have to refresh my mind on some of this history I have a whole episode on the French Revolution you can check out if you want to but right and left for me Represents two fundamental reactions to the Crisis of the center when it occurs the right is reactionary Therefore it is reacting to various forms of social progress Whether that is like social progress in the form of feminism or gay rights or the advancement of civil rights Their reactionaries when their politics is based around reacting to that Social progress and certainly in the case of socialism communism the ultimate forms of actual historical progress reactionaries center themselves as anti-socialist anti-communist Mussolini Hitler Arch reactionaries first thing they did dismantle socialist and communist fighting forces In order to then be able to move ahead with their political project So when you say somebody's on the right they are looking backwards They want to conserve something about the status quo. They can be Birke and conservatives Birke himself opposed the French Revolution thought it was too radical um But these are people who are against sort of what we would view as progress and the left are progressives broadly conceived But the difference between reaction going back holding back looking to the mythologized past for some golden era that we have to get back to Right Nietzsche did this Jordan Peterson does this trump is make America great again all types of reactionaries are always implicitly asserting Some golden age that needs to be returned to that we need to go back in history which is Not only a fantasy. It's an impossibility Center center left center right they want to conserve What is right now a centrist um, you know In the ancient regime would be somebody that defended the king and the queen right a centrist today is somebody that defends Capitalism and imperialism and neoliberalism and neo-conservatism and the right is looking to socially progress We are revolutionaries you can't be a right-wing revolutionary because a revolution is implying Forward momentum right wingers are reactionaries and the left are revolutionaries when you get to the actual real Mother fucking left us, you know We we have a vision for the world that is liberated from all forms of of domination, oppression and of class society itself right communism is the ultimate revolutionary vision of liberating human society and human civilization from the rusted cage of stratifying human beings into owning exploiting classes who live lives of luxury on the toil of the working classes We want to live as equals on the planet and cooperate to create the highest quality of life for everybody and we Spit in the face of kings and servants masters and slaves bosses and workers We want to obliterate that entire binary So that would be my first go at it, but Allison. What what what would your response to that be? Yeah, I'll answer the sun and little hop off I think but I did want to answer this because this is an argument that I see Affairly often as people arguing for the abandonment of this language And I think if people don't find the language helpful it's fine to like try to move away from it But I do think that the language does describe as you got up right like a particular historical moment And then kind of the trajectory in momentum which has carried on from that moment So I think it is just worth like emphasizing like you said that this distinction between left and right develops during the French revolution And by a large should be understood as mapping differential responses to the bourgeois revolution Right And so the bourgeois revolution wave occurs across Europe the overthrow of monarchy the establishment constitutional republics or constitutional limited monarchy's and there are a variety of responses Obviously, there is the left response which in this context by and large represented at one point the bourgeois position right if you go pick up the Communist Manifesto right now There's an extended discussion of the original revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie right at the front of that text Because the bourgeoisie did represent that left position and the right position by and large actually came down to remaining aristocratic royalists in monarchist factions who were opposed to the bourgeois revolution And then as capitalist society stabilizes and begins to develop over time Obviously what occurs is that monarchies are gone and so the right begins to become again these reactionaries who want a return to this previous form of governance And brought your correct to frame kind of Burke as like the figure really you should look at to understand the right It's the skepticism towards the bourgeois revolution skepticism towards any notions of liberal progress etc So I do think the words map on to actual material realities in terms of class struggle in Europe in a way that makes them still useful Now what's become complicated over time is that we are now centuries on from many of these revolutions And so the question of whether or not terms that demarcate one's position in relation to capitalist revolution Whether those are still useful I think is a fair question But those two impulses still exist I think there is still the kind of belief in extending the You know liberal ideals as far as possible versus those who want to return to some sort of pre or anti-liberal Sort of world and so I do think that they're still meaningful in that way And I do hear people say like Marxism is not of the left or socialism is not of the left And I think you could argue that in a sense that that is true because it Socialism would institute a new revolution that would make the distinction between left and right as two responses to a bourgeois revolution Essentially meaningless right now you would have to have new positions De-marcated in relationship to a socialist revolution But I do think you know socialism is kind of of the left right like socialism found inspiration in the bourgeois revolutions to a certain degree in the what the bourgeois revolutions revealed was possible Which was the overthrowing of feudalism in the monarchy's and so that Breakthrough in history was part of what helped Marx develop an analysis of the possibility of socialist revolution And so seeing some of that grounding in the left is there I know our comrades over in Marxist unity group in the DSA are very interested like there were public and Marx and really drawing some of that Continuity there, but I do think I still use the terms because I think they're somewhat descriptive When socialist revolution comes maybe all abandoned them because again there will be a whole new events that everything has to orient towards That's kind of how I look at it But yeah, I'm gonna hop off after this question. I'm gonna go rest for a little bit But thank you all so much for the questions. It's been really awesome talking with you all and yeah Hope to do more strings like this in the future. Thank you, Allison appreciate you so much Yep, no problem. See you. Yeah I'll wrap up here, but I just wanted to say one thing that that is helpful With this right left distinction I think Allison made really great points about in the context of the bourgeois Historical epoch and the mode of production that is capitalism in the political form of capitalism Which is liberalism right and left are oriented fundamentally to that but ultimately whereas during the French revolution the The the bourgeois class the capitalist class the rising merchant class the liberals were the progressive force in history Now that liberalism and capitalism have played themselves out they are now a regressive force in history because history is move forward And now the socialist and the communists are the progressive force and just like with the bourgeois revolutions There was decades and centuries of attempts to establish bourgeois republics Against feudal and monarchical ones there is there is and we've already seen over the last century starting with The Paris commune particularly but successfully with the Bolshevik revolution We're now starting to see historically over spans of of decades and centuries the emergence of these socialist and communist experiments Which very much mirror the lead up to these bourgeois revolutions that ushered us in to liberal capitalism And you know, I truly do believe that if we don't fucking go extinct or blow ourselves back 500 to a thousand years We will move in the direction increasingly of socialism by necessity by by the necessity of sustainability And the necessity of of the human desire to live in flourish But a fun thing to do Understand birx position on the French Revolution and then look at more Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Payne Reacting to Birk so that was like they're taking the side of the French Revolution while Birx is criticizing it It's a really interesting Historical debate that says so much about the entire epoch we're in and the other thing I would mention is Find your right wing figure any right wing figure Mussolini Hitler Nietzsche any modern Right wing figure and then ask yourself what is their romanticized past that they would like to return to They're all kind of different right Mussolini wanted to reestablish Rome and the Roman Empire. We are the people of Rome right not Hitler had all these ideas of the the supremacy of the Aryan race and reestablishing the dignity of the German people after World War 1 and the defeat Trump talks about make America great again Nietzsche had this aristocratic need to return to ancient antiquity Roman and Greek ways of being They all have it and Among so many other things it's impossible to get back to that's why fascist movements always fail you can't go backwards My favorite line is historically the only way out is through that's dialectically true And that's true from a Marxist perspective and we totally and vibe from that reality There is no going back the only way out is through And that's that's our that's our task So I have to wrap it up here to get ready for my next interview But this was a lot of fun absolutely love the showing even with pretty minimal heads up. I only gave 12 hours heads up tops Um, and we we have a really cool amount of people in the chat great comments We couldn't get to all the questions and comments But you are absolutely amazing it's so rewarding to see the sort of people who care about red menist and care about Rev. Left who listened to us and who engaged in this stuff My goal for this year is to Do more live streams like this public live streams on our youtube channel Which is hitherto just been used as kind of another platform to put our audio episodes out on kind of a backup You know, we never really engage much here. We never promote it very much at all We don't do much separate from what we do on the podcast here, but I want to change that this year I want to do many more live streams So thank you so much for this wonderful first showing and may this be the first of many going forward But in the meantime, you know find your community this can be a very alienating time It can be a very dread oriented and despair oriented time when you look around and see the apathy right James Baldwin I'm terrified at the moral apathy We too are terrified at the moral apathy, but there are millions of good fucking people Even in this rotten society. They're all around us connect up organized Re-invigorate yourself by getting into a reading group getting into a tenets union Talking in real life with people who share your values and your ideas that is so much more in livening than sitting online And just watching the dread drip drip drip and the insanity of the fragmented social media landscape To be in real communion to hear the birds chirp to talk to friends to work through difficult texts with one another to Create a goal in your community and go out with like-minded friends and achieve that goal That connects you to life that that that destroys despair It really prevents burnout and it gives you meaning in this moment in our history and there are I promise you Millions of millions of people who think like us who are ready to think like us who have hearts that are wide open like us and And it's our duty to go out to them meet them and link up with them That is our that is our only hope right only thing we have is numbers And the only way we can make those numbers matter is by organizing them effectively And we can't and I always say this we can't do everything but we can all do something Every single one of us has a role to play making art doing political education classes joining a tenets union You know creating a youtube channel making films whatever your thing is whatever you're good at Link up with other comrades and put your talents in service of the revolution truly That that that creates a meaningful life and it creates community which is something that we all desperately want more of And it's not going to be given to us. We got a fucking build it So that is our historical task and I know that that we are truly up for it So love and solidarity. Let's do this again. Talk to you soon