Politeia

This episode picks up right where the last one left off. If you haven't listened to that one yet, jump into this one if you choose or go back to that one first. This is a long episode, and we cover several of the more popular topics in reactionary discourse, as you'll see. Grab some snacks and strap in...

The way I see it, there are no unimportant ideas in philosophy, but among the most important concepts to understand for anyone interested in ethics or politics is epistemology. Fortunately for me, Sam Hoadley-Brill, a PhD student in philosophy is interested in all three of these things--and he's using them to take on some of the most prominent culture warriors. In the first part of our two part conversation, we foreground some of the ways we might think about epistemology to help us understand how to figure out what other people are arguing from their various positions within the Culture War. Now, when I say "culture war," you have to understand that I'm talking about right-wing reactionaries, not the people advocating for justice whom the reactionaries frequently target. The hope is, that by understanding something about how any of us can "know" anything, we might learn something about the ways propagandists convince others to follow them. Sam is just one of the individuals I've met who is trying to provide a counterweight to these reactionary opinions, and in the process he's hoping that he might be able to change the minds of some of the people who subscribe to these charlatans so that we can all get on with building a better world than the one we live in currently. As a society, I often can't see a way out of our current problems, but the hope is that if we can all learn some tools to help us do politics better we might be able to see some progress at last. 

Back on 7 January of this year, I met with Notre Dame professor Ashley Bohrer to discuss her book, Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality Under Contemporary Capitalism. Given this was the day after the white-supremacist attack on the Capitol, I had a hard time focusing strictly on her book and ended up asking her how her ideas can still be useful in a world that's so completely polarized. At the time, this seemed like a good idea, but as I was editing the conversation for this episode I began to worry that I hadn't done enough to get the ideas from her book into the conversation. As it turns out, I learned more from this conversation than I'd originally suspected, and I hope you all will find it as helpful as I did. You won't learn a ton about her book or about Marxism or intersectionality in particular, but you'll learn a great deal about how an activist navigates what are often tricky political waters, something I hope you'll fine equally as valuable.

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but there's a groundswell of authoritarianism in America, and it's entirely centered in the current Republican Party. It wasn't three weeks ago that we saw supporters of Donald Trump attack the U.S. Congress in an attempt to install the loser of the election. It was a stunning sight, but it wasn't something we should've been that surprised to see. Don't get me wrong; living through it was surreal. But there were a lot of people who saw the growing danger over the last four years, particularly regarding the potential for violence around the election. One of those people was Willamette University historian Seth Cotlar, who agreed to sit down and talk with me about all the historical contingencies that led him to be concerned about the tide of anti-democracy rising in the American body politic. Prof. Cotlar makes a lot of interesting connections between the past to our current moment, and I think the conversation says a lot about our current political moment. Somehow, we're going to have to figure out how to move forward as a country, and while history can't tell us what the future will look like it can tell us how we came to find ourselves in such a divisive national climate. If we can find out where we went wrong, maybe we can figure out a way to make it right. If we're going to have a chance, though, we have to address the strain of anti-democracy that runs all the way through American history.

What is meant by toleration, and can people asking for toleration reasonably be intolerant? If you read The Coddling of the American Mind, you might come away thinking that intolerance is always a bad thing, that we should tolerate things like offensive speech because freedom of speech is important to a free society. But what happens when speech is used to undermine the democratic ideals that form the basis for a society? What then? Does "free speech" mean that our elected officials can lie to us without consequence? Does toleration mean that we're required to listen to what Herbert Marcuse called "propaganda for inhumanity?" There are a number of things this book overlooks or just gets wrong, but to me this is one of the biggest problems the authors have. Toleration is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts in public discourse. It might be time for us to get in touch with what toleration has always meant.

In this episode, I continue with an examination of the events at Yale during Halloween 2015. Most everywhere you look, Yale students have been demonized for their behavior, mostly because of a viral video that showed a student yelling and swearing at Dr. Nicholas Christakis. Of course, that's not the whole story. The analysis in The Coddling of the American Mind takes an odd definition of racism for its understanding and then largely misinterprets what happened between students and Dr. Christakis. The students had a good understanding of racism, and they were trying to avoid the worst habits that surface in discussions of race. Rather than calling the Christakises "racist" or "evil," the students were trying to get them to see how Dr. Erika Christakis's email functions as a thing-in-itself in the larger discourse. All the students wanted initially was an apology, but instead they got a link to the 2015 article, The Coddling of the American Mind, in The Atlantic. These students weren't engaging in cognitive distortions, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy likely wouldn't have changed the outcome. This mess could've been avoided, particularly if anyone would've taken the time to listen to students. Even so, I think there are better ways to start talking about anti-black racism and dehumanization in general that might help us talk more openly about these important issues. This is Part 2 in a continuing series.The music at the end of the episode is from an unidentified group of Yale students who, by all appearances, are music majors or graduate students. This performance was recorded at the March of Resilience at Yale on November 9, 2015.

In 2015, protests erupted at Yale University after an email about the propriety of certain choices in Halloween costumes. I missed the coverage of this when it happened, and now I’m coming to find out that this protest and the ensuing controversy is one of the events that has led to the idea that there is an “illiberal and intolerant left” on the rise at college campuses. Personally, I think this whole argument over “cancel culture” is a tempest in a teapot, so to speak. First, I don’t see people taking political action in a fight against injustice, inequity, dehumanization, and exclusion as “illiberal.” Second, the idea that the First Amendment protects dehumanization is a claim that strikes me as particularly odd. As I’ve been researching what happened at Yale to find out why it’s considered an example of so-called left illiberalism, I’ve been surprised at what I’ve found. I think these events have been misinterpreted, and I think that many of the primary actors at the center of them have a fundamental misunderstanding of what racism is and how it works. I think Yale students articulated their concerns rationally, and they only became angry when it was clear that no one that mattered was listening to them.In Part 1 of this ongoing series, I introduce the events at Yale and cover the emails at the heart of the controversy and begin to formulate my larger critique of The Coddling of the American Mind and its place in this entire discourse.Links for this episode are embedded in the transcript, which is publicly available at https://www.patreon.com/PoliteiaPod

A quick review of the important takeaways from my discussion with Prof. Lewis Gordon.Deeyah Khan, White Right: Meeting the Enemy:https://youtu.be/rxP4B374Os8The Guardian, “‘It’s not fair, not right’: How America treats its black farmers”: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/30/america-black-farmers-louisiana-sugarcaneNew York Times 1619 Podcast:“Land of Our Fathers, Part 1”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/podcasts/1619-slavery-sugar-farm-land.html“Land of Our Fathers, Part 2”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/podcasts/1619-slavery-farm-loan-discrimination.htmlRobert Evans, “Behind the Police” podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-behind-the-police-63877803/Louisville Courier-Journal, "Three Percenters plan 'boots on the ground' in Louisville to counter black militia":https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2020/07/23/three-percenters-plan-response-nfac-march-louisville/5491690002/NPR, "CAHOOTS: How Social Workers and Police Share Responsibilities in Eugene, Oregon":https://www.npr.org/2020/06/10/874339977/cahoots-how-social-workers-and-police-share-responsibilities-in-eugene-oregonDemocracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, by Astra Taylor:https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250179845Red Pepper, interview with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, “Heats, Minds and Radical Democracy”: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/hearts-minds-and-radical-democracy/The Guardian, “Human brain is predisposed to negative stereotypes, study finds”:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/01/human-brain-is-predisposed-to-negative-stereotypes-new-study-suggestsThe American Conservative, “How Police Became A Standing Army”:https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-police-became-a-standing-army/Ibram X. Kendi on DemocracyNow:https://youtu.be/_oQXki0hG9wJeff Schoep at NYU, The Veritas Forum:https://youtu.be/xP8bP4hs1p0Music by Chafouin, licensed through Creative Commons:https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chafouin/a_suffa_comme_i/Chafouin_-_a_suffa_comme_i_-_01_Jessica_92Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/PoliteiaPod

What is racism? How does it operate, and to what extent is it a problem for all of us? The way my first guest on Politeia sees it, and I agree, is that societies either are racist or they aren’t—there’s no such thing as a not-racist society that has racist people in it. The question for us, then, is how can politics as philosophy help us understand the problem of racism and what can we learn about how to move forward with creating a truly anti-racist society? Join me for Part 2 of my discussion with one of the world's foremost philosophers on the subject of racism and politics, Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Lewis Gordon.References for this episode:Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon: https://groveatlantic.com/book/black-skin-white-masks/Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon: https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-wretched-of-the-earth/Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Frantz Fanon: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/What Fanon Said, by Lewis R. Gordon:https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823266081/what-fanon-said/Additional discussions featuring Dr. Lewis Gordon available for free online:Conversation with Jason Stanley, Part 1: https://youtu.be/UUaIAxJZFHcPart 2: https://youtu.be/lqYBy2KU6LUPart 3: https://youtu.be/0WAtlqNd7_APart 4: https://youtu.be/-tVtOd4oD2cPart 5: https://youtu.be/oD5FPiZhmbEPart 6: https://youtu.be/mI4UkgkpT0wPart 7: https://youtu.be/pVlF4E5Hhao"Engaging with Fanon in the time of COVID,” interview by Firoze Manji of Daraja Press: https://youtu.be/0azDbkzxtscMaster Class on Frantz Fanon with Dr. Lewis Gordon, hosted by The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown Univerisity:Part 1: https://youtu.be/ciV4wm6YfH4Part 2: https://youtu.be/zmVkHf5WQVkPart 3: https://youtu.be/TLG2hC2lsZkOliver Thorn of PhilosophyTube presents G.W.F. Hegel’s Master/Slave Dialectic:https://youtu.be/OgNt1C72B_4Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PoliteiaPod

What is racism? How does it operate, and to what extent is it a problem for all of us? The way my first guest on Politeia sees it, and I agree, is that societies either are racist or they aren’t—there’s no such thing as a not-racist society that has racist people in it. The question for us, then, is how can politics as philosophy help us understand the problem of racism and what can we learn about how to move forward with creating a truly anti-racist society? Join me as I discuss these and many other questions with one of the world's foremost philosophers on the subject of racism and politics, Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Lewis Gordon.References for this episode:Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon: https://groveatlantic.com/book/black-skin-white-masks/Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon: https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-wretched-of-the-earth/Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Frantz Fanon: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/Lewis R. Gordon on the life and writing of Frantz Fanon:https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823266081/what-fanon-said/Additional discussions featuring Dr. Lewis Gordon available for free online:Conversation with Jason Stanley, Part 1: https://youtu.be/UUaIAxJZFHcPart 2: https://youtu.be/lqYBy2KU6LUPart 3: https://youtu.be/0WAtlqNd7_APart 4: https://youtu.be/-tVtOd4oD2cPart 5: https://youtu.be/oD5FPiZhmbEPart 6: https://youtu.be/mI4UkgkpT0wPart 7: https://youtu.be/pVlF4E5Hhao"Engaging with Fanon in the time of COVID,” interview by Firoze Manji of Daraja Press: https://youtu.be/0azDbkzxtscMaster Class on Frantz Fanon with Dr. Lewis Gordon, hosted by The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown Univerisity:Part 1: https://youtu.be/ciV4wm6YfH4Part 2: https://youtu.be/zmVkHf5WQVkPart 3: https://youtu.be/TLG2hC2lsZkOliver Thorn of PhilosophyTube presents G.W.F. Hegel’s Master/Slave Dialectic:https://youtu.be/OgNt1C72B_4

What kind of animal are we? On the one hand, there’s this idea that we’re each individuals in competition with other individuals over a finite amount of resources, and on the other hand there’s the idea that we’re actually cooperative by nature and tend to work together to continue the species. In life, we end up somewhere in between these two positions most of the time depending on the circumstances, but in politics these two ideas of what human beings are have become polar ideologies that help give shape to the contours of how we see ourselves as a society. If we’re going to have public discourse over the kind of place we want to live in, we’re going to have to talk about how we see ourselves as human beings. The question of who we ought to be as a society, it turns out, has a lot to do with what we take ourselves to be. Welcome to my new politics podcast.Original music by Kevin McCloud is licensed through Creative Commons and is available through the Free Music Archive: https://files.freemusicarchive.org/storage-freemusicarchive-org/music/no_curator/Kevin_MacLeod/Jazz_Sampler/Kevin_MacLeod_-_I_Knew_a_Guy.mp3