Podcasts about Totalitarianism

National Review Senior Editor Charles C.W. Cooke, who hosts the Charles C.W. Cooke Podcast, fills in for Jim on the Tuesday 3 Martini Lunch. Join Charlie and Greg as they discuss Abdul El-Sayed's latest radical economic idea, James Talarico claiming school choice and the SAVE America Act are designed as tools of oppression against black people, actor Jeff Daniels missing the point of his new movie about Reagan, & a Democrat rejects an endorsement from Kamala Harris.First, they shudder as El-Sayed says he would be more aggressive than Bernie Sanders in government taking over private companies. Charlie explains why this is basically totalitarianism. And they fume over how the left has twisted the definition of "democracy" beyond recognition.Next, they shake their heads as Democratic Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico says Voter ID is designed to suppress the black vote and that school choice is a "tool of segregation." Charlie says 80 percent of black voters supporting Voter ID undercuts Talarico's pathetic narrative. And Greg sees a pattern in how Talarico and other Democrats approach these issues.Then, they react to Jeff Daniels suggesting the takeway from his new movie about the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland  is that John Lennon's Imagine might really come true. Charlie explains the real reason the U.S. won the Cold War, why Daniels is missing the main point of the story, and why Reagan and Imagine have virtually nothing in common.Finally, they get a good laugh as Democrat Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola publicly rejects an endorsement from former Vice President Kamala Harris. But other accounts suggests Peltola asked for the endorsement.Please visit our great sponsors:Brooklyn Beddinghttps://BrooklynBedding.comGet 30% off sitewide Brooklyn Bedding with promo code 3ML. BetterHelphttps://betterhelp.com/3ML See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Noble Goldhttps://NobleGoldInvestments.com/3MLIf you want to see how physical gold and silver could fit into your portfolio, download Noble Gold Investments FREE Wealth Protection Kit.New episodes every weekday. 

(Originally Published on January 15, 2022)Interest in socialism waxes and wanes like a teenage infatuation. "He loves me. He loves me not." This episode will extract five reasons we all should be wary of this idea that never seems to go away.Resources:Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies - Kristian Niemietz

James Lindsay led the 2018 Grievance Studies Affair, a hoax so effective it got a chapter of Mein Kampf rewritten as feminist theory accepted into a peer-reviewed journal. Since then he's built New Discourses around defining the woke formula of critical theory plus Leninist tactics, and how the formula appears on the left and the right. In this conversation, Lindsay traces "woke" back through Lenin's vanguard model and a 1937 Nazi corporate law that literally invented the word "stakeholder," then applies the same framework to Tucker Carlson, breaking down why he meets every box on the definition. James connects totalitarian ideology to clinical narcissism, explains why government incentive structures guarantee corruption regardless of who's in charge, and shares firsthand accounts from parents whose teenage sons are being radicalized into neo-Nazi forums. The conversation closes on JD Vance and his documented ties to post-liberal, Catholic integralist thinkers. Lindsay's  books: The Marxification of Education  Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody Race Marxism Timestamps: 03:07 Who is James Lindsay: anti-totalitarian researcher 04:18 The Grievance Studies Affair, explained 07:08 Cynical Theories and writing from a left-wing perspective on purpose 10:42 Defining "woke" begins 12:06 Critical theory's roots, back to Marx 13:53 The two components of woke: critical theory + Leninist behavior 19:20 Woke left vs. woke right, and the "Animal Farm" stakeholder model 25:33 The Nazi Shareholder Act of 1937 — the real birth of "stakeholder" 29:54 Do people actually understand this system? 31:17 Why everyone should listen to people who escaped communism 32:08 Totalitarianism as institutionalized narcissism 35:25 Why government incentive structures guarantee corruption 40:15 Bill Gates and the "Messiah complex" 43:01 Marx's Communist Manifesto, reread through narcissism 45:16 What happened to Tucker Carlson? 46:09 The case for why Tucker Carlson is "woke right" 50:15 Tucker's 2019 shift and Elizabeth Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act 53:06 How much of Tucker's audience is bots? 54:00 How much real power does Tucker actually have? 58:13 Hitler's "My Secret Book" and the targeting of youth 59:59 Parents' stories: kids radicalized into neo-Nazi forums 1:03:48 Where does JD Vance fall in the "woke right"? 1:05:53 Patrick Deneen's Regime Change and replacing the Constitution 1:06:16 Catholic integralism and Vance's economic worldview 1:08:42 The Iran MOU controversy and the operation against Vance

True free-market capitalism is dead. In its place, a hybrid of government and corporate actors have built a system of "privatized totalitarianism" and techno-feudalism. You think you have choices in your health care, your food, and your elections — but it's an illusion. I'm joined by political economist and author Charles Hugh Smith to break down the "golden painted leg chains" of modern American life. From the surveillance state and dynamic pricing to AI companies quietly shredding physical books to control history, Big Tech and the government have boxed out your options under the guise of "convenience." Worse yet, the political establishment — including Conservative Inc. — serves only to provide fake opposition, keeping you distracted with political theater while the oligarchy consolidates power. How do we break the monopoly? It starts by rejecting the ultra-processed life and decentralizing power back to our local counties. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stewart Alsop sits down with Daniel Freed, forty thousand words deep into a book that ties together consciousness, totalitarianism, archetypes, and religion, and the two spend the conversation tracing how those threads connect. They work through Jungian archetypes as behavioral blueprints embedded in stories across generations, unpacking the father, mother, and son roles and what they reveal about tradition, potential, and the individual. From there they get into Jordan Peterson's model of storytelling as a defense against totalitarian thinking, detour through Buddhism, Taoism, and the idea of the absolute, and Daniel walks through his own attempt to prove the limits of representing consciousness using axioms borrowed from math and logic, including Cantor's diagonal argument. The back half moves into Daniel's math and computer science background, touching on David Hilbert, Von Neumann, combinatorics, and complexity theory, before wrapping up with a look at Stewart's hardware prototyping experiments.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to archetypes, Jung, and why psychologists write dense books00:05 Mother, father, and son as story roles; tradition, potential, and the individual00:10 Totalitarianism, narrative architecture, and Peterson's four degrees of freedom in a story00:15 Objects, relational properties, and why the thing-in-itself breaks down under scrutiny00:20 The absolute, the Tao, and consciousness as a limit you can't directly represent00:25 A proof sketch against representing consciousness; diagonal arguments and formal limits00:30 Relevance realization, Popper, and why consciousness may resist full scientific modeling00:35 Applying the story model to groups: how collective narratives can become totalitarian00:40 Egregores, faith vs belief, and how ideas spread through modern institutions00:45 A turn into math: computer science, injury, Hilbert, and the power of axioms00:50 Quantum math, Von Neumann, and complexity theory as problem reductionKey InsightsArchetypes work like compressed behavioral data. Daniel frames archetypes not as arbitrary symbols but as patterns tested across generations of storytelling — when a story trains believers to kill the father figure and chaos follows, more value gets placed on the father and tradition over time, and the same logic explains why the mother figure comes to represent potential and the son comes to represent the individual.The son-outranks-the-father pattern underwrites Western individualism. Daniel argues that across traditions, the hero figure eventually outranks the established order, and this is the root of ideas like free speech and presumption of innocence — a fundamentally anti-utilitarian stance since it values the single person over the group's interest.Jordan Peterson's four-part story architecture doubles as a defense against totalitarianism. What is, what should be, the path between them, and the unknown or chaos form the minimum structure needed for a conscious being to experience anything as new. Daniel took this framework and applied it to group narratives, showing how holding one element of a group's story fixed while individuals change creates the conditions for totalitarian control.Every property is relational, so there's no "thing in itself." Drawing on Nietzsche, Daniel walks through the idea that qualities like hardness or mass only exist as effects on other things, which means an object stripped of all its relations has nothing left to define it.Daniel built a formal argument for why consciousness can't be fully represented. Using three axioms about distinctions resting within "respects" and borrowing Cantor's diagonal argument, he shows that certain respects can't have a ceiling, meaning any total representation of consciousness runs into the same problem uncountable sets do.Faith and belief are distinct but feed each other. Stewart draws out the difference — belief as propositional, faith as more emotional and fundamental — and Daniel agrees that propositional belief tends to translate into faith once people start acting it out.Daniel's path ran from computer science to math because of a wrist injury. Unable to type, he shifted toward math and ended up carrying over proof techniques from complexity theory and combinatorics into his philosophical work, citing David Hilbert's method of reducing ideas to rigorous axioms as a direct influence on how he now approaches philosophy.

In the final hour of the broadcast, The Tara Show explores political primary dynamics, foreign policy consequences, and cultural commentary. Republican candidate Mark Lynch joins host Tara Servatius to discuss his bid for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, positioning himself as a business outsider fighting against establishment politics. Servatius then addresses the tragic loss of three U.S. service members in the Middle East, sharply criticizing the administration's Memorandum of Understanding with Iran and accusing China of aiding in targeting attacks against American forces. Turning to ideological critique, she highlights a speech by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that attributes leftist political motives to envy and hostility toward traditional values. Finally, Servatius turns her focus internationally to warn that new political leadership in the United Kingdom under Andy Burnham will further accelerate civil liberty restrictions, digital identity mandates, and internet surveillance toward totalitarian control.

Kate is joined by returning guest and friend of the show, Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton, and one of the world's leading scholars of democratic backsliding, autocracy, and the rule of law. They discuss how the Supreme Court has been “captured,” the ways Donald Trump is attempting to remake Washington, D.C., in his image, and what Hungary can teach us about autocracy and how to recover from it.Favorite things: Kate:Emil Bove Defended Trump in Court. Then Trump Made Him a Judge, Mattathias Schwartz (NYT); Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home, Stephen Starring Grant Kim:Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan; Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID, Nicholas Enrich; The Dual State, Ernst Fraenkel; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt; It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis; Borgen - Power & Glory (Netflix); Gok Wan's Easy Asian (Prime Video) Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.comBuy Melissa's book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern ReaderBuy Leah's book, Lawless, now out in paperbackFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and BlueskyFor a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email transcripts@crooked.com

David Thomson joins me to discuss his new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light. Although we both love movies, we've noticed that movies have distorted our way of seeing the world, changed our sense of reality, and most of all, turned politics into a fascist mass spectacle. After all, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mussolini all loved movies. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin love putting themselves on screen. Totalitarianism and the cinema have always been linked, and politics is less democratic, and more cinematic, than ever.Here's a link to the book: https://flyleafbooks.com/book/9781668205730

On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Mikhail Zygar, author of the bestselling books All The Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, and the recently published The Dark Side of the Earth: Russia's Short-lived Victory over Totalitarianism to make sense of it all and to separate the signal from the noise.

## Title **Memes, Migrants, and Mars: Elon Musk vs. Europe's Totalitarian Speech Laws** --- ## Description In this riveting segment, the hosts break down the collision between global capitalism and European speech crackdowns. The monologue begins with the highly anticipated SpaceX IPO, marveling at Elon Musk's unique financial resilience. Despite years of media predictions claiming he was "finished," public faith in his vision has pushed his net worth higher than ever, showing that investors prioritize his track record over traditional business metrics. However, the conversation quickly shifts to the severe legal threats Musk faces overseas. European nations—specifically the UK and Ireland—are threatening to arrest the tech billionaire for violating their restrictive Online Safety Acts. The controversy stems from Musk's refusal to remove a video of a horrific migrant attack in Ireland, exposing a political climate where criticizing migration policy or sharing government crime statistics online is treated as a criminal offense. The hosts detail a series of shocking escalation tactics from European leadership, including Keir Starmer's push for digital IDs to access the internet and algorithmic surveillance tools designed to scan and save private messages before they are encrypted. The segment concludes with a stark warning: under current free speech crackdowns, the world's most successful businessman would face immediate arrest if he stepped off a plane in Western Europe. --- ## Custom Labels Elon Musk, SpaceX IPO, Free speech, Europe speech laws, Keir Starmer, Digital ID, Online Safety Act, Ireland immigration, Tech censorship, Totalitarianism, Political commentary

In a culture shaped by distraction, anxiety, and constant noise, how do we focus on what matters most?In this special episode, we're sharing a conversation from a recent Trinity Forum event featuring Ben Sasse—former U.S. Senator, university president, husband, and father. Following a terminal cancer diagnosis, Ben has embraced a new vocation: helping us think more clearly about the questions that matter most, and the things that endure. In this conversation with Cherie Harder, our Trinity Forum president who's known him since their undergrad days at Harvard, Ben joins a room full of family, friends, and colleagues to reflect on mortality, friendship, family, faith, and the kind of attention required for a flourishing life.What follows is a lightly edited version of that conversation. If you'd like to watch the full video of the interview, you can find a link to the YouTube livestream here.Recommended Trinity Forum ReadingsDemocracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (with an introduction by Ben Sasse)Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Federalist PapersThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtHere are Cherie and Ben from the live recording at National Community Church in Washington, DC: 

Preview for Later Today: Titus Techera reviews Andy Serkis's Animal Farm, which critiques techno-capitalism instead of Soviet totalitarianism. The film portrays Silicon Valley and artificial intelligence as modern villains, reflecting contemporary fears of corporate and technological overreach.IDAHO

John Zmirak. Hero Tina Peters Released from Demoncrat Gulag. The Eric Metaxas Show John Zmirak  Jun 03 2026   Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric celebrates the launch of Revolution before talking with John Zmirak about the release of Tina Peters, the Colorado election official imprisoned after challenging the 2020 election narrative. They discuss election integrity, weaponized government, political persecution, January 6 defendants, the Save Act, Tina Peters's refusal to say the 2020 election was honest, and why John compares her case to the Dreyfus affair. Eric and John also discuss George Washington, providence, the retreat from Long Island, and why America's founding story still matters today. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.⭐ ORDER TODAY:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 161 Totalitarian projects are peculiar. They're obsessed with telling us who man is and then controlling who man can become from their unique theories about our true nature. Within each, though, is a particular fantasy about who man is outside of sin (and what defines the nature of sin and depravity). The theological word, at least in Christian circles, for this sinless man is "prelapsarian man," that is, man before the Fall. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explores the prelapsarian fantasies of Communists and Nazis and discusses how they inform the thinking of these two totalitarian cousins. Join him for a uniquely deep look into the totalitarian mindset and the strange fantasies of Communism and Nazism. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #totalitarianism

Matt and Michael dive deep into the meaning of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. Starting from last week's cliffhanger about whether Jesus had to die, they explore the story of Cain and Abel, the problem of human sin, and why God chose to meet humanity in its darkest place rather than simply forgive from a distance. The conversation weaves through Job, the cross as the ultimate expression of love, and why this story demands a response that other worldviews don't. They discuss Carl Jung's Answer to Job, CS Lewis's analogy of God outside of time, and why Christianity's claim of divine self-sacrifice is unique among world religions. Michael shares his experiential journey through multiple religions and why Jesus was the one that actually changed him. Matt reflects on seeing a Rothko painting at the Met and how biblical stories are interactive in a way art cannot be. The episode grapples with troubling questions: What kind of God commands slaughter? What does it mean that God justifies himself to Job? Why did God choose to die rather than simply forgive? And what does it mean that we are all Cain? Cheers y'all

Societies rarely collapse overnight. More often, they decline slowly—becoming less competent, more restrictive, and harder to navigate with each passing year. In this episode, we revisit the ideas of managed decline and soft totalitarianism, examine the possible paths societies take as institutions weaken, and lay out a practical framework for how you can position yourself to survive, adapt, and preserve what matters in an age of growing instability.So, pull up a chair and sit a spell as we discuss How to Survive the Long Descent.Resources:The Civil War Has Been Cancelled (Until Further Notice)The Civil War Has Been Cancelled Part IILive Not By Lies, Rod DreherSupport the showGet Members Only Content when you upgrade to a premium membership on our Substack page.  Click here.Link up with us:Website:  Pearl Snap TacticalInstagram: Pearl Snap Tactical X:  Pearl Snap TaciticalThe views and opinions expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect those of the host, this podcast or affiliates.  The information provided in these shows are for educational purposes do not constitute legal advice.  Those interest in training in the use of firearms or other self-defense applications are advised to seek out a professional, qualified instructor.(Some of the links in the episode show notes are affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products or services we have personally used and believe will add value to our listeners.)

หมายเหตุประเพทไทยสัปดาห์นี้ ต่อศักดิ์ จินดาสุขศรี และชานันท์ ยอดหงษ์ ชวนอ่านหนังสือสำคัญของฮันนาห์ อาเรนต์ (Hannah Arendt) เรื่อง The Origins of Totalitarianism หรือ กำเนิดระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จ ผลงานคลาสสิกชิ้นสำคัญทางทฤษฎีการเมืองที่ตีพิมพ์ครั้งแรกในปี 1951 และกลับมาได้รับความสนใจอีกครั้งหลังชัยชนะของโดนัลด์ ทรัมป์ ในการเลือกตั้งสหรัฐฯ ปี 2559 ท่ามกลางความสับสนของผู้คนต่อความเปลี่ยนแปลงทางการเมืองในสังคมอเมริกัน อาเรนต์เป็นนักคิดการเมืองชาวเยอรมันเชื้อสายยิว ผู้เผชิญภัยคุกคามจากลัทธินาซีและต้องลี้ภัยไปสหรัฐอเมริกาในช่วงสงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง เธอเขียนผลงานสำคัญจำนวนมาก เช่น The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Revolution และ On Violence โดยเฉพาะ The Origins of Totalitarianism ที่พยายามทำความเข้าใจลัทธินาซีและลัทธิสตาลินในฐานะปรากฏการณ์การเมืองรูปแบบใหม่ของศตวรรษที่ 20 หนังสือเล่มนี้แบ่งออกเป็นสามส่วน ได้แก่ ลัทธิต่อต้านชาวยิว ลัทธิจักรวรรดินิยม และลัทธิเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จ โดย Arendt ไม่ได้เสนอประวัติศาสตร์แบบเหตุและผลอย่างตรงไปตรงมา แต่พยายามสำรวจ “องค์ประกอบ” ทางความคิด สังคม และการปฏิบัติ ที่ค่อย ๆ บรรจบกันจนทำให้ระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จกลายเป็นสิ่งที่เป็นไปได้ในประวัติศาสตร์ สำหรับอาเรนต์ ระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จไม่ใช่เผด็จการทั่วไป แต่เป็นรูปแบบการปกครองใหม่ที่มุ่งควบคุมมนุษย์ทั้งภายนอกและภายใน ทำลายความเป็นปัจเจก ความหลากหลาย และความสามารถของมนุษย์ในการริเริ่มสิ่งใหม่ พร้อมเปลี่ยนมนุษย์ให้กลายเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของขบวนการอุดมการณ์ที่อ้างความจริงสูงสุด ไม่ว่าจะเป็น “กฎของธรรมชาติ” ในลัทธินาซี หรือ “กฎของประวัติศาสตร์” ในลัทธิสตาลิน อีกประเด็นสำคัญคือบทบาทของ “ความหวาดกลัว” และ “อุดมการณ์” ซึ่งเป็นหัวใจของระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จ ความหวาดกลัวไม่ได้เป็นเพียงเครื่องมือควบคุมผู้คน แต่ทำหน้าที่ทำให้อุดมการณ์กลายเป็นความจริง ขณะที่อุดมการณ์แบบเบ็ดเสร็จเสนอคำอธิบายโลกทั้งหมดจากสมมติฐานเดียว จนทำให้มนุษย์ละทิ้งเสรีภาพในการคิด และยอมผูกตัวเองไว้กับตรรกะของขบวนการ และอีกเงื่อนไขสำคัญก็คือ loneliness หรือความโดดเดี่ยว ที่ทำให้มวลชนจำนวนมากเปิดรับระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จ เมื่อผู้คนรู้สึกไร้บ้าน ไร้ราก ไร้ความหมาย และไม่เป็นส่วนหนึ่งของโลก อุดมการณ์แบบเบ็ดเสร็จจึงเข้ามามอบคำอธิบาย อัตลักษณ์ และเป้าหมายใหม่ให้ชีวิต โดยอาเรนต์ย้ำเตือนว่า ตราบใดที่โลกยังผลิตความโดดเดี่ยวและความไร้ความหมาย ระบอบเผด็จการเบ็ดเสร็จก็ยังสามารถกลับมาเกิดขึ้นได้เสมอ

Did Russell Kirk accurately predict the revival of conservatism in late 20th-century America and England? Not really, but his discussion of the goals of conservatism remain lovely. Join us as we discuss the need for conservative leaders to encourage spiritual revival, encourage leadership, reshape education, provide a purpose to the common man, and stabilize the economy. Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Another attempt on Trump,Trump poaching all of Canada's steel companies, Manitoba to ban social media for under 16sAlberta snow storm,Ottawa approves LNG pipeline,WIdowson arrested at University of Lethbridge,Sign Up for the Full ShowLocals (daily video)Sample Showshttps://canadapoli2.locals.com/ Spotify https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/canadapoli/subscribePrivate Full podcast audio https://canadapoli.com/feed/canadapoliblue/Buy subscriptions here (daily video and audio podcast):https://canadapoli.cm/canadapoli-subscriptions/Youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/c/CanadaPoli/videosMe on Telegramhttps://t.me/realCanadaPoliMe on Rumblehttps://rumble.com/user/CanadaPoli Me on Odysseyhttps://odysee.com/@CanadaPoli:f Me on Bitchutehttps://www.bitchute.com/channel/l55JBxrgT3Hf/ Podcast RSShttps://anchor.fm/s/e57706d8/podcast/rsshttps://LinkRoll.co Submit a link. Discuss the link. No censorship. (reddit clone without the censorship

Join Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway and Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi as they sit down with radio host, author, and former CIA intelligence officer Buck Sexton to discuss the psychological and propaganda tactics totalitarians weaponize to indoctrinate and control the masses. You can find Buck's book Manufacturing Delusion: How the Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda Against You here.Pre-order Mollie's book Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution here.The Federalist Foundation is a nonprofit, and we depend entirely on our listeners and readers — not corporations. If you value fearless, independent journalism, please consider a tax-deductible gift today at TheFederalist.com/donate. Your support keeps us going.

—Jacob Siegel, the Information State, excerpts from audiobook, which can be found here.Totalitarianism came to America slowly at first and then all at once. It began as a utopia, one I helped build. It seemed like a perfect new America and gave all of us godless creatures, who'd been chewed up and spit out by the Boomers' counterculture revolution, a collective sense of purpose. It was all going so great until it wasn't.A Virtual UtopiaI got online 30 years ago. I never planned on living half of my life on the internet. It just turned out that way. I had motive, means, and opportunity to kill off my real-life self and be reborn in the virtual world. Why wouldn't I escape a life that had become a full-spectrum failure at everything I tried to do? A relationship that blew up when the man I thought loved me went back to his wife, the Graduate Film Program at Columbia I'd targeted as my life's dream ended in one semester as I chased that loser guy back to LA. There are things about that moment that are too painful to write about, at least for now, but I will someday. The result was me staring at the wall with nothing achieved and nowhere to go. I had just turned 30.The internet allowed me to remake myself as someone else. I could be strong. I could be confident. I could be beautiful because who knew what you looked like? I could just use words, and I was good at words. So I dove into a life online full of excitement and wonder, a dreamscape of endless possibilities. There was no Amazon, no eBay, no Google. There was barely a web browser.I fell in love with an Italian I met online and came back from Italy pregnant. He didn't want to be a father, but I wanted to be a mother, so I had my baby, and then I built a website so I could stay home with her and support us. I was the success story for every progressive female: a single mom and a business owner. A daughter of feminism en route to helping launch the Great Feminization and the Great Awokening.I was in Italy when I sent my first Tweet from my Treo. When Barack Obama signed on, I followed him, and he followed me. Then I became part of his army of clicktivists, shaping the new rules and building our desired narratives. We felt omnipotent. This was the internet, after all, and you could be anything you wanted to be - an activist for moral good? Check. An outspoken exhibitist? Check. West Wing-like politicos acting like experts in politics? Check. Remaking a new America one social media post at a time? Check. Virtue signaling with images blasted out to followers displaying our goodness? Check.For all the ways we used the internet, it shouldn't be that surprising that we built a virtual America - a fantasy utopia - that we forgot wasn't real. We were riding high with our media stars like Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. We were the new, the progressive, the forward thinkers, the early adopters. We colonized the internet in our image. Utopias only have two paths forward. They either collapse or they must become more totalitarian out of necessity, to quote Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.Our utopia was opt-in at first, and who wouldn't want to be a part of it? For a time, it felt like the best thing ever, all of our problems solved. It was everything, everywhere, all at once. A “whole of society” effort. It was # OscarsSoWhite. It was Critical Race Theory. It was every institution, corporation, legacy media outlet, and movie studio. But it was also dull. Movies became infused with dogma. The rules became stifling. Sooner or later, people like me were going to shake the tree.Says Siegel:Maintaining utopia, let alone defining it, meant that there would eventually be people like me who asked too many questions, who would be hurled before the almighty panopticon — an army of puritanical scolds policing thought and speech — and eventually destroyed and purged as the mob cheered. The BreakdownI'd been a good liberal, a loyal and devoted Democrat all of my adult life. I'd never thought about conspiracy theories. I didn't really challenge the system. I never doubted the intent of our government. I was all in for Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. I was so loyal a supporter that I was invited to an early Biden fundraiser in May of 2019. I watched him speak with tears in my eyes. He will save us, I thought. One year later, however, COVID hit. My daughter had to leave her senior year of college and have her graduation on my balcony. We were sewing our own masks and making our own hand sanitizer. It was a whole-of-society effort to deal with this once-in-a-generation pandemic. But by the end of May, the George Floyd video whipped around the world, and before long, the whole of society's effort had to shift to racial injustice as millions poured into the streets. What I saw unfold that year, the lies that were told, the gaslighting, the lurching from one narrative to the other, and all of the obedient robots going along with it, in full mass formation, was too much, even for me. We watched them lie - the experts, the journalists, the celebrities, the Democrats. I kept trying to scream from the rooftops that we would lose the 2020 election if the violent protests didn't stop. What I didn't know, what I would find out by the end of the election, was that it didn't matter. They would bend the media narrative to pretend there were no violent protests. It all worked cleanly and smoothly. No one was even allowed to question it. Trump was campaigning hard, doing multiple rallies a day, and it seemed to me he was making headway and changing minds. We know this because he won Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. Only once in history has anyone won those three states and still lost: The 1960 election.The difference in votes between Kennedy and Nixon proves how close the election was. But it never made sense to me that Biden would win by such a large margin and also lose Ohio, Iowa, and Florida. Unless, of course, they'd built a system that was too big to fail and had collected enough ballots long before Election Day.The FBI, still working under Trump, had helped the Democrats by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop via social media. COVID gave Biden the excuse to hide in the basement and not campaign. A “whole of society” effort to purge a once-in-a-generation threat seemed to justify everything they did, as we know from the confession in TIME Magazine. Our elections, it seemed, were too risky to leave up to the people. This system, this utopia we built, believed itself to be more powerful than our democracy, more powerful than our elections. I couldn't go along with that, just as I couldn't go along with everything that came after, as our utopia devolved into a totalitarian dystopia. The Information StateSometimes, during those dark nights of the soul, I wonder, did I do the right thing? Did what I thought happened really happen? No one in the mainstream media or culture has ever acknowledged any of it. They don't want to admit it or talk about it. Their war on Trump simply rages on, and they hope all of us will one day get with the program.But for me, there is still that untold story, a story I need to be told so that everyone on the Left - my friends and family and all of Hollywood and much of our legacy media understands what happened in the last ten years. Why are we living like this, with one half of the country marching by the millions to protest a president who defeated them not once but twice? Their hatred and shunning of half the country is still justified and accepted. Why?Now, thanks to Jacob Siegel, we don't have to wonder. He's written it all down, the whole ugly tale, in this essential text, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. There is nothing they can do about it now. It will set the record straight, at long last. The Information State starts with Woodrow Wilson's Great War crackdown on speech, and moves through World War II, Harry Truman and the Cold War, up to 9/11 and the expansion of the surveillance state. But it was the Obama administration that took it much further, beyond mere surveillance. He used information to change hearts and minds and to create a utopian society, not unlike those of the Soviet Union or China. As Siegel writes:How the protests and riots over the Summer in 2020, versus those on January 6th, were treated so differently by our government remains one of the clearest examples of the kind of two-tiered society we were living under before Elon Musk bought Twitter and Donald Trump won again. The BLM riots attacked working-class people, so they didn't matter, but January 6th attacked the powerful, and that, to them, meant war. Siegel writes:“Truth Held Forth and Maintained.”The scandal of how 20 people were hanged as witches in Salem would have been long forgotten, were it not for a cantankerous Quaker named Thomas Maule, who made the brave choice to expose the scandal in a pamphlet he called Truth Held Forth and Maintained. In cool and cutting sarcasm, he wrote that God would condemn the witch trial judges. He famously stated, “[F]or it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a Witch, which is not a Witch.”Maule's pamphlet was banned, and he was thrown in jail for “blasphemy and slander.” He would eventually get a trial, and the jury, exhausted and demoralized by the events of that winter, ruled in his favor, handing him a landmark win that would be among the cases that inspired the First Amendment. Jacob Siegel won't be jailed for blasphemy. Those named in the book will either ignore it outright or attempt to discredit it. As of today, there are no reviews in the New York Times or the Washington Post. As if out of a chapter in his own book, Renée DiResta objected to how she was portrayed and wrote a letter of complaint to the website Baffler, which then pulled the review. Siegel and DiResta publicly debated whether it counted as censorship. But who needs censorship when you have total societal control? At least among the university-educated ruling class. DiResta's bio on Twitter reads:DiResta and the machine she works for have rigged the game in their favor. No major media outlets will ever call them out. Hollywood won't write any controversial screenplays about them. Late night comediens will never mock them, and they will always be treated gently, with soft cotton gloves, lest anyone leave a mark.Into the UnknownJacob Siegel's The Information State does not paint an optimistic vision for the future. It ends with a question mark. Who will control this vast leviathan of data and human behavior, that now includes unstoppable AI? And how will we survive it?What will these same people who took complete control of society, of thought and speech, do if they take back power? I think we can probably guess. If they've never admitted it, never atoned for any of it, then we can expect it will come roaring back, and this time, they won't bother trying to hide it. My advice? Log off. Migrate back to the real world. Look at the sky at twilight. Dig your toes into the sand. Build a fire in the woods. Look people in the eye. Attend a poetry reading. Go to a coffee shop. Meet people in the real world and leave the internet and the Information State far behind.It's probably too late for me. I'm a lifer. I know that. But I'm also a cautionary tale. This is what happens when you spend 30 years of your life in the virtual world. But if I can find my way out, then anyone can. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

This is just my opinionIntro song is ‘⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bring Me Down⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Me a Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Slippery Slope Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠J Fallon Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Slippery Slope Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Slippery Slope YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Jan Jekielek is one of the most important journalists working today. As senior editor at Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders, he has interviewed nearly a thousand heads of state, scientists, dissidents, and survivors — and for two decades he has been doing what almost no one in Western media would: documenting China's state-sanctioned, industrialized harvesting of organs from living prisoners of conscience.His new book, Killed to Order, makes the case that this is the largest ongoing crime against humanity on the planet — and that most of us have been counting on not to notice. In this conversation, Jan traces how a peaceful spiritual movement became the target of an extermination campaign, how prisoners of conscience became a living organ database, and why the global elite's obsession with longevity may be more connected to this atrocity than anyone wants to admit. This is a conversation that demands something of you. Jan has spent twenty years carrying a truth the world wasn't ready to receive. It's time to receive it.

How do we conserve liberty in a society? Is it by curtailing the dangers of democratization? By using religious and social institutions as a bulwark? By increasing technological capabilities? Find out this and more as we discuss Thomas Babington Macaulay, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, and more!Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

The I Love CVille Show headlines: AlbCo School Board Castrates Student Club Autonomy School Board Imposes Totalitarianism Over Free Speech Will Students Choose To Dissolve Clubs & Move Off Grounds? Homeless Encampment Under Freebridge Is Expanding Has The City Opened Pandora's Box With Encampment? Is City Devaluing Real Estate & Biz Around Encampment? Will The City Attract Homeless From Around The Region? Need CVille Office & Commercial Space, Contact Jerry Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

In this episode of History 102, 'WhatIfAltHist' creator Rudyard Lynch and co-host Austin Padgett analyze critical historical moments and patterns to predict the future, focusing here on the Cold War's origins, psychological trauma, and global impact. -- FOLLOW ON X: @whatifalthist (Rudyard) @LudwigNverMises (Austin) @TurpentineMedia -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00 ) Intro (00:15 ) Developmental Abstraction: Children vs. Societies (02:05 ) The "Rubbedo" Stage and Modern Teenager Society (03:04 ) Ancient Mythologies and Priest-Class Archetypes (04:41 ) Personal Anecdotes on Mortality and the Inevitable (07:11 ) Modernity's Loss of Tragedy and Human Baselines (09:12 ) The Cold War as a Traumatic Global Event (11:13 ) Living on the "Knife's Edge" of Nuclear Annihilation (13:05 ) Cold War Impact on Modern Masculinity and Agency (15:15 ) Future Control: AI, Totalitarianism, and Nukes (18:14 ) Distinguishing Theory of Mind: Empathy vs. Sympathy (19:50 ) Transitioning from World War II to the Cold War (21:50 ) Anti-Soviet Sentiment: General Patton and Churchill (23:24 ) Defining the "Iron Curtain" and Post-War Division (24:47 ) Soviet Occupation and Mass Ethnic Shifts (25:42 ) Key Strategic Conferences: Tehran and Potsdam (27:17 ) FDR's Miscalculation of Stalin and the Soviet Military (01:05:12 ) Analyzing Soviet Internal Strategy and Global Politics (01:35:20 ) Modern Geopolitical Parallels: China and Iran (01:52:10 ) Historical Cycles and Future Geopolitical Predictions (02:34:56 ) Final Lessons: George Washington and Letting Go of Power (02:35:33 ) Conclusion: The Age of the Last Men Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Respond & React To Noah Coffin TPUSA Interview Are AlbCo Public Schools Embodying Totalitarianism? AlbCo School Board Will Castrate Student Club Autonomy UVA BOV Confirms Beardsley Selection As President South Street Brewery Is Closing On April 6, 2026 Barboursville Vineyards Was Sold To An Investor Group Va Tech (19-11, 8-9) At UVA (26-4, 14-3), 12PM, CWN Need CVille Office & Commercial Space, Contact Jerry Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

The Nurses Report on America Out Loud with Gail Macrae, BSN, RN – Drawing heavily from Dr. Mattias Desmet's The Psychology of Totalitarianism, they explore "mass formation" – a collective hypnosis fueled by isolation, anxiety, and fear that demands conformity and suppresses dissent. The conversation quickly connects mass formation to real-world harms: COVID-era fear leading to unquestioned...

The Nurses Report on America Out Loud with Gail Macrae, BSN, RN – Drawing heavily from Dr. Mattias Desmet's The Psychology of Totalitarianism, they explore "mass formation" – a collective hypnosis fueled by isolation, anxiety, and fear that demands conformity and suppresses dissent. The conversation quickly connects mass formation to real-world harms: COVID-era fear leading to unquestioned...

Fun new game: how would YOU survive the long walk?Follow Spooko on Insta: @_spooko_Join the Feel Bad Club on our discord: https://discord.gg/mJAJYCChGyAnd if you're keen for more Peach and Shag, check out our OTHER pod (it's about Gordon Ramsay): @peachandshagsnightmaremethodOh, and pls drop a review if you've been listening for a while!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Mikhail Zygar, author of the bestselling books All The Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, and the recently published The Dark Side of the Earth: Russia's Short-lived Victory over Totalitarianism.

"You either need to call it fascism or you need to invent a new word with more or less the same meaning." — Jonathan RauchJonathan Rauch's viral Atlantic essay has reignited the debate over what to call the Trump administration. Having previously settled on "semi-fascist," Rauch now argues that Trump ticks all 18 boxes on his checklist of fascist characteristics — from the glorification of violence and territorial ambitions to Carl Schmitt's philosophy of "enemies, not adversaries." We spar over whether the term obscures more than it reveals: Is this really fascism, or just authoritarianism with American characteristics? The conversation sharpens around Minneapolis, where citizens were shot face down, and the government initially denied it happened. You don't do that to win votes, Rauch argues — you do it because you believe that's how the social contract should work. He predicts Trump will fail to turn America into a fascist country but warns that institutions like the newly expanded ICE will outlast this administration. About the GuestJonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is the author of nine books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (2021), Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy (2025), and Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (1993). He received the 2005 National Magazine Award.ReferencesThinkers discussed:·      Carl Schmitt was a Nazi political theorist whose "friend-enemy distinction" argued that politics is fundamentally about identifying and crushing enemies, not managing disagreements with adversaries.·      George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" that "the word 'fascism' has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies something not desirable."·      Hannah Arendt was a German-American political theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany whose book The Origins of Totalitarianism examined both Nazism and Stalinism, preferring "totalitarianism" to "fascism" as the more encompassing term.Historical figures:·      Benito Mussolini invented the term "fascism" (from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods symbolizing collective strength) and ruled Italy as dictator from 1922 to 1943.·      Francisco Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975. Whether he was truly a fascist or merely an authoritarian remains debated; he never got along well with Hitler and outlasted the fascist era by three decades.·      Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary whose systematic capture of media, courts, and civil society has become known as the "Orbán playbook" — a template Rauch argues the Trump administration is following.Contemporary figures mentioned:·      Stephen Miller is a senior advisor to Trump who declared that "force is the iron law of the world" and told progressives "you are nothing" at a memorial service where the widow of the deceased had just offered Christian forgiveness to an assassin.·      Russell Vought is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, identified by Rauch as one of the younger ideologues building Trumpism into something more like a coherent ideology.·      Chris Rufo is a conservative activist and culture war strategist who has employed what Rauch calls "revolutionary language" in his campaigns against universities and public institutions.Essays and books mentioned:·      "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is Orwell's essay arguing that the corruption of language enables the corruption of politics, and that vague or meaningless words like "fascism" make clear thinking impossible.·      The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) is Hannah Arendt's study of Nazism and Stalinism as parallel forms of total domination, examining how mass movements, propaganda, and terror enable regimes to control entire societies.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - (00:13) - The viral essay (02:10) - Why Rauch changed his mind (03:41) - Fascism vs. authoritarianism (05:54) - Carl Schmitt and "enemies not adversaries" (06:14) - Orwell on the word "fascism" (09:12) - Can old people be fascists? (11:51) - Blood and soil nationalism (14:14) - Minneapolis (17:51) - Kristallnacht comparisons (20:07) - The postmodern right (26:34) - Following the money (32:05) - ICE as paramilitary force

Guests: Ernesto Araujo and Alejandro Peña Esclusa. Venezuelan regime factions clash over detaining opposition figures, while Brazilian conservative Flavio Bolsonaro seeks international support to combat totalitarianism ahead of the upcoming national election.1922 CARACAS

The writer Thomas Wolfe, known for his large novels and spewing prose, was a fan of Germany. On a trip there for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he found joy and worry. Initially he admired the changes, but would soon change his opinion after a series of events and a near run-in with Hitler himself. He didn't live to see the true extent of Nazism, but left a warning for history. [One note: Thomas Wolfe, the 1930's author should not be confused with Bonfire of the Vanities author Tom Wolfe. Also a good author, different guy.] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Summary:In this episode of Explaining History, Nick continues his exploration of Eric Hobsbawm's seminal work, The Age of Extremes.We focus on the first part of Hobsbawm's "historical triptych"—the Age of Catastrophe (1914–1945). Nick argues that this period was essentially a European Civil War, where the violent techniques of imperialism—gas, machine guns, and racial extermination—boomeranged back onto the continent itself.From the collapse of the liberal order in 1914 to the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 1930s, we examine how the certainties of the 19th century were shattered. We also critique Hobsbawm's Eurocentric view, asking: Was the post-war "Golden Age" truly golden for the colonized peoples of Vietnam, Kenya, or Algeria? Or was the Second World War merely the moment when the violence of empire finally came home?Plus: A final call for history students! Our Russian Revolution Masterclass is on Sunday, January 25th. Book your spot now for a deep dive into essay technique and historical argument.Key Topics:The European Civil War: Viewing 1914-1945 as a single, devastating conflict.The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial violence returned to Europe.The Collapse of Liberalism: Why democracy nearly vanished from the map between the wars.Hobsbawm's Blind Spot: Critiquing the Eurocentric view of the "Golden Age."Books Mentioned:The Age of Extremes by Eric HobsbawmBlood and Ruins by Richard OveryThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (referenced via the "boomerang" thesis)Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of History 102, 'WhatIfAltHist' creator Rudyard Lynch and co-host Austin Padgett examine 20th-century Eastern Europe, detailing the tragic shift from organic aristocratic societies to brutal, industrialized totalitarian regimes. -- FOLLOW ON X: @whatifalthist (Rudyard) @LudwigNverMises (Austin) @TurpentineMedia -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Intro (02:11) The Greatest Tragedy in Human History (04:47) The Transition from Monarchy to Totalitarianism (09:44) The Scythe Lens Mechanical Pressure (21:41) The Staggering Intellectual Loss (27:59) Capitalism Nobility and the Path to Democracy (35:32) Defining Mass Politics (54:19) The Ethnic Map of 1914 vs Modernity (01:05:43) The Hot Seat of the Balkans and WWI (01:22:47) The Eastern Front of WWI (01:38:13) The Urge to Submission (01:47:48) The Daily Horror of Stalinism (02:05:33) WWII The German Colonial Dream (02:17:15) The Legacy of the Holocaust and 40 Million Dead (02:28:44) Contemporary Resilience and Neoliberalism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle, and David French to discuss Donald Trump's second term and when a cycle of norm violations turns into authoritarianism. The Agenda:—DHS targeting of Americans—Administrative subpoenas, explained—Abuses in immigration detention centers—Megan McArdle on fascism—Why language matters—Totalitarianism vs. fascism—NWYT: The Superbowl Show Notes:—A listener's injury story—David French: "This Is Not a Drill" The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠click here⁠. If you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had seemed a thing of the past. Our guest today, historian Maurice Samuels, author of many fine books on French history (Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (2010), and The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016))and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism has written a crackerjack new book. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, (Yale 2024) has written a wonderful account of Dreyfus himself and how should we understand what that turmoil has ot tell us how Jews then (and perhaps today) coexisted with a mainstream secular Christian society either by way of assimilation or (not quite the same thing) by peaceful integration that preserved cultural distinctions. The discussion ranges widely, setting the scene in the prior centuries when Jews settled all over France, and then were accorded unusual rights by the universalist vision of the French Revolution. Maurie also explains why succeeding generations in France included the ascension not only of Leon Blum the Jewish socialist (and inventor of the weekend!) who improbably led anti-fascist France during in the 1930's--but also the other Jews who followed him as political leaders in France, right up to the present-day. From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) forward, Maurie shows, intellectuals have missed the significance of the way Dreyfus and his family integrated without assimilating. The conversation culminating in Maurie introducing John to the fascinating "Franco-French War" about what that coexistence should look like: assimilation which presumes the disappearance of a distinctive Jewish cultural identity, or integration which posits the peaceful coexistence of French citizens of various religions and cultures. Mentioned in the episode Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question" (1844) George Eliot's (perhaps philosemitic) Daniel Deronda (1876) Why does Yale have a Hebrew motto, אורים ותומים (light and perfection)? The Haitian Revolution in its triumphs and tribulations is an analogy that helps explain jewish Emancipation--and also in some ways a tragic counterexample. The horrifying Great Replacement Theory we have heard so much about in America (eg in Charlottesville in 2017) began in France; Maurie has some thoughts about that. Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair. America's racial "one drop" rule. Pierre Birnbaum, Leon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist (Yale, 2015) Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had seemed a thing of the past. Our guest today, historian Maurice Samuels, author of many fine books on French history (Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (2010), and The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016))and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism has written a crackerjack new book. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, (Yale 2024) has written a wonderful account of Dreyfus himself and how should we understand what that turmoil has ot tell us how Jews then (and perhaps today) coexisted with a mainstream secular Christian society either by way of assimilation or (not quite the same thing) by peaceful integration that preserved cultural distinctions. The discussion ranges widely, setting the scene in the prior centuries when Jews settled all over France, and then were accorded unusual rights by the universalist vision of the French Revolution. Maurie also explains why succeeding generations in France included the ascension not only of Leon Blum the Jewish socialist (and inventor of the weekend!) who improbably led anti-fascist France during in the 1930's--but also the other Jews who followed him as political leaders in France, right up to the present-day. From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) forward, Maurie shows, intellectuals have missed the significance of the way Dreyfus and his family integrated without assimilating. The conversation culminating in Maurie introducing John to the fascinating "Franco-French War" about what that coexistence should look like: assimilation which presumes the disappearance of a distinctive Jewish cultural identity, or integration which posits the peaceful coexistence of French citizens of various religions and cultures. Mentioned in the episode Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question" (1844) George Eliot's (perhaps philosemitic) Daniel Deronda (1876) Why does Yale have a Hebrew motto, אורים ותומים (light and perfection)? The Haitian Revolution in its triumphs and tribulations is an analogy that helps explain jewish Emancipation--and also in some ways a tragic counterexample. The horrifying Great Replacement Theory we have heard so much about in America (eg in Charlottesville in 2017) began in France; Maurie has some thoughts about that. Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair. America's racial "one drop" rule. Pierre Birnbaum, Leon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist (Yale, 2015) Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had seemed a thing of the past. Our guest today, historian Maurice Samuels, author of many fine books on French history (Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (2010), and The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016))and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism has written a crackerjack new book. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, (Yale 2024) has written a wonderful account of Dreyfus himself and how should we understand what that turmoil has ot tell us how Jews then (and perhaps today) coexisted with a mainstream secular Christian society either by way of assimilation or (not quite the same thing) by peaceful integration that preserved cultural distinctions. The discussion ranges widely, setting the scene in the prior centuries when Jews settled all over France, and then were accorded unusual rights by the universalist vision of the French Revolution. Maurie also explains why succeeding generations in France included the ascension not only of Leon Blum the Jewish socialist (and inventor of the weekend!) who improbably led anti-fascist France during in the 1930's--but also the other Jews who followed him as political leaders in France, right up to the present-day. From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) forward, Maurie shows, intellectuals have missed the significance of the way Dreyfus and his family integrated without assimilating. The conversation culminating in Maurie introducing John to the fascinating "Franco-French War" about what that coexistence should look like: assimilation which presumes the disappearance of a distinctive Jewish cultural identity, or integration which posits the peaceful coexistence of French citizens of various religions and cultures. Mentioned in the episode Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question" (1844) George Eliot's (perhaps philosemitic) Daniel Deronda (1876) Why does Yale have a Hebrew motto, אורים ותומים (light and perfection)? The Haitian Revolution in its triumphs and tribulations is an analogy that helps explain jewish Emancipation--and also in some ways a tragic counterexample. The horrifying Great Replacement Theory we have heard so much about in America (eg in Charlottesville in 2017) began in France; Maurie has some thoughts about that. Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair. America's racial "one drop" rule. Pierre Birnbaum, Leon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist (Yale, 2015) Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet when things seemed to be going well for Jews in Western Europe and North America generally and France especially, the infamous fin de siècle Dreyfus affair brought to the surface some of the worst kinds of bigotry and animus--like contemporaneous Russian pogroms a premonition of the deadly looming revival of ethnic or religious divisions that had seemed a thing of the past. Our guest today, historian Maurice Samuels, author of many fine books on French history (Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (2010), and The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016))and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism has written a crackerjack new book. Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, (Yale 2024) has written a wonderful account of Dreyfus himself and how should we understand what that turmoil has ot tell us how Jews then (and perhaps today) coexisted with a mainstream secular Christian society either by way of assimilation or (not quite the same thing) by peaceful integration that preserved cultural distinctions. The discussion ranges widely, setting the scene in the prior centuries when Jews settled all over France, and then were accorded unusual rights by the universalist vision of the French Revolution. Maurie also explains why succeeding generations in France included the ascension not only of Leon Blum the Jewish socialist (and inventor of the weekend!) who improbably led anti-fascist France during in the 1930's--but also the other Jews who followed him as political leaders in France, right up to the present-day. From Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) forward, Maurie shows, intellectuals have missed the significance of the way Dreyfus and his family integrated without assimilating. The conversation culminating in Maurie introducing John to the fascinating "Franco-French War" about what that coexistence should look like: assimilation which presumes the disappearance of a distinctive Jewish cultural identity, or integration which posits the peaceful coexistence of French citizens of various religions and cultures. Mentioned in the episode Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question" (1844) George Eliot's (perhaps philosemitic) Daniel Deronda (1876) Why does Yale have a Hebrew motto, אורים ותומים (light and perfection)? The Haitian Revolution in its triumphs and tribulations is an analogy that helps explain jewish Emancipation--and also in some ways a tragic counterexample. The horrifying Great Replacement Theory we have heard so much about in America (eg in Charlottesville in 2017) began in France; Maurie has some thoughts about that. Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair. America's racial "one drop" rule. Pierre Birnbaum, Leon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist (Yale, 2015) Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Totalitarian societies do not become that way overnight. There are recognizable signs and stages which show how a society slides into that abyss.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/five-stages-totalitarianism

Totalitarian societies do not become that way overnight. There are recognizable signs and stages which show how a society slides into that abyss.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/five-stages-totalitarianism

Richie is joined by the Irish writer and broadcaster John Waters. John recently published - on his excellent Substack - a passionate and thought-provoking defence of Mattias Desmet's "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." Desmet argues that totalitarianism today grows out of widespread loneliness, anxiety, and loss of meaning. As traditional sources of connection—such as community, shared values, and religion—weaken, people feel isolated and uncertain. In this state, they become more likely to attach themselves to a single story that promises safety, purpose, and control. Covid was such a story, arguably. The book has come in for unfair criticism in truther circles. Desmet has been accused of blaming the victims of totalitarianism for their plight. On today's show, John deconstructs Desmet's arguments and those of his critics. He explains why - in his view - Ireland is the birthplace of totalitarianism, why we should be wary of those who want to lead resistance or protest movements and much more. This is a must-listen conversation. Share it widely on socials. Read John Waters here:https://johnwaters.substack.com/

Leah kicks off the episode with repeat guest Rebecca Ingber of Cardozo Law to discuss the wild illegality–both domestic and international–of Trump's regime change operation in Venezuela. Then, Kate, Melissa, and Leah welcome Princeton professor and expert on the rise of modern autocracies, Kim Lane Scheppele to break down how Trump is consolidating power over the executive branch and the courts. Leah next catches up with president and CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman on some of the legal developments over the holidays, including challenges to Department of Education funding cuts, the freezing of childcare payments to Minnesota, and a near-total abortion ban for veterans. Finally, the hosts speak with Demand Justice's Josh Orton about the worrying trends his organization is seeing among Trump 2.0's judicial nominees.Kim's favorite things: An “Almost Sacred Responsibility”: The Rule of Law in Times of Peril, Gerald J. Postema (Judicature); Judge Harvey Wilkinson's opinion in Abrego Garcia v. Noem; Judge William G. Young's opinion in AAUP vs. Rubio; Sara L. Ellis's opinion in Chicago Headline Club v. Noem; The Dual State, Ernst Fraenkel; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026! 3/6/26 – San Francisco3/7/26 – Los AngelesLearn more: http://crooked.com/eventsBuy Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad VibesFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 3/6/26 – San Francisco3/7/26 – Los AngelesLearn more: http://crooked.com/eventsOrder your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad VibesFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Johnny's website https://johnnycirucci.com/Forbidden Knowledge Network https://forbiddenknowledge.news/ FKN Link Treehttps://linktr.ee/FKNlinksWe are back on YouTube! https://youtube.com/@forbiddenknowledgenews?si=XQhXCjteMKYNUJSjBackup channelhttps://youtube.com/@fknshow1?si=tIoIjpUGeSoRNaEsDoors of Perception is available now on Amazon Prime!https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.8a60e6c7-678d-4502-b335-adfbb30697b8&ref_=atv_lp_share_mv&r=webDoors of Perception official trailerhttps://youtu.be/F-VJ01kMSII?si=Ee6xwtUONA18HNLZPick up Independent Media Token herehttps://www.independentmediatoken.com/Be prepared for any emergency with Prep Starts Now!https://prepstartsnow.com/discount/FKNStart your microdosing journey with BrainsupremeGet 15% off your order here!!https://brainsupreme.co/FKN15Book a free consultation with Jennifer Halcame Emailjenniferhalcame@gmail.comFacebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561665957079&mibextid=ZbWKwLWatch The Forbidden Documentary: Occult Louisiana on Tubi: https://link.tubi.tv/pGXW6chxCJbC60 PurplePowerhttps://go.shopc60.com/FORBIDDEN10/or use coupon code knowledge10Make a Donation to Forbidden Knowledge News https://www.paypal.me/forbiddenknowledgenehttps://buymeacoffee.com/forbiddenJohnny Larson's artworkhttps://www.patreon.com/JohnnyLarsonSign up on Rokfin!https://rokfin.com/fknplusPodcastshttps://www.spreaker.com/show/forbiddenAvailable on all platforms Support FKN on Spreaker https://spreaker.page.link/KoPgfbEq8kcsR5oj9FKN ON Rumblehttps://rumble.com/c/FKNpGet Cory Hughes books!Lee Harvey Oswald In Black and White https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FJ2PQJRMA Warning From History Audio bookhttps://buymeacoffee.com/jfkbook/e/392579https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jfkbookhttps://www.amazon.com/Warning-History-Cory-Hughes/dp/B0CL14VQY6/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=72HEFZQA7TAP&keywords=a+warning+from+history+cory+hughes&qid=1698861279&sprefix=a+warning+fro%2Caps%2C121&sr=8-1https://coryhughes.org/Become Self-Sufficient With A Food Forest!!https://foodforestabundance.com/get-started/?ref=CHRISTOPHERMATHUse coupon code: FORBIDDEN for discountsOur Facebook pageshttps://www.facebook.com/forbiddenknowledgenewsconspiracy/https://www.facebook.com/FKNNetwork/Instagram @forbiddenknowledgenews1@forbiddenknowledgenetworkXhttps://x.com/ForbiddenKnow10?t=uO5AqEtDuHdF9fXYtCUtfw&s=09Email meforbiddenknowledgenews@gmail.comsome music thanks to:https://www.bensound.com/ULFAPO3OJSCGN8LDDGLBEYNSIXA6EMZJ5FUXWYNC6WJNJKRS8DH27IXE3D73E97DBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/forbidden-knowledge-news--3589233/support.

In "1984," Orwell described a thought-police totalitarian state. How prescient was he?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump greenlights CIA in Venezuela, debate on totalitarianism, Dems screwed in 2026 amid SCOTUS rulings. David Sirota's Book: https://www.levernews.com/master-plan-the-hidden-plot-to-legalize-corruption-in-america/ To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is the West a sitting duck?  __________ For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

Norman Ohler is a historian and author of "Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich," a book that investigates the role of psychoactive drugs, particularly stimulants such as methamphetamine, in the military history of World War II. It is a book that two legendary historians Ian Kershaw and Antony Beevor give very high praise for its depth of research. Norman also wrote "Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age", and he is working on a new book "Stoned Sapiens" looking at the history of human civilization through the lens of drugs. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep481-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/norman-ohler-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Stoned Sapiens Substack: https://substack.com/@stonedsapiens Norman's X: https://x.com/normanohler Norman's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/normanohler Norman's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Norman-Ohler Norman's Website: https://www.normanohler.de Norman's books: https://amzn.to/46uNS18 Blitzed: https://amzn.to/4mmY2XC The Bohemians: https://amzn.to/3KubPhK Tripped: https://amzn.to/4nEy7eX SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: UPLIFT Desk: Standing desks and office ergonomics. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/lex Fin: AI agent for customer service. Go to https://fin.ai/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex Hampton: Community for high-growth founders and CEOs. Go to https://joinhampton.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (01:09) - Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (09:00) - Drugs in post-WWI Germany (19:18) - Nazi rise to power (23:45) - Hitler's drug use (29:37) - Response to historian criticism (46:16) - Pervitin (1:00:15) - Blitzkrieg and meth (1:18:52) - Erwin Rommel (Crystal Fox) (1:23:02) - Dunkirk (1:31:06) - Hitler's drug addiction (1:47:03) - Methamphetamine (1:48:57) - Invasion of Soviet Union (2:07:54) - Cocaine (2:16:49) - Hitler's last days (2:36:48) - German resistance against Nazis (2:58:59) - Totalitarianism (3:04:09) - Stoned Sapiens - Drugs in human history (3:19:20) - Religion (3:30:09) - LSD, CIA, and MKUltra (3:55:39) - Writing on drugs (4:08:40) - Berlin night clubs (4:19:14) - Greatest book ever written