Loved this almost as much as the one with Brad DeLong.
Re the class basis for right-wing support among portions of the working class: it does make sense, I think especially for hardhat union types because the labour movement has been so successful. You're talking about people who are in their working years, able-bodied, and pretty well-compensated. To what extent can a welfare state plausibly redistribute towards those people? To what extent do they benefit from public service provision, when they have good benefits already? If the right is not actively hostile to labour to an intolerable degree, it's easy to see how they'd prefer low taxes. And this is before you consider cultural politics (male, non-college, etc.)
I think this is pretty clear in the divergence of labour leadership & membership in the last US election, and in the Canadian election, where the social democratic party bled rural/blue collar ridings to the masculinist/producerist/conspiratorial tories. As a result it kinda drives me nuts when people use "workers" to refer specifically to hardhat unions when that's a small slice of wage workers.
Yep, and cruelly a lot of hardhat union guys discover only in retirement that a social insurance state comes in handy. In many construction unions over the past couple of decades union pension payout cheques can and do literally get halved overnight (happened to my brother, who is a retired union ironworker) - partly poor returns on financial markets, but overwhelmingly just a radical shrinking of the pension funds themselves due to contractors hiring non-union tradesmen.
Regarding the analogy to the radical Black and Brown shirts vs. the periphery: it strikes me that MAGA true believers may be motivated by different things. Some want a return to a white supermajority where there's no question who's in charge, but remains open to some diversity. Others want straight up white supremacy. Still others seem to want a Christian Nationalist theocracy. There may be other streams as well, but they're not all pulling in the same direction and sometimes are at cross purposes. Meanwhile, there remains a majority of the country that still wants a pluralistic democracy that multiethnic and multicultural. At some point, it seems to me there will have to be a coercive attempt from one or more of the MAGA factions to grab the reins.
This is a great conversation. I look forward to more of these posts. Re: Kirk’s assassination as a mobilizing event for MAGA, it occurred to me watching that insane memorial service that the reason they seized on his murder for political ends is that MAGA functions best as a grievance-based, countercultural movement that sees itself as constantly persecuted by the mainstream, hegemonic society (which they absurdly believe consists of civil servants and college professors etc etc.) It’s a huge problem for populist movements worldwide that once they achieve real power they have to maintain that outsider stance. When you control the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court, how do you portray yourself as besieged? Kirk’s murder was a perfect pretext: ‘see, they want you dead’
There was so much good stuff, it's hard to even remember it all. One kind of off-hand remark really stuck with me (assuming I understood it correctly!): that the constant, low-hum level of gun violence in the United States may make people *less* willing to believe the Autocrat's claim that Something Drastic Must Be Done about all the disorder, because there's *always* disorder that that we've learned to tune out. That's horrific and to our shame, but it never occurred to me that it might dampen claims that things have gotten worse.
Also: You're an excellent host, Jon. You listen carefully, reflect back, and ask interesting follow-up questions. And you and Dylan have excellent chemistry. You should have him as a recurring guest and/or co-host!
I finally got around to listening to this in full (great talk !), and I was wondering, about the war of manoeuver / war of position question : isn't this possible that they're also thinking of this, and getting braced for a longer haul ? That they're trying to gain as much ground as possible in their current offensive specifically to build as many trenches and positions as they can ?
I mean, Trump I ended with Trump in discredit and little left of his legacy... except 3 Supreme Court judges, and we're seeing the full impact of this now. Right now the Trump administration is stocking the federal government with loyalists, nominating others as life-long appellate judges, having an open policy of recruiting white supremacists in the DHS (one Neo-Nazi dogwhistle in social media recruitement material is a red flag ; three Neo-Nazi dogwhistles in social media recruitement material is a crimson flag)... Whatever happens and even if Trump is later defeated, this will be extremely hard to root out and will have a huge lasting impact. It's reminiscent of the radicalization in Israel, in the way Netanyahu and his allies managed to strenghten their hold on power by pushing the religious apocalyptic right to get involved in great numbers in the army and in civil servant positions, which were traditionally held by the secular elites.
A few days late, but I wanted to chime in. The need for a Democratic candidate to bridge the gap between the establishment and the insurgent (left) energies of the party is an ongoing problem. I thought Elizabeth Warren could be that candidate in 2020, but she couldn't gain traction because both Biden and Bernie had solidified their bases of support. I do think the primary dynamic is going to be better next year, since the Schumer-Jeffries establishment continues to flail and shed legitimacy.
(That will of course depend on having good candidates to challenge incumbents across the country. I'm still holding out for a viable challenger to Mark Warner here in Virginia.)
Interesting chat, but feels like Prof. Riley is moving the goalposts a bit. Nobody argued during Trump 1.0 that *America* was a hegemonic fascist state, rather that Trumpism was a fascist *movement* and asked the question, “What if Trump just says ‘fuck you’ to the law and succeeds in dragging key institutions along with him?”
Personally, I never thought the issue of Gramscian hegemony/consent was relevant simply because controlling those key institutions renders it irrelevant. A fascist regime can quite happily co-exist with the non-compliance of half the population. Indeed, as we see, such a regime is dependent on and energized by citizen non-compliance, because they’ve now secured control of the necessary levers of power to mobilize against troublesome citizens and, crucially, claim legitimacy for such actions.
One thing that probably nobody foresaw was the total emasculation of the legislative branch as a mechanism of resistance or even of political significance. The impeachment hearings seem like a century ago, a remote time when people paid attention to elected officials and considered them a force in politics. Civil society is still standing, but does it stand a chance against a mind-blowingly immense, executively controlled security edifice that refuses to disobey illegal orders?
The part that stayed with me was John talking about how we can see the chess moves, so to speak, and know which problems this administration is going to face - even if they may not realize it themselves. As someone who lives in novice territory when it comes to understanding political theory, I would love more conversations or articles that outlines what is going on from that perspective. As of now, my understanding is fuzzy at best.
Where the bulk of mainstream news fails its audience, myself included, is framing current events more towards the legality of everything. The problem with legal framing, as mentioned here, is legal experts will say "they can't do that, it's illegal", and the conversation stops there. I strongly suspect this is why mainstream news, and by extension its audience, got duped into the narrative during the election that Trump 2.0 would just be another Republican presidency. (See also this recent article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/magazine/legal-experts-trump-justice-department.html ).
All this to say that I very much appreciated this conversation, and came away with a much greater understanding of the situation we all find ourselves in.
Loved this almost as much as the one with Brad DeLong.
Re the class basis for right-wing support among portions of the working class: it does make sense, I think especially for hardhat union types because the labour movement has been so successful. You're talking about people who are in their working years, able-bodied, and pretty well-compensated. To what extent can a welfare state plausibly redistribute towards those people? To what extent do they benefit from public service provision, when they have good benefits already? If the right is not actively hostile to labour to an intolerable degree, it's easy to see how they'd prefer low taxes. And this is before you consider cultural politics (male, non-college, etc.)
I think this is pretty clear in the divergence of labour leadership & membership in the last US election, and in the Canadian election, where the social democratic party bled rural/blue collar ridings to the masculinist/producerist/conspiratorial tories. As a result it kinda drives me nuts when people use "workers" to refer specifically to hardhat unions when that's a small slice of wage workers.
Yep, and cruelly a lot of hardhat union guys discover only in retirement that a social insurance state comes in handy. In many construction unions over the past couple of decades union pension payout cheques can and do literally get halved overnight (happened to my brother, who is a retired union ironworker) - partly poor returns on financial markets, but overwhelmingly just a radical shrinking of the pension funds themselves due to contractors hiring non-union tradesmen.
Regarding the analogy to the radical Black and Brown shirts vs. the periphery: it strikes me that MAGA true believers may be motivated by different things. Some want a return to a white supermajority where there's no question who's in charge, but remains open to some diversity. Others want straight up white supremacy. Still others seem to want a Christian Nationalist theocracy. There may be other streams as well, but they're not all pulling in the same direction and sometimes are at cross purposes. Meanwhile, there remains a majority of the country that still wants a pluralistic democracy that multiethnic and multicultural. At some point, it seems to me there will have to be a coercive attempt from one or more of the MAGA factions to grab the reins.
This is a great conversation. I look forward to more of these posts. Re: Kirk’s assassination as a mobilizing event for MAGA, it occurred to me watching that insane memorial service that the reason they seized on his murder for political ends is that MAGA functions best as a grievance-based, countercultural movement that sees itself as constantly persecuted by the mainstream, hegemonic society (which they absurdly believe consists of civil servants and college professors etc etc.) It’s a huge problem for populist movements worldwide that once they achieve real power they have to maintain that outsider stance. When you control the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court, how do you portray yourself as besieged? Kirk’s murder was a perfect pretext: ‘see, they want you dead’
This was a terrific conversation!
There was so much good stuff, it's hard to even remember it all. One kind of off-hand remark really stuck with me (assuming I understood it correctly!): that the constant, low-hum level of gun violence in the United States may make people *less* willing to believe the Autocrat's claim that Something Drastic Must Be Done about all the disorder, because there's *always* disorder that that we've learned to tune out. That's horrific and to our shame, but it never occurred to me that it might dampen claims that things have gotten worse.
Also: You're an excellent host, Jon. You listen carefully, reflect back, and ask interesting follow-up questions. And you and Dylan have excellent chemistry. You should have him as a recurring guest and/or co-host!
I finally got around to listening to this in full (great talk !), and I was wondering, about the war of manoeuver / war of position question : isn't this possible that they're also thinking of this, and getting braced for a longer haul ? That they're trying to gain as much ground as possible in their current offensive specifically to build as many trenches and positions as they can ?
I mean, Trump I ended with Trump in discredit and little left of his legacy... except 3 Supreme Court judges, and we're seeing the full impact of this now. Right now the Trump administration is stocking the federal government with loyalists, nominating others as life-long appellate judges, having an open policy of recruiting white supremacists in the DHS (one Neo-Nazi dogwhistle in social media recruitement material is a red flag ; three Neo-Nazi dogwhistles in social media recruitement material is a crimson flag)... Whatever happens and even if Trump is later defeated, this will be extremely hard to root out and will have a huge lasting impact. It's reminiscent of the radicalization in Israel, in the way Netanyahu and his allies managed to strenghten their hold on power by pushing the religious apocalyptic right to get involved in great numbers in the army and in civil servant positions, which were traditionally held by the secular elites.
A few days late, but I wanted to chime in. The need for a Democratic candidate to bridge the gap between the establishment and the insurgent (left) energies of the party is an ongoing problem. I thought Elizabeth Warren could be that candidate in 2020, but she couldn't gain traction because both Biden and Bernie had solidified their bases of support. I do think the primary dynamic is going to be better next year, since the Schumer-Jeffries establishment continues to flail and shed legitimacy.
(That will of course depend on having good candidates to challenge incumbents across the country. I'm still holding out for a viable challenger to Mark Warner here in Virginia.)
Interesting chat, but feels like Prof. Riley is moving the goalposts a bit. Nobody argued during Trump 1.0 that *America* was a hegemonic fascist state, rather that Trumpism was a fascist *movement* and asked the question, “What if Trump just says ‘fuck you’ to the law and succeeds in dragging key institutions along with him?”
Personally, I never thought the issue of Gramscian hegemony/consent was relevant simply because controlling those key institutions renders it irrelevant. A fascist regime can quite happily co-exist with the non-compliance of half the population. Indeed, as we see, such a regime is dependent on and energized by citizen non-compliance, because they’ve now secured control of the necessary levers of power to mobilize against troublesome citizens and, crucially, claim legitimacy for such actions.
One thing that probably nobody foresaw was the total emasculation of the legislative branch as a mechanism of resistance or even of political significance. The impeachment hearings seem like a century ago, a remote time when people paid attention to elected officials and considered them a force in politics. Civil society is still standing, but does it stand a chance against a mind-blowingly immense, executively controlled security edifice that refuses to disobey illegal orders?
The part that stayed with me was John talking about how we can see the chess moves, so to speak, and know which problems this administration is going to face - even if they may not realize it themselves. As someone who lives in novice territory when it comes to understanding political theory, I would love more conversations or articles that outlines what is going on from that perspective. As of now, my understanding is fuzzy at best.
Where the bulk of mainstream news fails its audience, myself included, is framing current events more towards the legality of everything. The problem with legal framing, as mentioned here, is legal experts will say "they can't do that, it's illegal", and the conversation stops there. I strongly suspect this is why mainstream news, and by extension its audience, got duped into the narrative during the election that Trump 2.0 would just be another Republican presidency. (See also this recent article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/magazine/legal-experts-trump-justice-department.html ).
All this to say that I very much appreciated this conversation, and came away with a much greater understanding of the situation we all find ourselves in.
But hey, at least we taught old man Joe a lesson.