Episode 111 – Cancel This Podcast with Dan Kovalik

Macro N Cheese – Episode 111
Cancel This Podcast with Dan Kovalik
March 13, 2021

 

[00:00:00.030] – Dan Kovalik [music/intro]

The violence that was carried out over the summer was not linked to the demands of the masses. In fact, it was opportunistic and again, in some cases carried out, in fact, in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter to try to discredit it.

[00:00:21.370] – Dan Kovalik [music/intro]

People can be moved and the question is, are you going to try to do that, particularly amongst working-class people, or are you just going to write them off? Are you going to write off, for example, the nearly 75 million people who voted for Trump?

[00:01:26.700] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:34.530] – Steve Grumbine

All right. And this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. I have got a special program today, folks. I typically try to stay within the MMT movement and you see me deviate because we’re trying to expand the base here. We’re trying to expand the way we view all of our world. And today, something very important has come up lately. In the last several months to a year, cancel culture has really kicked in heavy.

It’s been around longer than that, I’m sure. But you see some of your favorite media hosts, you see some of your favorite activists, they do something wrong – they do something someone doesn’t like – and instantly there’s a herd of people canceling them, knocking them out of the equation. And I’ve been pretty vocal about this on social media, because if you did any reading, any theory, you understand that agitation is a key component to activism.

Without agitation, there’s not going to be anything like what you saw in 1917 with the Bolsheviks. There’s not going to be anything like you saw in Saint Domingue [French colony that became Haiti]. There’s not going to be anything like you’ve seen in Cuba. There’s not going to be anything like you’ve seen around the world when people, the workers, rise up and fight back with one voice, you’re not going to see that without agitation.

And agitators, by definition, are going to make you uncomfortable. That’s their job. And so as I was out there blathering about, saying my stuff, Dan Kovalik, a gentleman, a lawyer, a professor out of the University of Pittsburgh Law School, approached me and said, “I think I’ve written a book that you might just like.” And I said, “When can I get you on Macro N Cheese?” And he said, “Hey, any time.”

So I brought Dan with me. And so what I’m going to do, because there’s a longer bio I’d like to introduce Dan so you get his credentials and you understand how he’s an expert in this field, how he can bring some insights. And Dan, first of all, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:03:33.820] – Kovalik

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:03:36.010] – Grumbine

Absolutely. Go ahead and give us a more thorough introduction of who you are.

[00:03:41.770] – Kovalik

So I graduated from Columbia Law School in New York City in 1993, and after that I served as in-house counsel for the United Steelworkers Union near Pittsburgh for 26 years. Did labor law, did human rights law while I was there as well and retired from there a couple of years ago, and I’ve been writing mostly about US foreign policy issues.

And then I, too, got interested in this cancel culture issue because of something that happened here in Pittsburgh to someone I’ve worked for many years and I decided to write about it, but to link it also to what’s happening generally in U.S. politics and to talk about what I see as some of the shortcomings of the progressive movement in this country.

[00:04:37.100] – Grumbine

I appreciate that. I understand. Let me just be clear for those people that really exhort cancel culture as a tool of activism. Let me be clear, I know there are times, valid times, in fact, where people cross lines into fascism or cross lines into sympathizing with people that have done tremendously awful things, some of the transphobic behavior that’s out there.

But there’s an education process here. So I want to be crystal clear here that I on one hand understand why cancel culture exists. But on the other hand, I’ve seen the deleterious effects of it. So that’s predominantly my modus operandi in having this discussion with Dan. So with that, Dan, you spoke about an activist in Pittsburgh that was the genesis not only of your concern with this particular topic, but the catalyst for you writing your book. Can you tell us that story?

[00:05:38.780] – Kovalik

Yes, and I think it’s a story that’s emblematic of a lot of what’s happening around the US, so it involves a woman named Molly Rush. She’s 85 years old. She’s famous among the peace movement, she was part of the Plowshares Eight many years ago. She actually, without telling her husband and kids, she went with seven other peace activists, including the Berrigan brothers, you know them.

And they did an action at a nuclear bomb site to protest the US nuclear weapons program. And she was arrested, threatened with life imprisonment for the action they did. They actually hammered on a warhead, a nuclear warhead. She ultimately served 11 weeks in jail. She got lucky, but in any case, she became a bit of a cause célèbre and she ended up co-founding one of the oldest peace and justice centers in America, the Thomas Merton Center here in Pittsburgh.

And she was active with the Thomas Merton Center for many years after. It’s a 50 year old organization which, again, she helped found. And that gives you some background on her. So fast forward to 2020, summer of 2020. I believe it was May. And this is when the George Floyd protests are starting up. She reposts a meme on Facebook that was going around. And the meme was the photo of Martin Luther King.

And it simply said, “Never looted, never rioted, changed the world.” And I saw the post when she posted it, and I did think, “Wow, this is going to probably get her into some kind of trouble.” Again, I wasn’t offended by the meme. I think she was obviously saying something about some of the protests that had become violent and that she wasn’t happy about that.

She is a long term pacifist. And then about a week goes by, I don’t pay much attention to it. And then I see a letter we get as members of the Thomas Merton Center from the Thomas Merton Center board. It’s also posted on Facebook. And the long and short of it, it says, without explaining what she posted, so you have no idea what she posted…

[00:08:16.180] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:08:17.150] – Kovalik

It says that she posted a racist meme. And the upshot is that they will no longer work with Molly Rush, the person who co-founded their organization. So then I go back to Facebook and I see that, yeah, for the intervening week when I wasn’t paying attention, she had been attacked quite a bit on Facebook. And ultimately on Facebook, posts an apology saying she learned a lot.

But that wasn’t good enough. The apology wasn’t good enough. And again, the Thomas Merton Center disassociated from her and even a letter from some of the elders of the organization said, “Hey, wait a second, can we talk about this? This seems rather rash.” The board, mostly younger folks, pretty much just blew that off and said, “No, no, we’re going to stay the course and stand by this original letter.”

And interestingly, some of the posts in response to what was happening said, “Look, maybe you should just disband the Thomas Merton Center altogether. Maybe it’s just time to put that to rest – because of one meme by a person, Molly Rush, who at that point wasn’t on the board anymore, wasn’t an employee anymore. But their mere association with her was enough for people to say, “Well, maybe you ought to just put down this 50-year-old peace and justice organization.”

And this was an incredible thing, I mean, that I witnessed. And I quickly defended Molly on Facebook, but very few people did, because I think most people were afraid, because if you defend people who are canceled, you yourself will be canceled. But I understand that.

[00:10:08.800] – Grumbine

I can tell you that firsthand.

[00:10:11.500] – Kovalik

Yeah, absolutely. So the first couple of long chapters of my book talk about that incident and talk about the meaning of it and what is happening here and what is racist about what she posted. And what I get into – and stop me if I’m going too far afield – I get into the fact that, look, the truth is from a number of sources, including The New York Times, but others, we learn that, frankly, from what we can tell, most of the incidents of violence during these protests were carried out by young white men.

[00:10:47.930] – Grumbine

Infiltrators.

[00:10:48.890] – Kovalik

Yeah, well, both by anarchists who were part of the movement and by right-wing infiltrators.

[00:10:54.710] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:10:55.170] – Kovalik

And they all looked the same. They were all young white males, OK.

[00:10:59.060] – Grumbine

Who look the same. Right?

[00:11:01.520] – Kovalik

And in fact, we know that in precinct three in Minneapolis, you know, the police station that was burned down in the opening foray of the George Floyd protest, a Boogaloo Boy from Texas was arrested for being a part of that destruction of the police precinct.

And by the way, we know also from polls that the violence that took place – again, mostly by young white people, young white men on both sides of the political spectrum – it turned people off to the BLM Movement. It’s just a fact. It hurt the BLM Movement

[00:11:39.990] – Grumbine

It’s a shame, isn’t it?

[00:11:41.670] – Kovalik

It is. And I quoted in my book, in fact, leaders in particular from Portland, from the NAACP, from Black Lives Matter, who said this violence is happening in Portland every night at around midnight. And it’s largely again being carried out by young white males. It has nothing to do with black lives. This has nothing to do with black lives anymore.

I mean, these are African-Americans saying it. So the point that I try to get to is look, Molly in the end was right to have the concerns that she had. But the fact that she raised them at all was considered racist, and that’s what people said, “Oh, well, you can’t tell black people how they should liberate themselves.” And it’s like, well, again, that ignores the fact that a lot of what’s happening that Molly’s concerned about is not being carried out by black people.

And in fact, in Pittsburgh, the most notorious act of violence, which happened in the early days of the George Floyd protest, was the firebombing of a police car. And it turned out it was done by a young white male from a suburb of Pittsburgh. And so this would be something that Molly was seeing at the time that she posted that.

So the point that I try to make is, what is this about? OK, so in the end, Molly’s right about what she’s saying. It could be, again, easily directed towards white people who are carrying these things out. And you’re going to not only cancel her, but you’re going to cancel a 50 year old peace and justice group over this, even though, again, if you look at the facts, she was right about her thoughts?

[00:13:27.970] – Grumbine

Mm hmm.

[00:13:29.440] – Kovalik

And that’s where I begin the book and I go from there. But that’s essentially the flavor of what I try to get to. What is being accomplished by canceling people like Molly?

[00:13:38.950] – Grumbine

I want to just interject something here.

[00:13:41.050] – Kovalik

Yeah.

[00:13:41.560] – Grumbine

It’s a semi-longish quote from Martin Luther King for context here.

[00:13:45.960] – Kovalik

Yeah.

[00:13:46.450] – Grumbine

MLK said, “But is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible of me to do that without at the same time condemning the contingent intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.

And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last 12 to 15 years. (And now we can add another 50 on that.) It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that the large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

That is one of the most powerful quotes. And for folks that are trying to get some context around this, I just want to make sure you understand the MLK quote that really drives that whole concept of the riot. So I wanted to interject that.

[00:14:55.080] – Kovalik

You know, that’s a great quote and by the way, a lot of people who attacked Molly quoted from that. And again, it’s the legitimate thing to raise that Martin Luther King, while he himself was a nonviolent political activist, as you quote, did not condemn all violence because he did understand that it was being carried out by desperate people.

[00:15:19.900] – Grumbine

Amen. Yes.

[00:15:21.690] – Kovalik

By the way, when the protests initially started, I said the same thing. I mean, I was saying, of course, this is understandable and I linked it to the pandemic and the fact that we got for all the troubles, people are going through a grand total by then of twelve hundred bucks. People were not being taken care of. People were dying.

They continue to die and we continue to get no money, right? Of course, people are mad. Of course, they’re going to carry out acts of destruction. OK, so that’s a fair point. But I think that as the protests went on and I do talk about this and this is probably where the book gets more controversial, is I say, look, as the protests go on and as some of the violence continues and again, mostly by young white males, not by the desperate…

[00:16:12.050] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:16:12.380] – Kovalik

People that Martin Luther King is talking about. In fact, there was a story in The New York Post about these five very rich kids, white kids who were arrested for looting and property destruction. So I said, look, it’s not of the same type necessarily that King was talking about. And by the way, if you look at some of the things that were destroyed, it’s troubling.

You know, it’s not just a police precinct or a Target Store in Minneapolis, which I, by the way, very early on said I’m fine with that if people want to destroy a Target Store. Why do I care? But if you look at what was destroyed in Minneapolis, there was a Native American community center that had just been built, at the cost a million dollars. That was burned to the ground.

There were, of course, minority-owned businesses that were burned to the ground throughout the United States. And again, some by young white anarchists, some by young white right-wingers who wanted to create a race war. But the fact is, there were a lot of casualties amongst the very people that these protests were claiming to support.

[00:17:28.540] – Grumbine

It’s funny you say that and I know this to be true. I’ve been to a lot of movement protests and direct actions and things like that. One in particular that stands out. It started at the beginning of the Trump administration was Occupy Inauguration. We were part of the DisruptJ20 crew that got arrested. And a lot of people were looking, staring down the barrel of life sentences. And it was just crazy. Right.

But we were out there marching in the streets. But yet you saw other people and they had masks on. But you saw them literally jumping on cars, throwing bricks through windows, and so you had two sides of this. Now, I’m not here to say that one way or the other. I’m just making the point that there was a lot of us that were there that were number one looking for the camaraderie and the solidarity of being in a movement together and joining arms.

On the flip side of that, you had the people there that were opportunists that were putting us all in a tight bind. If you have a shared understanding and a shared commitment to whatever you’re doing and you’re going to take action, and I’m not condoning violence, but to do that on someone else’s movement and jeopardize that, it’s a very similar look and feel to what you’re talking about, where the Black Lives Matter folks are out there literally trying to say, “Hey, stop killing us,” and other people, young white kids, some wealthy kids going there for the t-shirt and the selfie are creating violence.

And I think that that’s a huge dividing point that we’ve got to understand that people that are really trying to do direct action, they have demands. It’s not just random like that. There are certain things that you should see the difference. There is a difference between righteous protest and just simply going out there and smashing and banging and burning things down. It’s not to say that violence can’t happen in a justice righteous protest.

I’m saying that on the flip side, it happened at the DNC. I remember guys in these black outfits disrupting, infiltrators, causing problems. And this seems to be a relatively frequent occurrence. And there is a large segment of the population that won’t take the time to decipher what is what, and they’ll just lump everyone together and cancel that entire movement like Colin Kaepernick kneeling. Just an amazing amount of examples that we could go through. And I just wanted to interject that little bit of history.

[00:19:52.840] – Kovalik

No, it’s right. And this happens from time immemorial. You mentioned the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. I actually quote Lenin in my book who criticizes this type of thing, right?

[00:20:06.690] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:20:07.110] – Kovalik

Criticizes anarchists who assassinated a very unpopular government minister, which is at least directly related to the struggle. You know, he said, “Look, violence, or terrorism is what he called it, carried out that is not linked to the struggle of the masses is not helpful. It hurts the movement.” And by and large, the violence that was carried out over the summer was not linked to the demands of the masses.

In fact, as you say, it was opportunistic. And again, in some cases carried out, in fact, in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter to try to discredit it. And again, if we don’t honestly talk about that and talk about how to handle that for future protests, we’re in deep trouble because…

[00:21:04.340] – Grumbine

You’re right.

[00:21:05.120] – Kovalik

Yeah, we will not win. And what did happen is so the BLM movement, which was very popular at the beginning of the George Floyd protest, you had large support from the American population, began to lose support as the protests went on. And a lot of it was due to the perceived violence that people were seeing and again we know, and I mentioned this in the book because it’s important to mention, we know studies show 93 percent of the protests were peaceful and that’s important.

[00:21:40.250] – Grumbine

I think that’s an A on the test, right?

[00:21:42.100] – Kovalik

Yes, exactly. But at the same time, the same study mentioned there were like 9,000 protests over the summer, which is incredible and laudable. But three percent of 9,000, it’s actually not insignificant.

[00:21:57.850] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:21:58.990] – Kovalik

I took a calculator out, determined that would make 270 not peaceful protests. Well, that’s not insignificant, right?

[00:22:06.940] – Grumbine

No.

[00:22:07.510] – Kovalik

So people saw this, and it didn’t play well in Peoria, let’s just say, you know, I can honestly say that even though people were protesting in places like Peoria, there were people protesting – a BLM protest – in Hazard, Kentucky. I mean, it was incredible the amount of support these protests got from the most unlikely places, which is a great thing.

But as the time went on, people began turning against them and it hurt the Democrats. It did. The blue wave that was predicted didn’t happen in part because of these things. And I think we just have to be honest about that.

[00:22:47.190] – Grumbine

I’m sorry, I want to interrupt because I want to inject some context from our angle with this, too. As the Bernie Sanders campaign was kneecapped before it really got off the ground, the collusion with the power elite and the Democratic Party truly took populism and progressivism and basically told it to fuck off. And when they allowed Biden, who hadn’t won a thing up to that point, and Kamala Harris, who dropped out without a single delegate to somehow or another get the nomination.

I think a lot of people really felt the double whammy of 2016 with the new whammy of a pandemic induced 2020. And I think the the canceling of people as a result of not jumping on the Biden bandwagon, even with Cheetolini, I think that righteous people that stood up for that were canceled as a direct result of that as well. It was all tied. There’s too much institutional thinking there to disassociate the BLM stuff from the very real what I’m going to call a coup d’état of the primaries and the general with Biden.

And I think that a lot of people that would have otherwise been sympathetic and very willing to go along because they have the progressive leftist perspective, would have fought against fascism much stronger. But there was just a whole lot of components coming together that made that BLM and George Floyd protest added to that, the people that wanted to march for Bernie as well.

[00:24:25.580] – Kovalik

Right.

[00:24:26.000] – Grumbine

There was a lot of things going on there that made a lot of people angry. And with the pandemic and people locked down, you had a lot more access that neoliberal living doesn’t normally allow people to do. Most people can’t go to a protest for days on end because they’ve got to get back to work.

[00:24:40.490] – Kovalik

Right.

[00:24:40.820] – Grumbine

But during this time period, with mass unemployment and the covid-induced poverty that occurred, you had a lot of other factors playing into this. So those protests, while they were certainly for George Floyd, there was a lot of other components that made up that rage that brought people to the streets. And I think that the convergence of several lines of thought may have also played a part in this. I just want to throw that out there.

[00:25:06.770] – Kovalik

Yeah. And I agree that that’s true. But I think one of the tragedies of the protest was that ultimately a lot of those other demands were abandoned because there was some cooptation of the BLM Movement – is the truth of it.

[00:25:22.850] – Grumbine

Amen. Absolutely.

[00:25:24.860] – Kovalik

And companies jumped on that bandwagon – Amazon, Target,

[00:25:29.270] – Grumbine

The NFL?

[00:25:30.530] – Kovalik

The NFL. Right. And, of course, the Democratic Party itself. And, of course, the right wing of the Democratic Party, because by the time the Democratic Party was endorsing the BLM protest, Biden was pretty much assured the nomination. And so what happened is, the truth is, the demands for Medicare for All which are still very popular demands.

Sixty-seven percent of the American people want Medicare for All, and the demands for more stimulus, the demands for more equitable economic rights, those were drowned out, in truth. I think that was a tragedy and they have not returned, by and large. You don’t see people out on the streets at this point demanding those things, which frankly surprises me a bit that they’re not.

[00:26:23.280] – Grumbine

Yup.

[00:26:23.280] – Kovalik

The other interesting thing and again, people like Boots Riley, who I saw interviewed, and I quote him in my book, expressed concern about and disappointment was that the BLM protests did not link themselves to the mass strike wave that was happening in America last year. There were over a thousand strikes throughout the US which got nearly no media attention.

It’s one of the largest strike waves in America since World War II, and again, there was very little linkage with those struggles. And again, I think to the discredit to the left, I’ll just say that, you know, and I think that that is one concern that I see happening. And again, it’s very controversial to say this, but that the issues of class that used to be important to the left really have been largely abandoned.

[00:27:21.710] – Intermission

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[00:28:19.000] – Grumbine

Yes, it’s really gone idpol [identity politics] in a big way. And it’s funny you say that because you made some great points because Lenin wouldn’t even talk about himself. There were very little bios because he’s like, I am the revolution. Everything that is me is the revolution. There’s nothing important about me other than I’m part of the revolution.

And today it’s a bunch of orphaned politics. It’s not to say that those things are not important and they are extremely important. They’re a part of my repertoire, my toolkit, in fact, a great deal of the podcasts we do talk about the struggle of African-Americans in the quest for reparations and a host of other things. But that said, we have completely pushed aside the class discussion as capital runs amok and people are basically wage slaves in this society and wages have not kept up to keep people whole.

So I think that that’s a very important thing. Most people don’t have theory either. Most people haven’t bothered to read any of the theory of that whole movement because they’ve been so Red Scare conditioned to just reject it outright, that to have a class-based understanding, to have a class consciousness and take politics through a class lens requires a little bit of understanding of theory and materialism.

[00:29:36.190] – Kovalik

Yes. And of history, again.

[00:29:38.320] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:29:38.800] – Kovalik

You know, people who invoke Martin Luther King, many don’t know or they forgot that he died in Memphis supporting the Memphis garbage collector strike. Martin Luther King talked about the two-headed monster of antilabor and racism. And yet now, again, people like Adolph Reed, for example, who’s an African-American, a long time social justice activist, a Marxist.

He’s been canceled because he’s been claimed to be a class reductionist simply because he cares about class at all. And you see this happening to a lot of people still. I don’t know if you know about this incident, but it made The New York Times that Reed was, in fact, canceled from the Democratic Socialist of America event because of an article he put out shortly before his planned talk.

Which said that, look, race is obviously an important component of what’s happening in America, including in the pandemic, that more African-Americans are dying, more Latinos, more Native Americans, he said. But we also can’t ignore the class dynamics that cause this. And literally he was canceled because of this, because he even was just willing to bring class into the discussion.

[00:31:02.700] – Grumbine

It’s insane.

[00:31:03.720] – Kovalik

It’s insane.

[00:31:05.190] – Grumbine

Let me ask you this, because this is where the beauty of an intersectional movement that does take that bag of issues to the table with a class consciousness is vital because we talk about this frequently, the wedge issues that capital has put into any time they see whites and blacks working together in solidarity, to break up that ability to organize at a mass level.

And all you have to do is go back through time and you realize that if you go to sleep, I hate to bring Trotsky into this, but this is a guy who understood the constant revolution was required. You can’t go to sleep. And what happens? You see it in the French Revolution as well, the people that won their revolution. But then what ends up happening is that they started trying to govern and the loyalists, the monarchists started creeping back into the picture.

And without an understanding of that, again, my favorite go to is Bacon’s Rebellion, where you saw whites and blacks pre-revolution bonding together to take on the ownership class and they once again threw a wedge issue in there. They use all these little wedge things to ensure that there is never going to be a unification to be able to take that class struggle against the powers that be.

And it’s been highly effective because I have seen very few successful revolutions or even protests, protests as a form of revolution in its own right. And I’ve seen very few of them actually deliver anything other than slogans and T-shirts.

[00:32:39.570] – Kovalik

Yeah, particularly in the West and particularly in the United States. And I do think that what has happened. Again, there has been this real reaction against class analysis, even to the point that, again, as people like Adolph Reed point out, if you say the words working class, that’s now viewed as “white working class.”

Blacks are not even seen as part of the working class, even when they act as a class. Right? And this is just a perfect way to do, as you say, to prevent solidarity amongst working class people. And the one word I use throughout the book is Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” line. She talked about the deplorables in Middle America who were reactionary in terms of race and gender and that sort of thing.

Obviously, there are people in Middle America that fit that description, but there are many who don’t. And to write off all those people as racist and sexist really destroys the ability to create social change. Again, look at what happened over the summer. Look at places where people were supporting the BLM Movement. There were places in Middle America, in Kentucky, in West Virginia, in the South, where white people were coming out and protesting in support of black lives.

This was a profound thing. And to then write those people off as the deplorables, which I think happens in many ways, really just does a disservice to the ability to create real social justice. And in fact, you know, again, I give this example, the Molly Rush saga, that her family was referred to as white trash during this whole thing.

[00:34:32.320] – Grumbine

Hmmm.

[00:34:34.060] – Kovalik

And that’s kind of a mantra that’s used and people think they’re being progressive by doing that, when in fact the whole white trash pejorative has been used for years, again, against the white working class, against white poor people, in ways that have not been progressive at all. And again, I try to talk about that in the book, too, probably much to my chances of being canceled myself. But I think these things have to be said and they need to be talked about.

[00:35:06.060] – Grumbine

No, I agree. Let me bring us to something current that will play into this as well. I was on Jimmy Dore back around December 12th. Guy’s got almost a million subscribers – huge, huge audience. And like I said at the start, I speak on a subject in particular for Modern Monetary Theory that is very much kept under wraps. I mean, it’s having its moment in the sun right now because of the obvious contradictions based on the covid shutdown.

So as I go through this, I’m telling this on Jimmy Dore and well over 100,000 people saw it. And it was just a great moment. It’s right around the time of #forcethevote. Jimmy is just starting to amp up his force the vote, and Jimmy’s being an agitator. He’s being a disruptor. And this is one of those things where, you know, you’re not going to be the fun guy in the room. You know, people are going to be angry at you. It’s a tough role to play. And

[00:36:04.310] – Kovalik

It is.

[00:36:05.000] – Grumbine

Hats off to the agitators, right? Agitators have the toughest job in the world. You’ve got to be willing to be hated because a lot of people that you would like to like and play cards with them maybe snuggle they’re going to hate you because you’re pissing off their favorite politician or you’re saying things that are disruptive, but you’re there to make a point.

You’re there to make things stop so they hear what you have to say. And it just started amping up and it did get out of control. But I understood the agitation for force the vote that in and of itself made a lot of sense to me. Did I appreciate every way he did it? No, but you’re not supposed to appreciate an agitator. And so for me, I do appreciate the agitator because I am an agitator at times myself. But I went out there and I represented Jimmy.

I said, “Hey, listen, I’m not here to tone police what he’s saying. I don’t have to like every word he says. I don’t have to agree with every shot he takes. But I agree in principle that we must take action other than wait for these politicians to do something.” He’s being unequivocal. You must do this. And he’s willing to take the bullets for it. Hats off to him for being willing to take the bullets to deal with these other people. I haven’t seen any evidence that the Democratic Party is moving that way. Biden said, “To hell with you guys. I’m not doing any of it.”

[00:37:23.780] – Kovalik

I agree with you. And I think if we needed any more signs of that, we got it with the attack on Syria. Biden made it clear not just to the world, but the American people that, hey, I’m going to bomb another country. That’s going to be a priority before I’m going to get you your fourteen hundred, which I promised you would be 2000 and now maybe fourteen hundred by March or April. But that’s not my priority, even though I told you that that’s my priority.

[00:37:52.390] – Grumbine

So $2,000 checks day one man. Get these guys and baby, I’m going to go for it. And you know what? You watch the people that are running cover for Biden and Harris. And there are people that I care about and love. It makes me feel a little sick inside and out.

[00:38:09.100] – Kovalik

Of course. And you should. It’s sickening. It is objectively sickening. And again, to cancel someone like Jimmy Dore who is basically on the correct side.

[00:38:20.560] – Grumbine

Look, I am completely and utterly open to criticizing anybody and everybody at any given time without thought. Right?

[00:38:27.690] – Kovalik

And we should be yeah.

[00:38:29.160] – Grumbine

And Jimmy’s got plenty to be criticized about. His support of Tulsi Gabbard to me is laughable. That’s one of the areas where he and I, if I ever talk to him about Tulsi, I would dress that down. But so what? We disagree on that. Right?

My concern is really more about the movement instead of the movement focusing on the concept of Medicare for All or even Nancy Pelosi, the queen of neoliberalism, holding the keys to allowing this to even get to a vote, to me, the focus of activists should have been that, but instead what it became the focus of what “I don’t like Jimmy Dore’s tone.”

[00:39:05.220] – Kovalik

Right.

[00:39:06.090] – Grumbine

“He’s divisive.” And this whole divisive thing is a gaslighting ploy to stop you from speaking out. Now, don’t get me wrong. Again, Jimmy made many mistakes, in my opinion, but from purely an activist standpoint, the activist canceled him over tone instead of the substance of his argument. And I think that that’s a damn shame.

[00:39:28.110] – Kovalik

Well, it is. It is. Absolutely. And it concerns me again, where a guy like Jimmy Dore or like Molly Rush are basically treated equally to someone who’s in the Ku Klux Klan that they can just be written off in that way.

[00:39:44.250] – Grumbine

I want to ask you real quick. The horseshoe theory in politics. The further left you go, the closer you get to the right. And the antiestablishment thing certainly unites people and it can be confused for common cause. But there is a difference between fascism and communism or leftist thinking.

And I think that once you get to that point, that blurring of the lines, there is a little something to be said, if you will, for understanding that a guy seeking to cut spending and reduce benefits and put you out on your bootstraps versus a guy who’s looking to spend, spend, spend, give you basic needs, then change society to make it equal, I think there is a chasm of difference there.

And so I think that there is something to be said for the whole, hey, let’s not go red brown here, gang. There is an element to that. But that whole thinking places politics over class. And I think the class struggle is where it’s at. I think it’s the only way forward because we will never come up with the numbers to change society without it.

[00:40:47.570] – Kovalik

Right. Well, that’s absolutely right, and it’s complicated because, again, people can be moved, can be changed, can be brought around. And the question is, are you going to try to do that, particularly among working class people, or are you just going to write them off? Are you going to write off, for example, the nearly 75 million people who voted for Trump, even though a significant percentage were people of color who voted for him.

I think it ended up being like 18 million people or something? If you can’t try to reach those people, there’s no way we can win, right? And I’ll just tell you an issue that I find interesting and people are accused of the red brown alliance over this. But what I’ve seen and again as I witness in the reactions to what happened with the bombing of Syria is that liberals have now become more accepting of war, than a lot of conservatives. Right?

[00:41:47.620] – Grumbine

It’s ridiculous. Right?

[00:41:49.400] – Kovalik

The American Conservative Magazine is one of the most principled anti-war magazines in America. That’s just a fact. And again, if people who want peace and want to fight war can’t work with those people, then we’re not going to win.

But that’s become an interesting thing, where the liberals who tended to be anti-war in the past now have been convinced that the US somehow, even though it’s racist and all this, is somehow this promoter of human rights around the world. Now, that maybe is a topic for another day, and I’ve written about that.

[00:42:22.340] – Grumbine

I’ll have you back.

[00:42:23.280] – Kovalik

A lot of conservatives see through that and I respect those conservatives. If we can just talk about cancel culture, I mean, I’ll go on a conservative talk show to talk about those issues. I’m not afraid to do that. And people have been criticized, for example, for going on Tucker Carlson, who again, on most issues, I don’t agree with him. Right?

But he’s been at least open to talking, including to some of my friends, about the US intervention in Venezuela, about the potential war with Iran. And he’s been very clear he’s against that. So why wouldn’t you go on his show to talk about that just because you don’t like the other things he likes? And again, that’s what cancel culture is about. Unless you agree with me on 100 percent of the issues, then you’re no good to me. How is that a basis for political work?

[00:43:13.260] – Grumbine

It’s insane. One of the ugliest things I’ve seen and most people probably don’t even realize this, but Stephanie Kelton had consulted with some Japanese politicians and economists and had offered up some insights to Modern Monetary Theory. Instantly, people were trying to stir up some nonsense about there she goes, talking to the right wing Japanese government.

And thank God there were good people there that shut that nonsense down. But a lot of people don’t have a posse out there waiting to shut down that kind of cancel crap. When I came out and talked about MMT the first time, nobody had heard of it. Heck, most people had not heard of Stephanie Kelton. She’d been behind the scenes, but a great many people had never heard of her.

Most of Bernie Sanders most loyal people had never heard of her. All these activists had never heard of her. So when I was saying these things, oh, my God, heads were exploding. But that’s the nature. I think a lot of this cancel stuff is not just opportunistic, but it’s also ignorance. Right.

You don’t really understand maybe a person’s position what they’re trying to achieve. And rather than get to know why they’re taking a set approach or trying to do something, your first instinct is, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s wrong. You’re gone. I’m done with you.”

[00:44:30.650] – Kovalik

Yeah, well, exactly, I agree. I heard this term for the first time yesterday on another interview, and I just want to throw it out there because it resonated with me. And it’s a Freudian term, I believe, Freudian. And he used the term, the narcissism of small differences.

And what he said was that when you have different groups of people that, frankly, are very much alike, they will oftentimes focus on the small differences between them to divide them. To create a sense of us versus them and a sense of belonging with my group, right? It’s kind of like the Dr. Seussian thing where people go to war over what side of the bread to butter on, right?

And I see that again in a lot of this cancel culture where minute differences with someone who otherwise is a good person, who tries to be anti-racist, who tries to be feminist, etc., but again, don’t get the jargon completely right or don’t have all the nuances that we expect others to understand, that those types of people are called out and shamed to me seems like the functioning of this narcissism of small differences. And it’s not a pretty thing and it’s not a healthy thing.

[00:45:50.380] – Grumbine

No, not at all. I had an instance here where I was thinking so many people in general start from a position of contempt. It doesn’t even make it beyond niceties. You already start with this contempt. Martin Luther King said the white moderate likes order more than they like justice, and he said it more eloquently than that. But you get the point that everywhere along the way, these small differences, they’re used by media and government and these folks that are there to play the opposition. I think we plant these seeds.

[00:46:30.170] – Kovalik

Well, I agree. And we know this.

[00:46:32.060] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:46:32.720] – Kovalik

And we know the CIA, for example, supported the Postmodernist movement, which was this movement against Marxism in many ways. We know they sponsored the Paris Review and other allegedly progressive magazines to try to sway the cultural debate away again from a more Marxian view of the world. So I absolutely think that that is done. I think it’s done all the time to create the consent of the masses. And as you say, to keep people who otherwise would be allies at each other’s throats.

[00:47:13.930] – Grumbine

We’re going to start another podcast in the April time frame. We’re already working on it’s been in the works for about a month and a half now, and it’s called the S Word. And there’s a book by John Nichols out there that we didn’t know before we chose this title called The S Word. And it’s about the hidden history of socialism in America.

But we’re looking at this as a means of bypassing those jargony debates. There’s issues where somebody says the wrong thing. I liken this socialism world, unfortunately, a little bit to the Catholic Church. If you don’t know what happened at the meeting of the people’s or whatever in 1918, then you or whatever, and do I even want to try and figure it out?

And so the podcast is going to have about eight of us. And our goal will be to go through what struggle is. We’re not even to start with socialism. We want to start with struggle. And we’re going to go through the French Revolution and we’re going to take it on through.

And the idea here is to demonstrate that every one of these issues are things that we all agree on that we should be fighting for, that we want. Our goal is to not only enlighten and allow people to get away from the Red Scare, but to also get rid of the things that people don’t know any better of.

[00:48:34.060] – Kovalik

Well, that’s exciting. I will tune in for that for sure.

[00:48:37.840] – Grumbine

So I want to finish this off. We’ve been having a great conversation about cancel culture. And I guess my question to you is, what are some of your thoughts as you finished out the book? What are some of the key takeaways from your book that people might want to focus in on if they get to read this?

[00:48:56.240] – Kovalik

I guess my main message that I want to convey is, first of all, to treat others, particularly your comrades or people who want to be your comrade with compassion. And if they make a mistake or perceived mistake, something that you see is a mistake, but an honest one, instead of trying to condemn them, try to get them to be fired from their jobs, you take him aside and say, “Hey, you know, you want to say it this way, maybe you want to rethink that issue,” and you bring people along.

And I was raised Catholic in the Catholic Church, at least the more progressive part. The idea of redemption and forgiveness and conversion, they are important things, you know. And I give the example, of course, is Paul on his way to Damascus, right. He has this conversion experience, he becomes Saint Paul, right? Our goal should be to allow for that and allow for people to change.

And instead of mining people’s past for mistakes and then canceling them, which happens all the time, we have to allow for people to become better people, and I think the way to do that is not by finger-pointing. Again, it’s by compassion. It’s by rational discussion. And I guess if that’s the only message I had and it’s kind of a simple one, that’s what I would want to have people remember.

[00:50:28.460] – Grumbine

I want to give you one more thing to play off of. I started my life as a born again Republican.

[00:50:35.540] – Kovalik

As did I.

[00:50:36.530] – Grumbine

I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I listened to Rush every single day. I never celebrate death. But let’s just say the world is not the worst for having his voice off the air. Anyway, I voted Republican my entire life up until I voted for Ron Paul. And then that began my left swing and Ron Paul got me my anti-drug, anti-war movement checkboxes. It screwed up the economics because he doesn’t understand economics.

After all, he’s a libertarian, how could he understand? [laughs] But then after that, I moved further. I did a drive-by through the Democratic Party. Waved, because of Bernie. And now I would consider myself to be a fiercely progressive, independent leftist that wants to be a truth teller. But it all came as a result of I lost my job in 2009 during the great financial crisis.

And that spurred another podcast we do, which is The New Untouchables: The Pecora Files. But the point is, I went from being what I would have considered to be part of the radical right wing conspiracy and wore shirts saying such. I was happy. Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat. I was very Republican. So my conversion to the left of the last decade has been nothing short of miraculous. But it happened and it’s real.

And I am deeply studying theory. I am very active. I work seven days a week trying to promote positive leftist change in America. So it is very possible for people to change. It is extremely possible for people to change. Unfortunately, a lot of times it takes a cataclysmic event in their own personal life to be able to make them see what needs to be seen because we are stubborn beings.

What are your thoughts on that? Clearly, I voted wrong, whatever you would say. Is that not a case study in what you’re saying?

[00:52:28.250] – Kovalik

Of course. And I can give you many. I have a very similar trajectory. I was raised as a very conservative Republican, right-wing Catholic, loved Ronald Reagan. I had my conversion experience at an earlier age. And I give other examples in my book. When I went to law school, I learned of Hugo Black from Alabama, who was in the Ku Klux Klan.

And he later went to law school, he became a senator, I believe. And he was a right-wing senator, then he got nominated to the Supreme Court and he had a conversion experience. He ended up voting with the majority in Brown vs. Board of Education. And they said of him, when I was in law school, when he was a young man, he wore a white robe and scared black people.

When he got older, he wore a black robe and scared white people. And again, you have to allow for that sort of thing. You have to see that people are capable of that kind of change and that’s a very obviously extreme form of conversion. But it’s not rare. And again, maybe I seem Pollyanna-ish, though I also give the example.

There was a guy – I’m forgetting his name – but there is an NPR story, an African-American guy who went around converting KKK members and he collected their robes after he convinced them to quit. And he converted like 200 of these guys. And I’m not telling people to do that. Right?

[00:53:53.360] – Grumbine

That’s a special calling, man.

[00:53:56.300] – Kovalik

That’s a special calling. But all I’m saying is if that can be done, certainly the less extreme cases of people who are with you 95 percent of the way, you should be able to deal with those people. And again, that’s the key here.

[00:54:14.260] – Grumbine

I love it. So folks, this was a great deep dive into cancel culture. Please get Dan’s book, Cancel This Book. Dan, tell us where we can find that.

[00:54:26.020] – Kovalik

Pretty much everywhere. And you can preorder now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble website. There’s some indie ones as well. If you go to SkyHorsePublishing.com and you look for me and that book title, it’ll give you different options of where to get it.

[00:54:42.100] – Grumbine

That’s fantastic. So, Dan, with that, I want to thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I learned a lot. I really appreciate you validating some of my insights as well. And folks, we got a lot of work to do. I mean, we can’t win this alone. We need numbers. And let’s do ourselves a favor. Be gentle with each other.

Let’s try to bring each other to the finish line and not miss the idea that we’ve got to really focus on class consciousness as well. I don’t want that to get lost here. It’s a big component to this whole thing. So with that, Dan, thank you so much for joining me today. Friends, thank you so much for listening.  This is Steve Grumbine with Macro N Cheese.  We’re out of here.

[00:55:25.290] – Ending credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.