Ep. 84: How Claims of “Sowing Discord” Are Used to Silence Criticism of Power
Added 2019-07-24 14:54:51 +0000 UTCFreshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taking to Twitter to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, we are told, “plays into the hands of Trump.” Russians are using Black Lives Matter and anti-fracking activists to “sow discord,” insists CNN. We must “be united” rather than “divided.”
Everywhere we turn we are told by high-status pundits that we shouldn’t air our criticisms of power at this particular moment with any reasonable degree of severity lest our mutual enemies exploit these divisions to empower themselves.
We are told again and again that progressives criticizing party leaders is helping Trump. That fighting Trump’s racism is merely “playing into his hands,” that we shouldn’t attack other democrats in the primary too harshly lest it “give us four more years of Trump.”
But there’s a major problem with this: There’s no evidence that intra-party fighting loses elections or assists the "other side." In many ways, it may actually help engage voters and make them feel heard, rather than viewed as box-checkers for the already anointed.
We are joined by Maximillian Alvarez of the podcast Working People.
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Guest
Maximillian Alvarez is the host of the podcast Working People. His writing can be found in The Baffler, Current Affairs, In These Times, Truthout, and Boston Review. He is a dual-PhD candidate in History and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.
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Show Notes
Democrats Should Unify Behind AOC, Not Pelosi
Cenk Uygur | July 21, 2019 | The Wall Street Journal
Will ‘The Squad’ vs. Pelosi Be A Big Problem For Democrats In 2020?
Sarah Frostenson, Julia Azari & Nate Silver | July 17, 2019 | FiveThirtyEight
To Media, No Democrat Can Possibly Be Right-Wing
Alan MacLeod | July 17, 2019 | FAIR
Kamala Harris: Kaepernick backlash was 'not a thing' until Russian bots 'started taking it on'
Eric Ting | July 13, 2019 | San Francisco Chronicle
Pelosi feud with AOC, Pressley sows division among Democrats
Lisa Kashinsky | July 11, 2019 | Boston Herald
Excerpts from “Working People”
Maximillian Alvarez | December 3, 2018 | Current Affairs
Antifascism and the Left’s Fear of Power
Maximillian Alvarez | May 16, 2018 | Current Affairs
Clifton B. Parker | May 12, 2016 | Stanford News
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here.
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Comments
when you first subscribed patreon sent you an rss link for that can be used in any podcast app
2019-08-16 23:00:11 +0000 UTCguest links are broken. appears to be syntax.
2019-08-03 13:03:04 +0000 UTC"you know I think the left has had many of it's own debates about this for a long time. We've talked about whether or not twitter and the arab spring were/could be kind of linked as much as people made it out to be." Is that not true that there has been a debate among the left on this topic? To be honest I don't quite understand your criticism. He doesn't even mention the idea behind the article you linked to. It could be that he was talking about something like this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/exists-demobilise-opposition-twitter-fails-arabs-190716080010123.html I don't know, either way, I don't see a problem with him mentioning that twitter and the arab spring caused discussion among the left. and i guess i'm not offended that they didn't call him out on it
Emma & Brian
2019-07-28 07:47:22 +0000 UTCIs there a hidden soundcloud feed for the news briefs or some kind of link I can load into my podcast app on my phone?
2019-07-26 04:38:29 +0000 UTCSecond is your guest throws out a throw away line about the Arab Spring possibly being a social media influenced grassroots uprising, now you guys are media critics that are very good about calling out the war machine, tracing back statw dept. ops with research, and emphasizing the impact of lies coming out as the truth purely by redundancy so throw away lines with loaded implications going unchallenged can mean a lot. So, leaving that line in is at least a pretty glaring editing mistake that at least should require a correction in the next episode if not an edit to this one because https://dissidentvoice.org/2015/10/the-arab-spring-made-in-the-usa/
2019-07-25 15:54:45 +0000 UTCA couple of things. First, the link to "Antifascism and the left's fear of power" doesn't work and you say it's current affiars in it's description, but it's the baffler https://thebaffler.com/latest/antifascism-power-alvarez
2019-07-25 15:51:40 +0000 UTCGoddamn you guys, this one was a banger
gethaunted
2019-07-25 06:24:52 +0000 UTC
