Conspirituality

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What is going on with Gen-Z revolutions across the globe right now?

A student-led movement in Serbia just organized a massive nonviolent protest movement against widespread corruption and democratic backsliding. Despite state control of the media, violence and intimidation from government thugs and organized crime, and election interference, they won an overwhelming victory, sending their proto-authoritarian dictator packing.

This is in the wake of similar victories in Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. But it turns out that American first daughter Ivanka Trump and her real estate heir husband may have lit the fuse on both the Serbian movement and the ongoing Flamingo Revolution in neighboring Albania. They’ve been attempting to build Gulf State-funded corruption-magnet multi-billion dollar luxury hotel resorts in those countries—and the local kids are having none of it!

Julian looks into how the nonviolent protest movement that ousted Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic informed the strategies and success of the Student List just this last month, leading to the CANVAS model that trains pro-democracy activists worldwide. He contrasts this with less effective, undisciplined approaches that research says often accomplishes very little, while playing into the hands of authoritarians, stopping the wider population from participating.
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First, the blue wave. Then, Russell Brand gets convicted of rape and sexual assault. Derek and Julian talk about the meltdowns going on in America right now.
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For the moment, a sigh of relief ripples across America, perhaps even across the world. Seats that have not gone Democrat in decades did so across the country on Tuesday. Voters appear to have finally rejected MAGA. But from our perspective, a cult leader can only lie, cheat, and do the opposite of what he promised his followers he'd do, for so long. His now betrayed populist appeals to affordability and avoiding endless foreign wars appear to have been the final straws. Not January 6, not election tampering, not pulling out of global climate agreements, not the Ukraine-aid fiasco, not his criminal indictments, not even the actions of proto-fascist ICE thugs—the price of gas.

Well, we'll take it. For now.

We debrief and decompress from a night when the polling data over-delivered instead of delivering a gut-punch. Derek looks at the MAHA implications, Matthew notices a trend toward progressive populists reclaiming of patriotic symbolism, and Julian covers what and who to keep an eye on as the highly-organized anti-democracy election-conspiracists begin their assault on these results.

Show Notes

RFK Jr. and MAHA Suffer Brutal Election Night Wipeout

Stage Set for Election Denial Chaos

Key Election-Denial Activists

8 Things You Should Know About Trump’s Effort To Take Over Midterm Elections
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Julian interviews journalist Anand Giridharadas about his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. The book centers on the tragic death of Jordan Neely, a deeply traumatized, mentally ill, and unhoused former Michael Jackson impersonator who was put in a five-minute choke hold on a New York subway car by Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was acquitted on all counts.

Giridharadas spent three years investigating the stories beneath the high profile criminal trial. He takes readers on an immersive narrative journey that explores race, mental illness, homelessness, addiction, and the networks of support and care struggling within a failing system of social services.

Show Notes

Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City
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Matthew tracks the concept of "islamo-gauchisme," the French accusation that leftists are useful idiots for jihad. Pierre-André Taguieff's 2002 book on "new Judeophobia" is ground zero, and a forensic Twitter analysis has shown that far-right accounts pushed the term for years, until it was taken up by Macroniste ministers in 2020. The academic consensus is that it is a political slogan with no empirical reality.

But like any (potential) conspiracy theory, it also emerges from a constellation of partial truths: solidarity between leftists and the French immigrant working class, the contested influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on civil society, Mélenchon's pivot from friendship with the late Charlie Hebdo editor to an anti-Islamophobia position, and the LFI refusing to condemn October 7 as an act of terrorism.
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