[SPEAKER_02]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm G-T here of the nation magazine and I welcome to the time of monsters podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: This podcast is sponsored by the nation and is why the available on all podcasting platforms.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this week, the monster I want to take of is a cinematic one.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to talk about the movie, one battle after another, from fame director Paul Thomas Anderson.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's came out two weeks ago, and it's already championed to be one of the big movies of the year.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the movie features, I think, were the great monsters of recent filmmaking, which is Sean Penn as a Steven Lockjaw, a fascistic military officer who once [SPEAKER_02]: white supremacist group and is a very central figure in that movie and the movie itself raises all sorts of interesting political questions.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually been in sort of various stages of production for more than 20 years, but a Steven Spielberg said at the showing of the movie, [SPEAKER_02]: in some ways it's like more relevant now than perhaps when it was first conceived and when it was worked on a lot of the images in the movie of attacks by federal authorities against immigrants you know like they're very much what we're seeing on the daily [SPEAKER_02]: news, and the issues, the course of the movie, what is a proper kind of resistance strategy towards this authoritarianism, or fascism, I think that's an issue that a lot of us are struggling with right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very relevant movie.

[SPEAKER_02]: To talk about all this, I'm very happy to have on friend of the program, David Clion, who reviewed the movie for the New Republic, had some very interesting things to say about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's good to be here.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, do you want to give your basic take of the movie?

[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe just like a brief summary.

[SPEAKER_02]: Some of the discussions I should warrant ahead of time might get a little spoilery.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll try to avoid letting too many cats out of the bag, but I do recommend seeing the movie before listening to the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one thing is I went into this movie in, compared to a lot of people I know, a lot of my friends and I suspect you, gee, I went into it with less, I think of the relevant cultural capital that I might have had.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have never read pension, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a vague idea of what pension-esque means.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have never, so I've never read vine land, the novel.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is very loosely based on I read a Wikipedia summary of it just to see how it differentiated from the movie after I saw the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: maybe a little more than half of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, which is not enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen all the most recent ones, and I've only seen this one once.

[SPEAKER_00]: Several people I know have already seen this movie like two or three times and it's first two weeks.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I know you've seen it more than once, so it's...

Yeah, so I have seen the movie twice, yes, yes, yes, I have.

[SPEAKER_02]: I also recommend that, I have to think once people see it, I think a lot of them will want to see it more than once.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would like to see it again, but it sounds like you get more out of it the second time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a very detailed rich movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a blast, but I'm, and I didn't actually go in it intending to review it either.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was just seeing it to see what all the hype was about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the next day, our mutual friend, new Republican culture editor, Laura Marsh, was like, do you want to review this?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, I guess I have things to say about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: less in terms of like how is this as a pinch and adaptation or how is this in the Paul Thomas Anderson canon and more interested in how it relates to the current political moment which you were getting at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the specific angle I took there was actually something that even before I saw the movie I had been tossing around, talked about a little and a recent Jewish currents podcast I did right after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which is this fascination [SPEAKER_00]: how much both left and right, both the kind of fringes of the left and the all-powerful maga right, are obsessed with this concept of left-wing violence that barely seems to exist in reality in the present.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see it from Stephen Miller and Vance and Trump and all these right-wing propagandists, this fixation on the, [SPEAKER_00]: violent, deliberate left on Antifa and BLM like supposedly being financed by Soros and attacking people and it's supposedly their fault truly Kirk died and they're the ones who tried to kill Trump and all these all this stuff which you know [SPEAKER_00]: The truth is, these organizations are, I mean, it's almost a misnomer to call them organizations.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're decentralized tendencies.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are overwhelmingly non-violent.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no evidence whatsoever that sorrows or any other major progressive funder networks have backed any violent groups.

[SPEAKER_00]: Non-violence, I think, is baked in in my experience to how almost everyone I know in, you know, liberal to left circles.

[SPEAKER_00]: things about politics generally, which is one reason I think a lot of us feel really help helpless right now because we see an administration that is using all kinds of extra legal violence, massed ice agents who don't have to reveal their identity or show their [SPEAKER_00]: show warrants or anything, you know, the recent sweep and the Chicago apartment building where like kids were zip tied together, there was no even suspicion.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were immigrants, let alone undocumented immigrants.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have to belabor it, but like, [SPEAKER_00]: the amount of real physical violence that this administration has unleashed in the United States right now is sort of being projected on to progressives who can't do much more than tweet about it or march occasionally.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I do also see in like the fringes of you know left Twitter or whatever I will see people who kind of are unlike blue sky actually quite a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see people [SPEAKER_00]: like implying they would ever do violence, but they don't, it's like laughable that they would ever back it up, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like they'll, um, they'll, they'll do like guillotine memes or, or they'll, they'll make sort of cryptic jokes to the effect that they hope someone get shot or that they would celebrate if they did.

[SPEAKER_00]: But no one does anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: The actual, you know, it's very hard to ideologically place the Charlie Kirk killer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was erroneously labeled Maga, but I don't think that the case for him being on the left is particularly compelling.

[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly not part of any organized laughter taking any orders from anyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: He seems like someone who snapped.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, like all those sort of political violence we've seen, whether they're vaguely on the left or vaguely on the right, are really coming from lone wolves.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, people who kind of sort of self radicalize, often online, are very isolated individuals.

[SPEAKER_02]: And often individuals with very confused [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Luigi Manjoni, who is, you know, because he's so sexy and has such a great name, and because there's a certain coherence to who he chose to kill, I definitely think there are a lot of people on the left and even the center left to a certain extent who have kind of made a hero out of him.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to say under how many levels of irony, but Manjoni himself was not coming out of the left at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he was coming from a kind of like, [SPEAKER_00]: tech-normy centrist-contrarian place, but then he had bad experiences with the healthcare industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he decided to kill a healthcare CEO, but good luck linking him to any organized left force.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of which is just to say, like, I was struck like the, you have elements of the left that want [SPEAKER_00]: that have like fantasies of like a violent revolution that they that they're never going to back up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You also have the the right that's in power essentially openly fantasizing about a left-wing violent revolution that they can crush even more violently.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you have actual liberalism seeming really impotent all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really interested in how this is also made its way into fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we've talked about indoor, a terrific show before, which, you know, we don't have to talk too much about indoor, but we could just say, basically portrays, recognisably organized left-wing violence against a fascist regime and seems to justify it without, you know, without minimizing how horrible it can be.

[SPEAKER_00]: This movie, which we're going to talk a lot more about, also I think, [SPEAKER_00]: shows with some criticism, but also with a lot of celebration, left-wing violence against a fascistic American regime.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think that's it, Eddington.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eddington, yes, actually, which I just belatedly watched, because I was abroad when it came out, shows it's a little more complicated in the case of Eddington, but it certainly raises the the the [SPEAKER_00]: antifacoded, though it also suggests that it might be like a false front for tech companies, you know, with their own nefarious agendas.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, there's there's there's clearly a moment that we're having here where we're left with political violence that everyone's mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the truth is, as I say in my piece, the last time in the United States or the developed West, when I think any of this was real, like an actual real thing that was happening was the [SPEAKER_00]: you know, there's a period in the late 60s and into the 70s where there are real armed explicitly left wing violent movements that they're truly radical operating in western countries and most famously in the United States, the weather underground.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose you could say the Black Panthers and you know, the beta-minof gang, the Red Army faction in Germany and [SPEAKER_00]: and the provisional Irish Republican Army in the UK.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you could also say that the Palestinians of that year, or the Palestinian Liberation Organization was an actual left-wing radical group, unlike Hamas, which the right-off and tries to associate with the left not.

[SPEAKER_00]: completely insanely.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you could draw some like links there in terms of sympathies and in the current conflict with Israel, but but, but Hamas is not an ideologically left-wing organization.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he can also mention in North American context.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Quebec and the F.L.Q.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would not want to leave Canada out of the story at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, and so when you go back to that era, which is 50 or more years ago, you can see left wing political violence.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's clearly an influence on the aesthetic of the radical group, the French 75 in this movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure an influence on Pinsha in in [SPEAKER_02]: But maybe we can talk about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say, see something about that because I do actually think in terms of the movie we're talking about, there is a kind of weird anachronism and that comes from the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson, admired by inland, thought for many years of adapting it, but I was, you know, decided that it's an adaptable and then decided instead to like take elements of the story, [SPEAKER_02]: and bring it up to date.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, violent, unlike one battle after another, is very precisely historically situated.

[SPEAKER_02]: It takes place in 1984.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was written by Pinchan in the 1980s and published in 1990.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it is a book about the sort of tragedy of the American left in the 60s.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's to say, the main character, as in one battle after another, [SPEAKER_02]: is a kind of brimmed out, 60 survivor, hippie, with a daughter, and he has a former partner who he had been involved with revolutionary activities with.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the movie charts, it's about the return of the repressed, but really it charts the shift from the 60s to Reaganism, how the idealism and hope and countercultural energy dissipated, waned, was suppressed.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's a lot of aspects of police suppression [SPEAKER_02]: co-option in the novel and so the novel has a kind of historically tragic view of things that you know there's this great moment of hope and then it all went awry and it's sort of tracing how the 60s went awry and ended up with Reaganism.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, Paul Thomas Anderson, in taking that preliminary raw material, but setting it very much in the 21st century, not with any real dates, but you know, it is like recognizably our world, you know, like he's creating a lot of anachronisms.

[SPEAKER_02]: The group, [SPEAKER_02]: in the film, the French 75, they use the tactics of the weather underground.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's to say sort of like, you know, bombing campaigns and back robberies that are a vanguardist, revolutionary violence designed to stir up the masses and provoke police repression.

[SPEAKER_00]: This also says that that that that that tick the title of the movie, which is a line used in the movie directly from the weather underground, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it bill airs, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I believe so, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, it's a weather underground group, but the actual political concerns are not the concerns of the weather underground, which is like sort of the Vietnam War.

[SPEAKER_02]: But are the concerns of the 21st century?

[SPEAKER_02]: So is there, you know, like believe in open borders, liberating immigrants, aid for detention camps, [SPEAKER_02]: abortion rights and sort of a challenge to white supremacy along contemporary cultural lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a group, you know, it has an anachronistic element.

[SPEAKER_02]: And even if one takes the chronology, you know, one tries to map on a historical chronology.

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't make a lot of sense because the group would have been operating.

[SPEAKER_00]: like around 2008, 2009, you know, which is not a question because it's just as a basic structural note about the movie which the movie is like almost three hours long and the first third of it takes place in one time period that looks an awful lot like now and then the last two thirds take place 16 years after that and it also looks a lot like now and in fact the movie makes a point of not much has changed in these 16 years except for certain individual characters.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I mean, that's exactly it.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the main characters, who is a revolutionary profitee of Beverly Hills, says like an voiceover after 16 years though, not much has changed.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is actually the significant difference with the print on novel.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because a print on novel is historically situated and is tracing a historical trajectory from 60's idealism to Reaganite dissolution.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas this movie essentially is set in a 16-year span that might as well all be, I don't even want to say 2025 more like 2026.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like if everything now just got like an inch worse but was recognizable and then 16 years passed and it was still like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean to use a little bit of academic jargon.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's two ways of looking at society.

[SPEAKER_02]: this happened, this happened, this happened, mapping change.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a synchronic way, which is that there's a social structure that's in place, and it's now, it's an eternal now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the movie does sort of take a synchronic view.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that this has thrown some reviewers off [SPEAKER_02]: in a sense that, you know, they wanted, they're confused, like how could this, like, where, how did these in acronyms add up?

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that one way to think about the movie is that it has an element.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not as harshly satirical as Stanley Kubrick's Dr.

Strangelove, but like Dr.

Strangelove, it is a stylization of reality.

[SPEAKER_02]: that it's taking elements that exist in the real world but presenting them in a highly stylized way to accentuate and really catch the drama.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Paul Thomas Anderson, like when he was first starting as a director, you know, just to ground this, he went to England and he spent time with Stanley Kubrick while he was making his last movie, Eyes Wide Shot.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's definitely a kind of cover connection here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think a character like Stephen Lockjaw is an heir to General Jack D.

Ripper, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That sort of over the top toxic militaristic masculinity.

[SPEAKER_02]: So so if the movie isn't offering a...

[SPEAKER_02]: chronology, but on a synchronic view, what I think is offering is a synchronic view of different types of revolution.

[SPEAKER_02]: And not, you know, things that have happened in the recent past but things that could happen that have historically have happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's one possibility of our response to fascistic violence, which is the weather underground response.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a sort of response that is of a vanguardist, a revolutionary group that's organized in conspiratorial cells with the aim of creating spectacular displays of violence in order to disrupt the system.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now, I mean, I just to go back to something you said, often like the weather underground is sort of confused with like the black Panthers, but the black Panthers, particularly in the late 60s, when all of this was first shaking down, there was a very critical of the weather underground.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Fred Hampton, we know, once famously said that their strategy is custeristic, that's the same, they're like, you know, custer, they're going to sort of like mad, they think that will like a suicidal clinical strategy, because [SPEAKER_02]: from the point of view of the Black Panthers, what you have to first get is community organization.

[SPEAKER_02]: You have to get the community on board and build community solidarity.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you get a base of dual power that you can use to challenge the powers that be.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the weather underground strategy was controversial to say the least in the 60s and 70s.

[SPEAKER_02]: As you said, the left basically after the weather underground was when it's a hiding, was crushed, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: a band and that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it remains open as a possibility.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in terms of the plot of the movie, I mean, I think one of the interesting things that happens is that, you know, once you get the police refreshing, once you get the Lockjaw character, [SPEAKER_02]: going after the hero and his daughter, we're shown an alternative model.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the hero is rescued by and helped by character played by Benicio del Toro.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the main hero is Bob Ferguson, former revolutionary with a teenage daughter, and they're being stalked by...

We should note that Bob Ferguson is a fake name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not his name in the first part of the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but being stuck by this a fascistic agent who has a very personal interest in going after Bob Ferguson and his daughter Willa.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Bob Ferguson, as he separated from his daughter, is helped by a character played by Benicio Del Torra, who is a Sensei Sergio St.

[SPEAKER_02]: Carlos, [SPEAKER_02]: and the credit teacher of the the daughter will but who more importantly [SPEAKER_02]: runs a kind of what's described in the movie as a Latino Harriet Tubman situation.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's as an underground railroad to help immigrants during these police crackdowns.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this isn't even like spell load.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of we see this sort of almost behind the scenes while he's carrying out his activities.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the Sensei character, and you know, like Sensei, like teacher, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a karate teacher, but he's also like the kind of mentor to Willow, Willow, and as meant to be a kind of [SPEAKER_02]: a teacher or guide to potential resistance.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this resistance network is the opposite [SPEAKER_02]: in many ways of the French 75.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a vanguardist revolutionary group.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is a communal, mutual help group where, instead of working by codes, everyone kind of has local knowledge, which they share amongst themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the sense of character keeps telling people, you know what to do, meaning that they know how to operate their system of underground tunnels and they know how, if someone is captured by the police who are their friends in the social services [SPEAKER_02]: released.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that, you know, politically, I would say the movie is really a synchronic diagram of these two different types of forces of resistance, two different models of resistance politics, communal self-help versus vanguardist revolutionary selves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it does make sense and it's something I get out in the review.

[SPEAKER_00]: I talked to some friends about it and there were some open-ended debates about [SPEAKER_00]: whether the movie is taking a clear side there, or in which case it's probably more for what Benicio del Toro is doing, the sensei, or whether it's saying we need a range of tactics to confront this sort of fascist Trumpian reality that the movie [SPEAKER_00]: clearly is commenting on and even though it was made before Trump returned to power, I think, you know, we've been living in the shadow of the first Trump administration long enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, one of the major ways you know it's now that's indicated from like some of the first shots the movie are the mylar like heat blankets that the prisoners all have, which are actually shown several times they're playing with them at one point.

[SPEAKER_00]: there's kind of like aluminum foil looking blankets that they have when they're in these prison cells, which were which have been around since I'm not exactly sure when, maybe the early 20 teens, they started appearing in media, but they were very frequent site during the first Trump administration.

[SPEAKER_00]: when there was all this coverage of child separation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I assumed that was the primary aesthetic influence on all the detention center scenes in this movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're seeing them again with the new mass detentions they're doing and you know, allocate or alcatraz and so on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that the movie is definitely trying to show us [SPEAKER_00]: the different things we might have to do to fight Trump.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that it's necessarily saying like go form an arm cell right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also, well, and also interestingly, the French 75's violence is not like it's mostly disruptive violence.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been like, perfidia does kill a security guard, but she does it like, [SPEAKER_00]: She's not supposed to do it, she doesn't want to do it, she does it because it's a stressful situation and she's going through some stresses and it's a screw up and it gets them all in worse trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: But as a rule, they're not out for blood, they're out to make statements, they're out to liberate immigrants and do kind of spectacular displays of anti-authoritarian.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know, I mean, like, as you again align to them with the weather underground because I mean the weather underground would like, you know, for a head of time to places that they're going to bomb to let them know, you know, like a bomb is going to go off, you know, right, you should clear that building.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, as with the French 75, I mean, there were a lot of people like that killed because of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was not like intentionally, so it was like a screw up and in one famous case, they blew themselves up.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, interesting, there's a lot of their highest profile veterans like ended up.

[SPEAKER_00]: becoming basically lips, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like what we mentioned bill errors, but like what is bill errors, but like a guy in Hyde Park who could socialize with Obama, which you know, you had the right back in 2008 being like Obama's terrorist neighbor bill errors But the real joke isn't that Obama pals around with a terrorist.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that bill errors is just a guy in Hyde Park now [SPEAKER_00]: right, he's just like a normal bougie guy in a university area, despite what he was up to decades ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or, you know, Kathy Bowden's son ran for office in San Francisco and held it briefly, which he and then he was kind of demonized out of office by the right, just about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like, I feel like the legacy of the weather underground is kind of like a around and everyone's like collective memory and the right loves to bring it up all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They love this notion that the left might get really violent, but even for like surviving senior people involved, it's like [SPEAKER_00]: it's like the entire it's it's remarkable how much that new left moment is over and and even now when the right is far more repressive and in domestically than I think uh it well I don't know we haven't had our Kent State yet but you know like uh [SPEAKER_00]: at least arguably things are uglier now than they were in the 60s and 70s in some ways or certainly could get uglier.

[SPEAKER_00]: So far, you're not seeing this kind of reaction.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the French 75 are kind of aesthetically styled to resemble, I think, antifa or the rights paranoid notion of an antifa [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, I don't know, I mean, it's a, I mean, and Tiva didn't engage in sort of, people, you know, like it's not a group, it's an ideology or a worldview.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are people influenced by Tiva thinking who engage in sort of direct action, but even that was often like, you know, like, you know, in your face confrontations with neo-Nazis, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as we record this, I think, there's like Steven Miller is trying to, you know, send stormtroopers to like crack down [SPEAKER_00]: anti-IS demonstration in Portland that even the local police say is like an incredibly sleepy nonviolent, you know, couple people with placards kind of demonstration.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, important.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the images that we saw on Thursday night were, you know, people dressed up as furies as [SPEAKER_02]: dragons and unicorn dancing in the street and often dancing with the police so it doesn't quite much Stephen Miller's nightmare and the other thing I was going to say about Antifa is that actually that period of direct confrontation basically ended with Charlottesville like after Charlottesville people influenced by Antifa have taken a much [SPEAKER_02]: more low key approach and a lot a lot of what they do is simply research like they you know they try to find out who the local Nazis are in the right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well this is why they all mask they're afraid of doxing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know that does speak to like how even though left wing violence is not [SPEAKER_00]: is like barely exists in the present.

[SPEAKER_00]: The right seems to live in like very real terror of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, oh yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I mean, it is the case.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just earlier this week, President Trump had, who's that guy in the go?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But who's the whole thing is is sort of threat of like left wing violence and T5.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it is I mean, it's a kind of imaginary full I might be interesting to think about why it holds [SPEAKER_02]: Such a powerful hold on the imagination.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I do think that there is a fair amount of political violence in the United States But it is not a long ideological lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is no, I am a previous guest that I can clip and steam and I talked about this at some left But I mean, I think Ken's basic conclusion, which is that a lot of these shooters are similar to school shooters They are like sort of a social [SPEAKER_02]: kids who grew up really online, are really into memes, have kind of like confused political categories or mix of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: For example, if you were Charlie Kirk, I mean, there's there, he wasn't maga, and he seems to possibly know how he did grow up in like a deep red amount.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he didn't grow up in where he learned to have a bad end.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was also, it seems like a real fan of the second amendment.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I mean, it's not just the fact that he did the shooting, but that he was.

[SPEAKER_02]: like a real gun person, as well as also being, you know, we don't know the the full motive.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, what has been suggested is that he was upset at Charlie Kirk's home before we had transphobia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right, or transphobia.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like, you know, but there are people like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's very important to understand.

[SPEAKER_02]: that like, you know, this sort of, you know, the clear cut left-right politics that one sees, you know, washing your new shows, and also on movies like this, like, in the actual existing America, like you get people that are like a mix of a wide variety of ideas.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have, if you have coherent right or left politics or sensuous liberal politics or whatever, there are still despite how ugly things are getting, like legitimate, [SPEAKER_00]: legal, organized political activities.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I hope this remains true for the left in liberals, but it's still basically true.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are legitimate ways for you to channel your energy into political campaigns and, you know, boycott campaigns and nonviolent protesting and running candidates for office.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's writing angry op-eds in tweeting.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are all like, [SPEAKER_00]: valid things you can do.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people who turn to violence are the people who feel they have no other option, which is why I've been low key predicting that we're going to see an increase in all kinds of political violence as the political system seems increasingly unresponsive and authoritarian.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: and possibly minority and in its aims, it would not actually shock me if we do see an increase in what I guess you could call left-wing violence in the next few years, which I would attribute wholly to the fact that to how Trump is governing and how the right has, you know, basically suspended what we understood the Constitution to be in a lot of ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think people will snap [SPEAKER_00]: And we may see some ugly things.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a threat or a plan, or something I hope happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just something I would analytically based on history, expect might happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the rights fear of it suggests on some level that they know that, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, much as like the apartheid regime in South Africa, like [SPEAKER_00]: feared that if they ever gave black people basic political rights, then they would be the oppressed ones, the Jim Crow South, or in Israel they assume that Palestinians would slaughter them if given the chance.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the right has violent intentions toward the left that are [SPEAKER_00]: justified in part by their authentic if ludicrous feeling that the left has the same designs on them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also, I think I could channel Corey Robbins' reactionary mind, thesis is sort of classic work on what conservatism is or what reactionary ideology is where he, you know, he traces it back to the French Revolution and says that, you know, essentially modern conservatism [SPEAKER_00]: comes out of hierarchies feeling threatened by the revolutionary violence of what in hindsight you could call the left and feels it needs to mobilize and co-opt a lot of the political strategies of the French Revolutionaries basically and turn them against anything resembling the left, anything resembling progress and that you can basically see the origin of all modern conservative politics in that.

[SPEAKER_00]: explains a lot about the current moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Steven Miller talks about how the country is being invaded by, you know, hordes of rapists and murderers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think he might actually believe that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think that's real, Tim.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's basically right there is a kind of [SPEAKER_02]: a fear although I mean the case is all like Miller I mean I think the basic fear is just like, you know, Mexicans existing, like in America, it's like it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it [SPEAKER_00]: if and and if by their existence like you know if they become the dominant political force no but I'm being even more like if you follow him online or you'd like see his TV appearances or whatever he is specifically he and and like all the the sort of right-wing swam seed wells and are obsessed with specific [SPEAKER_00]: Possibly real incidents in which, you know, in undocumented immigrant committed a grizzly murder or raped someone, they will blast out stories like that and be like, this is what they want to do to you and they, they main line this stuff so much that, I mean, you know, there are obvious logical responses you could make that in a population of millions occasionally someone is going to do something terrible or that, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: There are plenty of Americans, native born, white Americans, committing grizzly crimes, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is obvious stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't doubt that like Miller and Co.

[SPEAKER_00]: Inbibing this stuff all day, like kind of do believe that we are imminently threatened by these violent invading hordes, and that would justify some kind of similarly, or preventatively violent response.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a complex kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they seek out those stories, but they also believe in them.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're seeking, it's a motivated reasoning, but that's also very sincerely held.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and they live in sort of closed circuit epistemological bubbles, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you, when you follow certain kinds of people who are all obsessed with the same things, that kind of becomes your reality, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and in fact, I mean, similar example is how like in the current Virginia race, I mean, they're just the file we upset at a sort of democratic candidate, you know, who did have like these express slave violent fantasies in text messages, but I think they're almost overly obsessed or like like there's something where they really like are getting off on it as well because it's [SPEAKER_02]: And that's our justification of that fear.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to say like kind of return to the movie a little bit because there is an aspect, I mean, you're right, first of all, I don't think one should necessarily map out a clear political message because I don't think Paul Thompson is in that way that he has a message.

[SPEAKER_02]: And particularly in the movie, I mean, I think what happened was he had a bunch of [SPEAKER_02]: and that narrative of the former Revolutionary whose past comes back to haunt him and his daughter.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he also had this other story in mind of an endangered daughter rescued by the father, which is a kind of replay of the searchers, but reversing the racial politics of the famous John Ford movie.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he had the third aspect which is that when they hired Viniceo Del Toro, [SPEAKER_02]: like, well, you know, why do we like have like my character, you know, like the helping out immigrants?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so so all these things came together to create a kind of layered portrait of a world.

[SPEAKER_02]: But having said that, like I do think like some of what you say is mirrored in the main narrative of the mirror imaging of the French 75.

[SPEAKER_02]: and the sort of fascistic forces led by the Stephen Lockjaw.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, like the various sort of shadowy right-wing groups, including the hilariously named Christmas Adventures Club, which is a kind of like covert, uh, Cluka X-Clan.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, [SPEAKER_02]: This actually not that much of a plot reveal because it comes very early in the movie, but one of the things that is an interesting thing has been criticized a little bit is the Relationship that is formed between the main charismatic revolutionary of the friend 75 for Fiddi up Beverly Hills wonderfully played by Tiana Taylor in a film of like with a lot of spectacular performances [SPEAKER_02]: She's a very charismatic revolutionary, but she has this kind of sexual entanglement with her opposite, the fascistic Stephen Lockjaw.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I've heard of, there's been some people with a sort of found that improbable.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I think like if you look at American history, like sort of, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: cross racial contact even among like hardcore racist is you know like you just like it like the what can we can we can we spoil the biggest spoiler in the movie the one that comes about halfway through or should we leave yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah [SPEAKER_02]: There's a kind of suggestion like like I want to defend that relationship where defend part of what's going on there because there's a kind of suggestion that Perfidia, you know her name also just you know she's like can't be trusted as it turns out to be a case, but her and [SPEAKER_02]: the Stephen Lockjaw are mere images that they're both really get off on spectacular displays of force, whether revolutionary force of the French 75 or counter-revolutionary force, and that therefore, there are emotional linkage that the spark that goes off, the sexual spark that goes off between these two characters is based on a kind of shared commonality that transcends ideology.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a way in which Stephen Lockjaw at one point he does kind of like even like Fraser like to say like you know Like telling her daughter like don't Insulter your your mother was a warrior.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we should let her fly here the big spoiler so the Willa the the young woman the daughter the center of the [SPEAKER_00]: back to third to the movie, played by an actress whose name seems like it was made up for the movie, which is Trace Infinity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but is apparently real.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we are given to believe when she's introduced as a baby in the first act and then through at least through the second act that she is the daughter of Bob Ferguson Leonardo Caffrey's character and prophetic who were lovers and comrades in French 75 and what we later learn in the big [SPEAKER_00]: Star Wars S twist and by the way, I think this is not the only Star Wars parallel you could draw with this movie Oh, yeah, I don't I'm leaving the capital has said that the movie also a remake of Star Wars But it is it well, and of course both this and Star Wars as you know to remakes of the searchers So there's a lot of continuity of of [SPEAKER_00]: you know Hollywood history here but but the big star wars or I guess Empire Strikes back as reveal here is that we learned that actually locked draw the the villain of the movie the white supremacist strongpan is her real father thanks to his weird you know kind of [SPEAKER_00]: the race plays actual affair with with profitee even as they're on opposite sides of the conflict.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and this is especially painful for Willa, the daughter to learn because she already had a lot of issues with her mother because her mother was a rat who sold out the French 75 forced her and Bob into hiding got a lot of characters killed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now she learns that she's the daughter of a [SPEAKER_00]: level pod head, what level but well-meaning pod head who actually raised her.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the beautiful things about this movie is how it shows, you know, biological family isn't everything that Bob Ferguson is her real father.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the one who actually did raise her and the father daughter relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is very powerfully rendered, I thought.

[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, there is sort of [SPEAKER_00]: that in being the child of this mispecata and relationship between Perfidian and locked draw the white supremacists that will is in some ways like an embodiment of America, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like what is America, if not a...

[SPEAKER_00]: a country produced by oppression and misagination and race play and racial violence.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a, it's, that's more implied than said, but I mean, well, but like the second thing that's needed to have is, yeah, needled up is is American girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I first heard that, I thought, [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, well, first I thought I love this song.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've always loved this song, Tom Petty rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was corny as that is, but, but I also thought, I was like, of course, this is the most perfect way to end the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, that was just because like the villains, you know, our white supremacists who think like, you know, you're only a real American, if you're of, at one point, I think they say you have to be of, of like, [SPEAKER_00]: long-time Gentile white stock, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a little dig at the Jews there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And which Lachtra is probably, but so I thought they're just saying, oh no, she's an American girl, Americans can be black Americans can be immigrants, which would have been nice enough as a way to end it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But now in terms of what we're saying, I'm like, oh no, she's like, [SPEAKER_00]: like what could be more American than the exact sorted origins of this person, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that is the entire history of America.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, no, I absolutely, I think that's absolutely right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I just was excited about the Star Wars analogy because I think that like Luke Skywalker, she is someone like with a tangled heritage, and but also many sort of parental figures.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is Luke Skywalker had this sort of biological father of Darth Vader, but also the mentor [SPEAKER_02]: of Obi-Wan Kenobi and of Yoda, the Yoda figure here is Vinicio Del Toro, who's the teacher.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that part of- That'd be Bob Ferguson is uncle Owen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the father.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, part of the story is, which is yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Someone who's actually not really related to this kind of an extraneous character.

[SPEAKER_02]: But part of the story is, will I try to having all these possible models?

[SPEAKER_02]: her father, her biological father, even her kind of like anti-figure diandra, who's a kind of, you know, revolutionary helps them.

[SPEAKER_02]: But also Benizio Del Toro is like kind of, you know, meant to be kind of mentor and possible fathers.

[SPEAKER_02]: A possible parental figure, a figure of guidance.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a kind of suggestion at the end that she's following the path of Benizio Del Toro, I've like, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: helping immigrants through mass mobilization.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think that and also the movie's logic of one battle after another because it's not just a great quote or a literal description of how the movie proceeds.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also like, like, this is true of Star Wars 2 and it's true of our real moment, too, that, like, you don't just like, vanquish evil and go on, that the movie sort of takes the view that I think is exactly what a lot of us need to hear right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fascism is not going away.

[SPEAKER_00]: They made defeat lock draw, but they don't defeat the Christmas adventures at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't defeat the overall white supremacist order at all, but they live to fight another day and they keep fighting, which is basically how most Star Wars stories end.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but as he said, the sensei, the Benicio del Toro character specifically says, like he's talking to Bob and he says, you know, we've been under siege for centuries.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like so sad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's basically like we might be fighting against the right for the rest of our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's actually very helpful in a way to like for all this movie deals with grim subject matter.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if we've appropriately conveyed what a blast it is to watch.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's right, but also that the sort of spirit of resistance comes through human connections, who family, you know, through the fact that like Bob is not, you know, the father, but he is the father because.

[SPEAKER_02]: He raised their belts of sensei as a kind of, you know, pattern familiar to this vast network of immigrants and social, that is the kind of hope.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, like, speaking, as kind of a bother, but like one of the most touching moments, and this as he speaks, I think the Paul Thomas Anderson and his connection with his material, because he's married to a mayor Rudolph, who's African-American, and he has, [SPEAKER_02]: African-American children and Mayor Rudolf herself had a black mother and white father and her father once said to her, you know, like I never knew how to fix her hair, which is a line that's echoed by Bob Ferguson when he's talking to the tour, which is a very moving line, like in terms of, like, you know, like talking about, it has the resonance of both race and also fatherhood, but also the sort of [SPEAKER_02]: uh, connections at the movies suggest that that kind of needs to be made.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and the fun of what I'll make is a sort of conversely, the Christmas adventure is called are not vanquished, but also, um, the sort of doctor's strange loving way that they're portrayed is itself, uh, a kind of refutation because their culture is so sterile and so lacking in like anything human that even though they have all the military power and they have all the [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, like, they, they, they, you know, like, they're like hunting log just that, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're, they're in a kind of like living death already.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they've already died, like, you know, sounds, well, actually one, one other thing I wanted to say about them that I found was kind of fascinating, um, that makes a, a lock draw such a perfectly Trumpy protagonist, uh, is that, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: Why does lockdown be with them?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just because he's a white supremacist, albeit one who's in deep denial of his true sexual energies.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because he wants the sort of like status, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's the military police guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a man who gets his hands dirty, and these guys are like old, wasp, corporate executives, the countries like presumed real ruling class.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell they want a used lock draw because he's a guy who gets his hands dirty, but they basically hold him in contact.

[SPEAKER_00]: they basically see him as a heck in a room.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, there's a pretty powerful metaphor for for the Republican Party and its relationship to its market base there, I think.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we've seen the the bases increasingly running the the whole show.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I think that's absolutely right, yeah, so in any case, yeah, I hope we've conveyed the servetusias of we have for the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've persuaded myself that I need to see it again soon.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think I've watched it a second time, it was very interesting because the sort of thriller plot that is like very tense and you know, keeps you on the edge of the sheet, receipts a little bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you see more of this sort of the patterns of character relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: which I think are really the core of the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: but also car chases, great car chases.

[SPEAKER_02]: Great car chases, yeah, I think the car chases at the end is going to be now remembered as one of the classic car chases up there with like sort of bullet and the French connection.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's also a movie very rich with resonance from history we mentioned the searchers and we mentioned Star Wars, but also Terminator 2.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a specific note that they're ready to in there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a decredibly rich movie.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we didn't go into any of those possible critiques of it, but I think we already said more than that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, as they say on Cisco and E, where the bulk of E is now closed.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, thanks for being on this show again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is fun.