 dystopian time. There's a lot of issues right now going on when it comes to leftist politics, and I brought all of you on because I think that you have really interesting and unique perspectives. To me, the question that I'm about to ask, I feel like there's no right or wrong answer. There's just a lot of gray area, and it's kind of messy, right? So the answer has to do with the extent to which electoral politics matters. This is, you know, something that we'll see discussed from time to time on the left. It even gets relatively divisive. So the question that I want to pose to the panel is, should the left, after losing in 2020 and 2016, should we focus more so on direct action and mutual aid as opposed to this hyper focus on electoral politics, or should we focus on actually obtaining real political power, getting involved locally, running for Congress, actually trying to build power, or is it a combination of both? Do we need to recalibrate to make sure we focus more on one or the other? So this is a question that I think is really interesting, and I don't really have a strong answer. My instinct is to say both, but I think that it's a lot more nuanced than that, and I kind of want to take some time to play around in the gray area. So the first person who I want to go to is Professor Harvey J.K., because you always kind of ground your political ideology and history, and I think that that's really important because if you want to know where we're headed, you kind of get a little bit of a roadmap by looking at where we've been. So what is your take on this issue of electoral politics, Professor? I can't imagine an either or to this. I really can't. I can't imagine a political party system that isn't propelled for better or worse any number of directions by anything less than serious social movements. I mean, it's very hard to imagine otherwise, but in those terms, I'm not going to talk very long. I'm going to just lay this out because this is kind of old left view, but I'm a labor unionist. I've been a labor unionist for many, many years, and I still believe that however much we can run into unions that may well be obstructing of what we would think of as a left agenda, that there will be no serious left until there is a serious left labor movement. And I can base that on historical arguments and contemporary arguments. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say that on occasion recently on various shows, I do a weekly thing with a guy named David Feldman, one of his shows. And I've been saying recently that no labor movement, no left. And I've even gone further and said, I don't even know if there is a left right now. I know there are lots of diverse lefts, but I don't know if there's a left. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen a lot of factionalization. I mean, that's kind of for part two of the panel. But yeah, it kind of seems like, no, no, I think that that's really important because it feels like we're kind of all going into separate directions. And this is why I really wanted to ask this question, because we all have different ideas. Like for me, I am a news YouTuber. And so I'm almost hyper focused on electoral politics to the detriment of direct action and mutual aid, whereas folks like actual J kind of do a combination of both. You talk about current events and whatnot, but you also have this really strong focus on mutual aid. So what's your take on this? Because what I'll usually see is people say, Mike, you focus too much on electoral politics. It doesn't matter. Stop talking about politicians. Stop directing people how to get involved locally, nationally. What is your opinion on this? Because it's kind of hard to walk that fine line. Yeah. I definitely think we can do both at the same time, like walking through bubble gum sort of thing, because you have to, there are situations where someone needs $300 by the end of the week, not Medicare for all in two years. You know what I mean? And that's super important all the time. So in my community, not just my community, there's tons of lefty communities and not even, you know, even liberal communities that do some form of at least charity stuff. Usually it's for like sick puppies. But, you know, we also try to like pay rent here. But yeah, I think electoral politics are frustrating and slow and it's very deliberate. And we live in an age where we can be very, very quickly satisfied via technology and from pretty much everything else. And so it can feel, especially for our generation or younger, that things just move incredibly slowly. But I have to remind people, now I don't have Harvey's background here, but I am also, I went for history. And, you know, I dabble, I'm not, I'm certainly not, you know, I didn't pursue a master's or anything. But, and I just, just the trends do show that like life doesn't prove, and we do slowly win ground all the time, especially socially. Now, obviously, this isn't like the goal, we're not trying to just barely dig trenches for like World War One and get 20 feet forward. We want to win-win more often. And so I think really the answer is if we want, and I know this is sort of a little bit of the next conversation, but it applies to this as well. If we agree pretty much that both are very important, we need apparatuses that deal with both of those things kind of at the same time regularly. So specifically electoral politics, we need to figure out what's the next thing we need. What is the next like leftist thing that will help the most? And I think that's probably healthcare, but you could also make a very strong argument right now for housing. So one of those two things probably needs to, needs to topple. And we need to win that one. We need to focus on that in America specifically. Now, I don't know about Canadians and what your problems are over there or Australians or anything, because we are very American centric here and we have a lot of problems, but I think we can talk about a lot of the other stuff. We could talk about what specific leftism we want to end up being whether you're an anarcho-communist or whether you're, I don't know, a sock damn. It doesn't really matter because we all want the first basic step. So we have to start there first, in my opinion. I think we get ahead of ourselves a lot of the time. Like what's the ultimate goal? Well, we can't get there. We don't have healthcare. We can't get there if no one has a house. So that's kind of my thing. Yeah. You know, what I kind of noticed is, and this is just, this is maybe a projection because this is my feelings, is, you know, overall I focus more on electoral politics myself in terms of priorities, but depending on my mood, I'll kind of go back and forth. Like for example, you know, after Bernie lost in 2020, that was where mentally I'm like, all right, waving the white flag. What's the point? It's just there's so much disappointment. There's so much distress and distraught. But then I think, you know, if I focus only on mutual aid, that's, that might solve some issues, maybe in my area, maybe online, but then we're still not solving the structural issues that need to be addressed. So it feels like almost a cop out to, to go from one to the next. And really, to me, this is about like trying to do both, but in a healthy way. And I wanted to go to Hector, who has kind of been on both sides here, right? So you ran for Congress. That's how you and I first met. And now you're doing a lot of direct action and mutual aid in your community. So how do you find that balance if you do believe that both are necessary? Yes. So echoing what a lot of has been said is that I don't think this is an either or where I see the genesis of this question coming up is that in a lot of leftist spaces, you have people who question the efficacy of participating in electoral or giving energy to electoral, specifically when there are so many people with immediate needs right now, right? Who need things. They can't wait, like you said, for Medicare for all. They can't wait for a jobs program to get them somewhere. They have to take care of things, literally today or tomorrow or they'll be evicted or they'll be homeless. They'll have, you know, food insecurity. And so to me, I think it is about having a healthy balance where we're not deprioritizing one or the other. I think there has to be a healthy getting both done at the same time. And I guess what I always want to say is that we can't deprioritize one or the other. There is utility to participating in electoral because we need a long-term strategy. We need things to look forward to. And that's what I think the utility that electoral participation has. You know, I'm honest with people, although I do, you know, I'm all for direct action. Like I said, I was arrested a couple months ago for a direct action against the county executive in Hudson County, which Harvey will tell you is not a safe thing to do in general. But at the end of the day, I am trying to get you to vote. I am trying to get you to participate in local politics. One thing that I'll say just sort of to end my thing is that I look at a lot of vote totals. And when you look at an election result, you always party, you see that the top of the ticket always gets the most votes. The president gets more than the senator who gets more than the congressman who gets more than the mayor. But the fact of the matter is that your mayor has more of an effect on your life than any president will ever have. So if we had the sort of leftist participation that I'm trying to foster is it would be reversed. And your mayor would be the person getting the most votes and less people voting up the chain because those people don't have a direct action on what your life is going to be like. Can I ask a follow-up question there? Sure. I'm wondering if a part of electoral politics and the problem of it in America specifically is the way we vote. Like obviously there's a ton about voter suppression and stuff, but what is like just because of your view on it, what do you think the most effective way to actually vote is it can't be how we do it now. I feel like it's ranked choice, but at all levels pretty much. But how do you feel? Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, I love that question because we need a lot of democratic reforms to make the system more responsive to people. But right, but we have a problem of like our participation level is so low that those things would be nice, but it's not going to fix the problem. What we need is like 80% participation, which is a ridiculous number, right? Like I'm just like shooting for the stars. But if we had 80% participation, our government would look so much different than what it looks like right now. So to me, we have this huge flood of people who have just given up on the system. Another sort of like kind of touching up on that of things that I've seen of people who are so cynically like disgusted with the system that for New Jersey during my election, we had all mailing, right? So every single person got a mail in ballot, right? Great thing. Some people wrote the most ridiculous things in the right end. So I saw a ballot come back that for president was like Jesus, for vice president was Satan, for congressman was like, you know, something else ridiculous. And this person took the time to fill that out, put it in a mailbox and send it in to tell your elected officials like I so have so much disdain for what you were doing that I will literally send a ridiculous ballot back to you. We have to fix that problem of like people just don't have any faith in the system itself. Yeah. And one thing that I've noticed just covering politics is when it comes to just views and I use views as a gauge for how engaged people are, especially young people because my audience is usually younger. So usually during election times you see lots and lots of people tuning in for the first time ever getting involved in politics. And then when the election is over views kind of fall off a cliff. And I view that as an indication of people losing interest in politics more general. Some people just need a break. I totally get that. But I feel like there's a lot of people that kind of like they jump in and then they jump right back out. And my question is because it really seems like the panel is gravitating towards so far with who we've heard that, you know, you definitely need a healthy dose of both. But it's really easy to become, you know, just overcome with cynicism. And so the question that I want to ask to Riverboat Jack is like if you're like a newer person, because your audience I'm assuming is super young, like if you're a newer person and you're super excited about a candidate Bernie Sanders, and then they lose our entire movement like just burns out in spectacular spectacular fashion. How do you keep them engaged? Because this is a question that I've been asking myself and I genuinely have no idea. Like I try to hello fellow kids them as much as I can throw in fun memes and stuff. But at the end of the day, sometimes it's just like too painful in a way to like be aware of all the horrible things climate apocalypse global pandemic. So like what do you do as a as a Twitch streamer to try to keep people engaged because I find this to be one of the most difficult things ever. So first off, I totally relate with the Bernie Sanders and like feeling hopeless because that's basically where I was in 2020 after he got knocked out of the primary. And you know, I went and voted Biden and whatever. But like inside I was like, man, this was really our last our last shot to like really avert some bad stuff that's coming down the pipeline. And and I realized my options were either to sit and essentially be inert and not do anything or to get off up my butt and actually put my money where my mouth is, you know, take take the jump, do this, even if no one's going to listen. And it turned out a lot of people wanted to listen. And it's not just young people who come to watch my panel. I have I have older people across the spectrum. I have parents who watch me who talk about their struggles raising their kids. And I have, you know, members of my mod team who are, you know, in in their 60s. And the the amount of support that I have seen around this community blows me away. And I think what it really comes down to is tapping into what fundamentally made Bernie Sanders so powerful and influential. And that's giving somebody out there hope. Because like like to what Hector was talking about, a lot of people are just absolutely crippled by hopelessness and despair. And they don't think there's anyone out there who's going to help them or who's going to care about their struggles. And what I've found is building these communities where people can talk about their problems, where people can get both emotional support and if needed, you know, financial support to like there are members of our community who've talked about how they've gone like a week without food. And my community comes together, make sure that those people get fed, you know. And so the important thing is that in in this world where we do have a climate apocalypse where we do have kind of this a rising specter of fascism, is to be able to correctly identify those problems, but then to give people actionable things that they can do that that are going to make a difference, either in an electoral sense, or in a mutual aid sense, which is why I you cannot disconnect these two things. The mutual aid is important to mobilizing electoral support. And the electoral support is key to getting mutual aid support. These two things feed each other. And when we're when we're talking about that, I mean, if you can't get people to do something as simple as going out to vote, it's going to be a lot harder to get them to do things that are harder. And a lot of mutual aid is really hard. So you got to be able to do both things. And different people are good at different things, you know, what is your skill set, you know, and that's what I talk about on my channel a lot, you know, think about what you can do and how that can benefit people. And if that's more on the electoral side, you know, there are ways you can get involved here, like X, Y, Z, here are things you can do to get involved at a local level, or even higher levels. And if your skill set is more like, I don't know, like cooking ribs or something, like there are ways you can do that too, to help in your communities. And so it's just giving people things that they can do that give them a sense of agency and a sense of hope. Yeah, it goes back to what Harvey said before about unionization, you know, there's there's really no strong left without unions. And I feel like in a way, these communities that we've all kind of built individually, either online or on the ground, they kind of serve that social role that unions and like more community support served before, where, you know, it's helping at least a little bit. We're in a way we're also like somewhat isolated in our own bubbles. But I do feel like leftists have built communities, they're relatively fragmented. But at the same time, I do think that that is a really important and insightful thing that you that you mentioned for Jack, I wanted to bring in pics here with the Australian perspective, because we talk about like people jumping into elections and then tuning right back out. And this always kind of brings me back to how do you increase participation? And to me, I feel like the number one way to do that is to model our voting process after Australia is more so when it comes to compulsory voting. So in Australia, you have to vote. So I mean, can you explain what does that do? Like, what effect does that have? Because I know you have a higher participation rate in your country. But do people kind of just like vote and then tune back out? Or do they stay engaged because of them being required to vote? Like, can you speak to this here? Because I'm trying to think about like, what does keep people engaged, just forcing them to stay involved in politics help? If so, then maybe we can advocate for that? Like, what's your thoughts on this? You know, it's actually really interesting. And it's a bit of a spectrum, because while it is kind of compulsory voting, you have to enroll to vote when you turn 18. If you don't enroll, it kind of just like goes under the thing. But a lot of people, even though there is compulsory voting, are still extremely disengaged. And we'll still do the kind of generational voting thing where it's just like, Oh, my parents voted Labour, so I will vote Labour. That being said, we do have a actual Labour party here in Australia, which is kind of centre left. But even though there is kind of a pretty strong, there's a stronger union movement here in Australia, I think, than you see in America. It's still a very divided left, right? Because we have the Labour Party and we have the Greens Party. And all over the spectrum, in every state, there sometimes can be a Greens person that is more progressive than a Labour, or they can be a very progressive like Labour senator, or, you know, there's all sorts of kind of mix and match throughout all of the parties. So even though you can be engaged to like a specific level, you have to be really following it to like learn about the policies of these people. I think one of the things where we get really lost in regards to like electoral politics in general is the frustration that people feel that their vote doesn't matter, right? Even if it's a compulsory vote, people still go in and they're like, that's the same, it's the same side of a different coin. Which is why I appreciate everyone's opinion on this panel so far because I think what is key is the motivating of people to really feel like they are engaged in their community. And in order to be able to do that, there does have to be this sense of hope for change. And I think by encouraging people to really commit to at least politics on a community level is something that would be really important going forward in an American context, through mutual aid, through electoralism. But it's really focusing it down to the community level where things are tangible, where you can see differences, maybe you're affecting the environmental policy in your local area. And I think that helps people stay involved a little bit more than what you see on the internet where we're all having these big global conversations that are also divisive because it's so good for the algorithm for people to have strong opinions on different things. Whereas we're all arguing for the same 95% of things, we all want the same. But we get really kind of different. So I just love the nuance here and I think that you can't leave power on the table. But in order to motivate people to be engaged, you have to kind of participate in mutual aid kind of organizations. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's really insightful. One more thing. You can also basically just bribe people to vote with a democracy sausage, which is kind of what we do here. You go down to vote, you go down to vote, and it's like, vote and you can have a snag. Here you go. Well, okay, I was going to say we should incentivize voting. That was exactly what corrupted American democracy in the 19th century. People would show up to vote and they'd get a beer before they voted. Yeah, I wanted to get Hilde's perspective as well because you're from Canada. I know there's an election taking place currently. And you've kind of always done both. You've done direct action. You've also participated in electoral politics. What's your overall take in this? Because you're raising a new generation of anarchists. Like you said that you came from multi generations of anarchists. So what is your take here on this? Well, I live in Helbert, Canada. So my perspective is a little bit different. It doesn't really matter where my heart lies. It's because the air, the writing, they're called writings in the United States. You have districts in my writing. It has always voted conservative. My vote really doesn't count. And that's because we have first passed the post system and it's broken. And I have done both. The mutual aid, absolutely, there is a place for that. And I fully endorse that with respect to direct action. Yeah, it moves the needle. I get it. However, I feel, and despite having value in that, I feel though that we should consolidate our efforts in both. But I think I would lean towards more to strategically place people in key positions, whether it be school trustee, city councilor, get on any types of boards, councils, be a mayor, get in the legislative assembly, be a member of parliament, any one of those things. Get appointed as a judge. Those are key positions and basically stack the deck. It takes so, so many leftists to apply to get elected so that one person can actually be sitting at the table. There's right now going on anti-abortion groups who are incredibly organized, incredibly strategically motivated. They are putting people in all of the parties because we have a multi-party system. It's not like United States where you basically got your Republican and Democrat. You're both right wing that you choose. We have a variety here. They're almost all right wing with the exception of one. That's basically all that we have. The left in Canada has literally nowhere else to go. With these anti-abortion groups that are getting together and placing people strategically in all the parties or in municipal elections so that they can sit on council, so that they can be mayors, so that they can be on swim boards or hockey boards or what have you. That is incredibly terrifying to me because you guys in the United States will remember back when in the olden days when the Tea Party was in and the damage that that did. People were motivated years before the Tea Party came in. That's going on right now. There's a lot of anti-abortion and basically when voting comes down to the nitty gritty, it's always on abortion. And so I think we need to be smarter on the left by doing this. I think that we need to be more aware. We need to engage more. We need to rub elbows with those that are doing the direct action so that we can put ourselves in specific and strategic places of power. There was a poll that came out. Nearly 40% of the Federal Conservative Party of Canada that were elected, nearly 40% were endorsed by these anti-abortion groups. And these anti-abortion groups are incredibly funded. They are very motivated to get monies and they will back a lot of people whether it's somebody who wants to be a mayor candidate. And I mean, right now it's so depressing living in Alberta. It really is. It's so, so, so depressing. And in fact, just last night I was contacted by one of the parties and I was asked for their support and they said, you know what we need? We need you to back us by maxing out your credit. And I'll use that in quotes because that's a direct quote. Maxing out my credit. And I'm thinking, where have we gone? This is not right. The right is basically not playing the same game that the left is playing. We need to get in the game and we need to be strategically smart about it. Otherwise we're going to lose because we've been losing for a long time. Yeah, that dynamic that you're describing is super familiar here to me, you know, in the United States. And I wanted to bring in Dan because, you know, there's this question, you know, is the Conservatives everywhere just better at politics? Like, I mean, the fact that we're having this conversation about does electoralism matter and to what extent doesn't matter when like basically 100% of Republicans, they all believe it matters and they still participate. They're still effective. Like, is there something that I'm missing here? Like our Conservatives just out-politicking us. Like, what's your take on this? Because I feel so frustrated and I feel like if we could replicate what the right did, albeit on the left, then maybe we, you know, could be successful, but then like to replicate that we'd need what they have, which is capital. And we just don't have that. So I'm like, it feels relatively hopeless kind of speaking to what like Hilda was talking about. But what's your thoughts on this, Dan? Many thoughts. I think the kind of the answer to the first part of your question about why is the right getting so powerful. I was just talking about this on Power Report with one of my regular guests, a brilliant person, Yasmin Aliakhan. And she was talking about how in Texas on the state level, Republicans have just been running a war path. And it's not just like in Texas alone in this. There's a lot of states where on the state and local level, Republicans have just gone gangbusters politically. And so not only are they like doing gangbusters politically, but they like you alluded to have the capital to be able to anytime they need to bust protesters to a given area to protest any little bit of leftist action, they're able to do so. And of course, they have the police behind their back. And as we mentioned earlier, of course, they have the local state and local officials behind their back. And so, of course, this isn't, I'm not teaching this panel anything because we've all kind of got this pretty clear. But the idea of the dichotomy between do you do electoralism versus direct action? I've got news for you. No Republican asked themselves that question. No one on the right asked themselves that question. They do it. They do it. And that's why they're effective. And one reason though, I think one romantic reason that's partially true about why, because I wrestle with this all the time and people on camera and off camera wrestle with this all the time of like, why is it so hard for the, you know, the left to accomplish what the right is accomplishing, right, at least in gaining political power. And the romanticized answer to that is, well, on the left, we're coalition based, and we very much care about our coalitions. And on the right, they're willing to fall in line. They don't care if Donald Trump isn't a real Christian and doesn't live very Christ. Like Mike Pence can still build coalition with him and won't say a word about it and won't talk about the blaring hypocrisy there because everyone in the evangelical side is supposed to understand the political gains that can be made if you just let Donald Trump kind of in, for example, right? And so, on the left, you're supposed to say, oh, well, we're not that coalitionally focused, but I think to criticize the left a little bit, sometimes ego gets in the way of our ability to see the chessboard and like kind of where we are on the chessboard, how badly we're using the game here. And I think I'm very much an and person. I'm glad we have this conversation of it can be both electoralism and direct action. But I think there has to be a balance of not sacrificing anyone's status or marginalized groups or individuals like abilities to have their say and have their voice, but also being able to realize, okay, we need to be strategic in certain times when how we gain power, because ultimately we do want the same things, we want to achieve the same things and achieve a more equal just society for everyone. And so in coalition building like that and putting our individual egos aside, as much as we put our identities and our politics within those egos, only then can we start to gain power. Because we like to consider conservatives as like being full of egos and things like that, but at least they can set their own personal egos aside for the whole coalition to gain power. And that's a tough pill to swallow for the left, but I think that's the best at least I've articulated it as to where we need to kind of figure it out, if that makes sense. Can I add a little bit to that too? I was going to do. Sure. Because we talked a little bit about abortion. And I think that there are fundamentally different motivators for the left and the right in this country and elsewhere too, right? Like, if you are willing to believe that your political opponents are killing millions upon millions of babies every year and you believe that with all of your heart, right? You're going to show up to vote. You're going to show up. You're going to mobilize to do these things. And I don't think we necessarily have the same kind of fire under our bellies, you know, that a lot of these pro-life people, sensibly pro-life people do, right? And like this goes into how like the Southern strategy tapped into how the religious fervor and belief of evangelicals, and that is something that has remained really elusive for the left to emulate in any way. And I think it is worth having a conversation like can we can we do the same thing that the right has done? And if we can, I don't think it looks the same as the Southern strategy, you know, like the left can't tap into QAnon, you know, like we can't peddle in conspiracy the same way, which frankly hampers us because it links us down to reality in a way that the right doesn't necessarily have to for its political figures. It's also very uncomfortable to criticize the right because sometimes you feel the need to be like, oh, you're getting diddled by a conspiracy, right? And that comes off condescending. So it's very much how do you even get on a platform to have these conversations, you know, like they can kind of just go. Well, and I mean, to a large degree, some people on the right have really been inoculated against arguments, you know, against their own conspiracy theories. I mean, to to Riverboats point, I mean, if you really if you really feel that being pro-life is voting for Trump or whatever is a matter of, I mean, saving unborn babies, you can't just call these people crazy. I mean, you can and they are. But you have to take into account that they really truly believe that if you are watching Fox News all day and they're beating you over the head with this idea that, you know, actually critical race theory is super racist. Well, you've been inoculated against any argument, you know, against the idea that you actually are supporting racists. And when people call you out or say, you know, I think you are racist or I think you are at least amenable to racists. Then they say, well, you know what, Laura Ingram warned me that you were going to say that. And this is actually true that I'm right. Yeah, we have a we have a big problem also with letting letting like the idea of like the perfect candidate get in the way of like a really good one, we get super, super picky. And I don't understand that at all. Like, I sometimes there's people that are shitty and you don't want to be part of your movement because they, you know, they're just bad people. But like, you know, Bernie Sanders having a summer house is not one of those things that we need to worry about yet that is that comes up when he runs. So like, I don't I don't know why that's a thing that that we engage with. I think there's a there's a big problem with branding as well. I think just like the way we talk about things, there's a lot of people who really want to get into the nitty gritty of like, like, I don't know, Marxist, like theory with people that don't even understand like the basics of capitalism and yet are still like, like, I'm a full capital like we need to calm down on some of the stuff that we we think we know about, like, we feel like we're smart and a lot of us are very smart. But like, we really want to tell people we're smart. And I don't so to the ego thing, like, I don't know what that's about. There's we have to be able to communicate in a clear way that doesn't use scary words, like the like the idea of anarchy. What do people think of when we say I'm an anarcho anything, they think Molotov cocktails. And frankly, maybe they ought to. But sometimes, but sometimes that's not beneficial to the to the idea of just being like, Oh, I'm pro anarchy. Like, and I think most people, if you tell them what it is, like, if you didn't give them the title, they'd be like, Oh, that sounds like kind of fine. This sounds like a nice community and whatever. But like, we have a huge problem with with just the way that we we have disparate messaging, Republicans have like this vast news apparatus. I mean, just conservatives at large, where where they they're kind of always on the same message. And they do this thing where a lot of us consider it a grift and it is definitely down once you get down to the YouTube level. But like Ben Shapiro will make a video and then everybody in the Daily Wire will make that same video. And then everybody on Fox News will pick up that video. And then everybody on Twitter is talking about that same topic. And so you'll see no kink at pride discourse for a month. And it's like, this isn't important. This is obfuscating like the actual important things. Meanwhile, they go and they pass like, like really harmful things and in national Congress or the Texas bill that no one was really talking about that until it happened. Like, we were like, Oh, this might come down the pipe or worry about the Supreme Court and stuff, like when Trump was there. And then it sort of went away for a little bit, because people get complacent. And I think we need some sort of, like, counter propaganda. Because I mean, really what Fox News is and all of that is like, just a propaganda arm of the Republicans, whether they realize they're working for them or not. It's like, we could get by CNN is not doing it. You know what I mean? MSNBC is not doing it for leftists. Definitely not. So, yeah. To quickly just like, sorry, just real quick. In there, you had a really good point about, you know, Bernie Sanders House, you know, makes him not a good candidate. And it's just, I think that part of the rhetoric that a lot of people on the left engage in overly focuses on hypocrisy, because it makes us feel really superior to be like, ha, that Republican just did something very hypocritical. And it's, you know, it's funny in like a Twitter ha ha sense, but like, it has gotten to the point where it no longer feels really real to people. Like it's not like a real criticism. And it feels abstract from reality. And because it's not proposing like an actual criticism other than, ha, you said one thing and did another. And we need to make things real for people, whether that is in the conversation about direct action and mutual aid and how it relates to, you know, electoralism, whether it is in our rhetoric for trying to reach liberals or unradicalized folks, or whether it's talking about Republicans, you know, like, we need to move away and improve our rhetoric and critique in these regards. What I was going to throw into the conversation is like, Mike, you asked, why is it that Republicans have held onto so much power for so long? And the left seems to have this intractable nature of like, not being able to be as successful. And I think that held it really hit the nail on the head as to where the left goes from here, and what the future holds for us. And like, for, for Bojack said, is like, we have to nail it down to reality. If you look at your community, there are all these like really unsexy positions on your zoning board on your school board on your, like I myself, after the election, was able to get appointed to the planning board in my municipality. There I can fight for affordable housing. I can fight back against developers who are gentrifying. That's how the right was able to hold onto power, like we need to send the left into your communities and take over all these local board positions and 10, 15, 20 years down the line, all of a sudden now we have a leftist government because we've been sort of getting in at the ground level of all these places. And that's where I think personally the left goes from here. And that's how we get the power in the future that the right seems to have now. Yeah, really, I just really fast on that. Like, I, while we're focused on what the left doesn't have and what we're talking about that, and just as Hector was coming into what the left can actually combat with this, because I love presenting solutions, especially in this space where we have audiences where we're talking to them on the internet. We love these audiences, but ultimately, it can feel like it's just us, the person on the other side of the screen in the screen, we want to kind of give them solutions, at least I want to try to. And what I sort of going towards local action, direct action, this is now the before times, but for folks who are on the panel who have done door to door knocking and canvassing and things like that, you'll actually understand there's something beautiful in the fact that no American has any consistent political opinions, like they're all all over the place. Or I think maybe the same thing is true across the board, like no one fits neatly, usually except for extreme hyper partisans in a left or right box, you can kind of talk them into any sort of direction. When you like kind of remove the least crazy people from, you know, the Fox News and SMBC CNN echo chambers, because in reality, these echo chambers, Twitter is only used by 3% of Americans. The best night of Rachel Maddow or CNN is still half of like a boring sports sporting event. In reality, not many people are paying attention to this. So you can kind of use the leftist opportunities as a blank canvas to show people, like by doing school board, by doing any kind of local thing like that, how leftist government can actually work so that people have a living example to go against the propaganda that you see online and also just like the connection between mutual aid and people say, oh, mutual aid direct action, do this, Venmo this person cash out this person. It's kind of less about what you're doing online. It's all important because like these people's lives are tangibly improved by this. But when you when you are visible in a community and you're helping them out, whether you're like passing out frozen water bottles to unhoused people in the like hot summer or whatever, you are visible in a community and you are building trust with that community. So when you come back around and you keep helping them, and then one those times you come back around and say, hey, there's an election coming happening. I know like we've been like hanging out and we start going to know each other and we start to know about the things you care about. Do you trust me on supporting these people who I trust and will make your lives better? That's where the mutual aid, the direct action starts to combine with the electoralism and you can actually do both. So I encourage anyone watching this convince other people like that's the connection that needs to be made to turn the tide with these things. One more tiny little thing is also the language that we use. Like the language that we use is so important because sometimes conservative language is so much easier to digest, it's fear based, it's simple. And sometimes I feel like there are people who aren't overly engaged in leftist discourse, who might not even know what the term mutual aid or direct action even means, which is basically just like helping those in need. That's it, right? So we really need to focus on simplifying the language. And I think that's something that Bernie Sanders was attempting to do in the Democratic primaries. Like he really did simplify his language. And that's why Trump was so appealing to the Republican party because he was speaking to a group of disengaged people who could understand what he was saying in very simplistic terms. I mean, we were sitting there going like, what, sorry? What? A lot of other people were sitting there being like, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. I can understand that. And I feel like sometimes on the left, we get lost in the theoretical and don't focus on the practical enough. Yeah, I also think maybe getting into politics at a local level can feel daunting to a lot of people, especially on the left, like especially the leftist. A lot of us are labor like laborers, like some of us are streamers, we're very, very fortunate and to be able to do this job. But a lot of people that agree with us are like, you know, poor. And I was very poor. And that's kind of what radicalized me and started to send me down this path is like, this is a shitty system. This does not work. I also think this might not be very popular opinion. Maybe we should stop using words they're scared of like socialism, and maybe just use words like labor, like maybe, and just to warm them up a little bit to the idea because when you say that in America, I don't know how it works other places. But we say it in America, they go, nope, that's the that Mao killed people. And it's like, what are we taught? What are we talking about? I'm not Mao. Do I what like, I'm talking about a totally different thing. I'm talking about like this specific, like, here's what I want. And you're like, just out of sounds like a thing that's bad. And so like, I think if we form it, like, there's already labor movements in the United States in a lot of ways. Like I live in Michigan, which is a huge union place for auto workers and stuff. And a lot of them in the West is sort of like that a lot of factors and stuff, although, you know, dwindled over time. But people like United Auto Workers Union, the UAW is very strong here, to different efficacies. But like, just just the idea of like having a workers union or a labor party, like the idea of that and maybe branding it as as, you know, because it really is it's about labor and about the, you know, the interaction that labor has with capital and all the things all that work its way up. So I don't know, I just I also think it's, like I said, like it's just a daunting aspect for some people to think about the idea of like, all the stuff that's on their plate, they're working like, at least one job, maybe more, to make ends meet paycheck to paycheck to paycheck to maybe run a political campaign to be like their comptroller. Like, so it's, I don't know how to get them all to do that. The circles back around to something I briefly mentioned, which is like play to your skill set, you know, like if you know how to grill, that makes it a lot easier to go out and grill for people like in the wake of a disaster, you know, people need food. Or like, if you if you have an affect that is really resonating in more conservative areas, more rural areas, then maybe you're you're a better candidate to talk to one of those people than I am as a trans lady, you know, like, there are there are people who are better or worse at different things. And we should play to our various strengths, because I think the left has a lot of diverse strengths. And I like just as as off the top of my head, like bow of the fifth column, there's a really good job at reaching like rural more conservative types. And it is through his his word choices and his affect. And that is really successful and something I couldn't do, even though we both do similar things. And so it is okay to play to your strengths, I think, and to let people play to theirs. Yeah, we're kind of like almost, I feel like this conversation is very productive, because you all are kind of offering solutions to people. And that's, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to get people motivated, like I always say that like, trying to get leftists to do anything is like hurting cats, like it's really difficult. And so the final person that I'm going to bring in here is Professor Harvey. This is the question that I want to ask to you, has it always been this difficult, like you are a teacher of history? Has it always been like this? Has there always been like this, I don't know, motivation deficit on the left? Or is this like a new phenomenon that is, you know, the result of like social media? But like, like, what is your take on this? Are we kind of just seeing history repeat itself? Or is this like a uniquely new thing for this era in terms of like people having to really be remotivated and talked up to get involved in direct action? What have you? The first thing to understand is that this is social media is very late to this whole question. I mean, what we've seen has been underway for, I'm going to use around number 45 years of nothing less than class war from above that was very effective back in the 70s in mobilizing as well, Christian evangelicals in particular. So and there are ways in which that, you know, that's a whole lecture basically, but you've got to believe me, this goes back well back into the 70s. And what's really kind of interesting is that there are many public statements and records that doesn't require a lot of research. There was a declaration of war, a declaration of war issued essentially in a number of ways between 1971 and 75, which actually named the targets. Okay, for example, it named poor people's movement, it named the labor movement, it named especially public employee unionism, it named young people, it named the women's movement, it laid out every single movement that came out of the 60s. They laid out as a sort of grand problem. And it was put very most effectively in a little thing called the crisis of democracy. And somebody mentioned conspiracies before, there was no conspiracy here. It was a group called the trilateral commission was made up of literally every single major figure political and business from Western Europe, the United States and Japan who was not at that time currently holding office. And this included George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, it was put together by David Rockefeller as a big new president. This was a major public organization. And the section, basically it was sort of authored from the American perspective by a man named Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard. And he said, we have a crisis of democracy because we have an excess of democracy. And what we have to do is we need to reduce democracy. And as I said, he pointed out all the culprits. Now, out of this kind of declaration of war, which had nothing to do, by the way, with the hard right at that time. But in the course of that decade, the Democrats were so utterly emptied of any kind of real politics by way of Jimmy Carter that you had the emergence of both this code of corporate democratic politics, as well as the right wing Republican party immerse. So this all begins back in the 70s, long before anything called social media. Hell, I remember in the early 90s or 80s, whatever was being fascinated by the fax machine. So I don't think it's a matter of that. I think what it is, is that literally they targeted, I don't mean to sound like a broker, they targeted labor in the 70s, the fastest growing enterprise probably in the 70s was the union busting law firm. And the high point of that or the culmination of that was the Patco strike, which was 40 years ago this year, in which Ronald Reagan fired the thousands upon thousands of air traffic controllers who were on strike. It's a whole tragic story in itself. But you've got that war basically on the working class that began in the 70s. And it literally was articulated in a way that it included the war on voting rights. It included a war on women's rights to control their own bodies. I mean, they really were very, very effective. And what was the left? Well, it was in fact splintered. Identity politics splintered it. Young and old splintered it. I've been a member of DSA for as long as I can remember, but I sure as hell wouldn't run around saying vote socialist because it's just not going to win the day. But I do think, and by the way, I think Bernie Sanders blew it when he insisted on calling himself a democratic socialist. I also think he blew it because he literally was an FDR Democrat and ignored the whole tradition. What I'm getting at is that the left is such a mess. It is such a mess. And I'll just close because you guys are the young ones who are the young left media. The young left media is failing itself. Somebody talked about the message goes out. And there's what is it called? You know, the message goes out in every right wing voice. Every right wing voice says the same thing, whether it's whether it's Ben Shapiro or Hannity, it's all the same. Okay. Now on the left is so much diversity on the left, which is in itself great. But it's also the case that there's no there's no there's no vision coming out of the left. Yeah. Okay. I think everything single thing all of you have said is true. I mean, I wouldn't take issue with any one of them. But it's also the case. Tell me what the vision of the left is. What is the vision for the left? What would be the good America or the good Western world, the good global picture? And I haven't even talked about the climate crisis, which literally fuck us all right. I actually think we're fortunate to have the one thing Americans desire most from a politician's mouth. And that's the word freedom. I think we offer the most like just livable freedom from our politics that's out there, whether it comes to like, like just the idea of just the health care issue, the freedom to go to any hospital to any doctor in any network that wouldn't exist at any time for any reason without cost out of pocket is more freedom than having a very specific limited insurance and in your specific doctor in your specific space. So even to that, I think we have this thing, the idea of freedom that's been co-opted by the right that I think we could rally around to some extent, most leftists agree. I think that if that was our for lack of a better term, like one of the 10 commandments of whatever we want to run as, if that was like number one up there, freedom to live however your life is. And this goes to the trans argument. This goes to this goes to gun ownership, you know, leftists aren't necessarily against being able to have guns. So that's not even really a thing we have to like rest from, from, you know, it's not like a liberal thing. It's not like Joe Biden or go, they're going to take our guns. Like, okay, have your guns then. But, but sort of the black communities and sort of the gay communities and so does everybody else. And you can't bully these people. So like there's lots of, there's lots of things that I think we could get out of just co-opting that word. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm going to make a point by way of please do. And, you know, the United States literally led the way in social democracy. I mean, we don't even think how many people were ever told that public education is the first major social democratic initiative in the world. And it started here. How many people were ever told that national parks are social democratic because in most other countries, they were royal parks, right? It begins here. I mean, it's over and over again, this kind of lack of a better way of putting it, this kind of amnesia. But it's also the case. And this is what I'm going to hold against your generation no less is the fact that literally there is no talk of what should be the talk. And that is that there is that what makes America in its better sense as opposed to its darkest sense in the in the sense of this dystopian moment that really, you know, I asked myself dystopian, I don't really think of this as dystopian because it's happened before. But that just means we've had a lot of dystopian moments. And for vast numbers of people dystopian dystopia was the state of the land. Okay. And remains it. But it is the case that look, I mean, we literally have seen tremendous historic, not just historical but historic victories. And and how dare the right hijack history ever since Reagan. And where is it where where is the left in terms of taking back the story that I'm look, I'm not looking for a Pollyanna story. What I'm looking at is, and I'm not going to even I'm not even going to deny the worst exploitation and oppression. That's part of it. But the real story that needs to be told is that struggles do matter. Hey, Philip, you know, I think it was a Philip Randolph, you know, nothing is or Frederick Douglass may have said at first, nothing is one without struggle. You know, or it's a Philip Randolph said, freedom isn't given, it's one. I mean, and but you have to remind people. But by the way, I'm correcting myself about something Walter Benjamin of the Frankfurt School once said, you know, basically, it's not a vision of the future that that will motivate the struggle. It's it's seeking revenge for one's grandparents and what they suffered. That's the thing that always checks my arguments. Okay. But it is the case that that that history is a very powerful, intellectual and rhetorical weapon. And we just aren't wielding it.