Beyond the Vapor with Robert Stark
Talk with Caleb Maupin about his Book Kamala Harris & The Future of America
This is The Stark Truth, hosted by Robert Stark. Brought to you by StarkTruthRadio.com. Robert Stark is an American journalist and political commentator. You can listen to his podcast at www.starktruthradio.com. This is Robert Stark. I'm joined here with Caleb Moppen. He's a journalist. And he has a new book out, Kamala Harris and the future of America. Caleb, it's great having you on. Sure, glad to be here. Can you start off by giving us some background information about you? So you've been a journalist now with Russia today and also can you talk about your involvement in Occupy Wall Street and also the anti-war movements during the Obama era? Sure, yeah. I mean I've been involved in many struggles for social justice. I marched against the drones. I marched against the U.S. intervention in Libya. I think the first protests, the war I protested against, was the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush. And yeah, I mean I have been involved in many such things. I view things from more or less a Marxist or socialist perspective. I think that Western capitalism and imperialism is driving humanity in dangerous direction. Millions are kept in poverty so that Wall Street and London can stay rich. I think that there are many countries around the world that have broken out of that system and started to develop independently. And that's a good step forward. And we need a new model in global trade based on win-win cooperation where countries benefit from trading with each other. I really like the Belt and Road Initiative that China has started. I like the Eurasian Economic Union that Russia is the center of. I'm excited about Bolivarian socialism in Latin America. And I think that we in the United States, we have a long tradition of progressive struggles, whether it's a struggle to abolish slavery, the struggle for women's rights, you know, and that progressive minded people, people who want to get beyond capitalism, have a special place in U.S. history. And that as much as the right wing, they'd like to tell us that capitalism is part of what it means to be an American. There have always been progressive people in this country. And that eventually I do believe that working people in this country will take control. And we will get beyond the capitalist system here in America. And optimistic about that. As far as your new book out about Kamala Harris, so there's a very good chance she could likely be our next president. I guess the big controversy was her record as a prosecutor during the tough on crime era and what was brought up in the debate with Tulsi Gabbard. But can you give us just an introduction to the book and are you criticizing her primarily from progressive standpoint? I would say so. Yeah, I mean, but the book is not simply like a hit piece on Kamala Harris. Okay, it's not like the case against Kamala Harris. The book is an essay in three parts about the United States and where things are going. And I see basically I see Kamala Harris as the culmination of a number of trends that have developed over the course of the last several decades in the United States. I feel that left wing politics has largely been distorted. I feel like the United States is moving in a polarized direction. We are facing a crisis as a society. And that name, Kamala Harris is very much the product of our time and figures like her kind of represent how weird politics has become distorted. And that's kind of the focus of the book. I try to give my readers an understanding of how Kamala Harris fits in with the direction all of US society is going. I'm very critical of Trump in the book. I am not a Trump supporter by any means, but I think that there are things about the Joe Biden Kamala Harris camp that should be very, very worrying to any progressive minded person and that we're dealing with a big fight among our ruling class. There are two factions that are battling for power right now among the rich and powerful in the United States. To what degree do you go into her record on criminal justice? Is the stuff you cover? Is there unique information or most of it is the same information that was, say, discussed in a debate with Tulsi? It's pretty much the same. I mean, Tulsi didn't talk about the video where she laughs about how she jailed the parents of, you know, children who were truing from school. I talk about that. I dig into her father and Donald Harris and you know some of the baggage there, you know, and you know, show that in her autobiography, she's not exactly honest. She says the only thing her parents thought about was the books, but if you read Donald Harris's essay, Reflections of a Jamaican Father, it's pretty clear there was a custody battle. Kamala Harris's father is a, you know, a Marxian social democratic economist who not only taught at Stanford University, but was an advisor to a number of prime ministers of Jamaica and he has denounced her campaign. She's pretty much estranged from him. I get into some of that history. There's a lot of things I talk about, but the main thing is the book is not mentally take her down or something like that, right? She is a product of her time and that what it means to be a leftist and what it means to be a progressive has been subject to a huge amount of distortion in the United States and the psychology that motivates people to become left-wing has also been widely distorted and confused. And that's really what the book is about. It's about the future of America and the role of progressive politics. And, you know, Kamala Harris is appealing to a crowd of people. You know, you talk about the woke crowd, the people that are involved in a lot of the identity politics on the internet these days. It's about unleashing people's rage, unleashing people's anger and injustice and people's destructive impulses. And that has become what left-wing politics has been focused on. It has been about helping people to unleash their pent up feelings of rage and their desire to tear things down. When in reality, socialism historically has been about construction. It has been about, you know, the desire to get beyond a society ruled by prophets, people coming together to build a whole new world. And I talk about Abraham Lincoln and his progressive side. I talk about Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana, who remains very popular in Louisiana. Even today, Huey Newton of the Black Panthers is actually named after Huey Long. I talk also about Roosevelt and his alliance with the Communist Party during the popular front period and their efforts to roll back fascism. You know, progressivism throughout US history looks very different than what is calling itself progressivism now. And I think that the reason Donald Trump has a good chance of winning this upcoming election is because a lot of Americans, they see the left simply as a destructive mob of people that want to tear things down. If America was never great, the country is racist and evil and average Americans are evil and we just want to tear things apart, destroy the country and and that's not an appealing message. There's no vision for the future. They want to tear down ideas of what America is but they have no positive vision for the future. Well, they should. I mean Bernie Sanders certainly did and there is a strand that certainly does have a progressive vision but when they tore down Confederate statues, which was absolutely the right thing to do, they didn't replace them with anything and that there's widely an idea in left-wing circles that having statues at all is somehow wrong. There is no truth that that everything is a matter of opinion and competing narratives and that if you fight for a cause, if you believe in something strongly enough, that if you do that, that you are a sucker and that the world is simply getting worse and worse. The planet is heating up because of global warming. We're all gonna die and great. Basically, the problem is progress. We've gone too far. It's almost like the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and human human beings are breeding too much and there's this really pessimistic dark destructive narrative that has kind of gripped left-wing circles and the history of socialism in the United States is very contrary to that. Marxism is a progressive ideology that believes in humanity and the ability of human beings to get to a higher state of being and a higher mode of production and I feel like there has been a big effort to kind of erode that and that largely that has become the problem in left-wing circles and that Kamala Harris and the world you she espouses and some of the ways in her campaign she talks a lot about her own childhood for example you know there's you know throughout her life you can see a real desire to destroy a real kind of vindictive. To what degree do you get into like her her psychological profile and her overall moral framework? No quite a bit quite a bit because I think that she is quite problematic no doubt about it. Can you give some specific examples of psychological traits? Well for example when you talk about the fact that as the prosecutor of California again none of this is my own research I'm just drawing from other people's work I mean you know the when she was the the district attorney for Oakland when she was you know the California DA prosecutor I mean I mean there was a record of trying to keep innocent people on death row you know trying to suppress DNA evidence trying to fight against exonerations there was there was a record of another example would be you know what I came to the marijuana laws you know the fact that she joked herself about smoking marijuana right the fact that she smoked marijuana when it's actually much higher than than Tulsi Gabbard Tulsi Gabbard said 1,500 people it's actually 1,900 people who she got gave criminal records for get good criminal records to for smoking marijuana and jokes about it herself and laughs it off the fact that she smoked it herself I mean that's that's pretty problematic and that's pretty concerning and the the record of the California district attorney I mean that is that is quite concerning. Terrians have looked into it many many people concerned about basic civil liberties have talked about prosecutorial misconduct in California under her leadership it's quite disturbing stop look into the details. Yeah I know there was the case with this man on death row and involving DNA evidence. Kevin Cooper yeah right I mean wouldn't would you I mean any moral person would want to make sure that they were executing the right person put the debate about the death penalty aside right would you want on your conscience for the rest of your life that you killed an innocent person and if you had just allowed DNA evidence you might have not done so but it seemed like there's no concern about that there's this desire to punish this desire to to destroy that is very very destructive and you know this is the curse of the air it's not just Kamala it was the whole U.S. political system where the tough on crime laws were being used to build careers this appeal to vengeance was very widespread but it's very very dangerous and I get into that and I talk about her personality and how her personality seems to have developed and and I get into do it I encourage people to read it again I'm not trying to make the case that Trump is necessarily better Trump really disturbs me towards the end of the book I get into you know some of the problems with Trump in particular some of the the narratives he uses about immigrants and such to to build up his campaign and some of the very very dark ties of it the country is moving in a very very dangerous direction I think Kamala Harris's career is an illustration of that and that's why I put the book out to what agreed does identity politics play a role to her personally and also reflect a greater overall trend on politics well it's interesting I mean you know if you watched Kamala Harris's speech at the Democratic National Convention you know in the video that preceded it they brought up the fact that she was a woman of color many many times and I know many people of color who voted for Barack Obama simply because they wanted their child to grow up knowing that it was possible for them as a person of color to be president and that's that's respectable I I are they're not wrong it's a very strong argument about about why why Barack Obama's presidency was so meaningful and identity politics you can't just completely dismiss it right and and we have to recognize the struggles that women have been through the struggles that people of color have been through and how symbolic victories can be very very meaningful but beyond that policy matters and and you know who the person of color is who's leading matters and it that if you just see Kamala simply as a woman of color becoming the first vice president and potentially the next president if that's all you see her as you're not really thinking about the country overall because there are some very very dangerous trends in the United States right now there's the danger I think of a new world war on the horizon we're facing economic decay you know I mean Donald Trump has completely mismanaged the pandemic our country is facing a crisis right now and the leadership that we have in the coming years could be very very vital and I and and big decisions are being made now that have really lasting implications as far as VP picks and the Democratic primary was Kamala the favorite of the donor class including Big Tech in Wall Street well what's interesting was I quote in the book a number of articles revealed that many of the financial backers of Hillary Clinton picked Kamala Harris that she had some meetings in the Hamptons on in Long Island New York where some of the wealthiest people Silicon Valley and others gathered and decided to put their money behind Kamala Harris and that decision was made and Kamala Harris as you'll remember she was in the debates and at the debates she she was taken down by Tulsi Gabbard Tulsi Gabbard brought up her prosecutorial record and that was it and Kamala had no response and not at the debate she had no real response and then afterwards when Anderson Cooper in a follow-up discussion following the debates gave her another opportunity to rebut it all she could bring up as well Tulsi Gabbard you know she has ties to the Syrian government Bashar Assad as if that changes the reality of her record Kamala Harris's record as prosecutor in California is very very disturbing and so the American people didn't vote for her and but yet she's back on the ticket Joe Biden many people have questions about you know he will be the oldest president in all of US history if he is elected and will he be able to complete his four years if he's not Kamala Harris will be our next president despite the fact that at the polls the American people decided against her and I also believe that it's pretty clear that Joe Biden worked pretty hard to not pick her as his VP and I get into that in the book as well there's a lot of a lot of hints that Joe Biden was thinking anyone but her and I think you can put this into the context of the clash between the Obama White House and the Hillary Clinton State Department so this was during the Obama administration Hillary Clinton represented the more the more hawkish and interventionist wing I know with the Washington Post they praised the selection of Kamala Harris as a her foreign policy like these the word a muscular liberalism so could she play that role in as far as foreign policy goes comparable in abiding the administration comparable to the rural Hillary Clinton played in the state department yes I think absolutely I think that the forces that that very much wanted Hillary Clinton to be president and and then ended up you know backing her as secretary of state have put their forces of and their their their energy behind Kamala Harris now first for president the voters didn't buy it now as vice president and that that there is a particular faction that is committed to unleashing chaos globally in order to bring down governments and secure the rule of Wall Street and that Barack Obama tried to restrain this faction and you know the New Yorker the New Yorker there was a very good article that exposed how you know Hillary Clinton had had you know protected Jared Andrew Cohen when Jared Andrew Cohen without the permission of the White House was giving directions to Twitter about how to so unrest inside of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Obama administration tried to fire Jared Andrew Cohen for it Hillary Clinton protected him Hillary Clinton is proud of it Barack Obama says that his his most proud moment as president was in 2013 when he was able to not send cruise missiles to Syria right when you know there was this allegation about a chemical attack and it looked like the USA was on the brink of you know bombing Syria with cruise missiles Obama didn't do it he says that was his most proud moment well Hillary Clinton wanted him to do it and Obama says that his greatest regret as president was the intervention in Libya going in and without a clear plan who was pushing Barack Obama to go in to Libya Hillary Clinton was and that there was a clear difference between the Obama White House Joe Biden John Kerry who eventually became the next Secretary of State replacing Hillary Clinton and the Hillary Clinton State Department that there were clear differences there and that the Hillary Clinton State Department had people like Samantha power and Marie Slaughter and others right Jared Andrew Cohen who have a particular agenda you know Anne Marie Slaughter wrote an article for the Foreign Affairs magazine right after Trump was elected issue was called the power of populism she believes there is a fight going on in the world today between what she calls the open international system and quote-unquote populist governments around the world and the way she sees it the job of the United States is to utilize social media to moment unrest and and and chaos in order to bring down these populist governments that get in the way of the great open international system so good doffy or in Assad examples of that or you could say like Milosevic under Clinton sure or or Russia and China today or Venezuela or you know in 2009 the first coup that took place under the Barack Obama administration was when the government of Manuel Zalaya an elected socialist was toppled by the military and Barack Obama in 2009 he was kind of startled by it and they asked him about it after the government of Honduras was toppled in 2009 and he said well it's clearly not legal because it's not legal for the military to topple the government he didn't know what was going on little did he know that Hillary Clinton had been meeting with the coup plotters and had been having and and the coup plotters had been in Washington and that that Hillary Clinton had been working to carry that coup out and topple the government of Honduras basically behind his back right and that Honduras a number of the refugees on the border that we hear so much about are coming from Honduras ever since 2009 Honduras has been gripped by instability drug cartels it has one of the it has I think the highest murder rate of any country in the world and people are fleeing in big numbers life has become unlivable because of a regime of narco chaos and instability that was imposed on Honduras by the Hillary Clinton State Department and you know I mean I mean that that in and of itself it's very similar to what's happened to Syria right we can be critical of the Syrian government but what has been the results of the efforts to destabilize Syria instability the rise of ISIL terrorism right what has been the results of the overthrow of Gaddafi and Libya instability chaos mass refugees people are are drowning in the Mediterranean trying to get out of the humanitarian crisis that was created in Libya these regime change operations don't result in making people's lives better they result in further instability and chaos and misery and we see this over and over again and Obama you know he criticized Bush for that and he came into office to some degree he wanted to sign the Iran nuclear deal he wanted to repair relations with Cuba and he was able to do that to some degree or other but it seems that the Hillary Clinton State Department was working against him at every moment and that becomes very very clear and that that Kamala Harris is cuisine not as a successor to Barack Obama but as a successor to the Hillary Clinton State Department the same backing the same crew of international interests that back Hillary Clinton have now backed Kamala Harris that's very very well documented she is their new pick and I believe that she will come into office with a similar agenda do you see dangers under Kamala Harris or at a Biden-Harris administration of abuses of civil liberties including like tech totalitarianism like a tech crackdown on dissidents probably both from the left and the right I absolutely do I think that what's going to happen I mean it's been basically like I'd say like preventing another Trump or Bernie right nailing the door shut and that's that's been made pretty clear that that that the factions that are backing Joe Biden they view Donald Trump as the result of too much freedom on the internet not too many competing ideas you know the idea that there is alternative media coming from other countries like Russia or China or Iran or Venezuela and they want to get into office and nail the door shut to make sure that no other Trump is possible that might sound good if you don't like Trump but remember you couldn't have had Trump without Bernie Sanders right the the Bernie Sanders and and the hopes of so many people that backed him and the way he was robbed of the Democratic nomination and and the way you know many many people in the Rust Belt states who had wanted to put their hope behind a left-wing populist a lot of them ended up voting for a right-wing populist the Trump and Bernie are both symptoms of a growing distrust of the status quo and the argument of the Biden campaign is not that we should you know be critical of the status quo from the left but it's rather that criticism of the status quo is a Russian conspiracy and that every effort needs to be made to crack down on people not trusting our great Democratic institutions if you're a person who has marched against wars or marched against police brutality or marched against injustice in this country you should be very disturbed by some of the statements that were hearing about the plans of a Biden administration I mean they plan to get in there and make sure that that competing narratives and and contrary information is not allowed I mean that's they're very open about intending to do that would this be through legislation or executive orders or more through collaboration with the tech I think it would be more collaboration with tech Trump has a hostile relationship with big tech for whatever reason he sees big tech as out to get him there's this right-wing YouTube channel PragerU that got to go to Capitol Hill and talk about how YouTube is rigged against them and that Trump very much feels that Twitter and Facebook and Google are working against him and he's trying to you know roll back their ability to to set the terms whereas Biden promised in his article in Foreign Affairs which he wrote America must lead again he promised that he would convene an international summit about controlling controlling information around the world and combating you know the the ideas of foreign countries and coming in and and trying to basically control discourse in the United States and and working with big tap working internationally to try and control discourse and that should be very disturbing to any progressive-minded person I would absolutely think it would be disturbing and and I mean again right you know within the Trump camp let me point this out the Trump camp you know they're often accused of being totalitarian and fascist and such and there's there's plenty of you know good points people make when they point that out but I know about I can think of about 16 different types of Trump supporters you've got religious fanatics you've got QAnon you've got gun supporters you know you've got you know people that are you know Miami Cubans or people that are you know big supporters of Netanyahu there's a there's a wide coalition of people in the Trump camp in the Democratic camp I increasingly hear more and more kind of totalitarianism for example Tulsi Gabbard recently criticized Netflix she said you know what I don't approve of this new film Netflix is making I think it's you know it's it's not appropriate to have young girls dancing this way or whatever that's all she said immediately the Democratic the Democratic establishment came down on her all over social media simply for criticizing Netflix you know she was put in the category of QAnon she was accused of being a Trump supporter that's far more totalitarian I see much more ideological diversity among Trump supporters it happens to be a lot of views I don't agree with but among the Democratic camp there is this increasing you know if being a Democrat means you support the status quo you don't believe in quote-unquote conspiracy theories you don't believe in in you know any any standard criticism of the official U.S. narrative you believe that somehow the 2016 elections were the result of a vast foreign plot you'll almost have to think of Donald Trump like he's the Manchurian candidate and if you don't accept this overall narrative that comes from Rachel Maddow that comes from the mainstream voices if you don't accept that even if you're on the left you're a racist you're a fascist you're a crypto fascist you're a red brown and and you you're not welcome I mean the attack on Bernie Sanders supporters and Bernie bros for daring to criticize things I mean I see a lot more thought conformity in the Democratic camp than I do in the Republican camp right now oh yeah that's that's definitely the case like what they were saying like accusing Tulsia being a Russian asset just looking at the election I remember in 2016 Trump did make more populist arguments in opposition Hillary Clinton about about war and about about things like NAFTA and economic the economic plutocracy and obviously you're not a you don't like Trump but hypothetically if you were to advise Trump he just don't would have so many opportunities to criticize Biden from a populist standpoint including NAFTA but all he's saying is basically that Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism in the far left right yeah and and the thing is I mean Trump you know he said some stuff about he was gonna build infrastructure well that hasn't happened he said he was gonna stop meddling around the world and overthrowing regimes well there's been how many attempts to violently overthrow the Venezuelan government now he escalated tensions with Iran he's you know he's ripped up the INF treaty and is basically trying his hardest to restart the nuclear arms race with Russia you know Donald Trump has not fulfilled a lot of the better things he said during his campaign no question about it Donald Trump seems to have made an alliance with a particular faction Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo they come out of they come out of a faction within the CIA the thing is the CIA tends to be a more liberal agency right I mean the military they're about blowing things up and big weapons but the CIA that's people out of Harvard and Yale who carefully study about how to strategically push the interest of the United States with soft power and maneuver and you know cultivate proxies around the world and maintain alliances you know it's much more of a liberal way of looking at things where you want to be friendly to people and and get along and operate you know covertly however there is a particular faction you know Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo and the Bush family I think that have a different view than the rest of the agency and that is who Trump has kind of made an alliance with and you know I mean the issue of torture is a great example John Brennan who is Obama's CIA director said he would never torture anyone that if Obama asked him to torture he would step down and that if you know the CIA's job is to maintain good relationships has to have the United States loved around the world so of course having the United States having no torture policy makes sense however Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo are in a minority faction within the CIA that's where they come out of that didn't view it that way that argued that perhaps it would be in the interest of the United States to be known to have a reputation for torturing people around the world to scare people into submission right and you know that that is not the view that that most people within the CIA have and you can go back to what happened with Valerie playing and then you know Dick Cheney and and and that whole debacle and that it's clear that there are contradictions within the deep state again now when I say deep state I'm not talking about some vast conspiracy of pedophiles drinking blood and Satan I'm talking about the vast you know intelligence apparatus in the United States you know most countries they have one security service right they have their their you know their security service here in the United States we have the FBI we have the CIA we have the NSA we have US Army intelligence we have US Navy intelligence you know we have a number of intelligence agencies plus they all tend to contract private firms for their work right so they're all contracting different security companies different cyber security companies so there's a huge problem now in the United States with what I think you could call deep state overlap where there are many many different agencies with many many different agendas competing with each other with different views and all you know trying to compete for the same budget and get you know get more support from from the government and this is leading to a bit of a disaster and that that you know where did the FBI stand you know when Trump fired James Comey many in the FBI viewed that as an attack on the sovereignty of the FBI as an institution and the Department of Justice and that that there are clear disagreements within the American power structure one thing you do talk about is like the divisions and the elites and the power structure basically like one side is more manufacturing or like the fracking industry and then the other side would be big tech or well street you actually give examples there's the divide of the sort of industrialist versus the East Northeastern establishment that's been a long it's been a long going to buy throughout the 20th century and you see that with the Trump versus Bezos and the divide in a ruling class so to what degree does Kamala Harris represent this this split in the ruling class I think that that the faction you know the division I've often said there's a division between the rich and the ultra rich and I'm not the first person to say that you know Ferdinand Lundberg wrote a lot about that about about the role of the Rockefeller family and how you know during the early Cold War it seemed like the Rockefeller family was almost at odds with the rest of American capitalism and that you know the big four super major oil companies and Silicon Valley they represent one particular faction that is probably the richest of the rich probably the most powerful faction within the ruling class of the United States and they are at odds with a lot of the manufacturers a lot of the you know the Pentagon contractors for example the fracking companies that are competing with big oil and they have different interests and I think that what you can call the Eastern establishment which tends to be big oil in Wall Street and now Silicon Valley they are more globally concerned they're about that open international system that Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote about and the Kamala Harris is very much working for them she is with them and and they are very much in a struggle against kind of an uprising within their own class against the lower levels Betsy DeVos is a great example right she's a billionaire she's Trump's Secretary of Education but Betsy DeVos you know she's not part of the club her money comes from Amway Tupperware parties right I mean she's that it's allegedly a multi-level marketing scheme you know you know this is this is where her wealth comes from she's also tied to Blackwater the weapons the military contracting company the private you know security firm Academy is what they're now known as I believe she's tied to that Eric Prince's is her brother and they have a very different interest you can talk about the Koch brothers you can talk about Bernie Marcus the owner of Home Depot who you know almost all the if you go to a Home Depot almost every item you're going to find on the shelf is going to be a company that's somehow contracted by the Pentagon and that that there are competing interests here and that that this the Eastern establishment that is more globally concerned more thinking in terms of maintaining the dominance of Western oil companies and Western tech giants on the global scale can be competing basically with the rest of American capital that is more domestically concerned and more concerned about their short-term profits I've often said that there's a division between a managerial bourgeoisie that is trying to have social peace and stability so the watch you've seen the article by the bellows but it's on it's called the horseshoe class theory and it shows the different like a like small scale businesses and industrialist and then different layers of the managerial class and it basically says how different class angles of the horseshoe line that basically dictates like what political agenda will have I haven't seen the article I have to check it out so what would you say is the long-term geopolitical strategy especially for the faction of the elite that you would describe as the Northeastern establishment but I guess if you want to comment do both do both of those groups have any long-term geopolitical strategy and how how will the election outcome impact that well I think that for Trump's faction the way he sees things is he wants to can keep a kind of diverse group of constituents happy he wants to make lots of money for weapons manufacturers you know he wants to have the American energy dominance and you know get the price of oil up and have crackers sell lots of oil and that's where he's at and he wants to help Netanyahu in Israel and help Netanyahu stay on top of Israeli politics and you know and that's what he's about whereas you know it's more about short-term profits in the Trump camp that's really what it's about profits for oil companies profits for weapons manufacturers you know political gain for certain factions he's aligned with internationally that's about it it's short-term strategy whereas I think that the Eastern establishment the council on foreign relations they're thinking more long-term they're seeing the rise of Russia and China around the world they're seeing kind of an alternative economy growing on the global stage and they want to think strategically about how we stabilize the United States and not have so much dissent and unhappiness over here number one and then on top of that how we can in the long-term roll back the influence of the various countries around the world that have broken out of the domination of Western corporations and they they may want to do it with soft power then they want to do it by staging revolts and uprisings and we've seen the results of what this particular faction has done in Honduras in Libya in Syria and elsewhere and and we're still dealing with the humanitarian fallout of their strategy of fomenting chaos right I think that you go back to the cold war during Roosevelt's time there was a difference how do we fight the communists how do we fight the communists during the Great Depression one faction said we lock down as a country we have the military take over you know and we you know outlawed labor unions and communists and we become a very authoritarian society well Roosevelt did not agree with that the National Association of Manufacturers and Henry Morgan felt that way Roosevelt wanted to preserve civil liberties and have more stability he and the Rockefellers entered an alliance with organized labor and with the Communist Party to beat back that kind of militarist fascist opposition and they argued that the way to the way to defeat forces of opposition around the world was by having more openness and creating more chaos essentially right with that divide in the elite to how much how much is there an economic angle it seems like the lower levels of the elite like the mid-sized menu manufacturing there would just seem like there's more of a libertarian ideology but with the northeastern establishment what is their general economic outlook well they they tend to have a more libertarian outlook I think simply because they're not going to get the government contract they know that there are are richer folks out there and that if the state is involved the government will pick winners and losers and because they're lower on the totem pole they're less likely to get the government contract and they they don't like that and they resent the power of big monopolies they see the state is protecting big monopolies they want more of a free market so that they can have a chance i mean they they also tend to really believe in the free market ideology that we get in the united states i mean the richest of the rich kind of realize that capitalism left to its own devices is very unstable and has a lot of problems but you know people who are the first in the first generation in their family to be wealthy they tend to really believe that if you just work hard in america you can become rich and if other people weren't lazy they'd be rich like them you know the iron ran stuff uh the more libertarian stuff tends to be more popular i mean the fracking companies are known for having that kind of viewpoint and this was the viewpoint of the john burt society which accused the rock fellers of being communists back in the 1950s uh they have a more libertarian outlook um and they tend to really believe that uh that that free competition is best and they resent uh the state favoring big monopolies whereas the big monopolies uh they fear a situation where they would lose that big monopoly which would be some kind of big social overturn some kind of big turnaround which would result from a populist leader or some kind of you know mass uprising and society so they're more concerned about preserving social peace so they can keep you know their position at the top rather than about their short-term profits and deregulation to what degree do you see trump uh if he's reelected uh being any kind of impediment to the agenda of the north-eastern establishment and like liberal internationalism well i i think that donald trump uh he does not care how the rest of the world sees the united states uh he's not afraid to insult muslims he's not afraid to insult different countries um he he is not afraid to escalate tension when it pleases him uh and because of that uh he will make it difficult for the united states to maintain the kind of alliances that it's built up the way the united states was able to destabilize seria was because of a long-standing alliance with the muslim brotherhood and with various wahabi fanatical groups that that have ties to saudi arabia uh barak obama you know during the arab spring there was a feeling among the muslim community of the world especially in the arab countries that for once there was a leader who kind of understood them he went to a muslim school when he was growing up in indonesia and that during the arab spring there was trust for the united states by the muslim brotherhood and buy some wahabi fanatics and so uh they were kind of unleashed in seria to destabilize seria on behalf of the united states if trump had been the president during the arab spring i really doubt that would have happened trump is widely hated by muslims around the world he's seen as an anti-islamic bigot he's seen as a greedy capitalist who's kind of the symbol of everything that's wrong uh with those who you know viewed as wrong by those who criticize us society it's a very different kind of image and that um that cultivate uh the illusions and and you know kind of you know keeping people around the world trusting of the united states having the united states be very very polite in the way it deals with different nations and such that's essential to what the eastern establishment does right it's a long-term strategy of of carefully unleashing chaos it's very similar to what this big new bridginski did during the cold war he realized that having big wars in vietnam and korea and killing millions of people wasn't exactly good pr for the united states and in the long-term kind of helped the communists so what was much more effective was to pick out some communists that you like give them covert u.s support arm them to fight other communists make it all very very confusing and we saw that with the campusia war we saw that with the rise of euro communism in east in in europe and the western european communist parties cutting their ties to the soviet union we saw that as poland began to have tension with the uss are romania began to have tension with uss are china and the soviet union where each other's throats the way the cold war was won for the united states was not by attacking communism with brute force it was by manipulating communists against each other in order to create chaos and that was the strategy of this big new virgin ski and it was very very successful and it requires you know you know kind of courting different people around the world and utilizing them as proxy and with these uh... divides in in geopolitics so there was that tension between uh... cutter and saudi arabia do some of those divides like in the middle east reflect the divides between uh... trump and then versus the north eastern establishment yeah trump has has thrown down with saudi arabia he talked against them on the campaign trail a lot he bashed them but once he's been in office i mean he went to saudi arabia he danced with the saudi king he loves saudi arabia even after they killed jamal kashoggi and everything there he says look you know that we they we weapon sales it's important he is down for saudi arabia meanwhile you know katar right and turkey are both the major funders of the muslin brotherhood which is a very different current right saudi arabia's willhabism and the muslin brotherhood there they're completely different uh... you know views of of islam and uh... you know saudi arabia has accused katar of funding terrorism trump echoed that allegation uh... you know u_s_ turkish relations are certainly not very good right now and that i think you know under brock obama there was very much you know a situation where saudi arabia and their wing of of islam around the world and turkey and katar and their wing of islam around the world were kind of lined up now it seems very clear that if you watch al-jazeera if you pay attention to what's coming out of of turkey and the country's aligned with the muslin brotherhood they are very very opposed to donald trump meanwhile donald trump is very very much in favor of saudi arabia and that these two polls that were once both aligned with the united states in the muslin world are now at odds with each other and the muslin brotherhood seems to be you know distancing itself from the united states now i have a feeling that if biden you know is elected uh... that uh... that a biden harris administration would probably try to restore that relationship do you think there would likely be uh... greater intervention under biden harris and trump i think so absolutely yes uh... and but again it would probably start as a quote-unquote civil wars in countries covert operations and stability and then the united states would come in like in libya or like in syria to you know quote-unquote rescue uh rebels in the country right it would would start out that way and that's how these wars tend to start what bush did with his direct invasion of iraq uh... was quite unpopular in europe and the eastern establishment wing is very much interested in maintaining the nato alliance which trump let's remember has gone out of his way to defend a lot of nato allies uh... so you know ran the fall praise donald trump for being the first president that to not start a new war well uh... donald trump has done quite a few things to escalate international tension but it is true there's not a new front uh... new country uh... you know that that that has has entered uh... a global conflict under trump that i can think of uh... and that may be just because his agenda of selling lots of weapons around the world uh... it doesn't really line up uh... with with having a new front of confrontation plus i think there are a lot of people in the pentagon who realized that uh... that that al-qaeda types and isis types and the kind of terrorists that do kill americans uh... that those forces have gotten stronger and that you know over throwing you know they're trying to overthrow beshara sod someone who was so opposed to al-qaeda he even offered to torture you know people for the bush administration gaddafi also you know so opposed al-qaeda the offered to torture people that overthrowing uh... so i'm saying for example it was a secular boffist arab leader and that has created a political space in which the kind of terrorist groups that actually do kill americans right like you know isis al-qaeda type groups uh... have gotten stronger we're supposed to be fighting a war on terror but instead of fighting the terrorists were fighting the enemies of the terrorists were fighting the nationalist independent and socialist governments that tend to hold back the terrorists meanwhile the ideology that these terrorist groups believe in will hobbyism comes out of saudi arabia and there's no questioning of the u_s relationship with saudi arabia uh... and that ideology is everywhere and the united states seems to be happy to use will hobby fanatics as kind of covert foot soldiers in these regime change wars and then act surprised when they turn around and and attack the united states and that is that is an ongoing problem that we have had i think that the muslin ban that trump did i mean many people call it that the the travel ban the the visa uh... ban uh... what that was about was the fact that in many countries uh... various forces that are aligned with the united states and efforts to bring down for countries like the syrian government and all of that are rewarded with visas right if you uh... fight for the united states if you're an ally of the united states you are your family get rewarded with a visa and i think that that people within the trump administration think that's not such a good idea and they took this soft power uh... negotiating bargaining chip away from the c_i_a_ and in syria in yemen and in various countries around the world the c_i_a_ can no longer you know bribed people by offering them a u_s_ visa any longer and i think that's what it was about it was taking a bargaining chip away from the c_i_a_ i want to get back to uh... kamala harris uh... to what degree uh... taking into account her background growing up in berkeley is she a product of the new left and also how connected is the new left uh... to to put a credit economic interest and then this sort of general discussion of like the northeastern establishment sure i mean um... i mean as far as uh... as far as that i mean kamala harris she grew up uh... i mean her parents met at protests uh... and for civil rights uh... in berkeley california uh... she was born in nineteen sixty four in in berkeley the same year that the free speech movement happened in her memoir she describes uh... going to rainbow sign which was a an african-american cultural center that was you know very much you know frequented by figures like james bald one and others and and she comes out of the new left and that's very surprising when you look at her behavior behavior as a prosecutor you would think that she grew up in you know in that thin blue line milieu that that thinks that uh... that thinks that uh... you know criminals are out of control and that the police are have their hands tied you know that would be with your behavior might make sense if that's how she saw the world but she grew up uh... attending protests against racism and uh... i mean you know becoming very much you know oriented toward you know black nationalism and you know civil rights demonstrations and and progressivism and leftism um... and i argue in the book that that there was a huge effort you know that started with the c_i_a_ is congress for cultural freedom program to distort and manipulate leftist politics uh... the c_i_a_ very much felt that that they did not want people in the united states who protested for civil rights or protested uh... you know against the uh... the mistreatment of women or against uh... against capitalism and war they didn't want them to become natural allies of the soviet union and that a huge effort was made to build up what you call the anti-style on this lap uh... that that was done right in figures like susan santag uh... figures like hannah arrant uh... partisan review magazine all these things are revealed it's now a matter of public record that these things were were covertly funded by the c_i_a_ in the hopes of creating a a a new kind of left the left of this is where you get uh... like right wing populist they'll actually outright say that all leftism is a product of like bankers but is this where they get their their theories from i don't know i mean i think that that in a lot of cases that's just anti-semitism right i mean i from the right it's just you know i mean when they say that leftism is all the product of bankers that's that's anti-semitism because i mean that's that's i think they're just using banker is code for jewan that's just you know jews are communist user bankers anti-semitism that's all that is from coming from most of the right there may be some on the right to who who who are able to understand this with a little more depth um... you know i think that there are a lot of like these middle-class elements that that you know feel like big capital and big corporations are coming down pretty hard on them um... and they also fear the last and labor unions and so in their minds they kind of push them together and i think that's what that's about i think there's a lot of social conservatives also uh... who do or are very aware of the fact that that you know not every advance of social liberalism is purely the result of an uprising from below that you know the rocker feller family did fund book of alfred kenzi for example they did bankroll the uh... the birth control league which eventually became planned parent to it and that their you know they're that this eastern establishment that is more liberal is more socially liberal uh... and that you know the motivation that the rocker fellers had for supporting the woman's right to an abortion and legalization of birth control it wasn't so much about concerned for women's rights as belief in malthousianism and belief that there are too many people in the world and fearing the instability of quote unquote overpopulation especially as capitalism advances with technology and there's a a smaller place for people at the assembly line and so because of that uh... we do see some elements of big capital funding social liberalism not economic socialism or left is and but social liberalism and i think that some on the right are aware of that uh... and of course they fit this into a kind of a conspiracy theory mentality and get their their defending you know the old way and they want to go back to the nineteen twenties or something that's not my viewpoint at all but it is important to point out that social liberalism in some cases does think does make things more profitable for capitalists right that that not every lifting of social restraints has been done purely because it will you know give a greater level of freedom to the proletariat uh... that there are contradictions among the ruling class what do you think that anti-populism including anti-worker to uh... became a theme within the new left i think it's mainly because uh... after the second world war the u_s_ middle class greatly expanded right we started have a lot more middle class people in the united states and that that the distort i mean both the left and the right change after the second world war on the right we got neo conservatism on the left we got uh... we got the new left and the new left was very much it wasn't about workers rising up against capitalists and the working-class majority season control the means of production it was rather about alienated intellectuals being protected from the mob uh... you know and it viewed you know the broad masses of people is potentially dangerous is potentially coming to take the freedoms away from those those intellectuals and it it's all left is about being preserving about preserving the freedom of of the intellectuals and that's what comes across if you read hannah our rent and susan sauntag and the fact that they can play you know the soviet union and marxism with fascism very openly they called red fascist susan sauntex at something like you know communism is just fascism with a human face in their minds they're both dangerous because they're both populism they're both ordinary people rising up and taking history into their own the same way that trump by by establishment of liberals they actually view trump and bernie uh... the same way i i mean i actually saw you posted a video of a woman at a resist rally putting a hammer a soviet hammer and circle over trump yeah and uh... you know i mean i hear in new york city i i remember i i went to a rally i was interviewing some anti- trump protesters and they you know trump with a hammer and circle on him is very common um and i've said to people do you think trump is a communist they said no he's a fascist and i said well i mean you know those are not the same thing you know those two groups killed each other in the streets there was the second world war you know there's a whole history of communist marching for civil rights and and defending the rights of african-americans while fascist built lynch mobs uh you know that these are two different viewpoints but if your viewpoint is simply that it's about the freedom of the individual against a dangerous mob a dangerous collective um if that's the way you view the world as the individual against collectivism in your mind you're gonna equate to however if you understand that one is trying to lead to a stateless classless world and create so much material abundance that there can be a higher level of freedom than ever before and and advance human progress and another is trying to reinforce social hierarchies with all kinds of brute force and repression uh you're going to see things very very differently um but that is the difference in viewpoint you know the middle class viewpoint uh that fears the mob is going to equate the two because it opposes collectivism by its very nature uh not necessarily taking into account what that collectivism stands for and strives for uh is there anything else uh you like to add on the topic of Kamala Harris and basically like what if she is she is successful and she does become president and what her long-term legacy will be well I fear that her long-term legacy will be lots of wars around the world and I also fear that at home there will be a higher level of censorship um and repression of those of us who have dissonant views already we're starting to see kind of a stigma develop against uh you know you know the slightest criticism of the status quo is being considered to be a dangerous conspiracy theory Tulsi Gabbard you know just recently being attacked simply for criticizing netflix for making this film that many people are quite disturbed by um that kind of ideological conformity I fear that there is going to be a bigger and bigger effort uh by silicon valley um and by google and and other forces to control political discourse at home and that that will then facilitate uh the escalation of more wars and conflicts and instability around the world in the hopes of preserving the power and preserving this open international system that Anne Marie Slaughter speaks about and I don't think that's desirable then again Trump's anti-immigrant bigotry and Trump's support for police brutality and his his hatred and and that's not something I support either so I'm not here to tell you who to vote for I'm just here to tell you that on the liberal side there's a lot of dangers that I think some people are overlooking uh Caleb before I wrap up the show do you want to plug your website uh any other books you have besides the Kamala Harris books or just any uh upcoming projects sure well I wrote a book called city builders and vandals in our age uh which is articles and essays on socialism and it goes over human history and it talks about uh the 20th century and the cold war and it reexamens Marxism in a new light and many many people have said that book was very very eye-opening for them it changed how they understood the topic of socialism and Marxism and many people have pointed out that the way I talk about these issues is quite different than the way most people on the left do and that I bring kind of a unique perspective you can check out my work at CalebMoppin.com c-a-l-e-b m-a-u-p-i-n.com uh Caleb Moppin it's been an excellent show uh thank you so much for being on