Beneath The Surface - Sunday, May 24, 2026

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1. Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Susie Wiseman. The Democratic National Committee
2. released its long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 election on Thursday, under duress after months
3. of trying to suppress it and accompanied by the admission from the party leadership that
4. the report does not meet our standards. Among its more revealing omissions, there's no mention of
5. Israel's war on Gaza at all, which dampened democratic turnout and support in 2024.
6. Meanwhile, in Britain, Keir Starmer's Labour government, elected on a wave of anti-Tory
7. exhaustion, has settled into a tepid status quo governance so uninspiring that the right
8. is capitalizing on the disappointment and the left is backing the Greens. In the face of the
9. most aggressive authoritarian challenge to democratic politics in decades, the official
10. center-left parties worldwide offer caution, triangulation, and managed retreat, seeing the
11. problem as too much radicalism rather than too little. It's different in the streets, in organizing
12. drives, in the mass resistance to Trump's second term in the pro-Palestinian movement. The question
13. is whether the political left can theorize and channel that energy before the right consolidates
14. its hold, and that requires understanding how we got here. Not just is this fascism, a question my
15. guest David Ost argues is actually the wrong question, but what political species produced
16. both classical fascism and today's right-wing populism, why it keeps winning, and what the
17. left has done to open the door to it. David Ost is a Polish politics specialist, the author of the
18. 2005 book, The Defeat of Solidarity, in which he predicted years before most people were paying
19. attention that Poland's right-wing nationalist Peace Party would win by speaking to workers
20. that liberals had dismissed as irrational. His new book, Red Pill Politics, Demystifying the
21. Far Right from Fascism to Right-Wing Populism, is a comprehensive and historically rigorous study
22. that connects fascism to Trumpism, Mussolini's syndicalist unions to Tucker Carlson, Jabotinsky's
23. revisionist Zionism to Netanyahu, and spells out what a left that is serious about winning
24. needs to understand and do differently. We're going to get his take and offer his book as a
25. thank you note for pledging your support to this program and KPFK when our program returns in just
26. a moment. Welcome back to the show. I'm Susie Wiseman and really pleased to have my friend
27. David Ost back here with us. We're talking about the rise of the far right and about David's new
28. book. And of course, the rise of the far right is the defining political crisis of our time.
29. But as David asks, and we're going to look into here, are we analyzing it correctly? David argues
30. that by focusing on whether Trump, Orban, or Netanyahu is or isn't a fascist, we're missing
31. the deeper question, what political species do fascism and right-wing populism share? And what
32. does understanding that species tell us about why the left keeps losing workers it once counted
33. as its core constituency? David's new book, Red Pill Politics, Demystifying the Far Right from
34. Fascism to Right-Wing Populism, as I said in the overall intro, is a sweeping comparative
35. political analysis arguing that fascism and today right populism are not separate phenomena but two expressions of the same underlying political species which he calls red pill politics And that an acronym that he
36. builds from, listen for it, right-wing exclusionary nationalist democratic populist illiberalism.
37. I guarantee you'll find red pill within that. Bras on Ost's deep expertise in Poland and the
38. broader post-communist world, but it ranges widely across Europe, the Americas, India, Turkey, Israel,
39. and the U.S. from the 1880s to the Trump second term. And it ends with a diagnosis of the left's
40. own failures and a prescription for what it would take to turn things around. The book is, I think,
41. a crucial contribution to understanding the political moment that we're in. So with all of
42. that, David Ost, welcome back to the show. So before we begin, I want to properly introduce you.
43. David Ose is Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
44. He's written widely on Poland and Eastern Europe.
45. His focus has been on labor and class and democracy and the new right.
46. And his books include, and I think we've interviewed him for most of them right here,
47. Solidarity in the Politics of Antipolitics, Workers After Worker States, The Defeat of
48. Solidarity, and he's written in Jacobin, The Nation, Dissent, and elsewhere.
49. And today we're going to talk to him about this just this week published book by the new press, Red Pill Politics, Right-Wing Populism from Fascism to Today.
50. So with that, David, let's talk from the start at this new autopsy.
51. I want to start with that because that, as I said in the overall introduction, was suppressed and finally released and not ready for primetime as the head of the DNC has said so.
52. It doesn't mention Israel or Gaza, even though the author apparently told the DNC that not mentioning it was costing the Democrats votes.
53. And then also across the Atlantic, Starmer's labor government seems to have concluded that winning power means doing as little as possible with it.
54. And your book argues that the left's abandonment of economic populism in favor of cautious managerialism is precisely what opened the door to red pill politics.
55. So does this autopsy confirm your diagnosis and does the party as currently constituted have any capacity to act on the prescription that you're writing?
56. Well, again, thanks for having me. Look, I read this Democratic autopsy as well. And I guess it's not so surprising that we see some of these discussions, these internal debates there, because it's been clear to everyone that a key reason for the decline of the Democrats and of the moderate left in Europe has been its move away from, we can say, classic social democracy,
57. a strong workers' movement towards what became known as the Third Way Left, originating with Bill Clinton and with Tony Blair.
58. And so it became clear, certainly in the United States in 2016, where the two breakout candidates who were not supposed to have any chance in American politics were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
59. If Bernie Sanders thought he really could win, he would have had a different campaign and he might have won that nomination because nobody thought Donald Trump could win it in the beginning.
60. And then of course he did So in other words the proof was in the pudding that people were looking were needing some kind of new alternative to this tired moderate right moderate left politics and particularly the politics that the left had promoted
61. which was that third way left. Again, that third way is this idea coming in at the time of Clinton
62. saying, of course, we're not going to have the state do anything anymore. We're going to work
63. with business and try to maybe make things a little bit better and provide a few more
64. opportunities and particularly urge workers to go to college rather than to really deal
65. with the problems that workers were no longer having the, quote, good jobs.
66. And I could even take the quote out because the social democratic period, of course, from
67. 1945 to 1975 were the best years workers are probably ever had in capitalist society,
68. at least in the West. And of course, then that's eroding during globalization. The left didn't
69. really fight it. It has a hard time fighting it. We should be honest about that as well. We might
70. get to that later. But in any case, right, we've seen that the right wing has taken that too hard.
71. And I might say to get something into the argument of the book, because this is exactly what happened
72. in the 1920s and the 1930s. One of the key reasons fascist parties started emerging and getting
73. strong is that the socialist parties in Europe, which were the very dominant ones in Western
74. Europe, communist parties were mostly either delegalized or very much on the run. Socialist
75. parties were very strong. But for much of that time, even during the Great Depression, the socialist
76. parties said, we cannot do anything to really make life better, to reform capitalism. We're just
77. waiting for the revolution to come. They didn't offer things to workers. The German Social
78. Democratic Party went along with economic austerity programs and was very much against Hitler,
79. of course, but not promoting any kind of economic policies. And the irony, in a sense, is that
80. Hitler was talking about improving conditions for workers, of course, just for German workers,
81. for Aryan workers. And in some ways, right, that appealed to workers who saw that the left was not
82. really doing anything for them. So I'll just end this little section by saying this kind of red
83. pill right is always strong and has a chance when the left is weak and when the left is not doing
84. its job of defending workers and non-elites. I do want to let the listeners know that we're
85. going to go back and we'll give you all the definitions that, you know, that David spends
86. a lot of time talking about in understanding this new right-wing populism and fascism and
87. how they're different and how they aren't. But I want to just kind of underscore what you're saying,
88. that you argue that workers who vote for these red pill parties are not necessarily voting
89. against their interests. And everything that you've just said kind of gives the backdrop for
90. that. But that downward exclusion can be a rational strategy when upward class struggle seems
91. foreclosed And that really kind of a hard thing for people on the left to even try to get their head around I think because it challenges the idea that these voters are just being deceived
92. You know, famously, Tom Frank's book about workers voting against their own interests.
93. But you argue that they're not necessarily doing that.
94. So what does that mean?
95. And what are the political implications?
96. And, you know, is it rational behavior or is it something that, you know, others would have called false consciousness?
97. what does the left need to do there? Skipping to the end of your argument.
98. Yeah, great question. Look, in order to understand that, let me just go back briefly,
99. because you mentioned that I did this work in Poland. And this is what I saw happening in the
100. 1990s. I saw a lot of these workers who were aligned with solidarity, and some had talked
101. about kind of left ideas and more power for workers are gravitating to the political right.
102. And of course, that's the kind of thing that then we saw happening in the West as well.
103. It's crucial to understand that fascism and this radical right populism has often been directed
104. to workers, and here I introduce one of my abbreviations. Perhaps there are a few too many
105. in this book, but I say, look, what these groups appeal to are those I call dominant essence
106. workers. In the United States, we know them as white workers, but in Poland in the 1930s,
107. Whiteness is not a key category there. Catholic is. Catholicism is. In Turkey, for example, the dominant essence is Sunni Islam, is the Islam represented by Erdogan and not the Kurdish Islam or any other religion.
108. In India, of course, the dominant essence is the Hindu identity. And what red pill politics, what starting with fascism, what this radical right does is it speaks to these groups of workers and says, we're defending you and we will provide things for you that we will not give to other workers.
109. that you are being privileged by us. As you mentioned, the red pill, one of the parts of
110. that is this exclusionary nationalism. All of these movements they speak about, we're doing
111. this in the interest of our nation, but the nation does not include all people who live in that area
112. or even all citizens. It includes only those of those they call the dominant essence.
113. In fact, workers historically have tried, of course, to organize, to defend themselves against capitalists. But often the elites are saying, well, we're not going to incorporate you. We're not going to do things for you as a class.
114. But if you join with us, we can give you certain kinds of benefits if you vote for us at the exclusion of others. And left parties, which are universalist, do not go for this, right?
115. If these right-wing populist parties are able to speak to some of these workers and say,
116. join with us and we'll provide you a little something against others.
117. And for many workers, they might want to join together with their class comrades.
118. But historically, we know class politics is very hard.
119. You usually lose when you're fighting against those dominant elites and fighting against
120. the capitalist class.
121. And so the red pill ride, starting with fascism, because they were always a little critical
122. of the elites, of capitalists, for not providing some minor benefits to workers. The fascists
123. always used the capitalists for driving workers to the left. They said, we don't want workers to
124. go to the left, so you have to provide a little something that we will push them to do. And in
125. that way, they're able to win over many of these workers. I really like that. And I thought that
126. that was something you did extremely well in your book, was to introduce country by country,
127. literally, who were the, as you call it, dominant essence. So we begin to understand this
128. exclusionary politics. So in the U.S., it was usually WASPs who were in the dominant group,
129. and Catholics, Irish were excluded, Blacks were excluded, Latinos later excluded. And now we see,
130. of course, under Trump, that in fact, they really want to not only continue the exclusion,
131. but to disenfranchise them from voting and also just expel the Latinos. In other words,
132. just get rid of them. So it ties in very well with the anti-immigrant sentiment and policy
133. that we're seeing here. But it also, in Britain, in France, in Germany, it takes on a different
134. hue slightly in different places, but it's really part of the same thing. And this reminds me,
135. because what's sort of like your, I hate using this word, but it's like your North Star, your book,
136. is that you heard this quote on Polish television, I think in 2016 in the election there,
137. or maybe it was earlier. 2015, yes.
138. 15. And the quote, it's about some TV commentator, I think, that lamented that
139. Hitler gave fascism a bad name. And that's like, okay, now I really want to hear David's understanding of the distinction between right-wing populism and fascism, if it's there. And is this some sort of attempt to sanitize the word but resurrect the ideas?
140. Yeah, look, this was a turning point for me. This was in 2015. Again, I've been working on Poland, and that's when the Law and Justice Party, known as PiS, came first to power.
141. Well, the second time, but the first time with an economically populist program as well. But they were far-right party. They had spoken very favorably in their publicity and propaganda about interwar fascists in Poland.
142. And so when they came to power, there was the discussion, very similar to what would happen soon with Trump, where people said, a lot of your program and the kinds of things you're saying sound very similar to fascism.
143. What do you say about that?
144. The point is, we know fascism became a dirty word after 1945.
145. Deservedly so.
146. Absolutely.
147. deservedly so But I realized well and as this journalist said that is someone asked isn your program very much like fascism And the usual response of the right that we used to is
148. that, oh, what are you talking about? That's just a swear word. If we were anything like fascism,
149. we wouldn't be talking with you. We'd throw you in jail. If we're not throwing you in jail or
150. shooting you. What does it have to do with fascism? That's the normal response. And in fact,
151. fascism was super repressive like that in a way that that kind of politics isn't today.
152. But this guy, when confronted with the question, isn't this similar to fascism? He squirmed the
153. thought for a minute and said, yes, the problem is that Hitler gave fascism a bad name. And at
154. the first moment, I was just like astounded. How could anyone say that? But I realized then that
155. was so key because I said, look, the point is that, yes, fascism had tens of millions,
156. hundreds of millions of supporters in the 1920s and 1930s. People were willingly fascist. They
157. voted for them. And then even when they couldn't vote, there was a lot of support for that.
158. fascism was not just about violent repression and suppression of women. It had a popular angle.
159. It was able to win over workers. Again, not all, but those of the dominant essence. And so I
160. realized that this debate we have, is this fascism? Is this not fascism? What this guy pointed out,
161. I think we associate fascism with Hitler. And Hitler and the level of violence and repression was, what can we say, off the charts and just the most extreme imaginable, right?
162. culminating, of course, in the Holocaust, literally trying to find every Jew they can and to
163. murder them. And it took this kind of politics to an extreme. And in fact, after 1945, when Hitler
164. waged war against so much of the rest of the world and then Hitler was defeated, fascism became
165. be legitimated like that. But it had had a popular program. And I tried to realize, well,
166. what was that popular program? Just like today, many people like the populist right. And one of
167. the points is that we use that term right-wing populism, but that in fact was the innovation
168. of classical fascism. That is, in around 1920, if you were a populist, and I, you know, when I speak
169. this word in Europe, it has a worse reputation. Populism, we have the American example of the
170. populists in the late 1800s, and we often use the term populist politics to refer to doing things
171. in the interests of non-elites. And in the early 20th century, if you really treated seriously the
172. interests of non-elites, you were by definition on the left. That is, the right-wing parties,
173. they were afraid of workers. They didn't want any trade unions or any organization.
174. They wanted to keep the workers at bay And the fascists were the first to say well world we workers too We non We are the scum of the earth But we on the right wing
175. We hate the left.
176. And one of the reasons we don't like the elites is that they don't take care of the left the way real men should do, right?
177. To fight them, to beat them up, you know, to take care of them.
178. And we're on the side of the people, the people who are just like us. So getting back to this question, is this fascism? Because we've been following this question for the last 10 years, and it seems like any time there's more violence, we use the term more.
179. But I think that it's not really violence that's absolutely central to fascism. I talk about how during Mussolini's reign, even during Hitler's reign, especially before the war started, if you were not a Jew and you did not engage in opposition politics, that life could be OK for you.
180. And in fact, it's true that the unemployment issues were resolved by Hitler's spending and that Aryan workers were in a better position in 1938 than they were in 1933, right, that they had provided this.
181. we need to understand, I realize, the appeal of this kind of politics, which, you know,
182. in the 1920s took the form of fascism with all that violence, because it was a much more violent
183. time after World War I. And because the idea of democracy was very new, and a lot of people
184. didn't support it at the time, and there was still very little social spending, welfare states at
185. all, if you take the current period, the idea of democracy is more popular. People in the West
186. do not have the experience of going to war, of violence like that. So you could have the same
187. kind of politics put forth without highlighting that violent dimension. And so that's why I say
188. It's red pill. Yes, right wing, exclusionary, nationalist, democratic, because fascism always says we're democratic in the interest of the nation.
189. And they came to power democratically in Germany.
190. And in the United States.
191. And in the United States.
192. Hungary and Turkey and in India.
193. And illiberalism, which means that essentially they will not accept any limits on their power.
194. That's the goal of this type of politics. In the 1920s and 30s, when the left was very strong, when workers in Germany and in Italy, say, were organizing massive strikes, fascism took a violent stand to beat them and defeat them.
195. In the current period, when the left is not strong like that, and also is certainly not
196. massively organized in unions or ready to defend itself with fists because it hasn't
197. needed to in the last decades, now that same kind of politics can and does emerge without
198. that kind of violence in the past.
199. So I think we really need to understand, right, this is a very similar kind of politics.
200. as you quote me saying the question is to look at what is the type of politics the species of politics that can take form either as fascism like in the 1920s or as right populism as it called
201. now in the 2020s, and see that this is a very similar kind of politics. And by doing so, we can
202. understand the real danger here, because right wing populism can turn to that same kind of
203. violence of the past. It's not afraid of that kind of violence. It feels it doesn't need it.
204. But if it does, it's ready to use that. And of course, we see Trump using that with ICE
205. and pushing in that direction here. That's what I was going to just go to,
206. because we're seeing it here. And it's interesting because the overreach of ICE has turned off a lot
207. of people, but we don't know to what extent. I think it has also even in the working class base
208. of Trump. You're finding Latinos are disaffected now, whereas they voted for him, not en masse,
209. but certain ones of them did. It's interesting to look at which ones, but that's not in our purview.
210. But there are some studies that show that Chicanos, more than new immigrants, some of them
211. I had small businesses, gardens, mechanics, that kind of thing.
212. But that's a different story.
213. I was really interested in your book and in what you just said now about universalism and the post-war generation during the long boom of democratic and liberal politics and the reaction to it.
214. Not so much because what red pill politics is all about, that exclusion.
215. And by defining this, this is only for white people or this is only for Protestants or only for Catholics or Muslims or Hindu, depending where it is, this is really important.
216. But you also talk about the neoliberal betrayal and you key in on NAFTA as the point where, you know, these liberal parties, because it wasn't just here, went for globalization, free trade and just would only pay lip service to workers' pain.
217. But now in the period in which we're living in, Trump came to, let's say he was able to win over people by speaking apparently to their pain or at least somewhat.
218. But unlike, let's say, Orbán and Kaczynski, who give their workers a little bit, Trump's giving them nothing and in fact asking them just to support, you know, his self-aggrandizement and his ballroom and his and ICE.
219. So I'm really interested in, like, does this create an opening or how do you see that? And has the right, have they overstretched the mark, turned off this group of supporters that they've won over?
220. Yes, great question. And look, Trump, of course, we know he broke out as a candidate in 2016 by being critical of multinational corporations who were sending jobs away, right?
221. He went to Indiana in his campaign, and I'm going to make sure that there's no movement of these jobs abroad.
222. I'm going to intervene on your behalf.
223. Right. He was speaking to those real economic populist issues in his presidency.
224. The first term, he did not govern that way.
225. of course, introduced those tax breaks, but he still spoke much more about workers' issues
226. and continued to get some support in that way. In his latest iteration, in this second term,
227. We see Trump dropping all of that, and that is responsible for the drop of his poll numbers.
228. Look, I focus on the economic issues that drive a lot of people, workers and non-elite specifically, to be able to go to the right or to the left.
229. They're looking for a party working in their interests.
230. And in Trump's second term, he's completely abandoned them. Of course, recently says what's been clear to everyone that he doesn't really care about these kinds of issues. He's focused on his own aggrandizement, he and his family.
231. And of course, weirdly, really craves that personal indulgence of you have to say he's great and worship him, that that's what drives him. And that's what's leading to a real problem in his poll numbers, right?
232. Now, other people can do this better who I'm really worried about. Trump was never a great economic populist. And right now he's not very good at all. And that's why his administration is really losing support.
233. But you get someone like Tucker Carlson. In the book, I point out Tucker Carlson, and I've been following him for a while. He speaks like the classic right-wing exclusionary nationalist, populist, illiberal of the fascist period. He does that better than anyone.
234. He's talking always about non-elites, about workers. He's very critical of capitalist elites for not supporting those workers.
235. He is not explicitly racist because we live in a world that is, of course, changing, we know.
236. But in that post-war period, which we are still part of, you cannot win right now with that open racism.
237. But Carlson goes pretty clear in all of his broadcasts.
238. There are always these others who are not really dignified citizens and focusing on immigrants.
239. there's always someone who's ruining it for us. So he has a narrow conception of us,
240. and he's critical of those elites, and he wants to do something for workers, but he also has made
241. clear with his total support, say, for Orban, that best is if you have a government that does not
242. have checks on what it can do. Carlson and others were lauding Orban in Hungary when universities
243. were being closed down, gender studies and historical studies program were being closed down,
244. the newspapers, almost all of the public sphere and television was controlled by Orban parties,
245. right? Just not on the internet. And Carlson has presented this always very consistently
246. in this kind of politics. I have a line there that I expect to be somewhat controversial, but I
247. try to defend it right away. I say that fascism emerged as the left wing of the radical right.
248. Yeah, I like that.
249. It seems to make no sense right Because we understand it as the farthest right But that actually false because the point is is that they say those fascists were the first right wing populists
250. They were the first on the right to say, we need to win over those workers who are going to the
251. left. We see them moving to the left. We have to win them over. So for example, like a government
252. like Pinochet came to power in 1973 against the socialists. They came to power,
253. slammed down on all unions and any kind of trade union organization. We're building up just a pure
254. capitalist society, no concessions to workers and the poor, right, for many years. And that was the
255. kind of politics there. Now, all of these movements like Le Pen in France has always said, well,
256. we're critical of those big elites. We're trying to help regular people. And in Poland, that's what
257. they say, in Turkey and in Hungary. Again, regular people for them means only those dominant parts of
258. our nation, but certainly not everyone. Although, as you mentioned, sometimes minorities,
259. while still in the last few decades, minorities everywhere associate with left-wing parties.
260. But as we talked about earlier, to the extent that left-wing parties are not really pushing
261. for left-wing policies that help workers, since minorities are disproportionately working class,
262. they're getting disillusioned with the left, who says, oh, the left may have some of us as
263. members, right, and may not, does not denigrate us publicly like some on the right do,
264. but they're not really doing anything for us economically. So some of them are willing to
265. move to that red pill right. Again, that's why so many Latinos, not a majority, but yes,
266. many more than before, moved in that direction because they were not improving their conditions
267. under Democratic Party politics. And so again, Trump was promising this. And so let's give it
268. a chance. All of this is really good. And I should let the listeners know that there's this and so
269. much more in this book on red pill politics, and you really should get it. We'll talk a little bit
270. about that when we come to ask for your support. But the last chapter of your book, and even a few
271. of the other chapters, hint that you're not just prescribing the problem, but you're also talking
272. about, say, first of all, the weakness of the left, but what the left can do. And there, you know,
273. you talk about economic populism and toughness and dominance. These are three words that you use that
274. are the right medicine, but some people feel that maybe we need something more. And I don't mean
275. just more like other words, but that this might not be enough. We're already seeing, and I'm going
276. to say this like this, we're already seeing a pretty massive resistance against Trump and
277. gigantic demonstrations, which I know are really, really good, even in terms of how demonstrations
278. don't do what they always have. And we know that, but we see also, despite the lowest union density
279. that we've seen in generations, but there's a drive toward unionization and there's heroic strikes.
280. And there unlike during much of the post boom unions are not demonized in national consciousness They supported but most people just can get to them to have a union Then we also have local electoral insurgencies and wins
281. like Mamdani in New York and Mayors in Seattle and elsewhere. So we're seeing, you know, because,
282. well, because we have now, thanks to Bernie, democratic socialists, and that's, you know,
283. really cause problems for the Democratic Party elite. Is it a roundabout way of asking, is this
284. the beginning of what you're calling for? And how do you see this becoming the kind of durable
285. political force rather than just an opposition that screams? Yeah, look, I think we are certainly
286. seeing that emergence of the kind of left politics that has a chance to win. We're seeing among
287. breakout candidates, and certainly Mamdani is the primary example, organized by talking to
288. people who voted for Trump and realized, of course, what we knew, that many were voting
289. just on economic issues alone. And we see in other candidates, the guy in Maine,
290. Plattner, right? A new kind of toughness. I say toughness because, as we all know,
291. Democrats in recent decades kind of say things that, like, we can listen to some of their
292. speeches and they can arouse us, perhaps most famously Barack Obama, right, who could give
293. great speeches, and then in office really didn't do almost anything that he imagined,
294. and we all imagined that he might be able to do, right? The left just wasn't pushing the agenda.
295. I cite my mother, who was born in 1928, starting to tell me ever since 2000, when Gore conceded
296. so easily to George Bush Jr. and for the next 20 years of her life would often turn to me and say,
297. the Democrats are just such wimps, right? Born in 1928 means she grew up in New York,
298. seeing not just Roosevelt, but Fiorella LaGuardia, an organized left movement pushing on
299. left economic issues that hasn't been present in a long time, right? And the Republicans have been
300. tough on their issues and on these questions of economic populism. Of course, what happened
301. is, again, I go through in the book, is that this right-wing populism, red pill politics,
302. reemerges only after the 1970s and 80s when globalization and outsourcing mean that even
303. those dominant essence workers no longer feel included. That, of course, is something that in
304. democratic politics we have to recognize. For any left to be able to win, it, of course, needs
305. support of workers of the dominant group to join on their side. That's what the left had had for
306. many years, it wasn't a problem. And it's not a problem that the left includes now minorities and
307. women. That's not a problem at all. But if and to the extent that a dominant working class group,
308. culturally dominant working class group feels excluded that the left is not looking out for them that when they are open to that right party And that the group that often makes the difference in elections That is we know that
309. most of the supporters were of Trump. You had many capitalist elites supporting them, right? And
310. he had a lot of elite voters, but it's always that group, right, workers and non-elites who
311. make the difference. And that's the group that the left, the broad left, must take more
312. into account. Now, I have to say, of course, you know, look, this is easier said than done.
313. In the post-World War II period, social democracy in the West became, we could say, hegemonic, really, for a few decades because it was a time of massive growth.
314. And also because it was in the interest of capitalists as well to have better trained workers, better fed workers. And they had an interest in the kinds of reforms that were taking place in 1945.
315. they didn't want to have that mass opposition that they faced in the 1930s.
316. The problem today, and it is a real problem, and I don't have the answer for it, but this is
317. certainly something we need to all think about, is that we know a tough economic populist program
318. can win over a lot of people. But today's capitalist elites do not seem to have any
319. interest in going along with that. I think that's really important. I mean,
320. it's not just that they're not interested. They don't seem to care.
321. They don't seem to care. And to that extent, they'll support more repressive politics.
322. And it doesn't do much for them. They can choose from a global labor force wherever they want.
323. And of course, right now, they're licking their lips at the prospect of reverting or turning towards artificial intelligence to serve their needs.
324. So really win over workers. So that's the problem, right?
325. I think we have to recognize that unlike after World War II, a left program is going to have a harder time making deal with elites.
326. I mean, we do not have a strong communist left, Leninist left like we did 100 years ago, not to mention even still 50, 60 years ago, there was more of that. There's not much of that around.
327. However, I would not be surprised to see more the emergence of a militant Leninist and actually, as Leninism was, anti-democratic left.
328. Because if there's not a plausible and possible democratic left alternative, then some are going to be turning to other kinds of radical left alternatives.
329. And I, of course, I wrote this book on right-wing politics and emergence, but my previous work was,
330. of course, on the Polish solidarity movement, where the Polish radical left government,
331. the post-Stalinist, the state socialist government, was also not doing things in the interest of the
332. working class. So I don't think that that is the alternative. I wouldn't be surprised if
333. Some people nowadays think it is, but that's why I think this is a key moment where we
334. do have to look for an alternative and to push firmly in that direction.
335. Again, if we all push in that direction, we will be able to find something and move along
336. in that way.
337. Last thing I wanted to ask you is that, you know, you finished this book in August of
338. 2025. And now in spring of 2026, things have moved, oh my God, so much faster. And the Trump,
339. you know, second term has accelerated. The DNC is more of a debacle. Resistance in the street is
340. even bigger than it was when you were writing your book. So I wondered, like, you know, maybe to wrap
341. up, are you more or less pessimistic than when you finished writing the book? And what do you
342. think is the single most important thing that people on the left should understand about red
343. pill politics that they don't currently? Well, look, I think the situation now is such in which
344. in the short term, we can still expect more hard time. Lately, I've been saying sometime that
345. the only good thing about today is that it's not yet tomorrow. And we know that there's going to
346. be some new thing put down. Two days ago, it was this slush fund for militant right-wing
347. insurrectionists to perhaps turn them into a private militia of Trump. That is a possibility.
348. But also the fact that in the United States, Trumpism has been exposed as this regime that
349. is not doing anything for the workers it says it can, that that is creating quickly, I think,
350. a real alternative that is emerging. You're right. Democratic socialists are much stronger. AOC
351. certainly has a lot of popularity. We saw her and Bernie's tour around the country. Unimaginable to
352. get that kind of impact 10 years ago, right, that it has now. So we're in these crucial moments.
353. And I think, right, the point of my book of red pill politics is to, for us to understand that
354. it's not just economic problems alone that's going to drive people to the left.
355. That is a key point, right? That's why I say that kind of politics is a kind of left wing of the radical right. They're able to provide some populist promotion for radical right politics.
356. Donald Trump may no longer be able to do it. Tucker Carlson or someone like Tucker Carlson can still be able to do it. And I think in that regard, it's not accidental that Carlson is now broken with Trump, supposedly over Iran.
357. But it's not just that. He can equally turn it to these economic populist issues. So we need to understand the appeal of red pill politics, just like the appeal of classic fascism at one time to workers and non-elites.
358. that we have to be able to provide that same incentive to people that we going to do things for not just dominant essence workers but for workers as a whole and non right to really
359. work on their behalf.
360. And if we do that, consequently, we absolutely do have a chance and we can turn this around
361. and we can actually build a politics that we will all be proud of
362. and that will push in a left direction that we haven't gone to before.
363. I can't thank you enough for joining us again, David Ost,
364. and for writing this book, which we're going to be offering in a minute.
365. The book is Red Pill Politics, Right-Wing Populism from Fascism to Today.
366. It's a great read and you got a lot in this last hour about it.
367. David Ost, thanks for joining us again.
368. Thank you so much for the conversation.
369. I really enjoyed it.
370. Well, that was our show.
371. And now we're going to switch gears because KPFK is in a fun drive.
372. And I'm Susie Wiseman.
373. And I'm really happy to, I guess, have to turn to you, the audience, and ask you to support this program and this station.
374. And Alan Minsky is joining me.
375. Alan Minsky is a former, my producer, and he is also the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America doing incredibly good work to help organize against red pill politics.
376. And that's really what the subject was today, talking to David Ost about his new book. And the new book is called Red Pill Politics, Demystifying the Far Right from Fascism to Right-Wing Populism.
377. And as you probably heard, it's a sweeping comparative political analysis that argues that fascism and right-wing populism are not separate phenomena, but two expressions of the same underlying political species.
378. And he calls it red pill politics.
379. One thing I never talked to him about on the show was where he got red pill from.
380. We know that it's an acronym, which he says comes from right-wing exclusionary nationalist democratic populist illiberalism.
381. But he got it from The Matrix. And I had to confess to him that I've actually never seen The Matrix. I know Alan is on and he knows what that pill was there. But the book, which is wide ranging and goes from the 1880s till now from Italy and France and Germany and Britain to the US to India to Turkey, and really talks about the same phenomena worldwide.
382. worldwide. And that's how these right-wing populist or fascist, and he said that asking
383. if it's fascist is the wrong question, why what he calls dominant essence workers or workers who
384. are privileged because they're white or because they're Catholic or because they're Hindu,
385. depending on the country, why they're attracted to this kind of politics. And we're going to offer
386. you that book for a $125 pledge at 818-985-5735. You can pick up a copy of that book. And I also
387. want to set a goal for this pitch. We are in the last stretch of the fund drive, and they're asking
388. us to raise an hour And that would mean 10 of you at 100 or maybe an angel can do 500 or a thousand but whatever it is at you not only become a listener sponsor of this radio station and of this program beneath the surface but you can
389. take away a copy of this really thoroughly argued, sweeping, interesting, but not long book,
390. Red Pill Politics. Alan? Well, yes, and a couple things there. First of all,
391. We just need eight people to pick up a book as a thank you gift at the $125 level to hit our $1,000 goal.
392. But Susie also mentions you become a listener sponsor of KPFK.
393. And I do know that with ACE Eastwick, the brand new general manager, and Maggie LaPique supporting ACE as the long-term interim general manager,
394. they are really developing a lot of community events, again, with KPFK.
395. Very important to do that, to get KPFK out into the community.
396. And to be a KPFK member is going to give you privileged access to some incredible upcoming events here in Southern California.
397. So if you just can call in, if you do want to call in and pledge at the $50 level, become a supporting member of KPFK, there are going to be advantages just to giving in that way.
398. But for $125, you get that plus this book, Red Pill Politics.
399. And yes, this is one of, I think, the most incisive analyses I've seen of really the world we're living in politically in 2026.
400. We've been in this really for quite a while with the rise of a fascist right, proto-fascist right, a red pill politics kind of right across much of the world.
401. Certainly prominent in Western and Eastern Europe, but also in places like India and now really all around the world.
402. You see, of course, in Latin America and Bolsonaro and many other countries and right here in the United States.
403. And while we while we while we know that there's a different color associated with the leader of the movement in America, orange rather than red, the red pill politics and red pill, as it refers to the reference in The Matrix.
404. If you hear just a brief summary description of what it means, red pill versus blue pill, you might come away thinking, well, that's rather simplistic.
405. And I think the reason it resonates with so many people who have seen the movie The Matrix is that is a fascinating movie as it sort of continually frames a set of philosophical questions and choices that people have as how they approach the world, understand themselves as subjects.
406. There are books written about and essays written about and courses taught about the philosophy and philosophical implications of the various choices that appear in the narrative of The Matrix.
407. So it's a very sophisticated film in that regard. Of course, it's a high, high budget, you know, sci fi, futuristic, dystopian film, a unique narrative coming with Lawrence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves.
408. But it asks very serious philosophical questions. And one of them is the choice about awareness.
409. How much this goes back to Plato's cave. Right. How much awareness do you really want to have about the world you live in?
410. How well do you want to understand it? And the right wing is grabbed onto the, again, narrative metaphor of the red pill.
411. As you take this pill and you will see things as they really are. There's no going back.
412. And of course, they claim arrogantly, of course, that their followers at one point were living in the illusion of an equitable society.
413. And they took the red pill. And now they see it's those evil feminists and all those woke people and elites that are suppressing them.
414. and they need to bond and in their dominant coded maleness,
415. dominantly ethnically coded and religiously coded maleness
416. have to bond and as the people who have taken the red pill
417. and seen things as they are.
418. And where that has left us is we do have this very compact set of true believers who make up a sort of a core of right wing movements around the country They very prominent on the Internet And we of course what they believe is in my opinion highly delusional
419. It's nothing like really seeing the truth of society. And we have to, though, be attentive to how we unravel this.
420. And this book gives more insight and information about how to proceed than I think any book I've seen yet.
421. So David O's Red Pill Politics, a fantastic compliment to Susie Weissman's Beneath the Surface here at KPFK.
422. So call now 818-985-5735, 818-985-KPFK.
423. And we need at least eight of you calling at at least $125 level or more of you calling and pledging at the $50 or $25 level.
424. Or fewer of you calling and pledging at the $1,500 or $20,000 level.
425. Whatever you can give at 818-985-5735 or go online at kpfk.org and pledge as much as you possibly can and do take away this book.
426. Alan, you really kind of encapsulated in terms of relating it to the film.
427. But one of the things we concentrated on was what can what can we do about it and what can the left do and how can we win back these so-called dominant essence workers,
428. those who are privileged because they're the real America, the real India, the real Poland, the real, you know, Italy, the ones that are appealed to by there.
429. And David Ost in this book, you know, connects fascism to Trumpism, to Mussolini's syndicalist unions, to Tucker Carlson, to Jabotinsky's revisionist Zionism, to Netanyahu.
430. And he spells out what a left that is serious about winning needs to understand and to do differently.
431. And that's what makes it so valuable to not only read this book, and it's an easy read even though it's very deep and thoughtful.
432. It's somehow you just are compelled and you really want to keep going in it.
433. And then the other thing, of course, is to pledge your support for this radio station.
434. But he gives prescriptions to let us know what to do.
435. So 818-985-5735, 818-KPFK.
436. Alan, what can you say to wrap up?
437. Well, 818-985-KPFK, 818-985-5735 is the number to call.
438. Call and pledge support.
439. Look, we really, really, in these times, we really, really need KPFK.
440. We really, really need shows like Beneath the Surface, Over the Airwaves of Southern California.
441. I spoke about the commitment of management to have more public events, and they've already started on that path with some great public events recently.
442. All the more reason to be a KPFK supporting member.
443. You'll get word of these things. And I'm sure there will even be some events coming up where you'll have extra access that would not be available for the non-members of KPFK.
444. So a great advantage to pledge support to the station. Call now 818-985-5735.
445. But most importantly, we need Beneath the Surface and KPFK because it brings on voices like David Ost.
446. And you have someone curating the airwaves like Susie Weissman, who has a deep understanding of really the organization of our society structurally, politically, economically, and therefore really can bring on authors that can provide incredible insight and point a way forward to really an honest, much more equitable and just democratic society here in Southern California, in the United States, and yes, in the world.
447. and that's really what this show delivers and it does so spectacularly and it's really really
448. needed at this hour of history dare i say more than ever and we all know why that is so please
449. call 818-985-5735 818-985-kpfk it is always an honor to be with you suzy weissman