Beneath The Surface - Sunday, May 31, 2026

Follows the audio · click any line to jump

1. for tuning in and especially thank those of you who pledged your support or renewed your membership
2. to KPFK. Hello, I'm Ian Masters, the host of Background Briefing, available 24-7 at
3. backgroundbriefing.org and heard on KPFK Mondays through Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11
4. a.m. Background Briefing looks into three or four of the important stories and issues of the day
5. to provide an in-depth daily briefing with context, history, and insight from the best-informed guests
6. closest to the scene, who offer analysis and details often overlooked by the soundbite-driven
7. media more and more controlled by Trump-friendly oligarchs. So if you want facts and information
8. to inform a motivated majority to save our democracy before it's stolen next November,
9. tune in Mondays to Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. for your background briefing
10. here on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and worldwide at kpfk.org.
11. You're listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM, Los Angeles, 98.7 FM, Santa Barbara County,
12. and the Chronicle Club at kpfk.org.
13. Pacifica Radio for all of the surface, California and beyond.
14. Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Susie Wiseman.
15. The Democratic National Committee released its long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 election on Thursday,
16. under duress after months of trying to suppress it and accompanied by the admission from the party leadership that the report does not meet our standards.
17. Among its more revealing omissions, there's no mention of Israel's war on Gaza at all, which dampened democratic turnout and support in 2024.
18. Meanwhile, in Britain, Keir Starmer's Labour government, elected on a wave of anti-Tory exhaustion, has settled into a tepid status quo governance so uninspiring that the right is capitalizing on the disappointment and the left is backing the Greens.
19. In the face of the most aggressive authoritarian challenge to democratic politics in decades, the official center-left parties worldwide offer caution, triangulation, and managed retreat, seeing the problem as too much radicalism rather than too little.
20. It's different in the streets, in organizing drives, in the mass resistance to Trump's second term in the pro-Palestinian movement.
21. The question is whether the political left can theorize and channel that energy before the right consolidates its hold, and that requires understanding how we got here.
22. Not just is this fascism, a question my guest David Ost argues is actually the wrong question, but what political species produced both classical fascism and today's right-wing populism, why it keeps winning and what the left has done to open the door to it.
23. David Oost is a Polish politics specialist, the author of the 2005 book, The Defeat of Solidarity, which we discussed,
24. and in which he predicted years before most people were paying attention that Poland's right-wing nationalist peace party would win by speaking to workers that liberals had dismissed as irrational.
25. His new book, just out this week, Red Pill Politics, Demystifying the Far Right from Fascism to Right-Wing Populism,
26. is a comprehensive and historically rigorous study that connects fascism to Trumpism Mussolini syndicalist unions to Tucker Carlson Jabotinsky revisionist Zionism to Netanyahu and spells out what a left that is serious about winning needs to understand and do differently
27. We're going to get his take when our program returns in just a moment.
28. Welcome back to the show. I'm Susie Wiseman and really pleased to have my friend David Ost back here with us.
29. We're talking about the rise of the far right and about David's new book.
30. And of course, the rise of the far right is the defining political crisis of our time.
31. But as David asks, and we're going to look into here, are we analyzing it correctly? David argues that by focusing on whether Trump, Orban, or Netanyahu is or isn't a fascist, we're missing the deeper question. What political species do fascism and right-wing populism share? And what does understanding that species tell us about why the left keeps losing workers it once counted as its core constituency?
32. David's new book, Red Pill Politics, Demystifying the Far Right from Fascism to Right-Wing Populism, as I said in the overall intro, is a sweeping comparative political analysis arguing that fascism and today's right-wing populism are not separate phenomena but two expressions of the same underlying political species, which he calls red pill politics.
33. And that's an acronym that he builds from, listen for it, right-wing exclusionary nationalist democratic populist illiberalism.
34. I guarantee you'll find red pill within that.
35. Brows on Ost's deep expertise in Poland and the broader post-communist world, but it ranges widely across Europe, the Americas, India, Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. from the 1880s to the Trump second term.
36. And it ends with a diagnosis of the left's own failures and a prescription for what it would take to turn things around.
37. The book is, I think, a crucial contribution to understanding the political moment that we're in.
38. So with all of that, David Ost, welcome back to the show.
39. Oh, my goodness. What an introduction. Thank you so much, Susie.
40. I'm not done. Here comes some more.
41. So before we begin, I want to properly introduce you.
42. David Ose is Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He's written widely on Poland and Eastern Europe. His focus has been on labor and class and democracy and the new right. And his books include, and I think we've interviewed him for most of them right here, Solidarity in the Politics of Antipolitics, Workers After Worker States, The Defeat of Solidarity, and he's written in Jacobin, The Nation, Dissent, and elsewhere.
43. 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.
44. So with that, David, let's talk from the start at this new autopsy.
45. 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.
46. It doesn't mention Israel or Gaza, even though the author apparently told the DNC that not mentioning it was costing the Democrats votes.
47. 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.
48. And your book argues that the left abandonment of economic populism in favor of cautious managerialism is precisely what opened the door to red pill politics So does this autopsy confirm your diagnosis And does the party as currently constituted have any capacity to act on the prescription that you
49. writing? Well, again, thanks for having me. Look, I read this Democratic autopsy as well. And I guess
50. it's not so surprising that we see some of these discussions, these internal debates there, because
51. it's been clear to everyone that a key reason for the decline of the Democrats and of the moderate
52. left in Europe has been its move away from, we can say, classic social democracy, a strong
53. workers' movement towards what became known as the third-way left, originating with Bill Clinton
54. and with Tony Blair. And so it became clear, certainly in the United States in 2016,
55. where the two breakout candidates who were not supposed to have any chance in American politics
56. were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. If Bernie Sanders thought he really could win,
57. he would have had a different campaign and he might have won that nomination because nobody
58. thought Donald Trump could win it in the beginning. And then, of course, he did. So in other words,
59. the proof was in the pudding that people were looking, were needing some kind of new alternative
60. to this tired, moderate right, moderate left politics, and particularly the politics that
61. the left had promoted, which was that third way left. Again, that third way is this idea coming in
62. at the time of Clinton saying, of course, we're not going to have the state do anything anymore.
63. We're going to work with business and try to maybe make things a little bit better and provide a few
64. more opportunities and particularly urge workers to go to college rather than to really deal with
65. the problems that workers were no longer having the, quote, good jobs. And I could even take the
66. quote out because the social democratic period, of course, from 1945 to 1975, were the best years
67. workers have probably ever had in capitalist society, at least in the West. And of course,
68. then that's eroding during globalization. The left didn't really fight it. It has a hard time
69. fighting it. We should be honest about that as well. We might get to that later. But in any case,
70. right, we've seen that the right wing has taken that too hard. And I might say to get something
71. into the argument of the book, because this is exactly what happened in the 1920s and the 1930s
72. One of the key reasons fascist parties started emerging and getting strong is that the socialist
73. parties in Europe, which were the very dominant ones in Western Europe, communist parties
74. were mostly either delegalized or very much on the run.
75. Socialist parties were very strong.
76. But for much of that time, even during the Great Depression, the socialist parties said
77. We cannot do anything to really make life better, to reform capitalism. We're just waiting for the
78. revolution to come They didn offer things to workers The German Social Democratic Party went along with economic austerity programs and was very much against Hitler of course but not promoting any kind of economic policies
79. And the irony, in a sense, is that Hitler was talking about improving conditions for
80. workers, of course, just for German workers, for Aryan workers.
81. And in some ways, right, that appealed to workers who saw that the left was not really doing anything for them. So I'll just end this little section by saying this kind of red pill right is always strong and has a chance when the left is weak and when the left is not doing its job of defending workers and non-elites.
82. I do want to let the listeners know that we're going to go back and we'll give you all the definitions that, you know, that David spends a lot of time talking about in understanding this new right wing populism and fascism and how they're different and how they aren't.
83. But I want to just kind of underscore what you're saying, that you argue that workers who vote for these red pill parties are not necessarily voting against their interests.
84. And everything that you've just said kind of gives the backdrop for that.
85. But that downward exclusion can be a rational strategy when upward class struggle seems foreclosed.
86. And that's really kind of a hard thing for people on the left to even try to get their head around, I think,
87. because it challenges the idea that these voters are just being deceived.
88. You know, famously, Tom Frank's book about workers voting against their own interests,
89. but you argue that they're not necessarily doing that.
90. So what does that mean?
91. And what are the political implications?
92. And, you know, is it rational behavior or is it something that, you know, others would
93. have called false consciousness?
94. What does the left need to do there?
95. Skipping to the end of your argument.
96. Yeah, great question.
97. Look, in order to understand that, let me just go back briefly, because you mentioned that I did this work in Poland. And this is what I saw happening in the 1990s. I've been going to Poland since the 1970s.
98. My very first book was about the Solidarity Movement, this leftist, really, workers' movement fighting against the Stalinist or post-Stalinist state socialist government there.
99. and in 1989 famously won and became the government there and then begins introducing
100. liberal reforms. And by the 1990s, when I went back to Poland, I saw a lot of these workers who
101. were aligned with solidarity and some had talked about kind of left ideas and more powerful workers
102. are gravitating to the political right. And of course, that's the kind of thing that then we
103. saw happening in the West as well. It's crucial to understand that fascism and this radical right
104. populism has often been directed to workers. And here I introduce one of my abbreviations.
105. Perhaps there are a few too many in this book, but I say, look, what these groups appeal to are those I call dominant essence workers.
106. In the United States, we know them as white workers.
107. But in Poland in the 1930s, whiteness is not a key category.
108. there. Catholicism is. In Turkey, for example, the dominant essence is Sunni Islam, is the Islam
109. represented by Erdogan and not the Kurdish Islam or any other religion. In India, of course,
110. the dominant essence is the Hindu identity. And what red pill politics, what starting with
111. fascism, what this radical right does is it speaks to these groups of workers and says,
112. we're defending you and we will provide things for you that we will not give to other workers,
113. right? That you are being privileged by us. As you mentioned, the red pill, one of the parts of
114. that is this exclusionary nationalism. All of these movements they speak about, we're doing
115. this in the interest of our nation, but the nation does not include all people who live in that area
116. or even all citizens. It includes only those of those they call the dominant essence. In fact,
117. Right. Workers historically have tried, of course, to organize, to defend themselves against capitalists.
118. But often the elites are saying, well, we're not going to incorporate you.
119. We're not going to do things for you as a class.
120. 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 universalists, do not go for this. Right.
121. So left parties historically began by incorporating those dominant essence workers above all, but in the last many decades, and they're also universalist.
122. And so what happens is that these right-wing populist parties are able to speak to some of these workers and say, join with us and we'll provide you a little something against others.
123. And for many workers, they might want to join together with their class comrades. But historically, we know class politics is very hard. You usually lose when you're fighting against those dominant elites and fighting against the capitalist class.
124. And so the red pill right, starting with fascism, because they were always a little critical of the elites of capitalists for not providing some minor benefits to workers.
125. The fascists always used the capitalists for driving workers to the left.
126. They said, we don't want workers to go to the left.
127. So you have to provide a little something that we will push them to do.
128. and in that way they're able to win over many of these workers.
129. I really like that and I thought that that was something you did extremely well in your book
130. was to introduce country by country literally who were the as you call it dominant essence
131. so we begin to understand this exclusionary politics.
132. So in the U.S. it was usually WASPs who were in the dominant group
133. and Catholics Irish were excluded blacks were excluded Latinos later excluded And now we see of course under Trump that in fact they really want to not only continue the exclusion but to disenfranchise them
134. from voting and also just expel the Latinos. In other words, just get rid of them. So it ties in
135. very well with the anti-immigrant sentiment and policy that we're seeing here. But it also,
136. in Britain, in France, in Germany. It takes on a different hue slightly in different places,
137. but it's really part of the same thing. And this reminds me, because what's sort of like your,
138. I hate using this word, but it's like your North Star, your book, is that you heard this quote
139. on Polish television, I think in 2016 in the election there, or maybe it was earlier.
140. But in the quote, it's about some TV commentator, I think, that lamented that 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?
141. 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.
142. 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.
143. 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.
144. What do you say about that?
145. The point is, we know fascism became a dirty word after 1945.
146. Deservedly so.
147. Absolutely.
148. absolutely deservedly so. But I realized, well, and as this journalist said, that is, someone asked,
149. isn't your program very much like fascism? And the usual response of the right that we're used to is
150. that, oh, what are you talking about? That's just a swear word. If we were anything like fascism,
151. we wouldn't be talking with you. We'd throw you in jail. If we're not throwing you in jail or
152. shooting you. What does it have to do with fascism? That's the normal response. And in fact,
153. fascism was super repressive like that in a way that that kind of politics isn't today.
154. But this guy, when confronted with the question, isn't this similar to fascism? He squirmed the
155. thought for a minute and said, yes, the problem is that Hitler gave fascism a bad name. And at
156. the first moment, I was just like astounded. How could anyone say that? But I realized then that
157. was so key because I said, look, the point is that, yes, fascism had tens of millions,
158. hundreds of millions of supporters in the 1920s and 1930s. People were willingly fascist. They
159. voted for them And then even when they couldn vote there was a lot of support for that Fascism was not just about violent repression and suppression of movement It had a popular angle It was able to win over workers Again not all but those of the
160. dominant essence. And so I realized that this debate we had, is this fascism? Is this not
161. fascism. What this guy pointed out, and I think we associate fascism with Hitler, and Hitler
162. and the level of violence and repression was, what can we say, off the charts and just
163. the most extreme imaginable, right? Culminating, of course, in the Holocaust of literally trying
164. to find every Jew they can and to murder them. And it took this kind of politics to an extreme.
165. And in fact, after 1945, when Hitler waged war against so much of the rest of the world,
166. and then Hitler was defeated, fascism became delegitimated like that. But it had had a popular
167. program. And I tried to realize, well, what was that popular program? Just like today,
168. many people like the populist right. And one of the points is that we use that term right-wing
169. populism, but that in fact was the innovation of classical fascism. That is, in around 1920,
170. if you were a populist, and I, you know, when I speak this word in Europe, it has a worse
171. reputation. Populism, we have the American example of the populists in the late 1800s,
172. and we often use the term populist politics to refer to doing things in the interest of non-elites.
173. And in the early 20th century, if you really treated seriously the interests of non-elites,
174. you were by definition on the left. That is the right wing parties. They were afraid of workers.
175. They didn't want any trade unions or any organization. They wanted to keep the workers
176. at bay. And the fascists were the first to say, well, we're workers too. We're non-elites. We
177. are the scum of the earth, but we're on the right wing. We hate the left. And one of the
178. reason we don't like the elites is that they don't take care of the left the way real men should do,
179. right? To fight them, to beat them up, you know, to take care of them. And we're on the side of
180. the people, the people who are just like us. So getting back to this question, is this fascism?
181. Because we've been following this question for the last 10 years, and it seems like any time
182. there's more violence, we use the term more. But I think that it's not really violence that's
183. absolutely central to fascism. I talk about how during Mussolini's reign, even during Hitler's
184. reign, especially before the war started, if you were not a Jew and you did not engage in
185. opposition politics, that life could be okay for you. And in fact, it's true that the unemployment
186. issues were resolved by Hitler spending and that Aryan workers were in a better position in 1938 than they were in 1933 right that they had provided this We need to understand I realize the appeal of this kind of politics
187. which, you know, in the 1920s took the form of fascism with all that violence, because it was a
188. much more violent time after World War I, and because the idea of democracy was very new,
189. and a lot of people didn't support it at the time, and there was still very little social spending,
190. welfare states at all. If you take the current period, the idea of democracy is more popular.
191. People in the West do not have the experience of going to war, of violence like that. So you could
192. have the same kind of politics put forth without highlighting that violent dimension. And so that's
193. why I say it's red pill. Yes, right wing, exclusionary, nationalist, democratic, because
194. fascism always says we're democratic in the interest of the nation. And they came to power
195. democratically in Germany. And in the United States. And in the United States. Hungary and
196. Turkey and in India. And illiberalism, which means that essentially they will not accept any limits
197. on their power. That's the goal of this type of politics. In the 1920s and 30s, when the left
198. was very strong, when workers in Germany and in Italy, say, were organizing massive strikes,
199. fascism took a violent stand to beat them and defeat them. In the current period, when the left
200. is not strong like that, and also is certainly not massively organized in unions or ready to
201. defend itself with fists because it hasn't needed to in the last decades, now that same kind of
202. politics can and does emerge without that kind of violence in the past. So I think we really need to
203. understand, right, this is a very similar kind of politic. As you quote me saying, the question is
204. to look at what is the type of politics, the species of politics that can take form either
205. as fascism like in the 1920s or as right-wing populism as it's called now in the 2020s,
206. and see that this is a very similar kind of politics. And by doing so, we can understand
207. the real danger here, because right-wing populism can turn to that same kind of violence of the
208. past. It's not afraid of that kind of violence. It feels it doesn't need it. But if it does,
209. it's ready to use that. And of course, we see Trump using that with ICE and pushing in that
210. direction here. That's what I was going to just go to because we're seeing it here. And it's
211. interesting because the overreach of ICE has turned off a lot of people, but we don't know
212. what extent? I think it has also even in the working class base of Trump. You're finding
213. Latinos are disaffected now, whereas they voted for him, not en masse, but certain ones of them
214. did. It's interesting to look at which ones, but that's not in our purview. But there are some
215. studies that show that Chicanos, more than, you know, new immigrants, some of them had small
216. businesses, gardens, mechanics, that kind of thing. But that's a different,
217. story. I was really interested in your book and in what you just said now about universalism
218. and the post-war generation during the long boom of democratic and liberal politics and the reaction
219. to it, not so much because what red pill politics is all about that exclusion and by defining this,
220. this is only for white people or this is only for Protestants or only for Catholics or Muslims or
221. Hindu, depending where it is, this is really important. But you also talk about the neoliberal
222. betrayal, and you key in on NAFTA as the point where, you know, these liberal parties, because
223. it wasn't just here, went for globalization, free trade, and just would only pay lip service
224. to workers' pain. But now, in the period in which we're living in, Trump came to, let's say, he was
225. able to win over people by speaking apparently to their pain, or at least somewhat. But unlike,
226. let's say, Orban and Kaczynski, who give their workers a little bit, Trump's giving them nothing
227. and in fact, asking them just to support, you know, his self-aggrandizement and his ballroom
228. and ice. So I'm really interested in like, does this create an opening? Or how do you see that?
229. And has the right, have they overstretched the mark, turned off this group of supporters that they've won over?
230. Yes, great question.
231. 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.
232. He went to Indiana in his campaign, and I'm going to make sure that there's no movement of these jobs abroad. I'm going to intervene on your behalf. He was speaking to those real economic populist issues.
233. In his presidency, the first term, he did not govern that way, of course, introduced those tax breaks, but he still spoke much more about workers' issues and continued to get some support in that way.
234. In his latest iteration, in this second term, we see Trump dropping all of that.
235. And that is responsible for the drop of his poll numbers.
236. Look, I focus on the economic issues that drive a lot of people, workers and non-elite
237. specifically, to be able to go to the right or to the left.
238. They're looking for a party working in their interests.
239. 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.
240. 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?
241. Now, other people can do this better who I'm really worried about. Trump was never a great
242. economic populist and right now he not very good at all and that why his administration is really losing support But you get someone like Tucker Carlson In the book I point out Tucker Carlson and I been following him for a while
243. He speaks like the classic right-wing exclusionary nationalist, populist, illiberal of the fascist
244. period, he does that better than anyone. He's talking always about non-elites, about workers.
245. He's very critical of capitalist elites for not supporting those workers. He is not explicitly
246. racist because we live in a world that is, of course, changing, we know. But in that post-war
247. period, which we are still part of, you cannot win right now with that open racism. But Carlson
248. goes pretty clear in all of his broadcasts, there are always these others who are not really
249. dignified citizens and focusing on immigrants. There's always someone who's ruining it for us.
250. So he has a narrow conception of us and he's critical of those elites and he wants to do something for workers.
251. But he also has made clear with his total support, say, for Orban, that best is if you have a government that does not have checks on what it can do.
252. Carlson and others were lauding Orban in Hungary when universities were being closed down, gender studies and historical studies program were being closed down, the newspapers, almost all of the public sphere and television was controlled by Orban parties, right?
253. just not on the internet. And Carlson has presented this always very consistently in this kind of
254. politics, right? Even more than Bannon, I would say, you know, who he sort of is in a line from,
255. if that makes sense. Yes, exactly. Yeah, look, I mean, Bannon doesn't run and doesn't try to
256. run a political party per se. But yes, Bannon was someone who promoted this at first. His theme has
257. been economic nationalism. And it's weird, in a sense, we might say that we on the left is grateful
258. that he hasn't done these kinds of policies. But here it's really tricky, right? Even for those on
259. the left, because I talk about in Poland in 2015, right, the law and justice comes to power,
260. And it does do some things, take some real measures that are in the interests of workers.
261. It is trying to monopolize power, but it's also taking some measures that are more in
262. the interests of workers.
263. And some leftists did try to move in that direction of supporting it.
264. Just like, as I talk about in my book, in the 1930s, some radical leftists did move
265. from leftism to fascism. Many listeners might be familiar with Oswald Mosley, who was the leader
266. of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley, in 1929, 1930, was on the left wing of the Labour Party.
267. He was a Labour Party MP and trying to get the idea of a planned economy to check the power of capital The Labour Party at that time like many socialist parties didn move in that direction and then mostly turned to the fascist
268. Mussolini, a socialist. Pilsudski, the socialist of the nationalists or something like that, right?
269. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly right. That's why, what's the word, we're in trouble, let's say,
270. if we just think of the fascists as the evil right-wingers, the worst of the worst.
271. We have to understand that it's always gotten its power by being able to appeal to workers
272. and non-elites in the way that big business capitalists have never been able to. I have a
273. line there that I expect to be somewhat controversial, but I tried to defend it right
274. away. I say that to really understand this kind of politics, we have to see what fascism was and
275. Red Bill politics in general. But I say fascism emerged as the left wing of the radical right.
276. Yeah, which seems to make no sense, right? Because we understand it is the furthest right.
277. But that's actually false, because the point is, is that they say those fascists were the first
278. right-wing populists. They were the first on the right to say, we need to win over those workers
279. who are going to the left. We see them moving to the left. We have to win them over. So, for example,
280. like a government like Pinochet came to power in 1973 against the socialists. They came to power,
281. clamp down on all unions and any kind of trade union organization. We're building up just a pure
282. capitalist society, no concessions to workers and the poor, right, for many years. And that was the
283. kind of politics there. Now, all of these movements like Le Pen in France has always said, well,
284. we're critical of those big elites. We're trying to help regular people. And in Poland, that's what
285. they say, in Turkey and in Hungary. Again, regular people for them means only those dominant parts of
286. our nation, but certainly not everyone. Although, as you mentioned, sometimes minorities,
287. while still in the last few decades, minorities everywhere associate with left-wing parties.
288. But as we talked about earlier, to the extent that left-wing parties are not really pushing
289. for left-wing policies that help workers, since minorities are disproportionately working class,
290. they're getting disillusioned with the left, who says, oh, the left may have some of us as
291. members, right, and may not, does not denigrate us publicly like some on the right do,
292. but they're not really doing anything for us economically. So some of them are willing to
293. move to that red pill right. Again, that's why so many Latinos, not a majority, but yes,
294. many more than before, moved in that direction because they were not improving their conditions
295. under Democratic Party politics. And so, again, Trump was promising this. And so let's give it a
296. chance All of this is really good And I should let the listeners know that there this and so much more in this book on red pill politics And you really should get it We talk a little bit about that when we come to ask for your support
297. But the last chapter of your book, and even a few of the other chapters,
298. hint that you're not just prescribing the problem, but you're also talking about,
299. say, first of all, the weakness of the left, but what the left can do.
300. And there, you know, you talk about economic populism and toughness and dominance.
301. These are three words that you use that are the right medicine.
302. But some people feel that maybe we need something more.
303. And I don't mean just more like other words, but that this might not be enough.
304. We're already seeing, and I'm going to say this like this, we're already seeing a pretty massive resistance against Trump and gigantic demonstrations, which I know are really, really good, even in terms of how demonstrations don't do what they always have.
305. And we know that, but we see also, despite the lowest union density that we've seen in generations, but there's a drive toward unionization and there's heroic strikes. And there's, unlike during much of the post-war boom, unions are not demonized in national consciousness. They're supported, but most people just can't get to them to have a union.
306. Then we also have local electoral insurgencies and wins like Mamdani in New York and Mayers in Seattle and elsewhere.
307. So we're seeing, you know, because, well, because we have now, thanks to Bernie, Democratic socialists, and that's, you know, really caused problems for the Democratic Party elite.
308. Is this a roundabout way of asking, is this the beginning of what you're calling for?
309. And how do you see this becoming the kind of durable political force rather than just
310. an opposition that screams?
311. Yeah, look, I think we are certainly seeing that emergence of the kind of left politics
312. that has a chance to win.
313. We're seeing among breakout candidates, and certainly Mamdani is the primary example,
314. organized by talking to people who voted for Trump and realized, of course, what we knew,
315. that many were voting just on economic issues alone. And Mamdani has been trying, and so far
316. in a few months, doing a pretty good job, perhaps an amazing job so far, in being able to move in
317. that direction. And we see in other candidates, the guy in Maine, Plattner, and there are other
318. kinds of candidates emerging who are talking like this, right? A new kind of toughness. I say
319. toughness because as we all know, Democrats in recent decades kind of say things that like we
320. can listen to some of their speeches and they can arouse us, perhaps most famously Barack Obama,
321. right, who could give great speeches, and then in office really didn't do almost anything that he
322. imagined that, and we all imagined that he might be able to do, right? The left just wasn't pushing
323. the agenda. I cite my 90, well, my mother who was born in 1928, starting to tell me ever since 2000
324. when Gore conceded so easily to George Bush Jr. and for the next 20 years of her life would
325. often turn to me and say, Democrats are just such wimps, right? Born in 1928 means she
326. grew up in New York, seeing not just Roosevelt, but Fiorella LaGuardia, an organized left movement
327. pushing on left economic issues that hasn't been present in a long time, right? And the Republicans
328. have been tough on their issues and on these questions of economic populism. Of course,
329. what happened is, again, I go through in the book, is that this right-wing populism,
330. red pill politics reemerges only after the 1970s and 80s when globalization and outsourcing
331. mean that even those dominant essence workers no longer feel included. That, of course,
332. is something that in democratic politics, we have to recognize for any left to be able to win,
333. it of course needs support of workers of the dominant group to join on their side. That's
334. what the left had had for many years. It wasn't a problem, and it's not a problem that the left
335. includes now minorities and women, that's not a problem at all. But if, and to the extent that a
336. dominant working class group, culturally dominant working class group, feels excluded that the left
337. is not looking out for them, that's when they are open to that right-wing party. And that's the
338. group that often makes the difference in elections. That is, we know that most of the supporters were
339. of Trump. You had many capitalist elites supporting them, right? And he had a lot of elite
340. voters, but it's always that group, right? Workers and non-elites who make the difference.
341. And that's the group that the left, the broad left, must take more into account. Now, I have to say, of course, you know, look, this is easier said than done.
342. 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.
343. 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.
344. they didn't want to have that mass opposition that they faced in the 1930s.
345. The problem today, and it is a real problem, and I don't have the answer for it, but this is
346. certainly something we need to all think about, is that we know a tough economic populist program
347. can win over a lot of people. But today's capitalist elites do not seem to have any
348. interest in going along with that. I think that's really important. I mean,
349. it's not just that they're not interested. They don't seem to care.
350. They don't seem to care. And to that extent, they'll support more repressive politics.
351. And it doesn do much for them They can choose from a global labor force wherever they want And of course right now they licking their lips at the prospect of reverting or turning towards artificial intelligence to
352. serve their needs, right? So really win over workers. So that's the problem, right? I think
353. we have to recognize that unlike after World War II, a left program is going to have a harder time
354. making deal with elites. I mean, we do not have a strong communist left, Leninist left,
355. like we did 100 years ago, not to mention even still 50, 60 years ago, there was more of that.
356. There's not much of that around. However, I would not be surprised to see more of the emergence of a
357. militant Leninist, and actually, as Leninism was, anti-democratic left. Because if there's not a
358. plausible and possible democratic left alternative, then some are going to be turning to other kinds
359. of radical left alternatives. And I, of course, I wrote this book on right-wing politics and
360. emergence. But my previous work was, of course, on the Polish Solidarity Movement, where the
361. Polish radical left government, the post-Stalinist, the state socialist government,
362. was also not doing things in the interest of the working class. So I don't think that that is the
363. alternative. I wouldn't be surprised if some people nowadays think it is. But that's why I
364. think this is a key moment where we do have to look for an alternative and to push firmly in that
365. direction. Again, if we all push in that direction, we will be able to find something and move along
366. in that way. Well, I want to come in there and it's, you know, your mother's verdict is devastating
367. and right, that Democrats, you know, it takes us back to this autopsy, the DNC's own look at,
368. you know, at what they think was the problem. It's like a textbook illustration of the opposite of
369. the dominance that you're talking about in your chapter about what the left can borrow and this
370. attitude that they could, that the right does very well, boldness, audacity, willingness to double
371. down rather than to defer. And even I would say to capitalize on the manosphere that is a big
372. turnoff to women and women are workers. So I think that there's a lot that the left could do. And I,
373. even though we are not, and I'm going to say it's a good thing, we're not going to see a revival,
374. I hope, of Stalinist type politics. But we are seeing the DSA and the Greens in Britain and
375. a lot of a healthy democratic socialist politics. We don't know if in power they'll be able to do
376. much without challenging capitalism, but that's for the future. The last thing I wanted to ask
377. you is that, you know, you finished this book in August of 2025, and now in spring of 2026,
378. things have moved, oh my God, so much faster, and the Trump, you know, second term has accelerated.
379. The DNC is more of a debacle.
380. Resistance in the street is even bigger than it was when you were writing your book.
381. So I wondered, like, you know, maybe to wrap up, are you more or less pessimistic than
382. when you finished writing the book?
383. And what do you think is the single most important thing that people on the left should
384. understand about red pill politics that they don currently Well look I think the situation now is such in which in the short term we can still expect more hard time Lately I been saying sometime that the only good
385. thing about today is that it's not yet tomorrow. And we know that there's going to be some new
386. thing put down two days ago. It was this slush fund for militant right-wing insurrectionists
387. to perhaps turn them into a private militia of Trump. That is a possibility. But also,
388. the fact that in the United States, Trumpism has been exposed as this regime that is not doing
389. anything for the workers it says it can, that that is creating quickly, I think, a real alternative
390. that is emerging. You're right. Democratic socialists are much stronger. AOC certainly
391. has a lot of popularity. We saw her and Bernie's tour around the country. Unimaginable to get that
392. kind of impact 10 years ago, right, that it has now. So we're in these crucial moments. And I
393. think, right, the point of my book of red pill politics is to, for us to understand that it's
394. not just economic problems alone that's going to drive people to the left. That is a key point,
395. Right. That's why I say that kind of politics is a kind of left wing of the radical right.
396. They're able to provide some populist promotion for radical right politics.
397. Donald Trump may no longer be able to do it.
398. Tucker Carlson or someone like Tucker Carlson can still be able to do it.
399. And I think in that regard, it's not accidental that Carlson is now broken with Trump, supposedly over Iran, but it's not just that. He can equally turn it to these economic populist issues.
400. 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, that we have to be able to provide that same incentive to people that we're going to do things for not just dominant essence workers, but for workers as a whole and non-elites.
401. right, to really work on their behalf. And if we do that, consequently, we absolutely do have a
402. chance and we can turn this around and we can actually build a politics that we will all be
403. proud of and that will push in a left direction that we haven't gone to before.
404. I can't thank you enough for joining us again, David Ost, and for writing this book. The book is
405. Red Pill Politics, Right-Wing Populism from Fascism to Today. It's a great read and you got a lot
406. in this last hour about it. David Oost, thanks for joining us again.
407. Thank you so much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it.
408. That's our show for today. I want to thank my guest, David Oost. Thanks also to executive
409. producer Robert Brenner, producer-director Melissa Figueroa, editor-engineer Juliana
410. Gotte and Osman Flamenco in Master Control You can listen to this and other archived episodes and subscribe to the podcast at kpfk Just click on Audio Archives
411. and scroll down to Beneath the Surface with Susie Wiseman.
412. More information on our program and our guests
413. can be found on our Facebook page,
414. and that is Beneath the Surface with Susie Wiseman.
415. An extended version of this conversation
416. can be heard on Jacobin Radio,
417. available wherever you get your podcasts.
418. And you've been listening to Beneath the Surface on KPFK, Pacifica Radio for all of Southern California and beyond, streaming live and archived at kpfk.org.
419. Thanks for listening and thank you for your support.
420. Stay tuned now for Ian Masters and background briefings.
421. I'm Suzy Wiseman.
422. I'd like to thank all of our listeners for tuning in and especially thank those of you who pledged your support or renewed your membership to KPFK during this past fund drive.
423. The support of generous listeners like you is what allows this listener-sponsored station to operate and to maintain its fierce independence.
424. It's a very special relationship, so thank you once again for being a part of it.
425. Thank you.
426. To engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding
427. between nations and between the individuals of all nations,
428. races, creeds, and colors.
429. To gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict
430. between any and all of such groups
431. and through any and all means compatible with the purposes of this corporation.
432. To promote the study of political and economic problems
433. and of the causes of religious, philosophical, and racial antagonisms.
434. That is our mission.
435. Hello, I'm Ian Masters,
436. the host of Background Briefing, available 24-7 at backgroundbriefing.org and heard on KPFK
437. Mondays through Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. Background Briefing looks
438. into three or four of the important stories and issues of the day to provide an in-depth
439. daily briefing with context, history, and insight from the best-informed guests closest to the
440. scene who offer analysis and details often overlooked by the soundbite-driven media.
441. more and more controlled by Trump-friendly oligarchs. So if you want