Rising fascism in the US

Lash wrote:

I guess American political movements and parties aren’t defined by European nomenclature…

The main difference is that what you call "Lefties" would here be centrists/left centrists.

The corruption charge was thrown out because the judge was biased.

I don't think I heard anything about a corruption charge.

Lula was investigated in 2016 for alleged involvement in two cases in the “Operation Car Wash” (Operacão Lava Jato), an extensive criminal investigation in Brazil which uncovered corruption between the State-owned oil and petrol company, Petrobrás, several construction companies, and various Brazilian politicians to obtain secret campaign funds. The investigation was conducted under former Federal Criminal Court Judge Sergio Moro.

During the investigation, former judge Moro approved a request by the prosecutor to tap Lula’s telephones, as well as those of his family and his lawyer. He then released the content of the wiretaps to the media before formally instituting charges. He also issued a bench warrant to detain Lula for questioning. The warrant was leaked to the media, and photographs of Lula were consequently taken by the media as if he were under arrest.

Former judge Moro sentenced Lula to 9-year imprisonment in July 2017. In January of the next year, Lula’s sentence was increased to 12 years by the Federal Regional Court. In April 2018, he began serving his sentence while his appeals were pending.

The Superior Electoral Court rejected Lula’s candidacy for the October Presidential Elections on the ground that the country’s legislation prevents anyone convicted of certain crimes and under certain conditions from running for public office, even if there are appeals pending.

The Supreme Federal Court quashed Lula’s sentence in 2021, ruling that former judge Moro had no jurisdiction to investigate and try the cases, and annulled the investigation on the basis that the former judge was not considered to be impartial.

In May 2017, Dore discussed conspiracy theories on the murder of Seth Rich on his show.[36][37] According to Salon, Dore continued to insist that there were "a lot of red flags" and there was "probably something more to this story" after the source of much of the conspiracy theory was discredited.[38] In December 2020, an article in New York magazine said Dore's discernment was questionable, due in part to his "promotion of conspiracy theories implicating the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Seth Rich's death".[39]

In 2017, Dore argued that the chemical weapons attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhun was likely to have been a "false flag", orchestrated by groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad.[40] The investigative journalism site Bellingcat reported that Dore received $2,500 from the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees in 2017. The Association is responsible for the Serena Shim Award and is described by Bellingcat as a pro-Assad lobby group.[40] According to Bellingcat, Dore featured Eva Bartlett in "another 2017 conspiracy-theory segment" about Syria.[40]

In 2018, according to Stephen Shalom writing in New Politics, Dore cited an op-ed which quoted US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis out of context as saying that he did not have evidence that the nerve agent sarin was used in Syria.[41] Mattis, speaking in a press conference in February 2018, had been referring to recent reports when he said he did not have evidence of sarin use, adding that Assad's government had "been caught using" sarin during the Obama administration and "used it again during our administration".[41]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dore pushed misleading information about the efficacy and safety of vaccines even though he had been vaccinated.[42][43][44] He further claimed that the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin is effective against COVID-19, although there is no compelling medical evidence to support this.[45]

Glanced and saw Dore getting criticized for ‘spreading disinformation’ about vaccines...

First of all, let me state for the record that Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore are not antivaxxers. What they do is even worse: They monetize vaccine hesitancy, legitimizing and reinforcing it, thereby doing their part to prolong a COVID-19 pandemic rapidly approaching its second birthday, after 5.3 million lives lost and countless more ruined.

They do it in a particularly sneaky fashion. They don’t advise against vaccination per se, and even insist they’re pro-vaccination and vaccinated themselves. But they strongly denounce vaccine mandates as tyranny and critics of antivaxxers as heartless meanies, sympathizing with the reluctance to getting vaccinated among those who just can’t stand putting a vaccine in their bodies, reassuring them that their fear is fair and their refusal is reasonable and presenting simplistic libertarian arguments that reduce vaccination purely to a matter of personal choice, as if other people have no stake in the matter.

It’s impossible to gauge how much of an impact they have on people choosing whether or not to get vaccinated. What is clear, however, is that their huge social media followings – including Greenwald’s 1.7 million on Twitter and Dore’s 916,000 on YouTube – owe a significant portion of their growth to their relentless pandering to vaccine-hesitant people, especially those on the far right, who in addition to helping them grow their fanbases are also willing to help them grow their incomes.

They could use that enormous reach to disseminate accurate information about vaccines and urge people to take them, helping public health officials and experts constructively address the misinformation, mistrust and – in some cases – selfishness that conspire to feed vaccine hesitancy. But instead of helping combat vaccine hesitancy, Greenwald, Dore and others like them milk it for fame and fortune.

Wednesday saw two prime examples of this insidious practice. An article on Greenwald’s Substack lionized former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and other British leftists in their crusade against vaccine mandates while whinging about people being mean to those who refuse to get vaccinated over unfounded concerns about vaccines’ safety and efficacy, complete with a button readers can click to subscribe for $5-$150 to see exclusive content. Meanwhile, for $9.99, you can view all premium content on Rokfin, including Dore’s nearly three-hour episode featuring an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently published the book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” but is best known as a leading light in the antivaxxer movement and promoter of the falsehood that vaccines cause autism.

It’s cynical. It’s irresponsible. And frankly, it’s despicable.

Greenwald’s article exemplifies his rhetorical sleight-of-hand. As is typical of his verbose style, one must dig to the earth’s core, through five long-winded paragraphs of shrieking about vaccine-hesitant people being lumped together with antivaxxers, before getting to the central and most disinforming point, which is to rationalize opposition to vaccine mandates and passports because “it is immoral and profoundly anti-worker to fire health care front-line workers and other workers for refusing a vaccine they have not been convinced is safe and effective,” while “persuasion is a far more effective and ethical means of administering public health policy than coercion, dictate and punishment.”

As any responsible journalist would do, Greenwald could affirmatively state that the vaccines are, in fact, safe and effective, providing some of the publicly available data to support that statement. This could include data showing efficacy rates north of 90% and low serious adverse event rates in clinical trials conducted with unprecedented transparency. Or data showing overwhelming safety and efficacy in regular use, with 57.7% of the entire population of the planet having received at least one shot. Or a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website showing that the likelihood of serious side effects like Guillain-Barre syndrome, blood clots and myocarditis is extremely low, while myocarditis is more likely with COVID-19 itself. After all, if persuasion is better than coercion, Greenwald would be perfect to do it because his fans are far more likely to listen to him than to Fauci.

But he blows that opportunity, instead uncritically presenting the unfounded skepticism of those who “do not believe” the vaccines are safe and effective as rational and understandable.

Other examples abound. In a tweet Sunday, Greenwald sarcastically wrote, “Just keep sticking out your arm and don’t question. And definitely don’t express any skepticism online about any of these decrees because you’re likely to end up banned.” The “decree” in question was a carefully couched statement by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that fourth shots may need to happen earlier than 12 months after the third due to the spread of the Omicron variant, but that wasn’t certain yet due to the lack of data. And kicking off a Sept. 15 Rumble video decrying Democrats’ “threatening tech companies to censor more” was a headline about Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Adam Schiff of California condemning Amazon for allowing sales of anti-vaxxer books.

Again, he’s not telling you not to get vaccinated. He’s simply pumping anti-vaccine innuendo into the discourse while expounding his belief in untrammeled freedom of expression that just so happens to prioritize antivaxxers’ sacred right to misinform the public.

Greenwald inadvertently let the mask slip a bit in a Dec. 7 tweet of a video of himself taking his sons to get flu shots. That prompted numerous angry replies from some of the antivaxxers he has been attracting as of late.

“Why would thriving, healthy children need a flu shot,” inquired one responder.

“Children don’t need flu shots. They have strong immune systems and you’re compromising them,” declared another.

He followed up with a bemused tweet wondering “how or why a flu shot is controversial.”

Do you get it? Greenwald is totally not an antivaxxer. But if you’re one, or you refuse to get vaccinated due to baseless “skepticism” about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy or because a free-of-charge intramuscular shot that is over in seconds and causes at most mild and easily treated side effects is just too much to bear, he will do nothing to change your mind. In fact, he’ll make you feel like your refusal is principled and courageous. Oh, and as you bask in his love, please praise him on Twitter as the greatest journalist who ever lived, hurl playground insults at his critics and consider giving him money.

It would be the stuff of a low-budget comedy film if it wasn’t so repugnant, and if not for the strong likelihood that many find in Greenwald’s tweets, blog posts and videos vindication and reinforcement for their refusal to get vaccinated against a virus that acquires vaccine- and drug-resistance mutations as it spreads and only needs one infected person to start a deadly outbreak.

Dore goes even further than Greenwald, outright promoting antivaxxers and spreading falsehoods about the vaccines themselves, as exemplified by his reckless decision to give a megaphone to Kennedy. Dore has also multiple times falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines do not reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

“I think to be safe I’m supposed to say vaccines reduce your chance of contracting the virus and they reduce your chance of transmitting it … That’s so I can keep my YouTube channel,” Dore said perfunctorily in a recent video, before flashing a sarcastic smile and accusing “the authoritarian left” of deriving enjoyment from vaccine mandates. He then pushed back against accusations of being anti-vaccine, insisting he’s only anti-mandate and allowing that people at high risk of serious disease should be vaccinated, but overlooking the fact that a vast majority of people getting vaccinated is necessary to achieve the herd immunity required to end the pandemic. He has also defended use of ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug popular among antivaxxers, but that no properly conducted clinical trial has ever shown as effective at preventing or treating COVID-19.

Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, a blog best known for trafficking in apologia for the authoritarian regimes of Syria and China, has even gone on Dore’s show to falsely claim that vaccine mandates violate the Nuremberg Code. Greenwald and Dore’s vaccine hesitancy grift – insisting they’re pro-vaccination while pandering to antivaxxers – is similar to how they have built huge followings among the far right by pretending to be leftists while pandering to right-wing extremism and regularly appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programs. Make no mistake: Vaccine hesitancy is a significant public health threat, and the increasingly fascistic American far right threatens democracy. But to people like Greenwald and Dore, they’re markets to be tapped.

Are anti-vaccine propagandists really being censored?

That’s the claim RFK Jr. and his raucous admirers make as they point out the lawyer-turned anti-vaccine crusader was kicked off of Instagram and has yet to appear on MSNBC or snag a seat on a late night show. But last I checked his new anti-Fauci book has thus far sold over 500,000 copies. Censorship sells, I guess.

While RFK Jr. may be blacklisted from MSNBC and other outlets (news flash, so are we), he recently dropped in on the Jimmy Dore comedy hour to cook up a stew of gibberish, with a dash of falsehoods that went unchallenged by Dore, who appears to be more than happy to cash in on all of this anti-vax paranoia.

“If you get that vaccine you are 500% more likely to die of a heart attack” six months post-vaccination, RFK flatly told Dore, who smirked and nodded in agreement. RFK Jr. was dishing out his usual dose of panic, but this brand of vaccine hysteria, which is entombed in the depths of RFK Jr.’s silly The Real Anthony Fauci, markets very, very well to the Jimmy Dore demographic.

Dore speaks to RFK Jr., goes full anti-vax.
RFK Jr.: Covid vaccines kill more ppl than they save!
Jimmy: Will America ever wake up to this? pic.twitter.com/6puCuv0vkz

— Obama freed the gays (@Nitzky89) December 18, 2021

Needless to say, like so many of RFK Jr.’s blatant lies, the bogus claim that mRNA vaccines will give you lethal heart trouble, is easily debunked. (Yes mRNA vaccines can cause heart inflammation, known as myocarditis, primarily in younger men, but these incidences are very rare and typically mild. In reality, far more covid infections cause myocarditis, along with a host of other ailments, some lethal, like stroke, arrhythmia and kidney injury. A pre-print study also found that myocarditis is by far more common after covid infection than vaccination in teen boys, 450 cases per million infections vs 67 cases per million vaccinations.)

If people were actually dying of cardiac arrest because they were inoculated with an mRNA vaccine, with over 191 million people having received two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer formulas in the US, we would have witnessed a large jump in heart attack deaths over the past twelve months. There has been no such increase. In fact, the country saw a small peak in deaths due to heart disease prior to the vaccines becoming widely available. In short, either RFK Jr. doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, or he is flat out lying. I tend to think it’s a mix of both.



In another totally bonkers exchange over at the revamped Gawker, journalist Tarpley Hitt (who, unlike Dore, pushes back on the insanity) asks RFK Jr. about a subheader in his book titled, “Final Solution: Vaccines or Bust.”

Hitt: That’s a pretty pointed choice of words. Did you mean to invoke the Holocaust?

RFK Jr.: It says what it says.

Hitt: Can you elaborate?

RFK Jr.: It says what it says.

Hitt: Right, but that’s a very potent phrase, “final solution,” in that it was used to mean eradicating the Jews.

RFK Jr.: I don’t think the vaccines have anything to do with eradicating the Jews.

WTF?

Of course, there’s a grand conspiracy that underlines RFK Jr.’s new money-making schtick, which has been a windfall for his non-profit Children’s Health Defense, doubling its annual revenue in just over a year to $6.6 million. RFK Jr. makes the case, in his book and in subsequent interviews, that Fauci is getting rich off of vaccines and is in “control of biomedical research globally, which makes him the most powerful medical figure in history.” RFK Jr. himself makes more than $250,000 a year heading his own organization, which attacks more than it defends.

In short, RFK Jr. argues that Fauci (and Bill Gates, sort of) is the spooky man in the white lab coat cooking up the killer potions, all the while pulling the strings of Big Pharma. Fauci has many faults, no doubt, the least of which is his reluctance to apologize for repeatedly getting so much wrong, but there’s absolutely no evidence Moderna or Pfizer’s covid vaccines are making Fauci or his family a heap of riches.

If one were to dabble in a more tangible conspiracy here, it would be that RFK Jr. is the one profiting off of the pandemic by making it his sole purpose to discredit the vaccines as well as those who promote their efficacy. As a result, RFK Jr. is fattening his non-profit’s coffers and selling a bunch of books in the process.

And really, does RFK Jr. even believe this loony stuff? Or is it all a big ruse? Late last year, invitees to his family’s holiday gathering were required to show proof of vaccination, which he blamed on his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, for requiring. This raises the question, is RFK Jr. vaccinated himself? He won’t say. Why is that? As far as we can tell, his wife did let him attend their festive soirée.

Much of this complete nonsense has infected a gullible segment of the Left, some of whom actually believe RFK Jr. that mRNA technology is killing scores of people. The most common complaint about the vaccines, however, is that if one supports their use then they are, as a result, an unwitting (or not so unwitting) dupe for Big Pharma. It’s a hollow accusation. One can support the science of covid vaccines, and still acknowledge that Big Pharma is largely in it for the money. These two truths can simultaneously co-exist. In fact, Big Pharma and the US government are responsible for many preventable deaths, not by pushing these vaccines, but by withholding them and refusing to allow other countries the rights to their formulas at no cost, particularly in Africa. Vaccine apartheid is very real, and it’s killing tens of thousands around the globe and creating a real-world laboratory where more variants are likely to develop as a result of Big Pharma’s slobbering greed.

For the few readers out there that still buy into RFK Jr.’s bullshit (please, don’t email me), I’ll just share a few facts in hopes it helps to illuminate just how good these vaccines are, and just how effective they have been and continue to be. It’s worth mentioning that mRNA vaccines are now being eyed for HIV and cancer, potentially revolutionizing future treatments. Scientific consensus matters, and the consensus is that these vaccines work very damn well.

First, let’s look at the death rate of unvaccinated vs. vaccinated pre-Omicron in 2021 in Texas, a state that has essentially let covid rip since it first landed two years ago.



Usually, when skeptics are confronted with hard, fact-based evidence that these vaccines are saving lives, they will butt in, claiming the shots do not reduce transmission of the virus. Well, they do reduce transmission, not only because of a reduction in the viral load of vaccinated individuals but because if you don’t get sick in the first place, you aren’t going to pass it along to others. It’s not that complicated.

And, you are less likely to get sick if you have been vaxxed. Again, here’s the fine state of Texas, proving that vaccinations reduce the risk of testing positive for covid.



Still not convinced? Then let’s look at hospitalization rates from Alaska, another state that has refused to take covid seriously. As of November 2021, hospitalization rates were almost 11 times higher for the unvaccinated. It’s the same case all over the country.



But what about Omicron, you ask? Isn’t that little strain infecting vaccinated people at the same rate as unvaccinated?

Data from New York, one of the first US states to get hit with the contagious new variant, is pretty clear. If you are unvaccinated, you are far more likely to test positive. Note that Omicron hit New York in mid-December.



This data, I think it’s important to note, isn’t gleaned from some Big Pharma study or an industry-backed press release. This is publically gathered information from public health departments.

There’s more. New research also suggests that shots saved 241,000 lives and helped avert almost 1.2 million hospitalizations in the US. An estimated 163,000 more could have been saved had they taken the vaccines. That’s a lot of needless death (and no, don’t point me to the unverified VAERS database).

It’s also important to note here that the unvaccinated, as we should all know by now, are taxing our healthcare system far more than the vaccinated, and racking up a mountain of medical bills in the process. It’s estimated that hospital stays of unvaccinated patients cost $13.8 billion between June to November 2021. Yes, we need single-payer more than ever, but in the meantime, it’s safe to assume that insurance premiums are going to rise substantially as a result of the unvaccinated’s toll on our medical system.

Certainly, RFK Jr. isn’t the only peddler of vaccine nonsense, he’s just the most prominent. One of his go-to experts is the now Twitter-banned Robert Malone MD (who is vaccinated against covid with an mRNA shot), a cranky researcher who says he invented mRNA vaccines (he did not) — a claim tantamount to Al Gore stating he created the internet. The disgruntled doc now states mRNA vaccines have devastating effects on human cells. Malone has been discredited many times over for misleading statements about the shots, but still pops up on nutty podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience to sell his quack science (note to self, don’t take public health advice from an MMA guy). Rogan, always eager to sell a quick fix, has become the go-to online vaccine myth-maker.

Fact checks on @RWMalone's pseudoscience and his lack of credibilityhttps://t.co/PiWDJSL3op

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 26, 2021

The sad thing about all of this craziness is that, despite the overwhelming, real-world evidence that these vaccines are very safe and effective at preventing severe covid, many still boldly mislead their followers for ego’s sake. The more sinister, like RFK Jr., are banking in on the madness. Much of this, I believe, is the result of a scientific-illiterate public, made manifest by years of the right-wing chipping away at public education across the country. Reading levels in the US are a paltry 15th place in the world and the country ranks “21 out of 23 countries in math and 17 out of 19 countries in problem solving.”

Is it any wonder why the US has one of the lowest vaccination rates on the planet? It’s not that people aren’t smart, it’s that they haven’t been given the tools to make informed decisions. Conspiracies, in turn, are captivating. Top this off with a healthy disdain for the government (one I typically share), and you have a recipe for lots of unnecessary misery and death.

RFK Jr. is profiting off this madness, and smarmy grifters like Jimmy Dore are straggling behind, picking up the loose change. There are many more, of course. You know who they are. And no, they aren’t being censored, they are being called out for promoting lies that have harsh impacts — impacts I take personally having lost an uncle to this awful disease.

I’ve always thought the Left to be compassionate, community-driven and collectively-minded. We are supposed to care about the most vulnerable among us. That’s no longer the case. The anti-science (anti-vax), individualistic (selfish) trend among a few is deeply disturbing but emblematic of a movement that has been infiltrated by the myths of libertarian freedom. It’s up to us to change this infectious, deadly dynamic.

Over the past year, as the far right trafficked in wild anti-masker and pro-Donald Trump fantasies that led to the Jan. 6 putsch on the Capitol, some prominent members of the “Dirtbag Left” and radical left have been promoting figureheads in the Boogaloo movement, circulating “deep state” conspiracies, and bantering about “great replacement” talking points—ones that can sometimes sound an awful lot like the fever dreams of the alt-right.

Take, for instance, Jimmy Dore, the populist YouTuber and member of the Movement for a Peoples Party’s Advisory Council. He recently courted a public-relations disaster when he offered a platform to Magnus Panvidya, a member of the Boogaloo Boys, a militant group that threatened violence ahead of Biden’s inauguration. Emerging into the public eye last spring during right-wing anti-lockdown protests, the heavily armed Boogaloo Boys have promoted attacks against state and government officials in retaliation for COVID safety restrictions. But Panvidya, who sports a rainbow flag in his Twitter bio, offered the movement a more palatable pro-LGBT and anti-racist face. (Panvidya also has tweeted that Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump supporter who shot three men, killing two of them, during turbulent anti-racism protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the summer, “was in his right to defend himself.”)

During the interview with Dore, titled “Radical Michigan Anarchist Seeks Unity With the Left,” Panvidya posed in front of a rainbow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag and talked about why the Boogaloos are anti-cop. He asserted, “It is the top versus the bottom, it is not the left versus the right.” Dore then listed the things they agree about: “We would agree on the war, we would agree on the corporate control of our government, we would agree on police brutality. We’re not going to agree on the Second Amendment… you know what, I tell you what, I go back and forth on the Second Amendment.”

Dore, who reportedly just dropped $1.9 million on an Los Angeles bungalow, has gotten populist mileage himself out of anti-lockdown sentiment, asking why small businesses closed while Amazon was allowed to remain open, saying that the World Health Organization was “cautioning against the lockdowns,” and characterizing the lockdowns on gyms, salons, and sporting-goods stores as “creating death.” He also aired a protester who opposed COVID-19 restrictions as “a conspiracy” and “a tyranny.”

“The far right has responded excitedly to signs that some on the left might indulge in ‘cross-pollination.’”

It’s a complex ecosystem, when you map the strange areas of crossover between the political fringes. In some cases, leftists pay tribute to aspects of right-wing conspiracy theories ostensibly to coax some from the right into left-wing populism. On the other side, some leftists genuinely seek to transcend the boundary between left and right entirely to create a populist moment that challenges what they see as the elites.

Playing footsie with the right is not a common thing on the neo-socialist left, but there’s a subset of this latter group, a small but influential band, who can veer into legitimizing the talking points of the extremist right.

The extremely online denizens of both movements like to hide behind a mask of “irony” on issues like racism, feminism, and equal rights, promoting reactionary memes and language that is often taken not so ironically by their followers.

Whether it’s anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdown types, those who believe in pedophile cabals, or deep-state conspiracists, media personalities who peddle such tropes are engaging in a sordid ecosystem that draws left and right together on false premises. And while this may be a profitable enterprise, it encourages polarization while claiming to unite “the people” against “the elites.”

Explaining the appearance of Panvidya on Dore’s show, one former Boogaloo Boy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted, “Of course, there are a LOT of these guys trying to rehabilitate the image of the movement. Any of them jockeying for attention will say whatever they think will make people sympathetic or take a softer view of them. So I don’t doubt there is gaslighting going on.” (As researcher Matthew Lyons observed in his text Ctrl-Alt-Delete, alt-right commentators have admitted to co-opting the rainbow flag and other signifiers to capitalize on “wedge issues” that could help split members of the left from a liberal coalition and bind them to elements of the far right.)

“It’s called class consciousness... You don’t recommend that some of our people in our same class, we don’t talk to, right?”
— Jimmy Dore

And Boogaloo Boys certainly have a dark side. One Boogaloo Boy, a former Air Force sergeant, was arrested for shooting two security officers in Oakland last year, killing one; police arrested another for plotting to bomb a hospital. Despite the group’s fixation on pedophiles, which the Anti-Defamation League attributes to the influence of QAnon and Pizzagate, two Boogaloo Boys have been arrested on pedophilia-related charges.

Boogaloo Boys are built around a racist meme that spread on 4Chan—where QAnon developed—and use the same talking points about QAnon seen among other populists. But they are a fragmented community with little ideological consistency; some members believe in fascist and far-right ideology. One Telegram channel associated with the Boogaloo Boys that has 9,327 subscribers denounced Trump in favor of a more extreme right-wing position, insisting, “The current administration is dedicated to protecting pedophiles after [Jeffrey] Epstein ‘suicided’ and [Ghislaine] Maxwell was ‘arrested’… They’re laughing at you. No, really these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it’s funny.”

Another reporter on the left, Alex Rubinstein—who has reported for the Russian state-backed RT America (which U.S. intelligence identified as a player in Russian election interference in 2016)—recently shared a video of Panvidya at a protest, stating, “Time to rethink the left-right paradigm.” Rubinstein also called a pro-Second Amendment protest involving Boogaloo Boys and a Black gun-rights group last July “an [sic] multiracial armed movement” and “actual solidarity.”

In another tweet on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Rubinstein declared, “The left thinks the blue collar MAGA people who stormed the capitol are their political enemies. This is how we lose. Our enemies should be the political elite and the oligarchy. We should be trying to convince the people who stormed the capitol, not trying to ID them for the FBI.”

Rubinstein emailed The Daily Beast to note, “It is important to point out here that I did not call for ‘Boogaloo solidarity’... In my tweet, I commented on a Boogaloo-aligned speaker, donning a rainbow Pride flag at a rally who praised Black Lives Matter, antifa, and right-wing militias in the same breath. I wrote that it is ‘time to rethink the left-right paradigm’... This is a position I have previously advocated, believing the distinction is out-dated having originated from where politicians in France sat in the 1700’s in the Estates General. I do not think it’s controversial to say that not everybody in our modern, hyperconnected world fits neatly on one side.”

He went on to note, “I was arrested—and eventually cleared—of felony rioting charges while reporting on antifascist protests during Donald Trump’s inauguration... I was ten feet away from the car attack in Charlottesville and had earlier photographed the perpetrator as he was benign guarded by police officers. There are just a few highlights of my experience taking on actual fascists and I have never argued in favor of alliance with those holding fascist beliefs... I do not condone the Boogaloos out-right, but there is a huge amount of video evidence taken by independent reporters that demonstrates some of them hold anti-racist and anti-authoritarian views... as for fascists in their ranks, I completely disavow.”

Panvidya did not respond to a request for comment.

“All of the good fiction writing now is self-published essentially and coming from the so-called ‘alt-right,’ and my haters can quote me on that.”
— Red Scare co-host Anna Khachiyan

In the aftermath of Panvidya’s appearance on Dore’s show, the filmmaker Rod Webber tweeted a thread of unpublished segments of an interview he did with Dore. (Dore did not respond to the thread.) When Webber tells Dore that Panvidya has defended Rittenhouse, Dore acknowledges, “That’s a big problem, right?... So then what do we do? What do we do when a guy like that shows up with a guy from antifa and Black Lives Matter and claims all the things he claims?” Webber’s response: “Vet them more before putting them out on the internet to tons of people, to let them just say what they want to say unchecked.” (Dore notes, “I had no idea about the Kyle Rittenhouse thing when I interviewed that guy…”)

Dore then tells Webber, “The fact that we’re making it toxic for Americans to talk to other Americans in this moment now when our government is abandoning us, and we all know that there might be a Civil War coming. It’s more important now than ever to talk to people because of COVID, because we’re all being screwed by the government…

“It’s called class consciousness... You don’t recommend that some of our people in our same class, we don’t talk to, right? You don’t recommend that, right?”

When reached by The Daily Beast, Dore said that his lockdown statements were referring to a statement from the World Health Organization on total lockdowns that noted, in part, “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Dore added, “I advocate for lockdowns as one tool to fight the pandemic. My concern about lockdowns are shared with the World Health Organization about the effects of lockdowns on working people and economically vulnerable people. It is why I have been an outspoken champion for government financial relief to people affected by the lockdown and the pandemic. I am also a staunch supporter of single payer healthcare. I do not believe COVID-19 restrictions are a conspiracy. Lockdowns are not tyrannical—closing down people’s businesses as a matter of policy without providing workers financial relief is.”

On the interview with Panvidya, Dore clarified, “The interview with Magnus has sparked a useful conversation about if social movements can work together. I believe people from all different ideological perspectives should be in dialogue. In the interview, I explicitly made clear that I am not making an endorsement of any particular group. We showcased debates on our channel including the perspectives of people who disagree. We should always be willing to talk to those who disagree with us.”

“Lots of right-wing boys got on board and really liked it, and I feel like those are the real fans of that podcast.”
— Perfume Nationalist cohost Jack Mason, on Red Scare

The far right took notice of Dore’s platforming of Panvidya, along with the YouTuber’s broader populist messaging and support for conspiracy theories. The SMAT tool for online site analytics shows an increase in discussion about Dore on 4chan and the pro-Trump site TheDonald following Panvidya’s interview. Dore was also retweeted approvingly by far-right libertarian Paul Joseph Watson, following Panvidya’s appearance. This trend matches continued interest from the far right in Dore’s populism. A prominent far-right Telegram channel called The Conspiracy Hole has reposted four of his videos, including the titles “Fauci is full of Fauchit,” and “COVID Whistle Blower RAIDED.”

Jack Posobiec, a far-right media figure who spearheaded the Pizzagate conspiracy theory—which insisted Hillary Clinton led a pedophile cabal run out of Washington, DC’s Comet Pizza—reposted Dore’s tweet, in which the populist said he was “completely floored” by his interview with Panvidya, and commenting simply, “Exactly.” On another occasion, he reposted a tweet to Telegram calling Dore “a Jack Posobiec Democrat.” Last October, Posobiec also interviewed People’s Party advocate Niko House in an OAN program devoted to “the Perpetual Neo-Liberal Nightmare,” and House was featured in Posobiec’s documentary, Antifa: Rise of the Black Flags.

It’s not the first time associates of the People’s Party have made strange bedfellows with the far-right and its deep-state, anti-mainstream-media conspiracies. On the official page dedicated to making “The Case for a People’s Party,” the group quotes an author named Teodrose Fikra (full name Teodrose Fikremariam), whose other writings speak out against Freemasons and their “serpent master,” and slam “the racist philosophy of Zionism” and “those fake Jews who pray in the Synagogue of Satan.” Last year, Fikremariam hosted Dore on his podcast in an interview focused on “the corporate press” as the “enemy of the people,” in which the duo floated the idea that the U.S. funded ISIS and secretly started the war in Syria in order to install a natural-gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe.

When reached for comment over the phone, Fikremariam denounced anti-Semitism, and declared that the “Synagogue of Satan” comes from the Bible’s Revelations, applying equally to Zionists as to the leaders of the Catholic Church and Islam who do not respect their devoted followers. He further informed The Daily Beast that he views the past and present leadership of the United States as part of a Freemason conspiracy, and sent over an article he wrote titled, “The Many Faces of Covid-19 Experimental ‘Vaccine’ Deaths,” which quotes COVID conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and makes prophetic references to the Bible. (After publication of this article, Fikremariam clarified, “I am not a leftist.”)

“Steve Bannon...they love him. They love Roger Stone, they love Trump, they love Kellyanne Conway. So this is highly unusual for an ostensibly leftist podcast.”
— Podcaster Jack Mason, discussing Red Scare

The Movement for a People’s Party could not be reached via an email submitted through their website about whether or not they endorse Fikremariam or his views.

One podcaster who spoke at the Movement for a People’s Party-driven #ForceTheVote protest, Fiorella Isabel of the podcast ConvoCouch, had independent journalist Ford Fischer on the ConvoCouch for a segment called “Boogaloo Boys and BLM Unity?” in which her co-host, Craig Jardula, called for solidarity between Black Lives Matter and the Proud Boys, the chauvinist movement whose members now face conspiracy charges for their role in the Jan. 6 putsch. Jardula proclaimed, “No matter what, I’m hoping that there’s some unity in the streets whatsoever. I know that these two groups, the Proud Boys and BLM, they kind of go at each other’s throats but at the end of the day, I’m looking up at the government and what they’re doing.”

And as the party has itself noted on Twitter, “MPP’s goal is a little different from the Greens. We say we want to be a major new party, not just a leftist party. Greens have a good platform, but I’m not sure it can appeal to red state voters.”

Last month, the Movement for a People’s Party suffered significant blows. In mid-February, a major left-wing influencer who supported the group bowed out in a tweeted statement saying, in part, “I believe we need a viable 3rd party in America that represents the interests of people—not corporations. But I believe it must be rooted in socialism.” The following day, the group Our Revolution Los Angeles dropped the Movement for a People’s Party, citing a “toxic and top-down hierarchical framework.” In response, the People’s Party tweeted of the Our Revolution LA press release, “We believe it is an intentional misrepresentation.”

The far right has responded excitedly to signs that some on the left might indulge in “cross-pollination.”

After the left-wing Red Scare podcast invited Trump ally Steve Bannon on the show to discuss populism, health care, and China last April, far-right website The Post Millennial rejoiced that “the establishment types on left and right are left behind by the populist approach… The traditional positions of left and right are basically up for grabs, and either party can own them as the ideologies shift.”

On the podcast, a Red Scare co-host asked Bannon a question about collaboration, commenting, “it seems like we agree on a lot of things… [can] the anti-establishment left and right work together in any meaningful way...?” Bannon replied, “I think we can. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. There’s definitely common ground... I get contacted by a lot of people on the left all the time.” When discussing the deadly white-nationalist march in Charlottesville, a Red Scare co-host called antifa and ethnonationalists “sides of the same clownish coin.”

“#MeToo is the result of female moral panic over male sexuality masquerading as social justice...female irrationality gone awry.”
— Perfume Nationalist

Red Scare co-host Dasha Nekrasova also appeared on the Pseudodoxology Podcast Network, hosted by an online personality referred to only as @kantbot, an internet troll associated with the incel subculture who has tweeted approvingly of National Socialism—he claims to be “a Marxist-Leninist—I’m a more legitimate leftist than any of these people claiming to be leftist”—and who self-identifies as “anti-democracy,” “Stalinist, a TERF, [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] and Black Nationalist,” while also questioning why he can’t say the n-word and attacking “hate hoaxes.” Their episode, called “Dashamania,” includes Nekrasova trading in the usual troll culture slang, like “cuck” and “libtarded.” The Red Scare also had @kantbot—who has said he supports Trump as a “meme for history working itself out”—on their podcast.

(When reached by The Daily Beast, @kantbot noted, “Im [sic] a Black nationalist in that I think Malcolm X was a hero. And Im [sic] a terf in the sense that I deny the entire concept of identity as an objective quality that is knowable. But ideology is all mystification. You surely know this. Such categories are ultimately nonsensical mystifications upholding the base material desires of individuals and the classes they belong to. Which Marx as you know is completely correct about in this matter. So yes. I am a Marxist.”)

During their conversations, @kantbot recommended Nekrasova go on Perfume Nationalist, a podcast committed to reactionary politics and voluptuous fragrances, which her Red Scare co-host Anna Khachiyan had guested on a few months prior. The Perfume Nationalist podcast boasts an avatar, slightly clipped off-screen, of a man wearing a shirt emblazoned with a Totenkopf (the “death’s head” worn by Nazi SS troops) and its hosts make declarations like, “#MeToo is the result of female moral panic over male sexuality masquerading as social justice... female irrationality gone awry,” and “we're being encroached upon by these extremely fertile immigrants from the world over,” playing into white-nationalist tropes about immigrants ‘replacing’ white people.

“‘We are ruled by a cabal of cannibalistic psychotic sexual abusers and all the institutions that they create are to further their dominance over us’: Correct. ‘And that ‘Donald Trump is going to stop them’: Incorrect.”
— Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman

During Khachiyan’s appearance on the show, she remarked on Bronze Age Pervert, a far-right thought leader in a milieu that Politico has described as reveling “in mythic, aristocratic pasts while trafficking in racism and anti-Semitism.” Khachiyan called him, “the great genius writer/artist of our age.” “I’m glad to hear you say that,” one Perfume Nationalist co-host replied, adding, “‘Cause I told you to read it, like, a year ago.” Khachiyan continued, “All of the good fiction writing now is self-published essentially and coming from the so-called ‘alt-right,’ and my haters can quote me on that.”

In conversation on another podcast, TekWars 2.0, @kantbot and his friend Jack Mason from Perfume Nationalist discussed Red Scare—“dig into the podcast and you’ll find a lot of shockingly reactionary content… delivered sincerely and without irony,” Mason proclaimed. He further claimed the Red Scare hosts “have always flirted with the alt-right,” that they mock climate science and body positivity (they troll “about being anorexic... they both are very thin, constantly talking about their frail arms”), and that they are “actually extremely red-pilled about the woman question.” He also praised their “erotic fixation on right-wing figures,” including their “obsession with Steve Bannon... they love him. They love Roger Stone, they love Trump, they love Kellyanne Conway. So this is highly unusual for an ostensibly leftist podcast.”

Mason also claimed that leading Pizzagater Mike Cernovich sent him a fire emoji regarding his “Red Scare blog.” (Others have claimed that Cernovich has been known to ask @kantbot’s advice. When reached by The Daily Beast, Cernovich replied, “Advice from Kantbot... that’s news to me.”) Later on in the podcast, @kantbot noted that “a lot of people who come on this show have really been into 5G and cell phone tower mind control.” In the finale, Mason noted that, once he started promoting Red Scare as “serious, entertaining, complex reactionary ideas, lots of right-wing boys got on board and really liked it, and I feel like those are the real fans of that podcast.”

“I don’t know what a Holocaust denier even is.”
— Norman Finkelstein, who also recently guested on the TrueAnon podcast

As Perfume Nationalist co-host Jack Mason notes in his TekWars podcast with @kantbot, “This irony-left thing of these podcasts, essentially people get away with appropriating right-wing memes and trolling with reactionary content by having the trappings of being a leftist socialist. It’s kind of a way to pass in New York, it seems like.” @kantbot replies, “It’s basically indistinguishable. You can easily frame Marxist-Leninism in such a way as it’s completely right-wing, it’s completely indistinguishable from any right-wing ideology.”

Mason, Khachiyan, and Nekrasova did not respond to requests for comment.

This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Far-right blog Counter-Currents noted that @kantbot hosted another “unwoke left” podcaster, Aimee Terese, who was praised by white-nationalist group American Renaissance for retweeting Bronze Age Pervert and supposedly rejecting “the war on white heritage.” Counter-Currents further appreciated @kantbot hosting Sean McCarthy, of the “Dirtbag Left” podcast Grubstakers. McCarthy in turn hosted Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman on Grubstakers for a two-part episode chatting about QAnon for hours, along with another of their cohort, Nick Mullen. (Neither Terese nor McCarthy responded to requests for comment.) Mullen is fairly notorious for his controversial podcast Cum Town and his use of racist slurs, including dropping the n-word multiple times in a conversation discussing Bill Maher. Mullen also joined The Sitdown podcast to talk about pedophilia in Hollywood back in 2018, on which a host introduced him by saying, “We’re here to talk about probably the biggest cartel that I know of, and it’s full of Jews.”

All this comes at a time when conspiratorial thinking seems to be on the rise across political ideologies.

One reliable area of overlap between the far left and QAnon types is the question of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, and the conspiracy of deep-state involvement—along with the conviction that Hollywood and political elites are running pedophile rings that the powers-that-be tacitly condone, or even participate in.

This talking point about QAnon—that its belief about pedophile “elitists” being protected by the neoliberal establishment is valid—was recently elevated by Rolling Stone contributing editor and left-wing writer Matt Taibbi, who asserted that “the underlying thought, that it’s a coalition of Trumpists who are taking on these elitists who want to take over the rest of society—there’s a core of, like, emotional truth animating the QAnon theory.”

Similarly, Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman avowed in an interview with the TrueAnon podcasters last year: “There are two basic premises to QAnon, one is right and one is wrong… That’s why I say it’s a 50/50 thing. The premise of, ‘We are ruled by a cabal of cannibalistic psychotic sexual abusers and all the institutions that they create are to further their dominance over us’: Correct. And that ‘Donald Trump is going to stop them’: Incorrect.”

“You can easily frame Marxist-Leninism in such a way as it’s completely right-wing, it’s completely indistinguishable from any right-wing ideology.”
— @kantbot

In the interview with TrueAnon’s Brace Belden and Liz Franczak (who has also appeared on the Perfume Nationalist podcast), Christman and his fellow podcasters riff on Epstein’s death in lockup and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent arrest—“this has to be a result of some sort of factional contest within the intelligence community or deep state or whatever, because somebody kept her alive for all those months,” Christman says. They then veer into prime conspiracy territory when Belden riffs on how he could see the “deep state” drugging Maxwell—“it’s like what happened to Jack Ruby”—to supposedly discredit her testimony in court. Between digs at the center left (“literally a minority of people think Epstein killed himself,” Belden says; Christman adds, “A majority of Biden voters, though”). Belden complains, “But this is a thing that everybody knows. Everybody knows that the government or factions within the government likely had something to do with it. But you can’t do anything about it. That’s what drives people so crazy. That’s just contributed to how insane everybody is.”

While the hosts agree that QAnon is a deranged theory—and while Franczak cautions her co-hosts against granting “single consciousness” to “every wing of the American bureaucracy working in tandem with each other”—the three male hosts seem to nod to the conspiracy’s appeal. In a discussion on Trump’s lawyer and Epstein associate Alan Dershowitz, Christman jokes that Trump “is a white-hat pedophile who’s trying to lure all the other pedophiles into a false sense of security and then spring the trap on them.” Host Hasan Piker exclaims, “And that’s how we tie this neatly back to the QAnon conspiracy. There you go.” “Which is 100 percent correct,” Belden jokes. “No,” Liz and Hasan say. “It’s 50 percent correct,” says Christman, more seriously. “It’s like, 30, 40... 30 percent,” says Belden. Later, when talking about QAnon’s evolution into a Trumpist personality cult, Christman declares, “Everything that’s wrong and insane about QAnon comes from that end of the spigot. The first premise [that the ruling class is a “cabal of cannibalistic psychotic sexual abusers”] is correct.” (Christman did not respond to a request for comment sent through Twitter.)

Much of TrueAnon’s approach tends to mix humor and seriousness in the same way it plays on the third rail of conspiracy theories and their tropes. In one interview with the L.A. Review of Books, Belden said, “I literally think that rich people are vampires in every sense of the word—psychic vampires, money vampires, sex vampires, blood vampires. They have a totally different, absolutely warped sense of morality and society.”

A more recent guest at TrueAnon is Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Zionist activist who caused controversy last year for calling Holocaust denier David Irving a “very good historian,” adding, “I don’t know what a Holocaust denier even is.” Irving is, among other things, notorious for urging a German court to “fight a battle for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust.”

When reached over Twitter, the TrueAnon podcast declined to comment on whether their speculations might indulge conspiracy theories that have sometimes aligned with anti-Semitism and the far right.

Scholar of the far right Shane Burley put it this way to The Daily Beast: “When trying to critique the inequalities inherent in our economic and political structures, deeply laid anti-Semitic canards and conspiracy theories still hold a lot of emotional power. The same is true in the anti-imperialist left who, in their effort to critique the excesses of Western countries and institutions, end up using questionable sources, conspiratorial innuendo, and making despotic friends.

“Conspiracy theories are some of the key ways that far-right ideas can creep into left-wing discourse, warping consensus reality—and allowing old bigotries, such as anti-Semitism, to fly unchecked.”

Paywalls are justified, even though they are annoying. It costs money to produce good writing, to run a website, to license photographs. A lot of money, if you want quality. Asking people for a fee to access content is therefore very reasonable. You don’t expect to get a print subscription to the newspaper gratis, why would a website be different? I try not to grumble about having to pay for online content, because I run a magazine and I know how difficult it is to pay writers what they deserve. 

But let us also notice something: the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free! You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall. This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free. 

Now, crucially, I do not mean to imply here that reading the New York Times gives you a sound grasp of reality. I have documented many times how the Times misleads people, for instance by repeating the dubious idea that we have a “border crisis” of migrants “pouring into” the country or that Russia is trying to “steal” life-saving vaccine research that should be free anyway. But it’s important to understand the problem with the Times: it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate—though sometimes they are—but that the facts are presented in a way that misleads. There is no single “fact” in the migrant story or the Russia story that I take issue with, what I take issue with is the conclusions that are being drawn from the facts. (Likewise, the headline “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest For A-Bomb Parts” is technically accurate: the U.S. government did, in fact, say that. It was just not true.) The New York Times is, in fact, extremely valuable, if you read it critically and look past the headlines. Usually the truth is in there somewhere, as there is a great deal of excellent reporting, and one could almost construct a serious newspaper purely from material culled from the New York Times. I’ve written before about the Times’ reporting on Hitler and the Holocaust: it wasn’t that the grim facts of the situation were left out of the paper, but that they were buried at the back and treated as unimportant. It was changes in emphasis that were needed, because the facts were there in black and white. 

This means that a lot of the most vital information will end up locked behind the paywall. And while I am not much of a New Yorker fan either, it’s concerning that the Hoover Institute will freely give you Richard Epstein’s infamous article downplaying the threat of coronavirus, but Isaac Chotiner’s interview demolishing Epstein requires a monthly subscription, meaning that the lie is more accessible than its refutation. Eric Levitz of New York is one of the best and most prolific left political commentators we have. But unless you’re a subscriber of New York, you won’t get to hear much of what he has to say each month. 

Possibly even worse is the fact that so much academic writing is kept behind vastly more costly paywalls. A white supremacist on YouTube will tell you all about race and IQ but if you want to read a careful scholarly refutation, obtaining a legal PDF from the journal publisher would cost you $14.95, a price nobody in their right mind would pay for one article if they can’t get institutional access. (I recently gave up on trying to access a scholarly article because I could not find a way to get it for less than $39.95, though in that case the article was garbage rather than gold.) Academic publishing is a nightmarish patchwork, with lots of articles advertised at exorbitant fees on one site, and then for free on another, or accessible only through certain databases, which your university or public library may or may not have access to. (Libraries have to budget carefully because subscription prices are often nuts. A library subscription to the Journal of Coordination Chemistry, for instance, costs $11,367 annually.) 

Of course, people can find their ways around paywalls. SciHub is a completely illegal but extremely convenient means of obtaining academic research for free. (I am purely describing it, not advocating it.) You can find a free version of the article debunking race and IQ myths on ResearchGate, a site that has engaged in mass copyright infringement in order to make research accessible. Often, because journal publishers tightly control access to their copyrighted work in order to charge those exorbitant fees for PDFs, the versions of articles that you can get for free are drafts that have not yet gone through peer review, and have thus been subjected to less scrutiny. This means that the more reliable an article is, the less accessible it is. On the other hand, pseudo-scholarhip is easy to find. Right-wing think tanks like the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Hoover Institution, the Mackinac Center, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation pump out slickly-produced policy documents on every subject under the sun. They are utterly untrustworthy—the conclusion is always going to be “let the free market handle the problem,” no matter what the problem or what the facts of the case. But it is often dressed up to look sober-minded and non-ideological. 

It’s not easy or cheap to be an “independent researcher.” When I was writing my first book, Superpredator, I wanted to look through newspaper, magazine, and journal archives to find everything I could about Bill Clinton’s record on race. I was lucky I had a university affiliation, because this gave me access to databases like LexisNexis. If I hadn’t, the cost of finding out what I wanted to find out would likely have run into the thousands of dollars.  

A problem beyond cost, though, is convenience. I find that even when I am doing research through databases and my university library, it is often an absolute mess: the sites are clunky and constantly demanding login credentials. The amount of time wasted in figuring out how to obtain a piece of research material is a massive cost on top of the actual pricing. The federal court document database, PACER, for instance, charges 10 cents a page for access to records, which adds up quickly since legal research often involves looking through thousands of pages. They offer an exemption if you are a researcher or can’t afford it, but to get the exemption you have to fill out a three page form and provide an explanation of both why you need each document and why you deserve the exemption. This is a waste of time that inhibits people’s productivity and limits their access to knowledge.

In fact, to see just how much human potential is being squandered by having knowledge dispensed by the “free market,” let us briefly picture what “totally democratic and accessible knowledge” would look like. Let’s imagine that instead of having to use privatized research services like Google Scholar and EBSCO, there was a single public search database containing every newspaper article, every magazine article, every academic journal article, every court record, every government document, every website, every piece of software, every film, song, photograph, television show, and video clip, and every book in existence. The content of the Wayback Machine, all of the newspaper archives, Google Books, Getty Images, Project Gutenberg, Spotify, the Library of Congress, everything in WestLaw and Lexis, all of it, every piece of it accessible instantly in full, and with a search function designed to be as simple as possible and allow you to quickly narrow down what you are looking for. (e.g. “Give me: all Massachusetts newspaper articles, books published in Boston, and government documents that mention William Lloyd Garrison and were published from 1860 to 1865.”) The true universal search, uncorrupted by paid advertising. Within a second, you could bring up an entire PDF of any book. Within two seconds, you could search the full contents of that book. 

Let us imagine just how much time would be saved in this informational utopia. Do I want minute 15 of the 1962 Czechoslovak film Man In Outer Space? Four seconds from my thought until it begins. Do I want page 17 of the Daily Mirror from 1985? Even less time. Every public Defense Department document concerning Vietnam from the Eisenhower administration? Page 150 of Frank Capra’s autobiography? Page 400 of an economics textbook from 1995? All in front of me, in full, in less than the length of time it takes to type this sentence. How much faster would research be in such a situation? How much more could be accomplished if knowledge were not fragmented and in the possession of a thousand private gatekeepers? 

What’s amazing is that the difficulty of creating this situation of “fully democratized information” is entirely economic rather than technological. What I describe with books is close to what Google Books and Amazon already have. But of course, universal free access to full content horrifies publishers, so we are prohibited from using these systems to their full potential. The problem is ownership: nobody is allowed to build a giant free database of everything human beings have ever produced. Getty Images will sue the **** out of you if you take a historical picture from their archives and violate your licensing agreement with them. Same with the Walt Disney Company if you create a free rival to Disney+ with all of their movies. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan because if you founded it here they would swiftly put you in federal prison. (When you really think about what it means, copyright law is an unbelievably intensive restriction on freedom of speech, sharply delineating the boundaries of what information can and cannot be shared with other people.) 
But it’s not just profiteering companies that will fight to the death to keep content safely locked up. The creators of content are horrified by piracy, too. As my colleagues Lyta Gold and Brianna Rennix write, writers, artists, and filmmakers can be justifiably concerned that unless ideas and writings and images can be regarded as “property,” they will starve to death: 

Is there a justifiable rationale for treating ideas—and particularly stories—as a form of “property”? One obvious reason for doing so is to ensure that writers and other creators don’t starve to death: In our present-day capitalist utopia, if a writer’s output can be brazenly copied and profited upon by others, they won’t have any meaningful ability to make a living off their work, especially if they’re an independent creator without any kind of institutional affiliation or preexisting wealth.

Lyta and Brianna point out that in the real world, this justification is often bullshit, because copyrights last well beyond the death of the person who actually made the thing. But it’s a genuine worry, because there is no “universal basic income” for a writer to fall back on in this country if their works are simply passed around from hand to hand without anybody paying for them. I admit I bristle when I see people share PDFs of full issues of Current Affairs, because if this happened a lot, we could sell exactly 1 subscription and then the issue could just be copied indefinitely. Current Affairs would collapse completely if everyone tried to get our content for free rather than paying for it. (This is why you should subscribe! Or donate! Independent media needs your support!) 

At the end of last year, I published a book on socialism, and at first some conservatives thought it funny to ask me “if you’re a socialist, can I have it for free?” They were quieted, though, when I pointed out that yes, they could indeed have it for free. All they needed to do was go to the local socialized information repository known as a public library, where they would be handed a copy of the book without having to fork over a nickel. Anyone who wants to read my book but cannot or does not want to pay for it has an easy solution.

I realized, though, as I was recommending everyone get my book from the library rather than buying it in a bookstore, that my publisher probably didn’t appreciate my handing out this advice. And frankly, it made me a little nervous: I depend for my living on my writing, so if everyone got my book from the library, it wouldn’t sell any copies, and then my publisher wouldn’t pay me to write any more books. We can’t have too many people using the socialized information repository when authors are reliant on a capitalist publishing industry! In fact, a strange thing about the library is that we intentionally preserve an unnecessary inefficiency in order to keep the current content financing model afloat. Your library could just give you DRM-free PDFs of my book and every issue of Current Affairs for free, but instead they make you go to the magazine room or check out one of a limited number of copies of the book, because while we want books and magazines to be free, we cannot have them be as free as it is possible to make them, or it would hurt the publishing industry too much. (Libraries preserve the fiction that there are a select number of “copies” available of a digital book, even though this is ludicrous, because abandoning the fiction would hurt publishers. They could offer every book ever written to anyone at any time. They just can’t do it legally.)

I also realized, however, that I wouldn’t care how many people got my book for free if my compensation operated on a different structure, where I was paid by the number of people who read it rather than the number of people who bought it. “Impossible!” you say. “Where would the money come from?” We can imagine such a set-up quite easily, though. We have our universal public knowledge database, and anyone who wants to can type in the title of any of my books and read them for free.** But the number of people who read the book is tracked, and I am compensated two dollars for every person who reads it (a pittance, but that’s about what authors get for their sales). Current Affairs, likewise, is granted a budget proportional to its readership. Compensated from where? Budget from where? Why, from the universal public knowledge database of course. But from where do they get their money? Why, from taxes.* Free at point of use services are not some alien concept. The NHS compensates doctors while charging patients nothing. (Of course, compensation for producers wouldn’t even be that much of an issue in a society with a Universal Basic Income and where the basics of life were guaranteed. I wouldn’t care about making any money on my books if I could live decently regardless.)

Now, I am sure there will be those who argue that any universal knowledge access system of this kind will inhibit the creation of new work by reducing the rewards people get. But let us note a few facts: first, dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all. The gatekeepers to intellectual products made by the dead are parasites the equivalent of a private individual who sets up a gate and a tollbooth in the middle of a road somebody else has already built and starts charging people if they want to pass. Actually, since parasites latch onto the living, they are better compared with corpse-eating worms.  

Second, creators are already exploited: Spotify is very much like the universal searchable information database for music, it just operates for profit rather than for artists, and rights-holders get a fraction of a cent per Spotify play, an amount that must itself split between the label, the producer, the artist, and the songwriter. The CEO of Spotify has said that if artists want more money, they should make more music. (He is worth $4 billion.) And if you ever want to make a professor laugh, ask how much they make from royalties on their published academic articles. As Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor for research at the University of Johannesburg explains, academic publishing is a “completely feudal system”: 

“The costs of the research production are borne by the universities, and as a result, by public monies, in most cases. Then, private companies publish the research, and charge the universities and public institutions for the very research outputs that they paid for. This is effectively the subsidy of the private sector by public money. There is a myth that this is an example of entrepreneurialism. In my view, all it does is facilitate enrichment at public cost with huge consequences for those most disadvantaged.”

This problem has not been fixed by the rise of “open-access” scholarship, because it hasn’t removed the profit motive, so poor countries are still getting screwed by the existing publishing model. 

Third, when considering the free information repository’s effects on content creation, you cannot look only at one side of the equation. The question of how much productivity would be inhibited by the state declining to enforce the copyrights of academic journal publishers and Getty Images must be weighed against the phenomenal unleashing of human productive power that universal free access to all human knowledge would create. You must add up how much researchers could do with the time that they now have to spend trying to track down and access things. No more would a certain thing only be in a certain library and accessible through an inter-library loan request. No more would librarians have to spend any time managing subscriptions rather than helping with searches. Researchers in the developing world would no longer be utterly unable to compete with American libraries that can afford vast fees. (I can tell you, personally, that as someone who is constantly having to find obscure used books for research and then order them and wait sometimes weeks for them to arrive, I could produce far more quickly if I could see the full content of the book in ten seconds, and I am constantly exasperated by Google Books’ “snippet view.”)

Furthermore, we would have to consider what would happen in a society where the relative accessibility and cost of truth versus lies was adjusted. What if every online course was free? What if textbooks cost nothing instead of $200? What if we made it as easy and cheap as possible to find things out and were guided by the desire to create the greatest possible access to knowledge rather than by economic considerations? I do not know what would happen, but I hope some rogue state (or microstate or seastead) that doesn’t mind pissing off the world’s most powerful corporations and governments tries to storm the Bastille of information and free every bit and byte from its artificial prison. The only thing stopping them is law, and what is law but a threat? 

The good news about our times is that the possibilities for democratizing knowledge are greater than ever. We could not have started Current Affairs in 1990 unless we had about ten times more money than what we actually had. Sharp left YouTubers are fighting hard to combat propaganda and debunk bad arguments, there are tons of great podcasts, and even Twitter has its uses. (Where else do you get to yell at powerful and influential people and personally tick them off?) But it is still true that Fox News and PragerU and the American Enterprise Institute have a hell of a lot of money to blast out their message as widely as possible. There is nothing on the left of remotely comparable size and influence. 

But we are working on it. We are a long way from the world in which all knowledge is equally accessible. Hopefully someday our patchwork of intentionally-inefficient libraries will turn into a free storehouse of humanity’s recorded knowledge and creativity. In the meantime, however, we need to focus on getting good and thoughtful material in as many hands as possible and breaking down the barriers we can. At Current Affairs we have no paywall, even though this might cost us some money, because we are trying to make it as easy as possible to hear what we have to say. This is what the right does. They tell people what to think, offer them books and pamphlets and handy five-minute YouTube videos. On the left we are not nearly as slick.

We can’t afford to keep our reach to those who like us so much that they are willing to pay money to listen, because then the free bullshit wins. It’s hard for small media institutions to figure out the right balance of depending on ads, paywalls, and donations. The money has to come from somewhere, after all. A lot of the times, that means a heavy dependence on ads—the traditional model of magazines has been ad-revenue based, not subscription-based—so that paywalls are actually the less corrupted model; a podcaster who sells their product on Patreon rather than giving it away but filling it with mattress and “box-of-****-a-month” ads has an important kind of freedom: they only have to please the audience, not the sponsors. At Current Affairs, we sell subscriptions to keep the lights on, but even one person who could have read an article and doesn’t is a loss. (I wish I could give my book to everyone too but my publisher won’t let me. I did make another one free, though.) The Guardian and the Intercept provide a lot of valuable material to the public for free because they don’t have paywalls, but the Guardian is funded by a trust and the Intercept by a benevolent billionaire. (Such funding sources make things much easier. Attention benevolent billionaires: we have a donate page.) Perhaps paywalls can help publications like the New York Times and the New Statesman from having to partner with “branded content” suppliers like Shell Oil and Cigna, but at the expense of limiting reach. More reason to have publications funded by the centralized free-information library rather than through subscriptions or corporate sponsorship. 

Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal. 

Quote:

Glanced and saw Dore getting criticized for ‘spreading disinformation’ about vaccines...

Where did you glance at this?

The anti-vax movement poses a huge threat to global public health, particularly in the era of COVID-19.