37: Andrew Marantz - Surfing the Wake of The Woke

The Portal

Kast Media

Science, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2020

⏱️ 193 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New Yorker writer and book author Andrew Marantz and Eric became friends shortly before the 2016 election when Andrew set off to write the first profile of Eric and Geometric Unity, his theory of Physics. Coming from similar ethnic and politically progressive backgrounds they found plenty of common cause. With the rise of Trump, they then found themselves in subtly different places with Andrew more directly concerned with the rise of the Alt-right and Eric convinced that the Alt-right was likely a response to the transformation of the Democratic Party begun under Bill Clinton into a serious threat to National unity.

In this conversation from November of 2019 in New York City, they discuss Andrew's theories of the rise of the alt-right and internet trolling as well as the research from his 2019 book Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. They also explore the contradictions between traditional and woke versions of progressivism and where all of this may be leading the republic. Particularly interesting given the 2019 time of this conversation is the concern with civil unrest and revolution which was shortly to play out in the American street a few months later.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Eric with a few thoughts this week on the coming US election before we introduce
0:11.0	this episode's main conversation.
0:13.6	Now I should say upfront that this audio essay is not actually focused on the 2020 election,
0:17.8	which is partially concluded, but in the election of 2024 instead.
0:22.3	The reason I want to focus on that election is that precisely because it is four years
0:26.0	away, we should know almost nothing about it.
0:28.7	We shouldn't know almost anything about who is likely to be running or what the main
0:31.7	issues will be, and we should be able to say almost nothing about the analysis of the
0:35.5	election.
0:36.9	Unfortunately, almost none of that is true.
0:39.6	Now obviously we can't know all of the particulars, however we still know a great deal more than
0:43.8	we should, and that is because the ritual is not what many suppose it to be.
0:48.4	A simple nationwide open contest to be held on a single day after several unrestricted
0:53.0	long-form debates with unbiased rules enforced by trusted referees.
0:58.4	What is most important is that prior to the 2024 election, there will have to be an
1:02.6	appearance of a primary election.
1:05.4	So what actually is a primary election and what function does it serve?
1:09.4	It's hard to say, but if you think about it, this is really the awkward, disingenuous,
1:13.3	and occasionally dangerous ritual by which a large and relatively unrestricted field of candidates
1:18.6	needs to be narrowed to the subset that is acceptable to the insiders of the parties,
1:23.0	their associated legacy media bosses, and the party mega donors.
1:27.4	Now the goal of this process is to, in the famous words of Noam Chomsky, manufacture consent
	...

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