This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Suzy Weisman. Today we spend the hour in conversation with

Warren Montag, who's article The Necessity of Taking Back the Streets, appears online in the journal Specter.

Montag argues that the left does not recognize the danger of the organized and armed far right,

and has been outflanked by the right's strategic advance politically, electorally, and militarily.

He sees January 6, 2021 as a big success for the right, and the left's inability to respond to the danger of the right encapsulates the political situation today, the actual balance of power.

The right's advance is not just in the streets, but in every level of government, as well as law enforcement, and all branches of the military,

and includes taking control of states and localities, school boards, and the like.

Montag sees historical precedence both for the organized rights marched to power, and the left's complacency about the scale of the threat.

To stop the right will require more than investigations and prosecutions. It will require understanding the danger the right represents, and mass mobilizations to defend democracy.

All this, when our program returns in just a moment.

This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Weismann, and I am very pleased to have Warren Montag with us for the first time I think on the show.

And we're going to be talking about an article that Warren just published online in Specter, a new journal that is both physical and online.

This is on the online version, and it's called the necessity of taking back the streets.

And it's a really important article, and before we do that, let me just introduce Warren, he's a professor of English and comparative literature at Occidental College right here in Los Angeles.

And he's known mostly for his work on 20th century French theory, especially Alta Serra in his circle, as well as his studies on the philosopher spinosa.

He's got several books out on them and Adam Smith, and he's the editor of Decolages.

I want to welcome you Warren to the show and just say that in terms of what you've been writing and that in this article, you argue that much of the left has failed to recognize the danger of the far right,

which has tentacles in every level of government, including law enforcement, every branch of the military, and that the armed organizations of the extreme right you assert march on opposed in cities across America, terrorized elected officials with impunity assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2020, and know their war and have adapted the tactics of European fascism.

And then we've just passed, as you know, no one can fail to recognize the one year anniversary of the attempted insurrection of January 6, Congress and the courts are digging through the evidence while the anniversary has occasioned a pretty intense media focus with documentaries and discussions, trying to understand, I guess, the meaning and significance for American democracy and if anything else, it also exposed just how fragile the institutions of American democracy are.

You know, there's been widespread recognition by liberals and even by some very prominent anti Trump Republicans that about the nature of the Republican party under Trump, it's his party and that it's a far right racist anti Democratic proto fascia's proto authoritarian party and a party which aims to stay in power by eliminating the institutions of majority rule and you go into a lot of this in your article, which we want to discuss.

But from what I get, I think missing in your view is the active focus of the left on the danger that the far right poses. So let's begin there warn that you argue that the far rights attempted insurrection on January 6 and the left's total inability to respond to it kind of encapsulate the political situation in the United States today, which is rightly focuses on the balance of power.

So can you explain that?

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