The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

In the past week, a number of prominent MAGA leaders have made comments about Jews that range from insulting to outright antisemitism.Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though are a different story – Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: The same banks that hold George Soros accounts and hedge funds also held Jeffrey Epstein accounts and hedge funds.In a tweet that was deleted by Twitter, the musician Kanye West wrote, “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” What are we to make of these comments? To take up the issue I talked to David Klion, an editor at Jewish Currents who has written before on Trump’s comments on Jews. (David speaks on this podcast for himself and not for Jewish Currents). It’s a wide ranging discussion about how casual bigotry serves as a gateway to something much worse.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.Host: Jeet HeerExecutive Producer: Ludwig HurtadoAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Star Wars franchise has long seemed to have exhausted itself with endless sequels and prequels offering variations of the same old stories. That's why the new Disney+ program, Andor has come as a surprise to many viewers. In tone and story, it’s very different than the Star Wars norm, offering a much grittier story about imperial oppression, police violence, and the emergence of a revolutionary movement.To talk about Andor, I sat with critic Sean T. Collins, who has been writing about the show for Decider. A respected TV critic, Sean also podcasts about TV and books, especially Game of Thrones related narratives, at The Boiled Leather Audio Hour.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.CREDITS:Host: Jeet HeerExecutive Producer: Ludwig HurtadoAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The power of centrism as a political force comes from the fact that it’s not so much an ideology as it is an ambient mood. It’s the shared common sense of the elite, a set of axioms about the goodness of bipartisanship, deficit reduction and military spending. Those who adhere to it take it so for granted, that they don’t feel the need to even defend it.Part of the achievement of Luke Savage’s new book The Dead Center is that it makes us see the almost invisible ideology of centrism and its pervasive ability to roadblock progress. A staff writer at Jacobin and co-host of the Michael and Us podcast, Luke is also a delightful guest on this episode of The Time of Monsters, as we survey the trajectory of centrism from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.CREDITS:Executive Producer: Ludwig HurtadoHost: Jeet HeerAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On September 12, Politico noted that Trump's appointed judges were "on a tear” and listed “a flurry of controversial decisions by Trump judges in recent months that have been criticized as out of step with longstanding legal principles.” These decisions touched on everything from abortion, to Trump’s handling of classified documents to voting rights. Politico’s reporting was backed up by a strong analysis of the problem of Trump’s judges by New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. The courts are now a bastion of reactionary activism. The are pushing to not just roll back settled rights but also hamstring the administrative state. To take up this topic, I talked to Linda Hirshman, a former law professor and author of many books on the struggle for civil rights by women, African-Americans and LGBTQ people. Her most recent book is The Color of Abolition. As always, Linda brings an incisive mind to the issues at hand. Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In the theater of American politics, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is auditioning for the role of Trump II. His pitch is that he’ll offer all the hard right policies the GOP base loves but with a more competent and stable persona which won’t offend centrist voters. His current gambit of shipping asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts is just his latest bid to gain attention.But Chris Lehmann, the recently appointed Washington Bureau chief of The Nation, is skeptical as to whether it’ll pay off. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talk with Chris about why DeSantis is risking a backlash. We also take up the center right and centrist pundits who are all too eager to jump on the DeSantis bandwagon.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. CREDITSHost: Jeet HeerExecutive Producer: Ludwig HurtadoAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Queen Elizabeth II is being widely mourned in the United Kingdom and elsewhere as a symbol of the British state, tradition, and service. These mainstream sentiments, often expressed in the media coverage in the United States as well as the UK, are not universally shared. In Ireland and many other former colonies, the Queen is a symbol of the oppression of an imperialism that is now in retreat but still leaves a legacy. Conversely, many right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and former Trump advisor Steven Miller, are using the Queen as an avatar of an earlier era when the right people with the right bloodlines enjoyed unquestioned power.To discuss the meaning of the Queen’s death and the monarchy, this episode of The Time of Monsters features a conversation with Nora Loreto, a Canadian journalist who podcasts at Sandy and Nora Talk Politics. One example of a right-wing politician seeking to weaponize monarchical sentiment is the newly chosen leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre. Nora and I take up the dangers of Poilievre’s mixture of libertarianism and cultural populism.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Joe Biden has become increasingly frank and forthright in in his criticism of Donald Trump. In late August, Biden told Democratic party donors that “extreme MAGA philosophy” “It’s not just Trump,” Biden said. “It’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something: It’s like semi-fascism.” Subsequently, Biden delivered an important and substantial speech in Philadelphia where he avoided the word fascism but detailed the way MAGA Republicans were a threat to American democracy.Biden’s remarks and his speech have elicited a considerable pushback from the mainstream media, with the president being accused of being inflammatory and partisan. New Republic staff writer Matt Ford has written an strong defense of Biden’s deployment of the term semi-fascism. I talked with Matt about his article and about the ways in which fascism does (and doesn’t) describe Trumpism.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Richard Seymour joins the Time of Monsters podcast for a live conversation in London, to discuss climate change and economic crisis in the United Kingdom.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The victory of Gustavo Petro in the recent Colombian presidential election is further proof that Latin America is being swept in a new “pink tide,” one that has the potential to be larger and more far-reaching in its impact than the original wave of left-of-center governments that took power in the 1990s and early 2000s. Aside from Colombia, there are now left-of-center governments, including some openly socialist ones, in power in Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, and Chile. Depending on the results of an upcoming election in Brazil, nearly 80 percent of Latin America could soon be governed by parties of the left.To survey the prospects for the left in the region, I sat down with journalist Doug Bell to interview Jeremy Adelman, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University. He is also the Director of the Global History Lab at Princeton. We talked about the history of the first pink tide, its achievements and failures, the right-wing reaction to it, and the current renewal of socialism in the region. The talk also takes up the exciting constitutional innovations being debated in the region as well as the difficult balance between a development strategy that relies on resource extraction and the urgent need for climate policy. Another important question is whether the United States will, as in the past, attempt to thwart a push for economic independence. Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. Credits: Ludwig Hurtado, Executive ProducerJeet Heer, Host Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 supermajority of Republican appointed justices, is on a rampage. On Friday, they extinguished the constitutional right to reproductive freedom. Then on Monday, they eased restrictions on teachers and coaches leading students in prayer at public schools. In his majority statement in the Dobbs case which ended abortion rights, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made a curiously two faced statement about future rights: he said that he thought previous court rulings on birth control, marriage equality, and gay rights broadly were badly decided. But he also offered assurances that they would not be touched since they were less serious than abortion.Should Alito be trusted? The fact that conservative justices previously made misleading statements about respecting precedent on abortion suggests not.This week I talk to Linda Hirshman, who I often describe as the Cassandra of the American left because she has been warning of this moment for decades. Linda is an astute analyst of conservative judicial extremism, whose work can be found here. We talk about where the court is going next and also radical (but also perfectly doable) actions the Democrats can take to stop the evisceration of basic constitutional rights. Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.Credits;Jeet Heer, HostLudwig Hurtado, Executive ProducerAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy