Unpopular Front Podcast

I visited the Partially Examined Life podcast, which I’ve been a fan of for years, to talk about Jürgen Habermas and his series of lectures, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In the book, Habermas defends the Enlightenment, reason, and modernity itself as an “unfinished project” worth continuing against its postmodern critics Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, and even his own mentor Theodor Adorno. Habermas’s books are famously long and difficult, but I think this is the best and most accessible summation of his project as a whole and how he differed from his direct antecedents and contemporaries. One way to characterize Habermas’s idea of modernity is that it’s the era that is an issue for itself: the specific meaning of the present time becomes important to discover or create. The other way to think about modernity is that it must provide its own criteria; it can’t turn to the models of the past—tradition, religion, authority—as definitive guides for politics, ethics, or art. As Habermas puts it, “it has to create its normativity out of itself.” You might think that sounds extremely abstract and dry, but Habermas actually begins with a discussion of Baudelaire, avant-garde art, and fashion as an entry point into modern consciousness. Baudelaire the art critic emphasizes an aspect of modern painting: “the ephemeral, the fleeting forms of beauty in the life of our day, the characteristic traits of what, with our reader’s permission, we have called ‘modernity.’” He puts the word “modernity” in quotation marks; he is conscious of his novel, terminologically peculiar use of the term. On this account, the authentic work is radically bound to the moment of its emergence; precisely because it consumes itself in actuality, it can bring the steady flow of trivialities to a standstill, break through normality, and satisfy for a moment the immortal longing for beauty — a moment in which the eternal comes into fleeting contact with the actual.I first read this book many years ago, just after college, and I wonder if it burrowed into my unconscious. I realized that this description of the modern approach to history, which he calls “effective history,” is exactly what I was trying to do with my book and my study of history in general: “[T]he future-oriented gaze is directed from the present into a past that is connected as prehistory with our present, as by the chain of a continual destiny.” I hope you enjoy Part 1 of our discussion, and please do sign up for PEL. It’s a terrific podcast that has helped me understand a great deal of very difficult philosophy and theory over the years. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

Max Read and I spoke to Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian about their fantastic new book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. The provocative thesis is that Elon Musk is not just a collection of quirks and tics, but his approach to capitalism and government forms something like an ideology, which, if not coherent exactly, can at least be reconstructed, articulated, and analyzed, much like “Fordism”. The proof is in the pudding: I must say I was skeptical at first, but it’s a very persuasive argument.For an idea, check out their recent piece “Muskism as Fordism” for the Law and Political Economy project. And, of course, listen to our conversation! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

On this episode of the Unpopular Front author series, I talked to reporter Elle Reeve. Elle is a correspondent at CNN, formerly of Vice News Tonight, where she won several awards for her outstanding coverage of Charlottesville. She’s also the author of the recent book Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet, Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics. If you’ve heard the term “alt-right,” it’s very likely due to Elle Reeve’s work. But today that term might already seem quaint. Elle has closely chronicled how the alternative became the mainstream: Her reporting traces neo-fascism from its origins in the seedy underbelly of internet forums to Capitol Hill and the White House. And from the subcultures of the socially marginal to the everyday language of politics and culture. We talked about what she’s observed over the course of her career, the road from 4Chan to January 6th, the psychology of the movement, and we speculated a little bit on what’s coming next. You might think that’s all darkness and gloom, but Elle’s reporting is also often very funny: her work is peopled with grotesque and pathetic characters that you can’t turn away from. I found the conversation really enlightening and a bracing real-world check on my sometimes abstruse historical and theoretical speculations, and I hope you will too! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

Ross Barkan, a political journalist, brings his insights to a compelling debate on the 'fascism question.' He discusses Trump’s strongman aspirations and the limits of executive power within U.S. federalism. Barkan contextualizes America's historical abuses of power and examines the ideological chaos within Trump’s administration. The duo tackles the complexities of defining fascism and its applicability to current political dynamics, ultimately questioning whether elections can coexist with fascistic governance.

Jay Caspian Kang of the New Yorker and the Time To Say Goodbye podcast joined Max and me for our regular live chat, and then something a little crazy happened: Substack sent out a platform-wide push notification linking to our convo, and we ended up with 7,000 viewers, many of whom were extremely confused about who we were and what was going on. Apparently, they told users we were going to discuss Venezuela, which we did not. But I think we handled the pressure pretty well and had a fun conversation.Here are some of the articles we discussed: “The Lost Generation” by Jacob Savage in Compact "Bari Weiss in L.A.” by Charlotte Klein in New York This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

For our bi-weekly live video, Max Read and I talk about the attacks on the Somali community, the streamer vs. donor models of political movements, A.I., and capitalist stagnation. We try do these chats every two weeks on Wednesday at 2 pm, but the holidays have disrupted the schedule a little, so we will be doing another one next Wednesday as well, before Christmas. Hope you enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

In his speech to the House of Commons on the eve of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill warned that if “we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” In exile 4 years later, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno wrote, “The fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.” And in 1945, Thomas Mann declared, “‘the really characteristic and dangerous aspect of National Socialism was its mixture of robust modernity and an affirmative stance toward progress combined with dreams of the past: a highly technological romanticism.”In their very different ways, they were all intimating what would come to be called “reactionary modernism,” an enormously useful and illuminating term in the study of fascism, both past and present. For this episode of the Unpopular Front author series, I’m very lucky to be joined by the person who coined the term, Jeffrey Herf, professor Emeritus of history at the University of Maryland and author of Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Professor Herf's book investigates how the “conservative revolutionaries” of Weimar—figures like Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, and Ernst Jünger, along with a group of much lesser-known ordinary engineers—combined a paradoxical rejection of the Enlightenment with an embrace of high technology, which they thought would be “spiritualized” with the energy of the purified Volk. Taken together, they contributed to an aesthetic and ideological movement that Joseph Goebbels would later dub “steely romanticism.” This cult of the machine would include a desire to split the “creative” and productive side of capitalism from the abstract mercantile and financial side, forming a philosophical underpinning of Nazi antisemitism and, eventually, the Holocaust. I talked to Jeffrey about all this and its relevance to contemporary debates about Trump, Silicon Valley, and much more! Read more:Jeffrey Herf, “Reactionary Modernism: Some Ideological Origins of the Primacy of Politics in the Third Reich” in Theory and Society, Nov. 1981 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

In this episode of Unpopular Front’s author series, I spoke to John P. McCormick, Karl J. Weintraub Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. John is the author of several books, including Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology, Machiavellian Democracy, and, most recently, The People’s Princes: Machiavelli, Leadership, and Liberty. The popular image of Niccolò Machiavelli is a “teacher of evil,” who counsels rulers how to use force and fraud to consolidate their regimes, but John’s illuminating books present us with a much different picture. In them, Machiavelli is a radical democrat, interested in encouraging popular participation in politics and fostering republican institutions that will protect the common people’s liberties from rapacious elites. Unlike his classical forebears, Machiavelli does not differentiate between oligarchs and aristocrats; for him, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few,” as the old saw goes. And, although Machiavelli lived in 16th-century Florence, a very different society from our own, I think you’ll find his political theory relevant to the present day. As John writes in Machiavellian Democracy: Every polity, Machiavelli observes, is comprised of two diverse humors: the oppressive appetite motivating the grandi, who wish to command and dominate the people; and the appetite to resist or avoid domination characteristic of the popolo, who desire only not to be commanded or oppressed by the grandi.As a kind of companion piece to our discussion, I recommend checking out a New York Times op-ed from yesterday by Anand Giridharadas, “How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails.” You’ll quickly see how Machiavelli can still help us clearly understand class and conspiracy in the 21st century. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.unpopularfront.newsI joined Max Read of Read Max for our bi-weekly Live chat, which we do together every other Wednesday at 2 pm. We talked about Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir, the Jeffrey Epstein emails, ethics in gossip journalism, what populism gets right about the ruling class, and what Niccolò Machiavelli can tell us about all of it. I hope you enjoy!

In this episode of Unpopular Front’s author series, I spoke to political theorist, writer, and researcher Laura K. Field. Laura has written for The Bulwark, The New Republic, Politico, and is a scholar in residence at American University, a senior advisor at the Illiberalism Studies Program at Georgetown, and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is also the author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, out now from Princeton University Press. I had the honor to blurb this book: “A pathbreaking intellectual history from the world’s preeminent researcher of the contemporary American right. Furious Minds scrupulously chronicles the coalescence of a modern movement that took place as much online as in the seminar room or the corridors of power. Essential reading to understand today’s political situation.”Laura’s book charts the rise of a group of malcontent intellectuals as they go from a scrappy group of bloggers fantasizing about an authoritarian America to joining a seditious conspiracy against the Republic and providing legal architecture for a coup. It also gives a very helpful taxonomy of the different schools of MAGA thought. We talked about all that, the strange influence of Leo Strauss and his students, and how JD Vance has embraced the New Right thinkers. If you’re in the New York City area, Laura will be doing an event on December 4th at the CUNY Graduate Center from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM with intellectual historian Richard Wolin. That’s 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 8301. Click the link to RSVP. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unpopularfront.news/subscribe