← Lunch with Jamie
Lunch with Jamie
Eric K. Ward & Rachel Carroll Rivas — Hate, Pardons, and Bridging the Divide
01:01:12
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- [00:02]
A
Baby, excited to see everyone. It's just get right into this. It's obviously been quite a kind of tumultuous couple of weeks. You know, as I've mentioned, it's really hard to prioritize what issues to focus on for these conversations. And since my goal is to create a space that isn't hyper partisan and that can look at issues that all Americans should be able to unite around. And hate was a topic that I've been passionate about creating a conversation around for a while now. We have all witnessed firsthand the rise in hate in America over the past years, and it has been truly heartbreaking. I was not around during the civil rights era, but I naively felt that we had moved so far forward that we wouldn't see a time like that again. But sadly, that is not the case. I'm not trying to compare the two, and it's undeniable that America has moved forward in some ways, but it's also undeniable that we have so far to go. The only way I see us continuing to move forward is digging deep inside ourselves and reaching out to people who have different viewpoints, who come from different backgrounds, racial, religious, sexual orientation, and trying to understand where they're coming from and what they believe. Try not to discount their beliefs just because they're different, but trying to understand why they're different. That's what I hope we can accomplish here today. And going forward, it's going to take every one of you to do that. It seems daunting, but we have to start somewhere. And one place to start is with these two great guests we have with us today. Eric Ward is the American recipient of the Civil Courage Prize, the Executive PR President of Race Forward and renowned civil rights leader focusing on intersection between authoritarianism, anti Semitism, white nationalism and community resilience. Rachel Kyra Rivas is the Interim Director of the Intelligence Project and Deputy Director of Research, Reporting and Analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was formerly co director and Research Director of the Montana Human Rights Network and has done work addressing hate groups and extremism. So I want to thank you guys for joining us today. And I really just and I appreciate all the work you've been doing. Eric, I met you years ago now at this point and it's really I'm always inspired when I get a chance to talk to you. And Rachel, you are a new friend, but I've loved learning about you and watching your TED Talk and other areas where you've spoken and written things. So you know, the first place I want to start is, is looking at the, one of the things, the most topical and the thing that's happened most recently which was the, was was January 6th, January 6th pardons. Because you know, I think what surprised a lot of people in, in that was sort of the blanket pardons. And I so I'm curious in your guys opinion and neither one of you can take it. Were you a were you surprised about that? And B, where do you think that sort of leaves us when it looks at some of the specific people that were pardon that were undeniably from both Republicans and Democrats, people that had committed awful attacks on police officers or the proud boy leader Enrique, Enrique Tario. So I don't know which one of you wants to start with that, but love to hear your perspective.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah. Thank you again for, for having us today. It's, it's, it's, there's so much and you know, we'll, we'll jump right in. Many of us argue after January 6th that it wasn't an aberration, it wasn't a single act. In fact that January 6th was continuing to happen in places around the country. I think directly to answer your question, not surprised at all. President Donald Trump was very clear during his election cycle that he would likely issue pardons and that they would either be targeted or very broad. And what we saw was something broad, disturbing in the sense that some of those individuals released since that time in the last couple of weeks, one was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, another was arrested on sexual predator charges. Right. And a third was re arrested on, on gun violations. These individuals, some of the groupings around January 6th were quite violent. Congressional hearings documented and showed right. That some of these individuals had come to engage in violence, had come come to the Capitol arm to disrupt the vote. Individuals were killed in January 6th. So not surprising but disturbing to now know that these individuals are re entering community without any supervision and are now pardoned to commit future crimes. At the end of the day, January 6th wasn't just about breaking windows. Right. It was also about our ability breaking our ability to trust each other as Americans and to trust one another in the process of democracy. And so it has been quite disturbing.
- [05:45]
C
Yeah, thanks Eric. And thanks for the question for having me here today, Jamie. You know, for me I think there is actually a few differences that were really interesting. So there was a, you know, very wide reaching pardon for almost everyone, but there were a few people who just received commutations. Those folks were key leaders in Oath Keepers, including Stuart Rhodes. I actually live in Montana, where I've mostly done my work locally. And Stuart Rhodes formed Oath Keepers just two years after I started this work. So we've kind of, we've been in this about the exact same amount of time. And from the beginning, Rhodes was saying at events in small logging communities the exact same things he was saying on January 6th in 2009, right all the way to that day. And I think what he and Oath Keepers represents as a substitution of replacement that is unaccountable to government. That's what a militia is in the US and that's what he was forming with 40,000 people around the country, is even threatening, I think, to the current administration. And that scared them. It concerns me that the folks who use the most explicit race based languages language and misogynist language in Proud Boys for, for example, receive the pardon because that's really about a message. But I do think there is something about sort of common ground in like that little opening that means that they also saw some concern in what it would mean to rearm, to totally wipe the slate clean for someone like Stuart Rhodes, who was involved in seditious conspiracy, like actually planning for decades this kind of action, involved in planning these kind of things locally, particularly across the west in like public lands disputes. And so that was an interesting thing that hasn't necessarily been talked about I think a lot. But I do think that regardless of what was happening before, we also know what's happening since then. People like Jake Lang were continuing to plan national militia while in prison. And we don't have a system that necessarily reforms people in prison. We, we actually have some problems there, but we were having people who were still involved in this. And so I think the warning signs are still there for almost all the people that face those consequences. And they were mostly proportional. People got community service who may have been caught up in the moment. People got long sentences who were involved in the conspiracy. I think it's about the message it sends to the larger population. For me, that really makes me most concerned.
- [08:28]
D
Can you talk?
- [08:29]
B
I think that's right. Go, Eric. I know we have so much terrain to cover, but I think what Rachel was saying right. Is exactly right. It's important for us to remember, right. We have forgotten in the onslaught of shock and awe over the last couple of weeks and the numbness of the last four years, just the amount of destruction. You know, I reside in and live in Portland, Oregon, and over a five year period, right, over 11 people were shot, right. In political confrontations that were occurring in the region four People killed hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, city reputation. From Portlandia to a city that is used regularly by the New York Times to reinforce this idea of urban decay and the fear of multiculturalism. The impact of January 6th was quite significant. And it's important, I think again to reinforce what Rachel just said. January 6th wasn't just the beginning. It was merely the latest large scale attempt. And what we learned from that day is that there are individuals who are willing to engage in political violence, violence who caught up thousands of more right in, you know, folks who really just came out to protest. They did not come out to engage in violence. But these individuals who planted themselves as far right leaders wrapped up the rest of those individuals, right, whose lives, for many, are permanently damaged in their communities. At the, at the end of the day, I think it's important for us to understand, right, I've been doing this work long enough to know that these groups never go away. Today a big victory against one of those organizations, the Proud Boys, who vandalized a church in Washington D.C. that Church sued them in court today. They have now won the name, right and the symbols of the Proud Boy organization, right? And it's a significant victory, but they won't go away, right? They will evolve and mutate, they will rebrand, they will resurface, right. But the loss will continue to help them. And the lesson there, right, is that hate movements need a sense of inevitability to survive. They thrive on people's feeling powerless. And every time we push back, whether in court or at the ballot box or by strengthening our own communities, we chip away at their illusion of dominance. And with this large scale pardon, it's going to be important for community leaders to continue to chip away at that.
- [11:35]
A
Obviously, hate and anti Semitism authoritarianism has been on the rise for a long time. Donald Trump didn't start it, you know, and I think it was interesting somebody said something to me when, when Trump was elected in 2016, that, you know, this had been festering right underneath the surface for so long that there was almost a positive in the sense of like rip. The band needed to ripped off and it wasn't ripped off then somebody else would have ripped it off later and it could have gotten significantly worse. And so, so I wonder, you know, when you go back, and I don't want to make this a history lesson, but at the same time, you know, I am curious and your guys are sort of helping us kind of set the table for where what were some of the, the key moments that if you look, in the past 20, 30 years that maybe we were missing, that was. Was happening. You know, obviously, I know that the. The Oath Keepers were started around 2009, but, like, what are some of the big moments? You know, we think of Charlottesville, but that's, you know, there. There was a lot of other things going on. So help us. Help us understand that.
- [12:54]
B
Yeah, I'm going to turn to Rachel because the heart of the story actually begins in. In Montana. Right. Not because of Montanans, though, I want to be clear. Right, right. But because of folks outside of Montana who saw that part of the country as kind of the starting base. This story starts really in the 80s and 90s with an organization called the Aryan nations that relocated to North Idaho and declared the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states as a Aryan homeland. Now, that was never going to happen. But what began was a shift in how the far right functioned. It moved from an IBM, right, of swastikas and clan gear to business suits and ballot boxes, but also armed paramilitaries, its own judicial court systems that began to build its own parallel institutions. But the most significant moment is something called the growth of the militia. Armed paramilitaries preparing to confront the federal government. And that story starts squarely in Montana. And I'll let Rachel pick up that piece of it and how it has evolved over time.
- [14:19]
C
Yeah, thanks, Eric. One thing I think that's really notable about who was involved in those moments in the 80s and unfortunately, who continues to be targeted. And so this is not, again, about the people themselves, but who is targeted. Really incredible thinker Kathleen Blue said, wrote a really great book about what we have dealt with in the aftermath of Vietnam War and the recruitment into these movements by people who are veterans because they are looking for those senses of belonging, a place to use skills, a way to be engaged, a way to feel like they can be valuable to their communities in that direct service orientation. So family I come from, right? Like that's my family, or they're direct service firefighters, et cetera. And those folks were key members who both moved or returned to the area in the post Vietnam area and really got caught up in this movement because they were looking to fill those holes. And. But it also meant that they came with pretty serious skill sets. And those skill sets were to be part of an institution in the military, not to be used differently. And so that movement really meant that people came in contact with folks in land disputes in the forest and Forest Service and public lands issues, school boards, even at times, state legislatures, on issues that seemed innocuous it didn't seem like they were about hate and anti Semitism and extremism. You just thought you were showing up to talk about water, right? And then in the middle of those conversations, community members were really sort of affronted with these random comments or these patches or these symbols that represented and were very much rooted in, in anti Semitic conspiracies about one world governments, particularly around the United nations and other. And it really is like a backlash. And so for the work I did in Montana communities essentially kind of said, someone tell us what the heck's going on. And my organization ended up forming and that was really our purpose to tell people like, yeah, actually you have to decode this for your leaders locally. You have to tell them what it is and then you have to figure out why is it being used in this moment to split what is happening and sort of like open that door. But unfortunately there wasn't a lot of activity to confront that. And so really, you know, we did a job here, folks did it here and there, but that wasn't the national attention. And so it continued to build and then it continued to spread. And then we had the rise of incredible organizing online and people like Stuart Rhodes, who basically had an amazing sort of media machine and was able to grow a national movement really right under all our noses for folks who weren't like me, spending my days doing that. So I think that that's a big one for me. I would say kind of echoing for Eric, but I think in modern time, the one moment I will call out is that the modern effort to really take on police brutality around George Floyd was the flip that really opened the door for groups who had been building from that time in the 80s on to really sort of say, shouldn't everyone be afraid of what it would look like to change, quite frankly, policing in the US and yeah, was a big question, and I'm not saying everyone had the right answers, but that fear of what that could be really opened a door for those folks in again, proud boys and patriot front and militia movements to really say, yeah, you should be afraid, we can solve it for you. We'll step in and we'll be the authoritarians to, to take it over and to go back to something that may not have been good, but you know it.
- [18:14]
A
So you do, when you say that, do you mean the kind of defund the police movement of that time, the BLM protests and, and, and in relationship to that, where do you put Trump's first election or the Charlottesville R riots in that same context.
- [18:32]
C
Yeah. Well, you know, there's one thing I've learned about any social movement is there's all kinds of people and they don't all get along. So there are definitely factions. Another figure that was really key and I think it's important for us to remember is Richard Spencer. And this is so weird because turns out he also was located in Montana. I'm like surrounded by them, you all. But Richard Spencer did not the kind of, you know, fatigues recruiting veterans work that we were just talking about that Eric flagged kind of roots in that old anti Semitic Aryan Nation stuff. But actually Richard Spencer did more of the suit and tie, right. And he brought that. What they called, they tried to call, you know, intellectual racism. And he, as he built that movement really, I think open the door for a political leader to step in and fill it. And to your point, Jamie, any, any number of people could have filled it, right. And did in multiple places around the country. But I do think that that had the, in some situations, what Spencer ended up building and resulting in the deadly incidents in Charlottesville actually had the alternate effect, right. That woke people up. They were sort of like, wow, that's too much. And, and so we ended up with this sort of moment of like, okay, maybe there's, you know, maybe there's one's going to make it movement and maybe the other movement's going to make it, like what's going to happen? So that wasn't very long ago. I still feel that way. I still feel like it's really a toss up. Like we've got a lot of options in front of us. I'm not hopeless about where we are, but I actually think Richard Spencer and what he did and where we end up with Charlottesville, the didn't necessarily have a galvanizing impact on the, you know, the hate movement, but actually had a wake up moment for those in the progressive civil rights movement.
- [20:25]
B
That's so well said.
- [20:28]
A
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I, because I had mentioned this concept of Trump being kind of in some ways just ripping the band aid off. And I had never thought of Charlottesville and I can't really remember to that time and this, this idea that that was going too far and so I hadn't really related it to the George Floyd and BLM movement of that time. And you know, the, you know, arguably one of the worst movements ever, the Defund the police move, in which nobody in the, in the world who's rational believes in that movement and nobody supports it. And no, there's no Democrat I know supports it. It was just a marketing slogan stall, you know, by the extreme left wing that was then taken by the genius marketers of the, the, you know, you know, Trump and other kind of supporters to, to use it. But I had never looked at it that way that we were, I don't want to say we were back on the downslope after Charlottesville, but in, in your mind that there was a moment of, of maybe it was things coming to fruition and then realizing, okay, we have to figure out a way to come together after that time. Do you think, were you hopeful in that moment post Charlottesville, both of you going back to it? And Eric, I mean, I don't know if you can kind of pinpoint those times, but did you think there was a I hopeful maybe the wrong word? I don't know what the right word for any of these things are.
- [21:55]
B
Yeah, for a moment, right. And you know, of course I, I'm not going to give everyone my political philosophy class. I, I don't actually teach one, but it, it would take three weeks, right, to, to unpack some of this, you know, so for, so for instance, yes, there was a. I wouldn't call it hope. What happens in Charlottesville is fairly alarming to folks who are doing anti hate work. It signaled a, a new moment similar to Oklahoma City, right. Similar to the Greensboro massacre, right. Where Klansmen open fire. Klansmen and neo Nazis joined together for the first time in the early 80s open fire killing anti clan protesters right in front of law enforcement with no response. There are moments that happen in hate group history that are quite alarming. What was different about Charlottesville was the national response. For a short period of time, for a moment, a broad based coalition of conservatives, liberals and progressives come together. Now we don't agree on every issue. I want to be clear about that. Right. But what we do agree upon for a short period of time is that bigotry and hatred are not part of the solutions to the context complex problems that we are facing as a nation. For a brief moment, we draw a clear moral barrier against bigotry. And it is a powerful moment in America. It's powerful because it cross lines of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation. I can tell you in that moment, during that three year period, I could walk into meeting and on one side of me would be a Republican farmer and on the other right, a radical 17 year old. Now those two did not agree on much, right? But what they agreed on is that they needed to rely on one Another to promote the values that were important to them in the society. Safety, the belief in democratic process. It was a very powerful moment. But it didn't hold for a number of reasons, I've argued. One of the reasons that it didn't hold was unconscious, unrecognized antisemitism. Right. Systems of antisemitism. And a misunderstanding that this was simply some kind of aberration. Right. We treat every instance of the growth of hate groups, the white nationalist movement, or the alt right as if they are aberration, rather than the evolution of a social movement that seeks to overthrow the United States and replace it with another system, a system that is grounded in exclusion, not inclusion. And until we learn that lesson, until we stop dividing ourselves. Look, I was one of the. Look, I'm a liberal. If you hang out with me for a long enough time, that's no surprise. All my conservative friends know that. They give me a hard time about that. But I can tell you, right, that I have always been very clear. The GOP was targeted for takeover by this movement. We sat in those meetings. We read their documents. Right. It was an attempt to take over a political party and to steer it in a specific direction. Individuals in that party tried to protect the Republican Party from that, but didn't receive the broad based support that it needed to hold that space. And we are now living with the outcome of that decision by the rest of us. We played political, partisan politics when we should have been upholding a moral banner about who we are as Americans and what type of America we seek to live in.
- [26:42]
A
I don't want to get too deep into your Eric, your history or whatnot, because that's. That's a whole other zoom. But I. Since you did bring up, you know, about you being, you know, your liberal background, I also think, you know, your punk rock background is interesting to sort of just reference for a lot of people who don't know you. And I want to. Again, I want to stay too far out of the history because we'll be here all day. But I am curious just for you to give the 10,000 foot sort of talk on just sort of how punk rock and your background experience sort of connected to this work today.
- [27:18]
B
Yeah. So I grew up in the midst of the desegregation of the public schools in Los Angeles County. And those are good and bad stories. But the. But the truth is we were being sent off, like many kids across town, black, white, Latino, Asian, to different schools. And let's be clear, the thing we weren't gonna Bond on was our racial differences, right? We lived in a segregated society. That wasn't going to be the bridge. Lucky for us, what appeared at that time, right, was the rise of hip hop and punk rock. And quite frankly, Gene, right, this is the early 80s. We don't know the difference. We just know it's not Kaplan and Tenille, right? It's not Lionel Richie. It is something that seems to speak to what we're feeling, right? The alienation, kind of the shifting of society. Our parents weren't helicopter parents, right? We were latchkey kids, right? You've heard all the Gen X stories. This is the environment we grew up in. And, you know, we. We found each other. A lot of kids found each other through this punk identity. It became as powerful, right, as the other identities we have held across race, religion, and quite frankly, much more exciting than those things that were dividing us. So the punk scene became very vibrant in la. I'm not going to draw unicorns and rainbows around it. It was also a nihilistic scene, right? We were a bunch of kids, as I said, who were alienated. Most of us didn't find our way there because we were the healthiest kids or had the healthiest homespout. But it became our place. And soon that space came under attack. And it came under attack by individuals who then began telling us that we couldn't be in this space, that we had put our energy in to create and build together. And that started decades of open warfare in this punk rock subculture community. People were significantly hurt, right? We had white power skinheads, Neo Nazis who were showing up and physically assaulting and attacking bands, people in the audience. It was a terrible time, and it really formed and shaped my understanding of this moment. But not just the horror of it, but the potential of what happens when we understand that we don't need a political ideology to tell us what our values are and what they should be in this society. What happens is we get politicized. Our values get politicized in ways that seek to drive us apart rather than bring us together and move us forward together. That is what I learned in the punk scene. I learned a lot about diy, right? And when this moment started to happen again at a much larger scale, many of us in the punk scene recognized once again what was happening. And the short of it, Jamie, is just this. Many of the lessons of the punk scene are actually applicable to this moment still. No matter. Despite the fact that the scale is a hundred times larger, those lessons are still valuable. We have much more in common with one another. Right. Than what politicians are telling us that we have. The truth is that I have much more in common with conservatives. I grew up in a conservative town. I joined the Navy at the age of 17. Every generation of my family has been represented in, in the military. Black folks by trade are libertarians. Because of the deep prejudice we have to try to figure out how to make it on our own. This idea that we are opposed in this open existential war is really so folks can get themselves elected. And that's what we wanted in the punk scene.
- [31:37]
A
That's really helpful. And I heard that great talk at CAA that you had did and the short film we've been here before that you were part of that was great. The. It's amazing to me how we as a country have so much in common across the board. And I say that all the time and that the majority of Americans all want the same thing. It's, it's undeniable. I don't, I don't have the, the data to totally back it up, but I, I would risk my life on it. We all want the same things. We just have different approaches of how to get there. And, you know, this, this sort of partisan landscape we're living in is, is just devastating. You know, I talk about it all the time. I, I, there's nothing I want more than to be able to have a conversation with someone who has different points of view with me, had different perspectives, different ways of getting there. How do you think we can start to build that bridge to people who have different perspectives and for lack of a better term, right and left conservative, you know, liberal, Republican, Democrat. Where do you guys see the opportunity to make a dent in the sort of partisan landscape we're living in?
- [32:58]
C
Well, this is funny for me because I work at, you know, a pretty large organization that's often perceived as, like, national at scope, even though in our name, Southern Poverty Law Center. But because the work particularly of the Intelligence Project has been to, you know, really document, expose, and try to counter hate and extremist organizations for 50 years. But, you know, SPLC is rooted deeply in the south and particularly in states that are very rural in nature. And my own work has been particularly rooted in doing work at a very local level. And for me, that's where it is, because you don't actually have a lot of option in those small community spaces particularly. I mean, it's, for me, it's why I spent so much time doing kind of rural work. I worked with a USDA program for years. Because you don't get a choice if your barber is anti Semitic. You don't get a choice if your neighbor, if you can avoid your neighbor because you only have so many. And you're forced into those conversations where then you actually have to like dig in and figure it out. You have to be like, whoa. And you actually have to say something. I think we're actually, oddly, in a, in a time where it feels like we're highly controversial and really conflict heavy. I think in a lot of ways we're actually pretty conflict avoidant because we just sort of stay with this. Like, I agree with this group of people over here and so I'm yelling, but that's really not like healthy conflict. Right? Like a really good place where you actually get to dig in and have healthy conflict where you say, like, hey, what you just said was like pretty offensive to me and like not my experience at all. Right. And so for me, I absolutely go back to those local spaces. So local organizing on whatever might be. I worked on non discrimination ordinances at the local level for years, passing 10 of them in a rural state that you wouldn't expect you could do that. In the work that we're doing right now at SPLC on the ground in the south, we've invested in doing deep organizing, having people on the ground across Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia to just talk about the basic stuff that's happening. I think people will come together. That. But that is a huge investment and I'll be honest, not something the civil rights movement, the progressive movement in the US has really invested in very well over the last few years. We've got a lot of kind of national DC focused infrastructure which leans into the partisanship. And I think the investment on organizing on the ground, where you can talk about everything from hate group to Medicaid to water, is actually like where the magic happens. So that's, that's it for me.
- [35:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, I'm part of the problem. I mean, you know, if someone told me they were voting for Donald Trump in this last election, I couldn't really get to the next part of the conversation. And I personally believe that, you know, based on his morals and his actions and many of his statements, the fact that he did not, you know, denied that he lost the election, the fact of January six and other things, you know, and I'm frustrated with myself. You know, I, on the one hand, I still believe those are, you know, sort of redline issues for me. I don't know how to get past that on the one hand, you know, if you're going to promote this concept that the election was rigged and that you didn't really lose, and I don't know how to get past that. And also some of the moral, I do believe I'm a pretty moral person and I would like people to sort of who are leaders, both political athletes, musicians who, you know, who are people who are role models. I think you do have to live up to certain standards. But obviously that didn't get us very far. So I have to now go back inside and do some soul searching and figure out how can I have a rational conversation with somebody who does believe that January 6th wasn't this big stain on our country or doesn't believe that it's, you know, insane to promote the idea that the election was stolen. You know, and it's a, it's challenging. I mean, how do you know when you're at a place where you just are so far from agreeing on what that sort of baseline facts are. How do you have an educated conversation your guys mind, like what's the, what's the right approach?
- [37:30]
C
Eric, I'll say one thing real quick is me one is we've gotta desegregate ourselves. And I live in a place that's a little hard to do because it's a fairly white place. But I also mean in other ways in political desegregation. So I purposely am involved in activities where I'm have to be with all kinds of people. I'm a longtime 4H volunteer and leader and my kids are involved. And that is a key place for me to engage because all of a sudden I'm not like scary and the enemy to a very conservative traditionally group of people, right. That participate in that particular organization. And same goes, they're not to me. But I also think it's the value of researching these movements because we spend time then understanding that the ideas are powerful and that people get caught up in them. And there are absolutely leaders who are responsible. I'm not going to get on a debate stage with Nick Fuentes. I'm not going to get on a debate stage and platform certain people. But I'm absolutely going to engage with the folks who are getting pulled in by that. Right. Particularly youth. And so that's the difference. To know that the ideas are what have power. The ideas are the thing that I'm opposed to, not the human.
- [38:42]
B
I, I think that's right. Look, the first is that you actually have to know your own values before you can have a value based conversation. With someone, right. I think it's, look, there is no outcome that brings us together through the political lens of a conversation, right. I think, I don't believe this, but there are some folks who believe every immigrant should be deported, right? And on the opposite end though, I don't like to do those both sides, there are folks who think no one should be reported, removed from, from this country under any circumstances when those are political positions. When you enter a debate you're trying to convince another person of your point of view, right? Or you're trying to find some compromise in the middle. And I don't think that's where we should be engaging right now. We should be curious about what someone tells me they believe all immigrants should be deported, right? They should know value wise. I absolutely do not agree with that. Right. 2 Though I'm actually curious what values that represents in a person, right? What is the value behind that statement rather than the statement itself? The statement is just a talking point but underlying that statement is a set of values that we should be curious about even if we don't agree with it. So that's the first thing that we have to keep shifting and doing. The, the other I think is understanding, right. That in the midst of those big debates that we also recognize the things that we still have in common, right? I believe that this is a society where they, the majority of people seek safety, right. They seek opportunity for themselves and for their families. And in the midst, right. Of these kind of hardy television debates. And I'm just going to keep blunt, right. Debates that are meant to make you stick around for the commercial, right. Or the ad on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, right. That we don't forget get right. The things that we hold together, the aspirations we hold. But there is a line, Jamie, like I, I, I want to be clear right there, there is a line for me and, and I would for me, I explain it this way. I again, I don't care if you are that 68 year old white male veteran living in rural Iowa or that 17 year old trans Latina, right. Living in New York City. Both of you have the right to live, love, worship and work in this society free from fear and bigotry. That is a non negotiable for me, right. And everyone in between that. And so if you do not believe that we aren't going to find common ground, but it doesn't mean that I'm still not interested in trying to understand the values behind your statements and behind your beliefs. And I think we have lost the Ability to be curious. We live in increasing segregated society. First segregated by class and race, increasing recently, now segregated by educational status. Right. A host of other things, urban and rural. The list goes on. And it tells us that at the end of the day, if we want to be a healthy society, we have to continue to remove the barriers of segregation. Right. If my views are more liberal. Right. Trust me, I could have been a leader of the alt right. Rachel knows this background. As a young kid, I don't hide this. There's a reason that I'm not and it's because I figured out how to traverse a non segregated subculture that opened me up to influences like that, made me challenge some of my beliefs. And we don't do that right now. We don't see it represented in our broad culture, we don't see it represented in our private lives. And we certainly aren't going to see it represented politically where people are winning and losing elections based off of us being divided against one another.
- [43:31]
A
That's really interesting. And Rachel, I loved you referencing 4H again, because when I was listening to you speak, I've decided that I think everybody learning going back to 4H would solve so many of our problems since I think the majority of kids, kids that I know have no idea what 4H is. So I, I appreciate that. I think, you know, I was talking to my daughter earlier who goes to UNC Chapel Hill, and she was talking about how in one of her journalism classes they sort of piled up on just anti Trump things at the beginning of a class. And I got me into a conversation about her and, and the relation and, you know, the conservative voices in her school and the Republicans and how many other kids in the class were fighting back and said, well, the majority of the kids in that class were all, you know, were all sort of piled on. But she had another friend in another class that had the opposite experience where they felt so in the minority when it came to being supportive of Trump's policies that they didn't even feel comfortable in that class. And gets back to this point of getting the youth figure out a way for them to be talking is so important for us. And that was why I was so excited for my daughter to go to school at unc. And, and I think it's critical that we encourage our kids and to go to these different places and have different experience and different conversations. I want to. We have only a few minutes left. Eric, I want to go to you. And Lisa brought this up. You, in 2017 wrote an essay that argued Anti Semitism is the theoretical core of white nationalism. And I'm curious, sort of where, you know, you are on that and where your stance is and has had that changed at all. Eric, you're muted. You're muted.
- [45:21]
B
Erica, mute myself. I was trying to be nice and not cock on the camera. Look, it is still remains my stance that antisemitism remains one of the most significant influential drivers in this moment, right? Anti Semitism is a direct attack on democracy. It is not created by the white nationalist movement. It is something that exists in our society. It exists across, across the political spectrum. But white nationalists have tapped into it specifically, right? As an organizing piece. And that's because it's unconscious and it has existed. It's one of the oldest forms of bigotry. The quickest way in that essay, Skin in the game, how Anti Semitism animates white Nationalism, folks can find the full essay. What I wrote about six years or, sorry, six months before Charlottesville. So remember six months before Charlottesville, no one was talking about antisemitism in this country. It was primarily seen as a phenomena that existed in Europe or the Middle East. The other piece around antisemitism at that time is that it was broadly rejected as something worth looking at. But for the white nationalist movement, it wasn't just at the core. Jamie. Right. It was the core of white nationalism. And it was so central to white nationalism that I, as a black civil rights activist, understood that we would not advance civil rights in this country. We were not also active in the struggle to uproot this form of anti Jewish hate. And that's because amongst 21st century white nationalists, Jews were cast in the same role they had always filled for anti Semites, right? As the absolute other demons stirring a pot of lesser evils. And the driving force behind white dispossession, right? The attack on the tree of life, a targeting of Jews worshiping, was done by an individual who believed that Jews were responsible in driving immigration in the United States. And at the foundation of that modern day movement is also an explicit claim that Jews are a separate race, they are not white in the eyes of white nationalists, and that their position is white was nothing more than the greatest trick that the devil had ever played. Right? That Jews, despite, and indeed because of the fact that they were seen as white, were placed as an enemy race that should be exposed and eliminated. It is that fantasy of invisible Jewish power that explains for white nationalists how black Americans, right, this race of supposed inferiors could orchestrate the end of Jim Crow or how Feminists in the LGBT LGBTQ community get upend, right. These traditional gender roles and even how immigrant workers could mount challenges against economic inequality. And when folks asked me, where was the anti Semitism in the white nationalist movement, I would have to point out it was everywhere. Right? Again, when the Tree of Life shooter said Jews were committing a genocide against white people, he was not using an aberration of language. It was intimately familiar to his fellow white nationals. And that is the framework upon which that entire movement functions. And as a racial justice activist, the one thing that I understand is to refuse to deal with any ideology of racism is to abet it. And what I argue is that fighting anti Semitism would cut off the animating force of white nationalism for the sake of all marginalized communities. And it's an issue I continue to push. Of course, it has become even more complicated and pronounced in the wake of October 7, right? The taking of hostages, the killing of Israeli civilians, the response by the Israeli government, the displacement of people in Gaza. It has become this complicated politicized conversation again to get people elected and unelected. But underlying that is the fact that white nationalists took anti Semitism from the margins and brought it into the mainstream. And when they bring it into the mainstream, none of us. I don't care if you were on the left, left or the right, are immune from the power of anti Semitism, one of the oldest forms of bigotry in the world, only outdated by misogyny. And it plays a role in our politics in ways we have not begun to talk about that.
- [50:32]
C
There's no reason, Jamie, that myself, right, growing up where I did in Montana was Grace Catholic, that I should have any concept of understanding what I will call the intersectionality of the right. Their connecting, their melding of anti Semitism with their opposition to feminism, their opposition to black civil rights, their opposition to trans rights, to. To democracy. Like that melding, there's nothing that should have made me understand that. But I was lucky in that one. People like Eric and Ken Stern, a friend of ours, really brought that understanding when we were faced with the Aryan nations, which was really followed, an idea called Christian Identity in our backyards. And through the militia movement, I had to. I was forced to understand it because of those meetings. And that understanding has made it for me, like, deeply important to continue to elevate that, because I still see it in the research from my team every single day. Got 24 people. They are looking at every dark, you know, chat room. They're at watching events, they're looking at Videos and the existence of what Eric outlined on the right and the how anti Semitism is so infectious into all of these things that we all are concerned about, no matter who we are, that still exists is still exactly the conversations in the chat rooms. It is still the same terms that come out of folks mouths on the events. It still happens. The challenge is they're people recognizing it and seeing it. Because if we don't, the wedges just come, the splits just come and then we are divided and not able to actually respond.
- [52:15]
A
That's really helpful. And obviously the rise of antisemitism is just heartbreaking and shocking and we know it's been there. And as a Jewish man, it's so sad. And so I appreciate your work on that. I want to get to one question and then we're going to finish up. Mark Verodian, can you ask question?
- [52:36]
D
Thanks, this has been great. Thank you guys for doing this. Eric, I mean, what really struck me is your conversation about curiosity, which I think is essential. And it's sort of how I was raised, how my father always was. He couldn't sit next to anybody without asking them about who they were, where they came from. And I think that's essential. And I think what you're really saying is you have to empathize in some way, even with somebody like a white nationalist. And I don't think there's a solution. There's two kinds of solutions. Put them all in jail, drive them out of the country, that kind of thing, which is never going to happen, or find out why they're this way and find out why they feel their needs are not being met. And what I asked Jamie was, you know, something is, and it's all psychology, right? Something as simple as, you know, financial aid, just as an example. Why, why does financial aid need to be described in terms, and it always is of, of color as opposed to need, right? Why are the needs of poor white people who are, I can only imagine, I'm not an expert, sort of the foundation of a white nationalist movement. Why can't you change the terminology around this, right? And make them feel like they're not being ignored? There is a way to help them or for them to help themselves. And that's something that I see continually resisted. Nobody ever grabs onto that idea.
- [54:12]
B
I think, look, I think that's exactly right. It's, you know, there's a here that becomes very complicated. But it's, as you just said, not very complicated. People are suffering from economic inequality in our society for some, right? That suffering Exasperated by racism or sexism. Right. But we are. But for many of us, those are real bread and butter issues. It's interesting the white nationalist movement has tapped into that frustration in significant ways and have coded a rhetoric around it that make it almost impossible to move forward. When is the last time? So, for instance, I'm not going to name names of these elected officials, but when is the last time that we've heard those folks say, right, we want white rural folks not to suffer economically. And it doesn't mean it's a trade off for the exasperated lives that many people of color face in society. It's always placed as one or the other that there is this scarcity right of the pie. And I think until we force folks forward in the way that you're talking about, there are basic needs that need to be met in a society. And what we know is that when those basic needs are met, society benefits in a significant way. I always use the most recent example of the most horrifying moment, right. Which was the COVID pandemic. The release of those stimulus checks completely fueled the economy in ways that this economy has not seen in a long time. Right. This wasn't that trickle down economic theory. This was about putting resources and money and opportunity directly into people's hands. And the entire economy benefited from that. That is a, that is something that didn't come at the cost to anyone in the society. There is a, an amazing. I know we're running out of time, but there's an amazing professor by the name of John Powell and if you ever get a chance to invite him to come talk on this specific topic, I think it would be phenomenal. And his idea is targeted universalism that there is this way to reach the needs of all Americans where no one gets left behind. But we are so busy fighting over the idea that black people may get reparations or that a white person may benefit from affirmative action, right. That we are literally blockading ourselves from progress in this society. So, Mark, I think you're exactly right. There is a big conversation to have there. We need to move into it. And it's the idea fundamentally, every person who's talking about inequality needs to reinforce in this moment that it is the intent that no one gets left behind, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. It's not about making our race, our differences, pretending like they don't exist. It's about naming them and understanding we still move forward together. That's the will, that's the aspiration. And if we don't seize onto that, we will continue to deal with individuals who believe that chaos is leadership. And I can tell you from the punk scene, right, there is nothing healthy in chaos in a community, whether it's at the subcultural level, Right. Or at the level of a nation. It's time for responsible leaders, but we first need to practice responsible rhetoric.
- [58:31]
A
I'm gonna.
- [58:32]
D
Eric, thank you for that.
- [58:33]
A
Mark, thanks for the question. I'm gonna let Rachel finish this off here and appreciate everybody being here. This is such a critical conversation. So thank you. And, Rachel, last word to you.
- [58:45]
C
Thanks so much. You know, I've spent almost 20 years, like, looking at the grossest of the gross every single day, right? The most horrible things, sometimes in person, because I can walk into that space because I look like this, and sometimes online. And I have not ever seen anyone enter the hate space because they wanted to hurt people or because they wanted to harm, because they were trying to leave people out. It's usually out of some other reason. And for a long time, we could tell you who people were and what they thought, but we couldn't really tell you, like, how they get in and how we stop it. And we're starting to understand it more. And we're doing particular research with youth, what brings them in. And for a lot of youth, it's a joke. We're finding that, right? They just think it's funny, right? Or people are pulled in because it's politics. They're told, pick a side, it's political. And when we know those things, we can interrupt it. And that, for me, I think, is that curiosity, Mark. That's that question of, like, what does it look like? And we can tell you from the last few years of research that when adults in a young person's life enter the conversation when they see a warning sign with curiosity of, why do you think that's funny? Where did you see this? What do you think the motivation of the person was who shared it with you? What do you think about how this might impact all these folks in your life? It actually makes a very significant difference in turning the direction, not telling them what to think or. Or making it more political, but asking those questions. It's not surprising to me, but it gives me hope that we actually have some solution that we can interrupt it.
- [60:32]
A
So thank you for ending on that, and that was the perfect thing we needed. I will follow up everybody with some resources. And Eric and Rachel, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your work. Keep at it, and I'll see you guys again soon. Thanks thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Lunch with Jamie. As always, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter@jamieslist.com for my thoughts on all things food, pop culture, politics and more. And remember to join these online conversations and ask my guests questions in real time. Sign up a paid subscriber. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Audible, and be sure to leave a review. Thanks and see you next time.