2021 June

June 25, 2021

Can Republicans’ latest racial panic deliver them a midterm win?

This week, Joshua Holland kicks off the show with some surprising new data on how deeply entrenched Trump's stolen election narrative has become on the right.

Then we're joined by Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation and Substacker, to talk about the right's heavily astroturfed campaign to terrify their voters to the polls with the specter of "Critical Race Theory." Will it work this time? It has in the past, but there are some important reasons to think it might not be the magic bullet Republicans are hoping for.

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June 18, 2021

Ammon Bundy is poised to ignite America’s next violent insurrection

This week, we have a special double-segment with Devin Burghart, the executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights. Devin and his colleagues have been tracking the rise of Ammon Bundy's sprawling anti-government movement called "People's Rights," which is spoiling for another standoff with the federal government over a water rights dispute in the Klamath Basin in Oregon. Burghart says the group is developing into a kind of "Uber of the militia movement" with its capacity to quickly mobilize potentially violent far-right extremists on short notice.

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June 11, 2021

Anthropologist explains today’s far-right: ‘Fascism is scary because it can transform itself’

Twenty-five years ago, Carl Sagan worried that America was sliding into idiocracy. Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at whether he was prescient.

Then we're joined by journalist Rachel Cohen to talk about the spike in homicides and gun violence that America has seen in recent years, and look at some good and not-so-good explanations for why it's happening.

Finally, we speak with anthropologist and filmmaker Sarah Riccardi-Swarz on her study of the growing fascist threat in rural America.

Playlist
Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter"
The Civil Wars: "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson Cover)
Melanie Durrant: "Bang Bang"

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June 4, 2021

Inside the right-wing smear machine targeting Black Lives Matter

This week, Joshua Holland kicks off the show with a look at a new study that helps explain how disinformation spreads so much faster and further than real news.

Then we're joined by Heather "Digby" Parton to talk about how the Democrats don't seem to have the sense of urgency about safeguarding American democracy that this moment calls for.

And then The Intercept's Robert Mackey talks about his investigation into "The Riot Squad," an informal group of videographers who feed the right-wing media out-of-context and often selectively edited video to smear the overwhelmingly peaceful Movement for Black Lives as a violent threat.

Playlist

Mindless Drug Hoover: "The Reefer Song"
Dan and Dan: "The Daily Mail Song"
Bill Bailey: "I'm Going To Kill You So I Can Ignore You In Heaven"