Ep 275. - Can Muslims live up to Malcolm X's legacy? | Professor Butch Ware
Today on The Thinking Muslim, we are joined by Professor Butch Ware for a powerful conversation on some of the most urgent issues of our time. We examine white supremacy as a global ideology that continues to shape power, violence, and resistance, while reflecting on the legacy of Malcolm X and his uncompromising commitment to justice. Professor Ware explores Malcolm’s intellectual evolution and the clarity he brought to struggles against oppression through a Muslim lens, highlighting how his faith-inspired worldview continues to offer vital lessons for Muslims today, from grounding activism in moral clarity to standing in principled solidarity with the oppressed.
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Transcript - This is an automated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
0:00
Professor Bilal Butch Wear is standing to become the next governor of California.
0:05
I talked to him about his radical politics, the legacy of Malcolm X and why he believes liberals can be as fascistic as conservatives. Now, many may disagree with his radicalism,
0:16
but his views are nonetheless as important as others to be heard. What is white supremacy?
0:22
They were hanging people from trees. They were shooting white voting rights activists. I should talk about Trump's America. Um, and the state of Trump's America, his flirtations with Nazism,
0:34
white liberal is a fox. It bears its teeth. You think that is smiling at you, but you are on the menu. An open enemy is less dangerous to you than a concealed enemy. The
0:43
state of Israel was created for the salvation of Western interests. The truth is is that they made
0:48
this monster. They cannot defend us against it. This is a white Jewish population being empowered by white imperialists to knock brown Arabs off their land. It is a kind of madness. Matthew says,
0:59
"We're not outnumbered. We're out organized." You put them first and they put you last and
1:05
that makes you a chump. We're picking through the scraps of what the billionaire class lets us have.
1:14
Professor Bahalam and welcome back to the Muslim.
1:21
It's really really good to be back especially since we're here in Santa Barbara. I got the the blessing of hosting you on my home turf. So, alhamdulillah. It's I I think this is a beautiful
1:32
place. Mashallah. It's a really a wonderful uh state and Santa Barbara looks uh looks amazing.
1:39
It's a it's a it's a gorgeous place to be. I'm blessed to be teaching at UC Santa Barbara. And
1:44
uh for those that haven't been here, the ocean is always in one hand and the mountains in the other.
1:50
You have the reminder of um out of water we were created. and then the mountain will be leveled.
1:56
So I feel like I'm between the day of alto and you know y cayyama um and this narrow beautiful
2:04
stretch of time in a land in between the two world. Thank you so much for for inviting me. Now
2:11
uh we had a conversation just prior to the uh election the general election and uh alhamdulillah
2:17
I think it was a really interesting conversation. and we delved into a lot of your thinking about US
2:22
politics and I want to build on that today as well as your your thinking about um your own philosophy
2:29
like your own ideas of what underpins your idea your understanding of justice. Yeah. Um so I want
2:35
to I want to focus a lot on that today and and actually talk about Trump's America um and the
2:41
state of Trump's America. Yeah. Uh but maybe if we can start with uh I think a question I asked
2:47
you last time, maybe it was the first question in fact where we spoke about Malcolm X. Yeah. I mean I recently reread Malcolm X's autobiography because I think it's a phenomenal book and I
2:55
I feel that uh I mean I read it originally when I was a teenager and I I think I got a lot more
3:02
from it possibly uh uh as a as someone who's sort of developed let's say in life. Mhm. Um I I feel
3:10
that um you know you're someone to speak to about Malcolm X. Um you became a Muslim at the age of 15
3:18
after reading Malcolm X's book. Just tell me what what does Malcolm X mean to you? Like what lesson
Lessons from Malcom X
3:23
should we really be taking from Malcolm X? I mean for for me personally like just Malcolm is like at
3:31
distance my mentor, you know, role model, teacher, guide. I mean you alluded to it. So when I was 15
3:38
years old, I read the autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time. I've read it many times since. But that reading of it changed my life. I read that book cover to cover in one night. Could not
3:49
put that book down. And I was up till till till dawn. And I I wanted what Malcolm had at the end
3:55
of that book because what Malcolm was like very clear about um all of the things that America had
4:01
done to him and also what he had become so that he was also honest about what his own hands had done.
4:07
Right? So he was talking about the fact that his father was killed by white supremacists laid down on a railroad track. His mother driven to madness by the fact that the insurance companies won't pay
4:16
out the state won't support. He goes into foster care, ends up, you know, a hustler, a criminal,
4:23
um, and then sees the light and gets transformed. And that spoke to me at a really, really deep
4:28
level because I had known intimately a lot of those same dark places that Malcolm described. My,
4:33
my father was a locksmith with a sixth grade education who hustled, you know, sold whatever he
4:40
needed to sell on the side in order to make ends meet. My mother was 15 years old, pregnant with
4:46
me, told by her high school guidance counselor to abort the child because she was pregnant by
4:52
a black man in Washington DC in 1973. And she was told that she would be strung out on heroin
4:58
and prostituting herself by the time she was 17 if she had the baby. Me. Wow. So, white supremacy is
5:04
literally trying to take me out before I get here. and and for the first eight or nine years of my
5:10
life, we never live at the same street address for a whole calendar year. It's in and out of public
5:15
housing, um battered women's shelter, shelter, my dad's locksmith van sometime. So, I had seen just
5:22
some really hard, difficult circumstances, some of the same ones Malcolm knew. But then the light
5:29
of Islam finds Malcolm. Yeah. And I realized that like if if if this Islam can bring Malcolm out of
5:38
that, then he could find me too. So I literally went out the next day and checked out an English translation of the Quran from my public school library. Still haven't slept, mind you. Yes.
5:46
Read that book cover to cover the next night. And I told my mom when she got home from work, I said, "Mom, I'm a Muslim. I want you to drive me to a mosque so I can make my shahada." And she said,
5:55
"That's fine, baby, but it's gonna have to wait till the end of the week because I have to work." And so, so Malcolm's autobiography was, you know, what brought me into Islam,
6:04
but it's also what brought me into the black liberation tradition, which then Malcolm was
6:10
also my teacher about how to transmute all of that pain and all of that trauma from what capitalism
6:15
and imperialism and white supremacy had done to him and had done to me. And instead of just,
6:20
you know, like suffering in that and allowing it to turn me into things I didn't want to become, it became this, you know, vehicle for like turning that into resistance. So whenever I'm trying
6:31
to assess political circumstances, Malcolm is my teacher again. So I'm always going back to Malcolm
6:37
to think about how he would be reading or how he might be reading contemporary circumstances and what his life and his story have for us in this contemporary moment. So there's a lot I think that
6:49
you know a rereading of Malcolm can bring into our current political moment for sure. What would
6:55
Malcolm X have said about electoral politics? So this is a a a common misconception about Malcolm.
7:02
Malcolm defined himself as uh he said I'm a black Muslim revolutionary. But um Malcolm was actually
7:11
deeply interested in utilizing electoral political processes for organizing purposes and for med
7:18
uh um for movement work. So 1964 the ballot or the bullet Malcolm delivers this speech at
7:25
least twice. We have records of him delivering the a speech under the same uh title twice. And
7:30
in there's differences in each, but in both the argument that he's making is actually one that
7:37
we are going to have our liberation whether it is at the ballot box or whether it is in the streets.
7:42
And he's essentially saying to the United States of America, do you want to do this the easy way or do you want to do this the hard way? And so he's actually proposing um like a comprehensive
7:52
electoral political strategy for the black community that is invested in black liberation. So Malcolm says in one of those versions he says we going to knock on every door in Harlem and
8:01
we are going to register every black face behind every door. Not as a Democrat, not as a Republican
8:08
but independent. So Malcolm was already seeing beyond the duopoly, beyond team blue and team red,
8:15
but the ballot of the bullet wasn't just um you know a a threat to white America that you you
8:22
need to to give the black uh person their freedom. It was also a threat to the black community that
8:28
refused to use electoral politics for organizing. Because Malcolm said in that speech again, he said, "Whatever black face behind that door does not have the responsibility to register
8:39
themselves to vote, we are going to have strong words for them or we might even run them out of town." Right. So, the ballot or the bullet was not just um you know a threat aimed at America,
8:50
but it was also saying to the black community, you need to utilize electoral political um uh
8:56
strategies in order to leverage community power for liberation. Um and I think that that's a
9:03
misconception that people have, you know, that that that black revolutionaries don't utilize electoral politics, but many did. You know, the Panthers who were inspired by Malcolm, you know,
9:11
Huey P. Newton ran for Congress not once but twice. Bobby Seal um the other co-founder of
9:16
the Black Panther Party ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973.Wame Toué formerly Stokeley Carmichael
9:22
another great black revolutionary thinker. He said voting every four years is the height of bourgeoa
9:28
hypocrisy. He said but I would shed my blood for the vote and I have because I know the vote is how
9:34
I organize my people. So they saw it as one tool in a revolutionary toolkit. Yeah. Well, that's
9:42
really really interesting. I mean, do you feel that um Malcolm X is misunderstood today by both
Malcolm X misunderstood?
9:49
um those who want to co-opt him into some sort of like liberal movement uh but also those who
9:55
who don't quite understand the nuances of what you've just described there. You know, he was a revolutionary but someone who was willing to use the electoral processes for his ends. Yeah, he was
10:04
a revolutionary. He was also, you know, sort of he was also raised as a farm boy. he was a pragmatist
10:09
and he he often processed things through like um you know rural idioms that were very practical
10:15
um in in the way that they understood uh things. Um so for example those that are trying to co-opt
10:21
Malcolm for a bunch of liberal agendas. Malcolm uh said that there are a lot of white people that
10:26
are trying to solve the problems of the negro um but none of them call themselves liberals. And Malcolm said in ' 64 he said the white liberal is the most dangerous thing in the
10:34
western hemisphere. Yeah. Right. So Malcolm was never a liberal. He didn't believe in um liberal
10:41
politics. He didn't believe in conservative politics. Malcolm said of the the the liberal, he said, "The white liberal is a fox. It bears its teeth. You think that it's smiling at you,
10:50
but you are on the menu. The white conservative is a wolf when it bears its teeth into a vicious snarl that leaves the black man with no illusion as to where he stands." So Malcolm conceived of
11:00
the Democrats and Republicans. And this is why he's saying in the ballot or the bullet, I'm going to register everyone not as a Democrat or as a Republican. He conceived of these as two
11:10
um kind of capitalist, white supremacist, imperialist parties that differed only in
11:16
the way that they hunt, right? One hunts by guile and by cunning, coming up to you so that it can get close, pretending to be your friend, whereas the other one,
11:24
it's just naked brute force. And in Malcolm's estimation, the one that hunts through deception
11:31
is the more dangerous to you. An open enemy is less dangerous to you than a concealed enemy.
11:37
And so when Malcolm said the white liberal is the most dangerous thing in the Western Hemisphere, that was 64. What were white conservatives doing in ' 64? They were hanging people from trees. They
11:46
were shooting white voting rights activists. They were turning dogs and fire hoses on protesters.
11:52
But Malcolm was clear in his assessment of what was more dangerous. And if you look at Trump's
11:57
America right now, you see people responding as though Trump's conservative uh conservatism
12:05
um his fascism, his flirtations with Nazism are the fundamental problem. And as though
12:12
somehow liberals and Democrats are going to be the solution to that, that's what these no kings
12:17
rallies have been about. But Malcolm I I don't believe would have had any, you know, illusions
12:22
about the fact that in point of fact um you know uh team blue is every bit as dangerous um for any
12:30
real prospects of liberation as team red is and that the way that we organize and Muslims should
12:36
be paying attention to this. The way that we organize is outside of this duopoly structure. Um
Donate to Baitulmaal
12:47
we have started a water tracking program um because of the onset of the failure of the
12:55
short rains. These trips that you see behind me the truck twice a week is able to sustain those
13:02
livelihoods and keep children in school. Without the intervention of Beetho and the government,
13:09
we couldn't have been alive today because of the severe water shortage. They have brought us water.
13:19
Today, we're going to also to Wija West to look at some programs they have done and see how we can support them further. We're also intending to do a faith-based hospital
13:28
inshallah in Wija County which is going to support this community greatly, immensely.
13:39
Visit btml. us/thinkingmuslim to learn more and give. Yeah, I mean that's fascinating and I want
Utilising democrats
13:45
to talk about the duopoly structure, but let's let's let's see and let's delve into that because of course um I mean the UK system is is somewhat different. We've got a parliamentary parliamentary
13:55
uh democracy in in a way that uh there are very many more uh ways by which we can leverage our
14:03
power let's say in the UK system uh than it seems like in the American system. I mean,
14:08
I I spoke to someone recently who said that, you know, he would like to vote for a third party and
14:13
or an independent. The reality is that in most electoral districts, it's really a choice between
14:20
the reds and the blues, right? It's a choice between the Democrats and and Republicans. And
14:26
given that choice, uh there needs to be an effort to try to uh change the political party which has
14:35
which is the most accessible when for him it was the Democrats. So his strategy was to to fight
14:41
uh Democratic primaries across the country and try through that process to get candidates that
14:47
are going to be far more um aware of of our issues or interest for the Muslim community
14:54
in this particular in this particular instance. Um like what do you say about that? How has that
15:00
worked for Muslims so far? How has attempting to um utilize the Democrats for Muslim purposes
15:09
um like has all of that influence peddling um prevented genocide? Did that stop Joe Biden and
15:16
Kla Harris from slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? It is a kind of madness. And
15:23
Einstein defined madness as repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome.
15:30
Minority groups of all kinds have been barking up that Democrat tree since Malcolm tried to
15:35
warn them in ' 64 and have found the same result, which is nothing. There's no affirmative action
15:41
left. There's no DEI left for um you know, women that were interested in uh in in uh protecting
15:48
reproductive rights. Democrats didn't protect any of that. And the reason is is that they have no interest in actually serving um minority communities or oppressed communities, least of
15:58
all to Muslims. They slaughtered Palestinians like animals and then muzzled Palestinians like
16:05
animals, not even letting a Palestinian speak from the stage at the DNC. For me, um Malcolm
16:12
in ' 64 understood what the Democrats are. And a lot of Muslims, some Muslims still haven't caught
16:17
up. the in in again um in ' 64, Malcolm said of the Democrats to the black community, he said,
16:24
"You put them first and they put you last and that makes you a chump. That makes you a political
16:31
chump." Those were Malcolm's exact words. Well, I'm tired of being chumped. And the good news
16:37
for the American Muslim community specifically is that the American Muslim community actually
16:43
saw through this ruse in 2024. The exit polling conducted by CARE Council on American Islamic
16:49
uh relations nationwide indicated that 53% of American Muslims voted for the Green Party voted
16:56
for the Steinwear ticket in 2024. Only 20% for team blue genocide, only 20% for team red fascism,
17:04
and the rest was split between other parties. So the reality is is that the Muslims have already
17:10
opted out of this duopoly plantation. It's just that usually um Muslim leaders that have sunk in
17:17
costs with the Democrats are going to be the ones arguing to get you back onto that plantation and
17:23
to work within the system. But that's because just like the hypocrites of Medina, they have sunk in
17:29
costs with the Zionists. And it is difficult for them to accept that a new emancipatory liberatory
17:38
movement has emerged and that the day that today is is not the day that yesterday was. Nobody wants
17:45
the Muslims to know that they already elected us. If everybody in America voted the way the Muslims
17:51
vote, then I'd be sitting in the White House right now. So, they don't want you to know. And
17:57
the reason is is that it was the first time that any major um ethnic or religious demographic voted
18:04
outside of the two-party system in 150 years. The last time there was a big party switch this way
18:12
was when African-Americans went from being Lincoln Republicans to being FDR Democrats in the 1930s,
18:18
but they stayed in the binary system. Muslims have already opted out. And now you got all of
18:24
these so-called Muslim leaders trying to sheep dog people back onto one of these plantations or using conservative cultural issues to try to sheep bag dog people back onto, you know, team fascism,
18:35
you know, team team Trump. Um, I'm sorry, Malcolm would be having none of it. And I ain't having
18:41
none of it either to be perfectly honest. But but I suppose you know uh the Muslim community in in
The Green Party
18:47
America I mean you're you're a small minority in this country and and in order for third parties
18:54
to really thrive there needs to be support from across uh multiple constituencies multiple groups
19:01
I mean 100% um how you know despite what you said about you know Muslims and their support for for
19:09
the Green Party the Green Party didn't really increase his vote. who share in the last election
19:14
that a couple Yeah. Part I mean part of that had to do with the fact that the Democrats sued to keep the Green Party off of ballots in the largest most populous state. So they were successful in
19:24
New York. They were successful in Illinois and that massively depressed the actual number because they're deathly afraid of you know what an actual independent third party vote would you in New
19:36
York you would not have a Green Party candidate on your ballot. We didn't. We were not on the ballot.
19:42
They sued us off the ballot in New York. They sued us off the ballot in Illinois and several other states. This was a Democratic party. This was the Democrats that did this. Wow. Yes. And
19:51
so they they they and they have been at war with actual democracy for you know an extended period
19:58
of time. But I I will agree with the fact that even with that being said that you know the the
20:05
Green Party has not traditionally done the work of building infrastructure on the ground in community
20:12
to be more successful and more competitive in national elections which is part of the reason why I decided to run for governor in the state of California to build that infrastructure in the
20:21
largest and most populous state because it does two things at the same time. one, it it strikes at the heart of the duopoly to be competitive in a gubanatorial election. And just for context,
20:30
right, um a Green Party candidate got 47% of the vote against Gavin Newsome um in 2003. Like Greens
20:39
have been ve and almost ended Gavin Newsome's career before it started. So Greens have been
20:44
very successful in lower level elections and in state elections. But even the the national
20:51
electoral outcomes, which some conceived of as disappointing, you have to understand that part of the reason why the Green Party has historically run in those races, is because it helps to secure
21:00
ballot access when the Democrats are always trying to get your ballot access erased. So, if you were
21:07
to try to create a new political party and to get the petitions and signatures, etc., that would be
21:14
necessary to get ballot access nationwide that the Green Party already has. It might cost you
21:20
$100 million. It might cost you $150 million that like there's so many petitions and little rules, they've rigged the system. And that's why no other third party actually has national electoral reach.
21:31
So understand that when they brought like a new age black Muslim revolutionary to
21:36
a position of leadership in the Green Party, they were essentially putting our communities
21:41
in a position of directing and leading the third largest political party in the United States and
21:47
the only one that isn't funded by corporate powers that isn't controlled by Apac and also has ballot
21:55
access across the country. So, so my model is to is to just continue to to build that power and to
22:02
demonstrate that power especially in this upcoming electoral cycle because people aren't going to believe it until they see it, right? And that means you have to do the work of organizing at
22:12
the ground level. Um, you know, I've been building these, you know, uh, units so that we can knock on
22:18
every door throughout the state from San Diego through Humble County. Um because there is truth
22:24
in the in the critique that the Green Party has not, you know, done enough in between electoral
22:29
cycles to really build for power. Well, I'm trying to utilize Malcolm's organizing approach
22:34
and acumen um in our communities more broadly so that we can get more of the Latino vote,
22:39
more African-American vote, um and get to a position where we're competitive in this very electoral cycle. Right. So, you're standing as as governor for uh for California, correct? as the
Governor for California
22:49
candidate for governor of California and of course Gavin Newsome uh termed out termed out right so
22:55
like do you believe that um there is a like is the idea that u you're you're really doing this as a
23:03
platform for um for build for organizing uh like do you believe in one election cycle you'll be
23:10
able to win governorship yeah in in the state of California we can um for yeah well so the reason
23:17
is is that those two parts parties um have rigged things as they always do to try to guarantee it's
23:25
um blue versus red in every election. So they have a what's called a jungle primary. Only the top two candidates advance um irrespective of party and that's supposed to get you one blue versus one
23:36
red. Except in the state of California there are because the state leans more towards the left and
23:43
leans progressive. There are actually as many registered independents as there are registered
23:48
Republicans. The Republican candidates don't do well in this state. So, they're actually very
23:53
susceptible to an independent political attack. Um, just for context, the second place finisher
24:02
in the 2022 gubernatorial election got 17% of the vote. We've run numbers, different scenarios,
24:11
especially in a split field right now where the Democrats have seven candidates all running at the same time. We could finish in the first or second position in the state of California with between
24:22
13 and 15% of the vote. We're almost guaranteed to make the top two if we get 20% of the vote.
24:29
Um just for context, they hide the primary in June, you know, 6226, you know, June 2nd,
24:36
2026. Um because of that, the voter turnout is traditionally low. 5 and a half million people in
24:42
a state of 40 million people voted in uh 2022. Well, what does that mean? There's a million
24:49
Muslims in the state of California, right? It took only 1.5 million votes to get to second place in
24:55
2022. If we mobilize the Muslim community and just get decent numbers, 5% 7% 10% of
25:04
targeted demographic groups, if we do well in the 18 to 24 demographic, um you know, which is where
25:10
anti-ionism is concentrated across the ideological spectrum, then we can coast into second place. And
25:17
what that would mean is that it's going to be me versus whichever sorry Democrat is left standing
25:22
on their side of the process. And that would essentially be the end of the duopoly because they wouldn't be able to hide us anymore that the media is going to have to cover every single speech that
25:34
I give. And I can talk about this later, but the early returns when we've had open gubanatorial
25:40
debates is that I've won the votes on who best candidate in those debates consistently. Next part
25:46
about it is that um they won't be able to use the argument. you're going to let the state go to the
25:54
Republicans. They won't be able to use a lesser of two evils argument. So then what will be their
25:59
argument when it's just green versus blue? Lastly is that all of those Republican inclined voters or
26:07
independent voters when they hear me savaging the corruption and hypocrisy of team blue, like a lot
26:15
of people don't know that in the 2024 electoral cycle in the last two polls, we were getting more voters voting green from red than we were getting voting green from blue. Right. Yes. So it's a
26:28
perfect storm. Um, all we need is between 15 and 20% of the vote on June 2nd and the the Democrat
26:37
control over the state of California is very much in play. Okay. I want to pick up on that. So,
Republicans and Greens
26:42
Republicans, you're saying that a good number of Republicans switched uh to the Green Party. Like,
26:49
where's the commonality? Why is it that where would why would Republican voters vote Green?
26:55
because the the Green Party is actually not invested in the culture war between blue and
27:02
red. Um, so I I made this argument at a number of points during the presidential campaign. Um,
27:07
and it was a relatively straightforward argument. I'll tell the the the the slightly longer version of the story on thinking Muslim because it's got something that is like a particularly interesting
27:16
for the Muslims. So, the first place that I rolled out this argument that that I then later use in public speaking engagements was on a flight from Santa Barbara. We have a little airport here. Um,
27:26
and uh, one of the few places it flies is Phoenix, Arizona. So, I'm on my way to Arizona for a connection flight. And I'm sitting next to a seated next to a white couple in
27:33
their 60s who happen to inform me that they are planning to vote for RFK. And I tell them, well,
27:40
RFK is actually already gone in with Trump now. And they're like, I guess we'll vote for Trump again. And I said, 'Well, I actually happen to be the Green Party vice presidential candidate,
27:47
which they, you know, they got a kick out of. Um, they said, "Well, what's the Green Party?" I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. Let me make my pitch." And then you tell me what what you think. They're
27:55
like, "Go for it." So, here was the argument that I made. And this goes to the heart of your question. I said, "Aren't you tired of Democrats calling you racist?" That flattened Jennifer as
28:08
she listened to it. She said, "Yeah." She said, "I'm not racist. I don't have any racial animosity
28:13
towards, you know, any anybody because of the color of their skin. I said, I know, you know, because that's what most people mean when they say racist. They're not thinking about systemic
28:20
structures. They just mean personal hatred. And and I said, I don't think that the average Trump voter is any more racist than the average liberal. I think that that is a fairy tale that Democrats
28:32
and liberals tell themselves so that they can sleep well at night. because I've worked in enough academic spaces to know that white liberals can be amongst the most racist people that you will ever
28:41
encounter. You can hear Malcolm's influence on my thinking, right, in framing it that way. Um, and
28:46
I said, "Here's what I think, Jennifer." I said, "I think that your average Republican voter does not see a difference between blue criminals and red criminals, and all other things being equal,
28:55
would rather pay lower taxes." And she laughed. She said, "Yeah, that's basically it." I said, 'Well, what if I told you we could lower your personal income taxes and your small business
29:04
taxes with one simple step? She said, 'What is it?' I said, I'm going to stop reaching in your pocket, taking a big cut out of your check, and handing it to Rathon, Lheed Martin, Boeing,
29:14
General Dynamics, the weapons manufacturers, after first laundering it through foreign genocides. She
29:20
said, "Yeah, I've seen some of those pictures of those kids. It's terrifying." So, that's when her husband Steve really got interested cuz I was talking about lowering taxes. And then we
29:29
have this conversation that is about not about a culture war, but about how you have policies that
29:34
serve ordinary workingclass Americans. That's not about dividing people on fake culture war issues.
29:42
45minute flight. The flight ended with Steve as I'm walking off the plane says, so first of all,
29:48
they organized a Green Party rally in their town of Flagstaff, Arizona on the basis of this 45minute conversation. And as I'm getting off the plane, Steve says, "Wait, we got to take
29:57
a selfie with you. You're going to be the first Muslim president of the United States of America." That's what he said. I still have the picture on my phone. So, I use exactly that pitch in
30:05
Instagram reels. And like it it resonates because the Democrats like to pretend that the racists
30:12
and the bad guys are over there. I can't have any illusions about that. And because of that, they think that there's some kind of moral failing when you vote against team blue. I don't believe
30:20
that because I don't believe in team blue anymore than I believe in team red. That's fascinating. I
30:26
mean I I I have been from outside I've been looking at um the turn within the MAGA right
MAGA Right
30:35
yes and how against Israel against Israel you know Tucker Carlson Candis you know you've got these
30:42
um and it's fascinating to see because of course you know maybe even three years ago would never have imagined unimaginable that there would be a dent to Zionism on the political right
30:52
um so is that really yeah in a sense that's that's arguing what you're arguing. You know, most sensible people, most good-minded people can see that American foreign policy is rotten
31:04
to the core. Rotten to the core and and been purchased by foreign powers and controlled by
31:09
weapons man and they don't want any part of it and and out of the entire gubanatorial field
31:15
that actually has a chance to be competitive in the election. You essentially have, you know, six now one of the Democrat candidates has dropped out. You've got six Democrat candidates,
31:24
two Republican candidates, and myself, right? All eight of the establishment candidates, both from
31:30
Blue and Red, are Zionists. They're all they've all given their I stand with Israel. Israel has a
31:36
right to defend itself. And even on the supposed right, especially in the younger demographics,
31:42
the opposition to having your elected officials be on the payroll of a foreign government,
31:49
the resistance to that is massive. So, we're going to engage a lot of white workingclass voters,
31:57
not just Bernie Trump voters, people that voted for Bernie in a 2016 primary, but then voted for
32:02
the uh Trump in the general, but we're going to get a lot of Trump Trump voters, people that have voted for Trump twice. And, you know, they don't even have to be the people that that that see the
32:14
escalations in fascism as problematic. They can literally just be people that are thinking this
32:19
government and the way that they do it is too expensive, too corrupt, and too wasteful. Um, and and last thing I'll just say on this is like if you go to the bottom of my of our web page,
32:27
butchwarforggov.com, it says solidarity beyond identity and ideology. Because the truth of the
32:34
matter is is that I'm not expecting everybody that votes for me to agree with my political ideology
32:41
any more than I expect them to share my personal faith. Right. Um, but the kind of solidarity
32:47
that we're going to need to knock these corrupt Zionists and corporateowned stooges out of power
32:56
is a kind of solidarity that the Democrats and Republicans and their culture war um,
33:02
makes impossible. So, I'm going to make an appeal that you don't have to choose between conservative
33:08
extremists or liberal extremists. you can just take a party that's invested in common sense
33:14
um policies that are beneficial for all working Californians. You mentioned Bernie Sanders. How what would you what's your opinion of Bernie Sanders? I think that Bernie Sanders um in in 2016
33:25
really provided the blueprint for exactly the kind of um you know populist politics that that that is
33:34
animating the way that I'm running this campaign. And he showed that it can be very effective. I think that the problem with Bernie is two twofold. One, Bernie's still a Zionist. He's a liberal
33:45
Zionist, but he's still a Zionist. Um, and he he, you know, this is the reason why um uh you know,
33:51
leftist thinker Michael Pari in the '9s condemned Bernie because Bernie even then was rubber
33:57
stamping Bill Clinton's Imperial Wars, right? Um, so, so Bernie has always been problematic when it
34:03
came to foreign policy, but he had a good approach to kind of unifying the working class. Um, here
34:10
the big bigger problem with Bernie, frankly, is that Bernie ran as a Democrat, right? Even though
34:15
he's independent, he caucuses with the Democrats and he allowed the corporate wing of the Democrat
34:22
party to to muscle him out. Some of our oldest Green Party members and core volunteers on the
34:28
campaign are people that organized for Bernie in 2016 and were in the room with him. I believe it
34:34
was in Philadelphia when he said, "We're g we're giving all of our delegates over to Hillary."
34:40
People screamed in that room. They were like, "That's what we've been fighting against this whole time." And Bernie said, "That's just how the game is played." And so he knuckled under to the
34:50
corporate own wing. And that goes back to that logic that your unnamed colleague suggested was
34:56
just why not work with the established Democrat? Well, if Bernie couldn't break the Democrats,
35:01
you think Mam Donnie is going to? If Bernie couldn't break the the the Democrats, you think that with the billionaire money and the corporate money and the they're even more
35:11
aggressively wararmongering in the Middle East than the Republicans have. They're slaughtering our people and have been for generations. How Muslims can continue to cosign for the imperialist
35:23
slaughter of Muslims is beyond me frankly. Um we have to have the courage and the audacity to
35:31
fight for something that's independent just like Malcolm said, not as Democrat, not as Republican, but independent of that structure. Mandani, your thoughts on uh on Mandani? My thoughts on Mandani
35:44
have not fundamentally changed. Um I I said before the election that I'm rooting for Manny and I was
35:52
rooting for him at that time because um he he has all of the the the kind of anti- capitalist
36:01
um you know anti-imperialist bonafides. I know his dad Mahmud Mamdani. He was a academic mentor for
36:07
me at different positions in my early career. Not a close mentor but a a valuable one. Um
36:12
you know I did events with him at Colombia. He did events uh with me at Michigan. Um you know
36:17
and and I know that he uh you know this is an African as well you know raised in Uganda. So
36:23
Mahmood is one of those analysts that understands anti-colonial thinking and resistance. So I know that that Zoron's been trained right. At the same time people in the Muslim community in
36:33
New York City mutuals swore and vouch for for Mamani's like personal integrity, his character,
36:40
his sincerity. So, I said that I'm rooting for him and and I was and I am. But you've already
36:45
seen how he has started to, you know, make more apologetic statements about Israel, you know,
36:52
um I won't, you know, Israel has a right to exist. He he won't uh talk about globalizing the inifat.
36:58
And when he explains why not, he um spouts a bunch of Islamophobic, you know, tropes about
37:04
bus bombings and Hifa and how he doesn't want that coming to New York City and all of these things. Madness. Madness. And that is I've called it the AOSification of Mamani. The AOC, you know,
37:17
um she starts out as, you know, a radical on all these points, but eventually she becomes AOC
37:22
Pelosi. She becomes the new Nancy Pelosi, right? And and under the influence, I fear of, you know,
37:29
um populist centrists essentially like, uh um like, uh Okaziocortez and Sanders.
37:37
what my conclusion the day after the election was. I said, "Listen, I'm rooting for Zoron because I know the people of New York need something other than the status quo." I said,
37:46
"But my analysis as a historian is either that um there's only three outcomes. He breaks the party,
37:54
the party breaks him, or he leaves the party." And what do you think is the most likely outcome? The middle one, right? And I think that that's the one that we're seeing the most signs of. He's already
Mamdani
38:03
giving ground. And then he said that like he's g he apologized to the NYPD for calling them racist
38:10
after the Floyd uprisings, which as a black man like oh that one was hard to stomach. Like who are
38:17
you suburban wealthy bourgeoa kid to now apologize to the NYPD when they've been stopping and
38:26
frisking and locking up my folk when they've been carrying out and prosecuting a centuriesl long war against black people. And that was actually my analysis. My analysis of why I feared Mamani
38:37
would fold had nothing to do with his politics. It had to do with his class positioning. I don't
38:42
think that the average person raised in that environment understands how hard you have to
38:49
fight these people if you are going to survive. Whereas where I was raised and how I was raised,
38:56
I understand that that you are in a fight for your life when you are fighting against white supremacy
39:02
and imperialism and capitalism. You are in a fight for your very life and that can turn on a dime in
39:08
an interaction with the NYPD or the IDF. Can I um please talk about Trump's America? Of course,
39:15
you know, because in in this conversation uh there is the spectre of fascism, the idea that
39:21
Trump America is moving in a very authoritarian direction with executive orders and he's chased
39:27
uh a lot of his former uh allies who've now become enemies like John Bolton. Uh he's using a form of
39:33
lawfare, I suppose, against them. That's um uh you know what seems like a paramilitary mob has
ICE
39:39
sort of descended on lots of cities. You know, you've got the National Guard on the one hand and then and then you've got ICE, you know, I was in Chicago and I saw these ICE U troops effectively
39:49
or like they look like SS soldiers. Um uh and and so and and you know, some of the the videos
39:56
coming out of ICE arrest in particular of the Latino community is horrific, right? You know,
40:02
so we're seeing the spectre of fascism here in in the US. Now, historically, at least whenever
40:08
I've spoken to to Muslims, they've always said to me that, look, we've got the US Constitution, and the US Constitution will at the end of the day guarantee uh the the basic civil liberties of of
40:21
all of us. Um what a marvelously naive perspective to hold. Tell me. Well, I mean, web de boys,
40:28
uh, you know, great black intellectual probably says maybe in 47, um, that fascism has,
40:37
uh, nothing, um, on good old-fashioned American white supremacy. Yeah. When he watches what's
40:44
taking place in Europe unfolding, um, and Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet, you know,
40:50
says say says the exact same thing in exact same period. As a black person, you can't have any
40:56
illusions about a descent into fascism. I mean, there were uh Democrat presidents in office. Bill
41:04
Clinton was president when I was stopped 17 times for driving while black and never ticketed. And in
41:11
one of those interactions, uh the police officer drew his service weapon and pointed it directly
41:17
at my face when I reached in my jacket to produce the identification that he asked me to produce. I
41:22
never broke a law. I was just being stalked the same way that immigration authorities stalk,
41:28
you know, brown people. They've been stalking black people for a long time. So the truth is
41:34
is that America is reverting to its pure original barbarism. It is, you know, enacting a theatrics
41:43
of visible white supremacist power as opposed to concealed and hidden white supremacist power. that
41:50
difference again between the fox that dissimulates and the wolf that just bears its teeth. So
41:58
the truth is Trump's uh with even with the escalations of ICE, Trump is still chasing Obama
42:04
era deportation records. Now I am concerned of course with the massive increase in funding for
42:11
ICE, right? This is definitely an escalation in authoritarianism, but it's not any kind of new
42:20
fascism. It was Democrats that were sending riot troops to my campus at UCSB, 200 cops in riot gear
42:29
in a blue state to to remove 30 unarmed kids from an encampment. It's been blue state governors and
42:37
mayors that have been endorsing these cop cities that they've been built all around the country whose function is just state repression. So I I can't narrowly conceive of fascism as being
42:48
just a team red issue. Now, the the authoritarian escalations of Trump, we do need uh uh opposition
42:56
to those and and I've said on the record any number of times that as governor of the state of California, I would not obey any unconstitutional federal orders. So therefore, um every uh ICE is
43:08
going to have to go through every lawyer and law enforcement agent in the state before they touch
43:13
a hair on the head of any California resident if you leave it up to me. But what's happening now
43:19
under team blue to the point is that while they make lip service of opposing Trump and stage no
43:26
kings rallies Gavin Newsome has and uh municipal Democrat authorities have actually been enabling
43:34
LAPD state police forces they've been helping ICE they've been providing logistical information to
43:41
ICE AB15 was a bill that Gavin Newsome swore to veto it it prohibited coordination between
43:47
the California Department of Corrections and ICE. So, they talk like they're going to resist, but they're not going to resist. And that is also part of understanding the problem that we're in is that
43:57
Trump is able to keep pushing the limits further and further because the Democrats are never going
44:04
to show any real substantive opposition because to what would be required to do so would alienate the
44:12
corporate donors, right? and the same capitalist powers that back the the the Republicans. So
44:21
real opposition can't come from them. So we're left without real opposition. I mean,
Trump
44:26
isn't it scary in a way? I mean, Donald Trump, um, I get the point you're making that, you know,
44:32
both sides have their authoritarianism and both sides have got their their fascistic, you know,
44:38
pedigree pedigree, right? So, you know, I I get that point. I think the Gaza demonstrations showed very clearly very clearly uh uh that you know um Democrats can be as harsh as Republicans can be
44:49
when it comes to protecting Zionism. Sure. Um but having said that, isn't it isn't it
44:55
scary in a way, isn't it frightening to see, you know, just how much the levers of state are now
45:00
siding with uh with the with with Trump and his administration? You know, he's got a 63 majority
45:07
in Supreme Court. He's got majorities in both houses. Fine. It's not an overall majority in the Senate, but it's still the overuse of executive orders. It it seems to me that I mean I I used
45:18
to follow American politics very closely and you would you would know about lots and lots of bills going through the legislature. Uh it that seems to have disappeared now. I mean it, you know,
45:28
most of what's happening in this administration is coming up the White House rather than through
45:34
through Congress. So I I suppose the the argument goes that um there is uh and then you've got the
45:40
project 2025 is it of the heritage foundation. So all of that comes together to to concoct
45:47
a a theory that there is something exceptional about this Trump administration and minorities in
45:55
particular have to be very careful about uh about the trajectory I suppose of of of Trump and and
46:04
the people around him. I would never dispute that Trump isn't like a clear and present danger. Um
46:10
uh and it's obvious that he is consolidating power in all kinds of autocratic ways. Yeah.
46:18
Um but that really just underlines my prior point is that how did we end up in this position, right?
46:26
That we are dealing with unchecked autocratic escalations of power. Well, let's go back to 2016,
46:33
Hillary Clinton's Pied Piper strategy where she handpicked Donald Trump as the candidate that she
46:40
wanted to run against and they promoted Trump thinking that a more extremist candidate would
46:47
give them a better chance. How's that looking now? Right? tens of millions of dollars that
46:52
the Democrats pumped into far-right extremist congressional candidates that were running as
46:58
Republicans thinking that it was going to give them easier competition. The truth is is that they
47:05
made this monster. They cannot defend us against it. So, it's not that that that I'm saying that
47:11
they're both the same. I am saying that they're both equally evil and fundamentally evil. I'm not
47:17
saying that their modality or their theatrics of power is the same. I'm saying that one is naked,
47:22
the other one is is concealed. But in the end, the only thing that is going to get the the knee off
47:29
the necks of our brothers and sisters in Falstine or here is a dismantling of the system that holds
47:37
both together. Right? In the end, the relationship between team blue and team red is that one steals,
47:45
the other holds the bag. They they are partners in crime. And if you were to make a vin diagram,
47:51
you know, circles that map the donor base of the Republicans and the Democrats,
47:58
you would essentially be staring at a single circle. Apac would be in the middle of it and
48:03
the arms manufacturers would be circling around Apac. And and it's the reason why like Blackstone
48:09
and Black Rockck, these massive private equity firms, said before the 2024 presidential election, that from their standpoint, it didn't matter whether the Democrats won or the Republicans
48:19
won. This is all like about the theatrics of power. But nothing is moving in the underlying
48:27
givens of imperialist slaughter and extraction abroad. um you know, capital increasingly
48:35
intensified capitalist exploitation. Right? The wealth gap in the state of California has grown
48:40
more under team blue than it did under team red. There's the there are nine billionaires, nine households that control $683 billion worth of wealth just in Silicon Valley. California has
48:51
$186 billionaires and 187,000 homeless people. That's been under Democratic administrations.
49:00
So, it just all depends on how you understand what oppression looks like. If it's about the theatrics
49:06
of oppression, yeah, Trump takes, you know, second to none. If it's about the actual outcomes of
49:12
oppression, team blue is are still heavyweight champions of the world. How much do you
MAGA Anti-Zionism
49:18
uh interface with uh mad mad supporters? I mean you've you've talked about how uh there is you
49:24
know there is a a conversation to be had uh with uh these people with people who are who've grown
49:32
tired of America's um uh imperial commitments abroad uh who who resolved from empire who believe
49:40
that empire has actually been a bad deal for America Americans and workers workingclass people
49:45
across this country. Yeah. um uh like from your from your standpoint because it seems to me that
49:53
uh MAGA as an idea it's still shaping it's still forming and this anti-ionism that's developing
49:58
within that MAGA trend is pretty significant right um like how much uh do you do you suggest how much
50:08
do you think we should be engaging with those people you know the the the the the couple on
50:15
the plane couple on the plane Right. See, I don't think that they're MAGA. I think that they're just
50:21
default Republicans. And and and if I were to break that sort of down, I think that there is
50:26
a committed white Christian nationalist, Christian Zionist, white supremacist colonel and core that
50:34
is untouchable for us. Untouchable. Untouchable. And you're wasting your time if you try to appeal
50:40
to that group. They are open enemies to you. They hate you not because of your policies or
50:46
anything you do. They hate you because of who you are. But you know, one would have said that about
50:52
Tucker Carlson maybe two years ago. I still think that about Tucker Carlson because Tucker Carlson might have become an anti-ionist, but he's still deeply anti-lack in all of his politics. He hasn't
51:02
apologized for justifying the police murder of every single black person. Candace Owens hasn't
51:09
apologized for saying that George Floyd died of a fentinil overdose. rather than 8 minutes and 46
51:15
seconds of Derek Chovin choking George Floyd on camera for us all to see. These people are still
51:21
white supremacists. It's just that their version of white supremacist uh white supremacy is open
51:29
to anti-sionism because actually at the core of white supremacy is actual anti-semitism. And it
51:35
is very easy for actual white supremacists to turn on Jews. Um and as much of their pivot is about
51:44
two things. Um uh conservative isolationism which is about screw the rest of the world.
51:50
This is about America. And another part of it is frankly like Candace Owens was was anti-semitic
51:57
before she figured out that Israel is the bad guy in you know in in Israel Palestine conflicts. Um,
52:04
so I I I'm reticent and and I know that a lot of people, you know, like see it as a salutary move
52:11
that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are now speaking against, you know, the the the they're not even speaking against the occupation. They were mostly arguing for a ceasefire.
52:18
And especially they argue for Zionist control over American politics, which sits very nicely
52:25
in a traditional anti-semitic argument about a cabal of Jews that control the world, right?
52:31
That sits very nicely for for their arguments. What they'll never say is the other part,
52:37
which is what Casper Weinberger, uh, Reagan's defense secretary said in ' 82, which is that
52:42
Israel is America's unsinkable battleship in the Middle East. They will never understand Zionism
52:49
as a fundamental expression of white supremacy rather than the other way around. But that's how Malcolm understood it. Malcolm said in his field notebooks when he came back from Kanununis,
52:58
he said that this is a white Jewish population being empowered by white imperialists to knock brown Arabs off their land. So Malcolm understood Zionism as an ethnic variant of white supremacy.
53:12
The same way that German Nazism was an ethnic variant of white supremacy. same way that British
53:18
imperialism functionalized an ethnic variant of white supremacy. In the anti-imperialist version
53:27
of anti-sionism, we are always clear about the fact that Israel is serving very specific purposes
53:35
for western imperial interests. James Baldwin 1979 open letter to the born again said the
53:42
state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews. the state of Israel was created for the salvation of Western interests. So, an actual anti-imperialist, anti-Zionism um recognizes that
53:58
if the genocide is ongoing in Philistine, it's because the US continues to want it.
54:05
It's because the US continues to provide the arms because the US continues to utilize um the IDF as
54:13
a protection force for resource extraction, right? That it's a tool of Western imperialism. The the
54:22
version of anti-Zionism that the unrepentant white supremacists focus on is the Zionist control over
54:31
the US government. as though the tail is wagging the dog. And while it's true that there's a
54:37
massive amount of compromat that Zionists have on politicians and that they spend insane amounts of
54:43
money purchasing influence, the truth is is that if the military industrial complex of the United
54:49
States of America no longer found it in their strategic interest to be allied with Israel,
54:55
we wouldn't hear so much as another peep from the Zionists. You've used the term white supremacy a
55:01
number of times. uh for those who are not familiar with with the structural idea, what is white
55:07
supremacy? White supremacy is not about racism as an ideological construct. It's about a system of
55:17
um politics and societal organization that produces outcomes that favor white people and
55:26
white-kinned people. And it's not just something that white people are complicit in. Bell. Hooks,
55:31
the great uh um African-American female theorist, said, "White supremacy isn't
55:36
just a white people's problem. White supremacy is threaded through our institutions, and that's why
55:42
they systematically produce outcomes of a certain kind. So, when I'm talking about white supremacy,
55:47
I'm not just talking about racism, although racism is a feature of white supremacy. I'm
55:53
talking about um a structure that is uh tethered to imperialism that's tethered to class structures
56:01
that produce racialized groups that will then labor for low wages. Um it te te tethers together
56:09
the reason why there are ongoing genocides in Sudan and Congo as well as in Philstine. Um,
56:16
it brings that together with the reason why we have like uh mass incarceration in the United
56:22
States that's predominantly targeted at black and brown communities. Those are all about outcomes,
56:29
geopolitical and economic and social outcomes. And that's what I mean when I'm talking about white supremacy. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to like clarify that because for me,
56:38
the problem is not white people. The problem is white supremacy. Right. Right. I don't hate white people. I hate white supremacy deeply. Yeah. Okay. Because I think that's really important. So, you
56:49
know, in in that sense, you're not appealing to non-white voters here. You're appealing to No, I'm
56:54
appealing to everybody. I'm appealing to everyone. And and this is another like kind of misunderstood
57:00
uh piece of like the history of white supremacy as a set of practices, right? Um historians
57:06
of America will talk about Bacon's Rebellion as being this pivotal moment in the history of white supremacy. And it happens in the early um you know kind of settler colony um of uh Virginia which is
57:17
that at that time indigenous North Americans and enslaved Africans and white indentured servants
57:25
all make common cause against the white ruling class in an uprising. And immediately after that,
57:33
um, European descended property owners start to try to create distinctions between the European
57:42
indentured servants and the enslaved Africans. They start to operationalize white supremacy
57:48
as a way of getting buyin from white people that did not own property. They needed to incorporate
57:56
them into the system. And part of that is then adopting this ideology of racial supremacy that
58:02
also does not serve the actual interests of most white workingclass people. Never has and never
58:09
will. Right? Because that same predominantly white ruling class has been happy to throw
58:17
Appalachia away. It's been happy to get Appalachia addicted on opioids the same way that it dumped
58:24
crack cocaine into black communities because of a CIA war um against the Contras in Nicaragua
58:31
that Congress would not fund. And so instead, Cong the CIA got in the business of selling cocaine in
58:38
order to fund their war. Right? They're they're perfectly willing to throw white workingclass people away. And that's also a fundamental dynamic in why so many white working-class people have
58:49
gone to the Republicans because the Democrats with Bill Clinton, with NAFTA, just decided to
58:57
completely divest from like white workingclass communities and working-class communities of all colors and instead take this neoliberal model. They're going to privatize everything. They're
59:07
going to ship jobs offshore because that's where corporations are going to make the most profit. and it leaves like a a a white working class that is impoverished in comparison to where it used to
59:18
stand. Well, where do you think that they're going to turn for answers except to a demagogue like
59:23
Trump? And calling those people, you know, racist um is just part of that liberal bedtime story that
59:33
that they tell themselves because it's actually the Democrats that abandon the working class irrespective of skin color and they have created the monster that they now pretend to be fighting.
59:43
So you you'll be against NAFTA. You're against these free trade agreements, these sort of liberal
59:48
neoliberal free trade agreements. So Oh, so I'm sorry to interrupt, please. Well, so people have
59:55
a lot of misconceptions about neoliberalism. So So being a history professor, I'll just
1:00:00
unpack briefly. Right. So um the word neoliberal makes it sound like you're just talking about a
1:00:06
new kind of liberal and it makes it sound like you're in a social conversation about liberals and conservatives. It has nothing to do with that. It's about economic policy and philosophy.
1:00:16
Neoliberalism. Um the the person who popularized it in American political discourse was Reagan.
1:00:22
Reagan referred to trickle down economics. He would talk about a rising tide lifting all boats.
1:00:28
And that's what neoliberalism is. It's an it's basically offloading a bunch of public sector um
1:00:36
uh concerns um like health care and other things onto the private sector. And it's rooted in the
1:00:43
idea that government's going to mess everything up. Private sector is going to be more efficient.
1:00:48
So therefore, let's just offload onto the private sector a bunch of things that the government used to do. And we're going to deregulate the private sector and let them do whatever they want. So,
1:00:57
we're not going to make strategic plans about what's good for the working class in America. We're going to let these corporations maximize their profit, which means call centers in India,
1:01:06
sweat shops in China, right? Um, and that's what's going to allow them to maximize the profit. Well, that absolutely guts the American working class. And that neoliberalism is both parties. That's not
1:01:18
just the liberal party. That's both parties. Um, the Republicans and the Democrats are
1:01:25
both neoliberal in their economic approach. And just one last little footnote on this, just as a historian, Reagan called it trickle down economics, you know, which is silly,
1:01:34
you know, like because it never actually trickles down, right? They just keep the money. And we're finding that now. Um, but in the 19th century, they actually called this ridiculous economic
1:01:42
philosophy, you know, where you prioritize privatization and allow the rich to get richer, you know, so that it would trickle down to the rest. They called it horse and sparrow theory.
1:01:51
um with the idea the image being that you stuff a horse's mouth full of so many oats that it can't
1:01:56
digest them and the sparrows come and pick out what they need from the feces and that's where
1:02:02
we are we're picking through the scraps of what the billionaire class lets us have belch I mean do
1:02:09
you feel that your your form of radicalism let's say has will really have traction in a state like
1:02:16
California in the sense that California has a GDP uh which is bigger most countries in the world.
California Challenges
1:02:22
I mean, I think it's it GDP is it's bigger than the United Kingdom. Um, for the record,
1:02:27
the GDP of the state of California, if each of the 50 states was an independent republic, it would be
1:02:33
the third largest economy in the world, um, after China and Germany. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, and so
1:02:41
you're, you know, that then that underscores the the potential challenge here. You know,
1:02:46
you've got a very rich state, a state that is uh that has plenty of billionaires, and then you
1:02:52
got someone like yourself who's basically talking against neoliberalism, and you know, you you want
1:02:58
a different type of economic system, an economic order. Is there enough currency on the street, enough uh um are there enough people out there in this state? Yeah. You know, to to recognize your
1:03:10
type of politics. The first thing before I answer that part of the question, I just want to reset it. The the as Muslims, the Quran is this eruption um an inbursting I ru I n. It comes from the
1:03:26
unseen world and it explodes into the seen world and changes the trajectory of the seen world.
1:03:31
And in that Quran there is this overwhelming and overpowering critique of materialist consumption,
1:03:39
greed and excess and stern warnings of those who commit injustice and oppression and those who
1:03:47
give into their greed. So even if I thought that there was no hope of victory, my moral
1:03:53
responsibility would be to stand and bear witness because the Muslim is the the the the Shahed,
1:04:01
the one that bears witness for the oppressed against the oppressor from the day of creation to
1:04:06
the day of resurrection. That is our mandate with our Lord. And having said that, so now I'm just
1:04:15
literally back where I was when I was 15. That was the Quran on one night. The previous night was Malcolm. And what's Malcolm say? Malcolm says, "We're not outnumbered. We're out organized." And
1:04:24
then Malcolm says, "Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Never let the man that
1:04:30
you are against form your opinions for you." The truth is is that this narrative that we somehow
1:04:35
can't resist these forces emerges directly from the mouth of those forces themselves. Um,
1:04:42
billionaires are few in number. Right. Right. And there is overwhelming support for these
1:04:49
kind of populist. They're not even populist. Like these aren't left policies from the standpoint of
1:04:55
ordinary voters. Like universal healthcare is a 8020 issue. Affordable housing is an 8020 issue,
1:05:03
right? These are things that are right down the center for your average workingclass Californian.
1:05:09
It's just that there are vested moneyed interests that are opposed to them. But I would argue that
1:05:15
in this moment where the corporate takeover of media, you know, used to be 50 media companies
1:05:21
controlling 90% of the media in 1983, now it's five in 2025. Four Zionists control so all of
1:05:29
social media essentially that actually the place where the people can make their voices heard most
1:05:34
effectively is in elections because the corporate takeover has been so complete in other domains.
1:05:40
And then the last part of my answer to this is that one of the wealthy donors in the Muslim community and we've had tremendous support, you know, generous support from the Muslim community
1:05:49
for our campaign. Um, one of the wealthiest donors from the Muslim community. I asked him the same
1:05:56
question. I said, "Does this like the way that I'm talking like a 2%, you know, increase on the tax
1:06:01
for billionaires?" because a 2% in uh increase in the tax on those 186 billionaires would make it so
1:06:07
that no one that makes 100k or less in the state of California would pay a penny of state taxes,
1:06:12
right? There's all kinds of ways that you can, you know, do incredible things if you just make the billionaires pay their literally their fair share, not even excessive amounts. Like
1:06:21
Tesla ends up paying like a 75 effective tax rate where your average working Joe pays 30%
1:06:26
of his check. We're covering their taxes right now. So when I asked him about this um he said
1:06:33
he said no no no it doesn't uh make me afraid at all. He said quite the contrary. He said
1:06:39
um the ruling class always underestimates how close the people are to revolution when wealth
1:06:48
inequalities reach the scale that they are currently at. He said, "Someone that talks
1:06:54
like you about the reality of people's ordinary ordinary people's suffering is the only person
1:07:00
that I think is sane in this kind of environment." And what does that mean? The state of California,
1:07:06
yes, third highest GDP if all of the states were ind independent, but the state of California has
1:07:13
the highest rate of wealth inequality of any of the 50 states in the union and in fact is tied
1:07:19
with the state of Louisiana for the highest poverty rates. How how is that possible? And
1:07:26
you can't blame that on the Republicans. This has been a state that had Democrat supermajorities for 40 years. has had Democrats in the governor's mansion for almost the entirety
1:07:37
of that time. Brief glimpses of, you know, the governator Schwarzenegger, you know, in there,
1:07:42
right? This has been team blue that has driven the economy into the ground for ordinary people. And
1:07:49
that's why like for example when I I spoke at the SEIU local 1000 candidate forum a thousand union
1:07:56
members in a in a in a union hall being streamed to three other union halls throughout the state
1:08:01
and I'm up there with Katie Porter and the six other Democrats three and a half hours answering every question and I'm quoting Malcolm to him I mean talking exactly this kind of you know uh
1:08:11
universal housing and all of the the the the the radical stuff that you hear me saying. They closed
1:08:16
the door and did the vote. when they tallied up the vote best candidate hands down one because
1:08:23
this is not an alienating message for your average workingclass person. This is the only thing that
1:08:31
sounds sane to your average workingclass person. Professor, thank you so much and I wish you all
1:08:38
the best for the election to come in. Baraka City and and I I just have to say it's been a
1:08:45
real honor to be able to sit and share space and time with you and to be able to lay out my case um
1:08:50
for for for our brothers and sisters in Islam and everyone that's Islam adjacent. Um the Muslims are
1:08:56
in a position to do something extraordinary um if we would seize the opportunity.
1:09:03
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1:09:12
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1:09:19
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