Back in June, we published an episode about the "Speaking with American Men" (SAM) project, a $20 million initiative designed by political consultants to understand and win back young men (18-29) who increasingly voted for Donald Trump. We talked about this cringey, inauthentic approach to compete over the influence of manosphere figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman, who exploit a perceived "meaning crisis" with pseudo-intellectual and often reactionary messages.
Instead of what? We said that the better route would be to focus on material concerns so that the rage of young men isn’t ceded to right-wing movements. Big-money consultant-led efforts to micromanage online interactions will not spawn-in the authentic cultural engagement that right-wing influencers naturally achieve.
Well here we are now in the fall, and we’ve got a bunch of guys stepping into this contested space from different angles. Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner present very differently as masculine role models, but share the same economic populism, but also a deep challenge in the long shadow of patriarchy: how do men become trustworthy?
Show Notes
Brief: Nair, Mamdani, and Culture against the Culture War (Pt 1) — Conspirituality
Matthew's Review of Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway
A Political Litmus Test: Can You Hang With the Boys?
Zohran Mamdani Is New York’s First Millennial Mayor. You Can Tell by His Suit.
A Political Misdiagnosis—NYT on How Dems lost Black and Hispanic Voters
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Bonus Sample: MAHA Inaction
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The nonprofit organization (and its adjoined Super PAC), MAHA Action, is leading semi-regular Zoom calls featuring a host of wellness influencers and RFK Jr appointees, including Jillian Michaels, Dr Oz, and Russell Brand. Derek listens into a recent call to see just what they're saying.
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Brief: Taylor Swift Goes MAGA?
Taylor Swift: Nazi sympathizer, freshly-minted racist, MAGA trad wife. Or so proponents of a recent conspiracy theory would have it. For years, the most successful female recording and performing artist of her generation (and therefore of all time) has used “easter eggs” as part of her marketing. Hidden messages in music videos and lyric sheets, oblique references in social media posts, and puzzles as merchandise marketing gimmicks have all contributed to a parasocial sense of intimacy and insider knowledge for her millions of ardent fans.
With the release of The Life of a Showgirl, these treats seem to have backfired on Swift. A deluge of TikToks claim dog whistles and hidden symbols reveal a far-right turn for a progressive artist that previously stood for feminism, reproductive freedom, gay and trans rights, BLM, and gun control.
Maybe it’s her “cancelled” friends, the influence of Travis Kelce, or traditional, conservative “family values” finally coming home to roost as she celebrates the desire to settle down with her soon-to-be-husband, make a home, and have some kids.
Julian peels apart the layers of this highly charged political conspiracy theory and looks at what it may represent.
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282: Mutual Aid Against ICE
When restaurants and cafes in Portland and elsewhere link into networks of food pantries and soup kitchens, will mutual aid feel real in the US? When regular folks come out of their houses to shame and chase ICE thugs out of the neighborhood, will that feeling of power from below catch on? Will it create some craving for a different way of doing things and understanding authority and order?
Derek looks at Portland, Julian looks at street resistance, and Matthew unpacks the old anarchist idea of mutual aid, and whether and how it intersects with our time and what’s left of our institutions.
Show Notes
Here are 18 Portland-area coffee shops and restaurants that have pledged to feed people who lose SNAP benefits
Angie Vargas, ICE Chaser
LAHoodLove on Instagram
BraveNewFilms on Instagram
Kat Abughazaleh in Mother Jones
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1:04:26
Bonus Sample: US v. Liberation Theology (Part 2)
Listen to the full episode on Patreon
Part 2 follows the money flowing from US agencies and interests to anti-Liberation Theology figures in Latin America. We meet Jesuit operator Roger Vekemans, who in the 1960s drew funding from the CIA, USAID, West German bishops, and U.S. conservative foundations to undermine Liberation and Christian socialism in Chile and beyond.
Nelson Rockefeller used Protestant missions as a model for soft power in the region, including the Summer Institute of Linguistics and their aviation-radio infrastructure (JAARS) that doubled as state and military logistics in Amazon frontiers. That infrastructure was part of a project to rewire communal lifeways into an individualism compatible with capitalism.
But what about the “reverse boomerang”? Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi te: On Love for the Poor, is a pastoral yet pointed retrieval of Liberation Theology’s moral center, in which inequality is posited as the root of social ills. Leo rejects trickle-down myths, insists on solidarity with migrants, and quietly sidelines the old Marxism panic. By grounding church mission in the lived poverty of Jesus himself, Leo offers a calm but withering rebuke to Christofascism and the politics of exclusion.
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Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.
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