loved the Mitchell & Webb clip inclusion!!  your show is a HUGE contribution to the people in the battle against relentless state propaganda bombardment. thank you!

The only problem with military modernization is that we have too many ships, not enough sailors; the F-35 is inferior to the older F-16, F-15 and F/A-18 jets. We may have reached a peak in weapons design in the mid-1970s, because everything since then seems to take too long to produce or two expensive to produce in large numbers.

It's all about keeping world capitalism going at any cost, full stop.

"Ex-officer Amber Guyger testifies in wrong-apartment murder trial: 'I was scared to death,'" a " story reported in 2019. "Starbucks Files Complaints with Labor Board, Accuses Union Organizers of Bullying and Harassment," reported Food & Wine Magazine in April 2022. "Labour MPs fear for safety as pro-Palestine protesters target offices," The Guardian warned in November 2023

Within the last decade, we’ve seen the rise of a phenomenon we’ll refer to as “elite crybullying," in which people in power engage in political manipulation in order to portray themselves as victims. Routinely, we hear that armed American police fear for their safety around unarmed civilians, lawmakers feel for the their safety after there's a sit in protest and corporate executives are being unfairly intimated by union organizers. 

It's a sleazy, manipulative tactic that not only flattens, but flips, power dynamics. By claiming to have been bullied or traumatized by those who oppose them, wealthy and influential figures suddenly transform themselves from victimizers into victims. Meanwhile, by this same perverse logic, they characterize their actual victims–be they organizing workers and peace activists, who merely seek to stand up for themselves, or people killed by military and police violence – as victimizers.

On this episode, we explore the rise of ruling-class crybullyism, how elites increasingly traffic in the language of anti-bullying and therapy-speak to indemnify themselves from criticism, examine how cynical distortions of power relations recast the upholders of colonialism, labor abuses, and police violence as the oppressed, and the people who dare to object as the oppressors, all in an effort to silence dissent from the justifiably angry masses. 

Our guests are Mari Cohen and Saree Makdisi.

Episode 199: The Golden Age of Crybullyism

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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After months of anti-Palestinian repression, raids, arrests, and pictures of crusty antifa types with Israeli flags, we attempt to figure out the roots and solutions to the philosemitic fever gripping Germany’s media and political class.

Episode 364: What's Up With Germany: Part 1 (preview)

“Sen. Chuck Schumer warns drug dealers are pushing rainbow fentanyl to children,” CBS News cries. “'It's very challenging': Inside the fentanyl fight at the border,” ABC News reports. “The hard-drug decriminalization disaster,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments. 

In recent years, we’ve been warned about the growing threat of hyperpotent street drugs, particularly opioids. Fentanyl is disguised as Halloween candy to appeal to children. US Border Patrol doesn’t have enough resources to keep up with drug screenings. Efforts to decriminalize drug use and possession are causing chaos and suffering on our streets.  

The dangers of drugs like fentanyl are, of course, very real, and concerns about them are certainly legitimate. But too often, media framings don’t reflect genuine concerns. Rather than offering urgent solutions to help those who are truly struggling-like reduced penalties, or stable housing and healthcare–media, alongside policymakers, consistently promote the same old carceral logic of the Nixon-era War on Drugs, turning a true public-health crisis into an opportunity to increase arrests and policing in general. 

On this episode, we look at the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It’s Different We Promise, and how, despite lofty liberal rhetoric about how the War on Drugs has been cruel and counterproductive, media and elected officials are doubling down on fear-mongering, stigmatization, and severe prison and punishment.

Our guest is Emily Kaltenbach of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Ep 200 - The Rise of the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It's Different, We Promise

Kyle Kern aka @laborkyle joins Jake to talk about Alex Garland's big dumb radical centrist film, Civil War.

KYLE KERN
@laborkyle
@horrorvanguard
@agabpod
https://www.youtube.com/laborkyle

MERCH
poddamnamerica.bigcartel.com

PATREON + DISCORD
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Civil War w/ Kyle Kern

We hit the books and head back to school, checking out a couple of university encampments and comparing what we saw to what columnists and politicians are saying. Then we talk Israel, deflections, and students and donors as customers.

Episode 374: Quad Squad

In this News Brief, we breakdown the White House's latest attempt to arm and fund Israeli war crimes while looking like helpless. bumbling humanitarians.

News Brief: Axios, NYT Help White House Obscure Their Role in Rafah Invasion

“Here's why creating single-payer health care in America is so hard,” explained Harold Pollack in Vox in 2016. “The benefits of climate action…are diffuse and hard to pin down,” shrugged a Foreign Affairs article in 2020. “A nuanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” presented Aliza Pilichowski in The Jerusalem Post in 2023.

Each of the above is an example of something that can be called "Nuance Trolling": The insistence that some major beneficial development like single-payer healthcare, ending wars and bombing campaigns, or the mitigation, even cessation, of climate change is impossible because the situation is too nuanced, the plan too lacking in detail, the goal too hard to achieve, the public isn’t behind it or some other bad faith “concern” that makes bold action an impossibility. Nuance Trolls present power-serving defeatism as savvy pragmatism, claiming over and over that no good, meaningful change can happen because no version of it will ever work.

Nuance and complexity, of course, are real, legitimate things. Political, social, environmental, and economic dynamics often are complicated. But Nuance Trolls abuse this self-evident truism, using it as a mode of analysis designed to weaken  and water down movements for change that seek actual, material solutions to political problems, and instead promoting inaction to ensure the continuation of the already oppressive status quo. 

On this episode, we examine the rise of the Nuance Troll and analyze the media’s selective invocation of “nuance” in order to stifle urgent movements for social justice, reducing poverty, curbing climate chaos and ending occupation and war. 

Our guest is Natasha Lennard.

Episode 201: The Conservative, Faux-Erudite Rise of Nuance Trolling

We sit down with Mike Cheslik, the director of the new(ish) silent comedy action farce Hundreds of Beavers. We discuss his Wisconsin influences, ultra-DIY approach to filmmaking, making your film exactly as stupid as it needs to be, and the inherent humor of watching a guy in a mascot costume get wrecked on camera.

There are still a few in-theater opportunities to catch Hundreds of Beavers: https://www.hundredsofbeavers.com/tickets/

And it’s also available for rental at home on Apple and Amazon.

Movie Mindset

Movie Mindset Bonus: Hundreds of Beavers with Director Mike Cheslik

Tulsi Gabbard’s bid to be Trump’s VP is laid out in her debut book: a memoir which must hide her personal & political past. Mike made the painful journey of reading it, and took Julian Feeld & Josh Ettingermentum along for the ride.

Follow Julian Feeld on Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/julianfeeld⁠
Listen to his QAA Podcast at: ⁠https://www.qanonanonymous.com⁠

Follow Josh Ettingermentum on Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/ettingermentum⁠
Read & Subscribe to his Substack: https://www.ettingermentum.news

SUPPORT Eyes Left by donating to Empire Files, a media non-profit: https://www.patreon.com/empirefiles

Tulsi Gabbard's Memoir: A Book About Nothing

Kinetic strikes. Limited military coercion. Robust sanctions. No fly zones. Military muscle. Modernization. All options are on the table.

So much of how we discuss U.S. militarism and imperialism is laundered through seemingly anodyne phrases, rhetorical thingamajigs that vaguely gesture towards an idea without conjuring the unseemly images of what’s really being called for.

In Part II of our two-part episode on “foreign policy-speak," we examine five more ubiquitous euphemisms and discuss what’s really being said (and what’s always left out) when the media uses banal phrases meant to mask military violence.

Our guest is FAIR's Janine Jackson.

Episode 71: Laundering Imperial Violence Through Anodyne Foreign Policy-Speak (Part II)

Following today's mob violence at the U.S. capitol building, we break down how, once again, American media would rather ignore homegrown currents of white supremacist vigilantism and their buddy buddy relationship with law enforcement and focus instead on how an anomalous President Trump makes us like those horrible poor people of the Global South.

US Media Incapable of Criticizing MAGA Mobs Without Evoking Racist Cliches About "Third World"

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 71: Laundering Imperial Violence Through Anodyne Foreign Policy-Speak (Part II)

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