Name: News Brief: Trump's Hollow Working Class Aesthetics and How Unions Can Lead a Real Resistance by Citations Needed Podcast
Duration: 33 min 13 s
Description: In this Citations Needed News Brief interview, we're joined by Rutgers professor Eric Blanc to discuss his new book "We Are The Union," and lay out how any meaningful resistance to Trump and Trumpism has to be grounded in a growing, strong, confrontational labor movement.

In this News Brief, we detail how Center-Left institutions and media have cynically wielded "lived experience" claptrap to assist Trump's overtly fascistic crackdown on dissenting speech.

News Brief: The Disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil and the Phony 'Campus Safety' Panic

In this Citations Needed News Brief interview, we're joined by Rutgers professor Eric Blanc to discuss his new book "We Are The Union," and lay out how any meaningful resistance to Trump and Trumpism has to be grounded in a growing, strong, confrontational labor movement. 

News Brief: Trump's Hollow Working Class Aesthetics and How Unions Can Lead a Real Resistance

Signs, wonders, and visions from another troubling week in Trump's America. We do however end with a funny story about Trump's recent soliloquy at the Kennedy Center regarding his failed career in the arts.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 385: The End Of The Tour

Jake goes to Mexico City to learn the story of Mexico's anarchist past. He meets a dog and a cat.

NYC CUOMO ROAST
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MERCH
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PATREON
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Son of a Water Dog

"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in 2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Guardian in 2025. 

In recent years, we’ve been exposed to the latest version of a centuries-old geopolitical message: We all have a common enemy, and we all need to unite to fight it by making our own country stronger. That enemy—most commonly China—is threatening to outpace, if it isn’t already outpacing, the US in infrastructural investment, educational programs, technological development, and elsewhere, and we need to devote millions, billions, even trillions of dollars to restoring the vitality of our institutions in order to reverse this trend. 

But why must defeating an "enemy" be the justification for policy that has the potential to benefit the public? Why should we just accept the premise that there must be an "enemy" to compete against and defeat? Why can’t policy be enacted for the sole purpose of improving people’s lives? And how does this messaging about the threat of a looming adversary serve the ruling class?

On this episode, we detail the timeworn trope of the common enemy as a "unifying" device, looking at how increasingly so-called progressives are appealing to feel-good sentiments of unity and to the genuine needs for sound infrastructure, robust social safety nets, corporate regulation, and functional institutions in order to sell the idea that there is, and always will be, a shadowy bad guy that must be vanquished. 

Our guest is historian, professor and author Greg Grandin.

Episode 218: The Siren Song of Rallying Around a 'Common Enemy' to Promote Progressive Causes

Ep 219: How Elites Concern Troll "Waste" to Gut Social Welfare and Divide the Working Class

"American Extremists Aiding Radicals Across Border," trumpeted the Detroit Free Press in 1919. "707 Illegal Aliens Arrested in Checkpoint Crackdown," reported the Los Angeles Times in 1987. "87 Bronx gang members responsible for nine years of murders and drug-dealing charged in largest takedown in NYC history," announced the New York Daily News in 2016. "'Top secret' Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted elementary schools and a youth center," claimed NBC News in 2023. 

Each of these headlines includes a label for a certain type of Bad Guy. Whether it’s the "Extremist," the "Illegal Alien," the "Gang Member," or the "Terrorist," these terms—and their cousins—seek to exceptionalize the alleged transgressions of their targets, separate them from both the law and history and dehumanize them, all while priming media audiences for crueler laws, harsher policing, longer incarceration and sometimes even extrajudicial punishment. The terms, of course, don’t have clear, universally accepted definitions—nor are they supposed to—their use is often heavily racialized and, by their very nature, subject to the whims and ideologies of the Security State and the media doing its bidding. 

What effects, then, do these Bad Guy Labels have on public perceptions? How do they serve to foreclose critical thinking about who is deemed inside the bounds of due process and humanization and who is categorically an other in urgent need of disappearing and punishment?

On this episode, we examine four thought-terminating Bad Guy labels, analyze their origins, why they rose to prominence and explain how they are selectively evoked in order to turn off people’s brains and open up space for quick and cruel state violence.

Our guest is attorney and author Alec Karakatsanis.



Episode 220: The Power of Thought-Terminating Bad Guy Labels

This week we take a look at some of the early effects of the tariffs, as well as the nature and purpose of RFK Jr's MAHA agenda, before pivoting to a review of Trump's first 100 days in office. Finally we turn to a very sleepy article in the New York Times about how the Resistance is...sort of...doing some stuff...and other stuff...

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 390: Moloch's Vertical Integration

A crossroads. A marketplace of ideas. A subreddit evolving in the age of Trump’s second term. We dive into R/Conspiracy to see where our head is at.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes:
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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

https://qaapodcast.com

QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

The State of R/Conspiracy (E324)

This week we start off with a few stories from Trumpworld: the new budget, allegations of white genocide, importing of white Afrikaaners and deporting of Danish people. Then we switch over to a few stories from Demworld: Gerry Connolly's death, an article in Politico about how the Dems are stuck in the black lodge, and an article in the New York Times about the search for the liberal Joe Rogan. Finally, we discuss the shooting of two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC last night.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 393: Creeping Hygge

Osita Nwanevu stops by to discuss his new book The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding. Osita leads us through his case that American “democracy” as it currently stands isn’t that democratic at all. We discuss the real intentions of the founders, the actual American revolution of the Civil War, and the stalled re-founding of reconstruction. We also look at the potential for economic democracy, the political reforms needed to re-found the country, the problem of the judiciary, and the challenges of a new media environment to democratizing movements. Yes, today the wacky morning DJ actually does say democracy’s a joke.

Pick up Osita’s book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704686/the-right-of-the-people-by-osita-nwanevu/

AND, we’ve secured ONE MORE WEEK to get your pre-order in for YEAR ZERO: A Chapo Trap House Comic Anthology at badegg.co/products/year-zero-1

957 - Democracy Soon! feat. Osita Nwanevu (8/4/25)

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.

News Brief: Trump's Hollow Working Class Aesthetics and How Unions Can Lead a Real Resistance

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