Lula and Brazil the Second Time Around ft. Alex Hochuli

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning to most good afternoon to others and good evening to the viewing audience across the pond my name is Jason Miles and welcome to a very special episode of this this revolution podcast and by very special I mean I was just having scheduling problems with the guest and this was like the one day they could do it and so I just decided to be insane and do it today and not schedule it for a pre-record later so that's that's what's going on today but thank you for join joining us today this will be a very interesting conversation I usually say there's links in the description to uh what our guest has written but it's so new and fresh it hasn't even been published yet so I'm excited about that I'm excited for this show um as some of you know I greatly admire the work of Our Guest today Alex auli um and I really enjoy the Bunga cast if there is one podcast you should listen to besides this one and the ones in our universe like far blog and all that good stuff definitely if you haven't checked out uh the alpha bunga bunga bunga cast please check that out but let's talk a little bit about Brazil as yesterday was Brazilian Independence Day a lot of Latin American independence this month uh later this month is going to be Mexican day Lula D Silva's return to office in Brazil makes a critical attempt to undo the conservative roll back of his party's previous Progressive reforms under Michelle Tamer and xer bolsonaro Brazil saw an erosion of social programs Environmental Protections and Indigenous rights that the Workers Party had championed in the 2000s Lula's reinstatement of programs like Bolsa Familia designed to address food insecurity for over 33 million Brazilians and his commitment to halting environmental destruction in the Amazon are core components of his platform however the the Brazil Lula governs today is far far far different than the one he left in 2020 the ideological landscape both domestically and globally has shifted dramatically after dma ruses aler Brazil became more polarized with bolsonaro's right-wing populism galvanizing large swaths of the electorate through Nationalist and anti-left rhetoric this new political environment reflects broader Global Trends a backlash against what is often derly speak called wokeness or globalism right-wing populists sovereignists and National conservatives have risen in opposition to the neoliberal policies of the past few decades creating a more fractured political Order Our Guest today aluli argues that this shift mirrors larger geopolitical tensions that he terms the new Cold War I do like that framing in an upcoming essay he draws upon thinkers like Frederick Jameson and slavo xek to examine how these cultural and ideological battles are unfolding as Alex writes a succession of cultural Logics have been identified since Frederick Jameson first wrote a about postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism in 18 or 1984 in 1997 slavo xek discoursed about multiculturalism as the cultural logic of multinational capitalism and if you were so inclined you could write essays arguing that the past decade has seen wokeness emerge as the cultural logic of late [Music] neoliberalism the notion of wokeness encompassing Progressive values neoliberal economics and the curtailment of freedoms by corporate and political interests serves as the ideological backdrop for much of today's political polarization Alex posits that unlike the original Cold War which was a genuine ideological clash between capitalism and socialism this new cold war is less about systems of governance and more about capitalist competition dressed in thin ideological codings whether framed as authoritarian ISM versus democracy or stability versus chaos the deeper struggle appears to be between nationalist forces that reject the perceived excesses of globalization and neoliberalism and a fragmented liberal order grappling with its own contradictions in Brazil Lula faces these challenges headon his efforts to restore Progressive policies and repair the Damage Done by bolsonaro are emblematic of a broader struggle against right-wing populism and anti globalist sentiment how Lula navigates this new political terrain will be a crucial test of whether left-wing governance can effectively counter the growing influence of right populism and restore faith in a more egalitarian internationalist approach to governance please welcome our guests for this special Sunday episode from the bun cast and damage magazine please welcome Alex Huli hey hello hello thanks for having me um thanks for that lovely introduction as well well you know when you have guests like you on you really gota bear down I I have to yeah I mean I did like the bit where where you um called me special um as a euphemism for difficult all I was like getting all ready and then you like what two hours before you're like hey by the way read this well I well that yeah that that was um a kind of curveball I suppose no but recording on the Sunday is important because there was events um wanted to I wanted to attend the Bolado demonstration yesterday and check what was going on put some feelers out see what the vibe was um so therefore I could come on here and tell you about it today um tell me about the F first of all you were like dude there's like a right-wing thing going on and we can't I can't do the show thing because there's I have to watch this right-wing protest did you go there with like your reporter hat like the 20s and a little yeah a little press yeah no I didn't I mean I think you you'd probably get looks if you were wearing a red shirt because will probably have seen over the course of the past decade when there's been these big demonstrations in Brazil um You probably you know don't follow it so closely but you'll have seen the big Pro impeachment demonstrations you refer to josef's impeachment in in 2016 so those ones were like you know green and gold everywhere right as the Brazilian W adopted the colors of the national uh national football team um theil soccer for your American listeners um and uh and was able to basically take over National symbols which previously weren't politicized in that way um and so it's always been when it's a right-wing demonstration it's all green and gold and when it's a leftwing one it's red and maybe a bit of purple um I have this as an aside Well I this is an aside but all the forces of the new new left or of the of left populism or of millennial socialism whatever you want to term it um have kind of adopted purple as their alternative like no let's leave red behind that's done that's very 20th century um let's try purple I mean p pistas in there I mean you you need Insignia you need symbols you need you know you need colors I love colors tell you what I love I love colors I could talk a bit about colors but no the the point there is just that um Bol in Brazil the party of socialism and Liberty which is a breakoff from the workers party it broke off in the early 2000s as a kind of protest against it um and as against uh the pts the workers parties's accommodations with uh kind of mainstream power and it chose purple right um and and and poos in Spain which was meant to challenge the kind of neoliberalized Center left party also chose purple I think there's maybe some other examples anyway um that's that's that's an assign but um anyway if you go there and you're wearing red you will really stand out and it might seem like you're trying to antagonize people the CL the climate is not very charged today in Brazil it's not like it was eight seven six years ago when all the protests and stuff it's not like you're going to get beaten up for wearing red at one of these demos whereas if you had done that in 2015 2016 you know you would have maybe not got beat it might get a little bit is PT red and yellow like the PT here in Mexico it's it's mainly it's just red okay um yeah and uh so anyway I was wearing I was wearing blue which um could it's ambiguous enough you know it's like it's a color in the Brazilian flag but it's not part of the part of the Gang part of the yellow and gold a golden green gang so anyway I'll get you a seel tourist shirt that's good yeah that fits in I mean I I did mention this as I'm I'm doing too many asides interrupt me um but uh yeah what happened to Brazilian raw because Brazil part s Pao had a strong Rock scene in the 80s and 90s and it's kind of disappeared and you listen to rock radio I think rock radio is like the same thing which you have in many countries where it's like oh cool rock radio and then it's like every other song is like Coldplay or something and it's like fro hang on um and uh probably a lot of the rock guys from the 80s or 90s have kind of are now just kind of uh rightwing and maybe bado supporters um that's across the board though I mean yeah there's a lot of that's a whole different episode of shows well that's where that's where Rebellion is um there's a yeah there's a a book by right by by rightwing no by an Argentinian um scholar argues you know rebellions mov to the right you know that's that's where Rebellion is to be found does it feel that way though to your point about your article about uh neoliberalism kind of embracing a certain amount of like quote unquote wokeness uh you know I'm going to use an Antiquated term political correctness because to me there's no difference it's it's a like language policing is really what I see with a lot of wokeness yeah yeah I think I there that's the main form of practice of wokeness I think there's something a bit behind wokeness which might um but it yeah it's mainly about language policing um and about cancellation which I guess is a a thing yeah I you know to me that there was an air of that with political correctness I mean if you if everybody I've never been one of those people and I mean this when I say I've never and I love comedy that looked as looked at comedians as like philosophers because they're comedians yeah they're satirists they're not necessarily philosophers and if you go back and look at George Carlin especially the 90s that dude sounds like Bill Mah right um cancellation was something that he felt he was facing in the age of political correctness so I don't know for me wokeness political correctness is just it's the same thing it's just a new title because people were getting cancelled back then it just we didn't the internet to to [ __ ] about it on publicly yeah so we go back and remember those water cooler or you and I like those those School conversations yeah no that's true but it's also a degree of institutionalization which has happened in the past 10 years or or more um which wasn't there in the kind of 90s uh where it was a kind of a lefty thing but you know kind of the cultural left and it was somewhat more Marin whereas now it's the kind of practice of Corporations of uh political institutions etc etc so um anyway the the point is just that I the so many discussions about wokeness and I don't want to get into a discussion on W I do think there is something about the anti I think I told you I was recently at a concert I I won't say which one but I was recently at a concert and it felt like everyone there was rebelling against The Man by rebelling against quote unquote wokeness and when you're in an Amphitheater with h say conservatively about 7,000 people um that are all cheering this quote unquote anti- wokeness um even though the crowd is not very diverse it's it's an interesting place to be and to observe it all uh to that point about this being the new Rebellion I'm like I don't know about new but I definitely think and then you know peruse the internet there's no one in our left World left adjacent world that comes anywhere close to the anti-woke um podcasters oh VI yeah no I mean I I I'm in agreement with lots of people have come to the same conclusion it seems simultaneously that you know anti- wokeness um such as it existed I mean to the extent that it was ever able to be critical like genuinely socially critical has um got too high on its own Supply and actually got too high on on Wes's Supply and pretty much reflects back uh what wokness does which is to say um the prostitution of identity of victimhood particularly um the kind of um self-pitying complaining the act the the the calls to be protected uh the language policing the foe outrage about everything um the hyperventilating hysterical reactions to minor or even invented social occurrences uh the drive towards cancellation of course you had that famous case um of uh of them trying to can after after the attempted assassination on Donald Trump the the cancellation of the Home Depot worker you know which I thought was pretty emblematic as did many other people um so yeah that's where we are um and in fact that's kind of what the um DSA not yet published which you quoted from is in part about which is about this kind of very sterile polarization between woke and anti-woke except that it happens at a kind of global or International level um and I I say Global and international because they're not the same thing one is kind of global in the sense of happening in a placeless um a sort of placeless space in The Ether of the internet uh which can be uh produced and consumed anywhere in the world and then an international in in the specific sense of um being between different nation states and you know uh you pass by a US Embassy somewhere in the world particularly in June and there' be rainbow flags all over it um and Russia pretend that it is the home of uh Traditional Values um such that the uh such that they put out a commun um that Putin was signing a decree can you talk talk about this because I was reading that I was reading that and I was like Putin is I think you called him an international Troll And I was like yeah after that Tucker Carlson interview like yeah he's pretty much International trolls talk about communic so that's what he's been um there is well I'll go I'll skip the backdrop for a second and I'll and I'll just say what what it is he basically put out a communicate with that or the Russian news ageny put out a communicate about a month ago saying Putin was signing a decree that would offer temporary residents to effectively refugees from wokeness um where people who were oppressed by neoliberalism and I think this is interesting right um oppressed by neoliberalism would be able to move to Russia without having to demonstrate knowledge of Russian Customs language uh Etc and and live there temporarily right is this a serious thing I suspect not it sounds to me like a a kind of a a a thing which is meant to play on social media and kind of right-wing spaces and is meant to kind of troll the um Progressive kind of whatever liberal establishment of the US in the EU and particularly mock their um mock their welcoming of refugees to say ah look we welcome refugees too um just not the type of refugees that you have you know uh we welcome refugees from wokness um and of course it's ridiculous because they Russia is trying to and you know Putin has lent into this ideology of um you know Defenders of Traditional Values of the Orthodox Church of Russian nationalism as a way to bolster his legitimacy and particularly as Russia traverses difficult times this already predates the invasion of Ukraine and so has tried to kind of use those uh resources to um to to kind of portray itself as as some sort of alternate poll and to whatever justify its its International uh behavior and particularly to mock the West um and that that's what Russia has been doing for um for a long time but of course the the decree in question is ridiculous because it like if you read between the lines and you're like okay first of all you are put you're saying neoliberalism right I'm not sure he even says wokeness in the uh in the communicates neoliberalism so it's casting neoliberalism in an exclusively cultural way which is interesting right because many people have pointed out that neoliberalism certainly from the 90s and 2000s onwards becomes culturally Associated much more with progressivism than uh with Traditional Values in the way that it was Advanced by Ronald Reagan and by Margaret that in the 880s right these are different phases of neoliberalism that's an important observation it's very real what isn't real is to kind of wipe away the entire material political economic basis of what neoliberalism is in terms of um being a form of management of the economy of transferring wealth upwards of reconfiguring the state to serve markets or pseudo markets like no that suddenly that all gets erased and it's actually just about um as as I put it crudely you know like it's about [ __ ] [ __ ] um and and if you don't like that you can come to Russia yeah and and have a Trad wife I think you said and have TR wife and have a Trad wife which you can cheat on and sleep with a prostitute you know as as God intended um so those women actually seem rather rather infuriating like if you're like um hey you're gonna make dinner okay that's fine why are you making your own butter just just [ __ ] get I bought butter so you didn't have to make it it's 2024 [ __ ] is going on don't slaughter a goat because you have to make dinner just there's meat in the there's meat in the refrigerator Margaret what are you doing yeah yeah no one said Amish you know that was the yeah it's like and if you're gonna do that get off social media turn off your phone you know like a bit of consistency on on the traditional and at least tell me you're starting dinner at like noon so I know right like I I watched I went down a rabbit hole for a couple months because I was just fascinated by this [ __ ] because I was like how much free time do you have to make your husband Oreos from scratch just buy the [ __ ] Oreos man those from scratch ones are not going to help him live longer trust me his prostate is inflamed okay well I guess this is this is a a new step in kind of aspiration lifestyle right um previously would have been the ability to have Comforts instantaneously right maybe you I don't know Uber for caviar or something um whereas this is like the next step it's like you actually have the the wealth and the free time to dedicate to making Oreos from scratch so it's a cons conspicuous consumption right when I go to Brazil and I go to your house if I'm I'm making you cookies I'm Bing you cookies don't if you're making Oreos from scratch I'm I'm just going to leave I'm going to throw my napkin down good day sir I will not participate in your patriarchal Display of Power good day what if it's just Bros making making you know sweet baked goods for Bros that's that's okay if if it's just like cookies like normal people yeah flour chocolate chips baking powder and all that Reg butter all the regular stuff you're not making the butter from scratch um we can have a good time we can laugh we can high five but uh if you're like have you ever had a Ritz cracker from scratch just leave just leave you know what I never will you're a horrible person but back to the show at hand tell me a little bit about what you saw at this businaro protest uh how many years are we four years well it's he was elected in 2018 he lost then the 2020 election um so he's been out of I mean it we're we're nearing two years since he lost the election he left office on the 1 of January that's when the transition happens in Brazil kind of New Year's Eve and uh Brazil's version of January the 6th um for all that there are differences Brazil had its own moment um as as you will probably remember on the 8th of January um but like the the it's B cringeworthy the imitation of the of the Yankees uh you know what what that that that's happening on the Brazilian right it's like really come on guys um just completely unoriginal but anyway so they tried to do this belated coup attempt on the 8th of January to prevent Lula taking office it was um a bit cack-handed but I think still a genuine coup attempt which was um prevented by the fact that the balance of forces was not favorable to bado and to the kongers specifically within the military but also um also two other major factors it's worth um highlighting again uh was the fact that the military wasn't or the military brass wasn't universally in favor of of some sort of coup of course this would be the the very postmodern form of coup right it's not tanks um tanks on the streets it would be um refusing to accept Lula's Victory ask asking for a recount or a revote um or maybe an interim government of some sort anyway just to point out that this is not the Cold War style it's not myar it's not viar but it's also not 1960s 1970s Latin America right yeah um it's not that type of coup so but it would still be a massive breach with democracy I mean I don't I don't mean to minimize the risk of it I just want to um set it in its proper historical context anyway the reason it doesn't happen is because the military isn't universally in favor the elite isn't uh United around it in fact a large parts of the elite um aligned with and stood behind Lula as a kind of like let's go back to some normality here um and as a consequence Lula's government is a government of the center it's not a government to the left uh and then finally importantly the US wasn't in favor either right um the US particularly under Joe Biden saw Brazil as a sort of repeat what was been H what had been happening in the US and was um quite clear that he wanted um you know he wanted the election to come off cleanly and fairly and if Lula was the Victor that Lula should you know take office um so you know nice to see the US for once uh defending uh defending you like Obama likes Lula there's that there's that scene of Obama being like you're the most popular guy here yeah yeah no exactly I mean but you know the I guess the point being that um the coup attempt was genuine but it was never likely to succeed I think um they just didn't have the they just didn't have the the forces behind them which is different to January the 6th in the US where that was not a coup attempt at all um that was just a ragtag bunch of losers and Neo fascists and whatever uh we call that in the states an uprising it was a a Kur fuffle it's a Kuru that's a teuff I wasn't trying to be there man was a right-wing Kur fuffle um yeah but anyway um the the vibe at the demonstration so the on the 7th of September Brazil's Independence Day which is not like the Fourth of July right there isn't um a kind of mass outpouring of patriotism or even a token of you know show of patriotism it's just people take the opportunity to go to the beach or whatever um this time this um year it fall fell on a Saturday so it wasn't really like a a holiday because it was a weekend anyway but um the way that these things tend to go is that they oh come out on the streets sometimes in different capitals uh state capitals I think the big ones this time really were um was just in s paalo where bado was presid um he gave a speech the issue has been focused for the bolista write very much on the figure of Alish J who is um a Supreme Court justice was previously president of the Electoral court and in some ways you could argue is the most powerful or second most powerful political figure in Brazil which is a real problem uh the Judiciary is in Brazil I think out of control and Al that J morise in particular and he is the one who has mandated the shutdown of Twitter we don't have Twitter in Brazil anymore um I saw that is is it so not even Elite people like yourself have it I mean you can have it Elite people such as myself because I have privileged access to Twitter uh um yeah that's what it gets you uh no the uh Wi-Fi goes right out yeah exactly as I say that no you can't even use a VPN so this is the interesting thing you can use a VPN okay but only now can you use a VPN because Alexandri Mor who is completely out of control as I said uh and I can recount a little bit the story of what's going on with Twitter and Free Speech which I think is very important not least because Brazil is an important test case uh I think kind of globally in particularly for the tech Giants and for the US's disinformation machine Etc or anti- disinformation machine you know um so I think all that's important and we can maybe go into that in a bit but um what happened uh most recently is that you know he mandated the shutdown of of Twitter in Brazil uh and he also was going to uh attach a fine of $8,000 to anyone caught using a VPN anyone any common citizen using a VPN which is completely illegal 8,000 you say yeah completely well you know in Brazil that that's a lot that's that's a lot of money in the US it's a lot of money in the US but it's like a lot a lot of money in Brazil and it's uh and it's no one really respected it I I used my VPN anyway I didn't think um and you know it's always always good for for the C figurativ Brazilian government he didn't really use it he's joking he's not using a VPN the the courts the courts then ruled that this was not a legitimate move so this fine couldn't be applied um but um but as a but this is part of an a rolling conflict between the bolat right and particularly the Supreme Court um and you know the bsna are right is kind of right kind of correct in their opposition to uh the Supreme Court um although it also wants to kind of shutter the Supreme Court entirely and have no Judiciary or I it's not entirely clear um and maybe also you know call in the military and have mil a military coup so you know obviously I'm not um trying to say that there are democ any Democratic credentials on the bast to right which should be taken seriously but um there is I mean it's kind of a conflict which you we don't want either side to to win but it's interesting uh in terms of what has happened on the on the the Brazilian far right of the Bol e right which is that they have turned their focus since around 2021 on the Supreme Court rather than than on Lula and the left so that's a that's an important change because until when before bado was in office and even in the early days it was still focused on um you know directed at the left and now it's directed at the Judiciary is that a good thing or bad thing for the the left broadly speaking in Brazil I mean it it doesn't really speak to a left which is um at all threatening or particularly relevant in the political scene um that it's able to condense all the IR and focus and frustration and resentment of the right right um so it speaks to the left's irrelevance rather than anything else o that's kind of frightening um now Lula's back in office and everyone's supposed to be happy now uh how has he changed since he last held office in 2010 I mean you know I think sometimes there's a perception of Lula as being a radical figure which he isn't and arguably he never was even when he his politics were much more to the left he was still as a the constitution of a politician not especially uh not especially radical you know someone who had always sought not moderation but negotiation you know that's his that's hiso make a deal and um you know he was so he was instrumental in in um strikes when he was at the Metal Workers Union um to find kind of some sort of Accord in whatever so and and was also um you know played a big part in kind of trying to marginalize trosi from the movement um because who were always pushing for kind of more radicalization so you know he's a guy who's always tried to kind of balance things out so in that regard it hasn't changed he kind of you know in a way with a bit of a comeback story he comes out of retirement to save Brazilian democracy um and says that I'm just going to run for one more term we'll see what happens um you know in two years time whether I me we'll find out sooner than that in a year and a half time whether he intends to to run again there's actually no one really of any serious political weight to replace him so the workers part is extremely dependent on l as a figure not least because there's many people who don't like um particular like in the in the Brazilian working class who don't like um who don't like the Workers Party especially or don't have an any great allegiance to him but love Lula I think Lula is a great guy right so it depends a lot on his kind of his history what he's done and his Charisma um which is a very precarious position for a party particular leftwing party to be in um so as he's entered govern I mean he his government you know was a government of you know it was a sort of popular front it was an attempt to get the Bol aristas out and the bols aristas have kind of other alignments so we can maybe go into a little bit later into the composition of what the right actually is in Brazil but Lula was able to bring on board a lot of kind of everything from kind of mainstream you know the the kind of New York Times of Brazil to um to kind of big sections of big business particularly the more kind of Cosmopolitan um elements of big business was able to bring in his old opponent from the center right as his vice president uh I mean this is all stuff that happened o over the course of um 2022 in in the in the runup to the to that election and as consequence he's had to govern as from the center and it's also dealing with a congressional situation where the balance of power there is very much against him so it's really just a matter of kind of trying to keep things taking over it doesn't have you the Brazilian president has very very little discretionary spending exceptionally little compared to other democracies so much is already bound up and accounted for that um I think I might get these figures wrong so forgive me if I do but um the Brazilian president has something like 4% of the budget as discretionary spending whereas in other countries it's like 20 or 30% so you've got very little that you can do as an executive right um and the it's it's added to that the added complication is that Brazil has this weird system which has developed it's called presidential Coalition ISM where basically instead of having your um in Congress having a base which is aligned to you and then the rest is the opposition you have all these kind of for sale parties who are ideologically amorphous and are mere vehicles for pork and they kind of funnel in and and support a a presidential um campaign and as a consquence are in the government so as so you end up with is sometimes situations which you've had in in um recent presidencies where something like 75% of Congress is in the government right is on is in the kind of ruling block which is just a recipe for immobilism because you're what you're having having to do is hand out a lot of spending and having to hand out a lot of government positions to supposed allies who aren't ideological allies in any sense right um so that's a recipe for a certain immobilism and all those forces of um what is called in Brazil the S which is the the big Center except it's not the center it's kind of again ideologically a morphous but mainly of the right kind of clientelistic parties pretty corrupt just exist for poor expending to then um have more money to run future elections to get more guys elected to extract more resources and and on and on it goes um they have become increasingly forthright so they were previously always a bit subordinate to more ideologically um like Vanguard parties so like the workers party or on the C of neoliberal Central right the party of Brazilian social democracy and these parties used to lead and then get all these other guys all these other kind of meaningless no-name parties to um support them and that was an imperfect Arrangement but it did create um a situation where there was a bit more programmatic government and now the the S thr this big Center of of these um you know kind of corrupt uh right-wing parties who exist only um for pork uh they've become a little bit more confident in themselves and have sometimes even sought to rule directly to put up their own presidential candidates this happened actually uh for the first time with at right after the the impeachment of Juma husf um and the the you know kind of parliamentary coup the illegitimate successor interim government of Michelle Tammer uh was precisely a moment in which the St thone comes to the four and goes actually we we'll have our own president we're not just going to be in the background uh you know kind of collecting pork and just supporting whoever is the government of the day we actually might want to rule directly and what emerged then especially as the Bolado uh phenomenon happened which is to say that Bolado was able to crystallize and join together a whole different range of kind of oppositional right-wing forces I mean oppositional to the to the to the PT government um that the that it kind of fused to an extent with this St throw and that's what you have and have had for at least four years in Brazil um which is a kind of refusion of the Bolsa right which is um a mixture of kind of Hardcore authoritarians in favor of military dictatorship um a large part of the Evangelical base uh the um supporters of uh of of there's a parliamentary cross cross party parlamentary bench in Brazil called the BBB which is the um boy Bal Biblia which is the um C cattle um cattle Bible and bullets right um I think that gives I think that that's pretty self-explanatory um who those people are and um and so bolar was able to pull all these together right um Lula is now basically in their pocket and there's going to be a um election for the new house Speaker early next year which is a very important position in Brazil right it's someone who sets a legislative agenda decides what gets voted on and what's gets discussed and what doesn't uh and the options there are between exclusively figures of the right the left has absolutely no horse in that race in house speaker for for the next two years so that I mean that's quite uh that's quite a a stark situation um and tells you something about the situation of Lula of the PT in government and of the left in general um so you know uh this is all that like PT and Lula can hope for is the May maybe the kind of the a right-wing figure who they can maybe kind of work with versus a right-wing figure um whom they can't work with um because it's important what's going to happen next right so just to one final point on this not to get too much into kind of congressional politics because like I think people tend to glaze over when it's about a foreign people tend to plays over about Congressional politics even in their own country let alone a foreign one that that's fine keep doing it because you know um I've been doing foreign policy on this show since I started and I think it's interesting and that's all that matters okay yeah I mean well you know if only was foreign policy this is kind of the dirty ins and outs of of congressional background this is why I bring you and people like bezar on my show okay well let's so let let me I'll try to just do this kind of just kind of briefly the um Bolado is il IL eligible I know why I couldn't say that word ineligible ineligible sorry that that was that was halfway Portuguese that's why I ended up mixed up ineligible until 2030 which by which point he'll be too old and he you know too many medical issues and whatever to to really run but he remains like eight times right yeah I mean it's all not entirely clear as well because every time he got into kind of some trouble um politically he would be like Oh I'm going to go to the hospital my my colostomy bag is bur again and it's like okay okay uh so we don't know but anyway he's obviously not in in great health and um by 2030 be it'd be too late for him what he remains nevertheless is a an important figure head for the right and is able to pull together votes and is able to unify this right which is not monolithic right it has different social bases um different ideological bases and so on so it's something which um which means that it means that b remains very important for the right and again there isn't a clear successor to Bolado who's able to perform that same role and um has the same Charisma which you know I mean this we're talking relative quantities I don't think he's very charismatic but he does have a kind of um he's able to convey us old man thing going the old yeah he's able you know and if like if that's your type of guy you know you're the kind of your uncle at the barbecu kind of ranting off about um the feminists or the feminazi or whatever and you're like yeah right on man um you know that's your guy so you know that there is he appeals to to certain you know important a sizable section of of the population or May and maybe people also who kind of go I don't like him or I'm not a bista but I will vote for him right um which I'm sure is a phenomena that you get in the US as well with with Trump so um you know they're similar figures in that regard anyway uh he's ineligible but there's proposals for him to be granted amnesty and that that is a matter of uh electoral calculation or you know of um kind of calculation of congressional seats and how many how much support he has for that and depending on who the house speaker is they might Grant him amnesty so that would be a really big deal for for the 20126 election uh if if he was granted amnesty and therefore able to run um regardless he's going to be an important political figure for the right and trying to gather votes for whoever um the candidate might be of of of the kind of Bolson e to right um um the reality is that the the the well- behaved center right that some of the progressive left dreams of having which in my opinion is a a silly and vain sort of Hope but um there is a section of the kind of Progressive center left in Brazil which is um trying and then indeed this is something that the Workers Party government has even tried in a way to do which is to cultivate a good enemy which I think again is is a Vain and silly sort of strategy but the idea there basically is like look we want to go back to having a nice kind of you know reasonably Progressive uh neoliberal center right opposition not these kind of raging populists and authoritarians um who we can't uh control and they you know say things they're not meant to and you know breach protocol and whatever so we want a nice well- behaved right not this crazy right um but that nice well behaved right doesn't really have any support again it's like the never Trump Republicans if you want to make a US analogy um no no one's really interested in them so um that's the kind of situation in Brazil and there's a lot to play for on the right in fact those movements on the right probably more interesting to pay attention to um than what's going on in the left I mean and that's that doesn't make me um happy but just as a kind of analyst hat on I'm going well that's a lot a lot more interesting kind of movements going on there do you think Brazil is suffering from something that we suffer from here in the US which is one certain leaders are in office there is a relaxation of the the more huh how can I put it I don't think the left is that big anywhere right we say on this show Pascal quoted it we don't have a left we have leftists and that seems to be kind of a global saying at this point um and there's a lot of people that kind of jump on especially during election years that for the most part are pretty pretty apolitical um and when their person gets in office then they kind of go about their their business would you say Brazil is really similar in that regard um you know Brazil is um less decomposed and I mean the us is weird because the the two political parties um are not real political parties they're not kind of real organic kind of Grassroots things they're appendages of the state which um they don't belong to civil Society right that the Democrats and Republicans are agents of the state who then go into Civil Society to try to grab support and then kind of exactly that's that's a great that's a great analogy on a t-shirt yeah need to be a little bit pithier I think I don't know if that's gonna too much text it's like the left C meme thing you know it's just like a whole paragraph on a t-shirt uh um Brazil is when I say it's less decomposed I mean specific spefically the Workers Party and almost exclusively the workers party in so far as it remains still just about a genuine political party it has life it has internal debate um it has members and it is basically the only ideological party left in Brazil it's the only party with some sense of identity and program for all the that the uh Lula government is far to the right of of probably of Workers Party supporters um but you know they go along with it but nevertheless you know if you look at party identification in Brazil it's all very very little very very low you know and there's loads of parties right there's like there's 35 registered political parties um there's I'm not sure exactly what the number is that are in in Congress now the number scaving but like 22 I think you know so there's this ridiculous fragmentation and a lot of these parties are these um fairly ideologically amorphous meaningless vehicles that for for power that just exist to reproduce themselves right that are not programmatic in any way even even the psdb the party of Brazilian social democracy which I already mentioned which ruled in the early 90s and brought in a lot of neoliberal reforms brought in uh a new currency which led to mass unemployment um but finally conquered the Beast of inflation of hyperinflation that was a a very important party in in Brazil's redemocratization that is a party now which is a party like any other now right so what you're left with is um you know ongoing kind of decomposition of these political parties where the workers part is the only one remaining which has kind of any meaning has any real support has an actual base Etc but that isn't to say that it's strong or vibrant on the contrary it lacks any one of real leadership quality after Lula you know and Lula is in decent Health by the sounds of it but is an old man nevertheless so um you know this is um it's not entirely this is one where you really can't make it a comparison with with us I think so was it Fernando Hadad yeah is his name he's not dead um he's a younger man he's a younger man but he is not a very good politician um he doesn't have much personal Charisma but is also seems to not have any strong political Instinct for what might be successful or popular um he's a kind of very technocratic um a bit high-handed and comes across as professorial people really don't like him um and he has been you know he he ran in 2018 against Bolado when Lula was made eligible was in prison so um but you know that doesn't seem credible there's really there is really no other figure on on the left and instead what you have is a lot of um if you're talking about kind of new political figures maybe we can talk about this um it's on the right which throws up Born online types right so one of the interesting um phenomenon of the past 40 50 years is the degree to which politics has become mediatized right this is an old story you know everybody knows this um and and it began in the US right politics became spectacle and dependent very much on spectacle much more so than it was on terms of in than than Base building and organization the media um of the 80s and 90s and 2000 was TV right uh that's for that's why we have um beone as our Bunga cast uh you know icon and and evil patron saint because he was the emblem of mediatized politics and of the kind of this new form of doing politics that it's not something that we endorse obviously but you know it's it's um it's important in terms of being representative of uh the end of History the end of politics and and um now what you have is internet politicians right emerging people who are internet influencers becoming politicians rather than being TV guys whether they're TV Executives or TV presenters or whatever you know Trump is a TV guy right but he's a boomer right so there's new generation of Gen X and and Millennials um Millennials especially who are kind of Born online and are entering politics um one guy who I've been following for a couple of years um who is running for mayor of s Pao um and again like I don't want to get too into the weeds because are you I mean people aren't going to care about a local election although you know s paalo is a city of 12 million people and and The Wider metropolitan area is 23 million people so it's big bigger than most European countries for example um but this so this guy is um a kind of remarkable uh remarkable odious figure uh who is um a coach uh he's a life coach he's an entrepreneur um he's born online he's kind of born again as well um and he plays very strongly with the Evangelical crowd um and is also involved in a bunch of kind of dodgy stuff where he was um I mean he he was charged with forming a gang of like diverting money from Banks uh in when he was 18 years old using fake websites and you know kind of lots of dodgy scams uh as well and has famously um you know he led a whole group of people on his course right which he charges um you know whatever like $ thousand dollar a month for um of like how to make yourself a success right and it's a little bit like Evangelical Prosperity go gospel um but exclusively driven to professional success so his um he does this kind of mental unblocking um it's all kind of woo woo it's a bit like you know evangelicals meets the Californian ideology so it's a bit of uh a little bit of new age woo um a lot of uh neoliberal entrepreneur of the self kind of stuff um plus a lot of Evangelical sounding kind of I'm gonna need you to stop slandering California it's my that's my home state well you know we're all we're all respia Uber Alis is my theme song well but this is it I mean this is California winning man no that is not hey it's not my California so so this guy took 60 people up a up a mountain in January which is the middle of summer which means that there's Monsoon rains and lost all these people up there and they had to be rescued even though they told them don't go up there you're barred going up the mountain and it's a high mountain it's 2,500 meters up there um I I I've climbed it and it you know it's a strenuous kind of hike and you would not want to do it at night in um torrential rains you know there's a like hurricane Forest winds up there like zero degrees because it does get cold even though it's you know in kind of southeast of Brazil anyway um and then I think last year he was making people do a marathon as part of his training thing right so you sign up for $1,000 and it's like go get them and you it's I think that his course is called the worst year of your life right um and someone died trying to attempt a marathon who was obviously kind of not prepared and this person has followers and this guy has like millions and millions of followers across social media he has these courses he has published I don't know like 10 different books on like how to how to make it and he's a massive deal on with the other uh online coach influencers you know he organizes conferences and they all love him what's the deal with Brazil and influencers there was a documentary I just watched maybe a month ago about a female Brazilian influencer that actually got imprisoned you know who I'm talking about I don't actually know who you're talking about but she's a younger woman yes I forgot and she was on the beauty side of things and I think she ended up pimping some women out right so the the fact is like Brazil is despite being relatively poor country very online right and which makes it interesting and maybe we can come back to the to the kind of free speech online Elon Musk brail is one of those countries where the Hales and there is a massive demarcating line between the Hales and Have Nots and by Hales I mean people that have like indoor plumbing right yeah like there's and there's this massive line that divides the two but if you do H have anything you definitely are kneed deep I mean this I see the same thing here but it's not but it's not but so it's not just you know in the peripheries of the big cities which is kind of of you know has a massive kind of social weight in in Brazil uh today that like that's where the you will find the Brazilian working class generally you know to just if you can kind of pinpoint it in in um in a way uh where people are very online people are are on they might not be on spending their days on Twitter right um although Twitter Brazil does have the second largest Twitter user base in the world um you know it's a population of 210 million and there's you know something like 70% or something are online these figures vary a bit it depends on how frequently you use it but the people who are online are online a lot right and there's a lot of usage of social media everyone's on WhatsApp right which is used for everything from personal Communications to business to Services Etc uh and so you know you you're sharing political memes on there for example right so you're on you're very online uh and the this combines with a um an economic situation which is is very precarious uh where there's a high rate of informality and so a lot of people are basically having to hustle to you know you put together your little micro business where you're buying um phone um phone cases wholesale and setting up a little store and and selling them off right and you've got to hustle and you got to do marketing there's even a kind of a meme in Brazil which is a very old kind of is old now you know like the Brazil every Brazilian is born with a marketing degree right because there's like the kind of wit for for catchy slogans and and little tricks of the trade and whatever to get people to to purchase stuff so it's in a very you know hyper kind of commercialized context one where you've got to be an entrepreneur um pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make things work and into that also goes criminality so um lots of scams uh high levels of of of social distrust and as a consequence someone like Pablo marau this guy who has mentioned who's running for uh mayor of s Paulo polling at 23% tied with two other candidates one also of the right and and one of the center left um so he has a very CH good chance to make it to the second round and and even become mayor of s Paulo and this that's the context in which someone like him flourishes because he has support you know in the peripheries of big cities as someone who's like who's made it who's made himself you know who's made himself into a millionaire U maybe they don't really care about some of the scams he's run maybe they do um but maybe that's not relevant that the fact is that he's an image of success an image of how to make it and also someone who um conveys a certain form of Rel religiosity associated with the Pentecostal and Ne and especially neop Pentecostal churches um which have grown uh massively in terms of number of of Believers and numbers of churches uh over recent years and so you know he is a figure which in a way um is able to set itself up as a successor to badum and he is doing this I mean so I don't want to say that this is going to happen um but G you know he still has yet to win elected office anywhere but and he's particularly dislikable I also think but so but people also said that about bado the point is is that he has said even listen if bado's ineligible trying to get that word right man um is Bol is made ineligible um and you know Lula isn't running then I'm going to be there I'm going to be the candidate of the right uh ahead of maybe one of bado's sons or bado's wife or anyone else who might be uh a candidate for the right uh so he's really putting himself up there and at this demonstration because this is what you were asking me at this demonstration yesterday for the 7th of September Independence Day which had maybe about 50,000 people on Aven Pista the kind of big Central Avenue here in s Paulo uh which incidentally is not um the largest you know kind of middling sort of numbers to have 50,000 out like that because it's also a Saturday it's a holiday people are out having a beer on the street kind of Milling about so it's not like an the most energetic demonstration um let alone having the particularly large number of people anyway a lot of the people there were Marcel supporters right they're supporting his candidacy for um for mayor and this despite the fact that Bolado and the Bado his family are supporting one of his rivals in the mayoral election right and they're supporting the the Rival because of uh internal kind of politicking and favors necessary uh to get uh Bolado amnesty so he needs to do some favors for one political party to blah blah blah blah blah there's a bit of horse trading going on there that's the reason he's supporting this the other guy who's the current mayor of s Pao but this guy Pablo Marcel the coach entrepreneur um crook uh he has a lot support it I was surprised um everyone there is like right behind him and so that's the same um kind of bll pro Bolado crowd who have aligned behind him and the reason I highlighted is because I have thought already since I kind of first became aware of this guy some years back that this guy was able to crystallize a lot of uh contemporary Tendencies on the right and made him actually more modern than a figure like bado because BOS is tied to the military he's a boomer uh he has a kind of there's something a bit more oldfashioned about him and this guy and and you know Bon has been able to learn how to be a success online uh but this guy is Born online right he he is someone who unlike the TV politicians of the past like Donald Trump this is a guy who comes from internet and has built himself a massive following on the internet sells his course online um he belongs to and is from the digital econ economy uh so I think it's one to to watch out for and not just watch out for like oh this guy might be a big deal in Brazil but it's the type of figure which I think um will emerge um in a in a bunch of different countries actually you know as um as you know and they speaks to a certain demographic um I don't know to what extent that is transferable but it's often kind of young men who are online um who um who look up to a figure like him who's kind of gone and made it um and has aggressive rhetoric and doesn't follow the rules and you know explicitly flouts the rules all the time uh and you know just say says outright lies all that kind of stuff but you know that doesn't this go back to your original point though not your point but a point that was made some time ago about how um this this kind of right-wing is the new what you call is the new counterculture because there again there's something to be said about the Andrew Tates of the world who have a massive following like all you really have to do is Buck or Orthodoxy and do it with a certain kind of flare like um I have money and f f whatever social graces um you may say I need to have and when I say social Grace I mean like you know not saying [ __ ] I'm going to call things that are lame gay I'm going to call a dude that is physically weak a [ __ ] and I'm going to stand behind that there's people that these people probably would call those names to that are watching these shows that are so invested in these people because it almost feels like they speak to them in this way in this Brave quote unquote Brave way like the bully looks different now than the bully looked 20 years ago right and even 20 years ago the bully was starting to look different than they looked 20 year you know the bully is no longer this is why Cobra Kai The Karate Kid uh sequel that that almost feels like it takes place in an alternate universe that pits the the main character is no longer Ralph machio in this like father son story but it's the alternate story of the bully um who kind of all these guys sound like so but because they're younger they're not out of date which is funny to me I mean you know and and it's a something that gets perpetuated in this cycle by the fact that progressives the only response progressives have to this is to say no you can't say that oh this is terrible and to talk up the the risk of them of course it's it's coming on a decade now that Angela Nagel wrote her famous book uh kill all normies about this phenomenon right so there's we're seeing it play out still and to and change form a little bit and uh grow and to enter into new areas but the same the same basic phenomen on of the the alt right as it people don't use that term that much anymore but of the altright as it was you know a decade ago is it's still it's still there right so in that regard it's nothing um I think terribly new what is interesting is that we're seeing across the world a strong gender Divergence in voting behavior among the young right so particularly the 18 to 24 year old bracket which as we know um tends not to vote that much but amongst those who do vote it is very marked that the boys are voting for your trumps your bsad and girls are voting for your uh whatever aoc's and uh I don't know whatever Hillary clintons and I don't know whatever they're kind of um more kind of central left figures um or you know yeah Central left figures you you want to think of um and I I find that pretty interesting and I don't have a good answer for why that is but I think it's because as politics becomes increasingly kind of culture wars and I don't mean to say that it's exclusively pertains to cultural issues but that it's has uh is framed in a kind of cultural way about what type of person you are right not what you want not what your interests are not what your class is not what your vision is for society but in a way more like what does it say about me what type of person am I am I a kind of am I a rascal or am I a good girl or am I a you know am am I am am I kind of a bit of a rebel who um you know calls people retards and whatever or am I a kind of Justice Warrior um who does the right thing um whatever that that's a thin line brother for a lot of people that's a thin [ __ ] line but this is but but this manifests in really strong divergences in terms of who you're voting for in South Korea in Brazil uh in the US it's happen in the UK in France these are all kind of um you know the under 30's bracket is voting um very much and you know so it's like because politics gets coded culturally it becomes a matter of do you go for the kind of Macho thing which is a bit [ __ ] you or do you go for the kind of more um a bit more moderate slightly more chased or more um or more Justice oriented or more girl boss oriented I don't know exactly how to conceptualize the the left side of the equation because I it maybe have kind of has different valences but the point being is that this is a phenomenon which is very real right it is it is happening um and it the real question then is as this cohort gets older and passes through life stages whether that difference disappears or if it continues and if it continues that means that we're fa we're facing a politics in the future over the next 10 20 years which will be configured in part by a strong gender polarization which is um which is relatively new I mean to the extent that that used to exist uh and it didn't never exist because you know we're dealing effectively with individuals right whereas previously 40 50 70 years ago we were dealing much more with family units in which maybe men and women husband and wife would maybe vote the same way although it tended to be the case that men would vote more to the left and women would vote more for the right in part the reason for that or one of the reasons proffered for that is that men were always more willing to take risks a little bit more rebellious and therefore would vote for the left and women would be a little bit more conservative more concerned about morality about protecting the family and therefore would vote for the right what's interesting is that this seems to have flipped or you know and it's not even a direct kind of mirror image of it but the idea again to come back to what we were talking about earlier is that the kind of rebellious option on the table is offered by the alt or dissident right and that's why boys particularly or you know men under 30 are voting for them whereas uh on the left there's a more moderate kind of Progressive center left option which um appeals much more to girls and maybe it's girls who are going actually all these young men are [ __ ] or they're kind of um self-pitying incels or whatever they might be and therefore I'm gonna I'm gonna vote for the guy that they don't like guys are [ __ ] guys can't not all hash n all men um but yeah a lot of guys can be [ __ ] but you know I am one of them so I keep trying to use the rward thinking that this will boost my popularity and and nothing yeah yeah I'm calling people retards left right and Center nothing um you know what's funny so there's two younger people in the ti world uh Quinn and and Stefan and I think they're around the same age they're both well under 30 and um I think Stefan's like 28 but uh they say certain things in our group chat and I'm like oh it's okay now like once they say some once I see them say something I go okay okay we have license yeah I'll say this in public because you know we all have our private conversations and you don't want yelling and stuff that we say and it's great because that won't fly you know someone calls you up on it you're going to be like no but but the guy in my WhatsApp group who young like guy look at him he's a na them said it was okay he said it was okay yeah but but that that is oh God you this conversation I knew was going to be fun and depressing that's what I bring yeah I I just knew it man I I need to I need to come back on your show if it's okay and talk to you or George about some of the music theory stuff that I've been working yeah let's let's do that absolutely so it can be a little less depressing and we can have conversations about authenticity and and uh and uh you know what what is a sellout things like that nice and apply it politically that that's that's that's more like hm instead of like hey hey you wanted to talk about you wanted to talk about Brazil and I'm like well I don't have any you know especially good news it's not the worst news in the world but it's not it's not um especially thrilling either um which is why you know which is why i' I've been talking more about the right than than about the left because um we're kind of looking at how things are going to develop over the course of the next kind of two years looking to the next kind of national presidential election it it feels like there's a buildout of of a utopianism that's going to feel a little more right I just finished this essay that I'm I'm going to publish next week for our patrons only um and uh it is about my very dystopian Vision on the future of um first my state California and then I think the rest of the US and probably globally um as inequality just grows at such a rapid rate I had a long talk with uh I think we're mutual friends with Ashley frowley yeah um and her work on youth in Asia and this is something I've been thinking for a while and then her work kind of reinforced this thought that I have like oh I think this is going to be kind of the final solution um for uh the unhoused because we're already seeing it in places like Canada different parts of Europe um that if you chronically your chronic illness mental illness um can be homelessness then you know there's a we can just you know eliminate you from the roles yeah yeah know I mean it Eugenics but woke um yeah yeah it's going to be it's going to be a woke Eugenics I was I watched that movie I I read the I've been reading the book The Running Man have you ever read the book no the book is way way darker than the movie in the book it's it's like um he's not a a military prisoner wrongly accused he's just like a poor guy whose wife is forced into prostitution to pay for their kid's medicine who's dying and the only government program is these game shows and there's one game show where people with like heart disease lung disease and other Cancers get on a treadmill and for every like minute they survive they get a hundred bucks or something like that that that's like I I think that's like a Black Mirror sketch I mean sketch dude if yes a lot of Black Mirror reading this book I'm like oh I can tell that Charlie Booker got a lot of these ideas from reading this story well there's a new film which is coming out which apparently has made a stir um at the Venice Film Festival it's a new uh filmed by B modov I think with Tilda Swinton called the room next door which I haven't seen yet we're going to do a Bunger cast episode I think hopefully on it um because it's about kind of euthanasia um so that will be an interesting way of I think of approaching that discussion which I'm also likewise and have long been um skeptical if not outright opposed to um assisted dying and the development of more explicit forms of euthanasia not just assisted dying um in Western Europe and in Canada are um really concerning so yeah yeah and and I and I've again I I see this as kind of this solution um that people have even though people think well there's so much money to be made in homelessness California spent 17 billion it's like yeah but that those chickens are finally coming home and a roost from the voting population and nobody wants to see gajillions of dollars spent anymore and I don't think it's going to take very long before this roll out happens um but anyway what are when is your article going to come out where is it going to be is it going to be in damage I'm assuming so this no well so this piece on um Global culture wars is something that I've been um playing with the kind of Contours of it for a while and so this the the the version that you've read is coming out um exclusively in Italian which I don't know makes which makes me sound pretentious in a way I don't know or maybe sounds exotic and gives me cash no that that that makes me think you're cool like beevans because bevans speaks like 15 languages I didn't write it in Italian though I um it's it's being translated but anyway it's coming out um for iconograph uh who um it's one of the editors is um Matias alvia uh friend of friend of mine friend of the podcast and and translator of of our book the end of the end of History into Italian uh and he um yeah he wanted a piece about the kind of chaos of global Affairs and the way that it's debated um and uh it will be out in English in a kind of I think extended form um about which I want to write about the culture wars in general and the way that politics and political tensions have been funneled into culture culture wars or rather that culture war is the form of management of um political descensus today and um as a consequence of um of that kind of management um politics becomes increasingly sort of chaotic but is a way um which is it's kind of like the successor regime to the regime of post politics that reigned in the 90s and 2000s which was to say you know consensus we all agree on the same things it's just a matter of technical implementation leave it to the experts that no longer flies as we know um under the assault of populism that's been you know it's chipped away at the authority of that form of rule and that form of legitimation and instead what you've got is culture War um and culture war is increasingly the kind of frame through which politics and disc course happens which means that it's not even just about things like abortion or religion or history or education but is also about kind of much more concrete policy or even economic issues it's about immigration um about uh International Affairs Etc and then um it's a as a consequence I mean I think it's a it's a trap so um trying to think of ways to escape um getting Dragged In perpetually into into culture wars the great uh Admiral the great Galactic Admiral abbar who you may remember from Return to the Jedi yelled out those those same words before they blew up the Death Star it's a trap maybe I should watch Star Wars I've never seen it so you know you [ __ ] don't be one of those guys this is this is what I have to say to you you having an unnatural allegiance to losers is not like you don't don't be that guy don't be that guy go [ __ ] watch it go watch all three but there's so many there's so many great great films out there why yeah you can watch those too not one thing is stopping you from doing all of that unless a very attractive woman was like uh I'm going to make you these Oreos from scratch no I'm going to be cooking for my very beautiful wife I'll tell you that's what's stopped me from watching from scratch are you going to go Slaughter the goat right now I don't know this this from scratch thing is like this is an American thing like everybody Cooks from scratch what is don't buy ready made things out of a packet like what that's fake cooking just buy it ready then fake cooking is like the new fake news it's fake cookie fake cookie it's fake cookie that butter is not real it's fake cookie goofy [ __ ] didn't [ __ ] grind [ __ ] it's fake cooking fake cooking I'm GNA use that so using that just just just start yelling it out in the kitchen to your wife if she pours you a bowl of cereal be like what what is this that's fake cook fake it's fake cookie you didn't you didn't you didn't uh flake those corns yourself just just flip it over just flip the bowl over walk out that's what a real man does and then clean it up like it's a joke honey please don't please put the knife down it's a joke that's it that's it well men can be [ __ ] as you said it's it's a little bit like that that Simpsons line where she's like yeah Marge is like oh kids be so cruel and Bart like they can thanks Mom SP men can be such [ __ ] we can thanks Jason now everybody's yelling at their W that's all I got how awesome would that be if just someone tapped me on the shoulder my husband's been yelling at me about my canned biscuits now for a week your show that's how I know I've made it if that happens Alex thank you so much for taking the time to Sunday thank no no no I can't wait for your article to come out in English very good get straight people to read yeah um yeah I guess there's no way I well I'm sure the the magazine has the ability to translate in English if I look it up online yeah yeah I'll circulate it but yeah it'll a version of it an extended version will will be out in English um soon enough um and do you want to talk about your relationship with damage magazine before we go real quick well uh yes we're partnered bungle cast partnered with d damage magazine um you may have come across um some print issues and the new print issue um has just been announced it'll be out in about a month and it's called mothers it's about um about mothering and the and the contradictions of mothering about conspiracy theories that that mothers have um a whole range of good stuff in there so um that's one to check out subscribe to damage magazine if you want that or uh indeed subscribe to Bunga cast um because subscribers get a um free online subscription to damage magazine if you sign up to Bunger cast so you know be great and we would love to have you it's a great magazine uh I've published in it uh my neighbor Ben Burgess has published in it our good friend Katherine Lou actually she has an article in it I believe in the mother issue right she does absolutely yeah about about pills was that hers I'm trying to I can look that up for you but um as we're talking but yeah some prairie fire says um says maybe Jason's the new Andrew Tate telling us we can be evil to women that was a joke pray and please do not be evil to anyone especially the wonderful women in your life you do not want to be me alone in Mexico it's not where you want to be was that was Katherine that wrote that right yeah yeah well the yeah her piece is on uh yeah I think mother wait I'm not sure actually um this isn't this isn't great stuff to do live but um yeah she oh her her her um piece in mothers is actually an excerpt from her forthcoming book on trauma um and it's a a portrait of the radical pamphleteer Susanna Wright um which is a really interesting um short little piece which I should have remembered off the top of my head because I proofed it the other day but you know look there's a lot going on and there's a lot going on I've got I've got all this like feeling of Guild for not having watched Star Wars and it so that creates a lot of anxiety and you know that's where it starts right because you're like no maybe I am that guy that got stuffed in a locker it's like yeah don't get stuffed in a locker anymore watch Star Wars and you stuff people in lockers after you watch I feel like I feel like you've got that the wrong way around I feel like I can stuff people in lockers because I even watch Star Wars I can be like hey star nerd get in there it's a different world man when you can buy Star Wars shirts at Walmart right I feel like I can go to Brazil because you have your version of Walmart I forget what it's called do we well there's a there's there's a store called hav which is um run and owned by a big bado supporter who was kicked off of Twitter by uh by alend jurai so that's a yeah yeah no no Twitter in Brazil and well now there's Twitter in Brazil again right well there isn't I mean I it's still kind of officially offline um so you need to Access bya VPN this is this is a good thing for you and all your friends by the way I agree I agree I I'm it's a it's a digital detox that I didn't want but that I needed that's what uh forcible rehab is yeah that's it stage intervention it's they throw you in a facility because you're you're you're too strung out on the tweets leave the wokies alone it happens it happens it's a thing well thank thank you guys I'm gonna go try toh catch a little bit of football before I come back here in a few hours and do this again with my friend Mac and we'll do the Red Zone sports episode we promised you guys we were G to do it we're doing it two shows one day all right Alex peace everybody I'll see you in a little bit we are out [Music] I [Music] [Music]