Abby Martin Deep State And Us Empire

TITLE: Abby Martin: Deep State and US Empire | Doomscroll CHANNEL: Joshua Citarella DATE: 2026-05-06 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Occupy Wall Street at one moment and 4chan were on the same side.

That is that sounds crazy. You’re Gen Z. That’s like No, that was impossible. That’s what I mean. Like the Ron Paul stuff. Like that’s what people can’t envision. Alex Jones is such a lunatic and such a crazy fascist that people think I mean that’s all they had to do to me was basically be like you’re this woman’s a truther. She’s a crazy conspiracy theorist. And now it’s so much more mainstream to question these things. I was questioning these things before they were cool 20 years ago. But but but when the internet first started, it was this egalitarian beautiful thing where information wasn’t fed to you. You actually had to seek it out. Welcome to Doomscroll. I’m your host, Joshua Citerella. My guest is Abby Martin, a journalist and documentarian. She is the director of a new film, Earth’s Greatest Enemy. God, I mean, when I started doing it, it was like the only alternative media spectrum was like Amy Goodman and then Alex Jones. I mean, this was like 15 years ago, so it was a pretty wide Yeah. Yeah. But also really small. Like there wasn’t much online that I felt was was telling the stories that I wanted to in the way that I wanted to. Um because I I started off more conspiratorial. I jumped in um Oh, don’t worry. I got questions about that. Yeah, I jumped in basically in the whole Alex Jones world like 20 years ago. Um, and then of course you, you know, you actually be, you become rooted in the ideology and and understanding why all this is happening. But it’s so interesting to see 20 years later everyone jumping on the bandwagon of like the Alex Jones ideas, but now it’s just like partisan. So that was that’s I think that’s the most interesting thing to me is this hijacking of conspiracy culture and and making it a partisan prison. Yeah. when historically it’s been like a deep state critique on power like historically like a left critique. That’s also one of my Okay, this I mean this is kind of why I’m excited to to talk to you about this because I have I have held for a few years what I now realize is a minority position, but that there’s a strong anti- elite sentiment among online conspiracy culture. And I wanted to optimistically think that that could be refined towards this kind of class critique and like, okay, it’s the capitalists that are behind all of these things pulling the strings and like you may be one of these success stories that like made me even think that was possible. Right. Right. Right. But clearly people are I think now it might it might just be losing ground because they’re going crazy sideways, you know, backwards ideas, not necessarily to the left, just incomprehensible ideological uh nonsense. But um to reconstitute some of that time like who else was in the field with Alex Jones like what was that ecosystem when you started doing these things? Well, interestingly enough it was like the Tim Pools, Luke Rodowskis. It was like people who now are just complete Trumper like generic conservatives. Um and a lot of people like the Ron Paul days that there was this kind of big broad coalition of anti-war politics. All of those people got folded into Trump. And I think that was part of the Bannon strategy as well was to big tent everyone. You know, that that’s what the right-wing is so successful. It’s like they big tented conspiracy theorists, anti-semmites, neo-Nazis, just generic conservatives, but the liberal tent closed off anyone that was left of of the very center. Yeah. Yeah. And so that that’s what’s fascinating to me. I I’m shocked at how many people 20 years ago just became Mhm. believers in the deep state. I mean, they believed that Trump was posing some sort of opposition. They believed that Trump um and because Trump did tap into the conspiracy world. He he did nods to 9/11 truth. Mhm. You know, you had Roger Stone out there being like, “He’s a truther. He’s going to he’s going to expose the truth about JFK and about this and that.” And so it was so intentional and smart. Huh. UFOs also disclosure. Oh, yeah. They hinted to all that stuff. It was really interesting. But you look at also what like Tucker Carlson’s doing. He has like a really successful media distribution company. Mhm. And he’s putting out stuff about like cattle mutilation. I mean, really hardcore like conspiracy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is And you see Tucker Carlson 20 years ago, he was one of the lead propagandists for the Iraq war, wearing the bow tie, speaking to our grandmas about why we needed to go to war with Iraq, and also ridiculing anyone who questioned 911. And now you have him being like, I think Israel did it. Yeah. Yeah. I heard um actually I should I heard I was reading a tweet I should say uh Tucker is speedr runninging every right-wing position just like basically AB testing what is going to accumulate the most like populist audience that he can he can uh I don’t know potentially swing into a presidential run or whatever future is in front of us. Let’s say there’s like a dozen different blocks in this coalition, this right-wing populist Tucker Carlson network coalition. Those guys have firm disagreements with each others on some issues. What are the wedges that could break that group apart? I mean, I look, I think this whole infighting in the right wing is really overstated when it comes to something that the left, I mean, the left should be concerned about. I get asked everywhere I go, why aren’t we working with Tucker Carlson? Why don’t we pay attention to Tucker Carlson? I’m like, why are we talking about Tucker Carlson? To me, this shows the monopolization of the rightwing, the lockdown and consolidation of just narratives in general, and why it’s it’s even forcing left-wing figures that are completely obsolete like me who are so relegated into the margins that I’m still being forced to acknowledge Tucker Carlson. It’s like, what the [ __ ] Why do I have anything to do with Tucker Carlson? So I look I think this whole America first thing the agreement stops once you basically get to the root of what that means because it’s xenophobia. It’s like what does that mean? It means that it it means you want it’s nationalism. It’s chauvinism. And so what are we agreeing on once you get past that foundation? It’s really hard to see because the polling shows that Trump’s base agrees with the war in Iran and agrees with the genocide in Gaza. So these loud figures like Marjorie Taylor Green and Tucker Carlson, I don’t think represent the base of MAGA, right? I think they are aberrations. Um, and I think to your point, it could be just some sort of tool that’s being like some sort of seed that’s being sewn for a potential presidential run. Because with all of this fronting about anti-war populism from Tucker, why is he in the White House when the oil executives are there buying off the oil after Trump black bag Maduro? Like, where? Like, why is Tucker there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is going on? I mean, he keeps saying he’s close friends with Trump. He seems to have no influence at all over IQ at the same time. Yeah, that’s what I think. It’s very mysterious and and I think it’s all a scop. I really do. I think it’s a scup. Uh I mean, so I was I was I think more so convinced that there was this like general populist dissatisfaction and the Trump anti-interventionist rhetoric, you know, going back like eight years, right? that this represented some type of uh emergent coalition in American politics where I’ I’ve cited this figure, you know, many times in the past, but the single data point that predicted a vote for Trump in 2016 was if you knew someone who had died in the wars uh of Iraq or Afghanistan, the the base of MAG is a cult and they will just go wherever the wind blows. So, I don’t think that you can really like decipher anti-war sentiment from that base in terms of of um yeah, I mean, look, I don’t think that we’re seeing this translated into any sort of electoral politics or street agitation because people are fatigued. They were protesting under a Democratic administration against genocide. So, it’s hard to gauge where anti-war sentiment is at. Although, Trump is is famous for speaking out of both sides of his mouth. I mean, during the 2016 campaign, yes, he did position himself as the anti-establishment, anti-war candidate. It wasn’t hard next to Hillary Clinton, but at the same time, he was talking about, you know, um he was he was hinting at like dipping bullets dipped in pigs blood. I mean, he was so anti-Islam and and I mean, he was talking about banning Muslims from the United States. I mean, it’s like it’s like this guy, you know, it was like a Tulsi Gabbard thing. It’s like I’m a I’m a dove when it comes to regime change. I’m a hawk when it comes to fighting the war on terror. It’s like what are we talking about here? She also made a huge pivot too, right? She she did I don’t know maybe it was like in an 8-year arc. Her politics were a little incoherent before that. But like does her trajectory surprise you also? No, I saw from I saw through her from the beginning. Um she’s a con artist just like just like Trump. The thing about, if you look at the last couple presidential runs, anti-war politics has always been kind of the forefront. Biden ran on ending the forever wars. Actually, Obama certainly ran on ending the war on like not ending the war on terror, but ending this kind of, you know, hardcore Bush administration while campaigning. Yeah. Yeah. While they’re campaigning. So, there is there is, I think, a huge fatigue of this endless war. Um, it’s a complete collapse of this notion of like any sort of benevolent empire, right? The pretense of human rights and democracy. But I think Tucker’s role as part of this SCOP is folding everyone into MAGA. That’s the thing. So even though there’s critiques for Trump, even from people like Nick Fuentes, um, Tucker certainly about Iran, about Gaza, they always will fold into right-wing politics. There’s never a critique on the power structure or the ideology. Mhm. So that’s that’s really important and that’s why it’s dangerous for people to continuously hoist up Tucker as some sort of ideological figure that we need to rally behind or listen to because at the end of the day he’s always going to fold into that. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it’s it’s very difficult in a two-party system because I feel like that is uh the critique often leveraged against us that you know we’re going to fold for the Democrats no matter how many criticisms that we that we make. Um and I we’ve done a lot of discussions on on this show about like you know how much worse Trump 2 has been for the working class and you know all of these types of things. Uh, and it does feel, you know, very clear that like a, you know, Biden or Harris administration would have been better for for workers and it is now worse. Um, but I feel I mean this is guesswork again. Mhm. But I feel like at some point we got to take people at their word and then then the question is like if I can be autistic for a minute here. Um, if you were a neoliberal in like the 1960s, for example, and there’s the Keynesian economic consensus among the conservative party, um, you sounded like a fringe lunatic that no one would listen to. And then the 1980s 1980s comes around and you get Reagan and Thatcher and all of a sudden there’s this [ __ ] coup in the economic common sense among the party that is so powerful it actually bleeds over into the uh the left the left left wing of liberalism the Clintons uh at that point. So um I want to hold out the possibility that these things can change but it may not be within a 4-year election cycle. might be like a generational scope that there is some type of um you know shifting in the in the sentiment. Um do you do you foreclose that possibility? You think it is actually like it can only stay on the basis of rhetoric? I think that it has to change. I don’t think that we’re going to get back to that cyclical nature of of absorbing the leftwing energy into the Democratic party because of by virtue of the fact that neoliberalism has flourished on co-opting all of the very real struggles from the 60s and 70s and hollowing them out, defanging them, dradicalizing them and and and absorbing them into this structure that’s bankrupt, hollowed out. It doesn’t provide any sort of material gains for people. And so, how could people get back into that? How are they going to regenerate? Mhm. Um and and put a new face on that system there. The the Democratic Party is just a husk of corporate power. It’s a shell of itself. There’s nothing there. It’s Republican light. And that’s it’s going to be really hard to generate that again. Yeah. Because people really believed in that. I mean, I was hoodwinkedked by the New Democrats. I was a total Clintonite when I was growing up. I didn’t know any better. It was just my parents beliefs. But like that it’s like it doesn’t make sense. It it doesn’t provide anything for us. It was just all rhetoric. Where did you get that sense from? Was that media or was that just a general cultural attitude or cuz I I think where when I grew up um in the in the same kind of uh just a general sentiment across most people that like oh this is the new face of progress. Like those were kind of commonplace assumptions. But how did we even absorb that? Right. Right. Why would we have thought that? I mean, I think it it it has to do I mean, I remember the Berlin Wall falling and the end of history being declared and I feel like that was it was a relief, I think, for our parents. Like my mom hiding under desks when she was growing up with like nuclear scares. There was like this huge kind of notion that there was going to be some sort of better turn. And it I mean the ‘9s was I know I was pretty oblivious, you know, pre 911. It was a pretty good time in America. Like I didn’t really know what the hell was going on around the rest of the world. Um, and so I think for for that generation where the capacity to own a home, to not have to be worked to the bone, to to sustain like a middle class income and household and Yeah. They thought it was they thought it was good cuz it worked for them. It worked for them. Yeah, it worked for them and it didn’t make sense. I remember going to college and taking like just just having these ideologies that I was like somehow not not against immigration but repeating these tropes that like Bill Clinton would say about the death penalty. And I was just like, I don’t even know why I believe this stuff. This is just what Bill Clinton said, but it doesn’t actually jive with what I know, you know, as as a a progressive. You mentioned uh I’m paraphrasing, but I think something like the pretense of liberal democracy before uh or the pretense of the the Democratic party challenging power in some way. Um and I think there’s two pieces that have really stuck out to me in the past few weeks and months. one um Francis Fukuyama that you mentioned earlier. He he uh he wrote an opinion piece. Oh god. I forget the name of it, but it was something like North Korea was right or something like having nuclear weapons is what prevents America from invading your country and doing, you know, a coup or whatever. Um and then also much more recently, Ezra Klein now talking critically about the two-state solution as a kind of progressive pipe dream. So unbelievable. What is actually happening to the liberal democratic wing right now? Right there. It’s a moment of reckoning, isn’t it? It’s a big reckoning. Yeah. I mean, the Ezra Klein thing is uh fascinating because it’s just acknowledging the truth that’s been very stark for the last 20 years. We’re the ones who’ve been plated by the ruling class politicians and media elite figures telling us, “Oh, the two-state solution, the two-state solution. Israeli society has been laughing at this for 20 years. It’s never been on the table.” Yeah. Yeah. So, ever since the Oslo Accords, this has all always been an impossibility. Um, so that’s just the liberals reckoning with the state of reality. As far as Francis Fuki, I mean, the North Korea was right thing. I mean, sadly, in the state of that we live in today with the US power um in this global military dictatorship, he is right. That’s unfortunately right about that. Yeah, that’s unfortunately correct. It doesn’t have to be this way, but that’s what but that’s what they left might have said for a very long time is curious. Mhm. Yeah. No, I I mean it’s it’s sad that that’s that’s where we’re at. I mean again the left is right too early, right? We’re always right too early and that’s our biggest Yeah. And it sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Uh a few months ago, we started putting our videos onto Spotify. If you’re subscribed to Spotify Premium, you can listen to our episodes ad free. The best way to support the show is on Patreon or Substack. We do a bonus episode with every guest. We’ve been doing the show now for 18 months, so we’re branching out to some new platforms. Follow us on Spotify Premium, Patreon, Substack. Let’s get back to the episode. What is the proper way to understand the state of Israel? Is it an ethnostate? Is it a theocracy? Is it neither or something else or how should we approach this? I mean I think I think calling it an apartheid state is is best. I mean it it is an ethnostate because it’s it’s Zionism is predicated on an artificial majority and you have to impose that artificial majority with ethnic cleansing. That’s that’s how it exists. Um and so yes, you have to have an aparttheid system. That’s what people don’t understand when they’re like, “Does Israel have the right to exist?” It’s like, what? But but what you’re really asking is, “Does an apartheid state have the right to exist?” And no, it does not. Aparttheid’s a crime against humanity. You have all these things enshrined in a lot. And then you juxtapose that the actual military occupation in practice. We’re not even talking about the the laws within 48. We’re talking about a military occupation that’s subjugating millions of people under dual laws. What what do you say about um you’ll know this history better than I do, but they have at times expanded the definition of what it means to be Jewish? Uh granting citizenship from pe from um there was a group of EP Ethiopian Jews for example. But yeah, is it a distinct ethnic group? Is that I mean is that the right way to look at it if they are granting citizenship to people who are you know totally different looking from them and have different backgrounds? it. Yeah, that I mean that’s the whole thing, right? That that is it an ethnic ethnicity or a race? That’s like the whole debate. And they did try to bring in a bunch of Ethiopian Jews to which is interesting because it was with the narrative that um you know it’s a genocide. It’s a safe haven for genocide survivors, people who are fleeing Darur and all these things. And that’s why I was so surprised to go to Israel and see all of these African refugees being held up in like concentration camps in the Negv desert. There’s huge rallies against what they call infiltrators. The majority of infiltrators they call African refugees. And you see this kind of cast system even within the Jewish major like the Jewish population even with their bomb shelters not allowing the African Jews inside um trying to push them out. Um it’s it’s pretty horrific. It’s pretty horrific. Uh so yeah, I mean again this is this is depicted in polling and shown in actual government policies where they were administering birth control um against the consent of Ethiopian Jews to try to prevent that’s another war crime. They sterilized people. Sterilized people. Yeah. So I mean that just says it right there. They didn’t want them actually breeding. Right. Right. This has come up a few times on the show. Um, and there’s a lot of questions underneath this, but broadly, I think we brought this up first with Kyle Kolinsky. What percentage of society is fascist? And generally speaking, there are like three blocks of people who are left, right, somewhere in the middle that you could win over. And if that number is closer to 10% people who are completely unwinable, not worth talking to them. Yeah. While that means a lot for media and democracy because you can win over the majority of people, right? However, if that number is like 60%. It’s kind of not worth working with them or trying to build a coalition. And I think the state of Israel may be one of these societies in which there is a majority of people who may be fascist. M what what percentage of Israeli Jews support this current genocide and the policies of their state in general? And this is not just anecdotal um which I have several stories of doing man on the streets and seeing just open genocidal rhetoric being espoused uh very casually knowing that I was on camera an American with a camera. Um, but in polling constantly you see overwhelmingly the majority over 80% I would say sometimes 90 95% of Israeli Jews agree with the starvation policy with the genocide and with the bombing of Iran. Um, and and I mean you don’t just have to look at polling. You look at the absence of any protests in the streets where there’s a handful of people who are actually protesting against the war. I’m not talking about the corruption of Netanyahu’s cabinet. They were anti-Netanyahu protest. Not at the same scale. No. And in fact, it’s very dangerous. It’s become so fascist that I do Gaia Dean. She’s an anti-Zionist Jew living in 48. And she says there’s a couple hundred. They all know each other. Everyone who’s a secular anti-ionist Jew knows each other because that’s how few there are in the country. And she says it’s extremely dangerous. They tried to show Gaza fights for freedom and her house was raided. She was threatened. Um, if you are out in the streets protesting, you you are threatened with other, you know, Israelis will come up and basically try to commit violence against you. Yeah. That’s how fascist it is. There’s no hope from within Israeli society. We need that’s why BDS, the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement is so important because there’s no way to generate change from within Israeli society. There’s change that’s hopeful here. I don’t think that I I think probably the m I think probably if you’re looking at American society, Trump’s base is the fascist base, you know, 20 to 30%, which is extraordinarily high, but that’s always been kind of the evangelical um contingent of American society that we have to grapple with. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not um enlightenment democrats. They believe in divinity and those things are basically inarguable. Was Israeli society that way in 1967, for example? like what happened along the way where this transformation unfolded or took like a major point at which it uh you know spiked and sentiment shifted. Was it that way from the very beginning or did it get that way over time? Mhm. It’s an interesting question. And it’s almost asking like has the US always been like a bloodthirsty, you know, empire that’s trying to subjugate the planet in a way. It’s gone through phases and it’s gone through different phases, presented different propaganda to justify this stuff. But I think um yes, I think the existence of Israel has always been predicated on these horrific atrocities. It had to be a people without a land, a land without a people. All of this was completely false. But because of its utility as like a progressive idea to provide a safe haven for marginalized people who were victims of genocide, it became rooted as a progressive idea in in the minds of so many leftists here. And and in fact, it did start off with socialist kabutzes and things like that. Yeah. Like Bernie Sanders infamously like lived on a kabutz in Israel growing up. But but over time the left leaves because they understand the the hatred that’s generated in order to self-justify and rationalize that artificial majority. But yeah, I don’t think that a leftist would be able to live in Israel today like they would have 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Yeah. A lot of our online discourse revolves around this question of whether Israel has a right to exist. Mhm. And maybe one of the more productive ways of phrasing that is if the United States turned off all funding tomorrow, could Israel continue to exist? Yes. I think that they would exist not in the same form that they do. Um, as Israeli officials have said, if the US cut off the tap, the war would end tomorrow. That’s what they said during the height of the genocide. So we know that Biden circumvented Congress like a hundred times to send Israel weapons. The subsidization of of the Israeli war machine is absolutely due to the US. I mean treating it as as a military garrison as a colony that necessitates our expansion and imperialism and hegemony in the Middle East. That’s where all the the arteries of capital and fossil fuel routes lie. But I think Israel because it’s it’s because we’re in such a globalized world and Israel has basically manifested so much of its own industry in surveillance and weapons. It’s not like apartheid South Africa where it can be isolated in the same sense. Um it’s integrated insidiously in so many arenas and that’s going to be really really hard to uncouple. And so I think that they will stand on their own two feet. For for people who may be viewers who don’t know the history, you’re talking about isolating South Africa. You mean economically? Yeah. And so how is the state of Israel different from the uh economic boycott of South Africa for example? South Africa wasn’t integrated in the global economy like like Israel is. And so Israel, you know, kind of similarly to Zionism being embedded in all of these institutions, like you have to be a Zionist and an imperialist and a capitalist in order to ascend in the ranks of of our political establishment or a lot of these media institutions. Um, and so it’s it it’s not necessarily like that’s why I hate when people are like the tails wagging the dog like like the Zog, the occupied government, Zionist occupied government. I’m like, what are you talking about? you have to be a Zionist order to even like become a politician. It’s not like they’re being paid to lie and be Zionist. It’s just like Chsky. It’s like there’s kind of pre-selected the people who already hold his opinions get to advance. Exactly. It’s like Marco Rubio when he was being um debated by the Parkland kids who survived the Parkland school shooting and they were like, “Will you stop taking money from the NRA?” And he was just like, “Why would I stop taking money from the NRA?” He’s like, “They don’t pay me to lie. They buy into my agenda.” Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s why I think we’re kind of missing it when we talk about Apac. Yes, Apac is is a horrific institution that insidiously decides elections by mostly by attack ads that have nothing to do with Israel, right? Um to try to land base candidates um and undermine their positions that have nothing to do with Israel. But I think we’re overstating the influence in terms of like the positions on Israel. I think these candidates already are hardcore ardent Zionists and Apac just simply bolsters their positions already. This is the not to sound a little too base but this is a vulnerability of a democratic system that people who are organizations that are very well capitalized can just send money to candidates that already agree with them. It’s not like they have to pay or bribe people or move them in their positions, although these things do happen, but like the resource uh allocation is so asymmetrical that if you have like Koch brother money or KO Institute or what have you, it’s like okay, we can fund this candidate 100 to one versus their competition and those things are, you know, very very powerful in um uh democratic elections. The other thing that is very sensitive but I think is important to bring up here is that many of the Israeli exports is in the field of weapons tech and espionage which gives um ground to a lot of conspiracies that people are being blackmailed and whatever. But maybe for viewers who are less aware of that um if we could talk about Pegasus and some of these other technologies that Israel is um you know very famous for exporting. Pegasus is very terrifying because this is this is a a system that you won’t even know it’s on your phone. It records the complete interface of everything. It’s not just um decoding, you know, like or basically taking your encrypted data and interpreting it. It’s like literally just everything’s recorded. Yeah. And these are the things that really scare me because we know the lengths that Israel is willing to go to um to further their cause. We know that the lengths the US is willing to go to. And so when these when these forces are working together with this sort of technology um the fear that people have for like Siri is listening to them or Instagram is listening to them when they speak like that is just real with a program like Pegasus. Yes. That is kind of the um the grounding of the reality of those suspicions for just how the rest of your apps work. Yes. Yes. I mean there’s Yes. And the thing is if you if you think too much about it you’ll go insane, right? It’s like there’s really nothing else to say other than how terrifying it is that this is the technology that exists and we know they’re willing to to do a lot to target journalists and to cultivate blackmail. I think again we’re overstating the whole like there’s this weird narrative about absolving Trump from all of this by saying he’s being blackmailed by Israel and and his hand is being forced which I find really odd. Um, again like folding again like these weird narratives that kind of fold into MAGA and ultimately absolve Trump and make him teflon don. He’s not responsible for the bad stuff he’s doing cuz someone else is and it’s always been that way through the first term, through this term. It’s always been someone else in the administration’s fault. Mike Pompeo, John Bolton. It’s like, didn’t he pick these people? It’s really, really interesting. And again, I think it’s a this Bannon strategy behind the scenes of not only taking the disaffected Bernie voters and folding them into MAGA, which I think was very successful with the Tulsi Gabbard initiative and the whole baiting with conspiracy culture. It really was brilliant. Brilliant. One of the political genius strategy moves in like the early 21st century like Yeah. changed the fate of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and still I mean the fact that people are still convinced that he is somehow outside of the deep state, outside of the ruling class, like someone who is literally part and part like best friends with Jeff Jeffrey Epstein through the ’90s and they still see him as like fighting Jeffrey Epstein. It’s really fascinating the way that’s all been manipulated. Feel free to not answer this uh if you can’t if you can’t, but you are uh you’ve been a very prominent critic of the state of Israel for a long time. You’ve done these viral man on the street interviews that where people express sentiments that are unthinkable uh in most contexts. What have you run into being threatened as a journalist? M um I mean definitely threats from Israel, from Israelis, from the sniper community. Remember when I went on Joe Rogan and wore a [ __ ] Chris Kyle shirt and that was like getting very graphic. Um it almost felt like ISIS like once the sniper community was activated and like the graphic threats of rape and stuff and I was like this is it’s really interesting. And it’s like those you claim to hate, you basically embody the worst characteristics of like the cartoonish depictions of ISIS. Um, and you want that to be done to me. It’s kind of similar to this uh rape fantasy that’s perpetrated by people who are just like, I want Hamas to rape you. And it’s like, why? Why? Why do you want that? Um, and it’s constant. It’s constant. Um, but other than that, I mean, it’s, you know, letters to my home. It’s like Netanyahu himself responded when I sued the state of Georgia over its antiBBDS law, which was which was nice, right? But other than that, it’s like, look, over the past three years, seeing what happens to Palestinian journalists who are just simply daring to tell the truth of what is happening to them, I find the threats and, you know, against against us and the worries here while we still have the first amendment, it is so it is so trivial compared to what other people are experiencing around the world that um you know, I don’t I don’t have any fear. M I have no fear and I will continue to do the bare minimum as a journalist which is speak truth to power and hold power to account and I’m absolutely floored at the lack of real journalism being done in this country. It’s absolutely devastating honestly. To watch part two of this episode you can support the show on Patreon. Yeah. What what were the like kind of early formative ideas that uh led you towards Oh god, I can’t talk about Chsky anymore, huh? He’s he’s throw the baby out with the bath water. No, I mean, look, of course, Chsky and PNI were like formative to my understanding of of capitalism and media literacy. Yeah. Um, Blowback was a really formative book for me written by Chmer Johnson. was a CIA guy that turned like anti- deep state whistleblower like anti-mpire guy who went to Okinawa and was just like what the hell is going on? Why do we have 32 military bases here in this tiny right, you know, colonial outpost. That that was that was huge for me. I I would say Chamers Johnson book actually helped cement my anti-imperialism and made me want to go back to Okinawa 20 years later for the movie. But I would say most recently, I mean, a lot of conspiracy films like we, you know, we talked about getting into, you know, the Zeitgeist trilogy, my good friend Peter Joseph, that helped catapult me into a lot of things. That was that was so influential. Could we maybe cuz a lot of the people who watch this show are are not going to know that period of the internet like Let’s talk about that period of the internet. Let’s talk about how the internet used to be, which is How old are you? like what? Like 2. Okay. You’re you’re No, I’m 39. I’m an adult man. I still have all of my hair thankfully. So, I look a little frontal lobe is fully formed. Okay. So, um but like that, you know, there was um Occupy Wall Street at one moment and 4chan were on the same side. That is That sounds crazy. If you’re Gen Z, that’s like No, that was impossible. That’s what I mean. Like the Ron Paul stuff like that’s what people can’t envision. Alex Jones is such a lunatic and such a crazy fascist that people think I mean that’s all they had to do to me was basically be like you’re this woman’s a truther she’s a crazy conspiracy theorist and now it’s so much more mainstream to question these things. I was questioning these things before they were cool 20 years ago. But but but that’s what’s so devastating to see it all being pigeonholed now into to right-wing politics and belief systems. But when the internet was when the internet first started, it was this egalitarian beautiful thing where information wasn’t fed to you. You actually had to seek it out and you could find anything. I mean, no recommendation algorithm. You had to hunt. And because there was no algorithm feeding you Jordan Peterson every day in his Joker suit, um, Sloo Change and Zeitgeist were like the most popular movies in the world. Google Video was like M there was no restrictions. And so I I’ll never [ __ ] forget that seeing Zeitgeist as the number one movie on Google video. And of course this this movie, if people haven’t seen it, this was like the Bible for millennials. Yeah, this was uh you know was deconstructing all the myths about religion, 9/11 and the economic system which you know the Federal Reserve was was for some reason like the center but I think um in his second and third movie he he went into different territory but that was just such a crazy movie. It was such like a bomb that was anti-war uh atheist um or like anti- evangelical at least anti Christian um evangelicalism and then in the first one at least like kind of very libertarian leaning in terms of like the money supply and inflation and um this type of stuff. Yeah. So it kind of hit that Ron Paul note which is like abolishing the Federal Reserve. It was like Mhm. like like taking some things from like I don’t want to say the John Burch Society, but it was like very left but then picking on the libertarian notes that ended up having this big tent kind of coalescence of of the Alex Jones movement with leftists. That’s what people, it’s hard to wrap your mind around like Edner, like a lot of these like Mark Ruffalo, a lot of these people back right after 911, like there was a lot of 911 truthers who were prominent leftists and celebrities. Um, so it it just became so difficult to talk to over it became so difficult to talk about over time and became so associated with crazy lunatic right-wing beliefs and then Sandy Hook happens and then it’s like, “Oh, you’re oh, you’re you’re that.” Yeah. If you question Yeah. I mean, it was horrific because I remember I was working at Russia Today and I made this big denunciation of Alex Jones. Um, and I realized just how much crossover that audience was to finally publicly denounce Alex Jones and be like, “This is [ __ ] crazy. This is this is horrific. Why? How is it possible that you can question things like 9/11 and the JFK assassination and then just literally question everything and have no foundation in in our consensus reality where you’re like school shootings just it it has to be because of the deep state. It’s like what are you talking about? We’re a society that’s obsessed with guns. It’s like it’s amazing that more random violence isn’t happening all the time because of how pointless. On this topic of u the deep state, what do you think about a phrase like the deep state? Is that does it get at something real? Is it just shrouded in conspiracy where it’s no longer productive or how do you think about this now? I mean these terms have been hijacked and superficialized and utilized for right-wing means. And so I think historically the deep state has been really useful to try to explain systems of power that are unchangeable. Right. I mean you can look at just the ruling class like like you know what’s interesting military presence overseas. Exactly. Exactly. There’s there’s a construct of a permanent state of of military warfare of a of global military presence of the think tanks of all the people who are kind of the intellectuals that um provide the prescriptions for our policy makers the blob. So it’s kind of like the blob for me. I mean the deep state it’s it’s not like the Jesuits and all the you know it’s not like the Freemasons and all these things like like that professor says which I think gets really wonky. Um, I think it’s just Professor Jen. Professor Jen. Um, who actually says that he’s been artificially signal boosted as well. Huh. Yeah. He He was just like, “Why am I getting so viral? Why exactly? And why?” Huh? And why? Um, damn. That’s great branding. It is, right? Look into me because there’s some conspiracy to uncover. You have to consume more of my content to find out who’s behind it. [ __ ] Yeah. Why is Doomcroll getting so big? That’s crazy. Yeah. But no, I think you know as a construct it’s useful in the sense that there is a blob. There is this bipartisan consensus that’s unchanging that instructs everything in Washington DC and dictates the policies uh across administrations and that’s absolutely provably true. Um, but in terms of of this mysterious cabal, right, where they’re like doing rituals, child sacrifice, and all this stuff when it comes to the Epstein files, there’s so much fake Yeah. artificial stuff that’s just complete nonsense. And so, it kind of flattens everything out. It’s like we’re not even talking about what’s real here. Um, but I think it’s easy to to look at things like Bohemian Grove with like the cremation of care, you know, and you’re just like, what the [ __ ] are these people doing? Like, what is going on here? But I think once you’re once you’re that powerful, you just do some wonky [ __ ] It’s just all it’s just all fun in games. On the topic of um Jeffrey Epstein, right? These files are basically programming all of our social media feeds in the last few weeks and months. There’s a phrase that’s become popular more recently called the Epstein class. What do what do you think about Epstein class? because I’m I’m kind of of two minds where we were talking about Occupy Wall Street before like 99% was really successful at galvanizing the normies for lack of a better term and I think I see a similar thing with Epstein class. However, I’m my reservation is like does that mean that there’s a good billionaire out there somewhere who wasn’t friends with Jeffrey Epste or like what is your what is your take on Epstein class? That is that is interesting. Um I think it’s good. I mean, I think I think the branding of it’s kind of like the billionaire class to me. I didn’t really find it to be excluding the good billionaires when I heard it. So, I like it. I mean, I like that it’s pointing to again the system of power, which is the billionaires who it’s the big club and we ain’t in it kind of thing, like the George Carlin line. I mean, that’s what I think of when I think of Epstein class. Although, I have seen rich people be like, well, I’m not in the I’m not in the book, so I’m good. Like, I’m safe. And even Trump himself, it’s like you just wash away all the the me mentioning of you from the 90s. And it’s like for example, if we got whatever happens in 2028, there’s some like billionaire who runs um I I forget if Bloomberg is in the files or somebody like this who’s super rich and you’re like, well look, everyone else was implicated. I’m not. I’m going to take down the Epstein class and they are themselves a billionaire. Like are we setting ourselves up for that inadvertently if we use this language? Mhm. I mean, I think we already set ourselves up for that inadvertently with Trump. It’s like Trump was the good he was the good millionaire, you know? [ __ ] He was the one. That’s the theme of the show is just everything is actually worse than you can even [ __ ] It’s like we’re goldfish in a bowl. I mean, that’s it’s so fascinating the collective memory loss of every year we just rehash the same things. Um, but no, I mean, this happened. you know, Trump position himself as the good the good elite that could take down the rest of the elites. Uh, we brought up um the deep state before. Let’s talk a little bit about your new film, Earth’s Greatest Enemy. Um, this is thematically related in some ways, the kind of everpresent military footprint of the United States. Um, tell us what is the topic of the film and um, how might it relate to the deep state? It relates very well if you’re looking at the deep state as just a permanent uh machinery of warfare, right? And this extractive machinery has always been in place to impose the dictates of global capitalism. So if you look at the economic system that’s laid waste to the planet and subjugating the planet at the barrel of a nuclear armed gun, it wields its power through the US military. That is that is the enforcement mechanism for oil companies, for banks. Um and so this sets up a system of a global military dictatorship. We have uh military forces in every corner of the world. We have 800 to a,000 military installations across the world. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because the oil that it takes to just maintain the arsenal, it necessitates the expanse and permanent state. Mhm. So that’s why we see war for oil like quite literally it’s not a trope. It’s it’s explicitly laid bare in Trump’s justification now to black Maduro to go after Iran. Venezuela had the largest oil reserves in the world and Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world. And that’s because they need the oil. They literally do need it to feed the oil beast to feed the machine of of how big this is. So I kept hearing that statistic. the US military was the world’s largest poller on an institutional level. That I I had heard that before, but I think most people are not familiar with that. Could we talk about some of those stats for a moment? It’s like the combined output of like five different countries. It’s like enormous. It’s 150 countries. 150 countries. What are there’s like the next top five? There’s some staggering statistic. It’s so basically if you look at the arsenal just the aircraft alone we have an air we have basically bigger arsenal of aircraft than the next five biggest countries combined. We have 600 Boeing Pegasuses. This is like a flying gas station. It would take the average American like 42 years of driving to just match one mission of a Boeing Pegasus. And these are just pointlessly flying around. In terms of fuel efficiency, like fuel is really heavy, but then we’re also going to burn fuel to fly up the really heavy fuel. Oh, yeah. To then Okay. Oh, most of the fuel is spent just like transporting fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It’s it’s incredible. I mean, 270,000 barrels a day just just on paper. And for the longest time, they were hiding that total because they said that would be a risk to our national security because it would reveal the expanse to our enemies. And so this is why you see it constantly not being counted in these global clim climate conferences. They don’t actually count the emissions from any military, right? They’re exempt from a lot of those regulations. Yeah. Yeah. So the movie digs into that. The movie digs into the statistic and unpacks that it goes so far beyond just the emissions. It’s the whole maintenance of the empire. Every stone unturned is another story about pollution. And then you go into the application of the weaponry and it becomes totally unquantifiable uh in terms of what is actually happening when you blow up a mountain when you are pulverizing concrete you know and the same people who are profiting off the destruction then of course profit off the rebuilding in Gaza for example. Mhm. So let’s say that you know fuel consumption for national security there is some small fraction of this in which every state that exists has national security concerns. How many of the 800 to a,000 global military bases are a reasonable concern for national security and how much of this kind of exists as a self-leimitizing deep state that needs to continue to fuel itself and is actually not zero. Zero. Yeah. Zero. Because then if you if you agree with the premise that any overseas bases is necessary for national security, you’d have to basically agree with the premise that uh extr territorial empire is necessary for national security. And I totally think that’s a facious. In contrast, how many um military bases does China have in other countries in Djibouti? Mhm. So we could say maybe like if we got rid of 999, we could maybe be on parody for our actually existing national security concerns. Maybe I think we should decommission the entire military empire. I think every base is a story of subjugation and desecration of indigenous land sovereignty and it’s a story of not only legacy contamination but extraordinary pollution um and destruction as we speak. I mean, for example, I went to Guam, which is like I was on a plane for 20 hours going to a [ __ ] abject colony out by Australia. And I was just like, what in the hell is going on? Why? Why does this exist? The whole country is basically just a a US military base. Chammoro culture has been almost totally eradicated. Um, and there the US military is just doing open burn, open detonation of ordinance that they don’t have to do. They’re just doing it for fun because they can. And so they had to be sued. Well, if they don’t spend it, they don’t get it next year. They don’t get it next year. So, it’s basically acts like a for-profit corporation and they use indigenous lands to just um destroy because, you know, there’s so little legal recourse and then all of the um the ordinance just kind of sifts into the water supply, poisons the soil and things like that. There’s there’s one example in the film where um made me cry. Um nice. What part? Leune, North Carolina. What happened? And what is baby heaven? Yeah, this is a really devastating story. Camp Lejun was the worst water contamination event that ever happened in American history. And it was the callous dumping of toxic waste during the 60s and 70s at Camp Leune, North Carolina from military brass. And you can look at this story and say, “Oh yeah, they just didn’t know any better.” That’s a lot of the justification for this legacy contamination with Agent Orange and nuclear radiation. Oh yeah, they just didn’t know any better. Well, they they certainly did. I would the infant mortality. It would be hard not to notice. It would be hard not to notice. Exactly. And so what happened was that when they tested the water wells and found out that they were poison, they covered it up for several years and service members continued to drink this highly toxic water that of course was making babies and infants most vulnerable to it because of their immune system wasn’t fully formed. And so just you know just like the most vulnerable are the ones who are most impacted by this horrific nature of sanctions. That’s what happened to the babies in Camp Lejun. They were dying in mass. No one knew why. There’s about a thousand babies that died. One woman had three miscarriages that we show. I mean, can you imagine having three miscarriages four years in a row and you’re just you think it’s you? You think it’s you who did this instead of the military doing it to you. Um, and after all was said and done, they denied claims. They’re still denying claims. That’s the thing about the military. They have to be constantly sued for any mitigation effort to happen, for any sort of accountability measure, whether it’s burn pits or camp Leon. For decades, people have been dying, stricken with horrific diseases and stonewalled with no severance, no no accountability, and no financial um payout for what they’ve endured. And we talked to one woman, Kim, who is going around with a little card still, who just says she is trying to do this huge grassroots effort to try to explain to people that they deserve um financial compensation. Mhm. And it’s just insane that you have 50 years later, the worst water contamination event in American history, and there’s still victims who don’t even know Yeah. that they were poisoned. There’s never been like a mass consciousness campaign other than these kind of um predatory law firms and you know it it’s happening so slowly that the judge basically said it would take like a 100 plus years because they’re trying to hear every case individually so they don’t they don’t pay out a lump sum yeah it’s shameful and you look at the same thing look at the 911 first responders look at the burn pit victims this is these are the so-called heroes these are the people that we we launder And then we just leave them to rot and die after we use them as cannon fodder. What is the tactic that you find most useful for this? I I mean this is and admittedly um this may be a small concern at this point, but how do you communicate to like normal people who think that the Democratic Party has all these kind of, you know, super radical politics about identity and whatever, how do you convince them that your faction of the left uh is serious about the conditions of working people and the economy and so on? Mhm. I try to reach people where they’re at with humility and empathy. Um, I used to be a lot more self-righteous and a lot more hard-headed. And now I feel like as I am going around the country, especially on the tour for this movie, I am able to talk to anyone from any walk of life about what they think. Like obviously if they if they’re supportive of starving children, you’re not going to get very far. Yeah. Um, but I think the majority of people are very very horrified about what’s going on. They know that life is not good for them and they know just in the periphery that the US is doing a bunch of crazy [ __ ] around the world that doesn’t serve them right. I don’t think they’re convinced when Biden or Trump says you need to sacrifice at the pump to because Iran is a threat to us. Spend 28 billion dollars already on Iran. Oh yeah. Is that Jesus? Yeah. I mean this is the average working person does not want to starve children does not want to have a parasitic force draining their energy and feeding it into a death spiral. Um and this is where I try to relate to people. The military-industrial complex is a really good kind of way to describe the capitalist hijgemony, right? Without without turning people off to left ideology. You you describe it as a machine, right? Um and and who would agree with that? Who would agree with literally dying for Chevron or or you know I mean that that’s what this is. Yeah. So it’s like you start there. You start at the basics. What what are we all trying to fight for? Clean water, clean air, uh a way of life that it protects our family that we want um to sustain ourselves. I mean these are really basic things that we have lost sight of because again the partisan nature of environmentalism of sustainability these are other things that have been so skewed you know where somehow the preservation of our natural world is seen as a political play. You’re the director of a new film Earth’s Greatest Enemy. Where can people see the film? Uh, where is it available if they’re interested to watch after this episode? People can watch the film at earth’s greatest enemy.com. It’s also on our YouTube channel coming out in May and hopefully on Amazon and Apple if we could use these [ __ ] tools against them. So check it out. Earth’s greatest enemy.com. Best of luck with that, Abby. Thank you so much. This has been a blast. I’ve really enjoyed this chat. Thank you so much. It’s a great honor to be here. To watch part two of this episode, you can support the show on Patreon.