Jacobin Radio: Red Pilled w/ David Ost

The rise of the far right is the defining political crisis of our time. But are we analyzing it correctly? Suzi speaks with David Ost about his book Red Pill Politics: Demystifying the Far Right from Fascism to Right-Wing Populism. David argues that by focusing on whether Trump, Orban, or Netanyahu is or isn’t a fascist, we’re missing the deeper question: what political species do fascism and right-wing populism share? And what does understanding that species tell us about why the left keeps losing workers it once counted as its core constituency?

It’s a sweeping comparative political analysis that argues fascism and today’s right-wing populism are not separate phenomena but two expressions of the same underlying political species, that of the Red Pill (a loose acronym of Right-wing, Exclusionary Nationalist-Democratic, Populist Illiberalism). From the Boulanger Affair in 1880s France to Tucker Carlson, from Mussolini's syndicalist unions to Orban’s welfare chauvinism, the radical right has won by offering workers something — economic recognition, belonging, enemies to hate — that the neoliberal center-left abandoned along with NAFTA and the Third Way.

David ends with a diagnosis of the left’s own failures and a prescription for what it would take to turn things around.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.