Synopsis: The Trump era is marked by controversy over women's rights; in this episode, we explore how misogyny fuels authoritarian politics with insights from three leading voices. Description: Donald Trump has a long record of demeaning and berating women. He’s also linked to Jeffrey Epstein and his name appears literally thousands of times in relation to what is arguably the biggest, sickest sex abuse scandal ever. So why is the sexism at the heart of Trumpism taken so lightly? In this episode, we look at how sexism functions in today’s fascist resurgence. “Research shows that across history, when women and feminist are out in front of a pro-democracy coalition, we win. The Trump regime and authoritarians around the world, they know that . . . We often see that women's rights and LGBTQ rights are some of the first to go.” - Annie Wilkinson Guests: • Nina Burleigh: NYT Bestselling Author & Journalist; Substack, American Freakshow • Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart: Strategic Partnerships Director, Political Research Associates • Annie Wilkinson: Senior Research Analyst, Political Research Associates Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel 11:30am ET Sundays and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast February 13th, 2026. Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, 'Steppin' by Podington Bear, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
Synopsis: What does Jeffrey Epstein's scandal have to do with Trump's brand of populist nationalism? We dive into the surprising links between fascism, feminism, and power dynamics on today's show.
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Description: Donald Trump has a long record of demeaning and berating women. He’s also linked to Jeffrey Epstein and his name appears literally thousands of times in relation to what is arguably the biggest, sickest sex abuse scandal ever. So why is the sexism at the heart of Trumpism taken so lightly? In this episode, we look at how sexism functions in today’s fascist resurgence with experts Nina Burleigh, Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart and Annie Wilkinson. Burleigh is a journalist, best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of “American Freakshow” on Substack. Rev. Washington-Leapheart is a minister, professor, and the first-ever Strategic Partnerships Director at Political Research Associates (PRA), a social justice research and strategy center founded in 1981 by the feminist political scientist Jean Hardisty. In 2025 PRA dedicated an entire issue of their journal to the relationship between gender and authoritarianism, with a lead essay written by Wilkinson. Hear what our guests are taking away from the Epstein story, why authoritarians are afraid of feminism, and how women’s leadership poses such a threat to fascists. All that, plus a commentary from Laura on impunity in our times.
“It's not just about a sex case. It's not just about the mistreatment of women, I'm sorry to say, because that's a big part of it. It's the underpinning of how Epstein maybe was operating. It's really about influence, foreign affairs, and the way the last 20 years of American foreign policy has played out.” - Nina Burleigh
“The most unprotected women in the United States throughout our history have been Black women . . . It's sort of okay for a MAGA influencer to say that Black women have brains that process more slowly than any, and nobody challenges that.” - Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart
Guests:
• Nina Burleigh: NYT Bestselling Author & Journalist; Substack, American Freakshow
• Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart: Strategic Partnerships Director, Political Research Associates
• Annie Wilkinson: Senior Research Analyst, Political Research Associates
Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel 11:30am ET Sundays and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast February 13th, 2026.
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation.
Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, 'Steppin' by Podington Bear, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
RESOURCES:
*Recommended book:
“The Trump Women: Part of the Deal” by Nina Burleigh: *Get the Book
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Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
• Fighting Fascism from Hungary to No Kings: Ezra Levin & László Upor on Trump & Orbán- Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
• Imara Jones: Countering The Anti-Trans Hate Machine- Watch / Listen: Episode Cut
• Freedom for Women Requires Abolition Feminism: Suzanne Pharr & Beth Richie- Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
Related Articles and Resources:
• Return of the Planet of the Apes: the All-Boys’ Clubs of the Trumpocene, by Nina Burleigh, December 16, 2026, American Freakshow
• Jeffrey Epstein: the Ultimate Davos Man, by Nina Burleigh, January 23, 2026, American Freakshow
• What We Cannot Do is Be Revolutionaries Except When We’re Mothering, by Kenton Wahsington-Leapheart & REv. Naomi Washington-Leaphear, May 10, 2028, Religion Dispatches
• Q&A: Harnassing Our Power to End Political Violence, An interview with Scot Nakagawa and Hardy Merriman, by Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, November 21, 224, PRA
• Gender and Authoritarianism: A Framework for Analysis and Action, by Annie Wilkinson, April 3, 2025, PRA
• Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women, by Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks, February 8, 2022, Foreign Affairs
• Donald Trump vows to be protector of women ‘whether they like it or not’, by Edward Helmore, October 31, 2024, The Guardian
• White House Posts Photo Altered to Show Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying, by Tiffany Tsu, Alan Feuer and Stuart A. Thompson, January 22, 2026, New York Times
• Shutdown, federal layoffs take toll on Black women, by AFSCME Staff, November 6, 2025, AFSCME
• ‘We have to keep showing up for each other’: In Minnesota, caregiving is a form of resistance, by Barbara Rodriguez, February 6, 2026, 19thenews
0:00
123.
While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offered to our members and podcast subscribers the full, uncut conversation.
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0:25
Donald Trump as an extensive, decades long record of demeaning, objectifying and allegedly abusing women.
From his days of his beauty pageants where contestants complained that they were treated like his personal harrem, to his grab them by the Pussy Access Hollywood tape, his sexual abuse and defamation of E Jean Carroll, and his contemptuous campaigns against two women, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, in the White House.
0:49
His administration has moved to exclude women, especially black women, from positions of power and backed policies that attack women's equality and autonomy in all sorts of ways.
It all reeks of misogyny.
So why is it that the sexism at the heart of 'Trumpism' seems to be taken so relatively lightly, Especially as it plays out against what is arguably the biggest, sickest sex abuse scandal possibly ever, The Jeffrey Epstein horror with all of its links back to the president and his circle, and which his team seems so desperate to cover up?
1:23
What is really going on here?
And alongside racism, how does sexism function in the fascist resurgence we're living through?
To talk about all of this, we have 3 experts.
Nina Burleigh is a journalist, best selling author, documentary producer, and the publisher of a Substack on politics called American Freakshow.
1:43
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a minister, professor, and the first ever Strategic Partnerships Director at Political Research Associates, or PRA, a social justice research and strategy center that was founded back in 1981 by the feminist political scientist Jean Hardisty.
2:01
In 2025, PRA dedicated an entire issue of their excellent journal to the relationship between gender and authoritarianism.
Our 3rd guest, Annie Wilkinson, wrote the lead essay.
Welcome all.
I am so glad to be having this conversation, but I don't know about you.
2:19
I know I've just come from places.
I've got a lot on my mind as we begin this conversation.
What is at the top of your thinking and and on your heart as we start to speak, Naomi?
Well, thank you, Laura, so much.
I'm so happy to be a part of this conversation.
2:37
I'm thinking a lot these days about the sanctification of misogyny, of patriarchy.
It's not new sanctification.
I think the Christian tradition especially has been a leading institution that has conferred to patriarchy and misogyny a kind of spiritual significance.
3:04
That is to say that now we've got people thinking that it is a matter of faithfulness to be discriminatory and violent toward women and films.
And so because I hang out in Christian communities, in communities of faith, I'm particularly concerned with how we can de sanctify.
3:29
If I can, if I can say it that way, remove the moral cover from misogyny even as we're trying to fight it on political grounds.
As well.
I like it so de sanctify the sexism.
I mean to settle us and and ourselves into this conversation.
What's on the top of your mind and and heart, Nina?
3:47
Well, right now the on top of my mind is, you know, we've been digging into the Epstein deluge at the freak show.
And I've been meaning to write for a long time an essay on how this sex scandal that people often call a pedo scandal really about women and how much, how the abuse of women, the mistreatment of women was, is, is so accepted by these people that that they, you know, they carried on in the way that they did.
4:24
And you can see it in the in the text and the casual, the casual mistreatment.
But the way that it's sold to the public and the way that the conspiracy theory was always sold to the public was children.
And I think it's really important to have that conversation about what, you know, what, at what point does a child become a woman?
4:45
And at what point do we say, oh, it's OK if you're over 18 to be trafficked from Siberia to New York by somebody who's commodifying you?
And of course, there's it's all raced as well as gendered in that mix as to who gets to be a mature person.
5:01
And we'll come back to you, Annie, coming to you as we begin.
What's on your heart?
Well, I'm currently thinking about how we have arrived at this moment, which is a moment that many of us who have been following this for a long time have anticipated.
5:18
You know, the the pattern that we're seeing in the United States is one that that follows a global pattern that I've been looking at for a long time and it has arrived to our shores.
I've been thinking about how, you know, in the lead up to the attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, like it or don't like it it, it's your duty, my beauty.
5:41
And, you know, we interpreted this, you know, similar to the conversation we've been having as the naturalization of violence against women.
This seems to be a cloaked phrase referring to marital rape.
And, you know, these are patterns that we've seen over and over again across the world.
6:01
Hungary is another example that I think about a lot where, you know, Orban has consolidated media to censor women's voices.
And I'm thinking about the parallels between that and the attacks on journalists that have been covering the incursion of ice into Minneapolis, many of whom are journalists of color, including women of color.
6:21
And, you know, this is a pattern that we see in China, where Xi Jinping is undoing decades of gender equality policy, encouraging women to return to the home.
And we see those same talking points echoed by the Trump administration as well.
6:37
All.
Right.
So we have a lot on our plates to discuss.
And I want to start with you, Nina.
That deluge of Epstein file information seems to have been with us for years and never to stop.
It's endlessly sprawling, and there are ties not just to President Trump and his circle, but rich and powerful figures across the world.
7:00
Sometimes it's so sprawling that it's hard to get your head around to sort of grasp the significance of it.
What's your take?
What what's your thumbnail take away from what we're witnessing and learning about Nina?
I think that my thumbnail take, what I always tell people is it's really not as about as, it's not just about a sex case, It's not just about the mistreatment of women, I'm sorry to say, because that's a big part of it and it's the underpinning of how Epstein maybe was was operating.
7:32
It's really about influence, foreign affairs and the way that like the last 20 years of American foreign policy has played out.
And you can see that in this guy's interactions with Saudi, especially with the Middle East, Saudi sheikhs, with European Council people.
7:52
Everybody was enmeshed in this, you know, this operation.
And he was, he was an operator.
And what about you, Naomi?
What are you taking away from all this?
Well, I think that I first of all, I want to register the offense of using Christianity as a kind of permission structure, as the spiritual technology to again provide moral cover for these diabolical political agendas.
8:30
So you mean these guys that were simultaneously sort of appealing to the family values constituency were out there cavorting with Epstein?
That's right, That's right.
That the the language that it's, it's really insulting.
8:46
I think that these folks think that they can use the language of morality, right, to give them cover even as their behavior flies in the face of that very language.
9:02
And so what's on my mind is a call to accountability, a call to authenticity, right?
And a call to and steal back the language, rituals, traditions, moral imagination of people of faith so that they can no longer be instrumentalized by this administration.
9:28
Yeah, And sticking with Epstein for a second, Annie, there has been this sort of gotcha campaign.
Like, who can we connect and what do they do and what pitches exist?
And I really appreciate all of you talking about the systems at play here.
9:44
One of the things that's frustrated me is that the whole Epstein story seems to be being covered in a separate, separate column of the paper by separate reporters from those who are covering the ICE raids and the rise of authoritarianism and all the rest.
But the characters, of course, are super connected from, you know, Trump and Musk to the guy who made the misbegotten Melania movie.
10:07
Am I alone here and thinking there are threads that need to be kind of connected Annie?
I think you're absolutely right, Laura.
And what this example does for us is it gives us an opportunity to to tease apart the varying actors that come together in coalition around gender politics or perverse gender politics.
10:28
And perhaps also anti gender politics, which is, you know, what my opening essay that you referred to is about and what I've been studying for a long time.
You know, what anti gender politics is able to do is to help bridge these different factions that we've been discussing, right.
10:44
So transactional authoritarians who instrumentalize gender for, for their own power.
So these are the the characters that we've been discussing, Trump, Epstein, right?
Mega, mega politicians who, you know, have a deep seated sense of misogyny and sexism, but they're transactional about it.
11:04
Together with the Christian nationalists that that Naomi was also referencing, right, Who are differently ideologically committed to patriarchy, who, who believe that it is divinely ordained right and core to their worldview.
And other elements of this coalition that we see coming together around a sort of similar politics of gender also include ethno nationalists in in the United States.
11:29
That's white, white nationalists, right, who need, who are invested in a, in a strict gender hierarchy and gender essentialism with this idea about who women are and who is a woman in order to maintain their, their racial and demographic control that they're interested in.
11:48
And another aspect of this coalition that that joins in right, is the tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, like Peter Thiel, who benefit, by the way, from a gender inequality that enables them to maximize capitalist extraction.
12:12
And we should say, I mean, we're talking about Epstein.
But coming up to you, Nina, for a minute, the picture when it comes to sexism and misogyny in this administration is much bigger than Epstein and sex scandals.
I mean, it's all of our guests are alluding to here.
And he came into office on day one with executive orders asserting that race is real and gender is binary and immutable.
12:34
Is this sort of the same old culture war that we've seen before, or would you say we're in new territory, Nina?
Well, I mean, stepping back, I think what I see happening is a, the, the backlash that Susan Faludi noticed in the early, what, 80s, eighties, far 90s has, you know, it's now juiced on testosterone and steroids in another, you know, 5-10, fifteen years of, of progress by people of color and women and, and gay people.
13:12
And they, they're just, they're just beside themselves.
And there's this, there's this, you know, seizure of power by these people.
And they are, they are hell bent, literally hell bent on, on, on returning themselves to absolute power and crushing these advances.
13:32
And so it's, it's a giant backlash.
And that's where we're at right now.
And I, I suppose that, you know, in my optimistic Midwestern terminal person, I, I think that at some point the pendulum swings back, you know, if we get through this and, and you know, it's just one, it in some ways it's like an extinction burst.
13:55
You know, where it with, with it, it's like a biological concept.
When someone, something's like not going to survive, it goes, it may flower and flourish at the last minute.
It's like last burst of action.
Or if you guys remember the movie Carrie, where at the very end the corpse hand comes up.
14:13
That's what I've always thought, that you know that image when Trump got elected in 16, that's what I thought was going on.
The last gasp of these horrible white monster men.
All right, so let's bring race into this picture, Naomi.
I mean, the primary, the people that have borne the worst brunt of the federal, federal government layoffs with black women.
14:36
You've got immigrant women being targeted and intimidated.
You've got a particular desire, it seems to me, to kind of humiliate women in the military.
And most recently, this bizarre posting by the White House of an altered picture of of the very dignified and elegant Nakima Levy Armstrong protester of Minnesota to suggest that she was, instead of standing strong and proud with the constituency behind her actually crying and with darker skin.
15:05
I mean, backlash, seems too weak a word for it in a way.
What do you think is really the agenda here, Naomi?
Well, you know, I think that the, the, it's, it's now safe and even honorable to say those quiet parts out loud.
15:26
I think that, you know, the, the most sort of unprotected woman in the United States through our history has been black women, right?
And so Black women have had the testimony, and now it's sort of OK for a MAGA influencer to say that Black women have brains that process more slowly than any.
15:53
And nobody challenges that.
Nobody, Kirk comes to the right, comes to the aid of Black women in that moment.
So I think the recklessness that this moment invites is making visible what has been invisible or under acknowledged for for a long time.
16:15
And and let me say that I think not only is it this last gasp, which I think is absolutely right, I think this time is a time of deep ambiguity, deep uncertainty, deep anxiety, right?
And so this is a perfect storm for some knight in shining armor to swoop in and tell us why we're hurting, tell us why we're unsure, right?
16:38
And so they're giving us the answer that they want us to internalize, which is the women are the problem, the black women are the problem, et cetera.
So it's just a perfect storm.
And as you've said.
That proliferation of this.
Is coming from pulpits and we've talked, you've talked a little bit about sort of Christian nationalism, white supremacy inside some Christian churches.
17:04
What about the black church?
What about sort of the role of religion generally in this, Naomi?
Well, you know, I think that Christianity in general does have patriarchy embedded.
Has a patriarchy problem?
Absolutely.
17:20
Absolutely.
So readings of the Christian scriptures are necessarily dipped in patriarchy.
And I think the same thing is true for majority minority Christian congregations, Latinx congregations, black congregations, right?
17:41
There's patriarchy there as well.
And so I, you know, one of the things I'm grappling with, with faith communities right now who are waking up to this authoritarian problem is you got to root out the the manifestations of authoritarianism in your own congregation within these four walls before you're ready to really make an argument outside of these walls with integrity, right against the consolidated consolidation of authoritarianism federally and nationally.
18:15
So churches are having to do to play that inside outside game, right?
What can we do inside to confess the ways in which we have participated in and promoted this very evil inside our own 4 walls?
18:31
And then what is our responsibility, given that our tradition has again sanctified much of this, to be a public witness to counter the Christian nationalist narrative?
Now there is the the narratives, there's the religion, there's the rank misogyny.
18:53
You any in your writings say that all of this is is ideological, but it's also tactical on the part of autocrats, that there is a role that sexism plays in diminishing democracy, building control, concentrating control.
19:09
Can you explain that for us?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I often make a distinction between using gender as a tool and gender as a as a tenant or patriarchy.
Believe in patriarchy as a as a tenant.
19:25
So when we see gender being used as a tool by authoritarians, what we see is them instrumentalizing it strategically in order to advance their political project, right?
So these are the transactional authoritarians that I mentioned earlier, right?
19:41
And their primary interest is in seeking and consolidating their power.
So so campaigns mobilizing people around those issues of abortion rights, around LGBTQ rights, marriage, etcetera.
And here, here's a story that illustrates how this has taken shape in the United States.
20:00
So in 2020, the American Principles Project did a series of.
Basically market research and and focus groups and discovered that anti trans issues are very effective at stocking moral panic.
20:20
So they found that particularly if they talked about trans women and girls in sports that they could get a lot of traction with this.
And Trump at some point said the quiet part out loud when he said when I talk about trans people, everyone listens.
And he went from talking in 2016 about supporting and and defending LGT Americans and including trans women in his beauty pageants to launching his 2024 campaign with a promise to end transgender insanity.
20:50
And so this is the making of a moral panic.
And it's a constructed moral panic that, you know, uses the tactics and strategies that authoritarians have used for a long time, particularly of scapegoating vulnerable populations, which is why we see, you know, not only immigrants being scapegoated by this, by this regime, but also trans people in particular, as well as other vulnerable and marginalized populations in the United States, including Black women.
21:15
I mean, it's been sort of stomach turning to see how many times Trump uses the word rape, particularly targeting migrant populations and, you know, alleging the allegations that he makes about all these people committing rapes when he's busily covering up what is clearly a rape scene in the Epstein story.
21:36
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21:53
Thank you, Nina coming to you.
You don't look like you are seized with panic, but you have written beautifully and searingly about what we're living through.
You've also written about why some of this stuff works specifically on some of the women that kind of go along, and Melania is just one of them.
22:14
What can you share about how we make sense of that?
Why does this stuff resonate even with some women, lots of them.
White women have voted in majority for this guy twice.
Yeah, well, that's that's a complicated question with a lot of levels, and I don't know if I can answer all of it.
22:31
I'm actually working on a book about this for release next year, so hopefully I'll get into it.
But there are a lot of things going on.
I mean, the first thing is, you know, the Phyllis Schlafly kind of syndrome where you've got all these women now, you know, and the governor of of Arkansas Sanders, you've got Bondi, you've got Noam MTG, Bobert Mace, who, you know, are participating their auxiliary to this totally misogynistic operation.
23:05
And they're stomping on their they, they love to talk about how feminist or progressive women are miserable.
They hate motherhood, they hate children.
And and yet they are actually massively beneficiaries of the second wave of feminism.
23:23
I mean, everybody here knows and your listeners probably know.
But like what those women did our grandmothers was make women not second class citizens for the first time in history, probably in human history, you know, and they were women couldn't bank account, they couldn't, you know, that it wasn't Saudi Arabia, but it was pretty bad.
23:41
And now these women are, you know, swatting around the White House and the chief of staff is a female and they're they're auxiliary to this operation.
So your question is, what is it that what what resonates with them?
Right.
Well, at one level, what resonates is it's transactional.
23:58
I mean, the minute, you know, the Melania thing is a transactional, everything the Trump has is and Trump ISM is transactional.
It's you know, it's the well, it's yeah, but it's also power.
And if you're, if you're not seizing, you know, let's say like, you know, to Fred Trump, the dad, I mean, he, he basically when you know, he, he got rich off of the government largesse with those veterans programs when he was building his, his apartments.
24:27
This is a this is a family tradition with with if something, if you're not taking, you know, let's say you're if you if you're not cheating on your taxes, when you can get away with it, you are a chump leaving money on the table.
That's the mentality that goes with that.
24:44
These women have they have attached themselves to now, is it good for them?
Are they, you know, is this going to be a long term win?
I mean, you know, one of the things that's so fascinating is the Mar-a-lago face and how they're redoing of, of, you know, the Betty Boop femininity thing.
25:01
And I've interviewed, you know, there's a, there's a, it's online.
I interviewed a plastic surgeon in DC who's willing to talk about how, you know, the DC women used to be really conservative.
I mean, they really did get, they got work done, but they never wanted anybody to know about it.
And since Trump's come in, especially the second term, they're much more like women in Florida or Dell or Texas where you do see this sort of, they don't care if people can see from 20 feet away that they've got, you know, filler.
25:29
And, and what she calls it is it's called filler blindness, where if everyone in your circle is injected with gallons of this stuff, you stop What she, you, you, you become blind to anatomic.
And there is a very, very creepy aspect to it.
25:47
Nina, the conversation that you had, I really encourage people to check it out online because it goes beyond, you know, isn't this weird to there is a Eugenics.
This reeks of eugenics.
This looking like a particular look.
We're not talking about any look, a particular look.
And I think if they'd had this kind of quality of plastic surgery in the 1930s in Germany, we would have the same story there.
26:08
And, and maybe we did, I have got to turn to what do we do about all this because I'm just feeling buried in what a big mountain we have to climb.
But Annie, coming back to you for a second, you also write powerfully, as do others with PRA, about why authoritarians fear feminism and women's organizing and fems.
26:29
Why?
Why?
What have they got to be afraid of?
Well, research shows that across history, when women and feminist led France are out in front of a pro democracy coalition, we win.
26:45
And you know the Trump regime and authoritarians around the world, they know that.
And so we often see when authoritarians begin to take power, often as they have in in this particular wave of autocracy through elections and through the democratic process itself, we often see that women's rights and LGBTQ rights are some of the 1st to go.
27:07
And that is certainly what we're seeing in the United States with waves of attacks at the legislative level against trans rights, with the fall of Roe V.
Wade, which is a much longer term strategy.
So we're seeing this pattern unfold in the United States.
And what we also see is that authoritarians often attack feminist movements because they are fully aware of the immense power that they have.
27:29
And we see this pattern over and over again.
So to turn this into sort of a positive, we have models to look at.
So I look a lot to the experience of feminist movements in Poland, in Argentina, in Mexico, across Latin America, where I've done a lot of my own research.
27:48
In Poland, a feminist led movement inspired a lot by young feminists and young women out in the streets was able to reverse the authoritarian turn that they took there.
So the Law and Justice Party had banned abortion completely, and they poured, you know, half a million people into the streets.
28:07
And we're able to topple ultimately, the Law and Justice Party, you know, that has reversed course.
And so the lesson 1 of the lessons here for us is that our wins may not be permanent.
This is a constant fight.
But we have a model.
And I actually don't think that we have to look too far for other models.
28:24
I think we can look to the streets of Minneapolis and what is happening and to an anti authoritarian resistance that is happening right here in our streets, in our homes and our communities that is often also led, unsurprisingly by women and trans people.
28:41
You've written about that, Naomi, Caregiving being mutual aid.
I saw a story the other day about women in Minnesota and Minneapolis donating breast milk for babies that had been whose mothers had been seized.
It is extraordinary and there is clearly a counter narrative.
28:59
How are you telling it?
I think that, you know, that care, first of all, is, I think, a political act.
And so part of what's scary is the normalization and prioritization of care, the technologies of care, right?
29:17
The idea that we belong to each other, right, which is often seeded by the women in Fems in any community, right?
And so that's another reason that women in Fems are dangerous, because we tend to and are throughout history, have been able to embody and practice care in ways that subvert the political establishment.
29:41
The other thing that I've been trying to work on with partners of PRA and other parts of the kind of progressive pro democracy movement is on what we would call a pillars strategy.
So in a nutshell, and this is what we've been saying this whole conversation, the authoritarian essentially only has the power that we give it, right?
30:05
So, for example, the Christian tradition has lent its power, its spiritual authority, its human resources, its material resources to the authoritarian regime, and the regime is then able to use that as a source of its own power, right?
30:22
So what we want to do is get people to understand that the authoritarian is much weaker than they purport to be, and we have much more power than we think we have, right?
So it's about getting folk to shift their loyalties, get out of the pillar that's literally holding up authoritarianism by resourcing it with power.
30:47
Why don't you withdraw your cooperation from that pillar, right?
What if Christian communities around the country withdrew their support for implicit and explicit support for this regime?
Then the regime can no longer use the power of Christianity, the the, the texts of Christianity, rituals of Christianity to resource its own agenda.
31:11
So we are, we are getting communities of faith to engage with folks who are currently caught up in the regime and get them to shift their loyalty, to withdraw their consent and cooperation as a strategic move so that the regime has to topple.
31:34
And the religious pillar is just one.
You have also the pillars of the media and you have the pillars.
Absolutely.
Social services and caregiving.
I mean, you name it.
Absolutely.
The challenge that I've been facing, and I'd love all of your help with this really is I don't, I want to take the Epstein story seriously every time I look at it.
31:59
It is beyond blood curdling and serious and has implications in all the areas that you've described, Nina.
At the same time, it is so disempowering to to hear about this kind of business as usual amongst this whole cabal of guys that spreads into every sector of our, our, our wealth and rich and wealthy influential world.
32:25
How do you maintain your spirit, especially you, Nina, your writings are hysterically funny as well as sharp and angry.
And yet I think a lot of journalists are just kind of, well, I can't handle that.
So I'm just not going to try to integrate that into this story that I'm writing about fascism, Nina.
32:45
Well, thanks for saying that.
Yeah, I'd rather be writing about a lot of other things, but I think the, you know, the I, I disagree actually, that it's that it's like not having an effect.
33:01
I think that in in you know, his in history will judge this moment as one that you know it today in the times this the head of Paul Weiss has resigned.
I mean, the guy who first bent the knee to the disgusting, you know, legal attack on the law firm, which is.
33:20
Maybe now we know.
Maybe now he did it.
He had to quit all these guys in Europe who thought Epstein was so great who walk around these metrosexual Scandinavians who run Europe.
They're they're his buddies.
They're quitting left and right.
They just fired.
You know, there's a these people are being exposed.
33:37
It matters that they're being exposed.
They're still running things.
Larry Summers And you know what?
People looking at that men who might be inclined are like, this is bigger than the me too.
This is like, oh, you lose your job, you know, and and you don't do that.
33:52
You don't hang with sex traffickers.
So I think, yeah, you know, it's depressing because it's exposing this and it's also exposing stuff that's happened before and it's it's receding in the rearview mirror as we careen into this, this chaotic fascist situation.
34:10
But I think that it's exposing things and I, I mean, obviously it's exposing people, but I think I think it matters.
And I that's how I would answer that.
I don't, I don't love writing about it.
I and I, you know, I don't, I have an assistant who spends more time eyeballing it because my eyes literally cannot go through that those files the way.
34:29
But I think that in the end, the Trump administration gets credit for opening, I mean, you know, Biden, Mark Garland, those guys knew about all this.
And Oh no, it's an under, you know, it's under investigation.
And and, you know, it was ridiculous that they used this as their as their juice, their conspiracy theory juice and the Q Anon juice.
34:50
And it's disgusting that they managed to take what Epstein and Trump and their cabal were doing with women and literally turn that with that Q Anon.
It's like one of the great psyops in human history and turn that so that millions of people think, oh, Hillary and were eating babies and having sex with children.
35:09
It's incredible.
That is a massive operation.
That's that's a psyop.
That was something that they cooked up.
And and so, you know, I think it's all of this in the end.
There's going to be credit due that they actually opened all this and showed people like this is how it works, man.
35:27
And they didn't they did it dragging their heels.
But you know, thanks to, I mean, MTG and that that the Republican from Kentucky, who I totally disagree with on everything, they actually were pressing for it.
And you know, I think those types of people, again, to what Naomi was just talking about, those types of people are the ones who who the churches who they're who are actually maybe able to be influenced by real Christianity, which they which the rest of these people, these white Christian nationalists have totally forgotten about the teachings of Jesus.
36:03
So coming to you, Annie, a message to reporters we got to wrap up.
But to reporters who are covering what is happening right now in our lives, how would you urge them?
Apart from going to PRA, which has been there for, what, 45 years, doing excellent opposition research, among other things, has an incredible archive of material.
36:22
And all hail to Jean Hardisty.
Apart from consulting with you all, what's your advice to them about how to tell this story of now?
Well, I think that, you know, just to to return to the question about Epstein and the Epstein files and this scandal of sexual violence that we're seeing.
36:42
I think one of the things that this tells us is that, you know, sexual violence and sexism is really naturalized and taken for granted in our broader culture.
And that is something that has to change.
And so we have many examples, both in our own history as well as around the world to look to.
37:00
And one of them, as a scholar of Latin America and Latin American feminist movements that I'm inspired by, is the way that Latin American feminist movements have named femicide, for example, and have made sexual violence against women the basis of their mass organizing.
37:17
And we have a lot of potential to do the same thing.
I think that the Women's March is leading the charge in in that regard and many organizations as well around the United States.
But we need to tell more of those stories.
There are many stories of action that are happening of of organizing that is both effective and moving.
37:36
And again, I want to return to the streets of Minneapolis and, and also just to the streets of Chicago, where we also before Minneapolis, witnessed A militarized masculine, masculinist force of immigration agents on our streets engaging in brutal force, right?
37:55
And being met with a an immense and loving resistance that again, is led by women, queer and trans people.
And those are inspiring stories of standing up to authoritarianism.
38:11
But I think that journalists can tell there is so much incredible organizing going on and the building of lasting, enduring networks.
That is what is going to help us be able to reverse this authoritarian breakthrough and consolidation that I think we need to be telling those stories.
38:26
There is a vast frontline, and I guess I have to concede that 'MTG' Marjorie Taylor Green is part of it.
But I'm much more excited about Letitia James, attorney general of New York, and reporters like Georgia Fort in Minneapolis as a frontline of defense right now and of offense, of assertive, of action.
38:47
Naomi, we always end these conversations by saying what do we think is the story the future will tell of this moment?
Those characters will be front and center of my story.
But what about yours?
What what do you think is the the story, the future?
39:03
I don't know, 2550, a hundred years from now, We'll, we'll, what will they say about us?
Well, you know, this whole conversation, I've been thinking a lot about what festering wounds reap, right?
What Nina and Annie have been saying is that this is a moment.
39:23
This is an apocalyptic moment.
The truest sense of the word apocalypse is revelation, right?
This these political moments reveal the extent to which we have wounds that we did not tend to, that have not fully healed, that are just reopening and hemorrhaging all over us, right?
39:44
We're seeing that both intra community like, whoa, we, we haven't built the kind of infrastructure we need to be able to organize and mobilize, right?
We don't know who our neighbors are, right?
We don't know, right?
So we're seeing the intra community and we're seeing it as a nation, right?
40:01
So I think history will look back and say this is a cautionary tale of what happens when wounds never heal.
And in fact, when they are denied, right?
Part of what we're we're dealing with is the denial.
40:18
That there's a problem, that there is 'woundedness' that needs to be addressed.
And so, you know, for me, you know, I'm thinking about this both in terms of strategy and in terms of the spiritual nature of the of this, of this moment, right?
40:34
Where we have, we have morally bankrupt leaders projecting their own frailties and fragilities onto us and embedding that into policy, right?
These are folk who are empty, right?
40:52
And when we have empty leaders, we have violence, period.
And so, you know, I hope that history will say we take seriously this cautionary tale.
And we're going to, in the new age of the United States, attend to the loss, the magnitude of the wound, so that we don't find ourselves here 50 years from now, because evil will shapeshift.
41:23
What about you, Annie?
How would you answer that question?
What will the future say about us?
Well, I hope that the future will say that we rose to the challenge, that we recognize what is happening around us early enough and act acted swiftly enough using the examples that we have.
41:41
Because we have done this before.
And the stories that we tell about, you know, the democratic transitions after World War 2 and the democratic transitions after the military dictatorships that gripped the world in the mid 20th century, The stories that we tell about that, or that we went through processes of democratization, we expanded gender justice and other forms of justice, racial justice, etcetera.
42:07
And, you know, we have not yet achieved the world that we, I think all here hope to achieve, one that is multiracial, feminist, pluralist and democratic.
But I hope that the story that we tell is that we rose to that challenge and we were able to reach towards that.
What do you think, Nina?
I mean, I agree with both of, of the other speakers here, but I, I think the backlash is, you know, Obama got elected in 2008 and it kicked off what I call Obama derangement syndrome among a minority of Americans who just couldn't deal with the fact that a black American have been elected to the White House. In the MAGA movement
42:41
it is a racial, it's a response to, to race.
And it's, I mean, really the white nationalist Christian churches are part of this.
And, and I think that history will judge, you know, again, the open wound of of how this country treated enslaved black people is yes, it's never.
42:59
And, and these people are reacting to that.
And the image that I wrote about a couple weeks ago when I talked about Obama Derangement Syndrome is those 2-3 guys.
It's the saddest image of the even with the murders in ice.
I mean, it's not as sad as the murders, but to see the three, the back of three white men in bleak, freezing cold Philadelphia on a day chiseling away at those little plaques that have been put up outside George Washington's home.
43:25
Just wouldn't that would have made a few.
It's on the way to the Liberty Bell.
You had to pass it it Maybe if you read it, you would think about those nine people that they talked about who were enslaved Africans with.
And just to think for a minute, you know what?
43:41
Those people didn't have liberty.
And they're like chiseling those things off.
And it's the back is to the camera.
It's a video.
And you, I just felt like, are they proud?
Are they sad that they have to do that because they're National Park workers?
I mean, I would think they were white.
But like, it's just so sad.
43:57
Like, we have to erase this.
So, yeah, history will judge that we're going through this convulsion of something that's not solved.
And it's not just an open wound.
It is the open wound of of this country's origins in slavery.
But it's also this, this sickness of, you know, a subgroup of, of people here who just can't deal with the multiracial society.
44:22
We live it.
We've been with, we've had them with us always and they didn't go away, as it turns out, and we still have work to do.
Thank you all.
My vision is that those plaques are all being kept somewhere and, and they will all come back.
Naomi, Nina and Annie, I really appreciate you being with us here today.
44:40
Thanks for your time and for your thinking on this.
Thank you.
You're welcome and thank you.
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44:58
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