Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch, and welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.

And today we're going to talk about, I think, a very pressing and relevant topic, the role of pop culture in resistance.

And, Alex, we are living in times where resistance is perhaps a life skill, perhaps the essence of the democratic existential angst of the moment we're in.

I use these titles kind of as aspirations, maybe as potential frames for our conversation, but I also try to create three pillars for every guest to kind of weave the conversation in and with you, Alex, I chose Pop Culture, Inclusivity and Resistance because in looking at your writing, I felt that they were three that spoke to Metaviews and what we were interested in and some of the fantastic work that I think you're engaged in.

But we like to start every episode of Metaviews with the news, and this is partly to promote our own newsletter.

And we've got an issue today about the Cash Patel confirmation hearings.

And we're sort of warning that it could be the return of cointelpro, the counterintelligence program that basically had the FBI as a political police in addition to law enforcement.

We're not endorsing that idea.

It's more like, heads up, everybody.

This is some scary shit.

But really, Alex, our goal in the news segment is to turn to our guest and say, what are you looking at in this hellscape of a news cycle that we find ourselves in?

And I'm not saying that you have to pick the elements that are on fire.

You could look for more enlightening news, personal news, industry news.

Really.

This is, on an intuitive level, our desire to kind of get a sense of what the guest is looking at under the guise of what should our audience know about?

What should we be looking at in terms of this overwhelming moment in world history?

Yeah, thank you so much.

That's a great question.

As a transgender American, I've been focusing a lot on that, particularly the executive orders that the Trump administration has been signing.

I think a recent one barred young people defined as 19 and younger are just under the age of 19 from accessing gender affirming care if they're using Medicaid or Medicare.

That's very concerning.

There's been a series of those executive orders relating to schools and education.

And that's sort of been my.

Not my focus in terms of the blog, because I'm a culture writer, but in terms of the news that I have been glued to the screen with, that I've been focused on that so much so that's sort of where I am from a news perspective.

Well.

And what I want to get into later is kind of the politics of dehumanization that this regime really seems to be grinding, but with the caveat that you're not a lawyer.

Have you read about the constitutionality of some of these policies targeting both gender and gender issues and trans people?

Because it strikes me that this obviously is going to be a battle in the courts.

All of this stuff, I assume, is going to be battled in the courts.

And it seems a lot of these executive orders kind of don't like.

They don't factor the Constitution into their logic.

Do you have a sense of whether that's true when it comes to these notions of gender identity and affirming the right of trans people to exist?

Yeah, it's a really difficult question.

As you said, I'm not a lawyer.

I think when it comes to the law, there's competing different arguments.

For a long time with the conservative side of the Supreme Court, the argument has been on something called, like, originalism, which has been the best I can describe it, is, is this what the framers of the Constitution had intended when they were writing this language?

And does the law sort of supersede that original argumentation?

However, that's a very subjective argument.

Right.

Trying to get into the minds of what people thought hundreds of years ago is you can stretch history to sort of say whatever you want.

So in terms of the constitutionality, the Court is currently conservative, and if they will find an argument that appeals to that, I don't think that it really matters, but sort of aligned, written.

Sure, sure.

And that may be just a practical assessment that the judiciary may not be on our side, so we may have to factor in other elements to, you know, ensure that our cause is successful.

That does, however, bring me to the second segment we have on every episode, which we call WTF or what's the Future?

Although the double entendre is very deliberate.

And this is where, when I was first scouting you out as a guest, I was incredibly impressed with your post in January on your Medium profile where you were laying out your 2025 predictions, which by all means you don't have to repeat here.

People can go to your fantastic Medium site.

But nonetheless, I was very much impressed with your foresight, with kind of how you see the future.

So this segment's really designed, again, on an intuitive level to get the guest to say what' on your event horizon, what do you think we should be looking at?

And this is where not only is the floor yours.

But feel free to hit multiple subjects given that you've already thought about this stuff to a certain extent.

Yeah, thank you so much.

And yeah, I did write about this in January.

I try to do a list of predictions every year on my blog.

Alex has appeared.

So sort of segueing or circling back to what we were talking about this year.

I very much anticipate that trans rights will sort of degrade further as the Supreme Court heard a case.

I think it was like the US versus scoredi, which is about a 10C law about gender affirming care.

And I very expect this coming summer for the Supreme Court to sort of roll that state's do have the ability to ban gender affirming care and that's a sort of open the floodgates this year for more regressive laws overall with that issue in particular.

I also expect us to sort of see it move from focusing on children in particular with schools and education and sports to adults.

We're sort of already seeing that with the military with the most recent executive order, as well as banning 18 year olds who have Medicare and Medicaid from accessing gender affirming care.

But I would just tell people to expect the sort of theater of war is a really polarizing way to frame it, but to expect the scope to expand to not just trans children, but to trans adults increasingly.

So that's.

That's where I am with that issue.

There's.

Although let me quickly respond and say I think theater of war is alarming but apt, right?

Because it is.

They are trying to challenge the existence of trans people, right?

Not just one's identity, but one's status within a society.

So it is a theater of war.

I think that language isn't chosen by those who are defending themselves.

It's chosen by the aggressors.

It's chosen by the attackers.

I absolutely agree.

It's.

We've been calling this a culture war for my entire adult life and trans people are certainly at the center of that culture war that has been used as a wedge issue to push for other things.

I would say that the people on the front lines and the people that I would watch out for in this upcoming year are of course trans people.

I would also watch out for migrants like we are seeing that with the most recent ICE raids.

I would expect there to be some sort of legal justification to be tried repeatedly this year until something works.

I remember during the first Trump term logic that was used was sort of using the public emergency of COVID to prevent people from coming inside the country.

The political situation has around Covid has changed, but that doesn't mean that some new legal argument will emerge.

And it's in fact already emerging within the Trump administration.

I'd also keep an eye out on prisoners.

We're already seeing that that intersects with all the other things that we're talking about, particularly with trans people.

I believe there was a recent Trump executive order talking about trans people have to be transferred to the prison that aligns with their like original gender on their birth certificate.

So I expect that to sort of degrade as well.

So I would, it's all not the most optimistic, but I would keep an eye on, on those three pillars this coming year, migrants, prisoners and trans people, because that's where I accept the most regressive action to happen this year.

And I think to your point, we have to face these challenges and kind of recognize the threats.

And what I think you quite accurately described are the most vulnerable and the most marginalized.

And they will be the first that this regime tries to dehumanize and tries to go after, but certainly not the last.

In yesterday's episode, we actually came up with a line of either you leave your comfort zone or fascism will take that comfort zone for you.

In terms of the challenges that we collectively face.

And the through line I felt you described there that I want to highlight only because it's another recurring theme for us is the for profit prison industry.

Because when you kind of do the math on the detentions, you do the math unto your point, kind of, you know, sort of robbing people of their, of their trans identity and forcing them into whatever their birth gender was.

Again, certain prisons are probably going to excel at that level of dehumanization.

And I wouldn't be surprised if it was the private prison industry because again, I just assume with this government that there's always an angle, right?

There's always a take in terms of some aspect to corporate power.

We digress.

But before we move on into the feature conversation, and again, this goes to how I was impressed by your predictions as well as your humility.

Where to your point, you look at your past year's predictions, where do you get either your inspiration from that or perhaps a more appropriate word, where do you get your discipline?

Because these are where a lot of, especially when you look at the technology world, a lot of predictions, quite frankly, aren't worth the ink that was used to make them.

And of course, no ink is involved anymore.

Where do you get your bonafides?

And this is me again, Just sharing respect in terms of really admiring the work that you're doing in that regard.

I really appreciate that.

So I was really taken by Cory Doctorow and they suggested years ago, and I think they continue to suggest to use an RSS feed for curating your news, to not rely algorithmically on how you are taking information.

I use News Blur.

They cost a couple of dollars a month.

I also, I don't think I can suggest this legally, but there are a lot of sites out there that allow you to access journals and scientific papers for free that I am also consuming a lot.

So it's.

I find that that is sort of what I'm trying to do.

I try to like keep a digital health or like a digital gut biome almost to try to make sure that I'm consuming as little misinformation as possible.

It doesn't always work like I consume misinformation all the time.

And that's why corrections are constantly coming up on my blog, because I am wrong consistently.

And you definitely are not incentivized with the current structure of like social media to admit when you're wrong and to sort of double check your research.

So me personally, I would just advise people to avoid algorithmic feeds as much as possible.

I understand that people have jobs that may prevent them from doing that entirely, and that's completely understandable.

And friends that you communicate, this is not me telling you to go cold turkey, but particularly with news, I cannot endorse enough Cory Doctorow's suggestion to get an rssp.

And that is, I think, a really brilliant methodology because to your point, you get to diversify your sources, you get to manage your topics.

But with the RSS feed, you're also getting this stuff when it happens.

So you're also not relying upon the algorithm to filter it in terms of the sources or news feeds you have.

And your point about scholarly research, it's a crime against humanity that they put that stuff behind paywalls.

Quite frankly, all knowledge should be free.

And with that said, Alex, I'm going to ask you to indulge me in running this commercial only because I haven't actually yet run it in a show I've had with a guest.

And it's something I'm working on as part of a future trend.

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Now, I'm not sure if you were able to hear the audio there, Alex, because I don't think I pump it back.

But if not, I definitely encourage you to listen to this after to hear the audio, because, again, it's something I'm working on in terms of these little PSAs for the tools we need to survive this moment.

Now, as part of our feature conversation, I wanted to start with pop culture, because I really feel that pop culture is a very politically powerful medium to engage people on radical issues, to engage people on political issues, cultural issues.

And I really love the way that you write about pop culture.

So I'm curious, again, your answer when I said, hey, how are you able to predict the future so well?

Was really spot on.

So, again, a kind of more general question of what attracts you to pop culture.

I think that pop culture is a site of struggle in our society, and a lot of people see it as this sort of ancillary distraction.

And in some ways, it is a distraction.

In.

In some ways, media is a form of escapism that especially more, I would say mainstream corporate media, such as the mcu, a lot of Disney movies, these are not playing with very complex ideas, but they are widely exposed.

And they.

The ideas that they present are being debated and they are being interpreted by all of our society, and then those are being repackaged to say other political things.

And all of that word salad essentially means that the art in pop culture affects how we think and how we see the world.

And then we then take those messages and we use them to act in the real world.

And it's a conversation.

It is both a give and take.

So I see talk culture as something that's very not sort of secondary.

I think there's a reason why the culture war that we've experienced over the last decade and the right in particular has used media as a jumping off point to radicalize people.

Like I started all the way back with Gamergate and people piling on Anita Sarpesian and other women game journalists and using that to talk about far right politics.

Stephen Bannon started using World of Warcraft forums to radicalize people.

And that thread has never died.

It is continue to this day.

And let's just reiterate that point because I agree with you 100%.

I feel that our contemporary fascist movement kind of had its.

Not its conception, but its formative period in Gamergate because Gamergate was a combination of, as I keep describing, the politics of dehumanization, the politics of othering, combined with this kind of young male fascist energy.

Right.

Based on this righteous sense in their mind.

Correct me if I'm wrong, it was kind of fairness in video games or accuracy in video game reporting.

I never understood the kind of fascist logic, but the terror that they were able to unleash against their targets I assume was intoxicating for them, for the people who were involved in this.

I'm curious to hear more of your analysis on the connection between Gamergate and this current moment because I think it's a brilliant insight.

Thank you.

It is certainly not an original insight on my part.

I think that there are a lot of creators that have been harping on this for such a long time, including Anita Sarkeesian, who I think still has a blog called Feminist Frequency.

But it's been a while since I've been on that side of the Internet.

I, I think that you were correct.

I think that there is this tendency, and this isn't just with like conservatives, but this is with everyone, to they have a rhetorical argument and your actual thing that your actions are saying.

So with Gamergate, they're talking about fairness in video games.

And you see that now with the culture war too, where they're talking about fairness with sports, about protecting women, with trans issues and so forth, about historical accuracy in Lord of the Rings and all of these things.

It is a disproportionate reaction to respond to a piece of media and say, oh, it is not that historically accurate.

Which, yeah, most films are, even ones that use history are not that historically accurate.

And then to dogpile and to harass and to dock someone.

Right.

I think that those, those arguments that you mentioned are, have and always have been a justification, a sort of Rationalization underpinning disgust.

Yeah.

Or underpinning violence.

Right.

Like.

Cause I think for.

Especially if you think about.

And again, I'm a gamer.

I'm really excited about the release of Civ 7 in less than two weeks.

But there is a sub faction, there is a subculture within the larger gaming pop culture that is driven by violence, whether that's video game violence or real world violence.

And Gamergate was an opportunity to express that.

And whether that's just in the form of verbal violence, and I shouldn't say just because it is still violence or to your point about.

But the doxing and the intimidation and the swatting, that can often occur.

It is interesting to see how those tactics were successful and to your point, how the likes of Steve Bannon were kind of there watching it, learning from it.

We previously here on Metaviews, sort of looked at the concept of mimetic nationalism and the way in which these new nationalist movements use memes as part of the dog whistles, as part of the mobilizing, as part of the communicating their values with that kind of Pepe the Frog dual meaning where insiders sort of know what's going on, but parents and partners may not.

Right.

And that's part of the secret society of it.

How do you, as a pop culture critic, a pop culture writer, a pop culture participant, how do you kind of break that down and communicate that to people who are not as savvy as yourself, are not as wise as yourself?

Because it strikes me that the other lesson I took from Gamergate was that we are losing a lot of young people who we shouldn't be, who we could be bringing back to the side of empathy and compassion and common sense.

But there aren't enough people like Anita Sarkeesian.

Right.

I mean, she did fight.

She was there.

Took a lot of flak and damage as a result, but did convert it into a career, a very sustainable career in terms of feminist frequency.

Had really good crowdfunding.

I'm curious how you do that and how you would encourage others because you are clearly yourself kind of at the front lines and saying, as a trans person, I ain't gonna go away quietly.

I'm here and I'm gonna communicate my ideas.

Alexhasopinions.com so I'm curious again about your methodology, your spirit, your politics when it comes to these things.

That's a wonderful question.

I think that I have tried to be authentic, and I know that's sort of like a dangerous word because authenticity is often a performance in of itself that A lot of people use to sort of push not so great messages, but what I mean by authenticity particularly is that I am trying to live by my ethics.

I'm trying to put out ideas that I can stand behind, and if I no longer stand behind them, I try to issue retraction.

I disagree with myself.

I think that is all you can sort of do.

And that's not to be dismissive, because that's a lot.

It's very hard to live by your ethics and sometimes we can't because we have to make sacrifices to exist in society to be safe.

There's all sorts of good reasons for that, and I'm not judging anyone for making those sacrifices.

But that is what I'm trying to do, and it is hard sometimes.

I by no means have received the flack that our neatest Ephesian has, but I still receive death threats and all sorts of vile things.

I'm not going to go into the specifics, but have done a lot to take care of my digital security.

And that's sort of the world that we're living on.

I think that if someone is trying to do this work, I would encourage them to think seriously your impact online to.

I really like the site.

Just delete me.

Which, forgive me if this is a tangent, but there's a lot of data brokers on your.

On the Internet and your information is constantly being sold and repackaged on places like white pages and411.com or something like that.

And they can legally do this and you can request for them to take the information down, but it is an ongoing process.

So you can pay sites to automatically take the information down on a periodic basis to create digital help.

And that's sort of one method to do that.

The reason why I'm going to like, how do.

What do people have to do?

And that's sort of something you have to think about when you're sort of doing this work, is you have to think about how everything that you say on the Internet can be weaponized, not only against you, but against people in your sphere of influence.

If you're going to be engaging with people on the right, don't post pictures of your family on Instagram.

Don't do, don't do any of that.

You need, you need to be very careful.

Well, and to your point, I mean, even cybersecurity is based on leveraging links of trust, right?

Of sending an email as if it's Alex to all of Alex's friends saying, this is really important.

You got to click on this again, cointelpro tactics.

This is the kind of stuff we almost have to anticipate.

But you said two things there that I want to tease out a bit, and one I acknowledge at the same time that there is a performative side to authenticity that on a humility level, we have to acknowledge.

But you're also trying to describe a humanization which is the antidote to dehumanizing, in that the humans aren't perfect.

We make mistakes, we make errors.

And you're trying to present that image of yourself as a human rather than the kind of stereotypes that I think our opponents really try to rely on.

But that also involves a kind of vulnerability, like acknowledging you were wrong is to be vulnerable.

And I think both of those engender trust.

I think they both cultivate a kind of trust that we need to be doing versus our opponents who cultivate fear and cultivate distrust as the way in which they try to accomplish this.

So I say this to kind of segue to the inclusivity piece because logically, if we're talking about a politics of dehumanization or a politics of constantly othering people, to go back to your point about immigrants and trans folks and prisoners as being those who are initially going to be targeted, then it initially suggests that we as a society should respond inclusively to, you know, to these constituents, to these communities as well as others.

Because that is, I think, what our enemies are hoping we don't do.

Right?

They want people to fall into fear.

They want people to embrace the xenophobia of their kind of worldview.

So, Ed, feel free to keep this within the thread of pop culture, but I'm curious what your approach is to inclusivity and how you try to, either in your own professional life or even your own political view, how you try to foster that notion of inclusivity so that it acts as the antidote to the kind of fear based xenophobia that these fascists are peddling, unfortunately.

So effectively.

That's a fantastic question, because it's hard to.

Inclusivity is a conversation with many different people.

So one person cannot be inclusive.

How to be inclusive is that you are engaging and interacting with many different people and you are in conversation with them.

So I try to talk to many people.

I try to engage in local activism in my local activist communities, and I try to create spaces for visions that are just not my own.

I run a speculative fiction publication where people submit stories about better futures and it's their vision of the future, it isn't mine.

So I think that is very important.

I think there's a tendency in our society to make everything into a product and to think of inclusivity as something that you can buy.

If I just read the right book, if I just say the right words and know the right history and donate to the right nonprofits, I will be inclusive.

But again, that's not how inclusivity works.

You need to engage in your community.

You need to engage with the people that are around you.

So if we're talking specifically about trans people are.

Even if it's something as specific as pop culture, trans people and learning what they think.

Yes, I'm a trans blogger.

I exist.

I'm on Alex's opinions, but I would also seek out as many opinions as possible and see what their solutions are and what they need help in.

Right.

And that's how I would be inclusive.

I hope that answered your question.

It did, in part, because you addressed the paradox I was kind of hoping you would hit on, which is, you're correct in asserting that it is inherently an idea within the context of community, not within an individual.

But I think individuals make excuses and put obstacles in their way when they could be engaging their community in a more vulnerable manner.

And I think the answer you gave was not so much ideology, but methodology.

Right.

Talk to your community.

Right.

Engage people.

We've had other guests kind of answer that question with, do a lot of listening and learn how to be a better listener.

But let me throw a kind of curveball as a follow up, and I mean this within the larger rubric of fascists don't count.

Right.

That generally speaking, the best response to a fascist is to punch them in the face.

So disqualifying fascists, how would you think about fostering a kind of culture of inclusivity that involved people who politically you have a lot of issues with or that you would find difficulty with.

And I say this because you strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't shy away from such a situation or such a challenge, but instead understand that inclusivity isn't just about including the people we like, but also dealing with the people who we might have issues with.

For good reason.

Exactly.

That's.

That's something that I think people sort of misidentify a lot when it comes to building community is exactly what you said.

Building relationships with what?

With people that you like.

When really it's people that you have a common interest with and have a desire for maybe something like safety or comfort in a geographic location or a shared identity.

So a common Advice that people give is to talk to your neighbors, right?

They say, if you want to develop community, knock on your neighbor's door, ask them how they're doing, and learn about them.

And this is great advice.

I think people should do this.

At the same time, however, this is just a proxy for telling you to develop relationships with people who are near you geographically.

And the problem with this advice is that sometimes you don't click with your neighbor, right?

Like what we're talking about.

Like, sometimes they're annoying, or they just have a busy schedule, or you just don't think you're set.

So with building community specifically, find a common interest that unites you and focus on those specifics.

And it does not matter if you like the person in that situation.

So I think a common one that people throw around a lot is disaster prep, right?

When a disaster hits your area, there needs to be a certain level of coordination.

And sometimes you're going to need your neighbors and the people in your area.

Sometimes it's as simple as, like, hey, there's a bunch of old people in our neighbor, in our area, in our neighborhood that we want to check in on to make sure that they can get out of the area safely.

Do you want apologies about that?

Do you want to divide this work up so we can make sure that the people who are in our community, we're caring for?

And I think that that's sort of a game, right?

The game is finding a shared purpose that does not have to do with charisma and likability.

That is fantastic advice.

And your disaster prep, I think, is really relevant and pertinent, given the climate volatility that we're all collectively facing and we face kind of equally.

That does, I think, create a kind of solidarity through osmosis rather than explicit politics of, say, unionizing the workplace.

I personally would never endorse people to knock on their neighbor's door, go three doors down, use a buffer.

So that way, if it is someone you don't like, you're not stuck beside them moving forward.

I want to bring us now to resistance, because you said something early on which has kind of been sticking in my head, partly because I think it's prescient, but also partly because maybe it provides a good way for us to talk about resistance, which is how they start with the trans kids, and now they're going after the trans adults.

And you mentioned the military.

And I thought, you know what?

They won't just limit it to the military.

They'll go after the civil service, right?

They'll go after the people in the federal workforce just because they can.

Right.

As a terror tactic to try to intimidate people.

So where, and this is obviously a political question, where do you see the role of resistance in dealing with such an unjust regime?

Especially policies that are not just dehumanizing, but ought to be opposed and resisted just on principle?

Right.

Because we can't allow these precedents to take hold, let alone a culture to form around them.

So given that we've been talking pop culture, given that we've been talking inclusivity, I'm not throwing resistance out of context.

I mean it within the context of what we've described, been describing.

How do you envision it?

What do you see?

What do you kind of encourage people to be contemplating as we sort of move further into this very contentious period?

Wonderful question.

There are so many ways and directions that I think people can go there in terms of pop culture.

This may sound obvious, but support creators and artists that are putting out subversive work, who are putting out ideas and concepts that would be turned into an MCU movie, that challenge the culture in some ways, because even if those ideas don't spread to everyone, they will impact a subset of people that will then go on to impact another subset of people that will have ripples.

So in terms of that, I think it's very important to make sure that we are also trying to preserve our culture, that we are, like, not just seeding the culture war to the right and going, oh, big companies, they're going to do what they do.

We shouldn't be concerned.

We need to fight only in the realm of the material.

Right.

Like, reconnect from the information ecosystem and just focus on, like, feeding people.

Which.

Feeding people is great.

People should definitely be people.

I think we should see ground anywhere.

Yeah.

So a culture in particular, I think that if you think that a movie comes out and it looks like it has a fascist message, you should make us think about that.

If you don't like the representation of something, you should comment on it.

And in the conversation, in the interplay, that conversation, solutions will come up and it will lead to other action.

So that's what I would say with pop culture specifically in terms of.

You.

You mentioned something about, like, almost like a lavender scare 2.0 coming up.

Which you mean like COINTELPRO, like the.

The.

Like the political.

The.

Using the FBI as political oppression.

Right.

As political intimidation, as political surveillance.

Right.

And using the FBI to target journalists and target activists and engage in dirty tricks.

Oh, understood.

So I was.

So, yes, that's gonna happen.

What I was referring to is you said that the.

The Trump administration was going to target federal workers.

Yes, sorry, the 2.0.

Yeah, the 2.0 threw me off.

Yes, absolutely.

So there was something in the 50s called the lavender scare, which was gay people were purged from the federal executive and all those offices and stuff.

And it was tied to the Red Scare, Right, in terms of, you know, thinking that it would be a way to leverage them as communist spies, that because their, you know, sexuality was different.

That all of a sudden.

And of course, there were a lot of communist sympathizers for that reason, but I get the point of lavender now.

Please continue.

So, for those people, specifically for the ones that can't resign, for the ones that sort of have to be more hidden for a variety of reasons, I would read up on the concept of malicious compliance, the idea of complying in the most technical and bureaucratic way possible because laws and regulations require being adaptable, and they require that a certain level.

You ignore them because they don't rely on every circumstance.

So if you want to, quote, unquote, resist, and you're in that position, I would follow the letter of the law in the most annoying and technical way possible.

So if someone is asking you to do something, make sure that they have the particular paperwork, and if they don't have the particular paperwork, void it and start the process over.

That's.

That's the sort of thing I would look at, which may seem very petty, but I think it's sort of necessary.

Well, I think it's actually quite profound in terms of the ability to sort of slow the machinery of the state to a halt as a literal protest against the illegitimacy of the executive.

I smiled only because the subreddit malicious compliance is very entertaining and could be a source of inspiration.

I'm curious also, on that point, as you were describing, that I was sort of imagining, because you made another point I want to quickly affirm, which is, we can't neglect the cultural.

Obviously, the material comes to the forefront when people are being detained, when the economy goes to shit, when hunger and housing become crucial issues.

Yes, absolutely.

The material is necessary, but the cultural is intrinsic as part of it.

You can't separate them.

And if we cede the culture war, if we cede the cultural battlegrounds, we will lose everything.

So that provokes me to kind of ask you to speculate on what you may already be practicing, but I want you to kind of spell out for our audience and for future listeners, what would you think of as a kind of pop culture guerrilla tactic?

Because I felt you were alluding to it in like, if a fascist movie comes out, make a stink.

If a radical creator is providing an alternative vision, support them, amplify them.

Do you want to kind of give voice or give word to the idea of a guerrilla pop culture within a larger fascist culture?

Yes.

So there are several things that you can do.

And I will of course, never encourage anyone to break the law.

I just want to say that objectively, there are sites that consume media for free.

And if there is sort of a fascist media, and for whatever reason, you need to consume it for the purposes of review for anything like that, I would maybe not spend money on it.

I would.

The right has had this significant impact on this tactic of review, bombing media that they consider woke and tanking the media and causing sort of like a scene on it.

Right.

Whether it's the Little Mermaid or something, we can do the same thing.

Especially since the right is now trying to jumpstart its own media apparatuses with things like the Daily Wire, which are now putting out their own movies and comedy specials and TV shows.

There's this tired ecosystem the right has spent the last decade building.

And not just like think tanks, like cultural like ecosystem that they've built.

They saw the gains that we were making in the culture and they replicated it and they created their own alternative structure.

But we can sort of use some of the tactics that they use to jumpstart their immediate ecosystem.

Again, review bombing is one of those tactics, sort of engaging in a.

Something that like a lot of media people will do is that they will have a staggered conversation where they will talk about a movie or something, like the Quartering talks about, which is a far right YouTube channel, talks about the Little Mermaid and they reference another video that someone else did and that brings to that person.

And then pretty soon you have a web of eyeballs that are going across this entire network.

See, again, I think this is Gamergate legacy, that the right is better at link solidarity than the left.

Right, the right is better at threading that intertextual, that interstitial conversation amongst all of them and distributing the attention versus the left is so scared of the right's response that we don't think about creating a similar type of structure, a similar type of institutional capacity.

I agree.

I also think that I can only speak for leftist organizing within the United States and sort of like cultural critics within the United States.

We're afraid of each other.

Yeah, we.

We don't have a lot of money.

Right.

And a lot of the stuff that we do have is prestige.

It's cultural prestige.

Right.

We develop networks with other influencers and other cultural critics and other people, and that sort of is our capital.

And that's very easy to take away.

And I think a lot of our cultural, sort of like people on the left are terrified of each other.

Yeah.

In the way that the right is not.

I don't think Ben Shapiro is terrified about alienating his relationship with Steven Crowder.

I think that there's enough money and security in the right media ecosystem where it doesn't matter if there are disagreements.

While I think that in the left, sort of, these relationships are everything.

I agree with your point, especially the kind of political, economic dynamics of it.

But I think on a cultural level, the obvious kind of framing, to me, that might help wake the left up to.

I won't say the moment.

I think we all know the fucking moment we're in.

But to wake up to the attitude shift, we need to say is the right's not afraid because their methodology is fear.

Like, they're using fear as the primary basis for their media engine.

And that gives them an arrogance not to be afraid versus we have succumbed to their fear machine.

And not to be cliche, but our emotional equivalent is love.

Right.

That we should be using love as the engine of our movement.

And that's not to dispense with rage and anger and other legitimate emotions, but I think the vulnerability and authenticity that is required to do programming and politics around love is difficult when you're in a state of fear.

It's difficult when you feel isolated.

It's difficult, to your point about the economics, when you feel that you're kind of precarious there.

And I will say, because you are, as the guest, of course, not wanting to put yourself into a difficult situation.

So this is where we say, for the record, Alex has absolutely, clearly, multiple times in this interview upheld the rule of law and made sure to not encourage people to break the rule of law.

But I will do so only to say that I've often thought, as an example, to go to some of the most marginalized people in our society.

I've often thought that the laws that govern people with disabilities and the laws that inhibit the lives of people with disabilities makes me believe that people with disabilities should be outlaws, rightfully so, at a certain point when your life is being squashed by the laws that are literally meant to empower you, that you have a moral obligation to be an outlaw.

And I fear that that is gonna be the case for trans people, if not now, very soon, where it almost becomes a moral obligation to be an outlaw, because that's the only way that you can be a trans person in the United States, you know, given some of the absurd and draconian laws that are out there.

Again, I don't want you to comment on that because I don't wanna get you into any legal trouble.

But this is where we come to the last and sometimes favorite segment of every Meta Views episode, which is the shoutouts.

Right.

Because if we are building solidarity, if we're building networks of collaboration, then I think it's important to share the love, to shout out other creators that you think we should be checking out, other intellectuals that you think we should be reading, or just people that you think are really fucking cool.

And you want the Metaviews audience to know more about.

Yes, I.

I do have a project that I would love to plug in that regard.

I said earlier that I was the editor of this fiction publication called after the Storm magazine.

I don't own it or anything.

We're a writers collective.

Everyone's sort of working on that project for free.

But we do pay our writers.

And I want to shout that out because we've received submissions all over the world of people imagining better futures.

And I think that hope is really important in a moment like this.

I think, oh, there's so many good people in the world I love.

Sorry, before we move on, what was the URL that people can find?

Oh, after the storemagazine.com.

Okay, thank you.

So there's that.

We just released her most recent issue, and a lot of food for thought in there.

I really like Margaret Killjoy as an author.

If anyone has seen her work, I think she puts out really great fiction that also tries to imagine better futures.

She's also.

Which is strange with her name because she's called Killjoy, but she's an optimist.

Like, she's a radical optimist.

So if you need Hope in that sort of regard, she's a great person to check out.

There's so many people if.

Well, and this, again, like most of our answers, is meant to be intuitive.

So we'll go with the two you've had because I want to give you an opportunity to let the audience know where they can find more about you.

Yeah.

So I am on alexsopinions.com I.

My main.

This is my backup site.

My main site is Medium, which you can also find at Alex's Opinions I back up my website a little less frequency frequently, as you can see, because the last things were in December.

So I'm on there.

I'm on Instagram as Alex has opinions.

You can also find me again editing afterthestoremagazine.com too, if you have fiction you want to submit to me.

Right on.

This has been a fantastic conversation.

Alex, I would love to have you back, especially given that, as I like to say, the light at the end of this tunnel is there, but the tunnel may be long before we get to that light.

So I would certainly enjoy having you back to kind of comment on what's happening in American politics.

And again, the role of pop culture, the role of fiction in terms of dealing with that.

Is that something you'd be up for?

Of course.

This was a fantastic conversation.

Right on.

Right on.

Thank you very much.

And I concur with Alex.

This has been a very fantastic conversation.

We're on a bit of a hot streak.

We've had some really amazing episodes.

Episodes, really amazing guests.

I hope that that streak could keep going because we need this kind of hope.

We need this kind of inspiration to stand up to the fascists and tell them to off.

So this has been another meta views.

You can find us on all the socials, but more importantly on your favorite podcast platform.

And we're going to keep pumping out the radical anti fascist message until either the Internet runs out or we get all locked up.

So until that happens, maybe we'll come back to abolishing prisons in a future episode.

But until then, thanks again and we hope to see you all soon.