Post "MAGA x DOGE, So Far (w/ John Ganz)" by "Know Your Enemy"

JDF

Shout out to Suckert / Malaparte

Mark K

If I had been a Heathen, I’d have praised the purple vine, My slaves should dig the vineyards, And I would drink the wine. But Higgins is a Heathen, And his slaves grow lean and grey, That he may drink some tepid milk Exactly twice a day... Now who that runs can read it, The riddle that I write, Of why this poor old sinner, Should sin without delight- But I, I cannot read it (Although I run and run), Of them that do not have the faith, And will not have the fun. -- G.K. Chesterton

Iroquois Pliskin

yeah I think John is on point - a revolution by bosses against middle tier knowledge economy workers. Hence the timing of combined layoffs/firings in both the tech industry and the assault on the Feds

Benjamin Pletcher

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/defense-stocks-drop-after-trump-says-defense-spending-could-be-halved.html

Chris Maisano

I think argument that Trump 2.0 represents something of a counterrevolution against skilled, strategically positioned workers (which, after all, they still are despite their education, skills, and salaries) in tech and other leading-edge sectors is quite right. In that sense, there are some echoes of the leading role that skilled, well-paid workers played in Second International-era social democracy. It often wasn’t the most beaten down and oppressed proletarians who stood at the front ranks, or were the most revolutionary. Makes me feel like we on the left have been bashing the so-called “PMC” at our own peril these last few years.

Jesse Peterson-Brandt

Corey Doctorow is really good on tech employee power. My impression is tech skills were so scarce and competition so cutthroat that even the 1-5% you mention walking out was enough to scare the shit out of CEOs. If your product succeeded the payout was incredible, but if you got scooped it was shit, and the difference between those two could be a few days of work

CPA

I highly recommend listening to The Great Simplification podcast in addition to this as there is some overlap of phenomena like the multipolar trap, super-organism, Jevons paradox etc.

Nimportequi

Never alone, always together!

Nimportequi

Everyone: Chi pensa deve agire. Who thinks has to act. If you aren’t already: get organized. Let’s fight back like hell 🚩

T.S.

o

Kevin Gallin

Thanks Matt!

Know Your Enemy

We keep Patreon posts locked, even when we put an episode in front of the paywall, because we actually post such episodes on the "main" feed (Matt)

William Schmidt

Just don't read the comments if they do!

Alexis

Y’all should really consider making this episode free/public. I’ve never wanted to share an episode with my family and friends more than this one. It’s such a comfort and breath of fresh air to listen to, and it makes me feel less crazy.

Ryan Beauchamp

Ganz locked in

Kent Miller

Thanks Ganz, I was gonna do an “H” night at karaoke, wound up reading Orwell and 18th Brumaire between‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and “Hernando’s Hideaway”

Kent Miller

Sorry you’re listening to Grist. Lithwick’s Amicus pretty good though

Kent Miller

On SNL he announced he was autistic. Natch with $200B, easy to find a doc to say ‘You’re autistic.’ Lets him off the hook for being a dick. This shows a level of cunning I’ve never seen in an autistic person. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole

Kent Miller

Scalia Law. I’m sorry, man. It must’ve taken many showers before feeling clean again.

Jonathan Cope

We all need a pic of Sam’s pedal board.

Kent Miller

Klein a Tyler Cowen fanboy, that’s all you need to know

Brick Ingle

Would absolutely be ok with this showing up on the main feed so I could share with my friends

Derek

Appreciate Ganz going supernova on capital

Durindana

Keep em dreamin down there

Matthew

I've found Klein's arguments for changing our tune on municipal regulations for development fairly persuasive, personally. I live in a mid-sized dem-controlled city that has only recently started ramping up city-backed projects after decades of sprawl to outskirts communities, which flatlined city revenues. The vibe of the city has already improved in the few years since they started pushing things through more forcefully, in my opinion. I'll have to listen to that episode. I've previously interpreted Klein's take as a more of a "pick your battles" type thing than a "regulation bad" thing. Although it's on the edge I suppose. I'll give it a listen—thanks.

Axel Herrera

Klein seems to be one of the more tolerable normie lib pundits most of the time (he is more astute than Yglesias), but there’s this certain type of lib pundit that hates the left and thinks the Democrats being too woke and people caring too much about Gaza is what gave us Trump, and they can never criticize anything Dems do (other than “listening to the far left too much”). Those libs deserve digs and Klein is adjacent to those types.

DJM

They went at him pretty hard in the “are progressives to blame for urban disorder” episode. Totally legitimately in my opinion. I get this weird sense that Ezra Klein is gong to switch to the dark side within 10 years. Hope I’m wrong

Steven Ngo

I think the real parable is this is what happens when a generation of people spent WAAAAYYY too much time on Twitter/X.

Daniel

"Move fast and things" is a poor shorthand for a fundamentally anti-democratic tech ideology. The underlying principle is based on the tech overlords fundamental belief that their hyper-utilitarian worldview is correct and must be foisted on the broader public. Its an agenda that could never come to pass via traditional democratic means and they've found their trojan horse. They genuinely believe Elon knows how to do government better then government.

Alex

Thanks so much for this very therapeutic breakdown. Would there ever be room for an episode about the conservative elements of the Democratic party and how those strains have possibly kneecapped the Dems' ability to counteract the Republican party? My sense is that the right flank of the Dems is remarkably similar to average Republican from the 1970s but without the same robust political framework underpinning and justifying their mission. Maybe their intellectual figurehead is... I dunno, Cass Sunstein? Thoroughly bureaucratic, chained to """economics""" as scientific policy guidance, and totally unmoored from human and social consequences of their policy decisions. I know that you guys mostly focus on the history of the conservative movement, but I ask this because I wonder if these more conservative Dems should be condescendingly lumped in with the conservative movement writ large? Or are they something distinct from conservatism?

aarinsanity

It’s not a leftist pod if there aren’t more digs at libs! It’s exhausting.

Alaina

Yes! I was expecting talk of annexation to start in maybe 10 years or so. Climate change and the politics of the arctic make such talk probable in my opinion. (On the Canadian side I find talk of oil expansion disturbing, since the worse climate change gets, the greater the likelihood of annexation, as far as I can see.)

mary lingwall

Lamar Ganz 2028 is all I’m fucking saying #notlikeus

Michelle Miller

Hi Sam! I almost texted you this instead of posting but decided not to abuse my texting privileges on a Sunday morning.

Know Your Enemy

Totally. Makes sense. (Hi Michelle!) - Sam

Know Your Enemy

Klein came up multiple times bc (obviously) i’ve been listening to him; I value his work. In a comment that may have been cut, John called him “an honest broker.” Generally, though, we’re spiky people with a lot of opinions (some of them petty), so if you’re going to stick with the podcast, you may have to endure people you admire catching the occasional stray. Maybe that’s a failing of ours, probably, but we also probably can’t change. Thanks for listening! -Sam

Dónal Gill

Please do an episode on Manifest Destiny and the expansionism of Trump 2.0. I’m a Canadian Political Scientist and the silence from the American left on the annexationist language about us from Trump is really notable! The shift in national consciousness up here within a few weeks has been astounding.

Jason Gonzales

One thought I'm left with after listening to this episode: hyper rich oligarchs will not let go of power peacefully. Please tell me I'm wrong. What is a peaceful way to get these people to let go of power?

Michelle Miller

Thanks, yes, I understand that. My point is that it is unhelpful to emphasize the idea that a high percentage of tech employees were left wing activists (which parallels with their perceptions of fed employees who they imagine occupy a similar class position). Noting the low numbers underscores the outsized emotional reaction by Musk, Andreesen, et al. When we repeat their overstatement of the size/“threat”, we play into a narrative that rationalizes their actions.

Matthew

I don’t think so. I think we’re talking about two different sections of this podcast. I was referring to a bit (around 18 minutes i think) where Yglesias’ and Vox’s coverage is criticized. Klein being implied. What you’re referring to is near the end, and is preceded with a rather passive aggressive slight against Klein. Then they assess Yuval’s insight about the perception of power in the first couple weeks of a presidency. Just a bit of a pattern noticed.

Sawyer Maher

I think the comment was more so directed at Klein’s guest on that specific episode - Yuval Levin. A fairly archetypical AEI/National Review kinda conservative. The comment suggested to me that hearing someone with those politics (Yuval’s) expound upon the first ~2 weeks of the Trump presidency would just be kinda exhausting more so than anything else.

Matthew

I think part of the point being made in this discussion was that the class war narrative has been tilted against the managerial class you reference from the 2018 walkout. Musk, & co. are acting out against what they view as an adversarial managerial class in tech and government.

David Gillman

The Ezra Klein hate jumped out at me, too. I liked the episode generally.

Matthew

Relatively new here, but what was with the Ezra Klein hate in this episode? There was a bit where Ganz criticized the piecemeal approach of opposition supposedly advocated by folks like Matt Yglesias. I inferred that Klein was included in that critique given the context. His name was brought up a couple other times. A recent Klein opinion article was simply: Don't Believe Him. As a lowly citizen participant of American politics, what is a more total approach to opposition than a rejection of a political actor's power? Anecdotally, the friends and family I've talked to found that mantra very compelling and comforting. It's simple and effective against most of Trump's executive bluster. Anyhow—I don't want to come off as Klein-glazing, and I've enjoyed the deep-dive episodes of Know Your Enemy. But I've gotta say that I found this topical episode to be a bit grating. I enjoy the deep dives specifically because I still want to engage with political content without the finger-pointing and influencer-centric self-immolation I seem to see and hear everywhere since the election.

edward ripple

Yes yes almost there. Such large target, only so much time.

Son of El Topo

Capitalism is not a weird evil spirit, it's The Terminator (the bad one)

Quinn Romanek

Would love to hear Timnit Gebru and/or Emily Bender on the show discussing this topic!

Georges Simenon

Great episode, but I thought you could have talked a little more about Trump flagrantly ignoring the judiciary, which has started happening already with the district court TROs

Paul Lemaire

Couldn't this “Machiavellian,” and very on-point approach to the right’s discourse—not taking it at face value, seeing it for what it is, and rejecting it wholesale—also be applied to many disingenuous centrist and left-liberal postures? Who claim to share progressive goals and often out-champion the left in (clumsily) pushing back against Trumpism, while the implications of their actions and words seem to consistently contradict those aims? A recurring question about where the borders defining “enemy” territory start. Dicey but inevitable for figuring out what response could effectively counter Trump 2 now that the Democrat coalition seems quite lost and somewhat bankrupt ideologically.

Zachary Roussie

My left-communitarian heart jumped when Matt gave a shoutout to MacIntyre. He’d make a great episode topic, I think, in the vein of the Lasch one a few years ago.

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

How did yall not take the analysis of Trump and women to Melania! You were so close

Big Honkin’ AG Fanboy

Another fun fact, this one from The Gist podcast with Mike Pesca, is that epistemology: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology Has ALMOST nothing to do with epistles!: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistle#English

Michelle Miller

A minor note on the organizing of tech employees — yes, this is a definitely reaction to the organizing. But there’s a lot of overstating the size of the constituency. I was in the midst of this from 2017-2020 as an organizer. There were simply not that many workers involved at any given moment. Andreesen put the number at “20%” activist. This is ludicrous. I would put it at maybe 1-5% depending on the moment and company. The peak would have been the Google walkout in 2018 and that happened often *with permission of managers.* What prompts me to point this out is that it points to the oversized rection by the SV investor/ceo set to even a mild disturbance in the relationship with their employees. A lot of the reaction is emotionally driven by their disappointment in no longer being universally admired and loved.

Joshua Cohen

Practicing psychoanalyst here in Seattle. Wow! What a great interview. Like medicine to fight this insanity.

Eleanor Mayrhofer

Yeah, that was my though too...I think one of Elons minions that just got fired for being racist tweeted as much

Eleanor Mayrhofer

Thank you! Alas, I am just a simple hausfrau who very much loves this pod, but I need to have a dictionary close by when listening...

Andrés Emil González

fantastically good analysis in this episode! just had one question about the segment talking about tech workers and their bosses. i found the interchangeable use of petty bourgeoisie with PMC and tech workers kind of confusing, and i don’t think i agree that they can work that way? Because wouldn’t it be that there’s a petty bourgeois subset of tech e.g. the entrepreneur/grindset/start-up crowd (that is, not just literally business owners but also adherents to PB “problems and solutions” as marx calls them) rather than just like, workers with a high income? especially thinking about your recent ep with Erik Baker, doesn’t the entrepreneurship thing seem kind of differentiated from (if not at odds with) the professions at the moment? not to say that there aren’t PB elements within the professions, but that they’re just that: elements of a larger whole (in my view, if you were a professor who used his high salary to buy houses to rent in a college town, you’d *become* PB, for instance). seems like it would be relevant to an analysis of the political aims and potential of that group of workers.

Tyler Paziuk

Ganz should join the KYE crew fulltime

erik w bjorke

Flavor Flav is way more talented than Donald Trump.

Nicholas Haggerty

It’s seems there’s been something of a current, prominent among substackers, of putatively left leaning critics with a beat of giving Trump his due on this or that, making liberals their true targets. It’s refreshing to hear the case for rejecting him “in the totality,” against the idea of engaging on Trump’s level. When migrants are being sent to Gitmo, as Matt says, to come out now with an argument about how the liberal position has gone too far is to show greater sympathy with the people throwing them there then with the migrants themselves — who need all the help we can give them.

Jonathon S

The first Burnham quote brought to mind how the conservative legal movement launders reactionary ideology through the veneer of intellectual debate. I’m an alum of George Mason’s Scalia Law School, and when I was there it was easy to be seduced by the faculty’s constitutional exegesis while losing sight of the practical implications of their arguments, which we are sadly starting to see now

Lou Guberti Ng

There are no three more pernicious letters in the current moment than NPC. Just completely corrosive to any idea of human connection

Lou Guberti Ng

"one of my favorite fascist writers" John 👏 Ganz 👏 is 👏 Canceled 👏

Addison

You barely talked about Bannon but as the only person on the left paying any attention to him at this point (my mom is a War Room disciple, this is my coping mechanism), I would love to hear any of your takes about the ongoing MAGA/tech oligarchy war as DOGE continues. Bannon seems totally delusional about what’s happening in a fascinating way: “We (the populists) will win because we're relentless. We don't quit.” (from his interview with Inskeep at NPR on 1/20 which had a surprisingly good line of questioning) and “As soon as I can turn Elon Musk from a techno-feudalist to a populist nationalist, we’ll start making real progress” (Politico in January)—very liberal of him to think progress toward his cause is inevitable. Maybe my brain is fried to still believe he’s principled at all, but it has seemed to this point that his convictions were about much more than owning the libs. Maybe he’s in shock too haha

Samantha Fried

I don't have any insightful follow-up commentary; only gratitude that you made this episode.

Zac Chapman

there is a telos to Musk and it's interwoven into the 'aimless telos of accumulation' of capitalism of which Ganz speaks. it's TESCREALism. i'd love to see an episode on that ideological phenomenon that has colonized silicon valley.

Martin Oswald

The bit about the type of tech guy Musk is reminded me of an old boss I had who was a very strong programmer. He built and maintained a pretty extensive system for our company for over 20 years but lacked understanding how to be part of a whole. He had his fiefdom and wanted to run it with an iron fist in the name of expediency. When upper management entered the picture, they clashed immediately over things like processes and standards that I, coming from another company, recognized as essential to a well-functioning organization. I can just picture the Treasury or OPM employees being viscerally repelled by the cadre of 19-24 year olds coming in and querying LLMs to find out "what does this thing do?"

Blue Squid

I think these tech guys do sort of have a plan, at lot of these tech elites take from the book "The Sovereign Individual" , relates to some of their apocalypse bunkers they've been building (and it sort of bleeds into Hans Herman-Hoppe which is big on the far-right)

Derek Hart

Elon’s daily regimen shows his total surrender to the spirit John describes: posting >100x a day, sleeping at the office, long Diablo seshes, ketamine transhumanism, etc. His awkwardness is method acting; he is playing the man this spirit wants him to be. I think on SNL he literally says this is the kind of guy that makes rockets.

Ann K

You know I will say I’ve had a hard time consuming much about this administration- I try to stay up to date on the policy issue area I work in federally (housing) but the other stuff is just painful. Hearing this has soothed me a bit, especially the comments early on about having a principled total rejection of the ideology. I think that is a deeply missed part of political debate but also it was just nice to hear someone flatly reject these people.

Chad Bailey

The other thing that’s a big issue is Musk mocking federal employees for working 40 hours a week, when his guys are working 120. He overlooks the rules that require feds to limit that work. Those civil service protections were enshrined to prevent patronage from leaking into the bureaucracy.

Know Your Enemy

Sorry I just turned that tab on! (Matt)

Victoria Aelia Magna

it looks like it wasnt tagged correctly when they uploaded it

Big Honkin’ AG Fanboy

One of the most frustrating things about hermeneutics is that I didn’t know what “hermeneutics” meant… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics

Kevin Gallin

Any insight into why this latest episode isn't showing up in the RSS feed for my podcatcher? I'm using Overcast and it's showing the Ayn Rand ep (great ep, btw) as the latest update.

Logan Ferree

Is there a Patreon to send Ganz to therapy for his Yglesias obsession? Dude can’t comment on the Vox article that’s actually brought up, he immediately shits to his grudge.

KELLAM R. CLARK

John Ganz is sunshine.

Nik

I’m sure there’s a genuine current of anti-tech humanism on the New Right, but so much of it seems bound up in a conspiratorial derision of the duped masses that I wonder if the alliance between those two factions won’t just end up looking like “rule by algorithm for thee, raw milk and classical education for me.”

Jonathan Nichols

John's passing reference to industrialists "hiring scabs" immediately set off alarm bells about the idea of AI replacing junior developers (alongside automating every other part of the PMC). I know this has been a thread in discussions around this, but that really underlined it for me.

genrepunk

Thank you for the brief moment of flattery to we listeners before John turned around and called us conservative 😂 That's a really good thing to pick at though because inasmuch as intellectualism is about holding oneself above others, using it to change things for the better is a doomed project. Look forward to seeing where this one goes!

Nico Villarreal

I think the "class war of tech oligarchs vs employees" is not that real, it's just political expediency. When tech companies cracked down on political extremism in 2017, that was just as much a way for them to consolidate power and curry favor as they are doing now.

Know Your Enemy

Hope you're fine Chad—if your situation changes and we can help, drop us a line. (Matt)

Chad Bailey

I wrote this a week ago as a coping strategy as a federal employee with a family to support and crosshairs on my head. It helped. Things are evolving, but I think my basic thesis still holds. I am pleasantly surprised by the successes of the past week in pushing back against the AI borg. https://open.substack.com/pub/chadbailey291184/p/gaming-out-scenarios-for-doge-impacts?r=4j5qp&utm_medium=ios