Michael Albert assesses Trump’s murderous war on Iran, fascist repression at home and a growing pro-democracy resistance movement—while envisioning a transformative “long march” progressive agenda that discards major elements of the decaying status quo system.
Albert is author of 21 books on economics, politics and socialism.
SCOTT HARRIS: This is Counterpoint. My name is Scott Harris and right now I am very pleased to bring back to our program after a long absence, Michael Albert, co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine and Z Media Institute. Michael’s host of the Revolution Z podcast. Michael’s author of 21 books on economics, politics and socialism, including No Bosses: New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael, much appreciation for you coming on the program tonight. Thank you.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.
SCOTT HARRIS: And Michael, just say a word if you would, about all the Z platforms, including your own podcast and how folks can get in touch.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Well, there’s a website at znetwork.org. There’s Revolution Z, that’s a podcast and you can find out at all the usual podcast outlets like Apple, etc. And it’s all of the activities. There have in the past also been a magazine and that still functions, book publishing, etc. And all of it is really guided by the same basic desire, which is to change society. To be honest, it’s to not just to understand or to chronicle, but to actually have an impact and change the way things happen, which obviously we need.
SCOTT HARRIS: It’s very smart. So it’s my leading question here. We’ll get right to that. So, if Americans were told 15+ years ago that our nation would elect a lawless, corrupt president, a convicted felon, an inciter of a traitorous insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing a presidential election not once, but twice elected—many Americans would dismiss it as a dystopian nightmare that could never happen.
SCOTT HARRIS: And Michael, just say a word if you would, about all the Z platforms, including your own podcast and how folks can get in touch.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Well, there’s a website at znetwork.org. There’s Revolution Z, that’s a podcast and you can find out at all the usual podcast outlets like Apple, etc. And it’s all of the activities. There have in the past also been a magazine and that still functions, book publishing, etc. And all of it is really guided by the same basic desire, which is to change society. To be honest, it’s to not just to understand or to chronicle, but to actually have an impact and change the way things happen, which obviously we need.
SCOTT HARRIS: It’s very smart. So it’s my leading question here. We’ll get right to that. So, if Americans were told 15+ years ago that our nation would elect a lawless, corrupt president, a convicted felon, an inciter of a traitorous insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing a presidential election not once, but twice elected—many Americans would dismiss it as a dystopian nightmare that could never happen.
But here we are now in the middle of a senseless and destructive war jeopardizing the world economy, not to mention killing thousands of people across the Middle East. Michael, I don’t want to get too deep into the war itself, but it’s a symptom of a dysfunctional government the likes I think the world has never seen here in this country. What do you see when you look at the state of America being led by a man that many describe as a cognitively-impaired megalomaniac?
MICHAEL ALBERT: Yeah. I find it hard to assess. I’m 79. I’ve never seen this kind of thing before. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s cognitively … that he’s stupid, that he’s narcissistic, that he’s moved by nothing but his own emotions and desires.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Yeah. I find it hard to assess. I’m 79. I’ve never seen this kind of thing before. It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s cognitively … that he’s stupid, that he’s narcissistic, that he’s moved by nothing but his own emotions and desires.
But it’s hard to square that with the fact that he has successfully taken over a massive political party and you know, sort of led the country into these various activities and that he manages to carry off being a disgusting creature and not paying for it. I can’t explain it.
And I’m not sure it matters much what he is personally. The two questions that do seem to me to matter is what kind of a system produces this and how does the public at least permit it, I guess is the way you could put it. Those two questions matter because they bear upon what we do. And so those are the questions that most occupy me anyway.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well put. This is WPKN in Bridgeport. My name is Scott Harris here on Counterpoint, speaking with Michael Albert, co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine and Z platforms. And Michael, I wanted to ask you about the issues beyond the war. Since Trump’s second term began, a resistance movement seen in three major No Kings national protests with millions of participants. They’ve made their presence known, but there are many concerns that such a sporadic set of protests one weekend every few months on a weekend won’t be sufficient to change or challenge and defeat the Trump authoritarian regime, especially as Trump and his government prepare to intervene and possibly have set plans to manipulate the outcome of the November midterm election, which is really the only check and balance we have.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well put. This is WPKN in Bridgeport. My name is Scott Harris here on Counterpoint, speaking with Michael Albert, co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine and Z platforms. And Michael, I wanted to ask you about the issues beyond the war. Since Trump’s second term began, a resistance movement seen in three major No Kings national protests with millions of participants. They’ve made their presence known, but there are many concerns that such a sporadic set of protests one weekend every few months on a weekend won’t be sufficient to change or challenge and defeat the Trump authoritarian regime, especially as Trump and his government prepare to intervene and possibly have set plans to manipulate the outcome of the November midterm election, which is really the only check and balance we have.
There’s discussion about May Day and putting some kind of soft version of a general strike together, which seems more promising at impact. What are some of your thoughts about this?
MICHAEL ALBERT: Well, suppose you want to impact the behavior of a government or a corporate board or any authority that’s exercising power over lots of people—either to pursue wealth or to pursue still more power. If you want to have an impact on that, you have to do something that causes them to pay a price, a price that they understand. It could be a financial price. It could be a price to their position, the loss of position, etc. You have to do something that has that kind of impact.
And I think that the people who you mentioned who are concerned about the effectivity of sporadic demonstrations are right. If the government sees that you demonstrate with 8 million people even across the country on a particular day and then you do it again, and then you do it again, and it’s two, three months apart and it doesn’t go someplace that threatens them dramatically, they’re not going to change their policies.
Now, ironically, the impact of the events has been to, at least to a degree, break through the kind of media passivity with regard to Trump and the passivity of political officeholders—and that does threaten him. What would threaten him more, for example, is suppose on May Day, there’s a massive national strike. People don’t go to school. People don’t go to work. People don’t shop. And there’s the threat that it will recur and it will recur repeatedly and closer and closer together until it’s what’s really called a national strike, which means the strike starts and it doesn’t stop until the changes are enacted. That’s threatening. That’s seriously threatening. This is not to discount what’s been done so far because you can’t go from zero to a 1000 miles an hour in 10 seconds. There’s a process that slowly but steadily engages people, gets them involved. Gets them to begin to think about what’s needed and so on.
And that process is underway and that’s called the resistance. So simultaneously, we have these two things sort of racing each other. On one side, Trump seeking to—honestly, you have to call it what it is—seeking to implement a fascist takeover of the United States. That’s what’s going on. That’s one side. And on the other side, a resistance seeking to stop him and hopefully to go on from there to affect the institution so that nothing like this could ever happen again and we could even go in a better direction.
That’s the task that we face that people are trying to make headway on. And I think progress is being made, but I think the people who have some doubts are right. But what do you do with those doubts? If what you do is to go home and business as usual—meaning watch TV, go to work, come home, take care of the kids and over dinner complain about the maniac in the White House—that’s not going to cut it.
If what you do is to make the resistance stronger, to contribute—well, that is the road to not only getting rid of Trump, but getting rid of the dynamics that produce Trump.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, that was well said, Michael. And I want to hit you with a last question that maybe just a way to shape and be a prerequisite for a future longer conversation. There are many Democrats right now who are on TV, talking heads, commentators or whatever. Increasingly, they recognize the existing status quo before Trump was not in any way attractive and that a larger number of people in this country reject what was before Donald Trump in terms of the economics—in terms of affordability, in terms of a whole roster of issues like housing, groceries, energy, utilities, healthcare, childcare, education—all these are major issues that were not really well addressed by Democrats or Republicans.
And I’m just wondering, in this moment, when larger numbers of people are rejecting Trump, Trumpism and Republicans, the Democrats have an opportunity here to break away from their corporate paymasters and really be bold in changing a system that most Americans aren’t happy with. And I’m saying this is a longer conversation than the two or three minutes we got here.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Yeah. Well, I think you’re right. But I think we have to be careful with our expectations. So you see somebody like (Sen. Bernie) Sanders or AOC (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and a number of others, (Mayor Zorhan) Mamdani in New York not far from Connecticut, who are in fact taking a more bold approach; telling soldiers that they shouldn’t follow orders, that’s bold and that was the cost and they are in turn pushed by No Kings and by all the various organizing that’s going on around the country about ICE, about income and so on. So I think you’re absolutely right.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Yeah. Well, I think you’re right. But I think we have to be careful with our expectations. So you see somebody like (Sen. Bernie) Sanders or AOC (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and a number of others, (Mayor Zorhan) Mamdani in New York not far from Connecticut, who are in fact taking a more bold approach; telling soldiers that they shouldn’t follow orders, that’s bold and that was the cost and they are in turn pushed by No Kings and by all the various organizing that’s going on around the country about ICE, about income and so on. So I think you’re absolutely right.
And you have to sort of ask, well, “Why then did people support a racist, misogynist, lying, narcissist thug in the election?” And some people answer that question and say, “Well, because that’s who American people are.” And I think that’s quite wrong. I think it has more to do with, as you say, distaste for what was before, especially in rural areas. If your town was underwater, if you knew two people who had died of oxycodone overdoses and who couldn’t get medical care and who were desperate financially, you want change.
And Trump honestly promised change. He even delivered change. It’s just change of the wrong kind. And people reacted to that. And there’s another thing in that long list of things that you mentioned, all of which I would agree with, that people were fed up with and wanted change—
There’s another thing that’s more subtle, which is respect, a degree of efficacy, a sense of being part of a society. Trump offered something that the Democrats haven’t offered really ever, that I know of. And that was membership in a team. A team which actually, to a degree felt like it had your back. And the team was manipulated, I’m talking about MAGA— the team was manipulated, but if you look at what people say about why they supported MAGA, it is often what I’m describing. It gave them a sense of dignity, of being respected. They weren’t this, like say Hillary Clinton did during that election run.
And so the Democrats, more to the point, those who want change have to become effective at talking to people who disagree and communicating to them the truth about what’s going on, but also that the effort to do better can actually work, it can win, it can deliver a different kind of social setting that meets their needs and that respects them and gives them power over their lives. If we do that, it will be a massive change that happens in this country. And people who doubt that, just there’s a real sense in which you have to say to yourself, look at what Trump did, right? Sort of appealing to working people on grounds that they were disrespected and that they needed to have some dignity in their lives. Look at how much he did—all bad or virtually all bad—but look at the desire for it and the willingness to stand up.
That’s what a positive approach to society offering a real alternative, explaining the possibility of winning change. Not just saying you want it, but not really doing it, has to offer. And we’ll see what happens. I think Mamdani showed some of what could be done in New York City. And we’ll see more.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, I very much enjoy this talk as brief as it was. And Michael, we’ll have you back soon to talk about more of the things that you discussed in a recent article that I really liked and would recommend to our listeners called Navigating Our Times. I’m not sure where that appeared.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Yeah, on the morning that Trump … I mean, the kind of the things that he’s saying are so beyond belief, I’m going to eliminate a civilization. What has happened in the society that allows people or causes people to permit an official, much less a president, to utter nonsense like that. And then he follows it up with attacking the pope. I mean, it really is beyond belief.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah, it is.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah, it is.
MICHAEL ALBERT: It is. And let me just say one more thing, if I could. When I was in high school, I spent a certain amount of time thinking about the rise of fascism in Germany and how could that happen? And it was called, “good Germans.” A good German was somebody who might have disliked Hitler. That wasn’t a requirement. You didn’t have to like him to be a good German. You had to do nothing about him. You could complain vociferously and aggressively, but at your dinner table.
But in society, you had to go along and then you were a good German. And that article asked, “Are We Good Americans?” Because that’s exactly what we’re doing in bulk. Too many people hate him, hate what he stands for, but aren’t doing anything because they think, “I guess it will have no effect.” But that’s just not true. It will have an effect and therefore we have a responsibility to do it.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Michael, just whetted our appetite for more discussion along these lines and really looking forward to our next conversation. Too little time here, but we’ll talk again soon. And leave our listeners again, leave our listeners again with the web address for your podcast and the Z platforms.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Well, the podcast is called Revolution Z, and I think that’s the way you look it up. I’m not too good with social media myself, but you can find it on all the various sources, sites like Apple and the rest. But this website that I think is really good is called znetwork.org.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Well, the podcast is called Revolution Z, and I think that’s the way you look it up. I’m not too good with social media myself, but you can find it on all the various sources, sites like Apple and the rest. But this website that I think is really good is called znetwork.org.
And let me give you one more reference that may even be more useful. There’s a site that’s called All of Us, one word—”all of us,” one word, directory.org. So allofusdirectory.org. If you go there and you are interested in trying to resist, but you don’t really know for sure how or who with, etc., it’s a site where you can put in your location and you can put in your interests and you can search among hundreds of progressive and resistance projects. And when you find something that suits you and that needs your kind of help—and they all do—you can contact them and begin to work with them. And that’s the kind of activity that we need to promote.
SCOTT HARRIS: Absolutely. Valuable resource. Thank you, Michael. We’ll be back In touch soon to have you back.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Thank you. I appreciate it.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks, Michael. Goodnight.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Bye-bye.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks, Michael. Goodnight.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Bye-bye.
SCOTT HARRIS: That’s Michael Albert, co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine and a host of the Z Revolution podcast. This is Counterpoint.
For more information, visit Z Network at znetwork.org and All of US: A Directory to Connect, Care and Build at allofusdirectory.org.
