Anna Loutfi, an equality and human rights barrister, discusses her support of parents in bringing the group litigation against the Department for Education for failure to protect pupils against political ideology, including the promotion and encouragement of “gender transition.” Covering the subtle processes of indoctrination within British classrooms today where education functions to “protect” children from reality while concurrently telling them that health is a myth, Loutfi analyses how gender ideology has been brought into RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) teaching whereby puberty has been presented as embarrassing, dirty, and as something that can be completely avoided. Tracing the roots of this “unlearning” of the healthy body, Loutfi notes that health is quickly being marginalised as the state has become the site where the masses will go to “correct” their “sick” bodies. Loutfi also covers how law has been incorrectly rewritten into public policies by the diversity and inclusion industry whereby the mere process of identifying as something other, relies upon the “protected characteristic” of "gender reassignment" from the Gender Recognition Act (2004), even though this law, written specifically for adults, has been misapplied to children by virtue of any child “identifying as” the opposite sex. Loutfi underscores the importance of having public conversations as to why some men are castrating themselves and why so many public and private institutions have capitulated to a movement that has been given carte blanche to do nothing other than attack and disturb women and girls.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Remi Adekoya, a politics lecturer at the University of York and former journalist, discusses his latest book, It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth (2023), wherein he argues that the socioeconomic realities are sustaining racial hierarchies and not, as the left fashions, a moral, reactive evil. Discussing what financial power means in the Global South as well as within the west, for instance, Adekoya touches upon how what what matters in his childhood homeland of Nigeria is the need to address the material realities and not any racial narratives emanating from the west, noting how what the people want are neither pronouns nor EDI training, but want visas to go to the US or the UK to improve their lives. Demonstrating how money enables influence over society and culture, Adekoya explores the connections immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, and status perceptions. He also demonstrates how wealth determines the key domains of modern life, elucidating its effects on racial dynamics across the globe. Noting how humans are hierarchal creatures, collectively orienteted around hierarchical thinking in all levels of society, he notes the paradox in conscious ellision of any discussions of economic hierarchies by government and media alike. Adekoya underscores how brown-skinned people are still the ones doing the menial jobs no matter how much we discuss racism, cultural differences, or how to “diversify curriculum,” pointing out how is “so much talk about the narratives around Africa and less and less and less about the realities of Africa.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jeff Gibbs, producer and co-producer some of the most important documentaries in recent decades, discusses his film covering the “fake green movement,” Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore that was tarred by media and the green industry. Exploring the billions-dollar green industry which banks sells to us the narrative that technology is freeing us from carbon emissions and the fallacy of this sentiment, Gibbs confers the disappearance of animal species, questioning how global warming has shifted the focus to single idea (carbon emissions) without worrying about what is driving species to extinction. Studying the increase in natural disasters, from forest fires to floods, Gibbs focusses on the collapse of human civilisation and the comcommitant disintegrtation of nature and the need to focus on consumption and population. Investigating the political spectrum from left to right, Gibbs criticises the left in is missing some of the most important factors of climate change by hyper-focussing on carbon. Covering how his film became a wider target of a censorship campaign being condemned by climate scientists and activists, Gibbs deliberates the power of green industry which he describes as “trying to destroy” him and “shut down” all debate on this issue. Gibbs historicises the marriage between capitalism and the green movement while explaining why his film is considered a “full-frontal assault” on the environmental movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Brandon Showalter, journalist and podcaster who has covered the “gender identity” movement and transgender ideology, discusses his latest co-authored book, Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry's False Ideology. Showalter discusses the how media standards and institutions of the corporate press like the Associated Press (AP) and their recommendations to use “preferred pronouns” and its latest topical guidance on the use of terms like “transgenderism” which make verboten the questioning of this movement as ideologically-based. Pointing to how legacy media uses highly-discredited references, Showalter discusses how the AP’s power over newsrooms and journalists flies in the face of basic journalistic ethis to reporting facts and questioning the information presented which thusly results is one-sided, ideologically-driven reporting. Showalter notes how mainstream media has never questioned the “scientific” pretenses of the gender lobby which has only empty language and zero scientific evidence for its claims. Discussing the importance of thinkers like Julia Long and other feminists, Showalter expounds upon the “gender lie” which in turn has been quickly institutionalised—all without any scientific basis— only later to become a legal reference, even being written into law. Showalter elaborates the necessity to resist this toxic ideology while exposing the lie driving it, citing Long’s words: “The word ‘trans’ has one function, and that is to falsify reality...as soon as you have a word that can institute the lie that a man is a woman, everything is reversed.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Namakula, a multimedia artist and producer, discusses her experiences as an actor who was disenfranchised from her profession during the COVID-19 pandemic due to her refusal to comply with vaccine mandates. Noting pervasive violations of medical privacy within theatre, film and television—from casting lists to auditions which often revealed private health information or for which vaccine status was required—Namakula notes how personal choices about medical health and bodily autonomy were entirely abandoned. Despite Big Pharma having noted that the “vaccines” would not stop transmission or infection, Namakula recalls how legacy media was effective propaganda machine in advertising just the opposite while amassing public support for a lie about experimental “vaccines” while also attempting to foment racial and class division. Noting the hypnotic effect of the television, a medium where the public is more apt to believe anyone propped up before the camera wearing a white lab coat over the anecdotal stories of friends and family, Namakula postulates that the lockdown was designed to keep people from hearing the stories of others as they were not only locked up in their homes and kept far away from human connections, but where they were also locked into the televisionscape of daily misinformation about the pandemic branded as “news.” As a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) member, Namakula took issue with her union not having protected the rights of its members to informed consent among a long list of problems that have been plaguing SAG for years, among which embezzlement of union funds. As a result of her experience during lockdown noting how SAG did not protect her rights or respond to SAG members’ request for peer-reviewed studies to explain the union’s support for vaccine mandates, Namakula felt compelled to run for the seat of New York Local President of SAG-AFTRA 2023 candidate running for the office of New York Local President. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Rukshan Fernando, Australian political commentator discusses his foray into journalist and his on-the-ground street reporting during the pandemic restrictions in Melbourne and the turn that legacy media has taken over the past two decades in curating the news. Noting how left-of-centre media outlets have buttressed narratives around race and gender, Fernando criticises this brand of racism, sexism and homophobia largely being embraced as “progressive” by the left and promulgated by the left-of-centre media. Fernando analyses how mainstream media in the west has created a double standard in its coverage of war whereby media often buttresses government messaging such that we are not allowed to criticise both sides in a war, but where we must see one side as good and the other as evil. Discussing what he views as a “disconnect” in the west, Fernando notes how today it is no longer an option to hold anti-war views regarding the current war in Ukraine since the default critical position framed by legacy media obliges the subject to take an “anti-Russia” position. Fernando remarks of the anti-war position, “It used to be something that was celebrated…Today if you are at all anti-war you might be a far-right Putin supporter.” Historicising recent cultural and political shifts in the west, Fernando covers the current media emphasis upon gender and race which ultimately ends up creating quite real forms of racism whereby the white, woke subject uses dark-skinned bodies as surrogates for their purification rituals which come in the form of public confessions, all the while nothing on the ground, in reality, ever changes for those who face inequalities resulting from poverty and war. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Bev Jackson, a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front (1970), discusses how she and Kate Harris, concerned by the implications of Stonewall’s decision to alter its definition of sexual orientation in 2015 from “same-sex attracted” to “same-gender attracted,” co-founded LGB Alliance in 2019. Jackson details how by 2021, LGB Alliance had its status as a registered charity challenged by another British charity, Mermaids, accusing LGB Alliance of having “gone beyond the boundaries of civilised debate.” Historicising how much time, engery, and money this legal challenge cost LGB Alliance over the past two years, Jackson describes in detail how the witnesses from the opposing side in court seemed “entirely unprepared, as if they’d been grabbed off the street and sort of stuck there, adding, “They didn’t seem to have any notion at all of what they were there for.” Describing the problems current within gender ideology and its current social, political and medical manifestations today—from its anti-science narrative to its homophobia to the sterilisation of gay youth—Jackson argues against the medicalisation model that is being presented as foreward-thinking, adding, “The greatest trick that is being played upon the world is that this is progressive, that this is kind, and that this is good. It is outrageous and it is homophobic rubbish!” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ann Menasche, a civil rights attorney, discusses the legal complaint she lodged against Disability Rights California earlier this year in response to her being fired from her job of twenty years. Her employer, Disability Rights California, issued a statement in May 2022 that opposed the reversal of Roe vs. Wade while also erasing females completely from the picture by replacing the word “women” in the context of pregnancy and abortion, with “people.” Menasche responded to this listserv statement writing: “So glad DRC came up with a statement in defense of Roe! Thank you! Access to safe, legal abortion is a life and death necessity for women as a biological sex across the board, regardless of race, economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation (even lesbians can be raped) or anything else, and an absolute prerequisite for equal female participation in our society. Of course, the most vulnerable females, especially poor women, women of color, women with disabilities, young girls, unhoused women and girls, women and girls in prison, etc. will suffer the most under draconian anti-abortion laws. Wealthy white women have often managed to get abortions, even before Roe. As a veteran of the feminist struggle for abortion rights that preceded Roe, I never thought it would come to this. Yet, it is good to remember that women won this right primarily through grassroots organizing and peaceful mass protests in the streets, and that is the way we are going to protect it. Thanks again, DRC, for taking a stand!” Menasche lost her employment for this statement and details the entire political wave of wokery within her sector and the fear driving the neoliberal managerial class that makes women participants in the erasure of their own sex class. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kit Klarenberg, investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The Grayzone UK, discusses his detainment by UK counter-terrorism police on 17 May at Luton Airport when he arrived from Belgrade, Serbia. With the threat of arrest held over him if he didn’t comply, Klarenberg was interrogated, had his bank cards, electronic devices and SD cards seized, his fingerprints and photo taken, his shoes removed, his DNA taken and he was subjected to a five-hour interrogation. While all this was ostensibly conducted under Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, Klarenberg observes how this law gives British law enforcement wide latitude to detain and harass individuals deemed to be taking part in a “hostile activity” whereby according to this Act an individual “can pose a state threat on behalf of a hostile foreign power without them intending to or the foreign power whose interest they are serving knowing.” Klarenberg contextualises what happened to him in May, elaborating on the bizarre interrogation through which he was subject, placing his experience within the context of recent draconian EU sanctions against state-owned Russian media outlets (RT and Sputnik) and the crackdown on legitimate speech under the aegis of "Russian disinformation."  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Simon Ateba, Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington, discusses the challenges he has faced at the White House under former Press Secretary Jen Psaki after challenging her over the ban on eight African nations over the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and then more recently with Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, having ignored Ateba’s quesitons for seven months. Ateba also covers the remarkable story of how on 20 March when at the White House for a press briefing, instead of being allowed to ask questions, Ateba and other members of the press found themselves thrown into a political theatre where the cast of Ted Lasso was brought in to derail the White House press briefing (to discuss mental health). Ateba, ready to do his job to ask questions about the news of the day, attempted to ask questions as Jean-Pierre scolded him for engaging in his job as a journalist. Ateba addresses how the role of the White House press secretary has become politicised whereby this role has become a position of curating the news emanating from the White House by answering light-weight questions from legacy media representatives while ignoring the harder questions posed by journalists representing smaller, independent and/or non-western media. These practices, Ateba notes, have become so entrenched within institutions and power centres today that they represent the ethos of what is now known as the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Paul Kingsnorth discusses the current debate within western culture where the postmodern and classical views of the world are at odds—those who believe in objective truth are pit against those who believe reality is a social construction. Discussing the west’s embrace of gender ideology, Kingsnorth notes the resistance to material reality conterminous to the embrace of technology while criticising the crisis of modernity where many believe humans can “remake” themselves while contending that any critique of this pretence over nature is itself a form of oppression. Examining the transgender movement on a wider spectrum where transhumanism and artificial intelligence also coexist, Kingsnorth observes how all these movements challenge biology, nature, and objective truth while positioning modern humanity in a “godlike way” that pretends we are can all be genderless, posthuman, and permeant, seizing the postmodern claim that “we can effectively become gods.” Kingsnorth criticises how the discourses around technology today attempt to view embodiment as a form of oppression, while noting that those who defend nature or objective truth are viewed as oppressors. Analysing the scale of institutional capture, Kingsnorth discerns how in addition to gender ideology, the language of race and white supremacy, all transplants from the United States, are being weaponised today across Europe to divide people into racial groups, setting people against each other while creating a war against the human body, human relationships, and the family. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nick Cruse, citizen journalist and cofounder of Revolutionary Blackout Network, discusses the political terrain in the United States today and how legacy media participated in the political framing and exaggeration of the events of the 6 January 2021 protests at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Vituperating the “frauds that cosplay as Socialists and leftists” like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cruse elaborates how this neoliberal class has made a mockery of itself pretending that the unarmed protestors at the Capitol formed an insurgency, while in reality these same actors supported US government-back insurgencies in other countries such as the 2018 assassination attempt on the life of Nicolas Maduro whom they labelled a “tyrant and a thug.” Noting how Bernie Sanders shifted the left radically to the right by siphoning leftists to the Democratic Party, Cruse criticises how legacy media has abetted politics through disinformation to include the attempt to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation” asking: “What are the chances that our media always had the same exact narrative?” Cruse demonstrates how journalism is failing the public remarking how media today collaborates with the state by creating fake news to divert the public from current events as journalists are censorsed or killed. Analysing the Biden administration’s collaboration with the Israeli government in covering up the murder of veteran Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, Cruse scrutinises how White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to take media questions regarding her murder or the torture and imprisonment of journalist and publisher, Julian Assange. Cruse observes that even if Assange were to be freed today, the lesson of terrorising journalists into compliance, into silence, has already been learned. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Exulansic discusses her series, I am Jazz’s Waking Nightmare, wherein she offers social and political commentary on Jazz Jennings’ reality TV show, I am Jazz. Analysing gender ideology’s infiltration in mainstream media, Exulansic delves into the postmodern condition of the Jennings family’s pathological grooming of Jazz Jennings. Analysing the production of I am Jazz, Exulansic examines the reality show and how all reality has been edited out or caught accidentally on camera while Jazz’s persona, crafted for television audiences as he is coached to demonstrate the happy “transgender” subject, morphs between the scripted lines and unscripted moments that allow for the reality and horror of his life to materialise. Historicising how the audience witnesses Jazz being coached for the show’s production and by his own family, Exulansic ironises how despite his ad-libbed performances we still get glimpses of Jazz’s real self through accidental admissions that are not edited out. Demystifying the rhetoric throughout this show’s history—how sic “transgender” people will always be oppressed, Exulansic studies how this show has become a marketing platform for ideological dissemination while locating the mother, Jeanette Jennings, as the primary perpetrator of her son whom she sexually abuses and shatters his psychological development through the pseudo-medical hokum and dangerous medical experimentation, all executed in the name of transgender ideology.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr David Bell, a former staff governor at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, discusses the fallout from the circumstances of his 2018 report, highly critical of the Tavistock Gender Development Service (GIDS), along with the criticisms by his colleagues from the Tavistock, that led to the growing public concern about GIDS, the Judicial Review, and the decision by NHS England, following the Cass Review, to close the service. Bell explores the complex terrain where the pro-medicalisation push within this demographic is at odds with the anti-pathology proponents, describing the paradox of a peculiar “double narrative” around gender dysphoria: those who claim they have a psychiatric disorder in order to covered by the NHS or by private insurance to be treated quickly and then the second group that claims they don’t have an illness, so they don’t need treatment. Bell also queries the politicisation of the treatments around gender dysphoria, stating, “Gender disorder…is a kind of ticket” where its adherents claim “that they know what the treatment is that they need.” Analysing the changes in the cultural context of gender dysphoria such as the co-morbidities associated with girls who identify as having “gender dysphoria” (eg. autism), Bell observes how current data on the decline of anorexia and bulemia cases suggests that girls who identify as transgender have much in common with the previous generations of anorexia and bulemia. Highlighting the complex and difficult relationship these girls have with their sexual body, Bell maps out the various ways these sorts of manifestations have changed according to cultural shifts: in Freud’s day it was “hysteria” to anorexia and bulemia in the twentieth century to this century’s manifestation of gender dysphoria. Noting how among young people in the UK presenting with gender dysphoria that 80% are girls, Bell ascribes this condition’s undercurrent as stemming from neoliberalism and misogyny. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of Shadowproof, discusses his latest book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange (2023) detailing the profound injustice of the case against Julian Assange. Historicising the political background to the case against Assange, Gosztola covers the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Espionage Act (1918) which works against free speech principles and freedom of the press while this act also protects entrenched corruption. Gosztola elaborates the abuses the US government has enacted upon journalists and whistleblowers who have told the truth while public officials have gotten away, unpunished, for their criminal acts and policies such that Assange has been held accountable as a publisher of war crimes while those who have enacted these war crimes have not faced justice. Gosztola analyses how both Democratic and Republican administrations, mainstream news outlets, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and other powerful forces have all conspired to condemn Assange in retaliation for exposing the extent of US torture, rendition, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan while evidencing how Assange was intentially made to “look like a bum” by major media as Assange was marched in front of the cameras in a dishevelled state in order to posture him as looking like he belongs in prison. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Lexi Ellingsworth, co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, discusses the state of surrogacy within Britain in the run-up to this week’s report jointly published by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission that outlines recommendations for law reform around surrogacy. Ellingsworth outlines the finer points of commercial surrogacy, currently illegal in the UK that are being subtly eroded through “altruistic surrogacy,” demonstrating how this system is a fudge on the commercial model because there are hidden aspects of remuneration in addition to powerful social returns. Ellingsworth vituperates how altruistic surrogacy, in some ways similar to the “sex work” model, is largely based on neoliberal notions of “choice” where pregnancy is a service and a baby the product all under the auspices of helping others create a family. Discussing how the ethical lines that are quickly creating a breeder class of woman to service the elite—be they infertile couples of the professional class or gay men—Ellingsworth outlines how the pro-surrogacy lobby is astroturfed to influence democratic debate while pushing the commercial model even to the exclusion of women’s voices up until the public consultation. Ellingsworth frames all forms of surrogacy within the larger legal spectrum of human trafficking noting that while we accept that women can do what they like with their bodies, “Do we also say that she can do what she likes with her children and if she wants to sell them, she can?” noting that laws which currently prohibit the sale of children who are two-years old, paradoxically in many countries uphold the sale of “brand new” children.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi discuss their recent book, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (2023) and the wider landscape of the regressive effects of lockdown policies. Historicising the pandemic response to the anti-democratic push of neoliberalism, Fazi observes how during the financial crisis, a new class of economists was ushered forth to justify devastating economic policies, falsely claiming the inevitability of austerity in order to save the planet from another financial collapse. Fazi notes how this same model of “econocracy” was brought in and used during the pandemic as hand-picked scientists played a similar role of the economists during the financial crisis in order to side-step democratic debate. Elaborating how the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), formed in 2019, brought together the most powerful media organisations in the world to include the BBC, Reuters, The Hindu, and The Guardian, among many other media outlets, Green analyses how by 2020 the TNI became a type of clearinghouse for received opinion on COVID-19 as it curated the media landscape around the pandemic creating long-lasting implications for democracy as accuracy was sacrificed for misinformation. Green and Fazi characterise the political and biomedical response to COVID-19 lockdowns as criminal, as they map out the negative effects on education, mental health, child protection, suicides, obesity, alcohol consumption, gun violence, and an increase in the marriages of adolescent girls by families desperate for economice relief in India.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Stacy Malkan, co-founder and managing editor of U.S. Right to Know, discusses a report she recently co-authored, Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide (2022) which uncovers astroturfing operations that Monsanto has exacted around the planet to embolden its hold over the agro-chemical industry. Malkan expounds on how Monsanto uses its wealth to saturate its agenda through universities, Nobel laureate scientists, professors, lawyers, and journalists in what she classifies as a “lockstep army.” Discussing California’s Proposition 37, a 2012 ballot measure that would have required the labeling of genetically engineered food, Malkan notes how Monsanto threw $45 million in the space of one month in order to saturate media with its propaganda, reversing public support against this measure for which there had previously been 70% public support in favour. Detailing how Monsanto orchestrates its astroturf operations—fake grassroots groups that are intended to look real but which are in reality managed by third-party PR firms to give the veneer of independence—Malkan elaborates how Freedom to Farm was one such operation that emerged in the European Union in the aftermath of the 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) ruling that classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Malkan fleshes out how how this astroturf operation was the creation of the PR firm FleishmanHillard whereby it employed 90 people across the EU “to recruit or look like or create the impression” that Freedom to Farm was a genuine grassroots effort led by farmers who warned of the “threat to farming” posed by restricting the use of glyphosate, when in fact this was all a massive PR theatre. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Canadian researcher Dr. Jessica Rose discusses her work around myriad facets of the COVID-19 pandemic—from the virus mitigation measures to the vaccine. Covering her research on the descriptive analysis of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data surrounding the Covid-19 “vaccine,” Rose notes how propaganda was established an early-on during the pandemic where the politicisation of the coronvirus put science far behind the various political agendas being spun. Rose also discusses her November 2021 paper, co-authored with Peter A. McCullough MD, MPH, “A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products” discussing how the highest reporting of myocarditis was among 15-year-old males after the second dose of the Covid-19 “vaccine.” Despite this paper having been peer-reviewed with no reported issues as to the content of the paper’s data or accuracy, it was withdrawn, a move which Rose deems politically motivated. Detailing the misuse of science from the beginning of the pandemic in what she characterises a “pandemic of testing,” Rose explains how the widespread use of PCR tests—instead of the more accurate antibody tests—functioned to inflate case numbers while instilling fear within a public that was subjected to unecessarily invasive procedures while being subjected to campaigns of false information by government agencies and legacy media that led people to believe that the PCR test was diagnostic when in fact it was anything but. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Janja Lalich, PhD, Professor Emerita of Sociology, an international authority on cults and coercion and author of Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships discusses her theoretical and practical work in the field of cults. Distinguishing cults from religious organisations and mass social formations, Lalich thrashes out the historical facts surrounding cults and their contemporary manifestations. Covering the “self-sealing system” of cults, Lalich forays into this world of cults within the west to include the penetration of Indian guru culture within the USA beginning in the 1960s. Delving into the current maelstrom of gender ideology within the west, Lalich observes the current upheaval over this ideology, comparing this with other ideological movements like QAnon, where it is difficult to have rational conversations with the adherents of these ideologies. Characterising the discourse around gender ideology as a “cult mindset,” Lalich notes that the real harm of gender ideology is how it is gaining vast social acceptance while isolating those voices who speak against this orthodoxy, comparing this ideology to McCarthyism during the 1950s where a tremendous political backlash similarly caused people to lose their families, careers, communities, and lives.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Aaron Kheriaty, a physician specialicing in psychiatry and author of The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State (2022), discusses the collateral harms of lockdown, vaccine mandates and the lack of public debate regarding these subjects. Reviewing his lawsuit against the University of California regarding the University’s vaccine mandate and the lack of informed consents, a central principle of medical ethics designed to prevent the kind of abuses that prevailed during Nazi Germany, Kheriaty discusses his refusal to take the vaccine after his former employer moved ahead with a vaccine mandate, violating ethical principles that he not only maintained professionally but which he also professed in the classroom. Kheriaty compares the social control of certain historical periods, criticising the “new paradigm of governance” under lockdown that went far beyond that of Italian fascism where citizens were made to follow strict rules, quarantines, social isolation, and relinquish freedoms not even seen during the bombing of London during the Second World War. Vituperating the government-sponsored smear campaigns of medical professionals who questioned the official government policies all the way through the vaccine mandates, Kheriaty argues that the truth must emerge from government agencies and institutions that need to take responsibility for the harms of lockdown policies, vaccine mandates, and the censorship regime that is now being evidenced through the Twitter files. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Siddharth Kara, Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University, discusses his latest book Cobalt Red (2023). Covering the historical developments that led to the European exploitation of the African continent, especially by Belgian King Leopold II in the Congo region, Kara describes the tragedy of Congo as having been the historical and contemporary site of extensive human and labour rights violations. Geographically located on a wealth of resources pivotal to both older and more recent automobile revolutions, Kara expounds how from 1888 onward this region was exploited for its rubber in order to supply tires for the First Automobile Revolution and then again from the 1990s to the present day where the Electric Vehicle Revolution, computers and smartphones necessitate cobalt to produce rechargeable batteries. Kara observes how Congo sits on some of the earth’s most valuable resources as he chronicles the region’s tragic history from the colonial period where all the Congo’s value was siphoned out to the world’s elite, especially King Leopold, only to have this exploitation replicated 130 years later with cobalt given that the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined. Kara remarks, “Now instead of a king, it’s mega-tech companies and electric vehicle companies…generating immense profits while the people of the Congo eek out a subhuman existence on a few dollars a day.” Kara covers the myriad human rights violations as a result of cobalt mining from child slavery to the sexual exploitation of girls and women while sustaining that “the very legitimacy of our global economic order is put in perile if it’s built upon this kind of colonial age oppression, degradation, and exploitation of the poorest people in Africa.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kate Coleman, founder and director of the criminal justice reform group Keep Prisons Single Sex, discusses her organisation’s advocacy for the sex-based rights of women throughout the criminal justice system and Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Expounding upon the importance of sex to risk, safeguarding, and data recording, Coleman elaborates the needed changes to current practices within prisons throughout the UK. Observing how Sturgeon pushed through the Gender Recognition Reform Bill with astounding rapidity, Coleman describes her participation at Stage 1 of this bill, having given testimony on a panel in Holyrood. She also elicits her horror during Stage 3 as Coleman witnessed discussions around approximately 150 significant amendments to this bill—from child protection and the safeguarding of vulnerable adults. Coleman recounts how these proposed amendments were arrogantly dismissed with jeers from SNP politicians and accusations of bigotry towards women asking for reasonable accommodations to not be imprisoned with men. Articulating how the transgender lobby has introduced the concept that sex is something “about which you can and should be able to keep private,” Coleman analyses how this, together with collapse of gender and sex, has piggybacked “gender identity” onto intersex medical conditions in order to give this project a veneer of a proper medical diagnosis while disappearing the reality of sex. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Aaron Moulton, a curator and anthropologist, discusses his project The Influencing Machine, a large-scale exhibition and publication examining the legacy of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts (SCCA), a network of twenty Soros Centres for Contemporary Art that sprung up across Eastern Europe from the early to mid-1990s. Examining the mission of these centres, funded by Geroge Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI), Moulton discusses how he first exposed his ideas at an online conference in 2020 where he elaborated how these networks pioneered forms of socially-engaged artistic practices that anticipated forms developed in Western art capitals while also serving as neoliberal social engineering projects. Critiquing how NGOs like the Open Society are supra-governmental forces that escape scrutiny while wielding a dangerous amount of power that approximates “a political party unto themselves,” Moulton observes how the fundamental failure of Soros’ project is that “it didn’t understand life without an opposition and how it would create a lot of hungry activists.” Moulton elaborates how The Influencing Machine is fundamentally an ethnography of the SCCA’s influence in the region where this NGO insinuated woke culture within curatorial practice as coercive philanthropy and corporations influenced creative practices that resulted in propaganda, not art. Noting how the SCCA created these museums of false consciousness throughout Eastern Europe, Moulton analyses the astroturfing of the art world at the hands of the Open Society Foundation and the tactics and strategies used to manipulate people into ideological obedience that has had enormous resonance throughout the west in recent years through identity politics’ tremendous ideological capture within western societies. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jennifer Sharp, an award-winning filmmaker, discusses her latest film Andecdotals (2022), which she produced and directed after having an adverse reaction to the COVID vaccine and finding herself mandated out of polite society. Discussing her motivation for making her film, Sharp details a story of medical malfeasance, pharmacetical and scientific fraud, and documents the wider theatre where Big Pharma, the FDA and the CDC have failed to appropriately test, trial, and scientifically document these COVID-19 “vaccines” to include occluding the possibility for trial participants to document adverse reactions that were not included in a narrow list of choices. Discussing how the trails did not demonstrate a reduction of deaths, Sharp elaborates the medical and pharmaceutical fraud behind the pandemic’s mantra—“follow the science”—because much of the “science” was based on secret, unscientific data which companies like Pfizer tried unsuccessfully to bury for 75 years. Sharp evidences the many cases of adverse reactions and how many such cases were eclipsed within the trial literature with some cases being entirely misrepresented: “data” from the trials was gamed. Noting how governments around the planet protected Big Pharma by extending these companies total immunity from legal liability, Sharp vituperates a very sick and inbred system in the United States where there is frequent phenomenon of members of FDA who retire only to take up posh positions in Big Pharma in what she calls a “good ole’ boys club.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Stephen Bezruchka, faculty in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, discusses his latest book, Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19's Health Lessons for the World (2022, Routledge), analysing some of the socio-medical terrain as to why the United States does so poorly in health measures. Discussing how the United States has by far the highest levels of inequality among wealthy countries, Bezruchka details how living in a society with entrenched hierarchies increases the negative effects of illnesses for everyone. Bezruchka covers how a fair system of taxation, maternal leave, support for child well-being, universal access to healthcare, are just some of the remedies that can reverse the downward trend in the health of the American population. Tracing his experiences in the field outside of western medicine, Bezruka frames how social issues like stress have worsened public health whereby social issues rarely figure into understanding public health. Observing how during the COVID-19 pandemic western societies leaned towards individualistic rather than collective solutions to the public health crisis, Bezruka notes that the United States has worse health outcomes than some 50 other nations despite spending almost half of the world's healthcare bill.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Tonje Gjevjon, Norwegian artist and filmmaker, and Christina Ellingsen, women's rights activist and publisher, discuss the current gender identity laws in Norway that affect women. Noting her cancellation from the Norwegian arts scene for her political stance on gender identity, Gjevjon considers how she potentially faces criminal charges and jail time for posting on Facebook that men cannot be lesbians. Gjevjon ellucidates how men LARPing (live-action role-playing) as lesbians are simply invigorating age-old homophobia directed at women that has taken a virutal format. Ellingsen discusses how she has been investigated for the past eight months for stating that sex is immutable, a biological truism. Although the case against her has been dropped, Ellingsen critiques how the ongoing case against Gjevjon demonstrates what is at stake today: that men claiming to be lesbians is the latest form of sexual harassment against lesbians. Ellingsen observes how this form of police and judiciary menace requires that women remain silent or risk their livelihoods and reputation in challenging the misogyny that has usurped public space over the past decade in Norway. Discussing the megalomania at the heart of gender identity politics today, Ellingsen picks apart the falsehood at the heart of this debate: that the technological control of nature is even possible. Both Gjevjon and Ellingsen vituperate the more horrific socio-political picture afoot: that of western societies foisting upon vulnerable individuals the lie of “sex change” as the mass sterilisation of this population is both encouraged and normalised. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Peter Phillips, a Professor Emeritus of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University and former Director of Project Censored (1996 to 2010), discusses his book, Giants: The Global Power Elite (2018), that focuses upon the concentration of wealth internationally whereby corporations and giant investment firms—multi-trillion dollar investment companies—have the money and power to restrict the parameters of what is possible for legacy news to cover. Elaborating how news is framed by the one-half of one per cent of the world’s population, Phillips notes how those who invest in big media (Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox, Bertelsmann, and Viacom/CBS) further protect their profits—to include these same shareholders’ investments in war—whereby news stories are modelled around the narrow parameters of these investors’ financial interests. Philipps considers the repression of news today by the collaborative efforts of intelligence agencies working to protect and expand capital (eg. governments’ “vital interests”) along with the military and political elite within every country. In this way, capital investments are shared among an international gobal elite whereby large companies like Hearst and The New York Times are primarily interested in protecting wealth as they hire public relations firms and adverising agencies—to include the Omnicom Group, WPP, and Interpublic Group—to package and release news whereby “managed news stories that are preempting objective new coverage.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, a British women's right campaigner, and Heather Brunskell-Evans, a feminist academic, discuss the class division within British feminism that has largely pivoted around and taken aim at Keen’s persona and activism. Giving historical perspective beginning with an event to which she had been invited at a Women’s Place UK event in Wales in the Spring 2018, Keen discusses how the manner in which she was disinvited was “libel-proof” where by WPUK effectively issued a statement that slated Keen as a racist without directly using these words. Noting that WPUK operates through “guilt by association,” Keen expatiates how this organisation weaponised the notion that guilt by association is “something that you can actually do to someone.” Keen discusses the events of January 2019 where she was accused of having “collaborated with the far-right” where in fact she and Julia Long undertook political activism to hold a political figure to account for having advocated the placement of a violent male prisoner in a woman’s prison and she had organised a public event for women to come and speak publicly. She observes, “If we start saying that free speech and the right to assemble and the right for free association…are something that the right do, then what does that say about the left? Because it’s not good.” Brunskell-Evans chronicles the purist policing within British feminism warning how this will leave a terrible legacy for future generations because the there is an attempt to frame the split in British feminism as merely “a bunch of women fighting with each other” which eschews what is actually going on. Elaborating how disagreement is part of any healthy liberal democracy, Brunskell-Evans expounds that these leftist feminists’ monstering of Keen has postured itself as disagreement when it is anything but. Brunskell-Evans details how these leftist feminists have engaged in policing and surveillance of thought together with ad hominem and defamatory attacks of Keen in what has been a uniquely authoritarian move in the guise of shutting down free speech and the grassroots movement that Keen facilitates. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Julie Ponesse, author of My Choice: The Ethical Case Against Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (2021), discusses the field of ethics and role that fear played within the landscape of a global pandemic and how this stalls the ability of humans to understand and process new information, inclines us towards pessimism, and moves society towards a certain level of gullibity of official political narratives that claim to “save” society. In a sharp criticism of what has happened since March 2020, Ponesse analyses how those who supported lockdowns—who believed the official narrative of fear, as a result of which encouraged them to push the narrative, even at times cruelly within their own social and professional circles—are now confronted with the fact that everything they supported and enacted was all a lie, discussing this demographic’s compliance to draconian pandemic responses. Noting how internet culture has already trained a generation to locking themselves down with computers and mobile devices, Ponesse discusses the ways in which public opinion became controlled by big tech and major media across most of the planet manufacturing a homogeneous public health narrative without including any other scientific counterpoints, what Ponnes views as the signal that we were collectively being lied to. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sall Grover, the founder and CEO of the female-only social networking app Giggle, discusses the Tickle v Giggle federal court case which opened up the conversation in Australia about the right to female-only spaces. Considering how she was legally pursued for making business decisions based on biological reality, Grover elaborates how the Giggle court case perfectly illustrates the larger global situation where women must fight for women-only spaces within the real world where women are being told that if they fail to see men as women, they must endure harassment, the threat of unemployment, public shaming, defamatory campaigns and/or are instructed to undergo re-education. Discussing how the sexism she experienced during her career as a screenwriter in Hollywood prepared her for the gender debate, Grover covers the wider implications of what is being foisted upon women and society at large—especially children. Observing how children over the past five years are being taught that everyone has a “gender identity,” Grover analyses how this political lie has been completely decontextualised from its extremely recent birth: “You could just assume that this has always been taught… [These children] are not being given the context of this which makes it even crueller.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr Phillip Altman, a retired Pharmacologist with expertise in the areas of clinical medical research and pharmaceutical drug regulatory affairs in Australia, discusses his 10 September 2022 lecture to the Australian Medical Professional Society (AMPS) wherein he criticises the science during the COVID pandemic, announcing, “We, the Australian people, have been deceived—we have been lied to.” Altman elaborates on his career working within this sector, reflecting upon the ideological hold that Big Pharma maintains over medical literature and medical thought while also revealing how he was blind-sided by the manner in which the “iconic medical journals” that inform physicians are highly controlled by Big Pharma. Describing Australia’s recent 17% excess death rate, Altman expounds how few are asking for accountability of these deaths and vituperates the misuse of PCR tests during the pandemic, asking, “What’s the point in measuring all those people if they’re not really sick?” Altman confirms that public health policy should have been driven by hospital admissions for COVID-19 which would have allowed for “a more realistic approach” to addressing this virus, instead of one “driven by fear,” adding, “And that was intentional.” Covering the power of the bureaucrats who drove lockdowns and vaccine mandates around the world, Altman confirms how they achieved their “amazing power by using fear…and they will not let go. And they stay silent regarding vaccine mandates: they know that these vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of infections…The whole world knows that now—even the CDC and the NIH, they’re saying it. They’ve had to admit now.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Katherine Deves, an Australian lawyer who ran as a Liberal candidate for the seat of Warringah in the 2022 Australian federal election, discsusses how her campaign was in part derailed by her views on gender identity. Framing this ideology as a religon where the god is the “curated identity” of the self, Deves like the gender identity cult to “Revenge of the Losers” where people who never had friends at school “have accumulated social capital online” to command public opinion. Accounting for the civil and criminal sanctions in Australia imopsed upon those who do not go along with gender identity, Deves elaborates how “transgender vilification” has been incorporated within the anti-discrimination law in New South Wales where “vilify” can simply be ideological disagreement and where, as Deves notes, even if the accused can sucessfully defend herself from this criminal chargs through the public interest exemption, “the process is the punishment.” Deves also covers how “gender identity” is a protected characteristic at the federal level noting how with recent proposed laws in the state of Victoria, that were anyone not to affirm someone’s “gender identity,” they could potentially be charged with crime. Deves goes on to analyse how this ideology is “so impoverished” that it has affected our cultures where from this movement no art or music is produced, where there is “no singing, no community…no joy.” Deves describes how this ideology has created a socio-political environment of nervousness where the current reality is “merciless, heartless and brutal,” as she exposes how many people irrationally go along with this ideology depsite having no idea what they are conceding until the moment they find themselves “up against it.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Biggs, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, discusses his foray into gender criticism from his graduate studies in the United States to being told by students to “get educated.” Bigg reports: “I did educate myself but I came away with the ‘wrong’ views.” Sharing his thoughts on the origins of gender ideology, Biggs examines inert facets within feminism where some feminists have maintained that there are no differences between men and women, a posture which inevitably led to the likes of Judith Butler being able to step into this discourse and to further disassociated gender from sex. Covering the history of transsexualism from the 1950s through the 1990s, Biggs considers how this era was a fundamentally male phenomenon with 90% of transsexuals being men and their clinicians were also invariably male (eg. John Money, Harry Benjamin). Conversely, Biggs apprehends an interesting shift from the beginning of this century where not only the majority of those claiming a trans identity have been women, but he observes that it is mostly females (eg. Judith Butler, Stephen Whittle, Ruth Hunt, Nancy Kelly, Polly Carmichael) driving this movement to include the incredible push for institutional and political capture. Biggs also elucidates how the transgender movement of today has nothing to do with the transsexual phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. Detailing how the scientific hokum within the literature of gender identity has been successful in elaborating what he calls “idea laundering,” Biggs expounds upon the mechanism whereby articles advancing bad ideas with poor research behind them are incredibly difficult to discredit while, even if one succeds in publishing a critique of a flawed study, the refutation, in all likeihood, will result in the flawed study being cited even more.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, discusses two of his articles on the gender debate—“The ‘T’ Piggybacking on the ‘LGB’” and “Transgender Confusions”—covering the policies around public policy, law, and Supreme Court rulings. Beginning with issues such as “bathroom bill” and prisons, Sapir criticises the central tenet of this movement: no debate. Claiming that we are in the throes of a “public mania,” Sapir goes through many of the contradictions within the trans movement’s arguments such as the claim that the only proper determinant of being a man or a woman is gender, not sex. Noting how the gender movement makes an exception within sports as, at the very least, acknolwdging sex as a reality, Sapir explains how this lobby has no other choice given that the political implications of denying sex would do away with women’s sports entirely. He also demonstrates how this “oppressed minority” has gained pervasive institutional capture within a decade and is anything but “oppressed” as he elaborates the American debate through the gender lobby’s inability to answer basic philosophical and scientific questions. Sapir explores how this movement has managed to build so much momentum “without actually having a coherent philosophical understanding of the human person or without having good scientific evidence for the transitioning of children.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Norman Finkelstein discusses his forthcoming book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom (2022, Sublation Media) and the current dilemma within academia today of identity politics. Covering historical examples of people who have been punished by authority for their beliefs, Finkelstein contextualises cancel culture from McCarthyism where ruling elites on the right attempted to silence critics of US domestic policy by deradicalising the US labour movement by ridding it of Communists in addition to the suppression of domestic dissent against US global hegemony which ultimately led to massive and brutal repressions internationally. Finkelstein outlines how the current brand of cancel culture on the left is not state-driven and somewhat milder in its form than in the 1950s, noting how the Democratic Party substituted identity politics for its working-class base. He asserts that identity politics and cancel culture form the party’s reigning ideology which he characterises as a “menace.” Finkelstein elaborates his thoughts on transgender rights observing that “there is a large element of…self-indulgence by people who have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of money in their bank accounts” maintaining that this ideology is more current in elite institutions and graduate schools than at universities frequented by working-class students. He posits that identity politics are elite concerns of the 1% where pronouns—what he frames as “self-absorbed word games”—have captured headlines in the media all invented by “Martha’s Vineyard culture” that is entirely disconnected from “the real lives of real people in the real world.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani discusses her latest book Divining Chaos: The Autobiography of an Idea (New Village Press, 2022) outlining her political and artistic coming of age in the 1960s in downtown New York, her development as a feminist, and her evolution into an ecoartist who employs a multi-disciplinary approach to take on the current ecological crises. Having worked at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, Rahmani explains the differences between ecoart and land art stating, “Where land artists such as Robert Smithson were using sculptural techniques to stamp their own philosophical comments on the Earth, as my father had, ecoartists are driven by the sense that the Earth desperately requires healing much more than stamping.” Rahmani elaborates how it is imperative that we understand the entire spectrum of change within the natural world without interrupting these spaces as she delves into what she calls “trigger point theory,” a pro-active relationship to change based in the physics of the natural world. Incorporating the diverse disciplines of art, music, law and science, Rahmani views the siloisation of disciplines as part of the problem leading is leading to ecosuicide. Instead, she engages the ecosystem through a trans-disciplinary paradigm whereby knowledge from various fields is brought together in order to address the ecological problems of our day. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Douglas Kellner, Distinguished Research Professor of Education at UCLA and an early theorist in the field of media literacy, discusses the current state of media today and the need for consumers of news media to think critically and to question everything they intake. Critiquing major media’s non-stop coverage of the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in recent weeks, Kellner analyses media's capitalist project where objective reporting of current events is rare because entertainment ultimately sells. Giving a brief history of television and cable news along with his consumption of print news from his time as a paperboy, Kellner elaborates how the age of the internet fails to offer the paradigm shift that many progressives hoped it would thirty years ago. He observes how corporate media dominates political and social discourse while raking in large sums by leaping from one spectacle to the next within strict partisan lines. From stories of “extreme weather,” the OJ Simpson trial, wars, sex scandals, Donald Trump, celebrity gossip, and the British monarchy, Kellner notes how media proliferates within the ethos of what Guy Debord called the “society of spectacle.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Fred Sargeant, a 74-year-old disabled French-American gay rights activist, veteran of the 1969 Stonewall riots, and a co-founder and organizer of the first Gay Pride march, discusses having been attacked at a recent Pride event in Burlington, Vermont. Tracing his involvement within the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, Sargeant criticises the transgender movement’s wholesale capture of the lesbian and gay rights movement whereby today it is assumed that gay men and women “owe trans people the event that we created,” likening this hijacking to a bad marriage where he believes the only solution to this conflict is for lesbians and gay men to separate themselves from the QT. Sargeant notes how local gay and lesbian organisations and media have ignored the attack on him, noting the many death threats and acts of violence committed by the transgender community whenever anyone denounces the fetishism, homophobia, misogyny, and abuse rife within this community. Sargeant observes how violence is being used to force the public to accept a fiction, “We are being asked to exalt their personality in very weird ways,” citing JK Rowling who recently spoke out about the attack on him: “Violence is not a bug, but a feature of this authoritarian movement.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jim Fouratt, former actor, gay rights activist, and one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front which was formed on the third night of the Stonewall Riots (also called the Stonewall Uprising), discusses what happened on 28 June 1969, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street. Speakng to the many fictions that have circulated in recent years, perpetuated largely by the transgender lobby, Fouratt historicises the era as well as the class and race issues prevalent in the late 1960s within New York City’s gay and lesbian community. Fouratt details how what he calls the Stonewall Rebellion was most definitely not a political protest that involved the sic “transgender community,” noting that Marsha P. Johnson was not even present and that drag queens barely figured into the venue of the Stoewall Inn much less the rebellion. Describing the political, policing, and social milieu at the time, Fouratt delves into how and why Stonewall took place, elaborating the social dynamics of various generations within gay culture as he vituperates the rewriting of gay and lesbian history by the transgender lobby that attempts to whitewash and erase gay men and lesbians from their own movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Monica Smit, founder of activist group Reignite Democracy Australia which opposes the Victorian government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, discusses her 2021 arrest, detention and the charges brought against her of incitement for urging people to attend anti-lockdown protests. Having spent twenty-two days in solitary confinement for refusing to sign the draconian bail conditions—extreme conditions which have since been appealed and revoked—Smit, recently recognised as Australia's first political prisoner, still faces criminal charges for her human rights activism. Here she elaborates the political machinery within Australia today that refuses to come clean on “the science” that many politicians fabricated to justify what she deems to have been unecessary lockdowns and draconian police actions taken against peaceful protests. Working with internationally respected experts and organisations to form a new global platform, Reignite World Freedom, Smit clarifies her endeavour to educate the public around the planet as to how they too can pushback against the globalist agenda in a post-Covid-19 world where the left has utterly failed to take up the mantle of defending human rights leaving the political right, as she views it, to undertake this task. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, discusses current public health measures and how the COVID-19 pandemic, now an endemic, has been handled—from the misguided WHO recommendations, to national policy responses, to lockdowns, and vaccine mandates. Bhattacharya analyses how the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 was politically framed and wrongly assumed by some to be capable of stopping virus transmission noting how countries like Israel had vast case outbreaks even with high vaccination rates. Bhattacharya details how vaccine discrimination grew out of wrong-minded public health policies based on vaccine falsehoods within the US where officials ignored the fact that those who had already recovered from having contracted COVID-19 had pretty good protection against getting sick again, stating: “Essentially they introduced…legalised discrimination against the unvaxed on the basis of a scientific falsehood: the idea that the vaccine could stop transmission.” Observing how the lockdowns were a complete failure in stopping the spread of the virus while there were viable alternatives for protecting the elderly, Bhattacharya vituperates how the lives of the poor, the vulnerable, and the working class worldwide were devastated. He cites a UN report from 2021 that documents how 230,000 children died as a result of the economic dislocation caused by lockdown in South Asia—starvation effectively—something he maintains was utterly predictable. Criticising “policy contagion” on the world stage and the conflicts of interest presented by Anthony Fauci’s roles in virus mitigation and in funding high-profile immunologists and virologists like Jeremy Farrar who are involved in setting COVID policy, Bhattacharya maintains that there is a conflict of interest between those who fund the science and those on the receving end of this funding who set public health policy given that these scientists will be afraid to speak up. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Topher Field, political commentator and Australian documentary filmmaker, discusses the politics and public health decisions that led him to make his latest documentary, Battleground Melbourne (2020). Historicising what happened during Melbourne’s lockdown and the ensuing mask mandates, vaccines and vaccine mandates, Field criticises the propaganda and theatre that has been elaborately disseminated by mainstream media and curated by Big Tech such that no discussion or democratic protest can take place. Noting how in many western nations and Australia alike people have expressed quite reasonable concerns about the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccines being rolled out, Field details that the cost-benefit analysis we were promised is not supported by the data. Explaining how he and others took to the streets of Melbourne to stand up to Daniel Andrews (Premier of Victoria) demanding the human rights that many western democracies have denied their citizens, Field notes the irony of how lockdown became Andrews’ Machiavellian tool for pitting the police and the “laptop class” against the working class where all groups are simply trying to survive and do their jobs. Criticising how evil is represented in popular entertainment, Field vituperates the propaganda created by governments and media the world over that pushed immoral laws and mandates that conditioned people towards fear and away from critical thinking, observing, “People who do evil things are people who do what they are told for the most part and the worst evils in history…have been done by people who were acting in accordance with the law and doing what they were told.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

George Christensen, a former Australian politician, discusses the disastrous political decisions made during the pandemic including the lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccines, vaccine passports and discrimination within Australia since early 2020. Focussing on the loss of liberty, Christensen notes that at the height of the pandemic the case fatality ratio was far too low to justify the lockdowns. Noting the hokum lent to the mask and vaccine mandates, Christensen queries why lockdown became a go-to model from one country to the next despite the science not justifying such draconian tactics. Criticising the power of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Christensen vituperates how the WEF instigated the Great Reset, influencing world leaders who parroted the WEF mantra on lockdown while this organisation, a vast collection of the wealthiest companies (eg. Big Tech, the weapons industry, major media, Big Pharma, the insurance industry, etc) on the planet, aggressively pushed lockdown. Christensen analyses the vast power of the WEF, observing how the editorial narrative in mass media is being driven by the corporate sector which has its hands in every level of government, healthcare, public policy, corporate media, and Big Tech. Major media and Big Tech, Christensen notes, have been instrumental in controlling the social and political narrative by curating what is published within major media and what permitted to be uttered and shared on social media. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Caitlin Roper, activist, writer and Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, discusses her forthcoming book to be published this autumn by Spinifex Press, Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating: The Case for Resistance (2022). Roper outlines the burgeoning industry of “sex dolls” and the more recent emergence of child sex abuse dolls where many companies now offer the customisation of these dolls based on photos of actual girls. Elaborating the widespread support for these dolls and the academic research that views these dolls as the solution to men’s sexual “deprivation," Roper criticises how these dolls are framed as the panacea to women and girls being raped with some supporters stating, “It’s better a robot than a real child.” Roper discusses the wider patriarchal context that supports the objectification of women and girls that prioritises men’s needs in a cultural context that depends upon the idea that women and girls are less than human. Pointing out the paradox where recent social movements have superficially recognised women’s and girls’ rights (eg. the #metoo movement, narratives of consent, etc.), Roper notes the steep disconnect from the wider societal support of the sex doll industry, pornography, and the sex trade. Roper vituperates, “They’re completely at odds. You can’t be fighting the mistreatmeant and exploitation of women while simultaneously encouraging their dehummanisation.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr Az Hakeem, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor in Psychiatry & Applied Psychotherapy who ran a specialist gender dysphoria service in the NHS for twelve years, discusses gender dysphoria and the politicisation of this condition within what has become its own lobby. Discussing his involvement with the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, a group of clinicians based in the UK and Ireland, calling for a greater understanding of the effects of sex and gender in healthcare, Hakeem notes how he and his colleagues are concerned about the current overthrow of reality by gender ideology, especially as children are being put on a trajectory of hormones and surgery. He also explores the theatre of organisational “support” offered by the medical community vituperating the Royal College of Psychiatrists that issues statements supporting “gender” treatments even rough it failed to ask its psychiatrist members and fellows within the College for their opinions on this subject. Hakeem maintains that most psychiatrists do not share the official mantra of the RCP. When asked where scientific evidence exists that demonstrates an enhancement of quality of life resulting from “gender affirming” surgeries or hormones, Hakeem answers, “There is no evidence,” elaborating how there are no follow-up studies on this demographic within the NHS, thus allowing the propagation of false narratives (eg. that those who are refused treatment will commit suicide) to bend pubic opinion on this subject. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Vaishnavi Sundar, a writer and self-taught filmmaker from Chennai, discusses her film Dysphoric (2021) that explores the social, medical, and institutional constructions of “gender identity” and her forthcoming film Behind The Looking Glass (2023) that gives voice to the women who's partners “transition.” Analysing the influence of western theories within India in recent decades, Sundar addresses how the theories of “gender identity” have come to infect academia, NGOs, the fields of psychology and human rights advocacy, and even the very groups most affected by this narrative and its medical procedures, the Dalits (those born into India’s most marginalised castes). While Dalits have faced enormous violence and oppression on the subcontinent for thousands of years, Sundar notes that it is precisey this groups which has become the target for “gender identity” in the transitioning of India’s most oppressed who view “queerness” and “transgender identity” as an escape route from historical economical, political and social oppression. Where “transgender” ideology has taken hold of the more socially affluent in the west, Sundar notes that in India many Dalit women captured by the “gender identity” myth view this narrative as a panacea, an escape from the brutal reality of being female and impoverished in India today. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Mary Lou Singleton, midwife, nurse practitioner and medical freedom activist, discusses the foundational myths buttressing Covid-19 virus mitigation—from the medical, public and political policies—in detailing what she witnessed in her practice. Singleton discusses the political underbelly that virus mitigation shares with the gender identity movement and the recent US Supreme Court decision which upended Roe v Wade while noting the misogyny that leaves women’s bodies expropriated by both political valences. Singleton elaborates how the right wants to restrict the women’s and girls’ freedom to somatic autonomy and reproductive healthcare and the left in unable to define what a women is while catering to regressive sexual stereotypes. Tracing the threads between the pseudo-science spun by legacy media during the past two-and-a-half years of the coronavirus pandemic and the propagation of similar medical hokum regarding gender ideology, Singleton addresses our current era’s most troubling reality where science has been repressed in the name of political decisions and medical totalitarianism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored and president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation, discusses the state of legacy media and the urgent need for critical media literacy today. Reviewing how corporate media covers the news filling its pages with junk food news stories that perpetuate stories of “billionaires in space” and Hollywood scandals, Huff notes how propaganda often thrives on censorship, noting that the best propaganda is largely true but is often missing certain crucial elements that would allow the public to analyse issues more in-depth. Huff elaborates how legacy media uses public concern for “disinformation” to regain control of the narrative by proclaiming anything that does not mirror establishment media as “fake news.” Huff states that this is a transparent twist on censorship and the curation of information. Reviewing the conflicts of interest within organisational alliances that inform legacy media content, Huff scrutinises the Disinformation Governance Board, chaired by co-author of the Patriot Act, Michael Chertoff, and Facebook’s official fact-checker, the Atlantic Council, a lobby arm of NATO. Huff surveys recent neoliberal political narratives that pretend that “fake news” was uniquely a problem during Donald Trump’s presidency while he vituperates the “reactionary control of the narrative” which he claims is “another form of propaganda that wants to get people to accept the notion that there is a form of censorship that’s good for us.”  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nolan Higdon, lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, discusses his latest book co-author with Mickey Huff, Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (Routledge, 2022). Covering the cultural performance of “social justice,” Higdon argues the need for critical thinking skills while noting how social media gives users a “delusion of power” whereby they believe themselves to be an authority on all topics such that when disagreement occurs, blocking has become the default means of interaction. Higdon focusses upon the importance of constructive communication and for individuals to learn how to have their ideas challenged and, at times, to being uncomfortable by fomenting productive relationships of communication instead of the present-day dumpster fire that social media encourages. Considering big tech’s hold over information, Higdon historicises the involvement of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in everything from mass surveillance tools to drones to the internet while noting how big tech is quite happy to do business with whomever is in power while trafficking in the “progression of neoliberal capitalism.” Higdon elaborates how major media and big tech have misrepresented working-class criticisms of the economic shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic by spinning the January 2021 demonstrators in Washington, DC as “white supremacists” and “gun nuts,” marginalising any discussion of class. All this while big tech silently removes social media accounts and certain information from the internet. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kara Dansky, attorney and author of The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls (2021), discusses Sarah Weddington, the architect of Roe v. Wade, who argued the case before the Supreme Court using the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment that guarantees Americans privacy. Addressing the leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito which indicates that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn the landmark decision, Dansky details possible strategies for American women to regain the right to abortion. The 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and was buttressed by a subsequent 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey 505 U.S. 833 that largely maintained this right. Dansky analyses the various legal and constitutional avenues that would fare better than Roe v. Wade while outlining the dangers for women and girls for the impending overturn of this Supreme Court decision. Explaining how the late Justice Ruther Bader Ginsberg, principal author of the brief that carried Reed v. Reed 404 U.S. 71 (1971), argued that women were discriminated against under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Dansky posits that the Equal Protection Clause would have granted women stronger federal constitutional protections of abortion rights over the Due Process Clause employed by Weddington. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dennis Kavanagh, a former criminal barrister and one of the directors of the Gay Men's Network, discusses his recent article that analyses the case of barrister Allison Bailey against the UK charity, Stonewall, while historicising lesbian and gay rights in Britain since the 1980s. Noting the incredible irony of Britain’s most important gay and lesbian charity having changed course over its historic protection of gay and lesbian rights to swap out the political narrative of sex for gender, where being “same-sex attracted” has been carefully conflated with “gender dysphoria,” Kavanagh elaborates how gender ideology has become a subterfuge for Schrodinger’s medical condition whereby on the one hand, this ideology is framed as part of a larger civil rights movement that is not a medical condition while on the other hand, adherents to this ideology exact demands for medical care. Kavanagh lays out the “culture of silence” that permeates gender ideology whereby women are disproportinately silenced for stating that sex is real while this movement evidences an appallingly regressive discourse replete with misogyny, homophobia and racism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sharron Davies, an English former competitive swimmer who represented Great Britain in the Olympics, discusses how she became embroiled in the debate over men participating in women’s sports in 2019 as she foresaw problems where the inclusion of these men “has the potential to ruin women’s sport.” Having followed the science for many years on this issue, Davies shares her experiences of having had to compete against East German swimmers who were given testosterone to outperform their competitors in what can only be described as a full-blown state-run doping programme. Reviewing the science while arguing for fairness in sports, Davies details how today mediocre male athletes can shift categories and outperform top female Olympians. This obviously poses an existential threat to women’s sports in addition to robbing women of titles, careers, economic remuneration, scholarships and many high profile opportunities which serve these athletes throughout the prime of their careers and beyond retirement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Christian Parenti, professor of economics at John Jay College (CUNY), discusses his recent article “How the Organized Left Got COVID Wrong, Learned to Love Lockdowns and Lost Its Mind: An Autopsy” elaborating on the power of the pharmaceutical industry that has dominated media discourse surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic along with the medical industry’s fixation on vaccines over treatment. Analysing how Covid became politicised by both parties in the US, Parenti discusses how social and medical policies were fomented based entirely upon politics leaving no room for any type of public rethinking of lockdown much less accommodating shifts in current policies as new facts regarding the virus emerged. Parenti explains how the left was caught in “Trump derangement syndrome” while Trump had lost control of his own Covid task force early on, such that there was hysteria being whipped up as the pandemic had been entirely politicised by April 2020 where “everybody with power is abusing it in the name of public safety.” Laying out how the left abandoned the working class during the pandemic, Parenti criticises the way class dynamics have been entirely elided noting how “a bunch of American oligarchs…have masked capitalist exploitation in this fog of woke identity politics.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Richard Hanania, President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a Research Fellow at Defense Priorities, discusses the current Russian war in Ukraine and the intertwined western cultural war deeply embedded within this conflict’s narrative. Noting how the “white conservative Christians bad” forms the ideological core of neoliberal views of this conflict, Hanania explains how wokery has crept into current media and political discourses which show support through emotional readings of the current war in Ukraine without any concern for the humanitarian impact of neoliberal calls to punish Russia. Hanania describes the generational differences of older generations who suffer from Cold War nostalgia lending to their hostile views of Russia while giving detailing the links between television’s influence on the representation of the current conflict. Covering the business model of major media like CNN and MSNBC and the American foreign policy establishment and its policies, Hanania covers the current media bias from the right’s militaristic bent and the left’s focus on identity politics while outlining the dangers in how many intake media. Hanania presents the background of US involvement in Ukraine historically to include its involvement in the protests against Yanukovych and its form of “democracy promotion” which fundamentally amounts to regime change while also accounting for the historical role of NATO in the run-up to this conflict and the post-Soviet situation in relationship to US foreign policy. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dora Moutot, journalist, Instagrammer (@tasjoui), and author of Mâle-baisées, talks about patriarchy and feminism today through a critique of the language of identity and queer politics being pushed by the left within France. Delving into the politics of medicine and the divide between how men and women are offere unequal access to medicine, Moutot chronicles how men who claim to be women will readily receive medical interventions while women suffering from conditions like endometriosis were only covered by the state one month ago with many other conditions falling outside state funding. Moutot also covers her views on the gender identity movement, political lesbianism, and how non-western cultures approach death while offering a window into how to understand the popular media messages and literature regarding women and feminism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah Haider, a Pakistani-American writer, public speaker, and political activist, discusses religious dissent and her exit from Islam while elaborating how girls’ and women’s rights under Islam are negatively effected. Noting the patterns and political effects of religion in the Arabo-Islamic world, Haider critiques how the left has consistently moved to any eschew criticism of this religion by pretending that any critique is necessarily a generalisation or a result of colonialism. Haider maintains that with such rationale, nothing would be analysable since scrutiny depends upon noticing patterns and specific paradigms. Discussing the parallels between the repression of women’s freedom in the Muslim world and women in west who are today hounded for pushing back on gender identity, Haider examines how women’s rights around the topic of material reality are being restricted in the west through the “derangement” and enforcement of gender ideology that “has the potential to undo some of the gains of feminists in the west.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jenni Swayne, a former teacher, discusses her work as a women’s rights activist her recent arrest for stickering in Newport, Gwent (Wales). Elaborating how the police arrested her on suspicion of having committed a “hate crime” (a public order offence) after which time she was held in a cell for ten hours, Swayne details the treatment by the police to in include the police interrogation and the limitations put upon her until the bail is over in in a month’s time when she will learn if she will be charged, cautioned or if the case will be dropped entirely. One of the stickers she posted reads: “No child is born in the wrong body: Humans never change sex.” Another found by the police who searched her house removing several sheets of stickers reads: “3+ women killed by men each week: Domestic violence kills.” As Harry Miller puts it, Swayne is being put through a system where “the process becomes the punishment.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, discusses her latest book, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy (2021) outlining how long before “fake news” became the calling card of the right, Americans had already lost faith in their news media. Noting how during the 20th century journalists used to live among the working class, Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism has undergone a status revolution over the twentieth century—from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession today firmly cemented within the well-rewarded and often high-profile knowledge-industry labour sector. Covering the conterminous to the rise of the Internet, the implosion of local news, and the nationalisation of America’s elite news media, Ungar-Sargon notes how journalists became both affluent and ideological which contributed to their ability to de-platform working class voices through the employment of obscure academic language and identity politics. She highlights how the working class has been rendered untouchable while the pressures of the digital media landscape align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades of wokery while the poor flounder under the goals of neoliberalism and meritocracy. Vituperating against the moral panic around racism, Ungar-Sargon elaborates how neoliberal media covers up the economic interests of the elite with a “patina of social justice” while abandoning the American descendants of slaves. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

John McWhorter, associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University discusses his latest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021). Examining how “anti-racism” has become a religion in all but name that treats black Americans as simpletons despite being billed as “anti-racist,” McWhorter states that “what started out as a socio-political orientation has become a foundation of people’s identity…and something of an obsession,” pointing out that this religion demands that the masses suspend logic while it also pushes a narrative of moral purity. McWhorter notes that this religion commands the subject to pretend that nothing has changed all that much for black Americans, something McWhorter deems “anti-empirical” noting that today “it’s racially progressive to pretend that no real progress ever happens” which is anathema to reality. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute, discusses pandemic mitigation measures in the US and around the planet that he has previously termed “central planning in the 21st century.” Detailing how governments and the media have failed to transmit accurate information regarding at-risk demographic groups for COVID-19 while failing to address how pathogens are part our biological world, Tucker delineates how lockdowns “only prolong the pain at best.” Highlighting the current social segregation within many countries where vaccine passports have been rolled out and virus mandates brought in, Tucker analyses the political theatre set up to make the public believe that they are are “safer” when in reality there is no data to demonstrate that masks or plexiglass dividers have served any function in virus mitigation. Maintaining that these devices, among other virus mitigation measures, exist as liturgies to demonstrate the citizen’s willingness to participate in what he calls an “obedience test,” Tucker argues that our humanity has been taken away from us and that our task is now to take it back. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sophie Scott CBE, British neuroscientist and Director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, discusses the neurobiology of human vocal communication, specifically that of laughter and crying and how these non-verbal vocalisations share similarities from the involuntary communicative repertoire to their more specific uses as communication, produced in similar ways while informing our identity as humans. Touching upon the ongoing culture war, Scott frames the prevalent quasi-religious pushback against rationality and science by those who seek to confirm their beliefs through the politicisation of science and the search of identity. Discussing how science is the accumulation of the direction of knowledge—not about what is right or wrong—Scott elaborates the field of science as a “movement of understanding the world” and not a journey with a determined end. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Mattias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University, discusses how the handling of the coronavirus pandemic has lacked a rational approach such that measures used to mitigate the transmission of the virus may potentially claim more victims than the virus itself. Examining how mass formation functions within the current socio-political situation of a global pandemic whereby the political “solutions” offered up result in people being unable to take any critical distance from what is happening, Desmet elaborates the current atomisation of the individual upon which totalitarian power relies and notes how mass formation emerges from the “belly of the population.” Desmet analyses how large-scale mass formation emerges in society when specific conditions are met—social isolation, the lack of meaning in life, free-floating anxiety, and frustration and aggression—all interacting to create a situation whereby society is extremely vulnerable to the rise of a totalitarian state. Desmet details mass formation describing how a narrative is circulated about an anxiety (eg. a virus) while also providing a strategy (eg. lockdowns) for dealing with the collective anxiety over a global pandemic such that the previous free-floating anxieties of the masses permit the subject to connect to the collective object of anxiety, the virus. In this way populations are willing to participate in the strategy of the pandemic such that their free-floating anxieties and frustrations find grounding in a real anxiety, thus creating a new—if not problematic—social bond and meaning-making where the aggressions and frustrations are now directed at those who refuse to participate in this mass formation. Desmet compares this process to hypnosis whereby all of society’s psychological energy is directed at the pandemic while the masses are uniquely focussed upon the victims that the virus might claim while they are not at all concerned with the potentially greater collateral damage of the measures they support. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Arun Dohle, Director of Adoptee Rights Council and Against Child Trafficking, discusses how adoption is never conducted in the best interests of children, but instead protects the interests of adoption agencies, adoptive parents and other vested organisations. Covering some of the legal quagmires between international conventions like the Hague Adoption Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, national laws, and inter-country adoption, Dohle vituperates the practice of adoption, considering it a form of child trafficking, replete with human rights abuses to both the adoptee and parents as the state, private organisations and western agents take it upon themselves to offer their economic advantage as the “better life” for the impoverished child from situations—both familial and national—perceived to be perennially “in need” of adoption. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Joachim Allgaier, Professor of Communication and Digital Society at Fulda University of Applied Sciences in Germany, discusses his research on communication and cooperation in the digital society to include disinformation and conspiracy theories in online media. Beginning with his 2019 study, “Science and Environmental Communication on YouTube,” Allgaier explains his research project wherein he analysed 200 YouTube videos related to climate change concluding that videos peddling conspiracy theories received the highest number of views. Discussing conspiracy videos from migration to COVID, Allgaier discusses how the various algorithms from YouTube to search engines navigate the user through its system giving the illusion that the user alone controls her own journey through online sites. Discussing the spread of misinformation within social media, Allgaier chimes in on how the pandemic has affected the proliferation of conspiracy theories and videos on platforms whose existence depends upon peddling addictive visual input such as TikTok where younger generations find life offline as “exotic” and where binge-watching is now a social norm, something he categorises as both interesting and worrying. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr Petra Bueskens, psychotherapist, writer and Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, discusses her op-ed last year on JK Rowling which which went viral opening up a debate within the Australian Sociological Association and led to a minority of members denouncing her as a “transphobe.” Lending a sociological perspective, Bueskens discusses the Balkanisation of cultural and political debates around this issue into “silos of unreason” which do not follow the pre-digital rules of debate. Jumping from the Jarod Lanier who has been outspoken about the destruction wrought by social media where outrage results in more online engagement, Bueskens discusses how online culture has resulted in social groups that are almost entirely based upon an identification with oppression noting how both sides of this debate are “limbically hijacked.” Turning to a class criticism within identity politics, Bueskens analyses the betrayal of the working class by the left which has taken over the institutional managerial class composed of baby boomers who sold out the left as careerists and the younger generation who lack the tools to critique this discourse. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Karen Davis, host of the Youtube channel “You're Kiddin', Right?” discusses her recent episode where she addresses those within the gender-critical movement who undermine the credibility of their own arguments whereby, on the one hand, they insist that gender is harmful to women and that sex-based language is vital to for women’s rights and, on the other, they reinforce the delusions of “mentally ill people” while treating the category of woman as an “honorific” that reduces women to a fantasy or an aspiration. Analysing the questions that Julia Long posed at a recent conference in the UK, Davis observes the elitism that has authorised certain gender-critics to recreate a privileged class of their “true trans” friends, while insisting that others obey these women’s exceptions, further exacerbating the class and intellectual divide. Davis demonstrates how calling any men “women” is a losing strategy for those who fundamentally don’t believe in the strength of their own arguments as they claim that certain men are not women, but others are. Explaining that it is simply not possible to “be kind” as some of the more privileged gender-critics believe themselves to be while also transmitting a coherent argument that humans simply cannot change sex. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

German-born artist, Jess De Wahls discusses the controversy that erupted statements she made in her 2019 blog that “a woman is an adult human female. (Not an identity or feeling)” and “humans can not change sex” resulted in the Royal Academy removing her work from its gift shop after complaints were raised as to De Wahls’ alleged “transphobia.” In this episode, De Wahls discusses the fallout to her career from the these accusations, the larger horizon of free speech within the art world, specifically for women, where “understanding basic human biology and knowing that humans can’t change sex” is now considered controversial. Examining the institutional capture that has emboldened the managerial class, to include those in power within art institutions, De Wahls analyses how those claiming to be oppressed have paradoxically become de facto gatekeepers without thinking through the consequences to the freedom of expression. De Wahls compares the current era where people are afraid to speak on the unconvertible fact of human sexual dimorphism to what occurred under the Stasi of East Germany while analysing the ways that various communities that claim to be Marxist have bought into identity narratives that flow directly to and from capitalism recycling extremely sexist stereotypes and exerting control over women’s language and bodies. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kathleen Lowrey, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, discusses her dismissal from an administrative post as Undergraduate Programs Chair in her department after student complaints about her opposition to gender identity ideology and her criticism of trans activism.  Discussing how trans activists “use a familiar language of structural injustice” through “aggressive male entitlement,” Lowrey analyses how calls for politeness are weaponised against women by both the the gender lobby and many gender-critics in order to silence the “less polite” women who push back against this ideology. Lowrey examines the paradox of “bad faith” within this ideology—from its focus upon women who are forced to accomodate men, the rehashing of old-world sexism, to the exhortations of women to “be kinder” to men while men are expected to do nothing. Observing how transgender ideology and its conterminous activism advances extremely conservative narratives, Lowrey notes how identitarianism fails to address class issues and imperialist wars as universities are becoming a space of advancing neoliberal ideological purity. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ceri Black, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a campaigner for child protection and for the rights of women and girls, discusses child sexual exploitation and protection today, discussing her own journey from victim to activist. Discussing the normalisation of paedophilia today to include child trafficking and the growing exploitation of children within so-called “leftist” communities that sexualise children (eg. Drag Queen Story Time), Black frames her horror of seeing the social media reactions to the Wi Spa incident in Los Angeles, especially that of Laurie Penny who suggested the child exposed to a naked man in the woman’s section of the spa “not to stare at other people’s genitals without their permission.” In response to Penny’s comment, Ceri wrote a Twitter thread about how to protect children by spotting predatory behaviour. As a result of her tweets, the Northern Ireland police have been threatening to arrest Black. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, discusses his recent report, Academic Freedom in Crisis and the current climate of political discrimination, self-censorship and public punishment ongoing within British academic institutions today. Detailing recent cases of harassment and mobbing such as that of Kathleen Stock at the University of Sussex and his own colleague, Lisa Tilley, who denounced him blaming his criticism of critical race theory for the alleged “sickening environment” in his department, Kaufmann delineates some of the reasons behind this religious fervour within British universities and the current threat to liberalism in western societies. Kaufmann addresses the censorious attitudes prevalent among the younger generation whereby authoritarianism is being driven by the masses and those who identify into oppression. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Vito Gesualdi, comedian and YouTube personality, discusses his participation in the counter-protest against the Netflix employees who staged a walkout outside the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles on 20 October. Discussing how “cancel culture” has affected comedy and screenwriting today, Gesualdi discusses the importance of protecting free speech and how the social media era has spawn social justice activists who believe themselves to alone have all the “right answers” to perceived injustices while creating a culture of victimhood, what he calls a “new religion.” He elaborates how major media like Variety and the Associated Press lied about his participation at the protest of Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, casting his comical and peaceful presence as aggressive and violent. Detailing how his sign was destroyed by a Netflix screenwriter, Joe Cristalli, Gesualdi was left holding the stick onto which his sign was affixed as Cristalli shouts out to the crowds “He’s got a weapon” only to later take part in the physically assault of his co-host, Dick Masterson. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Filmmaker, photographer and film studies scholar Haim Bresheeth-Žabner discusses his latest book, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation (2020) analysing the IDF within the larger project political project of Zionism. Reflecting upon his parents who survived Auschwitz, his birth in Cinecittà in a displaced persons’ camp, to his childhood and formative years in Israel growing up in an Arab house in Jaffa, Bresheeth-Žabner explains how his life and family heritage have informed his political values with a deep understanding of being displaced. Bresheeth-Žabner criticises the unnecessary formation of the Israeli state to resolve the refugee crisis after the Second World War while contending that the creation of Israel was emblematic of a state “where the value system of the army becomes the value system of a nation” noting that the IDF was never a defensive army but instead one of aggression. Discussing how international powers led to the dispossession of an entire nation of its home and the conterminous destruction that is connected to the Nakba (النكبة‎), Bresheeth-Žabner notes how Zionism was implemented to control power bases within the Middle East. Discussing recent accusations of anti-Semitism within the British Labour Party, Bresheeth-Žabner ridicules the tactics of aligning criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and details how he reported himself to the Labour Party as “anti-Semitic” according to its regulations two years before resigning from the party. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Hudson, American economist and author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972) discusses the rentier economy that accounts for the growing disparity in wealth due to finance capitalism. Giving a history of the the polarisation of the US economy since the 1960s through the present, Hudson discusses how the high costs of education and housing have led to a growing problem of student debt, higher costs of living and increasing austerity. Noting how 80% of bank loans are made for real estate in the US, Hudson expounds upon how loans and exponentially growing debts outstrip profits from the economy proving disastrous for both the government and the people who are paying increasing amounts on housing with little to no money left to spend on goods and services. Hudson contends that finance capitalism is a “self-terminating” oligarchical system leaving workers traumatised, afraid to strike or react to working conditions, while they are pushed towards serfdom as US and Europe are heading towards a debt crisis on par with that of Argentina and Greece.TranscriptIntroduction: Welcome to Savage Minds. I'm your host, Julian Vigo. Today's show marks the launch of our second season with a very special guest: Michael Hudson. Michael Hudson is a financial analyst and president of the Institute for the Study of long term economic trends. He is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, and the professor at the School of Marx studies, Peking University in China. He's also a research fellow at the Levy Institute of Bard College, and he has served as an economic adviser to the US Canadian, Mexican, and Latvian governments. He's also been a consultant to UNITAR, the Institute for Research on Public Policy and the Canadian Science Council, among other organisations. He holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in economics from New York University. Professor Hudson is the author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy (2015), and most recently, J is for junk economics, a guide to reality in an age of deception. His super imperialism, the economic strategy of the American Empire has just been translated into German after its appearance in Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. He sits on the editorial board of lap times quarterly and has written for the Journal of International Affairs, Commonweal, International Economy, Financial Times, and Harper's, and he's a regular contributor to CounterPunch. I welcome Michael Hudson, to Savage Minds.Julian Vigo: Class analysis in the United States is rather subterfuge amidst all these other narratives of the American dream as it's framed—that being the right to own one's home. In the UK, that became part of the Trojan horse, that Thatcher built to win her election. It was a very smart move. She won that election—she won her elections—by the reforms in the “right to buy” scheme as I'm sure you know. I t was really clever and disastrous for human rights in the country. I've spent quite a bit of my life in the UK and to see that in 1979 was, I believe, 49% of all residential housing was council housing. And when I wrote a piece on this for the Morning Star about eight, nine years ago, that rate was reduced to under 11%. So we're seeing the haves- and have-nots. And this is where your work really struck a chord for me. And let's kick into the show at this point. I have written over the years, about rentier capitalism, a term that is increasingly used to describe economies dominated by rentier, rents and rent-generating assets. And you discuss this quite a bit in your work, more recently, your article from July, “Finance Capitalism versus Industrial Capitalism: The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover.” And in this article, you discuss how today the finance, insurance and real estate sectors have regained control of government creating a “neo-rentier” economy as you put it, while you note—and I quote you: “The aim of this postindustrial finance capitalism is the opposite of industrial capitalism as known to nineteenth-century economists: it seeks wealth primarily through the extraction of economic rent, not industrial capital formation.” Unquote. I was wondering if we might begin our talk by branching out from this piece you wrote in July. And if you could explain for our listeners why discerning rentier capitalism is essential for understanding the global push to privatise and financialise those sectors that formerly existed in the public domain such as—and we see this everywhere, including in the EU—transportation, health care, prisons, policing, education, the post office, etc.Michael Hudson: Well, most textbooks depict a sort of happy world that almost seems to exist in the 1950s. And this “happy world” is when wealthy people get money, they build factories and buy machinery and hire workers to produce more goods and services. But that's not what the credits created for today, it's the textbooks that pick the banks that take in people's deposits and lend them out to people who build industrial production, and you'll have a picture of workers with lunchboxes working in. But actually, banks only lend money against assets. And the main assets do not make a profit by employing people to produce things there. They simply are opportunities to extract rent, like real estate 80% of bank loans are made for real estate. And that means they're made against primarily buildings that are in land that are already there. And the effective more and more bank credit is to raise the price of real estate. And in the United States, in the last year, housing prices have gone up 20%. And typically, in America, if you go to a bank and take out a loan, the government is going to guarantee the bank that you will pay the loan up to the point where it absorbs 43% of your income.So here's a big chunk of American income going to pay simply for housing, those price increases, not because there's more housing, or better housing. But in fact, the housing is built worse and worse every year, by lowering the standards, but simply inflation. There are other forms of rent, other people pay, for instance, 18% of America's GDP is healthcare, much higher than the percentage in any other country for much lower quality of service. So you know, that's sort of taken out of people's budgets. If you're a worker in the United States, right away, you get your paycheque 15%—a little more, maybe 16% now—is deducted for Social Security and medical care for when you're older. They also need up to maybe 30%, for income tax, federal, state and local income tax before you have anything to spend. And then you have to spend for housing, you have to pay for transportation, you have to pay for your own medical insurance contributions, your own pension contributions. So there's very, very little that is left over in people's budgets to buy goods and services. Not only have real wages in the United States, gone down now for three decades, but the disposable income that people and families get after they meet their sort of monthly “nut,” what they can spend on goods and services is shrunk even more. So while they're getting squeezed, all this money is paid to rentiers as at the top. And because of the miracle of compound interest, the amount that the 1% of the economy has grows exponentially. Any rate of interest is a doubling time. And even though people know that there's only a 0.1% rate of interest, now for the banks, and for large wall firms, it's about 3% if you want to buy a mortgage. and so this, the 0.1% is lent out to large companies like Blackstone that are now buying up almost all of the housing that comes onto the market in the United States. So in 2008, 69% of homeowners of Americans own their own homes. Now it's fallen by more than 10%. It's fallen to about 51%. All this difference has been basically the financial sector funding a transformation away from home ownership into landlordship—into absentee ownership. And so the if you're part of the 1%, the way that you make money is by buying stocks or bonds, or corporate takeovers, or buying real estate and not building factories. And that's why the factories and the industry have been shifting outside of the United States over to China, and other countries. So, what we're having is a kind of…I won’t say its post-industrial capitalism, because people thought that the what was going to follow industrial capitalism was going to be socialism. They thought that there will be more and more government spending on providing basic needs that people had. And instead of socialism, and a more, egalitarian distribution of wealth and income, you've had a polarization of wealth and income, you've had the wealthy people making money financially, and by real estate, and by rent seeking, and by creating monopolies, but not by building factories, not by producing goods and services. And that is why the economy's polarizing, and so many people are unhappy with their conditions. Now, they're going further and further into debt and their student debt. Instead of education here being a public utility that's provided freely, it's become privatised at NYU, it's now $50,000 or $60,000 a year. There is no way in which the United States can compete industrially with other countries when they've loaded down new entrants into the labor force with huge housing costs, student debt, huge taxes have been shifted off the 1% onto the 99%. So in the United States, finance capitalism basically is self-terminating. It leads to a polarised economy, it leads to austerity. And it leaves countries looking like Greece looked after 2015, after its debt crisis, it looks like Argentina is trying to struggle to pay its foreign debts. And that seems to be the future in which the US and Europe are moving towards.Julian Vigo: I posted on my Facebook wall about this about maybe five weeks ago, that the rentier class, I'm not just including the likes of Blackstone, but the middle class that are multiple home dwellers. I noted that during the lockdown, I was reading through accounts on social media of people who were being threatened by landlords, landlords, who actually had no mortgage to pay. And I had to wonder at that point, what is the input of the rentier class by the landowning class who are not necessarily part of the 1%. These are people who, as some of these people came on my wall and said, “I worked hard to buy my second and third houses!” And I thought, “Well, let me pull out my violins.” One thing that really alerted me during lockdown was the lack of sympathy for renters. And I don't just mean in the US, in fact, I think the US had a kinder response to renting in some sectors such as New York state where there has been—and still—is a massive pushback against any form of relaxation of rent forgiveness, since lockdown in the EU and Italy and France. It's appalling the kind of treatment that renters received here. I spoke to people in Bologna, who were doing a rent strike, but fearful of having their name mentioned. I ended up not being able to run the piece because of that. And there are so many people who don't have money to pay their rent in the EU, in the UK, and yet, we're somehow focusing oftentimes on these meta-critical analyses of the bigger corporations, the 1%. But where does the middle class fit into this, Michael, because I do have to wonder if maybe we should be heading towards the model I hold in my mind and heart is St. Ives in Cornwall, which about eight years ago set a moratorium saying no second homes in this city. Now, they didn't do it because of any allegiance to Marxism or socialism. They did it in part because of that, and because of a left-leaning politics, but mostly because they didn't want to have a ghost town that when the summer was over, you had very few people living in town. What are the answers to the rentier class that is also composed of people who consider themselves hard-working people who just want someone else to pay for their house, as one person on Twitter, put it.Michael Hudson: This is exactly the problem that is plaguing left wing politics, from Europe to America in the last fifty years.Julian Vigo: Exactly. It's astounding because there was a lot of debate on Twitter around last summer, when one woman wrote, I just did the math, I'm almost 29 years old, and I paid and she listed the amount in rent, I have just bought my landlord a second house. And people are adding it up that we are back to understanding. And I think in terms of the medieval period, remember in high school in the US when you study history, and you learn about feudalism, and the serfs coming in from far afield having to tend to the Masters terrain. And I think, are we heading back to a kind of feudalism under a new name? Because what's dividing those who can afford rents and those who can, it's not only your eligibility to receive a bank loan in this climate, which is quite toxic in London. I know many architects, lawyers, physicians who cannot get bank loans. Ironically, the bar is being raised so high that more and more people in London are moving on to the canal system—they're renting or buying narrowboats. The same is happening in other parts of the world where people are being barred out of home ownership for one reason or another and at the same time, there's a class of people often who got loans in a period when it was quite easy in the 80s and early 90s, let's say and they hold a certain control over who's paying—43% of income of Americans goes on housing. And as you know, in New York City that can be even higher. How can we arrive at a society where there's more equality between these haves and have-nots? Because it seems that the middle class is playing a role in this. They're trying to come off as being the hard-working schmoes, who have just earned their right to own their second or third homes, and then the others who will never have a foot on that ladder, especially given the crash?Michael Hudson: Well, I think you've put your finger on it. Most people think of economies being all about industry. But as you've just pointed out, for most people, the economy is real estate. And if you want to understand how modern economies work, you really should begin by looking at real estate, which is symbiotic with with banking, because as you pointed out that in a house is worth whatever a bank will lend. And in order to buy a house, unless you have an enormous amount of savings, which hardly anyone has, you'll borrow from a bank and buy the house. And the idea is to use the rent to pay the interest to the bank. And then you end up hoping late hoping with a capital gain, which is really land price gain. You borrow from the bank hoping that the Federal Reserve and the central bank or the Bank of England is going to inflate the economy and inflate asset prices and bank credit is going to push prices further and further up. As the rich get richer, they recycle the money in the banks and banks lend it to real estate. So, the more the economy is polarised between the 1% and the 99%, the more expensive houses get the more absentee landlords are able to buy the houses and outbid the homebuyers, who as you pointed out, can't get loans because they're already loaned up. If they can't get loans in England to buy a house, it's because they already owe so much money for other things. In America, it would be because they own student debt or because they own other bank loans, and they're all loaned up. So the key is people are being squeezed more than anywhere else on housing. In America, it rents care too and on related sort of monopoly goods that yield rent. Now the problem is why isn't this at the centre of politics?Is it because— and it's ironic that although most people in every country, Europe and America, are still homeowners, or so they only own their own home—they would like to be rentiers in miniature? They would like to live like the billionaires live off the rents. They would like to be able to have enough money without working to get a free lunch and the economy of getting a free lunch. And so somehow, they don't vote for what's good for the wage earners. They vote for…well, if I were to get richer, then I would want to own a house and I would want to get rent. So I'm going to vote in favour of the landlord class. I'm going to vote in favour of banks lending money to increase housing prices because I'd like to borrow money from a bank to get on this treadmill, that's going to be an automatic free lunch. Now, I not only get rent, but I'll get the rising price of the houses as prices continue to rise. So somehow, the idea of class interest, they don't think of themselves as wage earners, they think of themselves as somehow would-be rentiers in miniature without realising that you can't do it in miniature. You really have to have an enormous amount of money to be successful rentier.So no class consciousness means that the large real estate owners, the big corporations like Blackstone that own huge amounts can sort of trot out a strapped, homeowner and individual, and they will sort of hide behind it and say, “Look at this, poor family, they use their money to buy a house, the sort of rise in the world, and now the tenants have COVID, and they can't pay the rent. Let's not bail out these, these landlords.” So even though they're not getting rent, we have to aid them. And think of them as little people, but they're not little people. They're a trillion dollar, money managers. They're huge companies that are taking over. And people somehow personify the billionaires and the trillion dollar real estate management companies as being small people just like themselves. There's a confusion about the economic identity.Julian Vigo: Well, certainly in the United States, we are known to have what's called the “American dream.” And it's, it's quite interesting when you start to analyse what that dream has morphed into, from the 1960s to the present, and I even think through popular culture. Remember Alexis, in Dynasty, this was the go-to model for success. So we've got this idea that the super rich are Dallas and Dynasty in the 80s. But 20 years after that, we were facing economic downfalls. We had American graduates having to go to graduate school because they couldn't get a job as anything but a barista. And the model of getting scholarships or fellowships, any kind of bursary to do the Masters and PhD. When I was doing my graduate work, I was lucky enough to have this, but that was quickly disappearing. A lot of my colleagues didn't have it. And I imagine when you went to school, most of your colleagues had it. And today, and in recent years, when I was teaching in academia, most of my students doing advanced degrees had zero funding. So, we've got on the one hand, the student debt, hamster wheel rolling, we have what is, to me one of the biggest human rights issues of the domestic sphere in countries like the US or Great Britain, frankly, everywhere is the ability to live without having to be exploited for the payment of rent. And then we have this class of people, whether they're Blackstone, and huge corporations, making billions, or the middle class saying, “But I'm just living out the American dream.” How do we square the “American dream,” and an era where class consciousness is more invisible than ever has it been?Michael Hudson: I think the only way you can explain that is to show how different life was back in the 1960s, 1950s. When I went to school, and the college, NYU cost $500 a semester, instead of 50,000, that the price of college has gone up 100 times since I went to college—100 times. I rented a house in a block from NYU at $35 a month on Sullivan Street. And now that same small apartment would go for 100 times that much, $3,500 a month, which is a little below the average rent in Manhattan these days. So, you've had these enormous increases in the cost of getting an education, they cost of rent, and in a society where housing was a public utility, and education was a public utility, education would be provided freely. If the economy wanted to keep down housing prices, as they do in China for instance, then you would be able to work if the kind of wages that Americans are paid today and be able to save. The ideal of China or countries that want to compete industrially is to lower the cost of living so that you don't have to pay a very high wages to cover the inflated cost of housing, the cost of education.If you privatise education in America, and if you increase the housing prices, then either you're going to have to pay labor, much higher rates that will price it out of world markets, at least for industrial goods, or you'll have to squeeze budgets. So yes, people can pay for housing, and education, but they're not going to buy the goods and services they produce. And that's one of the reasons why America is not producing industrial manufacturers. It's importing it all abroad. So the result of this finance capitalism that we have the result of the rent squeeze, that you depict, and the result of voters not realising that this is economic suicide for them is that the economy is shrinking and leaving people basically out in the street. And of course, all of this is exacerbated by the COVID crisis right now. Where, right now you have, especially in New York City, many people are laid off, as in Europe, they're not getting an income. Well, if your job has been closed down as a result of COVID, in Germany, for instance, you're still given something like 80% of your normal salary, because they realise that they have to keep you solvent and living. In the United States, there's been a moratorium on rents, they realise that, well, if you've lost your job, you can't pay the rent. There's a moratorium on evictions, there's a moratorium on bank foreclosures on landlords that can't pay their mortgage to the bank, because their tenants are not paying rent. All of that is going to expire in February, that’s just in a few months.  So they're saying, “OK, in New York City, 50,000 tenants are going to be thrown out onto the street, thousands of homes are going to be foreclosed on.” All over the country, millions of Americans are going to be subject now to be evicted. You can see all of the Wall Street companies are raising private capital funds to say, “We're going to be waiting for all this housing to come onto the market. We're going to be waiting for all of these renovations to take place. We're going to swoop in and pick it up.” This is going to be the big grab bag that is going to shape the whole coming generation and do to America really what Margaret Thatcher did to England when she got rid of—when she shifted from housing, the council housing that you mentioned, was about half the population now dow to about 1/10 of the population today.Julian Vigo: This is what I wonder is not being circulated within the media more frequently. We know that major media is not...[laughts] They like to call themselves left-of-centre but they're neoliberal which I don't look at anything in the liberal, the neoliberal sphere, as “left.” I look at it as a sort of strain of conservatism, frankly. But when you were speaking about paying $35 a month for an apartment on Sullivan Street, get me a time machine! What year was that? Michael?Michael Hudson: That was 1962.Julian Vigo: 1962 And roughly, the minimum wage in New York was just over $1 an hour if I'm not mistaken.Michael Hudson: I don't remember. I was making I think my first job on Wall Street was 50 to $100. A year $100 a week.Julian Vigo: So yes, I looked it up because I was curious when you said 100 times certainly we see that. If the tuition at New York when and New York University when I left was $50,000 a year you were paying $500 a semester. This is incredible inflation.Michael Hudson: And I took out a student loan from the state because I wanted to buy economic books. I was studying the history of economic thought and so I borrowed, you know, I was able to take out a loan that I repaid in three years as I sort of moved up the ladder and got better paying jobs. But that was the Golden Age, the 1960s because in that generation there was the baby boom that just came online. There were jobs for everybody. There was a labor shortage. And everybody was trying to hire—anyone could get a job. I got to New York and I had $15 in my pocket in 1960. I'd shared a ride with someone, [I] didn't know what to do. We stayed in a sort of fleabag hotel on Bleecker Street that was torn down by the time you got there. But I,  took a walk around and who should I run into that Gerde's Folk City, but a friend of mine had stayed at my house in Chicago once and he let me stay at his apartment for a few weeks till I can look around, find a place to live and got the place for $35 a month,Julian Vigo: When there was that debate on Twitter—there were many debates actually about renting on Twitter—and there were a few landlords who took to Twitter angry that they learned that their renters had received subsidies in various countries to pay their rent. And instead of paying their rent, the people use this to up and buy a downpayment on a home. And they got very upset. And there was a bit of shadow on Friday there with people saying, “Well, it's exactly what you've done.” And I find this quite fascinating, because I've always said that the age of COVID has made a huge Xray of our society economically speaking. And it's also telling to me that in countries that I would assume to be more socialist leaning, if not socialist absolutely, in the EU, we saw very few movements against rent. Very few people or groups were calling for a moratorium on rent. It's ironic, but it was in the US where we saw more moratoria happen. What is happening where—and this reaches to larger issues, even outside of your specialty of economics and finance—but why on earth has it come to be that the left is looking a lot more like the right? And, don't shoot me, but you know, I've been watching some of Tucker Carlson over the past few years, someone who I could not stand after 9/11. And he has had more concern and more investigations of the poor and the working class than MSBC or Rachel Maddow in the biggest of hissy fits. What is going on politically that the valences of economic concern are shifting—and radically so?Michael Hudson: Well, the political situation in America is very different from every other country. In the Democratic Party, in order to run for a position, you have to spend most of your time raising money, and the party will support whatever candidates can raise the most money. And whoever raises the largest amount of money gets to be head of a congressional committee dealing with whatever it is their campaign donors give. So basically, the nomination of candidates in the United States, certainly in the Democratic Party, is based on how much money you can raise to finance your election campaign, because you're supposed to turn half of what you raised over to the party apparatus. Well, if you have to run for an office, and someone explained to me in in the sixties, if I wanted to go into politics, I had to find someone to back up my campaign. And they said, “Well, you have to go to the oil industry or the tobacco industry.” And you go to these people and say, “Will you back my campaign?” And they say, Well, sure, what's your position going to be on on smoking on oil and the the tax position on oil, go to the real estate interest, because all local politics and basically real estate promotion projects run by the local landlords and you go to the real estate people and you say, “Okay, I'm going to make sure that we have public improvements that will make your land more valuable, but you won't have to pay taxes on them.” So, if you have people running for office, proportional to the money they can make by the special interests, that means that all the politicians here are representing the special interests that pay them and their job as politicians is to deliver a constituency to their campaign contributors. And so the campaign contributors are going to say, “Well, here's somebody who could make it appear as if they're supporting their particular constituency.” And so ever since the 60s, certainly in America, the parties divided Americans into Irish Americans, Italian Americans, black Americans, Hispanic Americans. They will have all sorts of identity politics that they will run politicians on. But there's one identity that they don't have—and that's the identity of being a wage earner. That's the common identity that all these hyphenated Americans have in common. They all have to work for a living and get wages, they're all subject to, they have to get housing, they have to get more and more bank credit, if they want to buy housing so that all of the added income they get is paid to the banks as mortgage interest to get a home that used to be much less expensive for them. So basically, all of the increase in national income ends up being paid to the campaign contributors, the real estate contributors, the oil industry, the tobacco industry, the pharmaceuticals industry, that back the politicians. And essentially, you have politics for sale in the United States. So we're really not in a democracy anymore—we're in an oligarchy. And people don't realise that without changing this, this consciousness, you're not going to have anything like the left-wing party.And so you have most Americans out wanting to be friendly with other Americans, you know, why can't everybody just compromise and be in the centre? Well, there's no such thing as a centrist. Because you'll have an economy that's polarising, you have the 1% getting richer and richer and richer by getting the 99% further and further in debt. So the 99% are getting poorer and poor after paying their debts. And to be in the centre to say, and to be say, only changes should be marginal, that means—a centrist is someone who lets this continue. With that we're not going to make a structural change, that's radical, we're not going to change the dynamic that is polarising the economy, between creditors at the top and debtors is at the bottom, between landlords at the top and renters at the bottom between monopolists and the top and the consumers who have to pay monopoly prices for pharmaceuticals, for cable TV, for almost everything they get. And none of this is taught in the economics courses. Because you take an  economics course, they say, “There's no such thing as unearned income. Everybody earns whatever they can get.” And the American consciousness is shaped by this failure to distinguish between earned income and unearned income and a failure to see that dynamic is impoverishing them. It's like the proverbial frog that's been boiled slowly in water. So, with this false consciousness people have—if only they can save enough and borrow from a bank—they can become a rentier in Miniature. They're just tricked into a false dream.Intermission: You're listening to Savage Minds, and we hope you're enjoying the show. Please consider subscribing. We don't accept any money from corporate or commercial sponsors. And we depend upon listeners and readers just like you. Now back to our show.Julian Vigo: I don't know if you saw the movie called Queen of Versailles. It was about this very bizarre effort to construct a very ugly Las Vegas-style type of Versailles by a couple that was economically failing. And it spoke to me a lot about the failings of the quote unquote, “American dream.” And I don't mean that dream, per se. I mean, the aspiration to have the dream, because that is, as you just pointed out, unearned income, that is the elephant in the room. And it almost seems to be the elephant maybe to keep using that metaphor, that the blind Sufi tale: everyone's feeling a different part of it, but no one is naming it. And I find this really shocking, that we can't speak of unearned income and look at the differences as to which country's tax inheritance and which do not—this idea that one is entitled to wealth. Meanwhile, a lot of US institutions are academically, now formally, being captured by the identity lobbies and there are many lobbies out there—it's a gift to them. They don't have to work on the minimum wage, they don't have to work on public housing, they don't have to work on housing.They can just worry about, “Do we have enough pronoun badges printed out?” And I find this really daunting as someone who is firmly of the left and who has seen some kind of recognition have this problem bizarrely, from the right. We seem to have a blind spot where we're more caught up in how people see us, rather than the material reality upon which unearned and earned income is based. Why is it that today people are living far worse than their grandparents and parents especially?Michael Hudson: Well, I think we've been talking about that, because they have to pay expenses as their parents and grandparents didn't have to pay, they have to pay much higher rent. Everybody used to be able to afford to buy a house, that was the definition of “middle class” in America was to be a homeowner. And when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, everybody on the salary they were getting could afford to buy their house. And that's why so many people bought the houses with working class sell rates. As I told you, I was getting $100 a week. At least if you were quiet you could do it. If you were black, you couldn't do it. The blacks were redlined. But the white people could buy the houses. And that's why today, the white population has so much more wealth than the black population, because the white families would leave the house to the children and housing prices have gone up 100 times. And because they've gone up 100 times, this is endowed with a whole white hereditary class of kids whose family own their own homes, send them to schools. But America was redlined. Now Chicago was redlined, blacks were redlined. In New York City, the banks would not lend money to black neighbourhoods or to black borrowers. I was at Chase Manhattan and they made it very clear: they will not make a loan to a mortgage if they're black people living in my block. And they told me that when I was on Second Street and Avenue B. I won't repeat the epithet racist epithets they used. But what has caused the racial disparity today is what we've been talking about: the fact that whites could buy their own homes, blacks could not.And the reason I'm bringing this up is that if—we're working toward a society where white people are now going to be reduced to the position that black people are in today: of not having their own homes, of not being able to get bank credit. One friend of mine at the Hudson Institute, a black economist, wanted to—we were thinking of cowriting a book, The Blackening of America. The state of, well, the future of the whites, is to become blacks if you don't solve this situation. And I've been unable to convince many black leaders about reparations—that the reparations, very hard to get reparations for slavery, which was to their grandparents, their reparations are due to the blacks today who do not have housing, their own homes, because of the redlining that they have been experiencing right down to today.So, you have this, you do have a separation in this country. But this is not the kind of hyphenated politics that the politicians talk about. Not even the black politicians, the fact that if you're going to hyphenated American, how did this hyphenisation affect the real opportunities for real estate, for homeownership, for education, and all of these other things. I think maybe if people begin to think as to how there is a convergence of what was diverging before—now you're having the middle class pushed down into its real identity which was a dependent wage-earning class all along—you're going to have a change of consciousness. But we're still not to that. People don't realise this difference.And at the top of the pyramid, at New York University, for instance, where we both went to school, I have professor friends there and there was recently an argument about getting more salaries for professors, because they're hiring adjunct professors at very low prices instead of appointing them full time. And one professor turned to my friend and said, “They’re treating us like wage earners.” And my friend said, “Yes, you are a wage earner. You’re dependent on the wage you get from New York University.” And he said, “But I’m a professor,” as if somehow being a professor doesn't mean that you're not a wage earner, you're not dependent on salary, you're not being exploited by your employer who's in it to make money at your expense.Julian Vigo: Oh, absolutely. We've got the push from NYU in the 1990s by adjunct professors to get health insurance, and to have a certain modicum of earnings that would allow them to pay rent in an extremely expensive city. I find it amazing how many of my students at the time had no idea how much I was being exploited at the time, I was at lunch after the graduation of two of my students, they invited me to lunch, and they were having a discussion about how well we must be paid. And I laughed. I didn't go into the details of my salary. But later in later years, they came to understand from other sources, how exploitation functions within the university where they were paying almost quarter of a million to go to school, and graduate school, and so forth. So it's quite shocking that even though we have the internet and all the information is there, anyone can see precisely how much NYU or Columbia cost today, or how much the cost of living is, as opposed to 1961, for instance, that people are still not putting together that when you have housing, that is like income. For most of us, if housing is affordable, the way one lives, the efficiency to live, the ease, the mental health, and physical health improves. And it's fascinating to me that during lockdown, people were told, just to bite the bullet, stay inside, and how many publications, how much of the media went out to discover the many people being locked down in extremely small hovels? Multiple families living in three bedroom houses, even smaller. And I just kept thinking throughout these past 20 months or so that the media has become complicit in everything you've discussed, we've seen an extra tack added on where the media is another arm of industry and the 1% they are able sell lockdown stories: stars singing, Spaniards singing, accordionists from Neapolitan balconies, everyone's happy. But that was a lie. And that was a lie being sold conveniently.I regularly post stories from CNN, where their recent yacht story—they love yachts—their recent yacht story from about five or six days ago was how the super-rich are “saving” the world's ecology. And it was a paid advertisement of a very expensive yacht that uses nuclear power, what you and I hope: that all the rich people are running around with little mini nuclear reactors on the seas. And I keep thinking: what has happened that you mentioned campaign financing? Remember what happened to Hillary Clinton when she suggested campaign finance reform? That went over like a lead balloon. And then we've got CNN, Forbes, all these major publications that run paid sponsored news articles as news. It's all paid for, they legally have to see it as but you have to find the fine print. And we're being sold the 1% as the class that's going to save the planet with this very bizarre looking yacht with a big ball on it. And another another CNN article about yacht owners was about how it's hard for them to pay for maintenance or something and  we're pulling out our tiny violins.And I keep wondering, why is the media pushing on this? We can see where MSNBC and CNN and USA today are heading in a lot of their coverage over class issues. They would much rather cover Felicity Huffman, and all those other stars’ children's cheating to get into a California University scandal which is itself its own scandal, of course. That gets so covered, but you rarely see class issues in any of these publications unless it refers to the favelas of Brazil or the shanty towns of Delhi. So, we're sold: poverty isn't here, it's over there. And over here, mask mandates, lock up, shut your doors stay inside do your part clap for the cares and class has been cleared. Cut out. Even in the UK, where class consciousness has a much more deeply ingrained fermentation, let's say within the culture, it's gone. Now the BBC. Similarly, nightly videos at the initial part of lockdown with people clapping for the cares. Little was said about the salaries that some of these carriers were getting, I don't mean just junior doctors there, but the people who are cleaning the hallways. So, our attention has been pushed by the media away from class, not just the politicians doing the dirty work, or not just the nasty finance campaign funding that is well known in the US. What are some of the responses to this, Michael, that we might advance some solutions here? Because my worry, as a person living on this planet is enough is enough: Why can't we just try a new system? Is it that the fall of the Berlin Wall left a permanent divide in terms of what we can experiment with? Or is there something else at play?Michael Hudson: Well, recently, Ukraine passed a law about oligarchs, and they define an oligarchy as not only owning a big company, but also owning one of the big media outlets. And the oligarchy in every country owns the media. So, of course, CNN, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, are owned by the billionaire class representing the real estate interests and the rentier interests. They're essentially the indoctrination agencies. And so of course, in the media, what you get is a combination of a fantasy world and Schadenfreude—Schadenfreude, when something goes wrong with people you don't like, like the scandal. But apart from that, it's promoting a fantasy, about a kind of parallel universe about how a nice world would work, if everybody earned the money that they had, and the wealth they had by being productive and helping society. All of a sudden, that's reversed and [they] say, “Well, they made a lot of fortune, they must have made it by being productive and helping society.” So, everybody deserves the celebrity, deserves the wealth they have. And if you don't have wealth, you're undeserving and you haven't made a productivity contribution. And all you need is to be more educated, managerial and intelligent, and you can do it. And it doesn't have anything to do with intelligence. As soon as you inherit a lot of money, your intelligence, your IQ drops 10%. As soon as you don't have to work for a living and just clip coupons, you write us down another 30%. The stupidest people I've met in my life are millionaires who don't want to think about how they get their money. They just, they're just greedy. And I was told 50 years ago, “You don't need to go to business school to learn how to do business. All you need is greed.” So what are all these business schools for? All they're doing is saying greed is good and giving you a patter talk to say, “Well, yeah, sure, I'm greedy. But that's why I'm productive.” And somehow they conflate all of these ideas.So, you have the media, and the educational system, all sort of combined into a fantasy, a fantasy world that is to displace your own consciousness about what's happening right around you. The idea of the media is that you don't look at your own position, you imagine other people's position in another world and see that you're somehow left out. So, you can say that the working class in America are very much like the teenage girls using Facebook, who use it and they have a bad self image once they use Facebook and think everybody else is doing better. That's the story in Congress this week. Well, you can say that the whole wage earning class once they actually see how awful the situation is they think, “Well, gee, other people are getting rich. Other people have yard spots, why don't I have my own house? Why am I struggling?” And they think that they're only struggling alone, and that everybody else is somehow surviving when other people are struggling just the way they are. That's what we call losing class consciousness.Julian Vigo: Yes, well, we're back to Crystal and Alexis wrestling and Dynasty’s fountain. Everyone wants to be like them. Everyone wants a car. You know, I'll never forget when I lived in Mexico City. One of the first things I learned when you jumped into one of those taxis were Volkswagen beetles,  Mexicans would call their driver “Jaime.” And I said to them, why are you guys calling the taxi drivers here “Jaime”? And they said, “We get it from you.” And I said, “What do you mean you get it from us? We don't call our taxi drivers Jaime.”And then I thought and I paused, I said,  “James!” Remember the Grey Poupon commercials? That's what we do—we have James as the driver in a lot of these films that we produced in the 1970s and 80s. And the idea became co-opted within Mexico as if everyone has a British driver named James.Now, what we have turned into from this serialised, filmic version of ourselves to the present is dystopic. Again, you talked about the percentage of rent that people are paying in the US, the way in which people are living quite worse than their parents. And this is related to student debt, bank debt, credit card debt, we've had scandals directly related to the housing market. We saw that when there were people to be bailed out, they had to be of the wealthy class and companies to be bailed out. There was no bailout for the poor, of course. I was in London during the Occupy Wall Street. In London, it was “occupy the London Stock Exchange” (Occupy LSX) right outside of not even the London Stock Exchange. It was outside of St. Paul's Cathedral. And there was a tent city, and people were fighting ideological warfare from within their tents. There wasn't much organising on the ground. It was disassembled months later. But I wonder why Americans, even with what is called Obamacare, are still not pushing for further measures, why Hillary Clinton's push for or suggestion merely of finance reform within the campaigning system, all of this has sort of been pushed aside.Are there actors who are able to advance these issues within our current political system in the United States? Or will it take people getting on the streets protesting, to get housing lowered to maybe have national rent controls, not just of the form that we have in New York, which, before I got to New York in the late 80s, everyone was telling me how great rent control was. Now it's all but disappeared? What is the answer? Is it the expropriation of houses? Is it the Cornwall style, no owning more than one house type of moratorium on homeownership? What are the solutions to this, Michael?Michael Hudson: There is no practical solution that I can suggest. Because the, you're not going to have universal medical care, as long as you have the pharmaceuticals. funding the campaign's of the leading politicians, as long as you have a political system that is funded by campaign contributors, you're going to have the wealthiest classes, and decide who gets nominated and who gets promoted. So, I don't see any line of reform, given the dysfunctional political system that the United States is in. If this were Europe, we could have a third party. And if we had an actual third party, the democratic party would sort of be like the social democratic parties in Europe, it would fall about 8% of the electorate, and a third party would completely take over. But in America, it's a two-party system, which is really one party with different constituencies for each wing of that party, and that one party, the same campaign contributors funds, both the Republicans and the Democrats. So it's possible that you can think of America as a failed state, as a failed economy. I don't see any means of practical going forward, just as you're seeing in the Congress today, when they're unwilling to pass an infrastructure act, there's a paralysis of change. I don't see any way in which a structural change can take place. And if you're having the dynamics that are polarising, only a structural change can reverse this trend. And nobody that I know, no politician that I know, sees any way of the trends being reversed.Julian Vigo: The funny thing is that scandal, quote-unquote, scandal over Ocasio Cortez's dress at the Met Gala was quite performative to me. It's typical that the media does. “Tax the rich,” as she sits at a function that I believe cost $35,000 to enter. And she socialised the entire night even if she allegedly did not pay either for her dress nor for the entrance. And I'm thinking, isn't this part of the problem: that we have so much of our socio-cultural discourse wrapped up in politics in the same way that Clinton's suggestion that campaign finance reform disappeared quite quickly? Is there any hope of getting campaign finance reform passed in the States?Michael Hudson: No. Because if you had campaign finance reform, that's how the wealthy people control politics. If you didn't, if you didn't have the wealthy, wealthy people deciding who gets nominated, you would have people get nominated by who wanted to do what the public ones, Bernie Sanders says, “Look, most of them are all the polls show that what democracy, if this were a democracy, we would have socialised medicine, we'd have public health care, we would have free education, we would have progressive taxation.” And yet no party is representing what the bulk of people have. So by definition, we're not a democracy. We're an oligarchy, and the oligarchy controls. I mean, you could say that the media play the role today that the church and religion played in the past to divert attention away from worldly issues towards other worldly issues. That's part of the problem.But not only the pharmaceutical industries are against public health care, but the whole corporate sector, the employer sector, are against socialised medicine, because right now workers are dependent for their health insurance on their employers. That means Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman said, this is causing a traumatised workers syndrome, the workers are afraid to quit, they're afraid to go on strike. They're afraid of getting fired because if they get fired, first of all, if they're a homeowner they lose their home because they can't pay their mortgage, but most importantly, they lose their health care. And if they get sick, it wipes them out. And they go broke and they lose their home and all the assets.Making workers depend on the employer, instead of on the government means you're locked into their job. They have to work for a living for an employer, just in order to survive in terms of health care alone. So the idea of the system is to degrade a dependent, wage-earning class and keeping privatising health care, privatising education, and moving towards absentee landlordship is the way to traumatise and keep a population on the road to serfdom. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dee and Marie, two parents of children who have struggled with gender dysphoria, describe their experiences in dealing with the medical system and their children’s mental and physical health in light of the current, quite toxic climate for anyone who questions current orthodoxy and practices that are medicalising gender. Covering their familial situation, the schools and medical practices for gender dysphoria, these two members of Genspect detail their struggles in addressing the practitioners and institutions that have buttressed gender ideology, the reality behind rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), the larger political framework within the USA, and the increase in children who are given a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” by clinicians who fail to address—much less diagnose—comorbidities such as autism and other neurodivergent conditions, or social patterns such as the overrepresentation of adopted children who present with gender dysphoria. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Swedish journalist, writer, and activist, Kajsa Ekis Ekman reviews the history of the New Left since 1968 when the values of the oppressed class were highlighted to today where power has adopted the language of the oppressed, what she calls “patriarchy changing clothes” while using feminist language. Discussing the importance of class issues within feminism, Ekman highlights how corporate slogans of Zalando’s “celebrate diversity” campaign costs these corporations nothing as they prefer posturing their purity without making any real material changes to how they treat their workers. Comparing this class paradigm to current gender politics, Ekman gives an exegesis of the word “woman” which is currently being erased in many western nations, even prefixed with “cis” such that the meaning of “woman” has been perverted into a privileged oppressor of men vanishing all possibilities of women to speak of themselves an oppressed class. Ekman notes that the left relies on the discursive framework of “being oppressed” to speak within the university and within wider society detailing the bizarre disconnect between workers’ unions which have historically highlighted their labour grievances meanwhile the “sex worker unions” are consistently underscoring “how great” their “profession” is meanwhile it remains “the only industry that has to kidnap workers to survive.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Helen Joyce, The Economist’s Britain editor, discusses her newly released book, TRANS: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021) exposing some of the origins of gender identity and its early accommodation within society when the numbers of transsexuals were quite small. Comparing this early demographic to “witness protection,” Joyce explains the many reasons why society accommodated these individuals from the fact that people tend to accommodate even the most unfounded of ideas—that anyone could possibly be born in the “wrong body”—to the sexism within societies that still accommodate the implausible notion that someone could not only have a “pink brain,” but where such sentiment is received by subjects who themselves hold stereotypical ideas about the opposite sex. Discussing the larger political sphere of women’s physical boundaries, Joyce analyses how the silencing by the current gender identity movement driven by a tiny core of individuals requires that we must go along with a charade. She elucidates the bone-deep interpretability of sex that is missed when the debate takes place virtually, in the absence of the male body where the only way that so many accept men in women’s private spaces is to pretend that there isn’t a “grotesque overstepping of women’s boundaries” as this debate takes place within the purely linguistic realm. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Julia Long, a lesbian feminist, writer and activist, discusses the inconsistencies within the feminist and gender-critical movements—from the formation of social media activism groups whereby some women play along with the theatre of the transgender identity from recycling the “preferred pronouns” to the most fundamental illogicity of a movement that claims to be against gender while reinforcing certain men’s delusions of gender. Highlighting this political move of certain women to play along with the illusion of gender, also known as the “true trans” model, Long highlights a fundamental split amongst those advocating for women’s rights. She also contends that women who don’t see the contradiction in claiming gender as harmful while keeping certain men as immune from this analytical critique while also contributing to the “general amnesia around radical feminist writing” which Long highlights as being suppressed by the various actors who believe themselves virtuous actors engaging in political negotiations and lobbying which involves “feminine socialisation” that compels these women to “play nice” to the male subject. For Long, the gender-critical movement highlights the lack of feminism, critical thinking and credulity in what they ostensibly claim to critique while stating, “There is no such thing as being transgender.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics at University College London and Professor Emeritus of Physics at New York University, discusses his (in)famous "Sokal hoax" (1996), how the hoax was almost revealed, and the contemporary issues that have followed from his Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture (Oxford UP, 2008). Covering the historical backdrop of the current debates over identity politics, Sokal discusses the 1950’s “Two Cultures Controversy” ignited by CP Snow, the culture wars of late 1980s and early 1990s and the ensuing “science wars” of the 1990s. Sokal examines the ways in which politics of the left and the right affected academic debates on science and the humanities, and how identity politics has become a dog whistle where orthodoxy to anti-science hokum indicts the subject as being necessarily affiliated with the far-right. Analysing the current debate on gender identity and the attack on women’s rights, Sokal discusses the effects of critical theory on this debate noting the anti-intellectualism within academic debates today whereby the analysis of “oppression” has been elevated to the status of an “unquestionable truth” as he notes the turn from a radical relativism to a dogmatic absolutism. Sokal critiques reified postmodernism where political principles have firmly fixed themselves to fundamental truths that cannot possibly be questioned. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, former journalist and writer Simon Edge discusses the socio-political situation that inspired his latest satirical novel, The End of the World is Flat (2021). Covering the flatearthery at the heart of the gender debate that involves deliberate confusion and table-turning, Edge discusses how it is vital that we note the tactics employed that cement wider financial interests secured through oft repeated lies that attempt to rewrite history, cast gay persons as transgender or that pretend that the Stonewall riots were initiated by trans-identified persons. Where Edge’s latest novel frames this debate through the architecture and orchestration of new lies and myths, he analyses how despite this being an era of heightened literacy, that the ability to distinguish between what is true and what is false becomes muddied by social media and bots as well as by the many purposeful misrepresentations within the charity sector. Invariably, Edge claims that despite our having access to copious information through the internet, it is still difficult to assess which information is reliable given the many organisations behaving criminally while rejecting everything they know to be true in order to “curry favour” with online communities. Inevitably, people are willing to believe a lie while those in positions of power cynically reject honest debate. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nic Williams, PhD discusses her work as director of Fair Play for Women in providing advice to policy makers on how to fairly balance the rights of women and those who identify as “transgender.” Williams covers the push to keep women's spaces single-sex detailing her work on prisons and sports from the grassroots level, to chatting with Martina Navratilova over the sports debate and to having invited herself to a meeting hosted by World Athletics in Switzerland about the rules for trans athletes. Williams describes the climate over the past four which where she was left ostracised and where she was often times the only voice at the table speaking up for women’s rights. She also covers the triumphs such as the recent high court victory against the Office for National Statistics (ONS) after Fair Play for Women took the ONS to court to stop them redefining sex in the census. Williams also expounds upon her concern for young lesbians underscoring how being a scientist has informed her approach to this debate where evidence and facts matter. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Naomi Cunningham, a barrister and director and Chair of Sex Matters, discusses her entry into the gender debate and the wider implications of the Gender Recognition Act (2004). Elaborating the disconnect between the medical and legal frameworks on the subject of gender dysphoria, Cunningham notes how the surge of girls declaring themselves as transgender demonstrates a dereliction of duty by adults who should be protecting these adolescents instead of cheering them on. Cunningham also covers her work on submission and compliance to the Workplace Equality Index highlighting how the Equal Treatment Bench Book has been exploited as she details the vast capture of these institutions by the transgender lobby that has homed in on the country’s judiciary. Considering how human beings are invested in “getting into role” as humans tend to be vulnerable to group think, Cunningham elucidates the concept of the Milgram shock experiment in explaining the way in which judges have been given “training” that “bypasses their critical faculties.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, journalist Beatrix Campbell discusses her shift from the Communist Party to the Green Party analysing the horrors of Stalinism, the end of Perestroika in 1991 and the emergence of green politics to which she gravitated. Delving into the transgender issue that has plagued politics in the UK in recent years, Campbell discusses how the Green Party was captured by transgender ideology that decided that there was no debate and that the feminists who wanted to hold this debate were necessarily “transphobic,” a position that was instrumental in frightening people away from having any debate. Noting how trans ideology is highly sourced and hegemonic, Campbell elucidates how the Green and Labour parties were hammered by the toxicity and “cultish madness” of an identity politics that most people had never fully considered. Campbell also discusses her forthcoming book, Secrets and Silence (2022) about child sexual abuse and the cultural taboos around this social fact and the encouraging reality that today we are able to hold conversations on this subject. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Thomas Prosser, a Reader in European social policy at Cardiff University, discusses his latest book, What’s in it for me? Self-interest and political difference (2021), highlighting the economic and cultural foundations of different world views and how they relate to tribalism, Brexit and changes in liberal democracies. Analysing self-interest and political partisanship, Prosser discusses with Julian Vigo the rise of identity politics since the global pandemic and how these recent developments raise fascinating questions about different interests and liberal democracy. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

James Esses, a former a Criminal Barrister and currently a Trainee Psychotherapist, discusses the current social dilemma at the heart of the gender identity debate where countries are banning “conversion therapy” while dismissing the beneficial uses of therapeutic approaches to gender dysphoria. Analysing the deeper issues central to the refusal to embrace anything but affirmation, Esses points out how it the proposed ban on conversion therapy in terms of gender dysphoria is “very dangerous” to the client-therapist relationship as he underscores the need to push against the stereotypes being recycled by the gender identity lobby asking “What is wrong with being gender atypical?” Claiming that we need to spend more time addressing gender stereotypes, Esses lays bare some of the fundamental dangers at the heart of a petition and he and other members of Thoughtful Therapists addressed to the British government, namely the conflation of “conversion therapy” with beneficial therapy which effectively mandates the affirmation of transitioning. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Working class lecturer and filmmaker Deirdre O’Neill discusses the possibility and potential of working class filmmaking today as she highlights her experiences in the British film industry and the eclipse of the working class behind and in front of the camera. Arguing that “class is not an identity,” O’Neill considers the relationship between the forces of production and the paucity of analysis today amidst the myriad identities fighting for their visibility while class is entirely eclipsed from the debate. Criticising feminism and identity politics noting the damage they have inflicted on class politics, O’Neill debates the effects of the open letter she co-authored with Julian Vigo directed at the British Film Institute’s platforming of Munroe Bergdorf during its Woman with a Movie Camera summit noting that Bergdorf is neither a woman nor a filmmaker. O’Neill details her work in cinema in the UK and in Venezuela noting the kinds of films that are made today, who has access to having their work produced, and the types of cinema that superficially addresses working class issues today. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, co-founder of Stonewall Simon Fanshawe OBE deliberates his involvement in the formation of Stonewall in 1989 in response to Section 28 of the Local Government Act. Discussing gay rights during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and the stigma of AIDS that would come to mark the 1980s, Fanshawe notes that Stonewall pushed back against Section 28 through an appeal to the right of free speech. Taking up Stonewall’s recent political trajectory that focusses on trans rights which he characterises as the “Trojan horse for gender ideology,” Fanshawe elaborates how this essentialist ideology has moved against the rights and interests of women and gay men and lesbians while gaining enormous academic traction where the political today has become personal. Fanshawe addresses the paucity of diversity of differing points of view within Stonewall today expanding upon how a community’s struggle for freedom has been subsumed by a highly individualistic narrative where personal identity does not match material reality. Covering the history of camp within gay culture, Fanshawe analyses the drag queen who transgresses social codes simply because there is no pretence of “the real.” In drag there is no affirmation of identity—there is only camp which exposes “the flaw in masculinity” which lies in direct contrast to gender ideology’s “dull conformity that’s demanded by this lack of humour.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

English economics and politics journalist and author Grace Blakeley discusses her latest article, “How Corporate Welfare Props up the Billionaire Class” and the larger issues surrounding class politics today and the increase in wealth of the billionaire class is not a fluke but is very much part of the architecture of capitalism and the “direct intervention of capitalist states all over the world.” Discussing the Global Financial Crisis, Blakeley maintains the response to the crisis could be considered a form of “corporate welfare” noting how central bank policies are creating an even richer billionaire class through “quantitative easing” where banks create new money to purchase assets from the private sector (eg. government and corporate bonds) which have led to an explosion in stock and property prices. Blakeley covers the housing crisis and the “evictions ban” during the pandemic and the “fundamentally irrational” features of capitalism noting how the private landlord class contributes to an upward, intergenerational transfer of wealth within the context of massive disparities in wealth and income between the older and younger people. Noting the end result of the rentier system is that huge amounts of wealth are transferred from those who must work and who are struggling to those who monopolise necessary resources (eg. land, housing, capital), Blakeley argues quite effectively that this is making our economies work less well. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Laura Dodsworth, author, journalist, photographer and filmmaker, discusses her latest book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, addressing how SPI-B (the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour), a team of behavioural scientists working inside Whitehall that advise SAGE and ministers, has worked to create a climate of fear amongst the British population in order to encourage compliance with lockdown. Criticising the totalitarian tactics of terror that suppress rational thinking across the population, Dodsworth analyses the government’s use of behavioural psychology and the weaponisation of fear in order to treat people as if we were systems to “manage” noting how this form of fear mongering raises serious questions about the society being created and the government that thinks using fear as a form of social control is acceptable. Giving copious examples as to how the British government has used the pandemic to divide society along the lines of compliance where masks are used to signal obedience, Dodsworth notes the misleading use of statistic, bad science and the media complicity in spreading misinformation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Susan Evans, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and Marcus Evans, a psychoanalyst, discuss their latest book, Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Work ing with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (Phoenix, 2021) wherein they analyse some of the psychoanalytic ideas regarding gender dysphoria and the political and social climate surrounding transgender identity today. Covering some of the issues relevant to gender dysphoria, Evans and Evans cover the mental health co-morbidities often conterminous to adolescent and childhood gender dysphoria as well as adjacent familial and social issues that inform the exploration of gender identity. Detailing some of the frameworks for delivering therapy—to include its complexities—Evans and Evans note that oftentimes adolescent gender dysphoria is fraught with anxiety related to the subject’s inability to tolerate ambiguity and confusion and they detail how best to work with adolescents and helping them accept who they are. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Lisa Marchiano, a writer and Jungian analyst discusses her book Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself (Sounds True, 2021). In this episode, Marchiano speaks with Julian Vigo about employing fairytales in Motherhood to recount Jungian psychoanalysis through stories of descent and emergence from the well, the central metaphor of her book. Outlining Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong process of discovery and experience of meaning in life, Marchiano expands individuation to include the openness of the subject to learning about the self. Discussing motherhood in the context of family and culture, Marchiano distinguishes between individuation and the current cultural drive towards individuality, noting how the current seeking out the “authentic self” is anything but authentic. Underscoring the importance of “sinking down into our embodied selves” in the context of the narrative of motherhood where sacrificing one’s youth is part of the experience of caring for a child, Marchiano notes that “feeling more ordinary” sits in diametric opposition to the contemporary “discovery of the self” which often revolves around a victimhood narrative. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jo Phoenix, Professor at The Open University, discusses being de-platformed from a 2019 talk at the University of Essex after being accused of “hate speech” and “transphobia.” Addressing the points made in the the Reindorf report released earlier this week which details deeper institutional problems where the ideological capture by Stonewall within university policy, Phoenix and Julian Vigo explore how the University’s Supporting Trans and Non Binary Staff policy was based upon an “incorrect summary of the law” which was not reviewed by the university resulting in the curtailment of Phoenix’s and Rosa Freedman’s academic freedom. Considering how 121 universities and pubic and private organisations are members of Stonewall’s highly criticised “Diversity Champions”—to include the government and the Ministry for Justice—Phoenix analyses the most damning part of Akua Reindorf’s report: “In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is. To that extent the policy is misleading.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief  and founder of The Grayzone and author of The Management of Savagery (Verso, 2019), discusses the shift in coverage of the Middle East within mainstream media over the past two decades and the need for journalism to pay attention to the voices of the people. Drawing from his work in the West Bank and Gaza, Blumenthal scrutinises the disproportionate attacks by Israel on Gaza which in turn hits back demonstrating the “futility of Israel’s military strategy.” Analysing how Israel is engineering an “artificial Jewish majority” demographically manipulating the population in order for Israel to declare itself a “Jewish state,” Blumenthal notes how Gaza is a “human warehouse for a population that the Zionist ideology has mandated as surplus humans.” Blumenthal carefully runs through the history of the region that physically and ontologically has ensured the separation of Palestinians within Gaza likening this to a mass imprisonment that is “ethno-supremacist” at its root. Critiquing American unilateralism and its allegiance to a “rules-based order” designed to undermine the United Nations and circumvent international law, Blumenthal denounces these “rules” as mafia rule of law which wish to exist in a “state of legal exception outside of international law.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Cultural and medical anthropologist Alyshia Gálvez discusses her groundbreaking book on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico, (UC Press, 2018). Elaborating the ways Mexican are impacted by trade and economic policies and the wider public health and cultural implications from the the precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes in Mexico to the, Gálvez expands upon trade policies like NAFTA and USMCA that have chipped away at Mexican culinary traditions. Across the border, Gálvez considers the ways in which culinary culture is kept alive for expatriate Mexicans in the US by paqueteros, an informal brokering service of grassroots entrepreneurs who connect people on both sides of the border with goods that maintain culinary traditions that otherwise would have long been forgotten for emigrant communities. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jay Lalezari, MD is a physician and the Director of Quest Clinical Research who recently penned “Hope for Critically Ill Covid-19 Patients Within Reach” wherein he describes the results of a randomised, double-blind study of a drug called leronlimab (Vyrologix or PRO 140) which demonstrates a 82% reduction in the rate of death at Day 14 for patients on a ventilator who received 2 weekly doses of leronlimab compared to a placebo. Stressing the urgency for the FDA to approve leronlimab under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), Lalezari examines the various obstacles to achieving this end—from the ways in which Small Pharma faces greater economic hurdles compared to Big Pharma to the effort by short-sellers to sink CytoDyn, the producer of leronlimab, to the politics that allow Big Pharma to overpower smaller pharmaceutical companies strategically and economically. To confirm the finding for the FDA, CytoDyn must perform another trial of leronlimab that will take months to complete meanwhile critically ill patients in the Philippines are receiving leronlimab as part of the therapeutic treatment for critically ill COVID-19 patients and in Brazil some patients are well on the road to receiving this life-saving drug in Phase 3 trials soon to be conducted in up to 45 clinical sites. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC (1989-1995), elaborates the mandate of the HRC during his tenure and the overwhelming struggle in the face of the AIDS crisis. Detailing the struggles facing gay men in the 1990s, McFeeley discusses the HRC’s mission to secure healthcare for those living with HIV and AIDS seeing through the the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act (1990) which allotted federal funding to cities suffering the fallout from AIDS. Addressing the changing mission of the HRC during the Clinton presidency, McFeeley highlights the organisation’s work to secure HIV/AIDS funding during the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) period noting the rifts these competing narratives posed diving many within the LGB community. Noting the exclusion of women’s voices within the HRC and underscoring the role of lesbians fighting alongside gay men during the entirety of the AIDS crisis, McFeeley considers some of the recent threats posed to women’s rights as a result of the promotion of gender identity current within the LGB community where he notes the difficulty of the subject “because it’s a class of rights and it feels like for one to win the other has to lose.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In questo nostro primo episodio in lingua italiana, Marina Terragni, giornalista, scrittrice, docente universitaria elabora la situazione in Italia oggi affrontata da donne e ragazze alla proposta del governo del disegno di legge (Ddl) Zan e come questa proposta di legislazione, se fosse convertita in legge, sostituirebbe i diritti delle donne e delle ragazze nei settori dell'assistenza sanitaria, dello sport, della sicurezza personale, delle carceri, dell'aula scolastica e molto altro ancora. Terragni spiega qual è la posta in gioco con il Ddl Zan e perché tutti gli italiani di tutte le convinzioni politiche devono spingere i loro funzionari eletti a votare contro i cambiamenti proposti che confondono, quasi intenzionalmente, i diritti degli uomini e delle donne omosessuali con una lobby molto ben finanziata che cerca di ribaltare i diritti delle donne. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Tim Newbold, a senior research fellow in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, talks with Julian Vigo about how biodiversity is changing around the world due to climate change and what this means for human societies. Newbold shares his and his team’s latest research to include “A biodiversity target based on species extinctions” addressing the declining populations of insects, birds, and reptiles due to the removal of natural habitats and other imprints that humans leave on the planet. Discussing recent research demonstrating that between one-fourth and one-fifth of species face extinction within the coming decades, Newbold covers his team’s work on biodiversity models addressing the widespread declines among bumble bee populations. Addressing the functions of natural ecosystems dependant upon biodiversity such as seed dispersal, nutrient cycling and pollination, Newbold notes that with the loss of species from ecosystems these important functions are also lost. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Donna M. Hughes, Ph.D., a professor holding the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island who researches the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, discusses the fallout to her article on 4W, “Fantasy Worlds on the Political Right and Left: QAnon and Trans-Sex Beliefs.” As a result of having published her piece, Hughes was mobbed through defamatory comments and other misrepresentations of her person made by both her colleagues and activists, some of whom have pressured her to resign from the university. Framing these attacks as emanating from a totalitarian body of neoliberal identitarians, Hughes outlines how the underlying ideology to a movement that takes aim primarily at women detailing the attacks over her research on sexual violence by colleagues who frame trafficking as “sex work.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Helen Dale, Senior Writer at Law & Liberty, elaborates the differences between traditionalism and One Nation Conservatism noting some of the similarities with socialism as she addresses the spectrum of political responses in the face of pandemic mitigation policies. Dale also discusses the refusal of those who voted against Brexit to accept the electoral results, “not giving loser consent” within a democracy, while underscoring this moment’s political parallels to the civil war in Lebanon and the Moral Major in the US during the 1980s. Outlining the shifts in right-wing and left-wing politics highlighting the right’s tradition of reading “across the aisle”, Dale notes that the left is not only not abiding by this ethical obligation but she also links this critique to the the predatory academic publishing industry and the appalling abuses current within academia and media today which result in an entanglement of ideologies that clash where the oppressor-oppressed paradigms are discursively reproduced in order to silence opposing voices. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr David Bell was a consultant psychiatrist in the Adult Department at the Tavistock where he worked in adult services from 1995 until his retirement earlier this year. In his role as Staff Governor at the Tavistock, Bell was approached by a large number of clinicians who were working or had worked on the Tavistock Gender Identity Development service (GIDS). They raised very serious concerns about GIDS and Bell wrote a report which was critical of GIDS in 2018. In this episode, David Bell discusses his report, the retaliation he has weathered from the Tavistock and the lobbies that are steering public institutions while terrorising clinicians with the tyrannical politics of gender identity. Bell also queries some of the reasons behind the increase the sharp increase of adolescent referrals at the Tavistock detailing the “penetration of the commodity form into everyday life” and the commodification of the self and the misogyny driving this movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Maya Forstater, a researcher, writer and advisor working on business and sustainable development and co-founder of Sex Matters, talks about having lost her job after tweeting and writing about sex and gender. She is the claimant in a landmark test case on whether the protected characteristic of belief in the Equality Act covers gender critical beliefs. In this episode, Forstater discusses her case and the larger implications this legal challenge holds for the future of free speech and the rights of women and girls pointing to the vulnerability of employees in the academic gig economy who are often targeted by institutional policies that are quickly replacing the age-old role of the church throughout history. Examining the structure of her legal case which is based on the protection of a belief that impacts how the subject lives her life, Forstater postulates the social framework for disagreement or discussions about belief in an era where the presumed moral high ground of an employer can be the means for terminating one’s employment. Covering compelled speech and the institutional capture of gender ideology where women are forced to accept the personal and professional costs of free speech—to be polite or to save one’s job—in order to talk about what they see, Forstater discusses the legal system that has also been caught in the very paradigm her case addresses: ideologically-driven NGOs like Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence have pushed private and public institutional policies to adopt religious, anti-science beliefs which are also parroted by judges who instruct women within the courts to refer to men with a “gender identity” as “she.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Saiph Savage, co-director of the UNAM Civic Innovation Lab, discusses the era of misinformation and the uses and abuses of bots within social media. Considering her Botivist experiment, she emphasises how the use of bots free up humans to work on more creative tasks while bots are delegated to menial chores. Savage also details some of the abuses of bots which, along with trolls, have the capacity to silence opposition and journalists specifically because, in part, Big Tech companies are not employing enough humans to review each submission or complaint. Addressing the dangers that trolls pose—especially to female users on social media, Savage addresses how social media currently enables dominant groups to reassert their control instead of opening up to heterogeneous content. Examining how the larger ecosystem allows for the repetition of older power dynamics since Big Tech is financially rewarded by investments that emerge from bots, Savage details the links between revenue and Big Tech, suggesting that tech companies provide audits and transparency as to why certain accounts are banned or demonetised. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Gina Rippon, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre in the UK and author of The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain (2019), discusses the reasons behind the current of “neurotrash,” the populist (mis)use of neuroscience research to (mis)represent our understanding of the brain and to prop up outdated stereotypes. In this episode, Rippon tears through the regressive myths of the “gendered brain” elucidating how women’s biology has persistently been weaponised against them through the persistent recycling of historical tropes within science—from the myth of the inferiority of women’s brains from the 19th century to twentieth century science which focussed upon women’s hormones. Addressing the failure of science to find sex differences in the brains of men and women, Rippon elaborates the need for research in the twenty-first century to take up different questions to include more research into neuroplasticity which examines how circumstances and context affect the brain and how the brain solves problems while underscoring the need for science to confront the biological script playing out in a social stage that has a “much more profound impact on how the biological script plays out than we ever realised.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode Joey Brite discusses her article, “The Four Horsemen of the Gender-Critical Apocalypse,” that caused upheaval amongst various women in the “gender-critical” feminist movement. Detailing her grass-roots organising and activism within the jazz music and lesbian communities, Brite expounds on the class apartheid within the contemporary feminist movement where working class women’s voices are demonised and she recounts the recent attempts to shut down these women’s views. Highlighting the contradictory narrative where the “true tans” acceptance by some feminists is necessarily creating a two-tiered class-based scene for political activism, Brite critiques the bourgeois feminists who are platforming and prioritising men over working-class feminist voices while colluding with men who traffic in gender to advance exceptions to their gender criticism. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Conroy, founder of Men At Work, discusses his training programme for professionals whose aim of is to support those working with boys and young men in understanding the social influences, values and beliefs which lead to sexism, misogyny and a range of harmful behaviours. In this episode, Julian Vigo discusses with Michael the influences that form young boys into men which legitimate certain learned behavioural patterns, to include violence wherein they discuss the harms of gender—masculinity and femininity—and how societies reward boys for certain types of social actions while punishing them for others. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Joti Brar, political activist, editor, deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain and co-author of Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend, discusses the links between imperialist endeavours and worker exploitation while historicising the tradeoffs made by the western political elites who granted temporary advances to workers during the post-war boom, to include free education and council housing. Explaining how we inhabit a rawer version of capitalism today with no care for the needs of the poor or workers, Brar compares this period to the Victorian era as workers’ rights are being rescinded, poverty is quickly augmenting and aggressions on the working class are heightening. She also chronicles the fragmentation of working class organisation brought on, in part, by identity politics whose reactionary discourse is dividing the disenfranchised while the corporate world is now taking charge of the mandate of “human liberation” in what Brar deems to be a massive inversion of reality where the ruling class is reversing who is oppressing whom with industry leaders today “preaching at the workers about oppression.” Indicting victim narratives prevalent in the west where “fragile egos” and the focus on language have perfectly driven away any rational and scientific discussion of actual suffering, Briar highlights the real-life dilemmas that women face around the planet who need genuine “safe spaces” for their survival. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dawn Paley, journalist and author of Drug War Capitalism (2014) and Guerra neoliberal: Desaparición y búsqueda en el norte de México (2020), discusses her research in Latin America drawing parallels between the historical destruction of communities and the present-day environmental and social destruction amassed by Canadian mining companies in Argentina. Noting that the problems within the extractive industries were only part of the problem, Paley elucidates how transnational companies in Mexico and Colombia take advantage of the structural problems created by the drug war to amass their fortunes while dividing communities, polluting the ecology and taking control of communal land inhabited by indigenous people, peasants, and the urban poor. Paley brings into the discussion the grassroots organising within Mexico which is fighting against the phenomenon of disappearance in the city of Torreón, Coahuila underscoring how disappearance is both a material and semantic removal of life. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, discusses his current lawsuit against 19 of his academic colleagues for libel and the neoliberal machinery aiming to take down anyone who does not espouse certain political views within media, powerful institutions and universities alike. Detailing the recent history at New York University where he experienced a “mobocracy” of various accusations over the course of 2020, Miller elaborates how last fall he became the focus of an “expedited review” of his “conduct” for having asked his students in a course on propaganda to question the science behind COVID-19 mask mandates. Contending that we look beyond propaganda stating that “propaganda’s obverse is always censorship” with the ideal of dominating the subject’s “heart and mind completely” without argument, Miller analyses how the neoliberal left today only recognises propaganda when it epitomises a narrative with which it disagrees despite its reach going well beyond the political binaries. Taking aim of the censorious academic climate today where the “hate speech” and “micro-aggressions and aggressions” of which he found himself accused, Miller elucidates how the left is couching disagreement as a quasi-criminal act as it carries out a Gleichscheltung in complete defiance of the basic principles of freedom of speech while advancing some extremely regressive notions of identity politics as “progressive.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik discusses his soon-to-be-released book Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture while addressing the adjacent problems today within the left to include the ostensibly “progressive” policies around virus mitigation that dismiss the needs of survival for the poor and the working class. Citing longstanding problems within American politics, Kovalik analyses the Democratic party’s repudiation of the working class for several decades while noting its gravitation towards the wealthy and notes how lockdown perfectly materialises the class divide while sweeping aside all the economic issues of socialised healthcare. Devoting part of his discussion to the 1,000 strikes of workers across the United States last year, Kovalik notes how class is now a verboten topic both within the media but also within the foremost socialist organisation in the country which has focussed its energies on identity politics in recent years. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, “ex-scientist” Andy Lewis discusses his Quackometer, originally an AI-like experiment to see if a machine could recognise pages on the internet that could differentiate between the uncritical acceptance and evidence-based evaluation. Describing his work in advancing scepticism, Lewis details the “trouble” he has created by examining Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, homeopathy and the gender debate. Lewis notes how much of the scientific hokum espoused by various movements means that ideas or treatments are wrapped up with the person (the practitioner) thus becoming part of a larger identity politics usually found within the privileged classes as these “luxury beliefs” are part of business models that thrive on quackery. Lewis also discusses his work in libel law reform, elaborating how lawsuits claiming libel have been historically claimant-friendly in the UK and noting how such threats have resulted in the chilling of public debate even within the organised sceptical world. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Renée Gerlich is a writer and artist based in New Zealand who discusses her political activism around women’s rights and feminist politics today. Detailing the assimilation of the left by liberalism, Gerlich notes how liberal leftism is fundamentally a political vehicle of men who are not served by the right while underscoring how the rise of pornography is not coincidental to the neoliberal project of railroading of women’s voices and bodies. Gerlich notes the “land grab” by the neoliberal left which seeks to control women’s bodies through the medicalisation of gender by Big Pharma and the prostitution and pornography lobby and she criticises the ethos of “individual freedom” that disregards the lives of the collective. Describing internal hierarchies within feminism, she discusses her having been cast out of a feminist group and the changes that she underwent as a result. Gerlich explains how the essence of transgender ideology has taken root through the isolation and punishment of women utilising social censure and corporeal punishment while analysing how this “seed” has taken root within some feminist groups that punish certain women who are not interested in curating the feelings of men and contending that women need to assert their boundaries uncompromisingly. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, columnist and writer Suzanne Moore discusses female desire, the prescriptive nature of gender today and the way in which we are required to submit to ideology that goes against materialist analyses and reality—to include the materiality of the female body. Moore situates the current ideological trend that requires the subject to abandon reason within the larger and theoretical landscape of Prince, Foucault, Freud, and Riviere while vituperating an ideology that was born from theories entirely unhinged from Marxism and historical materialism. Querying Butler’s work on gender, Moore asks, “If gender is a performance, why are we compelled to keep repeating that performance?” Moore also elaborates her departure from The Guardian noting that many writers on the left are finding their journalistic “homes” in more conservative publications due to the ideological drive within the left. Offering glimpses of hope for the future, Moore notes how academia has been recycling the same theorists for decades as it is currently stuck within a discursive aporia while proposing that good journalism venture into difficult places and subjects. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Claire Fox, director of the Academy of Ideas and member of the House of Lords as Baroness Fox of Buckley, discusses her participation in the recent debate in the House of Lords regarding the absence of the word “women” in the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act addressing the double standards and hypocrisy in contemporary politics which is attempting to “nod through” legislation that erases all reference to biological reality. Fox also talks about how public discourse has become so beholden to trans ideology, that local authorities and venues have been cancelling events and branding women with epithets. Analysing how leaders like Corbyn and Biden have not understood the significance of gender identity suggesting that they having been badly advised on this issue, Fox contends that these leaders nodded through some regressive ideas presented to them as “progressive” by those behind the scenes who are “hanging on the coat-tails” of the left while not having to be minimally transparent about their political projects. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Joanna Williams, writer and founder of the think tank Cieo and director of the Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood Project at Civitas, discusses the debate over free speech theorising the roots of the current culture war, the institutional capture of identity politics and the appropriate responses that individuals ought to undertake in pushing back against the present-day bullying atmosphere. Referencing the #Metoo era, BLM and the trans movement, Williams elaborates how identity politics is the result of a major cultural shift over the past fifty years where gaining social status is dependent upon the celebration of victimhood, suffering and vulnerability instead of the veneration of heroes and achievement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Dr. Lisa Littman, a physician-scientist, discusses her research on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (also called ROGD), a phenomenon that has been observed from 2012 onward where females exhibiting late-onset gender dysphoria first started to become visible. Here, Littman notes how this new type of presentation, previously absent from the research literature, necessitated further study and she elaborates how her research has been received as well as the reasons behind and the results of her followup study, a side-by-side comparison of her research methods and the methods of articles supporting the gender identity affirming approach. In this discussion, Littman explains the impact of her research on the current debates regarding the medical and psychological establishments that advance the cure of “gender identity” while discussing gender dysphoria, the experiences of people who desist after identifying as transgender, and people who detransition after gender transition. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, co-founders of LGB Fight Back, Carrie Hathorn and Belissa Cohen, speak with Julian Vigo about the longtime corporatisation of lesbian, gay and bisexual lives along with the annexing of sexuality by the transgender lobby which has cannibalised most every gay rights group in the USA over the past two decades. As a result of the trans lobby’s institutional capture, it has been quite successful in convincing many within the gay community to affirm the conversion therapy of its own members to include fast-tracking children into becoming lifetime medical patients, the promotion of gay eugenics and the wider elision of what can only be regarded as gay conversion therapy by professional organisations like the APA (American Psychological Association) which refuse to address the psychological malpractice afoot. Underscoring that “transgender identity” is not “gay adjacent,” Hathorn and Cohen elaborate how our society has been caught up in confirming others’ delusions in the pseudo-political gesture of “kindness” that has paradoxically had a negative effect on the political reality and bodies of gay and bisexual men and women. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Kara Dansky, chair of the Committee on Law and Legislation of the Women's Human Rights Campaign, discusses what is at stake in the fight for women’s and girls rights which are currently being threatened by the enormous legal, public policy and institutional capture by the transgender lobby in the United States. Discussing the collective gaslighting of society through the employment a cult-like tactics which persuade subjects in western societies that “if we do not go along with this, there is something wrong with us,” Dansky compares the transgender lobby’s hold over liberals especially to being in an “abusive relationship.” Dansky also gives a background to several important political events that highlight the necessity for women to reach across the political aisle—even to forget about this “aisle” altogether—in making common cause with a “coherent set of political interests” with other women. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Inaya Folarin Iman, Founder and Director of The Equiano Project, analyses the current discourses of race and anti-racism from the ideological trends to the diversity and inclusion industry which have bolstered a disciplinary regime that re-educates the masses into “correct thinking” while noting that those espousing “wokeness” seem to be shielded from criticism, even to the ends of the “sainthood” of society’s most elite individuals. Observing the shift in the breakdown between the public and private sphere where one’s workplace is now politicised, Iman describes how the capitalist class is now charged with solving society’s ills fully empowered with the mandate of social transformation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Harry Miller, former police officer and founder of the campaigning group Fair Cop, discusses his court victory against Humberside Constabulary last year and his current legal challenge in the Court of Appeal which questions the lawfulness of provisions within the “Hate Crime Operational Guidance” (HCOG) published by the College of Policing. Specifically, Miller’s appeal challenges how the HCOG mandates the recording of so-called “non-crime hate incidents” where such allegations have been made against 120,000 people in the UK for which there need not be any evidence of hate for the recording of a “hate incident” while the accused’s record is not only blighted by an accusation that need not be proven but such incidents are not made known to the accused. Miller elaborates how this guidance has had a “chilling effect” on free speech. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Graham Linehan, a comedy writer and director behind such shows as Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Books, discusses his foray into gender critical activism and why this subject punishes women particularly through a movement which is populated with men who proselytise for the sex industry. Noting the links between the economy of pornography and the transgender movement, Linehan takes aim at what he calls “capitalism’s greatest joke” criticising the leftists who drive the transgender identity narrative while they do the bidding for corporations and neoliberalism. Using the metaphor of “Jenny’s boyfriend” from Forest Gump to analyse men on the left, Linehan contends that Jenny’s boyfriends populate the left today—especially in the online word—where they communicate and coordinate with each other to silence and punish. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Linda Blade, President of the Board for Athletics Alberta, discusses the proposals to insert gender ideology into Canadian sport policy detailing the misogynist encroachment of women’s and girls’ sports by trans rights activists who are decimating a field which has taken decades to establish and fund. Describing how male athletes are forcing themselves into women’s and girls’ sports as a form of “social therapy” which is forcing a societal affirmation of their “gender identity,” Blade compares the current western obsession over atomising identity politics to previous eras where men had long told women to step aside to make way for their needs. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode Chris Elston, a Canadian insurance broker-turned-activist, discusses his political struggle against what he calls the “medical scandal affecting the health of thousands of children.” Elston speaks with Julian Vigo about the ways in which parents in Canada are being blindsided by gender ideology which is being placed into school curriculum for students as young as five-years of age, the recent attack against him in Montreal by trans activists, and how transgender activism has taken over Canadian society with a cult-like ferocity leaving children vulnerable to the harms of lifetime medical procedures, double mastectomies, and sterilisation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Beth Stelzer is a wife, mother, amateur powerlifter, accidental activist, and the founder of the grassroots, nonpartisan coalition Save Women’s Sports. In this episode, Stelzer speaks with Julian Vigo about her entry into grassroots activism and her drive to save women’s sports in the USA, elaborating how sports bodies have almost entirely sidelined the voices of female athletes while centring the feelings of males who, she maintains, have no business competing against women and girls. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Selina Todd, a writer and Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, discusses her latest book, Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth which analyses the myth and reality of social mobility in Britain from the 19th century to the present. In this episode, Todd discusses previous measurements for understanding social mobility and how women’s consideration in this field had typically been elided because of the types of labour women perform, their interrupted career trajectories due to childbirth, and the fact that women’s and girls’ stories were never considered despite their having been integral to men’s and boys’ social mobility. Elaborating how migrants and women fulfilled certain social roles within national institutions like the NHS which furthered the social mobility of white Britons, Todd discusses how women and migrants invariably end up at the bottom of the social ladder in jobs that are not properly remunerated while these two groups paradoxically devise creative strategies for challenging these hierarchies. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jason D. Hill, professor of philosophy and Honors Distinguished Faculty at DePaul University in Chicago, is the author of five books, including We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People (2018) and his forthcoming book to be released later this year, What Do White Americans Owe Black People: Racial Justice in the Age of Post Oppression. In this episode, Hill discusses with Julian Vigo the problems of victim culture and the managerial class of liberal elites which denies people the ability to navigate their way through the world assuming that certain groups of people are necessarily handicapped, unable to speak for themselves. Focussing on the problems of cultural relativism, the decolonisation of university courses, cancel culture, and identity politics, Hill locates the ways in which the liberal left puts reason and logic under attack by positing the primacy of the individual’s feelings. In this phase of late stage capitalism, he notes how subjectivities need to be maintained and persistently curated, echoed and validated in the name of one’s victimhood, a posture claimed most often by those who are the most privileged individuals latching onto signifiers of oppression so as not to have to address actual oppression. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

James Caspian, a British registered psychotherapist who was refused permission by Bath Spa University to conduct research on gender detransition, has now taken his case against the university to the European Court of Human Rights. In this episode, Caspian discusses with Julian Vigo his interest in the field of gender identity, the need for research on both gender transition and detransition and how a Jungian analysis which advocates for the “rule of reason” might be useful in understanding the current collective chaos at the core of the gender debate. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Robert Jensen is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas in Austin and collaborates with the Ecosphere Studies program at The Land Institute. He is the author of The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability (University Press of Kansas, 2021). In this episode, Jensen discusses his introduction to radical feminism and the paradox of how this particular feminist perspective, despite offering the most compelling and accurate critique of pornography, has been entirely sidelined from academic and popular discourse. Analysing the social hierarchy of patriarchy and how it serves as a cultural backdrop to the debate on gender and our approach to ecological issues, Jensen suggests that men who still view radical feminism as a “threat” ought to view it as a gift. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist, educator, and author who co-hosts a popular weekly livestream with husband Bret Weinstein on the DarkHorse podcast. In this episode, Heying discusses with Julian Vigo the political political malaise of identity politics, sequential hermaphroditism, current denial science denialism, and our physical disconnection with other humans as she offers solutions to the current era of political intolerance. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Libby Emmons is senior editor at The Post Millennial and a senior contributor for The Federalist. In this episode, Emmons discusses the the ideological drive behind journalism today and how identity politics is sidelining critical thinking. Lucidly analysing the current media and political panorama, Emmons homes in on how identity has not only replaced discussions of class politics on the left, but paradoxically she notes how identity politics is being driven primarily by those within the upper class who benefit economically by paying it lip service all the while reaping the economic benefits of book deals, editorships, or professorships that belie any the reality of oppression. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Selina Soule is a freshman and track athlete at the College of Charleston in South Carolina who, during her high school years, was forced to compete against males in track and field, missing out on opportunities to advance in competition. In this episode, Soule and Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom which represents Soule and three other female athletes in their lawsuit to restore fairness in women’s sports, discuss the principle issues facing girls today in the United States who are often forced to compete against males in their own sporting categories. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Jennifer Wagner-Assali is an orthopaedic surgeon who has been a semi-professional cyclist since 2014. In this episode, Wagner-Assali tells Julian Vigo of her experiences in the sport from the moment she competed in the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship in Los Angeles when Rachel McKinnon (now called Veronica Ivy), a man who identifies as transgender, competed in the women’s 35-44 age bracket and won the top prize beating out all the female cyclists in the competition. Discussing her political activism around this subject both within the USA and internationally, Wagner-Assali relates the impact this has had on her life and the need to save women’s and girls’ sports while also lending a critical eye towards the sportswomen who have thrown women under the bus in their desire to appease the current wokery. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alice Sullivan, sociologist and Head of Research at the UCL Social Research Institute, argues for the need to collect data on sex in social surveys and the census while advocating for academic freedom in discussing questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. Focussing on the institutional capture of gender identity within universities, academic publishing and the Office for National Statistics, Sullivan details the ways in which academics have been targeted by a very powerful and well-funded lobby which seeks to no-platform and silence female academics who argue for accurate data collection on sex specifically because, as she states, “Proof denies faith.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, psychologist and researcher Ray Blanchard discusses the historical changes in gender dysphoria (formerly “gender identity disorder”) diagnoses and the politicisation of a pathology that used to affect so few but which today has grown into a social contagion. Discussing his research in autogynephilia, the paraphilic tendency in some males to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as female, Blanchard elaborates why many transgender-identified subjects today largely reject the psychological disorder framed by the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) while necessarily needing such a diagnosis in order for the subject to access medical treatment. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, journalist Taylor Hudak addresses the media coverage of the Julian Assange extradition hearing and the threat posed to whistleblowers and journalists today. Speaking with Julian Vigo, Hudak also addresses the media elision of the Capitol protest of 6 January which is being used to criminalise dissent, the corruption of Big Tech working alongside political parties to silence opposition voices, and the way that media polarises the public. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. William Malone is a board-certified endocrinologist who has been a vocal critic of the medical interventions in what is today called “gender identity.” Speaking with Julian Vigo, Malone goes through the institutional failures as well as the theoretical and medical practices that cater to the individual’s perception of how their own sex-related and socially-influenced personality traits should be “matched up with” stereotypes of gender reinforced through medical intervention. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester (UK) and a keen amateur sportswoman, discusses sex-segregation in sport, the impact of physical anatomy on performance and the necessity for a protected category for female athletes. In this episode, Hilton discusses with Julian Vigo her academic review of muscle and strength retention in trans-identified males suppressing the current policies within sports that argue for the inclusion of these males in female sport. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Caleb Maupin, a widely acclaimed speaker, writer, journalist, and political analyst discusses Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book, the implications of US-sponsored regime change operations abroad, the shift of leftist politics and the demonisation of populism within the left. Maupin offers a rich history of the left within the west elaborating how class politics have been eroded by the rich and the ultra-rich, to include a stunning analysis of what Maupin calls a “country club attitude” of the wealthy class. Discussing US party politics, Maupin examines the greater problems of neoliberal capitalism and why the left needs to return to class analysis to include dialoguing with the working class on both sides of the aisle while stepping away from the liberal culture wars. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Oliver Traldi is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a writing fellow at Heterodox Academy, and a columnist at ArcDigital. Recently, Traldi penned “The Left Has Turned Into a Guild Hall,” an essay which addresses identity politics on the left. In this episode, Traldi speaks with Julian Vigo about his views on the left’s abandon of class politics, the protest on the US Capitol building and why identity by fiat is putting the brakes on social and political advances. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Douglas Frank, Ph.D. in Surface Analytical Chemistry, has recently gained notoriety for his modelling work on the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Frank has been making his work available to the public since January of 1990 and his Facebook page “Follow the Data with Dr Frank” has over 50,000 members and followers. In this episode, Dr. Frank details the way the COVID-19 data is being used, abused and misrepresented by governments and the media. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

This episode is an in-depth interview with Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder and Director of Transgender Trend, the leading UK organisation advocating for an evidence-based approach to childhood gender non-conformity. Davies-Arai details her entry into the gender debate, her work to expose the medical fraud that is “childhood gender transition” and the problems faced by teachers, clinicians and parents when confronting what has become a quite well-funded and powerful lobby. Also, mentioned in this episode are Michael Bigg’s resarch, “The Tavistock’s Experimentation with Puberty Blockers” and Rachel Rooney’s book, My Body is Me! Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

En el episodio de lanzamiento para 2021, nuestra invitada especial es Lidia Falcón, abogada, escritora y política, que ha sido investigada por la Fiscalía de Delitos de Odio y Discriminación, junto con la Dirección General de Igualdad de Cataluña, en respuesta a una denuncia de la Federación Plataforma Trans (Trans Platform Federation) de España. Habla con Julián Vigo sobre su lucha contra la identidad de género, una nueva ola de misoginia que supone una seria amenaza para los derechos de las mujeres. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Philosopher, Heather Brunskell-Evans, joins Savage Minds for the our end of year broadcast in her analysis of the current pushback against lockdown to include the recent writings of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, who has harshly critiqued current virus mitigation in a series of essays and At What Point are We? this year. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist, bestselling author, and co-host of Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast, speaks with Julian Vigo about her personal and professional experiences in the “gender identity” debate and the way the “born this way” ideology within the gay community was quickly adopted within the “gender identity” camp. Focussing upon the problems of medicalising gender, O’Malley discusses her work on the Channel 4 documentary “Trans-Kids: It’s Time To Talk” and the fallout from this programme which includes a widening of the lens upon childhood gender transition to include the medicalisation of children, the entrenchment of gender stereotypes and the reluctance to move treatments for gender dysphoria towards a therapeutic or analytic model. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Paul Cockshott, author of How The World Works (2019), discusses the links between capitalism and class politics. Detailing how the ruling class is based upon the exploitation of labour and the interwoven dynamics of the class economy, slavery, feudal tenure, and immigration, Cockshott elaborates the historical issues that affect productivity and labour today. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade unionist, journalist, national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU, supporter of Blue Labour and the author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class. In this episode, Embery talks with Julian Vigo about the chasm between the working class communities and the wider left to include the abandon of class considerations by the left in favour of a focus on identity politics. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who holds an MD and PhD in economics, discusses his work during the COVID-19 epidemic to include the first seroprevalence study and some of the humanist ideals behind the Great Barrington Declaration which urges a change in COVID-19 infection control policies away from lockdowns and in favour of focused protection of the vulnerable. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Marcus Evans is a former governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation where he also served as Consultant Psychotherapist and Associate Clinical Director of Adult and Adolescent Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. In this episode Evans discusses the 400 percent rise in referrals to the Tavistock Centre in north London, the only National Health Service (NHS) clinic in Britain that treats children with gender-identity developmental issues. Discussing changes within the clinical psychiatric practices treating gender dysphoria, the powerful lobby groups and NGOs pushing “gender affirmative” approaches, the shift in doctor-patient relations and the explosion of cases among adolescent girls, Evans analyses the mutations in theoretical and practical approaches to childhood gender dysphoria in recent decades. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Martin Kulldorff, PhD, a biostatistician, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is one of the three creators of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) co-authored with fellow scientists Sunetra Gupta (Oxford University) and  Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University). In his discussion with Julian Vigo, Kulldorff analyses current WHO and media discourses surrounding COVID-19 and “lockdown-induced collateral damage” which has had devastating effects on public health and the economy. If you've been thinking about supporting Savage Minds, but have not yet done so, please consider taking out a subscription, by supporting our work on Patreon or through a one-off donation. We really can't do this without you and we depend on financial support which means that we can cover the news unfettered by corporate pressure. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, the esteemed Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, joins Julian Vigo to discuss this current global pandemic through the analysis he and Dr. Karina Reiss provide in Corona, False Alarm Facts And Figures (2020). An award-winning researcher, Bhakdi sheds a light on the current era of COVID-19 and offers an analysis of whether radical protective measures—including lockdown, social distancing, and mandatory masking—have been justified, and what the ramifications have been for society, the economy, and public health. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Women's rights campaigner and founder of Standing For Women, Kellie-Jay Keen, discusses the rift among feminists seeking to denigrate right-wing women, free speech and the myth of left-wing compassion with Julian Vigo. Also known by the name Posie Parker, Keen covers her political actions to include the posting of billboards and stickers with the definition of the word “woman” and her recent arrest. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Glenn Loury addresses Black Lives Matter, our cultural fixation on slavery, the current debate over police brutality and the uses and abuses of social media with Julian Vigo. Examining the “Karen” incident of Central Park this summer, Loury queries the “counterweight to the unspoken—but much more overpoweringly, empirically resonant reality” of a narrative which plays heavily in the American political and media landscape. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Heather Brunskell-Evans discusses John Stuart Mill, Michel Foucault, identity politics, the current philosophical and legal discourses on sexual violence, and the politics of “kindness” with Julian Vigo. Focussing upon many of the misrepresentations of Foucault’s work in recent years, Brunskell-Evans offers ways in which we might better understand liberalism and how Foucault asks us to consider both the body and our presumed freedoms.If you've been thinking about supporting Savage Minds, but have not yet done so, please consider taking out a subscription, by supporting our work on Patreon or through a one-off donation. We really can't do this without you and we depend on financial support which means that we can cover the news unfettered by corporate pressure. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Savage Minds presents its launch podcast with Noam Chomsky who speaks with Julian Vigo about the international mitigation efforts for dealing with COVID-19, US politics, ecological catastrophe, internationalism, feminism and identity politics. Chomsky lays bare the situation of politics within and outside the United States and why the left needs to focus on working class issues, public health, and the current ecological disaster. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe