Shut Down ICE, Shut Down the Trump Regime

July 27, 2025

Episode 258

Sam explains why the time to refuse fascism isn’t someday—it’s now: from ICE terror and mass disappearances to Trump’s executive order targeting unhoused people, to blatant defiance of the courts and violent threats against political opponents. Refuse Fascism is calling on people in every sector—healthcare, tech, education, government, culture—to join this nonviolent mass resistance and shut down the fascist machinery.

This week’s episode features an interview with Wajahat Ali, editor of The Left Hook and co-host of Democracy-ish, followed by an interview with artist Phil Buehler (modern-ruins.com) whose installation “Wall of Shame” is on display in Bushwick through August 3 and is a project in partnership with Radio Free Brooklyn.

Plus voices of resistance from this past week, including healthcare workers in Massachusetts rallying against ICE, Refuse Fascism NYC’s speak-out at the Ed Sullivan Theater in response to CBS canceling The Late Show, and Rev Dr. Richard Rose speaking before the march into East LA where our immigrant siblings are being kidnapped by ICE.

Take action:

Find a Monday July 28 No Business As Usual Action Near You and again on Friday August 1 at 6pm 15 minute noise demos in neighborhoods, metro stations, town squares and more.

Mentioned in the episode:

Audio Clip Sources:

Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown

Episode 258 Shut Down ICE, Shut Down the Trump Regime
Refuse Fascism podcast

Sun, Jul 27, 2025 5:09PM • 1:29:19

Wajahat Ali 00:00

The threat is fascism, and it is coming in the form of not just the Trump administration, but the entire conservative right-wing machine. So what we’re dealing with is a fascist right-wing ecosystem. Wake up. Time to get woke! Take your head out of the sand. You’re suffering from a failure of imagination. All the people who said it can’t happen here, it’s happening in real time. Everyone has a role to play at a local, state and national level, in any capacity they can to resist fascism. It is our job to cut the fascist machine, to make it leak, to widen the cracks, to throw sand in the gears, to slow it down.

Sam Goldman 00:36

Welcome to Episode 258 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. This is Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism works to unite all who can be united to join in mass nonviolent protest and resistance in the streets and throughout society, growing to include millions and refusing to stop until we create such a profound political crisis that Trump cannot impose his fascist program or even maintain his hold on power. Big thanks to our patrons, everyone who shares the show, rates and reviews the show and reps our merch. Every bit helps connect more people with Refuse Fascism. So after listening to today’s episode, please write a review, give the episode a share, and check out our store.

Today, we are sharing two interviews. First, we will share a conversation I had this past week with the editor of The Left Hook Substack and co host of Democracy-ish, Wajahat Ali, and then an interview with artist Phil Bueller, that also was a conversation that I had earlier this week. But first, very important, tomorrow, Monday, July 28, we’ve been talking about it, I’m gonna bring it up again: Tomorrow, we are launching No Business As Usual actions to call forth the mass non-compliance and mass nonviolent resistance needed to make Trump Must Go Now! a reality. In the future, they must say, in Trump’s fascist America in 2025, first they came for the immigrants, and millions of decent people said: No Fucking Way! In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America! They said Trump Must Go Now!

They refused to comply. They acted with such courage and conviction, they put their bodies on the line, they made so much noise and caused so much righteous, nonviolent disruption in every institution and every corner of society that the regime was not able to impose its terror, was not able to govern the country. They filled the streets and town squares day after day in the seat of power and all across the country with their demand that the regime must go. They kept coming back, and they kept coming back, and they kept coming back until the regime was not even able to hold onto power.

Tomorrow at lunchtime, blow the whistle on ICE. Join actions outside immigration detention centers, immigration courts, federal buildings and other locations. Together, we will blow the whistle because the emergency is now. Trump Must Go Now! We will blow the whistle because, with the big fascist bill, ICE will become an occupying military force controlled by Trump and deployed to an even greater extent nationwide, especially flooding into sanctuary cities. We blow the whistle because we read the Niemoller poems and are paying attention when ICE brutally arrests a teenage U.S. citizen who is Latino, and tells him: “You’ve got no right.” We know that they are not joking when they are recorded saying: “We gotta shoot some of them,” and brag about a “30,000 reward.”

We will blow the whistle, because no decent person can stand by as Trump’s ICE Gestapo kidnaps our immigrant siblings, locks them in vile concentration camps where they are tortured in this country and across the globe, or deports them to a country they are not from and know no one. We are blowing the whistle on ICE, on their raids, on their kidnappings, on their terror. ICE is Trump’s Gestapo, and because the scapegoating, demonization and ethnic cleansing of our immigrant siblings is a battering ram to a whole fascist program.

It’s on us to shut it down. We demand: Shut down ICE; No military occupation; Shut down the whole Trump fascist regime; Trump Must Go Now! We will blow the whistle for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for Espina Juarez, for Francisco Orizar, for Elario Martinez Garcia, for Eduardo Nunez Gonzalez, and the thousands more who have been hunted down, including at immigration court, ripped from their families, including children with cancer, with unaccompanied children encouraged to self deport, thousands who’ve been terrorized, disappeared, tortured and sent to their deaths.

This is who we do it for. At this point, we have now passed the six month mark into this nightmare, and Trump has issued an Executive Order directing federal agencies and state governments to find ways to seize and detain unhoused people as a solution to “crime and disorder.” Beyond having the largest prison population in the world, the United States has an extraordinarily violent history of involuntary, “civil commitment,” beyond the so called criminal justice system. We are talking about detention, often indefinite, in abysmal conditions with minimal or no judicial oversight. Detention based on poverty, ethnicity, race and nationality, religion, mental, emotional and cognitive health, non conformity to sex and gender roles, political resistance and more.

This is integral to what Trump and MAGA think is America’s lost greatness, and it is what they are now overtly incentivizing states to carry out. We are dealing with a regime that not only holds the legislature, but has transformed the Supreme Court into an instrument of fascist rule, and acts in open and routine defiance of the rule of law. The Washington Post reported that in the six months since Trump took office, this regime has been accused of defying one in three judges in lawsuits, “snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretext to carry out actions that have been blocked.”

This is a regime that is dangerously escalating its attacks on leaders of the Democratic Party. Last Sunday, Trump posted a dangerous and outrageous AI generated video of Obama being violently arrested and abducted. That this video, dripping with Trump’s white supremacy and gleeful sadism, in itself did not cause an international outcry demanding Trump’s removal from office means we are far down the road to normalizing and accepting fascism. Tomorrow, we will blow the whistle, because there can be no more business as usual when that business is cementing into place fascist rule.

Tomorrow, we begin to marshal the mass non compliant and non violent resistance that can grow into millions in the streets, walking out of schools, of work, refusing to let Trump rule with all the horrors that entails. Just imagine: Doctors defying fascist bans to provide gender affirming care and abortions; Hospitals refusing to comply with state mandated cruelty and instead saving lives, not obeying fascists; Celebrities using every mic they get from late night shows, to red carpets to demand: Trump Must Go Now!, and calling people into the streets to shut down the whole Trump fascist regime; Teachers openly defying book bans, teaching the true history of this country, celebrating diversity and resistance; Universities refusing to pay fines to the Trump regime, holding town halls and strikes to foster critical thinking and defiance in the face of that fascist edict; Tech workers walking out rather than building tools of surveillance and control; Local officials rejecting fascist laws and challenging their colleagues else where to join them in doing the same; Business Leaders ignoring censorship orders, not cooperating with ICE and using their platform to denounce fascism; Whole cities standing up in mass refusal, mass non violent resistance.

The hour has come for each of us to ask: If we do not act to stop this, what kind of people will we become? So find a lunchtime, hour long action at RefuseFascism.org, and be sure to be back in the streets Monday at 6:00 p.m. Together for 15 minutes, we will make loud, defiant, joyful noise that can’t be ignored. With our pots, our pans, playing our music, blasting our car horns in neighborhoods and parks and metro stops across the country. We will disturb the air, starting tomorrow night, calling everyone in earshot to join us. We will do this again on Friday, August 1, then Wednesday, August 6, then every Wednesday and soon every day.

We are mobilizing on the scale to bring the fascist machinery of this regime to a halt, to build up now the networks and organization to prepare for the time, as I said before, that must come soon, when we are millions acting together in that relentless, nonviolent protest that comes back day after day, night after night, that refuses to stop until the Trump fascist regime is removed from power. So once more, visit RefuseFascism.org to find actions near you, or see the show notes.

Columbia University has now actively capitulated and enabled this regime. In their own accord, they already expelled and suspended nearly 80 students for standing up against a genocide, one which is now coming to the end stages of mass starvation, all facilitated by the U.S. government. Now, Columbia’s administration paid the Trump regime a $200 million fine for not cracking down brutally enough, and more to the point, for maintaining an educational environment that even passively allowed their students to think critically about major world events, let alone have the audacity to act courageously to change the world.

This week, however, has also been marked by some very important acts of defiance, non-compliance and nonviolent resistance. We’re not going to be able to cover them all here, so be sure to check out RefuseFascism.org for more on this. Let’s talk first about the righteous defiance to CBS canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. To do that, we’re going to share a segment by Sunsara Taylor originally aired on the RNL Revolution Nothing Less Show.

When Stephen Colbert was outrageously canceled by CBS, in a way that really stinks of fascist capitulation, a capitulation to fascism, RefuseFascism.org immediately called an emergency protest in New York City outside the studio where that is filmed. Not enough people, but a good crowd of people, turned out, including comedians and performers and others. We want to show some of the footage, a few of the voices who spoke out and some of the crowd, and it gives you a good, vital sense of the message and the mission of Refuse Fascism and how it resonates and needs to be built upon.

Stephen Colbert 11:39

Over the weekend, it sunk in that they’re killing off our show. But they made one mistake. They left me alive! [crowd cheers] And now and now for the next ten months, the gloves are off! [cheers continue] Yeah!

WCBS 2 New York City 12:00

A crowd is protesting the canceling of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert here tonight, just days after it was announced the top rated late night comedy show was ending. The demonstration outside the Ed Sullivan Theater was led by a group called Refuse Fascism. President Trump has been a frequent target of Colbert’s nightly monolog, and the show’s cancelation came on the heels of Paramount $16 million settlement with the President. Protesters today questioned the timing. [Coco Das:] “We are trying to wake up the people. Too many people are accepting this and saying, you know, Colbert, we’ll miss you. Actually, we can’t accept this. This is illegitimate.”

Unidentified woman 12:40

I haven’t really protested much in my life, but this is so important, I don’t like losing our democracy.

crowd 12:56

“Keep Colbert! Dump Trump! Colbert Stays! Trump Must Go!”

Speaker 1 13:01

So when they come for the storytellers, the joke crackers, the drag queens, they’re just not they’re just not trimming the edges of culture. They’re gutting democracy. They’re censoring empathy, and they are laying the groundwork for something much, much darker. Listen, I don’t want to live through a sequel to history’s worst moments. We’ve already seen what happens when we stay quiet, and I refuse to stay quiet! [large cheer] We are not here because we want attention.

We are here because we are paying attention! [crowd approves] So no!, we will not be silent. We will not be edited. We will not cut for time. Let them cancel shows, let them ban books. Let them try to erase our art, our joy, our fire. Because guess what? We are still here, [crowd cheers] and we are louder than ever, because this is more than a protest. This is a warning and this is also a promise, because we will not go quietly, we will not go alone, and we will not go without a fight! [loud cheer]

Jim Keady14:22

Three months ago, I was over in Germany. I visited the Dachau concentration camp for the second time in my life. If you ever have a chance to go to Dachau, for those of you don’t know what it is, Dachau was the first prison camp that was established weeks into Hitler being named Chancellor of the Reich. Within months, there were thousands and thousands of dissidents, people who were politically agitating against the Reich, who were rounded up and locked up. Over the years that that camp was in place, 200,000 people were imprisoned there.

Tens of thousands were murdered there. Now, I’m not saying that Trump is Hitler, and I’m not saying the MAGA movement are Nazis, but my god, does history rhyme quite a bit in this situation. [some agreement from crowd] It’s not Dachau, Trump’s first foray was in the camp in El Salvador, and now he has built Alligator Auschwitz, and if we do not stand up and speak out and muster the courage to be in these streets, not just on one day, but every day, potentially for months at a time, we will not dislodge this regime. This is why we’re here with the Refuse Fascism movement. We’re thankful to see so many new faces, who are standing up and speaking out on this day, but please know, this will not be activism as usual. I am telling you, as someone with 25 years of experience in electoral politics and grassroots activism. We are dealing with a different animal.

This is a fascist regime. It’s an authoritarian regime. It is consolidating authoritarian power. It is getting more power from the courts. We have a Congress that one party is in bed with them, the other party is impotent. We have a citizenry that I’m not sure has awakened to the fact of what we’re dealing with. I’m not saying this to scare you. I am saying it to give you the straight up truth of what we are facing. What I want to encourage each of you to do when you leave here today, is to start finding the heroes that inspire you from history. Mine? Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Jesus — I’m a theologian — Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta.

All of these people were willing to put it on the line. They were willing to get arrested. They were willing to make massive personal sacrifice. Some were willing to give their lives for the cause. Our very representative democracy, enshrined in the Constitution of the United States of America, is on the line. [a few agree] Today it’s Stephen Colbert. If Trump has his druthers, tomorrow, it’ll be Jimmy Kimmel. The next day, it’ll be another entertainer. The next day, it’ll be another politician. Then we’ll all be looking around because it will be everyday citizens who are either silenced or jailed. So again, I want to encourage you to muster every ounce of courage that you have in your hearts and your souls and stand up and speak out and fight back, because We Refuse to Accept a FascistAmerica! [Cheers] The Trump Must Go Now!

Miles Solay 18:04

In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America. [crowd approves strongly] right now with no exaggeration and no hyperbole, we are quite literally in the midst…We are in the midst of the coherence of a textbook definition, fascist regime. The vilification, subjugation, dehumanization of tens of millions of our immigrant sisters and brothers, who, every single day exhibit more courage and sacrifice than any one of these MAGA, white supremacist Confederate lunatics could ever even imagine or dream of. [cheers] Our sisters and brothers from many parts of the world, many from parts of the world whose economies and land was destroyed by this country, have sacrificed everything to come here and are now finding themselves in concentration camps.

Yes, when we say concentration camps, we are fully aware of the entire historical significance; Dachau, Auschwitz and the like. You may be familiar with Pastor Martin Neimoller, a Lutheran who went along with the fascist regime under Adolf Hitler for many years. Afterwards, he miraculously survived, and he shared these words: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and the Catholics and so on and so forth… And then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.”

The first lesson of that is there is a trajectory. There is a logic to what’s going on. Genocide might not start on day one, but that’s where it is going. When you look at what they are doing with the burning of our planet and the evisceration of any restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels, when you look at what they are doing to tens of millions of our immigrant sisters and brothers, when you see what they are doing three years into the evisceration of the right of a woman to an abortion in this country, and then you couple that with the degradation and complete dehumanization of trans people, of the LGBT community and their virulent, vicious, lunatic, idiotic, white supremacy and hubris, the parallels to Nazi Germany are insufficient. That’s the bad news, my friends.

The bad news is when Refuse Fascism says: In the Name of Humanity — we are not talking just about us. We are not talking about just Americans. We are talking about an existential issue for all of humanity. The future of humanity hangs in the balance. People around the world, thankfully, are starting to hate this country and the people of it even more than maybe they did before. The good news is that there are tens of millions of people — this is not hype — there literally are tens of millions, probably more of them, who hate this than who like this, that’s going on. Right?, you understand what I’m saying? [crowd agrees] Get off the couch. Stop the Doom scroll.

No Democrat will save you in 2026. No Democrat will save you in 2028. If any Democratic Party, people want to join us in the streets, they are welcome. We are not excluding that. We need to join forces together in a movement that is so unprecedented and so fearless. That brings me back to something else that Pastor Martin Neimoller said — actually it was his wife, who was recounting that another thing that he said besides the famous quote first they came for. She said: You know, it’s possible that we could have maybe stopped this, what happened in Nazi Germany — meaning when Hitler became Chancellor 1933, but six, seven years before the final solution in the annihilation of Jews in Germany and Poland and so on and so forth.

We could have possibly solved this, but maybe 30,000 of us would have had to give our lives. I want to be very clear, I am not advocating for anything. We urgently need a nonviolent massive resistance movement. For the avoidance of doubt. That being said, the time is now. The Time is now… now, now,…[crowd begins to repeat now] now, now… Not: I want, now; I wish, now — Now, now. The time is now for those tens of millions of people to get some skin in the game. [crowd approves] When ICE comes, no more 50 people outside protesting… 5,000. [approval, and continuing] In New York, in Oxnard, in Boyle Heights, all across this country!

I want to give some love to all of you out here today. [cheers] Give some love to the organization Refuse Fascism, [cheers] which is a coalition and effort — in other words, anybody can be part of it — who, since 2017 has been calling this for what it is, a fascist regime. [approval] We need to join forces and put our bodies and hearts on the line like we’ve never done before. Before I go, I want to say this: For all the people over 65 in this crowd and across this country. Make some noise. [cheers] There is no retirement in the ranks of the movement to drive out fascism.

So all of the older folks who have been in the streets for the last three months — make some noise for everyone! [cheers] That being said, we must reach into the hearts of the young people, the under 25 — of which I am not part — but we need them to be on the front lines right now. There are starting to be stirrings of that. They’re starting to be stirrings, but we need them to put some skin in the game, and to learn what they don’t know, and to follow their conscience and to drive the Trump regime out in 2025! [approval]

Sam Goldman 25:15

For more from Refuse Fascism’s action outside the Ed Sullivan Theater and at CBS’ office in New York, see our social media @RefuseFascism or our YouTube. Next, cheers to the blistering, irreverent creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone for a master class in defiance in non-compliance with fascist edicts and those who abet them. They had just scored a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount, and yet used their [27th?] 37th season premiere, Sermon on the Mount, to skewer Paramount’s cancelation of Colbert, the rise of Christian Nationalism, the demonization of those who give a fuck, Trump’s strategy of using lawsuits to intimidate critics and bludgeon dissent and much more. And comedy, satire isn’t the only arena of defiance that we’ve seen this week. Listen to these health care workers who joined a weekly rally outside the ICE processing center in Burlington, Massachusetts this past Wednesday.

NBC 10 reporters 26:14

Immigration raids are scaring both immigrant patients and immigrant health care workers, whose status in the U.S. may be at risk. That’s according to a group of doctors and nurses who came together to protest against ICE. NBC 10’s immigration reporter Oscar Marguinne is live outside the ICE processing center in Burlington where a rally took place. Oscar, what kind of impact are these protesters talking about?

NBC 10 reporters 26:41

Well, Glenn, rally goers tell me that the impact is on patients and on the industry. They say that the health care industry here is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, meaning worker shortages. Now, these are legal workers we’re talking about who say they fear that they will suddenly be out of status and become a target for deportation. [Horn honking] A growing weekly rally in front of the immigration and customs enforcement offices was joined by a group of health care workers calling for an end to immigration raids.

Speaker 1 27:16

The way that ICE is persecuting and prosecuting immigrants in our country is shameful.

NBC 10 Boston 27:20

Doctors and nurses say the impact of ICE operations is being felt at clinics and hospitals. Dr Brett Lewis says about one in five workers in health care are immigrants.

Dr. Brett Lewis 27:30

Not only are our patients afraid to come into clinic, they’re afraid to get prenatal care, they’re afraid to call 911, but also our colleagues are afraid to come into work.

NBC 10 reporter 27:42

In Massachusetts, more than 40% of nursing home staffing is immigrant. According to the National Institute of Health, many like Meleida Cruz, who was born in El Salvador, are working legally under temporary protected status.

Meleida Cruz 27:53

At any moment you can they can tell us, you know, it’s gone and you have to go back, which is scary.

Dr. Scott Gilbert 27:59

Patients are supposed to come for a yearly physical. They’re 12 years old, they’re not. Or they’re very sick and they’re elderly, they’re not coming in.

NBC 10 Reporter 28:06

Dr Scott Gilbert can’t help but draw parallels between the fear that his mother and her friend Holocaust victim Anne Frank saw in Nazi Germany, and what he is seeing now with ICE.

Dr. Scott Gilbert 28:18

The ICE Gestapo out in their thousands, just picking people up during the day, covering with masks. That’s no different than what my mom and millions of others experienced during the Hitler Nazi period.

NBC 10 reporter 28:34

Now this sort of uncertainty can also be felt in other industries. Now, last month, the Trump administration established a Temporary Office of Immigrant Policy, and it’s meant to help industries reliant on immigrant labor. But it’s still uncertain or unclear how the rollout of this program will look like. Reporting live in Burlington, Oscar Marguinne, NBC, 10 Boston.

Sam Goldman 28:55

And last, but certainly not least, yesterday, Saturday, July 26 Refuse Fascism led a march from La Placita Alvera past the Federal Detention center into the community of East Los Angeles, where our immigrant siblings are being hunted, disappeared into detention camps and terrorized by a lawless and grotesque federalized military force loyal only to Trump’s MAGA fascist regime. The march was led by justice loving people, including clergy, artists and dedicated activists in a joyous, determined, nonviolent march that not only let people know they are not alone, but there is a movement determined to stop this fascism through growing acts of non compliance that confront this fascist program, aiming to do nothing less than defeat it. Here is a powerful speech delivered just before the march kicked off by Reverend Dr Richard Rose.

Rev. Dr. Richard Rose 29:48

Trump Must Go Now! [crowd repeats] In the Name of Humanity, [response: right] I am a concerned citizen of the world. [response: yeah] I Refuse to Accept a Fascist America. Now, when I was growing up, there was no doubt about being concerned about one’s neighbor. It is only natural to care about those people who you share living space with. In Christianity, there is a famous question that causes everyone to think deeply. The question is: Who is my neighbor? And the answer isa good neighbor is one who cares about those who are in need.

What is taking place today in our neighborhoods and communities is unsettling. It has become difficult for me to sleep, and my thoughts are dominated by this subject: How can we allow the government to steal our families from their homes? How can we allow parents to be taken from their children because they were not born here. What does all this mean in terms of what we call a just society? I was born and raised in Sacramento, California. I was educated in Orange County, my undergraduate degree. I went to the east coast and became a clergy person. Came back out to California and in the IE [Inland Empire?] and Claremont, received my Ph.D. in Philosophy. [cheers] My research has to do with what it means to be a global citizen, a member of the Christian faith, but yet connected to all of humanity. And I was fired from my job for 34 years for trying to build a beloved community.

You see, American values are misguided. America is perverted. In American culture where we’re taught a perverted form of individualism. We’ve been taught to be selfish. Dog Eat Dog is the way they do it. Trump and Elon Musk, which one has the biggest ego? My philosophical mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said, I fear I’m integrating my people into a burning house. Trumpism Must Go Now! [approval] Bob Marley said it like this: We gonna drive those… We gonna chase these crazy bald heads out of town. [cheers] There’s a why, Trump must go now, besides the fact that he’s unfit for office, there are policies that are a threat to democracy. Kamala Harris tried to warn us of that, yet we voted for the jerk anyway. How soon we forget. The U.S. government under Trump has in opposition to international law legalized kidnapping.

The General Assembly of United Nations has made it clear that the way these people are being labeled immigrants who may be out of compliance with some United States statute, they do not deserve to be treated unfairly. The United Nations has been clear on this. Article Two says everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms outlined in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national origin, property, birth or other status. What America is doing with ICE is state run terrorism and must be ended immediately. [large cheer]

The Trump administration should be removed from office and tried for crimes against humanity, against international law. [cheers] So we must come together and change the narrative. There’s a term from the African tradition called umbuntu, which means, I am, because we are. By telling our story, we can change the narrative. Who are you? What have you done? What do you want to see this America become? Let’s change the narrative, and in so doing, make this place the way we want it to be. [cheers] So with that, Trump Must Go Now! [crowd repeats and cheers]

Sam Goldman 34:36

You can see more on the L.A. March for Humanity, @RefuseFascismLA and on our platform as well, @RefuseFascism. There will be a link where you can watch the full rally that’s up on YouTube in the show notes. With that, here is my conversation with Wajahat Ali.

Today we’re welcoming back Wajahat Ali, author of ‘Go Back to Where you Came From and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become an American.’ Wajahat is the author of the Substack newsletter Left Hook, co host of the podcast Democracy-ish, contributor to Zeteo, where he continues to challenge the rise of fascism, the complicity of so called polite society with the sharp insight, humor and a deep commitment to multiracial democracy. Welcome Waj. Thanks so much for coming back on.

Wajahat Ali 35:26

Sam, thank you for having me. I wish one day that we don’t have to speak or we could talk about something else, like cats or toys or TV shows we like to binge watch. And then you can rename the Refuse Fascism podcast to Fascism isDead! Hooray! Podcast. But we’re not living in those times, are we? We’re in the year 2025, where I believe it is time — it has been time — and I think you’ll agree with me to name the threat, and the threat is fascism. It is coming in the form of not just the Trump administration, but the entire conservative right-wing machine. And if you don’t name the threat and acknowledge a threat, then how can you defeat it, Sam?

Sam Goldman 36:02

Exactly. You go to the doctor to get a diagnosis, not just to know what it is that you have going on with you, but so that you can properly treat it. Right now, for some time, people continue to use many, many euphemisms to describe what really is a cancer that needs to be, really, removed from our body, and this body being the United States. So I really appreciate your willingness to name it and your willingness to name it in the service of stopping it. We have for some time, I think both of us, have been warning that the window is closing — that there comes to be a point where it’s too late, where too late isn’t theoretical anymore.

The mechanisms for protest and redress within the government, they disappear. We see that further down the line than we would like to see already. We’ve got ICE raids like Gestapo sweeps, a SCOTUS that puts Trump above the law and violent threats against anyone who speaks out. I’m just wondering: What do you say to the people who are still waiting for clear warning, honestly, what do you say to those people right now?

Wajahat Ali 37:07

Wake up! Time to get woke! Take your head out of the sand. You’re suffering from a failure of imagination. All the people who said it can’t happen here; it’s happening, in real time. And if it wasn’t the masked, armed ICE agents terrorizing L.A., if that didn’t do it for you? Well, maybe it’s Donald Trump pardoning 1,600 insurrectionists, the violent ones. Maybe that’ll do it for you. Oh no? Maybe it’s the Supreme Court. Just right now, breaking news. I don’t know if you saw, the Supreme Court lets Trump fire consumer product safety regulators, because, of course, another one of the series of wins Donald

Trump has gone from the Supreme Court through emergency rulings. I believe this might be his 15th and he’s batting 100[%]. What a shocking surprise. So the Supreme Court that made him a president with absolute immunity for crimes — oh, I’m sorry, actions — committed within his scope of his duties last year has now given essentially a rubber stamp on all of his requests; to dismantle the Department of Education, fire these regulators. Donald Trump just ignores Supreme Court when he wants to. Alien Enemies Act? meh. Stephen Miller says: I don’t care. Bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia and these Venezuelans? meh, I’ll do it when I can.

So if that wasn’t enough, we also see the role of the broligarchy, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, literally spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get inside the Trump administration, where DOGE, even though Elon Musk is gone, still exists almost as an independent freaking sledgehammer to the government, and J.D. Vance has been groomed by Peter Thiel to replace Trump with his cankles now. As we’re recording this, you know, it was reported that J.D. Vance met with Murdoch. Interesting, very interesting. Murdoch has not bent the knee when it came to publishing that reporting on the salacious letter that Trump allegedly wrote Epstein.

Trump threatened them, Trump is suing them, and Wall Street Journal is still saying: Nah, we stand by our reporting. So Trump is underwater. That doesn’t mean he’s defeated. We see J.D. Vance being groomed. We see the billionaires passing this bill that guts Medicaid, adds $180 billion to ICE, which makes ICE the 16th largest army in the world, essentially — the most funded. The ICE budget has a budget greater than the military budgets of entire foreign countries. There’s now gonna be 10,000 ICE agents, more private prisons, more detention centers. There’s gonna be bodies, Sam, in those detention centers and private prisons. America already incarcerates 2 million people, so who do you think is going to go in those detention centers, folks?

Detention centers and private prisons are hungry. Now we’re seeing, essentially, slave labor being used.We saw the L.A. fires, there were incarcerated people fighting those fires. So Medicaid is gone, regulations gone, Department of Education gone, USAID gone, fascists all around the world, uniting with Donald Trump — people like Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, and masked ICE agents. Then you tell me: It’ll be fine — and I have to say: I don’t smoke weed and I don’t do drugs, but pass me whatever you’re smoking, because it’s time for me to take it.

Sam Goldman37:07

Yes, or put down what you’re smoking, because it really is ruining your brain.

Wajahat Ali 38:18

Open your eyes, right? It is frustrating for me, Sam, because I was talking to Mehdi Hasan earlier today. He did this now viral debate on Jubilee. For those who don’t know Jubilee, it’s an outfit that creates these viral moments, and they have one person debating 20 people in a circle. Mehdi Hasan, progressive, takes on 20 far right Republicans. He had no idea that there were actual fascists and Nazi sympathizers in the audience. It wasn’t just one or two. I recommend everyone go see the video. It was like a majority of them. The reason why I’m bringing this up, Sam, is that according to masochists like you and me, who have followed MAGA and the right-wing that is not an outlier, that is part and parcel of the modern Republican movement.

That is not the extremes, that is the norm. FT, Financial Times, not a flaming leftist outlet, did an analysis of right-wing movements and groups, and they showed that the right-wing in America, the Republican Party, is so far right that it’s even further to the right than China, and it’s only matched by Russia. So what we’re dealing with is a fascist right-wing ecosystem. It’s not just Donald Trump, it’s not just the GOP, but it’s also the right-wing media. What we’ve also seen, Sam — and this week, as we’re recording this, my prediction on this, sadly has come true, because I’m a student of history — corporate America laid out the red carpet for Trump and fascism, and we’re seeing CBS — just take CBS for as one example — Paramount, which owns CBS, has been trying to, if you will, lubricate the merger between Paramount and Skydance.

They know that Trump is transactional. So they know that Trump, if he doesn’t get all his gold, he might actually squash it. Sherry Redstone, who has so much money, doesn’t give an F about legacy or CBS News or 60 minutes, she wants more. So in order to placate Donald Trump, they bribed him. They bribed him to the tune of $16 million because Donald Trump was upset about a video, an interview, a piece on Kamala Harris that 60 Minutes edited. 60 Minutes did nothing wrong. Donald Trump sued them. They went back and forth. If Paramount had simply litigated this guarantee, you would have been dismissed; 100% guarantee. Instead, they gave him a bribe, $16 million.

Stephen Colbert called out the bribe. Stephen Colbert, as you all know, hosts, or hosted, CBS The Late Show. And then three days later, Paramount announces that they’re canceling the entire show. Then they said, Sam: ratings. And then voila, some of us dug and realized that Colbert has better ratings than Kimmel and Fallon. So do you think it was about the ratings? No. I just want to connect the dots for folks. I’ve been following this story, this merger for a while. 60 Minutes is the crown jewel of CBS News. In its 60 Minutes, nearly 60 year storied career, it has only had three executive producers. The last one, Bill Owens, voluntarily resigned about two months ago to protest Paramount meddling in 60 Minutes’ editorial independence and to sound the alarm to his colleagues in the press.

Then the CBS News Chief was forced to resign. Then Paramount paid off Donald Trump. Then Stephen Colbert was canceled. And I don’t know if you saw this, just depressing news yesterday, Sam, it was reported that the President in waiting, David Ellison, wants to buy Barry Weiss’s Free Press for $200 million and essentially make Barry Weiss the Maven of CBS News. This has happened before in fascism, and it is happening now. Sorry for my rant.

I’m at that point now where, whatever is your line, fine. You know, as we’re recording this, Sam, this came out this week, the poll, an A plus poll, has Donald Trump at negative 11 points. The only other president, this early in his presidency, that had such a low rating was Donald Trump from the first administration, where it was negative 16. His one strong point has always been immigration. He’s now negative five on immigration. He’s negative double digits on the economy. He’s negative 35 on Epstein. And as we’re talking breaking news just came out that Attorney General Pam Bondi apparently alerted Trump he was named in the Epstein files. This just broke on the New York Times about 12 minutes ago. He is negative double digits on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the Latino voters — it was a majority of Latino men, about 53 to 55% who voted for Donald Trump — he is now, in six months, negative double digits with Latino voters. These are not good numbers.

He is also negative 25 when it comes to the signature big, beautiful, billionaire bullshit bill. For independents, they’re negative 44. So he ain’t doing well, folks. I was speaking to Ruth ben Ghiat, who I’m sure you all know — your your listeners know, and we were talking about the J.D. Vance of it all. She was saying, the plan, she believes, is the complete dismantling of the United States of America. Because I was saying, the implementation, of this nativist, anti-immigrant plan. The United States is unique. It’s the it’s the most diverse country in the world. Plus we live in a world with global trade.

So we’ve already seen in six months, the attack on immigrants has led to a decrease in tourism. We’ve lost at least $13 billion. We might lose $44 billion. Countries are turning away from America. China and Japan and Europe are poaching our best scientists. How does a country survive? It’s self destruction. She was saying, that’s the point. The broligarchy wants to control a worn down, weakened, broken, exhausted, sick population that does not have the energy or the means to resist or fight back. And as Howard Lutnick, the billionaire, said: We’re going to replace the factory workers anyway with AI and then the people who rebel, well 80% of people in America in jails are poor, we incarcerate more people than any of the country on Earth.

We just gave a one $180 billion to ice and to build more detention and private centers. Well, Sam, ya send them to prison, and then you get an indentured servitude labor force. So Trump doesn’t give an F, J.D. Vance doesn’ tgive an F, and as you know, Trump, I believe is openly fascistic. I have no problem saying that based on his own conduct and his own words. But we also know J.D. Vance is groomed by Peter Thiel and their mentor, or their philosopher king, is the moron — name is Curtis Yarvin. Curtis Yarvin does not believe in democracy. They believe in techno-fascism. So either way, we get fascism, Sam, and we get screwed.

Sam Goldman43:30

I really appreciate you walking us through, and I think that people you know, sometimes have, you know, a really difficult time, because they’re intentionally, like Steve Bannon, flooding the zone. It’s like, if you’re only seeing it as like a scrolling list of like awful shit, you lose sight of the pattern here and what is propelling it. And I think thatthis cancelation that shook so many people — this was a wake up call, I think, for a lot of people who had been not getting the fascism of it. I don’t know how you don’t get the fascism of it when they’re breaking into car windows and masked men are pulling doctors out of cars while their babies are screaming in the back. I don’t know who you are if you can look at that and not see the fascism of it. But okay, if the the Colbert thing is the line for you, good, because there needs to be a line.

It’s a really important point to take sight of the full regime. There’s moving people from not liking it and opposing it to stopping it. One example is, going back to the Colbert example, because I think it does concentrate a lot. As you said, their cancelation, you could clearly smell the stench of appeasement to fascism. There was no covering it up with any kind of perfume of economic reasons. Even if there were economic reasons, even if he was bleeding the network dry. Even if it was pushing them towards bankruptcy — it was not, but if it was canceling for economic reasons — would be unconscionable in the face of advancing fascism. Even if there are financial considerations, this is the time to support dissenting voices, not to cancel them. I just think it speaks volumes.

Wajahat Ali 48:00

It’s all bullshit, Sam. I really appreciate you giving them, like some benefit of the doubt, or some plausible deniability, but first and foremost, it’s an institution. Second of all, you have a stake in the ground when it comes to the late night wars. Okay, replace Colbert with someone else, right? But also, you realize: No, he does have the highest ratings. He beats Fallon and Kimmel. It’s not just to placate Trump. I think it’s even more insidious, Sam. What we’ve seen throughout history, and even in Nazi Germany, who was complicit with the Nazis? the industrialists. Hey, don’t let a little genocide get in the way of good business.

By the way, folks, some of those industrialists were prosecuted and convicted of war crimes, just saying. But I do believe, based on what we’ve seen and the reports that we’ve seen, even with Ellison trying to buy Bari Weiss from the Free Press, which is a salon for the privilege to whine about the woke. That’s all it is. By the way, I want to say this, because I kind of knew Bari. I talked to her a couple of times. It was always civil. When we were at New York Times, I was contributing op ed writer, I think she was an editor. Bari’s a woman. Bari is a lesbian. Bari is married to another woman. Bari is a Jew, a proud Jew who’s very pro Israel.

Folks, you might want to think about your partners. You might want to think about who you’re getting in bed with. Because these folks — and if you don’t believe me, just go watch the Jubilee interview with Mehdi — hey are very antisemitic. It is core to their conspiracy theories about the replacement theory in QAnon. They believe that’s a cabal of Jews — ZOG (Zionist occupied government) — that is using Black people and Muslims and immigrants to weaken and replace white folks. They also don’t like the gays, and they really kind of don’t like women. We’ve always seen this. We had Muslims vote for Trump. You always see chickens for Colonel Sanders in your own tribe.

The point I was trying to make is by getting rid of Colbert and bringing in Bari Weiss and by neutering CBS News, to me, it seems clear that the broligarchy — and in this case, Sherry Redstone, the oligarchy, it’s women also — I think they want fascism, Sam. I think they like the techno fascist utopia. I think they want the masses to shut the f up. They want to destroy unions. They don’t want resistance. They don’t want to be inconvenienced. And you know, if there’s a little genocide or a little fascism, a little, you know, breaking of the Constitution? eh, as long as I’m making my money, I’m not inconvenienced. That’s what I think. What do you think, Sam?

Sam Goldman 50:07

I think that for the majority, yes, at least now, and that may change. I agree that the biggest lie of fascism is its inevitability. The biggest lie is that everybody gets in line and this happens. I don’t think that it’s inevitable. I think on the trajectory we’re on, it’s much more likely than not. I think that it’s much more likely that Trump lives another day — and I mean that just to be clear, I mean politically — lives another day despite whatever scandal hits him — and not to reduce traumatized women and girls to scandal. That he’s able to just bluster through, I think that that’s unfortunately more likely. This notion that people want so badly, that MAGA will self destruct, has been proven wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong again.
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something for us to gain through those cracks. That doesn’t mean that, like, we can’t seize every opportunity possible. I totally believe that. At the same time, like, let’s not live in fantasy land, people. Let’s be real. I wanted to ask you on those lines about how we get those people — okay, they’re not like, the top of fortune 500 I’m not talking about those people, but other people — with that platform, with that influence, including especially now, artists and comedians and producers, even journalists… How do you think they could be using their platform right now? What could they be doing that would make the most difference right now?

Wajahat Ali 51:34

I agree with you. I think this is a very important point. I think, Sam, everyone is looking for a haymaker. Everyone is looking for this type of knockout blow that will all of a sudden shatter MAGA and Donald Trump, and then snap of the fingers, the Avengers will come, and in 2026 elections, and everything will be fine. It’s very important that you’re mentioning this to your viewers, and it’s something that I try to say with Danielle on Democracy-ish all the time. This is a long walk. This is gonna be death by a thousand cuts. This is ten toes down, everyone has a role to play at a local, state and national level, in any capacity they can, to resist fascism.

The type of damage that has been done, folks, and I hate to be the bearer of this news, in the past six months on the Trump administration, is generational; generational damage to the United States of America. Danielle and I talk about this at this stage of my life, I might not be alive, inshallah [god willing], if we ever see the 180, where we see not a restoration, I’m not interested in restoration, I want reformation. Our job is to plant the seeds. Because I’ve got kids. So inshallah, if I can’t see it, if I can’t see the sunrise, inshallah, the kids could see the sunrise. They could taste the fruit. They could enjoy the shade.

And so people who think that, aha! this will finally crack MAGA — open up your eyes, folks, you aren’t paying attention. At the same time, why for the past two weeks have I been all in on Epstein? Because it is our job to cut the fascist machine, to make it leak, to widen the cracks, to throw sand in the gears, to slow it down. For those people who watch me, they know I quote this great meme, Ken Watanabe, his character from the movie Godzilla: “Let them fight.” and Epstein seems to be his kryptonite. Epstein seems to be the thing that… It wasn’t the violent insurrection. It wasn’t him being a criminal. It wasn’t him being held liable for sexual assault. It’s not him, you know, effing up the economy, not just once, but twice, lying to us about COVID. It’s Epstein.

What’s even sadder about this, it isn’t corporate media leading this fight. It isn’t Democrats. It’s MAGA leading this fight. Because we do affirmative action for conservatives and bend the knee, because MAGA gave the permission structure for corporate media and Democrats to double down on it, now you’re seeing them double down on it. And also I have on another screen, apparently Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal confirmed that Trump is in the files. So this is what I see, Sam, is a sharpening of the knives. I think Rupert Murdoch and some Republicans see that Donald Trump is underwater. He’s not healthy. He’s not doing well. I’m not saying they’re going out full Julius Caesar.

I see the knives being sharpened. Then, once, we found out that last week, J.D. Vance met Rupert Murdoch… And suppose Trump goes down, whether it’s health or what else, it’s not like the broligarchy is gonna go down. I don’t underestimate Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and all these other guys. J.D. Vance is their guy. I do think J.D. Vance does not have the love or the support of MAGA. So what I believe, what’s going to happen if Trump goes down, or if he gets sick, or if he dies, is you’re going to see a Julius Caesar type of shiving within MAGA. They’re not going to get less radical. Oh no, no, no. You’re going to see them all try to wear the crown. But it is an opportunity for the rest of us to organize and mobilize and then go after ’em. That’s my take. I’m curious what you think.

Sam Goldman 54:40

I think it’s really helpful, the way that you painted it. I agree that there’s opportunity. There’s opportunity precisely when they’re fighting. If everybody’s marching in line, you’d lack the opportunity. You need the rulers amongst themselves going at it, but not for us to sit back, pop the popcorn. And say: Ooh, this is a fun fight to watch. I get it, I’m not shaming. People find your joy, but you can’t just leave it there. I personally think that when they’re fighting, when that power is contested, that’s when you go out with your demand. That’s when you have the power and you have a bigger base of support and a bigger chance of winning. It’s oftentimes when fascists — and not fascist, just like tyrants — have been ousted by people.

Wajahat Ali 55:32

Everyone’s looking for that knockout punch, and I think it’s important for us to set expectations. During fascist regimes, it just doesn’t work that way, folks. The damage is done. There’s gonna be generational damage, generational repair. If we can keep on the optimistic tip — gosh, it’s gonna be tough, folks, because now we all have climate change, and you saw just last night, the EPA completely corrupted, and the EPA now is not gonna combat climate change, awesome. Because Donald Trump believes climate change is a hoax. Because these mother f-ers don’t care, because they don’t want to use their wealth to save the Earth, they want to build spaceships to go to Mars only for the chosen whites.

You think I’m joking about it? you have not paid attention to the techno fascist narratives and ideologies that influence Musk and Thiel. I’m not making that up. We have a lot of challenges, but I do think people need to prepare themselves, that we have to kind of win back step by step, by step by step, and in sha allah, then it adds up. Electing the right people… Now this is my take… Well, it’s not just my take, but it’s a take of, I think Amnesty International, and increasingly it’s gonna be the United Nations, and also scholars of genocide. There’s a genocide happening in Israel. They’re literally starving Palestinians to death. As we’re recording this. A report came out that yesterday, 22 Palestinian children died from starvation. More Palestinians have been killed.

Sam Goldman 56:43

Yes, skeletal children are filling hospitals, yep.

Wajahat Ali 56:46

Yeah, and now you have press agencies — the AFP [Agence France] Press Agency says their colleagues are starving. So even journalists are starving. And then Palestinians who have come to food aid distribution sites since May, they’ve literally been picked off by the IDF. More Palestinians have been killed at food aid distribution sites in Gaza since May than all the Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7th. According to Haaretz reporting, the IDF soldiers said that they were commanded by their superiors to shoot, and “it’s a killing field.” It’s one of those situations, folks, where we’re witnessing change.

You saw two weeks ago, where Benjamin Netanyahu, the war criminal, who is responsible for this genocide, visited, I think for the third time, Donald Trump. Who took a photo with him? Bipartisan photo. It wasn’t just Republicans, it was also Democrats; Schumer, Coons, Schiff, Klobuchar, Cory Booker looked like ‘Where’s Waldo?,’ he tried to escape, but he was in that photo as well. The reason why I brought this up is if the Democratic party thinks that they can beat fascists with the same old, same old, they’ve got another thing coming. We need new leaders, Sam. We need a culling of the Democratic Party. So we need new leaders running for office who are against genocide, who are willing to call out fascism.

And we need ten toes down of everybody else to do their part. You can protest with your dollar, economic boycotts, strikes, the No Kings rally. The No Kings rally, folks… I saw those photos, a lot of old white folks. Don’t discount these old white folks, because many of them marched for Roe v Wade. Many of them marched for gay rights. Many of them marched for [the] civil rights movement. They’re at this stage of their life — may our seniors have long life — they’re like: What the hell, man, you’re telling me that the end of my life, everything I fought for, is going to be turned upside down? F, that! So I think everyone who says: Oh, you know, same old, same old restoration — F, that. We’re not into restoration, Sam. This has to be reformation, and this needs to be ten toes down.

Sam Goldman 58:36

Yeah, I agree with the part of, there are times where there has been dramatic change, where you wake up and the world is different. Unfortunately, because of when I was born, I’ve had that happen a lot. Millennials have had that happen a lot. That can be both negative and positive. [WA: yeah] You had made the ten toes deep point. I think that there’s this forgotten idea or a myth that people buy — so much of the American perception of World War Two, the fight against 20th century fascism, is based on good guys and bad guys. But one of the major difference between the Holocaust and today is that there is no major power in the world going, for instance, to stop the genocide. [WA: That’s right.]

It just makes me think of when Trump said there’s gonna be a big show of force, and he’s threatening people who are gonna protest his military parade in D.C. I was out with other people, not enough, but thousands of us were marching in D.C. on that day, peacefully, non violently, and we were able to do so just fine. One woman, so beautifully, she said: We’re the bigger force. We’re the bigger force. [WA: We’ve got the numbers.]There’s realizing what that means. Knowing that is part of it, but we’ve gotta act on the reality that we we are the bigger force.

Thinking about, we’re not the first nation that’s faced a tyrant; we’re not the first people that have encountered this. It’s never been on this scale; never in like the biggest superpower in the world. So I’m not saying it’s totally precedented, but people have unseated leaders before. This is not unheard of. If we’re saying: Oh, this is an emergency — then we’ve gotta get people acting on emergency footing, and doing things that aren’t that comfortable to most of us. But the reality of what we face is hella uncomfortable.

Wajahat Ali1:00:28

[chuckles] I appreciate the use of hella. It brings back my NorCal, Bay area roots, thank you. [SG: Yeah, that’s the reality.] And my fear, Sam, bringing things back full circle, is as Trump gets more desperate, and I think he will get more desperate, he resembles a rabid rat to me, who, once backed into a corner, will chew and bite through an electrical wire, knowing full well that’ll cause a fire that’ll burn down his house. He’ll sacrifice his kid. He’ll sacrifice his mom. He’ll chew through his own tail. He’ll do anything and everything to survive.

My fear is, thanks to this big billionaire bill from hell, if he has 10,000 ICE agents who are acting as his personal Gestapo, what’s to keep him, Sam, from declaring martial law, punting the elections, and then when people resist, saying, I’m gonna invoke the Insurrection Act, and I’m gonna do something that I couldn’t do in my first term, in which Mark Esper and Bill Barr kept me from doing, is shoot unarmed civilians. When he has masked, armed ICE agents doing his bidding… Well, folks, if you think it’s impossible, you’re suffering from a failure of imagination. Sorry for my rant, but I just want to kind of connect the dots. You got me going.

Sam Goldman 1:01:36

It’s an important connection. I think that your connection that you’re making is spot on. It goes back to that window that I was talking about — the emergency being now. There’s this analogy that we’ve been using that’s telling people to just wait, the elections will handle it; no need for concern; we’ve just gotta organize and deal with it then… The analogy being, it’s like seeing somebody clutching their chest, having a heart attack, unable to breathe, and telling them: Don’t worry about them, they have a routine checkup next year. No. That would be unconscionable. You’d be calling 911, you’d be getting an ambulance, you’d be giving them support right now. We are in the equivalent of that.

Part of what you’re talking about of the danger that’s coming, where you don’t have the right to protest, where you don’t have the right to dissent — the time to use that right is while you still have it. People should still act and resist for as long as they can, but we don’t want to be, like, putting people in our attic. We want to be acting — I mean, we wanted to be acting four months ago, but we’ll take — now. We’ll take now. That kind of switching people to going from, like, fear and paralysis, and moving them into stop complying and start resisting, that is a shift that we still have to help people make.

It’s in that spirit that I wanted your honest take on: How do you get millions of people, which it would take — it would take tens of millions — but how do you start with millions stopping to comply, to really engage in the mass nonviolent resistance? Is there a path from, like, the Tick Tock fury to the actual action that’s needed? Otherwise, I fear that we’re just gonna, like, be stuck in doom scrolling while Rome burns.

Wajahat Ali 1:03:25

Gore Vidal said we live in the United States of Amnesia, and we have a very self-centered country, where I think the color green trumps all other colors. As such, I think when people start hurting, when it affects them and their bottom line, and their families and their communities, and their neighbors, that’s when they wake up. I think Donald Trump has overplayed his hand. Stephen Miller has overplayed his hand. Within six months, they’re sending masked, armed agents to terrorize innocent communities.

People are seeing their neighbors get picked up. People are seeing their communities get terrorized. People are seeing ICE agents at schools. People were promised lower price of eggs, not freaking trade wars with tariffs, increasing the prices of everything. People wanted a safer country. Now people aren’t even coming to America. They think we’re a shithole. Measles is spiking everywhere, you have incompetence, and Epstein… We’re recording this right as this is breaking. This is a big news. His [Trump’s] name is all over the files.

Apparently Pam Bondi told him about this in May, and it’s now implicating Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. How come they didn’t reveal this? And remember Mike Johnson said he’s willing to shut down the House until September instead of forcing a vote on the Epstein files. So, I believe that now is the moment to strike. I believe things might get worse before they get better, because, like I said, he’s a desperate rat, and MAGA is radicalized and J.D. Vance is waiting, but he’s negative 11, folks, within six months. The economy is in bad shape. Once this BBB hits, and people lose their Medicaid, I fear that people will become radicalized to violence. This is a country that has more guns than people. I think you need political leadership and grassroots leadership. Now forget about Democratic establishment saving you. Democrats have a lower favorability rating than Trump right now. When it came to actually resisting ICE in L.A., and getting the Dodgers to say: F you — when they showed up at Dodger Stadium, it was local leaders, activists.

When it comes to the No Kings, it was bottom up. I think it has to be bottom up. I don’t want hero worship. I don’t think AOC is gonna save the day, or Mamdani, or Bernie Sanders. To me, politicians are tools. I don’t worship anyof them. You use them, and once they become dull, you replace them with another tool. But I think local, local, local. There’s more of us than there are of them. I’ll give you an example: Republicans have worked on a local strategy for years. They get a few people who are very zealous organized. They come in, they take over school boards and city councils. You give me a flabby, moderate majority versus an ideologically committed, passionate, organized minority, I’ll take that minority. Why? Because that minority will carve through us like butter. If you actually get the majority to mobilize and organize, we’ve got the numbers.

Sam Goldman 1:05:55

I want to thank you, Wajahat, for joining me, for sharing your insight, your perspective, your expertise about thinking about this for… way too long. I appreciate the time that you take talking with us and working on getting people to face reality and do something about it.

Wajahat Ali 1:06:13

No. Thank you for being on top of this. We’ve been talking for a couple of years, sadly. My wish for you might seem like a dis. I hope you don’t have to do this podcast ever again, and then you can rename the podcast. But I’ve seen you grow, and I’ve seen this podcast grow, and I was talking to you before you even had a fancy schmancy icon. Now you have your own little icon and symbol. So you did the work as a concerned citizen, a concerned American, who said: I want to do something.

I think that’s very important and inspiring for people to know your story. You’re like: Who am I? I get asked this a lot, Sam. I’m sure you do as well. I’m nobody. I’m just an average American. What can I do? And I always tell people: I’m also nobody. If there was a sticker here what my name is, it would be “Nobody”. We’re all nobodies, but we’re all somebodies to someone. Everyone has a superpower. So what can you do? Sam started this podcast because she felt compelled to do something and, voila. I’m independent, I’ve been independent for overwhelming majority of my career.

I was broke as broke in my twenties, in the Bay Area during the 2008 recession, and even though I had just graduated law school, it was a recession, I couldn’t find a job, had to move back home. I was like: Man, this is depressing as F, I’m in my same, you know, bedroom from college. I decided just to write, and then, you know, I wrote my way out and I wrote my way to a career, a little by little. I think it’s most powerful for people to think the following: Well, what about me? Why can’t I do it? Once you let that top start spinning like the movie Inception, well, why not me? Why not me? It’s very powerful, folks, very powerful. Maybe I can. Well, if they can do it, maybe I can do it.

And I want you all to start flexing your imagination and asking this question: These are these corrupt, dumb asses. I can do better. This is what we have to inculcate in people, this type of imagination, to flex that imagination and that muscle and be like: Yeah, why can’t I lead a rally? Well, maybe I can lead a social media campaign. Well, maybe I can join a Substack or start a Substack or YouTube page. And this is how we build the resistance. All hands on deck. Ten toes down.

Sam Goldman 1:08:04

Thank you so much, Waj. Take care.

Wajahat Ali 1:08:05

Bye.

Sam Goldman 1:08:11

Next, here is my interview with artist Phil Bueller.This week, we’re joined by artist Phil Bueller, creator of the public installation, Wall of Shame, which was unveiled on July 4th, in Bushwick, in Brooklyn. Stretching over 60 feet, the wall calls out the enablers, and is really a powerful, powerful piece. We’ll talk more about it, but we are so glad to welcome on Phil and get into what this piece is about, the reactions that he’s getting and what role art can play in stopping this fascist regime. Welcome Phil. Thanks so much for joining us.

Phil Buehler 1:08:56

You’re welcome. Happy to be here.

Sam Goldman 1:08:58

Set the stage for us. For those who haven’t seen it yet, what is the Wall of Shame can you describe for listeners who haven’t gotten a chance to pass it yet?

Phil Bueller 1:09:08

Sure, it’s a large public artwork. It’s out here in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It sits between Pine Box Rock Shop Bar and Sei Coffee, 12 Groton Street, and it’s a large, 50-60, foot mural. It’s 10 feet tall, and it’s vinyl, so it’s printed. From a distance, it looks like red, white and blue, almost, rectangular post-it notes on a fence, it looks like. So from a distance, it’s kind of got a lot of eye appeal. Kind of coaxes you in to see what it’s about. And then when you get closer, you’ll see photographs, stories, sentences, crimes of the January 6th rioters. It’s color coded, so the violent ones, which are probably about a third of them, are red, the people who damaged property are in blue, and everybody else is in white. Some of those big things they shouldn’t have, and other ones, I think, were dragged along with the crowd.

Sam Goldman 1:09:58

These are rioters that have been pardoned, right?

Phil Buehler 1:10:01

Yeah, these are all the rioters that were pardoned by Trump on his first… I think, his first official act as President, on January, 20th of this year. So it’s not that long ago. All the information on the wall, most of the information, came from National Public Radio. NPR created a database of all this information that they fact checked to their standards, which relieves me of that crazy burden. And I could point people to, if they had a question about anything, I could just point them to a source.

Sam Goldman 1:10:28

Very important point to bring up. You unveiled the piece on July 4th, and I was wondering if you wanted to share about what motivated you to do that and what it means to you.

Phil Buehler 1:10:38

Well, this is the third in a series of pieces, I think it’s important to understand the first one was before the 2020 presidential election, I use public art in many ways to bring attention back to something that’s kind of, in the age of Trump, flooding the zone with all sorts of lies and just craziness, people forget. So, in 2020, we kind of knew he was lying, but right before the election, I made one. It wasn’t my original idea. Somebody at Radio Free Brooklyn, who I work with, wanted to do a radio piece where they would read all 20,000, at the time, Trump lies live, for as ever long as it took, like a marathon reading.

But then COVID hit, you know, and the studio closed down. So a few months went by, and then I thought, this is a great idea just marinated. So I said it would be really interesting as a visual art piece. So, all the lies on that wall were color coded. It was called the Wall of Lies, about Ukraine, or about the election being stolen, or whatever it was about. Then as a follow up to that, in the 2022 midterms, we did another wall called the Wall of Liars and Deniers. That was all of the Republican politicians running for office that had repeated, bought into the Big Lie, that the election was stolen. So this is the third in that series.

The first one was, Tom Tenney, had that idea, and then I turned it into a visual artwork. This one, Rob Pritchard, one of the co founders with Tom Tenney of Radio Free Brooklyn, he had the idea. He called me up earlier this year and said: Can we do another wall, but this one about the rioters? So then I went and searched, and I found the NPR database, and really wanted to bring that story back into the light, because January ’20 [’21], it was like, six months earlier. It’s already been swept down river, you know, this flood of new stories and all these crazy presidential acts that Trump is doing. That was, like ,really the first act of Trump’s march to authoritarianism.

I wanted to remind people of that, and use public art to not just people walking by, but people talking about it, it being posted on Instagram, stories being told about it. It’s using art to almost restart a conversation. Because we all remember those videos of the 140 cops getting injured and all that. Since then, I’m sure MAGAland believes it was kind of a tour of the White House, and it was very peaceful and loving, like Trump says. But it really wasn’t. If you read those stories on this wall… They have each individual, you’ll see a little picture of them. Most of them were taken off of news clips and stuff. So you see them in their crazy outfits, or their MAGA hats, or taking a riot shield and trying to jam it between the cop’s helmet and his neck, or beating them with their own clubs, or spraying their own mace. You realize, individually, a lot of them were really bad dudes, and then they were all pardoned.

Sam Goldman 1:13:14

I think it’s an incredible reminder of, that we in this country experienced an attempted coup, a violent attempt. He unleashed his mob, and that did happen. The current president of Brazil, what he said recently in an interview was: If Trump was the president here, and did what he tried to do here — he was comparing the response that that country did to Bolsinaro’s attempts and and the response of this country to Trump. As this regime continues to escalate the violence, escalate the shredding of the rule of law, escalate the repressive apparatus, and escalate the lies that justify it all, it’s important to have that reminder, a very concrete reminder, of what did happen, what is reality, what is happening.

Phil Buehler 1:14:06

You get reminded, if you just… because I wanted to 150 or 15,075 rioters — 15,075 people is just a statistic, but if you actually drive into any of these individuals, some of them were waiting in Virginia with AR-15s, the rapid response group. They were gonna come in when they finally took over the Capitol. There were guns there. One guy dropped a gun and said: Oh, I lost my gun. 140 cops were injured. It wasn’t this peaceful thing. So it’s really… We came pretty close. There could have been consequences. He was impeached, and then, Mitch McConnell comes out and says: Well, you know, that should be in the civil courts — which had already been packed with Trump’s Supreme Court Justices, who McConnell enabled by not letting Obama appoint the last one. You see what he’s doing in Fox News. His base is, if it’s not OAN or Fox…

Sam Goldman 1:14:58

It’s something much worse. If it’s not Fox, it’s something much worse. That’s all there is now.

Phil Buehler 1:15:08

I know, I know. And it was hard to understand when you look at history, and I grew up… I was born like ten years after the World War Two ended — like, how did the Germans allow this to happen? And then you see this blueprint, and or the Italians, you see the blueprint of an authoritarian government. You know, trash the other news sources, get rid of them. Politicians, you have your thugs threaten them. There’s a little chilling effect going on now in the art world as well, and at marches.

People are a little afraid. I know people who will not go out at these marches because they’re afraid of being identified. It’s a concern, because you don’t know how much worse it’s gonna get. You know, Kash Patel at the FBI: Oh, hit a cop, go to jail, unless it’s for Trump, and then you get pardoned. It was 140 cops got hit. I met the guy that wrote this book called The Dictator’s Handbook, and it’s almost spelled out how dictators take over. If Trump hasn’t read it, his advisors certainly have, and they’re, kind of marching down the that path. We’re all hoping we can survive the next three and a half years and that we can roll it back. Even the craziest things, it’s almost like to flood the news.

They kind of renamed the Kennedy Center The Melania Trump Center. That’s the latest. You just look at that as being silly, but it’s, you know, they won’t be showing certain kinds of art or performers that will not be allowed. National Endowment for the Arts, I’m sure is going to have different… rolling back LGBTQ rights all around the country, in the military. It’s just, it’s so going backwards. And all because, I don’t know if it’s 20% of the country, you know, if you’ve got a lock on 20% of the country, then you can control the Republican Party of voters, and then you can control the country.

I’m hoping he’s doing things that, you know, when the pendulum eventually swings back, that we can’t undo and fix again, and then put things in place that make sure that doesn’t happen again. Because I don’t think the Founding Fathers ever envisioned a media savvy guy like Trump, pretty much dominating… and social media, who could have anticipated that? They anticipated a lot, but I don’t think the antibodies in our system were able to stop that virus, that bacteria.

Sam Goldman 1:17:18

I think that what you were saying about this all sided assault on every core democratic right, every basic norm that has cohered this country since its founding, or that have been fought for and won, which is the product of the majority of rights in this country. The really regressive, violently regressive fight that he’s waging, is one that you have to look at soberly. There’s a real legitimate fear that instead of this being just the worst of politics as usual, that he’s able to lock in this form of rule. And if he does, you know, and if this does become entrenched, then getting rid of it from within becomes extremely difficult, if not outright impossible.

So I think that acting in the way that you are in a way that is projecting reality, that is projecting: This is what’s happening; This happened; This is real, and that isn’t self censoring is extremely important.Because the attacks are real. People are getting canceled. The Colbert thing is real. His attacks on Kimmel are real. His AI videos of Obama being arrested aren’t just distractions, they’re really dangerous in this political climate. It’s all real. The threats are real. But if we self censor and we don’t use our platforms or our skills at this time, what are they good for?

Phil Buehler 1:18:41

Yeah. We have to do what we can on these walls. It’s usually some ability as a visual artist, and also know databases like Excel really well, so I can turn these things into visual art. But also, a lot of my work, I work with nonprofits, where we share a message. There I get incredible like social media skills. Radio Free Brooklyn can spread the word because we share this message. It’s not on making artwork, it’s: There’s this message out there. I also encourage people to, if you’ve been on the first one, which was the Hands Off rally and then the No Kings rally, it’s really… I don’t know what the word would be, refreshing or rejuvenating, to march with a couple of hundred thousand people with their signs.

It’s almost joyous being together with people that share the same value and belief system. It’s not that I don’t believe that MAGAland doesn’t share… part of our value system, they probably believe. They’ve just been… they’re low information. They kind of believe one source, and they really need to open their eyes. Seeing that many people that don’t believe them is really… after something like that happens, I go watch Fox News and see how they’re covering it, and they won’t. They’ll show, some broken window in some small town, or they’ll keep harping on a Black Lives Matter thing or something from years and years and years ago, that was tiny in comparison. They do the whatabout-isms? It’s really important for us to be out there together.

They respond to it in a very different way. I mean, the database on NPR, it’s on a screen, usually on your phone, you can kind of sort by things, but nobody’s gonna go deeper than like, four people or something. I’m watching people walk along this wall, and I’ve highlighted things, and one person that came on the opening day was like: I know this person; or: This is, like, my father-in-law. It was pretty crazy. And then other ones were like: Oh my God, I didn’t know this, and I didn’t know this. It’s just overwhelming, how many people, and then you actually see their faces under the quotes, and you realize you see somebody with this really angry face with a stolen police shield, smashing a cop with it, and you go: Oh, these guys are not out for a walk in the park.

Sam Goldman 1:20:47

I was wondering if there was anything else about the reaction to your art that has been sticking with you, either people that have been walking by commenting on it, or people that have responded when you posted pictures online.

Phil Buehler 1:21:00

At one level, a lot of my social media is artists, and they’re very, like I said, inspired by it. Art has to fight back just as hard as anybody else, as hard as MAGA or Fox News. That, I think, is inspiring for them. Then, there are a lot of people who forgot, and are like: Oh yeah, this was important. And then there’s a lot of people, which I was surprised, that either at the wall, or on social media, who are thankful, they thanked me for doing it, which is personally rewarding, which, it never usually happens with art that’s not like that — that doesn’t have a cause like that. If you put out a photograph of something that, then, have a gallery for that kind of artwork, and nobody’s like: Thank you for taking that picture, glad it was inspired by Woody Guthrie.

I did one project about Woody Guthrie, where I found his pictures in the basement of an abandoned psychiatric hospital where he was dying, suffering from Huntington’s disease. Then that turned into a book, and his life kind of then inspired a turn toward the political with my artwork and how his voice could then get magnified. I think people also like that, because they might not have, say the artistic skills to create a work, but they can take it and push it ahead, give it a little boost, which I’m shocked at. Like, somebody on social media posted a story about it, and they got a half a million likes for their story, which blew my mind. Somebody else I just saw today got 40,000 likes, and I’m like: These are not big newspapers, that sharing is part of this list of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, like: Let’s sing this song and continue it. It didn’t write it, but let me propagate it.

Let me spread the word. So that’s I think, maybe I’m putting a seed out there and hoping it spreads, or replanting this thing, because it’s just, as I said, this happened six months ago, and we need to be reminded of it. There’s been a lot of… I can’t tell you how many people wrote: Bring it here. Bring it to Washington, D.C. Bring it to Chicago. Wherever they were, they go: We want this here. L.A. and London. People in Europe were saying, bring this here. So now we’re thinking about, what about next January? You know, make it a perennial, like every January 6, we put it back up on the fence, or bring it somewhere else to remind people of that.

I did have that original Wall of Lies, was 100 feet long, from that 2020, that was 20,000 of his lies, and I had to cut it off when we had to print it before the election. You know, he still had, like, four months to go. So the first what would that be? 44 months of his administration? It was 20,000 lies. The last four or five months, it was another 10,000 lies. We would’ve needed a 150 foot wall. We were ready to go print it and go bring it down to D.C., and we were going to lay it out on the lawn, on the mall, and then January 6th happened, and they kind of locked down Washington.

So maybe we’ll bring that one back as well. You know, January 6th is gonna be like, December 7th, 9/11, it’s going to be one of those days. I think, when the smoke clears and even in MAGAland, that’s passed and their fearless leader has moved off the stage, I think that’ll be one of those moments in our country’s history that will matter one way or the other. We do hope it kind of is this aberration or this thing that made us stronger.

Sam Goldman 1:24:06

In the interest of people keeping the spirit of spreading, going and growing. For folks who want to see more of your work, is your Instagram the best place for them to go?

Phil Buehler 1:24:18

I’m not the biggest Instagram poster. There’s a lot of my work on there, and then there’s a link tree with other links. But my website is Modern-Ruins.com so that’s kind of multiple bodies of work. One has been taking photographs of abandoned places. I’m trying to put them all together in a book right now, so they’ll learn a little bit about that… called The American Journey. It’s really about these places that, if you scratch the surface… and some of them are just factories that have been torn down or buildings, but other places like Indian boarding school or a Japanese internment camp, the piers on the Hudson River, where gays had to go because the police wouldn’t go there.

So it’s all these places where people were marginalized as almost not Americans. So I’ve revisited a lot of places I photographed in the spirit of Woody Guthrie. It’s like: Oh, The American Journey, it’s like, two steps forward, one step back. Is gay marriage gonna get rolled back? They’ll learn a little bit about my work that way. I do these immersive, walk in photographs of places. I try to take people to places they would never go. In Ferguson, where Michael Brown was shot, to Ukraine to see what’s going on over there. I went to a Trump rally to photograph a big immersive, 360°, and then printed that eight feet tall, and it surrounds you as you walk into it.

The wildfires in Altadena, Flint, Michigan, where the pipes where the Republican legislature there replaced — put put the wrong chemicals into the water so the lead leaked into the water system there. A lot in Nogales, the border — Nogales, Mexico, Arizona, the border wall, families reaching through the fence that are separated. My work is taking, like I said, taking a very political turn. But I think people are looking for that kind of expression. Art, it does it differently than… if we’re talking that’s one thing, if you see it, it’s going to be another thing. It’s gonna go into your head, your eyes, your ears, somewhere, with a friend… My work, it’s a photograph, or it’s this database made visual.

I allow people to find the truth in that. This is a place. Go stand there, look around, this is this wall with all these things, go read them. I didn’t make them up, just got them from a database that was fact checked. One group of people call it fake news, but it’s not really, and I don’t think they would ever take the time to look at it. If it was, you can call up any one of those people or investigate that thing. It’s what’s real. So, yeah, that’s where they can find more of my stuff.

Sam Goldman 1:26:34

Well, thank you so much. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes so people can see more of your work. Thank you for your work and for taking the time to chat with me.

Phil Buehler 1:26:43

Can I do one one little thing, one plug? You can see it on the thing, I’m wearing my radio free Brooklyn t-shirt. There’s 70 shows on that’s range the spectrum, some are talk shows, a lot of music shows. It’s out here in Brooklyn, but you know, it’s an internet radio station that’s broadcast all over. So this has given them an angle of advocacy for these kind of public artworks. It’s funny, I’m like the resident artist at a radio station, which is visual art at a radio station. [SG: That’s awesome.] So take a look at that, or listen. Take a listen to that.

Sam Goldman 1:27:14

Yeah, take a listen to it. We will definitely put a link to Radio Free Brooklyn in the show notes. [PB: Great.] Thank you so much.

Phil Buehler 1:27:19

You’re welcome.

Sam Goldman 1:27:21

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. I hope to see you in the streets tomorrow, Monday and this Friday, August 1st and going forward, every Wednesday, growing in size and determination. Once again, be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org so that you are connected. Your support is urgently needed to get the message of this show and this movement, organizing on a whole different level, influencing millions. So I encourage you to give today at FefuseFascism.org just hit that donate button or text support to 855-755-1314, you can also join our Patreon community at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism, where for as little as $2 a month, you keep this show going and fighting against this fascist nightmare. As always, please share this episode far and wide, rate and review us on Apple podcast or wherever you listen, drop a comment on our socials or YouTube. Every share, every word helps build this fight. Find us on social media @RefuseFascism, including on Blue Sky, and follow us on Tiktok @RefuseFashizm. It’s also in the show notes.

Much, much appreciation to Mark Tinkleman, to Richard Marini, to Lina Thorne, for their amazing work producing the show. We will be off the next two Sundays, and we will return with a new episode, August 17th. Until then, stay connected by visiting our website, RefuseFascism.org and following us on the socials. Until then, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!

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