Transcript of Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) interviewing Markos Moulitsas, Founder of DailyKos about his new book American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
To watch the video clip CLICK HERE
Cenk Uygur: We're going to start with a pretty special guest Markos Moulitsas the founder of DailyKos and now the author of American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power bind Jihadists and the Radical Right. How do you like that for controversial title? All right Markos welcome to The Young Turks.
Markos Moulitsas: Glad to be here Cenk and thanks for that promo I just subscribed
to your twitter feed, I wasn't following you, I don't know why.
Cenk: God Bless, I like that.
Markos: Took care of that little problem.
Cenk: All right so listen it's a fascinating book but first let's lay out the case then we'll get there's some criticism you've had over the book which I find interesting. Why do you think our right wing is connected to the right wing in the muslim world?
Markos: Look I mean I spent the last nine years, as I'm sure you have as well, hearing these right wingers conservatives telling us that we want the terrorists to win, and it's always infuriated me because the reasons I do not like Islamic jihadists are the same reasons I do not like American conservatives. They fetishize guns they think violence is solution to their problems. They want to impose their rigid ideology on the rest of us. They're hostile to women's rights. They hate gays. They're afraid of knowledge, science. They reject education. They have weird hang ups about sex and a bizarre approach to dealing with culture. So when you go down the list on social issues really there isn't that much difference there isn't that much daylight between them as far as what their values are and what they hope to accomplish.
Cenk: Well Markos, of course you're going to get the complaint that wait a minute now there's a giant difference because they kill folks and the American right does not.
Markos: Most of the time, I mean tell that to Dr. Tiller you know you know abortion doctors have been killed. You know I talk about that in the book several instances of these Glenn Beck type fanatics, crazed by the election of, by the election of Barack Hussein Obama, went out and shot cops up shot people up, and so they are prone to that violence. There are differences of course but I'm not saying the American Taliban is exactly like the Islamic Taliban I mean we have a system of constitutional framework, a system of laws that constraints the worst excesses, but these people are violent prone. There's a reason that there's a national shortage of ammunition that has been going on since Obama was elected and you cannot, there's a six month backlog on ammunition right now, because people have been hoarding it, getting ready for the coming uh the coming war. You got the of militias you got the minute men on the Arizona border with Mexico. I mean you got these groups who are prone to violence and uh you have, I mean let's look at the Senate race in Nevada. You have Sharon Angle who is running against Senate majority leader
Harry Reid, who has said that if Republicans don't take over congress they may have to resort to second amendment remedies to fix that.
Cenk: Right now, of course, people would say, but Markos so much more muslim jihadists have already resorted to those remedies and that you know it's just on a different scale, and that that difference in scale is so large that it seems unfair to compare them to the Sharon Angles of the world, etc.
Markos: But you know I don't think it's unfair at all because our American Taliban is constrained. I mean we can pretend that they don't exist that might make us feel better if these people don't exist but again you know the American Taliban is being and constrained by our system of laws. That is sort of curbing their worst excess but they are systematically they are hoarding ammunition and are systematically trying to attack the very legal foundation that allows them to do that that prohibits them from carrying out their worst excesses. I mean you have them systematically going after constitution now they want to get rid of the center. They want to get rid of the fourteenth amendment, anything that has to do with civil rights, anything that has to do with habeas corpus. The first amendment. The freedom of religious and the freedom of exercising religion. Systematically going after those very legal foundations that prohibit them from trying to impose their rigid ideology on the rest of us.
Cenk: Now the violence is only one of the issues I know in the book you cover a lot of other things but like for example in Afghanistan some of the Taliban are incredibly hypocritical and although they you know preach against homosexuality they will actually often times take young boys home with them right. Now the republicans here they would never do that would they?
Markos: Okay, that was pretty funny I mean I could have done a chapter called hypocrisy, on top of everything else, but a it's sort of ingrained woven and woven through the fabric. I gotta say I got a chapter that's just on sex and the weird bizarre sexual hang ups of the American conservative movement and it was the most fun chapter but I write about the violence and their sort of attempt to impose their ideology is really heavy and sort of depressing but then you start getting into the way they approach sex and the way they try to deal with popular culture and those chapters were actually a blast to write, because I mean they are funny. I mean there's this dichotomy when dealing with American Taliban on one hand they're a source of endless amusement on the other hand they love guns and bullets and they're kind of dangerous so you want to take them seriously and at the same time you also want to kind of laugh at them because they are ridiculous people.
Cenk: What do you think it is about the right wing, whether it's in this country or other countries, whether it's Christian or Muslim or whatever it might be. Do you think that that hypocrisy is is more prevalent there and if you think that's the case what do you think drives that?
Markos: I don't, you know I don't know every word of, I think the hypocrisy is driven by you know now I think about it a little bit it's driven by sort of their their certaintude in their righteousness and rigid ideology. As liberals we acknowledge we may not have all the answers or what's right for me maybes not right for you, and we're cool with that, right. For these right-wingers it's not okay, right. So we have this story that just came out a couple maybe a week or two ago. Where Newt Gingrich's old wife confronted him while he was running for congress on a family values platform, while he was having an affair with her. So Newt Gingrich's wife says, you know why are you such a hypocrite? And he said well it's an important message and somebody has to deliver it and I have to be that person. I'm paraphrasing but that was sort of the message. I don't care what I'm doing, I'm going to preach it. And rather than acknowledge that we're sort of frail moral creatures as humans and we make mistakes and, and sometimes it just happens. I mean here was basically Newt Gingrich saying, you know I what I know what I'm doing is technically wrong, but I subscribe to this rigid ideology, and I'm going to keep preaching it even though I actually won't try to even live what I'm what I'm trying to foist on everybody. You know
Cenk: We're talking to Markos Moulistsas he's the founder of DailyKos he's now the author of American Taliban it's the new book that's out. Now before we get to the liberal criticism of the book one more thing so now you think they're similar sometimes to some degree in violence, certainly in sex as you point out. Any other similarities between the two groups?
Markos: Well it's the I mean ultimately the book is about their goals and their values, how they get there is obviously different but that's a function of the society that you know we have here and in the middle east and elsewhere. The goals are the same I mean the goals are to keep women from being active partners in their societies. They want men, they want the male to be sort of the a dominant, uh sex. Clearly uh I mean you know we talk about the sex stuff we talk about their knowledge and information and their rejection of things like uh natural selection and evolution and global warming and so on uh because god's law trumps any sort of scientific inquiry and knowledge. Um, and uh, and then there's the notion you know like I said that violence is actually a solution to those problems that that could actually be an adequate way. Which actually speaks, I think, to a disrespect of democracy because they decide what's best for people they don't want to let people decide for themselves.
Cenk: All right Markos now you had a number of critics here, the American Prospect or at least a writer there, writer at the Atlantic and Matt Iglesias of Think Progress, uh writer at Daily Beast, all who are liberals or claim to be liberals, uh saying hey you know what this book is over the line. Iglesias said it was lying to the choir, and uh the American Prospect wrote that it was feeding into the same thing the right-wingers do calling our opponents terrorists, uh how do you respond to that?
Markos: Yeah, I call these people weenie liberals. These are people who are afraid to throw a punch and sort of make very stark, what we're facing up against, I mean they think they're making a you know the well reasoned argument with the flow charts with the embedded excel spreadsheets, will somehow uh get people to understand. So they're talking about, uh you know health care bill and they're talking about exchange councils and you have the right-wing talking about death panels, right. I did not resort to lying about anything. Nothing in that book is false. You know I was very very, uh, careful with that because of course, uh, people on the left are held to a different standard than our right wing colleagues, right. They can lie with impunity, we can't. I don't want to lie, so it wasn't something I did that was very difficult to do but, uh, I was very very careful, uh, to be completely solid on the facts, and ultimately, I mean, even like Matt Iglesias who's got you know he's got the vapors because oh my God how dare you call them the American Taliban, concedes in his argument that yes there are similarities in their militaristic world view, and the way they treat women, and so on and so forth. But he says, and I I don't remember his exact argument, but it's Ann Coulter isn't cutting anybody's head off. Granted I will concede that right now but ultimately like I said this book isn't about how they're trying to accomplish those aims. The book is about what those aims are and how they share again that hatred of women and gays and science and in think that since the masses don't adhere to their ideology guns and violence are a way to impose on the rest of them.
Cenk: Markos, I'm not taking any sides here, although honestly I think I'm a lot more on your side. So there there I go, but but I did want to just touch on their criticism one more time, which is, so they're saying look the right wing called liberals unamerican or compared us to the jihadists, et cetera, isn't it equally wrong and bad for the left wing to compare the right wing to the same?
Markos: If they want to make, if the right wing wants to make the argument that we're somehow, um, uh, ideologically or morally aligned with the jihadists they can feel free to do that. I mean, they call us communists every day and make those kind of arguments, um. Fact is I backed it up I mean I talk about. I systematically chapter by chapter go in issue by issue how the right wing and Islamic jihadists share those right wing values and look the, the, the conservative right has had every opportunity to, to distance themselves from this fringe. I mean, these people this radical right they used to be the birches, right, they used to define the American fringe. Now they've been invited opened arms so you have Sharon Angle in Nevada who you know subscribes to crazy conspiracy theories about flouride, I mean. Remember early two thousand nine when department of homeland security released a report talking about radical, uh, uh, the violent right wing extremists, and they just released one that was on violent left-wing extremist, of course, those of us on the left aren't about to rush out and embrace any violent left-wing extremist because they should be relegated to the fringes, but when the right wing report came out the American conservatives rushed to the defense. One of the hottest sellers online was a t-shirt that said "I am a right wing extremist". So they, instead of distancing themselves from that fringe, they sort of invited it and opened it up and I know people like Matt Iglesias and all these weenie liberals they don't want to hear that. They don't want to accept the fact that what we face is this dangerous and horrid and you know to me essentially evil enemy. They want to keep thinking that they're still negotiating with the John McCain of old and Lindsey Graham of all those jolly good reasonable republicans. They don't exist anymore, they're an endangered species. Their party's been completely taken over by the American Taliban and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better on that side of the ideological divide.
Cenk: All right, you know what I'm a talk show host, I do opinion so I have a conclusion (gavel pounding sound effect.) Now, I wouldn't call them weenie liberals, those other guys, and of course you and I both understand that there's an enormous difference in degree here right, but, in the end I think you're largely right. I mean and I was talking about it earlier in the show. I mean there is the same ideology of I'm right you're wrong so whatever I do to enforce my will upon you is the right way to go, and gays are wrong, women shouldn't have power, uh, my religion beats your religion. You know you quote Pat Buchanan saying that in the book, uh, et cetera is, and violence is the answer. Sex is the wrong answer. I mean it's, it is a right wing ideology, and so, you know, and I think your book is an interesting book and I think it's interesting that somebody's making that case and I'm glad that somebody did. So, thank you for coming on and talking about it and if people want to check it out it's called American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power bind jihadists and the radical right. Thank you Markos.
Markos: Thank you very much.
Cenk: All right, Young Turks.