The Paranoid Style of David Samuels
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Matt Duss on a popular right-wing fabulist.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Matt Duss on a popular right-wing fabulist.
Has former president Barack Obama secretly been running the American elite — including the media and wide parts of the government — for nearly 20 years? Has he been doing so on behalf of a subversive agenda to empower Iran and undermine American exceptionalism? That’s the argument made by David Samuels in a much-read piece in The Tablet.
On this episode, I dissect Samuels arguments with two friends of the podcast, David Klion and Matt Duss. We not only look at the problems with Samuels’s reactionary fable, but also take up why it is so popular on the right and even draws on conspiratorial ideas that have a wider purchase among centrists and conservative liberals.
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President Barack Obama
(Evan Vucci, Pool / AP Photo)Has former president Barack Obama secretly been running the American elite—including the media and wide parts of the government—for nearly 20 years? Has he been doing so on behalf of a subversive agenda to empower Iran and undermine American exceptionalism? That’s the argument made by David Samuels in a much-read piece in The Tablet.
On this episode, I dissect Samuels‘s arguments with two friends of the podcast, David Klion and Matt Duss. We not only look at the problems with Samuel’s reactionary fable but also take up why it is so popular on the right and even draws on conspiratorial ideas that have a wider purchase among centrists and conservative liberals.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Much has been written about how the Israel/Palestine conflict is dividing the left, but the
same is true of the right. Tucker Carlson’s interview with the antisemitic critic of Israel Nick
Fuentes has created an intense debate on the right about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism,
currently playing itself out in turmoil at the Heritage Foundation. I spoke with the historian
David Austin Walsh, whose bookTaking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far
Right provides a crucial background for this story.
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* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com
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