The Time of Monsters
The Time of Monsters
Podcast: The Stuffed Shirts and the Roughnecks
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Podcast: The Stuffed Shirts and the Roughnecks

Doug Bell takes stock of the Federalist Society and Canada’s election

(Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Frequent guest Doug Bell and I sat down to chat about recent political developments in North America. The theme of the show is the modern right-wing political movements rely on an alliance between elite insiders (the stuffed shirts) and rowdier, less respectable social movements (the roughnecks).

 We start with the Federalist Society, by reputation respectable organization promoting legal debate. But, as discussed in a previous post, one of the stars of the Federalist Society, law professor John Eastman, has been one of the architects of Trump’s attempted coup. One way of looking at Eastman is to see him as a bridge between the socially upscale conservative legal elite and the political goons who stoked the January 6 riot. Looking at Eastman’s actions, I expand on my earlier argument that liberals need to discredit and delegitimize not just Eastman but also the institutions that have elevated him and continue to give him their stamp of approval.

In Canada, Doug and I talk about how the defeat of the Conservatives and the relatively strong showing of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (which got more than 5% of the vote on a campaign that played on opposition to vaccination) is likely to increase pressure for the respectable conservatives to forge a new alliance with angry populists.

We also take up the prospects for the Liberals and the New Democratic Party, both of which, like the Conservatives, had disappointing results in an election that led to a virtual photocopy of the 2019 contest. The larger argument we take up is that even though the surface of Canadian politics remains unchanged, there are powerful divisions opening up in the country along lines of class, region, and ethnicity. The political systems ability to contain this turmoil will soon be tested.

More Podcasts

If you enjoyed the podcast, you might want to listen to earlier episodes where Doug and I take up these themes. There is one on Conrad Black as Trump lackey, one on the American right’s relationship with Eastern Europe, and another one on the state of Canadian politics.

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