A Conversation with Sociologist Joe Feagin About the Enduring Power of Racism in Trump's America; Kevin Willmott, Writer of "BlacKkKlansman", Reflects on the Absurdity of White Supremacy

There are two guests on part one of this very special two-part 200th episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.

Kevin Willmott is a professor of film at The University of Kansas. He is also one of the writers on Spike Lee's great new film BlacKkKlansman. Kevin and Chauncey discuss the surreal truth of how Ron Stallworth, a black man, teamed up with a fellow police officer, who is Jewish, to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Kevin also reflects on how BlacKkKlansman is a direct counter to the racism and bigotry of Trump's America, W.E.B. Du Bois' concept of "double consciousness", blaxploitation films and the desperation of hate mongers. Chauncey and Kevin also share what happened when they watched BlacKkKlansman in a theater with white Donald Trump supporters.

Joe Feagin is the second guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a distinguished professor of sociology at Texas A&M University and one of the leading scholars of race and social inequality in the world. Professor Feagin has written dozens of books including The White Racial Frame:Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, Racist America, and How Blacks Built America

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Feagin and Chauncey discuss the myth of white "working class anxiety" and Trump's election, liberal racism, and all of the myths and half-truths being circulated about race and class in the parts of the country which voted for Donald Trump. Professor Feagin also offers some warnings about the hope that "millennials" and other young white people will be and are less racist and bigoted than their parents and grandparents.

In this week's very special 200th episode, Chauncey DeVega ponders if a black man named Daryl Davis who befriends white supremacists and brings them to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. is a hero or perhaps just a well-intentioned but gullible man.

And at the end of this week's show, Chauncey gives some advice to a black woman who is dating a white man who refuses to acknowledge her anxieties and fears about racism and violence in Trump's America.

This episode with Joe Feagin and Kevin Willmott can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

A Conversation With Historian Richard Frankel About the Necessity of Comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler

Richard Frankel is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.

He is a professor of history at The University of Louisiana-Lafayette and the author of numerous articles as well as the book Bismarck’s Shadow: The Cult of Leadership and the Transformation of the German Right, 1898-1945. Frankel's work can also be read at Newsweek and the History News Network.

During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Frankel and Chauncey discuss how the rise of Donald Trump and the movement he represents have clear parallels with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, why so many historians are afraid to speak that truth, and how wasting precious time debating Donald Trump's threat to democracy and if he is a fascist (or not) is a recipe for disaster. Professor Frankel also explains how "regular" "everyday people" are necessary for evil to take place on a massive scale.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega survives another heat wave, is excited to see an early screening of BlacKkKlansman, and recommends the new film Puzzle. Chauncey also explains Donald Trump's next move in the Russia collusion scandal and proudly accepts an amazing award from a white supremacist website.

And at the end of this week's show Chauncey shares more interesting and titillating discoveries about the sexual kink proclivities of the bigots and hate mongers in the "alt-right" movement towards My Little Pony and "furries".

This episode with Richard Frankel can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

A Conversation with Eothen "Egon" Alapatt About Protecting J. Dilla's Musical Legacy, the Current State of Hip Hop, and Looking For Lost Musical Gems All Over the World

Eothen "Egon" Alapatt is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.  

He is the founder and president of Now-Again Records, the reissue imprint he founded in 2002. He oversees all of the label’s reissues and manages a vast catalog of music from the 1950s through the present day, with a focus on the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s. He is the creative director of the J. Dilla Estate and is partners with Madlib in Madlib Invazion. Eothen was also Stones Throw Records’ general manager from 2000 until 2011. He is also one of the world's foremost record collectors--aka "crate diggers"--of lost funk, soul, hip hop, rock, and other music.  

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Eothen and Chauncey discuss the hidden roots of hip hop music and culture in New Haven, Connecticut, their parallel experiences growing up there and all of the important and fascinating hip hop gatekeepers and personalities they encountered outside of the New York City area.

Eothen also shares some stories about digging for lost musical gems all over the United States and world, the current state of commercial hip hop, the commodification of "world music", and what has been lost in the transition from analog to digital culture. And of course, Eothen reflects on J. Dilla's musical legacy.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega updates everyone on his travels which included some critical self-reflection, an imminent big decision, encountering a ghost, falling in love twice, eating too much, seeing dear friends, the financial obligations of only children, Mama DeVega's nagging and how he needs to be a better son.  

And at the end of this week's show Chauncey is simultaneously titillated and upset by white racist Republicans who are into Bigfoot Porn and other interspecies erotica.

This episode with Eothen "Egon" Alapatt can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

A Conversation with Gary Lachman About Donald Trump, the "Alt-Right", Magic and the Occult

Gary Lachman is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.  

He is the author of several books and has lectured across the United States, Britain and Europe on the relationship between consciousness, esoteric knowledge, politics, history and culture. He is perhaps best known as a founding member of the New York new wave band Blondie, in which he played bass from 1975 to 1977. His new book is "Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump."

 
During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Gary and Chauncey discuss mass psychology and how symbols and other types of images and narratives influence emotion, Trump's power over his followers, the concept of synchronicity and "magic", and the ways that Vladimir Putin has been able to recreate reality for the Russian people with the goal of expanding Russian empire. Gary also explains the deep connections between the occult and esoteric knowledge as practiced by such figures as Stephen Bannon and the so-called "alt-right" movement.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega comments on the anti-climactic meeting in Helsinki where Donald Trump publicly betrays the United States to his handler and boss Vladimir Putin.

And at the end of this week's show Chauncey shares a warning from Harry Leslie Smith, who is 94-years-old, a veteran of the RAF in World War 2, and also a writer for the Guardian, about the rise of Trumpism and right-wing authoritarian movements around the world.

This episode with Gary Lachman can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

A Conversation With Malcolm Nance About Donald Trump and Russia's Plot to Destroy American Democracy

Malcolm Nance is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a career intelligence and counterterrorism officer for the United States government. In his more than three decades working in that capacity, Nance served with U.S. Special Operations forces, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. He has worked in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

A frequent guest contributor on MSNBC, Nance has authored several books, including the bestselling The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.

Nance’s new book is The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Malcolm Nance and Chauncey discuss how Donald Trump is Russia and Vladimir Putin's agent, the overwhelming evidence that Russia colluded with Donald Trump and his inner circle to steal the 2106 presidential election and how the Russians were able to undermine American democracy by exploiting conservatives and other members of the right-wing.

Malcolm Nance also sounds the alarm about why the 2018 midterm elections may be the last chance the American people have to save the country's (and global) democracy from Trump, the Republican Party, and Vladimir Putin's autocratic plot.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega offers some comments on Trump's hate rally in Montana and how white children are learning the lessons of white supremacy from their Trumpist parents. On this week's episode Chauncey continues to highlight the human cost of Donald Trump and the Republican Party's campaign of ethnic cleansing and white racial terrorism against black and brown refugees, migrants, and immigrants.

At the end of this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show, our intrepid host shares some emails from listeners about the importance of protest movements, and if we should in fact shun and marginalize Trump supporters.

This episode with Malcolm Nance can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

Independence Day and White America's Democracy Problem

Every year, on America's birthday, I read Frederick Douglass's essay "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

I was first introduced to Frederick Douglass while in elementary school. My sixth grade teacher, a stern but kind black woman, knew that I, the only black boy in her class, would benefit greatly from his wisdom and example. She was right.

The book "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" was wondrous.

It was the amazing adventure of a man who fights to free his people by first liberating his mind and then his body from the evils of white-on-black slavery.

Douglass tricks gullible white children to teach him how to read

Douglass beats the hell out of his evil overseer, Edward Covey.

Douglass escapes to freedom, avoiding slave patrollers and other evildoers.

Douglass goes on to fight for the freedom of black Americans -- and along the way becomes one of America's greatest orators, activists and thinkers.

What was there for a black child (and later on an adult) not to love?

In high school I would then discover his landmark speech and essay "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?".

At first I admired Douglass' masterful oratory and command of the English language.

There is searing truth:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

Then Douglass lays in the body blows:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Eventually I began to read "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" as political performance art and drama. As I learned and studied more, the naive optimism of Douglass's belief that white supremacy and racism would wither away as incompatible with a post-slavery America became more obvious and problematic. This too was a gift from Douglass: his hope reveals much about the contours and tensions within the black freedom struggle. Black folks are a hopeful people who all too often love a country which does not love us back. This is a special power. It is also a horrible curse.

But for all of the multiple valences of meaning in "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" there is one unifying theme. Douglass and his life are testimonies to the force of black Americans' love of freedom, and an unrelenting stubbornness to do all that is necessary to be fully equal and free citizens.

In the age of Donald Trump, when white supremacy is openly resurgent, and an unapologetic racist authoritarian is president, Douglass's "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" resonates even more.

A Conversation With Richard Painter About the Dangers of Trump's Regime and How the Republican Party Became So Dangerous

Richard Painter is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Painter was White House chief ethics counsel under George W. Bush and is a frequent political commentator and analyst on CNN, MSNBC and other news networks. He is also a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota and the author of several books, including "Getting the Government America Deserves."

Although he has been a Republican nearly all his life, Painter is now running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat recently vacated by Al Franken.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Richard Painter and Chauncey discuss the threat to American democracy embodied by Donald Trump, why he is no longer a Republican, and how the Republican Party became so revanchist, racist, and dangerous. Painter also offers a warning to the Democrats about the perils of "identity politics" for the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega wonders if protest movements such as the marches against Trump's evil treatment of black and brown refugees have any power against a neoliberal authoritarian regime. Chauncey also tries to help Democrats, liberals, and progressives--especially those cowardly "centrists"--work through their stages of grief about Justice Kennedy retiring, the Muslim ban, the assault on unions, and other Trump victories.

At the end of this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show, our intrepid host shares a story about a right-wing "Christian" church which is located next to one of the Trump regime's prisons for children--and how the wicked Trump Christians there support the abuse of Latino and Hispanic refugees and immigrants.

This episode with Richard Painter can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

A Conversation with Political Cartoonist Rob Rogers About Being Fired For Telling the Truth About Donald Trump

Rob Rogers is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a nationally-syndicated political cartoonist who worked with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper for 25 years before being fired several weeks ago. Why? Because he refused to stop telling truth about Donald Trump.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Rob Rogers and Chauncey discuss the personal costs of telling the truth about Donald Trump's regime in an era of cowardice as well as how Rogers decided to not compromise and sell out his principles to the Trump-allied publisher and new editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rob Rogers also shares his insights about the challenges of drawing political cartoons about the grotesque and evil human caricature that is Donald Trump.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega wonders if this was the week that the American people will look back upon in the near future when American democracy and human decency and American Exceptionalism finally died with Trump's direct channeling of Nazi ideology, an obvious and unapologetic war on our brown brothers and sisters at the U.S.-Mexico border, Melania's enabling cruelty, the denial of how Stephen Miller and Michael Anton are white supremacists, and Trump's continued assault on the rule of law in America while most of the country's people do nothing because they are sheep.

At the end of this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show, our intrepid host explains how Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels is being channeled by Donald Trump and his allies. Chauncey also shares some wisdom from those who fought back against Hitler's regime about how to organize and fight a day-to-day battle against evil.

This episode with Rob Rogers can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.

Stephen Miller is the Architect of Trump's Evil Child Separation Policy. Stephen Miller is also a White Supremacist...and the New York Times Won't Admit this Fact

When the news media provides facts without context it does the public a disservice. This is one of the core principles captured by the dictate of the five W's -- who, what, when, how and why -- taught in every high school-level journalism class. It would seem that the New York Times has neglected that basic rule.

Last Saturday, the flagship newspaper of establishment journalism focused on White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's role in the Trump administration's decision to hold thousands of refugee and immigrant children as de facto political hostages in prison camps and warehouses.

Nowhere in the New York Times story was there any explanation or discussion of Stephen Miller's background, his values or what other motivations could drive him to be so enthusiastically cruel toward nonwhite children and their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

This information is readily available: The Times made a choice not to include it.

Stephen Miller -- like other Trump advisers such as Michael Anton, Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon -- is a white supremacist. Like other members of the so-called alt-right (a collection of far-right extremists that includes neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other racists) Miller hides behind Trumpian slogans about making America great again and neutral-sounding terms such as "nationalism" and "populism" to advance a policy agenda where nonwhites are treated as second-class citizens and white people are empowered above all other groups.

Miller is also the principal architect of the Trump administration's proposed immigration "reforms," which would effectively turn the clock back to the 1920s and 1930s, a time when nonwhites were effectively not allowed to immigrate to the United States.

Ultimately, Donald Trump's administration -- with white supremacists like Miller serving as a type of racial id -- is making clear what has some level always been understood in America: To be a "real" American is first and foremost to be "white" and "Christian." (Miller is personally of Jewish heritage. Reportedly his maternal grandparents immigrated to America to escape anti-Semitic pogroms in the Russian Empire. This only heightens the irony and his moral malfeasance.)

What else do we know about Stephen Miller?

While in college he was friends with and mentored by the notorious white supremacist Richard Spencer. Together, Miller and Spencer collaborated on bringing right-wing ideologues to Duke University where Miller was a student.

A Conversation with Michael Eric Dyson About Trump's Rise to Power, America's Moral Rot, and the Persistence of the Color Line

Michael Eric Dyson is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and the author of many books including What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America as well as Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America.

Dr. Dyson is also a frequent guest on Real Time with Bill Maher as well CNN, MSNBC, and NPR.

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Dyson and Chauncey discuss the crisis in moral leadership and values which birthed Donald Trump's presidency, how right-wing Christians helped to conceive this wholesale abandonment of democracy and dignity, and how whiteness and white privilege have (again) undermined the common good--and yes, how such values also hurt white people. Professor Dyson and Chauncey also discuss the burden that black and brown people have to save American democracy from white racism and those individuals and forces such as Donald Trump and his white rage-filled supporters.

In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega ponders the alpha male bromance between Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, Trump's Fox News madness and threats against Americans who are not sufficiently "loyal". Chauncey is also enraged by the wicked evil that is how Trump's regime is breaking up families at the Mexican-U.S. border and explains the reckoning that is coming to America.

This episode with Professor Michael Eric Dyson can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here.