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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
Glad to be here Cenk and thanks for that promo I subscribe to your twitter feed
I don't know why I'm following you I don't know why God Bless I like that
took care of that little problem
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
uh why
do you think our right wing is connected to
the right wing in the muslim world?
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 ridgid 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
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
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
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.
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
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?
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 *** 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
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?
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
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
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
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
uh 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
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 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
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 birchers 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 extremeists
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
all right you know what I'm a talk show host I do opinion so
I have a conclusion
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
thank you very much, all right Young Turks