Jane Mayer and Jason Stanley Explain What's Happening in America, and Why It's Happening

Jane Mayer is one of America's Greatest Investigative Reporters.  

Jane is  the author of four best-selling books, including Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, which the New York Times named as one of the ten best books of 2016.

JSNE rates Mayer's Dark Money as the single most important political analysis of modern American politics.

Bill Moyers: "Jane Mayer argues that what we once knew as the Republican Party is, in effect, being supplanted by a private party of billionaires who use its machinery but have little use for the traditional political tools of compromise and negotiation. Why? Because they want what they want, hate government and don’t really care if it works."  

Jane Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. The magazine’s chief Washington correspondent, she covers politics, culture, and national security. 

YouTube Recorded Feb 12, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XcLHdejHQ&t=653s  

A New Yorker staff writer since 1995, investigative journalist Jane Mayer is renowned for her headlong plunges into the murky waters of national security, public relations in U.S. politics, governmental prosecution of whistleblowers, and other sensitive topics. She has written the bestselling nonfiction books Landslide, Strange Justice, and The Dark Side, an account of America’s self-destructive decisions in the War on Terror. For these landmark works she has won a slew of accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ridenhour Prize, and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Dark Money tells the story of the ultra-wealthy’s systematic plan to subvert and fundamentally alter the American political system.  In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org. 

New Yorker August 2, 2021 by Jane Mayer

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie

Dark-money organizations, sustained by undisclosed donors, have relentlessly promoted the myth that American elections are rife with fraud, and, according to leaked records of their internal deliberations, they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island who has tracked the flow of dark money in American politics, told me that a “flotilla of front groups” once focused on advancing such conservative causes as capturing the courts and opposing abortion have now “more or less shifted to work on the voter-suppression thing.” These groups have cast their campaigns as high-minded attempts to maintain “election integrity,” but Whitehouse believes that they are in fact tampering with the guardrails of democracy. 

The New Yorker August 23, 2010  By Jane Mayer  

"From 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. 

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.  

 The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. " 

Democracy Now:  3/29/2017 Full interview with the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer about her new article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency." 

Today, Jane Mayer on Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge fund billionaire who helped Trump win the White House. Some say he and his daughter Rebekah out-Koched the Koch brothers. For years, the Mercers bankrolled Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News and other right-wing organizations. Now, allies of the Mercers control the White House. We’ll speak with investigative reporter Jane Mayer about her new piece in The New Yorker and hear excerpts of one of Robert Mercer’s only public appearances." 

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of  How Propaganda Works, which won the PROSE Award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. He writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics. 

Jason Stanley provides haunting insights into the communication tools employed by the right-wing propaganda machine behind Donald Trump and MAGA. Stanley forcefully presents the case that Trump's methods are not new or unique; in fact, Trump uses the same strategies and tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini and other modern despots.  

YouTube Interview, Jason Stanley on The Big Think

Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country’s media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces. 

Fascist movements typically, though not invariably, rest on an urban/rural divide. The cities are where there’s decadence, where the elites congregate, where there’s immigrants, and where there’s criminality. 

Each of these individuals alone is not in and of itself fascist, but you have to worry when they’re all grouped together, seeing the other as less than. Those moments are the times when societies need to worry about fascism.

YouTube

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley sees January 6, 2021 as part of a history of fascist impulses in American politics. This is the focus of his book "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." His latest article in The Guardian is titled “America is now in fascism’s legal phase.” Stanley speaks with Michel Martin about what he calls an “extremely critical moment” for democracy around the world.  Originally aired on January 6, 2022. 

YouTube

We set out to examine topics like the historical roots of white supremacy in the U.S., the process of radicalization, the mechanisms of ideological spread, and the growing legitimacy of far-right ideologies due to its permeation through many aspects of our daily lives. Scholars will present their research in panels, taking questions from the audience; followed by practitioners and policymakers leading conversations that put scholarship into practice. The symposium will conclude with a final panel that will invite the presenters, responders, and audience to brainstorm ways in which we can all challenge, in our own ways and in our own corners of the world, the far-right movement.