
How Both Parties Work for ‘Tyranny, Inc.’
Get every episode summarized
Each time Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
About this episode
Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:
After claims of fraud in the 2020 election and the rise of Trump’s pseudo-populist wing of the GOP, Sohrab Ahmari wrote Tyranny, Inc. In the book, the journalist and founding editor of Compact magazine gives a tour of our political economy from the point of view of ordinary people who faced private tyranny and paid the price for it.
Private being the key word.
Ahmari, even as a conservative columnist for the NY Post, can sometimes sound more leftist than some Congressional progressives.
“Conservatives are quite used to thinking of government as the only potential source of coercion,” Ahmari tells us, “so the fact that a segment of the right was suddenly alert to what big tech could do to you, seemed to me an opening to say, ‘Hey, let me show you other kinds of private coercion which are less visible, but all the more insidious.’”
Sohrab Ahmari’s in-depth reporting and bipartisan critiques emerge as some mix of conservative populism and Marxist theory. It’s a fascinating perspective that, in a world ruled by tech censorship and private coercion, is increasingly rare to hear anywhere other else than on Useful Idiots.
Watch the full interview to hear his response to Jacobin excluding him from a left-right coalition because of his cultural views, Oliver Anthony’s controversial country song, the actual difference between his critique of capitalism and the leftist one, and the unprecedented support by the US so-called left of the military industrial complex and the Ukraine proxy war.
Plus, watch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: NATO Pinky Swears that it's a "Defensive Alliance."
And join the Absurd Arena live discussion board with Katie and Wilson every Tuesday at 12pm est in the Substack app.
Watch the full interview here:
Get every episode summarized
Each time Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
No transcript yet
This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.
More episodes
More from Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

“Lying is part of their religion”
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

The State of the Strait: Trump officials panic as Iran tightens its grip over th...
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Palestinian-American Psychologist On the Murder Of Her Cousins
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Settler Terrorists Attacked Three NBC Journalists in the West Bank – Did Meet th...
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
