Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
I'm Afshin Ratansi. And welcome back to Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from the UAE amidst calamity in this region from the catastrophic fallout of the Trump Netanyahu war on Iran. Tomorrow marks 15 years since NATO's brutal murder of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi by CIA trained Al Qaeda linked proxy forces, part of a regime change operation that brought down the nation, that topped literacy rates in North Africa and held the continent's highest spot on the UN Human Development Index. NATO's imperialist leaders touted democracy. Instead, they delivered a failed fractured state plagued by brutal civil wars and open air slave markets, all while siphoning off the resources of the nation with Africa's largest proven oil reserves. Today, another brutal campaign is targeting Iran with a now surging US Military buildup in West Asia and a raft of escalatory options on the table for a desperate US Israeli oligarchy facing elections. Trump is flailing at the polls in favor of neoliberal Democrats after his defeat against Iran and has made billions poorer as millions have been killed, wounded or displaced. Joining me is the University of Chicago is Professor Robert Pape, founder and director of the Pentagon part funded Chicago Project on Security and threats, or C post. Professor Pape, who has had U.S. security clearances, warned George W. Bush's West Wing against the disastrous invasion of Iraq and advised both Obama and ron Paul during 2008 presidential campaigns. His latest book is a nonpartisan warning about political violence. It's called Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. And he joins me now from Chicago. Professor Pape, thanks so much for coming on Going Underground. We've been trying to get you for quite a while. Tell me first of all, before we get to today's issues, our own worst enemies in what you call America in the age of violent populism. I mean, most of our global audience are going to think the USA has always been a society of extreme violence, not even just because of the recent Biden genocide in Gaza and Trump's mass school girl killing in Iran.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: So we have seen America lash out against the world. What this book is about, our own worst enemies is we're lashing out against each other. That's not exactly unprecedented. Of course, we had a civil war in the 1860s. That's a long time ago. We've had other periods, say the 20s and the 60s. But what's special special now is not that political violence is just in the fringe. Yes, that fringe is still there. But violent populism where large Parts of the American public support the use of force to hold on to power, to gain power, hold on to power. And that is special.
We saw this last in the 1960s. But this is what is on coming right to a 4 in the midterms. And it won't just be on the day of the vote on November 3rd. It will be with the counting of the vote and then the seating of the winners. Because that's when power is truly at issue.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I have some reservations. I think that maybe it could have had more of a class dimension. Although you do mention the concentration of wealth.
Just tell me about how you talk about how it took your breath away when you saw the kinds of. The class of the kinds of people who now favor political violence in the USA today.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yes. What really inspired me to do this was when with my research center, we studied all the perpetrators in 2020 who were doing political violence. And that of course included 2021, January 6th, and we studied 1575. And I have never seen profile like that before in my 30 years of studying political.
You see only one in 10 of the 1575 who stormed the Capitol were members of militia groups. And that includes only 1 in 10 of the 600 who beat up cops were militia group members.
45% were doctors, lawyers, accountants, IT specialists, State Department employees, business owners.
This is a different category than we're used to seeing. And that is what led me to want to spend five years to figure out what's really going on here.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry I had to laugh when you said State Department employees. But interesting obviously how the CNNs of this world and MSNBC, you know, the American media in the New York Times tried to deliberately lie about the class of the people to make them seem as if they were all from Appalachia, from where J.D. vance hails from.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: So just so your public knows, I spent time in person with the editorial boards on several of the groups you just mentioned. I don't really want to cite them by name, but of those two you just mentioned, I mean multiple in person meetings with all of the data and even the actual journalists who write the stories use our data.
So this is not a case where they don't know the data.
This is a case, I believe, where they created a certain image which was militia group member, militia group member. And it's just been incredibly difficult to get this legacy media to update that image. I think they may well also think there was some political sort of purchase here, but I don't know that as a fact. What I know is this data has been put squarely in front of them and it is not wrong. It's just not being taken seriously. And it's important because we need to understand that when you have middle class and upper middle class Americans supporting force and literally beating cops, this is extremely different than we're used to seeing. And that's why we need to understand that we're in an era of violent populism. This isn't just populism.
People mad at elites. This is where you have violent populism. Large parts of the public, tens of millions of people on both sides of the aisle support political force to hold on or gain power.
And this is unfortunately likely to come to a head. And the deep reasons for this are social changes. So why you mentioned class, there's a huge element here of what's driving this, of the shift of wealth to the top 1%. I call this over the last 30 years, we have become a negative sum society for the bottom 90%. Not just if you're poor, not just if you're working class, but even if you're middle and upper middle class, you are losing ground compared to your parents and even just compared to where you were a couple years before.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
I do want to get onto the current issues right now. But just very briefly on this topic, you mentioned de Tocqueville in the book and he talks about how those upper class and middle class, when they start to the great theorists of the French Revolution, obviously those journalists of the New York Times you might have been talking to, think it's more responsible to lie to their readers to prevent revolution in the United States. You have no sympathy with that?
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. So my view is we have to use social media because we just can't rely on the established institutions.
And what we need to do is not just have assertions on social media, but to bring the facts and let people decide for themselves.
That's what's happening in our own worst enemies. The book. The book is not just full of assertions or thin op eds. It's going through the facts of the case so that people can decide for themselves and they can fact, fact check every single point.
The bottom line is we live in a world where we need a more informed citizenry and we have a tool, social media, where we can do that. And this is the good side of social media.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's clear that those other elements of the media are trying to hide it. Let's go on to what made you famous. The escalation Trap and theories about it. Trump finds himself this weekend with the USS Theodore Roosevelt arriving here off the Gulf.
You call in the book the war in Iran the most partisan war in US History. What does that actually mean for a US President when more than half of his own country opposes his war?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: What that means is his support is down to just his core base. And so if he loses the war, he loses everything.
This is not a political situation for President Trump where he's only worried about getting a majority support in the public one way or the other. This is now political survival. His survival is at risk because the vast majority of the public already disagrees with the war. If he loses the war and admits he's lost the war, he will lose his core MAGA base, or at least large parts of it. That means he will be the worst lame duck in history. He will be more Jimmy Carter than Jimmy Carter. He will be viewed as radioactive, even by Republicans. And this is why President Trump has tremendous incentives, even though they're counterproductive, for the larger picture to escalate. He has incentives and has continued to act on those incentives to escalate in ways that have been ultimately counterproductive. Why? He's trying to show he's still in control, and that is the escalation trap.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: And if we just leave aside the idea that the US is really merely a proxy of Israel for a moment, what about the fact there is no escalatory option for him? You've been talking recently that any action by the United States would result in an Iranian strike on Abqaiq refinery in Saudi Arabia.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: That's exactly right. So I've been warning for weeks that we would be moving to a stage of the escalation trap where we would see the war spread to Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And that has in fact happened. So this is what I was anticipating and warning against.
And within that, what I've been warning about is you will have both horizontal and vertical escalation that will occur.
And it's occurring because what you're seeing is President Trump cannot really bring himself to end the war. And it's because if he does that, he will have to admit defeat. And as a result, what he's doing is he's taking steps that feed the war or escalate the war himself. And right now he has on his desk a three day airplan. And you might say, well, three days, what's the big deal?
This looks very, from what the weeks have been, this looks like a version of Instant Thunder, the airplane to decapitate Saddam Hussein and paralyze the government in Iraq in the 91 war.
This could be a much more widespread set of targeting with that three days. And this is why he may also be bringing in the Marines. This could be much more consequential, I think, than the public currently realizes. And it's because President Trump is under the gun to demonstrate he's still in control.
And so I think that this is what is leading to the current continuing escalation in the overall Iran war. And it could occur even worse just in the next few weeks.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: You've called it the most dangerous time. Obviously, at the time of this interview, they haven't launched any kind of nuclear attack.
We had Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff, telling us that Trump had given Netanyahu the go ahead to use tactical nuclear weapons on Iran. What's the possibility of nuclear weapons?
[00:13:04] Speaker B: I would raise it. So when the war began in March, I would put it as under 10% likelihood of a nuclear weapon being used.
I think those odds have now doubled.
I think that they could go up even more if the escalation keeps continuing, continuing. But what I think is that we still, even though the odds of a nuclear weapon use are still rather low, but 20%, I should just point out, this is 20% of using nuclear weapons. This is still a horrible situation and we should be talking about what that consequences would be so they don't go up. And that's what I do on the escalation trap. Because you see, even a tactical nuclear weapon would spread radiation that would could impact over 100,000 people in Iran. I've done the mapping. And this is then likely to trigger further escalation by Iran.
We are not in a position where when Trump moves up the rungs of the escalation ladder, he is going to escalate to our advantage. Professor Bates, he may escalate. They put pressure on Iran, but they will lash back. Professor Babe, I've been doing.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: I'll just stop you there. More from the University of Chicago's professor of political science and the author of Our Own Worst Enemies after this break.
Welcome back to Going underground. I'm still here with the author of Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism, Professor Robert Pape. Professor, you were talking about the escalatory ladder and the possibilities of nuclear weapon use. What will it do within the United States? So the people of the United States do not support this war.
He continues to escalate. He presumably loses the midterm elections. What will this do within The United States if he continues to escalate. I know you go into detail about Kent State and the shootings of demonstrators. We haven't seen big demonstrations within the United States against the Iran war.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: No, we haven't. And a big part of the reason for that is because it's so overwhelmingly unpopular.
So what you have in this war, which is for the first time in really American history, we have engaged in a war that right from day one, did not have majority support.
Normally, the public gives discretion to the president. Why did that happen?
Our own worst enemies. The book explains it. You see, we have been so at each other internally in the United States. In this age of violent populism, we have lost the legitimacy.
Big parts of our public doubt that our president is using force in any kind of legitimate way. The more the president uses ice against Democratic protesters, the more those Democratic protesters are not just losing confidence in the federal government's use of force internally, the more they lose confidence in President Trump's use of force around the world and vice versa.
It's a circle they build on each other. This is what I call the normalization of political violence. As political violence is normalized, that both makes it more likely to be used domestically and internationally, and. And it hardens divisions in the country, and it makes the country want even more to the use of escalation abroad, which you might normally think would. Again, you'd bring good feelings because if American is killed, there'll be a rally around the flag effect. Not in the age of violent populism. In the age of violent populism, it creates those divisions, makes them harder, and makes them want to go at each other even harder.
That's what you're seeing in Minnesota right now. You're seeing President Trump calling on Minnesotans to attack Somalis. And these are authorized immigrants or American citizens. President Trump is calling on people to attack. President Trump made a joke about whether Iran should take out Los Angeles in San Diego.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but that was obviously a joke. In fairness, professor, that, you know, one doesn't need to be a Trump supporter to realize that's part of his humor.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: My point. I'm not anti. I'm not being anti Trump. My point is the normalization of violence.
It's not. Normally you would have expected that the joke would just be kind of a.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Well, Obama used to joke about drones all the time. He was king of the drone strikes.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Well, that may be, sir. So I'm not trying to play partisan politics here. I'm trying to explain that. We've reached a Point where we are normalizing political violence, where it's becoming accepted.
And the more it becomes accepted, even in a joking manner, the more likely political violence is to occur because we're slowly raising that bar. And as we raise the bar, the next level of political violence doesn't seem so such a shock.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: If we can expect more civic life violence, then. I mean, you were in the military. You've advised the military. The Pentagon has funded your research. What about the chances of violent mutiny? As far as the military goes, we saw reports from a USS aircraft carrier that had to leave suddenly from this region after being deployed for way over the time it was supposed to be deployed. Clearly, the war is as unpopular, one would assume, amongst the troops as it is amongst the people of the United States if Trump tries to order them in. You were mentioning Marines in part one to be deployed. I presume you don't mean ground troops for any extended stay. If he continues the escalatory ladder on Iran, what chance for mutiny?
[00:19:31] Speaker B: I think that it's low and it's much higher if he declares the Insurrection act in the United States.
So right now, the price that our troops are paying is high. It's serious, but it's not death.
In the Vietnam war, we had 58,000 killed there. We saw wasn't exactly mutiny, but we saw what was called fragging of officers where the troops were so upset they would detonate grenades to kill their own officers who they believed were sending them to their death in these awful operations in Vietnam. We are not at that point in the Iran war.
The real risk of mutiny, sir, would be if President Trump were to declare the Insurrection act and to literally order the American military to go into cities, especially Democratic cities. And by the way, a year ago Almost right now, September 30, 2025, President Trump, for the first time in our Pentagon's history, called all 800 flag officers, that's admirals and generals, to listen to him speak. And he gave an hour address where he literally said, be prepared to go into democratic cities, be prepared to treat them as military training grounds. And then he said to just put a point on it. If they spit, we hit. In other words, escalation.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: What did you think personally watching that on television when it was televised? Are the reactions of officers what I think?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: So, first of all, I know quite a few people in the military.
And he said, also, you don't like it, get out. And a lot of people commentary did
[00:21:24] Speaker A: no one left the room?
[00:21:25] Speaker B: No, no, no, no one did publicly, sir. That's it's. A misnomer that no one did publicly, that no one did because no one has done it in a way, say Joe Kent. When Joe Kent resigned, he did it in a big public fashion. Military folks, they're just much more likely because they believe in civilian control.
They, they're much more likely to do it quietly. And that's what has happened. And I know because I know them personally, so that actually happened.
The real shock here is that the rest of the public, that was a one day story in the media and it sort of ended there. That was my surprise. My big surprise was not so much that President Trump said it. My big surprise is that we had reached the point of accepting political violence so much, we had so normalized it that that only merited a one day story similar to when the Blackhaw helicopters so literally on the same day I was sitting here in my office right where I'm speaking to you now, one mile from my office, Black Hawk helicopters descended on an apartment building. You could hear the blades.
And that was in an ICE anti immigration raid. Well, for an hour or two that was all the talk, big, big talk. And then, you know what happened around noon of that day, everything went back to normal.
And that's what I'm explaining in the book. What I'm explaining in the book is we're going through legitimacy shock cycles where we're being shocked and then we're so shocked we normalize it. And that makes it more likely the next level of escalation can happen.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: So the United States has got a many fronted war. It's fighting Russia, through Ukraine, fighting Iran, it's fighting Yemen, it's fighting parts of Latin America and it's fighting within itself.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Yes, you've got it. Exactly. And this in many ways, when I started the book several years ago, was my worst nightmare. My worst nightmare is we would come to an election very contentious in the midst of a very unpopular, costly war.
And I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. The scenario I'm most worried about would be either in 2026 or 2028, we would go into a very contentious election.
And the same time we'd have the Iran war. And that is what's happened. And it is producing all these consequences that I've been concerned about. And that's why I started the escalation trap very soon. It wasn't that I was just reacting to news.
This has been these concerns I've had for a long period of time. Unfortunately they're playing out in real time.
And I haven't been forced to change my trajectories. They're getting worse as I worried. And it's because now the Iran war and the midterms are intersecting with each other where the gas prices go up. That point I made, sir, in the book about the economic shift of wealth to the top 1%, causing the bottom 90% to feel impoverished. It's now happening even more because of the Iran war. So all the drivers that I laid out in the book, which you include the Iran war, you make those drivers hotter.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: So what is the message to the American public, given what you appear to be saying, is that the founding fathers. The founding fathers had nothing in the Constitution because the Congress is completely impervious and unable to deal with the situation you outline in the book. So that's why you have guns in America.
That's why you have guns.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: That's right. In chapter nine of the book, I lay out, we have good news, sir, in that 70% of the public abhors political violence and we need to lean into the 70% solution.
This is when you diagnose a problem, you sometimes discover ways to make it better. And that's the 70%, sir. So how do you reverse the normalization of political violence? It's in the mainstream. So you can't really rely on the FBI to do that. You can't really rely. Even political elites are unreliable because they often want to cater to those violent minorities.
Where we need to lean into is the 70% in the middle, that 70% solution. They abhor political violence. And if they will come out and vote in droves, if they will not just vote, but if they will communicate with their elected officials on both sides of the aisle, this is, and there's a key example, sir, I want to give that this can happen, which is the no Kings protest.
So also about a year ago, this was October 18th, I'm on a Saturday in Chicago and no Kings protests are happening in Chicago and in many cities in the country. 7 million demonstrate that day. And you know how much political violence there was? Zilch.
And I had talked to America because
[00:27:01] Speaker A: it was basically a partisan pro Democrat, that pro Democrat demonstration, wasn't it? It wasn't like the anti Gaza time.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: We had a pro Democrat president.
The last time we had that, sir, was the George Floyd protest. And that was all partisan pro Democrat. And that led to 7 to 10% of those protests going violent and lots of downtowns being smashed up, lots of police cars and police stations being burned to the ground.
None of that happens sir. And my point is that it's not a partisan point. My point is that by stressing if there's going to be demonstrations, there may well be demonstrations that they need to be peaceful and put the peaceful part right next to the demonstration part. That's what the no Kings protestors did, organizers did.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Professor Pape, we'll have to get to Russia, Ukraine next time you come on the show. Thank you so much.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Glad to do it. Thank you for having me on.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: That's it for the show. Our own worst enemies, America in the age of violent populism is out now. Our condolences to all those of you bereaved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression. We'll be back on Saturday with a brand new show. Until then, you can keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel goingundergroundtvonnormable.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Saturday.
