Don’t Use the F-Word: David Ost on Why the Red Pill, Not Fascism, Demystifies the Far Right

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Back at the beginning of the year in January, my dear friend Jonathan Rauch, who's a frequent guest on the show, had a very influential piece in The Atlantic. It was called "Yes, It's Fascism," and he was defining Trump, Donald Trump, the current American president, as a fascist. We had Jonathan on the show. We entitled it "Yes, It's Fascism: Jonathan Rauch on Trump and the F Word." But, of course, many people are skeptical of whether the f-word really defines not just Trump, but all this radical populism around the world from Poland and Hungary and Turkey, maybe even to Russia and the United States. My guest today has a different kind of language to define what's happening in the world. David Ost is a longtime political scientist, taught for many years at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and a real authority on Poland. His book is called Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today's Far Right. So he avoids using the f-word, and he's joining us from Ithaca, New York, where he lives. David, what's wrong with the f-word?

00:01:49 David Ost: Well, the f-word is often appropriate, but it's kind of become meaningless. There's been this debate. People use this term. I first heard it being used by critics of the right-wing government in Poland, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, then it started being used here. And the problem is that any use of that f-term is then met by the right-wing populists who say, "Are we killing you? Are we throwing you in jail?" And then seemingly, the matter is put to rest. So the question is that, in fact, there's a great deal of similarity between what's going on, this right-wing populism as they call it, that is pervasive in so many places around the world: their belief that their nation is particularly suffering on the international stage, that others are taking advantage of it, this militant kind of nationalism, denigrating all opponents. They don't have opponents. They have traitors. So it seems there are a lot of similarities. And yet at the same time, anytime that charge is made, it's like, well, again, "Are we killing you, throwing you in jail? No." So the matter is seemingly put to rest.

00:03:17 Andrew Keen: I take your point, and I actually agree with you. Although on the other hand, there are some people, for example, at the Charlottesville race riots a few years ago who actually seemed to embrace the idea of being fascist themselves. They called themselves neo-Nazis. So some people seem to embrace the idea of fascism, and there are people on the right who are, so to speak, reevaluating the value of fascism.

00:03:46 David Ost: No, that is exactly true. And that's, again, the reason why I wanted to write this book and point out that, look, we can talk about — and I think we ought to talk about — right-wing populism, just using that term to denote all these different systems. As you mentioned in the beginning, whether it's Trumpism, whether in Poland it's the PiS party, Orbán, Erdoğan in Turkey, Modi in India — that if we talk about these movements and try to look at what is the type of politics that they share with classic fascism, that's where I come up with this idea of red pill, which —

00:04:33 Andrew Keen: I know. We want to come to the red pill because it's a fascinating concept borrowed from The Matrix. But before we get there, David, the subtitle of the book is "Demystifying Today's Far Right." I really like the word "demystifying," and maybe we can demystify that word later. But I'm also curious about this concept of the far right. Who exactly is the far right? For example, would you include Meloni in that? Would you include some of the nationalists in the United Kingdom? What defines the far right from the right?

00:05:15 David Ost: Well, the far right are those who reject the basic principles of democracy, of liberal democracy. They may still accept, although grudgingly, elections. But when they're not elected, then they usually say something has gone wrong, and increasingly are not even accepting if and when they lose elections. So this far right are those right-wingers who are not going to accept, even reluctantly, the democratic game. That's the basic idea of this far right. And, again, who treat opponents not as opponents, but as traitors, as people who are not really part of their country and part of their nation.

00:06:13 Andrew Keen: I take your point, but I'm guessing if we'd had this conversation a month ago, you would have included Viktor Orbán in the far right. But he seems to have slunk off with his tail between his legs. He accepted his defeat. In fact, he was, for Orbán at least, relatively gracious. So would you include Orbán in the far right? Would you include Nigel Farage? Would you include Meloni?

00:06:37 David Ost: Yes, I do include these people in the far right. Look, what we're seeing now — this is in the last ten years or so — we could say this is the first iteration of a new type of far right, or as I say, a new type of red pill politics. And what they've done, like what Orbán has done in solidifying the regime, is to institutionalize some of the policies he put in place even if he lost power. We will wait to see if the new leader is able to get around those obstacles, those mines that the Orbán government left. But we're seeing now this first iteration of this kind of politics where they delegitimize these kinds of institutions, but they know that they live in a world in which the basic principles of liberal democracy are intact and most people accept them. So we see this way in which, yes, they're leaving government now. Again, Orbán did. Trump, of course, as we know, has never said he will leave office voluntarily.

00:07:59 Andrew Keen: Well, he did. I mean, he did sort of half-voluntarily in 2020.

00:08:07 Andrew Keen: I don't want to turn this into another Trump conversation. I'm certainly not going to be defending the guy. But anyway, what about —

00:08:19 David Ost: We're in the first stage, and things, I think, are moving in that direction where connections with classic old-style far-right politics are more and more in the air.

00:08:35 Andrew Keen: Okay. But let's just drill down a tiny little bit more. I mentioned Meloni. She's been somewhat of a surprise. She was quite overt in her sympathy towards Mussolini, I think, when she was in opposition. Now she's in power, she seems to have calmed some people down. Farage in the UK, again, not my cup of tea, but is he on the far right? Is Meloni on the far right? Or has this just become a term to describe people we don't like, David?

00:09:04 David Ost: No, I don't use it as a term just for people I don't like. Look, you're right that Meloni talked very sympathetically about fascism, using that term, and identified herself within that post-fascist movement. Yes. Since she's been in power, she has not governed that way. Partly, when they do come into power, they deal with all kinds of institutions that exist. I point out somewhere in my book — when Mussolini first came to power, for the first few years there were still elections. He tried to rig the electoral game, to gerrymander, to use contemporary parlance, and to institutionalize his authority. He only turned to outright dictatorship after being in power for four years. But that was a different time. So I think all of these figures you mentioned — and Farage also uses this kind of language — certainly signal to people that they're sympathetic to these far-right, meaning anti-democratic, meaning everyone else except me is not looking out for the nation and is thus a traitor, and we know what ought to happen to traitors. So they're introducing this kind of language, and it takes place in different places at different times. I mean my book to explain, to provide a kind of language for us to be able to follow these developments, to be alert to the kinds of things that are happening, without saying, of course, that everything is cooked, that we're living in the 1930s or 1940s. Because we're also living in very different times.

00:11:23 Andrew Keen: We certainly are. Your last book, or one of your books, was called The Defeat of Solidarity, very much a classic book on politics in Eastern Europe. I wouldn't have expected you, David, of all people, to come up with a term from The Matrix for your new book. So the terms "red pill" and "blue pill" — you've taken them from The Matrix. In all seriousness, what does this word "red pill" mean? Are you appropriating it, so to speak, from The Matrix? Is this where it's borrowed from?

00:11:55 David Ost: Look, I'll tell you and the audience what happened. Some years ago — after I wrote about what's happening in Poland, my Defeat of Solidarity book came out in 2005. It was finished just before that far-right Law and Justice party led by Jarosław Kaczyński came to power, anticipating that there was a good chance he would come to power because he and his party were speaking to non-elites and to workers in a way that the left was not. So after that, about five years ago, I had a year off from teaching in which I said, let me read about classic fascism. Let me read all I could find. And I didn't have any kind of term I was trying to come up with. But the question was always, like, the question that so many people — your friend Jonathan Rauch — said, "This is fascism." Everyone is talking about that. So I wanted to look into it. What's really similar? Reading all this stuff, it's clear that you can make a total case it's fascism and a total case it's not. For the academics listening, Immanuel Kant had this famous argument — that's the German philosopher from the late 1700s — who said in his Critique of Pure Reason, "I can prove a hundred percent that God exists and a hundred percent that God doesn't exist." There's no way to resolve that question. So we have to come up with a new way of thinking about it. And that's what happened as I began reading about fascism and reading about what's going on, that there's a similar type of politics. And just gradually, I started identifying the features, and then it kind of came to me that those initials worked to fit into this term.

00:14:06 Andrew Keen: So are you a big Matrix guy, David? Did you go and see the movie and then the light went on? Maybe the red or the blue light in your head —

00:14:18 David Ost: No. What happened is I saw it about fifteen years after it came out, with my partner and my stepkids, who were big fans of it. And I kind of let it go. I thought it was a fascinating film. I thought it was a great film. I mean, it was 1999.

00:14:37 Andrew Keen: Of course. Science fiction classic.

00:14:40 David Ost: Yeah. And I think I saw it around 2013, '14, really about fifteen years after. So it just lingered in the back. And then, of course, what happened is that that term became increasingly popular, used by the alt-right in America, but other places too —

00:14:59 Andrew Keen: There are two terms: the red pill and the blue pill. Define what these mean and how you've used the concept of the red pill to define today's far right.

00:15:11 David Ost: Well, okay. So the idea, again, comes from The Matrix, the famous scene early on where the underground hero of the film, played by Laurence Fishburne, is fighting against this system that literally uses our human bodies as energy for a giant matrix or computer system. The conceit of this film, the plot of this film, is that most people, you and me, are living in a world where our minds are really controlled by the matrix. But there's an underground organization fighting against it, and Neo, Keanu Reeves, the real hero of the film, is given a choice, and he takes this red pill. And so he knows the truth. So I just knew this film. I liked it. But then I started seeing more and more, particularly among the so-called manosphere, the antifeminists, those who were livid about women, and the incel movement, started using this term more and more — that "we have taken the red pill." And I said, what are they talking about? And they said, "We have taken the red pill because we now see that all this stuff about feminism is a lie. All this leftism about equality — all of this is left-wingers and feminists trying to take over our minds. But we've taken the red pill and we see the difference." So just getting back to the book, what happened is that over time I began seeing that there are all these things that can be connected. And I came up with: right-wing, exclusionary, nationalist, democratic — because they always say they're democratic — populist, illiberalism. And I can tell you, Andrew, I still remember the moment that I figured out, "Oh my god, illiberalism — no checks on power — then I get three letters of 'red pill' in one word." And I was thrilled, and that's how the idea came together.

00:17:29 Andrew Keen: It's a wonderful concept — you've described it wonderfully. As it happens, you'll be amused with this, David. Last week I had Becky Holmes on the show, who is a British-based writer and online personality. And, speaking of Keanu Reeves, she has a book — it's about demystifying not the radical right, but online dating and fraud. Her book, which came out a few years ago, which has done very well, is called Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love with You, and it's designed to tell women in particular that they shouldn't always trust the people they meet online. The point I'm perhaps drawing out of that is, it's not just young men who are misled by red or blue pills, but also young women. So are you suggesting then, David, that these young men who embrace the radical right — are they taking the red or the blue pill? And what are they thinking about these pills? Which pills do they think they're taking? Which pills are they actually taking?

00:18:42 David Ost: They believe they're taking the red pill. Because for them, it means that, following from the film, our minds at present are being controlled by some other forces — that our minds have been colonized. That's what Keanu Reeves learns in the film —

00:19:07 Andrew Keen: We need to remind ourselves that Keanu Reeves is not in love with you. He's not —

00:19:11 David Ost: — in love with you, yeah.

00:19:12 Andrew Keen: Yeah. With any of us, I'm sure. He's quite happy at home. So, speaking of demystification, they're being mystified. Is that fair, David? They think they're getting at the truth, but actually the reverse is true, you're saying.

00:19:36 David Ost: Look, no — exactly. Not really. My book — I have this line early on that I think would be surprising to many people, and you might have caught it yourself. I say after a few pages, "Look, it's probably clear to the reader by now that I denounce fascism. What you, the reader, may be surprised at is that the book does not." I don't need another book to denounce fascism, to say, "Oh my god, it's so terrible it's happening." I do believe it's so terrible that it's happening. But who cares what I or you or anyone believes? The fact is it's happening, and we need to really grapple with what it is. So when you ask, are they demystifying — I'm saying that for them it's real, that they break from this left-wing feminist politics. They think they're going to get some benefits from it, and they may very well get some benefits from it. Insofar as they break, insofar as they turn to this red pill politics — i.e., a kind of politics that fascism first innovated — if they turn to this kind of politics, it can be good for them, at the expense of minorities, women, others, leftists, liberals, all of these people who are also competing for the resources of the world. And for them, if we delegitimize them, it can be beneficial for us. So, again, are they being mystified? No.

00:21:27 Andrew Keen: They're acting on interest. You quoted earlier Kant's argument that you can always argue in favor of one thing or the other, for or against God. He could do it either way, although I think he probably would have done it in favor. But you're not suggesting that there isn't a reality out there. I mean, Kant wasn't a relativist. Of course, his whole life was spent trying to prove reality. Are you arguing, David, that there is a reality for these young men — and they're not just young men, they're young women and maybe some older men and women — that that reality actually reflects the fact that the Orbáns and the Trumps and the Erdoğans and the Netanyahus of the world are actually in these people's camp?

00:22:19 David Ost: Absolutely. Right. Look, fascists too did something for their supporters and for the people who aligned with them. They insisted on having all political power for themselves. But if you agree with them, if you sign up for them, and if you're part of the dominant nation, or the dominant religion, or whatever is the dominant essence — that's the term I use — whatever is the dominant essence in a given country, for these far-right, for classic fascist and right-wing populist leaders, if you're in their camp, they will provide certain benefits for you. They certainly did that in Poland, in Hungary as well. Orbán, one of his first things upon coming to power and trying to put the opposition at bay, to delegitimize the opposition, was to lower utility costs, to demand that the public utilities charge less. He put a stiff tax on foreign corporations and banks to help support some social programs at the beginning. He did things that some leftists would have done. PiS did that as well. Orbán, sixteen years ago.

00:23:47 Andrew Keen: Trump, of course, famously lifted taxes on tips, which certainly —

00:23:52 David Ost: Yeah. Look, the thing with Trump — why is Trump losing so much support now, very quickly upon his second term? It's because Trump, unlike these others, has never really taken the economic populist moment seriously. For him, he talks a good game when he's not there. This tax on tips, yes — that's the only thing. It's a very small thing. It doesn't cover all tips. But one of the things that's happening from dismissing taxes on tips is you have more employers who are forcing employees to become tipped employees. And he did that policy at the same time as supporting cuts on Medicare and, of course, getting rid of the subsidies for healthcare, so-called Obamacare, where now so many people are losing their health insurance. So in fact, Steve Bannon — at least he doesn't seem to really put his game on the line here, but he's always said that "you on the right, we must be economic nationalists. We must do things to actually support workers in concrete ways." Other right-wing governments, other red pill governments, have done that, including classic fascism and including this right-wing populism. Some little things for their members. Again, they're not leftist at all because they don't deal with or care to deal with independent workers' organizations, but they like to provide things from above. Trump, however, has not done that. Although I suspect that in the summer, to the extent that he probably will be forced to allow midterm elections in some way, I expect he'll do things like send out a check to all Americans for a certain bit of money signed by his name. That's the kind of economic politics.

00:26:04 Andrew Keen: Photo op as well. So, David, the subtitle of the book, as I said — Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today's Far Right. Who are you addressing? I don't suppose many people on the far right will read your book. You're a man of the left. You write for The Nation. You're an expert on working-class politics in Poland. Are you trying to demystify the far right for the coastal elites, the coastal liberals who are horrified by Trump and Modi and all these other characters and don't quite understand it? Are you trying to tell them that, actually, much of the support for a Trump or a Modi or an Orbán can be explained in material terms?

00:26:50 David Ost: Well, I think much of it, yes, can be explained in material terms. Look, I don't think I'm talking for any coastal elites. As you pointed out, I've written my first couple of books focusing on Poland in particular. There's a whole different kind of class and regional structure and things like this. The point is, my main interest, when I wrote this book on solidarity — you have a picture of that second book — my first book was called Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics. The first one came out in 1990, just to talk about this solidarity movement that had become victorious. And that solidarity movement was largely a movement with left-wing ideas. It was a trade union and social movement, and they put forth a lot of left-wing ideas. In the course of the 1990s, though, these people who saw themselves as leftist moved away from those ideas, along with the entire Western left, which was becoming more neoliberal in those days. So what happened is, after this kind of leftist or leftish solidarity movement won and had a lot of support from workers, they were squandering that support. And workers, as I noticed in Poland in the early 1990s, were suddenly being sympathetic to far-right ideas, nationalism, extreme nationalism — everyone else is an enemy, there are traitors governing us, all these kinds of things, a new type of authoritarian politics. I saw this happening in Poland, and I wrote that book you put on the screen, The Defeat of Solidarity. That was twenty years ago. Since then, of course, this kind of thing has happened elsewhere, everywhere in —

00:29:00 Andrew Keen: — the world. Everywhere. I mean, that's the point. Last week we had a book focusing on a lot of the themes that you cover in Red Pill Politics, by the Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro — After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World. For Shapiro, the politicians broke our world. And I guess we need to use the word "are" carefully — are the politicians on the center left, the Clintons and Blairs? Do you come to the same conclusion in Red Pill Politics, that today's far right has risen so dramatically because of the failure of the center left?

00:29:46 David Ost: Yes, I do. In fact, that was the argument before I studied any of this. That was exactly what I argued in the Defeat of Solidarity book — which I should mention, when that book came out in 2005 and was published in Polish translation two years later, it came out just before PiS, the Kaczyński movement, came to power. A lot of the liberals there didn't expect what was happening, and they really appreciated the book. I might also say that some right-wingers appreciated it because I was so tough against that center left. And, by the way, I do think — and urge — those who see themselves on the right to look at this new book, because I think they will find a lot there. I think I'll be able to convince some people reading it of the way in which we know we have a lot of supporters of right-wing populist parties who don't think they have anything in common with classic fascism. Again, for reasons we talked about earlier, they're not doing all that repression at this time. But this is something that points out to some of their supporters those kinds of links. I'm sorry — maybe I got away from the question.

00:31:15 Andrew Keen: Mussolini, of course, was the man who first defined the f-word, or used the f-word to describe his political movement. He started on the left as a critic of capitalism. He shifted to the radical right as a critic of capitalism. Some of these far-right leaders are themselves critics of capitalism. It's increasingly hard for some people to actually distinguish the critique of capitalism from the left and the right. Is that true?

00:31:48 David Ost: Absolutely. Look, that's a key part of the argument in the book. I have a few provocative lines there that are going to raise eyebrows, and probably the most provocative is this claim that fascism — and we can say that red pill politics is — that fascism is the left wing of the radical right. The left wing of the radical right. Now, that seems outrageous because we're used to thinking that fascism is as far right as you can go. But my point is that, in fact, the fascists were the ones who emerged — like fascism itself in around 1920, around that time — at a time when the left was dominant among non-elites, among the working class. And the fascists were those who also were part of the masses, the people who the elites kind of didn't care for, wanted to push away — but they were on the right. Unlike the previous right — Edmund Burke is always cited as the classic, the original right-winger representing the aristocrats, then you add in the nineteenth century the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class being the right — they were all afraid of the regular people. The fascists emerge and say, "We are the regular people. We are the scum of the earth. But we hate the left. And we also hate the elites for not beating up the left like real men. We represent, again, this classic — we represent the people who are against the left." And what fascism did, and what this right-wing populism does, as I just said, is that it speaks to those masses in ways that appeal to their prejudices. They speak to them in non-leftist ways, but they say, "We're going to help you out, to the extent you belong in our nation." So getting back to the issue: yes, the center left — when the left has become mostly center left, which happened over the course of the postwar period — the center left has not been doing the kinds of things to make sure that the working class, which in advanced capitalist societies only ten, twenty years ago they used the term "the middle class," because they felt that they were included — now we use the term more and more "working class" because those people who used to be middle class see that they don't seem to have a future in this kind of system, in this globalized system, in this vast huge inequality. And so the left has not been taking up those issues. And then the right says, "Oh, we'll help you to the extent that you're part of our nation. So these other people we keep aside, but we'll help you." And for a number of people, they say, "Well, the left is not doing anything for us." And it's very difficult to do things — that's another type of discussion we can have. The left doesn't have, I think, the same possibilities as it did in the post–World War II period to move far to the left.

00:35:36 Andrew Keen: Well, now let's get to that. We talked about it with Shapiro last week, the author of After the Fall. We talked about how we need to raise ourselves up after the fall, because, of course, the fall seems fairly self-evident. Even if you're demystifying today's far right, you're not sympathetic with it. What should people who are not in the far-right camp be doing? Are you suggesting clearly — and you're in the same camp as Shapiro — they're not just going to shift to the center left. They're not going back to Clinton or Blair or Obama. Shapiro is quite critical of Obama as well. Is your argument really, David, as more and more people are arguing, that the only way to counter today's far right, the red pill politics of the far right, is through Mamdani-style — I'm not very comfortable with the term "far left" —

00:36:41 David Ost: No, it's not far left. They're not —

00:36:44 Andrew Keen: — politics, which is ambivalent about capitalism and definitely determined to fundamentally reform the tax system, the trade system. Is that what people who don't like the far right need to do?

00:37:02 David Ost: Yes. Basically, yes. Economic populism. I use the term "populism" again in a good way — that is, it means speaking to regular people in language that they understand, but also doing things concretely, materially, that are going to benefit them. Mamdani's election came as I was writing this book. It was a real-world indicator of some of the things I was talking about. As he began campaigning, he began campaigning to speak to voters who voted for Trump. "Why are you moving in that direction?" And then he said, "Well, we can do that in a way that accommodates you and accommodates minorities, and represents — you know — a true universalist type of left." So the left needs to be assertive on those issues, and needs to be tough on those issues, and needs to be able to put through some of those policies. Now, Mamdani himself is mayor of New York, which does not actually have a great deal of power, because there's still a governor of New York and all kinds of restrictions. The presidency, well — not many people knew the president had so much power until the last sixteen months or so, and given more power by the Supreme Court. But yes, look, if and when we get a Democrat elected, the only way that Democrat is going to be able to break the spell of that far right and to turn things around will be to use that power of the presidency in the kind of activist, let's say, ways that Trump has used it, but for different kinds of policies. For ones that direct money — not to ballrooms and not to ICE, but direct that money to rebuilding small cities and even rural areas. You can certainly build hospitals, healthcare centers in these areas. You can make these places that people are fleeing from — you can make that attractive. Bernie Sanders has talked about that. And now, of course, in 2026 in the United States, we see a whole slate of candidates representing the working class running on the Democratic Party who say, "We're going to push these kinds of issues."

00:40:05 Andrew Keen: I think the data centers are so interesting, not just in symbolic terms of people's mistrust of Silicon Valley and technology, but also for local control. David, you saw this early, as you noted. You're a longtime student of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. You wrote The Defeat of Solidarity. You wrote a book about solidarity earlier. So you came up with red pill politics — or the idea, at least, of demystifying today's far right — earlier than most. The Law and Justice party in Poland has been voted out of office, just as Orbán got voted out a few weeks ago in Hungary. What can we learn today from Eastern Europe about tomorrow? Americans always like to think of themselves as doing everything first, but as you imply, they're a step behind Eastern Europe.

00:40:58 David Ost: Yes.

00:41:00 Andrew Keen: What's happening in Eastern Europe — in Poland, which you know very well, or Hungary? We did a show with Marc Loustau, an American academic based in Budapest, last week, about making Hungary boring again. What can we learn from what's happening in Eastern Europe about tomorrow in America?

00:41:27 David Ost: Yes, there are lessons, particularly in Poland right now. The Law and Justice party was in power for eight years and then lost in 2023, when there was a coalition of a kind of right-wing liberal — or center-right liberal — party, led by Donald Tusk, who's the prime minister. And it also had an alliance with the left, and with a more moderate party.

00:42:06 Andrew Keen: Could we make that equivalent? Would you compare Tusk and Magyar, the guy who defeated Orbán, or is Magyar to the right of Tusk?

00:42:17 David Ost: It's hard to say. Magyar, we know, was close together with Orbán until just a few years ago, left originally over a personal spat, and then seemed to see that he had a chance of defeating him and did start speaking to liberal and even left forces and spoke in that way. We don't know how he's going to govern. But in Poland you have a coalition where most of the left is part of it. One party on the left, the one that is more similar, say, to Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, actually withdrew from the government some months ago. Because after coming to power in 2023, they had a clear mandate from their constituency, from their voters, to do things about some social issues — for example, domestic partnerships. You have a very strong Catholic church, of course, in Poland. And not only was the last government very hostile against gays and any kind of LGBT issues, but also eliminated the right to abortion and wouldn't even put forth domestic partnerships. So there was strong pressure on this government — a mandate to do these things.

00:44:00 Andrew Keen: Okay. But, David, what does this tell us? We've got a mandate.

00:44:04 David Ost: Sorry. What it tells us is that the Tusk government has not been doing those kinds of things, has always said, "Well, we don't want to do anything to get the right back in power, so we won't do these kinds of things that may make some people upset." And then they alienate their own base, and then they've lost — like in a recent presidential election.

00:44:27 Andrew Keen: So it's a Biden mistake, is it?

00:44:31 David Ost: Yes, in some ways. You have to be tougher on that. Although Biden — I would give Biden more credit because he did some economic policies that were kind of redistributionist, pushing in new directions. I think a major problem of his is that, unlike Trump, he didn't come out every single day and talk about the things he was doing and promote those. But that's another question. It tells us that when the left or the center left is in power, it needs to push more in these directions. It needs to be more consequentially left populist to show people that it really matters, that it's going to make a difference, that we really stand for you. Let there be opposition. Let the others criticize us on whatever grounds. But we're going to show that we stand for something, and we're not just following public opinion and opinion polls.

00:45:33 Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. In a way, Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today's Far Right is also a manifesto for a left-wing populism. It's an important new book in a whole library of books about what's happening on the left and right of our populist age, by David Ost. David, thank you so much. Congratulations on the new book and for such a fascinating conversation, especially the stuff on Eastern Europe. So interesting. Thank you.

00:46:00 David Ost: Thank you so much. It was great talking with you, Andrew.