The State Between Us

Stepping away for a moment from his Novara Media series, Do Your Own Research , Richard Hames joins Fritz to explain the study of "Critical Collapsology" and what exactly 'collapse' really means. Richard talks about the limits of past studies of collapse, the problem of historical scales and comparisons (Indigenous America, the Roman Empire, the Bronze Age, etc.), and need to understand the "commu...

Fritz, still worried about what Tucker Carlson and JD Vance have in store for the post-MAGA right, uncovers the old WASP spiritual foundations of the American mythology around UFOs/UAPs/Flying Saucers, etc.. From a Swedish Psychic Astronaut in the 18th century, through the upper-class salons of the (2nd?) Theosophical Society in the 19th, and the fashy UFO cults of the early-20th, UFO-ology's orig...

From 1984 to '85, both sides of the Tug Fork river on the West Virginia / Kentucky border were occupied by private security forces, green berets, mercenaries, and other muscle for the bosses to terrorize striking coal miners under the UMWA. Historian Ashley Nguyen joins TSBU to explain how the tactics of class warfare that beset the Massey strikers were part of the larger global counterinsurgency...

Researcher Nick Graf joins The State Between Us to talk about the strangest May Day celebration the Midwestern United States ever had. In 1950, the American Legion organized a "high-effort LARP", transforming the small town of Mosinee, Wisconsin into the avant-garde of the "United Soviet States of America", complete with borscht, detention camps, and mock executions on "Red Square". *note: Nick po...

As Tucker Carlson splits the Right into weirder and more racist directions, TSBU examines a precedent to this contemporary moment occurring in the 1950s and '60s. William F. Buckley and his National Review cultivated a complex... 'frenemyship'?... with the hyper-conspiratorial N.A.M.-leader Robert Welch and his John Birch Society and the cringe-inducing fascist nerd, the classicist Revilo P. Olive...

25. Revenge of the WASP pt. 1: The Tucker Diaries Fritz fears the rise of the post-Trump right, arguing that a fashy new take on the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with some worrying and familiar characteristics is on the rise, and begins an investigation into the Revenge of the WASP with a look at Tucker Carlson, his notable rise on the MAGA right, his weirdo mystical racist beliefs, and how those...

[Trailer] Fritz analyzes a Trad-Cath classic, and is inspired to try his own hand at the genre. Written by a Carmelite nun in 1972, the novel AA-1025: The Memoirs of the Communist Infiltration into the Church , also known as The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle , pretends to be the diaries of a Soviet sleeper agent deep within the Catholic Hierarchy. The Agent, a mysterious orphan raised in Poland, hatc...

In TSBU's second edition of the News Rug, Fritz rips up the carpet on two recent U.S. press stories to track the long history of bad trouble underneath them: [2] trad-cath marine John W. Ripley's posthumous medal of honor taking us back to a militant traddy cult from Brazil: the infamous Tradition, Family, and Property, and [2] the news that American soldiers are being told that the war in Iran is...

Author and Journalist Jonathan M. Katz joins TSBU to turn the Smedley Dial up to 'Maximum Smedliness' by discussing Butler's formative role in the creation of the American Empire at the turn of the century, his transformation into an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist whistle-blower in the '20s and '30s, and the long shadow that Smedley casts over the USA and its subjects to this day. Like it? Shar...

Finally laying out the origins of the National Association of Manufacturers, TSBU looks at the tactics by Capital to shape the American political economy into a corporatist hell from George Pullman's dystopian town at the end of the 19th century, through the General Association of Manufacturer's open class warfare, to the bizarre religiously-tinged mass propaganda program of the NAM. Festoons abou...

Hooooo boy... Keith Allen Dennis drops by once more to help Fritz tell a darkly fantastical tale about a little weird looking dude who specialized in leaping out of planes to spread democracy via death squad, Major General John K. Singlaub, co-founder of the private intelligence clearinghouse and Contra fundraiser, Western Goals. From Operation Phoenix to Iran-Contra to the "renaissance" of the Wo...

Fritz takes a peek under the disgusting rug of the news and finds a long historical chain of apocalyptic lunatics and klansmen crawling underneath the recent shooting in Minnesota of Democratic state representatives. We get to know William Brahnam, his KKKompanions, Gordon and Freda Lindsay, and many more strangebad folks! Like it? Share it! Connect to The State Between Us at patreon.com/TheStateB...

For true fans of the over-a-decade-long Christian fiction series, Left Behind , and it's apocalypse addicted author, Tim LaHaye. Follow Timmy's political and cultural rise, evangelical influences, and the birth of the New Right's gray eminence, the Council for National Policy. Then, Fritz reviews Timothius' unfortunately impactful series of books and films. Also, some original Left Behind fan-fic...

Fritz digs even deeper into the cultural crater left by the Regnery family with the unending Fash Fic novel, Mister , written in 2009 by soon-to-be Alt-Right darling, the insufferable Alex Kurtagic. This 500-page self-published fashy rant is both pointless and terrible, and so is the perfect x-ray image of the 'New New Right' brain and its cringe-core obsessions. Like it? Share it! Connect to The...

Fritz, following some leads in episode 15, picks up a novel written by turn-of-the-century Secretary of State, John Hay: The Bread-winners (1884). The book follows Arthur Farnham, military-industrial exemplar of the 'American Race', as he woos the ladies and puts down labor rebellions led by conspiring socialist agitators. It's not as gross as fash fic, but it ain't great... Like it? Share it! Con...

Bursts of The Final Straw joins Fritz to reflect on the HBO miniseries created by David Simon ( Homicide , The Wire , etc.), The Plot Against America (2020), based closely on the novel of the same name by Phillip Roth in a counterfactual 1940s USA where the Nazi-loving aviator Charles Lindbergh becomes president. The series follows a middle-class Jewish family in Newark as they respond to the risi...

TSBU begins their study on the early-1980s information clearinghouse and private surveillance organization, Western Goals, focusing on two of its founders: the English scam-artist John Rees and martyred John Birch Society luminary, congressman Larry McDonald. The edgiest kids in the capitol, the threads of Western Goals weave their way from McCarthyists like Roy Cohn through Nazi intelligence agen...

TSBU breaks ground on its study of Americanism and American Fascism, and grips their stubborn roots in the 19th Century. From the Mexican-American war, through the 'Real' First Red Scare, to the creation of a Military/Industrial aristocracy, Fritz gets his timeline right by meandering around some books in front of a psychedelic camp fire. Features willful overproduction and special guests from the...

Mark Bray, historian and author of Translating Anarchy (2013), Antifa (2017), and the Anarchist Inquisition (2022), joins Fritz to critically examine the life and death of Spanish educator, revolutionary, and provocateur Francisco Ferrer (1859-1909) as covered in Mark's book, Anarchist Education and the Modern School (2018). They discuss some possible lessons for the contemporary movement from thi...

Keith Allen Dennis rejoins The State Between Us to offer a one-stop-shop for all things China Lobby, the original network of right-wing power players, spies, and criminal capitalists who positioned the "loss" of China to communism at the center of the new red scare in the USA that bookended the entire 'Cold War'. From the Kuomintang to the National Alliance, the China Lobby connects the worst of t...

The forgotten story of American Industry's post-war espionage, propaganda, and policy outfit, the American Security Council. Launched by Robert E. Wood and Hitler-loving Chicago Tribune owner, Robert McCormick, in the mid-'50s, the ASC was built on the work of Nazi spies, staffed with Special Agents of the FBI, and funded by - and serving - the USA's most powerful firms. From the China Lobby, thro...

Fritz meets with labor organizer, Eli, to discuss the early career and connections of Alt-Right co-founder and Regnery Dynasty byproduct, Richard Spencer, and how Gainesville organized to de-platform Dicky and his fashy friends at the University of Florida in 2017, the first real test for Spencer's circle following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Photo by Brian Bianco from Get...

TSBU takes on the Regnery family tree, the branches of which take us to the America First Committee, the US Conservative Revolution, and the absurd but influential Alt-Right. The Regneries rubbed shoulders with the Who's Who of the 20th century's most important fascists, reactionaries, Yale spies, and NAM big shots since breaking rich in Kansas City, and didn't stop when they made it to DC. Wilhel...

Medievalist Chase Padusniak joins TSBU to help Fritz briefly extend his vacation from contemporary horrors with 14th-century ones, and narrate the chaotic struggles of class formation in Norwich and the Low Countries through the strange lens of medieval mysticism. DMs take note! Lorestuff incoming... Stay tuned for Chase's upcoming podcast, Death Is a Photograph, coming soon! For Patrons, Chase wi...

In 1647, the urban dispossessed of Naples erupted into a revolutionary class war against their gangster aristocracy. Lead by a 'barefoot Moses', the destitute Masaniello, the brief but impactful revolt led to over a week of chaos that turned power in the Renaissance metropolis on its head, marking "the first time that the proletariat of any European city seized power and governed alone". Backgroun...