Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison – Is the World Headed Toward ‘Mutual Ruin’?

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This episode was originally recorded for Danny and Derek's podcast American Prestige and cross posted here. Subscribe to American Prestige at https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/join

Order Glenn's new book, Self-Censorship, here or where you get your books:

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Video Links

0:00 The origins of Self-Censorship

4:11 Black and conservative in Reagan’s America

8:30 The social science hall of fame

12:45 Jews, assimilation, and the quantitative revolution

17:56 Human universalism vs. ethno-national particularity

21:42 Historicizing “the Jew”

23:47 Danny: Larry Summers can’t see outside his own neoliberal paradigm

27:50 Are we entering a period of, as Marx wrote, “mutual ruin”?

30:46 Is capitalism leading us toward nuclear war?

37:18 What the Manhattan Institute incident taught Glenn about his own book

42:02 Glenn: “I’m rethinking everything”

46:40 Is the right reverting to a pre-New Deal political paradigm?

51:37 Is Israel a reversion to an Early Modern model of nation-building?

58:07 American Jews’s role in Israel’s creation and perpetuation

1:03:04 Why Glenn previously censored himself on Gaza

1:09:30 Glenn: So far, I’m disappointed in Trump

Recorded August 6, 2025

Links and Readings

Danny and Derek’s podcast, American Prestige

Glenn’s new book, Self-Censorship

John Murray Cuddihy’s book, The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity

Corey Robin’s book, The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

Glenn’s City Journal essay, “Clarence Thomas and Me”

Seth Schwartz’s book, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhamad

Omar El Akkad’s book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Glenn’s post, “I Was Fired by the Manhattan Institute. Here’s Why.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch’s book, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire

Avi Shlaim’s book, Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine

Peter Beinart’s book, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

Glenn’s conversation with Beinart

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