Diagnosis of the fear, anxiety and rage of americas angry white males. Hes interviewed by panama pandr of the end of man. Host congratulations on your book. I thought it was an interesting idea the first time you told me about it. It seems like theres a dirt out there and nobody has made sense of it so im glad that you took the time to do that. I would say one thing that strikes me as a journalist as you operate like a reporter. I would ask why do you do your books that way where you were out and about talking with different people . Guest i want sometimes to be out and about. I dont want to sit and manipulate numbers and i found these kind of interviews to be really revealing particularly with people that i dont particularly understand or get their worldview. I didnt start the book thinking i was going to do a whole lot of interviews with different groups. My first chapter on the extreme rightwing i figured they are so wired and have so many websites and chat rooms i would go on to these implicit to people talking but it occurred to me there would be like eight people saying all these horrible things and suddenly it dawned on me like theres eight people here come the four o,four of them ary graduate student in anthropology at want is a High School Kid goofing around i in the other oe is like me. As a journalist, you have to have sources that you can at least trust so i decided to go talk to them and as i began to do that research and working on a day began to realize i was going to want to talk to people from the other chapters as much as i could. Host lets talk about your relationship with rick because i think it gives a sense of who we are talking about, where are we in america and a little bit about your relationship with the people you are interviewing. Guest he is a guy that id met at onimet at one of the firi went to interview. When i told fred i was going to be doing work on the free market they said you are going to have to go to the deep south and i said i dont think so. It turns out i met him right outside of pennsylvania along the actual Mason Dixon Line today there are quite a large or of white supremacist extreme rightwing stronghold and it turns out a lot of suburban schools a lot of them are so stark for cash a lot of them read out their auditoriums or jims forgot shows on the weekend to. So basically i went to what is a high school if there are tables of gods. But as the walk and there are tables out on front prior to its public government has tried to take away your rights not that they are doing this and that so those were who i wanted to talk to. So i went to this one table and asked is this yours and about three or four standing around the table were talking and they looked at the type of suspiciously. No offense but you sound like what you are. You sound like a new york guy. I am a dork when jewfish sociologist. And of course im not going to take and accent. They said who are you and i said i am an academic doing research on these organizations and ideas to understand and i said heres what i am. Heres my job, i want to understand how you guys view the world. I want to stand your worldview. You will not have bids be if i will not convince you. Thats off the table. Whats on the table if i want to understand why you think the way you do. So, heres the thing that was interesting. I would say roughly half the guys that i approached them to talk to me. Basically i dont want to talk to you thin, and you will never understand. It was rather vague. Basically, here is basically my pitch. You are the forgotten america. You are the america on whose back this country was built. I will listen i promise. My job is to say as faithfully as i can to represent the world as you see it. So if you will trust that im willing to. Take a picture gets to where the views are with the age, race, class, like who are we talking about just for this part of . This is only one chapter of the book and we try to pick up a lot of different groups that i will describe it to you because when we met for the first and privately we addressetimeprivate next morning at a coffee shop. Hes about mid30s, he does have a job if he was working at a construction crew but here is the interesting thing. All who are on the extreme right with whom i spoke. They are lower middle class and some have their fathers were independent small shopkeepers. The independent farmers got close. They are downwardly mobile. They wont have the kind of job protection that their fathers have. A lot of them but i talked to were independent contract workers, but they were all downwardly mobile that was their background so he shows up if he decides hes going to be playful with beer that is one of the reasons i chose him to introduce the book. We are now in pennsylvania if there is a black tshirt with a considerate flag. So, i dont have to make them up. Host the figures also, he and his wife are trying to make it. He has two kids, five and seven at the time i interviewed him. Really im happy with the quality of schools. Wouldnt it be nice if you could exercise your right to free health care, we didnt have those conversations. We talked about what he suspected as he was growing up what he thought was going to be his did what he did and did and how he feels basically screwed by the system. Host things were taken that were rightfully his. Host that is the kind of connective tissue of the different factors so by both have some residents with yours. It has a lot of resident which the subtitle is the betrayal and they definitely feel like they have been. Host she visits different parts of america in a differente different ages of people and the through line is a similar one so what was promised to be what i was growing up the fathers of the 50s down to the sub could have thrown bottles for manhood and no easy thing to grasp onto. Before we get to the title lived clustered which is central to your book in the many ways that is uncomfortable is that its dealing with racism and sexism it is a bit frightening income based between two covers. How quickly before you get to the racism and sexism and how does that come up in the different conversations . It comes up in two ways. It comes up selfconsciously so either it is right there at the front because they want to shock me with a lot about obama. Its not obama specifically that it is generalized how they are invading and taking whats ours. Host my brother wasnt a working class neighborhood and i feel like its just kind of exploded. I have been herded into while it all of a sudden at the barbecue iits barbecuesits like where e from. Its all over new york. Guest i hung out at a firefighter bar of far from my house and it is as white as it gets and i heard that. I heard a little bit of that, but i havent gone back and listed. Host like really we are going to talk about this for how long. I can give you a really good example. If you remember during the primary season 2008 when clinton was running against obama for the democratic nomination. There was a guy at clintons rally im sorry Hillary Clintons rally said iron my shirt. Do you remember that . Now in 2009 asked the question how would you remember that . 10 percent hands. That was under the media radar so now imagine if at the obama rally somebody that said polish my shoes. Dont you think every media outlet . Even john mccain every single republican would say stop everything. That is wrong. You dont think it is dangerous . I think it just seems more acceptable. Overt racism prior to 2008 saying that we are over racism and that will go away but we were wrong about that and the resurgence overt to be coded. You are the president. That is behind the birther thing he is not one of us he is one of them. And some of this obama is not a black president he is africanamerican. One white and one african parent. This is the one drop rule. It is interesting it is far more casual partly because of the interpersonal and they have exwives that they hate are those that they hate even more but they also have women in their life getting ahead of the them. Theres a lot more from taking their job. So we will return to that subject but it is important to have this idea of aggrieved entitlement so what is that quick. Its a phrase i have come up with from the mens Rights Groups to the guys who beat up there partners or they kill them in some places and to the man on the extreme right. That is the notion of the aggrieved entitlement. And to tell you one story where i first encountered it. I was on a talk show there were angry white men and the victims of reverse discrimination. And actually the reverse discrimination they were qualified. So i was there opposite alongside jill gnosis nelson and the journalist and then to respond and the quote was the title of the show a black woman stole my job. Okay. I have one question for you. Actually it is one word i want to know about the word my. Where did you get the idea this is your job why is not a black woman got the job or a job . Without confronting that sense of entitlement to understand with gender inequality. This is a level playing field. That you think water is rushing a pill it is reverse discrimination. This is what grieves entitlement. And this is what we were told when we were little and this is what ive seen from monty python. And with the curtains. And they expect they were entitled to it. And now you have to play fair . So i felt like when i heard this and i began as we are doing research for the book i began to hear it in a lot of different venues so i try to use that as a frame because my argument in the book that they run to each other and this is the end of the era. With the end of male privilege. Thats it i kept hearing. And i was blind fight one blindsided by that. And with a madman. But the pace of this and then what happened. So the one thing i did reading your book trying to imagine and so i did find it hard and that makes total sense and then men have had wind at their back. And with tens of thousands of years. We have the advantage but they dont feel that way or a wind at their back. And then to get that but the only job that in my town was a walmart hostess. And i was having a hard time conceiving. There are two levels of answers and then to describe their experience. But the mistake i think and bed basically the 1970s and then to permeate that culture and then to look at every single Corporate Board and every university board. Men have all the power. And that women dont feel powerful and then to say we as a group to address the imbalance of power at the top. So with that aggregate power that men have all the power in the world. So therefore they must feel powerful and they say what you talking about . My kids boss me around. I am powerless but that analysis because men dont feel powerful. Because there is only one king of the hill. And then to be subservient and then to tell my male students they have all the power. That we are all little cogs in the wheel. So as a result that model did not apply. Then they sprung up in the seventies who said you dont feel powerful you are right lets get it back. You have another group who says you dont have powerful your right here is the power. That all the wall street yuppies eating up our breakfast with a power tie. Like its a fashion accessory. It is supposed to feel powerful but isnt. They are supposed to feel this way but they dont whos fault is that . And if that is whos fault is that . They had been sold a bill of goods but not by not than those lower than them. But that arrogance and cynical and then to go those with a common cause. It isnt Timothy Mcveigh but tom jones those who make common cause so Timothy Mcveigh the Oklahoma City bomber but tom jones the steinbeck novel about the Great Depression to study migrant on his way to california but it is impossible bureaucratic odds and then to finally realize for those to be a problem. And then goes off. You can see henry fonda sitting there by the candlelight. So as i say at the end that both Timothy Mcveigh and Nelson Mandela use the same palm as their motto, vindictive. And those common cause below them. Thomas frank whats the matter with kansas. But you are heeding the wrong people. With that Corporate Power to shift the job overseas that are completely forgotten about that you hate people below you the black people or the women. So with very often. So one of your most original factors in but we get it wrong to see the rampage shooter is for the School Shooters im sorry. Not those going postal that like columbine shooters. I am flattered that you think i have a new take on this. But i will tell you what i think we can do about it with the sociology about it with the School Shooters all the Research Done except those who have wrote a book that all the ways we have approach that has been on the psychology of the shooter. The extreme psychology that basically is like looking add painting it is guns and rockets and violent video games and any number of the causes and then the more social psychological that they were constantly beat up. So where is the entitlement in that situation quick. So that additional appoint one peace is that is not the profile of the shooter but also the schools. Sandy hook is a complete exception. It wasnt a kid. Thats right. A student wasnt coming into his school. But with Columbine School shootings have taken a dramatic turn you dont just go to school and kill as many as you can as people did before. That this is not suicide it is suicide by mass murder you take as many out as you can because they have done you wrong so their account is you have done is wrong. You have beaten us up, ignore this on ignored us, spread rumors, lied about us and that is the analogous version but they cannot take it anymore. So with that dynamic but they have different kinds of responses to it. They feel wrong and badly done. They feel ignored that i will show you and i will get even with you. There are boys that feel this all the time so why is it that School Shootings although horrifying and in some ways, a seemingly regular occurrence but 99 percent of the schools have not had one because there are so many other boys blowing up the galaxy on their computer . Because then you have to profile the schools in which they take place pickle they have certain characteristics the place where the jocks rule and an columbine one of the players parks his hummer in the 15 minute zone all day and never got a ticket because administration protected them and they rule the school and that Administration Faculty collude with them. Not that long ago in ohio these athletes if you remember what happened if you know what entitlement sounds like they raped a girl and filmed it one of it got worried and said we could get in trouble for this. They said dont worry the coach will take care of us and sure enough he immediately did they question what he was doing if she led them on. So how do they deal with this but a horrific response they re hired him. So now we are talking about the entire town that runs interference for the players. That is entitlement. This Football Player was right he was entitled and it all worked out as he expected it would. I understood that. That seems like its a different point because those jocks can also have the aggrieved entitlement. But then another places but thats like oldfashioned class. Let me Say Something about that thats really interesting. And they also feel they have aggrieved entitlement. And that highest guys on campus everybody is looking to get us. Who are the poor victims and the relationship between the shooters and the jocks that could have taken place with the entitlement of the jocks and what happens to those every guy just feels like he cannot make it. It didnt seem like you had to choose between psychology and sociology. And son have to interact. And then sacrifice one for the other. And for that context. For the individual behavior. A section of your book is that thorough take on the Mens Rights Movement because there is a lot of confusion you have a sense they are very angry with legitimate grievances and an old history to it. And its useful to put those strands together and separate them. May be able start with a history of the Mens Rights Movement so talk about the origins and where it comes from. The origins of the Mens Rights Movement in guys respond in the 1970s to the beginning of the womens Liberations Movement. There were a lot of men that what feminism basically challenged is whats called to be nice and pretty and quiet in women said that is not who we are and we dont want to sacrifice that nice and nurturing and all that stuff to lean in and loosen up. So the women in our lives where the feminist in critiquing our own behavior. So women have gotten a raw deal. So have we. You can never express your feelings or tell them that you love them. And all the relationships are restricted by fear so being a man sex to. And that is called the mens Liberation Movement from restrictive and constraining roles. It is sympathetic to feminism. But there was also since they became angry it is still a movement that is an impulse that sees itself as independent but not antifeminist. So what has emerged now as part of the Mens Rights Movement is basically the Mens Rights Movement takes us through the same thing often hear from a female students which is when i come to my classes but the history of the gender revolution they say feminism was your generations issue. We won. Thank you so much now we can do anything we want. The women say this. Now they havent been in the workplace yet and then they say you were right five years later. They think its over and we want now we can have as much sex as you want we can like sports. And the men have the same critique they think feminism has been so victorious that basically women have taken over. There are several ways the Mens Rights Movement raises the original claims of mens liberation for example around mental health. So before they get angry theres too much funding for Breast Cancer not enough for Prostate Cancer but they do say the definition of masculinit