attacks on Conservatives | Michael Patrick Leahy

Author and Former NYU Professor Dr. Michael Rectenwald Talks About His New Book Thought Criminal and Cancel Culture

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Dr. Michael Rectenwald to the newsmakers line who is the author of 11 books, including Thought Criminal and Google Archipelago.

During the third hour, Rectenwald gave a synopsis of his new thriller Thought Criminal and his experience as a conservative professor. He explained how he was dismissed by NYU for being a free thinker and exposing social justice agendas on college campuses as it is now entirely impossible to be in academia unless you are a leftist.

Leahy: We are joined now on our newsmaker line by Dr. Professor Michael Rectenwald. He was formerly a professor of global liberal studies at NYU from 2008 to 2019. You can find him on Twitter at theAntiPCProf. He’s the author of Thought Criminal, Beyond Woke and Google Archipelago. Welcome, Dr. Rectenwald to the Tennessee Star Report.

Rectenwald: Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.

Leahy: So we have something in common. You are a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Pitt panther. You got a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. I went to high school in Jamestown, New York just about 100 miles north of Pittsburgh. And you probably spent a few summers up I’m guessing at the Chautauqua Institute or know of it, which was near my hometown.

Rectenwald: I’ve absolutely been there.

Leahy: Yep. Great place, although they are so PC these days it’s just unbelievable. You have done some great work. Tell us about your new book Thought Criminal.

Rectenwald: Well, Thought Criminal is a science fiction thriller set in the not-so-distant future in which there is a database called the collective mind and there is a virus that’s been released, the protagonist thinks directly by the state. And the nanobots and then our robot that connects the neurons of the neocortex to the collective mind done controls inputs and outputs therefore of thinking in general. So the idea is to stay free of the virus because we connect you to this database that controls your thoughts. And the hero is attempting to stay disconnected and to retain his own individuality.

Leahy: It sounds like it’s a continuation of your work on what’s really been happening. And it’s nonfiction. Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom. And then I love this one. Springtime for Snowflakes. ‘Social Justice’ and Its Postmodern Parentage. Springtime for Snowflakes, was that a take on the musical play The Producers?

Rectenwald: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, Springtime for Hitler is exactly where it came from. And I’m trying to talk about the totalitarian nature of the left and I think that’s become evident by now to just about everybody.

Carmichael: Who do you include on the left?

Rectenwald: Well, ironically I include of course the Democratic Party today who are basically overtly socialist, but also Big Tech ironically, and most of the political establishment in general. But also ironically a lot of corporations are now considered part of the left. And of course, the deep state, or if you will, the intelligence community and the major bureaucracy. So basically it’s the entire social and political establishment at this point.

Carmichael: Now, why do you think that Big Tech and big companies are members of the left?

Rectenwald: Well, I think it’s pretty obvious what they’re trying to do is establish a kind of oligarchy on top with the monopolies basically and nothing else in between monopolies. And the rest of the people effectively are under ‘socialism.’ So it’s a kind of corporate socialism that’s being established.

Carmichael: Well, let me approach it a little differently. Let me use Warren Buffett because Warren Buffett for years has said that he should pay more taxes.

Rectenwald: Right.

Carmichael: That’s what he said. And then when he has the right the opportunity to ride a large check and send it to the treasury he demurs. So why do you think Warren Buffett for years has said he wants to pay more taxes, but then never has? Why do you think he has said it for years?

Rectenwald: Well, he’s trying to suggest that the oligarchy is benevolent in that they are willing to extend their largesse to the public. But I don’t think that’s really the case. I think they’re very much set on establishing and keeping their oligarchical position and then effectively dueling out whatever they will to the state and then the state to the people.

So really there’s an ongoing concerted effort to destroy the middle class. There’s no question about it. This is why you have all this socialist ideology coming out of every institution. All of Academia. Almost the entire Democratic Party and Big Tech actually promoting socialism. It’s a very ironic circumstance.

Carmichael: I’m going to tell you what I think it is. I think it’s the multi-billionaires trying to protect their multi-billions, and they don’t see the Republican Party as the threat to taxing their wealth. They do see the Democrat Party as a threat so they’re going to throw in with the Democrat Party to help the Democrat Party do what you say and that is destroying the middle class and set themselves up to be on the inner circle of what then becomes a fascist form of government.

Rectenwald: That’s right. It’s fascism but to the extent that it’s the collusion between the state and these corporations or oligarchs. But international fascism if you will. The only difference is it’s not nationalists, it’s globalists.

Leahy: Professor Michael Rectenwald this is Michael Patrick Leahy again, of course, earlier was Crom Carmichael who’s in here as a co-host every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I want to follow up with your own career. You’ve got a fantastic academic background. You left NYU, New York University in 2019. Is it difficult now to continue in the academic world and exercise free thought?

Rectenwald: It’s absolutely impossible. You must be a leftist. There’s no way around it. You have to be a leftist and if you’re not a leftist and you come out basically like I did by criticizing social justice and wokeness, then you’re in trouble. And that’s exactly what happened to me. It’s almost impossible to be in Academia otherwise, you have to hide it. You’d have to completely defect and be a complete socially isolated person and never speak your views once.

Leahy: What’s your plan to combat that personally?

Carmichael: Let’s ask him what happened.

Leahy: What happened to you?

Rectenwald: Well, what happened to me is I started a Twitter account called @TheAntiPCProf and started tweeting criticisms of social justice. And then I was interviewed by the student newspaper where I came out publicly as myself. The Twitter account had been anonymous, and then within two days, I was forced into a paid leave of absence and condemned by a committee called the diversity equity and inclusion group.

Carmichael: Whoa.

Rectenwald: Yeah. And they basically totally trashed my academic career just for making criticisms of what was going on at campuses.

Leahy: So what’s your plan going forward to be an academic public intellectual and make a living in this very different and weird world we live in?

Rectenwald: I’ve created a situation in which I’m basically uncancellable. I write for the Mises Institute and I write books and I live as a public intellectual at this point. I am a completely intellectual entrepreneur. So I don’t rely on any of these institutions for my income because it’s impossible to be a freethinker within these institutions.

Carmichael: I would encourage you that if you are paid to do public speeches that you come up with a number of pseudonyms. (Laughter) You can become an army of 20. They can cancel one speaker and poop you could pop up as another one. (Laughs)

Leahy: Hey, here’s an open invitation when the coronavirus situation improves come on down to Nashville. We will welcome you with open arms and give you an opportunity to speak. And our listeners here on the Tennessee Star Report would be delighted to hear your argument.

Carmichael: And you’ll like Nashville a lot better than wherever you are.

Rectenwald: I like Nashville. My publisher is located in Nashville.

Leahy: Is that Post Hill Press?

Rectenwald: The New English Review Press.

Leahy: I didn’t know about them. We want to meet them. So thanks for letting us know that.

Rectenwald: Great.

Leahy: Professor Michael Rectenwald, thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to talking with you more.

Carmichael: And meeting him.

Leahy: And meeting you in person.

Rectenwald: Sounds great to me guys. That’s fantastic.

Listen to the full third hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Dr. Michael Rectenwald” by Dr. Michael Rectenwald.

Crom Carmichael: ‘A Free Society Cannot Stand for Long When People Are Treated Unequally’

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who commented on the recent banning of the conservative social media app Parler and explained the importance of equal treatment necessary to maintain a free society.

Leahy: We are joined on Monday here at 6:30 by our good friend the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Good morning, Crom.

Carmichael: Michael, good morning, sir.

Leahy: Well Crom, you and I have been friends for about 30 years. I have a sense that we are in the process of watching a huge change in this country.

Carmichael: I think you’re right. And you know, I want to go back to kind of some first principles that we’ve been with that we’ve talked about for quite a while. There are two in particular. One is equal treatment. Not just under the law but equal treatment as a general principle.

Leahy: Not just the law but let’s say business practices for instance or interacting with other individuals.

Carmichael: Yes. And if people are treated unequally for example, and this is an extreme example, but it’s an accurate example. In the days of slavery, Black people under the law were treated very unequally in the South. And then even after the Civil War was over in the South. The Jim Crow laws and all the other laws that were on the books treated people unequally.

And a free society cannot stand for long when people are treated unequally. And today what you have is you have a government. You have a Big Tech complex. You have colleges, universities, and K12 that are all now treating people very very unequally. And I’m sure you may have discussed it earlier this morning. I heard the last 20 minutes as I drove in that Parler has been shut down.

And it’s an effort by a number of companies that acted in concert and they couldn’t have possibly acted separately and done so in the manner that they did it and it swiftly as they did it. Parler has been essentially removed from the planet. And Amazon. I was getting little messages from Devin Nunes yesterday kind of giving the countdown. I assume that as of now Amazon has shut Parler off of its servers. And I have no idea if Parler still exists. But it was taken out of the Apple Store. It was taken out of Google’s store and so it’s been eliminated.

Leahy: So if you go to Parler.com right now. You can’t download the app from the Apple store right now, right? But if you go to Parler.com on the web.

Carmichael: You may be. But try and make the app work.

Leahy: Let me tell you what it says. But Parler.com right now says this site can’t be reached. I’ll do some research on that.

Carmichael: But again are you are aware of what I’m talking about?

Leahy: I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’m saying this is additional to what you’re talking about.

Carmichael: The Parler app was hosted on the Amazon Cloud and Amazon has shut them down. And Google shut them down. But the way Amazon shut him down is particularly interesting because they gave him 24 hours notice on a Saturday. Which meant that they had a Sunday. It was intentional. It was very intentional to do what they did.

Now in addition let’s just go through a few other stories to kind of add too much worse the point. That I’m trying to make here and that ABC News calls for the cleansing. That’s a quote. The cleansing of Trump supporters in the wake of what happened at the Capitol. Now, let’s review very quickly what happened at the Capitol. You had 300,000 people who went there to protest the election results without an investigation.

Leahy: On the mall.

Carmichael: On the mall. That’s what they did. Then many of them marched down to the Capitol. And protesters have marched to the Capitol countless. So they march to the Capitol and the Capitol Hill police were essentially not present.

Leahy: Not present.

Carmichael: They weren’t there. And by the way, the head of the Capitol police has resigned. The Sergeant at Arms of the House has resigned. The Sergeant Arms of the Senate has resigned. And by the way, you know who supervises the Capitol police?

Leahy: I would imagine it’s Speaker Pelosi.

Carmichael: Yes. And it’s as if this was a setup.

Leahy: As if.

Carmichael: To have the House actually invaded. And perhaps and we don’t know this but we have in history had many examples of one side-dressing up like the other side. In fact in our own country the Boston Tea Party. It was a great example of Americans dressing up as Indians or Native Americans. And then they destroyed the chests of tea in Boston Harbor. And then in Germany, they did the same thing. Hitler did the same thing.

Leahy: That was the example I was thinking. What came to mind but not exactly a parallel was the burning of the Reichstag.

Carmichael: There are just not two examples in history. There’s there would be numerous examples. And so and did did did some Trump supporters going to the Capitol? Yes, they did. Did they think it was funny? Probably. Where they wrong? Yes. Okay. However, if you’re a Trump supporter and you look at how the officials reacted to the burning of Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Portland, and then you looked at how everybody reacted. Including Speaker Pelosi who said people will do what they do.

That was her quote. People will do what they do when they were destroying the federal courthouse in Portland. But I don’t want want to dwell too much on that because there are some other things that are happening. Pelosi calls Trump unhinged and personally talks to the military chief in an attempt to thwart Trump’s power.

Leahy: And that by the way, those actions of her personally talking to the military chief could be considered unconstitutional.

Carmichael: Could be but it doesn’t matter. You have to have the power to do something. And if the power to do something doesn’t do something guess what? Something doesn’t happen. Trump passes and signs executive orders taking aim at China’s digital totalitarianism. So he has signed an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese apps including Alipay and WeChat Pay.

Leahy: WeChat Pay. Interesting.

Carmichael: WeChat Pay. But there are eight of them. It’ll be interesting to see if Biden when he becomes president, is inaugurated whether or not he undoes that executive order. Now, this went completely under the radar as far as I know, but the Communist Party of China has arrested 50 people, the opposition to the Communist Party. 50 people in Hong Kong. So the entire opposition of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong.

These are political people, have now been arrested by the Chinese Communist Party. The Catholic Church according to The Epoch Times has been infiltrated by globalists. You can put quotes around that. ‘The Chinese Communist Party.’ Let me go back to my point that if people are treated unequally and the Trump people are being treated almost as if they are the 50 people from Hong Kong.

And all of the organizations associated with the Trump people. Parler is it is probably the most prominent example, but I would imagine that what will happen in the next 12 months. And it may happen sooner rather than later, is it there will be language passed in Congress that that essentially stifles talk radio. Because all of the channels that the people who support the ideas of Trump, and that let me make something clear.

Trump was elected in part because of Obama. And Trump probably was re-elected. What’s interesting is Trump was ranked the most admired person in America followed by Michelle Obama. Biden with way down the list. Now you’d think that somebody who’s just won an election by millions of votes would be very high up on the list.

Leahy: Hmm. It’s kind of curious that he’s not.

Carmichael: But Biden is not he’s not admired. He’s not even admired by the people who voted for him. We’re in a very delicate situation. And when I say delicate I see this as a football game where all the referees have been told to throw flags on only one team.

Leahy: Yeah. That’s what it feels like.

Listen to the full second hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.