Sohrab Ahmari
speaker
699 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 10 Aug
Sohrab Ahmari’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think there are very sincere people into kind of what this called the new right, et cetera, who, who, who don't share that view and they don't want that.
But I just want to address the PMC thing a little bit because I sort of have the same reading that the Jeff Bezos types of the world used anger at the PMCs because the PMC are people who manage working class people in a way. The working class people don't come into contact with Bezos.
Right. And so, I mean, it's very telling that for about a decade, the way that the Bezos types of the world legitimated their power was through kind of woke language, DEI stuff. My favorite example, John, you probably know it, is there was this podcast called put out by REI, the outdoor sports chain, right?
Where the podcast, it was a company podcast and some lady came on and said, hello, my name is so-and-so. I'm proud to serve as your diversity and inclusion chief. I use she, her pronouns. And I just want to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people. By the way, the topic of this podcast is why you shouldn't join a labor union, right? Right.
I mean, the examples are legion and it just shows you that kind of the PMC left did do harm because it associated, it blended some legitimate economically redistributive policies that I would support with a bunch of nonsense that ordinary people like got really fed up with.
And it's amazing now that like the same Bezos who marched at the forefront of kind of the Black Lives Matter column five years ago is now issuing diktats to his newspaper that he owns, the Washington Post editorial page saying, you know, don't be so woke. Yeah. Isn't it telling that it's the same guy?
Yeah, I disagree. I think that for the most part, it was about making the C-suite, making it more diverse, but not really changing the power dynamics between the C-suite and the assetless majority. That's my point. My point is- I get that, but I just put a more negative spin on it even.
I would just put the emphasis on class, genuinely, as opposed to these other identitarian dimensions, because in a very real way, lots of those kind of DEI, woke cultures, practices, et cetera, cashed out as, you know, hey, you haven't gotten a meaningful raise in nearly two generations. You know, your healthcare is lousy, et cetera, but take solace. Your boss is a you know, disabled trans woman.
I see it as much more, I think, cynical than Adam does. But I think if we just do a, focus it on class, because by the way, all these identitarian divisions are management strategies as well. You can divide the working class and they do it all the time. So I'm, you know, like, again, I'm of the center, right?
But when I listened to Senator Sanders, especially the Senator Sanders of circa 2015, 16, I'm like, oh my God, I really, This was good. And what a tragedy it was that, for example, he said – he called for all sorts of antitrust measures and Hillary Clinton said, yeah, but would breaking up the banks end systemic racism? No, it doesn't, but that's not the problem it's supposed to address.
And it was telling that she –
No, I agree with that, and I worry about that. Listen, you said something, and I think Adam agreed, that fundamentally the New Deal order was a conservative project because it was an attempt to bring the turbulent market and all the disruption it can bring under some degree of political control, strike a different bargain between the asset-less majority and the asset-rich few.
As Roosevelt himself said, if you would preserve reform, meaning if you don't want a revolutionary scenario, give in to reform. So I think my hope in the long term to try to think dialectically is if these guys want to return to the power relations that prevailed in the 1890s, let's say, then what you're going to have potentially is the kind of labor industrial relations that you had in the 1890.
Adam already hinted at this as well. You had mass strikes. You had violent uprisings at factories and mines and so on and railroads. Is it possible that we're heading into several decades where we're going to see things like that between, for example, masses of people who've become kind of turned into not even a proletariat but a lumpenproletariat as a result of automation being ruthlessly
push through without political pushback? And is it possible that down the road that will lead to some new labor settlement, some new, whatever the true new deal of the 21st century might be? But as much as possible, I'd like to personally, I'd like to avoid upheaval, right? I don't want to live through the early 20th century.
No, I share your alarm at what the sort of techno billionaires are up to. And I'm about as pessimistic as you put it. And what I put my hope in is democracy and democracy, not just as going to the- I've got some bad news, Sora. No, no, not just going to the ballot. Democracy, not as just going to the ballot box every few years, but the idea that
technology, economy, all these things are not, they shouldn't just be sort of left to their own devices and we say, well, inevitably it's gonna lead us in this or that direction, but no, people should have political input in how AI is rolled out, how it affects labor markets, how, you know, the shape that the market takes and so on.
Right. That's what I'm saying is, is there going to be, I think, just logically speaking, there's going to be pushback. And again, the only question is, is it, you know, ferocious upheaval of the kind that I think none of us would like, or will there a kind of wisdom reign like it did in the 1930s when elites
came to realize that for the sake of social order, they need to give more, bottom line, to give more and not just fuck one way. That's my hope.
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