Know Your Enemy
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From Armageddon to Zionism — More Listener Questions
🕑 Added 2025-08-11 10:30:02 +0000 UTCOur mailbag runneth over! Unsurprisingly, we received so many excellent questions from subscribers for our most recent episode that we decided to answer even more of them. Once again religion seemed to be on the minds of listeners, and we take up charismatic Christians and the evolution of both the religious right and the Republican Party, as well as the role of Christian Zionism in U.S. policy toward Israel. But that's not all: other topics include leftist theory bros; Roy Cohn, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the politics of sexual blackmail; Gore Vidal at 100, and more.
Sources:
Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)
Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation (2023)
Wilson Carey McWilliams, "The Bible in the American Political Tradition," in Redeeming Democracy in America, ed. Patrick Deneen & Susan McWilliams (2011)
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem (1992)
Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, (1938)
Phil Christman, Why Christians Should Be Leftists (2025)
Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (2025)
Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)
Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)
Gore Vidal, United States: Essays 1952-1992 (1993)
Comments
Kristen Holmquist
I’m introducing a friend to KYE and thought he should start with Matt and Sam’s favorite episodes. And now I don’t remember which all those were! I remember Joan Didion - if folks are still around on here and remember, could you help a girl out? Thank you!!
Henry Bachofer
Very interesting conversation — the notion that if you want to understand voter behavior just maybe you should spend some time talking with voters and letting them talk to you—not just polling them: shocking! Robert Lane did something more than 60 years ago although with fewer subjects and in greater depth. The result was his Political Ideology—still well worth reading with insights into our current political situation.
DC
Alt episode title: Don't Stop Believing
Harry Brussel
Thanks for the reading list, Sam! Will pick up at least a few of them!
Know Your Enemy
Lol @ “admitted,” like it’s venereal disease. I haven’t followed the case closely, but yes, Brown can’t be denigrated enough imo. -Sam
Know Your Enemy
Lol
pixlaw
Sam - since you admitted that you’re an alum of Brown (the most denigrated Ivy short of Cornell), I wonder what you think of that school's recent cave to the Trumpistas. They only agreed to pay $50 mill, but still their capitulation struck many alums as cowardly. C.f. Will Bunch’s denunciation in the Philly Inquirer.
ash
“theory bros, screw ‘em!” unfortunately i have 😣
Will Weinert
If anyone was interested by Sam’s part about Benjamin and Scholem, Robert Alter wrote a great little book called Necessary Angels about their relationship to Franz Kafka.
Zachary Roussie
Very happy to have gotten a response on my question from you boys. As always, I found it well-considered and insightful.
