Welcome to episode 2 of Liberty Report Extra.
This is an extra Liberty Report where I'm going to be speaking to a number of people
about a number of ideas that I think are interesting, that I think you'll find interesting, that
don't necessarily fit in with the format of the usual and normal Ron Paul Liberty Report.
You'll remember last week I spoke with Caleb Malpin, an interesting writer and intellectual.
Well this week I'm also speaking with someone I consider a very interesting writer and intellectual
and also like Caleb, non-controversy, but I'm talking about Michael Recton-Wald, a fascinating
guy I first got to know Michael at a Mises Institute conference a few years ago over
here in Lake Jackson and we've kept in touch and I've kept a monitor of what he's been
up to and he's done a couple of interesting things.
So Michael, welcome to the program, welcome to the Liberty Report Extra.
Good to be here Daniel, thanks for having me.
It's good to have you here.
Well let us know a little bit about yourself for people that may not know you as well
as I do.
Yeah sure, so you know as is pretty well known I was a professor at NYU for 11 years
and before that at Duke and Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve University.
I retired officially from NYU in 2019 after there was some controversy regarding
wokeness and the ideological police there and so since then I've been writing books
and doing speaking engagements.
I ran for president as a libertarian on the Libertarian Party.
I tried to win the nomination.
That was foiled, but I've been basically back at teaching, I can't say where
because they'll come from me.
So I am teaching again in a university and running as a pack, the ex-designist America pack.
So you're teaching underground.
What's interesting Michael, I mean you talked about it a lot in your presentation
for the Mises conference a few years ago but you know you've made a real journey from
the intellectual left and then you went through sort of the conservative right
and now you're sort of off on another plane.
I mean it's interesting for me because I sort of came from a similar milieu.
You had a BA in English, I think you earned a few years before me.
I got mine from UC Berkeley in 1988 and so we probably were in sort of
the same general intellectual ferment at the time studying English literature
with the prevailing schools of literary analysis that were a theory that was going on exactly
at the time and I think you were probably more political.
I was more punk rock.
I guess my rebellion at Berkeley was to become sort of a right-wing punk rock guy.
That's what I'm saying but I mean always a rebel but walk us a little bit about
what that milieu was like and how it affected you and how you came out of it.
Sure so I do recount all this very very thoroughly in my book Spring Come for Snowflakes,
Social Justice and its Post-Modern Parentage.
Yeah so I was an undergrad as you said in English literature and then I went into
advertising for like nine years and I did pretty well in that but I got burned out.
It was disgustingly repetitive and boring in a way although it was very good.
It was very remunerative.
I decided to go back to graduate school and I went to undergrad.
I finished in 83 by 93 as you probably can very well remember there was a major
change that happened in the institutions of higher education and particularly in English
departments which started to and had by the 90s very well and completely incorporated into
the curriculum what is known as broadly theory, literary and cultural studies,
literary and cultural theory.
I became very immersed in theory, inclusive of of course Marxist theory and there are many
versions thereof and post-modern theory, feminism, post-structuralism, post this, post that.
And I became pretty indoctrinated in a way I would say I was never completely I was always
pretty independently pretty independent thinker even as a Marxist.
I became a Marxist and wrote and this was not what I taught.
I didn't teach Marxism in the university.
I was not proselytizing from the lectern as it were.
I taught English studies as I taught my specialty is actually 19th century science and culture.
So that's what I wrote my dissertation and I had two books, three books on that area in that area
and one was just published in fact in December 2025.
So I still do this stuff but from a different standpoint of course I had you know pretty much
imbibed much of the premises and conclusions of Marxism and you know with a post-modernist twist
as it were kind of a post-modern post-modern inflection on it.
And then you know and I started becoming very disenchanted with the university
in the mid 10s 2015 2016 when the developments there were very foreboding as I saw it.
There was basically a policing of opinion going on.
It started to ramp up interestingly as Donald Trump emerged as a presidential candidate
against Hillary Clinton that seems like the campuses went into a total hysteria.
And anything that sounded at all remotely like Trump or criticisms of social justice sorts,
you know political correctness as it were was deemed you know right-wing and extremist.
So I made these critiques and the student newspaper had interviewed me
as I had started this Twitter account called anti-pcnyupro and I called myself the Deplorming
Professor and you know mostly out of you know shock value frankly it wasn't like a real
adhesion to Trump but I'd like to stick it to the Hillary Clinton people because I found her to
be utterly disgusting and I still do. So that caused you know a fallout for me at the university
and it wasn't you know it was almost instantaneous that I became at least a civil libertarian when
I recognized that without individual rights particularly the right of free speech and
supposed academic freedom on a campus which was it's a total misnomer there is no such thing.
I found myself you know totally divorcing the whole last in fact I renounced the
left all of it at once looting Marxist because I thought that I didn't want anything to do
with these people they were utterly censorious and you know what I saw as a budding totalitarians
frankly. Yes absolutely. I mean I recognized that I went back to grad school in 91 and I was
at the time doing international relations but it was the same thing I mean it was just assumed
that you were an adherent to all of the theories you know post-colonialism and all of these
sorts of things and if you were if you happen to not agree with that if you happen to dare
think about realism for example in world affairs which I've come to reject for a number of reasons
but you kept it quiet you kept it quiet and that's another thing that I was living in San Francisco
at the time and that's the other thing about living in San Francisco in the early 90s if you were
not if you did not buy into their indoctrination you kept your mouth shut because the open mind
was only open in one direction that's actually why I left San Francisco in the middle of my
fee of my master's thesis because I couldn't take it anymore. Yeah it's very tough to take I saw
graduate students when I was coming through as a graduate student at Ph.D. program in particular
Carnegie Mellon I saw students literally thrown out of the program for being what they call
Bright Lane if we're wanting to write about say property rights through lock-in ideas and
things like that they were dismissed and basically said no nobody wants to work with you you know as
a as a dissertation advisor so you you're gonna have to leave I've seen this I saw this numerous
times and then at NYU on hiring committees I saw as straight white males particularly were
put in one pile and then just you know basically discarded unless they could find somebody from
the other pile they would not go back to the white male pile I saw blatant discrimination and the
use of identity as a means to squelch thought and to squelch expression from other people
this what I call you know sort of their cry bullies this is kind of like snowflakes so
colitarianism yeah but it's more vicious I mean a snowflake it as a word it's such a dainty little
thing it's actually a very vicious thing it's a it's a throat to the knife kind of thing you
know and I remember in grad school there were a couple and you would find them through the
underground you know but I went with one of the other students we would pass around
national view like pornography like under the table you know I mean it was it was that
bad you could not let anyone see you read and of course now I think national review is discussing
but my friend actually ironically at the time he read national review and I forget the he was also
at the Chomsky so he really was interested in the whole perspective but the Chomsky stuff was
fine you could have it on your desk but the national review got to put her to the desk yeah
I call them snowflake totalitarians because they mobilize their so-called fragility in order
to squelch you're right true that's good that's a good image that's a gage well let's let's go into
the LP stuff because that was that was an interesting was an interesting choice that you made we don't
have to go into all the details of it because I do want to get to the main reason we're talking
which is now your new life as a lobbyist which is interesting but I just I'm wondering I mean
what was your biggest takeaway from the 24-ray so you are as I understand as if I recall you had
not been involved in politics you hadn't learned for office before and boom you jumped in off the deep
end what's your yeah I jumped in says I was asked by the Mises caucus to run by Michael Heiss and
I deliberated it and you know naturally not thinking of all the possible downsides to the
whole thing but it was an interesting experience and I found that the LP you know ended up to me to
be very disappointing in the sense that it resembles or at least they're trying to be like the major
parties in many ways in terms of you know I think was ledger domain in the final tally and
the final voting there was a lot of illegal from the standpoint of the LP's own rules activity going on
plus I think there was some Trump interloping into the whole thing he did come to the convention
and I believe his people also have something to do with what the final results because
they didn't want anybody that was deemed anything like so-called right wing running
and as a libertarian they did they wanted to foreclose any possibility yeah losing votes to the
libertarian party they wanted the naked guys that show up naked at the events right both
yeah yeah so I'm sorry go ahead I interrupted you yeah they courted the libertarian party as you
know Trump spoke at the convention I had a mishap there which was I won't go into but I didn't
know I was taking a hundred milligrams of THC I thought I was sitting out games
so called gummy gate and you know that took a while to live down for me frankly it wounded me
psychically because uh frankly that's just not who I am and I was uh I was very disturbed by the
whole thing um but I don't think that was finally the last the real thing because even
even after that I won the first five rounds of voting as you know they used the runoff thing where
you have to reach 50 percent yeah I won five times but I lost it in the end so uh because of the
one of the candidates threw his support to the other guy the second uh the guy that was
second place all the way through that ended my run I mean there was a lot of power politics
in the LP thing that year I mean uh and I think a lot of people uh uh they regret but a lot of
people are also angry about how they were uh many people got behind Trump but I mean Trump is no
dummy I you know I think obviously every day I think more and more that he's evil but he's
no dummy and I think people and he also there there have been libertarians or libertarian
oriented people uh certainly in his first administration I knew some of them uh they're
not there now uh but they were trying to gently from the inside you know push toward this which
is an admirable thing to do and but they were pushing this and they and I and I think they
did understand this is a body of voters that in terms of electoral politics everything else
stripped aside may not be uh something as as relevant it may not be a threat but when you
look at this in terms of swing votes if you look at uh libertarians who are not going naked to the
convention um you have a block of voters here and if you can tap into that if you can tap into
people who are interested in Monpaul uh that's going to be some votes that you need in critical
places so I think they certainly knew what they were doing when they courted these votes
yeah absolutely and I don't I don't fault the the party for wanting to try to
become you know to sort of infiltrate as it were the the Republican party and the Trump campaign to
push them towards libertarian ideas they did get Ross Albrecht reed that is very notable yeah um I
said that many times that that is something that is an accomplishment of uh Angela McCartle that
should stand in history I think absolutely she gets so yeah she deserves a great deal of credit
for that and although I don't think Ross ever gave it to her frankly publicly but uh I think she
deserves a great deal of credit for that but I think the whole thing was you know we don't we
I think a lot of people didn't know just the extent to which Trump was compromised shall we say
and yeah the extent to which he was a dissembler a con artist you know uh you know I think the
whole MAGA thing as it turns out was perhaps the largest con bait and switch routine ever played
on the American political uh political scenario yeah books will definitely be written about in
the future that's for sure I think no question about it um but you know we talked about the
sort of intellectual totalitarianism uh when it comes to uh you know when it comes to the
university and academia but you know the other them kind of the main reason I'd like to talk to you
today is that same kind of intellectual totalitarianism but in the political realm and I'm talking
really about the role of APAC the American Israel uh political action committee uh in our
political life you know this is something that I dealt with on Capitol Hill uh for a decade
plus when I worked with Dr. Paul um things were very different then people understood
that when it came to foreign policy uh APAC had a pretty strong stranglehold on things you know and
I went to many briefings Dr. Paul was on the international relations committee we went to
many briefings on bills uh in any time the bill was mentioned any time a bill was up for
discussion staff would have a meeting if it was about the Middle East we would be assured
by the senior staff the committee staff that this legislation was APAC approved
and so of course all the other staffers were happy because they didn't have to read the bill
and who it had a pre-approval people knew that things were being drafted by APAC uh it was
it was something that was understood but it was also something that with a few exceptions
and I'm thinking of people like Jim trafficant uh and there were a few others uh it just
wasn't mentioned certainly not in public at the time and I'm talking about the early 2000s
of course we can go back to they dare to speak out and that's a whole different conversation
but I'm talking about my experience there now behind closed doors for example when we had
the private lunches in Dr. Paul's office a lot of members would complain about it
they didn't like it they didn't like to stranglehold uh but a lot of them were afraid to do
anything about it so so that is what it felt like then at the time but also but none of the
world has changed and a lot of the things that were not said are being said so walk us through
this sort of uh intellectual transformation on your part and how you came to found this
anti-zionist political action committee yeah thank you um so I want to make it very clear that
this anti-zionist political action committee the whole thing really does extend from
my political outlook as a libertarian uh and that is to say I am a non-interventionist I
don't believe that the United States should be intervening in other wars and causing wars
and initiating wars especially especially at the behest of other countries like Israel
and you know I'm largely anti-statist I think the state should be reduced as much as possible
and um to see the state hijacked by this other entity you know by this one influence
APAT and there are 500 other organizations yes not detailed in Grant uh Grant Smith's book
Big Israel yeah he's great yeah he's very good and he shows how the you know so-called tax
deductible charity organizations actually funnel all this money into propaganda and west bank settlements
and things like this I just couldn't stand by and then with the with the genocide ongoing and
feeling utterly frustrated and having some audience largely accrued through you know my writings but
also then the part uh the the campaign I said that I'm in a position to actually try to do
something and I couldn't sit back and just watch um or just tweet or podcast and things like this I
there had to be some action and I thought what we need is an anti-designist party but then I know
left you know from my experience with the LP and everything that you see you know you can't
even get on a ballot in a lot of cases and uh you know RFK Jr couldn't even get off on a
ballot and then he couldn't get off the ballot they tried uh so they played the game as you know very
well the deck is totally stacked by these uh uniparty operatives they've got the state under
their control so they can eliminate third party candidates easily they block them out through all
kinds of mains petitions and so you know like entrance fees and everything else
exclusions from debates everything you can imagine so as you very well know all the
but I thought then well what is one way to do something and I thought what about a pack because
a pack can fund any candidate regardless of party especially if it's a non-connected pack
which we are as a pack is non-connected or unconnected to any party or candidate so we
can support anybody then I thought the interesting thing about the anti-zionist movement is that I
believe it's largely done in good faith but I think they have a lot of mistaken premises
for the most part that that is mostly coming from the left and progressives they think that
they can win by getting democrats to be republicans yeah even anti-zionist democrats
have to be republicans but the real bulwark of zionism as you very well know is the right wing
it's the republican party so they have to be defeated from venice and that's why we backed a
lot of republican candidates who are running against well-known zionists like for example
randy fine in florida oh yeah we're supporting his primary competitor and baker who is you
running to defeat him and this is going to be a republican district it doesn't matter
who wins whoever wins the republican nomination will be winning that seat so this is the approach
we that I've been taking is that how do we insert ourselves and start to get a shall we say an
anti-zionist a coalition nerveiac in congress so that they become disruptive and that disruption
becomes known and that becomes part part and parcel of our political discourse I wanted to
make anti-zionism he analyzed in a in our country and make zionism be uh the anathema that it should be
and um to talk about what we mean by zionism because that's a big that's a question that
always comes up what do you mean by zionism yeah and I the jews are right till a state
or they don't want to be able to have any philosophy they want to have is what I what I had believed
you know zionist that's your philosophy you're welcome to it you know absolutely but here's the
thing where we draw the line is that and I've defined zionism for our purposes as the you
know as the black male and bribery of the political class and the extortion of taxpayers
for the benefit of Israel that's it yeah well so that's what we oppose the purchase of our political
class you know it's interesting because um just a few years ago uh if you would say something
here's a headline we this was we did a show last week on the liberty report and this is a headline
that we that we both noticed um Trump says he will make a mutual decision with Netanyahu
on when to win the and when to end the iran war now if you had said maybe 10 even 10 years ago
maybe fewer that will Israel seems to be driving our foreign policy you would be you would be
accused of many many terrible things but now it's absolutely normalized no no i'm not going to go
to congress i'm going to go ahead and go to the head of this foreign country and we'll decide
together when we should end this war i mean it's it's it's a pretty radical transformation
yeah and you saw you know members of the administration like rubio coming out and saying the reason we
attacked Iran is because we knew israel was going to attack them and maybe we would retaliate against
up yeah so we're being led you know the tail is wagging the dog very hard as it were
whereas a pro-american uh secretary of state with someone like maybe like uh
james baker would have said okay but guess what not another penny guys and you're on your own
exactly that would have sent the message uh and there hasn't been anything go ahead i'm sorry
yeah that's all it is we just want to cut off the funding uh cut off the funding to this
criminal uh enterprise now i don't care what you think about israel i think rotting us to
pay for their uh military adventures and imperialist ambitions is completely
uh contradictory to u.s interests in terms of american citizens anyway yeah i mean i think the
um fits the m i c the military industrial contractors but it doesn't benefit uh it
doesn't benefit the american people yeah absolutely and i think you know i mean the world changed
in october 7th hamas military operation against israel and i think it um the reaction of israel
radicalized a lot of people um you know i had i had i had come to become critical
because i was dealing with middle i was very pro-israel in the 90s trust me very pro-israel
i was happy when nevin yahoo was elected uh you know this and that um but as i as i progressed
on the hill i met with rachel corey's family and in fact i refused to meet with her family at first
because i didn't want to get involved in any of that not my problem not our problem um but i
finally did meet with them and i finally i started coming to understand that there is an unhealthy
relationship here uh and it's uh it's you know sucking the future away at least from us economically
and morally and really the october 7th incident the reaction to it was radicalizing i think to a
lot of people that particularly i mean certainly me as a parent when i saw all of these kids
being slaughtered in gaza i myself and i know many many other people became much more radicalized
and much more angry uh not only in israel for doing this but for at the united states government
i'm more angry with our government for facilitating and forgiving them the money if you know the
guy's a dope addict uh and you hand him the syringe well you're you're as guilty as he is yes
they're enabling and they're complicit and the international law says that in effect if you
enable and fund known crimes against humanity then you are similarly guilty and i think
our whole congress minus a few exceptions are guilty and all the senate for the most part also
and uh but you know even from that standpoint we we wanted to make it very clear that while
we think it would be to the benefit of the whole world should the united state the couple
from israel and which supporting their crimes against humanity and belligerence across the
middle east that it would also benefit the united states citizens it it's it's good for the world and
it's good for us yeah and uh interestingly enough you know kind of america first nationalism is
actually better for the world as large yeah in that in that respect you know and one one could
argue um that if you are affectionate toward israel i think it's certainly better for israel
israel is in is in a psychotic state right now and partly is because the us has been that
pusher handing them a new syringe over and over whatever you guys do i got your back it's like a
kid who keeps stealing from the store and you keep covering for him he's going to steal bigger and
bigger things and that's what happened and what's happened and i would rather obviously have zero
intervention zero you know dealing other than trade but the fact of the matter is we've kept
supporting and back stopping this bad behavior to the point where not only are they hated in
their neighborhood they're hated universally the we were basically it's us and modi in india the only
two countries now uh who who are so so no country should want to be in a position where you are
universally hated that is not a good place to be no it's not good and i think it's bad for the
jewish people not only the israelis but also jewish people around the world because of
israel's conflation of anti zionism with anti semitism and that is definitely a strategic
ploy on their part to make all criticism of israel off limits uh with the proviso that if you do
criticize them you'll be called an anti semi and of course i have already been called this i'm
surprised michael but also the conflation with with uh jewish identity and zionism because we
we both know many people of jewish background who are the most ardent anti zionists and some of them
are our good friends uh and so sure and finkle stein uh eramate many yeah yeah i mean these are great
the most strident and articulate anti zionists are actually jewish and they're being put it out
there's of course organizations like the voice of rabbi this uh these acidic jews that are largely
anti zionists yes and they they bemoaned this this conflation and they see it as
endangering them yeah they don't want to be identified with bad actors who would yeah absolutely well
we're going to have to close out here michael i appreciate the great conversation let people
know if they're interested in as a pack or or you or your work let people know where they can
find you absolutely so as a pack website is az a dash pat dot com that's az a dash pat dot com
or just search as a pack az a pac on google we still come up they haven't well should i
surprised but and and my own work is largely on my sub stack now it's called rect r e k t on
sub stack so if you just search for sub stack rect r e k t you'll see my rigid most of my
new original writings and then uh there is my other website michael rectinwall dot com where all my
folks and a great majority of my essays and appearances and media coverage is sweet is there
okay great well michael thanks so much for taking the time to talk to liberty report extra
today and i also want to thank the viewers for tuning in uh please come back to the next episode
of liberty report extra