Going Underground Hosted by Afshin Rattansi
Oct 3, 2026 · 28 min · 8 segments
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to former State Department & Defense Department official Matthew Hoh, who resigned over the Afghanistan war. He discusses the significance of the 20th…
Matthew HohGuest
Afshin RattansiHost
I mean, I wish I could be that optimistic in one sense, because, yes, people have abandoned so-called legacy media.
But then how do you explain no big U.S. outcry from the people in the United States about the war on Iran? Millions have been displaced.
And what the American empire learned and what the elites have done, the establishment does, we have to recall that these are, always remember, these are living organisms.
So from the success of the popular movements of people on the street, In the 1960s and 70s for Vietnam, for civil rights, for women's rights, for the environment, getting into the 1980s for the nuclear movement, the establishment, the elites, the empire, they learned that we have to insulate power from that popular pressure.
So one of the things they do in the United States, of course, is we basically are a political system of legalized bribery.
But certainly you could see starting in the 1980s, this evolution, this protection of the political establishment through money, through campaign finance, as it's called.
I think that's what we saw really come to a head in 2020, Afshin, with the movement in support of black lives in the United States, where we had more than 20 million people on the streets, largest popular mobilization, most amount of people on the streets in American history.
But as well as, too, you have an American public that is burdened by their own problems.
You have an American public, an American population where more than 60% of us, 65% in some polls, are living paycheck to paycheck.
And so I think that frustration, that exhaustion, that getting out on the streets and protesting for black lives and then for Gaza and seeing nothing change.
I mean, I wish I could be that optimistic in one sense, because, yes, people have abandoned so-called legacy media.
But then how do you explain no big U.S. outcry from the people in the United States about the war on Iran? Millions have been displaced.
And what the American empire learned and what the elites have done, the establishment does, we have to recall that these are, always remember, these are living organisms.
So from the success of the popular movements of people on the street, In the 1960s and 70s for Vietnam, for civil rights, for women's rights, for the environment, getting into the 1980s for the nuclear movement, the establishment, the elites, the empire, they learned that we have to insulate power from that popular pressure.
So one of the things they do in the United States, of course, is we basically are a political system of legalized bribery.
But certainly you could see starting in the 1980s, this evolution, this protection of the political establishment through money, through campaign finance, as it's called.
I think that's what we saw really come to a head in 2020, Afshin, with the movement in support of black lives in the United States, where we had more than 20 million people on the streets, largest popular mobilization, most amount of people on the streets in American history.
But as well as, too, you have an American public that is burdened by their own problems.
You have an American public, an American population where more than 60% of us, 65% in some polls, are living paycheck to paycheck.
And so I think that frustration, that exhaustion, that getting out on the streets and protesting for black lives and then for Gaza and seeing nothing change.
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