Advertise on podcast: Dispatches from the Race War Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit timjacobwise.substack.com In this commentary, I challenge certain claims circulating on social media from white left commentators that Bernie Sanders’s support for Dem candidates was the key to their midterm victories. In House races, he backed mostly safe Dem candidates, so his endorsements were largely irrelevant; and in Senate races, his impact was literally zero, as I show w…

The anti-Blackness of the Washington Post is stunning. Today, an interactive graphic on the election discussed the various “drivers” of the Dems' midterm victory and credited literally every possible demographic group and cause except Black voters, even though without the Black vote, the Senate would not have flipped. They credited shifts among Latinos, which were certainly important in Texas but irrelevant in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, or Michigan, where Black votes were crucial for wresting control of the Senate from GOP hands. They credited “low-income counties” for shifting toward the Dems while ignoring that most of those were in the South, and that they still voted mostly for Republicans—meaning that they couldn’t, by definition, be responsible for Democratic victories! And to the extent they shifted, at the county level, those shifts were not among whites, primarily, but were the result of Black voters turning out in places like the Mississippi Delta and Alabama's rural Black Belt, because unlike in a presidential election year, when Black voters know their votes won’t matter as much thanks to the Electoral College, in a midterm, every vote counts. In other words, here too, the real story is more about Black voters than “low-income county voters” in the abstract. They then credit younger voters for shifting toward Dems, while ignoring that younger Black voters shifted back massively to Dems despite much talk after 2024 that Gen Z Black folks were drifting away from the Democrats and were MAGA curious. The fact that younger Black folks were the most Democratic voters this time would be, you would think, a story, but apparently not. The Post then looks at particular states like Michigan and South Carolina, and in both cases ignores the criticality of the Black vote to the Democrats' Senate wins there, despite the fact that in both cases, whites overwhelmingly voted for the Republican candidates. The unwillingness to give credit where it is due, and to instead credit the slightest movement by rural whites because they got bitten by diesel prices or movement back to Dems by Latinos because they were horrified at the sight of their brothers and sisters getting snatched off the street and finally realized that Trump hates them too, is offensive and unacceptable. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In this commentary, I discuss Donald Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller to Chief of Staff—what it means and why it matters. First, make no mistake: Miller is a racist and always has been. He fundamentally believes that biology determines the destiny of nations; thus, if you “import the third world,” you “become the third world,” because people in poor countries are inherently inferior—which is, indeed, why their nations are poor in the first place. I explain the absurdity of this racist worldview, with reference to prior advanced African civilizations during a time when Europe was backward, prior to the impact of imperialism, colonialism and the slave trade. I also note the way white ethnic groups have been scapegoated and discussed in the same way in previous eras, and with similar dishonesty. I also point out the criminality and misconduct of native-born, rich, white Americans as evidence that fraud and deviance—which Miller thinks are unique tendencies of immigrants of color—are anything but. I end the commentary with my song, “The Ballad of Stephen Miller,” which I wrote the lyrics to last year. The instrumentation is AI (sorry, I know), but if you or anyone you know would like to arrange it with live instrumentation, let me know. I would love that, as I detest AI music and have no intention of marketing this song until and unless I can get it recorded by an actual musician. Here are the lyrics The Ballad of Stephen Miller (Lyrics, Tim Wise) He’s a tiny little balding man/ who bathes in white resentment. Listening to brown folks cry/ is what brings him contentment. The sound of jackboots thrills him/ when they’re kicking in the door. of some immigrant family/ as he screams and shouts for more. He calls opponents commies/ agitators, Antifa. His face would make a pacifist/ wanna punch him in the jaw. He’s Stephen Miller, and he don’t care/ Due process don’t apply if your skin ain't fair. Except for Katie, her skin ain’t light/ I guess they only do it in the dead of night. He’s Stephen Miller, and one day soon/ He’ll be locked up in a tiny little room. Cuz change is coming, it’s almost time/ And Stephen’s gonna pay for all his crimes. People ask, “How’d he get like this?”/ What happened to this guy? To make him such an a*****e/ who laughs when people die. But maybe he was always/ this little fascist freak… who gets his kicks inflicting pain/ on the poor, the brown, the weak. Or maybe he was picked on/ at Santa Monica High… But if he was/ I think that we can all imagine why. He’s Stephen Miller, and he don’t care/ Due process don’t apply if your skin ain't fair. Except for Katie, her skin ain’t light/ I guess they only do it in the dead of night. He’s Stephen Miller, and one day soon/ He’ll be locked up in a tiny little room. Cuz change is coming, it’s almost time/ And Stephen’s gonna pay for all his crimes. So if you see him on the TV/ Spouting nonsense on the screen. And lowering his voice two octaves/ To make him seem more mean. Well, don’t despair and don’t you give up/ Cuz our resistance it don’t crack. And unlike Stephen’s hairline/ We can get our country back. And when we finally crush these racists/ When we run em out of town. Stephen Miller’s gonna learn/ That karma comes around. He’s Stephen Miller, and he don’t care/ Due process don’t apply if your skin ain't fair. Except for Katie, her skin ain’t light/ I guess they only do it in the dead of night. He’s Stephen Miller, and one day soon/ He’ll be locked up in a tiny little room. Cuz change is coming, it’s almost time/ And Stephen’s gonna pay for all his crimes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In the wake of the election, many are analyzing the Democratic Party’s win as an uprising around affordability and economic precarity. While true, this take overlooks the central role played by voters of color, especially Black voters, without whom the Dems would not have flipped the Senate or House. In Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi (where it appears Scott Colom will win), white voters supported the Republican candidates, and only Black and Latino voters delivered Democratic victories. Even the white voters who were most struggling economically voted MAGA. This suggests that if we want to build a permanent pro-democracy movement, we have to give credit where credit is due. Black and brown folks are out here saving America from most white people. And for those whites who see things clearly, this statement should not offend you; it should clarify who your natural allies are and inspire you to double down on racial justice efforts and efforts to challenge the manipulations of elites who seek to convince our white brothers and sisters that their enemies are Black and brown while their friends are rich white people. The election also demonstrates the regional importance of the South to any pro-democracy efforts and should put to bed all talk of “letting the South go” or writing it off as hopelessly reactionary. With more than half of Black folks living in the South, and many states in the South having a third or more Black voters, the Democrats should invest substantial money and time in cultivating candidates in the region and changing the electoral map, for good. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit timjacobwise.substack.com In this commentary, I respond to the voices on social media (sadly, there are many of them) who are blaming DEI for the Learjet tragedy in Florida on Sunday. Because the co-pilot of the private plane was a 20-year-old woman (albeit with 1300 hours in the air and three years of experience), some have suggested she was to blame and unqualified to be in th…

When Rep. Haley Stevens and her Jewish fiancé endorsed Mike Rogers for U.S. Senate over Abdul El-Sayed, they claimed it was because El-Sayed’s views on Israel were antisemitic—this, despite those views amounting to a critique of ethno-religious nationalism on principle, rather than a critique of Jews or Judaism in particular. And yet, it turns out that Rogers has, on his staff, two staffers who have made or endorsed blatantly anti-Jewish remarks, which apparently are of no concern to Stevens or her boyfriend. To wit, one staffer who has said Jews should be sent to North Korea, and another who defended the Young Republican group chat from earlier in the year, in which one member said, “I love Hitler.” To endorse a candidate who keeps people like this on his payroll — and brings in Sen. Bernie Moreno to speak for him, who then calls for a Jesus-centric religious test for office (which Jews, of course, would also fail, along with Al-Sayed) — is proof that Stevens, her fiancé, and other Jews in Michigan who plan to vote for Rogers are more concerned with criticism of Israel than actual anti-Jewish bigotry. In this commentary, I discuss the historical and contemporary absurdity of this, and the degree of self-hatred it must take for we in the Jewish community to make common cause with people who so detest Jews, so long as they support Israel. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In this commentary — honestly, it’s a rant, but well-deserved and worth a listen!— I respond to the announcement that Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race, all because of El-Sayed’s supposedly “hateful” views on Israel. To put it mildly, Stevens is full of s**t about El-Sayed, but more importantly, her decision only feeds antisemitism by suggesting that some politicians place Israel above the interests of Americans, and that people like Stevens (who is engaged to a Jewish man and is considering converting) are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S. As I explain, being willing to sacrifice a Senate seat to the GOP, thereby letting the Republicans possibly retain control of that chamber and further empowering Trump, is fundamentally irresponsible and will harm millions of people. But apparently, for some, Israel’s feelings matter more than Black lives, immigrant lives, the lives of America’s poor and working class, the rights of women and queer folks, etc. It’s pathetic. And for Jews to applaud her, as some will, only goes to show how willing some of us are to shred whatever universalistic, pluralistic, social justice values our people developed in the diaspora and trade them in for the particularistic, imperialistic, chauvinistic, and supremacist values of our ancient scriptures—the values currently being lived in Israel. Zionism has strangled our humanistic diasporan values to death, leaving nothing but evil in their place. And the more we accept that, the more we invite the very antisemitism we swear we need Israel to protect us from. It is time to tell Gentiles like Haley Stevens to stop “helping us.” And it is time for us to say to ourselves, enough of this poisonous, disastrous, racist, and colonialist project. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

It’s that time again—election time! A time when normal people go to the polls and vote for the candidates they feel will do the most good for the most people, because those voters realize: a) that’s all elections can ever really deliver, and b) that’s OK, because c) normal people are willing to just suck it up and do that, and then get back to work the other 364 days a year fighting for the things they believe in at the local, state, and national level, and hoping that in doing so, they might influence policymakers in some way, or build people power to such a degree as to force those policymakers to do what one wishes. But sadly, lots of people aren’t normal at all. And so they think you should abstain from voting unless a candidate is morally perfect on the issues that concern you—especially, say, their willingness to condemn Zionism and support an end to all aid to Israel (positions I support, by the way, but that’s not the point here). To these folks, voting for Democrats who aren’t clearly anti-Zionist is to be complicit in genocide, no less so than voting for Republicans, and so abstention is the only appropriate stance for someone on the left. In this commentary, I explain why this is an intellectually and morally bankrupt argument with no logic behind it. It is an argument made by unserious people, with a rudimentary understanding of politics, ethics, or strategic decision-making. Or by people who are more concerned with posing as radicals and revolutionaries, and pretending their hands are clean—when they are definitely f*****g not—than really changing anything on the ground, for Palestinians or anyone else. In fact, to the extent both candidates in a race are insufficiently anti-Israel, abstention, to the extent it might well result in right-wing, fascist candidates winning elections they otherwise would have lost, is objectively immoral when compared to voting, simply because on other issues, those candidates will do serious harm that the Democrat would not have done had they won. And yes, other issues matter beyond those in Palestine. And no, it is not racist or pro-genocide to say that. But it is racist to deny it, actually, given the folks of color in the US and around the world, who are objectively made worse off every time a MAGA Republican wins, like the quarter-million dead because USAID was dismantled by DOGE, which really wouldn’t have happened if Kamala Harris had won. Or the Black folks whose voting power was eviscerated by the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. But who cares about voting rights when people are dying, amirite? The f**k outta here. Anyway, give it a listen, and get pissed if you want. I don’t much care. If it bothers you, then you probably needed the lecture. Unfollow, unsubscribe, keep it moving if it makes you feel better. Having searched every drawer in my house in the hopes of discovering even a single f**k I might give, I have, sadly, failed to find one, and thus… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In this commentary, I respond to RFK Jr.’s recent anti-Arab rant in Michigan, in which he claimed that 500 million Arabs worldwide contribute basically nothing to the world. It was a shockingly racist and ignorant diatribe, made all the worse by the virtual silence of the media and mainstream commentators in calling it out. The fact that nothing of this nature could be said about any other group without it leading to calls for the speaker to be fired should be obvious. But anti-Arab bigotry, and the implicit Islamophobia that runs alongside it, is apparently still acceptable, even as mere condemnations of the government of the state of Israel result in charges of antisemitism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit timjacobwise.substack.com In this commentary, I analyze the “male loneliness epidemic” and place it alongside the male backlash to feminism and women’s growing power in the labor market, politics, and society. In all these cases, what men are complaining about is their inability to fulfill the expectations—to women’s attention and bodies, and to institutional dominance over wome…

In this commentary, I remind listeners of the sordid history of Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for Governor in Ohio. From ripping off investors in a biotech scam to now lying about his opponent, Amy Acton, in his campaign for the state’s highest office, Vivek has no shame. He has mocked her for talking about being sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, and now has platformed her mother—who stood by the rapist after he was indicted—as she tells the people of Ohio not to vote for her daughter because Acton, presumably, is dishonest and of bad character. Ironically, Vivek will likely be undone, not by his venality and cruelty—MAGA voters have no problem with that, obviously—but by their racism, which will probably keep them from voting for a brown-skinned Hindu like Vivek for Governor. He will likely be defeated by the very forces he joined when he cast his lot with the right. Never before have I been rooting so hard for a little racism to triumph, just this once. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In this commentary, I point out the inconsistency of those who condemn anti-poverty programs for supposedly promoting “dependence” on government. The fact is, these folks don’t dislike dependence at all. They love it, so long as it’s dependence on men under patriarchy, or the church, whose charity can be dispensed under threat of withdrawal unless one meets its strict moral code. Ultimately, the right loves for women, in particular, to be dependent on men because it reinforces male dominance. This is why they tell poor women that instead of receiving “welfare,” they should just “get married” as a way to overcome their impoverishment. In this scenario, the women would still be “dependent,” as the right would prefer they stay home with their children rather than work—but at least they would be dependent on a male authority figure. So long as the dependence being promoted serves the proper ideological function (patriarchal power), the right will endorse and promote it. But if that dependence might dovetail with an ideological function it rejects, such as the promotion of collective responsibility for one another, as with a public anti-poverty program, the same people will rail against it for its dependency-promoting features, as if dependency itself were evidence of a character flaw! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

In this commentary, I respond to JD Vance’s recent attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, in which he accused the Senate candidate of being insufficiently “grateful” for all America had “given him,” even though El-Sayed has repeatedly done just that in interviews and campaign speeches. The demand for gratitude, especially given the actual record, suggests his saying it is about something else: namely, a dog whistle to remind his audiences of El-Sayed’s “otherness” as a Muslim and child of an immigrant. It’s a pattern with Vance. He has also used the “lack of gratitude” charge with others in the past, but only with people of color: Ilhan Omar, Kamala Harris, Zohran Mamdani, Joy Reid, and now El-Sayed. The demand for these individuals to express gratitude in ways he never demands of white politicians — even quite liberal ones — or white people with recent immigration histories, suggests a belief that people of color owe something to white people for making their lives better—that they should be grateful to us, because without us they would be living in worse conditions—a racist belief by definition because it ignores not only the way that white countries exploited countries of color, impoverishing them in the process but also how people of color helped build this country into what it is, so that whatever greatness we have attained is just as much theirs as ours anyway. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit timjacobwise.substack.com In this commentary, I respond to JD Vance’s remarks in Michigan this weekend, as he campaigned for Republican candidates, including Mike Rogers in his race against Abdul El-Sayed. In his remarks, Vance accused “the far-left” of advocating for and then implementing “defund the police,” and pushing slogans like “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” or “Aboli…

Although rape culture is bigger than fraternities, and indeed far larger than a problem of colleges and universities, with fraternity men three times more likely to commit sexual assault than men who aren’t in frats, it seems obvious that for guys, Greek life is a major part of the problem. In this commentary, I explain why banning frats is a valuable step, not for the men who are the most likely to be predators — they will be dangerous with or without them, and will need to be protected against in other ways — but for men who would likely never engage in sexual assault, but for the toxic environment of fraternities and the sick pressures they create for men to perform masculinity for the approval of other men. Just as particular environmental conditions and contexts explain other forms of criminal offending, so too with rape, such that if we can change those environments and contexts, we may well reduce the number of offenses. Although the underlying problems of misogyny and toxic masculinity will remain and require a broader cultural reckoning, this step—which schools could take immediately—could produce immediate results with virtually no downside, as fraternities provide nothing of tangible benefit to campuses that can compensate for the damage they clearly do. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timjacobwise.substack.com/subscribe