I Went to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest

My interview with Wajahat Ali on a lot of things happening today

Last weekend I went own to Austin, Texas, for the huge South by Southwest festival which takes place there every year. In areas as disparate as wellness to technology to politics, groups gathered to discuss some of the leading ideas bubbling up in our culture today.

I was there to do a panel with the founders of the Gravel Institute on “guerrilla politics” and the presidential campaign of the late Senator Mike Gravel. I was also interviewed for the SxSW Youtube series by Wajahat Ali. Our conversation was interesting and I thought you might enjoy it…

Wajahat Ali:

We are together live, for the first time the South by Southwest Studio is here with people in three years. How does it feel to actually be engaging with people and not just looking at them through a Zoom screen?

Marianne Williamson:

Yeah. I think that, coming out of COVID, the idea of getting back out there, having actual human-to-human contact, certainly for someone like myself, for whom being out there, giving talks, being part of things like this, is sort of my natural professional mode of being, it's very gratifying.

Wajahat Ali:

How has been the response by the South by Southwest audience to your presence here?

Marianne Williamson):

People are nice. You know, I was born and raised in Houston, and I lived in Austin in the 1970s. There's a bit of homecoming feeling for me.

Wajahat Ali:

Do you go back to your roots, you feel like?

Marianne Williamson:

A little bit.

Wajahat Ali:

Does the cowboy hat come out here?

Marianne Williamson:

I had some barbecue.

Wajahat Ali:

Yeah. I had some barbecue last night. I regret it immensely. I went from a happy place to a dark place.

Marianne Williamson:

Well, if you have it in your blood like I do.

Wajahat Ali:

Oh, yeah. We're originally from California. The whole cast of those right now, we're like ...

Marianne Williamson:

It's not gluten-free. Not green juice.

Wajahat Ali:

It's a gloom zone. You know, we're talking about barbecue. We're lucky. We're blessed. We're privileged, but there are people right now in Ukraine who are facing an invasion, right? There is Russia. There's the rise of authoritarianism. There's Putin, there's rise of authoritarianism around the world. The Democracy Index, those who follow democracy, are showing over the past five years that democracies are backsliding all across the world.

Marianne Williamson:

That's right.

Wajahat Ali:

Authoritarianism is rising. For this young generation, who knows the history of World War II, who knows the history of authoritarianism, why do you think there's such an appeal of the strongman right now?

Marianne Williamson:

Well, first of all, I think the way you're contextualizing it is absolutely accurate. The bad guys are having a good time right now. It is the era of the bad guy, strongman leader. They are offering to people order. They are offering people a certain level of personal security. They are offering to people that they will not have to take responsibility for their own lives in quite the same way.

I think that we need to look not just at the power of the authoritarian strongman, but the failure of democracy and our failure to embody Western values the way we might , including in the United States and in other Western civilizations, over the last few decades. Democracy is messy. Authoritarianism is not messy. It's very simple. You do what you're told to do.

Wajahat Ali:

Or else.

Marianne Williamson:

Or else, thank you. Democracy is messy, and it takes citizens taking full responsibility not only for their own lives, but for the life of their communities and their nation in ways that, for decades, we have a lot of us failed to do. That's why this is a moment of awakening, because at this point we not only see the appetite for authoritarianism around the world, we see the appetite for authoritarianism here in the United States.

Wajahat Ali:

Indeed.

Marianne Williamson:

We've had our own authoritarian strongman who got a lot of votes and continues to have a lot of popularity, a lot of people not recognizing, apparently, what you surrender when you allow that kind of governance. I think, though, that everything happening in the world, including what's happening in Ukraine, is making people realize what it means to have democratic values, and what the responsibility is to maintain a democracy. It's the 11th hour, but it's not midnight yet.

I think, even when you look at how much of a Western Alliance is rising up in response to what's happening in the Ukraine, people are thinking, "What are Western values? What does it mean to have individual liberty? What does it mean to have a democracy? What does it mean to be a conscious citizen?" I do feel confident that a critical mass of people are asking themselves those questions. Once you start asking deep questions, you start having deep answers.

What has happened in the United States over the last few decades is we have just made our conversation, within ourselves and among ourselves, shallower and shallower and shallower. We've taken the deeper levels of questioning about what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, what it means to maintain a democracy, what is the individual's responsibility, and we've peripheralized the conversation. We farmed it out to a political class, and we are now recognizing the price we had paid for that.

Wajahat Ali:

I want to get back to something you said in that answer, which was the failure of U.S. and the failure of Western values. Specifically what were those values that failed, and specifically how does the U.S. embody that failure?

Marianne Williamson:

Well, what I was responding to specifically was you were talking about the appetite for authoritarianism.

Wajahat Ali:

Right.

Marianne Williamson:

There are a lot of authoritarian governments who look at the United States, when we start talking, let's say, about human rights abuses, okay? The supposedly Western value is that all people matter, equality and tolerance. We start naming human rights abuses in some of these authoritarian dictatorships, and they turn right back at us and they say, "Yeah, what about Black men who are being shot by the police, unarmed Black men being shot by the police? How are you doing, before you start talking to us?" We have sacrificed so much of our moral authority, and so many people do realize that in many ways.

Wajahat Ali:

Well, that question's being played out right now, when the United States is trying to get allies to intervene, to sanction, right, to punish Putin. What they're saying oftentimes is, "Well, weren't you the ones who did the War on Terror? Weren't you the ones who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? Weren't you the ones who have been the policeman of the world?" How much have we lost when it comes to our credibility, but at the same time, what do we still represent?

Marianne Williamson:

Okay. Thank you so much, because you certainly get to the heart of the matter, which I so appreciate. Unfortunately, it's very difficult for us to complain about Putin, given the fact that we ourselves invaded Iraq.

Wajahat Ali:

I can complain about Putin.

Marianne Williamson:

Absolutely, but that's what I was just going to say. That does not mean we should not complain about Putin, and it does not mean that we should not stand up to Putin. If you're an anti-imperialist, you should be anti-imperialism if it's American imperialism, and you should also be anti-imperialist when it is Russian imperialism. On one hand, unfortunately there was a horrifying moral equivalence between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Ukraine.

On the other hand, that was then and this is now. You can argue that you should have recognized it when it was the bombing of Baghdad. I can personally look at myself in the mirror, because I was as horrified when it was the bombing of Baghdad, and I said so. At this point, though, that does not mean we should just put our head between our legs and walk away in shame. It means that that was us then, this is us now.

Wajahat Ali:

There's something about Western values. There's the image of America, the reality of America. In addition to the nightmare, there's the dream. The dream is the Statue of Liberty holding her torch, inviting everyone. People like my parents come here, and they were promised. "You can work hard. This country will accept you, accept you despite your accent, your religion, your brown skin, your black skin. You too can make it." There's the dream and there's the horror. The pain and the joy, right? We see this, and oftentimes people are saying, "Well, you know what, part the conversation about refugees and keep it limited just to Ukrainians. Don't talk about Yemeni and Afghans right now."

Marianne Williamson:

I don't know who's saying that, but they should not be listened to.

Wajahat Ali:

No, that's when people are bringing up the double standards right now, and I'm sure you've heard the commentary from some in the media. They're like, "They look just like us. Look at these Ukrainians, blue-eyed. I can't believe this is happening in Europe. This usually happens in Afghanistan." People are like, "Wait a second. This is happening. There are refugees. There's no hierarchy in rank." If we are so kind as to accept Ukrainians, America has the capacity at this moment to expand its generosity, to open its borders to Yemeni refugees, to Haitians and to others. What's your response to those people who say, "No, no, no, park that"?

Marianne Williamson:

No. The issue about Yemen is not about opening our arms to refugees. The issue about Yemen is about recognizing the moral obscenity of selling over a billion dollars in arms (weapons) to Saudi Arabia, which are then used to prosecute the war against Yemen. This has been something many of us have been talking about for a while. This is even something that our president said that he would stop, and has actually ...

Wajahat Ali:

Both administrations ... we have to be fair ... the Obama administration and the Trump administration have been guilty of sending weapons to the Saudi administration, MBS, to fuel this war which has resulted in an international crisis.

Marianne Williamson:

That continues right now, so that's the issue of Yemen. Of course, I like to think that our grandparents would be rolling over in their graves that the United States is, for the sake of that money, for the sake of sales to the military-industrial complex, actually conspiring in what is essentially a genocide war in Yemen. I want to go back, if I might, to talking about your parents who came here and my grandparents who came here.

Wajahat Ali:

Please.

Marianne Williamson:

Where did your parents come from?

Wajahat Ali:

My parents came from Pakistan. My father came after the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act.

Marianne Williamson:

Wow, okay. My grandparents came, interestingly enough, Minsk and Pinsk. We are among those whose parents and grandparents did find the American dream. I think that what is important to remember is historical context, if we are to have a deeper understanding. This country was founded out of a bipolarity. We were founded out of a dichotomy. Fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence risked their lives to infuse in our founding the most enlightened principles that had ever formed the core of the founding of a nation.

Wajahat Ali:

Yet ...

Marianne Williamson:

Forty-one of those fifty-six were slave owners. It's always been there. It's baked into the cake, that we are both purporting to stand on the most enlightened, exceptional principles, and from our beginning in every generation including now, we have included forces willing to, usually for the sake of their own economic purposes - now as much as ever - willing to transgress, even in the most heinous, violent ways, against the principles for which we purport to stand in order to protect, maintain, and even perpetuate their own economic power.

Wajahat Ali:

On two topics coming up ...

Marianne Williamson:

If I may?

Wajahat Ali:

You may.

Marianne Williamson:

The point is, America has throughout our history tended to self-correct. The history of this country is that we've been both. The history of this country is that we've been both slaveowner and abolitionist, institutionalized oppressor of women and women's suffragette, segregationist and civil rights activist. We're simply living out, in our generation, what other generations have lived out. Let's just not be the first one to wimp out on doing what it takes to push back against those forces. They are deadly. They destroy our democracy. In many cases now, they have the power to destroy the world.

Wajahat Ali:

You might disagree with my analysis here where you're talking about those forces. The number one domestic terror threat, according to the FBI, is White supremacist terrorism.

Marianne Williamson:

Absolutely. I don't disagree with that.

Wajahat Ali:

My analysis on this, both on a domestic level and an international level, is that we are witnessing the death rattle of White supremacy that has turned into a death march. What we're seeing is not an expansion of America, but a restriction, a feel of being threatened, a feel of being replaced, and those who consider themselves White are like, "Oh, my God, the elevation of other individuals, the fact that other people can be equal, Black and Brown folks, that's coming at my expense. If I can't be in power, no one can. I'll burn it all down. Hell, I'll even like Donald Trump."

Marianne Williamson:

You and I were talking earlier, and I said something about how the appetite for authoritarianism is due in large part to the failure of democracy. Many of the people that you were discussing have been so robbed of opportunity over the last 40 years. This is not to say that we should not hold them accountable. This is not to say that they do not represent what is in many cases a criminal element. It is to say, however, that once we started this massive transfer of power and money ... mainly money ... into the hands of the 1%, taking from people the economic opportunities, the healthcare, the education, so many of the things that allowed them to feel that they had equal opportunity, it was very easy for those same forces that were robbing them to (propagandize them)…

It's like a purse snatcher. "Look over there." Those people were told, "It's the Mexicans who are doing it to you. It's the Black people who are doing it to you. It's the immigrants who are doing it to you." It's a classic displacement technique. Yes, you're right. Some of these people ... I don't think you can completely generalize here, but many of those people, certainly the White supremacists ... were brought up to believe that the White ... Christian, by the way.

Wajahat Ali:

White Christian nationalism, if you have to name it.

Marianne Williamson:

Yeah, absolutely ... that this country is theirs. This is their identity. What some of us see as the full flowering of America… many of us think, "Oh, wow, our parents came from India, Pakistan, Russia? How cool. We're Black, we're White, we're Brown, we're gay, we're straight, all those things. How cool." Some of us think, "How cool." But some people feel that’s a complete psychic annihilation of their identity and of the America that they feel is theirs. That's the underlying struggle.

Once again, if they had been brought along, if more people had been (given more opportunity) ... you know, this massive denial of opportunity that began with Reagan…it began with the Republicans, but no Democrat has stopped it. It became a kind of Petri dish…large groups of desperate people form a Petri dish out of which this kind of collective dysfunction is almost inevitable.

Wajahat Ali:

Yeah. You talk about the large Petri dish of desperate people. The data has shown that overwhelmingly it was not economic anxiety that led people to Trump, it was cultural and racial anxiety, right? Then you see the January 6th violent insurrection. Overwhelmingly the data has shown that it's middle class and upper middle class folks. People who made under $50,000 voted for Democrats, right? The people who actually have suffered historically are Black folks.

You're talking about we have to move forward, but to move forward, you also have to recognize the truth. You also have to do correction. You used the word correction, right? The United States has a corrective arc in its history. One of the corrective mechanisms that you mentioned to great applause, back in the day when you were running for president, was the R word, reparations. All right. You got an applause. It was like, "Wow, wild. Someone says reparations." How should the United States of America do reparations to make whole Black Americans, who are under active assault as we speak?

Marianne Williamson:

Okay. If I may, though ...

Wajahat Ali:

You may.

Marianne Williamson:

I will definitely deal with that. I want to go back a little bit to what you said. I don't buy some of the, quote/unquote, “evidence” that you just described. I find that evidence presented by the establishment, and that it is ...

Wajahat Ali:

It's been every single study from 2016.

Marianne Williamson:

Hold on a second.

Wajahat Ali:

It is not the sole. It is the primary.

Marianne Williamson:

I understand. Hold on a moment. Let's analyze that, though. That to me is like saying, "Well, Ben Laden came from a wealthy family." A lot of those guys who headed Al Qaeda, they came from wealthy families. Yeah, but that doesn't speak to the deeper phenomenon going on underneath.

Somebody might say that it was not people’s economic anxiety. They might say, no, it's their cultural anxiety. In many cases, because of the distraction technique that I mentioned ... and I'm sorry. The political establishment, which over the last 40 years has created this massive transfer of wealth into the hands of the 1%, of course they don't want us to see that there weren't any real economic factors there at all, because then they would have to hold themselves accountable.

Wajahat Ali:

No, I don't disagree with that at all.

Marianne Williamson:

So they keep saying, "Oh, it wasn't about economics." The hell it wasn't economics, at least on some level. Even if people thought, "Oh, it's about the Black people, it's about the immigrants," but even that is saying, "They're taking away my money."

Wajahat Ali:

Well, to correct myself if that was my assumption ... that was not what I was assuming ... is you're right, is that oftentimes those folks who are taking from both White and Black workers, Brown workers, they use a Southern strategy, right? Distraction.

Marianne Williamson:

Right.

Wajahat Ali:

Yeah. It's like, "Oh, there's a common unit between White and Black workers." Laborers, right? Instead, you say, "No, let's play racial anxiety and let's divide and conquer."

Marianne Williamson:

That's my point. Then we say, "Oh, it had nothing to do with economics." It had everything to do with economics, because of the feeling, "They're stealing our jobs."

Wajahat Ali:

"They" are.

Marianne Williamson:

"I would have a better life."

Wajahat Ali:

Not the people who actually are stealing it.

Marianne Williamson:

Exactly, who are then conducting those polls.

Wajahat Ali:

Right. Okay, so you made that connection.

Marianne Williamson:

That's my point.

Wajahat Ali:

All right. Look, you mentioned Reagan, and we've seen with the data. The past 45 years, you've really seen that the policies with Reaganomics, nothing trickled down. The income inequality has widened. You've seen the 1%. Even during the pandemic, billionaires made more billions.

Marianne Williamson:

Many more.

Wajahat Ali:

Workers have been working more. The data shows productivity has increased. Wages have not. Going back to the lack of trust in establishment institutions, people say, "It doesn't matter if it's the Republicans or Democrats. 2022's coming up. You know what? I'm going to sit this out, because I get screwed by either party." What's your response to that apathetic voter?

Marianne Williamson:

You want me to take that on, or reparations? Because they're both important.

Wajahat Ali:

You did my job for me, because I went from that. Let's do this one, then let's go back to reparations.

Marianne Williamson:

Okay. A lot of people are saying that, and anti-electoralism is very deeply concerning to me right now, deeply concerning. The Democrats, the Democratic Party, has so swerved from its own core values, starting with Bill Clinton, I'm afraid. The Democratic Party that I grew up with stood, way more than not, in unequivocal support for the working people of the United States. Now the Republican Party has been completely taken over by a corporatist mentality and the Democrats are claiming that they can have it both ways, which obviously they can't.

The fact that President Biden has chosen not to cancel the college loan debt, which he could do with a stroke of a pen; the fact that he has chosen not to declare a national medical emergency and expand Medicare to everyone, which he could do with a stroke of a pen; the fact that the president has chosen not to declassify marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug, which he could do with a stroke of a pen; the fact that the president has chosen not to declare a national climate emergency, especially with what's going on with petrostates such as Russia, he has chosen not to declare an emergency and set us on the path of a warp-speed transition, through the Defense Production Act, from a dirty economy to a clean economy. Not to even mention the failures of other aspects of the Democratic Party due to Manchin and Sinema, so that there's the expiration of the Child Tax Credit, no paid family leave…

Wajahat Ali:

Voter suppression.

Marianne Williamson:

Voter suppression.

Wajahat Ali:

You have to end the filibuster.

Marianne Williamson:

The fact that they did not raise the $15 minimum wage. At this point, you're right. A lot of people are looking at that and going, "I'm supposed to stand in line for seven hours again to vote for those people?"

Wajahat Ali:

During a pandemic.

Marianne Williamson:

Yeah. people thought those things were going to happen, or at the very least there was going to be a fight for it. I think the point with the president is they're just saying, "Oh, it's Congress's fault." Well, the Presidency is a coequal branch of government. There's so much he could do with executive order.

Going back to what you said, a lot of people saying, "Fuck 'em both," I'm very concerned about it. I'm very concerned, because it is an attitude that is likely to get us such a red wave in 2022. I hope the president will change his mind about what he's willing to do with all that power that has been vested in him over the next few months, and change people's minds. Right now, it's been this incremental, way too slow, way too little. If there is this red wave in 2022, it's going to be a very, very difficult time for this country.

Wajahat Ali:

I have a minute left. I could talk to you for another 30 minutes, but to go back to the question of reparations.

Marianne Williamson:

Okay, reparations.

Wajahat Ali:

How to do it properly.

Marianne Williamson:

Okay. Well, my plan is that there would be a reparations council. If I owe you money, I don't get to tell you how to spend it. I don't think it should be White people deciding how this money is spent. I think it should be a council of Black ... I would say elders, but not just elders ... because it should be Black young people, Black older people. There should be academia, government, arts.

Wajahat Ali:

A diverse cross-section.

Marianne Williamson:

Absolutely, which is chosen very, very carefully.

Wajahat Ali:

Who chooses it?

Marianne Williamson:

Well, it should be mainly ... there are many Black leaders in this country who are for both Black as well as White populations and our popular culture, both in arts, in business. I mean, there are. We do have some very serious Black leaders.

Wajahat Ali:

We have many.

Marianne Williamson:

I think you could start with a constellation of let's say 10 that aren't difficult to choose, and then go from there. My plan was about $500 billion. I understand that if you look at the end of the Civil War, there were between four and five million formerly enslaved people. At the time, the promise was that, for every former slave family of four, there would be 40 acres and a mule. I understand that in today's equivalent, this would be trillions of dollars.

I want to see something done. I think of $500 billion. Okay, let's go to the table and start negotiating. That's what I want to see. We don't need another commission. We don't need to know what happened. We're very clear what happened. We need a president that says, "Okay, I'm putting this money on the table. Let's talk." Then I believe that the money should be given over 20 years. That's a generation, 15 to 20. You have Black leaders in every field, from real estate, business, finance, arts, urban planning, government. I think it's so important.

Marianne Williamson:

You know, Germany has paid $89 billion in reparations to Jewish organizations. This has gone so far, not only the financial remuneration, but also the psychological and emotional healing between Germany and the Jews of Europe. That war was over in 1945. We've got a war that was over in 1865, and we are still passing along this toxic baton, generation to generation. This generation could say “It's time.” It won't mean slavery didn't happen any more than reparations in Germany means the Holocaust didn't happen, but it could go far.

I know you need to hurry. May I say just one thing, though, because it's so important with what's going on today?

Wajahat Ali:

Very quickly.

Marianne Williamson:

Okay. When Germany made the agreement with Jewish organizations to pay reparations, part of the agreement was that every generation of German children in perpetuity would be taught the history of the Holocaust. The fact that there are forces in this country that would choose for American children growing up to not even know what institutionalized racism has done in this country is very, very dangerous, and we absolutely must stand up to it vigilantly.

Wajahat Ali:

Are you running in 2024?

Marianne Williamson:

I don't know.

Wajahat Ali:

Okay. You heard it here first. Marianne, thank you so much for stopping by the studio today. You can watch all of our studio interviews on the South by Southwest TV app, available on Apple TV, Roku and Android TV, and Amazon Fire. These interviews are also available on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/sxsw, and for a complete list of our interview schedule, check out sxsw.com/studio. I'm [Inaudible 00:23:54]. Thanks for tuning in.