Interview with Dr. Naomi Wolf: A Talk About Totalitarianism, Nazism, Free Speech, and the Demise of Classical Liberalism

Over the last two years, I’ve had the privilege of making the acquaintance of Dr. Naomi Wolf. I think of the best-selling author and political advisor to the Bill Clinton and Al Gore campaigns as the last of a handful of Classical Liberals in today’s public forum. Other notable kindred spirits include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Glenn Greenwald, and Bill Maher.

With the arrival of COVID-19, Naomi incurred the wrath of the current Democratic Party Establishment by pointing out that the U.S. government’s pandemic response had distinctly totalitarian elements. Especially alarming to her was how federal and state governments invoked Emergency Powers in order to suspend Constitutional protections.

As she correctly understood, every totalitarian regime in history has invoked Emergency Power, purportedly to deal with a threat (real, perceived, exaggerated, or fabricated) to the body politic.

Among her many books, I especially enjoyed reading The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and The Bodies of Others. The story she tells in the latter book—about the totalitarian elements of the government’s COVID-19 pandemic response—is precisely the sort of scenario that she warned could happen in the former book, published in 2007. As she pointed out then, the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security, PREP Act, and Bush Doctrine granted too much power to the executive—power that could be abused in a subsequent emergency (real, perceived, exaggerated, or fabricated).

Since 2020, Naomi has taken a bold stand for her principles, which has resulted in her experiencing the same sort of censorship, ostracism, and invective to which her fellow Classical Liberal, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been subjected. She therefore embodies the virtue that we set out to showcase when we founded the Courageous Discourse Substack.

I’ve wanted to interview her for some time, but my compelling reason for doing so (even while I was at a family reunion in Colorado) was her extraordinary essay on RFK, Jr.’s recent remarks about COVID-19 and Ashkenazi Jews.

In addition to writing a terrific Substack, she is the CEO of The Daily Clout—an organization dedicated to producing independent journalism in order to protect and strengthen our democratic institutions. Please check out the DailyClout website and consider becoming a contributor.

Watch the Interview Here