In this episode, we discuss the uses and misuses of liberal standpoint theory to promote US meddling, sanctions, and bombing. With guest Vincent Bevins.

“Tony Blair says world must listen to Iraqi exiles,” reads a 2003 New York Times subheadline. ‘I Want To Get The Hell Out Of Here’: Thousands Of Palestinians Are Leaving Gaza,” NPR told readers in 2019. “Will Iran’s hated regime implode?,” The Economist wondered earlier this year, in June 2025.

In recent decades, when the US, or one of its client states, has sought to invade, bomb, occupy, or otherwise destabilize and destroy a country and its people, media and policymakers who support these aims––which is to say the vast majority––have employed ad hoc liberal standpoint theory to frame these efforts as in support of “the people” of said country, insisting that we listen to those people–whose platonic voice, we are told, share the US security state’s desire for regime change, sanctions, bombings and/or meddling.

Whether in Vietnam, Iraq, Bolivia, Gaza, or Iran, we’re told this “Platonic Voice of the People” not only objects to their government’s policies, but supports, either implicitly or explicitly, aggressive US intervention.