G.Y.: There appears to be a power shift throughout the world, particularly in terms of a kind of xenophobic power, and it appears to be the leading ideology. How do you understand xenophobic power, especially in terms of its white nationalist globalization? Whether it’s Hungary, or France, or Germany, I mean, it’s quite incredible.

C.W.: The important thing to keep in mind is this: Look back a hundred years and you will see that we have made very, very strong and discernible progress against forms of xenophobia. There’s been marvelous movements of struggle and militancy against white supremacy, and against forms of xenophobia, be it against Arabs, against Jews, against Muslims, or Dalit people struggling against Brahmin supremacy in India, and so on.

What is distinctive about our moment is the relative cowardliness of the liberal and neoliberal middle. The right wing in the last 10 to 15 years has simply become more visible, but they don’t constitute the vast majority of the people. What you do have is a neoliberal and liberal center that is so weak and feeble, so cowardly and milquetoast, that they don’t have the enthusiasm or the energy that the right wing has.

You know, when I was in Charlottesville, they looked at me in the eye and I looked at them in the eye. They got their guns, their ammunition, they got their gas masks on, and we sat up there singing “This Little Light of Mine.”

And I could see those neo-Nazi brothers were ready to die. Now that’s courage. But that’s the courage of a thug, the courage of a gangster, because the cause is still a thuggish cause, a gangster cause. But they’re willing to take action. You see, we don’t have too many people in the middle like that. We’ve got lukewarm, moderate, chattering, sophisticated, refined neoliberals who obsess over comfort and convenience.

Even with the folks who are being elected, there are large numbers of the electorate who just don’t vote at all. In America, for example, Trump can get roughly 25 percent of all the potential voters in America and become president. So even though the right-wing, xenophobic movements must be taken seriously, I think it’s crucial that we don’t view them somehow as becoming these majoritarian movements. Not at all.

G.Y.: Does your conception of love have a role to play in combating, or even functioning as a kind of counterforce to the hegemonic, xenophobic, toxic forms of power that we’re seeing in the 21st century?