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The Jenny Beth Show

The Jenny Beth Show

Written by: Jenny Beth Martin
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Jenny Beth Martin is an original organizer of the Tea Party movement and the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She is an author, a filmmaker, and one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. The title she is most proud of is "Mom" to her boy/girl twins. She has been at the forefront, fighting for America's core principles for more than a decade.2024 The Jenny Beth Show Daily Philosophy Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Surviving Communism: The 92% Tax Rate Sold to the People as 13% | Panel

    Surviving Communism: The 92% Tax Rate Sold to the People as 13% | Panel
    Oct 16 2026
    Guests: Sasha Gong is the former China director at Voice of America, a former political prisoner in China, and a Harvard PhD. She came to the United States in the late 1980s, cannot return to China, and has filmed the history of communism across Eastern Europe. On this panel she explains the Budapest photograph, describes informers inside the family, and reports on Chinese influence operations on American social media. Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a Soviet physicist and member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, exiled from the Soviet Union in 1980. Before his exile he developed an economic model of the Soviet system and concluded that the real tax rate was over 92 percent, hidden in state-set wages, against a nominal rate of 13 percent. He explains why the system could not match Ronald Reagan's military buildup and why Gorbachev was chosen to save communism, not end it. Agnes Gibboney was two years old when her family escaped Hungary after the Soviet invasion of October 1956, one of roughly 200,000 Hungarians who left. She visited the statue cemetery in Budapest last year. Ovidiu Frusina was born in Bucharest under Nicolae Ceausescu and was a university student during the December 1989 revolution. He describes the uprising in Timisoara, the rally that turned to booing, Ceausescu's helicopter, and a Securitate that could monitor 80 percent of the population. Manuela Colini grew up under Romanian communism. She explains the photograph of the Romanian flag with the communist emblem cut out, Ceausescu's trial, and his execution on Christmas Day 1989. Captain Onofre Gutierrez was born in Managua, Nicaragua. He explains the exiled Catholic bishop in the photograph and how the Sandinista regime has become the Ortega family regime. Janice Trey is chairman of the board of The Epoch Times, born in a forced labor camp during China's Cultural Revolution. She explains the Tank Man photograph, the cousins in China who still do not know what happened, and the Chinese Communist Party's reach into American media, courts, and schools. Torsten Trey grew up in West Germany and joins the panel for the Berlin Wall: Conrad Schumann's leap over the barbed wire in August 1961, the 30-year experiment that left East Germany decades behind, and a Bundestag witness's account of how Beijing pays influencers. Key topics: • Tank Man, June 4, 1989: a friend on an ambulance crew that night, and cousins in China who still do not know it happened• Read the People's Daily in reverse: the Party said unarmed students attacked the military• Budapest 1956: the Stalin statue comes down, the statue cemetery, and the 200,000 who left Hungary• Romania 1989: the flag with the emblem cut out, the rally that turned to booing, Ceausescu's helicopter, a trial of under an hour, and an execution on Christmas Day• Communism is cognitive dissonance: it promises abundance and safety, and not even the man at the top was safe• The Securitate could monitor 80 percent of the population, with informers in workplaces, schools, and families; Sasha Gong: my mother informed on me• Pacepa took orders from Andropov: Moscow wanted a change of guards in Romania, not an end to communism• Nicaragua now: an exiled Catholic bishop, and a Sandinista regime that has become the Ortega family regime• The Soviet food line and the number: a nominal tax of 13 percent, a real rate of 92 percent hidden in wages set by the only employer• A 1,000-ruble job paid 100 or 120; the trick was control over who gets the apartment, the food, and the doctor• Why it fell: with 92 percent already taken, there was nothing left to match Reagan's buildup; communism carries its own time bomb; Gorbachev was chosen to save the system• China today: Brezhnev-style stagnation under Xi Jinping; a Reagan-style peaceful offensive; Janice Trey says 466 million have withdrawn from the Party and its youth organizations• Infiltration: America Against America, paid inserts in American newspapers, lawsuits funded by the Chinese Communist Party, and Confucius Institutes that teach songs praising communism• Agents of influence now operate openly: the bank interview with a Party supervisor who said nothing happened at Tiananmen Square• Sasha Gong: fake accounts, and subscriptions used as payment to influencers• Jenny Beth Martin's rule for any anonymous account: who is behind it, where are its followers from, and who benefits outside America• The Berlin Wall, August 1961: built to keep East Germans in; Conrad Schumann's leap; one leveled country, two systems, and nobody ran east• The Bundestag testimony: $2,000 a month for a year to criticize China, then slowly change the narrative• Fifty years of one party with no criticism becomes extreme; the free world's balance is the check• Next in the series: the panel reads the Democratic Socialists of America program Timestamps: 00:00 — Cold open: the famous photographs of communism, explained by the people who lived them00:42 —...
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    1 hr
  • Mamdani's Housing: The Soviet Question Is Who Decides Who Gets What | Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev

    Mamdani's Housing: The Soviet Question Is Who Decides Who Gets What | Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev
    Oct 15 2026
    Guest: Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a physicist and Soviet dissident who joined the Moscow Helsinki Group, the main human rights organization inside the Soviet Union, and expected arrest every day. After Natan Sharansky and Yuri Orlov were arrested and Andrei Sakharov was exiled, American and Western European scientists organized a boycott of scientific cooperation, and the Soviets, far behind in computers and electronics, chose to force him out in 1980 rather than send him to a labor camp. In America he worked as a scientist at MIT and then Stanford, founded the Center for Democracy in the USSR to support dissidents still inside, testified before Congress, briefed President Ronald Reagan one day before Reykjavik and one day before Reagan's trip to Moscow, and was one of three men who briefed him on the weakness of the Soviet economy. He never worked in government. He describes himself as two things for life: a scientist and a human rights defender. Key topics: • Mamdani's housing plan: the Soviet question is who decides who gets what, and it is never decided democratically, by merit, or by means• The Soviet economy in one number: a hidden tax above 90 percent, with the rest handed back by loyalty to the party• The middle class is the nucleus of the city, and it is the first to be pushed out• COVID and rule by expertise: one truth, one set of experts, the dissenting scientists silenced; Gavin Newsom's restaurant party• Political opponent versus national enemy: do not call the whole Democratic Party communist; communists are enemies of the country• Scoop Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and the AFL-CIO: when Democrats were the anticommunists• Schumer and Jeffries are not communists, both agree; they are afraid• Exiled by the KGB in 1980 after Western scientists boycotted Soviet science• Meeting Reagan: sick bear or wounded bear? The answer was sick• The only president who understood ideology; regime change as a deliberate strategy• Iran: stop in the middle and you do not win, you lose; the regime has consolidated• One bloc: Russia, China, and Iran; the weakest link is Russia and the road to Tehran runs through Kyiv• Russia today: the same KGB, still sponsoring terrorism, still working to discredit American elections• Putin's conservatism is Stalin's and Brezhnev's, not Reagan's and Truman's; family values do not separate free countries from totalitarian ones• The danger from the left is always greater than the danger from the right, and liberals who will not fight the radical left summon the authoritarian right• Human rights: the best thing humankind invented, 250 years after the Declaration and 50 years after the Moscow Helsinki Group Timestamps: 00:00 — Cold open: the physicist who put the real Soviet tax rate above 90 percent00:43 — Part two of two: expelled in 1980, briefed Reagan before Reykjavik and Moscow01:25 — Mamdani's housing: an affordability crisis, or a seizure of private property?02:44 — The key question in his whole program: who will control it03:24 — The Soviet economy in one number: more than 90 percent hidden taxation04:03 — Mamdani's plan: take as much as possible, redistribute by their rules; the middle class is out05:41 — Jenny Beth Martin: young people understood government control during COVID; Gavin Newsom's restaurant07:25 — Rule by expertise: one truth, one theory, one party08:28 — The pandemic experts, and the specialists who were silenced10:29 — Why pointing at Mao does not impress young Americans: get to the appeal11:41 — An internal ideological war that needs resources, not a shoestring11:52 — Political opponent versus national enemy: do not equate the Democratic Party with communism13:10 — Scoop Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and the AFL-CIO: when Democrats were the anticommunists14:42 — Jenny Beth Martin: Fetterman and Carville have said no; Schumer and Jeffries are afraid15:49 — A gesture by Republicans: unite on this one issue16:49 — How he left: the Reagan briefings, George Shultz, and the young men of Reagan's Soviet policy18:23 — Exiled by the KGB: Sharansky, Orlov, Sakharov, and the scientists' boycott19:59 — Forced out instead of imprisoned; MIT, then Stanford20:51 — What was it like meeting Reagan? He listened and asked very good questions21:21 — His model of the Soviet economy: the Soviets could not afford another arms race22:20 — Sick bear or wounded bear?22:54 — The only president who understood the importance of ideology23:46 — Regime change was Reagan's deliberate strategy: evil empire, ash heap of history25:07 — Jenny Beth Martin: we have to finish the job we started in Iran25:47 — What finishing means: the Marshall-MacArthur model of Germany and Japan26:10 — Stop in the middle and you do not win, you lose26:27 — The regime and the country: the Soviet Union in 194527:24 — Iran today: the country damaged, the regime consolidated28:53 — Jenny Beth Martin: Americans ...
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    54 mins
  • Affordability: The Communist Motto Hiding in a Word Even Trump Uses | Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev

    Affordability: The Communist Motto Hiding in a Word Even Trump Uses | Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev
    Oct 14 2026
    Guest: Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev was born in the Soviet Union in 1949, the third generation of his family to live under communism, in a family of scientists who did not accept the system but were not dissidents. He graduated from the country's best university, became a physicist, and worked at the Academy of Sciences, then became a dissident and human rights activist and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, work that risked prison and his life. The Soviet Union exiled him instead. In America he worked closely with President Reagan and members of his administration without ever joining the government, and founded the Center for Democracy in the USSR to support other dissidents and to show Americans what communism is. He is still doing that work today. Key topics: • Affordability: the communist motto says to each according to his needs, the capitalist motto says to each according to his means, and the word everyone in Washington now uses, including President Trump, carries the first one• Born in the Soviet Union in 1949, the third generation under communism: what mature communism looks like after the terror, when people censor themselves and nobody needs reminding• Totalitarian means total: the clothes you wear, the songs you sing, the books you read, all decided by the party• About 20 countries are still communist, by his count, and communism's structures survive in the former Soviet republics• A dissident inside the Citadel: the Moscow Helsinki Group, exile, Reagan, and the Center for Democracy in the USSR• How a handful of dissidents broke the state's monopoly on information and opened American eyes• Human rights: the founding idea of the Declaration of Independence, the banner of every dissident, and the words the left took and conservatives gave up• Conservatives decided to care about business, religion, and the military and gave away education and culture; the left came for the other three anyway• There is no defensive strategy in the battle of ideas: Reagan's peaceful offensive, and why compromise loses step by step• Why a privileged young physicist at the Academy of Sciences became a dissident: moral responsibility, a love of freedom, and the courage to think a dangerous thought through• What the dissidents exposed: the labor camps and the psychiatric prisons the world was not supposed to know about• The pact of fear: how mass terror teaches silence to children and grandchildren, and what it took to break it• Conformism in America: the pandemic, climate change, and professors at leading universities afraid to hear an argument• Executive orders cannot change the minds of millions of young people; the Democratic Socialists of America grew on President Trump's watch, he says• Jenny Beth Martin reads the Democratic Socialists of America website: a day without capitalism, no bills, housing and health care as human rights. It sounds wonderful. It is not• Political correctness as a weapon: who controls the language controls everything Timestamps: 00:00 — Cold open: most of his friends went to prison; the Soviet Union exiled him instead00:36 — The Surviving Communism series: born in 1949, the third generation under communism01:25 — Still sounding the alarm: communism was never eradicated after Reagan02:32 — About 20 countries are communist today, by his count; Putin was a KGB officer04:01 — A dissident inside the Citadel: the Moscow Helsinki Group, exile, Reagan, and the Center for Democracy in the USSR07:03 — After Reagan: how America talked itself into believing China was no longer communist09:11 — Growing up in the Soviet Union: a family of scientists, a comfortable life, total control10:46 — Totalitarian means total: the clothes, the songs, the books11:43 — The third generation after the Great Terror: fear as the mechanism of control12:42 — Comfort even in slavery: why the majority got used to it, and why very few dared to challenge13:32 — No need for rights or liberties: the Communist Party knows best14:26 — Human rights, the most lethal weapon against any totalitarian system15:10 — The 250th anniversary, and why nobody says the words human rights anymore16:03 — Special rights and group rights: how the left took the concept and conservatives gave in18:31 — Jenny Beth Martin: conservatives who think a little socialism is okay19:16 — Business, religion, and the military: what conservatives kept, and what they gave away20:05 — Ideological war: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as one bloc21:15 — When Reagan won, the left went quiet; the stronger they are abroad, the stronger at home22:42 — There is no defensive strategy: Reagan's peaceful offensive, and why compromise loses23:26 — Why he chose to speak: moral responsibility, freedom, and courage27:52 — What the dissidents exposed: labor camps and psychiatric prisons29:45 — How the fear was instilled: mass terror as a stage every totalitarian state goes through30:52 — ...
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    53 mins
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