The Dictatorship
Hulk Hogan’s ‘real America’ peak was fun to watch. It was also a warning.
Hulk Hogan’s most memorable movie role was just 44 seconds long. At some point in the middle of 1990’s “Gremlins 2,” the titular monsters cause so much chaos that the movie itself stops. In a meta twist, the scene shifts to a movie theater where “Gremlins 2” is playing, and gremlins in the projection booth have destroyed the film reel. An usher asks a theatergoer for help. That theatergoer turns out to be Hulk Hogan (as himself); he stands up, gripping his popcorn, and screams at the gremlins that he’ll beat them up if they don’t restart the movie. “Do you think you gremsters can stand up to the Hulkster?”
The gremlins are duly cowedand the movie resumes. In 1990, neither man nor movie monster could stand up to his bluster — or his biceps, which he liked to call his “24-inch pythons.”
Reagan-era America was saturated with violent jingoism — and pop culture was no exception.
Hogan, who died on Thursday, was the most iconic figure to emerge from the world of professional wrestling. As political commentator Carl Beijer puts itthe Hulkster “almost singlehandedly elevated professional wrestling from a regional curiosity that toured in high school gyms and county fairs to a global multimillion (eventually billion) dollar industry.” This made him “the most important professional wrestler who ever lived,” though Beijer also calls him “an absolute trainwreck of a human being,” citing memorable episodes like Hogan being caught on tape delivering an N-word-laden rant while he was in bed with a friend’s wife, and then participating in a Peter Thiel-funded lawsuit that killed Gawker for publishing that tape on its site.
The “Gremlins 2” appearance came when Hogan’s career was still going strong, but it presaged his long descent into a schlocky nostalgia act. It can be hard to remember just what the Hulk Hogan phenomenon was like during his 1980s peak — in the middle of the Reagan years and during the last, shrieking years of the Cold War.
During the height of 1980’s “Hulkamania,” Hogan frequently talked about his three “demandments” — training, saying prayers and eating vitamins. (He later added a fourth demandment, “believe in yourself.”) I’m not sure who ever believed that “vitamins” were all that built Hogan’s “24-inch pythons,” and in the post-Gawker era it had become painfully obvious that the man didn’t exactly enjoy deep spiritual peace.
In his heyday, though, when Hogan strode out into the ring to the strains of his entrance song“Real American,” fans lost their minds cheering for him. The villains he fought, like the pro-Iran “Iron Sheik” or the supposedly Soviet wrestler “Nikolai Volkoff,” inspired surprisingly unironic hatred. When Volkoff (in reality the Croatian-born and fiercely anti-Communist Josip Nikolai Peruzovic) came into the ring singing the Soviet national anthem, fans were furious.
Reagan-era America was saturated with violent jingoism — and pop culture was no exception. Hollywood gave us a parade of muscle-bound movie murder machines like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting with fictional commies similar to Volkoff (or sometimes Middle Easterners to the the Iron Sheik).
The fantasies playing out on movie screens and wrestling rings were a dreamy remix of an all-too-real foreign policy in which the U.S. did things like invade the island nation of Grenada in 1983 on the grounds that Grenada’s left-wing government was building an airport, and that it was theoretically possible that this airport could one day be used by the Soviet Union to bomb us. (Really.) The Reagan administration was secretly funneling arms to Contra death squads in Nicaragua, who murdered nuns and priests during their insurgency against the country’s left-wing government, while Arnold Schwarzenegger was fighting with left-wing guerillas in the jungles of an unnamed Central American country at the beginning of the first “Predator” movie in 1987. The United States was backing Saddam Hussein’s bloody war against Iran while “Real American” Hulk Hogan was duking it out with the Iron Sheik.
You can learn a lot about a society from looking at the stories it tells itself. A generation later, a bestselling book of advice for aspiring screenwriters advised that the hero of a movie should do something like “save the cat” early in the film so audiences would root for them.
In an atmosphere of unhinged nationalistic fervor that marked the last decade of the Cold War, the only thing the Sly and Arnold types or the Hulkster needed to be for us to root for them was big, strong, violent and on our side.
You can learn a lot about a society from looking at the stories it tells itself.
And yet, even by the standards of the era, Hogan the man seems to have been remarkably free from redeeming qualities. In the late 1980s, when wrestler and future politician Jesse “the Body” Ventura made an attempt to form a union, WWE founder Vice McMahon caught wind of it and nipped it in the bud. Years later, it came out in court that Hogan was the one who ratted out his co-workers to the boss.
In the late 1990s, as Hogan’s original schtick was wearing thin, he did one of the most memorable heel turns in the history of wrestling, becoming “Hollywood Hulk Hogan” and joining with a team of villainous wrestlers who called themselves “the New World Order.” But even that only lasted for a few years.
The rest of his career was a cycle of “returns” that rarely lasted more than a couple of years. The fans turned against him hard after the N-word/sex tape fiasco and the lawsuit quietly funded by the far-right billionaire Thiel that put the pesky Gawker out of existence.
His last big public act came last summer, when he tore off his shirt at the Republican National Convention, screaming about “Trumpamania.” One of President Trump’s now defunct Atlantic City casinos hosted two Wrestlemanias during the Hulkamania 1980s, so perhaps the Hulkster’s invitation to the RNC shouldn’t have been surprising.
Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” was lifted from Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president in 1980, and some of the worst things Trump has done harken back to the era of audiences cheering themselves hoarse for “Real Americans” beating up cartoonishly evil foreigners. Trump ordered as many airstrikes in his first five months in office as Joe Biden did in four long years, even fulfilling the long-time neoconservative dream of bombing Iran, and he’s overseen a brutal crackdown on immigrants. The president and members of his administration are working overtime to make Americans hating a foreign “other” cool again.
I have many fond memories of watching Hulk Hogan wrestle during my childhood, and some of the silly action movies of that era are still personal favorites. But one time through the bloodlusting 1980s was more than enough.
Ben Burgis is a political commentator and author. He has written articles for Jacobin and The Daily Beast.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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