In Praise of Michael Brooks (1983-2020)
Michael Jamal Brooks was one of the smartest and funniest minds on the Left, defined by his advocacy for an international socialist mass movement, and the world is a lesser one without him.
Photo Illustration by Aaron Mayorga. Still of Michael Brooks taken from ‘The Mill Series’ at Lafayette College.
Welcome to Terminally Chill—a newsletter that discusses politics, sports, and other issues from a left-wing perspective—by Aaron Mayorga, an award-winning photojournalist.
It’s been more than two weeks since the world unexpectedly lost Michael Brooks, the host of The Michael Brooks Show and longtime cohost of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, at age 36. Many have already, as I will try to do so below, attested to the profound, indelible mark Michael has left on their own lives, whether personally or parasocially, and in ways political and not-so-political.
Regretfully, I never met the man, but I recall first coming across Michael—and his cackling, contagious laughter—at some point in 2013. I’d started watching debate clips from the Majority Report after seeing Sam on Chris Hayes’ then-weekend morning show, Up, on MSNBC. I’ll admit though, at the onset despite not really knowing his name, I wasn’t a fan of Michael’s. If I ever came across a clip from a show Michael was on the mic, I’d usually quickly click off to a different video, ideally one of Sam hosting. It wasn’t until I was an undergrad that Michael had finally grown on me. Being a commuter student left me with a lot of spare time between classes—much of it spent alone—and that was time often filled by listening to Majority Report.
Looking back, I believe it was Michael’s conversations with frequent show guest Wosny Lambre, writer for The Athletic, as well as his debate against far-right YouTuber-turned-failed UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin, or the Internet’s Sargon of Akkad, that finally converted me into a fan of his. The former showcased not only his incredible ‘Nation of Islam Obama’ impression but also a side to Michael that, evident through his banter with Wos, belied what my Bronx-bred brain had anticipated from a white guy raised in Massachusetts—although the reggae interstitials when Michael hosted the show should’ve been a hint.
The latter spat with Sargon, meanwhile, saw Michael offer an incisive rebuke to the concept of the “regressive left”—the notion liberals are afraid to tell the so-called harsh truths about Islam out of fear of being politically incorrect. An atheist by virtue of Catholic education, I’d seen the phrase bandied about in New Atheist circles for years before it entered mainstream right-wing lexicon. (I was one of those who watched videos of Dr. Richard Dawkins clowning on Ray Comfort’s banana obsession or whatever.) Yet, for all the New Atheist claims to intellectual rigor, the idea of the ‘regressive left’ was seldom scrutinized by anyone within and its existence, rather ironically, elevated to that of doctrine. That was, of course, until Michael came along—patiently exposing the superficiality of Sargon’s “analysis” of the Islamic world (and frankly, of the world in general) as little more than a pseudointellectual circlejerk wound in false binaries. (An aside: as a gamer—a hobby Michael urges in his book, probably rightly, that people avoid—it was deeply amusing to see Sargon, who rose to fame by claiming feminists had ‘infiltrated’ gaming, skirt questions for 45 minutes.)
[at 42:59] Michael J. Brooks: ‘Yes, I disagree with you — I’m not a fanatical, pure individualist. Yes, again, this is not a gotcha’ [question].
Carl Benjamin aka Sargon: ‘This is not about individualism. I’m talking about the need to have a separate month for black history. If, as you say, black history is being taught as part of the mainstream curriculum to give an accurate representation of your country’s history, (crosstalk) there is no need to have a—
MJB: (crosstalk) ‘It needs to be taught all of the above, all of the above, all of the above. Again, all of the above. These are not either/or questions, Mr. Sargon.’
Sargon: ‘Right, but I-I’m framing it as if it is.
MJB: ‘But I’m not accepting your frame.’
Sargon: (laughs) ‘Okay, but that doesn’t mean that this doesn’t need an answer.’
MJB: (coldly) ‘That doesn’t mean that it does need an answer.’
Amusement aside, Michael’s insight then—including invoking the work of the late Pakistani human rights attorney Asma Jahangir—was an early indicator of the historically-minded, internationalist perspective that defines his legacy.
Michael broadened, quite literally, the political horizons of those who listened to him, and I was no exception. He taught me to expand my international interests to include countries rarely mentioned in the American press—places like Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, and Bolivia. I studied international politics in college, as a complement to journalism, largely because of Michael’s work on the Majority Report and TMBS.
His empathy and compassion for others transcended borders, too many to count on your fingers, or your toes for that matter. In more ways than one, Michael personified the ethos of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign—epitomized by the willingness to fight for someone you didn’t know, a trait he had in spades and inspired in countless others.
That said, Michael remained scathing in his criticism of his foes and their “ideas,” most notably the likes of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web—themselves the subject of his recent book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. Therein, he shows how these self-styled renegades “naturalize or mythologize” the current state of affairs as just the way it is. Rather than reckon with the forces that shape our world, the IDW, as Michael concisely shows, are no renegades at all; they serve the status quo by masking it in an intellectually dubious and ahistorical veneer.
Where Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, et al myopically paint the world in black-and-white, Michael (with his incredible crew and diverse array of guests) provided nuance and, crucially, context with a healthy dose of humor and aspiration to boot—and challenged the rest of us to do the same. “Socialists,” he believed, “can do better [and] we can start by analyzing the material roots of the uptick in despair and alienation… [in] lives defined by relentless anxiety and undercompensation.” We “must reimagine the oppressive systems that structure both the boardroom and the shop floor.”
In a year marked by unending tragedy and cruelty, this feels especially so—to the extent that, on some level, I still don’t quite believe it. To describe Michael’s passing as a loss would be an understatement; he leaves behind a massive void in the building of left independent media (such as his collaborations with Jacobin, or his own Illicit History documentary series), while the global working class has lost an advocate.
Despair and mourn as we may at his untimely death, we must, however, collectively continue that work and advocacy in the coming weeks, months, and years, as the TMBS crew and Michael’s sister Lisha plan to do—and perhaps here, we can take solace in his own words: “There’s always hope as long as we’re breathing.”
I will miss Michael Brooks, just as so many around the world will, even more than he ever could’ve realized. He described Against the Web as his “contribution” to the cause of international socialism, but the outpouring of support from colleagues and fans evidences a body of work that was so much more—and, yet, had so much more to offer.
May he rest in power.
Michael Brooks interviewing one of his heroes, former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, in January 2020.
If you’d like to see—and learn—more from The Michael Brooks Show, you can do so here; and if you have the means, please consider supporting TMBS on Patreon here. Additionally, you can purchase in print Michael’s book Against the Web either here, or there.