In this hour-long interview, Butch talks about the difference between liberals and leftists, and why independent people-powered parties (often referred to as “third parties”) are crucial to the health and survival of U.S. democracy. He also shares his percepctive on his removal from the ballot by the Democratic establishment in California, and the differences and similarities between the two major corporatist/oligarchic parties – “Team Blue Genocide and Team Red Fascism,” as Ware calls them.
Says Ware:
A majority of registered voters [63%] say that both parties do such a “poor job” that a “third major party” is needed. . . . The two-party system is a fabrication [and] the “lesser of two evils” argument was actually formulated by the CIA in the 1960s to try to prevent the emergence of genuine leftist politics, and especially of genuine Black leftist politics. It’s a psyop [psychological operation], and we’re living under it. The people who live outside of this constant mental conditioning see through it. . . . What we perceive from the inside as a battle between Democrats and Republicans is actually a factional dispute inside a single capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist party. They alternate power back and forth, and that’s it. What they never do is create space for you to express your political dissent from the capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist framework in its totality. . . . The system is so fragile right now. We can break the duopoly control. A majority of people do not identify with this political system at all. The time is ripe for a third party. And you know who knows it? The Democrats. That’s the reason why they’ve sued to knock me off the ballot in California [and] the reason they spent 20 million dollars trying to knock Dr. Jill Stein and myself off the ballot in 2024.
Following is more of what Dr. Ware says in the above interview.
The relationship between Team Blue Genocide and Team Red Fascism is that one steals while the other holds the bag. So while one can argue that Republicans were responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade, when the Democrats had control over the House, the Senate, and the White House, did they protect Roe v. Wade? Did they enshine and codify it into law?
Just ask yourself a set of questions about what function the Democrats are actually playing. . . . They have preferred to weaponize issues and rights [a woman’s right to choose, the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and DEI) as ways to activate their voter base in “lesser of two evils” arguments rather than just securing and protecting [all of these rights] because their job is actually to weaponize your fear of Team Red in order for them to undertake identical policies.
[For instance] I push back strongly against the idea that the Republicans are [solely] responsible for ICE. The Democrats massively funded and escalated ICE. The Democrats were the ones responsible for starting the policies of family separations, for pioneering putting kids in cages. Trump, despite the theatrics of the [recent] escalation, and the visibility and the fascist violence we see in the streets, is still chasing Obama’s deportation record. He can’t catch the “Deporter in Chief.” . . . The problem is when Rebuplicans do it, liberals resist; and when the Democrats do it, liberals applaud.
. . . Voters are constantly fear-mongered about the other side being worse. . . . It’s a toxic relationship. The Republicans do the same thing with Democrats that Democrats do with Republicans. It is a game of mutual recrimination and fear that is built on stoking a fake culture war that does not affect the money flow of the corporations and the billionaires that are at the top of the system. They want you identifying with those parties because they know that those parties serve their interests one way or the other.
[A major study from 2014 showed] that there is “little or no” correlation between what either the Democratic voting base or the Republican voting base want and what our elected officials do. But there is a 100% correlation between what the donor class wants and what the political parties do. And the reason is simple: who funds you runs you.
. . . My colleague at UC-Riverside, Dylan Rodriguez, says that "the Democrat Party is the most effective counter-insurgency organization ever to come into existence in human history." They are where real possibilities for change go to die.
If you remove the Democrats from the equation, American fascism becomes virtually impossible because that hard white supremacist core that is driving the extreme right is actually a small fraction of people. But people are so disaffected with the Democrats and do not see any possibility of any emancipation coming through their corrupt capitalist imperialist practices, that they disengage. If we had an actual opposition party rather than just two factions of a single white supremacist party, coalitions which are possible would [form and] drown out this small hard core kernal of white supremacy. [That core] would become vastly outnumbered once the Democrats are out of the way.
But the Democrats are in the way of a real opposition party emerging, and they have to continuously weaponize identity politics in order to keep that position of material privilege where they control the access to resources. As long as they are there, no liberation is possible.
– Butch Ware
May 31, 2026
May 31, 2026
Related Off-site Links:
The Green Party’s Butch Ware: “I Love a Good Fight” – Nathan J. Robinson (Current Affairs, April 22, 2026).
Butch Ware: The Green Candidate – The Latino Newsletter (April 6, 2026).
Democrats Panic Over Green Party Candidate: An Interview with Dr. Butch Ware – Bad Faith (March 30, 2026).
Judge Rejects Green Party Candidate Butch Ware’s Bid to Appear on California Governor Ballots – Yue Stella Yu (CalMatters.org, March 26, 2026).
Green Party Candidate for California Governor Butch Ware Kicked Off the Ballot – The Spiritual and Political Podcast (March 27, 2026).
Inside Butch Ware’s Vision for California: Healthcare, Housing, and a Political Shake-Up – Matthew Levitt (Fathom, March 2026).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
BUTCH WARE
• Introducing California’s Gubernatorial Candidate Butch Ware
• Butch Ware on the Democrats’ “Lawfare” to Keep Greens Off the Ballot
• Butch Ware on Efforts by the Democratic Party to Block His Green Party Run for California Governor
• Hey, Liberals! We Need to Talk
• Butch Ware: “I’m Trying to Take Care of People”
• “People Really Want New Options in Politics”
• Butch Ware on “Red & Blue vs Green Politics”
• “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• Butch Ware on the Hard Knock Radio Show
• Butch Ware and the Gatekeepers Within the Democratic Party
• Photo of the Day – March 3, 2026
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – November 26, 2025
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – June 5, 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – January 30, 2025
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “This Is a Tragic, Heartbreaking Moment in the History of Humanity”: Butch Ware on the Gaza Genocide
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis (2024)
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
GREEN PARTY
• “Green Wave 2026 is Global”
• Meet Some of the “People-Powered” Green Party Candidates for 2026
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• Something to Think About – December 8, 2024
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler”
• Jill Stein: “Americans Deserve Choices”
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Third Parties and the Historical Record
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Cornel West: “The Next Step Is a Green Step, a Progressive Step”
• Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein: Is a “Historic Collaboration” in the Making? (2016)
• Voting Green: Hope Over Fear
THE FAILURES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
• Authoritarianism With a Blue Sticker
• The Time for Illusions Is Over: Henry Giroux on the Democratic Party
• David Norton: “The Democratic Party Serves Capital, Not You”
• Mike Figueredo: “Elected Democrats Have No Real Interest in Doing What the Base Wants”
• Tony Pentimalli on the Fallacy of the “Safe Political Center”
• Genny Harrison on Brian Tyler Cohen’s Interview with Obama
• Progressives and Obama
• Jeff Cohen on How Obama’s “Corporate Liberalism” Led to the Rise of Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’s Book, 107 Days
• Adam Bates on the Team Blue / Kamala “I Told Ya So” Smugness Tour
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden/Harris Administration
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in 2024
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• David Sirota: Quote of the Day – January 26, 2021
• Progressive Perspectives On an American Coronation
• Marianne Williamson: “‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Is Not Enough to Win”
• Nick Cruse: “‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Is the Privileged Position”
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
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