America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - Is Christianity Needed to Save the West? with Nick Fuentes - Matthew Drake

00:00:09.000 Hello, everyone.

00:00:09.000 All right.

00:00:12.000 I am Matthew Drake.

00:00:13.000 I'm here with Nicholas J. Fuentes, who is the co host of Nationalist Review, which is a podcast.

00:00:24.000 He's also the host of American First Media, as well as the Internet's number one almond activator.

00:00:33.000 Nick, how are you doing?

00:00:35.000 I'm doing well.

00:00:36.000 How are you, Matt?

00:00:37.000 Quite well.

00:00:38.000 Thank you.

00:00:40.000 Yeah, so.

00:00:43.000 By the way, Fuentes, is that, that doesn't sound like an Anglo name.

00:00:50.000 Are you by chance a mestizo?

00:00:53.000 No, no, actually, Castizo, Castizo nationalism.

00:00:58.000 Beautiful. 0.71

00:00:59.000 Nice catch.

00:01:00.000 It is Macron.

00:01:03.000 Right.

00:01:03.000 Well, I've been, you know, we're both into the whole nationalist right wing stuff, but one of the things I haven't covered too much on my channel is religion and Christianity.

00:01:17.000 I've done one video on that, but I wanted to get you on because I saw on Twitter you were causing a bit of a ruckus with your tweets about Christianity.

00:01:32.000 Now, I was just impressed because you didn't back down on that. 0.72

00:01:45.000 Basically, the tweet was saying, you know, we need Christianity to preserve the West. 0.97

00:01:52.000 I don't see any way that we're going to win this war, this current, without getting people back into the churches and such. 0.96

00:02:05.000 So, and I also think that you're a good person to talk to because, you know, a lot of people will say the church today is cocked, right?

00:02:16.000 There's a lot of problems with it.

00:02:18.000 And so that's most people's experience with Christianity.

00:02:23.000 But as I understand it, you're a bit of a bookworm.

00:02:27.000 I picture you're kind of like the, what, in Game of Thrones, like that tower that all the meisters go to study in, whatever.

00:02:41.000 So, you know, I think maybe you have a longer view of things, and obviously Christianity, it's ancient.

00:02:49.000 You know, it's been around forever.

00:02:51.000 And so, yeah, just give us your perspective and.

00:02:58.000 On Christianity and why you think it's so pivotal moving forward, if you will.

00:03:05.000 Sure.

00:03:05.000 So it actually surprised me.

00:03:07.000 You know, you bring up my original tweet where I said that Christianity would be essential to saving the West.

00:03:14.000 And I didn't think it would cause as much controversy as it did because what I was saying, I think, was something pretty simple.

00:03:21.000 Now, myself, I don't like to argue from the instrumentalist frame.

00:03:26.000 I don't like to argue that Christianity is just.

00:03:29.000 Some kind of a tool for us to use to rebuild civilization because, of course, I believe it's the truth.

00:03:35.000 But I see on the alt right in particular and on the fringe right, we talked a lot during the 2016 election about meme magic.

00:03:43.000 We talked about this concept, and there's a really good article about this.

00:03:47.000 I think it was on the Radix Journal.

00:03:49.000 I'm not positive, but it was an article called Esoteric Keckism.

00:03:53.000 And it's sort of a stale meme now, but they went into detail about how meme magic actually makes sense from a spiritual lens in the sense that.

00:04:02.000 Individual memes are supposed to convey very large ideas, and this has its traditions in Buddhism.

00:04:08.000 This has its traditions all over the place.

00:04:11.000 And it struck me one day when I was thinking about this meme magic, when I was thinking about Pepe, I was thinking about this idea that we could meme civilizational transformation into existence, and I thought there's a real parallel there with Christianity.

00:04:25.000 And it sort of bewildered me that nobody saw this before, that people think a prayer, an incantation, is a silly thing.

00:04:33.000 But a meme totally makes sense, right?

00:04:35.000 And they have rituals for memes and they have all these other things for memes.

00:04:38.000 What do you think Christianity is?

00:04:40.000 The rituals, the symbols, the going to church, the songs, the culture, the cathedrals.

00:04:46.000 I mean, that is the power of the collective unconscious.

00:04:49.000 That is the power of human will.

00:04:51.000 And again, this is just from the instrumentalist lens.

00:04:53.000 And so that was my predominant argument for all these people who want to preserve the past, who want to make our civilization great again.

00:05:02.000 It is striking to me how many people don't understand how useful Christianity would be.

00:05:07.000 In restoring all these things.

00:05:10.000 Oh, yeah.

00:05:11.000 Let's see.

00:05:11.000 Wow.

00:05:12.000 So, comparing.

00:05:15.000 So, you're seeing Jesus is like a rare Pepe, something like that.

00:05:22.000 Right.

00:05:24.000 Well, no, I do think it's.

00:05:26.000 I found the Kekistan thing kind of fascinating because people latched onto this, you know, like Sargon of Akkad was really pushing this, and you get people who took it really seriously, but, you know, it.

00:05:41.000 It was obviously just meant to be fun, and yet people are just going around and they're wearing Kekstani flags and they're painting their face green or whatever.

00:05:54.000 And yet, Christianity is supposed to be the weird superstition like, oh, that's just so lame or something like that.

00:06:06.000 And I don't know, maybe that's just because, oh, my parents were Christians, so that's. 1.00

00:06:12.000 It's got to be dumb, you know. 1.00

00:06:15.000 I definitely, and I've fallen into that trap too. 0.99

00:06:17.000 It's like I've had thoughts myself, like, hey, I could just create a new religion.

00:06:23.000 It's like, wow, you know, and I could find the truth.

00:06:26.000 But I think as I've gotten older, I realized that taking what has, you know, been built up through the ages and adding on to that in whatever minor way, I mean, I'm never going to write volumes like Thomas Aquinas or anything, but.

00:06:48.000 You know, I think we can all play a part.

00:06:51.000 And it also, it's interesting too.

00:06:55.000 Like the civic nationalists will often go for the Kekestani stuff, right?

00:07:01.000 Because they want to say, oh, race doesn't matter.

00:07:03.000 And so they're just using this as like the proxy for race or something.

00:07:08.000 And, oh, you can just invent your own type or whatever.

00:07:14.000 But, you know, almost like.

00:07:16.000 Like you're a goth, like you belong to this clique, and that's whatever it is.

00:07:23.000 But race, I think people get psychologically messed up because you can't choose your race.

00:07:31.000 You just gotta accept whatever it is, and you just gotta learn to love yourself for that, and obviously not be beaten down and cowed and everything because of whatever race you are.

00:07:50.000 But, yeah, I think for that reason, Christianity and the bigger religions fit in as long as we're trying to save the West, which we're talking mostly about Caucasians, whites, Europeans.

00:08:13.000 It makes sense that that would go hand in hand with Christianity. 0.67

00:08:19.000 Right. 0.87

00:08:19.000 Well, yeah, exactly. 0.87

00:08:20.000 And I don't understand.

00:08:22.000 Where they think the fervor will come to rebuild civilization, if not from religion.

00:08:27.000 You know, Richard Spencer and some of these other characters, they think that we're all going to band together around this pretty arbitrary, pretty ahistorical conception of the European race.

00:08:40.000 I mean, people, I don't think people have really put a whole lot of thought into this. 0.65

00:08:44.000 If you want people to be traditional again, to have a big family again, to have lots of children, to fight against these great evils, these great injustices, and everything else, to rebuild their communities, To say that the church plays a part in that or the church should not be part of that conversation, it's just silly.

00:09:02.000 These are people who are fundamentally unserious about what they're talking about.

00:09:08.000 I don't understand how you get from point A to point B, how you get from our civilization now to the imperium, to the ethnostate transplanetary imperium without Christ, without religion, without these traditions that made our civilization great.

00:09:24.000 You know, all these people will point to.

00:09:26.000 The great cathedrals, they'll point to the great works of art, the great scientific achievements, and all of them were achieved in pursuit of glorifying God.

00:09:35.000 They were all pursued out of religious fervor.

00:09:39.000 And additionally, you know, if we could come back to it, it's the mimetic power of religion.

00:09:43.000 People, I think, intuitively understand mimetic power, and they understood that during the election that if you get enough people channeling sort of this unconscious energy, channeling their will in a given direction, I think it's easy for progressives and modernists to wrap their head around this concept when it's.

00:10:01.000 Internet culture, when it's memes, when it's keck, when it's Pepe.

00:10:05.000 And while that's silly now and that's become pretty cringy civic nationalist stuff, I think it's a concept that is, again, it has a strong parallel in religion, where we see with Jesus Christ, where we see with Christianity, that you have this direction of a billion people and the will of a billion people directed towards a single book, towards a single set of virtues, towards a single set of morals and everything else.

00:10:30.000 To say that that's not going to be a part of it, that because What, because we got one bad pope, we should disregard it?

00:10:39.000 Of course, Christianity will play an instrumental role in saving the country.

00:10:39.000 It's silly to me.

00:10:43.000 Without it, I don't see why people are getting out of bed in the morning, you know?

00:10:50.000 Yeah, and, you know, a lot of these people, you mentioned Spencer and whatnot, they're very critical of Jews, which are, you know, we can just say it.

00:11:02.000 They're very critical of Jews.

00:11:04.000 And one of the things that they say is that. 1.00

00:11:08.000 Well, and rightly so. 1.00

00:11:10.000 Jews kind of. 1.00

00:11:11.000 What's the culture of critique? 1.00

00:11:12.000 They like to criticize things, but they don't necessarily have, like, some idea of, okay, well, what's your idea?

00:11:22.000 What's your big idea?

00:11:26.000 So we definitely see this with atheism.

00:11:30.000 And, yeah, like you say, I just haven't heard a good.

00:11:40.000 So it seems like they're kind of falling into that thing.

00:11:40.000 Replacement.

00:11:43.000 Now, another thing is that you will hear this argument that Christianity is a Jewish trick.

00:11:56.000 I'm sure you're familiar with this. 0.99

00:12:00.000 And on the face, it definitely seems like.

00:12:04.000 Well, yeah, I don't want to set it up too much.

00:12:07.000 What are your thoughts? 0.98

00:12:08.000 Do you think it's a Jewish trick? 1.00

00:12:12.000 It's funny to me because that would be. 1.00

00:12:16.000 That would be the first instinct of people who haven't read about this stuff, who haven't read the Bible, haven't read things about what actually went down 2,000 years ago. 0.58

00:12:27.000 Because Jesus, of course, was Jewish.

00:12:29.000 But if you know the story, you know that it was actually the Jewish rabbis who were responsible for his crucifixion who alerted the Romans to his activities and got him killed in the first place.

00:12:41.000 People called that blood libel.

00:12:43.000 People called it anti Semitism. 1.00

00:12:45.000 That's just the truth. 1.00

00:12:46.000 And Jesus himself drove the moneylenders out of the temple.

00:12:49.000 Jesus himself wanted to get.

00:12:50.000 The teachings of the rabbis.

00:12:52.000 And, you know, you could read there's a really good book about this called Judaism's Strange Gods, where it talks about how, in addition to that, modern news has strayed so far from Scripture, so far from the Old Testament and what's actually in there with the Talmud and the rabbinical teachings. 0.62

00:13:10.000 But in addition to that, it's funny because Richard Spencer, so ironic, because the same people that support Richard Spencer, that love Richard Spencer, who would call Jesus a Jew and it's a Jewish trick, Who was Richard Spencer's mentor? 0.58

00:13:22.000 It's Paul Gottfried, Jewish. 0.74

00:13:24.000 So, if we're going to start talking about Jewish tricks, I think you've got to start looking at who is the mentor of Richard Spencer. 0.95

00:13:32.000 Right, right. 0.89

00:13:33.000 Well, you know, a lot of people get woke on the JQ and then they think they've just found the answer.

00:13:42.000 And it is like a significant thing once you realize it. 0.67

00:13:47.000 But, you know, I think what you start to realize is that, like, The Gentiles and the Jews, they're very intertwined. 0.85

00:13:57.000 I want to say psychologically. 1.00

00:13:59.000 It's just like they sort of play off of each other.

00:14:05.000 And I can't. 1.00

00:14:06.000 I did a video called What I Like About Jews. 0.73

00:14:09.000 And, you know, it's like.

00:14:13.000 Well, for one, they're very nationalist.

00:14:15.000 You know.

00:14:16.000 So they have a lot of these admirable qualities.

00:14:20.000 They're very smart.

00:14:22.000 I think there's always at least, you know.

00:14:26.000 A half truth to what they're saying.

00:14:29.000 And so I see this, I don't see this as like some, I think, you know, to quote Nietzsche, like revenge that the Jews, that revenge that's taken 2,000 years just to accomplish. 0.57

00:14:50.000 And you guys, you're just oblivious because you don't see it.

00:14:56.000 Maybe I'm misinterpreting him, but that's kind of what he was saying.

00:15:00.000 And I see it more as like a challenge for us, guys.

00:15:07.000 We have to take this and find the wisdom in it and not let the parts that can go too far, like, oh, Jesus wanted us to help the poor. 0.97

00:15:23.000 So that means we have to help all these welfare moms. 0.55

00:15:28.000 And we have to just like give over everything that we make. 0.81

00:15:33.000 You know, people just, they misconstrue a lot of the teachings of Christ. 0.68

00:15:41.000 So, yeah, I think that if any, like, even if it is a Jewish trick, which I think you could make an argument that it is, that doesn't necessarily mean we just do away with it. 0.99

00:15:59.000 You know, it's like, I want to see us play a trick on them for once. 1.00

00:16:05.000 You know, it's like, why do they always have to be the ones who are, you know, like, being sneaky and, like, you know, subverting us and everything?

00:16:14.000 It's like, Well, hey, maybe we could use this, and they'd think they have us right where they want us.

00:16:23.000 But in reality, we've wised up. 0.90

00:16:29.000 Yeah, well, not for nothing, but not only, but the broader establishment, the broader global establishment, whether it's the Federal Reserve, the media, the government, Hollywood, there is really a satanic and anti Christian culture. 0.78

00:16:48.000 And you could call that. 0.68

00:16:50.000 You know, whether that's a Jewish establishment or an atheist establishment, I mean, there's all kinds of people that are involved in this affair, and certainly Jews have an outside presence in media and some of these other spheres.

00:17:02.000 That's not disputed by anybody.

00:17:04.000 But there is this incredible hostility to Christianity, and you have to ask yourself if you're one of the nationalists fighting against the system, fighting against the globalists, fighting against the New World Order, you have to ask yourself, why would you have the same hostility?

00:17:19.000 Why would you have the same antipathy towards religion?

00:17:23.000 Why do they resent Jesus Christ so much?

00:17:23.000 that they do.

00:17:25.000 Why have they driven Jesus and religion at large out of the church, out of, or not out of the church, but out of the schools, out of the public square, out of the public domain, off of television, out of culture?

00:17:36.000 You have to ask yourself why they've been so determined to destroy that as an institution in our lives.

00:17:42.000 And I think once you answer that question, you realize that it has tremendous utility, tremendous power to unite our people and unite our people around positive, Good things that will destroy the influence that the establishment has.

00:17:56.000 People will point to the Pope.

00:17:58.000 People will point to how Christianity is sclaven morale. 0.81

00:18:02.000 In the words of Nietzsche, how it's a morality of weakness that celebrates slavery.

00:18:09.000 And you understand that criticism, but at the same time, you look at how Christianity fortifies a civilization, how Christianity encourages strong families headed by a strong father with a subservient wife, with lots of children who respect their parents, who respect tradition, who respect rituals, and on and on.

00:18:28.000 I don't understand how people can take all of that and say, no, we don't like that.

00:18:36.000 My dad or my mom, boomer cucks, believe in that stuff, so I'm just going to write off the whole thing.

00:18:43.000 We have to have imagination.

00:18:44.000 To a certain extent, we have to have vision to repurpose and reutilize these old things. 0.59

00:18:49.000 I mean, somebody told me, well, Christianity's been cucked for a long time, and Christianity's old, and Christianity is. 0.99

00:18:58.000 Is useless basically. 0.98

00:18:59.000 And I said, okay, well then, if there's too much of an effort to rehabilitate Christianity, I think we could say the same for the white race, right? 1.00

00:19:07.000 It's old, it's lame, forget about it, who cares, it'll go away. 0.96

00:19:11.000 You know, there's that double standard there.

00:19:13.000 And it's people that just don't know enough about the subject that criticize it.

00:19:18.000 People that just don't know enough about it, they know one thing, they know that Jesus is Jewish, and they have heard some things before about that, so they say, writing it off.

00:19:28.000 I heard Nietzsche said that was slave morality, so it's.

00:19:31.000 You know, I won't even consider it.

00:19:32.000 You have to do your homework.

00:19:33.000 You have to read the history.

00:19:35.000 And a lot of people don't do that.

00:19:36.000 So, wholehearted endorsement.

00:19:38.000 I don't even think Nietzsche was like, like, even that, uh, anti.

00:19:44.000 Well, yeah, I don't know.

00:19:47.000 My understanding was he's not like anti Christian, or he wasn't just declaring that, uh, like the famous quote is God is dead, but he just, he, I think he just more wanted us to grapple with it.

00:20:01.000 Um, I wanted to point out you've got some great debating skills.

00:20:04.000 Have you been taking lessons from, uh, Will Chamberlain by Nietzsche?

00:20:09.000 Yeah, oh yeah.

00:20:10.000 I got a lot of raw talent, you know, but he's been helping me shape up.

00:20:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:20:18.000 So, let's see.

00:20:20.000 Another question that I thought of when you were talking about.

00:20:24.000 Okay.

00:20:26.000 So, yes, we have to look at Christianity as a whole, right?

00:20:31.000 We can't just look at it like, okay, I see these cucked elements that are in the church.

00:20:37.000 Like,.

00:20:39.000 This is almost an economic thing, like the unseen cost.

00:20:44.000 Like, if you do away with it, what's going to happen to the traditional values?

00:20:51.000 You go to these churches and you see a lot of people who they are not very intelligent.

00:21:01.000 They run on emotions.

00:21:03.000 I think this is a majority of people, actually.

00:21:06.000 A majority of people are not, you know, maybe like.

00:21:11.000 Revolutionary thinkers, or whatever.

00:21:13.000 So, yeah, a lot of people, they're just doing what they're told and what they're allowed to do within the structure that they're in.

00:21:23.000 And if you just say, okay, you're on your own, you know, go do what you want, and, you know, hopefully you'll do the right thing, you know, but we don't want to impose anything on you.

00:21:38.000 Well, don't be surprised when these nefarious.

00:21:41.000 Elements of society start leading people down the sinful paths, really.

00:21:48.000 And I also just, you know, I like that Christianity talks about good and evil and they confront that straight on.

00:21:59.000 They confront that. 0.69

00:22:00.000 And so I think when you start to remove these elements, it's hard to even judge, like, how bad things will get from that.

00:22:13.000 You know, it causes this ripple effect.

00:22:15.000 Also, like, you think about some of these black churches, and I have to think that Christianity has done a lot of good for black people.

00:22:27.000 So I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on, because I'm a little torn on this question of whether Christians should be, you know, proselytizing around the world.

00:22:41.000 Like, you know, I really, myself, I'm focused on my own people.

00:22:47.000 But I do see that Christianity can do a lot of good.

00:22:55.000 I think maybe it's sort of like a technology, you know. 0.75

00:22:58.000 So, yes, white men or Jewish men, like, created this thing. 0.71

00:23:04.000 And it's a technology now that other people can use. 0.80

00:23:08.000 At the same time, I don't like the idea of us, like, exporting things to other countries because that's turned out terrible in the past. 0.97

00:23:17.000 Do you think that we should try to spread Christianity as a.

00:23:22.000 Religion around the world to other races and cultures.

00:23:28.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:29.000 And you have to separate that from the missionary duty of Christians to spread our religion around the world from the nationalist political duty to save our country.

00:23:43.000 I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. 0.74

00:23:45.000 In fact, they're very different from one another in the sense that it's all the difference in the world between bringing people over here, between bringing Mexicans and Africans and everyone else over here to invade our country and to send a missionary over to Africa because you. 0.55

00:24:01.000 You want to share the truth with them. 0.95

00:24:03.000 You want to share the good word, as they say.

00:24:05.000 You know, I don't think there's any difference between religious truth in that sense and scientific truth or mathematical truth.

00:24:12.000 We share our technology with Africans in Africa or with Asians in Indochina and other places.

00:24:19.000 We share our truths with South America and other countries.

00:24:22.000 I don't think religion is any different.

00:24:24.000 It's just a matter of there has to be this separation. 0.91

00:24:27.000 There has to be this is America, this is Europe, and that is Africa and that's Asia.

00:24:33.000 However, You know, the truth is universal.

00:24:36.000 We can have it all ways where we can have different nations, but all being Christian, all understanding the same truth.

00:24:42.000 And this is pretty intuitive, but people, I think, they are openly hostile to this idea.

00:24:48.000 I don't think they allow themselves to see this because they've already been sold, they've already bought into and invested in this narrative that Christianity is universalist and therefore it does not fit in with the philosophy of difference, which is essentially the alt right brand of conservatism, which.

00:25:06.000 I don't think there's a lot of processing power.

00:25:09.000 Either you're not considering it or you're not smart enough to consider that sort of thing.

00:25:14.000 And I think we see a lot of that on the alt right is a refusal to consider a more nuanced understanding of the doctrine.

00:25:23.000 Yeah, as we were talking about the missionary thing, I remembered Martin Scorsese did a great film called Silence.

00:25:34.000 Have you seen it?

00:25:35.000 No.

00:25:36.000 Oh man, you gotta watch it.

00:25:37.000 It's like these two Catholic priests, I think, go to Japan and they're trying to infiltrate.

00:25:51.000 Well, I think there have been missionaries in the past and they set up this community, and then one of them gets caught and says that he has given up his religion because the emperor basically made him give up his religion.

00:26:11.000 But then at the end, there's like this ambiguous thing, like he held on to some token symbol, and you know, there's some ambiguity.

00:26:21.000 It's a good film.

00:26:22.000 Oh, I just spoiled it.

00:26:26.000 My bad, my bad, Nick.

00:26:28.000 It's all right.

00:26:31.000 So, I forget where I was going next.

00:26:39.000 We were talking about, yeah, can Christianity be adapted to cultures?

00:26:45.000 Um, let's see.

00:26:58.000 Well, do you have a.

00:27:00.000 Let's change gears a little bit.

00:27:02.000 Do you have a favorite Bible passage or story or something that's significant to you?

00:27:12.000 Or even more appropriate, like significant to ethno nationalism, to the idea of a right wing nationalist movement?

00:27:26.000 Not particularly.

00:27:27.000 I think one of the crucial ones that's important to. 0.92

00:27:31.000 The nationalist movement is obviously the Tower of Babel.

00:27:35.000 That's probably the first example that comes to mind.

00:27:38.000 And I believe there's a passage in Revelations as well that talks about how the nations of the world will exist until the end of time, essentially, until the second coming.

00:27:49.000 So I'm not sure exactly which one that is.

00:27:52.000 I believe it's in Revelations.

00:27:53.000 But I mean, those two probably support, are the best support for an ethno nationalist version of Christendom.

00:28:00.000 And, you know, people say that that's not legitimate or that doesn't exist.

00:28:04.000 But.

00:28:05.000 You know, you look at Christianity from the time of the fourth century when it was adopted in the Roman Empire until very, very recently, and there was no question as to whether or not Christianity condoned borders.

00:28:19.000 People conveniently like to forget about the fact that for 1700 years, for actually probably closer to 1500 years, Christianity upheld indisputably, uncontestedly borders and European Christendom.

00:28:35.000 It wasn't like that that was some kind of like Christian revelation that.

00:28:38.000 We don't need to have borders anymore.

00:28:40.000 That was a political one.

00:28:41.000 So I think it's very convenient that people read it out that beyond the theological case for borders that's laid out in several places in the Bible, in addition, you have a thousand or more, a thousand and a half years of history that suggest that the two are fundamentally not incompatible.

00:28:58.000 And actually, one would support the other.

00:29:01.000 We know that Christendom had borders and walls in the Vatican, on the outer periphery of the Holy Roman Empire, in the Balkans.

00:29:08.000 Obviously, they fought.

00:29:10.000 Multiple crusades to retake the Holy Land.

00:29:12.000 So, this idea that militancy, that borders, that nationalism is not Christian is absurd and against the historical record.

00:29:22.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:26.000 So, what do you think about the Dark Ages then?

00:29:33.000 I mean, there is this kind of myth that, oh, you know, things fell apart as soon as Christianity took hold and after.

00:29:44.000 After the pagan Roman Empire had fallen, and then we got into this, you know, terrible period.

00:29:54.000 There's actually a good book on this topic before I hand it over to you.

00:30:00.000 It's called, I think it's called The Victory of Reason, but it sort of talks about the Dark Ages and exposes this myth like, oh, yeah, it was just a terrible time. 0.78

00:30:10.000 Like, yeah, it's true.

00:30:12.000 We didn't have a lot of the, uh, You know, standard of living exactly, but there were a lot of inventions that were taking place then, like, I don't know, the like farming inventions, like the plow and stuff, like major things that laid the groundwork for everything that came after that.

00:30:36.000 And it was all the church, and it really didn't have much government involvement.

00:30:45.000 I think.

00:30:46.000 I think there were city states and stuff or regions, but it was really all these local communities would organize around their little cathedral or covenant there.

00:31:06.000 So I think it's a little unfair the way that history has painted that time. 0.89

00:31:17.000 And usually it's Christianity that gets the blame, and then we think, oh, the Enlightenment happened, and everybody was just, you know, they realized, oh, this was such a foolish thing to have this ideology, this religious part infused into society.

00:31:39.000 Well, yeah, the Dark Ages, I mean, that's a myth, essentially, this idea that everybody got really dumb because the church was hoarding all the books and. 0.71

00:31:39.000 Right. 0.71

00:31:49.000 Suppressing things.

00:31:50.000 I mean, this is an invention. 1.00

00:31:51.000 This is a fabricated history created by the new atheists like Hitchens, like Dawkins, and the rest of them. 0.98

00:31:58.000 And it's just simply not true. 0.65

00:32:00.000 There was so much knowledge that was being learned at the time.

00:32:03.000 There was so much cultural life going on at the time that you don't learn about.

00:32:08.000 And in addition to that, not only do they lie about the Middle Ages and medieval times about Christianity, they forget that Christianity basically invented the modern university with the cathedral.

00:32:20.000 Was the main place for intellects, for academics, for people that are studying, for scholars and everything else.

00:32:28.000 But in addition to that, the Enlightenment that they hold up as the triumph of reason, the triumph of science over religion, with few exceptions, every scientist, every political philosopher, everybody that was produced by the Enlightenment was Christian, was devoutly Christian, whether it's Copernicus, whether it's Isaac Newton on the political spectrum, on the philosophical spectrum.

00:32:52.000 John Locke derived his theories from.

00:32:54.000 Christianity and all the rest did as well.

00:32:57.000 So, you know, it's just a fundamental misreading of history.

00:33:00.000 If people, like, again, if people just read the books, if people went into their history and looked at what actually happened, all these things start to go away.

00:33:09.000 But that's just it.

00:33:10.000 It's so funny to me, too, that the alt right I mean, these are people that have a pretty good understanding that the media lies to them, that the schools lie to them, that they're being lied to by the establishment.

00:33:20.000 And then they take the same tired talking points from the media on issues that they themselves haven't looked into.

00:33:28.000 And they hold these as the truth, as the Bible truth.

00:33:31.000 So it's very interesting, again, that double standard.

00:33:34.000 That at once they believe that everybody's lying to them.

00:33:37.000 Everybody in school, everyone in academia is lying to them.

00:33:40.000 There's this big conspiracy.

00:33:41.000 But at the same time, they can take all the non political issues basically at face value from high school, you know?

00:33:49.000 And I like that point you made earlier about it's like, yeah, if our enemies were really like.

00:33:49.000 Right.

00:34:02.000 If they actually wanted us to be Christians, why would they be, you know, screaming and trying to, you know, pass legislation to discriminate against Christians?

00:34:13.000 And why would they have all these, you know, implements if Christianity wasn't good for us? 0.96

00:34:21.000 So it's just kind of silly. 0.83

00:34:26.000 Now, we have sort of talked about this dichotomy like the truth versus like.

00:34:33.000 This being a good implementation or whatever.

00:34:37.000 And my theories on this are kind of evolving.

00:34:43.000 And some of it I've talked about, some of it I haven't.

00:34:47.000 I was an atheist for a while and I've since converted, but I just want to ask you what your opinions are.

00:34:55.000 Like, if someone doesn't, you know, actually believe in, say, let's just call it, you know, a ghost in the sky or something like that, do you think it's like, Dishonest for them, but they recognize okay, there's all these cultural benefits.

00:35:16.000 I think your co host James Alsop has said, like, he's culturally Christian, which it's kind of an ambiguous term.

00:35:24.000 It's like, what does that mean?

00:35:27.000 You know, it's like, do you go to church?

00:35:29.000 It's like, so I guess, what are your thoughts on the like, someone who isn't fully on board, but they sort of like the Christian vibe?

00:35:46.000 Do you think there's a place for them in church, or is it sort of dishonest for them to jump into that?

00:35:54.000 I don't think it's dishonest.

00:35:55.000 I think that they, like anybody else, would be taking it on faith, essentially.

00:36:01.000 I mean, that's what faith means, even for believers, is that we know God is real.

00:36:06.000 We know that what God says is the truth, but we have to essentially take it on faith that that is right, even when it's difficult.

00:36:14.000 I mean, I was thinking about it the other day.

00:36:16.000 It's sort of like with children.

00:36:19.000 Little children probably know that their parents are right.

00:36:22.000 They've been around longer.

00:36:24.000 They're smarter.

00:36:25.000 They're more developed.

00:36:26.000 Any rational young person would know that whatever their parents tell them is probably 99% more correct than what they think.

00:36:35.000 They might not come around to the same conclusions because they don't, obviously, they can't comprehend what their parents are telling them.

00:36:41.000 So they have to take it on faith.

00:36:42.000 And that's essentially what faith means for Christians. 0.54

00:36:45.000 So with James Alsop or these cultural Christians, I think. 0.92

00:36:49.000 I don't know if it would be inauthentic, but I think they are probably trying, like most people, to come to terms with these commands, with these truths that are true, that we know to be true, but they are struggling to believe in a religious sense. 1.00

00:37:06.000 And I would welcome them, I think.

00:37:08.000 I think it's difficult for authentic Christians to see, like, you know, how do you take all the trappings of it without the core of it?

00:37:14.000 How do you take, you know, why would you be abstinent? 0.70

00:37:19.000 Why would you.

00:37:20.000 Have one wife and have lots of children and be sexually moral and have other moral behavior if you didn't believe in God.

00:37:27.000 I mean, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I think we have to bring these people along sort of baby steps to where we come from.

00:37:35.000 And so this is an evolution I've seen time and time again from people.

00:37:38.000 It was no different for me, where you see that Christianity is highly, has a great utility for our civilization.

00:37:46.000 And as you get interested in why that is, why it is the case that Christendom has made us so successful, I think eventually there is a path there.

00:37:54.000 Where you come around to understand that it's not because Christianity recommends X, Y, and Z, but it's through Christianity that we become great.

00:38:03.000 So I think there's a pathway to salvation, so to speak, to get a little religious.

00:38:08.000 But there is a pathway there from this cultural Christian that's a little bit paradoxical, that's instrumentalist, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to a genuine, authentic believer.

00:38:18.000 And that's where we want people.

00:38:20.000 We want people to be doing these things because they believe it's moral and right, not because.

00:38:25.000 Like somebody told them to, you know?

00:38:26.000 So I think there's a way.

00:38:28.000 There's a way to make it work.

00:38:30.000 Yeah. 0.70

00:38:31.000 I've been really interested in just like how, how could I get like atheists to, you know, start to entertain these ideas.

00:38:42.000 And I did put out one video which was talking about sort of a theory of, you know, the Holy Trinity in terms of seeing it in terms of some kind of ancestral link, you know.

00:39:01.000 So, and also, um, Obviously, like the big example that a lot of people are familiar with is Jordan Peterson, who's talked about the psychological significance of the biblical stories.

00:39:14.000 And he, I mean, he's, it's a big hit.

00:39:19.000 Like people are, a lot of these people aren't true believers, but they're really, they're fascinated by a lot of what he has to say. 0.74

00:39:28.000 And I think maybe that is hard for people like Christians to sort of do.

00:39:35.000 Like they're so, they're used to their, um, Their traditions, their church, and sort of just these emotional understandings of their belief, which they understand and it's very important for them.

00:39:55.000 And then they get up on the pulpit and they can, you know, they have this emotional experience.

00:39:59.000 And other Christians, it connects with them, but, you know, it's not really, I think, connecting to other people. 0.83

00:40:09.000 But I do think it's true. 0.67

00:40:10.000 Like you said, once people start to go down that path and they start studying the Bible or whatever, maybe they start reflecting and meditating a lot or looking into their inner selves.

00:40:27.000 There's a pathway there, a gateway drug, if you will, towards accepting it as something that is true.

00:40:39.000 And maybe they don't get.

00:40:41.000 Maybe they don't think it's like a metaphysical truth.

00:40:45.000 They don't think, like, oh, there's actually angels and stuff that are going to come down.

00:40:51.000 But they become believers and it works for them.

00:40:59.000 I guess Jordan Peterson says it's true enough, which I both love and hate.

00:41:06.000 So I just don't have a full answer on this, but it's definitely something that interests me and I've been.

00:41:13.000 Thinking about it and writing about it a lot, so I'm hoping to share some more thoughts.

00:41:18.000 This is only the beginning.

00:41:29.000 Yeah, so I guess we could talk about.

00:41:45.000 I want to talk a little bit more about the family.

00:41:47.000 Because this is, I think, where religion really shines.

00:42:00.000 You know, you can't.

00:42:03.000 Government is never going to, like.

00:42:08.000 Legitimize the family. 0.71

00:42:09.000 Like, they can pass legislation that doesn't interfere with it, but they can't actually promote it.

00:42:16.000 And I can't really think of any other organization other than the church that can really promote it.

00:42:24.000 But I just want to hear your thoughts, maybe, on why the church does have that significant role in promoting the family.

00:42:38.000 Like, why is it so built in?

00:42:41.000 To the doctrine, and do you think it could ever be manipulated to the point where it's just. 0.56

00:42:56.000 In other words, do you think people could infiltrate the church, these rootless cosmopolitans, and just sort of disintegrate it to the point where it's just not even recognizable?

00:43:11.000 Is that a realistic thing that?

00:43:16.000 That we have to be worried about.

00:43:18.000 Well, it's already happened.

00:43:19.000 It's already happened with the Catholic Church.

00:43:21.000 It's already happened with Protestants, obviously, who have been more susceptible to this sort of thing in the absence of institutional power, institutional authority, and hierarchy.

00:43:33.000 You see, really, the last bastion of traditionalist Christianity in the Orthodox Church.

00:43:38.000 And even there are some posed elements, some corrupt elements in there as well. 0.81

00:43:43.000 It's difficult, but I think Christianity.

00:43:46.000 At the very core of it, it's a pronatal text.

00:43:49.000 I mean, the first book, Genesis, is about a people going forth and multiplying all around the world.

00:43:56.000 And so much of the Bible places an emphasis on lineage, on the line, the bloodline from David, all the way from Adam to Jesus Christ, through Abraham, through Moses, through all the greats, so to speak.

00:44:12.000 And so I don't think there's any way to take away the fundamental essence of the text, which is to go forth and multiply.

00:44:17.000 And there are so many philosophical components.

00:44:20.000 To really explore all of it in detail.

00:44:23.000 But, I mean, for starters, a big part of it is sexual morality.

00:44:28.000 That if you believe in the Bible, if you are one of these devout Christians, if you're following it to the letter of the law, you're not supposed to be having sex unless you get married. 0.70

00:44:37.000 And when you have sex, when you get married, it's only for the purpose of procreation. 0.73

00:44:41.000 And that goes back to Aristotle's, or is it Plato?

00:44:44.000 I think it's Plato's five causes.

00:44:46.000 The final cause of sexuality is the reproduction of the species, of having children.

00:44:53.000 So the only. 0.98

00:44:54.000 Way to have sex morally, if you're a Christian, is for the purpose of procreation. 0.92

00:45:00.000 And so I think, you know, on the face of it, just that alone suggests that if you are following Christian doctrine, you're getting married, you're having kids. 0.84

00:45:08.000 If you want to have sex, and, you know, that's why we have that urge in the first place.

00:45:12.000 So that's for starters.

00:45:12.000 But number two, what Christianity is about fundamentally is about giving people meaning in their lives, making life sublime enough that you would want to bring children into the world, that you would want to bring joy.

00:45:25.000 Into the world than to create more Christians, create more people.

00:45:28.000 I mean, that's just a whole part of it. 1.00

00:45:30.000 Nobody brings people into this world anymore because it's a materialist, nihilistic, clown world that people don't want to raise kids in.

00:45:39.000 You know, why would you bring kids into the world if you didn't believe in God, if they were going to grow up and essentially become these basket cases, these psych ward cases where they grow up, they have mommy and daddy issues, they have all kinds of issues growing up in high school and they want to kill themselves or on all kinds of painkillers?

00:45:57.000 You know, why would you bring kids into this sick world? 0.95

00:45:59.000 So, Christianity, on the one hand, the only The way to have sex morally, if you're a Christian, is to have kids. 0.88

00:46:05.000 And number two, Christianity dignifies the human spirit and dignifies the human condition in such a way that people would want to have kids as opposed to now when it's really degraded and sick. 0.77

00:46:16.000 Yeah, I see a lot of the laws, the chastity stuff. 0.93

00:46:22.000 It's all, and you can think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, too.

00:46:27.000 It's like, well, you know, our.

00:46:32.000 Our minds and such, our bodies were built such that when we have an excess of stuff, we start to be slothful.

00:46:43.000 We start to get lazy and all of this, and we want to cut corners, and that's just really a slippery slope.

00:46:52.000 And so, the brilliance of it's not just Christianity, but this is one of the primary examples of it.

00:47:05.000 Yeah, like it's about sacrifice.

00:47:09.000 It's about, you know, voluntarily creating an environment of scarcity such that our genetics and our psychology are aligned towards the survival of our species.

00:47:37.000 And it's like. 1.00

00:47:39.000 I don't know if you know about the RK thing, but that comes to mind because the K selected species are the ones that have slightly fewer kids, but they invest more into their kids and stuff. 0.99

00:47:54.000 And so they usually come about in an environment of scarcity, right? 1.00

00:47:59.000 So if we create this environment of scarcity, then we don't have to wait for the next war to, like, you know.

00:48:08.000 You see this with wildfires, right?

00:48:13.000 And people.

00:48:16.000 Ecologists know that you have to have this controlled burn.

00:48:22.000 Otherwise, if you let it grow long enough, all the grass and stuff, it will eventually just erupt into this uncontrollable thing and cause so much damage.

00:48:34.000 So I really see the pain or the self sacrifice in Christianity, which is right there in the whole story of.

00:48:45.000 Jesus on the cross, you know, sacrificing yourself, I really see that as a way to stop these bigger cataclysmic events like war or like famine that could just annihilate.

00:49:07.000 And it will eventually.

00:49:08.000 It's just inevitable that if you let things go, if you let the looseness of our morality Go that long, then something is inevitably going to rebalance stuff. 0.89

00:49:24.000 So that's one of the most practical ways I can see advocating for Christianity is to have this controlled burn, if you will. 0.92

00:49:38.000 Yeah, it's true. 0.93

00:49:39.000 And simple things like personal responsibility, I mean, simple things like taking responsibility for your actions can avert all of the horrible apocalyptic scenarios that we envision today.

00:49:52.000 I mean, for example, you think of a pandemic disease that would wipe out. 0.87

00:49:57.000 Well, if you had people that were Christians, if you hypothetically were in a society where we can design the kind of Christianity that people believe in, the way that you avoid that is you don't have these cities. 0.98

00:49:57.000 The country. 0.98

00:50:09.000 You don't have these urban hellholes where people are in such close quarters with each other.

00:50:15.000 That stops the spread of disease.

00:50:16.000 If people are personally responsible and they have a public or civic consciousness that they don't want to cause harm to their neighbor, they wash their hands.

00:50:25.000 They take care of themselves.

00:50:26.000 It's simple. 1.00

00:50:27.000 It sounds so dumb. 1.00

00:50:28.000 It sounds so. 0.98

00:50:30.000 So simple, but you're right, it is a slippery slope where if people aren't doing simple things that they're supposed to be doing, it does open up Pandora's box to all kinds of ruin.

00:50:41.000 We're really taking a chance every day that something doesn't happen.

00:50:44.000 You look at the spread of STDs, that's a perfect example of that.

00:50:49.000 If people were living sexually, moral, and healthy lives, you would have no AIDS epidemic, you would have no STD epidemic.

00:50:56.000 It probably would have gone away a long time ago because the people that had it would have died off without giving it to anybody.

00:51:02.000 I mean, it's as simple as that.

00:51:05.000 So, you know, you have a Christian society, you have a moral society, a healthy society.

00:51:11.000 It's very difficult to state what the negatives are because there are so many positives that enter into it once you introduce hierarchy, order, authority, morality.

00:51:23.000 And I forget who said this.

00:51:24.000 I think it might have been G.K. Chesterton, where he said that essentially all forms of authority mean nothing unless they are defined. 0.96

00:51:35.000 And I think that's been true.

00:51:37.000 That's been the record of history that unless you have the mandate of God, unless you have the mandate of some absolute power, authority is pretty arbitrary, pretty meaningless.

00:51:44.000 And that is what religion offers.

00:51:46.000 I think that's what's at the core of it it's not just some guy telling you to do something.

00:51:52.000 It's not just some regular Joe that you could disagree with, that you could point to an empirical study or some a priori reason why they're wrong.

00:52:00.000 The difference with religion is that it comes from somewhere else.

00:52:03.000 And people, I mean, this is such an important metaphysical.

00:52:07.000 Ontological point that has drastic consequences for temporal affairs, for the society, and people just forget that.

00:52:15.000 Like, do you think it's a trivial difference that an edict from man comes from man and an edict from the church comes from God?

00:52:23.000 I mean, that's not a trivial thing.

00:52:25.000 So the church is very important.

00:52:30.000 Yes.

00:52:33.000 Wow.

00:52:34.000 Yeah.

00:52:37.000 I mean, so as a.

00:52:39.000 I still have very many libertarian leanings and stuff.

00:52:44.000 I think that it is important to.

00:52:51.000 I mean, the government, or let's just call it, as you say, authority by man, which would usually mean government.

00:53:00.000 It usually does things badly, and even when it does things good.

00:53:12.000 Like, there's no way to actually measure, like, whether that thing is good.

00:53:21.000 But, yeah, when it is coming from something higher, it's.

00:53:30.000 You can actually do away with government or eliminate it to some degree. 0.86

00:53:36.000 And so, yeah, for all the ANCAPs out there, it's like, yeah, how could. 0.79

00:53:42.000 Like, how could you possibly not be religious and be an ANCAP?

00:53:47.000 Well, what they, or an anarchist, what they basically want is just chaos at that point.

00:53:56.000 So, yeah, it is interesting.

00:53:59.000 Coming from the anarchist sphere, you see, like, how these two types of anarchists are completely opposed.

00:54:07.000 I mean, it's basically the right and the left.

00:54:10.000 It comes down to order.

00:54:16.000 So.

00:54:17.000 We are starting to come up on time here.

00:54:21.000 I did want to get in another question about, like, I guess other forms of religion. 0.96

00:54:30.000 And to me, it sort of does seem like you're cucking. 0.85

00:54:35.000 Like, if you say, okay, I'm actually just going to be a Hindu or whatever. 0.97

00:54:43.000 And I mean, I'm sure.

00:54:47.000 I've heard a lot of people say, oh, yeah, I learned, I gained a lot of spiritual knowledge or whatever from practicing these other religions or whatever. 0.56

00:55:00.000 I think sort of the exception would be like Islam.

00:55:03.000 It's like there's so many things.

00:55:08.000 I see it as sort of like, yeah, there's Christianity. 0.72

00:55:11.000 Yeah, I'm a Christian superior, supremacist or something like that. 1.00

00:55:15.000 Maybe that's the case. 0.70

00:55:17.000 But, uh, I see it like Christianity is sort of the best for most people, I think.

00:55:23.000 It would probably look a little different among different peoples.

00:55:27.000 Like, there'd be different kinds.

00:55:28.000 There already are different kinds.

00:55:32.000 And then you've got sort of these other religions in the middle, like Taoism and Confucianism.

00:55:37.000 And they're sort of innocuous, I guess. 0.97

00:55:41.000 And then you've got Islam at the bottom. 0.99

00:55:45.000 And so, what is my question here? 0.97

00:55:48.000 I guess my question is like, one.

00:55:53.000 Okay, one, do you think people.

00:55:56.000 It's wrong for people to explore and adopt other religions other than what is traditionally their own for their own culture and stuff?

00:56:04.000 And then two, do you think that. 0.58

00:56:13.000 Yeah, next crusade win.

00:56:17.000 Yeah, well, I mean, for other peoples of the world, I can't speak for them, but you have to.

00:56:22.000 When you're comparing world religions, there's a really good.

00:56:27.000 Video by Fulton Sheen about comparing world religions.

00:56:31.000 So good.

00:56:32.000 But to summarize his point, because I don't think it's been said better by anybody, but he says when you're comparing different religions like Islam, Christianity, etc., you understand why those religions have evolved in those places for those people.

00:56:47.000 Islam makes sense for the Arab people historically, geographically, what they're up against, their power structure.

00:56:54.000 It just makes sense. 0.57

00:56:56.000 Africa, there are folk religions, there are sort of superstitions.

00:57:00.000 Made sense given where they were. 0.77

00:57:01.000 And the same is true with the Orient and of the Amerindians.

00:57:05.000 But if you're comparing modern world religions in the modern day, and that's kind of a meme, but it's true, if you are comparing them today, you look no further than the Old Testament, which predicted in, I forget the exact number, but many different places where Jesus Christ would come again.

00:57:21.000 And I read some study that said that the probability that even eight of those predictions came true that were prophesied about Jesus Christ was something like one in a quadrillion, like insane, insane numbers we're talking about.

00:57:35.000 The prophecies that Jesus fulfilled when he came in the New Testament.

00:57:40.000 So, I mean, that's number one.

00:57:41.000 Number two, the guy rose from the dead.

00:57:43.000 How do you argue with that?

00:57:44.000 You know, you got Taoism, that's nice.

00:57:47.000 You got Hinduism, been around for a long time.

00:57:50.000 Our guy was dead and he was alive again. 1.00

00:57:53.000 Hard to argue with that.

00:57:54.000 So, I think it's the truth.

00:57:55.000 It can certainly be adapted to other geographies and to meet the challenges of different peoples, divergent peoples in divergent climates and topographical places and everything else.

00:58:08.000 But Fundamentally, it's the truth.

00:58:10.000 You know, that's why we believe.

00:58:12.000 Yeah, like on Puerto Rico or whatever, they'll have island time and they start church at noon or something like that.

00:58:18.000 Yeah, right. 0.97

00:58:23.000 Well, oh, and then, so the last part of that was sort of, you know, do you think that we are heading towards some kind of holy war where, I mean, we see Islam spreading into Europe? 0.98

America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - November 01, 2017

Is Christianity Needed to Save the West? with Nick Fuentes - Matthew Drake

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