RadixJournal - Groyper Nation Takes on the Culture War and The Rise and Fall ... And Rise？ of Paleoconservatives

00:00:00.000 My question is, if the President were to enact a policy that would completely benefit the United States and her citizens,

00:00:07.440 but to the detriment of Israel, would you support it, yes or no?

00:00:10.860 That's a false choice. Thank you for being here.

00:00:13.580 Welcome to the October 31st edition of McSpencer Group, the Halloween edition.

00:00:18.920 And today's topics will be the Nicker Nation invasion of Charlie Kirk's culture war series.

00:00:26.900 We'll also be talking about the rise and fall of paleoconservatism, why it failed, why it's wrong to revive it.

00:00:36.840 Yeah, right. Yeah, it's kind of like the phoenix, like our tarted phoenix that just never quite makes it off the ground,

00:00:44.460 just sputters a little bit, slams down, comes back up again.

00:00:48.300 But yeah, the biggest issue kind of online on Twitter generating a lot of controversy.

00:00:55.340 Let me interject.

00:00:56.900 I think we should bring some level of humanity to this discussion so that we can offer our listeners a sense of community.

00:01:05.280 So what are you doing for Halloween?

00:01:10.640 I'm 34, Richard.

00:01:12.500 I don't do anything fun for Halloween.

00:01:15.000 I don't know.

00:01:16.120 In New York, like things are so crazy that it's like I can't deal with it.

00:01:21.940 Well, I was visiting a friend of mine in New York a while ago, maybe when I was your age.

00:01:28.420 And he lived in gentrified Chelsea at that time.

00:01:34.960 And I remember visiting Chelsea when I was a lot younger and it was a horrifying gay neighborhood.

00:01:44.660 But it was no longer that it had been it had been gentrified by, you know, Wall Street people.

00:01:49.340 But anyway, I and I said I was like, oh, yeah, I'll come visit you.

00:01:54.060 It was on the 31st.

00:01:54.800 And he's like, oh, you know, be sure to get here before 2 p.m.

00:01:58.200 I was like, what are you talking about?

00:01:59.760 And basically all of the bureaus or the boroughs just descended upon lower Manhattan.

00:02:06.120 And you cannot cross the street like it is a madhouse.

00:02:10.420 And it was and I don't say this with any hate in my heart.

00:02:14.200 It was just waves and waves of Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, all sorts of, you know, other other people who just like come into the bureaus and walk around the streets for Halloween.

00:02:28.920 And then otherwise, Halloween has just become this like much like St. Patrick's Day.

00:02:36.280 It's just become a an excuse for drunk white women to wear sexy outfits and, you know, act like strippers for a night as if they needed an excuse.

00:02:50.700 Contrary to popular opinion, you know, the big slur word in New York isn't the N word.

00:02:54.740 It isn't the K word.

00:02:55.600 It's actually the B word, the bridge and tunnelers.

00:02:57.840 So that's the big one.

00:02:59.000 That's the ultimate slur in New York is if you're from the boroughs, it doesn't get worse than that.

00:03:03.060 But try it.

00:03:03.780 Try hanging out by the peers on Halloween, because ever since that wacky, crazy EDM fad from a couple of years ago, it's just like wall to wall cabs, lifts and women with just the most preposterous.

00:03:17.820 I mean, it's pretty hot, but it's also totally crazy.

00:03:21.540 Guys dressed like the predator.

00:03:23.100 It's it's it's the most madcap thing.

00:03:25.640 I'm too old for that shit.

00:03:26.840 To be perfectly honest.

00:03:28.340 Yes.

00:03:28.760 It's also really expensive.

00:03:30.060 And, you know, there's better things to spend your money on, I think.

00:03:32.920 Yeah, definitely.

00:03:34.240 I'll be doing kind of dad Halloween.

00:03:36.880 So I'm I'm very excited for that.

00:03:38.560 So no sexy girls, but, you know, candy and trick or treating and then, you know, in by 830 p.m.

00:03:49.080 What about you, Mark?

00:03:50.540 You're going to go as Apollo.

00:03:51.860 What's going to happen?

00:03:53.700 Too old.

00:03:54.400 This is the lamest cats to podcasters ever.

00:04:00.680 No, I mean, there is a I might go with a friend to a local bar.

00:04:04.820 I don't have anything really planned.

00:04:05.960 I mean, I occasionally I get more adventurous.

00:04:07.900 But yeah, I mean, it's just not as interesting as it once was.

00:04:10.960 Um, but yeah, it's a good it's one of those it actually is one of those romantic holidays.

00:04:16.440 Like you have to be with your girlfriend at the time, similar to New Year's Eve.

00:04:20.740 You know, so Valentine's Day is not the only one.

00:04:23.380 Those are also Christmas as well.

00:04:26.220 But so they have a kind of romantic obligation and aspect to them.

00:04:35.860 Yeah.

00:04:37.400 So these holidays have to diminish.

00:04:39.720 They've all all holidays are in America are pretty much the same.

00:04:43.620 It's all get drunk and dress in sexy outfits like Valentine's, Halloween, St. Patrick's Day,

00:04:50.520 the Oktoberfest, like it's all been reduced to just kind of, you know,

00:04:56.940 messed up a bar crawl.

00:04:59.240 Yeah.

00:05:01.420 Yeah.

00:05:01.920 40 year olds doing jello shots.

00:05:04.120 Yeah.

00:05:04.360 You're not you're not dancing.

00:05:05.740 You're not dancing around the maypole or or in some sort of ritualistic festival around a fire or something.

00:05:12.920 Yeah.

00:05:13.600 Yeah.

00:05:14.080 A lot of girls doing that while taking photos.

00:05:16.720 That's you're giving me flashbacks.

00:05:23.560 But on to more serious topics or maybe not, actually.

00:05:29.300 So certainly on the if you if you spend a lot of time on Twitter and YouTube,

00:05:33.740 the most important thing happening on planet Earth right now are the clips making their way across the the internets of these.

00:05:41.660 You know, for the most part, pretty chattily young guys, not entirely white, but often Catholic, who and I have not watched the whole clip,

00:05:50.240 but I've been told that it's that the Q&A section was mostly the kind of alt right side of things.

00:05:56.900 These young guys just air dropping all of these kind of alt right anti-Semitic memes at Charlie Kirk.

00:06:06.760 And he's trying to do some like Luke Skywalker, you know, evade the laser blasts as they pass by his head.

00:06:12.540 I know you were on with JF earlier to talk about this, but there's a lot to unpack.

00:06:17.480 I guess my first question to you, Richard, is and just to get right to the point, does any of this matter?

00:06:23.340 Well, not too much.

00:06:27.620 I think this was viewed as this humongous win.

00:06:32.420 And I it is a tempest in a teacup.

00:06:36.520 And a lot of people amplify themselves on Twitter and the forums and chans and whatever.

00:06:41.880 And it seems to become a bigger thing that it is.

00:06:46.320 I don't think it was a bad thing.

00:06:47.800 I mean, I went on JF and and we were just chatting beforehand and I was like, well, I think I'm going to probably get some hate, even though I'm just being objective about this.

00:06:57.460 I, you know, in terms of what just average people who hold our views could be doing, you know, going and going to the Q&A and kind of trolling it.

00:07:09.440 I mean, I mean that in a in a good sense.

00:07:11.620 The word troll has a lot of different meanings.

00:07:13.580 But going in, pointing out Charlie Kirk's hypocrisy, dropping some truth bombs on boomers, whatever.

00:07:20.960 I mean, none of this is a bad thing.

00:07:23.280 So I don't want to I'm not trying to rain on their parade or anything like that.

00:07:29.060 But it was I there are a couple of things I want to say here.

00:07:33.120 And I want to make a deeper point, but I'll save that.

00:07:36.660 But it it it ultimately is kind of a step backwards from where we have been.

00:07:45.640 And it's again, it's not a bad thing, but we do need to recognize that this is like trolling the comment section.

00:07:53.760 We are not the article.

00:07:54.700 We are going there and, you know, jumping on someone else's jam and kind of getting our word out here and there.

00:08:04.540 And I don't think Charlie Kirk and company will allow this to happen again.

00:08:10.540 They'll do, you know, extreme vetting of the of the Q&A questioners or just cut that out altogether.

00:08:17.740 But look, it's attacking conservatives.

00:08:20.780 It's attacking the right.

00:08:22.080 It's attacking the the phony right.

00:08:24.700 Um, it's, you know, dropping some truth here and there.

00:08:29.660 Maybe some boomer is going to be up all night Googling these things.

00:08:33.340 So I don't think it's a really bad thing.

00:08:35.600 But I this is not at all how I would describe winning.

00:08:38.980 And it is interesting.

00:08:40.880 I think Nicker Nation in general gives us a glimpse into what the alt right is right now and kind of maybe what it always was.

00:08:51.620 I mean, I had my own vision for what a what the political movement could be.

00:09:01.140 And, you know, I I've taken a step back.

00:09:04.520 Things have certainly changed.

00:09:06.620 I am completely off the Trump bandwagon.

00:09:10.480 So we're in a new place and we kind of get a glimpse of what the Groyper community wants the alt right to be.

00:09:18.780 And I think it is a lot of stuff like this.

00:09:20.940 There's a heavy trad cath component to it all.

00:09:26.800 There is a kind of trollish aspect.

00:09:31.180 Um, there is a a certain kind of anonymity of, uh, going to someone else's platform and kind of calling them out and so on.

00:09:40.880 Um, and it is what it is.

00:09:43.460 Uh, it gives us a sense.

00:09:45.180 But certainly for 2018 and up to now, what has defined the movement is kind of this.

00:09:53.040 It's what Nick is.

00:09:54.560 Um, Nick is a conservative.

00:09:57.140 He's a Republican who has been somewhat red pilled on, say, some racial issues or Israel or the Jewish question or or what have you.

00:10:05.240 Um, but those really haven't apparently changed him ideologically.

00:10:10.940 And so we are the movement as it is now is a kind of racist Republican movement and they want to take back the conservatism, uh, which is effectively what they were, you know, uh, declaring, uh, the other night.

00:10:27.240 And this is, uh, not really anything I'm terribly interested in, uh, to be honest.

00:10:33.780 Um, I, I, I don't think that's the right dynamic, uh, but I'm not, you know, I don't want to seem jelly or, or whatever.

00:10:42.880 Um, you know, go do your thing.

00:10:46.260 Um, and there's certainly worse things that could be done.

00:10:49.580 And I don't, I don't know the degree to which this, uh, it kind of had shock waves outside of the movement.

00:10:56.540 Sebastian Gorka was freaking out basically.

00:10:59.800 And obviously when, when you put me in a position where I want to defend Nick Fuentes, like you've really accomplished something and Count Chocula has, has done this.

00:11:09.060 Uh, so yes, I am on team Nick versus vis-a-vis Count Chocula.

00:11:12.860 Uh, and, uh, and there, there've been a few other kind of, you know, uh, Jim Holtz or Hoff or whoever his name is, uh, Hofft, Holft, whatever his name is, this kind of gay dredge level blogger.

00:11:26.220 Um, and, and a couple others have freaked out.

00:11:29.180 Uh, but I, I don't know the degree to which this is reverberated outside of our own echo chamber.

00:11:36.120 Uh, so it is what it is.

00:11:38.160 Um, yeah, but it's worth talking about it.

00:11:41.280 I think it's in terms of like the immediate spectacle of it that interests me to some degree, but I actually have some deeper thoughts on, on, on basically the construction of a neo alt-right.

00:11:54.560 And the degree to which, the degree to which the Republican party and the conservative movement actually kind of need something like this, that they're not as opposed to an alt-right, you know, writ large or radicals as you might think they are.

00:12:13.780 And that should make us a little bit skeptical of them.

00:12:17.000 But anyway, I'll go on to that a little bit later.

00:12:19.400 And, and of course, by the way, uh, PJW, uh, imagine our shock PJW is defending this and trying to jump on yet another bandwagon, much like he jumped on the alt-right bandwagon 2016, uh, just so that he can denounce them all in nine to 12 months and, um, declare how he never, never actually knew what was going on and was totally innocent and is a colorblind pro-gay conservative.

00:12:45.540 So, um, basically I have seen this VHS tape before, um, and I really am not that interested in reliving it.

00:12:56.080 Yeah.

00:12:56.580 I suspect, uh, PJW will probably check out the vibrant gay scene in Groyperville and then, you know, we'll get some, we'll get some very queer in the traditional sense selfies and, and, uh, yeah.

00:13:08.940 Um, but for Mark, I mean, this was my sense and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this as well.

00:13:14.680 The, the, um, the fact that so much of this type of political energy is confined to the internet, I think also creates some unique, like almost psycho digital problems in the sense that people are really, really excited about this.

00:13:30.800 But what are they really excited about, but the immediate dopamine response of seeing their guys enter the arena, you know, metaphorically slay the dragon or so they think, but there's, we don't, I forget who said this, but it's an ancient, uh, it's a, it's a very famous old quote, you know, what do you think about the revolution, the French revolution?

00:13:49.060 Well, you know, it's too early to tell.

00:13:50.720 So what do we think about the turning point culture war Groyper fest?

00:13:55.100 Well, it's, it's really true.

00:13:56.280 We're literally not even 24 hours out of the event.

00:13:59.840 And I made a lot of tweets about this and have generated probably too much attention on my own account, but there's a lot of people like this was a huge win.

00:14:09.880 Why wouldn't you let us have our fun?

00:14:11.180 This was a huge win.

00:14:12.120 We're killing conservatism to the specific point about this being a big win.

00:14:16.540 I mean, how much of this really just is the enthusiasm is that like neurochemical dump of watching something really, really cool on your monitor, but not having a physical metric or any like temporal distance from the event to really judge whether or not this was meaningful.

00:14:35.620 I mean, do you have any thoughts on that, Mark?

00:14:39.720 A question, please, and not a statement with an upward inflection.

00:14:44.180 No, I mean, yeah, no, I think what you're saying is pretty brilliant.

00:14:50.240 I actually, you know, I, I enjoyed watching it as well.

00:14:54.380 I mean, I thought it was pretty funny and I, and I actually can see why they got excited about it.

00:14:59.920 It is, it is kind of, you know, we're, I think we're, this is nothing really.

00:15:06.620 It's, it's, it's basically 2016 on a kind of much smaller scale on some level, right?

00:15:12.820 And a lot of that has to do with, it's not really the fault of the people that are trying to push these things.

00:15:17.000 It's just the fault of where we are right now, which is we're being de-platformed and we're being sort of, we're kind of imploding in a way in terms of influence.

00:15:25.080 And, I mean, they are, I mean, I think that, you know, there are kind of two effects.

00:15:31.480 One is, we hope a kind of longer term and deeper effect of people just becoming aware of the idea that we don't live in a country where there is actual free speech and that corporate censorship kind of reigns.

00:15:43.980 So we hope that that kind of sinks in into kind of the larger population and people just become aware of that and dislike it on some level, just dislike it.

00:15:53.460 And that's kind of optimistic though, because there's some data that shows that people may be in favor of censorship.

00:15:59.720 And I'm, and I'll let Richard go into this later because he touched on it on JF.

00:16:04.100 Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I, I think that, uh, uh, it's, um, I, yeah, of course, I, of course they're getting overexcited, right?

00:16:16.000 Um, and I agree that I think it was a good thing that they, they did, that they were trolling that event because they were using, uh, one of the few kind of avenues that are, are still available to them.

00:16:25.580 You know, uh, in 2016, 2017, uh, Richard was doing a college tour himself and he was the guy on the stage and there's something psychologically about that.

00:16:37.200 That's much more powerful than being the heckler as it were.

00:16:40.840 You know, even if you can kind of, uh, get a, these sort of brief moments of BTFO, uh, on a guy like Kirk, um, and into Richard's point on JF.

00:16:52.280 I don't, I think the guy was actually handling it in a very kind of like effective way on some level.

00:16:58.120 I mean, because ultimately the truth doesn't matter.

00:17:01.520 What matters is who kind of holds the reins of power.

00:17:05.060 So the guy can kind of like be on the stage and sort of be morally dismissive of the people that are heckling him.

00:17:10.280 And that is, there is something effective about that, right?

00:17:13.420 I mean, it's not ineffective.

00:17:14.840 He's demonstrating that he has power over this group now.

00:17:18.060 And the other thing too, is that, um, they may move kind of quickly to de-platform this avenue.

00:17:24.040 I don't know what's going to happen with it, but I think that they probably will try to limit it if, or, you know, to Richard's earlier point, maybe they don't feel that threatened by it.

00:17:32.800 Um, so I do think that one level, they actually like it.

00:17:36.780 Um, because, and again, I'm not, I'm not just trying to needlessly counter-signal them, but on one level, this offered Charlie Kirk a opportunity to, to shut them down from his perspective and to declare his allegiance to Globo Homo for lack of a better term.

00:17:56.460 I mean, I, I, I've, I mentioned this before.

00:17:58.680 I mean, when I was in high school or, or college, I had never heard of the USS Liberty incident.

00:18:05.280 Um, I, I had maybe read other things that these young kids should be reading, but I had never heard of some of these, you know, interesting kind of revisionist takes on history.

00:18:16.980 And, uh, but Charlie Kirk had, he had a pat set answer for it.

00:18:23.260 He has a pat set answer for criticism of Israel.

00:18:26.300 He has actually cogitated on America as an idea and Israel as an idea and a place.

00:18:34.060 Um, he has thought through these things.

00:18:35.760 He has answers for them and he was able to demonstrate to his donors that he is on their side.

00:18:43.160 And so, uh, you know, on, on one, again, on a bigger level, I don't think they want this kind of thing because they don't want it.

00:18:48.980 They, they don't want to perpetuate the notion that all conservatives are all secretly racist.

00:18:54.600 So that this is the crowd, you know, Charlie Kirk's on stage, but you know, the crowd is, it really expresses what conservatism is.

00:19:00.740 But on another level, it offered them the chance to differentiate, differentiate themselves.

00:19:07.120 Um, so I, I, I, but I, I do think generally speaking that this, I don't think they're going to allow this to happen again.

00:19:13.600 Um, uh, by whatever means necessary, maybe even cutting out all Q and A's.

00:19:20.160 Yeah.

00:19:20.760 Yeah.

00:19:21.140 I mean, that or just, uh, you know, uh, like basically bringing in ringers to speak or to ask questions, right.

00:19:28.120 Just getting a group of people to ask questions.

00:19:29.680 I mean, there's a lot of ways that they can shut it down.

00:19:33.180 Gay, black, libertarian activists too.

00:19:35.180 But, um, but yeah, so I, I mean, so, but, uh, look, I think it was a, it was a worthy effort.

00:19:44.800 And, um, uh, I, you know, part of the problem too, is, uh, I think a lot of the people that are, um, are the knickers effectively are part of this.

00:19:54.880 Well, I think, I think it's effectively, we can say it's a kind of Nick Fuentes led movement.

00:19:59.820 Right.

00:20:00.500 So the knickers and just using that term more generally to, yeah, to include others who are, um, you know, excited about it.

00:20:08.720 And, uh, uh, I, I think that the, so I think they were getting overexcited and, um, I think that things in some ways are resembling a 2016, except the problem is that kind of the, the wiser people in the movement, as it were, and I'm not trying to be like, again, I'm not trying to like shit on those guys or whatever.

00:20:29.780 I mean, I, I certainly, I, I would love for them to have political success, honestly, you know what I mean?

00:20:36.020 If it were possible, I would love for them, for them, for that to happen because they're, despite our differences, they're much closer to me politically than, you know, anyone else out there, you know, aside from kind of people on my side of the fence, um, which I, I don't identify as a wig net, but I don't love that term.

00:20:54.520 I think it's a reference to, uh, wiggers or something.

00:20:57.500 Um, but yeah, so, um, yeah, so that's the only thing I was going to say.

00:21:02.920 You were interjecting though, and I kind of lost my train of thought.

00:21:06.080 Sorry.

00:21:07.100 No, no, no, please.

00:21:07.840 You had something to say.

00:21:09.060 Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, I think it should be mentioned.

00:21:11.560 Um, one thing, cause we're actually going to talk about paleo conservatives a little bit later on in the broadcast, uh, but this, this bringing up of the culture war that Charlie Kirk has evoked, uh, which is interesting in itself.

00:21:26.000 Um, you know, culture war, Kulture Kampf, um, from the 19th century that there was actually a, a German nationalist antagonism against Catholics and education.

00:21:37.560 But anyway, uh, it is most famous certainly for Pat Buchanan's speech in 1992, uh, where he, he boldly said that we, we will take back this country, but we will, we'll take it back block by block.

00:21:50.400 And that the police who are, uh, girded by moral righteousness, uh, will take back the streets.

00:21:58.120 Uh, I mean, it was tough stuff, uh, but that was the culture war as Pat defined it.

00:22:05.180 Um, the culture war as Kirk defines it is, is really tough on say Israel, but is remarkable in the sense that it is the almost complete opposite of, of what Pat Buchanan was promoting.

00:22:19.960 Uh, the fact that you have a gay married black man talking with Charlie Kirk before a banner that says culture war, you know, it just seems to raise the question.

00:22:32.280 Like what culture war are you fighting?

00:22:36.060 You know, what are you defending?

00:22:37.920 What are you taking back?

00:22:39.560 Who, who, who are you even in opposition to?

00:22:43.580 Um, and, uh, so I, again, in that sense, I am glad that we, you know, we had some guys.

00:22:49.960 You know, come out there who were, you know, with rosary beads and crucifixes and whatever, because they certainly closer to Pat in their, uh, mentality.

00:22:59.360 Uh, but I, I, I think even a lot of that kind of stuff is naive.

00:23:03.320 They, they were, you know, trying to defend the Republican party or that we need to bring this back to the conservative movement.

00:23:09.760 And it's like, listen, guys, um, this is the conservative movement.

00:23:13.680 I mean, this, the Republicans voted for the civil rights act.

00:23:18.240 They voted for the art seller act.

00:23:20.180 Uh, the Republicans did amnesty.

00:23:22.180 Republicans have never really been behind immigration restriction.

00:23:25.820 Republicans talk about abortion because they want to get religious right votes.

00:23:30.060 But Charlie Kirk has a better claim to the conservative movement than you do.

00:23:34.320 He has a better claim to Trump.

00:23:35.560 Trump retweets him.

00:23:36.620 Trump, you know, uh, he, Trump's sons hang out with Charlie Kirk.

00:23:41.620 Uh, Charlie Kirk is conservatism.

00:23:43.780 Um, and he has a better claim to that MAGA hat than you do.

00:23:47.980 And so I, I, I do think that there was a certain naivete among these kind of Zoomer trad cat

00:23:53.900 whippers, uh, to think that they're, you know, they're taking it back, uh, or, or something like

00:24:00.620 that.

00:24:00.920 I mean, the, the whole idea is that we are going to present something that is a real alternative

00:24:06.020 to the right.

00:24:07.440 The right is the problem.

00:24:09.560 And, um, I don't really think that most of those people, I, I'm not, I, I, I question

00:24:15.920 the degree to which they want to do that.

00:24:18.140 Um, but again, you know, these are my kind of ideological critiques.

00:24:24.660 Um, I, I don't want to stand in their way, you know, go at them, uh, go after Charlie Kirk.

00:24:30.800 Uh, I'm behind you.

00:24:34.820 Uh, before we get kind of to the deeper question of why there has to be something like the alt

00:24:41.100 right, uh, I do want to kind of get back to Mark's, uh, rejection of the wignet term.

00:24:46.820 Uh, one thing, I don't know if you've ever said this on a live stream.

00:24:50.940 I know you've, you've tweeted about this quite a bit, but the interesting thing, and without

00:24:55.540 putting a specific name on this group of people, those, maybe they're younger, maybe they're

00:25:00.120 Catholics, maybe they're not, maybe they're Zimmers, maybe they're not, maybe they're

00:25:02.260 Knickers, CK, just to be clear or not.

00:25:05.240 Uh, but they all, whoever these people are, they all seem to agree that there are wignets

00:25:09.720 that either we are them or some people like us are them.

00:25:15.300 And therefore we are bad.

00:25:17.680 Wignets are bad.

00:25:18.520 Now, these guys, these folks are not going to be welcomed into the conservative party.

00:25:22.840 They're not going to be welcomed into the Republican party.

00:25:25.120 Uh, they've seemed to created this division, uh, between the wignets and themselves.

00:25:30.120 So there's almost like they've partitioned themselves in this corner of the internet

00:25:33.800 or the political sphere in the real world.

00:25:36.660 I don't know how they're going to have any influence beyond that, but this kind of concept

00:25:40.380 of the wignet, Richard, you want to jump in quick?

00:25:42.500 I'm yeah.

00:25:43.200 Um, I've never really liked identifying with wignets.

00:25:46.120 I don't think I ever have.

00:25:47.500 And if I did, it was completely ironic and I don't actually think I ever have, but, um,

00:25:52.880 yeah, it's this false dynamic created by neo-Nazis.

00:25:56.600 I mean, it's this weird thing.

00:25:59.480 I mean, I, I hate to, I hate to revisit the whole optics debate cause I'm sick of it.

00:26:04.000 But, um, and, and this is one of the reasons why I don't think I could ever really like

00:26:10.420 wholeheartedly get behind a kind of knicker nation thing, which is that Nick Fuentes was

00:26:17.080 a, you know, Ted Cruz, anti-Trump guy and like young Republican Vunderkant in 2015.

00:26:26.020 And then he got red pilled or something.

00:26:28.760 And then was pro-Trump, uh, when Trump got the nomination in 2016, and then he was brought

00:26:34.300 into the movement in 2017.

00:26:35.680 Um, and his vibe, uh, from the very beginning was, uh, the alt-right is terrible.

00:26:46.120 Uh, white nationalism is evil.

00:26:48.980 Uh, we, we, we can criticize white national nationalism another day, but, you know, um,

00:26:54.180 and basically I am the only one to be able to infiltrate the Republican party or red pill

00:27:00.960 the boomers or get the pair, the people behind me or something like that.

00:27:04.620 The alt-right only has six to 9% support, um, which I think is actually a, uh, amazing

00:27:11.100 percentage, um, as opposed to 50% or something who vote Republican.

00:27:16.180 Uh, it was these kinds of things.

00:27:17.960 It was basically quite toxic from the very beginning and, and also not self-aware.

00:27:23.520 I mean, the, the people who promote, continue to promote this stuff, um, are people like

00:27:29.340 Weave and Andrew Anglin who are neo-Nazis and have the world.

00:27:34.620 First conceivable optics.

00:27:36.480 Um, I, I agree that most of the questioners kind of were pretty cool looking.

00:27:40.540 I mean, you know, some more than others, but you know, there was certainly nothing bad

00:27:44.920 going on.

00:27:45.980 Um, but just this endless refrain of these, like, I don't, guys with swastikas or whatever

00:27:54.060 who are out there doing something.

00:27:55.840 I mean, I don't, we don't really know where they are or who they are.

00:28:00.000 So it's just this endless, like Matt Heimbach, you know, avatar is in their head and, um, who,

00:28:07.160 who actually wasn't even that bad.

00:28:08.780 Um, you know, what wasn't exactly the cartoonish, uh, um, neo-Nazi buffoon that he was made up

00:28:15.380 to be, but whatever.

00:28:16.180 Um, yeah, it's, it's just, it's very toxic and they've always presented themselves as

00:28:22.160 we are the, uh, mainstream version of you.

00:28:26.680 So it's this intramural status signaling, as I've called it, where you're basically advertising

00:28:32.980 to the alt-right that the alt-right is bad and that I'm pragmatic.

00:28:37.180 And so in 2018, there was this great promise of mainstreaming and infiltration in the GOP.

00:28:43.300 They'll just become the wallpaper and just enter the GOP, take the thing over.

00:28:47.760 You know, the, they're just, the donor base is just going to give them the keys to the

00:28:51.320 Lamborghini and they're going to just drive it down Rodeo drive.

00:28:55.480 And the chicks are going to be hopping in the car and, you know, boom, uh, it's as easy

00:29:00.140 as that.

00:29:01.180 And, um, the fact is these American nationalists have, what they have really accomplished is

00:29:08.140 that none of them will ever be allowed into a Republican or conservative movement gathering

00:29:13.780 ever.

00:29:14.780 Um, they pre-announced that they were going to infiltrate the Republican party and the Republican

00:29:19.380 party's immune system went into overdrive.

00:29:21.860 Um, and in terms of just like, you know, uh, bad optics, I mean, you can talk about, um,

00:29:30.860 hail gate or whatever until the cows come home in terms of like clips that are easily reproducible

00:29:39.340 of them just saying stuff that is quite nasty or radically politically incorrect or vulgar or

00:29:48.960 scatological.

00:29:49.560 I mean, these are a legion and I don't, it, that doesn't really bother me.

00:29:55.220 I'm not going to attack them for that.

00:29:57.380 They're younger, whatever.

00:29:59.800 I don't care, but other people do care.

00:30:03.500 And you're not going to take over the GOP with this baggage.

00:30:08.180 You're just not.

00:30:09.700 And again, the really good, like American nationalist or paleo would be in the model of Pat Buchanan.

00:30:19.140 I think, um, maybe it was Mark or, or, um, or Thamster mentioned this last week in the sense

00:30:25.540 of you have a right-wing guy who can't really be tarnished with, oh, he's a radical.

00:30:30.600 Um, but he never counter signals the, the people to his right.

00:30:36.680 And he kind of draws energy and ideas from them and, and, and genuinely mainstreams them.

00:30:41.340 That is a successful model, but a model of, we have these guys who come into the alt-right

00:30:48.400 and then say the alt-right is absolutely terrible.

00:30:51.960 Richard Spencer destroyed everything.

00:30:54.160 And, uh, I am pragmatic and I'm, I mean, this is just, it's intramural status signaling.

00:31:01.400 It is inherently toxic.

00:31:03.560 And the alt-right is at a much lower level than we used to be and much more demoralized

00:31:10.440 than we used to be.

00:31:11.540 It's not all their fault by any stretch of the imagination.

00:31:15.480 Uh, but they didn't help.

00:31:17.320 Let's just put it to put it mildly.

00:31:19.480 And, um, so I, I just don't know.

00:31:21.900 I, I, I remember all this stuff and so, you know, you, you do something that's pretty good.

00:31:29.400 Great.

00:31:30.080 You'll, you'll kind of get my, uh, a pat on the back for me.

00:31:33.420 But, um, do I think that these people are good men or that they can lead us anywhere

00:31:41.920 outside of troll, uh, trolling IRL, uh, or that they have the ability to do something that

00:31:50.740 is, that, that, that people would really respect that would really make an impact?

00:31:54.740 Um, absolutely not.

00:31:57.140 And I don't think that, and I'm not going to pretend like I do, and I'm not going to just

00:32:02.400 decide that, oh, now we're all this happy movement.

00:32:05.900 We'll all be kind, you know, nice to each other.

00:32:07.680 You know, I mean, like the bridges were burned.

00:32:11.040 I have no desire to rebuild them.

00:32:13.380 I seriously doubt they do either.

00:32:15.560 Um, maybe even less than I do.

00:32:18.080 So it's just, it's kind of over.

00:32:21.320 Um, I, I think that a, a alt-right, an alt-right in the broadest sense does have to take place.

00:32:29.020 That is an independent movement that is forward looking.

00:32:32.540 And that is radical in the best sense of the word, and that's going to attract the best

00:32:37.400 people that absolutely needs to take place.

00:32:40.060 Um, but I don't think it's going to ever arise with these types of people, um, in it.

00:32:47.480 And I certainly don't mean that to all the people who took part in the Q and a, but just

00:32:50.920 in terms of the leadership, I know how they're going to act and it's not just personal.

00:32:57.240 Um, they're going to always act like this and they're going to probably end up acting

00:33:01.980 like this towards one another.

00:33:03.740 And that will be a little bit fun to watch, but, um, it also is just a reminder that this

00:33:10.060 kind of thing doesn't go anywhere.

00:33:12.760 Mark, can we get your objection to the Wignat label?

00:33:16.460 Yeah, happily.

00:33:17.620 Yeah.

00:33:17.900 So I wasn't, I was never part of that because I, that sort of predated, uh, Brahmin.

00:33:22.440 Um, but I, I was never part of that discussion of like this sort of division between the

00:33:27.080 M-Nats and the Wignats.

00:33:28.500 Um, I kind of know, and Richard can correct me after I make this remark, but it seems

00:33:33.940 like it sort of has an origin in, um, I don't remember what college tour it was, but it was

00:33:39.960 when, uh, Heimbach essentially showed up with his guys as kind of your de facto bodyguards

00:33:45.960 or, well, where was it that was Michigan?

00:33:47.940 My bodyguards, but yeah, they, in Michigan in, in 2018, uh, they showed up, um, and,

00:33:55.020 uh, much like Charlottesville, uh, effectively a riot was allowed to take place.

00:33:59.860 And for about 15 minutes, there was chaos.

00:34:03.020 People were getting punched in the face.

00:34:04.780 It was utterly awful.

00:34:06.500 Uh, Antifa was acting in an unbelievably nasty way.

00:34:10.160 And, you know, look, um, I did, I actually did a very good broadcast with Greg Conti and,

00:34:16.500 um, and, uh, Don Camillo, maybe someone else was there in, uh, you know, right after that

00:34:23.540 event and right after the, the debacle with Matt Parrott and Heimbach, which I certainly

00:34:28.820 don't want to revisit.

00:34:30.280 Um, but look, you know, well, what's that the origin of the optics war was my question.

00:34:37.680 The optics war started, uh, nine months before that the optics war happened there after

00:34:43.600 Charlottesville, there was immediately a kind of in gathering and people were saying like,

00:34:48.020 we got screwed.

00:34:48.960 We were, our rights were denied.

00:34:50.460 This was a, uh, a shit show and so on.

00:34:53.720 Um, and then it went into this thought war where all women, women were being attacked.

00:34:59.260 Some, some somewhat accurate points were being made, but just this in the, in the intense

00:35:06.080 level of female hatred was totally out of bounds.

00:35:09.860 Um, and, uh, Nick was of course right on that bandwagon, you know, great optics there.

00:35:16.240 Um, and then that molded into the optics war and it was this, we're going to infiltrate.

00:35:21.520 And then it, that eventuated into what we're going to infiltrate the Republican party.

00:35:25.260 But by the time I spoke at Michigan, I would say that most of all, I mean, again, I don't

00:35:31.080 know who these people are now because these people might've been red pilled like a year

00:35:34.380 ago or something.

00:35:34.980 So this is irrelevant, but yeah, the, the, the kind of Nicker nation types and certainly

00:35:40.680 identity Europa types were like, Oh, that's so cringe.

00:35:44.120 Uh, you shouldn't ever go and attack Trump.

00:35:47.260 You shouldn't ever go and like go to a Richard Spencer cult meeting or all this just kind of

00:35:52.060 language.

00:35:52.980 And basically they don't want to support anything that's movement based and that's independent.

00:35:58.400 And it's, we're going to wear Trump hats and we have great optics and therefore we're so

00:36:03.140 much more pragmatic.

00:36:03.860 And again, I found it totally tedious after Michigan.

00:36:07.120 I noticed I had this barrage of tweets coming at me and, uh, of negative tweets and about

00:36:14.240 5% of them were liberals who were like, you're terrible, you know, and whatever.

00:36:20.840 I've heard a lot of that from New York times readers over the years.

00:36:23.940 Uh, but 95% of them were coming from the alt-right and that's when I kind of recognized that we

00:36:31.980 had passed over Rubicon.

00:36:34.140 Um, the degree of scapegoating, just hatred, some legitimate criticism thrown in, thrown

00:36:41.300 here and here and there, but general just hysteria, uh, was off the charts.

00:36:47.140 And, um, yeah, I mean, I, it was a weird thing.

00:36:51.840 And again, this is why I say I've seen, I've seen all of these movies before I've seen PJW

00:36:57.180 jump on the alt-right bandwagon and now he's jumping on the dissident right or Nicker nation

00:37:02.000 bandwagon or griper bandwagon or like, I believe in free speech.

00:37:05.900 And these guys are true conservatives against the globalists.

00:37:09.180 And then, you know, three months later, like I never knew that they were racist and anti-Semitic.

00:37:14.320 That's terrible.

00:37:14.800 You know, I've seen that movie before and I've seen the, you know, the, the movement

00:37:20.760 kind of rally around people and then scapegoat them and disintegrate.

00:37:24.820 I've seen all this before and I just am not eager to relive it.

00:37:30.320 Right.

00:37:31.020 I don't think any of us are.

00:37:32.440 Um, but having that optics kind of, uh, or, uh, origin story, uh, take it from there, Mark.

00:37:39.800 Yeah.

00:37:40.260 All right.

00:37:40.640 So it sounds like it may have originated as early as Charlottesville because people

00:37:44.620 had appeared in helmets and they had were Andrew Anglin and company and, and identity Europa.

00:37:51.520 And then, um, wig Nats were everyone else.

00:37:54.880 And I, I was the worst of all, I mean, Heimbach was like the poster boy of like, oh, the, oh,

00:38:00.680 it's so terrible.

00:38:01.460 Uh, but he kind of, I guess, lived up to the building to a degree, but, um, I was also

00:38:07.220 considered, um, totally, uh, uh, an outrageous, uh, wig Nat.

00:38:13.640 Yes.

00:38:15.820 Yeah, no, I mean, I just, uh, etymologically it's interesting to me because it seems like,

00:38:20.560 and I guess this wouldn't apply necessarily to Heimbach, though it probably would, it seems

00:38:24.620 like, um, but it seems like the Amnat is, so there's obviously in the name Amnat, it's

00:38:30.240 an emphasis on American sort of petty nationalism as it were, whereas wig Nat.

00:38:35.480 So in other words, you have Amnat, you have American petty nationalists contrasted with,

00:38:40.020 uh, Wiggers, which is, which is sort of how they've, they've kind of broken it down psychologically

00:38:45.280 in their mind.

00:38:45.920 Um, but I, you know, I typically have a almost kind of opposite association with the idea

00:38:52.060 that if, you know, if we were to become more of an international and indeed European movement,

00:38:58.260 uh, that would be kind of showing more classes or would be showing a kind of higher status

00:39:05.560 as it were.

00:39:06.180 So I, I just found it curious how this sort of, uh, this kind of etymological sort of

00:39:11.500 construction appeared.

00:39:12.420 And I wonder if that, like, there is a kind of like, at least subconscious reason for that

00:39:18.000 from their perspective, because it seems like they're the inventors of these terms, but the

00:39:22.080 idea that, uh, American nationalists are more high class than people that have a kind of more

00:39:28.020 international perspective.

00:39:29.660 Exactly.

00:39:30.000 Cause they, they'll, they'll counter-signal the ethno-state and all these kinds of things

00:39:33.540 all the time.

00:39:34.860 Um, I, I think even Patrick Casey is questioning race or I, I, it's a weird thing.

00:39:39.800 I saw something where he was doing something on Twitter, but I don't care about him, whatever.

00:39:44.600 Um, but yeah, it's a kind of aspirational bourgeois thing where it's like, we, we want to be

00:39:51.560 these middle-class Americans who wave flags and it's a weird thing to aspire to, to be

00:39:58.760 honest.

00:40:00.220 Um, but we, we could talk about the etymology of the word, but at the end of the day, it just

00:40:05.540 seems kind of like, again, we're, they're just liberals.

00:40:09.180 These are just liberal kind of middle of the road Americans, not distinguished politically

00:40:14.260 or philosophically or culturally in any way from the people they claim to oppose.

00:40:18.780 And even the term Wignet, I can literally think of maybe one person who's publicly facing

00:40:24.140 that could reasonably be described that way, but it's just a slur.

00:40:27.420 It's just a slur as a way to kind of create an artificial division to ascribe moral kind

00:40:34.340 of, I don't know, turpitude or something to ideas and people that, uh, near, near as far

00:40:41.160 as I can tell who have been more successful, whether it's in this particular endeavor or

00:40:47.080 beyond the political or kind of cultural realm.

00:40:50.360 Um, and just to create this, this, this, uh, distinction, uh, to their own benefit.

00:40:55.280 And I think, I think that's been, um, disastrous.

00:40:58.660 And no one outside makes these distinctions.

00:41:00.820 I mean, I, I, I, we've said these before, I mean, they, the reporting on this, I think

00:41:06.300 some, there have been some reports of like, oh, the white nationalists are trying to rebrand

00:41:10.580 through the optics or whatever that that's basically liberals are smart and they see through

00:41:16.000 this.

00:41:16.280 It's like, you're, you're not going to trick them.

00:41:18.320 They know it's the same people who were, who were, you know, alt-right shit Lord, Hitler

00:41:25.560 Pepe's, you know, in the summer of 2016.

00:41:28.720 And now they're, now they're American flag waving conservatives.

00:41:31.880 Like they don't, they're not, liberals aren't dumb.

00:41:34.300 You're just insulting them by trying to trick them.

00:41:37.320 You know, they literally study this movement.

00:41:39.360 I mean, they have academics that study it.

00:41:41.560 It's the subject of, of PhD thesis programs.

00:41:44.020 It's the study of, it's the, it's the, you know, they make television programs, documentaries.

00:41:48.880 We are like a weird amoeba in a Petri dish and they're just constantly, okay, another

00:41:54.040 slide.

00:41:54.540 Okay.

00:41:54.680 We've got another specimen.

00:41:55.660 Let's put that on the slide.

00:41:56.480 And they have this huge catalog.

00:41:58.140 It's, you can't fool these people.

00:41:59.460 They are the American left, no matter what version we're talking about, are infinitely

00:42:05.160 smarter than practically every part, every individual or group within the American right.

00:42:10.620 They're many times smarter, more sophisticated.

00:42:13.700 They've been doing this for decades, for decades, like twice as long as I've been on this planet.

00:42:19.360 They've been at this.

00:42:20.480 You can't, I mean, not to regurgitate what you're saying, Richard, but yeah, you can't

00:42:23.120 fool these people.

00:42:24.580 And so they don't make these distinctions.

00:42:27.480 So the Gripers are the alt-right.

00:42:30.660 They are white nationalists.

00:42:32.060 They are white supremacists.

00:42:33.180 They are, et cetera.

00:42:33.780 Like they're, you're going to get it no matter what you do.

00:42:37.600 And I don't know if you're going to trick a boomer here and there to like send you a

00:42:42.360 hundred bucks or something.

00:42:43.400 I mean, maybe, but I don't know.

00:42:46.620 Like the boomer is probably giving that a hundred bucks to his church or to Charlie Kirk.

00:42:51.480 He's not giving it like you're, you're going into this weird lane.

00:42:55.800 Um, so it, again, I, I don't, I never took part in the optics debate.

00:43:00.560 I, I was kind of baffled by it.

00:43:02.120 And then I recognized later on how powerful it actually was.

00:43:06.680 Um, but no, I, I mean, obviously I think we should be putting forth intelligent content

00:43:13.680 that appeals to high level people.

00:43:15.340 I think we should always look good.

00:43:16.980 I mean, this is again, one of the knocks against me actually was I'm, you know, uh, Bateman

00:43:21.680 like level of narcissism, you know, whatever, which is probably accurate.

00:43:27.220 Uh, but, um, yeah, I, I obviously think we should look good and we should have the best

00:43:32.460 people.

00:43:32.780 I mean, uh, you know, uh, on the, on a superficial level, it's like, yeah, I agree obviously,

00:43:37.320 but I think what it was on a deeper level and kind of, you know, and also on a, on a

00:43:41.420 psychological level and maybe even on a class level to be frank, um, it was this attempt

00:43:47.120 by the Groypers to have their movement and their movement is going to be about,

00:43:51.680 them and it's going to reflect them.

00:43:54.400 And Nick really does reflect them in a much better way, certainly than I, or, or, or anyone

00:44:00.360 else.

00:44:00.700 So here we are, um, this is the kind of decentralized, democratized alt-right.

00:44:12.180 Uh, joining the conversation as well.

00:44:14.460 We haven't heard from him yet.

00:44:15.400 Uh, Tyler Hamilton returning again.

00:44:17.940 Um, we haven't heard from you yet.

00:44:19.880 I guess, uh, I still want to hear Richard's argument about this, uh, why there needs to

00:44:25.760 be a distance thing, but completely ridiculous.

00:44:28.640 I mean, for God's sake, man, optics are really bad.

00:44:34.940 The pipe is back.

00:44:38.360 We've, we've got a vintage inspired blazer going on.

00:44:41.200 I mean, this is just, yeah, I mean, we're not hearing you, Tyler.

00:44:47.240 Okay.

00:44:47.440 We're not hearing you.

00:44:50.080 If you had a magnet hat on.

00:44:51.980 I think it's stranger when people see me not smoking something.

00:44:54.940 That's generally what people that know me say is if I don't have a cigar or pipe, then

00:44:58.400 there's something wrong.

00:44:59.500 Or I'll put on an, I actually own an ascot.

00:45:01.960 I will wear that for next, uh, week's episode.

00:45:05.120 Just one up you on.

00:45:07.260 Oh yeah.

00:45:08.020 It's going to be a war now.

00:45:10.120 Yes.

00:45:10.480 This means war.

00:45:11.480 Yes.

00:45:12.500 And I will win.

00:45:14.460 This is the new split.

00:45:15.400 Don't go to war.

00:45:18.280 Don't go to war with me.

00:45:19.320 I'm being pretentious.

00:45:20.120 Like you will lose.

00:45:23.760 Uh, I, this is just going to escalate.

00:45:27.540 This is going to be every episode.

00:45:28.640 It's going to be more ostentatious than the last.

00:45:30.520 But, um, what, what are your, what were your impressions on, on the, the grope, uh, the

00:45:35.780 grope fest?

00:45:36.800 You know, I guess I could tie this into the talk you guys just were about with the whole,

00:45:41.580 you know, optics wars because that during that time I earned the title Wignat too.

00:45:46.960 All right.

00:45:47.140 You know, because at the time the criticism I was making of the Amnats was basically that

00:45:51.660 they kind of reminded me of, you know, Arthur Moeller when he talks about the reactionaries

00:45:55.320 in Germany's third empire.

00:45:56.600 He describes them basically as these people that were trying to freeze a moment in the

00:46:00.660 past as saying, you know, this is who we are.

00:46:03.280 This exact structure is what we need to return to.

00:46:06.580 And that, you know, the kind of revolution going on in Germany was an aberration.

00:46:11.500 Right.

00:46:11.740 And so they reminded me largely of this in the sense that they were looking back at a

00:46:16.440 kind of mythical depiction of America where it's this, um, you know, the American flag

00:46:21.300 and conservative family values that, you know, it was somehow corrupted by something external

00:46:25.820 to it.

00:46:26.660 And my argument against that was always that, you know, the primal sense of Americanism was

00:46:31.460 always founded on this kind of classical liberal notion of liberty and freedom.

00:46:35.440 And that at some point that led to where we are now and that you can't redeem that in

00:46:41.000 the sense that we need to be thinking post-American.

00:46:43.280 And so that was the critique I was making of them.

00:46:46.180 And then, you know, I earned the title of Wignette.

00:46:49.480 That's what I've been telling them for a long time as well.

00:46:51.800 They don't want to hear that.

00:46:53.580 Yeah.

00:46:53.840 And then this Q&A brought it out perfectly.

00:46:57.520 And, you know, if I was, if, you know, Kirk was here, I probably would have went to the

00:47:00.740 Q&A, had some fun too.

00:47:02.040 But what struck me is that they were framing it in this way, like, hey, Charlie, how is

00:47:06.700 what you're talking about going to help us in the culture war?

00:47:09.540 As if Charlie is in the same culture war, right?

00:47:13.220 But if they're just insufficiently engaged in it, they're not conservative enough, but

00:47:18.120 rather they're perfectly American conservative.

00:47:21.200 They're embodying its values.

00:47:22.400 That's what it is.

00:47:23.160 It's all about liberty and individual choice.

00:47:25.240 And that's what they're trying to push.

00:47:26.840 It's completely concomitant with their message.

00:47:30.140 And so I was watching this.

00:47:32.400 And then so you have this kind of mythical view of America in a way that's almost worse

00:47:36.980 than, you know, Buchanan and the original paleocons had, because there's this added element

00:47:41.340 of Catholicism to it.

00:47:42.980 So while Buchanan and them, you read them now, they're very much just lamenting over the

00:47:46.800 end of America.

00:47:47.660 They don't have that much to say to us.

00:47:49.940 While these guys, they're adding Catholicism and all this culture war, this kind of stuff

00:47:53.680 that seems rather anachronistic.

00:47:55.220 When you look at American history, it's not something that was ever really, you know,

00:47:58.860 big in America.

00:47:59.720 It's a Protestant country.

00:48:01.660 So that was my main takeaway from that, is they're approaching it in the sense of trying

00:48:06.760 to bring American conservatism on board to the movement.

00:48:09.780 And they're trying to be the, you know, the true heirs to American conservatism.

00:48:14.200 And that's just not accurate to what American history is.

00:48:17.740 So that was my critique of that.

00:48:19.860 And, you know, the other side about this optics thing I want to bring up is that during

00:48:23.380 the so-called optics war, the other thing happening at the time was the James Field trial.

00:48:28.740 And so me and a few of my friends in that, we started, you know, tweeting at Casey and

00:48:33.620 them saying, you know, why haven't you said anything about this?

00:48:36.160 You know, you run the biggest, you run this big organization and you're not saying anything

00:48:40.260 about it.

00:48:40.700 And we want them to acknowledge the fact that someone, you know, in the alt-right, the state

00:48:45.300 cracked down on them.

00:48:46.300 They're getting all these charges on them.

00:48:47.800 And so you run this organization and you have all these voices at your disposal.

00:48:51.480 You should be able to say at least something.

00:48:53.480 And the response I got, including from some other, you know, big name people, quote unquote,

00:48:58.740 was accusing me of being a Fed.

00:49:00.660 And the kind of way they're presenting it to me anyways, was that, you know, if we just

00:49:04.640 blend in, if we fit in with respectable American conservatism, then people will go along with

00:49:09.500 us.

00:49:09.740 The state won't target us.

00:49:11.640 You know, we'll represent the average GOP voter.

00:49:13.860 And there was like this kind of attempt at being, doing politics risk-free.

00:49:19.800 And so the kind of working class representatives, you know, there's a strong classist element

00:49:24.220 in their rhetoric as well.

00:49:25.540 That was like, we need to ignore these guys.

00:49:27.180 We can't focus on them.

00:49:28.100 They're bad for us.

00:49:28.960 They're bad for the movement.

00:49:29.860 And to me, that was thoroughly disgusting.

00:49:32.280 That's kind of, that's what, in the optics debate, that earned me the title WIGNAT, which

00:49:38.000 now you look at what WIGNAT means now, that's certainly not what I am either.

00:49:42.440 But that was what the optics debate was about.

00:49:44.940 It was about this kind of attempt at, you know, being respectable American conservatives

00:49:48.920 and taking over the GOP, whether or not that be the party itself, or at least, you know,

00:49:53.700 the kind of representational content for it, for the average GOP.

00:49:58.360 I mean, two things, you're not, I mean, taking over the GOP, I mean, for God's sake, that

00:50:04.440 is a 30-year endeavor, and I doubt it would ever work.

00:50:08.860 If the donors ever learned of this, they would simply pull their money and do something else.

00:50:13.300 I mean, it's basically a kind of another term, I don't know if I invented it, lumpen

00:50:19.860 bourgeoisie, which I think kind of describes a lot of those people, kind of aspiration to

00:50:24.960 work in conservatism, Inc., and, or, you know, be a cog in the system or something.

00:50:30.920 But yeah, you're not going to take that over.

00:50:34.020 Again, you can't just assume that it's either a neutral platform or everyone there is a complete

00:50:39.000 idiot.

00:50:40.360 That is absolutely wrong.

00:50:42.560 And then the other irony was that they made it virtually impossible to infiltrate the GOP

00:50:51.440 by announcing that they were going to do it.

00:50:54.460 And that will happen again after this griper fest at the culture war activity, is that anyone

00:51:04.060 who is mildly associated with these groups, and again, they've been infiltrated in docks

00:51:09.400 by the other side, is going to be expelled from the GOP almost immediately.

00:51:15.640 It has an immune system.

00:51:17.480 They will, you know, locate, target, and purge.

00:51:24.360 One of the telling moments in the culture war Q&A, it made it to a clip.

00:51:32.700 I believe the gentleman's name is Rob Smith.

00:51:35.360 Please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:51:36.480 The black conservative is, and that was the most telling moment about the whole exchange

00:51:40.580 was the, basically, the gentleman representing the power structure saying, what you think

00:51:46.260 conservatism is, is not conservatism.

00:51:49.220 And we determine what conservatism is.

00:51:51.880 So you said it, I think both, I think both people here have said it.

00:51:55.760 It's a, it's a tremendous naivete, misunderstanding of, of how power works in this dynamic that you

00:52:04.440 as the lowly peasant, the peon, you can wave your rosary beads, and I don't mean that in

00:52:09.020 a, in a kind of demeaning way, as much as you want, but it's really kind of a impotent

00:52:17.040 display that is not going to have any significant political power.

00:52:20.980 These, conservatism is a homosexual man doing a split next to Donald Trump Jr.

00:52:26.300 It is a man in a blonde wig pretending to be Lady Gaga.

00:52:31.320 It is eventually going to be, you know, post-birth abortions.

00:52:35.540 It, this is, and in two years it will be, that's your satanic LGBT girlfriend talking.

00:52:43.120 We know that's, we know that's where that's from, Richard, you dirty wig mat.

00:52:46.320 But in two years it will be, you know, 18 month old trans babies.

00:52:50.680 I mean, that's what conservatism is.

00:52:52.400 There's, it doesn't matter what, what the audience says.

00:52:54.400 Right, but here's what I find interesting.

00:52:58.460 And, and I'm, so I, I want to take even a further step back, um, and, and kind of maybe

00:53:07.060 try to get us to rethink some of our assumptions as well.

00:53:10.980 Um, so there's always been a kind of alt right with the conservative movement and the GOP, even

00:53:19.160 if it never went under that name until very recently.

00:53:22.220 Um, so for, you know, when the conservatism began in the 1950s, this will bleed into our

00:53:30.340 paleo discussion when it comes next.

00:53:32.040 Um, they were attempting to kind of wrestle in, uh, other variations of the right, which

00:53:39.960 include a kind of aristocratic libertarianism.

00:53:43.260 Um, it also included a racialism and conservationism on the part of Madison Grant and included some

00:53:49.920 anti-interventionist, uh, uh, sentiments as well.

00:53:53.540 People who opposed not just World War I were against the armament industries after that war,

00:53:57.900 but opposed World War II even more controversially.

00:54:00.220 And it was an attempt to kind of wrestle them in and get everyone on the same plantation.

00:54:07.840 And in that plantation was a Cold War America that was going to globally confront the Soviet

00:54:14.580 Union.

00:54:15.120 And the conservatives did it in a kind of more outlandish way than, than most liberals who

00:54:20.440 almost seem sensible by comparison.

00:54:22.600 It was rolling back the Soviet Union, better red than, or better dead than red and, and

00:54:28.840 all sorts of, you know, overheated rhetoric like that.

00:54:32.080 Um, but forever with the conservative movement, there, there's been a kind of alt-right in the

00:54:37.100 sense of from the, the fifties on, there was a John Birch alt-right, which was super hardcore

00:54:43.680 on gun, hardcore on gun rights, super hardcore on, um, kind of sovereign individualism and

00:54:51.140 decentralization, anti-government kind of stuff.

00:54:54.900 Um, and then, and by the 1980s, you have this other kind of new alt-right, which was integrated

00:55:01.340 into the GOP, uh, which was the religious right.

00:55:04.500 And so this was post-segregationist South who decided one day they woke up one morning

00:55:09.840 and that they opposed abortion, despite the fact that their churches actually supported

00:55:14.340 the Roe v. Wade decision, uh, when the rubber hit the road, uh, and when was it?

00:55:19.440 1973.

00:55:20.620 Um, and, uh, uh, and so you, and they, they were able to integrate those energies.

00:55:25.740 So you had all these people who, you know, wanted a Christian America, school, school prayer,

00:55:30.160 anti-abortion crusade, et cetera.

00:55:31.580 They were able to integrate them and they kind of needed some of that energy.

00:55:34.940 They needed the kind of Randian energy, even though Rand was attacked in National Review.

00:55:40.200 Um, and in 2016, there was a new alt-right that came on the scene and that was the alt-right.

00:55:45.420 Right. And so it was younger, it was internet based, it was edgy. It had dispensed actually

00:55:52.540 with a lot of the earlier culture war ideas and was pro-Trump. We don't really care about

00:55:59.720 anything else. It's about immigration, nationalism, uh, crushing the SJWs, et cetera.

00:56:06.420 And the GOP needed that and they benefited from it. And I actually think the alt-right was

00:56:11.260 indispensable in Donald Trump's winning the election. Um, and I'm not just saying that as

00:56:16.520 a PR, you know, spin, uh, elections aren't just determined by demographics or get out the

00:56:23.640 vote. They are also determined by intensity and whether you, you think that you are going

00:56:28.500 out and changing the world or whether you intensely hate the other party. That is what really

00:56:34.240 wins. Uh, Donald Trump's election was miraculous. I don't think it would have happened if there

00:56:38.940 wasn't this upsurge in intensity that the alt-right brought. And the fact that we were

00:56:44.860 quote racist just added to it. This made it edgy and, and, and a taboo and, and, and, you

00:56:53.700 know, powerful. Uh, and so they needed that. Bannon recognized this. Bannon, as we learned

00:56:59.600 today in an interesting article was, was explicitly targeting incels in Michigan and Pennsylvania

00:57:05.540 in order to get them to vote for Donald Trump. Bannon identified with the alt-right as he

00:57:10.680 clearly stated in emails that were leaked in the Milo leak back in 2017. Um, they wanted

00:57:17.020 that thing, but after the, the deed was done, Donald Trump was election, uh, was elected.

00:57:22.380 They wanted to dispense with it because it got, it was too hot and the alt-right was gaining

00:57:27.620 independence. And I was the icon and I'm not going to buy into their shit and I'm not going

00:57:33.800 to be controlled by them. I think they need another alt-right. And I think that they, if

00:57:39.940 I, the smarter ones will try to create one. Now there's a civil war going on because you

00:57:45.000 have lots of people who are coming out super hard against Nick Fuentes and Gripers and whatever,

00:57:51.820 like Sebastian Gorka and et cetera. But, um, I think that social media summit that we saw

00:57:59.000 a few months ago, uh, probably six months ago now, in which a lot of people who had not been

00:58:05.100 banned from social media, but were kind of reliably MAGA, but also retarded. Maybe those two things

00:58:12.900 aren't, uh, certainly aren't too unusual to be, uh, play side by side, but a kind of retarded yet

00:58:20.960 edgy MAGA, reliably Republican. That is the indispensable fact, reliably MAGA all right. So

00:58:28.460 you had all these, you know, diamond and silk, you know, all these characters, Ali Akbar or

00:58:35.000 whatever, who's defending Nick Fuentes, by the way. And I think they want to construct, uh, I, they

00:58:40.260 want to construct a Neo alt-right or at the very least allow it to arise and not bash it or to try

00:58:47.460 to destroy it until after the 2020 election. And Nick Fuentes works as the icon of that, of such a

00:58:55.540 movement. He is taboo and, you know, too edgy, but then very much unlike me, very much unlike other

00:59:04.140 people, certainly on this podcast and others we can name is a, look, he's reliably Republican.

00:59:10.260 The guy is going to be in the tank for Trump. All those people, all the gripers are going to be

00:59:14.680 pro-Trump in 2020. I mean, prove me wrong guys. I don't think you will. Um, and so I, I, I do think

00:59:22.360 that there will be a kind of alt-right in 2020. I think Nick, unless something strange happens with

00:59:28.000 him, I think he will be a kind of icon for it and it will be a edgy racist alt-right movement that is

00:59:34.280 going to vote for Trump no matter what. And we'll tell us all these horror stories about what's going to

00:59:39.420 happen if Bernie or Biden or Elizabeth Warren is elected. And, um, they, the, the Republican Party

00:59:46.260 at some point needs that energy. They need that dark power to call upon, uh, you know, much like,

00:59:54.780 you know, I don't know, the, the, the, the empire needed to call upon the dark side of the force and,

01:00:00.720 and so on. They, they kind of need that in order to be intense. And I think they actually might lose

01:00:04.960 without it. Uh, but needless to say, as you can tell by the way I'm describing this, I really don't

01:00:10.100 want to have to be a part of that. Uh, 2016 was an amazing time. There's so much potentiality with

01:00:15.900 Trump. Um, but we've seen it and I don't want to waste our serious ideas and also the desperate need

01:00:26.820 for us to gain funding and build real institutions on yet another Republican campaign, um, where the

01:00:34.220 real winners will be Charlie Kirk if Trump wins. And I think he could win by the way, but the real

01:00:39.840 winner is going to be, it's going to be Kirk and those guys, those guys holding rosary beads and

01:00:44.420 talking about, you know, the dangers of butt sacks or whatever, like, uh, they're not going to triumph

01:00:50.580 if, if Trump wins, they're going to be doing that again in another four years, you know,

01:00:55.220 hectoring Nikki Haley or whomever's next or Ivanka or whatever.

01:01:01.200 You know, uh, one thing that I wanted to remark on, uh, sort of the Groeper movement in general

01:01:06.420 is a kind of, uh, is it, what is it? Groeper? Sorry. That was a boomer.

01:01:11.660 You're slandering these people.

01:01:14.780 Groeper, right?

01:01:16.820 Yes.

01:01:17.360 All right.

01:01:18.000 I have no idea what that word means.

01:01:20.580 But yeah, what is the etymology of that word? It'd be interesting to find out, but, um,

01:01:27.120 uh, it's some sort of frog. I don't know the etymology, but I've seen a lot of Groepers in my

01:01:34.500 time.

01:01:35.540 Yeah, I've seen the frog. So, and I know it's a kind of a, uh, continuation of the Pepe, like a

01:01:40.720 non trademark version of Pepe effectively. Right. Um, so in any case, uh, this movement,

01:01:48.060 uh, what is noticeable about it? And again, I mean, I, I think all of this has to be qualified

01:01:52.840 by, I don't know that our perception is a hundred percent accurate because the people

01:01:57.600 that are making the most comments that are kind of the most active on social media, I,

01:02:02.020 you know, how much of that are the people that share our ideas that, or that might tune

01:02:06.420 into this podcast and listen to this podcast. I don't know. I think that there's probably a large

01:02:11.440 number of lurkers or people who are just kind of engaged in different ways, uh, through different

01:02:16.260 forms of activism or not engaged in activism, uh, that are just not loud voices on social

01:02:23.920 media. So there's a kind of like fun house mirror effect that happens and we don't really exactly

01:02:28.780 know what the alt-right is, but I mean, our perception is reality to some extent or another.

01:02:34.440 So we'll go with that. Right. So as far as we can tell, like what happens with the alt-right

01:02:40.340 is there's a kind of, um, there's a kind of group psychology, right? So if, if the alt-right's

01:02:47.300 depressed, everyone in the alt-right is depressed, right? There's a kind of group psychology. And I,

01:02:52.860 and I think that there is something that, um, people that want to be serious in this movement

01:02:57.360 have to consider. And this is, uh, I think that there's a kind of a, uh, sort of cyclical

01:03:03.240 emotionality in the alt-right. It's almost sort of bipolar as it were, right? Where these kids get

01:03:09.200 like really fucking excited about this kind of small victory as it were. And honestly, again,

01:03:15.920 I'm not criticizing what people were doing. I think it was great that they were doing that

01:03:19.020 and hopefully they'll be, they'll have more success. Uh, I don't hope that they're, they're

01:03:24.400 used, which I think that I fear that they will be used to basically elect Trump again or try to elect

01:03:30.240 Trump again. Right. Um, but there is a kind of, yeah, there's a kind of bipolar, there's a kind

01:03:35.420 of bipolar nature, uh, to the alt-right. And I think that, um, what, I think that what this

01:03:41.760 movement will ultimately require is people who are kind of unchanging effectively in their mentality

01:03:46.740 that are not people prone to getting depressed and not people prone to getting overexcited about

01:03:52.080 things that are not necessarily important victories. Right. So I think that those are sort of

01:03:57.440 going to be the people that carry this movement forward. Whereas everyone else is kind of on this,

01:04:02.920 this sort of bipolar cycle. And again, who knows what percentage of the people kind of fit that

01:04:08.900 description, but that is sort of the kind of, uh, tenor tone, uh, that you, you take from the alt-right,

01:04:15.660 as it were, uh, that people get, you know, very despondent when things don't go their way.

01:04:21.640 And they get very excited when these sort of, uh, these kind of little miracles or these little

01:04:26.240 victories occur. And I think both tendencies are bad. I think that we more or less have to kind of

01:04:31.520 be steadfast and have essentially the same, uh, kind of like Terminator, like mentality through it

01:04:36.980 all. Right. Right. A kind of stoicism as it were, and just things should not get us down. They

01:04:42.580 shouldn't. It's we're at it. So in other words, it's the false community of these forums or wherever

01:04:49.540 they're telegram or Slack or whatever they're on or discord, um, where we don't have IRL community

01:04:58.800 with people where we have community that's not based on location, but that's based on interest.

01:05:05.180 And so they create these families as it were, that they take deadly seriously on these forums and they

01:05:12.260 do transfer their emotions back and forth. And they do get all on the same page about things.

01:05:18.060 And they get very mad when you're not on their page. Uh, that's what I've also noticed.

01:05:24.000 Yeah, no, I, I, I think we've all noticed that as well. But I guess the final point that I would

01:05:29.380 make is that, um, so before the red pill, I think that we all, to some extent before the red pill,

01:05:35.920 and I'm, you know, I think you, everyone listening to this broadcast knows what I'm talking about.

01:05:40.260 So before we all became red pilled, as it were, we had all become sort of accustomed to a

01:05:46.300 mainstream culture, watching the films and not really being, you know, made depressed by seeing

01:05:51.280 like these really degenerate films or whatever, which after the red pill, we would become later

01:05:55.300 sort of depressed by the culture, right? After the red pill, we'd be like, what the fuck? This is,

01:05:59.980 this whole thing is degenerate. Once the, the kind of scales fell from our eyes as it were. Um,

01:06:05.000 but I think now we have to sort of become accustomed to this new reality. And I think that that,

01:06:10.960 that's something that hasn't happened yet. So in other words, we have to kind of find our happiness

01:06:15.420 with all the knowledge that we have now, right? Both our happiness or sadness, but not to be in

01:06:22.900 this kind of bipolar, uh, emotionalized state, but to be in a kind of effective stoic state that's kind

01:06:29.880 of logically figuring out problems and figuring out a path forward. Um, I guess that's the only thing I

01:06:34.760 would say. Well, I mean, I think that joy comes from, again, at the risk of sounding like, you

01:06:40.720 know, Richard's like stock puppet or something, uh, that joy is going to come from viewing your life

01:06:47.220 and the larger goals of your life in a post American context. If you're, if you're looking

01:06:53.040 at, you know, the, the day to day or even five year, 10 year plan of your life in America, as it

01:06:58.860 stands, I don't see how you can't be demoralized, you know, constantly on the phone with your

01:07:04.640 therapist. You, the only way to contend with modernity or hyper modernity or whatever, you

01:07:11.380 know, kitschy phrase you want to use is to think beyond where we are and live partly in

01:07:17.200 that other world and make plans to realize that other world. Otherwise, yeah, the new

01:07:22.460 Terminator movie is going to make you want to put one to your head. Jesus is King is going

01:07:31.740 to make you want to, you know, do a big splat on the highway. I just, I don't know how you

01:07:34.980 can get out of the bipolar cycle as Mark is calling it unless without getting completely

01:07:39.620 like completely out of the frame that we are in now.

01:07:44.600 I listened to Jesus is King today, by the way.

01:07:47.980 Did you really?

01:07:48.900 Yes.

01:07:50.700 We might want to do a whole segment on this.

01:07:52.480 Maybe not.

01:07:54.900 It's fascinating.

01:07:56.100 You can't pay me. You can't pay me to do it.

01:07:58.380 If this show made money, you couldn't pay me to do it.

01:08:00.640 Yeah.

01:08:02.140 Well, if I heard Richard Wright before, and then maybe we can kind of move things along.

01:08:07.320 The idea that there always was some kind of alt-right within the American right-wing

01:08:15.780 political sphere. If they're trying to architect an alt-right that they can control, I mean,

01:08:22.240 if they're trying to create the Jungian shadow of Leslie Graham, it's not going to work.

01:08:27.880 It's going to be a complete failure. It's going to be totally ineffectual.

01:08:29.640 It's not going to be able to engender the kind of enthusiasm.

01:08:33.300 It's not going to have the creativity.

01:08:34.980 It's not going to be able to create any of the things that spontaneously emerge from like

01:08:39.260 genuine darkness, for lack of a better way of putting it.

01:08:44.200 I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Tyler.

01:08:45.840 Yeah, there's something I want to add. I think a lot of this is very much as what you guys

01:08:50.440 were saying, a reflection of the kind of pop culture mentality where the young, they kind

01:08:55.360 of see the state that we're in as an eternal present. There's a lack of history and a lack

01:09:01.480 of imagination. So when I mean history, we look at the history of the dissonant movement

01:09:06.080 all the way back to the 70s, 80s, 90s, as you see a lot of these same things that are

01:09:11.340 being heralded by this kind of new generation as like new, exciting things, like this kind

01:09:16.520 of new revival of paleo-conservatism, is that this is all already been played out.

01:09:21.300 Like you look at, say, Buchanan's culture war speech, and you know, I'm not American,

01:09:24.960 so I might be wrong, but I think it was in support of George Bush Sr. after Buchanan lost,

01:09:30.920 right? And so you see these kind of things repeating themselves over and over again,

01:09:35.420 and it's the same thing with the other side, is the Wignett contemporary mentality, where

01:09:39.400 it's very much a revival of kind of the 80s, you know, the 80s cell structures and things

01:09:45.840 like that. And so there's a lack of understanding that these ideas are not new, they're very much

01:09:51.860 a repeat of what we've already been through before. And so, and I think the other side of

01:09:56.840 that too, is that these things move like pop culture trends, and so they jump onto every

01:10:02.540 new hope that comes, not knowing that it's already been there many times. And that's

01:10:05.880 because there's a strong lack of imagination. There's no sense of what Zizek would call learning

01:10:10.800 to dream a bit dangerously, in the sense that we can't be tied to all these hopes that have

01:10:16.980 already existed before, and we have to learn to kind of imagine a post-America, and imagine

01:10:22.400 what we would like to build. And, you know, in a sense, people might say that sounds wishy-washy,

01:10:27.320 but the fact is, we don't know where we are moving, or how these kind of networks of power

01:10:31.560 are going to change. And so we have to start learning to take the reins, because as these

01:10:35.740 situations start to change, it's going to demand new responses. So we can't be backwards looking,

01:10:40.400 nor can we be deterministic. We need to understand our history, and we need to be imaginative about

01:10:44.900 where we're going in the future.

01:10:47.260 You know, Curtis Yarvin, I don't remember what publication he wrote this essay for,

01:10:51.540 but a quote that's made as Mencius Moldbug, for anyone who doesn't know his real name,

01:10:56.880 his birth name. There's an excerpt from the essay that he published, and it was something,

01:11:03.380 I'm paraphrasing quite a bit, every political break was preceded by an aesthetic break.

01:11:10.280 Paleoconservatism is not going to produce, I'm teeing you up here for the next big topic here,

01:11:14.500 Richard. Paleoconservatism is not going to produce a new aesthetic break. There's no revisionism

01:11:20.620 of the American conservative mind that will produce a new aesthetic, and therefore a new

01:11:27.520 political break. And I think even, and hesitate to bring his name up, Fuentes was on Infowars

01:11:32.280 saying earlier today, I'm a paleoconservative. And if that's what we're trying to return to,

01:11:37.540 there's not going to be a future. But yeah, go ahead, Richard.

01:11:39.960 Yeah, no. Okay. So let's move on to the paleos, and do you want me to just set the lay of the land?

01:11:47.120 Yeah, I am actually a little bit shocked that people would revive the paleo term.

01:11:54.920 It was a term that had a lot, much more resonance in the 90s and early 2000s. And

01:12:02.520 even groups that I was involved with, like the Mencken Club, which I helped found in 2007,

01:12:12.020 I believe, we were already trying to move beyond the paleos. I actually published a article when I

01:12:20.880 was editing Taki's magazine, called an epitaph for the paleo, or an epigraph, I guess, for the paleos,

01:12:27.300 written by Paul Gottfried, who more or less coined the term, or at the very least owned the term. And

01:12:34.260 yeah, I find it rather shocking that people would adopt this term. And I wonder how much of

01:12:41.940 the history they know, if any, really, or whether that term is just simply floating around, and they

01:12:47.920 want to jump on it. But that it does have a history. It's a it's a rather recent one. During the

01:12:56.660 Reagan era, there was a an episode that I guess everyone can Google and read up on the Mel Bradford

01:13:06.420 episode, where this Southern historian, who was really a kind of patronizing Christian conservative

01:13:16.160 towards African Americans, whom he considered his Christian brothers and, and so on, was basically, I think he

01:13:26.500 was going to be part of the was the Department of Education or something like this, he was going to be in a

01:13:31.220 major department, he might have been a figurehead, wouldn't have changed anything, but it was symbolic,

01:13:35.460 nevertheless. And he was viciously attacked by the then rising neoconservatives. And that became a kind of, I

01:13:44.700 don't know, what's, what's the best way of thinking he became the, what is that song from the National Socialist,

01:13:54.060 that they all the their their their famous fight song that was named after someone who died in one

01:13:59.180 of their rallies? Oh, yeah. Okay. Come on, guys, help me out here. I'm getting old. So I forget these

01:14:06.860 things. But anyway, he became a kind of martyr for the movement. And then after the Cold War, there were

01:14:15.640 some major shifts, the neoconservatives were rising. And there was this major question after the fall of the

01:14:23.100 Soviet Union of what now? And Pat Buchanan wrote a an article in the National Interest that was a

01:14:31.900 response to Fukuyama. That was basically come home in America that we won the Cold War. Buchanan was at

01:14:41.620 the time a free trade advocate and Cold War interventionists may maybe have a more sensible

01:14:48.480 variety than than others, but but certainly one nevertheless. He was a rising star as a columnist

01:14:55.760 worked in the Nixon administration. Nixon, of course, was the moderate. He's from California,

01:15:03.280 of course, but he was almost like the Rockefeller Northeast seaboard wing of the GOP. And Buchanan

01:15:10.160 worked for him and Buchanan made a major turn. And some of the implications of that were the culture

01:15:16.480 war speech in the 1992 after he had run a ultimately unsuccessful, but but pretty amazing when you

01:15:22.800 think about an insurgent campaign, this, this writer, this man known mostly for being the right wing

01:15:28.720 commentator of the McLaughlin group, who ran for president and won New Hampshire and did well in

01:15:34.560 other states. Oh, yes, horse vessel. Yes, just a l'esprit d'escalier. So yes, Mel Bradford became the

01:15:43.700 horse vessel of the paleoconservative movement. But yeah, to go back to Pat. So much like Trump,

01:15:51.300 some of these dissident intellectuals felt like they had a horse in the race with Buchanan,

01:15:58.240 even though Buchanan obviously was not successful and to the degree that Trump was.

01:16:03.020 And there was this interesting alignment in the 90s that was taking place at these Rockford,

01:16:09.420 Rockford Institute. They're called the John Randolph Club meetings. And I presumably they're

01:16:13.980 still taking place. I don't pay attention to Chronicles. Not sure if anyone does. But there's

01:16:19.340 a monthly journal called Chronicles that used to be edited by Thomas Fleming, who's a, you know,

01:16:25.500 a curmudgeon's curmudgeon, one of the most unbearable human beings alive, but certainly someone who is

01:16:33.660 extremely literate. And I believe studied classics and did other things. And there was a they these

01:16:41.900 John Randolph Club meetings where you would have the meetings of some really great minds. Murray

01:16:49.340 Rothbard, very famous, a man I certainly admire, radical Jewish intellectual, radical libertarian,

01:16:57.580 someone who said, wrote very kind things about David Duke and so on, Sam Francis, you know, monumental

01:17:04.860 intellectual, etc. They were giving these big speeches at Randolph Club meetings. Murray Rothbard

01:17:12.160 talked about, we're not going to turn back the clock, we're going to break it. And those those speeches

01:17:17.480 are actually still fun reads. And I'm sure the audio is out there as well. And they all came together and they

01:17:24.020 were much like the alt right, they were united around Buchanan as their guy, who was an he was

01:17:29.400 there at that point, anti free trade that appealed to Sam Francis, who was becoming a kind of national

01:17:34.700 socialist, lowercase and lowercase s. But the anti interventionism and just, you know, wrecking ball

01:17:42.980 to the state that he represented, appealed to the libertarian. So Lou Rockwell, Murray Rothbard and company

01:17:49.800 were all, you know, we're all, you know, joining together. And they had their moment. By the 2000s,

01:17:56.720 and there are also some other elements in there, Sam Francis was, you know, he spoke at American

01:18:01.180 Renaissance conferences, he was clearly willing to go there in terms of the racial question and in

01:18:06.560 terms of the Jewish question. So was Murray Rothbard, by the way. And Tom Fleming was to a degree, but

01:18:13.080 post Buchanan and into the 2000s, they became a kind of Roman Catholic outfit. And they became older

01:18:21.620 and more curmudgeonly. And, you know, I would say pretty unbearable, to be honest, I remember when I

01:18:29.020 was because I'm older than, you know, everyone else here, or except for Mark, who's much older than I am.

01:18:34.540 Um, but, uh, I remember in those days when I hated the Bush administration, I hate, uh, this is the

01:18:42.420 2000s, the W Bush administration. I hated the Bush administration. I hated the Iraq war. I hated the

01:18:48.140 religious right, all of it. I just thought it was all nuts and damaging and so on. And, uh, I would read

01:18:55.960 Chronicles as a kind of, wow, this is a sane voice. These people are anti-war. Um, yet they're clearly not

01:19:02.900 shrill leftist. Uh, and that was the first time I discovered Sam, I read Sam Francis's columns. Uh,

01:19:09.140 and so on the American conservative magazine, which again, kind of used to be more relevant than it is

01:19:13.620 now, um, was also part of that. So there was an interesting moment in time. Um, but that moment

01:19:22.660 is over. And, and it was a kind of, I think Paul Godfrey described it as a hastily assembled,

01:19:27.300 you know, reaction to neoconservative ascendancy. Um, I believe he used those exact words and that

01:19:34.460 that is a concise description of what it was. There were a few too many moving parts going in

01:19:40.460 different directions for it to ever cohere as a movement. I think, I think you could say much the

01:19:44.240 same thing about the alt-right. Uh, but, uh, you know, there it is and it doesn't really seem

01:19:51.780 relevant. I think if it's remembered at all now, it is that kind of mere reaction, um, that we were

01:19:58.920 talking about and that Molbug was getting at, uh, with the statement you mentioned. Um, but it was a,

01:20:05.300 a sense of the, there was, you know, Pat Buchanan's Catholic neighborhood in DC in the fifties,

01:20:12.520 that Thomas's Fleming's, you know, imagined childhood or, or, or, or so on. There was this

01:20:18.560 attempt to go back and freeze time at some moment when America was white, uh, America was at war at

01:20:26.900 that time. And, and all of that neoconservative stuff was absolutely at play. We should remember

01:20:32.540 that, but it was a, it was a better time. People were upright and decent and we, everyone was

01:20:39.000 Christian. The family had not been broken down. Um, and they wanted to go back to that point and

01:20:46.120 freeze it in time. And, uh, you know, as laudable as that was, Sam Francis was correct to recognize

01:20:54.320 them as beautiful losers. Uh, they offer a dream vision, a half remembered dream of what

01:21:01.000 might have been and maybe could be once again. Um, but they're ultimately losers at some level.

01:21:07.860 It's a kind of nostalgia as politics. And, um, so I, I, you know, as, as you can tell by the way I'm

01:21:15.180 describing them, I, I, I feel like it's a moment that's passed and, and therefore I'm not really

01:21:20.080 hostile towards them. I, I brought up the better parts of that movement and I look back upon them

01:21:27.180 is look that though they, uh, putting together Godfrey, Sam Francis, Thomas Fleming. I mean,

01:21:35.940 the guy, if you think Nick Fuentes hates me or is toxic, like wait until you meet Thomas.

01:21:41.780 But anyway, um, you know, Thomas Fleming, Rothbard, uh, all of these people in the same room. I mean,

01:21:49.500 it was impressive. And Hans Hermann Hoppe was involved. Um, I mean, it, it was a obvious,

01:21:56.580 you know, major thinker, deep guy. So it was an oppressive assembly of an impressive assembly of

01:22:02.620 people. And, uh, it, you know, it should be admired. Uh, do any of these people who call

01:22:07.540 themselves paleos even approach their level of erudition? Um, not even close. Um, are they just

01:22:16.680 kind of, I don't know, it's, it, it's, it, are they reaching for a term so that they won't be called

01:22:21.740 racist? Yes. Um, do they still kind of fall in, you know, despite their lack of literacy, do they,

01:22:29.080 they still fall into the same fundamental problem of Chronicles magazine, which is a politics as

01:22:36.160 nostalgia or nostalgia as politics, uh, an attempt to, um, you know, have an almost snow globe of

01:22:43.240 America that you could put up near your bed and look at at night and look at the, you know, the

01:22:48.300 beauty of it all, the quaintness of it all. Uh, yes, they fall into the same trap. We're not going to

01:22:53.580 bring back these things. The, the 1950s, um, was a, in many ways, a very bad time for us. It was a

01:23:02.100 stultifying, suffocating time of network television domination, uh, and new, and a big four or five

01:23:12.500 newspaper domination of our thought process. Uh, we, we are better off in many ways, uh, than we were

01:23:19.920 that time. Does that time, does that era have, uh, some amazing redeemable qualities to it that we

01:23:25.900 could look back upon with nostalgia? Absolutely as well. But it was a passing moment in American

01:23:33.220 post-war history and it simply cannot be revived. And to, to, to make that one's politics, I think is

01:23:42.100 a kind of bad type of utopianism. Uh, it's not a utopianism that's, that's ever questing and ever

01:23:48.500 forward looking, uh, it's an attempt to return to a, a half forgotten dream. Um, so anyway, that,

01:23:56.940 that's my little mini history of the paleos. Uh, but it is rather crazy that we have these people,

01:24:03.640 I mean, I, I don't, I don't know what the actual paleos who most of whom are still alive actually

01:24:08.440 think about, you know, Nick Fuentes or Faith Goldie of all people, you know, saying they're,

01:24:13.640 they're paleo conservatives. Um, it's, it's a rather odd thing, but there it is.

01:24:20.880 I'll turn it over to Tyler cause he's looking very ponderously into the camera, but before we do,

01:24:25.740 I mean, I think of kind of the 1950s as the prototype of America moving forward. You know,

01:24:32.700 the Korean war was the first Vietnam, it was the first Iraq war. It was the first unwinnable war.

01:24:37.820 Uh, everything that's bad about America, United nations. Right. Yeah. Everything that's wrong

01:24:44.300 with America today. Uh, I mean, obviously the roots are deeper than 1950s, but that's like the,

01:24:49.260 to me, that's like the crystal moment. It's all rolled out one. Uh, you have kind of like fake

01:24:54.320 and gay Christianity, media saturation, uh, narcissism culture, moving in the military

01:25:00.680 industrial complex establishing itself. That's people want to go back to the very first fuck up

01:25:06.780 that we made. It's just like, sorry for the language overwhelmed by the counter-cultural

01:25:11.440 revolution in the 1960s, which could not resist that at all. Uh, not even close. And yeah, so,

01:25:18.580 I mean, it, it, you know, it's, it's beautiful losing Tyler. I mean, what do you, what do you think

01:25:24.840 on, on the, the paleo con question? I mean, is, are these people as Richard describes them?

01:25:31.340 Well, actually, I guess I think it was Thomas Fleming that said this just cause he was brought up,

01:25:36.060 but he, he said when he was talking about the sixties that, um, it was largely in its own form,

01:25:42.180 kind of a reactionary conservative return in the sense that they wanted the kind of frontier life

01:25:46.800 that, you know, they're represented in their style of clothing, this very old, old style,

01:25:51.240 the return of folk music, Appalachian folk music, right? Like, and the conservatives failed to seize

01:25:56.700 on that because they were wrapped up in this military industrial complex and all the wealth that

01:26:00.880 they garnered from the war, right? And that's what kind of conditioned them to have this kind of,

01:26:04.880 you know, this great consumer's life came from out of that.

01:26:07.920 That's a very dialectical point. And, um, as much as I hate Thomas Fleming as a human being,

01:26:13.920 uh, I can only tip my cap at that level of thinking that's the right way to think about

01:26:18.660 these things as opposed to like, Oh, fuck the liberals, you know, to, to understand what,

01:26:25.300 what were they actually getting at? There was a kind of primitive Christianity to the hippie

01:26:29.340 movement as well, which Thomas Fleming should like. There was, and there was that, that kind

01:26:33.340 of rural primitivism as well that they were, they were going for.

01:26:38.100 Yeah. I mean, in many ways, the fifties, I guess, you know, Josh was mentioning Christianity in the

01:26:42.600 fifties, there was this kind of identification in American Christianity with the state and the

01:26:47.800 principalities and powers. Cause when you read the new Testament, when they're talking about the

01:26:50.960 principalities and powers, they're talking about state power, right? So when you read,

01:26:54.480 for example, like the idea there is that Christ declares his lordship over the principalities

01:26:59.620 and powers, like you read passages, like, you know, yield unto Caesar, whether Caesar's yield

01:27:03.820 unto gods, whether it's gods, it's often taken the wrong way as in Christians are supposed to be

01:27:07.740 subservient to the state and actuality, because Caesar demanded your obedience and your, your body

01:27:13.320 and your worship. The point was, if you give to God, what's God's that you have nothing left for

01:27:17.000 Caesar. Like early Christianity before becoming the state religion was largely a pacifistic

01:27:23.160 cult that was opposed to the Roman empire. Right. Um, and so they kind of adopted Christianity

01:27:28.680 in this very idle, idolistic sense, idols. Right. And so, yeah, but, uh, the other thing I would say,

01:27:35.640 cause you guys summarize my feelings on it already, but I will say, at least in Faith Goldie's case,

01:27:40.300 I read this Canadian paleo thing. And I really chuckled at that because it's the strangest thing

01:27:45.940 to put in a Canadian context. I mean, Canada is not a Republic. It's a constitutional monarchy.

01:27:50.400 If you wanted to go back to an older conservatism in Canada, you would be a Tory, like a high Tory

01:27:55.400 or like a George Grant style red Tory, right? You wouldn't be a paleocon. So it seems to be very

01:28:00.880 much this kind of way of rebranding yourself to avoid the term racist or as you can say, okay,

01:28:05.320 well, I'm not all right. You know, these mean guys are, we're just paleocons, but in a Canadian

01:28:10.220 context that makes absolutely no sense at all. So it's just like taking this term as a way to avoid

01:28:16.220 being lumped in with people that you think are, I guess we could say bad optics.

01:28:23.540 That is a good articulation or expression of just how, if you want to say right-wing politics

01:28:29.560 has been so thoroughly demoralized that there's just this constant attempt to rebrand,

01:28:35.620 reconceptualize, find some magic word, some magic symbol that will allow you to act willfully in the

01:28:41.700 world when really it should just be this, not to be crude, but just kind of balls out, very brash,

01:28:51.140 very courageous attitude and forget the semantics, forget the language game, forget the symbol game

01:28:57.780 and just, I mean, there are ideas here, there is energy here and there's a lot of pussyfooting around.

01:29:05.160 At least that's, that's how I see it. But I, but I would say, I mean, I obviously agree with that. I

01:29:13.900 would add that it, this needs to be a forward looking dynamic movement. And a lot of this kind of

01:29:24.660 nostalgia stuff, we, we've just got to get over it. And it, it's a, I don't, I don't think it's helpful.

01:29:32.320 And, um, I, I, I think the, the kind of, you know, this is America, you know, uh, uh, the land of

01:29:41.120 tight knit, you know, communities and Christianity and all this kind of stuff. This is just kind of

01:29:47.340 raw, the wrong conception. America is the font of globo homo. I mean, the globo homo probably would

01:29:56.320 not exist if it weren't for this country and you can, you know, blame all that on Washington or

01:30:02.780 Hollywood if you want, but that's not even really being true to ourselves. And, and, and, and, and

01:30:10.140 it's, it's not based on a proper understanding of what this country is. So it's just that whole

01:30:16.960 nostalgia stuff is just, it's got to go. I, I, I do think it's a veil over our eyes that doesn't

01:30:22.460 allow us to see the world and, and doesn't allow us to imagine a future.

01:30:28.160 Very well said. That will do it for this week's edition of the McSpencer group. Uh, enjoy your

01:30:33.420 Halloween. Uh, have a wonderful week. And, uh, once again, from, from the panel to you,

01:30:38.460 Tyler, Mark, Richard, thank you. Take care.

01:30:42.460 Bye-bye.

01:30:44.460 Bye-bye.

01:30:46.460 Bye-bye.

01:30:52.460 Bye-bye.

01:31:22.460 Bye-bye.

01:31:24.460 Bye-bye.

01:31:34.460 Bye-bye.

01:31:38.460 Bye-bye.

RadixJournal - October 31, 2019

Groyper Nation Takes on the Culture War and The Rise and Fall ... And Rise？ of Paleoconservatives

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