RadixJournal - August 19, 2026


Something Fishy This Way Comes


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

136.53

Word count

2,333

Sentence count

92


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So, Richard, what's your, like, what's your full opinion of the guy?
00:00:04.700 Because I haven't been on these calls in recent months.
00:00:09.420 So just give me the full, like, deconstruction of.
00:00:12.200 I hate the motherfucker.
00:00:14.620 I don't know if I need to say.
00:00:17.020 I have this passionate desire to bully him, to beat him up.
00:00:23.800 He gives me the willies listening to him speak in that fake mix between Barack Obama and Vivek Ramashwamy and the platitudes.
00:00:38.500 I hate it.
00:00:42.060 I mean, I am willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt.
00:00:47.260 You're young.
00:00:49.120 You somehow get hired at this financial firm.
00:00:53.800 And you were faking it until you make until you made it, you know, you were lying about your job, stealing clients, stealing money, whatever.
00:01:01.760 And then there is this lawsuit. And, you know, I won't pass judgment.
00:01:07.000 I mean, the courts have passed judgment on this, but I won't. I don't know enough about it.
00:01:11.880 The problem is he did the exact same thing, not not to me or actually any movement that I'm an enthusiastic member.
00:01:21.560 But he did the exact same thing to Nick Fuentes, and Nick Fuentes is applauding him for it, and I think that is actually a huge mistake, a huge mistake.
00:01:37.020 now is it a mortal wound probably for nick that is probably not i wish this were a mortal wound
00:01:46.080 figuratively speaking for james fishback but i'm afraid it won't be and he's gonna do some
00:01:53.420 podcasting circuit but at some point it just gets old but yeah just to like recap my opinion
00:02:01.840 of this person i really don't trust him due to the way he speaks the endless platitudes
00:02:12.180 the drafting so to speak on things that other people have done who who the hell is james fishback
00:02:20.800 no one knew about this character until nine months ago or maybe a year ago and yet he just
00:02:30.000 sort of fronts using two metaphors here he front runs a movement the gripers nick fuentes like oh
00:02:39.040 it's about me it's about me or the other metaphor i use is is drafting and car racing where you kind
00:02:44.540 of get right behind it and use the aerodynamics to jump past it that's what he's doing he's
00:02:50.900 he's allowed it though hasn't he he's allowed he's endorsed him yes he's i i don't i i think
00:02:57.000 fuentes will survive this but he has allowed it and he has endorsed him uh secondly i i just
00:03:05.800 am gonna have to go there but the phrase mystery meat comes to mind when i both look at this
00:03:14.540 character and listen to this character so bro are you saying that he won't be allowed in hyperborea
00:03:21.940 are you saying he won't ascend the underworld
00:03:26.020 he'll be like some sort of like evil gatekeeper or like under a bridge
00:03:33.880 frightens children look i'm just saying this okay dan blitzerian got 20 of the vote against randy
00:03:42.800 fine the last time i checked so he proportionately outperformed fishback why is that is that because
00:03:50.620 Dan Blitzerian campaigned hard? No, he didn't. He put up horrible AI slop, anti-Semitic slop videos and tweeted about stuff. But what is it? He has name recognition. He's famous. This is the secret of Donald Trump, the sort of open secret of Donald Trump. It's that he's a household name.
00:04:13.760 Everyone knows him and loves him as a colorful figure from television and worldwide wrestling, not necessarily from business and real estate.
00:04:25.020 And so, yeah, like if you're going to do a big campaign where you want to win, I'm sorry, don't choose the weirdest looking motherfucker on the planet as your torchbearer.
00:04:42.460 Just saying, I mean, weirdest name, dude, the name it's fish.
00:04:48.700 It has fish in the name.
00:04:50.420 It's fishy.
00:04:51.560 It's just, that's not his fault.
00:04:53.560 It's not his fault that he looks that way.
00:04:55.440 I'm just saying it's a non-starter unless you are like an establishment
00:05:00.420 Democrat in New York city.
00:05:03.200 It's fine.
00:05:04.180 It's good actually, but you're, that's not the field you're playing in.
00:05:08.120 This is just odd.
00:05:09.780 Now, he is articulate, again, a ton of platitudes, all this grab bag stuff, this self-righteousness. He, at one point, sanctified his campaign to Christ in the Catholic Church. I'm not even exaggerating.
00:05:25.180 He had one OnlyFans, perhaps stripper, prostitute girlfriend who he introduced as his wife to on a podcast, and then she disappears and he gets married to someone who looks remarkably like her.
00:05:40.240 And it just everything is fake and weird.
00:05:45.060 And I don't think I'm alone in just having this guttural reaction to the same reaction that I have to a used car salesman.
00:05:55.180 I mean, I shouldn't even say that.
00:05:57.200 No offense to used car salesmen.
00:05:59.240 Many of them are good.
00:06:00.140 Yeah, there's something oily.
00:06:02.020 There's definitely something oily about the guy.
00:06:05.240 Yes.
00:06:06.700 And the name Fishback is just evocative of wetback.
00:06:10.340 It's evocative of wetback and fishy.
00:06:13.840 And I'm sorry.
00:06:15.140 I remember this like nine months ago.
00:06:17.940 He was on with some weird like Russian like Faith Merrill or something.
00:06:21.260 And he's like, it is true that we are facing white genocide in Florida.
00:06:27.040 Like, it's like, look, man, if you're not white, that's cool.
00:06:32.960 But maybe you're not the best spokesman for a white nationalist meme from 2009.
00:06:41.840 Like, I don't know.
00:06:43.680 You find this a bit odd?
00:06:46.100 You know, just saying.
00:06:48.560 I don't know.
00:06:49.960 Go ahead.
00:06:51.260 yeah i know i i mean i i he also gives me the willies too so i've never liked him uh but i
00:06:59.400 don't i mean i guess i didn't i mean i guess the sort of logical reasons why i wouldn't like him
00:07:05.100 is because he's he's one of these sort of christoid uh holy rollers uh but in terms of
00:07:10.420 his personality yeah he just gives me the creeps he's kind of an oily type an oily guy the name
00:07:16.940 is terrible as well i would agree fishy fish sticks um yeah but uh yeah but i think that
00:07:24.300 if i had to guess why fuentes likes him is he he does seem like he's somewhat he does seem
00:07:30.460 intelligent i think he's intelligent and he is a good speaker uh so i think he feels like he's
00:07:36.120 sort of competent on some level he's a zoomer and i think that you know i i think that has a lot to
00:07:43.420 do with it he had he's not run away from af and by af i don't mean america first according to
00:07:52.180 caroline levitt i mean america first according to nick fuentes he's not run away from that
00:07:56.380 but here's the thing so and and i said this before this earlier when we talked about this with you
00:08:04.660 know chad champion and others and it's worth reiterating so donald trump in 2016 he did have
00:08:12.900 some emotional appeals and some pragmatic appeals there's no doubt about it but he was also a screen
00:08:22.100 he was just this celebrity that you know from the television or from the national inquirer
00:08:26.740 from your youth and he was just sort of a screen that a lot of internet people would project upon
00:08:35.240 and so it's like but from both sides it's like he's literally hitler yeah you're right he is
00:08:41.060 literally or you know he's a libertarian he's anti-war he's a zionist he's just a hilarious
00:08:49.080 troll and we should vote for him for the lulls i i he's a he's a christian savior he's christ
00:08:55.400 himself he believes in family values i mean you could just project your hopes dreams and fears
00:09:03.040 and fantasies onto him this is the difference because trump even to this day even when he's
00:09:11.060 in diapers he's larger than life and he's just sort of bigger than everyone else just in grotesque
00:09:20.080 ways and in even some dalliances with greatness he's just sort of bigger than everyone else
00:09:25.880 The thing about Fishback is that he's smaller than everyone else. And the difference is, in 2016, Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer, the alt-right, Christians, whatever, we all went to Trump and we're just like, yeah, libertarians did this too. You're our man. We're going to enclose you in our fantasies, basically.
00:09:51.760 This is the difference. Fishback is smaller than Nick Fuentes by a very large margin. And the only reason that he has any audience at all is because he has grifted or grafted off Nick Fuentes.
00:10:09.860 He's been that car that just rides behind it, draft him, and he is trying to surpass him.
00:10:16.260 So it would be like Trump coming to Richard Spencer and being like, let me be a part of that, of your movement, the alt-right.
00:10:24.180 I love it.
00:10:24.960 That's ridiculous.
00:10:26.660 Nothing like that would have ever happened.
00:10:28.640 But that's almost literally what James Fishback is.
00:10:32.960 He is smaller than the influencers that he is grifting off of.
00:10:38.840 and i just don't understand why they can't see that he is sucking energy from you he is not your
00:10:47.640 you know hilarious lulz fantasy candidate like we had in 2016 he is taking your energy in order to
00:10:56.860 do god knows what you know not go to jail um make a lot of money have a podcasting career who knows
00:11:04.900 what he's doing exactly i think he's one of these con men that lives day to day hour to hour but
00:11:11.960 he's not the future of anything go on i don't i don't like fish i don't like fishback either but
00:11:19.720 um at some point in theory there's going to be a political player out there
00:11:25.940 that uh you or fuentes could endorse and just by definition they're going to be drawing some
00:11:34.180 of your energy i mean it's a kind of this is part of the collaborative project right i mean you'll
00:11:39.960 try to get him elected if he if he's a good candidate and so forth right well i could talk
00:11:44.540 about this i mean yes look yeah i i wouldn't i like centrist and you know i i'm cool with joe
00:11:52.200 biden uh gavin if he wants to run i i don't i'm not gonna i will absolutely not ever endorse or
00:12:01.500 support a dsa candidate or any of that trash i like centrist people who can kind of maintain
00:12:07.960 things and i liked the refreshing change from donald trump of 2016 where you know i was
00:12:14.220 fantasizing in 2016 but in 2020 with biden or even you know believe it or not kamala harris
00:12:21.180 it's sort of like look i know you're not me i know you probably don't even want my endorsement
00:12:26.680 I don't know, maybe you do, but you probably don't.
00:12:28.860 But I like your policies, you're stable, your establishment.
00:12:35.660 You're not like a false dream of a revolution or awakening.
00:12:40.560 You're a realistic wake-up call that we're not going to have a revolution right now.
00:12:48.600 And so I'm cool with that.
00:12:51.240 Now, in terms of candidates, I would go back to what I've actually been saying for quite some time.
00:12:59.800 I wrote an article about this, I believe it was in 2018.
00:13:02.540 It's been a long time I have been saying this.
00:13:06.500 An educational candidate could be cool.
00:13:11.080 So what I mean by that is like Ron Paul 2008.
00:13:14.720 There's no chance you're going to win.
00:13:16.580 But you actually will blow some minds, teach people things, be bold and aggressive and even wild in a good way, not a bad way, and basically bring your message to the public square.
00:13:34.840 Ron Paul brought the anti-war libertarian message to the public square in a way that no one else had.
00:13:44.400 And that was ultimately successful for the movement.
00:13:49.480 Now, and the other kind of candidate, there's the educational candidate.
00:13:54.440 The other kind of candidate is just the realistic candidate.
00:13:57.160 You just want to win or you want to maintain the system, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, et cetera.
00:14:02.840 Now, it seems like Fishback is this worst of all conceivable worlds in the sense that he's not teaching anyone anything.
00:14:18.020 There's no coherent ideology.
00:14:20.220 there's just a grab bag of internet memes like catholicism like banning abortion
00:14:29.880 banning or taxing only fans um no more no fault divorce uh uh cheaters gotta pay what are some
00:14:41.760 mother of this just like weird amalgamation of like twitter and the religious right and
00:14:50.500 all of this shit put into a vessel that is flawed to say the least he gives everyone the willies
00:14:58.240 he might go to jail you know it's just this like really bad bad thing and ron paul i don't agree
00:15:10.020 with ron paul but i undoubtedly think that he helped libertarianism i don't know what how anyone
00:15:19.560 could make the case that james fishback has helped anyone nick looks worse af looks like it's non
00:15:29.560 viable uh catholicism why are you choosing this guy of all people to embrace as like a public
00:15:38.940 catholic you're choosing this fellow okay it's just everyone looks bad there's no coherent policy
00:15:47.280 so like what is the ideology are you like you're what are you exactly here you were anti-data
00:15:55.620 centers tax only fans in no-fault divorce sanctify the campaign to christ i mean it's just this
00:16:01.960 gobbledygook of Twitter memes so he has harmed everyone including himself to be fair he has
00:16:12.180 harmed everyone who has gotten within 10 feet of him no I'm sorry that's just the fact I don't as
00:16:18.860 I said I don't think it's a mortal blow to Nick Fuentes I think he'll people will forget about
00:16:24.500 this at some point there's no question that he's been harmed by an association with this character
00:16:32.660 everyone who voted for him is gonna feel like what was i doing volunteering for a sociopath
00:16:41.140 i mean i mean it's just he is the worst imaginable candidate the worst imaginable
00:16:51.140 standard bearer of a movement the least educational the most self-serving it although
00:17:00.060 to be fair i don't think he served himself either but there it is