Free speech is everywhere. It's everywhere in social media, and it's everywhere on the internet. You have a right to go out to the center of town or city sidewalk and hold up a placard that says "No to war" or "All Lives Matter" and you don't have the right to harass someone who disagrees with you.
00:00:00.000Tonight, I wanted to talk about a rather contentious subject.
00:00:06.780I guess it's contentious and it's not contentious on one level, and that is free speech.
00:00:13.600So everyone you know claims to love free speech, particularly if they are American, but not necessarily.
00:00:24.980It seems to be a kind of bedrock value, and it's very hard to find someone who will openly discuss the problems with that notion.
00:00:40.580It's obviously enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
00:00:48.540And since we live in an Americanized world, it has traveled around the world.
00:00:57.900And most new constitutions that you will see will pick up on the American notion of free speech.
00:01:07.700That notion of free speech, even in the First Amendment, I think should be looked at more closely.
00:01:18.800And the reason why I'm doing this, I guess the intention or what kind of spurred me to do it, really, was some contemporary problems that we have with speech.
00:03:04.280My understanding is that it is much like 4chan, a kind of user-generated forum that is anonymous.
00:03:14.260You know, enlighten me if I'm incorrect.
00:03:17.420And it became a cesspool of doxing, bizarre revenge fantasies, lies.
00:03:26.740And what is textbook harassment, effectively?
00:03:31.840You have a right to go out to the center of town or a city sidewalk and hold up a placard that says, say no to war or, you know, all lives matter, pro-life forever, whatever.
00:04:30.540And the notion that you somehow acquire that right through the internet is really stupid.
00:04:39.760You don't have a right to sell the internet.
00:04:44.060You don't have a right to illegal drugs, that is.
00:04:47.040You don't have a right to contract a hitman on the internet.
00:04:52.660The internet is a means form of communication.
00:04:57.000It is tubes developed and built by the government.
00:05:00.880You have just as much right to contract with a hitman on the internet as you do on a public sidewalk.
00:05:09.940But there are many people who don't seem to fundamentally grasp this distinction.
00:05:17.560I've noted who is perhaps my least favorite political commentator and someone who is more popular than ever, although he has been in the line life for about a decade or so, and that is Glenn Greenwald.
00:05:31.820He took it upon himself to defend Kiwi Farms.
00:05:51.920I was curious if he ever defended my right to free speech.
00:05:55.740So I did an advanced search, and I looked at some certain things, and apparently Glenn didn't have the time to speak up on some very key occasions, and one of which was a moment about two years ago when I and Stefan Molyneux, I believe Jared Taylor and maybe a couple other people, were kicked off YouTube.
00:06:25.740And, you know, I can only speak for myself, but I can more or less speak for the other people.
00:06:35.380That was pretty outrageous in the sense that I understand when someone gets kicked off for disobeying the terms of service.
00:06:47.840I mean, look, on some level, if you don't like the terms of service, you can get lost.
00:06:55.740But when people are actually obeying them and really, you know, taking the time to obey them and putting forward whatever you think about me, whatever you think about Molyneux, whatever, putting forward content of a thoughtful nature, that is pretty outrageous.
00:07:13.480But, you know, I didn't notice, I did an advanced search, Glenn Greenwald didn't seem to have the time to speak up on that matter.
00:07:54.800The question is not whether you defend the free speech rights of speech you agree with.
00:08:03.860The real question is whether you will defend the rights of people who you vehemently disagree with, maybe even the rights of people who are outrageous, maybe even poisonous or disgusting.
00:08:28.440Well, I think it's almost more of a test when you defend the rights of people who are rational, to be honest.
00:08:37.000It's kind of fine, I guess, but not very impressive when you vaguely defend the rights of Kiwi Farms or just people's ability to say whatever the hell they want on the Internet.
00:08:56.780That's, in some ways, it is a kind of low cost.
00:09:06.060There are clear implications to the existence of places like 4chan and Kiwi Farms.
00:09:17.200And whether it's 1% of 1% of people who will actually look at the rhetoric there and go kill some Twitch streamer that they're secretly in love with but are madly jealous of or something like that.
00:09:42.680Or someone like the Buffalo shooter who will just cut and paste all of this, you know, great replacement type stuff.
00:09:52.440And not look at it in a proper context.
00:09:57.900Not look at it in the context of someone who can actually talk about these things rationally.
00:10:04.300But just kind of cut and paste a bunch of graphs and then decide that the only way forward is to go kill minorities, people of color.
00:10:17.300You know, it's a football score and, you know, they're down 10 and I'm up 1 or something because I murdered them.
00:10:27.340But in places like 4chan, where it's this toxic brew of just endless, horrible nonsense, total distortions of what many serious people believe and kind of foreign assets acting in there as well.
00:10:50.260You can inspire that 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% to do something like that.
00:10:57.040And it's almost a mathematical certainty that something like that will happen.
00:11:02.000But you can also, in a cost-free manner, kind of vaguely defend the rights of these people to put forth just absolute garbage.
00:11:15.680And to engage in what is textbook harassment due to their supposed rights to free speech.
00:11:26.700I think people like Greenwald, they kind of get in this way of thinking that they see liberals who actually are, at the very least, trying to address this issue.
00:11:46.520And they basically see them as the fascist, and they see all of these people engaging in this toxic culture as, you know, somehow innocent or even the good guys.
00:11:59.800And they just moralize on that basis without seriously thinking about the problem.
00:12:06.920There's some other things that are important here about just our contemporary notion of free speech, and just some big problems within that legally, and I think you could say philosophically as well.
00:12:28.660So, you can be forgiven if you believe that since the First Amendment was penned and enacted by the states, that we have just more or less had a right to free speech.
00:12:49.800Now, that doesn't mean a right to, you know, sell drugs via language, writing or something like that.
00:12:57.900That doesn't mean a right to post, you know, graphic pornography or illegal pornography that is kind of a form of expression, I guess, on some level, but is obviously illegal.
00:13:15.340But you have a right that is enshrined to speak your mind, and no one can do anything about that.
00:13:22.840That actually isn't what freedom of speech means, at least in the common law tradition.
00:13:33.020Freedom of speech is basically a notion, and this is, and I'm drawing on Blackwell, that your ability to engage in speech cannot preemptively be taken away.
00:13:50.880So, no one shall destroy your printing press effectively before you've said something.
00:14:04.880That is your ability to engage in speech.
00:14:08.940But, even as, you know, early as the Adams administration, the government has had no real issue with enacting sedition acts that basically see speech as potentially a threat to public life.
00:14:33.080And certainly a threat to the government, and something that needs to be addressed at the very least.
00:14:44.580Now, there was another sedition act that, I guess, indirectly gave birth to the current conception, legal and moral conception of free speech.
00:14:57.640And that was the sedition act that accompanied the U.S. entry into the First World War.
00:15:07.320There were a number of suits immediately after that that reached the Supreme Court, in which people, Eugene Debs being an excellent example.
00:15:26.320He was also against the First World War.
00:15:32.720And he was being careful about his language.
00:15:37.060But he was valorizing or promoting people who evaded the draft.
00:15:44.060And he was, he was, he lost his suit against the government.
00:15:50.540And he was jailed under the Sedition Act.
00:15:55.280And one of the famous Supreme Court justices, maybe the most famous, who affirmed those rulings was Oliver Wendell Holmes.
00:16:07.820In one of a series of tests of the 1918 Sedition Act, Holmes wrote the now famous statement that you still hear repeated over and over again about how you are not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theory, in a crowded theater, if it is not a flame.
00:16:33.140So you don't have the right to generate public mayhem, is what he is effectively saying.
00:16:47.620He was actually in his late 70s when these controversies were taking place.
00:16:52.960He remained on the Supreme Court into his 90s.
00:16:55.380And he was a, at the very least, memorable Supreme Court justice.
00:17:03.800He also gave furthest lines about, what is it, three generations of idiots is more than enough or something like that.
00:17:11.540But he, he changed his mind in a famous case of Abrams versus the United States, which was the case of some Russian Jewish anarchist who were in opposition to some of these somewhat now forgotten military campaigns of the U.S.
00:17:38.680of the allies, of the allies, basically, including Britain, against the new Bolshevik regime.
00:17:45.760And Abrams was a pamphleteer of some kind.
00:17:51.560And Oliver Wendell Holmes reversed himself.
00:17:56.100So in an affirmation of a decision, of a verdict, rather, Wendell Holmes penned the lines, you're not, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
00:18:10.020In his dissent, he said something very different.
00:18:14.280And it's actually the dissent, which is, has been the kind of precedent, if you, not, you know, if you will, not exactly the right word there.
00:18:26.740It's been the logic of future rulings on free speech.
00:18:32.900And he effectively said that you would engage in the censoring and suppression of speech when you are 100% certain that you're right.
00:18:50.800And in that way, the other party's speech is, at best, useless.
00:18:59.420He is, at best, some kind of flat earth fanatic or someone who wants to square the circle.
00:19:04.760That's what I think the exact language Holmes used.
00:19:09.540But maybe it might actually be dangerous.
00:19:12.240We don't need to hear from communist anarchists or anything like that.
00:19:20.340That, you know, we can have free speech within limits, but sometimes people just take it too far.
00:19:27.720But he said the United States is unique.
00:19:31.920And it actually has a legal conception that is unique from common law.
00:19:38.940So he was directly addressing the fact that, no, actually, the United States is different.
00:19:48.500And while common law might grant you that right to own a printing press, but not necessarily grant you the right to say something toxic.
00:20:00.960In the United States, it does, because the United States is, in effect, a free market place of ideas.
00:20:46.100I don't think Holmes actually believed that personally, but he did, for better and for worse, make this principled stand.
00:20:58.320And so that tradition of free speech, you can see, that's coming from a dissent, that is coming from something that was not effective.
00:21:08.600You see that logic in the many cases of the Supreme Court on free speech, when they would say, when they would hold that someone has a right, Brandenburg, someone has a right, Brandenburg, to say really outlandish stuff.
00:21:28.100And even talk about violence in the way of, you know, we're going to round up Congress and hang them all or something, you know, something like that, that is, yes, a call to violence on some kind of vague level, but is so vague that it doesn't seem like a direct order of violence.
00:21:54.500You can see that, again, you can see that, again, in the Supreme Court's upholding the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest the funerals of soldiers in the most completely outrageous manner possible, offensive manner.
00:22:15.740The fact is, the fact is, they were engaging in some kind of political statement, even if they are holding up a sign that says, God hate fags or something.
00:22:32.520It was outrageous, but outrage used to make a political point.
00:22:39.600I mean, all of this is justified on that logic that the United States is a mere experiment.
00:22:50.960So it's an even more profound logic than we disagree on policy.
00:22:57.980Also, people are comfortable with free speech when we all agree on the basics.
00:23:03.500You know, in your little town, is there going to be a vigorous debate on whether we should raise sales tax to build a new baseball stadium or whatever?
00:23:19.860You agree that the town should be prosperous, that baseball is good, that you might raise taxes a little bit here and there, but not too much.
00:23:30.480We just want what's the best for our community.
00:23:33.600We're all in agreement on those basic norms.
00:23:37.320And if in those basic norms, we have some vigorous debate and yell at each other, but afterwards we'll go home because we're ultimately on the same team.
00:23:48.440This is saying something much more profound, which is that the United States is an experiment.
00:24:11.440I think that, you know, to be fair, I think there are some good qualities of this type of free speech conception, logical and moral conception.
00:24:25.200And I am someone who has said some rather radical stuff.
00:24:34.160And I'm someone who's read some rather radical stuff as well.
00:24:40.020So I think at the very least the devil should be given his due.
00:24:44.440I might be a bit offended if Karl Marx got banned at my local library or bookstore or something.
00:24:58.160But that is ultimately a matter of taste.
00:25:02.840And that's ultimately a matter of reading powerful, but maybe not terribly relevant philosophical ideas.
00:25:17.280What's much more relevant, where the rubber hits the road, as it were, is the right of free speech of people who take part in these forums, like Kiwi Farms, like 4chan, like many other places,
00:25:41.860that might host some philosophical discussion here and there, but which are overwhelmingly used as a platform for harassment.
00:25:57.600I don't think that any of you would be too upset if there were some restaurant-like establishment somewhere
00:26:15.600that was known to everyone as a mob-owned hangout and distribution center for drug dealers.
00:26:29.120Yes, it might actually be a restaurant.
00:26:34.700You can order drinks and some spaghetti bolognese if you'd like.
00:26:42.500But it's ultimately a platform for crime.
00:30:40.860not people who are going to be somehow inspired at work, I don't know how, to commit violence or harm people's lives or anything like that.
00:30:55.100But can we say the same for people who have bad intentions?
00:31:05.260Whatever you want to say about Karl Marx, he did absolutely act in good faith in his writing.
00:31:10.860There's something, there's something, there's something for us to learn from him, in fact.
00:38:10.460I mean, I've heard that or variations on that.
00:38:15.460A large percentage of the population, a significant percentage, probably believes that.
00:38:21.420And again, all of the news from sources that many of which are liberally biased, no question.
00:38:30.360But sources that are at least acting in good faith to a large degree and are attempting to talk about reality.
00:38:42.820And also, I would add, you could also get news of the war from Russian fanboy sources who are saying the same thing, basically.
00:38:53.200Russians with Russians with Russians with attitude, so to speak or Kim Iverson, Kim Iverson.
00:39:02.580Yes. I don't know what she's saying these days, but yeah, they're they're they're basically saying the same thing as the New York Times.
00:39:09.720They're basically saying the lines have significantly changed this offensive in the east is making a you know, you know, it's been a huge win for Ukraine.
00:39:21.820And actually, this brings up all these important questions about, you know, is is Russia and Putin willing to actually declare war and not consider this a special military operation?
00:39:33.880Can he, you know, mobilize his country? I mean, these are really important questions that need to be discussed.
00:39:43.540But again, you go on Fox News and there's some 75 year old, you know, stuff or there's some whacked out, you know, social media addicts watching this.
00:39:56.260And they're like, oh, whoa, yeah, you know, fake news, you know, Russia's winning like they're about to just take over Kiev tomorrow.
00:40:05.180You know, that's just wrong. Yeah. Well, only that is acting in absolute bad faith and polluting the public sphere.
00:40:16.160Yeah, they keep going on. I mean, Tucker and that, you know, kind of whiny voice of his, he just keeps going on and on.
00:40:26.000They've spent six billion dollars to help Ukraine. It's like, well, yeah, no shit. It got invaded.
00:40:35.480Yeah, I mean, like, like, like, from our elites point of view, democracy is being threatened.
00:40:44.900You know, the whole the whole thing, the whole, you know, what it's all about, liberal democracy.
00:40:51.220So they can't just stand there and do nothing.
00:40:53.760At the same time, they really can't send Americans over there because, you know, we got to watch Game of Thrones.
00:41:01.280Yeah. No, I mean, I don't I don't think the elite I think the elite at least worries about the war getting out of hand.
00:41:07.720But also, you know, there are serious implications for Europe and NATO that we're involved in in this war.
00:41:16.660Obviously, Ukraine's not a member of NATO, but you can't just pretend that they shouldn't care about this or something.
00:41:24.000You know, like J.D. Vance or Marjorie Taylor Greene were like, I don't care two ways or the other.
00:41:27.920What happens over in Ukraine? You know, I just care about my mama here at home.
00:41:33.200You know, yeah, I mean, that's that's just really unsophisticated thinking.
00:41:37.400I mean, you've got I mean, in the eyes of the elite, not necessarily me, but in the eyes of the elite.
00:41:47.040Vladimir Putin is a dictator now, probably the elections are all rigged in the elites point of view.
00:41:56.340He's a dictator and you've got a dictator going in to a liberal democratic country.
00:42:04.060I guess I guess you could say a liberal capitalist democracy.
00:44:48.540I mean, one defense of free speech that I've heard and actually while I was at the gym,
00:44:55.580I just hopped on was casually listening to another space by Bartomeu is that there's this libertarian assumption that in a way speech just doesn't matter.
00:45:09.700That's kind of Glenn Greenwald's assumption about Kiwi farms like what you know, it's I guess that,
00:45:15.440you know, there's a famous Latin phrase about, you know, about matters of taste.
00:45:18.640We won't dispute, which basically says, like, you know, we shouldn't get into an argument about whether key lime pie or cheesecake is better.
00:45:27.920You know, it's it's just a matter of taste.
00:46:08.260And I'm not equating language with violence.
00:46:10.400Obviously, there's a distinct important distinction to be made.
00:46:13.380But the notion that you can't change someone's behavior or in some ways make someone worse or better through language is ridiculous.
00:46:24.800If you believe that there is such a thing as a book, you also believe that there's such a thing as a bad book.
00:46:30.240And so I think there is a kind of depoliticization going on just in the sense that, like, you know, we don't believe that any of this we don't take our words seriously because we don't fundamentally believe that any of this matters.
00:46:51.260And I think that is actually a very that's a naive place to be.
00:46:58.480And I just think it's a really bad place to be.
00:47:01.140I mean, one of the things that, as you guys can tell, maybe from like a tweet thread I did yesterday, one of the things that just like drives me up the wall with the dissident right or the magosphere or whatever,
00:47:19.060is just this like total lack of seriousness when it comes to these personalities.
00:47:27.620Now, obviously, everyone gets things wrong and everyone, you know, will kind of be off or whatever.
00:48:00.900Like, I mean, I use the example and granted, it's kind of it's comical of Tim Pool.
00:48:05.520But like, whether that is simply a fact that he's stupid or he's catering to his audience or whatever, but the fact that you will just say stuff that is just demonstrably manifestly idiotic, but gives your fans good vibes.
00:48:27.520There's just, I despise that with my bone marrow.
00:48:38.100And, you know, I don't know, at some point, like this notion that you have some right to just pollute the public space with your just idiotic grift is, it's just extremely discouraging.
00:49:00.720And it's a wonder how these people get platforms.
00:49:07.440It's honestly astonishing how they get a huge platform and stuff like that.
00:49:52.460But there's something worse when you are presenting yourself as offering a perspective on the world or as reporting news or discussing the news.
00:50:03.480And again, through your just total stupidity, which might be the case with Tim Pool, or through malice, you are just misinforming them and kind of worse, disconnecting your audience from that.
00:50:22.180I mean, there is something just so profoundly despicable about this that needless to say, if Tim Pool ever faces any deplatforming issue, I would be the last person to speak up for that person, for that guy.
00:50:42.220I mean, you have to have a basis of, like, we're trying to – we have concepts, language, and there's reality, and we're trying to, like, find a match here.
00:50:52.000Not that everyone's going to be right, of course, but, like, you're trying to do that.
00:50:55.760But if you aren't trying to do that, then just this notion of, like, I need to, you know, vehemently defend your right to lie and grift and just be a moron is just, you know –
00:51:09.760But, you know, I'll call you on that one.
00:51:17.020Yeah, but a lot of these dissident right – and when I say dissident right, I mean, you know, everything from Tim Pool to, you know, NJP, you know?
00:51:51.500If anyone thinks that that kind of thing is not happening – not that – I mean, obviously, these are – any accusation should be examined in detail.
00:52:01.020But if any of you think that that kind of stuff isn't happening, you need to wake up because it is happening, and it happens on a very large scale.
00:52:13.480And it happens through kind of nudges and subtle kind of points.
00:53:06.980So obviously I give people the ability to evolve, but I also, like, see these recurring talking points places, and it does make me rather suspicious.
00:53:22.800Yeah, in terms of, like, look, this is the other, like, big factor, which is that there's been an explosion in the alternative media.
00:53:38.180I think much more so due to just social media and things that are like social media, like YouTube, where you have followings and you're, you know, building an audience or something.
00:53:48.580Obviously that can be great, but we are, like, past a point of no return where, you know, no – if Russia gave millions to the New York Times or something, that would be a scandal.
00:54:06.880I mean, people are still talking about Walter Durante, and I don't even know if Walter Durante took money from the Soviet Union.
00:54:16.500I think he was one of these typical, you know, head-in-the-sky communists, basically.
00:54:23.000But that's a scandal to this day, and needless to say, if the Kremlin were funding, you know, the San Francisco Chronicle, that would be just a sky-high scandal that people would never stop talking about.
00:54:42.140But you can give nudges to alternative people, and it kind of, like, the constellation of those different personalities, it kind of adds up to the same thing as we're doing the Washington Post or something.
00:55:01.440I mean, these people do have influence.
00:55:03.860And it's not just all a joke, which is this weird kind of thing about alternative media.
00:55:10.680It's very similar to when, like, Jon Stewart, I think, was correctly criticized that whenever someone would push back on Jon Stewart, he would always say, hey, listen, buddy, I'm on Comedy Central.
00:56:44.300So, you know, I look at people like Alex Jones or Milo or any of these guys who have been censored heavily or, you know, Nick Fuentes or any of these guys who have been heavily censored throughout the years.
00:57:02.680And I see that you still have your Twitter account.
00:57:07.660And I see, I guess my question would be, how is it that you've avoided the banhammer, you know?
00:57:15.920Aren't you, this is, it's very unusual to me that someone who says controversial things is able to avoid the banhammer while simultaneously not being, dare I say it, a fed.
00:57:53.940I also pretty rigorously follow the TOS of Twitter.
00:57:59.500But the idea that I haven't faced deplatforming is rather absurd.
00:58:06.320And the also, additionally, the idea that, like, there was no reason for Milo to be banned.
00:58:14.060I mean, again, this kind of gets back to this notion that I was talking about previously, where you absolutely have the right to go hold up a placard on the sidewalk of your town that says, you know, say no to war or something.
00:58:30.440You don't have the right to follow someone home and yell at him.
00:58:34.460And whatever you think about Milo's victims, he was absolutely engaging in textbook harassment of them.
00:58:43.500And, again, it's like, and I don't know how old you are, but it's like with young people only on the internet, you have this, like, bizarre notion of speech or whatever where you can just do anything.
00:59:01.560And that has never been the case in human history.
00:59:07.660You know, I don't know the reason, I can't, I don't, I can't remember offhand the exact reason why Nick Fuentes was kicked off Twitter.
00:59:20.540As I've been saying for a while, I think Nick Fuentes is going to have very serious legal problems, due to the fact that he was involved in a, you know, some kind of raid on the Capitol, and an attempt to prevent the functioning of government.
00:59:39.540And you can't just pull out a free speech card every time you guys do things that are just obviously against the law.
00:59:52.000Now, I also think that Twitter bans people who don't deserve to be banned.
00:59:57.740I mean, we're in a difficult situation where the whole free speech thing needs to be cracked on some level.
01:00:05.120And I can actually talk about that in tribulation.
01:00:10.620But just this, like, you know, let's defend Kiwi Farms, let's defend Milo, let's defend Nick Fuentes.
01:00:17.800I mean, there are real reasons why these people were deplatformed.
01:00:25.140I just want to add, with the free speech thing, a lot of it's like absolutist defenders.
01:00:31.200They like to call upon, like, a great heritage.
01:00:33.240But this idea that every single idea has utility enough to be argued on the, you know, on the platform of ideas is very new.
01:01:16.320Well, to speak on Fuentes for a second, I think he was banned, if I remember correctly, for something that was deemed anti-Semitic, if I'm remembering correctly.
01:01:31.880It might have been, but I think the bigger issue was he was, much like Ali Alexander, his collaborator, he was a blue-checked, you know, authenticated user who was involved, heavily involved with January 6th.
01:01:53.880I guess, you know, you look at these guys like that, who, Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes, Milo, and they were involved with walking around, you know, the Capitol, not even going in.
01:02:20.700Oh, that's what they were involved with?
01:04:04.900I'm not going to deny that there's, like, huge bias.
01:04:06.880I mean, the BLM thing in 2020, there was a—there is a difference in the sense that the BLM thing was anointed from on high.
01:04:19.340The BLM thing was mostly peaceful in the sense that you had all of these, you know, goofy liberals waving their hands and, you know, kneeling and all this kind of stuff.
01:04:33.060But even the stuff that started to get violent, and obviously it did get violent to a point that supporters of some level saw it as counter-effective, counterproductive.
01:04:48.180But there was no direct assault on the functioning of the government.
01:04:55.520And I'm sure that they, you know, knocked the windows out of a post office or did something in a public property.
01:05:06.060But at no point were they declaring that they were going to do something as dramatic as that.
01:05:11.700The one instance that was basically treated as benign hippiedom was the, you know, the rapper in Seattle who kind of created an anarchist—anarchic village for, you know, a week or something.
01:05:28.280And it was basically treated as, oh, this is the summer of 68 all over again.
01:05:32.040It was treated as not really capable of doing anything.
01:05:37.000January 6th was absolutely buffoonish, but at the same time, it wasn't just a bunch of guys getting drunk in the Washington Mall.
01:05:50.220I mean, they, you know, if you go and get drunk and raise hay in the Washington Mall, you'll probably be arrested as well.
01:05:54.900You're not going to spend months or years in jail.
01:05:57.820It's that it was a concerted effort from the town to prevent the transfer of power.
01:06:05.140And even if it was buffoonish, this notion that it just, like, materialized, you know, it was just, like, random Americans just happened upon the mall and decided to speak their mind.
01:06:17.960I mean, that's just such a fantastical notion of what it actually was.
01:06:24.140It was buffoonish as hell, but it was real.
01:06:26.240It was buffoonish because of the guys that were there.
01:06:32.520Had they been Navy SEALs, it would have been a whole different situation.
01:06:38.220If they were even a little competent, they've gotten to, like, more than a few congressmen.
01:07:51.180I just wanted to add something as well because there is a particular bit of footage where, and I'm British, so I don't know the layout of the building or anything like that, but they're going up.
01:08:02.780There's a crowd, and they're going up some staircase, and it's a black police officer, and he's constantly retreating up and up the staircase, and he's telling them to get back and stay down.
01:08:14.540And they repeatedly go through the same process, up a flight of stairs, he tells them, he goes back up a flight of stairs, they follow him over and over and over again.
01:08:22.880From what I've seen, it's like the police are actually quite tamed, or they were quite, you know, reserved in their response.
01:08:31.300So this idea that, you know, I think there's this idea among Magorites that it's like, oh, you know, they immediately cracked down.
01:08:38.360I don't think that was, that's not what I saw.
01:08:40.760Just, you know, with your own eyes, you know what I mean?
01:08:42.580It was, it was ambiguous, because particularly at the beginning, at the first breach, you had some of these scenes like that police officer who was almost getting crushed by the door, and you have these scenes that, you know, maybe they are a bit overblown in retrospect, but like that woman who testified saying it was like a war zone or something.
01:09:07.180I mean, you know, a bit overblown, granted, but I don't doubt that like, clearly people could have died in that, in that scenario.
01:09:17.480And there was a lot of like, really serious pushing and shoving, smashing of windows and so on.
01:09:26.080I'm coming at it from the, sorry, I'm coming at it from the claim.
01:09:28.640You also have scenes of like, particularly later on, of the police just effectively letting people in.
01:09:35.180And so, and I think that was kind of like a tactic at some point.
01:09:40.520And, and also a lot of people just, you know, they just seem less aggressive and dangerous.
01:09:47.020Like if you see 20 proud boys, like middle-aged men who lift weights and, you know, have beards or whatever, you're going to be a lot more than like some goofy kid or some old woman or something.
02:04:39.260I mean, first off, the population is literally bigger, but also, yes.
02:04:47.140I mean, I think John McCain and even Mitt Romney were, like, slightly toxic, you could say.
02:04:54.300And certainly the, you know, liberals tried to make them as such.
02:04:58.820But there was just nothing in comparison with the demonization of Trump, but also just the, you know, genuine hatred of Trump by tens of millions of people.
02:05:12.180And they're willing to, I mean, I don't know.
02:10:03.240I mean, again, I guess I kind of liked music that was somewhat like that.
02:10:07.520But even The Cure had kind of a broader following.
02:10:11.180This was almost this, like, extreme niche following of, I was, like, so, I was the only one who didn't have, like, a nose piercing or something.
02:14:18.860Sorry, this is going to sound so drastic compared to the conversation you just had.
02:14:26.320But I want to mention the phenomenon surrounding what unfortunately happened to Dugan's daughter.
02:14:40.580I want to ask you specifically, why do you think the Western media is enamoured with this idea of, like, the man behind the man sort of thing?
02:14:54.160Like, you know, like, the brains behind the man.
02:14:59.240So, like, with Dugan, he's presented as, like, the brains behind the man.
02:15:04.880Yeah, and with Boris Johnson, it's Dominic Green's behind Boris Johnson, but in both cases, there isn't much to really sort of, you know, to facilitate that or to flesh that out.
02:15:15.980Well, I think, I think basically they want something that they can get their hands on that explains the political actors.
02:15:26.780So, I mean, I wrote a tweet thread on this.
02:15:29.900I actually had two really good discussions on this, and we've lost the recordings of them.
02:15:36.580So, it kind of pisses me off, but I guess I'll reiterate what I've said.
02:15:41.400I mean, Dugan was more notorious in the West than he was influential in the East.
02:15:48.300But that doesn't mean that he wasn't influential, and it also doesn't mean that, like, his philosophy didn't gel or maybe you could say undergird, like, Putin's geopolitics.
02:16:08.160I mean, it wasn't – I think it's ridiculous to say that Dugan was, like, whispering in Putin's ear or something.
02:16:14.620But it would be, like, someone in China saying that, like, Richard Spencer is best friends with Donald Trump, and he just tells Trump what to do, and Trump, you know, doesn't.
02:16:47.760Like, I don't think he is, like, Rasputin, like, in the court of the Tsar affecting his daily opinions.
02:16:55.620I mean, that being said, like, Duganism is – like, you could absolutely use Duganism to justify Russian geopolitics.
02:17:06.680So it's not – you know, it's not like that foreign affairs article is totally irrational or something, you know.
02:17:14.500But, I mean, I think – I mean, I wrote this, and I'll tell you what I think.
02:17:20.300I think the Russian government killed Daria Dugina, and I think they might have been aiming at Dugan, or they might have actually been aiming at her.
02:17:32.420And if Ukraine did it, that is, the Ukrainian government, I think they would have admitted it.
02:17:45.720You know, I mean, like, they're – I mean, granted, it's a huge escalation to kill a citizen in a foreign country.
02:17:53.620But nevertheless, you know, you could kind of plausibly say, well, this guy is the mastermind behind it all, so we need to take him out.
02:18:02.500But they didn't. They vehemently denied it.
02:18:05.280And I don't think that – like, I think they have bigger fish to fry than killing Alexander Dugan or his daughter.
02:18:13.740And I think, you know, there might be some, like, radical group acting on its own that did it.
02:18:20.920But I think my vision of it, that it was a kind of message sent by the government.
02:18:28.220I mean, you know, it's not implausible for me to say this in the sense that there is a long list of people who were close to the Russian government who end up dead.
02:18:41.600And, in fact, their entire family ends up dead.
02:18:45.160I mean, it's a disgusting thing, actually.
02:19:31.080He more or less likes what he's doing.
02:19:32.720But he's a kind of potential threat in the sense that, you know, he wants to go all the way.
02:19:40.340He wants a total war, a existential war with the West and with, like, satanic liberalism or whatever he thinks.
02:19:49.280And so if Putin has to, like, pull back or negotiate or, you know, he loses or something, Dugan is going to be there saying, you betrayed the holy church.
02:20:03.440You know, he's not going to be like, oh, well, get him next time.
02:20:08.580And so I think it was a kind of shot across the bow.
02:20:12.960And to a lot of these ideologues saying, like, you know, watch yourself.
02:20:19.320Dugan says Putin on occasion, albeit in a very, like, slight way.
02:20:27.660I know at one point during an interview he had said that Putin sort of missed his chance to become the dictator that he could have been, where the people really wanted Putin to stand up or step up and seize a substantial amount of power.
02:20:42.380But, unfortunately, that time period left.
02:21:35.160Like, so I think it's a dangerous business, and that's just my assessment.
02:21:41.660I don't – and I'm not claiming that, like, Ukraine are angels or something.
02:21:46.120I just – the idea that, like, the government would do that – and, like, in America, would the CIA do that?
02:21:54.280I mean, I think they would kind of prefer Dugan around as, like, a boogeyman or something.
02:21:59.640Like, I don't think they're like, we must stop this man.
02:22:03.300You know, he's – I don't think they think – unless they're a lot stupider than I give them credit for.
02:22:10.120I just – I don't – like, using Cooey Bono as a logic, like, I just don't see it.
02:22:17.700Also, you know, the orthodoxy wants to be a martyr, and so it would be really politically unsavvy to make a martyr out of Dugan or his daughter.
02:22:30.400Not to switch topics, but there was that movie made by Martin Scorsese about the Japanese interaction with –
02:22:39.240Yes, silence, and they were very intelligent in the way that they dealt with the Christians, which was they killed – or they killed followers that the priests had created and said,
02:22:51.400okay, here, I'll kill one of your followers if you step on – or I won't kill one of your followers if you step on – or I won't kill one of your followers if you step on the Bible, but I'll never make a martyr out of you.
02:23:14.040Yeah, and there's no question that, like, Daria Dugan is more powerful in death than she was as a young political commentator, you know, who was going on Russian television sometimes, going on RT, going on live streams.
02:24:06.880So I think you rightly connect Duganism like an anti-Western crusade.
02:24:17.220Would you then say that it's innately stupid or inherently stupid for, you know, Western rightists to kind of take on Duganism like they do?
02:24:30.060I mean, I think that Dugan is highly intelligent, and he is interesting.
02:24:35.160So I'm, you know, I'm enough of a free-spirit intellectual to say that, like, you know, you can address Dugan and take him seriously and criticize him or whatever.
02:24:49.980I mean, I think there is a lot of – there is a bit of fluff and fluff in Dugan, but there actually is a lot there.
02:24:58.120Like, he's synthesizing a lot of things.
02:25:01.280I mean, he's attempting to synthesize, like, Plato and Russian orthodoxy and mysticism and so on into this – and the kinder geopolitics into this, like, big thing.
02:25:14.420And so it's interesting, and he's intelligent.
02:25:17.900But, you know, yeah, there is a lot of, like, self-hating Westerners who, you know, have projected all these fantasies upon Russia and thinking, you know, Russia is going to – the West is evil.
02:25:36.420We need Russia to take over the world, and we'll all be free.
02:25:40.880You know, there's a lot of that, you know, silliness going on, too.
02:25:44.640Speaking of hate, do you think that we're going to see a ripple, a repeat of 2018 where the GOP get a ripple just because of a type of voter called a contrarian voter who just votes against the opposition party?
02:26:04.640And do you think that's what the Republicans were banking on last year, and they thought it would be a big wave, big 10, but now they're just going to get a few people, and it's just going to be a ripple, and it's not going to be massive, in part due to their own shenanigans?
02:26:21.740Well, I – yeah, I mean, this is the midterm question, and, you know, it's worth talking about.
02:26:28.760I mean, I – this is the Republicans' election to lose.
02:26:33.880You know, I mean, as many people have pointed out, there is this off-year tendency for, like, big opposition victories.
02:26:42.140And even in 2021, when they had kind of successfully made it about critical race theory and parental rights or something, you know, that was – those are winning issues.
02:26:55.840And, you know, look, are they kind of overblown and – okay, sure.
02:27:07.340First off, like, the accumulation of shit piling up on Trump is just too much to bear.
02:27:17.320And he's always inserting himself in politics, so it becomes, like, a referendum on Trump, much like 2018.
02:27:26.840And so I think that is – I also think they have some kind of uniquely bad candidates that they promoted, particularly, like, the Teal candidates.
02:27:38.420Just kind of uniquely bad and then uniquely nuts in the sense of, like, some of these, like, Carrie Lake or whatever.
02:27:48.400So I think they're – I do kind of see a ripple.
02:27:53.460I mean, negative polarization is, like, the most powerful force in these elections.
02:28:01.060And so just, like, full-on hatred of the Democrats.
02:28:03.920The other thing is that, like, there's no – I mean, again, here I sound like a mainline pundit.
02:28:08.420I mean, there's no question that Roe v. Wade is activating Democratic voters.
02:28:14.160So I – I mean, I tentatively thrown out there that the Democrats are going to increase their lead in the Senate.
02:28:26.000And particularly if you get, like, a wipeout of, like, Dr. Oz, J.D. Vance, Blake Masters, or whatever.
02:28:34.780Like, you have all these guys just losing, like, dominoes.
02:28:39.120I think you could have 52-48 Democrats in the Senate.
02:28:42.480And I kind of tentatively threw out there, like, I'm wondering if it's just going to be a wash or if Republicans just fail to even win the House, that is, lose their majority.
02:28:56.540I'm not sure I'm bold enough to, like, go out there and say that because I want to get things straight.
02:29:01.740I mean, the – this is the Republicans' election to lose.
02:29:08.580But if they don't – if they lose power in the Senate and maybe they gain, like, you know, a dozen, two dozen seats in the House, that's going to be viewed as a loss.
02:29:24.640So I think it's – that's kind of what I'm seeing.
02:29:29.680And I think there's just going to be some surprises, like, a lot of Democrat – Democratic victories places.
02:29:37.260I don't think this is good for Republicans.
02:29:39.280And they're, like – they're just – this is the – they've squeezed the towel and there's no more water in it for this kind of, like, Trumpian stuff.
02:29:50.920At some point, you're just activating the other side to such a large degree that it's really not worth it.
02:30:06.460I just want to ask you, like, is this a bit of an abstract question?
02:30:09.840But, hey, you know, if we're getting to the end of it, maybe this is a nice place to end.
02:30:13.140But, like, what do you – if you could theorize on the average, like, young, Trumpian, Nick Fuentes type, where do you see this person in 25 years' time?
02:30:28.300Like, what's the end of the road if they carry on this path?
02:30:46.000Would you ever be – to have, like, a final conversation with Fuentes, whether it's to squash the beef or finally, like, talk out all the tension that's been going on between you guys for a long time?
02:30:55.140Or do you think that would be unproductive?
02:34:08.600And then is there any literature or posts that you have that encapsulates your reason for going from the far right to, I guess, whatever you want to call yourself now, a liberal?
02:34:24.160I've caught bits and pieces of it when I listen to the spaces, but I've never heard the full idea of why you kind of did the 180.
02:34:33.440I haven't done a 180, and I'm not a liberal.
02:34:42.780You're on the far right, but now you have ideas that are kind of antithetical to the far right, and I just want to know how that came about.
02:34:50.440I know you don't want to explain it now, but is there anything you've written?
02:35:34.780Speaking of which, I would love to see you actually have a conversation with him.
02:35:38.280Well, actually, I kind of dropped the ball a little bit on that.
02:35:43.080There was some push towards that, and I suggested a topic for debate, and he didn't want to debate it because he agreed with me, which was kind of funny.
02:37:21.940So, because he likes, that's kind of his shtick is to just dunk on, you know, I mean, he's debating people effectively on his show, but he's debating them in absentia.
02:37:34.360I mean, he's playing their clips and just, like, dunking, you know, rightfully in many ways.
02:37:41.300But, like, you know, it's, it's not fair.