RadixJournal - The Dialectic of Populism

00:00:00.000 You know, one thing that's interested me is this kind of satanic panic that's going on among conservatives that I've seen online, which I think is very authentic in the sense that I think they actually believe this.

00:00:21.720 So, a lot of this was instigated with the Grammys that happened on Sunday. And there's this artist named Sam Smith, who I remember hearing his music a while ago, let's say eight or 10 years ago.

00:00:43.820 And, you know, it's fine. I don't really have an opinion on it. It's kind of soulful, but poppy and et cetera.

00:00:54.800 And then he actually sang the theme song for Spectre, which was the James Bond movie before last.

00:01:03.600 And it was kind of it was very similar song to Skyfall. All of the songs seem to be like Skyfall because Skyfall has become a bit of a classic sung by Adele.

00:01:15.780 And, you know, it's a great number. But it also just struck me as kind of horrible.

00:01:22.160 I really didn't like the music and I could go into that, but I don't think I really need to.

00:01:29.320 So, I was just kind of like, yeah, you know, this guy. Recently, he's turned into almost like a Madonna figure and a rather implausible Madonna figure.

00:01:41.140 I mean, Madonna, at least in the 80s, was attractive.

00:01:47.900 She was a good pop singer and, you know, she everything was always sexy. 1.00

00:01:53.280 And then, of course, by the late 80s and into the 90s, she took it to a level of, you know, S&M and just stuff that it just became gross. 0.84

00:02:02.700 And now she's a grotesque husk of herself.

00:02:08.200 But anyway, Sam Smith seems to be going in this direction.

00:02:12.260 And he's I've seen highlights of his latest video.

00:02:17.780 Music doesn't interest me in the slightest.

00:02:19.600 And I think one of our someone who's actually a member, she was talking about it, how he's dressed up in like corsets, almost like an 18th century aristocrat. 0.73

00:02:29.740 And it's just all very kind of gay and trans.

00:02:34.700 And it's just, you know, the comment by one of our members who I like is is like, isn't it amazing that everything's so sexualized, but then totally non-erotic? 0.99

00:02:48.120 You know, like they've somehow managed to make rampant orgies something that becomes a boner killer. 0.95

00:02:57.040 Remarkable.

00:02:58.300 She definitely speaks for me in that regard.

00:03:00.900 But anyway, he was on the Grammys on Sunday.

00:03:06.080 And as you've probably seen, he was dressed up like Satan himself, or at least a kind of Hollywood version of Satan in a red suit and all this kind of stuff.

00:03:18.100 And the conservatives take this as, look, it's out in the open now.

00:03:24.420 They're Satanists.

00:03:24.900 These award shows are rituals and so on and so forth.

00:03:30.740 They're trying to get your children early and turn them all into Satanists. 1.00

00:03:37.100 I think there's something kind of interesting to this.

00:03:41.260 I obviously don't think that that's actually the case.

00:03:45.160 And I think Satan for people in Hollywood, the music industry, it's a kind of LARP, you could say.

00:03:56.420 It's like dressing up at Halloween.

00:03:58.980 You know, for Halloween, you can dress up like Mike Myers.

00:04:02.060 That doesn't mean you're a serial killer.

00:04:03.760 You can dress up like a zombie.

00:04:07.020 It doesn't mean you're undead or something.

00:04:09.620 It's a kind of fun LARP.

00:04:11.600 And I think they are kind of, you know, you could say thumbing their nose at middle America or something.

00:04:17.560 I mean, that's certainly fair.

00:04:19.300 I think there's almost like another level to this which is worth discussing, and that's the Caducean level.

00:04:26.300 So there's a phrase of, I'm probably mangling it at this point.

00:04:34.500 It's almost like an Oscar Wilde in phrase of hypocrisy is a compliment to virtue.

00:04:41.160 And it articulated in some fashion like that.

00:04:45.400 Now, what he means is that if you are hypocritical, you're almost demonstrating the value of being virtuous.

00:04:54.820 Though, if you have a love affair and you lie about it, you're in your own way reinforcing the idea that marriage is a good institution that we should support.

00:05:08.780 If you do a little cocaine one Saturday night and you cover it up, well, you're kind of, you're paying a compliment to being virtuous. 0.98

00:05:20.840 If you understand what I'm saying, you're, you're, you're a hypocrite, you're lying, but you're in that way reinforcing existing institutions. 0.98

00:05:31.860 If you're, if you're ashamed of your sins, as opposed to shameless is what you're saying, right? 0.99

00:05:36.160 Exactly.

00:05:36.760 That's, that's definitely a part of it.

00:05:38.420 You know, if there's something almost like worse in my mind about a lack of shame.

00:05:44.760 And I remember seeing this, this was like five years ago or something, reading this article in the New York Times about like these polyamorous relationships.

00:05:54.860 And, you know, the new fad of polyamory, which is probably going away at this point and thinking to myself, I had the same exact response as, you know, one of our female members who was making fun of Sam Smith, where it's like, you somehow made an 18th century aristocratic orgy unsexy.

00:06:14.880 Like what a remarkable accomplishment.

00:06:17.100 You've somehow done it.

00:06:18.660 I felt the same way about polyamory.

00:06:21.200 I remember reading this article in the New York Times. 0.62

00:06:24.060 And first off, the people involved were just kind of uniformly gross.

00:06:29.420 Yeah, it's a demographic problem in that case.

00:06:32.460 Yeah.

00:06:33.200 So you hear about like, oh, wow, these open marriages and multiple partners.

00:06:37.480 And then you see these people and you're like, I don't, it wasn't what I imagined.

00:06:42.140 But there's also something kind of worse about it, like on a deeper level, like regardless of aesthetics, where, you know, remember the congressman from South Carolina who ended up on the Appalachian Trail with his mistress?

00:06:57.420 Like he went on some, he just lost his mind.

00:07:00.740 I'm forgetting his name at the moment.

00:07:02.540 He's a kind of libertarian guy who was anti-Trump.

00:07:05.260 That's beside the point.

00:07:07.000 But he was this South Carolinian politician, Mark Sanford.

00:07:11.440 And he kind of like lost himself in a way.

00:07:16.420 He threw caution to the wind.

00:07:18.960 And next thing you know, he's on some, you know, weekend getaway with his mistress and so on.

00:07:25.620 You can look back on another politician from Colorado who had kind of a similar situation where he was in an unhappy marriage.

00:07:35.280 And he genuinely fell in love with this woman and they were on a boat and then the Washington Post got a hold of it.

00:07:43.600 There was a movie made about it with Wolverine.

00:07:47.980 Hugh Jackman.

00:07:49.020 Hugh Jackman was in a movie about it.

00:07:51.120 Yeah.

00:07:52.280 Gosh, COVID has, I think, affected my memory.

00:07:55.180 I'm always at a loss for names.

00:07:56.840 Anyway, there's something kind of tragic and romantic about these figures.

00:08:02.360 And I'm not endorsing what they did.

00:08:05.480 But it's also very human and understandable.

00:08:09.420 You know, you're stressed.

00:08:12.160 Maybe you're very unhappy.

00:08:13.620 Maybe, et cetera.

00:08:14.820 And you kind of throw caution to the wind and go off with this woman. 0.84

00:08:19.580 And, oh, it's not going to work out, but, you know, there's something kind of tragic and human and understandable about having a failing like that.

00:08:29.480 Whereas when you look at polyamorous people, there's something kind of horribly rational about it that just, and hyper moral in a way, that just makes it kind of disgusting.

00:08:40.640 You know, I remember seeing some video of Destiny, who's this very famous streamer and debater and all this kind of stuff.

00:08:48.800 And he was talking about like, oh, yeah, so, you know, my wife sleeps around, but, you know, I know that we have a great partnership together. 0.99

00:08:55.840 So she's always going to come home to me.

00:08:58.200 There was just something so moral and rational about his conception of this that it's almost, at least from my mind, it would almost be better if his wife had an affair and then he forgave her.

00:09:13.360 That would almost be kind of human, you could say, you know, like tragic, but understandable, sympathetic, et cetera.

00:09:23.020 But this notion of like, no, what we're doing is actually moral and rational and demonstrates our, you know, mutual compassion or whatever.

00:09:32.660 There's almost something just kind of disgusting about it, you know, and there's something almost like not romantic about it.

00:09:41.360 I kind of feel, I don't like Mark Sanford.

00:09:43.520 He's a libertarian, South Carolina, whatever.

00:09:45.960 I don't like him.

00:09:46.660 But like, there's something kind of romantic about, he just threw caution to the wind.

00:09:53.060 And next thing you know, he's on the Appalachian Trail with his mistress.

00:09:55.700 It's a good story.

00:09:58.120 He's a human being.

00:09:59.960 But there's something just un-erotic, un-romantic, un-sympathetic about these people who are like, oh, yeah, well, you know, you're an individual.

00:10:10.600 I'm an individual. 0.98

00:10:11.500 We have sex with whoever we want to. 0.93

00:10:13.900 It's just, anyway. 0.98

00:10:16.400 Guess what I'm getting into with Satanism thing?

00:10:19.340 Like, it's, don't you think on some level it's a kind of, like, hypocrisy that pays a compliment to virtue in the sense that it's so overtly satanic that it's almost deeply Christian in the sense that this notion of being, of Satan doesn't exist outside of a dominant Christian worldview. 0.50

00:10:45.180 So, in a way, it's reinforcing a dominant Christianity in society. 0.83

00:10:52.380 It's not, it's, you know, Satan exists to some degree in the Old Testament, although I don't think we should overestimate that.

00:11:02.020 I mean, he appears in Job.

00:11:03.560 He's called the adversary, the usual translation, or something like that.

00:11:07.480 He's not necessarily Satan.

00:11:09.280 He might be someone else.

00:11:10.240 He's someone working with Yahweh. 1.00

00:11:11.760 But does Satan appear in the Garden of Eden, in Genesis?

00:11:18.060 You know, you could read it that way, but it's certainly not written that way.

00:11:21.940 I mean, who exactly the snake is might be something different.

00:11:25.880 It's not necessarily the kind of, you know, red-clad, cloven hooves character that we imagine, you know, post-Hollywood.

00:11:34.360 But nevertheless, like, Satan himself, it's not like he can't exist outside of Christianity. 0.77

00:11:42.480 And so, indulging in this satanic play at the Grammys is weirdly reinforcing its opposite.

00:11:51.180 You know, I mean, like, it strikes me as odd that Christians imagine that, like, Satanism is an actual thing, and not just this, like, hypocrisy that's paying a compliment to them, so to speak. 0.91

00:12:06.860 Like, it's not, it's their opposite.

00:12:09.660 And it's something that only functions within their domain.

00:12:14.960 So, it's weirdly kind of reinforcing Christianity.

00:12:19.540 Yeah, I forget who said it, but just to miss it in.

00:12:21.600 But Christianity upside down is still Christianity, in a sense. 0.73

00:12:26.160 Yeah.

00:12:27.860 Yeah, that's the exact, that's perfect.

00:12:31.040 That sums it up.

00:12:32.020 Yeah.

00:12:32.780 It's, you're doing Christianity upside down, but in that way, you're reinforcing Christianity. 0.61

00:12:38.140 So, it's, it really is an excellent example, a outrageous, vivid example of the Caducean inaction.

00:12:47.040 It's a synthetic opposition.

00:12:50.440 And, yeah, like, there's no, there's, in that way, there's no possible way for Satanism to overturn Christianity.

00:12:57.320 All it's going to do is reinforce and strengthen Christianity. 0.92

00:13:00.980 And Christianity, in turn, needs a certain Satanism to justify itself. 0.96

00:13:06.500 Yeah, we, we associate that inverted cross with Satanism.

00:13:12.540 But actually, from the Bible, it's Peter was crucified upside down, right?

00:13:19.700 And Peter was, again, he's the one who denied Christ three times, right?

00:13:25.280 So, he could be a symbol, and yet, nevertheless, was given leadership of the church, right?

00:13:30.300 Right.

00:13:30.800 So, he could be a symbol of Jews who deny Christ, right? 0.83

00:13:34.220 Yet, nevertheless, are given a kind of cultural and positional advantage over them.

00:13:39.940 Or he could be a symbol of a crypto Jew, right? 0.78

00:13:44.740 And we know that that phenomenon exists.

00:13:47.580 Maybe, maybe it's more likely the former.

00:13:51.600 You know, but, I mean, it's evidently symbol rich.

00:13:54.440 So, we are, you know, we're right to kind of suspect things like that.

00:13:59.160 Peter is the rock, too, which is a kind of important symbol of Yahweh, a reoccurring symbol of Yahweh, a reference to his abidingness, right?

00:14:09.660 Right.

00:14:10.080 Anyways, I feel like we're being rude to our guest.

00:14:13.160 Yeah.

00:14:13.460 I'm glad you're here.

00:14:15.700 Yeah, I wanted to kind of throw that out there, because I do feel like there's a total, not surprisingly, like a total misconception of things coming from conservatives.

00:14:24.080 And they're now so enthused about this.

00:14:26.500 Like, we've got them.

00:14:27.820 Like, it's out in the open.

00:14:29.360 They're satis.

00:14:30.520 Okay.

00:14:31.400 Academic agents.

00:14:32.300 I have a couple of comments about this, about this, your opening spiel there, Richard, which is, I mean, they're just two, like, observations, I guess.

00:14:43.420 The first one is that it occurred to me that we're living through, like, kind of, like, the most boring version of, like, Pasolini's Salo or something like that, you know.

00:14:53.920 So, because that's what it sounds, I mean, if you ever sat down and watched Salo, even though you're watching, like, orgies, it is stripped of all, like, it's not sexy.

00:15:06.460 It is, like, kind of sterile and odd.

00:15:10.320 Yeah.

00:15:10.440 The other thing I thought I'd mention is that I think what you're circling around there is a concept which to the left have long been obsessed with, which is dialectics, right?

00:15:23.060 And this is something I've tried to talk about before, because there was a Marxist theorist in the 70s, who I'm sure you're familiar with, called Raymond Williams.

00:15:36.580 He was a literary theorist.

00:15:40.100 He had this idea of culture being residual, emergent, or dominant, right?

00:15:46.840 And it seems to me that a lot of the left's worldview is kind of stuck in a freeze in that cultural moment where a lot of this Marxist thought was written in, like, 1975 or something.

00:16:01.460 So they have to maintain a fiction, really, that they are not the dominant culture, that they are still the emerging culture, right?

00:16:09.400 And to me, I've said for a long time that one of the things that kind of drives me up the wall about the right, broadly speaking, is that they always play into the dialectical trap of the left, which is, if you're reacting to them, they are basically controlling the turf in a strange way.

00:16:34.640 Because the reaction is what they're looking for.

00:16:38.980 So all of the outrage about Sam Smith, which any of us with any sense at all have just ignored.

00:16:46.380 I mean, it's been kind of marginally on my field, but most of the people I follow just don't talk about this sort of stuff.

00:16:54.280 Because we know that it actually validates the left's view of themselves as being somehow edgy or countercultural or, you know, like in their minds, they're still kind of reacting against the America of the 1950s, you know, which has been beaten up so many times now.

00:17:13.620 I mean, you know, so I've always thought that the, you know, the right was always on its strongest footing.

00:17:24.220 I mean, really, the last time this happened was during what, you know, what I like to call the alt-right 1.0.

00:17:31.400 You know, that was essentially you guys, Richard, right?

00:17:33.220 Where the left was reacting in some way to us rather than vice versa.

00:17:40.560 If they are reacting to you, they're somehow having the conversation on your turf.

00:17:48.940 If you're reacting to them, it basically validates everything they're trying to do.

00:17:54.860 So, you know, the outrage cycle is kind of self-perpetuating.

00:17:58.640 And unfortunately, it's like the right has an addiction.

00:18:05.280 They cannot help themselves kind of lean into that dialectical trap over and over and over again.

00:18:13.400 And the long things go on.

00:18:15.180 Yeah, go on.

00:18:16.100 Yeah, this is great.

00:18:17.400 I totally agree.

00:18:18.860 I mean, I have some more to add to this as well.

00:18:22.220 I think also the right can't justify itself outside of yelling at the left, leave us alone or you're bad or something like that.

00:18:34.400 Like there's no there there in some way to the right.

00:18:37.820 All it is is a kind of endless outrage cycle to leftist advances.

00:18:44.140 You know, whether it's Sam Smith dressing up like Satan himself or transsexuals on TikTok or whatever. 1.00

00:18:51.180 It's just this kind of like endless no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:18:55.780 And again, you need to kind of like affirm yourself.

00:19:00.820 You know, like I and I think that's a bigger issue with with culture where, you know, there's like a negative empty center to liberal culture.

00:19:11.420 Where and I actually think it is a kind of donut or bagel, so to speak, where there's this empty hole at the center of liberalism.

00:19:21.900 And I actually think maybe Hitler is in that hole or something, because the way you the way you justify what you're doing is that you're not Hitler effectively.

00:19:32.700 So it's like a negative Hitler at the center of the donut. 0.63

00:19:35.900 And so anything is possible outside of being Hitler. 0.92

00:19:41.520 I mean, that is I mean, I have a concept that, you know, I don't know if any of your listeners will know about this, but good three years ago now, I had a I had a YouTube video series called the boom of truth regime.

00:19:57.340 You know, like, you know, the idea of an episteme, you live in a kind of epistemic bubble, I guess, you know, Foucault's truth regime is kind of what I had in mind, whereby the ultimate good is something like unlimited individual self-expression.

00:20:19.260 And the ultimate bad is the ultimate bad is the mid-century Germans, you know, and all things revolve around like it's almost everything in the culture has a reference back to it. 1.00

00:20:34.160 The kind of founding mythologies, I guess, where there is an ultimate evil at the, you know, at the base of what launched this, what I call a truth regime, which is obviously a terrible event that happened in the mid-century, perpetuated by, you know, the ultimate evil.

00:20:54.600 Right. So therefore, all enemies of the regime become a cipher of, of Hitler, effectively, whereby, I mean, do you remember the whole attempt in the in the 2000s to remember Islamo-fascism? 0.60

00:21:10.240 Do you remember that? Yes, yes.

00:21:11.980 Or whether it's, you know, the Ayatollah Khomeini or Milosevic or Saddam Hussein, I mean, they're all basically standing, even Stalin, for a period, was a stand-in Hitler. 0.58

00:21:27.280 People think of the Cold War as a war against kind of, quote unquote, far left communism.

00:21:33.760 But really, if you kind of get under what was happening there, kind of like, I mean, this is going to sound very odd, but in a strange way, Stalin had become a kind of reactionary figure by the, by the time he died.

00:21:50.500 And in a strange way, the, it was the, I mean, if you look in the long durée, I kind of feel like the USA was the progressive force in the, in the Cold War.

00:22:02.220 That makes any sense. So, yeah, I, I totally agree. I, I totally agree with that.

00:22:07.240 I mean, there, there is this irony of the East being cordoned off from liberalism.

00:22:13.060 I mean, this gets to a motto I've, I've repeated over and over from Jonathan Bowden of, you know, communism attacks the body, liberalism rots the soul, you know, communism, you can, they can starve you, they can enslave you, they can beat you up in the middle of the night.

00:22:32.220 But there's, there's something almost more toxic about the liberal meme that's out there. I think there's a lot of, definitely a lot of truth to that.

00:22:43.340 And I, I do think you have to get, I mean, I think what, what you're getting at is that like oral foundation of what we're doing.

00:22:50.060 Like, how do we justify fighting the Cold War and, you know, putting the world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and engaging in espionage, killing people, engaging in, in all sorts of black ops.

00:23:05.580 Like what, what, what morality undergirds that? Because you need that. You can't just openly express, we're doing this for power, you know, to dominate or whatever. You can't do that.

00:23:17.240 I don't think that's satisfying for us as humans and you, in general, but I think you definitely can't do that in a liberal age.

00:23:23.880 So it's like, what, what is that morality that's undergirding it?

00:23:28.980 I, I, I've mentioned this anecdote before, but I remember when I was living in New York City, some, you know, 12 or 15 years ago, I was actually at this CrossFit gym.

00:23:40.660 And there was a cool guy who was middle-aged and, you know, I, I, we had become, you know, acquaintances and so on at this gym.

00:23:48.580 And he, he brought his son one time and his son was this kind of young, angry young man type and, you know, still finding his way in the world.

00:23:56.380 And he, he would always wear like a red t-shirt with a hammer and sickle on it.

00:24:01.960 It's kind of like the ultimate outrage, I guess, you know, rebellion and, you know, these kinds of things are typical and amusing.

00:24:10.660 But, you know, there is something odd about it where it's like everyone there didn't pay him any mind.

00:24:18.980 It's like, you're wearing the Soviet Union, a Soviet Union t-shirt.

00:24:22.360 There's something almost nostalgic or amusing about it.

00:24:26.000 You know, it's, it's, oh, look, you must be into punk rock or you're edgy or whatever.

00:24:31.060 If he walked in wearing a red t-shirt with the swastika, like, I mean, granted, anywhere in the, in the Western world,

00:24:39.900 but certainly New York City, people would be screaming, like calling the police, you know, like take that off.

00:24:47.700 He'd probably be punched, right, Richard?

00:24:49.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:50.880 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:51.860 I know that, I know that all too well.

00:24:53.800 So there, there's, there's something like, well, it also, it's a negative, like, Nazism is the, is the empty center of liberal morality.

00:25:03.300 It's like, it's like, it's very powerful, but then, hold on, it's negative, but then it's also powerful.

00:25:11.520 Like, if you touch it, you, you, you have, in a way, more outsized power.

00:25:19.400 Like, no one cares.

00:25:21.000 There's no debate going on about the communist menace.

00:25:24.220 I guess there's a little bit of a debate about Antifa, but it's, it's not treated as anything of, of significance.

00:25:31.260 But there, there is a debate about, like, rising fascism.

00:25:35.760 Like, there, there's a, it's still relevant.

00:25:39.000 It's still potent.

00:25:40.200 It's a, it's a kind of, it's this, like, potential energy force out there.

00:25:44.500 Now, none of this is to suggest that we all walk around with Hitler mustaches and Nazi t-shirts.

00:25:52.220 I, I, not suggesting that. 0.92

00:25:54.500 I, I think that's stupid, but I, I, there's, there's a way that you can, you can kind of get power in the system by, by in some ways going there, by in some ways touching on that dark energy. 0.87

00:26:10.040 By, by going to that place that you dare not go, it's still a source of power. 0.95

00:26:16.400 And it's maybe kind of like the only source of power in a way.

00:26:20.440 Yes, but I, I, I would say, I would also say a road fraught with danger because, I mean, one of the, one of the things I, you know, I wrote a book called The Populist Delusion last year that I'm grateful that a lot of people bought because it seems so.

00:26:37.300 Hold on, you wrote that book?

00:26:38.920 I wrote the book, Populist Delusion, yes.

00:26:41.800 So if you, if you have, this is a revelation.

00:26:45.660 Yes.

00:26:46.300 I mean, this is one of those strange things where I have, you know, my name on that book.

00:26:52.060 I'm Roland Rett on Twitter and I'm Academic Agent on YouTube.

00:26:55.400 And there are lots of people who follow me, watch me on YouTube, follow me on Twitter and own the book and don't know I'm the same person in all three places.

00:27:03.700 But that's me.

00:27:05.300 Yeah.

00:27:05.480 The, the, when I was researching Carl Schmitt, there's a chapter in Carl Schmitt on there, in there.

00:27:13.660 One of the things that really struck me was the extent to which the American Washington establishment and the liberal establishment had kind of imbibed and inverted Schmitt in the, in the nineties and the, and the two thousands.

00:27:27.540 Which is something that I really wasn't like, he was very much, obviously for a period, a taboo and a figure you couldn't touch.

00:27:35.780 But then he was like really rehabilitated within the academy and within like Harvard elite circles and things like that.

00:27:42.500 And by the, by the time you get to the, to the two thousands and, and now I would say there really is an extent to which we're living in a kind of upside down.

00:27:55.440 And I mean, I know, I know, I know it's a kind of cliche to call your enemies fascist or whatever, but we are, we are living in like an invert, like a kind of Schmittian inversion.

00:28:04.000 If that makes any sense where, um, they, uh, you know, whatever is fascist is the, is the total enemy.

00:28:13.060 Right.

00:28:14.200 And, and because of that, you draw the eye of Sauron.

00:28:18.900 So there's a power in that.

00:28:20.180 Right.

00:28:20.640 But at the same time, the, um, the totalitarian state, if you want to put it that way, it, it kind of, it looks for all of those things I talk about in the publicity.

00:28:32.840 It looks for organization.

00:28:34.820 It looks for, it knows that, that, that is the threat to it.

00:28:40.860 I.e. people openly discussing its antithesis and organizing around it.

00:28:47.400 Um, they're kind of drawn to that as, as must to a flame, uh, as I'm sure you're aware through your own experiences.

00:28:54.000 Oh, yeah.

00:28:54.620 So it's, it's a, um, it is very much a road, a road fraught with danger.

00:28:59.620 And at, at the moment, I, I kind of, uh, we have to play this kind of strange game where we, where we want to deal with fire.

00:29:11.340 Right.

00:29:11.900 We want to deal with those very dangerous ideas, but somehow do so in a way that does not, uh, you know, repeat some of the mistakes of the past.

00:29:22.960 And a lot of my frustrations these days, I'm afraid, is, is just watching the same mistakes repeated over and over again, whether it's the normie conservative right or the radical right, who, as far as I can see, just don't learn and keep on just leaning into the same, you know, the same stuff over and over again.

00:29:43.440 Um, you're speaking with my voice here.

00:29:46.720 Yes.

00:29:47.360 I, yeah.

00:29:47.900 I mean, this is why I listen to you, Richard.

00:29:50.120 Lots of people said, why are you still listening to Richard Spencer?

00:29:53.600 And you see, the, the, the thing is, I'll just explain it.

00:29:58.220 I mean, there's, there's two reasons, really.

00:29:59.580 The first is that whether this is true or not, I feel dispositionally that we are, uh, that we have a similar, like when I was a kid in the eighties, I watched He-Man kind of rooted for Skeletor.

00:30:12.360 And I feel that you, I feel that you may have done that as well.

00:30:15.360 So that's one reason.

00:30:16.600 Um, the second, the second thing is that on a lot of the big, the big issues, I'm not talking about the little, like we would probably argue about, I don't know, uh, were the 2020 election results legit?

00:30:29.040 Or, but these sorts of issues don't, at the end of the day, don't matter.

00:30:33.640 The big picture issues, uh, I think we basically agree on a lot of them, like, including like basic hatred of social conservatives, um, on, uh, on things like, um, you know, whether empire or, or, or nationhood is the default state of the world, um, you know, and some of the Nietzschean stuff.

00:30:54.800 Like, I kind of feel like we do in many ways speak, speak the same language.

00:31:00.440 Um, but, uh, yeah.

00:31:03.180 Anyway, here I am.

00:31:04.660 Yeah, that's great.

00:31:05.600 Wow.

00:31:06.100 I'm overjoyed that we're, yeah, together.

00:31:08.700 I, yeah, that's, uh, that's really, that's really good to hear.

00:31:11.860 I, I, I, it's incredible.

00:31:13.580 I didn't put two and two together because I read the populist delusion.

00:31:17.180 I really enjoyed it.

00:31:18.220 And then I'm meeting the author.

00:31:21.300 Wow.

00:31:22.060 I, I'm, that's, uh, that's great stuff.

00:31:24.000 I'm glad.

00:31:25.060 I'm, I'm definitely glad you're here.

00:31:26.560 Um, I, I, there's a, there's another level to the analysis of like, they're, the, the liberals are reverse Schmittians.

00:31:36.560 Let me say two things.

00:31:38.280 First off, addressing what you just said.

00:31:40.140 Um, one of the reasons why I've taken certain turns, and it's not the only reason, but, but it is one, is that I, I do feel like the reactionary right or the populist right, they're, they're going, they, they, they don't have a capacity to learn and they're going to keep doing the same thing.

00:32:01.760 And they might even have a secret kind of martyrdom complex where they want to lose in effect, in effect and losing justifies, you know, them.

00:32:14.740 And I, I, that's something that I definitely want to avoid, but I also, you know, like we can only fight so many battles.

00:32:23.140 And if you go and fight all of these kind of conservative battles, they're going to bulldoze you on some level and, you know, like the, the J6 people, um, a lot, there's a lot of delusion there. 1.00

00:32:41.600 There's a lot of silliness.

00:32:42.880 There's probably some, there's definitely some authenticity there as well.

00:32:47.120 There's some like real general outrage at what is happening at the world and a feeling of powerlessness and things are out of control.

00:32:57.020 Things are just getting worse.

00:32:58.400 We've got to do something right now.

00:33:00.520 I mean, I think there's something like admirable about that, that feeling.

00:33:05.540 And there, they, they took that feeling and they stood in front of a bulldozer that ran them over.

00:33:13.700 And you can't do that.

00:33:17.340 Like you, you, it's, it's not cowardice to say that we, we might need to fight other battles or we might need to fight things in other ways.

00:33:25.380 And in that sense, you have to kind of make a certain Hobbesian bargain. 0.94

00:33:30.220 Like I'm not going to fuck with the regime overtly in broad daylight on inauguration day. 0.98

00:33:40.300 Like I'm not going to do that. 0.99

00:33:42.140 That's your domain.

00:33:43.840 I can't win that battle.

00:33:45.340 I'm not going to, I'm not going to go and say, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to put on a uniform and go play the New York Yankees at baseball.

00:33:53.920 You know, I couldn't possibly compete in that arena.

00:33:58.820 And so instead we're going to kind of compete in other arenas and we need to kind of, what do you want to call it, masking or, or just, you know, kind of choosing, picking our battles and giving them what's theirs.

00:34:14.840 And I, I, I think there's a certain virtue to that.

00:34:19.400 So that's why, why a lot of the reactionary right, it's like, oh, Spencer, he's now a liberal or he's, he's Rachel Maddow or whatever.

00:34:27.140 I'm not, but I'm going to kind of like grant Rachel Maddow what's hers.

00:34:34.300 You know what I mean?

00:34:34.980 Like, I'm not going to challenge, I'm not going to push in that place because I can't win.

00:34:41.120 I, I, I just, you know, and so we're going to try to push in other domains where they aren't playing as hard, you know, they're going to allow us to do very radical things in a, in a, on a cultural level.

00:34:59.460 Like we can initiate people and gain influence and develop ideas at a cultural level to which they're not going to push back on. 0.99

00:35:07.160 But if we start, you know, in, if we, if we start trying to actualize ourselves on inauguration day of Joe Biden, they're just going to kick our ass. 0.97

00:35:19.560 And I don't want, I don't want to be a martyr. 0.99

00:35:22.600 I, I just, you know, I think there's better things.

00:35:25.240 I also, I also think Richard that's, I mean, I I've said many times that I ironically, like arguably the MAGA, the MAGA movement or what the MAGA movement has become, arguably like the most pro-black, pro-gay, pro-democracy movement, like in the history of the world.

00:35:43.960 Um, I, I feel like, I mean, when you were talking about the boomer truth regime, I, I feel like in a way, like the, the, the left have already deconstructed that in their own way. 0.52

00:35:55.640 And they already don't believe in, they don't believe in democracy.

00:35:59.720 They, they, they understand power, you know, you know, they did all that stuff in the seventies and the eighties.

00:36:05.440 Right.

00:36:05.940 And the, you know, the so-called new, right.

00:36:08.340 The, uh, Alan de Benoit and so on were kind of playing catch up in the, in the eighties.

00:36:13.840 Right.

00:36:14.300 Um, yeah.

00:36:15.380 So the, the, the, the left have kind of instinctively understood all this stuff already.

00:36:19.680 And now they're in power.

00:36:21.020 They're just going to be ruthless.

00:36:22.080 Right.

00:36:22.620 So we are like, I mean, um, one of, one of my first encounters with your stuff was your podcast series with, with, with Jonathan Bowden.

00:36:32.000 Um, and, uh, I mean, he has a fantastic lecture on vanguardism.

00:36:37.720 Right.

00:36:38.240 And I, and I, and I, and I, I have long, you know, ever since I did hear that lecture, I, I kind of knew that vanguardism is the way, but you also have to understand kind of where we are in the scheme of things.

00:36:51.660 We're kind of like, um, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, like in the, in the 19th century or something, you know, we're, we're a long way away.

00:36:58.720 Post 19, post 1905, actually, you know, we're kind of hanging out in Switzerland or something.

00:37:04.760 We're not.

00:37:05.080 Yeah.

00:37:05.520 Something like that.

00:37:06.300 You know, we, we, we failed, we failed and then we're kind of, you know, brewing right now.

00:37:12.780 And I think that's, you know, it's, it's, you have to be authentic to where you are in the time.

00:37:18.100 You can't just go keep trying the 1905 over and over again.

00:37:22.300 And they're, you know, they, they, they, they're, they're onto you.

00:37:25.600 Um, so yeah, there, there's another element to this because I've always found a certain elective affinities, so to speak, between Carl Schmitt and Karl Popper.

00:37:37.300 And in the sense that, and, and, you know, ostensibly you couldn't find two thinkers who are more disaligned or, or opposed to one another.

00:37:50.300 This is Karl Popper of, uh, of the, you know, open society and so on.

00:37:55.300 And, you know, it's Karl Schmitt who played along with the national socialist regime and is a conservative Catholic and so on.

00:38:04.180 But they, they actually come to kind of similar conclusions about the contradictions within power.

00:38:12.960 So before, um, you know, Hitler took charge, uh, Karl Schmitt was in favor of expelling non-democratic parties from the Weimar parliament.

00:38:28.300 And he was like, what they're doing, they're taking advantage of you.

00:38:32.460 You're, you have unilaterally disarmed vis-a-vis the national socialists and the communists.

00:38:38.600 They are only in parliament in order to overturn parliament.

00:38:42.880 So they're going to use parliament as a weapon against the state.

00:38:46.880 And you can't allow people to do that.

00:38:49.660 It's a, it's a basic notion of like, are you acting in good faith?

00:38:54.060 You know, or are you not?

00:38:55.880 If, if you have a hotel and someone goes into your hotel with the, with the sole purpose of squatting in your hotel and never leaving for six months,

00:39:07.580 you just can't let him in, you know, it's, he's not acting in good faith.

00:39:13.200 He's not playing by your rules.

00:39:15.280 You're playing by his rules.

00:39:16.740 And so the, the paradox of tolerance of, of, of Karl Popper, of course, is that you can't tolerate the intolerant.

00:39:24.060 You kind of have to expel them.

00:39:26.700 They're not playing the game.

00:39:28.140 And this is a very similar conception of, of Karl Schmidt, which is that a liberal order is fundamentally based on a crime, you know, like the, the post, the bread and woods, like the era of globalization, which has been going on since 1944.

00:39:48.760 It's all based on bombing the hell out of Europe and defeating enemies and the deaths of millions of people. 0.90

00:39:59.980 It's all, it's all, it's all like a, it's a liberalism.

00:40:02.860 It's like a castle built on a pile of bones in a way.

00:40:06.180 And, and America itself is built on, you know, dispossessing and engaging in what can only be thought of as genocide of the American Indians and enslaving people.

00:40:18.980 I mean, it's, it's, so there is this kind of contradiction to liberalism where it, it kind of like from both Popper and Schmidt's standpoint, like you, you have to kind of embrace the negativity in order to, to assert something positive.

00:40:36.360 You, you have to engage in radical intolerance in order to have a functioning tolerant regime.

00:40:45.180 Yes.

00:40:48.180 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:40:50.720 I agree with everything you said there.

00:40:52.800 There's a, I mean, the, the, the election I always think of in this country was, was the 2010 UK general election where the choice given by the, given by the system was, it was Gordon Brown, David Cameron, who was basically Tony Blair again.

00:41:13.960 And Nick Clegg, and Nick Clegg, do you remember that?

00:41:17.220 And there was a famous moment in that, in that debate where Nick Clegg kind of made a spiel and Gordon Brown's response was, I agree with Nick.

00:41:27.040 And basically the, and basically the, the, the elites of the regime made a few like critical errors in this country, in fact, in all countries, which was basically allowing like actual democracy to break out.

00:41:42.660 I mean, it happened in the Labour Party when, uh, Jeremy Corbyn managed to, I mean, there was, there's a guy called Ed Miliband who allowed Labour voters to vote for their own leader.

00:41:53.920 And they ended up with, uh, they ended up with Jeremy Corbyn.

00:41:57.120 And, um, and, and, and then of course, Brexit, um, David Cameron, uh, called the Brexit referendum.

00:42:03.340 And of course, you know what happened there.

00:42:05.220 And, uh, they ended up with figures like Boris Johnson and then, and then Liz Truss, of course.

00:42:09.240 So the regime has taken pretty much, uh, what is it now?

00:42:13.640 2015 to now is what, uh, five, eight, it's taken eight years to get back to 2010.

00:42:21.460 When now the choice is Keir Starmer, who is literally taking lessons from Tony Blair.

00:42:28.500 I mean, eight lessons on how to be, you know, a globalist elite by, uh, by Blair and, uh, and, and Rishi Sunak, who is, I mean, just, uh, just, uh, I mean, almost openly and nakedly was installed.

00:42:42.100 Um, uh, and, uh, and has been compared yet again to Tony Blair, who, uh, who gave an interview, uh, with, uh,

00:42:51.460 Jeremy Hunt, just, just months before Hunt was, uh, brought in as the chancellor.

00:42:56.620 So, so, I mean, to your point, what I'm saying is in a liberal democratic regime, it is delusional to imagine that they're ever going to allow any candidate who is not a liberal Democrat, right?

00:43:10.900 Right.

00:43:11.200 Doesn't embody the rate, the, the values of the entire system.

00:43:15.340 And I think we saw with Trump, um, basically the, the system cannot really handle, you know, Trump was in office, but he wasn't in power and he wasn't in power because, um, the, the kind of arms, the machinery of, uh, of the regime wouldn't work for him.

00:43:35.020 Right.

00:43:35.680 When he gave an order, like when, when Tony Blair was in office or when Bill Clinton was in office, they, they were almost, um, Schmittian dictators, right?

00:43:44.200 They could do whatever they wanted.

00:43:46.060 They were, they embodied almost like, I mean, I hesitate to call them great men, but they, they, they did wield genuine executive power.

00:43:54.460 Um, even Barack Obama to an extent, you know, could, could rule by decree, uh, when Trump did that, the, none of the, none of the parts of the state would actually comply with him because, um, they knew that, uh, these were not legitimate orders because they weren't coming from, you know, someone who didn't agree with them.

00:44:16.140 Oh, look at the end of Trump's administration, he had a national security advisor.

00:44:23.620 One of these guys, who's actually a kind of pro Russia or Russia sympathetic pundit, he had a national security advisor actually send out a memo that was going to end America's overseas footprint and military bases.

00:44:38.980 It was like, it was like Ron Paul fully actualized, you know, and it's just, it was just ignored, you know, it was like me, you know, me demand, you know, going to McDonald's and demanding that they serve me caviar or something.

00:44:57.820 They're just gonna look at me with a blank stare, basically, you know, and, uh, you're absolutely correct.

00:45:04.800 Just to be serious for a moment, though, I do think that, um, populism is well and truly, um, as they'd say over, but to, like, if the sight of millions upon millions of Brazilians on the streets of Rio and so on, while Bolsonaro literally sits in Florida with a KFC, you know, basically refusing to grasp the mantle and become a great man of history.

00:45:33.700 I mean, and in, I mean, to me, that's the most boomer image of all time is Bolsonaro eating a KFC as his, his, uh, supporters risk their lives for him, you know, um, as he mumbles something about the constitution.

00:45:48.920 Um, you know, I've, I've, I've just written a, I've just written a sequel to the populist delusion called the prophets of doom, which is all about cyclical history and about kind of, um, denying, uh, the kind of progressive view of history.

00:46:04.820 I mean, it starts with a speech by Tony Blair, who, who sees history as this inexorable march forward.

00:46:12.040 Right.

00:46:12.780 Um, you know, it's, it's, it's basically, uh, uh, doing the same thing as populist delusion, but for, uh, you know, Spengler and people like Toynbee and, uh, Vico and people like that.

00:46:23.920 Um, in fact, uh, Mark may be interested, uh, he probably knows this already, but I, I actually, one of the things that that the research for that book threw up was that, uh, the linear conception of history is inextricably bound up with Christianity.

00:46:40.980 And in fact, the progressive, the progressive, uh, view of history actually comes out of, uh, uh, kind of radical Protestants, um, who overturned Augustine's much more pessimistic view of history, but that was still linear, right?

00:46:58.180 Because Christianity posits a definitive beginning, a definitive end. 0.99

00:47:02.880 Um, and, uh, you know, most, most traditions have, have had this kind of cyclical conception.

00:47:11.880 But it's Christianity that insists on the, on, on the linear one. 0.95

00:47:15.820 Um, uh, anyway, one of the, uh, just to get back to the point, what, one of the.

00:47:22.140 I do actually have a contrary reading to that, but, uh, I'll let you finish your point.

00:47:27.000 Yeah, I was, I was about to mention that Mark's conception of this is, is fairly complex.

00:47:32.940 Yeah, I would love to, I would love to hear his, uh, I would love to hear his views on that.

00:47:36.960 But, uh, just to, just to finish the thought a moment, one of the, one of the things in that, you know, Spengler has this conception of, uh, the spring, the, the summer, the autumn, and we, you know, we're living through the winter.

00:47:49.480 Um, and, and it's become what, one of the things that he insists really is, is this kind of, um, it's very difficult for the children of the winter to embody the spirit of another time.

00:48:02.020 Right.

00:48:02.980 We, as the children of winter, it's very difficult to, you know, be, be the summer or be the spring.

00:48:09.860 Right.

00:48:10.580 And in a, and in a strange way, um, it's, it's all, it's almost like impossible for someone like Bolsonaro or Trump to, you know, become the Caesar in this, in this moment.

00:48:25.260 If that makes any sense.

00:48:27.100 Um, I mean, it, it, the Caesars are also children of winter, but, but they have to come from, um, they have to come almost from, uh, a kind of, I hate to say this, but I feel like this, the age of the Caesars may, may have come, been and gone.

00:48:47.460 Right.

00:48:47.900 Like maybe Franco was the last one or something, but, uh, that's some, that's something that we have to consider really that, uh, you know, is it possible now in this day and age for, um, people like, uh, like a Franco or, or a Hitler or Mussolini to emerge?

00:49:05.100 Because obviously all of those guys were war veterans.

00:49:07.900 They lived through like grim hardship.

00:49:10.220 They were, you know, they were masters of organization. 0.99

00:49:14.400 Um, you know, I, I spend, I, I spend my day shit posting on Twitter and taking pictures of my coffee. 0.90

00:49:20.980 Like I, I, I grew up, I grew up watching bloody the A-team and, uh, WWF wrestling. 0.83

00:49:28.520 How am I, how is any, how is, you understand the point though, right?

00:49:32.160 How, how are any of us who are, who are children of this age meant to get back to those kind of martial values?

00:49:41.220 Um, cause they're not in like, it's difficult.

00:49:44.000 And I, and I think that, um, uh, you, Richard may, may have come up against some of the limits of that, uh, you know, in your, in, you know, in what happened in the 2016, 2017.

00:49:56.540 It's like, well, you were trying, you were, you were trying to channel those things, but you came up against like the limits of what does that look like now?

00:50:05.600 Right. Um, right. What it looks like now are, are, are, are, you know, rallies with flags and, and, and, in a way kind of like idiots getting in fights with Antifa, you know, and that's not, it's a, that's a parody almost of, you know, the 1920s or something.

00:50:23.220 It's not, it is kind of out of time. It doesn't, I mean, I, I remember having at the, um, at our last, we, we had a, a small conference and, in, uh, this past weekend or the weekend before last. 0.80

00:50:37.320 And, um, someone who was, uh, there was talking to me, she, she lives in Portland. She was just talking to me about this Antifa versus Proud Boy battles that are going on.

00:50:49.560 And they are a kind of like Seinfeld version of the 1920s. It's like a, a street battle over nothing, you know, effectively.

00:50:58.160 And just this, you know, uh, Antifa punching Proud Boys, Proud Boys kicking the ass of Antifa, but there's, there's, it's, there's nothing to this. 0.94

00:51:09.840 You're not actually winning anything. And it, it becomes almost kind of masturbatorial, uh, on some level, although, although very, uh, very damaging on some way. 0.97

00:51:20.900 What, what, the question that I would ask is, you know, cause you, you mentioned like emerging cultures and then residual cultures.

00:51:30.500 And I, is the other word you use hegemonic cultures? Is that the three?

00:51:35.500 Dominant, dominant.

00:51:36.820 Dominant, yeah.

00:51:37.460 Yeah.

00:51:38.100 Um, so it's roughly synonymous with hegemony. So, um, so Trump in 2016, there, it was a kind of emerging force, right?

00:51:50.560 But, but what, what, what was it in your mind? Like, what was it actually? Cause we, we can project our own fantasies onto it, but what, what was it really?

00:52:02.740 Well, I mean, I, I, I've got a head full of like cyclical history at the moment. So I, I've, I've kind of got like the most negative view of it possible now, which is that in a, in a strange way, the, the, the kind of current, uh, regime order, if you want.

00:52:19.880 Um, is, uh, you know, if, if you, if you use the, you know, uh, Spangler talks about the four estates, like the first to say that, and a lot of like, uh, people like Evelyn and so on, they, they talk about the warrior caste, the, um, the priests, the merchants and the peasants.

00:52:36.740 Right. And, um, I mean, it's, it's, it's very compatible with the, with, with elite theory, because it's literally just a question of which faction is on top.

00:52:46.580 Right. So when the, when the, when, when, when, when the warrior caste are in charge, broadly speaking, you've got something that looks like kind of authentic feudalism, something like that.

00:52:55.880 When the, um, when the, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the priests are in charge, uh, you know, you get something like a, like a theocratic state or something like that.

00:53:06.980 Uh, when the merchants are in charge, of course, um, you get something that looks like the 19th century.

00:53:12.680 Right. Um, obviously now we live in a, in a, in a, in a, in a kind of managerial order, but that managerial order is dominated by a coalition of merchants and intellectuals who are broadly speaking, the, uh, the fox classes, right.

00:53:28.540 Between the lions and the foxes, that they, they're both fox types, masters of persuasion.

00:53:34.260 Um, and, um, the, Trump really probably, uh, does represent the true quote unquote democratic will.

00:53:47.340 Right. Which is coming from below.

00:53:50.860 So, so in a strange, you know, they talk about like the Kali Yuga and so on in a, in a strange way.

00:53:56.120 I've come to the view that actually when, when the populists do well and truly take over and the regime crumbles, it will actually represent a devolution to, to an even worse, an even worse time where we're ruled by plebeian, where we're ruled by kind of a, a kind of plebeian, like a kind of, uh, you know, um, you know, that there's a strange thing in, in,

00:54:24.900 in the kind of populist right. That, uh, does bristle at, uh, distinction and quality. If that makes any sense, they, they really are kind of, um, like the, the, the mass man in the true, in the truest sense. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah,

00:54:42.860 I've, I've, I've come to have like a, like a, like a, probably the dimmest possible view of what happens, uh, when they, when, when something like that eventually wins.

00:54:52.760 Well, yeah, I, I totally agree. I'm, I'm, and I'm glad you're saying this because they're, you know, remember, you know, Peter Thiel in 2016, at least explicitly or, or kind of ostensibly was saying this.

00:55:07.800 He, he was like, you know, we, you know, we, we were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters or whatever. And, and Trump represents like an ability for the system to work.

00:55:19.620 You know, and there was a kind of, you know, businessman interest politics notion of Trump, where he's gonna, he's gonna splash through the red tape and build, you know, infrastructure and public transportation.

00:55:34.360 We're gonna have a sound foreign policy that's pro America and, and, you know, so on. And you can see this in like Trump's interviews in the eighties and nineties with Larry King, where he's, he is putting forth a kind of reasonable nationalism about, you know, why, why are we, why are we losing to Japan?

00:55:53.400 Why are, why are we paying for the security of NATO countries? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? We need to think about ourselves first. There's a kind of Buchanan or Ross Perot, I think is maybe the even more salient figure type of nationalism.

00:56:09.420 But I think kind of, that's almost a projection on our part, you know, like I respect such a worldview that that seems good to a large degree, even if, even if a bit impossible and fantastical, but it's a good idea.

00:56:26.520 But maybe lying behind, you know, Trump's rise is a kind of Libyan resentment and something that would be like genuinely worse for us. I mean, let's remember, we're having a civilized conversation over Zoom, you know, right now, involving people in multiple countries and time zones, and so on.

00:56:55.140 Like we're, we're benefiting from globalization. There's undoubtedly something good about the fact that we're connected via the internet, that we can travel to other countries in a reasonable fashion with a passport, that we can purchase something built, you know, constructed in other countries.

00:57:13.020 We're benefiting from that. We're benefiting from that. There's something good about it. But there's a kind of understandable, I guess, but maybe really grotesque kind of plebeian revolt against that, that's brewing and that's real. 0.97

00:57:28.020 Real quick, this anecdote, I've told it about three or four times in this call. So I'm sure some many people who are longtime listeners are sick of it. But I went to the Kalispell about nine months ago or so during Good Friday, and they were having this Trump rally in Kalispell.

00:57:48.220 And they do it every single Friday. And they rev their engines, the wheels starts, you know, they're doing donuts in the road. And I remember this, as I was leaving the, this restaurant where I was, this guy drove up to me and got out of the car.

00:58:07.960 And I think he reacted to me because I was dressed in a fairly fashionable way. I'm almost positive that's what it was, because I was wearing like a black leather jacket and jeans. I think he saw me as a liberal. I don't think he at all recognized me as Richard Spencer, Mr. Hale Trump and Charlottesville or whatever.

00:58:28.220 And he got out of his car and he said, fuck Joe Biden, fuck the liberals. And then he got back in his car and drove off. It was kind of hilarious. Like, you know, it's like I've, you know, we've come full circle. I'm being attacked by Trumpism. 1.00

00:58:42.220 But what I mean is that there was no, you know, there's no absolutely no political agenda to these Trump rallies that are weekly. There was no politics. It was classed. And it was pure resentment and hatred.

00:59:01.300 Yeah, I mean, there's a pretty good example of this. I did a stream. I did a stream yesterday with Mike from Imperium Press and Alexander Adams, who's a who's a who's an art critic. And, you know, he writes for the Telegraph and things like that. So he's fairly well known. And, you know, it was called Is Modern Art Left Wing?

00:59:21.420 OK. And the whole idea of it was, you know, every once in a while, Paul Joseph Watson will do a rant in front of in front of that world map where he has a go at modern art as being like degenerate and attacking beauty and so on.

00:59:35.920 Sure. And so we did we just did a kind of a kind of history of what was modernism like a kind of left wing phenomena.

00:59:45.380 We talked about people like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. We talked about the visual arts and Italian featurism and vorticism. And we talked about Bowdoin for a bit.

00:59:57.500 But the chat and the comments were just like, no, you guys are trying to like trick us in some way. Like this is subversion. This is like, you know, anything that's ugly, anything that anything that has any ugliness.

01:00:13.360 I mean, this is like a kind of child's eye. It's like it's like a view of art that comes from something like Dead Poet Society or something. Do you know what I mean?

01:00:23.640 And and this is the sort of plebeian attitude that I see everywhere.

01:00:30.840 So, yes, I kind of agree with you, Richard. It could be worse. Right. Maybe maybe under the maybe under the populist regime, I won't be able to take pictures of my flat whites every day.

01:00:41.880 Exactly. I do think that populism and as defined in the way that we're defining it now, I kind of do think that it will ultimately triumph.

01:00:57.300 But I don't but I don't think that that will be good. And I and I do think that that will kind of cap off the American era that that will be the cherry on the Sunday of we've we've had this American era of of globalism.

01:01:14.420 And and and look, whatever we want to say about America, I mean, I'm sure most people on here are critics of Americanism, like no doubt, but wild success on some level.

01:01:28.260 You know, like regular people can have a four bedroom home and three children and, you know, good job and two cars and and and, you know, there's been a kind of wild success story that can be told about America.

01:01:47.020 And it's certainly since post 1944 and and and particularly as we get later in the 20th century, it's been an era of globalization.

01:01:54.620 And I I do feel like populism of some kind. And I I do think it probably will be right wing populism will kind of cap it off.

01:02:06.040 You know, maybe a hundred year, you know, maybe a hundred year, maybe it's going to be 2044 or something, it's going to it's going to cap it off with like.

01:02:15.540 That guy who screamed at me at Kalispell will be like sitting on a throne of liberal skulls and forcing, you know, forcing people to use proper pronouns at gunpoint or something like, you know, it's it's going to be just this

01:02:35.080 almost grotesque, you know, right wing phenomena. But I think it kind of is inevitable in some way, like the liberals are they're going to win over and over.

01:02:46.360 They're going to they're going to keep winning battles over and over for for some time.

01:02:51.380 But I do think the backlash will will ultimately win.

01:02:56.640 But I I've got into a point where I don't think that's a good thing.

01:03:00.020 And I and I really was genuinely enthused by Trumpism.

01:03:03.600 There was there was a you know, if I go back to my myself four or five years ago, the past is another country or your previous self is another person in some some level.

01:03:16.180 But I was genuinely enthused and optimistic for the future.

01:03:21.160 I thought things are going to work.

01:03:22.960 And and we would probably get past a lot of the kind of negativity trolling of the alt right, you know, gas chamber memes and calling people out.

01:03:33.620 And, you know, we're going to kind of move past that there is going to be something really positive about this.

01:03:39.080 And I as I look on things now, I do think that MAGA or Trumpism or populism, whatever you want to call it, kind of will triumph.

01:03:47.520 But it's going to it's going to triumph in a rather horrible way.

RadixJournal - February 09, 2023

The Dialectic of Populism

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