The McSpencer Group is back, and this time with special guest Keith Woods ( ) and Mark Brahman ( ) to discuss the dangers of an anarcho-tyranny in the 21st century, and why Americans are uniquely incapable of dealing with them.
00:02:25.940So I wanted to talk a little bit about the American response to COVID-19 and about the degree to which Americans are unique on this issue and maybe uniquely clueless or uniquely incapable of dealing with something like this.
00:02:47.760And I obviously was born here, born in Boston, Massachusetts, raised in Texas.
00:02:57.400And we also have Mark Brahman, who is an American from the New England area as well.
00:03:04.120And then we have an Irishman, but I guess the Irish are kind of, you're kind of Americans and you're kind of, you're like the Irish, the Irish immigrants are kind of like the ultimate Americans in a way.
00:04:02.680There is an idea that the, the idea of a European identity or a sort of cross-Europe cooperation is a, an American idea, you know, coming out of bastardized white groups in America, come together with this idea of white nationalism.
00:04:24.820But I mean, the first time I encountered those ideas would have been people reading people like Guillaume Fay, Benoit, Sean Thierryard, who's a, who's a Belgian guy in the 60s that actually set up a pan-European political party that had Oswald Mosley and one of the Strasser brothers as members.
00:04:43.180And they did, it was traditionally the idea that was defined very much as being anti-American.
00:04:49.260And it was, it was coming out of the idea that the, the States after the Second World War were just kind of pawns of, of American Zionist power.
00:04:58.060So, I mean, there's something to it, you know, the, the idea that the growth of, of white nationalism is something that is kind of uniquely American in the last few years.
00:05:07.500I think it does mess the point on some level.
00:05:09.940Yeah, I think it's both because I, I clearly pan-European identity and, and pan-Europeanism as a political concept is coming.
00:05:21.620It has European roots, like no question, just the, the idea of a, a terrestrial empire, uniting nations and so on.
00:05:30.020You can go back to Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, et cetera.
00:05:34.500Um, but I, I, I actually wouldn't totally dismiss the idea that it's kind of American.
00:05:40.420And in a way that's taking like a silver lining from some, some aspects of America that would otherwise be bad, uh, in the sense that we've had ethnic strife in the United States.
00:05:54.700You know, the Anglo versus Irish, um, we've put Germans in concentration camps during the world wars.
00:06:02.000We've, we've done all sorts of things, but I think there's, there's almost a silver lining to overcoming, uh, many of those ethnic strifes.
00:06:09.980Now, ethnic strife is, is about, you know, jokes or something.
00:06:14.620It's, we're not at each other's throat.
00:06:16.560And I, and I, again, there's a way that, that something good can come from something that might be bad to many extents.
00:06:24.280And I, I think Americans have become kind of, you know, what is the alt-right term?
00:06:28.540Like Ameriburgers, you know, you're just this hamburger eating, uh, you know, nationalist, uh, doesn't really have any roots, but maybe there's something there that can actually be good.
00:06:40.580Maybe there's actually something that we can see that Europeans who are fixated on hating their neighbors can't.
00:06:47.560And, uh, I, I don't think that should be totally dismissed or discounted.
00:06:52.840Well, the, the interesting irony is that if you read people like Thierry, what was motivating him more than anything to push for some kind of pan-Europeanism was the fear that he saw coming down the line that Europe would become Americanized.
00:07:10.640I mean, you can see this, um, uh, in, uh, Yaki, you can see this in, um, uh, you know, Powell never really embraced, uh, pan-Europeanism.
00:07:21.300He was, he was a bit hostile to it, towards that.
00:07:23.840Uh, but you can, um, certainly see this in other people from the interwar period who were attracted to fascism, who immediately after the war went to, um, Europeanism.
00:07:35.120I mean, Oswald Mosley being the, you know, quintessential example, um, that it is a kind of fear of America.
00:07:41.180But then, you know, again, maybe there, there has to be a kind of understanding of something that went right in America as well.
00:07:48.960And I think we should be kind of, we should have a dialectical understanding of it in that way.
00:07:53.440Um, and then secondly, I'm from America.
00:07:56.860I'm, you know, in many ways, you could probably say that I'm anti-American if you look at, like, most of my opinions.
00:08:03.400But I'm not so shrill and, um, just kind of hate-filled that I hate this country or that I'm going to just dismiss it or say there's no redeemable features to it.
00:08:17.440Um, that would be ridiculous and, and kind of dishonest.
00:08:28.720I mean, I, I don't know that he talked about it explicitly in the American context, but the idea of the good European, or he was effectively a pan-Europeanist, or you might even say a proto-pan-Europeanist, but, or even actually, or, or maybe the originator, right?
00:08:44.680So, or one of the early originators, yeah.
00:08:47.000Yeah, and I think that, um, one, the question of homogenization, like the, the fear that the European countries are going to become homogenized, is only, uh, only becomes a kind of problem, you know, on the cultural level, if it's a homogenization under McDonald's, right?
00:09:06.120As opposed to under, you know, Jupiter, which, which is what I would argue for, right?
00:09:10.880So there, I, so I think that the problem of homogenization is not an inherently bad problem from my perspective.
00:09:18.680It's just what that, what that is, right?
00:09:22.000Well, remember, I mean, Nietzsche was talking about a, a common European type, um, in the 19th century, in the age of train travel and the telegram and, and so on.
00:09:34.920So this was happening long before, you know, I don't know, the 1990s or something that, that Europe was kind of coming together and that there's a, there's a European person who might be from somewhere, but, but he's starting to blend into a common European type.
00:09:51.320I mean, this is just a phenomenological observation, uh, by, by Nietzsche.
00:09:57.220And then I would also say there's a, there's another aspect to this, which is very important is, is to confuse the nation state itself with, uh, cultural homogenization, uh, in the sense that we need to have a parliament.
00:10:09.680We need to have borders and prevent travel or something like that, and that that's going to, um, protect us.
00:10:14.960I mean, look, homogenization has been occurring for a long time, certainly throughout the age of the nation state.
00:10:21.300The nation state seeks homogenization just on its own terms.
00:10:25.080I mean, there, there were many different Francis that traditionalists have, uh, whose death traditionalists have lamented, uh, at the hands of a centralization by the nation state.
00:10:36.820Um, and, um, uh, you know, these nation states now that are, you know, living in the shadows of globalization and Americanization, uh, are pretty much incapable of preventing this kind of thing.
00:10:51.660And so just to go back to some, you know, nationalism or pretend that that's any kind of real threat against, uh, globalization and kind of racial homogenization, I think is a bit diluted.
00:11:05.820Um, you know, mass McDonald'sization, which is what we really oppose can occur with, with a hundred different nation states on the European continent can easily occur that way, particularly more easily because they're all weak.
00:11:22.240Um, but anyway, yeah, I mean, you know, Europeans justifiably when they hear about ideas around United Europe, uh, reject it because they have the idea of everyone kind of abandoning regional identities and becoming this kind of mass man, European man.
00:11:43.460Yeah. But what's interesting is if you read most of the people that advocated for it, they're advocating for it for the opposite reason.
00:11:50.500Like if you read Faye's archaeofuturism, he has this idea of this grand United Europe with, you know, rapid rail travel from Paris to Moscow, whatever.
00:11:58.740But then he has the, this vision of there being like little pagan enclaves and in Sweden or wherever.
00:12:04.040So oftentimes people that advocated for it, they wanted a, a political superstructure so that the, you know, the regional smaller cultures could be protected because, you know, as you say, when you have this kind of balkanization, I mean, balkanization has been a tactic of, of, uh, neoconservatism and sort of American imperialism everywhere, whether it was in Yugoslavia or, I mean, even now we're seeing it in, in Syria and in Iraq, they wanted to, to balkanize those into Shia and sunny States.
00:12:31.780So yes. Yeah. His vision of Europe was the, all of this nation building, but it was basically to weaken, uh, major regional powers, Germany being the primary one and basically to invent all these new nations, inventing the kingdom of Yugoslavia, reinventing Poland and so on. Um, you know, there, there are some good, many good things about that.
00:12:59.820I mean, I'm not, I mean, I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not one of these people who thinks everything, everything, something is all bad or all good. Uh, but the political motive was to create a patchwork of weak nation States that can be under an American umbrella.
00:13:14.600Yeah. Well, it's this idea of the balance of power, but I mean, yeah, I mean, if you, if you look at who Israel and the U S have been opposed to more than anyone in the middle East, it's been the, the Ba'athist movement, which was a pan Arab movement.
00:13:26.180And you know, it's, it's, it's, it plays out similarly everywhere. I mean, they don't mind funding or supporting smaller, uh, Islamic enclaves or smaller ethnic enclaves, but the, you know, the biggest danger to them is that idea of like a, a national socialist kind of imperium, whether that's under, under Ba'athist Arab rule or under, under Persian rule, under the hegemony of Iran.
00:13:47.080Exactly. Well, we went into deep theory early on this one, but, um, I, I was, uh, planning to talk about COVID-19, but I'm glad we had this, uh, useful preface. Um, I was, uh, I was going to suggest we first talk about something, a, one of these phenomenon that, one of these phenomena that, that occur that kind of trigger both the left and the right on social media.
00:14:16.680And so the, the, the, the right wing starts cheering and then the left wing starts talking about a coming theocracy or something. Uh, and that is, uh, the, um, the, the thinker known as my pillow guy, um, a, uh, you might not know this Keith because of Fox news is an American thing, but he, uh, whenever you turn on Fox news, my pillow guy is there.
00:14:40.920That is the, he is hawking pillows left and right. Um, maybe his audience is in need of a lot of pillows, um, the, uh, 70 plus, uh, people watching that stuff. Uh, but he, um, he's doing something which I think is unequivocally good and which I support.
00:15:00.860So I don't want to totally bash this guy. And he seems like a nice man as well. Uh, but he is, uh, transforming his business to make mask, uh, which makes sense. And I'm glad he's doing that. Uh, so, you know, uh, one or two cheers for my pillow guy.
00:15:17.260Uh, who's, you know, dealing with the crisis in the way that he can. Uh, but he, he said something that was, um, pretty remarkable. I thought, uh, which was that America had turned away from God. Uh, and then we turned back to God apparently by electing Donald Trump, this, uh, thrice married womanizing, uh, a Bulgarian from reality TV.
00:15:45.160And that is what made the stock market go up. God was happy. And the stock market went up and, uh, you know, African-American unemployment went down. Uh, wages went up is what she claims that I'm, I'm a little bit skeptical of that one. Uh, and, uh, but apparently this, you know, kind of external thing came in the COVID, but we'll get back to there. If we turn back to God and start praying more and so on.
00:16:12.160God gave us grace on November 8th, 2016 to change the course we were on. God had been taken out of our schools and lives. A nation had turned his back on God. And I encourage you to use this time at home to get to home, to get back in the word, read our Bibles and spend time with our families.
00:16:30.980Our president gave us so much hope. We're just a few short months ago. We had the best economy, the lowest unemployment and wages going up. It was amazing with our great president, vice president, and this administration and all the great people in this country praying daily.
00:16:47.980We, we, we will get through this and get back to a place that's stronger and safer than ever.
00:16:54.980Look, I, I, I unquestionably understand the religious impulse. I think religion is indispensable for a functioning civilization. Uh, and, and it, religion can be the most powerful force in the world. Uh, but the, what, what I'm really getting at as, is this,
00:17:17.340just kind of strange Calvinistic impulse, which seems to be at the heart of generic American Christianity.
00:17:26.780And this notion that if we pray more, if we turn back to God by electing a Republican, that the stock market goes up because God is happy with us. And it just seems bizarre. And God, of course, is not blamed for stock market crashes or, um, or anything like that.
00:17:45.540But it just seems like a very, uh, bizarre thing and something which is genuinely anti-Christian and, and, and not to mention just factually inaccurate. Um, the stock market crashed the last time under the George W. Bush administration.
00:18:00.540And then it was rising for eight years effectively under Barack Obama, this godless, uh, globalist, uh, whatever he is liberal in their minds, or maybe even worse.
00:18:14.220And, uh, and, uh, and then we just saw a kind of blow off with Donald Trump and corporate tax cuts. But this, I don't know, this, this notion that, uh, America, you know, again, I, I think it's the main thing that bothers me is this connection between getting rich and believing in yourself, this prosperity doctrine, uh, which is genuinely anti-Christian, I would say.
00:18:38.280And, and, and, and, and also just, um, vulgar and, and toxic. And, um, I, it just, this struck me as one of these, these points where it's like the left is getting triggered for the wrong reasons.
00:18:53.420They think that this is a coming theocracy when it's clearly not. It's a guy who is basically worshiping money and worshiping the Republican Party as a symbol of God's love. Um, and then the right wants to defend this guy as some kind of traditionalist when he's not approaching being a traditionalist.
00:19:14.600This is a totally anti-traditional, anti-nationalistic, just individualistic, materialistic, greedy kind of outlook at the end of the day.
00:19:24.880And, um, so we, we kind of have the left and right triggered, but then they're both wrong. It's the Caducean, you could say. Um, but that, that was my kind of, uh, impression of all this.
00:19:44.600I'm not going to pull a Janine Pirro and get wasted on a, on a podcast. I apologize for that. I'm sure that.
00:19:50.860Well, other, other people might be watching Friday evening, I guess.
00:19:54.180But, um, so what I would say is, um, yeah, I mean, I, you bring up an interesting point that there is this kind of, uh, the Max, the, uh, the Max Weber premise was that, um, uh,
00:20:07.920the, the, uh, capitalism sort of arises from a, a kind of Protestant work ethic or from, uh, uh, the, sort of, the shift that occurs in Christianity, especially with Calvinism.
00:20:19.900Um, I don't, you know, I don't know. I think that, I think that there, I think that premise is plausible on some level. Um, it, I, I would argue that there would probably, what we see with the Protestant Reformation in general is a kind of, uh, sort of kind of slow death of Christianity that we're, and we're still kind of in that now.
00:20:40.300So in other words, Protestantism is actually a kind of move away from Christianity.
00:20:46.080And what it, what, and it seems like it's largely, uh, Protestantism is a function of these sort of, uh, you know, autistic sort of Northern Europeans who wanted, you know, Christianity to kind of make sense on some level.
00:20:59.900So they kind of pursued it in a very kind of pure, uh, kind of, uh, a, a sort of intellectually honest and pure manner.
00:21:06.600And the consequence is that they basically, it's been a kind of process of moving away from Christianity is what I would argue is that ultimately, uh, this sort of intellectual pursuit brings us to figures like Nietzsche and that Christianity start is, is basically in a kind of period of decline or death.
00:21:25.780Now in, in America, we still, we still, we still, we still, we still see this kind of particular brand of American Christianity as it were, um, that is very capitalistic.
00:21:35.940And I think a part of that too is during the cold war where communism became a, uh, uh, an antipode that, that, uh, American capitalism and Christianity could, uh, contrast it with itself.
00:21:49.780Like, so on one hand, we had the, the godless communists and on the other hand, we had the, uh, God fearing capitalists in America.
00:21:58.820So I think that, I think that that is, was one of the, that's, so what we're seeing now is kind of a remnant of this idea that, that, that the platform is God and capitalism.
00:22:10.740Which to your point, I mean, that, that's not really what Christianity was in its origin.
00:22:15.500So Christianity has now become its sort of opposite on some level, or at least on a kind of practical level.
00:22:21.820Um, so it is, it's kind of fascinating to watch and it's kind of, uh, but it does, it does like feel like sort of soulless on some level.
00:22:31.840Um, because it, I don't know, I'm sure Keith has, uh, plenty to say on this, uh, because I mean, I, I do think it is true.
00:22:40.580That there, that, um, uh, certainly there were the reform and capitalism, the rise of capitalism, those things can be linked, but I would, I would define it more as a kind of slow death of Christianity than, you know, the development of a Protestant work ethic as it were.
00:22:59.320And also real quick, just to jump in, because I'm thinking about this.
00:23:03.000I mean, I, I, I agree that there, there is this meme, which is largely true.
00:23:08.020If you judge, if you judge things by just a religious attendance and so on religiosity, and in particularly Christian religiosity has survived in America to a much greater extent than in Western and Central Europe.
00:23:22.320And, you know, I, I think there's a, you know, religion is always connected to the state.
00:23:28.320There's never really a separation of church and state.
00:23:32.200And so religiosity was a, you know, believing in God was a, a feeling of power.
00:23:39.840We're going to win this cold war for the battle of the soul of humanity against the commies.
00:23:45.180And so on, it just kind of lent itself to that, you know, lent itself to that confidence that one would need to, to really believe in God and not become kind of a, a different variation of the last man in Europe, where there's, there's really no need for God.
00:24:02.940And it's just all about, you know, comfort and pleasure and welfare and so on.
00:24:08.280But I, I, you could take this further and say that as the American, the American way and the American government faces a crisis of legitimacy, which I think it's clearly facing, you know, every day.
00:24:22.180And as America loses its place as the big kahuna of the world, which it inevitably will, it's probably going to lead to a religious crisis as well.
00:24:34.220Um, and, you know, particularly with, if we, if we look at the, you know, my pillow guy is just an expression of this.
00:24:41.380There's this direct connection between getting rich and being the world power and believing in God.
00:24:48.740And as that declines the United States, there's going to be a resultant and, you know, co-committant, um, crisis of faith.
00:24:56.160It's interesting, uh, I think Bertrand Russell, when he was talking about, uh, the Reformation, he said that Catholicism, I think it's a good explanation of it.
00:25:06.680He said it was, uh, you know, it was, uh, Hebrew scripture, uh, Greek theology and, uh, sort of Roman majesty or aesthetics.
00:25:15.840And the Reformation, uh, removed the Roman element, uh, greatly lessened the Greek element and extenuated the Judaic element.
00:25:37.060But you know what I find interesting is, um, you know, in a lot of ways, the U.S. is the only place that stuff like this, like the prosperity gospel could come out of.
00:25:47.240But you know, another place you see this a lot, um, and there was a few, I don't know, there's a few migrants from this place where I live.
00:26:13.660You know, it's kind of, it's kind of interesting looking at the demographics of Brazil and, you know, people talk about the Brazilification of the U.S.
00:26:20.440But, you know, maybe what characterizes American Protestantism especially is the lack of rootedness.
00:26:27.100You know, Catholicism in Southern Europe or in somewhere like Ireland is such a rooted religion.
00:26:33.560You know, it's rooted in the soil, it's rooted in the people and the traditions.
00:26:36.320And, you know, the way it was synthesized with Greek theology and with Aristotelianism, it was something, you know, it had its majesty, it had its aesthetic, it had its own traditionalism.
00:26:47.220And, you know, you look at some of the Protestant churches you see in place in the United States and they just look like sort of modern monstrosities.
00:26:55.320Like there's no, there's no tradition, there's no harking back to anything there.
00:26:58.360They look like a mall, the megachurch.
00:27:01.860The aesthetic really is that of a mall.
00:27:03.760And many of the churches even include like a Starbucks inside them and, you know, a daycare and a hamburger joint, a food court and so on.
00:27:16.120It's the American McDonald's or mall aesthetic with Hebrew scripture.
00:27:20.560Although they're not even, despite their claims to be fundamentalist, they're not really that fundamentalist.
00:27:26.560And then the theology is that of American capitalism.
00:27:31.000I'm, yeah, I'm glad you reminded me of that Bertrand Russell quote because I think it's a, you know, kind of insight into understanding a religion.
00:27:43.600But, yeah, so, I mean, unless we have...
00:27:47.000It's interesting how you even see this, you even see the sort of Americanization of Eastern religions.
00:27:52.900You know, like Buddhism and Hinduism are taken and it's turned into like a, you know, a nice hobby for, you know, an upper middle class housewife while her husband's at work.
00:28:05.420And, you know, everything is just reduced to the absolute lowest common denominator.
00:28:10.980Like, even things like Buddhism and Hinduism, Eastern spirituality becomes this thing about, like, positive visualization and you basically having a really successful material life using, like, tricks from Eastern meditation or spirituality.
00:28:25.200It's just always that, you know, reducing everything to the most base level.
00:28:31.920Well, it seems like it would, those faiths would always have that potential since that they are essentially a scriptural on the kind of final base level.
00:28:50.160And, you know, I would argue that something that was based on, had a racial basis, for example, among whites would be something that would represent something more concrete.
00:29:02.220That you could represent through, through idols and that wouldn't be a form of sacrilege, for example.
00:29:16.460We've talked about everything but what I thought we were going to talk about, but I think it's good to kind of dive into theory.
00:29:21.560I think that's something that we offer that's more unique and that's something needed as well.
00:29:28.520Uh, but yeah, I mean, I, I, and I think this is kind of, this does help explain to a degree the, the inability of the United States government to really deal with this properly until they are just absolutely forced to.
00:29:45.940Um, and even then, uh, we're, we're, we're going to struggle with it and, uh, and so on because there, there's this notion in America where we can't really make a decision that is political in, in the, in the real sense of the word.
00:30:02.740Um, the government is there to maintain your individualistic lifestyle or to keep the economy buzzing and the stock market up and the notion that at least domestically or, or do other things like be a therapeutic state as, as Paul Godfrey described it as, you know, promoting tolerance and diversity and trans sexuality or whatever, which now seems to be an injunction of the government.
00:30:30.340But it can't actually handle real political decisions.
00:30:34.120And this, uh, reminded me of, of two thinkers whom I admire, uh, quite a bit.
00:30:50.240Uh, and the other one is Sam Francis, uh, who was a, uh, a great American kind of political columnist and, and so on, but who, uh, inflected all of his writing with, um, very important theory.
00:31:02.760But, um, you know, Schmitt had this notion of the total state and it's a notion that is, it, it was, it was kind of a bit of an ambiguous or you could say kind of double concept.
00:31:16.280And, um, and, and, and that lends it to be misunderstood.
00:31:21.580He's, he's obviously writing a, much of his works in the age of totalitarianism, whether it's, you know, with Mussolini using that term, you know, there's nothing outside the state.
00:31:33.480Uh, and so on, uh, we, he, I think he spoke of his totalitarian will and so on.
00:31:38.100Uh, and then the, the, uh, totalitarian thinking that emerged after the, um, second world war and Soviet communism and, and the horrors and the imagined horrors as well.
00:31:53.800Um, it, it was that in some ways the total state is a weak state.
00:31:59.360And what he meant by that is that a state that is been, uh, that, that doesn't have its own identity that can't itself differentiate friend and enemy defined territory, defined injunctions, et cetera.
00:32:13.000This total state that just becomes, say, the tool of a political party or the total state in the sense of say communism, what's, what's once to revolutionize everything from the economy to the family, to social life, to, to art and culture, just everything's in its dominion.
00:32:30.140And it becomes weak because it's, it's kind of doing everything except what it should be doing.
00:32:37.360And so this total state actually becomes a weak state and one that is actually going to collapse or at the very least become, you know, dissipate and become extremely weak and not be able to define itself in the most basic terms.
00:32:51.420And this, this reminded me of a, of a very Schmittian concept, although I don't, I don't know if there's a great deal of evidence that, um, Sam Francis was reading Schmitt, um, or at least reading him seriously.
00:33:04.100But, um, Sam Francis's concept of anarcho-tyranny and it's a dialectical concept, much like the total state where it's both, it's anarchy and tyranny.
00:33:13.600And what he's basically saying is that the state isn't doing those things, which it actually should be doing, uh, defining a territory, protecting the nation, um, you know, engaging in military efforts that have a purpose and, and clear aims and so on.
00:33:30.080But then it's tyrannizing everything else.
00:33:33.120So it's not, it's tyrannizing its population through therapy and generating tolerance and endless surveillance and so on.
00:33:42.200Um, but then it's actually not doing those things that it needs to do.
00:33:46.940So it's both anarchy and tyranny at the same time.
00:33:49.860And I think this is actually a, an interesting, these are interesting concepts to apply to the current American order where the, you know, I was, I was tweeting about this a little bit this morning, but I think what we're seeing really now is that the state is weak.
00:34:07.800And, and we have all of these conservatives yammering on about how we're giving up liberty for security and, uh, you know, the, the state is going to be in all of our lives.
00:34:19.620And we have, you know, like people like Roosh or Ramsey Paul, like I, I'm going to go out and drink a margarita because my ancestors died for this.
00:34:27.880Or I'll never take a vaccine that's given to me by the evil government.
00:34:31.960It's this, it's kind of American libertarian virus that is ever present.
00:34:37.720But then what we're seeing is a state that is actually weak and that cannot, that cannot handle its basic business.
00:34:46.240Uh, you know, everyone, Alex Jones and someone wants to scream about FEMA camps as they've been doing for two decades now.
00:34:55.460Well, maybe this is actually a time for us to have FEMA camps, you know, if you cannot protect yourself from a foreign virus that has entered the nation and is threatening our, our lives and our livelihood and, and, you know, so on, then what exactly is your purpose?
00:35:14.460Um, this is the time for bold, ruthless action by the government.
00:35:20.560And yet the government is incapable of doing this kinds of things, whereas it puts under its domain, it's, it's, it's list of priorities, you know, promoting feminism in the Middle East, uh, or, uh, making sure that, you know, public school teachers teach social science in a way that's not racist or transphobic.
00:35:42.840Uh, but in, in, in the sense of doing its most basic task, we've seen it being actually extremely weak.
00:35:50.600And so I, I think we are living through the, a kind of decline, a legitimacy crisis with the United States, but also just a decline in state power.
00:36:00.200And yet we're not always really able to see it.
00:36:03.500And one of those reasons is that conservatives have this bug in their head that anytime the state, you know, undergoes action, it's like terrible tyranny or so on.
00:36:14.700And they're also unwillingness to re to recognize, and, and you could recognize it critically, but you have to recognize it.
00:36:22.080The degree to which the government is undergirding their, their, the lifestyle, which they think is theirs, the, the fact that there are U S gunships protecting trade routes and so on is undergirding the, this debt fueled consumer lifestyle that are the, all these conservatives love.
00:36:41.080It is what we call free market capitalism is not capitalism.
00:36:46.080It is a product of political and military decisions.
00:36:50.080And, you know, to, to, to think of that as kind of like freedom or, you know, consensual or so on is, is to just totally misunderstand what it is.
00:37:00.580And so conservatives aren't able to see where the government is actually under protecting and undergirding their, their lifestyle.
00:37:09.580And then they freak out and claim it's tyranny when the government kind of, sort of does the things that it should be doing that, that, that are at the, the basic exist that are the basic existential injunctions of a state.
00:37:26.660And they freak out when it does these things.
00:37:28.660And, uh, I, I just, I, I find it kind of amazing to be honest, that was a long rant.
00:37:45.400Um, I don't, um, yeah, there have been some, uh, pretty bad takes, uh, with the virus.
00:37:53.600Um, and I, it goes to that fear, this fear of government, which is kind of a, um, I don't know if it's, it's, it's, you might say, because the thing is the alt-right or the dissident right or whatever, whatever we call it now is fed by different, uh, streams.
00:38:08.380And one of those, one of those streams is kind of this libertarian stream, which has more of this anxiety.
00:38:14.860It's more for small government and it fears anything in a kind of reflexive and dogmatic way that it represents a government, uh, intrusion or, or government influence.
00:38:24.960And, uh, so this is one of those examples.
00:38:28.460And the truth of the matter is, uh, the virus itself, uh, there are some things that are unknown about it, but it's a global problem that many people from many nations are dealing with.
00:38:40.080So it's not like, I think a fear kind of emerges or a kind of logic emerges in the alt-right, for example, where people, um, they understand that, for example, Zionists have a disproportionate influence in our government.
00:38:56.580And they, and that's had a very, uh, bad influence on our foreign policy in terms of, uh, uh, military actions and these sorts of things.
00:39:05.380It's also had a bad, to the extent that a Jewish lobby has been very, uh, proactive in, uh, encouraging and being effective in promoting and encouraging immigration, for example.
00:39:17.440These things have had a bad and deleterious effect.
00:39:19.980And so people, as a consequence, people in the alt-right just see the government as kind of, uh, Zionist-occupied territory, which is not completely, I mean, that's more or less the case.
00:39:31.740But something like this, I mean, people have to kind of use their common sense, as it were.
00:39:36.840Something like this, where everyone's kind of lives are at stake, and everyone can suffer, and especially, I mean, to the extent that you understand the government as Zionist-occupied territory,
00:39:48.740not to speak in an overly vulgar way, the, I think that, I think that you can understand as well that we've seen already that the disease has disproportionately affected Jews.
00:39:59.960Um, AIPAC, AIPAC had a problem with this.
00:40:02.220Uh, the synagogues had, had a, have a problem with this, and, and in fact, that the religious communities in general, which is something I think that we'll go into on this program, um, have had a problem with this, including Jews.
00:40:13.400In, in the sense that they don't, they insist on, on attending worship, you know, during the quarantine.
00:40:20.320And in fact, in, in Florida, um, uh, they, what's the name of the guy down, DeSantis?
00:40:29.200Um, he, uh, he's making this sort of exemption or allowing people to attend church or religious services.
00:40:38.140Um, and that's, you know, so this is not something, but my original point is that Jews are concerned with this as well.
00:40:47.580So we shouldn't fear or we shouldn't doubt, rather, that, that people are looking for quarantine in an earnest manner.
00:40:55.760And that, and that whole sort of, it's kind of all hands on deck.
00:40:58.740And that everyone has an interest in solving this problem.
00:41:02.200So I think that that should start to kind of remove some of the paranoia that I think might be at the root of some of this resistance to the government telling us, you know, that we, um, have to be quarantined.
00:41:14.400Or whatever the case might be in the, in the, in the various states.
00:41:17.900Um, so, I mean, I, I guess that's the only thing that, that was kind of the main point.
00:41:21.980And then I'll, I'll pass it on to Keith.
00:41:24.920Yeah, I mean, well, I found interesting.
00:41:27.500I mean, I'm sure you guys have noticed, uh, there's been, uh, uh, a large increase in the amount of infighting in, in the distant right or the alt-right or whatever.
00:41:36.520And, you know, the last few weeks have exposed, you know, on, on one side, you have people calling everyone Nazbal.
00:41:42.440And on the other side, you have, uh, people pointing out that so many, uh, supposedly alt-right people are libertarians.
00:41:49.040But I mean, it has kind of exposed maybe the limitations of having a movement that was composed of, of people coming from that libertarian.
00:41:57.500And it's kind of showed that, um, as much as people talked about the, the, the libertarian alt-right pipeline, that sort of deeply ingrained, uh, libertarian attitude to the state and to affairs hasn't really been exercised for most people.
00:42:13.520And, you know, in many ways, much of the movement kind of was just, uh, a mutated form of, of libertarianism or liberalism.
00:42:22.260Because, you know, the problem, it shows the limitations as well, which is, uh, you know, there's, there, there was a good way to criticize the state and the elite from this.
00:42:32.780I mean, you know, we all knew about this back in January or even, uh, as early as December.
00:42:37.200And, you know, many people saw it coming and were asking the question, why aren't states in the West closing their borders now?
00:42:44.100And, you know, there's a good way to hold the state to account for not doing enough.
00:42:48.260And starting from the principle, you know, that the state is there to serve the people's interests.
00:42:52.120And then, you know, of course, the, the people on the other side will say, well, you know, the, the people occupying our state at the minute, why, why would you give them any extra power?
00:43:00.200And, you know, they, they'll always have this caveat that, well, I'm not necessarily against the state, but it's people in power.
00:43:05.280No, but I mean, you're seeing the problem.
00:43:08.480And I mean, you know, it's one of those things they're like, well, how are we ever going to get power back if we give it to the state?
00:43:13.500But again, it's such a Schmittian thing of, you know, there's a visible power center rather than, you know, we've slowly been losing, been being de-platformed and having rights taken away for the last four years or longer.
00:43:24.620And no one does anything because it's, it's private firms doing it.
00:43:27.300But I think this really exposes the limitations of that anarchistic attitude to the state.
00:43:35.600And maybe it'll be a good thing if there's kind of a split to come out of this, because, you know, you're always on the defensive.
00:43:41.740Anything the state does, it's always, they've gone too far this time.
00:43:45.040You're never putting forward a positive vision.
00:43:47.620And I mean, you can see, you know, like Boris Johnson had like a 73% approval rating.
00:43:52.800Everyone, every Western leader's approval ratings have gone up, the more totalitarian the measures.
00:43:59.480And, you know, that's a problem when there's an appetite for a stronger state and for a more maybe corporatist mode of organization rather than what we have.
00:44:10.800And when there's a dissonant movement on the sidelines, that's just kind of shrieking at power and acting outraged.
00:44:16.760You can't really influence things when that's your approach to everything.
00:44:20.040Exactly. And I think it's a kind of moral blackmail.
00:44:23.960And this is coming from that liberal virus at the heart of the right, particularly the American right.
00:44:31.200But there's this notion, you hear Stefan Molyneux say this all the time.
00:44:35.120I mean, Stefan did actually do a good video recently where he was like, look, we're past the denial stage.
00:44:41.120You've got to take this seriously now.
00:44:43.360And if you don't, you're going to be held to account.
00:44:45.100So I, you know, I'll applaud Stefan for that, but he still blocked me.
00:44:49.720But anyway, this thing you hear from Stefan Molyneux all the time, which is this blackmail, which is never give the state power that you don't want to be used against you.
00:45:01.260And so basically you never give the state any power because conceivably there could be someone else controlling it who would use that against you.
00:45:08.260And I heard this on a, when the way of the world replied to me this morning, he was like, I understand your point, but, you know, they're terrible people in the government right now.
00:45:20.480And you, you kind of, I heard a lot of this during the whole Brexit debate, which is like, you know, which you heard from identitarians or white nationalists, the alt-right or whatever.
00:45:33.160We, we like the idea of a united Europe, but we can't do it now because, you know, they're these bad feminists in government or something.
00:45:40.420I mean, first off, all of those bad feminists, maybe even worse feminists are in your national government.
00:45:45.780So don't tell me that they're like unique to the European Union.
00:45:50.060But, but, but, but also beyond that, it's like there, there's always going to be a state.
00:45:55.920There will be people who think if we were in charge of the government, there'd be people who think that we are bad, but we still have to rule them.
00:46:03.820And I mean that in a good sense, not, not in a, some sadistic sense.
00:46:07.020We need to rule them in a sane and sound way.
00:46:10.320Uh, you, you, you can't just say that we're, we're not going to use, you know, any kind of state power or we're not going to support the state performing its most basic function just because there might be some feminist or immigration, uh, uh, advocate somewhere in the government.
00:46:27.500There's always going to be that aspect, but the state is, you know, the state is or should be external to those things.
00:46:35.520Uh, so I, I just, but that just, that, that kind of liberal blackmail, it basically prevents you from ever doing anything from ever saying, we're going to be on the offensive.
00:46:45.860We are going to actually start presenting our vision of the world because all our vision of the world is inherently going to involve power.
00:46:53.960At some point, we are going to force people to be free.
00:46:58.200We are going to use the government for a, an end.
00:47:02.300And if you, if you're just constantly seeing that as an evil in itself, which is inherent to liberalism, then we're never going to be able to do anything.
00:47:12.140And we also, of all the things to criticize the government, there's so many things that are totally legitimate critiques of the European Union, of national governments, of America, of whatever, uh, the government actually taking a crisis seriously is the last thing we should be criticizing right now.
00:47:32.480Uh, so I, I, I just, I, I don't know, I, I kind of throw up my hands and, and I, and I also sense with a lot of these people who are just have this allergy to power that it's kind of like, what, what, if we, if that is our attitude, we are going to be this kind of like gadfly dissident movement forever, forever.
00:47:56.860We're always going to be just nitpicking other people's actions and that that's maybe useful or appropriate in some sense, but it's, it's, that's not going to ever get us anywhere.
00:48:08.760We're never going to actually enact a vision if this is our starting point.
00:48:44.860What kind of people are you going to attract into the movement if the only talking points you're ever putting out there is this kind of paranoid approach to power?
00:48:54.340I mean, I see it in Ireland like the, you know, the nationalist movement is more a kind of anti-establishment movement.
00:49:02.020And it's tended to attract more and more just people that are just kind of paranoid about everything and have this sort of negative schizophrenic approach to politics.
00:49:12.460And, you know, maybe it's good to get numbers and to get people that are against the system.
00:49:17.400But ultimately, if those people are just advocating a vacuum of power, how far is that going to get you?
00:49:27.920In fact, I take more or less the opposite position that ultimately the state is a kind of necessary.
00:49:34.260It's necessary that the state becomes a very powerful thing as a kind of, you know, as a way of securing and ameliorating a civilizational development.
00:49:48.700The state needs to be powerful because the problem we have now is that we it's, you know, our media is not controlled by state players that ostensibly could be acting in our interests.
00:50:00.760Right. So, I mean, to World of the Way's point, yes, we don't control the state now.
00:50:06.320That's true. So the state often acts against our interests.
00:50:10.380That is true. But we do have to start presenting a vision of what we're looking for, you know, beyond this period.
00:50:18.760And it's not this it's not this idea that we just want to kind of be left alone.
00:50:23.580We want to be, you know, in fact, petty nationalism is kind of just a sort of broader form of liberty, libertarianism on some level.
00:50:30.760In the sense that it's just, you know, we want to kind of be left alone in our little enclave with our own little sort of smaller ethnic family and not, you know, not to seek to kind of control the world in a way that will actually ensure the kind of survival of that smaller family.
00:50:46.900So libertarianism is kind of the is just sort of the the logical, logical extension of kind of, you know, the idea of you just want to be left alone.
00:50:56.360Well, the problem is you can't be alone. People have an interest in you, whether or not you have an interest in them.
00:51:01.620They say you have no place to hide. Right.
00:51:03.860So, in other words, you have to kind of assert and manifest yourself in the world and seek a way of dominating the world.
00:51:09.380And the way to do that ultimately is through, you know, assertion of culture, assertion of which ultimately becomes a kind of state expression in the sense that we have to control the media that our children are watching.
00:51:25.020We have to we have to to the extent that we need we feel that we need to control economies to our benefit.
00:51:32.060We have to do that as well. You know, we can't just be every man for himself or we're home.
00:51:38.500I can kind of I can kind of tie the two things together here, you know, the idea of of petty nationalism and, you know, who's who is influencing your culture ultimately and the response to the COVID-19 crisis, because it's interesting, you know,
00:51:53.640the anti-establishment figures in a small country like Ireland are increasingly adopting sort of Alex Jones language around things.
00:52:02.560So now things you wouldn't have seen even five, six years ago, you know, now there's there's like prominent figures pushing like hewing on stuff around Trump.
00:52:11.100And then I'll talk about, you know, vaccines.
00:52:14.240Yeah. And talk about, you know, vaccines, chemtrails, not FEMA camps, but similar kind of language around martial law.
00:52:23.480And like this is something that was never a part of Irish discourse, even on the sidelines, even on the extremes.
00:52:29.860And this is like a direct result of of interaction with sort of, I guess, American like Internet politics, like the Steve Bannon, Alex Jones type discourse around politics is kind of infecting discourse here.
00:52:44.380And, you know, libertarianism is never something that was that was natural to Europeans.
00:52:49.920But you do see libertarian ideas increasingly being pushed and becoming popular in Europe.
00:52:53.980I mean, I think Salvini in Italy was like advocating a flat tax.
00:52:58.500And I think there's countries in the Baltics of like implemented flat tax based off like U.S. think tanks economic proposals.
00:53:06.560So, you know, you're seeing, again, that shift away, like libertarianism is the ultimate rebuttal of that of that rootedness.
00:53:13.740And you're seeing that take hold in Europe.
00:53:15.720And that's that's a direct result of the cultural hegemony of the U.S. now, especially with the Internet.
00:54:18.700So which and this idea is not it's not a good idea, but it's a kind of understandable idea.
00:54:26.820And I think that it emerges from an anxiety about people getting having financial difficulties right now, which I think we should all be sensitive to because people are experiencing financial difficulties.
00:55:09.220It's not good if the older generation dies off and it's not, you know, kind of nature taking its course.
00:55:15.640First of all, we don't even really kind of know the origin of this virus.
00:55:18.720But the whole idea of nature taking its course, I mean, humans develop to kind of protect themselves, as it were, which includes also protecting.
00:55:26.860They're old and protecting their young.
00:55:40.940I mean, there is a kind of basic human value to it.
00:55:44.100And we no longer are living, you know, in Iceland, in whatever the nine nine hundreds.
00:55:52.580So that this idea is a kind of I don't think many people are advocating for this, but I don't think that a disease would have a eugenic effect.
00:56:02.560I guess one idea that one argument you could make is that, well, there's all these sort of wealth bearing boomers, for example.
00:56:09.500And if they die off, some of the wealth is going to go to these kids that are really strapped and need to buy homes.
00:56:15.060And therefore, they'll be able to, like, start having more children, the whole thing.
00:56:20.220And that or in just they'll be able to get back to work and provide for their family support.
00:56:25.500And therefore, we'll be able to have more children, you know, young white couples.
00:56:31.360And so that argument is flawed because the reason that wealth, the sort of wealth and decadence of the West has not proven that it's able to produce fertility or children.
00:56:50.320The problem there, ultimately, yeah, it means the opposite because you always can be this kind of American dream where it's in a manner it's keeping up with the Joneses.
00:57:00.000But it's, you know, it's not really the Joneses because no one really has class in that sort of old sense.
00:57:05.380It's keeping up with the guy who has the McMansion across the, you know, across the neighborhood or whatever the case may be.
00:57:11.480And so that wealth is not going into fertility.
00:57:15.380That problem is ultimately a cultural problem.
00:57:17.780And you could make the argument, for example, which I was making on Twitter, is that the fact that if we suffer a strong economic downturn, that actually would be a more – those would produce actually more eugenic conditions.
00:57:31.980Now, I'm not – my argument is more nuanced than that.
00:57:34.640And I'm not saying wouldn't it be great if we all suffered a, you know, horrific economic downturn, which may be kind of inevitable at this point, frankly.
00:57:44.100But, I mean, so one of the arguments is kind of a trope of the alt-right is this idea that the communists emerged in a kind of healthier way from communism.
00:57:55.080You know, part of it because they suffered and they learned a kind of strong political lesson, but also because they were impoverished.
00:58:01.100They were in a way that they hadn't been previously because communism was a way of – it was basically a kind of a way of retarding their economic development.
00:58:12.040So they became impoverished because communism didn't work in the sort of manifestation that appeared in the Soviet Union.
00:58:20.660But we see another example of that in the 30s when the world suffered an economic depression.
00:58:30.780So this idea that we emerged stronger from the 30s or that – and you can't say that's totally false.
00:58:36.940I think in some ways that people did emerge stronger.
00:58:39.300Like it did have a kind of sort of eugenic effect or it did play a kind of natural selection role.
00:58:47.300And then, of course, one of the sort of consequences of it were the terrible, terrible world wars that would follow.
00:58:59.820You know, some of our best people were dying in these wars.
00:59:02.300So this idea – so I think the idea is that like this or that travesty will have, whether it's an economic downturn or whether it's the disease killing off the old people, which has no eugenic benefit because it's just killing off old people.
00:59:19.240But let's say – yeah, an economic downturn.
00:59:21.920Yeah, our mind should be more not on how these conditions could benefit us in some eugenic manner or this is sort of a Ragnarok or a season that we go through and that we're going to kind of emerge stronger.
00:59:37.940We should be thinking more about how do we, as a people, control these conditions.
00:59:45.020How do we direct our people in a kind of – in a healthier, in a more fertile and eugenic direction in a conscious manner?
00:59:53.820Not because, you know, some travesty occurred and look, these travesties – I mean, to take that to its logical extension, then we should be – I mean, it's completely insane to take it to its logical extension, as you know.
01:00:10.820And the other thing, too, I would add as well is that, I mean, wealth is not necessarily connected to decadence or degeneracy.
01:00:20.400We should want to be prosperous and wealthy.
01:00:25.240But the problem then is – again, it's a cultural and ultimately a religious problem where we have to – what is the ethos of the society?
01:00:35.860What is that wealth being moved toward?
01:00:37.840Is that wealth being moved toward more children and thinking about, you know, mating in a kind of more eugenic manner because media is developed in a more positive way that's affirmative in a direction toward our people?
01:00:51.900So I just think that these kind of discussions are just – they're kind of inane because we shouldn't be looking, you know, for these sort of accidents to improve us or these travesties to improve us.
01:01:04.860We should be looking toward improving ourselves in a kind of conscious and intelligent way.
01:01:10.580Well, what's interesting is most of the people using this argument now about eugenics are the same people that would totally oppose anyone that mentioned the state kind of consciously using eugenics.
01:01:23.500And, you know, it's easy to forget, like, in the interwar period, eugenics was a very popular idea among academics and sort of the intelligentsia.
01:01:33.160I think this is kind of like this, again, this like post-World War II idea that, like, the worst thing imaginable is that there'll be, you know, there'll be a state body that's the ultimate decider.
01:01:42.840And it's like even with eugenics, it's like this kind of liberal idea of, like, the, you know, the invisible hand, like, you know, we're really against tyranny and silence and freedom of speech if it's a government doing it.
01:01:55.720But, you know, if market forces put someone in a position and they decide to do it, it's okay.
01:02:25.140Like, we could engage in eugenics in a totally sound fashion.
01:02:31.900And we could do it in ways that even resonate with traditionalism in the sense of, I've heard this guy, I believe he's of Indian background.
01:02:40.520I think he's actually from Dallas, Texas.
01:03:15.280And in the sense of part of eugenics should be we don't want a bunch of penniless millennials, you know, barely, you know, struggling, barely making it and thinking that they have no future because they're saddled with 100 grand and in college loan debt.
01:03:33.160And they can't afford health insurance.
01:03:36.000And they just feel like they're just keeping their mouth above water just barely.
01:03:40.560We don't want that during your 20s and early 30s.
01:03:45.740That's when you should be kind of slowly settling down, having children.
01:03:50.000And the fact that even more intelligent people who, I don't know, went to graduate school or, you know, have kind of some aspiration in their life that they don't just want to be a laborer.
01:04:01.580They actually want to do something with meaning and so on.
01:04:04.900Those people are being impoverished and not having children.
01:04:20.060We're harming people who we want to be, you know, producing children and so on.
01:04:29.080And, yeah, I mean, again, it's like the state is the entity that could rationally do this.
01:04:36.520It's where we could say we're going to help people, you know, put them in a position where they can feel comfortable and stable and they're not burdened with debt for their entire lives and they can actually have children.
01:04:49.660We're going to bring really sensible family planning to places like Africa so that we don't have these population explosions due to the introduction of modern medicine and other factors that leads to these just unsustainable, you know, populations and so on.
01:05:08.640We can do this in a rational and reasonable manner.
01:05:11.400And liberals will, of course, never use the word eugenics in a million years because it evokes images of Hitler and so on.
01:05:19.200But that is what they want for Africa to a large degree.
01:05:24.180And it's like a state can do this in a sensible, insane fashion.
01:05:30.400But just relying on the global economy or some, like, terrifying virus that emerged from a Chinese wet market to do this for us because no one takes responsibility, no one's to blame.
01:05:43.960First off, it's just not eugenic, like, pretty clearly.
01:05:48.360And secondly, it's just awful and inhumane.
01:05:54.920It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:00.400It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:30.400It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:36.680It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:39.260It is like leaving my career in a Facebook area to the end of the round and say,
01:06:42.860I'm the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:44.600It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine.
01:06:46.400So what are you DYKENCIE FORWARD OR RIDMIC