RadixJournal - The Pandemic and Political Chaos

00:00:01.000 It's Friday, April 3rd, and the McSpencer Group is back.

00:00:06.300 Joining me today are Keith Woods and Mark Brahman.

00:00:09.940 Main topic, anarcho-tyranny.

00:00:12.940 It's not just the flu, bro.

00:00:14.660 It's not a democratic hoax.

00:00:16.680 And it's not magically going away in April.

00:00:19.800 Coronavirus is here, and it's created a new normal for over half the population of the planet

00:00:25.440 who are quarantined in their homes with only Netflix and OnlyFans there to carve out a semblance of community.

00:00:31.820 The panel takes a step back and looks at what the corona crisis reveals about us,

00:00:37.140 the nature of government, and the future of geopolitics.

00:00:41.040 Most pundits and politicians will be spared by Corona Chan,

00:00:44.760 only to be destroyed by their unbearably bad takes.

00:00:49.160 Coronavirus has separated the wheat from the chaff.

00:00:51.860 It's revealed the weakness and incompetence of the world's only superpower and clouded the future.

00:00:58.780 The panel discusses pan-Europeanism, Carl Schmitt and Sam Francis,

00:01:03.640 the MyPillow guys' political religion, and the decline of the American empire.

00:01:08.300 No topic is too pretentious or arcane for this panel of pseudo-intellectual posers.

00:01:13.960 Hello gents, how are you doing?

00:01:16.100 You're both invisible today.

00:01:18.340 Mark Brahman is in an undisclosed underground lair.

00:01:25.160 And Keith, your laptop caught COVID-19 is what I hear.

00:01:30.640 So you just get to see my face today.

00:01:33.760 But how are you doing?

00:01:35.120 I'm doing well.

00:01:35.960 I'm in a bunker 600 feet underground.

00:01:38.340 I've got enough toilet paper, though.

00:01:42.220 And things are great otherwise.

00:01:44.880 And I'm just, you know, I'm looking forward to emerging after the virus has run its course.

00:01:51.220 And myself as Superman can emerge.

00:01:54.480 Right.

00:01:54.720 Maybe the last man.

00:01:56.280 Like in a different sense of the word.

00:01:57.940 In a better sense, yeah.

00:01:59.300 Yes.

00:01:59.760 Literal last man.

00:02:01.360 Keith, how are things in Ireland?

00:02:04.320 Yeah, not too bad.

00:02:05.240 Having some technical difficulties, as you say.

00:02:08.540 I mean, who would have thought those anime porn websites would have had so many viruses?

00:02:13.200 I would have thought.

00:02:14.560 But yes.

00:02:17.640 You were just doing research, after all.

00:02:21.940 As I could have all told us.

00:02:23.420 Okay.

00:02:24.220 Let's jump into this.

00:02:25.940 So 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.

00:02:47.760 And I obviously was born here, born in Boston, Massachusetts, raised in Texas.

00:02:53.880 Can you get more American?

00:02:55.900 No.

00:02:57.400 And we also have Mark Brahman, who is an American from the New England area as well.

00:03:04.120 And 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.

00:03:16.880 Yeah.

00:03:17.440 Although you stayed at home.

00:03:19.600 Well, we're being Americanized by today, so we're getting there.

00:03:24.180 So is the world.

00:03:24.960 Yeah. 0.99

00:03:25.160 I heard Keith was being accused of being an Americanized faggot on Twitter, so. 1.00

00:03:31.960 I've seen some, we've gotten attacked a lot. 0.98

00:03:36.800 And I think it's because we're putting out good content and our content is provocative in the best sense of the word.

00:03:45.100 And it's just kind of getting, it's, we're making people rethink things and that gets under their skin.

00:03:53.460 And then we get all these denunciations, which I've seen.

00:03:56.080 I saw a recent one just about 15 minutes ago.

00:04:00.460 Well, there is an idea.

00:04:01.640 That's what I'm here for, guys.

00:04:02.680 There 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.

00:04:19.540 But I mean, the first time.

00:04:21.440 It's just not entirely wrong.

00:04:22.480 Yes, partly.

00:04:24.820 But 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.

00:04:42.280 So.

00:04:42.580 Right.

00:04:43.180 And they did, it was traditionally the idea that was defined very much as being anti-American.

00:04:49.260 And 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.

00:04:58.060 So, 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.

00:05:07.500 I think it does mess the point on some level.

00:05:09.940 Yeah, I think it's both because I, I clearly pan-European identity and, and pan-Europeanism as a political concept is coming.

00:05:21.620 It has European roots, like no question, just the, the idea of a, a terrestrial empire, uniting nations and so on.

00:05:30.020 You can go back to Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, et cetera.

00:05:34.500 Um, but I, I, I actually wouldn't totally dismiss the idea that it's kind of American.

00:05:40.420 And 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.

00:05:54.700 You know, the Anglo versus Irish, um, we've put Germans in concentration camps during the world wars.

00:06:02.000 We'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. 1.00

00:06:09.980 Now, ethnic strife is, is about, you know, jokes or something.

00:06:14.620 It's, we're not at each other's throat.

00:06:16.560 And I, and I, again, there's a way that, that something good can come from something that might be bad to many extents.

00:06:24.280 And I, I think Americans have become kind of, you know, what is the alt-right term?

00:06:28.540 Like 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.

00:06:40.580 Maybe there's actually something that we can see that Europeans who are fixated on hating their neighbors can't. 0.67

00:06:47.560 And, uh, I, I don't think that should be totally dismissed or discounted.

00:06:51.820 Go ahead.

00:06:52.840 Well, 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.

00:07:06.600 Right.

00:07:06.820 So that's kind of an interesting irony there.

00:07:09.220 Yes.

00:07:09.600 Yeah, no question.

00:07:10.640 I 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.

00:07:21.300 He was, he was a bit hostile to it, towards that.

00:07:23.840 Uh, 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.

00:07:35.120 I mean, Oswald Mosley being the, you know, quintessential example, um, that it is a kind of fear of America.

00:07:41.180 But then, you know, again, maybe there, there has to be a kind of understanding of something that went right in America as well.

00:07:48.960 And I think we should be kind of, we should have a dialectical understanding of it in that way.

00:07:53.440 Um, and then secondly, I'm from America.

00:07:56.860 I'm, you know, in many ways, you could probably say that I'm anti-American if you look at, like, most of my opinions.

00:08:03.400 But 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. 0.81

00:08:17.440 Um, that would be ridiculous and, and kind of dishonest. 0.90

00:08:23.400 Anyway.

00:08:24.180 Yeah, and that was also Nietzsche's perspective as well.

00:08:27.660 I mean, more or less.

00:08:28.720 I 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?

00:08:44.680 So, or one of the early originators, yeah.

00:08:47.000 Yeah, 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?

00:09:05.780 Right.

00:09:06.120 As opposed to under, you know, Jupiter, which, which is what I would argue for, right?

00:09:10.880 So there, I, so I think that the problem of homogenization is not an inherently bad problem from my perspective.

00:09:18.680 It's just what that, what that is, right?

00:09:22.000 Well, 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.

00:09:34.920 So 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.

00:09:51.320 I mean, this is just a phenomenological observation, uh, by, by Nietzsche.

00:09:57.220 And 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.

00:10:09.680 We need to have borders and prevent travel or something like that, and that that's going to, um, protect us. 1.00

00:10:14.960 I mean, look, homogenization has been occurring for a long time, certainly throughout the age of the nation state.

00:10:21.300 The nation state seeks homogenization just on its own terms.

00:10:25.080 I 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.

00:10:36.820 Um, 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.

00:10:51.660 And 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.

00:11:05.820 Um, 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.

00:11:22.240 Um, 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.

00:11:43.460 Yeah. 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.

00:11:50.500 Like 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.

00:11:58.740 But then he has the, this vision of there being like little pagan enclaves and in Sweden or wherever.

00:12:04.040 So 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.

00:12:31.780 So 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.

00:12:59.820 I 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.

00:13:14.600 Yeah. 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.

00:13:26.180 And 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.

00:13:47.080 Exactly. 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.

00:14:16.680 And 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.

00:14:40.920 That 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.

00:15:00.860 So 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.

00:15:17.260 Uh, 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. 0.75

00:15:45.160 And 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. 0.82

00:16:12.160 God 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.

00:16:30.980 Our 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.

00:16:47.980 We, we, we will get through this and get back to a place that's stronger and safer than ever.

00:16:54.060 Thank you.

00:16:54.980 Look, 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,

00:17:17.340 just kind of strange Calvinistic impulse, which seems to be at the heart of generic American Christianity.

00:17:26.780 And 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.

00:17:45.540 But 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.

00:18:00.540 And 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.

00:18:14.220 And, 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.

00:18:38.280 And, 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.

00:18:53.420 They 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.

00:19:14.600 This is a totally anti-traditional, anti-nationalistic, just individualistic, materialistic, greedy kind of outlook at the end of the day.

00:19:24.880 And, 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.

00:19:36.980 You guys want to jump in?

00:19:39.640 Yeah, drink them if you got them. Caducean is the word.

00:19:42.240 Caducean, yeah. I'm drinking coffee.

00:19:44.600 I'm not going to pull a Janine Pirro and get wasted on a, on a podcast. I apologize for that. I'm sure that.

00:19:50.860 Well, other, other people might be watching Friday evening, I guess.

00:19:54.180 But, 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,

00:20:07.920 the, 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.

00:20:19.900 Um, 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. 0.99

00:20:39.620 Yeah.

00:20:40.300 So in other words, Protestantism is actually a kind of move away from Christianity.

00:20:46.080 And 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. 0.66

00:20:59.900 So they kind of pursued it in a very kind of pure, uh, kind of, uh, a, a sort of intellectually honest and pure manner.

00:21:06.600 And 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.

00:21:25.780 Now 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.

00:21:35.940 And 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.

00:21:49.780 Like, so on one hand, we had the, the godless communists and on the other hand, we had the, uh, God fearing capitalists in America.

00:21:58.340 Right.

00:21:58.820 So 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.

00:22:10.280 Right.

00:22:10.740 Which to your point, I mean, that, that's not really what Christianity was in its origin.

00:22:15.500 So Christianity has now become its sort of opposite on some level, or at least on a kind of practical level. 0.62

00:22:21.820 Um, 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.

00:22:31.840 Um, 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.

00:22:40.580 That 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.

00:22:59.320 And also real quick, just to jump in, because I'm thinking about this.

00:23:03.000 I mean, I, I, I agree that there, there is this meme, which is largely true.

00:23:08.020 If 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.

00:23:22.320 And, you know, I, I think there's a, you know, religion is always connected to the state.

00:23:28.320 There's never really a separation of church and state.

00:23:32.200 And so religiosity was a, you know, believing in God was a, a feeling of power.

00:23:38.280 We're going to be wealthy.

00:23:39.840 We're going to win this cold war for the battle of the soul of humanity against the commies. 1.00

00:23:45.180 And 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.

00:24:02.940 And it's just all about, you know, comfort and pleasure and welfare and so on.

00:24:08.280 But 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.

00:24:22.180 And 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. 0.98

00:24:34.220 Um, and, you know, particularly with, if we, if we look at the, you know, my pillow guy is just an expression of this.

00:24:41.380 There's this direct connection between getting rich and being the world power and believing in God.

00:24:48.740 And as that declines the United States, there's going to be a resultant and, you know, co-committant, um, crisis of faith.

00:24:56.160 It'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.

00:25:06.680 He said it was, uh, you know, it was, uh, Hebrew scripture, uh, Greek theology and, uh, sort of Roman majesty or aesthetics.

00:25:15.840 And the Reformation, uh, removed the Roman element, uh, greatly lessened the Greek element and extenuated the Judaic element.

00:25:26.240 Right.

00:25:26.620 And I think you especially see that.

00:25:27.380 How would you describe American Christianity?

00:25:29.900 It's like McDonald's aesthetics.

00:25:32.220 The U.S. is just a further extenuation of that.

00:25:35.800 Yeah, Zionist theology. 0.64

00:25:37.060 But 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.

00:25:47.240 But 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.

00:25:54.020 Maybe you can guess, but it's Brazil.

00:25:56.260 You know, Brazil, since the 50s, has had this massive shift to Protestantism.

00:26:00.880 And it's, it's, it's weird when you, you talk some, there's all these new Protestant churches popping up in Brazil all the time.

00:26:07.060 And most of them are like heavily Zionist and very, very Americanized in the way they talk about things.

00:26:13.080 So it's interesting.

00:26:13.660 You 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.

00:26:20.440 But, you know, maybe what characterizes American Protestantism especially is the lack of rootedness.

00:26:27.100 You know, Catholicism in Southern Europe or in somewhere like Ireland is such a rooted religion.

00:26:33.560 You know, it's rooted in the soil, it's rooted in the people and the traditions.

00:26:36.320 And, 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.

00:26:47.220 And, 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. 1.00

00:26:55.320 Like there's no, there's no tradition, there's no harking back to anything there.

00:26:58.360 They look like a mall, the megachurch.

00:27:01.860 The aesthetic really is that of a mall.

00:27:03.760 And 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.

00:27:14.220 But, yeah, that is the aesthetic.

00:27:16.120 It's the American McDonald's or mall aesthetic with Hebrew scripture.

00:27:20.560 Although they're not even, despite their claims to be fundamentalist, they're not really that fundamentalist.

00:27:26.560 And then the theology is that of American capitalism.

00:27:31.000 I'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.

00:27:43.600 But, yeah, so, I mean, unless we have...

00:27:47.000 It's interesting how you even see this, you even see the sort of Americanization of Eastern religions.

00:27:52.900 You 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.

00:28:05.420 And, you know, everything is just reduced to the absolute lowest common denominator.

00:28:10.980 Like, 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.

00:28:25.200 It's just always that, you know, reducing everything to the most base level.

00:28:30.460 Right.

00:28:31.520 Right.

00:28:31.920 Well, 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.

00:28:42.040 It's scripture.

00:28:43.240 Right.

00:28:43.600 So it's the word as opposed to something more tangible or concrete.

00:28:48.460 Hmm.

00:28:50.160 And, 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.

00:29:02.220 That you could represent through, through idols and that wouldn't be a form of sacrilege, for example.

00:29:07.820 Right.

00:29:09.280 In any case.

00:29:11.260 Yes.

00:29:11.840 But, um, uh, what is it?

00:29:13.920 Back to the virus.

00:29:14.780 Racial idolatrous. 0.99

00:29:15.620 Well, yeah, it's funny.

00:29:16.460 We'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.

00:29:21.560 I think that's something that we offer that's more unique and that's something needed as well.

00:29:28.520 Uh, 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.

00:29:45.940 Um, 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.

00:30:02.740 Um, 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.

00:30:30.340 But it can't actually handle real political decisions.

00:30:34.120 And this, uh, reminded me of, of two thinkers whom I admire, uh, quite a bit.

00:30:41.020 Um, one of whom is Carl Schmitt.

00:30:43.920 Oh, I guess we could drink to that one that I or Keith mentioned Schmitt.

00:30:48.560 Um, I'm out of coffee.

00:30:50.240 Uh, 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.

00:31:02.760 But, 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.

00:31:16.280 And, um, and, and, and that lends it to be misunderstood.

00:31:21.580 He'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.

00:31:32.120 There's nothing above the state.

00:31:33.480 Uh, and so on, uh, we, he, I think he spoke of his totalitarian will and so on.

00:31:38.100 Uh, 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.

00:31:50.060 Um, but his point was, was different.

00:31:53.800 Um, it, it was that in some ways the total state is a weak state.

00:31:59.360 And 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.

00:32:13.000 This 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.

00:32:30.140 And it becomes weak because it's, it's kind of doing everything except what it should be doing.

00:32:37.360 And 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.

00:32:51.420 And 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.

00:33:04.100 But, 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.

00:33:13.600 And 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.

00:33:30.080 But then it's tyrannizing everything else.

00:33:33.120 So it's not, it's tyrannizing its population through therapy and generating tolerance and endless surveillance and so on.

00:33:42.200 Um, but then it's actually not doing those things that it needs to do.

00:33:46.940 So it's both anarchy and tyranny at the same time.

00:33:49.860 And 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.

00:34:07.800 And, 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.

00:34:19.620 And 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.

00:34:27.880 Or I'll never take a vaccine that's given to me by the evil government.

00:34:31.960 It's this, it's kind of American libertarian virus that is ever present.

00:34:37.720 But then what we're seeing is a state that is actually weak and that cannot, that cannot handle its basic business.

00:34:46.240 Uh, you know, everyone, Alex Jones and someone wants to scream about FEMA camps as they've been doing for two decades now.

00:34:55.460 Well, 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? 0.84

00:35:14.460 Um, this is the time for bold, ruthless action by the government.

00:35:20.560 And 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.

00:35:42.840 Uh, but in, in, in the sense of doing its most basic task, we've seen it being actually extremely weak.

00:35:50.600 And 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.

00:36:00.200 And yet we're not always really able to see it.

00:36:03.500 And 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.

00:36:14.700 And they're also unwillingness to re to recognize, and, and you could recognize it critically, but you have to recognize it.

00:36:22.080 The 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.

00:36:41.080 It is what we call free market capitalism is not capitalism.

00:36:46.080 It is a product of political and military decisions.

00:36:50.080 And, 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.

00:37:00.580 And so conservatives aren't able to see where the government is actually under protecting and undergirding their, their lifestyle.

00:37:09.580 And 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.

00:37:26.660 And they freak out when it does these things.

00:37:28.660 And, uh, I, I just, I, I find it kind of amazing to be honest, that was a long rant.

00:37:37.180 You guys need to jump in here.

00:37:41.560 Yeah, no, I mean, it's a, it's boomer tears.

00:37:44.280 They say, right.

00:37:45.400 Um, I don't, um, yeah, there have been some, uh, pretty bad takes, uh, with the virus.

00:37:53.600 Um, 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.

00:38:08.380 And one of those, one of those streams is kind of this libertarian stream, which has more of this anxiety.

00:38:14.860 It'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.

00:38:24.960 And, uh, so this is one of those examples.

00:38:28.460 And 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.

00:38:40.080 So 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.

00:38:54.420 That's just a kind of objective fact.

00:38:56.580 And 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.

00:39:05.380 It'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.

00:39:17.440 These things have had a bad and deleterious effect.

00:39:19.980 And 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.

00:39:31.740 But something like this, I mean, people have to kind of use their common sense, as it were.

00:39:36.840 Something 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,

00:39:48.740 not 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. 0.92

00:39:59.960 Um, AIPAC, AIPAC had a problem with this.

00:40:02.220 Uh, 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.

00:40:13.400 In, in the sense that they don't, they insist on, on attending worship, you know, during the quarantine.

00:40:20.320 And in fact, in, in Florida, um, uh, they, what's the name of the guy down, DeSantis?

00:40:26.600 DeSantis, yeah.

00:40:27.680 DeSantis.

00:40:29.200 Um, he, uh, he's making this sort of exemption or allowing people to attend church or religious services.

00:40:38.140 Um, and that's, you know, so this is not something, but my original point is that Jews are concerned with this as well.

00:40:47.580 So we shouldn't fear or we shouldn't doubt, rather, that, that people are looking for quarantine in an earnest manner.

00:40:55.760 And that, and that whole sort of, it's kind of all hands on deck.

00:40:58.740 And that everyone has an interest in solving this problem.

00:41:02.200 So 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.

00:41:14.400 Or whatever the case might be in the, in the, in the various states.

00:41:17.900 Um, so, I mean, I, I guess that's the only thing that, that was kind of the main point.

00:41:21.980 And then I'll, I'll pass it on to Keith.

00:41:24.920 Yeah, I mean, well, I found interesting.

00:41:27.500 I 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.

00:41:36.520 And, you know, the last few weeks have exposed, you know, on, on one side, you have people calling everyone Nazbal.

00:41:42.440 And on the other side, you have, uh, people pointing out that so many, uh, supposedly alt-right people are libertarians.

00:41:49.040 But I mean, it has kind of exposed maybe the limitations of having a movement that was composed of, of people coming from that libertarian.

00:41:57.500 And 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.

00:42:13.520 And, you know, in many ways, much of the movement kind of was just, uh, a mutated form of, of libertarianism or liberalism.

00:42:21.860 Yeah.

00:42:22.260 Because, 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.

00:42:32.780 I mean, you know, we all knew about this back in January or even, uh, as early as December.

00:42:37.200 And, you know, many people saw it coming and were asking the question, why aren't states in the West closing their borders now?

00:42:44.100 And, you know, there's a good way to hold the state to account for not doing enough.

00:42:48.260 And starting from the principle, you know, that the state is there to serve the people's interests.

00:42:52.120 And 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?

00:43:00.200 And, you know, they, they'll always have this caveat that, well, I'm not necessarily against the state, but it's people in power.

00:43:05.280 No, but I mean, you're seeing the problem.

00:43:08.000 Yeah.

00:43:08.480 And 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?

00:43:13.500 But 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. 0.87

00:43:24.620 And no one does anything because it's, it's private firms doing it.

00:43:27.300 But I think this really exposes the limitations of that anarchistic attitude to the state.

00:43:35.600 And 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.

00:43:41.740 Anything the state does, it's always, they've gone too far this time.

00:43:45.040 You're never putting forward a positive vision.

00:43:47.620 And I mean, you can see, you know, like Boris Johnson had like a 73% approval rating.

00:43:52.800 Everyone, every Western leader's approval ratings have gone up, the more totalitarian the measures.

00:43:59.480 And, 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.

00:44:10.800 And when there's a dissonant movement on the sidelines, that's just kind of shrieking at power and acting outraged.

00:44:16.760 You can't really influence things when that's your approach to everything.

00:44:20.040 Exactly. And I think it's a kind of moral blackmail.

00:44:23.960 And this is coming from that liberal virus at the heart of the right, particularly the American right.

00:44:31.200 But there's this notion, you hear Stefan Molyneux say this all the time.

00:44:35.120 I mean, Stefan did actually do a good video recently where he was like, look, we're past the denial stage.

00:44:41.120 You've got to take this seriously now.

00:44:43.360 And if you don't, you're going to be held to account.

00:44:45.100 So I, you know, I'll applaud Stefan for that, but he still blocked me.

00:44:49.720 But 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.

00:45:01.260 And so basically you never give the state any power because conceivably there could be someone else controlling it who would use that against you.

00:45:08.260 And 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.

00:45:20.480 And 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.

00:45:30.380 They're like, well, okay, Spencer's right.

00:45:33.160 We, 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. 1.00

00:45:40.420 I mean, first off, all of those bad feminists, maybe even worse feminists are in your national government. 1.00

00:45:45.780 So don't tell me that they're like unique to the European Union.

00:45:50.060 But, but, but, but also beyond that, it's like there, there's always going to be a state.

00:45:55.920 There 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.

00:46:03.820 And I mean that in a good sense, not, not in a, some sadistic sense.

00:46:07.020 We need to rule them in a sane and sound way.

00:46:10.320 Uh, 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. 0.98

00:46:27.500 There's always going to be that aspect, but the state is, you know, the state is or should be external to those things.

00:46:35.520 Uh, 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.

00:46:45.860 We are going to actually start presenting our vision of the world because all our vision of the world is inherently going to involve power.

00:46:53.960 At some point, we are going to force people to be free.

00:46:58.200 We are going to use the government for a, an end.

00:47:02.300 And 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.

00:47:12.140 And 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.

00:47:32.480 Uh, 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.

00:47:56.860 We'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.

00:48:08.760 We're never going to actually enact a vision if this is our starting point.

00:48:13.240 Yeah, there's a problem as well.

00:48:15.020 I mean, you know, this idea, like there's people that will call themselves fascists or national socialists or something.

00:48:21.020 And it's like, well, you know, in an ideal world, if we had power, I'd do all these things.

00:48:25.060 But then on the day-to-day level, they're libertarians in all but name because they're opposing everything.

00:48:31.700 And regardless of what they might say, you know, in their ideal world, if they take power, what they're going to do.

00:48:36.340 The fact is, if that's your approach, how are you ever going to get power?

00:48:39.220 Your entire approach is a rejection and a running away from power.

00:48:43.520 And there's also a problem.

00:48:44.860 What 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?

00:48:54.340 I mean, I see it in Ireland like the, you know, the nationalist movement is more a kind of anti-establishment movement.

00:49:02.020 And 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.

00:49:12.460 And, you know, maybe it's good to get numbers and to get people that are against the system.

00:49:17.400 But ultimately, if those people are just advocating a vacuum of power, how far is that going to get you?

00:49:25.800 Yeah, no, look, I agree.

00:49:27.920 In fact, I take more or less the opposite position that ultimately the state is a kind of necessary.

00:49:34.260 It'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.

00:49:48.700 The 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.

00:50:00.760 Right. So, I mean, to World of the Way's point, yes, we don't control the state now.

00:50:06.320 That's true. So the state often acts against our interests.

00:50:10.380 That is true. But we do have to start presenting a vision of what we're looking for, you know, beyond this period.

00:50:18.760 And it's not this it's not this idea that we just want to kind of be left alone.

00:50:23.580 We want to be, you know, in fact, petty nationalism is kind of just a sort of broader form of liberty, libertarianism on some level.

00:50:30.760 In 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. 0.95

00:50:46.900 So 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.

00:50:56.360 Well, the problem is you can't be alone. People have an interest in you, whether or not you have an interest in them.

00:51:01.620 They say you have no place to hide. Right.

00:51:03.860 So, in other words, you have to kind of assert and manifest yourself in the world and seek a way of dominating the world.

00:51:09.380 And 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.

00:51:25.020 We have to we have to to the extent that we need we feel that we need to control economies to our benefit.

00:51:32.060 We have to do that as well. You know, we can't just be every man for himself or we're home.

00:51:38.500 I 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,

00:51:53.640 the anti-establishment figures in a small country like Ireland are increasingly adopting sort of Alex Jones language around things.

00:52:02.560 So 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.

00:52:11.100 And then I'll talk about, you know, vaccines.

00:52:14.240 Yeah. And talk about, you know, vaccines, chemtrails, not FEMA camps, but similar kind of language around martial law.

00:52:23.480 And like this is something that was never a part of Irish discourse, even on the sidelines, even on the extremes.

00:52:29.860 And 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.

00:52:44.380 And, you know, libertarianism is never something that was that was natural to Europeans.

00:52:49.920 But you do see libertarian ideas increasingly being pushed and becoming popular in Europe.

00:52:53.980 I mean, I think Salvini in Italy was like advocating a flat tax.

00:52:58.500 And I think there's countries in the Baltics of like implemented flat tax based off like U.S. think tanks economic proposals.

00:53:06.560 So, you know, you're seeing, again, that shift away, like libertarianism is the ultimate rebuttal of that of that rootedness.

00:53:13.740 And you're seeing that take hold in Europe.

00:53:15.720 And that's that's a direct result of the cultural hegemony of the U.S. now, especially with the Internet.

00:53:22.000 Yeah.

00:53:26.080 All right.

00:53:28.520 Bookmark.

00:53:29.800 Do we have anything more to say on this?

00:53:31.520 Yeah, well, one thing I wanted to add was maybe talk about eugenics question a little bit.

00:53:38.920 That's that's another interesting kind of Twitter thing that's going around that we should squash.

00:53:46.700 But go ahead.

00:53:47.640 Sure.

00:53:48.400 Yeah.

00:53:48.680 Well, you anticipated me.

00:53:49.780 So that was.

00:53:51.140 Yeah.

00:53:51.760 So there is kind of one idea that's floating around in our sphere.

00:53:55.720 And this is the idea that it actually could have a sort of healthy or strengthening or eugenic effect.

00:54:01.520 If we just said, you know, screw it, you know, whether or not the government is lying to us or it doesn't matter.

00:54:07.000 We should just we should break these quarantines and the government should not be imposing these quarantines. 0.91

00:54:11.960 And we should just let the disease to run its course and, you know, kill off everyone's grandmother, effectively.

00:54:18.400 Right.

00:54:18.700 So which and this idea is not it's not a good idea, but it's a kind of understandable idea.

00:54:26.820 And 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.

00:54:40.500 Right.

00:54:40.720 People are, you know, people are going who have small businesses are going out of business.

00:54:44.200 I've lost some business as well, personally.

00:54:46.760 So I'm I understand the kind of instinct to be like, let's get back to work so we can feed our family.

00:54:54.660 We can pay the mortgage or whatever the case may be.

00:54:56.860 And so this is all very kind of understandable.

00:54:59.780 But I think that to make a eugenic argument is incorrect.

00:55:03.640 I don't I don't I don't think that you can make a strong eugenic argument.

00:55:07.660 Here's the thing.

00:55:09.220 It's not good if the older generation dies off and it's not, you know, kind of nature taking its course.

00:55:15.640 First of all, we don't even really kind of know the origin of this virus.

00:55:18.720 But the whole idea of nature taking its course, I mean, humans develop to kind of protect themselves, as it were, which includes also protecting.

00:55:26.860 They're old and protecting their young.

00:55:29.140 Right.

00:55:29.320 This is something that we're evolved for.

00:55:31.300 And that's a good thing.

00:55:32.620 There is a value in old people. 0.94

00:55:34.680 They can they contain wisdom.

00:55:37.120 They take care of your children.

00:55:39.420 You love that.

00:55:40.500 Right.

00:55:40.940 I mean, there is a kind of basic human value to it.

00:55:44.100 And we no longer are living, you know, in Iceland, in whatever the nine nine hundreds.

00:55:52.580 So 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.

00:56:02.560 I guess one idea that one argument you could make is that, well, there's all these sort of wealth bearing boomers, for example.

00:56:09.500 And if they die off, some of the wealth is going to go to these kids that are really strapped and need to buy homes.

00:56:15.060 And therefore, they'll be able to, like, start having more children, the whole thing.

00:56:19.360 Right.

00:56:20.220 And that or in just they'll be able to get back to work and provide for their family support.

00:56:25.500 And therefore, we'll be able to have more children, you know, young white couples. 0.87

00:56:31.360 And 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.

00:56:44.960 Right.

00:56:45.280 So the wealthier we get does not mean that we are having more children.

00:56:50.240 No.

00:56:50.320 The 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.

00:57:00.000 But it's, you know, it's not really the Joneses because no one really has class in that sort of old sense.

00:57:05.380 It's keeping up with the guy who has the McMansion across the, you know, across the neighborhood or whatever the case may be.

00:57:11.480 And so that wealth is not going into fertility.

00:57:15.380 That problem is ultimately a cultural problem.

00:57:17.780 And 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.

00:57:31.980 Now, I'm not – my argument is more nuanced than that.

00:57:34.640 And 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.

00:57:44.100 But, 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.

00:57:55.080 You know, part of it because they suffered and they learned a kind of strong political lesson, but also because they were impoverished.

00:58:01.100 They 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.

00:58:12.040 So they became impoverished because communism didn't work in the sort of manifestation that appeared in the Soviet Union.

00:58:20.660 But we see another example of that in the 30s when the world suffered an economic depression.

00:58:30.780 So this idea that we emerged stronger from the 30s or that – and you can't say that's totally false.

00:58:36.940 I think in some ways that people did emerge stronger.

00:58:39.300 Like it did have a kind of sort of eugenic effect or it did play a kind of natural selection role.

00:58:47.300 And then, of course, one of the sort of consequences of it were the terrible, terrible world wars that would follow.

00:58:56.860 And these had a dysgenic effect.

00:58:59.820 You know, some of our best people were dying in these wars.

00:59:02.300 So 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. 0.72

00:59:19.240 But let's say – yeah, an economic downturn.

00:59:20.680 Randomly as well, yeah.

00:59:21.920 Yeah, 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.

00:59:37.940 We should be thinking more about how do we, as a people, control these conditions.

00:59:43.420 That should be more our mentality.

00:59:45.020 How do we direct our people in a kind of – in a healthier, in a more fertile and eugenic direction in a conscious manner?

00:59:53.820 Not 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.

01:00:10.820 And the other thing, too, I would add as well is that, I mean, wealth is not necessarily connected to decadence or degeneracy.

01:00:20.400 We should want to be prosperous and wealthy.

01:00:23.580 That's absolutely the case.

01:00:25.240 But 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?

01:00:35.860 What is that wealth being moved toward?

01:00:37.840 Is 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?

01:00:51.900 So 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.

01:01:04.860 We should be looking toward improving ourselves in a kind of conscious and intelligent way.

01:01:10.240 Right.

01:01:10.580 Well, 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.

01:01:23.500 And, 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.

01:01:33.160 I 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.

01:01:42.840 And 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.

01:01:55.720 But, you know, if market forces put someone in a position and they decide to do it, it's okay.

01:02:00.300 It's weird.

01:02:01.000 It's kind of a similar thing with eugenics.

01:02:02.840 Like, we'd never in a million years allow something so horrifying that the state would encourage eugenics. 0.94

01:02:09.720 But if it's this impersonal thing like a virus that we don't choose who gets or not, then that's okay.

01:02:16.300 Because at least there's no decider.

01:02:18.860 At least no one is using biopower to decide on life.

01:02:23.860 So, again, it's the opposite.

01:02:25.140 Like, we could engage in eugenics in a totally sound fashion. 0.97

01:02:31.900 And 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.

01:02:40.520 I think he's actually from Dallas, Texas.

01:02:43.200 Sanji Enjit or something.

01:02:45.000 He co-hosts this Hill podcast with Crystal Ball.

01:02:48.800 I have all these weird connections to them.

01:02:50.660 I think I was classmates with Crystal Ball.

01:02:52.160 But anyway, although we didn't know each other.

01:02:55.140 But he was saying, like, this is what the new right is.

01:02:59.120 It's basically which political party is going to help you get married and have a solid job by age 30 and therefore have a family. 0.98

01:03:07.880 And, you know, that's kind of basic bitch. 1.00

01:03:10.300 It's kind of Tucker Carlson type stuff. 0.97

01:03:12.440 But it's not wrong and it's not bad.

01:03:15.280 And 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. 0.57

01:03:33.160 And they can't afford health insurance.

01:03:36.000 And they just feel like they're just keeping their mouth above water just barely.

01:03:40.560 We don't want that during your 20s and early 30s.

01:03:45.740 That's when you should be kind of slowly settling down, having children.

01:03:50.000 And 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.

01:04:01.580 They actually want to do something with meaning and so on.

01:04:04.900 Those people are being impoverished and not having children.

01:04:07.900 That is not eugenic at all.

01:04:10.100 And, you know, the social Darwinism of free market capitalism just does not hold at all.

01:04:17.900 It might actually be the reverse.

01:04:20.060 We're harming people who we want to be, you know, producing children and so on.

01:04:29.080 And, yeah, I mean, again, it's like the state is the entity that could rationally do this.

01:04:36.520 It'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.

01:04:49.660 We'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. 1.00

01:05:08.640 We can do this in a rational and reasonable manner.

01:05:11.400 And liberals will, of course, never use the word eugenics in a million years because it evokes images of Hitler and so on.

01:05:19.200 But that is what they want for Africa to a large degree.

01:05:24.180 And it's like a state can do this in a sensible, insane fashion.

01:05:30.400 But 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.

01:05:43.960 First off, it's just not eugenic, like, pretty clearly.

01:05:48.360 And secondly, it's just awful and inhumane.

01:05:54.920 It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.99

01:06:00.400 It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.99

01:06:30.400 It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.99

01:06:36.680 It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.99

01:06:39.260 It is like leaving my career in a Facebook area to the end of the round and say,

01:06:42.860 I'm the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.97

01:06:44.600 It's the worst form of eugenics I could imagine. 0.99

01:06:46.400 So what are you DYKENCIE FORWARD OR RIDMIC

01:06:49.100 You can see it in the future.

01:06:55.160 You look towards a place.

01:06:56.560 You can see, too.

01:06:57.100 You're kind ofaide.

01:06:58.960 Videos did it.

RadixJournal - April 03, 2020

The Pandemic and Political Chaos

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