The Auron MacIntyre Show - Elon vs. the ADL ｜ Guest： Matthew Peterson ｜ 9⧸8⧸23

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00:00:30.000 Hey, everybody. How's it going?

00:00:31.740 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.400 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.660 So, I really try not to turn the show into just kind of a Twitter recap.

00:00:42.460 I hate it when people are just constantly talking about whatever happened on Twitter.

00:00:45.820 However, this week, something really important happened.

00:00:49.560 Something that could have far-reaching effects well outside of that social media site.

00:00:53.800 And so, I wanted to drill down into it.

00:00:55.620 So, for those who are not familiar, there's a hashtag trending on Twitter called Ban the ADL.

00:01:02.060 The Anti-Defamation League is, of course, an organization that has a lot of power, wields a lot of influence, especially when it comes to censorship and media.

00:01:11.560 And it's one that has had a big impact on what kind of content, especially conservative content, can appear on different sites, different places, be monetized, be present on things like YouTube or Twitter.

00:01:23.920 And with this hashtag trending, Elon Musk brought up a lot of things about the way that the ADL might have influenced Twitter and possible actions he might be taking to uncover what's going on with the ADL.

00:01:38.400 So, to break all this down with me, I have Matthew Peterson on.

00:01:42.020 He is the editor-in-chief over at The Blaze.

00:01:44.840 Matthew, thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:46.700 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:01:48.640 Happy Friday.

00:01:49.820 Oh, no, absolutely, yeah.

00:01:51.020 So, we're looking at, of course, the action that kind of Elon's looking at taking with the ADL.

00:02:00.560 One of the big complaints that he made once people started kind of having this hashtag, talking about the ADL's desire to ban a lot of people, to change terms of service, to influence who can be heard on the site.

00:02:12.620 One of the things, the big thing that he focused on was the way that he believes that the Anti-Defamation League has interacted with Twitter's advertisers.

00:02:23.260 He said that there's a large amount of, you know, he contacted many of the advertisers after he took over, and many of them referenced the Anti-Defamation League's campaign against Twitter.

00:02:33.900 Even though Elon said there was no real change once he had taken over, they said there was a big increase on hate in the platform, and they were pushing against monetization, pushing against advertisers to continue to support people on that platform.

00:02:49.420 What do you think of that?

00:02:50.360 What do you think about kind of his approach?

00:02:52.500 The angle he's taking specifically is the way that the ADL approaches and influences advertisers on the website.

00:02:58.840 This is really, really important, and I'm glad that you had me on to discuss this, because what he's describing is where the rubber hits the road.

00:03:10.740 And so, you know, everyone wants to talk kind of in these generic political terms about censorship and people fighting back and forth.

00:03:18.020 But the way in which this works economically, right, in our quote-unquote free market, is that they do go to advertisers, and they scare the hell out of these companies, because they're almost a quasi-public institution at this point.

00:03:36.600 I mean, so what happens is these nonprofits, and the ADL is just one of them, these organizations, are held up as the arbiter of the standard, right, by which you tell whether something is racist or not or offensive or not.

00:03:50.080 And they're increasingly colluding with the government, as we can discuss, but they're held up as the standard by which you judge.

00:03:57.900 And so when you go to the advertisers who, you know, who the companies themselves, the CEOs, the executive team, may or may not be very political, but the people who are in marketing, who are supposed to be most sensitive to this, are usually very much inclined, shall we say, to be against Elon Musk already.

00:04:18.080 And then the ADL comes to them and starts shouting and yelling and screaming about how terrible it is.

00:04:23.940 And then the people in these companies who are receiving these messages go to their bosses and say, you know, this is very problematic because they paid millions of dollars to a research firm, and they say that we should be woke, and people are very sensitive.

00:04:38.700 Our audience, our consumers are very sensitive to this stuff.

00:04:41.280 And, you know, we've really tried to have an inclusive marketing campaign over the last three years, and we've spent millions of dollars doing that.

00:04:49.240 And now the ADL is coming to us, and they're saying that, you know, Elon is, this is, the hate speech is going up, and we just can't do this.

00:04:57.380 And they present a very cohesive case.

00:05:00.860 I call it an iron triangle, actually, like the research firms, the advertising agencies, and then the marketing execs within the companies.

00:05:09.320 They're sort of all on the same team, right?

00:05:12.480 And the research firms literally get paid millions of dollars to tell these companies that they should go woke, otherwise they'll go broke.

00:05:20.280 And then the advertising agencies are, let's just say, extremely one-dimensional in terms of how they think about all this.

00:05:28.960 And so the ADL comes in, and they're like providing the objective standard.

00:05:33.480 And so what Musk is going to is right at the pain point, right, is like right where they're influencing the money, and they have a tight control over this channel between advertising and the rest of these corporations.

00:05:51.200 Does that make sense?

00:05:51.940 No, yeah, I think that's critical because, like you said, a lot of people like to talk about this kind of abstract free speech.

00:05:58.800 You know, we're out there, we're fighting for the principle of free speech.

00:06:01.740 But, of course, as you pointed out in this quote-unquote marketplace of ideas, you have this constant battle between access, right?

00:06:10.620 Just because you can say something doesn't mean anyone can hear you.

00:06:14.520 And when you have these critical choke points in all of these social media platforms, whether we like it or not, these places like Twitter, like Facebook, like YouTube, have become the public square.

00:06:25.340 They've become the place where people regularly communicate, where people who otherwise would never interact with each other and would never run into each other constantly discuss ideas.

00:06:35.480 And so if you have access to this megaphone, you have a voice.

00:06:39.100 And if you're denied it, then you just don't exist at all.

00:06:42.180 It's amazing how quickly I think about some of the people like Alex Jones or Stefan Molyneux, who in many ways just disappeared as soon as they were censored off of these platforms.

00:06:52.320 People who had massive reach, massive ability to draw audiences were extremely popular.

00:06:57.660 I mean, Jones is still somewhere in the public consciousness, mostly due to his kind of bombastic style.

00:07:03.000 But these people, for all intents and purposes, just kind of vanished from the public eye as soon as the hammers dropped on them.

00:07:09.100 And a lot of people at that time said, hey, you know, it's fine because these are the most extreme guys.

00:07:14.660 These guys are radical.

00:07:15.600 They're out there saying all this really dangerous stuff.

00:07:18.280 However, a lot of people also noticed this is the test case, right?

00:07:22.560 This is going to come eventually for everybody.

00:07:25.180 And so just ignoring the fact that they can go to these advertisers, they can go to these choke points when it comes to these different social media sites really makes it very easy to limit the amount of speech anyone can have.

00:07:41.340 And I think the question most people would ask is, how does an organization like the ADL or other organizations like it, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, how did they become these arbiters?

00:07:53.780 They don't just magically, you know, get elevated into these positions.

00:07:58.100 What are they doing to set themselves up as kind of the default voice?

00:08:03.200 Because they get selected by things like Wikipedia, they get selected by places like Google, they're routinely used as sources by all of these major credentialing institutions.

00:08:12.820 How did they establish that kind of power and leverage inside our system?

00:08:17.740 Yeah, that's a great question and one that unfortunately all Americans now have to deal with because, again, they're quasi-official, you know, they're quasi-public institutions at this point almost.

00:08:30.540 They're used, they collude with the power of government often increasingly.

00:08:37.520 Just real quick before we go to that, though, your point was so important about, you know, the flow of money and free speech.

00:08:43.440 Just one example that we should point out real quick is Tucker.

00:08:46.800 I mean, Tucker Carlson did not have the same amount of leverage he should have had at Fox News, even though he had consistently the most popular show, because that show did not directly generate the same amount of revenue that other shows, I believe, Hannity's show did.

00:09:05.240 And the reason for that is very simple, that the advertisers weren't there for his show, even though, according to free market neutral principles, of course they would have been on the show with the most.

00:09:16.800 audience in the audience in the country.

00:09:18.460 They boycotted that show.

00:09:20.940 And so, you know, so they were trying to monetize Tucker through, you know, he's doing Fox Nation and otherwise.

00:09:28.860 But it's not, you know, not quite a secret what the advertisers did to him.

00:09:35.020 And there you, I mean, there's the most popular talk show host in America, right?

00:09:40.640 So this is a very, very serious issue.

00:09:43.140 How does ADL get there?

00:09:44.680 I mean, it's a good question.

00:09:45.880 There's probably better people to answer it, frankly, like the entire history of this.

00:09:50.660 But I think that key to it all is leveraging in normal Americans' minds the idea that, of course, we are all against racism, and that is the worst possible sin in American society, right?

00:10:11.880 And so there's this fear that grows in post-World War II America as, you know, just culturally as we sort of evolve and change in some ways.

00:10:24.060 And people, Americans as a whole basically say Jim Crow is a terrible thing and we're against this.

00:10:29.260 And, you know, we want the Civil Rights Act because we want colorblind laws, et cetera. 0.76

00:10:35.520 And what ends up happening is a real keen sense, not just in elite society, but really in all the aspirational America that, you know, we think that some of this racial is a really nasty thing. 0.92

00:10:51.560 And we focus on a couple different aspects, right, that come out as, well, this is what racism is.

00:10:58.160 And, you know, World War II happens, people went and fought the Nazis, and, you know, the aftermath is looking at, you know, how did this happen, how did all these atrocities happen?

00:11:11.740 And so in the American consciousness, there really is almost no society.

00:11:17.440 I mean, it's very few examples in history of societies that were so almost open and honest about this is evil, this is bad, and we don't want to be like this, right?

00:11:29.620 So it's very powerful cultural leverage in Americans' minds.

00:11:34.020 And what grows out of this and becomes sort of monstrous is organizations like the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which take that notion, which is, you know, deep in everyone's mind, and just use it to start beating an agenda that has nothing to do with any of this.

00:11:52.960 And I think that's the simple explanation is, how does this work?

00:11:57.140 Well, it worked because people were afraid of being called racist because that was the worst thing you could be called, and that's the thing that would get you marginalized from society.

00:12:06.600 And if you look right now, what are the two things you can be called that, you know, are the bad things that we need to attach bad people to to get them out of elite society? 0.79

00:12:15.700 You're racist or you're fascist. And so, you know, that's what you're going to that's the worst possible thing, the worst possible sin.

00:12:22.700 That's what you're going to call people who are your enemy. So being called these names are being being labeled as a hate group by these groups.

00:12:30.340 It meant something early on to everybody. And and and that that is the real power that they had, which is real. Right.

00:12:38.500 And so what happens over time is and you see the entire, you know, the entirety of elite society in America doing this is they start to realize that's a real power.

00:12:48.960 It's a power that, by the way, middle America gave them because middle America was afraid of being called these names.

00:12:54.980 They saw these these these these kind of mental stances as evil. And so they they've used that over the years.

00:13:04.120 And now it's almost like recognizable, like the thing that they've become, I think, because it almost has nothing to do with.

00:13:13.700 I mean, racism is kind of a word they use. Right. An empty phrase. It could be anything.

00:13:19.020 You know, it could be any word. It could be an alien language you've never heard of.

00:13:21.680 It's just a word that means bad. And they are there to attack, you know, anyone who is full of hate, which means, you know, everyone I disagree with is Hitler. 0.66

00:13:34.320 Yeah, they've turned into a magical word that can simply be imbued with whatever qualities they currently want to push against.

00:13:41.220 And it really has no no tie to any given value or given understanding.

00:13:46.420 It's just whatever we can use to other our enemies and justify attacks against them.

00:13:51.640 And I think it's pretty obvious, like you said, that this has become the continual operating mechanism by which these organizations work.

00:14:00.680 Now, you mentioned this a couple of times, and I think it's really important.

00:14:04.100 So we should probably stop to kind of think on this a second.

00:14:07.500 You know, these have become basically quasi public organizations.

00:14:12.120 These have become organizations that have more or less merged with the government.

00:14:16.060 We know that the ADL, you know, trains the FBI on all kinds of things.

00:14:21.400 We know that the STLC is used as a reference point by different intelligence organizations and all of these things.

00:14:27.740 We know that there there's constantly back and forth communication between these.

00:14:32.680 And in many cases, it seems like the DNC can direct these organizations or these organizations can direct the DNC.

00:14:40.360 So basically, the ruling party of the United States is almost indistinguishable from these organizations.

00:14:46.880 They're not really separate entities so much as, you know, different names for different bureaus of the same ruling party.

00:14:53.820 And that becomes a really scary thing because it completely washes over this public-private distinction, right?

00:14:59.720 This is a thing that conservatives often hold on to.

00:15:02.120 Well, it's a private business.

00:15:03.100 It can do what it wants, right?

00:15:04.460 And so, you know, they say at the end of the day, Twitter or Facebook or YouTube, they're making their own decisions.

00:15:10.880 And if they're informed by these other organizations, well, that's just part of the magic of democracy.

00:15:15.520 But I think you and I know that that's not really what's happening here and that the government and these corporations and these non-government institutions are all working fast and loose.

00:15:28.040 They're able to run right past any kind of constitutional restriction on the power of government or the power of any other censorious institution because they can always just pass the ball off to the other branch whenever they're not supposed to do something.

00:15:43.140 So if the government wants censorship, they just pass it over to the ADL or they pass it over to the media companies.

00:15:48.360 And if the media companies or the ADL want something done, they can then start influencing the government.

00:15:53.920 They just move power around and put it where they need it when they need it rather than being restricted by anything that would exist inside the Bill of Rights.

00:16:02.680 Yeah, I think that's an important point.

00:16:05.520 There's a bunch of important points there, right?

00:16:07.360 So one is it's very useful to what you could call the ruling class right now.

00:16:14.280 It's very useful for everything not to be inside the government.

00:16:18.360 Because, I mean, that looks bad, right?

00:16:20.660 I mean, it looks bad.

00:16:22.540 You can always, there's always plausible deniability because you can always say, well, look, this wasn't enforced by, you know, some whatever, fascist, communist, whatever word you want to use, regime that forces speech and is censoring speech.

00:16:37.280 The ADL made recommendations and it's a separate entity.

00:16:41.740 It's a, you know, harmless nonprofit that tries to do good and is against hate.

00:16:46.900 Who's not against hate?

00:16:49.160 And it's against hate.

00:16:50.660 And the Twitter took its recommendations.

00:16:54.060 And the advertisers took its recommendations.

00:16:56.380 And it's an independent body.

00:16:58.440 And that has nothing to do with us, the government, who also, by the way, was ensconced in Twitter with former, many, so many former FBI agents.

00:17:07.300 They had their own Slack thread.

00:17:08.880 The general counsels from the FBI covering up speech.

00:17:12.500 But, you know, anyway, it's a separate entity, right?

00:17:15.360 And they do this all the time.

00:17:16.700 So, so the problem is they're all, they all agree on the same principles.

00:17:20.560 And in the case of the ADL, they work together in a very, in a very close way.

00:17:26.220 But what, what it does is it gives it the, the aura of neutrality and because it's a separate entity.

00:17:32.860 And what people have to realize is these people are all working together.

00:17:37.160 They all agree on the same principles and they, of the same organization.

00:17:41.980 So, you know, journalism is this way too, by the way.

00:17:45.700 There's all kinds of people who work for SPLC, who work for journalistic outfits, and who are also tied to the intelligence community.

00:17:55.140 And so you have to look at that and think about it and think, when has this just all become one thing?

00:18:01.720 Like, I look at this in media all the time with certain publications.

00:18:04.940 And I think, why don't they just work for Five Eyes?

00:18:08.540 Like, why, why, why can't we just have, you know, just give it an agency name and let it work for, you know, the, the actual, the actual powers that be.

00:18:18.800 Anyway, I don't, this isn't conspiratorial.

00:18:22.420 And what you have to realize is what, you know, Oran just said, look, you can see the collaboration.

00:18:28.180 Nonetheless, it's useful to them.

00:18:29.420 So what, the first thing that people have to do is, is realize these people are all batting for the same team and they're all colluding together.

00:18:37.020 And the genius of Elon or just the breath of fresh air, I don't know if it's genius, it's just saying the quiet part out loud is saying, you went to my advertisers, you destroyed the reputation, and you financially hurt my company with what I'm questioning is true at all, right?

00:18:56.160 Because we somehow were more hateful now that I took over, rather than we were five seconds ago when we weren't as hateful.

00:19:04.980 Says who? 0.65

00:19:06.020 I just lost $22 billion, right?

00:19:08.040 I mean, that's real.

00:19:09.800 And that happens every day across this entire country to countless businesses because of what these people do.

00:19:16.880 Yeah.

00:19:17.020 And I think that's the really big thing, right?

00:19:18.720 Is he, is Elon made these assertions.

00:19:20.820 He said, look, we know that they went to these advertisers.

00:19:23.860 We've heard back from them.

00:19:25.360 They've told us that, you know, we, that we might've lost as much as 60% of ad revenue during this time.

00:19:33.680 He's making claims like it could be a $4 billion in lost value.

00:19:38.640 And he's talking about, you know, lawsuit.

00:19:41.780 And that's, I think, where people really perked up because it wasn't just complaining about this.

00:19:46.620 It wasn't just, just, you know, empty words.

00:19:49.260 He's saying, look, there's, there's an obvious effect on our income.

00:19:53.820 There's an obvious attempt to censor.

00:19:55.440 There's an obvious attempt to get us to implement certain policies.

00:19:58.480 And this is directly affecting the amount of money we're making.

00:20:01.780 And to be fair, you know, to give Elon his credit, this is a very bold thing for him, right?

00:20:08.280 Because the ADL, it's not just another organization.

00:20:12.000 You know, there are organizations like the SPLC here that do this, maybe even the NAACP.

00:20:17.080 But the ADL, I mean, they specifically target anti-Semitism, right?

00:20:21.740 They specifically put themselves up there as like the protectors of Jewish people.

00:20:26.440 And so this is a very dangerous third rail for a lot of people to touch, which is why they usually run away from these organizations, right?

00:20:35.140 Because they do not want to have any question about this.

00:20:38.560 They don't even want the hint of this being brought out there.

00:20:41.740 And so it really takes a set of stones to put yourself in this situation because Elon knows what he's going to get called.

00:20:48.260 He knows how he's going to be attacked.

00:20:49.940 He knows how scary this can be.

00:20:52.460 And despite all of the heat that's going to come from addressing this issue, he's still stepping in there.

00:20:58.860 And that's where having a rogue elite like Elon matters because he's got enough sway to even say to people who wield large amounts of power,

00:21:07.260 I'm not going to be cowed by kind of these words, these threats, you know, these taboos.

00:21:13.220 I'm going to look into this and we're going to get the answers to this.

00:21:16.500 We're going to go into discovery.

00:21:17.980 We're going to unveil a lot of what's going on.

00:21:19.840 And I think once people see this, they may not see your organization the same way as they did before we went into it.

00:21:26.860 Yeah, that's what's amazing to me.

00:21:29.280 What's amazing to me is Elon is doing what Republicans should have done, you know, for the last 30 years, 40 years, longer.

00:21:38.260 I mean, you think about this, think about how many CEOs were too scared to say anything like this to the ADL or the NAACP.

00:21:48.620 Basically, this is racketeering in my mind.

00:21:50.780 I've said online, I would love if I was in political office, I would hate to run for political office and for the most part hate to be there.

00:21:57.820 But I would love to do things like make sure in an executive position that people go after them to prosecute them.

00:22:06.280 I mean, under RICO, under racketeering.

00:22:08.300 I mean, I'm curious about this right now.

00:22:11.680 I mean, we don't have all the resources yet that we're going to build here at Blaze to do more investigative, but we will.

00:22:18.560 I mean, who funded this, right?

00:22:20.960 If you are a competitor of a company and you want to destroy your competition.

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00:22:59.200 I mean, wouldn't you make a contribution to ADL if you knew that maybe that they could tweak up the, you know, the hate meter and get rid of their advertisers?

00:23:08.500 I mean, wouldn't that be the most obvious thing in the world if you're going to try to destroy your competition?

00:23:13.560 Who's funding them, right?

00:23:15.180 Where does that money come from?

00:23:16.360 How does it move?

00:23:17.100 How does it flow?

00:23:19.780 Who's all involved in this?

00:23:21.580 What do the conversations sound like when they talk to the advertisers?

00:23:24.700 I'm sure they have a nice little song and dance between them, but exactly what you're saying.

00:23:28.720 You start to show this to people and everyone will recognize it for what it is, which is basically a protection racket.

00:23:35.760 And it always has been based on the fact that Americans are so not racist that they're terrified of being called an anti-Semite or racist, et cetera, so that you can leverage that to scare the hell out of people and threaten them. 0.96

00:23:50.640 And that's, you know, that's the whole thing is ridiculous.

00:23:54.200 I mean, the entire premise that America is full of this, you know, rampant racism, one of those multi-ethnic empires in the world that's ever seen where you can pull off a protection racket like this because people are so afraid of being called the name.

00:24:08.880 And Elon is calling the bluff.

00:24:11.080 And it's not only calling the bluff of the ADL.

00:24:13.920 To me, it should shame, you know, 20, 30 years of people on the right who just didn't have the stones you refer to to say this.

00:24:21.860 Yeah, and that's the thing is, right, even if they can't find this stuff, they just manufacture it.

00:24:26.680 That's the beauty, right?

00:24:27.920 This is why I kind of tell, I always tell Republicans or people on the right, like, don't bother arguing over the definition of racism.

00:24:35.540 You don't control it.

00:24:37.120 You know, the ADL does.

00:24:38.980 The SPLC does.

00:24:40.200 You know, they go out and they declare, you know, the OK sign, a hand sign, you know, OK, as racist.

00:24:47.480 They declare all kinds of crazy stuff.

00:24:51.500 What else did they?

00:24:52.180 Oh, yeah.

00:24:52.960 Opposing Antifa was a sign of anti-Semitism, of course.

00:24:58.120 And then saying it's OK to be white. 0.56

00:24:59.960 Like, these are all supposed to be somehow.

00:25:03.060 What were all the numbers, too?

00:25:04.700 Like, I can't keep that.

00:25:05.380 Yeah, there's a lot of numerology.

00:25:07.180 There's, yeah, there's, there's, like, 93.

00:25:09.460 Like, there's, there's, they, it's funny because if you go, there's a, they have a hate database.

00:25:13.140 And if you go to the hate database, like, basically every number is hate.

00:25:16.840 Like, like every numeral that exists, every combination of numerals is itself a hate sequence.

00:25:22.960 And so then you have to wonder, like, OK, if, if, if you could just label everything in the world, like the very existence of people, any of the normal hand signs they might use, any opposition to terrorist organizations, any numbers.

00:25:36.820 If all of these are indications of anti-Semitism, then really what you're just saying is basically everyone is guilty all the time. 0.55

00:25:44.780 And so we just, it's like the IRS, right?

00:25:46.940 Like, everyone has probably messed up their taxes.

00:25:49.560 And so really all the IRS is, is a hammer that the government can drop on anybody.

00:25:53.520 And this is, like, true of the ADL, right?

00:25:55.240 They've declared everything racist, everything anti-Semitic.

00:25:57.800 And so everyone is guilty.

00:25:59.340 The only question is, are we going to focus you on you today?

00:26:02.020 Are we going to put you in the pain box?

00:26:03.760 And when will you give up so that we can collect our due?

00:26:07.580 Yeah, I think that's a, it's a very true point.

00:26:10.460 And, you know, I first kind of saw that not in relation to these issues, but just in relation to normal political corruption.

00:26:17.940 You know, and how, you know, if you want to build real estate, say, in a large American city, in a lot of the large American cities, or if you, you know, when you want to get a trash contract from a city within one of the big metroplexes.

00:26:39.280 Let's just say that, you know, what has been normalized is, is not what kind of hilariously most Americans think of.

00:26:49.280 I mean, it's 1930s Chicago all the time.

00:26:51.760 And that means that the only people getting in trouble for corruption are the people who the powerful have decided to mark out, as you describe, for destruction.

00:27:02.580 So, you know, that powerful factions are fighting when there's an article in, you know, a city paper about how so-and-so got busted because they were giving money to, you know, to build buildings.

00:27:14.720 And it's like, well, everyone's given money to build buildings.

00:27:19.060 Like, you don't make, get buildings done without greasing wheels in a large American city.

00:27:23.900 What happened here?

00:27:24.940 Is someone really sloppy?

00:27:26.460 Does someone have enemies?

00:27:27.740 Is there a turf war going on?

00:27:29.280 So, in other words, like, yeah, all have fallen short.

00:27:34.420 And it shocks me.

00:27:36.920 It shocks me with other things, too.

00:27:38.540 Like, in D.C., when it comes to, you know, so-and-so didn't file his TPS report to work with foreign actors, you know, as a lobbyist.

00:27:47.920 And you're sitting around, and the entire town is doing these things, like, you know, Ukraine.

00:27:53.560 Like, they're all taking money in the same way.

00:27:55.320 But who gets in trouble as you decide?

00:27:57.340 And we need a snazzy name for this point.

00:28:00.200 We need someone like Anton to come up with, or you, you could do it, too.

00:28:04.240 Come up with a snazzy name for this principle.

00:28:06.460 But the principle is very true. 0.54

00:28:08.480 I think we called it a narco-tyranny.

00:28:11.980 That's the proper understanding of it.

00:28:15.800 Maybe so.

00:28:16.300 But, yeah, no, I think that's really important for people to understand is this constant state of everyone is in violation.

00:28:24.320 And it's only the, you know, basically, you are all already sinners.

00:28:28.020 You're already doomed to hell.

00:28:29.220 And it's only by God's grace, you know, but in this case, it's the ADL that's declared itself God, right?

00:28:34.220 So they get to withhold the wrath, or they get to focus the wrath.

00:28:37.180 But everyone is inherently guilty.

00:28:39.280 And so that's never a question.

00:28:41.140 You're always someone who's going to be destroyed.

00:28:44.480 So one of the interesting things that I think has happened here is a shift in monetization.

00:28:51.100 So, you know, I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds of, like, content creation, but it is relevant for what we're talking about here.

00:28:57.960 For people who don't know, obviously, advertisers are very, very skittish when it comes to this stuff.

00:29:06.140 Like you said, they're very sensitive to stuff, especially in their marketing departments.

00:29:09.760 They hear wind of this stuff, and they just kind of fold up and fly away, which is why conservatives have had such a hard time getting access, right?

00:29:18.520 They have such a hard time getting their message out.

00:29:20.760 Liberals get to do it automatically.

00:29:22.120 They don't have to worry about it.

00:29:23.200 No one's getting pushed off the platform for being too communists, right?

00:29:26.620 Like, no one cares.

00:29:27.960 You can say whatever you want.

00:29:29.100 You can get as radical as you want on the left wing.

00:29:31.020 You'll still get all the major advertisers.

00:29:33.040 MSNBC is going to get every advertiser they ever wanted. 0.75

00:29:35.780 They never have to worry about this stuff.

00:29:37.640 Platforms like The Blaze, which are larger than kind of maybe the average persons, they still have to worry about this.

00:29:43.320 They still have to worry about, you know, they have to secure advertisers basically with certain, you know, they agree with certain things.

00:29:51.680 They have to go kind of out of their way to do this.

00:29:53.860 And then people who are subject to even the smaller stuff like on YouTube or Twitter, they get even less representation, right?

00:30:00.400 They're just like completely thrown to the wolves on this stuff.

00:30:03.560 And so monetization is a great way to limit what content gets made.

00:30:07.480 Because even if people want to make important videos, they want to talk about important things, knowing they're not going to get paid for it, even if people are like super passionate about it, it's just going to limit who's going to do it and how much attention it's going to get.

00:30:19.080 That's just the natural case.

00:30:20.420 So I think a big shift that happened here was Twitter started monetizing its content and paying its creators.

00:30:27.280 And in a lot of ways, that's good, right?

00:30:29.200 Like people who weren't getting money for this can start getting money for this.

00:30:32.420 But on another way, it opens up another avenue of control, right?

00:30:35.820 Because now the advertisers have more influence directly on posting, directly on threads, directly on what's getting produced and put onto the platform.

00:30:44.720 Because there's always this chain that's now being linked to you, oh, the advertisers could pull their money, they could pull their money, and all of a sudden, everyone is skittish about what they're doing with that.

00:30:55.640 Yeah, that's an interesting point.

00:30:57.320 I think the monetization that happened on Twitter is not like everyone's getting wealthy right away or anything.

00:31:07.480 But it is the case that I think the principle was really powerful.

00:31:12.580 So the first reaction that you saw, I thought was, because, I mean, part of it is just people trying to justify the amount of time they waste on Twitter, including myself.

00:31:26.400 But so that's gratifying.

00:31:28.100 Well, I'm making money.

00:31:29.960 The best tweet I saw was someone saying, my wife finally saw my monetization check and is filing for divorce. 0.91

00:31:36.300 But I think the principle of it was meaningful to people because they could just see what could be.

00:31:46.620 In other words, you know, we could be monetizing, God forbid, the individual creator, which has been, by the way, the holy grail of digital technology for a long time.

00:31:57.400 It's like, how do you actually allow people to rise in a free marketplace, free-ish marketplace, where they actually get rewarded for what they do?

00:32:07.440 Because right now, you know, the classic tale of Hollywood is a tale of all this time is that the creator gets used and abused by the business people who take all the money.

00:32:18.260 And, you know, they don't have access to get their word out, to get their stuff out, to get their art out.

00:32:25.320 So, I mean, the holy grail of the Internet is kind of like, how do we individually, you know, incentivize these people, like you're saying.

00:32:32.760 So I think there's a lot of promise to that.

00:32:34.560 At least the principle was out there when Elon started to do that.

00:32:39.580 But you're right.

00:32:40.340 I mean, the jury is way out on what exactly happens, because if it's still based on advertising dollars, advertising has become really a chokehold in a pipeline of information and entertainment.

00:32:56.960 And so they realize that this is where the rubber hits the road, because this is what actually pays for the deal.

00:33:03.880 So we can control that, right?

00:33:06.260 Ideologically, we will win.

00:33:08.420 And that's what they've done.

00:33:09.600 And so, I mean, I think about this all the time.

00:33:14.320 And, you know, the best I could come to, I'll just reveal, like, my secret plan, you know, online right now.

00:33:21.080 One of the things that best I could come to would be, the best thing to do would be for the right is to have a nonprofit that reveals all the worst of the ADL.

00:33:28.820 Some of these people are awful.

00:33:29.900 Like, I mean, reveal the worst of what these organizations do, of what they think, of how they think about half the country.

00:33:38.400 You want to talk about hate?

00:33:39.460 Yeah.

00:33:40.020 Well, let's find out.

00:33:41.200 And then go to the advertising agencies the same way.

00:33:43.860 Advertising agencies are owned by these large conglomerates.

00:33:47.560 A few of them own, like, a bunch of the scene.

00:33:49.640 And that's where, you know, your literal pedo-Satanists were not too long ago, right? 0.94

00:33:54.460 With a very strange ad, clearly referencing, you know, pedophilia throughout it. 0.90

00:34:00.300 I mean, very, I mean, this is where very strange stuff goes on.

00:34:04.580 And these people are radical. 0.99

00:34:05.980 They're all lunatics when it comes to politics. 0.99

00:34:07.860 And so, which is, in a way, I don't even care. 0.99

00:34:12.120 Like, artists can be lunatics, but don't interrupt the pipeline of free speech.

00:34:17.020 So these people are colluding, right?

00:34:19.740 So what you need to do is a nonprofit that reveals all this and then says, hey, fast food company that I won't name that's supposed to be conservative,

00:34:27.960 why do you give a $50 million contract annually to this company?

00:34:33.360 I can't do anything about the fact that this nonprofit, you see where I'm going with this, that this nonprofit out here is going to reveal, right, what these people are.

00:34:43.960 You're giving millions of dollars to people who hate you, hate what you pay for, hate your consumer, to take pictures of hamburgers or chicken burgers or whatever it might be.

00:34:54.860 And that's what you're doing.

00:34:58.740 You're giving money to these people, right?

00:35:00.520 In other words, to reverse this, there needs to be pressure applied in the other direction.

00:35:07.240 And that's what I've come to because I don't really see how to eradicate this. 1.00

00:35:12.140 And then you have to say, if you're a CEO who's going to hire a blue-haired liberal arts grad as your CMO and then turn around and complain to me about the market and how you have to go, whoa, you're an idiot. 1.00

00:35:23.220 Or worse, in terms of your customers, your loyal base, you're either a moron or you're a traitor to them and you're just here to make money and get out. 1.00

00:35:34.820 And they should hate you too. 1.00

00:35:37.320 Yeah, I mean, where is the Republican media matters, right?

00:35:40.580 Like where are these conservative SPLCs?

00:35:44.440 Where are these people who are documenting this stuff, drilling in?

00:35:47.780 And this work is so undone that it's interesting that even just a proto version of this would be something like Libs of TikTok, right?

00:35:55.040 Libs of TikTok is just taking the words of people, putting them back online, doing very little investigative reporting or anything, just kind of recycling this stuff and collecting it in one place and applying just the smallest amount of pressure.

00:36:08.620 And you could have people who do this, I mean, and that's just somebody who was just doing it in their spare time on Twitter.

00:36:15.200 You could have people who do this in a much more professional way, lining this kind of stuff up and preparing it.

00:36:20.700 And I think, like you said, that that's going to reveal a whole lot of stuff that people don't want to, which was, I think, part of the threat of this lawsuit, right?

00:36:28.740 Because if you start threatening the ADL with a lawsuit and you say, we're going to discovery, how many connections to the American government are you going to find?

00:36:38.320 How many connections to foreign governments are you going to find?

00:36:40.520 How many people who are funding all kinds of other really shady stuff, involved in all kinds of really shady stuff, how quickly does that unspool, right?

00:36:49.740 And so when you start digging in to kind of the nuts and bolts of how these organizations actually work and they don't just get to be this face that shows up every once in a while and says,

00:37:01.580 that guy's bad, destroy him in public and then run away again. 0.52

00:37:04.240 And when these people are exposed like that, I think that you will have, you know, kind of an alternative form of pressure that can kind of bring that back.

00:37:13.360 But without that dedication, without, I think, people willing to put together these type of organizations, you're never going to get any kind of pushback.

00:37:21.820 And, you know, organizations will be necessary.

00:37:25.300 You can't just rely on the random lawsuit or two from Elon Musk to kind of make this happen.

00:37:30.900 Yeah. I mean, let's be real about this, right?

00:37:33.740 I mean, the realistic counter and everything we've been saying, if you are a CEO or chairman of the board of one of these companies is, yeah, you're totally right.

00:37:42.760 But it's also true that my business will be destroyed by these people and we live in a world of mobsters and you have to pay protection.

00:37:51.180 Yeah. What do you want me to do?

00:37:53.000 Like, why do you want me to fight City Hall?

00:37:54.880 Why would I do that?

00:37:56.080 I'm just going to be destroyed and they're going to destroy me and my business.

00:37:59.960 So, you know, I mean, I'll make do is what a lot of people think.

00:38:04.300 They probably don't agree with what's going on, but I'll survive and I'll play their game and let the commissars and the, you know,

00:38:10.940 HR department and the marketing department do their thing and I'll mouth their mantras and we'll just move on.

00:38:17.920 I'll find other money.

00:38:19.260 So you're absolutely right.

00:38:20.620 It takes reverse pressure in a real way.

00:38:25.240 And Elon, I mean, Elon in this respect, he's very much, there's a similarity between him and Trump, right?

00:38:30.200 They have this uncanny power of asking really obvious questions in front of the entire country to show that the emperor is no close.

00:38:40.460 I mean, you know, it's like Trump going, guys, with a bunch of generals in the room, why are we still in NATO?

00:38:45.880 You know, aren't these like wealthy Western countries who could probably pay their own way in a lot of ways?

00:38:51.360 And what are we what are we doing there?

00:38:53.560 Oh, how could you ask the question? 1.00

00:38:56.380 You're insane. 0.99

00:38:57.360 You know, and that's what you have going on here. 1.00

00:38:59.400 How dare you?

00:39:00.220 But so the question is, is it is it is it the case that there's enough people like watching and thinking about this and talking about it like we are throughout the country saying, will they be inspired by this?

00:39:12.020 And will it will lead to, you know, a chain of effects where people start to take action the way you're describing?

00:39:19.560 And I certainly hope so.

00:39:20.640 I mean, it's invigorating even to me because I mean, I just think, yeah, this is the way it is.

00:39:25.240 But, you know, it's the way it is.

00:39:27.060 What are you going to do?

00:39:27.780 You need one of these guys to step up and he stepped up and he did it.

00:39:31.780 And I think there's a lot of room in conservative nonprofit world, in right leaning media to start doing the work to unpack this stuff, because it's interesting and it's it's revolting.

00:39:43.960 But it's like the kind of corruption is actually kind of interesting because you start to realize this is the way the world really works.

00:39:48.820 And a free market of ideas and free speech is, you know, these people don't even know that word means.

00:39:55.460 I mean, they their job is to control speech and they do.

00:39:58.280 They do it very effectively, very well.

00:39:59.840 So I think we both agree that taking this step by Elon is important.

00:40:05.900 But I want to ask you, there's it feels a lot of times with Elon, it's one big step forward, but then a bunch of tiny steps back behind the scene.

00:40:13.480 Right. So, for instance, Elon will say things like I'm for freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.

00:40:18.920 And that's honestly the kind of thing that somebody like, you know, Greenblatt over at the ADL has said.

00:40:26.060 Right. And he'll he'll say, oh, well, we're all for, you know, making sure that there's this free of exchange of ideas.

00:40:31.640 But then we'll see that the Twitter terms of service have suddenly been changed to where people who are no longer commercially viable can suddenly be banned.

00:40:40.700 You know, we'll hear about how, you know, we want to make sure that we're going to drop the Twitter files and we're going to show all of these ways that the government

00:40:48.540 influence the last election. But we're also hiring, you know, people like Linda, I don't know how you say her name, Yaccarino.

00:40:56.020 And, you know, we're we're putting in all of the we're hiring new people to have to have an impact on elections and watching misinformation and those kind of things.

00:41:08.040 It feels like they're still kind of going through the steps of assembling the censorship network while kind of also putting on a good face for this.

00:41:17.820 And it's kind of like, is that is that him leading with one story and then, you know, complying with the government or in another?

00:41:24.980 Or is he trying to, like, give the, you know, the appearance of compliance, but he's actually leading this base revolution?

00:41:32.200 Like which Elon is real, I guess, is the real question.

00:41:35.980 Yeah, well, he is.

00:41:38.600 I will say I've been privileged to meet many of these people.

00:41:43.300 He is one of the few I haven't met.

00:41:45.280 I don't know.

00:41:47.580 I know people, you know, within those circles a little bit, but not very well.

00:41:53.560 But I'll give you my instinct.

00:41:55.460 My instinct is actually until proven otherwise with Elon.

00:41:58.960 He's someone who I think is on a journey.

00:42:02.060 You're seeing it in real time.

00:42:06.000 The good thing about him is just like Trump, he doesn't care about what everyone else thinks.

00:42:13.160 And I think I kind of think something like Trump that the problem is that he's not surrounded by a ton of lieutenants or others who even get what he's talking about.

00:42:24.580 And I think that, you know, it's almost like every time he speaks, the space opened up by his words and within his own company is just an influx of, you know, your typical blue state Ivy League, you know, smarty who thinks the wrong way about these things.

00:42:45.480 It doesn't exonerate him.

00:42:47.080 But I do think there's a little bit of, you know, one guy can't run all these companies and he gets interested in something and I'll say something and he means it.

00:42:58.200 But in execution on it, you know, his attention is all over the place.

00:43:02.500 Any one of these companies would be more than a full time job for most people.

00:43:05.940 So he's got to rely in execution.

00:43:09.260 Forget about media for a minute.

00:43:10.320 Let's just talk about, you know, how organizations are run.

00:43:13.220 He's got to rely on execution for a lot on a lot of other people.

00:43:18.360 So that would be the nice version.

00:43:22.200 The other version would be he's also the other explanation, which I think is compatible in between.

00:43:30.680 He's a fake and he's he's based or whatever.

00:43:34.920 In between is he's navigating for his own self-interest and he sees that both sides.

00:43:45.100 Right.

00:43:46.600 And he he is playing a longer game for purposes that.

00:43:55.020 Whether it's for the sake of SpaceX or whatever else.

00:43:58.720 And, you know, he is sort of playing both sides, but he's not really on either side.

00:44:04.180 Right.

00:44:04.480 He's on Elon's side.

00:44:06.400 That's plausible, too.

00:44:08.280 I think that that's very plausible.

00:44:10.400 And maybe some mixture of that and some mixture of him kind of realizing, like, wait a minute, you know, this is all BS.

00:44:16.780 And then being coy with that sometimes and sometimes being naively, you know, innocent and eye opening and being enough of a spurt where he doesn't care and rich enough where he doesn't care.

00:44:27.240 And having these the goals, he does care about, if we take him at his word, are promoting humanity.

00:44:33.400 Right.

00:44:34.100 Human beings lasting on.

00:44:36.900 He does seem to care about that.

00:44:38.680 I mean, I don't think SpaceX was just about his own, you know, self-interest or his own self-interest is more tied to the glory of that travel.

00:44:47.140 I think he really believes in that stuff.

00:44:48.320 So, anyway, although I'm in that realm to explain to him rather than, you know, I have friends who say, no, he's a bad actor.

00:44:58.200 Right.

00:44:58.520 He actually is sort of lying about this stuff.

00:45:01.520 But, you know, I mean, I don't know, I cannot believe the amazing, I mean, this week is a good example.

00:45:09.740 I don't even care, to be honest with you, Aaron.

00:45:12.540 I mean, to me, if he's going to say this stuff and expose this about the ADL, I mean, I'm just kind of like, great.

00:45:18.740 If he's faking it, then let him fake it that way, right?

00:45:22.480 Yes.

00:45:22.960 Yeah.

00:45:23.600 Keep fake it till you make it, man.

00:45:25.560 Keep going.

00:45:26.180 That's great.

00:45:26.660 And what's the worst case scenario there that he wants to, you know, the thing is, I don't think you can be Elon and be secretly, like, for a lot of the principles that the Borg is for, the ruling class is for.

00:45:45.100 You can't say the woke mind virus, and we're never going to get to Mars if the wokeness wins, and actually be secretly part of that.

00:45:53.180 So he might be on Elon's side, as everyone is, his self-interest on their own side.

00:45:59.180 But I kind of, I am more inclined to take him at his word than not.

00:46:03.300 Although, of course, you know, I don't think he has a fixed, I think he's, he's a man on a journey, you know, and I can't take him.

00:46:11.320 I don't, he's not my, you know, total hero.

00:46:13.580 I don't totally trust him or even see him as on my side if there are sides anymore.

00:46:18.780 But, so, I don't, I think we should calm down on the hate a little bit, though.

00:46:24.240 And, and more, to me, it's more interesting to, like, we should talk more with Elon, right?

00:46:30.740 And Republicans and people on the right should certainly be learning from his example and from what he's exposing.

00:46:36.780 And my question over and over again is, why did it take Elon Musk to say all these things that are immensely popular and obvious, and no one on the right could say them, even though they claim that this is where they ideologically stand?

00:46:52.180 If he can do it and you think he's a faker, like you said, like you said, exactly, great, then let's have more fakers out there. 1.00

00:46:58.560 Yeah, and that's the thing I think people really need to grasp.

00:47:01.340 I think that last part is really important.

00:47:03.460 And I understand a lot of people don't like Trump, they think he betrayed him, they think that he was whatever.

00:47:08.600 But the thing they need to understand about Trump, the thing they need to grasp about our moment we're in now, is that both Trump and Elon matter.

00:47:16.200 Because even if they didn't mean what they said, I don't think Trump meant some of what he said.

00:47:20.860 They said it because they had the ability to do it.

00:47:24.900 And we're at the like, you make a really good point that a lot of these people who are paid to say this stuff, a lot of people who are supposed to be key to this movement are terrified to actually tell the truth, actually say what matters.

00:47:37.940 They're frozen.

00:47:38.900 They might ideologically check all of your boxes, they might have all the right positions on certain things in theory.

00:47:45.040 But in practice, they won't say what they need to out loud, they won't take the actions they need to out loud.

00:47:49.720 And these people will. 0.96

00:47:50.780 And so standing around and hoping that guys like Trump or Elon are like perfectly ideologically aligned with you and saying, I'm not going to give them any credit or I'm not going to push the same direction as they are until they've hit every single one of my boxes is foolish.

00:48:03.920 Now, I think there's another side of that where you don't pretend they're your messiah.

00:48:07.400 You don't pretend like they're 100% on your side.

00:48:09.980 You don't give them your full trust and everything.

00:48:12.100 But I think it's really important for people to understand like the value of people breaking and shattering like the edges of the overwritten window is way more important than someone hitting all your checkboxes, but sitting very safely and squarely inside the box.

00:48:27.840 Yeah, that's really well said.

00:48:29.740 And let me give an example with Elon where you can go either way.

00:48:34.340 It's my cocktail party example.

00:48:36.760 Because after all, that's why we do what we do, right?

00:48:38.660 To go to cocktail parties.

00:48:40.380 I haven't been to one yet.

00:48:44.180 There's not as many in Dallas, I don't think.

00:48:46.380 Yeah, I don't know.

00:48:47.240 Maybe I'm just not getting the cool kids invitations.

00:48:50.800 So Elon has Neuralink as one of his handful of companies, which, you know, I mean, let's just literally...

00:48:59.740 Talking about putting a chip in your brain, like, you know, connect to the matrix to increase brain power.

00:49:06.480 And the way it's starting is, it's already well since begun, is to...

00:49:13.760 This is what they say, right?

00:49:15.340 We're going to help people who are brain damaged with technology, connecting digital technology to their brains, starting with monkeys. 0.62

00:49:27.300 And we're going to see if we can help people, ultimately, through this testing, who have been damaged, recover brain function.

00:49:36.500 And, you know, you can look at that.

00:49:38.820 And I certainly, my instinct is to say, oh, my gosh, you know, we're in a sci-fi horror movie already.

00:49:46.940 Let's stop the experiment.

00:49:48.280 On the other hand, I don't think it's implausible, given what we know, that there could be good done there.

00:49:55.460 And Elon's case is, of course, if it works, we've...

00:49:59.500 A, first off, right off the bat, we help people who are disabled in some way.

00:50:05.600 And secondly, he's thinking AI is going to ultimately overtake us unless human beings, right, can keep up with artificial intelligence.

00:50:14.980 I think he truly means that.

00:50:17.560 But I have to admit, as some of my friends would say, that's exactly what you would tell people if you wanted to convince them to put chips in their brains.

00:50:26.360 Right, right, right.

00:50:27.500 And I feel like that back and forth is, you know, you see all over in Elon discourse, you know, whether he's good or bad.

00:50:35.680 Yeah, I mean, I think you should just launch a butlerian jihad at that point. 0.98

00:50:38.660 I don't think this technology should exist at all.

00:50:40.660 But, you know, I wanted to ask you one more thing before we wrap up, though.

00:50:44.700 You mentioned personal interest and SpaceX.

00:50:47.860 And I was one of many people who noticed that, like, after SpaceX got threatened with this, you know, government lawsuit over not hiring illegal immigrants or something, which is an amazing thing. 1.00

00:51:01.240 But here we are.

00:51:02.600 You know, when they got threatened with this, all of a sudden we started to see, like, announced changes on the platform, on Twitter, you know, things that the government have wanted.

00:51:10.960 And a lot of people say, OK, so Elon is really bought in.

00:51:15.740 You know, obviously, SpaceX and other parts of his business are highly dependent on government contracts, on being part of the deep state to some extent.

00:51:23.720 And obviously, you know, the government leans on him for things like Starlink in Ukraine and that kind of stuff.

00:51:30.560 And so the question is, how dependent is Elon on the government and how dependent is the government on Elon?

00:51:37.280 And is there a way to even wield power without being part of the deep state?

00:51:40.680 Like, does Elon's ties to government contracts and things make him a liability?

00:51:45.520 Do they give him power?

00:51:47.100 Is it just a reality of a guy of kind of great man wielding power in our current scenario?

00:51:53.420 Like, what what is that?

00:51:54.780 What is that relationship between him and the state mean when it comes to him being able to, like, make decisions and fight back against censorship and other things that the government might want to apply?

00:52:05.400 The reason I love that question is because to ask that question spreads awareness about the system that we're in.

00:52:14.200 The fact that we have to ask that question, right, tells us a lot.

00:52:18.120 And I think the answer to it is very unclear.

00:52:20.520 I mean, you remember early on or earlier on in Elon's career as routine for the right to say this guy got all his money from government contracts and government money or is dependent upon China.

00:52:35.400 It doesn't say a lot bad about China very often for someone who talks about free speech, for instance.

00:52:40.920 That's sort of a was a was a sort of normie con thing to say for a long time.

00:52:44.600 I think it's certainly true that Elon is one of the only figures in the world who can potentially compete with or has possibly some power to leverage against what we call the deep state, the administrative state, the permanent government that sort of has the technology that that rules the world.

00:53:10.060 So, you know, he's unique in that he potentially could have leverage.

00:53:17.160 And so my first thought, for instance, about Twitter and everything else was that they would never let him buy Twitter.

00:53:22.820 Like it wouldn't happen because they would threaten what he really wants, which is to put people on Mars and to perpetuate humanity.

00:53:30.600 I mean, you know, he's got all kinds of transhumanist ideas that I find despicable.

00:53:36.580 But overall, I approve his message because his message is that humanity must live on and that having children is good.

00:53:43.800 He's a natalist. He sees that the world could be depleted and destroyed and that human life is good.

00:53:50.200 I mean, go forth and multiply. He's for it.

00:53:52.100 So so so I thought his real love would be, you know, SpaceX and the the you know, the to paraphrase, like to make a cartoon of the message of the administrative state would be, OK, you know, you want you want Twitter.

00:54:06.800 We're going to make your life a living hell and you're never going to get to Mars because we don't want you to have this.

00:54:12.800 And we have, as Charles Schumer would say, six ways from the sun destroy you.

00:54:18.200 Now, you saw moments in the in the news cycle where they got into his personal life a little bit and then it kind of dissipated.

00:54:25.320 I mean, they they after this, like you see this, these these movements in the water, you can see the ripples on the surface.

00:54:33.140 But then you see him sort of counterattack or they fade away.

00:54:36.840 So they have not like crushed him, you know, in any way.

00:54:40.800 But are there implicit or explicit deals behind scene?

00:54:48.860 At least implicitly, yes, there has to be because he is inextricably tied, you know, to to to the administrative state and to the United States government in many ways.

00:55:01.820 Now, the thing about that is I look at it as this.

00:55:05.780 Of course, his interests are are tied up with the administrative state.

00:55:12.320 But the difference is, as opposed to everyone else, he is one man, not Boeing.

00:55:19.640 Right. Not a large Byzantine bureaucracy.

00:55:22.060 And he can leverage what he has against them.

00:55:29.780 I mean, that's the thing with Starlink. Right.

00:55:32.280 Yes. Is he using that in Ukraine? Right.

00:55:34.500 But there just came a report that maybe he turned it off or didn't allow it to be used in an attack.

00:55:40.180 And his words, it would have destroyed the entire Russian Navy. Right.

00:55:44.840 I mean, so so he in other words, he's he he has the power to say, well, do you want to you want your people to talk to each other?

00:55:52.180 I'm letting you do it. Right.

00:55:54.180 Right. And an even bigger one, which is, do you want to go to space?

00:55:58.760 Because I still do that. I'm not sure how much and how well you can.

00:56:03.940 Right. So so so that's the the really unbelievable power that he has.

00:56:11.660 And it's almost as if he if he wants to stay outside of the control of the Borg, he's going to have to barter and dicker and deal with it and fight it.

00:56:20.040 But he's always going to have to have a technological lit up or something that they want in order to stay just outside of its reach.

00:56:30.260 And as soon as that stops, then all of a sudden, you know, he's in trouble and all he's got is money.

00:56:36.020 But there's a lot of ways to deal with money.

00:56:38.660 And so I don't think, you know, they might be locked together, a little Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty falling down the cliff.

00:56:45.700 But it's not as if he doesn't have cards in his hands as well.

00:56:50.580 No, that's a good point. He's got to maintain that utility to the regime.

00:56:53.920 He's got to have something that that's over them at all times to kind of stay ahead of any possibility that they could compromise them.

00:57:01.000 We do have one chat from the audience real quick.

00:57:03.680 We'll grab that here before we go.

00:57:05.720 Thuggo here for seven dollars. Thank you very much, sir.

00:57:07.700 Coordinated attack on Musk today for not enabling Starlink for the UKR attack on Crimea comes right after the ADL issues.

00:57:16.800 Yeah, again, you always wonder how much of this.

00:57:19.400 Of course, you know that the government has had these backs and forth with him about Starlink.

00:57:24.580 And so, you know, how much of this is tied directly?

00:57:27.700 How much of this was already in the pipeline?

00:57:29.640 It was going to come up anyway.

00:57:31.400 It's always hard to untangle these in the moment that that's the difficulty.

00:57:35.580 And, you know, like Matthew said, that's why you want to have someone investigating stuff.

00:57:42.220 You want to have people looking into this, being able to keep these facts separate, understand where influence is coming from, who's applying pressure so that when questions like this come out, you can say, OK, well, we've got some indication that there might have been pressure here.

00:57:56.960 We have some investors who might have been interested in this move.

00:57:59.800 We might have had some people in the government who wanted to, you know, you have that option.

00:58:03.520 But because our current media is, of course, deeply uninterested in asking those questions, we don't know.

00:58:09.040 And the only thing left to do is speculate.

00:58:10.760 And that's what's so frustrating for, I think, many people who are enemies of, you know, kind of what's going on here, who disagree with what's going on here, is there's no kind of legitimate consensus manufacturing apparatus that can present a narrative that opposes the regime.

00:58:26.600 Everything just kind of falls into this weird gray conspiracy theory area because no one who's supposed to, in theory, have the authority to look at this stuff, spends the time doing it because they're all interested in sweeping it under the rug.

00:58:40.740 No, I think that's true.

00:58:42.220 And I mean, I think that I do think you can see this again, like ripples in the water.

00:58:47.320 Like you say, the timing, you can't tell, but clearly there's a back and forth going on, Elon versus the regime.

00:58:52.840 I mean, that's happening and how it plays out, we don't know.

00:58:56.460 And really what we have to do, what I have to do at Blaze and other entities like it is try, you know, it's an enormous task, but to try to build a media apparatus that really starts to pick at some of this.

00:59:12.380 And it's incredibly difficult, and you have to be extremely careful, frankly, because of the environment in which we're in.

00:59:20.100 But, you know, discussions like this are helpful, and then there's a lot of real grunt work that needs to be done to move to the place where we can really create an alternative media apparatus.

00:59:32.520 And, you know, you'll know you're successful if they are trying to shut you down, which will inevitably happen, and we all know it.

00:59:42.800 So here we are.

00:59:44.460 All right, guys.

00:59:45.280 Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap it up, but thank you so much, Matthew, for coming on.

00:59:49.740 Really appreciate it.

00:59:50.740 Appreciate everybody who stopped by.

00:59:53.040 Make sure, of course, if this is your first time on the channel to go ahead and subscribe.

00:59:56.700 And if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure you check out The Oren McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platforms.

01:00:04.440 Thanks for watching, guys.

01:00:05.320 And as always, we'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - September 08, 2023

Elon vs. the ADL ｜ Guest： Matthew Peterson ｜ 9⧸8⧸23

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