The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 04, 2024


The Importance of Capturing Castles ｜ 1⧸4⧸24

Hosted by
Auron MacIntyre
Mentioned
Christopher Ruffo Curtis Yarvin Musk Claudine Gay
The Tyranny of ‘Just’ ｜ Guest： J Burden ｜ 1⧸3⧸24 Leftist Meltdown Over Scalping of Harvard President ｜ Guest： The Prudentialist ｜ 1⧸8⧸24

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

149.77

Word count

1,410

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In a guest appearance on my show on the political theorist Curtis Yarvin's show, The Political Theory, I discuss how the political system no longer operates in the manner that you learned about in high school civics class. In fact, American political power in the United States now functions as a distributed bureaucratic oligarchy, with different expert institutions acting as nodes in a network operated by the ruling class.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:02.320 Rocky's Vacation, here we come.
00:00:05.060 Whoa, is this economy?
00:00:07.180 Free beer, wine, and snacks.
00:00:09.620 Sweet! 0.95
00:00:10.720 Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:14.760 And with live TV, I'm not missing the game.
00:00:17.800 It's kind of like, I'm already on vacation.
00:00:20.980 Nice! 0.94
00:00:22.240 On behalf of Air Canada, nice travels.
00:00:25.260 Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:00:27.200 Sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply.
00:00:28.720 CRCanada.com
00:00:30.000 Boycotts, elections, school shootings, waves of illegal immigrants, riots, pandemics, foreign wars, inflation.
00:00:38.140 The political battles cycle past us so rapidly it can be difficult to focus on any given event.
00:00:44.320 Journalists write feverish articles and pundits voice their outrage,
00:00:48.300 drawing media attention to the crisis of the week.
00:00:51.160 Whenever the public consciousness focuses on any given event,
00:00:54.880 politicians feel the need to weigh in or even take superficial action
00:00:58.440 before the next current thing captures the mind of the electorate.
00:01:03.120 This quick succession means that the public rarely notices whether any real change took place
00:01:08.540 before it moves on to the next crisis.
00:01:12.000 That's why the political right is so easily contained.
00:01:15.780 Conservatives tend to focus on the issues in the news cycle
00:01:19.280 instead of securing the kind of structural victories that can be built upon over time.
00:01:25.660 I kind of doubt that I'm shattering anyone's illusions at this point,
00:01:29.960 but American political power no longer operates in the manner that you learned about in high school civics class.
00:01:36.580 The idea that persuasive arguments win out in the marketplace of ideas
00:01:41.840 and organically alter public opinion until politicians are forced to take meaningful action
00:01:47.220 is laughable at this point.
00:01:50.000 In truth, public opinion is shaped by the constant consumption of mass media,
00:01:55.260 which is controlled almost entirely by the left.
00:01:58.280 This frames the boundaries of every political discussion.
00:02:01.600 Now don't get me wrong, those in the media aren't omnipotent.
00:02:06.460 There are events beyond their command that they have to react to.
00:02:10.500 But progressive journalists generally get to control the level of attention
00:02:14.320 and duration of focus that news items will receive.
00:02:18.300 While the media ushers the public's collective attention from one crisis to the next,
00:02:22.460 they also vest different institutions with the authority to resolve those issues.
00:02:27.800 And this is where real power lies.
00:02:29.920 The American political system is no longer confined to three branches of government
00:02:35.360 as the Constitution's framers intended,
00:02:37.740 which is why it feels like the Constitution no longer restricts the government's power.
00:02:43.640 Political power in the United States now functions as a distributed bureaucratic oligarchy
00:02:49.000 with different expert institutions acting as nodes in a network operated by the ruling class.
00:02:54.700 Universities, social media, and news organizations shape public opinion,
00:03:00.960 while NGOs, financial institutions, and unelected government bureaucracies create public policy.
00:03:08.100 These institutions dictate American politics,
00:03:11.560 setting the terms by which elected representatives must play.
00:03:15.420 Each one represents a castle from which the left can project power
00:03:19.160 despite the ebbs and flows of the democratic process.
00:03:22.460 The left don't like to lose elections,
00:03:25.940 but they never really have to worry about losing significant ground in the political game
00:03:30.680 because at the end of the day, they've fortified these different outposts of power,
00:03:35.580 and there's no way that a single elected representative,
00:03:39.200 or even president, is going to actually erode their position.
00:03:42.820 If those on the right wish to secure meaningful victories,
00:03:46.800 they must stop chasing whatever issue the media dangles before them
00:03:51.080 and instead focus on capturing castles for themselves.
00:03:56.580 While senators, representatives, and even presidents come and go,
00:04:00.560 institutions endure through every election cycle,
00:04:03.760 and those strongholds allow the accumulation of enduring political power.
00:04:08.020 Progressives recognized this long ago
00:04:11.840 and began their long march through the institutions
00:04:14.480 with the goal of securing these castles
00:04:16.620 so that they would always be able to govern
00:04:19.100 no matter the outcome of elections.
00:04:22.040 This idea has finally broken into the mainstream conservative space
00:04:26.320 under the name of the Deep State,
00:04:28.520 a recognition of the perpetual unelected governmental bureaucracy
00:04:32.740 that wields far more power than any single elected official.
00:04:38.160 Recognition of the Deep State is a good thing, 1.00
00:04:40.540 but the right needs to expand its understanding of power
00:04:43.880 far beyond the official government channels
00:04:46.500 to include the soft power of media, education, and financial institutions.
00:04:53.280 When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:04:56.980 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad
00:04:59.320 isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:05:01.380 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:05:04.520 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
00:05:08.240 Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
00:05:10.840 So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
00:05:14.440 Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:05:18.140 Service fees exclusions and terms apply.
00:05:20.420 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver.
00:05:23.880 In a guest appearance on my show,
00:05:25.860 the political theorist Curtis Yarvin pointed out
00:05:28.080 that while the right obsesses over individual issues,
00:05:30.380 the left instead focuses on securing power
00:05:33.940 so that they can impose their will on whatever issues arise.
00:05:38.760 Yarvin believes that political will is a finite resource
00:05:41.940 and that it should be used to capture castles,
00:05:44.420 not chase media-driven trends.
00:05:46.940 Real political victories are those that secure power
00:05:49.500 and make future victories more likely.
00:05:53.440 Electoral victories can be important,
00:05:55.680 but only to the extent that they make substantive structural changes
00:06:00.120 to the wider apparatus that actually governs the United States.
00:06:05.160 Fortunately, we don't need to speculate
00:06:07.400 on what capturing a castle would look like,
00:06:10.360 as we have a perfect example in Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
00:06:15.240 Progressives have relied on hegemonic control
00:06:17.780 of information distribution in the United States,
00:06:20.540 and Musk's purchase of the social media website breaks that monopoly.
00:06:25.940 Twitter isn't just another social media website.
00:06:28.820 It's the place where regime journalists came to craft the narrative
00:06:32.760 that they would push through other outlets.
00:06:35.280 While other platforms command larger user bases,
00:06:38.320 Twitter wields an outsized influence over the chattering class, 0.99
00:06:42.100 which in turn sets the public discussion.
00:06:44.600 Many have questioned how right-wing Musk truly is,
00:06:49.700 but his willingness to remove many of the key censorship restrictions on Twitter
00:06:54.200 has already had a huge impact on the right's ability to shape the public discourse.
00:06:59.960 Musk's purchase of Twitter is easily the most substantial political victory
00:07:04.400 the right has secured in a long time,
00:07:06.880 and it was achieved without casting a single vote.
00:07:10.140 Twitter is a castle,
00:07:11.200 a fortification from which the right can impact the public narrative
00:07:14.900 even as censorship on other social media platforms intensifies.
00:07:20.080 The purchase of Twitter also fulfills Yarvin's conditions for a real victory
00:07:25.240 because it makes future victories more likely.
00:07:29.540 By giving the right a stable platform
00:07:31.680 from which to organize and influence public opinion,
00:07:35.540 Musk has ensured that conservatives will have the tools necessary
00:07:39.160 to acquire power in the future.
00:07:43.080 Conservative activist Christopher Ruffo
00:07:45.440 understands how to wield these tools effectively
00:07:48.360 and which targets to direct them toward.
00:07:51.760 By using consistent and relentless messaging,
00:07:55.160 Ruffo has focused attention on the plagiarism accusations
00:07:58.560 surrounding former Harvard president Claudine Gay,
00:08:02.100 who tendered her resignation on Tuesday.
00:08:04.160 While it's unlikely that conservatives will retake Harvard anytime soon,
00:08:10.680 by applying significant public pressure,
00:08:13.640 Ruffo has worked to discredit the authority of the DEI regime
00:08:17.680 that Gay represents
00:08:18.960 and the prestige commanded by elite universities.
00:08:22.940 If you can't take an enemy castle,
00:08:25.260 the next best thing is to reduce or destroy its power.
00:08:29.640 By focusing its political capital on the kinds of victories
00:08:32.500 that Musk and Ruffo have secured,
00:08:34.760 the right can become far more effective
00:08:36.660 at acquiring the power necessary
00:08:38.620 to change America's trajectory for the better.
00:08:42.180 Thanks for watching, guys.
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00:09:21.360 Thanks for watching, guys.
00:09:22.440 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.