In this episode, we take a deep dive into nationalist groups and the tactics they use to spread their propaganda. We also have a special interview with a former CSIS agent and infiltrator of Islamic movements, Mubarak Shaikh.
00:05:38.360I picked you after I decided what topic I would go for tonight because you have great analysis of just how nationalist groups work in a broader spectrum.
00:58:17.160He did a live stream with Randy Hillier, and it was fantastic.
00:58:21.240It was great to hear Randy speak again.
00:58:23.600He has not been doing as much interviews online since he got arrested with nine or more trumped-up charges based on the Freedom Convoy that just happened.
00:58:35.700And so it's good to see Randy out there again.
00:58:38.620And thank you, Tofu TV, for giving him a platform.
00:58:42.740Jonathan Ferguson, good to see you in the chat.
00:58:47.060And even if other people think that they shouldn't get their voice, they should be suppressed, that everybody deserves their right to peacefully counter-protest pedophiles.
00:59:01.840Which, hey, we have this whole pride event going on, where it's supposedly family-friendly, and drag queens are doing dances, and then kids are giving them money into their hands as something you do during a striptease.
00:59:20.840And then halfway through, they have to say, you guys should put it in the bucket, in this box instead, because that would be more friendly for the media or something.
01:00:52.400Well, my immediate thoughts about them are that just, like, I don't feel like I know necessarily a lot about them or really anything about them.
01:01:05.580I'm really reluctant to trust information that I see if I'm not, like, if I were involved in their circles or if I was, you know, in some of their groups talking to some of their members, I'd probably have stronger opinions.
01:01:19.300I still, you know, I know that plenty of people are talking about it.
01:01:24.400I've been looking at things here and there, but I still don't feel like I really know what it is that they are.
01:01:29.960So it's hard for me to say how much of it is, how much of it I think is genuine and how much of it isn't.
01:01:38.200I think that they definitely have problems with their, like, OPSEC.
01:01:46.080Yeah, it definitely seems like they're infiltrated.
01:01:49.660And with these sort of things, like, you never know how...
01:01:53.920Well, I could give you some insight into that.
01:01:56.860So a few months ago, or I don't know exactly how long ago, but sometime recently, Unicorn Riot, which is like an Antifa leftist kind of organization.
01:02:07.000I believe they're probably funded by Soros-type money.
01:02:11.160But they did a huge dox infiltration where apparently one of the members had some kind of internet cloud service that hosted a lot of their materials, including their training videos.
01:02:25.200So it was all leaked and it had all their faces and their training videos.
01:03:01.280But, yeah, at the same time, my analysis of it would be, yes, they're not feds.
01:03:08.060Most of these people, the vast, vast majority, are good-hearted.
01:03:11.820But probably somewhere near the top of this organization, there is a fed infiltrator possibly from the beginning.
01:03:17.880Maybe he got caught with some kind of felony or some kind of crime, and then they turned him in order to diminish and probably even pay him, if he's an informant, in order to demoralize, diminish, and possibly prosecute other people within this organization if it comes to that.
01:03:39.400So, that's what I think is the danger in being especially involved in an organization like this, where you, it's a secretive organization.
01:03:48.520You have, like, a membership, essentially.
01:03:50.120Oh, so there is membership criteria that way?
01:04:15.740It's very informal and very fun in a sense.
01:04:18.840But if an organization has a screening process, then that's a whole different set of legal criteria.
01:04:27.320With these guys, it's like, I don't know to what degree or to what ratio their feds, like, maybe only one of them is and he's in a high-ranking position, or maybe half of them are.
01:04:40.680Well, it's easy enough to infiltrate things these days.
01:04:44.620The way that I look at it, though, is it's like, look, you know, we all share the same concern here about what's going on with these drag events and, to a certain degree, the direction that the countries, both countries are going in.
01:04:57.500And it's very easy to be critical of them, that maybe, like, they gave the government a win, right?
01:05:06.100Like, this didn't go well for these Patriot Front guys, other than their notoriety or whatever, right?
01:05:10.340But it seems like they kind of gave the government a win there.
01:05:15.060But really, like, what are people supposed to do?
01:05:20.440If it gets to the day where we're further down the road, it's not just drag kings and queens or whatever, dancing in front of kids with, like, dildos hanging off of them that they're, you know, or it's not just kids putting things.
01:05:34.040If things are to progress further down that road, at what point do people stop something or do something?
01:07:15.660And so, overall, I would say Patriot Front, I don't agree with the look of face masks and shields and coming out of a U-Haul to go to an event.
01:07:29.600Though I understand the organization that they have implemented.
01:07:35.100In so far that if you had just a random group, like, random groups like you had in Charlottesville with the alt-right, anybody could say anything.
01:07:45.720And especially the more extremist element of, like, you know, nationalist groups that we might not necessarily agree with.
01:07:56.360A lot of these people, they've been pushed to the outskirts of society.
01:08:01.780So they have many antisocial views and feelings.
01:08:05.980So they could actually have what could be qualified as hatred.
01:08:10.860And they are not willing to look at nuance.
01:08:15.340They specifically don't like people of certain groups.
01:09:49.800Matt Tabby, I think, was the guy that was the guest there laughing at everything Joe Rogan was saying.
01:09:56.620We'd probably agree with him on a lot of stuff, but it's very easy to throw these guys under the bus when they're LARPing hardcore with, like, shields and face masks.
01:10:08.020I think there's a better way to do it than that.
01:10:14.120I give them a positive and a negative there.
01:10:18.920And I want to share something about America First.
01:10:22.480So, specifically America First and the Groypers and Nick Fuentes, throughout 2019, especially 2019, but into 2020, 2021, and into now, they have been very influential in reshaping the right-wing sphere in American politics, especially people who are very online.
01:10:44.320And, and Nick Fuentes' people, specifically Vincent James, was at this event, too, and they were also counter-protesting.
01:10:55.000And this is a tweet that Nick Fuentes posted, or a telegram, and it shows at the top, Vince James and all the Christian patriots praying on their knees at the event,
01:11:12.700versus the Patriot Front people getting arrested on their knees, basically giving their allegiance or their, not allegiance, but submission to the state versus submission to God at the top.
01:11:30.540Now, I think, you know, this is a bit cocky, a bit hubris of a statement, in the sense that, oh, yeah, well, things turned out our way, in the sense, where we didn't get arrested, and, you know, we were only praying versus these guys, so, you know, our optics were way better.
01:11:53.140But in a sense, Patriot Front was the headline of this story.
01:11:59.220They're the ones that everybody's going to remember. People are not going to know America First from this story, so I would say that against them.
01:12:05.540But also, at the same time, these people had a very dignified presence at this rally, something that could be built upon within the community of, you know, probably mostly Christian,
01:12:18.380and actually have Christian values within Idaho, and it would actually resonate with that particular community in making a positive change.
01:12:27.980So, yeah, this picture is worth a thousand words.
01:12:31.860Whether you agree with the intention of Nick Fuentes' post here, I think that there's something valuable to be taken from this.
01:12:39.440And, Nick Fuentes, in his America First kind of group, I don't know, it's very informal, in the sense that there is no structure to it, there's no membership.
01:12:55.360It's kind of like what we're doing with Platt Army Diagon.
01:12:58.760It's almost like a fan group of a couple of content creators.
01:13:07.200And, you know, if we like you, if you want to come interact and hang out with us online or otherwise, that's cool.
01:13:41.200Though, at the same time with America First, you're not controlling people with discipline in a very specific, in real life way, like these guys are.
01:13:51.180The parameters for how you're going to function as a nationalist in society are largely different.
01:13:59.520And it leads itself to its own problems.
01:14:01.800And, I also think that America First has more of a cult of personality, in that Nick Fuentes is the leader.
01:14:13.580So, you have to agree with Nick Fuentes, or you're not really part of America First.
01:14:19.380And that has its ups and downs, insofar that people are infallible.
01:14:25.600You want to be more consistent to an ideology, or a principle, or a set of rules, right?
01:14:34.640And, they do have their own rules in America First.
01:14:37.800But, if you say that Nick Fuentes is not following those rules that are supposedly given out, then you could become a heretic yourself.
01:14:46.740Though, at the same time, somebody like Nick Fuentes, being a cult of personality, has its benefits, in that if he has good judgment, he could discern who is a good actor and who is a bad actor.
01:15:01.260And he could protect his movement, dependent on if his judgment is good.
01:15:06.160And that is how he kind of pulled himself out of this alt-right sphere, after learning from it, and made his own new American nationalist movement that was based on refined elements of the alt-right, where he pushed out the wignattery, the stuff that was going too far, that was unnecessary, that was not grounded in Christian principles, per se.
01:15:34.700Okay. And, he was able to make a diet, what do you call it when you branch out? Like a div-vol-sion?
01:15:45.960Yeah, a divergence. Yes, that's the word I was talking about.
01:15:49.620He was able to make a divergence, based on his cult of personality, in which he was able to say, okay, this guy doesn't get it, we can get it as a group going forward.
01:16:01.240And sometimes you need that, because, like I said, being a politically dissident movement, you're attracting a lot of people with personal characteristics that could be anti-social, that could be fresh meat for groups like the ADL, the SPLC, and just the media and government en masse, could descend down upon.
01:16:23.820And then, you'll be like every other nationalist group in the past, getting persecuted for not recognizing these faults.
01:16:33.440So, there's a lot of things going on here, and what is your opinion on some of the stuff I just said, and maybe America First, broadly?
01:16:44.460America First, broadly. I really supported what they were doing around the Groeper Wars, when they were confronting, like, TPUSA and Charlie Kirk, and that whole thing that was going on a few years ago.
01:17:00.700I was really in support of that, because that was when we were starting to see, like, the true dissident right really appear, and force the mainstream right wing to have to confront their ideas, and it just became so obvious that they couldn't.
01:17:15.320So, I really like that. What America First has become in more recent years, I think it's a, I think it's a total mess. I think they're more or less lost.
01:17:27.240I think it, it more or less is kind of a cult of personality, and they're doing this weird thing where they're like, yeah, it's a cult, and that's cool. Just join the cult.
01:17:37.620And people are making these weird pledges to Nick Fuentes, and it's like, you know, oh, sort of ironic, but sort of not.
01:17:45.320And they're engaging in gay ops, and they'll, they'll, they'll be really inconsistent, and in one hand, they'll say that, like, it's cool to be a criminal, and they're going to abuse copyright systems, and, you know, they're, they're, there's so much infighting surrounding what they're doing now, that
01:18:04.260whatever their intentions were, as far as optics are concerned, and whatever Nick Fuentes, his judgment was, or something, I really think it's catching up to them. And
01:18:16.440yeah, I think, I think it's probably a failing movement at this point, or at least it's, it accomplished the thing that it was, it's sort of like magnum opus already happened.
01:18:29.360But now it's just, it's so much infighting. And, but I do think that Nick Fuentes has figured that out. It seems like there's a rift between he and Ethan Ralph that's starting to present itself. And, but, you know, you get around America first. And like you were saying,
01:18:45.360you can't really challenge Nick Fuentes, or you can't really disagree with Nick Fuentes, or people have an issue with it. Now, there's this line that's been drawn where it's almost like this gang line where you're either with us or against us. And if you don't fully support what it is that we're doing, it's like gone are the days where you could say that while I support, I support some of what this person's saying, but I disagree with these other facets, they are not even willing to do anything, they're not willing to have any of that anymore.
01:19:15.360It's like, you support us, you're on board with us, you're on our team, or you're our enemy. And if you're our enemy, you're some sort of competitor, we're going to, we're going to crush you, we're going to push you out. And I actually have some, I have some like associations and some kind of like insider knowledge of what's been happening in some of those circles. And it's just, it's such a mess. It's such a shame. And it's such a joke, honestly.
01:19:40.880Well, I don't have those insider information. I don't have that. But I do hope that they could pull it together. I share some of your concerns, maybe not to the same extent that you do. But I'm really hoping that Nick is indeed watching what's going on as he watched what was happening during the Charlottesville and all this stuff, where he realized some of these people are just nuts.
01:20:07.840And they don't stand for what would actually be best. And whatever, if he has issues with his own personality, that is preventing him from, you know, taking criticism.
01:20:21.460I hope that he can overcome that. And I'm only rooting for him. Because honestly, this guy is one of the funniest people, most charismatic and interesting people. I still watch his show, like to this day. And I agree with most things he says. And I think it's a fantastic show presentation.
01:20:41.400So, knowing that he's pretty young, still now, I'm hoping that things will only get better for him. And it will help lead the movement. Now, I'm not like King Fuentes and all this stuff.
01:20:55.900Like, I pledge allegiance. But, you know, I hope the best for him and for everybody else. And I hope that we can all learn.
01:21:02.700But if you're not like King Fuentes, I'll take my lumps for it. I'll, you know, I'll be demoted. I don't care.
01:21:10.740If you're not, they'll eventually see you as an enemy. Eventually.
01:21:15.700Well, I hope that they overcome that un-nuanced kind of opinion. If that is true.
01:21:23.600Yeah, they could correct their trajectory on that front. But that's sort of where the movement is at right now. It's extremely polarized.
01:21:28.600Mm-hmm. Well, I want to look into Proud Boys quickly. Now, we all know Proud Boys, they're probably the biggest element of what's going, of these kind of movements, right?
01:21:42.980They're the quintessential, you know, Donald Trump said, stand back and stand by during the election debates.
01:21:49.440So that just inculcated them or pushed them into the history, the Hall of History, whatever you call it, the Hall of Fame political history of groups.
01:22:06.400And they also did their own stunts on the same weekend or day as the Pride events in Idaho.
01:22:14.800Now, specifically, well, maybe we should give just a bit of a rundown on Proud Boys before we get into them specifically.
01:22:28.300Like, it was started originally in 2016 or 2015 by Gavin McInnes, you know, really funny comedian and political commentator, in my opinion.
01:22:39.640And he started as, like, a boy's, like, Western chauvinist drinking club where they'd hang out and they'd promise not to jerk off or watch porn.
01:22:51.560And it was just kind of like a meathead thing.
01:22:54.300Well, it was, it started as parody, like, they were, they're called Proud Boys because that's the name of a song and an Aladdin musical.
01:23:05.180And they were trying to get their friend laid.
01:23:07.060So they formed this fake fraternal organization where, like, that was the goal.
01:23:11.720But then once a group of guys formed, then it was useful for trying to, like, offer protective services when conservative speakers would go somewhere and Antifa would show up.
01:23:25.660That's hilarious that you mentioned that because the first time I ever encountered the word Proud Boys, I shared a clip.