The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 139 - Antifa is a Terrorist Group

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, should the media stop naming mass killers? We'll discuss that.

00:00:04.400 Also, Antifa proves again that it is a terrorist organization. Finally, I wrote an innocuous tweet

00:00:10.040 and somebody said that my house should be burned down because of it. What does that say about the

00:00:13.920 state of our discourse in America? Nothing good. We'll talk about all that coming up.

00:00:20.720 All right, coming to you live from a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. You know, people ask me

00:00:26.960 all the time why I do these shows in a, you know, I'm in a car one minute and then the next minute

00:00:34.420 I'm in a, in my house. Sometimes I'm in a hotel. Sometimes I'm riding a camel through the,

00:00:40.300 through the desert. You know, sometimes I'm on a boat with a goat. Sam, I am, you know, people will

00:00:44.800 say, well, why are you, why are you all over the place? And I think it's a pretty simple answer to

00:00:49.040 that question. The answer is because I just, I, I just do it wherever I am. I just do the show

00:00:54.660 wherever I happen to be, but it's just, it's interesting to me that some people get so upset

00:01:00.460 about that. They get very upset about the scenery, especially when I'm in the car, because I have been

00:01:05.460 known on many occasions to do the show in my car and then just read the comments anytime, because

00:01:10.680 there's always going to be people who are really angry about the fact that I'm, I can't watch this

00:01:16.020 if you're in the car, get out of the car. Why are you in the car? Stop being in the car. Why is he in

00:01:22.780 the car? What's with the car? Over and over and over again. And I just, look, just take it easy.

00:01:28.900 I'm not in your car. Okay. So that's, if I was in your car, I'd understand being upset. I don't

00:01:33.980 understand being upset about a guy in a car. I just, I don't understand it. But I'm not in a car

00:01:40.320 today. Anyway, at least I'm in a, you know, I'm inside. I'm in a physical building. All right.

00:01:46.060 A few things I want to talk about today. The first thing, the, the, the Daily Wire, as, as you,

00:01:54.240 as you may know, does not publish the names of, of scumbag mass killers anymore, like the one who

00:02:03.520 committed that terrible attack in California yesterday. And I think that's the, the right

00:02:08.740 approach. And, and I wish that's what I was thinking about today is I really wish everyone in

00:02:15.100 the media could, we could kind of all be on the same page here. And I know that so few of us can

00:02:20.220 agree just in general, in society, few of us can agree on anything. And in the media, especially

00:02:25.460 everything is fractured down ideological and political lines, of course, but maybe this is

00:02:31.000 one thing that we, we should be able to agree on, you know, but obviously we aren't there yet. So

00:02:37.660 after the attack, California, that killed 12 people, wounded many more, um, the name and face

00:02:44.760 and biographical details of the coward responsible for the act were plastered all over every news site

00:02:51.620 and, and, and a lot of the TV channels, his name was trending on social media, so on and so forth.

00:02:56.560 And I'm sure if you, if you typed his name into Google, there would be hundreds of results already

00:03:00.880 for it. Now, look, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm realistic. And I know that we're never going to reach a point

00:03:06.380 where literally every source of news or information on television or on the internet commits to making

00:03:11.620 these people anonymous. And, um, and I'm in, you know, the daily wire, we only changed this policy

00:03:19.760 in the last year. So there is an argument to be made for, for publishing the names and the faces.

00:03:25.980 I don't deny that. Uh, and it is possible for a website or a news channel to do that

00:03:31.800 for reasons that are not simply pure exploitation. Um, and I'm not sure that complete anonymity would

00:03:40.180 even be ideal anyway, even if it was possible to do, even if it were possible theoretically to

00:03:45.500 get to a point where nobody is talking about, no one reports on the name, no one puts the picture

00:03:49.220 out there. Even if that were possible, that complete anonymity would not, which it isn't,

00:03:53.620 but even if it were, I'd say that I don't think that would be ideal either because the personal

00:03:57.880 details of mass killers can be relevant and important to some people in some circumstances.

00:04:04.300 For instance, if you read about the background of one of these people, and then you say to yourself,

00:04:12.600 well, that sounds an awful lot like my teenage son or something, then I think it becomes

00:04:17.900 important information. There are other situations as well where it could be important. The point is

00:04:22.800 that, that, that information about these people can be important. It can be useful. Um, it does help

00:04:28.680 to know what sort of people we're dealing with. It does help, can help to, to honestly try to

00:04:34.360 understand what led to these attacks, not to excuse them in the least, obviously, but just to figure

00:04:40.240 out what we can be done in the future to prevent them. But there is a difference between this

00:04:46.020 information being made available. And that's one thing having the information available. Of course,

00:04:52.620 that makes it, but there's a difference between that and the breathless kind of coverage that you

00:04:56.680 see about these people, the obsession with personal details, the tabloid like approach that some

00:05:02.380 websites and news organizations use. Um, the information can be made accessible without putting

00:05:08.840 a humongous picture of the guy's face on the front page, for instance. So I think that's something that

00:05:16.020 everyone in the media needs to look at and decide where the balance is, because I don't, I don't

00:05:21.120 think we've, we've quite struck the balance. There's no question. I think the media, this is one thing I

00:05:26.660 think the media in general has gotten better at as we've all assessed this and realized we've realized

00:05:32.880 that there's simply no question that these people are motivated in part by a deep desire for

00:05:41.860 attention, for infamy. Um, and many criminologists, psychologists have been warning about this

00:05:47.500 repeatedly for a very long time. These people having failed to figure out how to live whole and

00:05:53.500 fruitful lives, um, and they feel like their very identity is fading away into this pitiful fog of,

00:06:00.460 of irrelevance and mediocrity. So then they try to assert their existence, uh, and claim some kind of

00:06:09.580 meaning through an act of random destruction. So the more attention we award people like that,

00:06:15.720 when they do it, the more we incentivize the next pathetic loser to follow in their footsteps. 0.99

00:06:24.060 I just think it's, it's hard maybe for us to, it's hard to overestimate and maybe it's hard for us to

00:06:28.260 understand just how deeply, uh, these deranged lunatics crave to be noticed and noticed in horrible ways.

00:06:38.060 So I think if we focused on, on other things after these attacks and, uh, maybe the next attention

00:06:43.920 starved madman would be slightly less inclined to, to forfeit his life just to become a faceless

00:06:50.820 footnote on another very terrible chapter of American history. And I, and as I said, I do think

00:06:58.100 this is one area, one area where some people in media are making some progress, but, um, I think we

00:07:04.160 just have to keep looking at that and assessing that. All right. Um, we're now hearing more details

00:07:09.060 about the, uh, Antifa. Someone told me it's pronounced Antifa. I don't really care. I'm calling

00:07:18.840 it Antifa. More details about the Antifa quote demonstration at Tucker Carlson's house in DC last

00:07:26.060 night. There was a mob of about 20 left-wing thugs and they came in onto Carlson's property

00:07:33.180 when his wife was at home. He also has four kids who apparently were not at home. Thank God. But,

00:07:37.180 uh, it could have been for all these people, kids, people probably want, we're hoping that they would

00:07:40.920 be on so they could terrify them. And they started banging on, on his door, managed to crack it in the

00:07:48.040 process. They were shouting, we know where you sleep at night. Um, somebody in the crowd was talking

00:07:52.960 about bringing a pipe bomb. They spray painted an anarchy symbol on his driveway. Um, a Twitter

00:08:00.940 account that was associated with the group posted a message on, on Twitter while this was going on.

00:08:05.240 This is what the message said. It said, racist scumbag leave town. Every night you spread fear into our

00:08:10.260 homes, fear of the other, fear of us, fear of them. Each night you tell us we are not safe tonight.

00:08:15.480 You're reminded that we have a voice tonight. We remind you that you are not safe either.

00:08:20.160 And then the group also apparently posted the names and addresses of Carlson's brother

00:08:24.680 and, uh, and friend as well. Let's just be completely clear about one thing. This is not

00:08:34.020 a protest. This is not what a protest is. This is not free speech. These are not activists. Uh,

00:08:41.580 these are terrorists who are engaged in an organized campaign to harass and threaten their political

00:08:47.220 enemies. That's, that's terrorism by definition. They're being very upfront about it. They're

00:08:53.100 saying this is what they want to do. They want to terrify. They want, they want people to feel

00:08:55.960 unsafe. And this of course is far from the first case that we've seen. We see this all the time

00:09:01.180 with this, with this group. We've seen them shut down entire city blocks, assault, innocent

00:09:05.080 bystanders, vandalized property, like they did at Carlson's house. Uh, we've seen them swarm

00:09:09.760 politicians, chase them out of restaurants like they did to, uh, like they did this, this exact same 0.79

00:09:13.940 group in DC did that to Ted Cruz. We've seen them riot in their stupid little ski masks in the street

00:09:18.880 with, you know, carrying around bats and clubs and everything. Um, there's a reason why the

00:09:24.760 department of Homeland security has classified these people, domestic terrorists, because this again

00:09:30.560 is politically motivated violence, incitement and harassment. That's what terrorism is. But the

00:09:36.720 problem is that they aren't treated like terrorists for some reason that usually they're allowed to

00:09:43.260 carry on unimpeded. It still boggles my mind that anyone can show up to a protest with a bat in a 0.87

00:09:51.000 ski mask and not be immediately arrested. That's not free speech. Free speech does not require you

00:09:59.080 to carry a bat and have a ski mask on. And in fact, I would say if this is, if, if whatever speech

00:10:05.260 you're engaging in, if you aren't willing to do it with your actual face visible, then you shouldn't be

00:10:11.640 doing it. That's, that's a really good sign that whatever kind of speech you're about to engage

00:10:17.060 in clearly is not legitimate free speech because any legitimate free speech, if you're going to do

00:10:21.380 it out in public, you should be required to do it with your face visible. Um, but this is, this is,

00:10:29.640 they're given this incredible leeway to just like do essentially do whatever they want.

00:10:34.380 And I don't understand it. The cops did show up to Tucker Carlson's house last night after,

00:10:40.060 after his wife called them, but I haven't heard reports of mass arrests going on.

00:10:46.180 I'm not, was anybody arrested? I'm actually not sure about that. I certainly don't think they were

00:10:51.340 all arrested. If they were, then I apologize for getting it wrong. But my impression is that they

00:10:57.520 were not all arrested if anyone was arrested. But how does that happen? Why don't the police show up

00:11:03.060 and just arrest everybody? You've got this violent mob outside somebody's house. They've already gone

00:11:07.760 on his private property. They're vandalized. They're shouting, making threats, arrest everybody

00:11:12.500 there. Or if you've got a mob in the street, assaulting bystanders, you got them with masks,

00:11:20.000 just arrest all of them immediately. What, what are we waiting for? Um, it seems like the strategy is,

00:11:30.320 okay, let's wait until, let's wait until they kill somebody and we're, cause they haven't killed

00:11:34.860 anybody yet. And so let's, let's wait until they do that. But I think, you know, I, I think maybe it'd

00:11:39.740 be better to, to, to head them off at the past because we see where this is headed. Groups like this,

00:11:46.760 you know, they either become more and more violent as time goes on, or they are suppressed and stamped

00:11:55.360 out. Uh, I'm not aware of any case where a group like Antifa, this kind of organized, this violence

00:12:01.760 organization did a course correction on their own and then trended back in the other direction

00:12:06.260 towards nonviolence. I'm not aware of that ever happening. Uh, maybe there is an example. I'm not

00:12:10.820 aware of it. So what are we waiting for? Why are these ski mask terrorists allowed to get past square

00:12:19.900 one? It seems to me, especially at the department of Homeland security considers them to be domestic

00:12:25.400 terrorists. As soon as they show up, arrest them because this is a violent organization. They have

00:12:31.300 made it clear. That's what that's their, their goal is to make people feel, uh, is to terrorize

00:12:36.940 and to threaten, which is not legitimate speech. Um, and these are, by the way, these are the very

00:12:51.320 same people who argue that, um, white supremacists don't have free speech because to, to, to, to

00:13:00.800 spew white supremacist rhetoric is not legitimate speech. So you don't have a right to it. Now,

00:13:05.440 the problem is that they consider any speech they disagree with to be white supremacists.

00:13:09.300 So everybody who is not one of them is a white supremacist because these are ridiculous fools.

00:13:14.400 But even in the case of an actual white supremacist, their argument is even if a white

00:13:18.160 supremacist is standing up and speaking his mind peacefully, he's not, he's not directly threatening

00:13:23.540 any individual person. They're saying that's not legitimate speech. Well, we can argue about that,

00:13:30.700 but, but let me tell you something. If that's not legitimate speech, if you're telling me that person

00:13:34.240 doesn't have a right to it, then you certainly don't have a right to, to, to, to stand in the

00:13:38.480 street and make explicit threats towards individuals. Um, one of the things I wanted to

00:13:47.700 talk about related to all this, uh, somewhat related, uh, I mentioned yesterday a tweet that

00:13:56.160 I sent out, which was relatively innocuous. I thought, um, I just made the point a couple of

00:14:03.460 days ago that before the election, I made the point that your daily life and, and my daily life

00:14:09.100 is not really going to be affected, uh, terribly affected one way or another by the outcome of the

00:14:16.180 election. Uh, elections are important. They're not the most important thing. Politicians are powerful,

00:14:20.000 but they're not gods. And that's the way our system was set up by the very brilliant men who

00:14:24.480 established it. It's set up that way. So that even if you have a bunch of incompetent idiots,

00:14:28.680 um, and partisans in, in government, which, which, which we, which we always have had to some extent

00:14:34.820 or another, even in that case, you're still going to basically have freedom. You can go about your

00:14:38.900 life and live your life. But as I said yesterday, that tweet provoked an extremely strong reaction

00:14:44.800 from the left, uh, thousands of outrage comments and messages poured in, including actual death

00:14:50.860 threats, death threats, because I said that elections are not as important as everyone

00:14:55.120 thinks they were death threats because of that. One guy said that if he catches me in a room alone,

00:14:59.180 I'm not going to be breathing anymore, which was his way of threatening to kill me. Uh, another said

00:15:03.940 that he hopes that somebody burns down my house. There were other, there were a lot of other messages

00:15:07.140 in that vein. And then there were others that weren't threatening, but we're still pretty

00:15:10.380 atrocious. Uh, someone messaged me just recently and said that I'm a bad person and

00:15:16.380 a bad father. Uh, and my, my daughter deserves a better father. By the way, here's the exact

00:15:22.440 tweet, which they were responding to. The tweet was elections are important, but no matter who

00:15:26.240 wins 99.999% of your daily life and existence will be completely unaffected by the results today.

00:15:31.460 Just a bit of perspective. Now, even if you disagree with that, why in the world would it make you mad

00:15:38.320 enough to wish or threaten harm? Why would your response to that benign, innocuous statement

00:15:45.200 B. I hope someone burns down your house. I use this just as a personal example because it's the

00:15:52.960 most recent. I could point to dozens of others, of course, but the point is that none of these

00:15:56.240 examples are even necessary because you, you know, you, you, you know how it goes, right? You've seen

00:16:01.320 this as well. When people disagree on the internet, they threaten death. They call you a bad person.

00:16:08.320 They call you a Nazi, et cetera, et cetera. Um, we're so used to this dynamic by now that, that

00:16:13.140 on we're so used to this dynamic, especially on the, on the internet that we think it doesn't count.

00:16:20.520 We say, well, that's just the internet. People aren't like that in real life. I'm told that all

00:16:24.960 the time. I put a screenshot of that tweet of someone saying they hope someone burns down my

00:16:28.660 house yesterday. And a few people told me that said, well, it's just the internet though. You know,

00:16:32.420 that's not how people are in the real world. You got to get off the internet and go out into the real

00:16:36.340 world. Now it is easy to come to that conclusion. It's easy to come to this kind of dualist

00:16:41.440 idea of there's the internet, there, there are internet people and then regular people, right?

00:16:48.920 Because if you're like me, you're, you're, you're everyday interactions with people are normal and

00:16:53.520 you get along fine with most people in real life. Um, even though there is this animosity under the

00:16:59.660 surface, apparently it doesn't really come out most of the time. Uh, this is one of the things that

00:17:04.100 I've noticed in throughout my career is that I'll get the vilest, most disgusting emails from people

00:17:10.560 and messages, but then when I'm out in public, for the most part, people are perfectly friendly.

00:17:15.200 Um, unless I've, I'm protested or something like that, but, but that, but that's a group of people,

00:17:20.240 right? It's so groups can act that way. People on the internet act that, but when you've got

00:17:25.560 individual people in their everyday life, most of them act perfectly fine. Um, so how do you account

00:17:35.520 for that? For all of the hate and the vitriol online and in groups, but that doesn't counter

00:17:42.400 carry over to everyday life and everyday interactions? Well, it seems obvious enough.

00:17:48.340 This is, these are cowards. Um, cowardice plays a large part here. People want the insulation and the

00:17:54.260 protection of a computer screen or a mob. There are other things that work here too, obviously,

00:17:59.540 but, but I think that's one of the main things, but what that, but what I'm saying is that tells us

00:18:07.480 something about what's going on inside people. It tells us something about the, the, the capacity,

00:18:15.000 the, the tendency of people. Now they might keep it contained and they might funnel it through their

00:18:22.860 keyboards, but it's still there. And that's why I never quite understand the people who say, well,

00:18:30.500 yeah, all of that hate is just people online. You got to get offline, go out into the real world.

00:18:35.060 Well, what, who do you think these people are who are typing this stuff online? Where do you think

00:18:40.180 it's coming from? These are actual human beings saying this as some of them might be bots, but most of

00:18:46.180 them are real people. So what does that mean? Well, that's not the real world. Of course it's the real

00:18:50.660 world. It's not a, it's not a, it's not some kind of dream world. You're not dreaming when you're

00:18:55.200 online. You're interacting with real, actual people. In fact, I would, and I'm afraid to say

00:19:01.600 this because I know, I know what kind of statement it is about the state of society, but I actually

00:19:05.380 would say that your interactions with people online are a better indication of how people actually are

00:19:12.720 in the state of our culture than your interactions with people when you're in line at the grocery store

00:19:17.480 or something. It's a better, uh, it gives you a better sense because number one, it's a bigger

00:19:23.340 sample size, right? When you're online, you're interacting with a lot of different people at

00:19:26.260 once, bigger sample size. And also the anonymity gives people the license they feel like to actually

00:19:34.080 let their true selves show. So a guy who leaves a comment under a YouTube video saying, I hope your

00:19:43.120 children get cancer. Um, and then he goes out and, and, uh, and you bump into him. Uh, you know,

00:19:51.220 you walk by him when he's mowing his lawn or something and he waves friendly to you.

00:19:56.980 Well, that's not, that doesn't prove that he's not the guy who said that he's still the kind of guy

00:20:02.880 who would say something like that. He's just too afraid, too much of a coward to say to somebody in

00:20:07.400 person, but that's still what's so no. So you walk by somebody, you wave to him, you say, Oh, well,

00:20:12.200 that's, see, it's a decent guy. People are decent. No, that's not a decent guy. If you become suddenly

00:20:17.240 very indecent and vile and disgusting, when you get online, then you are an indecent, vile, disgusting 0.93

00:20:22.380 human. Even if it never comes out, except online, the internet is just a medium for communication. It

00:20:29.300 doesn't, it doesn't relieve you of your moral guilt. If you, if you say and do horrible things

00:20:34.580 online, that would be like, if somebody wrote a horrible message to you on a piece of loose leaf

00:20:41.200 and left it on your doorstep and you read it and you were upset and said, look at this terrible

00:20:45.660 thing. And I said, no, no, but that's not, that's not the real world. That's just paper.

00:20:50.860 Well, the paper didn't write it, did it? A real person wrote that a real person was using this as a

00:20:57.040 platform to let you know their true feelings inside. So that does give you an insight into who that person

00:21:03.660 is, not just who that person is when they're writing on paper, who that person is, period.

00:21:10.720 So this is, I just feel like this is one area of false comfort that we try to give ourselves where

00:21:18.400 we say, yeah, people, you know, you can't, you can't voice any opinion online without a bunch of

00:21:24.960 rabid morons attacking you. But that doesn't mean that the country is actually filled with rabid morons.

00:21:29.540 Um, you know, because people are decent in, in, in real life. No, that is real life. That is real

00:21:36.580 life. What is the actual percentage or what's the actual ratio of normal, decent people to rabid

00:21:44.280 morons? I have no idea. Um, I have no idea. It probably is lower than what it seems like when

00:21:52.600 you're online, but it's definitely higher than what it seems like when you're going about your daily

00:21:56.580 life. Because people have learned to channel their, their rabid moron-ness through the internet,

00:22:08.240 which you might say has certain advantages. Um, it's sort of like a cyber purge that goes on every

00:22:16.300 day. It's like the purge, but online every single day where people can just let out all of their horrible

00:22:20.260 feelings and thoughts and become monsters online. So that doesn't, so that they can be,

00:22:25.040 you know, they can get all that bad energy out. But I think what we're seeing is it's starting to

00:22:29.960 spill over more and more into, uh, the real world, into our physical everyday life. Um,

00:22:37.680 um, so that's kind of a depressing thought, but I think that's, that's kind of where we are.

00:22:47.860 Um, there is just a, a lot of animosity out there and not just animosity, but what, what I,

00:22:57.880 what I encounter is one of the main features, I guess, of, of the way that we,

00:23:05.320 that we have debates and discussions in, in America. And yeah, it's mostly like this online,

00:23:10.260 but again, that's just a reflection of how people actually are, is people are, they're filled with

00:23:15.400 hate, animosity, they're very hostile. But on top of that, there is this total unwillingness

00:23:20.820 that a lot of people have, a total unwillingness to actually listen to what somebody is saying

00:23:28.540 and try to understand it and then engage with it. I think what we are seeing now in our culture is

00:23:35.000 that is among a lot of people, a complete unwillingness to do that. So it's just a breakdown

00:23:39.960 of communication. If you're not willing to listen to someone and actually try to understand

00:23:46.820 what they're saying, hope of any, of any actual communication happening, of any fruitful

00:23:51.480 communication happening anyway. It seems like in most arguments now, people are,

00:23:55.460 it seems like they're yelling at each other, but really they're yelling at the voices in their own

00:24:00.240 head because they've created this caricature of what they think the other side is like and what

00:24:06.460 they think the other person is going to say and what they think the other person means when they

00:24:10.480 say things. And they are just super imposing that onto the statements that the other person actually

00:24:16.300 makes. So this tweet was just one example of that. I don't know what I actually said was benign and

00:24:22.000 innocuous. I, but the people reading it, they obviously had it in their head. They were

00:24:25.920 hallucinating. They had something else in mind. I don't know what they read. I don't know what they

00:24:29.680 think that I wrote, but they are taking their impressions of, of, of the kind of person I must

00:24:36.140 be based on my politics. And they are creating, um, a point of view I don't actually have and imposing

00:24:44.220 that onto me and then shouting at it. That's what discussion is in America. Pray for our country,

00:24:51.200 everybody. Uh, I'll leave it there. Talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - November 09, 2018

Ep. 139 - Antifa is a Terrorist Group

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