Unite the Rights speaker James Alsup joins the show to discuss the events of the Unite the Right event in Virginia, and why he didn t attend. Plus, Josh Yass, Aaron Bandler, and Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables to discuss Kim Jong-un backing down, Iceland's Down Syndrome genocide, and the most liked tweet in history.
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00:00:38.000Today, we'll be speaking with Charlottesville Unite the Rights Speaker and embattled Washington State College Republican President James Alsup.
00:00:45.680Plus, Josh Yasma, Aaron Bandler, and thank goodness Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables
00:00:52.200to discuss Kim Jong-un backing down, Iceland's Down syndrome genocide, and the most liked tweet in history.
00:01:01.720We're also going to talk, if we have time, I should have mentioned, why everybody seems to be attacking Lincoln these days.
00:01:16.440There was some graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial last night, so we'll be talking about that a little bit later.
00:01:22.060So, for our guest today, we're lucky to have James Alsup.
00:01:25.200We had actually booked him before any of this craziness happened over the weekend between the neo-Nazis and Antifa in Charlottesville,
00:01:32.980and we figured he was there, and in the spirit of open discourse and debate, we would bring him on to tell us what he saw and describe the event to us.
00:01:51.100I think that it was one of those situations where, going into it, nobody really knew exactly what to expect.
00:01:57.040People had different preconceived notions about what might happen, what they might see there, but once we got there on the ground, everything, all of the plans kind of went out the window.
00:02:05.780Well, this is what I want to talk to you about because, you know, I also was a college Republican president.
00:02:11.420I remember, you know, I was involved in right-wing activism back when I was a pretty young thing, such as you are.
00:02:17.360And my question about this Unite the Right event is that it's called Unite the Right.
00:02:23.560It was organized by a number of people, but there weren't any mainstream conservatives there.
00:02:28.860So there were no representatives from the mainstream of the conservative movement.
00:02:32.360There were no Republican politicians that could be talked about.
00:02:35.940There weren't even alt-light people like Cernovich.
00:02:44.560So the only people that I see there are neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, white nationalists like Richard Spencer, white identity advocates like Identity Europa.
00:03:01.200Well, I was actually going to deliver a speech about nationalism as a concept, not, you know, ethnic nationalism, about nationalism.
00:03:08.800I was going to speak about how nationalism is not a hateful philosophy, but it's a philosophy that is based around love of, you know, your country and your fellow countrymen.
00:03:17.540And I don't think it's quite fair to say that the only people there were neo-Nazis.
00:10:05.500It seems to me that for a lot of people your age, a little bit younger, even as old as I am,
00:10:11.960we were told, we were brought up in this milieu of feminism and being told that straight men are bad
00:10:17.280and white men are bad and this, that and the other thing.
00:10:19.760My concern is that seems to have provoked a reactionary response that is feeding the worst elements of the identity politics that drove us crazy in the first place.
00:12:45.380But so I come at it from a libertarian perspective with a lot of this stuff.
00:12:49.700And so I look, when I look at politicians, at people like Paul Nayland, who are excellent representations of what I believe America first policy should be.
00:12:58.460I like people like Steve King as another fantastic example of someone who is putting, you know, these workers first.
00:13:03.740I actually did an interview with Paul Nayland on my YouTube channel where we talked about a lot of this stuff.
00:13:07.440We talked about how the uniparty, the Republicans and the Democrats, are both kind of screwing the American worker and making things worse for everyday Americans.
00:13:15.280This is, you know, just to get back, I don't want to drop Ron Paul too quickly.
00:13:18.300This is one of the reasons why I'm interested in your videos.
00:13:22.300And I remember, you know, when I was, I was joking that at 17, every kid, every young kid on the right reads Ayn Rand and is convinced he knows everything for about six months.
00:13:31.060And then he kind of floats away from it usually, move away from libertarianism, what have you.
00:13:36.040And my worry with a lot of young people and with you as well, James, I worry that people are getting famous too young and they're espousing these views too young.
00:13:46.040Views that might change and views that might be nuanced.
00:13:49.260And I think you're playing with bad juju with these all right guys.
00:13:52.500And to give an example, I will, we have a clip of Richard Spencer from your channel, from a speech he gave at the Lincoln Memorial.
00:14:53.500They don't really care about the Constitution, you know, there's that meme, but my Constitution, my Constitution doesn't protect anything if you don't have voting demographics, is how it goes online.
00:15:04.580The question here, I wonder, is what is that meaning?
00:15:09.300What is that meaning that the alt-right is trying to embrace?
00:15:12.860It seems to me it's just the white race.
00:15:15.440It's the color of your skin and communities that have historically lived near each other.
00:15:30.120I only ask you because it was on your channel.
00:15:32.000I only ask you because I know you were at the event.
00:15:33.820And if you have any – you know, you've spent more time with these guys than I have.
00:15:37.040I think what they would say is that they are fighting to – they're fighting to, I guess, continue the flame of Western civilization, right?
00:15:47.400You know, people throughout Western civilization throughout history have built great things, built great empires, done great things.
00:15:52.620You know, the foundations of modern philosophy and art and music, all of this comes out of really, you know, mostly Western Europe.
00:16:27.140Well, I would actually argue that one of the greatest manifestations of Western culture and values are the United States founding documents.
00:16:34.400It is this idea that we can have a society that guarantees freedom and liberties to people but also inspires you to work towards bettering yourself.
00:16:43.600You know, you're ultimately responsible for yourself.
00:16:45.380And the – if you think back to the 1700s and the late 1700s, we were a country and we were founded as a country with a very, very small state for a reason.
00:16:54.300But we were also a country with very large, you know, church groups, right?
00:17:14.120All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which would traditionally be written as property.
00:17:23.780And if you look at the 1790 – if you look at the 1790 Naturalization Act, it's very interesting because they actually make it a required provision where people who emigrate from Europe renounce all of their former titles.
00:17:34.420You know, if you were a lord or some kind of, you know, royalty in Europe, you actually had to give that up.
00:17:39.600And to become an American citizen, you had to, you know, accept that kind of, you know, abandonment of the former hierarchy.
00:17:54.600And now my – so my question for all of these guys who have a stated goal, which is exactly the same as my stated goal, which is to promote Western culture and defend Western culture.
00:18:04.980But as we've just said, the Western culture, it was expressed in these founding documents in the notion that we're endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.
00:18:46.920No, I believe that the Ten Commandments and the biblical teachings are a fantastic foundation and should be the bedrock of Western civilization and culture.
00:18:55.620The Ten Commandments and the ideas expressed in the Bible should really be the guiding light for how we treat each other and how we, you know, manage our day-to-day dealings.
00:19:03.880You sound mostly Christian to me, but where – so where do you disagree with them?
00:19:08.740Well, it's not that I disagree with them.
00:19:09.980It's just that I don't participate in organized religion to the extent where I would be comfortable calling myself, you know, a Christian.
00:19:22.200You believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who came down to save all of mankind and was killed and then on the third day was literally resurrected to redeem man?
00:20:32.520You know, they want to get a university degree without a university education.
00:20:35.280They always want the semblance of the thing, the appearance of the thing, but not the essence of the thing, not the thing that animates it.
00:20:41.660And so I wonder, to the second point of what you've talked about, you say you believe that the Ten Commandments ought to be the structure of the bedrock of civilization, the Christian foundations.
00:20:51.980There ought to be more churches for more civic society, civil society.
00:20:57.460If it isn't true, if the Ten Commandments don't come from God, why should they be the foundation of society?
00:21:05.260Or on the flip side, why have they worked?
00:21:08.820Well, I think that they have objectively produced the best societies in world history.
00:21:13.060You know, and so, you know, even if you were to take the religious aspect out of it, you could say that these values, if you look at these values from a, you know, non-religious perspective, you could say these values have produced these great societies.
00:21:25.900And on that merit, you know, they should be supported.
00:21:28.320But why have they produced the great societies?
00:22:11.780And I don't, by the way, I don't mean this, I don't mean to be patronizing, but I know I sound like I'm patronizing.
00:22:17.140But I think there are a lot of young conservatives that you represent and that you can speak to and that you're a voice for.
00:22:23.420And I think that on the road of thinking thoughtfully and of reading a lot of books, people come up with some kooky ideas and go down bad paths.
00:22:33.480And people who are in the public eye and who go on camera have the misfortune of knowing that the Internet is forever and you're going to be chased by this for the rest of your life.
00:22:42.400And it might behoove people to think about the conclusions, the logical extremes of their ideas before they make grand statements.
00:22:51.960And the reason we talk about Christianity is it seems that the religion, the Christianity that created the West, the West that the alt-right alleges to defend, objects to a great many things that the alt-right is advocating and doing.
00:23:06.520In particular, the racist aspect of it, in particular, separating people categorically by race, advocating things like the ethnostate, so on and so forth.
00:23:17.360It seems to me, I mean, I think you would be bored if I read all of the scriptures about it.
00:23:24.060But there are endless scriptures that talk about this.
00:23:26.660This fundamental contradiction in the alt-right seems to me irreconcilable and shows the movement for what it is, which I think is half-witted.
00:23:34.420Sort of like the New York Times editorial board, you know, it's these guys who are a little bit smart, and so they convince the New York Times readers to believe their idiocy.
00:24:11.220So then you look at the 1790 Immigration Act, and the 1790 Immigration Act, I should say, explicitly restricted citizenship to free white people of good character.
00:24:21.060And that was a standard up until the mid to late 1800s.
00:24:24.580And so I guess we could then say, you know, were the founders wrong to say that?
00:24:27.740No, I don't think so. Surely you would agree that history requires context and that the society of 2017, excuse me, is quite different than the society of the late 18th century.
00:24:45.440People that have been held in bondage for 200 years in the Americas or who have come out of a civilization in Africa that is in very few ways similar to the civilization of the West.
00:24:55.960Surely their position might be a little different in society, and the laws would reflect that after the slaves are emancipated, after Jim Crow is obliterated, and, you know, we arrive at 2017 in a basically equalitarian place.
00:25:12.000Right. And I'm not arguing that we should, you know, return to this or anything.
00:25:16.920I'm just saying that this is the situation and this is the system that the founding fathers set up, that these Christians set up.
00:25:24.020And throughout the vast majority of the Christian history, these kind of policies were accepted and were put in place.
00:25:30.860And so it's actually a relatively short time in the Christian history that we've believed in this idea of egalitarianism.
00:25:36.000It seems to me that slavery, especially slavery as we're talking about in the United States, is an aberration in the history of the West.
00:25:43.700It wasn't practiced, certainly not as it was in the United States for all of the West.
00:25:48.320And by the way, that slavery only came about because we interacted with the people for the first time in the West Coast of Africa in a trade relationship.
00:26:00.840I mean, the Europeans held slaves for many years.
00:26:02.480Because slavery can trace its roots back to, you know, the Islamic world, you know, and the Islamic world.
00:26:08.100I'm not denying that there was slavery in the West.
00:26:09.780The Greeks had helots and the Romans had slaves.
00:26:11.980But those institutions of slavery were quite different.
00:26:14.720And they also were less racial, depending on which eras and which places we're talking about in the history of the West.
00:26:21.900Sure. And they were also quite a bit more brutal.
00:26:23.520And so it's important to remember that the American form of slavery was actually, and I'm sure this will be cut out of context somewhere, but the American form of slavery was actually one of the gentler forms of slavery that existed.
00:26:34.380You know, the Egyptians would actually, you know, do horrible things to their slaves, their castration, etc., before they would ever take them into bondage.
00:26:41.500And so, yeah, you know, history is replete with brutality and horrible things.
00:26:46.500Sure. Parts of the American experience of slavery, different decades were different, but parts were quite brutal.
00:26:52.980And other parts, relatively less brutal, say, than in the years right before the war.
00:26:59.120But, you know, one issue, because we've been kind of dancing around the culture and race, and it seems to me that, you know, any racial categorical differences, as they would matter for public policy, might just as easily be explained by culture as by genetics.
00:27:14.780I know a lot of people on the alt-right say that race and culture are inextricably linked.
00:27:26.240Also, I just see it flying around quite a lot, and I think that's another example of some of the stupidities that the alt-right is promulgating.
00:27:33.800The other is, do we need to worry about, the thing that they can't stop talking about is racial differences in IQ, as posited by Charles Murray.
00:27:41.780Is there any implication for public policy by these handfuls of studies that have shown some correlation?
00:27:48.100Well, I don't know if it's, if there's necessarily an implication for public policy, but I think it's an important thing to understand, because it helps us understand why certain groups tend to, on average, I'll be very clear, tend to, on average, perform differently than others in society.
00:28:03.540You look at why there are so many Asians, for example, that get into very top-tier schools, or why Asians do so well in the SAT.
00:28:09.900Well, it's due to the fact that Asians tend to have an IQ closer to around 110.
00:35:28.260And I don't deny it, but it seems to me what you're talking about now is culture rather than race.
00:35:33.640Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it seems to me that race is a biological construct and that culture is a cultural construct, a social construct.
00:35:45.220So if we're talking about big government, people coming from different areas and vote 70, 30 or 60, 40 or whatever, that seems to me not biological.
00:35:53.000Are you suggesting that we need to talk about biological implications of different peoples or just cultural ones?
00:37:38.240I think you've been rightly hammered about this, but I give a little grace to you because I understand that ideas can lead to ideas, and some of these guys are somewhat articulate, and it's easy to think the wrong thing sometimes.
00:37:55.520I think that it's important to provide media coverage of events like this that is going to be representative of the actual event.
00:38:02.960When you look at the reports that came out from places like the New York Times or CNN or Fox News, they were latching on to one or two pictures of the guy with the swastika flag and saying, this is what the event is.
00:39:16.880And I think that – but I disagree with the inherent assertion that that's a bad thing, right?
00:39:22.760Because, again, we see these people all across the country organizing for black interests, organizing for black identity, for Hispanic identity, for Asian-American identity.
00:40:16.240All of these anti-white attacks, these anti-white narratives going on in the media and in government, it's causing people to become conscious of their status as a white person, which is then leading them towards things like the alt-right.
00:40:46.380I would absolutely love for us to be able to drop identity politics and talk about the benefits of laissez-faire capitalism and the free market.
00:40:54.240But unfortunately, what we're seeing is that these people on the left are not going to take their foot off the gas.
00:40:59.540You know, they're going to keep attacking white people, keep blaming white people, keep demonizing white people in this country as the root of all evil.
00:41:08.620And I think, unfortunately, that's going to lead to more and more of this type of stratification.
00:41:13.340So I would love for us to be able to go back, you know, six years or whatever and talk about, you know, the intricacies of health care policy or something.
00:41:20.420But that's really not what is being pushed by the left.
00:41:34.140There have always been cultural warriors.
00:41:36.480And the primary motivator of that cultural war, especially on the right, has historically been the primary animator of the Western civilization that we say that we're going to defend, Christianity.
00:41:47.500Christianity, it seems to me now that that is being substituted for white race.
00:41:52.700And I think you would probably grant me that.
00:44:21.660Kim Jong-un has backed away from a threatened missile strike on Guam, which President Trump hailed as a very wise and well-reasoned decision.
00:44:28.560The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable, with an exclamation point, in true Trumpian fashion.
00:58:09.500It seems to me that there are, for people like my guest, James Alsup, and for other people who are being attracted to some of these alt-righty ideas, these alt-righty personalities online, it seems subversive.
00:58:20.340They seem quasi-articulate, quasi-intelligent, and it seems fun with all the memes and everything.
00:58:27.300I would just say, look past the surface.
00:58:30.360If you scratch these guys below the skin, you are not going to find any substance whatsoever.
00:58:35.700They say they defend Western civilization.
00:58:37.620They don't know a thing about Western culture.
00:58:39.100They don't practice the thing that animates Western culture.
00:58:43.680And if you, like the rest of us, do want to defend Western culture and do want to advance it, then read a book, man.
00:58:50.660Learn about your own culture and practice the thing that made it so important, those values that we see embodied in our United States Constitution.
00:58:59.580And on that, I will see you all tomorrow.