The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 569 - Abolish Whiteness

00:00:00.520 Political satire is now impossible. I have just returned from Washington, D.C. I was there for 24

00:00:06.820 hours. I was there talking to the Attorney General of the United States, which we will get to a

00:00:10.920 little bit later in the show. And while I was there, the rioters, the peaceful protesters

00:00:15.540 promised to tear down, in the name of racial justice, a statue of the Emancipation Proclamation

00:00:23.180 that freed the slaves. Yes, this famous statue in Washington, D.C., the Emancipation Proclamation

00:00:28.580 statue, is one of Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave. It was paid for in 1876 by black people 0.55

00:00:36.200 recently freed to honor the man who freed them, to honor their freedom. And now that statue,

00:00:43.440 to freedom, is considered racist. They are tearing it down. Here are the geniuses who want to pull

00:00:50.680 down our history. Our team today, some of my members out here, we don't want to

00:00:57.720 tear down the statue today. We understand. We don't want to do it today. We are going to be doing it

00:01:06.280 on Thursday at 7 p.m. Okay? Thursday at 7 p.m. Say it. Thursday? Thursday. At 7? At 7? P.m. P.m. P.m. P.m. Okay.

00:01:17.400 So we're not, we're not going to be just sitting idly, side on the side, going to Black Lives Matter

00:01:22.780 Plaza. No. No, we're not doing that no more. We are going to show up and wake these rich white people up. 0.54

00:01:31.280 Going to wake those rich white people, you know, rich white people like Abraham Lincoln.

00:01:39.340 Now, Thursday at 7 p.m. came and went. As you might imagine, the rioters are not the most reliable

00:01:44.280 people on earth, but they still plan to pull down the statue. D.C.'s fake congressman,

00:01:49.960 Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, has called for the statue to come down. D.C.'s mayor has suggested

00:01:55.240 the statue might come down. But we can't pretend any longer that this is about police brutality or

00:02:00.700 systemic racism or about the Confederacy or the slaves, because right now we're talking about

00:02:07.120 a statue of the guy who freed the slaves, who beat the Confederacy. The anarchists are targeting

00:02:12.840 the most ironic man. They're making it explicitly about race. And ironically, all that could do

00:02:18.420 is gin up racial tensions. We'll get into it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:25.240 Welcome back to The Michael Knowles Show. It is good to be back here in La La Land after a whirlwind

00:02:34.740 trip to D.C., where I like to credit my presence there for delaying the teardown of the Emancipation 0.74

00:02:41.100 Proclamation statue. I have no evidence that that is true, but look, it's a coincidence, and so clearly

00:02:47.060 there's something there. But before we get into that, because there's a racial point here that I think

00:02:53.180 the anarchists and the radicals who defend them are completely missing, and it's pretty ironic. But

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00:04:23.480 Obviously, that rioter who talked about pulling down the Emancipation Proclamation statue is speaking

00:04:27.940 in explicitly racial terms because he also was rallying everyone to go show up to Mitch McConnell's

00:04:32.920 house and other people. He said, we're going to keep these rich white people up. It's all about 0.91

00:04:36.580 white, white, white. And obviously now we, we, they can no longer say that it's about tearing

00:04:41.860 down statues of slavers because Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. They can't say it's about tearing

00:04:48.600 down, I don't know, the Confederate flag because you're talking about the man who saved the union.

00:04:55.360 It's a white thing for a lot of people. And that is true even of a lecturer at Cambridge University

00:05:01.920 who tweeted out, abolish whiteness. This lecturer's name is Priyamvada Gopal. A lot of people

00:05:09.000 reported her because imagine if you said abolish Mexicans, abolish blackness. If you said those 0.64

00:05:14.260 things, that's, I suppose, threatening. It's at least wishing ill on a whole group of people.

00:05:19.080 And so you would be taken down. Twitter the other day took down, or censored rather, a tweet from

00:05:23.920 President Trump because he said he would enforce the law against criminals. He said, we're going to use,

00:05:28.080 we're going to enforce the law against criminals. They said, this is violent. It's threatening harm

00:05:32.180 to other people. And yet abolish whiteness stays up on Twitter. And then what's even crazier is the

00:05:39.140 way that Cambridge University reacted to the tweet was to give this woman a promotion. She went from 0.81

00:05:45.960 a lecturer to a full professor, which tells you just about everything that you need to know about

00:05:52.280 the academy. But the tweet got me wondering, what is whiteness? This is a term that's come up among

00:05:59.080 these radicals, abolish whiteness. Whiteness is toxic. What is whiteness? I don't think about

00:06:04.880 whiteness very much. When I think about how I identify in my life, white is very low on the list. 0.98

00:06:12.200 What constitutes my identity? Well, I'm Catholic. I'm, if we wanted to get specific nationally, I guess

00:06:17.800 I'm of Italian extract. Still don't think about that as white. A lot of people wonder if Italians

00:06:22.340 are white. We're a little bit swarthy. I think that I'm a New Yorker, born in New York. I live

00:06:26.440 in Los Angeles now. I'm an American. Obviously that's way up there on the list. I'm a man. That's

00:06:32.120 way up there on the list. Whiteness is very low. And I'm not the only one who thinks this way. 0.78

00:06:36.440 It turns out white people have a very low racial consciousness. So Pew Research did this survey in,

00:06:43.420 it's the Race in America survey, 2019. And they asked, uh, what percentage of each group say that

00:06:50.780 being white or black or Asian or whatever is extremely or very important to how they think

00:06:56.600 about themselves? So among, among Asian people, it's 27% say it's extremely important to think of

00:07:03.760 their race. 29% additionally say it's very important. So 56%, most Asians say that their race

00:07:11.020 is at least very important to their identity. Among Hispanics, the number is 31% extremely

00:07:16.700 important. 28% very important. So 59% say their race is at least very important to them. Among

00:07:22.560 black people, that number jumps to 74% total. So 52%, most black people say that their race is

00:07:30.580 extremely important to their identity. An additional 22% say very important, bringing it to 74. And then

00:07:36.200 white people, do you know what the number is? Just 15 total. So 10% say it's very important to their

00:07:43.080 identity. And just 5% say it's extremely important to their identity. 15% racial consciousness. So

00:07:51.680 ironically, when you have a tweet like abolish whiteness, what that actually has the effect of

00:07:59.380 doing is creating whiteness. Whiteness as a concept is not one that's really recognized by a lot of

00:08:06.560 people. 85% of white people probably wouldn't recognize that concept. And yet, if we are constantly

00:08:13.040 being told you're white, you're white, that is your identity and it's terrible and we shouldn't have it.

00:08:19.740 There is no other effect that that could have than to create a racial consciousness. Now, perhaps that's 0.96

00:08:25.240 the point. Because on the one hand, it's easy not to have a racial consciousness if you're the majority

00:08:29.500 population in a country. But I think beyond that, because in the West, we have this idea of anti-racism,

00:08:36.700 we have the idea that we're made in the image of God, that we have human solidarity come from a common

00:08:40.040 ancestor. We just naturally have a lower racial consciousness. But I suspect the left is pushing

00:08:44.980 this because they want there to be a white racial consciousness, because they want to pit racial

00:08:50.180 groups against one another. And because liberalism seems to require overcoming the oppressive past

00:08:56.760 and having a villain. When there are no more villains to have, then you just have to start

00:09:01.140 making them up. Now, that's the ideological side of things. How about the practical side of things?

00:09:09.640 Are these riots still going to keep burning? You know, they're making up invisible villains and

00:09:14.640 invisible enemies. At a certain point, you think that would burn out. The BHAZ, the Black House 1.00

00:09:21.100 Autonomous Zone in DC, is still running. But the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, it is no more.

00:09:30.280 The dream of Chaz Chop is over. A statement from the Chaz Chop Twitter account says, quote,

00:09:37.900 few people remain in our beloved CHOP. The statement was signed by the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest

00:09:45.120 Solidarity Committee. And they said, very finally, the CHOP project is now concluded.

00:09:54.060 No more CHOP. It's very sad, but that's just the way that it goes.

00:09:59.040 It was always ever, it was always ever thus, right? It was always going to go away. It was a

00:10:07.840 utopian project. And like all utopian projects, it was disgusting. It was terrible. It was violent.

00:10:13.260 People died. It destroyed property. It destroyed the rights of certain people. Yet the mayor of

00:10:19.380 Seattle, who was tolerating this, said it was going to be the summer of love. It didn't look very much

00:10:24.460 like the summer of love. Now the summer of love has fizzled out. I think it went so quickly because

00:10:28.240 we're just moving on a faster timeline here. We're moving on a faster news cycle. We're moving on a

00:10:33.040 faster protest cycle. We went from tearing down Robert E. Lee to tearing down statues of Saint

00:10:37.840 Junipero Serra very quickly, right? To tearing down any depiction of Jesus that looks white,

00:10:43.760 according to Sean King. Things are getting a little bit faster. And the bright side of that is things

00:10:48.960 like the Chaz will fizzle out. Now, speaking of fizzling out, our good friend, Joe Biden,

00:10:57.840 is still running for president. We'll get a little bit more into the presidential election

00:11:00.560 later. But let's not forget, this man is still running and he is losing more and more of his

00:11:08.100 consciousness every single day. They are trying to go back and gin up this coronavirus idea. Well,

00:11:14.240 Joe Biden has a scary number for you. He is under the impression that coronavirus has hit 120 million

00:11:20.920 people already worldwide.

00:11:22.200 I just got off the phone this morning with Dr. Vivek Murthy and he and others who, he was a former

00:11:31.660 surgeon general and a number of experts who work, I have a meeting, an hour and a half telephone

00:11:38.580 conference with them, Zoom conference once a week, I mean, four times a week. And that's why we have a

00:11:45.320 major multi-billion dollar investment in mental health. What people drastically underestimate is

00:11:50.900 the impact on the mental health of people who now everything is complicated. Not only is the health

00:11:57.240 care piece, but people don't have a job. People don't have anywhere to go. They don't know what they're

00:12:02.360 going to do. And a lot of people you have unnecessarily. Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.

00:12:09.500 120 million dead. You know, it's funny. I actually have to correct myself. The first time I heard that

00:12:15.400 clip, I thought he was saying there were 120 million cases worldwide, which obviously is not

00:12:19.380 true. No, what he said is even crazier. He's saying there's 120 million dead. And it seems he's implying

00:12:24.760 in America, which is a country of 330 million people. That's a lot, huh? That's actually though,

00:12:30.100 the number is not anywhere close to that. It's multiple orders of magnitude lower than that.

00:12:36.820 But watching or listening to Joe Biden these days, you have to think the man is not up to the job.

00:12:42.980 And yet the poll numbers show he's actually in a pretty good position. Are the polls lying?

00:12:48.400 Possibly. But does president Trump think he's going to sail to reelection? I think probably not.

00:12:54.520 We'll get into those numbers in just a little bit. First though, I got to thank our friends

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00:14:17.220 Now, the coronavirus is back, according to Joe Biden. 120 million dead in America,

00:14:21.780 obviously nowhere near that, but still, this is the message that's being sent to everybody.

00:14:25.680 Coronavirus is back. We've all got to worry. But what about the past few weeks where the

00:14:31.560 public health officials and the politicians have been encouraging people to go out, not social

00:14:36.040 distance, be around hundreds of thousands of other people? The Seattle Autonomous Zone is the summer

00:14:41.840 of love. What about all of that? Clearly, there is a political agenda at work here. If the virus is

00:14:48.160 super duper deadly dangerous, stay in your house, wear a mask one minute, and then when it's advantageous

00:14:52.840 to the left, they say, no big deal. Go out and protest for whatever racial or social issue you

00:14:58.400 want to. Well, they're back on it shamelessly, and they want you to know that the reason the

00:15:04.080 coronavirus is spiking has nothing to do with the protests. It's almost, it's almost hilarious. If

00:15:09.760 it weren't so corrupt, it would be hilarious that at this point, they actually have headlines like this

00:15:13.520 in NPR. Parties, not protests, are causing spikes in coronavirus. Parties. So those scenes that you've

00:15:21.440 seen for weeks now of hundreds of thousands of people together, that has nothing to do with

00:15:25.200 coronavirus. But when you go over and have dinner with your friend, that is what's causing the spike

00:15:31.340 in coronavirus. You remember the public health officials, 1,200 of them at least, signed a petition

00:15:37.080 that said that you should encourage the protests because white supremacy is a public health issue

00:15:42.260 that is causing coronavirus to spike. I kid you not. And social justice protests, SJW radical BLM

00:15:49.240 protests will actually help reduce the spread of coronavirus based on what? Based on the science,

00:15:55.160 I guess. Another article, this one just came out yesterday. Black Lives Matter protests haven't led

00:16:00.360 to COVID spikes. It may be due to people staying home. Oh, that's why we're getting a spike as people

00:16:06.700 are staying home. All right, then lift the lockdown orders. They're probably not going to support that

00:16:09.280 either. All they want to do though is protect BLM or Antifa or the Chaz Chop zone. All they want to do 0.85

00:16:15.940 is protect anything that can hurt Trump and they will not permit any of that to lift for the next five

00:16:23.020 months. It is all about the presidential election. And the sad thing is it may be working. I mean, even

00:16:30.280 just the next time they bring up the masks to you, I just, a word to the wise, point to Denmark,

00:16:35.640 point to Finland, point to Norway, point to Sweden, all of which governments are advising against wearing

00:16:42.320 the masks in public. But the masks, as we know, have become a political symbol. Joe Biden, when he was

00:16:46.960 giving a speech, wore the mask dangling from his ear, wasn't covering his face, so it wasn't preventing

00:16:51.760 the spread of the virus. But he couldn't take it down because now he's telling everyone they have to wear

00:16:57.280 the mask. They're just dangling from his ear. That's the political symbol. It's incoherent. Obviously, the headlines

00:17:02.740 are ridiculous. And yet, I think it might be working because, not Cuomo, Biden's numbers are

00:17:09.380 actually up fairly high. So according to a New York Times Siena College poll that came out on Thursday,

00:17:16.800 Joe Biden is opening up a wide lead in important states, particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania, and

00:17:22.200 Wisconsin. Biden leads those states by double digits. Now, do I believe the polls? Not really.

00:17:27.920 I don't. But we can see some frustration among Trump supporters because the riots have been allowed

00:17:35.040 to carry on without very much in the way of consequences, although the attorney general says

00:17:39.220 consequences are coming, which we'll get to in a little bit. The economy, obviously, we threw 40

00:17:43.440 million people out of work over this lockdown, which now seems to be based on completely bunk science.

00:17:48.460 So am I worried that if the election were held today, Trump would lose all those states?

00:17:52.060 Not necessarily. But I am worried in general that if the president doesn't turn something around,

00:17:58.740 if the president doesn't change his messaging a little bit, if the president doesn't show hard

00:18:06.160 results and a return to law and order, he's going to have trouble in November because all of the media

00:18:13.520 complex, everything is geared against him. Just on this example of the coronavirus, consider how they are

00:18:20.180 covering the coronavirus. So Andy Cuomo, governor of New York, has handled this worse than any governor

00:18:25.660 in America. New York got hit the worst. They dealt with it the worst. They had no idea how to keep

00:18:31.460 their hospitals open. They had no idea. They had to call in the federal government for that. They had

00:18:34.740 no idea how many ventilators they needed. Then they got it wrong the first time on, on, they had too

00:18:39.180 few. Then they had too many. They then sent sick people into nursing homes, the most vulnerable

00:18:45.420 population killed thousands of elderly New Yorkers. I mean, it's just been a bungled disaster. And the

00:18:53.440 fault lies at the feet of governor Andrew Cuomo. But you wouldn't know that if you watch the mainstream

00:18:57.920 media, because the coverage he's getting is on a television show hosted by his brother on CNN.

00:19:05.840 Watch the Cuomo love fest. Take a listen.

00:19:09.140 Everything that he ever said mattered to him about public service is what you demonstrated

00:19:13.620 right here and right now during this period when your state needed it most. And I hear it all the

00:19:20.740 time. Not everybody likes you. Not everybody likes me. Everybody seems to like pop now. That's the benefit

00:19:26.200 of being out for a while, maybe gone. I just hope you recognize what even I'm able to recognize, being

00:19:32.420 spawned from the same wolf pack. I hope you are able to appreciate what you did in your state and what it

00:19:39.180 means for the rest of the country now and what it will always mean to those who love and care about you

00:19:43.540 the most. I'm wowed by what you did. And more importantly, I'm wowed by how you did it. This

00:19:48.260 was very hard. I know it's not over. But obviously, I love you as a brother. Obviously, I'll never be

00:19:54.020 objective. Obviously, I think you're the best politician in the country. But I hope you feel

00:19:58.840 good about what you did for your people because I know they appreciate it. They don't appreciate it.

00:20:04.260 They don't like it because what you did is kill people unnecessarily through very stupid policies.

00:20:09.660 He did. I mean, just consider this. In the same interview, Andy Cuomo attacks the governor of

00:20:17.060 Florida, Republican governor of Florida, and says that he gambled on the virus and he lost.

00:20:23.420 New York has 10 times as many coronavirus deaths as Florida. 10 times. Florida reopened early. New York

00:20:31.180 did not. They've been playing this up in the press as what a great job Andy Cuomo did. Cuomo's

00:20:36.340 response to the virus led to more deaths than the Republican response in Florida.

00:20:45.000 That's not the way it's going to be played. If they can lie as brazenly as all that,

00:20:49.580 consider how the rest of the election season is going to play out. Trump has got to get on top of

00:20:57.620 this messaging. It tends to be his strength. I mean, that's why he uses Twitter. But now Twitter

00:21:01.780 is censoring him, right? He uses Twitter to speak directly to the American people. Well, now,

00:21:05.420 big tech is going to shut that down too. Everything about the deck of this election is stacked

00:21:10.380 against President Trump, but he's got to get tougher on his messaging. Otherwise,

00:21:15.380 how do you stand up to these corrupt institutions? Meanwhile, they, they pretend to be moderate. They

00:21:21.140 pretend to be the reasonable people here. Andy Cuomo was asked on NBC News what he thought about the

00:21:26.500 rioters tearing down all of these statues. And I kid you not with a straight face. He said that

00:21:31.240 ripping down statues, roving mobs of anarchists is a healthy expression of political opinion.

00:21:37.040 The Teddy Roosevelt statue, I think was less about Teddy Roosevelt, but the other parts of that of that

00:21:45.620 statue. And look, people are making a statement about equality, about community, to be against

00:21:53.820 racism, against slavery. I think those are good statements. And it depends, you know, can you

00:22:01.160 overdo it? Of course you can. But in New York, I don't think we've overdone it. And I think that I

00:22:06.540 think it's a healthy expression of people saying, let's get some priorities here and let's remember

00:22:11.740 the sin and mistake that these, this nation made and let's not celebrate it. A healthy expression.

00:22:17.540 I like that he uses the phrase healthy too, because they tell us specifically on the question of health.

00:22:21.580 If you go outdoors, you're going to get coronavirus and it's going to kill you and kill everyone around

00:22:24.780 you. But when you're gathering to tear down statues, that's healthy. And obviously on the

00:22:28.960 metaphorical sense, it's not healthy either as a country to just roam around and rip down your

00:22:33.540 own history, to hate yourself as a nation and to destroy property. Nothing about that is healthy.

00:22:38.480 But what he does is he equates tearing down statues with opposing racism and opposing slavery.

00:22:47.000 Let me ask you something. How many people do you know these days who are pro-slavery?

00:22:54.020 You know, they've got bumper stickers and one of the bumper stickers is, I support slavery.

00:22:58.960 Bring back slavery. Nobody. Nobody is pro-slavery. And yet it's this rhetorical slate of hand. He's

00:23:06.460 saying, look, they're making this bold statement, this brave, courageous statement that they oppose

00:23:11.460 racism and slavery. And so we've got to let them make that expression. It's the same thing we've

00:23:16.400 been talking about for a long time, which is they have to set up fake villains. Early on,

00:23:21.400 they said that all of these riots, all this mayhem, it's being caused by white supremacists.

00:23:24.800 How many white supremacists are there in America? Like three? We went through the numbers.

00:23:28.020 Very few people have any sort of white racial consciousness at all. And I think the only 0.98

00:23:32.640 people wearing Klan hoods anymore, well, actually they're a Democrat governor of Virginia. I guess

00:23:36.720 he would be one. We have photographic evidence of that. Not that it caused his reputation to be

00:23:41.120 canceled at all. But they have to invent this imaginary enemy. And so that's what Cuomo does with a

00:23:48.320 straight face. Yeah. You know, we're the brave few who oppose slavery and racism. The implication being,

00:23:54.420 by the way, that if you oppose the tactics of these anarchists and Marxists, then you support

00:23:59.840 slavery and you support racism. That's the way it is. So they'll cancel U.S. Grant. They'll cancel who

00:24:08.460 won the war that freed the slaves. They'll cancel Abraham Lincoln, the president who freed the slaves.

00:24:13.540 They'll cancel St. Junipero Serra. They'll cancel Jesus himself. Okay. They'll cancel all of these

00:24:20.420 people. Now the cancel culture is having an effect beyond this. There was a person that I had never

00:24:25.660 heard of until yesterday who is one of the most prominent YouTubers. Her name is Jenna Marbles. 0.99

00:24:32.580 And a very important stuff, Jenna Marbles. Jenna Marbles has a YouTube channel of 20 million

00:24:36.880 people, 20 million subscribers. She's been around making videos now for 10 years.

00:24:42.880 And they're just kind of funny videos. Well, she's quitting now. She's quitting the whole thing

00:24:47.340 because people are digging up old videos of hers that she had deleted, where I guess she told some

00:24:51.540 jokes that she now thinks are offensive. And they're trying to ruin her reputation 10 years

00:24:57.060 after the fact, after they were deleted. Here is her tearful goodbye. And I don't want to put anything

00:25:02.960 out in the world. It's going to hurt anybody. So I need to be done with this channel for now or for

00:25:10.640 forever. I don't know. So, all right. Good talk. See you guys.

00:25:16.620 Ms. Marbles is apparently such a prominent YouTuber that she actually has a statue 1.00

00:25:20.580 at Madame Tussauds Museum. Although certainly that statue at this point, all the statues are coming down

00:25:25.760 and especially that one of her. That line she says, I don't want to put anything out in the world that

00:25:29.960 hurts anybody. This is the problem. What we are now being told is that if you, if a person has done

00:25:37.880 anything bad ever, anything that is not perfect, that is grounds to tear down the statue. But

00:25:42.680 consider the argument in all of these shootings and all the shootings that allegedly led to the

00:25:48.360 protests. Candace Owens got in a lot of trouble because she pointed out that the media haven't 1.00

00:25:52.480 told the whole story about some of these officer involved killings. And, and that in some cases,

00:25:57.260 the people who were killed had a long criminal rap sheet. Maybe they were committing crimes at the

00:26:01.420 moment that they were killed. The response to that, the popular response is how dare you bring up

00:26:06.360 that person's past. That person's past has nothing to do with what happened in that moment. And we

00:26:12.180 shouldn't judge a man based on the bad things that he did in his life. Even, even if they've done

00:26:18.020 years and years of long, terrible things, beat their wife, abuse their kids, we can't judge them for any

00:26:22.560 of that. We should only judge them on their, their few best moments. And yet the statue argument,

00:26:29.580 the cancel culture argument is doesn't matter how much good you do in your life. If you've committed

00:26:33.540 one or two bad things, that's what you should be judged by. The, the double standard is absurd and

00:26:38.700 it's obviously incoherent, but we are long past the stage of making finely tuned arguments. This is

00:26:44.900 about brute political force. This is about an ideological group clubbing everybody on the head

00:26:51.740 for their own interests. Whether their arguments make any sense, that isn't the point. This is a bare

00:26:57.120 knuckle brawl at least until November. And I think unfortunately one side of this is going to go

00:27:03.120 wishy-washy and buy into the, the lying premises of guys like Andrew Cuomo and the anarchists and the

00:27:09.080 avowed, admitted Marxists who are running BLM. And they'll say, well, I just don't want to hurt

00:27:14.480 anybody. Please don't come after me. I'll quit. We can't quit folks. We can't quit. This is the fight.

00:27:19.940 We're in it now. And you can either stand up and, and fight that fight and hopefully preserve

00:27:25.120 America before they tear the whole thing down, preserve American solidarity before they divide

00:27:30.460 us up completely, or you can surrender. Well, that's it. Luckily I sat down with a fighter

00:27:37.740 yesterday in two days ago in Washington, DC. I was there for 24 hours. And as part of my show

00:27:43.040 with Senator Cruz verdict, we sat down with the man, the myth, the legend, the attorney general of the

00:27:48.860 United States, William Barr. Take a listen to a quick part of our conversation.

00:27:52.760 Senator, you have brought a friend. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General for being here. You know,

00:27:57.840 the news broke just moments ago that you will testify before the house judiciary committee

00:28:01.760 next month. So we are honored that you would sit down with us first and very much appreciate it.

00:28:07.400 I want to get right into this. Obviously there's so much going on and it occurs to me,

00:28:11.180 we have a man who writes the laws. We have the man who enforces the laws and we have popular calls

00:28:18.400 for utter lawlessness in the country. How do we restore order?

00:28:24.360 Well, it's going to, it's going to take both state and local government as well as federal

00:28:28.460 government. The federal government is best positioned to address this kind of violence

00:28:34.060 and lawlessness after it occurs because we don't have FBI agents walking the beat.

00:28:40.300 And in fact, when the real violence started around May 25th, 6th and so forth, we started using our

00:28:50.180 joint terrorist task forces around the country. And there are 35 of them around the country. It

00:28:57.600 involves all state and local in those jurisdictions and all the federal agencies. And it's the system we

00:29:02.740 designed to follow terrorists. And now they are starting to go full bore cranking out investigations

00:29:09.680 indictments against the people who are involved in this violence. So we've, we've had scores of

00:29:15.420 indictments already for, for such things as arson, destruction of federal property, things like

00:29:21.420 that. And we have right now about 500 investigations underway. So it's picking up pace and we are committed

00:29:30.800 to holding accountable. The people are engaged in this, but we still have to try to stop it before

00:29:35.720 it happens. And that's where the burden is right now on state and local. And in many

00:29:39.660 places, they're not stepping up to the plate. They're, they're not doing their job.

00:29:43.460 So I know it's early, but, but how much indications are y'all saying of coordination and planning rather

00:29:50.520 than spontaneous acts of violence?

00:29:53.360 Right. We are, we are seeing strong evidence of, of coordination in many of these violent episodes.

00:30:02.900 Fundamentally, what you have here is you have demonstrators. Some of them go there with the intent of

00:30:07.040 demonstrating, but you have a group of provocateurs and agitators, sometimes a significant group that

00:30:13.520 try to convert those into violent activity. And, uh, they seem to be very well coordinated when they

00:30:20.060 show up. Uh, a number of them are associated with the movement called Antifa, but they go by various

00:30:26.600 names, uh, but frequently anarchistic. They want to tear down the country. Uh, the, they're different than

00:30:34.340 many traditional groups. Uh, and, and frequently the signs of coordination and activity are very close

00:30:41.380 to the event itself. So like the morning of or the day before, and things are very fast moving. Uh,

00:30:47.240 but we definitely see signs out on the street of communication, of organization, of pre-planning,

00:30:54.260 pre-positioning of, of things. So it's definitely, uh, organized activity.

00:30:59.520 Well, if, if you're calling in the terrorism task force, that means presumably that we're dealing

00:31:04.200 with terrorism here. I know, I know the president, uh, came out and said just a couple of days ago

00:31:09.580 that this will not be tolerated on federal land. You cannot destroy federal property. And he's

00:31:14.440 authorizing the government to go and hold people accountable. Uh, what will this mean in terms of a

00:31:21.480 change of policy or an acceleration of a policy that was already in place?

00:31:24.440 Well, it's not, it's not a change in policy in the sense that we've always had the obligation

00:31:29.500 as the federal government to protect federal facilities and federal landmarks and monuments

00:31:34.640 and so forth. But now, because in some places the local police are not doing an adequate job,

00:31:40.260 we're going to have to step up the federal effort to do that. Uh, and so there are two aspects to it.

00:31:46.240 Obviously we're going to prosecute right now, all the videos, uh, involved in the attack on the,

00:31:52.340 the, uh, president Jackson's statute are being carefully reviewed and we will go after people.

00:31:58.400 Uh, so if you attack a monument on federal property, you're going to get prosecuted.

00:32:04.260 That's right. But we're also going to, and, and the, the criminal statute has, has serious jail

00:32:12.000 time. I mean, 10 years, 10 years. Yep. And, uh, the other thing is, uh, we have to do a better job

00:32:18.560 of trying to stop these groups when they, before they are able to do damage to these monuments and

00:32:23.960 statues. It's fine to punish them afterward, but I think a lot of us would like the statues to remain

00:32:27.560 up. Uh, we spent another probably half an hour or so with attorney general Barr. He got into some

00:32:34.320 real specifics on not just the riots and what's happening and how many people are being indicted,

00:32:38.620 but he got into big tech, what the administration is doing to combat big tech and what we can expect

00:32:45.140 in the next few weeks. He got into Obamagate. He got into some of the politicization of the DOJ

00:32:51.220 before he took office and Senator Cruz gave Bill Barr a nickname. He, so go check out that. I won't,

00:32:59.840 I won't tell you any more than that, but go check out the episode on verdict, which is called

00:33:03.820 Bill Barr is the honey badger. Uh, also thanks so much for getting our Michael Knowles show YouTube

00:33:10.040 channel way up there in the subscriptions. We are nearly going to pass a hundred thousand. We will

00:33:16.500 do that with your help. So thanks. I appreciate you checking out the daily wire YouTube channel,

00:33:20.020 but then, you know, Ben doesn't need all those views. Head on over to the Michael Knowles show

00:33:23.260 YouTube channel. We've got a lot of fun bonus content and interviews and things like that.

00:33:27.500 If you're not already a daily wire member, you should consider getting a reader's pass

00:33:30.700 to dailywire.com. Great value, just three bucks a month for the first month. My gift to you,

00:33:36.340 it is only 99 cents. You'll get access to our mobile app articles, ad free access to exclusive

00:33:41.840 editorials like this one. Which one is this? This from Christian Toto, great writer, great writer on

00:33:47.120 Hollywood too. And, uh, Toto has an article up now just for daily wire members, Fallon, Kimmel,

00:33:52.820 and Stern. Here's the naked truth behind cancel culture. Gives you a real insider view into Hollywood

00:33:57.960 from a conservative perspective. We have so many other pieces back there from a lot of different other

00:34:03.680 writers. So head on over dailywire.com slash subscribe. We'll be right back with the mailbag.

00:34:19.580 All right. First question from James. Hi, Michael. I've heard a lot of people say

00:34:23.860 statues coming down. Don't erase history. Read a book. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks.

00:34:31.780 This is an excuse made by people who are trying to rewrite history. So it's true. Uh, as long as

00:34:39.000 you're not burning books, which is going to be the next thing that they try to do, they're already

00:34:42.020 rewriting historical books and they're already kicking many books off of curricula and already

00:34:46.940 banning books from schools. But let's say it were true. Let's say you could read the history in the

00:34:51.480 book. That's all well and good, but very few people read books. Something like only 30% of Americans

00:34:55.460 read a book at all last year. So when you say that, what you're really saying is, okay, if you want,

00:35:00.300 if you have this silly little preference of wanting to know the facts about your country's

00:35:04.300 history, that's fine. But don't stop us from rewriting it because for most people seeing

00:35:09.020 statues, seeing monuments is how we really live our history. It's how we acknowledge our history

00:35:14.060 as a country. Think about it in say the middle ages when many people could not read. And when books

00:35:20.880 were so expensive that many people did not have access to the Bible, the way that you would see

00:35:25.520 the faith and understand the faith would be through statues and icons, iconography, stained glass

00:35:30.820 windows, works of art. That's how you could experience it and see it and take it in, even

00:35:36.960 if you couldn't read a single word. It's the same way that we understand ourselves as a country.

00:35:43.400 When we knock those things down, then we knock down the history itself. We knock down what is

00:35:49.480 important. Regardless of your modern feelings of being offended by looking at a Confederate

00:35:56.100 statue, the Civil War is a very important part of our history. There is a lot for us to learn.

00:36:02.860 It's a lot for us to learn how we got into the Civil War and how we got out of the Civil War and

00:36:06.180 what the people who won the Civil War told us we should think about it, suggested that we think

00:36:10.180 about it. And when you tear down those statues, you lose all of that sort of thing. What it's really

00:36:15.900 about is an antipathy for the past because the past constrains radicals who want to rewrite the

00:36:21.540 future. And of course, they've put us in a ridiculous position because they've said,

00:36:25.660 why don't you want us to smash statues? Say, that's not the question. I think the burden of

00:36:31.340 argument is on you, the people who want to smash the statues. Smashing statues is not a normal thing

00:36:36.260 to do. It doesn't go in the normal course of daily events. It's a radical change. If you want to

00:36:41.500 effect it, then you've got to explain why you want to do it. But they won't tell you why. And the

00:36:44.940 real reason is because they have a radical vision for the future of the country and they can't,

00:36:50.240 they can't effect it if they are constrained by the past. From Andrew, have you or your fellow

00:36:56.880 Daily Wire hosts or contributors at all joined or considered joining Parler? Parler, I think it

00:37:02.680 would be nice if you and your hosts did join in order to bring a larger audience to the platform

00:37:06.220 and challenge the likes of Twitter. Why not? Give it a shot. Thanks. You know, I actually did join

00:37:11.620 Parler yesterday. I joined it because first of all, they're going to kick us all off of

00:37:14.900 Twitter soon enough and they're currently censoring the duly elected president of the United States

00:37:18.620 on Twitter. So I started a Parler. The trouble is because it's new and it's just getting started,

00:37:22.600 I realized there was a fake account pretending to be me. It wasn't like a parody account. It was

00:37:26.360 actually a guy just pretending to be me. So I think Parler is getting rid of him. But if you want,

00:37:31.320 if you're on Parler and you want to start following me, I'm just at Michael J. Knowles.

00:37:35.660 J is important there. That's in the real one. And I'll probably post a few things on over there,

00:37:40.400 but this doesn't solve the problem of big tech censorship because the issue with big tech,

00:37:45.740 and we spoke about this with AG Barr, is they have cornered the market. They are the public square.

00:37:51.460 And they did it on a false pretense, two false pretenses. One, they pretended to be a neutral

00:37:55.600 platform rather than a publisher that curates content. And so that got a lot of buy-in from

00:38:00.120 people. And two, they said that this would be an open forum for all sorts of ideas. And then

00:38:08.180 those are distinct concepts, but they are related concepts. And then when they got a critical mass

00:38:13.760 of people, when they became the public square, then they changed the rules. But it was too late.

00:38:17.820 The whole point of social media, the whole reason you would go and use a certain social media platform

00:38:21.600 is because everybody is there. So once everybody's there, it's very difficult, if not impossible,

00:38:27.200 to get them to move to another platform. You know, sometimes people say, oh, Michael,

00:38:32.140 if you think that big tech has a monopoly, that they've cornered the market, don't forget about

00:38:37.860 MySpace. Remember when everyone said that about MySpace? MySpace never cornered the market. They

00:38:44.020 never had the kind of critical mass that Facebook and Google and Twitter have. They didn't. They had

00:38:49.880 like funny little gifs and it was mostly used by teenagers and kids, right? Your mom was probably not

00:38:55.900 on MySpace. Your grandma was probably not on MySpace. And yet your mother or grandmother very likely are on

00:39:01.640 Facebook and possibly even on Twitter. They've cornered that market. So we do need to use the

00:39:06.980 legal remedies available to us to stop them from abusing their power and violating the law, which

00:39:12.820 is what they are. Parler might be a good use, a nice stopgap in the meantime, but it doesn't excuse

00:39:17.860 us from going after big tech. From Daniel, why hasn't Trump sold red MAGA masks yet? That's the best way

00:39:25.800 to get Democrats to give up the charade. There'd be a national announcement saying that masks are useless 0.53

00:39:30.980 and only racists and white supremacists wear them. Checkmate. Not a terrible idea, except it does cut

00:39:36.900 against some of the argument here because the mask itself has become a political symbol and it's a

00:39:42.620 political symbol for the left. I'm not saying masks are not ever useful. I mean, I don't think they're

00:39:47.540 useful in the way that the left tells us they're useful right now, which is what the left says is

00:39:51.040 the whole point of the mask is to stop other people from being infected. But their argument before

00:39:56.060 was that it stopped you from being infected and their argument before that was that masks are totally

00:39:59.080 useless. So they keep changing their story, but I'm not saying they don't have any uses. There's

00:40:02.980 a reason why surgeons wear masks. The question is, are they useful now in stopping the spread of the

00:40:08.760 virus? Well, we showed you those, those facts out of Scandinavia that show that they don't really

00:40:13.780 seem to matter very much there. They don't seem to matter very much here either. They are merely a way

00:40:18.320 to signal your virtue. It's why Joe Biden wore one dangling from his ear. He didn't care if it would

00:40:22.760 affect his breathing. He just, he just wanted to show everybody that he's on the right team

00:40:27.160 because he's wearing the right symbol. So even if you put a MAGA symbol on it, very likely that

00:40:33.720 would still cut against your argument. Now, some people who are especially vulnerable to the virus

00:40:37.880 or who are germaphobes or something like that, you can understand why they would wear the mask

00:40:42.000 regardless of their political views. But the left has undeniably turned it into a political symbol.

00:40:46.600 And so Trump probably can't sell them. From Xavier, I'm Michael, big fan of your show. I'm listening

00:40:51.780 from Europe here in Belgium. My grandparents lived in Belgium for a while. Maybe they, I've,

00:40:56.840 I've never been, but maybe I'll come visit now that I know we have one Belgian listener.

00:41:00.440 I see that you commented that the French revolution was the worst thing that happened.

00:41:04.980 Well, that's not quite true. I said it was one of the worst events in the history of the world.

00:41:08.400 It was a bad thing. It's, and it, you know, it's definitely up there. Could you explain to me a

00:41:13.560 bit why? I vaguely remember my history class about this period and Louis the 16th and other bourgeois

00:41:17.620 wasn't open-minded and friendly with the people. Uh, thanks for reading me. Have a nice day.

00:41:24.180 Um, I think I, I think I understood that. It's funny. As I read that, I could like hear it in

00:41:28.640 an accent, but, uh, thank you, Xavier, for the question. The French revolution is now taught

00:41:33.160 in schools as a good event. It's the beginning of the modern world. And yet it was one of the

00:41:38.940 worst events in the history of the world. The way it's presented in school is that it overcame

00:41:43.420 an oppressive past and gave people freedom, freedom and equality and fraternity. And that's not

00:41:50.640 really what happened. Consider this at least over three times as many people were killed in one year

00:42:00.020 of the terror of the French revolution as were killed in the entire 350 years of the Spanish

00:42:06.540 inquisition. At least three, that might've been as much as five times or even a little bit more than

00:42:11.020 five times as many where people were killed. The French revolution is the guillotine. The French 0.96

00:42:16.360 revolution took everything that came before it and ripped it apart, said all of the inherited

00:42:21.140 wisdom of the world is trash. They took down a statue of our lady in Notre Dame, put up the goddess

00:42:29.460 of reason. They created a religion of a reason of secularism. They rewrote all the neighborhoods in

00:42:34.820 Paris and made them finely tuned rationalist, uh, experiments. They, they redid the entire calendar.

00:42:44.600 They thought that they could create the world from scratch on the promise of a rational utopia

00:42:49.840 because it would be so much better than what came before it. And what did that lead to?

00:42:53.800 The guillotine. It led to a, a far worse, far crueler society. One of the, the, perhaps the worst

00:43:02.500 social experiment ever in history and a, and a precursor to all of the evils that we would see

00:43:09.140 later in modernity, national socialism, fascism, and communism. Finally, though, a little bit of

00:43:16.340 the old tradition crept back through again. Turned out people weren't quite as smart and rational as

00:43:20.980 they all thought that they were and that there was something to learn from the inherited tradition.

00:43:24.960 There's much more to be said about the French revolution, but we do have to move on. That's a,

00:43:27.800 just a beginning at least. From Matt, austere religious podcaster and Lord of Covfefe. I've heard

00:43:34.320 you and Clavin refer to the American revolution as a conservative revolution. That's funny,

00:43:38.760 funny position of that question. Can you elaborate on what that means? How can a revolution be

00:43:42.260 conservative? Also, I've heard you say that as American conservatives, we're defending a liberal

00:43:46.020 tradition, sort of. What does that mean? And how can the concept of a conservative revolution be

00:43:50.040 reconciled with defending a liberal tradition? Thanks. We're using these words kind of broadly

00:43:53.540 conservative and liberal, but the big difference here between the American revolution and the French

00:43:57.160 revolution is the French revolution sought to destroy everything that came before it

00:44:01.020 and overturned society entirely. The American revolution did not. The American revolution

00:44:05.200 maintained most aspects of the society that it had left and it, and it maintained its Anglo tradition.

00:44:11.260 And that's why we have such a special relationship with the United Kingdom, even still today.

00:44:15.020 That was not the case when the, the revolutionaries in France overturned the old regime. In America,

00:44:20.940 they kept their way of life. They kept their institutions, most of them. They kept their families.

00:44:25.480 They kept their religion. They kept most of their political ideas and their system of,

00:44:29.740 of law and government. In France, they did not. They overturned all of those things in France.

00:44:35.660 And so the American revolution is far more conservative. You could call it a conservative

00:44:39.380 revolution. That's why Edmund Burke defended the American revolution and opposed the French

00:44:43.200 revolution in his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, which was the beginning

00:44:47.080 in many ways of modern conservative political philosophy. Now in America, we do have this liberal

00:44:52.980 tradition in the sense that some of the prominent liberal thinkers impacted the way that we thought

00:44:59.080 about our government. Now, I think the effect of those liberal thinkers has been overstated. So for

00:45:03.900 instance, we're told that John Locke basically created the American regime. I'm not totally convinced

00:45:08.160 of that, but it does put American conservatives in kind of a weird position in that in some ways,

00:45:12.580 some of the tradition that we're defending is somewhat liberal. But the way I think about it,

00:45:18.000 there was a, a writer, I think it might've been Patrick Deneen who, who described this problem.

00:45:23.260 And the, the problem is that we have this high flying Lockean liberal language in documents like

00:45:30.040 Declaration of Independence. And yet we had a very conservative society. And though I think it was

00:45:35.620 Deneen, but it was one of these conservative writers who's writing today, described that as

00:45:39.680 saying that Americans in the revolutionary era talked like Lockeans. They talked like liberal

00:45:45.940 revolutionaries, but they lived like Burkeans. They lived like conservatives. They didn't always

00:45:52.340 preach what they actually practiced. And, uh, Alexi de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America,

00:45:58.260 coming from France, observing the American revolution and how that led to our society in the 19th century,

00:46:04.600 he describes this. He said, they have their civic associations, they have their traditions,

00:46:08.780 they have their family, they have their religion, things that ultimately liberalism would come to

00:46:13.280 oppose. The Americans still maintained and you can, you can see the breakdown of American society. 0.60

00:46:20.140 The more we've come to embody those rationalist, ideological liberal ideas and the, the less that

00:46:27.520 we've come to live our own conservative institutions. Probably the only way we're going to be able to

00:46:31.760 get that back is if we can rebuild those institutions and turn down the ideology. That's the battle we've

00:46:37.420 got right now in Chaz and Chop and all the way to November. Will we stand up or will we surrender?

00:46:42.080 I sure hope it's the former. I guess we're going to have something to say about which one it is

00:46:46.660 and then we can wait and see. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles

00:46:49.960 show. See you Monday.

00:46:54.540 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:47:01.960 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:47:06.360 to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:47:12.340 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:47:17.000 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:47:19.580 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring,

00:47:25.340 supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens,

00:47:31.040 assistant director Pavel Widowski, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin

00:47:37.900 Fenderson, hair and makeup Nika Geneva, production assistant Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a

00:47:44.580 Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020. You know, The Matt Walsh Show, it's not just another

00:47:50.180 show about politics. I think there are enough of those already out there. We talk about culture

00:47:54.820 because culture drives politics and it drives everything else. So my main focuses are life,

00:48:01.520 family, faith. Those are fundamental. And that's what this show is about. I hope you'll give it a listen.

00:48:07.080 I hope you can show you soon.

00:48:13.080 Have a great day.

The Michael Knowles Show - June 26, 2020

Ep. 569 - Abolish Whiteness

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