The Michael Knowles Show


Ep. 9 - Unite The Right, Not The Wrong: Alt-Right's Bad Religion


Summary

On Saturday, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right gathered in Virginia to chant stupidities and be maced by left-wing anarchists. Before one apparent "Brownshirt" rammed 20 protesters with a car, killing one and injuring the rest, we ll discuss how the Alt-right goes so wrong. Plus, lone conservatives Cassie Dillon, a roaming millennial, and the Daily Wire's Jacob Airy join the panel of deplorables to discuss Neo-Nazis losing their website, Obama's election collusion with Russia, and Colin Kaepernick.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 On Saturday, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right, but I repeat myself,
00:00:05.960 gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to chant stupidities and be maced by left-wing
00:00:10.760 anarchists before one apparent brown shirt rammed 20 protesters with his car,
00:00:16.740 murdering one and injuring the rest. We'll discuss how the alt-right goes so wrong.
00:00:21.860 Plus, lone conservatives Cassie Dillon, roaming millennial, and the Daily Wire's Jacob Airy
00:00:26.700 joined the panel of deplorables to discuss neo-Nazis losing their website, Obama's election
00:00:32.240 collusion with Russia, and for some reason, Colin Kaepernick. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The
00:00:36.800 Michael Knowles Show. What a weekend that was. I woke up to, I tried to figure out some other story
00:00:50.940 we could cover today because I know everybody is going to be covering this, but there is nothing
00:00:54.820 else. We have to talk about it. I wrote a piece about six months ago about the alt-right, kind of
00:01:00.780 a fairly in-depth study of them. So we'll talk about that a little bit today. As I was watching
00:01:05.400 it this weekend, though, it did feel like the Iran-Iraq war. It was a pity that both sides
00:01:10.220 couldn't lose. You had one New York Times reporter witness this. This is a quote. She's had to recant
00:01:15.460 recently, but she did tweet this out. Quote, the hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right.
00:01:19.960 I saw club-wielding Antifa beating white nationalists being let out of the park. Quote,
00:01:25.840 among my unanswered questions, police response. Why did things get out of hand so quickly? Could
00:01:30.740 the violence have been prevented? And this has been a huge criticism. Why were the police
00:01:35.020 apparently doing nothing? Why was all this violence allowed to happen? Why weren't there
00:01:38.580 barricades? Why weren't these little fights being put down? I don't know. There isn't a lot of video
00:01:43.820 footage out there of it, but a lot of questions to answer with regard to that. The event was called
00:01:49.180 Unite the Right. And this was so clever. This was a clever move of these. The whole event was white
00:01:57.160 nationalist, neo-Nazi, all focused on race, but they called it Unite the Right. Now, here is the
00:02:04.460 organizer describing the event, at the event.
00:02:06.960 So, I'm outside of City Hall in Charlottesville right now. The Charlottesville City Council just
00:02:16.400 held a press conference where they said that they were going to cancel the permit for Unite
00:02:23.620 the Right. They want to move it to McIntyre Park, this area that's across the way, that doesn't
00:02:30.340 have a damn thing to do with the Robert E. Lee monument. That is the first and foremost
00:02:36.020 reason that we're having this rally is for that park and for that statue. It's about white
00:02:41.960 genocide. It's about the replacement of our people culturally and ethnically. And that statue
00:02:48.240 is the focal point of everything. There is no way, there is no way we are going to move
00:02:53.820 that demonstration out of Lee Park. You heard him. That is the focal point of
00:02:58.200 everything. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate monuments, that is the center of it all.
00:03:02.580 That was Jason Kessler, who was the organizer of this, but they called it Unite the Right.
00:03:07.900 By the way, here's another tweet he sent out from another event. He said, getting ready to
00:03:12.020 speak at the free speech rally in front of the Lincoln monument, Lincoln can go to hell.
00:03:15.620 I'm a Southern man. I think we see where he's coming from. Other people who were helping
00:03:19.500 to organize and appear at this event were Richard Spencer, a well-known white national
00:03:23.820 journalist of the National Policy Institute. He runs alt-right.com and Radix Journal. KKK
00:03:29.780 showed up. David Duke showed up. A lot of neo-Confederates as well. But they called it Unite the Right
00:03:36.160 because they do have a little bit of intelligence. They do have a little political forethought.
00:03:42.040 And they realized that if they called it Unite the Right, then that would aid in the mainstream
00:03:46.560 media narrative, the inevitable mainstream media narrative, to lump all right-wingers in with
00:03:51.040 this event, all conservatives in with this group of racists. But then further, if it's
00:03:55.420 called Unite the Right, very few people are going to pay close attention to this, then perhaps
00:03:59.540 conservatives would defend these guys in their little protest and they would therefore insinuate
00:04:05.820 themselves more and more into the conservative movement, the mainstream of right-wing culture.
00:04:12.000 Now, there is a lot of misunderstanding over what the alt-right is and what the alt-right isn't. Most of
00:04:17.760 that was caused by Milo Yiannopoulos, who for a year said he is alt-right, he isn't alt-right. He's a
00:04:23.960 proponent of the alt-right, but he's not on it. He made a lot of contradictory claims in a long
00:04:28.940 piece that he published on Breitbart.com. On the one hand, he says that the racists make up a small
00:04:34.940 fraction, two to five percent of the alt-right. On the other hand, he says that all of the central figures in
00:04:39.420 the alt-right are white nationalists and are racists themselves. He names these people like
00:04:45.460 Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, who's a fellow Yali and runs American Renaissance, a white nationalist
00:04:51.440 organization, a lot of the neo-reactionary movement, Curtis Yarvin, Mencius Moldbug, a lot of people who
00:04:58.560 have been associated with racism online. So the question is, where does the alt-right go so wrong?
00:05:04.820 We love the memes, we love Pepe, and we don't like the Nazi stuff. So luckily, we have some
00:05:10.040 video of Richard Spencer explaining the alt-right.
00:05:13.820 How many times do I have to tell you that I don't speak German, Marshall?
00:05:32.980 How many times before it's similar, I guess? Do we have a clip in English?
00:05:37.860 Well, for that, we'd have to go all the way back to the time of Karl Marx, who was of course...
00:05:43.100 No, wait, that's Paul Bois. That is... I understand the confusion, because the Michael
00:05:48.820 Knowles show's own Paul Bois does look eerily similar to Richard Spencer. For those of you
00:05:53.780 listening, this is why you should subscribe, because the resemblance is absolutely uncanny.
00:05:58.060 But no, that isn't Richard Spencer either. Now do we... Sorry. So Richard Spencer created
00:06:04.540 alt-right.com. He's credited with coining the term alt-right. He's a major figure in it.
00:06:10.400 He holds an annual conference with the National Policy Institute, and he has been a leading figure
00:06:15.180 in this movement. Here is the old introductory video to his website.
00:06:18.340 Who are you? I'm not talking about your name or your occupation. I'm talking about something bigger,
00:06:30.500 something deeper. I'm talking about your connection to a culture, a history, a destiny. An identity that
00:06:40.180 stretches back and flows forward for centuries. An identity you can glimpse in the face of a grandparent
00:06:48.740 or your child. That is so creepy. If you can't see that video, it is so weird. I take back the Paul
00:06:56.420 Bois comparison. Paul Bois is James Bond compared to that guy. He is Cary Grant compared to Richard
00:07:01.940 Spencer. But as creepy as the video is, it does raise an important question. A question of identity. Who are you?
00:07:09.780 What is essentially your identity? Now, what Richard Spencer is saying is your identity is white.
00:07:14.340 Your identity is European or of European descent or whatever. People have lots of identities. I'm a
00:07:18.820 New Yorker. I live in California. I guess I'm a Californian. I'm a podcaster. I'm an American.
00:07:25.220 A lot of identities going around. What he then gets to is Western civilization. What is Western
00:07:31.620 civilization? What is the identity of Western civilization? Now, traditionally, we would describe
00:07:36.820 this as Athens and Jerusalem, the meeting of Greek philosophy with Christianity and the history
00:07:42.580 that that made throughout all of Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, the end of the Roman Empire,
00:07:48.020 the Crusades, the modern era, the last 500 years. All of these things that the West produced,
00:07:54.660 the natural law that came out of Christianity and the national rights that came out of that,
00:07:58.660 and the liberal democracy that came out of that, our own national culture as Americans
00:08:03.700 and as Westerners, which led to human rights, this, that, and the other thing. But what does
00:08:07.860 the alt-right take on this foundation of the West?
00:08:13.380 Are you a Christian? I'm a cultural Christian. Yeah.
00:08:16.820 What the hell is that? Well, you know, many of us struggle with
00:08:20.820 faith, but I'm part of a Christian. Hold on. You can't call yourself a cultural Christian and then say,
00:08:26.980 I struggle with faith. Have you professed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
00:08:31.780 No, I have in my life. I don't. I mean, look, is this an inquisition on me?
00:08:37.620 No, no, no. Actually, no, it's an interview. But see, when somebody tells me they're a Christian,
00:08:41.620 and again- I said I'm culturally Christian.
00:08:43.700 What is culturally Christian? I grew up in a Christian background. I resonate with Christianity
00:08:49.700 and so on. So this isn't a complicated question, but Richard Spencer makes it complicated.
00:08:55.780 He's a cultural Christian. And obviously that concept doesn't mean anything. But like with all
00:09:02.100 of these guys, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. The alt-right people are just
00:09:06.100 smart enough, just articulate enough, just educated enough to convince dummies to follow them. It is
00:09:11.540 like the New York Times editorial board, who are just- I would like to clarify too, I am comparing the
00:09:18.180 New York Times editorial board to the alt-right. Nailed it. For a variety of reasons. But this is that
00:09:23.700 issue. What does Richard Spencer worship? He likes the idea of Christianity, but he doesn't like the
00:09:33.460 doing of Christianity. He doesn't like the Jesus. I say this often, but lefties tend to want the
00:09:38.820 semblance of a thing without the essence of the thing. They like decaf coffee. They want to have
00:09:44.180 a university degree, but not have a university education. They want to use the image of Martin
00:09:48.260 Luther King, but they don't want to deal with the content of his actual speeches. And we're seeing
00:09:52.900 this exact same thing from the alt-right. A culture that becomes navel-gazing ultimately dies. It can't
00:10:00.980 just look at itself. It has to look somewhere else. Do we have clip seven of Richard Spencer talking about
00:10:05.380 religion?
00:10:06.980 Thinking about where does religion come from? How does it evolve? And I think one way to think
00:10:14.340 about it is that religion, like culture. I mean, there's no difference. The origin of the word
00:10:19.780 culture is cult. The religion and culture, it's hard to even separate them. But it's a way of binding a
00:10:29.940 community and having authority while not necessarily having power. So, if I'm leading an army, I could
00:10:39.460 say, fight. They're going to kill you, so you better fight them. And if you retreat, I'm going to shoot
00:10:46.820 you. Good luck, boys. That's a kind of brutal way of ordering your troops around and commanding troops.
00:10:57.940 But the way we've seen this throughout history, and definitely not just modern history, ancient
00:11:04.260 history, prehistory, is that you're fighting for... You might not be fighting for an ideal,
00:11:11.300 like democracy or something, but you're fighting for something bigger. It's like God is on our side.
00:11:16.420 That is exactly right. That's why I wanted to play that whole long clip, because he
00:11:20.900 gets it exactly right and then he gets it completely wrong. Culture comes from cult. A culture is defined
00:11:27.780 by what you worship. A culture that worships money will be a more materialistic culture. A culture
00:11:33.700 that worships sex will be a more lusty culture. But a culture can't worship itself. The Western
00:11:41.780 culture is a culture that was born out of Christianity. Culture that worshiped God in a
00:11:46.260 particular way, in a particular place, and it produced wonderful things. Works of arts, civilization,
00:11:52.100 governments, political rights, the greatest civilization that's ever lived. But a man wrapped
00:11:57.460 up in himself is a very small package indeed. And the same is true of cultures. So if the culture
00:12:03.060 just is trapped in its own existence, it can't become greater than itself. It can't grow. It will just die.
00:12:10.420 So Richard Spencer, he recognizes the importance of Christianity. He recognizes that it's the essence of
00:12:16.180 the Western civilization. But he himself doesn't worship it, because we live in basically a
00:12:22.020 post-Christian society, a post-Nietzsche society in which God is apparently dead. Spoiler alert,
00:12:27.140 he isn't really dead. But according to the culture, he is. So here is Spencer's idea of how to have his
00:12:31.780 cake and eat it too. Do you think that uncucking the church would be a great asset to our cause?
00:12:39.140 Good question. Well, again, this is one of those questions that a book could be written on this.
00:12:44.420 But of course, uncucking the church would be a benefit. And I would support that. And adopting
00:12:51.700 that as one's religion, I think we did turn Christianity into something European. We did,
00:12:57.060 you could say, paganize it or Germanize it in many ways. I don't want to ever be seen as someone who's
00:13:04.420 wearing a fedora and is a shrill atheist who's at war with Christians and thinks we need to
00:13:10.100 you know, deconstruct the church first or anything. I'm really not like that. Effectively, liberalism
00:13:17.220 and modernism are theological replacements for Christianity. They are post-Christian.
00:13:24.580 Also, also entirely true until he becomes entirely wrong. Liberalism, modernism, certainly modernism,
00:13:32.740 have become a replacement theology. But there are plenty of replacement theologies. There was
00:13:37.220 communism, there's environmentalism, there's the sort of cult of tolerance that we're seeing
00:13:42.260 now play out at Google and elsewhere. They are replacements for Christianity, but white nationalism
00:13:49.620 is too. Fascism is too. White supremacy is too. Nazism are also movements that have become theological and
00:13:56.980 taken the place of Christianity in the West. And this is also, in particular, nothing new.
00:14:03.940 Even in the figure of Richard Spencer, we've seen it before with George Lincoln Rockwell,
00:14:07.940 the head of the American Nazi party in the 1960s. Same thing, buttoned up, wore tweeds, smoked a pipe,
00:14:14.180 parted his hair nicely, and discussed the same ideas. Rockwell, when he was a little boy, was a
00:14:20.260 Protestant. And then he abandoned his Protestantism when he discovered that God isn't true. You know,
00:14:26.500 God isn't real. He had his atheist awakening, but he recognized the importance of Christianity and
00:14:33.300 the usefulness to society and to civilization. So he decided that we need to sort of use it in
00:14:39.300 some way. He didn't consider the fact that possibly it's all true and there's a reason why that culture
00:14:44.340 flourished for certainly all of modernity and for 2000 years. But no, it had to be some strange trick
00:14:50.500 and how do we recapture the trick. This is what we're seeing in this post-Christian West. We're
00:14:57.060 seeing fundamentally a contradiction, an impossibility. You want to have the Western
00:15:02.580 civilization without the thing that makes it the West. And the term that a lot of these online
00:15:06.660 alt writers are using is red pill. So you remember from The Matrix. Do we have a clip of it?
00:15:11.220 This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill. The story
00:15:19.940 ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill. You stay
00:15:26.660 in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. So that's the choice that they think we
00:15:35.220 have. They think that we're living in a fantasy, the fantasy of 2017 Western civilization. It's
00:15:41.300 illusory. And what we really need to do is wake up to the truth of reality, which is dark and ugly.
00:15:47.780 And it's a hard truth, but you know, we got to do it. Take the red pill. The world is ugly, but let's,
00:15:53.380 let's go ahead and do it anyway. Horace Walpole, the great English writer said,
00:15:56.580 life is a comedy to him who thinks and a tragedy to him who feels. So is life just a hellish facade full
00:16:03.220 of pointless moments until we turn into warm food? Or is there some purpose? I can't possibly answer
00:16:08.100 that. I have to bring on our panel of deplorables and we have an excellent one today. We have roaming
00:16:13.060 millennial. We have the lone conservative Cassie Dillon. And for some reason we have Jacob Airy.
00:16:18.500 Cassie, welcome. This is your first time here. So you will get the first question.
00:16:22.580 Uh, you know, this is a, this is a real softball. The West has been grappling with it for only
00:16:27.140 about a century or century and a half. Is God dead?
00:16:30.100 Cassie Dillon- Absolutely not. I'm a devout Christian and I think it's kind of telling
00:16:35.380 to see that these alt writers have abandoned Jesus. Obviously they never believed in Jesus
00:16:39.220 in the first place. If they're spewing these type of things out there, making it seem like God's
00:16:43.620 creation, which is humanity is not equal. So it honestly doesn't surprise me to see those,
00:16:48.100 those videos that you just showed of Richard Spencer. I haven't seen them before. I tried not
00:16:51.460 to pay attention to him, but honestly, it doesn't shock me at all.
00:16:54.100 Cassie Dillon- I emailed him actually, or I Twittered him. He and I, uh, follow each other
00:16:58.420 on Twitter. I, I, somebody I forget always joked that he only follows me because I'm the only non-Jew
00:17:03.700 at the Daily Wire, which might be, I don't know. I'm not sure. But anyway, he didn't get back to me
00:17:07.780 in time for this show. Maybe he'll send in a message or something. But is it, I mean, I agree
00:17:11.940 with you. God isn't dead. That's manifestly true. But, uh, you know, roaming is Spencer's vision,
00:17:18.020 the natural outcome of a post-Christian right wing, or is there a more coherent atheist right wing
00:17:24.740 that doesn't mow down people at protests? Well, I think what's interesting about-
00:17:31.700 Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I think what's interesting about Richard
00:17:37.300 Spencer is that, you know, he kind of coined the alt-right. He likes to parade himself around
00:17:42.100 under the right wing label. But if you actually listen to what he's saying, he is a literal
00:17:47.620 national socialist. And I'm not saying that, you know, trying to equate him with Nazis and,
00:17:51.860 you know, fear monger that way. I am. I think the guy is a Nazi. I think it's pretty clear,
00:17:55.700 but maybe you'll take a nicer stance. He's actually in favor of national socialism. Like he,
00:18:00.980 I interviewed him on my channel, uh, and you know, I asked him about non-ethnic cleansing policies
00:18:06.740 that he might be in favor of. And, you know, he's in favor of things like, uh, you know,
00:18:10.660 socialized medicine. Um, same, same thing with, uh, you know, environmental protections that we see
00:18:16.820 coming from the far left. He is not a right wing person. And I think that kind of extends to his
00:18:22.820 views on conservatism and Christianity as well. I think in his mind, he sees things like the
00:18:27.220 regressive left does where it's like anything white is right wing, which is actually not how it works.
00:18:33.220 Right. Don't, don't you think though, that there is some, that it's a little disingenuous to say
00:18:38.980 they have nothing to do with the right. I only, I agree entirely that they like big government.
00:18:44.260 They want socialized medicine. They view the world with the same identity politics as the left,
00:18:49.300 but all those guys voted for Trump. Do we have to take some ownership of them or can we say they're
00:18:55.220 lefties? They have lefty premises. Well, we could, we can take ownership of them in so far as, you know,
00:19:01.380 Trump wants the wall and they're anti-Mexican and they see that as a good thing. But if we're
00:19:06.180 talking about like, you know, their actual ideology, what their beliefs are, what their
00:19:10.020 economic beliefs are, what they are on the authoritarian libertarian scale, um, they're
00:19:15.060 very, very far from, I think the emerging new right, which is a right wing, actually right wing
00:19:20.580 and be culturally libertarian. Like these are authoritarian leftists, maybe center left. But
00:19:25.460 I mean, if we're actually going to tackle what their political ideology is, these aren't,
00:19:30.500 you know, these aren't tea partiers, for example, these aren't the cruises of the party.
00:19:35.780 Yeah. You know, that guy, Andrew Anglin, the head of daily stormer, he used to be a hippie.
00:19:40.500 He used to be a vegan dreadlocks. He was a member of the left. So I, I certainly grant it's an easy
00:19:45.620 leap from the far left into Nazism, but Jacob William F Buckley Jr. famously purged all those
00:19:51.940 racists out of the party, but sometimes they can be useful if we can take their votes. What do you
00:19:56.020 think? Do you think there's any big tent argument to suck up to them? Or do we just have to purge
00:20:00.260 them? I'm all for purging them. These, these same people are the same people who say I'm a part of
00:20:07.140 white genocide because I happen to be married to a Mexican and who's also part native American.
00:20:12.020 So I have, uh, I have absolutely no sympathy for them. I think that they should be purged out of
00:20:19.060 any movement, whether, whether it's a conservative or liberal. I don't think we should pander to these
00:20:24.740 guys at all. 100%. I'm, I'm against giving them even a bone.
00:20:29.220 You know, who else purged people was the Nazis, Jacob, or you? Well, I was just going to say,
00:20:34.340 Jacob advocating for purging people, right? That's going to be the headline.
00:20:39.860 I guess we're an alt-right show now. I don't, well, that was fast. I didn't think we were doing
00:20:43.300 that. Sorry, Cassie, did you have something to say? I saw you, you started talking.
00:20:47.860 Yeah, I was just going to add, um, that I just came back from the Middle East and I saw
00:20:51.380 deeply religious people. And being in America, we do have a secular society. Obviously there
00:20:56.740 are religious people in America. You can go to New York, you'll see very devout Jews. You go to
00:20:59.940 the South, you'll see really devout Christians, but it's not the same over there. But I don't
00:21:03.460 necessarily think that religion's going anywhere. I think these guys are pretending that Christianity
00:21:07.860 is no longer believing in Christ, but it's just your identity. No, it's still believing in Christ,
00:21:13.220 going to church, being with your family, and believing in God. So I think it's just crazy that
00:21:17.060 they're just trying to pretend it doesn't exist anymore. Right. They love Christendom. They love
00:21:20.740 Christendom, but they hate Christianity. They don't see some contradiction in between those two.
00:21:25.780 It's the idea of it, right? It's the idea of uniting people behind one person, but then they
00:21:31.380 want to pervert it. Absolutely. All right. I've had enough of the Nazis. We need to move on to really
00:21:36.340 important stories. Politico is reporting. Oh, by the way, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube
00:21:41.140 that you, you, you cheapskates, you have such a good panel today. You get Cassie Dillon,
00:21:46.260 roaming millennial, even Jacob Berry, and you won't be able to see the rest unless you go to
00:21:50.420 dailywire.com and subscribe. It's only $10 a month, $100 a year. You get my show,
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00:22:00.820 Keeps your leftist tears hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
00:22:04.260 Go over there right now, dailywire.com, and we'll be right back.
00:22:17.940 Politico is reporting that President Obama was warned as early as 2014 that the Russian
00:22:24.020 government intended to interfere in Western elections, but they did nothing. Cassie,
00:22:29.700 can we say, perhaps, that Barack Obama colluded with the Russians?
00:22:34.580 I don't even want to go into the whole Russian collusion, honestly. I think it's just insane,
00:22:38.980 and I think that the right is trying to fight back to the left by fighting
00:22:41.780 them with their own tactics. I don't think anyone necessarily colluded with the Russians. Do I think
00:22:46.260 the Russians got involved? Yes. So I think it went more than just trolling on the internet? No. I don't
00:22:51.140 think it's as big as people are making it. And I don't think Obama necessarily colluded them either.
00:22:55.220 I think he just kind of went along with it. I know he had that secret conversation that he was caught
00:23:00.100 in the hot mic, which was interesting, but I think this whole Russian collusion thing just needs to
00:23:03.940 die down. Sounds like the sort of thing a girl who colluded with the Russians would say.
00:23:07.780 Roaming, why did they ignore this? Is it because Hillary was a shoo-in,
00:23:12.100 because they wanted to leverage it somehow, or because they just didn't think it would matter whatsoever?
00:23:18.180 All of the above. Yeah. I think if we look at the timeline of this whole
00:23:22.980 Russian collusion narrative, I think even, you know, even the leftist media didn't even think
00:23:27.860 that it would stick as much as it has. I think they've just been kind of going with it, throwing
00:23:31.540 whatever they have and just seeing, hey, you know, this is actually working. Let's do it more. So,
00:23:36.420 yeah, I mean, you know, I'm no fan of Obama, but I kind of agree with Cassandra. I don't think this was,
00:23:43.140 you know, Obama in cahoots with the Russians. I think, you know, if there was anything,
00:23:47.140 I don't think it was anything serious. And, you know, I, I hate to see people,
00:23:52.260 you know, Republicans or, you know, people in the GOP just trying to distract from what's going
00:23:57.460 on on our side by flinging the same accusations out of people. I want to distract as much as
00:24:01.780 possible. This is a terrible story. It makes us look awful. And I want to talk about, I want to do
00:24:05.780 exactly what they did and only talk about this Russia nonsense. But Jacob Roaming brings up a good
00:24:11.220 point. There's very little coverage of this. There was maybe one, one headline in Politico today.
00:24:15.220 Is this evidence that the mainstream media is only interested in Russia when it backs up their
00:24:20.020 Trump narrative? Or is this really just a kind of nothing story that we'd be best to ignore?
00:24:25.860 Oh, it totally shows the mainstream media is in league with the Democrats.
00:24:29.060 It's true. I guess it could be both.
00:24:31.700 But I also agree with Roaming and Cassie. I think that, you know,
00:24:35.140 we should just let this whole Russia thing go. The Russians are always trying to cause trouble
00:24:39.220 for the United States. It's nothing new. There's no evidence that Obama directly colluded with them.
00:24:44.900 And there's no evidence that Trump directly colluded with them. So the mainstream media just needs to
00:24:50.260 to drop this completely. It's not going anywhere until that we find something that they did something
00:24:54.660 more, that the Russians did something more egregious. It just needs to be let go.
00:24:58.820 Fair enough. I agree with that. I'm done talking about those Russians.
00:25:02.020 Now we need to talk about the most important, I can't believe this is a story, but unfortunately it's
00:25:06.260 like one of the only ones today. Over the weekend, Al Sharpton's National Action Network protested outside
00:25:13.460 of the Rams preseason opener because Colin Kaepernick doesn't have a job. If you've forgotten
00:25:18.740 Colin Kaepernick, as I've been trying to, he's that football player who refused to get up for the
00:25:23.860 national anthem and kneeled down during it. Jacob, why doesn't Colin Kaepernick have a job?
00:25:29.860 Because he's not that great of a player. Now I'm saying he's on the level of terrible,
00:25:34.660 but he can't get a job because he's not that great. It's the same reason Tim Tebow couldn't
00:25:39.300 get a football job. But, and by the way, Tim Tebow was a little bit better than Colin Kaepernick.
00:25:43.940 He even won the Heisman Trophy right. But I still think that everyone, the left is trying to make
00:25:49.620 this all about racism and the right is trying to make it all about the fact that he wouldn't stand
00:25:53.220 for the national anthem. It's just a plain fact that he is just not that great of a player and
00:25:59.300 that's why he doesn't have a job. But that doesn't sell newspapers. That doesn't get clicks. Cassie,
00:26:04.740 is sitting down for the national anthem sufficient reason not to rehire a mediocre football player?
00:26:10.420 Or is that, should that not be considered?
00:26:13.860 I think that this is a bigger trend. If you look at anyone who is in an industry that doesn't have
00:26:17.700 to do with politics, the second they soil themselves with politics, whether it's left or right,
00:26:22.260 oftentimes there's that threat that you might be soiled. You know, you might not be able to go back
00:26:26.580 into your industry without being seen a certain way. For instance, when you have people like Snoop
00:26:32.900 Dogg coming out making these videos with politics and what was he, being rude to our president and
00:26:38.420 threatening to kill him. Basically you are, it's pretty rude. You're teasing yourself. People
00:26:42.420 don't want to see that. They want to listen to music. They don't want to hear about politics.
00:26:45.220 They don't want to hear about your, your views. They just want to see you play a game of football.
00:26:49.620 That's true. If celebrities don't, if celebrities don't tell us about their political views,
00:26:53.460 who will we simple non-celebrity people know who to vote for? It's really, I only pay attention
00:26:59.940 to Snoop Dogg and Richard Spencer. Those are the only, that's where I get my political views from.
00:27:03.860 If you average out the difference between them, you should be good.
00:27:08.420 Yeah, absolutely. It does bring, I mean, is this a question, should we consider what they do
00:27:14.340 culturally? I mean, this was one single act. He's kneeling down for the pledge of allegiance
00:27:19.540 and actors in Hollywood get away with this stuff all the time. The Oscars are unbearable these days
00:27:24.740 because every speech is some stupid Patricia Arquette screed about Trump or imagined wage differences or
00:27:32.340 something like that. Is there, um, is there any reason that we should, that sports should be
00:27:38.820 different or is everything of a piece? Well, you know, the thing, these aren't entertainers,
00:27:44.900 aren't really like regular employees where your employer, you know, as long as you do your job,
00:27:49.620 you get a regular salary, right? Colin, Colin Kaepernick. Oh my gosh. I, I don't know football.
00:27:55.700 Well, join the club. Yeah. So his job, yeah, he plays football, but his main job is to like bring
00:28:02.580 in viewers and sponsors, right? And if people are put off by his political message, then yeah,
00:28:08.020 he's not good for the team. And you know, it's the same with actors. If people get tired enough of
00:28:12.420 someone like, let's say like Sean Penn, that they don't want to see the movies and he's in anymore,
00:28:16.340 then yeah, people aren't going to hire him. And it's not necessarily even whether,
00:28:19.300 you know, the directors or the team owners agree with them or not. It's just about business and,
00:28:25.060 you know, consumers, I think for the most part, we're able to kind of distinguish between these
00:28:29.700 are your personal views and this is you as, you know, in your job. But after a while, it does get
00:28:34.580 kind of tiring. And I think that football player guy, he definitely put himself in that position.
00:28:41.460 Is it Kaepernick? Oh gosh. That's so racist roaming.
00:28:45.700 I know, even though that's, I'm pretty sure that's a white last name, but yeah.
00:28:49.700 It's true. Nobody has the right to throw a football on television. If the advertisers
00:28:54.500 want you out, then you know, you're an entertainer, I suppose, first and foremost. Cassie,
00:28:58.820 I'm going to give you the final word on this. Why do I care? Why do I, why does anybody care
00:29:03.940 about this man? Why has this been dominating the news for a year? I'm still searching for the reason.
00:29:09.700 I think the over media is maybe getting sick of talking about Russia,
00:29:12.740 but now it's back to Colin Kaepernick. They're going down their checklist.
00:29:16.100 What was it? The airplane, Colin Kaepernick, and now this, the Russia story. So now we're
00:29:21.460 going back to Colin Kaepernick. If an airplane goes down soon, I'm sure we'll talk about that
00:29:24.500 for a few months too. Yeah, it's a cycle. It's a cycle.
00:29:27.540 Never ending. That's an amazing prediction from the panel of deplorables. All right,
00:29:31.860 get out of here. Cassie, nice to have you on roaming. Wonderful as always. And Jacob,
00:29:36.980 now it's time for the final thought.
00:29:39.940 I have to put my smart glasses on for the final thought because I can't read the prompter.
00:29:48.020 A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. So if you want to defend Western culture, which is a
00:29:54.020 laudable and urgent endeavor, you might first ask yourself, what is Western culture? What created
00:29:59.620 Western culture? What does Western culture comprise? White nationalists like Richard Spencer
00:30:06.260 seem to answer with shallow pop philosophy and slick memes. Now it's a great thing to unite the
00:30:12.260 right, but not with the wrong. Alt-right reads Nietzsche. Conservatives understand Nietzsche,
00:30:17.380 and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. This eternal
00:30:22.020 fact should suffice to keep people out of hell. Unless, like the clowns who paraded through
00:30:26.740 Charlottesville this weekend, they're already there and determined to drag us down into the filth
00:30:32.020 with them. On that, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. Come back tomorrow and we'll do it again.