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Dec. 8, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:17
ROOTS OF ANTISEMITISM Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep723
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Coming up, I'm going to try to understand the peculiar nature of antisemitism in our time by focusing on the testimony of these three university presidents.
Who have posed a simple question and interestingly can't answer it.
So I'm going to go into that. Entrepreneur and activist Chris Widener joins me.
He's going to lay out his vision for the new Red Referral Network that connects conservatives who want to socialize, connect politically, and do business with each other.
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All of this is a show.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
There's been a great deal of talk this week about...
Anti-Semitism on the college campus, the scene of the three university presidents of top universities, Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, which, by the way, is also an Ivy League school, and Harvard.
Appearing before Congress and being asked a simple question by Representative Stefanik.
I think that episode is going to have a kind of long impact.
It's going to leave a big wake.
Because it was kind of a moment where academia itself was on trial.
Here you have in front of you three of the most eminent figures in academia.
We kind of assume that they're going to be similar to the leaders of academia in the past, and academia has produced a number of prominent intellectual but also social leaders.
And I think we saw, looking at these three women in this case, that they are, well, T.S. Eliot used the phrase hollow men.
Well, these weren't hollow men, but they were hollow women.
Hollow here in the sense of lacking a moral core.
Absolutely degraded, shameless people.
And what made them even more shameless was that when they were asked important questions with morally freighted questions, they sort of looked sarcastic, they smirked, they were like, yeah, this was kind of, I think in their minds it was, this is staple right-wing rhetoric.
And that's the kind of disdain, that's the kind of contempt with which they dealt with it.
In fact, what they didn't realize with all their talking points in front of them was that the question that Elise Stefanik posed was well thought out and loaded.
It was a sort of a loaded intellectual weapon.
And it was a question which had a very clear answer.
And the clear answer was yes.
But the failure to give that clear answer and the attempts to provide a sort of elaborate rationale and get out of having to provide a clear answer were incredibly revealing, kind of a window into the soul of academia.
And so I thought I would give a little bit of detailed analysis of what's going on here and try to spell out its significance.
So the question was really very simple, and that is, do explicit calls for genocide against the Jewish community violate your university's guidelines or rules against harassment and Explicit calls for genocide against the Jewish community violate your university's guidelines or rules against harassment and hateful speech or conduct.
Is there an academic violation here?
Can the university and will the university act against people who call for genocide of the Jews?
Will they be called to account? Will they be disciplined?
Will they be suspended? Will they be expelled?
And all the three college presidents or university presidents gave the same answer.
And that is, in effect, no.
They didn't want to say no.
So typically what they would say is, you know, in the typical evasive fashion, something like, Well, Representative Stefanik, let me emphasize that under our free speech guidelines, blah, blah, blah.
And you could tell that Elise Stefanik, who, by the way, is a fairly genial personality, she's not like a ruthless cross-examiner, she was a little stunned by what she was hearing.
In one case, for example, you had one of the university presidents literally say that the calls for genocide would amount to harassment if they were accompanied by conduct.
And at least if Attic was conduct, I mean, are you saying that someone has to commit the genocide in order to be charged with, you violated the Penn policy on harassment?
She could hardly believe it, so she would always would regroup.
And in a sense, almost robotically ask the question again and sometimes again.
So this is a case, it's not where these university presidents sort of were taken by surprise or they started out by misspeaking and then quickly were able to clarify their answers.
No, they in every case sort of dug in and the collective answer can be summarized in this way.
What they basically said is, If there is speech accompanied by conduct, in other words, the genocide is not only called for but done, then there is a violation.
Or two, there has to be concentrated, systematic, and directed harassment of Jews on the campus, and then there might be or there would be a violation.
And all you have to do is, you know, whenever you hear a justification of this sort, you apply the moral generalization that was, I think, in a first systematic way articulated by Immanuel Kant, and that is, apply this answer to other cases and see if it is a morally coherent answer.
So, So, generalize, if you will, the answer and see if the generalization holds up.
If the generalization doesn't hold up, then your answer has a problem.
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The philosopher Immanuel Kant made famous the idea of testing a moral rule or a moral principle by universalizing or generalizing the principle.
So, for example, if somebody were to say, is it good to lie?
And they were to think, for example, of some circumstances where, let's just say, lying may seem to be warranted.
Kant would say, well, yeah, but what if everybody did it?
What if lying became a general principle in a society?
What would happen to that society?
It would absolutely implode.
You would not be able to function in that kind of society.
So clearly, as a general rule, lying cannot be a good thing.
Why? Because we've now applied it to all cases and we've seen the chaos, we've seen the moral confusion that would result.
Alright, so we come back now to the university presidents who say that That calling for genocide of the Jews is in fact harassment if it is persistent and direct and constant and continuous, but only in that case.
In other words, in other cases, it's okay.
So now let's apply this principle to blacks.
Or let's apply the principle even more tellingly to Muslims.
Let's say that somebody calls for genocide of Muslims.
Would these same university presidents take the position that there's no problem with that?
You can totally do that.
But as long as the calls for genocide against Muslims aren't specific, aren't directed, aren't constant, aren't repeated, as long as that sort of intense pattern does not exist...
Go right ahead. It's acceptable on our campus for you to do that.
You will be subjected to no admonishment, no stigmatization, no ostracism, no administrative penalties.
Inconceivable. It's utterly inconceivable that these colleges would take that position.
So, in fact, these colleges have gone to such extreme lengths to protect, by the way, not just blacks, not just Mexicans or Hispanics or Latinos, not just Muslims, but even, you know, not just the trans, fat people.
I mean, there was an article I saw...
In which Harvard was talking about fatophobia and the sort of administrative penalties that occur by, quote, body shaming people by referring to their weight.
Or penalties that are imposed if you don't use people's correct, and by correct here we mean their self-designated pronouns.
So, here are these colleges that have been in the name of creating a safe space, in the aim of protecting the sensitivities of students, and they're very concerned about certain types of students, right?
The fat people, the trans people, the Latinos, the blacks.
Notice that there are groups omitted from that sort of lineup.
Groups omitted include Asian Americans.
Groups omitted include white people.
Groups omitted include males, Jews.
So, we now begin to see that academia operates on a sort of a bifurcation.
There are two types of people.
There are the oppressor people or the oppressor groups.
And then there are the victim groups.
The key idea to get extreme protection is to be able to pass yourself off as a victim group.
So, blacks are victims.
Women are victims.
Trans people are victims.
And Muslims are victims.
The other groups are not victims.
And very interestingly, Jews here don't qualify for victim status.
Now, why is that?
Debbie and I were actually talking about this and I said it's basically because the Jews are white.
If the Jews had been brown, if the Jews had been black.
And Debbie goes, well, wait a minute. I mean, Hitler didn't think the Jews are white.
I mean, for Hitler, with his doctrine of Nordic superiority, even the Southern European people, even the Eastern European people, even the Jews did not qualify for the kind of Protected, or in Hitler's view, superior group.
Jews were inferior, were seen as dark-skinned, and were objects of anti-Semitic targeting and hatred.
So isn't it interesting that this group, that was seen as non-white by the Nazis, is now moved into the white category, but again, not to be treated better.
Because obviously, if they were in the white category or the Nordic category, they would have been treated better in the Nazi framework.
But in the leftist framework that dominates the campus, they become targeted again.
So they're targeted by Hitler for being non-white, and they're targeted by the left for being white.
The same people.
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I'm talking about anti-Semitism, the US campus, the moral bankruptcy of the academic leadership of key institutions like Harvard and MIT and Penn.
And we also see the moral bankruptcy, by the way, of the media.
Look at this headline from the New York Times.
Republicans tried to put Harvard, MIT, and Penn on the defensive about anti-Semitism.
I mean, what a headline.
Let's look at the peculiar angle from which the New York Times views all this.
As the New York Times sees it, and by the way, the New York Times is owned.
It's now complex because they've sold out part of their interest to the Mexican businessman Carlos Slim and so on.
But by and large, the most prominent family is the Salzburger family.
And I used to... I had some dealings in the past with this family, but nevertheless, the Salzburger family is Jewish.
The New York Times has, in the past, by and large, been a supporter of Jews and of Israel.
And in fact, a lot of anti-Semites attacked the New York Times for this.
And yet, here's the New York Times, and they look at this discussion of anti-Semitism.
And to the New York Times, it's not about anti-Semitism.
And the New York Times dismisses the possibility that you could be seeing on the part of top academic leaders.
By the way, academic leaders that are part of institutions with a pretty sordid history.
If you've read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, it talks about Harvard's very sordid connections with Nazism.
And prominent Nazis who were invited to speak on the Harvard campus that had strong support by certain elements of the Harvard community.
So it's not as if these universities all have clean hands.
Not at all. Many of these universities were also into some of the really disgusting forms of eugenic research.
They took their cues from Nazi researchers in the early 30s.
And even before that.
And so all of this is out there.
And now you've got these university leaders and they're saying that a call for genocide.
Look, we're not talking about criticizing Jews.
We're not talking about disputing Israel or even defending Hamas.
We're talking about something that goes much further.
Genocide is the wiping out of a whole population.
It's mass killing.
We're at that extreme.
And these university leaders are, well...
It depends on the context.
That was one of their phrases.
We have to contextualize things.
This is sort of pseudo-intellectual babble.
Because, true, when you're trying to make sense of something, you have to look at the circumstances.
But usually when you mean that, what you mean is that the circumstances produce new information that That throws a fuller and perhaps a different light on things.
So you might say, for example, that, all right, Hamlet is on the face of it wrong to simply go out and plot to kill his own mother and his uncle.
But then when you contextualize it, you realize, wait a minute, his mother is the person who, in collaboration with the uncle, poisoned his own father by pouring poison in his ear.
And so, hey, Hamlet had every good motive to at least want retribution and revenge for what happened.
So, contextualization, that sense makes sense.
But what is the context?
I'm calling for the genocide of the Jews.
What context could transform the meaning of those remarks?
Well, I want to put them in context.
I don't think they should all be killed at the same time.
They need to be killed one by one and separately.
Is that the context?
What is the context?
And somebody actually on social media posted a very revealing meme.
It was, what was it, honey?
It was not Mein Kampf, but was it Mein Context?
It was, yeah, contextualizing Mein Kampf, in effect, or contextualizing the Holocaust.
You've got people, mass graves, you're throwing bodies into it, and, you know, you have this slow, well, it depends on the context.
Is that wrong? Well, it depends on the context.
Depends on... Well, no, it doesn't depend on the context.
The context here could not be more clear.
The fact itself illuminates the context.
And yet, here is the New York Times, again, running cover for these academic freaks, for these morally degraded individuals, and doing it by acting like this is all a Republican ploy.
Again, the headline, Republicans try to put Harvard, MIT, and Penn on the defensive.
Well, first of all, the Republicans are trying to do that.
They succeeded. They did put them on the defensive.
Why? Because basically, they exposed the moral bankruptcy of three of America's most prominent academic leaders.
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And now it's time to take account of the big apologies coming out of these university leaders.
So Harvard president, this is Claudine Gay, she goes, There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students.
Let me be clear, blah, blah, blah.
Now here's what's going on.
By the way, there was a similar video that came out of, I guess it's Liz McGill, the president of UPenn.
Similarly, I'm going to clarify what's really going on.
Now, really what happened here, and watching these videos is very illuminating because you can tell that these presidents are just absolutely...
They're so downcast that they have to issue this turnabout, this repudiation of themselves.
But because they're so arrogant, they can't do it with a straight face.
It's none of this sort of, you know what?
I don't know what got into me.
What I said was just rubbish.
It makes no sense.
I was caught up in, let's just say, my DEI fervor.
I was caught up in progressive athletics.
And so I began spouting moral nonsense.
so I need to become clean and tell you no, none of this.
Instead, look at this. There are some who have confused. There are some who have confused. It now sounds like we're the problem. We got confused about what she was really saying. No, we aren't confused. We're actually very clear.
So this is like when people go up to someone and goes, you know, you don't understand what I'm trying to say. And what they really mean is I did not make myself clear. So again, it's Claudine Gay The gay who's the problem here, not us.
We're not confused.
She spoke moral gobbledygook.
We took notice of it.
She's now trying to backpedal, but again, by putting the blame on us.
Well, you didn't really understand what I was trying to say.
And then we go to Liz McGill, and...
And we find something that is, in a way, even more disturbing than her original statement.
Because what she seems to be saying now is that she was previously too committed to free speech.
And so now she's going to give free speech itself another re-examination.
Let me read. For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn's policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law.
Now, let me pause here to note, isn't it amazing that these college presidents who have been shutting down free speech on the campus left and right are suddenly posing as the great defenders of free speech?
They're like, if we went too far in what we said to Elise Stefanik, it's because of our passionate commitment to free speech.
What a bunch of frauds!
Because these people don't believe in free speech.
They have been enforcing...
By the way, not just explicit administrative penalties, but they have been tolerating and encouraging an almost lynch-mob atmosphere on the campus, in which conservative students and patriots and evangelical Christians and others are hounded, are berated, are made to feel insecure and unwelcome.
So this threatening environment is very common.
It is the normal experience of conservatives.
And yet, here's Liz McGill.
She goes, but now...
The university quote must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies which will begin quote immediately.
So, a further retreat from free speech.
Now, to me, this is absolutely a calamity because any retreat from free speech, it's very obvious, is going to fall most heavily on us.
It's going to fall most heavily on Christians, on conservatives, on patriots.
So, this is not a good thing.
What we actually want is a wide latitude for free speech and That is enforced neutrally across the board.
In other words, we want campuses that have a true diversity of intellectual viewpoints.
The point here is not to defend extremist rhetoric.
The point here is to allow for genuine differences of opinion.
So free speech is the clearing of the rubble on the field to enable that genuine debate to take place.
That's why we defend free speech.
speech, the point of defending something at the outer extreme is to protect the ordinary guy in the center from being able to speak his or her mind freely.
So that's the justification for a true wide amplitude, saying look, we're going to stretch the amount of speech that's permitted all the way to the end, to the two walls on the left and the right, but it's not because we care about the guys who are over here and over here who are saying perhaps outlandish, maybe even hateful things.
But I think that hate speech is free speech.
In other words, hate speech should be protected.
Now, Debbie goes, not from terrorists.
On this issue, Debbie's become a heckler.
He's like, I'm going to be heckling you from the gallery, Dinesh.
But... But these academic professors and students are not terrorists.
Yeah, they are in sympathy with Hamas, but that doesn't make them a terrorist.
No, it doesn't.
A deluded kid or even a deluded professor who goes from the river to the sea.
You know, I mean, first of all, honey, if they were truly terrorists, then they should be killed.
But you're not that willing to kill them, and neither am I. Their rhetoric is ridiculous, it's absurd, but it is at the same time legal.
And if you can't protect free speech in a university, where can you protect it?
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It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast my friend Chris Widener.
He's in the field of personal development, motivational speaking.
He's one of the top guys in this field, really, in the world.
And he's written a whole bunch of books, more than 20, which have been translated into all kinds of languages.
He's a staunch conservative, founder of the Red Referral Network, a national conservative business network.
That's what we're going to talk about.
And his website, the website is redreferralnetwork.com.
Chris, thanks for joining me.
Really appreciate it.
I've known you for quite a while.
We were doing some events together across the country.
And then you came to me and we talked about this new idea that I find very intriguing and very powerful.
And we're actually going to team up on this.
But I want you to be the guy who sort of introduces it for my audience and explains it.
The Red Referral Network.
What is it? Yeah, sure.
Basically what it is, and you are the genesis of this really having for years talked about parallel economies, right?
And so really what this comes down to is, is how do we take conservatives and help them do business with one another?
And because right now I feel like, why should we continue to give our money to people who hate us or who are going to use our money against us?
And For the most part right now, what we do as conservatives is we shake our fists at the radio or the television and say, this is horrible.
And then occasionally we say, I'm never shopping at Target again.
I'm never shopping at Starbucks again.
But what about all the billions of dollars that conservatives give to local businesses that then are used against us?
So the basic idea is this.
Put together local groups all across America, they meet weekly, they're conservatives, and they drive business to one another because they share the same common values, and that money's not going to be turned around and used against you.
I mean, this to me is intriguing on many levels, but one of them is, as you know, Chris, I came to the United States as an exchange student.
It was an exchange program sponsored by the Rotary Club.
And so the Rotary Club of Bombay, India, essentially was in partnership with the Rotary Club near Tucson, Arizona, and we were exchanging students.
Now... I was not familiar with Rotary, but when I would talk to people in Rotary here in the United States and ask them, like, what is Rotary about?
They would typically say things, well, Rotary does a lot of civic stuff.
They adopt highways.
They obviously organize an international exchange program.
But as I observed Rotary meetings, I realized that there was, in fact, a kind of...
Primary and other motive.
And it was actually a very good motive, which is that people in a community, a real estate guy, a car salesman, a school principal, people from the business community, all joined the same organization where they would get to know each other and then they would refer business to each other.
So if I need a plumber, there's a guy who is in Rotary who's a plumber, I'm going to be like, hey, why don't you come and do the work I need at my business or at my house?
So it seems in some ways that in our ideologically polarized environment, this is really the same concept, but now focused on conservatives.
Would that be right? Yeah, absolutely.
There's always been groups like this, Rotary, Kiwanis.
In fact, I have a friend who's a conservative, ran for governor a couple of times.
He always said Rotary is for conservatives and Kiwanis is for liberals.
But you've got the Lions Club and you've got a big company called BNI, Business Networking International.
And the whole idea is to get together and to share business with one another.
And you know, I think even seven years ago, Red Referral Network would not have been at the right timing.
Because even seven years ago, before President Trump came on the scene, we didn't see the kind of vitriol that we see now.
And so I believe, and I know you do as well as we partner together on this, it's time to put conservatives together in a room every week referring business to one another.
And I'll give the listeners just a practical way of thinking about this.
Let's say you need a new roof on your house, $30,000.
You pay that money to a liberal roofer.
He takes $3,000 of that and he gives it to the Biden reelect campaign.
Or I think it's going to be the Gavin Newsom campaign.
And he gives him the money, and then that person has a national stage to stand up and say, by the way, Chris Widener and Dinesh D'Souza are racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, insurrectionists.
I paid for that.
When I got my roof done, I paid for my own demise.
Or as a friend of mine said, it's like tipping your executioner.
Hey, you're going to kill me? Here's a hundred bucks.
Thanks a lot. So it's really about giving our money to people who believe the same things that we do.
And frankly, it's been happening for a long time.
Mormon Let's do it.
Jewish people do it. Amish people do it.
I live outside of Chattanooga.
Hindus do it. Yeah, lots of people do it.
Let's give our money.
I say it. Let's keep our money in-house.
Let's give it to people who share our values and are going to donate some of that to politicians and organizations that believe in the same thing we do.
I mean, I think what's so practical and sensible about this is, like, you know, let's say, for example, somebody says, I don't like giving money, you know, to Amazon, or let's say to Target.
Obviously, one solution that jumps to mind is...
We start a conservative Amazon or we start a conservative target.
And there are some people trying to do those things.
But as you, it's so obvious, those are not easy to do.
I mean, Amazon has perfected its business model.
Say what you will about its ideology.
It's a heck of a company.
They get you your stuff.
I mean, even if you order something large, it's on your door the next day.
So to be able to create a rival Amazon or let alone a rival Harvard is not going to be easy.
But your approach is much simpler.
Which is to say in towns and cities around the country, let's say Phoenix, Arizona, you know, you have a red referral network and people in all walks of life, different types of business join.
Now they pay a modest monthly fee.
But isn't the point that that fee, whatever it is, $10 a month or whatever, is going to pale before the kind of economic benefit they get by meeting people from all walks of life who can do business with them?
If you're a real estate guy, you stand to make so much more in selling a single home than you would ever turn over in fees to the Red Referral Network.
Isn't that right? Yeah, absolutely.
And it's free to register with the Red Referral Network.
And there's lots of things that are going to be happening and lots of great information.
There's only a cost if you decide to join one of the local groups.
And the local groups are $35 a month.
And we priced it.
There are other groups that charge $75 a month, $50 a month.
And when we were putting this together, we thought, okay, let's...
Price it so that if one person gets one referral all year long, it pays for the entire thing.
So $35 a month is $4.20 a year.
If you sell one house as a real estate agent, you've now paid for about 10 years worth of your membership to the Red Referral Network.
We very specifically looked at that and said, what would bring the most value to people?
And that's the price point that we came up at.
it is the cheapest that I've seen in this entire industry because we want people to get involved and start doing business with one another.
I'll be right back with Chris Widener.
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I'm back with entrepreneur, author, personal development, influencer, motivational speaker, Chris Widener.
We're talking about the Red Referral Network.
Great name, by the way. And the website is redreferralnetwork.com.
Redreferralnetwork.com.
Chris, let's say that I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I decide I'd like to join the Red Referral Network.
What would I expect?
I'm assuming that I'm going to get some literature, I'm going to get some information, there will be all kinds of resources on the website, and there are going to be meetings.
I go to a meeting, what's going to happen?
Yeah, sure. You join Red Referral Network at theredreferralnetwork.com.
It's totally free. It takes you 90 seconds to register.
And everything on our site is driven by zip code.
So when you register, you register by zip code.
That allows our computer system to partner everybody together.
So somebody says, I'm going to lead a group in, you know, XYZ zip code in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
When you register, you'll be able to find that person, find that group, and now you show up.
You go to the group and you show up.
You meet for an hour every single week.
You get to know each other.
The meetings are very simple.
You know, the welcome, the Pledge of Allegiance, all those kinds of things like a lot of these groups.
You mentioned Rotary earlier.
And then each week, a couple of people in the group will stand up.
They'll give a two-minute little thing.
Hey, I'm Susie. I'm an interior decorator.
I've been in business for 15 years.
You know, that kind of thing. Then the next guy comes in.
I'm Joe the plumber. And, you know, I've been in business 17 years.
And here's what I do.
Then we have a focused speaker.
This is somebody that speaks for maybe 7 to 10 minutes, and they give value as well as information business.
So it might be, say, for example, a financial advisor.
He might stand up and say, here's where I think the market's going.
Here's some ways that you can invest your money.
If you're younger, you might do this.
If you're middle-aged, you might do this.
If you're older, you want safety, you might do this.
So it's value-oriented.
But you also get to know about his business.
Then we have Dinesh D'Souza.
Each and every single week is doing a five to seven minute little video.
We're calling it The Big Story with Dinesh.
It's timely. It's exclusive.
This isn't something that's being given anywhere else.
It's specifically done for the Red Referral Network.
And that's going to drive the core of the conversation for that particular meeting.
And then from that point forward, everybody gets to talk and chat and they have some open networking and then everybody's on their way.
Meetings are typically, you know, in the morning before, you know, go to work or at lunchtime once a week.
Groups will meet anywhere from Panera Bread to local churches, libraries, mortgage brokers offices, wherever they are.
But then when you go out and you're doing your work, Let's say you're a plumber and you go to a guy and he says, I need you to fix my toilet.
Okay, no problem. And the guy says, yeah, I need to get all this stuff done because I'm selling my house.
And you say, do you have a realtor?
You say, no, we're actually looking for one.
That's when the plumber in your group says, I've got just the person for you.
She's fantastic.
She's been selling real estate for, you know, 20 years in this area.
She knows everything. Can I give you a referral?
And they say, oh boy, we'd love that because they already trust you, the plumber.
And so now you're getting a trusted referral to your real estate agent.
There's a group out there.
They've sort of been the leading group in the last 30 years.
Their referral groups referred $1.8 billion to each other last year.
And so these are really powerful because referrals are better than leads.
Referrals bring somebody to you without the objections anymore.
So if you think about it this way, real estate agents, we keep using them, for example, they buy leads.
You know, Susie and Tom Schmo want to sell their house.
14 real estate agents call them.
Now they're like, well, we got to, what are you, what are you, and what are you, and they have to do all this stuff, and you're just one of 14.
But if somebody says, I'm selling my house, and they say that to their best friend, and their best friend says, oh, I've got just the agent for you.
Tom, you've got to call Tom.
What does that person do?
They call Tom up and they go, hey, your friend said you're the guy.
Can you come over and we can sign the paperwork and get our house sold?
So a referral from somebody you know, like, and trust goes way faster and is much more likely to turn into business than just a random lead.
So these are very powerful groups.
I mean, I think what's interesting here is that not only is there a trust between, in this case, the plumber and the client, but a circle of trust develops within the group itself because you have a similar worldview.
You have a similar philosophy.
And so, if you were to ask, I think most conservatives, given the choice between doing business between somebody who you don't know or is actively hostile to your values, and you're going to give that guy money and that guy a profit, and somebody who shares your values, and in fact, to the degree that they put money into a campaign, it's going to be to a candidate that you like.
That's going to be the guy you're going to want to deal with.
And I think also what's happening these days is that people are now finding the company of people who are ideologically hostile to them genuinely irritating because there is so little willingness to hear you out.
To engage in civil conversation, you're like, I don't even want to deal with those guys.
I'd rather find like-minded people and build my life.
That way I'm not constantly waking up and sort of feeling bad about myself and bad about the country.
Life is hard enough without being called a racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, insurrectionist, right?
So there's really three reasons I think people will join this.
Number one is just referrals. I mean, we've got inflation.
We need to make more sales.
We need to make more money just to exist the way we did a year or two ago.
So number one is just the referrals.
Number two is what you just touched on.
It's the ability to get together each and every week with people who share your values.
And again, I said, you know, seven years ago, it wasn't so vitriolic, but now it is.
We need that encouragement and that strengthening and that empowering that comes from meeting together.
It's why we go to church, right?
So that we can be encouraged with other Christians as we live this world out.
Or, you know, synagogue or wherever you go to be encouraged.
And then the third part is this idea of being able to connect with you, Dinesh, and hear your specific advice and content on how to live our lives and do our business and really make a difference in the world around us.
So, like I said, totally free to join the network and we've got other sorts of things available, business coaching and all sorts of other things, videos to help you, support you and your business.
But we do have the actual groups that are going to be Our goal is in the next three to five years Just to build out 1,000 to 5,000 of these groups, 20 to 50 people in every single group, imagine the power that will come from that and some of the extra things, right? Let's say there's an election next year and there's some shenanigans.
I watched a movie about that once.
And then we have to send some people into Georgia or Wisconsin or Maricopa County.
Well, we can say to the Red River Rule Network, hey, we need 250 poll watchers.
We need 250 people to go.
Who wants to go? And we're going to have Hundreds of thousands of people that we can help support those kinds of efforts across the country.
Chris, it's a wonderful idea, and I'm delighted to be part of it.
The website, guys, is redreferrarnetwork.com.
Chris Weitner, thanks for joining me.
Thank you. We're in the middle section of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and he now begins with a chapter that focuses on the trials of top fellow communists.
Now many of these names which may seem a little unfamiliar to some of us But they are famous names in the Soviet system, and they're famous names in Russia.
These are the top figures in the Communist Party.
They were at one time colleagues of Stalin, but Stalin turned against them, one after the other.
And he had them subjected to the famous show trials.
A show trial is a trial that is orchestrated.
It's not a real trial.
And in fact, it's a trial that is particularly aimed at getting the witness to make a self-abasing and self-incriminating confession.
And this is what happened.
You had multiple trials in which people did that.
Now, there were certain of the communist leaders who did not have show trials.
And Solzhenitsyn actually goes into, what were the show trials that didn't occur?
Like, what were the dogs that didn't bark?
And why was that?
And he has a very interesting reason for that.
But he begins by stating a conundrum.
And that is, he says, you know, I can understand how some ordinary fellow who gets grabbed by the Stalinists, is hauled into prison, is subjected to sleep deprivation and beatings and torture, just kind of gives up.
That's a kind of a helpless sheep who's not able to stand against the wolf that is the police state.
But he goes, but what about all these big guys, all these famous people, all these great leaders of the Communist Party?
And he says, how come they also were reduced to rubble?
How come they helplessly confessed?
How come they ultimately not only said that they were guilty of the things that they were charged, which, by the way, they obviously did not do, But then begged for punishment, begged to be executed, begged to be locked up.
He goes, what's going on?
Aren't these guys supposed to be like some tough?
Aren't these people who fought in the revolution?
Aren't these people who took on the forces of the czar?
Aren't these supposed to be like some of the military men, people like Trotsky, people like Bukharin and others?
He goes, what's going on here?
He calls it a riddle.
What's the solution to the riddle?
Here's Solzhenitsyn. He talks about the powerful leaders of the fearless Communist Party who had turned the entire world upside down and terrified it, now marching forth like doleful, obedient goats and bleated out everything they had been ordered to, cringingly abased themselves and their convictions and confessed to crimes they could not in any way have committed.
So, wow.
This was unprecedented, he writes, in remembered history.
And he says, even though there are people who have written about, both in the West and elsewhere, written about this phenomenon of the show trial, he goes, the riddle continues to circulate as durably as ever.
What would make, let's say, a Trotsky succumb to it?
What would make a Bucharin submit to it?
And Solzhenitsyn says, the fact is that an explanation on a higher psychological plane is called for.
He goes, first of all, he says, let's look at who these people are.
Trotsky, Kamenev, Bukharin.
He goes, we think that these were the leaders of the communist revolution against the czars.
He goes, not true.
Many of these guys, not all of them, were not even involved in that revolution.
They are the children of that revolution.
They're the next generation.
So right away, if you think that their hardness, their toughness, their combat readiness is signaled by the role that they played in the revolution, Solzhenitsyn goes, well, many of these guys played no role in the revolution.
He goes, number two, if you think that these guys who were in the revolution were made tough by interrogation by the Tsars, by getting beaten by the Tsars' forces, he goes, let me assure you, the Tsar didn't do anything like what the Soviets are doing now.
In other words, even though...
The communists justified their tyranny by pointing to the previous tyranny of the Tsars, were responding to the tyranny of the Tsars.
The truth of it is the Tsars were mild compared to the Soviets.
So none of these people were subjected to this level of torture and deprivation and physical and psychological abuse.
He says, for example, consider Trotsky.
Trotsky is supposed to be this really scary figure.
Why? Because he was the head of the chairman of the Revolutionary Council.
In fact, he ordered a lot of people to be executed.
Execute that guy, that guy.
Trotsky was kind of like the Che Guevara.
Che Guevara did exactly the same thing, by the way, for the communists in South America.
And so Trotsky got his reputation for being tough from that.
But Solzhenitsyn goes, wait.
There's no toughness involved in that because ordering another man to be executed is completely different than being willing to face your own death.
So his point is that one can be a complete coward and yet a sadist.
You're like, okay, yeah, execute that guy, execute that guy.
But when it comes to, I'm going to be executed?
No. Then I'm reduced to trembling rubble.
I start blubbering, begging for my life, and so on.
So Solzhenitsyn's point is, don't think of these guys in the sort of grandiose terms that they've been portrayed.
They had their own psychological vulnerabilities and there was a very cunning operation headed by a very cunning man, Stalin, who knew these vulnerabilities and successfully played and prayed, P-R-E-Y-E-D,
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