Jordan Holmes and Dan Friesen dissect Alex Jones’ hostile tone toward critics while Amanda Moore recounts her undercover work exposing far-right figures like Shane Trejo and Christopher Cantwell, who shifted from libertarianism to extremism post-Charlottesville. She details CPAC recruitment tactics and a Kirk Cameron-led anti-drag event with conservative allies Haya Elnashef and Sean Spicer. Moore’s analysis reveals far-right groups’ paranoia and fractured momentum after January 6th, suggesting their decline may be temporary—especially if Trump loses—while her focus on Gavin Wax highlights the broader pattern of ideological performativity and public backlash among extremists. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys.
unidentified
Knowledge fight.
and enjoy knowledge fight need money Andy in Kansas stop it Andy in Kansas it's time to pray Andy in Kansas you're on the air thanks for holding hello Alex I'm a first time caller I'm a huge fan I love your room knowledge fight knowledge fight dot com Yeah, yeah.
Well, obviously there's the undercover stuff, but I read in a piece a couple of years ago, I think it was, that you investigated, in your own words, gold diggers' boyfriends?
It was really wild, too, because, you know, that summer, back in like 2014 and 2015, I had been to a lot of Black Lives Matter protests, especially up in Baltimore.
And I...
I didn't go to so many in 2020 because I was super depressed and broke and just like generally unhappy internally.
But I went to one and it happened to be the one where the president tear gassed everybody so he could hold a Bible upside down for a photo op.
We're like marching to the Capitol and nothing's going on.
And I'm like, wow, I remember when we were just standing.
We were tearcast.
And here we go today.
Straight on, straight on inside.
I mean, I did not go inside.
I wanted to, but a reporter I know ran into me and he was like, you're not going inside.
So I was wondering, as we go back through this, right, so as you just pointed out, you know, in the 2014-2015 area, you're going through, well, we're all going through a period where...
You know, Black Lives Matter protests, we're fighting all of those things.
Just a few years before that, you know, relatively speaking, you're in more January 6 people territory again, you know?
So you grew up in an environment that led you to be a libertarian at 12, or if that's what I read correctly, right?
Larry Elder and the Sorcerer's Stone was my favorite book, but next time I think he's going to have to step up his game.
You know, if JK can meet him on Transphobia now, we're in real trouble.
Yeah, but tell me a little bit more about growing up like that, because I feel like your childhood kind of informed your ability to chameleon yourself into the far right that easily, right?
Yeah, and you know, I mean, something could have been done about that.
And you look at, so like the former head of the party, like the guys, one of the guys I know to cover, Shane Trejo, used to like...
Make this guy's life hell, Nick.
His name is Nick.
And, like, he would write all these articles about Nick being a cuck-servative, a libertarian, all that stuff.
And it's like, I don't, I mean, I'm not saying this is Nick's fault, but, like, on an individual level, like, at the county levels where we were and the state levels, you know, people will come in and it's like, that guy's a fucking Nazi.
And, you know, it's like, oh, you can't just call people Nazis, we're not the left.
And it's like, okay, well, he just did a...
You know, and it's like, oh, well, you know, it's better not to punch that way.
Like, we can't, you know, and it's just like, this denial.
And, you know, I was completely out by the time Unite the Right happened.
You know, I feel like if we had stood up stronger in more numbers, we could have kept them out of the party.
And who knows?
Maybe I would still be a libertarian.
Maybe I wouldn't have been pushed so far to the left.
Kind of the opposite intent or effect of what they wanted.
And, you know, now, of course, we see this happening in the GOP.
Like, the Libertarian Party is a disaster.
You've got the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire at the state level, which has not been, you know, they're not defederated.
They're a member of the National Party.
Tweeting out the 14 words, but instead of whites, they're saying libertarians.
You know, it's a joke, and now those same people are kind of trying to get into the GOP and do the same thing there.
And I think now they're really going to have to come to Jesus' moment because they already had a fraction in the GOP with Trump.
And now I think Ukraine is probably maybe a bigger deal than, like, they want to admit because so many of the people who are running for president on the Republican ticket are bizarrely pro-Russia.
Or at least not willing to condemn Russia, as we saw last night at the debate.
And, you know, I just, I don't know.
Like, these are things, I think, you know, maybe the best case scenario for us is we just have a crumbled little GOP that's like five different factions that are all fighting each other at all times.
And it comes up again when you were in January 6th.
You know, the way you described it...
The way that the crowd was functioning, you know, there were people who saw the violence start happening and the cops start attacking the violent people and they were going, yeah, get them!
You know, like not realizing that we ourselves are those violent people.
Yeah, yeah.
And in the same way, this is kind of another expression of that.
You know, like, we think of ourselves as the, like, we're anti, we're pro-United States, Rocky IV, USA, you know, that whole thing.
And yet somehow, wait a second, we're voting for the guy, we're voting for Drago.
Between, I mean, just, like, people not living in reality, not living on planet Earth, you know, like, especially some of the, like, extreme Trumpers who, you know, it's just, how do you even talk to these people?
unidentified
You know, like, at least a regular Republican, you could be like, hey, here's all your economic policy is shit.
You know, I always thought, like, we should probably have schools and roads.
I think roads are good.
I like roads.
But maybe we should not have so much with war, that kind of thing, you know.
And where programs need to exist...
What changed for me is seeing, like, you know, I think the government does a pretty shitty job with a lot of social welfare programs across the board.
But I would still, at this point, rather they are doing it than the private sector.
And so that's really what shifted for me.
Like, my actual belief system of who is deserving of things and that kind of stuff never really changed.
It's just, where is the money coming from?
And a lot of that, I mean, like, I remember being in Baltimore after Freddie Gray was murdered and being, like, you know, looking around and being, like, where the fucking libertarians at?
They're the ones who say, like, when things happen, it falls on the individual to come and fix it.
And that's not who's here, you know?
Or paying taxes or whatever.
You know, like, well, that's not the fucking...
I mean, come on.
You can't just be like, well, I'm paying taxes.
I'll never get off my ass.
Like, you have to do the work in addition to...
In addition to the forced taxes that you're paying.
And so, you know, that is, like, what changed for me.
And that is a perception of not what is real or what is not, but, like, how do most people actually come to action, no matter how much they run their mouth.
No matter how much they run their mouth about how they're going to be there to support inner-city schools and kids, they're never going to fucking do it.
And so that is, like, what changed for me.
So I, you know, I don't...
I've never thought Trump was a time traveler, for instance.
I think that's a really, really good answer because I don't know if my question was terribly clear, but you got to kind of what I was hoping to hear.
The question about that, though, then is like, okay, so...
Are you and I talking about a difference in orthodox libertarian belief, and that's the schism that led to you rejecting libertarian as a concept?
Or is it a situation wherein you realize that everybody wasn't actually being orthodox libertarian, and they were talking shit all the time, and you were just like, well, I don't want to be part of everybody talking shit.
Yeah, I mean, it was that, and it was also, I mean, the infiltration of white nationalists into the party was very clear to anybody who was listening.
And, you know, I'm from D.C., and I moved from D.C. to Dallas, and I just remember in Christmas Day 2012, so effectively 2013, I just remember getting faced with people, libertarians in Texas, when there was that shooting in Paris at...
The nightclub are constant.
I can't remember.
It's so long ago now.
Do you remember my fellow libertarians in Texas being like, oh, well, that could never happen here because everybody has a gun.
And I'm like, hey, asshole, look up the Texas liquor laws.
If you have a gun in a nightclub, you're going to jail.
And they would be like, I don't know what you're talking about.
I fucking do.
Here's the tab seat rules.
And it's just that constant frustration with people having this idealistic version of how the world works.
And the left does it, too.
I mean, everybody does it.
But not really applying that to reality.
And so, you know, you have this difference in the way people view stuff and their biases that they bring in.
And it's also like, you know, just not telling white nationalists to get fucked.
Yeah, I mean, like...
I knew people who ended up in the Proud Boys, who ended up in all these organizations.
Christopher Cantwell, a crying Nazi from Charlottesville, he was known as the anti-cop guy.
Everybody knew who he was.
Everyone knew he was an asshole, but it really took Charlottesville for people to be like, "Hey, fuck that guy." Probably shouldn't take a white nationalist march, you know, where someone's murdered to get people to be like, hey, we gotta get rid of this guy.
I thought of it, you know, the problem with questions like that is you say that and I immediately think of like 15 different practical real politic reasons why we're stuck in this scenario.
You know what's really funny is when I met Shane, it was at...
His organization was having, like, an event.
Laura Loomer was speaking, and so it was Margie Taylor Greene and Polkasar.
And within a couple minutes of meeting Shane, the director, the executive director of the organization was like, I think that person back there was a journalist.
And I'm like, oh, really?
Which person?
And I watched him pick somebody out for possibly maybe being a journalist because she was looking around sketchy.
unidentified
And I'm just like, wow, you guys are really bad at it.
I just went and there were a lot of adults for the children's story time hour.
A disproportional amount of adults.
The children that were there were primarily siblings, so maybe four of the children to one adult, but then, you know, so why do you have so many adults?
I mean, I know it seems like I may be jumping back and forth, but the reason that this jumps out at me is because back on January 6th, you know...
When you're describing the way these people see reality versus the way it is, you know, when you're walking around on January 6th, people all around you going like, hey, don't walk around alone.
Don't be alone, you know?
You're the people that she should be afraid of, you know?
Like, that's kind of the situation there.
And the same thing is going on here.
They're creating this enemy that's around the corner all the time.
I mean, like, the lead-up to January 6th, there was a rally in December 2020, and it was, like, haunting.
I don't even know how to describe it.
I'm sure my friends wish that I would shut up about it, because for, like, weeks, I mean, probably until the 6th, I was just like, man, this was really bad.
Like, these people are out of their minds, and they're not, like, saying that lightly.
I mean, like, literally the perceived threats that they were saying.
And the concern, if I walked across the street, like, I tried to go buy a Red Bull or something, and people were like, oh, my God.
With your story, I keep finding so many different moments where the people who are being honest, like Alex Nelson, I think, is the one in your most recent piece who's like, hey, yeah, I know Biden won.
I still think we should have done January 6th because fuck those people, you know, like that kind of thing, right?
As I think about the Trump campaign, I mean, not the official campaign, but the way it played out, especially on the internet.
Let's say you don't like Jewish people, and let's say you're racist.
I think the edgelord meme warfare thing created a culture where instead of just passively Being just trustful of Jewish people or passively, like, avoiding Black people or just maybe not even really knowing anything.
These things became fixtures in the front of people's minds in a way that, you know, maybe it wouldn't have otherwise.
And so I'm not saying it's, like, fine to be passively racist, but, you know, there's a difference between being passively racist and being obsessively fixated on something.
Which is what happened, I think, for a lot of people.
And so I think maybe some of these people don't even really know the answer to that question themselves.
I think that it's now just become a cultural and social thing to be this edgelord caricature of a person.
And I don't know that people really know where their identities begin and end anymore.
I mean, it's obviously for the more extreme elements, like not for regular people or whatever.
And I think as you look at people who are walking away from the Trump movement, you kind of see that.
And it's like, I mean, I don't really deal with people who are reformed or reforming.
That's not really my lane.
I don't really, like, I don't want to say I don't care, but like, I just, I don't care to deal with it.
My sister is a special ed elementary school teacher, so she got 100% of the patience between us, you know?
Like, she's a very kind and patient, and I'm like, ugh, shut up, I don't give a fuck, you know?
Perfect.
Like, so I don't have the personality for it.
But I do interact with these people sometimes, and I do see people, like, trying to understand, like...
How do I really feel about things?
You have to deprogram and separate yourself.
And so I think it's both.
I think there are people who are very interested in the idea of an ethnicity and would actually like to work to make it happen.
I think there are other people who would have, in a different situation, just continued to be passively racist until they died, but who got whipped up into the idea of it and became something else.
If it weren't for this asshole, I would have run a store and I've kind of been an asshole to people and no one could ever have truly proven that I was racist.
But thanks to this guy, now I'm all out over the place throwing my business around, right?
But I will say, maybe this is, like, some weird trauma response to, like, participating in a lunatic religion.
You know, I really didn't find it very hard.
It's like, I went to this stuff, and then I came back.
I was like, okay, let's go out drinking.
Let's drink.
When COVID was in, like, full, full swing, let's sit in the park and have a drink.
We gotta go.
That's, like, the first day that it's, you know, after that, it's kind of fine.
I mean, I was also pretty fortunate in that, like, I had friends who were interested in this kind of stuff, and I had friends who were reporters, and so I would call, and I could decompress with a journalist covering, you know, this kind of stuff for, like, an hour, instead of having to, like, start from zero and explain to somebody, like, okay, this is what a problem boy is, you know?
I really think it was, like, slang, which is probably, I mean, I would say it's probably fine, because it's, like, leftist internet culture has often adopted right-wing, like, you know, manner of speaking, you know?
And so that's kind of, like, whatever.
Yeah, not so much.
Not really.
I mean, because if I was gonna...
I had an opportunity to believe all of this stuff growing up.
You know, I was...
An active decision to not participate in this world.
I feel like once you make that active decision, it's like a vaccine.
No, I mean, like, actual dumb shit, where it's like, you know, you're like, okay, well, if everything in the Bible is right, then why was Paul, like, don't have sex, but if you have to have sex, get married, because the end of days is coming.
And it's like, if nobody can answer that for you when you're, like, 11...
That was when the very first Harry Potter came out.
And the collection of elderly women in my church gave me, 12, 13-year-old Jordan, this book being like, can you read this to make sure that it's not demonic?
You know, like in case our children read it, can you make sure?
Oh, you almost all!
Ladies and gentlemen, I have to say...
I almost elicited a full spit take.
We've all missed out on a full-on spit take.
It is a disaster that I will regret for the rest of my life.
You kept it in!
unidentified
Why would they tell a 12-year-old to be the Anubis?
I mean, I'm gonna be honest, it makes me a little bit frustrated to think that if those ladies had kept everybody from reading Harry Potter, we would all be better off!
So then, I mean, I want to ask you, because your work is continuing, you're obviously not done writing, or, you know, you're done going undercover in very specific places, I assume, right?
So, I mean, I feel like the place that I want to kind of close things up with is...
For most of us, we've never been inside of those, like, it's just us conversations.
And so our perception of this faction of the far right will always be tempered by what it is that we can see and who shows us what from what points of view, right?
Patriot Front is not a group of federal informants.
And yet, people cannot stop saying Patriot Front is just federal informants.
And it's crazy, because actually, when you're inside the organization, they're worried about federal informants all of the time, because they are not federal informants.
Well, I remember being in North Carolina in 2013 during a furlough, and I remember some guy getting in my car, my truck, we were talking.
He'll just talk about whatever with you.
And he was like, at the time, the farm bill, the corn bill was up, like the farm, whatever, so they could just get their free corn money.
And he's like, you know, this furlough, I'm really glad it's happening.
These Blacks, these Welfare Queens, you know, it's time that we, like, really restructure this.
But I really miss that corn shack.
And I'm like, my brother, guess who the Welfare Queen is?
That's you!
That's you!
But, like, you're coming down that escalator.
It sounded like my grandparents on my mom's side.
I mean, it's like so many people that I met when I was, like, talking about these trucks.
I'm like, You know, yeah, so I know.
But I think Malch will be the nominee.
I think there's a good chance he'll lose.
I think his health is degrading, and I think more people are disgusted with him that voted for him in 2016, and even 2020 that might not vote for him now.
January 6th did have an impact on some people.
But, you know, I think they're going to have a struggle.
The Republicans in general are going to have a struggle because...
How long can you entertain somebody like Carrie Lake who is living on Mars?