Knowledge Fight - #935: June 17, 2024
Aired: 2024-06-19
Duration: 01:56:51


=== Knowledge Fight Confession (05:02) ===

[00:00:16]  Dan and Jordan, I am sweating.
[00:00:19]  Knowledgefight.com.
[00:00:20]  It's time to pray.
[00:00:21]  I have great respect for the knowledge fight.
[00:00:24]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:25]  I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys.
[00:00:27]  Shang, we are the bad guys.
[00:00:29]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:30]  Dan and Jordan.
[00:00:31]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:35]  I need money.
[00:00:38]  Rattler.
[00:00:39]  Andy and Pansy.
[00:00:40]  Andy and Pandy.
[00:00:43]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:43]  Andy in Kansas.
[00:00:46]  Andy.
[00:00:46]  It's time to pray.
[00:00:47]  Andy in Kansas.
[00:00:48]  You're on the air.
[00:00:48]  Thanks for all of us.
[00:00:49]  Hello, Alex.
[00:00:50]  I'm a fish fan color.
[00:00:51]  We're here today and I love your room.
[00:00:53]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:55]  Knowledgefight.com.
[00:00:58]  I love you.
[00:00:59]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:00]  Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.
[00:01:01]  I'm Dan.
[00:01:01]  I'm Jordan.
[00:01:01]  We're a couple dudes.
[00:01:02]  Like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones.
[00:01:06]  Oh, indeed we are.
[00:01:07]  Dan.
[00:01:07]  Jordan.
[00:01:08]  Dan.
[00:01:08]  Jordan.
[00:01:09]  Quick question for you.
[00:01:09]  What's up?
[00:01:10]  What's your bright spot today, buddy?
[00:01:11]  My bright spot today, Jordan, is we are here.
[00:01:13]  And there is a reason.
[00:01:14]  There's something massive happened that we cannot wait until Friday to talk about.
[00:01:18]  Okay.
[00:01:19]  We're here on this Wednesday because the earth shook on Monday.
[00:01:23]  All right.
[00:01:24]  Everything changed.
[00:01:26]  I don't know what happened on Monday.
[00:01:27]  Beginning and the, this will be a demarcation point.
[00:01:30]  Everything changed.
[00:01:31]  History will remember this day.
[00:01:34]  All right.
[00:01:35]  Monday.
[00:01:35]  Wait, our us or Monday?
[00:01:38]  What?
[00:01:38]  Today or Monday?
[00:01:40]  Monday.
[00:01:40]  Monday.
[00:01:40]  The world today.
[00:01:42]  Monday evening.
[00:01:43]  Right.
[00:01:43]  But the world won't remember today, us.
[00:01:45]  No, probably not.
[00:01:46]  We have nothing to do with this.
[00:01:47]  We are mere spectators.
[00:01:49]  All right.
[00:01:49]  Fine.
[00:01:50]  Uncle Howdy is back.
[00:01:54]  So WWE Raw.
[00:01:57]  Uncle Howdy came back.
[00:01:59]  You are joking.
[00:02:00]  No, no.
[00:02:01]  I'm very worried.
[00:02:05]  How can Uncle Howdy come back?
[00:02:07]  Because Uncle Howdy is played by Bray Wyatt's brother, Bo Dallas.
[00:02:12]  Right.
[00:02:12]  Right, right.
[00:02:13]  And so almost as an homage and a carrying on the legacy of Bray Wyatt, since he passed tragically, they brought Uncle Howdy back with a crew.
[00:02:26]  He's got a crew.
[00:02:27]  Is that the way to do it?
[00:02:29]  I think it is, actually.
[00:02:30]  I think it was very well presented in terms of the, it was very horror movie, very cinematic.
[00:02:40]  Sure.
[00:02:40]  They had killed everyone backstage.
[00:02:43]  They killed everyone backstage?
[00:02:45]  Everyone appeared to be dead.
[00:02:46]  Okay, so it was like a Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors kind of thing.
[00:02:50]  It's kind of.
[00:02:51]  Gotcha, okay.
[00:02:52]  Other wrestlers were like blood coming down their head and shit.
[00:02:55]  Like it was a pile of bodies.
[00:02:58]  Sure.
[00:03:00]  They were really committing to this.
[00:03:01]  They were going for it.
[00:03:02]  Okay.
[00:03:03]  In that sense, I do think it is kind of nice homage to what Bray Wyatt probably would have continued to do.
[00:03:11]  Nice little summer wean.
[00:03:12]  And if you're somebody who is in the business, in a business like wrestling with your brother and you pass away, I think obviously you would want your brother to succeed and do great things, even if it means kind of carrying on this vein that you had been doing.
[00:03:30]  Joe Dallas is a good wrestler and a great character in and of himself.
[00:03:35]  He's done some great stuff in the past.
[00:03:36]  Sure.
[00:03:37]  Doesn't connect to me the same way as Bray Wyatt did.
[00:03:39]  Right.
[00:03:40]  But I don't know.
[00:03:41]  I'm tentatively excited.
[00:03:43]  Why not?
[00:03:44]  Right.
[00:03:44]  Why not?
[00:03:45]  Yeah.
[00:03:46]  What is the worst that could happen?
[00:03:48]  I mean.
[00:03:49]  Let's not even think about what the worst that could happen.
[00:03:51]  Let's think about what's the best that could happen.
[00:03:53]  Last time Uncle Howdy was around, we had a glow-in-the-dark match.
[00:03:56]  Let's not worry about the worst that could happen.
[00:03:57]  Let's worry about what the making happens.
[00:04:01]  So I'm worried.
[00:04:02]  I'm very worried.
[00:04:03]  But there's a lot of promise here, I think.
[00:04:05]  Yeah.
[00:04:06]  He's got a crew.
[00:04:07]  One of them is the old Eric Rowan from the original Wyatt family.
[00:04:12]  Sure.
[00:04:12]  So you got some of that legacy carrying over.
[00:04:15]  Of course.
[00:04:16]  Unfortunately, the other person who was in the Wyatt family is also dead.
[00:04:19]  Jesus.
[00:04:20]  Yeah.
[00:04:20]  Tragic.
[00:04:21]  Brutal.
[00:04:21]  Young passage passing away.
[00:04:24]  You know, you wear a mask and sometimes it becomes your face.
[00:04:28]  So if you become a swamp monster, sometimes you can die young.
[00:04:32]  I don't know where I was going with that.
[00:04:34]  I think that there is a way to do this that is all quite honoring and well done, even recognizing the fact that Bray is dead.
[00:04:45]  Right.
[00:04:45]  And this is Bray's brother.
[00:04:47]  As long as it's not sponsored by Mountain Dew.
[00:04:50]  Please keep.
[00:04:51]  I would hope they keep that away from this.
[00:04:53]  Keep goofy bullshit kind of to a minimum.
[00:04:57]  Yeah, it'd be nice.
[00:04:57]  Like there was a point where the fiend, one of Bray's character had a giant cartoon-sized mallet that he was carrying around.

=== Kings of Convenience Rediscovered (02:57) ===

[00:05:04]  He did not.
[00:05:05]  It's like, oh, that's fun, though.
[00:05:07]  It's a little.
[00:05:08]  Ah, I like it.
[00:05:09]  It's on the line.
[00:05:10]  I like a mallet.
[00:05:11]  When is a bad time to see an intimidating, gigantic mallet?
[00:05:16]  Anyway, the world will never be the same.
[00:05:18]  True.
[00:05:19]  Uncle Howdy.
[00:05:20]  All right.
[00:05:20]  Fair enough.
[00:05:22]  What's your bright spot?
[00:05:24]  What's my bright spot?
[00:05:26]  My bright spot is, I think this happens once every four or five years.
[00:05:31]  I rediscover a Kings of Convenience album called Versus.
[00:05:37]  And so the Kings of Convenience were a Norwegian folk duo around the early aughts era.
[00:05:44]  How convenient.
[00:05:45]  Yeah, of course.
[00:05:47]  They were like a more poppy version of Simon and Garfunkel, but from Norway or whatever.
[00:05:53]  And then they were on the Ninja Tunes label in the UK, which had everybody who was like an underground producer, a bunch of, like, you know, it had like lemon jelly.
[00:06:04]  It had like roots manuva.
[00:06:06]  It had a bunch of really, really cool stuff on there.
[00:06:09]  Sure.
[00:06:09]  But none of it was fucking folk.
[00:06:12]  It was all like electro.
[00:06:14]  It was all dance.
[00:06:14]  It was all rock or punk or something like that.
[00:06:17]  So because they had the Kickers of Convenience on the label, they just let everybody in Ninja Tunes fuck around with their songs for a while.
[00:06:24]  And they put out this album, which is like an amazing remix album of this folk duo with all these different kinds of instrumentations.
[00:06:32]  It's really cool.
[00:06:33]  That is always interesting.
[00:06:35]  You take that sort of backbone and you add other influences and weird styles to it.
[00:06:40]  Yeah.
[00:06:41]  There's some that are really, really good.
[00:06:43]  And Lady Tron even shows up because why not?
[00:06:46]  Sure.
[00:06:46]  It's Lady Tron.
[00:06:47]  I'll check that one out.
[00:06:48]  That sounds like something I could enjoy.
[00:06:50]  It's really good.
[00:06:51]  Yeah.
[00:06:52]  So I discovered it again while I was doing yoga, and I was like, hell yeah.
[00:06:56]  So I've listened to that for two days straight now.
[00:06:58]  Nice.
[00:06:59]  Yeah.
[00:06:59]  Good to go.
[00:07:00]  Yeah.
[00:07:01]  Hooray.
[00:07:02]  So we're going to do a little episode here today, Jordan.
[00:07:05]  We're going to be talking about the day that Uncle Howdy came back.
[00:07:08]  Okay.
[00:07:10]  Bigger return for me than The Rock.
[00:07:13]  When The Rock came back, who cares?
[00:07:16]  Yeah, we'd seen a lot of The Rock.
[00:07:18]  It's true.
[00:07:18]  We've seen too much of the rock.
[00:07:19]  Overexposed.
[00:07:20]  I like Uncle Howdy.
[00:07:21]  Uncle Howdy has started zero Fast and Furious spin-offs.
[00:07:25]  However, there was no Uncle Howdy and Shaw.
[00:07:29]  I'd be interested.
[00:07:31]  I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see him team up with Statham.
[00:07:34]  It would be interesting if the Fast and Furious just went all in on like Bond and just started doing different genres of movie every time.
[00:07:42]  Like, fine, we've already gone to space.
[00:07:44]  Why not do a horror movie, Fast and Furious?

=== Covid, Cooked Policy, and Comedy (15:49) ===

[00:07:46]  Where they have to outrace Jason or Freddie.
[00:07:49]  Absolutely.
[00:07:51]  Yes, Fast versus Freddy.
[00:07:52]  I'm living my life quarter mile at a time, bitch.
[00:07:58]  I can see it.
[00:07:59]  I like it.
[00:08:00]  I like it a lot.
[00:08:01]  So, we're going to be talking about June 17th, 2024, which is, of course, later on in the day.
[00:08:06]  Alex had no way to know that Uncle Howdy would be coming back, so we're not going to be talking about any of that.
[00:08:12]  Alex did not have any take on Uncle Howdy.
[00:08:14]  So you have to forgive him for his naivete about this major world issue.
[00:08:18]  The world hadn't changed yet.
[00:08:19]  Right.
[00:08:20]  Yeah.
[00:08:20]  So we'll get down to business on this, but first, let's say hello to somebody wonks.
[00:08:23]  Ooh, that's a great idea.
[00:08:24]  So, first, the case of MGM versus Honda was litigated for MGM by firm Kay Scholler and its attorney Robert Barnes.
[00:08:31]  And while there's no way it's him, it did make me say Bobby Barnes, media star, out loud to a courtroom full of fifth graders doing mock trial.
[00:08:37]  Thank you so much, Uranio Policy Walk.
[00:08:39]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:08:40]  Thank you very much.
[00:08:41]  Might have been him.
[00:08:42]  Yep.
[00:08:42]  Next, Gil Cornell from the Williamsburg School for Architecture and Design.
[00:08:46]  Thank you so much, Urano Policy Walk.
[00:08:47]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:08:48]  Thank you very much.
[00:08:49]  Thank you.
[00:08:49]  Next, August from Illinois.
[00:08:51]  Thank you so much, Uranio Policy Wonk.
[00:08:53]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:08:54]  Thank you very much.
[00:08:54]  August from Illinois.
[00:08:55]  You know it's great.
[00:08:56]  August in Illinois.
[00:08:58]  Temperatures, it's a little hot.
[00:09:01]  Next, you can't arrest me.
[00:09:03]  I quit.
[00:09:04]  Bavin Shoe.
[00:09:06]  Oh, boy.
[00:09:07]  You made it the mistake.
[00:09:09]  I started scanning ahead to parentheses.
[00:09:12]  So close.
[00:09:13]  Bavin Shilova.
[00:09:15]  Thank you so much, Uranio Policy Wonk.
[00:09:16]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:09:17]  Thank you very much.
[00:09:18]  Thank you.
[00:09:19]  And when I'm feeling down, I think about Jordan saying hi, Carrie, to Carrie Cassidy, and it really cheers me up.
[00:09:23]  Thank you so much, Urano Policy Wonk.
[00:09:24]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:09:25]  Thank you very much.
[00:09:27]  So this Monday episode, there's a lot going on on it, and we're going to ignore a vast majority of it because it doesn't really matter.
[00:09:33]  Right.
[00:09:34]  So there's one earth-shaking, major piece of thing that happens that is actually a huge dud.
[00:09:41]  And that is that Alex has Peter McCullough, COVID vax anti-vex doctor fella, Peter McCullough.
[00:09:50]  He's on, and Alex promotes it as like, they have found the off-switch for the COVID vaccine.
[00:09:55]  Okay.
[00:09:56]  And so I got really excited about like, oh, we're going to really set in stone how we're going to get out of this narrative dead end.
[00:10:04]  Yeah, that's great.
[00:10:04]  Yeah.
[00:10:05]  But he doesn't have any specifics, and he's just like, we figured out that maybe there's something to do.
[00:10:10]  And so it's all just selling his supplements that are supposed to help you deal with the effects of the COVID vaccine.
[00:10:15]  Yeah.
[00:10:16]  So there isn't anything specific there, although it does seem like this is the direction that we're going to end up going with narratives.
[00:10:22]  Yeah.
[00:10:23]  Is finding a cure for the COVID vaccine.
[00:10:26]  And that way we can explain away why all the planet doesn't die.
[00:10:30]  Like, here's the problem.
[00:10:32]  All right.
[00:10:33]  What they've created is essentially a disease.
[00:10:36]  And what they need is a vaccine.
[00:10:39]  Right.
[00:10:40]  And they're going to find it sooner or later.
[00:10:43]  Right.
[00:10:43]  But it can't be a vaccine.
[00:10:44]  No, it'll be some kind of weird, unregulated supplement.
[00:10:47]  Yep.
[00:10:48]  So also, Judy Mikovitz is on.
[00:10:50]  Sure.
[00:10:51]  Another anti-vex weirdo.
[00:10:53]  Luminary in the field of stealing money from rich people.
[00:10:56]  She is, she is going for it.
[00:10:58]  She's swinging for fences all over the place.
[00:11:01]  She says that every vaccine and shot that anyone has ever gotten since 2009 has been the COVID vaccine.
[00:11:07]  I love that.
[00:11:07]  She is just out there.
[00:11:10]  You texted me about that, and that's the type of swing that I'm looking for.
[00:11:14]  It's all COVID.
[00:11:16]  Yeah.
[00:11:17]  If it wasn't just almost impossible to follow the line of what she's going through, I might have covered that.
[00:11:25]  And I wish I would have pulled the clip of her saying, there's no bird flu.
[00:11:29]  What?
[00:11:29]  Is a bird sneezing?
[00:11:31]  I mean, that's just great.
[00:11:32]  That's just great.
[00:11:34]  That's just great.
[00:11:35]  It is.
[00:11:35]  It is.
[00:11:37]  I am still mad that we are never going to get to the bottom of Steve Pieczenik being the first person to have and cure COVID.
[00:11:44]  That seems so important to this 2009 narrative.
[00:11:47]  Well, when they, oh, that's true.
[00:11:49]  He's going to have to bump his timeline back.
[00:11:50]  Have to bump it back.
[00:11:52]  I guess if the new order of the day is we have a cure for COVID, Steve would be very helpful for that.
[00:11:58]  That seems like since he cured himself.
[00:12:01]  Oh, well.
[00:12:02]  Oh, well.
[00:12:02]  Anyway, we are not going to talk about a ton of that because something happens on this episode that I thought was much more deserving of our focus.
[00:12:10]  And that is that Alex is going to discuss some unintentional comedy that happened.
[00:12:15]  All right.
[00:12:15]  We've got all of that huge news today.
[00:12:20]  And Dr. Judy Mikovich is also joining us in studio in the third hour as well.
[00:12:25]  Peter McCullough, Dr. Judy Mikovich.
[00:12:27]  So I'm going to table all the COVID news that is totally off the wall, insane, until that happens.
[00:12:34]  Then we've got some really good unintentional comedy that I don't just go with comedy for comedy's sake, but if it's illustrative, if it's illustrative, if it really gets people to switch on their thinking cap, I'll do it.
[00:12:48]  The problem with this story is it reminds me of a bunch of other examples of this.
[00:12:53]  So I was really worried at this point that he was going to be talking about us on CNN.
[00:12:58]  Okay, that'd be fun.
[00:12:58]  Like, there was a small part of my brain that was like, is that what he's going to talk about?
[00:13:02]  Yeah.
[00:13:02]  I'm curious.
[00:13:03]  If he was the only person who saw it, that'd be fucking hilarious.
[00:13:07]  And it would be like, what's the unintentional comedy?
[00:13:09]  Does he hate my shirt?
[00:13:11]  What's going on?
[00:13:12]  But it is not that.
[00:13:13]  No.
[00:13:13]  And it's something I could never have predicted.
[00:13:16]  It turns out that Chuck Schumer for Father's Day posted a picture, and the internet is all they can't stop talking about it.
[00:13:26]  All right, so this is unintentional comedy about Chuck Schumer that is illustrative.
[00:13:31]  Yes, because of the Father's Day picture that is.
[00:13:33]  Because of the Father's Day picture.
[00:13:34]  It reminds me of a bunch of other examples of this with Beto O'Rourke and Pocahontas, Pocahontas, Pocahontas, Pocahontas, Elizabeth Warren.
[00:13:47]  She's not that fat, or I would call her Pocapotamus, but I'm inventing words.
[00:13:54]  Is that intentional comedy?
[00:13:55]  So it's Chucky Schumer on Father's Day issued a post on X that he later withdrew where he's cooking raw hamburger meat with a piece of cheese on it.
[00:14:14]  And if you zoom in on the HD, you can see it's gray hamburger.
[00:14:18]  It's raw.
[00:14:19]  It's just older hamburger.
[00:14:22]  Yeah, zoom in on that.
[00:14:23]  And they all issued similar photos.
[00:14:25]  And what's bizarre is in almost all the photos, it's raw meat with a piece of cheese on it.
[00:14:32]  So the internet went crazy with it.
[00:14:34]  We're going to show you some big HD photos blown up.
[00:14:36]  You can see it's raw meat.
[00:14:37]  Alex spends a lot of time on this.
[00:14:40]  Chuck Schumer has a raw hamburger.
[00:14:42]  So, all right.
[00:14:44]  Now, I have lived through three great events now, right?
[00:14:49]  There was 9-11.
[00:14:50]  Yep.
[00:14:51]  There was Obama wearing a tan suit.
[00:14:53]  And now there's Hamburger Gate.
[00:14:54]  I mean, you would have to think that this is one of the most important things that ever happened if you are listening to Alex's show.
[00:15:02]  Can you believe?
[00:15:03]  Look at this.
[00:15:03]  They zoom in a bunch of times.
[00:15:04]  I can't believe they zoom in.
[00:15:06]  I cannot believe they zoom in on the burger.
[00:15:08]  It's on the grill.
[00:15:09]  It's not cooked.
[00:15:11]  Okay.
[00:15:12]  So there's four burgers, and there's like one of them has a piece of cheese on it, which appears, but it also, like, it looks like it's more than one slice of cheese.
[00:15:21]  So maybe it's just set there for the moment, and then they're going to break it up onto the other.
[00:15:27]  I'm not the pruder filming a fucking hamburger.
[00:15:29]  We are.
[00:15:30]  We are.
[00:15:30]  No.
[00:15:30]  Yes.
[00:15:31]  We're going to.
[00:15:32]  I called Chuck Schumer to get to the bottom.
[00:15:36]  But I was sitting there watching this.
[00:15:38]  I'm like, there's a hamburger on the grassy knoll.
[00:15:41]  Okay.
[00:15:42]  Like, worst case scenario, Chuck Schumer made a shitty burger.
[00:15:45]  Yeah.
[00:15:46]  It does feel like that is the worst case scenario.
[00:15:49]  Yeah.
[00:15:49]  It's great.
[00:15:50]  Well, it's illustrative of what we're doing with our lives.
[00:15:53]  It is very illustrative, though, in a way, of the way that these people, like Chuck Schumer, are not humans.
[00:16:00]  I'm sorry because they can't make a burger.
[00:16:02]  Did we go that way?
[00:16:03]  Gray look, but it's it's raw.
[00:16:05]  Blow it up.
[00:16:05]  Zoom in.
[00:16:06]  If you zoom in on that meat, yeah, zoom in.
[00:16:09]  I'm gonna do this later.
[00:16:10]  I guess I'm already doing it.
[00:16:13]  Folks, that's raw as my rear end.
[00:16:17]  That is raw hamburger.
[00:16:21]  And he's too stupid to go buy it fresh.
[00:16:24]  So that's been on the store shelf a week or in his refrigerator two weeks.
[00:16:27]  Do you think he goes shopping?
[00:16:29]  And wait till we read this.
[00:16:35]  But here's why I'm doing you a disservice.
[00:16:37]  There's so much news, I don't have time to do it.
[00:16:40]  But I do want maybe Rob Dew or Darren McGreen or one of the great researchers.
[00:16:45]  There's a bunch of examples of this with Elizabeth Warren, Betro Rourke, and a bunch of others, where Betro Rourke was cooking raw hamburger.
[00:16:53]  He said it was cooked, and he was putting clearly raw hamburger not on a bun, he was putting it on English muffins.
[00:17:06]  So this goes to the theory they're space aliens.
[00:17:09]  That does track.
[00:17:11]  Because seriously, folks, not just Schumer, but the Clintons and a bunch of others put out photos over Father's Day showing how human they are, flipping raw hamburger and then putting it on buns with cheese.
[00:17:33]  And remember, they want us to, quote, eat the bugs.
[00:17:38]  So I don't know anymore, folks.
[00:17:39]  I mean, I'm not even joking at this point.
[00:17:41]  Yeah, you're just dumb.
[00:17:42]  I mean, so he later plays the video of Beto.
[00:17:45]  Yeah.
[00:17:46]  And the burger is cooked.
[00:17:48]  And Alex even has to concede that at a certain point.
[00:17:50]  Well, I mean, at a certain point, you will admit that the burger was cooked because it's very obviously cooked.
[00:17:56]  He is putting it on an English muffin.
[00:17:57]  That is true.
[00:17:58]  Okay.
[00:17:59]  But then Alex is just swinging.
[00:18:00]  And so, like, Beto's plate has the English muffin on it in order to put the burger on the English muffin.
[00:18:07]  Right.
[00:18:07]  And then there's a side of broccoli.
[00:18:09]  And Alex is like, he so dumbly thinks broccoli's lettuce.
[00:18:16]  So fucking dumb.
[00:18:17]  This is the same level of thinking that was the underpinning, the backbone of help my teacher is an alien.
[00:18:27]  Right?
[00:18:28]  Isn't that how they discovered that their teacher was an alien of some sort when the teacher took the mask off and had to eat something that was not of yes, a burger on an English muffin?
[00:18:37]  On an English muffin.
[00:18:38]  I don't want Alex to find out about the burgers that are on like Dixie Cream Doughnuts.
[00:18:43]  Oh, fucking hell.
[00:18:44]  He's probably going to have to do it.
[00:18:46]  You know what?
[00:18:46]  Have you had one of those, though?
[00:18:48]  Those are too good.
[00:18:49]  Those are made by me.
[00:18:50]  I have not.
[00:18:51]  But I just can't imagine his just like what unconventional buns.
[00:18:57]  So anyway, look, here's the situation.
[00:18:59]  How's he feel about a pretzel bun?
[00:19:01]  I mean, everybody loves a pretzel bun.
[00:19:03]  I do.
[00:19:04]  Alex is brioche or nothing.
[00:19:06]  Brioche or nothing?
[00:19:07]  Right.
[00:19:07]  Oh, he's never even tried to roll.
[00:19:09]  Nope.
[00:19:10]  Okay.
[00:19:11]  Potato roll?
[00:19:12]  Nope.
[00:19:13]  Oh, there are these potato donuts.
[00:19:14]  No, never mind.
[00:19:15]  So, look, here's the situation.
[00:19:17]  I just want to be abundantly clear about this.
[00:19:19]  I don't give a fuck about this at all.
[00:19:21]  No, no, no.
[00:19:21]  I don't care about Alex's stupid shit.
[00:19:23]  I don't care about any of this.
[00:19:24]  But the reason that I wanted to play this and bring it up is because this is an example of Alex trying to bait the media into covering him that didn't work.
[00:19:34]  This is another version of the like, I'm going to eat my neighbors.
[00:19:38]  But in the case of the I'm going to eat my neighbors, it was so sensational and so it got people.
[00:19:45]  It got like all these outside of his media bubble.
[00:19:50]  Yeah, accounts to post the video of him and make fun of him and stuff like that.
[00:19:54]  He was trying to bait people into covering, oh, he thinks that Chuck Schumer is an alien because of this burger.
[00:20:01]  Right, right.
[00:20:02]  He was trying to do that in order to be able to ride the wave.
[00:20:05]  He's trying to national inquirer it.
[00:20:07]  Yeah.
[00:20:07]  He's trying to coast on the wake of other people's coverage about this.
[00:20:11]  And it just didn't work, which is kind of funny.
[00:20:14]  It's sad.
[00:20:16]  Yeah.
[00:20:16]  Yeah.
[00:20:17]  It is more sad than anything else.
[00:20:19]  Trying to get attention and failing is always, it's so sad.
[00:20:23]  Especially when it's like this.
[00:20:24]  Yeah.
[00:20:25]  These people don't know burgers.
[00:20:27]  Oh, man.
[00:20:28]  That's sad.
[00:20:28]  This is a bar.
[00:20:29]  You're fighting the devil.
[00:20:31]  Are we zooming in on a burger in the midst of this holy war between good and evil?
[00:20:37]  More than once.
[00:20:38]  Okay.
[00:20:38]  Yeah.
[00:20:39]  All right.
[00:20:39]  He spends a lot of time on this.
[00:20:40]  Okay.
[00:20:41]  Because to a pod person, doesn't even know how to turn on a gas oven or charcoal for that matter, doesn't know how to grill a hamburger and get it juicy and sizzling and get it just ripe and put the piece of cheese on it and slide it onto that delicious bun.
[00:20:55]  You just crispy a little bit on top of the, just throw the buns on about 30 seconds, get a nice little toastedness to it.
[00:21:02]  They know nothing about any of that.
[00:21:04]  Easiest thing that cooks a hamburger.
[00:21:06]  I was looking at hamburgers when I was six years old.
[00:21:09]  By the age of four, my dad's like, you come over here, you grill it, you learn to do it.
[00:21:13]  About once a week, my parents say, hey, I was about eight years old, cook us French toast and scrambled eggs.
[00:21:19]  When you're done, go mow the yard.
[00:21:21]  And they weren't being mean to me.
[00:21:22]  They didn't want an invalid, didn't know how to run the.
[00:21:26]  I remember one time my dad goes, well, it's time to reroof the house.
[00:21:30]  And I was thinking it's a good family project.
[00:21:32]  We got plenty of money to hire roofers.
[00:21:34]  We're not going to do that.
[00:21:35]  Your uncle's coming over next Saturday.
[00:21:38]  And we're going to go today and buy the shingles.
[00:21:40]  And we're going to strip that off tomorrow.
[00:21:43]  And then we're going to reroof the house Saturday.
[00:21:46]  I remember my dad pulling up at 3:30 at the school on Friday.
[00:21:50]  It was in the spring.
[00:21:53]  We go home.
[00:21:54]  We tear off about half the shingles, didn't get it done.
[00:21:56]  Got dark.
[00:21:57]  Got up the next morning, pulled off the rest, and then roofed most of the house, me, my dad, and my uncle, into the night.
[00:22:04]  And then the next day we got up Sunday morning.
[00:22:06]  My dad said, Yeah, we're not going to go to church today.
[00:22:11]  We're going to finish roofing the house.
[00:22:13]  And by about one o'clock, we were done.
[00:22:14]  And my dad said, We're going to Billy Bob's and getting you a chicken fried steak, son.
[00:22:21]  And that was just, it wasn't like some big thing.
[00:22:23]  It was constant.
[00:22:25]  We're going to roof the house.
[00:22:26]  We're going to skin a buck.
[00:22:28]  We're going to run a trot line.
[00:22:31]  And to these pod people, they don't even know how to grill a hamburger.
[00:22:37]  And they look at us and they think, these are weirdos.
[00:22:40]  They walk in here, these leftists, they're like, what's the engineer doing with a firearm on his side?
[00:22:48]  Well, why do we have armed security here, too?
[00:22:49]  It's all bonded.
[00:22:50]  Because we're not rolling over, bending over, waiting for somebody to come after us.
[00:22:56]  We're like these churches that have the deacons that are armed.
[00:22:58]  So when some crazy Satanist comes in or some Islamists and starts shooting people, most of the time they don't kill one person before they get killed because there's trained men with guns that kill them.
[00:23:09]  But it shows the total break with these people.
[00:23:12]  They think we're the weirdos.
[00:23:15]  I do think you're a weirdo.
[00:23:17]  This whole thing is weird.
[00:23:18]  Yes.
[00:23:19]  This is weird.

=== Pod People and Burgers (08:58) ===

[00:23:20]  So what's interesting about that clip is I think that Alex kind of forgot the point in the middle of that story about re-roofing the house.
[00:23:28]  And then he kind of remembered it, but it was too late.
[00:23:31]  He remembered that he was supposed to be complaining about pod people not knowing how to make burgers.
[00:23:35]  He was.
[00:23:35]  But I think it was too late to save the ship.
[00:23:39]  But then I do think it's weird.
[00:23:42]  I don't think it's strange at all to be like, I'm slightly uncomfortable about the idea of a working environment where everyone's just got guns on.
[00:23:50]  Or I don't want to consider the need for murder at church.
[00:23:57]  Usually a good idea.
[00:23:58]  I think that that's indicative of a larger problem.
[00:24:01]  Probably.
[00:24:01]  That is not that everyone is uptight about guns.
[00:24:05]  Nah, it feels like everybody's just got to stick up their ass.
[00:24:08]  That sounds about wrong.
[00:24:11]  I appreciate everything that he's trying to do here.
[00:24:16]  I think it would be fine.
[00:24:18]  It's so fun because it is just like if you'd gone metaphorical, the idea is essentially these elites are out of touch with the common man.
[00:24:26]  Like, I get it.
[00:24:27]  Sure.
[00:24:28]  Fine.
[00:24:28]  There are some bucolic pleasures like cooking a hamburger.
[00:24:33]  I understand that.
[00:24:35]  But what he's really talking about is how he is never going to be the man that his father was.
[00:24:45]  And I mean, isn't that what he's doing?
[00:24:47]  There's a little bit of that.
[00:24:49]  And there's also a little bit of like turning it into a larger point than it deserves to be.
[00:24:54]  Yeah.
[00:24:54]  Like, I think it's fine to clown on people for like, you don't know how to make a burger, ha ha ha, or whatever, because you're rich and out of touch and, you know, extra.
[00:25:04]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:05]  But then to turn it into like, this is some sort of, this means something about one, there's a, they're not human, they're pod people or whatever.
[00:25:14]  Right.
[00:25:14]  It's just desperate.
[00:25:15]  That's too much.
[00:25:16]  The taking it into like, they want us to eat the bugs, but that, and that's what they're messaging with putting raw meat on these burgers.
[00:25:26]  Cooking a bad hamburger is going to make me eat bugs.
[00:25:28]  That doesn't make sense.
[00:25:29]  It has part of the messaging, and I believe the way that this works is that they're trying to make eating meat look unappealing because they have these raw meat and these gross burgers and stuff.
[00:25:42]  And so if you're watching it, you subconsciously are more willing to eat bugs.
[00:25:45]  Putting it next to Chuck Schumer is what makes it unappealing.
[00:25:51]  I don't think that there's any beef politics.
[00:25:54]  I just don't think so.
[00:25:55]  No.
[00:25:56]  I get that there's a need to turn everything into a masculinity issue with these people because for them, everything is a masculinity issue.
[00:26:05]  That's a huge part of it.
[00:26:06]  And then the other part is just like there were a bunch of memes about this in Alex's social media feed, and that's what he covers.
[00:26:12]  So basically, it turns into this weird loop of like, oh, a lot of people are getting attention talking and making jokes about the Chuck Schumer thing.
[00:26:21]  So I'm going to pretend to be a little bit serious about this and try to desperately get some attention out of it myself.
[00:26:28]  And this was just a swing and a miss.
[00:26:30]  Bad miss.
[00:26:31]  This didn't work.
[00:26:32]  But I saw this put up with the Clintons and others.
[00:26:35]  So I guess it's like, well, get out.
[00:26:36]  I think it's the PR firms are also pod people.
[00:26:39]  They're like, okay, get out of here.
[00:26:40]  It's the photo shoot.
[00:26:41]  And they just put a piece of cheese on raw meat.
[00:26:43]  Okay, go ahead and put that now on the bun.
[00:26:47]  Look, blow it up.
[00:26:48]  Zoom in.
[00:26:49]  It's raw meat with cheese on it.
[00:26:52]  And they put out more photos of them putting raw meat on buns.
[00:26:57]  It's on Infowars.com.
[00:26:58]  Tell my X account.
[00:26:59]  Now, folks, that's Space Alien, okay?
[00:27:04]  So no wonder they think I'm bad because I'm still a human.
[00:27:08]  I'm still normal.
[00:27:09]  Still normal.
[00:27:10]  Still very, very normal.
[00:27:12]  All right.
[00:27:13]  Hold on.
[00:27:13]  Let me throw this out at you.
[00:27:15]  All right.
[00:27:16]  When I was growing up, all right, my dad, he could re-roof the house.
[00:27:20]  He took my two older brothers.
[00:27:22]  They re-roofed the house.
[00:27:23]  They did the whole thing.
[00:27:23]  Could he skin a buck and run a trot line?
[00:27:25]  Couldn't cook for shit.
[00:27:27]  Oh, no.
[00:27:28]  Couldn't cook for shit.
[00:27:29]  I can cook, but I can't do all that other stuff.
[00:27:31]  What are we?
[00:27:32]  Are we both aliens?
[00:27:33]  Are we half alien?
[00:27:34]  What's going on here?
[00:27:35]  Yeah, you're probably half alien.
[00:27:37]  Half alien?
[00:27:37]  Yeah.
[00:27:38]  But why is he one half and I'm the other half?
[00:27:40]  I mean, it's genes.
[00:27:42]  It's weird.
[00:27:42]  Fair enough.
[00:27:43]  Who knows?
[00:27:44]  I don't know.
[00:27:45]  Fair enough.
[00:27:46]  I'm no scientist.
[00:27:47]  All right.
[00:27:47]  No health arranger.
[00:27:48]  That's, I mean, I get it.
[00:27:49]  Yeah.
[00:27:50]  So, anyway, this was all just a very desperate attempt at trying to get people to cover this in a way that Alex could capitalize on and get some media attention out of.
[00:28:00]  It didn't work.
[00:28:01]  And so I think it's very funny to look at this.
[00:28:03]  It's like a fail video.
[00:28:04]  Yeah.
[00:28:05]  Kind of, you know?
[00:28:06]  It's a propagandist fail video.
[00:28:08]  I'm talking about Chuck Schumer and his zooming in on the ground beef.
[00:28:12]  Yeah, you know, we only really talk about the times propagandists get it right.
[00:28:15]  We never really look at a propaganda fail video and kind of analyze what's going on.
[00:28:20]  I get it.
[00:28:20]  And there isn't all that much to analyze, but Alex does say something else that I think is a little telling.
[00:28:27]  He's talking about and complaining about his bankruptcy.
[00:28:31]  And he says, essentially, whenever you hear Sandy Hook families, you should think CIA.
[00:28:38]  Oh, no.
[00:28:38]  Which I think is bad.
[00:28:39]  Yeah.
[00:28:40]  But just remember this headline from last Friday: Sandy Hook families.
[00:28:44]  We see that.
[00:28:44]  Who's behind it is the CIA, the FBI on record.
[00:28:47]  They're just being used.
[00:28:48]  I'm so sad for them.
[00:28:50]  Sandy Hook families think CIA want to seize Alex Jones' social media accounts.
[00:28:57]  The judge just laughed at him.
[00:29:04]  So, oh, we don't want to shut you down.
[00:29:06]  We just want you off the air and to have your social media so you can't speak anywhere.
[00:29:10]  See how that works?
[00:29:13]  But separately, we're going to break.
[00:29:15]  It's key to have money to win a war in the information war.
[00:29:18]  I need your word of mouth.
[00:29:19]  I need your prayer.
[00:29:19]  I need to share the articles, the videos from Infowars.com, banned.video, real Alex Jones.
[00:29:23]  Real Alex Jones, follow us there on X.
[00:29:26]  I need you to also support our great sponsor who got demonized and attacked, my daddy, and his great warehouse and his great products.
[00:29:33]  This same CRO kicked out of the warehouse.
[00:29:35]  My dad helped set up all our stuff and had his products over there he's making 30% on while he's getting sued by the Democratic Party.
[00:29:44]  My dad moved all those great products when they kicked him out that you can't get anymore to his warehouse in North Austin at dr jonesnaturals.com.
[00:29:51]  Oh, so Dr. Jones Naturals is just Infowars Health, but you removed it whenever you got sued.
[00:29:58]  Wow.
[00:29:58]  I think maybe this is not the kind of thing that is ethical.
[00:30:05]  I feel like he's saying this in a way that is maybe a little bit dangerous.
[00:30:09]  Are you?
[00:30:10]  I mean, I don't mean to say this lightly, but Stringer Bell may have had some of the most important words of our time, which is just, are you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
[00:30:23]  This is exactly what criminals do.
[00:30:26]  A law says you can't, in knowing of a bankruptcy and collections coming, you can't knowingly then move stuff as if like the deadline, aha, you can't catch me until there's no home base law.
[00:30:40]  Man, does it sound like Alex is explaining exactly that?
[00:30:43]  It really does kind of sound that way.
[00:30:46]  Oh, wow, it's his dad.
[00:30:47]  It's a totally separate person.
[00:30:48]  It's totally different.
[00:30:50]  Also, I think that if I were one of the family members of the Sandy Hook victims, or as a plaintiff, I think I would be probably very offended by the assertion that I have no agency of my own and that everything, whenever you hear anything that I say, you're supposed to hear that as the CIA saying this.
[00:31:12]  I think that that would probably be something that I would not be thrilled to hear.
[00:31:16]  Yeah, it's almost as if that during a time period wherein he thinks it will be advantageous for him to apologize to people and appear as though he has the capacity for human compassion, he does.
[00:31:29]  But then whenever it is no longer advantageous, he does not.
[00:31:33]  Almost as if it didn't matter in the first place.
[00:31:35]  And he was full of shit.
[00:31:36]  Yep.
[00:31:37]  Oh, well.
[00:31:38]  Oh, well.
[00:31:38]  So anyway, It had the burger saga, and that was kind of all I really wanted to talk about on this episode.
[00:31:44]  It was pretty good.
[00:31:44]  I liked it.
[00:31:45]  But it was kind of short.
[00:31:47]  It was kind of short.
[00:31:48]  And I don't know.
[00:31:50]  Do you have anything?
[00:31:52]  Maybe.
[00:31:52]  What do you got?
[00:31:54]  I've got an interview with Mike Wendling.
[00:31:56]  What's this?
[00:31:57]  From the BBC.
[00:31:58]  Holy shit.
[00:31:59]  Why do we listen to that?
[00:32:01]  Are we doing this?

=== Sure Informants, Paranoia Online (08:38) ===

[00:32:04]  Hello, everyone.
[00:32:05]  Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.
[00:32:07]  This is Jordan.
[00:32:08]  Unfortunately, once again, without my co-host, Dan.
[00:32:11]  However, I am joined by BBC reporter Mike Wendling.
[00:32:15]  Hello.
[00:32:16]  Hi, Mike.
[00:32:17]  Thank you so much for joining the show.
[00:32:19]  You are the author of Day of Reckoning: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy, which will be out on May 20th, correct?
[00:32:29]  That's right.
[00:32:30]  That's right.
[00:32:31]  It's great to be here.
[00:32:32]  Thanks for having me.
[00:32:33]  I'm glad to have you on the show.
[00:32:35]  I reached out to you.
[00:32:36]  I wanted to talk to you.
[00:32:37]  Or no, actually, you guys reached out to me, which was very cool.
[00:32:42]  Or at least some rep at the BBC did.
[00:32:46]  Right.
[00:32:46]  It was, was it the publisher or the BBC?
[00:32:49]  Something like that.
[00:32:50]  Something like that.
[00:32:52]  They're all the same.
[00:32:52]  Yeah.
[00:32:53]  They're all the same to me.
[00:32:56]  But I read your book and I really, really enjoyed it.
[00:33:00]  And it's about, well, I think it's about a lot of things that we'll eventually talk about.
[00:33:06]  But the first thing I want to talk about is its title.
[00:33:09]  What is the day of reckoning?
[00:33:11]  Well, you'll have to read to the end to actually find out what the day of reckoning is.
[00:33:15]  It's a little bit of a narrative trick, I suppose.
[00:33:19]  You know about those.
[00:33:23]  It basically comes from this idea, you know, that I have increasingly noticed the conspiracy world creeping into mainstream politics.
[00:33:33]  We've all seen it.
[00:33:34]  You've seen it and your listeners have seen this, but I wanted to sort of like describe it and get into it a little bit.
[00:33:42]  And, you know, the election was a very good time to do this, right?
[00:33:46]  Because, you know, I mean, everybody, it's not just exclusive to the far right is putting a lot of chips on this election.
[00:33:56]  You know, and people think that like, you know, the world is going to be vastly different the day after.
[00:34:04]  Who knows?
[00:34:04]  It might be.
[00:34:05]  But, you know, for particularly for the sort of conspiracy fringes of the far right, there, the stakes seem to be bigger, almost existential.
[00:34:16]  Right.
[00:34:17]  What that's kind of the next question that I have because I love a good declaratory title.
[00:34:26]  But what exactly do you think will be reckoned with?
[00:34:30]  Are you talking about reckoning with the far right's war on democracy or the like?
[00:34:37]  How exactly is that to be reckoned with?
[00:34:41]  So how I would describe it is like this.
[00:34:44]  That is more of a description of what they are saying.
[00:34:50]  And they is very, very broad.
[00:34:51]  I go into various sort of like strands in the book and we can talk about some of those.
[00:34:57]  But really, it's like hyping up the sense of panic and fear.
[00:35:03]  And the conspiracy bit of it is interesting.
[00:35:09]  And perhaps, from like my perspective, the most interesting bit, how it's, you know, like the sort of tenor of QAnon, let's say.
[00:35:20]  And this was very much confined to sort of like online fever dreams, you know, just a few years ago.
[00:35:26]  And now it's become sort of generalized that we don't even need QAnon anymore.
[00:35:31]  You know, we don't even need these Q drops.
[00:35:33]  You know, they've sort of disappeared.
[00:35:34]  Right.
[00:35:37]  What we have instead is we have a constant sort of drumbeat of QAnon themes, but like more generalized fear and paranoia coming from these groups.
[00:35:53]  There's sort of two effects, right?
[00:35:56]  You know, one effect is you don't know what people will do.
[00:36:01]  There's this phrase to cat.
[00:36:02]  Well, I think we do.
[00:36:04]  I think we do exactly.
[00:36:05]  They will run into the government buildings and overthrow the government.
[00:36:09]  Well, yeah, well, okay, yes, yeah, no, no, I think we've got a pretty good idea of what they're going to do.
[00:36:16]  However, however, there is also a balancing paranoia, right?
[00:36:21]  And I found it very, very interesting when, you know, when Donald Trump was getting arrested and showing up in court and whatnot, you didn't see huge, massive protests, even in Florida, the home territory, right?
[00:36:33]  What did you have?
[00:36:34]  You had Laura Loomer walking around in a t-shirt that referenced Hitler or whatever, and a few like online streamers or whatever, right?
[00:36:41]  And why?
[00:36:42]  Why?
[00:36:42]  Because if you look at what they're talking about online, it's that they are so afraid.
[00:36:47]  They believe their own hype.
[00:36:49]  You know, they believe that the feds are in their movements and everywhere and that it's everything's a trap.
[00:36:54]  So that's kind of mitigating, right?
[00:36:57]  And I honestly do not think that we're going to see, you know, we certainly won't see like a repeat of the Capitol riot because the police will be more prepared and they'll be sort of like, you know, don't go to the Capitol because that'll just sort of do what we did last time.
[00:37:11]  It won't work.
[00:37:12]  It didn't work last time.
[00:37:14]  You know, it didn't manage to really stop the transfer of power.
[00:37:20]  But, you know, there's that sort of like being eaten by your own paranoia, which is really interesting.
[00:37:27]  But then it also, as you say, makes it like very unpredictable what might happen.
[00:37:33]  And we know that there's people bent on stopping the result of an election.
[00:37:40]  Sure, sure.
[00:37:42]  I think this is where I want to, and this is quite a part of why I appreciated starting exactly where we are.
[00:37:51]  Because there's so much in your book that falls into a strange almost middle ground, I would say.
[00:38:02]  Not on one side or on the other so much as all of these people, like what you just described, you know, when you describe that as paranoia, these people saying, we're not going to go to these, we're not going to do this stuff.
[00:38:15]  We're not going to show up there because there might be the feds.
[00:38:18]  There might be all these people in there.
[00:38:20]  When you describe that as paranoia, them being afraid of that, you think you're saying, oh, they're overblowing it.
[00:38:28]  This is ridiculous.
[00:38:30]  But I mean, it would seem kind of silly to me for there not to be feds in these groups at this point, right?
[00:38:37]  Right.
[00:38:37]  Yeah, sure.
[00:38:38]  I mean, look, there's informants, right?
[00:38:41]  Sure, sure.
[00:38:42]  I'm not, and I'm not, I'm not trying to like, oh, this is what's really going on here.
[00:38:46]  I'm trying to say exactly at what point are we in the paranoia is overblown, of course, but is also a good warning?
[00:38:57]  Like, they shouldn't go.
[00:38:59]  Isn't it a reasonable?
[00:39:00]  Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you, right?
[00:39:02]  I mean, it's just because you're being sold that it could be the feds coming to break down your house doesn't mean it's also not good advice to not show up at a Donald Trump arrest, right?
[00:39:15]  Right.
[00:39:15]  Yeah.
[00:39:16]  Maybe, maybe everybody should just calm down.
[00:39:19]  Yeah.
[00:39:20]  Right.
[00:39:21]  I mean, if, okay, so, but if you look at sort of how the actual like story progresses, right?
[00:39:28]  So, you know, there were in there were informants within the Oath Keepers, within the Proud Boys, sure.
[00:39:37]  And some of those informants were members of the group, right?
[00:39:42]  And what people just like, you know, don't sort of like get really when they're in the conspiracy land is that doesn't mean they were agents, right?
[00:39:53]  They were informants.
[00:39:54]  And there's like a really big difference between those two things, you know.
[00:39:58]  You know, we know, and like you covered it before, like, you know, the history of law enforcement and far-right groups and extremist groups is really kind of murky.
[00:40:07]  You know what I mean?
[00:40:09]  In this country, in other countries, you know, it's not very straightforward.
[00:40:17]  But you take that sort of grain of truth and in classic conspiracy methods, you spin it into how come they won't say how many agents were in the crowd that day?

=== Dakota's Grafting (04:27) ===

[00:40:29]  Sure.
[00:40:29]  There must have been hundreds.
[00:40:31]  They inspired the riot, and it was all a Fed surrection.
[00:40:36]  Right.
[00:40:38]  That is, yeah, that's the point I'm trying to make.
[00:40:44]  So, so, but, but see, this is kind of what I'm interested in: that idea of, you know, in terms of all of these groups, and if you go through your kind of meet, you've you've kind of analyzed and classified a lot of different groups of people.
[00:41:04]  You know, you have your QAnon groups over here, you have your Christian nationalist groups over here, you have your proud boys, you have your etc., etc.
[00:41:15]  All of these things.
[00:41:17]  And I keep asking myself, in regards to Dakota Adams, the son of Stuart Rhodes.
[00:41:27]  Son of Stuart Rhodes, yeah.
[00:41:28]  Son of Stuart Rhodes is how is it possible to leave these groups when there's nowhere really to go?
[00:41:39]  Do you know what I mean?
[00:41:40]  Like Dakota, when you talk to him, he's talking about how he's living in the woods and hunting for food.
[00:41:48]  Yeah, he wasn't quite at that level by the time I spoke to him, but like certainly that was it.
[00:41:55]  I mean, Dakota is like a remarkable man.
[00:41:59]  Oh, totally.
[00:42:00]  He's he's he's he's quite incredible and unusual.
[00:42:05]  And, you know, perhaps maybe not a great sort of like template, I think, for like somebody who's leftist, just because you know, he, you know, it's sort of like, if you want a bootstrap story, you know, this, this is it, you know, get yourself out of an extremist lifestyle and just try to provide for your family.
[00:42:23]  And, and, you know, I mean, he was, he was just working really hard.
[00:42:27]  When we were there for a week in Montana, um, we were just snatching whatever FaceTime we could get with him because, you know, he was going to college, you know, at his job, had to, you know, take the kids to trick-or-treating.
[00:42:39]  It was late October.
[00:42:41]  Um, you know, it was he was grafting, you know, and he and he and he still is grafting.
[00:42:47]  Um, so, um, you know, and then it's like family dynamics are very unusual too.
[00:42:56]  If sure, you know, if our and you're a psychopathic lunatic, yeah, absolutely, right, exactly.
[00:43:02]  They're different, absolutely.
[00:43:05]  Um, I was like, I kind of in a cod psychology way, I always think of like, you know, the way people uh rebel as teenagers, right?
[00:43:15]  Um, and this is you know, all sorts of movements, not like exclusive to extremist movements.
[00:43:21]  I mean, I didn't you sort of grow up in a not, I don't want to say it's a similar environment, but in a heavily absolutely no, it's 100 religious environment.
[00:43:31]  It is 100% similar, yeah, okay, fine.
[00:43:35]  Except my parents were, uh, you know, I guess just folk, you know, not neither of them had shot their eye out, uh, which is huge, huge, uh, I think personally.
[00:43:49]  But, but as far as belief systems go, I would say that there are very little daylight between them.
[00:43:56]  Yeah, sure.
[00:43:57]  And, you know, so I didn't, but I, you know, rebelled against my Catholic upbringing, say, you know what I mean?
[00:44:04]  Like in a really minor way by, you know, dressing poorly and not going to church.
[00:44:10]  Sure, sure, sure.
[00:44:11]  Um, you know, so it's hard for it's hard for like somebody like myself, I suppose, to sort of put myself in the shoes of somebody like that.
[00:44:20]  Um, but um, you know, he's on the front line out there, you know, he's he says, um, there are people in this community, uh, you know, which he, which he loves because he, you know, he has friends and he has support and he has his family.

=== Bernie's Lockdown Resistance (15:41) ===

[00:44:40]  Um, but it's also kind of alienating to him because they talk about how, you know, the we're going to go door to door and kill all the Democrats.
[00:44:54]  Sure, sure, sure.
[00:44:55]  Um, and stop violent fantasies, uh, right.
[00:44:59]  And he's surrounded by just through no fault of his own, a 10-year-old kid.
[00:45:04]  Everybody around him is going, let's go round up people you know and kill them.
[00:45:08]  Exactly.
[00:45:10]  And it's, it's to this day, right?
[00:45:13]  Uh, when you add to that, I suppose, the stress of what Donald Trump has been saying recently, which is, I'm going to release these people.
[00:45:22]  And he hasn't been specific about who he's going to release.
[00:45:26]  Sure.
[00:45:26]  But certainly, you know, people who might have engaged or not rather not engaged in violence or not gone into the Capitol, you think that he might be at the top of his list, which includes the ringleaders, right?
[00:45:41]  Stuart Rhodes's main hope is that Toronto, Donald becomes president again and then pardons all of them and then hires specifically as the militia of the state.
[00:45:50]  And he's allowed to go around killing people whenever he wants, probably including his fucking son, because he's an absolute psychopath.
[00:45:56]  So yeah, that's the goal, right?
[00:46:00]  Yes.
[00:46:00]  Well, you know, your words, I couldn't possibly diagnose the man, but certainly I've tried to talk to him.
[00:46:07]  But yeah, but certainly like his hopes are pinned on Donald Trump being elected.
[00:46:14]  You know, but then, you know, we can sit here and talk about this and we can sort of analyze what Donald Trump has said in the last month or so.
[00:46:21]  But is he going to follow through with it?
[00:46:24]  Who knows?
[00:46:25]  You know, sure.
[00:46:27]  He, he, um, I have a theory.
[00:46:33]  I love theories.
[00:46:34]  I love it.
[00:46:34]  I love theories.
[00:46:36]  Having sort of like gone into the Pizzagate conspiracy, right?
[00:46:41]  Conspiracy theory.
[00:46:42]  Sure.
[00:46:43]  If you look at, if you sort of timeline it against what was happening in politics, national politics at the time, what you have is you have a campaign that to the most fervent Trump supporters was like, lock her up, right?
[00:46:55]  Hillary Clinton needs to go to jail.
[00:46:57]  Sure.
[00:46:58]  Pizzagate really takes off in the couple of days after he goes on to 60 Minutes, the president-elect Trump after he gets elected.
[00:47:06]  And says, you know what?
[00:47:08]  I don't think that's a real, you know, legitimate thing that, you know, we're not going to lock her up.
[00:47:14]  That was just campaign.
[00:47:16]  And so like, you have this energy, right?
[00:47:19]  I don't really have any way of proving this.
[00:47:20]  It's just an interesting coincidence in my mind, I suppose.
[00:47:24]  And suddenly, then you have this focus on these fake pedophiles in a pizza parlor, you know?
[00:47:33]  Sure.
[00:47:34]  And that gets people riled up.
[00:47:36]  So, um, you know, Donald Trump, you know, might say, These uh capital rioters, well, you know, I've looked at it actually, and nah, I'm not gonna do anything about it.
[00:47:49]  That doesn't solve the problem because then people will be like, you know, all those people who are very, very obsessed about it, and there's many people who are obsessed about this and call them political prisoners, and they've managed to build a movement and they managed to sort of get the ear of Donald Trump.
[00:48:03]  What do they do then?
[00:48:05]  You know, what do they do then when their hope is gone?
[00:48:08]  I don't know.
[00:48:09]  It seems pretty pretty, though.
[00:48:11]  I mean, I here's my problem with some of that: is like I understand the idea of like, oh, where will they go without their hope?
[00:48:21]  But it's like, we got hoped and changed our ass in 2008 and then fucked over.
[00:48:26]  We're fine, we lived through it.
[00:48:29]  Now, admittedly, at the end result of all of that was Donald Trump, so maybe we didn't.
[00:48:33]  But it's like, nobody started a riot, nobody started a war, and maybe these people are more violent, but I don't know if they're war capable.
[00:48:46]  You know what I mean?
[00:48:48]  So, wait, what is that paranoia?
[00:48:52]  What are they capable of?
[00:48:53]  That, like, that like dot dot dot ellipsis, you know what I mean?
[00:48:58]  Yeah, okay, this is interesting.
[00:49:00]  So, I mean, what you're saying is like progressives put a lot of hope into Obama's whole country put a lot of hope into Obama.
[00:49:08]  A lot of people, yeah, who weren't even just weren't even just progressives, yeah, right, right.
[00:49:13]  The whole country did.
[00:49:15]  Um, you know, I don't, you know, that that campaign is so nebulous.
[00:49:27]  And look, I'll be honest, like, you know, I was living in, I was living in Britain for 20 years, so right, right, right, right.
[00:49:36]  Obviously, I was, you know, intensely interested in it, but um, it's different from actually being here, I have as I've found again.
[00:49:44]  Um, sure, yeah, you know, hope the hope meant a lot of different things to a lot of people.
[00:49:49]  I think maybe this is a little bit different simply because he's saying specific promises, you know what I mean?
[00:49:57]  Like, specifically, he's going to free these quote political prisoners.
[00:50:00]  Sure.
[00:50:01]  Um, if you don't live up to that particular promise, then there will be hell to pay to some degree, I think.
[00:50:10]  So, do you think?
[00:50:11]  So, you think the main difference here is the specificity of it.
[00:50:15]  So, because Obama promises a kind of generalized health care will be, you know, right?
[00:50:22]  I mean, what did that mean?
[00:50:24]  It's kind of shit.
[00:50:24]  You're like, he kind of did it, whatever.
[00:50:27]  But they said, I'm going to lock her up, and they didn't lock her up.
[00:50:30]  So, people have got to go her up, right?
[00:50:33]  So, let me put it like that.
[00:50:34]  Yeah, but you know, but not specifically Hillary Clinton, right?
[00:50:38]  But just, you know, just somebody, something that has some sort of vague connection.
[00:50:43]  So, I need to throw a punch and I'm going to throw it at whomever's nearby if I can't throw it at who needs it.
[00:50:49]  Uh, let me let me put it like this: yeah, Obama could have run by saying, you know what?
[00:50:54]  Um, let's go back to the time and the economy is complete meltdown.
[00:51:00]  Uh, we're gonna put bankers in jail, right?
[00:51:02]  Yeah, we are going to put the heads of the major banks in jail because they completely have us, right?
[00:51:08]  Right?
[00:51:09]  Uh, and then he didn't, right?
[00:51:12]  I think things would have been a little bit different, right?
[00:51:15]  And you know, uh, there would have been uh protests, um, you know, a mass sort of a shock.
[00:51:26]  Are we talking?
[00:51:27]  I have no idea.
[00:51:27]  Well, you know, you only you know in your own heart.
[00:51:30]  No, no, for sure.
[00:51:31]  Mean, I mean, more like, are we talking?
[00:51:35]  Is this an equivalence test right here?
[00:51:37]  Are we talking if Obama had made promises like I'll lock up the bankers?
[00:51:44]  And then does it?
[00:51:45]  Let's actually take Obama out.
[00:51:47]  Let's make it Bernie.
[00:51:48]  Bernie seems much more reasonable.
[00:51:49]  So Bernie comes to you.
[00:51:50]  He says, I'm going to lock him up.
[00:51:53]  Then he doesn't.
[00:51:54]  All progressives everywhere are disappointed and hopeless.
[00:51:57]  Even our champion has nothing.
[00:51:59]  Are you saying that then January 6th happens on the left?
[00:52:04]  I mean, look, conspiracy theories and political violence are like not limited to any one group, right?
[00:52:13]  Sure.
[00:52:13]  I mean, like, I guess when we say like a Bernie Sanders presidency, where he like fails to, this is like very, very hypothetical to this, to the third degree or whatever.
[00:52:25]  Oh, yeah, it's never happening in this country.
[00:52:27]  Like, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't rule that out, you know, for sure.
[00:52:33]  Like, it's hard to say specifically what would have happened, but I certainly wouldn't, I certainly wouldn't rule that out.
[00:52:40]  You know, we obviously, like, I go into political violence in the United States and how it comes, you know, mostly from the right, not exclusively, but mostly, mostly from the right these days, in terms of murders, terrorist attacks, and whatnot.
[00:53:00]  There's historical periods where the opposite has been true, you know?
[00:53:05]  Certainly.
[00:53:06]  That's an interesting question.
[00:53:09]  What is that?
[00:53:10]  Do you mean when the opposite has been true?
[00:53:12]  Do you mean like John Brown or the IRA or any of those things?
[00:53:21]  Any of those things?
[00:53:22]  You know, or the weathermen or, you know.
[00:53:25]  Okay.
[00:53:26]  Now, let me ask you this question.
[00:53:28]  All right.
[00:53:30]  Because I wonder about this.
[00:53:34]  Do you think, because it is called the day of reckoning, do you have a value judgment on the day of reckoning?
[00:53:42]  Is it a good or bad thing?
[00:53:45]  I don't have a value judgment.
[00:53:47]  I use it, I suppose, as a description of the stakes that a lot of people on these fringes believe, you know, are going to be sort of thrown down around the election, right?
[00:54:07]  Well, I mean, but aren't, isn't that like what regular people are talking about?
[00:54:12]  Like on CNN, like, hey, at the end of this election, if Donald Trump is president, CNN is probably going to be lit on fire.
[00:54:21]  You know, like there are people who are very stridently warning in very mainstream spaces.
[00:54:28]  It's good that we got to this because I think that this is very interesting.
[00:54:31]  And, you know, in terms of predictions, I wouldn't really want to offer one because whatever we predict here is not going to come true, right?
[00:54:39]  It's just like the universe.
[00:54:41]  Sure.
[00:54:42]  Well, in 2017, I predicted a massive global pandemic that shut everything down.
[00:54:46]  Who didn't predict that random assessment?
[00:54:48]  Yeah.
[00:54:49]  Yeah.
[00:54:50]  Right.
[00:54:50]  Yeah, totally.
[00:54:51]  I know what's coming.
[00:54:51]  Are you the clairvoyant?
[00:54:52]  Maybe.
[00:54:53]  I know what's coming.
[00:54:55]  Tell us.
[00:54:58]  I'm desperate.
[00:54:59]  I'm desperate.
[00:55:01]  I would love to know.
[00:55:05]  No, yeah, you're right.
[00:55:06]  But like, you know, what I would like to interrogate, I suppose, and I, you know, because the book deals with the far right and what they believe, it's not so much, you know, what the people on CNN are talking about.
[00:55:20]  I always just look for specifics, you know.
[00:55:24]  I look for like anecdotes and how this actually sort of plays out on the ground and what people in Iowa think about it, you know, to take a random place.
[00:55:35]  I am, you know, sometimes I hear this talk and I think I really don't know what people mean by how it's going to herald the end of democracy or like, you know, what just what do you do to justify like stopping that if you believe that that's true?
[00:55:55]  Good question.
[00:55:55]  I'm not sure.
[00:55:57]  And I don't, you know, I maybe, you know, again, like, I find it hard to visualize, right?
[00:56:10]  Like, let's say, let's say Trump gets elected, and anything can happen.
[00:56:15]  You know, because people ask me all the time, they're like, particularly people in Britain, you know, my friends in London or whatever.
[00:56:22]  They're like, oh, what's going to happen?
[00:56:24]  Tell me, tell me, tell me.
[00:56:25]  I was like, why are you listening to me?
[00:56:27]  Number one.
[00:56:27]  I didn't think he was going to get elected in 2016.
[00:56:31]  You know, number two, I have no sort of special insight, but I say, like, just be prepared for anything, right?
[00:56:38]  Like, this could happen.
[00:56:40]  That could happen.
[00:56:43]  We've got two old men.
[00:56:44]  We've got two old men.
[00:56:46]  That's bad advice.
[00:56:46]  Consults are not exactly helpful advice.
[00:56:49]  It's not helpful.
[00:56:49]  No, it's not helpful.
[00:56:51]  I mean, like, if you, if you would have amended that psychological go back, psychologically.
[00:56:55]  Have a go bag, you know, like have ice, you know, be a blanket in your car.
[00:57:00]  Like, I feel like that's useful.
[00:57:03]  You know, I suppose, you know, it's very interesting to read, was it Project 2025, you know, these reports that say, you know, this is how Donald Trump would run his next administration.
[00:57:15]  Sure, You know, but then again, a lot of that stuff is, you know, we're going to, you know, root out all these civil servant type people, right?
[00:57:24]  Sure.
[00:57:25]  And that doesn't necessarily to me to be sort of like three alarm fire type territory.
[00:57:31]  Right.
[00:57:32]  There's courts that will get involved with this kind of stuff.
[00:57:36]  There are people who will be, you know, very active from day one, as we saw the last time that Donald Trump got elected.
[00:57:46]  I was having dinner with a friend earlier this year, and it was in New Haven, right?
[00:57:53]  In New Haven, Connecticut.
[00:57:55]  And so I was sitting there.
[00:57:57]  I was actually doing a story on Democratic politics, not in New Haven, but nearby.
[00:58:01]  And this old guy, I had never, I hadn't seen him for years.
[00:58:06]  We're sitting in a pizza place, and he's, you know, he's a very sort of like left guy, right?
[00:58:10]  He's a very left-wing guy.
[00:58:13]  And we're just talking about politics, and he says to me, if Trump gets in, who's going to stop him?
[00:58:24]  And I just looked around the room.
[00:58:26]  I looked around at all the sort of Yale students that we were surrounded with in one pizza place in New Haven and the whole and the blocks surrounding us.
[00:58:36]  It's like the heart of liberal America in this, you know, blue state in a completely blue region.
[00:58:42]  And they were like, we'll capitulate heartbeats, sir.
[00:58:45]  God bless America.
[00:58:47]  I think maybe there may be some opposition to Donald Trump if he becomes president.
[00:58:53]  I ask you this question because I recognize what you're saying, but the women's march, global, largest protest ever.
[00:59:07]  Multiple Supreme Court justices and the end of abortion followed.
[00:59:12]  So who fucking cares is my question about your resistance?
[00:59:17]  Well, I mean, look, I think that's a completely valid point, right?
[00:59:22]  Like, what are the, what are the, what is the real, you know, but it's not as if I wouldn't necessarily talk to that.
[00:59:30]  I suppose I would just say, you know, the idea that there won't be any type of resistance is crazy.
[00:59:36]  You could kind of say the same thing.
[00:59:37]  I mean, sure.
[00:59:38]  There will be some resistance.
[00:59:40]  That's fine.
[00:59:40]  But who, I mean, there will be some victories and that's fine.
[00:59:46]  You know, there will be some days where you're like, oh, they didn't do this and that's fine.
[00:59:51]  But we abortion's gone.
[00:59:53]  Do you, do you know what I'm saying?
[00:59:54]  Like, I mean, yeah, sure.
[00:59:56]  That, but what is the, what is the point of this resistance if it will just, I guess, maybe slow a giant ice cube ball rolling down?

=== Political Solutions and Violence Threats (09:20) ===

[01:00:08]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:00:09]  You know, look, that's, again, perfectly valid point.
[01:00:14]  Perfectly valid point.
[01:00:16]  History doesn't move in a straight line.
[01:00:17]  We know that.
[01:00:18]  Sure.
[01:00:19]  Say the same thing for the March of Our Lives.
[01:00:21]  I was, I went to cover that in 2018, I believe it was.
[01:00:25]  And you have all these kids, you know, you've got hundreds of thousands kids marching through Washington.
[01:00:31]  And it's just like, you know, a super emotional day.
[01:00:35]  And you kind of say, like, okay, well, you know what?
[01:00:37]  There's nowhere, we're nowhere near sort of a federal assault weapons ban.
[01:00:43]  You know, there are still mass shootings in America, quite a few of them.
[01:00:50]  Will that have some difference?
[01:00:52]  Will that make some difference at some level?
[01:00:55]  And certainly, you know, in some localities and states, cities, or whatever, have passed gun laws, you know.
[01:01:03]  You know, we're not too far from Highland Park, where, you know, that has inspired in the state of Illinois laws that are guns.
[01:01:12]  Yes, absolutely.
[01:01:13]  Yeah.
[01:01:14]  So, you know, the, you know, what's the real effect?
[01:01:21]  It's not zero.
[01:01:22]  The real effect, let's check back in about 25 years' time.
[01:01:27]  Sure, that absolutely.
[01:01:28]  No, no, no.
[01:01:29]  And I'm not, I'm sorry.
[01:01:30]  Apologies if I'm just a clownish.
[01:01:33]  No, no.
[01:01:33]  I mean, come off like that.
[01:01:35]  I'm just trying to, I'm trying to.
[01:01:37]  It's a totally valid point.
[01:01:38]  No, well, I'm not trying to make a point.
[01:01:42]  I'm trying to like interrogate the words that you've written down, if that makes sense.
[01:01:47]  I'm not, I'm not trying to say, like, oh, this is what we need to do.
[01:01:49]  I'm trying to say that in your book, there is a chapter titled No Political Solution.
[01:01:56]  Yeah.
[01:01:57]  Now, to me, the question then becomes: if there is no political solution, do you mean there is no solution?
[01:02:07]  Or do you mean that there is a solution?
[01:02:09]  It's just not political.
[01:02:11]  No, no, no.
[01:02:12]  I think that is a reference to the hardest core of the hardest core, right?
[01:02:17]  Sure.
[01:02:18]  That is a reference to, again, like I try to be as strict, descriptive as possible.
[01:02:23]  It's, you know, it's sort of crazy, like in American journalism where you're like, no, actually, I'm paid not to have skin in the game or take a side, right?
[01:02:33]  Sure.
[01:02:33]  So, and it just so happens I, you know, my expertise is in the far right.
[01:02:37]  And so I'm looking at these people and there's all sorts of like interpretations or assumptions or whatever that come along with that.
[01:02:43]  But that specific chapter goes into the people who don't believe that there's any political solution.
[01:02:49]  And like they are hellbent on violence, right?
[01:02:52]  You're talking about, you know, violent terrorists, domestic extremist groups, you know, which, you know, like a lot of people in the in the book I sort of like talk to, even though they're fringe or extremist groups, these people are very difficult to even find, you know?
[01:03:12]  Sure, sure.
[01:03:14]  These people certainly won't talk to you in any sort of like friendly manner or give any sort of reliable information.
[01:03:21]  So, you know, that's that's my way of summing up what they think, unfortunately.
[01:03:29]  There's some of the more scary elements, certainly.
[01:03:34]  Well, I mean, I'm, I, I'm right.
[01:03:37]  I mean, and obviously the scariest of them are the like, let's uh, let's go hot shooting war kind of thing.
[01:03:46]  Uh, and I recognize that.
[01:03:48]  But my, my question upon reading that chapter was: if there is a political solution, right, which would be like electing Biden or whatever, uh, or or, you know, whatever it is you'd like, but that will be met with violence.
[01:04:07]  Is it a political solution?
[01:04:09]  Do you know what I mean?
[01:04:10]  Like, is the political solution in this regard to elect Trump in order to avoid the violent response that you might get if you elect Biden?
[01:04:21]  I suppose a lot of those people would.
[01:04:25]  Sorry, I just get the question.
[01:04:28]  No, I'm the question.
[01:04:30]  The perspective of their perspective, you know, their political solution is some sort of Trump, you know, maybe dynasty.
[01:04:43]  You know, it's hard.
[01:04:44]  Again, it's nebulous, but like, certainly that's the first step.
[01:04:47]  Right.
[01:04:47]  Trump getting re-elected.
[01:04:49]  After that, what happens?
[01:04:50]  You know, they will disagree.
[01:04:51]  And, you know, we saw during the first Trump administration about how these sort of things fractured, because suddenly you're in power and suddenly you actually have to do things that matter.
[01:05:00]  And then you're not going to sort of please the alt-right at the same time as you're going to please the, you know, tax-slashing, you know, club for growth or whatever.
[01:05:14]  I guess, you know, when you go to the hardest core of the hardest core, are they going to be very pleased with Trump?
[01:05:25]  Well, you know, they're not sort of like down the line for him, I guess.
[01:05:31]  Sure, but I mean, I'm talking more specifically about Biden, right?
[01:05:37]  Like the arguments, as I understand it, from all of these groups, the danger from all of these groups is essentially the attack on democracy.
[01:05:47]  It's the threat of violence.
[01:05:49]  Right, right, right.
[01:05:50]  Now, that is, I mean, essentially an extortionate voting base saying that if you elect the candidate we don't like, we're going to J6 you, which is what they did.
[01:06:02]  So they've established that that's what they're going to do, right?
[01:06:05]  So then should we not expect that we're being extorted?
[01:06:11]  Should we not say that a political solution is voting for Trump, whereas a violent solution is voting for Biden?
[01:06:21]  In other words, like, hey, vote for Trump and to lessen the impact of violence.
[01:06:26]  I mean, isn't that kind of the point of these groups?
[01:06:30]  Isn't that what they are describing?
[01:06:33]  Isn't that what you are describing them as in this scenario?
[01:06:38]  Yeah.
[01:06:40]  Listen, it's not, they even themselves, they're not sort of as clear-cut.
[01:06:45]  You know what I mean?
[01:06:46]  Like, they don't see themselves as violent.
[01:06:48]  You know, part of the whole J6 narrative thing is that, hey, you know, it was peaceful.
[01:06:55]  And actually, the violence was precipitated by the feds.
[01:06:59]  Oh, so it was violent.
[01:07:00]  No, no, it was peaceful.
[01:07:01]  Oh, and there was a million people there.
[01:07:02]  Oh, but only a few people went in the Capitol.
[01:07:04]  Right.
[01:07:05]  It's just like that, you know, I fire a hose of bullshit, essentially.
[01:07:13]  Right.
[01:07:13]  Well, I mean, the mob doesn't consider itself violent unless you don't pay up.
[01:07:17]  Exactly.
[01:07:18]  Yeah.
[01:07:18]  Well, I mean, hey, there you go.
[01:07:20]  That's yes, some of these elements like that's probably a good way to think about it, right?
[01:07:26]  Because, like, you know, if you have, um, if you think that there's a political solution, you don't start like start a foundation, you know, you're not like Mike Lindell.
[01:07:34]  You don't sort of like advertise on Fox and then like, you know, develop some sort of what he has now is some sort of weird thing where like you can all sort of be poll monitors and organizations or whatever, you know what I mean?
[01:07:47]  Sort of like parallel universe, things like true the vote, you know, and and they make these movies and social media output and stuff.
[01:07:55]  So, yeah, if you truly think that there's no political solution, you don't do those things because like you think they are useless.
[01:08:03]  On the other hand, like in the back pocket, there's always sort of a threat of like, yeah, we're gonna do something.
[01:08:09]  I think you know, we don't need to hear that much about that right now because it the polls are looking very good for Donald Trump or a lot better than you might expect, right?
[01:08:23]  For somebody like that.
[01:08:23]  Oh, no, I for me, I expected him, I expect him to win.
[01:08:27]  I expected him to win in 2016.
[01:08:29]  You expect him to win.
[01:08:30]  Yeah.
[01:08:30]  Yeah.
[01:08:31]  But I mean by a lot.
[01:08:33]  It's not going to be a lot.
[01:08:34]  Okay.
[01:08:34]  So that has sort of tempered that.
[01:08:38]  So it's like they haven't, you know, you don't hear sort of overt threats, you know, hey, we're going to do a big march because we know that this fix is in, you know, right.
[01:08:46]  I mean, I'm sure we'll hear some of that later in the year.
[01:08:50]  Sure, sure.
[01:08:53]  Okay.
[01:08:54]  So, so, so, yeah, so it's so, yes.
[01:08:58]  So, the answer is yes.
[01:08:59]  Vote for Trump.
[01:09:00]  I mean, so they don't.
[01:09:03]  I'm not, I'm certainly not advocating that at all.
[01:09:08]  But, I mean, it would be the pitch.
[01:09:10]  It will be the pitch from some of these groups.

=== Deliberate Open Threats (15:59) ===

[01:09:11]  You know, sure.
[01:09:12]  It's veiled threats.
[01:09:17]  You know what I mean?
[01:09:18]  They're not veiled.
[01:09:19]  They are deliberate and open threats.
[01:09:21]  Some of them will not be veiled.
[01:09:22]  No.
[01:09:23]  Right.
[01:09:23]  I mean, you know, yeah.
[01:09:26]  Well, I mean, look, we don't, I don't see Trump at the moment saying, you know, we are going to make sure we get the job done this time.
[01:09:37]  Everybody brings guns to the Capitol.
[01:09:39]  Right?
[01:09:39]  Sure.
[01:09:41]  So, you know, while he's saying they were great patriots, those people on January the 6th, they're great patriots.
[01:09:49]  Which ones?
[01:09:49]  Well, I mean, nobody was sort of gets close to sort of asking him that question.
[01:09:54]  Yeah.
[01:09:57]  Well, I mean, why?
[01:09:58]  Why ask him that question?
[01:10:00]  You and I know, everybody knows the answer who needs to know the answer to that question, right?
[01:10:06]  Oh, no, I think that question.
[01:10:08]  People he's talking to know the answer, and you and I know the answer.
[01:10:12]  It's Nazis.
[01:10:12]  No, no, no, no.
[01:10:14]  I think the question, I think it's a very interesting question.
[01:10:18]  Like, who's who are the good people?
[01:10:20]  Like, which ones?
[01:10:22]  Yeah, like, which ones?
[01:10:23]  The Nazis.
[01:10:24]  Like, no, the people who were at January the 6th.
[01:10:28]  The Nazis.
[01:10:31]  I don't know.
[01:10:31]  Those are your words.
[01:10:32]  Those are the good people.
[01:10:33]  Those are your words.
[01:10:34]  That's my, that's my.
[01:10:36]  See, when I, when I read alt-right in your book, when I read Christian nationalist in your book in these contexts, it bothers me.
[01:10:47]  It bothers me because alt-right, I think now we have to, like, looking back on it, now alt-right doesn't mean what I think it was branded to mean.
[01:10:58]  Now, I think we have to accept that alt-right means whatever amount of Nazi is socially acceptable enough for me to function in polite society.
[01:11:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:11:10]  It's a four-dimensional title, right?
[01:11:13]  So, no, I get it.
[01:11:14]  There was people who were having, who had fascistic beliefs who were hiding them under the layers of internet irony that we called alt-right.
[01:11:29]  And there were other people who weren't hiding it.
[01:11:32]  I mean, my last book was about the altruist.
[01:11:35]  You're going to have to tell me about the people who weren't hiding it.
[01:11:39]  Oh, well, I mean, the people who weren't hiding it were, you know, people who were like, we are Nazis, you know?
[01:11:48]  Right.
[01:11:48]  So the people who are hiding it are the alt-right.
[01:11:51]  And the people who weren't hiding it are the alt-right who were Nazis.
[01:11:55]  So they're Nazis, right?
[01:11:58]  So if you know they're Nazis based upon the words that we use to describe them, why is it impossible to say they're Nazis?
[01:12:08]  I don't think that everybody at January 6th was a Nazi, you know?
[01:12:14]  Ah, now we've got a very interesting question.
[01:12:16]  You know, if you're on January 6th and you're not a Nazi, why?
[01:12:23]  I think that there's a whole bunch of reasons why people get swept up into mobs.
[01:12:28]  You know what I mean?
[01:12:29]  It's like they were Trump supporters.
[01:12:30]  Some were Trump supporters.
[01:12:31]  Some were proud boys.
[01:12:34]  Some people were violent.
[01:12:35]  Some people were very violent, right?
[01:12:38]  There were many people there that were very violent.
[01:12:41]  And they, you know, smashed windows and beat police officers.
[01:12:47]  There's other people who weren't, you know, there's other people who sort of didn't go inside.
[01:12:52]  There's people who went there and then they saw it all kick off and they got their asses out of there.
[01:12:58]  You know, I think, in some ways, I don't think that actually like this, you may push back on this.
[01:13:07]  I'm ready for it.
[01:13:09]  I love it when people are.
[01:13:11]  I love it when people are about to say something to me that they kind of don't want to say.
[01:13:15]  No, no, I want to say this.
[01:13:19]  Like calling people Nazis is unhelpful for calling a huge number of people Nazis is unhelpful in a number of ways.
[01:13:30]  Because I think a lot of people like do not are not actually thinking through the politics of all this stuff in that level of detail.
[01:13:40]  And also, you hear this all the time.
[01:13:43]  I'm sure you get this all the time.
[01:13:44]  It's like we do not believe in the tenants of the German National Socialist Party as it is.
[01:13:52]  I don't get any of that.
[01:13:53]  And it's just like from 1933 to 1945.
[01:13:56]  I mean, let me try.
[01:13:57]  No, we're not talking about those Nazis.
[01:14:00]  No, no, no.
[01:14:00]  We're not talking about any of you.
[01:14:01]  I'm trying to push back on that.
[01:14:03]  I don't care.
[01:14:05]  Does that make sense?
[01:14:06]  Like, this is the thing about those arguments that I find so interesting of like the engagement arguments that I see from that kind of Twitter space that like, you have to call us the alt-right, otherwise we'll all be so mad at you.
[01:14:22]  Right?
[01:14:23]  Yeah, no, and it's not that it's not actually those people themselves that you sort of care about, I mean, or one cares about, right?
[01:14:32]  It's more just making your argument to a broader audience, right?
[01:14:38]  I'm interested in that.
[01:14:40]  What argument to a broader audience are you talking about?
[01:14:43]  All right.
[01:14:44]  So are you including argument?
[01:14:46]  Let me ask you.
[01:14:47]  I'm communicating to a broader audience.
[01:14:48]  I'm not necessarily making an argument there.
[01:14:50]  But if I'm writing a story, if I'm writing a story, I don't sort of, you know, write the Nazis or the people there.
[01:15:02]  You know what I mean?
[01:15:03]  We say they're, you know, I always try and drill down to the actual sort of specific thing.
[01:15:09]  Like, I, and it's impossible to avoid.
[01:15:12]  It's impossible to say, like, you know, hey, these people are far right.
[01:15:17]  Oh, we're not far right.
[01:15:18]  You know, proud boys aren't far right.
[01:15:20]  Right.
[01:15:20]  You know, we just believe in America.
[01:15:23]  I don't care who you are.
[01:15:24]  All right.
[01:15:24]  All right.
[01:15:24]  Let's break it down.
[01:15:26]  Let's break it down.
[01:15:27]  Why do we call you far right?
[01:15:28]  We call you far right because you have extremist views and guns and social relationships.
[01:15:35]  And also, you are prepared to back those views up with violence, as you know, blah, You know what I mean?
[01:15:40]  So, yes, you have to use shorthand sometimes, but I'd like sort of, you know, drilling down to like specifics in terms of actions and beliefs.
[01:15:52]  And, you know, and obviously, like a lot of the people there, it's, it's, you know, Trump says the communists and the fascists and you know, he's and the globalists or whatever.
[01:16:07]  Sure.
[01:16:07]  I don't know if he uses the term globalists that much.
[01:16:10]  But anyway, he lumps in the Democrats, fascists, communists.
[01:16:16]  Yeah.
[01:16:16]  It's crazy.
[01:16:17]  It's like all those things you think are the same thing, and it's just the other side.
[01:16:26]  I'm not going to, as a member of the press, like play that game.
[01:16:34]  I'm going to try not to.
[01:16:35]  Sure.
[01:16:35]  But let me let me throw this out at you.
[01:16:39]  All right.
[01:16:39]  So you're NBC news or whatever.
[01:16:44]  You've drilled down to this is why we call you.
[01:16:48]  Am I NBC or am I BBC?
[01:16:50]  Well, I mean, yeah, apologies.
[01:16:52]  Apologies.
[01:16:52]  I was, I thought that's what we were talking about.
[01:16:55]  I'm not talking about you in specific, just a general.
[01:16:57]  Okay, that's good.
[01:16:59]  Any media outlet.
[01:17:00]  I'm not talking about far right mainstream or far left.
[01:17:03]  I don't care.
[01:17:04]  Any media outlet, right?
[01:17:05]  So you are talking to somebody and you are saying to them, here is how I know you are far right.
[01:17:10]  Blank, Right?
[01:17:13]  Yeah.
[01:17:14]  Now, you have given me a definition for far right.
[01:17:17]  If I say to you, aha, I don't believe blank and blank and blank.
[01:17:21]  And you say, well, then, sir, that makes you alt-right, which is now a socially acceptable form of the exact same thing, minus two little things.
[01:17:31]  Do you understand what I'm saying?
[01:17:33]  Yeah, sure.
[01:17:34]  Did they exist before or did you make them?
[01:17:37]  That look, are they responding to that scenario?
[01:17:41]  Yeah.
[01:17:41]  Are they responding to that scenario?
[01:17:50]  Yeah, like they might respond to that scenario, but like, are they arguing in good faith?
[01:17:54]  Like, no.
[01:17:55]  Well, you, well, no, they aren't.
[01:17:56]  No.
[01:17:57]  Usually, usually.
[01:17:58]  No, I honestly look, I get messages sometimes.
[01:18:01]  I get messages from people who actually are arguing in good faith.
[01:18:06]  Like they're rare, which is disappointing.
[01:18:09]  Right.
[01:18:11]  Because I am interested.
[01:18:13]  And if I, and, and, you know, the really annoying thing is that when you think that somebody is arguing in good faith and and they aren't, you know, sure.
[01:18:23]  You know, there's, they're sort of saying, you know, I'm not a Trump fan, but I would really like to know why you think that, you know, what he says is a conspiracy theory or whatever.
[01:18:38]  And nine times out of 10, those people are actually sort of like fully signed up to voter fraud is rife and Democrats are eating babies or whatever.
[01:18:46]  You know what I mean?
[01:18:47]  Sure.
[01:18:48]  But, you know, there is one out of 10.
[01:18:50]  But they are actually, they are like a curious person and they're like, hey, now we have the social media thing.
[01:18:56]  And so I can reach out to somebody specifically and they might or might not.
[01:19:03]  By your answer, okay.
[01:19:05]  So, then by that, if we're going to transpose that back to the alt-right thing, you're saying that 90% of the alt-right are Nazis.
[01:19:14]  If that's if that's what your descriptor is, is that one time out of 10 there is somebody who is arguing in good faith, then that one time out of 10 there is somebody who's in the alt-right, and you are describing them as alt-right when they're Nazis.
[01:19:28]  Is that not what you have just described to me?
[01:19:30]  I was just, I, you, you, you like to get people to describe other people as Nazis.
[01:19:36]  I've no, I'm not trying to get other people to describe people as Nazis.
[01:19:41]  I am trying to read all of these books and see all of the ways that people try not to call Nazis Nazis.
[01:19:49]  I am not the one trying to impose upon people something.
[01:19:52]  Yeah, I mean, what I am seeing is a million different words being applied to avoid doing something because those people will be pissed off at you.
[01:20:02]  Oh, I'm not really worried about them.
[01:20:04]  I'm not, I don't think you are.
[01:20:07]  Let's do more specifically about that alt-right definition of that idea for you.
[01:20:13]  You know, that one out of 10 is in genuine faith an alt-right person.
[01:20:17]  No, that one out of 10.
[01:20:19]  That's just, I don't, I don't mean, I suppose maybe I wasn't so clear.
[01:20:22]  Like, when I'm talking about that one out of 10, that's sort of people who are like messaging me or like DMing me on Twitter or whatever.
[01:20:28]  Sure, sure, sure.
[01:20:29]  You know, it's like that's not, I wouldn't sort of put a name on it.
[01:20:33]  Like, um, I think you know, what sort of happened with the alt-right is well, like a you know, that that was never a term that was very sort of like incredibly well defined.
[01:20:47]  In my last book, I tried to define it as much as possible.
[01:20:49]  And in fact, I did the same kind of thing.
[01:20:52]  I was like, there's all these sort of people, there's like, you know, these Menonist people, and then like there's an incel subset or whatever.
[01:21:00]  They don't always get along, you know, they share a lot of beliefs.
[01:21:03]  What is their common ground?
[01:21:06]  Their common ground is they think that Donald Trump is great, and they whatever version or flavor of extremism that they're promoting, they think that like he's going to push it.
[01:21:16]  Um, so you know, look, again, it's like I don't think it's like super useful.
[01:21:24]  You can call them Nazis, and look, I got people who, you know, I like to talk to people.
[01:21:29]  I don't, I don't need your permission, sir.
[01:21:30]  You can, you can call, I love it when people give their opinions.
[01:21:34]  I'm going to reflect your opinions.
[01:21:36]  You can call, you know, somebody, you know, a woke libtard if you want.
[01:21:41]  Sure.
[01:21:42]  Um, I just like to prefer to sort of like drill down and say, okay, well, what the hell does that actually mean in practice, right?
[01:21:50]  This is this is the question for me.
[01:21:52]  This is what's so interesting to me is the binary there that you have just described perfectly, right?
[01:21:59]  So, on the one hand, we have clearly defined alt-right, right?
[01:22:05]  That allows you to say, I inhabit these characteristics, and thus I am one of these, right?
[01:22:11]  Whereas, woke libtard is completely nebulous bullshit that you can throw at anybody.
[01:22:17]  Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting thing.
[01:22:19]  So, so I can hide an alt-right.
[01:22:23]  Do you know what I'm saying?
[01:22:23]  Because that's really difficult.
[01:22:25]  Although I would probably say that alt-right is, you know, not number one, uh, it quickly became a toxic brand to the nation of at large, I would think, particularly after Charlottesville.
[01:22:42]  Um, and number two, it became a naff brand, and that is actually actually more powerful, right?
[01:22:49]  Like, oh, that's that thing from like five years ago.
[01:22:52]  Like, everybody sharing Pepe memes these days is like a boomer, right?
[01:22:57]  Yeah, that's for me, and they're, you know, Like high on K or whatever, but like, oh, it's only it's just like they, you know, you, if you look at like the substacks that these people pump out, it's just like, oh my gosh, get some new memes or whatever, you know.
[01:23:14]  Um, and and that is in a weird way is almost like more powerful than um any one, any like specifically one of these groups could could go.
[01:23:25]  Because look, I have I have no doubt that the groups that I look at in the book will go the way of all the other ones that you know were in my book about the alt-right.
[01:23:35]  It's like half of them are defunct or you know, just fizzled out, um, got arrested.
[01:23:44]  Uh, it's this sort of cultural stream, I suppose, that's more important.
[01:23:52]  Yeah, I mean, there's there's definitely that, there's definitely that.
[01:23:55]  I wonder, and this is why we talked in advance about how I wanted, I was definitely going to bring up religion in this regard, especially in the way that you've just described these fractured, splintered, uh, competitive, and frankly, incompatible beliefs all united around one thing.
[01:24:17]  Uh, it's hard not to think of religion, that old-time religion.
[01:24:22]  Uh, whenever you hear, oh, no, I'm a QAnon guy, and oh, I'm a Catholic, and oh, I'm a blah.
[01:24:28]  It's all the same, uh, in my estimation.
[01:24:32]  Like, the way that you've written these characters, uh, all of these like classified groups is that if you drill it down, somewhere along the line is magical thinking, right?
[01:24:46]  Well, I think it's even like maybe more specific.
[01:24:49]  It's like what unites them is Donald Trump.
[01:24:54]  Well, I mean, is it Donald Trump the person?

=== Evangelical Identity Debate (15:57) ===

[01:24:57]  Absolutely not.
[01:24:58]  Donald Trump the person is fucking garbage.
[01:25:01]  Everyone, everyone kind of functionally believes that Donald Trump the person is garbage because that's how we live our lives.
[01:25:08]  You know, people laughing on all of that stuff.
[01:25:11]  What they believe Trump, the God figure, is way more than Trump, the guy who's going to steal $50 million from you.
[01:25:20]  So, yeah, without you've put it in a way that I don't necessarily put it, but let me put it like I have a knack for that.
[01:25:27]  Like, you said that Trump the man, Trump the Man versus Trump the idea.
[01:25:31]  Like, yeah, no, um, it's it's like the spirit, right?
[01:25:36]  Right, like it's you've heard it, yeah, yeah.
[01:25:38]  Um, it look, it's it's very uh, this isn't in the book because I, it, it, I sort of did this after I wrote the book, but um, I was in Iowa to um do some reporting on evangelicals and Trump, and my editor suggested this to me.
[01:25:52]  And I thought, oh, gosh, I'm not sure.
[01:25:55]  Um, I mean, obviously, I'll do it because you know, boss says, but um, but I find it actually like tremendously fascinating.
[01:26:05]  And specifically, what was fascinating about it is obviously we know that you know, when Trump came on the scene in 2015, evangelicals were like, hmm, not sure about this guy, he's divorced, Divorced.
[01:26:14]  It's a bit of a playboy.
[01:26:15]  Sure.
[01:26:16]  Not one of us.
[01:26:18]  Now they love him.
[01:26:20]  And what has happened, what happened since he became president was that the number of evangelicals has gone up in this country, right?
[01:26:29]  And weirdly, church attendance keeps declining.
[01:26:34]  So you have a lot of evangelicals who don't even go to church.
[01:26:42]  And they're actually their faith is in a relationship with leaders and other community members that do not have anything to do with a church or your pastor or whatever, which is traditionally how this what people look to for leadership.
[01:26:57]  And instead, it's politicians and it's Donald Trump.
[01:27:00]  And it's kind of an interesting and often people, I think, like, you know, don't get quite get it right when they call it a cult or like they call it worship of Trump.
[01:27:13]  You know, I don't think it's that.
[01:27:14]  I think that's actually kind of belittling to a lot of these people.
[01:27:19]  But it's certainly like a cultural and religious identity that's all become tied up.
[01:27:25]  And it's a definite trend.
[01:27:27]  Like, you know, statistics bear it out and the experts bear it out.
[01:27:31]  And you can, I mean, you can see it in these places.
[01:27:35]  I am, I'm interested in that question in this regard.
[01:27:40]  All right.
[01:27:41]  So I'm not allowed to call somebody a Nazi because it's not specific enough.
[01:27:47]  Why are they?
[01:27:47]  Oh, you can't.
[01:27:49]  I know.
[01:27:49]  I know.
[01:27:49]  I'm just, I'm just being a prick.
[01:27:52]  That was stupid.
[01:27:53]  I'm just fucking around.
[01:27:54]  No, no, no.
[01:27:56]  My question is: why exactly are they still called evangelicals?
[01:28:01]  Is it because they self-identify as evangelicals?
[01:28:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:28:06]  I mean, so from the study, it is.
[01:28:08]  Yeah.
[01:28:09]  Yeah.
[01:28:09]  Okay.
[01:28:10]  So, so what is it that makes an evangelical then?
[01:28:14]  Just saying you are one?
[01:28:16]  I mean, yeah, I suppose.
[01:28:20]  I mean, it's a good question.
[01:28:22]  Okay.
[01:28:22]  That's like, I don't think it's obviously they have faith, right?
[01:28:30]  Sure.
[01:28:31]  Like, you're not letting me try and a member of the church of Satan or whatever, and I'm also an evangelical.
[01:28:37]  I'm an atheist evangelical.
[01:28:38]  That doesn't make any sense.
[01:28:39]  Right.
[01:28:39]  That's basic, but it's, it's not, um, it doesn't get much more complicated than that.
[01:28:46]  And yeah, it is like self-identification.
[01:28:48]  Yeah.
[01:28:49]  Are you evangelical?
[01:28:50]  Well, I think that completely disagree with Jesus.
[01:28:52]  I think it gets extremely complicated.
[01:28:55]  And it part of it, that's another thing that frustrates me is that idea of you're calling them an evangelical because they self-identify as that.
[01:29:03]  But that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything in terms of what is an evangelical.
[01:29:12]  If all it is, is I self-identify as an evangelical, then exactly how is it possible for these people to make large pronunciations about what evangelicals believe if all it is is just people who self-identify as whatever on any given day.
[01:29:32]  Yeah, I mean, I think that is for instance.
[01:29:39]  What is the difference between an evangelical and a Christian nationalist in your book?
[01:29:44]  Yeah, okay.
[01:29:45]  So I don't know, would some of these people, okay, so Christian nationalists would be like, oh, you can be an evangelical and not be a Christian nationalist.
[01:29:56]  Like, clearly.
[01:29:59]  I'm asking you what the difference between these two things is.
[01:30:02]  Not in terms of one and not the other.
[01:30:05]  So to put it very for specifics, what's the difference between the alt-right and a Nazi?
[01:30:10]  What's the difference between an evangelical and a Christian nationalist?
[01:30:15]  I mean, to put it very simply, a Christian nationalist believes that the U.S. is a Christian nation, right?
[01:30:22]  And like Christianity should sort of be should run through the government, right?
[01:30:28]  Sure.
[01:30:29]  The nation should be run on Christian principles according to what they think Christian principles are.
[01:30:37]  Right.
[01:30:38]  Yes.
[01:30:38]  Like that, I think that's probably as specific as I can get about it because, you know, we can have a very long conversation about what Christian principles are and how they should specifically be implemented in government if you believe that.
[01:30:54]  Right.
[01:30:55]  Sure.
[01:30:56]  But that's the baseline definition.
[01:30:58]  And, you know, there's plenty of evangelicals who do not believe that.
[01:31:05]  You know what I mean?
[01:31:06]  Who, you know, right?
[01:31:12]  I'm asking, I suppose I'm asking you because I think this gets back to the same question.
[01:31:17]  You say to me, you know, oh, these people don't want a Christian nation.
[01:31:21]  And I ask myself, tomorrow there's a Christian nation.
[01:31:24]  I don't think these people give a fuck.
[01:31:26]  I think they keep going on about their day and they go, oh, it's a good Christian nation that we live in.
[01:31:31]  That's what being an evangelical is.
[01:31:33]  You want a Christian nation because you want everyone to be a Christian.
[01:31:37]  Right.
[01:31:37]  You can't not have a Christian nation if everyone is a Christian.
[01:31:41]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:31:43]  So I see.
[01:31:44]  I mean, I'm not being an evangelical.
[01:31:47]  I suppose that, you know, an evangelical who is not a Christian nationalist might be completely.
[01:31:55]  I didn't see you're going to, oh, you're going to hit me for this.
[01:31:58]  Apolitical.
[01:32:03]  Yeah, sorry.
[01:32:04]  Sorry.
[01:32:04]  Apologies.
[01:32:05]  I, again, this is just a weird thing that happens now where people are like, I don't want to say this to Jordan.
[01:32:14]  Hey, you know, it's very, look, I get what you're saying.
[01:32:19]  Like, you know, I'm not saying anything.
[01:32:23]  I'm genuinely interested in your book and how these definitions are functioning within the context of your book.
[01:32:29]  If that makes, does that make sense to you?
[01:32:32]  I'm not trying to put forth anything.
[01:32:33]  I'm interested in the connections between all of these different chapters because in the center of your book are like very delineated chapters with very specific kind of groupings.
[01:32:45]  Oh, yeah.
[01:32:46]  Interested in how these are the same and how they're different and what it is that makes them different that makes them specific.
[01:32:54]  Because if they are different and they are specific, then they each require a specific and different response.
[01:33:00]  Whereas if they're all the same, I get it.
[01:33:02]  Then they all deserve one fucking response, don't they?
[01:33:06]  What response is that?
[01:33:08]  I mean, that's my question to you.
[01:33:10]  If there's no political solution, my man, it's in your book.
[01:33:15]  There is.
[01:33:16]  Yeah.
[01:33:17]  So look, I mean, obviously these groups, there's a tremendous amount of overlap between these groups.
[01:33:22]  You know what I mean?
[01:33:23]  Totally.
[01:33:23]  I am trying, you know, I'm trying to sort of make it sort of make sense in a way.
[01:33:28]  Otherwise, it could just be like, you know, in 50 shots and words of stream of consciousness, you know.
[01:33:36]  There's what I always like to say, I suppose, and like this is going to be like a little bit wishy-washy, but there's a tremendous amount of overlap, but also there's like tremendous infighting.
[01:33:45]  The infighting happens on the level sometimes of like theory and ideology, ideology, but like more often on personalities, right?
[01:33:55]  Like you have people, you might have energy, yeah.
[01:33:58]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:33:59]  Have Christian nationalists, and some of them won't talk to other Christian nationalists because they, you know, snubbed them at a party or like whatever, you know, totally got involved in that with their husbands or wives or whatever.
[01:34:10]  You know, who are we to judge?
[01:34:14]  Hey, I'm sorry.
[01:34:17]  Take a look at you know, some of the stuff that's happening in Florida right now.
[01:34:20]  I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say any more than that.
[01:34:22]  Um, but look, I mean, yeah, you're good to demand definitions.
[01:34:28]  Like I say, like, I love definitions.
[01:34:31]  I think you can go quite far in trying to, you know, I think maybe like, isn't this a problem too?
[01:34:45]  Like, if I sort of say, you know, a Christian nationalist believes one through 10, and then Michael Flynn says, I don't believe in number nine.
[01:34:54]  Does that not make him a Christian nationalist?
[01:34:56]  I don't think so.
[01:34:56]  I think Mike Flynn is Christian nationalist.
[01:34:59]  And he might change a few things about what he believes tomorrow, but he probably will still be a Christian nationalist tomorrow.
[01:35:07]  He also has sworn, you know, an oath to QAnon in the past, right?
[01:35:12]  So he's also involved in that movement.
[01:35:15]  Would he sort of maybe think twice about that now?
[01:35:19]  Perhaps.
[01:35:19]  I don't know.
[01:35:20]  Love to talk to him.
[01:35:22]  He doesn't respond to my interview requests.
[01:35:25]  So look, I think we can be specific about some of these categories.
[01:35:29]  I think they are definitely interrelated.
[01:35:34]  There's a lot of detail in the weeds.
[01:35:37]  Absolutely.
[01:35:38]  I mean, that's kind of my that's where I'm getting.
[01:35:42]  I'm getting very specific because when you describe to me Michael Flynn, Christian nationalist, that's one through 10.
[01:35:54]  Michael Flynn says, I'm not number nine, so that means I'm not a Christian nationalist.
[01:35:58]  Would you, would you call him that in print?
[01:36:03]  Would I call him that in print?
[01:36:05]  Um, if I was doing a story on Christian nationalists, yeah, sure.
[01:36:09]  Okay, yeah.
[01:36:10]  Um, why?
[01:36:13]  Why he doesn't self-identify as a Christian nationalist?
[01:36:17]  Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sure.
[01:36:19]  So, like, um, no, that's a good point.
[01:36:23]  Like, like, sometimes people self-identify as something and they might not be that thing.
[01:36:28]  Sometimes people self-identify something, and we might agree with them.
[01:36:31]  I guess it's just like it's getting very meta, isn't it?
[01:36:35]  Uh, uh, why?
[01:36:37]  Because, um, I will talk to somebody who says, you know, hey, I've studied Christian nationalism for the last 10 years, and this is the definition.
[01:36:47]  I'll take that definition.
[01:36:49]  So, good guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
[01:36:52]  Um, and uh, by my judgment and by my sort of expert sources, I suppose, like he will fit that definition, okay.
[01:37:06]  Um, yeah, like it's what's I, I don't want to sort of sort of minimize it.
[01:37:13]  I don't want to minimize it.
[01:37:14]  I don't want to minimize it because do you know where I'm going to come with it after that?
[01:37:17]  Probably back to the Nazi thing, probably back to the Nazi thing.
[01:37:22]  I, I, look, I mean, if the Proud Boys is a good example of this, you know, they are a good example is an excellent example.
[01:37:32]  It's like, you know, they're always, they're always upset about the far right label, you know.
[01:37:41]  Um, Gavin McInnes and Jason Lee Van Dyke, we made a Proud Boys, uh, a film about the Proud Boys in 2018, 2018, 2019.
[01:37:51]  Before we'd even shot a second of footage, right?
[01:37:55]  They said, we're going to sue you.
[01:37:58]  Do not call us far right.
[01:37:59]  We are patriotic.
[01:38:01]  What is it?
[01:38:02]  Fraternal organization is what they used.
[01:38:05]  Whatever they want to call themselves.
[01:38:06]  And it's like, sorry, no.
[01:38:13]  For the reasons that I've just outlined, you know what I mean?
[01:38:16]  Like, you're a far-right fringe extremist organization.
[01:38:21]  Like, end story.
[01:38:23]  And maybe that's a very like clear example.
[01:38:26]  Other examples are not going to be so clear, which is why I'm hedging a bit about the thousands of people who are out there at January the 6th.
[01:38:35]  You know, every single one.
[01:38:37]  And then, you know, again, it's, it's the whole sort of you see the parallel in the conspiracy world where it's like, you know, if you are wrong about one thing, they only need to be right, like most of the time, right?
[01:38:49]  Like mainstream journalists, commentators, experts, or whatever, if they're wrong once, then in the eyes of those people, like they just like wail away at it.
[01:39:02]  You know what I mean?
[01:39:04]  I think it's, it's, it's more than just PR, though.
[01:39:06]  I think it's more just like, hey, let's have some sort of like dedication to the truth and, you know, objectivity in like a very broad sense, right?
[01:39:19]  And that's why, that's why I'm not going to be like, hey, all those people are Nazis, you know?
[01:39:28]  I'm not, I don't even, you know, I think that maybe some of those people didn't even know what they were up to, you know?
[01:39:36]  Okay.
[01:39:36]  I mean, some were drunk.
[01:39:38]  All right.
[01:39:38]  Tell me more about that.
[01:39:41]  Are you less responsible for your actions if you're drunk?
[01:39:45]  Yeah, it depends.
[01:39:46]  Depends legally.
[01:39:48]  I'm not a judge.
[01:39:51]  Are you less racist if you were drunk at the time?
[01:39:54]  Oh, yeah.
[01:39:54]  No.
[01:39:54]  I mean, like, no, I'm not saying that as an excuse, but I'm saying it's like, it's, it's, um, you know, it's like, you know, there's debate over language.
[01:40:08]  Okay, so let me, let me put it like this.
[01:40:09]  Yeah.
[01:40:11]  There's, were some people sort of like looking to overthrow the government?
[01:40:15]  Yes.
[01:40:17]  Were some people not possibly.
[01:40:23]  Was it a riot?
[01:40:24]  Definitely.
[01:40:25]  Right.
[01:40:26]  Okay.
[01:40:26]  This is all, you know, this is the alt-right thing.
[01:40:28]  It's like, yes, are some of you alt-right people, Nazis?
[01:40:31]  Yes.
[01:40:32]  Do all are all of you fascists?
[01:40:36]  Well, yeah, there's probably that, you know, we're going back to the number here.

=== Intent Matters (07:55) ===

[01:40:41]  I don't want to put a number on it, but say it's like 10%.
[01:40:46]  You know, I don't necessarily want to get into like semantics about how many of these people are, you know?
[01:40:53]  Sure.
[01:40:54]  Well, that's, that's an interesting, that's an interesting point because what you're talking about, though, is like intent.
[01:41:02]  Right?
[01:41:03]  Yeah.
[01:41:03]  Like what was in these people's hearts at the time?
[01:41:07]  Yeah.
[01:41:08]  Absolutely.
[01:41:09]  Now, I ask you this question.
[01:41:10]  It's very interesting.
[01:41:11]  Who fucking cares?
[01:41:13]  If the results are the same?
[01:41:16]  Yeah.
[01:41:18]  I mean, you know, do you need to be a fascist at January 6th if Trump wins and becomes dictator for life?
[01:41:27]  Yeah.
[01:41:27]  Do I care?
[01:41:29]  Do I care if you, in like in your heart of hearts, you were like, this is a good thing.
[01:41:33]  Do I care?
[01:41:34]  If it, yeah, if it works, then like, yeah, you, you were, you were wrapped up in that.
[01:41:39]  And, well, certainly like legally, like that's not always the case.
[01:41:45]  You know, it's like, you know, judges were not sort of saying.
[01:41:50]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:41:53]  That's what I'm so interested in your book is why is why I keep doing this.
[01:42:01]  Sorry, I don't quite get the question.
[01:42:06]  What I'm trying to say is in terms of the in terms of the differences between these things, in terms of Michael Flynn, I will call him a Christian nationalist, even if he tells you he's not, because I know his intent is bad.
[01:42:23]  I know I can discern it.
[01:42:29]  Why?
[01:42:29]  No, Why are you allowing me to do that?
[01:42:31]  It's not about, I don't, I don't like look into the, I don't like, look into the hearts of people and have some sort of, you know, aren't you?
[01:42:40]  Aren't you looking into the hearts of the J6 people only they're not fascists because they said so, because I believe them when they said so, because they wrote it down in court?
[01:42:51]  No, I suppose I've just, you know, I've seen, I've looked at a lot of the cases, right?
[01:43:01]  Okay.
[01:43:03]  And I've talked to a number of the people, right?
[01:43:13]  So that's where I come up with that.
[01:43:16]  You know what I mean?
[01:43:16]  Okay.
[01:43:17]  It's like, also, yes, you judge somebody by their actions, you know?
[01:43:23]  Are some people lying to each to me when they're talking about that?
[01:43:27]  Possibly, yeah.
[01:43:29]  Are they minimizing or are they changing their?
[01:43:32]  How do I know?
[01:43:33]  Yeah.
[01:43:35]  How do I know if somebody is evaluating?
[01:43:40]  It's look, it's very, very like specific.
[01:43:43]  You know what I mean?
[01:43:44]  Like, it's a case by case, it's a case by case basis.
[01:43:49]  You asked me this before, uh, before we came on about how I know.
[01:43:55]  Like, how do I know if the wife of Stuart Rhodes or Alex Jones is accurately describing what their role was in those organizations, like in Oath Keepers or InfoWars, right?
[01:44:12]  Yeah.
[01:44:12]  And there's okay, so look, it's it's pretty, I don't want to call it simple, but straightforward.
[01:44:20]  If there's specific sort of things, facts, like, hey, uh, you know, I met him on this date, blah, blah, blah.
[01:44:27]  All right, well, let's check that, you know, thing things that are checkable.
[01:44:32]  When people have memories about things, and this is true in a completely different context for January the 6th, you know?
[01:44:41]  So, you know, one January the 6th guy was like, you know what?
[01:44:46]  I just walked in there.
[01:44:47]  You know, I was just protesting.
[01:44:49]  I walked, I was in there for like 10 minutes.
[01:44:52]  Now I can check that he was in there for 10 minutes, right?
[01:44:56]  Is his stated intent?
[01:44:58]  Should we take that with a grain of salt?
[01:45:00]  Yeah, possibly.
[01:45:02]  We can set that against, you know, what does the judge in the case say, right?
[01:45:09]  And in that particular case, the judge says, well, you're sorry, you're going to prison.
[01:45:16]  You were part of a rebellion against the United States, right?
[01:45:21]  Obstructing an official proceeding.
[01:45:24]  That's that.
[01:45:28]  Like, you can't really sort of, you can't really put it, you can't really sort of pin down to that sort of degree of specificity.
[01:45:40]  Sure.
[01:45:40]  If you see what I mean, right?
[01:45:41]  You know, I mean, you're saying that the results could be the same.
[01:45:44]  And again, that's like a completely, in fact, that is like the actual danger, right?
[01:45:52]  It's not that a majority of the population is going to believe that voter fraud is just going to completely wipe out the election and then they're going to march on Washington and burn down the White House and then Donald Trump will be dictator for life or whatever, right?
[01:46:10]  Like that doesn't happen for, but that, but that does happen when a lot of people who are in the area just sort of go along with it.
[01:46:19]  You know?
[01:46:20]  Yeah.
[01:46:22]  So I think that that raises, actually, your question raises kind of like a reasonable that's the idea, though, isn't it?
[01:46:30]  Specter.
[01:46:31]  The reasonable people will just go along with it.
[01:46:33]  Is that when you tell me about Christian nationalists being different from evangelicals, right now, Christian nationalists are ascendant, which means evangelicals will fly right alongside them.
[01:46:44]  And you could say, yeah, nationalists are below the earth, wondering about how to get out from underneath their goblin holes.
[01:46:51]  Evangelicals are wonderful and lovely people.
[01:46:55]  I spoke to evangelicals.
[01:46:57]  I spoke to a number of them and they did not all have, you know, love for Donald Trump.
[01:47:10]  Right.
[01:47:10]  You know, and a lot of them, you know, not a lot of them, but like certainly several of them said, you know, what he has done in office is despicable.
[01:47:22]  And, you know, we hate January the 6th and whatnot.
[01:47:26]  Sure.
[01:47:29]  You know, right.
[01:47:33]  Now, this is what I'm kind of, I'm kind of interested in in regards to kind of this, this whole thing as a whole is the idea of what I, what I think is called a, or what I'm calling an accurate falsehood, something that is totally accurate and yet is 100% false.
[01:47:52]  Yeah.
[01:47:53]  So there's one thing that Kelly Jones said that is why this kind of sparked in my mind and why I haven't been able to let go little kind of definition kinds of things the whole time is Kelly said, we started at JFK assassination theories and then we wound up at January 6th or whatever it is.
[01:48:14]  Yeah.
[01:48:14]  And that is an accurate statement.
[01:48:17]  That is an accurate statement that could be said, right?

=== Surprising Censorship Comparisons (05:31) ===

[01:48:21]  And the way it is said, though, in your book is it tells me, ah, here is the story of innocence lost.
[01:48:30]  It is a narrative being created out of that by itself.
[01:48:33]  Right.
[01:48:34]  Okay.
[01:48:34]  They started at Waco to January 6th.
[01:48:39]  It is a lateral move.
[01:48:42]  Do you know what I'm saying?
[01:48:43]  Yeah.
[01:48:44]  It's not a fall from grace.
[01:48:46]  This is so to me, whenever I keep hearing people talk about the state of the United States, et cetera, et cetera, I 100% am delighted that people thought we were good.
[01:48:57]  But this is a lateral move from the birth of the country.
[01:49:05]  Wow.
[01:49:06]  You've gone back right.
[01:49:07]  Not just to Waco, but to, yes, the birth of the country.
[01:49:12]  I'm just saying what we're experiencing is not as earth-shatteringly new.
[01:49:20]  I apologize.
[01:49:21]  I mean, political violence is like, you know, cut through American history.
[01:49:27]  I don't think anybody can deny that, right?
[01:49:29]  Sure.
[01:49:32]  You know, leaving aside all the other violence that is not explicitly political, right?
[01:49:38]  It's a very violent country.
[01:49:39]  On the other hand, you know, I also do tend to take like a global view of these things, working for international news organization.
[01:49:50]  Used to, you know, not concentrate so much on the United States.
[01:49:53]  I went to all sorts of countries to make radio documentaries.
[01:49:57]  Yes.
[01:49:58]  And, you know, I like, I think that a lot of these people, like, particularly when, like, it particularly sort of gets me when you hear all these sort of like the massive amount of stuff about so-called censorship, right?
[01:50:18]  Which is basically just people getting like shadow banned on Twitter or whatever.
[01:50:21]  I'm not saying that's a good thing.
[01:50:22]  There's like arguments for and against or whatever.
[01:50:23]  It's debatable, but they have no idea what it's like in Uganda, you know, or like, you know, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where like, you know, oh, oh, yeah, you, you think that you're going to get thrown in jail for a tweet or whatever?
[01:50:37]  Like, let's go to some, you know, countries where let's go to India where they just like shut the internet down.
[01:50:45]  They're just like, hey, in this state, we're just going to, we're just going to shut the internet down today.
[01:50:49]  It's fine.
[01:50:50]  Okay, you, you want some censorship?
[01:50:52]  We can show you some censorship.
[01:50:53]  And again, I'm not sort of trying to like minimize things to say that they're not like, you know, they might not be doing something wrong or whatever, but you need to get some perspective, some of these people.
[01:51:06]  Right.
[01:51:06]  Well, I mean, I mean, that's, that's an interesting, that's an interesting point.
[01:51:10]  Is this a four-dimensional problem, if you will?
[01:51:14]  Is this a situation where you say, it's a good thing we are not like India insofar as our internet can be shut down.
[01:51:23]  But isn't that also saying, so we better fucking act like absolute lunatics to make sure we don't turn into India.
[01:51:30]  Otherwise, we're fucked.
[01:51:32]  You know, you know what I'm saying?
[01:51:33]  This, we, we live in a very strange country on its own terms, you know?
[01:51:40]  I like that is a good point.
[01:51:43]  You know, you can say, um, well, okay, like if you look about, if you, you know, you we're obviously being roiled about debates over anti-Semitism and the Middle Eastern conflict and, you know, anti-Muslim sentiment and whatever.
[01:52:02]  Um, I always find it kind of surprising how surprised Americans are when this stuff sort of comes home.
[01:52:10]  Let me put it like that.
[01:52:11]  You know?
[01:52:16]  They hate us for our freedoms.
[01:52:18]  Why would they, why would they, you know, we're not surprised it comes home.
[01:52:22]  It's because of our freedoms, man.
[01:52:25]  Yeah.
[01:52:26]  Well, I mean, I think, okay, so I, I, one of the more difficult stories I covered was the murder of a small boy.
[01:52:39]  Yeah.
[01:52:40]  Well, you, you're, you're in the neighborhood, so you, you must have remembered Plainfield, Illinois.
[01:52:46]  Yeah.
[01:52:46]  Um, I, October, I think it happened in October, um, you know, just a few weeks after Hamas and Israel kicked off.
[01:52:58]  So, um, you know, I went to the boy's funeral.
[01:53:03]  It was a completely gut-wrenching experience.
[01:53:07]  You know, of course, you know, there's thousands of people in Gaza who are being killed right now, right?
[01:53:13]  And this is just, you know, one child, right?
[01:53:20]  But there's kind of an assumption, I suppose, that, like, hey, you know, this should be like safe or neutral territory, or this kind of stuff shouldn't happen here.
[01:53:31]  Even from people, many of whom who were in that crowd in the funeral who were immigrants, you know, from Gaza or from the West Bank or whatever.

=== Judgments and Questions (03:08) ===

[01:53:43]  It's in some ways it's sort of like you think, well, that's hopeful.
[01:53:47]  And I'm really glad that you think that you found safety.
[01:53:50]  Obviously, you didn't because you have this guy who allegedly murdered this small child.
[01:54:05]  I mean, the one thing that, like, I guess, like, you know, not living here for so long teaches you is that like you got to take every country on its own terms.
[01:54:16]  You know, often when I look at American media, I don't really want to sort of give too many people a kicking here, but I just feel like some of the debates just sort of lack that perspective.
[01:54:30]  You know, hopefully we can add to that.
[01:54:33]  With this one?
[01:54:34]  Good God, no.
[01:54:36]  I do nothing.
[01:54:38]  Maybe I'm a subtraction only.
[01:54:42]  Maybe, yes, I know.
[01:54:44]  I'm still a little naive.
[01:54:46]  What can I say?
[01:54:48]  It's not naivete so much as like this, this is probably how things should work.
[01:54:56]  And it might be how they do.
[01:54:58]  It's possible.
[01:55:06]  Oh, I don't know.
[01:55:07]  I don't know what to tell you.
[01:55:09]  I'm really grateful for this.
[01:55:10]  This has been an absolute delight of a conversation.
[01:55:13]  I don't know if you agree, but I've enjoyed every moment of it.
[01:55:15]  Yeah, you know, look, I, before you, like I said, you sent me some, you sent me some questions and they were challenging questions.
[01:55:24]  And so, you know, I was ready.
[01:55:28]  I might not have seemed like I was ready, but I definitely, I definitely enjoyed it.
[01:55:33]  I definitely enjoyed it because, you know, often, like, let me put it like this.
[01:55:37]  We talk about good faith actors and bad faith actors, but it's like, you know, your questions come from a good faith perspective.
[01:55:44]  And hopefully, like, when I talk to people, like, it comes from a good faith perspective.
[01:55:48]  It's like, like, I actually want to sort of like find out about this stuff and I have to evaluate them and like make my own judgments or whatever.
[01:55:55]  You know, everybody will make their own judgments and sort of ask questions.
[01:56:02]  There we go.
[01:56:03]  And then you just, I always, I was trying to make clear again, I am very curious.
[01:56:09]  So all I'm doing is trying to get to what it is that you believe and think.
[01:56:12]  That's what I'm curious.
[01:56:14]  Yeah.
[01:56:14]  Anything if I if I throw in my old nonsense, I don't care.
[01:56:17]  I can throw that into the garbage.
[01:56:18]  I don't give a shit.
[01:56:19]  That's meaningless.
[01:56:21]  What's important is that you wrote a book and what matters about it.
[01:56:24]  And that book is Day of Reckoning: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy.

=== Huge Fan On Air (00:22) ===

[01:56:32]  It is out May 20th.
[01:56:35]  Mike Wendling, thank you so much for joining me.
[01:56:38]  Thank you for having me.
[01:56:39]  It's been very interesting.
[01:56:40]  It's been very interesting.
[01:56:42]  Wonderful.
[01:56:42]  Thank you very much.
[01:56:44]  Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.
[01:56:45]  Thanks for holding.
[01:56:48]  Hello, Alex.
[01:56:48]  I'm a first-time caller.
[01:56:49]  I'm a huge fan.
[01:56:50]  I love your work.