All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 16, 2017 - The Michael Knowles Show
58:27
Ep. 11 - "Unite The Right" Speaker James Allsup Talks Charlottesville

Michael talks with #UniteTheRight with scheduled speaker James Allsup. Plus, Josh Yasmeh, Aaron Bandler, and Amanda Presitigiacomo join the Panel of Deplorables to discuss Kim Jong Un backing down, Iceland's Down Syndrome genocide, and the most liked tweet in history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Today, we'll be speaking with Charlottesville Unite the Rights speaker and embattled Washington State College Republican President James Alsup, plus Josh Yasma, Aaron Bandler, and thank goodness Amanda Prestigiacomo join the panel of deplorables to discuss Kim Jong-un backing down, Iceland's Down Syndrome genocide, and the most liked tweet in history.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
We're also gonna talk, if we have time, I should have mentioned, why everybody seems to be attacking Lincoln these days.
There was some graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial last night, so we'll be talking about that a little bit later.
So, for our guest today, we're lucky to have James Alsup.
We had actually booked him James, do we have you?
Yes, I'm here and thank you for having me here.
James, thank you for coming.
Great, yeah, of course.
Yeah, no, Charlottesville was insane.
I think that it was one of those situations where, going into it, nobody really knew exactly what to expect.
People had different preconceived notions about what might happen, what they might see there, but once we got there on the ground, everything...
All of the plans kind of went out the window.
Well, this is what I want to talk to you about, because I also was a college Republican president.
I remember I was involved in right-wing activism back when I was a pretty young thing, such as you are.
And my question about this Unite the Right event is that it's called Unite the Right.
It was organized by a number of people, but there weren't any mainstream conservatives there.
There were no representatives from the mainstream of the conservative movement.
There were no Republican politicians that could be talked about.
There weren't even alt-light people like Cernovich.
Gavin McGinnis turned it down.
Based Stickman, one of my favorite characters from the internet.
They all turned it down.
So the only people that I see there are neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, white nationalists like Richard Spencer, white identity advocates like Identity Europa.
My straightforward question to you is, why would you go?
What were you thinking going?
Well, I was actually going to deliver a speech about nationalism as a concept, not ethnic nationalism, about nationalism.
I was going to speak about how nationalism is not a hateful philosophy, but it's a philosophy that is based around Love of, you know, your country and your fellow countrymen.
And I don't think it's quite fair to say that the only people there were neo-Nazis.
You know, I was on the ground there.
I think there were others.
I think there were white nationalists.
I think there was Richard Spencer was a leader of it.
I think there were neo-Confederates.
I think there were people like, I forget his name, the man who organized it, who said, screw Lincoln, I'm a Southern man.
I think there was a lot of Southern pride there, and there were a lot of And I agree with you.
I don't think it's fair to call them all Nazis.
But there were swastika flags there.
And what's worse than that, I didn't see anybody from the other side, any other people from the right wing.
So when I see Unite the Right, I think it couldn't even unite the alt-right.
It couldn't even bring the alt-right guys around.
And then my question to you is, knowing that, even I understand you want to give a speech about nationalism, knowing the optics of that, knowing that you're known by the friends that you keep, why appear with Richard Spencer and the KKK? Well, I don't think anybody knew the KKK was going to be there.
I certainly didn't when I went there.
And to be fair, I don't think the KKK really was there.
I mean, we're seeing this in the media, right?
The fake news media is trying to make this out to be some kind of KKK event.
But there were no hoods.
The pictures they were showing were from months ago.
That's all a fake news narrative.
But you would say that Richard Spencer is a white nationalist.
And you would say he was involved in leading this event.
Sure.
So I guess my question then is, why would you allow yourself to be associated with somebody like Richard Spencer?
I don't have to agree with everyone at an event, right?
By appearing at an event, I'm not in no way co-signing the opinions of everyone else who's there.
Of course, but did you agree with anyone at that event?
I understand if they have some kooks and then they have other points of view and it's a free speech event and it's a unite the right, I understand that that would be a different thing.
But did you agree with any of these people there?
It depends what topic you're talking about.
I mean, on something like economics, for example, Spencer and I have very different philosophies about a lot of that stuff.
And by the way, we would have heard what all of these opinions are.
We would have heard all these different opinions, and we could have an accurate representation and understand what these people actually believe in if the event had been allowed to continue.
Sure, I agree.
Clearly the police did very little.
Clearly Antifa were bullying everybody all around.
You know, it's in the fake news media, but occasionally they get something right.
This event has been called Unite the White.
Do you think that there was a white identity?
That was the major component of this event?
I can't speak for everyone else who was there.
I know that I was going to speak about nationalism.
Do you think the event was primarily a white identity event?
I understand you weren't there for that.
I'm not asking about your motives.
I'm just asking if you think that was what the event was.
I think that may have been an aspect of it, sure.
But at the same time, we have these events across the country.
We have Black Lives Matter events.
We have La Raza on hundreds of college campuses.
Black and Hispanic identity is seen as completely okay by the mainstream media and the left.
But do you think those are okay?
Do you think Black Lives Matter and La Raza and all those other ethnic identity groups are all right?
And if you don't think so, as I don't think so, then why is it any better when we do it?
When white people do it.
I don't condone violence.
But I'm not talking about violence.
I'm talking about this identity mob organizing that now we're seeing replicated in some ways on the alt-right.
Sure, but I think it's fair to say that you can differentiate between black identity movements like the Hotep movement, for example, and Black Lives Matter.
So I guess Black Lives Matter wasn't a great example.
I completely think that the violence perpetrated by people like Black Lives Matter or La Raza in California, that's despicable.
But I don't necessarily think there's something wrong.
Wrong with, you know, these identity movements because there is a, you know, one of the unfortunate truths when you look at societies that have a lot of political stratification like we do is that people will often align along racial lines.
I'm not saying that's good or bad.
I'm not saying that's a positive or negative.
You think we have to admit it and we have to accept it and are you saying that the right in this country basically has to appeal to white identity if it's going to have a future?
I'm saying, well, I wouldn't say it like that, but I think what you're seeing is, if you look at the data from Pew Research, you're seeing that the Republican Party is becoming more and more made up of white people, and you're seeing that actually minorities, African Americans and Hispanics, are becoming further left.
You're also seeing white Americans become further right.
And that trend has been happening since the 70s.
And as that trend continues, I think we will continue to see political realignment in that way.
I think it depends.
I grant you some of that.
I think it depends a little bit on how you define left and right from the 70s through the 80s and 90s and 2000s.
But I'm a little confused because the alt-right has, you know, embraced, I think it basically defined itself as you are defining it, leaning in toward white identity, appealing to white demographics.
And yet the alt-right is a very new movement as a political movement.
It's only about a year old in public.
And during Barack Obama's presidency, we did not see the Tea Party and other grassroots movements appealing to white demographics.
And yet we took over the whole country.
We won so much, we almost got sick and tired of winning.
We took a thousand seats in state legislatures.
We got 24 governorships out of 32 Republican state legislatures.
We took the Congress, the Senate, and the presidency.
It looks like we did pretty well without explicitly appealing to white identity.
Tell me I'm wrong.
And we got nothing done.
I mean, Obamacare is still in place.
We have no new protections on trade.
We didn't build the wall.
Republicans are great at getting in power, but they're awful at getting things done when they get in power.
It seems a little confusing to me.
It seems to me that you're saying that as an electoral strategy, in order to win elections, we need to appeal to white demographics.
But that doesn't seem true from the last eight years.
And then you'll say, the trouble is we get elected and we don't do anything.
And I totally grant you that.
I absolutely grant you that the Republicans in Congress have been squishy and basically useless.
But they seem to be different questions, right?
How do we win elections?
What do we appeal to?
And how do we operate once we're in office?
I think we can't be purely introspective when we talk about this question.
I think we also have to look at the Democratic Party.
And the Democrats have been going down this road where they're employing a lot of anti-white rhetoric and they're aligning themselves with people who are very, very anti-white with anti-white messaging.
And look, you know, for young white college guys like myself who see a lot of that messaging going on, we're told about white privilege and how white men are responsible for everything.
The reaction for some people is to fold and say, yes, you're right, I'm evil because I'm white.
But for a lot of people, it's to reject that narrative entirely and say, look, you know, I'm a white man.
I totally understand that.
It seems to me that for a lot of people your age, a little bit younger, even as old as I am, we were told, we were brought up in this milieu of feminism and being told that straight men are bad and white men are bad and this, that and the other thing.
My concern is that seems to have provoked a reactionary response that is feeding the worst elements of the identity politics that drove us crazy in the first place.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, no, I can understand that, but I think we also have to look at this as a defensive measure, right?
There is a perceived attack, and whether this is entirely legitimate or not, there is a perceived attack on white people in this country.
It's coming from the media, it's coming from government, it's coming through the education system with affirmative action, and there's a lot to be said for that.
It's in the culture you're saying.
Sure, absolutely.
Silicon Valley puts out these numbers and these diversity reports every year, you know, the diversity reports, which are essentially then bragging about how many fewer white people they hired.
And, you know, look, I don't think anybody should be subjected to that.
And I would say that for any race.
I don't think any race should have to be, you know, subjected to that kind of thing.
Now, what's interesting...
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Okay, I'll finish quickly.
I was going to say that every year, Republican politicians and Democrat politicians consistently agree on bringing in more H-1B visa applicants.
This has the effect of driving down wages for American labor.
That's really what I'm concerned mostly about, is an America First policy.
When it comes to our trade and our immigration.
And reducing trade and immigration.
I agree entirely, which brings me back to my first question.
Believe it or not, there are other groups that have opposed immigration and have advocated for lower legal and illegal immigration, who have advocated for protective trade tariffs since the 90s.
Two differing degrees of effect, obviously.
The Bush administration did not take immigration enforcement terribly seriously, tried to push amnesty, and so on.
That is the understatement of the year.
Don't you think there are other groups that you could align yourselves with that aren't, as those who showed up in Charlottesville, that aren't explicitly white identity, white nationalists like Richard Spencer?
I'll let you answer.
And then there is something I'd like you to respond to that I was perusing on your YouTube channel.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, no, certainly.
And I consider myself to be a paleoconservative.
Look, I got into politics back in 2012 with Ron Paul.
So I'm coming at policy from a very libertarian perspective.
Didn't we all?
Didn't we all?
When we were all young, didn't we?
Yeah.
Yeah, we were all naive and thinking about winning caucus strategies and stuff back in 2012.
It was a good time.
So I come at it from a libertarian perspective.
With a lot of this stuff.
And so I look, when I look at politicians, at people like Paul Nayland, who are excellent representations of what I believe America First policy should be.
I like people like Steve King as another fantastic example of someone who is putting these workers first.
I actually did an interview with Paul Nayland on my YouTube channel where we talked about a lot of this stuff.
We talked about how the uniparty, the Republicans and the Democrats, are both kind of screwing the American worker and making things worse for everyday Americans.
This is, you know, just to get back, I don't want to drop Ron Paul too quickly.
This is one of the reasons why I'm interested in your videos.
And I remember, you know, when I was, I was joking that at 17, every kid, every young kid on the right, reads Ayn Rand and is convinced he knows everything for about six months.
And then he kind of floats away from it, usually, move away from libertarianism, what have you.
And my worry with a lot of young people, and With you as well, James.
I worry that people are getting famous too young.
And they're espousing these views too young.
Views that might change and views that might be nuanced.
And I think you're playing with bad juju with these alright guys.
And to give an example, I will...
We have a clip of Richard Spencer from your channel, from a speech he gave at the Lincoln Memorial.
That's clip 001.
We aren't fighting for freedom.
We aren't fighting for the Constitution.
We aren't fighting to liberate some foreign people who will probably rise up against us five years after we leave.
We are fundamentally fighting for meaning in our lives.
We are fundamentally fighting to be part of something that is bigger than ourselves.
We are fighting to be part of a family together.
We are fighting to be strong again.
To be beautiful again.
We are fighting to be powerful again in a sea of weakness and hopelessness.
That is our battle.
I think he's absolutely honest and absolutely right in describing what he's doing.
This quest for meaning.
They don't really care about the Constitution.
There's that meme, but my Constitution.
My Constitution doesn't protect anything if you don't have voting demographics, is how it goes online.
The question here, I wonder, is what is that meaning?
What is that meaning that the alt-right is trying to embrace?
It seems to me it's just the white race.
It's the color of your skin and communities that have historically lived near each other.
Am I wrong?
Well, I think you'd have to ask Richard Spencer that question.
I can't defend, and I don't have any interest in defending everything Richard's ever said.
I only ask you because it was on your channel.
I only ask you because I know you were at the event, and you've spent more time with these guys than I have.
I think what they would say is that they are fighting to, I guess, continue the flame of Western civilization, right?
You know, people throughout Western civilization, throughout history, have built great things, built great empires, done great things.
You know, the foundations of modern philosophy and art and music All of this comes out of really, you know, mostly Western Europe.
And they're fighting to continue that cultural tradition.
And I don't see anything wrong with that.
I agree entirely.
And this is my essential question on that.
Because I think that's exactly right.
I am an evangelist for Western culture.
It's obviously the greatest civilization in the history of man.
Obviously, providentially guided.
What is Western culture?
Because I highly suspect that most of these people know very little about Western culture.
What is it?
What is the West?
What is Western culture?
Well, I would actually argue that one of the greatest manifestations of Western culture and values are the United States founding documents.
It is this idea that we can have a society that guarantees freedom and liberties to people.
But also inspires you to work towards bettering yourself.
You know, you're ultimately responsible for yourself.
And if you think back to the 1700s and late 1700s, we were a country, and we were founded as a country, with a very, very small state for a reason.
But we were also a country with very large, you know, church groups, right?
Communities, voluntary communities, voluntary associations.
We were founded as a country that would be free from the trappings of European royalty, I guess you could say.
Very religious while all of Europe is running away from Christianity.
Of course, absolutely.
And equalitarian, by the way.
All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which would traditionally be written as property.
If you look at the 1790 Naturalization Act, it's very interesting because they actually make it a required provision where people who emigrate from Europe renounce all of their former titles.
If you were a lord or some kind of royalty in Europe, you actually had to give that up.
And to become an American citizen, you had to accept that kind of abandonment of the former hierarchy.
The American values we were founded on are actually one of the greatest manifestations of Western civilization.
I agree.
So my question for all of these guys who have a stated goal, which is exactly the same as my stated goal, which is to promote Western culture and defend Western culture.
But as we've just said, the Western culture, it was expressed in these founding documents.
In the notion that we're endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights.
All of these guys were Christian.
Basically, the West, it seems to me, is a combination of Athens and Jerusalem that spread throughout Europe for 2,000 years.
It blossomed in the United States and elsewhere.
But Christianity is the central factor, right?
Culture comes from cult.
It's what we worship.
So are these guys Christian?
Are you Christian?
Yeah, I was raised Christian, right?
I consider myself to be very culturally Christian.
What do you mean by that?
Before we go on.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Continue.
Yeah, no, no, I'll expound on that.
Yeah, no, I believe that the Ten Commandments and the biblical teachings are a fantastic foundation and should be the bedrock of Western civilization and culture.
The Ten Commandments and the ideas expressed in the Bible should really be the guiding light for how we treat each other and how we manage our day-to-day dealings.
You sound mostly Christian to me, but where do you disagree with them?
Well, it's not that I disagree with them.
It's just that I don't participate in organized religion to the extent where I would be comfortable calling myself a Christian.
Do you believe in Jesus?
Sure.
I think everybody does, don't they?
You believe that Jesus is the only begotten son of God who came down to save all of mankind and was killed and then on the third day was literally resurrected to redeem man?
I'm not certain.
Again, I'm not up on my Christian theology, but I do believe in these teachings, and I think that it is absolutely imperative that we have respect for the Christian tradition.
I see your point.
The reason I want to interject a little bit here is I think there are two issues with what you've said.
I think the phrase culturally Christian, I've heard Richard Spencer describe himself that way too.
I think it is nonsense.
I think it is etymologically impossible.
I think it's semantic nonsense because the word culture comes from cult, right?
It's what we worship.
So to say one is culturally Christian would appear to me to say we believe in Christ, we believe in Christianity.
And yet, whenever anyone says that, there is a caveat that says, I like Christianity, I like the churches, I like the civilization that Christianity produced, but I just don't believe in the thing that produced it.
I don't believe in the thing that animated it.
And I don't know.
I see this a lot on the left.
I talk about this all the time.
Lefties want to drink decaf coffee.
You know, they want to get a university degree without a university education.
They always want the semblance of the thing, the appearance of the thing, but not the essence of the thing, not the thing that animates it.
To the second point of what you've talked about, you say you believe that the Ten Commandments ought to be the bedrock of civilization, the Christian foundations, there ought to be more churches for more civic society, civil society.
But why?
If it isn't true, if the Ten Commandments don't come from God, why should they be the foundation of society?
Or on the flip side, why have they worked?
I think that they have objectively produced the best societies in world history.
And so, even if you were to take the religious aspect out of it, you could say that these values, if you look at these values from a non-religious perspective, you could say these values have produced these great societies, and on that merit, they should be supported.
But why have they produced the great societies?
Because they're congruous and good.
I'm not sure.
Why are they good?
This is one argument for God, right?
As you keep saying, well, why is this better than that?
Why is this better than that?
And eventually, you get to the perfect good.
So my only question is, I think people bend themselves over backwards to try to make Christianity secular on the alt-right.
Not only do I not see if it's possible, I don't see why they would do it in the first place.
I don't really inherently disagree with you.
I think you're probably correct about a lot of this.
But here's the thing.
It's not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Perhaps I should think about it more.
I think so.
By the way, I don't mean to be patronizing, but I know I sound like I'm patronizing.
But I think there are a lot of young conservatives that you represent and that you can speak to and that you're a voice for.
And I think that We're good to go.
And it might behoove people to think about the conclusions, the logical extremes of their ideas before they make grand statements.
And the reason we talk about Christianity is it seems that the religion, the Christianity that created the West, the West that the alt-right alleges to defend, objects to a great many things that the alt-right is advocating and doing.
In particular, the racist aspect of it.
In particular, separating people categorically by race, advocating things like the ethnostate, so on and so forth.
It seems to me, I mean, I think you would be bored if I read all of the all of the scriptures about it.
You probably take my word for it.
But there are endless scriptures that talk about this.
This fundamental contradiction in the alt-right seems to me irreconcilable and shows the movement for what it is, which I think is half-witted.
Sort of like the New York Times editorial board, you know?
It's these guys who are a little bit smart, and so they convince the New York Times readers to believe their idiocy.
But I really think it's half-witted.
You can respond.
Yeah, sure.
So I guess the question then you have to ask is, were the founding fathers wrong?
Because, again, going back to 1790, and we're saying that, you know, these people were Christians.
I would have actually said they're theists, but if we want to say they're Christians, that's fine, too.
I think a great many of them were Christian.
I think some were deistic.
There was some plurality, but they all came from the Puritan stock that came over here on the Mayflower.
Yeah, no, exactly right.
So then you look at the 1790 Immigration Act, and the 1790 Immigration Act, I should say, No, I don't think so.
Surely you would agree that history requires context and that the society of 2017, excuse me, is quite different than the society of the late 18th century.
Of course, yeah.
No, of course.
So therefore laws would change, right?
Opinions would change.
Even people would change.
People that have been held in bondage for 200 years in the Americas, or who have come out of a civilization in Africa that is in very few ways similar to the civilization of the West, surely their position might be a little different in society, and the laws would reflect that after the slaves are emancipated, after Jim Crow is obliterated, and, you know...
We arrive at 2017 in a basically equalitarian place.
Right.
And I'm not arguing that we should return to this or anything.
I'm just saying that this is the situation and this is the system that the Founding Fathers set up, that these Christians set up.
And throughout the vast majority of the Christian history, these kind of policies were accepted and And we're put in place.
And so it's actually a relatively short time in the Christian history that we've believed in this idea of egalitarianism.
It seems to me that slavery, especially slavery as we're talking about in the United States, is an aberration in the history of the West.
It wasn't practiced, certainly not as it was in the United States for all of the West.
And by the way, that slavery only came about because we interacted with people for the first time on the West Coast of Africa in a trade relationship.
Well, that's not entirely true.
I mean, the Europeans held slaves for many years.
Slavery can trace its roots back to the Islamic world.
I'm not denying that there was slavery in the West.
The Greeks had helots and the Romans had slaves, but those institutions of slavery were quite different.
And they also were less racial, depending on which eras and which places we're talking about in the history of the West.
Sure, and they were also quite a bit more brutal.
And so it's important to remember that the American form of slavery was actually, and I'm sure this will be cut out of context somewhere, but the American form of slavery was actually one of the gentler forms of slavery that existed.
You know, the Egyptians would actually, you know, do horrible things to their slaves, their castration, etc., before they would ever take them into bondage.
And so, yeah, you know, history is replete with brutality and horrible things.
Parts of the American experience of slavery, different decades were different, but parts were quite brutal.
And other parts, relatively less brutal, say, than in the years right before the war.
I suppose that's right.
You know, one issue, because we've been kind of dancing around the culture and race, and it seems to me that any racial categorical differences, as they would matter for public policy, might just as easily be explained by culture as by genetics.
I know a lot of people on the alt-right say that race and culture are inextricably linked.
Would you agree with that?
I don't think that's...
No, I don't think that's entirely true.
I agree.
Also, I just see it flying around quite a lot.
And I think that's another example of some of the stupidities that the alt-right is promulgating.
The other is, do we need to worry about the thing that they can't stop talking about is racial differences in IQ as posited by Charles Murray?
Is there any implication for public policy by these handfuls of studies that have shown some correlation?
Well, I don't know if there's necessarily an implication for public policy, but I think it's an important thing to understand because it helps us understand why certain groups tend to, on average, I'll be very clear, tend to, on average, perform differently than others in society.
You look at why there are so many Asians, for example, that get into very top-tier schools, why Asians do so well in the SAT. Well, it's due to the fact that Asians tend to have an IQ closer to around 110.
You don't think it's cultural?
You don't think it's because those cultural groups put more of an emphasis on studying, more of an emphasis on schooling?
You don't think it's possibly explained by that?
What scientists would argue is that it's a mixture of both.
But what scientists would argue...
Well, I don't have any scientists, son, James.
I've only got you.
I'm kidding.
It drives me crazy, because this is a thing lefties do.
They always say, well, what I think scientists would argue is, and I think, I don't know.
You don't know any scientists.
I'm not a scientist myself.
Just a gentleman and a scholar.
But I've read studies, right?
Yeah, so go ahead.
You've read studies.
Yeah, no, and this is very well researched that many of the people who research this kind of thing professionally argue that intelligence is about 80% genetic and about 20% cultural.
And through the nurture, it's the nature versus nurture debate, right?
And so while certain things that are cultural can influence your ultimate intelligence, you know, if you are, you know, born to, you know, brain surgeon parents, but you're raised in a crack house, yeah, you're probably not going to be as smart As someone who is born to more average parents, who's raised by brain surgeons.
So yeah, of course, no one would ever deny that cultural and nurturing aspects can affect someone's ultimate intelligence, but we can't dismiss the genetic aspect of intelligence either.
So whether that is true or not, you don't think that there's any implication of that for public policy in the U.S.? No, I don't necessarily think so.
That's kind of a vague question.
Do you think that we ought to take into account the alleged racial differences in IQ or categorical differences in IQ when we make public policy at the federal level or at the local level?
I don't think we should because I think it would be unconstitutional.
I think there would be issues with discrimination.
One of the failings of social science like this is that it is not uniform.
There are bell curves.
When you understand the bell curve, you understand that there are a large population in the middle, but there are 12.5% of the population that's on that upper echelon and 12.5% that's on the lower echelon.
There is certainly crossover, right?
There are thousands, if not millions of people who are, you know, Hispanic and Black in this country who are smarter than Asian people.
And that's, of course, that's true.
No one's going to debate that.
Do you agree with...
I think you're stating it well, and absolutely.
I also think there shouldn't be any public policy drawn from these social scientific studies.
But do you agree with the definition...
You know, the alt-right is such a vague term.
Hillary Clinton gave me the name for my panel, the panel of deplorables.
When she lumped basically all right-wingers in with this term, it's been watered down to nothing.
Milo Yiannopoulos said he was in it, and then he isn't in it, and then yada, yada, yada.
Some of the thought leaders that people have seemed to agree on of the alt-right, that Milo put in his piece, for instance, Richard Spencer, Vox Dei, Jared Taylor, people who came up with the term, who promote the term, they've given definitions of the alt-right that are explicitly racial.
Do you agree that those are the definitions of the alt-right, or are Richard Spencer and all those guys wrong?
I think that...
Well, I haven't read their definition, so I'm not going to latch on to one of them specifically and agree to it, because I don't know what I'd be agreeing to.
Well, I can tell you what it is.
I'll read...
Vox Days says...
Well, he gives 14 points, which, for those who have been in the dregs of the internet for a while, know what the implication of that is.
But Vox De says the alt-right does not believe in general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or subspecies.
Interesting choice of words.
Every race, nation, people, and human subspecies has its own strengths and weaknesses and possesses the right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.
It's anti-equalitarian.
It believes identity leads culture, which leads politics.
Richard Spencer says it's essentially about racial identity.
He had that kind of flashy, creepy video on his old version of alt-right.com, which has changed.
Jared Taylor, head of American Renaissance, also popularized the term alt-right, says that it's explicitly about turning from conservatism to an alternative, which is where the alt comes from, which is essentially a white identity movement.
Would you agree with any of those, or do you think those guys get the alt-right wrong?
I don't know.
I'm not going to agree to any of those.
I haven't really thought about that to a level where I can agree to that.
But what I will say is that I think it's important to understand that race is a real concept.
We can't be afraid of talking about race, as conservatives have for so long.
I think the problem that conservatives have, a lot of conservatives, I won't speak for all of them, is that they've been so afraid to address race.
Differences in racial groups for the longest time, and it's led to this almost paralysis where they're too afraid to even address the topic.
And this is an area where the left has identified the problem, but they haven't identified the right solution.
They've identified that different racial groups tend to have different interests.
And that doesn't speak for every individual, of course, but there tend to be different interests for these different groups.
And so they've been able to exploit that for political gain.
You think of the Obama Coalition of the Ascendant, for example, is a fantastic example of that.
But what do you mean by different interests?
Because I do agree with you.
Conservatives are squeamish to talk about race because anytime they talk about taxes, they get called a racist.
Ann Coulter once told me that when a liberal calls you a racist, you know you've won the argument.
But there are legitimate racists out there as well.
I don't want to be called a racist by the left because I'm not a racist.
It's not because I'm afraid of the left or something like that.
So what are those racial interests of those groups?
You say we're afraid to talk about race.
What should we be talking about with regard to race?
So I'll give you examples of those different interests.
For example, if you look at how Hispanics tend to vote in this country, Pew Research has done fantastic research on all of this Hispanics will tend to vote because they come, when you think about this, they come generally from societies with large governments.
They have a culture that is, they bring over a tradition of large government when they immigrate here.
Hispanic immigrants will vote 70 to 30 for, they pull 70 to 30 for bigger government, right?
When you ask them if they support bigger or smaller government, they say bigger government.
What about my Cubans, my favorite people in the world, the Cubans who gave us excellent cigars and music and fled that bum Fidel Castro?
Those guys vote about 100 to 0 Republican, and they come from the biggest government island that you could imagine.
Doesn't that fly in the face of those numbers?
Well, and you can always find an anecdote to disprove a trend.
I don't think a country is an anecdote.
I think Cuba is a pretty large number of people.
They swing Florida.
Sure, and they vote, you know, 60-40 for Republicans.
But when we're talking about Hispanics broadly, that's not the trend that exists.
The trend, as research, and I'm not making this up.
You can look at Pew Research, who is cited multiple times on the Daily Wire.
You can look at Pew Research, and they will corroborate this, that Hispanics tend to go 70-30 for bigger government.
Sure, and I don't deny it, but it seems to me what you're talking about now is culture rather than race.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it seems to me that race is a biological, Are you suggesting that we need to talk about biological implications of different peoples or just cultural ones?
No.
Look, I don't want to get into the semantics of that.
All I'm telling you is that these are how these different immigrant groups vote.
By the way, people should remember that semantics means meaning.
So when people say, well, that's just semantics, they mean to say it's just trivial.
But this is a meaningful distinction.
That's the main distinction I'm asking about.
Are you only talking about culture?
Or are you talking about race?
Because everything you've said is cultural.
And I agree.
We need to teach people from other cultures to vote for Republicans.
I think that should be priority number one.
But...
Or close the borders and stop them from immigrating.
Sure, there are plenty of good arguments for lower immigration, for building the wall, absolutely.
But are there any arguments explicitly about race, about the physical aspect, the biological aspect, or are you just talking cultural?
Well, Michael, I don't know why they vote the way they do.
I don't know why they vote for bigger governments.
Do you think there might be a biological aspect to it?
No, you don't think so.
I haven't seen any research.
No, I don't know.
Look, I don't know.
I don't think so.
I'm willing to bet.
I'd bet my $400 from Shapiro that there's no biological impetus to vote for a Republican, other than maybe a little more testosterone.
Who knows?
Who knows?
That's interesting.
They have done studies on that yet.
So, alright, I think we've gone over this.
I've grilled you enough.
You've been taken around on this whole thing.
You had to step down, I think, as the head of the Washington State Republicans.
Is that right?
I was not forced to do anything.
I was actually planning on doing that for weeks before.
Yeah, no, I wanted to let them start the year fresh.
We're starting school in a week.
I wanted to let them start distraction-free.
Do you regret going to the event?
You've been hammered about this.
I think you've been rightly hammered about this, but I give a little grace to you because I understand that ideas can lead to ideas, and some of these guys are somewhat articulate, and it's easy to think the wrong things sometimes.
Do you regret going?
Do you wish you hadn't done it?
No, not at all.
I think that it's important to provide media coverage of events like this that is going to be representative of the actual event.
When you look at the reports that came out from...
Places like the New York Times or CNN or Fox News, they were latching on to one or two pictures of the guy with the swastika flag and saying, this is what the event is.
This is all the event is.
But James, all of the organizers were white identity advocates.
You'll grant that.
I'm not saying they're all Hitler youth.
I'm saying they all were advocating white identity.
There weren't organizers who came from any other branch of the right.
You will at least grant them that premise.
I don't think that's actually true.
That's not actually true.
There were people like Augustus Invictus who were there.
People like Augustus Invictus, people like Christopher Cantwell.
These people are libertarians.
You know, these people come from the libertarian...
Augustus Invictus is a former and current candidate for the Senate as a libertarian in Florida, right?
There was a wide swath of people from the right wing invited there.
But I would also have to put...
Well, there were a lot who were invited.
I grant you there were a lot who were invited.
But even people who have played around with the all-right, like Gavin McGinnis, said, no, thank you, I don't want a part of it.
But earlier on, you had granted to me that a major, a foundational part of this march and this rally was white identity.
Do you now disagree with that?
No.
No, I don't push back on that at all.
But I disagree with the inherent assertion that that's a bad thing.
Because again, we see these people all across the country organizing for black interests, organizing for black identity, for Hispanic identity, for Asian American identity.
I don't see anything wrong.
We criticize them for doing that, don't we?
Maybe you do, but I don't.
You don't, alright.
Maybe you can.
Look, I don't see anything wrong with finding a common cause with a community like that.
You think race as a category is a primary and important political grouping?
Do you think it's worth bringing more racial identity politics to the fore in America?
Well, that's speaking in some kind of grand strategy context.
I don't know about all that, but I do know that race is very important for a lot of people in this country.
It's very important for a lot of black people, very important for a lot of Hispanics, for a lot of Asians, and it historically really hasn't been that important for white people, but I think that is changing.
All of these anti-white attacks, these anti-white narratives going on in the media and in government, it's causing people to become conscious of their status as a white person, which is then leading them towards things like the alt-right.
I agree.
There has been a backlash.
The left started the fight on racial identity politics.
I think it's a very bad thing and ought to be opposed.
Perhaps you disagree with me on that.
But nevertheless, before we go...
In an ideal society, I'd agree with you.
I would agree with that ideal, right?
I would absolutely love for us to be able to drop identity politics and talk about the benefits of laissez-faire capitalism and the free market.
That would be fantastic.
But unfortunately, what we're seeing is that these people on the left are not going to take their foot off the gas.
They're going to keep attacking white people, keep blaming white people, keep demonizing white people in this country as the root of all evil.
And I think that's silly.
And I think Unfortunately, that's going to lead to more and more of this type of stratification.
So I would love for us to be able to go back six years or whatever and talk about the intricacies of healthcare policy or something.
But that's really not what is being pushed by the left.
We're not even talking about...
I don't think anybody ever wants to talk about the intricacies of healthcare policy or tax structures or whatever.
It's very boring.
It's always been a cultural battle.
There have always been cultural warriors.
And the primary motivator of that cultural war, especially on the right, has historically been the primary animator of the Western civilization that we say that we're going to defend.
Christianity.
It seems to me now that that is being substituted for white race.
And I think you would probably grant me that.
Do you think that's a good thing?
Do you think that's a necessary thing?
Do you think that that's something we should oppose for both practical and moral reasons, as I do?
Well, I think that...
I don't think they are necessarily different.
I think that when you look at something...
I think you've got to read your Bible, James.
I think I'm going to send you all those quotes that I compiled.
Well, hold on, hold on.
I would appreciate that, yeah.
But I think when you see people arguing for a lot of this stuff, they're arguing for Christian civilization, right?
They're arguing for a continuance of Western Christian civilization.
They just don't practice Christianity.
But they do want Christian civilization.
I agree with you.
Some of them do.
Point them out to me.
Like, I haven't taken a poll.
I didn't take a poll on everyone who's at Unite the Right on what their faith is.
I would be willing to bet, though, that the majority of them are probably Christians.
Well, we'd have to define our terms, but I would happily bet you my Shapiro check on that.
We'll have to see.
We'll have to see about that.
James, it has been very nice having you.
Thank you for coming on.
I appreciate it.
And we will talk to you again in the future, I'm sure.
Great.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right.
That was a long one.
We've got to introduce our panel of deplorables now.
We have, this is a brand new panel of deplorables.
We have, thank goodness, Amanda Prestigiacomo.
She is flanked by Josh Yasma and Aaron Bandler, both of the Daily Wire.
Guys, sorry to keep you so long.
Usually we have a fun covfefe show.
We have to talk about serious things.
Oh, I'm sorry, we also have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube because James and I kept yapping for so, so long.
So, thank you so much for everyone who is a subscriber.
If you're a subscriber, right now go over to dailywire.com and you'll be able to watch the rest, finally, this panel of deplorables.
And if you're not a subscriber, but subscribe, what are you waiting for?
Go over now, dailywire.com.
You'll get me, you'll get the Andrew Klavan Show, you get the Ben Shapiro Show.
And the Leftist Tears Tumblr.
You can keep your Leftist Tears hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
go there right now dailywire.com all right We don't have to talk about this Charlottesville thing anymore, do we?
We've talked about it so much.
Let's get rid of it.
We have to move on to much more important news than the neo-Nazis attacks in the United States.
We have to talk about Donald Trump's tweeting.
Donald Trump's wonderful tweeting.
Kim Jong-un has backed away from a threatened missile strike on Guam, which President Trump hailed as a very wise and well-reasoned decision.
The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable, with an exclamation point, in true Trumpian fashion.
Josh, you're a foreign policy guy.
President Trump has received a lot of criticism for his comments in the lead-up to this.
The fire and fury, the world has never seen anything like this.
But did they work?
It seems like they worked.
Well, can I just say that I don't think it's a good idea to be so cavalier about tweeting national security and foreign policy concerns Why?
It seems to have worked!
Well, the Trump hate it.
Looks like they're not going to bomb Guam.
Well, what hasn't been covered is the fact that we have been negotiating with the North Koreans through a backdoor diplomatic channel.
Sure.
U.S. envoy for North Korea, Joseph Yoon, he's been talking to his North Korean counterpart, and they've been kind of negotiating some sort of truce, or at least a temporary truce.
So that hasn't been covered yet.
That's much less interesting than the tweets.
I don't think CNN is going to make any money covering the back channels to Kim Jong Un.
Amanda, what do you think?
I don't think the tweeting hurt.
I think there was a lot of media hysteria over it.
This language is actually not unprecedented.
We saw Bill Clinton, Barack Obama say similar things.
Not on Twitter, but they did say similar things.
So it wasn't as insane as people were making it out to be.
I don't think it hurt anything with North Korea.
I don't think they were going to do anything in Guam anyhow.
They know the United States can obliterate them.
I think that was just...
You know, Kim Jong-un doing what he does, flexing his muscles.
He just doesn't want...
I don't think he has a lot of muscles.
No.
I think it's all dough.
Yeah.
He's a doughy young man.
I said this like a week and a half ago, but I didn't think they were going to...
They clearly aren't going to do anything, and we're...
Working the diplomatic way, but what Trump says on Twitter, I don't think it had that big of an effect.
I don't think it hurt us, but it wasn't as extreme as the media made it out to be.
Did Trump win here despite himself, or did he help himself, Aaron?
No.
Well, I think that he actually did kind of help himself because I think that tough language does help when it comes to dealing with rogue maniacs like Kim Jong-un, you know, because the biggest deterrent is strength.
You know, peace through strength, as Reagan always said.
And so I think that, I think that had Trump, like, not followed through on that threat, had North Korea actually, like, attacked Wampson like that, then it would have been bad.
But because he didn't have to and North Koreans backed off, it was like, okay, he talked tough and Kim Jong-un backed down.
It was sort of like a stance.
It looks like a Trump win, either way.
It does look like a Trump win in that regard, yeah.
We'll see in the future how that will play out with other rogue regimes like Iran and Syria and so forth, but for now it seems like a win, yeah.
But there's this trouble that now, so we were all looking forward, we were going to blast this guy off the face of the earth, right?
It was going to be a catastrophe because probably Seoul would have been destroyed, but now we've saved Seoul, we've saved Guam, we've saved Los Angeles and my little studio, but Kim is still in power.
So are we just kicking the can down the road, Josh?
Is there any hope for regime change?
Well, it's interesting you mention that.
General Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson actually penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explicitly saying that there will be no regime change.
They wanted to make that clear.
So I think the Kim regime has to be dealt with, but it's not a good idea to deal with it right now.
We have to deal with our immediate national security concerns and making sure that our partners in the Pacific are taken care of.
And that includes proponing missile defense in the region.
That includes making sure that our bases have the resources and the money they need to function properly.
But, you know, this has been the argument since the 90s, right?
Bill Clinton is the first president to deal with a real crisis in North Korea, and luckily for him, Kim Il-sung dies, and there are famines, and he gets to kick the can down the road.
President Bush obviously is dealing with other wars.
Meanwhile, North Korea shoots off missiles.
Mustn't this be dealt with at some point?
Well, Trump has been doing a good job at pressuring China, and I think that's the key to this whole thing.
In the weeks leading up to the unprecedented UN sanctions on North Korea, which sanctions up to a billion dollars worth of exports, coal, North Korea's primary exports, primarily to China, China didn't veto that resolution, which is huge.
And the reason they didn't veto that Is because the Trump administration pressured China and said, if you veto that bill, we are going to place sanctions on Chinese banks.
Chinese banks that may or may not be doing business with North Korea.
So the Chinese were scared and they backed down.
That's the key to this whole thing.
We have to work with the framework in the region.
We have to work with partners in the region to pressure North Korea.
I mean, simply...
That's not going to get anywhere.
You know, Kim is still going to be in power and it's going to lead to, you know, this standoff.
So you're advocating the art of the deal.
You're an art of the deal proponent.
So am I. We make the best deals, don't we folks?
Alright, enough about Kim.
We have to talk about, speaking of cartoonish evil, we have to talk about Iceland committing a genocide against Down Syndrome people.
This is from, I think, CBS. Quote, It's eradicating Down Syndrome births.
Amanda, has there ever been a more absurd euphemism for killing a lot of people?
Everything about abortion is cloaked in euphemism.
And this is particularly disgusting because they're framing this as a moral good.
That we're eradicating Down Syndrome.
No, you murdered all the pre-born babies who had Down Syndrome.
That's not a scientific advancement.
They didn't cure it.
Right, right.
This is, I mean, it's interesting, too, because we just had this disgusting, I'm not, excuse me, this is disgusting, these neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
Vile stuff.
Okay, you want to talk about Nazism?
What about this?
I mean, we're not going to say anything about eliminating human beings that you deem unworthy of life.
The eugenic arguments that come out of the left on a daily basis.
Can we have the same extreme outrage over this as we did for those 200 losers who, of course, there was a disgusting murder.
Again, I'm not downplaying that, but where is the outrage over this?
And again, this is happening in America, too.
This is not just some foreign thing that's going on.
This happens right in the United States every day.
Of course.
And you know, the left all the time, they make these quality of life arguments when they're talking about euthanasia or they're talking about a boring, mentally retarded babies or Down syndrome.
Is there any argument for quality of life?
Do their arguments hold any sway, or is it just sophistry?
It's just sophistry.
I mean, who are they to say what the best quality of life of somebody is?
I think the person that's decided that is the person themselves or their family members and so forth.
It's not for them to say.
I mean, it's only disgusting to say that somebody can't live a valedictus because they have Down syndrome or triploidy or something.
And to add on to your point, in the United States I think like 6% of abortions are done because they found out they have those conditions like triploidy, Down syndrome and so forth.
And it's disgusting and it is very reminiscent of the eugenics movement in the early 1920s of which Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a big supporter of and so forth.
I mean it really is evil.
It's like Nazism basically.
It's disgusting.
Well, with the advance of these public policies and then with the advance of designer babies, we're seeing new stories about that every day.
Will we eventually eliminate Down syndrome people?
Will we not see any more Down syndrome people?
So I think we have to draw a distinction between the abortion element and genetic engineering.
I don't think there's anything morally wrong with gene therapy, with correcting these issues that are going to put pressure on families.
I mean, we can't discount the financial cost, the emotional cost, all these things.
I mean, there is something to be said about the stressors involved with having children with genetic disorders.
Like Down syndrome, would it be preferable if we could correct it in the womb, or would it not be preferable?
Or does it depend on the family?
Some families want to get rid of their kid, and some...
Well, I think fundamentally parents have the right to know.
So I think arguments that are suggesting that, oh, if parents know, they'll get rid of the baby, that's 100% wrong.
They have a right to have a prenatal screening or something.
Yes, 100%.
They need to know what they're getting into.
And then, you know, the rest of the discussions are public policy discussions.
You know, I don't know about you, but we've been talking about a story right now that isn't a tweet for far too long, so I think we have to go back to tweets.
President Obama has now the most liked tweet in the history of tweeting.
This came in the wake of the terror attack in Charlottesville.
He quoted, no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his hair.
Religion.
And I think that's a Nelson Mandela quote, isn't it?
So, Amanda, is this because it's a poignant message, or God help us, is there nostalgia for Barack Obama?
Perhaps there's nostalgia for Barack Obama.
I don't see why.
I mean, it's interesting that he's the one coming out and saying this.
Under his administration, we saw endless identity politics.
He helped bolster and legitimize the Black Lives Matter movement.
He invited them to the White House.
All of this racial division was in part helped by President Barack Obama and his administration.
And now we're seeing this nasty reactionary stuff.
This is, of course, not 100% on President Obama, but it's just interesting to see that he pushes this identity politic, this implicit bias that we all apparently have, but then he tweets that.
So which is it?
Am I inherently biased and racist because I'm white, or am I not?
Am I taught that?
So it contradicts his message, and it's just interesting that he helped promote this backlash and racism on the left, And now he's coming to save everyone.
It's very interesting.
And it does raise a question, which is, is that quote correct?
Is it true that no one is born that way?
Is it that we only learn hatred?
Or is it the case that we're all born sort of brutish and we need to have it civilized out of us?
Josh, what do you think?
So we need to parse that out.
I don't want to parse anything.
You don't tell me what to parse on my show.
Go ahead.
You know, he's equating religion and race and ethnicity, which is, you know, fundamentally that doesn't make sense.
And that's what both the alt-right and the far-left do.
They're racializing Islam, Judaism, Christianity.
Great point, great point.
I think that religion has to be understood for what it is.
It's an idea.
It's an idea that's taught.
It's either true or untrue.
It's either beneficial or destructive.
100%.
And color of your skin, you're born white or you're born black or you're born brown.
Some of us are born white, but because we're Sicilian, we lay out in the sun and then we, just like Amanda and I, turn to the color of this brick wall.
You're glowing.
I'm glowing, thank you.
I think you're glowing.
But that's the exception, not the rule.
Right, right.
So religion is taught.
Race is not taught.
But ideas associated with race are taught.
But I think that there is...
There's something fundamentally simplistic about what he's saying, because I think human beings are predisposed to being attracted to people that look like them.
I think there's a reason that a child...
I'm not sure about that.
You and I have a similar skin tone, and I'm in no way attracted to you.
We have to move on, folks.
Yesterday, some idiot defaced the Lincoln Memorial with the words, F. Law...
And the left on Twitter thought it said, F Islam.
I don't know where they got that from.
But you know what does strike me right now is that everybody hates Abraham Lincoln.
The alt-right is attacking Abraham Lincoln.
The far left is attacking Abraham Lincoln.
These anarchists are attacking him.
Aaron, what is the deal?
Why are people being so mean to Honest Abe? - Leave Lincoln alone.
I think that it's, one more respect, I think there's a lot more neoconfederate kooks have always hated Lincoln.
Now they're kind of coming out of the woodworks now with the rise of the outright and so forth.
I think with the far left and the anarchists, I think they just want to tear, I think what all those groups have in common is they want to tear everything down.
And Lincoln's always been associated as, like, the one reviewed guy that everybody likes.
So it's almost, like, contrarian to, like, you know, say he's awful and stuff.
And obviously he's not.
I mean, he freed the slaves.
That's awesome.
And so he's always, like, number one or number two on a lot of, like, presidential lists in terms of, like, where he's ranked.
And it's probably...
Yeah, don't forget.
Obama would break himself number one.
But...
And Trump would rank himself number one, too, probably.
But, uh...
So, but that's why I think there's so much hate towards him right now.
That's interesting.
That might well be the case.
Amanda, any thoughts?
Yeah, no, I don't think, I kind of agree with Aaron, I think Republicans want ownership of President Lincoln.
I don't think there's hate, because I don't associate Republicans with the alt-right.
I think that's a different sexo.
I don't think Republicans are distancing themselves from Abraham Lincoln.
I see it on the far left, as Aaron was saying, and from the alt-right.
Sure.
Alright, speaking of the alt-right, well, I've got to say goodbye to my panel of deplorables.
We're not going to do a final thought today.
I'll just give a final sentence.
It seems to me that there are, for people like my guest, James Alsup, and for other people who are being attracted to some of these alt-righty ideas, these alt-righty personalities online, it seems subversive.
They seem quasi-articulate, quasi-intelligent, and it seems fun with all the memes and everything.
I would just say, look past the surface.
If you scratch these guys below the skin, you are not going to find any substance whatsoever.
They say they defend Western civilization.
They don't know a thing about Western culture.
They don't practice the thing that animates Western culture.
And if you, like the rest of us, do want to defend Western culture and do want to advance it, then read a book, man.
Read something about it.
Learn about your own culture and practice the thing that made it so important, those values that we see embodied in our United States Constitution.
And on that, I will see you all tomorrow on Michael Knowles' The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back tomorrow.
▲
Export Selection