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Nov. 9, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show
24:54
Ep. 139 - Antifa is a Terrorist Group
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, should the media stop naming mass killers?
We'll discuss that.
Also, Antifa proves again that it is a terrorist organization.
Finally, I wrote an innocuous tweet and somebody said that my house should be burned down because of it.
What does that say about the state of our discourse in America?
Nothing good.
We'll talk about all that coming up.
All right, coming to you live from a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida.
You know, people ask me, All the time, why I do these shows in a, you know, I'm in a car one minute and then the next minute I'm in a, in my house, sometimes I'm in a hotel, sometimes I'm riding a camel through the, through the desert, you know, sometimes I'm on a boat with a goat, Sam I am, you know, people will say, well, why are you, why are you all over the place?
And I think it's a pretty simple answer to that question.
The answer is because I just, I, I just do it wherever I am.
I just do the show wherever I happen to be.
But it's just, it's interesting to me that some people get so upset about that.
They get very upset about the scenery.
Especially when I'm in the car, because I have been known on many occasions to do the show in my car.
And then just read the comments anytime, because there's always going to be people who are really angry about the fact that I'm... I can't watch this if you're in the car!
Get out of the car!
Why are you in the car?
Stop being in the car!
Why is he in the car?
What's with the car?
Over and over and over again.
And I just, look, just take it easy.
I'm not in your car, okay?
So that's, if I was in your car, I'd understand being upset.
I don't understand being upset about a guy in a car.
I just, I don't understand it.
But I'm not in a car today anyway.
At least I'm in a, you know, I'm inside.
I'm in a physical building.
All right.
A few things I want to talk about today.
First thing, The Daily Wire, as you as you may know, does not publish the names of scumbag mass killers anymore, like the one who committed that terrible attack in California yesterday.
And I think that's the right approach.
And I wish that's what I was thinking about today is I really wish Everyone in the media could we could kind of all be on the same page here.
And I know that so few of us can agree just in general in society.
Few of us can agree on anything and in the media, especially everything is fractured down ideological and political lines, of course, but maybe this is one thing that we we should be able to agree on, you know.
But obviously we aren't there yet.
So after the attack, California that killed 12 people, wounded many more.
The name and face and biographical details of the coward responsible for the act were plastered all over every news site and a lot of the TV channels.
His name was trending on social media, so on and so forth.
And I'm sure if you typed his name into Google, there would be hundreds of results already for it.
Now look, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm realistic and I know that we're never going to reach a point where literally every source of news or information on television or on the internet commits to making these people anonymous.
And, um, and I'm in, you know, the daily wire, we only changed this policy in the last year.
So there is an argument to be made for, for publishing the names and the faces.
I don't deny that.
And it is possible for a website or news channel to do that for reasons that are not simply pure exploitation.
And I'm not sure that complete anonymity would even be ideal anyway, even if it was possible to do, even if it were possible, theoretically, to get to a point where nobody is talking about, no one reports on the name, no one puts the picture out there.
Even if that were possible, that complete anonymity would not, which it isn't, but even if it were, I'd say that I don't think that would be ideal either, because the personal details of mass killers can be relevant and important to some people in some circumstances.
For instance, if you Read about the background of one of these people and then you say to yourself, wow, that sounds an awful lot like my teenage son or something, then I think it becomes important information.
There are other situations as well where it could be important.
The point is that information about these people can be important.
It can be useful.
It does help to know what sort of people we're dealing with.
It does help can help to honestly try to understand what led to these attacks, not to excuse them in the least, obviously, but just to figure out what we can be done in the future to prevent them.
But there is a difference between this information being made available.
And that's one thing.
Having the information available, of course, that makes sense.
But the difference between that and the breathless kind of coverage that you see about these people, the obsession with personal details, the tabloid-like approach that some websites and news organizations use, the information can be made accessible without putting a humongous picture of the guy's face on the front page, for instance.
So I think that's something that Everyone in the media needs to look at and decide where the balance is because I don't I don't think we've quite struck the balance.
There's no question.
I think the media.
This is one thing.
I think the media in general has gotten better at as we've all assessed this and realized.
We've realized that there's simply no question that these people are motivated.
In part, by a deep desire for attention, for infamy.
And many criminologists, psychologists have been warning about this repeatedly for a very long time.
These people, having failed to figure out how to live whole and fruitful lives, and they feel like their very identity is fading away into this pitiful fog of irrelevance and mediocrity, so then they try to assert their existence.
And claim some kind of meaning through an act of random destruction.
So the more attention we award people like that when they do it, the more we incentivize the next pathetic loser to follow in their footsteps.
I just think it's hard maybe for us to it's hard to overestimate and maybe it's hard for us to understand just how deeply these deranged lunatics crave to be noticed And noticed in horrible ways.
So I think if we focused on other things after these attacks, and maybe the next attention-starved madman would be slightly less inclined to forfeit his life just to become a faceless footnote on another very terrible chapter of American history.
And as I said, I do think this is one area where some people in media are making some progress, but I think we just have to keep looking at that and assessing that.
All right.
We're now hearing more details about the Antifa.
Someone told me it's pronounced Antifa.
I don't really care.
I'm calling it Antifa.
More details about the Antifa quote demonstration at Tucker Carlson's house in D.C.
last night.
There was a mob of about 20 left-wing thugs, and they came in onto Carlson's property when his wife was at home.
He also has four kids who apparently were not at home, thank God, but could have been for all these people's kids.
People probably were hoping that they would be home so they could terrify them.
And they started banging on his door, managed to crack it in the process.
They were shouting, we know where you sleep at night.
Somebody in the crowd was talking about bringing a pipe bomb.
They spray painted an anarchy symbol on his driveway.
A Twitter account that was associated with the group posted a message on Twitter while this was going on.
This is what the message said.
It said, racist scumbag, leave town.
Every night you spread fear into our homes, fear of the other, fear of us, fear of them.
Each night you tell us we are not safe.
Tonight, you're reminded that we have a voice.
Tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.
And then the group also apparently posted the names and addresses of Carlson's brother, And friend as well.
Let's just be completely clear about one thing.
This is not a protest.
This is not what a protest is.
This is not free speech.
These are not activists.
These are terrorists who are engaged in an organized campaign to harass and threaten their political enemies.
That's terrorism by definition.
They're being very upfront about it.
They're saying this is what they wanted.
They want to terrify.
They want people to feel unsafe.
And this, of course, is far from the first case that we've seen.
We've seen this all the time with this group.
We've seen them shut down entire city blocks, assault innocent bystanders, vandalize property like they did at Clarkson's house.
We've seen them swarm politicians, chase them out of restaurants like they did to this exact same group in D.C., did that to Ted Cruz.
We've seen them riot in their stupid little ski masks in the street carrying around bats and clubs and everything.
There's a reason why the Department of Homeland Security has classified these people domestic terrorists.
Because this, again, is politically motivated violence, incitement, and harassment.
That's what terrorism is.
But the problem is that they aren't treated like terrorists for some reason.
That usually they're allowed to carry on unimpeded.
It still boggles my mind that anyone can show up to a protest with a bat in a ski mask and not be immediately arrested.
That's not free speech.
Free speech does not require you to carry a bat and have a ski mask on.
And in fact, I would say if this is if whatever speech you're engaging in, if you aren't willing to do it with your actual face visible, then you shouldn't be doing it.
That's that's a really good sign that whatever kind of speech you're about to engage in clearly is not legitimate free speech, because any legitimate free speech, if you're going to do it out in public, you should be required to do it with your face visible.
But this is this is they're given this incredible leeway to just like do essentially do whatever they want.
And I don't understand it.
The cops did show up to Tucker Carlson's house last night after after his wife called them, but I haven't heard reports of mass arrests going on.
Was anybody arrested?
I'm actually not sure about that.
I certainly don't think they were all arrested.
If they were, then I apologize for getting it wrong, but my impression is that they were not all arrested, if anyone was arrested.
But how does that happen?
Why don't the police show up and just arrest everybody?
You've got this violent mob outside somebody's house, they've already gone on his private property, they've vandalized, they're shouting, making threats.
Arrest everybody there.
Or if you've got a mob in the street assaulting bystanders, you got them with masks, just arrest all of them.
Immediately.
What are we waiting for?
It seems like the strategy is, OK, let's wait until let's wait until they kill somebody.
And because they haven't killed anybody yet.
And so let's wait until they do that.
But I think, you know, I think maybe it'd be better to to head them off at the pass, because we see where this is headed.
Groups like this, you know, they either become more and more violent as time goes on.
Or they are suppressed and stamped out.
I'm not aware of any case where a group like Antifa, this kind of organization, this violence organization, did a course correction on their own and then trended back in the other direction towards nonviolence.
I'm not aware of that ever happening.
Maybe there is an example.
I'm not aware of it.
So what are we waiting for?
Why are these ski-masked terrorists allowed to get past square one?
It seems to me, especially if the Department of Homeland Security considers them to be domestic terrorists, as soon as they show up, arrest them, because this is a violent organization.
They have made it clear that's what their goal is to make people feel is to terrorize
and to threaten, which is not legitimate speech.
And these are, by the way, these are the very same people who argue that white supremacists
don't have free speech because to To spew white supremacist rhetoric is not legitimate speech, so you don't have a right to it.
Now, the problem is that they consider any speech they disagree with to be white supremacist.
So everybody who is not one of them is a white supremacist because these are ridiculous fools.
But even in the case of an actual white supremacist, their argument is, even if a white supremacist is standing up and speaking his mind peacefully, he's not directly threatening any individual person, they're saying that's not legitimate speech.
Well, we can argue about that, but let me tell you something.
If that's not legitimate speech, if you're telling me that person doesn't have a right to it, then you certainly don't
have a right to stand in the street and make explicit threats towards individuals.
One other thing I wanted to talk about related to all this, somewhat related, I mentioned yesterday a tweet that I sent
out which was Relatively innocuous, I thought.
I just made the point a couple days ago that before the election, I made the point that your daily life and my daily life is not really going to be affected, terribly affected, one way or another.
by the outcome of the election.
Elections are important.
They're not the most important thing.
Politicians are powerful, but they're not gods.
And that's the way our system was set up by the very brilliant men who established it.
It's set up that way.
So that even if you have a bunch of incompetent idiots and partisans in government, which we always have had to some extent or another, even in that case, you're still going to basically have freedom.
You can go about your life and live your life.
But as I said yesterday, that tweet provoked An extremely strong reaction from the left.
Thousands of outraged comments and messages poured in, including actual death threats.
Death threats because I said that elections are not as important as everyone thinks.
They were death threats because of that.
One guy said that if he catches me in a room alone, I'm not gonna be breathing anymore, which was his way of threatening to kill me.
Another said that he hopes that somebody burns down my house.
There were a lot of other messages in that vein.
And then there were others that weren't threatening, but were still pretty atrocious.
Someone, message me just recently and said that I'm a bad person and a bad father, and my daughter deserves a better father.
By the way, here's the exact tweet which they were responding to.
The tweet was, elections are important, but no matter who wins, 99.999% of your daily life and existence will be completely unaffected by the results today.
Just a bit of perspective.
Now, even if you disagree with that, why in the world would it make you mad enough To wish or threaten harm?
Why would your response to that benign, innocuous statement be, I hope someone burns down your house?
I use this just as a personal example because it's the most recent.
I could point to dozens of others, of course, but the point is that none of these examples are even necessary because you know how it goes, right?
You've seen this as well.
When people disagree on the internet, They threaten death, they call you a bad person, they call you a Nazi, etc, etc.
We're so used to this dynamic by now that we're so used to this dynamic, especially on the internet, that we think it doesn't count.
We say, well, that's just the internet.
People aren't like that in real life.
I'm told that all the time.
I put a screenshot of that tweet of someone saying they hope someone burns down my house yesterday.
And a few people told me that.
I said, well, it's just the Internet, though.
You know, that's not how people are in the real world.
You got to get off the Internet and go on to the real world.
Now, it is easy to come to that conclusion.
It's easy to come to this kind of dualist idea of there's the Internet, there are Internet people, and then regular people, right?
Because if you're like me, your everyday interactions with people are normal, and you get along fine with most people in real life, even though there is this animosity under the surface.
Apparently, it doesn't really come out most of the time.
This is one of the things that I've noticed throughout my career, is that I'll get the vilest, most disgusting emails from people and messages, but then when I'm out in public, for the most part, people are perfectly friendly.
Unless I'm protested or something like that.
But that's a group of people.
Right?
So groups can act that way.
People on the Internet act that way.
But when you've got individual people in their everyday life, most of them act perfectly fine.
So how do you account for that?
For all of the hate and the vitriol online and in groups?
But that doesn't carry over to everyday life and everyday interactions.
Well, it seems obvious enough.
These are cowards.
Cowardice plays a large part here.
People want the insulation and the protection of a computer screen or a mob.
There are other things at work here, too, obviously, but I think that's one of the main things.
What I'm saying is, that tells us something about what's going on inside people.
It tells us something about the capacity, the tendency of people.
Now, they might keep it contained, and they might funnel it through their keyboards.
But it's still there.
And that's why I never quite understand the people who say, well, yeah, all of that hate is just people online.
You got to get offline, go out into the real world.
Well, what?
Who do you think these people are who are typing this stuff online?
Where do you think it's coming from?
These are actual human beings saying this.
Some of them might be bots, but most of them are real people.
So what does that mean?
Well, that's not the real world.
Of course it's the real world.
It's not some kind of dream world.
You're not dreaming when you're online.
You're interacting with real, actual people.
In fact, I would, and I'm afraid to say this because I know what kind of statement it is about the state of society, but I actually would say that your interactions with people online are a better indication of how people actually are in the state of our culture than your interactions with people when you're in line at the grocery store or something.
It's a better, it gives you a better sense.
Because number one, it's a bigger sample size, right?
When you're online, you're interacting with a lot of different people at once, bigger sample size.
And also, The anonymity gives people the license they feel like to actually let their true selves show.
So, a guy who leaves a comment under a YouTube video saying, I hope your children get cancer.
And then he goes out and you bump into him.
You know, you walk by him when he's mowing his lawn or something and he waves friendly to you.
Well, that's not, that doesn't prove that he's not the guy who said that.
He's still the kind of guy who would say something like that.
He's just too afraid.
He's too much of a coward to say to somebody in person.
But that's still what's, so no, so you walk by somebody, you wave to him, you say, oh, well, that's, see, it's a decent guy.
People are decent.
No, that's not a decent guy.
If you become suddenly very indecent and vile and disgusting when you get online, then you are an indecent, vile, disgusting human.
Even if it never comes out except online.
The internet is just a medium for communication.
It doesn't relieve you of your moral guilt.
If you say and do horrible things online, that would be like if somebody wrote a horrible message to you on a piece of loose leaf and left it on your doorstep and you read it and you were upset and said, look at this terrible thing.
And I said, no, no, but that's not that's not the real world.
That's just paper.
Well, the paper didn't write it, did it?
A real person wrote that.
A real person was using this as a platform to let you know their true feelings inside.
So that does give you an insight into who that person is.
Not just who that person is when they're writing on paper, who that person is, period.
So this is, I just feel like this is one area of false comfort that we try to give ourselves where we say, Yeah, people, you know, you can't, you can't voice any opinion online without a bunch of rabid morons attacking you.
But that doesn't mean that the country is actually filled with rabid morons.
You know, because people are decent in real life.
Now, that is real life.
That is real life.
What is the actual percentage or what's the actual ratio of normal, decent people to rabid morons?
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
It probably is Lower than what it seems like when you're online, but it's definitely higher than what it seems like when you're going about your daily life.
Because people have learned to channel their rabid moron-ness through the internet.
Which you might say has certain advantages.
It's sort of like a cyber purge that goes on every day.
It's like the purge, but online every single day where people can just let out all of their horrible feelings and thoughts and become monsters online so that doesn't so that they can be, you know, they can get all that bad energy out.
But I think what we're seeing is it's starting to spill over more and more into the real world into our physical everyday life.
life.
So it's kind of a depressing thought, but I think that's kind of where we are.
Bye.
There is just a lot of animosity out there.
And not just animosity, but what I encounter is one of the main features, I guess, of the way that we have debates and discussions in America.
And yeah, it's mostly like this online, but again, that's just a reflection of how people actually are.
Is people are they're filled with hate animosity.
They're very hostile.
But on top of that there is this total unwillingness that a lot of people have a total unwillingness to actually listen.
To what somebody is saying.
And try to understand it and then engage with it.
I think what we are seeing now in our culture is the is among a lot of people a complete unwillingness to do that.
So it's just a breakdown of communication.
If you're not willing to listen to someone and actually try to understand what they're saying.
Hope of any of any actual communication happening of any fruitful communication happening anyway.
It seems like in most arguments now people are it seems like they're yelling at each other, but really they're yelling at the voices in their own head.
Because they've created this caricature of what they think the other side is like, and what they think the other person is going to say, and what they think the other person means when they say things.
And they are just superimposing that onto the statements that the other person actually makes.
So this tweet was just one example of that.
I don't know what I actually said was benign and innocuous.
But the people reading it, they obviously had it in their head.
They were hallucinating.
They had something else in mind.
I don't know what they read.
I don't know what they think that I wrote.
But they are taking their impressions of the kind of person I must be based on my politics, and they are creating a point of view I don't actually have and imposing that onto me, and then shouting at it.
That's what discussion is in America now.
Pray for our country, everybody.
I'll leave it there.
Talk to you tomorrow.
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