Nick Fuentes and James Smith dissect his YouTube ban, arguing it stems from corporate censorship targeting the "Groyper Wars" to protect establishment figures like Charlie Kirk. They expose the hypocrisy of "fake libertarians" who support mass legal immigration while claiming to oppose open borders, contrasting this with Ron Paul's true principles. The hosts critique the oligopolistic nature of social media, advocating for Section 230 challenges and a unified free speech front against viewpoint discrimination that threatens the statist order. Ultimately, they conclude that replacing government-enforced norms with cultural shaming is essential to restore moral objectivity for younger generations facing economic displacement. [Automatically generated summary]
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Censorship and Deplatforming00:15:25
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome back to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
It is Wednesday one-on-ones, and I'm very happy to have returning to the program, Nick Fuentes.
What's going on, brother?
Not much.
Just got banned off of YouTube, and so I've been very busy taking care of that.
But it's good to be back.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, well, I'm happy to have you back.
And I was bummed to hear that your YouTube channel got banned.
It just, it sucks.
I know a lot of people over the last few years who I know, who I enjoy listening to, have been, you know, kicked off various different social media platforms, kicked off YouTube.
And it just, I, you know, I'll just start with that thought.
It just fucking sucks.
It's just like these people who have interesting points of view, who are having interesting conversations, who develop huge followings.
And obviously there's something about their message that a lot of people are enjoying and getting something out of.
And it seems like there's just so many boring people out there.
Like every, you know, like 90% of cable news, and I've done a lot of these cable news shows, 90% of them are just boring.
Forget whether you agree with their opinions or not.
They just suck.
It's like there's Tucker Carlson and I love Kennedy.
And then it's a bunch of boring nonsense, just the same thing said over and over again.
And it's just, it's a little disheartening when anybody who's got a different point of view or challenging the kind of status quo ends up suffering through this stuff.
So I was sorry to hear that.
And I hope America First will live on.
Yes.
Well, I appreciate your condolences.
The good news is my show is going to live on.
We're trying to find some alternative strategies to continue to stream the show independent from the platforms.
But I totally agree about the boring network television and all that.
And this is really something that's happening across YouTube, not even just with political streamers.
You know, if you look at, for example, the demonetization that's been happening over the past couple of years, it's not even just politics, but it's really like they're banning every kind of content.
I think they banned prank videos.
They're banning like anything that even talks about politics with the exception of, you know, right-wing people obviously get banned from the platform.
But I think even anybody that talks about politics gets demonetized.
It's become so stringent what they allow and particularly what they allow to monetize that I think the only thing that's really left on there is network television that has a YouTube channel.
So like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, that kind of thing, like arts and crafts, music videos from major musicians who already have their own platform.
And then it's stuff where people are just buying things.
It's like unboxing videos.
It's people that are reviewing like top 10 stupid nonsense from Amazon, you know?
So I think it's something, it's like this chilling effect that's happening across the board, which is why I think you're so right.
It's not, it's not even just so much a question of people you agree with or it's right-wing.
It's like anything interesting is now out the window and it's now all corporate advertiser friendly content.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I got to say, and I believe I kind of, without meaning to make a prediction, predicted this would happen to you on the show at some point.
It just seemed like the writing was on the wall with you.
Like since the last time you were on the show, you have, it's like blown up.
And there's been all the, I want to talk about a lot of this stuff, like the Groyper Wars and all of this different stuff.
And you really, it was almost like you could sense this energy where it was like, ah, Nick Fuentes is getting a little bit too popular and is a little bit too controversial.
It's really just a matter of time before they're going to be like, yeah, no, I don't think we're going to keep, you know, and they can always find an excuse.
The terms of service are so vague that basically, and there's like very, as I'm sure you're figuring out now, very little recourse.
There's no like kind of way to actually figure out, well, what did I do?
And can I argue that this didn't violate the terms?
And it just, it seemed like, particularly when the whole thing with you guys in Turning Point USA was going down, I was just like, I think, you know, you're pissing off some powerful people now.
And that usually, in my experience, ends in deplatforming.
Yeah.
Well, and that's exactly it.
I've been doing my show now for three years.
So it was actually just, I think, two weeks ago that I celebrated my third anniversary doing the show.
I think it was February 6th, 2017 was when it started.
And so I said this after I got deplatformed, you know, I've been doing this now for so long without any issues.
I've been doing this on YouTube for years, saying the same thing with the same message, the same style, the same language.
And as you said, it wasn't until I blew up during the Groyper Wars and started making problems for powerful people and really connected people.
Turning point USA, Charlie Kirk are very connected people, that all of a sudden they decided that what I've been putting up for years was no longer accepted.
It was no longer consistent or in conformity with the rules.
And yeah, about the terms of service, they don't even tell you what exactly you did wrong.
They hit you with just these blanket, broad, arbitrary rulings.
They said, like, for example, that one of my videos had hate speech.
And these are like two hour, two and a half hour shows where I've said all kinds of things and they never tell you exactly what was said that violates the rules.
And I'm sure that if they did that, you could show a Young Turks video or you could show a progressive video or something like that where they say something exactly the same or it's the same principle or whatever.
And there's no problems for them, but problems for us.
And so it really is a targeted political thing.
They are, as you said, they're just using these rules.
They find whatever pretext they need to justify a ban that had already been in the works for political reasons.
So, but I think that's the way to go.
At a certain point, a lot of people are telling me, you can't keep saying this on your show.
You can't keep challenging Turning Point USA.
And at a certain point, I had to make the decision, which was either I can continue to do my show on YouTube in, you know, conforming to their rules, but it wouldn't be getting the message across.
I could watch what I say.
I could self-censor and all that.
And it honestly wouldn't be worth doing the show if I was going to be consistent and stay on YouTube.
Or I could continue doing what I do, saying the same message, challenging the same people, and probably ultimately face censorship.
And I made a deliberate and conscious choice to choose the latter.
I said, you know, even if I get banned for this, well, it's not worth being around if I have to self-censor and neuter and castrate basically the message.
Yeah, it's unfortunate.
I feel like we all get put in this position where you probably can't do either one 100%.
You know, so maybe you'll pull it back a little bit.
You'll be like, okay, I won't say this one thing I kind of wanted to say just because I don't want to get kicked off this platform or whatever.
But then you hit a certain point where you're like, well, if I'm pulling it back all this way, then what's the point of me even doing this?
The whole point was that I wanted to be different than these other guys because I don't agree with them.
It's interesting to me because as we talked about the last time you were on the podcast, you're, you know, I'm like an ANCAP libertarian.
You're a paleoconservative nationalist.
And it just, it's reminiscent almost of the 90s when there was this paleo-libertarian, paleo-conservative kind of, you know, I don't know, whatever they call the strategy of them coming together.
And a big part of, I mean, obviously there were some issues that they agreed on, really important issues.
And what happened to all of them, or what had happened even before that, whether it was from National Review, the Weekly Standard, the Cato Institute, is that basically all the hardcore Rothbardian ANCAPs got kicked out.
And all the hardcore paleoconservatives got kicked out of the movement by the gatekeepers.
And so they would, you know, like the William F. Buckleys and all of these people would kind of get rid of the Birchers and the Rothbardians and all of them.
They were not allowed to be in the conversation.
And now we're here.
And it's kind of this new version of that, where now it's like, well, we've already long since, you know, receded from any mainstream publication.
But now it's getting your YouTube channel banned.
It's getting your Twitter account banned or whatever.
And it's just, it's kind of interesting.
It's trippy in a way to see it like all come like the same tactics.
And they were certainly successful the first time.
So it's concerning.
Yeah, it is weird to be kind of part of this intergenerational struggle to now be a part of basically like the same fabric as, and I don't know if this is, maybe this sounds silly, but part of the same fabric as somebody like Pat Buchanan or Peter Brimelow or Paul Godfrey going way back because we are, as you said, engaged in the same struggle with the same ideology against the same gatekeepers.
And I said this on my show on Friday, the day I got banned.
A lot of people are giving me sort of the generic anti-censorship takes, you know, people saying, well, this is Silicon Valley shutting down Trump supporters, something like that.
Well, this has been going on for five years.
And I understand that.
I agree probably with a lot of these takes in general.
But in my case in particular, and I made sure to stress this fact on Twitter and on my show, is that this is not a case of merely a Trump supporter being banned for expressing his views.
And it's left-wing people in Silicon Valley.
I mean, maybe that contributed to it.
We really have no way of knowing.
But this is maybe the most prominent, high-profile case of conservative ink now using these modern censorship tools, the deplatforming on YouTube, whatever, to enforce their sort of plantation, for lack of a better word.
You know, they're always saying the Democrat plantation to enforce their control over this conservative ink plantation in the same way that they did 30 years ago in the 1990s with all the different newspaper, or rather the magazines and publications, in the same way that they've been doing.
If you go back to the 1950s and 60s in the post-war era with the conservative battles that were happening, so as opposed to seeing it as just another generic, oh, you know, he was too right-wing and got banned.
It's really more like this is part of that much longer intergenerational struggle between these establishment conservatives that represent corporate interest in the military industrial complex and the real social conservatives, the real paleoconservatives.
So yeah, there are definitely parallels.
And it is, like you said, it's weird to kind of see that coming to fruition now in the modern day and how they're engaging with the same social media censorship, these very modern tactics.
But I have a feeling that this time it will be different because the medium is different.
You know, if you kick somebody off a magazine or you kick somebody off of a television show when it was the mass media that you're talking about in the 1990s or the 1950s, all the control of mass media was highly centralized back then.
And that's not to say that it isn't now, obviously, because YouTube is run by Google and Facebook is run by, you know, I mean, they're their own company and everything.
But with the internet, you obviously do have a lot more of a means of fighting back.
It's not, we don't have a lot of great options, but because the internet allows for information to be dispersed so widely and in such a decentralized fashion, you know, you could get banned on Twitter and then make another Twitter account.
And you could get banned again, but at least you're back on there.
And so I think perhaps modern communication technology, that mass media is more decentralized, not totally, but it's more decentralized than before.
I think it maybe gives us the best chance yet in this struggle to remain viable, to continue to challenge the system, even if they kick us out, they gatekeep us out of the movement.
No, no question about that.
I mean, it's still, it's not as effective because it's not as centralized as it used to be.
It's still far from perfect, but there's no question.
I mean, if you were coming around with your views 30 years ago, it would have been easy to just nip it in the bud and just wipe you off the map.
And you wouldn't have ever even gotten to the point you're at now and having a big following and stuff like that.
So no question about that.
And that is like a silver lining in this whole thing.
But you're right.
I think it's a really important point that you made, that it's not as simple as somebody who's supporting Donald Trump.
One of the things that I've really enjoyed about the political climate over the last few weeks has been the Democrat establishment, the corporate press establishment, freaking out about Bernie Sanders.
And I'm no fan of Bernie Sanders, but it's amazing.
I loved it.
My last episode, I was playing the clip of Chuck Todd calling the Bernie Bros brown shirts.
And it's just a great, it's a great moment to go to like these, these progressives.
It's like, see, you're Nazis too.
It's not just all of us.
Like as soon as you step out of line, you're a Nazi too.
It doesn't even matter if you're supporting the guy who has the best chance of being the first Jewish president in my lifetime.
You're still a Nazi because it's not just about supporting Trump or supporting, believe me, it's not just a Republican thing.
This wouldn't happen to a Mitt Romney supporter.
And even, look, Charlie Kirk is a Trump supporter, but he's not going to get kicked off any of these platforms.
There's something a little bit different than that.
And I think the main thing to me is being outside of the national security foreign policy consensus of questioning the warfare state, the relationship with Israel.
I mean, this is like the big thing.
This is one of the things that I loved about the whole Groyper Wars is that there is nothing, no matter how you feel about Israel, there is a, and I'm critical, but no matter how you feel, it's a great question to ask anyone.
It's almost like just like a, are you a complete fraud check?
Like you just ask somebody about Israel and then find out if we're allowed to have this conversation or you just retreat into your like, you're an anti-Semite or something like that.
You know, like these ridiculous, like, you know, and even someone like Charlie Kirk, who claims to be like libertarian leaning, you're like, okay, so aren't you against foreign aid then?
Like, wouldn't you not be for fighting wars on behalf of some other country in the Middle East that clearly has no interest for us?
Like, and right away you see like, this is the thing that you're not allowed to talk about.
And that's what Bernie Sanders is guilty of as well.
It's not so much so many of these other policies, the Democrat, Republican, left, right.
It's just like, are you inside the national security apparatus or outside of it?
Yeah, that's totally true.
And it's been that way for a long time, especially with Bernie Sanders, because if you're looking at Bernie Sanders' policies on healthcare or on immigration or whatever, he's really not so much out of step with any of the other major candidates or even a lot of people that are in Congress.
You know, we saw that immigration bill last week by Chewy Garcia, which says like decriminalize the border, jam up the courts, all this.
So across the board, he's really pretty consistent and in lockstep with even somebody like Elizabeth Warren, who's for Medicare for all.
The Tulsi Gabbard Phenomenon00:06:10
But where does he tend to differ?
As you said, it's the criticism of the military-industrial complex, the national security apparatus.
And that's about Israel.
So true as well.
Even with Charlie Kirk and what was so funny about the Groyper Wars is at first when we were doing these questions at his events, he would simply ignore that this was happening.
He would pretend he didn't know what was happening.
He didn't know who was the cause of it.
I think somebody asked him, will you debate Nick Fuentes?
And he said, oh, who is that?
Is that that troll?
Is that that troll online or something?
And after so many weeks of this campaign, as I like to call it, you know, it was a war, it was a battle.
After so many weeks that this was going on, eventually he could no longer play dumb and pretend to be ignorant.
He just had to address this phenomenon that was happening.
And he continues to address the Groyper War phenomenon.
Recently, he was on, or Ben Shapiro rather, was on his podcast talking about it.
And in talking about the Groyper Wars, he talks about how these alt-right trolls, and this is not true, but this is how he's choosing to brand them.
This is his tactic.
He talks about how these alt-right trolls are trolling his event and asking him questions about immigration.
And they're asking him questions about Christianity.
And he never, ever even mentions that we were asking about Israel.
And to me, that is just so fascinating that even when he talks about the Groyper Wars, even when he acknowledges who's coming and what questions they're asking, he'll talk about the questions about mass legal immigration.
We can have that conversation.
He'll talk about the questions about social conservatism and Christianity.
We can have that conversation and he'll offer up a pretty strong defense.
But we will not even mention the conversation that was happening about Israel.
He'll mention that people talked about dancing Israelis and that's evil and immoral.
He'll talk about how people are mentioning the USS Liberty and that's an evil conspiracy theory, but he will not bring up the foreign aid.
He will not bring up the foreign wars.
And that's just it.
You know, it's that old quote, which people wrongly attribute to Voltaire.
And it's so trite at this time.
But, you know, people say, to find who rules over you, simply find who you're not allowed to question.
I don't believe Voltaire said that, but it remains true.
You just simply find the issue that you're not allowed to talk about, the country or topic you're not allowed to criticize or ask questions about.
And that pretty much tells you who's funneling the money.
And that's true across the establishment, whether it's Nancy Pelosi trying to shut down Rashida Tslaib and who's the other one?
Elon Omar.
Right.
Or it's on the conservative side, Charlie Kirk and the others shutting down the real anti-war coalition on the right.
So it's totally true.
And that's Council on Foreign Relations, military-industrial complex.
That's all those assorted actors, which I'm sure they don't want the information getting out there.
Well, and another great example of what you were talking about or what we were talking about, there was Tulsi Gabbard, whose campaign unfortunately kind of didn't make the impact that a lot of us were hoping it might.
Not that I was ever going to enthusiastically vote for Tulsi Gabbard, but I was hoping there would be somebody who led with this issue that is, to me, the most important issue.
And she's more or less right on it.
She's not perfect, but she's pretty good on it.
And you see right away where it's just like, even though she is, you know, I mean, she's like you said about Bernie, with all the other issues, she's right with the Democrats.
It's just this one issue that she's different on, which theoretically should be something that lefties would love about her.
Like, aren't you the anti-imperialist, you know, people or supposedly?
It was such a weird dynamic, by the way, listening to just thinking about like some of these younger kind of SJW woke type lefties listening to Tulsi Gabbard.
And if they're watching the debates, and she's like, you know, we shouldn't be fighting these wars.
And I almost wonder to some of them.
I know they're just focused on, you know, intersectionality and shit like that now.
But you're like, doesn't that kind of sound right to you?
Like, doesn't it sound like you're supposed to be not for fighting wars for oil or whatever you guys used to say?
Like, I'm old enough that I remember the Bush years very well.
And they were big on that for a while.
But the interesting thing is then you'd see these articles written attacking Tulsi Gabbard.
And they'd be like, why is Tulsi Gabbard the darling of the right wing?
And you're like, well, what are you really saying there?
I mean, what else?
What would a right winger like about Tulsi Gabbard?
I mean, we don't like her Medicare for all plan.
We don't like any of this other bullshit.
There's one thing that we like about her, and that's that she's not as terrible as the other guys on the most important issue that, as you said, you're not allowed to talk about.
But they don't want to say, hey, looks like there's a lot of really anti-war people on the right wing, because that sounds kind of like sympathetic.
Like that would make you sound like, oh, they sound kind of like they're not that bad.
But it's anyway, the whole thing has been really, really fascinating to watch.
Yeah, well, it's so funny because the left is, they were born out of the anti-war movement.
You know, the modern left that comes from the 60s and 70s, that was literally their claim to fame was opposing Vietnam.
And, you know, even you think of somebody like Jane Fonda, who goes and is collaborating with the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese or whatever.
And you think about how they talk about Tulsi Gabbard with Assad.
And they say, oh, she's an assadist.
I remember Barry Weiss was on Joe Rogan and said, she's an assadist.
She used a very specific word, a laugh or something like that.
A toady.
A toady.
That's right.
That's right.
She's an assadist toady.
And this is like whoever, that line, that line of attack on Tulsi Gabbard for being friendly to Assad, you could see that coming from like a buttoned up suit from the Pentagon or from Halliburton or from like a major defense contractor.
You've got all these like hippie progressive social justice people parroting the same thing when 50 years ago, you know, and not to say, I mean, it was different, obviously, different context 50 years ago, but they would go over to these foreign despots or foreign dictators and cozy up right with them.
And now they're peddling the same propaganda that you would hear from the Bush administration.
And by the way, on the Bush administration, it's so funny to see that in the era of Trump, now George W. Bush has suddenly become okay.
You know, did you notice that?
Heshy Socks and Political Stickers00:02:46
That Michelle Obama hangs out with him and that was so adorable.
And George W. Bush at the inauguration is frowning in his rain poncho.
And that was so funny.
And all of a sudden, now that we have like somebody that actually challenges the establishment, George W. Bush, who was literally Hitler for eight years and the dumbest, worst guy ever, all of a sudden, now, by comparison, he's actually really smart and really wise.
And we miss him.
We need him back.
You know, we used to see those stickers during the Obama administration that said, you know, miss me yet.
And they didn't miss him during Obama.
But now, you know, now all of a sudden the liberals do miss him.
So, and then that says it all.
That says it all.
Yeah, I remember, I remember those.
I haven't thought about that in a long time, but I remember those stickers that like Republicans would put up, Miss Me Yet, because I hated Obama.
I mean, I would always be railing against him, but I remember always being like, no, not at all.
Like, nothing's made us miss George W. Bush.
But it really is funny.
And even from like this left-wing perspective, you can even try to get into it, like put your head in their space.
It's like, right, I know Donald Trump, like, I mean, sure, George W. Bush slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in third world countries, but I mean, Donald Trump's a dick on Twitter, you know?
So like, how exactly do you prioritize this?
And they, they do mental gymnastics to get it there.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Groyper Wars and that whole thing.
It was, I must say, it was fucking entertaining, man.
Like it was really fun to watch.
Even, of course, they'll mention that Israeli dancing comment, which was just hilarious.
Trump Hotel and Libertarian Points00:14:57
Like, I don't get how who could look at that and be like, that wasn't like even someone outraged was smirking a little bit when they first saw that question.
It was just hilarious.
Whoever did that, he delivered it beautifully.
But there was something interesting about that whole feud.
It really, to me, kind of was like a microcosm of the bigger picture of what's going on in the right wing in America, where you have kind of like somebody like Charlie Kirk, who to me represents this kind of like establishment attempt at grabbing the grassroots.
You know, like a guy who was a never Trumper, then as soon as Trump wins, becomes the always Trumper.
I mean, like, can't ever criticize Donald Trump.
Everything he does is perfect to the point that it's just infuriating.
I mean, things where like Obama would brag about the unemployment, you know, rate and he would go, but that doesn't account for real unemployment.
And then Trump brands, and then he's tweeting about Trump's unemployment rate all the time.
And you're like, oh, dude, you're so fucking phony, man.
Like, it's just so obvious.
And obviously he has a lot of big funders behind him.
And then there was someone like you who is really just completely grassroots, just built up this audience because people like what you're doing, you know, because you're a talented broadcaster, a funny guy, and the message that you're talking about is authentic and resonates with these people.
And them just getting like this guerrilla warfare swarming.
I mean, they just couldn't keep it away.
And it's like, you can't recognize who's who.
So they got to just take questions and then like hope you're not one of them.
And you know, you could just imagine everyone who asked a question, Charlie Kirk's in the back of his mind like, ah, shit, is this another Fuentes kid or is this someone else?
So was this like, was this something you organized or did this just kind of spontaneously happen?
It was totally spontaneous.
The first event was in Colorado.
I forget which school it was exactly, but it was the school in Colorado.
And the first time, like the first event where we had people asking questions was Colorado.
And it was two guys that just did it of their own accord.
It was this guy named Kay Alexander and then it was this Patrick Bateman guy.
Patrick Bateman looked like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
And these two guys just came up and one asked a question about Israel aid and one asked a question about legal immigration.
And people started to pass around the clips and Charlie Kirk's reaction, which was he was caught very off guard and didn't really have a great answer.
And so I remember covering it on my show that night and saying, this is like awesome.
We should do this tomorrow.
He was going the next day to, I think, Iowa or New Hampshire.
I think it might have been Iowa.
I said, let's go to Iowa and do the same thing.
We had four people ask questions at Iowa.
He was doing an event in New Hampshire the day after that.
I said, let's do it in New Hampshire.
Four after that.
And so over time, it just gradually snowballed into at a certain point, every event that he went to, every single question was one of our guys.
And it wasn't people that we were sending.
It wasn't like, you know, I guess in Charlie Kirk's mind, because he runs one of these like totally corporate, sterile, as you said, like of the establishment monstrosity type organizations.
I'm sure that in his mind, he assumed that only through very tight coordination could you achieve this level of political impact.
Only if I was in an office making phone calls with the staff and so on, could we be coordinating something like this?
But it was completely spontaneous.
It was me on my show.
I would cover the events.
And I guess people would watch the events.
They get excited.
And when Charlie Kirk came to their town, they said, okay, now it is my turn.
I've been called upon as my responsibility to fight in the Groyper War.
And they wrote their own questions.
I mean, we helped them a little bit.
We drafted some questions with, we had all kinds of people behind the scenes, people actually from D.C., from the administration, a lot of intellectual type people drafting questions for us.
And I would disseminate them with some of the other Groyper generals.
And we just passed them out and people would go and ask them.
And I agree, it was a microcosm of what's happening.
I think the best example of this is like Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., which if you've ever been there, Trump Hotel has become like the hangout in D.C. for Trump supporters.
And to me, going to D.C., and I've been there probably maybe two times a year, every year since Trump got elected.
I've been to Washington, D.C., and every time I end up in the Trump Hotel, seeing that the Trump Hotel gradually gets filled up with all the people we were fighting against during the election, all the same Republican establishment types, all the same like media grifters and so on, all rocking the MAGA hat, wearing suits and shaking hands and so on.
I remember somebody like R.C. Maxwell was like this creature of the RNC.
You may know him as Black Hannity, who was once a never Trumper.
People like him end up in the Trump Hotel with their MAGA hat.
They become the always Trumpers.
And to me, that was so indicative of where the movement has gone, that it's been completely co-opted, or at the very least, there's this effort to completely co-opt it, that all the people we were fighting against are now wearing the Trump hat.
And I see that.
And on some level, I say the Trump hat almost doesn't represent what it used to if the people that we hated back then, the people that represented the military-industrial complex and represented the free trade regime and all the rest, the mass migration, open borders agenda.
If they are now loving the hat and loving and defending everything Trump does, it's almost like, well, if you're defending it, that means it probably can't be very good.
And that's exactly what it is with Charlie Kirk.
You know, here's somebody who was never Trumper.
And I think he's a total opportunist, somebody that, you know, will say whatever it takes, whoever is in office, whoever is in charge of the party, he'll say what he needs to to rise through the ranks.
You know, that's my own take on his personal intentions.
And that he's wearing the MAGA hat shows that something is deeply wrong with what we've done.
And it's, to me, the greatest crisis in conservatism or in the right wing, maybe that's a better word for it, that we have this huge opportunity, a real grassroots movement that Donald Trump has started that is nationalistic.
It is against dwarves.
It's against immigration.
It's against free trade.
It's against China.
And it propelled him all the way to the White House.
This was the first one that like really succeeded as compared to the Tea Party or the libertarian moment.
Sorry, you know, you remember the libertarian moment or, you know, the Buchanans with the pitchforks and all that.
We finally made it all the way.
And what do we find?
That it's taken over by all these so-called swamp creatures.
And it seems like this is what happens every time.
So in my own way, during the Groyper Wars, we were trying to wrest control back for the grassroots.
And we'll see if it turns into anything.
We'll see if that has a chance.
But I think there are some very powerful forces in the White House that are working against us.
Well, yeah, I mean, there's no question about that.
And of course, Donald Trump has been, you know, I mean, I don't know.
I struggle sometimes with what even to think of Donald Trump.
But there is no question that he's had lots of forces working against him from the very beginning of his presidency.
And look, I mean, I'd be lying if I said it doesn't hurt a little bit when you mentioned the libertarian moment dying, but that is the reality.
But I guess I'm only consoled by the fact that you'll have to, you know, misery loves company and you'll have to join me there too, because you guys might have gotten your guy elected, but you really didn't get too much out of any of it.
And you're right.
I mean, look, I just want to make because there's an important distinction almost that needs to be made.
Like, I have no problem with people changing their minds.
I mean, the example that always jumps out to me was the late Walter Jones, who voted for the Iraq war, right?
He was the guy who like came up with the Freedom Fries thing.
He was like all on board George W. Bush, and he just realized he was wrong.
And he was like a devout Christian.
And really, I mean, this guy like repented.
Like, you know, he went to his deathbed.
He used to spend every day writing letters to the families of people who had lost soldiers and apologized that he sent their kids off to die.
And he voted against every subsequent military action after that.
Like you, it was just clear that this guy really changed his mind.
And I will say, to a lesser degree, but, and this is just, I guess, just speculating to some degree, but I buy it with Tucker Carlson.
Like, I buy that he changed his mind.
I think he doesn't.
And you can just see this in the way he covers the latest foreign policy developments.
And then there are guys like Sean Hannity where I'm like, eh, I think he just went where the wind was blowing.
I'm just convinced if a Republican wanted to start another war tomorrow, you would jump right on board with it.
And I feel the same way about Charlie Kirk.
It's like you can say you changed your mind and you're for this now, but I'm just not buying it.
And to me, a lot of people asked me when the Groyper War thing was going on.
People would be like, oh, like, what do you think about this?
And I'd always kind of err on your guys' side.
Like, I was like, I kind of love what they're doing.
It's great.
And then people would be like, but why?
Like, why are you?
Because really, I mean, I'm a libertarian.
If you listen to, there'd be lots of issues that you could take what Charlie Kirk's talking points are and what your talking points are and say, I probably agree more with him than I do with you.
But the essence of it was that I just believe that he is phony and that you like, I will take a real nationalist over a fake libertarian in this argument.
And particularly on the foreign policy stuff.
And I just like, you know, and let me say this.
This is where I have a little bit of a bone to pick with you because someone did send me a clip where they said that, where it was you talking about this.
And you said the real distinction is that, you know, you're a nationalist and Charlie Kirk is a libertarian.
And I got to say, I really, this is one thing that I think the Groupers get wrong.
I think a lot of the populist kind of new right people get wrong, where they'll say something like, oh, well, Charlie Kirk is a libertarian.
Oh, they'll say that libertarianism is dominant in the Republican establishment or any of these things.
None of this is true.
These guys are not libertarians.
Listen, Ron Paul was a libertarian.
Okay.
Murray Rothbard was a libertarian.
I don't care.
Whatever these guys say, they may give some lip service to it, but that's like, yeah, like John McCain really wanted to build a wall or you know what I mean?
Like George W. Bush really cared about small government.
These guys are big government corporatists.
And that's why he's defending Donald Trump as he's proposing a $5 trillion budget.
These guys don't care.
None of these Republicans care about libertarianism.
They will use libertarian talking points when it's to their advantage.
They'll use nationalist talking points when it's to their advantage, right?
Dick Cheney used to talk about American exceptionalism that he's not exactly your idea of a nationalist.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's not like this guy is not a real deal.
I believe in free markets and shackling the state.
Does that make sense?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I totally get what you're saying.
And yeah, to clear that up, I would agree with you that a real libertarian is somebody like Ron Paul.
And I used to be a libertarian in high school.
So I know all the meaningful distinctions when it comes to war, when it comes to even something like sound money, when it comes to all these things, you know, where you draw the line between somebody that is a small government, small government conservative, you know, somebody that will vote for the Iraq war, but is going to complain about, you know, whatever Obama's doing.
So believe me, I understand the distinction.
It's sort of like when I guess people would call like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders a communist.
You know, it's more just like.
It's using that as more political rhetoric than anything to draw these meaningful distinctions between somebody like Charlie Kirk, who even if he's a fake libertarian and he really is in favor of the corporate state and he's in favor of the military industrial complex, who he's pandering to and who he's speaking to are well-intentioned, well-meaning college kids who believe that liberty is the overriding most important thing.
And when Charlie Kirk talks about the free market, this is really the angle.
When Ben Shapiro talks about the free market, this is the angle.
Ben Shapiro says, we cannot have trade protection.
We cannot have tariffs because you have a right to buy and sell from China.
A corporation has the right to trade with China.
We have a right to have the free movement of goods and labor across borders.
And so what they're getting at is about this liberty ethic, this libertarian ethic.
And I think that is the pitch to younger people.
That is the pitch to Turning Point kids or whoever, because not, you know, Charlie Kirk notwithstanding, I've seen a lot of debates that have happened between Groupers and Turning Point members or Turning Point spokesmen or whatever.
And their ideology is, well, we can't put limits on some of this degenerate, deviant stuff we see in society because that violates rights.
We can't direct the economy in a way that will incentivize family creation because that is unfair to the individual or something like that.
So when I say that Charlie Kirk is a libertarian, it's not to say that Charlie Kirk and Ron Paul and Murray Rothvart are all, you know, reading Ludwig von Mises when they're all talking about the gold standard.
It's that what Charlie Kirk is pitching is his vision, what he holds up as the main virtue of conservatism is liberty or permissiveness or individualism.
And that, I think, is what you see in sort of the rank and file.
That's, I think, where people are eating it up.
And that is where you can draw a meaningful distinction between somebody that says the individual is the building block of society versus we who say the family is the building block of society.
Or somebody would say that freedom is the most important governing principle versus us who would say that order is the most important governing principle.
And so I think using that word is really more just to draw a meaningful distinction.
As a libertarian, I completely hear you.
I completely understand what you're saying.
So I will clarify, Charlie Kirk is not a libertarian, but I think that what he puts out there and I think where his followers see the appeal is in that sort of libertarian ethic.
Okay, so that makes sense to me.
And I do agree with you.
I mean, they certainly, you know, but I mean, I like, you know, it's, I joke about this on the show a lot, but it's like where they call the income tax voluntary compliance or they call the war in Iraq Operation Iraqi freedom.
Like it's like people are always, this is the frustration of true libertarians is it's like, just stop taking our fucking words.
Like leave them alone since you are the antithesis of everything that we stand for.
And for the record, I also will point out that Murray Rothbard, Hans Hermann Hoppe, Ron Paul, all of these guys were opposed to open borders, were opposed to NAFTA and all of these trade deals too.
So it's not as if like I am in theory a free trader.
Like I don't agree with the protectionist stuff.
I'm not an open borders guy.
But I do like, I just think that it's like, it's a lot of these kind of corporate Republican types who use libertarian rhetoric and then insist that you cannot violate, you know, like open borders or the latest, you know, like whatever, like NAFTA clause that they've come up with.
Gatekeeping Illegal Immigration00:14:59
Like you can't possibly violate that because that's a violation of liberty.
It's like these Lindsey Graham types who like, uh, he'll he'll be like, um, you know, when Obamacare is passed, he's like, Liberty died today.
And then he's like talking about like, he's like, if they want a lawyer, don't give them a lawyer.
Say, fuck you.
Get in there.
And you're like, wait, I thought Liberty died with Obamacare.
It's just, it's very convenient.
And they use libertarian talking points when, and like you said, to appeal to people because this does kind of tug at there is something in the American mindset that believes we're like just the average person who hasn't thought this through much believes like, yeah, we're kind of supposed to be for liberty.
And then they kind of play off of that.
But I accept your answer and what you're saying there.
But I do think there's an important distinction.
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Do you see like when you talk about one of the things that was really interesting is that Charlie Kirk, where, you know, aside from the Israel stuff, which it really is to me, the most interesting, as I said before, because you're just like, you just can't talk about that.
But the immigration stuff would get him really tripped up also, because of course he'll kind of rail against illegal immigration, but then be very in favor of expanding legal immigration, which to me is of all of the policy positions on the right, I've never found one more absurd than being against illegal immigration, but for expanding legal immigration.
So the same people, you just want to make them legal.
So you're against this happening, but then if someone just writes something on a piece of paper in Washington, the same exact thing can happen.
And you're like, oh, well, it's wonderful now.
And it was funny watching him get tripped up about that stuff.
Yeah, well, and that's exactly right.
It's just like this bill.
I was talking about this bill, HR 5038 last night, where it's like this program where all these legal immigrants working in agriculture, they like work in agriculture for eight years and then they get a pathway to citizenship.
And you could see somebody like Charlie Kirk or these big business types supporting that.
And that's exactly it.
The difference between illegal and legal immigration at this point is almost a meaningless distinction.
Citizenship versus legal resident versus illegal in most places, it is virtually a meaningless distinction.
If you go in a city like Los Angeles, what rights does a citizen have that an illegal immigrant does not have?
You know, it's like voting.
And maybe I'm not an expert on all the technical details, but I mean, I think that's really the only significant and meaningful difference.
And in some cases, not even that.
Yeah, not even that.
Right.
Right.
So, so there's almost like no distinction anymore.
And I think that's what these Republican people do, or these Charlie Kirk corporate types do, is they use this argument against illegal immigration so that they can pretend that they are immigration restrictionists or immigration patriots, because the vast majority of Republicans, and even I believe the majority of the country, has been opposed to expanding immigration and wanting to, at the very least, keep it at the same levels or lower it for decades.
I mean, this has been the consensus for like 30 years in spite of all the immigration we get.
So I think this is a very like cheap cop-out strategy where Charlie Kirk, and that's exactly what he did.
We'd say, you know, you're in favor of destroying the country through immigration.
And he would say, no, I'm not.
I've always been against border jumpers and line cutters and people that are coming here illegally.
And it's like, well, you didn't really answer the question.
That's one half, or, you know, depending on the numbers, the percentage of immigration that that accounts for.
That's one part of the immigration story.
What we're talking about is the mass legal immigration coming from Mexico or China or India or whatever.
And it has virtually the same effect.
And they'd say, oh, yeah, well, we're fine with that.
You know, we're fine with the RAISE Act.
We're fine with the Jared Kushner's immigration proposal that'll keep immigration the same.
So to me, I think it's really just like a bait and switch.
It's just like this cheap rhetorical gambit where they can say, oh, no, no, we're against these illegal immigration.
I'm going to be militantly against that.
But legal immigration, more.
We always need more, always need more cheap labor and we'll do anything, rewrite visas, rewrite the laws, whatever it is to accommodate whatever big business needs at any given moment.
So, so yeah, that's a really good point that you make.
It's so true.
Yeah, it's just, it was just, it was really like entertaining, if nothing else, just to watch him, you know, just have these points.
And of course, he always kind of had this air about him, which was one of the, like, actually, this probably is the most entertaining thing of all of it, was that Charlie Kirk just always had this kind of pompous air about him.
Like, I'm the one who's for free speech.
I'm willing to take on all of these arguments because my ideas are so sound that I can debate all of these points.
And it was really amazing to see that he just had no answers.
You know, he was very, very prepared to be attacked from the left, but he was not prepared at all to be attacked from the right.
And I got to say, I've seen the same thing with Ben Shapiro and some of these other guys.
Like they almost have, it's they've built up these defenses against the left, which, you know, I mean, okay, it's fairly easy, really.
It's like, oh, okay, well, I'm not for socialism because, you know, hey, the 20th century, genocide and starvation.
And also, I don't think there are 72 genders.
You know, it's like, it's fairly easy to like win these arguments.
But then as soon as they're attacked from the right, they seem to almost have nothing.
Like they haven't even thought through a line of defense, which is, I found, you know, entertaining, if nothing else.
Yeah, well, I remember.
I remember you talking about this during the Groyper Wars.
And by the way, I know I speak for all the Groypers and we really appreciated that you gave us a very fair take and were supportive and everything because, and that to me was very indicative of who is paid for and who isn't.
Because Charlie Kirk, after the whatever was the OSU.
By the way, Nick, I'm one check away from just slamming it.
One big check away from just going, he's a racist and I didn't like that cookie monster joke.
It was way out of line.
Anyway, big corporate America, throw me a check.
Let's get this sellout going.
Yeah, Sheldon Adelson Bloomberg writes the check and then these Grouper frogs, the croppers.
Yeah, well, it's true.
It was indicative of because Charlie Kirk did call up.
And I have it on, I know somebody who talked to these people.
I don't want to give too many specifics, but after the OSU event, Charlie Kirk was literally calling everybody on his Rolodex and saying, you know, you need to defend me.
You need to, you know, disavow these people.
You need to call them Nazis, whatever.
So we did appreciate the fair take.
And you said, and it was so true that the Shapiros and the Charlie Kirks for years have gotten, have basically gotten an easy job of going after the left.
And they have allowed their, I guess, debating muscles or their brain to atrophy because they have not actually had to think through what is the justification for their ideology from a right-wing perspective.
They thought of it as against the left, but they haven't justified it thinking through these attacks on the right versus us, where we've been fighting everybody forever.
You know, we were forged and born out of internet blood sports and fighting the left and fighting the right and everybody in between and so on.
It's when we go and ask these questions, it's like all the people that are writing these things and who've been a part of it.
I mean, we've been fighting our whole lives for our why our political ideology is right against emotional appeals, logical appeals, everything else.
And yeah, and they have no answers.
And this really speaks to, I think, the ink aspect of conservative ink.
I don't believe any of these people actually are really sincere political actors who spend their time reading political books and thinking about like, what is the nature of government?
What is the nature of man and his relationship with the state?
You know, what are we supposed to do here?
What they're not asking these big questions.
They're not rigorous intellectuals that are trying to fit.
And I don't know if I'd fall into that category either, but I'm a little bit more thoughtful than them.
I think these are people that they know that if you say these things, you will be able to write for the Washington Examiner.
If you say these things, you will be named as the Red Alert Politics 30 under 30.
You know, if you peddle the same and they hear it from the podcast people, they get their opinions from the thought leaders in the podcast sphere, whether that's Shapiro or Crowder, whoever.
And then they go up and they have themselves a fine career.
And it's really hardly any different than any other sales career.
You know, what they are doing at the end of the day is selling a brand.
They are selling an ideology.
You know, these are not people that are really in the proper sense political actors concerned with political affairs.
They're concerned with the brand of their think tank, their NGO, their organization, nonprofit, whatever.
And that's why when we came, and you could tell, and it's so true how pompous he is about this free speech stuff with that big head, he'll go around to these left-wing people and say, I'll debate anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Our ideologies are so sound.
You know, you don't want to debate us because your ideas are not true.
And then the minute he gets challenged from the right, oh, shut it down.
You can't ask questions.
You're sabotaging my event.
You're trolling me.
It's the alt-right.
It's a conspiracy and so on.
Change up the line.
Different lines.
You guys need to go to the back of the line, all that.
And it shows that they're fundamentally unprepared and they do not want to face that challenge from the right.
A challenge from the left, in my opinion, shores up their monopoly over the right-wing apparatus.
It is part of the controlled dialogue.
They want to have the left-wing person and the right-wing person, and they decide what's the left and we decide what's the right.
And that exchange is, that's the controlled conversation that they want to have.
Well, the minute somebody comes up and asks about war or somebody asks about justify foreign aid or justify your position on legal immigration, well, that's outside the bounds of the conversation that they want to have.
That also challenges their monopoly over the right-wing position in that conversation.
And so that must be branded as outside.
That is beyond the pale.
We have to gatekeep that out.
That is too controversial, too offensive.
You know, and it's funny that they are now unironically and overtly defending gatekeeping.
You know, their new line now, which Benny Johnson was on, Dave Rubin recently, he said, well, us conservatives are willing to set bounds.
The left won't set bounds on Elon Omar and Rashida Telai, but we are going to say this is conservatism and this is too extreme.
And what they're defending is gatekeeping.
And I don't understand how you can say we're the free speech wing of the free speech party.
We'll debate anybody and so on.
And then at the same time, overtly say, Yeah, we're gatekeeping.
We decide what's conservative.
We decide what questions can be asked and answered.
Yeah, it's been, you know, the funny thing.
It's it comes back to what you said at the beginning, where this has been, this is nothing new.
This has been their strategy for a long time, and it's been unbelievably effective.
It's just getting harder and harder to pull it off because now, even when they try to get people kicked off and banned, it's like there are these alternative voices that people can find online and at different podcasts and internet shows and stuff like that.
But it really is.
I remember saying this that I thought it even works on me, like to some degree.
I mean, and I'm fairly aware of this stuff.
But when you have this kind of like some right-wing, you know, some Republican or something like that, who you don't even really like that much, but they're just kind of seem like the only option against the insane left.
It's kind of like, well, I mean, I guess that's where I'm going to go.
I remember, like, I will not support Donald Trump in 2020.
It's just been too much for me.
Like, for my, I'm a pure libertarian.
It's just between all of the wars being continued, the biggest military budgets ever, the biggest federal budgets ever, just way too many things that I'm like, I just can't vote for this guy.
I'll like abstain.
Or there's this guy, Jacob Hornberger, who I like on the Libertarian Party.
If he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him.
If it's a Gary Johnson type, I won't even waste my time in that.
But then I remember hearing Donald Trump in this campaign speech, and he goes, Listen, you have no choice.
It's an alliance between the deep state, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and the Democrats, or me.
And I was like, God damn, that's the best pitch I've ever heard on just having to vote for Donald Trump again.
And it's almost like that dynamic that they all count on.
Like they're like, well, if you're not allowed to hear from these other voices, and I'm the only other game in town, I'm better than the, you know, the transgender 72 genders activist, right?
So why don't you go with me?
And it really is.
It's really goddamn effective.
Yeah, oh, absolutely.
And that is what they have been relying on and counting on for years because I don't think anybody really thinks that Charlie Kirk's brand, if they had it laid out in like a buffet, and it's you can have, you know, paleo-conservative, you can have libertarian, you can have, you know, whatever, whatever brand of conservatism that you want versus Charlie Kirk's brand of corporate.
It's just like a hodgepodge of whatever the donors that day wanted him to put out there that they told him at the Wednesday meetings.
I don't think anybody would say, oh, I'm with Charlie Kirk's really militant, vociferous defense of like China abusing us on trade or whatever it is, you know, whatever the item is of the day.
And I think because, as you said, he's the only game in town that that is where people naturally gravitate.
And that's why we have been challenging him.
So many people say a lot of these like mainstream like boomers, you could tell, who just kind of like wandered and stumbled into this.
Like it's so funny that we and Charlie Kirk, like this blood feud between paleo cons and the establishment has been going on for decades.
Challenging Charlie Kirk on Campus00:02:38
And we are engaged in this intergenerational struggle and it's vicious and we all know the stakes and we know the score.
And you see these boomers with like the three star emojis in their handle on Twitter, you know, and they've got hashtag where we go one, we go all the dragon emoji for dragon energy.
They will stumble into this and say, well, why are you attacking the president?
Why are you attacking Charlie?
Why are you attacking other Republicans and not the loony left or something?
And those people don't understand that we have to wage a full offensive, a full assault on Turning Point in particular, on Charlie Kirk in particular, because on the college campus, they are literally the only game in town.
And if you've seen even the other college campus conservative organizations hate Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Liberty, Young Americans for Freedom, College Republicans.
There have been internal memos that have been released over the past years, not even about ideology, but saying that what Turning Point does in terms of their tactics is so shady, is so unethical that they'll lie about their chapter numbers, lie about how many people are in their club.
They will go in and like poach the members from other clubs and so on.
And, you know, whatever.
You can feel how you want to feel about that.
But on the college campus, Turning Point has the most muscle out of any conservative group.
They are sort of the standard bearer of what conservatism is for young people and young professionals that are in college.
And that's why it's important for us to show up to these things and go to them and them being the ones that sit on the throne of conservatism and challenge them and say, this is wrong.
You're not conservative.
You're not right wing.
Because unless and until that is done, they will be the ones that are sucking all the oxygen and all the donor money and all the votes and all the personnel, the human capital out of the room because they're the ones that are there and they've got the big flashy events and demonstrations and promos and they've got, you know, their social media game is tight and everything.
So that's why, in my opinion, it's almost better to go after them than it is the left even.
As much as the left is our enemy, we have to become the right to take on the left.
No, so I agree with you on that.
And I think that there's, you know, it's like a lot of people have, I mean, at this point, I mean, I'm sure there's some who haven't, but at this point, most people have probably heard woke social justice warriorism debunked.
You know what I mean?
Like they've heard someone take that on.
The question is kind of like, what is going to be, you know, like what's going to be battling against that and who's going to own that space?
And then ultimately, obviously the goal after that is to take on the left, but you have to decide who's going to take on the left first before you can kind of win that fight.
Generational Divide in Culture Wars00:02:05
And that's what so many, and that's what the whole, you know, state of American politics has always been is it's kind of like, well, you might win this election, but who actually won the election?
Like who actually gets in there?
And if you didn't make sure that it was actually what you were fighting for that won, then it's basically for nothing.
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Nihilism and Online Censorship00:15:13
All right, let's get back into the show.
I thought it was interesting that you brought up the boomer stuff.
And there definitely is a big generational divide.
And I know this is something that I've heard you talk a lot about on your show.
And it's something that I got to say, like there's as much as it's almost like maybe I'm kind of in the middle of where I see a generational divide between like me and a boomer.
I also think there's a generational divide between me and you.
Like I don't, I don't get everything about America first, which is appropriate, by the way.
Like that's how it's supposed to be.
Like I'm a father who's pushing 40.
Well, I mean, I'm 36, but I'm a father who's, you know, in his mid-30s.
I'm not supposed to get everything that somebody in their early 20s is talking about.
Like, that's the natural order of things.
I'm supposed to go, wait, what?
What are these kids doing now?
But then it is interesting.
And I know you talk about this.
And this is one of the reasons I think why you've gotten so popular is that you attract a lot of the Zoomers and a lot of people who I think a lot of times when I talk to baby boomers, it's like they just don't understand what the kids today are growing up in, like what they've come out of.
The baby boomers were this interesting generation that almost like they started their childhoods with like an intact nuclear family, a very Christian America, a very, you know, like, okay, I mean, it wasn't, I mean, it was biracial.
It wasn't multiracial.
It was 90% white, 10% black, but that was the country.
And they were probably around for Jim Crow days.
So it was basically where you were was kind of like 100%, you know, racially homogenous.
The ethnic difference or the tribal differences were like Catholics versus Protestants or something like that.
But it wasn't like, you know, the world we're growing up in today.
And it's really, it's interesting that I think you speak to a generation that was really raised on like moral relativism, or maybe not even moral relativism, but just like nihilism, maybe a better, a better, a more accurate description.
And it does seem like that's almost an area that very few people in that generation understand.
Like they, so they're almost like, I don't even get it.
I don't get these dark jokes and these weird things.
Like I don't understand.
Why would you be making this cookie monster joke or this thing?
You know what I mean?
Like it's hard for them.
Whereas I can understand it a little bit more because my generation was also raised on like nihilism and just this kind of like absence of anything, absence of any structure, of any belief of like, you know, God, country, you know, chivalry.
Like none of these things were there.
It's just kind of like, you know, the meaning of life is have fun.
And that's kind of what I was taught and believed basically up until I had my daughter.
And then it was like, oh, shit, there's like a purpose to this whole thing.
There's a little bit more.
And I actually care about something other than myself more than myself.
And this is anyway, this is where I will admit that I think, and I've been saying this for a few years now, where I think libertarians really need to learn their cultural lesson.
Now, I don't want to see the government involved in this part.
I don't believe in the state regulating culture.
Me and you might disagree on some of that stuff.
But I do think that it's like, you have to realize that this culture that we have today is not going to result in a free society.
It just can't.
It's incompatible with it.
And anyway, so I'm just kind of rambling, but there's something that you speak to with the Zoomer generation.
What do you think that is?
Well, yeah, this is the big puzzle, I think, is after the Groyper Wars, I think a lot of, well, I think a lot of people who are intelligent and don't just see it as it's just a new alt-right.
It's a new alt-right.
New skinheads dressed off in a different costume.
You know, the people that are actually looking this and saying, you know, what is it about this show?
What is it about this movement that is, you know, there's got this Catholic element, it's reactionary, it's whatever that speaks to young people.
Why is this resonating?
Why are young people gravitating towards it?
And I think, as you said, it's looking at the era that we grew up in versus the era that the various generations grew up in.
You know, you think about the 1990s as a time where even, and I've talked about this on my show before, the 1990s was thought of as this time where it was nihilistic and godless.
And you had like Columbine and you had the LA riots and you had the Simpsons.
And that was thought to be this time of irreverence and a decline in morality.
And it's like, we were born after that.
We were born 10 years, you know, we were born at the end of the 1990s.
And then you had the 2000s, which was new atheism and the Bush administration, just like total destruction of public trust, the dissolution of the family, and so on.
And you think that we have lived through like a country that is in ruins, a country that in every meaningful way, the social fabric, these community institutions, the religion, all of it, even the conception of America as like a country that does good and is great.
It's all just in ruins.
And we've grown up in a time that then with the addition of technology, with social media in particular, but also the computer and the internet and so on, it's like a neurotic, schizophrenic, like just very frenzied society.
And it's in that period of almost post-truth, this ruinous social fabric, schizophrenic, frenzied technology and pace.
It is in that environment that the Zoomers are growing up in.
And you just take a look at, you know, young people in high school and in college and almost down to a person.
You know, they've got some kind of head case.
Oh, I'm bipolar.
I'm depressed.
I have anxiety.
I have whatever.
You know, the sort of modern generation, the Generation Z is defined by their, I don't know what the word for that would be.
I'm struggling to think of it, like pathology.
They're defined by this like strange, like mental problem.
And I think it is in that environment that somebody like me, who a lot of boomers, even boomers who ostensibly agree with me, by the way, like that, I think his name's Mark Krikorian from Center for Immigration Studies.
He hates me.
And the Catholics and American Conservative are writing nasty things about me.
And like, I see across the board, even people that like should be agreeing with like the message of my show are saying nasty things.
This guy's a punk.
This guy's a brat.
He's vulgar.
It's whatever.
I'm sure to boomers that grew up.
And my father tells me about on the tail end of the baby boomers.
He tells me about the shows they would watch on television and the commercials and the things they grew up in.
Of course, compared to their wholesome and intact and coherent upbringing, the kind of humor and content that is produced from people that grew up in our time is going to seem like totally insane, totally beyond their comprehension and so on.
But fundamentally, we need somebody who has an understanding.
We need people that have an understanding of that, the texture of life that we've grown up in to communicate to these people.
And that's why, you know, even millennials on some level, they can communicate better than the boomers to us, but even a lot of millennials don't get it.
And Gen X and Boomers and Silent Generation definitely don't get it.
And that is, I think, maybe the big source of our strength is that we have that power of communication.
The Groypers, the America First movement, we have that power to speak to these people on their level and in ways that resonate with the kind of upbringing that they had.
And it's all shaped by, you know, I'm a part of it too.
I'm sort of a victim and a survivor of growing up in this broken time as well.
And maybe that's where we find our solidarity.
Well, I do.
I think that it's like if I were to try to sum your thing up, at least from my perspective of it, it's almost like you speak in the language of nihilism, but you're preaching a message of Catholicism and moral objectivity.
And there's something about that where you can kind of like, it's like you speak in their language.
It's, it's the language that they would understand, but then you're kind of like preaching this other way.
That's not, I don't know, you know, if that's accurate or not, but that was my kind of perception.
I do, you know, I find all of this stuff to be something that is, as you mentioned, it's lost on a lot of people who kind of don't get it and would say like, oh, because I remember even, and maybe it's my own, just like my mind too, like as a comedian and as a millennial, I just kind of can get it.
So I remember people would send me, you know, when you were going through all this shit, when, you know, they were trying to like take you down.
And people would send me like the fucking, they're like, look, he's a Holocaust denier.
Look at this cookie monster clip there.
And I was like, I mean, okay, that's hilarious.
Like, what are we eating?
Like, what?
I mean, it's not like as if like, and then there's this other weird thing.
And I got to say, I've been very disappointed by a lot of people in the libertarian world.
And again, there's different, you know, there's, there's different groups of libertarians.
Some of them have been great on this stuff.
But a lot of them will kind of be like, well, you know, what Nick's advocating is authoritarianism.
And he's saying these horrible things and blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, oh, okay.
Well, look, truthfully speaking, I mean, all right, fair.
Maybe there's some truth to that.
But it's like everybody from the libertarian perspective, short of being an ANCAP, is arguing for some type of authoritarianism.
I mean, you know, it's like, so why am I supposed to be so much more offended?
Like Ben Shapiro, when he was your age, was advocating like borderline genocide that actually happened.
Like, how is that not worse than, like, let's just say, hypothetically, not saying this is your view, and I'd still like to stay on YouTube for a little longer, but not that this is anyone's view, but let's say somebody didn't believe that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, but they did.
Like, let's just say that that is the starting point, that 6 million Jews to the T, not 6 million one, exactly 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.
And someone says, eh, I don't believe it.
Why is that the most horrible thing ever?
It's like, it's over.
It's done with.
I don't know what to say.
It happened, but you don't really believe it happened.
Like, whatever.
Again, not saying you, just hypothetically, some person.
It's like, yet someone else is advocating a genocide that then happens.
Why am I supposed to be more outraged by this one?
And so there's this weird thing where a lot of people, I think, don't even understand their own programming and why they've been triggered.
You know, I was noticing this the other day.
And let me just preface this by saying, because I was getting in arguments with the Libertarian Party on Twitter the other day, because they're just so fucking embarrassing sometimes.
But so this, this, this Caitlin Bennett girl, do you know her?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know her, but I know I've heard her.
I don't know anything about her.
I mean, I know she did that gun march at Kent State.
It's literally all I know about her.
And then people are like, you follow her on Twitter.
Like, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't even remember when I followed her on Twitter, whatever.
But she was, you know, going to some college and got like fucking, you know, this mob surrounds her and is throwing drinks at her and then like pelting drinks at her car and throwing toilet paper on her and stuff.
And the Libertarian Party is like, you have the right to say what you want to say and they have their right to freedom of assembly as well.
And you're like, are you out of your mind?
And then I'm actually arguing that like a young woman is being assaulted on camera and you're just going like, well, you know what?
And then as I'm arguing with people, it's almost like I started to figure it out.
First off, there's this dumbass argument where people are like, well, throwing a drink is an assault, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Obviously, throwing a drink, you can't throw a drink at somebody.
That is assault.
That is battery.
It's assault, whatever you want to call it.
It's a crime.
It's actually a violation of the non-aggression principle, libertarians.
But then it's as I'm arguing with people, they're going, yeah, but you know what?
She's an authoritarian or she's horrible.
Have you seen?
And you're like, oh, so that's what it is.
It's that your programming has decided that whatever she's done is so horrible that it's okay to do this.
But now apply that to Black Lives Matter or some LGBT group.
And if someone was throwing shit at them, you wouldn't be defending that at all.
Yet, aren't they also authoritarians?
I mean, by the libertarian, you know, as you're not a libertarian anymore, but you know the idea.
Like by the libertarian philosophy, aren't they also authoritarians?
So why do only they get this pass?
But then some right-winger is supposed to be like, yeah, go attack a 20-something year old girl.
Anyway, I don't know.
Your thoughts.
Yeah, well, it's totally true.
And with the Holocaust thing in particular, it's like, it would be one thing, and I would get it, if my show was like Holocaust denial first.
And it's like, good evening, everybody.
You're watching the show.
And here's more evidence why the Holocaust didn't happen.
But that wasn't it.
It was like one year ago, I made an off, it was from a super chat.
I made an offhand remark.
It was basically a joke about the number.
And that's all it is.
You know, people said, oh, I ridiculed the victims.
The joke was about the number and about the, you know, the intensity that they bring to anybody that questions the number or whatever.
And so it went from, you know, Nick Fuentes is this, he's this bad guy, whatever, to Nick Fuentes made a joke one time.
So now he's a Holocaust denier.
And everybody who associates with him is a Holocaust denier sympathizer.
And then you break it down and you just think about like the subject matter itself.
You know, I remember it was people that were calling me a Holocaust denier on Twitter and I would go and check out their profile.
And these would be basically completely apolitical people, you know, people that are total normies.
And you got to think to yourself on the subject of conditioning, you know, think about what it means to, and again, you know, as you said, not saying that I'm a denier.
I would never say that.
I like being alive.
I like, you know, not getting a visit at my door from some group or something.
But, you know, let's say that that was the case.
What are we actually talking about?
We're talking about an historical event and somebody is questioning the number of casualties in that historical event.
That's not to minimize it.
It's not to say anything else.
But let's say hypothetically what you're accusing me of is true.
Why is that something that is Holocaust denier carries the same weight as like neo-Nazi murderer, you know, something like that?
It's like, if I talked about the American Revolution, well, did this many people really die in the American Revolution?
Would anybody say, you're an American revolution denier, you know, ban it from the internet or anything else?
I mean, that is standard, only applies to one thing.
And I said this on the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day this week or last month, I think it was.
I said, you know, look, everybody's saying you can't joke, you can't make jokes, or if you are making a joke, you can't make a joke about that.
I said, okay, let's dispense with the jokes.
Let's say what's really going on here.
This is an event which is used as a political weapon.
We understand that what this has become, what this event and controversies or events surrounding it has become a political tool, where because we were asking Charlie Kirk uncomfortable, inconvenient questions about his policies, they were able to use this event or something I said about it to brand me as a dissident, to brand me as somebody that you're not allowed to like.
You're not allowed to talk to Holocaust denier.
You know, never mind that the origin of why that clip was dug up and used against me was a conversation about immigration or about foreign aid.
Well, now you're on the bad list.
You're on the naughty list.
You said this thing one time.
And so people really have to do sort of do some introspection and look at their own programming and really think it through and say, why is this somebody that I should not listen to?
Parroting Approved Talking Points00:07:45
Why is this somebody that is beyond the pale?
And moreover, who stands to gain from branding that person in this way?
Why would they be using that attack and so on?
And once people do that, they've truly broken the conditioning and they realize sort of the word game that keeps us in chains.
No, absolutely.
And it's also that it's like, right.
So no matter what your views are on the Holocaust.
Watch out, Brian?
No matter what your views are on it, it's like this is the kind of foundation of what's supposed to justify the entire foreign policy establishment.
And it's always used that way.
Again, I mean, it's like any time that like anyone's like, hey, I don't think we should fight this war against Assad.
They're like, you're Chamberlain.
You know, it's like, that's always, and the evil dictator of the day is always labeled Adolf Hitler.
And anybody who descends from war is always like, you know, labeled with this Nazi label.
I mean, it's, look, and I'll say this, maybe I can go a little bit further without being worried because I'm a Jew.
I had family who was in Nazi Germany.
And let me say this right now.
First of all, I do, I am completely convinced, and I've looked into this quite a bit, not that I'm the authority on it, but I'm convinced that millions of Jews were killed in Nazi Germany.
I don't know the exact freaking number, and it's ridiculous that it has to be this number or something like that.
But my family, I'll say this, my family were Jews who were just horribly treated and many of them killed under the Nazi regime.
And they weren't Jews who were running the banks or, you know, like degrading society.
It was like my great-grandfather was like a married man with many kids who ran a shoe store.
He got caught up in the bad situation being a bad religion at a bad time.
You know what I mean?
And it's horrible.
What happened to them?
But the weirdest thing about this kind of Holocaust, like, oh my God, you're not allowed to talk about that is that it's not like this was a peaceful world and then a few million Jews died.
It's within the context of a world war where 65 million people died.
Yet we're just supposed to pick this one part of it and go, nobody's allowed to talk about this.
And this is the most sensitive subject ever.
But you can't like, I mean, people call Pep Buchanan a Holocaust denier who wrote a whole book that the thesis was oriented around the Holocaust happening.
Like the whole thesis wouldn't work if the Holocaust wasn't real.
And it's, but so this is kind of like the game that they play.
And it's, I just think it's, it's bullshit.
And like it doesn't mean like you don't have to be anybody of your, and maybe you can go like, I don't care that my family was like slaughtered.
Like, yeah, no, I very much do.
It's just obviously, I'm not an idiot.
I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot.
And I can tell when I'm being propagandized and when this is like this nonsense is being used.
And I've had this experience a lot, man, like over years and years.
And that's why I was even saying with this, like, this Caitlin Bennett girl, like, I don't know her, but all these people are telling me, oh, she's the worst person in the world.
I'm like, eh, I'm not going to judge her.
Cause I've been told so many people, you're one of them, but a whole bunch of people, oh, this guy's evil and this guy's horrible.
And then I talk to him and I'm like, I don't know.
I'm not really seeing it.
Maybe I'm missing something and I'm just like the ignorant one.
But all these people, and it's been friends of mine from Gavin McGinnis, Anthony Cumia, Owen Benjamin.
I know you two had a weird thing, but Owen Benjamin's a good friend of mine.
And all these people tell me like these horrible people.
It's like, no, I met him.
Good dad.
Really nice guy.
Turns out not at all what you're telling me he is.
So I would just encourage people to just try to like, you know, tune out the propaganda a little bit and make judgments for yourself.
I think that's a good starting point.
Well, yeah, and it goes back even to what we were saying at the top of this show, which is about the interesting people getting deplatformed.
It kind of comes full circle in the sense that the people that I believe are not branded that way are the people that are parroting all the approved talking points.
You know, the only people I believe that are not branded, because I mean, the list that you even just rattled off, Gavin McGinnis, Owen, me, you know, Caitlin Bennett, all these characters, we are widely divergent in what we believe and what we do.
And, you know, even the, even some of the people in there, I think Gavin would make a distinction between me and him in terms of level of controversy of what we're saying or whatever.
But what we all have in common is that we are opposed to the system.
We are opposed to this establishment view.
And it seems to me almost like if you're not branded in that way, if you're not branded a thought criminal or whatever, well, what does that make you?
That makes you somebody that is parroting all the talking points of the elite.
It's all the people that are running the show.
And to me, not only is that boring, but that's wrong because we can see that the society is going in a bad direction.
I think everybody almost agrees.
I think that's why you're seeing this horseshoe theory type stuff of, you know, Bernie Sanders on one side and us on another.
And, you know, there's all kinds of other fringe political people.
But I think I don't think anybody thinks that the trajectory we're on is a good one.
And so the only people that are not called that, the only people that are not put on the list are people that are perpetuating the governing ideology.
And so, yeah, I think it is, it is good to encourage people to check out, you know, who are the blacklisted voices, who are the ones that are defamed and called all the names and whatever, because all that is, is a linguistic political tool.
That's literally all it is.
It doesn't describe anything that anybody believes.
It doesn't have any kind of like meaningful content about their character, who they are.
All it is is to say, oh, well, this person is a threat.
This person makes us uncomfortable.
This person is pushing things that are not convenient.
And therefore, we have to put sort of like a thought label on them that that is not to be touched.
This line is not to be crossed with them.
And then that's that's what happens, I think, to everybody in this day and age.
But the good news is that increasingly, as that list of people grows, I think it becomes harder to convince people that the list is legitimate.
You know what I mean?
Like when you could go back 25 years ago and the list was short and the people that were on it were unknown, it's like, okay, well, I'm not a neo-Nazi.
So, you know, I'm not a skinhead, so that's okay.
But now the definition is so broad, you could even look at the definition of anti-Semitism.
The legal definition of anti-Semitism is like, if you think that some Jews have an allegiance to Israel, if you think that Jewish people are coordinating on an international level, it's like so broad and comprehensive.
It's like, well, you could go back 25 years and say, oh, well, somebody like attacking Jewish people in the street with like Doc Martens and a shaved head.
Well, those are probably not okay people.
But fast forward 30 years and somebody says, well, I think all these Jewish neocons advocating for wars that benefit Israel is probably not a good foreign policy.
These are not the same.
And they're not as like morally compelling to everybody else that's supposed to buy into it.
So as the list has grown and the definition is broadened and all these people are put on there for just the most for the most banal things, I think people are going to start to come around and say, hmm, you know, maybe this is not what it seems, which is why the free speech argument is something that I think we should all find common cause in.
Yeah, no, I agree with all of that.
And it's so funny for me.
Like I'm in this weird position where like I still do like I've done like a lot of the cable news shows and things like that.
I think it's because I'm a comedian.
Somehow I kind of like skate on just like, I can go do that.
And then I do my podcast and talk to people like you.
And yeah, I'm sure I'll be joining you on the banned list, you know, soon enough.
But it's a, but it's weird to me, particularly just me talking to the libertarians who listen to the show because our show is obviously a lot, not all, but a lot of people who are libertarians are lean libertarian.
And it's so weird that I never get any of this heat for like going and talking to a Fox News panel.
I've done panels with John Bolton before and nobody gives me like, how could you talk to this guy?
How could you be chummy with him?
But then like I'll do Stefan Molyneux's show and people will be like, oh, but he talks about race and IQ.
Government Intervention for Social Media00:15:08
You know, you can't.
And then like the fallback is always, and it's the same with you, with these, he's preaching authoritarianism.
And I'm like, I just talked to John Bolton.
Authoritarianism?
You're talking about people who are running the empire of the world.
Like authoritarianism.
Like, where is Julian Assange right now?
We want to talk about authoritarian policies.
And it's just, it's weird that it gets selectively applied in these different directions.
And I think libertarians need to wake up on this stuff.
Libertarians need to wake up on the cultural issues.
They need to realize that it's fine to not want government enforcing cultural norms, but then something else has to be in that place.
And the something else has to be a culture of like shaming bad behavior, rewarding good behavior.
If the culture is going to be, you know, praising single moms and denigrating men, that's probably not going to work out very well.
So let's figure that thing out.
Okay.
Now, there's my libertarians have to learn their cultural lessons.
But now I'm going to transition to, and but we are right about the legal and economic questions.
We are right about that stuff.
And this would be my pitch to you that I think you should realize, and what Zoomers who listen to you should realize, is that you guys, your generation is undeniably being fucked by the government and being fucked by big government particularly.
And it's the biggest aspects of the government that are screwing you guys over the most.
And particularly, I mean, the biggest aspect of the government is the entitlement programs, which is just straight up a transfer of money from your generation to, I mean, I guess baby boomers at this point, or maybe a little bit older than baby boomers, but they're straight up just like, we are taking your money and giving it to them, which is also a redistribution from a poorer group to a richer group.
I don't even know how Bernie Sanders can defend the entitlement programs.
You guys are a generation that it's going to be next to impossible, you know, to own things, to starting families is going to be made harder and harder.
But if you actually are talking about policy and what is making this happen, it's like, and by, and this is where I really think there is the synergy that I wish more of the America first type, the Groyper types would realize that it's like, look, man, the fact is that if what you care about is a culture with families and values and like decent people and order, as you put it, it's like, well, look, what makes the price of owning a home so outrageously expensive?
The price of healthcare so outrageously expensive?
What makes it next to impossible for you to rely on these government pension programs?
You know, and of course, like I just said, the ones that are already sucking money out of you guys.
And one after another, after another, it's these government policies.
And also, it's the government schools that have created this entire culture to begin with.
So I just think there is my pitch to you is: I think there is a real, like, there is a real message to you guys, like a real libertarian, not these dumb libertarians, like, I don't care if you want to jerk off in the streets.
That's your right.
Like a real serious Ron Paul family man Christian doctor libertarianism that can be like, look, man, these government policies are what's screwing you guys over.
And just so you feel better, it is all the baby boomers' fault.
Well, I will say that I don't actually disagree with a lot of that.
It's particularly about housing, about healthcare.
You know, it is doing that.
And with even with the baby boomers, the regressive tax, which is Medicare, Social Security, you know, believe me, I agree with all of that.
I think where we diverge a little bit on these things is I am willing to look at each problem and say, well, the problem with the cost of homes is due to these government regulations or public housing or whatever.
The problem with healthcare is Medicare and their broken price system and all of this.
But the difference is I don't have the same ideological or moral commitment or conviction about lessening the role of government.
I'm willing to look at a problem and say, what do we need to do with government, whether that's intervention or restraint, to make this better for families and family creation and the public good in general?
And so in a lot of cases, that involves bringing the government back.
In some cases, it means having more government.
And I don't have an ideological conviction about where the state should be.
I think the state should be where it needs to be and doing a good job.
And so I think maybe that's a divergence.
But I will say on the question of the synergy between libertarians and America First, if the libertarian thought leaders, if there was like a vocal leader of the libertarian movement, maybe that's you, maybe that's Ron Paul who is saying this is libertarianism, it is all of this.
I would say, hey, you know, this is an alliance.
It's the epic handshake meme.
You know, we're coming together.
We're defeating the globalist.
But unfortunately, as you know, there are so many self-described libertarians.
You might say they're not real libertarians, but there are so many self-described libertarians that you see like a lot of these people at National Review, or you see a lot of these other characters that are defending things like open borders and everything else, every other globalist program, people from the Cato Institute or the American Enterprise Institute.
It even goes back to the earlier conversation, even if they're not like true libertarians.
And I would agree with you, they still do dress themselves up in a lot of the language and a lot of the ideological framework where we have to say that there is like a good distinction to be drawn between people that are advocating just unrestrained libertinism versus us who favor something that's a little bit more with a little bit more government, a little bit more authority, a little bit more.
But look, I get your point, but you've got a similar thing on your end too.
I mean, how many America first people are there who are like, yeah, we're not like the Iranians because we love transgenders and we went right like you have the same thing on your side as well.
So that's all around us.
That's like, I get what you're saying.
And I get your point too.
Like it's like, well, if they were to say, well, we're really the America first or you're really, who am I to say, I'm really the libertarian?
What I'm really saying is that this school of libertarianism, this kind of like Rothbardian, Hoppyan, Ron Paulian school of libertarianism and the school of like paleoconservatism that you're talking about, like I think there is like to me, it's almost like the older I get, the more I see that they really do go hand in hand in some ways, not in others.
But you know, like I said, like those, all those Charlie Kirk guys are wearing make America great hats too, and they're all they're all America firsters in their mind also.
You know, I guess just depends on how you how you how you define it.
Let me ask you, because we're coming up toward the end of time, but I did want to ask to come back to what we started at at the beginning, that you, you know, you've gone through this YouTube ban now.
I will say that this is one of the areas where I have some of the most difficulty with what the solution should be and what if any role, you know, like laws or government should play in this.
I think that, by the way, I'll say this.
I'm not going to, I won't support any government intervention into this area.
I mean, I'd be open to like a proposal, but I haven't heard anyone that I like.
But it drives me crazy when I hear libertarians say like, well, they're a private business.
They can do whatever they want to.
I mean, libertarians always talk about how like, well, if some private business were discriminating again, you know, if they hung up a whites only sign or something like that, I would be the first, you know, we would boycott and we would do all this and we would say they're horrible and all this.
And then the market would sort all of it out.
But here you have in real time, like our modern day version of that, which is basically that if you want to say like, no, if I want to refer to Caitlin Jenner as Bruce Jenner on Twitter, I get kicked off of Twitter for doing that.
And the market doesn't seem to be solving the problem.
Obviously, it's not a completely free market.
But at the very least, I think libertarians should be out there condemning them.
Like, don't just say, hey, they're a private business.
They can do whatever they want to.
I mean, libertarians, just for your own survival.
I mean, but obviously, like you said, the libertarian moment isn't the same thing it was in 2008, 2012.
But our whole moment was online.
So wouldn't you feel a little bit threatened if they can just kick anyone they don't like online out, you know?
So, but I do struggle with like, I don't know, you know, and also, by the way, I think for America first people, I think for, you know, alt-right people, for new right people in general, you know, the right to discriminate is something that we all should fight for.
Like the right to discriminate is important and it gets very demonized, but like you want to be able to decide who's going to come to your business, who's going to, you know, live in your community.
I mean, that's a big part of what a lot of the new right is about.
So I do find there to be this conflict there where I believe in the right to discriminate, but I think it's horrible what these big tech companies are doing.
Do you like advocate any particular solution for it or what are your thoughts?
Well, I think really the only solution is to get the government involved in some capacity.
And there aren't, as you said, you said you're not happy with the options that are available.
There really aren't a lot of great options with this.
You know, the best one that I've heard probably, which maybe you've heard of, is the Section 230 method through the CDA, where it says that insofar, well, the law says that because these big tech companies constitute platforms, they get these special legal immunities and protections.
And if they become publishers as opposed to platforms, then those immunities evaporate.
And that would open the door for huge lawsuits that would probably destroy these companies.
And so the idea would be we kind of use that as leverage and say, okay, well, you have to get immunity from the government once you prove to us that you are not a publisher, once you prove to us that you're a platform and you don't do viewpoint discrimination.
And I think that's maybe the best one that I've heard so far.
But really the problem with these social media companies is they don't constitute, as you said, a free market because what they represent obviously is like an oligopoly or they have a monopoly over their particular thing.
And especially when you think about the fact that alternatives have been tried.
And it's not simply that you've got things like barriers to entry and they've got like their brand and they've got billions of people on there and so on.
But more than that, people have tried to start alternatives and there are only a finite amount of services that even allow you to scale on that level.
You know, when you're talking about domain registration or payment processing, payment processing goes all the way to the banks.
And you can't just like start your own bank.
You can't just start your own like credit card processing or something like that.
It's not, and even going back to things like Cloudflare, DDoS protection, that kind of thing.
So it's really not a market.
And therefore, if it's not like a free market or one that we can compete in, then what you're looking at is something that's like a utility or it's like an oligopolistic market.
And in that case, then I think the government does have a role in going in and regulating and making sure that there isn't discrimination.
In the same way that I think, you know, if you look at like a utility company, a utility company can't say, we're going to turn off your electricity because you're black.
You know, we're going to turn off your electricity because we don't like your whatever.
You know, I don't think that would be the same thing as a cake shop says we're not going to bake your cake.
So I think that once we consider that social media companies operate in a different ecosystem than the rest of the market, then you could begin to draft proper regulations or government intervention.
But yeah, and that, but the overriding point there, I think the overriding thrust there is that there is no option for us to create an alternative.
I think a lot of people just don't know that because they don't have the technical knowledge of what's involved because most people don't have that problem.
You know, most people use social media very casually or recreationally.
And so they don't know it on the level of the extent to which the deplatforming is happening.
You know, for example, that it's not simply just happening on Twitter, but it's also happening on Uber and Airbnb and it's happening with MasterCard.
You know, and it goes, it goes all the way back.
Because I think most people just don't possess the technical know-how.
They say, oh, you get banned from YouTube.
Well, we'll boycott YouTube and start our own YouTube.
Well, it's not a lemonade stand.
It's not exactly the same thing.
So I definitely think that the government should get involved.
I think that Section 230, that's the one that I've heard from all the experts that might be our best chance.
But I'm honestly not optimistic because, you know, they really got us between a rock and a hard place.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not like, I would even be open to the idea of like lawsuits being opened, I think is a somewhat reasonable compromise.
And the idea that it's like, well, hey, if you're banning people for their speech, then you've become a publisher, not a platform.
I think that's all fairly reasonable.
The real problem that you run up against is that it's like to ever actually get the government to have the will to come in and, you know, like be on the side of making sure that Nick Fuentes doesn't get booted off one of these social media sites.
It's almost like if you got to that point, this wouldn't even be an issue anymore.
You know what I mean?
Like, so it's just almost like this catch-22 where it's like, well, the whole problem is that this, this, like, look, and this is what my pitch almost to libertarians, where it's like, the truth is that if you hate the current order, which by the way, is a very statist order.
We live under the biggest state in the history of the world.
If you hate that current order, well, this is the threat to that order.
And that's why they're kind of getting rid of everybody who they see as a threat.
But the problem is that it's like, that's why they're never going to be on your side.
I mean, it's crazy to me that with Donald Trump in there, he wouldn't even do more just in terms of like a bully pulpit.
You know, like he does so little where it's like, dude, they're taking your supporters with the most enthusiastic followings and kicking them off right before the election.
Like if ever there was a time to talk about this, it's like, talk about it now.
Obviously, this is in your interest.
And he still doesn't even seem to have the much desire to do that.
So I do think that we're just going to have to live with this for a while.
Although I'm open to what solutions could be because it really is, it's just, it's, like I said at the beginning, it's just, it just sucks.
And the fact that, you know, for anybody can, they can agree with you completely.
They can agree with you partially.
They can not agree with you at all.
But the reality of the situation is you built something up completely organically.
It blew up.
It got this huge following.
It spoke to a large number of people, you know, like who really loved seeing what you were doing.
And they get to just kind of take this, you know, away.
Not that they've ruined you.
I think you're going to be fine.
And I think right now you have a shot in the arm because you have this dynamic where it kind of like it almost builds you up more to some degree, unless they do the thing where you're kicked off every single platform and there's no way to get your message out.
But it's just, it just strikes me as wrong and something that even if we can't legally, you know, get anything done, that more people should be speaking out against and trying to be like, you know what?
Philly Live Taping Announcement00:01:11
What do you want to do here?
You want to live in a world where there's a few plutocrats who get to choose what people are allowed in the conversation?
Or you want to live in a world where we argue it out and people have to come up with superior ideas.
And I know I prefer the latter.
Okay, we are up against time, but just let everybody know where they can find your stuff or where they can follow you.
Where can we watch America First now?
Sure.
Well, you can find the show now on dlive.tv slash NickJ Fuentes.
And I'm on Twitter at NickJ Fuentes.
I've got a new platform coming out.
It's a proprietary thing on my website, which will be announced shortly as well.
But thank you so much for having me.
It was a great conversation.
Always a pleasure to be with you.
Yeah, absolutely, dude.
Thanks for coming on.
I really enjoyed it.
And we'll have to do it again sometime.
Everybody, Nick Fuentes, thank you very much to Nick for coming on the show.
We will be back.
Oh, we're going to have our Friday episode will not be live, but we are recording a podcast in Philly.