Dave Smith defends the Mises Caucus against Southern Poverty Law Center accusations, labeling their "Andrew Yang" article dishonest propaganda designed to smear libertarians rather than engage in good faith debate. He critiques factual errors regarding his social media role and Nick Fuentes associations, arguing that judging individuals by mere attendance ignores core non-aggression principles. Smith frames SPLC hostility as evidence of growing libertarian energy outside establishment politics, contrasting this vibrancy with the intentionally boring nature of recent American leadership. Ultimately, he invites critics for unedited dialogue, asserting that association alone does not validate hate-watch attacks on free speech events. [Automatically generated summary]
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Generational Divides in Politics00:13:06
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
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If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
I am writing solo for this episode.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein is traveling, I believe, but he'll be back for the next one.
So as some of you may be aware, our schedule was a little bit messed up this week, and I did not unfortunately make it out to Freedom Fest.
As I said the last episode, I was leaving the morning after we recorded.
Unfortunately, both my kids got sick, got RSV, which is a real nasty little virus that I did not know much about until this experience.
But both of them got sick.
My daughter had been a little bit under the weather when we were recording the last one.
And then it looked like my son had caught it.
Anyway, we took him over to the doctor and they both tested positive for RSV.
My son, as many of you know, had had open heart surgery earlier or late last year, less than a year ago.
And so this was a big concern.
He had to be monitored very closely.
So I just, you know, family comes first.
I couldn't leave.
And so unfortunately, I had to cancel that.
Good news is he seems to be doing just fine.
We just had him checked out by his pediatrician.
He seems fine.
Doesn't look like it's going to be a problem, but the kids have both been real sick.
For parents out there, you know, man, that is, it is really just miserable when the little ones are just not feeling good.
So it has not been a fun week in the Smith household, but everyone's going to be fine, it looks like.
And yeah, so unfortunately, I had to miss Freedom Fest this year.
I will be out there next year, and I hope everybody who went had a great time, which is somewhat related to the topic that I wanted to talk about today on today's episode.
Oh, and I should say thank you for I got a lot of like well wishes, thoughts and prayers and stuff like that.
So thank you to everybody.
I really appreciate that very much.
So I did notice during this week of trying to keep together a household full of sick little ones.
I was featured in another article by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as the great Thomas D. Lorenzo calls them, the Soviet Poverty Law Center.
They had another piece on, this one was about Freedom Fest and in their hate watch blog or whatever.
Hate watch.
They attacked me and some other people in the liberty movement.
So I thought I would respond to them.
This will be my response to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
But of course, just to be clear, this isn't really a response to the people at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This is just me talking to you, my audience, about how we should think about these things and handle them because there is no real response to these people other than to just laugh at them and dismiss and mock them because they're not.
None of this is real.
This is all just imaginary pretend.
They don't believe any of the shit they're writing.
They don't see this as a legitimate threat of hate rising in our culture.
And they don't even care to like do basic research or know basic facts of what's going on.
And so the Southern Poverty Law Center, essentially, from what I understand of them, they were at one time a group that would like basically keep tabs on the clown.
Like if the clown was having meetings, they would tell you where the clown was.
But after a while, I guess there just wasn't enough to write about on that subject because there's just not that many Ku Klux Klan meetings in this country, as it turns out.
And so they basically just started calling everyone the clown.
And at this point, they are essentially like kind of the attack dog of the regime.
So if you are if you are in any way outside of the regime, if you're critical of the regime, then they will attack you and demonize you as some type of bigot or something like that to try to hurt you.
So that's the first thing to understand is that that's the goal is to hurt people and to smear them.
And that it's none of this is in any way, shape or form honest.
And so the appropriate response to those people is not, I don't know, you don't want to be in a position where you're like, no, this isn't really accurate or something, because they know it's not accurate.
So you want to mock these people and dismiss them.
This is something that I talked about quite a bit in the run up to the takeover of the Libertarian Party and that I was well aware was coming, that once we got control of this thing, we were going to be viciously attacked by many of these progressive outlets.
There's something that I talked about at almost every single speech that I gave at the state Libertarian Party conventions.
And what I would say was that there's this divide amongst kind of like the old guard of the Libertarian Party and the new fresher faces.
And a big part of it was a generational divide.
As much as people will sometimes talk about the Mises caucus and the new Libertarian Party versus the old guard, and they'll talk about it in terms of ideology, like whether they were more left and we're more right, or whether they were more, you know, kind of corporate and we're a little bit more radical or whatever.
But one of the huge divides that I think just about everyone who's in the Libertarian Party knows this.
It's undeniable.
One of the huge divides was just generational.
I've had people, you know, like I've been a libertarian since around 2008, 2009.
Like, I don't know.
I always say that because I don't know exactly the moment I was converted.
I was introduced to libertarianism in 2007 and then got very interested in it in 2008.
And somewhere along there, I was just, I was reading more libertarian literature to try to, you know, with this kind of like, this can't be right.
I have to, I have to find a way to debunk this.
And then eventually I was just persuaded.
So I don't remember exactly where that was, but, but I didn't join the Libertarian Party until like 2018.
Back then, it was the Ron Paul days and he was in the Republican Party.
So that just, that's where all the libertarian energy was.
But I've talked to a lot of people who, you know, I've been in the Libertarian Party for a long time.
And they would talk about going to national conventions, you know, years ago.
And they said, you know, the median age was probably about 68.
Just, it was old.
And in Reno, at this last national convention, I mean, it was just tons of millennials and Generation Z and the average age of the Mises caucus, you know, members were probably in their 30s or something like that.
You know, like it was like I felt old compared to some of these guys.
So there's a big generational divide.
And I think it also kind of makes sense that, you know, the keys to the party or whatever you want to call it kind of got turned over to more of the kind of millennial movement, whereas previously it was run by an older group.
So the reason I bring that up is so the other divide that I was talking about when I would go to these state libertarian party conventions was this kind of it seems to me that the older group was a little bit more allergic to the possibility of being called all of the names that the hacks at the Southern Poverty Law Center are going to call you when they write a hit piece on you.
You know, they'll call you racists or whatever, you know, all the what as it goes, all the terms that you get called when you're winning an argument with a progressive.
You know, you're sexist, transphobe, xenophobic, you know, all the tired played out words.
And they were a little bit more concerned with, you know, so, well, we have to make sure that we're never called racist.
And this is what drove so much of the thinking of the old LP Guard.
A lot of that stuff was not, you know, when after Charlottesville, when they were demanding everybody sign a pledge condemning Nazism, all it was was to be able to look at groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and go, CC, we're not the bad ones.
We made everybody sign a pledge.
See, will you like us now?
And spoiler alert, by the way, they're still not going to like you.
But maybe they'll attack you a little bit less ferociously.
Whereas what I was saying at these state conventions was that my attitude is more like, look, if we're ever successful and we're ever perceived in any way as a threat to actually roll back the power of the state, then it's a guarantee we're going to get called all these awful names.
And you see that now.
I mean, it's like it's all coming true.
So why even constantly be, you know, so petrified about being called these things?
If you know who you are, then you don't have anything to worry about.
Like, who cares what some dishonest hack calls you?
And, you know, I was thinking about this after reading this last piece, which I just read the other day, and I got a good chuckle out of it.
But after reading this, you know, you see why that divide exists and why the generational thing like plays into it.
I think that for a lot of people, you know, in the kind of in the boomer generation, there's a lot of people that that word, you know, being called a racist really like hurts them.
And of course, you know, you kind of understand why.
I mean, you understand why people are age, it hurts too.
It's like the racists are the bad guys.
That's always been the bad guys.
You know, my entire life, that's who the bad guys were, the racists.
In terms of everything any teacher ever told you, anything any movie ever portrayed, any that's that's it.
Racist is bad.
And we've all seen examples of like, you know, really fucked up evil racism in our lives.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
I've seen it directed at all different races, and it's very ugly and wrong when you see it.
And so you don't want to be that.
You don't want to be the bad guy.
But of course, it's a little bit different.
In my experience, I've seen like boomer types.
There's a little bit more of like a defensiveness to it.
Like, I think maybe it's because they came up in an age where, first off, like, you know, things like actual racist policies that, you know, anti-black policies were either existed when they were young or were very much in, you know, in close memory.
Maybe their parents were like a little bit racist, and it's just kind of this awful thing to be called, and they get very defensive over it.
Whereas people in my generation, it just none, it just doesn't ring true.
Like, there's nothing to be defensive about because it's so absurd.
It's like, I don't know.
First off, I didn't have a weird thing with my parents being racist.
My parents weren't racist.
I'm a Jew from Brooklyn, New York.
I grew up around every culture, and racism was always the bad thing.
That was the starting point.
It's not like I was started from being propagandized that like racism is good.
And then you grow up out of that.
It's like, no, that was always the bad thing.
And so it's just, and as it's used as the attack against every single person, it just starts to fall flat.
And so I think it's a lot easier for the younger generation to just laugh a lot of this stuff off, which is, I think, the appropriate response because no one, again, no one's like really, it's just not a genuine accusation.
And anyway, so that's where I guess I'd kind of start with this.
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Freedom Fest Documentary Controversy00:12:43
So let's see, let's get into the article.
The article really wasn't about attacking us.
was primarily to attack Andrew Yang and then to use all of us to attack him because I guess he spoke at Freedom Fest.
And so why, and I'll go back to this point before that I made that the purpose of the Southern Poverty Law Center is to be the attack dog of the regime.
Okay, so why is it that they would be going after Andrew Yang?
Were they writing hate pieces about Andrew Yang?
when he was running in the Democratic field?
Like, oh, no, they weren't.
And the reason is because he was a Democrat at the time and he was kind of playing within the system.
But now Andrew Yang has left.
He's helping to form his own third party, the Forward Party, I believe it's called.
And so now he's kind of outside of that regime.
It's like, well, what's he doing?
We better take him down.
So anyway, this will come up more.
But so the title of the piece, it's written by Creed Newton.
It's titled Andrew Yang to Speak Alongside Far Right Figures at Freedom Fest.
And then the subtitle is former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang will speak Saturday about his new forward party and creating political coalitions at the 2022 Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, which will feature far-right libertarians with ties to white nationalists and anti-Semites.
So just think about this already, how pathetic the attack on Andrew Yang is here.
And, you know, look, I'm not like a Yang supporter.
There's a lot of things I don't like about Andrew Yang's politics.
But think, imagine attacking someone for speaking at a festival where there are other speakers who have ties to people we don't like.
I mean, the levels of guilt by association that you're going through here.
He's speaking in an event, and at that same event, there are other speakers who have also spoken to these other bad people.
So what is it?
The seven degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon or whatever.
What was that old thing?
I mean, I guess it's like, so now you're going three degrees to the bad guy.
It's just so absurd that that would be how you'd start.
And this is, so this is to my point of like, you can't, you can't respond to, you know, people like this as if it's a good faith attack, as if they're really concerned about Andrew Yang's ties to these people.
Which, by the way, I guarantee you, everybody and everybody in the political world is tied to some bad person through different degrees.
Anyways, even on its face, it just makes no sense.
Okay, so here's the article.
Freedom Fest, which begins today, is a yearly festival that builds itself as a quote, an open-minded environment that is independent, non-partisan, and not affiliated with any organization or think tank.
But the festival skews towards libertarians and other members of the liberty movement, which, okay.
I don't understand why there's a but in there, as if this is contradicting anything.
Does it skew toward libertarians and other members of the liberty movement?
Well, it's called Freedom Fest.
So yeah, it might draw the people who believe in freedom.
Like, okay.
Their claim that they're independent and non-partisan and not affiliated with any organization or think tank is a is a factual statement.
I mean, it's, yeah, they're not partisan.
They have Democrats and Republicans and libertarians.
They have the forward party face.
Lots of, you know.
So I don't know.
Just seems like a demonstrably true statement.
We're already starting, but they skew toward members of the liberty movement, portions of which belong to the extremist anti-government movement.
It is sponsored in part by Epic, a web hosting company that has provided service that has provided services to neo-Nazi and white nationalist websites.
Okay.
So I mean, this is where we are.
We're opening the article, and this is already where we are.
How fucking goofy is this?
Andrew Yang to speak at event with other speakers who have spoken to people we don't like.
The company that works with them is called Epic, and they have provided web services to neo-Nazi and white nationalist websites.
My God.
You know, you know, Verizon has provided phone service to murderers.
Is that an indictment of Verizon?
Like, what does that even mean?
It's all just so freaking ridiculous.
All right.
A group of anti-government sheriffs who believe they have the power to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional is also expected to be there.
So a group of anti-government sheriffs who believe they have the power to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional.
Well, I don't look.
If we're just talking about the Constitution, which I think is still, at least they pretend officially as the law of the land.
I mean, would the Southern Poverty Law Center go on record as saying the Constitution is not the law of the land?
Well, yes, sheriffs take an oath to uphold the Constitution.
So actually, sheriffs have an obligation to not enforce unconstitutional laws.
And you could get into the argument about whether you agree or disagree with them about what laws they believe are unconstitutional, but the idea that they believe they have the power, it's like, okay, unless you're going to come out and just be real and say we don't believe in the Constitution and it's just a piece of paper and that's bullshit, then yeah, they do have that power.
The conference was set to host white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and air his short film, The Most Canceled Man in America.
Organizers booted Fuentes after taking a quote deeper look into his ideology, the Daily Beast reported.
So, all right, where to start here?
So, Nick Fuentes, there was a thing that went on with Freedom Fest and this guy, Jason Rink, who made a documentary about Nick Fuentes.
From what I understand, it's not Nick Fuentes' film.
It's a documentary that was made about him.
And the documentary was focused around the federal government seizing several hundred thousand dollars of money from Nick Fuentes, who's not been convicted of a crime, and putting him on a no-fly list when he's not been convicted of a crime.
Now, that is something that has like libertarians or people who believe in freedom should have some interest in.
It doesn't matter how you feel about the kids' politics.
If you think that the federal government should not be allowed to seize money and put people on a no-fly list for having politics that they don't like, then you could see why that documentary would be, you know, worthy to make.
So, anyway, now, basically, what happened from what I understand of the situation is that this documentary was going to be aired at the Anthem Film Festival, which is Freedom Fest's film festival.
And then there was talk, although I don't know if it was ever actually scheduled, of Nick Fuentes coming and being on a panel.
From what I understand, and it's, I don't know, you know, like I heard Jason talk about this a little bit on Buck Johnson's show.
And I talked to some of the people at Freedom Fest about it.
Exactly what happened and how this was like the message was conveyed to each other.
I think what happened more or less was Freedom Fest didn't know anything about Nick Fuentes, didn't know who he was.
We're like, hey, yeah, we're down to do all of this.
Then they found out after announcing that he was coming.
a little bit more about who he was.
They were like, we're not really sure about that.
What ended up happening ultimately was that he didn't come.
The film wasn't shown.
Now, a lot of people have been critical of Freedom Fest for pulling it, for pulling the film.
The devil's kind of in the details about what exactly was said from each party.
I don't know the, you know, I wasn't there for any of this.
Personally, I think what should have happened was that that film should have been shown.
I think it's an important thing that libertarians should stand up for people's rights, even if we don't agree with them politically on everything.
And so I think the film should have been shown.
It's an important thing.
I mean, that's a serious threat to everybody, and particularly everybody who's a dissident of any kind who opposes the current regime.
The idea that the federal government could just seize all of your money and put you on a no-fly list without ever charging you, let alone convicting you of any crime.
That seems worthy to me.
Now, why that didn't end up happening?
I don't know if this was something that could have been worked out and wasn't.
I don't know who, you know what I mean, like how this was presented or could have been presented differently.
I just don't really know the details.
I'm open to talking about this.
In fact, I've said that I would have Jason on the show and he could kind of, you know, give his side of the story.
Same offer to anyone from Freedom Fest.
If they wanted to tell their side of the story, like I'd be fine with any of that.
However, you could criticize Freedom Fest for not having Nick Fuentes' movie show shown at their festival.
You could criticize maybe Jason for saying, hey, you should have been upfront in presenting this to them and saying, like, look, just so you know, this is like a very controversial figure that for whatever reason gets people very worked up and then, you know, kind of explained it in some other way so they could, you know, just present it in a way that they were comfortable with.
However, for the Southern Poverty Law Center to criticize them for what?
They were going to have this guy and then decided not to have him, aha, proof, proof that this is a far right racist.
If anything, if they weren't, if the Southern Poverty Law Center wasn't like just the dishonest pieces of shit that they are, they would look at that and go, oh, I guess this isn't what we thought because they actually didn't, they wanted to distance themselves from this guy.
There's a little bit of a lesson in there, by the way, that this cancel culture stuff, no matter how much you try to cancel someone, it's not going to win you any favor with these with these types.
Okay, back to the article.
Still, some libertarian speakers belonging to the Mises caucus, a far-right group that won control of the Libertarian Party in May, we sure did, associate with far-right figures.
Dave Smith.
That was my favorite part of the article about me.
Dave Smith, a comedian and a Mises caucus member who now runs the party's social media, is a featured speaker at Freedom Fest.
Smith and Fuentes have appeared on each other's podcasts at least three times.
Smith has called Fuentes a, quote, fellow traveler.
Ooh, the damning indictment.
Okay, so first off, I don't know, a far-right group, whatever.
I don't even care about getting into arguing that.
We're a libertarian group.
That's what we are.
And probably most people who are far right would not consider the Mises Caucus a far right group, but whatever.
That's just the pejorative that they throw at anyone who doesn't fit into their progressive worldview.
This sloppiness with all of this, it's like, if you're going to write, if you had like one ounce of integrity in your soul and you're writing a thing on Hate Watch that's designed to like, let's get real, this is designed to hurt people.
You're designed to like, you're trying to put a stigma on somebody and make their life and the life of their families more difficult.
Like that's why you're writing this piece.
You'd think you'd feel some obligation to just do a little bit of research, get your basic facts down, not just like make so just saying, I don't run the party's social media.
It's just not true.
I've helped with the Twitter.
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That's it.
I don't even run the Twitter.
Most of the tweets aren't from me.
And I've helped a little bit with the Twitter.
I've never done anything with the Facebook, with the Instagram, with any of the other stuff.
So the idea that I run the party's social media is just like, no, that's not accurate.
Again, that might be kind of like an irrelevant detail, but it's just like, you're writing this thing on Hate Watch.
Maybe know what the fuck you're talking about.
I don't know.
Obviously, they didn't speak to anyone who knows what they're talking about.
It's probably, you know, speak to one person who's like, you know, one of the old fucking guard losers.
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So, Smith and Fuentes have appeared on each other's podcasts at least three times.
Subscribe to Liberty Lockdown Podcast00:15:52
No, I've never been on Fuentes' show.
He was on my show twice.
The third time we did it on somebody else's platform.
And oh yeah, it was a debate.
We debated each other and the debate was over was me arguing that he should reject state authority.
He should reject state authoritarianism.
And then my entire closing argument I spent arguing that him and his followers should reject racialism also.
But I guess that's an unimportant detail.
Really important details are that we podcasted together, but that's an unimportant detail.
And of course, it's not an important detail that the third time was a debate in which I was rejecting state authoritarianism and racialism.
That's not an important detail, but a really important detail is that I called Fuentes a fellow traveler, which, by the way, is not even true.
I didn't call Nick Fuentes a fellow traveler.
I'm not saying that in some way of like, no, spare me.
It's just factually not true.
What I said was the first time I ever met him and had him on the show, he said he was a paleo-conservative.
And I was like, oh, I was really interested in all the old paleo-conservatives.
I've read a ton of stuff by Paul Gottfried and Pat Buchanan and guys like this.
And they were always considered fellow travelers of like the Rothbardian types.
So let's see if we're fellow travelers.
And then we talked for a while and we did have areas of large agreement and sure areas of disagreement.
But you know what?
I don't care.
Like, it was an interesting conversation.
I enjoyed both of the podcasts we did together.
I enjoyed the debate we did together.
And I'd have him on again and do it again.
I don't know.
Screw you.
Screw you guys.
You don't get to tell me who I'm allowed to talk to and who I'm not allowed to talk to.
And, you know, as someone, I debated Nick Fuentes, and I'm a pretty good debater.
And kids are formidable.
So, man, Southern Poverty Law Center guys, why don't you go try to fucking have a debate with them?
See how you do.
Okay.
So moving on.
Yang was a Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential elections.
He won support from a broad political swath of the electorate, including right-leaning fans of former President Donald Trump.
Yang has since founded the Forward Party, a political action committee that does not position itself on the right or left of the political spectrum.
It offers, quote, common sense reforms like congressional term limits.
The Forward Party has set up one state affiliate party in Minnesota.
Okay.
I guess I don't even know if any of that's true.
I can't really trust these people, but okay, whatever.
Hate Watch sent a request for comment to the Forward Party about Yang's decision to appear at the festival.
The Forward Party did not respond.
Good for you, Forward Party.
That is the correct way to handle this.
It's how I handle it when they reach out to me for comment too.
I have no interest in responding.
I'm not going to respond for you to have like a little clip for your article.
I'll say this: Southern Poverty Law Center, don't waste your time messaging me again for a comment because you're not going to get one.
If you or any one of your people are interested in coming on my podcast, open invite anytime.
Come on.
Let's have a real conversation about this stuff.
And it will be unedited and put out in full.
That I'm willing to do.
I'm not giving you a statement that you can edit up as much as you want to.
I have no interest in that because you guys are dishonest and you know it.
None of you want to do that.
None of you want to come have a long form unedited conversation.
All right.
Another Mises caucus-linked speaker, Clint Russell, is the host of Liberty Lockdown podcast.
Let's just take a moment and say, proud of our boy, Clint Russell.
You've officially made it.
You have now been knighted as one of the good guys.
By the way, the best way to respond to things like this right now, if you're not already subscribed, go subscribe to Clint Russell's podcast, Liberty Lockdown.
It's phenomenal.
Subscribe to it.
Share it with a friend.
Give them a nice bump off of this.
This is the best way to respond to articles like this.
Okay.
Clint, as you guys know, he's been on the show several times.
I've been on his show several times.
Great guy.
Very, very bright, really principled libertarian.
Okay.
Russell started the podcast in May 2020 to push against COVID-19 lockdowns meant to stop the spread of the virus.
So just take that sentence in there and just take this for a second.
And isn't this kind of proof of what I was saying?
What is the Southern Poverty Law Center?
They're the attack dog of the regime.
Period.
Because what the hell does being against lockdowns have to do with racism?
What's the connection there?
What, if you're against racism, you have to also be pro-lockdowns?
And then to put in there, meant to stop the spread of the virus.
Well, that's a little bit of editorializing.
So you're not exactly inside the hearts and minds of these political leaders.
I don't know exactly what it was meant to do.
I know it didn't stop the spread of the virus.
We all know that.
Johns Hopkins knows that.
So yeah, Clint Russell, that's right.
Wear that as a fucking badge of honor.
He started his podcast in May of 2020 to push against the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Damn right.
Yes, if you haven't figured it out yet, Southern Poverty Law Center, here's the thing.
We don't believe that some races are inferior and some races are superior.
We don't believe in like whatever other far right wing garbage you want to try to ascribe to us, but we do believe in human liberty.
And so we're against the fucking lockdowns.
I'm proud of it.
Okay, Russell.
So back to Clint Russell.
So this is the number one critique of Clint is that he was against the lockdowns.
Ooh, what a horrible, awful person.
Number two, Russell has appeared alongside Ryan Dawson, a Holocaust denier and self-described journalist who combines criticism of Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank with anti-Semitic tropes.
In one video that garnered widespread criticism, Dawson claimed Jewish people are responsible for communism, pedophilia, wars, and more.
He then said, and for no reason at all, they elected Adolf Hitler, referencing the Nazi government that oversaw the Holocaust.
I'm sorry, I'm just laughing because I don't think, I don't know how necessary it is to mention that the Nazis oversaw the Holocaust.
Referencing the Nazi government.
You know the ones.
Yes, we know the ones.
We're familiar.
We've heard about them.
So I mean, I don't even know what to say about this.
We've now gone from Andrew Yang, right, is appearing at this festival that has other speakers that have.
So now, because Clint did a podcast once with someone you don't like, that reflects on what?
Freedom Fest or the I mean, I just can't even imagine what this is.
And of course, you know, these associations, they only go one way.
You know, hey, you know, Joe Biden teamed up with Strom Thurman, the segregationists, to make sure that Black people did decades in jail for minor amounts of crack possession.
Those people like died in jail, had their lives ruined.
Some of them are still in jail.
That's the sitting president of the United States, but way to hold power to account.
Clint once did a show with Ryan Dawson.
Yeah, by the way, speaking of crack possession, the Biden family knows a little something about that.
They don't all go to jail for it, though.
So anyway, okay.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I don't even know the comment that they're referring to about Ryan Dawson, but like, okay, so someone once talked to a person who you think is fucked up.
Oh, all right.
The video originally featured a thumbnail of a Zyklon B, the gas Nazis used in death camps to kill millions of Jews in the Holocaust.
Dawson denied this to libertarian Reed Coverdale.
My boy Reed gets in there, a Mises caucus supporter podcaster and one of Russell's collaborators on Coverdale's natural capitalist podcast.
Guys, go subscribe to the Naturalist Capitalist, download it, and tell a friend about it.
Also, a great show.
Dawson said that the thumbnail of the Zyklon B belonged to another video and claimed his anti-Semitic accusations were aimed at Zionists.
Okay, so in other words, Ryan Dawson said when talking to Reed, like, no, no, no, I didn't, I wasn't really being anti-Semitic, I was just criticizing Zionists.
That no, that thumbnail wasn't from that video, it was from another video.
So, whether or not he was telling the truth about that, isn't it also kind of revealing?
Like, if you wanted to look at this honestly, you'd be like, oh, when he's talking to Reed, he's telling them, no, no, no, no, dude, I don't really, I don't have a problem with Jews.
I'm not like an anti-Semite.
So that itself kind of says something, right?
So it's not as if you're trying to like attach Reed and Clint to Ryan, but it's not as if you're saying, oh, they got together and all discussed how they believe this.
In fact, you're saying when this came up to Reed, Ryan was like, no, no, no, you got this story all wrong.
By the way, I don't know what is right or wrong about the story.
I just, I don't know.
I have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
But it seems to me, like to any reasonable person, you've got nothing here on Reed or Clint.
All right.
The festival lists Natural Capitalist as a media anthem live stream sponsored at the 2022 Freedom Fest.
So I guess Reed got a table there at Freedom Fest.
Okay.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Freedom Fest will also feature Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
The sheriffs, or also known as the CSPOA.
The CSPOA claims counties and their sheriffs have the authority not to enforce rules from the federal government that the sheriffs view as unconstitutional.
Okay, back to what we said before.
If the laws are unconstitutional, then absolutely they have the authority to not enforce those.
In fact, they swore in allegiance to do so.
Okay, MAC originally spread this through the Tea Party and anti-government movements.
COVID-19 lockdowns helped spread this ideology further.
Oh, it's almost as if some people have the radical view that our government does not have the right to make going to work a crime.
I guess that's you're an anti-government extremist if you think that the government doesn't have the right to do that to you.
I mean, like, what, what do they have the right?
What do they have the right to do?
Southern Poverty Law Center?
Do they have the right to enslave people?
Do they have right?
Like, what?
Where would you draw the line?
Is there any law where you would say that, like, oh, yeah, sheriffs have a right to not enforce that law?
All right, MAC and the CSPOA will take part in it in two panel sessions on July 14th, according to the festival's agenda.
One session is on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that, quote, powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.
Yeah, that is an amendment in the Constitution, isn't it?
The 10th Amendment is the foundation of the constitutional sheriff ideology.
The first session is titled The Greatest 10th Amendment Decision Ever Rendered.
Will Citizens Back Their County Sheriff?
The other is titled 2000 Mules.
Law enforcement has to step in at this point.
Will sheriffs investigate it?
Will sheriffs investigate?
CSPOA held a press conference in Las Vegas on July 12th, where the group called on law enforcement to investigate election fraud in the 2020 election.
Their call to action is based on claims made in the Dinesh D'Souza movie 2000 Mules, which is based on unfounded conspiratorial notions about voter fraud in the 2020 elections, known as, quote, the big lie.
So, look, as you guys know on this show, I'm not really like, I'm pretty much an atheist on the topic of election fraud in 2020.
I just don't know.
I have never been, I didn't see 2000 Mules.
Maybe I'll try to watch it at some point.
I have never been convinced by any of the evidence I've seen.
There's some degree of voter fraud in every election.
I don't know how much more there was in this one.
I do think there's, you know, we did radically change the way we do voting.
And there was an unprecedented, let's say, cooperation between, you know, spy agencies, corporate media outlets, both political parties to kind of get Donald Trump, that's for sure.
But I really don't know.
But what?
What is the idea?
We're not allowed.
You can't have a panel on it.
You can't have a panel to discuss it.
It's something that's believed by tens of millions of Americans.
Maybe instead of just calling them out for having the conversation, freaking debunk it.
You know what I mean?
Like take it on.
Like, it's, isn't this all just like so insane?
The idea.
And this is where libertarians really need to reject all of this shit.
Like there is no outside of like strict libertarianism, right?
Like property rights, non-aggression principles, self-ownership, all of this stuff.
There's no culture of freedom.
There's no, in reality, actually having a free society.
If you want to live in this world where it's like, you're not allowed to have a panel about any topic that I say is off limits.
And you're also going to be judged by not what you believe, but what anyone you've ever talked to or done a podcast with believes.
Or if you speak at the same event as someone else who's done a podcast with someone else, you're also going to be judged by what that person believes.
This is stupid.
Like if you want to, you know, I don't, my job isn't to sit here and condemn everybody else who doesn't have my views.
My job isn't to explain why I've ever spoken to anyone who doesn't have my views.
Ask me what my views are and I'll tell you.
That's it.
That's how I live my life.
That's how I'm going to continue to live my life.
Deal with it.
There's a lot of things you could accuse me of.
I don't think being shy about where I stand on my views is one of them.
I don't think you could accuse me of not being upfront about what my positions are.
So that's it.
You could ask me about any of my views.
Why Politics Feels So Boring00:08:38
And the same is true for Clint Russell and Reed Coverdale.
Go ask them where they stand on these issues.
Anyway, this is all so stupid.
The Loving Liberty Network, a distributor of podcasts, some hosted by extremists, is an exhibitor at this year's festival.
CSPOA sponsored the network, which includes Sam Bushman's Liberty Roundtable podcast that is also featured on its own Liberty News Radio Network.
Bushman has interviewed anti-government extremists such as Mac.
The anti-conservationalist Mountain States Legal Foundation, the MSLF, is an exhibitor at this year's event.
MSLF's general counsel, Will Trachman, will sit on a panel review of the Supreme Court according to the organization's websites.
Okay.
Critics blasted MSLF for the anti-Indigenous writing of their then director, William Pendy.
Pendley in 2020, when he was the Trump administration's nominee for the Bureau of Land Management Director.
Pendley wrote in his 2006 book, Warriors for the West, that due to declining blood quantum, laws that recognize Indigenous people based on fractions of their ancestry, recognize recognized tribes may soon be little more than an association of financial convenience.
Okay.
Doesn't really sound like anything hateful.
One guy who's not the guy who's going to be like, do you see what they do here?
One guy, not the guy who's going to be at Freedom Fest, but another guy from this organization once wrote in a book in 2006 that I guess basically that this, like Indigenous people are not really, it's not really being based on their blood ancestry anymore.
It seems to just be like associations of financial convenience.
Wow.
I guess throw them all in jail.
I don't know what this even means.
Okay.
Other speakers.
Freedom Fest has been a major festival for libertarians and their allies for years.
Not all speakers have links to anti-government or other extremists.
Editors from Reason, a libertarian-focused news outlet that reports on the Libertarian Party and mainstream politics will appear.
Former United States Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, the only Libertarian Party member to have served in the U.S. Congress, and Spike Cohen, the 2020 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, will also speak.
Freedom Fest organizers did not respond to Hate Watch's request for comment.
Excellent job.
Absolutely no need to.
No need to respond.
All right.
Well, of course, from our perspective, they kind of got some digs in there at Reason, Justin Amash, and Spike Cohen.
I think that's unnecessary, personally.
Why would you be so rude as to claim that all of them are okay?
What exactly, what does it even mean to be an anti-government extremist?
I don't know.
Spike Cohen doesn't make your list?
All right.
Spike's pretty goddamn against everything the government does.
Anyway, look, what can you even say to this?
It's like it's pathetic that this is the best punch they can come up with.
How could you not, like if you were even pretending to be honest, how could you not just look at that article and go, let's just not write this?
I mean, let's, we literally got nothing here.
They got nothing.
Some people who were scheduled to speak at Freedom Fest have spoke to other people who hold views we don't like.
One of them was going to be there and then they uninvited him, which I don't even think that's technically the story.
I don't know if it, I don't know the details with Fuentes.
I don't know if he was actually going to go to Freedom Fest and then they didn't.
That was kind of unclear to me.
But the movie didn't end up getting played, which is too bad.
I don't know who's, you know, I would have preferred if there was a way that they could have played that movie because I think it's a really interesting story and an important one.
And anyone who's going to say that like, if you're against the government doing something to somebody, that then they'll be like, oh, but look, he holds views that I disagree with.
I mean, that's just too stupid to even bother responding to.
I've, you know, I was pretty loudly, I was pretty loud about how outrageous it was that Barack Obama murdered Anwar Alaki, who was an American citizen, who he killed with a drone bomb.
And he had sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
But from my perspective, it doesn't matter.
He's a citizen of the United States of America.
Therefore, he gets a he needs to be charged with a crime and he needs to have a trial.
And that's that.
That's the way it works.
You don't just get to kill American citizens.
I mean, okay, that's not the way it works, but that's the way it ought to work.
Now, if I were to say that, and then you go, oh, so I guess you're sworn loyal to Al-Qaeda or something, it's just too stupid.
It's too stupid.
It's an outrage that the federal government seized hundreds of thousands of dollars from Nick Fuentes without him being so much as charged with a crime.
It's an outrage that he was put on a no-fly list.
And anybody who believes in liberty should be against that shit.
And if you're not against it, then you don't really believe in liberty.
Okay.
As far as all this other stuff, what can you even say?
This is without question, a positive sign.
This is a positive sign about what we're doing with the Mises caucus.
It's a positive sign about what's going on today.
It's that they are concerned.
They're concerned.
They don't like what we're doing with this party.
And that's good.
We should want them.
We should want the, you know, the attack dog of the regime to not like us.
We don't like them.
They shouldn't like us.
That's fine.
You know, there's tremendous energy that we have with what we're doing in the Libertarian Party.
And that, I think, even more so than anything ideological is what their issue is.
They don't like to see energy like that, particularly energy outside of establishment politics.
They don't.
There's a reason why politics is so fucking boring.
It's hard work to make this so boring.
They work very hard to do that because they want to turn off anybody who's looking for excitement because that excitement is kind of their biggest threat to the establishment.
The excitement might be, you know, directed toward like, oh, hey, the establishment is screwing us over.
Let's get them out of there, you know, peacefully speaking.
But that's what they're concerned with.
And so there's, you know, you ever notice like you just, if you just look at like a typical year, whatever it is, in the last 30 years, American politics, you look at the Democratic, you know, presidential debates, the Republican presidential debates, like in the primaries, you know, when there's 10 of them up there.
And everyone's just boring as shit.
You're just looking at 10 of the most boring human beings you've ever seen in your life.
You know, just looking at Joe Biden and Al Gore and, you know, whoever, all these just boring people.
All these stuff like just Jeb Bush and, you know, whoever, Rick Perry, just the most boring human beings.
That's not by accident.
The leaders are not typically boring.
In fact, it's excitement and energy is what usually makes someone a good leader.
You got to work really hard to make your leaders boring, but that's what they like.
It's also one of the things they really hated about Trump.
They really didn't like that he wasn't boring at all.
And, you know, anyway, this is the stuff that they start responding to.
So look, these attacks are here.
They're going to continue.
I say we have fun with them.
I mean, it's too stupid to even like, to not just enjoy the moment.
And, you know, who cares?
Enjoying the Moment Despite Hate00:01:06
Who cares what they call us?
We're not any of these things.
We know what we are.
And they know it too.
They know no one writes this piece and at the end of it doesn't think to themselves at one point, you know, it's kind of weird that I really didn't have anything on any of the people I'm attacking.
I mean, if these people are so awful.
How come I don't really have anything to say about them other than, well, they know this other guy.
They did a show with this other guy once.
But they're doing a festival where there's a speaker who spoke to someone else who said something we don't like.
You know, if you, if that was the attack you had on someone, I think you might go, I don't really have much on this person, right?
So, okay, yeah.
Don't, I give credit to everyone who didn't give them a comment.
Don't give them a comment.
But like I said, open invite.
You want to come on the show and fucking have a real conversation?
It'll be put out in full, long form, unedited.
That I'm down to do.
Anytime, let me know.
You know where to get a hold of me because you've already reached out to ask me for comments.