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Nov. 6, 2022 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
32:37
The Elon Question

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comMark and Richard revisit the history of the Alt-Right, whose insane troll energy has increasingly been absorbed into mainstream conservatism. They also discuss their hopes and fears around Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and how he could maintain a productive platform. In the last half hour, Richard talks about how America’s constitutional conception of…

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Mark, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
Over the past six months, there seems to have been this rumor that Elon was taking over Twitter and he was going to turn it into the Wild West.
Now, I think a lot of people have bought into that rumor on both the dissident right and conservatives and even the left.
I noted that there were a few small time Liberal celebrities that are, you know, we've left the platform over too much hate and so on.
And I can remember when Elon first put forward his offer and it was accepted by Twitter.
This is before he tried to back out and we had this legal battle that he capitulated on.
But anyway, there was this day of rage, as they say in the Middle East, of...
All of these banned accounts coming back, people doing Twitter spaces where the N-word was dropped with reckless abandon, and there was just this notion that it was going to be 2015 all over again.
I think a lot of those expectations have been dampened, and I think a lot of those expectations were ridiculous to begin with.
I actually did a little monologue on why...
Elon Musk is actually not buying Twitter so that you can say the N-word.
But I think there are a couple of factors here.
First off, to be honest, I do have a bit of nostalgia for the crazy alt-right days of 2015 and 2016.
Deranged memes, these hilarious videos where Trump was an 80s beach Miami Vice icon or an anime villain or something like this.
And the kind of craziness that was going on then.
To use some of your terminology, I do think that there was a kind of Dionysian quality to it all, where it was just all crazy and you got caught up in the frenzy and you could throw rationality and sobriety out the window in a way.
It was just wild and we felt like we were winning.
I'll admit to some nostalgia for that period, but I also have sobered up, and I would say that those days are not going to return.
Whatever Elon Musk has in store, he's going to have to monetize this thing, and he has pressures that he will bow to.
But I would even go further, and I think you'll agree with me, that those days shouldn't return.
But let me pass over to you to get your response to that.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I think, yeah, it's hard to like, in hindsight, I think I, I've, I've developed a sort of jaundiced view of that time.
Because you can look at it in hindsight.
We're kind of being led down the primrose path to a certain extent.
It's hard to kind of...
I think at the time, yeah, I had a lot of the same enthusiasm.
But it's...
Yeah, it was a kind of Dionysian moment.
But I think that I also, and probably you and others, but I think I also had a sense that, well, let's see where this goes.
So there was general optimism then.
But I don't know that any of us were completely sold.
We were never really totally sold on Trump, right?
And then gradually we became...
Or somewhat rapidly we became disillusioned with Trump after he got into office.
But, yeah, it's a different time now, definitely.
But I think also people are aware of this.
So I think that when you say that people are coming back on with the expectation that it's going to be 2016 again, and I don't think you're saying this exactly, I think that people are also kind of leery.
And are waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, and don't know if they can trust Musk.
Just because of all the sort of high expectations and dashed dreams that they've had in the past in 2016, I think that people are a little more kind of sober-minded about these things now.
Now, I mean, to me, though, I think that what is...
What is interesting is I think that a lot of people are coming back on, and the leftists are actually talking about it in these terms in the media, that they're coming on, they're sort of kind of testing how far they can go with free speech, free speech in quotation marks, where they're just trying to be sort of outrageous and see if the N-word, for example, is still viable on Twitter.
I think it's kind of not really a...
From my perspective, I don't think it's a worthy experiment.
I think a better approach would be for people to come onto Twitter and just kind of treat it as a different face to their media campaigns, which may have also another kind of subterranean dimension on websites that you can't necessarily easily Google.
And just make it their kind of more professional face, where they speak in a more sober-minded way, and let it be their portal to this other world that they want to retain as well.
But in general, I think that people probably should be professionalizing and just not being as kind of ridiculous as they were in 2016.
Well, I think you're...
I obviously agree with you on a basic level, but I do think you're being naive in two ways.
First off, I don't think there's much to a lot of these people outside of yelling the N-word on Twitter or harassing Jewish journalists or whatever.
I don't know if there's much more to that.
Secondly, on a more technological level, I agree 100%.
In two ways.
Elon Musk, or even Jack Dorsey before him, said that Twitter is a town hall.
And these social media platforms have taken over the web.
I mean, a website is great and all, but it actually doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot.
And there are people who are social media only.
That's where they do all of their activity, in fact.
How influential and potent ideological activity takes place is Twitter and YouTube and so on.
And these are, at the end of the day, private platforms.
And it's hugely influential.
I mean, not only is the web kind of dead in the sense of when you would log on to a website or something like that, I think it's actually more profound.
Because Trump...
Trump's campaign was a watermark, and you can see precedence for it with Ron Paul in both 2008 and 2012, where he was the candidate from the internet, in the sense that if you ask a Fox News or a CNN pundit, what are Ron Paul's chances?
They would basically say, Ron who?
Or, that's really cute that you're talking about this.
Wacky libertarian.
But if you went to the internet, he was doing massive fundraising online.
You can even see this in the Democratic candidate from Maine.
I'm forgetting his...
The guy who yelled out like, we're going to Nebraska in 2004.
Do you remember that?
Maybe you don't.
Like, we're taking Nebraska.
I can't remember his name at the moment.
Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico.
We're going to California and Texas and New York.
We're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan.
And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House.
He was actually a fairly interesting candidate.
Some of this even started with him, but then it morphed into the Ron Paul era, and then all of that energy went to Trump, both in terms of people who are extremely online and rather savvy about it, but then also in terms of normies.
So by 2016, normies were getting their news and their information and their...
Punditry, et cetera, from the internet and from social media in particular.
And so previously, the mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, or whatever, could denounce Trump and endorse someone else or something like that.
By 2016 and 2015, The people weren't getting that information from the nightly news or their newspaper.
They were seeing, they were getting their take on it from Trump.
And so he could not mention it at all or just basically say, oh, you know, the swamp is striking back at me because they know I'm a threat to their existence.
You know, corrupt mayor of Des Moines, Iowa has endorsed.
Lion, Ted Cruz, you know, this kind of stuff.
And so they'd almost have the take even before they learned about it from a reputable source.
And so we kind of like passed through the looking glass.
And it was also 2016 that was the first time that genuinely fake news was surpassing mainstream media on social media.
And again, I'm not passing judgment on Any of these institutions.
I mean, to a degree, you could say that discussions in the New York Times about weapons of mass destruction in 2003 were fake news.
And you would have a point if you said that.
But these were stories like the Pope endorses Trump or Hillary Clinton is a member of ISIS.
I mean, just obviously fraudulent nonsense.
These were getting more traction than a mainstream article from USA Today.
So it really was that crazy alt-right moment when we kind of went through the looking glass or whatever metaphor.
Things kind of flipped over where social media wasn't kind of like an add-on or a way to create enthusiasm or just another avenue.
it had surpassed and even displaced mainstream.
And the mainstream was then kind of reacting to social media.
And this flip still takes place today, and I don't think we fully contemplated the effects.
Yeah, I mean, it was to one extent a kind of democratizing of media generally.
Social media is a democratization of media.
Now, I think that now people, you know, sort of the establishment or the moneyed powers are realizing that that's not going to totally work for them, right?
So now we're seeing, you know, things are starting to settle a little bit more.
In terms of what this relationship is going to be like.
You know, I mean, at the end of the day, of course, it's...
Capital always rules.
So if you have resources, you're always going to have a louder voice regardless.
In that regard, it's always going to be a kind of plutocracy.
But there are other ways to gain a voice, of course.
And it is still essentially a kind of democratic structure.
Media is now democratic.
So it is a kind of an amazing shift.
Yes.
I mean, Ricky Vaughn, I don't know how much money he invested.
In his Twitter account.
And he did have or developed some connections to GOP people, including people connected to Rudy Giuliani.
But that seemed to come afterward.
The fact is, you know, for good and for ill, he was a guy tweeting.
And you could say the same for...
Oh, I keep...
I'm forgetting names tonight.
That crazy guy.
Just basically, Trump could slip on a banana peel and he would be like, this is great.
This is 40 chess.
This is brilliant.
This is how we win, folks.
Whether you agree with what QAnon does and says or not, they're great patriots.
Everybody I've met at QAnon is a great patriot.
And here's what I said on Twitter today.
I said one or two things are true with the whole QAnon thing.
If it is just...
Something that's interesting to talk about, if it's just patriots getting together and postulating about what the deep state might be doing and what Donald Trump might be doing about it, and it just ends up being just a fun thing that keeps everybody motivated and encouraged, that's fine.
That's okay.
But there's a possibility.
Okay, and it's harmless.
There's a possibility that it could all be true and that it could all be foretelling the destruction of the deep state and what the Trump plan is for the deep state.
Trust the plan.
Maybe it's all true.
So one way or the other, either it's a harmless fun thing or it's true and it's going to be the destruction of the deep state.
To me, I like those odds.
I see no downside in it.
Forgetting his name at the moment.
You probably know who I'm talking about.
And there were probably a collection of people like this.
This is a big Twitter account or something like that?
Yeah, he got banned for spreading QAnon at one point, which is not at all surprising.
Just a continuation of his Trump sycophancy.
They all could have gone together, to be honest.
Yeah.
I can't remember his name at the moment.
You probably know who I'm talking about.
But again, what kind of capital was behind that guy?
Nothing.
Effectively.
He was just tweeting.
He lost his job.
I don't know.
I don't know what happened.
He just tweeted all day.
I mean, if you are somewhat snappy and if you kind of go with the herd, you kind of realize you have some sixth sense where you can kind of tell where things are going and you're always like rooting them on and you tweet a hundred times a day.
You're going to get a million followers at some point, and you actually are going to have tremendous amount of influence, which both of those individuals did.
Yeah, and a key to that is you have to be bringing sort of glad tidings, right?
So in other words, it has to be an optimistic message.
I mean, this is really kind of the root of...
Or a radically pessimistic.
Libs of TikTok is another one.
That's kind of like you live in hell is what she is telling you.
Haim or whatever her name is, is telling you every day.
But go on.
I guess you're right.
Maybe my thesis is totally incorrect.
I do think that there is at least a type of social media personality that gains currency by basically coattailing and cheerleading Movements like the MAGA movement.
And by basically bringing glad tidings, like we're winning, we're winning, right?
Yes.
People like to hear that, of course, right?
Now, there may also be a black pill equivalent to that.
But I would venture to guess that the stronger current or tendency is to basically white pill.
Yeah.
You get beyond whatever, and get behind whatever, you know, in our sphere at least, get behind any conservative movement that appears to be gaining momentum or having success, right?
Yes.
You know, so that also becomes, for some, of course, it also becomes a way of grifting.
And it is kind of...
It's a way of like sort of amplifying things that are not necessarily useful movements or directions and kind of wildly amplifying them because you get a lot of like accounts or social media accounts basically doing the same thing.
Yeah.
And they'll do it no matter how, you know, sort of blackpilling events are, right?
So, you know, it doesn't seem like they're ever sobered by the reality of the situation.
For example, Trump getting elected and failing to live up to his obligations towards his constituency.
There does also seem to be...
Sorry to cut you off.
First off, his name is Bill Mitchell.
It actually came to me.
Good old Bill Mitchell.
Gray-haired boomer.
I don't know where he is now.
Probably Gab.
But there also seems to be a right-wing quality to this.
And that's not to say that...
There aren't left-wing equivalents.
I remember reading about Brooklyn Dad or one of these guys who was a fairly popular left-wing account, and he was getting paid.
Not big bucks, but $5,000 here, $10,000 there.
You know, pretty...
Good money, I guess, for tweeting and for tweeting on behalf of Joe Biden.
And the reason why he was getting paid is because he had more traction as this authentic Twitter account.
Like, I'm just a guy.
I'm a Brooklyn dad.
And between, you know, PTA meetings and fixing dinner, I'm going to tweet about how Joe Biden's great.
Trump is a fascist or something like that.
And, you know, that was probably money well spent, actually, from this campaign.
So there are left-wing equivalents, but I think there is this kind of right-wing quality to it that this flourishes on the right.
And I think it says something about the position that the right understands itself in.
Like, you go to Bill Mitchell to get your 40-chest...
Copium, because the New York Times won't do it for you.
The New York Times has a liberal slant, of course, but deals in facts and balancing their statements and so on.
And so there's this almost kind of like Gnostic quality, and I mean that in a loose sense, of course, of...
Don't believe the lying media.
They're all evil and ridiculous.
But like Bill Mitchell, he'll tell you the real truth that Jesus is coming back tomorrow morning or something like that.
I don't know.
Again, not that there aren't left-wing equivalents, but this does seem to be a particular right-wing thing.
I guess there's a certain irony to that in the sense that when people were first singing the praises of the internet, you know, 25 years ago, I don't think they imagined this would be, you know, the most prominent force on it would be 4chan and QAnon or something like that.
But, you know, here it is.
Yeah.
No, I mean, and now, so I guess we have this situation where Musk is now in control of Twitter, and he is going to set a new direction ostensibly.
He's recently met with ADL heads, much to the horror of the dissonant right community.
You know, on some level, you get a sense that it may be more of the same.
It may just end up being more of the same.
Which I think that you and I had sort of girded ourselves for that possibility.
Like, I don't think that either you or I were having delusions about this.
And I'm sure that's the case with many people in the dissident right, especially the people who have been in the dissident right, you know, since 2016 or 2015.
To me, though, it's interesting.
I wonder what he's going to do different because I actually think that he'll probably try to...
I do think his interests were genuine.
Ultimately, I don't know that...
Rather, his interest in free speech was a genuine interest.
Because otherwise, I mean...
On some level, it is kind of a turd of a company.
It's a very kind of overpriced company that he's bought.
It's not a profitable company currently.
So I think that he is actually doing this as a kind of activist, that he is interested in issues surrounding free speech.
And so that that's genuine.
I mean, it's also a kind of a passion project in the sense that I think he really loves Twitter.
He loves being on Twitter.
He loves interacting with people on Twitter.
So he loves the community of Twitter.
And it allows him to be a kind of media tycoon because now he's, you know, it's social media, which has risen as one of these major forms of media.
So I think that there are things that are, that he, it is a labor of love.
And I think that his interest in free speech or issues surrounding free speech are genuine.
And who knows?
Because he's not going to hear our voice.
Who knows?
Maybe some of these ideas will kind of trickle up to him.
Or maybe, hopefully, he's already got some ideas.
Maybe he's a listener.
Well, that would be fantastic.
No, because I think that there are directions that he could...
If I were Elon Musk, I think that one thing that I would consider doing is rigorously banning racial epithets.
Just getting rid of racial epithets.
This is not a position that if you disagree with me on this position, I'm going to unfollow you or block you or something like that.
I understand the argument that Well, you know, because the counterargument would be kind of more of a libertarian argument, and it would be like, well, that's a slippery slope.
And if you ban, you know, racial epithets, which are protected free speech, and obviously they should remain protected free speech.
But I'm talking specifically about the House rules on Twitter, on the platform, right?
Now, I mean...
There are a couple of factors here.
One is execution and enforcement of speech codes, effectively.
Because one way or another, there's going to be speech codes on Twitter.
I mean, that's just something that he's indicated that he's interested in doing.
He doesn't want it to be a free-for-all.
He doesn't want it...
Hellscape was the word he used to describe it.
And I don't think either of us want it to be a hellscape either.
But if I were him and there were a good system, because, I mean, again, part of it is the policy, and then the other part of it is the kind of execution of the policy, and I guess a third part of it would be the people executing the policy, right?
So there's many kind of, like, pieces to this mechanism that he would have to sort of wield to make Twitter a kind of more desirable...
cultural and political space.
But if I were him, that is something that I would consider.
Now, again, I understand the arguments against it.
It's a slippery slope.
But again, the counter argument is we're only talking about Twitter here.
We're not talking about free speech generally.
But other people might say, well, but, you know, free Twitter is influential.
So, Well, yeah, but think about it.
Before you go on, you have more to say.
I mean, think about it.
I was arguing with myself.
Yeah, well, think about it this way.
I mean, yes, the N-word is protected speech in the sense that, yeah, I think everyone would be outraged if you were arrested for that or even fined.
Although there are some examples of that in Great Britain and so on.
But this is America.
But the fact is, if you think of Twitter as a town hall, it is a zone for discussion and free speech.
Jack Dorsey even used a global consciousness or something.
A little airy-fairy, but whatever.
Yeah.
You can't go out onto a...
So in that sense, it's replacing public spaces that we had previously.
Maybe some were private, like the local coffee shop or bar.
Maybe some of them were public, like the sidewalk, particularly the sidewalk outside of a public building where protests would occur.
You can't go out onto a sidewalk and run up into someone's face and start yelling racial epithets at them.
That's not protected speech.
You're going to be arrested for that, rightfully.
And yeah, it's a little bit different if you're not just directly harassing someone.
You can get rough in your protest, and I support that, actually.
I think people should have the ability to be a bit edgy or vulgar.
Combative or something in their rhetoric when they're protesting something.
Sure.
But you can't harass people.
And you're going to get thrown out of whatever coffee shop or bar there is if you're just dropping N-bombs constantly.
I think what the thing is of these people...
First off, my criticism would be there's nothing much to them outside of the N-bomb.
But secondly, They almost believe that they have infinite rights on the internet, that the internet is somehow special.
And if you're going to understand these platforms as a public space to at least some degree, and I think they should be, you have more right to say protest.
In some way, in a shopping mall than you do at someone's house.
If you walk into their house, you can't say, well, this is a protest or whatever.
No, you're going to be arrested.
Now, could you hold up a sign and protest a company that's, I don't know, killing the whales or whatever?
Yeah, you can.
You kind of have expanded rights in a private zone, like a shopping mall, for instance.
But if we...
If we take that and we project that onto the internet, you don't have infinite rights.
You just can't do whatever you want, regardless of whether it's a private or public space.
And I feel like my own personal trajectory on this was that when...
When people were first getting banned on Twitter, it did seem arbitrary and highly politically motivated.
And my response then was like, well, you have to think of it as a private place where you have expanded rights.
And I still think of it that way.
I think I'm just kind of pushing back.
You know, from the other end at this point in my life.
Maybe it has something to do with age.
But I think it has just a lot to do with the fact that I recognize just how endlessly toxic this kind of atmosphere can become.
No one...
If you're on Twitter and you're trying to make a point, you don't want to be on 4chan where there is...
Endless, scatological, fake, misrepresentations, gross, pornographic nonsense 24-7.
You don't want to be there.
And if that's all the movement is, if you're just this free speech warrior because you post porn and lie about people and drop the N-bomb or the K-word or whatever the hell, I'm just kind of done at this point.
I'm like, let's just sweep them out.
They're not genuinely trying to add to discourse.
I mean, free speech is...
The ideal of free speech is based on a general level of good faith.
You're trying to contribute to discourse.
And if you're not, you can get bent, in my view.
There has to be a basic assumption of good faith.
And you might very well be wrong.
You might be really wrong.
Fine.
But you are genuinely attempting to contribute to discourse.
Or otherwise, free speech is meaningless.
And it can also have rather dangerous effects.
Sure.
The Russia-Russia-Russia narrative might very well have been overstated.
by Rachel Maddow and those types of people that Trump is in control or the Kremlin's in control of America.
It's overstated and it becomes ridiculous.
Yes.
There's no doubt that foreign actors are seeking or would like to seek to pollute the discourse and Make our societies much worse in order to benefit theirs in the kind of zero-sum game, which in many ways, of geopolitics.
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