RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Barbieland
Aired: 2023-08-02
Duration: 05:37


=== Barbie and Ken's Secret Fantasies (03:39) ===

[00:00:00]  I'm curious, in regards to Barbie, where you said earlier you think it's about fearing your own desires, like that's the ultimate horror.
[00:00:15]  I'm curious where you get that read of it.
[00:00:17]  Okay, so I think it's...
[00:00:19]  I'll give you my take on it.
[00:00:22]  So with Ken, I think it's more obvious.
[00:00:28]  So Ken, he feels left out.
[00:00:32]  He's just Ken.
[00:00:34]  And Barbie is the star of the show, and she has the dream house, and he's riding sidecar to Barbie.
[00:00:44]  And then he leaves Barbie land, and he enters the real world.
[00:00:50]  And I guess kind of ironically, he learns about the joys of patriarchy.
[00:00:56]  From a library, from criticisms of patriarchy.
[00:01:01]  And he also learns about horses.
[00:01:03]  And then I think in this way that is really realistic, he embraces this kind of dark version of being a man.
[00:01:16]  He becomes Andrew Tate, in effect, but a bit of a lovable Andrew Tate.
[00:01:21]  And it's just bro-ing out.
[00:01:25]  He's like, do you want to be my non-committal, long-distance girlfriend or something?
[00:01:30]  We got a low commitment.
[00:01:33]  Right.
[00:01:34]  So it's just basically like, do you want to be my sex friend?
[00:01:37]  You know, friend with Ben.
[00:01:38]  It's just, you're becoming the parody.
[00:01:43]  And I think so many of these...
[00:01:44]  Kids are like this to stay because, look, everything's screwed up.
[00:01:48]  Everything's really hard.
[00:01:49]  That is true, and I have sympathy.
[00:01:52]  But then your response to that is to almost become the parody of masculinity.
[00:01:59]  And, you know, I have heard of this.
[00:02:02]  Like, kids in suburban middle school are watching Andrew Tate.
[00:02:06]  Yes.
[00:02:06]  And they're going into class and, like...
[00:02:10]  Talking to their teacher like, "No, bitch!
[00:02:12]  I don't do no homework!
[00:02:14]  I'm alpha here!" And the teacher is like, "Jimmy, your father is an accountant who's an upstanding member of the community.
[00:02:25]  What has happened?" And so you indulge in that kind of thing.
[00:02:30]  But what is Ken's secret fantasy?
[00:02:34]  What's his secret fantasy?
[00:02:36]  He actually loves Barbie.
[00:02:39]  You know?
[00:02:40]  And yeah, he says, I'm Knuff or I am Ken.
[00:02:44]  He's aware of himself and so on.
[00:02:47]  But his secret fantasy is what he's fearing.
[00:02:51]  So he actually loves Barbie and maybe wants to have a mundane relationship with her.
[00:02:58]  But he fears that reality and thus indulges in toxic masculinity.
[00:03:06]  Of the worst, but maybe most hilarious kind.
[00:03:11]  So I think that is kind of an easy one.
[00:03:15]  I think with Barbie, I found it interesting that at the end of the day, how do I say this?

=== All Civilization Is Based on Violence (02:12) ===

[00:03:29]  At the end of the day, the men were still fighting over the women.
[00:03:33]  And that was their secret plan to destroy the patriarchy, is to get them fighting each other.
[00:03:39]  But in that sense, they did the most...
[00:03:43]  They created a society that was at its most ancient or most traditional, you could say.
[00:03:51]  Like the rape of the Sabian women, this famous painting and all that kind of stuff.
[00:03:58]  That idea of...
[00:04:01]  My tribe, we fight your tribe.
[00:04:05]  We take your tribe's women folk.
[00:04:07]  They become our tribe.
[00:04:10]  It's the most basic quality of civilization.
[00:04:16]  Because all civilization is based on a lie.
[00:04:19]  It's based on violence.
[00:04:20]  It covers over its own violence.
[00:04:23]  You can have a functioning order, but it's ultimately on...
[00:04:30]  It's ultimately on bones.
[00:04:32]  It's ultimately on a crime.
[00:04:34]  Even America, we have this functioning liberal order with citizenship, etc.
[00:04:39]  It's ultimately based on a crime of disobeying our legitimate authorities.
[00:04:46]  But you can't do that again.
[00:04:49]  That was the exception.
[00:04:50]  But then now we can do it.
[00:04:53]  And so I feel like...
[00:04:56]  Maybe this is a bit of a subversive reading, but there's the objective fantasy that I think covers over a deeper fantasy.
[00:05:07]  So there's the objective fantasy of neoliberal feminism, which is that, look, women can be in the Supreme Court, or women can win a Nobel Prize, or women can be doctors, etc.
[00:05:18]  But maybe that's a mask hiding...
[00:05:24]  A deeper fantasy, which is we want men fighting over us.
[00:05:33]  Okay, you know, there it is.
[00:05:35]  You can disagree.
[00:05:36]  Yeah, okay.