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Nov. 30, 2024 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
34:25
Wifejak Deconstructed

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comRichard and the gang discuss the strategy of the “radical flank” in protests and social movements; the “wifejak” meme as Rorschach test; the failure of the “Axis of Resistance” (Russia, Syria, Iran); and more.

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So, I want to talk a little bit about Wife Jack.
I saw this meme appear last week, or something like that.
And it was, yeah, you can see it on your screen here.
It's this woman with a, how would you describe her expression?
It's a bit inscrutable, a little bit of concern, an absence of emotion.
Bitchy. Hint of a frown.
Resting bitch face might be an accurate description.
While holding a phone, sitting back.
In a redhead, this seems to be part of her costume.
I thought it was actually sort of funny.
It was poking fun at wife Jack as a sort of annoying, Vapid, reasonably attractive, maybe somewhat forgivable or even endearing,
okay, sort of presence.
But it's a play on Wojak, which, correct me if I'm wrong, because I might not know all the definition of memes, but Wojak is a sort of deluded conservative Ameriburger type, correct?
The Wojak art style, if I recall, it started on one of these image boards back in 2010, 2011.
It was largely used to express melancholy and sorrow.
The whole meme it was used for was that feel when no girlfriend.
It was called Feels Guy originally.
Then it morphed into these Cringy self-inserts later on.
So you had these characters like the Doomer and the Boomer, and people would make these very cringeworthy cartoons and edits.
It basically turned into playing dolls with cartoons.
It's winning imaginary arguments in your head.
Right. Yeah, that's a lot of memes.
I did find Wife Jack amusing, if not really all that important, and I saw that there were a lot of postings about it.
And then this controversy erupted, and I do find it very funny and maybe sort of revealing that...
All of these, all light-type people.
Like, I've seen some people from, you know, like, Infowar retards and things like that of, like, you know, at some point we might have hated all women, but now we're responsible family men.
Or something.
Like, Harrison, something.
I can't remember.
They're all coming out.
Harrison Smith, exactly.
Harrison Smith, yeah.
We're now responsible people.
But I guess a couple of things.
It is a Rorschach test, but also how you view it demonstrates something about your own perspective and really your own level of idealism.
So I don't have any problem with Wifejack.
Do you meet wife Jack at Target?
Yes. Might wife Jack be a sort of annoying Karen when you are throwing a party at your apartment and it goes past 10 p.m.
She calls the property manager to come knock on your door to turn down your music.
Might she become that type of...
Annoying schoolmarm scold, yes.
Might she be sort of funny and whatever?
Perhaps. But at the end of the day, she's vapid.
It's shallow.
She can be annoying if maybe on occasion adorable or something, but mostly annoying, in fact.
So the Gripers who have gone sort of over the top attacking Wife Jack and they're like, let's shoot Wife Jack in the head or let's, you know, bore out her eyes with her thumbs.
I understand, you know, why normal people would find that offensive and...
You know, talk about bad optics.
I mean, you know, it's a meme, but it's sort of even worse than a Palestinian protest, which you could at least partially defend on free speech grounds.
But so I get that that in itself is toxic.
But what do you expect?
But it shows something about what perspective you're coming from.
So I think a lot of gripers resent the wifejack.
Because it's something that is very difficult to acquire at this point in time.
And it was easier.
Now, it was always sort of hard, but it was simply easier to live in the 1950s and just roll into some 30-year employment and, you know, a wife.
Two and a half kids, a television set, etc.
Now, we sort of have a misty, nostalgic, inaccurate, in many ways, view of the 1950s, but I get it.
You didn't have student loan debt.
Housing was certainly more affordable in comparison to your income than it is now.
I understand the resentment.
I think the resentment is forgivable.
Even if it's not laudable, and it certainly isn't, I do get it.
And maybe they do need to go and clean their room and touch grass and get out of the house and stop staring at 4chan or their Discord server all day.
But that doesn't change the fact that their resentment is coming from somewhere.
And I get it.
So I don't endorse their violent memes, but...
I do understand their resentment.
But at least with the Groypers, there's at least a potential for something higher and bigger.
Because I hate to break it to these conservatives and infotards and alt-light influencers, etc.
But Wife Jack ain't it.
Wife Jack is not an ideal.
Wife Jack doesn't accomplish anything.
I saw one meme as I glanced at Twitter today at the water...
I mean, I was doing Wife Jack-like activities just today at the water park of some Chad who was like, Chad and Wife Jack, we're trying to save the white race by having children.
Let me break the news to you, folks.
The 1950s was followed by another decade called the 1960s.
So apparently, Wife Jack offered zero resistance, meaningful resistance, to the flow of the sexual revolution, integration, the Heart Seller Act.
I could go free and easy drug use.
I could just go on and on.
So you're clearly not saving the white race.
Wife Jack and company went to church more often.
Wife Jack and company had higher birth rates during the post-war period, immediate post-war period.
And we still had all of these problems.
That the entire right agrees are problems, that they endlessly complain about.
So Wife Jack is not an ideal.
You're not really saving the white race.
You are, in fact, breeding for more conservatards, and in fact, you're breeding for liberals, most likely.
Wife Jack is ultimately not terribly interesting if her appreciation of The finer things in life include Target, Starbucks, and Marvel films.
She's actually not aspirational.
She's kind of totally cringe, if inoffensive on some level.
She doesn't really accomplish anything.
You had wife-jack supremacy at one point in American history, and we still ended up here.
So what are you talking about?
You're clearly not saving the white race by lionizing your boring, annoying wife.
I'm sorry.
And the fact that you don't really have any ideal other than leave us alone so that we can all wife Jack in peace.
And our minivan, while we drive the kiddos to Target.
And I buy my wife Jack a $7 latte on the road.
If that is your political ideal, like I saw some other replies that were getting like tons of reach, you know, like, this is literally what I aspire to.
You're fucking pathetic if that's what you aspire to.
That's something you should look down upon.
That's kind of like the worst.
Aspect of the bourgeoisie, of being middle class, basically.
Like, the middle class do have virtues.
But being a Target shopper and ordering expensive, overly elaborate, sugary lattes is not one of them.
Like, I really don't know what to say.
Like, I can forgive the wife, Jack.
And I can maybe even find wife jacks sort of amusing.
But if that is your goal, then you should take up gardening because you're not, in fact, saving the white race.
You're breeding more conservatards like yourself, or you're, in fact, more likely breeding liberals.
Oh, another thing.
I hate to break the news to you, conservative wife jack enjoyers.
But you know, there's this other class of people who wife jack.
Better than you do.
They're called white liberals.
And do you know the difference between conservatives and white liberals?
The white liberals are better educated.
They have higher incomes.
They succeed more in the managerial class, whether in corporations, government, law, etc., etc.
They're wife-jacking better than you.
What do you make of that, conservatives?
What do you think that might mean?
The fact that wife Jack, you know, judged on an average, is more likely to be liberal.
Median wife Jack voted for Kamala Harris.
What do you make of that?
Like, this notion that liberals are, as a whole, and I'm sure you can find some that are this bad, but liberals as a whole...
Just, like, want to prevent you from purchasing a minivan or want to burn down your Target or prevent you from watching Marvel films.
Like, they don't.
They want you to do that, in fact, and they do it better than you do it.
So what do you make of that?
So I don't know.
It's just, like, revealing of...
Just lack of idealism on the right.
All they want is to be left alone.
And this is another little thing that I think sort of coincided with the wifejack meme and sort of tells you all you need to know about these people, the conservatives, that is.
So there was an Apple Thanksgiving commercial in which the Apple AirPods now have a sort of hearing aid feature.
And they had this...
Very homey, Hallmark card-like advertisement for these hearing aids where there was a man and he couldn't hear his family and then he put in his AirPods and he could hear his granddaughter perhaps talking and he was re-experiencing memories and it was just,
you know, they put Vaseline on the lens of the camera and everything was just sort of timeless.
You know, look, first off, hearing aid function with Apple AirPods.
Okay, that's cool.
I don't know if I need, I don't need that, but great.
I'm glad they did that.
If you don't, if you have hearing problems, right.
Was this commercial, you know, tugging at the feel strings?
Sure. You know, even someone as cynical as I was like, well, that's kind of cute, whatever.
But then all these conservatives are like, We won.
We did it!
They're giving us our favorite commercials back.
I mean, I don't know how you could be more pathetic.
Advertisers and corporations who want you to buy stuff are going to pander to you.
And they're now very happy that Apple or whatever corporation is now pandering to them again.
And giving them the feels, giving them this just kind of glowy, holiday, bourgeois experience.
And maybe it is better than watching an Apple commercial where there's a black transsexual dancing with his iPhone.
Fair enough.
Is that sort of less toxic?
Is the new commercial something you wouldn't mind your children watching?
Fair enough.
I sort of get it.
Or I do get it, in fact.
But the problem is that that seems to be the end of their idealism.
Like, that's what they want.
They want to be boring.
And they want to be left in peace by the woke, hipster, intellectual class.
They want to just leave us alone, which is the calling card of every conservative.
Just leave us alone.
It's just pathetic.
And when you see them just jump towards this type of ideology of being sort of boring and ultimately stupid, you know, not thinking, just being a pushover,
basically, and not affecting culture in any way, but being pandered to.
You know that all of these conservatives are just utterly useless.
So I think it really is a Rorschach test.
If you find the wifejack mildly endearing, if annoying, and ultimately vapid, then you're good.
If you find the wifejack the ideal that we strive for, you suck.
And you should fuck off.
Because you're not meant for politics at all.
You're not meant to be part of anything.
Because you have no ideas outside of leave me alone.
Just leave me alone.
Let me buy my AirPods in peace.
It's fucking pathetic and childlike.
So, anyway, it's a Rorschach test.
It's a good one.
And I hate people who have taken up the cause of Wifejack.
That is just the stupidest thing I could conceivably imagine, in fact.
Alright, there's my rant.
Yeah, so I have two big hot takes here.
My first is that a lot of the guys posting Wifejack, I don't even think they have wives, actually.
I think they're making up a fantasy.
Yeah, I think they're making up a fantasy of a wife in their head and posting about it online.
Now, one of the things that these people with their bullshit pontificating say about this is it's a cultural victory because boomers used to make jokes about hating your wife and now it's all about loving your wife.
Well, the difference is...
Yes, well, the difference is...
The boomers making jokes about hating your wife, that's them blowing off steam and venting from the stress that comes with being in a long-term marriage.
You are making up a fantasy of a wife in your head and posting gay memes about it on Twitter.
Now, my other hot take is...
If you don't at some level...
Sorry just to jump in, but if you don't at some level...
Hate your wife and hate women.
You're not a man.
And I'm not a misogynist in the way that crazy incels are or whatever.
They might, in fact, genuinely hate women and think they're evil or whatever.
And you can find the mirror image of that on the left.
All men are evil.
But if you're not at least have a healthy level of misogyny, then you're not a real man.
That's sort of the tension that makes it work.
You know, the can't live with them, can't live without them.
That is a timeless cliche because it's getting at something.
And if you don't vent a little bit or if you're not just sort of like at the very least rolling your eyes and maybe sometimes just, you know, frustrated or appalled with women, then you're not a man,
actually. The other thing I wanted to add here is that it is funny.
You're seeing a lot of the Grypers post these memes where they're like sticking their thumb into wife Jack's eyes and it's a Pepe.
And it's funny watching a lot of these accounts from like the BAPSphere who constantly post stuff like TND, we're going to nuke Africa, we're going to kill all the minorities.
And then you make a meme of like a Pepe sticking its thumb.
In Wife Jack's eyes.
And they're like, this is unwholesome.
This is not wholesome Reddit gold.
Like, it's insane to me.
And also, these memes, like, I...
These are Pepe's, like, drawings that you would see on 4chan's b-board in 2014, where they were just drawing this frog doing all these deranged things.
But when it happens to this wholesome Reddit lifejack, I guess it's just too far now and people need to get help and be decent human beings and stop posting this.
It's just very silly.
Yeah. Yeah, totally agree.
Like Harrison, whatever.
Go leave politics.
You're not contributing anything, if that's the case.
So all you do is contribute things that are negative, and yet you have no real end goal in mind.
So what you contribute are bullshit conspiracy theories on InfoTard channel.
And so it's just like, then go fuck off.
Yeah, and I mean, another guy who was big into this was...
I think he's been on the show before, 9mm SMG.
He was very vocal about this, saying that it's anti-white to attack wife Jack.
And it's anti-family and it's anti-white race.
I think the point is that don't become a wife guy.
And I think everybody knows what that means.
I think everybody knows what a wife guy is.
Somebody who is completely detached.
From higher meaning, but just wants like cuddle time with their wife and wants to go shopping and view that as like the pinnacle of their happiness.
I think that's all Nick is talking about.
I don't think Nick is saying don't have a family.
I forgot who spoke before me, but somebody hit the nail on the head.
They said that a lot of the people attacking the people attacking my wife, Jack, aren't married themselves.
So you have a lot of people like these John Doyle types who are single guys who are hoping.
That if they run cover for women, then their sweet wife is going to DM them and be like, that was so cool how you stood up for the women.
It doesn't work that way.
There's something in there, I promise you, that is deep in the lizard brain of the simp.
They think that the hypothetical girl that they're standing up for on Twitter is going to DM them and say, that was awesome.
Do you want to watch Netflix with me later tonight?
And it's like, dude, you are not married.
And the fact that that's your fantasy will probably continue you being single forever.
You know what I mean?
So that's my little thing.
Yeah, right.
Well, women want the alpha, that's true.
But sometimes they'll just grasp onto the beta cock who puts up nonsense for 40 years.
And then fast forward 10 years and that guy who's getting walked on will be posting wife jacked memes.
So it's going to be that guy who gets walked over who's saying, I love my wife.
And Harrison Smith, he had a tweet.
I'll let the next person go.
But Harrison Smith had a tweet that Nick screenshotted from a few months ago.
Harrison Smith said, I love the way my wife drinks water.
She stays so hydrated.
And I love soda, but the way she is addicted to her water is something majestic.
Never seen anything.
It's like, dude, everybody knows what that guy is.
What the fuck does that even mean?
That's like saying you appreciate breathing or something.
Yeah, you stay hydrated.
Like, congratulations.
Like, you're not dead.
I'll post a link in a sec.
It's just, again, these just, like, just really contemptible people who, for them, it's like the bare minimum is utopia.
You know, it's like, Not dying of thirst is now an accomplishment.
They worship mediocrity.
Yeah. That's sort of like my point, kind of what I've been thinking with this wifejack thing.
It seems like everybody who's posting this is a very insecure person that wants to lionize a sort of brainless woman who's incapable of really doing anything.
Or the things that she's concerned with are totally mediocre and mundane.
And I think that comes from a place not of like, oh, it's super attractive that she wants to save $5 on toilet paper at Costco.
But it's more like the type of person that they envision as trying to save $5 on...
On Costco is the type of woman who's not going to cheat on them because they're fundamentally insecure about that.
And I think that that's where the root of all of the Wife Jack stuff comes from.
It's this...
Again, it's just...
They're exalting a woman who's incapable of betraying them because they're so insecure about being betrayed.
She's incapable of anything.
I mean, it's just...
Yeah. You're not moral because you lack claws.
The lamb is not moral because it doesn't swoop down and tear apart a defenseless creature.
It can't do that even if it wanted to.
You're not moral because you're weak or boring or helpless.
You're not more moral than the rest of us.
You're in fact only moral If you are able to be violent and destroy.
Those are the only people who should be praised for morality.
But yeah, if you're just some fat schlub and you're boring or whatever, your moral is a default.
It's just so...
I don't know.
It just reveals how unbelievably pathetic the right is.
Like the type of people who are attracted to conservative ideas don't want to think about anything.
They want the world to be sort of like less dangerous and safe.
It's just pathetic.
Have you seen the daughter Jack that goes along with it?
There's like a whole family Jack.
There's like a husband Jack.
The husband Jack is even more repulsive.
It's like this...
He literally has, like, a soy jack beard and he's, like, wearing a flannel.
It looks like the worst, most ugly kind of self-insert.
I actually wanted to talk about this character.
Andrew Torba is, like, the expression of just being fucking lame.
Stone Toss, Andrew Torba, Harrison Smith.
Yeah, this is just the expression of being fucking mediocre.
Hey, Richard, I found the Harrison Smith tweets that Nick screenshotted.
I just put them in the chat.
Yeah, literally how to save the white race.
So you just pump out babies.
No, actually.
And if you think that, you haven't thought seriously about this issue.
You know?
More white people means you're breeding more liberals or more conservatives.
Now maybe that's a...
Necessary, if totally insufficient, means of, quote, saving the white race.
But you're not saving the white race.
Well, they're, like, autistic, and they're, like, incapable of thinking in things other than some, like, numeric game of winning and losing.
Like, we have more numbers.
And it was the same thing with that.
I think it was in that manifesto from the Buffalo shooting guy and also from the El Paso Walmart shooter.
It's like, well, we're going to shoot some...
Immigrants and a few black people in Buffalo, New York.
That's going to change the metrics in terms of the number.
That means nothing.
Power isn't about numbers.
It's about actual power.
Palestinians outbreed the Israelis.
How's that going for them?
Even beyond that, that's even a military question.
Yeah, it's cultural and spiritual power.
Yeah, the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round.
So this is your ideal, this guy.
This is what you should aspire to.
This should be the pinnacle of your meaning and happiness, is driving in the front seat and hearing kids screaming.
And I think what people took Nick to mean is like, you shouldn't, again, you shouldn't get married.
Nobody's saying that.
They're just saying that you should strive for more than just driving to Target with your kids.
Is wife Jack here, she's wearing one of these wearable blankets?
It's like a synthetic felt poncho.
With her, and I think something that's actually, something that's not as subtle as they want it to be, is the wife Jack's feet are like laid across his lap, which is supposed to kind of symbolize like, oh, it's cute.
Oh, she's cuddling him even when he's driving.
I think the cuddle, I think it's, A little bit subdued, but I think the whole wanting to get comfy with wife Jack thing among single young guys is very prominent.
They want to be cozy with their theoretical wife.
I think there's a lot to unpack here.
But you should check out the Harrison Smith tweets.
They're pretty telling, honestly.
There's a reason Nick screenshotted these four.
It's also...
Just hilarious.
They're posting this meme, like, literally saving the white race, as if this fringe right-wing Twitter meme, you know, people are going to see it, and then all the Zoomers are going to have sex finally, and they're going to save the white race.
It just, it's kind of ridiculous on its face.
Yeah. Yeah, I'll just retweet this.
I hate infotards.
My wife is the only person to beat me at basically every board card game we play.
I have never won a single Mario.
Jesus Christ!
I don't want to save the white race now.
I mean, this is so fucking disgusting that I think white genocide should happen because of this fucking loser.
Seriously, this is so offensive.
You keep stealing the words from my mouth, Richard.
I was about to say that this is like a minstrel show for white, middle-class people.
This is how it plays out.
It's like a parody, and it makes me feel embarrassed to be a white person.
It is!
It is a fucking parody!
So he did this before a wife check.
She has an honestly weird appreciation of water.
She talks about how amazing water is all the time.
She savors it like I savored Dr. Pepper.
This just keeps getting worse.
Like, I don't know how this could be worse.
I could not parody this mediocre fucking peasant.
Men, find yourself a woman who knows how to hydrate.
What in the fuck are you talking about?
When is hydration an issue?
Well, some of us get our girlfriends extremely wet and they have to rehydrate.
This guy, yeah, does it.
Watching your wife...
So he did this like a month ago or so, or two months ago.
Watching your wife give birth is the most amazing thing you will ever witness.
Okay. All right.
I'll let that sort of pass.
Especially without an epidural or any pain relief.
Okay. He's signaling the Catholics there, honestly.
He's signaling that she didn't use any medication or anything.
So she could experience Eve's curse?
Her age-honoring experience.
It's like they go into a trance and revert to a more savage primordial phase.
Getting a little creepy.
Lank, her spirit is subsumed by a raw animal focus.
You can practically feel the waves of power emanating from her.
I'm tearing up just thinking about it.
This is definitely...
It could have been expressed differently and he would have gotten a pass.
There's something primitive but also beautiful about giving birth.
This almost seems like they were desiring more pain and then he's impressed with his wife because she's actually alive as opposed to this boring nerd.
Oh my god.
I think there might be another element to this as well.
The fact that he's enjoying her pain or at least fixating on it, it expresses some Repressed resentment or aggression towards his wife, Jack, that he can finally watch her experience suffering,
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