Lauren Chen details her evolution from a hobbyist YouTuber to a conservative commentator, recounting her experiences with racial segregation in USC dorms and the backlash over her skepticism regarding systemic colorism and rapid-onset gender dysphoria. She critiques progressive demonization tactics like labeling conservatives "Nazis," advocates for a public-private climate approach over the Green New Deal, and highlights how Trump's policies lowered minority unemployment. Chen argues that young people are adopting conservatism as a rebellious counter-culture against institutional indoctrination, hoping this initial defiance matures into a genuine belief in individual meritocracy rather than mere reaction. [Automatically generated summary]
I poked you in the shoulder before, just to make sure you're real, because people always want to touch me to see if I'm real, and we are real.
Okay, there's a ton I want to talk to you about.
Technically, you have done the Rubin Report one time.
Yes.
A little less than three years ago, we did a YouTube week where I was just sort of reaching out to interesting YouTubers that I thought were doing something kind of cool, and you had a small channel.
I think you probably had like You wanna maybe figure it out for me?
Well, I'm glad to do it, and many people helped me before that.
So I had you on, and you were sort of just When we went through the list, basically, of who we were gonna put on, your name came up a couple times, people had recommended you, and I watched some of your videos, and I thought, here is this young woman who's actually making sense, saying some politically incorrect things, and actually doing something good.
And I think I started off the way a lot of YouTubers nowadays are starting off, kind of just as a hobby, something to do for fun, because for all that we rag on social media, I think it has kind of created this atmosphere where people feel like their opinion matters and they want to chip in and they want to contribute, even if they're not getting a lot of recognition for it or money for it.
It was really just a way for me to feel like I was participating in the crazy amount of discourse we were having.
It'll be three years ago in May that I started my first A few videos for a while actually were just like little slideshow presentations.
My face wasn't in it.
And my first ever video I think was about transgenderism.
The whole idea of like transgender versus trans-trender.
You know the idea of many genders I think.
And for a while I kind of put out a video or two a month just for fun and then eventually I started getting
more and more subscribers and after, it wasn't even that long, maybe eight or so months,
I was able to make YouTube my full-time job through things like crowdfunding.
Well, I am just the biggest introvert you could ever imagine.
Like, I'm the person in class who never really spoke up unless, A, the teacher specifically called on me or, you know, attendance was part of the grade because I wanted to get a good grade.
So I wanted to contribute, but I think for a lot of people who are maybe more shy, not to mention the amount
that certain opinions get demonized nowadays, I felt like kind of being anonymous at first, it was safer.
I was less embarrassing.
People wouldn't really attribute stuff to me.
I wasn't necessarily worried about blowback specifically until I got a little bit bigger and then I was like,
oh, maybe it is a good thing that my real name isn't attached to it.
I don't feel like I know him less as a content creator because of that, but I started doing more in-person events, and I was on Fox News and stuff, and that's when I was kind of like, for people who aren't in the YouTube sphere, it is kind of weird to just go by a moniker.
I was born in Canada, but I, when I was only a few months old, moved to Hong Kong, and that's really where I grew up.
Aside from that, I've also lived in Shanghai, Singapore, and London, and then I came to the States for university.
So I've had a pretty, like, metropolitan mixed background, in addition to my, like, racial heritage, and I think Coming on to an American campus for the first time was the first time I was really made aware of my race in a very real way, because growing up Eurasian in Asian expat circles is actually not that uncommon.
I'm not going to say that there's a lot of us, but you do have quite a few mixed kids in the schools that I was going to, like the American foreign expat schools.
So I never really thought about it.
I had friends of all different races growing up, and we got along.
Fine.
I mean, I'm not going to say that I was colorblind because I knew like, oh yeah, this person's Indian, this person's white.
But it was never a point of contention or anything like that.
But, you know, going on to an American college campus, it was a whole different story.
It was a little bit strange because I remember I was really excited to go to, I'd never lived in America before.
I had been going to American schools all my life and I had so many friends that were American, but I'd never lived in America before and I was really excited about it.
Because in schools I learned American history and stuff like that, but never lived there.
So when I started college I was really excited to get the American experience because it was almost like a It was the place that movies took place in, where
celebrities were from, where everything I read about in books happened.
So I really built it up in my head, and I was excited to get that experience.
But it's funny, when I got there and I saw my dorm room assignment, USC, which is where
I did my freshman year, they have this thing where they kind of segregate dorms a little
There's like a gay floor, there's a black floor, there's like a Muslim housing thing.
And I went to look at my room assignments and every single other person that was in my dorm also had an Asian last name.
So that was kind of like the first time where I was like, wait, what?
Because I had never I'd never really experienced being stereotyped in such an obvious way for that, and maybe it was just an accident, but all I know is that I never volunteered, like, hey, yeah, put me with all the other Asians.
Yeah, there's not that many Asians at USC that it just, like, you know, literally every other person in that suite.
There's, like, I think maybe, like, 15 other people.
So I applied for a room transfer.
Because I was like, well, I mean, no offense, like I'm sure you're lovely people, but I didn't come here to just live among other Asians.
I want, you know, just a general mixed American whatever experience.
And so that was like the first instance and then, you know, aside from that I was approached a lot by people to join like, you know, the Asians in Film Club or the Asians in this club and that's when I started to notice that race was a much bigger deal in America than it was for me growing up in Hong Kong or Canada.
I went to college Republicans, sorry, yeah, college Republicans meetings when I was 17, so I didn't have really a moment where I was liberal then became conservative, but in terms of the race issue, if it's even an issue, I just wasn't thinking about it, right?
I was just for like, you know, economic responsibility.
Lower the budget, etc, etc.
I think it kind of, it made me feel in a way...
I don't want to sound like an SJW, but marginalized the way that they were constantly bringing up my Asian-ness.
And I think that's what made me more interested in cultural issues as opposed to just governmental issues, because I was seeing how much of their philosophy was affecting me in my everyday life.
And I mean, I have people who, you know, on my channel, they say, you're always talking about culture and social stuff.
Why don't you talk about more policy?
And I mean, frankly, My viewership, I think it's 75% under the age of 35, and for a lot of these college students or people who have just graduated, this is stuff that affects them every day of their life.
They are bombarded in social media, pop culture with, your race is this, versus your race did this, you can't talk about this because of your race.
So, for these people, and for me at the time, that was the biggest thing that was affecting us.
When you started doing the videos then were you like holy cow there is a world of people talking about this because I mean that's even though I did come from the left so I wasn't you know always let's say on this side whatever that means like when I started talking about these things I suddenly was like oh I'm not the only one there aren't that many yet and now they're kind of growing but Yeah.
It's a pretty nice feeling to know there's some other people out there.
It was, and actually, you know, I grew up, well, I grew up from, you know, college, like late teens onward, watching people like Steven Crowder, How the World Works, Lee Doran.
He doesn't really make videos anymore.
By the time he was one of my favorites, he did sort of the whole political, like, debunking commentary thing.
And I so appreciated that because for so long when I was in college I felt like I was in a bubble and I was the crazy one.
I was the only one with my set of opinions and everyone else thought the same way.
So in making my videos I did kind of hope that maybe for someone else out there I could be that lifeline that's like, hey, you're not crazy.
And I think conservatives, especially right now, we're so against the idea of victimhood culture.
But I don't think it's playing into victimhood culture to say that it is difficult.
And not only am I younger, but also being someone who's half Asian, and you experience this because you're gay.
And I watched your PragerU show with Candace Owens.
She experiences it because she's black.
But when you are not even conservative, but just not far left, And, you know, one of these protected groups that doesn't fit the mold of who they think should be disagreeing with them, you get even more of an attack, right?
Because then you're called, I'm called things like an Uncle Chan, you know, Kenneth Owens is called really terrible things, you know, I'm sure.
They want us to believe that white people don't accept us, still see us as other.
I've had progressives tell me that the only reason that conservatives watch me is because They think I'm white or that I'm trying to be white or that they're tokenizing me.
You know, they're propping me up as a way to say, see, I'm not racist, which is really one of the most racist things I've ever heard.
And that's that is hard.
And I think we see like with this, like our oppression hierarchy, you know, they still like to claim Asians as their own.
But at the same time, progressives right now are happy to throw Asians under the bus when it comes to something like affirmative action, which it's it's been documented actually harms Asians.
And it's It's really frustrating, especially, I did a video recently on colorism, which if you're... Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
The idea that it's not just race... Sorry, wait.
Okay, racism is like prejudice against different races, plus systemic power according to them, and then colorism is like, we're talking more about skin tone, so it can even apply to people within the same race.
So I did a video about that and, you know, frankly I didn't even disagree with the idea that colorism exists and that there are some people out there who might prefer like a lighter skinned person to a darker skinned person because I don't think either of us would say that individual sexism or racism or whatever type of prejudice exists, right?
But pretty much in my video I said that I don't think there's enough evidence to say that colorism affects something like prison sentencing, which is what the MTV video that I was responding to said.
Meaning that darker skinned black people get longer prison sentences than lighter skinned black people because of their race, right?
Yeah, so pretty much I was just saying, I don't think there's really evidence to back this up, and I think the conversation surrounding colorism, just like the conversation surrounding racism, it's not so much a fight for equality anymore as it is to try and bring down the oppressors or those more privileged, right?
So the conversation surrounding race, I think, has evolved to Unfortunately, demonize white people in a lot of ways, and what we're seeing in the conversation with colorism is that lighter-skinned minorities are kind of being demonized in the same way, and that's what my video was about.
And I got a lot of people quite upset.
They weren't happy with that.
You know, I was told to shut up because my opinion doesn't matter because I'm not dark-skinned, and so I wouldn't know what it's like to experience colorism, which is a nice little bit of irony there that apparently they didn't get.
And yeah, I was just attacked for being, you know, an Uncle Chan equivalent, just a puppet used by white people to try and tear down darker-skinned minorities, and it's just... I mean, I've been watching your stuff, I don't know if you're feeling like this a little bit lately, but I'm getting really pretty fed up about it.
Well, it's funny because I think you know this about me, my general disposition is I'm fairly agreeable and I try to be respectful and all those things, but there are these moments where I'm like, this thing is so dangerous, it's so out of control, that there are these moments where I just want to unleash hell on these people and really take them down.
I completely understand and it's funny when I started making my videos I was so under the impression where it's like yeah other people face controversy and backlash but I'm I'm so reasonable and like I'm gonna explain it in a way where they can't misunderstand me where it's like obvious that I'm arguing for more equality and stuff like that.
Clearly not the case, and I'm still not a provocateur.
My goal is never to upset people, and I really do—I'm speaking out about these issues because I want more equality, but I am at the point now where it's like, yeah, there are some people who are just bitter, and they're raging ideologues.
They don't want to listen.
They don't care what you say.
They're just going to demonize you based on who they think you are and use your identity to, you know, call you a whole bunch of slurs.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, politics, it's almost a game of, like, back and forth, reaction and then action and then et cetera, et cetera.
And so on the right, I'm just worried that there are people on the right who are getting so fed up, like I am, where they're actually saying, for the example, in the issue of identity, where they're saying, like, yeah, let's have our own identitarian politics.
Which is completely the other way of where I think we should be going, and Jordan Peterson speaks out about this too, where it's like if you don't like a game that someone's playing, you don't respond by playing it yourself.
You stop.
You stop the game.
And I think there are some people on the right that right now are happy to Start to, you know, buy into it.
It's like maybe, yeah, we have like a black club.
We have a Hispanic club.
Why not a white club?
Where it's like, you know, you have most reasonable people.
It's like, wait, whoa, let's calm down.
Let's stop this.
So that's something I'm worrying about on the right.
And just in general, there are people that are so entrenched in the culture war right now.
I got people mad at me.
I lost subscribers because I said that the Captain Marvel movie was pretty good.
Yeah, so I said it was pretty good, and people freaked out, and I just hope with all of this stuff that we don't lose sight of the reason why we oppose the authoritarian identitarians, right?
We keep things in perspective.
It's not so we can have our own group that does the same thing to other people.
It's so we can move past this and Try to maybe calm things down where we can actually talk about issues and policies rather than calling everyone else a Nazi or like a, I don't know, whatever type of fascist.
Yeah, it's so interesting to me because you can watch videos that I was doing before the election where I kept saying, if you guys on the left, when I was saying it was us, right?
I was like, if we don't stop calling everyone a racist and stop calling Trump a Nazi and the rest of it, we're going to create this on the right.
And it's almost like, in a weird way, that's almost what they want to do.
Which makes people like us, our job, I guess, that much more important.
And the only hope that I have really is that the loud voices that you hear online are not representative of the average person, which I don't think they are, right?
You have that vocal minority.
And I think most people who are just, you know, living their everyday lives, maybe they have a Twitter account to follow people they actually know in real life, not just like this whole political world that we're wrapped up in.
They look at both of these sides and they just think, wow, you guys are insane.
Yeah, so you mentioned the culture portion of this before, and the tagline for your show is, it's like the intersection of culture and politics.
I find that I'm not that interested in politics anymore, that the culture thing has become much more interesting to me, because the politics thing is after.
Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, I will have people who will ask me, what do you think about this bill or this policy?
Why don't you talk more about something like foreign aid?
And, you know, my background is in political science.
I was a researcher for my professors when I was in school, so I am really interested in policy.
It's not that I'm not, but I think that right now what's happening culturally This is—we can't even begin to talk about what, for example, presidential candidates think about, I don't know, domestic spending, when everyone's being called a racist or a sexual predator, you know?
It's just—it's hard to get to political talking points when you first have to debunk that you're a white supremacist.
Right, and I really want to get to the point where we can talk about those issues, but right now we have this huge block in front of us, and I think especially when we're talking about younger voters, which are becoming a bigger and bigger influence in elections, so much of what younger voters, you know, What they choose to support is based on things like cultural aspects.
It does, and at any time, because you probably get the burnout too sometimes, where it's like, oh gosh, I've said something and now people are... It is really encouraging to get someone who says, hey, I love your videos, I used to be really this way, but you've kind of opened my mind to things, and I don't think I identify the same way that I used to, or even, and maybe not even that, but just someone who says, Hey, I'm a liberal, I'm on the left, but I still enjoy watching your videos for a different perspective.
And that to me is what's so encouraging and why I keep making videos.
But I think the whole conversation around gender right now, it's come to a point where we're not just saying, hey, you know, these are people with, you know, this medical condition which has been diagnosed, like, let's try to support them in whatever way doctors think are best, you know, let's make sure they don't feel alienated.
It's gone from that to Not only is gender not a real thing, but biological sex is also not a real thing, and also, it's okay to give hormones to kids.
So, the conversation has really, really derailed from where it was, I think, even just five years ago, which is scary to me, and we do a lot of videos on the show, Pseudo-Intellectual, about how this stuff is affecting young kids, because I think a lot of people, they may watch a video that I've done about transgender issues or whatever, and think, why do you care?
Why does it matter to you?
Stop butting into other people's lives.
On a person-to-person level, I don't care what you do, your body or however you prefer to be, your life, go for it.
But this matters because of systemic issues.
It's gotten a lot bigger than that.
We have laws like in Canada, Bill C-16, that may criminalize speech if you don't use someone's correct pronoun.
We actually have cases now where parents are having to go to court because they don't want their children To be given hormones.
So this isn't just affecting individuals, and this isn't just me being a jerk and not wanting to use this pronoun for you.
I'm talking about this issue because it's affecting, I think, individual freedoms and parental rights, and mainly parental rights because we see this coming down into the school systems.
So for someone that is paying attention to this, that's doing a lot of videos on these topics for that very reason, are you shocked how much trans Stuff, is the only way I can put it, is just constantly out there.
And, you know, we did a video about rapid-onset gender dysphoria.
Because a lot of us kind of just observing might think, wow, it seems like there are a lot more trans-identifying people than before.
Maybe we're crazy. No, actually, that's correct. Numbers have really skyrocketed, especially among
younger generations. So they've begun to do studies, and they've found that gender dysphoria
actually manifests itself, especially among young girls, in social clusters, right? If there's a
teenage or maybe early 20s girl who's now identifying as maybe not a girl, she believes
she's trans, it's actually quite likely that in her social group, there is another person that's
So this study was actually looking at whether it's possible that gender dysphoria could be somewhat of a social contagion.
Their phrase, not mine, similar to things like bulimia, anorexia, and things like that.
And they actually did found that, yeah, there's a strong correlation.
What that means is that the people who are saying Hey, maybe we shouldn't, you know, be teaching this at such a young age, or maybe we shouldn't be, you know, glamorizing as this, like, new trend because it might affect people.
Maybe we are right.
Maybe we're not just being crazy and bigoted.
And again, what's the big deal so they identify as a different person?
A lot of people might be asking.
Well, you know, becoming whatever you want, when it involves things like hormones and potentially surgeries, This is a big deal.
It's frustrating, because that's, no matter what someone may call themselves, at the end of the day, they're another person, and I would never wish them harm or want them to be deprived of, like, life, liberty, or property, or anything like that.
And I would like to think I would also, you know, want to be kind to them, too.
So it is hurtful, like, having all those doors closed in your face.
Are you as sort of hopeful for what I would call sort of the new center-right that I think is sort of conservatives like yourself, like there's just a younger breed of conservatives that I think are a little more tolerant on some of the social stuff than the libertarians, say the classical liberals, the ex-lefties, that there really is something growing right now, that for all the reasons that everything feels crazy, there's actually something really nice taking root right now.
If you could just sort of step away from the craziness for a minute.
You know, it's very encouraging to see how YouTube, as a platform, has kind of played its own role in furthering political and cultural conversations among younger people.
But are you worried that when things like that come out, and then they put you on that, that then we see the way these things get escalated, where then it's like, oh, Lauren talked to this person who's an accused white supremacist, and now Facebook says you can't be a white supremacist and be on Facebook, but now you're that much closer to them, and Rubin talked to this one.
So I know you've spoken about social media censorship before, which I appreciate because I feel like more people need to be talking about this.
And the reaction that I get from some people is that, like, you're paranoid.
Like, you're just, you know, you're seeing a boogeyman where there's not, if people aren't watching your videos because they don't want to watch it, like, people maybe just don't care to engage with your tweets, whatever.
You do get called paranoid when you talk about these things, but then you have these lists.
Yeah, literally linking you to actual white supremacists.
And then, you know, someone like YouTube comes out and say, they outright say, yeah, we are going to be not recommending extremist or conspiracy content.
And you're kind of like, well, I'm on that list.
Does that mean I'm like, I don't think this is just paranoia.
To worry about this.
And you know, part of me, like I said, they're gonna say what they're gonna say.
The other part of me is like, wait, this does matter because this affects who can see my videos, my ability to get my message out there.
And never mind that.
I don't want someone who doesn't know who I am, whatever, being told that I'm a Nazi so they shouldn't watch my videos and just write me off entirely.
Right, and you can also brush a lot of it off your shoulder, but you know, we're still people too, and it's like when you go to get a slice of pizza, if there's someone standing there that's looking at you and they heard that you're a white supremacist, that's no fun.
And I think people who fling these words at people online and I don't know if they really believe it, if there are actually people out there who believe that I am a Nazi and a white supremacist, or if they're just trying to be hurtful and inflammatory, but I don't think they realize how much damage that does, not just to a platform or a career, but personally.
You kind of have to defend to people who maybe know you in real life, like, hey, why are people saying that about you?
Because, again, for people who aren't in our crazy online world, Maybe they don't know that Nazi is just another word for disagrees with you, right?
Because I mean, if you told me 10 years ago that so-and-so was a Nazi, I would probably have been like, oh my gosh.
Every time they say that about somebody or one of those things, I start having to really, I now, even lately, I've been thinking about some of the people over the years that were really called this or that.
And I'm like, man, did I really not understand what the actual truth was?
Yeah, like, full disclosure, not pro-Nazism, not pro-sexism.
I'm pro-good things, anti-bad things.
So, like, it's hard when people kind of just muddy the waters, and it's like words don't mean anything anymore, and you're called the worst things imaginable on a daily basis.
Yeah, so how has it been working for Glenn over at The Blaze?
Because that's all part of this conversation.
It's like, here's a guy who is, I think, unfairly demonized for a long time, and who has also said that, you know, he was part of the sort of cable news problem and the outrage thing, and he's kind of had his mea culpa about it, and he's trying to build bridges now, and it's like, I give that guy a lot of credit.
No one's perfect, and we've all done things in our past that we're not proud of.
And if you're familiar with how bigger networks operate, that's really rare.
That doesn't happen all the time, and I don't think people understand that.
And I still get people all the time who come to me, I'll be tagged like, "Hey, this person
who's also on Blasey B said this and this.
How could you work with someone that blah, blah, blah?"
Or, "Did you see what X person said?"
I don't know what they say.
And they can say whatever they want.
I'm gonna say what I say.
And I think there are some people who are so into purity testing that they can't even imagine a network or a platform where that doesn't happen, where not everybody needs to toe the same line about the same issue.
I actually did go through my libertarian phase in college.
I used to call myself a conservatarian, but now with issues like the border, which I know even among libertarians themselves are not really together on, so I generally just call myself a conservative right now.
I don't know if there are issues—oh, I got one—the environment.
I think there are definitely people on the right who don't believe climate change exists at all.
I am not one of those people.
And then, you know, going even further, there are some people on the right who do believe that climate change is an issue, but they don't think that government should be involved.
I wouldn't be against I don't know, I'm trying to think of a green initiative that I would support, but just in general, I... Well, some sort of public-private combination.
Yeah, exactly, because I don't want the Green New Deal.
That would be one of the worst things that could happen, just for many reasons.
Wait, you don't think that a freshman senator who's never done anything other than win re-election could write a document that would reorganize the entire economy?
It's like, I'm not on board with that, but in terms of, I guess, what his administration has implemented, I mean, right now, in terms of the economy, black people, Hispanic people, women, their unemployment rates are at record lows.
I think that's something that everybody, regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump as a person, should be happy for.
Because I've had people comment that, I'm glad you don't try to oversimplify things or, you know, shy away from issues that maybe don't make your side look good.
And again, like, I'll bring about the environment.
I'm not saying that I absolutely do not believe that the government should be just putting all the money into solar and win in the hopes that
something happens.
But am I going to deny that I think we should be talking about the issue of the environment?
No, I'm not. And I think just being able to have that goes a long way for some people.
And then, I mean, of course, there are these these ideologues who you're never going to connect with.
And I that's something that I've had to come to terms with, that some people
just don't want to listen. And there's nothing you can say that was going to change their mind.
But for a lot of people, I think they understand when someone's being, or at least trying to be, rational and reasonable.
And I had someone, I made a comment about the hashtag MyWhitePrivilege thing that was going around, and I was told to stay out of American politics.
How is this American politics?
Because these cultural issues, they don't end at borders because the internet doesn't end at borders, right?
This online presence doesn't end at borders.
So especially when I'm talking about issues like gender or race, where we have our extremely liberal government that's actually putting these kinds of ideologies into law, I think I'm absolutely talking about something that applies to my country.
And I think it's something that it's funny.
Maybe some of these Americans who are on the left, they're trying to tell me to butt out.
If I were perhaps, I mean this is like it's all conversation, but if I were perhaps an undocumented immigrant, they maybe wouldn't be so like anti-foreign.
But also I just I think that some people need to recognize that culture is It doesn't stop at borders.
And so, like, these issues affect Canadians.
These issues affect Brits.
And my breakdown of who watches my show, it's, like, about 60% Americans, but then I have, like, a good 10% Canadians, 10% of Brits, and, you know, the rest of the Anglosphere, the Australians.
So it was this hashtag that was started on Twitter and it ended up trending.
And it was meant for just white people to check their privilege,
to mention instances or maybe trends they've noticed that are due to their whiteness,
a privilege that they know that a non-white person would not get.
And the thing is, like, I don't deny the idea of privilege exists.
Like, I, coming from a two-parent household, I've lived a lot of places, I've gone to good schools, I absolutely acknowledge that I've had privileges that a lot of people haven't had.
Well I think it's like they're kind of interchangeable.
Like I don't have systemic privilege, but I've had things that afforded to me in my
life that other people haven't had and life's not fair and I don't think anyone would dispute
that life isn't fair.
But I think, you know, the idea when other people mention white privilege, they're talking about the idea that for white people, you know, their skin color affords them certain privileges that non-white people don't have.
And I think that's a very, very toxic mentality.
And if you, I was reading some of those tweets and just like blood pressure just raising through the roof.
It's like the, you can kind of like almost imagine these like white progressives like on their knees trying to grovel down before their non-white friends and like apologize for the whiteness of their skin.
It's depressing and embarrassing to watch, I think.
And you know, they talk about things like, I got pulled over by a cop and then he didn't give me a ticket.
Hashtag my white privilege.
And it's like, well, I mean, sometimes cops, like, I personally, I've never been pulled over and not gotten a ticket.
I've only gotten a ticket once.
But it's like, I've never been given that kind of, you know, leeway.
You know, I've had teachers maybe who were a little more lenient for me.
Is that because I'm white, or is it because I'm a female, or was it because I'm a good student?
We are so keen to attribute motive to people.
And, like, it just reinforces this idea that, yeah, white people are privileged, and it's Annoying because now merely denying the existence of white privilege makes you a racist and a bigot.
And I have friends who are on the left and progressive, who I do think, at the end of the day, want equality.
I think we have different ideas about how to get there.
So, you know, I wouldn't just, based on someone being a progressive, call them racist.
But I think if you are someone who thinks that because of the color of their skin someone is not entitled to have an opinion about a certain issue, that is racist. If you are someone who thinks that, you
know, this person, because of their skin color, is entitled to either more or less of a
starting point or an advantage or disadvantage, then you are a racist. And I think that's historically,
generally, kind of been the agreed upon definition of racist. So yeah, like, there's no
Yeah, it's like if you want to have a conversation about class and school funding, then let's have that.
Which I actually, you know, I think one of the privileges that is kind of undeniable is that some kids are afforded more luxuries in their schools or whatever than other kids.
You know, an inner city kid is not going to have the same education or whatever.
So let's try to address that and say how we can improve the inner city schools and stuff.
And not only are people free in the U.S., they are economically prosperous by any metric.
You take someone who's living in poverty in the United States and you compare it to a global level, they're still doing pretty dang well.
As someone who grew up in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are very prosperous countries, but I visited two places, like Indonesia and Thailand, where that actually is structural poverty.
So I'm able to recognize how privileged we are just to be in the West.
Um, and I think a lot of millennials now, they've been painted a picture where capitalism has failed.
The American dream is dead.
AOC says that all the time.
Like, we're living in a, like, you know, all the billionaires have all the money, the working class, we're screwed, we don't have anything.
That's not true.
And that's not to say that issues like high tuition don't exist and stuff.
You know, absolutely they do.
We should talk about it.
But overall, we are living in such tremendous affluence and prosperity and equality that
the fact that there are people, you know, saying, "No, this is so broken.
We need to start all over and tear it all down," it, like, freaks me out.
It would take a lot of campaign finance to get me to New York, I tell you that.
Not my favorite city, but I mean, I think even people are starting to wake up to the fact, like we had the whole Amazon debacle, right?
And at the end of the day, like, yeah, people love this sort of like socialist populist rhetoric, but you know what else they love is just actual jobs.
And so when we had Amazon being chased away, we did have angry New Yorkers being like, Okay, but wait.
Even if you don't work for Amazon, you get to be part of the growing economy surrounding and providing support to that business.
I think people are, at the end of the day, what they want more than anything else is jobs, and not necessarily the promise that I don't think is even possible to provide of just all this free stuff.
At least that's what I'm hoping for.
But it is really, I don't know, depressing, frustrating, sad, whatever negative word you
want to use, to see a generation of millennials, socialists, communists, whatever, completely
misrepresent the environment that we are living in now and not recognize how lucky they are.
Well, you know, I've read people suggest we should have some sort of like internship study abroad program where we just send people, you know, these progressive, mainly white, rich millennials to places like Venezuela.
Or just like, you know, foreign places where they can maybe see a little bit more of the outside world beyond their bubbles or what they've been fed to really, really see how the U.S.
stands, or the West in general, compared to other countries.
I worked my butt off when I was in high school to kind of get to the best college that I could.
I took it really, really seriously when I was in college.
I worked for my professors.
You know, all my friends were in academia.
It was kind of like assumed, because I was in that world, that I would go on and have my master's and stuff,
and I have a lot of respect for academia.
But at the same, and I would never say that college is useless, but at the same time,
I think we're reaching a point now where A, so much of what colleges do now
is not really instruction, but it's indoctrination.
And the return on a college degree, especially if you're taking something like a gender studies or feminist theories degree or whatever it may be, the return is not worth it.
That's essentially the only place I would know to look at it, but I think we need to kind of reevaluate how we see college because, you know, other countries, they have things like trade schools and things like that where You know, it's not anti-education, because I'm not anti-education.
I'm always pro-education.
More knowledge is always good, but college is not the only way to get education.
And I think colleges, if you look at what they're spending money on, they've really inflated the number of administrators they have.
You have entire diversity boards and things now.
It's like, where did you come from?
Who's paying your salary?
Well, the students are.
And I don't think it's worth it.
You know, President Trump, he's actually taking measures now to try and enforce freedom of speech on campuses, which I think is really important.
Um, but I am against the idea that everybody needs to go to college.
The only way to be successful is to go to college.
And I think by, by doing that, we've kind of like, we've made the leftists in academia untouchable because they have like wave after wave of student who's, you know, willing to pay whatever to get in so they can be indoctrinated.
Let me ask you some, I'll turn identity politics on you, which would be, why aren't there more women in this space?
You're one of the few, Allie Stuckey, there's a couple, but I wish there were more women, not for identity politics purposes, but partly just a little bit for the optics of it, so that when we're all getting attacked for all this stuff, it's like, here's the low resolution part of this, here's more women, even though it has nothing to do with your ideas and everything else.
I think the reason why there aren't more women in this sphere is kind of why there aren't more women in politics in general, is that this is a very aggressive sphere.
It really is, and I think, for me even, it can be overwhelming for a lot of people who, you know, all right, you put your ideas out there, and then you're going to just get attacked, like, ruthlessly.
So, and I'm not saying that men don't as well, but I think maybe as a female-identifying person, whatever the PC, you know, For a lot of women, it might be a little bit harder to just say, okay, let me brush that off, move on, and forget about it.
Especially if you are a woman who's speaking out against progressive ideas, you're gonna get even more attention than maybe a white male that's doing so, because I think a lot of people figure, oh, another white guy who hates feminism, who cares?
But if you're a woman, then it's like, You're going against the grain.
It's like error in the system, and they really feel the need to double down.
I mean, regardless of what you think about the Trump family, the way that Melania and Ivanka Trump are treated, I think most of us would agree is completely vile, sexist, the things that they're called.
And it's unfortunately kind of par for the course for conservative women or, you know, someone who is gay and speaking out against the left or black.
You get that much more pushback.
So I think that alone, unfortunately, is enough For a lot of people to say, I don't know about this.
I think my answer kind of goes back and forth for that.
There are some days, you know, when, for example, I see people speaking out against maybe the Gillette ad and I'm not being like totally irrational and, you know, wanting to burn cars down over a commercial because that's all it is at the end of the day, but kind of saying like, OK, this is stupid.
You don't need to do this to sell razor blades.
You know, it's days like that where I think, OK, good, most people have kind of wanted to leave all this identity politics in the trash.
Great.
And then there are other days, like I knew during the Kavanaugh hearing, where I'm like, OK, never mind.
This was a mistake.
Asteroid.
Just we're ready.
We're ready.
So I go back and forth.
But I think if looking at Gen Z, they're one of the generation's most ready to like reject this whole like far-left
thing that we've seen in a while so I don't know about how hopeful
I am for Millennials, but I think maybe the the next generation a little bit more
Yeah, that's actually exactly where I was gonna end this.
Yeah, suddenly there is this now burst of younger people You're gonna be you're gonna be old to these people. I hate
to tell you That's okay.
But that are now coming out and going, whoa, we've seen the last five years of abject hysteria and lunacy, and now they're becoming more conservative, and maybe that is the silver lining out of all of this.
Yeah, well, because I think, and people make fun of this meme, but it's kind of true, where it's like, conservatism is almost counterculture right now, and a lot of people on the left laugh about that, but I mean, think about it.
If you are a young person who's in school right now, like, all of your teachers, you know, all of the media that you watch, the school books you're being given to, that are given to you, they all push this progressive
agenda.
So what do you do if you want to rebel against that?
Because let's face it, young people, if there's like tales old as times, that young people like to rebel.
We like to be different.
We like to like, I'm doing my own thing.
We've all been teenagers.
So how does a young person do that right now?
Well, it's not by kind of committing yourself to PC life and culture.
That's not edgy.
That's not edgy, that's not against the grain.
That's not against the grain.
It's by saying, no, like, I'm going to listen to this offensive comedian.
It's by saying, no, I'm gonna listen to this offensive comedian.
I'm going to listen to like, you know, one of the people who I hear my professors or
I'm gonna listen to one of the people who I hear my professors or my parents
my parents or whatever telling me not to watch, you know, like the Jordan Petersons, the Dave
or whatever telling me not to watch, the Jordan Petersons, the Dave Rubins,