Jack Murphy details his survival of an Antipa exile campaign, leveraging it to expand The Liminal Order, a group of 800+ men aged 35 to 55 adhering to strict fitness and spiritual standards. Citing C.S. Lewis and Jordan Peterson's 2016 Rogan appearance as validation against media narratives labeling masculinity as far-right, Murphy describes events like "Suits and Steaks" and the 8,000-person waiting list for his community-focused organization. Ultimately, this movement seeks to rebuild masculine energy through disciplined self-improvement rather than complaint, offering a structured path for men to reclaim their roles in society. [Automatically generated summary]
I guess I'm kind of a journalist, but I'm really just sort of a guy that asks questions.
I've been asking questions for 10 years and each day I ask a new question and it's landed me right here in this chair just by asking questions and being curious and coming to understand that one of the major challenges that we have right now is like building a community of masculine energy of men.
So I want to talk about that, but what's interesting to me now that I'm sitting here with you is that, I don't know, maybe six, seven years ago or something, I'm doing a talk at some libertarian event, and this tall guy with a beard comes up to me and you start telling me, you know, Dave, I'm in the middle of being cancelled.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We should talk one day, and we traded numbers, and then over the years we had some sort of light connection.
You've done the show once or twice since, but you sort of survived the monster.
People can find out how you did that.
We don't have to rehash all of that, but they can just search you and they'll find it out.
But now you are one of, I'd say, the sort of 20 online sense makers.
You know, it was a moment where It was either that's going to defeat me, or I'm going to turn it around and use it to where I want to go, to jujitsu that energy around.
And I was able to do that.
And Antipa literally came after me.
Antipa literally did a whole campaign to try to end my whole everything, exile me.
And instead, I'm 150,000 times more powerful because I had nothing then.
I was working on the book and I realized that this is where I wanted to be.
It was where my heart was.
I used to think that it was a tragedy, but it really has been the beginning of what is now unfolding to be some sort of great journey.
And I do remember that Libertarian conference, and I did wait to talk to you, and I was like, of all people, you're going to understand this, and I appreciate you staying in touch.
Well, I knew, you know, you meet all these people at all of these things and people come up to your walk-in and every now and again someone was able to break through and you're like, there's something there.
But, you know, sometimes you're busy too and eventually it gets there.
But you mentioned this, what you're trying to do with men, that we've had this sort of collapse of men.
And, you know, I toured with Jordan Peterson, obviously, for a year and a half and I saw him literally have people stand up straight with their shoulder back and that started a process for a lot of people.
And I've seen a certain amount of people, I think, take that to a more granular level.
So with Jordan, I just want to talk about this for one second.
When he appeared on Joe Rogan somewhere around 2016.
Yeah.
I remember that vividly because he put into academic intellectual framework all the things that we had been talking about in our little internet subculture from like 2008 up until that point.
And so it really crystallized a lot of the work that we had been doing sort of just very underground on the internet.
And it moved me quite a bit, actually.
And it helped me understand that what I was experiencing as a man in America, I wasn't alone in that.
And the negative feelings I was having around the perception of masculinity and such, and the treatment of men, was legit.
And it wasn't just something I was thinking up in my head.
Because you know, part of the whole game here is to make us feel isolated, to make us feel alone, to make us feel like, you know, you're crazy and there's no one else that can relate to you.
And so when we get people together to break bread and drink wine...
You know, on a patio, on a Sunday.
It's just amazing to see what happens when you get together with people who share your worldview, more or less, who have the same vernacular as you, who follow the same media people as you, who know the same stories.
It really, like, frees you up to make personal connections in a way that, when you just randomly meet somebody, there's always, you know, that thought in the back of your head they're gonna say something eventually, where like, oh yeah, all those Trump supporters, you know.
And then you're like, all right, well, there you go.
It's really a broad swath, a representative of everybody in America, all the men.
I mean, the common theme is that they're all online, right?
Because that's how they find me.
But most of our guys are 35 to 55, married or with kids, family-oriented, professional, patriots, care about America, well-read.
And they want to do something, you know?
They don't want to just sit back and be a victim.
They don't want to just sit back and complain.
They want to build things.
We've got media publishers, we've got tech guys, we've got guys building tech companies, we've got guys putting out newspapers, actual print newspapers as a way to like... You guys really are a throwback.
We are?
Well, you know, it's one of the ways that you know for sure you can get your message out to regular people.
And so it's been a beautiful thing and we have 8,000 guys on the waiting list and we let in 50 every month and then we interview everybody and some make it and some don't.
But our fitness standards actually cover mindfulness, meditation, prayer, blood work even.
We have a heart surgeon who has established a blood panel for us for our metabolic health.
For mobility, for cardio, for strength, etc.
So it's really like a rubric for living a generally healthy life.
And we ask guys, we want them to be mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically integrated.
Because that's how you can become the best version of you possible, which is how you can then contribute to society in a way that's hopefully going to lead us to wherever we need to go to solve this mess that we're in.