Piers Morgan’s interview with Nick Fuentes on Monday resulted in miles of newspaper columns, endless hours of YouTube commentary and thousands of social media comments. It was to be expected, what with Fuentes’ rising notoriety - but what we didn’t expect was how incensed Nick’s army of ‘groypers’ would be by some of the events that unfolded in the discussion. Nor the abuse directed towards Piers and his family. But is Fuentes just performative, outrageous and attention-seeking? Or does he really believe the most incendiary things that he says? And if the answer to that question is yes, how did he get there? Joining Uncensored to discuss the interview and the furore that’s followed is Dr Phil, critical thinker Warren Smith, The Crucible host Andrew Wilson, influencer Harry Sisson, System Update host Glenn Greenwald and Bet News host Marc Lamont Hill and author Danny Finkelstein. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Pendragon Cycle (Daily Wire+): Discover The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of The Merlin—a bold retelling of the King Arthur legend where Merlin’s vision sparks a civilization’s rebirth; watch the full trailer now at https://DailyWire.com. Cozy Earth: Slow down and recharge with Cozy Earth’s luxurious Bamboo Sheets and Bubble Cuddle Blanket—order by December 12 for Christmas delivery and use code PIERS at https://CozyEarth.com for up to 40% off. Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/ to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Olive Garden Insult00:10:36
My family had a saying about Olive Garden that contains the N-word.
Do you think you grew up in a racist environment?
That your father was inherently racist?
If you want to go after families, we can play that game.
Your family's green lit that too, Piers.
Fuck you and your family.
You did bring up the guy's dad and you said his name.
This is a person who has had people attempt to assassinate him.
The most powerful role model in any child's life is the same-sex parent.
You, I think, were the only interviewer so far to really hold Nick Fuentes accountable.
Say what you want about him.
He's extremely smart, an incredibly talented communicator, and very well read.
The reason he has attracted a lot of attention is because he's speaking to the anger and frustration, a lot of which is valid.
Just about everybody else has had their say on my interview with Nick Fuentes this week, with a notable exception of me.
There's been columns in newspapers and magazines, endless hours of YouTube commentary, hundreds of thousands of posts on X Plus, the inevitable swarm of Groyper weirdos following me everywhere online.
All of that was to be expected.
Fuentes is highly controversial and increasingly influential, which is why I invited him on in the first place.
What I didn't really expect was the frenetic and compulsive pearl clutching from Fuentes and his troll army, who ironically accused me of doing exactly the same thing during the interview.
Fuentes and his followers are particularly upset about this.
There was an episode of your podcast where you talked about your father, Bill Fuentes, and how he wouldn't take the family, including you, to certain restaurants because he believed they were associated with African Americans.
We would be deciding where to go to eat, you said.
What are we going to do for dinner tonight?
It was a running joke.
Me and my sister would say Applebee's, and my dad would say we would never eat at Applebee's.
Not in a million years should you be caught dead, Fuentes said about Applebee's.
Go to a different restaurant, a local restaurant.
No Applebee's, no red lobster.
That is commonly known as black fare.
And you also shared another story about your family and restaurants.
So before me and my sister were born, my family had a saying about Olive Garden that contains the N-word that we're not allowed to say.
So my question, based on that anecdote that you say on your own podcast, is, do you think you grew up in a racist environment?
That your father was inherently racist?
And that that thought process moved to you?
Well, Fuentes responded by getting very worked up and directing his trolls to harass me and all my family, all very predictable.
You want to go after families?
We could play that game.
Your family's greenlit then too, Piers.
Your family's greenlit as well.
So, fuck you and your family.
Fuck you and fuck your kids.
You bring my dad into it?
But Nick, if you clutch those pearls any harder, they will bruise the back of your neck.
To be clear, again, this wasn't a low blow or a trap or an attack on Bill Fuentes.
It was a question about a story, which I thought could be insightful.
And it was a story that Nick Fuentes decided to share on his own show to his own followers.
My dad refused to allow us.
My dad would not let us go.
That was a common joke.
We would be deciding where to go to eat.
You know, what are we going to get for dinner tonight?
And it was a running joke that me and my sister would say, Applebee's.
And my dad would say, no, we will never eat Applebee's.
So.
Yeah, so not in a million years, not in a million years should you be caught dead.
Go to some other place.
Go to a different restaurant.
Go to a local restaurant.
So yeah, no, no Applebee's, no Red Lobster.
That is commonly known as black fare.
And before me and my sister were born, my family had a saying about Olive Garden that contains the N-word that, you know, we're not allowed to say that my parents wouldn't say around me and my sister about Olive Garden, its relationship with black people.
It contains a bad word, contains a naughty word in there.
So I'm not going to repeat it here.
But yeah, we don't eat there.
So that's Nick Fuentes, in his own words, telling the story that he objected to me asking him about.
One of my objectives for the interview was to find out a bit more about this guy who's at the center of a big raging storm amid the conservative movement in America right now.
Is he just performative, outrageous, and attention-seeking?
Or does he really believe the most incendiary things that he says?
And if the answer to that question is yes, how did he get there?
Having interviewed people for nearly four decades now, I find their upbringing is almost always influential one way or another.
And if you don't want other people to talk about it, then why talk about it very publicly yourself?
There are many more interesting points of debate from this interview, from crime stats and racism to generational divides to Holocaust denial.
I'm going to get to all of them and we'll do with my panel shortly.
But this one small exchange has for me really made a bigger point.
What Fuentes and his fans hate most is any accountability.
It's all about speaking unchallenged into an echo chamber where there's a whole movement built on directing blame and anger onto everybody else.
Girls don't like you because they're difficult.
Your neighborhood's in decline because of the black people.
The world is corrupt because of the Jews and so on.
Now, he's angry about the story being shared because in fact, he shared it himself.
It wasn't a game or a trick to question Nick Fuentes about the words of Nick Fuentes.
That was the whole point of the interview.
Well, I'll be joined by Stella Panel in a moment.
We'll begin with Dr. Phil, host of The Real Story.
Dr. Phil, great to have you back on Uncensored, as always.
What do you make of Nick Fuentes?
Well, a lot.
And I first have to say, I commend you for doing this interview.
I know some people say, why would you platform this person?
I think it took courage for you to put him on.
And I'm glad that you did, because if an adult, if there's not an adult in the room to ask the hard questions and hold these type of voices accountable, then they just run unchecked.
And you saw what happened here.
I spent a lot of time doing trial science work in the litigation arena.
And we always say your story goes a lot better if you're the only one telling it.
And that's what people mean when they talk about echo chambers and living in a bubble.
And what you did was hold him accountable for what he said.
And of course, that's not near as much fun when a narcissist is not in a room full of people that are nodding along with them.
And you just said, listen, I'm not going to introduce anything new here.
I'm going to ask you about what you said and let you explain what you said.
And there was no ambush here.
He could have predicted with great accuracy what you were going to ask.
You just ask it in a very critical thinking sort of way.
And that was very uncomfortable for him because someone was holding him to account.
And thank you for doing that.
Because his opinions that he's spreading are ugly, they're corrosive, they're deeply un-American.
And that's the psychology of extremism.
I think that he is not empowering young men.
He's manipulating them.
And Piers, I'm going to take a breath here in a minute and let you come in on what I'm saying.
But this is the same algorithm that social media uses.
If people like something, they click a little bit.
If you can get them worked up about something, they click a whole lot.
And that's the same strategy as the algorithm that makes social media so toxic.
And that's what he does.
And you called him out on that in a very transparent and fair-minded way.
You let him tell his story, but you ask about some of the key points.
Yeah, and you know, what was really interesting was I don't think he expected that anecdote about his father to come out so early, or if at all.
So he looked a bit taken aback.
And the reason I asked it was very specific.
You know, I said to him, in all my experience of interviewing people, and you've interviewed as many as I have, Phil, if not more, I really do believe that the vast majority of people are a product of their environment.
And if Nick Fuentes, through his own story about his parents there, and particularly his father, if he grew up in an environment of overt racism, with his father saying, I'm not taking you to certain restaurants because they're associated with black fare, then you can begin to understand why he himself has become overtly racist and indeed is proud of it.
So to me, it was a very relevant question.
But again, it can't be an ambush if all I'm doing is asking him about a story he himself put in the public domain.
He did introduce it into the public domain with great fanfare and having a great time doing it.
Look, the most powerful role model in any child's life is the same-sex parent.
They write on the slate of who their children are, and they start doing that from a very early age.
And they write on the slate emotionally, socially, in terms of values, thinking process.
So you're quite right to bring that up.
If you want to know who someone is, you need to look at from whence they came.
And that doesn't mean they don't have a chance to alter that when they get other worldviews.
But certainly that's a relevant subject matter that he introduced.
He just introduced it when no one was calling him out or questioning him about it.
And it was interesting to me how quickly he put on the victim hat and started retreating.
Roots of Radicalism00:04:49
I thought it came across as very whiny, immature, insecure, and inadequate.
And he said he was a racist.
He said he was an incel.
He used that term.
He introduced that.
And, you know, that's defined as very misogynistic and resentful and blaming of others, blaming women, blaming minorities, blaming Jews.
He's blaming so many other people, which is strange for someone that's in a leadership position to try to do.
You know, I asked him about his own sex life, right?
Because it seems to me relevant because of this whole belief that he runs a group of incels, you know, who are involuntary celibates, supposedly.
And this is how the exchange went down.
Are you actually attracted to women?
I am attracted to women.
You're not gay.
No.
But I will say that women are very difficult to be around.
So there's that.
And do you think they should have the right to vote?
I do not.
No, absolutely not.
They should stay at home.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
See, basically, you're just a misogynist old dinosaur, aren't you?
For a young guy.
I mean, I know I'm the boomer.
I know I'm the boomer here, but actually, you're a 27-year-old dinosaur, aren't you?
Aren't you, Nathoentes?
All women, all women are annoying.
All women grow old.
They all get fat.
Says the guy, have you ever had sex?
No, absolutely not.
Wow, says the guy who's never got laid.
That's the thing, though.
You boomers, it's a lot of people.
It's a free love.
You've never got laid?
Yeah, we are going back to the Stone Age.
You're absolutely right.
You're talking about empathy and your kids are empathetic and they would never laugh at a joke about the Holocaust and you're a misogynist.
You're a simp yourself.
You're totally hand-packed.
That's the problem.
And what was interesting, Philly, he went on to admit he'd never been in love, never had any meaningful relationship with a woman.
And yet he's so misogynist in his rhetoric about women, so demeaning about them.
You know, I talked there earlier in the interview, which is why I refer it again about how he'd said on his show that women, the trouble is they're not just annoying.
They get old, they get ugly, they get fat, and so on.
Now, really demeaning, horrible language about women, but not difficult to work out why he would feel this way if he's never had any real interaction with them.
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Well, it's very transparent.
And these go back to some of the oldest parables in the world.
You're talking about sour grapes here.
And this is someone that has gotten into a comfort zone where he doesn't interact.
He doesn't have relationships that call on him to engage in meaningful conversation with women, learn what they're about and who they are.
It's easy to sit up in the cheap seats and criticize.
And of course, we know the talent pool in this world at every level.
If we took women out of the talent pool in this world, we would be crippled so bad.
Look at what's happening in medicine, technology, so many areas that if you look at the enrollment in universities right now, women have eclipsed men.
He is so uninformed in his views.
And the problem is you get in these cult-like communities where you get people that maybe haven't had a good role model in their lives and have someone like him who can be entertaining, can be charismatic.
He's a nice-looking young man.
Bots and Brainwashing00:02:56
And people, young men will follow that.
If they don't have good father figures in their own life, in the absence of real leadership, they'll follow almost anyone if they present well.
And that's a problem.
And mothers and fathers, families need to be asking, what can I do to fortify my young men against this kind of exploitation?
And that's why people should be standing up and applauding you, exposing with great transparency what's going on here with this Nick Fuente's phenomenon.
Well, all I wanted to do, honestly, was to work out whether it was all performative or whether he really believes a lot of the things that he says.
And by the end, I concluded he does actually believe a lot of this stuff.
And what?
He does.
I think he believes some of it.
But what I wasn't expecting, Phil, which I was really quite shocked by, and it takes a lot to shock me, but the sheer volume and venom on social media of his so-called Groypers, these young men that adhere to his every word, who he kind of unleashes on people, it was unbelievably brazen in its misogyny, in its racism, in its anti-Semitism.
It was some of the most vile stuff I've seen in a long time.
And it was relentless and has carried on and targeting me, targeting members of my family, whatever.
I don't care.
I'm used to it.
I've had a lot worse actually than this.
They remind me of a bunch of mean boys at school.
And, you know, obviously I'm 60 years old.
It's not going to wash the sides, this kind of thing.
However, it was noticeable to me that they were almost to a man, young, male, misogynist, racist, and anti-Semitic, and view everything he says as sacrosanct.
You know, this is a kind of brainwashed world.
The only question I don't know is how much of them are genuine human beings and how much may be, as has been reported today in the New York Post, foreign bots that are unleashed because they analyze the speed of reaction to stuff that he posts.
And they've worked out a lot of it comes from overseas and a lot of it may be bots, you know, actual robots doing the stuff.
You know, these bot farms now, there was a time when people would use these bots and they would deploy them by the hundreds.
But now our research shows that these bot farms, a lot of them out of Russia and some other foreign countries, are deployed in the tens of thousands.
And what happens is they start kind of a zeitgeist on the internet and then others, real people see that and then they start jumping on the bandwagon.
Naming the Father00:17:45
And so it can drive a social media kind of think a certain, can drive social media to appear that it's thinking a certain way.
But I'm sure in the middle of that, he has followers that do echo what he's saying.
And it's whiny, it's immature, it's insecure, it's highly transparent.
And you wonder what's going to happen to these young men if somebody doesn't force them into some critical thinking where they say, listen, what's the end result here?
Where does this lead me in my life?
As opposed to opening themselves up to some real interaction and some real critical thinking where they say, what do I want?
What's my goal in life?
Do I want to have a family?
Do I want to have children?
Do I want to have a meaningful career where I can fit into a fully functional society?
And if they stay on this path, they're going to be lonely, depressed, anxious, inadequate, with a false sense of superiority that is very, very empty, very, very meaningless.
And I hate that.
I hate that for these young men because he is misleading them.
He's not empowering them.
He is misleading them.
Yeah, you know, I totally agree.
I've got three sons of 32, 28, 25.
And I'd be horrified if they behave like that.
Horrified if they had those attitudes and views.
Horrified if they were so dismissive of things like the Holocaust.
Horrified if they spoke about women that way.
Horrified if they were brazenly admitting to being racists and openly admitted they avoid black people in case they get attacked and so on.
All of it was actually quite disturbing.
Well, it is.
But think about all of these young men that are seemingly ascribing to his mindset.
Think about what they're being cheated out of.
Think about all the joy and pleasure and fulfillment that they're actually getting cheated out of if they stay this course.
I mean, think about all the joy you've had with your kids, all of the rich relationships you have with female colleagues that would be off the table.
Think about everything that's missed.
And when your heart is filled with hatred and this anti-Semitism and how much you're out of touch with reality in denying the Holocaust, and you got him to agree that actually the Holocaust was real and that he's had even more than six million people.
And there were much more than six million people because it wasn't just the Jews that were impacted.
And you got him to acknowledge some of those things.
And I wonder how he'll square that up with his followers based on what he said in the past.
But I think he has convinced himself that some of this is real.
And that's just a sad fact.
Yeah.
Dr. Phil, as always, on the money.
Thank you very much indeed.
Well, thank you for doing this interview because as I say, if you don't, then, and I think it takes you to drill in on this and ask some of the uncomfortable questions.
If not, then he runs unabated on the internet.
I can't believe people are saying, why are you giving him a platform?
Because he needs to be asked the hard questions.
I agree.
I feel the same about Andrew Tate and these other characters.
They have huge online followings.
They are very influential.
You can pretend they're not.
You can put your head in the sand and let them go ever bigger without anything being challenged.
Or you take a view as I do.
It's better to get them in front of you, ask them a lot of tough questions about their views and what they've said, and let people make their own minds up about whether they really want to lasso themselves to this person.
Phil, thank you.
Appreciate it.
Well done, Piers.
We'll talk soon.
Thank you very much.
Well, joining me on the panel now is Warren Smith, critical thinker and founder of the Secret Scholar Society.
Andrew Wilson, host of The Crucible.
Martin Lamont Hill, host of Bet News, and influencer Harry Sisson.
And also joining us a little later will be Glenn Greenwood.
All right, Harry Sisson, we're in the unique position, I believe, where you and I may have a slight agreement here about all this.
So what was your view of the Fuentes interview?
You know, Piers, I don't think it's a slight agreement.
I think it's a full agreement.
First and foremost, I do want to start off by saying I thought the way that you conducted the interview was fantastic.
I watched the entire thing and you, I think, were the only interviewer so far to really hold Nick Fuentes accountable and not let him get away with a lot of his hateful views.
I love how you played the clips side by side and made him defend it on the record.
So I want to give props to you there.
I thought it was really well done.
And I watched the entire thing and I was trying to decide, similar to you, does Nick Fuentes actually believe these things or is he doing it for the money?
Is it performative?
And I might disagree slightly with you.
I think it's both.
I think he does believe some of these things.
And I think some of it's performative.
I think when he tried to moderate himself, that's performative.
But the more hateful views that, as you mentioned, when the mask kind of slipped, that's what he truly believes.
You could tell that he was trying to moderate himself when, as you were talking about with Dr. Phil, talking about the Holocaust, he said, oh, I believe it was the Holocaust.
You at least six million Jews.
He said that, but then simultaneously claimed that Hitler is cool and that he liked his uniforms and the music and things like that.
So, no, I mean, you know, I think Nick Fuentes broadly is a sad, insecure man.
I think he's a liar.
I think he's a grifter.
And I think you exposed that in the interview.
Andrew Wilson, what did you think?
Well, I was just watching your previous segment and I thought that the framing there was a little off.
So I've always appreciated coming on the show and you letting me get my viewpoints out.
But I do take some issue with your framing.
You did bring up the guy's dad and you said his name.
And when you said it on the air that way, this is a person who has had people attempt to assassinate him.
They have come to his house, shown up at his door and tried to kill him.
And that's on video happening.
And so when you said the guy's name and then try to tie it into racism, I know that you know this, Piers, but the left broadly will do these harassment campaigns.
These harassment campaigns are designed specifically to incite the violence of many of their mentally illness.
You know, Andrew, let me just say.
That's what they do.
Yeah, let me just say, if I had my time again, I wouldn't have said his father's name, but I would have still told the anecdote because I thought it was really important to Nick Fuentes.
The anecdote's not the relevant part.
Well, but the anecdote is relevant when he immediately tried to attack me for ambushing him with a story that he told himself on his show.
I mean, look, if I told a story like that.
That's not what people are upset about.
No, no, I understand this.
They weren't upset about the anecdote.
They were upset that you specifically said the guy's name.
Fuentes has had these assassination attempts on him.
To be clear, if I had my time again, wouldn't have said his father's name, notwithstanding the fact you can find it in two seconds on the internet.
So it's not like it's difficult to find.
But I do think it's important that that anecdote to me was potentially very relevant to why Nick Fuentes is the way he is about racism, for example, because he was telling a story that cannot be construed, Andrew, any other way than his father was directing them away from restaurants because of his racist views about the people that go in them or run them.
And it couldn't be seen any other way.
I get that.
Listen, I get the point of bringing the anecdote up, but that wasn't what looked to me like what was making these guys so angry was not the anecdote itself, but the fact that you said the guy's name, referenced it as his dad.
And then, you know, this, this guy's had assassination attempts.
Yeah, but the story, the story was him telling the story.
By the way, hang on.
A lot of the first assassination attempt happened because of the Your Body, My Choice thing that he put that tweet out and people began doxing his address and his family's name.
And that's why they showed up to kill him.
So the guy's grievance there, I think, is legitimate.
Yeah, but I think it's important that his grievance wasn't just that I named his father, which again is a matter of public record.
You can find it anywhere.
Although I wouldn't have said it if I had my time again, because I don't want to attack his family for the sake of attacking his family.
It was when he tried to frame it as an unfair attack on his family, when I think actually the story that he himself put in the public domain was potentially very relevant to why he is the way he is.
As a journalist.
Well, how he was framing it was you're trying, you're bringing this up and name doxing specifically so that you can rally people into a harassment campaign.
That's how he saw it.
No, but that wasn't.
Okay, but just to be clear again, that was not my intention.
My intention was to ask him, in all sincerity, if you grow up in an environment at home where there is clear racism that you have discussed yourself on your own show very like unarguably, you know, you can't listen to the clip.
I played it earlier without realizing that's what he's saying.
Then, you know, is that relevant to the way he is?
Let me bring in Mark Lamont Hill here.
I mean, Mark, you know, I didn't do that lightly.
I had decided before I did the interview that, A, I would do a lot of research into this.
I would find all the clips that I felt were the most incendiary things he'd said on the record.
And I would ask him and push him about them in a way that I don't think anyone else has really done.
And it would be interesting to see the way he responded.
And, you know, if you're going to talk to Nick Fuentes, who openly admits to being a racist, he did it again with me in the show.
That anecdote to me was pertinent to why he may have shaped those views.
What do you think?
Was it unfair?
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I think the anecdote was entirely fair and necessary, particularly since the first part of the interview was very much about his biography.
It was very much about what shaped him.
He himself volunteered information, even in that interview, about his parents, about how they came together, about the loss of their fathers, etc.
All that to me is fair game.
I agree that invoking his father's name in that moment was too far.
I hear you saying if you could do it again, you wouldn't.
Because I do have some ethical and moral reservations about doxing.
I don't think it's wrong, for example, if someone does something awful in public and it's relevant to the public interest to track down their job and notify their job.
But that's not the same thing as tracking down every private citizen just because we think they're racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or homophobic.
I may think you're that thing, but you have a right to be that thing, even though I think it's awful.
And I don't think you should be, I don't think you should live without safety because of that.
Now, there's a bigger question, Piers, that you raised at the top of the interview, and it's come up again in the media.
And that is, should you even be talking to this guy?
And I got to be honest with you, Piers, I've struggled with this.
I interview controversial people.
I sit down with people who people say don't platform them.
And I take seriously your point that they already have a platform.
And I'm not making them big.
I'm not drawing attention to them.
They already have the attention.
They're just not being questioned or challenged on that platform.
I concede that point.
I agree with you fully.
The problem with this guy, the problem with Nick Fuentes in particular, though, to me, is he's such a chameleon and he moves in such a way that I'm not sure holding him accountable matters to his base.
And he does just enough to look moderate and normal and reasonable that I think he'll do more damage by sneaking some people from the middle and dragging them to his side because they think he's reasonable and only later find out that he's a sexist misogynist, Hitler-loving Nazi, right?
Or whatever he is, right?
That's where the danger comes for me.
I'm not saying we should interview controversial people.
I'm just saying this particular guy, I feel like we're playing into his interests and his angle.
Yeah.
Well, Glenn Greenwald, welcome back to Uncensored.
You've had Fuentes on your show.
What's your view about that issue, about platforming him at all?
Oh, I didn't even consider it to be a difficult question at all.
I mean, if you're going to have people on who are responsible for the invasion and destruction of Iraq based on lies or the incineration of Vietnam or the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of people and welcome them and treat them like respectable people, tell me what it is that Nick Fuentes has done remotely as bad as that that justifies allowing them to come on and speak, but not him.
And whether you like it or not, he does speak for a huge number of people in his generation and even other generations as well who feel the same kind of anger and frustration with the status quo, with the establishment, with the kind of dogma that we've been told we have to accept.
And there's a lot of people who were angry about it and who rebel against it.
And we saw this with Donald Trump on maybe a little bit of a smaller scale, but very much the same pattern.
When Donald Trump appeared, everybody was like, oh, he's racist and fascist and he's the misogynist and he's this and that.
And no one wanted to grapple with the reason why his message was resonating so much.
And to me, it is very similar to Nick Fontes.
Say what you want about him.
He's extremely smart, an incredibly talented communicator, and very well read.
Like he's very informed.
He's not just some sensationalist babbling on the internet.
And I think the reason he has attracted a lot of attention is because he's speaking to the anger and frustration, a lot of which is valid of a lot of people.
And to stick your head in the sand and say, oh, we're going to pretend that this isn't happening because his views are too off.
But the people who start wars or are responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, these are respectable people who we treat with respect, like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or whoever.
That to me is the kind of thing that I think is really distorted.
Yeah, you know, I, Warren Smith, I'll bring to that.
Well, no, let me bring in Warren Smith first and then I'll come back to you, Mark.
You know, Warren, that really is my feeling about it: is that you can let these guys like Fuentes and Andrew Tate run riot, and they do already, and they have massive followings, millions and millions of young men.
I know when I interview Tate, the number of young men who just come up to him in the street to ask about it is off the charts more than almost any other guest I ever had.
So we can either pretend this phenomenon isn't happening and Fuentes is a phenomenon, whether people like it or not.
And I don't, you know, I don't hate everything about him.
There were elements of that interview where it was a genuinely quite interesting conversation.
But there were elements which, either because he wanted to be performative and shocking and attention-seeking, whatever it may be, or because he really believes it, where I felt we saw a pretty dark underbelly of some of his beliefs.
You know, I mean, just when somebody just says, I am a racist and then explains, well, this is let me play the clip first, then come to you.
You're fine with saying you're a racist.
Totally.
I think everybody's racist.
I think everybody, if we're being honest, is racist.
I think everybody, the only people that aren't racist or pretend not to be are white people to their detriment.
Everybody else is racist.
Earlier in the interview, you went really got aggrieved at the idea that your father was a racist.
You wanted to make emphasis on the story.
Yeah, because my father's because my father doesn't share my same views on that.
So he's the exception to the everyone's a racist.
Well, everybody's a little bit racist.
I mean, I thought it was an interesting contradiction there, which he was probably calculating in real time that having got so exercised about the idea that his father was racist, he then said everyone's racist and there's nothing wrong with it, effectively.
But putting that to one side, Warren, I mean, you know, this issue of whether you platform somebody like Fuentes, who has these inflammatory views, I think we can all agree they're inflammatory, a lot of his views.
You know, is this, am I, by doing it, am I continuing to fuel this phenomenon in a way that is a negative for society?
Or in a free democratic society, you know, should I be entitled to interview who the hell I like as long as I do my job as a journalist of holding him to account over these things, let other people work it out for themselves?
No, I think it's totally understandable.
And I agree that you would have him on.
I was in the same position where I was genuinely shocked when I made a knee-jerk response video to something he had said.
I was overwhelmed by the response.
I was like, I had no idea there were this many people out there that agreed with him.
And I had people that I knew actually telling me, no, you're oversimplifying this.
And I actually went back and looked at the same clip and realized I had oversimplified it.
There was actually, I was looking at it through the narrative going into it without much prior research.
And that actually led to me sitting down with him for an hour and a half.
I think it's important, though, if you want to achieve the ideal outcome, it is important to actually genuinely be trying to gain a better understanding of his reasoning and in his arguments and not just trying to win or embarrass because at the long run, I think that will backfire and that will cause him to become bigger.
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's an interesting point.
You know, people were asking me, you know, he won or people said you won.
Winning vs Understanding00:06:38
I said, look, I didn't seek out to win.
I don't seek out ever to win an interview.
That's not the point of an interview, actually.
What I wanted to do over two hours was A, personally get to know him better because I know nothing about him other than what I've read.
I've never met him.
I've never interviewed him.
And B, to go over all these things, which he's notorious for and actually work out the correct context, what he really believes, what may have motivated this, and so on.
And I think a lot of that was achieved in the interview.
But it wasn't, you know, I think it very quickly afterwards, you know, when I asked him during the interview, you know, how he felt towards the end, how he felt at the gone, he thought I'd been fair.
He didn't think I'd ambushed him and so on.
He made that clear in the interview.
And yet afterwards, almost immediately afterwards, he comes out full bore on the attack, which is what he does.
But it was interesting to me that the reaction from his sort of mob of Groypers was instantaneous and extraordinarily widespread.
They just come as this mob.
And it's very, and it's, you know, if you're not me, who's got a very thick skin, it's a pretty hard thing to get back at you.
Look, I don't care.
I've had a lot worse.
And they'll move on and that's what happens.
But if you're not, actually, it can be very intimidating.
It was very threatening, very racist, very anti-Semitic, very, very nasty, actually.
Like I said, it wasn't scrape the surface with me because I got a skin of a thousand rhinos.
But to other people, I could see it really being a pretty terrifying experience.
Hey, Peter.
Can I ask a question about that?
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
They're doing that too.
Sorry, Gwen, go first.
Yeah, let me interrupt just because it's really interesting.
Hang on, hang on, guys.
Don't talk at once.
Let me start with Glenn.
Ted, thanks.
Mark, I'm sorry to interrupt.
But the issue is, why does he have such a loyal following?
Why does he have a large and loyal following?
Now, you can ask that question about Donald Trump, and a lot of people are satisfied by saying, oh, America's just filled with racists and misogynists and xenophobes.
And he's playing into that.
And maybe that is part of it.
You know, politicians do demagogue and play to our worst instincts always, but there was a lot more to it than that.
And I think people understand 10 years later that there is and was a lot more to that.
So you can say, oh, yeah, Nick Funtes has this army of angry young men who are incredibly devoted to him, who believe that he's speaking truth uniquely, because they're also a bunch of Nazis and racists and Jew haters.
Okay, that's an easy, I think there's a lot more to it.
And I think people ought to grapple with the reason why he's speaking for so many people.
No, I think that's a very valid point.
You know, I've always said about Andrew Tate, for example, that, you know, a lot of the things he says, I can understand if you're a young, slightly disenfranchised young man, you feel society has got it in for you and all you ever hear is man-bashing.
I can understand why you gravitate to a guy like Tate who stands there tall and proud as a very masculine kind of guy, beating his chest, talking about, you know, taking care of your body and getting fit and being a protector and all these things.
I get all that.
But then he slides into brazen misogyny, which I hate.
Mark Lamonhill, let me bring you in here.
I mean, I just want to, before you say what you want to say, what he said after the interview, Nick Fwedgers was, Piers Morgan tried his best, but his hardball interrogation made me look even better than Tucker's wildly criticized softball interview.
The regime can acquiesce like Tucker, or it can try to resist like peers, but the result is inevitably the same total Groyper victory.
Now, on one level, I admire his social media work, right?
He goes on the attack, he gives it full bells, he claims total victory.
It's very Trumpian, and it can be very effective, okay?
And he's perfectly entitled to claim total victory and whatever.
And I'm sure all his supporters agree.
But it's interesting that he views me and Tucker Carlson and other people who now do our own shows or whatever as the regime.
Almost like anybody who's older than him is part of some ancient regime that just doesn't get it.
All his supporters call me boomer, right?
And I was like, I've been called that probably ever.
Okay, I'm a boomer.
I don't know what that means, but it just means I'm an old dude who doesn't get it, right?
And it may be, as Glenn says, there is a more interesting conversation to be had about why these guys get so popular.
And it may be that when I do my old, it's like the old school journalistic trick, as somebody put it, of just being quite tough and rigorous with questioning, that it's viewed by young people who gravitate to people like these guys as just an old boomer going through the motions.
Perhaps.
I mean, and also I wouldn't assume that because he said that, that he believes it, that he actually believes you're part of the regime or that he believes that one is softball or hardball.
He gives a lot of the characteristics, mannerisms, approaches, styles of a cult leader.
And cult leaders navigate their followers in very particular ways, including re-narrating or counter-narrating events that happen in ways that are favorable to them.
That's why when I said I struggle with whether or not you should have him on the show, I didn't say you shouldn't.
And I didn't say you should.
I genuinely, it's a struggle for me.
Again, as a journalist, I have interviewed despots, killers, you know, people, I mean, genocide leaders.
I've done it all.
And there are days where it feels very clear and obvious why I should do it.
They need to be held accountable.
They need to be forced to answer tough questions.
And I don't put them in it, contrary to what was said, I don't hold them in a different box than I do Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or someone who I voted for, you know, potentially, right?
They all need to be held to scrutiny.
Everybody in power needs to be held accountable.
I'm with that.
My concern in this particular case, though, is that I'm not sure what the net gain is.
I don't know if you really got to know it better him, not because you didn't do a great job, you did do a great job, but because I'm not sure who the person is behind that persona.
And the question I would ask you, Piers, is if you knew ahead of time that doing this interview would double the amount of people who believed in the worst things that he believes, would you still do the interview?
I honestly don't think you should do it.
Well, I don't think that that is going to be a consequence of it, honestly.
But what I do think is that I don't like generalizing.
When Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump supporters, the MAGA supporters, a basket of deplorables, it probably lost to that election.
When you generalize about millions and millions of people, it's always a very precarious and stupid folly to do that.
Avoiding Generalizations00:04:23
What I can say with what I can say with some certainty is that pretty well 100% of his Groypers who've directly messaged me or members of my family have been highly abusive, overtly racist, very misogynist, and many of them anti-Semitic.
I can say that with certainty.
Now, what I don't know is how many of those are human beings and how many are from a bot farm, because according to reports in the last two days, a lot of his stuff comes from bot farms.
I don't know if that's true, but that's been reported in various mainstream papers.
And I don't know how representative these ones on X or Instagram are of the total body of his support.
I just don't know.
So, you know, I don't want to generalize and say neither do I, Pierre.
Want to say all Nick Fuentes supporters are disgusting because there may be a lot of people.
It's a bit like Tommy Robinson.
Let me make my point.
I'm not saying that.
Let me finish my point.
It's a bit like Tommy Robinson.
Tommy Robinson in the UK, right?
Is a bit like Fuentes over here.
And there's no doubt as the people marching with him have grown bigger and bigger and bigger.
The idea that they're all fascist, racist, whatever, whatever is nonsense.
A lot of people are marching for well-intentioned reasons connected with the immigration crisis in the UK, right?
He has bad people as well.
And I think he's a malevolent character.
But again, I wouldn't generalize anymore about all these people that march.
Can I ask you a question, Pierce?
Yes, yeah, sure.
I would like to.
But again, I didn't generalize.
Well, let Andrew come in.
Let Andrew come in.
Okay.
There was a part of the interview where you were very combative and you said you haven't even been laid and you're a virgin.
This guy's a Roman Catholic.
Isn't he supposed to be a virgin until he's married?
Isn't that part of your guys' faith?
To be fair to him, to be fair to him, that is, I was brought up a Catholic.
I'm not a particularly devout Catholic.
I disagree with a lot of the churches.
But you do agree that Catholics are supposed to remain chased until marriage, right?
The strict interpretation from the Catholic Church about that is you should.
How come he didn't get shouldn't he get credit for that?
Well, he couldn't say that the idea that he's kind of staying, he's staying within the confines of his religious beliefs.
I have no problem, but he also can't get any action.
But he also self-identifies as an incel.
You know what?
Well, so like, here's what Mark just said.
You see what I mean?
Like, he can't get any action.
The guy is rich as shit, and he's a good-looking guy.
He could get action if he wanted it, Mark.
And by the way, Andrew, hang on, Mark.
I agree with you, Andrew.
Just let me finish your point.
Let me finish.
What I'm saying to you, though, is this: is that, yeah, of course he could.
The thing is, though, is that if he's, if you guys are saying, like, he's a huckster, he's a fraud, isn't he, in fact, following rigorously his faith by doing that?
So, my response to that, I think it's a very hard thing.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, Harry.
I think it's a really good question.
I want to respond to Andrew.
No, it's not.
I think it's a perfectly valid question, particularly as I have always said I'm a Catholic.
I was raised a Catholic.
I had spiritual guidance from Catholic nuns when I was 12 years old.
You know, I go to church occasionally.
I'm not devout.
I'm not there all the time.
I don't agree with some of the Catholic Church's views and policies, and I wish they would evolve faster.
However, you know, as speaking Catholic to Catholic with him, yes, it's a perfectly valid thing that he could say, I am saving myself for marriage.
But if that's all he said, fine.
But I would argue that, you know, if you look at him as a Christian, for example, how many of his other views are compatible with being a Christian?
Right?
You know, his views on the priests are overt racism.
That was correct.
His due baiting, his overt racism, the despicable way he talks about women generally, and so on.
None of those things are what you would categorize as being a good Christian.
I think you can have dogmatic distinctions with him, and that's fine within the confines of the faith.
But with the points he brought up, when he said women aren't allowed to be clergy, that's true.
They're not allowed to choose clergy by the Catholic faith.
And when he said he's saving himself for marriage, he also said he should publish the people.
But hang on, Andrew, when he said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote and should stay at home, i.e., should also have jobs.
Would you agree with that?
The Catholic Church does not have dogmatic teaching on democracy.
They're not like, oh, democracy is the standard.
No, no, I'm asking you.
Transgressive Dogma00:15:42
I'm asking you.
I'm asking you whether you think when he says women shouldn't be allowed to vote and should stay at home and not work, most people shouldn't be allowed to vote.
I think I would limit suffrage for most people, like our founders did.
I think it specific to women.
Would you make it specific to women?
Not specific, not specific.
Let me finish this later.
Why would that matter?
Because I do think if you say women voting, yeah.
I do think after they've waged a hundred-year war, women for women's equal rights to remove one of the wrenching building blocks of that, which is what the suffragettes fought for, the right to vote.
I think if you remove that.
Oh, come on.
That whole movement was totally astroturf.
That's one.
And one of the right things.
Let's just point this out.
There's a good argument from a Christian perspective to make that the husband, the head of the household, should be the one voting.
Within his dogma, that would make sense.
So there is a Christian case that you could make for that, that the head of household, the wife, right now, what goes on in Christian households is that the wife is just doubling the vote of the man, right?
So this is not against the purview of Fuentes, and it doesn't even sound particularly misogynistic to me.
Okay.
19th Amendment.
Harry, what's your response to that?
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There's so much to respond to right there.
I do want to point out that Andrew was talking about, you know, Nick Fuentes is a good Christian.
He was, he's being celibate until marriage because of this reason.
That's not what he said in the interview.
When he was going back and forth with you on this, Piers, he talked about how women are gross and they get fat and they're ugly and he wouldn't give his female friend a tampon because they're gross and things like that.
So Andrew is making an argument for Nick that Nick did not make any interview.
Nick Fuentes is just an open misogynist who has spent far too much time in his basement alone festering online and getting involved in his own conspiracy theories that he's creating.
There's nothing, or at least in his via his own words in the interview, he did not present it as a case of him being religious and him staying perfectly to the religious text.
Now, he did.
I have the quote.
I have to quote.
Go watch.
Andrew, go watch the viral courage.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Andrew, go watch the back and forth with Piers.
Go watch the back and forth with Piers when he's in front of me.
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, please be quiet.
Go watch the back and forth with Piers in that specific instance.
Why are you a virgin?
Have you slept with anybody?
And yes, go watch the clip.
Fine, let the record speak for itself.
You can go watch the clip if you'd like.
That's what he said.
No, you said he's been giving out the entire interview.
Andrew, can you please be quiet?
Can you just zip it?
Why don't we watch the exchange again and Clarity?
Let's do it.
Are you actually attracted to women?
I am attracted to women.
You're not gay.
No.
But I will say that women are very difficult to be around.
There's that.
And do you think they should have the right to vote?
I do not.
No, absolutely not.
They should stay at home.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
So basically, you're just a misogynist old dinosaur, aren't you?
For a young guy.
I mean, I know I'm the boomer.
I know I'm the boomer here, but actually, you're a 27-year-old dinosaur, aren't you?
Aren't you, Nathoentes?
All women.
I am.
All women are annoying.
All women grow old.
They all get fat.
Says the guy, have you ever had sex?
No, absolutely not.
Wow.
Says the guy who's never got laid.
That's the thing, though.
You boomers, it's a fairy.
You're an expert in women.
It's free love.
Given you've never got laid?
Yeah, we are going back to the Stone Age.
You're absolutely right.
This, you know, you're talking about empathy and your kids are empathetic and they would never laugh at a joke about the Holocaust and you're a misogynist.
You're a simp yourself.
You're totally hen-packed.
That's the problem.
So he doesn't actually there, Andrew, mention the reason that you've given.
Not in that clip, but he did mention that he was a good person.
Why did it so important to him?
Why didn't he say it?
If it's so important to him, why did he say it right there?
Why didn't he say it right there?
Because his reason to come there was women are gross and they get fat and things like that.
Wait, no, but if this is so important, that's Cherry's reason.
That's a cherry picture.
No, no, Andrew.
If that's his reason, his reason doesn't change in five minutes.
He doesn't go from, oh, I'm a Catholic.
I'm staying true to my religion to women are gross and that's why I don't do it.
Wait, wait, wait.
You just said that his religion is the main reason as to why he's celibate.
So now he was the main reason five minutes before.
And then it fast forward to five minutes later to say, oh, well, women are gross.
That doesn't mean he can't have multiple reasons.
It's just such an important reason that he didn't bring it up again.
That makes total sense.
He just brought up an entirely different.
That was his first reason because it was the most important reason.
But in that interaction, he didn't say anything about religion.
And if it's his central view, if it's so central to who he is in that he bases his misogynistic views off of?
Well, the other thing if I could jump in the other thing, the other thing we bring on it.
Don't crash out like you did on that podcast man, hang on.
Let me bring uh Glenn back in.
The other argument which I thought was interesting and I thought I missed a bit of a trick here with him was when he was talking about the holocaust, where people have assumed he's a holocaust denier because of things he said in the past of trivializing it and questioning, questioning the number of people who've died and so on.
He seemed to try and take a more moderate position, which was, yes, I believe six million Jews were killed, maybe more.
Whether he meant that or whether he was being some sort of satirical, he was satirizing you, he was satirizing.
That's what I, that's what I now believe was probably happening.
Yeah, so I, I suspect he was.
Yeah um, but regardless his argument, was it all happened so long ago?
Why did Jews continue talking about the holocaust?
We've all moved on.
They use it all the time as a political weapon and so on.
And of course, I suppose the obvious question for him.
I went and checked afterwards how many times he's talked about, for example on his show, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which was over 2000, 2,000 years ago, right?
He does it all the time.
So, you know, if I'd been smart in the moment as a fellow Christian, I would say, well, hang on, but isn't that exactly what Christians do all the time about the crucifixion?
What's the difference?
They talk about the crucifixion because it's absolutely central to their religion.
And I think, you know, I do think so much of what your interview with Nick Funtes highlighted was extreme generational differences.
It was sometimes like watching two people speak different languages.
You know, Piers, you and I are kind of the same age.
You're obviously older.
Everyone can see that, but just a little bit.
And, you know, for people who were born in like the 60s, the Holocaust was just 20 years before.
World War II had just ended 20 years before.
There was a mythology about the United States, about our role in the world, about how great of a country we were, about all the great things we did, about the Holocaust, the unique evil.
Now it's 75 years ago.
And people who are next generation were Harries were born in, you know, 2000 and 2002.
And this idea that like, yeah, the Holocaust has been weaponized.
We've been beaten over the head with it for eight decades.
We've been forced to spend and pay huge amounts of money in reparations, or that slavery is sometimes weaponized that way.
This is a very common view.
So I think when he's doing things like making jokes about the Holocaust, it's not because he thinks it's funny that huge numbers of people were exterminated.
I think it's a way of purposely being transgressive about orthodoxies and pieties that a lot of people in his generation don't accept.
But there was a bit, yeah, but Glenn, hang on.
Hang on, Harry.
Hang on.
There was Glenn.
There was a callousness to it.
And I'll tell you why.
I brought on a guy called Danny Finkelstein, who's a top journalist for the Times newspaper over here, who wrote a very powerful book about his family and their horrendous experience at the hands of Hitler and Stalin.
And it's incredibly powerful.
It's very moving.
It's informed his life.
And I'm going to talk to Danny actually after we finish this because he's been on the receiving end of the most appalling abuse in the last 48 hours, all directed by Nick Fuentes, who was so dismissive of him, so dismissive of him talking about his mother and father, so just callous in the way he responded.
It's that kind of utter devoidness of any empathy whatsoever.
You can have a view that we should try and move on generationally from these seismic moments.
Okay.
But you don't have to be so callous towards somebody whose family literally got murdered by people like Hitler and Stalin, do we?
I mean.
But the idea, Pierre, I think the thing is, is like this generation of people grew up in the wake of the Iraq War, in the wake of endless war, in the wake of the destruction of their financial security with the 2008 financial crisis, with all the lies of COVID and Russia gate and all the rest of it.
And faith and trust in these institutions have collapsed.
So when they look at people who represent institutional thinking and they're told you're not allowed to make fun of this and you're not allowed to talk about this and accept in the ways that we prescribe and we're going to call you all these names unless you affirm all these pieties over and over and over again, one of the ways of rebelling against that is to say, you know, it's a very common generational reaction is to say, FEU, we're going to transgress every line that you told us we can't because we hate you.
We think that the things that you're doing have been destructive to our lives.
And I think like ignoring that part of you.
You know what?
You know what, Glenn?
I think it's a very valid point.
And there may well be a generational thing to this.
Let me bring in Warren.
Just for the record, by the way, Andrew, we've just been through the whole transcript and he never uses the excuse that you may have heard him do it elsewhere.
He talked about clergy, whether women should be allowed to be clergywomen and so on.
And obviously they can't under the Catholic Church doctrine, but he never uses, he never says celibacy is for religious reasons.
That may be his view, but he didn't express that view in my interview is the point.
We've just checked the transcript.
Andrew was just saying, oh, I have the quote, I have the quote, and there's no quote.
Well, it may, I can't rule out, I can't rule out.
He hasn't said it elsewhere.
And it may be, Andrew's heard him say that before.
I'm just saying in my interview, he doesn't.
You know what?
I made a mistake.
It's okay to be like, yeah, I got it wrong.
I may have heard it elsewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like that.
All right.
Let me bring Warren back in.
Look, Warren, you're a critical thinker.
You know, Glenn's, you know, stop me in my tracks a little bit and maybe think about this, right?
Because I think there is probably a generational thing here.
And I do think that in a way, you know, maybe Mark's right, that by me interviewing Fuentes, the only real winner at the end of the day may be Nick Fuentes, because none of his supporters, certainly from the reaction I've had, have changed their impression of him one iota.
I mean, they just assume he just landslided me and that was it.
And I was an old boomer sent packing.
And it may be, as Mark says, that other more moderate people quite like some of the things they heard.
I don't know.
He is charismatic.
He's a good talker and he's smart and all these things.
I don't dispute any of that.
From a critical thinking point of view, where does this take society?
If people like Nick Fuentes grow ever more popular, what will happen to a whole army of young men here?
Last night, I held a focus group to try and get to the bottom of this.
And I was with over 30 people.
The vast majority, three disagreed with the vast majority.
And what they were saying things such as, I went into this exchange not expecting to like anything about this guy, but what I saw was Pierce not contending with his arguments.
I think that's why when you bring up his dad, that's why he gets upset because he's saying, look, man, I'm here.
Let's talk.
Why are you talking about my dad?
Contend with my logic.
It's the same thing when he, that was his response when you brought on your British friend who told his horrific story, which it's terrible.
And you could disagree with his response to it, but I think he's saying, why are we, you're just telling me what you're saying is bad, but you're not really contending with the argument.
And I think that is the core problem that has led to this outcome because you can play these clips.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I don't think he was surprised by anything that occurred in here.
That's another reason that you're seeing the backlash is because it was exactly what people predicted, largely.
But when you play that clip, it's like, okay, yes, that's taken from a large stream.
In the past, people evolve.
And if you're asking him in that conversation to expand on that, and then he does, and he does present logic, what I'm seeing is people say, no, you're saying that now, but you're lying.
You're playing this game.
You're pretending to be moderate.
And now you're mind reading.
You're saying, I know what Nick Fuentes thinks more than Nick Fuentes.
And I do think it's really important in these exchanges to come at it with that first principle of, I'm going to take the wild approach that I'm going to wipe the slate blank and assume that the person who knows the most about what Nick Fuentes actually thinks is Nick Fuentes.
And that seldom happens.
And when it does, I do see, I saw a vastly different response to my conversation, but I don't think I challenged him any less.
Right.
No, sorry.
You know what?
It's very interesting.
It's very interesting.
I've been reading.
I mean, I read and take note of the more nuanced commentary about it.
I don't listen to the Groypers all ranting away or attacking me or my family or whatever.
They can do what they like.
They can do that.
Rest of their lives.
I couldn't give a damn.
But I do think there's a more, there are interesting arguments to be had about this because whether we like it or not, he is a phenomenon.
He's a growing phenomenon.
And young people are gravitating to him.
And it may well be for the reasons that Glenn articulated.
And how we, the rest of us, deal with this is a really interesting story.
But that was a really interesting discussion.
Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
Well, joining me now is Daniel Frankenstein from The Times who wanted to address the anti-Semitism row with Nick Fuentes.
Danny, I played a clip you sent me.
We discussed this.
You sent me like a 90-second video clip to play him about your own family's horrific experience at the hands of Hitler and Stalin from your very powerful book.
And I've been struck by two things.
Dismissing Holocaust Trauma00:05:07
One, his utterly dismissive reaction in the moment.
But secondly, the horrible pylon that's been directed at you in the most mocking, awful manner.
What's it been like for you?
So that is a bit distressing.
There's no two ways about it.
But I suppose you have to understand that Hitler would never have come to power in the first place if there weren't a lot of people with that mentality.
And that's what he's proving.
His own response on the program was, I think the only thing that he sort of felt he could do.
But I think he made a big mistake.
I think he thinks, you know, he did, lived it large by admitting what, you know, kind of just saying to you, yeah, sure, I'm a racist.
Sure, I don't like black people.
Sure, I don't want women to vote.
Sure, I think the Holocaust is fine.
He thinks that he's winning out of that.
But actually what he's doing ultimately is marginalizing himself.
So he does produce, as you've experienced, and as I have, this kind of deep reaction where people interestingly repeated his jokes.
So it was all like a bit of a cult.
And I noticed that.
And that's not nice to receive.
But I think it's worth it in order to try to expose the sort of person he is and to try to isolate him from the rest of the American right, which I'm very concerned about.
That's one of the reasons why I wanted you to go ahead and confront him in the way that you did, which I think was very effective, and why I wanted to join in with that.
Because I think it's really important that this kind of thinking doesn't go into the mainstream of the right.
And he chose the path of deepening rather than widening.
And that was a mistake.
Yeah, he did.
But it's whether he would see that as a mistake or whether he thinks, as he says, we're a couple of old boomers who just don't get it, who don't understand how young American men are thinking right now.
And he's much more aware of how they are thinking about issues.
Calling us boomers is like reconfiguring or re-badging his incredible ignorance and childishness as an asset.
In fact, what was obvious is he hasn't got a foggest clue what he's talking about and he doesn't know anything about.
Yeah, there was one brilliant bit where he said he thought Hitler was cool.
He said, I'm not in favor of genocide in parenthesis.
Well, you actually are.
And so he doesn't really understand anything about it, nor do his supporters.
So they kind of dismiss it airily as, you know, a laugh and who cares what that happened all that time ago and then calls us boomers as if you or I cared about that.
So yes, it's absolutely true.
I've lived quite a bit longer than him in order that I've actually read more books, understood more and know more of what I'm talking about.
So he was sensitive about his own ignorance and it came out in a kind of bragging way.
And then, of course, a load of other people pile on to support that as if they're unbothered by it.
But he's made a mistake, which he'll live to regret, even though he's 27 now and hasn't lived very long to regret anything.
What's happening with the kind of conservative movement in totality in America is fascinating.
You're seeing splits within the MAGA movement.
You're seeing others now developing like Fuentes and others outside of MAGA going very hostile on Trump and so on.
You're seeing a lot of stuff going on here.
What do you make of it?
So it's really fascinating thing is the split between your two interviewees, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
Ultimately, that actually is in fact what I'm really interested in producing.
Tucker Carlson has gone wild.
Some of the things as you laughed in his face when he said some of the things about the French.
His ridiculous point about Poland, not understanding at all, of course, we had to enter the war before Hitler invaded us.
Any historical account will show that we couldn't trust him or have a deal with him.
And in fact, we had a contractual obligation to help Poland.
And which we went into not simply because of Polish human rights, but because we understood strategically we had to do that.
The Americans, by the way, did not do that and ended up being dragged into the war anyway.
So Tucker Carlson's position was ridiculous, but it's not yet Nick Fluentes' position.
His position is: I don't know why you British are that bothered about the Holocaust, but he's not actually in favour of it, which is the Fuentes position.
Driving a wedge between those two things, making Tucker Carlson feel he can go that far, but he can't go as far.
He can endorse a lot of cranks, but not Nick Fuentes, that is valuable.
And I think has been achieved by his interview with Fuentes, your interview with both of them.
I just had a panel discussion about it where one of the panelists argued quite strongly: I shouldn't have platformed him at all.
That actually, all you end up doing is helping him grow his movement.
I think that you and I have to recognize in our different media ways, we don't any longer, because of the way the internet works, have the power just to say, well, let's no one listen to Nick Fuentes.
He's got a platform.
It's ridiculous to argue he hasn't got a platform.
I agree.
And I took the view, you know, and I know, you know, some people said this to you before you did the interview.
That was not my position.
And I think it was vindicated by what happened.
It's important to expose what he thinks.
Exposing the Platform00:01:27
We've all got to understand it.
It's an important part of the development of the right in the United States.
And that may come also to Britain as well.
We've got to understand it.
We've got to listen to it carefully, see what its weak points are.
So one of his clear weak points is cut off all women from supporting his position, right?
Well, that's half the population to start off with.
So he's making mistakes, and making him talk on the record in a challenging way is part of forcing him to do that.
Of course, he can't see it.
If he could see it, he wouldn't have made it.
But he couldn't see it.
Well, Danny, thank you.
I hope it wasn't too bruising an experience to get involved in that.
You know, I've had a lot of backlash to stuff over the years.
This hasn't been the worst.
I've had worse, but it's been pretty ferocious.
I mean, if you get bracing up.
You enter the world of Nick Fuentes and his Groyper army.
It's nasty.
It's a nasty little suspect.
Absolutely.
And you've got to have pretty broad shoulders to deal with it.
You have, I have.
So we'll continue to do our jobs.
We will.
Thank you very much.
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