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Reaction
An international anti-fascist show run by a Scandinavian nerd, a Slavic alcoholic and an American unc that takes you to the darkest corners of the internet to help you understand the footsoldiers of online right-wing mobilization - content creators.
Reaction
Episode 3 - Asmongold (Ft. Hasanabi)
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The digital right wing ecosystem and it's... more peculiar members.
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This is Hassan Piker, a neo-Ottoman Turkish nationalist, two-time anti-Semite of the Year nominee, terrorist supporter, dog electrocutioner, champagne socialist living in a five million dollar mansion, progressive mind in a MAGA body, and finally, most damningly, the Joe Rogan of the left. If you haven't heard of Hassan Piker, you're living under a rock. Hassan is the most recognizable online figure of the next generation of the American socialist left. Commanding one of the largest audiences in the world on live streaming service Twitch.tv, Hassan has built a massive army of Gen Z and millennials who follow his marching orders into battle for the young and not so young American political mind. He has garnered 500 million hours watched on Twitch and over 1 billion views on YouTube. Refusing to remain only online, he was one of the top three largest fundraisers for Amazon's labor union, raised millions of dollars for aid to Gaza, and millions more for countless left-wing politicians across the country. Which brings us to today's topic, Asmund Gold. In many ways, Asman is the perfect foil for Hassan, where Hassan is a strapping six foot four with legions of thirsting fans. That is what Hassan is here to help us understand. How is it that a man famous for playing dress up with his World of Warcraft characters and never bathing has now become one of the world's largest conservative political influencers? Everyone say hello to Hassan. Hello, guys. Hello, Hassan.
SPEAKER_12Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Uh it's a great honor to to to use my one day off talking about Asmongold, which will which will definitely like all of the uh the the bots from South Asia will be under the uh comment section of this podcast wherever uh people are receiving this podcast, being like, you talk about Asmongold so much, and and you know, and then all the old uh community members in my community will also chime in in the same way and be like, what the fuck? Be sure be serious. But you know, this is my favorite subject, as everybody knows. Um I'm a bit of an Asmongold historian, if you will. That's that's primarily what I do. Yeah, that's why I'm here. But how would I describe myself? I I'm I just say I'm a political commentator that chooses to be uh entertaining and as palatable as possible and educate Americans on a unique perspective that they do not get in their political education, if they ever get a political education at all. Uh and and that's that's the short and sweet of it. Uh my enemies, on the other hand, uh, depending on their perspective, would I say I'm a American chauvinist, uh Department of Homeland Security asset, State Department asset, a propagandist, a sheepdog for the Democratic Party, or a uh tanky communist, fascist, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi, neo-automist, uh Ottomanist, like you said. You know, I'm I'm everything at the same time, all at once. And as far as Asmung goes, I think he is the perfect depiction of what uh the anti-intellectual reactionary right is looking for. He is the perfect, uh, I guess barely sentient vessel of what the modern fascist movement looks like, sounds like, and and demands more to hear from. That's what I would uh that's how I'd summarize Asmund Gold.
SPEAKER_15Just going off what you said, I think that Asmund Gold is kind of the crystallization of the way the right has been trending for a long time. It all got started with the anti-SJW compilations, which were famous on YouTube, where the focus was never really about ideas or policies, it was about creating these targets that you could sadistically abuse, these blue-haired liberals. Uh, where basically they removed themselves from the political conversation and it was almost apolitical, and really about making these targets where that you were permitted to go after as viciously as you wanted, and you would justify with that arcane grievance, usually about video games. Uh, I feel like Asmund Gold has been a key figure in organizing that kind of internet troll army. The rise of Gamergate uh and the post-Gamergate era that we live in. Now in the second Trump administration, we have a political moment where the entire right is now just completely spinning out. And they are all now like that, where it's no longer about any kind of policy whatsoever, it's about finding the right enemy, making them suffer, and laughing about it, and not even bother being consistent or having any political project whatsoever. Do you think that's a fair way of describing Asmongold's politics?
SPEAKER_12Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's all about uh taking revenge on uh figureheads that have like destroyed their lives uh from early on. It could be like uh like a maternal figure, uh, it could be a teacher, it could be a nurse, like someone that told them no at some point that was like uh incredibly damaging uh to their development. And and it's uh it's a manifestation of hatred and rage towards uh what they perceive as like the domineering force of of evil and control in their lives, like any kind of uh demand of hierarchy or structure that that they despised early on, that um that went against uh the the sense of entitlement that they uh oftentimes learned as young boys. Uh and I say young boys because I think uh most of this movement is is is older men that have the mentality of young boys that are mentally stunted. It's usually it's oftentimes like 35 to 40 year old men uh that that are you know not in education or training, uh and not employed, or maybe sometimes have like a contractor IT gig. Uh many of them are from Europe as well, which is really interesting. That's uh something that I would love to dive into with you guys as well. Um, but uh but most of that is like cultural resentments that they have developed early on, you know, a girl that didn't actually want to go on a date with them or made them feel small at some point, and the anxiety that they carry, and their only political expression is just hatred towards those groups. Um, I think this perfectly was demonstrated with the uh anger and resentment uh that that a lot of people had in Asmongold's community towards Renee Good, uh, you know, 37-year-old white mother who who wasn't really doing anything wrong at all. She was just out there protecting her community and then was assassinated by uh Trump's uh Gestapo. Uh the the fuck around and find out mentality that we heard from a lot of these people uh uh was was so shocking for normal people. Like normal people looked at that situation and found it to be morally repugnant, uh, people of good conscience and people who might have even voted for Donald Trump looked at that and and felt uh a sense of frustration, a sense of anger, uh an unaccountable, unelected body uh ending the life of someone that could have just as easily been their neighbor or their mother. But many people on the internet saw this as like their kindergarten teacher, uh that that is you know a beacon of woke in their lives, and that that was very frustrating for them. So this was almost like a revenge fantasy playing itself out, and they celebrated it, they championed it. And that I think is at least on the internet, that is what makes the backbone of the modern fascist movement, just a bunch of uh entitled man children who've never really grown out of their uh childlike uh understanding of the world and silly anger that they have towards uh figures that they perceive hold a lot of control over their lives.
SPEAKER_13If I can chime in real quick, I just want to say like that fantasy aspect with online fascism and also fascism in general, is like a huge thing. Even you know, Jack Bosobiac with like the end wokeness stuff, like jumping on a knight of the seven kingdoms, all these things, even if it's like it can be literal fantasy. You have historic examples from like Cold War fascism with Campo Hobbit, like the Italian fascist hobbit camp, which is where Giorgio Malone, Prime Minister of uh Italy, got her political awakening. And then she started a new, like similar sort of festival thing uh called Atreu, which is like based on the never-ending story. And there is a uh a quote by one of the organizers of that which said that uh we are inhabitants of the mythical middle earth, also struggling with dragons, orcs, and other creatures. And he's like using this to talk about real life. Oh god. Yeah, that's from 1977, by the way. That's way before the internet. So they were like this back then too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_12Fascism taps into the dispossessed, the masses, uh, the the lump and pearls so perfectly, because it is a unfuckable loser ideology. Like when you're left wanting, when when you grow up thinking that you are going to have a certain set of values, uh a certain standard of existence, and then due to systemic forces completely outside of your control, and maybe due to your own personal shortcomings, uh, you don't end up in that reality. And then when reality doesn't match your expectations, you find yourself lost and you find yourself angry. That's why we saw so many, you know, veterans after World War I join the ranks of these fascist brigades when you know historic fascism was being developed. These were people who had been wronged by systemic forces, sent to fight imperial wars, and uh did not get anything in return for that and felt wronged. But instead of taking that anger and resentment and moving it into a productive place of organizing and trying to solve some of these systemic problems, you know, trying to combat titans of industry that was that were um taking advantage of of uh being able to throw these bodies on the pile, both in this uh imperial endeavor, but also uh on the domestic home front, uh in the way that that production was being organized, production of commodities was being organized. These guys instead uh chose the easy route and and leaned into the first sense of community they could find, uh a shared uh expression of frustration. It was the the weakness uh that uh society presented that uh was the reason why they were now uh their lives have been destroyed, and they leaned into this like nationalistic mythos. Um and it's always the same. It's like even if it's not you know uh a hasty recreation of like uh you know Tolkien or whatever, uh sometimes it's sometimes it's just like totally made up mythology. I mean, esoteric neo-Nazi movements always they hyper focused on creating like a totally separate sense of national identity and leaned into these like myths and went so far as to do archaeological digs in an effort to advance this uh yeah, this uh completely made up idiotic uh uh version of events, version of like shared history and culture that that uh made up the backbone of their their uh superior, supposedly superior uh mythology.
SPEAKER_15Well, a hundred years ago it was the battlefields of World War One that forged a generation of disaffected men. But now in the 21st century, this round of fascism, it's the battlefields of Azeroth, it's the battlefields of Mordor, it's the battlefields of make-believe. And I think Asmund Gold is pretty much the quintessential American or really international fascist. So, you know, not to like yank us back in time too far, but have you been following like Asmund Gold's rise like as a gamer? I know like as as recently as like what 18 months ago, you were like close to him, right? Like you had you went on his podcast. You say close, but well, I mean, what I mean is you were friendly.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, I mean I saw him as like I saw him as like a random sweaty gamer, uh, in an industry filled to the brim with random sweaty gamers. And um, I just uh assumed that he was uh offensive at times, but manageable, you know, like a burnt peanut style figure, right?
SPEAKER_15I think you're closer to being correct as you than you than you know about burnt peanut, but yeah, go on.
SPEAKER_12Well, even with burnt peanut, like regardless of like how reactionary his worldview might be, um, for the most part, his output is just like, you know, uh goofs and and calling people goober gobs or whatever the fuck he does, like the phalannial style that getting goop. Yeah. Um that that kind of that kind of thing is like uh uh otherwise inoffensive because those guys oftentimes say, oh, I'm apolitical, and they just like keep to that, right? And I thought Asmong Gold was in the similar, uh, you know, in a similar lane. He he uh organized the gamers around their their mutual hatred of women, LGBT and people of color, uh, and and whatever kind of like uh expression of diversity they might have, but for the most part, it was just like regular wire titties not so big in video games any longer. It's not capitalism and and corporate consolidation that's ruining this industry that I love. Right. It's not the sense of nostalgia that I have for the childlike wonderment I once experienced and and how uh gaming no longer hits as hard now that I'm, you know, 35 years old. Uh uh it's not it's not any of it's not a combination of those forces. It's actually because uh a lot of uh gay people and women, um specifically women of color, have entered the field uh on the developer side and they've forcibly fused in uh what I perceive as is offensive woke culture into these games, and I'm gonna spend a lifetime attacking that. Because that was like that was his initial uh rallying cry, right? He he rallied his forces around that.
SPEAKER_15I think one of the things that is interesting to me, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding of Asmungold is he always had these like dog whistly right wing takes, right? He would like he had the dog whistles, but he would present himself as like an enlightened centrist. And he he might even say, I support Medicare for all, or I support a you know, universal basic income as these kind of like sops toward, oh see, he's you say he's right wing, but he supports Medicare for all. How could he be right wing? And so it was much more crypto, it was much more obscured. Yeah, he would trade with these tropes you're talking about, blaming like the SJWs, but he would always try to, you know, to hold himself out as this enlightened centrist figure, and that has changed. Breta, do you want to talk about that?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, his character was named not just after the guy, but it was named Andres Nordic, which is literally the name of the Wow character of the neo-Nazi Norwegian mass shooter uh who uh killed 77 people with like weapons at a youth labor camp, like a summer camp, um, in 2011 in Norway. And he confirms that it's a reference to said neo-Nazi in a Reddit comment. Let me quote him from 11 years ago. It's my version of inappropriate and dark humor. Don't worry, I'm not some kind of white supremacist or whatever. And then he goes on and on about like, you know, if it's against the rules, then you know, maybe report it if you're on the American servers or whatever, and then like talks about how he likes to abide by the rules, whatever they are and stuff.
SPEAKER_12I love that. That's my that's my favorite mentality. It it is it is cattle mentality at the end of the day, where it's like, yeah, I want to like be a reactionary, but also, I mean, if it if it's uh if it's bad, then just report it. Like, I'll abide by the rules.
SPEAKER_13It's like Yeah, and it's also not like if it offends you, like I'll stop or whatever. It's like it's only if they if the rules say I can't do it, then I can't do it.
SPEAKER_12He was the perfect proto-fascist for like the American MAGA uh movement that would come uh five, six years after this. Uh and and uh you know, even like the the proclivity, the the interest in abiding by the rules plays a perfect role in this as well. That's how you see like a lot of libertarians as well who love being this like uh rule-abiding rule breaker. Like they'll always always do the First Amendment audits and stuff, but but it's like it's well within the confines of like the established rules. Like we're not gonna break them, right? Um, but the reason why I say, you know, MAGA is the uh modern fascist movement is because and it's universal, is because I this is a theory that I want to hear your guys' perspective on. I think historic fascism was initially seen uh as a as a revolutionary movement. Obviously it wasn't, but but its its formation was revolutionary. Many of the uh fascist leaders, especially Mussolini, for example, came from the communist background. Obviously, he was like ousted from the Communist Party due to his support for Italy joining uh World War I, and that played a big role in his you know, in his resentment and his anti-communist attitudes. But I think modern fascism no longer cares about like national sovereignty in a way where like I think historic fascism did. There was obviously a collaborative element there, but like there was still a sense of like national sovereignty and and restoring national dignity, right? After after this uh humiliation that these countries had received and the peoples had received. Yeah. Whereas I think modern day fascism is like very American, slop, and treat-oriented, and it's just MAGA. MAGA is the expression of international fascist solidarity, and that's why you see like in places like South Korea, in places like even Italy, in places like Germany. It's in Norway too, yeah. Yeah, in in Europe, especially. Places that have had their own versions of fascist formations far longer than like America has had, like any sort of robust fascist militancy. These guys have completely dropped their own older versions and have just adopted this like very funny America first, make America great again. Sometimes literally wearing like MAGA merch, right? Right. And uh this this utterly servile attitude to American capitalist interests. Uh and that's what the newest expression of fascism is all around the globe. And I find it very fascinating that uh you you see this in the polls, like you look at Canadians when Donald Trump was entertaining the annexation of Canada, militarily annexing Canada, massively consequential trade partner, right? Uh a part of the uh American security umbrella, and has has been a servile vassal throughout his entire existence since, like, I don't know, they tried to burn the White House down, but that was a long time ago.
SPEAKER_15They did burn it down.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, yes, they exactly. But that was a long time ago, right? Like what I'm saying is like Canada is is little America, right? Is America's hat for all intents and purposes. Now, you look at the polls around the time when Donald Trump was saying they're going to militarily dominate Nanax Canada, and it was fascinating to see liberals and the NDP, the more to the left people were, the less excited they were at the prospect. They openly stated that, you know, NDP had like overwhelming majorities saying they would fight back militarily against an American incursion of sorts. And same with even the liberals. Whereas the further right you went, the more pliant they were, the more excited they were. The more they want to surrender. Yeah, I believe that it was only a minority that said that they would fight back, a tiny minority that said they would fight back against uh an American military annexation plan, and the overwhelming majority of conservatives said that they would be excited or they would be totally open to the prospect. They would totally surrender to American military domination. That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, the the um scholar of fascism, Roger Griffin, calls it like fascist ecumenicalism, where like all these diverse sects and group iscues and stuff, you know, they they're working towards like a common goal now. I mean, it's something that can only happen in like the online age, really, because it's so easy for them to connect or to like work on the same mission without really actually being directly connected or being l led by any sort of central organ or anything.
SPEAKER_08That that's fair, but also like especially when it comes to European Central, Eastern, uh Western, whatever the fuck, or even like you opening and browsing and seeing an Indonesian that's gonna like. Like sell everything that he has in order to enter Agartha or some shit. It I think it has a lot to do with American culture generally being so dominant, and in the quote unquote age of decay of empire, not to sound too LARPy, uh, the main cultural export is no longer only, you know, like very decent music, good food, fashion, and so on, but it's also arguably the most present uh politically cultural wave that we see you know span through every single uh large content creator, especially coming to us from the United States. So when we are inspired on what is cool, aka what is normal, aka what is edgy, or in this case, what is patriotism, uh because we live in an American world, these local nationalists, no matter how much they hit themselves in the chest, ooga booga style, and go like, you know, Poland first or Germany first or France first, they're always in innately America first because they are, you know, you know how the Chinese do, I don't know, socialism with Chinese characteristics. Well, they're doing nationalism with American characteristics, they are importing it, copy paste the way it exists in America. So that's why you see so many of them in Asmongold's chat, or why you see so many of them like complain. Like I've talked plenty with with Polish dudes that have never seen a black person in their life just insert themselves in a conversation and bring up how you know BLM is ruining the world. And you're like, what the fuck are you talking about, Mayonnaise boy? Well, that's because, as I said previously, and adding on what what Freda said, we are importing American style, you know, right-wing rhetoric, which is so obsessed with these particular kind of like cultural pain points without us necessarily even having those quote unquote cultural pain points, which are not really pain points, they're just fucking you know reactionary rhetoric utilized to confuse uh the masses, etc. etc.
SPEAKER_12But that's why it works, right? Don't you think that's exactly why it works? Because it's fake. Exactly. It's a fake cultural grievance to to to organize around, uh, and for that reason it doesn't even matter, right? Like there's versions of this, obviously. Like South Korea is uh is very invested in the gender wars, right? Oh, yeah. Um, so there's like there are certain uh you know shared cultural grievances that people lean into.
SPEAKER_08I was talking to I'm sorry, I I'm gonna interrupt you, but like that's that's that's exactly the meme. When it's categories that in no way exist locally, it's even harder to combat them. So like when somebody's like, oh, heard their racist points about I don't know, uh black people in the states. Let's fucking random random example, and you live in the states and you experience that oh my god, like uh you know, African Americans aren't like insane, etc. etc. Well, yeah, and there's also black people fighting back in America. Exactly. That there's a there's there's higher exposure to what you heard online being the case, not being the case. Well, if you if the only experience you have with uh marauding masses of BLM terrorists being online while living in Warsaw, there's no exposure to black people whatsoever. Your only exposure to BLM is an Asmongold stream, there's a higher chance that you're gonna remain right wing for a longer period of time. Sorry for the interruption, but it's it that's insane. It's insane.
SPEAKER_15If I could just jump in here real quick, because I think this is why Asmongold is the perfect leader of the online right, because he's importing like the idea of whiteness to Europe and he's treating it like joining the Argent Don in World of Warcraft. It is a faction that is entirely made up, and you adopt it and you LARP it, and this is even more like so it becomes your identity and it becomes you know, and there is no material forces in reality pushing back. If you're, you know, if you're openly racist white person in America, there are forces that are arranged against you that are pushing back. Whereas in Eastern Europe, or uh on the fringes of what is considered white, you can assert your own whiteness. You can LARP as a white man as part of the West by adopting the most extreme conservative value. So it's almost like these guys in Eastern Europe, because they're so, you know, they feel so insecure about being part of the so-called Western hegemony, they are asserting themselves and they're asserting their status by adopting the most conservative reactionary people, you know, viewpoints, and they're LARPing it. And and Asmund Gold, you know, is kind of the leader in that because he is, you know, it's make-believe for the 21st century. We talked about fascism a hundred years ago, and that was romantic nationalism. What do we mean by romantic nationalism? It means there's a mythical past, blood and soil, mythical past. And the thing about myth is it's not fucking true, it's a fantasy. And so we have updated this to an international kind of survival of the dumbest version of history that now is imported all around the world. And because we share this kind of American cultural dominance, because so much of people's content or that they consume and LARP about is coming from America. Now we have this entire international, fascist international that is focused around importing these American categories and applying them in their own politics.
SPEAKER_12I want to add two things to that. Number one, um, to add on to Yugopnik's analysis and yours as well, it's it's not even like made-up cultural grievances that don't have any uh real uh material concern in in you know, places like Warsaw being afraid of like Black Lives Matter. Sometimes it actually goes against like the established uh cultural attitudes in the country that it ends up brain poisoning the youth in or brain poisoning like adults in. Japan is a great example of this, where I I, when I was visiting the Japanese Communist Party headquarters, I asked them like what the attitudes are in Japan towards trans people in general and whether or not they had like a serious, you know, transphobia panic in Japan as well. And what's interesting about Japan is much like many of these other Asian countries, like they don't have a serious concern about trans people, right? Like they have a more interesting approach to gender in general. And there's obviously like a lot of culture around, you know, men dressing up as women and and and doing all that. But yeah, transphobia had become this like it was in its beginning phases of becoming like an important cultural plank for the Japanese right, or even their version of like anti-immigrant attitude, which has always existed, which is primarily directed towards the Chinese and Koreans, right, was now turning into this uh anti uh black uh immigration, anti-Muslim anti-immigrant sentiment, which was really funny because that was again totally being shaped by Western forces and their concerns. And that's a that's a fascinating thing to observe in real time when you got like what eight Kurdish people that live in fucking Japan and they're like, Yeah, we gotta get these Muslim Kurds out. This is terrifying. And the average Japanese person that is like very right wing, very reactionary, and very xenophobic is thinking, no, no, no, I I want to make sure that like my neighbor isn't secretly Korean, actually, or secretly Chinese. I want to that's my that's my concern. When I'm saying like fuck these immigrants, I'm talking about secret Chinese immigrants that are uh sleeper cells in Japanese society. But slowly but surely that that panic sets in and uh and that attitude uh becomes a rallying cry and people lean into it, which is fascinating. The second point I wanted to make is that a lot of this is anchored around a totally disorganized, totally decentralized, totally uh undisciplined version of fascism, which I because it's anchored around capitalism and and how it like makes your treats good, taste good, feel good, and and therefore I feel like it's it will be easier to destroy because it doesn't lean into any made-up mythology that you can lean into. Like there's no like Americans are too undisciplined to be fascist, is my attitude around this. And I want to hear what you guys think about this too. They're too predisposed with with all the treats that capitalism gives them to actually build like a like a serious, disciplined fascist movement. That's why its expressions are like the the fascist expression in American politics and universally now is MAGA. And and I think that's um it's on autopilot, right? Like it the systems need to keep churning out treats. So when that faucet shuts down, I think these people won't know what to do, and and they will easily find themselves in the throes of you know more militant organizing that doesn't revolve around fascism, but maybe even class-first politics. But maybe I'm being too hopeful there. What do you guys think?
SPEAKER_13I think your uh like your analysis kind of uh fits with the author that I mentioned, Roger Griffin. He also believes that fascism right now is so like groupuscular, it's so small, like it's got it's this disparate th network, and maybe not even a network of all these different people. But I think that they are kind of pushing things. Everyone is pushing in different directions, but it's all vaguely in the same direction. Um so you don't necessarily need like uh fascism to come in and take over the way it did before. Because fascism like has never really worked uh in terms of uh a disciplined sort of group that's done a coup or whatever. Um there's only a couple of places in in Europe where that's actually happened, and that was because of a very specific historic situation where fascism had already kind of uh gained electoral success in uh Italy and in Germany, of course. So like uh and we won't look we don't have that right now. So I don't think like you necessarily need that like disciplined mass. I think it's enough for them to do I I talked about this in the previous episode, right? Do like right-wing Gramsciism. They're basically like trying to transform society before they even take control or anything. So the issue there is that like before you know we even have the the fascist uh people like in government, we're already a lot of people, uh normal quote unquote normal right-wing conservatives are already saying fascist shit and like doing fascist shit because they've been sort of transformed into this being the new normal.
SPEAKER_15I think for America in particular, this is my most surprising take, but I think that America is actually very resistant in the base level to fascism, just like the the way that Americans generally are predisposed toward each other. Uh, there is a hardcore uh of like a you know what I would call the MAGA cult, which is really a kernel that's been surrounding the southern evangelical right, you know, which has been the building block that has that has led us to this moment. But I would say that somewhere for me, 65% of Americans are just generically opposed to the fascist moment. And the problem that we have here is that the billionaires are very class conscious in our society, and they are focused on seizing state power and using, you know, new technology to kind of keep themselves in control by flooding money, you know, creating flawed elections, exploit the problems and the anti-democratic elements of the constitution, use seized state power from a top-down approach. But I think Americans in general are very much resistant to all of these ideas. And the question that we have in the race against time is really will there be a moment where the progressive left, the populist left, is able to grab hold of state power and actually enact some major reforms that arrest the ability, ability of the oligarchs to seize more and more wealth and control of society? Or will we, you know, fail to hold them off? And then they'll have some, you know, all sorts of really concerning technologies specifically surrounding like mass surveillance and drones and going towards a really dark future. There's a book called Four Futures, which was written a few years ago, which I always bring up for you know the frameworks of these kind of discussions, and they talk about how capitalism, you know, socialism versus barbarism, basically the four possibilities that we're looking at, you know, one being communism where we have abundance and technology that kind of solves our world's problems, one where socialism, where we seize control, but the problems, let's say, of climate change keep us in an austerity kind of solidarity. But the ones that I think are more relevant for today is rentierism and exterminationism. And it feels to me that the billionaire class is focused on building a rentier exterminationist program where they build up like kind of permanent toll booths around our society to keep their wealth and power permanent. And then they turn out, you know, these drones, these Terminators, Skynet, whatever, and kind of exterminate the surplus population around the world that might challenge their control. Basically, we have a moment where politically at its core, I feel like America is ready for the left and the populist left. We just need to actually organize it and seize power while we still can. If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, you were talking there about the the sort of like capitalist using these technologies and everything, uh like the the sort of billionaire class. Um, I have a question there for Hassan, because we have uh seen many times now on like the timeline Asmongold and Elon Musk interacting. What do you make of that relationship?
SPEAKER_12I mean, it's symbiotic, it totally makes sense. Much like many fascists historically were, Elon Musk is a deeply insecure guy that's like desperate for admiration from anyone and everyone. And Asmongold is a very influential person in the circles that Elon Musk wants to gain uh you know uh admiration from. The gamers. The gamers, yeah. So he I think finds this to be a wonderful entry point into that market. And I don't even think it's as like tactical from Elon Musk's side of things. I mean, it might bear itself out as like uh creating an army of Fedeen potentially for him later down the line, but like I think he just wants to be liked by gamers, like sweaty fucking loser gamers. And I think Asmogold is a perfect way to carry out that primary task. As far as his allegiance goes, it it's beneficial for Asmongold as well. He also is very thin-skinned and wants admiration, just like Elon Musk. So him being able to lean into this like profoundly powerful figure gives him more legitimacy in the eyes of some in his base as well. By the way, as far as the exterminationist thing that you were talking about, I wanted to bring up the Palantir Maven Smart System software. I don't know if you guys saw this. The DOW's chief AI officer was explaining how it works. This was like literally this past week, and they talk about what is known as a killbox and how like the AI partnering with drone technology can create a killbox inside of like like on top of a map, basically, from from afar without any like human beings touching it. And that will absolutely be utilized. I mean, it's already being utilized in some way, shape, or form in our foreign incursions, but I think it will inevitably be utilized against you know dissenters in quote unquote liberal democracy as well, if we don't change the structure of society as quickly as possible. Definitely. Um, so that's something to look forward to where you can just like boom put like a pin on top of a map and create like establish a killbox and just like destroy every uh organic uh sentient matter in that vicinity by drone warfare. Um, fantastic future to look forward to. Uh, but hey, guess what? You know, maybe video games will be marginally better in that process. So they won't. They won't, yeah.
SPEAKER_15They'll kill all the people that actually make the games and we'll just have AI slop forever. Bigger titties, of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, but that's that's the other side of the story, right? Like, uh, because these grievances are totally fake and totally uh uh created, designed um as a as a distraction, uh, to distract people away from gaining uh class consciousness, to ensure that they're just like predisposed with whatever they perceive as like a slight or a grievance that uh doesn't disrupt the the uh ultimate hierarchy that these the the forces of capital want to control and continue enforcing, it's perfect. It doesn't even matter if the games are shitty because you can always go back and say, well, the games are still shitty because we haven't dominated the queer developers hard enough. Right. Um, you know, we haven't like uh we haven't stormed the halls of like Sweet Baby Inc. or whatever that like uh DEI aggregator was. Yeah, you know, we haven't like killed enough uh video game developers. If we kill enough of them, like then the games are gonna be good and the and the hard-dicked men are gonna come back and and be sexy and and dominate the video games again.
SPEAKER_15Well, I don't even think like I think one of the things that is often said is conservatives, there's very few conservative artists for a reason because they don't they lack the ability to have uh an understanding of empathy, and therefore they're not good at telling stories, because to tell a story, you need to have characters with uh opposing worldviews that are internally consistent, and they have a they struggle with that, having a theory of mind. And what's really interesting about the whole game drift is it really started with, in my opinion, Steve Bannon and World of Warcraft, which is Steve Bannon, while he was working at Goldman Sachs, invested in a startup which would hire a bunch of Chinese Hong Kong residents to farm gold in World of Warcraft and then sell that gold to Americans for real money. So you were buying in-game, you know, magic gold for actual American dollars. And this is where you know Steve Bannon got this insight about you know, gamers, white male gamers being disaffected and possibly a politically available force for them. So I find it really fascinating that that's where Steve Bannon got in, and now we have Asmund Gold as the leader, and he's one of those people who probably complained about he compl he probably complained about those bots, right? He probably complained about those things ruining WoW when he was playing uh in between his dress-up competitions, which is why he got famous. And now he's aligned completely politically with the people that he would have blamed for ruining the games, and it doesn't seem to have like any kind of consistency. So, how do you account for Asmund Gold's rise and and how he's just not really he's completely incurious about the thing he supposedly cares about? And that's what I always find so fascinating about him is like he literally says he believes in something, but when you examine the thing he claims to care about, he doesn't. He cares about literally nothing. No, that's why he's perfect.
SPEAKER_12He's perfect for the moment because it's like there is no real foundation and real belief system for these guys. Like, even the most ideologically disciplined neo-Nazi of this day and age is Nicolas Fuentes, who is a gay Mexican manlit who happens to be a white supremacist. So even then, it's like he would probably also be exterminated in the in the perfect dystopia that he wants to design for America. But outside of that, he also constantly goes back and forth on his opinion on Donald Trump, for example, even in his opinion on like Jeffrey Epstein, like, and he masquerades it as like, oh, I'm just simply memeing or I'm trying to be contrarian or edgy, but like it's utterly devoid of any sort of real uh foundational principles. Even the biggest neo-Nazi, that's supposed to be the most ideologically committed, ideologically disciplined, is not really as ideologically disciplined. I I don't know historically if that was always the case either. As far as what I know about like Mussolini, for example, he wasn't also like super invested in this as well. He just kind of went whichever way the winds were blowing. A grifter. So, yeah, exactly. I think like grifters have been key figures in both historic fascism and in contemporary fascism, they get to modify their framework and modify their perspective because it's just like pure reactionary. At the end of the day, uh, not to get like very idealistic about this, but I think it's just a culture of domination. As long as like we control the reins of power, as long as I gain power in my immediate vicinity, as long as I'm like the top dog, for example, or have fans that admire me, I'm good. I'm happy with that. It doesn't matter what this is, like the output is always going to be inconsistent. But that unreliability, that fluidity makes them very reliable servants of fascism. Because at the end of the day, there is no real goal there other than to establish a dominant hierarchy that still creates stability by force around the same exact capitalist hierarchy that exists at a time when liberalism is very clearly failing to uphold the capitalist hegemony, when people are recognizing the contradictions as they worsen and people are starting to get angry, even if they don't have the political education, the tools to recognize who to get angry at and who is actually doing this to them, there is that discontent. And fascist grifters, right wing grifters, reactionary grifters are are uh perfectly capable of moving their anger towards cultural forces that have are more vulnerable targets, that are easier to dominate, easier to get a W on, you know, trans people, undocumented. Migrants, uh, lean into like uh long-term established targets that reactionaries of the past have also consistently attacked. And I don't think it's out of like sincere anger or resentment, and then more so just this works. It's more so just a very pragmatic approach almost where they're like, yeah, this this kind of works. People like it when I say trans people are mentally ill. And Trump was like that too. If you recall, Trump was like pro-trans in 2016, right? He was like, I don't care where uh Caitlin Jenner uh takes a shit in as long as uh she's shitting in Trump Tower. And then by 2024, when that election cycle was happening, I remember this uh very salient moment where he came out and he was like, you know, I talk about tax cuts and none of you guys celebrate it, but when I talk about transgender, everybody goes crazy. Like he was almost personally shocked in this very vulgar uh saying the quiet part out loud manner that Trump uh oftentimes uh engages the public with, where he just straight up was like, I don't really care about this trans shit, but like I'll say it because you fucking idiots love hearing about it, right? And I'll I'll design a legislative, I'll design legislative action around it or executive orders around this stuff, even if it has no real impact in your life whatsoever, as long as it keeps you happy.
SPEAKER_00And other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content of our children. It's amazing how strongly people feel about that. You see, I'm talking about cutting taxes, people go like that. I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought five years ago you didn't know what the hell it was?
SPEAKER_12So what I'm trying to say is like it's not even a sincerely held anger or resentment in the way that like some people think it is. Now, obviously, this isn't uh the same as like, you know, anti-blackness, I would say, where it's like such a foundational principle of of being American that that is definitely something that uh, you know, anti-blackness is certainly a big part of like what creates a big umbrella of reactionary force in this country. But you know, to to varying degrees, these guys will drop it if it's no longer advantageous in their messaging.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, I mean, I see Asmund Gold like harass trans creators like directly a lot on like streams and stuff, like showing like their tweets, etc. And is he just doing that because like it works, it it riles up his fans, they like it. Uh or do you think like he he kind of believes that and stuff? Like he and he thinks that they're evil and they need to be like dealt with quote quote unquote.
SPEAKER_12I don't know. I i I don't think he I mean he watches like he a lot of his like consumption is still like VTubers and stuff, right? Which is which is like I know that there's now like this right wing VTube uh meta, V tuber meta that is like grown up and and and well it it is kind of falling apart, but like there was a brief moment uh where Asmung Gold was like really leaning into these like super right wing neo-Nazi VTubers, and and one of the guys that he would watch is this dude named Rev Sedesu. I think that's his name, if I'm not getting it wrong. Yeah, I think so, yeah. So this guy is like uh a lolly con. For those uh of you that don't know what that is, because you haven't been brain poisoned like I have, it's a it's a a a drawing of a child, okay? Oftentimes sexualize child uh children. And this is a dude, right? Not a queer guy, at least as far as we know. He doesn't, you know, say that he's queer or anything, but he would his his character was a was a little girl. And Asmungold was sit there and listen to this little girl, this drawn little girl, uh talk about you know political issues. But with a man's voice, and he'd be like, yeah, based. And that was fascinating to me. Like it didn't make any sense where you're like, I think 60 years ago, if if you were to describe uh to to like a right-wing fascist that this would be their guys, yeah, a key leader in like uh this growing online fascist movement, they'd be like, No, we're gonna kill you, we're gonna shoot you, we're gonna take you out back and shoot you in the head. This is unacceptable. So there is a I guess in some ways, like liberalism is such a hegemonic cultural force, it's such a profoundly important part of like monoculture that even the right is is engaging in like uh I guess diversity politics of some sort, and it's not it's not anchored around the things that it's supposed to be anchored around, like exterminating any kind of depiction of of uh queerness.
SPEAKER_15Well, there's no consensus about who's inside or outside the circle, which I I think plays into what you were saying before with fascism has always been a grift, but the postmodern fascism or the postmodern conservatism that we're dealing with today, they don't even really try to draw lines. And it's like these dashed lines are different with whatever Twitter post you're on. Like you have you'll have Sneeko, you'll have Nick Fuentes, you'll have Rev says Desu, you'll have all of these different contradictory individuals who in no way embody white masculinity who are representing this movement. You have Asmongold, and this is something that I was curious your take on. I mean, he is very obviously suffering some sort of disturbance, right? He lives in filth, he doesn't seemingly have any in-person interactions. He famously had a rotting rat that he used as an alarm clock when the sun would rise, it would shine onto the rat, it would release, you know, a fluvia of rot, and that stink would like wake him up. He had a blood wall where he would rub the blood from his gingivitis-infected gums on, you know, to soothe the the bleeding that was happening while he was sleeping. Basically, this is a multimillionaire, but he lives like the lowest order, and he is nearing 40, he doesn't have a wife, he doesn't have kids, he doesn't seemingly have any productive civic engagement whatsoever. So when you're examining him as a man, he fails in every single way that we traditionally would consider someone to be a man, and yet he has become one of the most prominent conservative voices, as you said, interacting with Elon Musk, being retweeted by JD Vance, the vice president. How do you square that circle in your mind that they're so degraded and so depraved?
SPEAKER_12Because it's representational politics. That's what it is. Because the overwhelming majority of people that tune in for that are people who are also shut-ins. They're shut-ins who also don't shower frequently, uh, with no real like job prospect, that have completely given up on a positive vision for their own future, for their own destiny, that they've just like leaned into a demonstration of constant resentment politics. That's it. It's just a way to like restore control in their own lives when they feel completely rudderless when they can't uh go and I don't know, participate in regular civilized society. So they just decide I'm just gonna spend every waking moment on the internet. That's why you don't really see a lot of like Asmongold fans out in the real world. I'm sure there's like, you know, the the cop that was uh watching Asmongold compilations on his on his uh police vehicle before going and doing a home invasion or whatever. Every now and then there are some people who are out there uh in the real world that are fans, but for the most part, they're just like weird little guys. So for them, it's it's the same as like I first noticed it with Ben Shapiro, right? Like they used to love someone like Ben Shapiro before you know they all uh started tuning out because he was so Israel first at a time when like that was no longer politically viable. But they loved a guy who was like as nerdy as they are, who could speak convincingly on what masculinity and and what being like a positive masculine figure would be, even if you weren't actually masculine at all, right? As long as you said those words, as long as you were like, I'm right wing, and the expression of masculinity is dominating trans people, dominating women, dominating people of color, it gave them something to easily attach to, right? It was no longer about some sort of aspirational goal about looking a certain way or living your life a certain way. It was more so just something you could easily adopt by saying those words. And it's that's why it's so easy to organize for fascists on the internet because it's all about just saying the right words, right? For them, there's no real organizational discipline, no real ideological discipline. It's just like anchored around specific grievances and and dominating certain marginalized identities with your words. So that's the reason why I think Asmund Gold is so popular amongst the the modern, you know, MAGA fascist movement, because he is exactly like many of these other people, a dirty shut-in who's not very intelligent, who has not put a lot of thought or effort into his commentary or like what this new world order that they would want to design even looks like, kind of just at the mercy of whatever cultural forces he perceives is going to uh get him the most eyeballs at any given moment. And a lot of people respond positively to that because they're like, oh, he's just like me. He's just like me. There's everyone is desperate to have a little bit of representational politics at the end of the day. They look to someone like him and think, oh, he's actually very successful and he's nasty. He's a nasty little shut-in and antisocial, just like me. Maybe I can be like him as well. If I present myself as this like right-wing uh mouthpiece on the internet, I can also be a part of this movement. I can see myself as maybe even a leader of this part of this movement, as long as I, you know, post on X.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, when I talked about the Hobbit camp thing, the reason they chose Hobbits is because they viewed them as like unlikely heroes, these like little guys who, you know, they didn't they they haven't had their moment yet. But when, you know, when history or whatever calls on them, they're gonna be the people who step in and like actually get it done. It's the same thing, I think.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean now now they're additionally overpowered than ever before because you have like data streaming in immediately as you say something. Like you don't have to give a particular pitch to your political movement and then wait for polls or wait for uh how many people end up showing up on a party meeting or out in the street. You're directly talking to 10,000 people, 20,000 people, 30,000 people, even 1,000 people, and you're throwing shit at them, and you decide one stream, I'm gonna be throwing this shit. Let's see if it sticks. It used to take years to see if a particular political pitch can stick. Now you will know in 24 hours, depending on the amount of donations that came in and how many motherfuckers stuck around. Extrapolate that on every type of content platform that you can think of, and you have this very, very fast, fluid, adaptive model that can constantly shift like a snake in between rocks to whatever the current reactionary pitch is. And that's why, as Hassan mentioned, like people like Ben, I guess, suffer because this is kind of a period, in my opinion, where we are seeing the true grifters completely dedicated to the craft, and those who hold even like a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of some sort of principled perspective kind of get put into two camps. And the only ones that will be able to survive as you know society gets more and more radicalized as these distractions become a bigger and bigger part of how we view the core causes of our problems and so on, the only guys that will be able to survive are the guys that unironically are the most digital reactionaries, those who can follow the kind of cultural zeitgeist faster than the other guy. And what's the only thing that can potentially stop you from continuously adapting if you have an actual opinion that you are not gonna budge on? And you know, Ben with his whole you know Israel shit and so on, he's not budging on that, so he cannot adapt to that. An ultimately contrasting figure to that, for example, is Asmongold, or even an even more radical one, my personal favorite, okay, Candace Owens. I knew you were gonna say that, right? This is this is a person that will just literally in my life. That's how I look, I look at her as a generative AI model, like literally, it's just like there's something in the cultural zeitgeist immediately adapts to it and immediately grows her following out of it. The unfortunate direct effect on you know the wider population, unfortunately, is that these opinions start to fester. These opinions and hot takes and perspectives start becoming the mainstream, which then motivate through very basic market mechanisms, those same content creators to push towards something more radical because that old shit is fucking soft and it doesn't make give me the you know bing bing subscription notifications on screen. I'm oversimplifying, obviously, but it is kind of a continuous snake eating its own ass loop.
SPEAKER_12You also came after my queen Candace Owens, and I I disavow. Uh I disavow Candace Owens is the only ideologically disciplined reactionary. I mean, she was she was waving around a copy of the Talmudic Jew talking about how uh Jews are contract lords, and that's I guess you know, that's theory. If you want to reduce it to such crude terminology, but that's that's technically right-wing theory when you think about it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08I mean, I mean it's it's min-maxing because like you understand that uh 100% of the time when you're pitching a right-wing pitch, you eventually have to come to like one particular ethnicity cabal ruling everything, etc. etc. So she knew that's gonna be the end goal. So she's you know giving that pitch even at the beginning so that she can do a nice little throwback, as as we now are. So she can say, like, I'm an OG from every angle. I'm Joe, uh I jest, of course, but yes. The less principled you are, the more principled you are as a right winger, if you understand what I mean. Like, that's you're utilitarian to the death. Like, that's that is what a successful fascist is, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_15Well, to build on that and and to give a point that's highly relevant as we record this, you know, the United States and Israel are attacking Iran in a completely ill-considered, botched war of aggression that is which which is backfiring horribly. Asmund loves, he fucking watches it live stream and jacks off. And as we record this, as we discussed this, Asmongold used to be the anti-war America first, bring the troops home, isolationist, and now Donald Trump uh, you know, starts this war, and you know, Hassan, what is Asmongold saying now about the war in Iran and American interventionism abroad?
SPEAKER_12This might come as a surprise to everyone here, but Asmongold is now firmly committed to uh bombing Iran and is saying is is totally based.
SPEAKER_14I am actually, I am so happy this has happened. I am just dramatically, tremendously happy this has happened. Uh, I know that, you know, obviously I've talked about it for a long time about how big of a problem Iran is and everything. I was a big supporter of us bombing them before, and now we're bombing them again, and this is just amazing. Wow.
SPEAKER_12And not only that, but also one of my favorite things that he did recently wasn't just that he's like now super pro regime change in Iran, which again, uh, I think demonstrates his inability to read the room because even JD Vance is more cognizant of like what the future holds for this unimaginably destabilizing war of choice that is not going to lead to any productive outcomes for American Empire, really, and has been a spectacular failure thus far. But not only is he pro, you know, going to uh war with Iran and destroying the energy markets at the behest of Israel, but he's now also saying like eventually like people are gonna start getting bored of this like blaming everything on Israel thing, which is such a cowardly way to try to manipulate discourse and try to like move your fans in that direction, especially when you're the guy who's like hyping up Nick Fuentes over and over again and talking about how Nick Fuentes is based and how you know Hitler was kind of based too, like all this stuff one day, and then the next day you're like, actually, people shouldn't focus on Israel. It's very strange that they hyper focus on Israel, who happens to have unimaginable outsize influence over our political forces, and almost unilaterally commands the American military's at least MENA campaign at this stage, and and has like tremendous domestic leverage as well, as we've seen with both AIPAC and numerous subsidiaries, and even a pressure mechanism that that bullies politicians when they come out and speak out of turn and say things that are objectively true, like Israel's an apartheid state, reminded of Gavin Newsom's little mishap there. Yeah, just just don't even think about Israel, guys. Why are you thinking about it? Was his attitude. And and now even his fans are kind of cooking him on that. But at the end of the day, they just don't really care. I don't think these guys are even invested in Israel.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to like ask you, just to put on our like uh let's take ourselves very seriously hat on for a second. How much do you think like this is I don't know. Um how much do you think this actually impacts the average, I guess, uh perspective on a particular issue? What I mean by this is when Asmongold drops a particular perspective, now let's focus on him, I guess, as a as a guinea pig, very apt in a zoo. When he drops a particular perspective on an issue such as the war in Iran or any other thing, does this actually have an impact on, I don't know, the political cognizance of the people? As insane as that sounds, or not really? Do you think it's just a fucking eco chamber that exists online and has no impact on the real world, or does it have a real impact?
SPEAKER_12I don't think it's as impactful in the real world at all because these people don't exist in the real world and in a meaningful fashion. And I think it serves the same purpose as like watching the NFL, you know, watching the Super Bowl, watching a TV show. It's just uh it's just a distraction. It doesn't lead to any meaningful political organizing. And one of the closest expressions of like meaningful political organizing to his ideology is like James Fishback, right? And that's the reason why I I think this is like a like a failed political project. And it's just basically uh a way for people to feel satisfied, a way to feel like they're actually uh moving towards like a tangible political goal that isn't really identifiable and would most likely be devastating for all of the people championing it, regardless. But James Fishback, the reason why I'm bringing him up is because he's aligned himself with anti-Israel sentiment, which is definitely a very popular thing to align with right now, especially uh even on the Republican side, really. But uh it's it's certainly a popular issue to lean into. And yet, given all of the other weird things that he has, both in his background and and all the other weird issues that he champions, you know, like OnlyFans Girls, like taxing them or whatever the fuck James Fishbag is interested in doing.
SPEAKER_15They already pay taxes, but okay.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, he he's polling at what? Like, I mean, he's he's uh barely making uh making it out of like the lower, you know, five percent to ten percent range against you know Donald Trump's hand selected candidate uh Byron Donald's.
SPEAKER_15I think your point makes uh just to throw another thing in there that he recently did, he supported the uh new far-right party in the UK restore UK. And it just shows you to me, which is a very important point, is that Asmongold is very dumb and he doesn't know anything about Dick. So he's basically just trying to copy whatever came on his algorithm in the moment and then go, yeah, based, and that's about it, right? Like, and so he has no ability of discernment. Obviously, reform is the far right party that is growing in the UK. If the far right is to have power, it's going to be with the reform party. Having an even further right party is nonsensical because they haven't even had reform yet. Like, so he's supporting this like fringe shit, fishback is the same thing. He trips over his own two feet because he's stupid and he doesn't understand politics even in a kind of elementary level. And so his impact as far as pushing people to organize is definitely mitigated by the fact that he is very stupid.
SPEAKER_12Yeah. But it but not only is he stupid, but he's like rudderless. Like he doesn't have real uh a real ideological commitment, is what I'm trying to say. Because, like, yeah, definitely you could support a growing movement if you were like if you were genuinely committed to it, right? You could organize around like shared values and principles and demonstrate like a real disciplined ideological commitment to a Cause. But my point is they don't have like the right has no real goal that they're uh going towards either. So even his like commitment to to something beyond reform is just reflexive. Like he's just he just sees that on his timeline. He sees Elon Musk pushing for it. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna push for this too. There is no real reason for why he wants it. He's like, oh yeah, we are gonna purge uh I want England to be uh rid of of all all Muslims. Like that's not he's not leaning into that because that's like a genuine problem for him, and he wants to uh lean into the international success of this kind of policy making so that he can like design it in America as well. Like, that's not the actual goal here. He's just jumping on the bandwagon with no real backing, with no real interest in it whatsoever, and it'll move on to the next thing. For him, it's just meta-chasing, and that's precisely why he's such a perfect vessel for what like modern day right-wing expression looks like, because it's just totally anchored around idealizing one guy, Donald Trump, who is uh somewhat unreliable and only consistent when it comes to advancing the interests of capital and advancing the interests of empire in a very naked way, in a very brazen manner, but he'll he'll lie. He'll he'll lie to get there. And a lot of these people are perfectly servile to that uh to that need, to that commitment, because they don't have any sort of established worldview. That's why you don't see a lot of like people turning around and saying, like, no, I'm actually formerly MAGA now because he said he was gonna be anti-war. I voted for him because he's the peace president, but it turns out he's the war president. No, they just go along with it. We saw this with, like I said, the the Iran war, right? Like uh 35% of Republicans were in support of striking Iran before Donald Trump struck Iran. The day he struck Iran, they were pulled, it went up to 50%. The day after, it went up to 75%. Now it's at 85%. MAGA is going wherever Donald Trump is going. There's no real established like principle. Whereas with a lot of the with a lot of people on the left, both organized and and self-identifying leftists, and even people who have like liberal commitments to, you know, peace, uh, even if they don't have like the perfect ways of expressing themselves, they were shocked by the Democratic Party's reluctance to to uh bring Israel to account, to make Israel stop its genocide. And they were willing to punish the Democratic Party, even if it wasn't a commitment to not voting, it was clearly expressed in their desire to no longer go out and vote for the Democrats because they didn't feel enthused enough to go out and vote for the Democrats.
SPEAKER_15Or donate less or not or volunteer less.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, exactly. Like refuse to door knock, refuse to phone bank, refuse to go out and volunteer for a campaign that they were not on board with, that they could not get themselves to commit to go out and do the same things that they would do. Whereas I think like Republicans don't have that. They have that base of white evangelical Protestants that will go wherever Donald Trump is taking them, and it doesn't really matter as long as they're just like dominating, as long as they're getting uh red meat thrown at them every now and then, like these you know culture war issues that they get uh W's on at the legislative level or at the Supreme Court level or through executive action, they're happy because they live in the suburbs, they're somewhat comfortable anyway, and uh whatever kind of economic pressure that they experience, they can channel that frustration back to these like uh vulnerable populations because we haven't dominated them enough.
SPEAKER_15I think a lot of a lot of the core of their support is that mega boomer that is surfing on the wave of home equity, you know, where politics is not so material for them because the entire society is set up for luxury boomer communism where everything is taken care of for them, you know. Well, we're gonna cut property taxes on the millionaire boomers who bought their house for $20,000 so that we can, you know, raise fees for the young millennials that are trying to have their first child. Like that's the society we live in, and and Donald Trump is the ultimate representation of the boomers that refuse to pass the baton, who want to be the star of the show into their 80s. Like that is a kind of mental illness, a refusal to accept the, you know, looming death, the inability to recognize that you only have a short period of time on this earth. And I feel like this politics that we're talking about is really a rage against that. It's a rage against their own mortality, or even the idea that they have a responsibility to anyone but themselves.
SPEAKER_13I was just gonna say, like the uh Gen Z online fascists are themselves also raging against this sort of boomer, kind of like, you know, equity-owning class and everything constantly, but then of course go out and back Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_15Well, you know, and recently, you know, one of the things that makes me laugh about the Donald Trump, you know, support is and something that I noticed, which is, you know, during the Zoran Mamdani race, one of the things that I was surprised by, even though I was an early endorser and I thought he was going to win pretty early on, was the way that the Republican Party voters shifted exactly where Donald Trump ordered them to go. He said, vote for Andrew Cuomo, who was supposedly this big boogeyman enemy of the right wing, you know, the worst of the worst liberal. But when Donald Trump late in the campaign says, okay, conservatives, Republicans, vote for Andrew Cuomo, they overwhelmingly did. They overwhelmingly did. Like Republicans in New York City voted for Andrew Cuomo according to Donald Trump's orders. And that was the thing that really, you know, showed me an early indication of the way that the political right is now operating is whatever Donald Trump says goes. There is no consistency, there is no hesitation, there is no desire to hold yourself to some sort of ideal. It is what daddy tells me to do. And, you know, I think Asmogold in particular, he represents the desire to have a daddy. You know, he is the perpetual adolescent, and he's looking for orders to be given to him by someone who is appropriately white and male so he can tell him what to do and what to think. And he doesn't even bother having the self-respect necessary to have a position.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, but it's like it's like a daddy, but like a daddy that owns a warehouse and has like 20 employees. So you want to be daddy's son that inherits the warehouse, and you get to LARP being daddy without having to do almost anything that daddy does, while expecting the respect from the employees at the same level as daddy does. You know how in marketing you have just to circle back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to, you know, like uh Asmongol doesn't have any meta, he just, you know, fucking beer heads, whatever is in the current mainstream. You know how when you when you're trying to sell something, I don't know, you're trying to sell the new chicken McCrap fluffer, you have a part of the marketing campaign that just introduces people about the concept of the chicken mccrap fluffer, exactly what it is, and then you have a completely different team that focuses on making sure that everybody hears about this thing, on repeat and on repeat, and on repeat, on repeat, on repeat, on repeat. Well, the difference between somebody like I don't fucking know, um uh old guy, fucking uh Tucker Carlson? Tucker Carlson, thank you, brother. Yes. So the difference between, for example, a Tucker Carlson and a and a Asmongold is one is at least attempting to create some sort of new meta. And yes, as every reactionary and right wing, right winger, you're not really doing proper analysis of what the problems are. Half of your job is to invent an alternative fictional explanation of why society is decaying, etc. etc. But even while creating the story, there is some sort of narrative to be created. And a far smaller part of these, let's say, digital reactionaries are the ones that are creating the or at least attempting to create some sort of meta, and the other guys, you know, the first guys are the ones making the chicken McCluffer, and the other guys are the ones that are simply the speakers that make that meta that was made by somebody else uh a little bit louder. But do you think that maybe his um his ego will start clicking at some point where he wants to be the one uh giving the pitch, not only creating the pitch, not only giving the pitch? Or do you think that's not possible because he doesn't have the capacity?
SPEAKER_12No, he doesn't have the capacity at all. I don't even think he has the ambitions. I I sincerely believe this. Like I think if cultural forces like snap back to you know woke liberalism 2016 style, he would uh go back to you know, every now and then talking about video games and stuff like that, but he would not be as like uh committed if if there was like a cancel culture again, right? Like some kind of social stigma associated with like uh saying the most uh reactionary thing possible, he wouldn't do it. I just I don't think he really has that dog in him. Like I think he's currently doing it because it creates uh discourse, it makes him look transgressive, it makes him look edgy, but it's actually very safe. Uh it's very safe for him to do so. And he can garner the attention of a lot of these reactionary forces. But if there was a lot of there was like some sort of real pushback against him, he would stop doing it. So it there is no like uh ideological discipline there, like as opposed to, you know, people like ourselves. Like we have a real commitment to anti-Zionism, anti-fascism, anti-genocide. These are principles that we believe. And even though it was uh virtually impossible to get a word in edgewise after October 7, we continued in a very steadfast manner to speak truth to power, to slowly but surely try to organize against these massive cultural forces, in spite of all the real cancel culture, the actual cancel culture that exists in society. And that I think is like a perfect indication. Like he would not, if there was a serious pushback and it made it impossible for him to advocate for a fascist future like it was in like the 2016 era, he would just resort, he would just revert back to what he was doing in that era, like dog whistles every now and then. But you know, if he got banned for it, he would stop doing it, as he said with the Andres Brivik thing. It's that simple because he doesn't have a real commitment to a fascist vision.
SPEAKER_15There's one thing that I wanted to mention and get your thoughts on because you're probably the biggest expert here, is what about the element of his support and Candace Owens' support that is completely artificial? And what I mean by that is somebody who is maybe it's Elon Musk, maybe it's you know the creators themselves, but I've noticed that a lot of right-wing creators have botted to fuck streams. For example, recently you showed that Candace Owens, who had like 300,000 viewers on her YouTube, had a chat that was slower than mine when I have 5,000 viewers. And so what do you think about that? Like, what element of the right-wing reactionary surge in content creation and social media is actually completely fake? It is just bot farms that are being, you know, sent from Tel Aviv or you know, wherever else. Oh, I mean, all of it.
SPEAKER_12So so much of it, I think. I mean, the greatest example of this is Twitter. What we are seeing right now, a part of the mobilization against Donald Trump and a demand for like woke 2.0 that I do think is organic comes from the fact that these guys tweak the algorithm in a way that favors the most reactionary positions, neo-Nazi positions, like open anti-Semitism, open uh defense of fascism, and whatnot on Twitter. And then that had this uh incredibly toxic secondary effect on every other platform that is is getting their notes off of like whatever discourse is happening on Twitter, you know, whether it be Reddit, whether it be Twitch, Twitch definitely was impacted uh dramatically from this, TikTok as well. And TikTok is basically the mass dissemination uh funnel because you know, TikTokers would go to Twitter and see whatever was popping off there, and then they would uh, you know, add into the discourse, and then then it would become this organic thing. However, I think people started realizing the modern demonstration of like right-wing attitudes was disgusting and gross and utterly repulsive to the general, you know, normy society that oftentimes, just like you said earlier, are nowhere near as invested in designing a white supremacist future, where you know, America's a very diverse country, one of the most diverse nations on the planet, entirely comprised of immigrants. So, so there is that like almost European style hatred that was gaining uh a lot of momentum because of that algorithmic boost that it got on Twitter. But once normal Americans encountered it, they were like, this is gross, and we should stop doing this. And I think there is a lot of that, I think, is just boosted by people directly like Elon Musk. And I mean, it's an operation to try to move the masses in that direction for sure, but I don't know if it's like super successful in general, given how Americans normally operate and how they see themselves as. But of course, who knows? Who knows what the future holds, you know? That I mean, Americans are cattle, so maybe they will actually lean into these uh incredibly racist forces.
SPEAKER_15I don't know. I mean, I feel like if anything, uh there was recently a clip I saw from Kyle Kalinsky, who I think of as kind of like maybe uh the the nexus between the left and liberals in a lot of ways. And he was saying how he he went off on a ramp about how he started to understand authoritarian left, you know, the gulags and Stalin and We need re-education camps, bro.
SPEAKER_16We we might need re-education camps. I'm not so sure a gulag was a was a bad idea, come to think of it. I don't this is making me understand a lot of things I previously did not understand. I never used to understand authoritarian left movements. I'd be like, why are you authoritarian? Just be like libertarian left. Look listening to these motherfuckers? I'm like, uh, I see. They gotta do something about you motherfuckers. You weren't gonna get along. You weren't gonna play nice. You are if we if we let you do what you want to do, there'd be a lot of fucking up shit happening. We gotta go a little further, don't we?
SPEAKER_15And and I feel like this phenomenon of what you know some people are calling woke to or dark woke or this kind of sharp-elbowed leftism that is tired of like the centrist democrat discovering socialism. Well, discovering it through the the the means of what it always was, which is we are the only people that are fighting back. We are actually the only people to fight back.
SPEAKER_12They're reinventing siege communism through first principles. And that's beautiful. It's beautiful to see. Yeah, and it's it's entirely due to like how grossed out they are by like manifestations of fascist right-wing politics in in everyday society.
SPEAKER_15It's like, how do you fix Asmongold? You have to show up at his house with you know a uh hazmat crew, you know, uh and a rubber room. Like you're not going to fix that man through rational argument. He needs intervention. And I think that is kind of the symptom of our society in general, and maybe something that we're we're starting to become aware of is we need a second American reconstruction where we solve some of these root issues from you know how these right wing beliefs are fostered through certain institutions all the way through the way the oligarchs exercise their power in our society. And I think more and more people are being radicalized against this kind, as you rightly describe, gross, you know, post-truth right wing that just seemingly is out there to enact sadism. And most people aren't sadists, so they're getting pissed off and they want to fight back.
SPEAKER_12Yeah. Ironically enough, we haven't really talked about the role that liberalism has played in designing society in this way, but I do think that that plays a major role as well because like the only funnel of left flank expression has oftentimes been liberalism. And that is totally ineffective at meeting the moment because at the end of the day, liberals are also capitalists and they want the same like billionaire-dominated uh society to continue. And at least Republicans can make it seem like they're more invested in like breaking the hierarchy when in fact it's actually a reassertion of the same hierarchical structure that exists. The oppressive forces that still dominate society will still sit at the tippy top. As we've seen, Donald Trump came out, said he's gonna he's gonna run an anti-corruption campaign in 2016, drain the swamp, right? And then what did he do? He just didn't do any of that, right? I mean, he he was actually more overtly corrupt than than even previous administrations were. Previous administrations were also corrupt, but and not in uh as open of a way that Donald Trump is, you know, cutting deals for his family members and the like. And it's gotten significantly worse in Trump too. And what I'm trying to say is like liberals have oftentimes created tremendous hurdles against like uh going further left and against like the political education necessary for class consciousness. And that is part of the reason why they've designed society in a way where, like, while you know liberalism is failing, you can have this uh reactionary right movement present itself as like a true new, I guess, like somewhat revolutionary way of existing when it's not at all. It's just a restructuring of society that is more cruel and more ruthless to marginalized identities, even though it's always has been very cruel and very ruthless to vulnerable populations. And I I think that that alternative, people are coming to the same conclusions that we've arrived at many years ago that like the alternative must be militant organizing and and socialism. So I do think that we also must at a certain point combat liberalism as well.
SPEAKER_08100%. Nothing to add there. So let's wrap up with a meta question that will probably get us all in trouble. I have a small game here for you that's in line with uh what we're trying to do here on this young show of ours, uh hitting the digital front of the modern right-wing pitch. So, in that spirit, let's do a classic rating game. I honestly did not have as much creativity as like uh 100,000 like you know, business podcasters do because I was very inspired, and I'll I'll speak openly with that awesome clip of Alex Jones going Baker, nationalist, uh vampire, right? But like I don't have these specific words that I could copy for the left wing that would either make somebody you know sound very base or not base. So we're gonna do a classic rating from one to ten. So I will drop a name and you rate them one to ten on how hot oh no, on how dangerous of a fascist you think they are, actual impact and so on. I'm talking knowledge, dedication to the cause, the whole fucking shebang. So one to ten, how dangerous of a fascist you think they are. I know it's a doozy, but let's do this. Are you okay with that?
SPEAKER_12Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Okay.
SPEAKER_07Ben Shapiro. Zero.
SPEAKER_15Well, he's got no motion now. He's fucked.
SPEAKER_12Nothing.
SPEAKER_15He's so he's so fucked. I said certified freak seven days a week. Wet ass P word. Make that pullout game week. I think he's a smaller streamer than like a lot of people that we know now. Like he's he's like what was it?
SPEAKER_12What is it? It was the uh election night. I think it was uh was it Texas? Yeah, like it was one of these uh one of these election nights where I I tuned into his broadcast, and he had like a thousand or two thousand people watching. I was it's shocking. I got that.
SPEAKER_08Oh, I'll tell my mom I'm bigger than Ben Sapiro. Holy shit. Yeah, it's amazing. Fantastic. Number two, I'm starting with the classics, Jordan Peterson.
SPEAKER_12Two, also gone. No, I mean he might be dead. Oh, zero. He he's dead, I think. He's more he's more dead than Benjamin Nanyahoo. Like benzo addiction is no joke.
SPEAKER_08I I always wish like the in an alternative dimension, because he kept coming to the buckets to get benzos for some reason. And uh, I was always like, you know, like and I would see like Instagram stories that he's like clubbing. Like, wait, but aren't you doing like the religious shit? So, you know, I I would be out clubbing and I would like fantasize like please Jordan Peterson appears somewhere randomly, like this would create the ultimate, ultimate story for for a stream or a show, but never happened.
SPEAKER_13Never happened. I I can't visualize that, like visualize Jordan Peterson clubbing, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_12You could have raised up his daughter. I mean, at a certain point, she was in the Balkans, and after putting his father in a coma for an experimental benzotreatment in Russia, she did give uh her father uh COVID because she was frolicking about with Andrew Tate, I think, in in former Yugoslavia somewhere.
SPEAKER_10And I'm not taking down that tweet or acknowledging that my tweet violated the Twitter rules. Up yours, woke moralists.
SPEAKER_08We'll see who cancels who You know how you know how there how many Balkan dudes, I mean you're you're from Turkey, so Turkish guys as well, look a lot like Andrew Tate. Yeah. Like every time I go, and you know, I'm fifty percent terminally online because of what I do. So whenever I go out, I just see Andrew Tate fucking everywhere. Now he's no longer that relevant. But two years ago, like you know, music playing, uh lights flashing in every bold head starts looking like my favorite man in the world. So yes, a very, very, very terrifying experience, especially after 2 3 a.m. when you got more than a few promils, as they say. Next guy. This one you gotta rate more in like uh like a metaphysical way, like long-term impact, okay? You know which one I'm gonna ask. Charlie Cook.
SPEAKER_12Oh no, bro, everyone is dead.
SPEAKER_07I mean, that's what the hell happened. Look at all the people that have been smoked. How many people we've defeated? Jesus.
SPEAKER_12I guess we're winning. What the hell happened to the titans of the right? They're like either comatose, literally dead, or or figuratively dead, like Ben Shapiro's movement. Yeah, I mean, his again, zero, nothing. Nada.
SPEAKER_15Can I just say that so many people, and and maybe even including myself, thought this was gonna be some sort of horse vessel, yeah, you know, like uh they're gonna turn him into a martyr of the MAGA movement and they're gonna go after me and you for laughing at him and uh and being mean to him over the years. I never laughed, I disavow. Okay, well, um uh I mean I used to make fun of his face all the time. You know, I had a I had the Kirk slider, which may still be online or not, uh, where I would make fun of how his face seemed to be too small for his head. But it turns out that the if anything, right wingers are now making fun of Charlie Kirk more than we are. Like right wing Gen Zers are putting him into nonstop AI slop with uh Jeffrey Epstein. Uh yeah, and I think that might be like what our uh it's one of our first episodes is good is uh about Charlie Kirk. So we take a deep dive into how the uh monuments to Charlie Kirk are already vandalized before they're built. Absolutely. So next guy.
SPEAKER_08Okay, now we're back to the living, even though this one is a zombie. Asmongold.
SPEAKER_14I don't need to understand whatever article you want me to read. All I need to understand is human psychology and then I would say like five out of ten.
SPEAKER_12Wow, like he has more emotion. I mean, we spent the entire episode talking about how it's like it ultimately is is a grift, but he has motion in the sense that like he can open up like a wave of harassment against like uh off like a smaller content creator, or even someone uh at my size as well that can have some impact as long as he like leans into other systemic forces, leans into like the ADL campaigns and stuff like that. He can he can be a megaphone for things like that and have some impact, and has had some impact. So I'll say I'll give it a five. Very fair. Next one.
SPEAKER_08He is Nick Fuentes.
SPEAKER_11Never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman, really makes you more heterosexual because honestly, dating women is gay. Having sex with women is gay.
SPEAKER_12Ooh. This one's difficult because I I I think I think he definitely punches above his weight quite a bit. Again, totally uh backed by the algorithm, totally backed by these like clipping accounts, uh has uh a lot of outsized influential power. I think even many leftists oftentimes get duped by his trickery, where uh they'll like highlight you know uh the the sequence of like donations that he gets where he's like, Oh, I'm so mad at how stupid and gay these Nazi fans of mine are, and then like leftists will post that to be like, see, even Nick Fuentes hates his right wing movement, and it's like no, he's just marketing himself, you're fucking idiot. But but even then, I mean he is a cockroach. Uh, he he has been able to uh reinvent himself over and over again. So I I'll give him a seven. Decent, uh potential nine eventually.
SPEAKER_15Yeah. I I mean I agree with that. The thing about Nick is he actually has some amount of ability to read the room that isn't just copying other people. Like he can look at a situation and kind of have a mental model about where it's going, like for example, the Iran shit. Yeah. Like he recognizes from having a basic understanding of history that this is not gonna go well, or the odds are that it's not gonna go well. So if he jumps out in front of it and says, this is dumb and we're being slaves to Israel, he'll he's setting himself up for far more influence in the future just by having kind of basic understanding of how the world works, whereas somebody like Asmungold is now going, ooh, based, and is gonna look like a complete fucking moron even more than he does now in six months' time. I think I honestly, my my prediction is I actually think Asmund is falling off and gonna stay falling off because he's he's dumb and he's you know tripping over all the shit that should be easy to avoid, whereas Nick is way ahead of it.
SPEAKER_12I I do think that being dumb is a superpower nowadays, more so than ever before, though. That's why I gave him a five, because like you do get rewarded for being stupid because the audience is really stupid. So uh we kind of saw this a little bit with like the Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes debacle that took place, where Nick Fuentes was like really mad that his uh his audience was uh kind of leaning in Candace Owens' direction because she was just like, Oh, the Jews killed Charlie Kirk. But then she said the French killed Charlie Kirk and the French are the real Jews, and then the Egyptian uh is were the real Jews or whatever the fuck she was saying, right? But like, but people wanted to hear that Israel was uh responsible for Charlie Kirk's assassination, which is the official position of of my broadcast now as well, uh, because it's advantageous. Um but but my point is like Nick was very mad at the time because uh he was like, you guys are doing anti-Semitism the wrong way. Like your anti-Semitism is so so base and so uh so primal, so stupid. Like you're not supposed to do it like this. And he was upset because he he wanted to have a more intellectual version of that, which is again not how reactionary sentiment works. And for that reason, I think like Asmogold still will have prominence, like cultural prominence, because the audience is demanding stupidity and they're much more forgiving as long as Trump is still around. If Trump falls out of favor, Asmogold is done, though, for sure. Because he has nothing to like anchor himself around and to to repeat when when the when the cultural forces of the right are going to be in a dire situation where they're fighting one another, just like we saw in the power vacuum in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination in the hands of the Israeli state, which is the official pro uh position of the reaction podcast as well. Uh-huh. Uh there was a power vacuum, right? Like, you know, Candace Owens rose to prominence as the Anwar al Alackey of the uh you know, grifting right, and all these other groups were like trying to figure out uh how to to take advantage of of this uh this power vacuum on the right. I think a similar thing will unfold when Donald Trump is no longer in fashion and when he's no longer in favor, or you know, if he ever loses power and and who rises in the prominence, uh who rise from the ashes, I I suspect it's it'll be Tucker Carlson. I think he's like the spiritual successor of like MAGA slopulism. But a lot of people that have just simply uh spat out cat turd style pro-Trump sentiment, uh, which is what Asmongold is doing, are gonna find themselves rudderless because they don't have anything anchoring their worldview. But for the time being, you know, as long as Trump is around, he'll also continue winning favor with the crowd.
SPEAKER_15And speaking of Tucker Carlson, what would you rate him as a threat going forward? As nine. I give him a ten.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, ten.
SPEAKER_15I think he's I think I think he's the most dangerous right winger by far.
SPEAKER_08I I agree. I agree. He was the last one. You guys are rushing my list. You're see how building a narrative here, but no, I agree completely. Yeah, uh Nick Fuentes is a baby Tucker. That's unironically how I see them. I think Nick Fuentes to an extent even sees himself like that.
SPEAKER_15Why why why do you think Tucker, why do you think Tucker is a 10, by the way?
SPEAKER_12Um, I think Tucker Carlson is a 10 because unlike Nick Fuentes, he knows how to read the room even better, and he has like 30 plus years of of being a professional commentator. So he won't step on landmines that Nick Fuentes actually boldly steps on in a way to like showcase how radical his worldview is, how contrarian he actually can be, how edgy he actually can be. You're never gonna find Tucker Carlson uh selling Jeffrey Epstein merchandise, right? You're never gonna see until it's perfectly normalized. Tucker Carlson will never say it's the Jews, right? Even if he believes it, or even if he doesn't believe it, it doesn't really matter. Like he will, like, even his sentiment around Israel, like it changed so dramatically. And I don't know how much of that was like genuine grievances, and how much of that was just like his ability to read the room, but he won't like step on certain landmines that Nick Fuentes will gladly dive on top of in an effort to make himself seem more edgy. And that's why I think Tucker Carlson is uh the most devastating version of that. He did this in 2016, he was very much in favor of like some kind of left-adjacent populism in an effort to anchor his you know wasp nationalist ideology, and he was able to to win a lot of people over by by doing that, every now and then offering concessions to uh the real grievances of working class Americans. Um, so that's why I think he's the most uh dangerous WASP nationalist on this list.
SPEAKER_15I also feel like he's the only person that I can think of in the Republican Party right now that actually could bridge the gap between the like establishment Republican Party, the old school CIA, the you know, the nationalist institutions, the rich, because he's got old money. He has the pedigree, he has those connections, you know, he got made fun of for Putin for being a CIA wannabe, but he also has like a lot of clout with the far right. He actually has a lot of clout with the neo and the Nick Fluentes types, the Nick Fluentes fans, like so he can square all those circles, unlike any other politician. I don't think like JD Vance can do it. I don't think that Marco Rubio can do it. I think that Tucker Carlson is by far and away the most dangerous, and you know, he's my 2028 pick or at least 2032 pick for the Republicans because like same, he just has really good understanding of the online media space. He understands media better than everybody else. He also understands how to talk and he could trick people, like he could trick some of the not so bright populist uh left-wingers. Like, for example, um some of your uh some of your, you know, Anna Kasperia goes on his podcast and gets completely rolled by him, right? Like that is a sign of his political acumen.
SPEAKER_12I've tried to go on his podcast, by the way, and oh hell no, he won't have me on, which I think is very interesting. Because they're not dumb enough. Well, it's like him and Candace Owens both always keep me at like uh arm's distance, even though I am the most overtly anti-Israel leftist, like the largest overtly anti-Zionist content creator on the left. And it's really interesting that they will consistently collaborate with other, also overtly anti-Zionist content creators who are uh much smaller, right? But I think they're a little bit more pliant, and that's what it is. Like they want someone who's not gonna be like a threat to whatever their like goals are, whatever the agenda is. And I think Tucker Carlson worries a little bit about me eating away at his base of support or you know, having having people in his audience uh approach what I have to say in a more sympathetic manner because they think like, oh wait, this guy's actually pretty convincing, you know, he has the he has the background and he's not moving the conversation to like ridiculous, silly places, like uh, you know, transgender athletes or whatever.
SPEAKER_08To me, he is uh he's absolutely terrifying because he's an actual reactionary with class consciousness. I watched one of his interviews. I made a whole video about this guy, I read his fucking book and so on. I watched this interview where he so eloquently quotes like five different books that he's uh read, both analyses and uh personal biographies of these like over-the-top like white Russian barons that were fighting the Bolsheviks, that he went through studying page by page uh where they made mistakes so that he uh does not repeat them. Okay, this is a guy who has an understanding of how systems work, but very openly, and I kind of to an extent, like that's the only reactionary perspective that I'm I wouldn't say respect, but that I understand he understands it's either you know I'm under the boot or I am the boot. I was lucky enough to be born as the boot. I will do everything I can in order to make sure that me and mine, you know, me and my children remain the boot.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so the actual like intellectual reactionaries are the ones that you kind of have to worry about because they are the ones that have like staying power, they're the ones who have an intellectual output. Beautifully put, absolutely.
SPEAKER_08Now, speaking of great intellectuals, next one. We only have a few ones left, do not worry. Next one, intellectual giant. Actually, I don't know if we should measure it because I think he's gonna clip the shit out of us.
SPEAKER_07But fuck it. Drew Pavlou.
SPEAKER_04Make sure that I can hear a fucking job.
SPEAKER_03I don't care about a job.
SPEAKER_04I'm just fighting I don't care about the school.
SPEAKER_03I'm I'm gonna be fine. I'm practicing tomorrow.
SPEAKER_07Who?
SPEAKER_06How dare you even mention him in my presence?
SPEAKER_07Who who? Who, Pavlow? Okay. Okay, okay. Next an OG, Sam Hyde.
SPEAKER_12Oh, Sam Hyde is so awesome because like he he is like designed himself as this uh you know ultra-reactionary, scary figure that that is always like, is he joking? Is he serious? Is he sincere? And I think the death of that like comedian comes from being genuinely sincere at times. And whenever people mention Sam Hyde to me now, aside from the fact that he's obviously a pedophile and has like, you know, some some very serious rape allegations, pedophilic rape allegations.
SPEAKER_08Which you can hear in a reaction episode that will come out other after or before him.
SPEAKER_12Oh, oh, okay. But what I was gonna say is what killed, I think, his momentum or whatever momentum he could have ever had was his like 45-minute video that he looked that he did looking like Trotsky.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_12Where he was like, You guys, you guys killed Charlie Kirk, and you're gonna you done did it now, and all of his fucking like 40-year-old 4chan loser ass audience were like, You made Stam Hyde cry. Oh, you guys done did it now.
SPEAKER_01This is you. This is your sister, your wife, your daughter, but this right here is you. This is your sister, your wife, your daughter, this is you. This is your sister, your wife, your daughter, but this is you, and this is their reaction when you are killed.
SPEAKER_12I could not believe it. Like that was that was, I think, the first uh uh moment where I was like, oh, this is not gonna go anywhere. Because I was like, there's no way, like they're trying to be like, we have to be serious now. Sam Hyde is crying, like, okay, what he ran out of like little girls to rape. Is that why he's crying? I don't give a fuck about Sam Hyde crying.
SPEAKER_15If you keep at it, he might break some cabinets at Fish Tank Live or whatever the fuck he does at this time. Yeah, that was awesome. That was yeah, uh it's so funny. Like, the thing about Sam Hyde that's awesome is it's like, how long can you dine out on getting a show canceled? You know what I mean? Like, how long can you have your your adult swim show canceled and pretend like this is a world-shattering grievance? Bro, write some funnier shit next time.
SPEAKER_08You know, like uh like what do you want me to say? But that's why he's at least a six, because somehow he's still relevant. No, he's not relevant, relevant, but he's still he exists in the fog of no, he's he's not even a three.
SPEAKER_15Like, I I think he's it very important that you listen to our episode about Sam Hyde. He is at least a six.
SPEAKER_06Fuck you, man. That's my job in this show, man. I'm gonna market this up, man. Sam Hyde, he's very important, okay?
SPEAKER_13You fucking I mean, we we made an episode on Charlie Kirk, and I feel like Sam Hyde has also been like kirked a little bit with the whole like mass shooter meme shit and like the reaction videos and stuff. Like his actual intellectual input is set aside, and then he's just a meme now for reactionaries too.
SPEAKER_06Absolutely. If Sam Hyde dies, he won't have a life.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, but even then he tried to be serious in that moment, which is what like I think kills the reactionary, it kills the influence that he could potentially have when he comes out and he's like, Well, it's time to be serious now, and then it's a spectacular failure because now uh kirkification is like the thing that you see everywhere. Like, no one takes his no one no one sincerely mourned Charlie Kirk now. So it's just it's it failed.
SPEAKER_15And it's really interesting because in our episode, which I I I urge everyone to listen to, we talk about how he basically succeeded because he was able to exist in this kind of Schrdinger's position of no, this is my real position. No, I was just joking, and why are you getting offended? Like that was his whole strategy was to never really let you pin him down. And he was constantly testing whether or not he could get away with some you know statement. And if he couldn't get away with it, well, it's just a joke and you're a snowflake. But if it was accepted, he would, you know, lean into it and go, like, yeah, this is actually the way politics should go. And it seems like he completely forgot who the fuck he was in that exact moment. And I'm I'm glad you brought it up because it does, you know, show you how these right-wing reactionaries in this postmodern era are falling flat on their face, whatever they try to reach for actual power.
SPEAKER_08Literally Kirked, literally Kirked. Holy fucking shit. Okay, next one. I know the rating for this one. And I mean, I mean, I would also rate 10, but not well, okay. You go, you're on the show. Candace Owens. Ooh.
SPEAKER_12Um, I mean, like does she have the the capability of like commanding the attention of hundreds of thousands of of middle-aged white women that want to get like uh politics in the ver in the form of true crime and and conspiracies? Yes. But is she also not very intelligent and incredibly self-involved and therefore is is not capable of like crafting a like a desirable fascist outcome? Also, yes. Like she's too she's too self-involved and too narcissistic to actually care about something bigger than herself. So I don't know if she has like any sort of interest in organizing a fascist movement at all. And you see that with like the Charlie Kirk stuff. She threw this atom bomb uh when when she came out and was like, nope, Charlie Kirk was my best friend and maybe my lover, and and I mourn him and Israel killed him, and everyone was like, Oh my god, that's so right. You're so right, Queen. Uh, and it and it totally destroyed the administration's uh uh goals of martyring Charlie Kirk and turning him into like this beacon of reactionary excellence that had his life cut too short. However, what did she tie it back to? Brigitte Macron being you know a transgender man or whatever the fuck she believes, and how the French actually are responsible for his assassination, too, in some ways, like and and that's really entertaining for a lot of people, right? Like for all the messy uh girlies that want drama, uh and and if she was a little bit more disciplined, like you she could be a devastating force for American fascism for the new American fascist movement, but uh but I don't know. So I I I go I I I would give her a five.
SPEAKER_15I I could see her like winning the presidency and then like causing global thermonuclear war by doing a strategic first strike on France, forcing them to retaliate. We we get new the nuclear war is not US versus China, it's US versus. Friends.
SPEAKER_12And my Jupitarian king will destroy uh Candace Owens and America Kaka finally.
SPEAKER_09Like I just said, had a vivid dream this weekend, and Charlie came to me and he told me that he was betrayed. And so for me, we don't have to believe that, but I do believe that.
SPEAKER_08Uh and and last one, uh just to throw him in here because uh why not uh destiny? Because that's our destiny.
SPEAKER_12That is an interesting one. If he were to like fully uh lean into being like a reactionary figure, I think he could be uh he would be welcomed. And I think he could have more impact. But because he's so autistically incapable of just doing that, where he won't like take that dive, and instead he's like, I'm a democrat. I'm a neoliberal centrist democrat, the probably like the most dying fucking movement of all time, who wants to say slurs, which is the only thing that like neoliberal democrats don't want, right? Like, that's the only discernible political movement that you can identify with, like the the centrist neoliberals is like we're woke, we don't want to say slurs. We don't even care about like the racialized outcomes of of you know systemic racism and and all the this the disparate outcomes for like black people, brown people. We don't even care about that. We'll literally lean into it, but don't you dare say a slur, and he's like, No, I'm the anti-woke Democrat. So he has no constituency at all. And I don't know why he has not given up on like identifying himself as a Democrat. But if he were to like lean into the fascist stuff beyond, you know, being a straight up fascist, which he is, if he were to like openly say I'm I'm a Republican now, I think he could be a uh somewhat more powerful force on the on the Republican side. I mean, he is a little bit of a cockroach too, in the same way that like Nick Fuentes is, where he just like digs himself out of holes that he makes for himself with regular frequency. He is his own enemy, he's his own worst enemy. So yeah, I don't know. Oh, yeah. I would say like maybe a three, but for the time being, he's a zero because all he's doing is getting his, you know, increasingly shrinking audience of sex cult autists to be in favor of I don't know, voting for Pete Buttigieg or something, while also saying the N-word as a white guy.
SPEAKER_15Well, that and support race will my long-term destiny prediction I made five years ago is that when Donald Trump is out of politics, destiny will become a Republican.
SPEAKER_12Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, I I see that. Yeah. Because he's too, he's too far down the rabbit hole of being anti-Trump that he couldn't successfully do that pivot. But like, say, for example, what I want to happen, or what, you know, we, you know, I uh imagine a good thing happening and somebody like AOC, Rashida Talib, you know, whatever, becomes the Democratic nominee, and there's a progressive left moment which will go through yourself, myself, and many other creators uh on the left that he has oriented himself against. That is the moment where he'll have a mental breakdown and he'll be supporting Tucker Carlson and he won't even have to change his friend group.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, I don't know if he would, I don't know if he'd support Tucker Carlson, but I think if it's a JD Vance, it's a lock. I think if it's a Marco Rubio, it's a lock. If it's Marco Rubio, he's gonna be the vice president. I can I can totally see that because Tucker, Tucker is not running for president without being anti-Israel, right? Like, so so that could also be uh a difficult pill for him to swallow because he's just like leaned into being the pro-Israel pro-genocide guy so hard, almost as uh feverishly uh anti-Trump as he is, like pro-Israel for some fucking weird reason. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_15To go against you. What? I mean, I I I I almost don't even want to give you an answer because I think that it'll it'll he'll do it. I mean, I'll tell you what he's gonna do. He's gonna use the Iran war as the reason he broke with Israel, right? Like he'll be like that, you know, the way they allied with Trump and they did the and that would be the perfect reason for him to become a Tucker Carlson like Republican because he'll be like, AOC's economically illiterate, uh, you know, and she's gonna ruin the country with Hassan and they're anti-American and Yeah, illiberal.
SPEAKER_12They're they're illiberal. They want to destroy liberalism as opposed to Tucker Carlson who wants to restore liberal democracy.
SPEAKER_15Exactly. She's destroying NATO, he's they're pro-China. They wanna, you know, they're gonna they're gonna arrest us or whatever the fuck fantasy he's gonna, he's gonna do whatever, you know, who becomes a neocon. It's so funny. He's basically going and doing the neocon pipeline because of you know his entire life as a political grifter, political entrepreneur, where he was trying to orient himself in gaps in the algorithm, which is why he took that position, by the way, which is there was no large content creator that was soaking up that Israel money, that centrist democrat position, and he was like, pick me, pick me, centrist democrats, give me your money, you know, interview with me because I will support I will bite the bullet at support Israel. And you know, he just he's also kind of dumb, and so he couldn't see the way that the wind was blowing, and and now he is uh I thought it's because he's a pervert.
SPEAKER_12He like read an article that said uh pedophiles get safe haven in Israel, and he was like, Oh, this is great.
SPEAKER_15I mean, yeah, that too. Like he did, he does vibe with the average, you know, the average Israel, yeah.
SPEAKER_12He's also like disgustingly Islamophobic. Like, that is a real principled he is a he is like a like a genuine Islamophobe. Like he's probably more Islamophobic than Asmongold, I think, in the way that he operates, in the way that he like sees the world. Whereas Asmongold's like definitely whatever, like, yeah, Muslims suck, they they're goat fuckers or whatever. Like, whoever he he whatever he saw on his subreddit, he's like regurgitating. But like, I do think uh Destiny is like legitimately a a uh horrifyingly Islamophobic person.
SPEAKER_17Honestly, uh I'm pro-genocide. I like it's not it sounds really shitty, but like I think that Israel should just drop its fucking borders about where it's it is now, and basically Palestinians can go live in another place.
SPEAKER_02That's that's really shitty, but like that's about where I'm at.
SPEAKER_14Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Alright, well. With that, and with uh should we wrap up? Yeah, let's just eat, man.
SPEAKER_12I my food's been sitting outside my door this entire time. No, it's all good. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Hassan. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to see this podcast.
SPEAKER_08Let me do a little wrap-up and let you shout out whatever you uh you want to. And yes, obviously, thank you very, very much.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_08Of course. And with that, the third episode of The Reaction comes to a close. Thank you so much, seriously, to our first ever guest, Hassan, for taking the time to come and have this angering but unnecessary conversation with us. I feel like this uh this episode is about to start, I don't know, the digital World War IV, but uh hey, at least you did it with a comrade. So before we wrap up, uh tell our audience about any big project that you have coming up. And of course, uh for the 12 people in here who do not know about you, where they can find you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, uh twitch.tv slash anabi. By the time this episode is out, I'm probably gonna be in Cuba alongside the Progressive International Flotilla. Uh, you know, we're sending a lot of aid to Cuba. We're bringing a lot of medical aid, food, and also solar panels as well. The Answer Coalition has like uh you know hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of solar panels that they're shipping. And uh hopefully I'll be able to show the reactionary Americans like what everyday exists in Cuba looks like, what the what the you know, the average Cuban person's opinion actually is on the American blockade as opposed to like the government, which is you know, we we get a very one-sided and totally ridiculous propaganda here in the United States. And uh other than that, you know, I got college tours, going to China again, probably in April, you know, New York, New Jersey. I'm gonna link up with Analyia Maya and uh numerous other candidates that uh obviously I'm I'm pushing for. So be on the lookout for all of that. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_08Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_12All right. Thanks for having me, guys.
