(actual episode page)

Daniel:

So welcome I Don't Speak German, episode 30, which is actually not really I Don't Speak German, episode 30. This is actually a thing that Jack and I did a couple years ago. It was originally released on the 9th of December, 2017, if I remember correctly, for a kind of footnote project on another podcast we do. He and I have been talking to each other over microphones and putting them up on the Internet for a long time. 1

Anyway, we used to do a podcast called Wrong With Authority, which was a podcast about movies about history and history they're about, which is now defunct. But the archives are available, are around. 2

We did a little footnote about Writing About the Right. Now this was part of a project in which Jack was writing a chapter in Elizabeth Sandifer's book, the full-book edition of her Neoreaction a Basilisk. And he was specifically writing about Marxist interpretations of libertarianism and the various internal contradictions that are just basic to libertarianism... and in the incredibly knowledgeable way that he does. 3

It's an excellent essay. You can find it if you buy the book, which Jack is going to put in the show notes I can assume. And so I'd recommend you read that. We do get a lot of requests from people asking us to cover libertarianism more broadly. And one of the reasons we haven't is that Jack is completely done talking about libertarianism, forever I think. I think the process of writing that chapter and doing that research just kind of broke his brain on the subject. 4

So, yeah, that's kind of what we [incomprehensible 01:40]. Anyway, this podcast kind of came out of the process of he and I talking amongst ourselves about the process of writing and thinking about, writing about the far right in the United States and around the world. And sort of the, sort of similar lines that our minds kind of went down during that project. 5

So, yeah, I relistened to that this week. There is some stuff I definitely would not hold to these days, certainly the direct connection with libertarianism I think I wouldn't quite hold to the alt-right. I mean I wouldn't hold quite as strongly on that today. I think I'm a little bit more that – libertarianism is kind of an accidental feature of this kind of deeper movement. 6

But overall I think this holds up pretty well. A couple things you'll notice. One is that the audio quality is not as good as our current audio quality setup. We were using a cheap [incomprehensible 02:35] recorder at the time, and those just basically suck. You'll also hear some kind of moving around in the background. You'll hear some boards creaking and such, it's just kind of the nature of the beast. 7

Also we do refer to Elizabeth Sandifer as "Phil". I assure you we are not deadnaming her, this was before her transition. I do feel a little bit bad for re-releasing this just because I do feel like we shouldn't be releasing something with her deadname. But I think that people who listen to this podcast will get a lot out of this. And we didn't really have a chance to record for this week because I kind of fucked up on some scheduling. 8

That said, I much like this. I think that the audience here is going to enjoy it. Again, I would not hold one hundred percent to every interpretation here. But this will give you a nice look into kind of where – kind of a prequel to I Don't Speak German, something that Jack and I have kind of been talking about for a long time now. And it gives you a hint of kind of where Jack's deeper interests are when he's not talking to me about the intricacies of 21st-century American Internet fascism. 9

That being said, no further ado, we're just going to run right into the audio, the original audio from that podcast. And, yeah, next week we will have an interview, the interview that I promised you last time about the Nashville dynamite bombings in the 1950s and 60s and kind of what that says about the state of the modern movement. So... check that out for next week, and until then, enjoy. 10

Jack:

Hello, Jack here, just to clarify: I also would not agree with everything that I hear myself saying in this. There are some errors that I make when I speak, and there are some things that I would interpret differently now. And also Daniel says that I wrote the chapter in El's book Neoreaction a Basilisk. We co-wrote it. Just to clarify that. 11

[a few bars of some treacly waltz written by some dead Austrian dude] 12

Daniel:

I'd really like to see you expand this, honestly. I know that's not what you want to heear right now... 13

Jack:

He he he he he he. 14

Daniel:

...but I think like a full-on conversation – full on, twice this length – that goes into some of the stuff where you're like – this is a place to talk about, like – a full defense of the libertarian value, or the, you know, conditions of [incomprehensible 05:40] profit. 15

Jack:

M hm. 16

Daniel:

I mean would love to see that integrated into this, honestly. And kind of make it more a full-blown intro reader. 17

Jack:

Yeah, I think that's kind of a separate thing, you know. I think... 18

Daniel:

Sure, sure. 19

Jack:

I mean I've been toying with the idea of doing sort of intro stuff on some of these very important Marxist concepts, you know. As I've been getting more and more sort of obsessed with it, over the last year or so, as I've gone back to – it's sort of rekindled my excitement about some of this stuff, you know. 20

And I sort of toyed with the idea because Phil's always nagging me for a book, you know. One idea I had was sort of an Intro to Marx, and/or Marxism. You know, couched in terms of Doctor Who. I thought that would be funny, like one of those – you know, the Philosophy of Star Trek, or the Philosophy of South Park and so forth. They're all over the place. 21

And I various sort of ideas for how to do that. And I think it would have to be done with kind of heavy, heavy layers of self-awareness and irony, you know. But I think it could be done. I have a sense of how I could do that and make it funny and appeal to Doctor Who fans hopefully, and also get some of these concepts across. 22

Alternatively, I could just write about the ideas without any of that sort of garnish on the top. I don't know, I'm still thinking this stuff out. But I don't think I would want to combine – because I do think there's like a fuller treatment of the Austrians. You know, because – I mean, we've been talking about this. The final thing I gave to Phil – I don't know how long it will be in the final work because we're still editing – but my final edit that I gave to Phil was nearly 22,000 words. And that's a lot less than I wrote, you know. I've been... 23

Daniel:

Right. 24

Jack:

...cutting it down from [laughs] a lot more than that. You know, orders of magnitude more than that. And there's lots more that's not written yet even in a first draft form. And there's still loads of – as I say, it took so long because I kept on falling down these rabbit holes. Like one rabbit hole is... 25

Daniel:

Can you talk to me a little bit about that process actually? Just sort of, like, how did you get started, what was – I think Phil kind of said, oh yeah, and then Jack will write about the Austrian school, and you were like, I will? That's sort of the impression that I got of how this kind of started, is that accurate? 26

Jack:

Yeah, that's not right. Phil was putting together the Kickstarter or Patreon page, I'm not sure which one it is, for his book, Neoreaction a Basilisk, which is going to be out soon. Which is, I think, if I understand correctly, it's like the original short book Neoreaction a Basilisk that he released last year, but with loads of extra stuff. You know, without the graphics this time but with loads of extra writing. 27

Daniel:

Right. 28

Jack:

And one of the things that he put into his pitch to potential funders was a piece about the Austrian school co-written by him and me. He said, he asked – he did ask me in advance, before, he didn't just do that and then tell me. [laughs] 29

Daniel:

[chuckles] Right. 30

Jack:

And I thought, that'll be easy. I'll just find – I'll just go to one of my books or one of the blogs I normally read... and I'll look up the Austrian school and I'll I crip from that. That'll be easy. The funny thing was, when I came to actually start researching it, I found that Marxists really haven't written very much about the Austrian school. Certainly not recently. So it wasn't that easy. I had to start sort of go and – you know, I had to be a bit less lazy than I was originally planning to be, and actually do some fucking research of my own, you know. 31

And it was interesting because the more I looked into it, the more I saw that there was to look into. You know what I mean. Not necessarily in terms of the Austrian school itself being more complex or impressive than I thought it was going to be. Not necessarily in that sense. 32

But it's – one of the thing I was a bit puzzled by when Phil originally pitched this to me was – why? Why do we need to talk about the Austrian school in a book that's about neoreaction? And is, you know, is also going to be about the alt-right, more generally, and the present political climate more generally. And I remember thinking, why is he – why, you know? 33

But I came to see in my researches that actually it is a lot more connected to where we are now, so to speak, than I thought it was. I mean I really didn't know very much about Murray Rothbard, for instance. I didn't know very much about libertarianism in general, paleolibertarianism in general, until I started researching this. You know, sort of a vague idea – I knew more about Ayn Rand, to be honest with you, than I did about Rothbard et cetera. 34

I sort of looked of looked into where – because of course one of the foundational Austrian thinkers is Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, who is always – he is one of the people who is always brought up by people who say, oh well, you know, Marx has been disproved, you know. So when you're a young fella, a student, and you're investigating these things and you think you might be a Marxist, this is one of the things you have to look at. And I sort of – I have a vague memory of looking at it back when I was at university, and, you know, thinking well, that's not very impressive, is it? He's misread this, and that doesn't work... Rudolf Hilferding answered it satisfactorily and so you're just chucking it to one side. 35

Going back to it, it's like – countless things I was surprised by. I keep on talking about rabbit holes and this is another one of them. I always thought, sort of, oh yeah, Böhm-Bawerk, he started the transformation problem. 36

Now the transformation problem is this long-running controversy about Marxist economics. I won't go into the details but it's been rumbling on for years and years and years. Ever since the Marxist economist Paul Sweezy sort of republished Böhm-Bawerk's piece about Marx, along with another piece by a Russian economist who I think was a Ricardian rather than an Austrian called Bortkiewicz. 37

It sort of – it started this long-running argument about whether or not Marx's account of values and prices is contradictory. And it's done an enormous amount of damage to the reputation of Marxist economics. And it's sort of diverted loads of Marxists away from some of Marx's pretty central ideas. And I thought, oh yeah, Böhm-Bawerk, transformation problem. You look into it, actually, no. 38

Böhm-Bawerk's objection to Marx is actually – I mean kind of – he is the first person to draw attention to that – to the idea that there's a contradiction in that aspect of Marx's account. But his... 39

Daniel:

The transformation problem, the transformation problem is essentially about the transformation of value from labor theory of value to prices, am I correct on that? 40

Jack:

Yeah. That's right. 41

Daniel:

Okay. 42

Jack:

And the long-running argument is that Marx's account is contradictory. Well that's not – I mean, again, without getting into details – that's not what Böhm-Bawerk said. Böhm-Bawerk says that it is tautologous. Which is not the objection that has rumbled on all these years and caused so much damage, and caused so many – including so many Marxists to sort of say, oh, we need to redraw Marx, we need to check out this bit of Marx and rethink. 43

So you know, I was kind of fascinated to discover that this thing I thought I knew actually wasn't true. I'm not saying Böhm-Bawerk isn't connected to this. But the transformation problem as such – it's not actually him. It's this other guy... [laughs] 44

Daniel:

[chuckles] 45

Jack:

...that sounds the problem. And you go to Böhm-Bawerk himself and he is very, very unimpressive. I mean to the point where huge stretches of his critique of Marx are based on just straightforward misreadings of Marxist texts. He just misreads it. 46

I'm not exaggerating either. He claims that Marx says things that Marx simply doesn't say. And he does this repeatedly. So it's not particularly... 47

Daniel:

That seems to be a common thing with anti-Darwinians as well. 48

Jack:

Yeah! While I wouldn't want – yeah. I wouldn't want to necessarily draw a comparison between Marx and Darwin but yes, I think that's probably true. 49

Daniel:

I wasn't trying to make a direct comparison. 50

Jack:

No, I know... 51

Daniel:

I know that... 52

Jack:

I know you would, but I have to be very careful so that people don't think I'm doing this. [laughs] 53

Daniel:

Yeah, it's so much of it – certainly I mean, I know, I'm – until I met you, until we started talking I will admit that I knew virtually nothing about what Marxists actually say. The only version of Marxism that I've ever been exposed to is the one-paragraph-long communism – inevitability-of-communism, while one debunked Stalin. You know, that's what the... 54

Jack:

Yeah... 55

Daniel:

And I hate to – I mean, that's just an admission of reality, that's just the version that I kind of had in my head. The toy version of – almost Fukuyamaesque – well, all of that's over now because the Soviet Union fell, right, you know? 56

Jack:

Yeah well, that's pretty standard. I mean, even – in my experience, even in textbooks for students that are more in-depth than that and more sympathetic than that you get egregious, egregious misrepresentations. 57

When I started to become interested in this stuff I was at university, and that in the mid-nineties, mid to late nineties. And Marx was just dead, bah, because this was pretty much immediately post the fall of communism, you know. So it was all postmodernism in the university department where I studied English. 58

Marx was brought up, but it wasn't – it was very much sort of this dead thing that was kind of an embarrassing remnant. And I was taught things like that as fact. I mean I was taught by philosophy lecturers that it was a political religion and it was all about a restatement of Jewish myths about the end of the world being inevitable. I was taught that as fact by philosophy lecturers. So yeah. I think deliberately misreading. 59

I'm not saying you can't find stuff in Marx that makes you go, oh god. Because you can, you know. He will talk about the inevitability of socialism and the Iron Laws of History working themselves out and stuff like that. I'm not saying he isn't guilty of formulations like that. But it's – like great thinker, he will – he has off days, and he contradicts himself, and he speaks in different registers and different times, and stuff like that. And sometimes he doesn't live up to his own – to the better version of himself, if you know what I mean. 60

Daniel:

Right. 61

Jack:

But what they do is, they focus on the line that creates the impression they want to create, and then they ignore everything else. Unless you're Böhm-Bawerk, in which case you just flat-out lie about what Marx says. [laughs] 62

Daniel:

[laughs] 63

Jack:

But... tell me how we got into that. Yeah, it's the rabbit holes thing, because it kept – you know, I discovered it was a more complicated story than I thought it would be. And I kept on finding these little byways like that, and surprising things like that. And one of them, as I say, was the discovery that it actually it a lot more connected to our current situation than I thought it was. 64

Because, you know, the alt-right – you can trace that right back to right-wing libertarianism in America. And the person who, as far as I can see, far and away most responsible for right-wing libertarianism in America being what it is is Murray Rothbard, who is of the Austrian tradition. Directly – you know, drawing loads of his ideas from Ludwig von Mises. And you can trace that right the way back to the avowedly anti-socialist tradition that is, for example, embodied in Böhm-Bawerk with his anti-Marx stuff. And loads of their foundational ideas actually come from their engagements with Marx... sort of trying to counter him, and socialist economics more generally. 65

And, yeah, so I was surprised to find that sort of genealogy of ideas leading very directly to a lot of our current problems at this stage. 66

Daniel:

Yes, it's interesting in the degree to which Marx, regardless of how you kind of feel about him, seems to be one of those fulcrums of intellectual thought – running from his time to ours. He's so widely read and misread and influential – to some of the best and worst people, that so much seems to be a response. There's just – what are they all saying? Cultural Marxism. 67

Jack:

Hm. Well that's a... 68

Daniel:

Cultural Marxism is such a bugbear – which has nothing do to with Marx, at all, as near as I can tell. It's only just... 69

Jack:

Nah. 70

Daniel:

..you put Marx's name on it and suddenly it's, say, they're for evil. That's all it takes. 71

Jack:

Well and then again, I mean, the whole Cultural Marxism thing, [the] conspiracy theory, that flows from Rothbard. 72

I mean, Rothbard is – he is one of the people who identified the Frankfurt School as sort of this conspiratorial group. And one of the interesting things about that conspiracy theory is the way it's perfect illustration of these affinities. Because it's got that lineage, it goes back to Rothbard, and it's directly descended from the Kulturbolschewismus Nazi conspiracy theory about Jews deliberately – you know, Bolshevik Jews deliberately degenerating German culture. 73

Although of course in that version of the conspiracy theory it was modernist art and stuff like that, whereas now they think it's Hollywood movies and TV. 74

Daniel:

I don't know that a lot of them draw a big distinction there. 75

Jack:

Well no, I mean, if you look at... 76

Daniel:

It's all just – anything that is not the sort of very straightforward, mainline, sort of Middle American working class kind of straight-to-text, you know – paintings on a wall, you know... A picture of a sailboat on a wall is the only thing that isn't... 77

Jack:

[laughs] 78

Daniel:

...Cultural Marxism essentially. It's anything that derives revulsion in the reader, the listener, or the watcher, or the viewer. That's – it seems like they resist to really define that too concretely. 79

Jack:

Yeah... 80

Daniel:

And then who they tend blame on that depends on the speaker and how – which version of the conspiracy theory they've really kind of swallowed, in my mind, you know. 81

Jack:

I don't know as much about the real, sort of serious far-right, fascist people as you do. Because you've looked into them a lot more than I have. But, I mean, I know for instance the infamous Paul Joseph Watson video about, you know, art... 82

Daniel:

[chuckles] 83

Jack:

...art and culture. And he just has no definition of terms. He uses terms like art and culture and modern and present day and the past... he just uses these fundamental terms so incredibly freely that you don't – when he talks about these things you don't know what he means by, you know, the art of the past or the culture of the present or anything like that. It just seems to be anything he doesn't like, at any given time. And that's definitely a Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory video even though he doesn't use that term. 84

Daniel:

Yeah. It's all about this sort of degeneration of past culture into today. 85

Jack:

Yeah. 86

Daniel:

It's all about this sort of, well, back in – some unspecified time in the past, before we had all this outside influence – it is, among the really far right – Paul Joseph Watson is not this far. But they really – it really is just they blame it all on the Jews. That's it. It's the Jews. They'll even use the word Jewy. I feel some Jewiness from that, you know. 87

Jack:

One of the things I've noticed is really how much of a continuum they're all on together. I mean I agree with you, Paul Joseph Watson isn't a fascist in the proper sense. But these people, they really are very, very much on the same continuum together. Like you see... 88

Daniel:

It's almost like you're just changing words around. While they have the same enemies, it's just that – the far right, Richard Spencer thinks it's the Jews. Whereas, Paul Joseph Watson thinks it's the libtards or the Frankfurt School. Versus, if you look at someone kind of more – Sargon of Akkad just says it's the communists or the left or whatever – all these terms are really very nebulous, you know. 89

Jack:

Yeah. 90

Daniel:

But they're all sort of referring to the same people. 91

There was a piece that this fash podcaster, actually a radio host, named James Edwards, who I'll be writing quite considerably about down the line here – he's actually a radio host out of Memphis, Tennessee, and he's been hosting a radio show since 2004. 92

And he posted a thing on his website, several years ago, [incomprehensible 24:45] references to it. Originally it was something like, look at how the Jewish people are out to destroy the family, or something like that. And then he sort of got chastised for it and he was about to lose his web hosting and stuff. And he literally just went in and changed the word Jewish to liberal. And then suddenly it was fine. 93

Jack:

[chuckles] 94

Daniel:

It really is – the funny thing is, the actual far right, the alt-right, the people... the anti-Semites will look at that and say, well look, you're just not allowed to say anything about the Jews, you know, and it just becomes part of the big conspiracy, right? 95

Jack:

Yeah. 96

Daniel:

It's just one more piece of evidence that the Jews control everything. It would be funny if it wasn't terrifying, you know. 97

Jack:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that – that simple case of changing some words, that really tells us something I think. Because I think – I'm saying all these people are on a continuum. I think the main differences between them are aesthetic rather than political. The serious difference – I mean, as I say, I don't even really think it is a particularly serious difference, or fundamental difference. But the thing that differentiates a Paul Joseph Watson from a Richard Spencer or whatever is simply the version of aesthetics they use. Down to word choices, you know. 98

Daniel:

Right. 99

Jack:

Like, you know, the fascists take over tomorrow. Paul Joseph Watson isn't going to be on our side against them, you know. We all know whose side he and Alex Jones and people like that, and Sargon of Akkad and so on, we all know which side they'd be on if the Fascists took power tomorrow. What it is is that at the moment, in the situation as it currently is, they just use different aesthetics. They present themselves differently, using different words and a differently style. That's really the only thing that differentiates these people, I think. 100

Formally, they have differently ideologies. But the ideologies are so vapid and empty and incoherent that at that level the differences are very, very insignificant I think. 101

Daniel:

Yeah, there is a lot to that. I mean it is sort of one of those things where it's really easy to sort of lump – when I first started researching it, and I started kind of listening to what they had to say, it was – well, they're all just fucking racists and nazis and shitheads, right? 102

Jack:

M hm. 103

Daniel:

And then the more you start paying attention, the more it becomes – well, no, there are kind of distinct schools of thought within this world. I can differentiate between the National Socialists and the neoreactionaries and the – the various strains start to become more clear, the various factions even within certain strains. 104

Jack:

M hm. 105

Daniel:

You know, what they call the Chad Nationalists versus the more kind of hard-right, far-right guys, the Southern Nationalists versus the American Nationalists versus – so there are various strains and there are very real differences between them. And I think one of the things that frustrates me is when I sort of – people who look into it only a bit do kind of cram some of these people together... when it might actually be useful to sort of highlight those differences, to sort of drive wedges further between them, you know. 106

Jack:

Oh, I see what you mean. You mean, yeah,I got yo. Strategically, if we know the, yeah. It got you. 107

Daniel:

I mean, I guess, in Charlottesville, there was a – Charlottesville is a major... it's probably the single biggest event in the alt-right ever. Even more so than, I think, the election of Donald Trump. Like, in terms of... 108

Jack:

Hell yeah, yeah. 109

Daniel:

...the way that it has really forced these guys to show their true colors. It really has sort of developed a lot of the divisions between them. 110

But one of the things that I kind of saw was – there were multiple groups in Charlottesville. And one of the groups, a lot of the people who were kind of armed, who were kind of standing armed with rifles, you know, military arms, the militia groups – most of those guys were actually Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. Well, the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, as organizations, don't have any more love for the alt-right than you and I do, in a lot of ways. 111

Now a lot of their members are very sympathetic, but they certainly do not like the sort of overt racism... too a large degree. 112

Now we can talk about how that's actually incoherent on their ideology... 113

Jack:

M hm. 114

Daniel:

...and I would agree, but certainly what they're telling themselves is, these racists do not deserve any of our attention. This is not – the people with rifles standing in the middle of the street were trying to stand in between Antifa and the alt-right, to a large degree. Despite being probably more sympathetic to some degree to the alt-right than to Antifa, to a large degree. But there are distinct differences of who they are and what they believe. 115

Jack:

Well that's what the Oath Keepers did in Ferguson, wasn't it. They paraded around and presented themselves as trying to keep the peace between Black Lives Matter and the cops, didn't they. 116

Daniel:

Yeah, they did. And this is not to say – look, if it comes down to a shooting war, the Oath Keepers are definitely going to take the side of the cops and the alt-right, against us, and against Black Lives Matter. 117

This is, you know, to a like a ninety-ten degree [30:47]. I mean you will have some of the Oath Keepers who will not – who will kind of take the side of, take our side. But for the most part these people are materially and ideologically much more aligned with this sort of far-right ideology than with us. But for right now, they're certainly not – they don't see themselves as racists. And the alt-right, what they're trying to do is to make the Oath Keepers see themselves as racists. 118

Jack:

Yeah. 119

Daniel:

And... 120

Jack:

Are they racists? 121

Daniel:

Ugh... a lot of the rank and file are, yes. 122

Jack:

M hm. 123

Daniel:

It's not a binary, right? 124

Jack:

Nah. 125

Daniel:

It's a – what the propaganda that the alt-right is producing, what all these podcasts are essentially doing is trying to find any bit of racial animus or racial bias or resentment you have in your head and make it – and flower it into a full-blown response. 126

Jack:

Hm. 127

Daniel:

That's the whole point. Because if they can get you to agree with them on race, they think – then they can kind of get at you with some of these more intellectual arguments. Intellectual in quotes, obviously. 128

Jack:

[chuckles] 129

Daniel:

But they have a lot of talking points and the whole thing is to make racism okay again. That's the point. 130

Jack:

Yeah. 131

Daniel:

And the genocide comes later. [laughs] 132

Jack:

It's interesting you say, to make racism okay again. Because what we have, I'm afraid, in – it's an egregious generalization but I'm going to go for it anyway, what we have at the moment in Western culture is a real cognitive dissonance about this issue. Because what we have is a widespread – I think, anyway – we have a widespread perception on the part of most people and an acquiescence to this as well. 133

It's not a just a perception, it's a broad agreement, I think, from at least a large number of people, that quote-unquote racism is bad. Right? People... 134

Daniel:

Right. 135

Jack:

Huge numbers of people, probably a majority, in Western societies – they perceive that and they agree with it, right? Racism is bad, as a proposition, okay? 136

Daniel:

I think what we came down to is we have to then define what racism is. But, yes. 137

Jack:

Yes. This is the thing. Because they then reason backwards from this. Not what do I do, or think, that's racist. What they then – you know, I'm a good person, ergo what I think isn't racist, right? 138

Daniel:

Right. 139

Jack:

I've said this before, what our culture has decided to do about climate change is to teach children in school to draw little pictures of the world, and trees, with little things on them that say, protect the environment. That's been our response to climate change. 140

What we've done with racism is the same thing. 141

We've decided to say, and believe, to a large extent, racism is bad, but not really do anything else. And that's an egregious oversimplification, overgeneralization,. because of course things have changed, things have been done, by millions of people struggling, and winning changes and stuff like that. 142

But certainly in terms of mainstream culture, what mainstream culture has learned to do is to – you know, bit more diverse casting, and to disapprove of open racism. Somebody says something that's openly racist or can be interpreted in that way, you find it... 143

Daniel:

There is this – and this gets get kind of right to a point – you listen to these guys and they talk and they say, the system is against us, because we're not allowed to say what we really feel about race and what most people actually believe about race. 144

And, you know, there is a – lots of people have very negative feelings about other races, and then they feel like they are not allowed to express them publicly. Because people will look down on them. 145

And what the alt-right is – one of their major goals is essentially to move the culture to the point where they no longer have to worry about being looked down upon for saying, why, you know black people are just inherently more violent. You know, well, Muslims really do commit more terrorist bombings, et cetera. The Jews really are in control of all the banks. 146

Jack:

[chuckles] 147

Daniel:

So what I see is essentially this sort of immediate response, particularly on the right, among the libertarians in particular 148

I think there are libertarians – I have personally known libertarians who I would consider to be ideologically pure, like actually believe in libertarianism because it is the best of – like [incomprehensible 35:52] convinced into it and they actually will sort of support those – the social justice causes as well as the property rights, low taxes, you know, Ancapistan causes, you know. 149

Jack:

Yes. So have I. 150

Daniel:

And those people – to some degree, I can work with those people. You know what I mean? We can work with stuff where we agree and disagree on some of the rest – issue to issue. I can at least respect that. 151

But I think that the vast majority of people who call themselves Libertarians, who don't really care about the personal liberty of people who aren't like them, who are not kind of moneyed propertarians – basically reject the rhetoric of the far-right racists, of the open racists, the explicit racism, because it makes them look bad. 152

Jack:

Yes. 153

Daniel:

They are essentially virtue signaling, right? 154

Jack:

Nyahahaaa. 155

Daniel:

They're saying like, no no, those people are bad, and then it's also – you know we talked about Mississippi Burning not that long ago, and the depictions of the Klan and the Nazis. It's like, the real racists are the people who are having – making black people use a separate bathroom or a separate water fountain. Like, well, I'm not burning all the Jews alive so therefore I'm clearly not a racist, right? 156

Jack:

Yeah. 157

Daniel:

Racism means that sort of low-class trailer park hick saying the N word, as opposed to systemic oppression or just kind of personal implicit bias. 158

So there's a lot to unpack. 159

I mean you can ask me, are they racist?, and I guess I should have kind of gotten in to this then because it does kind of depend on what you mean by racism. Because racism isn't really about a person, it's really about this system. It's about the system in which we live. And that's why everything is white supremacy and... 160

Jack:

Exactly. Racism is not a system of ideas, it's a system of power relationships. It's about white supremacy, yeah. 161

Daniel:

Right. But there is sense in which the entire right wing, and this is not just the alt-right, this is all of them, sort of rely on this sort of nebulousness, nebulosity? Nebulosity? Can we say that? 162

Jack:

Yeah, sure. 163

Daniel:

...of the term racism, and rely on this fifth-grade understanding. There's a lot of – this is one of my big pet peeves these days, people kind of relying on this basic grade school education of very complex topics. 164

Jack:

Yeah. Well this is why the right is so dead set against anything – any sort of proper education on these topics getting into the education system. They don't want people to have clarity on these issues. 165

Daniel:

Well, and they don't want there to be subtlety, right? They don't want to approach these things with any level of complexity, because once you start asking complicated questions, once you start exploring things in more depth, then suddenly these sort of simple-minded bumper sticker solutions don't make sense anymore. 166

Jack:

Yeah. 167

Daniel:

But it takes a while to explain. Well, no, there is systemic racism, there's implicit bias, that kind of racism, and then there is open – you know, people saying bad things and hanging people from trees kind of racism. And these things are – there is a Venn diagram, these things are all sort of interconnected and they feed on each other, but when we use the word racism it's – they right gets to just sort of define that term however it makes their – however it makes the left look the worst, essentially. 168

Jack:

Yeah. Aesthetics again. And this – to look back, this is what I was getting at with the – you know, you mentioned the Oath Keepers. Although I think if I can be a little bit smug for a minute I mentioned the Oathkeepers in one of my Faeces on Trump articles way back. The start of the – before he was even inaugurated I said that they were [incomprehensible 39:58] they and things like them were the possible germ of a future street fighting movement, which is always a part of fascism. 169

Daniel:

And I definitely agree with that. 170

Jack:

Yeah. 171

Daniel:

Especially to the degree that Trump – the Oath Keepers love Trump even more than the alt-right loves Trump at this point. 172

Jack:

Yeah? 173

Daniel:

Yeah. 174

Jack:

I don't actually know all that much about them, I have to say. Except that they seemed, at the time, because of their presence on the streets in Ferguson, they seemed emblematic of a particular way in which a particular kind of militarized right-wing cultic behavior [incomprehensible 40:32] could possibly develop. So why did they – I mean just to finish my thought about the aesthetics there. 175

You say that they don't – or at least most of them don't like the overt racism. That's an aesthetic thing, isn't it. And of course it depends upon their understanding of that term as well. It's not just other people's understanding of that term and how it affects how they seem them. It's about their own understanding of that term. And then you were talking about how the alt-right are trying to manipulate that themselves. 176

So... yeah, why do the Oath Keepers like Trump so much? 177

Daniel:

Well, they like any Republican president because Republican presidents tell them the pretty things about faith and freedom and the flag and, you know, [incomprehensible 41:20] and America is great and... 178

Jack:

Hm 179

Daniel:

There is this – this is actually a term, it's something that actually makes a lot of sense in terms of understanding – this is something I'm getting from a lot of the alt-right who consider themselves white nationalists versus the civic nationalists. 180

Jack:

M hm. 181

Daniel:

The civic nationalists in this kind of phraseology are people who believe that, well, if you're citizen of the United States you can be anybody, any color, any creed, any whatever, so long as you kind of follow the rules and you say want to be an American, and you follow the process by which becoming an American – or a British person or, you know, Japanese or whatever – you are now part of that group. 182

And you're one of us, and we are with us and that sort of idea. 183

Now that only goes so far because they sure don't like people who disagree with them politically. They don't like the left. They don't like communists or socialists or even liberals. They're still a very kind of very right-wing conservative movement, by which... 184

Jack:

You delve down into this far enough, you eventually reach the white supremacy, don't you. Because they say... 185

Daniel:

Right. 186

Jack:

...if you integrate into society as it is, then that's fine. You can be part of our civic nationalist community. But that entails, of course, integrating into a system that's inherently white supremacist. And if you take any part in any politics that challenges that, then you're out of the volk. 187

Daniel:

Right, right. It's all about saying, we define our volk as being people who have chosen to be sort of Middle Americans. People who have gone through that process. And you be any color so long as you, like, have a house in the suburbs and vote for the Republican candidate and keep the taxes low, and are not one of those awful communists or, you know, queer people, or whatever... 188

Jack:

...complain about the current inequalities of society, the current injustices of society, the fact that you're more likely to be shot. But you know, you can be – if you're a black person, you can be part of our civic community, and we're absolutely fine with that, just don't complain if our cops are far more likely to shoot you. 189

Daniel:

Right. I mean, whereas the alt-right is much more explicitly about, we have to go based on genetic averages... all of this is in quotes, please, this is not what I believe... 190

Jack:

Yeah yeah yeah yeah. 191

Daniel:

...I'm describing their belief. I'm trying to avoid the language. Because it's so much easier to just say it the way they say it. But we're going to be nice here, we're going to avoid the racial slurs. 192

Jack:

We will put a trigger warning on this as well, so... 193

Daniel:

Still, I'll try to keep it to a minimum. But the whole point is, the idea is that – it doesn't matter, you know – the talented tenth of black people. Their term, again. 194

When you have that sort of based black guy in a MAGA hat, that's one of the talented tenth. He's one of the good ones. He's high-agency, quote-unquote. All these are like – they have special definitions within this world. 195

This is a guy with a low time preference, he is high agency, and he's got his shit together, and so you might think he's one of you. 196

And hey, you can have a black friend, but ultimately, these people and their kids, and all oft this, they're just going to come in and eventually they're just going to regress to the mean, the black mean. And that's lower IQ and higher time preference. And they're just going to make our country Africa.And that's why we're got to keep them out. And I feel bad about that, but that's what we have to do. 197

And that's essentially the argument. In a nutshell, that's it. 198

And so it's like, you can't – biologically – it's social construction, constructivism, as defined by genetics, you know. That's exactly what it is. And it took me a while to just say, you're really that stupid? [laughs] 199

Jack:

[laughs] 200

Daniel:

You're really ignoring everything that we know about history and culture and sociology... 201

Jack:

Yeah. Well of course... 202

Daniel:

...in favor of this not even accurate genetics? 203

Jack:

Yeah. But these sorts of arguments, they always rely on amputating history. 204

They always rely on amnesia. 205

Forgetting loads of other stuff happened. 206

You get people saying, oh well you know I'm not a racist, I'm just recognizing there are such things as genetic differences between people. Like, for instance, Asian people are higher scorers in academic exams and stuff. And that ignores a huge amount of historical context. 207

There are very, very material reasons for things like that, you know. Which anybody who – [with] basic common sense, you can – even if you don't know anything about it you can guess at the reasons, or you should be able to guess at the reasons why there might be a statistical – a higher average for academic attainment in certain communities. 208

These sorts of things, even if you don't know the details, you should be able to guess at the sort of thing that's going on, but they... 209

Daniel:

You know why you believe that, Jack. You know why you kind of think that's true. 210

Jack:

Do tell, do tell. 211

Daniel:

It's because the Jews have gotten to you. 212

Jack:

Yeah. Must have been. 213

Daniel:

I mean, it's – you've been brainwashed by this Jewish media that is trying to convince you not to believe the evidence of your eyes. 214

I mean, look at Japan. They've got lots of wealth and power. And then look at Africa, and these are people living in mud huts, obviously. So clearly, you know, the Japanese are just better than the Africans. 215

Jack:

Western imperialism had no effect whatsoever on African economic development, you know, and social development. 216

Daniel:

Exactly. Of course they have arguments that go around and around on that, you know. 217

Jack:

Of course they do. Of course they do. And it's just startling and dismaying how, if you know anything about the history of Western colonialism and imperialism in Africa, how completely these people are just recycling the same old shit that Cecil Rhodes was saying. And people like him. 218

Daniel:

Yeah. 219

Jack:

Because there's nothing new under the sun. But one of the interesting things... 220

Daniel:

Richard Spencer is an open colonialist right now. 221

Jack:

I know. Yeah. 222

Daniel:

I mean I have some audio where he was saying, hey, I'm in favor of mint julep colonialism. We're just going to take these countries over and we're just going to rule as landlords drinking mint juleps in our hats all day. 223

There's a sort of jokey tone there, but he means it. He's totally – we're going to build our ethnostate and in couple hundred years we're just going to come back out and we're going to rule all these people, and it's going to be better for them. 224

And that's what Richard Spencer believes. 225

Jack:

That jokey tone of course is very key to the aesthetics, again, the aesthetics of the alt-right. It's very key to that. It's sort of the delivery of outrageous, disgusting things, but with a sort of a knowing smile and a wink, and a nod, you know. 226

Daniel:

Right. 227

Jack:

With a least sort of layers of I'm kidding, I'm not, except that I am, except that I'm not. You know, all tied up in a – it's very much part of their shtick, so to speak. 228

That kind of race realist stuff, as they call it... it's actually race fantasist. That's... 229

Daniel:

They also call it human biodiversity, that's another term, HBD. 230

Jack:

Yeah, HBD. It's absolutely – you know, right libertarianism or paleolibertarianism is absolutely soaked with this, right? 231

Daniel:

Yeah. [incomprehensible 49:14] came out of that same school of thought, in my understanding. 232

Jack:

I think it did! 233

Daniel:

A whole lot of it at least was popularized by – if you look at the sort of original writers... J Philippe Rushton and... some of the other guys whose names I'm forgetting of the top of my head. 234

Going right back, I mean, some of it comes out of the 50s and 60s [incomprehensible 49:36] basically people funded by people who are also funding the Klan, who are sort of academics. 235

And then you find, later on in the 90s, you get – some of these guys who were moving in the same circles, who – it's less this sort of causation, sort of one thing leads to the other, as much as it's a sort of a web of connections. That's what I kind of find. That's... 236

Jack:

Yeah. 237

Daniel:

...what I wanted us to talk about a little bit. Because some of the same names are coming up for both of us, sometimes. 238

Jack:

Yeah, we've kind of converged on similar things from different angles, haven't we. You from very much the fascist far-right and me from the Austrian school, and thus – and thence into libertarianism. 239

Daniel:

Right. But yeah, the alt-right absolutely grows out of paleolibertarianism. It's probably as simple as – it's probably simplistic to say that it's simply rebranded paleolibertarianism, because I don't think it is... 240

Jack:

No, there are... 241

Daniel:

It certainly grows out of it and a lot of the rhetoric, I mean it really is just a new paint job on an old thing. 242

Jack:

Yeah. There are definitely distinctions. The most fundamental one is that libertarianism is – it's completely about unrestricted free trade across borders. 243

Daniel:

Right. 244

Jack:

Whereas the alt-right is very much – what they've done is they've taken pretty much everything – because of the interesting things about the libertarian attitude to this is that they are completely pro free trade. They are very ambivalent about free movement of peoples. 245

Like, Ron Paul, in an interview that he did for VDARE, which is an extreme right-wing web site – it's actually named after Virginia Dare, who was the first white... 246

Daniel:

...the first white child born in what is now the United States. 247

Jack:

Exactly. Yeah. And it's a web site – it's a far – it's an extremely right-wing libertarian web [site] run by a guy called Peter – or it used to be, anyway, by a guy called Peter Brimelow, who is a white supremacist. 248

And he did – Ron Paul did an interview with VDARE where he talked about this. And it's fascinating to watch the contortions of the position. Because he wants a sort of a free trade in labor across the border. For instance, the Mexico border. 249

But he wants it on free trade grounds, but he goes into all these contortions where – because obviously he doesn't actually want to be in favor of immigration. So it's about, yeah, let them come over here and then they can go back, you know, stuff like this [laughs] 250

Daniel:

That's the whole thing we have – I mean we do the temporary work permits. Like, yeah, you can come over and you can work for a while. And the interesting thing with the real alt-right is they don't even want that. 251

Jack:

No. 252

Daniel:

Most of them will say, well, if you want to be a tourist... if you want to come and take pictures of our pretty stuff and then leave, that's probably okay. But they're explicitly... 253

Jack:

If you go to... 254

Daniel:

Having guest workers from another country – (a), they don't leave, and (b), even if they do, what they're doing is driving down wages for real Americans, quote-unquote... 255

Jack:

Hm, hm. 256

Daniel:

...or they're making it so that we're not developing more technology, because if we didn't have the cheap labor source then agribusinesses would just build machines that picked those fruits for us, which... 257

Jack:

[laughs] 258

Daniel:

...there is actually a problem with some truth to that, quite honestly, you know. Let's not pretend that global capitalism is not relying on these – basically slave labor, brown people, for a reason. 259

Jack:

Yeah, like a lot of things, they sort of stumble upon a kernel of truth and then they completely fail to see, (a), that's its actually a lot more complicated than that and (b), evidence of barbarism. 260

Daniel:

And like, why blame the poor Mexican migrant for the fact that agribusiness isn't investing in better technology. 261

Jack:

Well that's foundational as well. You blame the powerless, you blame the victim, essentially. 262

In his principles of the alt-right, Vox Day actually makes this distinction. He says the alt-right is in favor of intranational free trade but not international free trade, which is fascinating. 263

And international free trade is of course absolutely a libertarian principle. 264

So there's a distinct discontinuity there. 265

And there's – I can't remember who it what, I think it was Jeffrey Tucker – he actually wrote an entire thing about how libertarianism is different than the alt-right. The interesting thing there to me is that if you have to do that, in the first place, then there's obviously a similarity. If you have to go to pains to disambiguate yourself from something else then obviously there's an extent to which you're similar. 266

And what's interesting is, I mean, Vox Day does this. Vox Day talks about how the alt-right is an alternative to Libertarianism, right? Well, an alternative isn't a negation or a contradiction, is it? It's an alternative. It's something you can have instead of of something else. If you like seafood, you can have lobster or you can have crab. The crab is the alternative to the lobster. There's still a fundamental similarity. 267

Daniel:

Right. 268

Jack:

And loads of these people talk about getting to where they are – Mike Enoch says this, Christopher Cantwell says this, there's another... 269

Daniel:

Cantwell still describes himself as primarily a libertarian. 270

Jack:

Yeah... 271

Daniel:

Cantwell talks about the non-aggression principle, to absolutely absurd ends. He is straight up libertarian, like he's trying to justify his desire to genocide everyone but white people through his libertarian principles... 272

Jack:

Hm 273

Daniel:

...which is fascinating. We can talk about that if you like. Cantwell is tiresome to me because I'm just so sick... 274

Jack:

[chuckles] 275

Daniel:

He produces – he's producing and an hour or so of content from jail right now. And I just can't listen to it all. There's just no – even at high-speed playback. 276

Cantwell is sort of fascinating in general, in theory. But in practice he's just so tiresome and so hateful and so disgusting a human being that it's just difficult to bring myself to spend too much time thinking too hard about him. 277

Jack:

Absolutely fair enough. 278

The only point I wanted to make about him is a general one, which is that, like a lot of these people – like Mike Enoch, like Mencius Moldbug, the founder of neoreaction if you please – he talks about, and loads of them do this, he talks about getting to where he is, his current politics, via transcending libertarianism. 279

This is the sort of language they keep on using. I kept finding this as I was reading them. They keep on talking about I transcended libertarianism, or I developed from libertarianism, et cetera et cetera et cetera. 280

I point this out in the essay, the Austrians essay, and another things I point out is the fact that the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory is right across this spectrum. And you can see that on Youtube, right the way from the soft people over to the hard people. Some version of it – we were talking about this before, like Paul Joseph Watson, he is engaging in the – he is engaging in all this stuff, the Great Replacement and Cultural Marxism and all that stuff. 281

He's not necessarily using those terms, or is peddling it more softly. I think he does actually talk about the Frankfurt School. But, you know... 282

Daniel:

Oh yeah, the Frankfurt School. I think Great Replacement is – that's a little bit harder than – I haven't heard him say that. I would not be surprised if he says it, but usually that's slightly further than the Infowars crowd is willing to go. 283

Jack:

But this it the point. He's talking about the same thing. 284

Daniel:

Well, he'll just say, the West as opposed to, you know Replacement. He won't talk about demographics [incomprehensible 57:44] Western culture is under attack by Cultural Marxists, and really what he means is, white people are under attack by the Jews. [laughs] 285

Jack:

Exactly! And the different – they will couch these – pretty much exactly the same quote-unquote arguments at different levels of intensity, right the way across this spectrum. You know, from the classical liberals, so to speak, like Sargon, all the way across to the really hard right people. 286

And really, what – I think what we're looking at here is not a difference in anything other than aesthetics. It's different in terms of what level of aesthetic openness about what you're doing you're prepared to engage in, tactically. And a lot of it of course is down to which particular audience they're pitching to. Because – some of them are making their money from this, and they're doing it by pitching a certain kind of product to a certain kind of audience. 287

And of course another thing they can do is, they know – if they pitch it at a certain level, they can sell to people past a certain level of political radicalism, on the right, and then everybody beyond that. Because the full-on fascist will buy stuff, so to speak, literally or figuratively, even if it's couched in relative mild, coded, dog-whistly language, because they know what actually is being said. This is one of the things – it's fascinating what people like Lauren Southern are getting up to, and stuff like that... 288

Daniel:

Oh yeah. 289

Jack:

...but right the way across... 290

Daniel:

Or Stefan Molyneux. 291

Jack:

Stefan Molyneux as well, yeah. I mean, he is a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about. Because he is absolutely a right-wing libertarian. I mean he is an anarcho-capitalist or whatever. 292

I actually find the distinctions between all these different things pretty uninteresting, because to me it's very random, because they all have their own definitions of what they're talking about. And the things they're talking about are very, very similar, to the point of being near-identical anyway. 293

But right away across this spectrum you see it, and Youtube is a perfect place to actually see this: you see libertarianism in one form or another, and that, to me – I mean I think there was a Daily Beast article talking about this: the fact that libertarians are so heavily represented, or former libertarians, or people who say, you know, I got to the alt-right via libertarianism, or whatever – they're so heavily represented in the alt-right, despite the fact that there's far fewer libertarians in America than there are conservatives, you know. That tells you something as well, I think. 294

And the fact that you got people like Cantwell talking about getting to race realism – I'm not sure if he actually uses that term, but I mean I've read this article by him and that's absolutely what he's talking about. Race realism, which is the kind of thing we were talking about, how genetic hierarchies between black people and white people and stuff – they call that realist. 295

He talks about, pretty much openly, getting there via Rothbard, you know. 296

Daniel:

Yeap. And that's kind of where – the term, in a lot of ways, was sort of birthed in that Rothbardian era, in the mid-nineties. I mean I remember seeing it when I browsing Stormfront forums back in the nineties. Honestly, it was kind of the first time I ever ran across it. Because, you know, my shameful past is that I was a teenage libertarian... 297

Jack:

[chuckles] 298

Daniel:

...because I was kind of edgy and leaned towards the right, you know. 299

Jack:

M hm. 300

Daniel:

And in 1997 the way to do that was to get really into Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein and, you know, argue for Ancapistan, that's sort of the... 301

Jack:

He he he 302

Daniel:

...that was me being an edgy teenager, that was who I was. And then once you start thinking about that to any degree – and science fiction sort of helped me with this, in terms of kind of giving these thought experiments. Like, this doesn't make any sense. It's not difficult to find internal contradictions in Ayn Rand, let's just put it that way. 303

Jack:

[chuckles] 304

Daniel:

Not in the slightest, without even knowing anything about her life, yeah. 305

Jack:

The thing that's interesting to me about Ayn Rand is that she's always touted as, and including by herself, as this great pro-capitalist philosopher. And she doesn't really – I don't think she really knows anything about capitalism at all. I don't think she's really actually interested in capitalism. When you read Ayn Rand it's far more about – it's like she's got a sort of domination fetish. That's what it... 306

Daniel:

Oh she had – definitely has that. 307

Jack:

It really reads far more to me like she's sort of being excited by all these games of abuse and domination between essentially horrible people. That's what it's – she's far more interested in that than she is actually [in] anything resembling capitalism that I can see at work. 308

Daniel:

She's interested in – I mean it comes down to same idea. And I don't want to – I mean I'm not trying to gainsay you there, because I agree. 309

She's so interested in this ideal, the ideal Man, quote-unquote, with a capital M. And that's almost exactly the terms that she uses. [incomprehensible 1:02:38] read a lot of Ayn Rand. But she's so interested in this sort of idea, this sort of prime mover of these great men of history that we should all aspire to be that thing. And that the thing that gets in our way of that are the moochers, you know. And the state and... et cetera et cetera. And she's still interested in that aesthetically. She's so in love with that idea that it sort of – I mean she's not talking about capital accumulation in terms of – in a material sense. 310

It's just about, oh, we have got to let these strong men do exactly what they need to do, and to be selfish, because the rest of us will benefit from it, the world will benefit from it, and this is the way things Should Be. With capital S, capital B. This is the way things Should Be, right. 311

Jack:

Right. And again, that's aesthetics, isn't it. 312

Daniel:

Right. 313

Jack:

She has chosen a political position based on the fact that she has associated a political system or an economic system or at least the idea of it, with a certain set of aesthetics that she finds appealing. 314

Daniel:

You know, just, without – I hate sort of ideology as biography, or biography as ideology, but you have to at least – I would give her the slightest bit of credit in that if you grew up in Stalinist Russia, anything that smacked of quote-unquote collectivism probably left a bad taste in your mouth. 315

Jack:

Yeah, this is one of the problems I had talking and writing about the Austrian school. Because they have – I mean, this isn't unique to them, but they are absolutely insistent upon their view of socialism as being rigidly authoritarian, centralized command economies. 316

And as much as I think that is a deeply mistaken view of socialism, and it's certainly not what Marx was talking about, you have to admit that the history of what most people called socialism – including most socialists during the 20th century – that gives them some warrant for that. 317

So this is one of the difficult things, because there is a very real sense in which the things they are arguing against, and calling socialism, were real things. 318

Daniel:

Yes, absolutely. And, I mean, again – that's just one of those – I mean it's very easy, I think, to overlook – you know, I'm against totalitarianism wherever it comes from. 319

Jack:

Yes. 320

Daniel:

It's not – we're not tankies on this show, and I'm not going to criticize the Nazis without also saying, yeah, the Holodomor was also really, really, atrociously bad. 321

Jack:

M hm. 322

Daniel:

And yet, so many on the left seem to negate that point or, you know, well, Holocaust denial is disgusting but, you know, Stalin didn't mean it, you know. 323

Jack:

Yeah... 324

Daniel:

That's a difficult conversation to have because there is this – there are these sort of niggling technical things that can kind of get in the way, like, well, what really happened in the Holodomor et cetera. 325

And then there's a lot of propaganda that's making that into – even worse than it already was. And I'm not historically competent to discuss those issues. But let's just say, I'm no one to defend totalitarianism on what's nominally considered the left, anymore than I am for the right. And I think that's worth pointing out at this point. 326

Jack:

Yeah, and I'd like to completely agree with that. I totally abjure totalitarianism. Not actually a term I'm fond of in terms of political theory, but we'll go with it for now. I'm completely – we all know what we're talking about, those sorts of regimes. I have no truck with them whatsoever even if they call themselves socialist, you know. 327

I think the usual account of where they came from and how they came about and what they meant and why they did what they did is deeply flawed, but I – and I could have an argument with just about anybody on that topic, but at no point would my side of the argument be anything remotely resembling a defense. 328

On the contrary, my – the political tradition I consider myself a part of has been ruthlessly critical of every regime of that type. 329

So, just to be clear about that. 330

Daniel:

Right. Absolutely. 331

Jack:

I have no truck whatsoever with any sort of Soviet Union apologetics. And some people might be about to cry you currently got a hammer and sickle in your Twitter handle, Jack. Yeah, that hammer and sickle was also used by, for instance, the POUM in the Spanish civil war. You know, the Stalinists don't own the hammer and sickle, that's all I'll say to that. [chuckles] 332

Daniel:

Right. 333

Jack:

But that's taken us way off topic. 334

Daniel:

That has taken us way off topic. But, I think, a worthwhile thing to say in this conversation. 335

Jack:

Yeah, I think it needs to be said, doesn't it. 336

Daniel:

Unfortunately. No, please continue. 337

Jack:

Yeah, I can't remember – from that, before that particular blind alley we were in the Ayn Rand blind alley, weren't we. How did we get... 338

Daniel:

Yes, yes. [laughs] 339

Jack:

[laughs] 340

Daniel:

...down that Ayn Rand rabbit hole. 341

Jack:

Yeah. 342

Daniel:

Which, you know, I guess what we would say is – despite being the – I think she wrote a book that was called In Defense of Capitalism or something? 343

Jack:

Yeah. 344

Daniel:

Unless [incomprehensible 1:08:08] In Defense of Selfishness but... she's not much – and this is something that I think it is worth sort of elucidating, maybe we can get some [incomprehensible 1:08:17] as well. 345

I mean it does seem like when the Austrians, or when sort of the libertarians, the ground-level libertarians you find on Twitter or Facebook or whatever – because we know that these movements only exist online, right? 346

Jack:

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. 347

Daniel:

Their defenses of capitalism seem to – well, colonialism wasn't capitalism. And slavery wasn't capitalism. 348

Jack:

Yeah. 349

Daniel:

What they mean by capitalism is just, like, free people trading with one another. And it is this sort of thing where you've defined – (a), it's completely ahistorical. I mean, it's almost like, what we're going to do is we want to start from now, and just forget history and then just remove any state action and then – everybody go from here, where I already have a whole lot of advantages. 350

There's no sense of, you know, let's look at where my wealth has come from, which... 351

Jack:

Yeah. 352

Daniel:

…built up over time through capital accumulation on the top of – literally the broken backs of brown people, largely. 353

Jack:

M hm, yeah. 354

Daniel:

So this sort of ahistoricity is something that comes up over and over again. Really whenever you're talking about the right. It just seems to be this... 355

Jack:

It's fundamental. 356

Daniel:

...refusal to look at anything that happened more than fifty years ago. At most. 357

Jack:

Yeah, and to strip everything of its social and historical and material context. It's not just that they refuse to talk about the past. They refuse to talk about anything in the present as if it has a past, you know. 358

Daniel:

Right. 359

Jack:

It's absolutely fundamental to the right, as you say, the ahistoricity of it. 360

Yeah, I mean, this has been said before. They just – anything that's wrong with the system, they say, oh, that's because of – we're not in favor of corporate capitalism, we're in favor of the free market, you know. 361

Daniel:

[chuckles] 362

Jack:

And then you say, well, what about – they say, what, look at the amount of prosperity that capitalism has brought. Oh, you mean corporate capitalism? They're terrible. They're incapable of holding a coherent position, and that's part of how they... 363

Daniel:

The really clever ones will say, well, even the flawed, imperfect corporate capitalism brings so much wealth, imagine what the real thing will bring. [laughs] 364

Jack:

Yeah, which is, again – another thing that's so startling about these people is how much they resemble Stalinists and tankies... because they say things like that as well. They say, oh well, okay, we can agree there were problem with the Soviet Union, you know, but, even so, look at what it achieved in terms of industrialization and stuff. [laughs] Yeah, okay [laughs] 365

Daniel:

There is this sort of desire – and this isn't unique to the right, as we've brought up a couple of times, but – it's this desire to sort of define away any negatives. To sort of define your terms so that anything negative doesn't count. And then – but all the positive things that come out of this historical process are all because of – you know, so: capitalism, well, you know, it's free trade, and look at what free trade brings. And look at, oh, people in impoverished countries being brought out of ghetto poverty through Western development, Western – 366

Jack:

M hm. 367

Daniel:

It's all bullshit, obviously, but – just so, sometimes you can find one where it's like, okay, maybe that's – you know, some philanthropist did something, you know, et cetera... 368

Jack:

Like a lot of bullshit it has a germ of truth. 369

I mean, capitalism does develop, it does create progress, it does develop the productive forces, it does create wealth and – you know, it has created enormous prosperity, enormous technical advances and stuff. There is more literacy, there is longer life expectancy, there is better health et cetera et cetera in the world because of capitalism. 370

And, you know, one of the first people to point this out was Karl Marx. 371

Daniel:

[chuckles] Right. 372

Jack:

He's absolutely – you read the Communist Manifesto, bits of it are almost rhapsodic about capitalism, he's talking about how amazing it is, you know. 373

You could probably cry shenanigans with me because I'm saying, well, they just define capitalism any way they like, and I've just gotten through saying, you know, the horrible totalitarian regimes, they weren't really socialist, you know. 374

But I actually – I can actually tell you precisely why those regimes weren't anything resembling what the founders of socialism thought of as socialist. I can tell you coherently – I can actually tell you pretty coherently why those regimes were actually capitalist. 375

So I do think it's different. 376

Daniel:

I think the difference is that the criticisms of capitalism come from an understanding of what capitalism actually is... 377

Jack:

Well I hope so [laughs] 378

Daniel:

...whereas the criticisms of communism come from a through-a-glass-darkly version of communism, you know, and... 379

Jack:

Yeah. 380

Daniel:

I don't call myself communist, but I can get along with communists. I mean, you know, I feel like – there is this sort of human quality, which is sort of like, well, I don't have to deal with the bad things that happened in history because I'm not in favor of those things, you know. 381

Jack:

Yeah. 382

Daniel:

But if we're trying to think systematically about sort of what a political system should look like and kind of what the world should look like, it means at least examining those things. 383

And I feel like the response of libertarians who will sort of quote Rothbard and [incomprehensible 1:14:09] common strand, kind of give this Austrian school vulgarization at least that I ran into. And when you say, well yeah, what about colonialism – well, colonialism was done by the state, that was state activity, that doesn't count. 384

Okay, what about slavery. Well, slavery was allowed by the state. Yeah, but it was private businesses and individuals owned people. Even if it was allowed by the state, that's – private activity made that happen. And [incomprehensible 1:14:35] the state was – its almost like they just sort of use the state as a – as this sort of catch-all bad guy. 385

Jack:

Get out [incomprehensible 1:14:48] 386

Daniel:

It's literally just like, oh, I can look at anything in history that went badly, and then find the state, find – there is some state activity happening somewhere. And I put my finger there and see, there was state activity going on, therefore the state was responsible for all of it... 387

Jack:

Yeah. 388

Daniel:

...or the government, or whatever. And, you know, again, you know how to talk about the state as a – I'm ill-defining the state here, but – it just becomes a get-out-of-jail-free card. 389

Jack:

No, you're doing fine, because you're just describing the way they use it. And the way they use it is ill-defined. They don't have a – the immediate next question there is, okay, so you're positing that there's the capitalist system, which is great, and then there's this thing called the state, which keeps on appearing next to it and fucking it up. Why does that happen? Where does it come from? 390

Daniel:

[chuckles] 391

Jack:

They don't have an answer for this. 392

And of course the truth is that that's not how it works at all. 393

The truth is that you can't analyze these things as if they're completely separate. Like you have capitalism here and then you have the state there and it just happens to be there. Capitalism simply would not exist without strong states. One of the reasons why it was able to develop in Europe was because it developed out of European feudalism, which was based on relatively strong, centralized nation states that were arguing with each other and had military strength and stuff like that. 394

It's like saying, if only we could turn the clock back and have – re-run the rise of capitalism, but without the state. It wouldn't happen. Capitalism today can't survive without the state. The state props it up. And the truth is that it does that because it's fundamentally part of the same social system, you know? 395

Daniel:

Exactly. 396

Jack:

And you try to get into stuff like that with these people – like, Hayek's view of what the state is is basically – it's like an expression of the fact that because there is so many people who are employed they have the whip hand over the employers. Like, that's his explanation. 397

Daniel:

[laughs] 398

Jack:

That's it! 399

Daniel:

[laughs] Yeah, exactly. Well, gee, there's so many of them, they can just, like, band together and then just quit and then where would the employer be. Well, that's... kind of our point. [laughs] 400

Jack:

[laughs] 401

Daniel:

Gee, wouldn't it be nice. 402

Jack:

[laughs] 403

Daniel:

I mean I've literally heard – this is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, The God That Failed, which is a book I have not read but is – it comes up a lot in these circles. 404

Jack:

I haven't read it either. Hans-Hermann Hoppe was one of the sort of – one of the rabbit holes that I never quite fell into, if you know what I mean, in the research of the Austrian school – I familiarized myself with it basically, because I realized I had to, but – there could well have been, from my cursory look at him, there could well have been an entire separate several thousand word section about this motherfucker, you know. 405

Daniel:

He may end up being a kind of bigger part of mine just because he's not only – he's central to the neoreactionaries, which is sort of a sideline, sort of... 406

Jack:

Absolutely. 407

Daniel:

…one of the nebulous pieces of the alt-right. Cantwell himself actually says that Hoppe was sort of the big moment that... 408

Jack:

Yes. 409

Daniel:

...turned – started him in this direction towards naziism, for lack of a better word. 410

Jack:

Cantwell likes to make the give-leftists-helicopter-rides jokes, which – apparently he gets that from Hoppe. 411

Daniel:

That's – did Hoppe made that joke? 412

Jack:

I think I read somewhere that Cantwell gets it from Hoppe. I'm not sure. I'll have to look that up. 413

Daniel:

Okay. Well, Cantwell gets a whole lot of his – Hoppe was sort of the beginning of his turn away from a lot of the libertarian movement as it existed at the time. 414

Basically, there's this – gee, all these so-called Libertarians were more interested in gay marriage and trans – he doesn't say this, transgender bathrooms, he uses a different term for that. And not about basic property rights. And really, as libertarians we should be interested in property rights. 415

And then he starts calling Hoppe and he says, you know, Hoppe – basically – and this is again a sort of vulgarization of Hoppe, and I haven't read Hoppe, probably going to have to read it. But the argument basically goes that democracy fails because the many can just sort of vote themselves the resources of the few. 416

One quote-unquote producer, who owns the factory, and then a thousand factory workers, and they can just vote themselves – they can just take by force. And what we need it a system that allows the productive and the strong to continue to be productive and strong so that they can keep making stuff. And then we just get meritocracy, that's where this comes from, you know. 417

Jack:

Yeah. 418

Daniel:

…that, were it not for the distorting thing of the state we would just have strong people making stuff, and then everybody would just sort of filter into where they naturally belong, based on their abilities, and isn't that what we want? 419

Jack:

Yeah. 420

Daniel:

That, you know... 421

Jack:

That comes pretty much directly from Austrian economics. 422

Daniel:

Yeah, no, absolutely. In a way, Hoppe is sort of a return to those ideas. He's sort of taking away the cruft and in that sense I definitely think that Hoppe is more on line with those kind of original ideas than a lot of the people, a lot of the other writers within the libertarian movement. Certainly more than Ayn Rand. 423

Jack:

Hm 424

Daniel:

Ayn Rand, as I've sort of said, is not a particularly good capitalist, you know. She's after a different game. I think there is something to that. And this sort of idea that, well, absent the state, absent the sort of outside interference, people would just survive on their own wits, and the good will – the right people will live. And of course, the right people means people who are best [incomprehensible 1:20:58] or are most like me. 425

Jack:

Of course, yeah. 426

Daniel:

And then that leads inexorably – if you're – once you kind of except that racial realism biodiversity shit, suddenly it's like, well, of course black people, they live in mud huts and they don't have running water because they're just genetically inferior to us. And any attempt to make them more like us is just going to cost all our resources and we're just going to get dragged down to their level. 427

Jack:

Yeah. Well, it all stems fundamentally from the desire – like all reactionary politics, as [incomprehensible 1:21:33] has pointed out, it's all fundamentally a coalition around the defense of privilege. Reactionary politics is always basically that, at bottom, what it is. 428

And in a capitalist society that is fundamentally the defense of capitalist private property. 429

Now what they're doing, when they extrapolate into these imaginary utopias, into the future – you know, Ancapistan or whatever you want to call that. They're imagining, like, what if everything I like about the world as it is were made perfect, you know. Like the world now, but turned up to eleven. Better. Purged, you now. 430

Daniel:

Purged of all the inferiors, right? 431

Jack:

Yeah, pretty much. But what they have to do – because everybody wants to think that their – that their preferred version of the world is fair, right. So if it's the world as it stands that you think is fair – and of course you're very likely to think the world as it stands is fair, if you're a white guy, with a fair amount of money. And that's the incentive actually to deciding that the world as it stands is fair. 432

If you're doing okay, that's a reason why you want to believe that. 433

So why it is that in this world that is fair – you know, all is for the best and it is the best of all possible world – why is it that some people who don't have as much as me? Why, obviously it's because they don't deserve to have as much as me. And you look at the fact that, you know, a lot of the people who don't have as much as you have browner skin, and rather than delve into the actual material, social history of why that is – and this is the interesting thing: people don't look because they know they're not going to like what they see. So on one level they do know. This is another topic, but... 434

Daniel:

And they don't – this is, I just want to interject here briefly – they don't want to hear it because they think, well, you're just trying to guilt me out of something. You're just trying to make me feel bad, because... 435

Jack:

That's a defense mechanism, yeah. 436

Daniel:

Right. 437

Jack:

That's an ego defense mechanism they employ, you know. 438

Some people do that in their private lives. Why are you getting at me? It's just extrapolated to politics. But they – so the obvious thing to do is you say, well okay, if that's where they are, then that's obviously where they deserve to be. That's the only place they can be. 439

So you amputate history again. 440

You don't look at why people of color are, generally speaking, impoverished and marginalized in Western capitalist society. You don't look at why that is because you're going to find out that Western capitalist societies are basically built on the exploitation and the oppression, not to mention the slavery and genocide, of people like that and their ancestors. You don't look into it. 441

So you just generalize from now. 442

You just say, well, they're there now, that must be where they've always been. Where they're supposed to be. And that's how you end up with race realism. 443

There is a direct line from the desire to defend existing property relations through to the conclusion that, if black people are in a ghetto, that's the only place black people can be. And when they extrapolate that into the future – that's basically all they're doing, they're extrapolating up. They're saying, you know, it's just going to be like that, but more so... and quite right too, that's the attitude. 444

Daniel:

I often think of the adjective panglossian with these guys. 445

Jack:

Yeah, totally. 446

Daniel:

My nose is where it is because my glasses are designed to fit like this exactly... 447

Jack:

[laughs] 448

Daniel:

[laughs] You know, black people are in ghettos because that's just the way the world is, you know. 449

Some people use a religious language for that, but – this is the thing that kind of started fascinating me the longer I listened to this, the longer I studied the propaganda, and sort of reading where all this came from – is that is none of this is new. The same arguments were being made 200 years ago, you know... 450

Jack:

Yeah. 451

Daniel:

…in defense of slavery. This whole – they've got most sophisticated language and they've got more – there are people who will kind of fit it together a little a bit better and kind of give you a more internally consistent world view based on that. But ultimately they're arguing – because of the way they feel about the world – it's all intellectual justification ultimately. 452

Jack:

Yeah. 453

Daniel:

And that's something that's – you know, if you're trying to fight it, and argue against it, or to figure out how to diminish that in people, there is – how do fight something that pernicious? Because it's built in this way to be pernicious. It's built in this sort of self-internally-referencing thing. 454

And the right, certainly in America, has been absolutely – they absolutely hammer on this idea of – the media, or the leftist professors, left-leaning liberal et cetera, are just fundamentally mendacious. They're just lying to you all the time. 455

So it's like, they're not going to listen to someone like me. Because the second I started saying, well, look, let's look at sociology, it's like, well yeah, all of that is fake anyway. It's fake news! Fake news! 456

Jack:

Yeah. 457

Daniel:

[evoking Trump tweet:] Sad! 458

Jack:

[laughs] 459

Daniel:

What are you, some kind of cuck? 460

And so, it is just sort of like – what's the point in even talking about it. And this is where it just kind of comes down to, to some degree, if all they respect is force. I hate having that as the answer. But to some degree there is that sort of argument. They don't respect anything but force. And if that's what it has to be, then – I don't know, that's difficult. I mean, that's a hard thing to... 461

Jack:

Yeah, it's not nice, but, you know – I mean, you can't debate [them]. And I think it's irresponsible to debate them, to be honest. I think... 462

Daniel:

I think there is a situational argument to be made. 463

Jack:

Okay, yeah, I can imagine a situation where – yeah, okay. But generally speaking, most of the time, I think it's... 464

Daniel:

I don't think you and I are ever going to convince Richard Spencer of – that his beliefs are wrong. 465

Jack:

No. 466

Daniel:

Richard Spencer is unreachable. Richard Spencer believes what he believes for fundamental reasons. I think you can get under the skin of the people listening to him. And so the point is, if you can – to debate, to argue, to use words is to try to reach the audience, not to try to reach Spencer himself, if that makes sense. 467

Jack:

Yeah, no, I understand that argument. I think in a certain set of circumstances, okay. But I think, generally speaking, most of the time, if you're going to be debating Richard Spencer, you're probably going to be, to a certain extent, debating Richard Spencer on Richard Spencer's own terms. And I think the damage you're likely to do by engaging with him, or taking him seriously, is likely to outweigh any possible outreach you might have. 468

Daniel:

I guess I'm meaning debate in a little more of a general, cultural sense: if we're trying to debate these general ideas. 469

Jack:

Yeah. 470

Daniel:

If we're trying to... spread the memes or whatever, you know. 471

Jack:

Yeah. If you about debate in the widest sense of, you know, engage with the ideas, then yes, I absolutely agree with you. When it comes to the individuals, I don't think they should be engaged with at all. Except when they have to be. 472

Which is, you know, as you say, when it comes down to force, as it always does with these people. They either fizzle out and go away or it comes down to force. Because ultimately this is all it's about. Ultimately, for them, it's not about ideas. It's about enforcing things they fear. 473

Daniel:

One of the darkest things for me in terms of – when I really started to understand what these guys are about – is that, they have all these intellectual – you know, intellectual, I always use that in quotes – arguments. They have these sort of justifications. But ultimately they also have mechanisms, sort of rejection mechanisms for anything that challenges that. 474

Jack:

M hm. 475

Daniel:

And ultimately what it comes down to is this sort of – if you get right down to it, you're not going to convince them, at least none of the leaders of the movement. Because ultimately they don't care. Ultimately they just want what they want and they're going to take it by force. 476

Jack:

Yeah. 477

Daniel:

And once you realize that, once you realize that that's true, then the question is, well how do we counteract that force. How to we use it against them. What is necessary to prevent this. Because... you know, I don't think every person on the alt-right – I don't think every prominent voice on the alt-right is sort of actively in favor of genocide. 478

The number of people who will actually say, yes, we should actually, realistically, unironically throw every non-white person into an oven is small even within the movement. 479

Jack:

M hm. 480

Daniel:

But I think a whole lot of them would stand aside while it was being done. 481

Jack:

Yeah. 482

Daniel:

I think that this dehumanization is fundamental to them. And it's been the hardest thing in terms of just processing it emotionally: accepting that on a gut level. 483

Jack:

Yeah. Well, I mean, without for one fraction of a second defending them in any way: when the Nazis took power and started to do what they did, they weren't planning to genocide all of Europe's Jews. That was not – it used to be thought that Hitler sort of conceived the plan before he took power, that he was going to kill all the Jews of Europe, and that was an aim, right the way through, and they just set about implementing that as policy because that was something he wanted to do. 484

As we now know from decades of historical research, the Holocaust evolved. Slowly, gradually, step by step. In the context of the war and loads of other things. And certainly, absolutely, in the context of vicious anti-Semitic ideology, I don't want to downplay that for a moment. 485

But it wasn't that people who voted for the Nazi party, or even most of the people who marched with or were members of the Nazi party before they took power, were actually thinking, right, we'll take power, and then we'll kill the Jews. That was not something – they wanted them out. They wanted to victimize them, they wanted to steal their possessions, they wanted to ethnically cleanse them, they wanted to torture them and beat them and do horrific things to them... do not misunderstand me. 486

But they were not actively planning to set up Auschwitz in 1933, right. 487

Daniel:

Right. 488

Jack:

That was something that evolved. And in exactly the same... 489

Daniel:

It's the – and this is kind of a point of contentious historical debate. And then of course the fact that it's a part of historical debate then becomes [fodder] for the doubt merchants... 490

Jack:

Yeah. 491

Daniel:

...on the Holocaust denial circuit. And this is something I've had to learn quite a bit about as well, you know. 492

Jack:

M hm. 493

Daniel:

But yeah, no, there is this really famous recording of, I think it's Himmler, the Poznań recording? 494

Jack:

Poznań, yeah. 495

Daniel:

Yeah. And if you listen to that, and if you – particularly if you listen to it in a sort of – it's in German, I don't speak German, so I had to read it with subtitles. This is a group of – this is a very high-ranking member of the Nazi party speaking to other high-ranking members of the Nazi party in 1944, is it? 496

Jack:

I think it is 44, yeah. 497

Daniel:

Late in the war. And even at that point not openly saying what extermination really means... 498

Jack:

No. 499

Daniel:

...and what the final solution really is. And yet using some of the same rhetoric we see today, and some of the same hectoring language, some of the same liminal space that sort of the modern alt-right rhetoric exists in. In terms of, we're just kind of not concerned with these people. We have to because they're a poison and a cancer and, you know... 500

Jack:

Yeah. 501

Daniel:

And once – I'll admit that I sort of relistened to that after I'd been listening to these guys for a little while. I kind of had to shut everything down for a day or two. It's just one of those – once you realize that particular parallel, it's... 502

Jack:

Yeah. 503

Daniel:

You run into those moments every now and then. I don't know that you ran into that looking at the Austrians necessarily, but I've definitely run into that. 504

Jack:

I didn't run into that specifically with reference to the Austrians, but I ran into something like it, which we [can] talk about later if you later. 505

Daniel:

No, sure, we can talk about it whenever. 506

Jack:

Yeah. I was just going to say, the other thing about that Himmler speech you're talking about is the civilizational rhetoric and the language of decency. 507

That's what always strikes me about that speech. Because he's talking about how they've – you know, they've done – and you're right, he circumlocutes around it. But he talks about how they've done this thing, and they've done it for their people and their culture and their civilization and stuff like that. And they had to do it. And the fact that they managed to do it – and he actually says, I believe, the fact that we've managed to do these things and remain decent, that's what's made us strong. He says something like that. 508

And that is a startling formulation. Not just for its incredible hypocrisy and monstrous disconnect in thinking, but for the fact that he's talking – he's sort of praising his in-group in terms of bourgeois values of decent good behavior, civilized behavior, stuff like that. 509

Daniel:

And this is so, just straight up – what are the polo shirts and khakis supposed to be, exactly? 510

Jack:

Yeah. 511

Daniel:

The whole point is, we look nice. We are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. We are well-off white people. And people want to be us. We had a permit, unlike these rioting black people, you know. 512

Jack:

[laughs] Yeah. 513

Daniel:

I mean, it's the exact same thing. It's like, well, Black Lives Matter doesn't get a permit for their riots. 514

Jack:

[chuckles] 515

Daniel:

But the fact – they're obsessed with the idea, and this is partly because they have to, because they know that if they start breaking laws the FBI is going to crack down on them – but you'll hear this from Mike Enoch constantly, whenever they talk about anything, it's, we always obey the law, we are always – we are a lawful, law-abiding group. 516

Jack:

[laughs] 517

Daniel:

Just throw it in, in the middle of everything, it's like, we are not advocating for anyone to break any laws, but we should throw the Jews into ovens. 518

Jack:

[laughs] Cantwell was a little wobbly on that when he started making noises about how people should attack policemen. 519

Daniel:

Cantwell is fascinating just because he doesn't have the same filter, and... 520

Jack:

[laughs] 521

Daniel:

...it's interesting, the degree to which you can sort of – I mean, I think a large reason that Cantwell is in jail is because he doesn't have a filter. And he's a – I mean, this is... 522

Jack:

If you watch Cantwell in that Vice documentary, you can almost visibly watch him getting overexcited as he talks, can't you. And sort of saying more than he means to, as he's doing it, I think. 523

Daniel:

Well, it's – he's sort of in control of himself. Like, he's a – he was a professional radio host long before he was... 524

Jack:

He was a stand-up comedian or something, wasn't he? 525

Daniel:

He was a comedian for a while. He wrote – he literally wrote for A Voice For Men. 526

Jack:

[cracks up] 527

Daniel:

Vicious misogyny was just like part of his – long before he was like a race realist, a Nazi shithead, he was a misogynist guy. Like, deeply, deeply fucking misogynist. 528

Jack:

Speaking of byways and rabbit holes, the MRM absolutely fucking soaked in right-libertarianism. 529

Daniel:

It's fascinating, the degree to which the – you know, We Hunted the Mammoth was originally just kind of, look at these goofy, you know... 530

Jack:

Yeah. 531

Daniel:

...rape apologists. 532

Jack:

Yeah. 533

Daniel:

And as bad as that is, it then – it just sort of becomes, and now they're all into white nationalism. [laughs] 534

Jack:

[laughs] That's right. It starts out as a jokey site about eccentrics, and it turns into fascist tracking site. 535

Daniel:

Exactly, exactly. It's really like – and I think that's part of why David Futrelle has had so much of a problem updating regularly recently.... 536

Jack:

Yeah. 537

Daniel:

I know he's had some health issues as well, but I think it's just kind of like, what do you do at this point? 538

Jack:

Yeah. That guy – I mean, as much as I have my differences with David Futrelle, his efforts are nothing short of heroic, you know. And if he's making a living from that site, then: good. He deserves to. 539

Daniel:

I hope so, legitimately. There's is some – there is some other sites that do sort of yeoman's work on the alt-right side as well. Stupid – no, Angry White Men. Angry White Men is sort of the most prominent one that I know of. 540

Jack:

Yeah. 541

Daniel:

But – in terms of, sort of tracking these guys. Really useful research if you want to just – if you don't want to listen to these guys, if you just want to read someone else, you know, talk about them on a regular basis, that's a great source. 542

But, no, Cantwell is fascinating because he was a radio host for years and he was just kind of on, like, conservative talk radio, kind of libertarian talk radio. And then you can kind of watch his progression as he gets further and further to the right. But he has no – he's a very professional, like he has sort his technique down. So if you listen to his podcast for a while you sort of get – he can get really emotively, performatively angry, and the move directly into, like, [fake Cantwell voice:] and now we're gonna get calls, call me at dun dun dun et cetera. 543

Jack:

[laughs] 544

Daniel:

He's got all his patter down completely. And so there is a sort of manipulated quality to that. At the same time, I get the sense, listening to him long enough, like I know when he's actually upset about something and when he's just sort of putting it one for the camera, or for the audio. 545

He really is this guy – and, you know, I'm not trying to – assuming Chris Cantwell ever listens to this... 546

Jack:

[laughs] 547

Daniel:

I certainly don't, you know – I'm not trying to make a sort of legal determination or anything, but – I really think there is a sense in which he's a guy who feels like – his emotions are very close to the surface... 548

Jack:

Hmmm. 549

Daniel:

...if that makes sense. And he is never more than kind of an instant away from snapping. And he might kind of intellectualize that and kind of say, I have a rational response to this. But there is very real sense in which he went to Charlottesville armed to the teeth because he was prepared to do what he had to do. And I think if he'd been the given the slightest provocation, more than he was – I think you could have seen some really, really awful moments from him. 550

Jack:

Hm. Well we did – you know we did see something awful in Charlottesville and that's – I have no doubt a similarly – a similar sort of guy with emotions similarly at the surface, another angry white man, I can't remember the guy's name, the man who murdered Heather Heyer... 551

Daniel:

James [Alex] Fields. 552

Jack:

Yeah. 553

Daniel:

The thing is, we don't really know anything about – I mean, we haven't – he hasn't, he very cleverly has not spoken to anyone. Like, as far as I can tell he has spoken to no one since his arrest. 554

Jack:

I imagine that's probably on legal advice. 555

Daniel:

Oh I, well, yes. But Christopher Cantwell is doing daily podcasts from jail. 556

Jack:

[laughs] 557

Daniel:

And I really hope,. I really hope there are people listening to that. I hate to be in favor of the police, you know, for a leftist audience... 558

Jack:

[laughs some more] 559

Daniel:

...but I really hope that law enforcement and legal people are taking down every word of that because there is so much material in there. 560

Jack:

[cackles like a rhesus monkey on nitrous oxide] 561

Daniel:

I mean, I haven't listened to all of it, but there are times when – like he very clearly has to refuse to talk about Heather Heyer, for instance, and how much he thinks that, you know, well that was just great. It's just – he is a disgusting – even by the standards of the alt-right, Christopher Cantwell is just this disgusting, vile human being. But... 562

Jack:

Yeah, contemptible. 563

Daniel:

...he wants me to think he's that. He wants me – that's what he wants me to think of him. 564

By the way, just for the audience: there is, and I can give you link to this – if you want to listen to the audio, because Christopher Cantwell recorded the audio of the entire process of making that Vice documentary on his end, and he put it up as a podcast before he went into jail. So you can listen to the whole thing. If you want to actually get a better context into what was actually being said. It's legitimately fascinating. And it tells you a lot about exactly how that documentary is put together. And I'm probably going to end up having to talk about it in a bit more detail and text, and pull it up. If you want to three and a half hours of Cantwell and Elle Reeve's talk, it is out there. 565

Jack:

Okay, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. 566

Daniel:

I hate to give him a download but, like, whatever. 567

Jack:

What you should do is, you know, put a copy on Google Drive or something and people can download it from you. 568

Daniel:

Right. I also have – I have all these podcasts stored on both a Google Drive and my home PC. Because these guys do get kicked off their platforms often enough. It's really annoying for me... like, I'm happy that it happens but then I have to go track down their new RSS... 569

Jack:

[laughs] 570

Daniel:

...RSS feed, you know. 571

Jack:

Yeah. 572

Daniel:

So it is kind of one of those annoying things, like, one of the podcasts stops updating for a few weeks, and then I find out, oh, they got kicked off their platform. So... 573

Jack:

Yeah. That reminds me every so slightly of trying to research the Austrian school and finding that there are... there are certain books that aren't really in print anymore and you can only buy them for fifty, sixty, seventy pounds on eBay and being – at the same time really annoyed and really pleased. [laughs] 574

Daniel:

[laughs] Right. Well, I mean, it is one of those – I've had this kind of argument that, like, I want all of this to continue to exist for historical context, you know. 575

Jack:

Yeah. 576

Daniel:

I don't want these guys, certainly I don't want these guys to ever get to hide from their words, you know. I want it to exist so that people can know that it existed. At the same time, you know, kind of breaking down the platform does make it harder for people to find them. And that does make me happy. [laughs] 577

Jack:

[laughs] 578

Daniel:

So definitely I'm of two minds about it. 579

One of the biggest podcasts, Fash the Nation, there was a doxing thing going on right around Trump's inauguration. And they're on the Right Stuff radio, they're on the same podcasting – kind of the same site, the same group that Mike Enoch is on, that Mike Enoch runs. 580

Jack:

Yeah. 581

Daniel:

And there are the other biggest alt-right podcasts. 582

They had archives going back like a couple years, a year and a half, something like that. They'd done seventy-something episodes. And they were the first podcast I really started listening to. And then they just disappeared. And what happened was, they – the doxing thing kind of went around and they, like, they scrubbed the Internet of everything. 583

Fortunately, the Internet Archive still has a bunch of it, and Youtube still has a bunch of the older stuff. 584

And they didn't come back for like seven months. But then they came back and now there is a new RSS feed. But it really was kind of one of those moments that was like, oh, they're just pretending this didn't exist, because they're scared of being found out. And, you know, doxing works. Although it does and it doesn't. I don't know. It's a complicated question. 585

Jack:

I do have to acknowledge my debt to you, to be honest, because you helped me make a lot connections that ended up in the Austrian school essay. I mean, just us chatting in what – as Wrong With Authority listeners will know what we mean when we talk about the back channel. 586

I mean, you were the one that made me look seriously at some of these people, like Cantwell, and their connection to libertarianism, you know. I mean we chatted about him, his former libertarianism, his being involved in the Free State Project, and – I went from that discussion that we had and I looked up the Free State Project, which – a lot of – some of it didn't end up in the final essay, some of it ended up as background research and some of it ended up in the thing about the Koch brothers and their funding of think thanks and stuff that I posted on the site. 587

But that lead me down – you go to the Wikipedia page for the Free State Project and it's another rabbit hole. All the people that praised it, you know, that takes you to Ron Paul. I mean I was already on to Ron Paul via Rothbard and stuff, but, you know, like Walter Block. He's an Austrian economist, he's praising the Free State Project. 588

You know, these people are so connected … 589

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah. 590

Jack:

...despite their formal disagreements. 591

Daniel:

It's a web of connections. 592

Jack:

It is a web of connections. 593

Daniel:

Where they all sort of – and this is where... I feel like they like to distance themselves from each other and say well, you know, I took a photo, Ron Paul has a photograph with so-on-so, and what does that mean. Well, it means – it's not like Ron Paul agrees with every single thing that so-and-so ever said, it means that Ron Paul relied on these people for funding... 594

Jack:

He took donations from Stormfront. 595

Daniel:

Yeah. 596

Jack:

And of course, infamously, I talk about this a little bit in the essay – the infamous newsletters, probably written by Lew Rockwell, who's Rothbard's cohort, they co-founded the Mises Institute. Rockwell now runs rockwell.org, publishes libertarian, Austrian school right-wing stuff. 597

You know, Rockwell wrote – probably wrote these newsletters that were released under Ron Paul's name, and they're full of this paleolibertarian shit that's, you know, racist and sexist and conspiracy theorist and, you know, praising David Duke, praising Jared Taylor. 598

They are all connected with each other. 599

And as much as Ron Paul – Ron Paul is kind of like the perfect example of this. Because he is very respectable and he's very widely respected. And he now disavows all the stuff in the newsletters – I don't agree with that, I didn't write them, I don't agree with that. But you know, he made a lot of money from those fucking newsletters. 600

Daniel:

And it's all about – and this is the point I [was] making... I mean you've been talking about how this sort of spectrum of belief. And I agree with that. But it's also about, like – they're all going after the same basic base of supporters and voters and ideologues. 601

They're all going for this same general group of far-right reactionaries. I mean I don't know – the funny thing, the difference between you and me in terms of the research that we've done it that you've done a lot of the sort of big picture, sort of reading the ideological background, kind of digging into this stuff. Whereas I've spend a lot of time just sort of paying attention to the propaganda... 602

Jack:

Hm. 603

Daniel:

...sort of much closer to the ground level. And so I kind of admire you because you've given me sort of theoretical understanding of some of this. Kind of pointing me in directions to sort of understand – oh, this is where this comes from, in a sort of a more big picture kind of way. Particularly in terms of understanding the history of, you know, Germany in the 20s. And the actual rise of Hitler. And how communism isn't nearly what, you know, we're told it is, et cetera. So if there is – I don't want to – it's mutual admiration, both ways, if we can... 604

Jack:

Yeah. 605

Daniel:

I think one of the reasons I think we wanted to chat about it was just to sort of compare notes, and to kind of say, we've – this is definitely been sort of a – we have – it's two different projects but they've definitely overlapped to some degree. And we've helped each other out I think. And that's been wonderful. Certainly you've helped my understanding. 606

But I think that the sort of, the point of – you know, I was a teenage Libertarians in the 90s, in the early days [of] the Internet. You know, Geocities sites were full... like, the gold standard and all that kind of stuff and that was... 607

Jack:

Yeah, yeah... 608

Daniel:

And even at the time I'm like some of this stuff is bullshit, right. 609

Jack:

[laughs] 610

Daniel:

There is a bunch of conspiracy-mongering nonsense, and they're all complete – I mean, you know, you can look at this – the Ron Paul newsletters are just... 611

Jack:

Ron Paul is... 612

Daniel:

It's such a moment, you know. 613

Jack:

Yeah, it's a big thing. And I'm sure it had a – very quiet, but I'm sure, like dominoes toppling, you know – a very large effect. 614

Ron Paul is very – I mean first of all you mentioned the gold standard. I want to mention that goes right back to Mises. Not just him, I think it comes from various places. But Mises is one of the people who initiated the long-running libertarian fixation with the gold standard. 615

But, yeah, Ron Paul, avowed Austrian economist. He had portraits of Rothbard, Mises, and Hayek on a wall and, you know, he's – in his various presidential campaigns, his campaigns for the nomination, he specifically went after the young, angry, disaffected, rebellious, young white guy vote. 616

Daniel:

Yeah! 617

Jack:

That was absolutely central to his campaigning, you know, approach. And I think he played a role in radicalizing some of the people who are now in the alt-right. 618

Daniel:

There are people who were Ron Paul delegates in 2008 who are now prominent members of the alt-right. 619

Jack:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But... 620

Daniel:

I say that like... I could name names. It wouldn't mean anything to most of the people listening. But there's at least one person I know of who claims to have been a 2008 Ron Paul delegate, when he was a teenager of all things. Because how young most of these people are, right. 621

Jack:

This is another one of the rabbit holes that I didn't quite have time to fall into, you know. I could have gone into researching this. So I didn't myself find any specific names. But I'm absolutely sure, from what I have found out, that this is part of this process. Absolutely certain of it. 622

Daniel:

Yeah, I know. I mean, my – there is this awful book, the Nagle book, Kill All Normies... 623

Jack:

Yeah. 624

Daniel:

...which I read. And I was really worried she would kind of beat me to the punch in terms of talking about these guys – no reason to worry. It's an awful book. 625

Jack:

Yeah. I still haven't read it myself. 626

Daniel:

She seems to have no grasp of historical context of any of this. She takes the Pepe memes way too seriously... 627

Jack:

[laughs] 628

Daniel:

...and just seems to, like – I think she understands the difference between the alt-right and the alt-light, for instance. But she doesn't talk about it at all, and she uses the two terms, and sometimes sort of slots people into the wrong place. It's just a mess of a book. It's really a mess of a book. 629

Jack:

I have to say, I haven't read it, so I can't comment, [on the one hand. On the other hand,] I have to say it is very easy to fall into this trap, that they lay for you, of terminology. Because this has happened to me. 630

You will say, so-and-so was a paleolibertarian. And you will get, oh no I wasn't, I specifically said in this issue of this article from 1978 that he... – that's a bit early, but you know what I mean. 631

Daniel:

Right, right. 632

Jack:

They will find a quote where so-and-so said, I'm not a paleolibertarian because X, Y, and Z. And so much of it is such crap, honestly. 633

The supposed distinctions between – you know, I'm not a paleolibertarian, I'm an anarcho-capitalist, or I'm an analytic Marxist, et cetera et cetera et cetera, or I'm just a libertarian, or I'm a paleoconservative. 634

So much of it is just absolute nickpicky shit, you know. And it's kind of like a load of traps they lay for you, where the minute you try to generalize about any of this – you know, you talk about the Austrian school and you bring up Schumpeter, you'll get people go, no, Schumpeter... – yes, okay, I understand that they have loads of internal disagreements, and maybe some of them didn't want to be identified as being Austrians or, you know, such-and-such a guy believed everything that the paleolibertarians believed but said he wasn't a paleolibertarian... this is a real minefield. 635

Daniel:

Yeah. 636

Jack:

So without having read Nagle I will sort of issue a provision defense of her... 637

Daniel:

Oh yeah, sure, sure... 638

Jack:

...because this is something – this is a minefield you fall into when you try – when you start trying to write about these people. 639

Daniel:

Right, absolutely. And certainly – I'm not trying to – it's less that, I mean it's not even that concrete because she doesn't get that deeply into it, you know. 640

Jack:

Mhm 641

Daniel:

But sort of using the terms alt-light and alt-right without really ever clearly saying what you mean is only going to work for people who already sort of know these terms, or are already sort of familiar with [them]... 642

Jack:

Yeah. I see what you mean. 643

Daniel:

...and, you know, are already sort of on board. Like, you have to know as much she does already in order to get anything out of the book. But if you already sort of know, she's not adding anything to that conversation. That's sort of where I land on the book. 644

Actually, Noah Berlatzky's review is – I mean I was going to talk about it more, I was going to – I don't know. Maybe I'm going to write about it, who knows. But Noah Berlatzky already kind of did the heavy lifting on that, as far as I'm concerned. 645

Jack:

Right. Yeah. 646

Daniel:

There is a great piece he wrote about it and just to sort of hit the high points – yeah, no, he's right on that. 647

Jack I think I retweeted that at the time, with a, you know, disclaimer that I haven't read the book, but – if Noah's right about it then, you know, I'm not surprised. 648

Daniel:

I've had Twitter conversations, like, kind of brief ones about the book with him, here and there. And certainly when it came out. I think he and I are broadly in agreement at least, so, it's worth knowing. 649

Yeah, I don't know – I think we've come to another rabbit hole, didn't we. 650

Jack:

We did rather, yeah. But then, as I say, this is the – this is what happens. 651

Daniel:

Yeah, I mean, the thing is – I mean, I guess where I was going was, it's so like looking at this sort of movement, and this sort of political thing as it exists. Part of what's kind of fascinated me is just the process of understanding it as sort of this living, breathing, evolving thing. And if I'd started writing in like March, I would have definitely said things that probably were only vaguely true then and certainly aren't true now. For instance, even just the relationship of the alt-right to Trump has dramatically changed over the last year. 652

Jack:

Yeah, yeah. 653

Daniel:

They've kind of – this is something Richard Spencer has said, and – I mean, it's also how seriously do you take these guys when they say things – but this is something I kind of agree with. He's saying the alt-right has grown beyond Trump. And that's true, you know. They no longer sort of take him – I mean, Trump was their metastasis, it was their, like – he was the chrysalis that sort of lead to where they are now. Now they're the moth, the butterfly. They've gone through the pupa stage. 654

Jack:

I hate to sound smug. (I don't, I like sounding smug.) But I said all this, way back in Thesis on Trump, I said, the real danger of Trump – I mean, I'm not – I think by the time this is out, people will probably have heard our Trumpiversary Wrong With Authority, so I'm going to sort of vaguely restate something I think I said in that, but – the real problem with Trump, as much as he – I'm not saying he hasn't done horrible things, because he has and he will continue do to so. But the real problem with him is this – as the word you used – metastasize, metastasization – that he's catalyzing. 655

Which is, it's on the streets 656

It's the forces he's unleashing. 657

Daniel:

The alt-right would not exist in the form it does today without Donald Trump as a prominent candidate. And Donald Trump would not be where he is today without this group of dedicated fans pushing for him. 658

Jack:

Yeah. 659

Daniel:

And that's a big, complicated – I mean there's definitely a chapter or whatever, some essays talking about the relationship of Trump to the alt-right, you know, both ways. And that's going to be... 660

Jack:

It's why you need a dialectical analysis. You can't – because so much that's written about this is such shit, honestly. 661

Daniel:

Oh yeah. I mean I feel like part of what I'm trying to do is to figure out how to explain this to liberals. 662

Jack:

[laughs] 663

Daniel:

Like, it's just... 664

Jack:

[laughs] If you can explain it so simply that even a liberal can understand it... 665

Daniel:

If I can get the liberals to, like, sort of improve their rhetoric by ten percent, we'll win. It'll be fine. 666

Jack:

[still laughing] Major victory. 667

Daniel:

[chuckles] But yeah... 668

I feel like I'm winding down. I mean we've been going for two hours. I fell like this is enough for you. Especially if we agree to do it again. And I'm going to try to get some writing done. It's very easy to just kind of keep researching.... 669

Jack:

Oh god, I know. I mean... yeah. It's only really the looming deadline for... the fear of letting Phil down that sort of forced me eventually to start turning half-written things and first drafts and copious notes into something vaguely readable. At least I hope it is. 670

Daniel:

Oh no, it's very readable. It's a very – I mean, the thing for me is that the piece we have is so dense I just want it to be – I just, I kind of to sit down and niggle at some things, like I read a paragraph and then I'll go and think about it for fifteen minutes and I kind of come back, yeah, I agree, I think I agree with that, let's move on. And then I read the next paragraph and go, oh god, now I got to think again. 671

There's just – there's a lot going on... 672

Jack:

Yeah. 673

Daniel:

And it's – that's a compliment. That's a deep compliment. It's not a skimmable twenty-two thousand words, let's put it that way. 674

Jack:

Thank you. 675

Daniel:

In the best possible way, in the best possible way. And I hope people listening to this will – I mean, maybe I'll buy a paper copy of Neoreaction a Basilisk so I can get the extended version, the sort of paper copy, because I did support at the five-dollar level, so I get the ebook. But yeah, no, this is something that sounds like – people are really going to enjoy, and I think people listening to this podcast, if they're not already supporting you on Patreon, they really should. 676

Jack:

Well, this is it. People who support me for as little as one dollar a month on Patreon can already read this masterpiece of political analysis. In its current form anyway, before it gets, you know, a few more alterations, ready for the book. [deadpan:] So, you know, why would anybody hesitate, that's what I want to know... 677

Daniel:

[chuckles] 678

Jack:

...to read, you know, to read twenty-two thousand fucking words about the fucking Austrian school. 679

Daniel:

Twenty-two thousand pretty fascinating words about the Austrian school, to be fair. Jack is underselling this. This is really good writing. And it's not – I mean, it's about the Austrian school, but it's really as much about Marx, and it's about – it's a really fascinating read. 680

It's a really interesting – if you're a fan of Jack Graham, you're going to be a fan of this piece of writing. I will say that for sure. 681

Jack:

For sure. And I, you know, I did have to cut a lot out of it. And one of the things I had to cut out of it was a more extended look at Friedrich Hayek, who I found a fascinating figure. 682

A genuine thinker, a genuine intellectual. Enormously frustrating because he's, you know, he keeps on sort of showing – and it is presumptuous of me to say this about one of the foremost intellectuals of the 20th century – but he keeps on showing so much potential, you know. And then he keeps letting me down, you know. You're almost there, Freddy, you're almost there. 683

But, yeah, he is a person who absolutely disgraced himself through his association with – putting the issue of neoliberalism aside completely, right. 684

He is one of the foundational figures of neoliberalism, and neoliberalism has done enormous harm to the world. In concrete terms, to millions of people's lives. It has created enormous misery. I mean, I think capitalism is the inherent problem, neoliberalism is a particular form of capitalism that is – that has done enormous damage. But putting that aside completely. 685

Friedrich Hayek, a civilized man, a cultured man, an educated man, a genuine intellectual, he disgraced himself beyond measure by his association with Pinochet's Chile. 686

Because he was – he was not just one of – and as I discovered looking into this, his links with Chile under Pinochet, far more extensive than I realized. I thought about Chile under Pinochet. I thought Friedman and the Chicago Boys economists and all that. I knew Hayek was sort of associated but I didn't know the extent of it. 687

His writings, his books are explicitly an inspiration to the people running Pinochet's junta. He's over there all the time on speaking engagements, lecture tours, he is instrumental in getting the Mont Pelerin Society's annual conference held at the Viña del Mar, which is one of the – which is the place where Pinochet's coup was planned, and they know that, it's a deliberate reference. 688

They're over there hobnobbing with Pinochet himself, with members of the regime. He's writing defenses of the regime to newspapers in – it's absolutely disgusting. 689

And you can repeat this pattern more or less for other places. He's mixed up with South Africa, he's trying to pimp his ideas to Salazar in Portugal... and this is a regime where people, people who were deemed a threat to the regime because they were too left-wing or they didn't like the idea of the Pinochet dictatorship or just their hair was too long or they were a woman who wasn't dressed the right way. This regime rounded people up and sent them to a system of absolutely unimaginable torture, including – they had... 690

Daniel:

Well, the helicopter rides. The helicopter rides were Pinochet. 691

Jack:

The helicopter rides, exactly. The things that Cantwell jokes about. Free helicopter rides for leftists. 692

Daniel:

It's not just Cantwell. It's an alt-right meme. It's a huge one. 693

Jack:

Absolutely, but he's one of them. 694

Daniel:

Yeah, he's definitely one of them. 695

Jack:

That's a joke about murdering people for being socialists, you know. And a lot... 696

Daniel:

That's taking people who don't like and throwing them out of a helicopter in air. That's what the helicopter ride means, yes. 697

Jack:

They were – the Pinochet regime was assisted in this by the CIA and the Nixon White House, we should add. But, you know, more than... 698

Daniel:

[chuckles] Kid just pushed his fist in the air listening to this. 699

Jack:

But you know, this is a regime that had ongoing – had institutionalized sexual torture. They had a place devoted to sexual torture, as I say. And this is not something – I mean I don't know if they knew the details – but this is not something that Hayek and his buddies didn't know about. In fact they specifically praised it. It was great. It was great. 700

And this is the great Classical Liberal, this is the great defender of freedom, this is the great opponent of totalitarianism speaking. And this is what I was talking about earlier, when you were talking about the moment you had to take – I had to take a moment as well when I got to this stuff. I mean, you know, apart from anything else, he's drawing his – this is what my next post is going to be, which will be out by the time you hear this – he's drawing his ideas from Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist. 701

Daniel:

Hmm, I didn't know that. I'm definitely going to have to check that out, for sure. 702

Jack:

Yeah. But there you go. 703

Daniel:

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, like, history is such a – it's such a series of people just brutally murdering one another and otherwise being really shitty to each other, right. And I feel like – this is simplistic and, you know, but – the left wants to end that and the right sort of accepts it as inevitable. And that seems to be one of the sort of fundamental differences. 704

Jack:

Yeah. 705

Daniel:

And, you know, I'm trying to work for a world in which there is no ritualistic murder of dissidents of any kind, you know. 706

Jack:

[sarcastic:] You communists 707

Daniel:

I guess so. If that's what that makes me, that's what that makes me. 708

Jack:

If don't understand. I mean, are you a communist? Because you want to stop people being ritualistically murdered. And it's bad to be a communist because of course communists ritualistically murder people. That's how it works, isn't it. 709

Daniel:

Yeah, exactly. Catch-22, libtard! 710

Jack: Powned! 711

Daniel:

Oh man. 712

I think we should wrap up. I think it's time. But I definitely want to come back to this. And I really want to talk, once we can kind of talk more in detail about the essay, I want to talk about the writing process, and... sort of how you came about it, and kind of get into some of the nitty gritty. And I want to ask some questions about some of the details, some of the stuff, but I got to get like a printout and a highlighter and some notes et cetera before I can do that. 713

Jack:

Wow. 714

Daniel:

Yeah, so... before that, before the book comes out we'll do another one of these, definitely. And hopefully in the next few weeks I will actually start writing and we'll see what that turns into. But once I start posting, my plan is to start a Patreon so I can make some money off of this, finally. 715

Jack:

[chuckles] Yeah... I've read a first draft of the first bit and it's really good, it's really interesting, you know. I think you've got the right tone, which I know you were searching for, for a while. You know, you were right about the tone. And I think you cracked it basically. And I really want to read this, so get on and write it. And, people listening... 716

Daniel:

[incomprehensible due to crosstalk] 717

Jack:

...bully Daniel to get on and write it. 718

Daniel:

Don't, no, don't bully, because bullying is – that's a step into fascism. Honestly. 719

Jack:

[disappointed:] Oh yeah, you're right. 720

Daniel:

We want to encourage positive things, rather than bullying. 721

Jack:

That's right. Positive reinforcement. 722

Daniel:

Positive reinforcement. You can go follow me on Twitter, @danieleharper, and you can ask me question, if you're so inclined, and I – basically all that I do on Twitter anymore is correct people's misapprehensions about fascism. So, check that out, if you're so inclined. 723

Jack:

And you can find me on Twitter, @_jack_graham_, and at my blog, Shabogan Graffity 10, which is part of Eruditorium Press. 724

Daniel:

Wonderful. Thanks so much for chatting with me today, Jack. 725

Jack:

No, that was great, yeah. 726

Daniel:

We never get to talk! We never get to talk! It's certainly not like a daily occurrence where we're sharing notes about some bullshit that happened. 727

Jack:

[laughs] 728

[a few more bars of the dead Austrian guy music] 729