Knowledge Fight - #935: June 17, 2024

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

In this installment, Dan and Jordan do a little mini-ep to check in on Alex's feelings about Globalist hamburgers, and then Jordan sits down with Mike Wendling, author of Day of Reckoning: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy.

Music It's time to pray. I have great respect for knowledge. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys Chang we are the bad guys Knowledge fight It's time to pray Hey everybody! Welcome back to Knowledge Fight, I'm Dan. I'm Jordan. We're a couple dudes I'd sit around worship at the altar of Selene and talk a little bit about Alex Jones Oh indeed we are Dan Jordan Dan Jordan quick question for you. What's up? What's your bright spot today, buddy? My bright spot today Jordan is we are here and there's a reason There's some some massive happened that we cannot wait until Friday to talk about okay We're here on this Wednesday because the earth

Shook okay on Monday. All right. Everything changed. I don't know what happened on Monday. The beginning and this will be a demarcation point in time. Everything changed. History will remember this day. All right. Monday. Wait, our, us or Monday?

What? Today or Monday? Monday. Monday, so not today. Monday evening. Right, but the world won't remember today us No, probably not we have nothing to do with this. We are mere spectators all right fine fine fine. Uncle. Howdy is back So how can uncle howdy come back because uncle howdy is played by Okay. No, no, I'm very worried. Oh man. So.

How can Uncle Howdy come back? Because Uncle Howdy is played by Bray Wyatt's brother, Bo Dallas. Right, right, right, right. And so almost as an homage and a carrying on the legacy of Bray Wyatt, since he passed tragically. Yes.

They brought Uncle How back with with a crew He's got a he's got a crew is that the way to do it. I think it is actually okay I think as well. It was very well presented in terms of the The it was very horror movie very cinematic sure they had Killed everyone backstage. They killed everyone back. Everyone appeared to be dead Okay, so it was like it was like a Simpsons tree house of horrors kind of things kind of gotcha. Okay, okay Coming down their head it was it was a pile of bodies They were really committed they were going for okay

In that sense, I do think it is kind of nice homage to what Bray Wyatt probably would have continued to do. Nice little summer ween. And if you're somebody who is in the business, in a business like wrestling with your brother and you pass away, I think obviously you would want your brother to succeed and do great things even if it means kind of carrying on this vein that you had been doing. Sure. Bo Dallas is a good wrestler and a great character in and of himself. He's done some great stuff in the past.

Sure. Doesn't connect to me the same way as Bray Wyatt did. Right. But I don't know. I'm tentatively excited. Why not? Right. Why not? Yeah. What is the worst that could happen? I mean, I don't know. I'm tentatively excited. I'm why not right? Why not? Yeah, what is the worst that could happen?

I mean, let's not even think about what the worst thing can happen Let's think about what's the best that could happen time uncle hattie was around we had a glow-in-the-dark match Let's not worry about the worst. They can happen. Let's worry about what the brought to you by So I'm worried. I'm very worried, But there's a lot of promise here I think. He's got a crew, one of them is the old Eric Rowan from the original Wyatt family. So you've got some of that legacy carrying over. Unfortunately, the other person who was in the Wyatt family is also dead. Jesus, man!

Yeah, tragic young passage. you wear a mask and sometimes it becomes your face so if you become a swamp monster sometimes you can die young i don't know where i was going with that i i think that there is a way to to do this that is all quite honoring and uh and and well done even recognizing the fact that Bray is dead. And this is Bray's brother. As long as it's not sponsored by Mountain Dew. Please keep, I would hope they keep that away from this. Keep goofy bullshit kind of to a minimum.

Yeah, it'd be nice. Like there was a point where the Fiend, one of Bray's character, had a giant cartoon sized mallet that he was carrying around. He did not That's fun though Like it's on the line. I like it's on the line. When is it? When is a bad time to see an intimidating gigantic mallet? Anyway, the world will never be the same true

Uncle howdy all right What's your bright spot? My bright spot is I think this happens once every four or five years. I rediscover Kings of Convenience album called Versus. And so the Kings of Convenience were a Norwegian folk duo around the early aughts era. How convenient. Yeah of course. They they were like more poppy version of Simon and Garfunkel but from Norway or whatever. And then they were on the Ninja Toons label in the UK which had everybody who is like an underground producer a bunch of like you know it had like lemon jelly. It had like

roots, Meduva. It like, it had a bunch of really, really cool stuff on there, but none of it was fucking folk. It was, it was all like electro. It was all dance. It was all a rocker punk or something like that. So because they had a, the kick is a convenience on the label. They just let everybody in Ninja tunesunes fuck around with their songs for a while, and they put out this album, which is like this amazing remix album of this folk duo with all these different kind of instrumentations. It's really cool. That is always, always interesting. You take that sort of backbone and you add other influences and weird styles to it. Yeah. There's some that are really, really good. And Lady Tron even shows up because why not?

It's Lady Tron. I'll check that one out. That sounds that sounds like something I could enjoy. It's really good Yeah, so I think I discovered it again while I was doing yoga and I was like hell Yeah, so I've listened to that for two days straight now. Nice. Yeah Hooray, yeah, so we're gonna do a little episode here today, George. We're gonna be talking about the day that uncle howdy came back, okay? Bigger return for me Cares We'd seen a lot of the rock it's true. We've seen too much of the overexposed I like uncle howdy uncle howdy has started zero fast and furious spinoffs. However, there was no uncle howdy and

I'd be interested I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see him team up with Statham It would be interesting if the fast and furious just went all in on like Bond and just started doing different Genres of movie every time like fine. We've already gone to space. Why not do a horror movie fast and furious where they have to outrace Jason or Freddie absolutely uh-huh yes fast versus Freddie I live my life quarter mile at a time bitch I can see it I like it I like it a lot so we're gonna be talking about June 17th of 2024 which is of course later on in the day, Alex had no way to know that uncle howdy would be coming back. So we're not going to

be talking about any of that. Alex did not have any take on uncle. Right. So you'll have to forgive him for his naivety about, about this major world issue. The world hadn't changed yet. Right. Yeah. So we'll get down business on this, but first let's say hello to some new ones. That's a great idea. So first the case of MGM versus Honda was litigated for MGM by firm Kay Scholler and its attorney Robert Barnes And while there's no way it's him It did make me say Bobby Barnes media star out loud to a courtroom full of fifth graders doing mock trial Thank you so much. You're now policy walk. I'm a policy walk. Thank you very much Might have been him. Yep next Gil Cornell from the Williamsburg School for architecture and design. Thank you so much You're now policy walk. I'm a policy walk. Thank you very much. Might have been him. Yep. Next, Gil Cornell from the Williamsburg School for Architecture and Design.

Thank you so much, you're an Al policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, August from Illinois. Thank you so much, you're an Al policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much.

August from Illinois. You know it's great. August in Illinois. Temperatures, that's a little hot. Next, you can't arrest me, I quit. Bavin, Shoo- Oh boy. Uh-huh, you made the mistake. I started scanning ahead to parentheses.

So close. Bavin Shilava, thank you so much, you're now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank you. And when I'm feeling down, I think about Jordan saying, Hi, Kerry, to Kerry Cassidy, and it really cheers me up. Thank you so much, you're now a policy wonk.

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much So this Monday episode there's a lot going on on it and we're gonna ignore a vast majority of it because it doesn't really matter Right. So there's one earth-shaking major piece of thing that happens that is actually a huge dud And that is that Alex has Peter McCullough COVID Vax, anti-vax doctor fella, Peter McCullough. He's on and Alex promotes it as like, they have found the off switch for the COVID vaccine. And so I got really excited about like, oh, we're going to really set in stone how we're going to get out of this narrative dead end. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. But he doesn't have any specifics and he's just like, we figured out that maybe there's something to do. And so it's all just selling his supplements that are supposed to help you deal with the effects of the COVID vaccine. So there isn't anything specific there, although it does seem like this is the direction that we're going to end up going with narratives narratives is finding a cure for the COVID vaccine. And that way we can explain away why all the planet doesn't die. Like, here's the problem. All right. What they've created is essentially a disease.

And what they need is a vaccine. Right. And they are going to find it sooner or later. Right. But it can't be a vaccine. No, it'll be some kind of weird unregulated supplement. Yep. So also Judy Mikovits is on sure another anti-vex Weirdo luminary in the field of stealing money from rich people. She is she is going for it She's swinging for fences all over the place She says that every vaccine and shot that anyone has ever gotten since 2009 has been the COVID vaccine. She is just out there. You texted me about that. That's the type of swing that I'm looking for. It's all COVID. Yeah. If it wasn't just almost impossible to follow the line of what she's going through. I might have covered that.

And I wish I would have pulled the clip of her saying, there's no bird flu. What, is a bird sneezing? I mean, that's just great. That's just great. That's just great. It is. It is.

I am still mad that we are never going to get to the bottom of Steve Pacenek being the first person to have and cure COVID. That seems so important to this 2009 narrative. Well, when they, oh, that's true. He's gonna have to pump his timeline back. He's gonna have to bump it back. I guess if the new order of the day is,

we have a cure for COVID, Steve would be very helpful for that. That seems like- Since he cured himself. Oh well. Oh well. Anyway, we are not gonna talk about a ton of that because something happens on this episode that I thought was much more deserving of our focus. And that is that Alex is going to discuss some unintentional comedy that happened. All right.

You've got all of that huge news today. And Dr. Judy Mickiewicz is also joining us in studio in the third hour as well. Here McCullough, Dr. Judy Mickiewicz is also joining us in studio in the third hour as well Peter McCullough, Dr. Judy Mickiewicz. So I'm gonna table all the COVID news. That's just totally off the wall insane Until that happens. Now we got some really good unintentional comedy that I don't just go with comedy for comedy sake but if it's illustrative If it's illustrative if it if it really gets people to switch on their thinking cap, I'll do it. The problem with this story is it reminds me of a bunch of

other examples of this. So I was really worried at this point that he was going to be talking about us. Okay, that'd be fun. Like there was a small part of my brain that was like is that what he is going to talk about that I'm curious if he was the only person who saw it that'd be that'd be fucking hilarious And they'll be like what's the unintentional comedy? Yeah, hate my shirt. What's going on?

But it is not that no and it's something I could never have predicted It turns out that Chuck Schumer For Father's Day posted a picture and the internet is all They can't stop talking about it. All right. So this is unintentional comedy about Chuck Schumer that is illustrative. Yes, because of the Father's Day picture that he posted. Because of the Father's Day picture. Reminds me of a bunch of other examples of this with Beto O'Rourke and Pocahontas,

and Pocahontam pocahontamus pocahontamus pocahontas Elizabeth Warren she's not that fat where I would call her pocahontamus, but Inventing words is that intentional? So it's it's Chuckie Schumer on Father's Day Issued a post on X that he later withdrew where he's cooking raw hamburger meat with a piece of cheese on it. And if you zoom in on the HD, you can see it's gray hamburger, it's raw. It's just older hamburger. You gotta zoom in on that.

And they all issued similar photos and what's bizarre is and almost all the photos It's it's raw meat with a piece of cheese on it So the internet went crazy with it. We're gonna show you some big HD photos blown up You can see it's raw meat Alex spends a lot of time on this Chuck Schumer has a raw hamburger So alright now I have lived through three great events now, right? There was 9-11, there was Obama wearing a tan suit, and now there's Hamburger Gate. You would have to think that this is one of the most important things that ever happened if you are listening to Alex's show.

Can you believe, look at this, they zoom in a bunch of times. I can't believe they zoom in. I of times. Zoom in on this burger. I cannot believe they zoom in on the burger. It's on the grill, it's not cooked. Okay. So there's four burgers, and there's like, one of them has a piece of cheese on it, it appears, but it also, it looks like it's more than one slice of cheese,

so maybe it's just set there for the moment, and then they're going to okay break it up onto the other Filming a fucking we are we are we're going to I call to get to the bottom But I was sitting there watching this I'm like there's a hamburger on the grassy doll he Okay, but yeah like worst-case scenario Chuck Schumer made a shitty burger. Yeah Feel like that is the worst case scenario. Yeah, it's great Well, it's illustrative of what we're doing with our lives It is very illustrative though the way that these people like Chuck Schumer are not humans

I'm sorry, they can't make a burger. Did we go that way great look, but it's it's wrong blow it up zoom in If you zoom in on that meat you zoom in I'm gonna do this later. I guess I'm already doing it Folks that's raw as my rear end That is raw hamburger And he's too stupid to go buy it fresh so that's been on the store shelf a week or in his refrigerator two weeks. Do you think he goes shopping?

And wait till we read this. But here's why I'm doing you a disservice. There's so much news. I don't have time to do it. But I do want maybe Rob Dewar or Jeremy greener one of the great researchers There's a bunch of examples of this with Elizabeth Warren bet to our work and a bunch of others Where bet to our work was cooking raw hamburger? He said it was cooked. He was putting clearly raw hamburger not on a bun

He was he was putting it on English muffins. So this goes to the theory of their space aliens. That does track. Because seriously folks, not just Schumer, but the Clintons and a bunch of others put out photos over Father's Day showing how human they are, flipping raw hamburger and then putting it on buns with cheese. Put out photos over Father's Day showing how human they are. Flipping raw hamburger and then putting it on buns with cheese.

And remember they want us to quote eat the bugs. So I don't know anymore folks. I mean I'm not even joking at this point. Yeah you're just dumb. So he later plays the video of Bet point. Yeah. You're just dumb. I mean, so he later plays the video of Beto. Yeah. And the burger is cooked and Alex even has to concede that at a certain point. At a certain point, you will admit that the burger was cooked. Cause it's very obviously cooked. He is putting it on an English muffin. That is true. Okay. But then Alex is just swinging.

And so like Beto's plate has the English muffin on it in order to put the burger on the English muffin and then there's a side of broccoli and Alex is like he so dumb he thinks broccoli's lettuce. So fucking dumb. This is the same level of thinking that was the underpinning, the backbone of help my teacher as an alien, right? Isn't that how they discovered that their teacher was an alien of some sort when the teacher took the mask off

and had to eat something that was not of? Yes, a burger on an English muffin. On an English muffin, yeah. I don't want Alex to find out about the burgers that are on like Dixie cream donuts. Oh, fucking hell. He's probably gonna go crazy with that. You know what, have you had one of those though?

Those are too good. Those are made by aliens. I have not, but I just can't imagine his, just like what unconventional buns. So anyway, look, here's the situation. How's he feel about a pretzel bun? Hate. I mean, everybody loves a pretzel bun.

I do. Alex says brioche or nothing. Brioche or nothing? He's never even tried to roll? No. Potato roll? No. Oh, there are these potato donuts. Never mind. So look, here's the situation, and I just want to be abundantly clear about this. I don't give a fuck about this at all. I don't care about Alex's stupid shit. I don't care about any of this. But the reason that I wanted to play this and bring it up is because this

is an example of Alex trying to bait the media into covering him that didn't work. This is another version of the like, I'm going to eat my neighbors. But in the case of the I'm going to eat my neighbors, it was so sensational. And so it got people. It got like all these like outside of his media bubble accounts to post the video of him and make fun of him and stuff like that. He was trying to bait people into covering, oh, he thinks that Chuck Schumer is an alien because of this burger. He was trying to do that in order to be able to ride the wave. He's trying to do that in order to be able to ride the wave. He's trying to National Enquirer it.

Yeah, he's trying to coast on the wake of other people's coverage about this, and it just didn't work. Which is kind of funny. It's sad. Yeah. It is more sad than anything else. Trying to get attention and failing is always, it's so sad. Especially when it's like this.

Yeah. These people don't know burgers. Oh man, that's sad. and failing is always it's it's so sad especially when it's like this yeah these people don't know burgers oh man that's sad this is a bother fighting the devil are we zooming in on a burger in the midst of this holy war between good and evil more than once okay yeah all right he spends a lot of time on this okay because to a pod person doesn't know how to turn on a gas oven oven or charcoal for that matter doesn't know how to grill a hamburger and get it juicy and sizzling and get it just right and put the piece of cheese on it and slide it onto that delicious bun you just crispy a little bit on top them just throw the buns on about 30 seconds get a nice little toastedness to it. They know

nothing about any of that. Easiest thing to cook's a hamburger. I was cooking hamburgers when I was six years old. This is about the age of four, my dad's like, you come over here, you grill it, you learn to do it. About once a week, my parents say, hey, I was about eight years old. Cook us French toast and scrambled eggs.

When you're done, go mow the yard. And they weren't being mean to me, they didn't want an invalid, didn't know how how to run the I remember one time my dad goes well it's time to reroof the house and I was thinking it's a good family project we got plenty of money to hire roofers we're not gonna do that your uncle's coming over next Saturday and we're gonna go today and buy the shingles and we're gonna strip that off tomorrow and then we're going to reroof the house Saturday. Remember my dad pulling up at 330 school on Friday.

It was in the spring. We go home. We tear off about half the shingles and get it done got dark got up the next morning pulled off the rest. And then roofed most the house me my dad my uncle into the night and then the next day we got up Sunday morning. My dad said yeah, we're not gonna go To church today. We're gonna finish roofing the house and by about one o'clock we were done and my dad said We're going to we're going to Billy Bob's and getting you a chicken fried steak son

And that was just wasn't like some big thing. It was constant. We're gonna roof the house. We're gonna skin a buck. We're gonna run a trot line. And to these pot people, they don't even know how to grill a hamburger. And they look at us and they think these are weirdos. They walk in here, these leftists, they're like, what's the engineer doing with a firearm on his side? Well, why do we have armed security here, too, that's all bonded? Because we're not rolling over, bending over, waiting for somebody to come after us. We're like these churches that have the deacons that are armed, so when some crazy Satanist comes in or some Islamist and starts shooting people,

most of the time they don't kill one person before they get killed because there's trained men with guns that kill them. But it shows the total break with these people. They think we're the weirdos. I do. I do think you're a weirdo. This whole thing is weird. Yes. This is weird. So what's interesting about that clip is I think that Alex kind of forgot the point in the middle.

I would say so. So what's interesting about that clip is I think that Alex kind of forgot the point in the middle of that story about re-roofing the house. And then he kind of remembered it, but it was too late. He remembered that he was supposed to be complaining about pod people not knowing how to make burgers. He was. But I think it was too late to save the ship. But then I do think it's weird. I don't think it's strange at all to be like I'm slightly uncomfortable with the idea of a working environment where everyone's just got guns on or yeah, I don't want to

consider the need for murder at church Usually a good idea. I think that that's indicative of a larger problem Probably that is not that everyone is uptight about guns. No, it feels like everybody's just gotta stick up their ass. I... Mm. That sounds about rude. I- I appreciate, uh, everything that he's trying to do here. I think it would be fine.

I- I- It- Like, it's so fun because it is just, uh, like, if you'd gone metaphorical, the idea is essentially these elites are out of touch with the common man. Like I get it. Sure. Fine. There are some bucolic pleasures like cooking a hamburger. I understand that.

But what he's really talking about is how he is never going to be the man that his father was. And- I mean, isn't that what he's doing? There's a little bit of that. And there's also a little bit of like turning it into a larger point than it deserves to be. Yeah. Like I think it's fine to clown on people for like ah you don't know how to make a burger

ha ha ha or whatever because you're rich and out of touch and you know. Yeah. ha ha ha or whatever because you're rich and out of touch and you know yeah but then to turn it into like this is some sort of this means something about one there's a they're not human they're pod people or whatever right is just desperate that's too much the the taking it into like they want us to eat the bugs but that and that's what they're messaging with putting raw meat so wait on the Burgers cooking a bad hamburger is gonna make me eat bugs that doesn't make sense It has part of the messaging and I believe we had met

I believe the way that this this works is that they're trying to make eating meat look unappealing Because they have these raw meat and these gross burgers and stuff I mean, and so if you're watching it, you subconsciously are more willing to eat bugs. Putting it next to Chuck Schumer is what makes it unappealing. I don't think that there's any beef politics involved. I just don't think so. No. I get that there's a need to like turn everything into a masculinity issue with these people

because for them everything is a masculinity issue. Yeah. That's a huge part of it Yeah And then the other part is just like there were a bunch of memes about this and Alex's social media feed and that's what he Covers so basically it turns into this weird loop of like oh a lot of people are getting attention Talking and making jokes about the Chuck Schumer thing Yeah I'm gonna pretend to be a little bit serious about this and try to

desperately get some attention out of it myself. And this was just a swing and a miss. This didn't work. But I saw this put up with the Clintons and others. So I guess it's like, well, get out. I think it's the PR firms are also pod people. They go, okay, get out here. It's the photo shoot. And they just put a piece of cheese on raw meat. go ahead and put that now on the bun look blow it up zoom in it's raw meat with cheese on it and they put out more photos of them putting raw meat on buns it's on Infowars.com it's on my ex account now folks that's space alien okay so no wonder they think I'm bad because I'm still a human I'm still normal still normal still very very normal All right, hold on. Let me throw this out at you. All right, why when I was growing up? All right, my dad he could reroof the house. He took my two older brothers. They reroofed the house

They did the whole thing right in a buck and run a trot line? Couldn't cook for shit! Oh no. Couldn't cook for shit! I can cook, but I can't do all that other stuff. What are we? Are we both aliens? Are we half alien?

What's going on here? Yeah, you're probably half alien. Half alien? Yeah. But why is he one half and I'm the other half? I mean, it's genes. It's weird. Fair enough.

Who knows? I don't know. Fair enough. I'm no scientist. I'm no health ranger. I mean it's jeans. It's weird. Fair it up. Who knows? I don't know. Fair it up. I'm no I'm no scientist. All right. I'm no health ranger. That's I mean I get it. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway um this was all just a very desperate uh attempt at trying to get people to cover this in a way that Alex could capitalize on and get some media attention out of. It didn't work and so I think it's very funny to look at this. It's like a fail video. Kind of, you know? It's a propagandist fail video. I'm talking about Chuck Schumer and his zooming in on the ground beef. Yeah, you know, we only really talk about the times propagandists get it right. We never

really look at a propaganda fail video and kind of analyze what's going on. I get it. Yeah, and there isn't all that much to analyze. But- It's a fail. Alex does say something else that I think is a little Telling okay. He's talking about and complaining about his his bankruptcy. Mm-hmm, and he says Essentially whenever you hear Sandy Hook families, you should think CIA. Oh no, which I think is bad Yeah, but just remember this headline from last Friday Sandy Hook families we see that who's behind it as the CIA the FBI on record that they're just being used and so sad for them

Sandy Hook families think CIA Want to seize Alex Jones social media accounts the judge just laughed at him So oh we don't want to shut you down. We just want you off the air and to have your social media so you can't speak anywhere. See how that works? But separately, we're going to break. It's key to have money to win a war, the information war. I need your word of mouth.

I need your prayer. I need you to share the articles, the videos from infowars.com, band.video, realalexjones. Realalexjones, follow us there on X I Need you to also support our great sponsor who got demonized and attacked my daddy and his great warehouse and his great products This same CRO kicked out of the warehouse my dad helped set up all our stuff and had his products over there He was making 30% on All he's getting sued by the Democratic Party While he's getting sued by the Democratic Party, my dad moved all those great products when they kicked him out that you can't get anymore to his warehouse in North Austin at

Dr.JonesNaturalS.com. Oh, so Dr. Jones Naturals is just Infowars Health, but you removed it whenever you got sued. Wow. I think maybe this is not the kind of thing that is ethical. I feel like he's saying this in a way that is maybe a little bit dangerous. Are you? I mean, I don't mean to say this lightly, but Stringer Bell may have had some of the most important words of our time, which is just, are you taking notes on a criminal

fucking conspiracy? This is exactly what criminals do! The law says you can't, in knowing of a bankruptcy and the collections coming, you can't knowingly then move stuff as if like the deadline, ah ha ha, you can't get me until there's no home base law. Man, does it sound like Alex is explaining exactly that? It really does kind of sound that way. Oh wow, it's his dad. It's a totally separate business, totally different.

Also, I think that if I were one of the family members of the Sandy Hook victims, or I was a plaintiff, I think I would be probably very offended by the assertion that I have no agency of my own, and that everything, whenever you assertion that I have no agency of my own and that everything, whenever you hear anything that I say, you're supposed to hear that as the CIA saying this. I think that that would probably be something that I would not be thrilled to hear. Yeah.

It's almost as if that during a time period wherein he thinks it will be advantageous for him to apologize to people and appear as though he has The capacity for human compassion he does but then whenever it is no longer advantageous He does not mm-hmm as it almost as if it didn't matter in the first place and he was full of shit Yep. Oh, well. Oh well. So anyway We just had the burger saga and that was kind of all I really wanted to talk about on this I was pretty good. I liked it. It was kind of short. It was kind of short and um, I don't know Do you have anything?

Maybe. What do you got? I've got an interview with Mike Wendling. What's this? From the BBC. Holy shit But why do we listen to that? Are we doing this? Hello everyone, welcome back to knowledge fight. This is Jordan Why do we listen to that? Are we doing this? Yeah. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. This is Jordan. Unfortunately, once again, without my co-host Dan. However, I am joined by BBC reporter Mike Wendling. Hello.

Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for joining the show. You are the author of Day of Reckoning, How the Far Right Decl declared war on democracy, which will be out on May 20th, correct? That's right. Excellent. It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to have you on the show. I reached out to you. I wanted to talk to you or no, actually you guys reached out to me, which was very cool. Or at least some some rep at the BBC did. Right. Was it the publisher or the BBC? Something like that. Something like that. Good. They're all the same. Yeah. They're all the same to me.

But I read your book and I really, really enjoyed it. And it's about... Well, I think it's about a lot of things that we'll eventually talk about. But the first thing I want to talk about is its title. What is the Day of Reckoning? Well, you'll have to read to the end to actually find out what the Day of Reckoning is. It's a little bit of a narrative trick, I suppose. You know about those. It basically comes from this idea that I have increasingly noticed the conspiracy world creeping into mainstream politics.

We've all seen it. You've seen it and your listeners have seen this, but I wanted to describe it and get into it a little bit. The election was a very good time to do this, right? Because everybody, it's not just exclusive to the far right, is putting a lot of chips on this election. And people think that the world is going to be vastly different the day after, who knows? It might be, but you know, particularly for the sort of conspiracy fringes of the far right there, the stakes seem to be bigger, almost existential. Right.

What – that's kind of the next question that I have because I love a good declaratory title. But what exactly do you think will be reckoned with? Are you talking about reckoning with the far-rights war on democracy or the like? How exactly is that to be reckoned with? I, so how I would describe it is like this, that is more of a description of what they are saying. And they is very, very broad. I go into various sort of like strands in the book and you know, we can talk about some of those.

But you know, really it's like hyping up the sense of panic and fear and the conspiracy bit of it is interesting. And perhaps, from my perspective, the most interesting bit, how it's the sort of tenor of QAnon, let's say. This was very much confined to sort of like online fever dreams, you know, just a few years ago. And now it's become sort of generalized that we don't even need QAnon anymore. We don't even need these Q drops. They've sort of disappeared. What we have instead is we have a constant sort of drum beat of Qing on themes, but like more generalized fear and paranoia coming from these

groups. There's sort of two effects, right? You know, one effect is you don't know what people will do. There's this phrase, stochastic- Well, I think we do. I think we do. Exactly. They will run into the government buildings and overthrow the government. Well, yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Yeah. No, no. I think we've got a pretty good idea of what they're going to do. We have a good... However, however, there was also a balancing paranoia, right? And I found it very, very interesting when, you know, when Donald Trump was getting arrested and showing up in court and whatnot, you didn't see huge massive protests,

even in Florida, the home territory, right? What did you have? You had Laura Loomer walking around in a t-shirt that referenced Hitler or whatever, and a few like online streamers or whatever, right? And why? Why? Because if you look at what they're talking about online, it's that they are so afraid. They believe their own hype. They believe that the feds are in their movements and everywhere and that everything's a trap. So that's kind of mitigating. And I honestly do not think that we're going to see, we certainly won't see a repeat of the Capitol riot because the police will be more prepared and they'll be sort of like, don't go to the Capitol because that'll just sort of do what we did last time. It won't work. It didn't work last time. It didn't manage to really stop the transfer of power. But there's that sort of like being eaten by your own paranoia, which is really interesting.

But then it also, as you say, makes it very unpredictable what might happen. And we know that there's people bent on stopping the result of an election. Sure, sure. I think this is where I want to and this is quite a part of why I appreciated starting exactly where we are because there's so much in your book that falls into falls into a strange almost middle ground, I would say, not not on one side or on the other so much as all of these people, like what you just described. When you describe that as paranoia, these

people saying, we're not going to go to these, we're not going to do this stuff. We're not going to show up there because there might be the feds. There might be all these people in there. When you describe that as paranoia, them being afraid of that, you think you're saying, ah, they're overblowing it. This is ridiculous. But I mean, it would seem kind of silly to me for there not to be feds in these groups at this point, right? Right.

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, there's informants, right? Sure, sure. I'm not, and I'm not trying to like, oh, this is what's really going on here. I'm trying to say exactly at what point are we in the, the paranoia is overblown, of course, but is also a good warning. Like they shouldn't go. Isn't it a reasonable thing?

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you, right? Well, I mean, it's just, just because you're being sold that it could be the feds coming to break down your house doesn't mean it's also not good advice to not show up at a Donald Trump arrest, right? Right. Yeah. Maybe everybody should just calm down. Yeah.

Right? I mean, okay. So, but if you look at sort of how the actual story progresses, right? So there were informants within the Oath Keepers, within the Proud Boys, right? And some of those informants were members of the group, right? And what people just don't sort of get really when they're in a conspiracy land is that doesn't mean they were agents, right? They were informants. And there's a really big difference between those two things. You covered it before, the history of law enforcement and far-right groups and extremist

groups is really kind of murky. You know what I mean? In this country, in other countries, it's not very straightforward. But you take that sort of grain of truth and in classic conspiracy methods, you spin it into how come they won't say how many agents were in the crowd that day? There must have been hundreds. They inspired the riot and it was all a fedsurrection.

That is, yeah, that's the point I'm trying to make. But see, this is kind of what I'm interested in, that idea of, you know, in terms of all of these groups, and if you go through your kind of meat, you've kind of analyzed and classified a lot of different groups of people. You know, you have your QAnon groups over here, you have your Christian nationalist groups over here, you have your Proud Boys, you have your etc etc. All of these things. And I keep asking myself in regards to Dakota Adams, the son of Stuart Rhodes, son of Stuart Rhodes, yeah. Son of Stuart Rhodes is how is it possible to leave these groups when there's nowhere really to go?

Do you know what I mean? Like Dakota, when you talk to him, he's talking about how he's living in the woods and hunting for food? Yeah, he wasn't quite at that level by the time I spoke to him. But like, certainly that was it. I mean, Dakota is like a remarkable man. Oh, totally. He's quite incredible and unusual. And, you know, perhaps maybe not a great sort of template, I think, for somebody who's left this, just because it's sort of like, if you want a bootstrap story,

this is it. Get yourself out of an extremist lifestyle and just try to provide for your family. extremists lifestyle and just try to provide for your family. And, you know, I mean, he was just working really hard. When we were there for a week in Montana, we were just snatching whatever FaceTime we could get with him because, you know, he was going to college, you know, at his job, had to, you know, take the kids trick or treating. It was late October. You know, he was grafting, you know, and he still is grafting. And then it's like family dynamics are very unusual too. Sure. Stuart Rhodes is a psychopathic lunatic. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Exactly. His dynamics are different. Absolutely.

I kind of, in a cod psychology way, always think of the way people rebel as teenagers, right? And this is all sorts of movements, not exclusive to extremist movements. I mean, didn't you sort of grow up in a, not, I don't want to say it's a similar environment, but in a heavily religious environment. Absolutely. No, it's 100% similar. It is 100% similar. Yeah, okay. Fine. I didn't want to, you know. Except my parents were, you know, I guess just folk, you know, not not neither of them had shot their eye out, which is right huge huge

I think personally But but as far as belief systems go I would say that there are very little daylight between them Yeah, sure and you know, so I didn't but I you know rebelled against my Ethnic upbringing say you know what I mean? Like in a really minor way by dressing poorly and not going to church. Sure, sure, sure. It's hard for somebody like myself, I suppose, to sort of put myself in the shoes of somebody like that. But he's on the front line out there. He says there are people in this community, which he loves because he has friends and he has support and he has his family.

But it's also kind of alienating to him because they talk about how, you know, the, we're going to go door to door and kill all the Democrats. Sure, sure, sure. And violent fantasies, right. He's surrounded by just through no fault of his own, a 10 year old kid. Everybody around him is going let's go round up people you know and kill them. Exactly and it's to this day right? When you add to that I suppose the stress of what Donald Trump has been saying recently

which is I'm going to release these people and he hasn't been specific about who he's going to release these people." And he hasn't been specific about who he's going to release. But certainly, people who might have engaged or rather not engaged in violence or not going into the Capitol, you might think that he might be at the top of his list, which includes the ringleaders. Right? Sure. Stuart Rhodes' main hope is that Donald becomes president again and then pardons all of them and then hires him specifically as the militia of the state and he's allowed to go around killing people whenever he wants, probably including his fucking son because he's an

absolute psychopath. So yeah, that's the goal, right? Yes. Well, you know, your words, I couldn't possibly diagnose the man, but certainly I've tried to talk to him. But yeah, but certainly like his hopes are pinned on Donald Trump being elected. You know, but then, you know, we can sit here and talk about this and we can sort of analyze what Donald Trump has said in the last month or so. But is he going to follow through with it? Who knows? I have a theory. Let's put it like this. I love theories. I love theories.

Having sort of like gone into the pizza gate conspiracy, right? Conspiracy theory. If you timeline it against what was happening in politics, national politics at the time, what you have is you have a campaign that to the most fervent Trump supporters was like, lock her up, right? Hillary Clinton needs to go to jail. Sure. Pizzagate really takes off in the couple of days after he goes on to 60 Minutes, the president elects Trump after he gets elected and says, you know what? I don't think that's a real legitimate thing. We're not going to lock her up. That was just campaign. And so you have this energy, right? I don't really have any way of

proving this. It's just an interesting coincidence in my mind, I suppose. And suddenly, then you have this focus on these fake pedophiles in a pizza parlor. And that gets people riled up. So, Donald Trump might say, these Capitol riot, you know, I've looked at it actually, and now I'm not gonna do anything about it. That doesn't solve the problem. Because then people will be like, you know, all those people who are very, very obsessed about it, and there's many people who are obsessed about this and call them political prisoners and they've managed to build a movement and they managed to sort of get the ear of

Donald Trump. What do they do then? You know, what do they do then when their hope is gone? I don't know. It's not gonna be pretty though. I mean, I, here's my, here's my problem with some of that is like, I understand the idea of like, oh, where will they go without their hope? But it's like, we got fucking hoped and changed our ass in 2008 and then fucked over.

We're fine. We lived through it. Now, admittedly, at the end, result of all of that was Donald Trump, so maybe we didn't. But it's like nobody started a riot. Nobody started a war. And maybe these people are more violent, but I don't know if they're war

Capable, you know what I mean? So wait What is that paranoia? What are they capable of that like that like dot dot dot ellipsis? You know what I mean? Yeah, okay. This is interesting. So I mean what you're saying is like progressives put a lot of hope Into Obama interesting so I mean what you're saying is like progressives put a lot of hope into Obama. The whole country put a lot of hope into Obama. A lot of people who weren't even just weren't even just progressives yeah. Right, right, right. The whole country did. You know I don't... That campaign is so nebulous. And look, I'll be honest. I was living in Britain for 20 years. Right, right. Obviously, I was intensely interested in it, but it's different from actually being here,

as I've found again. Sure, yeah. The hope meant a lot of different things to a lot of people. I think maybe this is a little bit different simply because he's saying specific promises, you know what I mean? Specifically, he's going to free these quote, political prisoners. Sure. If you don't live up to that particular promise, then there will be health pay to some degree, I think. So you think the main difference here is the specificity of it. So because Obama promises

a kind of generalized, health care will be a little, you know. Right. I mean, what did that mean? Whatever it's kind of shit, you're like, eh like hey kind of did it whatever you know I'm gonna lock her up and they didn't lock her up so people have got to go fuck her up right so let me put it like that yeah but you know but not specifically Hillary Clinton right but just you know just somebody something that has some sort of vague connection so I need to throw a punch and I'm gonna throw it at whomever's nearby if I can't throw it at who needs it. Let me let me put it like this.

Yeah. Oh, Obama could have run by saying, you know what? Let's go back to the time and the economy is complete meltdown. We're going to put bankers in jail. Right. Yeah. We are going to put the heads of the major banks in jail because they completely have fucked us.

Right. Right. And then he didn't. Right. I think things would have been a little bit different. Right. And you know, there would have been protests, you know, a matter sort of a shock. Are we talking?

I have no idea. Well, you know, only you know in your own heart. No, no, for sure. I mean, I mean more like are we talking? Is this an equivalence test right here? Are we talking if Obama had made promises like I'll lock up, you know, the bankers and then does it? Let's actually, let's take Obama out. Let's make Bernie. Bernie seems much more reasonable. So Bernie comes to you,

he says, I'm going to lock them up. Then he doesn't. All progressives everywhere are disappointed and hopeless. Even our champion has nothing. Are you saying that then January 6th happens on the left? I mean look, conspiracy theories and political violence are not limited to any one group. Sure. I mean, I guess when we say a Bernie Sanders presidency where he fails to, this is very very hypothetical to the third degree or whatever. Oh yeah, it's never happening in this country. Like I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't rule that out, you know, for sure. Like it's hard

to say specifically what would have happened, but I certainly wouldn't, I certainly wouldn't rule that out. You know, we obviously like I go into political violence in the United States and how it comes, you know, mostly from the right, not exclusively, but mostly from the right these days in terms of murders, terrorist attacks and whatnot. There's historical periods where the opposite has been true, you know? Certainly. That's an interesting question. What is that, do you mean, when the opposite has been true? Do you mean like John Brown or the IRA? Or like what are we talking about?

Oh, I mean, yeah, any of those things. Any of those things? You know, or the weatherman or, you know. OK, now let me ask you this question. All right. Uh, because I wonder about this. I do you think. Because it is called the day of reckoning. Do you have a value judgment on the day of reckoning?

Is it a good or bad thing? I don't have a value judgment on the day of reckoning? Is it a good or bad thing? I don't have a value judgment. I use it, I suppose, as a description of the stakes that a lot of people on these fringes believe are going sort of thrown down around the election, right? Well, I mean, but aren't, isn't that like what regular people are talking about? Like on CNN and the like, you got to point. Hey, at the end of this election, if Donald Trump is president, CNN is probably going to be lit on fire. You know, like there are people who are very stridently warning and very mainstream spaces.

It's good that we got to this because I think that this is very interesting. And you know, in terms of predictions, I wouldn't really want to offer one because whatever we predict here was not going to come true, right? It's just like the universe. Sure. Well, in 2017, I predicted a massive global pandemic that shut everything down who didn't predict that Totally I know it's come are you the clairvoyant maybe I know what's coming I'm desperate I would I would I would love to know um No, yeah, you're right. But what I would like to interrogate, I suppose, because the book deals with the far right

and what they believe, it's not so much what the people on CNN are talking about. I always just look for specifics. I look for anecdotes and how this actually plays out on the ground and what people in Iowa think about it to take a random place. Sometimes I hear this talk and I think, I really don't know what people mean by how it's going to herald the end of democracy or what do you do to justify stopping that if you believe that that's true? Good question. I'm not sure. Um, you know, again, like, um, I find it hard to visualize, right?

Like let's say, let's say Trump gets elected and anything can happen. Um, you know, cause people ask me all the time, they're like, particularly people in Britain, you know, my friends in London or whatever, they're like, Oh, what's going to happen? Tell me, tell me, tell me. I was like, why are you listening to me, number one? I didn't think he was gonna get elected in 2016. Sure.

Number two, I have no sort of special insight, but I say, just be prepared for anything, right? This could happen, that could happen. We got two old men. We got two old men. We've got two old men. It's not like that's bad advice, but it's also not exactly helpful advice. It's not helpful. No, it's not helpful. I mean, like, if you would amend it that way.

Psychologically. Have a go bag, you know? Like, have ice, you know? Be a blanket in your car. Like, I feel like that's useful advice. I suppose, you know, it's very interesting to read, what is it, Project 2025, you know, these reports that say, you know, this is how Donald Trump would run his next administration. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, but then again, a lot of that stuff is, you know, we're going to, you know, root out all these civil servant type people, right?

Sure. And that doesn't necessarily to me to be sort of like three alarm fire type territory. There's courts that will get involved with this kind of stuff. There are people who will be very active from day one, as we saw the last time that Donald Trump got elected. I was having dinner with a friend earlier this year and it was in New Haven, right? In New Haven, Connecticut. And so we're sitting there. I was actually doing a story on democratic politics, not in New Haven, but nearby. And this old guy, I hadn't seen him for years. We're sitting in a pizza place and he's a very sort of like left guy, right? He's a very left-wing guy. And we're just talking about

politics and he says to me, if Trump gets in, who's going to stop him? And I just looked around the room, you know, I looked around at all the sort of Yale students that we were surrounded with in one pizza place in New Haven and the whole and the block surrounding us, you know, the is like the heart of liberal America in this, you know, blue state, you know, completely blue region. And they were like, we'll capitulate in the heartbeat, sir. God bless America. I think maybe there may be some opposition to Donald Trump if he becomes president. I ask you this question because I recognize I recognize what you're saying, but the Women's March.

Global largest protest ever, multiple Supreme Court justices and the end of abortion followed. So who fucking cares is my question about your resistance. Well, I mean, look, I think that's a completely valid point. Right? Like what is the real... But it's not as if... I wouldn't necessarily talk to that. I suppose I would just say, the idea that there won't be any

type of resistance is crazy. You could kind of say the same thing about- Well, I mean, sure, there will be some resistance, that's fine. But who... I mean, there will be some victories and that's fine. You know, there will be some days where you're like, Oh, they didn't do this and that's fine. But we abortions gone. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, yeah, sure that, but what is the what is the point of this resistance? If it will just, I guess, maybe slow a giant ice cube ball rolling down the thing. You know what I'm saying? You know, look, that's, again, perfectly valid point. Perfectly valid point.

History doesn't move in a straight line. We know that. Sure. Say the same thing for the March of Our Lives. I went to cover that in 2018, I believe it was. And you have all these kids, you've got hundreds of thousands kids marching through Washington and it's just like a super emotional day. And you kind of say like, okay, well, you know what? We're nowhere near sort of a federal assault weapons ban. There are still mass shootings in America, quite a few of them. Will that have some difference? Will that make some difference at some level? And

certainly in some localities and states, cities or whatever, have passed gun laws. We're not too far from Highland Park where that has inspired in state of Illinois laws that restrict guns. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. What's the real effect? It's not zero. The real effect. Let's check back in about 25 years time. Sure. That absolutely. No, no. And I'm not, I'm sorry. Apologies if I, I, I'm just a clownish. No, no. I mean, it's a totally- Apologies if I come off like that. I'm just, I'm trying to, I'm trying to- It's a totally valid point. No, well, I'm not trying to make a point. I'm trying to like interrogate the words that

you've written down, if that makes sense. I'm not, I interrogate the words that you've written down if that makes sense I'm not I'm not trying to say like oh, this is what we need to do I'm trying to say that in in your book. There is a chapter titled no political Solution yeah now to me the question then becomes if there is no political solution The question then becomes, if there is no political solution, do you mean there is no solution or do you mean that there is a solution, it's just not political? No, no, no. I think that is a reference to the hardest core of the hardest core, right? Sure.

That is a reference to, again, I try to be as descriptive as possible. It's sort of crazy in American journalism where you're like, no, actually, I'm paid not to have skin in the game or take a side. It just so happens my expertise is in the far right. So I'm looking at these people and there's all sorts of interpretations or assumptions or whatever that come along with that. But that specific chapter goes into people who don't believe that there's any political solution. And like, they are hell bent on violence, right? Sure. Talking about, you know, violent terrorists, domestic

extremist groups, you know, which, you know, like a lot of people in the book I sort of like talk to, even though they're fringe or extremist groups, these people are very difficult to even find, you know? Sure, sure. These people certainly won't talk to you in a sort of like friendly manner or give any sort of reliable information. So, you know, that's my way of summing up what they think, unfortunately. There's some of the more scary elements. Certainly. Well, I mean, I'm, I'm right.

I mean, and obviously the, the scariest of them are the, the like, let's, let's go hot shooting war kind of thing. And I recognize that. But my question upon reading that chapter was, if there is a political solution, right, which would be like electing Biden or whatever, or, you know, whatever it is you'd like, but that will be met with violence. Is it a political solution? Do you know what I mean? Is the political solution in this regard to elect Trump in order to avoid the violent response that you might get if you elect Biden?

I suppose a lot of those people would... Sorry. Biden. I suppose a lot of those people would... Sorry, I took the question. No, I understand. The perspective of their perspective, their political solution is some sort of Trump, maybe dynasty. Again, it's nebulous, but certainly that's the first step, Trump getting reelected. After that, what happens, they will disagree. We saw during the first Trump administration about how these things fractured because suddenly you're in power and suddenly you actually have to do things that matter and then you're not sort of please the alt right at the same time as you're going to please the, you know, the slash tax slashing, you know, club for growth

or whatever. I guess, you know, when you go to the hardest core of the hardest core, are Are they going to be very pleased with Trump? Well, you know, they're not sort of like down the line for him, I guess. Sure. But I mean, I'm talking more specifically about Biden, right? Like the arguments, as I understand it, from all of these groups, the danger from all of these groups is essentially the attack on democracy. The threat of violence.

Right, right, right. Now, that is, I mean, essentially an extortionate voting base saying that if you elect the candidate we don't like, we're going to J6 you, which is what they did. So they've established that that's what they're going to do. Right. So then should we not expect that we're being extorted? Should we not say that a political solution is voting for Trump, whereas a violent solution is voting for Biden? In other words, like, hey, vote for Trump and to lessen the impact of violence. I mean, isn't that kind of the point of these groups? Isn't that what they are describing?

Isn't that what you are describing them as in this scenario? Yeah. Listen, it's not they even themselves, they're not sort of as clear cut. You know what I mean? Sure. They don't see themselves as violent. Part of the whole J6 narrative thing is that, hey, it was peaceful. And actually the violence was precipitated by the feds. Oh, so it was violent. No, no, it was peaceful. Oh, and there was a million people there. Oh, but only a few people went in the Capitol. It's just like that, you know, fire hose of bullshit, essentially. Right. Well, I mean, the mob doesn't consider itself violent unless you don't pay up. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, hey, there you go. That's, yes, some of these elements, There you go. Yes. Some of these elements, that's probably a good way to think about it, right? Because if you think that there's a political solution, you don't start a foundation. You're

not like Mike Lindell. You don't advertise on Fox and then develop some sort of... What he has now is some sort of weird thing where you can all be poll monitors and organizations or whatever. You know what I mean? It's sort of like parallel universe, things like True the Vote, and they make these movies and social media output and stuff. So yeah, if you truly think that there's no political solution, you don't do those things because you think they are useless. On the other hand, like in the back pocket, there's always sort of a threat of like, yeah, we're going to do something. I think, you know, we don't really hear that much about that right now because the polls

are looking very good for Donald Trump or a lot better than you might expect, right? For somebody who is bedrollers. Oh, no, for me, I expected him to win. I expected him to win in 2016. You expect him to win. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We buy a lot. It's not going to be pretty. Okay. That has sort of tempered that. So it's like they haven't, you know, you don't hear sort of overt threats, you know, hey, we're going to do a big march because we know that the fix is in. Right.

I mean, I'm sure we'll hear some of that later in the year. Sure. Sure. Okay. So then, yeah. So the answer is yes. Vote for Trump so we don't die. I mean, so that some of these groups will not...

I'm certainly not advocating At all Be the pitch it will be the pitch from some of these groups, you know They will they will make Threats, you know, I mean They are deliberate and open threats. Some of them will not be veiled. No, I mean, you know Deliberate and open threats. Some of them will not be veiled. No, I mean, you know Yeah, well, I mean look we don't I don't see Trump at the moment saying, you know

We are going to make sure we get the job done this time everybody brings guns to the Capitol, right sure so You know while he's saying they were great patriots, those people on January the 6th, they're great patriots. Which ones? Well, I mean, nobody was sort of gets close to sort of asking him that question. Yeah. Well, I mean, why? Why ask him that question? You and I know, everybody knows the answer who needs to know the answer to that question, right?

Oh, no, I think that question is very- The people he's talking to know the answer and you and I know the answer. It's Nazis. No, no, no, no. I think the question- It's fucking Nazis. I think it's a very interesting question. Like who are the good people? Like which ones? Yeah, like which ones? The Nazis. No, the people who were at

January the 6th. The Nazis. I don't know. Those are your words. Those are the good people. Those are your words. That's my, that's my interesting. See, when I, when I read alt-right in your book, when I read Christian nationalist in your book book in these contexts, it bothers me. It bothers me because alt-right, I think now we have to like looking back on it, now alt-right doesn't mean what I think it was branded to mean. Now I think we have to accept that alt-right means whatever amount of Nazi is socially acceptable enough for me to function in polite society. Yeah, yeah.

It's a four dimensional title, right? So no, I get it. There was people who were having, who had fascistic beliefs, who were hiding them under the layers of internet irony that we call alt-right. And there were other people who weren't hiding it. I mean, my last book was about the alt-right. You're going to have to tell me about the people who weren't hiding it. Oh, well, I mean, the people who weren't hiding it were, you know, people who were like, I mean the people who weren't hiding it were you know people who were like

we are nazis you know right so the people who are hiding it are the all right and the people who weren't hiding it are the alt right who were nazis so they're they're nazis right so if you know they're nazis based upon the words that we use to describe them. Why is it impossible to say they're Nazis? I don't think that everybody at January 6th was a Nazi, you know? Ah, now we've got a very interesting question. You know, if you're a January 6th, then you're not a Nazi. Why? I think that there's a whole bunch of reasons why people get swept up into mobs, you know what I mean? It's like they were Trump supporters. Some were Trump supporters. Some were Proud Boys. You say some people were violent. Some people were very violent, right? There were many people there that were very violent.

And they, you know, smash windows and beat police officers. There's other people who weren't. There's other people who didn't go inside. There's people who went there and then they saw it all kick off and then they got their asses out of there. In some ways, I don't think that actually is like, you may push back on this, I'm ready for it. I love it when people are about to say something to me that they kind of don't wanna say.

No, no, I wanna say this. Okay, okay. Calling people Nazis is unhelpful for, calling a huge number of people Nazis is unhelpful in a number of ways. Because I think a lot of people are not actually thinking through the politics of all this stuff in that level of detail. And also you hear this all the time. I'm sure you get this all the time. It's like we do not believe in the Tenants of the German National Socialist Party as it I don't get any of that 33 I don't 45. I mean, let me try. No, we're not talking about those

Push back on that, uh, I don't care No, no, no, let me push back on that. I don't care. Does that make sense? This is the thing about those arguments that I find so interesting of the engagement arguments that I see from that kind of Twitter space that you have to call us the alt right, otherwise we'll all be so mad at you. Right? Yeah, no. And it's not the it's not actually those people themselves that you sort of care

about. I mean, or one cares about, right? It's more just making your argument to a broader audience. Right? I'm interested in that. What what argument to a broader audience are you talking about? All right. So let's not say argument. Let me ask you this. What what argument to a broader audience are you talking? Communicating to a broader audience. I'm not necessarily making an argument there but if I'm writing a story if I'm writing a story, I'm like I don't sort of You know write the Nazis Sure, the people there, you know, I mean? We say, I always try and drill down

to the actual sort of specific thing. It's impossible to avoid. It's impossible to say like, hey, these people are far right. Oh, we're not far right. Proud Boys aren't far right. We just believe in America. Blah, blah, blah. Don't care who you are. Fuck off. Let's break it down. Let's break it down. Why do we call you far right? We call you far right because you have extremist views and guns and social relationships. And also you are prepared to back those views up with violence as you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? So yes, you have to use shorthand sometimes, but I like sort of drilling down

to sort of like specifics in terms of actions and beliefs. And obviously like a lot of the people there, you know, Trump says the communists and the fascists and the globalists and, you know, he's and the globalists or whatever. Sure. I don't know if he uses the term globalist that much, but anyway, it's all in a chain of these days.

Democrats, fascists, communists, like it's crazy. It's like all those things you think are the same thing. And it's just the other side. Mm-hmm. You think are the same thing and it's just the other side I I'm not going to as a member of the press Like play that game. I'm sure try not to sure but let me let me Throw this out at you. All right, so

Your NBC News or whatever, you've drilled down to this is why we call you the far right. Am I NBC or am I BBC? Well, I mean, yeah, apologies. Apologies. I thought that's what we were talking about. I'm not talking about you in specific, just a general line. Okay, no, that's my question. Any media outlet, I'm not talking about far right mainstream or far left, I don't care.

Any media outlet, right? So you are talking to somebody and you are saying to them Here is how I know you are far right blank blank blank blank blank blank, right? Yeah now you have given me a definition for far, right? If I say to you aha, I don't believe blank and blank and blank and you say well then sir that makes you alt Right, which is now a socially acceptable form of the exact same thing minus two little things. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah sure.

Did they exist before or did you make them? Look. Are they responding to that scenario? Yeah. Are they responding to that scenario? Yeah, like they might respond to that scenario, but like are they arguing in good faith? Like, no. Well, you well, no, they aren't. No, usually, usually. No, honestly, look, I get messages sometimes. I get messages from from people who actually are arguing in good faith.

Like they're rare, which is disappointing, right? Because I am interested and the really annoying thing is that when you think that somebody is arguing in good faith and they aren't. Sure. You know, they're sort of saying, you know, I'm not a Trump fan, but I would really like to know why you think that, you know, what he says is a conspiracy theory or whatever. And nine times out of 10, those people are actually sort of like fully signed up to voter fraud is rife and Democrats are eating babies or whatever. You know what I mean?

Sure. But you know, there is one out of ten- But they are telling you that they're not- They are like a curious person and they're like, hey, now we have the social media thing and so I can reach out to somebody specifically and they might or might not- But by your- Answer your question. specifically and they might or might not. But by your answer, so then by by that, if we're going to transpose that back to the alt right thing,

you're saying that 90 percent of the alt right are Nazis. If that's if that's what your descriptor is, is that one time out of 10, there is somebody who is arguing in good faith. Then that one time, there is somebody in the alt right. And you are describing them as alt-right when they're Nazis. Is that not what you have just described to me? You like to get people to describe other people as Nazis. No, I'm not trying to get other people to describe people as Nazis. I am trying to read all of these books and see all of the ways that people try not to call Nazis Nazis. I am not the one trying to impose upon people. So yeah, I mean,

what I am seeing is a million different words being applied to avoid doing something because those people will be pissed off at you. Oh, I'm not really worried about them being pissed off at me. I don't think you are. Let's do more specifically about that alt-right definition of that idea for you. That one out of 10 is, in genuine faith, an alt-right person. No, that one out of 10, that's just, I don't mean, I suppose maybe I wasn't so clear.

When I'm talking about that one out of 10, that's sort of people who are messaging me or DMing me on Twitter or whatever. It's like, that's not, I wouldn't put a name on it. I think what happened with the alt-right is, that was never a term that was incredibly well defined. In my last book, I tried to define it as much as possible. In fact, I did the same kind of thing. I was like, there's all these people, there's these Mennonist people, and then there's an

incel subset or whatever. They don't always get along. They share a lot of beliefs. What is their common ground? Their common ground is they think that Donald Trump is great and whatever version or flavor of extremism that they're promoting, they think that he's going to push it. So look, again, I don't think it's super useful. You can call them Nazis.

And look, I got people who, you know, I like to talk to people who- I don't need your permission, sir. You can call them. I love it when people give their opinions. I'm going to reflect your opinions. You can call, you know, somebody, you know, a woke libtard if you want. I just like to, I prefer to sort of like drill down and say, okay, well what the hell does that actually mean in practice? Right?

This is the question for me. This is what's so interesting to me is the binary there that you have just described perfectly. Right? So on the one hand, we have clearly defined alt-right, right? That allows you to say, I inhabit these characteristics and thus I am one of these, right? Whereas woke libtard is completely nebulous bullshit that you can throw at anybody. Yeah, yeah, it's an insult. So I can hide in alt-right. Do you know what I'm saying? Because that's Yeah, although I would probably say that alt-right is, you know, not number one,

it quickly became a toxic brand. To who? To us? To the nation of at large, I would think, particularly after Charlottesville. And number two, it became a NAF brand. And that is actually actually more powerful, right? Like, oh, that's that thing from like five years ago. Like everybody sharing Pepe names these days is like a boomer, right? And they're, you know, like high on K or whatever. But like, it's just like, you know, if you look at like the sub stacks that these people pump out, it's just like, oh my gosh, get some new memes or whatever,

you know? And that is in a weird way is almost like more powerful than any one, any sort of like specifically one of these groups could go. Because look, I have no doubt that the groups that I look at in the book will go the way of all the other ones that were in my book about the alt-right. It's like half of them are defunct or just fizzled out, got arrested. You know, just fizzled out, got arrested. It's this sort of cultural stream, I suppose, that's more important. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely that. There's definitely that. I wonder, and this is why we talked in advance about how I was definitely going to bring up religion in this regard, especially in the way that you've just

described these fractured, splintered, competitive and frankly incompatible beliefs, all united around one thing. It's hard not to think of religion, that old time religion. Whatever you hear, oh no, I'm a QAnon guy and and oh, I'm a Catholic, and oh, I'm a blah. It's all the same in my estimation. The way that you've written these characters, all of these classified groups, is that if you drill it down, somewhere along the line is magical thinking, right? Well, I think it's even like maybe more specific. It's like what unites them is Donald Trump.

I mean, is it Donald Trump the person? Absolutely not. Donald Trump the person is fucking garbage. Everyone everyone kind of functionally believes that Donald Trump the person is garbage because that's how we live our lives. People laugh and all that stuff. They believe Trump the God figure is way more than Trump the guy who's going to steal $50 million from you. So yeah, you've put it in a way that I don't necessarily put it, but let me put it like this.

I have a knack for that. Trump the man versus Trump the idea. Like yeah, no, it's like the spirit, right? Right. It's the spirit. You've got it. Yeah, yeah. Look, it's very, this isn't in the book because I sort of did this after I wrote the book,

but I was in Iowa to do some reporting on evangelicals in Trump. And my editor suggested this to me, and I thought, oh gosh, I'm not sure. I mean, obviously I'll do it, because boss says. But I find it actually is like tremendously fascinating. And specifically what was fascinating about it is obviously we know that when Trump came on the scene 2015, evangelicals were like, hmm, not sure about this guy.

He's divorced. He's a bit of a playboy. Not one of us. Now they love him. And what has happened, what happened since he became president was that number of evangelicals has gone up in this country. Right. And weirdly, church attendance keeps declining. So you have a lot of evangelicals who don't even go to church. And actually their faith is in a relationship with leaders and other community members that do not have anything to do with a church or your pastor or whatever, which is traditionally

what people look to for leadership. And instead it's politicians and it's kind of interesting and often people, I think, don't quite get it right when they call it a cult or they call it worship of Trump. I don't think it's that. I think that's actually kind of belittling to a lot of these people. But it's certainly like a cultural and religious identity that's all become tied up. And it's a definite trend, like statistics bear it out and the experts bear it out. And you can see it in these places.

I'm interested in that question in this regard. So I'm not allowed to call somebody a Nazi Because it's not specific enough. Why are you? I'm just I'm just being a prick Stupid I'm just fucking around. Um, no, no, no my my my question is why exactly are they still called evangelicals? Is it because they self identify as evangelicals?s? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, from the study it is, yeah. Okay, so what is it that makes an evangelical then? Just saying you are one? I mean, yeah, I suppose. I mean, that's a good question. Okay, that's a good question. Okay. That's fine.

I don't think it's... Obviously, they have faith, right? Sure. Like, you're not like, I am a member of the Church of Satan or whatever, I'm also an evangelical. I'm an atheist evangelical. That doesn't make any sense. Right. That's basic. But it's not... It doesn't get much more complicated than that. And yeah, it is like self-identification. Yeah.

Are you evangelical? Well, I think that means that you believe in Jesus. I think it gets extremely complicated and part of it, that's another thing that frustrates me is that idea of you're calling them evangelical because they self-identify as that, But that doesn't mean anything. I'm not. I'm not. It doesn't mean anything in terms of what is an evangelical. If all it is, is I self-identify as an evangelical, then exactly how is it possible for these people to make large pronunciations

about what evangelicals believe if all it is is just people who self-identify as whatever on any given day. Yeah, I mean, I think that is... For instance, what is the difference between an evangelical and a Christian nationalist in your book? Yeah, okay. So, I don't know, would some of these people... Okay, so Christian nationalist would be Oh, you can be an evangelical and not be a Christian nationalist, like clearly. I'm asking you what the difference between these two things is, not in terms of,

yeah, I mean, okay, so to put it very specific, what's the difference between the alt right and a Nazi? What's the difference between an evangelical and a Christian nationalist? I mean, to put it very simply, a Christian nationalist believes that the US is a Christian nation, right? And like Christianity should sort of be, should run through the government, right? The nation should be run on Christian principles according to what they think Christian principles are, right? Right.

Yes. Like, I think that's probably as specific as I can get about it because we can have a very long conversation about what Christian principles are and how they should specifically be implemented in government if you believe that. Right? Sure. But that's the baseline definition. And there's plenty of evangelicals who do not believe that. You know what I mean? Who,

you know, God's realm is God's realm, right? I'm asking, I suppose I'm asking you because I think this gets back to the same question. You say to me, you know, oh, these people don't want a Christian nation. And I ask myself, tomorrow there's a Christian nation. I don't think these people give a fuck. I think they keep going on about their day and they go, myself tomorrow there's a Christian nation I don't think these people give a fuck I think they keep going on about their day and they go oh it's a good Christian nation that we live in that's what being an evangelical is you want a Christian nation because you want everyone to be a Christian right yeah I have a Christian nation if everyone is a Christian yeah yeah I see I mean I suppose that you know an evangelical who's a Christian. Yeah. Yeah. I see. I mean, I suppose that, you know, an evangelical who is not a Christian nationalist might be completely. And then you're going to you're going to hit

me for this. A political. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Apologies. I again, this is just a weird thing that happens now where people are like, I don't want to say this to Jordan. Hey, you know, it's very look, I get I get what you're saying. Like, you know, you're not saying anything. I'm genuinely interested in your book and how these definitions are functioning within the context of your book. Does that make sense to you? I'm not trying to put forth anything. I'm interested in the connections between all of these different chapters because in

the center of your book are like very delineated chapters with very specific kind of groupings. Oh, yeah. Just did in how these are the same and how they're different and what it is that makes them different, that makes them specific, because if they are different and they are specific, then they each require a specific and different response. Whereas if they're all the same, I get it. Then they all deserve one fucking response, don't they?

What response is that? I mean, that's my question to you. If there's no political solution, it's in your book. There is. Yeah. So look, obviously these groups, there's a tremendous amount of overlap between these groups. You know what I mean? Totally. I am trying to sort of make it sort of make sense in a way. Otherwise it could just be like, in 50,000 words, a stream of consciousness. What I always like to say, I suppose, and like this is going to be like a little bit wishy washy, but there's a tremendous amount of overlap,

but also there's like tremendous infighting. The infighting happens on the level sometimes of like theory and ideology, but like more often on personalities, right? Right. Vibes. You might have Christian- Vibes, big vibe energy, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You have Christian nationalists and some of them won't talk to other Christian nationalists because they snubbed them at a party or like whatever, you know, got involved in there with their husbands or wives or whatever, you know, who are we to judge? Who are we to judge?

Take a look at, you know, some of the stuff that's happening in Florida right now. I wouldn't say I wouldn't say any more than that. But look, I mean, yeah, you're good to demand definitions. Like I say, I love definitions. I think you can go quite far in trying to, I think maybe, isn't this a problem too? Like if I sort of say, you know, a Christian nationalist believes one through 10, and then Michael Flynn says, I don't believe in number nine. Does that not make him a Christian nationalist? I don't think so. I think Michael Flynn is

Christian nationalist. And he might change a few things about what he believes tomorrow, but he probably will still be a Christian nationalist tomorrow. He also has sworn an oath to QAnon in the past, right? So he's also involved in that movement. Would he sort of maybe think twice about that now? Perhaps? I don't know. Love to talk to him.

He doesn't respond to my interview requests. So look, I think we can be specific about some of these categories. I think they are definitely interrelated. There's a lot of detail in the weeds. Absolutely. I mean, that's where I'm getting, I'm getting very specific because when you describe to me, Michael Flynn, Christian nationalist, that's one through 10. Michael Flynn says I'm not number nine.

So that means I'm not a Christian nationalist. Would you, would you call him that in print? Would I call him that in print? If I was doing a story on Christian nationalist, yeah, sure. Would I call him that in print? Would I call him that in print? If I was doing a story on Christian Nationalists, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Why?

Why? If he doesn't self-identify as a Christian Nationalist. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sure. So, like, no, that's a good point. Like, sometimes people self-identify as something and they might not be that thing. Sometimes people self-identify something and we might agree with them. I guess it's just like, it you know, hey, I've studied Christian nationalism for the last 10 years and this is the definition. I'll take that definition. So good guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

And by my judgment and by my sort of expert sources, I suppose, like he will fit that definition. Okay. Yeah, like it's... What's so- So- I don't want to sort of minimize it. I don't want to minimize it. I don't want to minimize it because- Do you know where I'm going to come with after that?

Probably back to the Nazi thing. Probably back to the Nazi thing. Look, I mean, the Proud Boys is a good example of this, you know, they are a good example is an excellent example. It's like, you know, they're always they're always upset about the far right label, you know, Gavin McInnis and Jason Lee Van Dyke made a Proud Boys film about the Proud Boys in 2018, 2018, 2019. Before we had even shot a second of footage, right? They said, we're going to sue you. Do not call us far right. We are patriotic. What is it? Fraternal organization is what they've used.

You know what I mean? Whatever they want to call themselves. And it's like, sorry, no. For the reasons that I've just outlined, you know what I mean? Like you're a far right, fringe, extremist organization. Like any story. And maybe that's a very clear example.

Other examples are not going to be so clear, which is why I'm hedging a bit about the thousands of people who are out there January the 6th, every single one. And then again, it's the whole sort of, you see the parallel in the conspiracy world where it's like, if you are wrong about one thing, they only need to be right most of the time. Mainstream journalists, commentators, experts or whatever, if they're wrong once, then in the eyes of those people, they just wail away at it. I think it's more than just PR though.

I think it's more just like, hey, let's have some sort of like, this dedication to the truth and, you know, objectivity in like a very broad sense, right? And that's why I'm not gonna be like, hey, all those people are Nazis. You know, I'm not I don't even, you know, I think that maybe some of those people didn't even know what they were up to. You know, OK, I mean, we're drunk.

All right. Tell me more about that. Are you less responsible for your actions if you're drunk? Yeah, it depends. It depends legally. I'm not a judge. Are you, are you, are you less racist if you were drunk at the time? Oh yeah, no, I mean like, no, I'm not, I'm not saying that as an, as an excuse, but I'm saying it's like, uh, it's, it's, um, you know, it's like, uh, you know, there's debate over language. Okay, so let me put it like this. Were some people sort of looking to overthrow the government? Yes. Were some people not? Possibly. Was it a riot? Definitely. Right. And this is the alt-right thing. It's

like, yes, are some of you alt-right people Nazis? Yes. Are all of you fascists? Well, yeah, there's probably that, you know, we're going back to the number here. I don't want to put a number on it, but say it's like 10% um You know, I don't necessarily want to get into like Semantics about how many of these people are you know, sure. It's well, that's that's an interesting. That's an interesting point because What you're talking about though is like intent Right. Yeah, like what? Yeah, what was in these people's hearts at the time? Yeah, absolutely now. I ask you this. It's a very interesting who fucking cares

If the results are the same Yeah, I mean, you know, um do you need to be a fascist at January 6th if Trump wins and Do you need to be a fascist at January 6th if Trump wins? And becomes dictator for life? Yeah. So like, if it were. Do I care if you in like in your heart of hearts, you were like, this is a good thing. Do I care?

If it, yeah, if it works, then like, yeah, you were, you were wrapped up in that. And, um, well, certainly like legally, like that's not always the case. You know, it's like, you know, judges were not sort of saying, you know what I'm saying? That's what I'm so interested in your book is why I keep doing this. Sorry, I don't quite get the question. I I'm what I'm what I'm trying to say is in terms of the in terms of the differences between these things, in terms of Michael Flynn, I will call him a Christian nationalist, even if he tells you he's not, because in I know his intent is bad.

I know I can discern I don't like look into the hearts of people and have some sort of you know, aren't you? Aren't you looking into the hearts of the j6 people only they're not fascist because they said so because I believe them when they said so No, they wrote it down in court. No, I suppose I've just you know, I've seen I've looked at a lot of the cases, right? Okay, and And I've talked to a number of the cases, right? Okay. And I've talked to a number of the people, right? So that's why I come up with that. You know what I mean? Okay. It's like, also, yes, you judge somebody by their actions. Are some people lying to me when they're talking about that possibly? Yeah Okay, are they are they minimizing or they changing their how do I know? Yeah

How do I know if somebody is It's look it's very very like specific, you know, I mean like it's It's, look, it's very, very, like, specific. You know what I mean? Like, it's a case by case basis. You asked me this before, before we came on about how I know. Like, how do I know if the wife of Stuart Rhodes or Alex Jones is accurately describing what their role was in those organizations like an Oath Keepers or Infowars. Right? Yeah. And there's, okay, so look, it's pretty, I don't want to call it simple, but straightforward.

If there's specific sort of things, facts like, hey, I met him on this date, blah, blah, blah. All right, well, let's check that. Things that are checkable. When people have memories about things, and this is true in a completely different context for January the 6th. One January the 6th guy was like, you know what, I just walked in there, you know, I was just protesting.

I walked in, I was in there for like 10 minutes. Now I can check that he was in there for 10 minutes, right? His stated intent, should we take that with a grain of salt? Yeah, possibly. We can set that against, you know, what does the judge in the case say? Right? And in that particular case, the judge says, well, you're sorry, you're going to prison. You were part of a rebellion against the United States.

Right? Obstructing an official proceeding. That's that. You can't really sort of pin down to that sort of degree of specificity, if you see what I mean. I mean, you're saying that the results could be the same. And again, that's like a completely, in fact, that is like the actual danger, right? It's not that a majority of the population is going to believe that voter fraud is just going to completely wipe out the election and then they're going to march on Washington and burn down the White House and then Donald Trump will be dictator for life or whatever. But that does happen when a lot of people who are in the area just sort of go along with it.

So I think that raises, actually your question raises kind of like a reasonable... That's the idea though, isn't it? Specter. The reasonable people will just go along with it. Is that when you tell me about Christian nationalists being different from evangelicals, right now Christian nationalists are ascendant, which means evangelicals will fly right alongside them. And you can say, yeah, well, yeah. When Christian nationalists are below the earth wondering about how to get out from underneath their goblin holes, evangelicals are wonderful and lovely people. I spoke to evangelicals.

I spoke to a number of them. And they did not all have love for Donald Trump. And a lot of them, not a lot of them, but certainly several of them said, what he has done in office is despicable and we hate January the 6th and whatnot. Sure. You know. Right now, this is what I'm kind of interested in in regards to kind of this whole thing as a whole, is the idea of what I think is called, or what I'm calling, an accurate falsehood. Something that is totally accurate and yet is 100% false.

So there's one thing that Kelly Jones said that is why this kind of sparked in my mind and why I haven't been able to let go little kind of definition kinds of things the whole time, and why I haven't been able to to let go little kind of definition kinds of things the whole time is Kelly said we started at JFK assassination theories and then wound up at January whatever it is yeah and that is an accurate statement that is an accurate statement that could be said right uh and the way it is said though in your book is it tells me, ah, here is the story of innocence lost. It is a narrative being created out of that. Yeah. By itself. Okay. Right. Okay. They started at Waco to January 6th. It is a lateral move. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah yeah. It's not a fall from grace.

I know. This is so so to me whenever I keep hearing people talk about the state of the United States etc etc I 100% am delighted that people thought we were good but this is a lateral move from the birth of the country. Wow, you've gone back right not just to Waco but to yes the birth of the country I'm just I'm just saying what we're experiencing is not as as earth shatteringly new I Apologize, I mean political political violence is like, you know, cut through American history. I don't think like anybody can deny that. Right?

Sure. You know, leaving aside all the other violence that is not explicitly political. Right? It's a very violent country. On the other hand, you know, I also do tend to take a global view of these things working for international news organization. I used to not concentrate so much on the United States. I went to all sorts of these people, particularly when...

It particularly sort of gets me when you hear all these sort of like, the massive amount of stuff about so-called censorship, right? Which is basically just people getting shadow banned on Twitter or whatever. I'm not saying that's a good thing. There's like arguments for and against or whatever. It's debatable. But they have no idea what it's like in Uganda, you know? Or like, you know, the Democratic Republic of Congo where like, you know, oh, oh yeah, you think that you're going to get thrown in jail for a tweet or whatever. Like, let's go to some, you know, countries where... Sure. Don't fuck with the case of Thailand. Let's go to India where they just like shut the internet down.

They're just like, hey, in this state, we're just going to shut the internet down today. It's fine. Okay. You want some censorship? We can show you some censorship. And again, I'm not sort of trying to like minimize things to say that they're not like, you know, they might not be doing something wrong or whatever. But you need to get some perspective. Some of these people. Right. Well, I mean, that's an interesting point. Is this a four dimensional problem, if you will? Is this a situation where you say, it's a good thing we are not like India

in so far as our Internet can be shut down? But isn't that also saying, so we better fucking acts like absolute lunatics to make sure we don't turn into India Otherwise, we're fucked. You know, you know what I'm saying this we we live in a very Strange country on its own terms, you know Like that is a good point, you know You can say, well, okay, like if you look about, we're obviously being roiled about debates over anti-Semitism and the Middle East conflict and anti-Muslim sentiment and whatever.

I always find it kind of surprising how surprised Americans are when this stuff sort of comes home. Let me put it like that. They hate us for our freedoms. Why would they, you know, we're not surprised it comes home. It's because of our freedoms, man. Yeah, well, I mean, I think, okay, We're not surprised it comes home. It's because of our freedoms, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, okay, so one of the more difficult stories I covered was the murder

of a small boy. Yeah. Well, you're in the neighborhood, so you must have remembered Plainfield, Illinois. I think it happened in October, just a few weeks after Hamas and Israel kicked off. So I went to the boy's funeral. It was a completely gut-wrenching experience. Of course, there's thousands of people in Gaza who are being killed right now, right? And this is just one child, right?

But there's kind of an assumption, I suppose, that like, hey, you know, this should be like safe or neutral territory or this kind of stuff shouldn't happen here. Even from people, many of whom who were in that crowd in the funeral who were immigrants, you know, from Gaza, from the West Bank or whatever. In some ways, it's sort of like you think, well, that's hopeful, and I'm really glad that you think that you found safety. Obviously you didn't because you have this guy who allegedly murdered this small child. I mean, the one thing that I guess not living here for so long teaches you is that you've got to take every country on its own terms. Often when I look at American media, I don't really want to give too many people a kicking

here, but I just feel like some of the debates just lack that perspective. Hopefully we can add to that. With this one? Good God no. Yes. I do nothing to detract, sir. Maybe I'm a- I am a subtraction only.

Maybe, yes, I know. I'm still a little naive. Yes, I know. I'm still a little naive. What can I say? It's not naivete so much as like this. This is probably how things should work. And it might be how they do.

It's possible. Oh, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I'm really grateful for this. This has been an absolute delight of a conversation. I don't know if you agree, but I've enjoyed every moment of it. Yeah. You know, look, before you, like I said, you sent me some questions and they were challenging questions and so, you know, I was, I was ready.

I might not seem like I was ready, but I definitely, I definitely enjoyed it. I definitely enjoyed it because, you know, often, like, all right, let me put it like this, we're going to talk about good faith actors and bad faith actors, but it's like, you know, your questions come from a good faith perspective. And hopefully like when I talk to people, like it comes from a good faith perspective, it's like, like I actually want to sort of like find out about this stuff and I have to evaluate them and like make my own judgments or whatever. You know, everybody will make their own judgments and sort of ask questions.

There we go. And then you put something in your brain. Yeah. I always try and make clear, again, I am very curious. So all I'm doing is trying to get to what it is that you believe and think. That's what I'm curious about. Yeah. Anything, if I throw in my old nonsense, I don't care.

I can throw that into the garbage. I don't give a shit. That's meaningless. What's important is that you wrote a book and what matters about it. And that book is Day of Reckoning, How the Far-Right Declared War on Democracy. It is out May 20th. Mike Wendling, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. It's been very interesting.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.