Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekenana Show.
I am here again with Thomas seven seven seven, but
we have something a little different, a little diversion plans
for today. How are you doing, Thomas.
Speaker 2: I'm well, thank you, thanks for hosting me again as always.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I had contacted you and said, instead of
Cold War Part six with the holidays coming up, let's
pick that up after the holidays were over. But there
was a book that I read a few years ago
when I found out how how many people at the time,
influential people, people who became leaders, were inspired by it.
Reflections on Violence by Sorel. And then I found out
that the Imperium Press version had a forward by you,
So I decided to have you on and let's discuss it.
I think that this can go in a lot of
different directions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity man definitely.
Speaker 1: When did Cerell come on your radar? Like, when did
you read him first?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting because a lot of people, a
lot of people associate Cerel like and some of these
other thinkers with with kind of the rise of like,
you know, a kind of right wing subculture on the Internet.
I came to Cerel before that. I'm not trying to
sound like some like original like or something like O G.
He was like, oh I knew about Cerrell before. But
in the stuff in the National Alliance would put out
and then Situde for Historical Review, that stuff is pretty
weighty man, you know, like William Pierce whatever, whatever anybody
thinks of him or things of that whole scene. You know,
he was, he was in He was a serious intellectual.
You know, he read tons of stuff, some some of
which I I didn't really connect with. You know, he
was a big will William Gelly Simpson guy, and he
was a big kind of you know, you spent a
lot of time with you know a lot of this
kind of like social Darwinist stuff that I don't put
a lot of stock in. But uh, he'd reference George
Sorell okay like on some of his adv broadcast us
and more than a passing capacity, and the I HR
and guys like Hke Thompson and Teth Stimley and and
and the like like, they they'd raised Currel all the
time and they considered him to be like a serious thinker.
And one of the reasons why is because part of
their whole part of their whole mandates, the IHR. I mean,
they're just still putting out great content that's very very relevant.
They made the transition to to the information age very seamlessly.
But during the Cold War, you know, during the early
Reagan era was kind of when when they launched and
became really active. So obviously, like they were constantly kind
of defending the revisionist perspective against allegations like, oh, well,
you know, the Second World War among the things that
you know, it was a fight against these like socialist
uh conceits and and and the brutalities that derived there
in and you know, the Third Reich it was just
another socialist government and we all socialism as godless thing
that you know, it doesn't have any likes to stand on.
And why would anybody on the right, you know, paid
any mind? And Sorell the the answer to that is
because of the thinkers like Sorell. And even if you've
gott no interest in kind of the different iterations of
socialism and the revolutionary imperatives that you know kind of
became the the the animating mythologies of these of these
inner were of the of these early twentieth century and
then later interwar ideologies. If you even you don't put
a lot of stock in that, you get if you
want to understand, if you want to understand European politics
after nine, after seventeen eighty nine, you've got to be
in dialogue with socialism and you've got to understand, you know, what, how,
how how the right, how the revolutionary right was dealing
with those realities, you know, And Sorell was kind of
first among those thinkers. And if I basically accept Ernest
Nolty's paradigm that uh the uh that that that that
Italian fascism and things that the Flange Party in Spain,
they were reacting. They were reaction against, you know, kind
of the monarchist right and like the reactionary right as
much as they were a reaction against Marxist Leninism, and
then national socialism was u was a reaction to that.
And in dialectical terms, like you know, some premises that
were hostile and some that were not. But that's why
I understand George Sorel. And in America and people think
of the right, you know, they think of uh, they
think of uh that, they think of Jeffersonians who uh
you know, like like John C. Calhoun or they think
of like America first guys in the twenty overth century,
you know, and like that the Taft Republicans who were
you know, who are anti New Deal and anti interventionists,
and both of those guys, I mean, even the latter
obviously they were kind of traditional Hamiltonian nationalists. But you know,
their whole idea is you know, like get the government
off your back, you know, uh, you know, and uh
and and and decentralized authority and you know, the kind
of ha on the on their own terms to the kind
of class identities that most kind of European paradigms suggest
are are what informs political reality. But Sorell wasn't a
class warrior. And like we'll get into that, you know,
like his Sorel's his his kind of he was, you know,
like Nietzsche did before he viewed Crell viewed culture is
like peaking early, you know, like the pre Soprietic Area era,
you know, like the pre Peloponnesian War era of Dori Gathens.
That's what Sorel, That's what thought was like the zenith
of like human culture and political organization, like it wasn't
some guy he was saying like, oh, we just got
to give And he wasn't even he wasn't even like
he wasn't even like the the Stefan George circle or
like Earns the Younger. He wasn't even saying like, oh,
we just we just got to inundate you know, the
working class with some kind of like patriotic or like
racial life identity. He wasn't saying that at all. He
was saying that, you know, there's a way, there's a
way to insinuate into revolutionary consciousness among the workers, like
something that's like culturally elevated, you know, and that that
will change things and you know, educate people in a
way that you know is progressive, if not progressive with
a capital key, but you know is progressive in terms
of you know, allowing them to can septualize themselves and
conceptualize you know, political action, and in ways outside of
this like narrow like paradigm of like you know, hostility
to capital and you know, control of one's labor and
you know, like material justice in terms of you know,
getting paid for one's labor. Like if you that's kind
of banal, you know, not like that's not important. Obviously
it's important, but they can't be the end all purpose
of your political activity. And it certainly doesn't rationalize you know,
like like murdering your own countryman wholesale. I mean, if
that's what it comes down to, because that's you know
what the proverbial gods ordain. Okay, I mean, you've got
to deal with that in a manly and serious way
and a stoic way. But that's not something you bind
for just because uh, you know, it's it's like, well,
you know, God is dead, so we were just gonna
find some kind of catalysts, you know, for violence that
can be rationalized in the language of the day. Like
it wasn't saying that at all.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so let's talk a little bit about this
because this is I mean, I've even written a little
bit on this recently. It's the the socialist right. When
you say, well, the national Socialists were on the right,
people lose their minds. I mean, mind you, these are
the same people who use the term capitalism and don't
realize where the you know, they know where the term
came from. So they're like, well, we're just taking that
term for ourselves. And I think what they would say
is the difference between the left and the right is egalitarianism.
The left is egalitarian. So was the socialist right egalitarian.
Speaker 2: Not in the sense of like like not not in
a biological sense, and uh not in not in the
way that like not not not in the way that
in contemporary discourse people think of it. And I'll qualify
it too. Even a lot of people, a lot of
people shouldn't know better, misunderstand to what Marxy and equality was,
you know, the whole like the secular human is. They've taken,
you know, the idea of quote human dignity and kind
of extraptly they all kind of strange things out of it.
But Marx, I've got nothing nice to say about Marx
and Lenin. When Marx was talking about quote equality, he
was talking about a kind of equal dignity across the
class divide and across you know, kind of the like
the you know, and and and eliminating and eliminating these
kinds of contrived distinctions between people based on rank, you know,
and uh, you know this and and and and from there,
you know, like affording that kind of elevated dignity to
the workers whom you know, in his estimation, were were
the we're the ones responsible for generating the wealth of
the nation. Okay, he wasn't saying like, oh men, women
are exactly the same, or like there's no differences in
intelligence between men. Like that's a weird kind of cope
that that that that like post ninety forty five cope
that you know, people who wanted to kind of maintain
people who were not going to attack the capitalist system
on structural terms. You know, that was kind of like
what they'd invoke in order to say like no, actually,
like we're we're more morally sound than than, you know,
than than the Marxists and in in the Soviet Union
and their satellite states. That's important to keep in mind.
But the uh, the idea of socialism, you know, it
didn't originate with Marx and that was that was one
of Spangler's important points. Like even if you don't accept
Spangler's view of history and you think it's like, you know,
just kind of needlessly esoteric and mystical, his uh, his essay,
his essay Prussian Prussianism and Socialism, and then later well,
let's a degree is a book. I mean it's yeah,
it's like a longer. I say that it's been turned,
it's been beefed up with like secondary analyzes, but the
hour of decision like basically the modern state as we
know it in structural terms like os to the Prussian
state okay, everything from the military draft you know, to
public education you know, to having like pensions for for
retired people like that that came from the Prussians, Okay,
and I mean even that that's literallyly in America too,
like early education is kindergarten, okay, like it's not an accident. Okay.
I mean, so that's some and this is something that
you could be openly acknowledged, like it's not so much anymore.
I mean some that's political something that's just because people
are kind of ignorant. But you know, it's not like
it's not like when Marx and Engels put their proverbial
ink to paper. It's not like they it's it's not
like it's not like Europe was, you know, like this
feudal society or some or something in Jeffers in Yalemen
society like the Confederate States, and they were like, you
know what, we need to like beef up a government
that and you know provide equity, you know, to people
based on their labor and can like look after like
old folks. What they were doing was they were taking
something that already existed in places like Prussia and to
a lesser degree, you know, in places like France and
the Habsburg Empire and saying like, okay, we've got to
like improve upon this and make it into a progressive
instrumentality to advance history. So this that's important your mind too.
Like if you're a European writing, you know, in the
in the in the nineteen hundreds, like Sorell, like you
were looking backwards at you know, your political heritage going
back about three centuries. We're just looking at Mars and saying, oh,
I see Marx's idea. I can improve upon that and
make it acceptable to the right. So that's important to
keep in mind. And you know, kind of the kind
of the first truly socialist institution is the modern military,
Like it is okay, Like it's not the military's a
lot of things. What it's not is it's not some
robustly capitalist thing. Okay, I mean it's and the Prussians,
arguably this was their strength and their weakness. Prussia really
is a wasteland. There's like nothing there, Okay. I mean
you can like farm dirt and rocks and uh you've
got you've got port access. But I mean other than that,
it's and you're surrounded by hostiles, okay. And I mean
and obviously like Prussia was, Prussia was the Germans weren't
the original occupants of Prussia, Okay, there was, there was,
There was. There was a barbarian element there, like a
truely like pagan barbarian element of indigenous Slavs that the
ethnically cleansed. Notcause the Germans are bad guys. I mean
at the cleansing is it was just wasn't It's just
the way it thinks, especially that part of the world.
But the kind of key institution of the Prussian state
was the Prussian Army. That's what made it possible. It
was literally like this garrison state, okay. And so from
that that's what they extrapolated kind of like their model
of what of what of what society should look like
and how it should be organized. Like there's very much
an odds like the Anglo American sensibility, but that's a
lot of things you can say that that's authoritarian. You
can say that doesn't respect people's freedom or individual liberty.
You can say that in some way it stunts like creativity,
and maybe it does. I don't see it that way,
but I also want to hold it out. It's like
the zene of the human political development. But one thing
it's not is it all like left wing or or liberal.
I mean, it's it's the opposite and extreme terms, you know,
I mean because yeah, like a military type structure, a
venture model, like, yeah, there's some kind of basic there there,
there's there's some kind of basic cohesion and respect for
like the various ranks. But it's it's singularly obsessed with rank,
you know. It's it's the elm of hierarchy. It has
no conceit that like, oh world equals here, you know
at uh, it's very in fact that it very much
repudiates that. So that's another important keep in mind, and
that that's basically what Sorel was getting in that, you know,
it is uh like what he was calling for is
you know, uh, a socialism that you know makes meaningful
cultural activity possible and that reflects you know, basic human
nature in some way that's not totally at odds and
reality but again too, he was like he looked at
dance like as a means of because again like his model,
he's not saying like, oh, the kaiser Reich is so great,
or you know, Frederick, the seconds Prussia is so great.
Like what he was saying was that, you know, things
went wrong when uh, things went wrong when men like
Socrates became powerful in ancient Athens. You know, like his
his ideal was the the pre Socratic uh, you know
pelopon Uses.
Speaker 1: So the socialist right when they're coming to power, are
they is there a rebellion against establishment liberalism or is
there a rebellion against what is growing communism.
Speaker 2: At the time, I mean it was both, but it
depended than where you were at. If we're going to
use Vymar as kind of the I mean, obviously like
Swell with writing in the pre Buymar era in a
situation in France is more complicated. But if you're talking
about the real like if you're talking about the true
kind of divide dialectically and socially as well as politically
and in terms of our conflict, obviously you know it
came down to like actual civil war that plays like Munich.
There's a couple of things going on in the Weimar years.
You had UH, you had organizations like the Stalhelm you know,
that were basically you know, kaiser wright veterans who wanted
to turn things back to the way they were. But
they and you know, and they they they were fighting
the case. They were the guys who constituted the early
Free Corps. But then you had guys, you had guys
like Ernest Rahm and Joseph Gerbels who basically saw the
Communists as essentially correct in their methods, that they were
just you know, wrong in their in their ideological conceits.
You know. Gerbels would go as far as he he'd
organized street protests with the KPD, you know, to bring
to bring down the UH, the unions that were like
friendly to the Social Democrats, you know, and UH. And
this made a lot of people upset. And Gebels was
the one kind of stress or infection national socialist dinner
party man who survived the night at June h of
June nineteen thirty four. You know. So that's something to
keep in mind. I think what really like, I think
national socialism like ossified into what it truly was when
when Hindenburg told the Hitler that Ernst Rahm and all
of his fellows and Stress had to die. And then
Hitler gave the order, and then Himmler and Seb Dietrich
and the rest of them not just carried it out,
but they also murdered guys like Kurt Schliker. I mean
that that was that's kind of like what turn national
socialism into like a a pretty conventional right wing tendency. Honestly,
like I uh, not not in the sense of you know,
not not not not right wing in terms of like
Donald Trump, or not even right wing in terms of
like Robert Taft, but by European standards, the Third Right
was more conventionally right wing than people will acknowledge. I
mean they because there's there's moronic stuff like like Joan
Goldberg saying like, oh Fishers or a bunch of like
Hillary Clinton liberals or something like. But but there's serious
people too who aren't prone to that kind of moronic stuff,
who don't like really understand because they you know, they
read these like dispatches from uh, from from Dietrich Eckert
then and from Ernst ron like saying that yeah, God
is dead, you know, like the hell with the capital
listen to Jews like burn everything down. You know, we're
gonna we're gonna march on everything, and we're gonna kill everybody,
and we're gonna build those like new Society of the
barss like that. I mean, those don't get me wrong.
Those guys are serious about that. That wasn't That wasn't
just like so much talk. And a lot of them
are frankly cyple bands. Well they they that that that
that came to an end in June nineteen thirty four.
And if if you're if you're killing people because a
man like Hindenburg is telling you that, like you know,
these men are these met are red revolutionary rebel. We
have to be stopped. Like you're a lot of things,
but you're not left wing, okay when you're executing that order. So,
I mean, that's my opinion. I know some people disagree
with I. I've been studying the topic for a lot
of years. I think I have some insight into.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about what you you said
about Europe and how Europe defined things differently than here.
When socialism or communism is mentioned here, it almost seems
like we just have this we know exactly what's being said.
But from a European standpoint, especially at that time when
socialism was spoken of or communism was spoken of, how
did the European culture make it a different interpretation? Even
when you read Yaki, you know Yaki when he's talking
about when he's talking about Europe, it's a different language
than the language that we're used to reading in the
books that you know, we're basically written by the victors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, definitely. Well it's also too it goes back
to it goes back to sociological origins, you know. I
mean America has some depending on where you fall on
it ethically, but also just depending on what kind of
weight you put on the different variables. You know, America
is something of an incomplete society. I mean that's either
good or bad. But you know, everything that Europe was
trying to do in the modern era, okay, and it's
zenith in the twentieth century. We were trying to repair
the social fabriak in some ethical way that had been
smashed after them after the Middle Ages. Okay. In the
Middle Ages, there's this basic interdependence between everybody, you know, Uh,
the lords were dependent upon the serfs. Both were dependent
upon the king, and the intermediary between the two of
them was the clergy. You know, these people couldn't survive
without each other. Like that cannot be overstated. You know
this idea that if you were like a lord of
the manor you know, you could just act like the
character in that silly mad Max movie who's like, you know,
for widering people to worship him from border or something like.
That's not That's not the way things were. Like I'm
not saying if you were a medieval serf, I'm not
saying to have some great life, and I'm not saying
you had some I'm not saying you had adequate remedies.
If if you had a cruel master, but he needed you.
You know, he could not defend the land without you,
he could not chill the land without you. He had nothing.
If if if you were not willing to work. But
in contrast, like you had, you had no access to justice,
and you had you had no nobody to navigate for
you with with with royal authority, like if he did
not exist. I mean, you had the church too, but
that was that the church weren't men who worked. They
did very important things, but they they operate in a
totally different world. I mean, so it's you didn't have
a direct line to authority unless you know, you had
a rapport with the lord of the manner. So that's
fundamentally important. Would changed in the modern age and reached
kind of its critical and in every sense you know,
and like in existential terms and consideral terms, reached it's
kind of critical state. In the twentieth century, you know,
people were ripped off the land, they were thrown into
factories that literally employed tens of thousands of people in
these dangerous conditions where you were insinuated into some machine,
you know, for hours and hours a day. I mean,
if you died on the job, nobody really cared, or
if they did, it's say, well it's so much it's
a mark in a Ledger book, you know, like you
don't have any rights. And it's not even even if
somebody wanted to confer upon you some kind of voice
or wanted to you know, kind of make you a
lot like better. Just like the velocity of production and
the traje three of things, like there was you didn't
you didn't matter, you know, you were you became totally dehumanized,
you know, and that's what the socialists were trying to do.
And they're like we on the right and the left,
they're like, you know, we we've got to repair this
kind of social fabric and this inerdependence and there's basical
basic ethical unity of classes and functions, you know, so
that people aren't being treated like a commodity and so
that like when they die in the job, you know,
they're just not like shoveled away like so much garbage,
like literally, you know, I mean, that's that's the way
to keep in mind. That's the thing to keep in mind.
Like in America, there there wasn't some medieval order from
which things originated, like even in the South, like people,
I know, the Southerners themselves kind of looked at themselves
as uh as uh as. It's kind of like lords
and knights, which wasn't totally inaccurate, but it was more
like but again, it was more like Athens than it
was like uh then then it was like you know,
a thirteenth century England, you know, like you had like
the South is made up of like Kulak twypes. You know,
there were white serfs and there were black slaves, but
they weren't the majority. The majority was not like rich
plantation owners and like poor serfs and like slaves who
were property like. The majority was like small freehold farmers
who were doing their own thing. And that's that's supposedly
the American ideal. Okay, like now it's like a small businessman.
I'm not saying that the actually the way things are,
but that's like what's idealized. But you know, the in America,
if you're on the right, your idea isn't like, well,
you know, we gotta we gotta bring things back to
you know, the throne and altar and like reverence for
God and God's emissaries on earth, and you know, we
got to create some kind of codependent between the classes
that's not dysfunctional. Like the ideal is like, you know,
I need I need to be given the opportunity to
like till the land and get what's mine and you know,
had the government stay off my bed, not take the
fruit of my labor. I mean, the totally different sensibility,
but one is not superior to the other. I mean,
obviously I'm more sympathetic to the American model because that's
my heritage and I you know, and then plus that's
just like what's realistic, Like you can't, well there is that,
did GOPHI when? I mean I realized some of those polemical,
but some of these idiots actually believe this. Like when
when like when like regime loyal people are when these
like mother Jones types claimed that like Donald Trump's this
big fascist or something. I mean, that's like retarded from
as a reason. But like some radical right wing guy
like if George Wallas become president or he would want
to become president, it would not look anything like Germany
in nineteen thirty three. You're like Italy in nineteen twenty two.
Like that's ridiculous. That's not the way we do things here.
Like that's like that's like saying that that says retarded
as saying like oh, if Donald Trump paid his way,
you know he would he would he you know, he
would be like the holy Roman Emperor. Like it doesn't
it doesn't make any sense. But I you know, like
I made the point before that the entire like civic
religion of America is like is anti fascism, which which
is particularly kind of aside in this country. But yeah, well.
Speaker 1: That that set me up perfectly, so we know because
you know, Genteel Gentili wrote what fascism was in Italy,
but as far as I know, you know, really nobody
in Germany at the time was writing what socialism meant
to them? What socialist? You know, you can listen to
the Strasser debates and everything, and you can get it.
You can get an idea, but in your opinion, what
what the national socialism of Germany? What did what did
that socialism actually mean?
Speaker 2: I mean they were drawing upon a couple of things,
and if you read there's not a lot you can extrapolate.
I was telling people to read Hitler's second book because
it's instructive, but it flushes out as geostrategic ideas and
some other things, and it's just interesting reading. You know,
it was never published, like the manuscript was found by
the US Army and then it was handed over to
its handled an Army intelligence and chain of custody was weird,
but it is. It has been authenticated. I mean it
was it was Taylor's actual manuscript, but it wasn't published
and available at public until after the war. But you know, people,
there's not like there's not only you can extrap away
from mine. Cop that's why it's idiotic. But people, oh,
it's a boring book. It's like, well, yeah, it's it's
it's it's an electioneer screed from the nineteen twenties, Like
why why would it be interesting today? But what is
interesting like when he talks about when he when when
Hiller talks about his his ideas on conflict between human populations,
like that's that's instructive. And also, you know, I made
the point of people before Hitler was he was just
Catholic Habsburg, Austrian who uh basically identified his movements as
the legacy of the Prussian state. And you know, the
the December eleventh speech the Reichstag, which is really Hitler's
last public address of the Reichstag. You know, that's like
when he issued the declaration of war against America, he
talks about, uh, he talks about we like the royal
we like in a reference to the Prussians and the
Napoleonic Wars. Okay, so I mean he's saying like and
then then that's notable because like, you know, Prussia was
at odds with the rest of the German kingdoms. I
mean that's a little bit off topic, but he as
it may like Adalf Hitler himself. If Adolf Hitler is
like the standard bearer of like right wing socialism in Bymar,
which I mean, I think I think we can say
that he was, because he's the man who became king. Proverbially,
his view was what I just said, It was that
you know, the the proper like German, the proper German
model of a national life is is Prussia, and and
the Prussian model was based on was based on the army,
and you know the the cynegepe baratus that that were
vote around that. So I mean that's the way, that's
what you can think of German socialism. Of course, to
your point, guys like Strasser, guys like ram Uh Kurt
von schleik Or I think was a lesser aristocrat who
was basically cynical and he didn't really care, but he
was obviously through his lot with with Strasser and Rahm
because he wanted to destroy Hitler. But all these guys,
at least what they were advocating in public was they
were saying, like, you know, Hitler is a tool of
the bourgeoisie. He's not really a revolutionary, he's just a reactionary,
and he's a petty bourgeois buffoon. So I mean the
note true Scotsman stuff about socialism. A lot of that
was interesting rivalry between national socialists. It's not like the
German street was. We're like nineteen seventies era, like you
know Berkeley types, you know, talking about like who's a
real socialist. It was a lot more. It was a
lot less existential and like a lot more like polemical
and kind of cynical than that. I mean, that's my view,
and I think i'm something. It's not an expert. I
think I have some I think I have some expertise
on the topic. At least.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to Sorel, but I wanted
to mention this. So you mentioned that Prussia was based
off of the military. A lot of people, a lot
of Americans, point out that, you know, Prussian schooling is
you know, what's his name, I can't even remember his name. Now,
he went to Prussia, saw saw how the schooling was done,
and basically brought it back. And but what a lot
of people will say is that all that schooling is
meant to do is turn people into a cog in
the machine to be plugged in. So if that is true.
It seems like that is creating a group of people
in that there the students. If the students are all
learning the same thing, then that could be seen as egalitarian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the difference two of courses. Yeah, it's not
just that. Know, the Prussian model identifies that, you know,
the vast difference in human intellect and abilities and kind
of organizes people and the perobial slots or organize them
based on you know, how those things can be cultivated
and utilized. But also like the core of the Prussian
ethos is, you know, the the racial community. So if
you take that Prussian model, when you utilize it as
kind of a way of of the rant and people
and saying, Okay, you're not like a Mexican, You're not
like a white man. You're not you're not black. You know,
you're not you're not Asian, You're you're just you're just American.
You just have the civic identity where you're not gonna
speak your own language anymore. You know, you're not gonna
go to your own church anymore. You're not gonna you know,
you're not gonna abide these habits anymore of your forebears,
you know, like that's like that's what's really asitious about
like the New Dealer or like American model. It's not
it's not so much that it declares that like every
man is gonna have some kind of like income in common,
or that it's going to like reduce you know, like
the proverbial disparity you know, between the ownership cast than
what was then the working cast. Like what was insidious
about is that it was tailed to essentially like strict
people of any ability to live historically and any like
meaningful you know, actual cultural identity. You know, it's gonna
like alienate Mann from his heritage and from history in
absolute terms. Like that's the big difference. And that's also
why I object a lot. There's something to it when
people talk about quote cultural Marxism, if they're talking about
Gramsey and Adorno like contra marx and angles, but they
don't understand that like a lot of this, a lot
of this doesn't have to do with Orthodox and Marxism
or Frankward school stuff at all. A lot of it's
like New Dealer bullshit, you know, like raceline, Like God
is dead. You know, we we we know now that
like everything is reducible to you know, data derived from
the scientific method. You know, the man's basically just like
an animal who can talk, and you know, there's no
more history and there's no more culture. All that matters
is making man more suitable to governance and eliminating these
you know, these problems like you know, like like like
conflict between the races, or like men and women not
getting along, like that's like.
Speaker 1: That kind of or family. I mean, just read the
authoritarian personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean there's like a pastiche like
definitely like Frankward school stuff and and and that kind
of thing became pre eminent like in especially like as
as the American left broke entirely, not just the American left,
but in Europe, like with the left just in in
Macro terms, like broke with like Stalinism and decided like
the East Block or their enemy. I mean, this was
long in coming, but they were looking around or some
kind of or some ideological cannon and they settled down
like the Frankward school. But this is also what had
been turned loose on on on on divided Germany, you know,
I mean, so there's a lot of things. Yeah, this
definitely became part of like the American conceptual arise, like
in policy terms as well as academic and electual terms.
But there was a lot of stuff that also like
preceded it, you know, like these fools like were uh
who built like that part of education and all that
kind of stuff, and and these and these, uh and
even even even a lot of guys who proceeded in
their dealers like Colonel House, who was uh, you know,
Wills kind of the Wilson's uh kind of Machiavelli, you know,
administered without portfolio like uh, even he was like prone
to a lot of that kind of nonsense. Like House
wrote that he wrote this really bad science fiction novel
where there was like this benevolent dictator who was obviously
supposed to be himself, and uh he basically like you know,
finds a way to like strip man of any like
historical identity and he like forces everybody to speak this
like esperantial language. So now there's like no more war,
and this great man becomes like God on earth because
there's no more war. And it's like why why would
that be remotely desirable? It sounds like a nightmare. Like
like idiots like Colonel House like there's some like great
utopia that like you know that quits government of any
criticism because you know, the the greatest thing ever is
somehow like if black kids had high test scores and
like everyone he was going to be prison were war
is impossible? Like Nova explain like why these things are
so awesome, but like that's their conceit.
Speaker 1: Let me just uh try to nail down exactly what
you meant when I when I mentioned the Prussian schooling.
So in Prussia, if your if your goal is to
educate everyone and bring them down into a cohesive culture
that works within itself, and that's what the Prussian that's
what the Prussian education system meant to do. But if
you if you transfer that over into the United States,
now you're stripping a multi cultural society and you're saying
everyone has to be one. And obviously some are going
to rebel against that and not and the ones that
don't rebel against it are going to basically lose what
kind of social cohesion they have within their own community.
Speaker 2: No exactly, And that's what I one of the things
that brought to the United States and the Soviet Union together.
I'm talking you know, like the new Deal Stalinist alliance,
like on it's based in geo strategic terms, it doesn't
make a lot of sense. Like I what Lindbergh said
and what Houston Stewart Chamberlain said, they I mean, yeah,
those guys obviously had political and aesthetic preferences for Germany,
but in ragio strategic terms, it doesn't really make sense
for America in the UK to decide they're going to
annihilate Germany an alliance with Russia. Like what makes sense
is for you know, Europe, led by Germany, the UK
and the United States, you know, to house do this
kind of ramparts against the East. You know, whether it's China,
whether it's Russia, you know, whatever it is. Okay, that's
there's there's a basic iologic to uh to what developed.
And one of the reasons why that happened was uh
ideological necessity. And the United States from the Soviet Union
when about irrationality of their objectives domestically, uh, there they
had similar problems, you know, Stealin's big problem with the
nationalities problem, you know, like how do I strip everybody
their ethnic identity and make them into new Soviet Man?
And the New Dealers were like they had the same problem,
you know, like how do you like destroy like the
nationalities in America? You know, And and I mean that
this still goes on in the day. Like that's why
in typical fashion, when the regime talks about quote multiculturalism,
they're talking about the opposite. They don't about like the
eradication of all cultures, you know. But that's there's very
few I mean that is now there's not a hell
of a lot of states or organized like the United
States or like the Soviet Union was, Like it's not
it's not a natural political mode of organization. So you
can do one or two things there. You know. You
can either you can either you can either rule by
way like kind of evolve federalism, you know, and and
basically leave people alone to manage their own affairs within
their own culture spaces. Or but I mean government never
is wanting to do that, I mean, at least here,
so they're always gonna opt for this idea of of this,
you know, eradicating culture and ripping people out of out
of a historical existence. And both are I mean, that's
one of the things that brought down to soy Union.
And that's all that's also one of the reasons why
post World War like America does not have moral legitimacy.
But that was definitely what they wanted to do. And
the but there's well it's gonna sound like a goofy example,
but I'm using it because it pops up again and again.
In the sixties, I read a lot of science fiction
from the era, and science fiction from that era wasn't
just entertainment. There's a lot of think tank guys. I
mean even to the until eighties and Jerry Pornell, who
was you know, kind of the Drivings my sdi like
he wrote science fiction and he was when he you know,
incident to his like think tank and policy work and stuff.
But you know, there's that cornyal Star Trek episode where
like Captain Kirk and Spock they go down to this
planet and it's like the Third Reich and they know
how this is possible, like you know what I'm talking about, Yeah,
and then they and then ultimately it's unraveled, like, oh, well,
this guy in like the twenty second century, he created
like from the craft lands on this planet, the primitive humanoids,
but there are always a war and he's like, okay, well,
I know, I know how to resolve this. So we
created this like third rich style regime and then Kirk
like addresses gay audience, like, you know, this was the
most efficient government of all time. But you know they
they were they were brutal racist, so you know, that's
why it didn't work. But the idea was sent in
some way noble and that's that's interesting, and that that
comes up again and again, not just in like corny
science fiction, but in like policy papers, like we admire
the Prussian state because the Germans are great people, but
they're these brutal races. So that's why it didn't work.
But we've got to strapolate that here in some way,
but strip it up of these chauvinistic and like racialized
views and things. People don't think that way directly anymore.
It's spent finats in different ways, but that's like what
underlies it, especially in a place like Chicago, but nationwide,
like a great which these institutions people like, for granted,
are like things taken from the Prussian State. It's crazy,
you know, it really is. You know, the degree that's
not just me, that that that's not just me you know,
being ah like a teutonal file or something. I mean,
I'm sure like in part of that too, but it's
just like can't be denied. Like I'm not even saying
it's like a good or bad thing. It's just reality,
you know, and that people one time people were way
more kind of like directly cognit into that or at
least willing to acknowledge it. Something that's important to consider.
All right, Why did it get back to the book?
Shut everybody?
Speaker 1: This is from Imperium Press reflection by Sorel and from
the forward. I'm gonna read your words and have you
comments on this. It says, rather has already been alluded to.
Surrellian violence can best be understood as an absolute, uncompromising
and radical commitment to pure history, and blood letting parentheses
one's own in the case of the martyr, and the
enemies in the case of the partisan, and blood letting
is the sanctifying process. And you go on to say
a partisan unwilling to die or commit homicide is no
more a political soldier or agent of history than would
be a lawgiver who is incapable for reasons of moral
or physical frailty of executing a death warrant. Issued by
order of the King's bench as an agent of exclusive
sovereign authority. Sorel viewed the modern bourgeoisie as particularly decadent
and harmful, but he did not think the conditions of
his epoch to be otherwise unique. All ruling regimes political
and social develop over time a kind of moral and
intellectual apathy that precludes its worthiness, or at least revokes
its mandate to act in a role of guardianship or
standard bearer over the subject matter of its dominion. This
is not to suggest a Currell shared a secularized eschatological
vision of utopian salvation common to Marxists and progressives, which
posited that the condition of man or the state or
national community was capable of perfection by way of revolutionary processes. Rather,
he and I underline this, he viewed the fervor of
violence as a hygienic mechanism entirely congruent at Congress with
his own rejection of the linear view of history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the best way, it seems for both.
But it's it's hard to convey these things in in
kind of rational terms. But that's yeah, I mean, that's
the best way to think of to describe it. And
that's I mean, that's so the the degree of which uh,
I mean this also this uh, some of this sorell
was definitely like in in in direct dialogue with the Maestra.
But some of this, again is found in in the
kind of pre Socratic hero epics, like like so I
saw the the Socratic uh what what he used, like
the decadence of the Socratic uh era in Athens. He said,
what you were left with was, you know, instead of this,
instead of this mono class of Yalemen farmers, you know, uh,
the best of whom you know rose to leadership rank
whose use education and system mythology and hero epics, what
you had was they developed this class of professional politicians
who relied upon intellectuals like Socrates to rationalize their rule,
but neither of whom were capable of real action, and
both resented each other and both were afraid of an
hostile to the ya women warriors. So you're love of
this kind of like parallel paralysis where the men who
should be the ones like most capable of direct the
action and violence are declared that you know, this kind
of thing is illegal linear moral because they're terrified of
their own position being swept aside, and then they're on
like you know, lives being threatened by such a process.
So there's this kind of like ongoing paralysis where this
just kind of like meaningless discourse takes the place of action.
And yeah, like I said in the intro that you've
just reiterated, it's not a swelfout. Violence was so great
or like the sexy thing that we all got to
get into. He was saying that, you know, in political terms,
you're not serious unless you know you're willing to implement
your will through violence. And in fact, he took human
life and they're taking out very seriously. And that's one
of the reasons why there's something Sago saying about the
revolutionary process. If you're literally willing to kill people, even
if they're your enemies, maybe especially if you're enemies, Like,
that's a very serious thing. You know, it's not something
you do flippantly, and that's certainly not something you deal
with pettigouse agreements. And if you're willing to do that, uh,
there's a sacred aspect to that that commands a certain
reverential observance. I mean, it's it's all of those things.
But that's also why that's also and until things reach
that state, whether it's because you know, the like the
extens system is feeling structurally at such a point that
people find themselves in these just dire circumstances where there's
survivals and jeopardy, or when you're talking about, you know,
a revolutionary circumstance incident to you know, uh, a wire
kind of strategic pairing of warfare. You know what what
necessitates these things is is is a convergence of extreme
conditions and and the human will and the hardening of
the human heart within that will. So like when people
in America, like at present, I mean like likes talk
about it like, oh, Donald Trump is an extremist or oh,
you know, we're we're under siege by by by quote Marxist,
You'll know. You'll know when that's underway, man, because the
bodies being dropped. And thankfully that's not happening because in
the Americans condition and then under present conditions, I don't
I don't think I would lead anything positive frankly, Okay,
I just don't. That may change, but for now, we
would it would, it would, It would mean a lot
of suffering, and a lot of a lot of dead
people being stacked up for no real purpose. But yeah,
that's that's also and also like I don't want to
get too far afield, but this is intrinsic to anything
that European political theorists wrote about really till the twentieth century,
This idea, this kind of rollsy and live capital liberal
idea that people have in America kind of like on
all sides of the political are both sides of the
political spectrum of like, oh, politics are just as rational
process that people decided to create and implement, Like no
Europeans thought that way. Politics is mysterious and like the
zene of the political occurrences is warfare, and you know, politics,
like warfare itself is its origin is mysterious. We don't
really know why things are ordered this way, you know,
even if you don't believe in God, there's there's some
kind of they're they're there, there's some kind of design.
Even even even if it just man acting out, you know,
is is programming like as in as in an ant
colony would that's very mysterious and strange. We don't know
why that happens, you know, So all you can really
do is you're truly like in quite literal terms, like
writing the peribial tiger to try and manage, you know,
political occurrences and in violence, they're in chooses us. We
don't really choose it. So there's an inherent uh kind
of providential uh, there's not an identificcasion of providential things
and phenomenon within the European mind. Conceptually said that that's
important to keep in mind. Like this really jumps out
at me, I think, because I mean, I'm very much
like a God centric person. I'm a Bible Protestant, but
I'm like an old stock American, so like I'm I'm
inundated with uh with uh with with kind of like
American viewpoints and things, you know. And I always was
even guys like Russell Kirk, you know, who was a Catholic,
but he was kind of the quintessential like American like
twentieth century political historian. Like even he like falls into
this kind of trap of of kind of like ralls
in and and and Hobbisian ontology about man kind of
like rationally choosing to like organize politics this way and
that's nonsense. And then maybe as a topic for another episode,
but yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that you mentioned and how Europeans view politics
versus Americans, especially back then, because and then earlier you
had mentioned how you know, people read Spengler and he
seem it seems esoteric. Because I recommended Imperium to somebody
and they started reading it and they're like this, does
it stay this esoteric? And then that's when you realize
it's like, well, politics isn't one thing we've been we've
been convinced, we've been taught in this country that politics
is just one thing, or it's it's this side against
this side, and no, politics has a very spiritual side
to it. That's why I think a lot of people,
especially people who are Biblical, when they read Imperium and
they read part one, they're completely blown away because they've
never read politics like that before.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, And Imperium's a really well
written book. It's not just because I like Francis Yacky
a lot. I mean, even before I even knew any
about frand of Yacky, like his book will always pop
up on AhR uh you know, I uhr newsletters and
what was Cardo obviously would always plug it and I
got it. There's a there was a used bookstore in
Evanston and like Noontime Press at that time, which was
Willis Carter's outfit, like they weren't currently stocking it. So
this was like in nineteen ninety seven or so, Like
I I I had this. I just I just used
bookstore in Emiston like order meal like an old hard
copy of Imperium, and then I like took it home
and read it, and uh, I was like, wow, this
is really intense stuff and it's really insightful. So I
mean I came to yacky by reading his book and
realizing like this is this isn't this is incredibly you know,
highly developed and serious stuff. And yeah, I said, it's
just really well written. Some of Jacki's language at the
time seems overwrought because uh, you know, he was a
little he was he was he was he was a
he was a litigation attorney, and I mean that kind
of comes out, but uh, that's all. That's also as
part of like the time though, like in the early
like really until like the nineteen fifties, that's just kind
of like the way people wrote, even kind of square
people just like you know, writing on behalf of some
kind of like even somebody like writing like a like
an op ed on behalf of like eyes and how
we're in like the early fifties, like what it would
seem kind of like overwrought to us properly, like but
at the language I need. But but yeah, that's some
you know, it's a it's a it's a serious book
like whether you know, even if you even if you're
basically kind of hostle to fishism or you know, postfishes ideas,
and even if you're not you know, any kind of
any kind of Germanic phile. I mean you can't like
like the people claim like imperiums like mystical garbage, like
none of them I've actually read the book. I know.
It's like I've engaged them, like, well, what do you
object to specifically? Like they can't tell you. There's like repeating,
there's like repeating some nonsense they like read online or
they're just you know, it's just like some conceit they
have that I guarantee you they have not actually read it.
I'm so great, maybe them like a bookworm I've actually read,
like I I've read Martian Angles for twenty years, like
when I I don't only sound off about a body
of political theory that I haven't read, and you'll notice,
like when you're raising them and read it till you're
right off, Like I haven't read that, but I don't
most people. Most people don't sit around like you know,
reading Dost Capital. Most people don't sit down and read
like all six hundred pages of Imperial They just don't.
Owing to the fact that everybody's got to live their
life doing what they gotta do. I'm lucky to have
the time to like read this kind of shit. But
it's also I mean people that I don't think people
with the attention span anymore, like even smart guys like I.
One of the things I learned to do in law school.
If if I drive anything of value, that experience is
like I can sit down for like nine hours and
like power through like pays and pays and pays a
dense text. There's things that what's rather do than that?
But I can do it and like it doesn't you know,
it doesn't like it's not like torture to me. So yeah.
Speaker 1: The part of the forward is under the title Modernist
violence and service of Ancient Virtues and something that I
A couple sections I gonna pick out here. He viewed
the organization, management, and economics of the homestead, and the
cultural values intrinsic to this enterprise as being inextricably linked
to and mutually reinforcing of military competence and endeavors and
the waging of war itself. Moving down, he further views
the Yeoman Homestead as a school of command. A man
must rule his wife and children firmly, but also caringly
and justly. He must also demonstrate his worthiness to wield
his authority. A man's wife and children are obliged to
obey his commands, but only insofar as his command's command
role is tempered by correct virtues and practical reason. Do
you think that is why the founding of this country
actually worked in the beginning, In the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then like I said, it calls back to
tom If you read uh, if if you read what
these confederate like mental letters were writing about, I mean
that that's what that was their mythology. They were calling upon.
They were they were calling upon Athens. Okay, I mean
like later, you know, you read everything from Walker Percy
to UH to Michael Sharah, you know, guy with the
Killer Angels you know, they they vote like our Thorian
legend and stuff. But I mean really, the way the
southerns thought of themselves, it was like that, you know,
and and that's why, like you know, in terms of
like place names everything else, you know, like Athenian references
you know, were ubiquitous and the anti belle themself and
to some degree that still are in themself. And yeah,
that's the way they viewed it because again, the South
was not the South was not the Habsburg Empire. It
was it was it was, it was. It was a
ye woman reed who viewed themselves as kind of like
a monocast, you know, like that's why. And I mean
part of that was possible because like, uh, slave was racialized,
you know like that. But so I mean you dated
somebody's like a monocast, like even even like a poor
even like a poor like white like tenant farmer and
like a lord in the manor, like they had some
kind of political interest in common, like cont for the slaves.
Now I know that, Like I know, people like Howard
Vinn would be like, oh, that's because they were just
educated and you know, racial prejudice, like that's not the case,
Like they're at people do obviously identify in communitarian terms,
like along racial and cultural lines, and that's only possible
that then that's really only possible if there is like
an US and them like paradigm. That's not good or bad,
it's just the way it is. And yeah, that's if
you and then North it was a little bit different.
But at the same time too, like I said, even
you know, the uh, the the old right what was
called old right in the twentieth century, you know America
first and Robert Taft and stuff that those guys were.
Those guys were Hamiltonian Republic. They were like northern city slickers.
But at the same time, you know, they they viewed, uh,
they viewed the American ideal. You know, it's like the
small business man, like our version of the Kulak, you know,
like they so that I'm maintaining it's not just a
Confederate conceit that is truly like the old American ethos.
And yeah, it's got no, it's got nothing. Uh you know,
there is no Caesar in that equation. Okay, So it's
you know, it's not there's no Caesar and there's not
even a King Arthur. You know, there's a the the
ideal like like the American hero, he's an archetype. He's
not he's not a king or he's not like a
man in a certain in a certain official role. So yeah,
I think I think that's fundamentally important. And I mean
that's the way I think, like not even consciously, like
I you know, that's why I think some of these
like trad guys in the internet are wro. It's like
I'm not talking about like like actual like Russian guys.
I'm not talking about you know some of these, uh,
some of these Moslim guys who who are by that
world I thought, I know, like guys from Terry Hood, Indiana,
but like decide that they're like trade Catholics or something.
It's like, bro, like what you want you want to
like you know, you wanna you want to you want
to you want to want to pretend it's you know,
we got a king here or something, or you want
to pretend you're in the court of Caesar, Like why
the fun would you want to do that? And plus,
I mean it's not like our heritage anyway, you know,
Like that doesn't that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: People hate to hear this, but I mean we're a
Protestant country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, I agree with you, Michael Joneses,
like if you are like, you know, culturally Catholic. I
mean Jones is right, like America it wasn't as a
massively anti Catholic country. And I don't think that's a
good thing because I'm not a bigot, but that this
idea you can like saw reconcile Americanism with Roman Catholicism
and just make the Pope some kind of like first
deacon or some kind of like you know, or some
kind of like equivalent of Billy Graham. Like that that's ridiculous,
like that, that's that's not Catholicism. Then you know, you're
just like some guy like like go with the math
occasionally and you know, uh, Christmas Eve at midnight, you know,
goes like a local perish. But that Catholics in man's
actual implications for politics and authority and like the pope
is either that the pope's either the Emperor of Europe
in absolute terms or he's not. You know, I mean
he's not he's not Billy Graham, He's not this, he's
not this deacon in a weird hat who like we
all kind of listen to when we want to, you know,
like he he has either God's emissary on earth or
he's not. You know, in my fight, I'm not a Catholic,
but if you are, you can't. You can't be a
Catholic and then decide to like you're going to like
pretend Joe Biden as the president, you know, like.
Speaker 1: I wanted to. I wanted to read this one section
under anti modern modernism. He says, uh Sorel shared with
Pradon and Hobbes a pessimistic view of nature. This is
one facet of Sorellian thought that fundamentally alters the way
in which Sorel's relationship to socialism is to be understood.
Cyrel viewed man as basically mired in sin and driven
by his own avarice and egoism and desire for his
own gain. This tendency, in the Cirellian view, and this
is the part I underlined, is only overcome by submission
to sovereign authority customary as well as formal in ordinary conditions,
and when necessary, by immersion in collectively dynamic and violent efforts,
often themselves both revolutionary and restorative in character. Sorel's commitment
to socialism must be understood within this context that socialism,
for better or worse, was considered a historic inevitability in
structural terms, and if nothing else, it was at least
grudgingly stipulated, even by many of its staunchest critics on
the European right, that at least some concessions to the
popular demands of socialist parties would need to be made
for any future government to enjoy the legitimacy it required
to effectively rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why, and that's how, and that explains
the ascendency of of of of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler.
I mean, Hitler was always more popular than the party,
but eventually, you know, Hindenburg, U Hindenburg personally disliked Hitler,
and I think him, I think Hindenburg personally disliked the
National Socialists. But you know, again, it was the Stalhelm
wasn't going anywhere for that for that reason that uh
Currell outlined and that I just kind of like explicated
in plain English, the uh you know this there's I
realized that you know, in from the twentieth century onward,
especially with the advident visual media, as well as you know,
the concentration of power in in Key Loki and the
ability of consolidated governments to you know, to kind of
dictate policy. You know, there's there's a power to kind
of create a conceptual horizon, you know, like the media
like in the in the Oliver Stone movie Natural Learn Killers.
You know, like what he Harrelton says. He says the
reporter like media is like whether, but it's man made
whether like that that's actually really poignant, Okay, And like
I stipulate that that's very true. At the same time,
you can't just generate some kind of like revolutionary tendency
out of the air or and he can't just quash
one that's emergent. So this idea that you know, I mean,
I think Annolf Hiller believed everything he said, for better
or worse, whether you think Hitler was great or what anything.
He was evil, Like he wasn't a liar, and he
wasn't he wasn't a politician in the conventional sense, Like
he believed everything he said. He didn't take on like
a socialist program like like Thaloman claimed and the KVD claim,
you know, just for cynical reasons, like he believed in it,
like even if you didn't, like, yeah, it was the reality.
Speaker 1: Was that he might be wrong, but he never lied.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the and the Vimart voter, the var voter
at a social sensibility, like you could say that that
was bad or that you didn't accept that. It's like
well okay, but then you're not in the game, you know,
So there's no there's no way to kind of like
reactionary party or or some kind of like kaiser Reich
ravancist party like what would have gone anywhere in Germany,
Like you just wouldn't have you know. And and like
I said, that wasn't just that was that wasn't just
like the fervor of like you know, the kind of
red wave after nineteen twenty one twenty two. It was
that was like deeply insinuated into like the German consciousns
you know, like the uh, this idea you know, like
like we talked about that at the at the top
of the hour, like the the you know, uh, socialism
as we know it especially you know, came from it
came from Prussia and and came from uh that that
state of organization with yourself was derived from this desire
and this fundamental imperative to kind of repair the social
fabric that it ceased to exist after you know, the
medieval era disappeared into into historical time. I gotta raise
up in a minute, though, So let's we can we
can go part two on this if you want. But yeah, yeah,
there's anything else you want to hit, just real quick though,
in terms of key points. So let's take those up now.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just do one one last question. Yeah, man,
do you think America has ever had a right wing
and if they did, when did it disappear? Do they
have a right wing?
Speaker 2: Now? Yeah, I'm gonna deal with the first part of
the question. First, the War between the States, there was
there was something of a there was not conventionally right
left paradigm to that, but it was the precursor of it. Okay.
I mean there was guys in the North who were
who were kind of nullifiers, who didn't really want to
you know, in there, who were the free soilers. They
didn't really want a part of the war between the States,
but they were highly racially conscious and highly anti government. Uh.
But if you're talking about the actual partisans, you know,
like the kind of like kind of the true like
rebels in the South, and uh, and you were talking
about the fire years in the North, you like, and
and the the like the radical abolitionists, like there was
there was something of a precursor to like right left
divide in America. It's an imperfect analogy, but there's that later.
I agree with basically when Patty Cannon wrote in the
eighties and nineties about the old right being you know,
the the Hamiltonian uh, Robert Taft right, the America first right,
that was that that was the emergent American right in
modern terms, okay, and uh, you know in the in
the in the you know, in the in the twentieth century,
the words win the state wasn't ancient history. It was
less than one hundred years in the past. Okay. So
I mean the like America is like a consolidated uh
national union was was a pretty new thing. So there's
that too. The I believe, Uh, I'm always making the
point that you know, the Nuremberg system replacing the Westphalian
system that had not just profound implications for international order
and more in peace and and and and the conceptual
horizon of of of of heads of state, but it
also uh, it made it made the political right quite
literally illeal because that that that was part, that was
that was half of the reason for holding the Nuremberg
proceedings in the first place, is to say that you know, okay,
like you know, the Allies were on the side of
of providence and history and opposition to that which is
the right wing. You know, this is a criminal conspiracy
of racist murders, you know, and and and obviously you know,
no no rational actors such as you know, the Marxist
Leninists in Moscow and the New Years in Washington whatever
started war. So wars were only started, you know, by
the trigues and conspiracies of of breakings and criminals and races.
And that's what the right wing is, you know. So
where it's it's it's illegal to hold these views because
they result in genocide and warfare. That's why after that's
why there was no like Hewing Long or Robert Taft
after nineteen forty nine or forty eight forty nine, okay, like, uh,
you the closest thing was a guy like Joe McCarthy.
But obviously you know, there were there were the uh
the deep state closed ranks to wipe him out. And
I'm that said McCarthy was like a great guy. I mean,
I'm not saying morally, I mean, I don't think he was.
I think it was kind of a bumpkin. I don't
think he was a great figure hit and I've got
my own issues with him. But certainly the name was
Roy Cohne didn't do any favors but the for all
kinds of reasons, but that are Cold War series. But
the but that was that was basically the American right
as it was as it was Acipha and you know,
hewing long Robert Taft Wallace was a resurgence of that,
you know, And and of course Nixon took on the
Wallace Coalition, which became the Reagan Coalition, which became Mega.
That's right wing in the American sense. I mean, I
I think it's somewhat of a protest movement. But at
the if those people had better leadership, and if they
had UH and if they had a stronger intellectual foundation,
I think they'd very much like identify with Taffian principles,
like actual America First principles. So yeah, I mean, I
think I think that's basically genuine. I I think there's
a lot of silly stuff like within I mean, if
we can still consider like MEGA to be a movement
like the you know, the I was on the ground
in January sixth, And I'm not saying that to sound
like I mean like figure that one killer and not
trying to come off like Rodoni Junior's characters that you know,
like I was there when the ship went down at Gretade.
I was there. I'm not trying to come off like that.
But like I raised that a lot because like people
say all kinds of crazy stuff about January sixth, and
like when I tell them like they're wrong, and it well,
how do you know? It's like, well because I was there,
fucker like that's how But and and those people were gutsy.
I think a lot of them for like turning out
in depth, you know, to exhibit their discontent, which was
entirely well placed. But there's also just like a lot
of like fucking real goofs man and like guys doing
dumb shit, you know, like like that freaking weirdo like
oupainting himself up like brave Heart, like running around like
like an idiot. Like I saw a lot of like
that kind of shit, and there's like goofy stuff like
that that you know, like on the MAGA, right, So
I mean there's like more than like a seed of
potential and they are in some real way like the
airrors to like you know, the Taff Hamiltonian and later
like the you know, the Wallace, Nixon Reagan uh coalition.
But it's problematic because like America is problematic in terms
of how colitics break down. I mean, that's my view
of it. I'm not I'm not saying bad I'm not
trashing mega people like I mean, most of my friends
are our constitute or people like that. You know, I'm not.
I'm not some snob. I mean, how can I be.
So I don't want people to think I'm like saying
new things about them but them. But yeah, uh that's
my view and at a.
Speaker 1: Glance, and you need to get out of here, do
plugs real quick and we'll do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Pete. You can find me on Twitter
at Chriskellian jahad. Uh. The T is a number seven.
But if if I think, if you serve for Thomas
seven seven seven, I come up. I I got kicked
off at t RAND for criticizing Uh, mister Zolensky, which
is interesting. On t gram there's guys that literally post
like really gross like pornography and like pictures of dead people,
like really awful stuff. I don't sounds like some fucking
shrinking violet, but I mean I find that kind of
stuff upset it, you know, and like I but so
that's okay, but like you trash like Lensky, like you
get like moved. So I mean, hey, it's it's neither
here or there. We don't need t gramm anymore because
the centenship regime is is has been broken in some way,
like enough at least that we can get our message out.
But so I'm not on t gram anymore. But in
my substack it's real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack
dot com. There's a chat in there, and if you're
a subscriber, like you don't need to pay, but you
do need to subscribe to access to chat. And like
that's like where we've been congregating. And you can always
like hit me up on email if you want to
talk to me direct. It might take me a week
or two reply just because I get a lot of email.
It's zartex z e r t a X seven seven
seven at ProtonMail dot com. And yeah, that's that's all
I got.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. Man.
Speaker 2: Likewise, man, this is great. Thank you. One.
Speaker 1: Back to the Pin Show, returning for part two on
George Sorell. It's Thomas seven seven seven. How are you done, sir?
Speaker 2: I'm very well, thanks man, And all I got indicated
before we went live. There's been an overwhelmingly positive response
to covering Sorel and then our first episode on Sorell.
I mean, and that's that's fantastic, Not because it gives
my ego a boost, although frankly it kind of does,
and I'm not ashamed to say that, but the fact
that people are engaging with Sorel in a meaningful way
is great. It's essential to understanding the twentieth century and
the trajectory of the political right and and how European
the political culture developed in fundamental ways, and you know,
more and more of what we do. I mean, it's
important to educate our people in our faction, as it
were anyway, but you know, mein Shamagademia just is not
taking these things up. The exception is guys like Paul
Gotfried but I mean he's really on his own, you know.
I mean, I mean, I was Godfrey, you know, one
of us uh Rick large. But he is a serious
political theorist. But he's you know, he's he's found a
niche audience, kind of like Michael Jones says. But you
know that my point being that what what we're doing
is really kind of filled uh uh phi satisfying a demand,
you know, and the fact that demand exists in the
first place, it is a very positive tendency because that
was not the case twenty years ago. But yeah, we
we can dive in. We can dive in immediately. Man.
Speaker 1: All right, well, yeah, here's something to start out with.
What did what did cREL consider himself? You're you know,
you read this and definitely brings up syndicalism a lot, definitely,
And also we know that he changed his mind on
some things as uh as his life progress. So when
you read Sorell, when you read Reflections on Violence, what
is he how how do you see the framework with
that he's personally writing it in?
Speaker 2: What I think of And that's that's that's a great question.
What I think of Cyrel personally, I think is a
pure I think he was a pure political theorist in
a lot of ways, and that's one of the reasons.
That's one of the things that distinguishes them from mars
I mean, obviously he was ideological sympathies and his esthetic
tendencies were totally to odds with Marxism. But you know,
like we talked about before, you know, Marx had these
pretensions Marsian angles both an equal measures. They had these
pretensions to science, you know, or this idea that you know.
They were they were you know, they were they were
positing theories of economics, and nothing of the story was underway.
That's not my own conceptual bias, Like there is no
Marxist economics. There's a Marxist sociology. And yeah, it posits uh,
you know, values and and and uh and observations about
you know, the human condition and how and obviously, I
mean that's selling a fundamentally concerned with particularly man and
his relationship his on labor. But that's that's not a
theory of economics, you know, it's a it's kind of
it's kind of political sociology that it places a premium
on on man as an economic actor. Uh, both severally
and collectively as it is kind of like his primary
is his primary kind of function as historically as well
as Andrew pot But that's not that's that's not economic science, okay.
And but Sorell I Mesuela is very clear that he
was he was dealing in pure political theory. Okay. He
was talking about value creation. He's talking about animates people,
you know, to to to create political cultures, and you know,
and and and and to live historically, you know, and uh,
you know fundamentally conserned the questions of identity with esthetic
with value judgments kind of rendered by aesthetical tendencies, you know,
uh the things uh you know kind of the kind
of kind of distilled down, uh as into human values,
you know, things like heroism and like what is heroism
and in the political realm and things like that. You know.
That's why the seminal text of Sorel if you want
to understand this point I'm trying to make, and forgive
me if I'm being up, the skater shot is, you know,
with Sorell's essay on the Trial of Socrates and why
Socrates deserve not only deserve to be executed and in
absolute moral terms, but he was imperative and political terms,
because people at Socrates had brought horrible damage to Athens,
you know, and and and really kind of destroyed the
legacy of Paraples, as it were. And that's why that's
why Sorell's favorite, uh, Sorell's favorite the pre Socratic thinker
is Xenophon. I'm not that's a really complicated issue, and
I'm not a guy who was an expert in the classics,
but that you know that that's fundamentally important. I'm just
for our purposes we're talking about here, it's it's premium,
it's prem efficient evidence that Currell did not pretend that
he was you know, that he was that that he
was presenting some like new science of economics, and he
was not pretending that you know, he he was like
the air to some kind of rationalist socialism that uh
was an improvement upon Merks or something like. He He
was a very he was in a very real sense
philosophizing with a hammer, uh. And frankly, he was concerned
with a lot of the same with a lot of
the same phenomenon that Nietzsche was. But he was far
more of a practical, uh, political theorist about it. And
he was driving different conclusions that had superficially sort of
similar uh the futures, if that makes sense. But I
draw the distinction or I make the comparison not accidentally
or or or not because I'm trying to be funny.
But like the other day online, like I was a
bar of people who were mad at me because they
thought that I was putting shade on and they're kind
of nichean sensibilities and that's not really what I was doing.
But people like us, I feel, can read wherever they want, okay,
and I'm not I'm not like the grand like Bury
and of philosophy or something, just kind of authority they
like tell people like like, hey man, you should like
read this, but not that. But you know when people
do approach me and say they're interest didn't understanding you know,
the twentieth century, and they tell me that their interest
didn't understanding, you know, uh, developing kind of like a
practical paradigm of political action. You know, you should be
reading stuff like cREL a lot more than you should
be you know, sitting around reading. You know, there's arthustru
and you know, genealogy and worlds and things like that.
But they you know, I and I try and steer people.
I mean, even even if people are just kind of
like died in the wool intellectuals. I mean, it's great, okay,
I mean, there's nothing at all wrong with it as
long as its tempered by a kind of pragmatic grounding
in the world, and it's not some kind of you know,
it's not some kind of psychological coping mechanism of retreat.
But the uh if if one of the things that
people that caused people that gravitated towards thinkers like Nietzsche,
and there's some degree Heidegger, although they were very different,
is uh you know, there was there was there was
a real historical crisis that that reached the zenith you
know in in uh in in in elite modernity, you know,
the mid really really the mid nineteenth century, just when
they started to impact like regular people's individual lives, you know,
and obviously it reached a horrible zenith in the twentieth century.
I mean, I don't I don't see that for the
reasons what court of storians do. Obviously, as I mean
I drew I drived that observation for radically different reasons.
But you know, this can't be denied. And I try
and expand people's conceptual horizons and make them see that,
like what Mitra was not the only uh andoth very
powerful language that really resonates with with people, especially especially
younger guys. Which is fine, young guys have great energy
that we need. But I try and help steer people
the fact that you know, he was not the only
thinker concerned with these things. There was many others who were,
and there's many on the right who were, And there
was many who whose ideas and and philosophy's held a
far more kind of relevant trying to go relevance to
you know, the the current dilemma. And so that's kind
where Sorell comes in. But I he was I look
at Sir as a pure political theorist and a uh
and and a political sociologist were at large, and he
was fundamentally concerned with the economic But you know that's
everybody was. You know, like the Zeit guys do exist
in is like the Zeit guys do exist in. You know,
you've got to you've got to, like a whether you
want to or not, you've got to abide the the
epoch in which you're situated and the kind of conceptual
realities that are paramount, you know, and his guys is
a real thing. You know. You don't have to be
a gaily End or you don't have to believe in
God if, but you can't deny that, like the Zeitgeist
is a real thing. I mean maybe you maybe you
come at it as like, well, you know, it's just
kind of a you know, it's just like a functional
mass psychology or whatever or you know people or or
like you're like epigenetic memory come uh, basic structures of mind.
It's like, okay, it doesn't matter for our purpose. It
is like what causes the Zeitgeist to emerge. But it
is a real thing, you know, and like what's possible
politically is very much bounded like pen by those parameters.
You know. That's why lately, uh, I mean my big
project right now is uh is is uh, you know,
making progress on the Nermer with transcript and that that's
preceding at taste, But I want to write about the
d d R and uh the radical German left post
nineteen forty five and things like the botder mindhoff Gang
you know, more more globally onto the Red Army faction,
you know, like a lot of these people. And I
realized this is a tangent, but I'll bring it back.
I'm going to start with this. This is topable. A
lot of the people who are involved with it, they
weren't first of all, like versusly. None of them were
relacure minorities like they They were very much like German
boys and girls, okay, And they were attracted to this
really because that's what was possible within with you know,
within the conceptual parameters of the Cold War, you know.
And interestingly Horsechmahler, who was uh, you know, a self
identified you know, stalotist radical who who became a lawyer
and he defended a lot of the boder Minehoff people
in court. You know. He after the after the Berlin
Wall came down, he joined he joined the NPD and
he was actually arrested in prison for quote Holocaust and
island things. I mean, so he basically and some people
were like, oh, what is synic this man is? I say, no,
I think there was always what his sympathies were. But
you know, he was a German guy from the east
who was you know, born in nineteen forties, Like what
was he like, what was he gonna do like march
around like horse or vessel? Was he gonna you know,
was he gonna try to organize like a march on
Rome in nineteen sixty? I mean, it's not that that's
not the way the world was, you know, and it uh,
and it's not just it's not just a matter of
of practical potentialities. It's also I mean just what what
what speaks to people? Like what guys uh, potentialities within
the political realm emerged, you know, so I I want
to more about this, you know. And there's also and
that's one of the reasons too, I'm interested in guys
like Johann von Leirds. I mean, I'm interested in Islam
for and it's impact on the political for all kinds
of reasons. But guys like him and guys like I'm
at Hubert, it was like the same kind of thing, okay,
Like they were kind of unusual people and you know,
kind of like orientalist adventurer types, but they they very much.
I mean, I'm not gonna claim to know like what
I mean, I've never leave the Christian faith, okay, but
I I can't. I can only speculate, and like what
motivates people to convert to like what a very alien religions?
I mean, for all, I know this was very genuine
and some kind of spiritual uh calling. But I also
there's a negatively political aspect in the case of people
like von Leers and Mahler and that oh what I
just said. The Zeit guy said, the questions of you know,
what what what is? Uh? What? What was possible? You know,
within within the conceptual parameters of of the e F
I I much was situated. I know that was long winded,
but it's it's it's frankly a big question. But yeah,
that's that's that's that's not that's how I characterized Sorel.
That's why I believe he's there's an enduring relevance there.
It's SAE for Werner Sombart. Uh And well, if you
want to, we'll do a episode on Werner Sombart. You know,
he was he was kind of like the other like
socialist of the right, and he was German obviously, and
he wrote specific America and why socialism is not resonant
in America, which is fascinating and timely with It's that's
that's my not so brief answer to the question as
to how I characterized Sorel or categorize him.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm glad you brought up the zite Geist, because
I think that operating in the Zeitgeist, when your thought
is firmly planted within the Zeitgeist, you can make you
either make very realistic decisions or in my case, in
the past, you have very fanciful decisions. And I want
to read this passage right here, and it points to
a lot of what I was talking about. And this
is in part three of the chapter Prejudices against Violence.
I just want to read this chapter. It says the
army is the clearest and most tangible of all possible
manifestations of the state, and the one which is most
firmly connected with its origins and traditions. Syndicalists do not
propose to reform the state as the men of the
eighteenth century did. They want to destroy it because they
wish to realize the idea of marxis that the socialist
revolution ought not to culminate in the replacement of one
governing monarch already by another minority. The syndicalists outline their
doctrines still more clearly when they give it a more
ideological aspect and declare themselves anti patriotic, following the example
of the Communist Manifesto. He actually goes on to say,
it is impossible that there should be the slightest understanding
between syndicalists and official socialists on this question. The latter,
of course, talking about official socialists speak of breaking up everything,
but they attack men in power rather than power itself.
They hope to possess the state forces, and they are
aware that on the day when they control the government
they will have need of an army, they will carry
on foreign politics, and consequently they, in their turn, will
have to praise the feeling of devotion to the fatherland.
The reason I brought I chose that passage is because
it's very easy. I know a lot of the people
in my orbit are anarchists. A lot of them call
themselves right wing anarchists. And it seems to me that
the reason that anarchy can seem very appealing to a
lot of people is because they don't see an answer
in the zeitgeist for their morality what they believe. And
another thing something that I wrote is it seems that
moral superiority when you have no solution to present dilemmas
leads you to become somebody who politics becomes all about morality,
because it's very easy to win a political argument if
you just say, well, all war is immoral, all taxation
is immoral, everything is immoral when you have no when
there is no vision that you can see of overthrowing
what is in power now where it seems like these anarchists,
and I'm including my former self are no different than
these syndicalists who just want to destroy everything and will
even resort to anti patriotism and saying that power it
is possible to destroy power when you're basically moralizing against
the site geist you know that exists.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and I think in America there's a conceptual
problem here too. The reason why you know, the anarchists
who did crazy stuff like attacking the UH the Chicago
Federal Building and it's like literally blowing it up, and
these these guys like Sacho and many like is Italian
anarchists suit your point, we're very much like in in
bed with cyndical is, you know, like like perceptually in
Europe that had that was kind of like anarchism like
had within conceptual vocabulary of European socialism, like anarchism made
sense even that, even if it was not a good idea.
In America, I think there are like anarchists in America
who actually like I think that. I think I think
they're to your point in doublging and flights of fantasy,
but they do have a pretty deep understanding of h
of H of the source material. But I think most
people in America grantate towards it. Like when they think
of anarchism, they're not really thinking of anarchism per se.
They're thinking of kind of like a Habizian ontology of oh, well, naturally,
there's no there's no course of authority, you know, uh,
And all we need to do is, you know, kind
of overcome this tendency to exploit others and you know
that the state of nature has no government, which is
nonsense and also too if people kind of associate all
authority with like this, you know, new dealer, uh, bureaucracy
committed to social engineering and all kinds of and and
all kinds of in all kinds of tyrannies like prosaic
and profound like screw with people vibes, you know, individually
as well as collectively, culturally, socially and everything else. Like
it's not some people develop this binary tendency. They don't
realize that there's various iterations of government, and like government
quad government doesn't just like equate to you know what
this like obsolete like cold world of Iathan that we're
kind of stuck with in America. You know, I governments
neither good or bad like on its face, you know,
I mean it's I'm always making the point of people that,
you know, because uh like a lot of people know
that I you know, I identify a lot with you know,
Confederate here and stuff, you know, for for cultural and
theological and like racial reasons, but as well as you know,
historical ones. And they're like, well, how can you also
like admire the Prussian state. It's like because there's a
commonality there and that you know, the regime that came
into existence was appropriate for the people within its dominion
as well as you know, the political challenges that were extants.
You know it, uh like the Prussian regime was appropriate
for Prussia, like you know the Confederate Yaloemen re you know,
truly we're kind of like self governing and in a
classical sense. So it's as much as that was possible
you know in the in the nineteenth century. I mean
that was appropriate for them. You know. It's not like
there's like one like it. It's not it's not just
like one modality a government that is appropriate. There's categorically wrong.
I mean obviously there's something. There's there's some there there's
some configurations of government that are just absolutely like terrible, okay,
Like I mean there's something like weird Internet guy. Like
no nobody was say that, like you know, democratic campu
Chia like like a great regime, you know, like something,
but you know, the yeah, people can just make it
like categorically sweeping judgments like the The problem with regimes
like that in America and like that which has been
imposed on Western Europe is that it's it's I compare
it to like you know, you know, like the old
Ray Bradbury story Faaraaneck for fifty one, like when I
was in high school, Like people still like read that,
like he to sign it, and you know, have like
the fire department and fair n forty one. Their guys
actually go out and start fires. Like the US government
is like a fire department that starts fires because like
governmental dres its legitimacy from the degree to which it
guarantees the posterity like the people in their culture and
and the government is quite literally working to annihilate those things.
And that that's that's it's beyond like a dysfunctional government.
That's it's abjectly perverse. You know, it's a it's a
cross purposes with the raison detro of a government. I
mean that that's that's really what brought down the Soviet system,
you know, I mean, yeah, there was the planned economy
doesn't work. You know, you can't, you can't. You can't
abolish the incentive for creativity. We're large, and they just
say like, well, we're gonna you know, we're just gonna
plan all like economic activity and all. And you can't
like plan spontaneous innovation. Okay, that's ridiculous, you know, and
obviously like it didn't. It didn't. It didn't deliver anything
of of of real value to people. And then some
kind of basic security of material nature, you know, I
mean in every like their bone sense. But that's not
like why if that collapsed. There's there's ysfunctional governments that
just like lurch on for centuries, you know, like the
out of an empire. Okay, like the Soviet regime fell
because it was it was literally like this perverse iteration
of of of of a regime that was literally across
purposes with with you know what what what should be
like the t los of government. Then if you if
you're literally like one of things I agree with the
Michael Jones on is if you're literally proceeding like if
you're literally proceeding against a reason, like that's kind of
like your course set. You know, you're like anti reason,
like that can't really sustain itself. And eventually people are
gonna revolt against that. I mean, even if they don't
understand really like what's wrong with the regime they're under
and like philosophical or ethical or or any kind of
you know it like you know, intellectual terms, just because
it's it's it's gonna like start, it's gonna star like
from any obstacles their ability to lead a normal life,
you know, and like do anything constructive, you know, And
that's that's kind of where we're at now. But yeah,
I forgive me if that was a long one.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the you would you had talked about
how understanding the zeitgeist is most important. So if you
were to take any lessons from Sorel in repairing what
we have here. Okay, so we don't have we don't
have a history of communism here, we have a history.
We don't have a history of Roman Catholicism here. You know,
we have a history of Protestant farmers, working men who
basically can have a history of providing for themselves. So
the you know, what is the answer that's you know,
it's like a lot of the people I know, their
answer is, well, we just have to get rid of
the state. As we get rid of the state, then
you know, the we can institute good economics quote economics.
Of course that has never been tried. They just assume
that it's going to be better. You know, people will
be able to defend themselves. Well, if we just get
rid of gun laws, any gun law, then you know,
violence can take care of itself, because you can if
somebody comes at you, now you're you can have a
bigger gun than them. I mean not not taking into
account that people just with people are large families just
put together their own armies, you know. And so when
you try to devise an answer to what we have now.
I don't think that going backwards in time is what's
going to solve it. We're going to it's going to
be something new, but it's going to be something that
involves a government of some sort, and I think it's
going to I would assume it's going to be something
that would be more of a right classic right wing
government if we're going to hold any of this together, unless,
of course it just breaks up and balkanizes.
Speaker 2: Well, there some of some of the problems that take
care of itself. There's not even appalling in or some
kind of or some kind of Uh. I don't have
some kind of like eschatology of you know, how the
government is going to all go down or something and that.
But what's gonna hit to my point about what I
raised earlier about or a minute ago, rather about you know,
not being able to sustain in the course that's literally
at odds with the reason. I mean, there's there's a
few things wrong with the government, Okay, one of which
is structural, you know, like we've talked about like regardless
how you felt feel about like Roosevelt in a history
or the New Deal or whatever, like the regimes that
exist today. It's an anachronism. It's as much of them
as as the Soviet Union was and like a turanglerea okay,
because it's it's it's structured to do something that that
is uh that there's no longer extant. Okay, I mean
it's it's it's structured to wage the Cold War, Okay,
and then that's about it, and literally everything else that's
subservient to that, because even even regimes are totally just functional,
even even those that are populated by people we don't
have any meaningful understanding of of high politics conceptually, they're
they're like bound by basic realities, okay, like going to
the fact that you know, their ability to act like
hemmed in by uh by by by critical disincentives to
you know, to push up against that. Okay. So everything
was every everything is subserve me at the high politics, okay,
when particularly when you have uh a situation, strategic landscape
like that of the Cold War. So I mean, the
regimes just it's it's it's it's you know, it's a
it's a quote solution like in constant search of a
problem to you know, to the rationalize it continued existence.
So there's that there's also uh, there's this radical uh
faction that's you know, really really I mean, the New
Deal was when it was when it was able to
assert itself politically and truly kind of concrete, organized capacities.
So I mean frout a century, we've just kind of
like lampre wrapped around the the structure of government proverbially speaking,
that's uh that, that's uh that that's actively trying to
destroy the culture and uh the ability of the people,
uh who are the you know within that culture live
historically or to or to harbor any identities of a
historical nature. Okay, if and that must that have to
be excised. How it's going to excise, that depends on
what develops. But the structural problem I was talking about
about the obsolescence of uh, the regime that's gonna take
care of itself, and not in some punctuated way. It's
not gonna be some like Mad Max scenario where everything
blows up one day. It might take two hundred and
fifty years or something, Okay, but gradually it's just not
gonna be able to assert itself anymore. And you're gonna
see localities, you know, whether you know, whether it's some
what you know, whether it's like some some mid size
city in New Mexico, Arizona that you know, can't rely
on the federal government, you know, to provide it with, uh,
with the water it needs and things like that, and
the infrastructural uh, the things it needs. So you know,
it's just gonna it's just gonna have to find ways
to you know, to resort to self help, you know,
in Congress with you know, like the other states and
municipalities that are similarly situated. Or whether it's you know,
some place like Chicago where you know, you take this
you know, you take like the West Side that's like
increasingly just like kind of going to hell in a handbasket.
You know, like the police increasingly you just kind of
like just don't patrol anymore. You know, you're gonna see
more and more situations like that where, uh, you know,
people in true like ghettos like like live like Perl,
not intersecting lives with like bourgeois people and they don't
even like really interfere with each other anymore. Okay, like uh,
and then that that's happening as we speak, Like I
see it. I'm not just like It's not some science
fiction thing I came up with. So like things like
that are kind of gonna kind of gonna conspire to
you know, just kind of like deprive the regime of
credibility in uh in hard power terms, and uh that
will uh that that'll like the the uh the radical
culture distortion element within that regime. Like on account of
these kinds of structural frailties that are increasingly emergent, it
won't be able to impose its will on people anymore.
You know, it's not gonna be able to insinuate crazy
ideas to the part of education. You know, it's not
going to be able to you know, transform like what
we're you know, basically functional with kind of poor communities
into like ghettos where like you know, race wars are
going on. It's not gonna be able to you know, uh,
it's not it's not gonna be able to mobilize uh people, uh,
you know, to go and annihilate you know, other societies
overseas that decide you don't have to be destroyed, and
that that's already happening too. You know. That's why increasingly
this reliance on mercenaries and and things like that, So
what what will emerge from those proverbial ashes. I believe
once you strip away what I just talk about and
the core of America, you know, kind of like the
white Christian core and those people who are you know,
who perhaps aren't you know, like us ethnically or or
or or don't like a bid you know, the same
sex that we do. But where my fellow travelers in
terms there are billy you to you know, create and
sustain culture. That kind of core I think kind of
like the core setting of America is like hamiled vers
of Jefferson, and a lot of people object to that,
and that can be like oversimplified, but basically it's the
federalist versus an anti federalist perspective, okay. And you can
see some states that uh tend towards the former and
some towards the ladder, and that's gonna cause tensions, but
generally it's not in anybody's interests, you know, to wage
bloody civil wars. And I think by necessity, particularly in America,
it becomes poor, you know, kind of uh, pragmatism is
gonna carry the day, you know, but just in practical terms,
you know, you're not gonna you know, like twitter years
from now. You know, if you do have you know,
the geographic division is gonna isn't gonna be between you know,
like the old North and the Old South, but there's
gonna be some of the same kind of tendencies that
you know, cause like a political and and and sociological
class between them. But you're not You're not gonna You're
not gonna have this regime that's kind of got like
endless that that's got kind of like a that's got
bottomless pockets, you know, uh, and the ability to just
kind of like you know, martial unprecedented productive capabilities to
like wage war and dominate you know, anybody you wants.
The that's not going to exist anymore. You know. That'side
the fact that that's really kind of self defeating as
a as as a as a course to you know,
to unite the country in some sort of in some
sort of a unitary political culture under a single sovereign.
I mean that was possible in the War between the
States for kind of complicated reasons, but it's also you know,
the the war win the States shouldn't happen in the
first place. I mean, I don't know, I don't know
if there's any a civil war discussion, but it my
point is like I'm not it's there's not some look
evitability that you know, absent these kinds of a because
of the alien elements that I just talked about. You know,
we're literally attacking the body politic and absent this kind
of obsolescent and very corrupt regime, you know, morally materially,
that's kind of desperately trying to cling to power. I
don't see Americans just kind of like going to the
rifle to kill each other as a matter of first recourse.
You know, generally these things can be resolved. You know.
It's and I may be wrong, but I I don't
think I'm overly optimistic. I mean, I am like a
basically a gloomy Angle six and Calvin is kind of dude.
I don't think anybody accuse me of being some like
optimist Pollyanna who says everything's gonna be all right all
the time. But I don't. I don't agree with guys
like Thomas Chitthham and who he he. He is a
fascinating guy, and he wrote some great stuff in the nineties.
And it's like Civil War two paradigm, Like he literally
wrote a book called Civil War two. It was I'm
sure some of the fellows that are familiar with I mean,
like I'm an old guy, so I'm familiar with that.
I read it when I was like sixteen. But the
kind of ethnic confleet he talks about, yeah, I don't
doubt that that that's pretty possible, and it's unfortunately in
some places that's underway, right, But.
Speaker 1: Pierce, you know, even yeah, Pierce the same everything. A
lot of that talk was in and around the militia
movement of you know, the late eighties and nineties that
Clinton declared war on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the the nineties were, the nineties were wild times
and and mostly in good and bad ways, mostly bad ways.
And yeah that I do. I mean, don't get me wrong.
Like there's definitely I can definitely see you know, like
like eighty years from or whatever, you know, a place
like Detroit or a place like west side Chicago. You know,
basically something like gangster world words like on the cops
like you're not the law here, like we're the law here,
and like what we say goes and you know where
the Lord King is sovereign and them being kind of
like a periodic war with like blackwater Tights who owing
to some interest for another you know, are being hired
by uh, you know, either wealthy private agents or by
what remains of you know, the the seate of sovereign
government in the state and and like and going to
war with these people in the localized ways or something
where I can see like militia type guys, you know,
pulling like what the Arian Nations did and saying like,
look like we're seceding because you know, we're like, you know,
we're like the Arian Community of Christ And if you're
not white, you're not right. And if you're a fed,
you're fucking dead. So like you're not gonna you know,
you're not gonna fuck with our municipality and the government
just being like, well, we're not gonna like we're not
gonna fight some like endless war with these people. We're
not gonna kill them all. So it's like leave them
alone like stuff like that. I definitely see happening. I
don't see, like you know, I don't I don't see
you know, like years from now some kind of uprising,
some kind of simultaneous uprising and kind of like the
White underclass against you know, the regime, and like blacks
against the man, and like immigrants who like you know,
want to create like you know, Oslon and like the Southwest.
I just don't see that happening. It's not likely. And
Shildham was Sham was a dude born in the forties
who who's sort of experienced, was in was in Vietnam,
And I mean, I totally get that. And I got
a lot of respect for dudes like that, you know.
And then I mean that's my day's generation, you know,
And I got huge respect from my dad as in
all of them, guys. I'm not saying like they got
stupid ideas at all. What I'm saying is like their
world views, like we was colored by that. And I
don't have a crystal ball. I'm not some kind of
like Augur, but I do think I'm pretty good and
kind of discerning basic the basic trajectory of of political events,
you know, like in every basic sense. Okay, I think
that's why people read my content. Frankly, you know, it's
not it's not because I'm a comediant or because like
I'm a a great knuckle but you know, I and yeah,
and plus two I'll turn it back to you in
a minute. I'm sorry for rambling, but the you know
frankly too. And I mean, I recognize this because it's
my culture, and I totally I've got a problem acknowledging
it to the tendency to like apot not just escatological,
but like apocalyptic thinking in America, you know, and there's
an idea that there's gonna there's always gonna be a
day log, and there's gonna be there, there's gonna be uh,
you know, there's always gonna be something like punctuated event
that brings everything down. You know, there's gonna be you know,
some kind of like massic, some like extinction level event. Honestly,
that's like when underlies the global warming bullshit. It's like
the weird old, basic kind of like uh, it's it's
like a it's it's kind of like the loser, basic,
bougie version of it. But I mean that's that's why
it's weird to hear like Europeans parodic because it's not
a European thing. That's like America thing, you know. And
but on our sidety, I mean, even intelligent guys and
some ladies you know who don't ascribe to that kind
of nonsense. And there's even kind of cogs and the
tendency I talk about like anthropologically, they still like they've
got this kind of like instinctive tendency to think in
terms of like punctuated equilibrium. I'm in in in historical
events and like apocalyptic stuff like oh, you know, just
one day everything's gonna come down, or there's gonna be
a race war, or like infrastructure is just gonna go
belly up and we're not gonna clean water, Like it's
not gonna happen. You know, it's it's gonna be a
death by a thousand cuts, and it's gonna be like
it's gonna be a couple hundred years, Like a Mary's
gonna exist in some form or another for a couple
hundred years. Yet, you know, even even if it's just
like in even if even if twitter years now it's
just like in name only kind of like the last
day is the Holy Roman Empire or something, but it's
it's going to exist in some sense, and there's gonna
be a guy who's identified as President of the United States,
Like what kind of cloud he has, what kind of
ability he as raised Army. I mean, that's that's a
different question. But I firmly believe that. But yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to monopolize the conversation.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to know that this ad break is
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It's a totally different way of paying for healthcare. Terms
and conditions may apply. No, we can start. We can
start an argument on when the when the Roman Empire
started to fall. I mean, some people will say, you
know what, you know, what Caesar and with the first Caesar.
But okay, well here's something I wanted to bring up.
So this book actually talks about violence. It has violence
in the in the title, but he also he also
talks about social change. He also talks about political change.
And from everything you've just said, is the change that
would happen in our culture where we were born, where
we are. I don't think any of us are. Most
of us aren't planning on going anywhere else. Is going
to be social and is going to be political, because
that's where sure, if you go back to the War
between the States, the War of Northern Aggression, then you
can talk about violence, and you can talk about an
invasion of a foreign land. But really what started to
bring down what we have now was social and political
and it was by you mentioned the term culture distortion,
invoking Yaki and invoking Spangler, that's what has to be
won back. And I really think, and people are probably
sick of hearing me say this over and over again,
that that's going to have to start at the most
local level, and probably the most local level is in
the home and then spreading out to community and going
forward like that like that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's one of the things.
I mean that that's a Surrealian point too, you know,
one of the things one of the reasons he was
hung up on Xenophon and one of the reasons why
you know, he talked about, you know, the home being
kind of like the school of command, you know, where
where like the patriarch, you know, learns how to you know,
how to how to rule over his wife and children
in a firm way, but in an equitable way. You know.
That's that's how that that's where women learn, you know,
how to like how to like relate to men and
stuff and like hold down the household. And women do that.
You know, believe that, you know, that's not some conceit.
That's very true. So I don't like people mean down
at females, that's where kids like learn, you know, how
how how to grow up into adult men and women,
you know, and uh and and you know and and
and the nature of like what you know, what is
just and the parameters of obedience like within within you know,
within that kind of justice paradigm of command and obedience.
And that's why you know this in a concrete engagement
with with what we consider the body politic I mean
in Sir Alzheimer, now, I mean, uh as the body
politic and anthem has consisted of of like every liked
a household, you know, and uh, some of these men
were rich and some of them were not so rich.
But you know, they all went to war together. They
all told the soil together, you know, they all they
all participated in the assembly together. Like this idea of
you know, hyper specialization and dividing people into like you know,
basically neglecy, dividing people's functions within the same kind of caste,
that's that's a recipe that that's that's a recipe for
self destruction, among other things. Because that's Therrel's point is, like, well,
then you have this basically parasitic cast of politicians who,
even if they themselves aren't aren't wealthy by birth, you know,
they they basically become like the clients of wealthy patrons
and aside of everything else that's wrong with that, Like
these guys don't work, they don't do anything, you know,
they're like this, there's this weird leisured class that by
nature's kind of decadences, you know, that develops resentments of
the Yalemen ry and vice versa, and UH in turn,
they're dependent upon these kinds of intellectuals and financers, who,
in Sorel's view like have more are like in bed
together like verbially, you know, and they and you know,
these guys view themselves as they they you know, they've
they've got their own kind of like resentment and fear
of like the Yalemen re or the proletariat like in
Cerel's at Bach. You know, but they themselves are as
parasitic as like the political caste, and just as UH
and just as prone to intrigues, you know, because they're
they're they're their situation is always tenguless, you know, because
they're they're they're they're they're they're by definition they're parasitic,
you know. They they they rely upon the willingness of
UH of the two other factions they just identified to
not just tolerate them, but to sustain them and everything
else aside, Like even if you had a totally like
homogenous population, even if at least nominally there was some
kind of common culture and common religion like ce religion
and like ethics in common, that that's still a create
all kinds of weird pathologies, and and it would institutionalize
social divisions in ways that not that not just their counterproductive,
you know, until like a virtual society, even just in
practical terms, like what you don't institutionalize social divisions for
its own sake because I'm gonna endless conversation and endless
argument and endless contention is some marvelous thing from which
we all benefits. That was that was called Schmid's point
about parliamentarism. My wife's dysfunctional, Like on his face, it's
there's there's something very ethological about it. I don't mean
insinuate these kinds of psychological terms in the discussion, but
I can't think of a better way to describe it,
because it is it's it's it's uh, it's a maladaptive
uh conceived of of human mind. Is the pray these
things It's not like practical, it's not things that exist
and like you know in kind of political reality that
we just come upon and have to address, these things
are very much cultivated and created and it's very artificial,
you know what I mean you see this today, I
mean even uh there's you know these like even if
you took away the culture distortion and aspect like look
like this, look like this infotainment garbage. Its job basically
is the kind of like is a manufacture like Widge
issues us like make people upset about you know, like
this isn't stuff that's like emerging when people when people's
actual lives or if this isn't stuff that you know,
people would uh people would identify as as as being
something that you know, warning their attention and some like
oncological capacity. It's like literally just like confabulated and you
know because people are like, uh, you know, even in
the best of times, you know, like common people or
you know, deal with a lot of certain and like
anxiety uh derived therein you know that that's that's kind
of formless, you know, something that's just this kind of
human condition, you know, when they're plugged into figuratively and
literally like plugged into some kind of media organ twenty
or seven. You know, one of the things that satisfies
or one of like the needs of fulfills like psychologically
and tell them cope with things is like giving form
to these kinds of amorphous like negative feelings and anxieties
and so it it's it's it's kind of like a
these thing are kind of like permanently situated to be,
you know, like manipulated by a sort of idol like
parasite political cast whose only real role is to kind
of is to kind of create like you know, institutionalized
grievance structures, if that makes any sense. And I mean,
you know, obviously a high tech and like you know,
media like change all that. I mean, even like radioven
for TV, like visual media is a huge game changer.
But even like radio, like the ability to just like
literally brought broad being able to broadcast any capacity like
coast to coast or like across the European continent, you know,
from like Paris to like Prague, like that was that
was a game changer, you know, for the reasons I
just stated, and that uh that that's one of the
reasons why people ask like why why why It's kind
of like faux democracy or it's kind of like institutionalized
uh or it's kind of like institutionalized grievance uh structure.
I just identified, like why why why it seems to
like acciomatically coexist with you know, like the modern like
managerial state. Well, I mean the answer is media. I mean,
I don't mean a time of reductionists, but I I
think i've I think I've invoked the quote before from
Natural Born Killers. I really like National Born Killers. It's
a really dope movie, and I I try and turn
people onto it because it's not it's not just like
gross Quentin Tarantino's stuff or like Oliver Stone like preachy stuff.
It's really really insightful and it's really subversive in some ways.
But the guy who's uh like the Stark Weather uh
like Diliger character, you know, Woody Harrelson, when he's talking
like the media guy, he's like, you know, he's like
he's like, media is like the weather, but it's man made.
Weather is this thing you're immersed in and you don't
even you don't even like notice it. I said, I
find myself like not really noticing it. I mean I
discern like what what what's not People's minds and kind
of like you like, what's something like the Floyd craziness
George Floyd crasiness was jumping off. I would discern like
this is what people are thinking about. But it's like
I don't even like I don't even always like detect
Immediately they're like, well, that's that's the narrative that's being
created by what, you know, the media they're immersed in,
because they're just like take for granted, you know, and
it uh and and speaking of zeitgeys the uh you know,
like the day of day uh, like the day day
fixations of people like within that like brought a paradigm
like that that comes one hundred percent from media. I
mean it plays upon like things like intrinsic to mind,
you know, like symbolically and and things really the impulse
and appetite and stuff and symbols that are kind of
universally resonant in like most basic terms, but in terms
of the actual narrative, like the concrete particulars like of
those narratives and of like those symbols and like what
form they take those totems rare, Like that's one hundred
percent created by uh by by architects of media, and
I mean that sounds conspiratorial to people. Whatever I mean,
I'm main a sociological observation.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not it's not conspiratorial. Yeah yeah, yeah.
This is part two. But when I released part one,
the next episode I did after that was me and
my friend Buck writing the reading the Engineering and Consent
by Burne, and he wrote that in propaganda he wrote
in twenty in twenty twenty one, but he wrote this
in forty seven and he's already radios in every house,
TVs are starting to go in every house, and he
basically says, news is what we say it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's the go Aheada'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, so two hundred years ago,
you had ten year olds that could run a farm,
and they you had a farm that people could survive on.
Then you have the technology, you know, the Industrial Revolution,
and now everyone has Everyone is just comfortable enough that
they won't revolt, but they also have this engineering. And
I was going to bring this back to what I
was reading earlier, is when you read about these syndicalists,
how they want to destroy anything that's anti patriotic. Well,
in the process of destroying anything that's anti patriotic. You
have to just destroy family, you have to destroy people's religion.
And that's exactly what the culture disorders that we you know,
that we've talked about, set out to do. And it's
not a conspiracy theory. They wrote, you know, Burnez wrote
about about propaganda and that's why you have to have
That's why the Internet is the blessing and curse it
is because it puts out propaganda. But you can also
destroy that propaganda within minutes in real time. But you're
basically dealing with culture disorders who are like, Okay, if
we are going to have the kind of power over
the people that we want, if we are going to
be the managers over these people, we have to do
everything we can to destroy this. And it seems like
that is something clearly out of the Syndicolas, the communist playbook,
and even today, people that I know who are the
you know, some of the great you know, they believe
there fighting for freedom and liberty for the individual, don't
realize that they're basically on the same side as the syndicolas,
who want to destroy every bit of hierarchy. And as
soon as you destroy hierarchy.
Speaker 2: You are.
Speaker 1: Word, you're where we where we are now you're in menagerialism.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, like I said, the problem is that there's
a counterfeit hierarchy that is a cross purposes with virtue
and logos. There's the problem. The problem isn't that you know,
there's these distinctions exist in the first place, and structural terms,
I mean in the legitimate ways and like organic ways
that curs spontaneously. There's also the sendingolists who were on
the right and some of these guys uh like a
lot of these guys actually far really are in Spain
on the right, I mean, you know, against the Reds.
But they and you found this with with with the
Rohm fiction two you know in in uh, in the
in the Reich, Uh there's a there's a type of
man who like really holds a communist and contempt not
just for the kind of more obvious reasons, but because
communism really is just promises. It's kind of like Telluric
utopia and it doesn't just like rob kind of the
you know, our living environment, in our our conceptual space
of anything beautiful, edifying or pool frankly, for if you'll
forgive the kind of colloquialism. But it also at the
end of the day, it's not really heroic because it's
just saying essentially, well, you know, technology is gonna usher
in this kind of garden of eating of uh of
like productive surplus. You know, we're all gonna have like
all the cargo we want and you know we can
we can like eat as much as we want and
like sit around as most as we want, and it's
gonna be great, you know. And uh, the cynical is
you know, part of the reverence for violence and kind
of like they're the sorel is. Like, no, the problem
with communism is that it's just as decadent as that is,
you know, the as the as the bourgeois worldview, you know.
And the function of violence is that, you know, it
forces man to be engaged with mortality and and with
you know, at least potentially heroic action and like a
data day sense. You know. Now that can go too
far and you get like gangster as dudes as well
as cycle passed, as well as some guys who are
just kind of like angry and misguided for various reasons.
You know, they take that to mean like, well, there's
just kind of like an endless mersh to like burn
things the fuck down and like fuck people up. And
like the most kind of pure iteration of that right
now is like isis or whatever isis is like morphing
and do currently Okay, you know what you have then
is you have like a bunch of mongols. Okay, I
mean that and that's not I mean's all kinds of
reasons why that's not. I'm sure some guys are can
saying the comments and being like a pussy or something.
It's like, okay, whatever, But I I don't think. I
don't think some kind of like endless like you know,
mongol rampage against things we don't like. Is is is
the way forward? But that is like a real tendency man,
And that's why violence does need to be tempered with reason.
And I think and and Sorell does not like abandoned
reason or something like. That's why he's not he's not
He's not not only is he not an Ichian, but
he's not some he was. He was not some like
anti rationalist, uh you know, uh like fu Cove the
write or something at all, you know, I mean that's
why uh, his issue with uh you know, is issue
with Sobegates is that, like Cyberate, he's like, wasn't serving reason,
you know, rationalisms, logos, you know, it's it's something entirely different.
And you know that's why I, like I said, I'm
not an expert at all in the priests of pratics
as sure as hell, I can't read Greek or anything
like that. But I do think I've got a pretty
decent understanding of Cirel annoying to Cirell and oing a
hiag girl like I read a you know, I read
the fragments are Clitus that I mean that do exist.
You know, I spend a lot of time with Xeno
fun and uh, there's nothing, uh, there's nothing anarchic about
what Cerell posits in like a coloaquial sense, you know,
I mean, yeah, there's he pertacts with some of the
same uh, some of the same intellectual heritage as like
actual capital at anarchist did like in his epoch. But
he's not he was not at all a guy like Ron.
He was not all a guy who you know, he's
not at all some like criminally minded strange person or
some or some kind of a faeries outlier who you
know just uh, it just just identified like a path
to like revolutionary action. I mean that's the way people
have to mischaracterize him. I mean, Sorell's probably uh, he's esoteric,
like his whole body of work is. But those that
do actually have a deep understanding of a twentieth century
European intellectual foundations, they will to very directly attack Cerell
and and painted him as like what I just said, like, oh,
this guy was like you know, he was he was
you know he was he was he was something erst
Rahm type psychopath, but without the without the medals and
the war record and and uh and the body count,
and it's not and that's a deliberate slander. I think
it's not what he was at all, you know it. Uh.
So that's why there's an there's an enduring the value
to uh Sorell, not just to the political soldier. I
guess that's what I'm getting. Yet I even argue like
kind of hyper modernists and worldly and like secularists as
Cerell was. I say that guys like the Iron Guard
and Kadriano who probably had like more in common with
Cerel and then what he identified as. Uh. I mean
the kind of Eastern mysticism, uh that you know, the
Romanian Orthodox guys were into, Like obviously Cerell we have
like no use for that, but in terms of like
within their own kind of cultural paradigm, like what they
were trying to accomplish like that, the Currell probably would
have like looked approvingly on that more than more than
any kind of you know, inner inner war, like you know,
radical right movement at least I think so you know,
it's uh, and that's all about the Ctic was in Spain,
like didn't they didn't they didn't go anywhere like they
I mean, like I said, those guys said guts and
they had heart, and they fought really hard, and I
think their sacrad lice should be honored. But I mean,
is the reason why there is there's a reason why
I kind of like the dullary Cudgillo Franco this this
kind of like reactionary uh like Cruk like went out,
you know, I mean it's not It certainly wasn't because
of like his charisma or like his great mind or something.
It was because cynicalism, even if it is tempered by
a basic decency like in moral terms, it and isn't
just kind of this like orgiastic you know path like
orgiastic cathartic violence or something. It does. It does not
like lea out Asian for sustainable structures or for like
a new kind of like dialectic that's gonna you know,
build something in instead. I guess that was a point
we're coming up in the hour here, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll get let me get one more, one more question, yes, right,
So when it comes to violence, is the do you
think the aversion to violence in the United States? Is
that because of our political heritage, our Protestant heritage. Do
you think it's because of the culture distorters coming in
and you know, basically making it verboten or is it
a combination of both. Is it the culture distorters using
our Protestant heritage against us?
Speaker 2: America's got a very perverse relations to violence, And I
think about something younger kind of got into and stuff
like you know, and some of is like later and
some is like quasi science fiction novels had a lot
more social commentary, like like America's a place one of
the line people claim like they hate violence, but they
get all excited the idea of like people being sexually
tortured in prison. You know, like until recently, it was
you know an identified you know, quote human right uh
to a fanticide. Like there's this there's this mass homicide
machine in the Pentagon that just constantly murders thousands of
people for the most like ambiguous reasons, you know, like
aus it's currently doing to Russia, and people people like
cheer that on, like it's just like not only like
there was tolerted, Like they get excited about it, but
then they'll turn around and to say that, like, you know,
violence is the most horrible thing we can imagine. They
you know, they but they don't don't really believe that
they've actually got no real respect for human life. But
because they don't, it's it's it's a kind of a
it's it's it's a kind of it's it's kind of
milk coast aversion to uh, actual sovereign decisionism, like coupled
with a kind of a couple of couple with the
kind of like un manly like content for human life,
where you know that that that kind of like that
that kind of identifies, uh, you know, living things is
a commodities to be exploited just like everything else. I
mean that's the way I read it, but it's also
too like an ethical terms the way point the way
these like uh the way these uh like post war
liberals like John Rawls, they're they're only the eras like
Jeremy Bentham and like Bentham. Uh you know, the uh
the Enlightenment liberals and demisterra was always uh the people
that Demister was always savaging correctly. I mean they they're
they're whole there, you hope he is a pointless society,
you know, like we talked about before, like it's it's
it's the ideology the nursing home or like the luxurious prison.
It's a place like nothing ever happens. You know, there's
no value creation, there's no culture, there's no passion, there's
no love, there's no hate. It's like when people like
exist like fornicate or present masterbait more properly, you know,
like defecate and like and and and and uh and
and eat and sleep and like that's it. But it's
it's just wonderful utopia because like you know, nothing bad happen,
nothing quant unquote bad happens. I think it's uh, I
think it's the intellectual poverty of the enlightenment project, you know,
couple with that basically kind of see like like agents
sanility in terms of uh, in terms of the you know,
the the dominant bourgeoisie cultural string like dominant in terms
of its ability to like impose its view upon like
the culture as a whole. And yeah, it's obviously it's
you know kind of like the culture distorders. Uh, it's
it's a primary objective of there is the you know,
the kind of like defang like there the people identify
as like their mortal like enemies. You know. In one
way to do that is the is the kind of
you know condition people against you know, quote unquote violence
or like you know, conditionally to a tolerance for like
all kinds of horrible stuff. But you know, uh to
uh you know, to condition them away from the ability
to like apply violence constructively or in like you know,
a political capacity. It's a complicated issue when it's all
of those things, but it's uh without those conceits though,
like rationalism, Like rationalism can't bite anything that doesn't have
some like utilitarian you know, like very basically explicable purpose
like within its own kind of self referencing paradigm, So
like why would you care about anything enough to be violent?
You know, like why why why would you care about
redemptive action? Like why would you care about you know,
like writing injustice, Like why why would you care about heroism?
Like why would you care about like you know, uh,
massulain honor? Like none of those things matter because they
don't have some kind of utilitarian end that like helps
us shit more efficiently or like eat more food or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they make the excuse that we have no problem
with violence as long as it's in it's in self defense,
and then they get to define what self defences.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, it's like it's it's like a two hundred
and fifty pound like linebacker, like beating the crap out
of some like eight year old lady while screaming she's
trying to kill me. Like that's what.
Speaker 1: America is, well, and that's definitely that's definitely what the
culture distorts are well.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like it's like how, I mean, what
like you this idea like Vlander Putin is is like
a deranged mediacu. He doesn't want people pointing hypersonic missiles
at Moscow at range of three hundred miles. I mean
it's like, like America is deployed in something like one
hundred and seventy bases across the world. What if if
Russia deploys on its border. It's like this is like
a deranged act of aggression. I mean, it's like there's
it's one part like delusion and sinility on the part
of uh, you know, on the part of uh these
clowns in government uh since nineteen ninety two. But part
of it is I mean people are, yeah, people are
actually I think a lot of people like in these
kinds of managerial caadres, they're really like they have twos
some fucking stupid and like morally illiterate, like they really
believe that like how there, you're not let me punch
you in the face over and over again. Like it's
I I didn't realize that for a long time, and
then I realized, like these people really are. They're they're crapists.
They're like moral creaman's and they're just like a lot
of we're just like fucking stupid, Like they're not acting
like Joe Biden, like Biden, they're not acting yeah, yeah, yeah,
Biden really is a fucking moron, Like he's like aside
from his uh, aside from whatever like organic mention issues
that they ran out half like the guy the guy's
are fucking idiots, you know, like it uh like like
Nancy Pelosi is like a subnormal fucking moron. You know,
like they're very rare exceptions. They're they're all like that,
you know, and it's there's outliers, but they you know,
they're kind of only in the game. A guy like
Mary and Paul is only in a game that's like
literally become kind of like a family business. I'm not
like putting shade on Randon Paul. He's a by the
only like he's not the only previous Paul. I I
I like it all these days. But but my point is,
like I think Head he had like another kind of
like path, the clout and money. I I don't think
he'd be hanging around Washington. I just don't. I Mean,
that's that's all. That's all other people talking on the
sociology of the managerial state, like, uh, there's not there's
some grand uh historical project. They buried that project. Notwithstanding
you know, whether it's world whether it's war, whether it's
World War two, or whether it's the code war, like uh,
you know, the point before like Elon Musk forty years ago,
he'd be like Jerry Pornell. He would have been you know,
heading up some pack and like working hand in glove
with the d O d on like SDI and stuff
like that. But like I guys like him, like they
want anything to do with garment these days, why would they?
Like that's this repository of like losers and like Weirdo's frankly,
you know what I mean that that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like how people Definitely he's smart enough to take their
money though.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's part of the game.
You know. It's like I I get people putting shit
on of Elons. There's something that seems like lose rich
about it. I Mean, the dude is he's an Afri connor,
a billionaire who's a genius innovator and he he he's
he's he's one of the only people who's talking about
truly fallacy and things, you know, like the Congress, the
space which, despite when people tell you, actually is important
on its own terms. So there's something like lose rich
about people that just deciding they hate Elon Musk. But
he but yeah, I mean the role he's in not
just his wealth, but because of like how that wealth
is kind of insinuated into things that touch and concern
you know, uh, like like you know, technology that at scale,
you know, the regimes relying upon. I mean, he's gonna
be like a political actor, okay with it. But the
reason why, like he doesn't comment like formal office. So
the reason why he's not you know, engage in like
think tank stuff is because, yeah, that the end of
the Cold War brought an end to the ability of
of of the regime to attract none such as he
to uh their environs. Yeah. Well yeah, let's uh if
you want to do a place, well that'd be great.
Man's up to you. And then we'll after that, well
we'll get back to the Cold War series and take
up uh Vina Vietnam era, like what next episode will
do whichever you want, like either of those.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about jumping back into the Cold War
I kind of a few episodes and then coming back
into this because I think a lot of it will
cross over. I think we'll have what we'll actually even
generate content for the next surrel talk, especially with what
we're going to talk about in the next couple uh,
in the next few Cold War episodes.
Speaker 2: No, that would be great, man. Yeah, there's a lot,
there's a lot, there's a lot to there's a lot
there with Vietnam and then then that that dovetails not
just with my research on this, on this Nuremberg International
International Jurisprudence manuscript and working on, but it, like the
Annams vi Atnaun's important in ways that not unlike World
War Two, is important understanding the current regime. I mean
not it's like a founding mythology obviously nothing like that.
But it changed things in all kinds of ways, and
that that really was like the hot battle field of
the Cold War and all kinds of like militarily put
it leap, I mean culturally it changed things. And we'll
get into all of that. But my point is like
it's not just some it's not just like a question
a trivia or some or something something that's like interesting
to talk about, like you know, it might be to
talk about kind of like you know, the you know,
some some kind of like long forgotten you know, war
ways by the British Empire or something like. It remains
really important is my point.
Speaker 1: All right, two plugs and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can still find me on Twitter. I mean,
they screw with me a lot, but I don't think
they're gonna band me again. I think those days are over.
I mean, if they did well, I'm launching a YouTube
channel just in a few days here, after the first
week in January, and I'll make sure everybody knows where
to find it. It's Thomas TV. Uh able to find it,
but I'll plug it like on Twitter, I'll plug it
on substack. I'll make sure people can find it. My
Twitter is at Tris Kelly and Jahad. The first T
is seven. If you search for Thomas seven seven seven,
I think you'll find it. But uh, you can find
me on substack at real Thomas seven seven seven dot
subsec dot com. I've been canceled from uh t gram,
which is a ship UH company. In my opinion, I
was a paid subscriber in a you know mind you
They welcome garbage like you know, hardcore pornography and like
really disgusting like boor stuff. But it's run by some
Zionist crowd, like and apparently like the crime of like
criticizing uh Somali of the Earls West known as Ukraine
as like a cancel orable offense. So I've got no
use for that. I wish people would. Uh. There's plenty
of other chat options popping up, including a substack itself. Uh,
you can join my substack chat for free. They it's
it's a lot more user friendly than t gram. They
don't censor anybody, and we've got total control of it
because it's incident to my t gran, my subject account
and subjects.
Speaker 1: You need to have the sub you need to have
the substack app and on your phone in order to
get notifications for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's it's dope and uh so far subtect
has never ever done anything to sensor any of my content.
And frankly, uh, people like Genuate generate a health lot
of revenue for them, and uh, I think they realize
which side they're uh bread as buttered on as it worse.
I don't think that's gonna change, but please migrate to
sub stack. I I'm done with t Graham. I'm not
I can't a good conscience. I'm not gonna pay money
to people who cancel me. I'm not gonna utilize a
platform where people abuse me and I've gotten really disgusting
and awful communications from from these like Ukrainian sickos and
like other people. Man, like there's it just really grows stuff.
I mean, like I I cannot, I don't know, you know,
play murder or something. But this idea that like well
t gram kind of sucks but you know it's good
for other things. It's not a good platform, man, And
it's it's a repositive Malbourne spy Wars spywear. It's always
fucked up like.
Speaker 1: The user in or it's bought.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, man, it's a ship hole and people I
don't know why people are like so attached to it.
It's like what do you what are you getting out
of this? But whatever, So yeah, that's no more. I
will never return there. But yeah, forgive the rant, but
that's definitely can find me. My My second novel, which
is the second Steel Storm novel, is gonna drop in January.
I hope you went asking what that, but you know
that that's all I got for no And thank you
very much everybody you throw all the kind feedback.
Speaker 1: This will be the first episode of the new year.
Oh thank you know, thank everybody for this previous year.
It's been absolutely amazing and just to say about Substack,
substack will be the only place that someone like you
or me will ever get a check mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, I remember, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember. I. I logged on and I looked at
my I looked at one of my posts and there
was a check market next to my name, and I'm like,
that's weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it's in some ways, the the market
is the corrective and and we we make a lot
of money for those people. Man, they make money because
of us. I mean they're not they're not. Uh, I
mean that's that that really is the bread and butter.
I mean, it's not a platform that draws advertising revenue really,
I mean, yeah, so they I'm a huge fan of
substick man, I I really am. So yeah, please dip
into the substick ship. It's basically like the core of
guys and a few ladies, and we we appreciate them
being among us. Stop. Uh. It's basically like the t
Grand mob like basically migrated there. But there's still something
holdouts and I don't know if they're fucking massiveness or what.
It's like quite the freaking t gram man, It's bad
for you. Yeah, it's bad for you. But yeah again,
I can't thank you enough man, and I I'm really
stoked that people have been so excited about this, this
this series. And yeah, well we'll get into we'll get
into uh, we'll get into the Vietnam War next episode,
and then we'll get back to Sorel and reflections on violence.
Speaker 1: So appreciated, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Thank you