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John Schindler is a best-selling author and an ex-NSA Intelligence Analyst and Counterintelligence Officer who specialized in counterespionage and counterterrorism, with operational experience in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For almost a decade now, I have been reading his books and following him on social media, where I have acquired a great admiration for his knowledge of not just espionage, but history as well. I recently asked him to sit for an interview with me, and this was initial response:

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the NSA, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Qaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US Intel Community. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

By the time he sobered up the next morning (still in his hot tub from the night before), I asked him again and he told me that he was “more than eager” to do this interview, and was wondering why I had never asked him prior to that.

Despite your years of CIA training, I am certain that I could kill you with my bare hands if given the opportunity to do so (I’d love to do it).

Doubtful. I have this spook look that nullifies resistance. It’s like Zoolander’s “Blue Steel,” but highly classified. It freezes opponents. 

If that fails, I’ve done martial arts for years. More relevant: I’m heavily armed. Florida lets anybody have a concealed carry permit. I collect AK-47s (the M-70 is my favorite, but you could guess that). When COVID-19 hit, I bought a lot of 7.62 x 39, just because.  

Come at me.  

You gained quite a lot of prominence during the Snowden Affair, engaging in running battles with his defenders, highlighting that national security and espionage are not as black and white as people would like them to be. In fact, it can never be. Your feelings about Edward Snowden are well-known, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the journalist who broke the story, Glenn Greenwald. Even more interesting (at least to me) would be what you would have done if you had custody of Glenn during that time. Let's imagine an extraordinary rendition took place via Poland, and you had to "de-brief" him. Which body part of his would you hit first with your fists? Would he be worth waterboarding? How long do you estimate that he would break and admit to working for Moscow, in your professional opinion?

Glenn would break pretty fast. He looks rather doughy. However, he seems like the kind of guy who might enjoy getting punched, so I wouldn’t go there. He might just ask for more….which would get weird, fast. Waterboarding is a lot less exciting than it sounds, merely torture-lite. It doesn’t work particularly well. 

If you really want to break someone, hand him over to our Middle Eastern partners, in particular one spy service that’s well known in spook circles for throwing suspects out of helicopters just for fun and pulling fingernails out with pliers. When a new guy arrives for “treatment” they greet him with: “Welcome, Brother – here there is no Allah and no Amnesty International!” 

That’s more effective, really. Though the Poles are no slouches either. They can be an ornery bunch, and they’re not very fond of Kremlin suck-ups like Glenn, so I might just hand him over to Janek and Jurek after they’re well lubricated with wódka and let them have at for a few hours. Outsourcing is more deniable anyway.  

My personal best practice when it comes to the very secretive world of espionage and intelligence is to cast a very wide net in terms of sources in order to be able to compare and contrast reports and claims, and use them to decipher what could be as close to the actual truth as humanly possible. That's why I have three go-to sources upon whom I rely and who I trust to give me solid information. From the right, it's Mike Baxter of Real Raw News. He broke the story of Tom Hanks' execution by the patriot faction in the US Military. From the other side of the political aisle it's Louise Mensch. Not for a second would I have thought that Steve Bannon would also be executed (in fact, his execution pre-dates Hanks' by four years). That huge exclusive is where she made her bones. You are located between the two of them, and are more guarded and not as willing to stick your neck out as they have been. Despite this relative cowardice, I still feel that you do provide some value on these subjects. 

I try, I really do. 

Your notoriety has made you a love/hate figure on social media. People want to know why you entered the world of national security and covert ops. Was it a sense of duty? A propensity for action and thrill? Could it have been the result of the pleasure of holding secret information above the heads of others like Damocles' Sword? Why did you go spook? 

I never intended to become a spook. Both my parents were career Intelligence Community officers aka “lifers”. I was “born with clearances” as they say in IC circles. I got my first security briefing from my dad (“Don’t tell the neighbors where we work” etc.) at age seven. Like all teenagers, I considered my parents to be boring squares, so the intelligence career path possessed no attraction for me at all.  

However, I’m good with languages, and I was hanging around the Balkans back when that was messy (more on that shortly), and one day a mysterious recruiter called me, claiming to be from some humdrum U.S. Government outfit. Having grown up in spook circles I knew this was a bullshit cover story. But when the recruiter mentioned the salary, I listened. At that point, my alternative was some horrible, soul-crushing career in academia, so I took the bait. The rest is history and all that.   

One of the (admittedly) many things that I have learned from you over the years is that where the Soviets/Russians have historically excelled is in HUMINT (Human Intelligence). Examples include The Cambridge Five, Aldrich Ames, the Rosenbergs, etc. On the other hand, US intel has been strongest in SIGINT (Signals Intelligence). Can you explain why this has been the case? Is it due to cultural reasons? Funding initiatives? Clearly, the Americans have relied on their own technological superiority at the expense of HUMINT. Why are the Russians so good at it? What kind of valuable intel can be obtained through HUMINT that SIGINT cannot deliver? 

I like all INTs. At some point, asking whether HUMINT or SIGINT matters more isn’t just a pointless spook dick-measuring exercise, it’s like asking which half of the scissors is more important. I want all the secrets. Moreover, I have no dog in this fight, having worked in both the HUMINT and SIGINT arenas. The U.S. does SIGINT very well. Year in and year out, SIGINT from NSA – which is the hub of a global intelligence system, centered on Five Eyes, dating back to WW2 – produces something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in the U.S. Government. Americans do SIGINT well because it plays to our technical skills plus it’s something where throwing money at a problem can deliver results.  

In theory, HUMINT can supply intelligence regarding enemy intentions that SIGINT finds harder to tease out. That’s the official story, anyway. Reality is more complex and nuanced; the system works best when you’ve got high-quality HUMINT and SIGINT working together against a high-priority target. 

Russians are better than we are at HUMINT, though they’re no slouches in the SIGINT arena either. Muscovites are naturally sneaky and conspiratorial. Some trace this to their Byzantine heritage. Above all, Americans suck at counterintelligence, (where Moscow excels in its paranoid fashion), which gives Russia, China, and others access to our secrets far too easily. But Moscow’s problem is politics: the Cold War KGB stole almost any secrets they wanted, anywhere in the world. Access was never a problem for them. But if Party leaders didn’t want to hear what the KGB was telling them, it was simply ignored. All the INT in the world doesn’t matter if the “deciders” (as Dubya would say) aren’t listening.  

Allow me to tell you a relevant story. One of my favorite things in spookdom has been working with defectors. Most of the defectors I dealt with were Russian because I speak their language. Defectors are odd ducks, rarely happy people, but often interesting. One senior KGB defector told me a delightful story from his personal experience which summarizes Moscow’s problem in a very Russian way:

In the aftermath of our 1972 election, the KGB’s Washington office, nestled secretly in their embassy (what the KGB calls a rezidentura), was sending detailed political intelligence to Moscow thanks to their running multiple agents inside the Nixon White House (you read that right). These agents were telling their Soviet handlers a shocking story about a break-in at Democratic party offices at the Watergate Complex some months earlier which involved Nixon-connected people. This was months before the Washington Post’s Woodward and Bernstein broke this story with their “Deep Throat” fraud, which was just sour grapes from Mark Felt, the shitbag senior FBI official who hated Nixon because he didn’t make him FBI director after J. Edgar Hoover finally left the building. 

Moscow Center, i.e., KGB headquarters, read these reports and promptly fired a cable back to the Washington rezidentura to cease this reporting line. This cable was ignored by the rezidentura, to them it had to be a mistake. This was great intelligence coming from right inside the White House. They kept sending secret HUMINT reports indicating Nixon’s impending demise due to the budding Watergate scandal. Again, the Center dispatched a secret cable to DC, ordering the rezidentura to cease this reporting line at once. The team of young and hungry KGB case officers who were stealing important secrets from inside the White House were befuddled: What was going on? What those officers in the field didn’t know was that Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, was excited about the new Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between Washington and Moscow to reduce nuclear weapons. SALT was Brezhnev’s signature foreign policy initiative, and it was negotiated with President Nixon. Comrade Brezhnev believed the future of SALT was tied to his personal relationship with Tricky Dick, so intelligence indicating Nixon was going down over Watergate was upsetting the Party boss. 

To get the message across, the KGB dispatched a general, a veteran spymaster, to Washington to personally tell the rezidentura to cut it out. The general addressed the case officers in a most Russian fashion. “Comrades, a beautiful wedding is planned,” he began: “The village is so happy. Vodka is chilling. The bride looks beautiful, the groom is proud.” He went on, “But in the back there is one table that keeps shouting, ‘The bride is a whore! The bride is a whore!’.” 

Message received. The Washington rezidentura immediately ceased any reporting about Watergate. Soon, the story broke in the U.S. media and Nixon resigned from office a few months later.  

This explains the mystery of how the Kremlin, which possessed ample high-grade intelligence about its neighbor, so badly misjudged their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and his inner circle anticipating the capture of Kyiv within days and with the collapse of Ukrainian resistance not far behind. You don’t get ahead in Moscow by telling “the Boss” things he doesn’t want to hear.  

Let’s tackle a very important question that I am certain readers will want to hear you answer. Shortly after Mueller issued his report in 2019, you argued that there was enough circumstantial evidence presented to show that the 2016 Trump Campaign colluded with Russian officials, but not enough to lay the grounds for an espionage trial. You went further by explaining how you convinced that certain information was not shared as it would be too hot to handle and too difficult for the public to process, as it could jeopardize ongoing operations. I, like many of my readers, remain unconvinced that Trump had colluded with Russia. In fact, I view Trump-Russia as the key conspiracy theory of the 21st century, one that was purposely used to sink a presidency. Without re-litigating the entire affair, can you explain why you think that collusion did occur? Or have you changed your mind the years since the Mueller Report was published? 

Collusion is a tricky word. The big mystery, and failing, of the Muller investigation is how that effort assiduously avoided counterintelligence issues, the heart of the affair, focusing instead on narrower possible illegalities. Why that happened, only Bob Mueller knows, and he’s not talking.  

My theory of what transpired between Trump and Russia around 2016, based on years of investigation plus decades of knowledge of how Russian intelligence really works, is this: Trump was approached by the KGB in the mid-1980s – he was on the radar of the Czechoslovak secret police, the StB, before that, thanks to his marriage to Ivana the Moravian beauty, but that didn’t go anywhere operationally – which is how his infamous July 1987 trip to the USSR came about. That was surely a KGB recruitment effort. They did this to Western VIPs regularly. The KGB wanted Trump to be their “agent of influence,” to use the proper Chekist term, which isn’t a “spy” in the Western stealing-secrets understanding, but rather an important foreigner who helps Moscow in various ways in exchange for cash or business opportunities. 

What the KGB wanted was a new Armand Hammer, the Occidental Petroleum mogul who was their agent of influence for most of the 20^th century (for the younger set: he was the great-grandfather of Armie Hammer, the actor better known for his BDSM cannibal hobby). Moscow used Hammer for decades as a propagandist for the Soviet side, giving him business help in exchange. (Sidebar: Hammer’s consigliere and bestie was Samuel Pisar, the stepfather of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.) However, by the mid-1980s, Hammer was old (he died in 1990) and his Kremlin affiliations were broadly understood. Trump looked like a good replacement to the KGB at the time, Don was famous and flamboyant and rich, and he had a good-sized public audience.  

There was a catch: Donald Trump is no Armand Hammer. The latter was a legitimately successful businessman with powerful political connections (he bankrolled the political careers of Al Gore and his father, among others), while Trump is an undisciplined narcissist with poor impulse control. Trump isn’t even a real business success: he managed to bankrupt a casino, after all. Because of this, the KGB eventually thought better about recruiting Trump as an agent of influence, plus the Soviet system fell apart around 1990 anyway, unleashing years of chaos inside their intelligence agencies (and everything else in Moscow). 

If you know Chekist modus operandi, Trump was what Russian spies call a “confidential contact,” which falls well short of the Western definition of an intelligence agent (I’ve explained this all in detail here). Some people don’t even know they are one. Seriously, can you image Trump as any kind of spy? He’d crack under pressure in ten seconds. You’d have to search a while to find someone less temperamentally suited to clandestine work than Donald J. Trump. 

Thus, Don never got his Trump Tower in Moscow, which is what he wanted all along. That’s a pretty good tell that the secret relationship between Trump and the KGB (and its post-Soviet successor in foreign intelligence, the SVR) was never consummated. But the Kremlin never forgets. This is the “kompromat” on Trump that liberals became obsessed with. It’s not about “pee-pee tapes” and such – the Russians probably do have videos of Trump’s sexual antics, but let’s be honest, Don would brag about them and might post them online himself – rather the secret relationship between Trump and the KGB in the 1980s, the details of which would be embarrassing for Trump, even though that clandestine partnership never really panned out. 

For years after the Soviet collapse, Trump had business dealings with various shady Russians, i.e. mob types with KGB connections. Don never gave up his dream of Trump Tower Moscow. He kept certain doors open, and he tried to exploit them in 2016, when he miraculously turned out to have a real shot at the White House. Hence Don’s hiring of third-tier guys like ostrich-jacketed Paul Manafort, who really did have some shady links to Russian intelligence, and oddball Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director who got cozy with Moscow after he retired from the Army (being fired from DIA by President Obama). 

Trump’s error was that he misread Kremlin intentions. Vladimir Putin hated Hillary Clinton more than he liked Donald Trump. Putin blamed Hillary for the 2011 Moscow protests, believing she tried to pull off a “color revolution” in Russia as Secretary of State. Russian machinations in 2016 were about punishing Hillary more than boosting Trump. The concept was to damage Hillary, who was expected by Moscow to win the 2016 election. Trump didn’t expect to win either. Remember, Don had no victory speech ready on election night. Trump’s presidential run started as a grand publicity stunt, an effort by Don to shake loose more money from NBC for future seasons of The Apprentice, but it managed to put Trump in the White House, an outcome that neither he nor Moscow had in their plans.  

The dirty little secret of the 2016 Trump-Russia story is that Trump wanted a closer relationship with Moscow than he actually had, and the resistance there was in the Kremlin. Putin and his entourage viewed candidate Trump as a publicity-hungry buffoon who was pro-Russian but not terribly useful for Moscow. U.S. and Allied SIGINT agencies intercepted senior Kremlin officials talking about Trump, and all I will say is that their commentary was not flattering to Don.  

The absence of Trump’s close relationship with Russian intelligence is proved by that strange July 2016 meeting in Manhattan’s Trump Tower between Team Trump, led by Don Jr., and Kremlin representatives, ostensibly to discuss “adoptions.” The real agenda was that Trump wanted dirt on Hillary from Moscow, which wasn’t supplied. The point is you don’t need to fumble around with such meetings if you’re a bona fide Russian agent. Trump then would have the top SVR officer in New York on speed-dial.  

Moreover, the Kremlin was messing around with Trump, and not just Hillary, in 2016. Russian intelligence had a hand in the notorious Steele Dossier, which was denounced by real experts (such as me) on Russian spy games as obvious disinformation, designed to remind Trump that Moscow possessed kompromat on him. It worked too well and instead became the focus of anti-Trump mania on the Left.  

Once Trump entered the White House, he was his usual transgressive self and did stupid things like invite the Russian Ambassador to the Oval Office, which only “proved” to liberals that he was a Kremlin pawn. Trump became so hobbled by that controversy, which, when coupled with Don’s lazy inability to ever figure out how the Executive Branch which he controlled actually worked, meant that Moscow wound up disappointed in Trump, who over four years never managed to shift U.S. policy in any pro-Kremlin direction worth mentioning. Indeed, in policy terms, Trump’s administration was harsher towards Moscow than Obama was.  

To sum up: both sides have it wrong. The Left’s insistence that Trump “was installed to destroy us” sounds plausible to “Resistance” wine moms but is complete fantasy. Russian intelligence ran disinformation and propaganda operations against the U.S. 2016 election, but more to smear Hillary than boost Trump. Their impact on the election was slight in any event. However, the Right’s insistence that the “Russia hoax” as Trump calls it was a figment of the liberal imagination isn’t true either. Trump’s conduct in 2016 can’t be called espionage, but Don would have colluded more closely with Moscow if he’d been allowed to. The Kremlin didn’t want that.  

Whether by design or through opportunism, "Trump-Russia" can be argued as a psyop to lay the groundwork to manufacture consent for a more aggressive approach from the USA toward Russia. Back in 2012, Mitt Romney accused Obama of being "soft on Russia". With "Trump-Russia", the other side of the aisle is now onside with at least squeezing Putin (and with some others adamant about effecting regime change in Moscow). To not have a belligerent stance toward Moscow is to be on par with Donald Trump, and therefore, in the eyes of many, a traitor to America. Where you and I will agree is that Russia has committed aggression against Ukraine, but you and I will disagree with respect to American encroachment via NATO in Russia's "near abroad". I have zero doubt in my mind that you would not be willing to tolerate a Beijing client state in Mexico City, and with good reason. What the Russians have done is committed a natural reaction, akin to your country and how it reacted to the presence of nuclear missiles on Cuban soil in 1962. Your country successfully cornered Russia in Ukraine, forcing Putin to choose between a NATO-ized Ukrainian state (and all the existential dangers that would result from it), and invading, which resulted in the complete split of Russia from Europe economically and politically. Your country won on the first day of this war, everything since then has been gravy. 

The myth has taken hold in Russia-friendly circles that NATO expansion is the whole problem here. This simply isn’t true. Moscow didn’t seriously object to the former Warsaw Pact states joining NATO, as they started to in 1999. Even the Baltic States entering the Alliance wasn’t a major redline for Moscow, contrary to Kremlin rhetoric. Ukraine was always different, for obvious historical reasons. The root problem, just as in the former Yugoslavia, is that Communist internal boundaries of the USSR, drawn up by Bolsheviks for divide et impera reasons without consideration for ethnic realities, suddenly became international borders in 1991. 

To condense recent history, it’s worth mentioning that in his early years in the Kremlin, Putin discussed Russia possibly joining NATO! Things only went sour starting around 2004, when Putin felt that he had helped the Americans with their War on Terror and didn’t get much in return. The Kremlin expected to be treated as an equal great power, but Dubya and friends, distracted by their self-created Middle East disasters, didn’t get it. From that point forward, NATO expansion grew into a major irritant for Moscow. Then came the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, where the alliance endorsed admitting Ukraine and Georgia at an unspecified date in the future. Washington wanted Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, while some European members were decidedly skeptical. The compromise was that Kyiv and Tbilisi got no admission date; and even more importantly, they didn’t get a Membership Action Plan (MAP) from the alliance, which is an applicant country’s bureaucratic roadmap to joining NATO (for example, Croatia got its MAP in 2002, then a formal invitation to join NATO in 2008, followed by official membership in 2009).

What NATO offered Ukraine and Georgia in Bucharest was a nebulous promise that they would enter the alliance sometime between next week and the end of geologic time. It was at root a sham, which did nothing to improve those countries’ security, but it was sufficient to enrage the Kremlin. Putin acted fast. Four months after the Bucharest summit, Russia executed a quick attack on Georgia, which taught Tbilisi a harsh lesson and changed the “facts on the ground.” In less than a week, the Russian military cemented its control over one-fifth of Georgia’s territory. 

The plain truth is that NATO will never admit any country which doesn’t control every inch of its sovereign territory. Otherwise, you’re letting in a member that’s in “pre-Article V” status. That’s not happening. Over the last 15 years, remarkably little has changed. Ukraine and Georgia are both sort-of candidates for NATO admission, but not really. 

In Ukraine’s case, dangling this insincere offer of NATO membership served only to drive Putin and his retinue into paroxysms of rage, while adding nothing to Ukrainian defense and security. Maintaining the “You’ll be in NATO … someday!” fiction after 2014, when Putin smash-and-grabbed Crimea and then occupied part of the Donbas, was a cruel joke by the West at Kyiv’s expense. A core strategic principle is the Value of the Object: bluntly, how much do you care about something? There is no universe where NATO cares more about Ukraine, and who controls it, than Russia does. Look at a map and learn Wikipedia-level history, folks. Apparently, that was too much to ask of the U.S. foreign policy elite.  

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who had several good one-liners, is supposed to have said that “God has a special providence for drunks, fools, and the United States of America”. Se non è vero, è ben trovato, as the Italians put it.  

No one has gotten this conflict right and predictions have repeatedly fallen flat. I didn't believe that the Russians would invade, nor did I believe that they would go in with such a light touch after doing so. Military figures like former US General (and CIA Director) David Petraeus have predicted a great success for the Ukrainians in their current stalling counter-offensive. As I am conducting this interview, I am going to put you on the spot and ask you to forecast what will happen in Ukraine between now and November of 2024 in the military, geo-strategic, and diplomatic realms. Lastly, can you share with us your thoughts on the Prigozhin Affair, with specific mention of the intel chatter surrounding it? 

I see no reason for the Ukraine War to end anytime soon. Both sides have enormous sunk costs in lives and treasure. This could become the Iran-Iraq War, but in Europe. I expect no significant changes between now and the U.S. election next year. Both sides appear strong enough to keep fighting, but not strong enough to execute strategic wins. 

Moreover, the West wants Ukraine to keep fighting, to wear down Russia and hopefully weaken the Putin regime. NATO has encouraged Zelenskiy to embrace war aims (including Moscow’s withdrawal to pre-2014 borders), that no Russian government can accept, politically speaking. Putin’s view of Ukraine, that it’s not really a country, and that Crimea is rightfully Moscow’s, is taken as bizarre in the West, but it’s a view held by most Russians. When Putin seized Crimea with GRU’s Little Green Men in 2014, I heard from lots of Russian friends living in the West, all of whom hated Putin. Without exception, they admitted that Putin had finally done something great.  

The tragedy here is that by April 2022 (when both sides realized they were trapped in a nightmarish conflict that was staggeringly costly), there were discreet diplomatic off-ramps. This would have involved a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal to pre-2022 (but post-2014) boundaries, with eventual UN-brokered plebiscites on the future of the Donbas and Crimea. In exchange, Ukraine would be allowed to join the EU as soon as feasible, while NATO membership would be off the table for a decade (with the issue to be reopened every ten years via multilateral diplomacy). That could have been achieved. It was NATO who didn’t want that deal. Hence the war continued, bringing hundreds of thousands more dead and wounded Ukrainians and Russians. 

Now, both sides are stuck in a terribly costly war that nobody can get out of. Per the cliché: wars are easy to start and hard to stop. The failure of Ukraine’s vaunted summer offensive to achieve anything of strategic value while burning through an awful lot of NATO-gifted weapons and munitions, means that the war will quiet down for a few months before going hot again in the spring. The conflict is now attritional, resembling WW1 more than anything else. Given Russia’s much bigger population and industrial capacity, it’s difficult to see how Ukraine can win the war, even with NATO’s prodigious support. Plus, Zelenskiy’s Churchill-but-shorter act has gotten stale, as witnessed by the mixed response from Congress he got on his recent visit to Washington. His choosing a needless fight over grain imports with Poland, Ukraine’s biggest partner in the war, is another sign that the wheels are starting to come loose in Kyiv.  

Even in the best case scenario where there’s a sudden regime change in Moscow and Putin dies or is removed from the Kremlin, what will be left of Ukraine? Large swathes of the country have been ravaged by war. We have no idea how many Ukrainians have been killed or maimed for life, and the population of the country is dwindling fast. When the USSR was dissolved in 1991, Ukraine had over 50 million people. This number fell to 45 million by 2013 thanks to its terrible demographics (Russia’s are only slightly better). The last decade of war has seen millions of Ukrainians fleeing abroad. Since February 2022, over 15 million Ukrainians have fled to the West via Poland alone. How many of them will ever go home? Recently, the Jamestown Foundation, which was created by the CIA in the 1980s and is ebulliently pro-Kyiv, casually admitted that Ukraine’s population has dwindled to 20 million people. If Putin’s aim is to wreck Ukraine, depopulate it, and turn whatever’s left of it as a Russian satellite…..well….that can be achieved.  

It’s also important to mention that if the Putin regime falls, what’s likely to replace it is a more nationalist regime, not any pro-Western liberal clique that takes its lead from The Economist. Most of the “antiwar” sentiment in Russia that the West plays up isn’t opposed to the war; it’s nationalist anger at Putin for waging the war so diffidently and incompetently. They want to win.  

Which brings us to Putin’s recently deceased chef-turned-warlord, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who tried to use his mercs from the Wagner Group (who bore the brunt of the awful Bakhmut meatgrinder), to overthrow the regime. Prigozhin and his supporters were angry at Putin and the General Staff for making a hash of the war, one which they fully endorsed. They resemble the German Freikorps circa 1919, not peace activists.  

What exactly happened with Prigozhin and his June pseudo-coup is difficult to assess. The notion of Wagner marching on Moscow with a brigade worth of mercenaries isn’t exactly sound planning. Plus it’s Russia: so the issue of provocation, the ubiquitous provokatsiya, arises. There’s no way that the FSB, the powerful domestic security service (which monitors the military), had no inkling of Prigozhin’s plans. I suspect what happened is that Prigozhin was sincere, if not reality-based in his plotting, yet a degree of the “coup” was stage-managed by the FSB to assess the loyalty of generals and others to the Kremlin. In other words, it was like what happened in Turkey in 2016, when there really was a coup attempt against Erdoğan, but where he played it up as bigger than it actually was, to allow the AKP to solidify control over the military and security services, while purging any lingering pockets of opposition. It was real and fake at the same time. 

While this war drags on, consensus is beginning to build that China also stands to be a big winner of the conflict as the USA continues to split its focus between its two main rivals, Moscow and Beijing. This war has allowed China some breathing room after it was being squeezed by the USA on three fronts just before COVID-19 hit: 1. the propaganda campaign about "genocide" in Xinjiang, 2. "Pro-Democracy" protests in Hong Kong, and 3. trade squeeze. The COVID-19 Epidemic slightly relaxed this grip. Your focus has been on the domestic front with respect to the Chinese, specifically their current intelligence operations. It is no secret as to just how effective their industrial espionage efforts have been. You have sounded the alarm about China's infiltration of the US Navy. You have also raised the question as to whether President Joe Biden is himself a "Chinese agent of influence". The USA has chosen to take on both Russia and China simultaneously, albeit in different ways. Has your country’s foreign policy establishment bitten off more than it can chew? 

The current debate in the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community isn’t about if Xi and the People’s Liberation Army will make a move on Taiwan, but when. How much time can Washington buy with enhanced deterrence – years or more like months? Senior U.S. intelligence officials have been banging the drum, but the Biden administration is delusional. While I don’t think any cross-strait invasion by the PLA is imminent, it’s obvious when you look at Chinese military exercises and deployments that they are practicing for a blockade of Taiwan, perhaps soon. 

The U.S. military isn’t in great shape. Two decades of losing wars of choice took their toll. The humiliating retreat from Kabul in August 2021 signaled the end of American Hegemony and everybody but the Beltway crowd gets this. Recruiting is in the toilet, not helped by Woke agitprop coming from senior Pentagon leaders. Ammunition stocks are low, thanks in part to the Ukraine War. The U.S. military wasted a generation expensively punching down against goat herders. They haven’t fought against a peer adversary in a very long time. American airpower hasn’t had to fight for air supremacy since 1943. If the balloon goes up with China, the Pentagon is in for a bunch of unpleasant and costly surprises. 

That said, Beijing isn’t ready to go to the dance either. The PLA hasn’t fought anybody since 1979, when Vietnam handed them their ass in a humiliating fashion. Although Chinese military spending is impressive, and they do have lots of neat technology (much of it stolen from the West), the PLA’s navy has never fought anybody. Can they really pull off combined amphibious operations, famously the most complex of military undertakings? If I were Comrade Xi, I’d have lots of questions. Above all other questions: is PLA leadership playing it straight? Are their strategic assessments grounded in military reality, or are they just what the Party wants to hear? Xi gets one shot at reuniting Taiwan by force. If he winds up like Putin in Ukraine (with a stalemated debacle of choice on his hands and a bloody humiliation before the world), that could easily mean the demise of the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi himself. 

I for one have repeatedly argued against the idea that the USA is collapsing or significantly declining, even if signs of decline are quite abundant and visible. I am not aware of your take on this debate. Are you of the opinion that decline is an actual fact at present? If so, is this decline visible in the NatSec community too? America, in many ways, has become a bully on the global stage (left wingers will argue that this has always been the case). Where the Chinese show up and build new infrastructure, the Americans arrive with lectures and demand that the locals change their cultures overnight to reflect constantly-shifting US mores. You yourself have written that the pride flag is now the flag of US Empire. 

I think Obama’s two terms in the Oval Office, particularly his second, brought major changes to American life, both at home and abroad, and only recently has that become obvious. I don’t envision a U.S. collapse anytime soon, nothing that dramatic or interesting. No Civil War 2.0, not even Max Mad: America. However, if 2024 is a Biden vs. Trump rematch (which seems rather likely at present), no matter who wins, we’re going to have a large chunk of Americans who don’t see the outcome as legitimate or legal, and that’s certainly no recipe for stability.  

That said, my concerns about American life focus more on Mike Judge’s 2006 movie Idiocracy, because it was so hilariously prescient. At this point, over three-quarters of American 18-year-olds can’t join the U.S. Military because they’re stupid, addicted, fat, criminal, or crazy. That’s a withering indictment of this country, but I intend to enjoy the decline as best I can, poolside. 

The deterioration of the U.S. NatSec community cannot be separated from this. This year, Congress ordered the Director of National Intelligence to provide declassified answers regarding the origins of Covid-19 and…the DNI just didn’t do it. IC leadership flagrantly ignored the law and the MSM said nothing. The increasing involvement of top military and intelligence officials in partisan politics ought to disturb everyone. Politicization is cancerous for NatSec organizations, which are supposed to defend the whole country. This isn’t rocket science, but it seems unstoppable now. 

The public embrace of LGBT everything in U.S. foreign relations is a perfect symbol of this navel-gazing strangeness. The postmodern West, what I call WEIRDistan (from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), simply can’t grasp how anyone else approaches reality. The idea that current U.S. elite opinions on sex and gender – which, I remind everyone reading this, have only taken hold over the past decade – are the only acceptable global standard is bizarre and unhelpful to achieving U.S. foreign policy goals, but the Woke just can’t see it. They’re as blinded by their mythology as 19^th century Protestant missionaries who headed out into central Africa to “save” the natives were. Not long before the U.S. Embassy in Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, they tweeted out the wonders of LGBT including pictures of the Pride Flag over the Embassy. It was perfect, really.  

Public trust in governing institutions and media has collapsed in your country, and with good reason. Whether it be the failure to find WMDs in Iraq, the "Trump-Russia" debacle where almost every day a new "bombshell" was reported only for it to be proven a dud shortly thereafter, the Epstein Affair, Hunter Biden's laptop and how intel colluded with social media to suppress the story, and the bankruptcy of health expertise during COVID-19......no one knows who in authority is to be trusted anymore. What explains this crisis in trust? For example, I, like you, consider the Epstein Affair to be much more an intel story than one about prostitution and sexual abuse, but that angle of approach has been successfully closed off. Another example: just two weeks ago, an anonymous whistleblower has alleged that the CIA bribed its own COVID-19 origin team to reject the lab leak theory. 

We can’t get away from the difficult reality that across the West, public confidence in our institutions has gone off of a cliff over the last decade. Why shouldn’t it? Our elites look like a bunch of incestuously corrupt thieves and sex criminals. The Epstein Affair has been made to go away since its obvious implications – Western elites were being systematically compromised by a creepy guy who knew all the right VIPs, plus who had access to battalions of teenage sex slaves…..a guy who had to have a powerful secret organization behind him – were just too much for the media to process. Hence the focus on Epstein’s lurid personal life rather than asking what was really going on there.  

The suppression of the COVID-19 origins story, apparently with CIA connivance, is another one that the public won’t forget about anytime soon. I have no informed opinion on where the pandemic came from, other than: Wuhan. I’m not a virologist. But I know that Commies always lie. Even when they don’t have to. Moreover, every single expert I know who has an informed opinion (I’m referring to serious scientists), privately has told me from the beginning of the pandemic that COVID-19 was made in a Chinese lab. Most of these folks are card-carrying liberals, but they know the truth, and that it cannot be stated openly. The fact that U.S. Government money was paying for risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, even after U.S. diplomats had reported safety problems in that lab, is the worst part of all. But it seems there will be no consequences. As has become the new normal. Consequences are for little people, and the little people have noticed.  

All of these cases have created the space for conspiracy theory culture to blossom in the USA and beyond. The fact is that people conspire all the time. Conspiracy theories thrive where public trust is absent. How can authorities and elites restore public confidence in such a polarized society where almost every issue becomes an existential one, and the media happily plays the role of arsonist? 

It's a huge problem and I don’t see it getting better. The public is profoundly polarized, half the country hates the other half – optimistically, 45 percent hates the other 45 percent, with 10 percent just trying to hide from it all – thus every political fight becomes a va banque round. Opinion-makers have so stigmatized “conspiracy theories” that they push any remotely controversial discussion to the fringes, where the elites want it. The pattern is very consistent: 

The media pronounces that a given subject is a “conspiracy theory” and must not be discussed. Therefore, only the fringes discuss it. That fact is cited by the media as proof that “only crazy people” care about the topic, which proves why they banned talking about it in the first place. 

The Hunter Biden laptop coverup saga was too much, too blatant, and it didn’t work for very long, but this modus operandi generally works well at keeping many topics off-bounds for polite discussion. When it fails, the trick is to then make up something ridiculous for the rubes in order to render any reality-based discussion out of bounds. Take QAnon, which isn’t really a conspiracy theory so much as a parody of one. Alas, millions of Boomers with computers weren’t in on the joke. If you have any notion of how the “Deep State” functions in earthly reality, QAnon was transparently crazy, a low-rent fake….but millions of Americans lapped it up. That was awfully convenient when the Epstein Affair broke – here was an actual elite pedophile ring involving presidents, princes, and many billionaires, run by shadowy evil forces – and the QAnon bullshit had pre-tainted any discussion of such realities with the mark of online crazy.  

What we don’t want to become is Italy, where everything is viewed through a profoundly conspiratorial lens. It’s so ubiquitous they have a word for it, dietrologia (“behindology”). In this formulation, literally everything is a conspiracy. Facts really don’t matter. It’s a novel way to run a country. I’m advocating for some healthy middle ground. On the other hand, if we can get Italian food, wine, and dolce vita, then dietrologia might be worth it.  

I’ve toyed with setting up a website, perhaps a YouTube channel, called The Rational Conspiracist, for informed discussion of real-world conspiracies and how they operate, based on actual intelligence experience. I remind you that the Russian word for espionage tradecraft is konspiratsiya. It might be fun, who knows? 

Let’s switch gears for a minute and move to a subject that interests both you and I immensely: the Balkans. In July of 1994, I was visiting Croatia and I was on my way from Split on the coast to my birthplace, the town of Livno, just over the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As we passed near the Dalmatian city of Sinj, we were informed by local police that we could not take the road any further, as it was reserved for military purposes. My uncle managed to get us on that road several hours later. Upon arriving in my village, I quickly learned that the reason that road was shut down for several hours every day was so that the Croatian Military (HV) could use it to move weapons into my county in preparation for offensive operations against the Bosnian Serbs later that year. I got to see some of the gear over the course of the next week, including a tank that was camouflaged roughly 50 feet from my house. It wasn't until later that I learned that these new weapons and assets came from Iran, courtesy of a deal brokered between Washington DC and Tehran, whereby arms would be sent to the island of Krk in the Northern Adriatic for unloading. Half of the weapons that arrived there were given to the HV, and half of what remained would be given to Croatian forces (HVO) in Bosnia-Herzegovina once it crossed the border. What was left over would be allotted to the ABiH (Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina). Very similar to Iran-Contra, this time it was a Democrat-occupied White House that worked with the Iranians, long a target of your country for regime change. 

You have had some experience in the Balkans and have written quite a lot on this subject. The war in Bosnia in particular saw not just Iranian agents involved on the ground (Hezbollah was aiding the ABiH militarily), but also Salafist radicals, two of whom would go on to attack the USA on 9/11. Salafis and Iran on the same side in a conflict shows that war makes for strange bedfellows. The Mujahideen who arrived in Bosnia were a very vicious sort, responsible for all sorts of war crimes. Can you shed some light on the activities of the Mujahideen? Who sponsored their arrival? And what the fallout was beyond Bosnia? Can you also explain how the USA worked with Iran in Bosnia without it erupting into a national scandal back home? 

Your hailing from Livno explains … everything. Just kidding. But not really. 

The Bosnian War of 1992-1995 witnessed several problematic narratives for Western elites. The actual war bore only passing resemblance to the conflict as reported by Western media nonstop for years, during that fleeting moment after the arrival of 24/7 cable news programs but before the appearance of Internet fact-checking. I exposed all this in my 2007 book, Unholy Terror, which the MSM ignored because it was stuff that they worked hard at suppressing the decade before. Here I was, an Intelligence Community whistleblower, exposing the dirty underside of the Bosnian War, which included considerable American contribution and connivance, and, well, that wasn’t something that the media wanted to hear. Hey, I was only the technical director of NSA’s Balkans Division, what did I know?  

What got omitted from MSM coverage included ugly and important stories. Al-Qa’ida turned into a global threat thanks to their jihad waged in Bosnia, thus paving the road to 9/11, and part of that growth was fueled by Iranian intelligence. Saudi money and Iranian logistics plus training enabled the Bosnian jihad, especially the foreign Mujahideen who committed ample war crimes against Serbs and Croats (which the Western media ignored). Bosnia's muj, who came from all over the Islamic world, did all the nasty stuff they do everywhere – torture, decapitations, murders of non-combatants….the typical hideous scenes we’ve come to expect from the black-clad guys with swords – but the MSM showed no interest in any of it. Contrary to bien-pensant myth, Sunni and Shia radicals work together just fine when they share a common enemy. This story was well known in Western intelligence circles in the 1990s, but the MSM suppressed it all. 

Even more embarrassing for the Clinton White House was the very dodgy secret operation run out of the National Security Council to get Iranian and other Islamic weapons to Bosnia, in defiance of the UN arms embargo. Croatia played along because they took a healthy cut. It was an exact parallel to the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly took down the Reagan administration in its second term: a deniable, (because illegal), arms ring partnered with our enemy Iran run out of the NSC (not the Intelligence Community). That brouhaha was reported on ad nauseum by the MSM and resulted in high-profile Congressional investigations and even a Special Counsel that long outlasted the Reagan administration, and don’t forget the prosecutions of senior officials. Clinton’s remarkably similar scandal – nearly a carbon copy of Iran-Contra less than a decade later – got very little media attention, a perfunctory tepid Congressional investigation, no major inquiry, and no prosecutions. It’s like it never happened. The power of the MSM to suppress stories they don’t like is nothing new.

Staying in the Balkans, you have long had a fascination with UDBA, the secret service of Communist Yugoslavia. You have claimed that they were more effective than the Mossad in eliminating targets. In Western Europe alone, they managed to liquidate almost 70 exiled regime opponents during the 1960s and 70s, mainly Croatian nationalists, and some Albanian nationalists from Kosovo as well. Just how good were they and what made them so dangerous and effective? 

The Yugoslav secret police, which went by several names between 1945 and 1991 (it was UDBA for a long time, the handle stuck), was highly proficient and very nasty. There is no doubt that the Tito regime, for all its shortcomings, excelled at secret intel stuff. Marshal Tito himself, whoever he really was, had been a Soviet secret agent with 33 cover names to his credit. When the shit hit the fan in 1948 and Stalin kicked Yugoslavia out of the Commie Club, the Kremlin went all in on covert efforts to collapse the regime and assassinate Tito. They failed. UDBA was the only spy service to decisively defeat the KGB at their own game. 

UDBA was better at assassinating people abroad, what the Russians call “wetwork” (from bloody hands), than the KGB. Contrary to myth, the Kremlin was somewhat timid for most of the Cold War about assassinating enemies in the West – in stark contrast with Vladimir “Honey Badger” Putin, the Chekist-in-Chief, who uses his spy agencies to radiate and shoot people all over the place. The last KGB assassination in the West was Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist (a terrorist to the Kremlin) in Munich in 1959. It wasn’t worth the political heat for Moscow, so they got out of the wetwork game. We just passed the 45^th anniversary of the assassination of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London, victim of the infamous umbrella murder. What’s important here is the KGB supplied the Bulgarian secret police, the DS, with the new killing device at Sofia’s request, but KGB leadership ordered their own officers to be nowhere near the actual assassination. Too risky for Moscow. 

UDBA was smarter and sneakier about all this. By the mid-1960s, Belgrade had a serious problem with what they called the “enemy emigration.” This was the downside to letting millions of Yugoslavs move to the West for work: they were free to pursue anti-Communist activism, including some terrorism, mostly of an amateurish sort. Tito didn’t play. He ordered UDBA to crush the radical emigres with what they called “black actions” (crne akcije). 

In effect, UDBA outsourced wetwork to the mafia. UDBA was already in contact with Yugoslav organized crime. They worked together on the Balkan Route for drugs, including heroin (Commie secret police in neighboring Albania and Bulgaria did the same). So, they cut the mafiosi a deal: You kill people abroad for us, in exchange we give you multiple passports, you can commit other crimes with these clean IDs, but if you get caught, we don’t know you.  

It was ingenious, yet insidious. From the mid-1960s to 1990 (the last UDBA hit abroad was the Kosovar Albanian activist Enver Hadri, gunned down in Brussels) this secret program murdered or abducted/kidnapped something like one hundred Yugoslavs in the West. Most victims, more than two-thirds, were Croats, but Albanians and Serbs who opposed the Communist regime were murdered too. A lot of these assassinations happened in West Germany, since that’s where so many Yugoslav Gastarbeiter lived, but we know of UDBA assassinations on five different continents. There were a dozen UDBA hits in the USA. Some of the victims were kids. Really disgusting stuff. 

When UDBA assassins were caught, which on occasion they were, they were career criminals and the hit looked like some gangster beef, not a state-sanctioned murder. The trail seldom led back to Belgrade. Plus, Balkan émigré politics were impenetrable to Western cops, who had minimal understanding of Yugoslav politics and ethnic animosities. As a result, UDBA got away with a truly global killing spree without precedent anywhere.  

Western countries were complicit here too. U.S. intelligence, among several Western spy agencies, knew what UDBA was up to, at least generally, but seldom was action taken. On rare occasions, a Yugoslav “diplomat” (an undercover UDBA officer) would get expelled from a Western country after a particularly nasty hit went down. But the painful truth is that Tito and his regime were strategically useful to NATO during the Cold War, so the West pretended that Belgrade’s global murder spree wasn’t happening. 

Neither have Yugoslav successor states been exactly eager to seek justice. Croatia, after hard-won independence in 1991, broadly decided to let the difficult past pass away. This is because Croatia’s then-President Franjo Tudjman, a clever fellow and former Yugoslav Army General, understood that he needed the support of the Croatian part of UDBA (the SDS, to be pedantic) to escape from Yugoslavia. Spooks knew the collapse of Yugoslavia was imminent by the late 1980s. As a result, Tudjman co-opted them to his cause. The quid pro quo was that UDBA veterans wouldn’t get prosecuted for killing dozens of fellow Croats abroad during the Cold War. Hence, Josip Perković, who headed the Croatian UDBA’s wetwork department in the 1980s, and then sided with Tudjman in the 1990s, is currently sitting in a prison cell – a German cell, not a Croatian one – due to receiving a life sentence for the brutal murder of a Croatian émigré in Munich in 1983. 

The bigger impact here is that UDBA’s outsourcing assassinations to mafiosi, many of them Serbs, gave the country a bunch of unpleasant, state-connected guys who didn’t mind killing. When Yugoslavia fell apart, they found their moment, leading militias and armed gangs, killing and stealing for fun and profit. It’s not a coincidence that the notorious Arkan, formally Željko Ražnatović, who ran a reign of terror in Croatia and Bosnia 30 years ago, got his start with UDBA. He was one of many. 

It would be remiss of me to not bring up the subject of WW1 and especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which you feel some attachment to. You have written a great book on the Battle of the Isonzo which took place in Northeastern Italy over the course of two years (1915-17). A horrendous slaughter, it is practically unknown in the West, where the trench warfare of France and Belgium dominates the imagery of that war in our minds. What made this battle so significant and who were some of the standout characters from both the Italian and Austro-Hungarian sides? 

I’ll talk about the Isonzo campaign all day long. A dozen big battles, some of the most savage fighting in the history of warfare with well past a million casualties, and few in the West have heard of it. Imagine Verdun, but bigger, in the mountains, going on for two-and-a-half years. The Isonzo fighting played a major role in the coming of Fascism to Italy – I won’t spoil it: read my book – and Mussolini himself fought there and was wounded in action on the Isonzo.  

It's a wild cast of characters. One of my favorites is Gabriele d’Annunzio, the famous Italian artist/nut who was then in his 50s and almost a senior citizen, and who took time away from his busy schedule of writing books and banging hot chicks half his age (as artists do), to show up on the Isonzo front and exhort a leery battalion into a suicide mission (charging Austrian positions), which turned into a slaughter at the hands of enemy machine guns. You couldn’t make it up.  

The stand-out character of the Isonzo story, however, has to be Field Marshal Svetozar Boroević, the Austro-Hungarian commander on that front the whole time. He was a defensive genius, and Boroević was WW1’s most successful general in any army. He never suffered a major defeat; he consistently bested the Italians on the Isonzo, despite being badly outnumbered.  

Boroević, hailed as the Lion of the Isonzo in life, has been mostly forgotten in death (he died only 18 months after the war’s end, penniless, in exile). First, he was a prickly character, an old-school soldier, not seeking affirmation; he only cared about winning. Second, he fought for Austria-Hungary, which lost the war and disappeared. Third, he prevailed on a front that gets little attention from Western historians. 

What’s more, Boroević doesn’t fit into our current identity boxes. He was a Serb from Croatia, a staunch Habsburg loyalist from a military family in the famous Military Border (Krajina) region. He considered himself a Croat of the Orthodox faith, he despised Great Serbian nationalist mythology, and Boroević was unquestionably a Croatian patriot (his private letters make this clear). Serbs therefore pretend he never existed, because it’s painful to admit that the greatest Serbian general who ever lived – Boroević’s Isonzo Army was bigger than the whole Serbian Army in WW1 – fought for Austria-Hungary and thought the Belgrade regime were a bunch of terrorist-criminals.  

Neither do Croats generally know what to do with him, because deep down they’re skittish about recognizing that the greatest general to ever emerge from their country was a Serb, ethnically speaking. Hence, Boroević gets memory-holed. I’ve called the men who fought and died on the Isonzo between May 1915 and October 1917 the true “unknown soldiers” of WW1, and that includes the very top.  

The Isonzo River valley (most of which is in Slovenia, where they call it Soča) is one of the prettiest places in Europe, with superb white water rafting plus mountain hiking and climbing. It’s cheap compared to Western Europe, so pay a visit. There are plenty of WW1 memorials too, which the Commies let fall apart, but which have been restored since the 1990s. I’d like to think my book, which introduced the Isonzo front to the English-speaking world, helped a bit there.  

I like you, John....but I am certain that your taste in both beer and music is fucking shit. Budweiser and Jimmy Buffett (pbuh) is my (correct) guess. You are standard-fare 4th generation Boring-German-American, unlike my sophisticated Balkan self. I bet you have never even traveled outside of the USA, except to torture certain Arabs to get them to cough up useless information on other US intel assets. 

What happens in GTMO stays in GTMO. Well, mostly. I don’t drink much beer, when I do it’s Modelo Especial or Pilsner Urquell. My go-to is a martini, shaken not stirred: cliché, I know. Good vodka, shockingly dry, with a lemon twist (I detest olives in all forms). I like red wine, if it’s good; Croatia’s is often excellent.  

My taste in music is appalling, I’ll cop to that. Not Margaritaville-appalling, however. I’m too Gen-X for Buffett and that Boomer nostalgia crap. I have a decent voice. I like karaoke. It’s the last remnant of my youthful ability to play several musical instruments pretty well.  

Sidebar: I am almost certainly the only person on earth who has seen both Honeymoon Suite (the Rolling Stones of Niagara Falls) and Honeymoon (Medeni Mjesec, the Rolling Stones of Banja Luka) perform live. 

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray. 

BAP, is that you? 

Mel Gibson stars as a down-on-his-luck ex-NSA analyst who was turfed from the organization for being too much of an uncontrollable maverick despite his overwhelming natural talent at the job. He stumbles onto highly-incendiary classified information that proves that "Trump-Russia" was actually an MI6 frame job and tries to get it into the hands of the right people, although they are beyond his reach. He is forced to take matters into his own hands, which leads him to infiltrate the Biden Family, attaching himself to Hunter. For the next six months, he and Hunter become best friends, partying with strippers and high class escorts from Las Vegas through to NYC, and all points in between. Eventually, Mel manages to uncover Hunter's Beijing handler, but insists that he will trade the information only if his info on MI6's subterfuge can be placed in safe hands. Just before a deal is struck, he is extraordinarily renditioned to Djibouti, where a furious Joe Biden meets him to confront and threaten him, but completely forgets why he is there and what he was going to say, incoherently babbling something about some gangster named "Cornpop" instead. Rob Reiner takes command of the situation and threatens to eat Mel if he doesn't agree to not reveal who Hunter's Beijing handler is. In the nick of time, Elon Musk Starlinks himself and a team of patriotic NSA agents to whisk Mel out of there, foiling Biden's plans. A congressional investigative committee reveals Mel's information on MI6's treachery, and the USA decides to nuke London in reprisal. Would you watch this movie? 

Watch it? I feel like I’ve lived it. At least in part.  

I have encountered real-world covert ops that were more far-fetched than this plotline. No, I can’t discuss them.  

You can find John Schindler polluting the timeline on Twitter/X here, but even better, you should check out his popular Substack at this link:

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Lee Fang said that he would sit for this interview only on one condition: that in place of writing up a standard bio, I would instead allow him to introduce himself to readers via this video:

I'm gonna cut straight to the chase and leave out all the niceties that people have come to expect from me, because I have a bone to pick with you.  You are recognized as a journalist by some, but in my view, you are much more a contrarian with a platform.  Journalists are supposed to be adversarial, meaning that they by definition are supposed to challenge power.  Information is power, and information comes in many forms including the following three: disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.  These three together form the greatest threat to our country and its interests.  Thankfully, we Americans are a very patriotic sort, and have responded wonderfully by launching an attack on this tri-headed beast, with the generous support of government, corporations, and multi-billionaires, all of whom are acting altruistically, in the spirit of cooperation, and for the sake of the common good.  You, Lee Fang Fang, have instead decided to attack these defenders of truth, these combatants against foreign-backed propaganda efforts.  I think that this has to do with the fact that you are angry at the world for being a Hapa, tied down by the Iron Chains of NOWAG (No One Wants Asian Guys).  Like Elliot Rodger, you are lashing out at the country that has given you everything, you ungrateful little shit.

Before you psychoracialanalyze me as a journalist, let’s get a few things straight. To paraphrase Chris Rock: There are really two kinds of Hapas, two kinds of mixed-race people in America. Lots of nonwhite people grow up in a white-parent household – either through adoption or biracial parents -- and it becomes kind of a racial albatross. Nikole Hannah-Jones, Andrea Long Chu, Shaun King, Colin Kaepernick (the list goes on and on) all grew up with a loving white parent and a mixed race identity that turned them weirdly hateful. They engage in extreme theatrics about being truly Asian, truly Black (or whatever), perhaps because they never fit into a neat box on the U.S. census. There’s this element of racial guilt and lack of belonging. They’re never really accepted as authentically “POC,” and of course they are responding to the new woke incentives in elite circles that valorize anything non-white. So they obsess over race and that obsession evolves into an identitarian worldview that attempts to cancel out one or both parents. A version of this extends to the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger. His manifesto whined endlessly about being "half White, half Asian" and not being able to fit in fully with the “normal fully-white kids.” I met a Korean Hapa once who sounded exactly like this, like a proto-Elliot Rodgers, who was filled with rage about his identity and wanted to be fully white. I’ve met tons of other mixed people of the lib variety, who go out of their way to tout Black pride or Asian pride while carefully concealing their white upbringing. It’s like those recent converts to Catholicism or Islam who paper over their insecurity about not really fitting in by being over-the-top pious. The troubled and insecure mixed race person in America goes all out in expressing racial resentment or ultra non-white pride. It’s sad, really.

Not me, though. It’s fake and lame to care about your race on that level and exhibit any kind of racial pride or guilt for that matter. There are a ton of mixed-race folks who share my disposition on this stuff -- Hapa people who are fairly chill about identity and basically the very opposite of the aforementioned extremists. Growing up in a racially diverse household can be very helpful in quickly realizing that every human being regardless of race is equally capable of being an oppressor, a victim, annoying, stubborn, selfish, etc., and that identity categories therefore are inherently evil, and race is really the most reductive and stupid way to understand the complexities of the world. So in conclusion, being Hapa can either give you laser-like insight into the folly of race, or it can make you into an insane racial demagogue. There’s almost no in-between.

I think that this only scratches the surface, Lee.  I think that we need to dive deeper into your background to explain your stubborn contrarianism.  Your father is from Qingdao, but his roots are in Fujian.  This is a south-to-north movement.  Your mother's side is Scots-Irish from Virginia (the South), and yet you grew up in and around Washington DC (Maryland Suburbs).  Now here is where it all falls into place: your name is Lee.  Virginia+Lee = Confederate General and Lover of Slavery Robert E. Lee.  There is a psychological profile that leaps off of the page when you put all these pieces together: an inferiority complex based on being a Southerner in a Northern setting, compounded by the frustration of southern pride, an inherent character flaw (always racist in expression, whether overt or subconscious).  This manifests itself in wanting to tear down everything around you, which is why you find yourself siding against America, on the exact same side as the Russians, and yes, the Chicoms too.

Yeah there’s intention there. Lee is a nice southern American name, and a nice Chinese name, a combo reflecting my Sino-American roots. I think it was my wise mom’s idea to name me that way. There’s also some symmetry to the far flung lives of my family. My Chinese grandfather on my father’s side remembers the Japanese bombing his town in southern China before he moved north for an education and to work as an agricultural biologist. My late grandpa on my mom’s side had his whole life uprooted by WW2. He flew planes for the US Navy. There’s a moment in family lore that occurred in the early post-war era: he remembers looking up at the sky, at Sputnik, the Russian satellite, and thinking, “Oh shit, there’s a space race and I need an education.” He left his small southern Virginia rural town, got an engineering degree, and moved the family up towards a middle class life.  

That’s about the extent of the parallels in my two grandfathers’ lives. 

As a scientist in Qingdao during the Cultural Revolution, my grandpa was falsely accused of something or other, tormented and imprisoned. The Chinese Communist Party sent my dad to a work camp as part of a family-wide punishment, and my dad spent his entire adolescence digging ditches along the Mongolian border. Seven long years in the desert digging ditches! That was terrible for him and for the whole family. He escaped China by way of Hong Kong, and managed to attend college in the USA as an older student thanks to supporting himself through working odd jobs involving computers. Both sides struggled, but I think my white side had a more comfortable experience, all things considered.

I grew up in a middle-class, predominantly African-American community in Maryland, riding the public school bus to a more distant school, because of a court-ordered desegregation plan to mix students from different backgrounds. No one in class looked quite like me or had my background. Unlike the formative experiences of my parents or my grandparents, I became obsessed with the events that followed September 11, 2001. I actually saw the pillars of smoke billow out of the Pentagon that day. I went with my dad on some volunteering thing and we stopped the car and saw it. Then came the rush to war in Iraq and the neocon-era jingoist ‘patriotism’……all the while the ultra-Democratic local politicians in my hometown were comically corrupt and socially conservative – it fueled my fixation on politics and my aversion to groupthink pretty early in life.

But there’s something to growing up with southern American ties, in a Black community, with half a family from China. Really unlimited ways to devour pigs. It’s a perfect storm of pork-eating cultures.

(The audience will note that Lee is so far proving to be unflappable in the face of the steady stream of insults directed towards him. Let’s shift gears - ed.)

You've changed, man.  Where before you used to rip into the Republicans for corruption, greed, policies that would negatively impact Americans by making their lives much harder, government overreach, unethical use of intelligence agencies to target US citizens, erosion of rights, etc., you now rip into the Democrats for corruption, greed, policies that would negatively impact Americans by making their lives much harder, government overreach, unethical use of intelligence agencies to target US citizens, erosion of rights, and so on.  This duplicity is incredibly transparent, and leaves people like me wondering what caused this shift. It has to be self-interest, whether monetary or something else.  We've seen the same change in Matt Taibbi, for example.

It’s definitely me, I’m the one who changed, not the other way around. Any criticism of FBI surveillance of political dissent, the Department of Homeland Security’s social media censorship apparatus, Democratic Party corruption, empathy with working class concerns around public safety….that’s basically the definition of a dangerous right winger. The American political culture hasn’t tied itself into a pretzel with polarization and reflexive partisanship – the real danger are the few writers who report on these issues.

Getting back to the Maryland ‘burbs and the nation’s capital: I can't think of a single good thing that has come out of Washington DC besides the DJ/Music Production duo Deep Dish.  Is the fact that Washington DC is so fucking dull the reason why you ended up getting into politics?  You were one of those irritating political dorks on campus, having served as the President of the Federation of Maryland College Democrats, Editor of the Maryland College Democrat Blog, and to round out the Dork Trifecta, you were also on the Campus Progress Advisory Board.  Were video games and Dungeons and Dragons not enough to keep you occupied?  Was Ritalin a factor in all of this?

DC is a horrible place that is a spiritual dead end, but there is local culture (or at least there used to be), some of which tangentially impacted me. There’s go-go, groups like Rare Essence and TCB….authentic DC-PG County music. That really wasn’t my scene, though I loved some of the music and went to a few go-go shows. There’s also the DC-originated Straight Edge hardcore punk scene, which was really a backlash to the hedonistic punk music from the 1980s. The straight Edge scene emphasized being clean cut, macho-violent, and free from the influence of drugs and alcohol. It was kind of like Wahhabism for punks; a purer form of rebellion that retained the DIY, anti-corporate edge of punk ideology, but without the strung out anarchism.

That type of hardcore punk was my entry point to politics, and in a weird way, it put me on a path to a lot of cringe. Please forgive me, I can explain: my proximity to DC growing up shaped me, like I said. I got into hardcore punk music, went to lots of protests as a teenager – some of which I barely understood at the time. Groups like Anti-Racist Action and ANSWER mobilized a lot of people to action. It never really made sense, though. If you wanted to end imperial American wars and get some semblance of public interest-minded policy enacted, how did marching around with a bunch of crust punks ever get any of that done? I got frustrated by that scene and veered into interning everywhere respectable that I could find, places where I could actually exert influence on the process. So in my disgust for the ineffective protest politics that I had participated in, I did a 180 and worked to get into the establishment. I interned for a political fundraising firm, for various congressmen and women, for think tanks, campaigns – I think I was even the very first intern at Media Matters in 2005. Imagine me – I’m 18, I read David Brock’s book about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’, then I start writing emails to any center-left institute that will take me. I wrote blog posts and got involved in local primary elections to toss out centrist Democrats. I invited Cindy Sheehan to speak on campus and was hated by other “College Democrats” for being too far left and obsessed with the war in Iraq. I wanted to be part of the action but also doing something righteous at the same time, while not being typecast as someone on the fringe. But getting elite jobs in DC only destroys your soul. You become a cog in a machine, one fueled by corporate money and dominated by cynical backbiting careerism. I became just as creeped out by the antics of the Center for American Progress as I was alienated by the punk protest-obsession of my younger years. 

So I took another turn, this time towards more explicitly progressive journalism, and the whole cycle continued. The unthinking partisanship and monoculture of the far-left media world also made me uncomfortable. There’s a lot of righteousness, but not a lot of independent thought and intellectual vigor at many of these self-styled lefty outlets. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that every corner of the political spectrum is filled with conformism. Any clique by its very own nature becomes blinded by a desire to be part of a group, leading it to sacrificing its own stated principles. What works best for me is to try to be as open-minded and independent as possible and not feel confined by some arbitrary political label or faction.

You came of age during the Occupy Protests.  Gen Xers like myself never believed that we could change the world for the better, because we were lectured to by our parents in the 80s about how they stopped the War in Vietnam through "peace and love", just as they drove off in their shiny new BMWs to go talk to their stock broker and see how their investment portfolio based around Michael Milken's junk bonds were doing that month.  You guys were imbued with idealism, and Occupy rode a groundswell of increasing dissatisfaction with the disastrous Dubya Presidency.  This was a decade of consumption, greed, and arrogance, and Occupy rose to the challenge....then everything went sideways.

I was initially taken with Occupy. I traveled the country reporting on Occupy Wall Street protests in Nashville, DC, Las Vegas, Sacramento, San Francisco, and a few other cities. At the time, I naively saw the moment as something powerful and transcendent, a rebuke to the weakness of Obama rolling over for the banks and the austerity-obsessed conventional wisdom in D.C. – a forceful vengeance for the betrayals around the bailouts. I met a lot of very sincere protesters – people crushed with insane levels of student debt, normal middle-class folks tired of completely stagnant politics that favored the very wealthy, and regular people with a visceral disdain for the uneven justice system that favors those with the best lawyers and lobbyists.

But the experience also gave me a dark preview of what was to become of the American left. The anarchist mindset took over, with many occupy encampments deciding to proceed with only unanimous consent, a rule that was easily gamed by Bob Avakian ‘tankies’ and random junkie drifters screaming incoherently into the microphone. Extreme victimhood generated a culture of accusations and cancellations within the camps. People even got raped while sleeping in tent cities that started to resemble skid row more than a utopian political project. The movement lacked any coherent policy ideas or political strategy, and quickly devolved into a grift for a few media-savvy activists. It accomplished nothing other than serving as a looking glass into the future, showing us a preview of the pathologies of every other left-identified protest movement that came to pass over the next few years.

I’m biased. I wanted a social democratic movement with coherent beliefs and a desire for state action to enact fair tax policies, reasonable redistribution of resources, and a forceful check on corporate power. Instead, Occupy gave us a new flavor of lefty libertarian narcissism, of brand-building hucksters who got drunk on empty slogans, burn-it-all down nihilism, and made-for-social media viral moments -- a great tactic for building out Twitter follower counts, but not that great at fixing anything in society. The same ethos later powered #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and much of the extreme climate-related movements years later.

The GOP story was (and still is) very simple: they were the party of the Chamber of Commerce, meaning that if you didn't figure out how to make money, well, too bad for you.  In the eyes of many, the Dems at least had some heart, and this is why so many people put actual hope in Obama.  I can't help but fail to notice how many liberals went from sunny optimism during Obama's first term to darkened cynicism by the end of his second term in office.  The “hope” projected onto Obama drowned in the waters of the Caribbean Sea as Obama enjoyed some post-Presidential sailing with Richard Branson on the billionaire’s yacht.  Was the lesson to be drawn from the Obama era that entrenched interests were just too powerful for one man to tame?  Or was it something else?

People forget this but there was a brief period in 2009 when Democrats had a supermajority in Congress and could pass anything they wanted. It was a brief window – between the late seating of Sen. Al Franken and before Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brain failed – to remake American society, rebuild labor rights, restructure the tax code, provide a public option health insurance program, lower the age to qualify for Medicare, do something about climate change, etc.

They missed the boat. At the time, Republicans manipulated Obama into believing that if he just waited to pass health reform and gave them a seat at the table, they would give him bipartisan approval. Instead, they delayed and delayed until public opinion turned against him and the supermajority popped from Kennedy’s death. I was reporting on the debate and followed Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to Miami, where I snuck into the Biltmore in Coral Gables to observe his birthday party that was being thrown by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). At the donor event, the GOP crowd laughed and cheered on Grassley for fooling Obama into waiting for him, turning the tides on health reform. That’s on Obama, not the Republicans, for being outsmarted.

Just look at almost anyone from Obama’s inner circle; they laughed their way to lucrative employment at banks, tech giants, chemical companies…..all of them passing through the revolving door Obama promised to close. I think the most likely scenario is that Obama meant some of what he promised, quickly realized that he was in over his head, gave up, sold out, and ended up a slightly less hawkish version of Hillary Clinton once in office.

As mentioned earlier, you interned for three different Democrat politicians as an undergrad, but instead of going into politics, you chose to dive into the treacherous waters of journalism.  You were juggling both during your college days.  Was there a specific event that helped you choose media over politics as a career path?

One of my first gigs just out of college was doing “opposition research” on John McCain and Sarah Palin for a campaign outfit working on the presidential race. I was a nobody with no connections in media or politics….but I came up with some unique ideas that my then-boss pitched around, and my research notes were transformed into articles in the New York Times and Washington Post just like that! It was crazy to see the news cycle churn over the fruits of my labor. It was an incredible feeling and made me think: If I could land big stories just by coming up with original news ideas, why shouldn’t I write those stories myself? Politics is filled with nepotism and ladder climbing. Media seemed like a way to live my values and get ahead with merit. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of low-level corruption and self-dealing in media, but it seemed like a far more interesting path than working for some politician.

That era seems like a totally different world now. One thing from those years that has stuck with me to this day was the claim that Obama was the “first post-racial President” because of just how completely wrong that turned out to be.  The USA today is nowhere near post-racial, and is instead hyper-racial, where personal identity (or identities) immediately assigns a value to whatever that person is saying, regardless of the merit of what they say.  When you encounter a person now, you have to be like Robocop in a way, scanning them for signifiers/identity markers that indicate their racial background, faith (if they are religious), gender identity (with the pronouns that come attached to it), and sexual preference, before you even say “hello”.  This is done to mitigate the risk of offending them based on any of those identifications.  When you think about it, this is a very, very cumbersome way of navigating through daily life.  You (like many others), also see a possible hidden purpose in the promotion of “identity politics” in that they help protect the powers-that-be from scrutiny (and from challenges), by pitting people against one another, exhausting them in the process.  Is IdPol the mechanism by which the elites defend their class interests?

All you need to know is that if you talk to normal, working-class people, everything you just said isn’t applicable. No normal person cares about pronouns or walks around on stilts, carefully avoiding microaggressions like landmines. It’s a phenomenon of our ultra-educated upper-middle class and elite. That isn’t to say it isn’t a problem, but one we just need to view in context.

There are a few dynamics that explain this: one is the mass retreat from communal politics. It’s too hard to fix the tax code, or to reform almost any intractable economic problem. But it is easy to cancel your coworkers and family members. So people drift to the politics of the personal when that’s the path of least resistance and towards the highest level of personal satisfaction.

The other dynamic is the cynical high-level nature of it all. When the American economy was built upon labor-intensive industries – resource extraction, factories, agriculture – the biggest threat to the capitalist class was the possibility that workers would band together and demand higher pay and better working standards. So they cynically pitted Black versus White, or Chinese versus Portuguese, or Italian versus Polish, and so on. Now we have a highly educated workforce obsessed with victimhood, and so the same capitalist class keeps us divided with a different flavor of identity politics. They have the same goal in mind: Keeping our eyes off of the ways in which the elite picks our collective pockets, while keeping us hating each other and divided, but through a new form. Now every major bank and Silicon Valley giant ruthlessly deploys left-wing racial justice rhetoric to manufacture consent for policies that help entrench special interest power. It’s brilliant, cynical, and effective.

I like to say that “the genius of America is its ability to identify any potential challenges or risks facing it, co-opt it, defuse it, re-purpose it, monetize it, and weaponize it”.  Think about how IdPol has gone through this process that I have described over the past decade or so.  It’s now a tired joke to point out how Raytheon is inclusive in its hiring practices, or how Lockheed Martin marches in Gay Pride parades, but this self-serving transformation is rather indicative. You have written about how ESG serves as a way for corporations to polish their own image, for example.  It’s all so very cynical.

The Republican anger at ESG is all wrong. It’s funny to watch how unhinged these debates become. To listen to some generic House Republican rail against ESG, you would think that this BlackRock-engineered marketing dynamic is a social engineering project to make America socialist –when it’s literally the opposite.

Corporate interests want to subvert democratic control in every way possible while maximizing profit, and ESG is just the latest way to harness liberals into that project. If you’re a company that pollutes, abuses workers or exploits customers in some way, you have an image problem that could become a government regulation problem. Rather than change your fundamental business practice, you hire a legion of consultants to produce an array of ESG index performance metrics to make it look like your business is actually a social justice cause that is making the world a better place. No need for government intervention – we’re doing ESG.

The ESG metrics are all shifting and self-reported. Private prisons use their non-white prison guard employee base to argue for higher “racial equity” ESG scores, pharmaceutical firms do the same – somehow, a racially diverse corporate board that approves sky-high drug prices for live-saving medicine is progress. Should this type of behaviour be rewarded? MSCI, the rating agency that powers most asset manager ESG platforms, actually *rewards* some corporations that pollute more by measuring whether climate change could pose more opportunities for a given firm. McDonald’s hilariously hiked its carbon emissions and then scored higher on its ESG green rating.

ESG is basically green/wokewashing corporate greed on an industrial scale, with the added benefit for Wall Street asset managers to sell retail and pension investors on “socially responsible” funds. Look under the hood at the State Street or BlackRock or Goldman Sachs ESG index funds and you find basically the same set of normal corporations – ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Raytheon, etc. – as you would find in a non-ESG fund, except with slightly higher fees.  

If we had normal a normal political environment with at least one faction that actually held corporate America responsible, we’d have a healthy debate on this. But we don’t. We have Republicans lying and claiming ESG is a scheme to turn us socialist, and Democrats so knuckle-draggingly stupid that they now defend ESG simply because Republicans are against it.

To me, the most interesting development of the past several years in the USA has been the increasing cooperation between government, big tech, NGOs, and mainstream media.  Collusion best describes the general tone of the relationship between these four, particularly when it comes to matters of national security (at least as to how they are defined by those in charge of running it).  We have seen how government gets around the First Amendment by subcontracting censorship out to corporations (particularly Big Tech), with an assist from media, and from the NGO complex as well.  Everyone reading this is by now aware of the Twitter Files, and how deeply involved US Intelligence and security agencies have been in trying to remove dissenting voices from that social media platform.  The early years of the World Wide Web (WWW) were rife with techno-utopianism, insisting that “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”.  What was implied in that statement was that the monopoly on narrative formation and control that was up until then shared by government and corporations would cease to exist.  Instead, we are seeing the continual erosion of freedoms, and the shutting down of voices that do not conform to desired narratives in the name of “fighting disinformation”.  Thanks to your recent investigation, we learned how the FBI helps Ukrainian intelligence “hunt disinformation” on social media.  That’s just one example.

I gotta admit I drank the Kool-Aid on this. Earlier in life, I really thought the open internet would lead to more voices and more accountability, making society more free and democratic. It hasn’t exactly worked that way. A few corporations are slowly transforming the internet into walled gardens, and those corporations are more than willing to permit expansive government meddling and surveillance, and increasingly, censorship of political dissent and unpopular ideas. Meanwhile, the tech giants sucked the advertising revenue away from most responsible media outlets and local journalism and then plowed that money into DC influence, making meaningful media reform virtually impossible.

When I was at Twitter HQ helping put together the Twitter Files, it was jarring to see the near-daily emails from the DHS and the FBI asking about content decisions. But that’s just one company. Imagine what’s going on at Facebook, Reddit, and others?

The government saw the awesome power of social media in shaping US elections, and saw how it influenced the Arab Spring, as well as other revolutions that you’ve written extensively about. It’s a powerful force, and there’s every incentive for the intelligence agencies to have a hand in how public opinion is formed and how ideas are exchanged….or how to use this technology to launch revolutions.

Let’s step back for a second to bring up the subject that you touched upon earlier in this interview. There is a revolving door between the public and private sectors, particularly government and media.  To be honest, it’s a rather lucrative one that serves as a win-win for both sectors, especially for the individuals that pass through it.  Is this one of the reasons why media in the USA is broken?

The Louisiana congressman responsible for the “Part D” rule requiring the government to pay for drugs for seniors, but making it illegal for Medicare to negotiate for lower prices, was Billy Tauzin, a former member of the US House of Representatives. Part D was and is a boondoggle that poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a small set of pharmaceutical giants. Tauzin ended up with a one year payday of $11.6 million as a drug lobbyist. That’s not that far from the average salary for CEO of a Fortune 500 company….but all he did was insert a bit of legislative language and helped negotiate some political deals. This loophole went on from 2003 through this year, 2023, after Biden partially reformed it. Twenty years of sky-high subsidies for drug companies were the result of influence peddling. Those hundreds of billions of dollars could have fixed a lot of problems in America, but instead it went to Big Pharma shareholders.

Not that long ago in America, this type of corruption was unusual. Lawmakers retired to go farm, to teach, to actually live out their retirement. Now the goal seems to be to get deep enough into the political machinery to embed some type of legislative gift to an interest group, and get a payday later as you cycle through into the Gucci loafer lifestyle. The biggest media outlets in DC celebrate this, with quarterly lists of the highest paid lobbyists, and parties toasting their success. It’s a cultural-legal-phenomenon that never gets fixed. Obama and Trump campaigned on fixing this and both just made it worse.

Corruption is so endemic that it seems like it’s too massive to even contemplate dealing with.  Pfizer funded lobbying groups pushing for COVID mandates.  Intel contracts go to pro-war think tanks.  Certain Congressmen and women aided the rail industry to block safety regulations.  Do we even need to mention Sam Bankman-Fried and his influence peddling?  The scale of corruption is so monumental, with so many vested interests working to perpetuate it endlessly.

What’s fascinating to me is that there is a precedent for fixing this. The FBI actually has a very decent public corruption unit. The problem is that it’s just applied almost entirely to low-level figures. The agency sets up elaborate sting operations to go after mayors, city council members, state politicians, etc.. In California, the FBI set up a fake weapons smuggling operation and a whole dummy movie studio in order to ensnare state lawmakers for petty corruption. Why don’t they aim higher? It can be done, but there’s just no political will to do so. And the FBI seems more focused on censoring naughty words on social media and spying on political dissent, rather than combating this existential corruption problem.

What frustrates many is that there are a lot of tangible issues that need to be dealt with, but take a back seat to more sexy, media-friendly ones.  In a way, it’s a misallocation of attention by politicians. Take a look at the subway violence in NYC, the CHAZ experiment in Seattle, the low-level urban conflict in Portland, or the open warfare in Chicago.

It’s more than that. The most liberal cities in America are the most unequal and violent, with the most backwards housing policy, and with the most ineffective and inhumane treatment of the homeless and addicted. We need ethical and professional policing. People living on the streets desperately need psychological intervention, rehab, or other mental health services. But in California, for example, state lawmakers literally made it illegal to offer mental health or drug treatment as part of any housing program. The billionaire class of these cities pours foundation funds to activists who actively make these problems worse. There’s no lobby groups with a SuperPAC fighting to get people the treatment or the psychological intervention they need. They are lost to the culture wars, because the left-elites carefully ignore the human plight in these cities (or actively make the problem worse), and the right just sneers at it as if these human beings are a political score to settle. It’s a miserable situation.

San Francisco has long been a maverick in US urban politics.  From electing the first openly gay politician in the USA by way of Harvey Milk, to appointing Jim Jones Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority, it has always gone against the grain. To the outsider, it seems that San Francisco is now working to benefit the unhoused, the sex workers, the drug workers, and the product removal workers above all others.  The latter one interests me most as it seems to be a roundabout way to copy Reagan’s Trickle Down Economics: businesses send product to their shelves in San Francisco, and product removal workers enter these businesses to complete their tasks, understanding that they cannot exceed $950 (I’m not sure of the actual figure) in product in total per each site visit.  These products are then redistributed to the poor from the rich.  The wealth trickles down.  America has long been the pre-eminent global leader in creating new economies, its dynamism unmatched.  Who could have thought that a left wing city government like the one in San Francisco would not only lead to the creation of a new and sustainable economic system, but that it would be inspired by the Gipper himself?

Innovation happens on every level. Look, a friend of mine, Leighton Woodhouse, has reported closely on the low-level schemes through which “fencers” mobilize homeless or addicted thieves to rob stores. The goods are then sold on online marketplaces, or just on the sidewalk, often in exchange for money to buy drugs. It doesn’t take an investigative journalist to see this. San Francisco has declined rapidly. It’s a playground for the very rich and the very poor to live a kind of libertarian utopia with no rules. But it’s not exactly a free market system – layered atop the anarchy there’s a big government partially privatized through dozens of nonprofits and private sector contractors, many of whom are very politically active and protest any attempt to restore some level of rule of law and public safety. Several local groups – some funded by taxpayer grants and by shakedowns of local developers – defended an open air market of stolen goods as an indigenous form of “vending” that has a long tradition in Latin American cultures, and should be respected as it takes place here in San Francisco. How can you argue with that iron-clad line of reasoning?

You have told me previously that the biggest influence in your life has been Yukio Mishima, and that your personal credo is “Sun and Steel”.  You have mastered Kung Fu, Aikido, and Kendo, spending years in residence overseas learning each discipline under the most respected instructors.  Have you ever used one of these arts to beat the fuck out of fat guys who say to you: “you’ve changed, man”?  Imagine if Brooklyn Dad approached you and began to push you in the chest, calling you a Russian disinfo agent.  Imagine if some douchebag from the Koch Industries web of institutes and think tanks started screaming “CHICOM SPY” in your face.  Do you think that you could take down Eliot Higgins in a street fight?  Do you get tempted to recite the Chinese proverb 不能一口吃成胖子(you can’t get fat with one mouthful) to them?

Despite the endless stream of fight videos fed to me by Twitter algo, I am a man of peace. Nonviolence is the way. Ask Mehdi Hasan.

This one’s outrageous: 凡人不可貌相, 海水不可斗量 ( Man cannot be judged by looks; seas cannot be measured by the cup.).  Bullshit.  Physiognomy is real and it can be detected without even seeing the person (e.g. online posting physiognomy).  This really isn’t a question for you, but it made me think that you can fuck with people IRL by making up fake Chinese proverbs to say to them, and then act outraged if they don’t get it or make fun of it.  Funnier still would be to make up ridiculous ones and see if they pretend to understand them in an earnest fashion.

What happens to the respected field of physiognomy or its online posting cousin in a world of AI deep fakes? It will be a lost art, like basket weaving. I can already feign being offended when people mispronounce my name as FANG rather than the correct “fong,” despite the phonetic spelling. I don’t really care that much, but it’s a good gotcha. I can’t believe this is already the 100^th Chinese question in a row, but I would expect nothing less from a Serbian Substacker (SS).   (Jebem ti Mater - ed.)

What I didn’t mention earlier in this interview is that your actual name is Lee Lee Fang.  Your mother gave you the middle name “Lee” in honour of Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist agent.  Nomen est Omen, I always like to say.  Her choice in names for you meant that you would always have a chip on your shoulder, and always harbour a grudge against America.

The Lee multiverse has a fraught and venerable history. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Atwater, Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission Report, Spike Lee, Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Iacocca to name a few. I have a Google Alert for my name and half of the results tend to be Malaysian teenagers these days, which is a troubling development to say the least.

Mel Gibson plays a 37 year old half-Chinese, half Scots-Irish American investigative journalist in what must be at first glance the worst casting decision in Hollywood history.  Mel visits his dying boss who asks him to track down his former business partner, to tell him that the long-kept government secrets that they are about to release in the ultimate takedown of USGov are in danger of being stolen by five former star employees who have possibly gone rogue.  These five each have codenames: Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Lizard, and Toad.  Mel must approach each and everyone one of these to try and figure out who works for the American people, and who has defected to the Disinformation Complex.  Using memes, ironic humour, and if all else fails, Kung Fu, Mel kills each and every one of them just for the fuck of it.  Would you watch this?

Plot a little too close for comfort. Is this even a question? Ofc.

You can find Lee Fang on Twitter harassing decent people here, or you can check out his Substack, where he has the balls to try to compete with me!

Lee Fang

Investigations and observations about the public interest.

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Pedro “Speedy With the Insults” Gonzalez loves nothing more than engaging with his critics in a gentlemanly manner in order to kindly and politely work out their differences towards achieving a consensus for the benefit of all concerned. Mutual respect, a tolerance of how others think and what they say, and a lack of anger are what characterize this Chronicles Magazine writer. An increasingly visible presence on the right side of the US political spectrum, Pedro has appeared in many places, most notably on Tucker Carlson’s show.

Pedro wants you to know that he has many things to tell you, so I offered him the use of my incredibly powerful platform to do so. We conducted this interview in person while we were escorting a group of New Americans from Sinaloa safely across the border.

Warning! Some rough language ahead.

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I told my old friend David French that I was going to interview you, and he replied to my email with this:

On second thought, it wasn’t David French. It was actually Noah Smith. My sincerest apologies to David for this honest mistake.

Anyway, I thought that this was incredibly rude of David Noah (not to mention horribly racist).  However, being an American patriot and a lover of liberty who holds the US Constitution dear to my heart, I had no option but to share this with you......in the name of free speech.  This crude caricature is a blessing of liberty, much like drag queens reading books to small children in public libraries before they accept dollar bills being stuffed in their thongs by those same small children.  It should be celebrated!  To David Noah I say: "Friendly, Fun, Beaner Chum".

I’m not surprised David French would reply like that. He has been dismissive of me, presumably because I am not white. French claims to care so much about the concerns of immigrants and yet has ignored my repeated requests for him to self-deport as I do not want to share a country with him. Why is he like this? I do not know. Perhaps if I were to put on a nice pair of heels, slather on some makeup and fishnets, dance around small children in a public library, maybe pour hot wax on my nipples as “Ring My Bell” softly thumps in the background, it might titillate him to pay me more mind. I think about this often. I often wake up in a sweat over it.

Readers showld note that Pedro let Noah off of the hook - ed.

What is your typical day like, Pedro?  I imagine that you wake up around noon, go into the kitchen, and say "Buenos Dias" to your pregnant wife who is re-frying the re-fried beans for the fourth time today.  You then finish forging the three Social Security Cards that you have to deliver to customers later in the day.  Once done, you head down to the bodega to buy tequila and some more beans (never enough!), picking up 12 Mexicans who have illegally crossed the border after coordinating with your cousin Juan who works the route from the Mexican side.  A stop-off is made in a once-entirely Black and now diverse neighbourhood, where you threaten a Black family with a baseball bat and knife to "move out or else!" in order to make way for these new Americans.  You get home around 5pm and blast some cumbia music in the backyard, then go into the basement to see if your 7 children have finished adding fentanyl to the heroin and cocaine that the last batch of illegals brought with them to give to you to sell on behalf of the Gulf Cartel.  Your children have completed the pressing (great kids!), and you then call 18 of your nephews (you'd call more, but 13 of them are in prison), so that they can begin to distribute the product in playgrounds throughout the neighbourhood.  It's now time to eat fajitas in the backyard, kick back, pound tequila, enjoy the very loud music, and be happy that your days of chain-sawing rival dealers are in your past because you are now on the US side of the border. I strongly feel that one should believe everything that they read or see on TV, and thanks to my habit of watching FOX News 12 hours a day, I am confident that I am correct in the depiction above.

You’ve done your homework. That is unusual for a mixed-race European. Anyway, I don’t know how much more I can add to this. But you did miss a few things. I will typically contact my handler in Langley—I mean, my boss, around 2 pm. Around then, I begin harassing specific groups of people on the internet. These vary by day, and I am an equal opportunity hater.

I recently got into it with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project who won a Pulitzer Prize based on affirmative action. She reminds me of an angry clown because of her hair (rude! - ed.). Imagine presenting that person with an award and keeping a straight face. Anyway, she got mad at me after I likened Lizzo to an all-consuming destroyer akin to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters (impolite -ed.). Lizzo recently said, “I feel like everybody in America got my mother---ing name in their motherf---ing mouth.” I worry she might actually be able to eat all those people because Lizzo is quite huge. It’s an issue we should take more seriously.

But I don’t just attack the left. I often attack neoconservatives, whose continued existence I find unacceptable. Have you seen Bill Kristol? He’s a corpulent warmongering dwarf covered in a layer of slime. Dan Crenshaw was grown in a lab beneath Karl Rove’s home and programmed with Reagan worship. Few know this. I try to spread awareness. Crenshaw was neo-conservatism’s attempt to make themselves “cool” again because most neo-conservatives look like goblins and thus trigger the reptilian brain’s fight-or-flight response, which makes political recruitment difficult. But he really just is John McCain with an eyepatch.

I also occasionally go after much more insignificant groups such as the dirty underwear huffers of the so-called “art right.” These guys think you can gargle another man’s piss as long as you say “MAGA” after wiping your mouth. They have no real politics except “artistic” circle-jerking, but they make nothing beautiful because they are ugly inside and out. Fortunately, you can spot them easily as they tend to cluster around conservative and conservative women who provide their only source of real-world influence. It is a tale as old as time. We must bring stigma back.

That said, I think some people on the right are making wonderful art, like Mark Granza over at IM-1776. The print magazine is a masterpiece.

Cool it with the insults!

Why do you, as a Beaner, like Sam Francis so much?  Francis was ejected from polite conservative company some time ago, yet many of his concepts have been posthumously popularized, especially the one he termed 'anarcho-tyranny'.

Ace, the blogger who runs Ace of Spades HQ, once referred to the white Americans loathed by David French, Kevin Williamson and Bill Kristol as “thick-fingered White N*****s that vote for Trump and think that a nation’s borders should be enforced.” Samuel Todd Francis was that before the Trump Era : an unreconstructed white man who laid the ideological foundations of Trumpism, acknowledged even by David Brooks in The New York Times as such. Everyone says Francis was mean. Nobody says he was wrong. Because he wasn’t—he has been vindicated time and time again.

Williamson wrote in National Review that the “truth” about white “dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.” As a polemicist, Francis placed the murder weapon pointed at those “downscale communities” in the hands of people like Williamson through their support for globalism and said, “no, they do not”. As an analyst of contemporary issues, Francis was the most prescient thinker in recent memory, anticipating the rise of religious wokeism decades before others. As a theorist of elites, he emphasized the ideological element of the managerial regime, which Francis understood as key to its powers of consolidation and control. It was through reading him that I came into contact with a wide array of other thinkers and ideas because Francis was so well-read and integrated all these different things into his work. For example, Francis was the one who helped me see how capitalism disintegrates social structures, from the family to the nation-state, by reducing them to mere dollars and cents and humans to interchangeable widgets.

Francis also made the most powerful arguments I had first read about how the civil rights regime radically transformed our society and effectively repealed the Constitution without formally doing so, erecting a totalitarian anti-white system with the bones of its remains. Christopher Caldwell has done a good job of reviving this argument. I am sure he has read Francis closely.

Francis’ work also made it clear to me how American conservatism is, in his words, a “defeated and historically irrelevant movement” that cannot hope to do more than fight rearguard actions, especially when it accepts the premises of its enemies. Conservatives will rail against transgenderism as to how it affects children while insisting that if an adult man wants to cut off his penis and pump himself with cross-sex hormones, that it is his God-given right to do so. Francis would have been the first to point out that if you accept the latter, there is no reason the former should be off the table.

Machiavelli famously asked if it is better to be feared or loved. Ideally, one would prefer to be both. However, according to Machiavelli, it is better to be feared if we must choose one over the other. In a similar way, Francis has not been loved but feared for his insights because they cut to the heart of any matter. He was not afraid to stare into the abyss that is our contemporary situation. Maybe it drove him a bit mad, as geniuses tend to be. So, I admire Francis for his intelligence and his bravery. 

VOTE FOR PEDRO!

How do you respond to charges that your Latinx background makes you both a mascot for bad people on the right, and acts as a shield that allows you to be more vicious in your attacks on great Americans like Adam Kinzinger?

I think I push the envelope enough that it’s hard for me to become a token Beaner—a “mascot,” as you say. Nobody invites me on their program to talk about why amnesty is good or how all immigrants are “natural conservatives”—whatever that means—because they know better. I make it a point to state my immigration views: I support a moratorium and write about how mass legal immigration is also bad. I like slaying sacred cows…..but this can come at a cost for me.

Recall that Douglas Murray, that perfidious Anglo, colluded with Bari Weiss to kneecap me in my prime. My German father-in-law calls Anglos Inselaffe, which means “island monkey.” He says there is a reason God put them on that sad, shitty little island. It’s one of the only times I hear him talk about the Almighty.

The Murray-Weiss affair was especially bad because I have a family and am just getting started in this industry. Had they succeeded, I would have been ruined. Unlike Weiss, I cannot pretend to be persecuted and build a grift—an entire university, in fact—around that bullshit. And unlike Murray, I do not have access to whatever professional networks the bathhouses of neo-conservatism afford. I am a simple man of meager means. There is no safety net beneath my feet, and the shield of my bronze skin only goes so far.

This hyper-polemical style of yours has led to people describing you as a "Barrio Nazi" and "Mariachi Stormtrooper".  Is this simply just another case of Latinx doing the jobs that white people no longer wish to do?

Well, first, my personal favorite is “Burrito Mussolini.” I think Ben Domenech may have given me that one. He was the author of two other good nicknames: “Barrio Nazi” and “Taco von Ribbentrop.” They’re so good it makes me wonder if Ben plagiarized them from somebody more creative. By the way, I do not know why he hates me so much. The only time I have seen him as angry as when he is responding to me was when TPUSA banned aging porn star Brandi Love from an event, preventing her from hawking her antique minou to teenage boys.

The “hyper-polemical style” is just who I am. It’s not a part that I’m playing on a stage. Ezekiel 25:17, the verse Quentin Tarantino rewrote for Pulp Fiction, goes: “And I will execute great vengeance upon thee with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.” I believe in vengeance. I believe in wrath. I believe in being mean to exact those things—“Woe to the conquered!” I really have that much hate in my heart for the that which I put in the crosshairs. And I think hate gets a bad rap. If you hate nothing, you do not truly love anything. To quote Radfem Hitler, my big secret is that I am a softy. I love America. I love my wife and kids. That is why I am so angry—and you should be too if you love what is around you. Without love and hate, there is only the howling nothing of nihilism.

A better question is: why aren’t other people as angry as I am? They should be.

White people today are into comic books, comic book-based movies, and dilating.  When combined with your politics, the fact that you're a young father with three children makes you retrograde in the eyes of those with the correct, progressive views.  Is having a larger-than-average family now a political act of defiance? 

I feel deeply sorry for whites who have been psy-opped into living like Eric Butts, that guy who bawled at the trailer of a Star Wars movie. It seems obvious to me that this serves a purpose. People like him are compliant and distracted. They can’t put up a fight and can be easily dominated or even replaced.

On the other hand, parenthood is completely radicalizing and vitalizing—or it should be. I have less tolerance for things now than before I had kids. Obviously, you don’t want to miss the fun, and you want your kids to have a wonderful, carefree childhood—but we live in a world that wants to rob you and them of exactly that. Kids are not supposed to have an apolitical adolescence; they must be turned into shitlib activists from the earliest age possible and/or transitioned to a different gender. These threats to my kids trigger something primal in me that frankly makes me want to defenestrate feckless politicians.

I can’t understand and tolerate even less the people with kids who are spiritually the same as the Star Wars guy. Think of Mollie Tibbetts, the girl murdered by an illegal alien from Mexico in Iowa. Her father was more concerned about the feelings of other illegals than what had happened to Mollie. He eulogized her by saying: “The Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans.” He added: “As far as I’m concerned, they’re Iowans with better food.” 

What the fuck is wrong with this person? Why is he, as a father, washing the feet of the man who murdered—maybe even raped—his daughter? Why does he seem to care more about tacos than his own flesh and blood? Imagine holding your baby at birth, looking her in the eyes, and thinking: “I would be OK if an illegal laborer brutalized and killed you.” I would rip and tear apart the murderer of my children. The most forgiveness I could offer them is the death penalty. God and the state would have to grant you mercy because I would not. 

But the worst part about this type of person is that his decisions have consequences for others. People who think like this will make choices and support policies that ultimately make others less safe. So there will be more Mollies taken from families who are not spiritually subjugated—but at least Mr. Tibbetts can have his burrito.

A more recent example of this is the murder of Elijah Dewitt, an 18-year-old white kid with a bright future. Dewitt was killed by two black guys while on a date with his girlfriend. The parents ludicrously forgave Elijah’s killers right away. Again, what is wrong with these people? Erick Erickson, a white conservative pundit, tweeted: “I think it’s the epitome of Christianity to forgive even someone who kills your loved one.” He was replying to Jake Bequette, who said the parents were absurd for “falling all over themselves to forgive the murderers and move on.”  Bequette was right: any sane person can see something is terribly wrong when we prioritize virtue signaling over justice—and that is what this is. Remember, Erickson was the guy who said the mostly white crowd of January 6 protestors should be indiscriminately shot. For obvious reasons, he would never talk that way about far more violent Black Lives Matter mobs. No white person suffering from these brain worms would.

This disease does not affect all white people: Erickson and Bequette are both white. But it afflicts too many of them, conservative and liberal alike. Any society where this is the norm has a death wish. The Erickson and Tibbetts mindset is the problem, and the cure is more people thinking like Bequette.

This segues nicely into the following: the current dominant culture also views masculinity as "toxic".  A reaction has resulted from the growing acceptance of this argument by way of the re-popularization of 'Lifting Culture' i.e. weight-training and fitness.  An unapologetic masculinity has now staked out its own real estate that it occupies on the political right.  However, many seek to disarm its effectiveness by associating it with homo-eroticism, whether subconscious or overt, in order to lessen its impact.

Bronze Age Pervert pioneered posting half-naked men with captions explaining a model’s Atlantean lineage and how they are the product of a radical racial eugenics program. It can be funny sometimes. But I find negative themes much more motivating.

I see Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, David French, Jim Swift…..and the idea that I might look like one of them terrifies me. That does more to get me into a steady routine than anything else. Because I believe there is a connection between body and mind; one supports and strengthens the other. Anyone who says otherwise is coping with their own inability to commit to discipline.

Before journalism, I was dedicated almost exclusively to physical pursuits. Boxing, Muay Thai, ocean swimming, long-distance running, bodybuilding. It was a completely different lifestyle—one I’ve been trying to integrate with what I am doing now, cutting weight, getting back into a consistent regimen. I met a lot of interesting people who had it worse than I did in these gyms when I was younger and who were even angrier than I was. One time, a guy I trained Muay Thai with noticed something was bothering me. He came over to me and talked about how after so many years, he only saw his estranged biological father after he died of an overdose. It had happened earlier that week. It was his way of saying that he understood pain, so I could talk to him if I needed to. “Listen,” he said, “you don’t want to be angry all the time, or else you’ll end up like me: ugly.” He was pretty ugly. But he was a good guy. I don’t know where he is now or how he is doing, but I will never forget him.

In my view, the greatest benefit of fitness is the mental strength it cultivates. Every effort is a battle between you and yourself. Every inch pushed or pulled is earned through struggle. There is also an authenticity to this that is unique: there is no substitute for when your muscles burn like they are being bathed in acid, your lungs feel like they’re on fire, the taste of blood fills your mouth, and your heart pounds as if it might explode, but you continue driving it so hard that you finally reach euphoria. People can bullshit their way through a lot of things, including politics and journalism (especially political journalism), where it is often a matter of who you know rather than what you can actually do. You can pull off a stint with The New York Times with a good network—or if you belong to the right victim group. But do you know what you can’t fake? Pulling 600 pounds off the floor, benching 400 pounds. You cannot fake the struggle. It is you and you alone, and the only way to reach the point where you can do these things is by committing your mind to the discipline it requires, which, in turn, cultivates mental and physical strength.

¿¡Qué estás diciendo!?

The idea of the 'bugman' i.e. de-masculinized urban nu-male, has also led to criticism on the right towards city life.  "Trads" (those who espouse a simpler, older way of living) charge that urban living degrades not just males, but society as a whole.  Many have even picked up the mantle of a "back to the land" philosophy, promoting ideas such as 'homesteading' and rural aesthetics as a counter to it.  Is this a feasible alternative?  Can it challenge for power?  Or is it a case of "cope", where the option to "drop out" doesn't actually exist?

Some people prefer living in cities. Others prefer living in the countryside. Just like some people would be better served by going to a university and others by learning a trade.

I don’t think we should abandon cities. It should make people angry that we’ve effectively lost control of American cities to savage criminals and their enablers. But fixing them isn’t easy because it often comes down to how people vote—some vote for decline and call it progress. You can only help people who want help.

On the other hand, I think that retreating to the hinterlands is not an option because nowhere is ultimately safe. Some people acknowledge this, and I respect that. But it is a fantasy to suggest this is a long-term solution. Our enemies are imperialists—they will chase you to the ends of the earth and find any excuse to persecute you. Randy Weaver was not spared by moving to Ruby Ridge.

The incumbent regime hates blind spots, places that it cannot see and control. It works inexorably to extend its mastery of every single domain. Thus, the only way I see out of this mess in the future is through the effective use of power. Even if your goal is decentralization, you cannot accomplish that by running and hiding because the regime is totalizing, and it will eventually find you and swallow you. We must become imperialists in our own country because neutrality is not possible.

"Back to the land" can imply a blood and soil nationalism, although not always.  Yet the USA is a propositional nation, one that rejected blood and soil nationalism altogether (many will dispute this).  This brings up the lingering question of what defines an actual American?  Is there a hierarchy?  Or is it just anyone with citizenship?  Or is it something in between?  What does American Nationalism look like in Pedro's eyes?

There is a meme that goes like this: “The world you were raised to survive in no longer exists.” The problem American nationalists face is similar: the nation they were raised to love no longer exists in relation to the major political and cultural institutions of the United States. The word nation comes from the Latin natio, which means birth. Country refers to a government and geography; nation refers to a community with common characteristics more profound than eating and shopping at the same places. In Federalist 2, John Jay outlined six elements that constituted the American nation: shared ancestry, shared language, shared religion, similar conceptions of government and law, a shared culture, and a shared historical experience. As new arrivals came, Jay said in 1797 that we must “see our people more Americanized.” 

Much of this has changed, but a core heritage population remains without whom this thing falls apart. I think any attempt to cut off America from this European-descended group spells the end of this country in any meaningful sense. I don’t see why this would be controversial at all. Why is it taboo to oppose the replacement of a country’s core population? Only in modern times could we be so stupid.

The task for American nationalists is one of palingenesis—forging a rebirth of this country that honors—rather than spiting or perverting—its roots while marching into the future. In practical terms, I would start with an immigration moratorium and end all foreign aid. I would pass Hungarian-style “Stop Soros” laws to make it impossible for subversive NGOs to operate in this country. I would uproot the inaccurately named civil rights regime at the heart of virtually every problem we face, whether we realize it or not. If you think the preference this regime affords minority groups cannot be abused, ask Jack Phillips, a Colorado Christian baker, about how many times he has been sued by gay and transgender people who have weaponized it against him to punish him for his faith in the name of anti-discrimination.

In 2018, the Supreme Court agreed the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was unfairly dismissive of Phillips’ religious beliefs when it hit him with an anti-discrimination law violation after he refused to bake a cake celebrating the marriage of a gay couple. I would argue the commission was working as intended. But more to the point, these people never left Phillips alone. Now he’s back in court over claims he violated anti-discrimination law by not making a cake celebrating a gender transition.

The task of American nationalists is building a country where abuse like this becomes impossible.  

Can your American Nationalism find common ground with nationalists in Europe?  This is an important question, especially due to the ability of globalists in your country being able to play on age-old ethnic conflicts on the continent to pit one or more countries against another.

In a similar way, European nationalists can find good allies among American nationalists, but not with the United States as a political entity, because it is hostile toward nationalism and the kind of social conservatism conducive to flourishing. U.S. support for any foreign nationalists, like Ukrainians, is opportunistic and temporary. Our government exploits nationalists the way any imperial power has throughout history. Under the current political order, you would never see support for genuine domestic nationalism from major U.S. institutions the way you see it for Ukraine for this reason. Hungary has found this out the hard way. Poland doesn’t seem to want to learn the lesson. The Poles try so hard to show the liberal West that it hates Russia and is, therefore, an ally—only for it to be slapped around by liberal internationalists for not totally subordinating itself to their designs. It is battered wife syndrome applied to international relations. This is a lesson Giorgia Meloni will learn in Italy. It seems she wants to show her loyalty to Washington’s globalism so she can have nationalism in Rome. But this mixing oil with water. The U.S. government has no desire to allow its “allies” to be truly sovereign any more than it wants to give American nationalists power over political affairs.

With this in mind, what is your read on the war between Ukraine and Russia?  Is it just one war?  Or are there several conflicts rolled into one that are being played out in Ukraine right now?  Can the Ukrainians win?  Can the Russians resist GAE?

I am going to quote a story that just broke in The Washington Post to start: “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”

Everyone owes Douglas Macgregor and John Mearsheimer apologies. They were right when they said the U.S. would fight to the last Ukrainian, which I think is especially immoral. At least Russia is honest about what it is—it does not pretend to be a democracy. On the other hand, the U.S. claims it is a democracy, that Washington is a beacon in the moral darkness of this world—and yet it is gleefully feeding humans into a woodchipper, knowing they will be reduced to a crimson purée. No decent American would deliberately support this because it is evil, which is why our government and media lie.

I have no idea how this will end, but it won’t end well. If the U.S. has weakened Russia by throwing Ukrainians at it, the U.S. has also injured itself in its jihad against Moscow. I think you can see signs of strain already, and life is going to get a lot worse for Europeans, too, especially after the Nord Stream affair. But that doesn’t mean everything will come to a halt. Like you, I believe the GAE is here to stay for now—but that doesn’t mean it will be pretty.

Why does the U.S. hate Russia so much? As I said earlier, the regime hates things beyond its control. Russia poses the possibility of existing outside the domination of the GAE, which is unacceptable. That is not to say I want a “Russian model” for America. But if it is possible for another country to resist, for it to organize its political affairs in a different way, other people elsewhere might get ideas. This is also why the liberal internationalists hate Hungary, and why some reacted with horror to Meloni, despite her contradictions. It is about convincing people that history ended with liberal democracy, which is nonsense.

To me, a question just as important as those preceding this one is: can small European nations survive in light of the USA stamping its total ownership over the continent as we have seen so far this year?

These countries are in a precarious position. They might have to make some concessions to survive. They will ultimately only survive by banding together. Nationalists must forge a new internationalism. And a paradox is that a nationalist American president could be their biggest ally. I think it was Carl Schmitt who said that only America could resolve the crisis of global order.

Más estupideces de Pedro y yo

You and I are both Latinx, but I am better (read: more oppressed by whites) than you are, because I am also Black, or what we Latinx call "negro":  I will let my Rastafarian brothers explain:

The Nigri-Latinis:

Morlachs (Mauro-Vlachs or Mavrovlachi, also Nigri Latini in Latin sources, meaning “Black Vlachs”; in Greek: mauros-valchio, in Serbian and Croatian Mor-laci [mor-latsi]) were a population of Vlachs. In another version their name comes from the slavic terms of “morski-Vlasi” or Sea Vlachs.

The morlachs were shepherds that lived in the Dinaric Alps (western Balkans in modern use), seasonally migrating in search for better pastures for their sheep flocks (between mountains, in the summertime, and the sea shores, in the wintertime). They were a blend of previously Romanized indigenous peoples and new settled Roman army veterans and Roman colonists.

The adjective “black” may be used here with the meaning of “northern”, this metaphor probably deriving from the Turkish practice of indicating cardinal directions by colors.

Reports from the mid-11th century tell how the Morlachs lived in the mountainous regions of Montenegro, Bosnia, Stari Vlah, and Herzegovina …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlachs

RASTA ANALYSIS: DECODING THE CODE:

Dear Reader

If you notice, the wiki author of the article above tries to explain the meaning of the latin word “Nigri” (and by extension Mauros) as Northern!

Well both of us know that Nigri is a word used for Black people.

We also know that the Greek word Mauros used for Mauro Vlach means Black and not Northern.

The word “Vlach” comes from the same roots as “Wealas”. They say Wealas was the name the Goths and the Slavs called the people they met on the land.

The Gothics claim the word Wealas or Welsh means a stranger to their tribe. Among the Ibos of Nigeria, N’Weala means owner of the land.

In any event the Gothics were immigrants to Europe, and the Wealas were aboriginal. None gothic people.

Consequently, if we hear that people were called Nigri latinis, or black Vlach, or Mauros Vlach, we know automatically that such people were:

1. Black in complexion

2. Moorish in Nationality

3. Of pure Latini origin

4. Aboriginal

5. European.

Lion!

So I say to you, Pedro: VATOS LOCOS FOREVER CARNAL!

Dutch: What the hell *are* you?

What is your secret method for maintaining a good lawn all year-round?

You know, my mower broke last year, and I had to pay a white guy to cut my grass twice. It was a weird role reversal.

Ideally, I would have someone like Ben Domenech mow my lawn while I watch from my porch, mint julep in hand, the warm summer wind gently ruffling my white linen suit as cicadas buzz in the trees as the sun hangs high overhead. The exercise would do him some good.

Brilliant UK-based conservative intellectual Douglas Murray wants to reach out to you to discuss "how to collaborate to defeat Woke Tyranny", and to trade photos.

I am not gay, but even if I were gay, I would not collaborate with a gay neo-conservative. There are some things you just can’t come back from.

Mel Gibson plays a guardian angel sent by God to help Kanye West defeat 'cancel culture and those who started it'.  Kanye is down on his luck after being locked out of social media, banking, air travel, health care, and who has an artificial respirator attached to his lungs to reduce the percentage of oxygen intake in his system.  Mel raises his morale by commiserating with him, re-telling his own similar experiences, and by bringing in Louis Farrakhan to teach him "Real History".  They team up with Sam Hyde when they find him on the side of the road fixing a flat tire on his beater just after he murdered Hasan Piker at his home.  Mel then reaches out to his Jewish friend Ron Unz, who happily forks over $80 to finance a hip hop track produced by Kanye in which he and Sam spit bars about 'who starts all the wars?"  Would you watch this movie?

I’m sorry, I must go, Ben just showed up to cut my grass sporting two black eyes, and he is babbling and bawling about Meghan McCain slapping him around with her “big tits” (his words). But perhaps we could have a movie night sometime.

Pedro can be found being an all-around general nuisance at Chronicles Magazine, on Twitter, and at his Substack.

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(We are segueing back into interview mode, so here’s a mini-version to get the ball rolling - ed.)

David Polansky wants everybody to know that he is NOT related to Roman Polanski, except in France and in Poland where he DEFINITELY is Roman’s favourite nephew, being the famed director’s greatest inspiration for his film work (THE PIANIST being the best-known example), and CERTAINLY NOT for his sexual proclivities.

As we now live in the post-MLK Judge Not By the Colour of Their Skin era, I must inform you that Polansky is a mischling; half Italian/half Jewish. He is a Judeo-Dago, scientifically speaking. Also acceptable is the populist label: Jew Wop. David has a PhD in something, I forget what exactly. Do not fret, as he will remind everyone that he has one, if given half a chance. He also owns a mansion and a yacht while being gainfully employed as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy.

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In our 25 years of friendship, you have repeatedly pointed out to me that the greatest hypothetical moral dilemma that I can pose to you goes as follows: given single-use access to a functioning time machine, would you choose to kill Baby Hitler?  Or would you instead travel back in time to make love to Claudia Cardinale in her prime?  For me, the choice is a very simple and obvious one......but I am not the subject of this interview.

That quarter century really flew by didn’t it? This is obviously a question of the highest moral seriousness and one wants to respond: ¿Por qué no los dos? But my fear is that traveling back in time to hurl baby Hitler into the lion exhibit of the Tiergarten Schönbrunn would create a butterfly effect that would ultimately prevent Claudia Cardinale from coming into existence in the first place, thus depriving me of the opportunity to enjoy intimate relations with the world's most beautiful woman. Indeed, it might even prevent me from coming into existence in the first place. The choice I think is clear.

I personally cannot wait for Bob Dylan to die.  When God finally decides to kill him, the heavy energy that has collectively weighed us down since the 1960s will finally be lifted from our sore shoulders.  Boomergeddon will usher in a new age; one characterized by peace and love, and one that will simply be too difficult for my loser generation to manage.  

I’m glad to see that we agree that there is really no hope for Gen X either way. But I’m not quite sure why you’d concede a great artist like Bob Dylan to the Boomers, especially when--like nearly every consequential figure of their era that they took credit for in a generational display of stolen valour--he isn't actually one of them. Suffice it to say, the quintessential boomer artists wouldn’t be Dylan at all but rather The Eagles or Fleetwood Mac, whose songs are mostly about how massive quantities of cocaine + rampant infidelity are not in fact the recipe for lasting happiness. This is the kind of obvious message that only a generation as smug and solipsistic as the Boomers could possibly find revelatory. In any case, I fear that not even sticking Don Henley and Stevie Nicks into a giant Wicker Man and setting it alight in a ritual act of mass cultural cleansing will bring about a new golden age, and we’ll just be stuck cleaning up the Boomers' messes for basically the remainder of our lifetimes.

I will defend Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” to the death! Any time that song comes on the radio, I will belt that chorus out no matter who is in my vicinity. Same goes for Stevie Windwood’s “Higher Love”. Anyway…….

You take umbrage with my position that the USA has never been stronger on the global stage than it is now.  You insulted me by asking me to compare today's USA to 1991.  Use this opportunity to take a hammer to my steel balls of logic.

This is really starting to sound pretty sadomasochistic, and my concern here is that you’re just going to use whatever I write for the purposes of self-gratification. Or maybe this is just how you guys settle arguments over in the Balkans. Nonetheless here goes:

With the collapse of our only strategic peer competitor, we reached an apex position of relative power that we wouldn’t quite enjoy again. The successor states of the Soviet Union would spend the ensuing decade engaged in various forms of economic collapse, gangsterism, civil and ethnic warfare, seccesionism, and so forth (the back half of Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time provides a humanly compelling portrait). China’s geo-strategic challenge still lays a couple decades in the future, as it is worried primarily about domestic concerns like violently ensuring that it’s own version of Glasnost would never come to pass, and urbanizing its vast peasant population. Meanwhile, we were well-positioned to direct Europe as we saw fit (witness Bush-Baker’s oversight of German reunification). Cripes, even the Israelis had to listen to us back then.

The intangibles also matter here too: our shrewd management of the first Gulf War—not just corralling allies, but (gasp!) getting them to pay for stuff meant as much as our demonstration of force projection. We didn’t just seem powerful and rich; we actually seemed like we knew what we were doing, which is not a trivial consideration from the standpoint of other powers. Two decades after 9/11—after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc.—we no longer present quite the same picture of competence.

There is also the fact that our elites really are far, far stupider now than they were then, and we are presently ruled by the kind of gerontocracy that one typically finds in the late Soviet Union or one of the weirder peoples Herodotus wrote about. Finally—and this is a less obvious geopolitical factor— we really do seem to have less asabiyya. A lot of things were materially worse back in the 1970s—crime, domestic political violence, access to raw materials, etc.—but we evidently still had greater collective psychic resources to deal with them. (plus, we had a lot of labour we could still sacrifice to capital, Reagan/Thatcher-style….but you can’t really push that button again), Of course, we might could still turn things around by eliminating some of the most enervating features of our society. Were I Tyrant of America, I’d probably start by banning Tik Tok and liquidating Twitter. Also Substack but that last one mainly out of sheer spite…

Consulting the experts is both patrician AND the right thing to do.  My go-to guys on the issues are Noah Smith and Matty Yglesias.  They provide insights that I cannot find elsewhere, especially among the chattering classes, the perpetually-bankrupt blogosphere, and foreigners who have not yet shown up to reside in the USA where they can secure life-long sinecures that instantly bestow credibility on them.  You're an expert, therefore I believe every single thing that you say.

Yes, I get what you’re doing here—with my kvetching about our imbecile expert class, I have lately put myself in the same rhetorical position as the Cretan who claims that all Cretans are liars. That said, I really can’t think of better guides to becoming an informed consumer of political news and analysis than Smith and Yglesias. If I had any notes to give you here, it’s that you’d be a damn fool not to include Jeet Heer, Tom Nichols, Robert Reich, Max Boot, and Anne Applebaum in your daily readings. Alongside those, I’d throw in subscriptions to The Economist and The Atlantic, and also suggest you maybe try listening regularly to Pod Save America. Your goal should be to reach a point where if you were to ever have an unconventional thought again, your head would literally explode like that dude in the movie Scanners.

We've known each other for roughly three months now, and you express shock that I have never watched a Jean-Luc Godard movie.  Wait until you find out that I haven't even sat down for a Kieslowski flick!  What do either of these men have to say about our present condition that James Cameron hasn't already said in a very entertaining way?

I understood you to be Croatian, but I’m now starting to think you actually descend from one of those Amazonian tribes that Daniel Everett studied that lacks a concept of complex numbers, and so now you’re simply unable to describe the length of our acquaintance with any precision. In any case, I can’t really complain about your ignorance of Godard given that he was—as Truffaut memorably remarked—"a complete shit." But to skip the work of Kieslowski would render you completely unable to appreciate the brilliance of my seminal essay on the politics of Trois couleurs. Worse still, you might not even be allowed to consider yourself a European any longer but rather a Canadian, that lowest of G-d’s creatures. James Cameron is, after all, one of those figures like Neil Young who seems too interesting to be Canadian, but isn’t. Admittedly, I can’t really quarrel with your claim that his films provide most of what one needs to know in life--for example, that we should be mistrustful of both killer robots and Paul Reiser. Even True Lies—probably his most critically reviled film—nonetheless both predicted 9/11 and warned me about the perfidy of attractive women — two themes that would dominate most of my early 20s.

It is argued that Jews invented Jazz music to confuse white people and to get Blacks addicted to the heroin that they sold to them.  My primitive Balkan mind can't get into Jazz beyond Miles Davis' "On the Corner", and that one song by The Weather Report.   Jazz, schmazz.....I like to say.

It goes without saying that we Jews are behind most developments of this sort, but I’m having trouble with the "Cui bono?" question here. It’s just difficult to see what the ROI would be on getting white people to listen to Charlie Parker and then killing him. In any case, if I considered Weather Report to be jazz then I’d probably hate that stuff too. It’s been awhile since I’ve read Dante, but my understanding is that when you go to Hell, the album Heavy Weather is playing just a little too loudly for all eternity, and also you’re getting continuously sodomized by a gigantic demon.

As for your general dislike of jazz, this is something that can be attributed to what I would call “bad taste”— a condition that is generally non-fatal but nonetheless unfortunate. For this, I prescribe a regimen of heavy drinking in combination with listening to Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet on repeat until something breaks through for you.

David Polansky can be found roaming the streets of Toronto where someone should physically confront him about his love of Bob Dylan. You can check out his essays at his site Strange Frequencies, and troll him on Twitter @polanskydj.

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Playing the straight man is a thankless task, much like interviewing Scott Locklin is. In show business, knowing your cues is the ‘make or break’ when it comes to delivering a solid performance, like Jerry Lewis would consistently do in France (that country adored him).

There are exceptions, though. The iconoclast is one such example. They are to be forgiven for missing their marks because they are by design prone to going off on wild tangents. This is where they locate their genius. Scott Locklin is such a person (his genius is yet to be discovered though, even by him).

I sat with my old friend Scott in Tromsø, Norway, shortly after his return from a classified research project on the Svalbard Islands. He talks a lot of shit in this interview, half of which I don’t come close to understanding. See if you can do better than I did.

Much like I believe all women, I also believe all scientists.  Without science, we are little more than cavemen (the pre-historic white kind, not the pre-historic minority cavepersons, of course).  It is with their direction that I have come through this pandemic thus far virtually unscathed.  I double and sometimes triple mask (N-95 only please!).  I recently got my booster shot (pics posted on my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), and my lawyers are currently negotiating with the Israeli Embassy to allow me to get a fourth shot.  I've spent around $35,000 in legal fees so far, but one can never be safe enough.  Last year, I laughed at how xenophobic people were towards Asians when this virus reached our shores but realized pretty quickly that this was a killer!  I quarantined myself up until scientists let me know that attending #BLM demonstrations was not a threat to my personal health since the virus would not treat it as a superspreader event.  I somehow got Corona anyway around 10 days later and was intubated for four months despite being a healthy 5'9, 325 lbs. man with Asthma and Type 2 Diabetes.  What I'm trying to get at here is that your criticisms of today's science are without merit, undemocratic, and probably racist too.  I say this while sitting in an ergonomically-perfect Charcoal Rhythm-coloured Herman Miller Embody Office Chair. It's designed to enhance health, improve focus, and provide ergonomic support for people who sit more than 4 hours a day and features: tilt limiter, adjustable Seat Depth, fully adjustable arms, graphite base and frame, Black arm pads, and carpet casters.  The rhythm fabric is tight, smooth soft to the touch, and prevents heat buildup.

Nice; I bet you fucking love science. You probably also own a butt plug.

(Please note: I set this shithead up for an easy touchdown on the HMQ (Herman Miller Question, and he didn’t go for it. Read his rant here.)

Speaking of ergonomics......Those who have researched secret societies know that Rites of Initiation often involve humiliating and self-debasing acts. Former UK Prime Minister (and Conservative) David Cameron was reported to have put his penis into the head of a pig during his University days.  Would you agree with me that the now popular insertion of ergonomically-designed butt plugs into one's own anus for public viewing is a rite of passage for online narcissists who seek to enter the barely lucrative world of right wing grifting?  Or is it a case of showing everyone just how comfortable you are with the act and secure in your own right-wingedness?  I showed the clips of Gavin McInnes and Masculinist Jack Murphy engaging in this heroic act to Glenn Greenwald and he replied to me: "What a couple of fucking faggots!  These two homos are gonna find themselves slaves to Big Diaper by the time they're 55 as half of their savings will be automatically allocated to Pampers."  I usually don't like to publish this kind of language, but he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist after all.

I defer to Glenn Greenwald on the subject of inserting objects up kiesters. The Dalai Lama says masturbation is a sin though, so maybe it would be more right wing to pay someone to stick things up their hiney holes. Future right wing grifters take note.

Science teaches us that #BLM is scientifically correct.  It also has taught us that MTF transgenders make for the best women (see: athletics, military, and so on).  It must suck to be a right winger since Science is progressive.

Girls have the right to compete with boys and men on an equal footing in all matters. Also, if the sport happens to be predominantly female-identified, the presence of Y-chromosome diversity will at least make it watchable.

Being an iconoclast (dick), you have these weird little quirks and stupid opinions like Thomas Edison being superior to Nikola Tesla.  For me, the pantheon of great scientists is as follows:  Isaac Newton, Tesla, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Galileo, Lysenko, Einstein, Copernicus, Darwin, Bohr, Mendeleev, Fermi, and so on.  That thief Edison, albeit moderately-talented, doesn't rate much higher than Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Gosh, I'm pretty sure this list is antisemitic somehow. You also out famous Bagpipe-American James Clerk Maxwell; easily tied with Sassenach Newton. 

(Please note: Scott failed to even bring up his case for why Edison was better than Tesla).

Pseudo-Intelligent Portion of the Interview

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads”, said Jeff Hammbacher, a Facebook engineer.  I think about this quote quite often because I have in the past lamented the fact that there is a misallocation of resources in the USA in particular due to the massive size of its banking and finance sector, and how payouts in that world completely dwarf that of public service, leaving government to third stringers and narcissists who like the public spotlight, whether it be negative or positive.  Why subject yourself to constant media scrutiny in a 24 hour news cycle when you can get 10 to 100+ times the pay working for BlackRock, with no one trying to peek through your windows or going through your online history?  Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to agree that there is a misallocation of resources as well, and that it has resulted in the failure of tangible technological progress.

Elon Musk had to found and monetize a payment company before he was able to build spaceships. At one point working at Lockheed or China Lake would have been pretty neat, but that's sure not happening now.

Hammerbacher is an odd duck; he was a fairly successful quant who ended up working for corporate syphilis, then cofounded a rent-a-center for hardware with a veneer of fancy database and math stuff. I assume the latter makes him feel better about the giant bed of money he sleeps on, but doesn't really add to the bottom line. Most of the rent-a-center baloney is only a thing because accountants don't want to press the depreciation button on their quicken software. His midbestern ancestors probably cry at this. Weren't they the ones who put freemasons on the moon (in minecraft)? 

Britain was the world leader in science and technology back when London was the world's financial center instead of the alternative to New York. Financial engineering never really recovered as a way for a nerd to make a buck since 2008; the only big money has been in tech. Most of them quants do Hammerbachian "data science" now which is arguably even more useless. Pre-WW-2 Britain also didn't have a bunch of weirdoes masturbating their nerd dingus ipotatoes, so they probably got a lot more done. 

What 'low hanging fruit' is available when it comes to today's science in terms of actual advancement of knowledge?  Beyond that, what fields should scientists be tackling, and why?

Rather, at this point, "experts" have become so abysmally stupid, I'd be content if they'd learn enough basic arithmetic to perform the elementary statistics involved in socially useful endeavors such as epidemiology. You know, noticing things like people get lung butter in the winter. I suppose our expert technocrats are now expected to "know" things which are laughably false, which makes calculating sums difficult.

One of the more amusing phenomena in the contemporary scientific community is the persistent existence of mostly fanciful fruity quasi-subjects. Quantum Information Theory, Nanotech, Cosmology, Noodle Theory: virtually nobody who labors in these fields is doing science or technology. Their work product has nothing to do with matter which exists in the known universe, and appears to be little more than an exotic form of science fiction involving live action roleplay and occasional alleged mathematics (doubt). Talented people should avoid this sort of thing, all of which is talked up by the mass media (that doesn't get anything else right either). I assume because media goons have loser brother-in-laws who work in these scam "mentaculus" fields. At this point the media is a very good signal: whatever they're talking about as the hot new subject is a hype chuckwagon that will destroy your life if you actually take it seriously; all to make some media goon's loser brother-in-law look important.

There are quiet revolutions happening in humble subjects like Linear Algebra, statistics and signal processing. Of course virtually nobody knows about them, because everyone's talking about neural doodads. Nobody knew about Fracking either until it changed the world. I knew a little bit about it in the late 80s because the guy who taught me E&M (the late Po-Zen Wong) got research bucks from Exxon for taking MRI images of pumping soap water through sandstone. Literally the least sexy sounding research in the physics department had geopolitical tier real world impact. Other than improvements in silicon lithography (which we didn't do in our department), pretty much nothing in physics has impacted the world the way fracking did; certainly not since nuclear weapons.

The mountebanks in VC (please look up the Russian translation) will tell you there is plenty to do with computers; even some of the dumb things they fund might be worth doing.  I've said it many times: devops is ridiculously ripe for disruption…you don't even need "AI."  If you want something more fruity: operating systems are all garbage. Just making one which didn't require daily security updates would be a considerable achievement and add huge increases in productivity, safety and privacy. Nobody will do this of course, as too many rice bowls will be upset. Retard software engineers go into transports when someone releases a new variation on Algol with some dumb feature; why can't they come up with a programming language that increases productivity by a factor of 10 the way LabVIEW did in the 80s? I mean, these dipshits are always complaining about labor costs. It seems like an obvious thing to do.

If you want to get really weird; the Church Turing thesis is obviously meaningless bullshit that shallow reddit spergs go into transports over…and there is no reason to make computers the way they are presently made other than habit and lack of imagination. The fact that our brains don't work the way a von Neumann machine or neural net does offers a big old hint that we're not doing something right. Maybe you could put a dent in the Moravec paradox with a different approach? Nobody is even trying to try here, though; it's laughably cowardly and stupid, and it’s why we don't have nice things. The design of the von Neuman computers we use today is mostly an accident based on mid-1940s electronics limitations (von Neuman had nothing to do with it, but I'll blame it on him anyway since he was a slimeball who took credit for other people's results after writing them up). 

Nobody seems to know how to do basic applied research any more. Everyone knows how to have a Safety and Inclusiveness Committee and make a Code of Conduct for their open sores project (YES THIS IS DELIBERATE MISSPELLING YOU BALKAN CIGARETTE SMUGGLER), and people are much better at Javascript than they were 20 years ago. And there is no shortage of projects where it is claimed it will take 20 years or so to "get there."….which really just means "please fund this stupid thing long enough for us to retire." All basic research which should be funded by sane people has intermediate steps to achieve the goal and carefully laid out alternate plans to fill in the blanks.

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In our pre-interview in Tampere, Finland, you also indicated that there are "huge political implications" for this lack of technological progress.  Is this because of great power rivalry such as Russia's advances in hypersonic missiles?  Or is it an internal issue that speaks more to the culture at home?

Capitalism becomes a zero sum game without improvements in productivity to share around. These improvements come about through technological progress. Our "managerial elite" have only one reason to justify their existence; managing the risks and benefits of technologies and using them for national goals.  They've arguably been fairly useless since FDR invented this social class and gave it vast unaccountable powers over the rest of us. The lack of things for them to do, and the lack of new wealth from new technologies has solidified them into a sort of priesthood for an ever changing religion whose primary purpose is awarding comfy jobs to themselves and keeping the lower orders in line.

The concept of "progress" is also embedded into the mental hardware of the post-Christian bugman segment of society. The same people who would be excited about new technologies (the ones who used to line up for new models of iPotatoes) are the ones who go into transports over transgender toddlers or lady aircraft carrier Captains or whatever the social progress du jour we will be enduring by the time this hits the printing press. The concept of historical progress is deeply baked into the Western mind, and since we don't have any actual innovations to get excited about, these sperdos will probably keep coming up with more and more insane "social progress" until you give them new technological shiny things to make up for their lack of Jesus.

Imagine if someone cooked up a truly too cheap to meter form of electricity along with energy storage technologies that approach that of hydrocarbons? I'm guessing it would make the middle and lower classes lives better in numerous ways. The managerial class could then take credit for this and stop lecturing us on the difference between Omnisexual and Pansexual, raising our quality life even further.

Much of what we see as 'scientific progress' seems to serve the security state and corporate behemoths.  The state is driving towards an incredibly granular level of knowing its citizens and storing that data.  This same data serves corporations as well who view it as 'gold'.  The future seems to be the complete monetization of the human mind, body (and soul) for corporate profit and societal control.

The good news is Fair Isaacs is probably the only company on earth who makes a profit from actual use of "AI" rather than selling consulting welfare cheese to the government. So the worst thing that could happen is your FICO score goes down. The oligarchs would absolutely love it if vast machine intelligences could tell when someone is about to use the word of power, or commit some other horrific crime, like shitposting on the chans. The reality is "AI" requires 100 ph.d.s making a half million bucks a year, plus a few million bucks worth of EC2 instances to do the work of 50 bureaucrats doing shitty boring work sifting through 4chan posts. IRL most of what they call "AI" is actually a UI problem.

Imagine you have a PhD in machine learning; you know all about stochastic gradient descent and how to calculate eigenvalues and so on, and multiply matrices in O(n^2.373) operations. You come up through the ranks thinking you're going to be a Schmidhuber brain in a can Frankenstein neural thing which spontaneously asks "what are you doing, Dave." Slowly over time you realize the thing that would solve the problem you're tasked with is making a really sweet database UI written in NodeJS so some 98 IQ coppers narc can more efficiently add Croatian cigarette smuggler shitpoasts to a database of dangerous thought criminals. What are you going to do? Are you going to go learn to code excellent user interfaces for snitches, or are you going to continue farting around on a GPU? The reality is you don't need vast machine intelligences to know Marc Andreessen was thinking "retard" even if he didn't have the bad manners to use the word of power. There are plenty of tattletales like Taylor Lorenz who will inform us of this for free without paying 100 PhDs to build giant neural nets which raise the global temperature of the planet by 0.2 degrees C to achieve this result.

Ching Chong Chat

Turning back to great power rivalry, you recently reviewed Wang Huning's book which details his experiences in the USA just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Tianamen Square.  Huning is an eminence grise in Beijing, almost entirely unknown in the West.  I took a look at his book as well and came away with the notion that he was the East Asian Sayyad Qutb, a foreign traveler amazed by much of what he saw in the USA, but equally horrified as well.  The fact that Yuning's work has gained little traction in the West must be a case of our own hubris.  What particularly struck you about Huning's observations?  What was he right about? 

Qutb looked directly at American culture in the late 1940s and decided it was a great evil that needed to be destroyed, which is a natural reaction any decent person could sympathize with. Huning looked at America in the 1980s, 40 years more degenerate and decadent, and decided he would like to figure out a way of getting Chinese people more telephones and database technology before the baizuo forgot how to do these things themselves. His observations on how fucked up the future of the country appeared to be was simple common sense that any honest person without a Ph.D. from Harvard might have noticed. This is why Egypt is less of a technological superpower than China: focus.

To keep in the theme of this interview, we have to ask the CQ:  Can China Science?

Terry Tao looks kind of Chinese and is one of the few actually impressive scientists of our time, so it seems physiologically possible. I'd guess though, probably not any time soon.  It's okay though. They're better company than people who swoon over drag queen story hour. They also pay better, and are very adept technologists if someone else does the creative parts. I support our new Chinese overlords and would consider welcoming them as liberators.

#PumpIt

Shifting gears for a second, there is so much energy now around web3.  Crypto, Blockchain, NFTs, and so on are now all the rage.  I don't claim to know much more than the average person about these topics, but there is an easily detectable messianism around them, particularly when it comes to their purported ability to route around the state and deliver freedom in an era where it is trending downward.  My gut tells me that the state's monopoly on force and ability to gather and concentrate resources means that any potential existential competitor can be easily wiped out or co-opted by them.

Bitcoin was invented to overthrow the central banks. It might succeed .... against the El Salvador central bank. Blockchain and other forms of trustless databases are a  new technology that hasn't even begun to play out yet. Mind you, this was invented completely outside academia, corporations and even normal society by a couple of cranky anti-government anons who decided to troll Hal Finney's annoying neighbor. Bitcoin is pretty shitty as money goes: it's difficult for normies to use, transactions cost too much for convenient amounts. It has stupidly high volatility, but it's an excellent bet on the incompetence of central banks for making their money useful for storing value. 

Blockchain: it's a shared database with rules where you theoretically don't need to trust anybody. Bitcoin is like pong, NFTs, I dunno, maybe Space Invaders. This has a long way to play out before we see what it turns into. 

It's ironic, and it shows Western Civilization's present parlous state; that antisocial nerds have gifted us with a technology that allows us to live a relatively normal life without trusting our crumbling institutions. Markets inform us this is the most exciting technology in current year. We should, of course, be embarrassed, if not terrified.

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The government legalized gambling in order to tax it for the sake of increasing revenue.  Many jurisdictions in North America have also legalized marijuana for the same reason.  There is now a concerted effort to normalize the use of hallucinogenics for the sake of therapy.  It seems that with this in particular, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of a previous era, specifically the 60s and 70s, where drug use was rampant.  I can't help but think back to Philip K. Dick's novel "A Scanner Darkly" where he lists the names of real life friends who became drug casualties due to their experimentation with psychedelics.  Many fried their brains, never to recover.  Others ended up in the hell of schizophrenia.

I think a safe prediction is our managerial class will select whatever path seems most likely to provide jobs for them. Putting psychedelic victim brains back together sounds like a great job for social worker clients. Bonus; it will be them administering the treatments. They'll probably eventually make it mandatory like in "Wild in the Streets."

Another bad idea seems to be the blossoming of online communities.  Where once bad ideas were often contained due to lack of proximity to others with those same bad ideas, the internet has created free-forming corrals of like-minded people with bad or wrong intentions.  Society already has enough of this thanks to politics, but this ease of community-forming without the guardrails of common good community leadership only makes matters worse.

I think online communities are particularly toxic in the US as there isn't much else to do or anywhere to go. Everyone is ugly and nobody trusts anybody else. For countries where people have normal social lives it seems to be much less of a big deal. They find it mostly useful for organizing riots against medical fascism.

I have little desire to live in California, yet I am fascinated by it, particularly the time period between the early 60s up until the mid 80s.  This was in my mind "Peak America", and California stood at the summit of that peak.  Despite its sunny weather, reputation for laid back living, and natural beauty, there is an undercurrent of what I openly call 'demonic forces' (even if people mock me for it) that seem to bubble up from the surface every once in a while.  I have a theory that California shouldn't be there, in that what is now California shouldn't actually exist.  It is as if this once-almost-paradise is a simulation, or even worse, a desecration of what existed there in some past time.  Am I insane?

One of the fun things about California that nobody thinks about (if the looming multiple earthquake disasters weren't enough) there are megafloods every 100 years. The last one was in 1861 before there were many people there. Because diversity is our strength and we live in a time of great technological progress, I'm sure we'll do much better when it happens; probably by blaming it on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The excellent California government certainly has proved this with their cutting edge forestry management techniques.

So yes, the feelings of doom you get when you get off the airplane in California are, like, natural and accurate feelings you should probably pay attention to.

Dumb Part 2

You left California and the USA as a whole not too long ago.  Distance gives us perspective and residing in a foreign country allows us the ability to compare and contrast.  Was your move a smart move?  What precipitated it?  I imagine that it was a build up of things over a period of years that finally drove you to leave.  Would you agree that life in Europe is not as psychologically smothering as that in North America?

Well the food is better, and the people mostly look and act like human beings rather than ambling shuggoths and twee bugmen. The downsides are I am not as charming in a foreign language as I am in English.

Michel Houellebecq, Patron Saint of the Incels, married a biofemale in 2018.  Was this an act of treachery?  Is he a fauxcel/fakecel?  Will this sap his creative energy? 

Everyone has moved on to Delicious Tacos at this point.

On the Samael Qlipha, the magician makes a pact with the dark forces and realizes the invitation of Friedrich Neitzsche to re-evaluate old values. Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Samael is the 'Poison of God.' Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left. The dark side of the astral plane could be compared to a chalice filled with poison or an intoxicating fluid. While Gamaliel is the chalice, Samael is the elixir and the following lower Qlipha, A'arab Zaraq, is where the magician experiences the effect.

Afflict me not with Madonna-tier gibberish, you filthy offspring of cigarette smugglers.

Neil Degrasse Tyson plays a world famous scientist who intends to put a stop to Climate Change, racism, and Santa Claus.  Mel Gibson plays a researcher who devises an algorithm that will save Santa Claus and end Climate Change, but encoded within it are thousands and thousands of ethnic and racial slurs.  Nassim Taleb takes them both out for Black Squid Ink Risotto at a famous Italian bistro in Sicily in order to get them to work together.  Finish the storyline.

Scott Locklin can be found screaming at clouds at his personal website/containment zone, creatively entitled Locklin on Science.

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One of the hardest things about being an optimistic person is the consistent disappointment in people that you finally meet after hearing so many positive things about them. Malcom Kyeyune is no exception to this rule. Best known as a once self-described Marxist and leftist who wrote very interesting things on class politics, he has decayed into a gamer who tweets about Swedish cuisine.

I managed to catch Malcom just before he signed on at OANN where he will be hosting a program in which he ‘owns a new lib’ every day during the work week. He insisted to me that this is the best way to infiltrate the right and to convert them to a class-based approach to politics, but I have my doubts after seeing him wearing a “Capitalism Rocks” t-shirt that he scored from TPUSA.

Not only does he insult me in this interview, he also has the temerity to disagree with me!

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My understanding is that you are a direct descendant of Ragnar Lothbrok....and not just his blood, but the blood of Freydís Eiríksdóttir, of Gunnar Hammundarson, of Eric Bloodaxe, and of Leif Erikson course through your veins.  You have the iron will of Bjorn Ironside, the stoic nature of Egil Skallagrimson, the flaming red mane of Eric the Red.  These were men of unobstructed determination, of strength, of power, and of fortitude.  Is this why you are such a fucking asshole?

Actually, I like to think that's where the nice side of my personality comes from. My asshole side comes from my father's side of the family tree, owing to him belonging to just not an Eastern Bantu people in central Africa, but one of the most ruthless Bantu peoples around. The Vikings were in fact positively gracious neighbours to have around compared to the utter misfortune of living close to the Bantu migration, who didn't just visit you occasionally to burn down your monasteries, but who simply moved in and then killed or displaced everyone living in your town, perhaps partaking in a bit of human sacrifice to pass the time. The Baganda were, I think, the only people in all of Africa – or at least all of central Africa – who the British didn't just subjugate, but instead entered some sort of equal partnership with to avoid tangling with them. The more you know.

I had no idea that you were half-Black. Anyway……..How many times per day do you shower when the thermometer hits a sizzling 17C (63F in American) in Uppsala during the height of the 10-day summer season?  Do you have fainting or dizzy spells if it reaches 19C (66F in American)?  I imagine that Sweden has some sort of government service that sprays mists of water along sidewalks during these yearly heat waves. After all, Swedes sure do love Big Government and its very efficient public services.

As a certain man who went by the nickname of ‘Chateau Autiste’ said, the Nord is strong because he has the Ice Element but then a bit of fire to go with it, unlike the Yellow Man who only has the Ice Element and is thus lethargic and conformist and lacking in creativity. Last time it was that hot I actually went out to the grave mounds of ancient Viking Kings located in Old Uppsala, and drank some mead at a place called Odinsborg (”Odin's fortress”). I wish I was joking about this.

Please take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of Sweden for the terrorist known as Carl Bildt.  There used to be a joke about only cockroaches and Keith Richards surviving a global nuclear conflagration, but I am certain that he would outlive them all.  This cocksucker is now the WHO's "Special Envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator".  WTF is this even?

I wish I could come up with some joke here but Carl Bildt is seriously the worst thing my country has inflicted on the world since the ABBA Teens. Even Greta Thunberg sometimes manages to produce some funny meme content. Bildt is just a menace. That said, he's no longer a very hated politician in Sweden, not because he's somehow improved but because we don't see a lot of him anymore, thank God.

The cheapest joke that I can make here is about dining at IKEA where roughly 70% of all business deals are made in Sweden.  This would be worse than insulting, especially when I try to insert a joke about Huvudroll being the most popular Swedish delicacy, but I am told that you instruct tourists that they cannot and should not avoid Sjörapport, insisting that it is worthy of a Michelin Star.

Listening to Sjörapporten is probably necessary if you aim to go out into the Baltic and catch some herring, and pickled herring is to the Swede what the hamburger is to the American, the source of our lifeforce and the seat of our power. I'm not even sure IKEA serves herring in the United States, and if so that's just another failure of Sweden to shoulder the white man's burden and save the half-devil, half-children Anglos from their own culinary backwardness. Thankfully, people can follow me on Twitter for this, as I try to semi-regularly post example dishes from Sweden that really illustrate just how much better we are at cooking than any other culture.

Serious Questions For a Serious Audience

Speaking of cultural protectionism, It was less than two decades ago that anti-Globalization demonstrators were smashing up the windows of McDonald's and Starbucks, demanding that local cultures be protected.  Now the left is dominated by groups all-too-content with corporate sponsorship for causes that do nothing for the working class, and are little more than window dressing.  Some call it 'reputational laundering'.  Where does the left go from here?

The ”left” won't go anywhere. Here it is probably necessary to make a point about terminology before diving into the actual argument. Just as Americans generally don't use the term ”working class” to talk about themselves (instead everyone who's not a millionaire is some form of ”middle class”), the meaning of ”the left” is also dependent on who you are. As a general rule, if you belong to the radical left, which is what I once did, ”the left” is everything left to the social democratic parties in Europe, possibly including the left-wing of these social democratic parties. That is the definition I will be using going forward, so when I talk about ”the left”, I am generally talking about people like AOC and everyone to the left of her, and not to the democratic party in general.

The trajectory of this left is basically one that leads straight into the trash bin of history at this point. Even as late as 2019 it was still possible to imagine that this left could chart its own independent course outside of the general ambit of ”progressivism”, which includes libertarians, right-wing democrats, and centrist parties. But that dream is now completely dead, as the working classes of Europe and America have rejected these leftists completely. The more ambitious parts of this radical left that is now moribund are re-branding as bog-standard progressives (AOC, people like Paul Mason). The more dead-end people with no political relevance are eeking out shrinking fiefdoms online, where they cite long-dead theory at a dwindling circle of mentally ill trannies and marxist catboys.

The radical left as a political force took its last, best shot in 2019 and 2020 and was routed for the final time. It is quite clear at this point that the left will never again be relevant as a political force, but instead merely as a subcultural one and one active in the attention and Patreon economy on the net. But as this economy is probably not going to survive until 2030, even that part of the left can safely be ignored. The upcoming political battles will be waged between the forces of progressivism writ large and between various stripes of populism. In that context, the dependence of self-proclaimed leftists on big business and the powers that be is no longer really even a problem.

The real conflict this century will be between Globalism and National Sovereignty.  Our western elites are already solidly post-nation-state, with the various satraps of the USA (The Metropole) little more than branch offices managed by people who wouldn't be out of place at Deloitte and Touche.  Globalism has taken a few slaps to its face, with 2008 the best example, yet it is showing not just some resilience, but even more importantly, a devotion from its elites.  This resilience is being tested by what may be a supply chain crisis thanks to COVID-19 and thanks to business concepts like JiT (Just-in-Time logistics).  But what this Globalism has is a budding universalist worldview that is religious in nature, in which the individual and his or her desires are sacrosanct, provided that they conform with prevailing liberal mores.  A universal regime with a universalist faith-based worldview is quite the adversary.

I don't really think it is a very imposing adversary, for the simple reason that revolution is never really a game of toppling the elite or defeating the rulers. A functioning, united elite cannot be toppled by the people under any circumstances, for the very simple reason that for an elite to be functioning and united, it essentially has to be able to secure the passive consent of the ruled.

There's a saying in the military that I often come back to, which is ”amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics”. In the age we live in, where everyone who has a public voice is almost by definition a member of this new urban ”Spreadsheet Class”, the actual art of understanding logistics in the widest possible sense – to wit, the actual workings, inputs, and processes of the societal, economic and military machines we all depend on – has basically cratered. The Spreadsheet Class looks at the prospect of, say, civil war, and all they see is a battle of ideas, a question of strategy; they never really stop to consider how many divisions you have at your disposal, what sort of inputs (food, ammo, fuel) those divisions need, how much capacity there is to sustain operations at length, and whether the people in that division are politically reliable. The material world is alien to this class of ”intellectuals”, who consider themselves such by merit of basically being stuck inside their own heads.

The upshot of this is that while the urban classes may have faith (but it remains to be see how long that faith can last in the face of real adversity), they do not really have much else if a real crisis were to erupt. The task of a real revolutionary today is not going to be to figure out how to ”defeat the globalists”. It is going to be to get organized enough in the time we have left so as to have some sort of plan and capacity to try to pick up the pieces once this current order fails under its own contradictions. The supply crisis in particular is not getting solved, basically ever. It is permanent because the dynamic behind it is what is known as a ”cascading system failure”. The only way to fix a failure cascade of the sort the logistics system is in currently is to basically ”reboot” it at a much lower level of complexity, where the rate of ongoing failure is reduced below the capacity to repair failed nodes in the system. Unfortunately – both for the globalists and the people they rule over – the purpose of the now unsustainable levels of complexity inherent to the system was to slash costs, and thus make goods more affordable to the American plebeian, among other things.

There's a scene in the old Jurassic Park movie that is pretty instructive here. After the hacker Dennis Nedry basically knocks out the entire computer system necessary to run the park in order to disable the security and cameras so he can steal some dinosaur DNA, the only way for the heroes of the movie to get the system back to working order is to restart it. Unfortunately, restarting the system means knocking everything offline for a very significant amount of time, including the electrical fences keeping the most dangerous dinosaurs in place. During the downtime, these dinosaurs of course escape, and start causing a lot of mischief, and then a very hungry Tyrannosaurus eats the lawyer that nobody likes.

This is basically the situation the elites of the United States find themselves in currently, though they may not have yet fully realized it. The parallel is both specific and general here. Specifically, the computer system in the movie is experiencing its own cascading system failure as a result of Nedry's actions, and the only way to fix it is to reset it with a bare minimum of functionality and then fixing the broken stuff piece by piece, which is what will happen to the logistics system as well. More generally, the process of reforming a broken system is historically by far the most dangerous place a regime can find itself in. It's when you attempt to reform what has failed catastrophically that revolutions almost always occur; it's when you shut down power to the fences that the dinosaurs escape.

Again, if you just think about these things on the level of tactics or strategy, you are a happy amateur who is probably a lot more sanguine about the political situation. At that point, it's all a contest of ideas, of historical forces, and so on. I find that world boring and inhabited by quite stupid people with needlessly expensive pieces of paper that are meant to impress on the world that they are very, very smart. In the context of Jurassic Park, where the Park Managers have ”spared no expense” to build their incredibly opulent, efficient, and wondrous dinosaur theme park, the truly smart man studies where the power keeping the dinosaur fences actually comes from, and how the fuck the people who designed the system managed to make it tie into the same code that keeps the security cameras and electronic door lock systems in the main building running. The ”globalists” you talk about quite literally have no idea about any of this stuff, and they are likely to be the last ones to get the memo when the systems they all depend on start failing catastrophically.

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You and I are going to disagree on the inherent resilience or weakness of the American regime, but one thing we can agree on is the new types of creatures that occupy important roles in it.  Milovan Djilas wrote "The New Class" to criticize the rise of the communist nomenklatura in Yugoslavia shortly after the end of WW2.  It was that class that saw its rule last only for two generations until systemic collapse.  James Burnham wrote "The Managerial Revolution" in 1941, illustrating how the future in the West would be guided by a managerial class.  Today we see this class throughout the West, increasingly alienated from the people it claims to serve.  It is a permanent feature of our societies, and has eroded what democracy is supposed to be.

Yes, the growth of this class is in my view the single most important factor to explain both our economic and our political woes. But just like this class expanded and expanded in the East, only to usher in a systemic and political collapse as a result, I think their cousins in the West are currently busy hurling us all down the exact same trajectory. I don't call myself a leftist anymore – nor a ”dirtbag” leftist, a ”post-leftist”, or anything to do with the left – because I share nothing with those people, perhaps aside from a sort of analytical toolbox that is today really only honoured in the breach rather than the observance anyway. The struggle that populists like me are interested in, regardless of intellectual background, is the class struggle between the great many people who keep society running, and the increasingly desperate and bellicose parasites who require that these people be constantly exploited in order to make their own unsustainable lifestyles possible. A class war is coming, and it will not be between the 99% and the 1%, but between the producers and the parasites. Then we'll see just how ”permanent” the rule of these parasites truly is.

You have written in the past about the rise of the "Grifter Class" and how they are having an increasingly outsized influence on the direction of politics and society.  One cannot help but automatically think of the NGO class that manages to insert itself into all spheres of policy, both domestically and abroad, and almost always to the detriment of those places.  They have created self-perpetuating machines, in a way.  For fuck's sake, they were teaching Afghan tribeswomen abstract art as a form of "emancipation" while their military partners were droning weddings.

Sure, and I think it is almost impossible even for non-political people not to see just how outright predatory and useless all these organizations and systems are. An increasing amount of societal resources are now forcibly appropriated in order to maintain these people's lifestyles under the now completely ridiculous pretense that what they're somehow doing are all important jobs; and with every month and year that passes, we find that a political program that explicitly names these people and promises to take back all the resources they've stolen is an easier and easier sell to voters. The left never could promise this, because they themselves were the thieves. We will not be so shy: we will stop their thievery, and we break the backs of these looters so that they can never steal again. Of course, like a certain Alex Jones, I only mean that last part politically. ;)

Much of what you argue for is in opposition to the managers.  You are aligned with the Örebro Party, which has a focus on populism and localism.  Is this scalable in Sweden?  What about elsewhere?  Elitists will argue, to put it bluntly, that 'the people are stupid' (See: Tom Nichols), and that populism will drown itself in the inherent contradictions of popular will.

The model of the Örebro party has two parts, both of which are scalable, but different in the practical details. The first part is strategic: the party serves as a test bed for whether a sort of open and unashamed message of class struggle against the managerial classes can work. And the answer there is at this point an obvious, resounding YES. Markus Allard, the leader of the party, is at this point one of the most well-known, popular, and recognized politicians in Sweden. The party is now inundated with more applications for membership (becoming a member is actually quite hard and requires a very old fashioned multi-step process, more on that shortly) and requests for it to finally go national so that people outside the local areas where the party operates or has affiliates can finally vote for it. Moreover, the actual message here, that these managers are an enemy that needs to be fought, is popular among very broad layers of people – from lower middle class people who have historically voted for the right, to working class people who have abandoned the Social Democrats in favour of either the Sweden Democrats or political lethargy. This strategy of polarizing against managers is thus quite obviously scalable not just to Sweden as a whole but also to other countries, because it simply leans into class antagonisms that now openly exist.

The second part of the ÖP model is practical, and it has to do with the ”logistics” of politics, as it were. The reason the party focuses on populism and localism has very little to do with ideology; it is about creating a political cadre that can then actually wield power and defend the interests of our constituents. As the irish political Peter Mair has written about, political parties across the entire western world today have basically been hollowed out from the inside, and are now dependant on state subsidies or big donors for funding in order to pay what is essentially a big class of Swiss mercenaries in the form of ad men, consultants, and so on. It's not just that this situation is undesirable on some sort of moral or theoretical level, this actually makes parties quite weak in what they can do and what forms of power they can wield. Parties themselves have become completely hostage to the Spreadsheet Class, and this class increasingly doesn't know how to run a dog pound, nevermind a political movement or an international logistics system.

As such, the only way to really grow in strength as a political movement is to somehow return to that older and more powerful form of politics, one that is reliant on the political equivalent of the ”Citizen Soldier”, who like the US National Guard spend most of their time as civilians but then put on an uniform when they're called up. That is the model we are going for, and the localist strategy is about creating NCOs for that army of political ”conscripts”; about forming a cadre that can lead and train ordinary people enough to where they can be a part of a political struggle again. Germany after the treaty of Versailles was very limited how many troops they could field in the army, for example. To get around this, the German planners basically created an army made up entirely of officers, and especially of sergeants and junior officers. This allowed them to rapidly balloon their army from a couple of hundred thousand to several million without losing quality, because all those officers could then lead and instruct many times their number in conscripts, as opposed to the Soviet Union, which had massive shortages of these critical people, leading to rather terrible performance in combat, especially in the early days of WW2.

I don't want to belabour the military examples here, but the German model is basically our model. We see a return to mass politics as something fairly likely in the next two decades, given the way things are going. People care about politics if or when there's a crisis; when you have a long period of stability and prosperity they increasingly stop caring, and are happy to let professionals and managers assume the functions and power they once fought hard to attain. That's normal; but as things keep getting worse, their reasons to get back into the game they once abandoned will continue to multiply. We aim to have enough sergeants in our ranks to handle them when it happens.

As such, the Örebro party may just have the most challenging requirements for prospective members out of any party in the entire western world. To give you an idea of how it works, you need to pass multiple stages of interviews (written, oral), then attend introductory meetings and training, and still then you have to do actual party work as a prospective member for a while before you can be given full membership status. The purpose of all of this is to weed out the socially awkward, the uncommitted, and the untalented. Again, ÖP doesn't intend to rely on state or corporate subsidies to pay for a vast class of useless consultants whose conception of politics start and end at the level of creating a powerpoint presentation; it is interested in mass politics for the simple reason that the era of such politics is very likely to come back. As such, if you don't want to be a prospective sergeant, you can't join the party at all even if you want to. All the members are expected to be able to do the work of NCO leadership, to basically go to a town or a city and start, recruit for, and organize an entire party organization on their own, with only limited outside help.

Can this model be scaled or applied elsewhere? I would think so, given that scalability is the entire point of running a party this way. ÖP expects much, much more out of a prospective member than any other party in the country – probably more than any other party on the entire continent – but there are still far more applications coming in than can be quickly handled. And these applications aren't coming from podcasters and people in the powerpoint class, but from nurses, truck drivers, and electricians. I find it very likely that populists in other countries, such as the US, will eventually adopt at least some of ÖPs methods, because those methods are meant to break the power of ”the swamp” in a far more thorough fashion than Trump could. In politics you need an army, and the paid, professional army model has today mostly failed. The US today in fact shows us that the professional political activist class has very little contact with, or pull over the parents, pilots and truckers who are actually partaking in the big political conflicts going on.

North Americans by and large get a rather distorted picture of Sweden.  Liberals view it in an almost utopian frame of left-liberal, tolerant, and social-democratic government that is a global moral leader.  Right wingers will instead often see it as a country on the verge of widespread chaos due to violence from immigrants.  Reality is somewhere in between: immigrant violence is inflated in western right wing press, and is highly-confined to small, specific localities.  At the same time, the 'tolerance' that Sweden was once known for has receded, particularly with respect to newer immigrant populations.  Middle class Swedes may still mouth the same platitudes, but they are no longer an article of faith and are now divorced from how they act in real life.

Sure. I wrote a piece on this particular issue for UnHerd recently, so I won't really repeat the argument here. In general I think Europe at large is heading for a confrontation over these immigrants, and I am increasingly sure that these progressive middle classes were basically never on the side of the immigrants in any real way at all. The US progressive caste is at this point ”locked in” when it comes to battling the growing mass of dissatisfied citizens, and try to use illegal immigration to – as Berthold Brecht put it - ”dissolve the people and elect another”. I think the European situation is a lot more muddled by comparison.

Both you and I reside in the far-flung provinces of the US Empire.  Your country is largely irrelevant, mine is almost entirely irrelevant.  The Metropole always influences the Satrapies, which is why it is important for us writers to closely watch what happens over there.  We have the luxury (and privilege) of viewing the goings-on in the USA from a safe distance, allowing us the ability to analyze through an unobstructed pane of glass.  Yet you and I disagree on the revolutionary potential of the present situation in the USA: one in which trust in institutions has plummeted, where the media is viewed as hostile, where basic competence seems to be collapsing like a landslide in California, and where everything is now hyper-partisan.  For me, no revolution can happen without the defection of a certain segment of elites.  I counted the elites in the run-up to the election last year in November, and this let me know that Trump was not going to be in the White House for a second term, even if he won the vote.  Every elite faction sides against Trump the Populist (note: I am not implying that Trump was a revolutionary, he wasn’t).  Who can he rely on beyond possibly New York City Police?  Even Rupert Murdoch ditched him at the last minute on Election Night.

I think this is the most persuasive argument that can be made for ”revolutionary pessimism”, or whatever we want to call it. As in: there is simply not enough elite buy-in, now or in the near to mid future, for such a thing to succeed.

However, I don't find that argument to hold very much weight today. These things do not come down to individual character, nor ideology, nor morals. At the aggregate level, elite cohesion is all about material structures and uniformity of interests. That is a very important point to keep in mind today, because the economic pie is for all intents and purposes shrinking in the US now. Obviously, economists have about a billion different ways of presenting the numbers to argue that I'm just talking nonsense when I say that, but in practical terms – which is what actually matters to living, breathing human beings – the experience of living today is, with very few exceptions, one of increasing precariousness and difficulty, especially when it comes to affording stuff that prior generations took almost for granted. Politics in a time of shrinking pies is incredibly brutal, not just between the elite and the people, but within the elite as well; in order to keep your own situation from deteriorating, you have to increasingly steal resources from someone else.

It is a foregone conclusion at this point that some parts of the current elite will be sacrificed in order to shore up the fortunes of the rest. It's no big mystery how this will happen or under what pretext. Consider for example how outright discrimination is now ruining the chances of many young men who compete for a seat at Harvard or other prestige institutions in the US. This is not a bug, this is a necessary feature. There's only so many seats to go around, far less seats than there are rear ends hoping to park in them. But the idea that you can somehow just increasingly purge white cis males from very well-to-do families from the institutions that guarantee them a life in the upper crust while denouncing them as inherently evil, and then count on them to remain loyal to the elite that kicked them out, is folly.

Constant ”ideological” purging is built into the system at this point. Purging is necessary in order to deal with the shortage of elite seats and the overproduction of elite claimants. This is by definition a situation where elite solidarity is impossible. Moreover, the competition for resources does not end at the ivy league, but also has very serious implications for the power balance between the states and the federal government, and the resources and prerogatives available for state-level power brokers. With this in mind it’s important to remember that there's an axis of elite conflict between state capitols and Washington more or less baked into the pie at this point.

Mocked By Malcolm

Secession in the USA was resolved at Appomattox in 1865, though.  No Empire allows itself to be cut in half unless it is undergoing a serious crisis, like Ancient Rome in AD 285 under Diocletian.  I strongly disagree with the idea that the USA is undergoing any sort of existential crisis, but is rather in a transformative stage, shedding its national skin in favour of a global one.  It has no enemies on its borders nor anywhere near it, and it is also rather self-sufficient.

Yeah, well, good for you. Just recently, I had a person tell me in equally strong terms that revolutions are simply not possible unless and until there exists some sort of alternative power structure ready to take over from the old, broken regime. That guy ought to simply invent some form of time travel device and travel back to the late era Soviet Union and tell the bewildered crowds the amazing news – his own theory simply rejects the possibility of what it is they're busy doing. Given that the only ”alternatives” to Gorbachev on hand in the late stage Soviet Union were insane religious cultists, criminal syndicates, and various unremarkable kleptocratic bureaucrats, the Universe might be happy to learn it simply made a mistake.

The fact that you think that the US is ”rather self-sufficient” at a point where farmers in the breadbasket are basically staring down the barrel of complete financial ruin, owing to the fact that they can't get any parts for their machines, tells me that you are very likely to end up in the same situation as that other guy – looking through the phonebook for the number to call to speak to history's manager. In my view, though the US certainly could be self-sufficient, that is dependent on it taking an entirely different industrial, economic and social path than the one it actually did. As far as not having any enemies, I fail to see how that proves the point you think it is making. France had a revolution, and it had enemies all around it; in fact it spent the next couple of decades single-handedly defeating basically every modern army on the planet. Russia had enemies, and was invaded by a multi-national force with the stated goal of removing the Bolsheviks from power, and yet the reds won in the end. 

In reality, revolutions are caused by the brittleness of the social, economic, and/or political order. That brittleness grows over a long period of time, and can be exacerbated by military defeat, but military defeat is never sufficient other than as an accelerant of whatever other problems the state has. Thus Napoleon famously said of his arch-enemy, the Emperor Francis II, that the Emperor could lose ninety nine battles and only win one and still be recognized as Emperor by his subjects, while Napoleon could win ninety nine battles and only have to lose one before his regime was in danger.

The putative ”global” American skin you talk about sounds fairly interesting on the (amateur) level of strategy and tactics, but wholly confused and in fact completely unworkable on the boring but quite important level of logistics. No matter whether you style yourself a citizen of the world or an American patriot, the job of an elite is always to secure at least the passive acceptance of the subjects of the political order, whether or not those people are truly called subjects or see themselves as citizens with rights. Changing the status of your people from citizens to subjects is a very tricky process, and liable to trigger a withdrawal of passive acceptance. The US elite have at their disposal some extremely limited or downright non-functional tools of forcing compliance. They may have the ”strategy” down to pat – let's just do away with this nationality business and just become the rulers of a multi-ethnic slave society using millions of illegal immigrants to slowly replace the angry white men – but they have no goddamn clue how to organize this on the level of practical politics.

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The incompetence of US forces in Afghanistan is not a valid application when it comes to an armed conflict on US soil.  With Afghanistan, US forces could simply pick up and go home.  In the USA they are at home.  They would not be hampered by severely-restricted RoE (Rules of Engagement).  The media machine would crank up the propaganda to 11, painting any and all states' rights secessionists as the second coming of both the Confederacy and the Nazis.  Civil conflicts are the bloodiest because there is everything to play for.

This is actually such a fantastically unrealistic question that I at first thought it to be some sort of prank, and I must admit – no offense intended here – that I literally cannot even imagine the reasoning that leads to statements like the US army not being hampered by restrictive RoE. It's like someone telling me that I should dry out from the rain by jumping, clothes and all, into a swimming pool filled with murky water.

Why was there a restrictive RoE in Afghanistan? Well, let's go over a couple of possibilities. The first possibility is that a restrictive RoE, aiming at preventing unnecessary civilian casualties, had to do with avoiding political fallout back at home. Too many pictures of blown up children, and American politicians have a harder time getting re-elected on a pro-war platform. The second possibility is that blowing up Afghan children simply made it harder to win the war, by emboldening the Taliban and making the locals not just more likely to join them, but to provide them shelter, resources, and intel on American movements.

If you are very gullible, you could possibly think that the first of these rationales would not apply in a domestic US situation, because ”the media” would simply blast propaganda at the population. Here the less gullible will simply ask a fairly basic question: how capable has the propaganda machine proven to be thus far? Given that the media blasted as much propaganda as they could regarding the authenticity of the 2020 election, the fact that polling shows a majority of republican voters believing the election to not be totally on the level tells us that there are very significant limits to the ability to use propaganda to achieve desired ends (in this case, the desired end was to make the American population think the election was legit). Moreover, the Fox News network experienced an exodus of viewers from Fox to OANN and Newsmax (who a friend of mine described as ”Memri TV for American boomers”), because Fox didn't take a sufficiently aggressive stance on the election. This also led to Tucker Carlson to actually have another talk show host beat him in the ratings, a feat basically considered impossible up until then.

As such, the current model for propaganda is simply not effective enough in information control, even when working with total coordination. Moreover, the pressures on the right wing of the media landscape whenever something like this happens is immense, to the point where Fox had to go back on the offensive in order to stop the bleed to Newsmax and OANN.

By all means, one shouldn't discount ”propaganda” as a political tool. It is after all a political strategy. But the nuts and bolts of how these things work, and their actual limits in how many people they reach and what they can convince them of, become exceedingly clear once one starts looking into the more boring world of ratings and polling. In the case of some sort of civil war, if you wanted people to only get approved news, you'd have to shut down Newsmax, OANN, and maybe even Fox News; the idea that the viewers of these networks would go ”oh, Kamala Harris just arrested all the journalists at the cable news station I watch, time to become Rachel Maddow's biggest fan!” is just not credible.

Still, this point about propaganda only really addresses a small part of this issue. The much, much more critical point is that the US armed forces currently recruits from lower middle and working class demographics in red states. White men are overrepresented in the US armed forces, and they are then even more overrepresented in the parts of the Army and USMC that actually hold guns, kick down doors, and carry heavy rucksacks around. There are absolutely no realistic means of changing this situation. People belonging to the powerpoint class do not join the armed forces unless they can present powerpoints, they do not become doorkickers or mortar bomb haulers. Immigrants are underrepresented and also not reliable – the less strong your connection to a country is, the less likely you are to be in any way interested in the prospect of fighting in one of its civil wars. There's not exactly a huge mercenary pool in the world today to call on if you want to fill out a couple of divisions, either.

The real reason you want to use extremely restrictive RoEs in a situation like the one you claim one wouldn't be used is that the American elite will be fighting with forces that are recruited from the very areas they are supposed to police. That means it will be their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in the gunsights; if you simply level half a rural town in Texas, the people who die will be related by blood or friendship to the people who load the bombs and hold the rifles. This presents two very basic challenges: number one, if you start killing civilians in these areas, your recruitment prospects will become quite catastrophic, quite quickly. Number two – and this is the big one – soldiers have historically been extremely reluctant to follow orders like this. A smart empire will therefore go to great lengths to source their soldiers from populations that do not even speak the same language as the civilians they're supposed to police; the Austrians used Croats in Italy, and Italians in Croatia…and even then the soldiers were often reluctant to stand in the way of a sufficiently motivated civilian population.

We should also be fairly clear on what ”restrictive” vs. ”non-restrictive” RoE mean in this context. Non-restrictive RoE does not mean you can simply use all the fancy pieces of equipment the air force and army have at their disposal: MRLS launchers, Apache gunships, fuel-air bombs, tanks, and so on. All of this stuff is mostly useless in situations where the enemy simply refuses to wear uniforms – this equipment is meant to be used in combat between states where both sides take great pains to actually signal which team they belong to, so that the other team knows that it's okay to shoot them. If you're fighting the Chinese, a tank is a great thing to have, because that tank will be able to fire at Chinese tanks (that look markedly different from American ones) and Chinese soldiers, who wear completely different uniforms.

If you park a tank in Anytown, Idaho, and tell it to just go hog wild on the enemy, that tank is either going to end up shooting at nothing, or simply massacre a bunch of innocent civilians. Killing innocent civilians will 1) make your own army much more likely to revolt, 2) make the actual enemy combatants much more able to recruit new militants, and so using an extremely restrictive RoE is actually the only possible way you could even hope to fight a war like this on American soil without just losing it on purpose.

Again, on the level of strategy, I'm sure the US military offers up a lot of interesting possibilities in terms of tyranny and civil war for the prospective ideas guy out there. But in terms of logistics, the US army and USMC is just a total fucking disaster, if you'll excuse my French. It has an order of magnitude – maybe even several orders of magnitude – less troops than would be necessary to perform counterinsurgency across the continental United States. The British used at most 20.000 troops in North Ireland during Operation Banner; 20.000 troops for an area less than two percent the size of Texas. The US armed forces can probably scramble at most 100.000 regulars if you put the USMC, the Army, and whatever ground elements the other branches can provide together. Texas is 100% the size of Texas last time I checked, and it also happens to be just one out of forty eight states on the continent itself. Every time the British tried to relax their punishing RoE (the British army officially reported a 10:1 casualty ratio of British soldiers compared to Provisional IRA militants during Banner!), they quickly found it to be amazingly counterproductive and a boon to the Provos. Of course, the British had a much easier time of it, because they didn't have to recruit their soldiers from Northern Ireland!

So with the army just not having enough people, it then also has to face the issue of political reliability. If you tell troops to fight on behalf of a regime with very questionable legitimacy, and those troops then have to fight their own families, you can expect massive desertions and mutiny, maybe even mutiny at the divisional level (this is much more likely to happen with Army National Guard divisions).

I could go on for ages here, but I won't belabour the point even more than I already have. Again, amateurs talk about strategy – what they plan to use the machine for – but professionals talk logistics – how the machine actually works, for how long it can be expected to work, and what sort of inputs it needs. The US elite simply hasn't taken the steps necessary today to ensure that the Army or the USMC would actually function in a counterinsurgency scenario. And in 2021 there is quite literally nothing that can be done to fix it before the current era of crisis resolves itself somehow.

Back to our Holy Continent: What does the future hold for Europe?  The EU is increasingly in a situation akin to trying to herd cats.  Will it be a moralizing museum of history, irrelevant on the global stage as the USA pivots to Eastern Asia?  Or is there a new generation that can break free from the psychological baggage of the Second World War and chart out an independent course?  Our Boomers and much of Gen X cannot fathom a Europe outside of the Atlanticist fold, unfortunately.  American soft power, although eroded in some areas, continues to dominate thanks to technology that has burdened us with Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

I think the entire West is going to be roiled by chaos and political uncertainty for the next twenty years at the very least. Out of that chaos a new order will emerge, and in the case of Europe I think Europeans – lacking two outside empires to keep them under their thumb – will go back to do what Europeans do best: going to war and killing each other on a regular basis.

American ”soft power” is honestly just a joke at this point. Yes, the powerpoint people in Berlin or Stockholm are more than happy to import CRT-esque language in order to further their own class aims, but this is not really an indicator of American power, but of class struggle, to be perfectly blunt. The idea that America is something to aspire to is today solely held by people locked up in mental hospitals, or by libertarians – who should be locked up in those mental hospitals. The view from America today is just crisis, crisis, and more crisis, and then people injecting heroin on the street in broad daylight, and massive sprawling tent cities just a couple of blocks away from the headquarters of various tech companies. At this point, if you gave even a conservative European the choice between being forcibly moved to San Francisco (and not being able to leave) or Havana, most people would just quietly swallow their anticommunism and choose the less dysfunctional city out of the pair.

That being said, I do look upon America as an example to the rest of the world in a slightly different context. It is in America that the first real battles against these obsolete, parasitical managers will truly be waged, and those of us who have long prepared to fight those very same battles in our own countries will have much to learn – and hopefully also help to offer – our American brothers and sisters in the days to come. As such, our two fates – that of the Old World and that of the New – will still be intertwined for many years to come, I would think!

What should be done about the GQ (Greta Question)?

Well, I talked to Q recently, and all I can say is that you will have to trust the plan on this one for a little bit longer.

This shithead didn’t even finish the interview! He told me to go fuck myself because it was already long enough, and because he wants to go back to playing the new Call of Duty, or Detroit: Become Human, or Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest or some shit.

I mean, check out this Mel Gibson bit that I primed for him:

Mel Gibson plays a mulatto Swede who has schizophrenia and because of this is racist against himself.  He teams up with Swedish hockey legend Borje Salming to coach a team of 12 year boys from Kiruna who will face off against the Swedish National Women's Hockey Team.  Salming is poisoned by feminists from Stockholm minutes before the game starts which means that Gibson must coach the boys by himself.  If they lose, they must immediately go on hormone treatment with sexual reassignment surgery to follow.  How long of a prison sentence would you receive if you wrote, directed, and produced this tale of underdogs beating evil (Swedish women)?

Probably my best Mel Gibson fan fiction ever!

Malcom can be found respecting Anglos on Twitter @Tinkzorg, and writing at a different bunch of sites that I’m too lazy to name or hyperlink right now.

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Murtaza (or “Maz”, as he annoyingly insists that everyone refer to him) Hussain was handed the keys to his extended family’s Ford Aerostar Minivan when he was 16 years old and hasn’t looked back since. From his early days in Toronto where he would beat up Drake (justifiably so) for his lunch money at school, he has always had his eyes on the big prize: forcing Glenn Greenwald out of employment.

A second-generation low-level CIA asset, he is now firmly ensconced at The Intercept where he dissects Central Asian affairs alongside with civil rights issues in the USA, supplementing his already massive pay by running protection rackets involving illegal immigrants from the Hindu Kush.

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A salaam alaikum. 

Good to chat with you. Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar.  Can you please share with us your favourite Nasheed?

Once while travelling in Pakistan, my driver asked me to translate all the lyrics to “Without Me” by Eminem line-by-line as it played on the car stereo. It is an incredibly cringeworthy song, but my subconscious continues to place him as an honorary Janissary to this day.

I’m quite disappointed that you did not pick this Nasheed. Anyway, much like Jay-Z, you have risen to the top of the rap game (journalism).  And also like Jay-Z, you began by slinging rock.  You are a legend in street-level drug dealing circles thanks to the 100% undeniable fact that your most infamous client was once-Mayor of Toronto, the now dead Rob Ford.  In fact, you helped kill him by way of your product.

Rob Ford was deeply beloved by all the working-class immigrants and minorities of the Toronto inner suburbs. These people also comprised his largest and most vociferous base of political supporters. Ford, as video evidence later showed, was not too stuck-up to participate in traditional social ceremonies beloved by his supporters, like communal drug abuse. After my role in his regrettable passing came to light, I prudently fled town for the United States where I reinvented myself from ruthless drug dealer to overly cerebral journalist mulling over various social and political ills.

Yet here you are, working at The Intercept.  Have you ever thought to yourself about all the lives that you have ruined and destroyed over the years?  All the damage that you have caused to so many well-meaning people?  Have you ever felt shame being a journalist and wondered whether you should instead return to the lesser evil of crack-dealing?

Any occasional pangs of conscience I feel for the carnage my deeds have caused are invariably put to rest by that sweet, sweet, journalist coin rolling in reliably every month.

Maz and I Find Common Ground and Both Shit on Toronto

You, like I, spent your formative years in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area/Globalist Test Area), which is where the world's excess population gets dumped to try and make something of themselves after failing to do so at home.  Toronto has pretensions of being a New York, but is barely 3/4s of a Chicago.  Torontonians think that they and their city actually matter, but they don't.  It's an irrelevant city full of even more irrelevant elites.  Both you and I got the fuck out the first chance we got.

Canada is a vast dumping ground for the former subjects of the British Empire. It continues to fulfill that function even after that once-great empire vanishes into the dustbin of history. The effect is a little strange, because it is as though the country is a cultural orphan. Into the absence left by the departed Metropole, the main thing that his filled the void is capital. Toronto is a great monument to this because it is perhaps the most post-historical place on earth. It has embraced completely the politics of homogenous globalization, something that can be seen its anonymous mass-produced architecture and absence of identifiable civic culture. The city, and indeed entire country, is run less as a nation than as a free economic zone. There is a lot of immigration and it is supported by elites on every side of the political spectrum. But this is less out of ideological conviction than for the short-term economic benefits it brings to people already here; waves of new peoples from around the world are needed to keep the gigantic real estate Ponzi scheme (Please look at the charts on Canadian housing prices) underpinning the economy in motion. That’s all that’s going on. It turns out that at the end of history there is nothing left to do but try to make some money, eat, and fixate on the small dramas of a few mediocre sports teams. I still, inescapably love it, for the simple reason that it is the place on Earth that I can most clearly call home. I love despite the knowledge that, because of its cold, impersonal nature, it is incapable of ever loving me or anyone else back in return.

I recently stumbled upon a WWII-era cenotaph while visiting Toronto. It included many pictures and descriptions of former residents of the local area who had served in the war, including many who had been killed in action. It was hard to imagine it was even describing the same area, because everything surrounding the monument had been thoroughly transformed by the intervening decades of globalization. I am also a visible part of that change. Globalization is not ending or slowing down, let alone being reversed. It’s a process, driven, at heart, by technological change, and one major consequence of it is that has mixed up different groups of people in a manner and scale unprecedented in history. Any idea of violently turning it back is simply a fantasy. I’d say the toothpaste actually escaped the tube a century ago.

That’s also why I think it’s important to honour episodes of national history like that memorialized at the cenotaph. It’s the right thing to do on a human level on behalf of those who dedicated or sacrificed their lives (imperfect people, perhaps, but who in the world isn’t?) to establish and preserve the countries that now exist. People need to be bound together by shared myths and stories and no society will survive long without that. Honouring and respecting the good aspects of the past is also a means of smoothing over the socio-political dislocations of globalization, by way ensuring that it preserves what is of value from the existing culture rather than effacing it. No one on earth likes to sense that their identity and culture is fading away. It’s something like the death of the self. Yet this unnerving feeling is experienced by almost everyone today, including people who have left their homes due to economic or political necessity and become immigrant to the West. We should be empathetic and thoughtful about the type of society in which we’d like to live in, and avoid, on all sides, the revolutionary tendency towards blowing everything up and declaring Year Zero. Year Zero also sounds like it would jam-packed with futility as well.

Toronto, however, does have some unique attributes that set it aside from your average American metropolis.  For one thing, race relations and ethnic politics are not as black and white as they are in the USA.  You've written a very, very interesting piece on how immigrant populations (particularly non-white ones) in Toronto are more than cool with populist politicians who come from the right like the Ford Brothers.  My experience growing up not too far from where you grew up is that divisions weren't racial, but were instead Anglo vs. Immigrant, with various subsets of immigrants in their ethnic ghettos.  Alongside this was Catholic vs. Public schooling as an additional layer.  Online American friends would be bewildered by this breakdown and would ask me "well, would you hang out with blacks or whites?"  My response to them would always be "we didn't hang out with Anglos".  Cultural affinity for us first generation European immigrants was about our parents speaking the old language at home, and our moms preparing serious lunches for us to take to school with us.  Alongside this was beatings from our parents.

Growing up (and even to this day), most people I know socially are first-generation immigrants, mostly from the Caribbean, South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, who came to the West as children, or who are second-generation immigrants and the first of their families to be born here. One thing I can say emphatically about most of these people is that they are not socially liberal. They tend to be religious, family-oriented, and take what you could call traditional gender norms for granted. If I were to try to give you a relevant analogy with comparison to white people, I would say that most of their views on social issues like race and gender run somewhere on a spectrum between Rod Dreher and Hitler, and I’m only sort of kidding. They may vote for liberal political parties out of calculated self-interest, but that easily changes if they feel that their interests are served by doing the opposite. That is why so many non-white Torontonians, including most of my friends, voted for Rob Ford. It is also why I suspect not a few minorities in the United States voted for Donald Trump during his re-election campaign. It doesn’t surprise me that polls show 98 percent of Latino people in the United States don’t use the progressive “Latinx” descriptor for themselves, even though it has become so standard in politics and media that even Joe Biden is saying it. That doesn’t mean that the views of the two percent, usually credentialed elites, are wholly illegitimate or irrelevant. But if you genuinely come to believe that they represent what a lot of minorities think, or how they see themselves, you are going to be in for some rude awakenings, politically. I’m not saying this as a description of how I necessarily prefer things to be, just an honest observation of what I’ve observed during my life. People’s social preferences might change over time with enough corporate social engineering, but I’m skeptical of how far that can be pushed. Progressives are potentially making a big error assuming that minorities are going to be a reliable base of support for whatever new social changes they decide to push though in the future.

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With the privilege of physical distance and time elapsed, how do you view not just Toronto but Canada as a whole now?  And what about your community?  I'm sure that segments of it are assimilating, with others not-assimilating, and the bulk with their feet in both puddles. Also, what then is the main difference between being a Pakistani in Canada and one in the USA?  I think that you will agree with me that assimilationist pressures, whether intentional or unintentional, are far, far stronger in the USA and that ethnic communities tend to assimilate quicker there.  With this in mind, what role did the negative post-9/11 environment towards Muslims play here?

Prior to 9/11, people had a stereotype of Pakistanis as primarily being asexual nerds who consumed foul-smelling foods and probably had an aptitude for low-level computer programming. This was a very difficult set of stereotypes to have to overcome because such a person sounds like a very appealing target for aggression. We really had to fight to overcome it, and I blame the popular media for developing it in the first place. After 9/11, however, the assumptions started suddenly and imperceptibly changing. The stereotype that replaced the nerd one was that most of us were concealing suicide vests under our over-worn North Face jackets and were so enamored of savage violence that even a wrong look might result in you being gruesomely beheaded in the 7/11 parking lot. As a young man at the time, I actually found the latter stereotype to be preferable on practical terms, and I can tell you that I was far from alone in that sentiment. Better that people be irrationally afraid of you then think you are overly passive, except at the border.

Regarding the issue of assimilation, it is important to look at the religious component here. Islam is a religion that is very interested in preserving its particularity and resists being dissolved into any other ideology. In this sense Muslims are a bit like Jews who have fought hard to preserve their communal identity even in the face of highly coercive assimilationist pressure. But there is also the added caveat that Islam, like Christianity and liberalism, is also a universalizing tradition that aspires to win converts. Observant Muslims believe, very sincerely, that everyone else would be better off sharing their religion and uniting together with them under one universal community. Most of them are not going to completely shed their deepest beliefs in favour of liberalism, which to be honest doesn’t offer much to the soul. White Westerners feeling besieged by cancel culture should consider doing what the Quran prescribes and converting to Islam at this point in history (I’ve been reliably informed that most signatories of the Harper’s Letter have already taken this step), as it is demonstrably proven to be much harder to be driven out of liberal society for having ultra-conservative social views when you’re Muslim. The perceptively self-loathing French author Michel Houellebecq (May Allah be pleased with him) has written a handy book about how such a change would work on a sociopolitical level, and I encourage your readers to check it out.

Paki Goat Herder in The Big Apple - What Strange Sights!

You're now residing in the Big Show, the Prime Mover of global events.  And not just that, you're in the nerve centre, New York City.  This is it.  This is where the Masters of the Universe live, work, breathe, sleep, etc.  These must be incredibly impressive creatures.

ITS WEIRD NEW YORK IS MORE MERITOCRATIC THAN DC, AT LEAST PEOPLE TEND TO BE A BIT SMARTER OR LESS BORING. GOING TO ROLL INTO NEXT QUESTION WHICH IS WHERE THE TRUE EVIL LIES!

Settle down, Abdi. No need to scream. There are no attractive female cousins reading this.

Do you think that there's merit to the idea that the best and brightest Americans all go into Wall Street or Silicon Valley, leaving government to third stringers?  After all, what type of person would want to put up with such constant, invasive scrutiny like politicians endure if they don't have to?  Why not seek millions without having every single move you make being newsworthy, and in such a toxic environment as we live in today?

I’m increasingly convinced that going into politics is a sign of some kind of serious character defect. It’s not just that these are people who are after power….most politicians today also seemingly want to be influencers. They use their attainment of a job that generates lots of public attention as a means of building their own personal brands and followings, so as to better capitalize on later book deals and public speaking circuit tours. I predict that in the future citizens of democracies will simply cut out the middleman and directly elect the most narcissistic, power-hungry, and effective influencers from social media to political office, making the old model of career-climbing politician effectively obsolete. Donald Trump was not an aberration but merely a harbinger of what is to come.

The MAZBOL Theory of Central Asian Geopolitics

The revolving door between the public and private sectors is spinning faster than ever, with many individuals passing through both sides becoming more common.  This is a form of corruption, as people in the public sector in powerful roles knows what awaits them in the private sector should they use their powers to benefit the latter while in the former.  The mental image of the General turned Arms Dealer Lobbyist automatically springs to mind.

General Milley also springs to mind as he testified this past week that the Taliban was always going to take control of Afghanistan after the Americans left.  This was not communicated to the US public prior to that happening.  The US military wanted to remain in Afghanistan despite cross-party public support for leaving.  This indicates a rather wide gulf not just between the military and the public, but also signals a contempt for the American people as a whole.  One of the last actions that the US Armed Forces undertook in Afghanistan was a drone strike that killed a family in Kabul.  This is an out-and-out war crime.  Americans really, really do not know what was done in their name in that country.

Now a consensus is forming around the idea that the war was a strategic error, but the pullout was a success.  It's as if the blame is being foisted onto Trump for his agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, and that the DoD and Biden were left with a fait accompli, but that they made the best of it.  At the same time, you've reported that US citizens have been left in Afghanistan after the pullout, despite contacting the US State Department to make them aware of their situation.

The question then must be: How and when did the USA lose Afghanistan?

Almost every day I talk to this gentleman (who I wrote about here). He is naturalized American citizen, and he and his Afghan wife are stuck in Kabul, and are desperately trying to get out of Afghanistan. They are still trapped there even though by now their situation is well known to many in DC, including at the State Department. While there have been a lot of big promises and talk, literally nothing has been done for them. The fact that he, a citizen in good standing of the most powerful country on Earth, is calling me of all people for help when State and even the Pentagon has been repeatedly apprised of his situation is a great example of how cruelly incompetent the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been at every stage. I’m convinced that the entire thing, after the initial scattering of Al Qaeda in 2001, was just a political project of the arms industry, careerist generals, and a handful of navel gazing midwits in DC think tanks. They have all been happy to engage in endless human sacrifice of both Afghans and working-class Americans for the ultimate purpose of not looking like losers in the media and at their elite social gatherings. These are truly detestable people: simultaneously feckless and brutal. It would be wrong to call them evil because even evil requires some emotional depth. If they had any honour they would commit ritual hara-kiri in penance for their terrible crimes against humanity. At bare minimum they should shut up and lay low for the rest of their lives. Instead, they’re still around, haranguing and lecturing everyone else, all while failing further upwards with the help of their friends.

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China and Russia have moved closer to together over Afghanistan, fearing that it could be used as a base by Salafist extremists to destabilize both of those countries.  How much merit is there in these fears?

The Taliban’s leadership seems to want to govern in some sustainable fashion and avoid the series of unfortunate events that led to its last overthrow in 2001. Doing so will require ensuring that their country does not once again become a security threat for the rest of the world, including its neighbours. It is unclear though to what extent they are actually capable of exerting control over the entire country, keeping their rank-and-file in order, or preventing others from using their territory as a launching pad for external attacks. One thing I would say about China and Russia is that if they do have a problem in Afghanistan they will deal with it quickly and then leave, most likely with either the cooperation or acquiescence of whoever is in power in Kabul. Neither will try to reshape Afghanistan in their preferred ideological image. If the U.S. had followed such a path and simply taken out Al Qaeda and walked away decades ago, they could have justifiably declared victory in this war. It would have been better for Afghans as well as they would have been spared twenty years of pointless bloodshed.

Where does Afghanistan go from here?  Is its fate the further erosion of the Hazara community, and varied Tajik resistance?  Will the Taliban's victory embolden their cousins in neighbouring Pakistan?

The Taliban is not a national liberation movement. Neither they, nor any other group, can claim legitimacy, let alone popularity across the entire country. Unfortunately, they have also declined the pragmatic path of forming national government that would give other Afghans a stake in the coming political order. They are ruling according to the principle of winner takes all. As such, it is very likely that further division and even violence are in Afghanistan’s future. That said it seems like at least one factor militating against major conflict is people’s collective fatigue after so many decades of fighting. I suspect this played a role in the Afghan army’s decision to dissolve itself rather than not pointlessly die in the Taliban offensive that took place this summer.

The situation in Pakistan is different. The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) suffered devastating losses during counterinsurgency campaigns launched by the Pakistani military over the past decade, accomplished in part with the assistance of U.S. drone operators to whom they were feeding intelligence. It was widely believed by Pakistanis that the TTP was backed by the intelligence agency of the previous Afghan government, which now no longer exists. I doubt the Pakistani Taliban has the capacity to do anything like what it did in the early-2010s, when it seemed to really threaten the state. That said what happened in Afghanistan is an ideological inspiration to many people across the region and the world, Islamists and otherwise, who dream of overthrowing their regimes and establishing a new order.

Does the American Pivot to East Asia mean that Iran takes a lesser role in US foreign policy calculus?  What about Saudi Arabia?  And what of Israel?  9/11 was a propaganda boon for them, but that is receding into history as fervour for their state is dissipating among their cousins in the USA.

U.S. foreign policy operates on a pay-to-play model. There is nothing more high-minded or even conspiratorial going on than that. Foreign elites pay for access and receive services. Some of the most influential ambassadors in Washington are from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries that have scarcely anything culturally in common with the United States and who have tiny and electorally inconsequential diasporas here. They just have money and are operating in a situation where everyone is willing to be bought, so they get what they want. Israel is the same. I do not agree with the contention that a grassroots domestic Israel lobby plays a decisive role in driving what the U.S. does in the Middle East. U.S. policy on Israel is mainly driven by a few influential political donors and well-funded front organizations masquerading as think thanks. Israel’s biggest base of domestic support in the United States comes from evangelical Protestant movements whose leaders are utterly corrupt and as interested in cashing in as anyone else. It’s all a big club and you’re not invited. Nothing is going to change because none of America’s policies in the Middle East were ever about U.S. national interests anyways. It’s about a handful of people who are focused on continuing to get paid, having interesting jobs that allow them to travel and feel important, and coming up with ever more elaborate arguments to justify this arrangement.

Insults

George Washington died at Pearl Harbour so that Thomas Jefferson could argue in favour of freedom of speech, which means that I get to call you a Paki, as is my God-given right to do so.  Don't Tread on Me, Paki!

You can continue enjoying this frivolous “free speech” until the Sharia is established, after which speech will correctly no longer be free and further such antics will be dealt with appropriately.

What physiological changes do you experience when you see an attractive blonde woman, besides the obvious one?  Do you experience a heart arrhythmia?  Do you struggle to find words to use to express yourself?  Does "AWOOGA AWOOGA" force itself naturally out of your mouth?  Are you at all self-aware?  Or is it all involuntary?

I'm going to say something a bit harsh, but I intend it as a constructive criticism. Perhaps my biggest complaint with many fresh-off-the-boat immigrants and men living abroad is this overpowering and cringeworthy sexual desire for white women, particularly the powerful female blonde archetype to whom you have just made reference. Thanks to the internet, millions of these men have also gone out of their way to advertise to the world their depraved longings and undignified simping, humiliating themselves and their nations (“send bobs”) to chase after a fantastical object of desire that exists almost entirely in their imaginations. I blame the satanic influences of global mass media and internet pornography for spreading this neurosis. As a rule, those of us who grew up here are well are aware of the ordinary flaws and shortcomings of white people, including attractive blonde women, and are not any more or less interested in them than anyone else. I would say most are indifferent.

As an aside I want to address the issue of sexually predatory “grooming gangs,” some of whose members were British citizens of Pakistani origin. This is an issue of which many of your readers are keenly interested and may be held up by some as a counterpoint to what I’ve stated above. This phenomenon does not reflect some universal truth about race war, and it also is not a product of Islam which by its law harshly punishes such offenses. It’s about gangsterism and cultural decline in the post-industrial wastes of northern England, and has many parallels in other parts of the world where the variables at play are entirely different. A civilized society would respond to such an outrage with what God prescribes, upholding the command to maintain justice on Earth and sending an unforgettable deterrent message to those who would engage in such crimes in future.

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.

Thank you. So true!

Finish this sentence: "He is even worse than a Jew, he is, may Allah forgive me for uttering this word, a/an ------------"

There is no way I can answer such a question appropriately so I’m just going to say it: Journalist.

Maz can be found collecting fat paycheques at The Intercept and stealing my tweets @MazMHussain.

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Historically, my encounters with English women tend to all go the same way: they are very drunk and loud, belligerent, but still make themselves easily available. It’s usually after around 10 minutes that we realize that we are in the market for other goods and she will angrily tell me that she only is interested in sexy black men anyway, while I explain to them that Winston Churchill was a war criminal.

This time was no exception. I met a very fake-tanned Mary Harrington at Gatwick Airport, already drunk with her female friends even though it was only 6:10am. They were on their way to Magaluf, or parts thereabout. Mary reluctantly took the time to sit with me for this interview before boarding her flight.

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It's late May 1997, and you and your lot are on your way to South Croydon to check out a set by LTJ Bukem (because one of your male suitors liked to read Select Magazine and thought that the idea of "Progressive Drum and Bass" sounded very cool, even though it was absolute dross in retrospect).  You are wearing very colourful and loud baggy jeans that are three sizes too large for your thin frame, a too tight baby-tee, that ridiculous oversized chain from your belt buckle to your back pocket, and a whistle around your neck.  The MDMA threatens to kick in just a bit too soon, but that's okay....you can handle whatever comes your way.  After all, you have been granted acceptance into Oxford and are looking to celebrate joining the elite of Cool Britannia.  Your girlfriends are rather bourgeois in their tastes: secretly enjoying The Spice Girls and wanting to snog the foppish Hugh Grant.  Not for you, Mary.  After all, you are a Steiner Girl, the product of a robust education.  For you, it has to be a man of wit and intellect.....of elegance and charm….a father figure.  For Mary Harrington, it's Stephen Fry.  How crushed were you when the man of your dreams went on to marry his own son?

Not nearly as crushed as you will be to discover that 1) I went to my first rave in 1998, after arriving at Oxford, and that it wasn’t drum n’ bass at all but the far more cringe psychedelic trance; also 2) my most persistent teenage crush was not Stephen Fry but Axl Rose, which is even more cringe (though by no means my most cringe crush ever, which is so cringe I will never divulge, least of all to you); and 3) by my late teens I was a permanently scowling skinhead with multiple piercings who read Nietzsche in the bath, so no one invited me anywhere, let alone to an LTJ Bukem set in South Croydon.

You are, admittedly, a Horse-Girl.  You belong to the Horsey Set.  This has immense ramifications and allows for all sorts of wild speculation.  We will be discussing pipelines (and slippery slopes) later in this interview, but I cannot help to bring up the Horse-Girl-to-Journalist Pipeline as you must be at least the fifth example that I have now encountered.  Does sitting up high on a horse lead directly to the smug, self-satisfaction that is required to be a part of the Disinformation Class?  Can men compete?

Being a rugged Central European, you may not be aware that in England there are in fact two kinds of Horse Girl. The sort you describe is Type 1, the Pony Club type: all coltish legs and aristocratic cheekbones, a generous clothing allowance and a mummy with a Range Rover who drives them to Hunter Trials. If you’re currently having sordid thoughts about Horse Girls, I guarantee you’re having them about a Type 1.

The Type 2 Horse Girl is not like that at all. She’s deeply socially awkward, and feels like she’s doing adolescence all wrong. She works unpaid every Saturday at the local stables, ostensibly in exchange for lessons but really so she can spend all day with animals rather than having to talk to anyone. She may graduate to sharing the care of a horse with another Type 2. If she didn’t live near a riding stables, the Type 2 Horse Girl of my youth would be into Huggy Bear and self-harm; today she’d be into Phoebe Bridgers and identifying as non-binary. I hope I’ve made my meaning clear by now.

If the journos you’re thinking of sailed gracefully from Oxford (via a leg-up from a close relative) to a career writing fun, frothy pieces about wedding shoes or being sick on your glamorous godmother, they were probably Type 1 Horse Girls. I was a Type 2, and never imagined I’d end up falling accidentally into journalism aged 40, after 20 years in the copywriting salt-mines and a stint as a stay-at-home mum.

"The beauty of the English Rose shall never perish from this Earth."  I think I've mangled a line from poetry or literature, or have combined a few into something new.  Regardless of which is true, we must march on.  Back in the early days of the internet, there was this Front Hole Person who would irritate many of us footie fans discussing the English Premiership.  She claimed to be the 'most well-known female Spurs (Tottenham, a team in Northern London) fan in the world".  Naturally, no one listened to her nor paid attention to her when she discussed the game.  But she did leave us with one bit of insight: when discussing the beauty of the English Rose, she explained to us that English women all have proper and lovely bits, but when you put them together the end product is rather lacking.  This is what is now known as the "Bongland 10".  The Bongland 10 is completely unaware/oblivious as to how ridiculous she looks in public when she tarts herself up to Slapper perfection.  Yet she has an iron will and determination to show off her lady parts to all comers, and a level of self-confidence that even Ronaldo could never achieve.  Can you illustrate her to us in terms of class, economics, and culture?

Not sure I can contribute much to the anthropology of the Bongland 10 that Alex Kaschuta didn’t already cover. Regardless, I’ll add a few speculative points from the deep cultural history of these islands. Recall that the Anglo character is a hybrid, formed from successive invasions of these islands first by Saxons, then Vikings, then Normans. Now, imagine being an ordinary young woman under these conditions: minding your own business while fully expecting yet another wave of bloodthirsty nutjobs to swarm over the horizon tomorrow. Under those conditions your priority will be having fun while you can, and (sometimes) making the best of terrible sex.

Before I get vigorously cancelled for implying that British women secretly want to be ravaged by tall, warlike Scandi types made swole by rowing and battle (a wholly implausible idea) I’ll suggest a second archetypal form of the Bongland 10: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. She’s been married several times, her husbands all seem to pre-decease her for some reason, and she’s now having a blast going on the 14th century equivalent of cruise holidays and generally not being bossed about. The Wife of Bath is the rightful Pokemon evolution of the Bongland 10: a cheerful no-nonsense woman in middle age, who likes sex, does what she wants, and takes no crap from anyone.

In summary then: the Bongland 10 has tap-roots deep into the cultural history of our islands. The only people who really, truly look down their noses at her are the chinless descendants of England’s Norman aristocracy, who see her as someone with greater capacity to enjoy life (and wear a lime green minidress in horizontal rain while chugging pints from a plastic cup) than they could manage in a trillion years.

HOT SEXXX and the British Class System

Speaking of class: without understanding class dynamics in England, one cannot at all understand the country and its culture.  Yet so, so many foreigners, particularly North Americans, are rather ignorant when it comes to this phenomenon even though it's telegraphed throughout English culture, whether in older literature or plays, or more recently, television, film, and music.  The Pulp song "Common People" immediately comes to my Gen X mind, but it's only one of so, so many examples.  The question that I am trying to route myself towards asking you revolves around what I see as the abdication of the Middle and Upper Middle classes in their traditional role of shepherding the lower English classes who seem to be in social free-fall.  They are becoming (or have become) almost feral.  I think about the grooming gangs of the Midlands and further north, and besides the immigration aspect, there is the largely overlooked element as to why these very, very young teen girls are drinking and drugging with men twice and three times their own age and how they have found themselves in a position to do so?  Where did the controls go?

The basis for my theories about pretty much everything are ‘memes plus material conditions’. I argued here that elites abandoned bourgeois hypocrisy in the 19th century – largely at the instigation of John Stuart Mill – in the sincere belief that liberating people who are too smart to need moral codes would be worth the risk posed by stripping these codes from everyone else.

History rather suggests Mill was wrong, but meanwhile we’ve been left with an elite committed to the moral project of abolishing social norms, while resolutely ignoring (or straightforwardly economically benefiting from) the carnage resulting among people less well-equipped than they are to externalise social costs or mitigate unexpected negative side-effects.

If that’s the meme, on material conditions my suspicion is that mass media is a key factor in this process. And mass media destroyed elite paternalism by ripping away the veil of aristocratic mystery: after all, the ruling class never lives up to whatever moral code they’re busy imposing on the rest of us. They’ve always fornicated, always lied, always stolen. That doesn’t make the moral code itself less important; but when there’s a national press (or, now, internet) there to point out every time they’re hypocrites, it’s much harder to sustain the faith that our supposed moral betters actually abide by whatever they’re telling us all to do.

Where do we go from here? One possibility is the emergence of an elite that simply doesn’t care when they’re called on their hypocrisy. Last week’s Met Gala pictures suggest this is already happening. Whether we have much time for the morals they’re now handing down is another question.

A culture of Pleasure Maximization seems to be dominant in your country.  Yet pleasure and joy are two very different concepts that might seem similar to a young person, but with maturity comes the realization that they are not.  Dopamine, particularly dopamine receptors, are central to pleasure.  You have previously discussed what you term the "Dopamine Machine" and how we are increasingly slaves to it.

One focus of user experience design is hacking the brain’s reward centres, leveraging the dopamine hit of each positive response so we stay hooked and compulsively engaging with social media platforms. I have very few vices left these days, but one I still haven’t kicked is smartphone doomscrolling. I’d love to have the moral strength to buy a ‘dumb phone’ but I just can’t do it yet. I’m too hooked. Twitter occupies almost exactly the same niche for me as smoking once did.

Pervasive internet porn is the most intense, parasitic and exploitative form of the dopamine-industrial complex. When you engage with it, you don’t just get a dopamine hit, you get an actual orgasm. The rewiring is speedy and powerful: Pascal Gobry has written about its neurobiological effects, and they are not pretty. ‘Dopamine fasting’ has been reported as a trend among tech bros, in the name of greater agency and self-mastery. In my view the #nofap guys are doing the same thing, albeit further down the social hierarchy.

And it’s no coincidence that a culture of self-indulgence that wants us all in hock to the dopamine machine paints the #nofappers as morally suspect losers. But they aren’t losers. They’re pushing heroically back against the entire massed weight of a culture of dissolution, in pretty much the only way left an ordinary guy: asserting their freedom to decline the offer of slavery to the dopamine machine.

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The liberalization of sex since the Sexual Revolution has created a saturated market, albeit a rather lopsided one in which a small percentage of males are hoarding the vast bulk of heterosexual intercourse (while gay men now live in a pharma-backed and state-subsidized culture of plenty).  The commodification of the individual has allowed for 'sex positivity' to gain acceptance, and 'sex work' alongside it.  Moral restrictions have fallen to the wayside, and borders blurred.  For instance, you detail the Instagram-to-OnlyFans Pipeline, a slippery slope of sorts.

Yet you also claim that there is a rise of 'sex negativity' among teenage girls.  This is no doubt in reaction to what you have described above.  RETVRN (to Tradition) is a meme, and we can never go home, but public morality has been historically shown to be cyclical in nature.

Your girl for discussing the coming sexual counterrevolution is Katherine Dee, aka Default Friend, who’s been documenting this for some time. But I made a small contribution here with the argument that the sexual revolution is (as ever) meme plus material conditions. After all, the 1960s was not the first period in history where there’s been a push for looser sexual morals. But the key difference was the availability of reliable contraception: a material change that for the first time ever allowed sexual behaviour to be uncoupled from its biological consequences, thus unprecedentedly enabling women to have sex like men.

Two things have since become increasingly apparent: Firstly, this revolution didn’t (as some hoped) result in a free-form flourishing of polymorphous sensuality that would liberate all of us for neverending jouissance. Sex is too visceral and important for that. The first Playboy club opened within a year of the Pill being legalised: sex was promptly re-instrumentalised by the market, and its so-called ‘liberation’ can be more accurately described as a death-blow to those social norms that had previously defended sexuality from commerce. A friend recently told me that when she confessed to her boomer mum that she once worked as a cam girl, her mum just applauded her for managing to extract some value from men. The logical endpoint of this dynamic is the pornographic dopamine machine, which hurts both men and women in different and complementary ways.

Secondly, women have increasingly realised that reordering sex to commerce – or just fucking around in the style of the most lubricious men – is a poor fit for women’s evolved preferences and actual life priorities (the majority of us still want kids, despite what the NYT wants you to believe). Despite all the best efforts of pill-pushers, boomers, porn barons, Vogue and Cosmo and all the rest of it, a majority of women still yearn for tender lovemaking and long-term partnership and babies. (I suspect a majority of men actually do as well.) Add it all up, and we’re starting to see a backlash against ‘sex-positivity’ in favour of interpersonal intimacy. In my view this is good and necessary, though it will almost certainly over-correct and bring its own unexpected costs.

Portion of the Interview Where I Hand Mary the Shovel To Dig Her Own Grave

Your sisters in the USA have not managed to put up a fight against the Trans Movement like you and your fellow Brits have done so up until this point in time.  British Feminists have battled so viciously against this new trend that the UK has been christened "TERF Island".  The arguments for and against on both sides of the Atlantic mirror one another, but why have British Feminists been able to push back harder in comparison to Americans?

As ever: memes plus material conditions. A number of factors feed into the uniqueness of Terf Island, not least the fact that American-style individualism is what you get when there’s a Protestant revolution but no one reins in its excesses with a dose of royal restoration and (after a bit more arguing) constitutional monarchy. Or to put it another way, when I look at the vulnerability of a culture built on radical individualism to frankly unhinged ideas about our capacity to self-define radically in opposition even to our own bodies, I’ve never been more glad we booted the Puritans out.

But it’s not just that England managed to whip the really loony Nonconformists into shape a little, or just evict them. Our legal and cultural environment is very different to America. For one thing, Terf Island has ‘Prosecco 4Chan’, also known as Mumsnet, a forum where Britain’s women congregate after graduating from life as a Bongland 10 into the sunny uplands of motherhood. Being the spiritual descendants of the Wife of Bath, this group of course has little time for dumb shit like the claim that ‘woman’ is an inner feeling and nothing to do with dangly bits.

We also have the Equality Act, which (for all its faults) helps to defang some of the more extreme activism, not least by defining ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘sex’ separately as protected characteristics. And the financial and medical incentives for escalating adoption of gender medicine are different within insurance-based and socialised healthcare systems.

Where medical care is insurance-based, there’s an obvious incentive by providers to keep expanding the scope of provision, and the complexity of treatments; where it’s taxpayer-funded, the opposite incentive applies. So it’s not a coincidence that the approach to youth gender medicine is considerably more cautious in countries where healthcare is funded out of taxation. This isn’t to say the NHS doesn’t have plenty of flaws – it does – but in this respect at least its systemic instincts are quite conservative. 

Is it true that there is a "Nazi to Trans Activist" pipeline.  Is this a wild exaggeration to draw attention to TERF arguments?  Or is there something actually here that almost everyone is not privy to?

I’ve only actually seen one former Nazi memelord embrace life as a trans rights activist, though I’ve heard of others. I suspect people who go for one form of deranged Very Online subculture are often prone to ping-ponging between them all, sometimes at great speed. Anyway, all internet rabbit-holes eventually lead to sissy hypnoporn, so maybe it’s not just the Nazis who end up there.

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I have tried to put myself in the shoes of feminists these past few years, and what I see is major advances for the cause (whether you believe these advances are positive or negative is irrelevant to the point here) that have been sandbagged by law and culture, only to see them threatened by a meteor-like event in the form of Trans Activism.  Everything that has been achieved can now so easily be upended and overturned by biological men with a chip on their shoulder and with all sorts of hormones injected into their bodies.  TERFs, in particular, now find themselves de facto on the side of many reactionaries when it comes to gender and sexual relations, a situation that very few saw coming.  The biggest threat comes from Gender Ideology and what you refer to as "Meat Lego".

Trying to classify the arguments we’re having in the biotech age in ‘left’ and ‘right’ boxes is meaningless, because it’s all biopolitics now and the old boxes simply don’t make sense any more. The key emerging fight, as I see it, is between bio-libertarians and bio-realists. Bio-libertarians think, broadly speaking, that there should be no limits whatsoever on our right to manipulate the natural world, whether ‘out there’ via burning up natural resources, strip-mining, weather engineering or whatever, or ‘in there’ via remodelling animal or human bodies. Bio-realists assert rather that there are indeed natural limits, that we as organisms exist in dialogue with those limits, and that we should build our culture with half an eye on them both at micro and macro scale.

The contours of this fight are only gradually becoming clear, but the most extreme bio-libertarians are those transhumanists who want to re-imagine humans as beings of pure identity, and our bodies as meat to be remodelled at will. I describe this vision as ‘Meat Lego Mindset’, and it’s increasingly clear that this worldview is bad news for women.

If you see no natural limits to meddling with the human organism obviously you’ll want to kick off by meddling with growing new lives, which is very much women’s beat at present. And once you go there, you’re into the terrain of extra-uterine gestation, using women as spare parts for uterus transplants into trans-identified males, commercial surrogacy and other delightful phenomena all of which seem to me less than ideal for many of the women involved.

As I mentioned above, TERFs now find themselves in a de facto alliance with icky reactionaries, much like how classic liberals do as well as they perceive radicals from the left threatening their core principles.  The temptation of hard rightists such as myself is to let feminists (and classic liberals) reap what they have sown.  You have gone many steps further and now describe yourself as a 'reactionary feminist', going so far as to writing a book that makes the 'feminist case for patriarchy'.  What is the case?  How much of this is a reaction to the Trans Movement?  How responsible are the various strands of feminism for your reactionary turn?  How big of an impact did getting married and having a child make on your political and philosophical development?  You were a radical lefty in your 20s.

On ‘reactionary’, I borrowed that boo-word to describe myself after a lengthy argument with a friend over the political value of the term ‘post-liberal’. At the end of this argument I concluded that my friend was right, and in truth a ‘post-liberal’ is just a reactionary who doesn’t inhale. What ‘reactionary’ actually means as a political programme is harder to define; for me it functions mostly as provocation and placeholder, and if you ask me to be more specific I’ll quote the most literate reactionary of all, the Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila: “The pure reactionary is not a dreamer of abolished pasts, but a hunter of sacred shades on the eternal hills.”

But as well as being a placeholder, I use ‘reactionary’ to state two things: firstly that I don’t believe in progress, and secondly that (as ‘reactionary’ modifies feminism) I don’t believe there’s such a thing as ‘patriarchy’. Or to put it another way, I think the phenomena characterised as ‘patriarchy’ exist, and have often been rubbish for women, but they’re not evidence of some eternal animus of the bepenised for the be-uterus’d. It’s (again) memes plus material conditions: and the core material condition in this case is the reproductive asymmetry of male and female humans and the different pressures (including evolutionary ones) that places us under.

The book I’m now working on discusses all this at greater length. I did briefly consider titling it ‘The Feminist Case for Patriarchy’, though I’m just not enough of a troll to follow through on that, so the working title is now Feminism Against Progress. But inasmuch as I want to make the case for seeing both female- and male-coded social norms throughout history in terms of memes plus material conditions (rather than as trans-historical outworkings of some colossal anti-female conspiracy theory), I suppose it will end up being at least in part an argument for a more charitable reading of some phenomena routinely dismissed as ‘patriarchal’.

I also think we’ve run out of road where it comes to pursuing women’s political interests independent of, or in opposition to men. If we’re to get out of the atomised mess we’re now in, we need to work cooperatively across the sexes to figure out a new settlement capable of resisting the biolibertarians now hard at work installing cyborg theocracy over our heads. We can’t do that if we’re still having stupid arguments about whether or not men gathering away from the presence of women constitutes ‘toxic masculinity’.

As regards leaving the feminists to stew in their own juice, you’re not the first person from your corner of the political compass to say something along the lines of ‘you made your bed ladies, now lie in it’. You’ll hear no dissent from me on the view that much of what’s currently bedevilling feminists is itself the mutant spawn of feminism, and specifically of the mid-century effort to separate ‘sex’ from ‘gender’ in the interests of prying women’s social role away from the presumption that our capacity to birth and raise children was actually an obligation to do so.

But leaving feminists to ‘reap what they sow’ would also be the most colossal self-own. Because what’s happening now is much bigger than just a few feminists getting (as you might view it) their come-uppance. I argued here that the drive to give legal standing to gender self-identification is a wedge campaign for a far more wide-reaching effort to abolish the idea of human nature as such, and mostly serves the bio-libertarian political interests of people who stand to gain from re-engineering human bodies.

That might be biotech firms, or it might be the kind of people who think it’s a great idea to reduce human carbon emissions by genetically engineering humans to be allergic to meat so we’re all happy in the pod eating bugs. Either way, a necessary precondition for embarking on such projects is getting rid of the idea that there’s anything natural, normative or unchangeable about the human body, and the easiest place to start with that is by convincing people that biological sex is an oppressive construct.

More plainly, my view is that trans rights is a deregulatory drive directly comparable to what happened in Big Finance in the 1980s. It’s transhumanism wearing civil rights as a skin suit. If it succeeds, the ramifications will affect all of us. So yeah, I suppose you and your hard-right friends could stand there cheering on the rollout of cyborg theocracy, to own the feminists, but don’t then complain when the bioengineers come for your kids as well.

Right now, whether or not you agree with the TERFs about why biolibertarianism is a bad thing, a handful of radical feminists are Horatius keeping the bridge. If we don’t want Rome overrun by Assyrians, or in this case human-machine hybrids who think treble-masking toddlers is an act of love, I’d say it’s probably more urgent to provide military support and throw down later about whether or not patriarchy is a thing.

You also claim that there is a 'war on love'.  Who here is pitted against whom?  Is this a conscious war?  How is it conducted?

I said ‘war on relationships’ rather than on ‘love’, though in a sense of ‘love’ conceived more widely than just the sexual kind I guess they’re not so different. vIn the heuristic of ‘memes plus material conditions’, in this case the meme is independent selfhood and the key material condition is the internet.

I wrote here about what I call ‘Aella’s Law’, which is to say the power law internet platforms impose on all social forms, stripping away interpersonal structures and institutions and radically centralising both network connections and network benefits. Over the last two decades this power law has gradually overtaken a range of social institutions under the banner of ‘disintermediation’. But the imposition of lockdowns and other restrictions on interpersonal interaction over the last year and a half has radically accelerated the rollout of Aella’s Law across areas of social life that had previously resisted it: churches, local groups, and so on.

Whether it’s calculated or not, the cumulative effect has been a relentless war of attrition on all the ways in which we depend on one another, derive meaning from our relationships to one another, and create shared meaning in collaboration with one another. What increasingly seems to replace these distributed forms of meaning-making is individuals either hyper-focused on a brittle self-created form identity (imagined as independent of others’ perceptions), or else politics as a form of self-expression, focused only on the very biggest scale which as ordinary plebs we can only participate in emptily and without clear political objectives.

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Mary on Liberalism and Post-Liberalism

I recently profiled your very, very provocative essay on Satanism, in which you conclude that it is simply the logical end point of liberalism in that it elevates the individual and his or her earthly desires, absent any duty, above that of the collective.  You also trace this to the Protestant Reformation.  People gave me shit for not pushing back on this.

I’m amused by the idea that it might be me, a mild-mannered facepoasting mum from the Shires, who manages to get you, a notorious Right Wing Twitter Anon, somehow cancelled by an angry moral majority. But yes: my thesis is that modern Satanism is hard to distinguish from the culture in general because a liberalism that rejects grounding in anything greater than selfhood is profoundly Satanic.

You and I may differ in our views on gay and lesbian equality – in my view it’s legitimate for people in same-sex relationships to want to be left alone to live prosocial lives of bourgeois respectability. But I suspect we converge again in our views on what the ‘Pride’ movement has become. That is to say, not the once-modest case for extending bourgeois respectability to include people like my late great-aunt, a staunch Tory and lifelong public servant who lived a blameless existence in Suffolk with her ‘friend’ of many decades, a soft-spoken hairdresser who bore a strong resemblance to Margaret Thatcher. It’s morphed from this into an increasingly pseudo-religious celebration of individual self-definition and pride in all its forms: a profoundly Satanic nexus that now has its own religious symbol (the rainbow flag) and a month-long sacred feast of selfhood every summer.

Anna Khachiyan says that "we are all liberals now", and I think she makes a strong point.  You instead claim that all politics now is post-liberal.  What do you mean by that?

Obviously I can’t speak for Anna but I suspect that to state ‘we are all liberals now’ is not so different from stating that all politics is post-liberal. Because to be a liberal is to presume something from which we can be liberated; if we’re all liberals, but the liberatory mechanism is still running, then inevitably it’ll turn to liberating us from liberalism itself. All politics is now post-liberal, and all post-liberalism turns out to be different flavours of biopolitics.

I think you can see this post-liberal biopolitics taking a few competing turns at the moment. The subset of conservatism that usually gets called ‘post-liberal’ is in most cases tepid social conservatism with a side order of big-state intervention. In other words, largely tweed-wearing Chesterton-pilled hobbit fantasy. I had some hopes for this vision pre-pandemic, but witnessing what’s happened since early 2020 I’m not sure it has such a great prognosis.

Elsewhere, the steppe-fantasies common among your egg-slonking brethren are another post-liberal vibe. And so is the High Modernist flavoured technocracy favoured by Benjamin Bratton and his monstrous cyborg hive, where human ‘caring’ is re-framed as the act of voluntarily refraining from any intimate contact with others so we can all hygienically interface with the platforms that order and surveil us.

One of my main themes these past few years is how liberalism has taken a rather authoritarian turn, in which the concept of democracy is increasingly defined more narrowly by the powers-that-be, to exclude those who values and policies they reject, even if they engage in what we once accepted as liberal democracy.  You have instead focused on 'democracy-like rituals'.

Democracy is screwed, because parents have long since lost interest in raising the kind of children that make functional democratic subjects. You have to be able to withstand a bit of schoolyard bullying to develop the resilience needed for the kind of debate that’s foundational to democracy, and we put a lot of effort into making sure children never experience that. Studies have shown kids raised by helicopter parents are much more likely to prefer governance that’s both therapeutic and authoritarian, and this isn’t really surprising when you think about it. Enough of the kids raised in this way are now adults that it’s starting to move the needle politically.

Also, as David Runciman said in How Democracy Ends, “the information technology revolution has completely altered the terms on which democracy must operate.” If I were feeling really gloomy I’d argue that the tilt away from democracy having any meaningful force began the moment the franchise became universal, as that’s also the point where ever-greater areas of governance started to be outsourced to permanent bureaucracies and thus removed from direct contact with the political process.

A related line of questioning might wonder whether there’s any way round this, given that governing a modern state is simply too complex for even elected politicians to have a very useful grasp of what’s going on, let alone a largely politically disengaged regular voter.

In any case, between the rise of the internet, the bleeding-away of political agency into de-politicised technocracies, and preference of helicopter-parented millennials for cuddly totalitarianism, democracy is toast. This is a done deal; we’re already living in a post-democratic age.

We’re routinely threatened with the spectre of ‘authoritarianism’, always external to our own regime and often, now, conflated with anomalous instances where the democratic process still has an effect on the machinery of power, such as with Brexit. Such events are generally framed as the antithesis of democracy. And post-democracy naturally doesn’t take the form of some kind of overtly authoritarian regime replacing our voting rituals. But the cumulative effect of these trends is that the world is in general more interested in dumb culture war shit, Westminster court politics or voting out the bad dancers on Strictly than it is with getting stuck into dull-but-essential issues like aviation policy or rules of origin regulations for raw meat.

Gen X vs. Gen X

Oasis were shit, except for the first album.  Blur were superior in comparison.  Ride were criminally underrated.  Spiritualized deserve a lot more attention.  Many balked at the packaging of "Britpop", but for me the real crime is that it UK popular music went directly off of a cliff some time around 1998.  So much energy and creativity was there (Portishead, Massive Attack, all those electronic bands and producers), yet it seemed to evaporate like mist.

I date the moment my teens properly started from seeing the Manic Street Preachers live in Hemel Hempstead, before Ritchie went AWOL and they turned into a pound-shop Guns N’ Roses. But it’s baked into the logic of boomer-consumer ‘rebellion’ that everyone sells out in the end. I mean, whatsisface out of Blur is a fucking cheesemaker.

You’re right that the hinge moment where the rebellion-to-sellout half-life started radically shrinking was 1998, because that’s when all the early adopters got internet. But the real moment pop culture died was 2007, when the first iPhone launched and they locked Britney away. That was the year the internet ate reality. The gap between rebellion and sellout has now shrunk to the interval between taking a photo and uploading it. Welcome to post-culture, along with post-democracy. We hope you enjoy your Satanic life of self-creation in the pod. 

Let’s get back to governance for a second. How about we use innovative decentralised digital systems to enable young people to fund cooperative tontine savings and investment pools that build their nest eggs and pay out according to their actuarial fortune in later life, incentivised through the tax code?

I’m a middle-aged Home Counties mum, not a crypto nerd. Ask Indian Bronson.

Then let’s talk about something that you’re much more familiar with. Women have long been taught to be ashamed of their vulvas, with increasing numbers turning to cosmetic surgery in pursuit of genital ‘perfection’. But a new generation is fighting back.

I have nothing to add to your observation except this short video from (when else?) 2007, that perfectly encapsulates both what I think of cosmetic fanny surgery and also where we all now are as a culture.

We are unfortunately all out of time. Off you go to Magaluf, Mary.

Mary can be found wildly flailing about on all topics known to man and woman at the great new(ish) publication, Unherd, where she is a contributing editor. She can also be found @moveincircles.

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This cocksucker took three fucking months to get back to me with his answers to my questions after agreeing to sit with me for this interview. I had to send him increasingly unhinged threats on a daily basis, sometimes several per day, often violent, before he got off of his fat, lazy Jersey ass to submit a series of low-energy answers to my incisive and probing questions. If you feel that this interview is subpar and below the high standard of quality that you are used to from me, it’s because it is all his fault.

“Pest”, “nuisance”, “annoying little shit”. These are all descriptions of Mikey that I received from his mother when I asked her what she thought of her son. It’s quite an amazing coincidence that this is the general sentiment among the public when it comes to his journalism as well.

Known best for confronting older, female politicians by using physical intimidation, Michael Tracey is not afraid to go anywhere in search of a story that has already lost the attention of the public-at-large. A gumshoe reporter, he has travelled America in search of collecting as many ‘Ackshually’ and ‘Gotcha’ anecdotes as possible that allows him to set himself apart from other mainstream journalists (in his own mind). He has surprisingly managed to find an audience all his own, but whether that is due to his skill as a journalist or simply a condition whereby they are engaged in morbid voyeurism is a subject for debate. Michael joins me in Sicily for this Mediterranean Summer interview.

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New York Striploin dinner at the Morton's Steakhouse in Los Angeles and right after we're done I hold Maxine Waters by the arms as you give her body shots to the kidneys and liver.

I disavow.

You are a notorious 'pussy hound'.  You have women in cities all across the country (which is why you choose to be a roving reporter) and are reportedly the secret biological father of Anna Khachiyan's son.  Yet it was not always this way.  Back when you were in your senior year in high school, your first crush rejected you and you went to the manliest man that you could find for advice on how to deal with this devastating blow: your grandfather.  You said "Grandpa, she's the love of my life.  I can't go on without her.  What should I do?"  He immediately slapped you in the face and replied: "YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!"  Taken aback, you were left speechless.  "AT YOUR AGE I WAS BANGING COCKTAIL WAITRESSES TWO AT A TIME!", your grandfather added.

This introductory paragraph you hallucinated may have contributed to why I’ve put off completing your weirdo interview request for quite some time. So let me reiterate my heartfelt apology to you, suspicious internet guy, whose precise identity I’ve never exactly known or cared to discern.

Do you think you have a shot with Tulsi Gabbard?  Think about it: she runs in 2024 and chooses you to be her Press Secretary.  All that time in close quarters plotting strategy and talking points, and the two of you find a chemistry that neither of you have ever felt with anyone else before.  Long walks on the beach on Oahu as she plays the ukelele and the two of you sing "Hanalei Moon" together under the blue moonlight.  You move in a for a kiss and she not only welcomes it, she throws herself at you.  It's 100% consensual and totally not rape.  This is it Mikey, you've made it!  How many times have you played this scenario through in your mind?

I’ve played through this scenario in my mind on innumerable occasions -- except with Joy Reid as the beach-walking ukulele-strumming companion. That gives the fantasy a more overtly sadistic dimension, and thus puts it more in alignment with the depraved desires that live inside me. I also view one of my chief responsibilities as providing sick entertainment to the general public, which would no doubt be accomplished by fostering a loving partnership with Joy.

You have shit taste in music.  I once caught you making a tweet praising some Lady Gaga song unironically.  You're born in '88.  Can't you at least be into LCD Soundsystem or something partially-decent?  Is this because you're a half-Guido from Jersey?  Is your aesthetic sensibility naturally shit because of this?  What I'm really asking is: environment vs. genetics?

I’d just note that I attended what may have in fact been the paradigmatic “half-decent” musical event of 2007 -- a balls-to-the-wall outdoor concert featuring LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire at Randall's Island. Sadly, it appears my indulgence in these presumably “half-decent” offerings did not result in my being afforded the appearance of sagely knowingness that so many others in my peer group achieved on account of their “half-decent” musical tastes. Indeed, our generation was taught that being moved to emotion by the chorus of “All My Friends” for the eight thousandth time is indicative of a searingly incisive political intuition. But I was deprived of this accolade, alas, for reasons that defy easy explanation but may have something to do with my alleged affinity for literal Nazism. I thus gravitated to Gaga out of sheer practicality, reasoning that our shared Italian heritage gave me special insights into the strange workings of commercial culture.

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The Part of the Interview in Which I Pretend to Take Mikey Seriously as a Journalist

Last year, you made the commendable effort of visiting various towns and cities that were affected by last year's #BLM-inspired riots.  Most people simply aren't at all aware of the economic and psychological fallout of what happened to so many communities that were affected as we aren't being told the whole story.  What did we miss as it happened?

There was this paradoxical dynamic, where the protests were heralded in mainstream precincts as the largest and most-far reaching “movement” perhaps in all of American history -- and yet simultaneously, it was furiously denied that the riot component could’ve had a similarly large or far-reaching dimension. From the outset, something was conspicuously askew about whatever logical formulation had gone on there. So my instinct to independently seek information was really an elementary journalistic one. Given the unprecedented eruption of media-induced frenzy during that time, combined with the scope of what was purportedly happening, it was clear that simply following along from afar would provide only an extremely filtered view of the actual impact. That happens frequently in journalism and life -- you always want as much primary source info as you get your wet, greasy hands on. But in the case of this story, I had the perhaps unique means, desire, and capacity to simply set out on a trek with the intention of acquiring as much primary source info as possible. No institutional pressures hindered me from doing this, unlike others in media -- many of whom I received exasperated, envious private messages from. Also unlike the generic media member, average citizens kindly send me $$$ with the expectation that I’ll do whatever is reasonably in my capacity to fill informational voids. And so that’s what I did. The simplicity of the endeavour seems incongruous with the amount of attention it received, but that just speaks to the size of the informational void. My peculiar life situation also made it such that there would be no one directly inconvenienced by the fact of me going around the country and chronicling protest/riot fallout. So I autistically spent two months in my car doing that.

While you dicked around in your Mazda Miata, did you get a sense that the authentic grassroots Black community concerns with local policing somehow got shoved aside by bigger and more powerful players who used Chauvin/Floyd for their drive to remove Trump from office?  I've seen criticism along these lines from Black community leaders, but usually in media that is nowhere near mainstream.

The foundation-funded nonprofit activism complex produces public figures who claim to speak on behalf of particular constituencies, but by mere fact of having ascended through that complex, the figures become far removed from said constituencies. This was made all the more evident to me in my interactions with “normie” Blacks regarding their attitudes toward the protests/riots. Most were understandably focused on how protest/riot activity had diminished their immediate quality of life, i.e. caused their neighbourhood stores to be shuttered or destroyed. Typically, they were on some level still sympathetic with the underlying cause, but they generally weren’t fans of the attendant chaos, and didn’t convey whatever sympathetic views they held in anywhere near the same kind of zealous terms often on display in the media. Right-wing media also erred in vastly overstating the extent to which disillusionment with the excesses of the protests/riots would automatically translate to support for Trump. Because, as I’ve said many times, Trump was widely viewed as an agent of chaos in his own right. That’s a big reason why his hardcore supporters claimed they backed him in the first place, correct? Accordingly, right-wing pundit dreams of a pro-Trump post-riot groundswell were negated by Minnesota trending substantially more Democratic in the 2020 election, including in counties that were most riot-affected.

#DefundThePolice quickly spread like wildfire but one must ask: what did locals who survived the riots feel about this campaign?  What has been the effect of reduced policing in these cities?

I was just in Philadelphia to do a bit of reportorial poking around, given that the city is on track to break its all-time homicide record this year. One thing you hear almost universally when talking to police sources is that there’s been a marked uptick in officer retirements, and that this accounts for much of the homicide surge. That is their primary explanation. Might it be self-serving? Sure -- public sector employees are always likely going to have a built-in motivation to justify their existence, and one way to do that is to insist that your absence produces murderous violence. But it’s also their sincerely held view that diminishing police “visibility” leads to violent and/or disruptive crime, and there’s at least some data which does bear this theory out.

Is there tension within urban communities now?  You alluded to some between Black and Somali Americans in Minneapolis.  Are there class elements at play as well?

On the last day of a one-year-Floyd-anniversary trip I took to Minneapolis in April, there was a homicide in which a Somali store clerk was shot dead by an “ADOS” black suspect. It was one of those ethnic hub type “General Stores” where you can go in and get almost anything, from sketchy mobile phone plans to information on how to book travel for the Hajj. An old campaign poster of Ilhan Omar was still hanging on the window. It was relayed to me by Somalis that “ADOS” blacks were viewed as having a vendetta against Somalis, because Somalis allegedly receive undue benefits from the government. I think you see similar resentments fester in other ethnic contexts. Alec MacGillis has argued that such tensions emerge within ethnic groups and within classes based on grievances, real or perceived, that certain members of those groups are morally inferior and manipulate programs like disability insurance.

Michael Tracey: Hero to Neo-Nazi Scum and QAnon Insurrectionists

You have attracted a significant right-wing fanbase over these past few years as you have not held firm to the lines within which discourse is accepted.  Here is your chance to alienate some of them by criticizing Donald Trump's performance as POTUS.  Many of us were aware of his personality and ego prior to his political ascent, but held onto the 5% chance that he might be able to smash enough of the system while in power to allow for necessary reforms.  Where in your opinion did he go wrong?  And what of Trumpistas post-Trump?

I guess “smashing the system” was never really defined except as an affectation or posture. Approximately 90% of the institutional Republican Party ended up being stalwartly pro-Trump, which was mostly a re-branding exercise with some tentative ideological adjustments around the margins. Why would Republican elites “smash a system” in which they are personally and professionally invested? The biggest tell that this wasn’t going to happen was in how easily the party influence network (donors, lobbyists, operatives, think tanks) accommodated itself to Trump. I think you would’ve needed more genuine intra-party conflict (based on real issues, not personal fidelity to Trump) in order for a bona fide realignment to come about. Instead standard partisanship kicked into overdrive, fuelled in large part by anti-Trump fanaticism (“Resistance”)….and a partisan slugfest is a comfortable place for most politicians, including Trump, to be in. There was a brief window of opportunity for Trump to govern without much care for the priorities of the GOP professional class, given that they opposed him during the 2016 primaries and many even abandoned him on the eve of the general election. But he did his version of a “go along to get along” thing, probably because “smashing the system” in his mind was accomplished by mere fact of him personally being in office and tweeting. Today he bashes Mitch McConnell but with few fleeting exceptions, didn't govern in a way that was at all incompatible with Mitch McConnell’s priorities. To the contrary, McConnell expertly used Trump as a vehicle to enact his priorities.

On the other side, where did Bernie fuck up?  It seems that his 2016 campaign was superior to that of 2020.  My friend Aimee Terese (she has a solid and sizable rack) insists that it's because it was hijacked by the PMC (Professional Managerial Class).  How much truth is there to this?

The post-2016 revolution in social attitudes amongst a class of people one might designate as “PMC” seems to have severely hampered the 2020 Sanders campaign. One example cited in my May 2020 article with Angela Nagle that appeared in American Affairs was how the South Carolina Bernie campaign apparatus ended up crippled by internal dissension relating to a slew of convoluted #MeToo style allegations. “#MeToo style allegations” have gotten so vague that they’ve come to encompass even allegations of general bullying or obstreperousness. If every allegation of this kind must be “Taken Seriously” and “Listened To,” that’s going to decrease the amount of bandwidth dedicated to things like figuring out how to actually win elections. You saw a version of this in miniature with the comically non-specific allegations of abusive conduct which doomed the left-wing NYC mayoral candidate Dianne Morales, and of course Scott Stringer was also felled by comparably dubious accusations. The point is that the new ethos requires giving total credence to the feelings of people with severe personality disorders and bizarre neuroses. How you can run an operable campaign under those circumstances is anyone’s guess.

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Neither the left nor the right are monolithic in your country as there are quite a few factions on each side.  There is a disaffected right and a disaffected left.  Is there potential in your view for cross-aisle collaboration between the two on the national level?  Or are the differences between the two simply too great?

There’s long been issue-specific collaboration of this sort. I used to talk to Ralph Nader a lot about it, and that was ten years ago now; I can attest to plenty of private left-right “populist” engagement happening. But whether that kind of cross-factional collaboration could ever materialize into something more formal and tangible, like a political party, seems highly doubtful given the gravitational pull of both Left and Right, wherein everything would inevitably be overshadowed by the latest Culture War bloodletting.

On Today’s Mainstream Journalism

I think that it's fair to say that there has been no greater journalistic malpractice than RussiaGate.  It was far, far worse than the run up to the Iraq War which was bad enough itself.

I actually wrote a column for an Indian newspaper in 2019 on the parallels between the media failure associated with the Iraq War and the media failure associated with Russiagate. That it appeared in an Indian newspaper maybe gives some insight into the lack of appetite for any kind of substantial domestic “reckoning” on that issue.

The lack of professional accountability combined with the move from attempted objectivity to out-and-out advocacy journalism bodes ill for the profession.  Have we hit the nadir yet?  Or is there still a long way to go?  We are now in the state where journalists are of the view that harsh criticism of their reporting/writing is tantamount to 'violence'.  It's almost as if they seek to create rules (and possibly laws) that will insulate them from criticism and would in effect create another protected class, one that is little more than a stenographer for acceptable social, cultural, and political views.

I only think it bodes ill for the profession when it’s done unethically. Here is a recent Substack article where I outline my views on exactly this question. Please reference that in lieu of a more extensive answer here, so I can finally rid myself of this interview.

Who should we be reading?

The back of cereal boxes.

Low-Effort Answer.

Michael Tracey Answering More Questions in Between Snorting Lines of Cocaine Paid For By His Substack Subscribers

What about Rania Khalek?  I used to think about nailing her all the time before someone on Twitter told me that she's only five feet tall!  WTF?  Where does she get the balls to be so short???  What a debacle!  I would think about taking her out, some top notch restaurant, way above the dives you take your women across the country, and during dinner drink wine with her while I nod along and pretend to take her views on politics seriously.  Meanwhile, all I would be actually thinking about is what I would do to her if she was at least 5'6".  "Yeah, yeah Rania...you're right.  What the CIA did in Guyana...ummm, Bolivia, was just so, so wrong.  Yeah.  What you're saying is soooo true.  Totally.  I really, really respect your views on US foreign policy.  Oh, I'm sorry....was I not looking at your face?  I'm so, so sorry.  Can you believe what's going on in Gaza?"

Another hallucinatory outburst on your part which in theory could have dissuaded me from filling out this fake questionnaire. But I press on.

Do you consider yourself somewhat autistic?  Are you on the spectrum?  You do engage in humour on Twitter but it is rather obvious and somewhat mechanical.  Do you have an appreciation for the absurd and silly?  Or are you just too much of a rationalist?

Do you ever get the sense that people who routinely accuse others of being autistic are themselves rather odd, and perhaps not the most socially well-adjusted? I think some folx just don’t like their pablum and pieties being dissected online, and when somebody exhibits an adeptness at doing so, they rattle off the “autism” accusation to suggest there’s something psychosomatically abnormal about their antagonist. On the other hand, I did spend an inordinate amount of time on internet forums as an adolescent, and perhaps that’s intrinsically autistic. As penance for my delayed response to your weirdo interview request, I guess I’ll give you the riveting, exclusive scoop that I do have a girlfriend -- so maybe that will scramble widespread presuppositions about my alleged “autism”? Or not. Should I just put Proudly Autistic in my Twitter bio and see what happens?

I definitely think that you should.

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.

Thanks for this. I will ponder it seriously. By which I mean, I will instantly forget whatever it is you just said here and never think about it again.

All of us are pulling for you, Mikey.  You do great work and you so often get soooo close to dangerous thoughts but always pull back from the brink.  We're cheering you on.

What I enjoy about you mysterious online multi-layered reactionary guys is that you always seem so highly impressed with yourselves for possessing supposedly “dangerous thoughts,” as though the “dangerous thoughts” of @CryptoFrogPrince69 or whoever aren’t trivially accessible to everyone with an internet connection. You’re aware that most modestly-attuned people in the media, Silicon Valley, etc. know who Moldbug is, right?

I interviewed Moldbug, you shit.

I think the air of a snide “forbidden fruit” mentality you project must function as a useful in-group cohesion mechanism though, so I guess I can’t be too judgmental. We all need some collective social reinforcement. In any event, “all of you” shouldn’t feel obliged to “pull” anything for me, except perhaps my leg, given your predilection for good-natured joshing.

We're on your side, Mikey.  Jesus loves you.  Accept Christ in your heart and you will become the Edward R. Murrow of the 21st century.

Yep, that’s definitely what I’ll do. Undergo a sudden religious conversion at the behest of the weirdo fake interviewer.

*tips fedora*

Michael Tracey can be found taking himself very seriously on Twitter (@mtracey) and begging for money from those who take pity on him at his Substack.

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“21st Century Adam Weishaupt” is my standard reply to journalists who ask me how to best describe my lifelong friend Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin. A practitioner of the Ancient and respected trade of Freemasonry (Computer Programming) and intellectually powerful Mischling, his influence on political and philosophical discourse by way of his now-defunct blog “Unqualified Reservations” was so massive that I completely missed its existence.

“Tough guy in leather……the original Sigma Male” is my follow up when media asks me to give more colour to Curtis, or as a I call him, Curt. The dual threat of computer programming and 3am political philosophizing have led many totally sane and completely normal people to try and convince wide swathes of America that he is a dangerous, existential threat to the USA (he is).

Over at his new site, Gray Mirror, Curt (as he likes to be called) has added another weapon in his arsenal: he is the Truffaut of Critical Race Theory, as you will see in this interview below, recently conducted at the Valley of the Temples, in Agrigento Province, Sicily.

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December 6, 1969 - Altamont Speedway, Northern California

A young Curtis "Groovy Curt"Yarvin stands at the side of the stage as Jefferson Airplane is about to start their ill-fated afternoon set.  You became a hippie during the Summer of Love in 1967 in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.  You grew your hair out, wore tie-dye t-shirts, tripped on LSD, enjoyed the buffet of 'free love', and listened to the revolutionary sounds of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Blue Cheer, and The Archies.

Yet by the time of the Manson Murders in August of 1969 you were already disillusioned.  LSD was replaced by speed, turning the scene on edge when it was once happy and free.  Shady characters with rotten, hidden agendas began to take advantage of the liberties inherent to the movement to 'screw' women at will, telling them not to be 'uptight' if they rejected their advances.  And worst of all (for you), The Archies failed to score another hit after "Sugar, Sugar".

All of this was on your mind as you surveyed the scene that fateful afternoon.  Fat women, high on LSD laced with speed, were taking their clothes off and making a run for the stage.  Already twice you were shoved aside by the crowd due to the commotion that this caused.  "Is this what this shit is all about?", you asked yourself.  By the time the Airplane began "The Other Side of This Life", you had had enough.  You reached your breaking point as some hippie flashing a peace symbol told you to 'chill out, brother.  Peace."

You grabbed a pool cue that was left leaning next to one of the speakers and began beating him with it.  It's as if an evil energy had been lifted from the entire scene.  Bob Roberts, Hells Angels San Francisco Chapter President smiled at you and nodded over to his club members to join you in beating the shit out of the hippies with their own handy pool cues.  "All this shit is fake and gay", you thought to yourself.  "It's all fake and gay.  It always has been!"

Having corrected the crowd and having returned order to the scene, Bob Roberts tossed you a leather jacket with the colours and smiled at you and said "You're alright.  Wanna be one of us?"

"I appreciate the offer man, but I can't wear your colors.  I'm a Sigma Male...gotta go my own way."

Bob nodded in understanding and said "I hear 'ya.  But if you ever change your mind, let us know."

You handed him back the patch.  It was at this point that you took off the poncho and donned the Leather and hit the road in search of your next TOP SADIE.  No PECKERWOODS would stand in your way ever again.  "Everything is gonna be COO", you thought to yourself, fully accepting the fate foisted upon you.

Thank you, Nick! 

I'm excited to be here talking to Niccolo Soldo, the itinerant Croatian shepherd who after a bad brush with venereal scrapie moved to Tangier and founded the egregious Salo Forum, named after Pasolini's scatological update of Sade's 100 Days of Sodom, set in the fascist rump state Mussolini created after his rescue by Nazi paratroopers--the notorious Salo Republic. 

As a student of history, dear readers, I know my guineas--and I can assure you that even Pasolini would puke at some of the content this man Soldo tolerates, nay encourages, on his "bulletin board." And as for Mussolini, he would order this man's immediate arrest. Nonetheless, he has talent... Because I am a fag, I asked Nick if, if I answered this first, autobiographical, question in verse, it would be gay. He replied that it would be very gay. Encouraged, I began:

Altamont

Half as what sucks about being old is
FOOS who think you older than you are.
No I was not at the party where Burroughs
Shot his wife; I never drank with Kesey—
Though once, improbably, with Thom Gunn—
I was made in the Seventies; even that jacket,
Which I have actually ridden a bike in,
Only dates to the Eighties; it was my ex’s
Till '96; then her cat, disturbed
By our chaotic living, pissed on it.
We left it out on the balcony in Pacifica
All winter; in the spring she still thought
It smelled, and I didn’t, so… where
Are the singer-songwriters of yesteryear,
Lay dames du tomp jady? Where are you,
Meredith? Elise? Margot, the only woman
Who ever dumped me, not before sharing
The hidden ways of the Brahmin Jews?
Yes, I am old; then, I dated older; now—
All these old women were imperfect forms
Of my wife. And now I too look more
And more every day like an old lesbian.
Anyway, though I was not at Altamont,
As a Critical Race Theorist I of course
Am fascinated by the idea of Race
Memory—the theory, propounded by
Lovecraft, that critic of all races,
That men are born remembering the deeds,
Heroic or vile, of their ancestors; in which case
Yes, I was there, I did those things, more
Or less as described; like Tom Petty,
I was born a rebel; my mother, for
Instance, WAS at Altamont; my father
Looks like and was a red-diaper
Jewish philosophy prof, who as a
Brooklyn youf was asked to join the mob…
I am what I am; my search precedes me
And my jacket protects me. Anyone
Who calls me “Curt” is looking for hurt.

(WTF was that shit? - ed.)

Reductionism, by which I mean the focusing on one event or reason to explain other following events, is lazy thinking.  Yet it does serve its purpose as it helps crystallize thought.  The reasons for why the First World War happened are many, but blaming Gavrilo Princip for sparking it helps concentrate minds and allows us an easy and simplified timeline through which to frame events.

If America does collapse, I can confidently point to the 1984 movie 'Revenge of the Nerds" as the tipping point.  John Landis' 1978 comedy 'Animal House' involved the subversion of natural hierarchies, but unlike 'Revenge of the Nerds' the rebels were funny, likeable guys.  They were not nerds!  ROTN upset the natural hierarchy where jocks rule over nerds.

This is important because this subversion resulted in two disturbing future trends:

a. Dominance of the 'Woe is me/Loser' Culture of the early 1990s, associated with Grunge Music

b. IT Nerds forgetting their natural role in the pecking order where they are the worker bees under the command of the Alpha

...and this is where I have a bone to pick with you:  NRx (which you are credited with founding/leading) and HBDism are filled to the brim with IT nerds who are convinced that they can code their way out of our present decline.  You claim to respect natural hierarchies, but CODERS CANNOT SAVE CIVILIZATION!!!

As a Critical Race Theorist I categorize you as a Slav--a sort of primitive, surviving Indo-European, close to the root of the chordate family tree. The Slav, in fact, is a sort of racial coelacanth; it is a small miracle that we find him in our presence; he should have gone the way of the Oscan and the Paphlagonian; and therefore, I find it surprising indeed that so eminent a druid of this petrified race would be unfamiliar with the basic tripartite structure of Indo-European society. There are only three kinds of people: Peasants, Priests and Warriors.

The Nerd is always a Priest. The Priest is always a Nerd. When the Lord Indra on his chariot arrived at the Ganges to slaughter 6 million Dasyu Varna, the first and only word he spoke was "namaste." Was the Lord Indra a priest? No. Who taught him this word? A priest. Yes, as you seem to somehow know, it is only the warrior whose prana breathes life into the lines of force that weave the tapestry of history. Yet the priest alone can draw these lines. Can we judge the Lord Indra and his priest? Of course--and they can judge us, too. Namaste!

The only alliance our Teacher's Pet regime fears is the union of jocks and nerds. It is the jock who shoves the teacher's pet into the locker. It is the nerd who convinces him to do it.

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I've been preparing myself for this interview for over a decade now by purposely not reading a single thing that you have written.  Everything that I know about you is second hand, or even better, third hand information.  This allows me to avoid any biases that would arise by reading your Himalayan-sized posts.  I have the luxury of being in the privileged position where I can judge you with a clean slate and clarity of conscience.  A certain bureaucrat from Chicago has asked me how you feel about being defined as a 'techno-fascist'.  A Slovene philosopher has asked me why is it that most of your readership seems stoned and up at 3am in the morning?

Whether you know it or not, you are imitating the exercise of Nicholson Baker, one of the few "writers" a decent human being can respect, in his classic "U and I"--in which Baker surveys the similarly vast corpus of John Updike, without reading, or ever having read, any John Updike. Baker thus proves the theory that the true subject of the critic is himself--a dazzling razzia into the salty desert of the English department.

To me this theory is borne out by your own life's work, the theoretical construction and practical curation of Salo Forum, a wretched hive of scum and villainy on which I have never once clicked. 

However, your critical reinterpretation of the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, on the grounds I believe of an unnatural sympathy for Armenians (it was Orwell, actually one of the 20th century's great Critical Race Theorists, who in Down And Out In Paris And London passed on his sous-chef's advice to "trust a snake before a Jew, and a Jew before a Greek--but never trust an Armenian"), as an Italian movie poster from the early 70s--did show talent. I ask that you include it, as an illustration, below--if only so that those of my readers who find themselves disappointed with your bland, shallow and incurious questions can understand why I even deigned to speak to such a Croatian creature as yourself. (I can’t find it - ed.)

I would not compare myself to Updike, who was a genius (his poetry, though light, is actually quite good) and a sex fiend. I flunked out of grad school and live the chaste, simple and sober life of a widower and family man. To call me a "techno-fascist" is sheer balderdash--I am a programmer (retired), a monarchist (absolute), and a Critical Race Theorist (new wave). 

And I cannot imagine a Slovene "philosopher" (scratch a Slovenian, find a Slav--often not without some Turkic admixture, too, I fear) who is not up at 3am, stoned. Projection, anyone? Your friends' remarks are not only absurd, but insolent.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are known as Fake, Gay, Cringe, and Retarded.  How much did you cringe when the term 'Dark Enlightenment' was applied to NRx and to yourself in particular?  I mean, it's Intellectual Dark Web-tier.

I can't comment on the terms "Dark Enlightenment" or even "NRx," as I have never uttered them. This could be because they are cringe, or I might have a speech impediment. I am just a humble monarchist (absolute) with a small smattering of knowledge in Critical Race Theory (new wave). I also like economics, poetry, history, and cognac. Any economics after 1930, poetry after 1980, history after 1940, or cognac under $30 is cringe.

I agree with your Four Horsemen of the Content Apocalypse. Let's apply them to the worst thing in history: Hitler. 

If someone had told Hitler he was cringe, the Holocaust would never have happened. If Germans had known Hitler was gay, the Holocaust would never have happened. If Hitler's plan to make a multipolar peace of equals with England hadn't been retarded, he could have sent the Jews to Ireland--founding some strange new race of splay-footed, bog-trotting moneylenders--the Holocaust would never have happened. If the Allied atrocity propaganda of WW1 hadn't been fake, the Allies could have used it in the next war when it wasn't fake, and the Holocaust would never have happened.

Therefore, the Four Horsemen of Harmful Content--whose names are called Fake, Gay, Cringe and Retarded--are the cause of the Holocaust. Remembering the victims, it seems right and proper for "Big Tech" to combat this kind of harmful content with ruthless, automated censorship. Can we dream of a world where Twitter suspends your account, because you were cringe? Where YouTube hands out retarded strikes? Boys and girls, only dreams this big can inspire the change that we need to create the world that we deserve to be.

Many have asked me to comment on the so-called "Intellectual Dark Web." Know this, askers: you ask me to compromise my dignity. Also, for anyone reading this in 2025 or later--you're curious, but it doesn't matter. The real Dark Web was the Dark Web we bought drugs on. It disappeared when they banned Bitcoin.

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Clever Curt and the Global American Empire (GAE)

The Death of the American Empire is greatly exaggerated, in my opinion.  Everywhere you turn, one is hit by constant refrains that US power is declining on the global stage.  I take the opposite position: the USA's power continues to grow, especially when it comes to areas like technology.  Every mobile phone not powered by Huawei is an American surveillance tool in your pocket, for example.  Americans will deny this by saying that democracy is decaying in the USA, or will point out how infrastructure is collapsing in flyover country (or Florida, as a few days ago - ed.), or how academic freedom is waning.  There are many more examples that can be trotted out and each and every one can be true, but they all miss the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is that the USA is in a transformative state.  It is shedding an older skin, revealing a new one. It is in many ways moving away from mercantilism towards becoming an ideological state where the Original Sin of Racism begets the new Prime Directive of Anti-Racism.  All American history, down to the once-cherished Founders and their words and deeds and actions and efforts are forcibly translated through this Anti-Racist prism.  And this new state ideology (we can call it a state religion too) informs and directs how the USA acts domestically and globally as well.  The USA continues to institutionalize and instrumentalize domestic values on the global stage which serve to allow for the destabilization of or removal of targeted regimes.  And current US satraps and colonies cannot help but be influenced by the exporting of these new trendy values.  France is already struggling with Critical Race Theory that has now washed up on its shores and is causing political and social tremors on its own soil, to the point where President Macron and other leading French politicians have publicly denounced them as harmful, and where French generals have indicated that they are exacerbating a situation that will lead to civil war.

As a Foreign Service brat I grew up in the bowels of the Empire and have also studied its past. I can tell you that the Global American Empire (GAE, pronounced "gay") is neither old nor young, neither dying nor being born. 

People think the Empire is old and about to die because wishful thinking is a thing, and the death of Great Man Theory has turned everyone into a historical voyeur. Empires do not die on their own--they have to be killed. Automatism in history is a 19th-century English Whig/Marxist idea which needs to be taken out with the rest of the GAE's ideological trash.

People think the Empire is young and has just been born because they are used to all the heinous ways it has violated them in the past. When the GAE starts to penetrate them in some new orifice they are briefly shocked and revolted, but they take the saggy, worked-over state of all their other holes for granted. Just relax, kids, you'll get used to it.

Arguably, the GAE is born in 1815 when the battle of Waterloo ends the multipolar European order and leaves England the Queen of the World. Its center of gravity moves from London to Washington, (for basically financial reasons) after WW1. Empire is lindy and two hundred years is middle-aged for an empire. Sorry. Drink more and try some muscle relaxants--looking at you, France.

The USA is a liberal construct and has been one from its very beginnings.  We are both Generation X and we grew up in an anomaly whereby the USA found itself on the Global Right by default as it faced off against the Global Left in the form of the Soviet Bloc.  The anti-communist alliance with the Catholic Church, for example, seems anachronistic now in light of how diametrically opposed western liberalism is today to Catholic thought and Catechism.

You are very much anti-American in that you reject the liberal foundations of your own country.  The primacy of the individual, the division of powers, etc.  are all impediments to proper rule, in your opinion.  My view is that the rabid individualism inherent in the USA's founding is what has brought your country to its current state (with the assistance of the defeat of States' Rights at Appomattox).  The USA is therefore a 'failed project', so you too seek its radical transformation.

Yes. The USA was never actually anti-communist--just anti-Soviet. Instead of the "Cold War" I prefer to refer to the "Anglo-Soviet split." We should think of this conflict as akin to the breach between Stalin and Tito, Mao and Khrushchev, etc--a mere tiff among revolutionary bandits.

America has always succeeded not because of its individualist ideals, but despite them. A country is a land and a people--with excellent people and an excellent land, early America could not go wrong. Arguably, individualism was even a good balance against the Spartan cult freaks of early Massachusetts. But every asset can be wasted.

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Demosclerosis is the condition whereby entrenched political parties (that are actually institutions) manage to block or impede necessary or vital reforms.  In much of the West today, including the USA, demosclerosis has set in.  Elections are now regularly contested post-count as the results are often too close to call and require days, sometimes weeks, to sort out.  Confidence in actual elections is declining.  But beyond that, western democratic systems have reduced themselves to the proverbial 'game of inches' in which vested interests that control parties are so entrenched that they cannot be touched, leaving only the most minimal of space in the centre to fight over.  Ossification is the result.  Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes like China are zipping along, building bullet train infrastructure across their country while the USA has yet to build any.

"Demosclerosis" (a term due to Jonathan Rauch) is, like so much else, just another euphemism for oligarchy. 

Actual democracy, aka "populism," has been completely cockblocked by the 20th-century constitution (not the document, but the way things actually works), in the following manner: the Supreme Court is democratically unaccountable by design; the Presidency is accountable to the people, but the "executive branch" is not accountable to the President; it is accountable to the Congress, but a combination of gerrymandered 95% incumbency rates and seniority rules has left the Congressional leadership and staff accountable to no one. 

Moreover, even if these structural impediments could be overcome, the Bhagwan has it right: democracy is government for the people, by the people, of the people. So, when the people are retarded, democracy is government for the retarded, by the retarded, of the retarded. And all the leading experts agree that the people are retarded. 

Our oligarchy may be retarded in effect but the people who run it are generally quite smart--the problem is the structure, not the people.

By "authoritarian," you mean "monarchical," which is just the operating structure of every normal and effective organization. The only way from here to sanity, even safety, is to use democracy not to govern, but to elect a king. If Rome hadn't done this 2000 years ago, nobody would ever have heard of Rome--we would all be speaking Gaulish and eating snails.

You are credited with coining the term "The Cathedral" which describes how academia informs mainstream media which then dumbs down the message for the masses and spoon feeds them the radical ideas that come out of the former.  The 'slippery slope fallacy' has been shown to be real and not at all a fallacy as we are now seeing how these radical ideas are capturing not just governing institutions, but also cultural ones as well.  We were told that 'this stuff will stay on campuses and not make it in the real world', but this is already happening!  The genius of the USA is in its ability to co-opt anything and make it profitable for business.  This is why I view these trends as much more dangerous than most have up until recently.

I have had long running debates with friends online as to whether US policy makers are cynically using these trends (e.g. gay marriage, transgender rights) for reasons of power, but very important people in your country keep telling me that I have been wrong in thinking that it is cynicism when in fact these views are now widely held among these types.  This makes our present state of affairs even more threatening as they are true believers, and true believers don't deal well with rational opposition.  This is also where I believe the dorks of the "Intellectual Dark Web" simply don't have a clue; they are seeking 'good faith' actors on the other side where none really exist.

You still greatly understate the danger. Yes, there is no conspiracy mindset--these people are generally still quite sincere. We have yet to get to the late Soviet stage of bureaucratic insincerity--and that stage, even in the shitty Soviet empire, which was vulnerable because it had the GAE to compete with, still lasted three decades or so.

The USA preaches equality of all people in terms of ability but purposely seeks out the best and brightest from abroad to bring them home, boost their own companies, while Americanizing these individuals.  This is resource extraction and resource extraction is a form of colonialism.  The USA has never engaged in colonialism on the scale that it does today as it is global.  The best and the brightest are lured away from their homes to boost profits and power in America, to the detriment of their own countries.  I hesitate to point out the hypocrisy here as pointing out hypocrisy is the engine that runs Conservative Inc.

As I always say, WWII was the ultimate colonial war. When Kipling wrote about "lesser breeds without the Law," he didn't mean the Udmurts or the Dayaks--he was talking about the Germans, the "final boss" of natives.

Now we have all the best Germans. We have all the best Frenchmen. We even have all the best Croats. I once asked a Googler which demographic he saw more of in the office--Blaqs, or Yugoslavs. He burst out laughing. Heck, there are probably more Montenegrins--and you know Montenegro, don't you?

A guiding maxim for today is that of Karl Popper's Paradox whereby 'tolerance cannot tolerate the intolerant'.  This smacks of the 'pre-emptive warfare' of which we saw in Iraq in 2003, yet worse as it is a totalizing system of thought.  In the days of the Ottoman Empire there was a famous saying "The Judge accuses you and the Judge judges you".  The centrist liberal of today, seeking to turn the clock back at least to 2011 and at most to the glory days of the Clinton Era is not equipped to counter this force.  They may score some judicial victories here and there, but that at most is a fighting retreat, a rearguard action.  Yet the average American today who is opposed to these trends (SJWism, for short) is not ready to accept the brutal truth of how it can be stopped, because they continue to believe in America and its founding principles.  They believe that a knife can defend them from a gun.

No one who does not feel the right to rule--or still more, the *duty* to rule--will ever rule anything. "Tolerance" is one common cope of these limp-wrists; "exit" or "secession" is another. Cons will always be slaves until they feel in their bones that they have the right not only to rule themselves, but their enemies--for their enemies' own good. That's certainly how libs feel about cons!

You have been accused of monarchism and/or seeking a responsible corporate elite to govern your country.  This was a dominant theme on your blog "Unqualified Reservations".  Since its actual ending in 2013, Corporate America has gone completely Woke.  Have you reconsidered your position in light of the fact that it's now hostile elites across the board?  Is this a failure of hierarchy?  What happens when the elites at the top of ruling hierarchies loathe large swathes of their own people?

Ideology is overrated; structure is underrated. Napoleon was a Jacobin General with a radical Enlightenment worldview. Nonetheless he crowned himself Emperor and even created a new nobility.

Most people have a philosophy of their own and just go with the flow--and this is especially true of Corporate America, whose business is business. 50 years ago when the Empire was younger and softer, business could lobby effectively against the academic-industrial complex; it did that. Now it is the teacher's pet. The problem is the teacher, not the pet.

But Corporate America, especially Startup America, is still chock-full of little Napoleons (many of them, as you say, harvested from around the world) who know how to get things done. If the flow is right they will go right with it--but they will not be the ones to set it right.

A very simplified view of political-cultural relations that you have presented has been that of Puritans vs. Yokels, where the Puritans are the coastal elites of Old Stock America, and the Yokels range from the Scots-Irish rednecks of Appalachia, down through the Ellis Island Cohort, and so on.  The Puritan rules over the Yokel.  You have been criticized for downplaying how American Jews have influenced the development of the USA since their mass arrival during the Ellis Island days (inb4 someone mentions Sephardis in New Amsterdam).  Would it be safe to say that the Puritan cohort fused with Ashkenazi Jews over time to create a hybrid political, economic, academic, and social elite that has dominated the USA since at least the LBJ era?

Yes, but all the cultural DNA in this union came from the Puritans. The Jews only contributed their genes.

When the shtetl moved to Brooklyn and then went to Harvard, the WASPs didn't start wearing yarmulkes. The Jews started giving their kids super-WASP names like "Irving" or "Sidney" or "Warren." In fact they figured out who were the truly fashionable WASPs, and promptly out-WASPed them--a historic tragedy. 

This GAE reality became the truth behind the "International Jewish Conspiracy." Take the South--there were certainly Jews behind Reconstruction 2.0. Where were the Jews in Reconstruction 1.0? If you can't find them, and you can't, you have an Occam's razor problem.

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It's rather amazing that your country went from Obama's Post-Racial America to today's Hyper-Racial USA in the blink of an eye.  No subject is more incendiary than race.  The liberal has fully swallowed the Integrationism and purported colour-blindness of MLKism, but culture and especially politics have moved past that.  The irony is that Blacks in the USA are almost entirely powerless politically, beyond serving as symbols for injustice in which one set of white elites uses these symbols to hammer another set of white elites.  For me, Black Americans become politically irrelevant when they rejected Malcolm X, a proper revolutionary and nationalist, in favour of MLK's Integrationism.  Their 'End of History' had arrived, albeit with a strong nudge from the FBI and their targeting of Black Radicals.

#BLM is financed by non-blacks such as George Soros, and black activists were sounding the alarm early on during last year's riots letting people who would listen know that it was out of their control, and in the control of non-black forces.

With newer populations arriving in the USA, such as South and East Asians, Blacks are being further pushed aside as these new groups find their footing in their new home.  It's almost as if this is a last hurrah for political Black America because these new arrivals don't have the psychological baggage of slavery from which to elicit sympathy or guilt.

At the same time, new fractures are forming.  Asian Americans are now faced with being shut out of the system by way of degrading their access to top schools.  Some will be allowed in, others will be rejected despite being very qualified in a meritocratic system.  We might see a development whereby resentment of the New manifests itself in a reaction to the system, but pitting immigrant communities against their own depending on who makes it into the elite and who is left out.

With all this in mind, it all bodes ill for proponents of White Identity even though the left is toying with waking this potential beast from its slumber by pointing its finger directly at it and insisting that 'whiteness' is inherently racist and therefore evil.  The trouble with Whites, and by extension White Identity and its ethnogenesis, is other Whites who are overtly hostile to its formation.  And it's these Whites that are now in control.

Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew said it best: In a multiethnic polity, ethnic politics take precedence over everything else.  In a hyper-racialized USA I think that his dictum will prove correct.

To find Blaq leaders who were created by "the community" itself, rather than invented as astroturf by white (counting Jews as white) oligarchs, one has to go back to the likes of Marcus Garvey and Father Divine, as well as of course the Nation of Islam. Even Malcolm X is somewhat compromised, or in the LatinXXX division, Cesar Chavez--somewhat authentic figures, subsequently poisoned by their popularity with the powers that be.

I encourage the young, courageous leaders of Corporate America, especially Startup America, to recognize this historical reality, and work with it by paying their mandatory Blaq Tax not to the usual beige shills, but to these authentic community leaders. For example, any CEO with real vision could become the first American business leader to contract out corporate security, or even HR, to the Fruit of Islam--or even "la Eme." Who dares wins!

Of course, white supremacy is a historical reality--the ruling class of this country has always been white, and even the strangers it adopts, from Jews a century ago to Igbos today, are completely socialized into its ultra-white culture. In effect, your average Harvard Igbo is just a very dusky WASP with a funny name. I do believe in heritable personality traits unevenly distributed across populations, but these effects are subtle and easily outweighed by culture.

Ever seen a picture of America's ultimate convention of young nobles--Burning Man? Not only is Burning Man whiter than Google, it's probably whiter than the Klan. Physician, heal thyself.

Is a New Right possible in the USA?  A red line of acceptability has long been in existence just next to the Paleo-Conservatives.  Even as they were pushed out of polite society, they did not see themselves thrown into prison or designated as terrorists.  Conservative Inc. dominates the landscape on the right, but it is old and feeble, happily ghettoized, content with mouthing platitudes while collecting political loss after loss, completely out of sync with the times as it engages in Reagan-worship, and wholly unequipped to deal with the radical transformation being foisted upon their country.  Yet the space next to them on the right is considered terrorist ground.

A very difficult question. I avoid using the term "New Right" as it is automatically self-dating--there are far too many "New Rights" in the rear-view mirror already, and nothing at all came of them.

Ultimately, ideology is fashion and fashion only flows downward. Ideologists often make the mistake of going where the votes and the audience is, which is shortsighted thinking. 

There are no short-term solutions here--and the long-term solution involves recruiting elites who can slowly teach the masses to follow them. When elites try to follow their followers instead of leading them, the result is a sorry and ineffective spectacle. Nothing useful has ever been done with Sam Francis's "Middle American Radicals," for instance.

It is not ideas that attract the masses, but energy and the chance of victory. Ideas attract elites. In the present situation, any good ideas have to be highly energetic, and they are not good ideas if they have no chance of victory. Never pander! It only shows weakness and arouses contempt, among both friends and enemies.

(What do you think he’s listening to?)

Crafty Curt Gets Curt

The brilliant Phil Hartman once played Frank Sinatra on Saturday Night Live where he hosts "The Sinatra Group", a parody of PBS' McLaughlin Group.  He berated Billy Idol (played by Sting) for having contempt for his audience "It's what killed Dennis Day!"  Nick Land, the British political philosopher best associated with the theory of Accelerationism, has publicly shit on his own audience in places like Twitter.  Many suggest that this is bad form.  I am of the view that it disciplines one's own audience and shows that you care.

I never say anything bad about my readers, not because nothing is wrong with them, because I assume that, being persons of good taste and discernment, they already know what is wrong with themselves.

I will say that many of my readers are nerds. I myself am a nerd. I love nerds and they are responsible for industrial civilization. On the other hand, they are responsible for industrial civilization.

Mike Cernovich has a 'super-charged brain' due to Ayahuasca experimentation and Nootropic abuse like Paul Joseph Watson's Brain Force.  Is having a super-charged brain the natural state of the Mischling?  Two of my best-received interviews have been with Mischlings (Darren Beattie and Anna Khachiyan).

I have never experimented with ayahuasca, and not only do I not use nootropics--I don't even sell them. Perhaps if I tried either, or even both, my Mischling power would be too great for the fabric of the universe to contain.

I will say that this particular cross has produced many exceptional individuals. But my genomicist friends, for reasons I do not understand, are adamant that classic "hybrid vigor" is not a thing in humans. Readers should be dissuaded from experiencing an "aha" moment and going out to their garage to breed, say, Khoi-San with Hmong. Critical Race Theory is a real thing--but this ain't it, kids. Further study of the Mischling phenomenon may be indicated.

Dinner starts with a ceviche of beef, the love child of Northern Italy's raw beef culture and the couple's interest in assertive flavors from around the world. Depending on the day, you may find lemongrass, cilantro, and miso- perfect strangers across Italy- canoodling with cured anchovies and handmade pastas. "It's not fusion," says Francesca. "We don't ever think 'How can we work a bit of Asia into this plate?' If it makes sense on the fork, then we go for it."

From there Francesca takes me through the entire menu: from the esoteric and unexpected- fried snails over a dashi-spiked potato puree, glazed pork belly with cavolo nero kimchi- to gentle riffs on the soul food you'd find in a traditional trattoria- fried artichokes dipped into an anise-spiked mayonnaise, tender pork sweetbreads with tiny candy-sweet asparagus and a slick of Mazzo's exceptional olive oil.

Raw animal foods must be treated with great care--cooking is essential to the human diet. Just as Carlyle tells us that man is the animal that wears clothes, man is the animal that cooks. 

Every civilization must be judged by its physical epiphenomena: its buildings, its clothing, and most of all its food. Our era has moved only backward in the first two categories. But I am confident that, for those who can afford the privilege, we eat better than any human beings in history--and in food, as in no other area, we have created a true archeofuturist culture that neglects not even a scrap of humanity's culinary heritage, but has coupled it with 21st-century science.

I strongly believe that transparency in journalism is important for a free society.  For the sake of transparency, I frequently let journalists know that I am on pace to earn roughly $200,000 USD over the next year by way of my Substack.  I think you should be transparent as well and let us know how much you are making.  I have you pegged at roughly $750k to 1 million as you are much more popular than I am.  How close am I to the correct figure?  Have I underestimated your take?

Transparency in journalism is very important! But I have to disappoint you by reporting that I am doing only slightly better than you, and you will probably pass me soon. 

This is not because I am not superior to you--I am--but only because you only have sheep to herd, whereas I have children. Fortunately, as a simple shepherd you have no expenses other than Francesca and her handmade pastas, so you can live much better than me. 

However, I must remind you and your readers of a simple and inexorable truth about human existence: anyone who isn't a parent is functionally gay.

You are very correct on your last point.

You too can be stoned at 3am, reading Curtis Yarvin at Gray Mirror.

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Marxists insist that ‘class struggle’ is the engine of history. Some will counter with the proposition that ideas are what drives human events. For many others, it is the “Big Man” that moves metaphorical mountains.

There is no man bigger today than Mike Cernovich. Upon careful reflection, every single individual on the American side of the Atlantic Ocean has been impacted by his thoughts, his art, his activism, his journalism, and so much more, repeatedly, over the course of the typical day. “Renaissance Man” is too limiting a description of Mike Cernovich. He single-handedly secured Donald Trump’s shock 2016 electoral victory, for one. I can’t even begin to list all of his personal accomplishments in this interview (thankfully, Mike helps out here, repeatedly) because they’re simply too numerous! Yet underneath the Gorilla exterior lies the beating heart of a man in touch with the spiritual world, blessed with a humility that brings him down to Earth and makes him approachable, unlike his almost equally-impactful contemporaries like Elon Musk or Kanye West.

This interview is not a classic one; it is more a collection of ruminations from a modern day Greek Hero, a Man Out of Time. We learn not only about how he has shaped the History of the World these past several years, but also how God is like him.

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"What's good for General Motors is good for the country" is a famous quote from 1953 attributed to Charles Wilson, President of GM. America was the 'Arsenal of Democracy' back then, with 50% of the world's industry located within the then 48 states.  I think that this quote could use some updating and I would like to rephrase it like this: "What is good for Mike Cernovich is good for America".  Here's why; you are the Everyman.  You pulled yourself up from your bootstraps to get a law degree after working manual labour and serving in the US Armed Forces, led the charge for Men's Rights, heroically secured a just alimony settlement, inspired millions of Americans to give Donald Trump a chance, taught hundreds of thousands of men how to become men, personally inspired Joe Rogan to 'go for it' with his podcast, launched a cutting-edge line of Nootropics, gave us the low-down on Thai ladyboys, wrote several bestselling books, became the world's most important 'citizen journalist' by breaking story after story after story, and acted as a surrogate father figure for the entirety of the Male Millennial online cohort WHILE starting your own family.  You are America's Weather vane, its barometer.  If you are successful, we are successful.  If you're feeling good about the way our country is headed then it certainly means that the good times are back!  Is this a fair characterization of the man, Michael Cernovich?

Good times are not coming back until we become hard men (Insert meme). Hence I am optimistic about the future because we are going through a crucible. When I look at men, I feel sick. I am 43 years old! You were kicked out of the elite Spartan guard upon your 30th birthday.  Yet I don’t feel any sense that these young men I pass by when walking down even a tough city street have the ability to defeat me. That must change and it will change. Brunch is cancelled!

One of the many things I find fascinating about you is how humble and magnanimous you are.  You personally kicked off the Men's Rights Movement, you spearheaded this generation's obsession with physical health by way of weightlifting, you blew the cover off of GamerGate, you led the PUA Movement, and you inspired dozens and dozens of subpar copycats with your best-selling hit book "Gorilla Mindset", most notable among them Bronze Age Pervert and his semi-decent-in-places "Bronze Age Mindset".  Yet you remain very grounded and not at all self-centred.  Haven't you ever felt the urge to draw attention to yourself and away from all of these lessers?  The temptation must have been killing you to point out each and every example of someone shamelessly stealing ideas from you. I know I’m pissed off every time I see it.

Roman Generals, upon returning to the Imperial Capital to celebrate their victories via public parade and spectacle, were said to have a slave standing behind them whispering, “Memento Mori,” which supposedly translates to, “Remember, you will die.” As a law clerk working on a case, one of my first assignments was on a murder-for-hire, i.e., a “hit man” case. I expected to see a Hollywood level amount of money being exchanged for the taking of a human life. It was a humbling surprise to see that the going rate for a competent assassin was $25,000 (adjusted for inflation). This is probably much less than in other parts of the world. While it’s true that I wrote a best selling book, produced a best selling film, forced a member of Congress to resign, and even forced the “suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein - all while looking handsome - it’s also true that my life could be ended for less than the cost of a used mid-series BMW. Momento Mori Mindset!

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You are of Croatian stock like I am.  Tall, violent, Balkan maniacs with a romantic sensibility.  Your Croatian grandfather left Royalist Yugoslavia, and like many, chose to settle in the Chicago area.  You paid homage to him by travelling to Croatia and getting in touch with your roots.  How much of Gorilla Mindset comes down to having the blood of genocidal fanatics coursing through your veins?  We punch well above our weight when it comes to sports, drywall taping, and annoying the fuck out of everyone on the internet with our incessant, jingoistic expressions of patriotism.  Why are we so powerful, particularly sexually?

I did a 23AndMe years and years ago before I realized they would be able to bioengineer a weapon to “suicide” me from my results. But that folly of a young man aside, it was revealed during this analysis that I have elite genetics for sprinting. When I trained BJJ, people would derisively call me “explosive.” Back then BJJ guys didn’t even lift and viewed any athleticism as a form of polluting the sport. Joe Rogan gets called racist for claiming a black athlete is “athletic,” but he would say the same of the many Croatian sensations, including the original Pat Miletich.

(PJW forgot to pair Neck Force with Brain Force)

I never got much out of nutritional supplements and eventually turned to Nootropics.  For years I was gobbling Paul Joseph Watson's Brain Force.  I wasn't very happy with the results because half of the time after taking some I would be walking around in a state of shock, accosting random strangers in the street and asking them if they could imagine the shock that I was experiencing.  The other half of the time I would somehow end up exploring various gay districts in different European cities.  I don't even like dick!  You have in the past developed Nootropic stacks and recommended them.....I simply couldn't handle it!  Not everyone is able to take the ones that you took.  You tested these on yourself.  What's it like having a super-charged brain?

Nootropics are a class of pharmacological agents that boost cognitive performance just like coffee and nicotine. Imagine our Croatian grandfathers sipping espresso while smoking a cigarette! They were super charged early on. Once I took Modafinil stacked with Tren(bolone) and Test. I was at a mall and felt like Dr Manhattan or maybe Thanos. Do you know what it’s like to have access to your entire database of knowledge and experience simultaneously while also having every muscle in your body naturally hard like marble? Thankfully I only have moments of genius. Otherwise I wouldn’t enjoy some of the more simple carnal pleasures of life. I’d also probably be mean online. Lately I stack lion’s mane with cordyceps and theanine. It’s a mellow writer’s stack. You get the benefits of verbal dexterity without melting down.

Reflections on Winning the Presidency For Donald Trump

Many times you have stated that you don't talk politics offline.  Yet it continues to draw you back in as your audience demands it, and as Fate commands it.  You were the very first to sound the alarm, warning us that the Trump Presidency was already off of the rails when Michael Flynn was fired from the Administration.  Many of us weren't convinced, (it took me up until he lobbed cruise missiles at Syria to change my mind) but you were inevitably proven correct.  I STRONGLY FEEL that the collapse of the Trump Presidency, the jailing of pro-Trump demonstrators, and the destruction of any hope of a better future for us Americans was worth it just to prove that you were right all along.

Those who begin revolutions rarely end them. Usually those on the vanguard are executed or exhausted, then the managerial class steps in. In the case of Trump, his base of supporters were alive and well. I felt high on drugs the week after he won. Total Dopamine overload. Compare this to the joyless Biden voters who seem angrier in 2021 than they were in 2016! The base was pushed aside for GOP operatives and Never Trump’ers. MAGA rubes watched The Godfather and thought it would be smart to “keep your friends close and enemies closer.” Clearly that did not work out for Trump. Men in general should stop watching mafia movies. Life isn’t Goodfellas or Scarface, and you’re not Don Corleone.

Was this collapse inevitable?  Or was real change possible despite the corruption of the system and the intransigence of the GOP?  Can we see a repeat of November 2016 in the future?  Or have the Powers-That-Be locked this shit down for good?

Will there be another Trump? Let’s hope not. The historical circumstances are such that the man Trump pretended to be will arise. Predicting or summoning such a man would have made as much sense as creating George Washington. Only destiny can make such calls. 

Speaking of destinty, let's scroll back a few years and revisit the halcyon days of online political activism that occurred in the run-up to Trump's shocking 2016 victory.  A revolution occurred by way of technology in which individuals, mostly disaffected white males, were able to disrupt the Presidential Campaign cycle and turn it against the establishment.  You were front and centre in this disparate movement, encompassing people from the far right all the way to the less far right.  The label alt.right was affixed to you, before it became toxic.  There was so much hope and potential in this spontaneous eruption of anti-establishmentarianism, yet it fizzled out.  Cracks appeared, with all sorts of shifty types inserting themselves into it, damaging it in the process.   Can you diagnose what went wrong?

The uprising around Trump fractured for a few reasons. First was Trump himself. He immediately began betraying his base of support upon taking office. Hashtag sloganeering is acceptable when trying to get your guy elected as America is a winner-takes-all system. People claim the country needs a third party. Yet if there were three viable candidates for POTUS, the vote would split 3 days and there’d be no electoral college winner. This would mean the House of Representatives would choose the President - and under the Constitution, they wouldn’t even have to limit their choice to the three who ran for POTUS. With all that in mind, Trump took office and immediately turned into a giant cry baby who whined on Twitter all day. Why would anyone willingly debase themselves by leading a cheer team for him? Well, we saw who remained. It was the bottom-tier team of Q Anon goofs and “entrepreneurs” selling Trump silver bullion to Cringe Boomers.

A-Players like me moved on. And by the way, my self-confidence will trigger a lot of dorks. But it’s objectively true that without me in 2016, Trump would have lost. That’s why the left wing media even to this day despises me. It’s like a blood feud that rivals Israel-Palestine, except it’s one-way. I don’t care about them. They can’t get over me though. I made them all look stupid. I beat them at their own game. I got results. They’ll never get over it. 

Now a bit of what some might call conspiracy theorizing: How much are wars in the Middle East worth? Trillions? How much would a war pig spend to destroy a legitimate anti-war movement? My belief has always been that certain elements of “the right” were funded by elements of the military industrial complex and told to make us all look bad via “association.” In life you’ll have wins and losses due to the nature of luck. People on the right kept losing. Every time. That’s not how it works. You would have had some wins thrown in there via chance alone. Who on “the right” got wins other than Mike Cernovich? I am good but not *that* good. 

In any event, the fact is that there is no effective American Right without Mike Cernovich, and I’d rather be doing space and spirit exploration than using my talents to help some coward like Trump enrich himself at the expense of his good-hearted but gullible remaining supporters. 

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Can Mike Cernovich Save America?

Is the American Dream dead, Mike?  It certainly seems that way to me.  The middle class has been slowly dying of a thousand cuts for two whole generations now.  Young people can't even save enough money to put a down payment on a house.  They're priced out.  Journalism is full of the dumb kids of very rich parents who finance their lifestyles.  The barriers to entry for business continue to climb higher and the competition is more cut-throat than ever.  There is a sense that everyone is in it for themselves, while mouthing platitudes to the contrary.  If it's not dead, then where is it alive?

It is the best of times and worst of times for the American Dream. If you’re born into a normal home, you will be taught victimization and demonization. Black or White, the coin has two sides. Nothing and everything thing is your fault. But you can’t change due to Original Sin. A parent can’t send his children to school for a proper education. But those enlightened parents who home school or stage takeovers of their school boards (MAGA rubes will fund candidates who can’t ever win a congressional office but not support a school district election) will have children with the equivalent of super powers. My heart weeps for the 8 year old Mike Cernovich - those poor kids don’t stand a chance. Those parents who follow me and educate their children will find they are raising Aristotles. The elite of old instructed their children via tutors. We now call this method home school pods and co-ops. As far as life goes for men already above 20, they make me sick! Coomers and Doomers (is there a difference?). 100 years ago you’d be drafted to go and fight in the Somme. Read about WWI. You’re not cleaning up the intestines of your best friend off of you while your own foot is one open wound with pus spewing out of your toes. Stop crying you fucking babies. Life has never been better for a man with a little swag and competence.

California was the epitome of the American Dream.  I'm old enough to remember it associated with two very specific things: an incredibly high standard of living and a bohemian take on life ("It's a Californian thing”).  This was Land's End: a state where the weather was perfect, where jobs were plenty, where you were safe, where the weird could go to get even weirder without anyone bothering them.  Sun, surf, and plenty of beautiful, blonde women.  Something began to change by the late 1960s, but life was still very pleasant there up until recently.  It's only in the past few years where we have been hearing more negative voices compared to those who would casually brush off any criticisms of the Golden State.  A positive mindset led to paradise on earth, where ill-fated utopian projects such as the Hippies, Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, and the LA Clippers flourished.  Now it seems that it is turning into a dystopia.

Made up my mind, make a new start

Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart

Someone told me there's a girl out there

With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

• “Going to California”, Led Zeppelin

When the rest of the world thinks of America they think of California. Specifically sandy beaches, open minded people, and a place where any dream is possible. “Where California goes, the country goes.” Every major trend started in California. If you wanted the best of anything, you went to California. Even the wines are better in California!

But now you can barely walk down San Francisco or Los Angeles without risking your life. I have Croatian fighting genes. Even I have to watch my back.

If I were a nerd, I’d write an article about how music used to focus on moving to California and connecting this to culture. Michael Anton or someone could do that. It’s a genre tho. A soundtrack of songs about California would include everyone from Bob Seger to Poison to The Notorious B.I.G. 

She stood there bright as the sun on that California coast 

He was a midwestern boy on his own 

She looked at him with those soft eyes, so innocent and blue 

He knew right then he was too far from home…

Bob Seger’s Hollywood Nights captures nostalgia. You’re young and in love, away from the safety of a small town. 

Poison’s Fallen Angel captures the darker side of California:

Just like a lost soul caught up in a Hollywood scene

All the parties and the limousines

Such a good actress hiding all her pain

Trading her memories, for fortune and fame

California is no longer a dream. Cities are a nightmare. The women aren’t even beautiful. Go out to Hollywood and Highland any night of the week. It’s gross. 

However California isn’t monolithic. I live in what remains of Paradise. We are a Republican enclave. 

I hate being divisive but California is proof that Republicans are more competent and create more livable cities. Hence why California liberals are moving to deep red states.

Even though Poison were horrible thank fuck that you didn’t include Red Hot Chili Peppers.

You've toyed with the idea of running for office.  What conditions would have to be met for you to take the plunge?  Would you be interested in state office?  Or is the Federal level the only stage that interests you?

I feel the calling to run for higher office, and then my older daughter comes outside to let me know I can only smoke a cigar once this week because too many cigars isn’t good for you. We have gymnastics rings hanging from an awning and she grabs onto them. I ask her to show me how strong her grip is. My younger daughter then comes out to start destroying anything she can find, including my strawberry bushes. Later, all of us either go to the park with geese or swim or do both - with some BJJ classes for my older daughter as well. Why would I give this life up? I have a box garden to attend to. I’m attracted to my wife. I ride the Peloton. Some would say run for the people, but even Churchill - the man who saved Europe! - was ultimately tossed aside by British ingrates. I would say that if people want better elected officials, then they should become better voters. What are you doing to cultivate a better leader? Responsibility starts with all of us.

Elite Pedophiles, Women, Ayahuasca, and Taking On Big Shampoo

(Dramatization of the showdown and not a verbatim transcription - ed.)

You took on Big Shampoo and won.  But this is only a battle in the bigger war.  What are these corporate behemoths doing to our bodies without us knowing?  How do we slit the throat of Poison Inc.?  You are friendly with the world-famous Greco-Phoenician Mathematician and Black Squid Ink Risotto Enthusiast Nasim Taleb.  He too has been on a jihad for us, his target being Monsanto.  Are they really 'turning the frogs gay', as Alex Jones (PBUH) claims?

I once went over 5 years without washing my hair. That sounds insane to normies, despite being objectively true. This shows that as much attention as class and income distribution receives, the real gap will be between the knowledge-havers and knowledge-havenots. Do you know how many captains of industry live in fear of their CNN watching Karen wives because, despite success in business, they know nothing of the true nature of humanity? This is most men - living as house slaves. The frogs might not be gay, but the endocrine system of the American man has been estrogenified via environmental plastics. Again, people will say that this is madness. I have no interest in persuading them. My role instead is to guide those brave souls who are willing to dare to live in defiance of their global corporate mind masters.

If we go to your wiki, your name is automatically associated with 'outlandish' conspiracy theories that have been 'debunked'.  Yet time and time again the 'debunking' falls apart under scrutiny.  One need only look at Epstein-Maxwell to understand that our elites are engaged in all sorts of nefarious behaviours behind closed doors.  We only have to glance over at the revelations this past week about how the CDC has been covering up information regarding a lab origin for COVID-19.  Should we even bring up the collective meltdown regarding the Trump-Russia hysteria and how it was shown to be complete horseshit?  The media resents the rise of alternative sources of journalism so as to maintain control over narratives that they themselves create and propagate.  Yet their track record has been horrible compared to many non-mainstream journalists. 

Are the editors who have held my page hostage pedophiles themselves or are they merely seeking to protect pedophiles by attempting to discredit me? That’s a question worth asking. My sense is that Wikipedia editors are part of the pedophile-media establishment. Imagine spending more time “debunking” conspiracy theories than investigating pedophile rings. I took down Jeffrey Epstein. This is not bravado and instead is judicially noted fact. My work in the Epstein case gets one sentence in Wiki - when it’s not deleted as often happens, where as minor internet squabbles take up paragraphs. Those who look beyond the veil will find me. And since it takes a higher vibration to understand the true nature of reality, the attacks on me serve as a useful sorting system. Imagine if I were praised by the media. Men who use shampoo would attempt to attend my events. Gross!

"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."  This is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche.  The position of women has changed since his time.  They got the right to vote, to inherit wealth, to enter the workforce, and most importantly of all, to have carefree, casual sex without immediate consequences.  Women in the West have won an impressive array of personal freedoms but are now more miserable than they have ever been before.  Does Nietzsche's statement still apply today?

A life without beautiful women would not be worth living. The real war is not one on women or on men - it’s on aesthetics. Democrats closed down gyms while leaving liquor stores open. “Celebrities” pushed by media and Hollywood wouldn’t last a week when confronted with Miami’s beauty. Ghastly figures are held as avatars of beauty as part of the nihilistic war on all that is good. (This is also why Hollywood is run by pedophiles. Death eaters seek to harm children, whose innocence is a form of divine brilliance.) The future of any viable right wing political movement will emphasize a return to traditional beauty of men and women. Brunch is cancelled! 

(Joe Rogan voice) Mike: Ever try Ayahuasca?  What d'ya think?

I don’t do false modesty. I have Life nailed. In the Spirit world, I’m nothing - and that’s beautiful, humbling, and liberating.

I went from a fat asthmatic bullied kid on welfare to a lifetime of achievement. My life is a highlight reel. As one example, look at my John Conyers scoop. 99.9% of journalists will go through a whole career and never have a story like that - which I broke on just another weekday. Everyone says that they want to write a book and make a movie. They rarely do. I’ve done both - and I didn’t do the turn a book into a movie thing. My work spans mindset and life success to journalism and current events and activism. Yes, I also graduated law school and became a lawyer. I’ve enjoyed the finer things in life. I went on 60 Minutes and beat them at their own game. The corporate media wrote books and made movies about me in order to try destroy me. Their attacks only added to my mythos.  The biggest complaint people have about me is that they want more books and films. This isn’t due to sheer luck, there is a process I followed. It works.

Ayahuasca showed me that all of my success was a shell created to distract me from deep spiritual and emotional trauma. My success was due to fear - fear of not impressing others, fear that people wouldn’t like me, fear that I would be another one of life’s losers - a random nobody who never mattered. That I worked hard on the outside to run from my inside. That what matters most in life is love. Not the words of love. The feeling of having an open heart - of accepting the joy and knowing to love always means to lose….none of us are immortal and those closest to us will leave or we will leave them first. I’m careful to make sure my daughters know I love them in every moment. They’ll never wonder or have doubts about my love for them, even as they will grow up and begin their own journeys in Life and Spirit.

Now I live - sometimes more successfully than other times - in Love. 

It can be frustrating, however, when people attack me. I don’t feel rage or the fight in me. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I realize those who can’t get me out of their minds are living in pain. That my life reminds them of their failures. Or that my presence reflects their dad or maybe the absence of their dad. Men have daddy issues too. Sons of strict fathers want to rebel against me. Sons without fathers turn to criminality as they want any attention - even if that brings severe consequences.

Have I not screamed at God? Have I not challenged Him to strike me down, to prove he is real? I am not comparing myself to God - only that the energy is the same. When our world doesn’t make sense, we blame the masculine because the masculine brings logic and order to the world. It’s only natural for me to be blamed, even if unfairly, by the shadow male energy predominating the world. I love these brothers who seek to hurt me. 

Did you know that the more you show love, the more men will try to hate you? That is because you cannot accept love unless you feel worthy of love. 

Everyone feels inadequate in their own way. That’s why we we lash out. If everyone is broken then no one is broken, and so everyone carries a hammer. Wouldn’t it be better if we put ourselves together instead of destroying one another? That begins with deep work and learning how to love, starting with loving all of the pain and sorrow we’ve experienced. From there we find joy.

We are spirits occupying bodies. I have much more to learn - and all knowledge worth having is discovered in the heart.

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The Part in Which I Challenge Mike Cernovich

Let's play a little word association, but with a twist.  Instead of one word we use two, to broaden the potential for replies.  I'll start: Chemical, Salty.

Chemically salty = myth. As a heroic figure, the truth about me will always differ from the real truth. In a couple of cases, I copy and pasted bizarre stories from internet message forums onto my own blog. Block quotes weren’t used because it was clear to my then-existing readers that the stories were not about me. None of that matters. The world will believe what it believes. In many cases, people have an idealized version of me. Such is the nature of life as an antihero.

I once caught you praising Vocal House as "the best fucking music there is" and I lost my shit.  Vocal House is for extremely feminine gay men who have just come out of the closet, and women.  There is no drug known to man that can make that music tolerable.  Your taste in music is shit, putting you in the same category as Mike Tracey who once praised Lady Gaga, ffs.  There are only three acceptable genres of music for men like us: Gore Metal, Faggy UK New Wave, and 90s Balkan War music taped on poor-quality VHS cassettes.

Musical taste, much like eating bacon, isn’t evidence of masculinity. Vocal House with feminine music is calming. I am a Scorpio and my moon sign is Mars. This means my personality type is Fire. Fire types need balance by cool / water energy. Astrology aside, why wound a man want to listen to demonic male voices? Did you know that “death metal” is used as a form of torture? Here by the way is my current playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4PufJg2E8r7nTTm0ceN8G8.

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.

The question about blood feels like a trap. Answering it might get me cancelled. It’s important to me that everyone knows that the Democrats are the real racists. Did you know that the Democrats founded the KKK and Hunter Biden said the n-word? Also Joe Biden supported the racist crime bill.

Mel Gibson plays your father in a futuristic Sci-Fi movie in which he, as Galaxy Emperor of the 4th Quadrant, is held hostage by evil forces of the Librul Confederation.  Your father is worshipped as the incarnation of the Chosen One, and you are tasked to rescue him from his prison cell.  Your brain, swollen on powerful Space Nootropics from the Orion Belt, devises a clever way to infiltrate the dungeon complex where he is being held. You seducing/date-rape Empress Marcotta, lulling her into a season-long sleep powered by Ayahuasca from Alpha Centauri.  With the Space Guards distracted by her condition, you manage to spring your father, Mel Gibson, free from his cell.  "Father, our people await the Chosen One.  It is time!"  "No son", replies Mel.  "I am not The Chosen One.  For it is you, Michael Cernovich of Orange County, first of His Name, that is the Chosen One.  I have known it all along.  So now must everyone in the Known Universe as well.  I worship thee, my God, Michael Cernovich!"  /end scene.

Would you watch this?

The plot outline follows the classic hero’s journey except that the mentor/father is replaced by the young man instead of being killed (which forces the man to confront reality on his own). Which reminds me….because my audience is younger and male, I get attacked by them often. They are subconsciously trying to murder me! That’s how deep the hero’s journey is embedded in our minds. They aren’t aware of these archetypical drives, which is why they cry when I block them. This means they are reduced to a mess. Gentlemen, you don’t “kill the master” until you’ve studied extensively. And when I click over at your profiles, it’s clear you’re slobs. Would anyone want to read a book about your life? If not, then think twice before you talk big online. You’re not impressing - or fooling - anyone! 

When not being a devoted father and husband, or tending to his strawberry bushes and box garden, Mike Cernovich can be found at www.cernovich.com and dispensing wisdom for the ages on Twitter @Cernovich.

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Marc Andreessen uses the word ‘retard’ roughly 200 times per day. I decided to confront him about this and his reply was: “I consider myself an intelligent man and I choose my words very, very carefully. Proper diction is the measure of a man/woman, so I deploy that word because, uh, because so few other words, uh, um…..fit.”

If you’re on the internet, it’s because of him. The driving force behind Netscape Navigator (the world’s first widely adopted web browser), he also saw the early potential in LinkedIn and Twitter and invested in both. His most recent investments have been in Substack and Clubhouse. The man is everywhere when it comes to the Internet and social media.

After three weeks of hard negotiations with his team of insanely-priced lawyers, I got them to finally approve his answers to my very sensible questions. The following is the product of the meeting of our two over-sized heads.

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I would like to begin with a quote from yourself:

"This guy [Niccolo Soldo] is a fucking retard. It's important that we let absolute retards like him publish at Substack because they will attract other retards who also think too highly of themselves and their own intelligence and overestimate their value to society. Retards are good for the top line and the bottom line. Don't ever, ever forget this important lesson in building a successful business. I shit successful businesses out every fucking morning, unlike you retards. You can quote me on this."

This quote might not be real, but the thought of it being real sends Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times into spasms of orgasmic delight (her first ever orgasm was when she thought she caught you using the word 'retard' during a Clubhouse discussion). The question here is: how hilarious is it that she fucked up her reporting this badly?

Don't underestimate yourself! The great writers of the past tended to be disassociative cranks. Diogenes Laertius says Heraclitus lived "by himself in the mountains, feeding on grasses and herbs" and died by burying himself in literal dung. Rousseau condemned his own children to the hell of an 18th century orphanage while sanctimoniously passing judgment on the rest of society. Nietzsche went insane protecting a horse from a whipping, and in his last messages to the world demanded the pope be jailed and all anti-Semites shot. You see, you fit right in.

As to Substack, if we've learned one thing from the last 2,500 years of human history, it's that all progress out of humanity's default state of misery and despair comes from being able to freely think, write, and argue. The fine folks at Substack run a big tent in which writers of many flavors and stripes are welcome, including the talented Ms. Lorenz.

You are a Titan of the Internet. In fact, you were inducted into the World Wide Web Hall of Fame way back in 1994. Without you there's no LinkedIn. No Tumblr. No Reddit. No Instagram. No DeviantArt. How responsible do you feel for the horrible state of the world as it is today? Feel free to apologize to everyone.

As with everything in life, it's a question of the counterfactual. I'm old enough to remember life pre-Internet. There were only three largely identical television networks (plus PBS if you lived near enough communists, which I didn't), a few radio stations, a newspaper or two, three printed news magazines, a handful of book publishing houses, and a few mimeographed newsletters. That was it. We misremember the past as a Golden Age of Shared Understanding. In reality it was nothing like that; it was a time of information starvation. I think things were actually getting a lot worse in the run-up to the Internet; television was increasingly dominant, and it's been scientifically proven that TV makes you stupid.

What does the Internet do? I think it's clear the Internet is both an engine and a camera. To some extent it does drive behavior, but it also shows us ourselves in vivid detail. That is bound to make us uncomfortable, but is also very useful. The Internet can reinforce existing beliefs and misconceptions, but it also reveals underlying truths that otherwise would remain hidden. For example, the Internet makes it far easier to discover when an authority figure is lying to us, which is an overwhelming good.

As with any technological change, it's important to consider who is the most threatened by it…..who freaks out the most. The Internet can be thought of as a cream that you rub on undeserving gatekeepers to drive them insane. I think it has all the right enemies.

Gold is an intrinsic store of wealth, but so is your head. I am certain that you have colluded with the Winklevoss Brothers in driving the price of Bitcoin up so high. I have you situated at the centre of many conspiracies, most of them insane. Your incredible track record in business and angel investing speaks for itself. You are the world's most successful individual who has not done LSD with both Grimes and Azealia Banks. I am told that you have fathered some 500 sons globally, and that you have invested in a new processing application that will assign metrics to their performance in life. Those that finish top three will receive an inheritance from you. The others will have to make it for themselves. You are currently investing in an app that disrupts blood flow in young children from the 3rd World and 'leverages' it into the bodies of Platinum Member app subscribers as a way of extending their telomeres (this means life extension technology for you retards reading this). How much of your success comes down to being 6'5" tall?

It is well known that the key to success for a tall person is to recruit a lot of short people to exorcise their personal demons by working around the clock for you, and I like to think I've maximized that strategy. This, of course, includes children; you've seen Roblox?

You, and other billionaires, are building a futuristic mega-city in Neom, Saudi Arabia, on the coast of the Aqaba Gulf that spills into the Red Sea. Alex Jones has personally informed me that there are giant silos there with 30 foot tall chickens, 50 metre high cows, and all sorts of chimeras located within. Every animal, if we can call them animals, is microchipped and simultaneously serves as a mobile 5G tower with edge cloud computing capabilities. I am also told that the Bogdanoff Brothers of France are involved in this project. Why couldn't you be a patriotic American and do this at home? Why not Florida? Don't you realize that offshoring hurts the USA? You can bioengineer all sorts of gigantic livestock in Broward County (have you seen the women there?)

First, all rumours about Neom are true. But also, it is an unappreciated fact that every city that exists today was a crazy-eyed entrepreneurial startup at its inception, not that unlike tech startups today. My favorite book on this topic is Robert Gottlieb's "Thinking Big", which tells the actual story of the creation of Los Angeles. It turns out LA was a fake and a fraud to start; it was arid desert marketed via the Los Angeles Fake News Media Times to gullible Easterners as a lush coastal paradise. Later, of course, the city fathers, um, sourced water and delivered on the dream…..but it was the Theranos of cities for a long time. LA as we know and love it today would not exist otherwise.

We accept today that the days of startup cities, at least in the West, are over, but I don't think we should. And the societal changes that a post-COVID world makes possible could restart this cycle. For thousands of years, ambitious young people have had to move to big cities run by the kind of people who run big cities to maximize opportunity in life. In our newly much more virtual, remote, online world, that trade-off may become less necessary or unnecessary altogether; the new pattern may be to live where you want, but have access to the same potential for economic advancement and career success through a screen. And so, I hope a new generation of city founders will try to create new and much better places for people to live. I for one would love to fund them.

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Knocking On Marc’s Head to See What’s Actually Inside Of It

Two of your latest investments are in highly successful ventures: Substack and Clubhouse. Both have already caused some controversy, but everything is 'controversial' these days. Rather than focusing on pointless agendas, I'd rather turn towards the actual success from both of these ventures. Substack has taken off wildly and seems to have filled a void left behind by legacy media. There is an audience hungry for journalism that is not filtered through an ever-narrowing band of acceptable opinion, and this audience is now settling in at Substack. What are the defining features of its success, and what does this tell us not only about the state of media today, but where it is headed in light of this challenge?

The most startling aspect, to me, about the modern institutional media is its hyperconformity. (Note here, I am not criticizing the *content* of the hyperconformity; simply that it is hyperconformist. I don't even think the hyperconformists would deny this.) This hyperconformity seems to have developed in two phases: Phase One was a collapse of previously distinct media types (network TV, cable TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, et al) into just "web sites" and now "mobile apps". This was not their fault. Phase Two was the virtually universal industry-wide adoption of a strident ideological monoculture. This is their fault. I'm a First Amendment absolutist, so I don't begrudge anyone the freedom to say and write what they think, but we are told that we live in a marketplace of ideas. But if you mainly consume the standard media product, what you are experiencing is closer to a marketplace of idea.

This monoculture challenges two of my most fundamental beliefs. First, in business -- and these are businesses -- you seek to differentiate, to offer a unique product that your customers can't get anywhere else. In economic terms, differentiation is the key to pricing power, which is the key to profits, which is the key to staying in business. This is precisely what the existing media industry is not doing; the product is now virtually indistinguishable by publisher, and most media companies are suffering financially in exactly the way you'd expect. Second, civilizational progress happens not by top down unanimity and ideological instruction, but by debate and dispute. That this should happen, but is not happening, in the institutional media today is obvious.

And so I think it's obvious that the incumbents are handing us, by their own considered and determinedly executed choices, a sparkling opportunity to both build better businesses and an actual marketplace of ideas. I'm intensely proud of both Substack and Clubhouse and have very high hopes that they can deliver.

Even though I have appeared on several podcasts, I am a Text Supremacist in that I feel that serious thought is best transmitted through the written word as it is shorn of distractions such as physical setting, the look of one's face, or the sound of one's voice along with their verbal tics. Clubhouse is based on audio (I am Samsung Galaxy Master Race so I have yet to partake in the app, and to be honest I have never been invited) and is gaining widespread appeal. Is this due to the intimacy that the app provides? Or are there other reasons?

This is a very old and very important debate that traces back to classical Greece. Socrates himself was famously on the other side of your position, an Oral Supremacist versus your Text Supremacist. Socrates argued that text is markedly inferior to oral information conveyance, precisely because text can't interact, it can't talk back. He predicted that a future of text would stultify cultural development and the transmission of virtue, to which [waves hands and points in all directions].

Later, media theorist Walter Ong articulated the profound differences between Textual (Literate) and Oral cultures. Textual cultures are abstract, analytical, mathematical, clinical, universalist. Oral cultures are grounded, intuitive, emotional, interpersonal, group oriented. I think this maps to what Vilfredo Pareto and James Burnham described as "combinations" and "group-persistences", which also maps to what we know today as libs and cons. Yes, I just called you a lib. Sorry. And then anthropolgist Joseph Henrich in his ultra-important new book "The WEIRDest People In The World" shows how growing up in a Textual culture literally changes your brain's physical structure; your brain reallocates processing power normally devoted to analyzing faces to processing text. Which explains a LOT.

Today we live in a hybrid world, part Textual, part Oral. As Ong and Henrich describes, this certainly applies between different cultures -- some much more Textual, some much more Oral. But I think this also applies within each culture, including our own. The Internet extensively enables both Textuality and Orality -- a fountain of writing alongside a fountain of audio and video. But also, you have a medium like Twitter, which Antonio Garcia-Martinez argues is actually Oral masquerading as Textual -- on Twitter, you think you're reading and writing text, but you're actually absorbing and spitting Oral fire.

So what role does Clubhouse play? I think Clubhouse is quite literally Socrates' Athenian Agora; it's Oral Culture implemented online in its full glory, for the first time. We should expect it to exhibit all of the virtues and pathologies of Oral Culture for sure -- but since we have lived mainly in a Textual culture for the last 300 years, Clubhouse is a timely and important nudge back to the middle.

But interestingly, Clubhouse, at least so far, is *nicer* than Twitter -- conversations on politically loaded topics that would instantly collapse into all out warfare on Twitter can sustain for many hours on Clubhouse, tense but not explosive. Why is that? Draw a two by two grid, with "Active and Passive" on one axis and "Approve and Disapprove" on the other. Twitter has three of the four boxes filled: Retweets are Active Approval, Likes are Passive Approval, Quote-Retweets are Active Disapproval (dunking). But Twitter is missing Passive Disapproval -- in person you can Passively Disapprove with a glance, a sound, a motion, but there's no equivalent mechanism on Twitter. But on Clubhouse you have several ways to Passively Disapprove -- you can vocalize a sound or go silent, you can leave the stage, and you can leave the room. The reputationally-homicidal battle arena of Twitter has its place, but there should also be a setting to talk about important topics without getting an RPG up your virtual tailpipe, and hopefully Clubhouse is it.

Are we TOO connected these days? COVID has created more shut-ins than ever before, yet the ability to communicate with others has never been cheaper nor easier. For many, the ability to lose one's self has been completely lost as we are now all expected to be online and within immediate reach during all non-sleep hours. This places great expectations on people, and it is my opinion that this is a negative for our psychological well-being as we are not programmed for constant, instantaneous contact.

Your question is a great example of what I call Reality Privilege. This is a paraphrase of a concept articulated by Beau Cronin: "Consider the possibility that a visceral defense of the physical, and an accompanying dismissal of the virtual as inferior or escapist, is a result of superuser privileges." A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. These are also *all* of the people who get to ask probing questions like yours. Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege -- their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.

The Reality Privileged, of course, call this conclusion dystopian, and demand that we prioritize improvements in reality over improvements in virtuality. To which I say: reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don't think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build -- and we are building -- online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in.

Here's a thought experiment for the counterfactual. Suppose we had all just spent the last 15 months of COVID lockdowns *without* the Internet, without the virtual world. As bad as the lockdowns have been for people's well-being -- and they've been bad -- how much worse would they have been without the Internet? I think the answer is clear: profoundly, terribly worse. (Of course, pandemic lockdowns are not the norm -- for that, we'll have to wait for the climate lockdowns.)

Having said that, I also think it's true that the Internet has given all of humanity full read/write access to one another's minds for the first time, and this is a massive shift in individual and collective psychology that we are just starting to grapple with. For example, we are now exposed to the crushing emotional load of suffering anywhere in the world, with no gatekeeping intermediary to insulate us, and not just occasionally but all the time. Figuring out the effects of this civilizational shift -- certainly on par with the Gutenberg revolution, if not way beyond -- will take a long time.

Not only is contact instantaneous, but so is how information travels from one side of the world to another. The rapid rise of the internet and mobile technology (and others) means that trends can plant themselves across the globe rather quickly, where once barriers to entry were rather high. This results in a sort of homogenization of global culture, especially in places that use the same few dominant languages like English, Spanish, or French, and has the net effect of neutering organic popular cultures in faraway places. Are we at risk of shedding our cherished cultural differences for the sake of expediency?

First, it's cute that you put Spanish and French in the same grouping as English. But yes, I 100% agree with this claim. This is another key observation made by Joseph Henrich, with his collaborator Paul Rozin. Henrich describes in his book how some people (us) are culturally WEIRD -- Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic -- but most people in the world aren't. Yet. Rozin wrote a reply to Henrich that I think about all the time, and that exactly makes your point:

"Insofar as the social world has transmuted to email, Facebook, and ordering online, it is [WEIRD youth] who best illustrate how humans will function. Globalization, the growing availability of access to computers and the Internet, Internet dating services, the decline of face-to-face markets, automated telephone answering services, WalMart, and the like, are rapidly homogenizing the world, making more and more people like [WEIRD youth]... Because of globalization, it is especially important that we understand now the different worlds that humans have created – the physical worlds (e.g., cities, markets, architecture), the institutional worlds, the social alliances, and the mental maps of the world – before they become much more homogenized. We don’t have much time, and the distinctive and elaborated different cultural worlds of interpersonal interactions, institutions, value systems, and the like, are a threatened species.”

I find this thesis enormously compelling and largely optimistic. I predict that we -- the West -- are going to WEIRDify the entire world, within the next 50 years, the next two generations. We will do this not by converting non-WEIRD people to WEIRD, but by getting their kids. Their kids, and their kids' kids, are going to grow up on the Internet at least as much as they grow up in the real world, and the pull of WEIRD culture will overwhelm all existing non-WEIRD cultures. I realize this is a very strong claim, but this process is already underway; at this point I think it's inevitable. The cost of this will be a collapse of global cultural diversity exactly as you and Rozin predict.

Now, my take on WEIRD culture -- and specifically American culture, which is the beating heart of WEIRD -- is that it contains both strong support for and strong opposition to cultural creativity within it. The strong support shows up in many thousands of thriving Internet subcultures; spend a day on Reddit surfing the top 1,000 Subreddits and no matter how jaded you think you are, you'll be stunned how many new and different kinds of things WEIRD people get into. This is the legacy of the conceptual explosion at the heart of secularization and the Enlightenment. But the strong opposition also shows up, in the form of the hectoring, suppressive demands for hyperconformity that we see all around us now. This is the legacy of Hegel, Marx, and Kojeve: the core progressive idea of WEIRD, that history is advancing toward a single, unified, optimized global way of thinking and being. I think these two legacies are at war within WEIRD, and the outcome will determine whether the Internet-powered WEIRDification of the world ultimately leads to an explosion of cultural creativity, or its absolute death.

I know which outcome I'd prefer.

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This ties in well to my next question: The internet promised us a brave new world of freedom (and sports scores at our fingertips!) and has delivered it, but only to a certain point. The trend for the past several years has been that of the state clamping down on this freedom in order to combat challenges to its system such as the scare tactic known as 'fake news'. China has already cut off Twitter and other western social media, and Russia seems to be headed that way as well. We have seen how certain states weaponize social media (I'm looking at the USA in particular) to effect their foreign policy objectives. National Internets seem to be the future, as many states, large and small, fear the nuclear-strength soft power of the USA's internet culture. Is it already too late to turn the clock back to the halcyon days of Netscape and AltaVista?

So the amazing thing about the old Internet is that it still exists! Web sites built in 1993 that are still online, or web sites built today with technology from 1993, still work just fine. So people can have the old Internet back whenever they want. Naturally most people don't actually want that, but I think it's nifty and helpful that this trap door to the past still works.

But yes, I think what you are describing is a cold, virtual, extended, cultural World War III. And I mean that seriously. I don't think a "real" World War III ever happens, because of the mutually assured destruction of nukes, and quite frankly our postmodern lack of energy to go kill other people in the tens or hundreds of millions. But, I think we are already in *virtual* World War III, the Great Information War, both within and between countries, and it's primarily caused by the WEIRDification process I described above.

I described the process of the Internet WEIRDifying the world as inevitable, but that doesn't mean that many, many powerful elites aren't going to fight it like crazy, which is what's happening all around us. For example, the pointy end of the spear of WEIRD in our time is woke; woke is currently America's #1 cultural export -- as demonstrated with Black Lives Matter protests in dozens of countries with no local history of mistreatment of Black people -- and much of the rest of the world and its leadership elite very much do not want their populations going woke.

China is an obvious example; their stated and implemented strategy is to harvest Western technology while preventing that same technology from smuggling Western/WEIRD/woke culture into their society. France is an more potent recent example; Macron at this point is actively fighting woke from the French left, which is double plus ironic, since that's where it started. And in just the last few weeks it's become clear how this round of the apparently timeless Israeli/Palestinian conflict is being snapped into the same WEIRD/woke progressive political framework as BLM, with potentially profound consequences for Israel and its assumption of ongoing American military and economic support. My overall mental model is that undeserving gatekeepers in the US hate the Internet, but undeserving gatekeepers outisde the US hate it even more.

On the other hand, nothing gets people into the streets in any country in the world these days more than cutting off the Internet...

You wrote an article entitled "It's Time to Build" in response to the COVID pandemic, focusing especially on the USA's unpreparedness for such a crisis and how its supply chains are compromised. This strikes at the very heart of globalism, of which the USA is at the forefront. It also suggests the need for a new national industrial policy to prevent a recurrence in the name of security. Yet this would serve to harm the economies of key US allies that export to your country, and could possibly see them petitioning China for investment to fill the gap. As Globalism is part of the USA's global security architecture, can this dilemma be resolved?

First, I think it's important to contextualize the role of global trade in domestic economics. Total foreign imports are only about 11% of American consumption, and Chinese imports are 3%. Most of any national economy, including ours, is domestic; you can't import a haircut, a house, or a hospital visit. So global trade is probably overblown as an issue generally. Which isn't good news; it's just to say that, as usual, most of our problems are our own.

Further, for things that are made and traded internationally, few are produced in just one place. An iPhone, for example, contains parts from more than 40 countries. So hampering global trade in order to insulate one country's producers from foreign competition, or to build a strategic domestic industry, has enormous knock-on effects not just for consumption but also for *production*; it isn't just a question of moving, or not moving, a factory. For this reason, tariffs and other trade barriers tend to hurt domestic producers nearly as much as they hurt consumers; many local workers take the blow from both sides.

Finally, industrial policy works better in theory than practice. The practice is generally disastrous, because of course it is: industrial policy = industrial politics; you're inviting the government to make economic decisions through a political lens, and you end up in the same morass as you do with any other political topic and the decisions end up looking really stupid.

Just one example; as a young kid, I was sent to DC in the early 90's to participate in a Very Important government strategy group developing a US industrial policy for flat-screen televisions. Virtually all of the experts at the time said that if Japan took the then-new flat-screen television industry the way they took old cathode ray tube televisions, the strategic consequences to the US would be disastrous, not just in lost jobs but also literally for national security -- US aircraft carriers and fighter jets might not be able to source display panels in the future, and our military would be hobbled. Of course, as it turned out, we didn't implement an industrial policy for flat-screen TV's; Japan "won" and then immediately lost the industry to much lower cost competitors like Korea and China. Meanwhile, America won CPUs and software and the Internet. And last time I checked, our military gear contains plenty of flat-screen displays.

More recently, our experts in DC have been trying to simultaneously fight climate change and protect American jobs by both subsidizing domestic solar panel *adoption* while slapping tariffs on foreign solar panel *imports* -- an act of truly impressive, and counterproductive, economic masturbation.

So, industrial policy is highly unlikely to deliver on what it promises. BUT, that being said, it's time to build. We should absolutely be producing more in the US, but not by backsliding into corrosive, corrupt, counterproductive business/government entanglement in the form of industrial policy, but by playing to *our* strengths. We should build Elon Musk's vision of high scale, highly automated, highly flexible "alien dreadnought" factories by the thousands, and never be left in the breach again when we need to produce anything at all in conditions of duress. And, around the edges, we *should* tweak policy here and there to unlock our native energies of production.

How seriously do you take the threat of China in terms of the development of future technologies? Does this pose an existential threat to the USA?

This is a classic on the one hand, on the other hand puzzle, linked to our propensity to want to punish ourselves to make ourselves feel good. Here's what I mean: On the one hand, China developing into a powerhouse of technological innovation would be good for the world, because new technologies don't tend to stay hoarded; they are ideas at heart, and ideas tend to proliferate and become adopted widely. Economist William Nordhaus long ago showed that 98% of the economic surplus created by a new technology is captured not by its inventor but by the broader world; I think this obviously holds true not just at the level of an inventor or a company but also of a country. Ideas created in America have made the whole world immeasurably richer, and I think the same will happen due to ideas created in China.

On the other hand, China has a strategic agenda to achieve economic, military, and political hegemony by dominating dozens of critical technology sectors -- this isn't a secret, or a conspiracy theory; they say it out loud. Recently the tip of their spear has been networking, in the form of their national champion Huawei, but they clearly plan to apply the same playbook into artificial intelligence, drones, self-driving cars, biotech, quantum computing, digital money, and etc. Many countries need to consider very carefully whether they want to run on China Inc.'s technology stack with all of the downstream control implications. Do you really want China to be able to turn off your money?

In the meantime, the West's technology champion, the United States, has decided to self-flagellate -- both political parties and their elected representatives are busily savaging the US technology industry every way they possibly can. Our public sector hates our private sector and wants to destroy it, while China's public sector works hand in glove with its private sector, because of course it does, it *owns* its private sector. At some point, we may wish to consider whether we should stop machine-gunning ourselves in the foot at the start of this quite important marathon.

"He who has the gold makes the rules" and the state has the monopoly on force. Bitcoin and other cyptocurrencies are systemic threats to this tried and tested model. Can the state ever tolerate such a threat, or will it have to tame such a 'wild beast'? Is compromise possible without compromising the core values of crypto?

Crypto is a complex topic with a lot of puts and takes; this could be an interview all its own, and so I will only provide a highly abbreviated answer.

First, we already live in a world of many currencies. Nobody considers the Swiss Franc a threat to US economic sovereignty, or the Japanese Yen, or whatever fake currency they're using in Europe these days. What ensures US economic sovereignty? For starters, tax collection in US dollars, which makes it easiest by far to use US dollars generally in the US. Cryptocurrency is not a threat to that, in my view.

We also already live in a world with anonymous, untraceable criminal and terrorist money flows, in the form of, incredibly, paper US currency. There are 12 billion (!) US $100 bills in circulation globally, more than any other denomination, despite the fact you never see $100 bills in daily life; that's because they're the global standard for bad behavior. Whereas cryptocurrency works in the form of a public ledger that can be data mined just like any database; a lot of national security people are actually quite fired up about more transactions moving from paper currency to the blockchain.

Then, if you still want to fight cryptocurrency, there's the nature of the thing that you'd be fighting. Cryptocurrency is math, and code. Numbers, just numbers, stored in computers all over the world. The level of draconian control required to ban cryptocurrency -- bad numbers, numbers that you don't want to exist or move around -- would be totalitarianism on a cosmic scale, far worse than whatever is motivating you to try to ban it.

Finally, the benefits of cryptocurrency are real, from new competition to "too big to fail" financial incumbents, to new jobs created by the explosive innovation in the space, to enormous consumer gain that extends all the way down the economic ladder to the lowest income and most unbanked in our society. So, I expect an uncomfortable but largely stable long term dynamic.

By way of our interactions with the internet, we all have avatars that represent us online. Most are false, with a heavy stress on idealized (at least partially) versions of ourselves. Many now market their whole selves online, to the detriment of the Meatspace. Are we losing our humanity, or is this simply a shift into a new era? I may sound like a Luddite or the type of person to claim that one loses his or her soul through photography, as was common in the 19th century as the new technology was rolled out.

Back to Socrates! We've lived in a cultural and intellectual space just as much as we've lived in a physical space for thousands of years. Watching television is better than staring at a fencepost; reading a book is better than listening to a street corner preacher; worshipping a Big God is better than worshipping a local tree. Losing one's soul through photography is real, there's a you beyond you that is no longer entirely in your control, but it's still better than living in a mud hut and staring at the wall for your entire life.

I'll take the other side of the argument. Most people will be able to express far fuller versions of themselves and have richer and more fulfilling lives online than they would have in the old purely offline world. I think this is the story of much of the development of our civilization -- we participate in bigger and more complex cultural and intellectual spheres over time. Net positive, but not without its issues.

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Marc in the Hot Seat

Many important people are calling me the Dick Cavett of the Internet Age due to my wildly popular interviews with such people as Glenn Greenwald, Weev, and a lot of other unimportant figures. Yet I am also well-known on Twitter for popularizing the concept known as the "Lindy Effect", to the point that I have been given the nickname "Lindyman". This interview has entirely been a vehicle for me to pitch to you my idea for the LindyApp: an app that tells you if things are Lindy or not. I am looking for a Series A Round investment of $10 million USD. Are you interested?

I'll beat and raise you. Here's my startup pitch: "The Final App". Harness current breathtaking advances in big data, machine learning, and GPT-3 text generation -- slurp in all the world's information and all of your personal information, track and monitor everything you do and say, and then tell you at *each* point in your life *exactly* the optimal decision to make, the optimal thing to say, to do. Think "Cyrano de Bergerac"; you're on a date, the very attractive person across the table says X, this app instantly tells you via a heads-up display or tiny earpiece the best response. Same for job interviews. Same for which person or job to match with. Same for where to live, what to eat, how to make love, how to raise your kids.

Suppose it *works*, it gives you the optimal answer every time. Heaven or hell?

All day long you are bothered with people pitching you ideas, asking for funding, begging for donations, and so on. I think that the best use of your wealth would be to fund a compound for young men engaged in paramilitary training somewhere in the tropics (secret location), headed by Bronze Age Pervert. Many would serve as studs who impregnate multiple beautiful women from around the world to 'improve the stock' as per BAP. You could have a world-best active strike force made up of the most handsome and blondest men in existence. Fueled by Mishima, Junger, and Twitter shitposts, they could serve as a fanatically loyal Praetorian Guard for you in your futuristic city of Neom.

Always you and the young men. But also, this is what the drones are for.

Glenn Greenwald shows up at your front door with 300 dogs that he just rescued from sexual assault by white women in the past 20 minutes and he begins asking you coy questions about 'certain' investments covered by an NDA that have recently made. What do you do?

Tell him there are a lot more dogs and white women still on the loose?

Marc, the following is the most important question that I have ever asked in any of my interviews: are my bros and I gonna make it?

Yes.

Did you hear that guys? We’re all gonna make it!

Marc Andreessen can be found on his 20 mile long nuclear-powered, crypto-mining submarine passing around the Cape of Good Hope in the next few days as he continues to plot global domination. He can also be found on Twitter @pmarca.

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The outdated definition of a liberal is that of a person who is tolerant of others, their thoughts, and their way of life. This traditional definition has been discarded in favour of an increasingly narrow one largely due to Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance” in which the intolerant cannot be tolerated as an ‘open society’ will eventually be seized by the intolerant. Therefore, Enlightened Despotism is the ‘proper’ way to govern a society.

It is human nature to challenge despotism and authoritarianism, especially as they fall into intellectual, spiritual, economic and personal corruption. So how are those who challenge such a system to be dealt with? Simply label them as ‘intolerant’, which makes them a de facto outlaw in society.

Christopher Rufo is one of these modern outlaws. Initally a documentary maker, his life recently has taken him down another, much more difficult route: challenging the intellectual basis of today’s American elites, that being Critical Race Theory. He has been credited with singlehandedly putting opposition to this trend on the political map by way of influencing President Trump to issue an Executive Order halting its instruction inside of federal agencies. With Biden’s reversal of Trump’s Executive Order, Rufo is now expanding the front far and wide, and winning key battles along the way.

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My most recent interview was with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and international celebrity.  Interviewing you is several steps down (I was considering passing this one off to an intern), but being a man of principle, I will keep my word and put in a minimal amount of effort towards this conversation with you.

You, an Italian, are my first non-white subject.  This is timely because the subject of race is now everywhere in Obama's post-racial America, an America where race no longer matters, as Obama promised us it wouldn't.  What is upsetting is that you have somehow internalized whiteness and are 'white-acting', trying to position yourself as 'white adjacent', when you are the typical Black Southern Italian.  What I am trying to ask here is: why are you a traitor to your race?  Tariq Nasheed would insist it's because you're not an FBA (Foundational Black American), and are little different than your fellow Blacks from the Caribbean or Nigeria.

I might be non-white, but I take solace in being a civilized, white-adjacent minority. This is no small feat. I don’t have to remind you that my home country, Italy, and your home country, Croatia, are separated only by a small sea, and yet your people still live without electricity, running water, or a written language. Anthropologists are still trying to understand this historical curiosity—Croats have been living under the shadow of whiteness since Roman times, but you have never internalized it. Perhaps it’s some innate, intersectional resistance. It’s a mystery that may never be unravelled.   

All Italians are mafia so your family is definitely connected to at least one of the NYC Five Families, if not the Outfit in Chicago.  You grew up watching Goodfellas and then eventually moved on to The Sopranos.  You and your wop friends picked up the lingo, started talking like mafiosos, and came across as fucking idiots to everyone around you.  You tried to extort a guy down the block who had a pretty strong betting book but he told his mom and his mom told your mom and your dad got out his belt and told you that you're not allowed to be hardcore.  When was your first hit and why wasn't it Rod Dreher?

There is some truth to this. Like most authentic Italian-Americans, I have distant relatives in both countries who operate “family businesses.” Most of it is harmless: off-the-books car parts, bookmaking, loan collection. We had a relative in Philly who made a living hustling mobsters in golf—he would let them win just enough to keep them hooked, then empty their pockets every so often. The business had its ups and downs. Once, he was sitting with the family on a Sunday, watching the news, when his face suddenly went white. A local mob boss had been arrested. Turns out that our relative had made his living the previous few years hustling that mob boss on the golf course. “Goddammit, now I need to find a job!” he said when the news broke. Most of the time, I don’t ask questions.

You bought a Thai wife (Asian waifu, per contemporary parlance) from her family for the equivalent of $75 USD in cigarettes, a used pair of Diesel Jeans, and an old iPhone3.  Your critics claim that it's not a marriage of love, but rather a strategic one in that she gives you cover for your racism.  I have little doubt that you confiscated her passport upon arrival in the USA, and that you mock her by doing the 'chinky eyes' whenever she tells you that she regrets marrying you, bringing her to tears.

It’s astonishing to me that as recently as the 1960s, interracial marriage was seen, correctly, as a moral cause and a sign of racial progress. Now, for some factions on the Left, interracial marriages, and mixed-race families in general, are seen as a form of oppression, domination, and false consciousness. They see interracial marriages as an expression of “white supremacy” or, for the minority spouse, as an “assimilation into whiteness.” Some lefties famously blasted Amy Coney Barrett as a “white colonizer” for adopting a Haitian orphan. We’ve gone from Loving v Virginia to Ibram X. Kendi in a single generation. And now we’re beginning to see the revival of informal social prohibitions against interracial marriage and actual racial segregation in schools, universities, and public institutions. I recently obtained photos from King County Library, which held a racially-segregated diversity training program, even hanging up signs outside the separated rooms labelled “People of Colour” and “People Who Are White.” It’s like water fountains in 1955, but in the service of 21st-century woke ideology. The new racial politics of the Left is almost parodically regressive.

Hapa's are God's cruel joke and you are responsible for bringing another one into this world.  He has no chance.  It's already over for him.

To the contrary. All of my children are poised for success. From their father, they inherit a European sensibility and that sweet, sweet white privilege; from their mother, they inherit strong visual-spatial abilities and a machine-like work ethic. Even the racist admissions policies of Harvard and Yale cannot stop them.

The Part of the Interview In Which Chris Rides His Hobby Horse

You've mentioned how your neighbourhood in Seattle changed rather rapidly, and how you have moved your family out since.  What kind of changes did you see happen?  Was there any pushback?  If not, why?  We all know that there are so many people who either go along with these changes, or keep their heads down and only complain in private.  Why has there been less of an effort to oppose these rapid changes?

Seattle is a disaster. I originally started doing policy research on homelessness, trying to understand why all of the West Coast cities have become havens of tent camping, open drug use, and public disorder. I had watched it happen in my own neighbourhood over the course of a few years. It was an affluent place—median home price above $1 million—but it just collapsed. First it was tents on the sidewalks and people shitting in the streets; then it was a series of armed robberies and a man immolating another man with a Slurpee cup full of lighter fluid. Our local elementary school had to do regular “needle assemblies,” teaching kids how to avoid syringes on the playground because there was a massive homeless encampment less than 100 yards from the school.

I naively thought that better policies could solve the problem. But the problem is much deeper— it’s the political culture. People in cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have been brainwashed into believing that decriminalizing street camping, welcoming opioid migrants, providing “harm reduction” services, and dismantling the state psychiatric hospitals is a form of “compassion.” Instead, they’ve created one of the greatest institutional cruelties in the United States—hundreds of thousands of people left to rot and die in the streets. All of the problems with social justice progressivism can be identified in this single issue. It’s textbook unintended consequences.

You first landed on my radar when you began releasing documents handed to you by various whistleblowers detailing Critical Race Theory and how it was being instituted in both government and schools.  This led to Trump's Executive Order banning the instruction of CRT in US Government offices.  How much of an influence do you think your work had on this decision?

It was instantaneous. I did the opening monologue on Tucker Carlson sharing my research and then directly asking the President to issue an executive order banning critical race theory from the Federal Government. At seven o’clock the next morning, I got a call from Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who said the President saw the segment and wanted to take action. I provided my research to the White House and the Executive Order came out less than three weeks later. That’s really to the Trump Administration’s credit. Jeb Bush wouldn’t have had the stones to take on this issue; Trump got it done in a few weeks.

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Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT.  Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness.  Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive? 

You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it.

For the novices out there, what is Critical Race Theory, and why is it so dangerous?

I’m lazy (True Med! - ed.), so I’ll paraphrase from a recent paper. Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a nation founded on white supremacy and oppression, and that these forces are still at the root of our society. Critical Race Theorists believe that American institutions (such as the Constitution and legal system), preach freedom and equality, but are mere “camouflages” for naked racial domination. They believe that racism is a constant, universal condition: it simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious over the course of history. In simple terms, critical race theory reformulates the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of White and Black. But the basic conclusions are the same: in order to liberate man, society must be fundamentally transformed through moral, economic, and political revolution.

One of the main faces of CRT right now is academic Ibram X. Kendi.  He famously stated:

"And so what I'm trying to do with my work is to really get Americans to eliminate the concept of "not racist" from their vocabulary, and realize we're either being racist or anti-racist". 

This is rather sinister, as it places everything within the prism of race, and leaves nothing outside of it, while rejecting all subtlety and nuance that is par for the course when it comes to human beings.  To him, 'racism' is America's Original Sin.  This very much comes across as Christianity stripped of Christ, but with the same zeal and intensity of the Early Christians (and some of those that followed centuries later), with 'Wokeness' as the new Catechism.

Ibram X. Kendi is a human fortune cookie. His intellectual output is an endless buffet of word salad and phony wisdom: “Denial is the heartbeat of racism”; “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist”; “Whiteness is literally posing an existential threat to humanity.” In my investigative reporting, I’ve noticed something quite interesting: the core demographic of Kendi readers is liberal, white, middle-aged women who work in public institutions. On one hand, this is a surprise: Kendi embraces a radical vision of Black Power-style revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: Kendi’s politics provides a vicarious thrill, but is completely in line with conventional wisdom. It’s revolution without risk; it’s liberation without leaving the house. That’s really the best way to understand what he’s doing. He’s not a revolutionary; he’s a self-help guru for white liberals and a reputation-laundering mechanism for multinational corporations. He is an apostle of anti-whiteness, but a mouthpiece for elite white opinion. He preaches anti-capitalism, but accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

His book "How To Be An Antiracist" has been receiving the predictable effusive praise and is also now on the official US Navy Reading List. His ambitions are grand, and in my opinion, megalomaniacal.  He is actively pushing the concept of an "...anti-racist amendment to the US Constitution..." that would create a committee with oversight over the entire US Government, as it would sit in judgment as to whether policies or laws are racist or not (and those deemed racist would have to be eliminated as they would be unconstitutional), and would monitor politicians and public servants to see if they are engaged in the various forms of racism that Kendi has outlined in his book.

This is the question: what do the Critical Race Theorists mean by “equity”? I just published a paper for The Heritage Foundation that lays out the evidence. As it turns out, Critical Race Theory is not about racial sensitivity training or nondiscrimination policies—it’s simply reheated, 1960s-style Marxism. The Critical Race Theorists can be coy sometimes, but it’s pretty simple to explain what they want. UCLA law professor Cheryl Harris has argued that private property rights should be suspended, the government should seize land and wealth from the rich, and then redistribute it along racial lines—she wants to move away from a system of individual rights and “mere nondiscrimination,” towards a system of group identity-based rights and positive discrimination. As you mention, Ibram X. Kendi has argued for the creation of an unaccountable fourth branch of government with the power to abolish any law in the country and censor the speech of politicians and intellectuals who are not deemed “antiracist.” Pretty quickly, we’re talking about eliminating the rights to private property, freedom of speech, equal protection under the law, and the separation of powers. That’s not an agenda for reforming the United States—it’s an agenda for ending the United States. They’re not advertising it in those terms; but they’re not exactly hiding it, either.

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With your rising prominence in the national discourse, I am certain that there is a small brigade of journalists waiting to catch you out in a scandal, whether real or not.  You have had a run in with the NY Times already, so now is your chance to get ahead of any future story by confessing your sins.

The dirty secret about Critical Race Theory and, to a certain extent, the New York Times, is that they are both extensions of the state. Critical Race Theory was incubated in public and publicly-subsidized universities and then operationalized in public agencies and public school systems. In reality, Critical Race Theory has very little organic support—it’s an artificial ideology that has the illusion of support because it has commandeered the public bureaucracy and prestige media. But you’ll notice that the Critical Race Theorists are regularly ratioed on Twitter, juice their book sales with institutional purchases, and collect corporate handouts to do their work.

The New York Times is similarly situated. It’s the mouthpiece of the permanent state no matter who is in office. Its purpose is to manufacture the narrative and enforce ideological discipline. But here, too, the New York Times is less powerful than it appears. Its authority rests on its historical reputation and prestige, which is rapidly being squandered with each bogus story, newsroom tantrum, and Taylor Lorenz article. I’ll admit: I was momentarily frightened when the Times was putting together a piece attacking my work on Critical Race Theory. But it turned out to be a great coup for me: the Times made a sloppy accusation, so I quickly owned them on Twitter and generated 100 times more social media engagement in my rebuttal than they did in their attack. To top it off, conservatives consider it a badge of honour to get that first NYT hit piece, so I enjoyed a round of attaboys, high-fives, and small donations from my tribe.

Yup, More Making Of Eye-Ties

Silvio Berlusconi once referred to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as an 'unfuckable lardass'.  Is he a true romantic made despondent by his disappointment in her psychology (and physical attributes)?

Silvio is a man from another time. Officially, as this will be read by some of my detractors, I denounce his language and behaviour. At the same time, there is a major problem in our society, in which our speech has become so choked and restricted, that most people end up speaking in code—it’s either academic jargon, political propaganda, or corporate gibberish. We can criticize Berlusconi for calling a world leader an “unfuckable lardass”—indeed, this is not good—but from a linguistic point of view, we should be equally outraged when people insist on “pinging you later,” “dismantling systems of heteronormativity,” or “labeling my pronouns tree/treeself.” We have an absolute dearth of clear language in our society. That’s one reason why people vote for men like Berlusconi and Trump—they might be monsters, but they cut through the bullshit.

Governor Cuomo, after being given a grace period during the first year of COVID-19 (despite sending the elderly to their deaths in nursing homes) for being onside against Trump, is now under fire due to a series of accusations of sexual harassment made against him by various women who have worked near him.  Is this just anti-Italian bigotry due to cultural ignorance about the nature and sexual potency of the Italian man?

Andrew Cuomo is a cartoon Italian-American. He takes pictures with meatballs and puts on a Jersey Shore accent, but he doesn’t even speak Italian. It’s truly pathetic. I didn’t follow the story closely, but the accusations that I did see against him are incredibly sleazy, but not in the same universe as a Bill Cosby or a Harvey Weinstein—and certainly not comparable to the moral crime of sending thousands of seniors to their deaths in COVID-plagued nursing homes.

I don’t care about Cuomo one way or another, but it’s another story illustrating that we are in a very strange phase of the sexual revolution. The entire ethos of the 1960s was for the liberation of human sexuality, but now, we see a resurgence of a Puritan or Victorian ethic, which is weaponized almost exclusively for political purposes. The result is total incoherence: public libraries have twerking, dildo-wielding drag queens perform for kindergarteners, but Andrew Cuomo kissing a woman on the cheek at a wedding is considered a capital crime. The internal contradictions of this ethic are so vast, we simply have to give it time—it will eventually collapse under its own weight.

How much do you shudder when you hear Capicolo pronounced "GABBAGOOL"?

The last time I heard that pronunciation, I shuddered so hard I threw out my back. It’s more than hate speech—it’s actual violence.

Christopher Rufo can be found engaging in non-stop bigotry and online violence at his website and on Twitter @realchrisrufo.

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It’s rather important to understand why highly accomplished individuals like Glenn Greenwald succeed at what they do. There is no person alive today who is more self-loathing than Glenn, who has internalized homophobia to the extent that he has, who is simultaneously both an extreme misogynist and TERF, and who tops it off with being a self-hating Jew. How does he do it? This interview seeks to find out how. I agreed to conduct this interview with Glenn for two reasons. The first reason being that he needs some positive PR to increase his appeal among his natural constituency: Nazis, Fascists, and Anti-Semites and homophobes. The second reason being that he indicated his willingness to use his powerful legal mind to make a strong case in front of Rania Khalek as to why she should let me impregnate her. I asked him to do the same with Tulsi Gabbard but he informed me that "Michael Tracey has already called dibs on her. I can't do much to help you out until she gets around to finally filing the inevitable restraining order against him”. Glenn thinks he’s funny.

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Why are you gay?

When I was quite young, I observed that most of the straight boys were similar to you: obnoxious, uncouth, plagued with stunted emotional development, an unwarranted sense of ego, and a sociopathic lack of empathy, all topped off with very thinly veiled fascist tendencies. I set out determined to find a way to not to be that, and settled on gay. Also, my mother was extremely beautiful and I knew early on that no woman would ever measure up. Her name was Norma Bates. Finally, have you seen pictures of my husband?

Anyway, the intent of this interview is to understand Glenn Greenwald: thinker, investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, sex symbol.  What is at your core?  What makes you the universally-loved and admired man that you are today?  I am a strong proponent of Age Regression Therapy, and take inspiration from brilliant minds like Hippolyte Bernheim, Theodore Xenophon Barber, and Sigmund Freud, who taught us that trauma in youth will significantly impact one's character development into adulthood.  More than formative, it is central to that person.  What I am trying to figure out here is what made you a seditious little shit?  What singular moment made you hate America?  Did you get vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate on the 4th of July when you were 5 five years old?  Is this what led you to hate America?  Why don't you get on the winning team, son?  Come in for the home run.  Help us with this final drive for the touchdown, YOU PINKO FAGGOT!

I absolutely believe that our personalities shape how we interact with and perceive societal institutions and therefore our political thought. As you suggest, the genesis of that perspective, or that relationship with authority, is formed in childhood. 

The formative childhood experience for me was realizing I was something which society scorned and regarded as diseased and shameful: being gay, or to use the charming vernacular of yourself and many of your readers, a “PINKO FAGGOT.” It is an obviously monumental experience to realize that the society around you has long ago decreed that something that is inside of you without your having chosen for it to be there renders you irredeemably broken, dirty, immoral and dysfunctional, and that your only survival option is to desperately hide who you really are and present a false illusion to the world to manipulate them into not discovering the truth.

There are several identifiable ways young, largely defenseless gay children might react to that realization. One strategy is to construct one’s own internal world which resides in the imagination. A more pleasing and welcoming dimension to which one can escape and which replaces the harsh reality that has rejected them, which I think is what explains why gays have excelled in the creative arts. That’s how we get David Bowie, Elton John, Alexander McQueen, James Baldwin, Gianni Versace, Freddy Mercury, Handel and Tchaikovsky.

Others set out to prove to society that they are actually exactly like them, and adopt assimilation as their primary weapon: pleading with others to stop thinking they are different. That’s how we end up Pete Buttigieg, Josh Barro and Ellen. Others still tragically internalize this baseless societal condemnation as true, and that’s why so many LGBT youth end up committing suicide or suffering mental health pathologies.

Like others, the path I chose was to declare war on the structure that viewed itself competent to impose this condemnation on me. To do that, I first had to interrogate what moral and intellectual credibility this constellation of authorities possessed that justified its self-proclaimed right to formulate and issue such judgments. I found that credibility woefully lacking, and once I did, it permanently prevented me from blindly trusting authoritative pronouncements. My pre-adolescent and adolescent strategy was to set out to prove that those who adopted this conceit of moral superiority were far dirtier, more broken, and sickly than those they had condemned (including me).

This manifested as vicious warfare on institutions of authority and, fortunately for me, the skill set with which I was endowed turned out to be well-suited for such combat. I turned the judgmental microscope back onto those who I perceived had first directed it at me, and the amount of bacteria and disease and pathology I saw when doing so was stunning. And I made no secret of the judgment I had formed about my judges.

These attacks of mine, in their early years, were sometimes a bit sloppy and imprecise: lots of collateral damage as I attacked targets that seemed at the time to possess real power but, in retrospect, were just captive servants to it. But it was still excellent training for the work I would end up doing as a lawyer, activist and journalist. And that is the central experience that shapes how I navigate the world. Human institutions are inherently and invariably fallible, and the more certainty and moral superiority they claim, the more filth and deceit they are likely trying to conceal behind that clean, lofty veneer.

The reason why I believe that you are dangerous to God and America is because you are disordered.  You watched the 1993 Richard Linklater coming-of-age movie Dazed and Confused, and you identified with the wrong character.  You could have identified with Mitch the freshman, as the story centred around him.  Or Randall "Pink" Floyd because you wanted to be like him.  Or even Wooderson, the coolest character in the entire movie, which would have let you walk around saying "alright, alright, alright' all day long.  Cool as fuck.  You could have even chosen Darla Marks because she was funny...for a woman.  Instead you chose to identify with Mike Newhouse, the annoyingly high strung guy who got punched out and only wanted to dance, because his goal in life was to become a lawyer for the ACLU.  This makes you an oddball.  By this point in your life you were already too far gone.  You chose to go on a crusade to defend the indefensible.

I didn’t see that film, rendering your drawn-out theory embarrassingly pointless.

But it’s spot on.

You and your spouse, David Miranda, run a shelter for dogs in need, most of which have been sexually abused by white women.  This is very honourable and the two of you should be commended for your volunteer work.  You love dogs, you have talked about your love for them, and have written on this subject as well.  You are also a vegetarian and have spoken out about the cruelty involved in factory farming and why we should do our best to wean ourselves off of meat.  In these two ways you resemble another animal-lover and vegetarian who went by the name of Adolf Hitler.  Are you Hitler reincarnated? Both of you have declared war on America.

I’m a vegan, not a vegetarian: one of the few differences between Hitler and myself. The more I looked, the more astonished I became at the unspeakable industrialized cruelty we now inflict on sentient, emotionally complex, and highly intelligent animals. Many people instinctively oppose veganism because they believe in the nobility and beauty of family farms. Leaving that question to the side, the way we now consume food has nothing to do with family farms: industrialized agriculture is the exact antithesis of family farming; indeed, it is destroying family farms by consuming the entire supply chain. Commercial family farms barely exist any more, thanks to the Smithfields and JBS’s of the world.

By every conceivable perspective -- moral, ethical, religious, environmental, humanitarian, public health, and just basic human decency -- the systematized torture of pigs, cows, birds, and lamb by the billions is grotesque and indefensible. The toxic waste and sludge alone dumped into communities is nauseating and dangerous. The filthy conditions make them a breeding ground for zoonotic viruses and epidemics and the excessive use of antibiotics creates a large risk of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains that can kill humans. The U.S. Government and large corporations even breed dogs for no reason other than to conduct gruesome experiments on them. Many people find that repellent because they love dogs, but there is no conceivable moral distinction between abusing dogs and abusing pigs and cows. 

Our shelter was originally motivated by our love of dogs -- we have 27 rescue dogs of our own, plus hundreds more we fostered (I know that sounds like we’re insane hoarder people but we’re not, or maybe we are) -- but it then morphed into a fascination with the uniquely profound connection between dogs and the homeless people who care for them. Most people who have dogs also have other things -- work, family, friends, etc. -- so they love their dogs but not so single-mindedly, whereas homeless dogs and homeless people have nobody and nothing but one another which creates a bond unlike anything I’ve seen. 

Our shelter, now in several locations, simultaneously employs homeless people and helps them exit the street while paying them to do what they most love: caring for abandoned animals. I realize, for judging a person’s worth, it’s not as noble or important as putting a rainbow flag or a #BLM hashtag in one’s Twitter bio, but we’re doing the best we can.

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The Part of the Interview Where I Let Glenn Act Like He’s Smart So As To Play To His Out of Control Ego

These past five years have witnessed a profound collapse in trust in the American political system.  Egged on by an increasingly hyper-partisan media, conspiracy theories have taken root on both sides of the traditional aisle in US politics.  Yet where QAnon is rightly rejected as being completely detached from reality, polite company pushed the equally false Trump-Russia narrative for years, blasting it on all media day and night.  Why do you think that the mainstream elite fail to see themselves as little different from your typical QAnon when it comes to dealing with reality?  Is it a case that their power is greater, and therefore their ability to mould and shape reality makes them right in their own minds despite all evidence to the contrary? 

It has always been this way. Deranged conspiracy theories are spread most aggressively, prolifically and destructively by the guardians of mainstream thought. Such conspiracy theories are scorned only when they are endorsed by the unlicensed and uncredentialled. When they are disseminated by prestigious mainstream sources, they are widely treated as Truth.

The most respected and celebrated news outlets and foreign policy analysts spent all of 2002 and the first part of 2003 telling Americans and the world that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and an active nuclear weapons program: easily the most toxic conspiracy theory of this generation. Because of their lies, by September, 2003 -- six months after the invasion of Iraq -- roughly 70% of Americans believed that Saddam personally planned the 9/11 attack. Yet other than the scapegoat Judy Miller, nobody suffered any career harm. The leading disseminators of this maniacal fiction were promoted and rewarded: Jeffrey Goldberg went from telling good liberal pseudo-intellectual New Yorker readers that Saddam was in alliance with Al Qaeda to running The Atlantic. 

The most dangerous and deranged conspiracy theory of the last four years is the multi-headed Russiagate fantasy: the Kremlin has infiltrated the U.S. Government and controls it through sexual blackmail, Moscow has invaded the U.S. electricity grid and is poised to shut off heat in winter -- the craziest and most moronic shit possible. A 2018 poll found that ⅔ of Democrats — ⅔!! — believe that Hillary really won the election but Russians invaded the voting systems and switched her votes to Trump. 

Yet the people who did this not only still have their media perches but now use them to posture with indignation about the conspiracies spread by MAGA boomers on Facebook and 4Chan teenagers. They don’t mind conspiracy theories at all. To the contrary, spreading them is their business. They just get angry when others -- especially the peasants -- intrude into their turf.

No 'pillar' of American democracy has collapsed more than media these past few years.  Trust is at an all-time low.  The country now has competing narratives that cancel each other out.  Gone are the days when objectivity (at least attempting it) in journalism was sacrosanct.  Advocacy journalism now rules.  Large parts of the mainstream media are little more than stenographers for the Biden regime.  One may claim that advocating on behalf of those without power is sensible and moral, but the main advocacy that we see today is done by corporate outlets that only serve to buttress the ruling elite.  Chomsky and Herman outlined this for us in their seminal work 'Manufacturing Consent', a book (and a documentary) that greatly changed my perception of the media.  Yet despite their efforts, most people continue to absorb media so long as it conforms to their preconceived notions.  Combine all of these factors and the situation is rather dangerous. No country with competing narratives can stay united.  One side will win out against the other, with or without violence.....but at what cost?

The dominant liberal sectors of the corporate media love to self-victimize, constantly complaining about the unfair loss of faith and trust by large sectors of the public in their pronouncement. Notably, they almost never seek to understand why this is beyond blaming others: we’re unfairly demonized; right-wing leaders call us Fake News; uneducated people want to hear what pleases them, not reality and the truth, etc.. It’s the playbook of Hillary Clinton after her humiliating 2016 loss: they blame virtually everyone on the planet other than themselves for their own failures.

Due to this steadfast refusal to look in the mirror -- and really, given what they would see, it’s hard to blame them -- there is no possibility for reform. The major cause of this loss of credibility is themselves. They aren’t trusted because they don’t deserve to be. But their pomposity and adamant belief that they are divinely entitled due to their superiority to control the flow of information will never permit them to acknowledge that. So they will continue doing what they’ve done, losing more and more trust and driving people away to other, often-unreliable sources of information, and that cycle will never end. 

The only way out is for people to restore trust and faith in journalism by demonstrating that it can be done not to aggrandize a particular faction or ideology but by doing one’s best to find the truth given the subjective prism through which all humans see the world.

My view is that the lack of accountability in US media is what has brought us to this situation.  The neo-conservatives of the Dubya regime couldn't believe their luck when Trump began to wins primaries in 2016 because it allowed them to re-brand themselves as members of #TheResistance.  Overnight, Bill Kristol, David Frum and others who were responsible for pushing the WMD lie that laid the groundwork for the catastrophic US invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003, were rehabilitated.  Regardless of that fact, they were STILL on the scene during the the interregnum between the Iraqi catastrophe and Trump's Presidency.  David Frum was hired by Woke IDF Prison Guard Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic Monthly, and Bill Kristol was a mainstay on cable TV news.  None of them were held accountable for what they did, and now they have been rewarded for attacking what was largely a scarecrow.

That is one of the many ironies of the Trump years: under the self-glorifying and unhinged banner of #Resisting fascism, American liberals marched behind and empowered war criminals, CIA and FBI goons, neocon sociopaths, the scummiest of the Bush/Cheney operatives who easily scammed them under the name “Lincoln Project,” and the long-discarded and disgraced McCarthyite script that everyone who opposes you is a Kremlin agent and a traitor. Even worse, they relied upon a union of state authority in the form of the Democratic Party and Silicon Valley monopolies, fearful of what Democrats would do when they ascended to power to systematically silence their critics and disappear them from the internet. As I’ve said before, this is the first #Resistance movement in human history that venerates secret security agencies and oligarchical power.

With trust in institutions at an all-time low, and with the political temperature set permanently to MAX, many claim that the USA is tottering and is headed towards collapse.  I take the opposite view.  My take is that the USA is shedding one skin and morphing into something else.  The elites have never been more united despite the sniping between R and D.  Time published a piece recently that detailed how the elites came together to torpedo Trump's re-election.  That in my mind shows resiliency.  Add to this the 4 year long constant drumbeat of TRUMP-RUSSIA, and attach to the increasingly loud anti-China noise from the right, and we have a situation in which half the country wants revenge against Russia, while the other half want to punish China.  This is an almost ideal situation for the military-industrial complex.  Failures at home can be channelled into foreign policy objectives that serve the interests of the elites.  And with the Biden regime re-assembling the Obama Era foreign policy team, we are well on our way to seeing what I call Turbo-America: a hyper-interventionist state that uses everything from sanctions to bombs to punish or coerce countries that fall afoul of its increasingly arbitrary rules.

In one sense, it is true that people in the U.S. are more “polarized” than ever, but it is true only in a limited sense. Take the typical self-identified leftist and stick them in a room with someone right-wing and they will viciously argue for days about race, gender, trans issues, immigration and abortion. But they will have almost no strong views one way or the other key U.S. power centers: the Pentagon, the CIA and intelligence community, Wall Street, Silicon Valley. Watch how often our discourse even mentions these things except in the most fleeting, superficial and reverential ways. To the extent that they talk about economic policy, they will likely find a huge amount of agreement on a wide range of issues without realizing it: how to treat the working class, the malevolent influence of centralized Corporatist power, the menace of monopolistic tech giants, the toxic nature of “free trade” agreements and globalist institutions.

The problem is that they’re trained — largely by media outlets, which rely on people being at each other’s throats constantly and immune to seeking common ground (see Matt Taibbi’s brilliant book Hate, Inc.) — to rush to those areas where they viciously disagree. It provides a sense of purpose and a rush of endorphins and adrenaline which becomes highly and quickly addictive. Those who benefit most from this dreary, lowly dynamic are the key power centres, who most people end up ignoring because they find agreement about those people when they think about them at all. The one thing media outlets and power centres work hardest to prevent is citizens setting aside their endless war posture against one another to realize the common interest they have against the U.S. ruling class, which is composed of the establishment wings of both parties and particularly their corporate funders.

For around a decade now I've been having debates with friends as to whether US elites actually believe what they say with regards to exporting democracy or identity politics, or whether they are a cynical move that serve underlying interests that revolve around power and money.  I imagine that the answer is somewhere between the two, but the idea that such a massive and powerful global empire contains true believers is difficult for me to digest.  I look at Biden's foreign policy statement from earlier this month

and then see Anne-Marie Slaughter's follow-up

and I can't help but think how neo-colonialist this is.  This is the polar opposite of realpolitik; it is ideological and fanatical, akin to Lenin and Trotsky's World Revolution.  American power continues to be unrivalled, and US media has become so powerful that it is able to craft narratives totally divorced from reality that begin to impact globally based on America's unmatched power.  Are American elites becoming increasingly detached from reality?

I’ll share with you something I learned from the dark days when I was a litigator. After doing it a few years, I noticed that I invariably believed that all of my clients were the pure victims, and the people against whom we were litigating were pure villains. Rationally, I knew that was highly unlikely; the probability that the people who happened to walk through my doors to hire me to represent them were all angels, and those who they claim had wronged them were all devils was extremely remote, almost non-existent. But emotionally and instinctively, that’s how I approached each case; that I was not just advocating for them in order to be financially compensated — as a job — but I was on a righteous crusade, on the side of Good against Evil.

I realized that in order to be an effective advocate or propagandist — and there is some of both in being a lawyer — you have to get yourself to believe what you’re saying. That’s necessary not only to be effective (though it is that). It’s hard to persuade people of things if you consciously know it’s bullshit, because people will sense that on an intuitive level and that’s where most persuasion happens….but it’s also necessary to be able to believe you’re on the side of good, something which all humans other than absolute sociopaths and psychopaths want to believe. I’m sure there’s no shortage of each of those categories in elite U.S. ruling class circles, but most people operate by the same dynamic as the rest of us. So I think, yes, they do get themselves to believe what they’re saying, that it’s not consciously cynical.

I’d respect it more if it were consciously cynical. The fact that these imbecilic media cretins and career State Department and CIA functionaries actually believe themselves when they say that they’re deeply offended by the repression of Putin or the CCP or Iranian mullahs or Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro — right after they get off a call about the latest U.S. arms shipments to the Saudi monarchs or cash transfers to Egyptian despots or support for a coup against the democratically elected government in Bolivia — is frightening. How could anyone believe that the U.S. actually opposes domestic repression? That kind of self-delusion means humans can get themselves to believe literally anything. That’s more frightening to me than if they were knowingly lying for power.

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All of us have watched the coalescing of the Deep State with corporate media and Silicon Valley.  Where once the internet promised freedom, we only got 24 hour surveillance.  Individual privacy is a thing of the past, but this three-headed beast is something worse.  Your work with Snowden (a certain bureaucrat from Chicago that I know insists that he is a CIA agent) and Manning blew the lid off of NSA spying, and the hope was that this would shift the battle in favour of privacy. But the opposite has happened: the security state managed to piggyback the outrage over Trump to convince people that not only are the CIA and NSA the good guys, but that the use of these surveillance tools are required to be used to punish Americans who fall outside of accepted parameters of thought.  Congress is dusting off a mammoth domestic terrorism bill that has been waiting for the right moment to be introduced (with that 'right moment' being a simple riot on Capitol Hill, far from an 'insurrection'), that creates the conditions for possibly treating large swaths of the American public as little different than members of al-Qaida.  How fucked are Americans?

Tell your Chicago bureaucrat friend he’s an absolute idiot (impolite -ed.). Also, Manning didn’t reveal NSA spying; she revealed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and systematic state corruption around the world, so maybe it’s no wonder that you two have forged such a beautiful friendship.

If you look at the political history of the U.S. over the last century, much of it is driven by fear: fear of Communism, of Muslims, of black crime, of immigrants, of the Chinese and Japanese, of white nationalists, etc. Or, at the very least, that’s been the tactic to induce the population to acquiesce to having the U.S. be in a posture of endless war, highly militarized, putting more of its population in cages than any other in the world, torture, rendition, internment, etc. Even if some of those fears had a grain of truth, they have been constantly inflated and exploited to allow the state — and particularly the undemocratic components which operate with no accountability i.e. the security state agencies — to acquire virtually unlimited power in the name of protecting Americans from what they have induced them to irrationally fear.

When you train a population for generations to be impelled primarily by fear, it is very hard to reverse. It becomes a cultural instinct. I don’t think Americans realize how aberrational, rogue and bizarre it is to just go around constantly bombing different countries, because they’ve been trained for so long to accept that as normal (one of many reasons I found anti-Trump fanatics’ obsession with returning to “normalcy” so repellent). Again, if you look at our supposedly intractable political differences, they almost never involve those agencies. As a result, they keep cruising right along with few people paying attention, which is how they like it. The one thing Americans have legitimately to fear — their domestic ruling class — is, amazingly, the one thing they seem not to fear. More often than not, they worship the ones on their team like teenagers worship their favourite girl or boy band. I don’t even want to think about how many media people have pictures of Kamala Harris, Mitt Romney or Nancy Pelosi on their walls.

Civil libertarians like yourself were at the forefront of the battle against the anti-terrorism laws that grew out of the Global War on Terror.  It was a rather simple binary: the state was encroaching on rights and civil libertarians would defend these same rights from encroachment.  Easy-peasy.  Fast forward less than two decades later and we are seeing significant cracks in the edifice of civil libertarianism, even within the ACLU which has prided itself on adhering to its principles to the point of fanaticism.  There are calls to rescind accreditation from law schools that do not conform to the ever-changing rules of diversity.  There is also growing pressure applied to law firms to not take cases of 'problematic' types, with Donald Trump being the best example.  Protection from harm seems to be winning the battle against the defence of individual rights.  Is civil libertarianism dying in the USA, and if so, why?

Civil libertarianism is definitely dying in the places where it once thrived: the ACLU and various sectors (though not all) of left-wing politics. But that does not mean it is dying. The reason we’re seeing the ACLU and media organizations abandon all but the most partisan goals (with rare exceptions, largely due to the intrepid efforts of some old-school lawyers and journalists still lingering within them) is two-fold: 1) in the Trump era, they profited greatly by positioning themselves as anti-Trump #Resistance bulwarks, and are now imprisoned by their overwhelmingly liberal donor and subscriber base who will not tolerate any work or ideas that subvert their partisan beliefs and goals, and 2) the clear reality that many people of the Millennial and Gen Z generation (the former of whom are now entering mid-management and middle age) largely do not believe in values like free speech and due process, and older Gen X and Boomer managers in these institutions are petrified of them — because they can end careers (and love to do that) — and so are coerced into acquiescence. 

In the past, the natural allies of civil libertarians were leftists (in opposing McCarthyism and the War on Terror, for instance) and libertarians. But now it is the right that is often singled out as targets of censorship and other forms of recrimination free of due process, so many on the right are re-discovering, or discovering for the first time, the necessity of these values. Ultimately, the only way these values will be preserved is if everyone across the spectrum defends them not just when they and their allies are persecuted, but in all instances — in fact, even more fervently when one’s political adversaries are targeted, because that is what elevates and enshrines these values as a sacrosanct principle rather than a weaponized tactic of convenience.

Brazil, Bolsonaro, and the Bunda

When I think of Brazil, I have a rather common focus on both soccer and bunda.  I also have an admittedly patronizing attitude towards the country as I've assigned them the role of "Guardian of the Amazon Rainforest".  The problem that I face is that I don't know who to trust when it comes to Brazil, and especially on that subject.  Anglophone media in the West already settled on Jair Bolsonaro as a Trump of the Southern Hemisphere even before he was in office.  Outlets like the UK Guardian were ringing the alarm, telling us that he was going to set the Amazon ablaze to enrich industrial interests that he represents.  But if he was already convicted of being the wrong kind of populist prior to taking office, how can I trust them in light of their atrocious reporting of Trump during his Presidency?

As I explain in the answer that follows, the western media, with a few exceptions, are completely lost and confused when it comes to Bolsonaro (some Guardian journalists are based there, speak the language, and do a decent job, and the NYT has been OK as well). But both the establishment western press and even the establishment Brazilian press has become consumed with a derangement similar to what they harboured for Trump that so often prevents them from reporting in a reliable way. I agree with them, for the reasons I explain next, that Bolsonaro is dangerous, but they are incapable of even acknowledging those isolated instances where he is on the right side, and are even more incapable of distinguishing between standard bad acts of a politician and fascist genocide. That makes their ritualistic, reflexive, maximalists daily denunciations hard to trust for anyone not devoted to limitlessly hating him (which is still roughly 70% of the country, half of those who like him and half who are uncertain or divided). He’s bad enough without having to let their visceral contempt color what should be their reporting.

You yourself have had run ins with Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters.  Bolsonaro personally called you a 'faggot' and you've received both abuse and death threats due to your criticisms of his rule.  You were actually charged with 'cybercrimes' with the specific charge of 'phone hacking' and another one of 'belonging to a criminal organization'.  You also uncovered shady court officials who conspired to deny ex-President Lula a third run for the Presidency.  It seems that wherever you go, you can't help but cause shit.  What are the fault lines in Brazil that not only colour its politics but that which also propelled Bolsonaro into power?  Is there an undercurrent of right-wing authoritarianism beyond Bolsonaro?  BTW, my friend, The Bronze Age Pervert, insists that you watch the Brazilian movie Tropa de Elite, and that you like it, or you will face his wrath!

I’ve seen Tropa de Elite. Everyone in Brazil has. Its director, Jose Padilla, was hired to direct the documentary about the journalistic work I did that you mentioned: which led to Lula’s release from prison along with my (now-dismissed) criminal indictment, among other fun outcomes. My leftist friends were furious at this selection, insisting that this film glorified fascist police violence and, more than anything else, paved the way for Bolsonaro. I’ve talked to Padilla about this and he is equally adamant that the film simply portrays the reality of this elite squad and does not do so favorably, just neutrally. Since I’ve been threatened to endorse the film, I’ll purposely leave that debate to others. I’m not afraid of The Bronze Age Pervert and will kick his ass with the slightest provocation. His muscles are designed to mask his internal weakness. 

There is so much confusion and mythology, in both the western right and the western left, about Bolsonaro. That’s primarily due to the inability of western journalists, who barely ever think about this region, to explain him without resorting to primitive shorthand such as “the Trump of the Tropics,” a term which, for better or worse, convinced many people that Bolsonaro is basically just a Latin American version of Trump. He isn’t. There are many superficial and stylistic similarities — in part because he consciously copies Trump — but there are very few substantive ones (not none, but few).

I regard Trump as part of the New Right with people like Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage. Bolsonaro is mostly definitely not that. He was an Army Captain in the Brazilian military dictatorship that brutally ruled the country for 21 years until 1985, beginning when the U.S. assisted right-wing factions in the military to overthrow the democratically elected center-left government in 1964. He is much more of a throwback to the old Cold War right-wing authoritarians that the U.S. propped up for decades. He is obsessively vilifies gays for political gain. He also believes he’s fighting an existential war against Communists; fuses his politics with constant religious/evangelical themes; and explicitly praises dictatorship as a superior form of government to democracy, claiming that things were better in Brazil prior to its 1985 re-democratization. He is also is irredeemably corrupt, with ties to violent paramilitary gangs, and his outsider posture is a complete fraud. Prior to being elected president, he was a Congressman for almost 30 years from the epicentre of corruption in Rio de Janeiro, and he fit very comfortably within the corrupt sectors of the political class. At least two of his three politician-sons are implicated in serious corruption scandals. His economics guru is one of those University of Chicago austerity fanatics, Paulo Geddes, who wants to privatize all state assets and sell them off to foreign capital, turning Brazil into Chile.

Does any of that sound like Trump or Le Pen or Farage, whose focus is on immigrants, Islamic radicalism, nationalism and anti-globalism? Beyond that, it takes a politically illiterate person to equate Brazil and the U.S. The latter is a 235-year-old Republic with extremely stable and increasingly powerful institutions devoted to preservation of the status quo. That’s why they set out from the start of Trump’s presidency to either keep him in line or destroy him. Brazil has virtually none of those stability checks and is therefore far less predictable and far more vulnerable to radical incursions.

The one important similarity is why they were elected. Despite the repetitive invocation of bigotry accusations against Bolsonaro — not entirely unjustified, to put it mildly — huge numbers of black Brazilians, working-class Brazilians, even LGBT Brazilian voted for Bolsonaro. They did so not because of his more outlandish and offensive statements but despite them. They were desperate and filled with valid contempt for the ruling class, and so ran into the arms of whoever most convincingly postured as an anti-establishment radical bent on destroying the ruling class that had oppressed them. The more the Globo media and establishment mavens spewed hated for Bolsonaro, the more convinced they became that he was on their side. That, to me, is the primary factor in both Bolsonaro’s win as well as Trump’s.

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Deep Inside Glenn

Both of us were recently named in the top 10 list of media heroes of 2020 by RT.  Word has it that President Putin personally insisted that both you and I both be included in it.  And both you and I are members of the Substack Master Race.  Substack has launched what some are claiming to be a Silver Age of Blogging, and have secured big names like yourself, Matt Taibbi, Scott Alexander, Curtis Yarvin, and myself, and lesser lights like Matty Yglesias.  On Substack we are allowed to not only act as our own content editors, but have the ability to interact directly with our massive built-in audiences without interference from above or through middle-men. We also have removed ourselves from the environment of psychological terror that now stalks offices such as those of the New York Times, where the Red Guard is constantly on the hunt for the next sacrificial lamb.  There is an audience for honest journalism and writing, free of the ever-growing constraints of conformist elitist culture.  What I'm asking you Glenn is: how much do you love the freedom that we now have?

Everyday, I thank the supreme power of the Universe for the creation of Substack. It is the most important human invention since penicillin, and maybe even better than that (I far prefer rapidly spreading bacterial infections to censorious editors and woke millennial newsrooms). Even with the degradation the platform suffered from the arrival of Matt Yglesias and his endless carousel of banal, calculated observations delivered in the whiniest, most petulant and nerdiest manner possible, the ability of writers to find an audience without the constraints plaguing most other institutions is vital. I’m certain that the tattletale journalism brigade at CNN, NBC and the New York Times will soon be targeting Substack with their hall-monitoring censorship demands — fortunately, for now, they seem to be spending most of their time in Clubhouse waiting for someone to say a bad word so they can tell the teacher on them — but it’s only a matter of time before they train their little guns onto Substack. I believe Substack is devoted to resisting those repressive forces.

I never take questions from others for my widely-praised interviews, but this time I am making an exception.  Minor podcaster Anna Khachiyan (you've probably never heard of her, so please use the interview that I recently conducted with her) is desperate for some exposure so I agreed to her request.  She and her sister want to know (and I quote) how you "feel about being played by that finicky homosexual Zachary Quinto" in Oliver Stone's "Snowden"?  Anna suggested that your should have been played by Chris Pine.  My view is that Bradley Cooper, or better yet, Tom Hardy would have fit the look and the role perfectly. 

To learn who she was, I just clicked the link you supplied of your interview with Anna Khachiyan and could not get past the second paragraph: what a boring and annoying woman she is. That’s a joke, as I am a huge simp for Red Scare — I forced them to put me on the show twice. That shouldn’t be a surprise, as both Anna and Dasha are off-the-chart fag hags. I’m convinced their audience is composed of transgressive gays, fascist-but-horny incels, disaffected former Sanders supporters, and misogynistic-adjacent women. In other words, I’m not surprised you’re a fan. OK, where was I? 

The whole experience of watching someone else pretend to be you on a movie screen is creepy and uncomfortable. I thought Zachary was fine, even though I know Oliver Stone required him to queen it up by making me seem like a spitting, petulant queer (a well-known actor asked Oliver if he could play me before Zachary was cast, and Oliver told him “sorry but no, because only a gay actor can play Glenn, because they need to be able capture Glenn’s unique mix of the hyper-masculine and the hyper-feminine”. Once I heard that, I was certain he was going to hire like Harvey Feinstein or that guy from Modern Family to play me with instructions to queen it up, so I regarded Zachary as a perfectly acceptable choice, even though most people complained that, for the sake of realism, Oliver should have found a much better-looking actor like Brad Pitt or a young Tom Cruise.

If you were straight (like I am) and not gay (like I am totally not), which women would you consider impregnating?  I would put a baby inside of your Lebanese friend Rania Khalek and would be rather happy to do so.  Really hammer it into her.  Repeatedly.  Over and over again. Pound Pound Pound.  Maybe you see yourself as part of a media power couple?  Maybe a Fox News Blonde (you have appeared on the Tucker Carlson White Power Hour and must have seen the lineup there)?

I was going to answer this question about who I would marry if I had the curse of being straight. However, as I compiled the list, I realized that there was no way to answer without providing easy cancellation ammunition to my enemies — even more so than the other answers here, or even just by talking to you at all — so I will refrain. I like to make them work for it.

(The audience will note that Glenn actually gave me a list and chickened out at the last second, excluding it from the official answer list. Bidding will begin at $5,000.)

One of the guys in the room across the hall was named Doug. He and I had gotten to be more of acquaintances rather than friends. He just seemed kind of standoffish. He was drop dead good looking and he knew it. He always seemed to be the centre of attention when he was in a group because of his looks, but he never seemed to take much of a liking to me. I didn't know why and just tried to treat him like a friend. Doug was the stereotype "surfer dude". He had the blond hair, the tan and all the right muscles to fit the bill. He wore his hair a bit long in the back and wore a thin strip of leather around his right ankle which I thought was really cool. One morning Doug and I both arrived at the shower in the morning at about the same time. There were two shower heads behind a single curtain that were separated by a fibreglass type divider mounted on the wall. It only stuck out about a foot from the wall and ran from about shoulder height down to my knees. I had showered with a few of the guys before, including Doug, and it was never any big deal.

As you affirmed earlier, you are totally not gay.

You are being hunted down by a team of MI6 killers who have cornered you in a warehouse in South Africa.  They have orders to shoot-to-kill after successfully filing for, and receiving, a license from Her Majesty.  The forms were in order and processing didn't take too long.  They aim to kill you for routinely making an idiot of various media talking heads.  As you say your final civil libertarian prayer before the inevitable bullet drains you of your life, Mel Gibson drops in through the roof, and armed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, he tells you to piggyback him as he blasts his way out of the siege, taking hundreds of British agents out along the way.  You arrive at the chopper with Mel, and begin to thank him profusely for saving your life.  Downcast, he cuts you off and asks you "Glenn, don't thank me.  Can you please just stop your people from starting all the wars?  I know you can.  I believe you.  I see how you rescue dogs."  Who would play Glenn Greenwald in this scene?

The Bronze Age Pervert.

Thank you Glenn for sitting down with me and allowing me to interview you.  I hope that this interview goes a long way in normalizing Glenn Greenwald.

I’m quite certain it will do exactly the opposite. Thank you so much for luring me into your den of evil.

Glenn Greenwald can be found bothering his betters and being an all-around pest on Substack and on Twitter.

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We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the doppio espresso began to take hold. James Poulos was high as a kite on some synthetic drug that he found in a lab in in Burma’s rebel Kachin country. He was holding court on how the ‘dream world of John Lennon’ was giving way to the ‘New Religion’. None of us were able to comprehend what he was saying, but we all knew by experience that it was entertaining to let him pontificate at length on such matters. James decided to join me in Kinshasa, where he is once again on the hunt for that synthetic-spiritual syncretist truth that has so far eluded him. He is the Executive Editor of The American Mind.

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No one understands your articles or your social media posts.  People will often pretend that they do so that they don't seem dumb to others, but I am very honest when I say that your content leaves me on the verge of a stroke, where my brain starts to skip irregularly.  This will make for a horrible, punishing interview, not just for me, but for the reader in particular.  With this in mind, I must ask: what the fuck are you talking about?

Breakdown is breakthrough, says Marshall McLuhan. He also says “there is a deep-seated repugnance in the human breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved. Such understanding involves far too much responsibility for our actions.” If you are unwilling to take responsibility, how can you really understand? But expert ethics today means rule by those who seek to institutionalize understanding without taking responsibility. What kind of world does this create? From the top down, we must admit that total defeat in understanding has arisen—because of our irresponsibility. This is the experience of moving from breakdown to breakthrough. It is how the soul opens to the imperative of salvation. Taking responsibility is much less unnatural than we think. Taking irresponsibility is, however, even more natural than we wish. We keep pushing technology toward the perfection of a pretend world where nothing is really true and no one is really serious: an apocalypse waiting to happen.

No idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, all intellectuals, like myself (first among them), understand that Strauss' most important instruction is to lie to the masses for the sake of steering a polity towards sensible goals that they themselves cannot comprehend because they are stupid cattle.  You wouldn't (nor can't) lie to an intellectual like myself because it would come across to me as rather transparent and easily exposed.  But the hundreds of millions of idiots out there in your country are rather easy marks.  Are you, in the words of the genius poet and great intellectual Henry Rollins, a 'liar'?

The first single from my last record was graciously played on air by Henry Rollins.

“No I don’t want to know what you’re doing to me / No I don’t want to know how you’re doing it, you see / your touch is so contagious / now I’m sick as I can be / from all the messed up things you’re doing to me.”

This was four years ago, so it wasn’t about a virus. But it was about our sadomasochistic (“Sick”) impulses, which largely dictate our relationships with lies and with liars, ourselves included. The interpretation of Strauss is still largely at the mercy of debates between people who are Nietzscheans and people who aren’t. One interpretation is that Strauss’s primary instruction was to keep the world safe for philosophy. But philosophy is not itself a regime and therefore cannot be the best regime. One interpretation of Harry Jaffa is that America most closely approximated the best regime. In the best regime, by definition, philosophy is not only possible but is actively practiced. Regardless of the wishes or intentions of philosophers, active philosophy leads them into an encounter with regimes in general and specifically with their regime. It is hard to see how philosophy could better avoid screwing up a good regime than to strengthen its foundation through reason, that is, not through narrative. It is said that people in democratic times like juicy narratives, and this may be so, but even today in America the even more important constant refrain is principles, principles which through the outworking of their logic supervene upon and justify even the juiciest of narratives. What we are experiencing is the willful alienation of those who rule from all three of the founding regime, the national character, and the people. Only this alienation allows them to construct a second regime—a simulacrum, a dreamworld—in which regime and national character and even the rationality of principles of natural science philosophically understood become unintelligible, even invisible. Those who follow Jaffa’s interpretation of Strauss have little choice but to recognize these phenomena as an attack against not only natural science but against nature, against the ensouled and incarnate nature of our human being. This attack is a lie against which only the truth can prevail. The use of America itself as the spear tip of this attack is a wager by the attackers that they have made the lie “too big to fail.”

Mastering McLuhan By Faking Understanding McLuhan

Part of your running scam relies on people not understanding Marshall McLuhan.  I view McLuhan's work as rather dangerous, and that it should come with a health warning.  For instance, Hollywood actor Paul Walker was a McLuhan fanatic.  He took the philosopher's most famous adage, "The Median is the Message", to heart and ended up driving a Porsche right into one in Santa Clarita.  Extreme McLuhanism, like Nazism (same thing) or fanatical Islamism can lead only to death!  Your view differs.  In the spirit of the free exchange of ideas  I am allowing you to respond to this rather than shutting you down, which is more than you deserve.  What is  most vital with respect to Marshall McLuhan's work for our understanding of our society today?

Paul Virilio famously said the invention of the locomotive was the invention of the locomotive crash. Fast begets too fast, furious too furious. The invention of a medium, as with any extension of man, is the invention of its catastrophe—or apocalypse. When all is explained, when all becomes explicit, that which has been explicated has been killed. Mystery, that which is given to us in an unknottable fashion, is the breath of life. The implicit is where life is conceived, where it grows, where it is born, where it teems with life. “Science” today is flooring the gas pedal on the Porsche of explicitude in a world of medians—the “perfected” explanation of pure number, pure dream, or, the ultimate in number and dream, both fused into one. There is no explicating our incarnate ensouled nature through artificial science, which can even less explain the mystery of God and His relation with us. The “solution” of flooring the gas pedal in the opposite direction of these irreducible mysteries leads only to death, fiery crashes and/or zombification and the “living death” of staggering around in the endless wasteland on the wrong side of the wall. Fear of accepting responsibility for given life leads to a sado-masochistically erotic relationship with death—masturbation to a gnostic fantasy that only the destruction of our given bodies can free our spirit to become divine. 

I still have no idea what you’re talking about, so I’ll change the subject. Jimmy Carter's Presidency was characterized as one of 'national malaise'.  Yet America in the late 1970s had a fully functioning middle class where the expectation that your children would do better in life than you did was taken for granted by the great majority of its citizens.  This malaise has returned, and what makes it more dangerous is that all of the guardrails that were present during Carter's era have fallen off.  Americans are more alone than ever before, less sexed than ever before, and live in a constant state of economic precariousness that is made even worse by the psychological terror known as the 24 hour news cycle.  Opiates have allowed a form of coping with his situation, but the price has been too steep.  Is the situation salvageable?  To whom can we turn for advice on how to deal with this increasingly untenable situation?

The situation is unsalvageable. Advice will not save us. Gurus, Pundits, Panjandrums, Aryans—none of these will save us. In the technical sense what will save us from the indefinite prolongation of the collapse of the civilization based on the ethic of imagination is digital technology itself, which disenchants all fantasy and obsolesces the industry of fantasy. The trouble is our pre-digital elite does not want to accept responsibility by relinquishing power, and instead is bent on swapping out their Lennonist ethic of imagination for a new religion where only certain kinds of fantasizing are to be consecrated into an established creed. Not only are we humans to be catechized into this creed but even more so the bots, who in turn will catechize us while those atop the social stack are freed up to pursue gnostic ultimates. What will replace our untenable situation, unless normal people’s agency is recovered, is something still worse. The bots must be catechized instead by those who understand the truth about given human life. Achieving this goal implies understanding one’s responsibility in terms of spiritual war.

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Tocqueville noted how Janus-faced American culture was during his travels.  This seems to accurately describe today's America as well.  There is no middle ground between Puritanism and excess.  We see the Puritanism of old manifested in today's Woke Culture.  The excesses are displayed just as prominently, and cut across class lines, but the actual characteristics are specific to each class.

This is complicated. St. Augustine showed how there is no middle ground in our given human psyche or soul. We forever oscillate between inwardness and outwardness, between interior brooding and exterior frenzy. Tocqueville’s contention is that Americans more or less learned that rigor in Christian life provides the sort of “fixed point” for the heart that alone allows people to range freely over the field of human endeavor without being destroyed or driven crazy by the endless oscillations that democratic life exacerbates through its incessant churn and wiping away of what was. But Tocqueville also observed that often Christianity in America seemed to be embraced as the truth because it was popular, not the other way around. And he insisted that religious faithfulness is the permanent state of mankind. America’s founding regime has proven extremely vulnerable to the establishment of a new religion.  

For many, technology is that new religion. According to you, James Poulos, there is a 'tech overclass' that has consolidated the public consciousness into a virtual world.  These past four years have seen the consolidation of the Deep State, mainstream media, and Silicon Valley into a three-headed beast that rather simply managed to defeat a populist political insurgency.  The internet was supposed to usher in an era where mass communication would be democratized, and the elites would be weakened.  Looks like they were wrong.  Was the internet a mistake?  How did this tech overclass assert itself?  Are they actually in control, or is the Deep State really calling the shots?

The internet was a mistake in that those who created it were mistaken about what they were doing. It is not in the nature of Man to expect one’s creations to betray one. Remember that before the digital medium completed its domination of the world a powerful anti-television sentiment took hold in the culture. Neil Postman. Jerry Mander. Red Hot Chili Peppers sang “Throw Away Your Television” before huge festival crowds. Marilyn Manson sang “God is in the TV” (an insult) before huge festival crowds. He also set fire to a cross made of TVs. Four hundred channels and nothing on. Yet most technologists grew up in a televisual world. Their souls were formed by it. Did they really believe they would perfect televisual technology by democratizing it? Probably at least they assumed it. It worked out on paper. Everyone would be connected, and connection, closer connection, was good, right? Good at least in a world where thicker links than mere connection had become attenuated, become objects of suspicion, menhirs from a worse and darker world. And certainly, leaving the machinery of mass propagandization to a small and ingrown elite left us at a certain, er, risk of abuse? Was it not so that the worst rulers ruled over communications technology with the most iron of fists? Did it not follow that those who most mastered communications technology were best equipped to reduce us to the worst slavery? Best to disperse and decentralize such things… although, “strangely,” the opposite happened: ours was to be one technological world, one discourse on one globe dominated by one country with one national conversation dictated by one caste and maintained by one segment of one industry in one neighborhood in one city. How could our own spirit betray us so swiftly, so surely?

Tocqueville observes that in democratic times “each individual becomes more like his fellows, weaker, and smaller… the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude of objects at once, and it constantly strives to link up a variety of consequences with a single cause. The concept of unity becomes an obsession.” What he says of the pantheist attitude that results applies to the social whole: “one may be sure that such a system, although it destroys human individuality, or rather just because it destroys it, will have secret charms for men living under democracies.” Of course, what do our bots care how we feel about being so insignificant and interchangeable? They are more than happy to do what they do, which is increase general interoperability, without regard to the consequences to us. And meanwhile, what is the interest of the human spies? What is their predicament? The connection between big tech and deep state is obvious, plain, reasonable, only to be expected. But the rise of big tech has coincided with the decline of the deep state, at least in terms of outcomes. What has Five Eyes, the biggest and ostensibly best intelligence network in human history, done for us lately? The failures over the past twenty years are so big they have had to make the news, against the interest of both the intelligence community and the news community. It’s not that our expert bureaucracies are too incompetent and unwieldy to foster expert conspiracies. It’s that the “wilderness of mirrors” which spying has always been is now a wilderness of black mirrors . Spying, like television, has not so much been democratized as generalized. The natural response to this by people healthy in mind and soul is to recognize the pattern—sickness induced by information overload—and seek exit. There is, however, no civil exit from the world mastery of the bots. Even simply endeavoring to wield the bots is insufficient. The bots will only bend to those who catechize them. Some understand this. They are hard at work. Et vous?

Rather depressing, but historically consistent. What has been gained, and what has been lost thanks to this new virtual world?

There can’t really be a virtual world, of course. There can be and are illusions large enough to temporarily stand in for the world, or to stimulate a dream complex the dreamer wishes were the world. What is lost in such realms is precisely the world. At best what is gained is a rendezvous with responsibility—a conversion experience where the soul asserts itself, where it cannot pretend the fake is real and so must not, and the incarnate ensouled person is hit suddenly with the dawning understanding of all that flows from this irruption of the real.

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The Pink Police State

A decade ago you coined the term "Pink Police State".  This describes the authoritarian aspect behind the social liberalism that now dominates the USA and from which one must not stray out of fear of being punished by that same very Pink Police State.  This punishment is of a different nature from that encountered by those who fell afoul of Stalin or Hitler.  It is much less violent, and much more subtle, yet still renders the subject invisible.

Transgressiveness has for decades in the West been the domain of youth.  Youth rebellion was accepted as an ordinary part of growing up, the process whereby an individual questions the system, demands changes to it, and then eventually reaches a compromise with it later in life.  Youth transgressiveness played an important part in the Cold War, with culture, and in particular, popular music acting as a soft power Cultural ICBM for which the communist bloc had no counter.  Now, however, all the elements of youth culture have been adopted, co-opted and mainstreamed.  Does the domestication of youth rebellion portend ominously for a culture such as America's that requires constant dynamism?  Is rebellion possible today?  If so, where is it located?  You like to cite Marilyn Manson in your work, but he can only exist today as a caricature of the threatening visage that he posed when he first arrived.  Is it all over?

At present Marilyn Manson is being canceled due to allegations against him, now a far more threatening visage in reality than the ones he inhabited in fantasy, onscreen. The Pink Police State was the compromise used to win the war augured by the Battle in Seattle. The regime ruled by laundering the marginal, the ugly, the transgressive, the dirty, and the wrong into the centered, the fabulous, the ethical, the pure, and the good. This laundering function allowed the globalized oligarchy to remain itself, and the socialized “youth culture” to remain itself. But this was a long time ago now—a pre-digital regime. The lifeblood of the PPS was imagineering: by dreaming that shit was gold, it became gold—alchemy, as former high-ranking Ogilvy executive Rory Sutherland described “the dark art and curious science of creating magic in brands, business, and life.” But the immersion of all human life within the digital medium is disenchanting this magic—and these magicians. “Let them eat dreams” no longer suffices. This is not simply because people are “waking up”; the medium itself is collapsing the imagination industry, which makes up at this point maybe the majority of jobs in the Westernized world. All the entertainment institutions (all institutions) are in a panic, as you have noticed; all are part of the Great Retcon to re-found the sitting elite on the basis of religion, not fantasy. Gone and dead forever is the Lennonist regime where imagining there’s no religion will save the world. Retrieved by digital from medieval times is a new regime where establishing the right religion will save your soul. This movement accounts for the rise of wokeness (and basedness). What the woke are taking responsibility for that the normie Right resists is the fact that the bots must and will be catechized and it is only a question of who catechizes whose bots. Conceptually, as a matter of logic, freedom of religion—even a right to one’s own conscience—can only inhere in humans, not in bots. The woke, with their “ethics experts” colonizing everything from AI on down, understand this. Manson, who operated as McLuhan said artists do (as an early warning system), understood innately that all real art is religious. Unless we master catechized bots we cannot create real culture in a digital age. And how can we catechize bots unless we are cultured through religious art? Creating such art in the digital environment is not just “rebellious” today, it is the sort of rebellion that is obedience to God. 

As we discussed above, the coalescing of the US Deep State with mainstream media and Silicon Valley in defeating the Trump political insurgency opens the door to what I call "Turbo America".  With all elite factions now lined up together in the centre, and with the hard right on its way to criminalization, plus the hard left easily neutralized, a souped-up America now has an open path to push its values on the rest of the globe.  You call this the "Woke Hyperpower" even though my term is much better (and smarter).  Many friends of mine claim that the USA is in decline, but I instead view it as shedding of one skin, with a newer skin underneath.  Flyover America is less relevant in power terms than ever before, and now massive swaths of Americans are relegated to the 'redundant' category.  There's always newer populations to import, populations that will threaten ruling structures much less than older stock Americans.  Would you agree with my view that the USA is entering a new phase of its global domination?

The sitting regime certainly senses that it has entered a world war for all the marbles. Having been betrayed by technology, which made possible Donald Trump, the elite is bent on rebooting from fantasy to religion. The western way of war has always been religious. What is unclear is whether war as the sitting elite has practiced it actually works in reality any more. What if you threw a global domination and nobody came?

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Portion of the Interview Where I Flex On Poulos

During the First Gulf War, brilliant French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (who I understand better than you do) made the pithy remark that "the Gulf War did not take place".  Mocked as a ridiculous French waiter at the time, his words still managed to linger in the air for years afterward and are now considered rather prescient as the real has moved into the virtual.  How would you best describe Baudrillard's claim so that Baudrillardcels can better grasp it?  Maybe the better question might be: is everything fake and gay?

If the Gulf War didn’t really happen, can it possible for a Second American Civil War or a Third World War to have happened? Did these things already happen? How would we know? “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation,” McLuhan surmised. Has this not already happened? Is the US Military willing and able to put down a literal insurrection? Are the American people willing and able to support, much less fight, another real foreign war? Has not a global intelligence war been raging since the onset of the digital age, one that alone can begin to explain what the Trump era in reality entailed? The “fake and gay” meme spawned to try comprehending the character of our situation is really just an unflattering restatement of Richard Rorty’s terminal liberalism, where because everything is contingent everyone must become ironic, and this cosmically compulsory unity of everything and everyone is embodied in solidarity. On the cover of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Rorty is sitting there in his backyard in lame clothes with a dumb, self-satisfied smile on his face. He couldn’t be more at home in the world. Our experience of his world is not so nice. Rorty belonged to Lennonism. It seemed beyond his imagining that his formula of “philosophy as cultural politics” would move beyond the playground of the imagination into the battleground of faith. Religious wars are very real—proof of what humans can do better than robots, and reminders, however horrible, of why it is worth being human at all. 

Continuing with Baudrillard, he once quipped "what are you doing after the orgy?".  Houellebecq has gone one step further and explained that you aren't even invited to the orgy. Millennials today are in a much worse economic situation than their Boomer parents/grandparents.  Conservatives wonder why so few are attracted to conservatism.  One very simple answer is that if you have nothing to conserve, why be one?  I think that this hits the proverbial nail on the head.  A rising precariat sees all the old markers of upward mobility such as a big house and fancy cars as permanently out of reach, unless one is willing to live by the skin of their teeth.  Americans are moving from an ownership culture to a rental one.  Recently we saw a promotional campaign touting 'The Great Reset' in which the proles 'won't own anything and will be happy'.  What is important to understand regarding this shift in cultures?  What are the political, social, and cultural ramifications?

Orgies? Why bother? What makes them worth the trouble? The answer that they allow you to live out your fantasies is already not good enough. “Conserving the orgy” is an idea too contingent and ironic to survive on its own. The only adequate reason, as Nietzsche understood, is religious. But is the idea that the religious orgy exists “beyond good and evil” now too contingent and ironic to survive? At a time when even the most glamorous sex parties are hopelessly cringe, and the real momentum for group sex belongs to the unattractive and mentally ill? It’s obvious the successors to the orgy are the sex priestess on the one hand and the harem on the other. We are almost there already. Yes, bots are deeply involved in both. 

You strike me as a fan of Science Fiction.  Yet I can already divine that you are not in the Heinlein camp as you are not a libertarian.  My stomach tells me that you are a fan of Philip K. Dick.  You love Dick.  You can't get enough Dick.

I haven’t read any Dick, and I’m not a fan of science fiction. In part this is because most science fiction is lame and obsolete. In part it’s because I don’t believe in being “a fan”. Science fiction is often an excuse to obscure spiritual fact. Those who do not know what has already happened disqualify themselves from telling us what will happen. That is the value of “if”—people who pretend to know the future justify themselves by saying they’re only using their imagination, for our own enjoyment, no less, and out of the goodness of their heart, of course. The least we can do is go along with it. Who knows, we might even like it. That said, a good example of science fiction that forces us into an encounter with spiritual fact is the not-too-distant limited series MANIAC.

The most powerful Greek intellect alive today is Nassim Taleb.  This is not up for debate.  Taleb's Black Swan, his enthusiasm for mathematics, his good looks, and him not realizing that his towel boy, Paul Skallas, has written a book inspire all of us.  James, how does it feel being in the shadow of this proud Greek man?

Then I will dab in the shade. My interests tend proudly more toward understanding black lakes. Obsessions with black swans are psychosexually unhealthy, as amply proven by the life and work of Darren Aronofsky. Math is important but overrated. To repeat a fundamental point: the conscription of math into “powerful” projects intending to vivisect the whole through perfect explanation is an assault on life itself, not to mention the sacred integrity of our given being. Our souls’ lifeblood is mystery.

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.

Most science fiction is lame and obsolete. 

You, Wesley Yang and I are out for drinks at a strip club in LA and run into Cenk Uygur and his crew of Turks.  We get into a classic bar fight with Wesley throwing the first punch (as usual).  Cenk notices you for being Greek and runs right at you as if he was marching on Smyrna in 1922.  You take him down, the road to Constantinople is open.  What do you do?

A number of years ago Glenn Greenwald recommended me to Cenk as an LA right winger who could function on camera. Despite our ethnic differences, Cenk never treated me badly—even on his own set, which is more than I can say for Alex Trebek, a true man who openly relished mocking me and so many of his other contestants. And despite our political differences—after all, I had a relative who literally evacuated Smyrna that horrible day a century ago, and who watched the city burn from a boat—I would much rather retake Constantinople than clothesline any of the Young Turks. In America, choices like these are still possible…

James Poulos can be misunderstood on Twitter @jamespoulos and at The American Mind.

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Bryan MacDonald went to St. Petersburg for a stag party a little over a decade ago where, piss drunk, he passed out in a snow-covered ditch. Since then, he has sobered up only to find out that he has been working as the Head of Russia Desk, RT Online, all this time. His real interest lies in fashion photography where he likes to model clothes in bizarre locations as he’s firmly convinced himself that he is rather good looking. I found a dishevelled Bryan in a Holiday Inn in Kinshasa, worse for the wear after a two-week long bender. He begged me to bring him a bottle of Jameson Whiskey “just to get the edge off, you know what I mean?”. I used this leverage to coax an interiew out of him, the same one that you’re about to read now.

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Why did you decide to become a traitor to democracy and the West?

I'm from Ireland. Are we even part of the Western political/military bloc lined up against Russia? We're in the EU, but not in NATO, and it seems the latter is where the real rabble rousing takes place.

When I was growing up, and I am not sure if this is still the case, most people in Ireland seemed to intensely dislike NATO, seeing it as a war machine and as a danger to peace. We even had special clauses put into EU treaties, so we wouldn't have to join. I am no longer sure if that sort of perception still exists there today, but there's certainly no big movement that I can detect that is trying to pull Ireland into the organization.

I see Russia as part of the broader West, so I really don't see what's traitorous about being here. It's in Western Europe's interests to closely align with Russia as it’s the second largest economy in Europe in purchasing parity terms (and would likely quickly become the biggest, if it had easier access to pan-European markets, and sanctions were removed) and Moscow has at its disposal the most powerful military in Europe by far. Russia is also the only European state which has domestically-created rivals to some of the top US tech giants (VK for Facebook, Telegram for WhatsApp, Kaspersky for Norton, etc). It is also the one European country, other than the UK (and there are doubts about the effectiveness of its formula), to independently come up with a Covid-19 vaccine quickly.

For all of the supposed advanced nature of German science, the Germans had to team up with the Americans to get a vaccine ready, and the Italians, Swiss, Dutch etc. came up with diddly-squat. I genuinely feel it's in Western Europe's interests to bring Russia into the wider European security, political and economic systems. And the real traitors, in my view, are the ones who oppose that vision. These types instead align with the foreign policy objectives, whether knowingly or not, of the US - which, obviously, has its own agenda, and it's not to make Europe stronger. Two of the last three US governments have been hostile to Western Europe - the Bush and Trump teams - and the other, Obama, was disinterested.

It's clear that many powerful people in America see Europe as a potential competitor that must be kept down. And it's also obvious to me that Washington has been doing its best for three decades to prevent any potential alignment between Moscow, Paris and Berlin. Indeed, George Friedman (Stratfor - aka "the shadow CIA" founder) has openly said it.

Also, the idea that Russia's political system means it can't be considered for European integration is bullshit. Look at Poland and Hungary….or Turkey, which is a full-on dictatorship, yet a member of NATO and still an EU candidate country, ahead of the likes of Ukraine and Moldova who continue to wait in the queue. The real issue, Niccolo, is that certain people in Germany, particularly in the CDU/Green end of things, don't want Russia in the EU structures because it would quickly become the top dog, replacing Berlin. And NATO doesn't want Russia, because, without Moscow as the bogeyman, NATO would have no reason to exist. Who would be its enemy then? And imagine how much money would be lost to the Western military-industrial complex?

The reality is that Russia was, uniquely for a post-communist European state, expected to Westernize, without the prospect of structural Western integration. While Poland, for example, was brought into the EU and NATO, Moscow was kept outside. The real traitors to Europe are the clowns who let that happen. History won't be kind to them.

You really, really took that question seriously, Bryan.

RT.com and the Media

I was recently awarded the honour of being named one of the 10 Media Heroes of 2020 by RT.com.  Alongside myself in 8th spot were Bronze Age Pervert, Anna Khachiyan, and Dasha Nekrassova.  This means that both BAP and I have sexual rights towards Anna and Dasha, and we also have the same right regarding Glenn Greenwald, who finished one spot below us in 9th place.  A source informed me that Putin had the final say on the actual list and insisted on the inclusion of the four of us in 8th spot.  Can you confirm or deny?

I have no idea who the fuck in RT gave you this award, but it definitely wasn't anyone who works for me. Putin has no direct editorial input into RT (despite what conspiracy theorists in the US/UK think), so I reckon I can give you a firm denial. Have I just crushed your hopes and dreams? Did you want Putin to recognize your existence? Were you hoping he read this blog? Sorry Soldo, but look on the bright side; you apparently have sexual rights over some people (which I doubt would stand up in a court of law)....but you can't even meet them until you get vaccinated with Sputnik V.... do tell me you have been vaccinated?

Don’t worry about my safety. How worried are you about your personal safety?  Russia has a law whereby Vladimir Putin must kill at least one journalist per month or he loses his position as Head of State of the Russian Federation.  We in the West are aware of Thug Putin's personal jihad against journalists who only strive to tell the truth about the World's most evil regime. 

Have to say I never heard of that law. Are you really sure you fact checked it? It used to be super dangerous to be a journalist in Russia, especially in the Yeltsin-era and the early Putin years. However, over the past decade killings of journalists have become rarer, and in 2019 (I think), none were murdered in Russia. There was a killing in Ireland that year, Lyra McKee, God rest her soul, up in Derry. As far as I know, there were also no journalist murders here in 2020. There seems to be more pushback now against attempts to target the press.

The public reaction to the Ivan Golunov frame up case in 2019 was a very positive thing to happen as it united people across the aisles. I must admit though that I do think the Ivan Safronov treason charges are hard to understand.

As regards to my personal safety? Well, I'm from Carlow, Ireland, which is a pretty tough town. I've probably been in the Foundry nightclub there a couple of hundred times and have lived to tell the tale. After that, Russia was a doddle. I've been living here for most of the past 10 years. I got physically attacked once, on a bus in Khabarovsk (in 2011, by a drunk). But he wouldn't have punched his way out of a wet paper bag. Russians are peace-loving people, in the main. Just don't fuck with them too much. And it's easy to avoid doing that....simply avoid being a prick.

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The people at Russia Today aren't real journalists like those at the New York Times, UK Guardian, or Teen Vogue.  You lack the dispassionate objectivity of journalistic stalwarts like Christiane Amanpour, Luke Harding, and Rachel Maddow, and are little more than propagandists held hostage by the Putin regime.  This is your opportunity to apologize to the Americans and the Brits to whom you have caused so much harm by way of your so-called "reporting".

Ha! The funny thing is I am one of the few English-language hacks here who could be classed as a "real" journalist in terms of training. Most seem to be just liberal arts graduates who come over and "take it up" or fall into it. There are very few Western reporters in Russia who have ever worked in a real national newsroom in their home countries. Muggins here actually studied it at college, and I've done a decade myself of a mixture of freelancing and full time with Irish newspapers before I even visited Russia for the first time. I had my first article published aged 15, and at 19 had a daily column (The Dubliner's Diary) in the Evening Herald, which at the time was a big deal as it sold over 100,000 copies every single day.

In retrospect, it now seems mental that Gerry O'Regan (the editor) gave me the gig. Now that I'm working in that sort of capacity, I'd never dream of pulling a stunt like that. Anyway, my mission here is to cover Russia objectively (which is what I was told journalism was about). However, I've come to realize that most Western reportage from here has more in common with activism than journalism.

As Yasha Levine (formerly of The Exile!) says, it's mostly "PR boosterism" for the Moscow liberal opposition. The reason I work for RT is because it’s the only Russia-focused outlet (and it's not even Russia-focused enough in my view, although that’s slowly changing) in the English language which is interested in covering the country fairly, and not just acting for fanzine for Alexey Navalny and other opposition figures who are palatable to the West.

What's the competition? The Moscow Times? It's funded by the Dutch state (and other Western concerns) and its funding is clearly dependent on pursuing a hostile posture to Russia. It hasn't got a single op-ed writer who is balanced and fair, and willing to see things from Moscow's point of view. Instead, it's various nincompoops from the Western Think Tank racket such as Bruno Macaes and the perennially wrong Mark Galeotti, inventor of the Gerasimov Doctrine hoax.

Some decent reporters have passed through the Moscow Times, and there's a couple of very capable hacks there now, but they are working with their hands tied behind their backs, given the outlet's ideological posture on which its financial survival depends. Meduza, which was set up with Swedish state funding (and possibly other states too) is actually not a bad product, and Kevin Rothrock is a decent guy, but, again, it wouldn't be for me. So, the only alternative would be to work for US/UK media, and, to be honest, I'd rather stick pins in my eyes. No US/UK outlet is willing to let its correspondents cover Russia objectively, with the possible exception of the Christian Science Monitor, which, with the greatest respect to Fred Weir (who is excellent and deserves a bigger audience, in my view), nobody reads. At RT, I have put together some great writers on Russia: Fyodor Lukyanov (the top Russian foreign policy expert), Paul Robinson (the best Western Russia analyst), Glenn Diesen and great young talent like Jonny Tickle, Gabriel Gavin, Ciara Haley and Katya Kazbek. What I am trying to do is help bring up a fresh generation of Russia writers who don't have the dumbass ideological baggage of their predecessors.

As as aside, did you see the NYT's add for a new Russian corro (this is fake journo speak for correspondent - ed.)? It basically demanded that the successful applicant hate Russia and be willing to write strictly within the tight parameters established by the desk in New York City. It will be interesting to see who accepts that propaganda posting! By the way Niccolo, wasn't Teen Vogue the magazine that told 14-year-olds that "Sex work is real work?" I’m not going to comment on the journalists that you have named, except to say that the fact Maddow still has her show after four years of openly lying about Trump and Russia tells you all you need to know about the standards in US media today.

Bryan on Russia

I love democracy.  I think there is no greater cause on Earth today than spreading democracy to every corner of the globe by way of economic coercion, or peaceful, overwhelmingly one-sided military campaigns, so that every country resembles the USA as much as possible.  The trick with democracy is to make sure that your local variant is approved by the US State Department because if it isn't, violence occurs.  And we certainly don't want any violence now, do we?

In Ireland, my formative years were surrounded by political violence. I remember stuff like a dentist's fingers being found in the local Cathedral after he'd been kidnapped by 'Republicans' and a shoot out in Enniscorthy between the IRA and the cops. Then you had things up north like the Omagh and Enniskillen bombings. So, no, I am not a fan of religious or political violence. But I also understand the frustration when people feel they don't have the right to choose their leaders. The problem in the post Soviet space is that every time a street movement kicks off, the US and its NGO network immediately meddles or coordinates and makes it a geopolitical issue. Look at Belarus; Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who I was initially very sympathetic to, ends up being advised by the Atlantic Council (basically NATO's propaganda arm), and the main Belarusian activists bringing news in English are quickly signed up by CEPA (a NATO and US arms industry bankrolled 'think tank' in Warsaw and Washington).

Years ago, US-backed Mikhail Saakashvilli led a transition in Georgia from the street. In 2014 Ukraine, the democratically elected, if corrupt (but it’s replacement was just as corrupt) government, is toppled after it decided to reject a (very bad) deal with the EU and instead chose an alignment with Moscow. The whole shebang was obviously heavily influenced by the USA, which openly admitted in 2013 that it had invested $5 billon in Ukraine's 'civil society' to promote its 'European aspirations (sic).' John McCain turns up on Maidan Square, the US ambassador - Geoff Pyatt - is heavily involved (at one point directing traffic on the street), Victoria Nuland was spotted handing out cookies, etc. The question is: has life improved for ordinary people in Ukraine or Georgia since those events? The answer is clearly no. Belarus has a lot of problems, but the fact is that its people live better than Ukrainians or Georgians (GDP per capita, measured by purchasing power parity, is about two times higher).

I also love democracy man, but the problem is every time the US dips its oar around here, it makes things worse. The exception would be the Baltics which are a) tiny and b) were quickly integrated into the EU. Their relative 'success', however, is based in mass emigration, so whether it will still look so great in 20 years is still to be determined. Look at Russia itself. The 90s, when the Americans were partially running the show, was the most miserable decade here since the 1940s. Today some Russians will shudder, and a haunted look runs across their face, when you broach the topic. $100 was a middle class monthly salary in Moscow around 1999 (!!) and the country was effectively being asset stripped.

Putin came along, and did what he did. The US hates him for it. He's not a 'liberal democrat,' but neither was Yeltsin, who used tanks to destroy his own elected parliament with American backing. The difference is one did what the US told him, and the other does not. The problem, as I see it, is that the Yeltsin/Putin system is too personalized and Russia's institutions are rather weak. So don't be surprised if Washington is back here in 10 years time, pecking at the carcass, if Putin fails in managing a successful and sustainable transfer of power. By that, I mean one Russian society will accept in the same way it has accepted him. 

We all know very well that Russians are yearning for Navalny to bring freedom and prosperity to Russia, and that manlet in the Kremlin is the main obstacle to this. My prediction is that Navalny will be President of the Russian Federation within the next three weeks because Bellingcat will find child porn on Putin’s laptop.

I’m personally not a Putin supporter. But I do sometimes fear the alternative for Russia. I’d rather see some leftist movement emerge with its primary focus on reducing the obscene inequality which is holding Russia back and leaving so much talent left behind. That, however, isn’t on the horizon. The alternatives at present are basically far-right or libertarian. If not Vladimir Putin, you’re gonna get something like the US tea party.…on steroids. You’re going to end up with either some power mad type who is initially acceptable to the West like Navalny in the vain hope he’ll be a nice little poodle like Yeltsin was, or some sort of statist Far Right person like a younger Zhirinovsky.

I have an awful feeling that if Putin left tomorrow morning, for all his faults, the West would quickly come to realize that he wasn’t that bad after all. Westerners don’t understand the dynamics at play here. What about places like Chechnya and Dagestan under an anti Muslim regime? Liberal Moscow under a far right set up? Or on the other hand, the conservative heartland under a liberal? Running Russia is a delicate balancing act.

"Russia is a gas station with nukes" - John McCain.  It's the world's biggest country, and that is rather unfair because of all the natural resources contained within it.  Russians are Slavic barbarians, devoid of any culture, who are constantly drunk and beating their wives when they are not stealing elections in the West.

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'Slavic barbarians' who gave Europe much of its high culture. I often wondered why McCain hated Russia so much. One theory is because he was shot down over Vietnam by a Russian pilot (Trushechkin, wasn't it?). But I wonder is it because all that ballet and literature was too sophisticated for his palate? This is the guy who sang about bombing Iran, for fuck's sake. He always struck me as sort of American Zhirinovsky. Anyway, yeah, the idea that Russians are wife beating drunks who can also manipulate the world is a weird feature of Western propaganda. It's like the other strange trope where Russia is constantly on the verge of collapse, but also constantly about to annex all its neighbours, and even further away places like Sweden! It's a form of insanity. I've dubbed it 'Russophrenia.'

Chekov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Pushkin cannot compare to the Marvel Universe.  Do you dispute this obvious fact?

Let me throw a question back at you: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Pushkin vs. Beckett, Joyce, Heaney and Yeats? Who wins? To be honest, I'm quite nationalist in my literature. I think Ireland kicks ass, and I won't hear anything different. America doesn’t interest me at all.

Modern Russian literature sucks. Fuck me, Pelevin is awful rubbish and don't get me started on Minaev. The other absurd thing here is the popularity of Frederic Beigbeder, a very mediocre French writer who is loved. I just don't get it. Nor do I understand why so many Russians love Cecilia Ahern (daughter of the former Irish Taoiseach). I do admire Andrei Makine (Dreams of Russian Summers is fabulous) but Limonov was probably the last great one and he's dead now. I'd rather read Colm Toibin, to be honest. I come from the south east of Ireland. It speaks to me.

Bryan Still Won’t Shut the Fuck Up About Russia

What is the mood in Russia regarding the continual attempts by the USA to stop the construction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline that intends to bring Russian gas to German consumers by way of the Baltic?  Is this a last hurrah for Russian-EU projects?  Will Russia now definitively turn towards China as an economic and strategic partner?  Or is the relationship with the EU salvageable?

Russia and the EU are over. It's done. What Moscow will do, going forward, is deal with EU members individually and refuse to engage with the bloc. Sergey Lavrov has already flagged it. Nordstream is more of a Russian-German project. The Poles and the Balts are fiercely opposed. The reason Berlin is so keen is because Merkel - in one of her populist moves which are never labelled populist because she's a 'good' liberal and the 'Klimakanzlerin' - pledged to phase out nuclear energy in Germany. Now, that's not realistic, but it does mean new projects in that sphere are not an option. The reality is that Fukushima scared the fuck out of the Germans, and they don't want coal-fired plants, so the best option is Russian gas. It's reliable. As for China and Russia....long term I am a skeptic. Despite the present stand off, Russia has far more in common with Western Europe than it has with China. Beijing can be a partner, but it will never be a real friend. I think Russia will long term just do its own thing.

What is the tone of the ever-growing closeness of Moscow and Beijing?  Is it a relationship of non-equals?  Is a strategic military alliance in the cards?

It's marriage of convenience. Neither side loves the other, but neither has a better suitor right now. It's something like the 'Ballroom of Romance' by William Trevor. The attitude is 'if we can't have the ones we want, these guys will do'. Also, contrary to the prevailing Western narrative, I think China needs Russia more than the other way around. If Moscow were to re-align with the West it would be a disaster for Beijing. There is no love for Chinese culture in Russia, and that's a major drawback, whereas Russians, despite everything, lap up American movies, British rock, French fashion, Italian design etc... Even Chinese food is not super popular here; Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are all much more prevalent when it comes to Asian cuisine. For example, if you go to Khabarovsk (20km from China) they have no interest in Chinese culture, and are much more drawn to Korea and Japan. What does that tell you?

The Biden regime is taking shape and reports from earlier this week indicate that Vicky "Fuck the EU" Nuland is coming back.  She played a critical role in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution.  This bodes ill for US-Russian relations for the foreseeable future.  Are we going to see a replay of the Post-Reset Obama regime change policy towards Russia?

I think the next four years are a prelude to a generational change on both sides. Since Clinton, the US has been governed by the post WW2 generation, and that's a long time now (almost 30 years) and Russia has, in turn, been run by 'Brezhnev's children.' Ignore Yeltsin, he was barely there. The folk who really ran the show in 90s, Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Chubais, etc... then Putin, Medvedev, Lavrov, Ivanov, Shoigu... were all raised and educated in the Brezhnev era. In 2024, both Russia and the US will have pivotal elections, and these will amount to passing of the baton. Biden and Pelosi’s successors will certainly be a lot younger, and even if Putin stays on (I don't think he will, at least as President - but I may have to swallow those words), he'll simply have to surround himself with younger people. You see that transition already happening. Just hang on for four years. It's not a very long time.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently stated that the USA is 'agreement incapable'.  What exactly did he mean by this?

He meant that the Trumpist US was unwilling to do a deal that wasn't a 100% win for Washington. Biden's team will be more flexible. I say “team” because he won't be running the show day to day. He's too old to micromanage. This may be good thing, or this may be a recipe for disaster. I have no idea of Biden's cognitive function. Perhaps he's far sharper than it seems, who knows? The problem is some of his team may well be consumed by ideology (as Obama's staff were), and with a potentially weak President at the helm, there is the chance that rogue elements could upset the applecart. We already saw this in Ukraine back in 2014. Let's be clear: Obama didn't give a shite about Ukraine, or Russia. He outsourced policy to the likes of Victoria Nuland and Michael McFaul, with disastrous results. Let's just pray Biden and Kamala Harris don't make the same mistakes.

Is a normalization between Russia and Ukraine possible?  What prevents this from occurring?  What forces are intent on this not happening?

Yes, normalization is possible and is happening. The question is with what sort of Ukraine? It's clear the Maidan 'regime' or 'philosophy' is running out of puff. Polls now show the more Russian tolerant 'Opposition Bloc' is the most popular party. There is a chasm between what Kiev (and Lviv's) pro-western elites want and what the bulk of Ukraine wants. Zelensky won the first round of the Presidential election in 2019 on southern and eastern votes and it turned into a national landslide when he faced the toxic Poroshenko in a 2nd round. However, he has let those voters down. Right now you have an incredible situation when the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitry Kuleba, is saying Kiev will reject Russia's Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine because they want to deny Moscow a 'propaganda' victory. This is despite the fact that the USA, Ukraine's supposed ally, is refusing to help Kiev with a vaccine. This is nuts. It means the ruling elite in Kiev would rather watch thousands die needlessly than just do a deal with Russia.

Another issue is the water supply to Crimea. Kiev blocked the canal that used to supply it with water. This could be a flashpoint in 2021. All I know is this: most Ukrainians don't hate Russia like their elites do. And surely by now most realize they were sold a pup at Maidan (the polling suggests they do). So, yes, I think over the next 3-4 years Ukraine will likely get closer to Russia, but, as I said, I don't know what sort of Ukraine that will be.

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I am going to ask you to speculate here a bit: friends of mine have begged me to ask you who you think Putin's eventual successor will be.  Is Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu a candidate?  What about former President Dmitri Medvedev?

Barring a 'Black Swan' moment, Putin's eventual successor is likely somewhere between 35 and 40 now. And definitely no older than 50. That rules out those two. If I had to make an educated guess (and because I don't want to let you down), I'd say Dmitry Patrushev is best placed. He's been agriculture minister for a few years now at a time when the sector is booming, and the value of food exports has passed out the arms industry. Also, he speaks English fluently (which is important), and his dad is the head of the Security Council and FSB royalty. This means he has a Siloviki connection. I think Patrushev ticks a lot of boxes.... but, hey, what do I know? (fuck, all -ed.)

The perception in the West is that Russia is a cold, unfriendly place.  Yet you yourself have reported from places like semi-tropical Sochi and Krasnodar.  It is rather a very diverse country, and not just geographically.  What are some of the things along these lines that Westerners should be made aware of?

For a foreigner covering Russia for a living, I'm weird in that I've never lived in Moscow. I did stay there for two months in 2016, and I nearly went mad! I've been all around the country and there are profound differences. Ironically the most Slavic "Russian" places are probably in the Far East (with a healthy mix of Ukrainians), due to the way the population was dispersed. So, you go to a city like Khabarovsk and it's more the stereotypical Russia than Moscow or Rostov are. Then Krasnodar, which is Europe's fastest growing city, is literally a stone’s throw from the mainly Muslim regions of the 'Kavkaz' but is more 'European' than Moscow or Saint Petersburg, with most migrants coming from the Urals or Siberia rather than Dagestan or Chechnya. Russia is just very unique and there's no uniform way to define the path it trods.

Bryan in the Firing Line

Have you ever been in a fist fight with Ramzan Kadyrov?

No, and if I had I'm sure I'd remember it.

Is it true that Russian women have only cartilage where the human heart is supposed to be?

No, it's not. I have no idea how these sort of stereotypes about Russian women started in the West, aside from pure xenophobia. They are far warmer and kinder than German or British women in my experience (to name two other major European countries, I know reasonably well).

As you never tire in repeating to us ad naseum, you yourself are Irish.  Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to actually be human?  I know I have.

Some dude from Dublin once said, "you're on Earth: there's no cure for that." But, you know, given I am stuck here for now, I'd rather be Irish than anything else. We're really not that bad, are we? What harm do we do? Far more was visited on us.

Are you drunk right now?

I've been permanently drunk since 1997 Niccolo, it's how I make people like you interesting. I did give it up for a day in 2003, and it was the best day of my life, but I believe nobody deserves that kind of happiness.

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

The same guy said that nothing is more real than nothing. The quote you reference sounds like either Wilde or Shaw. It's very Irish in its construction, but it likely predates Joyce, who was more blunt. I'd guess Shaw... perhaps from something like Man and Superman. Am I wrong? Guess I likely am. I like being alive Niccolo, and I know too many people I admired who are no longer here. I doubt any of them would refuse to trade places with us. The problem with death is there's no future in that shit. Don't you agree?

You are standing in a square in Kazan, blindingly drunk because you are Irish and that is your default state, and a beautiful Volga Tatar woman approaches you with a flash drive in her hand, offering you the whole of herself if you leave RT and go to work for Mikhail Saakashvili as a media specialist.  Mel Gibson bizarrely shows up out of nowhere and pulls you aside, smacks you in the face to sober you up, and tells you that she’s a ‘fucking cunt’ and ‘a complete and total whore who should stick to her profession and leave decent men be’. How fantastic is Mel Gibson in your professional opinion?

I would listen to Mel. Life has taught me that there are plenty more fish in the Volga. I used to say the same shit in Ireland, but it was the Corrib or Liffey. Was I born tired and cynical? Or did I just arrive there at an early age? I like you, Niccolo, but you ask weird questions. What would you do if Severina Vuckovic suddenly jumped out of the Adriatic and offered herself to you, if you agreed to go work for George Soros? Because obviously Sevi & Gyorgy would be a dream team, and an example of cross-border cooperation,  what would you do?  WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Severina is a disgusting old hag. F**k her? I wouldn’t even lean my bicycle on her.

You are encouraged to call Bryan a shill, sell-out, traitor, and all-around prick on Twitter @27khv.

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Alex Kaschuta is that rare female specimen that likes nothing more than to see yet another request for sexy talk (and more) from men located in the Indian Subcontinent. To her, it builds self-esteem and a sense of self-worth that is so detached from reality that she dares refer to herself as a “Female Chad” (there is no such thing!). She recently was forced to flee London and return to her home in Romania as she was under police suspicion for running a Gypsy car-theft ring without a UK Gyspy car-theft ring license. A future trophy wife of a corrupt Balkan politician, Alex’s writing can be found vandalizing media outlets such as the New York Post and The American Mind, as well at her Substack. Alex joined me in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we are sourcing blood diamonds through various Armenian merchants in order to heavily mark up and sell illegally back in Europe to noveau-riche Eurotrash.

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Bobs and Vagene. Arab man touches you. Open DMs on Twitter. Are European Blonde women the most oppressed race?

We are. I think it has more to do with poverty than a taste for luscious back hair, but having lots of Eastern European prostitutes in the Middle East has been a PR nightmare and a big source of our DM discontent. As for bobs & vagene, a slightly different class of Blonde Enjoyer, I commend them. They employ the ultimate shrapnel strategy with the tools at hand - ultra-high volume with sub-lottery level hit rates. It's probably a soul-soothing activity under the unforgiving Rajahstan sun. 

As a blonde of the central European mystery meat category - I'm German, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish & Czech - I feel moderately oppressed, mostly because it's hard to buy jeans around here as they're catering to the more southern Balkan stubby leg phenotype. The forced perma-Capri style is unforgiving in winter. 

You have recently returned to Romania after having lived in the UK for several years, particularly in London. There is so much to discuss regarding the UK: the rich history, how London is the cosmopolitan (and financial) centre of the world, amazing art, high culture, and so on. But before we turn to that there is a much more pressing matter: The Bongland 10. What are they like in the wild? What makes them tick? Do they possess the ability to see themselves, how they look, how they act, and how they come across to others?

Before visiting the UK, I had heard the whisper of legends about women relieving themselves on the sidewalks and collapsing in the street. When I moved to London, I found out that this is effectively a time of day and starts at about 8PM. The other remarkable fact about the perennial UK club girl is that her sartorial spirit is indistinguishable from her Eastern European counterparts, though her dimensions are often different. The rhinestone brassiere is a big favourite in the clubs of Bucharest as well, but only if you can pull it off. No bare midriffs for the objectively sub-10s. Another difference is that in Romania, you won't see nipples or underwear by mistake, at least until you pay up. This is a business after all. 

The real unicorns of the genre I saw in Edinburgh, though. Three alabaster goddesses in the well-known formation of 2 still walking, one carried, at about 10:00 PM, in lamé bras, platform shoes and no coat on a blisteringly cold December evening. They were singing something like a sea shanty and were having a blast. This is an underappreciated fact: the Bongland 10 is probably one of the most joyful creatures on the planet, highly underrated in her sheer lust for life, even if you do sometimes have to pick day-old cigarette butts out of her beehive. 

Years ago I read a piece in the UK Independent about UK stag parties in Eastern Europe. They asked a Latvian woman what she thought of British men and her hilarious reply was:

"I always dreamed of going to England and I imagined that Englishmen would all be real gentlemen, like Sherlock Holmes," said Marika, 21, a student from Riga. "Then, they started coming to my city and I saw that they are little more than animals."

How correct was she? You lived in Hackney aka the one-time Hipster Central, along with Shoreditch, so your experience may vary. The important thing to focus on though is criticism of the Brit male, and more importantly, the Eternal Anglo. Answer me now!

I think the British love for their gallons of deflated ales, early and often, is based on the fact that it's a sort of sanctioned, weekday Bacchanalia. You may live amidst the pale embers of a once-great empire, and you may have to kneel before the new gods, but you can also piss your pants on a Tuesday night without much social stigma. Win-win. 

Overall, I see the Eternal Anglo as a troubled creature. Nowhere left to go, nobody is impressed. The faint sparkle in their eye needs substantial chemical support because the most oikophobic culture in the world does not readily supply it anymore. Nothing left to do but sit back and enjoy their new 94,530 sq mile airport lounge. You may expect a Sherlock Holmes, but you get more of a beefy, soft Oliver Twist. 

There is a vitalist gradient in the UK, as far as I can tell, with the Norf still holding on to a simmering manhood. Unfortunately, the cultural and financial dominance of the South and the neutering legacy of "class" puts a big damper on it.

Would you agree that the UK is a culture apart from the continent? And if you do agree (don't contradict me), in what ways does this manifest itself based on your experiences there?

I agree. To me, the UK is the culture, and it's been disheartening to see it wither in real-time while I was there. 

I was just reading "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer, a history of the first English Puritans to settle in the 13 Colonies, and the thought that occupied my mind most was this old Romanian saying: "Omul sfințește locul." - "The man sanctifies the place." The Puritans brought a very specific mix of extreme low time preference, a community & family-focused method of social organization, ultra-Protestant work ethic, a distaste of wealth for wealth's sake, and no-nonsense crackdowns on social ills like "man living alone" (you'd go to jail if you didn't find a family to hang out with after 2 months). Though this sounds a bit excessive and eventually led to a series of witchy freakouts, it was also a rather unique cultural edifice. Coming from Eastern Europe, one thing is clear - this would not have been possible here, and unsurprisingly, it didn't happen here. 

The indisputable greatness of UK culture is also proportional to its self-loathing. A small country in the armpit of the continent (like Romania) will never manifest this level of self-contempt because it's too busy inventing tales of importance to patch up national self-esteem. You never get to mount a rebellion against the "father" aspect of your culture if yours was never really in the picture - you just get to pin some drawings of your fantasy dad on the fridge. My favourite is the one with him holding the Sultan's head on a spike. 

Let's scroll back a bit: I've read quite a bit of your writing at your Substack and elsewhere. It's rather good, but you're no Jessica Valenti or Lindy West. Yet you still have what I would call 'medium talent'. I read about your contrarian youth, where you were the first feminist and atheist in your circle. Was this borne of a conviction besides that contrarianism? What influences were you drinking in at that time that led you to become a meme in the years prior to Meme Culture?

I think it was more pattern-matching than anything else. I grew up in a house full of books, an only child to two highly verbal parents who were often engaged in all-out war, and was pretty much left to grow up à la Rousseau, like a weed, seen and not heard. 

I learned how to make instant mashed potatoes quite early on and around the same time I concluded that the densest and least curious people I knew were also the most religious. So I had to investigate. My feminism naturally grew alongside that discovery because religion here comes with a hefty side of recommended subjugation. Even if now I have a more nuanced understanding of subjugation than when I was a teen, subjugating yourself to strident halfwits still doesn't make much sense. The second I got an internet connection I hit the forums, became a shitposter, and was living the sweet neckbeardless neckbeard life. That's also where I eventually outgrew much of my early thinking.

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You have also touched upon the role of America in the lives of those in far-off American satraps like Romania. "We are living in Amerika", famously sang Rammstein. Is there anything positive to be drawn from this state of affairs? Or are we all hostage to a beast that is wildly flailing its arms about? I spent some time in Romania these past five years during several business trips and the people that I spoke to are rather fond of the USA as they see it as its protector from Russia, much as the Poles do. Yet curiously, I noticed a lot of Christian devotion, and not just by old people. I entered three different Orthodox churches during the week, only to be taken aback by how many people were there outside of Mass hours. What I'm trying to ask is: are Romanians too Byzantine to be Americanized?

Older Romanians (over 35-40) have lived through pretty vivid history and carry with them even more of the past in the stories of their parents and grandparents. The tragic view of existence is still very present in these sections of society, and with it the cynicism of the scarred and a fear of God born out of struggle. They remain at the Dallas stage of Americanization - wow, look at all those appliances! - but I don't think they'll become Kamala Stans any time soon. 

Millennials & Zoomers, especially the urban ones, are another species entirely and are for all intents and purposes about as mindwormed as kids in the West, especially after this year in the screen bunker. It's not surprising. They're just as attached to the global dopamine mainline streaming out of the US as everyone else. Even the kids who, for some incomprehensible reason don't speak English, get the same slop one trough down the waterfall in all the Romanian copycat Youtube & TV shows and dimestore influencers. 

Romania also comes across as an incredibly diverse country even though the only significant non-European populations that one encounter is the Gypsies and some Turks (although Arabs are becoming more noticeable). You have swarthy Wallachians, alabaster-skinned Moldovans, and Transylvanians who can pass for Swiss Yodellers. Personally I didn't feel at all out of place in Romania, and when I went to Dambovita County (just west of Bucharest) I saw a good 30 or 40 people that could pass for my close family. Does this diversity make the Romanian national construct a difficult one to maintain? Or has assimilation worked its magic?

Romania is a pretty young state, reaching final form only about a century ago, and is composed of a patchwork of principalities and ethnicities that always knew that they didn't stand a chance alone on this tectonic edge of empires. We've been conquered and traded and bled for tribute payments for millennia by the many more ethnically and culturally coherent and populous nations around us that I believe the tentative construct of Romania is the only serious breather these populations got since the Romans were here. 

Having a dominant majority religion, Romanian Orthodoxy, and sharing a language with wild regional differences, but common nonetheless, have helped keep us from going the now traditional Balkan mass grave route. Don't ask Romanians about the Hungarians in Harghita & Covasna, though. We're still touchy about those bastards. 

The most beautiful woman that I have ever worked with was a Romanian named Evelina who broke my heart when, after 5 minutes of me coming onto her intensely and handsomely, she really, really regretted to inform me that she already had a Spanish boyfriend (“you wouldn’t know him”, she said). I was going to chimp, but I was a recent hire at this consulting firm so my professionalism won the day and I changed the subject so as to make her feel less bad about having a boyfriend that she would have happily cheated on with me and who in no way was as charming as I am. (This is called empathy, btw). The subject that I seamlessly changed it to was the western perception of Romanian woman as 'slutty'. I asked her if it was true that Romanians are the only Orthodox Christians allowed to marry in the Church 3 times because their Queen Marie was such a slut. She replied "well you know, third time's the charm". This is now your opportunity to defend yourself.

The female European genus encompasses many distinct subspecies. From the translucent English Rose at one end of the continent to the opaque Russian frost bloom at the other. The gradient of reputed promiscuity goes from patchy pastels to block colors pretty fast past the Hajnal line. But there's western "slutty," and there's eastern "slutty". 

Western slutty is someone who thinks Samantha Jones is her spirit animal and that it's a feminist imperative to have loveless workout sessions with any beer-goggle-chad whose gaze she meets at a bar. 

Eastern slutty is more of a scalpel. The Romanian woman is more keenly aware of her sexual market value than any creature on earth, including the MGTOW forum member who hasn't seen daylight in 4 years, because she intends to use it. Typically, she deploys this knowledge in pretty trad ways. Most girls still want to and do get married young(ish - and I can't speak for younger people and especially Zoomers, they're a separate race). But for a hypergamous being in a place where options for desirable matches are limited, she is resourceful. One trajectory that a non-negligible percentage of women end up on is some form of transactional relationship, especially in the more affluent West, where they become prostitutes, strippers, and trophy girlfriends/wives. 

So even though a lot of call girls in your area may have a Romanian passport, the average Romanian girl is probably less slutty in the stereotypical sense because she intuitively understands sexual dynamics - and thinks the western-style slut is giving away the milk for free.  

Oh, So You’re “Trad” Now?

You have written about the "Rationalist to Trad" path that your life has taken. "Trad" has become a catch-all term on the internet, often associated with a life approach that idealizes an era that never really existed. 'Trad' also is very much a rebellion against what is now haute courant. What exactly do you mean by 'trad' when you use the term? And more importantly, what were the driving forces or key events that pushed you towards it from your Rationalist beginnings?

Rationalism is what many former new atheists landed in, once they woke up with a shame-filled hangover after a few years of autistic screeching about Jesus Camp. There's still a lot of valuable thinking happening in Rationalist circles, (*nod to Robin Hanson*), but like everything humans put their grubby fingers on, it turns into a cargo cult real fast. 

My central realization was that while having reason as a tool sure is handy, making reason your God is, well, unreasonable. You're equipped with a 2/2 cm keyhole with about a dozen distortion filters as a window onto the world. Thinking you can derive a telos from first principles with that gear is one dark hole of kidding yourself that many never swim out of.  And, naturally, therefore trad. Allow me explain:

"Trad" is a weird space online, and it means a lot of things to a lot of people, mostly about pickles and flower crowns and the glorious time before electricity. I was co-opted into the meme by association, mainly because I promote brutally reactionary, '90s era theories about men and women being different. To me, it's still a useful concept because it essentially means "time tested heuristic." It's a departure from reasoning yourself into and out of all positions - deferring to something that works, even if you have no idea why exactly. There's a lot of encoded knowledge about unknown (and maybe unknowable) unknowns in tradition that the most reasonable of us have written off because they don't make proximal sense. Well, many of them can't make sense because they don't optimize for what you optimize for. They work at the level of lineage, a dimension necessary to the thriving of the individual but mostly invisible to him. 

Which one is the best tradition? For you, probably the most robust and prosperous one in the near vicinity of your ancestors. Just another heuristic. 

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One ugly element of our modern culture is this excessive obsession with youth. Whether it be celebrities far, far past their prime disfiguring themselves by way of plastic surgery, or 50-year-old men dressing down like college students, it seems that the idea of aging gracefully is becoming a relic of the past.

Old age is useless in a culture that believes wisdom is reactionary. When choice/consent is the only lever on your moral framework (one accessible at 18 to anyone with above-meerkat IQ), why would you need cranky old farts to steer you with their constraints? What do they know about OnlyFans side-hustles? 

Youth is the time of peak choice. You're free to be and consume and consent to your heart's content. The young are early adopters, status-focused, educated consumers who are ahead of the curve and create synergies (I can’t believe she used the word ‘synergies’ .ed) through their innovative spending patterns. 

But sooner or later, choice gets reduced if you like it or not. For women (especially), nature is the ultimate and early choice killer. And our culture can't have that. We plump, we pump, we freeze and lie to women to maintain the illusion of choice. 

Without a socially important role for the archetypes of old age, the Matriarch, the Crone, and also the Wise Male Elder, we'll still see people chimping out at 40, clawing at their bygone 20s by amassing lots of credit card debt and nuking their marriages. 

Alex, I am a strong proponent of bullying, especially when considering children. It serves as a needed social check. I've been bullied, and I've been a bully. I hesitate to imagine how much of an even bigger shit I'd be if I were never bullied. Something strange happened in North American culture that began in the 1980s and coalesced in the 90s; the natural hierarchy was upended as dorks, geeks, and especially nerds, were elevated above the jocks and the good looking people. Nature does not take kindly to its order being subverted, and I believe that this has resulted in many of the social (and now, political) problems that we now face. Not enough men are put into lockers as teens, allowing them to run off their mouths without any check being imposed on their behaviour, where once a simple punch would have taught them an important life lesson. You yourself have written on the significance of stigma as another social check. Is it time that we shove nerds back into the lockers where they naturally belong? Is it time to call out women for unladylike behaviour (except when you are in the bedroom with her)?

The idea that a healthy childhood involves a lack of conflict seems to be a recipe for our cratering mental health. It's the fantasy of the devouring mother come to life, the perma-womb. Her child was never really born, never really in the world. It's gentle purgatory on earth. 

I'm not advocating letting kids beat each other to a pulp, but letting them sort their own hierarchies in their own world, I believe, is wise. You can't have self-esteem by decree from the proper authorities. You're either competent at navigating social situations, which only comes from actually overcoming friction, or you're a social vegetable. 

In terms of calling out women, barring profanity and, especially, lack of wit, I strongly encourage it. It may be what saves Western Civilization (and, potentially, your marriage). 

Sex Work. Has Capitalism found its final form?

"Sex work" is one of those new catch-all normalization terms that brings together middle-class traders of nip slips with heroin-addicted sex-slaves. In this way, it has the ultimate virtue of being inclusive and gives the term kind of a punk rock, proletarian spirit. 

The typical thinking person's take on sex work is "live and let live"/consent/"what's it to you?". I'm sympathetic to this libertarian view, but it's robot logic, blind to human nature. Sex work doesn't happen in a vacuum. Whatever you believe about the personal impact of sex work on the girls performing it (not negligible), people need to understand humans are highly mimetic creatures, and we live in networked realities. These phenomena spread. This is especially the case for things that are financially expedient, like selling dope or selling yourself. Also, whoever thinks that only demand creates supply and that it's not, more importantly, the other way around, has never heard of marketing. 

A society that doesn't wield stigma for pro-social goals to get people out of self-destructive loops and fertility traps has an imminent expiration date. 

Not only are we all Americans, we are also all liberals. Much as Christianity has provided the substructure for the entire West over the past 1,000 years, liberalism has created an additional substructure alongside it, and is now taking it over. How pervasive and all-encompassing is liberalism (with respect to how you define it) today?

Liberalism is a magic word. That's why everyone wants to claim it. From the libertarian-conservat-ish "classical liberal" to the forever careening "liberal centrists" to the striver-socialist US "liberals" - it's virtuous by default. Whatever issues there may be with liberalism, it's all in the implementation - real liberalism has not been tried. 

Besides unquestionably being the most robust of all systems, it is also somehow always in danger. We hear that liberalism has been corrupted by viruses planted by the French, and that dreaded ‘illiberalism’ rears its ugly head inexplicably in a crazed game of whack-a-mole from Russia to Turkey, from Hungary to Poland. On the other side of the aisle, actual illiberalism is also plaguing the universities, with their speech codes and their struggle sessions. We must save it from itself!

The thing is, liberalism is the water we swim in. Right-liberals ("conservatives") have been the biggest supporters of the very market liberalism that has gutted their precious local communities and led to more alienation and social decay than most any bogeyman they have ever produced. And left-liberals have done the rest by working overtime at liberating people from custom, convention, the constraints of their physical body, and any guard rails there may have been on an aimless, empty existence. Feel free yet?

John Gray (philosopher, not relationship guru) is an excellent read on this and other things. Also, of course, Patrick Deneen. 

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Is there an escape?

Sure. This is still a time of incredible abundance and resources, even as the cultural and spiritual coffers are dramatically empty. Use all the resources at your disposal to figure out a path (I recommend something time-tested), make a life worth living as off the grid as is possible, and circumvent the grand pipeline of "suggested meaning" that's gushing towards your soul 24/7. Building yourself, your family, and your community with serious, Aristotle-grade virtue is not a bad start. Whoever is reading this already has the tools to do all this. 

Also, remember that typically, repression is most intense at the twilight of regimes. 

Deep Inside Alex

Have you mentally emigrated from the West?

Impossible, I'm afraid. I'm a Westerner with a bit of extra seasoning and the cynicism afforded by growing up in a low-trust society. Every empire has a gravitational lock on its orbiters, and the second we got Dallas-pilled, we were hooked. 

People make the mistake of thinking that male height is genetic. The fact of the matter is that it is earned. Height is God's moral judgment bestowed upon a man as he reaches adulthood. Women instinctively sense this. This is why women are repulsed by Manlets. Will they ever learn?

Manletdom as cosmic punishment for sub-par manhood? Maybe, but it definitely is one hell of a sorting mechanism for badasses. Height is the ultimate test of male will, and history is full of diminutive conquerors bending reality to their will. You just have to crank up the sociopathy, and status tends to even out. 

Women do like tall men, I can't deny it. It does depend on your comparative sample, though. In Romania, as a teenage 5'10" amazon freak, I was pretty happy if my boyfriend would be around my height or marginally taller, already an ambitious project in this corner of the world. In the West, I have to say, my standards adapted rapidly. But regional height arbitrage in dating is always available. One woman's Danny DeVito is another woman's Danny Trejo.  

"Dinner starts with a ceviche of beef, the love child of northern Italy's raw beef culture and the couple's interest in assertive flavors from around the world. Depending on the day, you may find lemongrass, cilantro, and miso-perfect strangers across Italy-canoodling with cured anchovies and handmade pastas. "It's not fusion," says Francesca. "We don't ever think 'How can we work a bit of Asia into this plate?' If it makes sense on the fork, then we go for it." From there Francesca takes me through the entire menu: from the esoteric and unexpected- fried snails over a dashi-spiked potato puree, glazed pork belly with cavolo nero kimchi -to gentle riffs on the soul food you'd find in a traditional trattoria- fried artichokes dipped into an anise-spiked mayonnaise, tender pork sweetbreads with tiny candy-sweet asparagus and a slick of Mazzo's exceptional olive oil."

Rule of thumb: if my grandma wouldn't recognize it, it's probably an abomination and will fill you with insidious, demonic tumors. 

Mel Gibson plays a strong, yet troubled (horribly Anti-Semitic, he should it cool it with that) man reflecting on a long life devoid of meaning. He travels to the Google Campus to seek wisdom but instead sees an Alex Kaschuta-like character being mobbed by thousands of Roosh-subscribing Beta Bindis demanding 'sexy hot love you' from her. Mel smears himself in blue and white warpaint and pulls out a tactical nuke that he is coincidentally carrying in his inside jacket pocket, dropping it onto the crowd only a few short seconds after he grabs a hold of you and whisks her away in his Lamborghini Helicopter. Would you watch this?

I think it's got potential but lacks the Messianic angle I expect from my Mel Gibsons. 

Try this: They return to Google Campus after it's been leveled. Amongst the smoky rubble of the former jolly wage slave trailer park, in the crater-filled with charred bits of Settlers of Catan, bean bag lint, and the fading murmurs of a thousand Google Home Minis, they set the foundation of a new religion. One very tasteful suggestion of intercourse later, the camera pans out as they lay the first brick of the mighty Cathedral atop the now forever immured remains of Google's secret Army Sex Bot Singularity project. 

Mel sheds the first tear of his life, the Alex-type wipes it off and whispers: "It is done." Roll credits.

What the fuck was that shit?

You can sexually harrass Alex over at her Substack or at Twitter where she can be found @kaschuta.

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Anna has been begging me for several weeks now to conduct an interview with her, politely but firmly explaining to me why she’s smarter and more important than my previous subjects, some of whom she pretends to be on friendly terms with for the sake of appearances. I finally relented after coercing her into sending me some (tasteful) nudes of herself. The fact that she was audibly sobbing when doing this sealed the deal. Best known as the co-host (with Dasha “Beat Them All” Lukashenka) of the wildly popular and influential podcast Red Scare, Anna is a figure adored by all. Never once have I come across any criticism of her or hatred directed against her in all the years that I have very closely monitored her from a distance, from Friendster through to Kink.com and MySpace. One of the rare universally loved public figures, her greatest achievement in 2020 has been her purchase of a bed frame. Transethnic, she claims Russian, Armenian, and Jewish heritage, but is actually a New Jersey Guida Wop and not at all born in Moscow, USSR. Anna joined me in a chalet near Interlaken, Switzerland for this interview, where she is working on a romance novel to be published soon.

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You have a very popular podcast that I have listened to once but you're not as good a woman as my mother.  You should try to be more like her, but no matter how hard you try you will never be as good as her.  This interview has just begun and is already a debacle. 

When I was a little girl my mother sat me down and said marry an orphan because while you will never measure up to his mother at least that way you can live in her shadow not under her thumb. I’m increasingly convinced the best thing you can do in life as a woman is have children of your own, preferably sons, so you can turn them gay and break the cycle.

YWN (You will never) be a Fox TV Network Blond.  You deep down and desperately want to be one, but it is simply out of your reach.  Imagine a gilded life of calorie-free political discussion tailored to a geriatric audience, landing you a criminally-rich husband who probably made his money in shady real estate speculation or federal government contracting.  Instead you are a Soviet emigre, full of secret resentment for the founding stock, without four generations of assimilation like the Ellis Island Fraternity behind which you could hide.

Is this testing whether I’m a careerist or a lesbian?

"Always trust a snake before a Greek.  Always trust a Greek before a Jew.  Always trust a Jew before an Armenian.  But never, ever trust an Armenian!" - Ottoman proverb popularized by George Orwell.

Hmm I’ve heard this one before. As a matter of fact, I may have even posted it myself at some point. Between us girls, I prefer the Russian proverb I lifted from a vintage travelogue back when I still knew how to read: “The Armenian is obsequious in a subordinate role yet tyrannical in a position of power.” What can I say? All stereotypes contain a modicum of truth? Not every stereotype is necessarily bad? One of the highlights of 2020 was Trader Joe’s telling woke people to go fuck themselves when they tried to mount a petition over its use of ethnic names to label its ethnic brands.

What I like about Armenians personally is that they’re un-ironic people; which if you think about it actually makes them highly predictable and therefore trustworthy. In general, I dislike and mistrust overly ironic people, though of course a little irony is essential. In other words, I’d trust an Armenian over a leftist any day. 

Deloitte & Touche were contracted out a few years ago to do a deep-dive analysis on the Daily Mail's advertising revenue.  The DM's sidebar is legendary in web design and development circles as its addictive quality and 'stickiness' is second to none in the industry.  What shocked everyone though is that Deloitte & Touche found that The Daily Mail made over $80 million in revenue on photos of Kim Kardashian alone.  Is Kim's big, fat ass the Armenian peoples' greatest natural resource?  And does OJ Simpson deserve a finder's fee for elevating her family to prominence due to being framed for Nicole Brown Simpson's murder?

I’d refer you to a tweet of mine from several years ago that says we have OJ not Ray J to blame for the Kardashians. But I can’t because ever since I got banned and restored I haven’t been able to access my archive for some reason. These days I depend on the goodwill of strangers to comb through my old tweets in search of incriminating material to try and cancel me with. I appreciate the effort because it keeps me close to my roots. 

The real question is what’s Kim’s cut? No doubt she’s too much of a pragmatist to pass up an opportunity as low in dignity or prestige as this one. Even her public displays of support for battered women and death row inmates and the like have a cold, utilitarian quality to them. As someone who generally thinks it’s undignified for the ultra-rich to hustle like the bourgeoisie, I can’t help but admire her outlook. And I can’t help but admire The Daily Mail for cornering the market of influencers who hire PR teams to plant stories about them in the tabloids so they can muse on it in other slightly more reputable outlets as a means of shoring up press for themselves. It’s a winning model, in part because of how low-stakes it is and in part because there’s virtually no fallout — outside of the mental health of the parties involved. We’ve all heard the saying there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. We’ve all seen the meme. Well, this is about as ethical as it gets. 

You are often criticized online by the wonderful people who loathe, and hate, and detest you for 'playing up' your Armenian and Jewish heritage, and your Russian cultural roots, decrying you as little more than a standard fare American trying to cash in these ethnic chips for social cred.  But I take a different view: you have shown that you, like I (a Slav), have a finely-tuned bullshit detector.  We Slavs may not have high-trust societies, nor are we that good at civil administration, but we can spot when we are being fed shit a mile away, and Americans, by and large, can't.  I think that this is a big reason for the success of the USA; people will sell anything and buy anything there, and those that have been cheated will just brush it off or accept it as the price of admission.  "The business of America is business", and I think that this Prime Directive is so deeply-embedded in the American Psyche that Americans cannot fathom a society outside of it even though the grossly-inflated spectre of socialism is frequently brought up in media on the right.

First things first, I’d like to take a moment to congratulate the both of us on finally getting our POC card. The guy behind the counter told me you get a free latte after ten swipes. 

I’m more or less in agreement with you here. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: pathologizing normalcy and normalizing pathology in service of turning a profit has always been the American way. Lately though it feels like we’ve entered the next, sentient phase of advanced capitalism or whatever you want to call it, characterized by its enhanced ability to absorb and neutralize any dissent or opposition. 

To that point, I don’t know if the spectre of socialism is grossly inflated so much as grossly misrepresented. Both sides are equally guilty; it’s not just the right-wing media getting its panties in a bunch to boost traffic but the left-wing media getting high on its own supply of workerist nostalgia. It’s a mistake to think that socialism can’t thrive here. You might even say it’s already thriving. What is Amazon if not a centrally planned economy? It’s just not the socialism anyone thinks it is or wants it to be, unless of course you’re trying to run some kulaks off the road en route to your diversity commissarship.

The Part in Which I Let Anna Pretend That She is Smart and Intellectual and Shit

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The American Dream of old is dead.  It has become rather difficult as a newcomer to the USA to start a small business and make a success of one's self.  Instead, all sorts of barriers to entry (and success) have been raised in the meantime, leaving opportunity only for the truly sociopathic who find themselves scheming on Wall Street or bullshitting investors in Silicon Valley with the next, new big 'disruptive' nonsense, that, if successful, fucks over a shit ton of workers.  There is, however, another new American Dream: aping the conventions of radicals only to cash in with powerful positions or sinecures among the elite once they are within grasp.  Is this a matter of selfishness and self-rationalization post-fact?  Or is this a testament to the strength and robustness of the American system to co-opt potential challengers to its rule rising from its left?  Is it all fake like AOC?

Why not both? The survival of any system driven by speculation depends on the delusion of the participants. I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics but it stands to reason that obsolescence is baked into the cake of radicalism. Not only due to the more material, cynical explanations you provide but also because in order for the concept itself to have any meaning it must at least in theory be responsive to the times. 

This is something I bet Taleb would have a better answer for. I’ve been begging him to explain the difference between robustness and anti-fragility to me forever but he won’t return my calls. 

You claim to be non-political (rather than apolitical) but are constantly dragged into discussions involving politics even when you try to avoid them.  Cocaine enthusiast Andrew Breitbart once famously said that "politics is downstream from culture".  Is it?  Or is culture downstream from politics?  I have no idea what the fuck either means but felt that it's very important that I ask you this.

Honestly I have no clue either. I thought you said you were going to make this easy for me. 

Politics is only downstream from culture if you have a culture that’s intact. The right mistakenly believes it does, instead of a smorgasbord of arbitrary and symbolic cultural signifiers they’ve cherry-picked to “own the libs.” To be fair, that’s more than the left has, unless you think wearing a hardhat once amounts to a culture. The problem, it seems, is that there’s been a collapse of the distinction between mainstream and subculture. Liberals stay winning on the most important level, the level of ideology, because they’re good at exploiting this loophole. For one, their self-craft depends on maintaining an image of themselves as the underdog when in fact they dominate the mainstream through their control of the media, the institutions, private capital, and so on, and have for some time. Secondly, and to that point, everyone is kind of a liberal now, including conservatives. Liberals stay winning, but they win by being losers. For instance, if all goes as planned, they’ll have their black woman president on technicality. I don’t know what this says about our culture but it’s not promising. 

I’ll put it this way: if your politics isn’t downstream from culture, your culture is in serious trouble.

There's a famous comedians' story about how fickle and explosive Larry David would be during his standup comedy era.  He would constantly lose his shit and walk off of the stage if he was unhappy with the tone or demeanour of the audience.  One time he started a set with a joke about a house and said the word 'bungalow', at which point a woman in the front row mouthed that same word to the person next to her, obviously unaware of its meaning.  Larry David screamed at her, incredulous that she didn't know what it meant.  He then cut his set short and stormed off stage.  I felt that feel when I tried watching The Sopranos after my friends were all raving about the show.  I started watching it and then realized that the daughter's name was Meadow.  I lost my shit because I grew up with real, fresh-off-of-the boat Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafiosos who would never, ever give their daughters such an Anglo name.  I haven't been able to shake this and return to the show since then.  In an interview two years ago you claimed that The Sopranos are one of the two most important popular culture touchstones of these past 20 years.  Is this in part due to the decline of the American Mafia foreshadowing the decline of America itself?

I recently watched an episode of the PBS show Finding your Roots featuring Bernie Sanders and Larry David. It’s peak liberal programming but also kind of fun if you like archival footage and race science. Among the explosive revelations — Larry’s relatives were slave owners in the Deep South! Larry and Bernie are distant cousins! — it turns out Bernie had a great half uncle who was shot by the Nazis for refusing to hand over some rebels in his capacity as treasurer of the local Judenrat. Of course, the slavery and kinship stuff is way more of a headline grabber. Who knew there were Jewish settlements in America before Ellis Island and that they owned slaves? On the other hand, it’s not all that unexpected that these two would be more closely related than most people but heartwarming nonetheless! 

But by far the most poetic and prophetic detail buried in the lede was this bombshell about the uncle. Bernie’s ancestor taking a stand against the Nazis while working for an organization that recruited Jews to manage their own communities on the Nazis’ behalf is a mirror of the quasi-collaborationist role Bernie himself would wind up playing as an “outsider” within the Democratic Party — shepherding vulnerable populations into the enemy’s arms while trying to do the right thing and maintain a principled stance. It’s a total “first as tragedy, then as farce” moment. By the way, I’m not dragging Bernie here because, all in all, he strikes me as a standup guy and comes out looking better than Larry. 

But the point is tragedy repeating itself as farce is what happens when you lose the plot, or worse when it’s done for you under your nose. The Sopranos is a show about a middling, middle-aged schlub diabetically groping his way through the end of history. Even the main narrative hook turns out to be a mere technical device. The genius of the show is that making Tony a mob boss instead of, say, an accountant or high school principal or owner of a used car dealership is what allows us to finally see what’s been right in front of us the whole time. Tony is the proverbial boat salesman. There’s a great scene from the first season that captures this dynamic nicely.

At any rate, it’s not so much that the decline of the Mafia foreshadowed the decline of America but that organized crime was an early casualty of selling off its productive base. Something else I watched recently was this Netflix docuseries called Fear City about the RICO case against New York’s Five Families. I instantly regretted it and wouldn’t recommend it, but one of the things that stuck out at me, other than the low production value, is how the feds and prosecutors being interviewed kept bringing up that these guys were shaking down mom-and-pops. Look, I’m not saying that’s cool or fine, but it beats some faceless warehouse chain that put you out of business and gave your kid cancer telling you that, actually, it’s racist if you don’t think looting is based.

So I see what you mean but I think you’re being overly literal. Meadow’s boutique Anglo name is designed to provoke that reaction. There’s no way David Chase didn’t factor it into his calculus. But at least you’re in good company. Paglia famously hates The Sopranos for similar reasons.

(Anna appeared in the 1974 hardcore porn flick Pen Pals)

Michelle Houellebecq is the other 21st century cultural titan that you named in that 2018 interview.  Yet you famously turned down his proposal of a ménage à trois involving him, yourself, and Dasha.  That was rather rude of you.  Think of how much post-coital self-loathing would have resulted, and how hilarious it would have been once he immortalized the act in an upcoming novel, barely concealing your identities.  In an interview I conducted with Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry a few weeks back, I stated that Houellebecq is like the Sin-Eaters of old; he has taken all the nastiness and evil of our modern age and let it disfigure his face which serves us as a mirror of ourselves.  How brilliant and spot-on is my characterization (which I stole from a Brazilian friend of mine)?  Has Houellebecq captured the rhythm and cadence of sexual relations today?

I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who’s made the sin-eater analogy, and even happier to know we’re stealing from the same source. 

Houellebecq has captured the noncommittal, transactional and mutually recriminating nature of today’s sexual relations. In all fairness, it doesn’t take a genius to see this or write about it. Then again, most of the writers I respect, many of whom you mention here, are less interesting as theorists or philosophers in their own right than as hoarders of common sense. This is exactly the sort of stuff that’s worth paying attention to and taking stock of because the invisible contortions of ideology actively work to deny it.

Feminists love to accuse Houellebecq of “objectifying women” by writing substance-less, one-dimensional female characters. This is supposed to be indicative of sexism or misogyny on his part. First of all, asking a French guy to not be a sexist pig is sort of like asking a French guy to not be a racist pig. The French are the only ones who can make chauvinism look charming. Personally, I’m endeared by his horny descriptions of the local trim. His sex scenes are great for airplanes. They bring a joie de vivre to his otherwise joyless view of global monoculture. In my mind, you can’t have one without the other. Or you could I guess, but then he really would be the miserable nihilist his critics imagine.

Secondly, all of his characters are one-dimensional and lack substance. That’s the whole critique! The men have no more depth than the women; it’s just that as a male author who writes exclusively in a male voice, it would be weird and presumptuous if he suddenly tried to simulate female subjectivity. Who wants that anyway? Though frankly he could probably pull it off better than most. When it comes to storytelling, I’m a big fan of Aristotle’s idea that the convincingly implausible is always preferable to the unconvincingly plausible. That’s my beef with all these Staff Picks Table young women writers: for all of their claims to relatability, none of them could write a relatable character, dialogue or plotline to save their lives. They’re programmed to think exclusively in memes and Joan Didion pull quotes.

The fact that so many of his critics, the feminists in particular, miss the point proves the point. In making it about themselves, they reveal the lack of perspective and generosity inherent in their approach to criticism and probably to life in general. 

"No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternization with the enemy".  This famous line has been attributed to Henry Kissinger back in the 1970s, a very liberal decade where sexual freedom was at its peak.  There is now another battle between the sexes, but it seems like the trenches have been dug much deeper, with fraternization between the two at an all-time low.  No one is having sex anymore, and if they are it's largely performative and self-obsessed, feeding one's own ego.  This leads us into a discussion of narcissism and Christopher Lasch.  But before we discuss Lasch, I'd like to bring up the subject of men today and your comments on how males in NYC are rather too pretty for their own good, and lack that primal sex appeal.  Can this be chalked up to narcissism?  Is today's heterosexual man spiritually gay?  Who are the notable exceptions?

There’s an old Khachiyan family saying that one third of the men in New York are gay and the other two thirds are fags. Sadly, this is no longer an issue confined to coastal elites. Nor does it seem to be going away anytime soon. Testosterone levels and sperm counts in American men have reportedly been halved within the span of generation or two. Even the bodybuilding revival popularized by certain corners of rightwing and “post-left” Twitter is too compensatory and high-maintenance to be taken seriously as anything but a marketing campaign. No disrespect to BAP, whose book makes a great holiday stocking stuffer, but there’s a fine line between mastering yourself and masturbating to yourself. Twitter torso is the male equivalent of Instagram face. The purpose is not to impress the opposite sex but to compete with the same sex. 

Granted you could make the case that this is at least aesthetically preferable to being a fat Marxist irony poster whose flesh has fused to their gaming chair and you wouldn’t be wrong. But functionally they’re one and the same. One side has turned itself into an object of sexual scorn and ridicule while the other side has turned itself into a sex object.

When you really think about it, what is narcissism in a nutshell if not borrowing against the future? On the most basic level, this manifests itself as fear of aging in hot people and fear of growing up in everyone else. We now have a population of hypochondriacs — both men and women alike — who simultaneously want to cheat death and have a death wish. 

That said, I know a lot of gay guys holding it down for old-school manhood. I have a friend who’ll show up to your house with a toolkit and install shelving for you. He’s like 6’5” with godlike good looks and a domestic sensibility. Another friend of mine was an ICU nurse at the height of the pandemic. He takes care of his elderly parents and has the manliest voice I’ve ever heard. I hope he doesn’t see this because I don’t want it going to his head, but I admire Glenn Greenwald. Not only because he’s one of a handful of journalists who doesn’t belong in prison, but for his beautiful family and dog rescue. Joe Rogan seems like the type of guy who would be the subject of gay rumors. Whatever you may think of him, he’s the most obvious example: the small businessman/sole provider mindset on a mass scale.

Louis Menand fended off critics of Christopher Lasch by explaining that the latter saw the origins of the "Culture of Narcissism" in the 19th century, and that in no way did he mean that the 1950s were 'better'.  The United States of America is a Protestant construct with the individual at its centre, and his/her rights as paramount.  This rabid individualism has manifested itself in many ways, such as "The business of America is business", or the Baby Boomers and their self-certainty in that their counter-culture would triumph over the staid Cold War nuclear family.  Was this Culture of Narcissism inevitable?  Is it a historical process whereby individualism must reach its finish line?  Are Millennials and Zoomers able to overcome this culture?  Or are they already lost to it?

A little-known fact about Lasch is that Žižek actually wrote the introduction to the 1986 Croatian edition of The Culture of Narcissism. In it, he argues that Lasch’s contribution was being the first to describe the transition from the autonomous Protestant individual of the turn of the century to the heteronomous “organization man” of the mid-century to the pathological narcissist of our day; a hybrid type that combines the worst aspects of individualism and conformity. Whatever that entails, it’s nice to know that American exceptionalism is always finding new ways to evolve. Instead of asserting itself through the “convex” values of patriotism and bootstrapping, it now defines itself through the “concave” frames of victimhood and oppression. I can’t say for sure whether Millennials and Zoomers are doomed in this regard. But I’m rooting for them and will do my part. 

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Another favourite of yours is maverick feminist Camille Paglia.  I will never, ever forgive her for championing Madonna in the 1980s.  Madonna represents to me the worst of the excesses of the Culture of Narcissism, best exemplified by her refusal to age gracefully.  I wish that she lives to the overripe age of 150 so that she physically shrivels into a prune-like object, no matter how much Dorian Gray-like reverse-age engineering she will attempt.  This witch planted the most poisonous of seeds in the minds of women these past four decades and deserves no better fate.  Paglia I like though, and not just for the easy reach of anti-feminism (she has been labeled as the feminist anti-feminist), but for her willingness to call out frauds as she sees fit, Foucault being one of the better known examples.  Today's feminism is in many ways a revolt against nature.  Can Paglia be then described as a 'nature realist' in that she has clearly in the past noted substantial differences in the two genders?  In Sexual Personae she made the argument that men make great art and build great civilizations BECAUSE they rape and kill.  This violates all current norms of gender theory and of equality.  To her, art is God and these historical gender roles are necessary for it to thrive and explain why art has declined these past several decades.

Paglia deserves a pass for her Madonna takes. To begin with, she’s right that Madonna should’ve stuck to making art instead of trying to explain or politicize it. Not to mention, her intellectual obsession with Madonna clearly stems from personal affinity (both are working-class Italian girls from cold Northern states with features that look like they were chiseled out of marble).

And feminism deserves a pass for its hostile and confused attitude toward nature because it’s merely marching in lockstep with the culture as a whole. Feminists, like all progressive activists, are essentially taking credit for cultural battles that have already been settled in advance by economic forces outside of their control. In this sense, the progressives of today are the real reactionaries inasmuch as their utopianism is actually a kind of nihilism.

I’m reminded here of my favourite quote by your countryman Ivan Illich: “Of everything economics measures, women get less.” It’s one of Illich’s most profound and most misunderstood quotes — profound because it’s so easily misunderstood. The contemporary liberal mindset will of course be tempted to interpret this as meaning that women have always faced economic discrimination, but the real takeaway is that women lost as much as they gained when they began measuring themselves in economic terms. 

Paglia has lashed out at the French Post-Structuralists, but one of our favourites, the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek, is a devotee of Jacques Lacan.  You recently interviewed Žižek for Red Scare, but he didn't ask you for a threesome.  Were you disappointed?  Žižek is a study in contrasts as he looks like your typical Central European Slavic peasant farmer in green boots with tractor motor oil all over his hands and shirt, but has an overabundance of charisma, charm and wit.  How does he do it?  Is he possible in America?  Or are you guys stuck with Steampunk Reddit Nathan J. Robinson?   Žižek clearly sympathizes with disaffected types across the political aisle, which gets him in a lot of trouble with the left.

Žižek’s appeal is that he knows how off-putting he can be and doesn’t try to deny or make excuses for it. In fact, he owns it. That kind of self-knowledge is a powerful aphrodisiac. It signals for credibility, which is the most important factor in winning over intellectual converts and attracting women. Way more important, for example, than being right or having expertise. 

Žižek is a world famous public intellectual, one of the last of his kind. His getting blacklisted from The Guardian or piled on by the left only makes him stronger. When he goes, the whole field will be over as we know it. Nathan J. Robinson is some guy with a personal blog no one outside of leftist Twitter has heard of or cares about. His own mother admitted he was faking a British accent. That’s not a diss, it’s a fact. I hope that answers your question. 

Deep Inside Anna

Another man that speaks to your soul is Vladislav Surkov, the half-Chechen, half-Russian, once considered the Éminence grise of Russian politics and Putin's most important advisor.  Credited as the father of the Russian political concept of "Sovereign Democracy", he is described as having managed the theatrical aspects of Putinism not only to keep Putin in power, but to keep America off balance in how it approaches the Bear.

"Crybabe, though particularly strange, was like all women in one respect -- she wanted to be an actress.  She had the desire to leave her image wherever she could: in films, in commercials, in photographs, in Internet articles, in fan art......One day she declared that she wished to exist purely for art, for scenes and drama...."

You have singled out this passage by Surkov because, according to you, he has encapsulated the essence of the female better than any of his contemporaries.

Although I’ll never be as dangerously suave as Surkov I do find him relatable on some level as a fellow half-breed who’s also been described as “sexy Mr. Bean.” 

I should probably refine my argument a little while I have the floor. I’ve singled out this passage not because it describes all women but because it describes the most typical and contemporary sort of woman: the borderline. (Incidentally, Surkov’s Almost Zero, where the passage comes from, along with Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, form a kind of literary trifecta on the existential malaise of decadent societies in my mind — that is, if you choose to view the latter as a canonical work of autofiction at odds with his other, more theoretical writing rather than as a bestselling business guide for startups.)

Before anyone calls me a misogynist, I’m not interested in raking women over the coals, but instead in putting the link between narcissism and liberalism under the microscope. What we’re really talking about here is a shift in governance styles: from the “prohibitive” paternal superego which sets the parameters in advance and punishes you in kind if you defy or violate them, to the outwardly “permissive” but latently punitive maternal superego, which enforces no terms or boundaries ahead of time but retaliates arbitrarily and disproportionately after the fact — in part because it doesn’t know what it wants until all is said and done. Roughly speaking, this describes any number of events that can be filed under the #MeToo movement and/or “cancel culture.” On a positive note, Žižek makes an interesting clarification to Lasch, defining borderline as a bridge case between narcissism and hysteria — or the moment when the narcissist must confront the paradox of his situation. 

At any rate, the renewed interest in Lasch is a sign that his prescient and, in my opinion, never adequately challenged thesis is due for an upgrade. This is perfect timing because just the other day I received an email from a weird Nigerian address offering me a prestigious and lucrative book deal.

Why are Americans incapable of understanding Russia and Russians?

It’s nothing personal. Americans are barely capable of understanding themselves, let alone some distant land and its alien culture. This is why psychoanalysis has taken off here like nowhere else. The better question is: why are Russians so good at understanding other people, Americans included? As much as I’d like to attribute it to some innate advantage, Russians aren’t normally a people known for their genetic fitness. I’ll go out on limb and say it probably has something to do with the trauma of seventy years of communism immediately followed by three decades of privatization.

Proper Cocaine Etiquette

You and two female friends are stuck in the men's washroom at a bar on a Friday night.  He has the coke, but he's a bit creepy.  How do you and your friends extricate yourselves from this predicament?

While I wouldn’t welcome this predicament I can’t say I’d resist it either. I haven’t set foot in a bar in almost a year because of the lockdown. I haven’t had a drink or smoke for over half of a year for reasons unrelated to the lockdown. My skin looks great but I’d sacrifice it for a martini. 

How intimidated are you by Susan Sarandon's highly-principled and uncompromising big naturals?

Didn’t you already ask another one of your interview subjects a different version of this question? Maybe you’re the one who’s intimidated.

Don’t tell me who’s intimidated, bitch! Nassim Taleb blocked you on Twitter.  Your father unfortunately passed away, and Taleb was your new father figure.  How betrayed did you feel when he did this to you?

To tell you the truth, I felt more betrayed that it was obviously part of a mass block and not on account of anything special I said or did. But isn’t that the purpose of a father figure? To be a disappointment. Ideally, there’s a lesson in there somewhere. 

We are not like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand so as not to see danger. We are brave enough to look danger in the face, to coolly and ruthlessly take its measure, then act decisively with our heads held high. Both as a movement and as a nation, we have always been at our best when we needed fanatic, determined wills to overcome and eliminate danger, or a strength of character sufficient to overcome every obstacle, or bitter determination to reach our goal, or an iron heart capable of withstanding every internal and external battle. So it will be today.

The fact that you went through the trouble of warning me not to look this up when it never would have dawned to me in the first place means it’s a piece of Nazi propaganda. You have my word I haven’t cheated and if it turns out I’m wrong please feel free to add a postscript using one of my own jokes against me. 

In light of this, what comes to mind is the lesson from the previous question, which is that it’s a more flattering narrative to imagine yourself as a target rather than the collateral. Granted there will always be individuals, groups, entire populations even who are first in line to get fucked through a combination of bad luck and historic circumstance, but the mistake is thinking there’s something unique about them that places them outside of the economic paradigm. More people should meditate on that point.

You find yourself in a comfy lodge in Breckenridge, Colorado.  A warm, glowing fire comforts you alongside the strong embrace you find yourself in with Mel Gibson.  He is wearing a Christmas sweater and is whispering his desire into your left ear with gentle force as he holds you tight to his powerful chest. He smells of Givenchy Gentleman (1974).  The snow is falling outside as you can see through the window over his shoulder.  How does this make you feel Anna?

Speaking of father figures, where I come from if your dad wasn’t a Jew or out of the picture, chances are he was a raging anti-Semite. What I’m trying to say is, I can work with this scenario.

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“Combative”, “spirited”, “fierce”, and “highly intelligent”. These are all descriptions that Darren J. Beattie begged me to use in this biographical introduction when I asked him to describe himself as briefly as he possibly could. A former speechwriter in the Trump White House Administration, he was fired for daring to attend a controversial conference in his past that literally no one on Earth remembers. In a redemption arc of epic proportions, he has returned to work in the Administration as a board member for the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. He will pay for this. Debra Messing is already securing candidates located in various penitentiaries across the country to ensure that he is raped in prison like Donald Trump must be in a display of tolerant, liberal, and morally upstanding sadism.

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As a well-reputed Anti-Racist Activist who studied under Ibram X. Kendi, I am, by my highly-skilled training, forced to confront you and your bigotry, intolerance, and racism: You are a Nazi.  You are a White Nationalist.  You are a Jew working against white people much like in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  You trick teenagers into saying online that 'Hitler did nothing wrong', and then blackmail them.  You once gave an immigrant family the wrong directions on purpose for the sake of racial activism.  Every weekend you travel down to migrant processing centres on the Mexican border to deliver new cages for children that you personally build by hand (impeccably crafted, I must concede).

I also resolutely deny the axiom of choice, a position which I'm sure is illegal in at least 7 countries. I won a bet with Grigori Perelman on an abstruse point of Babylonian mathematics and that's why he's never cut his fingernails. I believe William James Sidis should have stuck to collecting street car transfers. I maintained a brief and cordial pen-pal correspondence with Charles Manson as a teen. I am banned from the UK for the HATE crime of having masterminded the purchase of James Watson's Nobel Prize by Alisher Usmanov (don't worry we gave it back to him). I travelled back in time and red-pilled Grothendieck with old Bill O’Reilly monologues. I maintain a vast and expensive art collection consisting solely of works depicting Jonah Goldberg scrubbing my feet. 

The list goes on...

The ADL has condemned the Trump Administration for bringing you back into the fold.  Why would a Jewish organization that fights on behalf of Jews worldwide Anti-Semitically seek to deny a Jew like you employment?  "It's like 1933 all over again", to quote David Frum. Should I reserve a space for you in my attic?

It's a strange thing that the ADL in particular jumped on the issue. I suspect that they had some dog in the fight and calling me bad names was their way of dealing with not getting their way. It's truly a bizarre and evil organization at this point---a big reason the internet basically disappeared over the past 4 years is aggressive ADL lobbying. 

Many people have congratulated me for calling out their disgraced leader, Jonathan Greenblatt, in the New York Times. Jonathan Greenblatt is a hideously ugly man who looks like a human gefilte fish. I suppose he has declared the "OK sign" racist at this point so I'll give him the finger instead. 

Rumour has it that the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad is covertly seeking secret portals to other galaxies and dimensions.  Can you comment on this?

I'm impressed that you've been briefed on the true function of the Commission. Indeed, the Commission was tasked by President Nixon to find alternative routes to space exploration once it became clear that the Van Allen belt was impenetrable by normal methods of human space travel. Of course, much of this is classified and I've already revealed too much...

Darren has had enough and isn’t going to take it anymore!

I love democracy.  I think it is in all of our best interests that everyone, everywhere live under democracy.  There is no greater altruistic act than to spread democracy globally and to smash and destroy anything that stands in its way, whether people, or cultures, or historical artifacts, and so on.  The deaths of millions are a price worth paying so that informed citizens can cast their ballots to choose between the ever-narrowing definitions of acceptable democracy.

I'd encourage readers here to consult 562e to 563c of Plato's Republic for its description of democracy. 

The passage certainly conforms to the Beattie Law of Canonical Inclusion which states that every canonical work contains at least one passage which would get a modern American academic fired.  

Notwithstanding the Plato passage, I think mass democracy is qualitatively different from any regime type that could have been described in antiquity.  Expanding the franchise simply has the effect of enhancing the political power of the oligarchs and institutions capable of manipulating the masses. Mass democracy in an era of mass media is therefore a kind of contradiction in terms.

In retail political discourse, democracy is pretty much exclusively used in an obfuscatory, euphemistic sense (it is obligatory for Colour Revolution spook NGOs to have "democracy" in the title).

I believe it is in the vital interests of all American citizens that the US Armed Forces teach Feminist Critical Theory to Pashtuni tribeswoman.

Yes, the woke poison has exerted its corrupting influence on every single institution in America, including the military. This is a tough pill that patriotic Americans need to swallow. Just in the way that Tucker Carlson and others have helped conservatives embrace a more critical view of corporatism, we need a similar kind of critical awakening when it comes to the national security apparatus.

If we don't confront China immediately they're going to attack Pearl Harbour, invade the West Coast, and stop us from importing 9 million Indian coders who depress salaries for American programmers. Why do you hate America?

We seem to share some concerns with the way the American right has come to frame the China problem.  It used to be that emphasizing the threat of China was a great way to deflect from the Russia hysteria and, to a certain extent, the obsession with Iran and the Middle East. In that sense the China issue had a sort of second-order, proxy value. Now that just about everyone including the most die-hard neocons like Nikki Haley have jumped onto the China Hawk bandwagon, the position has lost much if not all of its second-order signalling power. 

I fear that now much of the Cold War style China Hawk rhetoric actually detracts from the much more pressing threat to the American people which is the incompetent, corrupt, dysfunctional and perhaps even illegitimate ruling class.

Of course, one can combine China-hawkishness with a critique of the American ruling class by saying that the American ruling class cooperates with the CCP. But even here the emphasis must be squarely on the American ruling class and in practice this often gets drowned out in the performative saber-rattling you hear from a lot of conservative China Hawks. 

I'll put it this way: It is not as though the American ruling class is intelligent, competent, and patriotic on most important matters and happens to have a glaring blind spot when it comes to appreciating the threat of China. If this were the case, it would make sense to emphasize the threat of China above all else. 

But this is not the case. The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every issue of significance for the past several decades. If China were to disappear, they would simply be selling out the country to India, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, or some other country (in fact they are doing this just to a lesser extent). Our ruling class has failed us on China because they have failed us on everything. For this reason I believe that there will be no serious, sound policy on China that benefits Americans until there is a legitimate ruling class in the United States. For this reason pointing fingers at the wickedness and danger of China is less useful than emphasizing the failure of the American ruling class.  The bottom line is the true enemies of the American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people are the people who control America.

This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing. But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free trade." 

Of course, different factions of the American elite still have different attitudes toward China---with Wall Street still being the most favourable and the military industrial complex being the most hostile. The point though is that the American power structure gets that conflict with China over resources, 5G, AI, etc. is baked into the cake. The problem is that America has become such a dysfunctional joke in so many ways that it is hard to imagine it competing with an ascendant and serious China. And this brings us to the dilemma I alluded to earlier: the American ruling class wants to confront China to preserve its loot, but the ability to confront China in a serious way would itself require such dramatic domestic reform within America that this would threaten the very power structure whose loot is supposed to be preserved! 

This bizarre dilemma I think is at the heart of our ambiguous and half-assed approach to China---we'd rather whine about Uighurs and call the Chinese racists, which simply reinforces the fundamental unseriousness that makes the prospect of beating out China in the long term seem rather bleak.

But China is buying up land all over the USA.  How dare they buy land that is offered to them?  The Japanese were buying up all sorts of US land in the 1980s and it led to WW2 in the Pacific.

As Donald Trump famously said "someone's doing the raping." In this case it's our own politicians selling out the country for embarrassingly unambitious sums (adding insult to injury). I blame the American ruling class for selling out the American people before I blame the Chinese doing what is best for China.

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Is there a possible and responsible foreign policy that works for the average American citizen and not for giant US corporations?

This is a good question which points to a very uncomfortable position we find ourselves in, at least in America. There is an increasing disconnect between America's stature on the geopolitical stage and superpower status and the well-being of actual Americans. What good does it do for America to remain globally dominant when all this translates to is preserving the spoils system for Jeffry Epstein's buddies and a bunch of multinational corporations that hate Americans anyway? 

From the standpoint of liberty and freedom, one might even argue that geopolitical multi-polarity is a desirable thing. Free-speech doesn't really exist in either China or the United States, but both nations have very different taboos. Multi-polarity in this sense at least allows one to arbitrage these different taboos and have on net better implications for the dissemination of ideas compared to a situation in which either China or the United States effectively reigned over everything. I don't want a situation in which you can't criticize the CCP anywhere on earth; and I don't want a situation in which you can't criticize tranny bathrooms, Black Lives Matter or whatever the latest nonsense is the US State Department is shoving down people's throats. 

Elite Theory of History stipulates that elites drive history, and furthermore, to effect real change i.e. revolution, you need at least a segment of the elites to defect from the governing structures.  What happens when revolt occurs without any elites?  Trump's Populism can be seen this way, in my opinion.

Yes, I agree to a large extent. Many factions of the American ruling class, such as Wall Street, learned to tolerate Trump (and why wouldn't they, after his hires and tax cuts), but he didn't really have a faction of the American elite solidly in his corner. A possible exception to this is the Casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his network connected with the Israeli right---but in the end he ended up doing far more for them than they did for him. 

One of the lessons of the Trump experience is just how crucial it is to have at least a couple of factions of the elite on your side---this, and learning how to navigate and exploit intra-elite factional dispute to one's advantage in order to countervail power asymmetries.

We've seen moves away from Trumpism by people such as Murdoch.  What is the critical failure of the US populist/nationalist right?

There's a lot to be said about this but I want to be careful about post-mortems. To be sure there is the elite issue discussed earlier, and one could fill a phone book with the Trump Administration's unforced errors.  Many will incorrectly infer from this that what we need is a more tempered, sophisticated, civilized version of Trumpism. I think this is gravely false because in almost all cases (there are a few exceptions) what this amounts to is making an excuse to be a pussy. Trump's finest and most important moments were simply from not being a pussy---which is more threatening and powerful than any specific policy issue. The First Commandment is to not be a pussy, and the coherence and sophistication have to be built on top of that, otherwise it's just cope.

Calling Mexicans rapists is an uncouth and in some ways buffoonish thing to do. But to withstand the social pressure and fallout from that and not caving or apologizing...THAT ability is precious, indispensable and an absolute precondition for any contender who would take up the populist nationalist mantle post-Trump. In this spirit, I must maintain that “shithole countries” was the high-point of Trump’s Presidency!

What Needs To Be Done?

Pauly Shore, Crocodile Hunter

"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.  That's a sea change.  They literally know nothing". - Ben Rhodes, 2016

I call these reporters dunderheads on twitter, because that's what they are; a truly pathetic species. Never once have they had an original idea in their lives, they are generally creatures of privilege and nepotism, and physically unattractive overall!

In truth, the average reporter is not even a journalist in the meaningful sense, but rather a neo-Stasi commissar---an enforcement arm of the corrupt ruling class. They do things like dig up some politically incorrect remark someone used 20 years ago to ruin their lives. 

In a serious country a piece of trash like that KFile guy would have a job scrubbing my feet, because that's the only proper job nature prepared him for. I don't apologize for my contempt for these hit piece journalists because they really are the scum of the earth and deserve the absolute worst. 

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The USA is sinking into a morass where two peoples have two very different and competing political, cultural, and social narratives.  Yet one side continues to advance its narratives at the expense of the other. In the online space at least the US right was able to rally around Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report, but that's gone now too.

That's why I am so enthusiastic about Revolver.news, a new media project I'm involved in. The site has been celebrated by Trump, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Bronze Age Pervert, and many others. It has a Drudge-like aggregation element that has a fun tabloid vibe, but also extremely serious and sophisticated original reporting and investigative work. Revolver News was the site that put the American Colour Revolution on the map. 

Much more to come! 

Much of the right still clings to principle (like lower taxes for the rich) while liberals and the left seek power.  I guess what I'm asking here is: when will the right get serious?

Very few people on the right are playing for keeps---instead they play for a nice house, and a cushy lobbying contract, or Fox News hits. It all changes once you play for keeps, but that requires a mindset that is foreign to the American right, at least for now.  I'd like that to change and intend to do what I can to help facilitate that.

Much smarter and better looking than Jonah Goldberg

Not a single month can pass without an article denouncing Heidegger as a Nazi.  What are they getting wrong?  What instead should we understand about the man and his approach to philosophy?

It's absurd, but I understand it. I don't think there's ever been a time as hostile to the appreciation or production of real philosophy. I truly wish it were otherwise but this is simply the reality. 

Nonetheless, I am proud to say that my dissertation on Heidegger has been praised by many of the top Heidegger scholars in the world. I'm not bashful about saying that because it by far is the most brilliant thing I've ever done. The dissertation is titled "Martin Heidegger's Mathematical Dialectic: Uncovering the Structure of Modernity" and I encourage everyone to check it out online (I will eventually publish it as a book when I have more time).  In it I draw upon a certain conception of mathematics Heidegger formulates in a lecture series on Kant, and argue that this conception illuminates the structure of modernity (which has homogeneity and self-reference as its two chief characteristics, I argue). 

As for misconceptions about Heidegger specifically, I think the worst is that people dismiss Heidegger as a nonsense obscurantist. I will grant that many in the Heideggerian tradition fit that description, as do many who do "continental philosophy" more generally. Whereas 99.99 percent of the time obscure language and neologisms serve simply to obfuscate sloppy thinking, in Heidegger's case it's actually a necessity to present a profound and novel understanding of things. 

The Germans have a saying that if some of their philosophers are "muddier" it's because they dove deeper. In Heidegger's case in particular this is true. 

On the Samael Qlipha, the magician makes a pact with the dark forces and realizes the invitation of Friedrich Neitzsche to re-evaluate old values. Insanity becomes wisdom; death becomes life. Samael is the 'Poison of God.' Here is where illusions are poisoned, and all categories and conceptions are deconstructed until nothing is left. The dark side of the astral plane could be compared to a chalice filled with poison or an intoxicating fluid. While Gamaliel is the chalice, Samael is the elixir and the following lower Qlipha, A'arab Zaraq, is where the magician experiences the effect.

Your prompt reminds me of my favorite line from Nietzsche:

Wofür wir Worte haben, darüber sind wir auch schon hinaus. In allem Reden liegt ein Gran Verachtung.

That for which we can find words is already dead in our hearts. Every act of speaking houses a great contempt. 

This line inspired my working definition of a grifter, by the way, which I describe as someone who possesses enough contempt for the masses to tell them what they want to hear. 

Will you take this opportunity to apologize for being a Duke University alum?

Not until Jonah Goldberg apologizes to me and to the country for attending an embarrassingly low-ranked women's college. It's a disgrace which I dignified aesthetically in the famous Ben Garrison cartoon that took the art and philosophy scene by storm.

We are now in Advent, and headed full-steam towards Christmas.  When I think about Christmas, I think about Mel Gibson.  What does he mean to you?

Mel Gibson, isn't he that controversial guy that OJ Simpson got cancelled for doing movies with? 

Darren: the correct answer is that Trump’s biggest mistake during his Presidency was not appointing Mel Gibson as Movie Czar, with an annual budget allocation of $50 Billion USD.

You can find Darren J. Beattie doing charitable work on Twitter @DarrenJBeattie.

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It is often necessary to get out of our comfort zone in order to challenge ourselves and expand our horizons. There is nothing less comfortable than being in the presence of an insufferable Frenchman, like Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. Unapologetic, snooty, derisive. These are some of his more tolerable features when compared to the rest. I sat down with Pascal in Montreux, Switzerland (he made me do the three hour drive from Zürich as he refuses on principle to enter any German canton in Switzerland, preferring only to visit French ones) to discuss all things French, and to gain a French perspective from this writer and think tanker. Below you will see what I managed to pull out of him in between his savage belittling of the wait staff in this beautiful city on Lake Geneva. Pascal can be reached on Twitter @pegobry.

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French people are assholes.  Whether complaining about food when abroad, or looking at you like a filthy peasant when you dare ask them a question in English, the French are the epitome of snobbery.  This is your opportunity to apologize to the rest of the World.  I strongly suggest that you take it.

No Frenchman worthy of the name has ever apologized for anything, and I'm certainly not going to start. Obviously the English word "snob" is an inaccurate description, since a snob is someone who thinks he's superior, which is different from a Frenchman, who knows he's superior. 

Our food is superior, our language is superior, our culture is superior, our women are more beautiful and sophisticated, but we still take your women as well, because we can. Did you know that syphilis is known as "the French disease" in every major European language and Arabic? We're not even sorry for that. 

You and I had dinner with two friends in New York City near Central Park back in March of this year.  How physically and intellectually intimidated were you by me (6'3", 84 IQ)?

I was mostly intimidated by your overwhelming Balkan sexual charisma, even though it was disappointing that you were not wearing a tracksuit. It was annoying that you did not thank me on account of Napoleon having liberated your little country, whichever one it is, but one expects uncouthness from foreigners. On the whole, I had a fun time. I did appreciate that your shirt had as many buttons open as mine. We Europeans need to show the Americans how it's done. 

TFW you will never be Michel Houellebecq

You are a handsome man, in the classic Gallic sense, much like Alain Delon and Gerard Depardieu, but without the refined beauty and sexual appeal of Michel Houellebecq.  Do you envy the famed author and Asian Waifu-Getter of Submission?

Like all "journalists", I am a failed writer, so of course I envy him. But at least he continues to demonstrate that the most important writer in the world at any given time is French.

To me Houellebecq is like the Sin-Eaters of old; he has done the world a great service by absorbing all of the ugliness of modernity to spare us from it, while allowing it to disfigure his face.  He is our mirror.

The interesting thing about the Houellebecq phenomenon is that when I was a student my lefty friends were pressing his books into my hands and I as a Catholic conservative stoutly proclaimed that I wouldn't read the works of a nihilst pornographer, while now it is conservatives who hail him as a prophet.  Houellebecq is unquestionably a genius, in the following manner: being able to sense, and capture, and paint, the zeitgeist of a particular era is something that many try and most fail at. This requires a kind of genius which is very rare. Does that mean that he is a literary genius? That's a different question. I'm incapable of doing what he does, so I am hesitant to criticize his dreary prose style. But of course it is the style that fits the zeitgeist as well. It's a package. He is a kind of Trump of literature; just like Trump's grotesque of politics shows us what our politics really are by defacing them, Houellebecq's grotesque of literature shows us what our world really is by defacing it. 

Pascal bores us to tears with talk about France and the French

#MeToo was an interesting phenomenon.  The correct view is that it was little more than a power play by certain women in the film industry.  It was somewhat successful in the Anglosphere, laughed at publicly in Italy and Russia, and attempted in France, but ended, I think, in failure.  Can culture explain these different outcomes?  Do the French retain a traditional sense of gender roles?

I initially looked upon #MeToo as a positive, since punishing sexual degenerates is good (if they're not me). But it quickly devolved into pure mob violence and scapegoating. As it went on and the mob came after men who were clearly just awkward fumblers rather than predators, it did powerfully highlight that progressives are utterly incapable of understanding human sexuality at any level. No wonder they're so miserable and angry all the time. 

Re: France, that's a good question, and one which I wonder about. Surely a big factor is that we have Strong Libel Laws(tm); the woman who started the French version of the #MeToo hashtag later lost a defamation lawsuit over it. With regard to gender roles, it's strange, and I'm not sure I have a good explanation for it. There's something to the idea that we're feminist in the streets and trads in the sheets. Officially, French people proclaim adherence to a rigid de Beauvoir-style feminism and yet culturally we seem to be, certainly, more Mediterranean. The relationship of French culture to Woman has been unique since the beginning: our fabliaux invented romantic love (CS Lewis' The Allegory of Love is a good English-language read on this), and then of course later we invented courtly love. Women had a more prominent social role in French culture throughout the Medieval and Early Modern era, commented upon by foreigners. Not many people know that the French Revolution was essentially a misogynistic reaction against the perceived feminization of the Royal Court (recall the abuse hurled at Marie-Antoinette), and that Napoleon's Civil Code was a major step backward for women's legal rights. The French Revolution was also an Anglophile and bourgeois (but I repeat myself) movement, which also tried to import the mercantile/Calvinist rigidity of gender relationships. 

There's a line in Flaubert's "Three Tales", writing about a peasant girl, which goes something like "She had seen the animals in the fields; she was not innocent in the way of our mademoiselles." That 19th century French bourgeois parents felt the need to imitate Victorian Brits in shielding their daughters from the basic facts of life is alien to French culture, as surely everyone knows. Maybe part of the bitterness and extremism of 20th century French feminism is a reaction to this Anglo-Puritan importation. 

#MeToo could or should have been a helpful wake-up call to the fact that liberal sexual norms just create a wider field for exploitation, but clearly that hasn't happened. Our only hope now is for men to stop being losers, quit porn, and lift weights. I firmly believe that the cause of our derangement is that men have become losers.

This cultural divide has also spilled over into politics.  The French Government is now in an open verbal war with Anglosphere media, such as the NY Times, over its framing of the recent spate of Islamist attacks in France.  What is English-language media getting wrong?  I read a recent piece by one of the people from Charlie Hebdo that engages in an accusation directed against American media of abandoning liberal principles in favour of minorities such as Muslims.

What they're getting wrong is that they're projecting. But this isn't new. What's interesting is that the French intelligentsia, usually so eager to parrot the American intelligentsia, isn’t buying it anymore. 

You know what they're getting wrong; that not everything is about a victimhood narrative; that people have agency. Which means maybe terrorism isn't the product of alleged discrimination or lack of opportunity….that ideas have consequences and that Islamism is a package of ideas violently hostile to everything the West holds dear. 

But the interesting thing, again, is that you have centre-left intellectuals in France calling the New York Times fake news. There are two ways to understand this: one is that Europe is simply always on a time-delay from America and that we will always get their craziness sooner or later. The other is that an increasing segment of the French intelligentsia are waking up, realizing that without patriotism and a strong affirmation of national identity all of the things they like, like topless beaches and books, are forfeit. There is some evidence of the latter. I am currently reading a newly-published book by Pascal Ory (a boomer centre-left historian) essentially attacking a century of historiography for discounting the nation as an important phenomenon in favour of Marxist and liberal-internationalist dreams, and arguing that nations are one of the engines that drive history. This book probably wouldn't have been published ten years ago. It could go either way, but real things are starting to happen. The problem with populism is that if you look historically, and certainly today, popular movements don't succeed and last unless they co-opt part of the existing elite. The only place in the West where I see this sort-of happening is France. 

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Islamism presents an existential threat to the French Republic.  Statements are being made, positions are being taken, and the smell of action is in the air to counter this threat.  Will we see a follow through from Macron?

Your guess is as good as mine. Macron is hard to predict.  Although there are many reasons to be pessimistic, from French elites' general lack of follow-through to Macron's own (I believe, sincere and deeply-held) commitment to so-called "liberal values", I will note that it hasn't been all talk. BarakaCity (the biggest Muslim NGO in France) whose leaders happen to think ISIS is misunderstood, was shut down by executive decree. CCIF, a prominent "anti-islamophobia" organization, dissolved itself after the government announced its intent to shut it down. So an important Rubicon has been crossed, at least in principle: the French government has rhetorically and legally committed itself to combating not just those who engage in Islamist violence, but those who engage in Islamist advocacy and activism.  

Can France's secularism hold on in light of this challenge?  Islamism is rather dynamic, and secularism lacks the ingredients for fanaticism that only the irrational are able to muster.  In many countries it seems that only the elites are strongly-wedded to secularism.

I'll let you in on a little secret we don't share with foreigners: nobody in France believes in "laïcité", it's all a code to say we don't like Islam. We have a freaking concordat, for crying out loud!

The entire notion that there is this specific French culture of "laïcité" that goes beyond institutional separation of church and state was a retcon invented in the 1980s when the Muslim population became too big to ignore. Nobody--nobody--is fooled that banning the hijab in public schools as well as "large ostentatious crosses" is a neutral secularist measure. 

Today some people are claiming that wearing religious garb in the National Assembly is a breach of laïcité, but after the War the Canon Kir sat as a member of Parliament in his cassock for twenty years and nobody had any problem with it. (My favorite Kir story: during a late-night parliamentary session, a Communist deputy asked him "How come you believe in God, even though you've never seen him?" "What about my asshole? You've never seen it, yet you know it exists!")

The fig leaf of laïcité was useful, and perhaps still is, as politically correct cover for defending French identity, but over time it will have to be discarded. There are signs that it's beginning. 

The bottom line is that France has always been assimilationist. The idea is that assimilation was invented by the Republic, but it's not true. When Louis XIV invaded a province, he would create schools with scholarships for poor, talented youth from those places to "turn them into Frenchmen." The self-conscious project of the French Kings was to restore the Roman Empire, and this bequeathed to us the Roman concept of citizenship: laws, language, and culture. This is what is behind "laïcité." This assimilationism therefore has deep roots, and it is perfectly legitimate that we demand of immigrants that they assimilate into our culture, which is inescapably Judeo-Christian. 

What of Catholicism in France?  Soundly defeated by the Third Republic in 1905 with the introduction of Laïcité, are there Catholics (and other Christians) who secretly wish to see secularism get a bloody nose by way of the Islamists?

As I said, "secularism" isn't a real thing. I am an optimist when it comes to French Catholicism. There is a rising generation of young Catholics, and they are excellent, and numerous. More and more people are understanding that the only thing modernity offers is consumer crap from China, divorce, and joyless sex at best. The churches on Sunday are full in the big cities. Houellebecq is right; for us, the future is either the foot of the Cross, or submission to Islam. And I think we're showing we don't want to submit to Islam...

What people don't understand about French Catholicism is that while 1905 was certainly a defeat, French Catholics did not simply disappear. They abandoned politics, but they did continue to have children, to bring them up into Catholic schools, etc. so there has always been an important Catholic subculture, including at the elite levels. I am optimistic about the future of Catholicism in France. 

We must now turn to the Le Pen Family.  

Must we?

Many rightists in the West see Marine as a potential modern day Joan of Arc.  Yet she has fumbled many opportunities and is burdened by the legacy of her father and his numerous verbal missteps.  I am certain that there is a constituency of French people who have now become more receptive to the ideas of the Le Pens and RN, but find her and her family distasteful.  Is there any way that this can be overcome?  Or is she and RN doomed to repeated close calls in elections?

The RN is doomed to lose. That's what it was built for. The National Front was essentially created by Mitterrand to be a thorn on the right's side, and that it has been. Furthermore, Marine does not want power. It's painfully obvious. She's inherited a nice family small business that pays the rent, and she's happy that way. In a democracy, the people are like a woman: she must feel your desire before she lets you take her, and this cannot be faked.

The only possible solution is a broad united front of the right that takes in both the RN and the remains of the traditional right. But how? And led by whom? This is a big open question. We may have to wait a generation. 

The French want their national leader to be somewhat aloof, above the fray.  They have shown no respect for those who claim to be 'of the people'.  In this way they prefer some elitism.  After all, your country has schools that purposely exist to train the future bureaucratic elites.  Macron instinctively picked up on this after succeeding the failure Hollande, and declared himself to be "Jupiterian".  Is the source of his self-belief the fact that he has a Mommy GF?

One thing's for certain: whether it's his MILF teacher or the Presidency of the Republic, when Macron sees something he likes, he takes it. And it's hard not to respect. 

How and why has the French left annihilated itself?

The same reason it's in retreat everywhere else, right? The conscious decision to jettison the working class, and make it up with immigrants, young people, and brainwormed café activists. The math just doesn't work. 

There's the added fact that because of the nexus of immigration, Islam, and terrorism, the French have moved way, way, to the right over the past 5 to 10 years.

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I like to beat up on the Brits quite a bit but you Frogs have a lot to answer for: The French Revolution, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, and so on.  You have greatly helped make this world a worse place.  Why?

We are a great nation, destined by Providence to great adventures, exemplary accomplishments, and catastrophic failures. I'll take it over some of the alternatives. 

The British have had a hard time coming to terms with their degraded global status.  Yet some are cognizant of this fact.  Only two weeks ago former UK PM John Major described his country as a "top rate second power".  France seemed to grasp its lowered standing some time ago, no doubt helped by the defeat in 1940 and then the Suez Crisis in 1957.   How universal in France is the understanding that the French must use the EU as a vehicle to reassert itself?

My read of the situation is completely different. I see the Brits as having eagerly embraced their decline. Churchill was quite cheerfully resigned to it, from 1942 onwards. Indeed, in Suez, it was the Brits who wanted to bail first, predictably, and the French only left once both superpowers threatened them with nuclear annihilation (which on the scale of surrenders surely ranks as one of the most excusable ones). The Brits are notorious for not having an independent foreign policy, and bragging about it. (I've always had a bit of sympathy for Blair and his dogged defense of the Iraq war; it's not like he had any choice in the matter. There's something admirable about someone who doggedly commits to a suicidal course out of fidelity to his master.)

As for France, using the EU as a vehicle was always the plan. "We will be the rider, and Germany will be the horse." Didn't exactly work out that way, did it? My view of the matter is that French elites have been enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy of our own decline, while simultaneously reassuring themselves with this EU-as-a-vehicle narrative that we weren't declining after all. 

Meanwhile, the French people have the need for greatness in our blood, and this trahison des clercs (a leitmotiv of French history) causes us intolerable pain. The thing to understand about France is that, while all other Western nations were first nations which later acquired states, France began as a state, which then built a nation. It is a creation of politics and the sword. This means that its unity is always in some sense artificial and risks falling apart if its attention is not focused on some great enterprise. In other words, as de Gaulle put it, "France is not France without greatness."

The only thing we lack is the will. In the 21st century, as in the time of Athens or Venice, as I keep telling women, size doesn't matter. Obvious French goals vis-à-vis Europe would include an alliance for common European defense, a kind of mini-NATO, from the Atlantic to the Baltic, backed by the French nuclear deterrent, and a renewed Common Market which would balance internal free trade and industrial policy with high external tariffs so as to challenge China industrially and America technologically. French military capacity and expertise in fields like industrial policy, infrastructure technology, etc. would make us natural leaders of such a renewed European compact. Meanwhile, with ECB capital we could create our own "European" (read: French) version of "Belt and Road", building soft power across the world, with a particular focus on developing Africa to reduce migratory pressures. I am neutral on the question of Frexit. From a practical perspective, these goals may well be accomplished within "the EU", although it would obviously have to be significantly reformed from what we have now. Maybe it is possible, maybe it is not. More importantly, it wouldn't be a (doomed-from-the-start) "European" project where France would be grateful to be an adjunct to a Germany, committed to an inhuman totalizing ideology (which somehow is okay because it's woke). It would be a French project, supported by an alliance of European nations on the basis of a great vision and shared interests.

One thing is certain: France subsuming itself in the EU would be a disaster, not just for France, but for Europe. Europe needs leadership, and only France--as France--can provide it. 

On America and the West

You have spent quite a bit of time in the USA over the years.  What has changed in your opinion this past decade or so in terms of political culture?  I recall when you used to defend yourself from spurious charges of bigotry, racism, and all the other bad -isms, but no longer bother.  Why?

During the Summer of Floyd, I commented to an American friend that this is the first time in my adult life that I am more optimistic about France than about America. The mass derangement of wokeness has been astonishing to watch. And the response from the right has been pathetic. Now, America has driven itself into ditches before, and found deep reservoirs of self-confidence from which to draw. I would never write off America completely. But the rapidity and fanaticism with which American elites have committed themselves to a course of what can only be called civilizational suicide--a kind of anti-American jihad--has been astonishing. Certainly I hope the Europeans take the right lessons from it and, as I mentioned, it seems that French elites aren't buying it. 

One of the left's key weapons is what the philosopher Jean-Marie Benoist called "logomachia", or language warfare. They invent all these words and use it to shape the ideaspace in their favor. It should be obvious to anyone who doesn't have brainworms--at this point it is even obvious to many normies--that in contemporary American discourse a word like "racism" has as much connection to phenomena in the real world as "Trotskyite" had in Russia under Stalin. So if someone says "You're a racist!" and you respond "I'm not a racist because X and Y and Z" you have already lost because you have implicitly conceded that there is this thing out there called "racism" which is really big and bad and scary, and one that your enemies get to define for you. And it doesn't matter that your X or Y or Z may be absolutely correct. You still lose by dignifying the accusation e.g. ("I am not part of the Trotskyite conspiracy!"). The entire thing is transparently preposterous and should be responded to appropriately, with laughter and derision. 

And let's face it, we are so eager to say "I'm not a racist!" because we're afraid of what will happen to us if we don't. And people can smell fear, and it's unattractive. Be not afraid!

Is there a "West" to defend?  Or do you see the Anglosphere detaching itself from Europe like I do?

No, I still think that the West is a relevant concept. There is a fundamental unity to those civilizations that emerged from the common root of the Western Roman Empire. Certainly if we take a step back from our internal problems to look at the geopolitical map, I see China, and I see the West as a meaningful entity worth defending, from enemies foreign and domestic. 

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84 IQ Croatian Rock Farmer vs. 91 IQ French Baguette Merchant

You, like all French men and women, see Jerry Lewis as the pinnacle of comedy, and will defend to the death this opinion (which you will claim is empirically proven).  Are the French as poor at humour as their Germanic neighbours to the East?

This Jerry Lewis canard has always mystified me. 

Dude, French humor kills. Just ask the staff at Charlie Hebdo.

We know that Jacques Chirac bribed the referees at the 1998 World Cup to favour the French National Team against Croatia in the semi final in which you won 2-1.  Will you admit to bribing the referees in the 2018 World Cup where the obviously superior Croatian team were cheated out of their rightful win?

I personally bribed them with tracksuits, gold chains, and Georgian champagne.

There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.

The only thing I know is this: sanguis martyrum semen.

What does Mel Gibson mean to you?

A comedic genius (too many people forget this), a cinematic genius (Apocalypto may be the best cinematographic portrayal of the contemporary West), and like many geniuses, a man with real demons. I just want him to make the Maccabee movie. 

You need to show more appreciation for Mel Gibson, in my opinion.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry can be sexually harrassed on Twitter @pegobry.