Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Dispatches. We don't really have a name for this show other than the Dispatches with Dewa and also William. So highly creative round here. But gentlemen, welcome back.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: It's an honour to be here. Thanks very much. It's good to be back.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: I thought we'd kick off actually with a fascinating video clip that I saw during the rounds last night, very short one. And this was Jacinda Ardern over at the old climate convention, the conflagration, whatever it is that they're doing overseas at the moment. And I thought we'd start here because it was quite humorous actually had a chuckle when I saw her saying the following.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: What would your message be to someone who might right now be sitting in.
[00:00:42] Speaker D: The shoes that you once filled as.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: A Prime Minister of a country who is dealing with domestic backlash?
[00:00:50] Speaker D: Well, you know, I think we've got to ask ourselves how we came to the point where something that is about the preservation of our planet, it for the future, next generation, how did that end up becoming so political?
Because this really is, should in many ways be a very straightforward question.
You know, if immediately within the next five years someone said that without significant change you run the risk of, you know, losing huge parts of our ecosystem. Wildfires, tropical cyclones that will take many people's lives and a planet that's so warm that people die from heat. If that presented itself with immediacy, then maybe we would be hearing different debates, but that is actually the consequence of indecision and inaction. There should be no politics in that, it should be much more straightforward. So to any politician, I would say endeavour to take the politics out because that is only holding us back.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Oh man, you gotta chuckle, don't you? The queen of the political.
And I don't know how anyone could say after what more than two decades of hyper politicised climate alarmism, that they are shocked and surprised. How did this become so political, chaps? It was a rather strange comment, wasn't it?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Well, this is the long running tactic that they use on the left. They're very good at holding frame so they always act as if you everyone agrees with them that what they're talking about is common sense, that there can be no disagreement, that anyone who would disagree or would have a different take on the facts or a different take on the right policies to address them, they must be misled or they must be in the grip of misinformation, or they must be mentally ill or damaged or they must be some sort of extremist there must be something wrong with them because no normal person would disagree with the left and what they want to do. And this is the sort of strategy, the rhetorical strategy that they've laid out for a long time and it doesn't work anymore because with social media, with some of these new media providers, with a lot of the, the, the new and different opinions that are getting out there, people can see for themselves and evaluate for themselves the different views and they just don't buy this line anymore, that we've got all the answers, all our views are correct, and everyone who disagrees must have something wrong with them.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Well, William, especially too, in light of the fact that what last week was it Bill Gates came out and he said, nah, I'm changing sides now on this climate issue. So I guess he's, he's either seen where the money lies, maybe there's no money in it, or he just thinks it's, it's, you know, now the alarmism has come to a quick end, right?
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Well, it's an interesting one. I mean, he made a lot of comments over a long period of time about climate change, and now he's changed his mind. I don't know what it's like to be a billionaire, but perhaps he has to, he has to manage his, what he sees is public affairs, like a politician does, to make sure he doesn't get too out of step with what the, the current zeitgeist is. I don't know, maybe that's what he's thinking. Maybe it's something else in general.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Right. The climate change catastrophe.
It's been around for my whole life, at least as far as I can remember, you know, growing up.
I grew up, of course, on the correct side of this issue, which is that, that it's all a scam.
That's the morally correct side of the question. Anyone who disagrees with me, you know, just. Yeah.
Anyway, I'm just tired of the, of the whole thing. Like, who cares? Like, that's basically the point that I feel like I'm at. I don't even want to discuss or debate.
And that's basically the writing on the wall that I think Bill Gates and others have seen, that you can't just say, oh, the world's going to end, and then people live like that for, for five years, for 10 years, for 15 years, for 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, because it's not working. The world's not ending. So either we fix the problem or the problem's not real.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's the world's slowest apocalypse.
Gentlemen. Speaking of apocalyptics scandals, there's been this astounding scandal that has.
It was almost like talking of slow burns. It was a very slowly developing story about Jevon McSkimming who was the former Deputy Commissioner. That's right, wasn't it? Of New Zealand police. Police. And a very serious scandal involving illegal forms and quite heinous forms of pornography. Not that any of it's good, but you know, the really serious criminal end of the spectrum.
And it was sort of, that was how things were progressing. And then all of a sudden in the last 24 hours we've actually learned that this involved not just his offending as a predatory actor, but a cover up involving high level police officers and police officials and also the weaponisation of the system. They turned it on the complainant and prosecuted her initially to basically silence her instead of investigating the initial claims. This really has been quite an astounding moment and certainly a big scandal. We'll talk about the scandal in just a second. This afternoon I saw the following pop up in my newsfeed and no, we're not gonna go to Ardern. Sorry about that. I saw the following pop up in my newsfeed. This was from Stuff Media. How did police stop ministers from hearing about their disgraced deputy? And my first thought was okay, whoever wrote this headline is either very naive or they're just very ignorant of how the bureaucratic managerial class works. Right?
There's a whole lot of power wielded by bureaucrats that's largely unaccountable. And that's exactly how they were able to get away with this. And this is something that if you're no stranger to the show, you're a friend of the show, you will know we've talked about this quite a bit, but gentlemen, this is, I'd love to hear your take on this. This feels to me like one of the biggest institutional scandals in our country in a very long time, if not ever. This is for little old New Zealand. This is quite a serious scandal that's broken here, is it not?
[00:07:08] Speaker C: We covered this on ICR when it first started to, to leak out into the, into the mainstream. And we sort of speculated as to the extent of how far it might go. And all of the revelations from today were sort of in line with our speculation about the kind of COVID up that, you know, we, we had speculated would have gone on. And that's what did go on. And you still have Christopher Hipkins denying, you know, that he knew anything about this when he Promoted, you know, when he. He put McKimming forward, I again suspect on that front as well, there's going to be a little bit more. More to come out, because there was a lot of speculation around that a few months ago, already putting all of those puzzle pieces together. You know, complaints had already been made by the time that. That Chris Hipkins put this guy forward. So he can't really say, oh, I didn't know, unless he wants to allege that someone hid those complaints from him at that time.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's quite astounding, really, isn't it, William, when you think about what this actually represents? Like, there's. I look at this and I think there's corrupt behaviours involved.
There was that, I think. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the New Zealand police have largely sort of navigated a lot of the policing scandals that have plagued other Western nations. It's not. They haven't had their scandals, probably the Louise Nicholas trial, I was thinking about it today, it was probably the last big one. But they've sort of. What we haven't seen is like the highest echelons of policing, the institution now dragged into this and corrupt behaviours. This feels like it could be a lot bigger than what people are really perhaps appreciating at the moment, because it could well drag the last of our remaining institutions that had public trust into a situation where there's just a nihilistic loss of trust in, you know, the police and all institutions in general.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Well, we like to think of ourselves, and there's some good reason for thinking this, that we're relatively low in corruption. I think we score that way in a lot of the, you know, the big international studies or things that keep track of this sort of thing. But it did seem to me that during the Ardern government, and particularly in the way the protest around the Parliament, protest against mandates was handled, there did seem to be quite a high degree of collaboration, or it seemed like that from an outsider anyway, between the politicians and the police. And that's not really supposed to happen now. This is kind of speculative for me. Like, I can't prove this, I'm just sort of inferring it. So take that into mind. But I think there's something going on there with this corruption and there's something going on with the collaboration between the politicians and the police that happened in the Ardern administration. There's something fishy going on there.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: So tell me, elaborate that a bit more, because both of you have indicated this, you've Obviously talked about it on rcr, Reality Check Radio for those who aren't tuning in, and you definitely should. But you've both talked about you think there's more, there's maybe a few more worms left in this particular can yet. So unpack that a bit for us chaps.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Well, it's hard for me to say more than that. I mean. Cause it's an intuitive feel. I mean, I went down to the parliament protest. I saw how they were doing things. They weren't as they were portrayed. You have to remember all the media coverage around how this was covered.
It was covered as that they were nasty, they were throwing things, they were throwing poo. At one stage they were accused of all this really nasty stuff. And it wasn't like that at all when you went down there. So there was a great big conspiracy really by the institutions, the media, the politicians and the police as well, to portray this as a really bad, really negative thing and to shut it down.
And the police did that. They used the kettling technique where they gradually moved in the concrete blocks and encircled the protesters and took, you know, territory took from them over time. And then they moved in very violently and ripped all the tents up and smashed the protesters out of the way. They used tear gas or something very much like that. I was there, I saw this firsthand. I saw people, you know, stuff streaming out of their eyes.
It was, it was pretty brutal. And they, they got away with that really. I don't think everyone just sort of said, oh well, it was appropriate, they had to do it.
I think there was discussions happening between the police and the labor government and I think that this sort of, there's obviously been something funny going on about the way they managed, you know, this McSkimming investigation and the way Costa sort of managed that and tried to suppress the news of that. So there's just, you know, I just ensure that there's something wrong going on here that went wrong in that whole complex of issues.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting actually. Diwa, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because I, I, one of the things I had on my, my little notes for to the show is does this touch on then the COVID era policing? And that's exactly what you seem to be saying, William. Dewa, I'd love to hear your thoughts because I like. One of the other things too that William, you didn't mention was that the use of those sound weapon cannons, which initially they lied about and said that. So they used them. And then these are, these are Highly questionable devices which have actually caused permanent deafness and injury to people overseas. There's great scandal about this. And then they lied about it as well. And then it was revealed, I think it was an OA that finally revealed they had used them. So there was like, there was a whole lot embroiled in that. And does the scandal then DEWA really start to open up that as well again for New Zealand?
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Well, I was on the receiving end of the police activity with regards to Jacinda Ardern's firearms legislation as well.
And there was communications that, you know, between the police minister and police that went missing.
They, you know, we, I had some evidence that they had talked and. But then when I made formal requests for information and suddenly there was, there was no communications and a lot of bits and pieces redacted between, you know, what would have gone on between say the lower, you know, like the local police and, and the police HQ back in Wellington. A lot of that stuff around my case I just went missing. Now we did win in the end on, on the basis that they had hidden some things from the courts, but we never got final answers on what exactly the political involvement was and what exactly the, the police hierarchy involvement was when they went after me. So having been on the receiving end of, of the, you know, police activity, it does not shock me at all that there's some really dodgy stuff going up with the police hierarchy.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's, this is the thing too. Like I've already seen someone online today posing a cheeky question about whether or not there might be something more to the Clark Gayford rumours that were floating around a few years ago about drugs, et cetera, and a cover up. And now that might be totally unfair, totally scurrilous and absolute abject falsehood, but this is what happens when you have a major breach of trust.
Like the people are just going to. A major breach of trust means that people are just going to lose trust. And what fills that vacuum? All sorts of speculation about what else have we been lied to?
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Well, look, exactly, you ask me, do I trust the police? The answer is no.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: After the Christchurch mosque attack, there was a sort of fundamental change that happened to the government where they, they sort of turned it into a little bit like a STASI organization. They went on a sort of witch hunt and the police were a big part of this where if you read the report of the royal commission under the Christchurch mosque attack, they basically recommended doing this. They recommended, you know, turning the government into kind of a STASI like organization to prevent these types of attacks happening before. And that's the reason why we had the firearms safety authorities set up and the firearms register, and then we had police going around to people's house and asking them about their threatening take their firearms licenses away on, on the basis of right wing tweets that people were putting up on the Internet.
And then, then all the horrible stuff that happened during COVID as well.
There, there was a conspiracy of the institutions. All the institutions, including the media, including various professional boards like the medical association, were working in concert with the government. And these organizations are supposed to have independence. They're not supposed to be taking orders from a central authority.
But they were, or at least it appeared very much like they were.
So we need to get to the bottom, or I would like to get to the bottom anyway, of why that was happening. Why did the behaviour of these ostensibly independent institutions appear as if it was coordinated centrally around the government's Covid response?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Well, this really does then start to open up some much broader questions. And already, and I've got to be honest, I'm quite surprised how quickly this has happened, but which does make me wonder whether there is a bit of credence to what you are both saying and have been speculating about. How far does this rabbit hole go? Because normally if there's not much more, you try and sort of, you know, you admit what you admit and then you bury the story. You don't start throwing people under the bus this quickly. And already what are we seeing? We are seeing the likes of Andrew Costa is now being thrown under the bus and like we're not even 20. Well, we are about 24 hours or so into this thing and already we're seeing, you know, once a liberal darling and champion of progressive policing, Andrew Costa has fallen from grace. So clearly he is implicated in this and that sort of, he's been thrown to the wolves, which you gotta wonder, okay, what else is behind all of this?
It raises some really big questions.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: There's a good point that William made around the change to policing after the Christchurch mosque shootings, where a lot of the upper positions were, you know, given to sort of regime loyalists. And there was probably an internal purge within the police of anyone who may have had more conservative, more right wing opinions. And they probably did a lot of promotion up through the ranks very, very quickly. Some of these people, I mean, if you look at what they were doing before 2019, these were where, you know, people of no importance. And then suddenly you see them elevated in this way very, very rapidly. And so it's going to come down to, well, who's who, who was behind that? Who is really pushing these people up to the top?
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Well, we have jobs for the boys, right? I don't think anybody's shocked by the fact that we have, you know, people know people and it's, you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know, but it does this now really does.
I mean, that's fine as long as they're competent, right? And they actually can do the job well and they act with virtue when they're in the role. But when they're not doing that, then that really does become a big issue that the public suddenly gets upset about as well. Like why did these people get their job?
[00:18:14] Speaker C: In many ways they were promoted due to their lack of virtue. You could say that their commitment to the progressive cause. That is at the heart of the issue.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Gentlemen, as I said, I think it's one of the biggest scandals that we've seen in the country in a while, if not in its history. And I'm sort of leaning towards you, both of you, and the speculation you have that there's probably more to come.
Speaking of, though, Nick Fuentes, the major political scandal.
It's a civil war, really is a civil war. I thought it might just be a blow up, but it's clearly ongoing and there's a lot more to it than just people getting upset about something that happened on someone's show.
Before we get into the specifics of this incident, I want to ask you both a question before we talk about this incident, what's happened in the last couple of weeks?
What do you personally make of Nick Fuentes as a phenomenon? And, and also perhaps as a commentator? Like what, what, what do you make of that phenomenon that is Nick Fuentes? Why is it the way that it is?
And, and what do you see, I guess, when you think of him as a commentator, what, what strikes you about Nick? Because clearly this is. Now he's in the limelight in a big way, globally, it's fair to say. And some people are discovering for the first time that he actually exists.
But those of us who've been watching have known for quite some time that he's been out there and gaining in traction. So perhaps, Dewa, I'll throw you the curveball first of all and put you on the spot. What, what do you think of when you think of the Nick Fuentes phenomenon and, and, and him as a commentator?
[00:19:46] Speaker C: I first ran into him when he was sort of heckling, interrupting the campus tours that DP USA was doing. This was the early days of Charlie Kirk and he was sort of leaning into a kind of a, you could say a progressive conservative movement at that time. Something that, that, you know, Charlie Kirk sort of stepped away from a little bit more later on perhaps in part of this happening. So he was basically heckled for this sort of like pro gay conservatism and sort of a more secular conservatism. And you had these guys who were like Nick Fuentes and others who were all Roman Catholics and they were going in a sort of heckling him from a more of a right wing position, more and more of a Roman Catholic position, which is generically a religious position.
And they were doing this to members of the GOP in general then. So they went out, went after congressmen, after senators.
And what happened is that although, you know, they were effectively banned from most of social media, they were very effective in getting their talking points and their positions into the mainstream and getting other people to say, hey, yeah, actually we, we want the, the more right wing positions. You know, we actually don't like the watering down of conservatism.
We actually want to win and we want to win something and, and get things done done. We've got to be willing to use different tactics and, you know, actually pursue political power for the sake of like using that political power to get what we want.
And that in general, I thought, hey, that, I'm looking at it, that works. You know, whatever the specifics of the people involved are, whatever the moral, morally dubious things they sometimes would get up to, they would, they ended up being very effective and they ended up being very helpful. They ended up being very helpful to a lot of other people who were less dubious in many of their policy positions or things that, that went on in their private lives and so on. So they were as a vanguard movement, as a vanguard figure, he's been very, very effective. I must confess, I have never actually listened to a whole Nick Fuente show.
And that may be true of a lot of people who, I think most.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: People probably would have to admit that.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: So that's, that's on the whole, my, my, my view, I think I, I don't mind having political disagreements, even serious political disagreements with people who are working towards a similar political goal. Don't mind having serious theological disagreements, agreements with people who are working towards a similar political goal because we can, you know, admit that we have those differences and then we can focus on the tasks that we're trying to achieve. That's the way that I look at this, and that's sort of why it sort of ended up on that side. And I think that's why that side is winning the Civil War, as you could say, on the right. And there are people who are a little bit more like, oh, no, we need to be respectable. Everything's got to be respectable. Unfortunately for the respectable people, you've been losing for 100 years straight. And I think that people are just tired of losing. And as Trump would say, you got to get tired of winning, you know, so we'd rather be getting tired of winning, and we are really, really tired of losing.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: William, I'd love to hear your thoughts because, like, imagine if someone came to you and they said, well, you know, I don't get it. I don't get the what's going on here. I sort of, you know, you're trying to explain to an outsider why, I guess Fuentes is a phenomenon in a sense, and what's the draw been or what is it that's given rise to this? How would you, what do you make of him as a phenomenon?
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I would say that his views are substantively largely correct.
So he's been critical of immigration. And this is an issue that has been verboten, you haven't been allowed to speak about in the conservative movement. Nick spoke about it. His criticisms are correct. Second, avoid his criticisms of Israel and Israeli and Jewish influence, another issue that has been verboten in the conservative movement. But the criticisms he makes on that count, I think are also substantive and largely correct. And third, criticisms of much of the post 1960s civil rights era movements, the countercultural movements, gay rights, women's rights, even African American civil rights, certainly trans rights. I think there's a lot of substantive points on those issues that he is correct about as well. So on the substance, I think he's putting into the conservative movement a whole bunch of issues that have been gatekept out and they've been gatekeeped out deliberately. So William F. Buckley, who was, you know, the leading conservative figure in conservatism from the 1960s through, I don't know, 80s, some period like that, he deliberately kept out people to the right of sort of liberal conservatives. He kept out the paleo conservatives, he kept out the John Birch Society. He kept out people called the old right, the Pat Buchanan types. He deliberately purged these people from the movement because he wanted to make conservatism acceptable to liberal elites and he wanted to focus it around fighting communism and not some of these Other issues that would sort of put conservatives out of favor with liberal elites. And maybe for the time that was appropriate when conservatism, when communism, sorry, was the biggest threat facing society.
Communism is not the biggest threat facing Western society. Currently. The biggest threat facing Western society is not economic Marxism, it's cultural Marxism and globalism. Right. And we have a conservative movement that's still oriented around fighting communism. And it hasn't come around to realizing that the real threat is this cultural Marxism globalism thing. And it's not a threat from foreign countries, it's a threat within that is destroying Western civilization from within.
So that's Nick Fuentes and not and similar people on the right are being deliberately gatekeeped out of the movement. They're trying to force their way in. That's what the Civil War is about. Now, in terms of tactics, what Nick does is he uses transgressive tactics. So he deliberately, you know, flies in the face of the liberal politically correct progressive norms. And he does that on purpose to get attention, to get people's heckles up and to. To create publicity for himself, to get himself over, as they say, in professional wrestling with his own people.
And you know, you can criticize that, you can say it's divisive, but you have to remember that these transgressive tactics were used by all the post 1960s progressive movements on the left. They deliberately flouted conservative values, our traditional Christian norms, for exactly the same reason, to get publicity. So you have to, you know, you can't fight a war with one hand tied behind your back. I don't want people to be. I want to be nice to people, I want to treat them with respect.
But you have to have the same rules for both sides. And if the left for 60 years now has been able to use these transgressive tactics that have been very divisive, have split society apart. You cannot have a situation where the right is not allowed to use those tactics. So we. There either has to be some sort of renegotiation on what acceptable political tactics are or source for the goose has to be source for the gander.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Is it? Because there is a history repeating here. And you're right, I was going to actually raise this point, but you've beaten me to it. That there was the gatekeeping during the Red Scare, the communist era, which was a very real thing. It was actually tangible communism in a cold war they were locked into. But the liberal element definitely took advantage of the alliance basically between conservatives and liberals and really did purge a lot of authentic conservatism.
And so there's sort of history repeating. And ironically, in some ways you could argue that their attempts weren't really that fruitful because it's really Reagan Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher working in concert who really are the ones responsible for bringing down the wall at the end of the day. And all of the work they did. And then like you say, cultural Marxism or what was originally called neo Marxism, that which was the, you know, what Marx birthed after his departure from the scene that, that won the day. So it's. And then on top of that we sort of got the worst excesses of the liberal project as well with the sort of the global, you know, the idea of the global citizen who belongs to nowhere, owns nothing and you know, will be happy with that. But I think another factor, and I think this point you've made about the transgressive nature is an interesting one. Cause I was thinking about it, I was thinking, well, part of the problem is too is when people approach Nick. Cause I got no doubt in my mind that he does say some things. He does. He holds anti Semitic views and I think I'm comfortable rightly pushing back against that. He says other things about Israel that are spot on.
And so there's also another factor though, when people talk about Nick and context with what he says.
Basically dialogue, I think is now broken down and so has sort of the norms of rhetoric. And I think this is really what you're getting at. And there's a lot more hyperbole now than ever before. And memes are a particular, not just a language, a tool of language, but they are a type of language now in their own right. And, and memes as a way of not just the images, but speaking in meme type ways about issues and, and just sort of discussing the world, particularly for that younger generation. And so if you're looking at this from the outside and you're a bit older, you're going to go, oh my gosh, this is really awfully transgressive. And they're just sort of seeing it as a way of communicating that happens left, right and centre amongst young people of that particular age group. Right. I feel there's so much that's sort of embroiled in this that's getting lost a lot of the nuance, if you like, in the storm.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: I think your point about it, different styles of communication generationally is correct. I mean, a lot of the way that Nick communicates as a sort of normal communication style amongst young people, particularly young people on the right, meme based communication and yes, the sort of a reveling and glorying in transgressing politically correct norms.
It's almost, in some ways it's almost a status symbol to be violating those norms to the maximum degree. So this is sort of Darwinian competition to see who can, who can win being the biggest politically correct norm violator.
But yeah, where does that come from? I mean it comes from a sort of a rebellion against a repressive culture that has been imposed on people in a top down way.
And you know, there's an intellectual by the name of Herbert Marcuse and American 1960s maybe roughly around then, who deliberately set this out. He wanted to replace the idea of viewpoint tolerance, which is the traditional classically liberal idea that is consistent with free speech, with this idea of repressive tolerance, where basically in practice what that has meant is that anyone who says things that can be conceived of as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, anti Semitic and all the other politically correct words, they are greeted with threats, censorship and personal harms brought against them, being fired from their job and such like. It's created a repressive atmosphere in Western society and personally I believe that this has done great harm to Western society and I think many of these young people agree with that and they're just sort of psychologically fed up with it as well. And so they're just not going to take being forced into behaving according to these norms that they disagree with and think are harming their society. So that's, I think, where this comes from.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Dee well, I want to ask you a question in just a second but yeah, you're absolutely right about Herbert Marcuse and the repressive tolerance and ironically a lot of people don't realise he's actually taking his lead from John Locke there, who was very much the first progressive and had this idea that we'd progress in the direction he wanted to progress in, but none others and he was quite liberal when he wanted to be.
DEWA and I want to ask you this after as well, William, after I've asked Diwa, why does Nick Fuentes have such a massive and growing following? Now you, I guess we're touching on around the edges but, but he really has, he's attracted a following and that, I mean this is possibly one of the most cancelled people in the world. I mean you, you outside of someone like Edward Snowden and people like that who really have had to hide, he, he has been one of the most Cancelled and de platformed and everything else.
And, and yet he is still here. The following has only grown. What, what do you think's behind all of that?
[00:33:34] Speaker C: Well, he's got opinions that are as close to being illegal as you could get without actually being illegal.
And the fact that he keeps going and has been canceled is something that there's just a really big audience for that, that he's willing to double down on.
In fact, I saw an interesting criticism from him the other day that I thought it would repeat. Somebody said that you're talking about anti Semitism and Nick Fuentes was the, was a classical anti Semite and that they'd been extinct for nearly 100 years or I guess since, you know, for 80 years or something, since the end of World War II.
And that, that in and of itself was fascinating and perhaps is something that attracts a lot of people.
There has also been a shift in general in society, interestingly from the left, right.
An anti Zionist movement, a criticism of Israel, particularly from the left, has been trying to delegitimize Israel as sort of being, you know, a colonial entity, as being, you know, their proxy for the European man.
But he has, he has sort of taken that as acceptable from more classical right wing, more classical conservative perspectives of, you know, criticism of foreign influence, of Jewish influence, or say if you take the, the historic Christian view, sort of like morally subversive elements. Right. So what are the, what are the, the elements that are morally subverting your society? Well, actually it's the, you know, it's the mostly Jewish people who are doing this right. And having those views, not, not saying if that's what is right or wrong or how, you know, he's going too far. I'm just analyzing this as that being incredibly attractive to people because having that view is about as close to having an illegal view that you could have on anything.
And in, in the age of the, supposedly the most progressive age, the most tolerant age, you know, any, any identity, any kind of behavior, anything is accepted except for that one point. And then people say, oh, that's very interesting.
And that, that becomes the focal point of his movement, strangely enough. And I disagree with a lot of that direction particularly he attracts, as you could say, the third world elements as well that have come into a lot of Western countries. They tend to historically have a lot of this kind of anti Semitic views. And so that gets drawn into his movement. So I take that as a criticism as well. I think it adds something very interesting to the mix. A lot of people mock a lot of his supporters for basically being, you know, Mexicans and, you know, sort of he's got his friends and people who are allied with him end up being like Muslims from the Middle east and stuff because you have these like really conservative views mixed in with that anti Israel, perhaps anti Semitism or probably most definitely anti Semitism. That speaks very strongly to their kind of like these third world traditional cultures as well. So the left sort of creating the Frankenstein monster to be their own undoing.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: William, I want to ask you this question as well, but first I want us to have a quick look at this tweet that was in the last 24 hours or so. I think actually this was tweeted because I think it sums up something quite fascinating. So first of all, this is what Nick tweeted. He said the older generations have completely betrayed and sold out the youth. They have left us a diversified s hole filled with foreigners dominated by the left, controlled by global special interests. And when young men stand up to fight, they scold us for being too edgy online.
Now, what caught my attention about this was Rod Dreher, the author, who's not unknown in his own right.
He retweeted it and added his own disagreement commentary to it. And this is what Rod Dreher said in reply.
He said, no, they scold you for being a racist, Jew hating, nihilistic piece of s. Many people can agree more or less about the miserable state of the country and the culture and the inadequacy of the ruling class, but they see you as having nothing to offer but destructive rage. Now one thing that caught my eye about this before I, you know, I get to the, I guess the heart of the matter is first of all just you, you take a look at the difference in the ratio and the numbers there and it is really quite telling. So the, the tweet at the bottom is Rod Drea's and the tweet at the top was Nick Fuentes to almost 3,000 comments. 10,000 retweets, 87,000 likes, 4,100 bookmarks versus 100. 151 comments, 40 retweets and 412 likes. And 29. It's not even 29. One of those bookmarks was mine for this episode. So it's only 28 bookmarks.
That really does speak to the, the, the sort of, the divide here.
And I can't help but feel, William, as I get you to answer this question, why does Nick have such a massive and growing following? Is basically this exchange here sums up a Situation whereby you've got a guy from an older generation who generally has some very good conservative ideas, but has enjoyed the privilege of a society where, I guess, if you think of it like a pyramid scheme, he got in at the middle. And in a pyramid scheme, the worst place to get in is at the bottom. Get in at the top, that's the best the middle you can cope. But if you come in at the bottom, like Nick Fuentes and his generation are, you know, you don't have that privilege to sort of try and, you know, survive or knuckle down. What are you knuckling down for? Where's the job, where's the house, all that kind of stuff. And it seems to me this just in a nutshell really sums up so much of that.
Is this a factor? If not, why is Nick Fuente so massive in your mind? William?
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Well, I like Rod Dreher. The Benedict Option is a, a great book, but when I read Nick Fuentes tweet there, I agree with it. I think he's just right about that.
And when Rod Dreher accuses him of nihilism and hatred, I don't think that's right. I mean, I think that there's method to the madness here. And what he's trying to do is tear down this edifice of repressive tolerance. He's trying to tear down political correctness. He's trying to deliberately disrespect these norms and inspire other people to disrespect them as well, so that we might live in a culture that has free speech, where those taboos no longer apply and they no longer have power over anyone.
And so I agree with this, I agree with this mission.
I mean, I understand that people think that, you know, it's divisive and it is that, you know, it's sometimes unnecessarily being an asshole, and it kind of is.
But when you're being deliberately gatekeeped out of the movement, when you're being deliberately cancelled, he's one of the most cancelled people on earth. Or as you say what I mean, that sort of limits the range of effective tactics that you have to get your message out and make yourself heard. And one of the remaining tactics here is to be transgressive and to, to use that to your advantage. So that's what he's doing.
And it's probably out of necessity as much as anything else. The, the things we haven't mentioned about Fuentes, though, is that, and the reasons for his following is he's very talented Right, exactly. He's a fantastic communicator, extremely fluent, if you. I have. I don't watch his show regularly either, but I have watched a handful of episodes that are. Been recommended to me by people for particular reasons.
He can sit there and talk by himself to a camera for hours on end, fluently, in great detail about a wide variety of topics. I mean, he's. He is a very talented guy. And people respect. The other thing that people respect is they respect and follow courage. And he's been cancelled many times. He's under constant personal attack and he carries on, and people respect that and they admire it and they follow it. Now, obviously, people who don't like what he's doing, they're not going to see things that way. But you have to understand that to a lot of other young people who have been subject to, you know, punishment, repression, censorship, finding it very tough to get ahead in life, when they see someone like Nick Fuentes just acting in defiance of the. The norms and the people and the systems that are being deployed against them and holding them down, they see that guy as their champion. And so that, I think, is why he's so popular. It's a similar dynamic to what we've seen with Donald Trump. He had all the institutions and the political elite and the legal system and everything right against him. He carried on, he disrespected them, he fought through them and went along anyway, and it improved his popularity. So it's the same sort of dynamic.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: There's.
We'll get to the specifics of what happened about a week and a half ago and how it's all exploded in just a second. My two cents worth, for what it is worth, I think you need to understand this phenomenon.
Probably in light of something like A Clockwork Orange or Christopher Nolan's Joker in the Dark Knight.
I feel a bit like you're talking here about the Lost Boys, and I have a great heart for the Lost Boys, actually, the younger men. I'm about to turn 50 myself, but I have a great affinity for these young men and what they have lost. I grew up in a very poor family situation, and so I understand what it is to sort of be on the outside of society in a lot of those ways, but I think they are really the living embodiment of liberalism's sort of ultimate failures. And it's dying, as you've said, William, it's dying social, global order. I think of it like this. To me, it's almost like Fight Club, which, by the way, is yet another example of we've had this transgressive anti establishmentism for quite some time now, but Fight Club. But this time, unlike the former story, the fictional story of Fight Club or the film, if you've seen the film, there's no way to numb yourself now with material pursuits. In Fight Club, one of the big things was the nihilism was sort of like you just, you tried to drown your sorrows in, in consumerism and corporate lifestyle and everything else, but that's. Even that avenue is now closed to this younger generation of men. Things like marriage is becoming a fast closing door. And so it's like Fight Club but with no other way to actually even numb yourself to the failures of liberalism, if you like. And it seems to me this is why I think we've got to engage. We'll get to that point in just a second and we'll talk about what you think solutions might be. But I feel we've got to engage with these young men and cheer and talk ideas. That's key. Before we get to that point though.
And this is what we saw two weeks ago.
Tucker Carlson platformed Nick. He interviewed him. That's what he did. And, and I, I. This whole platforming talk is just nonsense. But he interviewed him.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Ben Shapiro does a response video in a matter of a couple of days. And I saw someone, it might have even been Nick or someone made the joke that, you know, it's serious when Ben Shapiro goes for, for all that time. It was like 45 minutes or something with no ad reads the entire time. It was just a 45 minute attack video.
And then he's been doing a circuit the last couple of weeks and others have. Really.
Man, I don't think I've seen a pylon like this in a while.
Why do you think I'll start with you, Dea? Why do you think such an intense reaction? What, What? Because this feels like more than just, oh, I'm upset about what he said.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: Well, I would like to talk about Rod Dreher for a bit as well, you know, if I can do both. But no, so the, the Ben Shapiro one, I'm just going to say, I mean it comes back to the anti Semitism. He's like, Ben Shapiro was Jewish. So, so everything that Nick Fuente says is a personal attack on Ben Shapiro and his, his tribe, his race, his, his ethnic group, his culture, his religion, his heritage. So that to me is sufficient to explain Ben Shapiro's reaction because he sees, you know, when he looks at, when he Looks at Nick Fuentes, he sees Adolf Hitler, you know, like this, that it's at that level. I think for Ben Shapiro it's personal.
Now the Dreher exchange I think is, is more interesting because it speaks to the option that we have. When we look at what's happened, we look at a Rod Dreyer and he grew up well, had a family, wife and kids. He taught at a classical Christian school. He wrote books.
Adoption and others live not by lies. He wrote great books.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Dante can save your life. There's another good one, sorry, carry on.
[00:46:55] Speaker C: But then you find out that none of it's real. And he's now he's divorced, living in Eastern Europe.
And you say, well that's these young people are looking at and saying, is that, is that my future? Is that my life? Is that all you know? Is that it? And then you've got Nick Fuentes who's sitting there, he's you know, self proclaimed incel, living in a, living in his mother's basement or something, raging, raging on the Internet about everything that's wrong with the world.
And you look at Rod Dreher, you know, well, what's the point of, of what Rodriguez did and is doing?
So as someone who was looking in from the outside, you know, is looking at closely Rodrier and then you know, Nick Fuentes comes along and you think whatever Rodrier is selling is not something anybody wants to buy because, because Rod Dreher didn't get to buy it. In the end, he lost it all. So there's that, that, that's. And that's a story that repeats itself very often with many of the boomers. As you, you, as you know, say, okay, well maybe they, they did really, really well. A lot of them, especially conservative ones ended up very disgraced and ran into all kinds of problems and you know, before they kind of got to the end of what was supposed to be the generation that had it all. And so if the generation that had it all, a lot of these guys end up with nothing, then what's the point? If you're coming after and you're the generation that's got nothing, there's no prospects and no future. So that's a really key point there.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's a valid one. And funnily enough, I've already seen some people online reacting to that tweet I showed earlier and they've been pointing out the hypocrisy of Rod Drea's personal life. I, I have to be honest because I'm, I'M like you, William, I actually, I, I like Rodria's writing and I've had to go on a journey of separating the author from his own personal lifestyle failings that she live up to his own claims. And I also imagine on top of that again, and it's not just that, Dewa, but he's overseas probably collecting residuals from the books he sold. And, and you're a young guy who can't. You're trying to figure out where's my job going to be, let alone sitting there collecting residuals. That's all tied up in it. But William, if I could get your thoughts on this. The intensity of the reaction, I mean, Ben Shapiro, man, he really has piled on. He was blaming Tucker for the. Is it Mumdani, that's his name, is it? In New York, the election result there. He did that on cnn. He also claimed that Kevin Roberts are the Heritage foundation, who have been quite pro Israel, was also responsible for Mandani's election. He appeared on another podcast and I'll quote you here, where he said that Christian white men, what the left actually did is they started to create a feeling in a lot of young white men that as a targeted group, they were actually an identity group of their own. And then obviously the implication is they, they have no right to claim any sort of communal status of their own. So he's really gone all out here.
What do you think is. And he's not the only one. What's the intensity of the reaction? Why is it.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: Well, Dee was attributed to an emotional anti reaction against anti Semitism. And I have no doubt that that is part of it. But I want to attribute a more tactical motivation to Ben Shapiro as well. The truth of the matter is that many Jewish and pro Israel conservatives occupied privileged positions of power in the American conservative movement and in many other conservative movements around the Western world, but particularly America.
And this, what Ben Shapiro is doing in part here is he detects a threat to that privileged position from the likes of Nick Fuentes and a whole broad range of thinkers, some of whom are more respectable than Nick Fuentes, like Patrick Deneen and so on, who have been traditionally sidelined and marginalized out of the conservative movement by people like Ben Shapiro, by the neoconservatives, by the Israel Firsters.
What he's trying to do is defend that privileged position that these pro Israel Zionist commentators have within the conservative establishment because they sense, correctly, that they will lose that position as more and more Nick Fuentes and some of these previously marginalized voices come through. And what I would just say is there is a feeling, and I think it's an accurate feeling, that in America and in many other countries, and John Mearsheimer has said this in his works, I think I've spoken about this before, that America's foreign policy is being unduly influenced by the Israel lobby in such a way that it's helping Israel, but sometimes it's not always in the best interests of Americans and the Israel lobby and pro Israel people.
They really need to accept a subordinate position within conservative movements. In America and other Western countries, conservative movements exist to defend the people, the culture, the way of life of the host people and the host nation.
And you cannot have a situation where those interests are subordinated to a foreign power. That's completely unacceptable. Now, I want to have a situation where, you know, intelligent, valuable Jewish conservatives can participate in the Western conservative movements, but unless they accept that subordinate position where the interests of the host nation come first, that isn't going to happen. What's going to happen is they're going to have to be necessarily driven out of the movement if this gatekeeping behavior continues. Because we cannot have a situation, it's simply unacceptable to have a situation where the interests of Israel are given priority over the interests of the host nation.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think you're right that what's got it, you've got to get back to a point where they are making their case as to why any nation should be intervening. And I think there's, there's not an. I think there's not an unfair case, actually quite a sound one, about, you know, Israel as a potential gatekeeper in that part of the world against particularly Islamic hegemony. But you've got to make that case. Right. And then. And it would be on a case by case basis.
And I think also you're right those instances where anyone who wants to disagree or take an alternative position is just effectively shamed, publicly shamed as being an anti Semite. I mean, that's just got to stop. It's just. Yeah, it's just got to stop. I mean, Nick Fuentes is. And it does have anti Semitic views, no problem there. But there are lots of other people who have good, valid critiques. I myself am generally a lot quieter about that issue with certain friends because I'm just afraid of being called pro Hamas and anti Semitic. And it's just, it's nauseating.
[00:53:52] Speaker C: I think you point out the right problem there, which is that if you are a little bit critical or you're not enthusiastically supportive Enough, you get called anti Semitic, well then some people are going to say, well, why not just be anti Semitic? Right. It's the same. You're going to get called racist. Why not just be, be racist? You're going to get called fascist. Why not just be a fascist? And on. Because it doesn't matter what you do or say, as long as, as soon as you're not enthusiastic enough for the particular position, then it doesn't matter whether or not what, it doesn't matter what you believe, you're going to get given the label anyway.
[00:54:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So it doesn't matter what you say. And, and I guess you do ultimately depower it as well. I think ironically, of all people, Douglas Murray made this book and this, made this point in his book the Strange Death of Europe that if you call everyone Hitler and Nazis, then when real Nazis turn up, you won't recognize them because everyone's a Nazi, then no one's a Nazi. And ironically that's pretty much what's going to end up happening here probably, I would suspect, I mean, because I know William, you're quite outspoken and you're strong in your views on this and I think probably the three of us, you might be the, maybe the most clear eyed or the loudest and strongest on this, I don't know which. But you, you're very clear on your views and I guess you must encounter this a lot, surely.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I mean, I've been called anti Semitic a lot of times by people online. I've had complaints from the Human Rights, with the Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Tribunal, some, I can't remember what the name of the tribunal is taken against me, things like that.
But I mean, I accept, I don't think that should happen, but I accept that that will happen given that this is what I'm doing, that I'm taking these strong positions. So, you know, I can't think of a better way. I think what needs to happen is we need to overcome repressive tolerance. We need to be able to talk about these difficult subjects to do with Israel, to do with racism and sexism and homophobia. There's legitimate problems that are going undiscussed and we need to discuss them. I can't think of a better way or you know, a more, a less divisive way, a less inflammatory way of getting to that end state than flaunting the rules around political correctness and encouraging others to do the same. I want to do it in a way where I'm not personally attacking people. I want to do it in a way where I'm just raising legitimate issues that lie outside the Overton window in a respectful way.
That's the approach I try and take. Maybe sometimes I don't always get it exactly right, but that's what I'm trying to do.
I cannot think of a better or different way to do it that's going to be more acceptable to people. If there is a way, I mean, I'd love to hear it. But I think when you're facing a wall, you have to just bash down the wall in some way or another. And so I want to bash down the wall respectfully, but I am going to try and bash down the wall.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: You got a sledgehammer and you know what's in front of you.
I want to end in just a few moments by asking the key question. I guess, you know, what do you think is the solution here? What is the way forward? Because you can't have a perpetual civil war. But there's a couple of other questions I want to quickly touch on first before we get there. Before we do any of that, though, I just want us to have a quick look at a little clip of Ben Shapiro, who appeared on the Trigonometry podcast.
And some people are already claiming that this was taken out of context, but I'll let the viewers decide from the themselves. But let's watch this video clip. He's asked about the fact that, you know, people feel that they can't afford to live, for example, in somewhere like New York. They can't afford to live where perhaps they would like to live. And here was Ben Shapiro's response.
[00:57:31] Speaker E: If you're a young person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I mean, that is a real thing.
I know that we, we've now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up. But the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that. The history of America is you go to a place where there is opportunity, and if the opportunities are limited here and they're not changing, then you really should try to think about other places where you have better opportunities.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Now, chaps, my response to that is, okay, if that's advice you're giving to a young person who's about to leave home and is deciding where they should live, that's sage advice. Find somewhere affordable. But if you're telling someone who's great grown up in an area and this is maybe like New York or wherever their family have been there for successive generations. Well, too bad if you can't live here anymore. This is truly horrific, quite frankly, and it is the abject failure of liberalism. Now, in response to this, people pointed this out, Constantin Kissen himself came out and claimed this was just taken out of context. To which I say, well, unless Ben Shapiro is quoting someone else and we think it's him who believes this or he's acting, then no, this is the context is there for us to see. James Lindsey, Mr. Woke Wright himself came out in defence of this and he really doubled down and he said this in a tweet, deserve to, like, live in a place. So Lauren Chen had said counterpoint, people actually do deserve to live where they grew up. And he said, deserve to. On what basis entitlement are you going to make land acknowledgements next? And I'm like, yeah, well, why not?
Which again is kind of ironic when you do think about the whole point pro Israel side of this debate and land acknowledgements and who has a right to beware.
But Oren McIntyre retweeted this, and I think he summed this up perfectly. He retweeted James Lindsay and he said this in response to him. This is the perfect distillation of why liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide. It's a universal acid which destroys all human bonds. No religion, no tradition, no community, no homeland, liquid modernity. He's quoting Sigmund Bauman there. Great book, by the way. Liquid Medunin, if you haven't read it. Melting the entire world into a multicultural grey goo.
And really that does like, it's almost like in this moment, it's not just the civil war, but in some ways liberalism is starting to expose its very weak belly at the moment in all of this, right, William?
[00:59:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's the, the. What's the doctrine here? Everyone in the world has a right to come, but you don't have a right to stay.
I don't think that that is an acceptable way of thinking about countries, about belonging, about homelands, about what a nation is and what it means.
This is the perspective, this is an outsider perspective, this is the perspective of a diaspora people. And it's understandable why Ben Shapiro might have that perspective.
But, you know, there needs to be some acknowledgement and respect for the other perspective, the perspective of the majority, the perspective of the people who view a nation as a home rather than as a marketplace where individuals go and interact and earn money. And there's no real emotional connection to the place, the people or the culture. No one thinks this way about their own house. No one thinks everyone in the world has a right to come into their house and that it's racist to ask them to leave again. But what is a nation state? A nation state is just like a house for an extended family.
So it's a set of infrastructure, buildings, roads, accommodations for a large extended family of people, at least traditionally. For most of history, that has been what a nation state has been understood to be. A new understanding has been inserted because it's been deemed racist to take that view of what a nation state is.
And I just think that this is one of the dividing lines in this debate between Ben Shapiro and emergent New Right that Nick Fuentes is part of, but there are many other people who are part of it as well.
This is the type of thing we're fighting over.
[01:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah, Dee, it's fascinating because can you imagine.
And this is one of the things, actually, I really have a great love and affinity with the Mori people. They have a high regard still for tradition and homeland. It's essential, you know, it's just essential. And you imagine someone saying that or thinking this was a normal way to think about people who actually do have an ancestral, legitimate connection to the land. But on top of that as well, Diwa, it feels like they have other credibility issues as well. Like capitalism does have some problems. It is not a perfect panacea. But the liberals, it seems, don't even want to acknowledge that.
Someone put it succinctly I saw online last night, and they said, well, this is what Ben Shapiro said here. Is this just the 2025 version of, you know, learn to code?
And it feels a lot like that. And so my sense is that some of the failings in capitalism, and particularly the way that liberals have just either glossed over or actively deny they're not there, that's done more to actually enable, you know, communism and socialism than any socialist agitator ever has. Because people know, like this is part of the appeal, it seems to me, of Nick Fuentes. He's kind of like Karl Marx in a lot of ways. Marx was actually seeing real problems and he was diagnosing real problems. His vision of reality and his solutions were not sound at all. And so his proposed outcomes were. Were not good. But the reason why Marxism persists is because it did accurately diagnose some of the problems within capitalism. And until, you know, the liberals, I guess, acknowledge that, then these problems will ensue. There's a credibility issue here, right? On all sorts of levels.
[01:03:25] Speaker C: Well, they're Very openly saying that capitalism or liberalism or conservatism, you know, their entire movement is tied into the political philosophy that the, the line must go up, the house prices must go up, they must get more expensive and too bad you've got to move away because the house prices have to go up and that's the entire economy. That's the entire political philosophy. How do you make the house prices go up? We just keep importing more people to make the house prices go up.
And if that's your political ideology, well, then it's over for you. I mean, there's not an acceptable, that's not an acceptable answer to give to generations of young people who are basically growing up as strangers and aliens in their own countries, in their own neighborhoods.
And I mean, it's being put very well by William and by or McIntyre. I won't add to that or repeat it. But yeah, if the, if the, if the entire conservative movement is supposed to be tied to house prices go up, well, then we, you know, burn it all down.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, well, if house prices are going up and everyone, and young families in particular are in those houses and they own them, great. But if they, they're going up because they, and they, and they can't afford them and corporates own them and rental oligarchs and all the rest of it, then yeah, they're just, it's, I'm sorry, look, I feel this, I'm not even particularly wealthy, but we own our own home. And I feel great sadness about the generation coming behind who are really struggling just to even get in on the ground for. And we don't even have a flash house, but we've actually got a house. And I know there's a lot of people who've been struggling to do that. I want to fire two quick fire questions before we conclude, gentlemen. And then like this final question about what is the solution? But I've got two quick fire questions for you. So let's try and give good, solid, speedy answers to this.
Number one of the quick fires is what is the blowback for Trump in all of this? Is there any blowback? Because it seems like this is his movement that is sort of fracturing here. So, William, I'll start with you. Is there a blowback for Trump?
[01:05:29] Speaker B: It makes Trump's job much more difficult because he has, his job is to appeal to both sides of this, this alliance. And it's going to be very difficult if the harder that they are fighting with each other.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, so that, that's definitely a factor. What do you reckon, Dewa?
[01:05:50] Speaker C: I think JD Vance does a very good job of walking the line. He does a good job of explaining why the New Right exists, why it's ascendant.
He himself is sort of a little bit of a product of the New Right mixed in with a little bit of the, the neo conservative, sort of the libertarian side, you know, supporting him in his, his senatorial campaign way back. So, yeah, Trump has good people who are helping him deal with this. If he listens to those people, if he keeps encouraging them, J.D. vance keeps doing what he's doing, I don't have any concerns.
[01:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting. I've noticed actually, too, in the last few days, he's been noticeably quiet, actually. I just wonder if he's keeping his powder dry and very astutely figuring out, well, you know, 2028, 2028, where do I want to be in relation to all of this? Sec. Second quick fire question before we ask the big kahuna at the end, and we'll start with you again, William. Do you subscribe to the theory that this is actually a fight about control for the Republican party post Trump 2028 and the narrative? Because basically there has been side lining, really, of the neocons and that former movement which held sway. Is this a bigger, like, I know Tucker is proposing that. He's saying they are fighting about what happens after Trump in this moment. That's what's really going on. Do you subscribe to that theory?
[01:07:10] Speaker B: Yes, I think that's a big part of it.
[01:07:13] Speaker A: Okay, that was, gosh, that was an easy answer, wasn't it? Diva, what about you?
[01:07:16] Speaker C: It's, it's not just that. It's not just that, but also a lot of the older neoconservative titans are dying at the moment. I mean, we just, this past week, Dick Cheney passed away.
I think we've had several other prominent figures do so this year. And so it's the end of an era of, of those giants of the neoconservative movement. And so even if Trump wasn't here, you'd be having this kind of fight anyway. But because this is Trump's movement, it very much is about who comes after Trump.
[01:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. There's a generational thing going on, too, a passing of the torch where maybe some people don't want to let the torch go.
Last question then, gentlemen, and this is the big one to wrap us up. What is the solution here?
Because clearly a lot of people throwing around attacks. There are people I've seen propose what they think the heart of the problem is. We've talked a little bit about that, but what is the solution? What is, what is the, do you think the correct way to respond to handle deal with Nick Fuentes and the Groipers? That movement. I think it's bigger than just them. I think it is a global issue with young men in general. Like I said, I have an affinity for that generation. But what do you think is the solution here? Maybe we'll start with you, William.
[01:08:32] Speaker B: I think the solution is to talk to one another and to reassure one another that the worst fears that each holds of one another are not true.
So the pro Israel Zionist people, their worst fear is that Nick Fuentes and a lot of these other groups from outside the mainstream conservative, they, they represent the second coming of Hitler.
So we need to reassure those people that that is in fact not what is happening on the other side.
The pro Israel people or the establishment conservatives, which who aren't. I don't think they're exactly the same groups, just to be clear.
They need to reassure the emerging groups that they're not going to be systematically deplatformed and gatekeeped out of the conservative movement and they need to reassure them that there will be a place for them on merit and that there will be free speech to have the discussions of their views within the conservative movement. That's my solution.
[01:09:36] Speaker A: Dewa, what do you think? That's a pretty compelling case. You may William D. What's your proposed solution here? Firebomb it.
[01:09:46] Speaker C: I had three words.
I have three words in my head. I'm just going to sum up what William has said in three words. Let them fight.
[01:09:55] Speaker A: Let them fight.
Well, see who's left standing. Is that this, is that your solution?
[01:10:02] Speaker C: That's my. So yes.
I'm not even joking.
You have power struggles, you have wars. Somebody wins, somebody loses.
That is the way it goes. I'm not hoping it's a destructive fight. I'm hoping that whoever kind of the end result of the fight is something stronger.
But I think letting this play out is key and following William's advice on, you know, trying to reassure both sides, trying to work out compromises and agreements where possible, navigating our way through this civil war for a civil solution.
[01:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you gentlemen. I really do think that we've got to communicate and particularly to the young men who are in this disenfranchised group.
I mean if history tells us nothing else, it is that you do not ignore or further alienate, disenfranchised groups, that's the worst thing you could do. So we actually have an obligation. If we really are the moral conservatives of goodness, truth and beauty as we came to be, then we should be safeguarding that. And that means proactively. And so you've got to engage.
I like, for example, someone like Gavin McInnes, who is. And he's remained friends with Nick Fuentes, but he's quite open about the fact. He's like, yeah, Nick is anti Semitic. And I. And he does, he challenges him on it.
Gavin's a lot more pro Israel. He's not full on in, but he's a lot more pro Israel. He thinks it's kind of become an obsession on both sides, but I think his approach is right. That's how you temper. Like, there was a Catholic cardinal, Cardinal Powell in Australia, who once said to a group that he was speaking to young people, your job is to set the Church on fire. Old people, you're there to make sure they don't burn the place down. And I think that's true of everything. So our job as people who've got a bit more, you know, perhaps wisdom on board, is to actually engage with and help them temper the worst excesses. I needed that when I was a young man, full of vim and vinegar. They do as well. So just doubling down, taking the rod rare approach, calling them names or calling them Nazis and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. A, it's not gonna work and B, it's really the worst way of dealing with this, I think.
And I think also there's another group who we have to consider here, and that is the people who are perhaps watching on from the outside.
And I would say to that group, just be aware that, like William, you've already indicated this, there is a power struggle going on and part of that is the influencer class on the right. They're trying to exert their control of audience and it's a big factor. So you'll actually see a lot of bloviating hyperbole on the right, both sides, actually, and. And it's all about trying to make you think the worst of the other so you'll support them. And so you just gotta, if you're an outsider watching on, I'd say be very aware of that and, and be discerning, double check before you go believing someone's a Nazi or that someone is, is, you know, wants to take over the Western world and for Jewish interests, go and double check what they're actually saying and you might be Kind of surprised to discover that things fall a bit more in the middle.
Gentlemen, before we close out and you share with us how people can follow your work, I just want to say a huge thank you to the patrons, the subscribers, the supporters of Left Foot Media. And I just want to give you a heads up that I am right now negotiating actively with four different overseas guests who are going to be on four different episodes, not all together.
And. And I'm quite excited. I think you'll really enjoy that. So I'm working with their PAS at the moment to try and nail down interview recording times, one guest in particular who has not had a lot of coverage, but some very important things to say. So, yeah, I'm quite excited and it's thanks to your support we're able to do that and also to produce episodes like this. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our patrons and supporters, Dewa and William. We'll start with you, Dewa. Where do people follow your work? And then, William, share with the audience where people can follow you.
[01:13:51] Speaker C: You can go to rightminds NZ and sign up to my newsletter. You can find me at rightmindznz on X& also look for D Wood aboard on Telegram. Those are the best places to get in touch with me and of course, enjoy the show on RCR at least once a week. I'm on there with William.
[01:14:09] Speaker A: Brilliant, William, how do people follow you?
[01:14:12] Speaker B: Follow me at William McGimcy on X at the Zeitgeist NZ and on Substack at the Zeitgeist and the Conservative Network. Those are the best places.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: Gentlemen, it's been a real pleasure as always. Gosh, I feel we're the. I like to think we're the smartest people in the country. We're not, but everyone thinks they are, so it's been a very intellectually stimulating conversation. And just again, William, thank you. I mean, it's sort of turned into an unofficial show really, hasn't it? But, yeah, you've really brought something good on this occasion. And thank you for taking the time, Dewa, as well, and sending the kids off out into the darkness, the Hunterlands, so we can record the episode. Thanks, gentlemen.
[01:14:52] Speaker C: And you're welcome.
[01:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's been a real joy.
[01:14:56] Speaker C: The kids want their dinner now, so.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: So do mine.
[01:14:59] Speaker C: The kids are getting hungry.
[01:15:01] Speaker A: They'll start to eat each other next door.
Right, gentlemen? Other than that, I'd say it's time to bid everyone farewell. If you're tuning in from wherever you're watching, don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And we will see you next time on the dispatches with Dewa and also William.
