Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Ragnar Redbeard: The Patron Saint of Toxic Masculinity

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Ragnar Redbeard.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's filling? I Jesus, I don't know how to open this one. I was going to make like a claim about like a joke about cum socks or something for the introduction because it's part two of our... What's ejaculating in my cum socks? Sophie, is that a good introduction? Not my best. Not my best. That was Jamie. I pulled back. What's squirting my cum socks?

Way better. See, Jamie, this was the introduction equivalent of that scene in Footloose where the two tractors are racing towards each other and then like one pulls away and I pulled away. I pulled away in the game of unfortunate cum introduction based chicken and you did not. No, I refused to back down and I think I'm reaping the rewards as we speak. So this is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where our introductions are increasingly unhinged and inaccessible to new listeners. This is part two of our two part episode on Arthur Desmond, author of Might is Right, the book that inspired the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting and a bunch of other stuff. I don't want to like spoil the end, but this is a lot of

where the Church of Satan comes from too. So it's going to be cool. Oh yeah, baby. Yeah. How do we get through the whole first episode without... Okay, okay. Yeah, I buckle in, strap together, belt down. Yeah, tape it back on. Tape it back on. Yeah, that's one way to say get it together, right? Throw a wrench at it. Yeah, all of those are synonyms for get your shit rolling. Throw a wrench at it. All right, it's time for part two. Okay. Might is Right was originally published under the title The Survival of the Fittest. It first existed as I stated as a 25 page pamphlet Desmond printed out while he lived in Sydney. It wasn't until 1896 that the full book was published and the final edition of Desmond's Life was

published in around 1903. Under the title, Might is Right. It's here I should note that not everyone agrees about the purpose behind this book. While most folks seem to accept that Desmond meant everything he wrote, there's a sizable chunk of people who do think that this was a work of satire and that he was actually making fun of the kind of people that you and I find so frustrating. They'll argue that Desmond was actually a committed socialist to the death and that Might is Right was basically him mocking the extremes of the politics that he hated. Well, if so, irresponsible satirist. If so, nobody got the joke because everyone takes it seriously. Yeah, but also looking at home dude's life, there's a pretty natural evolution from

like labor warrior to guy who just thinks that you should punch each other to determine who gets things. Yeah, I don't. I mean, that's a very, that's a very forgiving interpretation. Yeah, yeah, that it is. And I think the people who consider it satire, I think in part, they just don't want to believe that anyone could take this book seriously. But Right, a lot of time on the stupid parts of the Internet and people take way dumber shit seriously. They're like, he's got to be joking. There's no way. I mean, I do have to appreciate that he went back and he changed the title to something like punchier too. Might is right. Yeah, he got notes. Yeah, exactly. They're like survival of the fittest.

You know, it's kind of been done kind of been said. I'm going to guess he like rolled down to the gym and was like, did anybody read my book? And there was just like a guy punching it. Punching it being like, no, I don't read science books. And I was like, but what if it rhymed? Right? What if it rhymes? He's a poet. He's a shitty poet. I wonder. Does his poetry get better or worse? Do you think as he slowly becomes a Nazi? I think labor song, the poem that you liked with the kids getting eaten. The Children's Bones. Yeah, the Children's Bones. I think that's his high point as a poet. Okay. Looking forward to future work. I'm about to read another poem. It's not really a poem. It's just sort of like flowery language. I'm going to read how the

the book's introduction starts. In this arid wilderness of steel and stone, I raise up my voice that you may hear to the east and to the west, I beckon to the north and to the south, I show a sign proclaiming death to the weakling, wealth to the strong, open your eyes that you may hear. Oh, men of mildewed minds and listen to me, ye laborious millions, for I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world to interrogate the laws of man and of God. I request reasons for your golden rule and ask why and wherefore of your ten commands. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith thou shalt to me is my mortal foe. I demand proof over all things and accept with reservations, even that which is true. I dip my forefinger into

the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, your divine democrat, your Hebrew madman, and right over his thorn-torn brow, the true prince of evil, the king of the slaves. No. Yeah, he's not, he's real anti-Jesus and also anti-Semitic and they are both very much intertwined. I was like, there it goes and he's off. We are off to the races. That is bad on so many levels. He's also obsessed with like, he's like, oh, you thin blooded, like just all this weird coded language for emasculation. You're like, how do you even think of that? It's like when you like go on an incel board and I'm like, how would you think to describe something like that? You're thinking about it too hard, my friend. Yeah, this is the problem. I think like, back in the day, Desmond was the only guy

thinking like this because he was the only one spending all this time alone in front of a piece of paper writing out his crazy thoughts. But now with the internet, people like, you have whole communities of people who are thinking along the same lines and they just drive, because like, Desmond would have looked at the stuff incels right about how like, oh, no dude, you've got this classification of chin and so you're going to die alone because your chin's like an A3 and you got to have an A6 or better chin in order to like get a girl. Desmond would have looked at that and been like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? But that's, you know, you can't have that without the internet. This is as far into those territories as you got back. I say you leave him on those

boards for a couple weeks. He would start to see. He would start to see the darkness. He might, you do get that feeling from him that if he'd had the internet, he would have been pretty hardcore Elliot Roger. It does seem like every time he has like a lost year or two, he pivots intensely. Yeah. Yeah. And I suspect he's spending a lot of a lone time in those years. Well, he's certainly not fucking that. I can say pretty certainly. He is absolutely not fucking. Arthur Desmond did not fuck. And rightfully so. Except for his pillows. Sorry. No, we're very glad that he did not fuck much. Yeah. For the betterment of everyone. And now the anti-Semitism is really stark like to us because we come from a somewhat

saner time where that's less common. But in an era where that was more common, you can kind of see how the language and theme would be compelling to a lot of people in an era with a stricter social hierarchy and strong ideas of the place of religion, the family, the social order, this like, this is a time like the early 1900s when a lot of philosophies based on tearing it all down are gaining an ascendancy, not just sort of like different strains of anarchism, but like that's what socialism is about. And that's kind of where like fascism comes from too. So you can see where why this would be compelling to a lot of people. Yes. Yeah. Now, all that said, like as much bullshit as they're in there, there are like pieces of stuff in

here that like I find compelling, or at least that I think in an earlier dumber stage of my development, I would have found compelling. Like there's stuff in here that's tailor made to like latch onto the brains of 18 year old kind of narcissistic kids who are like starting to read books that are like outside of the mainstream. Yeah, the college freshman contingency. This is where we're built exactly. There's stuff in here that's made for that. And I'm going to read one of those quotes now that like you can see why you can you can imagine the kind of person that this this is electric to. Okay. In the nursery at school and at college, plastic brain pulp is deliberately forced into the pre arranged mold. Everything that a corrupt civilization can do

is done to compress the growing intellect into unnatural channels. Thus the great massive men who inhabit the world of today have no initiative, no originality or independence of thought, but are mere subjective individualities who have never had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideals they formally revere. So that's like, yeah, it's just like adult, like your parents are stupid. Your parents are so dumb. Society's bullshit, man. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like like serious Gen X ideology of like, you know, your parents who loved you. Fuck them. Yeah. Love it. Fuck them. Those IKEA shoppers. Yeah. Yeah. And there's Desmond's a weird writer. Like there's single lines in here that are actually like really good lines, good turns of phrase. And then like,

you know, Yoho bullshit. Like he's weird. Like if he'd had an editor. He's a bad writer. He's a bad writer with snatches of like really good turns of phrase. So I'm going to read a paragraph that's complete nonsense and then ends on what I consider to be a pretty fun line. Okay. Mankind is a weary, a weary of its sham profits, its demagogues and its statesmen. It cryeth out for kings and heroes. It demands an ability, an ability that cannot be hired with money, like slaves or beasts of burden. The world awaits the coming of mighty men of valor, great destroyers, destroyers of all that is vile, angels of death. We are sick unto nausea of the good Lord Jesus. Terror is stricken under that executive of priest mob and proconsul. We are

tired to death of equality. Gods are at a discount. Devils are in demand. Fun last line. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like it's he never had an editor. And so he didn't. Yeah. Yeah. But that is something in order to have an editor, you do have to have a friend and it seems unlikely. He never had a friend. I know. He actually did have an editor, but I don't know what the fucking guy was doing. Yikes. Because, because there's a lot of nonsense. And you can see like, again, when I'm talking about how there's like all sorts of shit in here that's like proto the stuff that people say online now, we're tired to death of equality. Like that's a major through line in the book of just like the evils of equality. And yeah, because yeah, well Desmond's

a big like the democracy is bullshit. Like all of our societal notions of like the inherent equality of mankind is bullshit. Like women's rights are bullshit. The only thing that matters is like, who can beat up everybody else? Well, yeah, like that's his philosophy. It's frustrating. Yeah. That is like big like college, college freshman, like male college freshman energy where it's like if I only was strong, I just need to get stronger. I'll fix the world by being very strong. And I guess like the point I'm making with the he has odd single lines here that are like catchy is that like it's he's a writer whose writing is made to be like have quotes pulled out and tattooed on the arms of guys at the gym. Like that's that's that's the kind of writer he is. Like

you can see why individual bits of this would like stick out to people reading it, which is where we're building with the crowd. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what he's good at. Yeah. And he also repeats himself constantly every chapter he repeats every single point that he makes in the entire book, which makes it a slog to read. But if you're not good at reading, it makes it really easy to get the point driven home to you. Fun. Because you only have to read one chapter of this book to kind of get where it's all going. It's like the secret. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'm going to read another quote. This one could have come from a poorly mimeographed sovereign citizen pamphlet in the mid 1990s. And it's again, like, there's just so much here that seems like directly

influenced the modern far right. The free man is born free, lives free and dies free. He is, even though living in an artificial civilization, above all laws, all constitutions, all theories of right and wrong. He supports and defends them, of course, as long as they suit his own end. But if they don't, then he annihilates them by the easiest and most direct method. And you can't be tried under a flag with a fringe. That means it's a flag of admiralty. Is this written in all caps? He writes like, I've got a lot of gun shows in my day, and there's a lot of poorly, like Xeroxed pamphlets in them. Like Arthur Desmond reads like every one of those pamphlets. Oh my God. Like there'll be one poll quote on the front, and you're like, okay, what's going on

here? And then it's just like fucking nonsense. Yeah, just everything he writes just seems like a hymn problem. It just reeks of a personal issue with something that. Yeah. Yeah. He's a bitter, angry guy. And that comes across really fucking clear in this book. And he's like, and I refuse to work on my personality. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. The world needs to accept his personality, which is that the government should be based on who can punch best. God, so many, yeah, so many people have done, like so many men have done damage based on wanting to the world to bend to their shitty personality instead of. Yeah. Arthur Desmond is like the fucking archetype of that. Cool. Although there's also like there's an, there's an angle of it that's kind of sad

too, because you can see like we covered how he started out as this like very pro labor guy who is like kind of desperately trying to get the working class to like recognize how fucked over it was being by the system they lived under. And he's completely abandoned that now. And you can taste the bitterness over that fact in this book. Right. I mean, but that's just like a, that feels like a lack of commitment to the cause and just being like, I wanted to get all the credit and no one cared. Sure. There were tons, tons of people who did not give up and who actually made like significant social strides and stuff. Yeah. Desmond just like I said, he didn't have patience. Like, you know, when he started his political career, there was a point at which

he probably could have made himself a career as a politician, gotten into parliament. But like after the second election didn't quite go his way. He was just like, fuck it. I'm going to write illegal newspapers, which you know, I like illegal newspapers. He got involved in the zine community. We can't slide it for him. He got involved in the zine community. Yeah. Quote, the common people have always had to be befooled with some written or wooden or golden idol, some constitution, declaration or gospel. Consequently, the majority of them have ever been mental thralls living and dying in an atmosphere of strong illusion. They are befooled and hypnotized even to this hour. And a large proportion of them must remain

so until time is no more. Indeed, the masses of mankind are but the sediment from which all the more valuable elements have been long ago distilled. They are totally incapable of real freedom. And if it were granted to them, they would straight away vote themselves a master or a thousand masters within 24 hours. Mastership is right. Mastership is natural. Mastership is eternal, but only for those who cannot overthrow it and trample it beneath their hooves. So yeah, that's where he's wound up. Yeah. Okay. I hate him. I hate him. Yeah. Yeah. He uses the word eunuch a lot in this too. He's, he's been using the word eunuch a lot the whole time. Yeah. That he starts using that mainly to refer to Christianity. So like it'll be,

he'll, he'll focus on like, like, it's Hebrew and it's like eunuch and it's like, yeah, he thinks it's dickless. That's his number one insult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I know what you're wondering, Jamie, is this book racist as fuck? And yes. No way. It's, it is absolutely racist as fuck. Okay. Are all men really brethrened? Negro and Indian? Black fellow? Cowmuck? I don't even know what a cowmuck is. And Cooley, the well born in the base bread, the beer soaked loafer and the hero hearted patriot belted chieftain and ignoble mechanic slave, pot of iron and pot of clay. That's a sentence. Like that's a fucking, that's a single sentence. He wrote that down, Robert. He wrote that down and was like, print this shit. People have to read this. People have to know.

I had to read this. No one else has to read this. Please don't read this. There's no need to read it. And then, and then going, I mean, it's like, if you think that that is the content of it, and then you read the marketing for how important he clearly thought the book was. Yeah. No one's ever had these thoughts before. Yeah. My cool idea. Racism. You're like, oh, geez. He would have had so many fucking fight club posters up in his bedroom right next to the pile of socks as stiff as particle board. Petrified socks and a million snake flags. I just, yeah. Yeah. Now, might as right is on balance, extremely repetitive. Desmond does attempt to cite history and science in his arguments, but he never goes into any meaningful detail because he clearly

only has a shallow understanding for anything that he references. One good example is this line. The big fish eat the little fish. The big trees, by absorbing and monopolizing the nutriment, eat up the little trees. The strong animals eat the weak animals and so on. And it at infinitum, which is not how forests work. Okay. Not entirely how fish work even or even animals. Like, yeah, it's just. But he says it with such all caps confidence that you're like, does he know something? I don't. And then it's like, no, he's gaslighting you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, some of them may just have been honest ignorance about the way forests work. Of course, the big trees are eating the little trees. That's how it works.

Crazy. How like, yeah, you're just like, oh, he's gaslighting me. You're like, no, he's not even that smart. He can't even not even that smart. Understand. Oh, he just like looked at a big tree next to a little tree and was like, well, that big one's eating the little one. I got to write a book about clearly. Yeah. Oh, piece of shit. All right. Now, I'm going to guess it didn't surprise you that he was racist. No, it surprised you to learn that he's very pro cannibalism. Yes. He's super pro cannibalism. This is the most pro cannibalism book I've read. No, I didn't run into a poem. Unfortunately, not like figure of speech cannibalism like let's know. No, literal. Like he talks about cannibalism for pages and he never says

like it's good to eat people, but like he clearly admires cannibalism and thinks that it's like I just read how racist it is. Like there's a bunch of lines about how like black and white people clearly aren't like like equal and stuff. The one time he talks about a non-white group of people positively. He's talking about New Zealand, Aboriginals and cannibalism. Like that's his one like wokest passage is being like these guys eat people and that's cool as hell. And that's fucking metal. He just sounds like a misguided like right wing metal music. Oh God. Yeah, he's a big cannibalism fan. Do we know why he chose to publish this under a pseudonym other than it's absolutely full of shit, but it doesn't seem like he thinks that. So why isn't he willing to

put his name on it? You know, he had a bunch of pseudonyms throughout his life. I think because he was a criminal. Yeah. He was constantly committing crimes. Okay. Okay. Just curious. Yeah. Yeah. So like again, cannibalism cannibalism. Yeah. He describes him as very intelligent New Zealand Aboriginals when he talks about like their cannibalistic traditions because and that's the only positive reference to a non-white group of people in the book is like these guys eat people and that's sick as shit yo. Yeah. I'm like this is a very like hot topic analysis like of cannibalism. He is so fucking cool. There can't. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a terrible book, but at least there's twists. I appreciate it. He stands cannibalism. Stannibalism. Stannibalism.

God. Okay. Please don't make that t-shirt. Please don't. Oh, I am. It's already in shirt. I refuse. Arthur Desmond's attitude towards women is another area where his writing seems virtually identical to angry posts on 4chan or Reddit. Yeah. So I'm going to read a little bit of that now, Jamie. Okay. Hit it. A man's family is his property. It is part of himself. Therefore, his natural business is to defend it as he would his own life. Women and children belong to man who must hunt for them as well as for himself. He is their lord and master in theory and in fact. Yeah. Well, I agree with all of that, so I don't really know why you were trying to set me off because I agree with it. I think it's

right. Well, let's see how you let's see how you feel about this next part. Yeah. Women are frail beings at the best of times and in their secret hearts are probably lovers of the unlimited. For the welfare of the breed and the security of descent, they must be held in thorough subjection. Man has captured them and besides providing for and protecting them, it is necessary to keep them on the chain as it were. Woe to him. Woe unto them and woe unto our race. If ever these lovable creatures should break loose from master ship and become rulers or equals of man, but that is impossible. He adds in parentheses. Oh, I don't either. He's talking about women like they're mogwas. It's so icky. Yeah. From the earliest ages, man has captured his wife by

force or stratagem. And to this day, he does the same. Marriage ceremonies symbolize his proprietorship, his capture. The marriage ring is one link of a chain emblematic of the fact that the prehistoric bridegroom chained his beloved one in a cave. So she became tame, tractable, and reciprocative. I don't know where he came up with that. This is brutal. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You would not be wrong to see Ragnar Redbeard as the prototype of the men's rights activist or the in cell movement. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect that today he'd be at the very least a very successful grifter in that world. Yeah. For example, near the end of the book is this chapter subtitle. Manhood is demonized. It complains. All caps king. It is actually all caps.

Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. It's literally all caps. Manhood is demonized. And again, this is like the late 1800s, early 1900s. It is. No, but it's also like 2018 in a way. Yeah. It's very much both of those things. So we're going to talk, Jamie, about how manhood is demonized. But first, you know, what's not demonized? Capitalism. Yeah. Ha, beat you to it. At book. Yes. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first

season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the gun badass way, nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted

pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories.

But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. We're talking about how manhood is demonized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I mean, isn't it, Robert? Wouldn't you agree? Haven't you been on

the boards? It's a pretty hot topic of discussion. It's all I can do to, I don't know, what's a stereotypical thing? I feel truly like manhood is demonized in all caps. Sounds like a Reddit post. I saw this week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, literally, I've read variants of that exact sentence a thousand times over the last couple of years. Okay. Generally, while someone on Facebook was trying to sell me like leather goods and axes and shit, because manhood has been very successfully capitalized, which there's a funny bit to that here. So I'm going to read a quote from that chapter on manhood is demonized. Sure. We're living and dying, mostly dying, in a poisonous environment of deep-seated moral dementia, social disease and political illusions,

the righteous and the just, hypocrites, deceivers, enemies of all that is noble, courageous and manly, destroyers of self-assertiveness, annihilators of heroism, wood that I had a legion of demons to ring neck, a crucified Jew slave, terrorized under authority, is set up as a God, a standard of measurement for all mankind. That is why personal valor and nobility of thought are at such a tremendous discount. Christendom is bondage. Manhood is demonetized. Our race is betrayed. Demonetized. Yeah. I think he was trying to say like demonetized, like made into a demon, but it's spelled demonetized. Yeah. Like he's PewDiePie. Manhood is demonetized. Yeah. No, man, you can, it's monetized very well ever since. Yeah. This, okay. So manhood is

demonetized. I would, I would buy that shirt. I would wear that shirt. I, what a piece of work. You would? I would wear that. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Right? No, Jamie, I bet at this point, I know what you're wondering. How would Arthur Desmond, how, yes. How, how would Arthur Desmond scientifically define a female? Oh no. Oh yeah. Yeah. I really did get like a weird feeling in my stomach when you said that. Oh yeah. Female. Yeah. I mean, he, yeah, it's gross. Okay. Okay. A woman is primarily a reproductive cell organism, a womb structurally embastioned by a protective defensive osseous network surrounded with the antennae and blood

vessels necessary for supplying nutriment to the growing ovum or embryo. That's a woman. It sounds like a fucking creature from the black lagoon. What is he? Oh, that's just a womb with bones. You're just a meat prison that's supposed to make me a child yield me an air, but he, that is, oh, what a loser. What a loser. There's, I like, if he had a counselor or if he had somewhere to express himself, maybe he did actually, I think him having a place to express himself was the problem. Well, I think that he, he shouldn't, he certainly shouldn't have had a platform, Robert. I think he should. Oh my gosh. Hashtag deep platform, Arthur Desmond. Did he demonetize him? A stroke did that a while back. So wait, he said, he said,

we may have antennae. Yeah. Did he specify where they got him? Cause. Nope, but you have antenna and blood vessels to supply nutriment to your growing ovum. So congrats on that. I bet you're happy to learn that. My ovum stays growing. So maybe that's, maybe it's the antenna. You gotta check those antennae. Yep. So, oh, what a dork. Wow. What a dork. Pathetic. Now, the more you read, might as right, the more convinced you become that among other things, Arthur Desmond was the founding father of all incels. And this quote, I think embodies that more than any other strap in. Okay. Sexualism and maternity dominate the lives of all true women. To such an extent is this so that they have very little time left or inclination to think,

and therefore they've never been fitted out ab inito with reasoning organs. Probably this is what Muhammad alluded to when he sentatiously affirmed that women have no soul. Even in man, the soul is probably a fiction, but in woman, its absence is an absolute certainty. I got stuck on reasoning organism. Reasoning organs? Yeah. That's so nasty. I just love that he's both like such an like atheist bro that he's got to be like nobody has a soul, but also like women for sure don't have souls. Again, again, it is like that trend that he has of just like, you're like, oh, this could be something horrible, or he might just really not know what he's talking about. Where he's like, you know, when you're gestating a baby, you really got to focus and

give it your full attention or like you're just sitting on an egg for nine months. You can't move. You can't do anything. Much less use your reasoning organisms or grapple with your soul because you don't have one. Oh, Lord. Well, Jamie. Yes. I'm sorry. I was my reasoning organism is just overextended right now. Keep reasoning with those organs. Yeah. Well, I mean, I can't or my ovum will stop growing. Oh, that's the classic, that's the classic contradiction of womanhood right there. If I flex my reasoning organism too hard, my antenna will stop working and my ovum will shrink. Don't you understand? I do now. Now that I've read might is right. And that's the last normal quote from the book we're going to read. I do have one last piece of might is right to read

and it's a poem. Go for it. No. From Sandy Hook to London Tower, from Jaffa to Japan, they can take who have the power they may keep who can. This is the law of heaven and hell, stupendous and divine, the highest, holiest law of all that governs mine and thine. The law it is of sun and star, of president and pope. It is the prisoner at the bar, the gallows in the rope. It is the lawyer and his fee, the shearer and his sheep. The eagle soaring swift and free, the dreadnought on the deep. It is the bond, it is the loan, the profit and the lost. The user on his bullion throne, the idol of the cross. It is the goth, it is the hun, the tyrant and his prey. The flame and saber, club and gun. Oh taxes that we pay. It is the law of all the climbs and

all the things to be and all the bold tremendous times that you and I shall see. From Sandy Hook to London Tower, from Greenland to Japan, they will take who have the power. And I think I cut off the last line. I was going to say, that's a very jarring place to end it. Yeah, it ends with the word can, I'm sure. Yeah, well, I mean, you don't know, his poetry is so good and deft and complicated. Where is it going? That sounds like a shitty black Sabbath song. He should have kept writing labor poems about kids' bones being crushed. That was, yeah, because it really, that's his high point. Yeah, when he was, when, and that was also kind of his high point ideologically too. Yes, it was. Good. Okay. So, so he's a bad poet again. I am also interested in the arc of

his poetry. Yeah, it's really, it's a parabola. Yeah. He's bad, but we also know he's a plagiarist. So we may, my, my, my thing is maybe he didn't write the one good poem. He just beat some guy up and stole his poem. Well, yeah. That's entirely possible. Well, might as right. So, yeah. Good. That is, that is how poetry works. He's got, I mean, the untellable damage that's been done to the world over like shitty artists that, that just really couldn't get it. It's just like, oh, just get a line. That's part of what, that's like the best argument you can make for like the, the fucking, whatchamacallit, the universal basic income is like, then all the terrible artists in the world can make terrible art and not turn into Hitler. And not yet become so deeply

politicized or, or George Bush for that matter. Yeah. Yeah. If they, if they both just lived in small apartments and painted, we'd all be better off. Right. It's like, yeah, no one's going to buy it, but they're not going to die. It'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. If Arthur Desmond had just had a government apartment, he would have kept writing poems. Some of them would have been good. Some of them would have been terrible. He would have published shitty zines for the rest of his life. And no, I mean, this, you could argue that might as right as kind of a shitty zine. Yeah, but it has way more impact than that. Like it's, it's, we're, we're about to get into how this spread outside of the shitty zine community of the, the 1890s and early 1900s. Okay. But first,

let's talk about the rest of Arthur Desmond's life. Okay. Now, once he made it to the United States, he appears initially in like registers in the city of Chicago as a reporter. He also started going by the name Ragnar Redbeard professionally at this point, writing one friend that he had taken on the new name just for luck. After might as right was published and started to gain serious prominence as a work of radical politics, Desmond seems to have found himself in possession of a decent amount of funding. He created the Adolf Mueller company in 1897 for the sole purpose of selling Ragnar Redbeard books and pamphlets. I'm going to guess Adolf Mueller was another one of his aliases. Yeah. Now, most of these seem to have just been reprints of pieces of might as

right. He published the eagle and the serpent in 1898, which was just a reprint of chapter six. He started publishing a journal, Redbeard's review in England. It was mainly existed to like sell copies of might as right. And it ran for around four years. Gross. Desmond also started claiming to be a PhD at this time and started signing his work with LLD, the abbreviation for a doctorate of law. When his biographers looked into this and found it to be an absolute lie, the University of Chicago, where he claimed to have gotten his degree, didn't even award its first LLD until a year after Desmond claimed to have received his. Cool. So pathetic. Okay. And yet another grifter who follows in the pattern of they all wind up pretending to be

a doctor at some point. Yeah. I mean, and that's, that's almost Billy Wayne territory. I know. I know. And I'm, yeah, he might leap out in through the poison room at this point to take over. It's okay. There's not a lot about the doctor part. I bravely take on the in cell beat. And yeah. Okay. So he's, I mean, we knew he was a liar and a grifter, but okay. Okay. And we also don't know how old he is. We really don't like not even super close to how old he is to be honest. We have a 20 year descriptive. I'm seeing like 1859 and a lot of stuff. Yeah. It's really hard to tell like different sources. Like you, like one of the difficulties publishing the, or putting this together is like everyone who writes about him, there's a bunch of stuff that doesn't at all go

along with each other. And I don't know exactly how everything timed out other than like the publication of his books and stuff. We have that set in stone, but like, I mean, and some of that's just down to the fact that this was like the 1890s. Nobody was keeping good records back then. Sure. But also he was a criminal grifter who lied about every aspect of his life. So it seems like he might lie about his age. About everything. We don't even know if Arthur Desmond was his real name. Like the reason they're pretty sure he was Ragnar Redbeard is just because like the poetry and shit in Might is Right sounds exactly like Arthur Desmond's poetry. And that seems compelling to me. Like just having read a bunch of his poems

from earlier in his life and then reading Might is Right, like I'm pretty sure it's the same guy. There's definitely a through line through all of the shitty poetry we've heard today. And I'm also convinced that it's not Jack London who wrote Might is Right, because Jack London, for all of his flaws, was a good fucking writer. He could write a fucking book. And Might is Right is mostly nonsense. Like there's a couple of turns of phrase that are neat, but it's mostly just like insane babbling with no through line. I liked Children's Bones and that was a different publication. That was a different publication. There's nothing for me here.

Well, maybe you just got to read Might is Right, Jamie, and learn about Antenna. And Birthing Organs. He has to learn a thing or two. Now, it's possible that this new publishing career was very lucrative for Arthur. Some sources say he did well enough to buy a large ranch in Calispell, Montana. He said to have stocked it with game animals and entertained journalist friends of his there with hunting and shooting parties. This is probably a lie, because I've only found it in one source, but he might have gotten rich and bought a ranch in Montana. I really don't know. At the end of the 1800s, Arthur Desmond claimed to have fucked off to South Africa to fight in

the Second Boer War. He claimed to have joined a regiment of Light Horse Cavalry in Cape Town and to have fought in the vicious battle of Par de Burg in February 1900. After that adventure, if it happened, he moved back to Chicago and lived for a time under the name Richard Thurland. In 1903, he published Might is Right, the newest edition of Survival of the Fittish with that title. He wrote another book, Rival Caesars, which flopped. And by 1904, he had been reduced to managing an ice cream and candy company. So I don't know if he went to fight in the Second Boer War, but he definitely wound up managing an ice cream company. Okay. Best chapter of his life yet.

Yep. Now, if you know one thing about Arthur Desmond, it's that whenever he was in an office building, he was running an illegal side business out of that office building that he wasn't supposed to be running. And true to form, while he was managing this ice cream company, he also ran an advertising business as a side hustle out of the office. In March of that year, Desmond got into trouble when a telephone inspector asked to inspect the office as part of a routine checkup. Arthur refused, possibly because he was running a side business out of the office that his employers were unaware of. The inspector called the police and Desmond held them off for some hours with a rifle he had claimed to have captured during the Boer War. He was eventually

assaulted, overpowered, subdued and taken to the Cook County Jail to await trial. Thankfully for Desmond, a lifetime as a labor firebrand and organizer had turned him into a capable public speaker. He defended himself successfully in court and seems to have earned the sympathy of the jury enough that he was freed. Oh, wow. That never works. It did back then. It was an easier time. Yeah. All right. We'll give them... Now, of the rest of his life, we know fairly little. We know he got married once to a woman who were like 20-something years his junior. They had a child, but she left him fairly quickly

for reasons that are probably obvious. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she died of tuberculosis, right? That's what I'm missing. I was trying to find out more about this poor lady who he was just like, wow, your antenna are looking mighty fine today, my inferior. And then she was like, yeah. Yeah. I don't have trouble believing, like, understanding why she would have left. Plug my ovum, daddy gross. I regret saying that. If you want to plug some ovum, check out the products and services that support this show. I regret everything. And also ovaries? Yeah. That was probably a bad line to go to ads on, but we can't edit audio. But here we are. We can't edit this. We legally can't.

Ovum! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy, voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good, bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories,

but there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. We're back. We're talking about ovums and ads, ovums and ads behind the bastards. Oh God, ovums. That's feminist capitalism, baby. I love ovums and ads. No, I can't participate.

Okay. Arthur Motherfucking Desmond. So yeah, his first biographer, who is also his editor, claims that Desmond stayed mostly in the Chicago area for the rest of his life, publishing articles and journals intermittently, arguing with other anarchists and republishing one last edition of Might is Right Before His Death in 1929 from a spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage that he had while stocking books at the bookstore where he worked. It was like a second-hand shop. So he died of a stroke while putting books on a shelf. The author of Might is Right, the book of how warriors should rule the world, very warriorly death. Now, that said, there are other stories about how he died. Some sources will claim he died fighting in Mexico

in 1914 or in Palestine in 1918 or 1926. There are stories that he died in World War One, and for what it's worth, yeah, I think the likeliest version of events is that he ran a small bookstore as an old man and died in the late 1920s. Yeah, I believe the bookstore narrative. I wonder if he was like paging through something deeply pathetic, and then he just he just fucked off but forever this time. Well, all right, rest in power, King, loser. Rest in power, King. Now, while our buddy Desmond was dead and buried by 1929, his work has lived on, and it did not take long for his fevered writings to catch the imagination of another generation of political firebrand. In 1957, Anton Lavey, the father

of modern Satanism, was walking down a street in San Francisco, California, when he came upon a rare bookstore. In the window was a particular tome that caught his eye, an old copy of Might is Right. Here's what Lavey wrote about finding it. What I saw should not have been in print. It was more than inflammatory. It was sheer blasphemy. Obviously, McDonald hadn't even glanced within its pages, but figured the odd cover and title would remove it from the window. As I turned the pages, more blasphemy met my eyes. Crazy as it was, I found myself charged at the words. People just didn't write that way. There's a good reason for that, Anton. Yeah. Now, many scholars will claim with significant evidence that Anton Lavey plagiarized

huge chunks of Might is Right in order to write the Satanic Bible, which is his most well-known piece, which he published in 1969. It's generally considered to be the most influential Satanic text. I'm going to quote now from Digital Commons. Lavey's plagiarism was extensive. To his credit, however, Lavey removed some of the more offensive passages, and there are no racist undertones in the Satanic Bible. So, Lavey finds this book, likes the parts of it about hating Christianity, and about some of the stuff about the will to power, and just cuts out the anti-Semitism and the racism, and basically reprints some of it almost word for word as the Satanic Bible. Yeah, I wasn't aware that that was... I also got that whole narrative of just like,

and yeah, he'd never seen... I'd never seen something written like that before. I wonder why that is, but we never get to the second question. I mean, part of it is that in a little bit of fairness to Lavey, in the 1950s, do you think about how closed American society was, and how intolerant it was of any questioning of Christianity, of patriarchal value, of like, so anything that's like... I imagine there was so little really radical text being written in that anything that didn't reinforce the fucking madmen line about how society ought to be was intoxicating to a guy like Lavey, and I suspect that's some of what's happening. If Anton Lavey had been born later, he probably wouldn't have found this as influential,

because there would have been other shit to read. I mean, I'm glad that he at least cut out the shittiest parts, but okay. I would think twice if I was like, found myself enthralled with a philosopher, and was like, okay, well, I gotta cut out pages of racism, but like, there's some gold in here. But he's pretty spot on with everything else, so weird that he felt that way. I like what he says about antennae and ovums. Yeah. Wait, did Lavey keep the woman stuff? I don't know. I didn't go deep enough at it. But Lavey did admit to basically plagiarizing might as right, and he actually wrote a foreword to a reprinting of might as right that is the addition I have. Wow. Quote, after spreading the gospel of might as right for over a decade,

came the official commission to write a satanic Bible. My agent and publisher wanted the material I had already printed in tract form, with additional stuff to make up the Bible as quickly as possible. I was not a writer. Some will say I'm still not. But I had to draw from my inspirations, what had to be said. Now, you may know that every single occult scholar I knew warned me against publishing the Anarchy in Call, saying that nobody touched upon them and it was doomed to even mention them. Okay, that was enough for me, and they went. So it was with the selected passages from might as right, except I got no warnings because nobody'd even heard of the damn book, especially head in the clouds occultniks. It had inspired me, though, and that was enough.

The copyright, even with renewal, would have recently expired. So it suddenly became part of the satanic Bible, with myself and the publisher holding, in context, new copyrights on the portions employed. So you like brags about plagiarizing it and copywriting. And just getting away with it. Yeah, just being like, well, yeah, sure, I stole it, but I found a loophole. That sounds like a fun, like, indie comedy of like, I'm not much of a writer, but I've got to write a Bible and fast. Like, horrible. I'll just steal from this book. I guess I'll just find this book by this incel racist. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just looking at the Anton Levé Google images page. I've been here before, but it's always just newly shot. Oh, it's pretty fun, right? Snake heavy.

Yeah, he was heavy. He had a style. You got to give him that. He was way ahead on branding. I respect the consistency of brand. Yes, I did. Yeah. The eyebrows claims he only included the sections of might is right that he agreed with because the rest of the work was filling with what he called glaring contradictions and was at best a rant. Both of those things are very accurate. He sought to preserve the things he found so inspiring in Desmond's book without including all of the bullshit. Okay, it is despite my enthusiasm for the book, inaccurate to state that might is right was the inspiration for the church of Satan. For the record, I was relatively young when I discovered it, but I had already indulged myself in the experience of reading every scrap of anarchist,

nihilist extremist and free thought esoterica I could encounter a day hardly passes that I don't read a comment from someone who was astounded at how close his own thoughts come to the message of my satanic Bible. I find that interesting because he's basically saying that like a lot of the stuff in might is right. I had thought of before as like a young dude on the fringes and like so much of Desmond's writing sounds like shit. I've seen kids on eight Chan type who I know hadn't like read that shit or kids on four Chan or read it like there's a certain degree to which like frustrated young male minds think alike. And like that's kind of what might as right is, is it's like the worst parts of the male id published by a low rent poet and former labor

organizer. That's how I would describe the book. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Wow. I mean, I love when two Kings collaborate. Yeah. So, you know, there, there is something primal about I think the young male psyche that Desmond was able to reach at times. And that's why Anton Levé found it so compelling and why he cut out bits of Desmond's philosophy to write the satanic Bible, which was also like magnetic to a chunk of young men. But you know, someone like Levé was clearly strong headed enough that like he didn't imbibe all of the toxicity from might is right. Other people are more vulnerable. And this brings us back to the Gilroy garlic shooter Santino Lagann. We don't know how or where he first came across might as right. The book is available for free

online. And I ran into it numerous times over the last year in post filled with suggested reading material on eight Chan's poll board, they would include links to this one regularly. It was not the most popular tome of white supremacist reading, but it was certainly prominent and it's only grown more so in recent months. In my research, I found the website for a very dumb group called the red beard right, purporting to be an organization of white nationalists adhering to the ideas and ideals of Arthur Desmond. From that website, quote, this is a far right website and unapologetically so. However, the site has nothing to do with national socialism. This website is not for basic bitch Hitler fanboys. We are white nationalists,

but not all right. We are the real right. Our ideal is not some kind of socialism without brown people. We are pragmatic realists. We embrace the nature of man and of life itself. We recognize man for the aware beast that he is and have no desire to domesticate him into docility. We seek to deal with the reality on its own terms. We have no interest in bewitching ourselves with fanciful willow-wisp utopias. We are the red beard right. We do not indiscriminately concern ourselves with just any white person's well being. We instead reserve our concern for the well being of those Europeans we feel worth preserving a future for. So there we go. That's the great sir. This is a Wendy's moment. The red beard right. Yeah. The red beard right.

I mean, the thing that strikes me about all this Arthur Desmond stuff is it does sound like he was able to connect with that like young, angry, like oppressed masculine thing, but it doesn't seem even that particularly strategic. It just seems like that was he was stuck there as opposed to like LaVe kind of more strategically pulling out stuff with a specific goal. But it's to me, like especially as his career goes on, it's unclear to me what like Arthur Desmond's real goal was other than to be like thought of as a fucking cool guy. And it's I, which I think is why people are like so fluid in their ideology. Sometimes when they're just like, I just want someone to think I'm like smart and cool. And if you don't think I'm cool and the labor unions, I'm fucking right off, you know,

and yeah. And I think anger is the core of where what Desmond did. Like that was the heart of it. And that's why it's so electrifying to a lot of young men because like there's this core of anger that like particularly young men often don't learn how to deal with. Right. And might as right kind of speaks to that in a very primal way. And doesn't challenge any of it. And it doesn't really require that you do any interest. Oh boy. No, it just requires that you do a lot of push-ups so that you can punch people. Yeah. Now, in the weight of Santino Laganne shooting spree, the redbeard right was forced to directly address what had happened because research revealed that the gunman had shared a Facebook post made by the group. Now, the post included a bunch of quotes from

Redbeer's work, but it also included an image macro with a picture of a Viking that said, dear conquered peoples, the history of humanity is one of constant conflict and competition for resources like land, food, water and women. You whine about the fact that Europeans were and are better at this contest than any other culture in the world. You losers want us to regret being better at conquest and exploration than you were. You want apologies and reparations from people who are smarter and stronger than you, people who unequivocally won. We are not sorry. We owe you nothing. Deal with it. Deal with it. Come on. Deal with it. Yeah. Now, this obviously looked bad for the redbeard right. No kidding. Yeah. So one member of the group posting under the misspelled

username Redbreard posted this. We at the Redbeard right do not disavow his actions, but we are not responsible for the actions of those who read our posts. We do not encourage our readers to commit violence. We do not condone what he did. His actions contributed nothing to our cause of white well-being. His actions were strategically stupid. So yeah, it's the fun guys. Cool. Now, a bit of digging made it clear that Redbreard is James Theodore still well the third, which is absolutely the name of a guy who creates a website dedicated to the Redbeard right. He calls himself a rogue philosopher, which is the most punchable thing you can call yourself. Sounds like a terrible YouTube channel. I think I would have to fist fight someone who introduced themselves

as a rogue philosopher. A bit of a rogue philosopher. That's my might is right. I'm going to write a book just about punching people like this guy. Yeah, just list of people I'd like to punch. James Theodore still well the third. Yeah. He lives in Keen, New Hampshire where he writes books like Power Nihilism, a case for moral and literal nihilism. Well, he portrays himself as some sort of neo Viking warrior skeptic. My guess is that he will probably wind up living as a low end bookseller and dying alone of a stroke like his idol. As for Santino Lagann, the Gilroy shooter, he proved to be distinctly less mighty than the Gilroy police who shot him repeatedly with one minute of opening fire. Most mass shooters these days tend to have some sort of political

message they're trying to get out. And Satino was no exception. He created an Instagram account just a few days before the shooting and posted about Ragnar Redbeard's might is right. It's clear to me that he hoped people would be inspired by his shooting to read the book. Law enforcement combed through Santino's home after the attack. And they seem to have been baffled by what they found there. The Los Angeles Times quoted John Bennett, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation. Among the information we are collecting there is conflicting literature, everything from left to right. So Bennett said, investigators do not feel they can put this person in a box. I wouldn't say it was extreme views. It is writings and books that we have found

through some of the search warrants. We're trying to go through all the literature and make sense of it. Now, to me, this suggests that Santino himself went through an ideological evolution, not unlike that of Arthur Desmond flirting with the most extreme elements of left and right wing political theory before settling with violent egoistic nihilism. According to some reports, one of Santino's victims at the festival was heard to ask him, why are you doing this? To which the 19-year old allegedly responded, because I'm really angry. And I think that right there is the core of why Arthur Desmond did what he did and what was in like, because I'm really healing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God. That's awful. That's so brutal. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, there's that Robert.

Was there is. Oh, geez. Yeah. Fun with this one? You know, it started kind of fun. I liked the poetry parts. I love dunking. Yeah. The poetry parts was fun. I love dunking on a shitty poet. Yeah. I mean, it is troubling that like, I mean, yeah, just that something this angry, that it's just like so clear how like impotent it comes off and the fact that, you know, it's still, it's still appealing to equally angry people. It's a sad takeaway. It really is, because it sounds like Arthur Desmond was like a real kind of like a sad, pathetic person himself. And is inspiring, sad, pathetic people to this day. It just is, it's. And the saddest thing about it to me is that like Desmond, there was clearly a point at which he could have done good

for the world. Like he started out with really good intentions. Like you get a lot of credit for me if you're the only person, the only white dude in town willing to stand up for an indigenous person and their right to like exist in your community and stuff. Like, and it's just like that's the big question is like, why, why do some men who wind up in kind of the similar situations where they're sort of pushing against the social tide, stay true to their moral compass and like, you know, fight for what they see as justice. And why do some men like, like Desmond become consumed by their anger and leave their idealism behind and just turned into these, this sort of like shitty asshole nihilist. But like, yeah, it's like an ego driven,

like it does, it does seem like an ego problem. If you do, if you feel ego, yeah, like it, the, like his like left leaning political, I guess you could call it a career, but like early on when he was still doing cool stuff, it sounds like he just didn't get the like pay off of that that he wanted, which just puts in the expectation that he was always expecting something from doing this. And if he didn't get what he wanted, then why do it? It just, it's just, I mean, it's all very bleak to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he, um, he wanted, I think you are right that like he wanted recognition out of his activism. He wanted to win and he wanted to be recognized for his importance in the struggle. And when it became clear that like, no dude,

like turning around the, the kind of weight of human injustice that is like this inertia in our culture that like leads to such like an oppressed underclass of labor is turning that around, isn't the work of one person. It's the work of millions of people over the course of decades and really centuries, if we're like being realistic about it. And that doesn't mean it's not valuable, but like a guy like him, I think was too narcissistic to accept that. And so when he realized, yeah, he just bales halfway through and gives up on his principles. It's, I mean, and I do think that there are like other examples of that in the tons of them. Yeah. Just like people who start with being really into leftist politics, who, who just sort of sour for

various narcissistic reasons. It's a story. You see Jason Kessler, the guy who organized the Bloody United, the right rally in Charlottesville. His first big political like action was taking part in Occupy Wall Street. And if you go into the Discord archives that Unicorn Right has posted of those like fascist groups that planned those, those early 2017 rallies, and you just type in the term Occupy, a whole bunch of them got their start with Occupy Wall Street and sort of like liberal and left wing activism. And then they realized like that shits hard because you're fighting against social inertia. And so they turned to this kind of violent, nihilistic, toxic bullshit, because it's easier. Yeah. Yeah, it is less challenging and

there's more direct ego-based reward, I guess. It's just, oh God. Because I'm really angry. Because I'm really angry, really does sum it all up, doesn't it? Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Yep. Well, you want to plug your plugables, Jamie? Yeah, this feels, it always, it is, it never feels right. I love a good plugable. All right. I'm on Twitter.com at Jamie Laftis Help and Instagram at JamieCris Superstar. You can listen to the Bechtelcast every Thursday. And yeah, that's, that's what all plugables. That's all your plugables. Well, you can find me at I write okay on Twitter. If you want to find a political philosopher who was not a violent nihilist and not anti-woman, maybe read some Murray Bookchin. You can find

this podcast sources at BehindTheBastards.com. You can find shirts on T-Public behind the bastards. And you can find love inside your heart where it dwells in the hearts of us all. Wherever it remains. Seek it out. Where it remains. And let leopards crush your children's bones or whatever, whatever that line was. Yeah. Leopards! Leopards! Robert, you're going to plug Worst Year Ever or No? Oh yeah, we have a podcast called The Worst Year Ever. It's about the 2020 election, speaking of being pushed into violent nihilism. Hard sell. Hard sell. I'm not good at selling things. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you,

hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after

her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.