Chapo Trap House - Episode 258 - Lesko's Lament (10/29/18)

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

We do our best to unpack the last week's numerous tragic instances of creeping fash. It may be a hellworld, but at least we've Celebrity Death Match! Watch the walnut head cracking videos referenced here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6269787/Martial-artist-cracks-247-walnuts-open-HEAD-attempt-break-bizarre-world-record.html and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PQX64cTgY&vl=en

feeling like my elevated sense of humor was offended by the crudity of something like Celebrity Deathmatch. But at least there were fucking attempts at humor. Now it's just, no, no, no, the joke is that they're all sad. No, there's jokes in Bojack Horseman. There are jokes in it. Yeah. Oh, season three, episode 14, the depressed horse shithead realizes that his attempts to spurn an open relationship are stemming from him neglecting intimacy that

stems from childhood issues. Good thing I brought my hand because that shit is a fucking knee slapper. So what? You can't play with serious topics? Isn't that what our show sometimes? No, especially since the way it does it is the same as all these fucking shows, which is to say, you know, this guy's a piece of shit, but he's aware that he's a piece of shit. But that's not enough. But then he's just going to keep knowing he's a piece of shit. It has to go on. I actually

just say every show. I'm not every show. I'm going to be honest with you, dude. I've never seen the show. I've decided that I don't like it. And I don't think that comedy should ever take on serious topics. In fact, I think that the hate of comedy was when the main comedic genre was like fat guy trying to move a safe. That was so good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the show's weakest point, I think, or it's very feeble attempts at satire. But I think what it does very well is it makes the horse's

tribulations like that of a man. Oh, that's great. Wait, wait, wait. So he's doing the thing a person would do. But he's a horse. He's a fucking horse. Holy shit, dude. Dude. Oh my god. What if what if the Budweiser Clydesdale self harmed? I got one for you. How would that show be any different if none of them were animals? There would be, well, there's jokes in the show. No, but that's it. You say the show has jokes. The jokes are literally the puns because they're animals.

Yeah, there are puns. That's the only jokes are puns, the lowest form of humor. So it's depression and puns. No, there's other jokes. There's banter. All right. Okay. What if Bojack Horseman was on Celebrity Deathmatch against Agent Smith from The Matrix? And Agent Smith was like, looks like you're going to the glue factory, Mr. Horseman. How about this? That would be fucking awesome. Bojack Horseman, Celebrity Deathmatch versus the horse head from The Godfather. See? Now you're

talking. That's the kind of thinking that made that show brilliant. I think it's coming up next. A very special episode of Bojack Horseman. The one where Steve Platypus kills himself. So who's also increasing, you like this field shows also increasing asexual representation in media. All right. Now we're cooking. Another D slapper. I prefer the intellectual and sexy cartoon for adults of an earlier era, Eon Flux on MTV, the good

television. Eon Flux was, that was honestly too scary for me. As a kid, it's too scary for me now. I was terrified about how skinny everyone was. So it's just, they're emaciated. No, thank you. A little thing called stripper Ella. Oh hell yeah. Stan Lee was involved in that. He was. Yeah. It was, it was in a block with not surprising. Spike TV's adult animation block with the Red and Stimpy where they're gay and they fuck and Gary the

Rats. Gary the Rats. God, who would have thought that this would be like the high point of cartoons? Yeah, the high point of Western culture. That's the culture Trump wants to defend. We make fun of the late nineties so much, but it like, if you told us at the time, this is the best it's ever gonna get, I'd be like, no way. Yeah, I would be like, fuck you. We could do better than, than, than the Partridge family killing the Manson family with a machine

gun. We could do better than that. Turns out, no, can't can't do better than that. 9 11 happens. There's depression and then everyone's brains explode and now all we got is sad horses. Nanette two. Yeah, it rocks. Well, let's look at the news. Get away from this. Yeah, yeah. Let's take a look at the front pages to take our minds off of all this bad comedy out there. All right. It's it's so depressing. It's bad. It sucks so bad. It's bad. So let's rewind the clock to the

beginning of the week. We talked about it on Wednesday. The main news story that dominated the week up until, you know, a couple days ago was, of course, the the pipe bombs being mailed to prominent Democrats and Robert De Niro. Yes. And we and that that story sort of it resolved itself fairly quickly and predictably in that the person who did it was just honestly one of the stupidest, you know, it was deeply stupid. Insane man. Well, you say that now, but what

if he had succeeded? You'd be like that guy's smart and a as we said, Fox News brain destroyed boomer as I said, we all said you weren't on that episode, Virgil. So no one knows that you said that own own. So look at you trying to steal for a fact. You were afraid that it wasn't a Fox News magazine. No, I thought it was probably a Fox News grandpa, but I said in private, it seems weird how literally none of them work. Not like by accident, if you

sent 13 bombs, one of them will go up. Turns out not if you are this incredible moron. So this this Fox News stripper with the with the magic with the D. K. with the D. K. with the Trump decal van, who was he's like a late boomer early excerpt exactly when we would have imagined. Another interesting thread to the Caesar Seahawk story is that he's also stealing Native American valor. Yes, he claims multiple times that he's part of the undefeated Seminole

tribe. Yeah, but apparently that is also bullshit. Yeah, I can't believe. Okay, I was I was willing to hear him out before, but now that I know he's lying about this, that's honestly what you're saying is re's running for the Senate in Massachusetts. One real time. He he had a lawsuit against Chippendales or something because he had some sort of rival stripping company that was using their copyrighted material, something like that. And he was claiming that he

was working for Chippendales and they said no. Yeah, that's normal MAGA stuff. You have the lawsuits against Chippendales, a lawsuit against Circus City, even though they don't if you read his tweets, if you read his tweets and look at the van, it's clear that he is impaired in some way, but also not indistinguishable from like a hundred million people on Twitter. Yeah, it's completely identical. Yeah, but I thought the most interesting thing was is that he had his house foreclosed

on after the mortgage crisis by by a company that illegally Robo signed his mortgage, which happened all over the place and then was later bought by Steve fucking Mnuchin's bank. So Bill Trump's Trump's beloved his beloved Trump's treasury secretary helped steal his house from him. Thank you, Mr. President. Yes, it's wonderful. Do you think that made it onto any bumper sticker on his car? I don't think so. Thank you, Mr. Mnuchin. Thank you for Mr. Mnuchin. You have given me the

honor and dignity to live in my van. And thank you for Suicide Squad again, sir. It was a thrill ride. Just as a quick side addendum here, I would say it's very fair to say won't be reading replies. Do not at me about this. OK, with every extra bumper sticker you have, like one, two, three equals an exponentially increasing level of insanity. I think that's a very, very yes. That's a solid. Do you see someone with the back of their car has over seven bumper

stickers walk away. It's true. Don't make eye contact with them. Just slowly back away. Irregardless of their political. Oh, no, no. OK, in college, I had this tennis instructor who was like a what? Bearing the lead. How many fucking chapters are in your life, Dick Whitton? And he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he was this like hardcore like 9 11 truther and he went around. Yeah, he has this story. I can't believe you've

been sitting on this. It's like shitty beat up car and he drove around and there were pictures of American and Israeli war crimes on the windows of his car. What? This guy sounds cool. How he must have been a really good tennis instructor. And he would and he said like, yeah, people don't like it when I drive down the interstate. Get a lot of nasty looks and honks. I but you know what? Your your serve was never better. So totally worth it. Ace every

time. The the only time like I ever want to drive is just to get the most confusing bumper stickers possible. Like I want like um keep honking. I'm I'm thinking of a free Cyprus. Like just I don't even know what they mean. Like just baffle everyone who drives behind me. It'll be worth the accidental vehicular murder I commit. Okay, most confusing bumper stickers go. Okay, I got Obama isn't Muslim. If he was, he'd wash his hands. People are just like, is

this pro or ant? What the fuck are you talking about? Don't like my driving. Go vote November 6th. Matt, what you got? Uh my other car is my wife. I don't know. Okay. Uh oh, I got one. Abortion stops my beating heart. Okay. Okay. Uh we already had domestic gladio. It's called circumcision. That's pretty straightforward though. I agree with that. Yeah, I would have. We're getting into my real opinions here. If you tailgate me, convert to Islam. So yeah, no, I think I'm

buying a car. Here's one. Here's one. One more. Calvin peeing on another Calvin's face. Okay. That's like, you know, that's just like a. How about Calvin peeing on a word but the word is disrespect and it makes you think like it's like it's about respectful or is it being a pro respect? Dude, it's part of my uh it's a viral marketing campaign for my awful new film cycles of hate. That's about the lives of six people who intersect in New York City. Oh, by the way,

this is this is an absolutely true and baffling bumper sticker. There's a guy on on this very block. I see his car parked all the time and he has a a back window decal that says it's the sons of Anarchy logo but it says New York chapter. Yeah, yeah, we don't have any motorcycles out here with the world's only motorcycle club that rides the subway, baby. Hey, you know those family stickers? Uh that but it's all nine Supreme Court justices.

Fuck you. That would be very because no one likes all of them. I do. Yeah. I'm rooting there. That's my team. Some people got the red socks. I got the Supreme Court. That sucks so much. Virgil and someone's gonna make it. I fucking hate it. Amazon gift card of the week goes to Virgil for the Supreme Court justice bumper sticker idea. So yeah, there's the the the pipe bomb story which had the added benefit of, you know, slightly frightening but

more absurd than anything else. Yeah. You know, like this really was just like someone whose brain has been melted by Fox News. Uh the internet and his already, you know, already extant mental illness. Yeah. Uh decided to yeah, just send pipe bombs to like everyone he saw on the news. Everyone who is mean to his beloved Donald Trump. Okay. So there is that and and of course people were already in high dudgeon over that one uh because you know

it involves attacks on the media and this overall question that we've been talking about again that this political climate of tribalism and you know disrespect and violence and oh how is it ever how are we ever gonna get better or change or blah blah blah. Then of course uh the weekend rolled around and I woke up on Saturday to find out that some fucking right wing lunatic Neo Nazi had walked into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and just slaughtered eleven people

mostly elderly uh Jewish people and that one is just horrific and all. Yeah. Like I don't even know what what else to say about it other than the fact that hey um if you ever even remotely were concerned about the caravan or concerned trolled uh the idea that it is just an absolute racist hysteria guess what you believe exactly as the guy who shot those eleven people did. Oh yeah. Because I mean he attacked this synagogue very specifically and in his own

words because of a Jewish community group that was working to resettle refugees in America. He uh told you about the caravan I think about an hour before he walked in the door of that synagogue. Uh he was obsessed to the idea that uh you know what did they show Charles filled the Jew will not replace us. He was obsessed to the idea that Jews are financing the replacement of whites by third world immigration in America. This is an idea that

is aired on the conservative media and in Fox News probably about an again an hour before the shooting and you know probably even after it. No. That's mainstream Republican thought. I mean like I like one degree removed but I mean they're they're not I mean they say George Soros all the time like that's their stand. They don't say Jews are doing this but they just say George Soros and no liberal elites you know like it's couched in those terms but yeah this has

been this has been a state this is at the bottom of all of this country's anti-immigrant hysteria and paranoia. There is that idea. This is the idea that motivated that guy. This is why he killed eleven people. He said to the cops after they're doing a genocide to my people all Jews must die. This is just straight up neo-Nazi alt-right white genocide fantasia. Yeah. Based again based around this idea that the that the caravan represents an invasion of America or a

clear and present threat to you know our lives here in America. Economic refugees from Honduras just desperately trying to cross Mexico or seek asylum in the United States. There was a lot of backflipping after the shooting a lot of sort of contorting their own bodies to fit what had just happened with the right who had just you know spent the last month screaming about people being rude to the DHS lady at the Mexican restaurant. People

being unfair to Jeff Flake etc etc. You know taking on this very precious definition of violence and the most violent people in our entire political arena just sort of become pablum. Let's raise awareness of the issues. Let's raise awareness of violence. All lives matter should whenever this happens because the moment that you actually start to think about it is what Will said. Just the logical conclusion of Kevin McCarthy tweeting about how George Soros is funding some

great replacement. Anything like that. And the thing is that they're actually stuck with it which is why they're pushing back so hard and not really doing the sort of apology you would expect after an attack of this magnitude because there is no other explanation. They have nothing else to sell people when they're trying to explain what's going on in the world because there is a straightforward explanation for things like refugees and the caravan and everything that

people are scared of. I mean you have a combination in Central America of countries that have eventually collapsed into not failed states with the help of American military coups and genocides carried out only in the last 30 years. And also reports now that a lot of people in Central America who are trying to move out are people in small holding farms that can't fucking grow anything anymore because all of a sudden there's not any water for

some reason. Something's happening. Well in the country they're coming from Honduras by the way they had an election that was overturned by coups supported by this country and Hillary Clinton personally. The guy who they overthrew a guy who wanted to redistribute land and maybe make it easier for a poor person to stay in Honduras and like that's pretty straightforward but if you can't accept that as the explanation for this thing you

have to have some sort of conspiracy because it's the only way to to square the circle of what's going on. And so it's the same thing with the way they talk about Soros and they and you know there's a straightforward argument about the influence of money in politics. It's that all the rich scumbags use their money to control the agenda of the government but their idea is no these guys like the coax or whatever they're all they're all just

concerned American citizens who want what's best for everybody. George Soros you'll notice when they talk about Soros they don't talk about him having any kind of a self-interested agenda. It's always he has this like long term plan to like replace the white people or do some sort of subversion of our democracy. It's like well what does that get him? Like what what what what what what how does it serve his interest? It only serves his

interest if he has some sort of alien agenda that you couldn't make sense of because he's different from you in some fundamental way i.e. he is a Jewish lizard man. And of course you know this i mean what happened on Saturday is the single worst hate crime perpetrated against Jewish people in American history 11 people. Yeah that's insane but of course we know where this is going again and it could not be clearer who did this and why. This is this is a this is a

guy who hated Jews, he hated black people, he hated immigrants, he hated Muslims, this is a guy stewed in right-wing propaganda in media who you know committed an act of mass murder on behalf of his very clear racist right-wing beliefs. But we know where this is going of course. I can I've already seen in the delica at least a half dozen articles about this or tweets about this. It's all going to be like it's going to be about how anti-Semitism is so bad and we have to come

together to confront anti-Semitism be it the guy who just murdered 11 people or Lewis Farrakhan or BDS or anti-Zionism and they're already trying to do that in conjunction with the Israeli foreign minister or they're like the who the fuck is that guy? Neftali Benet. The education minister who among other things is basically you know anyone below an Orthodox Jew isn't really a Jew etc etc he believes in a version of white genocide for Jews. But you know I mean to the to

those Zionists it's like well congratulations you got the fucking world you wanted. All that fucking Netanyahu shaking hands with fucking Victor Orban probably the single most anti-Semitic world leader on the fucking planet. This is what you wanted it is the destruction of the assimilation of American Jews into American life. You got exactly what you fucking wanted and for all the people that spent all of earlier this year talking about Farrakhan or Linda Sarsour

or fucking whatever you know it's gonna come for you too and just don't fucking cry when you get what you want. Alex I'm gonna miss you. I hope the I hope the ping is good in Tel Aviv. Well they got one thing going for you. Again and this is part and parcel of like a huge and concerted effort to portray Jeremy Corbin as a vicious anti-Semite to prepare Bernie Sanders as an anti-Semite. That's a cool one. And this is all taking place in the background of as Felix referenced Netanyahu

literally shaking hands and allying himself with Victor Orban and the far right-wing nationalists in Europe. They don't want Jews in their country and guess what neither does Netanyahu. He wants Jews to feel afraid everywhere in the world so that they'll all come and live in Israel. Yeah it is in his fucking ethnos. So he'll have friends. It is like a perfect marriage because they are on the same page about Muslims and they both want no Jews in their country. What do the you know Israeli Zionists and the

far right-winger in Europe or America share? It's that they hate the squishy little fucking pussy diaspora Jew. Yeah more than anything. Because that's what they hate about Jews. If they're not like weird like you know biological racists what they hate about Jews is that they don't have a country then therefore they can't be part of the nation and then they're not trustworthy and that they they want to undermine all of your solid you know social orders that exist because they can't be part of it. Well if you send them to Israel then it's amazing how quickly they develop

all those things. Well I mean here's the thing. They're every single anti-Semite in the world of any real consequence or power. And I'm not talking about like alt-right gripers or people posting on the internet. I'm talking about actually anti-Semitic world leaders media figures politicians guess what they all love Israel including our new friend in Brazil Bolsonaro. Yes. I mean and this is the next thing that honestly depressed me more than anything this week is the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil.

An outright fascist. Yeah this is a guy. No question about that one. He's an outright fascist who has spoken openly about the fact that he is going to he immediately wants to murder probably tens of thousands of people extra judicially torture kill them then bulldoze the fucking rainforest and kill every last indigenous person still living there. Yeah like an out-and-out open fascist Brazil's actual president has been sent to jail by that fucking country.

Former yeah for the former president yeah. But he likes Israel so he likes Israel. No he's a big fan of Israel a lot of his supporters love waving Israeli flags he plans to visit there soon. You know do you really think Bolsonaro or Victor Orban do you think they like Jewish people personally? No obviously not. But yeah they love Israel they love Israel and just yeah be prepared for it because you're about if you have any any level of criticism of the Israeli state or of Zionism in general get

ready to be guilted into believing otherwise. Well I mean a new hero of the resistance max boot has tweaked just now where he says speaking of anti-semitic dog whistles it's not only globalists and George Soros neocon is often used the same way by haters. Oh my god are you okay dude that is where's your cash.me dude that is are you all right that's too oh you fucking worm what a fucking oh my fucking god too much boot oh my that's a lot of it's not enough it's not enough for him to just like

crawl back into the world after birth helping birth this out of his fucking diseased urethra he has to he has to retroactively you know make it make it unfair to criticize him or Bill Crystal or any of these other fucking assholes that got into this place. It is that is the most nauseating thing is these fucking scumbags are the architects of a huge percentage of the current crisis that we're in and they're just they just walked away from it and then they're like you know what let me tell you how to fix this this thing I helped make.

So I broke the fucking world and now it's now it's uh now it's the same as shooting 11 fucking Jews to death in a synagogue to call you what you fucking are go fuck yourself. Honestly what was so repellent about the immediate responses to the shooting was so many people like maximum boots to the most boot you can have whose instinct was to use this to to grind some other acts whether it was uh uh they're mad about Farrakhan or they're mad about being called a neocon I'm sorry

again good lord I know I or they're mad at Sanders well again I don't I can't believe I have to say this but I think it you know bears stating nation of Islam members are not walking into synagogues and gunning down Jewish people. Linda Sarsour isn't. BDS activists aren't just openly killing Jews in the streets of America. It's this guy fucking Bauer and you know guess what he was on Gab and fucking like every other right-wing fucking shithole like that that is who are the there is no

fucking equivalent to this on the left and I'm using that in quotes because Farrakhan is on the reactionary by any fucking by anything economically culturally he is a right-winger and as far as an axe to grind the the addendum to oh like you know anti-zionism is just as dangerous to the Jewish people of America than like you know full on neo-nazism and white nationalism is this idea that oh you know you can't you know like only the only the only this man is responsible for his actions and you know you like

you know don't don't use this and grind an axe against the president no fuck that Trump is absolutely responsible for this shit I mean responsible in so much as uh he has opened the gates to all this he is fine that his supporters believe all this shit he yeah like he makes no difference to him and I think I as I've said over and over again it's not that like he says to his support oh go out and kill Jewish people but in him being president and him saying the things that he does and the

people he surrounds himself with and you know like the his language about the caravan and Soros and the media being the enemy of the people I think he is given people who are inclined to do that essentially a kind of permission well that's the thing is the is that the way he explains what's going on in this country and in the world to get rile up these these rubes uh I don't think he necessarily wants them to draw these conclute these anti-Semitic conclusions and these racist conclusions I don't think he cares

but that's an like I said it's the inevitable thing because it's the only way to explain the world if you believe this if you believe that there's this conspiracy that things aren't you know operating on any kind of recognizable material basis that this is that isn't just capital accumulation you know working its way out in imperialism then you have to fucking have villains identifiable people not forces or or classes and then they have to have an an obscure and occult agenda

and so every people are going to make the people have to draw the conclusion because there's no other way to make sense of it otherwise it's just it's just noise and and and you don't want that you want it to be concrete enough for people to put their hands around so that they'll stay on your side and keep going to your rallies and and voting for your your guys where and and staying activated because that's what he has honestly done unlike any politician americ president I've seen is trying to keep his voters activated after he won

which is basically the opposite of what obama did and which most presidents not even bush very few of them have even cared to do he is trying to keep these people in that election day fervor all year all day throughout his entire presidency and that's kind of never been done which is surprising because it is it makes sense to do that no it's it's smart politics but the thing is it's gonna these people are gonna keep getting more anxious about it because they've got to keep being more and more scared of this they have to keep worrying about the

caravan they have to worry about the consequences of the caravan maybe they've got maybe they've got super airborne rabies I want to clarify this point because it almost sounds like you're saying oh the republicans have just chosen this tactic of stoking white supremacy in the country uh whereas uh maybe they could have run on something else like taxes or whatever but I I believe that it's the case that this it's not a choice it's it's a necessity because that is fundamental to their movement whatever it is right now well

I think it's I don't I think that they wouldn't necessarily take it if they had other options but I think you're right that they don't have other options because it's the only thing that gets the popular gets popular passions up you're not gonna get people to stay this motivated on tax cuts it's not gonna work even though that's what you actually want and that's what for most of these people all they really care about that's not going to keep these hooting dipshits showing up at these rallies with their q-shirts they need another story they need

something more visceral and terrifying with something with enemies something with monsters something where they can be heroes and fight against them and that's not going to work with fucking tax cuts and getting rid of the fucking uh the mandate for obama care I mean that that's why I have to figure like in a country that I grew up in where's like the best country in the fucking world to live if you're a jew it's not going to be the case because it's sort of a miracle right that we haven't had

as much of a cultural antisemitism is like France right because we're very we're one of the least fucking class conscious countries on earth oh yeah and a lot of antisemitism I think like a lot of it is just it's people who have like never fucking met a jewish person and you live somewhere where there's just no one like that you live this fucking shitty life that sucks and you turn on tv and yeah you see like Lloyd Blankfein or somebody and you you you don't really know what a jew is you just

you don't know like the cultural history or the consequences of the history of antisemitism or you know a billion things you would have to know like okay why why why is there this separate group of white people that's like very powerful you would just have to suddenly figure that this is this is an alien group that just wants to harm you and not just that like okay some like German Jews had to like they ended up in finance and there's an achievement thing it was part of the simulation blah blah blah

but it's going to get worse from here because yeah the only thing that will keep people coming out is that election day fervor and that the only reason most of these people vote is because fuck the other side they're not excited about anything else they're going to do like if you fucking run a strict poll this is exactly what the tax bill is this is exactly what x is this is exactly what y is they're not fucking excited for that but if this is the only thing that keeps republicans coming out yeah we're gonna we're gonna become more

like hungry or somewhere like that we talk about one guy in particular which is very germane to this discussion of like is the republican party as it's currently constituted like is there any difference between the modern republican party and just like a white nationalist political party uh steve king of iowa steve king of iowa republican congressman he is the closest thing in america that we have to like an openly white nationalist he's a european style right winger he just the other week went without some funded junket where he visited

auschwitz in poland he visited auschwitz and then immediately after it gave an interview to an extremely right-wing austrian newspaper i think where he said uh it was very profound in moving but i i i felt the need to get a non-jewish perspective on the holocaust i wanted a polish perspective on the holocaust and i wanted to find out if the communists were worse than the nazis you know what happened is he went to auschwitz and then he snuck downstairs into the room with a bunch of filing cabinets and he opened up the box that says jewish lies

and he found the documents god they gotta they gotta honestly put a guard on that door it's like it's getting embarrassing first fred leuchter goes in there and now this guy jesus christ but you know uh steve king uh as far as i can tell he doesn't actually do anything for his constitution oh no iowa he doesn't pass any like he doesn't sponsor any bills really what he but what he does do is go and press junkets with like you know yeah far right nationalist politicians in europe dirt wielders that fucking lunatic and uh you know other very

explicitly white nationalist political movements in europe uh and then he says things like you know we can't have a future with someone else's babies and i remember a while ago a year ago jonathan shate wrote an article in new york where he was scold once again doing what he always does scolding the left for being too bellicose or too quick to tar the entire you know right wing in this country with the sort of alt right neo-nazi label and steve king was one of the you know examples and i asked him as one of the

only times he ever replied to me on twitter where i said jon how would you categorize this quote and it was the quote about we can't have a future with other people's babies and he said oh you know i think that's you know sort of edging closer to alt right but not openly white nationalist and it's just like what the fuck are you talking about wait what distinctions are you drawing here jon and why and i think it's again very telling if you want to like think about you know fascism as the rise of fascism as a

historical phenomenon this is what guys like jonathan shate do they would never ever uh be as ruthless or parsing to the fucking right wing as they are to the left edging is a good description of jonathan shate's writing process yeah absolutely it looks like it looks like you're trying to sign into white nationalism tell me how many school buses are in this picture and i will decide if you're actually not see thanks jon uh steve king very hopefully uh kind of laid it on the table somebody

confronted him about hanging out with all these psychos you know there's like usters vander racism and all these psycho like you know from the uh like austrian cricket hate crime party and he goes hey these guys would all be republicans if they were in the united states and he's correct they would be we've only got two parties they really don't have anywhere else to go they would definitely be probably steve king is like you got to feel for him in a way because he's literally just he's like what do i have to do he's like looking for hitler's ashes to rub them

on his face and he's like no i'm uh i'm this yeah and jonathan shate is like i think he's like a newt gingrich republican so many of these guys are like him and that they're just media figures they don't really have any kind of they don't have an even of an agenda they just they're just kind of hanging out and they love triggering the libs and people love watching them trigger the libs and it really just shows how hollow even their idea for politics is that it really is just spectacular acts of outrageous racism that get people mad at them

it's not really even designed to be and even constructive even on their terms uh it's it's just it's just nihilistic provocation right and then the next obvious step if you have a political movement that is not really dedicated to anything other than nihilistic provocation against libs and jews and immigrants are nihilistic spectacles of violence yeah that's the next step and that's what happened in pittsburgh yeah and that's why i think like you know bower and you know gab is a natural outgrowth of all of this yeah this whole

moment is sort of instructive and that it kind of shows especially coming the exact same time as the election in brazil is that it really does show how the different basically between fascism as a as a coherent and effective political movement and fascism is sort of an ambient cultural feeling in the brazil and and the united states are good good comparisons to point that brazil is almost a textbook sort of postmodern fascist situation where you had like a social democratic uh president uh presiding over an economic and and and social crisis so the high

crime and and and uh and a and a stalling economy basically get cued through the the functions of the of the administrative state she was she was removed from office uh in a an impeachment proceedings that was highly dubious by a bunch of incredibly crooked conventional conservative senators uh most of whom had done things far worse than anything she was even accused of uh and by the way when bolson arrow who was in the senate and voted to impeach her did so he dedicated his vote to impeach her to the guy who had tortured her

when she had been a uh insurgent during the dirty war when they had the dictatorship uh and when they removed her from office uh the guy that replaced her michelle temer from the from the old-fashioned uh like establishment right basically had no popular support no legitimacy by the end of his term he had something like two percent approval rating as as amber talked about on the episode she did with ben fogle just no no popular support at all the their attempt to sort of just

decapitate the left was totally without the sort of grounding in a popular uh you know mandate that would have made it stable in the long term and so what what happened is that a party led by this guy who'd been a bozo and a clown and just over a far right provocateur for all of his career in government that had been a very small party just filled the gap and became this massive transracials to a degree and and trans class party that harnessed all of the resentment of corruption and and failed economic

development uh again against basically the the the left party that had been in power for so long into this effective mass organization and and one of the good definitions pocket definitions of fascism the robert paxton says is uh it's the suppression of the left amidst popular enthusiasm and that's what happened that's ball scenario is it is the conventional right the establishment right wanted to suppress the left party once and for all but did not have the legitimacy to do it on a long term basis

and boom this this movement arises to fill the gap and that's fascism uh and so now we have a fashion an out fascist as president of brazil ninth largest economy in the world yes uh well yeah i believe massive country yeah the fifth largest uh is country and uh population and uh they're going to bulldoze the fucking rainforest which by the way those the favelas it the but the rain for the of what's left of the amazon rainforest in brazil which has already been deeply deeply decimated just in the course of our

life they'll finish that off now saying he's going to turn it all over to agribusiness and basically kill every indigenous person yeah as i mentioned earlier the amazon rainforest provides i think a quarter of the world's oxygen yeah it's one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world but that's fine we don't really need it's only a quarter in an era of uh where what the un says we have a decade to handle global warming cutting down all of the fucking trees we have left that absorb carbon is definitely going to help but as i said so that is fascism on the march as a mass

movement with purpose with support of the elites and with actual voters with an actual popular base of support among among actual citizens what we have in the united states is a still the establishment right wing party the republicans who are losing legitimacy the same degree that the democrats are uh in this sort of slow rolling continuing crisis that we've had ever since the economic collapse because we never really recovered from it and we're just sort of you know

reinflating the same bubbles that led it to it in the first place and they're just going to pop again and that legitimacy is is weakening and to sort of prop up their support they are courting these feelings to the degree so that so that stuff shirts like paul ryan and and uh and you know john bainer and and these guys who don't really give a shit about anything but but the tax code can stay in power and and they're happy to use a clownish uh buffoon figure like donald trump is that as the

charismatic frontman for they care but they want the judges to exactly but you know in the long the long run if the crisis continues uh and certainly if we have another collapse the the that patina of of institutional legitimacy that they still have is going to be even further eroded and that's when you have to start thinking about genuine uh fascism as a feature of american politics in the streets uh but that's also going to depend on whether or not the left begins to pose an actual threat

which they haven't until now but we'll see i mean that's the thing is that the left is also starting to emerge and and gain power and and and influence and and try to change the um the agenda and the dynamic and and that's the kind of thing that can lead to the right turning to these sort of fascist movements to try to counter it i think that distinction is a very good one and keeping in mind and like the contrast between like you said fascism as a sort of ambient cultural frequency and it as a actual mass movement

which i don't think we have in this country no not yet yeah but it doesn't mean just because it's weak now we should it shouldn't be you know opposed all the more vigorously because of the fact that you know uh better now than later yeah you know what i mean and i just want to start briefly about the the gab thing because i've been enjoying that because i i don't want to say briefly about so gab is currently being deplatformed because the pittsburgh shooter had an account on it and he announced his intention to kill these people on gab

i mean gab is basically just like an incubator for future school shoot school or mass shooters and what i find interesting about it is that they pose as like we're defending free speech on the internet but as soon as this guy killed these people they censored his account what happened to his free speech dude disgusting yeah oh we need a new gab gab is fucking bullshit now they're cocked uh i'm starting a class action lawsuit for the shooters guys posting rights on gab i mean i mean it is amazing how fucking short our cultural memories are because

i remember for instance when the sort of culture tilted like popular culture tilted a little more center right right wing than it did now the campaign the right wing campaign against like the fucking dixie chicks was more obnoxious and more punitive and more insane than like even the just the most fucking stupid sort of liberal culture like cancel x causes yeah the nobody nobody since the the bush years has driven in public a fucking steam rollers over albums maybe that's because we don't have albums anymore just drive over a bunch of

phones playing spotify or something already flat but i think we need to remember though you know uh i mean i don't shed any tears for what happens to gab but the the way that this is going to be diffused the way this movement has been to be diffused and defeated it's not going to be through any kind of of corporate decision to the mods aren't going to the mods are not saving us the only thing that's going to save it is a revitalized and and must your left movement that seizes control of this country frankly before

it fucking crashes into the fucking yeah do you trust like jack dorsi the 41 year old man with a nose ring and like his team of confused people who have confused people in another country who don't really speak the language being forced to work support for like 32 cents an hour that's your vanguard yeah you know i i i think not good man the one thing that would help and the one thing that i'd like to see are these earnest i'll presume they're earnest and

sear resistance liberal types coming to terms with the fact that there's no such thing as valorous republicans or valorous conservatives and that they're not there yet conservatism you know it it it just boils down to white supremacy up and down from the steve king out now nazi types to the paul ryan types who you know want to destroy the federal government on which so many non whites rely by the way just saw a story yesterday about in georgia a bus full of

elderly african-american voters being taken to early than early voting on monday were pulled over by georgia state troopers and essentially forced out of the bus and sent back for doing illegal political work or something like that it's just like could not be more obvious yeah 30 of electronic voting booths in texas are just changing people's votes from beta or orc to ted cruz and they elect an official say there's nothing they can do about it well i like all the

officials just say the voting machines aren't malfunctioning and i'm like yeah no shit they're doing exactly what they're supposed to do right there's still people you know in the aftermath of the massacre who were saying you know this is this is due to tribalism you know we need civility and i want republicans to denounce steve king i want them to denounce uh matt gets whatever his name is down in florida and what do you think is accomplished by that

that you you say the words and you're absolved of your sins you want republicans to just do ritual penance while staying in power and continuing to rely on a voting base that is now largely made up of explicit white nationalists made up of people who believe every single thing robert bower did is walking through the door every single thing it's just like that like oh yeah of course soros is paying black lives matter to destroy my community and he's paying for all the caravans that's going to flood america with the

legals and to be a supporter of this version of american nationalism and to frankly be a supporter of this you know global capitalist system this american hegemony is to be a white supremacist well okay but that's not gonna work and even economic migrants to the country is to be a white supremacist i'm sorry that's it that's what it boils fine but that's not gonna work that's not what i didn't suggest anything what do you mean what i'm just saying that that that frame of putting everything in a racial

category is not going to get the the peep the numbers you need of people to sign on to a left-wing agenda because there's too many of them are white and not enough white people have an instinctive revulsion to the concept of white supremacy they and a lot of them to all this bullshit well that's a problem well yeah but you're not going to solve it by scolding people you need to have an alternative i'm solving anything right now i'm on a show i'm not right right well okay obviously none of us are solving anything i'm just saying that

that it needs to be framed in terms of of of pointing out the way to which their agenda harms people's in their day-to-day lives and how a different sort of economy would help them that has to be forward that has to be the first thing people hear because the rest of it honestly as much as it's horrible to to to hear this from for somebody who does have you know what what we consider to be an advanced moral sense it just it just it's just white noise it's part in the term sure i don't necessarily disagree with that i'm just

i'm just frankly sick and tired of having to brook these compromises with white supremacy that the democrats have for years now been very much so guilty of well i i stand with the police when they go along with all of this nationalistic militaristic nonsense when they say things like oh this is the sort of violence that should be happening in the middle east not here well the other thing is i mean i think i saw something in the new republic today that's like you know decent people can support trumps like tax blah blah blah at like all these other policies but not

his stoking of you know anti-semitism or violence against the media and i'm sorry no decent person can support the republican tax plan or their fucking immigration policies or any of that and i one more thing though at least as it regards the democrats and these liberals or resistance people here's the other thing i am so i do not want to fucking hear it was going on all week even before this fucking synagogue shooting joe biden in particular obama as well and giving these they're speaking publicly about this and trying to be statesman like

they believe they keep talking about it's like tribalism they keep talking about this division in this country that they were so divided or whatever and that like the problem is the division and not like one side of it i'm sorry the problem in america is not that we're divided if you're a democratic politician or anyone with any moral sense the problem in this country is the republican party and the right wing movement which it is a vehicle for they are the problem they need to be defeated yeah it's good

that we are divided from them but let's go a little further yeah in terms of you know like actually identifying and combating what is the source of this division i mean like the fact that people are angry or that our politics are so divided is in and of itself not a bad thing well no i mean it's an inherent politics is by definition division because if everyone agreed you wouldn't need politics politics is managing disagreement and conflict but what's needed to do is not just to say those are the bad guys but to

elucidate explicitly what makes them the bad guys what is it about their control of the levers of economic power over people's lives their ability to to to immiserate the vast majority of people for their grandisement and their cynical use of of racial resentment and and pop and right wing fascist appeals in order to maintain that that's what makes them the fucking enemy that's what makes them the that's what makes the division because they can't have it all if if you have any they have to take it from you

to have it all and that and they're gonna do anything it takes to make that happen i want to respond to what will noted the people the you know left of center people who say i you know you can be a decent person and support the tax cuts but i don't like all this white nationalism stuff that's where you draw the line you have to draw some kind of distinction there and implicit in that is the idea that you can have this economic conservatism right you can have this

uh small deregulated free market state without militarism without the racialized violence without the racial caste system in this country and that's impossible that's absolutely impossible that's a little that's a liberal fantasy basically and you can't for instance have the you you you you can't have this rigid uh economic racial hierarchy in this country without mass incarceration you can't have a prosperous american hegemony without

uh 500 billion dollars defense expenditure without torture and violence and murder that we export yeah the there's no a la carte approach to this it's a it's a total ISIS of exploitation that needs to be overthrown and and and yeah you can't you can't get people who are being fucked over by an economic order to go along with it without a whole lot of of cultural grievances and resentment based politics and and fear to sort of distract them from it so

there's no honorable republican party because stripped of all that shit they were on that path before trump they were looking at the face of electoral relevance they wrote the paper after 2012 because Romney was the unadorned republican agenda of hey tax cuts hey corporations are people hey business friendly and he lost people were like this guy doesn't care about me he if he saw me he would fucking hand me his keys because he thought I was a fucking valet and they were panicked about that

and then against their own desire just by the by the the the the sheer yearning of the lump in american reactionaries for someone like trump he just gifted them the fucking solution to their problem saying I can fucking sell this dog as long as I can give it the pageantry and the spectacle and the racial button pushing that it needs to to be uh uh to be appealing to people who would otherwise find it clearly exploitative and and not to their benefit and uh back to back to bolson arrow another thing you mentioned earlier I

mean I think the lesson here with him and trump uh much to my own chagrin I think what we're learning I was wrong about it is when it comes to these figures there is nobody too stupid or buffoonish or out there who cannot achieve this high high level of power nope like that that illusion is well well and gone dead and gone no it's gone I mean and it's one I had up until very recently yeah I mean Italy as often the case is sort of the canary in the coal mine we had Berlusconi

a figure who everyone looked at and said how is the bunga bunga porno tv owner the the fucking perpetual prime minister of this country and then when he fell he was replaced the leader of the biggest party now in Italy the five star movement is a literal clown bepe grillo he was a fucking tv clown like he walked around to the big lollipop with a propeller beanie on his head you know bolson arrow is a guy they drag out on the brazilian tv for years and say check a look get a load of this dork get a look and listen to him what an idiot

and now he's the president there's yeah there's no limit to it because we what you're saying is we need to find who the dumbest person on tv is now and just make them the new left leader see I've we thought about this and I want to talk about it more in a future episode or something because I honestly don't think that can work for the left because that because those figures are carrot top on speed because because the strength of the left comes from clarity of purpose right it comes from identifying economic you know sources of

exploitation and misery and identifying the causes of them and then identifying solutions and trying to speak to them speak to the needs of the material needs of people clearly I got it I got it I know exactly who he's kind of he's this high-kitch figure today because in the 90s he was on the sitcom where he was he adopted these three orphans and it was just like very like full housey type sitcom and his career took a downturn now he's you know addicted to drugs and alcohol god damn it

damn it fuck you he lives with this guy Todd and he's a horse that his name is bojack horseman god dude you know honestly though I will form the draft Matthew let's go super bad that's on free money baby free money from the government imagine he comes out there in his question mark suit and Donald Trump is like you look disgraceful people like oh you're triggered by his cool suit you're a pussy dude your jab you suck dude Matthew less goes the man that's really like that yeah that was

short circuit trump because you know he tried to make these like really awful shitty zingers like people tried on trump like those question marks should be exclamation points right it's like you're yelling too loudly right it's like you beat jab you become him you'll be like Donald Trump's voice shifts he stops moving his hands around he's like frankly I feel like people asking for free money is a symptom of our culture and Matthew less goes just like tossing things out he's like you could get money to start a boat business

you don't know you could even be in a landlock state doing it in the crowd i was just going crazy oh my god dude here's my i close my we're gonna have one of those good dead zone visions now okay all right hell yes with me need one of these okay close your eyes it's your 2023 who field marshal and emperor for life Matthew less go sits atop an m1 abram's tank the brazilian military who are all wearing denim shorts i stare him down they go we want to pave over the rainforest and destroy the biome

want to get rid of all oxygen because we don't believe in global warming by the way we lost the first battle this war because our back hurt field marshal less go goes you can get free oxygen now if we fire the brazilian military surrenders we replant every tree the amazon president less go rules over earth in a currency because he found a free money program become a war gallagher comes back he's not racist anymore mark mark marin is poet laureate uh phase replaces the new york yankees is america's winning esteem

everyone's cousin fucks kate upped it with them every story is true oh that's that's my happy dead zone big rock came out just think about that you the listener think about that yeah let's all we think about it hard enough we can make it happen remember this is one of those this is one of those episodes where we talk the gun into yours and ours mouths so don't watch bojack don't want you know don't i've never seen it's probably an okay show i'm gonna be honest but it's gonna depress you more you need to watch

matthew lesko infomercials you need to you need to stay in there cheer yourself up i'd like to recommend a series of youtube videos i've watched recently which are guiness world record breaking attempts uh to smash break open the most amount of walnuts with one's head in under a minute they are really impressive the guy who just beat the standing record is a pakistani martial artist and they have a whole table set up with uh like a double row of walnuts

and he just goes down and make an incredible noise the entire time just just absolutely just shredding walnuts the entire way down and i think he does almost 200 in under a minute it's insane and his fucking forehead is bleeding and the whole time he's just like and he just just plowing through walnuts and like i said just keep that in mind yeah that's gonna be us folks we're gonna plow through the walnuts of fascism yeah with our heads what are some other pleasant thoughts we can it's national cat day

oh i've uh it was a new character we developed on the stream do you want to hear it yes baron maren i already love them so are your guys my guy is my dad the president of the united states uh don't you fucking hate when your dad runs the post office excellent can we get uh can i hear just a snippet of uh phase seem more harsh okay um and you know in skirmish even though it's

supposed to be on land settings okay you get lag like you're playing on eu servers and you're in na east it's it's it's ridiculous okay you know i've edited quicker windows on 80 ping but it's neither here or there and and and you know all day all day folksy is going we can't get any bloom on our ars and i i i'll never forget this he says it's not a win if it's not a real flesh so we take the grappler gun and we take high ground and i quickscope uh liquid 72 hours who's a great great guy but he just happened to have low position that day my aim was better

and uh then then you know it was it was great you know you had obviously woodward and burnstein there but also keemstar who's there to congratulate us and you know a lot of guys can get no scopes but the point of the 360 no scope is you're showing you can do it anytime and that's what really that's what really you know freaked the the nixon guys out oh i've had last last thing uh michael has been saying something that's ruined my brain lately i feel like i'm going crazy

superman like the song kryptonite oh i'm going crazy superman oh right if i go crazy will you still call me superman i'm going crazy superman that's good all right so all the problems in the world i think we're ready to take them on now yeah no just everyone if you have anyone remembers the secret close your eyes and think of present for life god emperor matthew lesko free money from the government baron maren yeah they see more her all your guys all of them will be with you

lying cousin guy lying lying cousin guy mike perry yeah they're all waiting for you in elysium yeah mike pair dude think about mike perry and packs like really the world it's not packs america and it's like the peaceful prosperity of the world but you still like damn they still car to me for alcohol we we got fucking uh jupiter of space stations and i still got to pay for alcohol this bullshit i don't okay don't stay cheerful if you feel like you're forcing it that's honestly gonna make you feel worse it's like

you wake up and you drink an energy drink that should be banned and then you just crash after 13 hours straight of awful anxiety don't force yourself to feel something you don't feel inside and don't think that there's a baseline of happiness because there isn't unless you're just like the perfect you know ohio college football fan dumbass guy and chances are you're not you're not that lucky but you know the the most desirable baseline is that you face all the awful things that you see every day

and you can keep going that's really all you can ask for i know i've made fun of this advice when it came from my my grandmother you got to keep going the advice of people who live through the great depression but it's true there is something to it you know you can feel shitty you can feel very hopeless at times and you can feel you know what what's the way out but that is exactly what they want you to think they do want you to feel fucking beaten down and that there is no joy in your life and sometimes it is very hard to find that joy

and i'm just also what i what i said on a during the the ben sass episode when i said like you know you know they've won when you stop caring about this shit or you stop feeling sad or angry or depressed about it like there is good reason to feel hopeless i mean like it does i mean it does feel like fascism whatever you want to call it like advice is just tightening around all of us and then of course the backdrop of catastrophic climate change as well there's reasons to feel despair but nihilism

is inherently reactionary just like just believing in nothing is is handing the keys to the kingdom to all these assholes but try try i think the way to to prevent from all this just from becoming morbid or just sort of an self-indulgent despair is to try to act on your beliefs any way you can i mean i i i don't know every listeners situation so i can't give any kind of blank there is a small percentage of listeners who should not act on their beliefs

but i just think like you know i know this is hard for people who sort of live online but get offline to the degree that you can and talk to people around you if you have a job co-workers organizing at the workplace in organizations campaigns do something to feel like you're trying to push against the tide because otherwise you're just gonna get drowned by it i will put it this way i don't know the exact course of the future neither do they but if they were

sure that they had already won they wouldn't want you to stop fucking garing i think that's a good place to leave it um till next time guys till next time let's talk about a movie next time tell you actually i have a great idea computer and even atros pro made their millions with the help of my money programs and you can too i'm Matthew lesko and my new book shows you 15 000 programs you can use to get a better job get an education or start your own business

those who know about the programs are the ones who get the money i was able to get money to buy equipment for my business and also a life alone the government gave me money to live on for six months while i started my own business i want every taxpayer to know you get a hundred thousand dollars to open up a coffee shop or fifteen thousand dollars to write a novel you also get nine thousand dollars take a computer course or get a gd or a phd if i could get fifteen thousand dollars to go back to school

anybody could do it doing what you want to do in life is like being on vacation every single day now i'll show you how to get the government to pay for it so call me call this member now for only two payments of 29.95 plus shipping and handling get Matthew Lesko's 1100 page work and six hour audio yeah