Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 37: Public Murder Discourse, Heterodox Psychodramas, and Generous Tit for Tat-ers

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

Why are we never invited to these dinners? We wonder if it was something we said or if our invitation just got lost in the mail, as we endure the inevitable discourse wave that followed in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 21 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 3700:00 Introduction01:10 Cooking Gurus?05:39 Sensemaking Overindulgence07:19 Feedback on The Elephant Graveyard Segment14:07 Gary is awarded an Honorary Doctorate by SOAS19:15 On the Murder of Charlie Kirk24:49 Murder is Bad & Charlie Kirk was a Polemicist38:07 Hypocritical Calls for Violence: Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson41:32 The Superficial Celebrations of Luigi Mangione44:52 Michael Shermer is an entirely non-skeptical partisan47:16 Eric Weinstein and the rush to post49:48 Joe Rogan argues with his friend on vaccines58:11 Predictable Pivot01:05:30 Blocked and Reported discuss the Interpersonal Psychodramas of the Heterodox01:07:07 The Thick Skin of Michael Shellenberger01:11:41 Being Bret Weinstein's +101:13:39 Dave Rubin does not appreciate public criticism01:16:29 A Heterodox DM encounter01:21:01 Money and Macro's Video on Gary's Economics01:27:56 The DTG approach vs Debunking01:29:43 The Nature of Expertise and Criticism01:31:17 Researching Guru Claims01:36:37 Destiny invokes the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tit for Tat strategies01:40:59 Generous Tit for Tat01:46:28 Konstantin Kisin's warning about alternative media01:54:26 Konstantin's "Consistency"02:01:44 Next Gurus and Fake Outro02:03:44 Decoding the Gamers: Caves of Qud and Two Point Museum02:08:11 Retro School Games: Drug Wars, Beachhead and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?02:11:53 Real OutroSourcesSOAS honorary awardees for 2025What did Elon Musk say at far-right UK rally and did his remarks break the law?“We Either Fight Back or Die” – Elon Musk's Fierce Speech at London 'Unite The Kingdom' Rally | APTShermer's tweet after Charlie Kirk's murderJoe Rogan and Bryan Callen on vaccinesHe Had One Product, $80K in Funding, and One Influencer - And Unilever Just Acquired His Company for 9 FiguresMichael Shellenberger Mixed Up Two Guys With Sorta Similar Names And Falsely Told His Readers — And Congress — One Of Them Might Be A Spy As A ResultBlocked and Reported Premium: Taylor Lorenz And The Perils Of Journafluencing (Part...

Hello and welcome to the Gooding the Guru's material, the sister podcast to the bigger brother decoding episodes, which is at the minute stuck deep in a sense-making swamp. But the person that is enduring that with me is Matthew Brown, the psychologist opposite me there. And I stand before you, both a psychologist and an anthropologist, but mostly, mostly just a man. Mostly a man. Mostly a podcaster, Chris. I'm not mostly a podcaster. I'm mostly an academic with a side gig in podcasting.

Isn't that more accurate? I'm mostly a home chef and flavor maximizer. That's how I prefer. Oh, flavor maximizer? Is that you're like, you're in the optimizing world of, that seems like an area right for guru. Like, I know that you have Gordon Ramsey and. Heston Blumenthal and all those kind of things.

But not really anybody like that's combined Andrew Tate style or Jordan Peterson guruism with cooking. No, it doesn't. It doesn't suit. Yeah, it's been noted on the Patreon discussion boards, Chris, that there's a bit of a schism. A schism, even. Is it schism, is it?

Shism, schism. It wouldn't be the podcast about a debate about Fernandez. at the beginning. So, okay, there's been a schism or schism. That's right. There's Chris's monastery and modest effort where middle-aged people share their tiny physical accomplishments, like going for a walk. They're not tiny. They're modest. They're just modest, ma, okay? People are doing grand. And then there is the fun-loving Epicureans in my area where we're just, we're just looking for the flavor man. Yes, we're getting bit flabby and pasty.

Yes, we're loading up on carbs. All that is true. We're not moving around as much as we should be. But we're happy, Chris. We're happy. And that's the most important thing. Yes, well, actually, we should give a shout out, Matt, that somebody in that Patreon chat, you know,

you get various nice photos of food that people have prepared. And Elisa prepared a nice pastry, very tasty-looking piece of bread that has. the DTG logo on the front of it and that was yeah it's so impressive I asked I said I'd be more impressed if she could make a a gingerbread man uh that look like you did you say that I did say that that and if she can make a piece of toast where if you squint at it it looks like like the shroud of Turin except it's me so on the burnt toast that would be impressive she hasn't done yet though right no not that's that's not I feel like she could though

I mean it was very impressive in general her bread is very impressive whether it's carved in our likeness or not well but there's a lot of impressive cooking there um I thought I was pretty fancy with my homemade ravioli the lasagna I made too um but yeah people have outdone me especially with the baking yeah I can't bake it's too hard I once I once tried to make croissants and um yeah There's a big blood of my ego. Never again. Well, I don't like baking. It's like an alchemical science.

It's too complex. There's too much. You know, I get very stressed by cooking in general. I can cook to a certain extent. Don't dare, I try and correct that I can. Okay. But whenever I do it, it's always constantly like a fear that I'm going to destroy everything, you know. And I'm like running multiple timers at the,

I'm spinning like multiple paradigms and I'm not very good at that. I get stressed and I snap at my kids and stuff of doing that. So it's okay if I know the rest. Like I always do. That's pretty relaxed a fair knife because I know what's going to happen. I know how to make it good, right? Everybody can help. We can have fun with it.

But if it's something new where I'm like trying to follow a recipe, oh God, it's like all of my cognitive power needs to go towards that. So yeah. It's a bit like that. But yeah, yeah, it's meditative, making something that you know how to make very well and you can just relax and, yeah, I find that pretty groovy. What happens to me is when I'm making stuff and it's like a bit overwhelming, there's too many pots and pans going or I'm worried about the pastry for the ravioli.

What happens is the kitchen becomes a disaster area, there's flour all over the place in this, washing up stacked up and the thing, doesn't make me popular. You'd think the tasty food would have, you know, make up for it, but it doesn't actually. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there we are, Matt. Anyway, that's that. That's that.

How do you feel about the decodings we did recently? What do we do? We did the sense-making, we returned to sense-making land, which I know by the time we've finished, we were absolutely fed up with it. And people have only heard part one so far. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, anyway, we're finished. So, we're spoiler. Spoiler.

It gets a better noise. It doesn't get, yeah, it doesn't get better. I mean, who would have guessed? Yeah, just three grown men playing around. And sneaking alone in a room. Yes. But, you know, the thing about that is, though, that as you and I noted, in the response the episode got on Patreon, on Twitter and whatnot, people were like, oh, Matt and Chris are enjoying.

They're like, it's nice in a way because it's, you know, it's stupid and it's like pretentious waffle. But there is an element of enjoyment to listening to it, right? Yeah. That doesn't last. So, like, because it's split up in this depart, I feel like we've lulled people in the false sense of, oh, this is, you know, but actually, it's like a chocolate cake. You know, your first couple of bites, you're like, oh, this is a great, this was a great decision.

And then when you're, like, lying at the end of the cake with the crumbs all around you and you feel bloated, And you think, should I have eaten that whole cake? Like, what was I thinking? Yeah, this is horrible. I hate chocolate cake. What was I thinking? Yeah, you're right. It is like a chocolate cake.

I don't need to go back to sense makers for quite a while. I mean, I know they'll drag us back, but this was enough sense making for the foreseeable future. But what you might be thinking of, Matt, is that Andy, editor Andy, a man of many talents, put up the video. about the Elephant Graveyard video on Rogan Art versus Conspiracy So if you remember we did a segment About the Elephant Graveyard's video

About the comedy cult In Austin, Texas And Joe Rogan, right? So a new audience The online YouTube audience came across our take Which already existed in podcast format But it spurred another round of discourse

And that was That was quite entertaining because let me just read what I put as the notes on YouTube for that, okay? It's only like three lines, so let me just read it. After receiving many requests, we take a look at the Elephant Graveyard's

popular satirical critique of Joe Rogan's comedy, career, and influence. Presented in a style reminiscent of Adam Curtis's documentaries with a sardonic spin, the video critically dissects Rogan's impact on the comedy scene, making some comparisons with cult-like behaviour. We offer our thoughts on the video and discuss the nature of some of the claims made

about broader tech elite conspiracies. The summary, very entertaining, mostly accurate, but don't take it all at face value. Okay? Yeah. Now, let me just read a few of the responses, the top comments, under that video. Now, far be it from people on YouTube, you know, to react without paying attention to the content of the video. But give them a little credit, everyone. It isn't easy to miss the point so entirely. Two scientists trying to wrap their heads around the cinematic technique

of montage. I feel like either I'm missing something or UTR, it's conspiratorial as a joke, not because Elephant Graveyard is actually approaching a conspiracy. Joe Rogan is known for conspiracy theories. So Elephant Graveyard used that angle as a setup. The video is straightforward satire, a parody of Rogan's conspiratorial mindset. Nobody is taking it literally.

Okay, nobody's taking it literally. That's a strong statement. You've got to be careful making absolute statements on the internet because someone like Chris will prove you wrong. Quite right. So, I mean, just a couple of comments down. Dude, you just scratched the surface with Peter Thiel. The rabbit hole goes much deeper.

Right. And Lex is a teal protege. Getting all those people on podcast because it's a safe space is naive. If you go down, you will see two takes predominant. One is, did you guys miss that this is satire? And no, we didn't. We talked about that. And the parts of the satire that we enjoyed.

We talked about the bits that we thought were like kind of irony rapping and so on, so forth. But if the other genre of comments you see is, oh, you guys are so naive, there is indeed a very significant concern. You think he's like just being satirical and just making fun. He hasn't even scratched the surface with this teal thing. So in our comments is an illustration of exactly what we were talking about. that, yes, there is like satirical, ironic presentations. But the way that it's done, especially the stuff around teals and tech elites, is not presented as that this is supposed to be a spoof and a parody.

And it's not even clear that that is the case, that that's what the creator of elephant graveyard thinks in general, given the other videos. Now, all the people claim it definitely is. Like if you go and look, but if you look at his subreddit as well, it's the same to conflicting presentations. So I feel that the reaction illustrates the point that we were making, which was not that you can't do a satirical parody of Rogan and you cannot invoke conspiracies. And that insofar as that's what the intention is, it's an excellent video at doing that. But in the way that it presents the stuff around Teal being responsible for Joe Rogan's rise

and all of that, basically, the Rogan comedy sphere being a vanguard for this secret tech elite agenda, that is not accurate based on the existing evidence for how Rogan became popular and no, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk showing up on Rogan's show does not illustrate that that's the case. or Thiel being a billionaire who support various people online that are annoying like Curtis Arvin and J.D. Vance and so on. Okay. I'm hearing you. Our take was completely right and all the critics are wrong. Hey, how dare you? Look, that's not fair. You're the one that brought this up and said, oh, we should cover that and make it fake. And in your reaction there, you're like, oh, I'm glad

you've got that off your chest. You're the one that said that. That's true. That's true. It did seem unfair because we were very complimentary. We made some incredibly measured cautions about, look, don't take it literally. It's kind of art. It's all ironic. But don't take the stuff about it all being like this secret plot. Like it was quite detailed, you know, this secret plot to sort of place operatives within the world of comedy and then to ruin it and then to, there were a lot of moving pieces. Now, it could be that this is all satire and what he's doing is kind of illustrating

the kind of conspiratorial reasoning that Rogan does in a critique of Rogan which would be very meta if that were the case I would respect that. I think there are aspects where that is happening in the video like so there there is that but yes

carry on. Yes but as you showed not every listener gets it if that's the case and that's why we voiced a note of caution that is all. It's interesting how people react to, like, it's going to be

the mildest criticism we've ever given. It was so tempered. It was almost in, you know, you always couldn't see it. Interceptible. Yeah, interceptable, that's the word. Yeah, but anyway, what are you going to do? It's Reddit. It's read it. It's right of it. Well, that's YouTube. But yeah, YouTube Reddit, you know, it's the, it's the internet, man. It's the

internet, yeah. And we also need to give a note of recognition because someone that we've covered previously, Matt, has been awarded recognition. Gary Stevenson was issued an honorary doctorate by my old university, so as, which people kindly pointed out on the subreddit again. So there, there you go. No longer can you say Gary just has a masters in economics. Now, he has a doctorate, admittedly. An honorary. An honorary doctorate. Yes, it is an honorary doctorate. But, yeah. But, you know, honorary doctorates kind of a ridiculous thing. Not actually, not entirely, because like the basic concept is reasonable, right? That people have excelled in some area and they haven't got a

doctorate, but universities want to recognize that regardless of the person having achieved a formal qualification, they want to give recognition from the academic field to what they've been doing. But typically, this is given to people that are lifelong offers or human rights lawyers or developmental practitioners or whatever. Like, if I look at the list, Here, of people honored beside Gary, you have Nurden Farah, a renowned offer of 14 novels, novel, several plays and non-fiction books on the Somali diaspora. Nuridin has been a recipient of several major international literary awards, including the prestigious Nootstadt Prize, okay.

Elizabeth Kivitashvili, an accomplished development practitioner with global humanitarian and crisis response leadership and field the operations expertise with the United States Agency for International Development, USAA, extensive humanitarian work and expertise in development of conflict related in disaster response problems. Ramachandra Guha, historian and biographer, currently distinguished university professor at Crea University, previously started Stanford. And so it goes on, right? Now, Gary is a bit of an outlier because when they're talking about what he's done, they talk about his book, the treaty game.

It was a Sunday Times best teller. And they mentioned that he has been a leading voice on the state of the UK economy, speaking to a following of well over a million on YouTube. So it's just like he published a book and he's a YouTuber who mentions inequality. And yeah, yeah, that's... And he is the figure at the front of the SOAS page announcement

and he gave the, like, you know, the kind of commencement speech type thing or the UK equivalent of it. I think it kind of reflects the growing influence of, like, independent media podcasts. YouTube's, that kind of thing. I think the legacy institutions are kind of

wanting to be, you know, hip, but up to date as well. But yeah, I mean, if it was up to me, like I think honorary directors are a little bit silly, but yeah, if you're going to give them out, give them to, I don't know, people that have done exceptional things and are not being recognized for them, as opposed to, you know,

someone whose job is kind of building their recognition They've got enough recognition. Anyway, but anyway, don't want to be mean. Congratulations to him. I know, I know. I mean, Kermit the Frog has an honorary doctorate. Now, that on, I think that's... I'm behind that.

Yeah, me too. But, yeah, I think people just enjoyed that he got an honorary doctorate from my previous undergraduate university. But that's completely in keeping with SOAS. This is exactly what I would expect, so as to do. So it does not in any ways surprise me. But it just means

that I know at some future point, when people are debating this, they will say, well, the fact that a university give him an honorary doctorate, that means that they recognize that he's on the level of a economics

doctorate holder. And is that what that means? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, not everyone agrees with our takes. That's true. That's true. So congratulations to Gary.

Well, done. I hope he could be recognized in more ways for his YouTubeing. I wonder if you'll mention that. I wonder if it'll come up at any point. I don't know. It's hard to say. But we'll see. We'll find out.

Now, Matt, there was an event which took up a lot of the discourse. this week, right, that we would be remiss not to mention. The polemical right-wing pundit, Charlie Kirk, was executed, shot in the neck when he was giving a talk of one of his turning point USA speeches, right? And the details around the shooter are still, there's various pieces of information that have come out, various inscriptions on bullets or casing or, you know, something. And people are, are scrying the tea leaves. as they do in the aftermath to discern the particular ideology. I believe the main takeaway from the evidence,

as it currently exists, is that he was too online. There's a lot of references to, you know, gaming culture and so on. Even in reference to like anti-fascist songs and stuff, it's also stuff from gaming playlists and whatnot. So the ideology that he may or may not have subscribed to particularly, is not yet, like, completely clear. Given the target is Charlie Kirk, a lot of people would assume, right,

that it's somebody left wing, but Charlie Kirk also having lots of infights with right-wing communities, including far-right ones, gropeers and whatnot. So it's not automatically clear. But whatever the case might be, they've caught the person who seems to be responsible and his death, his violent death, led to an explosion of takes online and responses.

Did you see any of this, Matt? Thanks for the setup, Chris. Yes, yes, yes, I did, I did. And I'd never really paid much attention to Charlie Cook before, actually, because, you know, he doesn't really fit with him, our remit. You know, she's a political activist. I mean, it's kind of Dave Rubin-esque, right?

But like, if Scott Adams is in our remit, then Charlie Kirk Yeah, kind of. It's close. It just seems like he's just pure politics. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, there is, I mean, you know, Twitter being what it is

and just the online discourse being what it is, whenever, you know, these things are obviously shocking and terrible events, regardless of who's getting shot. And, you know, I guess it's, natural for everyone to react. But it is a bit annoying how, like, there's this sort of hunt goes on

to figure out the political motivations. And, you know, it could be that they've got, you know, left-wing politics. That could be that they've got some other different kind of politics. And the same goes for right-wing assassins too, or someone who has taken a crack at a progressive figure. But the main thing that they've got in common is just they're almost always, just deeply unwell people, you know, suffering from some kind of mental illness or just terrible personality disorder or something. And while they may have expressed various political views, it's not like they're an operative working at the behest of the mainstream group. So yeah, anyway, I just think it's a bit, like I don't think you can tag and make the left or the right

responsible for every little thing that every lone madman does. I don't think you should do that. And I take the point, like, I agree that very often the people are like, primarily the number one characteristic is that there is a disturbed individual in one form of the other, right? But I do think that ideology and rhetoric can make these kind of things happen. Like there's a reason that it was Charlie Kirk that was targeted. And there are lots of all the, you know, people have pointed out, well, America is a place with like a lot of guns, right?

But it still is the case that whenever there are public figures executed, right, and they're known for being polemical in a particular political arena, that it automatically will get people talking about the rhetoric and just. for violence on whatever side, right, be it the left or the right. So obviously, there was an immediate jump to looking for people on the left justifying that this was fine or good or celebrating it, right? And as is the case that you will always find people celebrating when somebody is murdered in a partisan, like, political environment, right? So there were plenty of people that you could find on TikTok or in various social media, Twitter, blue sky, you know, whatever, that seemed to not just be saying they weren't sorry,

but greatly overjoyed at the events and like kind of kicking clean at. And that's obviously ghoulish, right? And we'll inevitably get play in conservative spaces or right-wing spaces because it comes across very badly. I'm rightly so, but it will always happen. No matter which group is targeted, you'll be able to find people online celebrating it, right, in the more gruelish quarters of the internet. Now, that is not to say, though, that I don't think there's an issue around people celebrating violence. Or actually, Matt, like the, one of the things that I find in the whole discourse around this was like, there seemed to be.

in general, two things that people had a hard time putting together. Not everyone. I did hear various people talk about this in relatively sensible ways, but two things that people seem to have a hard time combining was, one, I think it's very bad that Charlie Kirk was executed in public in this very violent manner, but just in general, you know, a person being shot at a university when they're giving a speech. Like, just imagine if you have to be left leaning or whatever, imagine it was Chomsky or something. Like, this is not good when this kind of thing is normalized.

And you can have human empathy for the fact that if you watch the video, you know, it's a very violent way to die. Apparently his children and wife were in the audience. And the people in the audience, right, that also saw that. Just a horrifying moment for the people involved. Now, those facts, right? So, like, I'm someone that generally, just very opposed to political violence and justifications for it in most contexts. I recognize, you know, people can point to all sorts of things where their circumstances where political violence is necessary or has led to improvements.

You know, Ireland had a longstanding civil war and civil conflict around and various things. did improve for certain communities and get worse as a result of those conflicts. But anyway, all of that hand-wringing is to say none of it makes it hard to then say, Charlie Kirk, not good the way he died, wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. Also, a polemical, partisan conspiracy-mongering, fairly misogynist, racist, all these kind of badest person based on his content, right? He was a polemicist who was not promoting like the best in people. So you don't have to pretend that he wasn't like a polemicist and an apologist for the Trump regime in order to say that you're not, you know, overjoyed at his

death, right? You're not celebrating his death. Yeah, yeah. It's a fine distinction. I remember but an important one to because there is a tendency I think for people not to want to speak ill of the dead and that somebody you know that's natural feeling of sympathy sort of shades into kind of um I don't know not quite white not quite whitewashing but kind of smoothing over um who the guy wants and um you know his politics were pretty extreme you know he he he said reject feminism submit to your husband Taylor you're not in charge. And he basically promoted white replacement theory all the time. Yeah. Not just arguing for a bit less immigration, but making out that it's a plot by the Democrats

to import a bunch of docile, in these words, foreigners who will do the Democratic Party's bidding, you know, anti-Semitic stuff. Anyway, I could go on. And he did Jewish,

oh, okay. I mean, that's not hugely surprising, but he, one of the points of disagreement with him in the Nick Fuentes Grobo sect was that he was seeing this too apologetic for Israel. But that would still not prevent you from being anti-Semitic at all their times. They somehow managed to, yeah, do both these figures, do both anti-Semitic and pro-Israel. I know it doesn't make sense. But anyway, you know, among as many views, one of these views was that it's worth it, basically, to have gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment, which is a view of a lot of American, that's not an extreme view in America,

that's a view of a lot of other Americans share. And I guess, you know, he drew the short straw. Right. And like on a podcast from 2024, with a bunch of other, you know, like kind of reactionary charcoal heads, including Jack Passovich, somebody that's definitely, engaged in anti-Semitic dog whistles to put up mildly. He talked about the death penalty and his views that it should be public and that at a certain age it should be initiation. Maybe people should be watching public executions as children, right? Yeah.

So look, does that mean, therefore, well, he got what he deserved, right? No. But it does speak to the fact that he is, you know, part of that ecosystem ramping up all this rhetoric so extreme. And, you know, like talking about violence, vilifying Democrats and transgender people and, you know, all sorts of targets. It's not that that makes him therefore responsible, therefore you just get what you ask for. No, but it is a fact that like he contributed to that level of extreme polarization and like really hardcore rhetoric in America. And he was defending every single move of the Trump administration.

Like he essentially was a propagandist for Trump. That was the way that he was behaving since the new Trump administration started, but also before. So you can recognize all of that. I think you don't have to recast what he did and present them as if he was this guy that was just interested in dialogue and debating, you know, topics. Because, no, he, he wasn't just this kind of moderate conservative guy. If you choose to only emphasize that better, kind of present what Turning Point USA does is like seeking dialogue in universities and discussion. That is whitewashing as I say, but you don't have to do that in order to say that you're not on board with him being executed in cold blood, right?

Like, that's, that's a bit that people seem to have. It should be an easy distinction. And I did want to mention, Matt, that in like two rather disparate sources in terms of ideology and approach to things, I did see this very topic covered quite well on one, blocked and reported, where Kitty Herzog and Jesse Zingle, they go through the reaction, the counter reaction, what is known and whatnot. And I think they do a good job of navigating the variance issues and directly like condemning, you know, the violence without hesitation and recognizing the issue of Charlie Kirk. On the other hand, I don't speak German,

the anti-fascist podcast, right, with Daniel and Jack. Not always our biggest fans. And they are, as you would imagine, extremely critical of Charlie Kirk and they cover, you know, basically his output in no uncertain terms. But they also clearly highlight that they're not endorsing the political violence. They managed to do that, right? So this is what I mean in saying, it's not everybody doing that. And it's, again, those are two podcasts were very different outlooks and political leanings. And yet they both navigated it fine. So I'm just giving Hattip that it isn't all people like running around, you know, taking the most extreme kick. Yeah.

Yeah, good on the, I don't speak German guys because, you know, I've proven that you can be a hardcore, like, you know, be a anti-fascist. Anti-fascist, you know, I think they're communists as well, right? Yeah, yeah. They're about as far left on the spectrum as you can be. And they throw that needle. So, well done. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're not exactly sad that he's gone, but you don't have to be in order to express that you're not endorsing that kind of violence as a solution.

So, there you go. I mean, you know, it should be said that I didn't see any mainstream accounts or people that I knew who were celebrating his assassination. I did see a bunch of right-wing accounts basically, you know, jumping to the strongest possible. calling for civil war, calling for civil war, you know, start fighting back and, you know, basically saying it's time for, time for violence now to get the Democrats back or the left wing in general back. And that's what I was getting at with this kind of taking a single person in a single incident as, okay, now this is a sign that we need to commit more violence against, you know, half the country. that's the kind of thing that I'm against. I mean, just calm down and keep it in proportion. I mean, fortunately, political violence is still relatively rare in the United States.

I mean, the correct amount is zero. But compared to the other ways in which people are sadly dying from guns, it's a drop in the ocean. So I always tend to go and look at statistics and stuff when these things happen. And I found a study by Reuters that looked at 14 fatal political attacks since January 6, 21. And they tried to find the ones where there was a clear partisan leaning, some sort of political motivation to it. They found 13 by right-wing actors causing a total of 34 deaths. And they found one by a left-wing actor causing one death. Now, you know, anyway, there's other research on this.

There's academic articles that have looked at data. since 1948 and another one that looked at data from mining 90 to 2020 and you know you can quibble about some of the classifications and things like that but but basically the ratio of political violence is strongly strongly you know more weighted in the direction of right-winging actors on progressive targets that doesn't make it okay just just putting things in context and another thing to put it in context with is that, you know, over that period of the Roeder study, you know, you had a title of 35 deaths. Compare that to the 45,000 gun deaths that happen in the United States every year. And that's not all homicides. Actually, suicides are more common. And of

the homicides, most of them are not kind of, you know, super criminals or gangs or random. people being targeted by our evil door on the street, it's domestic violence. So if a guy has a gun in the United States, the most likely person they're going to use it on is themselves. The second most likely group of people they're going to use it on is

their family, spouse, friends and names. So just the temper of the discourse I notice online is that if, obviously these events are very emotive and so many people are running on emotion And if you just went on vibes, you would feel like the highly politicized violence is the main thing.

And actually, sadly, I mean, it's bad either way, but it's just not. So I guess my point is just put things in perspective. And don't call for civil war because one person, sadly, was shot. I mean, like Trump right put the flags at half mass and stuff, which is normally reserved for, you know, the death of presidents or that kind of thing. And similarly, like, you're right that this event has been given outsized attention because of the nature of the event, right, and like what occurred. But that's to a background of just general gun deaths in the U.S., which is going to happen

when you have unarmed populists and the kind of general culture around guns that you have in the U.S. Like, that's the nature of American society. And I know that there's various Americans who would prefer that it wasn't, that there was a restrict their gun laws and whatnot, but they can't get that passed in Congress.

And the other thing to note is that people are fleeting hypocrites here. Now, you might, this might surprise. The people are hypocrites? Yeah. There were a couple of months ago, former Democratic politicians, Melissa Hortman and her husband,

were killed. And some of the Republicans that have come out, you know, saying that anybody saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk should, you know, have their employment terminated and whatnot, they themselves have engaged in, if not,

celebrating promoting conspiracies or, you know, whenever Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by the guy with a hammer. There was a lot of joking around that. And yeah, so like people just are not consistent about this. They're partisan. And politicians like Trump utilize it. And Elon Musk that once in a generation or so did a video call in to this huge right wing protest. March that took place in London a couple of days ago, right? And just listen to some of the things he said. He said, I really think that there's got to be a change of government in Britain. You can't, we don't have another four years or whenever. The next election is it's too long. Something's got to be done. There's got to be a dissolution of parliament and the new vote held.

And he said, this is a message to the reasonable center. The people who ordinarily wouldn't get involved in politics. who just want to live their lives, they're quiet, they just go about their business. My message is to them, if this continues, that violence is going to come to you. You will have no choice. You're in a fundamental situation here where whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either fight back or you die. And that's the truth.

Today, Elon, I think the British public are telling the world that they're ready to fight back. Good. Yes. Come on. Come on, Raybrien. Oh! Come on.

That's him talking to Tommy Robinson's audience. far-right audience, right, anti-immigrant. So that's the kind of rhetoric. And Jack Potsovich, Charlie Kirk, all of those guys were in that ecosystem. And the fact that he's Christian, and that he's made various sentiments saying things about Christian stuff, also doesn't matter. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash decoding the gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus. podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes, and decoding academia.

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