Fourth Reich Archaeology - #110 - Propaganda Madness, Part 3, Side A

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

This week’s episode focuses on the Pentagon’s propagandist-in-chief, Sean Parnell.  Parnell is someone we suspect you may never have heard of, but we think, upon thorough examination, he perfectly encapsulates a certain character type that could only really thrive in the Fourth Reich. Parnell is a self-described victim of “horrific” childhood bullying, which led him to an adolescence and young adulthood filled with self-described binge drinking, dirty living, and little awareness of what was even happening around him.   That all ended with 9/11. No, really. The guy actually credits the 9/11 attacks for his political awakening and decision to enlist in the army. So he enlisted and went to Afghanistan and later bragged about how many people his unit killed. Parnell’s affect is like that of a whinier J.D. Vance. It's like they cooked him up in the same factory as Vance, but he fell off the assembly line before production was complete. You can tell he doesn’t have the Ivy League polish the way Vance does, and he thinks that’s a good thing. But his performance is to act like he is an authentic guy who’s just as smart, if not smarter than the Ivies, when in fact he is tremendously, colossally dumb. He, of course, wrote a memoir with a “co-author” as a pathway to a political or media career before epically failing upward towards his current position as the official spokesperson for the Department of Defense. In Side A, we set the table on Parnell and provide some much-needed context.  Stay tuned for Side B, in which Don interviews a friend of the pod, Matt Farwell, about his coverage of Parnell. Let’s Get Digging. 

Hi everyone. Dick here speaking to you from post production of this week's episode. I am reaching out to you directly because I, on behalf of Dawn, wanted to apologize because this week's episode, during our recording of this week's episode, we ran into a bit of a technical snafu and the audio just wasn't up to snuff and was not in a place where we would feel comfortable releasing it. This week, we planned to release an interview that we had with our fan favorite guest of the pod, Matt Farwell. And we do plan on releasing the full interview, hopefully in the upcoming days. But for now, what we've done is we've split the episode up into two sides. Side A, which has Dawn's exposition and scene setting for this week's episode.

That's being released right now, coming up next. And you'll just have to bear with us for a few days before we release the full interview with Matt Farwell. I've listened to the interview. and aside from the technical snafu with the sound, which we are working around the clock to fix, it is absolutely amazing. It is a banger episode. And so with that, I will say again, I'm sorry on behalf of Don that we just were not able to get this week's episode out in full as we had hoped. and to remind you that Don and I are just two dudes doing this in our part-time, very much a DIY podcast over here. So with that out of the way, I hope you enjoy Side A of Propaganda Madness, Part 3. Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or France or.

the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. for resources. We found no evidence of conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The Warren Commission was science.

I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The global war, global, world, The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small. For example, we're the CIA.

Now he has a model. He's no longer to be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent?

No, we have a model. The CIA. Now, he has a model. I decide. National global. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology. I'm Don. Dick is out on the high seas, unclogging toilets on the USS Abraham Lincoln. He's waist-deep in human excrement right now, and we want to wish him all the best in his endeavors out there. We've got a great show for you today. Before we get into it, the usual preliminaries.

First of all, thanks so much for tuning in. Please, if you've not already, like, subscribe, rate, and review the podcast as that gets us out to more listeners. Also, follow us on social media at Fourth Reich Pod on Twitter and Instagram. And finally, don't hesitate to reach out to us at forthrightepod at gmail.com. We've got a loaded show for you today, and we're going to be. to have a guest, our friend of the pod, Matt Farwell, to discuss his latest hunt for Tom Clancy dispatch firing shots across the bow, if you will, at Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. We extend that discussion well beyond the confines of just Sean Parnell and talk about

propaganda, about reaching across the aisle, and about how to make common cause with people who may not share our political views in pursuit of a greater society over and above the desires, the nefarious desires of the powers that be who would just as soon throw us all into the old meat grinder as they prepare their bunkers for doomsday that they are inflicting upon the entire world through their reckless and evil misdeeds. I do want to introduce the topic of today's episode because, you know, here on Fourth Reich Archaeology, we are strong believers in showing and not telling the listeners what it is. is we're talking about. It's why we so frequently rely on clips from the historical periods that we're

discussing. And it's why we really get into the primary sources so frequently because we don't believe that you should just take our word for the things that we say on the pod. We believe that it's our duty as the progenitors of this political education project to back. up what we say to support our assertions and to entertain at the same time as we educate. And so this introductory portion, which I'm about to launch into, aims to do just that. I didn't really know who Sean Parnell was before I read Matt's substack. And I would guess that probably a lot of you don't know who Sean Parnell is. listening. He is a spokesperson, a mouthpiece for the United States Department of War. He is an

underling of old Pete Higgsax, excuse me, Pete Hoggsex, Pete Hogshit. I have just a hard time pronouncing his name. And he is a great glazer of the rich and powerful. The guy has few talents, but they are concentrated in things that put him in a better position adjacent to the venal overlords at the top of the old governmental pyramid in 26. So I said that I didn't know who Sean Parnell was before reading Matt's substack. Since reading Matt Substack, I have an ungodly amount of knowledge about who Sean Parnell is, about how he speaks, about the types of things that he speaks about, about his patented phrases that he will dust off and reuse time and time again in his speaking engagements.

And, you know, upon this thorough examination to which I've subjected myself, so that you don't have to, I can let you know my view that Sean perfectly encapsulates a certain character type that could really only thrive in Trump's America. Sean Parnell is a self-described victim of horrific childhood bullying, which led him to an adolescence and young adulthood full of binge drinking, partying. You could imagine this is a guy who, was living dirty, and he had no clue of what was going on around him.

Until one day... I kind of woke up as this college kid on my couch surrounded by beer cans, had a horrible hangover, turned on the TV, and I had just in time to see a plane fly into the World Trade Centers. All I wanted to do was join the Army and get in the fight. When I first saw Sean, the other lieutenant came in, and I can't fly out for a week. Sean Fleck, I want to fly tomorrow.

So there you have it. I think that Sean Parnell is the first person I've ever heard use the plural in the world trade centers, which is a turn of phrase that really rolls off the tongue. It's phenomenal. Sean Parnell, according to himself, was raised in a Union Democrat Pennsylvania family. It's almost the... most classic political trajectory origin story that you could think up, right? Think about Joe Biden, right?

Growing up in Scranton, union family, industrial town, what have you. But Sean Parnell, kind of like Joe Biden, is also a class trader. He has betrayed his union member working class ancestors to become a total. total toady for the ruling class and a salesman, albeit not a particularly effective one, of the ruling class's wars, of exploitation, of conquest, and that was exactly what he set his sights to do when, after 9-11, he enlisted in the military, was deployed to Afghanistan, where he was injured and came home from that deployment to brag about how many people his unit killed, among other things.

Sean's affect reminds me of like a whineer J.D. Vance and his appearance is reminiscent of a guy you might see on like a self-help infomercial that a main character in a 90s comedy watches before realizing they need to change their life. right in the plot of the movie before the comedic hijinks ensue. This is a guy who was cooked up in a lab, right? Like all of these ghouls and gremlins that we see on TV, he appears to have come from the same factory that J.D. Vance came from, but he doesn't have that Ivy League polish, right?

I think that Richard, Sean Parnell must have fallen off of the assembly line at some point in the production process. And you can tell that he believes that his lack of Ivy League polish is a good thing. And so you see him sort of acting like just an authentic guy who's just as smart, if not, smarter than all those Ivy Leaguers. But in fact, unfortunately for him, he is tremendously dumb. And we talk about it in the episode, but he nevertheless was able to fart out a memoir

with a quote-unquote co-author, a.k.a. a ghost writer as his pathway to a political or media career and or media career, I suppose. So picking up after his 2012 war memoir, his little nest egg for the launch of what he hoped would be a long and prosperous political career, Sean Parnell did not stall in getting right in to the self-promotion game. Well before he ever set his sights on elected office,

he recorded and released this sizzle reel video that just praises his many accomplishments as of 2013. And I guess, was meant to promote his services as like a motivational speaker or something, but it's worth giving a little listen to. You are the guardians and protectors of that spirit that was born on the battlefields of our revolution and built upon by every succeeding American generation. And now our share of the legacy is melting into the past to be a part of our collective heritages of people.

Hope, freedom, Liberty. America, I promise you, if we take a stand, we will weather this storm and shine more brightly than ever before. It didn't matter how bad things got. We were not going to seed them a moral victory over Americans. Sean always says if me going there to fight will prevent my son from having to do it, then I want to do it. We will find common ground. We will continue to protect and defend this great nation and heal her wounds.

We will find the solution. I promise you, we will find the solution to our generation's greatest challenges. Oh, we'll find a solution all right, Sean. Might even call it a final solution. In seriousness, though, I believe that this video landed Richard Sean Parnell a lot of work speaking to insurance conventions,

dentist meetings, a local Chamber of Commerce speaking engagements, any gathering of chuds you might find Sean Parnell there at the podium. It's pretty funny the video if you watch it on YouTube, we'll link it in the show notes, but the people that are saying,

nice things about him for reasons that will later become clear in this episode, well, let's just say that one could watch that and say that they appear under duress of some kind. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that people might say that and you can decide for yourself. And that really goes for everything that we're saying about Richard Sean Parnell throughout this entire episode. You know, we're not asserting facts about the man. we are simply reporting what others have alleged about him. And indeed, even though he's not with us on the episode, we will even go so far as to play some of his rebuttals

to allegations that others have made against him. And perhaps the most impactful allegations that anyone has made against Richard Sean Parnell or Dick Sean, as I like to call him, are by his own ex-wife pertaining to alleged instances of abuse, both physical and verbal, against his ex-wife and children. Now, of course, he denied those allegations, and no court has found the allegations to be verified, but they are pretty specific.

and, to borrow a term from Dick Sean, pretty horrific. Your ex-wife, Lori, did make abuse allegations during the hearing, and this is where things got ugly, and I want to ask you about them. So suddenly, she testified at this particular hearing, which wound up going her way, about specific incidents she claims constituted abuse. Again, this is 2021, the fall of 2021. She says in, she says 13 years earlier in 2008 while you were dating that you threw chairs across the room toward her, that you dropped her off on an interstate when she was six months pregnant and told her to get an abortion. That in 2009, 12 years earlier, after your oldest child was born, you pinned her down by her thighs and screen profanities at her, that in 2015, six years before her testimony, you tried to choke and strangle her on the couch.

and that she bit you. That in 2018, three years before her testimony, you started hitting the kids and would call them names, that you would call her crazy in front of the children. You would go into rages over little things the children did. And then she had two big allegations beginning in 2018, which I'll get to involving the children. But so far, that's what she alleged and testified to.

How do you respond to those claims? They're flat out untrue. They're false in every single way. And what I just told you is the same thing that I told the trial court. And every single one of those allegations, the alleged allegations and alleged incidences were heard in an actual hearing in 2018 in front of a judge where there was a full hearing. In fact, my attorneys at the time, because there was a PFA filed, and I don't know if your audience knows what that is, but it was a protection from abuse order. I was so committed against defending myself against these false allegations. I wouldn't settle.

I went to trial. And in that hearing, we won. And in fact, there was a Child Protective Services investigation at the time. They found the allegations to be completely unfounded. The judge at the time found the allegations to be unfounded and untrue. Everything was dismissed and then expunged. There was no contest on the expungement. And then shortly thereafter, she consented to 50.

50-50 custody, and I thought that this was all behind us. Unpacking that denial a little bit, I would expect that if indeed all of these records existed, he could make them public. He could take out this apparent finding of the judge exonerating him. He could take out this Child Protective Services report, finding that the allegations were false. He did not do that. and indeed, it turns out that the judge never made such a finding. In fact, the entire proceeding in the 2018 proceeding, this protection from abuse proceeding,

there were no court-issued findings at all, and it ended up settling. So maybe he did dispute it in court at some point, but it did not result in a judicial finding. it did not result in any exoneration of these charges, and that's exactly why the allegations were permitted to enter the record of his divorce proceedings three years later in 2021. And in those proceedings, the judge, Judge James Amor, found that Sean's ex-wife was more credible than he was and concluded that Parnell, quote, did commit some acts of abuse in the past.

End quote. The judge specifically said that Parnell's repeated blanket denials were less believable in light of the other evidence, and the judge found him to be evasive in his testimony. The judge also found that Parnell had committed the acts described by Snell that caused harm to two of the children, although the judge concluded. that because those incidents had occurred over three and a half years prior to the proceedings, it didn't merit a abuse factor in the divorce proceeding because there hadn't been any subsequent allegations over the proceeding three years and some change. And, you know, lest you

believe that Sean Parnell was somehow denied due process, he appealed the judge's custody decision and lost. And I think it bears mentioning when this all came out, right? So Sean Parnell ran for office first in 2020. He ran for Congress in Pennsylvania against Connor Lamb. And he ran as a moderate trying to appeal to disillusioned Democrats. And despite getting a Trump endorsement, despite getting a gig at the 2020 Republican National Convention, he nevertheless lost that race. And then, as all good white guy losers do, he set his sights on an even higher office and ran for the Senate. This time, though, he didn't get the chance to lose because he suspended his campaign when the abuse allegations became public. Now remember, those abuse allegations first arose way back in

2018, so he was aware of this skeleton in his closet that could emerge when he ran. He had three years to get his shit together to get some copies of all of these documents that allegedly exonerated him, and yet he failed to do so. And once his campaign, he was a lot of, you know, and once his campaign, did crash and burn. Well, here's how it was reported. Breaking news, U.S. Senate candidate, Sean Parnell says he is suspending his campaign after a Butler County family court overturned custody of his three children to his estranged wife. Parnell will have physical custody of his kids a few weekends a month. During the custody trial, Parnell was accused of physically abusing his wife and hitting their children. He denied the allegations under oath. In a statement he relates to

this afternoon. He says he plans to ask the court to reconsider its decision and wants to focus on his family rather than his campaign. Former President Trump previously endorsed Parnell's campaign. After his campaign crashed and burned, he took advantage of the humiliation and became a spokesman for culture warrior dudes who believe themselves to have been falsely accused of spousal abuse and other sexual impropriety. And he made the media circuit as a victim of the woke lynch mob. What was really difficult about all of this was that I remember being bullied as a kid a lot. I was bullied pretty horrifically, actually. And one of the things that affected me the most as a kid were my friends who I was really close with who would see me getting bullied and then maybe not do

anything or stand up for me. And for whatever reason, I just thought to myself, I'm never going to be that kind of person that sees someone that needs help or needs to be defended or is maybe weaker than me. I'd never let them stand idly by and take it. I would always stand up to defend them. And I think that was a lot of what drove me to join the military after September 11th. And it's been wired into the very fabric of who I am defending people who can't defend themselves. And since I've been out of the military, I've dedicated my life to serving other people. I think the pathway to a meaningful life is service to your fellow man and woman. And these allegations just flew in the face of all of that.

Helping the helpless. You heard it right there. keep that in mind, just put a pin in that for once we get to the substantive discussion with Matt. Dixion also became fluent in other culture war issues, like the anti-critical race theory craze that was hitting the airwave circa 2020-2020, 2021, in that hysteria spawned by the George Floyd uprisings that took place against police brutality. If you remember, although forgive you if you don't, because it was a mere blip in the news cycle,

at some point in time, the military brass was discussing the need to educate their soldiers in, I don't believe that they used the term critical race theory, but in the types of things that would now fall under the banner of DEI and Sean Parnell joined forces with friend of the pod Tucker Carlson to discuss. If you were looking for a way to destroy the United States military from the inside out without firing a shot and implement critical race theory. It's a disaster. It's dangerous. It makes it harder to accomplish the mission and ultimately I think it will cost lives on the battlefield.

When men and women raise the right hand to serve this country, they do so because they believe that America is an exceptional nation worth defending. Critical race theory undermines that because it teaches people that America is fundamentally bad, it's evil, its systems need to be reinvented because, at their core, well, they're racist. That, Tucker, is a national security threat. Well, I couldn't agree with you more.

And when you fray those bonds, when you force people to focus on what divides them, you're less effective fighting for. I mean, since you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle need to act. We should ban critical race theory from the military yesterday. We have been a colorblind culture in the United States military for almost 200 years. We've gotten a lot of things right.

Keep your politics and your social experiments out of our military and let us focus on what we were always intended to do, protecting the United States of America and winning wars. yeah Sean Parnell so nicely put thanks for coming on tonight good luck in your race thanks sir after his Senate campaign fell apart Sean Parnell may have been exiled

to the deep dark recesses of the far right podcast sphere vying to get a spot back in the limelight by humiliatingly debasing himself and glazing Trump and his hangers on to try

and ass kiss his way back in to the inner circle. And who knows if that would have been successful. But as it were, Sean Parnell caught a lucky break in the summer of 2024. I was at the July 13th rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. My wife and I were 20 feet away from President Trump when an assassin almost took his life. You know, I have been. shot at more times than I can count.

Let Americans during some of the biggest fights of the Afghan war. The courage of my troops never ceased to amaze me. Their courage inspired me to fight harder than I ever thought possible. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter how much training you have. You never actually know how you react under fire until that first bullet cracks by your head. President Trump raised his fist, blood covering his face, and he said three words that will go down in history.

And those words were what? Let me hear. I have seen men react under fire many different ways, and on July 13th in Butler, I watched Donald Trump rise to the moment in a way that few people could. And in those moments, and in that moment, he transcends. ended being just a politician, he became an American icon. I find this to be fascinating. And here's a guy who's just the most craven power-seeking type of guy imaginable. I almost think of him like a Republican version of Jonah Ryan, the character from Veep.

He's down and out after his disastrous Senate campaign. He was not invited back to the 2024. RNC. And nevertheless, he's out there supporting Trump. He goes to the rally in his home area of Butler, Pennsylvania. And, you know, who knows what happened behind the scenes. Who knows what kind of scheming this Sean Parnell may have gotten into. Again, we are not alleging anything. We are not advancing any factual assertions about Sean Parnell, but hypothetically, if I were, let's say, trying to plot a fake assassination attempt as a spectacle to present my candidate in a certain way, you know, I might look for people with some military tactical training and experience

to put in the crowd to assist with the production of that spectacle. You know, you could do a lot worse than a guy like Dick Sean to aid in the stage management of such a spectacle, hypothetically, of course. Now, after this event, of course, he was back in the Good Graces. He got invited on Don Jr.'s podcast. He got invited on Bon Gino. He got invited on, that's right, the goat, Charlie Kirk. And he joined Charlie Kirk to continue his ass-licking campaign

to get his way into the government. And whose ass is more lickable than that gin-soaked sphincter of pistol, peat, hog-sex? Because I've known Pete for over a decade. I know his wife. I know his family. I know his parents. He's an extraordinary man with an extraordinary family. And the smears against him, these are deliberate false smears are absolutely sickening.

And it's personal to me for the second reason because I've been through this. And I've been on the receiving end of false attacks elevated by the media for the express sole purpose of destroying you. And I am telling you right here. right now on this show in front of God and everybody that the allegations against this guy are completely false. He's a great man. He's a good leader. He's a reform-minded leader. He's somebody that is a threat to the defense industrial complex. And because he's a threat, he's having to endure these horrifying attacks. And it stops today. It makes me sick. Yeah, I just, again, I do this for a living. I can't even keep up with the nonsense that they're

throwing at Pete. And I just like, I just don't care. I know him. He's been so good to me. He's such a generous, sincere, patriotic person. I just, I think, I'll go, I'm going to the mat for him in any way I possibly can. It's quite humorous, again, to clock how Sean Parnell and Charlie Kirk are here talking about how Pete Hague Seth and Donald Trump are running as anti-war as a, quote, threat to the defense industrial complex, as though these guys. guys are going to wind down the U.S. Empire and make America great again as they promised. Of course, this is cult behavior. There was absolutely no evidence from the first Trump

administration to suggest that anything like that was going to happen. And of course, it appears to us absurd in hindsight because as a reward for his obsequiousness, Sean Parnell was appointed by Trump himself as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, aka Pentagon Propagandist in chief. And now, this guy Parnell is sitting in front of the mic every single day lying about a brand new, endless war for regime change, unprovoked, that Donald Trump started. Although what Matt says in his article is it's not so. so much a new war, he characterizes it as a continuation of the over 40-year-long war going on

in the Middle East, which of course has never ceased dating back at least as far back as Operation Cyclone, the arming of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets back in the late 70s, early 80s, to this very day. And, you know, we'll talk a little bit about, some of the lies that Parnell and Heggseth tell in the conversation. And I've been going on this intro for coming up on a half an hour now. Hope that it was not boring. I hope that it sets the stage well for the discussion that's to follow. And I hope that you will have enjoyed listening to just a tiny curated sampling of the hours that I, listener,

in sacrifice of my mental health sat through for you. What we've seen almost, in fact, just universally among our allies, was them congratulating the United States, the President and Secretary of Defense on that bold operation. And the idea that American action in Iran has set the conditions for global stability. They know that when America is strongly, the world is a better and more stable place. Since November 5th,

2024, the U.S. military has seen the highest recruiting percentage of mission achieved in 30 years.