Fourth Reich Archaeology - #111 - Propaganda Madness 3, Side B

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

We are back with Side B of Propaganda Madness 3, our exploration into the Pentagon’s propagandist-in-chief, Sean Parnell.  This week Don is joined by friend of the pod Matt Farwell who has quite the axe to grind when it comes to 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. Let’s Get Digging.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England 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, you're with the, is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of 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 acquire information which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one. For example, the CIA. He has a mile. He knows so long as a die. Freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis.

can never be secure. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? We're not going to the CIA. This is Fourth Reich archaeology. I'm Don. Dick is underground in a congressional skiff

receiving fake classified documents from a fake Pentagon non-employee? I don't know. I guess we'll have to figure that one out next time. Meanwhile, listener, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for doing all the things that bring our podcast to more listening ears. Those include, and please do them if you've not already, liking, rating, reviewing, subscribing to, and commenting on the pod in your podcast application of choice. we have the much Ballyhooed and promised part B of our third installment in the Propaganda Madness series

and our friend of the pod Matt Farwell is back for this one. Remember there was Side A published last week which consisted of an introduction to Sean Parnell the subject of Matt Farwell's recent Hunt for Tom Clancy substack dispatch on the Pentagon spokesman who allegedly beat his wife and children, allegedly. If you've not yet listened to Side A of this episode, please go back and do that now, because it's really our way of showing and not telling you who Sean Parnell is and what kind of bullshit he is on about. Because in my discussion with Matt, we do discuss Parnell, but we really zoom out and talk about the larger picture of where propaganda stands today and this trajectory

that were tracing in the target audience of official government propaganda, of war propaganda, you know, whereas once upon a time in the days of Dulles, in the days of Bernays, the propaganda was sophisticated, it targeted the educated, the elite, to sell the wars of empire on offer from the United States of America. Well, now it seems like the brow has lowered and so has the average net worth of the target recipient of war propaganda. Now is that part of a cult around this MAGA movement could be. We get into it. We get into a lot, lot more.

We think you're going to enjoy it. and we certainly hope that you will, and we encourage you to sound off in the comments and leave any feedback that you have. Thanks again, listener, and now, before any further ado, let's get digging. What we've seen, in fact, just universally among our allies, was them congratulating the United States,

the president and secretary of defense on that bullet operation, and the idea that American action in Iran has set the conditions for global stability. They know that when America is strong and speaks, clearly the world is a better and more stable place. It was at the July 13th rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. My wife and I were 20 feet away from President Trump. You dropped her off on an interstate when she was six months pregnant

and told her to get an abortion. When an assassin almost took his life. You pinned her down by her thighs and screamed profanities at her. You tried to choke and strangle her on the couch and that she bit you. 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. And in 2018, three years before her testimony, you started hitting the kids and call them names.

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. Matt Farwell, the hunt for Tom Clancy. Our listeners may know that Matt was the very first guest on the podcast, and he is back now for a very special third appearance. welcome Matt well thank you as I sit here in a Salt Lake City observing the sun go down past a tall power with a pyramid on top that's the Wells Fargo building and the Utah State cap God it's so beautiful out here and I'm I'm coming into this podcast with so much I like before

we get into the meat of the podcast they used to you know which is going to involve some higher I'm coming into this with so much love in my heart man and it's partially a not partially, it's because of this. I have fallen in love, and I believe this podcast had something to do with it. I had the most amazing summer, and I drove across the country. I went to eventually wound up in Sag Harbor, New York, listened to Harlet's Ghost on the way out, listen to Moie Dick on the way back, recommend both, fell in love, picked up Rosicrucian artifacts from a woman in Crossville, Tennessee,

had mystical experiences, and I'm really. writing all about it in a real weird way on the hunt for Tom Clancy. So I encourage everyone to subscribe, help me live this crazy life because weird shit keeps happening to me. And I'll keep telling you about it. I'm a magnet for it. It's amazing. And yeah, I'm going to get into more detail on all that later, but I figured, you know, plug my American Odyssey series first. Absolutely. And we've said it before. We'll say it again. If you're not already, please do go to Substack and subscribe to The Hunt for Tom Clancy for just a plethora, a smorgas board of content that you will guaranteed enjoy.

And likewise to Fourth Reich Archaeology, because they're doing great work, you know? Well, thank you very much, my friend. And you heard it here first, folks. We are also an amateur matchmaking service here on Fourth Reich Archaeology. So to all of the single folks out there, particularly the single folks to whom we have extended an invitation to appear on the pod, you might want to give that a second thought. You might want to come on because your future in love could be right here with your boys. You never know how it's going to go, man.

Life is pretty sweet. It sure is. I mean, really the world that we live in, it's a weird, a mysterious and dare I say a wonderful place. On this cosmic playground, we're all just children trying to have a good time and trying to avoid the bullies and the jerks like the subject of today's episode. Oh, man. Maybe that would be a good transition to the episode itself.

Although, Matt, you have brought up now a handful of the many episode ideas. that we have rattling around for your future on forthright archaeology. Yeah, Mad Men. Harlot's Ghost. We got to do Harlot's Ghost. Oh my God, no, I got to write up a dispatch on it because it is so fucking good. I could not believe it. And, like, you know, I spent all that time in the archives, like, really learning. And, like, hanging out with the offspring of Frank Wisner,

which we're going to talk about today, actually, because a lot of that shit goes back to it. But, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. So many more episodes yet to be done together and to any military ghouls out there who might be listening, please do not shorten our boys' life.

Oh, come on. No, look, look, here's the thing. Here's the thing, actually. Like, I've stated this in writing before and I've stated it on podcast. there's like one institution in America I like actually love and it's the United States Army right like I was a soldier in the Army I'm proud of that I'm not proud of like some of the like bullshit and I'm not proud of like a lot of the bad things and I've devoted a lot of my career

to making sure that that institution is better and I've done it at like you know pretty high stakes to myself. I don't look we all um when I went to ESP camp you know the Monroe Institute last year one of the one of the messages that came through was that I'm going to die a horrible death and you know I don't know entirely what form that'll take and I don't know how woo everyone is but the ESP shit's real and you can like try it out yourself um but like I don't know so look everyone's got to go at some point and if people can't take some valid criticism without like, you know, getting weird, then, you know, maybe those people shouldn't be in positions of power.

That's right. And one person whom I've spent an ungodly amount of time studying up on the subject of one of your most recent hunt for Tom Clancy dispatches and the sort of subject of this episode is a guy who I think definitely should not be in a position. position of power. I'm talking, of course, about Richard Sean Parnell. We might call him Dick Sean. We might call him Richard. We might call him any series of names throughout the episode. I knew him as a lieutenant Parnell. Okay. I suppose we could call him that too if we wanted to be extra respectful. No, I mean, not really. I don't know. He's not in the army anymore and he's not

that rank anymore. But that's how I first was introduced to him. We went to war together. Yeah. He was in a different company. I didn't know him all that well. But like, you know, all of us like e-dogs hung out after after the war. So I don't lot. Yeah. So why don't you just start out at the beginning, you know, talk about how did you first become aware of this guy? What is your inside line on this fella? and we can start sort of at square one and then zoom out from there to talk a little bit more broadly about the function of military propaganda and where it's at today. Well, and also, look, I, like, Barnell sucks, and he's the Pentagon spokesperson. And I have a real, like, he and I were both in 287 infantry and went over to Afghanistan.

In 2006 and 2007, we served a really long deployment. He mentions it as 485 days. And that's what ignited me, actually, was, you know, again, we were at different places. They were at Burmell, and I'm not taking anything away from the guys at Burmelt. Like, that shit was fucked up. That was a hard place to be. Those guys had a hard time. About 12 months into the war.

this is the Afghanistan, Pakistan, border region. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's where that is. And it was a hot zone, you know. It was bad. They took a lot of shit.

And they got in a lot of what we call ticks, troops in contact, like firefights. Like it was, so, you know, and my platoon, I was first platoon Delta company for the first 12 months. And then I became like, someone figured out I could fucking type. And I became the like commanders RTO. and like the training room NCO. So I'd ride the gun whenever the commander went out, but like hang out and fucking do paperwork and like send SipperNet messages, you know, when we were,

which was kind of a nice break after a year at war, actually. But my boys went to Bermel and they're like, oh, it was fucked up Farwell. You know, like they'd give me shit all the time. So again, like Sean Parnell served in a hard place, right? And he was a lieutenant. He was in charge of, you know, about 40 dudes, squads. So he had a real responsibility there too, right? And, you know, I wasn't with him in any combat, so I can't comment on any of that. But I can say that other people that were at those places

were like, I got about a quarter of a way through his book, which is a self-serving piece of shit written by Ghost Writer, that, you know, like, we all just kind of thought, like, oh, he's a fucking blowhard, right? And I really, in this, don't want to, like, constant too much on like the gossip column aspect of it right like I happen to have a unique window into this guy's like psychology and persona right and I happen to know what like people who served with them think and he referenced that to like support some bullshit political thing about like the Lincoln or whatever and it piss me off right so yeah I sat down and wrote a screed my my one friend that um used to uh uh

work in the Bush administration sent me a thing where she was like, let me see if I could find it. Was I the first person to send you the Sean tweet? God, I knew it would light a fuse, ha. And I replied, half his guys are dead or on the dole. Aren't Republicans supposed to not want to put people on disability for life? You know, I mean, and that's where I come from it. The thing that really fucking pissed me off is I wrote this article for Harper's. a couple of years ago, two years ago, three years ago. It was when I was kind of a bad time of my life, going through a divorce, do-do-do. And I went down to like the worst fucking place

in the United States, Wichita Falls, Texas. Because one of Sean's soldiers, who was like, basically like enlisted in the Army right out of high school as like a scrawny little dude, right? named Keenlin was facing like some charges because you know he tried to kill himself his wife called the cops the cops had come he decided he didn't want the cops to do anything and you know he had some training so he holds him all off with a rifle he might have shot down their drone you know like basically like you know that guy was going through it and you know who wasn't there for him

platoon leader, Sean. Now I'm not saying like us as soldiers or veterans or like, you know, just men need to like be babysitters for each other, right? And there's certainly like people I know in my life from my service that I'm like, look, you're either got to shape your shit up or like I can't talk to you anymore. But you can intellectually know that and you can be sitting in a fucking prison cell or jail like interrogation. or, you know, lawyer room with big, like, bulletproof glass things and, like, bulkhead type, like submarine battleship looking, like, you know, hatches in there. You're sitting in there with, like, a Texas lawyer and across from you is, like, a dude that you

went to war with didn't know all that well. Didn't fucking actually know. But still, like, you share pretty common, like, you share an experience that's pretty uncommon. And, um, you know, I saw the look in that guy's eyes when I was like, hey, it's about Parnell ever contacted you? And that's why I put it in that Harper's piece. Like, you know, all of this, even the substack screen I wrote, which I noticed the whole Pentagon Press Corps subscribed after that.

So we'll see if they treat them any differently. Probably not. But anyhow, you know, to sit in there and like see this dude's eyes and just see how like, you know, shitty he felt. And basically like, Sean was a father figure to that guy. And, you know, much like with his other kids, he was a disappointing one. I just monologued, huh? Jesus Christ.

We love a good guest monologue here on Fourth Reich Archaeology. And I think, Matt, that this is what our listeners have come to expect and love when you come on the pod. So don't sweat it. maybe now would be a good time for you to elaborate on what you mean when you talk about his children not respecting him yeah like like look i knew uh i knew the reason sean's not a senator is because portions of his divorce came public where like his wife was making you know allegations under perjury being choked and like you know being physically abused in front of the children and I mean, I think that should disqualify you probably from being the spokesman for the Pentagon as well.

But, you know, I don't make the rules. But I do wonder, again, like, this thing was written with a pretty targeted audience, right? Like, I have a message to Sean Parnell at the bottom. I don't expect that it'll read it because I don't really think he can read. but it was mostly targeted towards, like, as a lot of my work is sometimes, towards prompting my esteemed colleagues in the media to maybe like quit begging for scraps and go after something. Yeah, it seems to me especially necessary with this Pentagon

that has so restricted access to the briefing room and has imposed all of these additional restraints on the flow of information and has really undertaken great efforts to try and control the narrative. And so sucking at that teet seems like it's going to be a pretty dry well. Yeah, but even with that, like, they'll all pawn it off on fucking Trump, right? And like, and the changes in the Pentagon. But it ain't that, man. It's like briefings were also a tool to control, right?

The real way that you investigate the Pentagon or look at what the Pentagon is doing is generally, not actually from Washington, D.C., right? Because that's where you get told what it's doing. Then you go out to where they're actually doing shit, and you talk to the people around there, and guess what? The story is often dramatically different. Like American cipher, my book, which I'll plug here to, like, I don't give a shit if you buy it or not, steal it from a bookstore. I don't, you know, I'm never going to out earn that advance, probably because I got a little bit of Pentagon or CIA money for it. I'm starting to get paranoid, as you can say. No, not really.

I'm just learning how the game works. But if, you know, they would go out and actually like look at things and figure things out. And there are few that do a pretty good job with it. But institutional support generally means these, the press institutions, like what we call the legacy media, is an extension of all of this at this point. right their consent manufacturing machine yet this reminds me of something that you and i were discussing off mike which is the multiple ways in which this pentagon propaganda machine controls the narrative or at least sets out to do so so maybe we could kind of talk about different buckets of narrative different mechanisms.

So one mechanism that we've been talking about is the briefing room where you have these professional propagandists like Sean Parnell. I wouldn't call him a professional. I'd say he's in the job. Okay, well, maybe we could call him a media mercenary then in that case. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, that's a good thing. And another one of the levers.

that the Pentagon information machine has at its disposal is out in the field where they force journalists to embed alongside troops, where they have information officers assigned to journalists to sort of handle them and to control the message that they're putting out, to keep them in line with the official narrative. And then the third means, I suppose, would be, and talk about getting paranoid again here, the either explicit or implicit threat to take action of some kind against journalists who stray from the message. Yeah, but they're not going to do anything.

I mean, look, look, they, I took one of the things, like, I heard some of them were like, wait, isn't that the guy that did, like, acid at AUSA? I'm like, no, it was mushrooms. But, like, dude, I was tripping balls on mushrooms in a suit in front of these people like four or five years ago. AUSA, this giant, like, Blood Merchant Fest. It's, if you want to, like, really understand what the hunt for Tom Clancy is about, read Fear and Self Loathing with the Merchants of Death or listen to me to it in audio. But, like, it's a vibe.

And I think you like the vibe, honestly. It's a pretty good vibe. but um like i'm standing there tripping balls i'm wearing a business suit but like you know that's how you blended and none of and i'm telling them and none of them are like they're like no you didn't like no i'm telling you i took like a shitload of psychedelic mushrooms and like your face is melting right now you know we're like spinning actually but like it it took like the effort and persuasion. Finally, it was a, there was a guy that, like, you know, photographer. Photographers are always weirdos. But I'm a photographer that did like bluegrass festivals and he came over and he's like,

oh shit. Like you looked at my eyes and he's like, can I photograph your eye? And I'm like, yeah, fuck it. Why not? So he did. But like that's, you know, and the guy I learned how to do journalism from, you know, God rest his soul, Michael Hastings. When he wrote the piece about McCriss, They got McChrystal fired. McChrystal was the commander in Afghanistan a long time ago for people who don't pay attention to minute bullshit with the empire. But, yeah, it was a story for a while. Revived a little bit in the Seth Harp book, The Fort Bragg Cartel. Oh, was it? Yeah, he talks about McChrystal as one of the architects of the special obsification of war fighting.

Oh, yeah, well, I don't know. I haven't read Seth. book. I wonder how much one of my darker suspicions with that one, speaking of paranoia, is there's like two factions of that special operations community. There's like the drug dealing pirate

psychopaths and then like the fundo Christian like warriors that want to parachute into the temple mount with the tactical nuke so they can like bring on the next temple or whatever or the dome the rock you know. Yeah, the rapture the second coming. Yeah, yeah. And that

book really did well and really weakened one faction and like I don't know like drug dealing pirates are kind of preferable like Knights Templar gone rogue but that's just me you know I mean like always examine who benefits no I mean it's also because like listen I wrote a I wrote a book for I believe the same publisher that didn't do nearly as well and this isn't out of jealousy at all actually I wish Seth all the professional success in the world but add like this caveat to it which which is I noticed reading through my book, which I'm proud of and you should read. But there are certain things where, boy, I'm pretty sure I put that in the draft and it did not get into the final version.

You know? And so, and this actually like feeds into our larger thing, which is Sean Parnell is this Pentagon spokesman. But maybe the Pentagon moves in mysterious ways, right? The Pentagon sponsors movies, who's seen Top Gun, Transformers, you know, like whatever. They do video games. The Institute for Creative Technology at University of Southern California is essentially like a digital weapons lab. And people wonder why like all the young men are so right wing. They've been fucking like raised on call of duty learning history from that where like,

Oliver North fucking rules. And like, listen, actually, in some ways, Oliver North does fucking rule. Like, the shit he was able to do, you're like, God damn, bro. But, like, it's a multi-axis approach. And I sound insane, I think, when I talk to people about this,

if I don't, like, give a broad thing. But basically, look, during World War II, this country went to fucking lockdown. Right? Like, shit you can't imagine. Or like most of the listeners can't imagine. Rationing of like sugar and fucking pantos and silk and like steel drives, nail drives, and media control and censorship and rounding up your Japanese neighbors so that you can steal their farm or their like hotel in the Pacific Northwest, right?

Real bad shit. We put a significant portion of the Western population in concentration camps. Okay? That's World War II. Right? People romanticize it, but it was fucked up. And it was fucked up domestically. Actually, Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, was out in northern Utah, southern Idaho as an Army counterintelligence officer working those kind of beats, right? So the legacy continues. The legacy continues in other ways as well.

One way is the Manhattan Project, highly fucking secret, media control. They were able to censor Superman comics that mentioned atomic energy, right? That shit didn't ever go away, that kind of censorship. The other thing was in the late 40s, early 50s, as I explained in parts on a, the Hut for Tom Clancy, or I did my master's thesis on it, if you want to read a master's thesis on Virginia's website. But Frank Wisner in the Office of Policy Coordination basically to do. decided the threat from the Soviets was the common turn.

Like, you know, and all the things the common turn was doing, sponsoring cultural shit, sponsoring like publishing actors, plays, you know, whatever. We had to out common turn the common turn, but do it without any Americans knowing. Right. And so he quietly assumed control of majority stakes in the New York Times, The Washington Post, he was best friends with Phil Graham. They both committed suicide within two years of each other with the same type of weapon and the same psychiatric diagnoses.

Same way Hemingway killed himself, right? It's an interesting time. For the uninitiated listener, we're talking, of course, about a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. Yeah, trigger warning. literally. And so, you know, but I read through all these files, man. And like, there's one where an OSS guy writes a book that, like, criticizes the intelligence community a little bit.

And this, like, OSS guy that's now down in North Carolina working on a paper, writes a letter to Wisner being like, hey, if you send me some rat poison, I can feed it to this guy. It's what he deserves. And then, you know, the files are arranged alphabetically. and like by subject matter. And so you look through and you see what the next like correspondence from this guy is. And my dear Mr. Wisner, I've been, uh, is a year later. Like my dear Mr. Wistner, I've become the chief Washington correspondent for the New York

Times. And I just have to have to thank you for that. I suspect you and Gordon Gray had something to do with that. Right? Amazing. The merry go round. Yeah. It's just, it's, and people, people think that having like coercive control over industries

is like real hard or real impossible, but it's not, man. You just have to like control the right people, right? And so if you have the executive editor of a magazine or a publication or the executive producer of a TV show or the star of a TV show or whatever on the payroll, well, they can direct the action and no one will know. And if you don't think that shit's being done like you're naive, frankly at this point. Like that shit's being done on different axes now. that are way more sophisticated.

Yeah, I suppose you could call it sort of a public-private partnership, one of our favorite types of partnership here on the pod, whereby those narrative controllers within the halls of power, within the government institutions that we were just talking about, are able to seamlessly integrate with the so-called private media in ways that go unpersexual. received to the untrained eye. Yeah, yeah, I think that sums it up.

And within this dynamic, you know, looking at the quote-unquote work that Sean Parnell has done in this so-called job of his, you think back to the old days, to Wisner's Day, for example, there was a certain elon to what the professionals were doing. You know, there was a finesse, a refinement, an erudition, about the type of propaganda that they were putting out and the way that they were disseminating it. Yeah, no, the quality's gone down, but it's pro wrestling now, though.

It also, like, quality doesn't matter. What matters is what works. And so what worked at a certain point was appealing to, like, cultural elites, right, with your message. It doesn't work quite that way anymore. And so, like, basically, they script a large, like, pro wrestling narrative and like run people through it. Mm-hmm.

Say more about that. Well, I mean, if you're like, okay, I put up a tweet the other day that like where I was like, okay, ISIS, right, the, you know, the fearsome terrorist group in the Middle East was a proxy group run by the Central Intelligence Agency, right? Run up the top. Now, like, were the like foot soldiers legitimately jihadists that wanted to kill West. and shit? Sure, of course. You want them under your control, right? Because then you go and have them fuck up shit that you don't like want to be blamed for and you can't be messed with. Yeah, it's a

classic misdirection, straw manning. Yeah. You hear it all the time and conspiracy discussions. Like, oh, you're saying that every single person involved was willingly doing this big thing that you're alleging? No, of course not. Like, no. Of course not. But I'm saying that they're leadership who were, like, released from behavioral modification programs on, like, in U.S. prisons on military bases were probably under our operational control. In fact, I know they were. And people can believe me or not, but I ask you to, like, just consider this simple metric with it. How many times did ISIS attack, like, Israel are really into Jordan?

The listener can check me on this, but I'm pretty sure the number is zero. Check out that statistic. See how weird that is. you know and then like and also if you want to get weirder with it ask yourself why president Obama wouldn't say the word ISIS but preferred ISIL because you know I mean ISIS is a very important goddess in a certain ancient Egyptian religious rights you know so I don't know if it was a like concern over blasphemy or what but I always found it curious I also always found it curious ISIS had like Toyota's from Texas and M4s and shit.

That was weird. You know, and really good branding. Like just that kind of popped out of nowhere almost like a marketing campaign. Thank you to. ISIS couldn't have done it without him. Yeah. Yeah, it's just strange how like, you know, and then how, huh. And then almost like some of that technology's been brought home, you know, weird.

Yeah. I mean, their online recruitment efforts were sort of prototypical. They set the mold for the type shit we see today with school shooters getting radicalized on discord or whatever. Or just anyone, I mean, even like anyone on social media, right? Like you're being hurt in one direction or the other. It's a platform created by the Pentagon and spied on and directed. You know, it's bad for all of us. We should all get off of it.

We all make part of our living through it, and it sucks, and we're trapped in this web. Yeah, same as it ever was in a lot of ways. Same as it ever was. And that's sort of what I want to get back to now. So we've talked about the pro wrestling WWE paradigm of political discourse, of military discourse and war propaganda. And, you know, that's something that we called out on episode one of, this podcast, I think, and have been hammering ever since. But I think it's really useful to consider it, as you were saying, in terms of the shift in target audience and the demographic shift

in the target audience of propaganda away from the sort of global elite towards a different audience. And it's interesting. You've also described this as a podcaster-occupied government, which I think... Fuck, dude, it is, man. No, I was on the... I went to the Great American State Fair with the beautiful woman this summer

and we were like, we're walking up the National Mall and Dr. Oz is out there like talking about the benefits of milk like on the National Ball while there's like four people watching because it's like 105 degrees. One of his staffers is in a suit

and like just, you know, like burning up. up and I tease them a little bit about bad staff work. Meanwhile, there's like a robot dog down the way being driven by a department energy guy from fucking Los Alamos. The tourists are gawking at. This is Don coming to you from post-production. Just want to say that at this point in the interview, Matt was perhaps taken away to that special mental place on the National Mall under 105-degree Fahrenheit Heat with that beautiful woman that he met through our podcast. And, well, as happens often to our distractible friends, his eyes drifted to the page in front of him, which was the

outline. And he picked a question to answer, which I think is just great, and I think it's a good question. But before we get to the Q and A portion of the interview, let's all take a little brain break, and perhaps we might even take this moment to send a text to our neurodivergent and distractible friends and loved ones to let them know how much we love and appreciate their special ways of seeing and being in the world and all the ways they enrich our lives. Now enjoy this musical interlude from the great psychedelic Mediterranean Crout Rock group Duri Dava. Okay, wait, I'm looking at your outline right now, and it's, I know you're in the military,

you're a critic, but you're a guy who straddles the line a little bit and is able to be friendly. I think some in our listening audience might be distrustful, or you're even disdainful of such an approach. What do you say in response? How do you justify having a rapport with actual fascist? Wait, are we talking about the fact that I, like, text back and forth with Steve Bannon occasionally and, like, had dinner with him a couple of times? to, for example, is that what we're talking about?

That seemed to really, I went on truon. That seemed to annoy a lot of people that, like, I talk with people. Yeah, I mean, dude, I can go everywhere. I talk with anyone. I want to learn shit. I want to learn how the world works. And the way you don't learn how the world works is by sticking in your fucking bubble according to some sort of purity test.

And so, like, yeah, anyone listening to this? I hang out with fucking everyone all the time. And I learn a lot, man. And, you know, if you got a problem with that, you should come hang out with me. It can vouch that you're a fun guy to hang out with. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But another part of the question, and you've talked about being paranoid, and obviously your reporting pokes a finger in the eye of a lot of factions within the establishment

and pisses some powerful people off powerful people who have a reputation for doing very nasty things to people that piss them off and so i think that's part of the question too do you ever worry about your exposure well i mean like look we're in the world right that we live in where when I'm up at any of the universities, every classroom is wired for sight and sound under the pretext of being good for Zoom or something. We carry spy devices in our pockets, and we're recorded on multiple cameras with casino level

or what was like good casino level like security, right? So am I being watched? Yeah, we all are. Do I let it bother me? No, because part of the thing with surveillance is surveillance is a control mechanism. And so if you let it change the way you think, act, or do things, then it's one. So, like, that also means, like, hey, if you're doing shit, like, you're super ashamed of

and you're in a position of power, you better be, like, ready for that shit to come out, right? Like, live a life you're proud of. I actually do live a life I'm proud of. That's why I write about it. It's weird shit, man. Just, you know, so, yeah, that's, and I get it. And I understand, and I actually have a lot of sympathy for it, because I think people have been deliberately programmed in a lot of ways

to be openly hostile to each other over, like, differences in politics. And I'm not saying, like, look, I lived in Germany. I'm Swiss German, but, like, my Swiss German people came over in the 1600s. They were the good Germans. They're pacifists. They, like, fucking didn't eat meat. you know they wrote abolitionist

tracks they negotiated their land from the natives that were there right but that that background also makes me fucking despise like some of the people that stayed there

and became Nazis right because they're the same fucking people that made my family refugees so there's a line right like if I'm you know I I don't go to and like, like, found myself one time I accidentally in an Aryan Nations bar. And it was like, fuck, I got to get out of here, man.

Like, Jesus Christ, I didn't know what this was. You know, so that's what I'm saying. Like, also, they're, like, they're actual, like, fascists and there are people you disagree with. And, like, sometimes, like, you know, that definition is blurred. Sure, but, like, people in this administration, like, Higseth and the other mouthpieces. I mean, those guys. Because I think Bannon's a Bolshevik, personally.

And I can explain why. Sorry, I interrupted you. Go ahead. Run with it. Okay, he said that he's a Leninist, right? He said it in the past. The way, if you look at Doge and the way that Doge was executed, and you compare that with something called the Rabcrin during the Russian Revolution,

which for some reason we had to study extensively at my Illuminati school in New Mexico, founded by the King of England. But if you look at that, that's almost identical to Doge. In like they just bring in a bunch of fucking ideological idiots to fuck shit up, right, deliberately and see what's strong enough to stay. His goal is bringing down institutions. But he's a military guy. He's a Navy guy.

And he worked for the like chief of naval law. operations in the same capacity, by the way, Bob Woodward worked for him. So I think Bannon, as a military guy, looked out of the field, assessed it, and said, hmm, path to power to do what I want, which way works best, and he saw that the right wing was easier to manipulate to his ends. And so he went that way. I'll remind people that Stalin Stalin fucking

forcibly relocated a whole bunch of like Volga Germans to Kazakhstan Like there's similarities Um Okay You like that? That threw you for a loop, huh?

I'm trying to get back on track Oh okay, okay, sorry We can we can no I just I do I do feel like I went on and I read comments after the last time I went on Trinon and notice like man a lot of people got bad over that and like I get it like that's fine you can be bad at me that's protect your anger on me that's great but you know understand the spirit in which I do things and understand that like I'm here talking to you about it and telling you what these people are like like are you going to go do this you're not

I am yeah absolutely and better you than me my friend better you than me to bring it back around, setting aside any analogy to the Soviet Union, where I'm pretty sure that no Bolsheviks were stealing data from the government and giving it to billionaires and their companies. But to the Doge point again, do you think that Bannon was driving that? Well, I will note that I began communication with Bannon when he seemed to be a little more of a cast out and he was out west because he has a good relationship

with a Navajo Nation which is weird but and then and we had hatched a plan I wanted to like go from Roswell New Mexico to Los Alamos, New Mexico with them and profile him. You know like driving a car and do that. People are more open

when they're in the car like you know the venue would have been great would have taken us right past Epstein's ranch like you know I think about these things. He added on that like he wanted to go to area 51 and we were kind of serious about it. And then he went dark and that was when he moved to DC and I tracked him down there and like chatted with him a little bit. And it was right around the time they were getting musk out. So I don't have any like, you know, this is me just noting timing and movements of people and events. But my

impression was that he was brought in to deal with Musk and get Musk out like, you know, kind of blunt instrument, blunt instrument in, blunt instrument out. And so then things never came to fruition. And now it seems he's back entrenched in D.C. You know, he was just out of prison when I first saw him and he looked good. He, you know, he looked healthy, all that. Like, it's been a decline. But I don't know.

I find him interesting. I find him compelling. I also found Mike Flynn interesting and compelling and went and like, hung out with him. One of my interests is people that are kind of different than me. Yeah, but apart from those people, we were talking earlier about Sean Parnell and his boss, of course, Pete Hegeseth. Oh, they just seem boring. The guy I want to hang out within the Pentagon is fucking Steve Feinberg because he really runs it.

And he's evil, like probably one of the most evil Americans, you know, like alive currently because Cheney's dead, right? Oh, yeah, he's dead. Yeah, so like Feinberg's a real bad dude. And I would totally hang out with him. Yeah, and this is something that I talked with Douglas Valentine about when he was on the podcast, and folks listening, if you've not, you should definitely give that episode a listen. Doug Valentine, the author of The Phoenix Program, among many other books, especially about U.S. government involvement and CIA involvement in particular in the drug trade

and other criminal endeavors. but talked with Doug about how it impacted him to talk to these guys who had been running death squads, who had been running drug rings in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as part of the Phoenix program. And, you know, how he chose to do that nevertheless. I mean, yeah, it also, like, I was a trained professional practitioner of violence and killer for the government. Like, you know, my, I guess my sense of, like, what is acceptable or not, it might be different than other people. And I think that leads into your next thing, right? Which was, would I recommend people serve in the military today?

I don't know. Like, the, like, on a pragmatic level, it seems probably like a bad. deal actually like you know try and get out of that if you were going to go into it coast guard seems like a pretty good place actually they treat their people pretty good they got a good mission you know it's been a mission that they've run like since alexander hamilton founded them as the cutter revenue service well haven't they been like blowing people up like fishermen in the caribbean as part of this alleged war on drugs oh is that the coast guard i think that's the navy I think that's the Navy.

I think that they're coordinating at least. I don't know if they're pulling the trigger. But I don't know. Yeah, I mean, Coast Guard kills people too. They all kill people. Like, sorry, guys, no one in America is pure. You're all fucking feeding the blood machine and killing people. It just is up to, like, how you're doing it.

Yeah, speaking of the blood machine, I think that's a good pivot to start talking about some of the lies going around now about what killing is. being done by the U.S. Empire and by whom that killing is being done. Nerds driving drones. Yeah. And of course, some of those drones are headed for the Middle East to the so-called war in Iran. The economic action in Iran? It's all just a pump and dump scheme, man.

And like what was surprising for me on this cross-country trip I took was I rolled down to the Higree Apache Nation in New Mexico. And I hadn't been there in a while since like my friend and Shana, my brother, Monty, it's like funeral. And so I went by to see Monty's sister. And I got to go down there for Gia next month, which should be cool. but like the Higri Apache Nation is loving the war in Iran right now because they're oil and natural gas producers, right? And so like, gee, this is going to be sick this year because like the coffers are full from prices, right?

So from oil prices. And like that game is being run on like multiple levels and multiple ways. And I think what like people should kind of understand about just the larger Pentagon national security stuff right now, is the Pentagon's being run like a venture capital fund, right? And it's being run to make money for people. And that money is being made in weird ways. And part of like the Straits of Hormuz thing is oil futures markets and current oil markets and just market manipulation.

Right. And it's interesting how these spokespeople play a role in concealing all of that and in creating this sort of alternative. universe, this alternate reality where none of the actual motivations of the people in power are accounted for in any way at all. They're simply made up justifications for everything that they're doing and all the decisions that they're making. And looking at this situation now, you know, we've talked on this pod about the extreme levels of dishonesty that we're seeing, but I wonder from your point of view, do you think that the relationship, with the truth of these guys has meaningfully changed from the past?

No, I mean, okay, I remember being on a, on Bob Sharana one day and like, you know, my platoon's argument comes up to me and like far well, you got to go get a coin from the commanding general. And like they would send me up to get coins sometimes because I could talk to people, you know? And, um, yeah, a coin is like some video game sounding shit. Yeah, a coin is like, it's not a metal, right? It's like a personalized token. It's, it is made of like metal and resin and stuff. But like it's a personalized token from a command.

And they'll give them out as like, add a boy and a good job. I got a desktop holder on, you know, full of coins on my shit downstairs in my apartment. But so I get a coin from General Eikenberry, who's at Stanford now. But he was ambassador Eikenberry afterwards. But Eichenberry came out.

out there, man, and gave us this like long fucking weird motivational speech that was like, he's an awkward dude. He's really smart. And he speaks Chinese and he's like probably a good spy. But is it like motivational speaker. He's a little bit lacking. But he was just given this like long extended sports metaphor like football shit for, for the war in Afghanistan.

And, you know, he was supposed to rally us up, right? And that's basically what like Pete Hague says. and those guys you're doing. But my last couple of years in the Army, like when I really went nuts, I had a fucking office job working around a bunch of generals. And I was, like, the command sergeant major is driver, like speechwriter and general all-around guy.

And basically these guys would go make site visits, right? And they're lower ranking the Secretary of Defense. But those things wind up being a huge pain in the ass for the unit, and everyone hates them, right? Like even the people that are getting like ostensibly rewarded. It's fucking stressful. You got to like clean your room in case like the secretary of defense comes in to like inspect your bed. You know, like that's some weird shit, right?

And so it's not for the benefit of the troops. It's for the benefit of all the like kind of like pussy dudes in their like 30s and 40s that never signed on the dotted line to go kill people in a resource rich area of the country. you know, like I did, but that like go out and shoot competitively or like, you know, fucking do rucks or, you know, do all this like pseudo, oh, we support the troops, rah, rah, r stuff. And that's like the audience it's aimed at. Because like that audience of like insecure dudes is like Trump's power base. Yeah. But do you think that this messaging is still effective? Like does it have legs? Yeah, I mean, actually, yeah, yeah, I do. Because from my perspective, I mean, just the size, scale, and transparency of all of these lies is like too much to hold. Every single day, it seems that they're saying how much the U.S. is winning the war, how the Strait of War moves is under U.S. control, how Iran is begging for the war to end. And it's like none of that is true.

and it's in fact demonstrably false. And it just seems to me like some cracks are starting to form in the dam. And it's got a burst at some point. I mean, don't you think so? No, man, you got to spend more time around cultists, man. Like, no. Like, come on, man. There have been multiple cults throughout American history

where, like, the leader has fucking prophesied that the world was going to end. And it didn't. And guess what? The cult went on because they'd invested so much of their, like, identity in things that, like, you just kind of keep going with it and clapping along. And so, like, for the people that see that it's bullshit, yeah, it's bullshit. For the people that don't see that it's bullshit, it's hurrah. Right, but it seems that the little cracks are opening up in places that could pierce the veil, like with the ship stuff. for example, that you have these SOS signals coming from troops aboard naval destroyers like waist deep in human excrement.

I'm so glad I wasn't in the Navy. Like, that sucks. No, I mean, look, there's a cynical way to look at this where, you know, the military is being almost deliberately run ragged while certain domestic paramilitary organizations are being given a lot of shit, right? Now, the military, the United States Army, I'll note, precedes the United States and gave birth to the United States, the Continental Army, right? Like, the Army at its core is loyal to, like, America. Whatever that means. Yeah, I guess, right?

Like, you know, I mean, but they, uh, there's, there's a portion of the army that takes, like, the Constitution as it has written, like, fairly seriously. And that's more than I can say for a lot of the government, right? What about the National Guard? I think governors should probably, like, do a better job of asserting their control over, you know, their state troops and maybe take, you know, like, there's a lot of political actors involved. And I have a lot of sympathy for military dudes, right? I am one. I'm from one. And so, like, yeah, I feel bad for those dudes, and I don't like the policymakers that keep jerking them around.

But that's been, like, the history. But, I mean, how could you feel bad for these guys that are out there, like, arresting teenagers in D.C. metro stations and on the street corner and completely tearing up Posse Cometadas prohibition against military enforcement of dementia. laws. Well, I mean, I can say that the, like, boys from the Idaho National Guard that I interacted with outside the Krispy cream at DuPont Circle were, like, really nice. And I'm a, like, white guy wearing a suit and a cowboy hat. I get that. But, like, you know, I would say that they have bad leadership. They shouldn't be doing that shit. And I don't like, I was in D.C. this summer. DC looks like the fucking green zone, right? Like, But the thing I would like people to understand is that we've essentially been under military dictatorship since like 45 and you're just seeing it.

And so like wake up everybody and kind of grow up and realize what you're dealing with and realize who your enemies are and who is persuadable. Hmm. And who do you think is persuadable? I wonder what your thoughts are on the military as a source of political change in the United States. I remember hearing many, many years ago, I think it was Matt Christman on Chappo Trap House talking about a general's coup of some kind, displacing the ruling class in the U.S. and being the surest and only real possible way to a revolution. and I remember not really agreeing with that at the time.

I mean, I quite like the resolution to seven days in May. You know, I'm a big believer in civilian control of the military. Okay, so who does that leave then? You know, who will be the force that stands up against these malign forces that seem so hell-bent on suppressing and controlling all of us? I think that that leaves the American citizen, right? That leaves you and me and like our brothers and sisters up and down the street. And, you know, who we like see at the gas station and who we see at the supermarket and who we see like just out in our daily life.

And I guess like, yeah, that might be a good way to kind of wrap this up is just with a, you know, like, look, I've traveled. across the country this summer. I've done it a lot. I'm everywhere and I'm talking to everyone. I'm able to float between like socioeconomic groups through like racial groups, through like cultural identity groups, you know. And people can like me or not like me for that and that's fine.

But what I will say is like most people are pretty good, man. And like they're trying to do the right thing. but also most people are really I talk about this with the international students at up at the university because they're actually much more attuned to like how things work because Americans don't understand how like propagandized they are

and so one of the things that we're being propagandized to do right now is to hate each other over like differences right And some of those differences like, hey man, like there's, I don't like Parnell, right? And I outlined why. And like, I have things. But in general, like, America and the world and the political situation would be a lot better, I think, for what it's fucking worth.

If one, people just kind of took stock of the situation and understood where it was. and tried to understand like the polar opposite perspective from it, right? Which is the one that like they're fighting with. And then realize kind of actually like, like man, everyone's just trying to like do their shit. But we're being robbed blind by a bunch of greedy psychopaths who make us fight each other. And so I think the answer doesn't come from like without or from an institution. right because they're all fucked up but the answer comes from like people

and individual people and like you know what start up a collective where you like you know have dinner with each other once in a while and you make a little more and you pass it out to people that don't have enough like do small shit

do good small shit rather than sitting on your phone getting fucking mad at people and I'm lecturing myself as much as I'm lecturing getting what else? Well, if I didn't know any better, Matt, I would say that you're lecturing yourself and everyone else in Marxist praxis of some kind.

I don't fucking trust Germans from Trir, because I lived in Bitburg. We've discussed this. Yeah, but Jews, are they really Germans? Okay, well, I don't trust residents of Trir. I went to his house when I was little. I have, like, pictures outside of it. Nice. I guess what I was trying to say is regardless of whether you're expressly approaching an issue from a Marxist lens, you know, obviously that is what we use and put forward in the bulk of our historical analysis and of our analysis of current events on the pod. And part of the reason why it's so useful is because it provides a preexisting framework into which all,

of these recurring themes fit so neatly. So themes of alienation, of surveillance and control, of exploitation, of concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. And the prescriptive elements that any sane person reacting to a very sick society would suggest in their mind are also the very same types of prescriptive measures that a Marxist would take. I'm thinking of the very things that you were just saying, Matt, like going out, being with your neighbors, organizing among your colleagues, your loved ones and friends and neighbors, people with whom you share something in common, and sharing goods and information among those people towards a common goal.

Love one another. And loving one another. Absolutely. And that's so important because the divide and conquer strategy has really been so effective. And so that's why, you know, even though I'm sure that, you know, the online discourse really does sort of poison people's brains to hearing perspectives different from their own to... Yeah. Listening to people that maybe don't share their political views, but people really just need to chill and to understand that everybody's really approaching this stuff from a different angle. And we have to find some common ground to start from if we're going to have anything like a mass movement that's necessary to turn things around if that's a.

even going to happen at all. And I think part of that just involves, like Matt so expertly does, making yourself available to and being open to other kinds of perspectives. I love everybody pretty much. I don't know. There's some people I don't like very much. But yeah, no, I mean, I just, like, I don't mean this to sound like kind of a weird. You're like, there, but, like, kindness and understanding is a weapon to use against, like, heartless sociopaths because they don't understand it. It's a motivation that never, like, never factors into their calculus. Kindness, understanding, and friendship.

These are the munitions in the arsenal of Fourth Reich Archaeology and of the hunt for Tom Clancy. Matt, I think that's a perfect place to end things. Before we sign off, is there anything you'd like to plug or to shout out? Yeah, no, I used to, like, anyone that listened to this, you know, hey, thanks for listening to me, me chat about stuff that I have an interest in and have spent a lot of time learning about. And I hope you've had some fun, because I've had some fun. It's been nice. Thanks for letting me talk. And thank you for talking to us, and thank you, listener, for tuning in.

On behalf of Dick, and on behalf of Matt Farwell, I am Don, saying farewell, and keep on digging.