Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:9 -(uncensored) Ukraine Chessboard : The Art of Losing Slowly - Special Guest Comic Dave Smith

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Darryl is traveling this week. So Scott invited a good friend of both to join the show! ENJOY! (prod. chris did a lot censoring to keep YT happy! :) ) # # The war in Ukraine grinds on with no end in sight as peace negotiations repeatedly fail due to poison pills disguised as compromise. Scott Horton and GUEST host - Comic Dave Smith dissect the recent talks in Alaska, where "security guarantees" for Ukraine functioned as NATO membership by another name—a non-starter for Russia and likely designed to be rejected. Russia continues making steady territorial gains, now controlling approximately three-quarters of Donetsk and two-thirds of both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. This slow-motion advance strengthens Putin's negotiating position while depleting Ukrainian resources. The fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict's origins—demonstrated even by Donald Trump's belief that "Obama gave Ukraine to Putin" rather than recognizing NATO expansion as the core issue—makes meaningful resolution nearly impossible. Perhaps most concerning is the rising influence of Ukraine's far-right nationalist elements, particularly the Azov Battalion. What began as a volunteer militia in 2014 has evolved into an official military unit with explicit neo-Nazi connections. Recent reporting reveals Azov leader Andrei Beletsky is positioning himself for political power in post-war Ukraine, envisioning a militarized state modeled after Israel. Western defense contractors reportedly prefer working with Azov units because they operate outside normal Ukrainian military command structures without demanding kickbacks. The conversation shifts to examining how Israel's campaign in Gaza has fundamentally altered media dynamics in the United States. Prominent right-wing commentators like Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk find themselves caught between establishment pressure to maintain unwavering support for Israel and audiences increasingly troubled by civilian casualties. This represents a significant crack in what was once the most controlled topic in American political discourse, potentially reshaping foreign policy debates for years to come. Chapters: ⁠0:00⁠ Welcome to Provoked ⁠2:11⁠ Ukraine Peace Talks in Alaska ⁠13:43⁠ Russia's Territorial Gains ⁠24:40⁠ Understanding Ukrainian Nazism ⁠43:17⁠ The Human Cost of War ⁠55:07⁠ Israel's Gaza Campaign and Media Shifts ⁠1:07:31⁠ Shifting Tides in Political Commentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BAS. BASBURG LOR. BADY HADY HADY HAD. FRIZE HAD. TO HADSKI. All right, y'all. Welcome to Provoked. I'm Scott Horton from the Libertarian Institute

and filling in for Daryl Cooper tonight. It's Dave Smith. Hey, Dave. What's going on, dude? Thank you for having me. It's cool to be on what has become my favorite new show. Ah, thank you very much. Two bad Daryl's out this episode, but it's good to be here with you.

That's right. He has other obligations. And featuring tonight, Ruby. I can see her nose at the bottom of the screen there. Hopefully she won't be breathing heavily into the mic too badly this evening. But it's better than whimpering out in the hallway, so she's in here with us. But yeah, so I'm Scott, and he's Dave, and we're going to talk about some stuff for you, as per your want. Let's hope so.

That's right. So lots of big news. It was funny. I did this interview with Larry Johnson, the former CIA officer, who's a real expert on the Russia-Ukraine stuff. And I talked to him on the show last Thursday. And, no, it was Friday morning before the big meeting. So it was like, gee, Larry Johnson, you think I might be wrong? And they actually could make a deal?

And he's like, no. And then they didn't. Yeah, of course. So anyway, what was your take on the talks there in Alaska? Well, I don't know. I mean, it seemed like, you know, it kind of reminded me of the, when Trump was in the negotiating stage with Iran and all the hawks were flipping out about how there was any enrichment, you know, involved in the being to be allowed in the negotiations and that Donald Trump's red line must be

zero enrichment whatsoever and Mark Levin and all these people are freaking out about it and it is kind of this interesting dynamic it's kind of like part of how the Warhawks operate is through their through their the peacemaking also so in the negotiations and and it was obvious in that case much more obvious I think in that case that the whole point was to not make the deal the whole point was to put a poison pill in so that the deal there is no option for a deal. And it's hard, you know, when you hear Zelensky just harp on security guarantees, security guarantees to go, okay, you could kind of understand like, okay, maybe that's genuine from his, but like, hey, I'll give up some territory, but when you hear all the Europeans

harping on security guarantees, it's like this just feels like you're obviously trying to insert the thing that you know will guarantee that Putin won't make this deal, which I, and Donald Trump doesn't seem to know enough to know that that's actually what the whole thing was about the whole time. And I have the advantage of Donald Trump because I've read your book, which the title of this show, provoked, which lays it out that this is what the whole thing was about to begin with. Yeah. And, you know, what's a security guarantee if it's not Article 5 membership in NATO in the first place is, you know, people like to cite the Budapest memorandum of 1994 where everybody promises to respect Ukraine sovereignty. And they try to

pretend that that's a treaty of alliance and that we promise to come to help them in case anyone violates but that's not what it said right right people want to try to read it that expansively in fact even the nato treaty article five says that if any member stays attacked then the other nations will then have to decide what to do yeah yeah right article five a lot of people think article five means we're at war if someone's at war with a nato allied country but that's not technically what it says it's in fact one of the things that's interesting right and and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but it's not clear, at least, like what we've done for Ukraine, you certainly could argue would have met Article 5 requirements, like just doing

what we're doing right now for Ukraine. Oh, sure. Like if they had done that to Lithuania or Estonia or whatever, yes. Then what we've done, you could say, hey, we ate it in the defense. We didn't just allow it to happen. But anyway, but yes, it's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, man, so it is frustrating, though, because I know that I'm not exactly certain why other than, you know, whatever Donald Trump's conception of the future development of the Arctic or whatever he has in mind here, trying to split Russia away from China as best he can, that he wants to see this thing over, and yet he just can't.

It's just such bad timing on his part when the Russians are winning, but slowly, and they're not done winning yet. they have no real reason to quit they're saying well look if the ukrainians will just drop their guns and turn around and walk off of the territory they still control in donyazks of prussia and kurson well then and then declare their neutrality forever and kick all the nazis out of the cover right then that'd be fine but otherwise no we're going to keep going but then it's going to take them a while apparently i don't know how long it'll be the skeptics keep saying the ukraine army is just their lines are going to break and it's going to fall apart, they're going to have to turn around or run at some point.

I don't know when that point is, but at the rate they're going, it's going to take them a long time to finish takens of Proje and Curzon, which they've already officially annexed. I mean, they've made major gains in Provostk in Western Donyetsk, which they say is, you know, a major strategic kind of hub there. So, you know, perhaps they'll finish consolidating all of Donetsk by the end of the year. And what do they have? They have like two-thirds of it or something like that now or something?

Yeah, I'd say more than that, I think, probably three-quarters or more of Doniesk now. But they only have about two-thirds of Ziproja and Kurson. Right. Those are my rough estimates, and including, like, major cities outside of their control in those areas. And then plus these, archivis right there, and Odessa is right there. And once you got Odessa, Transnistria, which is this little strip of land, as you know, on the Moldovan side of the river. on the Moldovan Ukrainian border there which is stripling controlled by Russia

so now that they have Crimea hell they can see transnational from there anyway proverbially speaking especially from Odessa it's just a hop, skipping a jump right there to take it so it would take I don't know what promises Trump could ever make to get Russia to stop short of their goals and never even mind Odessa and Harkiv

because maybe they haven't officially annexed those areas Putin has said belligerent things about both before about, you know, the potential for oh yeah, you know, like somebody asked him, he goes, oh, the weather in Odesta is very nice and this kind of thing, you know. So they could stop short of that,

but are they going to stop short as a progen? See, a solid third occurs on the part of it they don't control is on the other side of the river, on the right bank of the river, the western side so um so they're not going to take that until they've smashed the ukrainian army and they can just go there right you know and the ukrainian marines have tried to take and cross that river and have a beachhead on the russian side and have gotten completely creamed and lost did nothing

but lose guys and finally give up on an attempt to wage an offensive down there so um yeah it's just it's a it's a really uh it's a really bad time to be a president try to end a war it's it's such a slow motion more the way that the russians are fighting it um and you know they're not like sending it sending in the heavy bombers you know i mean they kind of are but they're hitting them you know one at a time not like richard nixon carpet bombing or whatever and um so uh so i don't know what the hell i think trump you know assuming trump and his guys have game this out it makes sense that they would be saying that they essentially be setting ukraine up and saying look we came up with a deal

they wouldn't take it but we have other business to attend to so we're going to go ahead and like for example i think we could all agree we would rather develop the arctic trade routes with russia rather than in some strategic competition with them that ends up like threatening violent conflict over freaking trade roots in the Arctic. Forget that. Let's make a joint condominium up there with the Chinese too. What the hell and all help each other trade. Because this is a big deal. The Northwest Passage, which they were seeking, you know, coming here to the Americas back when, which they never found because there was Canada in the way. The thing is, it's open now, right? But the thing is, there's another Northwest Passage that's

also open now, which is north of Asia, north of Russia. that there's a trade route from China around north of Russia to Europe that way instead of having to go all the way around India and through Suez and all of that mess, right? So it's a huge potential

trade zone up there. So it could be that Trump is saying, is setting himself up to argue, look, I did my best, but neither side wants to quit. And what the hell? We're not just going to put off getting along with Russia forever, even while they're fighting this war. Which is, I don't know if he's going to be able to do that or not, but it could be what he has in mind.

It sounds like the type of thing that might excite Donald Trump, you know, but I will say, I don't know. Did you see, I played this on my last show, but I don't know if you saw Trump, Trump called into Fox News. I guess it was Fox and Friends or whatever one of those shows where there's three of them on a couch. I don't even know, like who all the people on cable news are. Like I used to, I don't know, like I used to know everyone. Kind of recognize their faces sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that lady from before, yeah.

But, you know, I know the thing with Donald Trump is always, you know, he says a million crazy things and everyone jumps on every latest crazy thing and half of them he doesn't even mean or whatever. But I really don't think I'm doing that. But he's just, it's just him explaining the war. And he just has no idea what he's talking about, man. And it's just totally this like, it's like a Sean Hannity, Rudy, Julia. minus 20 IQ points, like way of, like, conceiving of the whole thing where he's explaining,

like, he doesn't even get, he goes, he goes, this all started in 2014. And at first you're like, okay, he goes, Putin took Crimea and Obama just gave it to him. He just gave him Ukraine. That's what Obama did. Never would happen under me, but Obama gave him Ukraine. And so he still fundamentally thinks the problem was that we gave Ukraine to the Russians and doesn't realize that the problem is actually that we took Ukraine away from the Russians and that that Putin taking Crimea was his snap was the snap back to that and so like when you don't even get that and you're you're talking about solving this war which I think you know even as you're indicating now solving this war right now is actually much tougher than just diagnosing what caused

the war you know like it's actually a much tougher challenge to solve it than it was to start it, which is also, is quite often the case with catastrophes, like in your personal life in general. It's much easier to start one than it is to put it all back together. But like, if you don't even understand the very first thing about how it started, what hope do you have to being up to this challenge? No, no, listen, don't worry because Marco Rubio is there three buys and explain. Yeah, right, right. This is why they say personnel is policy, you know, because it is like, okay, all right, guys, tell me what's going on here. And then, you're only going to get so good of a perspective you know what i mean so and especially

no president from either party i mean potentially trump could if if he had his ducks in a row blame it on the other guys but when it comes to foreign policy it's like you know they say politics stops at the water's edge and we're all united against whoever or foreign things so like blaming biden himself is one thing blaming policy for the last 25 years and all of this kind of thing, which he doesn't have to be that specific, but it would be nice if you understood it. It looked like, oh, there's a long train of abuses and usurpations here, but. Yeah, well, even if he just, even if he just got the basics of it, the basics of what the beef is about, what led to the conflict, I mean,

because it's, you know, if you don't get that, then you're fundamentally going to, you're kind of just feeling in the dark about what the potential solution might be, and then it's very easy to get. You know, it's like when Donald Trump, he instinctually on some business level knows all these wars are bad. And he does seem to not like people dying. Like that seems to be part of it too, which is refreshing, you know, in a way that he's also like, yeah, they're dying. They should stop dying. But when you just go, I like, this is bad business, you know, we're losing all this. Then it's easy to pivot to, oh, well, like, since you don't actually understand the core of the issue,

instead of coming to the conclusion that we shouldn't be in NATO anymore or that NATO shouldn't exist anymore, you go, oh, they're ponying up their money. Okay, so we solved it that way. Oh, we got some oil. Okay, well, then we solved it that way. Oh, we got a mineral deal. We solved it that way. So when it's just a gut, you know, aversion to this is bad business, it's actually a lot easier

to come to a really bad solution. Why are we even talking about security guarantees or mineral deals? This is the whole fucking problem. How do you not come to? At best, Ukraine has to just be neutral. That's like, that should at least be, obviously everyone should accept that at this point. And so now also, I got to think the other thing, because it was, look, I don't know, obviously, dude, you know, you know this shit a lot better than I do, and you wrote the fucking book on it. But, you know, so I was reading, perhaps at your recommendation, but I was reading Aaron Matei had a piece about this on Substack a few days ago, which was very good. And, you know, he's talking about how, like, look, there have been some signals coming out of Moscow. I was, you know, who knows, but there's some signals coming out that they're like, they might be open to like, all right, you get the, you get the fuck out of Dunnask, like you give us the 100% of the Donbass region, obviously Crimea, that's all annexed and has to be recognized as Russian territory.

They wanted a corridor to Crimea from the south there, and that they might think about with no, and guarantees of no NATO or whatever, the few things they want, that they might be open to that deal. So, like, look, who knows, maybe that's not the case. And even if they were offered that, they wouldn't take it. But when you hear they might be open to that, and then you start saying, literally what was reported in Axios, what they called it was Article 5 like security guarantees is what they're sitting there in negotiations. So as soon as you broadcast, well, the rest of Ukraine is going to be a NATO essentially, which is right with like de facto at least. Once you broadcast that, well, then that totally changes the incentives of Vladimir Putin to go, okay, so you're telling me whatever. I don't take right now is part of NATO is that the threat now yeah so okay well in that case I went so it just it just seems like so you know like if it seems to me that a lot of their

goal is not to end the war it's to keep the goddamn thing going it has been the goal for a while and as you've done some good reporting on this in the book at least for some of them they seem to not really give a shit if Ukraine collapsed and it was an insurgency I think that was kind of the plan at the very beginning so they don't actually really give a fuck at all they think it keeps bleeding Russia dry, and our Austrian economic training would tell us there probably is a lot of truth to that. And so they want to keep it going,

but the problem is, if you're Donald Trump and you actually do want to end the thing, it's like now you don't even see that you're flying into these fucking poison pills that are going to defeat the whole effort. Well, and the logical inconsistency of it all just shows the cynicism of it all that,

you know, and this was true during Biden too, that they made it very clear that We're not going to fight for Ukraine. We would never risk war with Russia to fight for Ukraine. So then in other words, you would never bring them into NATO because that's what bringing them into NATO means is that you would fight for them. But you're saying now you're going to end the war and then, but you're going to give them a security guarantee after they're done losing?

And then you promised to fight for them in the next one? What the hell is that any of this makes no sense at all? Right. And it's really what they're admitting is what you just said. They don't give a damn about Ukraine. They're just extras in our movie. and their lives are worth no more to Washington than the lives of the Afghans in the 1980s

that they're props and they're here, their pawns on the board to be used to weaken the Russians. Well, and this is where people on our side or people in our camp can at times get sloppy and it's easy, it's easy to, because it is like, you know, you tend to think of this thing of like, oh, this is the state's motivation,

this is the regime's motivation. but actually like there's different players and there's different periods right so like then you cover this very well in the book it's very interesting right that when so when in uh in 2008 and george w bush's last year as president in the at the bucores summit when they announce ukraine and georgia are coming into nato well that was because george w bush really wanted them to be in nato keep for his own legacy building purposes wanted to have these countries added to nato then merkel's giving him pushback so he doesn't end up getting a full map, but he does get an announcement that they're... So at that point, I think the goal really was to bring Ukraine into NATO because this would

be great for George W. Bush's legacy. But after that point, none of them really seemed serious about bringing Ukraine into NATO. Like, they all kind of knew, ah, you can't really do that. This is fucking crazy. Like, I mean, before 2014, like after 2008, after the war in Georgia and all that, they're kind of like, but they just keep floating it out anyway. And then it does make you wonder, well, what the hell was... the goal of that like if you're not if you're not serious about ever actually incorporating them

i think it's it really it comes down to public choice between the different people involved right i think like newland was so heavily involved in pushing the bucoress summit in the vice president's office in the first place and and cheney was involved in pushing that and then i think you had probably in the obama years i mean there's newland again right although she came in later but um I think you may have had more reluctance in the beginning. Although, so like you've got to go back. I'm trying to remember the timeline and all the WikiLeaks because there are a lot of WikiLeaks documents about this

where they talk about the crisis. There are at least two or three different states department documents about this. They talk about how the people of Ukraine don't support NATO membership. So we got to figure out how to wage a propaganda campaign to get them on board and how to change the influence to get at least be able to claim that we have enough. Yeah, and that was, and that was, those were published in the Washington Post. I remember actually you sending me these articles about the, yeah, where they're literally going, the Ukrainian population, it's so unpopular to this idea of NATO membership. And they're spending a lot of money

on trying to change minds about it. Which is funny because they have a mandate. You know, they talk about, of course, in the, in the context of Maidon, they talk about like, always like the will of the Ukrainian people. By the way, for people listening to the podcast, I was not saying, honey to Dave. I have a dog in the room here. Sorry, go ahead dude. I didn't want people to take that out of context. Thank you, honey. No, but so like they all talk

about when it comes to Maidon, which again, I think was never really demonstrated that it was actually popular. I think it was very closely split like the whole, during the all of Maidon, like the opinion polling was like very, I think it was like, Yanukovych was unpopular, but he was still the most popular

of the political figures or something like that. It's like, the country was very divided on the whole thing. Obviously, there were huge, huge crowds out in the streets. But they'll go, it's the will of the Ukrainian people. You're denying their agency. But the thing is back just a few years before, when our State Department is finding out that their agency says they don't want to be a part of NATO. They go, okay, well, then we got to pump money in there to change what the will of the Ukrainian people is. So, you know, maybe it's they were the ones who were denying their agency. And meanwhile, like imagine any other

circumstance, like just say, for example, like anyone listening, like it was people you disagreed with. And there was a big crowd of them. And they said, look, see, it's the will of the big crowd of people. Like, come on. I saw, I don't know, 50 or 60,000 people march against the Iraq war in downtown Austin. Right, right. You think they're representative, even of Travis County. Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, maybe. But not Williamson and certainly not the rest of this state. Forget it. And sorry, folks, we were right about that one. Yeah. And that was there February and March 15th of 03 by the way. Thank you very much. My sign said

no more UN wars because I thought it was all about empowering the UN still because I was stupid. This is kind of funny. But I think there were pictures of that somewhere. The future. Yeah, we talked about that. I think Ukraine is really screwed, man. I think

I guess I'm kind of being redundant. I'm not sure when and where I keep repeating myself saying this, but I think the Russians really put themselves. in a bind by doing this. By removing the Russian population out of Ukraine, I mean, they used to win elections. That's why we had to keep overthrowing the government there, right?

Yeah, it's a really good point. Yeah, so now they've got anybody who liked them, they've now drawn a line around them, and they've left a country behind that is going to be run by right-wing nationalists from the far west of the country and who absolutely despise Russia and who are the survivors of those

who just fought and died in the war. Hate them more than ever, I'm sure. And there's going to be no balance to it at all. And I want to highlight, you know, of course, in the book, I, Ruby, honey. Okay, you just hear me. The Ukraine talk is exciting. She's asking like we just got home, you know.

You just left the room for one minute, baby. We're still here. It's okay. Dang, all, in the book, I beat the dead horse about the Nazis because, I mean, look, the book is obviously very thick. But I don't really belabor any one point too much. It's just a lot of different subjects in there because it covers a long period of time.

But the two subjects I really beat a dead horse over the most would be the promises over NATO expansion and the Nazis. And I go back, I explain the commies and the Holodomor, and I explain the right-wing reaction to that. and then the coming of the Germans and the war and then their defeat and then the CIA support for them and then the rise of the Nazis. No, honey, we can't play ball now.

I'm sorry. The rise of the Nazis, again, with the fall of the Soviet Union, they came home from Canada and the United States where they'd been living in exile and they came home and built up these movements again and, you know, with all their rewriting of history and all of this stuff. and um so i go on and on about that because of course it's the worst thing that you could say

about the ukrainians is that man there really are Nazis of influence in their country in a way that we just don't have uh elsewhere certainly in europe or really anywhere that you could think of um and and so then of course therefore the russians like pointing that out and then the americans like crying that that's not true that's just something that the russians say so I'm not going to tolerate anybody saying about me that I said something because it's something that the Russians say. I would only say something if it was true. And so I got plenty of sources, very few of them Russian, on all of this story.

And part of it is about the group Patriot of Ukraine, the National Corps. And this was the group that was one of the major facets of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the Maidan Revolution, where they were. were part of what became right sector, which was like the coalition of the Steppenbendera's Trident, Whitehammer, and the Patriot of Ukraine group. And then this other one called Ukrainian National Assembly, Ukrainian self-defense, all of these are tied directly back to the Nazis of the Second World War era through their fathers and even their mothers sometimes in some cases where it would be like the

chairwoman of the board over the thing. So these are the groups that really spearheaded the overthrow. Spoboda is another one, which had been called the Social National Party. I saw a funny comment on Twitter where I had posted a thing about one of these Nazis. I said, yeah, he's from the Social National Party. And the guy goes, yeah, see, that's the exact opposite of the National Socialist, Scott. What's your problem? So the exact opposite?

social nationalism is not to be confused yeah not at all the same thing um which you know he was joshing around having fun um which me too and um and so but here's the thing about it is after the revolution when um the leader of jabat al nusra john bernan came to town and insisted that the acting president Turchinov launched the anti-terrorist operation, i.e. the civil war in the east of the country. The military was severely unprepared, and some of their best units were loyal to the other side and defected to the other side, which is where the other side got all their military equipment, not from the Russians. It was from the Soviets who had left it behind back when, right? And it was part of the Ukrainian

national force that they got. Well, so when the Ukrainian military military, military was so unprepared that azov battalion stepped into the breach and those were the guys who essentially were right right sector now beletsky himself uh this guy um andri beletsky he had been in prison on i thought it was kind of funny the charge was a terrorist attack for blowing up a statue of vladimir lenin and i'm like i don't know i can look the other way but the guy is still a hitler-loving lunatic and so they let him out of prison well that is the nice thing about not to do they don't like land. Yeah. What are you going to do? It's one of their only good qualities.

I remember years ago looking at Ukraine and seeing this story where a gang of dogs beat up this old woman. And I'm like, God, these Nazis over there, what in the world? And it's like, well, she did come to lay flowers at the feet of a statue of Joseph Stalin. So like, these things do happen. You know, I don't know. But anyway, people are crazy. Over there, they're crazy. Here they call each other communist. Over there, they're commies and Nazis you know there's a lot of that right um right but so this guy andrew beletsky he got out of prison and then like just pulled rank i guess and got um the essentially the leaders of right sector and c14 which was another militia of the swaboda party

or you know the social nationalist uh renamed spoboda party and they'll join together and they created what became called the azov battalion and the first thing they did was not the first thing. There was some assassinations, I think, at a protest in Harkiv. I remember, right? But then they ended up liberating, very importantly, they liberated Maripol, and then Maripol, however, and drove the pro-Russian rebels out of control of that town then. So that was their first big victory. Cemented their legend and all of that. So then they went from the Azab Battalion to then, by the, I guess, November or whatever, late 14, they were officially integrated into it. than the National Guard and called the Azov Regiment.

And they were still called the Azov Regiment until, I guess, sometime during the war, they actually split it. And part of them became the 12th separate National Guard division. And then the rest, followed Beletsky, and became the third separate infantry division. And they've been fighting mostly in the north of the country for the last three years. He's now Colonel Beletsky, and they've now now, promoted the group again they're now called the third army corps that's the isab battalion

and the thing is about it is it's not just the azab battalion it's the isab movement and especially you know we haven't heard that much about it since the worst part of the war in 2022 except at the very start um and i may have just overlooked some things but um certainly from all through the civil war from 2014 through 22 and into the beginning of the start of the war at least is you know this massive neo-Nazi movement unparalleled anywhere in europe there's just nothing like it you look at like gie wilders uh or like um marine lepen or or you know any of these guys what was that guy in austria that juster romano liked so much back years ago like none of these guys they're like nationalists but they're not Nazis they're not yeah and they're a real different oh yeah yeah yeah yeah

well look right wing nationalism has been with humans for you know thousands of years nazism is a very particular thing and this literally is nazi yeah and it is and they're recruiting white supremacists from all across europe and from even you know america and brazil and wherever italy that's part of europe uh all over the place to come and is and they had you know fight clubs and death metal concerts and big recruitment events and whatever all across europe for years and so then I don't know how close we are to the end of the war but I've been saying for a while

and working on an article right now like this because I want it on the record that I told you so about this because I think that this guy, Baletsky, is probably the most dangerous of them and now there's a bunch of them whose names I don't know you know I know Dimitri Yaros and Andrew Perubi Andrew Perubi was you know one of the major leaders of the social national

national parties, Foboda, who then became the Speaker of the Parliament for like nine years or something, seven, eight years. So, and a lot of these guys, you know, a guy named Troy N became the deputy head of the national police for a while. I think the Americans, maybe after 22, possibly the Biden government insisted that they get rid of some of these guys or demote them or whatever, but they're far from gone. And I think... Well, yes, this was a bit of a PR problem, if people remember.

early in the war. They did have a little bit of an issue with too many of these guys swastikas because were showing out of their military uniform or whatever. So they were trying to. Getting sent home from Germany because they're like, one of them went, an official in the government went and laid flowers at the tomb of Steppen Bandera and the Germans kicked them out of the country. And then the Ukraine's promised we will have our guys remove all their swastika insignia

from their uniforms before we send them to train in Germany from here. run out you know we really are serious about that don't worry um and so listen so if if anybody's ever heard much of the um you know the anti-war argument on this stuff and and are familiar with it all and and the accusations about the ukraine nazis the most familiar quote that you will hear is that this guy saying that we must lead the white crusade against the semitic led unter mention right that's the and that means subhumans right in the to the german nazis were the uber mentioned they're the unter mention right so um and this was a speech that he gave and it's funny because uh well it's not funny the thing is um it's your boilerplate you know

typical not nazi fanaticism um you know it's crazy stuff it's essentially what you would think a nazi would say um about the the single being that is the ukrainian state and how all must serve it for the greater glory of the way things used to be and whatever you know how it goes and for and for all the aryan virtues which i wasn't sure that included the slavs you know but like i don't know if that's what you're calling them now i don't i don't know how that's supposed to work really about that the aryans were indians i don't know how they can be white if they're from india but i think if it's a bunch of made-up crap, that it's not supposed to really be consistent, you know?

Yeah, I don't think you can't get lost in the details there, but... But, yeah, so the thing is, um, the good old London Times has a thing about Andrew Beletsky and how, who Putin fears him, and he's a tough guy. Look at him, everybody, and they're rehabilitating the guy. Like turning Al Jolani into Al-Sharahara.

They're like, yeah, we're turning this guy from Stepping Bandera and, I don't know, Benjamin Franklin or something. And so he maybe went to the same, like, Turkish finishing school where they sent Al Jalani from al-Qaeda in Syria. And so he's, like, acting like a normal guy. And he goes, man, I never said that Nazi stuff. Why, that's a Russian forgery. I immediately thought of Joy Reed. Go, that's a Russian forgery.

Dude, I never said that stuff. And it's like, but that's funny. Because I got the source from the Wayback Machine archive of the Azov Regiment website. and there it is and yeah and I published a whole thing on the anti-war.com blog and I forgot I was going to email it to myself

so I could show it to you here but in fact here Ukrainian radical social nationalism by Andrew Bilitsky and anybody can find this at antiwar dot com slash blog and again it's your boilerplate Nazi

lunacy and so but I think that look there's it's almost certain This guy's going to be the future leader of this country. They'll probably call him El Presente instead of furor or whatever because bad PR. Like they told Jolani, stop getting people's heads off, dude. There's cameras rolling. But otherwise, you can have the power. Just don't do that, right?

Same thing here. Chill with the Seagiles. And then you can have your chair. Yeah, I heard throughout the war, or maybe it was kind of earlier in the war. I mean, I remember hearing from a few of the hawks that were basically arguing, And I never saw any of this substantiated anywhere, but they were arguing that, you know, because this would come up as a kind of black eye on their undying support for Ukraine. And if you remember of this, you do well, but you're the listener, if you remember, you know, in 22 and 23, before, you know, when the initial wave of Ukraine propaganda came, I was like, you know, change your profile to their flag. And these guys are great.

A beacon of democracy. What a hero, ghost of Kiev. You know, we were in that, like, time, and this was kind of a black eye on that, like, well, there's a lot of Hitler-loving Nazis in the middle of this wonderful country that you're describing. And I remember a bunch of the Hawks used to say, yeah, but all those guys got sent to the front lines, you know, essentially like they all, that problem took care of itself. Cross your fingers, pal. And I think a lot of them were the first to enlist. I mean, these are the toughest guys. But it's interesting that, of course, just, you know, like so many of these things, the wars that are supposed to eliminate these.

groups then you see them popping up and you know it's it's a look you think about even say in america we still have you know groups in this country who quite passionately defend the south in the civil war and call it the war of northern aggression now most your average joe six pack may not know about this at all but cooks like us in our world we do know people who like refer to the civil war as the war of northern aggression and still ever and they've no listen they've got an argument like i'm not and i honestly this topic for another show but i think me and you maybe would like split the difference with them in the other side on it like maybe wouldn't be but there's an argument i mean they're like you know and and as

is the case always with wars right i mean like if you're a southerner like your perspective on this is like a whole bunch of innocent southern people getting fucked up and that's not fair and that's right you know and like from your perspective that's not wrong no matter what the meta beef was you were just living next to your aunt's place or whatever um but you the point anyway i was making is that it's like these old they don't die so easily you know and when you have something like and i'm talking about a conflict in the 1860s that there's still people today talk you know arguing about that and still very upset about it and this is really much much more recent than that and so it's like there's it's not easy i remember jeff dice had a big uh speech about this where he was

just like banishing politically defeated groups is not as easy as you think like there's still people in russia who support Stalin there's still people and the other kind of forgotten chapter of the rest of europe post world war two is that it's not like the nazism just went away like it was forcefully suppressed and is still illegal in large parts of of europe and so it does seem like the two points you're making there are pretty interesting and for the first part of it, if anybody hasn't seen, there's that John Mearsheimer had a big lecture on this that went super, super rival and has like 20 million views on it. But when he actually starts breaking down, like, I think he goes through on a slide there, like the election results

in 2010 and then in 20, whatever the years the elections were, whatever, Yanukovych was it 2012? He was a... 2010. 2010 was the one he was, okay. So, but they go, and I mean, you can see it where essentially, like, Russia has now taken the balance. of this country away. What's left there isn't no matter what you call it, it's not neutral anymore. The country Ukraine was neutral because the kind of eastern half of it wanted to be pro-Russian and the western half of it wanted to be pro-Western. And so that gave you this neutral kind of political dance where Yanukovych is trying to be like, I'm cool with you, but I'm also cool

with you and we could kind of just be in the middle. That's gone now. And you have these guys is the most powerful fighting force and in many ways have a lot of energy. Yeah, this could be the future. Yeah, so that leaves the Russians then they take that Donbass is a projean

but they leave Harkiv and Sumi and DeNapro Provost and I think there's one more there east of the river where people still speak Russian are basically culturally Russian from the Russian government's point of view

well those people need protection still they're now a much smaller minority in a much more radicalized Yeah, much more radicalized Right-wing nationalist country based out of What was never really part of Ukraine It was part of Austro-Hungarian Empire And then Poland is what's

You know, Valmina And And Galicia You know, in far western Ukraine And so Only makes sense then that like And then this is the other thing Is you get to Kiev

And I was thinking Well, and then Kiev's on the other side the river but no i was just talking with larry johnson he's like no kiev is like kansas city uh kansas and kansas city missouri's right across the river's two things so they're gonna own half the city and then the other and then the capital of the enemy country is now right there across the river line of sight and they absolutely hate you and they're led by fanatical nazis who say we got to keep dying or else the guys who already died died in vain and so get them everybody and then kind of thing and then it only makes sense that this war just keeps going for years

until the Nazis are completely looking i'm just extrapolating a slippery slope kind of yeah yeah dirty snowball sort of argument here i don't know like i might be uh missing things i'm assuming that that bolitsky and his guys oh i'm not just assuming see this is the other thing is there are a couple of more articles about um about belitsky here one of them is a ukrainian news story and it's about him saying how the new ukraine after the war is going to have to be like Israel, a militarized state ready for war at all times with Israel as the model, which is funny to hear

national socialists, you know, talking about that. Well, it's more politically correct than saying like Nazi Germany these days. Yeah. Our model is Germany. Our model is Israel. That's just more or less. Nice substitute. You know, it works. National socialist too. Um, so

there was that, but in other words, though, like, he's planning ahead for like, this is going to be the shape of our economy and governance going forward kind of thing he's not just a colonel in the army he's planning on being a boss and there's this brand new thing the article is in intelligence online which is apparently very old and i've never heard of before and i had to give them my email address to get free access to this great article but it's really good article i can tell that it's not BS and i invited the guy on the show and it's called the saga of the third azov brigade from the trenches of dombas to the corridors of power and then hell the subhead reads no longer content with just fighting the third

Azab Brigade is shaping public opinion, uniting disaffected youth, attracting Western military firms and officers, and imposing its vision of a post-war Ukraine. Behind the military unit, a planned rise to power is steadily taking shape. So some of the major points of the article are about the broader Azab movement that they've been cultivating, you know, the civilian side of this thing, this whole time and the broad networks. And he cites a lot of people that I talk about in the book from pre-22 days. of being leaders, including this lady, Ola, Seminaca, and all of these cooks. I don't know.

There's a bunch of them. And they also talk about, I thought it was really interesting. I was telling you, there's a part in there where they're saying that, I guess the reporter himself talked to the defense firms. And the defense firms say they really like the Azov Battalion, not because they're Nazis, but just because they actually operate on an entire separate chain of command from the central military regime. So they have the official imprimatur or whatever

of the Ukrainian state, but they're still an independent military force. It's not that they hate Jews. It's just that their trains run on time. And so that's just really nice to work with. Yeah, exactly right. And so these guys, when they order weapons, they don't demand a kickback.

They don't demand a bribe. They give you feedback as to whether this weapon system is working for the intended use or whether there's some more that they could do or what. And they're, like, great partners to work with, man. They don't... Well, this is the same... Of delays and kickbacks, man.

You just want to kill some people, you know? Well, when you were just mentioning up, before we started recording, what's his name? The C-14 guy who said it would have been the gay pride parade in that talk show. Right, Yves Karras. Right. So he's saying that, but he kind of said almost like the same thing. Or he said something, because he said something.

I can't remember exactly in the interview. He goes, they like us because we have fun killing. And he was like, first off, he was like, we have. don't fucking like the West. The West doesn't like us. They like us because they know. And essentially, I mean, these are my words, not his, but he was like, they know, you want to put pressure on Yanukovych. Well, who's going to do that? I mean, who's actually going to go kick ass for you here? And so it was like, it does, it becomes that type of thing, right? Where those, that's always, you know, it's a Daryl, uh, whose seat, I guess I'm sitting in, uh, today. Um, he made this point I thought was

great in, um, what was it must have been in the fear and loathing. series, or maybe it was in the follow-up to that. But where he was talking about, yeah, yeah, it was in the follow-up piece to that war all the time, right, I think is what it was called. Where he's talking about... That's a great poison idea album, by the way. Oh, yeah. Well,

it's also a great follow-up series to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem. Highly recommend all of that, but I guess this audience doesn't need to hear that. But, no, he's talking about the people, which kind of also applies to, like, the settlers in the West Bank, say, today. But he was talking about

the like right after the formation of of Israel so this is like when Gaza is still under Egyptian territory you know this is 48 to 67 somewhere in there I was talking about like hey who do you think's going to go live in southern Israel keep in mind back then this is 1952 there's no wall there's no you know what I be facial recognition technology there's no nothing there's them right there and you right there and you better have someone to go occupy this territory if you're Israel because otherwise fucking they'll just start seeping back in and you lose your there's not lines on the ground there's not a wall there there's not this technology you're just putting everything

together and so who do you get to go occupy that the craziest motherfuckers who are looking for a fight in the same thing like amongst israeli society right now who's volunteering to go be another settler on the west bank it's not just your average random israeli it's the most fanatical most like i'm on this mission because god promised us judea and Samaria and these people have no... And I'm willing to put myself at risk to go... So like, it just when you get these situations,

it ends up like it snowballs because of course the most radical craziest motherfuckers are always the ones who are going to be what you need in a situation like this. Like, if you're the West looking for someone to support here, well, who are you going to do? You know, it's like the moderate rebels in Syria, as you say, right?

A bunch of Chechens and Uyghurs willing to travel halfway across the world to blow themselves up. You tell me, I mean, you say it, you know, enough already you cover this in real great detail, but it's like, when you just sit there and you go, okay, so you're telling me, you found a group who's going to go into Syria in 2013, and they're going to stand with, you know, al-Qaeda and ISIS on this side, and Bashar al-Assad and the Russians on this side, and defeat both of them out of their moderate nature for not-licking conflict, right, with all of their de-escalatial escalatory policies they're going to defeat both like no like that's just not how this works

unfortunately it always was the bin lad nights from the very beginning of that thing yep okay so hey guys uh i just want to tell you a little bit more about scott horton brand coffee i know i've seemed like a shill but i pay my dues leave me alone and this is really good coffee it's made by moondos artisan coffee get it they hate Starbucks too so it's moon doze um but it's really good it's part Ethiopian blended with Sumatra and I talked about it on the show last week and got a bunch of sales and already a bunch of great feedback also got rid of some at the Ron Paul birthday event down in Houston and already got a lot of great response from that in the email talking about oh great now I can never drink any other coffee ever again yeah welcome my world I'm enslaved to this guy basically Phil Pepin and his wonderful coffee at Moondos artisan coffee and if you what you do is you go scotthorton.org slash coffee and it'll forward you right on to the correct thing. Or just go to my website, Scott Horton.org, and there's a logo in the right-hand margin.

You click on that and you'll get this stuff and I'll get a kickback and it'll be great. So wake up in the morning by drinking this stuff. Thank you. It's funny because when you talk about, you know, Chechen jihadists and Kosovar jihadists and Uyghur jihadists all traveling to Syria to fight, you're like, okay, I mean, that makes sense, right?

We've seen this before. That's how they do it and all of this. And then you're like, wow, and then you really do have these jihadists going to Ukraine to help the Nazis fight the Russians there. And I don't want to say that because now that sounds silly, but no, I'm sorry. I got it from like a couple of different reports from the New York Times, plus a really in-depth series by a guy at the Intercept. Marston Mammon, I believe, was his name, who did like a three or four part thing about this. And then I have something too from like, was it the telegraph or something where the CIA and the U.S. Ukrainians raided a jihadist who'd been hiding out in Kiev for a while, but he'd been there for a while.

And then the expert people that they were talking to, like consultants to the police, were saying that like, only the real committed ones get this far. It really raises questions like how many more of these guys are there. Right, right. There have been reports of them out there fighting in the east. And then when there was that terrorist attack in Moscow and the Russians claimed that they were heading back to Ukraine, before they nabbed him and that that was who was behind it. It was like, dude, that is possible.

You know, like they said that they were ISIS K. I don't know who they were. And whoever gave them money and told them, point your gun that way and shoot it, probably lied to them about who they were anyway and what, you know what I mean? Who knows who hired the guy, who hired the guy who hired the gun, you know, whatever.

But, like, they could have come from Ukraine, like, essentially straight, because we got multiple reports of jihadis because look they got whooped in syria they're back on top now for a while they were all whole up in the idlib province with nothing to do and nowhere to go and so they were going to ukraine to fight well and you see this um you know i guess all over the place i mean even um you know you hear the story from our boys who are back home here where even the ones who you know by and large have turned against the mission and turned against you know wanting to fight in wars, one of the things you hear when you talk to like the soldiers, you know,

the combat vets who are really struggling is that they do kind of wish they were back out there. And there is this thing, even when they were like, don't, they know they got conned into war and they're still like, there's just, you know, and like obviously this is not something I've experienced or you have, but you hear it from these guys where they're like, yeah, but dude, just that you're, you'll never be at that again in your life. you know what I mean like you were in this thing where it's like a life or death you your life is in your buddy's hand your buddy's life is in your hand the stakes are so goddamn high

and that level of excitement is and then you see this all throughout the world where it is these guys they get battle tested somewhere and then they're looking for the next battle like they're looking to this is the story of all the early Zionists you know where it's like um uh we're like all those guys were like fighting in eastern europe and then would come over to keep the fight going here and then it's like you come home from battle and also at you know you get these young men because for the most part that's what you're talking about are young men who if you spent let's say you know let's say you you spent years fighting in ukraine or something like that or let's say the guys who uh you know you covered in enough already who are fighting in the you know uh in iraq

and then went over to fight in Libya or then went over to fight in Syria or all of this you're an 18 to 25 year old guy who spent a few years. years doing that that is your skill now right like what is it you bring to the table what what is it that you can do well i'm a phone yeah like this is what i do and i'm pretty good at i've gotten pretty good at it by this point i've survived four years of war you know yeah they're looking for another one it's like another ripple effect of the cost of starting these wars that don't need to be start or not de-escalating them when you can then you got all these fucking international mercenaries now which will will pop up in the next conflict yeah and look there were only hundreds of these guys until a rock war two

right and then there were thousands of them but then the locals murdered them all which is like a magic wish came true but then Barack Obama gave him four billion dollars him and all of his allies including Benjamin Netanyahu

and of course resaparitan and the rest so that was what brought him back to life and created the caliphate and so you think about you know a lot of those people were just regular racky schmucks who got you know rounded up and conscripted did a lot with the rest, but for the people who volunteered to be part of the bin Ladenite movement

in al-Nusra and ISIS in those Syrian days, that's only 15 years ago, and there's a lot of guys left over from that. There's bin Laden's we don't know of. Some of them are under the control of Saudi intelligence. Some of them surely not. Yeah. And I am really concerned about that. I think I was even saying before maybe on your show there, I really want Tulsi Gabbard to only, I want to declassify everything in the world on the Russiagate thing and then I want her to go back to work with Joe Kent

keeping al-Qaeda guys off our shores because I know al-Qaeda mostly works for America and in Israel again these days. That does come and go and America was backing them in Chechnya during September 11th and 10 of those guys have fought in Chechnya or Bosnia

and they came and hit us anyway. We're supporting the Saudis support for them at that time. and hit us anyway. So I know people think, well, that just shows that we were behind it all, our government was behind it all along,

but I don't think it's so simple. No, it's not. It's not because, look, I mean, and this is why people, people really should read enough already.

They should, like, if you want to believe in any of this shit, at least just, like, learn some of the facts of it, but like, look,

the thing, I'll say this, right, like you just cannot convince me. There is absolutely no way that it was their plan for ISIS to invent, Iraq. That was not their plan. Their plan was to use ISIS to put pressure on Assad. Even

John Kerry on that, uh, that hot mic, he says it himself. He's like, and I, he's not lying when he says that. He's not, their plan wasn't to humiliate the army they had just been backing and then have to re-invade the country and have to, like, that was not part of the plan. The thing is, though, you could think ISIS is your little pet project, but they're not. They're fucking ISIS and they don't. So like under the control of intelligence agencies isn't a magical spell where you're like puppeteering these people. These are still fucking head shoppers with Uzi's running around a fucking country and you don't know what they're going to do. And oftentimes if there's nothing else we've learned is that like the people in the intelligence agencies have

just like this tremendous hubris about what they are capable of accomplishing without even without even giving any thought to like the obvious other four possibilities here of what could happen then you see this all the time i mean it's happening right now even like uh obviously yes israel has some type of loose agreement worked out with syrians right now right

but they're still they're still fighting them and they're still have these radicals right next door to them you don't know where that's going to go in the next few years By the way, speaking of which, dude, we've got to talk about this. Oh, yeah. I just got my copy. Oh, good, did you? Too much glare.

Creative Chaos by William Van Wagon. It's our 17th book we published at the Libertarian Institute. I announced it two weeks ago's show. But I got the hard copy of my hand last week and have it here again to tell everybody about. So, you know, with 400 pages, it's good, man. This is the best guy. I've read a lot of books about the Dirty War in Syria. This is the very best guy on it.

He wrote these incredible long form, like 10,000 word articles for us at the Institute before, like a bunch of them on all different aspects of the thing. And this is not the entire dirty war there. It's the origins of it. But it's, you know, so like the first three years of it, I guess maybe leading right up to the invasion of Iraq by the Islamic State. Don't quote me on that. It's not the entire thing. But what it is, though, is it's all about America, Saudi, Turkey, Israel, and the rest all working together to support these cooks. knowing good and well like how dangerous it is to do so and doing it anyway and um and how from

the beginning the whole portrayal that this was you know Assad was cracking down on a protest movement and that's what turned it into a civil war and all that is totally belied he just shows that no it was terrorist sniping cops from the beginning that's the game plan they did the same thing in in serbia in 99 was the kLA sniping cops in order to provoke the national guard to or military to crack down and then they go aha and then and then they say oh there was an organic uprising and they crack down on it right so um and no no we're victims save us bill clinton kind of thing you know so there's there's uh there's some to that so anyways um and then yeah it did grow up into the caliphate and then iraq war three to destroy it again

and all of the rest of that horror show and then you know we were sleeping on it they were hole up in there in that idlib province just like it was the gaza strip up there in northwest Syria all that time Biden, their time, at Biden their time. There you go. And then Biden was like, okay, activate plan al-Qaeda again. Or somebody informed him. That's what we're doing.

And they, um, and they sacked Damascus. They sacked Hamahams, Aleppo, and Damascus in 10 days last December, late November, early December. And, um, and took over that country. And I don't know what the hell is going to happen there. I'm still predicting the worst. I don't know if eventually we're going to have to go to war there or what, um,

I'm not advocating that, but I think it's a real problem, the population of bin Ladenites who are being made ministers in police and military forces and what used to be Syria right now. Okay, hey guys, this October 10 through 12, Mikhail Thorup is doing the expat money summit again. He's a really great guy. I actually went and toured Mayan pyramids with him down in Mexico when I was on the Tom Woods cruise. He's a really great dude, and he's a brilliant genius who's mastered the laws all over the world about citizenship and property ownership and how you can protect your wealth and from taxes. No cheating. It's all extremely legal. He's a brilliant guy.

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I'm sorry, I was going to say one thing about what you're saying about how exciting it is to go to war and all that. There's a book about that by a guy who you might think is a pencil neck geek, Chris Hedges, which he is like kind of a progressive liberal type and whenever he knows him as a New York Times reporter, but he covered 14 wars. He'd been shot at and dodged a bunch of bullets before a lot of times. He's seen a lot of dead bodies and knows for real what he speaks about, like covered the Balkan Wars and all kinds of things. And so he wrote a book.

it's kind of a clunky title but you see why i call that it's just called war is a force that gives us meaning and it's all about how god dang exciting it is to go to war for reporters and for fighting men and for the survivors of the atrocities and for everybody else it's a level of endorphins and adrenaline and stress and brotherhood and kinship and fear and love and loathing and every where else uh sorry that's just uh i was like god I got the juices mover. You'll never have it. Well, isn't it like you feel, I think, you know, I've thought this a lot of times.

I've heard other people articulate this better than I could, but it's something about having kids that I felt like there's one of the best things about having kids is that it, it like immediately gives your life purpose. You don't really have to like wait too long to go like, wait, what am I doing here? What am I? It's like, oh, okay, well, this. This is the thing. And whether that's, that's gainful employment or having kids or having a marriage or having friendships, it's like, men really need that. They need this feeling of like, what's my purpose? What's my role? What am I doing? And, you know, war is probably like, there's probably no better example of something that gives

you immediate clarity. It's like, here's your purpose. In fact, it's written a mission, you know, right here. This is what you do. And it's a, you know, we're kind of made. to respond to that type of stuff. Essentially, all of us descended from successful warriors. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. So, yeah, it's part of how it goes. And so, yeah, speaking of barbarianism, let's wrap up here with a little bit of Israel.

I wanted to point out that maybe I say this every week or what, I don't know, but it's like somewhere right around. I don't do like the mean and medium and average. I just look at the front headlines on anti-war.com every day. But it's like a bare minimum of 70 people are killed every day. And then usually it's like 120. Mm-hmm. So I don't know.

I measure these in Waco massacres. That's how I count them. Fair enough. Right? So it's like that's a Waco massacre a day, sometimes too, every day. But Dave, I'm still pissed off about that. And that was 32 years ago. And then I think of them doing it.

that every day for three years and uh and then i see some of the pictures too i try not to look at them too much but uh i think that um it it really it's uh romando would say it's the great clarifier war really goes to show who's on whose side and what they really care about and and what really matters and it makes people change sides uh very quickly when they realize things that they thought were true aren't after all and and all kinds of stuff you know comes into play it's tossed up in the air kind of so um obviously like a major facet of that is the absolute i'm not saying this is what's important about it i'm just saying it's an interesting important facet is the absolute has barra catastrophe that is this war for israel and from now on so like another

example another little waco of mine is a rock war two and i carry that chip on my shoulder even though that was 20 years ago i'm never getting over that either and particularly the role that israel played and lying us into the thing and having their agents in america lie us into that war most people don't know about that so i got to be angry enough for everybody just for that one thing kind of thing but this thing man everybody can see what's going on right it's not that they tricked america to do it's the Israeli slaughtering the Ghazans, but everybody knows it's on our dime and in our name with our weapons. And, um, and, you know, same thing for the Iran thing, heightening the risk, dragging us into a war that they know they can't win without us to finish it for them, uh, launching a war

potentially without permission, uh, to drag us into a thing like that gets real dangerous. And it's so obvious and so abrupt. And especially it's Ghazan more than Iran. Well, I don't know. maybe it's Iran because that really is where it involves us a lot but in Ghazi you see just the abject cruelty and the the relishing in the cruelty you know murdering some woman and then dressing up on her underwear and parading around and all of this stuff and like killing all these kids um there's a new thing that just came out that supposedly is a leak from Israeli intelligence where they say they say they've only killed 8,000 members of Hamas this whole time leaving 52,000 civilians plus all the missing bodies that aren't counted that everyone knows they're dead but can't find them because they got buried alive in the thing or just crushed to death if they're lucky um and so like whatever that ratio is is completely insane and and thousands of of minors i mean children under 12 and and thousands of of minors under 18 as well and uh it's just the ugliest damn thing in the world so then what happens is what used to just kind of be the minority

report where you would have anti-war folk all know this we'll talk about this the israel lobby and the wars and the occupation of palestine and all this mostly that's been considered in american politics to be a hippie issue right that's something left wingers care about college kids care about whatever but more and more you have important people of influence on the right washing their hands of this thing. Like, for example, Stephen Bannon, right? Like, that's a guy who, yeah, he was very pro-Israel up until he wasn't anymore. And, you know, I don't know how to measure exactly his power and influence, but I know he

really played a major role in stopping the war in Syria in 2013. Remember that? It was brightbart.com said, hey, talk radio, we're all against this. And they were like, yeah, everybody, we're all against this. Big time. And, like, I'm sure played the major role probably in stopping that. So you got Candace Owens talking about. She'd rather saw her own foot off than support Israel ever again.

And she might do it. And, yeah, she means it when she says that. So hopefully they won't make her choose. But so then I actually saw a short of Candace Owens talking about Megan Kelly. And Megan Kelly was interviewing Margaret Taylor Green and going, what's okay to talk about this right a little bit now megan kelly is the lady from fox news dude she's i don't want to say she's bill o'reilly or whatever like she's not that bit but she's just very conventional roger ails wants you to say this today type of a lady that's what her character is

like pretty republican lady right that's her whole shtick the entirety of it so she goes well i don't know like whatever it was somebody said israel in the wrong tone of voice or something and And then she got all this pressure on her. Mm-hmm. And so Candice Owens was like, ah, she was like being sarcastic. That's right. We love you, Megan Kelly. We're your best friends.

We care so much about you. And that's why we will absolutely destroy you if you don't fall in line. Right now, you're going to go to Auschwitz and pose for the picture. You're going to go pray at the wall and do the thing. And like, or you're, and you're. And then Candice goes, I'll never forget where I was when it happened to me. And she says, there I was sitting on an airplane. You can tell it's like when you, when you like smell a smell or hear a song and you remember

where you were or whatever. Candace is like, there I was sitting in my airplane seat. And my phone went ding ding, ding. Jeez, Candace, you better back down. Or I don't know if I can protect you, the Zionist on my phone said. And I was like, wait, what protect? me like I'm not afraid of you and then she says the next morning I woke up and hell was raining down it was on and like that's what it's like so get ready you're either going to get on your

plane straight to the wailing wall or welcome to the club of you know this is not me talking candace ex-Israel supporters um who are now you kind of have no choice but to be with us now because they won't have you. And then within a day, of course, they're already attacking her. And there's this guy, it sounds stupid, but there's apparently some real influence with this stupid Twitter account, awesome Jew that goes around picking fights with people, smearing people, and getting retweets and getting, you know, making headway in smearing people's reputations and stuff. Yeah, I saw just posting that Megan Kelly is taking money from the terror.

Megan Kelly is run by the terrorists. Like, that's where we are. That's where you guys are. Yes, that's... Protocols of the learned elders of Mecca. You know, where they're like, they control everything, dude. Yeah, right. Oh, man, it's so funny.

But, you know, right, it's like you guys are... You're the caricature of the most deranged. The Jews did it guy. Except he at least has a plausible theory. Like, yours is just too ridiculous. But, no, there is... You know, there's something really interesting. It's been interesting to be in this world as it's happening.

both of us have been and there's there's a snowball effect right yeah there's like this thing where so you have first of all right so say let's say the old media apparatus like the old mainstream media whatever that consists of the new york times in the washington post and then some networks and some cable networks or whatever and okay so it's like it's the most controlled environment and then this is the most controlled issue in the most controlled environment like this was the issue that like you know there were always a few little cracks uh there were people like pat buchanan or uh francis or guys like this you know who like made a comment here there about like you know pat you can't made one joke if you remember on the mclaughlin group one time about

uh capital hill being israeli occupied territory and they all flip out about the So there'd be one, if you remember, there was that guy, Rick Sanchez, who was at CNN. I'm going to do his show soon. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, he, I think reached out to, I think we had emailed back and forth with him or something. That's great that you're doing it. But so he had, if you remember what he said, he was talking about, they were saying something about, he was talking about minorities, because, you know, he's Sanchez. He's a Hispanic guy.

He was talking about the minorities or something. And they went, well, John Stewart is a minority, too. And he goes, yeah, yeah, being a Jew's a real minority or something. And then he went like, he goes, yeah, I'm sure all the people who owns CNN are all minorities. So he said that, and he was fire the next day, but he was just gone. So there was, this was like the thing that you could never. So now, right, they had, so the support for Israel relied on this fucking control. Because if you had this control, then most people can never really see what was going on.

And the mechanism for control was like ruining people or threatening to ruin people. Right. So then you lose your control, the things decentralized. now all of a sudden you don't have the control. People aren't supporting Israel because you needed control. Now they can look at this. And once you look at it, you can't unsee it. Like, no matter what angle you go, what the fuck is the relationship between?

But they're still going. Just keep cracking down. But there's the snowball effect is that now you're threatening to ruin people, but it's not working. It's missing. And then those same people are going, hey, you just tried to ruin my life. And like, that's kind of personal, you know? It's hard to not like take that.

And so now it's this thing where they're literally, I mean, I saw it both with Charlie Kirk with Megan Kelly with the people who are there and they're going now they have an audience where look I'm just saying I'm not even trying to I'm really grateful to Charlie Kirk for having me at that event and hosting me and stuff and he didn't back down or apologize for it when he was getting a lot of shit for it I give him credit for that but at the same time I also recognize it's like Charlie Kirk's not having me there out of the kindness of his heart he's having me there because he's got an audience he's got to keep too and your audience at this point a right-wing audience. You got to have someone representing the America First Critic of Israel side. Otherwise,

they just don't buy it. And so, like, now these guys are in a situation where they're like, look, this is the day after the debate, everyone noticing that Joe Biden is old. I can't go to my audience and tell them, we don't notice this anymore. Even MSNBC had to go to their audience after that and say, yes, we need a new candidate. We're all for Kamala Harris now, right? Like, Nagin Kelly and Charlie Kirk, they're like, what am I supposed to say? I'm getting killed out here with your Hasbara bullshit that doesn't work anymore. So what am I going to do? And now, because they're just going like, yeah, okay.

And then look how easy it's going to be for Megan Kelly to just make the shift and say, you know what, Tucker Carlson's still plenty successful. They haven't been able to ice him out. They haven't been able to destroy Candace Owens. And so maybe it's in Megan Kelly's interest to just finally figure out and say that, well, maybe I just need to learn about Israel and what's all the controversy about anyway. you know what I mean she'll be just one of us in no time

you know it's just like I always say about Donald Trump once you figure out that it makes no sense to pacify Afghanistan you're never going to get that wrong anymore same thing here man you same thing with Joe Biden being too old or Israel being this criminal

degenerate regime that our politicians all day long that our politicians must praise above their own country it's just too crazy go pray at their special wall and all this crap all of it yeah no I said to you on the phone the other It's as if we lost a war that Israel won and now we're living under their rule.

Like, but we didn't, but we're the superpower. They're the ones who need us. It's too crazy. That's it. So it is. It's a new day. And I think it, well, let's jot this down, right? It's mid to late August of 2025.

Let's see how long it takes before Megan Kelly is just down with us and reading anti-war.com every day. There you go. All right. We should wrap. That's been our time. I'm Scott. I do a show

and I wrote some books and I'm the director most importantly of the Libertarian Institute I got a new project called the Scott Horton Academy coming out you might want to look into that

he's Dave Smith he hosts part of the problem and it's too late for you to buy tickets but he's doing stand-up comedy here in town this weekend so maybe next time absolutely

and that's it for provoked and that's it for provoked You're going to be able to be.