QAA Podcast - Episode 129: Superfascism with Liv Agar

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Coined as a term by Italian fascist Julius Evola in his own defense in 1951, the concept of "superfascism" is useful to understand QAnon beliefs and the ideological projects of people like Steve Banno...n and Richard Spencer. ↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓ https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Check out Liv's podcast: http://soundcloud.com/livagar // http://patreon.com/livagar QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by Doom Chakra Tapes (http://doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com)

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome, listener, to chapter 129 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the super-fascism episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Liv Eagai, Julian Fields, and Travis View. This week, we plunge further into our intellectual exploration. of QAnon by picking apart its connections to fascism and extreme right ideologies.
Starting point is 00:00:35 Specifically, we'll be looking at the post-World War II concept of super-fascism, first coined by Julius Ivola, an Italian fascist who was on trial for a series of post-war bombings in 1951, and managed to get himself acquitted. His name would later grace the lips of such degenerate ghouls as Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer. But before we explore these edge lord superfascists and analyze their strain of thinking with Liv Agar, are Q&ON News. First up, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green stripped of her congressional committee assignments. Last Thursday, the House voted to kick Representative Green off of both of her committee assignments.
Starting point is 00:01:10 That was the education and the budget committees. Now, all Democrats voted for the resolution plus 11 Republicans. This was an unprecedented move, and it was punishment for Green's history of promoting bizarre conspiracy theories, endorsing violence against elected officials, and making base. allegations of election fraud. Before the vote, Green made a 10-minute floor speech in which she mischaracterized her history of promoting baseless conspiracy theories as merely liking some Facebook posts back in 2018. This is not the case. She was deep in the shit.
Starting point is 00:01:42 And like I repeatedly mentioned, she has promoted a pro-QAnon article in December of 2020 just a couple months ago. Later in 2018, when I started finding misinformation lies, things that were not true in these Q&on posts, I stopped believing. believing it. And I want to tell you any source, and I say this to everyone, any source of information that is a mix of truth and a mix of lies is dangerous, no matter what it is saying, what party it is helping, anything or any country it's about. It's dangerous. And these are the things that happen on the left and the right. And it is a true problem in our country. So I walked away from those
Starting point is 00:02:25 things. And I decided I'm going to do what I've done all my life. I'm going to work hard and try to solve the problems that I'm upset about. Marjorie Taylor Green responded to being stripped of committee assignments by sending tweets that sound like they came from a comic book super villain. Like,
Starting point is 00:02:41 this is one of the tweets. I woke up early this morning, literally laughing, thinking about what a bunch of morons, the Democrats, plus 11, are for giving someone like me free time. In this Democrat tyrannical governments, conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyways. Oh, this is going
Starting point is 00:02:56 to be fun. I'm not mad. I'm not mad. Please don't put in the newspaper that I'm mad. But I honestly think she's actually not mad. I mean, she's like, when she's on the house floor, it's like, I'm just a Georgia bomb explore in the world. Sometimes I get
Starting point is 00:03:12 things wrong. Yeah, who cares? But when on the Twitter's like, you fools. You have struck me, but it's only made me stronger. She also boasted the hundreds of thousands of dollars she was raising off of all the attention and drama. And I mean, I mean, she is, of course, one of a, I think part of a class of like postmodern members of Congress where the office itself is really not important and not as important as the platform it provides her. All the office is a stage.
Starting point is 00:03:43 For my next story, Democrats roll out new messaging strategy to troll the GOP with QAnon. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is unveiling its first. major TV and digital campaign of the 2022 cycle. It is focusing on Republicans who have refused to stand up to QAnon. This $500,000 ad campaign ties eight Republicans to QAnon and Marjorie Taylor Green. For example, here's a 30-second ad targeting Nebraska congressman Don Bacon. Qanon, a conspiracy theory born online, took over the Republican Party, sent followers to Congress, and with Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked the Cal.
Starting point is 00:04:22 capital and murdered a cop. Then Republicans like Don Bacon voted to protect Trump, letting the QAnon mob win. Congressman Don Bacon should have stood with us, but he was a coward. He stood with Trump and the lies. Congressman Don Bacon, he stood with Q, not you. DCCC is responsible for the content of this advertising. Oh, thank you Ubisoft for doing the production on that. Oh, God. What the fuck. This is so stupid. Hey, let's kick off the year of Democrats by just sitting down and eating our own turds. Hey, Dems, yeah, let's make the GOP-QAnon. Also, by the way, that cop, you're like, they killed a cop. That cop followed Q&on accounts.
Starting point is 00:05:03 Yo, I don't, I've never ran a major, you know, congressional campaign before, so I can't judge that. You should. Okay, but you're hired. But, yeah, this is, this is weird. I don't know. When I think of, like, QAnon, I think of, like, a cancerous tragedy that is. sucking everything that is possibly hypothetically
Starting point is 00:05:23 decent about the about the country and sort of ushering in the new wave of fascism. But they're like a good way to like stick it to these specific eight members of Congress. I don't know. These people basically took what 4chan
Starting point is 00:05:39 first kind of started which is like let's run an op. Let's run like this dramatic bullshit and try to push it and this macro environment Of course, it's because it's the macro environment and we're dealing with the D triple C at this point, we're looking at them being like, what if it was a bit more like an email forward to?
Starting point is 00:05:56 And it's just like, really, it's very low quality, but it's also very counterproductive in my opinion. This is going to just fuel more and more ops. Everything's an op. Everything's going to be like this, kind of like looking digital and like, you know, like the image kind of interrupts with movie static and they shift to the next scene.
Starting point is 00:06:14 It's like, how is this helping us come back down to reality? How is this helping us understand what's happening at all? It's also, it's making Q real. Yes, it makes it look cool as hell. He stood with Q. Yeah, a real, powerful, amazing thing that makes sense. Yeah, it's like they're making it real. And there's going to be thousands and thousands of Republicans who goes, well, hell yeah, I want to stand with Q2.
Starting point is 00:06:40 You know, not just not actually saying that this is not real. We're just going to be running Metal Gear Solid cutscenes at each. other until the end of time. It's just going to be, we're just in, we're in Kojima's world now. Yeah. If the content of this was changed, it would just be like a Dan Crenshaw ad, like the same sounds and like effects, etc. It's fucking identical. For my next story, General Michael Flynn says that there is no plan. So this was a surprising development. You know, Michael Flynn, massive hero in QAnon lore. But he's surprised many when he contradicted a few popular Q&ON conspiracy theories on the radio show The Right Side with Doug Billings.
Starting point is 00:07:20 When Flynn was asked about the claim that Trump signed the Insurrection Act, he dismissed it as nonsense. Even more confusingly, he said that there is no plan. So I'm going to play a clip of that interview, but bear mind that his connection in the interview was pretty bad. So his audio cuts in and out. So that's him. That's not the podcast. There's a lot of people out there that look to you for a sign of hope that things may continue as they were prior to, as I call him, Administrator Biden showing up on the scene. Do you, I'm just going to ask you some questions, and I want you to just tell me if it's nonsense or if there was anything to it at all.
Starting point is 00:08:00 Number one, did President Trump ever sign into action, the Insurrection Act? No. Nonsense. Nonsense. Is the United States military running the country or just doing, is that nonsense as well? More nonsense. Good to hear. More nonsense. There's no plan. There's so many people out there.
Starting point is 00:08:26 Is the plan happening? I mean, we have what we have and we have to accept the situation as it is. but now we have something about it so I'll stick to get into more questions I love that we get a little peek into Flynn's life he apparently has people coming up to him and say like hey is the plan working is the plan going through
Starting point is 00:08:49 what's the next step in the plan yeah he's like well I don't know man I don't know people keep coming up to me on the street talking about some sort of plan there is I mean I do have a plan to go to the grocery store with my boys and get some you know get some beers but
Starting point is 00:09:05 beyond that, I don't know what they're talking about. Also, like, you took the pledge. You took the pledge. You took the pledge. You took the pledge. Now, people are asking you the plan. Seems pretty logical to me. Yeah, I love to sew, but I hate to reap. For the next story, Q&O followers and other conspiracy theorists eagerly await
Starting point is 00:09:24 Trump's inauguration on March 4th. The 19th president. Yeah, that's right. We've mentioned this before on the great disappointment episode. But there's this whole host of Q&O followers and pro-Trump people who are barring some sovereign citizen arguments to claim that Trump is going to be inaugurated the 19th president on March 4th.
Starting point is 00:09:43 This is all totally absurd. But this delusion apparently is having a real life impact. Coincidentally, Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. is hiking up the prices of sweets around that period. Now, I have had people write in and say, I've worked in this sector and this is probably just, you know, the website's kind of algorithm just responding to demand. Same thing. That's the same. Oh, they automated their hiking.
Starting point is 00:10:07 Okay. They're hiking their prices. Oh, yeah. This is the actual hospitality industry economy reacting to a total fantasy. It rocks. I mean, just more evidence that the economy isn't real. Yeah, I think we're getting a lot these days. It seems like a deluge.
Starting point is 00:10:26 Doge coin to da moon. Yeah, we're using my Dogecoin profits to buy a hotel for the March 4th inauguration. Well, that's stupid. You should be reserving a hotel room on the moon. That's what's going to be used for. That's where Doge is going to get you somewhere. That's where Trump's going to get inaugurated. Yes.
Starting point is 00:10:47 If we could just convince Elon and Trump to just move the whole op to the moon and then maybe beyond to Mars, wouldn't be bad, right? It's like they think they're doing exploring, but we know we're exiling them. I mean, it would just, our reality would just turn into like total recall. There would just be like a mining planet. You know, a mining operation on fucking the moon. Yeah. That rocks.
Starting point is 00:11:08 Super fascism. In 1951, a racist far-right ideologue, Julius Avola, stood trial in Italy for being connected to neo-fascist groups that were responsible for a series of attempted bombings in post-war Italy. In his defense, Avola argued that he was not a fascist, but was instead a super-fascist, and could therefore not be meaningfully connected to these groups in their crimes. This is like the Metal Gear Solid Box technique.
Starting point is 00:11:34 I am not here. The problem is you do not understand my power level. I mean, this sounds like a sovereign citizen argument, but to get out of war crimes. Yeah, yeah. He was then subsequently acquitted on all charges linking him to the bombing, which was far more as a result of the sympathies of post-war Italian courts for the fascists. They were looking for a reason. But nevertheless, what Avola exactly meant when he referred to himself as a super-fascist,
Starting point is 00:12:01 is somewhat unclear. He may have been placing himself beyond the fascist movements of the 30s as a more evolved version of it or simply above it. However, what we do know is precisely what Avolus pipe dream of a super-fascist world would look like. He made it clear in his writings that this world would be dominated by men of tradition who have an aristocratic soul, live an ascetic Spartan warrior life, and have a will that rules as absolute law for those who live under them. This ideal Avolon's super-fascist would be educated in all the classics and exert an exquisite knowledge of philosophy and history. The gentleman fascist.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Yeah. It is no surprise that the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-semantic, transphobic, contemporary far-right idolize Avola as an important thinker. Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer, for instance, citing him as essential for their wretched worldviews. If anyone is familiar with the reject modernity and brace tradition meme, which at this point is generally used ironically, this is a direct product of Avala's work. There is a certain sense in which Avala's dream.
Starting point is 00:13:01 of a world populated by super-fascists has come true, yet he could not have imagined how pathetic the individuals who fall under that label truly are. The super-fascist is not a man of exquisite tastes and philosophical knowledge, who creates a moral code as he pleases to suit his natural tendency to dominate others, or whatever nonsense of all I dreamt of. They are instead little piggies that'd love to be ruled and slop up any filth given to them by potential fascist demagogues. The super-fascist is not one who creates as they please and takes what they want, they're one who shows up to a Trump rally in the freezing cold and are taken to the hospital for hypothermia because Trump did not care enough to provide them with a way to get home after the rally, as he promised to.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Which is a real example, of course. It is not as if Avola's vision had simply been implemented wrong, and the different correct version of super-fascism must be implemented. There is no such thing. These are the logical conclusions of the fascist movements of the 20th century and their underlying social causes. QAnon, a super-fascism of our contemporary age, is a logical conclusion of a society which begins to agree more and more with someone like Avola. Why is that the case? In this episode, we will go over the underlying causes of fascist movements both in the early fascism of the 1920s and 30s and the super-fascism and the super-fascism of today.
Starting point is 00:14:18 When I use the term super-fascism, I do not wish to mean a super-dangerous form of fascism that is even more brutal and scary than Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. In a certain sense, the contemporary form of fascism can be understood through what Marx wrote about history in the 18th Bumera of Louis Napoleon. Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. All of the most truly pathetic, absurd, and disgusting elements of a fascist believer in, say, Nazi Germany, are not only present but amplified in contemporary movements like QAnonon. even to the extent that this group is debatably less useful than its older equivalence, which is a good thing, of course. They are fascists to a level of absurdity, even beyond that of traditional fascism.
Starting point is 00:15:08 Avola's dream of heightening the most fascistic elements of, say, Nazi Germany, to create a new form of fascism above or beyond that of its traditional manifestations has, ironically for him, taking the most absurd and irrational elements of this traditional fascism and accelerated them. Avola wished to take a collection of movements that were already on. unimaginably unstable, and accelerate them even more. It's like driving a car meant to go only 60 miles per hour at 100, and thinking the problem is that you aren't going fast enough.
Starting point is 00:15:37 When I use the term fascism, I'm operating upon Wilhelm Reich and later Deleuze and Guitary's account of the fascism in our heads or the desire to be ruled. This key element is shared between the fascism of the 1930s and the fascism of QAnon that can allow me to claim that QAnon is more fascist than Nazi Germany. It is not that these super-fascists are not that these super-fascists are an improved, scarier form of fascism, but simply that the average believer in this ideology desires to be ruled, to be crushed by an authoritarian ideology, even more than that of the average Nazi or Italian fascist. Wilhelm Reich, a Viennese-Marckso-Froidian psychoanalyst,
Starting point is 00:16:13 attempted to describe the social phenomenon of fascism as he saw it developing in Europe during the rise of Nazi Germany. He asserts that the German masses who collected around the Nazi party and supported their brutal, genocidal, destructive regime had, in a certain sense, not been tricked into doing so, even though this brutal regime was against their personal interests. At some psychological level, those who supported Hitler had genuinely desired to be ruled by him. This desire is, importantly, primarily in the realm of the unconscious. Rake follows Freud's account of the libido, which produces all of our desires, being mediated by our unconscious to produce our ego. Many may scoff at any mention of Freud as a result of some of his more ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Yet the idea that our desires are produced by biological urges, our libido, and that these urges work unconsciously are both fairly intuitive concepts that begin with Freud's work. It is relatively common sense to assert that one can subconsciously want something and be driven by that subconscious desire to develop opinions to justify that want. This is the basic way that Wilhelm Rank and others conceptualize why people desire a fascist dictatorship. One may think of a stereotypical Freudian psychoanalyst listening to their patient vent their frustration to them about their temper, their shitty job, their failing relationships, their financial problems, etc. After they've done this, the psychoanalyst says, I've figured out the cause of your problems, they're actually all your subconscious sexual desire towards your mother. While this is an exaggerated critique of Freud, of course, one can think of a similar logic as to why the fascist jumps through hoops to pledge allegiance to an authoritarian demagogue.
Starting point is 00:17:45 One can think of me as their psychoanalyst saying, I figured out the cause of your problems, they're all actually your subconscious desire to be ruled. be ruled. The fascism within our heads is primarily an unconscious or subconscious desire, and therefore operates outside of the fascist conscious intellect. This is how an anon can claim that they want an entirely unrepressed and free society, yet still simultaneously desire the most repressive and unfree society imaginable. We can think of the Marx quote about capitalist ideology that they do not know it, but they are doing it, to imagine how their desires are aimed towards repression. They do not consciously know what they truly want, yet this want, desire, drives them to
Starting point is 00:18:25 believe that QAnon is real. You may be asking how this conceptualization can reconcile with the idea that these people are not being tricked into fascism. The primary point of Wilhelm Reich's account of fascism is that they do not have to be tricked into it because what they truly desire is full-on fascism. The propaganda that works to mask many of the more brutal elements of fascism simply allows their conscious ego to pretend like what they truly desire deep down isn't full-on authoritarianism. In a certain sense, we can imagine that the fascist ego is being tricked, yet there is far more to the self than simply the ego. To explain this, I will use a Q believer as an example. You may claim that they are generally being duped into their beliefs.
Starting point is 00:19:04 Yet I think the main reason people have such a difficult time explaining why Anon's believe such ridiculous theories about Trump is because they assume that the Anon's are being tricked into it. A far simpler interpretation of many of these people's worldviews is that they already had a desire to support a fascist movement and were desperately searching for a confirmation for that desire. They were so desperate, in fact, that they got their worldview from an anonymous Chan poster who claims to be military intelligence and whose predictions have all clearly not come true. Occam's razor actually confirms my account of why Anon's believe what they do.
Starting point is 00:19:36 To claim that they believe these ridiculous things because they truly desired their own rule is a far simpler explanation than that they have been tricked into it. Deleuze and Gattari take Wilhelm Reich's idea of the fascism within our heads or the desire to be ruled and expand on it, viewing the individual as a multiplicity of desires and drives, and critiquing the concept of the ego itself. When D&G, which is just a shorthand for DeLuz and G say that we are a multiplicity of desires,
Starting point is 00:20:02 they mean that there is essentially a bundle of different, potentially contradictory, desires produced within us all that create our comprehensive self. They use the fundamental assertion within Freud and Reich that desire is produced by the libido and that we have unconscious desires, but discard the ego as a legible concept. Our ego and sense of self is just the strongest set of desires that usually manage to satiate themselves. To provide an anachronistic comparison, one can think of the critique of the concept of the self and the ego within Buddhism as somewhat similar to DNG's position. We invent the concept of the ego to navigate the world easier. It is far less of a stable and absolute
Starting point is 00:20:41 concept than many think it is. All of the desires and drives within us do not necessarily flow through the ego for DNG. To illustrate this, one can also compare this account of a smoker with what Travis said in episode 127 when conceptualizing cognitive dissonance. The smoker may say, I really have to quit smoking cigarettes, right as they're taking a drag of one. How could they possibly do this? We like to conceive of ourselves as having a consistent and coherent direction in terms of our beliefs and desires. This is one of the reasons why a situation such as this, which indicates this is not the case, is so disheartening. What is truly going on with the smoker is that the contradictory desires to smoke and to quit smoking both attempt to manifest themselves the strongest,
Starting point is 00:21:24 and the desire to smoke obviously wins out. In this view, the reason for cognitive dissonance, or the physical pain associated with it, is simply the struggle between these contradictory desires. One's ego has very little to do with this battle, even if one likes to think. otherwise. The ego attaches itself to a desire that commonly wins out and says, this is me, when in reality, this desire does not always win. When a desire that the ego does not think is representative of itself wins, there is physical discomfort, and it must be reconciled with somehow. The smoker's ego, or conscious intellect, may attach itself to a desire related to feeling disgust for smoking. Yet if they
Starting point is 00:22:01 continue to smoke, and the desire to smoke continues to win in particular instances, the physical discomfort in the struggle between these drives will continually reawaken. This is why the smoker may adopt a perspective that, actually, smoking isn't that bad for you, or that it's worth it. They think they come to this conclusion because of some presentation of new evidence. They believe that their ego is the captain of the ship. The real reason they develop this new opinion that smoking is fine is because of the libidinal desire to smoke winning out so often. The ego is essentially a slave to these desires or drives, and specifically to which ones win out. And the ego cannot last long, typically, holding a view of its nature that
Starting point is 00:22:38 is contradictory to the actions and drives that are the strongest within it. Now, of course, you may ask the question, why is it the case that the desire to smoke wins out so often? This is usually because of a nicotine addiction. For D&G, our desires and the subsequent views of the world carried in them play out at the biological libidinal level. There is no higher rational order that structures our beliefs, our actions, views on morality, etc. It's all part of the natural biological world, and we are no different than non-human animals. This is a very Freudian view, of course, and one can imagine that many psychologists would also subscribe to this position about what drives humans to do things, that it is the same
Starting point is 00:23:17 fundamental mechanism present in many non-human animals. The reason why, in general, we may do contradictory things to what our ego understands as our self is related to the multiplicity of drives within us. The ego may attempt to shape these desires at some level, but it is, for the most part, at the whim of these desires and which ones are generally the strongest. Using this general framework, D&G attempt to understand why fascism is desired or why desire desires its own repression. They wish to do away with the concept of the ego and the self and help us understand how the desires that are produced by us all are molded by our social world.
Starting point is 00:23:53 It is the social world of the fascist that shapes and affects their libido and causes them to desire to be ruled. The fascist desire to be ruled leads their ego towards specific. opinions and beliefs that can support their unconscious desires, not the other way around. In most cases, they do not even recognize it as such, and their desires functioned primarily on the unconscious level, yet they still desire their own repression, which can clearly be seen in their actions. In a certain sense, desire is intentional but non-subjective. By this I mean that you can analyze desire not by asking the individual subjects what they desire, but instead by
Starting point is 00:24:29 looking at these individuals' actions. What this means practically is that to truly understand something like Q&N, you look at the larger effects of their desires in society, not necessarily which crazy conspiracies they believe, like who JFK Jr. is, whether John Tider is Donald Trump's uncle, etc. The desires of an individual certainly have intentions that intimately affect their actions, yet the individual's conscious intellect does not necessarily know what these intentions are. Following this, super-fascism is simply the the desire to be ruled at an increasingly intense magnitude compared to regular fascism. These contemporary super-fascists are not an aristocratic, spiritual elite, who will revolt
Starting point is 00:25:09 against modernity and bring back a traditional form of life, as Avola may have imagined them, but simply a group who desires their own rule to such an extent that their political beliefs and actions are even more fascist than those who supported Nazi Germany 80 years ago. These super-fascists desire their own repression to such a degree that they will make up a competent strongman who will swoop in to lead them by the arm to their own repression. They desire their own rule to such an extent that they look at the world as it exists around them that contains increasingly militarized borders, overreaching police forces, mass surveillance, and decide that this is not repressive enough for them.
Starting point is 00:25:45 The superfascist desires repression beyond what is currently politically feasible. This is why so many believe in Q. QAnon is, in fact, the best example of superfascism manifested in our contemporary world. What other reason could there be that so many began to believe that a senile ex-reality TV game show host has an eighth dimensional plan to destroy all of the bad guys and turn the world into paradise? What other reason could this insane world's view have gained any prominence not simply within America, but outside its borders as well?
Starting point is 00:26:17 The international nature of Q&N also certainly demonstrates that the social causes of super-fascism are not bound by borders. Even if a system predicated on militarized borders is what this disease grows out of. QAnon believers project onto Trump a competency that is potentially the most absurd of all the different type of Trump supporters. This is because they are the most fascist of all of them. Many Trump supporters simply cynically latched onto him as a means to continue republican-style economic austerity, expansion of the military, police, the surveillance apparatus, and
Starting point is 00:26:50 increasing xenophobia and deportation of immigrants. These individuals are surely also fascist, but far more in the traditional sense of the word. Their support of Trump is nevertheless an affirmation of their own repression and the taking away of their own rights, but it is one based on some actual social reality and set of material interests that Trump represents that they also benefit from. These cynical and wealthy white Trump supporters still desire their own repression, but mainly because it may also align with their material interests. Importantly, it is desire itself that determines one's material interests.
Starting point is 00:27:23 and it is one's material interests that make one desire something. So a wealthy business owner desires a tax cut that comes from Trump above a desire to help those less fortunate, or a desire to help limit racism, because their social world shapes their desires. So desire affects the political world, and the political world affects desire. They're intertwined. Importantly, most of these regular fascists,
Starting point is 00:27:44 who are becoming increasingly less common, had already ditched Trump after the election, and certainly it ditched him after January 6th, and would not ever think about doing a revolution for his same. sake. They recognize that their material interests align with market stability, which could not happen under a Trump dictatorship. We can see this demonstrated through Coca-Cola, for instance, denouncing the coup attempt on the 6th. Unlike these regular fascists, who ditched Trump when it became expedient for their material interests, the super-fascist Trump supporter continued to have faith
Starting point is 00:28:13 in their god emperor. Their desires are even more absurd than the regular fascists, and they are perfectly fine risking their well-being for him. Trump was not the fascist strong man, that they had desired so badly, of course. He is a smooth-brained reality TV host. He never had a coherent plan to take over the government. This is not necessarily because he respects liberal democracy and wishes to keep it intact, but more so because he is simply too stupid
Starting point is 00:28:38 to even begin to hatch a plan to place himself as God Emperor of the United States. You don't think he recruited the best of the best when he got Flynn and fucking Powell up there. Lynn Wood, these are all. Giuliani melting. You don't think this is the best fascism can do. The top minds of America.
Starting point is 00:28:53 America. This is not what his adoring fans and supporters believed, of course. When he called for them to march on Capitol Hill, for whatever reason his decaying brain imagined it might do, they had all assumed that he had a plan to take over. This is why we saw the various radically fascist, tactical white supremacists who brought weapons, IEDs, and zip cuffs to the capital. Most of these individuals were also morons. The man who brought zip cuffs, for instance, had brought his mom to the coup, these individuals, nevertheless, could have caused serious physical harm to Congress people, thinking they were somehow working through Trump's grand plan to take over the government. Superfascism is still dangerous, not despite of, but because of how untethered it is to reality.
Starting point is 00:29:37 It's not so much that Trump himself had a plan to overtow the government, it is more so that these superfascists had projected onto him the status of a competent, authoritarian, strongman, who they could help lead to victory. We can also see, like, the inverse of this, where some people, people who don't like Trump also project onto him, this sort of extreme competency. As we, I guess as we saw in that ad that we watched, that viewed Q is this real thing that Trump was standing with and as this actual plan. People go further and argue that QAnon is also this completely sensical and, you know,
Starting point is 00:30:10 altogether coherent platform, which is to all of our detriment because it basically stops us from seeing when a competent version of this. will come along by obscuring it with this false competent version that has just fallen over itself in every possible fucking way. And like you said, is actually quite incapable of carrying out their like their biggest dreams. That's a good point. If everything is treated on this same level, then there's no capacity to identify when like an actual competent strongman comes along because it looks the exact same as someone like Trump. We can at least be fortunate in the current context that the super-fascists have no competent strongman who wants to overthrow the system
Starting point is 00:30:54 to attach their desires to be ruled onto. One may even argue that they are so untethered to reality that a real strongman would have a hard time unanimously gating their favor, although this is admittedly wishful thinking and cope. The only thing more fascist than fighting to instate an authoritarian strongman to take away your rights is fighting for a perceived authoritarian strongman who is actually a moron with no coherent goals. This is how Delizant Guitary's account of fascism helps us explain the phenomenon of Q&N perfectly. Most, including myself, have had a minimal capacity
Starting point is 00:31:26 to meaningfully understand exactly why so many people have latched on to such an absurd and obviously wrong, far-right ideology. The easiest explanation for how this movement could have possibly come about is that the people who subscribe to this ridiculous set of beliefs do so because they desire to be ruled. They want it to be true to such an extent,
Starting point is 00:31:46 that they will ignore literally every single piece of evidence that obviously proves it is absurd, just so they can continue imagining that Daddy Trump is going to guide them by the hand towards an even more repressive police state. It is their desire itself that helps shape their social reality and distort it towards an entirely virtual understanding of the world that has no reference to the actually unfolding events. The collection of unconscious drives and desires of Q supporters works towards their own repression, The specific content of the baking process, you know, whether the deep state is Satanic or not,
Starting point is 00:32:21 whether Chrissy Teigen has been secretly arrested for sex crimes, etc., are irrelevant. In fact, the nature of the baking process is perfect for these super-fascists, because it allows for an increasingly large flexibility in developing conscious reasons for further pursuing their desire to be ruled. There is a bizarre autonomy to this particular form of fascism. Adorno and Horkeimer compared the traditional form of fascism to factory production, in that it is predicated on top-down planning and a rigid structure that's similar to the factory. This fascism produces its ideology through a central ministry of propaganda that distributes this ideology to the masses.
Starting point is 00:32:56 See the Premium QAA episode about astrology for more on this. Following this, we can compare the contemporary form of fascism to cryptocurrency. This sort of crypto-fascism still requires a capitalist state and market, yet also functions on entirely autonomous online peer-to-peer connections with no essential hierarchy, to the process in which propaganda is produced and disseminated. To destroy a cryptocurrency, you cannot simply attack the central banking system. There is not a particular connection within the blockchains that, when severed, destroys the currency. You must instead sever the entire chain of peer-to-peer connections that form the network
Starting point is 00:33:32 which records the transactions. The baking process, which produces the Q ideology, is not produced by a central ministry of propaganda. It functions based upon a set of autonomous connections and relationships. It is the broader social reality and the desires that causes the different points in these connections to act the way that they do that must be dealt with. The fundamental problem that produces the desire to be ruled must be targeted if this phenomenon is to disappear. To simply ban and censor-cube believers on whatever website the attempt to amass on is a Band-Aid
Starting point is 00:34:02 solution. Many Anon's, importantly, are so fascist that their ego is no longer playing catch-up with their subconscious desire to be ruled and meets it at face value. We can see this with the Anons who explicitly desire a military dictatorship and the taking away of their rights for the sake of fighting the shadow cabal. When the military took over in Myanmar, many Q's supporters explicitly stated that this is what they desire to happen in America. They no longer justify their desire with the belief that Q is leading them towards a perfectly free society for all. They instead picture the storm simply as involving the destruction and suffering of their enemies. I would imagine that if the Overton window shifted further right in America, then it already has,
Starting point is 00:34:41 we would find out that quite a lot more Q believers hold these conscious fascist beliefs than we can objectively observe at the moment. And of course, the removal of Donald Trump is, for the most part, not going to change that. If anything, they'll just sort of pivot towards something else, or maybe even continue to believe in Q. Following this analysis, the obvious question is, what is it exactly in the broader social world that causes so many to desire their own rule? And why has it gotten so much worse in the last 100 years?
Starting point is 00:35:07 The primary answer to this question should be no surprise to anyone upon finding out that Delozing Qatari are Marxists. It is the domination of capitalism in our social formation that causes desire to desire its own repression. To simplify greatly, D&G believe that the production of libido, or our desires, is intimately connected to economic production. They are inherently intertwined.
Starting point is 00:35:29 This goes back to what I was talking about before in relation to the regular fascist and their material interests. The way that an economic system orders and arranges production is heavily based on the ordering and arrangement of desire. It is only because people want to play along with the arrangement of economic production in a particular system that makes this system possible. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Let's take the example of the relationship between production and desire in hunter-gatherer societies, as these conditions are what humans have been living in for a great majority of our existence.
Starting point is 00:36:00 In these societies, economic production does not have to repress desire nearly as much as other newer social formations in order for it to function. function. This is obviously because it is the closest social formation to our evolutionary environment or our natural and unrepressed desires. In these quote-unquote primitive societies, which is importantly a misnomer, because the Losing Atari do not view primitive societies as inferior to other more advanced social formations. But in these societies, one's desires are connected to the entire community, which allows for production to be arranged communally. Things like food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc., are produced and arranged for the entire community's well-being. This can be possible because of the desires of those in the community being arranged
Starting point is 00:36:42 for this purpose. This is why Marx and Engels identified primitive societies as primitive communism, because goods were produced for the sake of the entire community. When a hunter gave away the food they had just collected, instead of hoarding it himself, to then be distributed based upon the entire community's collective needs, it was because their desire was attached to this collective social formation. I mean, to simplify it, a project of society. Yeah. And And when we're looking at capitalism, what we mean is that we've become so atomized and so removed from that greater need. We have like a vague understanding of it, like we should quit smoking. But we have no ability to actually like redress all those severed connections because it is the structure itself that has long ago severed those connections.
Starting point is 00:37:24 Even if you want to care for your village, it wouldn't mean anything because there is no villages. Interestingly, I think nationalism is also one of those like dead ends where you go, well, America first, right? We're doing great as opposed to other countries. You never see the tangible change in your own life. You're totally atomized, even from the concept of the nation at this point, which was supposed to be like the last container that capitalism was going to use to like make us somewhat work together. And that is completely falling apart because we are so atomized. Yeah, as it sort of, as like profit dominates like just the way our social formations are defined,
Starting point is 00:38:01 And even these concepts like the nation or this collective interests of the nation start to become less and less legible. Yeah, if anything, fascists are just saying, well, now that the kind of global economy has been set up and we're basically in just one giant container where it's only individual desire bouncing against each other in this flat, endless world, they're like, well, it was better when it was the nation. And it's like, what about actual communities? I mean, they don't obviously want that, you know, even their desire for the restoration of the nation. national body is basically a false, a dead end and a false interpretation. But it is very sad that that's where we're at now, you know, and the idea that globalization is just this very positive and good force doesn't account for the fact of how many people were actually able to think of as part of our in-group, as in our village, our communities. You know, it's never
Starting point is 00:38:54 going to be the whole planet. It's not even working on a national level. Yeah, like, you can see like a lot of nationalism, and you know, particularly what caused fascism, what caused Nazi Germany in the first place, it was this sort of hypernationalism, that like even the use of nationalism, which was sort of a way to vaguely point one towards this sort of communal project, even if it fundamentally didn't do so, even if the nation was predicated on, you know, a lot, a few people having quite a bit and everyone else not having anything. Even that concept is slowly, like being removed. It's very hard because I think fascists are both lying to themselves and lying to you and also telling the truth to themselves and telling the truth to you, all at once.
Starting point is 00:39:41 Yeah. So under the capitalist social formation, our desires are still arranged for the sake of production, but of a very different kind than the primitive communism. Instead of producing goods for the sake of the needs of the community, one produces goods for the sake of selling them on the market. Labor is done to produce capital, and our desires are arranged around this very basic. economic phenomenon. There are obviously many perks to the social formation. I use the money I earned through my labor writing podcast scripts to buy a multitude of commodities that could not have been produced in these hunter-gatherer societies. Yeah, no, they didn't have alien wear rigs. They didn't, yeah, they did not have
Starting point is 00:40:15 escape from Tarkov. The relationship between libidinal production, or the production of our desires, and economic production, has the most complicated and worrying one in the capitalist social formation. Desire is most radically altered from its unrepressed biological beginning point when it is shaped for production in the capitalist social formation. One of the reasons for this is that the capitalist social formation is predicated on an increased use of force in order to function, a force that isn't present in, for instance, primitive societies. The free flow of goods is paradoxically intertwined with militarized borders, police brutality, surveillance, and exploitation. Desire must desire its own oppression, people must desire to be
Starting point is 00:40:55 ruled, at some level, in order for this free flow of goods to continue. Desire must compensate for the radical differences between its natural, unrepressed form and what is required of it for the capitalist economy to function, by participating in the process of repression itself. This is the basic explanation for why we see the phenomenon of fascism or an individual desiring their own repression within capitalism. The more that our society is arranged for an increase in the generation of capital or the making of money, the more desire will want its own repression to compensate.
Starting point is 00:41:26 This is the underlying reason why we have super-fascism today. Ironically, this super-fascism is so absurd that in many cases, like what we saw during the Capitol Hill coup attempt, it actually harms the interests of capital and threatens to instate a political system that is far less stable for markets than what already exists, which is again shown by Coca-Cola denouncing the coup attempt. To Lizzie and Qatar are very complicated and elusive thinkers that I myself have trouble understanding, so I've tried to simplify their account of Desire's connection to economic production as much as possible, Even if you think it's a bunch of pinko-commy bullshit or whatever other likely more legitimate disagreements you have with it, I still think my general explanation of why Anon's choose to believe the absurd theories they do,
Starting point is 00:42:06 that they are attempting to justify an inner desire to be ruled, is a much simpler and more likely explanation than that they are simply idiots being tricked. At a base level, I want people to understand that the only reason something like QAnon appears is a tendency in our society towards an increase in economic and political exploitation for the sake of profits. That is why this problem is even worse than it was, say 100 years ago. The only way that many individuals can reconcile with this social and political situation is by a maddening drive towards their own repression, an absurd embracing of the worst of what these economic tendencies produce.
Starting point is 00:42:40 The reason they do so is beyond their own understanding. Many of them think they are simply fighting the deep state or defending the children from satanic pedophiles. If they only want to believe that these are the reasons they act, because the true intentions behind their beliefs and actions are so aliened, alien to the natural, unrepressed desires within them that they cannot bear to look it in the face. I don't know. It's an attractable problem. I see
Starting point is 00:43:02 I don't like the conditions that give rise to super-fascism, but I really do like two-day delivery with Amazon. That's a good point. That's a very good point. That's it. That's it. It's like we're like, well, we would never choose to just be individuals who think of ourselves as totally separate from everybody else and just don't
Starting point is 00:43:18 give a fuck about our community. But every day, we have that weird dissonance and we're like, I just ordered something. on Amazon. It's really nice. I can get anything I want. That's the day after tomorrow. We've been trained for it.
Starting point is 00:43:32 It's like Liv was saying earlier in the episode, you know, that that, you know, capitalism sort of has taught us that this is what we want now and this is how we live. You want to. What do I want? You want to have a connection to your loved ones and to live in a community that makes sense. But you, but you desire so badly to receive, you know, cyberpunk on the day of It is released that you're actually unconsciously trading those two things for each other.
Starting point is 00:44:00 Well, all we have to look forward to is something like the cyber, you know, an overhyped game from, you know, seven years ago. It's the only desire that you will actually have a good shot at fulfilling. Fulfilling. If you have a desire for justice, it ain't coming. It ain't coming. If you have a desire for cyberpunk, two-day delivery. But you know what? If you work hard, if you work hard and fail at most things and then get lucky doing a weird podcast.
Starting point is 00:44:24 about some weird fucking online conspiracy then you can you can be able to get cyberpunk on the day it comes out and not have to trade in three games at GameStop and get it a couple months later when the price goes down he's going to be doing Tony Robbins
Starting point is 00:44:40 style speeches across the nation I don't have the I don't have the moral turpitude to even begin to put something like that together no I will rant he means work ethic yeah I will rant from behind this microphone until Julian shuts me on And that's, I'm fine with that.
Starting point is 00:44:56 It's not going to happen. I'm going to get deported before you can be silenced. My ultimate move. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Q&on Anonymous podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, you should definitely also check out Live Agar's podcast. Where can we find that? On most platforms that host podcast, just search Live Agar. And then also on Patreon, of course, at Live Agar.
Starting point is 00:45:17 And you can also go to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode of this podcast, everyone. week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact. And now, today's auto-cue. The next mayor of Myrtle Beach, Gene O. On day one, the first thing I do, and I promise you this, I will go to the city of
Starting point is 00:45:48 Myrtle Beach Police Department, and I will learn each and every one of their officers' first name. And then I'm going to learn the first names of their wives, their husbands, and I'm going to know them. My name is Tracy Bean. This is my glowing endorsement. Please vote for Gene Ho for Mayor of Myrtle Beach. We have to take out Beach back because it will be safe. My name is Winnie de Broderick. You can't do any better than Gene Ho. Vote for Gene Ho. When we have biker weekend, I will be downtown with my family and my children and we will feel safe. And this is a plan that is going to work because it is God's plan and I'm going to prove it to you right now. Zero tolerance for crime.

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