TRASHFUTURE - It’s a Pilled, Pilled, Pilled, Pilled World ft Julian Feeld

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

QAA’s Julian Feeld joins us to discuss how Q-Anon has metastasised into mainstream political thought in the global North, and will usher in a whole new era of traumas and catastrophes that will in turn produce yet wilder political tendencies that will continue metastasising. Also, Starmer’s forensic diplomacy lasts all of 45 minutes, the dissociative border patrol, and Miguel Arruda stands firm. Get access to more Trashfuture episodes each week on our Patreon! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

So there's been a lot of news happening and I know that when you tune into this podcast, you come here expecting us to discuss the hard-hitting issues that are shaping the world today, and to discuss the stories that really matter because it's a very anxious time. Oh yeah, of course. Like, we're in the midst of a real, like, global realignment. It's totally unprecedented. Yeah. So, with that in mind, I need to share with you the first story we're gonna talk about

before we even introduce our guest. Is that important? Miguel Arruda's parliamentary immunity has been lifted by the Portuguese state. My God. He is now going to be interviewed by the Central Criminal Investigation Court. So we need we need jail support for an incarcerated comrade. Miguel Arruda bail fund link in the description. Yeah, they protected him for a long time,

but they realized he had too much baggage. Thank you. there we go. Yeah, Hussain wins the free soda stream this week. Get me to write Oscar's jokes. Get me to like be on SNL. I am, by the way, now paying attention to Portuguese news in translation so I can keep you abreast of this developing story. So he is going to be charged with eight crimes. However, however, he is standing tall.

Miguel Arruda is currently campaigning among other members of parliament to make sure that he still gets to sit on his three parliamentary committees, including affairs rights, freedoms and guarantees, budget and finance, and environments and energy. A sterling example to us all. Absolutely. Just when you thought this man couldn't get any more cases.

How is he supposed to have pens and notepads if he doesn't get to go to those? Well that's right exactly he is standing up for the freedom to do what you want at the airport and I think in an age of security theater that's incredibly important. He should come into court with all of his documents in a big suitcase that has someone else's name on the luggage tag. You're like, your honor, would I? Yeah. So Miguel Arruda, we and the listeners of this podcast are all with you. Of course. Bell fun in the links, and we show notes. He has to show receipts for all the clothes he wears walking in, but I think he can stay. Yeah. Turning up in clearly several people's clothes and not all of them male gendered. Look a lot of people get their egg cracked in a lot of different ways okay? Taught you guys too much. That sounds like a different

euphemism to the one it is. Like sometimes you just got to get your egg cracked you know what I mean? You're not ready to go back to the wife after a long day in the office. You don't know what that means in Portugal. It's like an ancient saying. It's an ancient saying for when you change your gender in Portugal. When you get your luggage stolen. Yeah. That's Portuguese egg cracking is when you break the lock in a Rimowa case. Yeah, that's right.

You should always do it on a flat surface though. You don't want any bacteria getting into the case. It is my pleasure to introduce our guest for this week. It is returning, must be like a five or six Pete now, returning champion. QAnon anonymous is Julian Field. Julian, how's it going? What's up? What's up? I'm here in the United States, feeling good, feeling fresh. Yeah, you get access to like the sort of very, very, very special lounge, but we may not guarantee that you get your luggage back.

Hasn't said thank you once. Well, we're going to get into that. Dressed really inappropriately as well. Didn't even wear a suit for this. Yeah. Nipples protruding. He's been enjoying the free canapes and the unlimited orange juice. Hasn't said thank you. Not once. I am dressed as if I'm going to war, though. Yeah.

Julian is back today. And Julian just has a couple articles that have been come out in Jacobin that I think are really good and we're going to be discussing different angles on both of them that are basically about the transformation of QAnon into a major and mainstream strand of political thinking that is pretty much inescapable in the US and increasingly inescapable in the rest of like the North Atlantic world. Oh good. You're so, so welcome. Thanks. Yeah. How come you did this? We finally found whose fault it is. Thanks so much. Yeah.

It's like reverse operation paperclip. We're importing dumb Nazis to Europe. I want to get into this with him, especially because Julian, in addition to having written some of these articles that we're going to be discussing, is also freshly back from CPAC. So Julian, my first question I want to ask you about CPAC this year, what was it like meeting JFK Jr.? Was he as handsome in real life? He's absolutely gorgeous. He was very literally the first person I saw when I walked into the lobby on the very first day. Incredible. And he also has some sort of leprechaun like power to appear around every corner. I ran into him over and over, sometimes in places where it wasn't logical. Like I was like, how did he get to there since the last time I saw him over over that other part of the of the conference.

The real power that JFK proper could have used, I'll say that. there since the last time I saw him over over that other part of the of the conference the real JFK proper could have used I'll say that yeah yeah yeah yeah he he does have like I don't know he just has this consistent look where his facial hair looks like it was painted on like if he's a lego figure it's kind of like this like overgrown five o'clock shadow and the first time you meet him you're like oh he must be really kind of like down on overgrown five o'clock shadow and the first time you meet him you're like Oh, he must be really kind of like down on his luck not looking great And then you see him he's exactly the same every single time like this weird straw black hair. He's wearing a fedora He has a cheeky little smile

And he has a new shtick this time because obviously the JFK jr. Thing has been carrying him He's been getting lots of middle-aged women coming up to him But now middle-aged women are coming up to him and they're talking to him about the fact that he was behind Trump when they tried to and when that young man RIP tried to kill him with a gun and he was the only one in the crowd that didn't like crouch that just looked confused And was just kind of looking around. They can't shoot a father and a son for the same crime It's not possible I've been given powers. Epigenetic memory, no longer afraid of bullets. My mother dipped me in the river

Charles holding on only to my head. We're not going to make the same mistake with this one. His shtick is like shifting too now. Now he so he's always been like a wink guy. He never says, oh yeah, I'm JFK Jr. So now his new wink is Trump's guardian angel. He may or may not be Trump's guardian angel. He may or may not.

Well, he definitely has made t-shirts, his own design that are amazing and I did purchase one off him after logging him into his own PayPal on his big flip open phone because he couldn't figure it out but yeah no that's that's his whole thing is just like winking and always delaying like the payoff right so it's like oh yeah those three seconds you know when the shots went out there were like three hours for me but I can't I can't get into it right now because it would take forever. I would I would be I would be here forever. So it's I was like, oh, yeah, tomorrow I'll tell you more about how I'm Trump's guardian angel tomorrow.

You might hear more about how I'm JFK Junior. And I tried to pull a little combo on him. And I was like, who's Trump's guardian angel? And he kind of smiled at me. You know, he has this cheeky smile. And I'm like, is it this guy who's definitely not you? JFK jr. And he got the biggest grin on his face and he said you know too much Look whatever it is, I don't know what to call his job

I guess his job is he's kind of like a traveling entertainer for you know, paranoid middle-aged suburban women But he's amazing at it. Oh yeah. Is he matching Mike live? Yeah. You will be happy to know that he's interested in the UK because the t-shirt that ended up getting off him, he did not want to part with because he said it was for Nigel Farage. See you have Nigel Farage's t-shirt.

Yes, yes. If you zoom in on that picture of Nigel Farage emerging from a plane crash, you can actually see JFK Jr. sitting in the back of the plane and not even ducking. Yeah, because JFK Jr. survived that one plane crash and now... My other father was the Big Bappa. I'm also immune to that. He had a kind of like uncoheritable plane crash survival trait. Of Onculinear.

I also want to ask Julian, have you also learned from CPAC what it's like to live the meme? Oh my lord. That was so painful because the trick that they kind of pull at CPAC is that they don't really tell you the big names that are going to be there. So there's no Trump on the calendar because I guess they don't want you to predict when he's going to arrive because they do lock the whole place down with with um, you know secret service agents But but yeah, so Elon showed up out of nowhere and I walked in I was about it was about a third through and I Really could not believe my eyes

I mean you can't really maybe hear it as well in the recording but his his big gold Rapper chain was like clinking on his lapel mic the whole time Kind of like shook there, like genuinely like, like someone you'd be worried if they were at a rave with you, you'd be checking on them and being like, hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't take this much, you know, are you, are you going to be okay? Do you have a ride home? That kind of stuff.

He was so fucked up. And the, the, all the questions were so obsequious because he didn't have a speech, of course. So so they they sat him down and he was getting interviewed on the stage and all the questions were like so how is it like to be in the mind of a genius you know very literally that was one of the questions and there were people in the audience around me kind of chattering which was interesting because you got to see how people were processing stuff but he described his mind as like a storm but on his way to just saying that one word which took like 25 seconds

There was a woman who just turned to her friend. She's like well He's such a genius that like he can't he can barely speak Like Stephen Hawking yeah Cuz it was very clear so you had to come up with some reason why this genius who's doing all the cool stuff is Completely incoherent and just seems to be babbling his way through this speech. Is fucking Elon Musk just out of his mind in the smoking area at CPAC asking anyone if they've got any gum?

This is a guy who definitely would then go outside to smoke the wrong end of a cigarette. It was remarkable how he, as someone who again is the most powerful, now one of the most powerful people in the world, essentially the head of government for the United States, in a hall full of basically religiously devoted fanatical supporters, still could not get a rise out of the crowd. He's washed. He's washed. And he's been cyberbullied too much.

Thank you to the listeners for their service. And he's just going around impregnating random women, abandoning the baby, and sort of like shambling on stage to kind of mumble some things, it seems like. Yeah. Yeah, when Yalan Mus can't get it up, you get a little envelope in the mail the next day with the comb in it. Ohhhhhhh. envelope in the mail the next day with the common it That's how and that's how he's inseminated almost all of these women because no way anything's working brain not working dick not working

Nothing's working and it was it was interesting because you're mentioning the smoking room But like there was a green room video and it was Malay Javier Millet the the president of Argentina. They're obviously big fans of each other. He was gifting him this giant chainsaw, which Elon later like kind of waved around on stage because they recreated that moment for the stage. But when he was actually backstage and he's like, I got a present for you. There was a film crew that came in with Malay to film the moment and Elon was

Kind of hovering over the craft table with his his back turned and as he turns he slips on the sunglasses Because he realizes that that he's going to be actually captured Glasses on stage the whole time. That's how fucked up he was that is a guy with pupils this just not a square millimeter of white in those eyes. It just goes directly from bloodshot to pupil. He was waving that fucking chainsaw and in his other hand he had a portrait of himself that someone handed him from the audience that it was almost like you know Alex Gray like that kind of DMT style art where you look like you're kind of ascending into an

astral plane and stuff So he's waving that in one hand and a big chainsaw that he is pretty fucking heavy So he's kind of struggling with it on stage. I don't know. I feel like he could have accidentally done something terrible Oh, well, you know what in another life, maybe the problem just sort of solved itself because he was clowning around on stage with a chainsaw Real sliding doors moment being handed a chainsaw by Argentina's answer to Milton Jones. Yeah, it was weird having him. I mean, like, you know, pretty distinctive looking man, but for some reason in between

the last time I saw him on CPAC, he got this barcode tattoo on the back of his head. So, I mean, I want to talk though about like, we're talking about, you know, about Musk, right? And we're talking about QAnon, CPAC and Julian, you wrote, you've written a couple of articles. One of them is about CPAC. That's what I want to discuss first. And I want to read a selection from from your article says the crowd at the international summit roared when they were shown an airstrike on Somali jihadists, small grainy shapes and satellite images of a mountainside disappearing in a cloud of dust. Cheers erupted at the idea of thousands of criminals, including Americans, being deported

and indefinitely held in the Salvadoran mega prison with the help of President Naib Bukele. Support for the Israeli military intervention in Palestine, considered a genocide by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, received raucous applause. An Israeli politician, Amichai Shigli, told convention goers that his country was, quote, teaching the West how to win a war. This seems like an extraordinarily more overtly bloodthirsty than usual celebration of conservatism. I think so. I think they're out for blood. I think they're very, very angry at the perceived slights that they've received from liberalism in general, from their, you know, family members

maybe that have told them that they're supporting Hitler or whatever. And I think that it's kind of like, oh, so you, you know, you're going to call me a Nazi? Well, fine, fuck it, you know. And with Israel on board, I feel like they now can just kind of get away with, I don't know, very literally having Nazi salutes on stage. That's what Steve Bannon did. And then that was imitated as well by another speaker, but like having guys in Kippah is like wandering around saying some of the most psychotic stuff that I heard there, you know, I mean a lot of the talk was, well, you know, it's, you know, Israel has a right to defend itself, obviously, but now we should also have a right to exterminate the evil terrorists, Hamas, you know, like there was a lot of, no, no, no, we're now have a right to exterminate the evil terrorists Hamas

You know like there was a lot of no no we're we're now asking for the next level up We no longer have to tow the liberal Zionist line that that this is about defense We have to find and exterminate our enemies that the job is not done we have to you know keep supporting it and That actually kind of allowed I think a lot of like far right people, including by the way, the Austrian far right party that was founded by literal Nazis, they were meeting in a cafe with Amir Chikly.

So it's not even, you know, oh, it's looking kind of bad, you know, the optics are bad. It's very literally a party founded by Nazis meeting with like Israeli leaders in their kippahs Imagine an Austrian Nazi being a meeting with a bunch of Israeli government officials and being like never thought this would happen. Hey If you'd have given me $10 on this happening 20. I would not I would not have taken that bet I would not have taken that bet

Yeah That the feeling was that there's a lot of bloodthirstiness and that there's also like a global coalition, like out to get revenge and gaining in the polls and now kind of focusing more on the judicial aspect of things because, you know, they've had some setbacks in South Korea, they've had some setbacks in Brazil, where, you know, basically the leaders tried to attempt a coup to stay in power or to kind of circumvent like parliamentary power and for them the solution is what we have to change the laws so that the stuff that's illegal that we're doing can't be prosecuted anymore because they're trying to jail us and kill us and you know these communists,

these Marxists. A lot of people saying woke with a European accent so... Oh god, one of the worst things. Voke. Culture. Voke, one of the worst things. Yeah. Oh goodness. Uh, and I mean, what, what really strikes me about your writing about this is that this is a moment of, I would probably say on pretty unbridled world historical triumph or the far right. And the narrative that you talk about throughout this, not just from the Americans, but from the Europeans who are there as well,

is one of constant victimhood. Yes, they always need that. I mean, you'll see that even when people have total power, there still has to be the secret communist threat. You know, you still have to denounce your neighbors. There has to be something lurking there. Otherwise, like the whole fascistic project doesn't work. You need to be under threat. You need to be a victim. And in this case, the four years of Biden in the United States is, you know, like we're going to cleanse ice of all the woke guys who work for ice. We're going to double up. You know, it's, it's very much like, uh,

I think what I really felt was that the project of American empire is just shedding liberalism. It no longer needs it at all. It's, it's, it's very much a kind of aspect of the past that you had to put that sheen on things and it's like no No, we're getting like the ice guy was talking about rehiring people that had been fired for being like too Insane and to right wing and or whatever well now the plan as well these same Organizations like where they had like jet like January 6 people in them, where they got fired, the talk is now also, we gotta get the J6ers back on board. Oh, the J6ers are all out. Those are the guys who are the most victimized by sort of Bidenism, right?

Like they were put into the gulags for exercising free speech. So, yeah. Trump called them the J6 hostages and he has released over 1500 of them with full like expunged records and full pardons. So a lot of guys there were, they had their prison IDs with them, their federal prison IDs and also their pardon with them, you know, and they were kind of brandishing it around and they were promising retribution straight up. I have a quote here from your article. They destroyed my life and my kids lives, exclaimed Rasha Abuel Rageb, a single mother sentenced to two months of home detention and 36 months of probation for participation in January 6. That's not very many.

She was sentenced to her LULUG at home. Sentencing me to be with my family is like a horrendous assault on my values and freedoms. To be fair, for a J6er, that is actually pretty much a horrendous assault on their freedom. That's the thing about the gutting of the state now. You have to gulag from home because of hot desking. There's not enough space in there. She says, so fuck you Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, shifty Adam Schiff. I love that they're still using the

epithets. The DOJ, the FBI, we're going to get justice by law. Another woman in the group pointed her finger in the face of a group of reporters adding, quote, the hunters will become the hunted now. Keep that in mind. And I was actually looking while looking for something else. I ran across another like just minor like local story that I thought is a great example of what the kinds of things this looks like in practice. So I'm reading to you now from just like the Florida police blotter. A Florida man is accused of impersonating an immigration and customs enforcement officer and going to a Orlando compartment complex in search of quote unquote Mexicans in the country illegally. Officers responded to a call about a suspicious

person at the Cybal Palm apartment complex. When they arrived, they found the suspect, 47-year-old Stephen Kenneth Donovan, standing by a bicycle. Donovan told cops he was a quote, homeland security officer and provided them with a blue card, which was in fact an application to become a security guard. Awesome. An apartment complex employee came into contact with him, said Donovan approached him on a bicycle and asked to open up one of the apartments. He then allegedly opened up his jacket and showed him a handgun. The employee walked to the front

office to call the cops. Donovan followed and started knocking on doors and screaming that he was the police working as an officer, making sure Mexicans were not illegally staying in an apartment in the complex. Jesus Christ. We talk about the hunters becoming the hunted. That's a perfect example of someone who's like, I have been hunted, I am now going to now in this moment of triumph. I've been hunted by the woke deep state asking me if that's a real police badge, because it looks a lot like I got it out of a box of cereal. Look, you had to look, you had to spend a lot of time with his wife, and he's never going to forgive anyone for that.

He believes in self ID, but only in terms of saying that you're a cop. I mean, this kind of pursuit of revenge goes all the way up, right? Another you also talk about in your article, you say the chainsaw that Millay gives Musk was a perfect symbol of what undergirded this celebration of jingoistic cruelty, the desire for retribution. Trump told the audience that his ongoing purge of the federal government with the help of Doge would get rid of the fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists and deep state bureaucrats who wronged him. And I don't know if it's sort of facile to say this, but to me, you know, reading your work about this and how they're now talking

about Doge, it sounds a lot like a fulfillment of the QAnon fantasy, but without targeting actual elites. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously like there were, there were always going to be shifting goalposts on that. But you know, I was talking to a J sixer, you know in while Trump was speaking and I asked him like do you think the storm? You know has has come to pass and he just pointed to the stage and said he's on stage Mm-hmm, you know, it's like they they really have a feeling that it's here, you know Yeah, and and obviously the new line is like well QAnon was never you know literal It was just something to wake you up

It was just like you know kind of a metaphorically true But yeah, I don't I mean you know the idea of sending tons of people to Gitmo and expanding it That was a big a big dream of theirs at jailing people that you don't like and you know Prosecuting people like James Comey. I don't think they'll get their full, like, hangings, their military tribunals. This was my question, right? I think, am I right in assuming that a lot of these people's ultimate thinking is, when do we start the killing? Right? Like... Yeah, they would love that.

But then, you know, when it starts happening, it's, listen, Americans talk a big game, you know? That's the thing. That's it's like Trump. You know he gets up there He says something insane, and then he does something awful. That's about 60% of what he promised or something like that Yeah, that's like this for the course. This is fun You know the sort of like the the sort of like the way fair pedophile conspiracy stuff is kind of like the QAnon Old Testament And now we're getting the kind of like revised QAnon New Testament

Which is like we're just firing every federal employee. And that was what the Old Testament was preparing you for. Yeah. Elon Musk is not Q. He's a very good man. But I mean, this is another thing I think whenever we talk about like the sort of march of the right on this show is that it always seems to me to be characterized by people, ideological entrepreneurs who say, I am looking at this movement that is all about the satisfaction of the desires of power. And every time there is a right-wing revolution, whether that is,

you know, that's austerity, that's Brexit, that's whatever anti-immigrant hysteria that gets whipped up and so on and so on, it's always by an ideological entrepreneur who says, I'm going to go a little bit further than the last guy. But he always has something he says he'll go no further than. Right. And, you know, the Elon Musk now is ideological entrepreneur has gone way further than all the previous guys. But he still represents something less than the total fulfillment of the wish for revenge on like actual people.

Right. So do you do you think that there is an ideological entrepreneur who can actually get power, who would take this desire further? Or do you think that this is actually gonna end because taking the desire further involves targeting actual elites who are actually human? They hate them, but they're human. Yeah, it honestly kind of mirrors

how Elon Musk sells his own products, right? It's like, well, we're gonna go to Mars within two years or something. And then, well, actually we have a pretty cool rocket that can kind of land itself and that we can reuse. I mean, you know, he's always gonna sell you on something insane and then deliver something that is much less. Like, you know, if you believe QAnon we're gonna get the you know the Gitmo is full we're gonna be hanging people but and if you believe Elon we have a talking robot that can hang out with people at parties. Yeah, that's it. It's like you said everything is ideological entrepreneurship Everything is is salesmanship everything is like a magic trick kind of you know you're gonna have the surface

And then you're gonna have the reality. I don't know if you can go, I mean, like you said, further I think is distasteful even by someone like Elon's, you know, standards. I think that they want very specific people targeted and that's why I think at the end of the day there won't be that much of like the targeting people like Hillary Clinton or I doubt we'll see James Comey, you know, other than on paper, you know, opening investigation or the same shit that the liberals did with with with Russiagate, you know, oh, lots of, you know, discussions are being had. Current investigations have kicked off, you know, and then nothing really comes of it.

The people who will really suffer are obviously at the bottom They're gonna be you know so called like illegal aliens and petty criminals Especially people who are already incarcerated people of color you know it's gonna be the same targets as always with this kind of cowardly approach It's going to be people who are Extremely easy to victimize that will be victimized further and even deported to fucking El Salvador to put be put into a mega prison Which is that's new even for the United States like outsourcing your prisoners to to a jail That has by the way, no you cannot leave that jail. There is no like release date There is no rehabilitation at that El Salvador jail. There is a promise of like these people will never leave Yeah, we don't make anything in this country anymore at that El Salvador jail. There is a promise of like, these people will never leave. Yeah.

We don't make anything in this country anymore. You know, we used to incarcerate people indefinitely in the US of A, creating American jobs. Well, here's the thing, right? You talk about the colonial methods of control coming home. I mean, this is what would happen if you were like black-bagged and extradited to Egypt. It's just, instead of being a tool of foreign policy,

that's now a tool of domestic policy. You know, it's like, oh, we're to put you somewhere where these inconvenient laws don't apply. You mentioned as well earlier the sort of even veneer of liberalism coming off of the American empire at this point. And this is where I want to take a slight detour out of QAnon. We'll come back to it in a few minutes. But of course, also to mention the, I believe this was post CPAC, yeah the post CPAC, sort of Starmor Trump summit, which was hailed after Starmor forensically gave Trump everything

that he wanted, including eliminating basically all foreign aid spending to just reroute that money to arms manufacturers, essentially. But he also gave Trump a letter from the king to make him feel special, which was, it was very funny that that worked, or seemed to work, that Trump was genuinely like, earnestly delighted by this and like, felt very honored. So for a minute, like, Stammer and his people must have felt great about that. What do you reckon the King says in a letter to Donald Trump? Like, I really think you'd get on with Princess Michael of Kent. I think you guys should hang out. It was literally because people like photographed it over Trump's shoulder. It was the same like boilerplate shit.

It was it was basically like a check out of the D of E. That's that's cool, right? D of first name. Yeah. Mr. Trump, how do you get your hands to look so healthy? I don't know how do I lose weight? So he clearly gave Trump what he wants because ultimately, the UK is a vassal state of the US empire. It is not, especially when foreign policy is concerned, it is a meaningfully different

country. And this is no different from Blair with Bush. It's just Starmer is going to meet someone who is not a neoconservative, who he is hoping he can pressure or badger or wheedle or convince or whatever into maintaining the more liberal flavor of American empire. They had a conversation, it's not worth getting into so much of it, but he said, number one, there's a good chance of a trade deal where tariffs wouldn't be necessary, which basically is like, again, what we did is we came and we gave him everything that he wanted, which is more defense spending. To be fair, we were never going to, in this country, pull together the kind of Canadian

venom, you know? We're not as organized in government as Mexico, and we're not as organized, like, populous as Canada, so, you know, this is what you have to do instead. So we went and we did what we do best, which is we toadied. Oh yeah, we got in there and we licked some shoe. Like real obsequiousness. And I think that's what makes me proud to be British, is to come from a proud tradition of just really getting the tongue all the way into the leather, you know?

We brought out the big guns. We asked politely. That was it. to come from a proud tradition of just really getting the tongue all the way into the leather, you know? We brought out the big guns. We asked politely. That was it. Like, we went there in full, so I've been rewatching Deadwood, we went in there in full EB Farnham mode and we sucked up. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is the thing.

We had two moves. We had two cards to play, right? One is the sucking up and the other one is maybe he'll like some like Downton Abbey shit, and he did yeah There was like a third card which was that you could sort of promised him like a feature on like whatever new Paddington movie comes out That's our one piece of soft power left is Paddington movies That's right. You shouldn't be letting in those Peruvian bears. You don't know what they're you don't know why they're bringing in okay He says he likes marmalade.

Yeah, I like this story. I think you should be opening up those jars. Customs, actually. And then Trump says, again, because he always believes the most recent thing he's told, right? He's like, oh, did I call Zelensky a dictator? That didn't sound like something I would say.

And Starmor's like, okay, I'll take it. And then immediately, the entire liberal centrist UK press falls in line behind Starmor. Master, okay, I'll take it. And then immediately the entire liberal centrist UK press falls in line behind Starmor. Masterful gambit, sir. Breathlessly reporting, oh, Trump has changed the Ukraine conversation, Starmor says. Oh, there's another says, there's a lot of hat eating tonight.

Critics will find a way to do the PM, this is from one of the Romaniacs, they're maniacal about Romaine. There's a lot of hat eating tonight. Critics will find a way to do the PM down, of course. Say he gave too much or too little, was too fawning or not enough. They'd have done it better and nothing will come of it.

The Romaniacs accusing someone else of hat eating is really quite something. But he basically does this. And then like 45 minutes later, Trump is reminded that no, that's not your position. Yeah, but what happens is one of his two viziers, in this case, JD Vance and his army of extremely online Nazi twinks gets to him

and he reminds Trump that Zelensky doesn't wear a suit, which Trump really doesn't like. And he's ungrateful for the aid and shows him a bunch of memes off of Discord. And then we get this kind of mugging in the Oval Office that's genuinely one of the most consequential political events of the last few years, where Trump and Vance just yell at the guy in front of the cameras for what feels like an hour. Vance- I liked this guy before, but then I found out he voiced the Ukrainian Paddington

Bear. I've made my views on Paddington perfectly clear. I don't trust the bear. Okay, I don't think he's a good guy. He's coming in. He's wearing a What's Under That Hat. You know what I mean? He's not even eating it. Why does he need the hat? Yeah, that's it. That's Paddington Bear is the skeleton key to understanding why NATO doesn't work anymore. Please, Mr. Trump, I brought you this marmalade sandwich, I thought we could be friends. Peruvian-Ukrainian accent. I'm doing the Zelensky voice, which is like no voice I've ever heard on anyone else.

What you don't understand. So now what happened is this, play the blinder, there's like a shot of all of the lobby journalists just smugly looking at the camera being like, oh yeah, liberalism's back baby. Robert Peston's here. Emily Maitlis is here filling out the baritone section of the voice register. I'm not sure that Paddington sounds like that. One question for you Mr. Trump, have you got any B&H on you? So this is the consensus in Britain for about 45 minutes before the second discussion happens. And now what's happened is Trump got everything he wanted from the UK, which is an increased defence spending and like a prestigious bauble to be thrown at him.

And the UK got a, well, other than just some vague discussion of a trade deal and maybe delaying tariffs for a little while, nothing. We got a government away day. One of the last ones that will ever be allowed. Is Starmer going to have a ride in the little motorcade? We got a feel good story about Keir Starmer and that's, you know, those aren't easy to come by. You know, this is also what annoys me, right?

This is all, there's so much of Westminster politics is based on purely internal conversations based that are themselves based on metaphors that don't have any meaning. The whole plan for Starmer to go to the US, give Trump every, and then just sort of forensically give Trump everything he wanted only to immediately trip and fall in his own dick afterward, right? The whole plan is, oh, we're going to be the bridge. We're going to be the bridge between the US and between Europe because the, now that we're out of Europe, we can be the bridge. And I see Julian shaking his head.

The bridge between what and what I mean that is an insane Gambit now that you see how Trump is you know speaking You know the the Munich speech by JD Vance which by the way was referenced with love by almost every foreign speaker at CPAC But yeah, that's an insane. What are you talking about? Yeah, we're gonna be the DMZ. Yeah, that's the thing I don't think they know what they mean. It's just you have to take Vance particularly at his word. All of these guys fucking hate you. They're all radicalized against you.

Keir Starmer specifically, because they read a post about how you can be arrested for thought crimes now. And so there's no bridge happening there. I think that's sort of it. I feel like there's a sort of, at least more in the UK and all the sort of fetishization around the special relationship and everything. They really want this thing to exist, right? They really want to be part of it.

A lot of their thinking and mentality is built around watching too many West Wing episodes, right? We know that, we talked about that on the show before. And now they're sort of dealing with an administration that like isn't even sort of wanting to do the performance of the special relationship. They... Those guys don't even like the West Wing. They don't even watch TV. They just read posts, right? They read posts. And like, I feel like they, you know, the Labour Party and maybe other European governments too,

but like the Labour Party have no idea how to interact with something like this. And it's like both vengeful, terminally online, and also like has no regard for the norms. You're so right. They need to, I never thought I'd say this, the Labour right need to become more online. I'm willing to offer consulting services at a reasonable fee. Yeah. Well, I mean, like the thing is they are very online in the same way that everyone who like is interested in politics anyway, largely sort of falls into that.

But it's more like they have to sort of let, they have to become unhinged, right? And there are like a few unhinged centrist out there. I'm not going to name names. We probably are thinking about the one same guy. And I'm just going to say that like, I'm kind of worried about him. I'm kind of worried about like any of like, yeah, like sort of being a radicalized centrist, I think is kind of, that might be a very interesting and also like very common type of character in the next few years. That's my prediction.

Jokified Wes Streets. If we're talking about, of course, getting radicalized, you know, now the discussion, and this is so early that I don't want to talk about it too much. Like, we'll sort of see what it develops into. Now you have for the first time since 2022, you know, Starmer overtly saying, we may need to put UK boots on the ground in Ukraine with a coalition of the willing, which to me is terrifying and insane. Turns out not many people are willing.

We've looked into it. It's quite a small coalition. Well, this was the other big piece of bridge building, right, was to do, and again, this is very consequential, right, to essentially concede that the US is fucked, they're not interested anymore. So there has to be some kind of like European security thing, we finally got to like stop fucking around with EU battle groups or Eurocorps or whatever and actually like weld something together. And yeah, maybe in five or ten years that'll change, but right now there just are not the European troops to do it.

It's something that's been outsourced to the US and that process of like vassalization and undoing that is something that is gonna take a lot more than like speeches and fist bumps and stuff. I do like that the lesson is just, we have to be our own George Bush. Yeah. Yeah. Especially the use of the phrase coalition of the willing is, I think, intentional

and is, I get recalling a time when like what the forces who love like the American empire, which I get like what Stammer is saying is America has derogated its role as leader of the empire. We must take over as as America. We will start with George Bush the last time the US Empire was able to really flex its Muscles so we're gonna have a coalition of the willing. But is he fucking forgetting it was a lie they went to war on a fucking lie that was a failed war Well, why would you reference that why would you use words from that era? That's not a good thing. Still did it though it brought it brought the guys back together

You know friends we made along the way. Well I mean number one It's also it's because Starmer is now much more politically close to the people behind George Bush than the people currently in the White House, right? That's one thing. You see yourself as the legitimate heir of... The whole of, like, North Atlantic liberalism... You have a neoliberal sort of mandate of hell. Oh, God. The whole of North Atlantic liberalism sees itself as the true heir to Dick Cheney, essentially. Like that is what they're here to do. That's what happens when you position yourself at the center, where it's like it's a moving center and suddenly one day you wake up and you're doing the Iraq War again. Yeah, the Iraq War but against

a nuclear armed adversary as someone whose own nuclear deterrent is an American one that we just put in our submarines. This is why I talk about especially British politics as being dangerously self-referential and metaphor driven. Talking about these, whether it is norms and responsibilities and the world, the bridge between the UK and Europe and so on and so on leads to a place where dangerous actions can be taken where they do not fully understand the world that they are in because you think that you're giving Donald Trump you go to the White House you think you're giving Donald Trump a like sort of Downton Abbey

you know fantasy and he's going to give you what you want he's giving you your like global political importance like fucking Jed Bartlett fantasy you're are also being played, but you don't see it. And again, it's like now you're OK, you're saying you're going to do a coalition. You're the inheritors of Dick Cheney. You're going to do a coalition of the willing of European countries to put like boots on the ground in Ukraine, whatever the fuck that means. And you're not just you're just not going to understand the world in which you are doing that. You're not going to understand that like this is of sort of major and serious consequence

in that the global balance of power has moved away from the liberal empire, which made you able to do that easily. Okay, new bridge, new bridge. We're doing bridge between neoconservatism and fascism now. Yep, gotta stay the bridge, gotta be a bridge. Yep, super important, super important. Weirdly short bridge.

Yeah. Very short bridge. It's getting important super important weirdly short bridge. Yeah, very short It's getting shorter and shorter. We are building another bridge across the Thames estuary at Thurrock Maybe we'll stop that one. It's a relatively simple bridge. I want to move on though I want to talk about like the main segment, right? Which is and I think it's worth pausing here to talk about why? Specialist media outlets have gotten so much better at understanding the politics of our current moment than political outlet outfits in particular. I'm thinking about like Wired is so much better at talking about the current state of the US government or especially Doge than anybody else or over here

about how the outlets continue to report on Nigel Farage as though he's just a normal politician with rough opinions to be mollified but also how organizations that aren't specialists on QAnon are really unable to talk about the whole of what's going on in the U.S. state right now. That's because they think of it as the disease instead of just a symptom. They've never really actually understood what brought QAnon and what continues to kind of create a setting so that QAnon would arise by any other name. If you're thinking about this in terms of

elected positions, horse race politics, who's in who's out, then someone like Cash Patel is just, hey that's just a, whoa that's a weird FBI director, doesn't come from the usual background. You can't have a Liverpool fan running the FBI. It's fucked up. You're not seeing what he actually is. You're also not able to understand, for example, what a Q-pilled state looks like. It's just if you're not understanding,

like for example, QAnon, or if you're not understanding the Silicon Valley ideology, then it looks like what the state is doing is a bunch of random, terrible stuff. But if you do understand these things, then you can like what the state is doing is a bunch of random, terrible stuff. But if you do understand these things, then you can see that actually this is, and this is the topic of your other article we're going to discuss now, is this is the result of QAnon as a kind of Vanguardist movement successfully becoming mainstream. This is its moment of triumph, if anything, which is why it's weird when people say, and now

you say people ask you this, is, hey, whatever happened to QAnon? It's like it's in power right now. So just to review, the actual Q conspiracy in terms of Facebook people getting radicalized by critically written drops or someone claiming to have Q-level security clearance, that method of the conspiracy theory has been dead for a long time, but that set of beliefs isn't dead, it's just changed from a conspiracy theory being peddled to shut in to a hegemonic belief system. Can we talk a little bit about how that transformation happened to Cupid the state? Yeah, I think that you have to kind of see it as it was smuggled into power and people who think that way definitely are kind of holding some of the levers now. But it's

also a way of processing things. And I think that liberalism in the United States has long been sliding into it. I think that people overlook the importance of Russiagate as a kind of mirror to QAnon. And, you know, the idea that, for example, that Donald Trump attempted assassination was staged. All these things. The conspiratorial way of thinking and the idea that you can't trust the mainstream media. We saw liberals kind of break away from the mainstream media after they they decided that they were doing Biden dirty, is a way of coping because you know your guy's up there and yet nothing is changing right? And so you kind of gamify the whole thing and you have a mechanism of what they call in the Q movement baking, which is like you take the surface level

story fed to you by the mainstream media and you try to figure out how That's actually a facade and what lies beneath it And I think that the reliance on that mechanism by those in power is very important to look at because yes Trump is doing this and saying this but Actually, what's happening is insert here, right? And so that cash Patel is really good at that He's been on like I believe over 50 shows that have in some way promoted QAnon You know, he's been on like the most bizarre Weird tiny QAnon podcasts and he is quite overt about saying, you know, these people they're they're useful

They they they have some good ideas. I really admire the way they research. That's really essential because now the state is relying on you to add subtext. So whatever you're doing and whatever you're saying you're doing, they are like, they have the feeling that they're being winked at and that and you're winking back at them kind of. There's this this, yeah, we know what that means kind of thing going on. So the state is taking advantage of people's own desire to have politics be a more of a participatory activity. It's an ARG. It's an alternate reality game.

Yeah. What's different now is that functionaries of the state, people like Cash Patel, are taking advantage of the fact that people want to play politics like an alternate reality game and actually using that to advance their own agenda. Yeah, and also you can fill in the blanks right so the idea that we are doing one thing but you know that there's actually this other thing

going on that's so fucking useful that means that people will basically rationalize all disappointments in your actions they'll rationalize what you're doing as as something different you know, by the same way that... Cussing off my social security, they're actually rusing out the deep state pedophiles, etc, etc. 100%! I presume I'm a deep state pedophile, that's the only explanation. Yes, like on two levels, it's like Doge's is, you know, cutting waste. So that's the story on the surface, but then underneath it, it's actually a purge of all these deep state actors. Meanwhile, it's neither of those things.

God, paedophiles were so good at air traffic control. It was like a suicide squad of paedophiles. The delicate touch of the paedophile is essential to modern air traffic control infrastructure and like look we're not saying it's morally good that we have to have all these paedophiles working in air traffic control but think about it it they're far away from children up there and also they are saving lives so in a way they're repaying their debt to society. The first air traffic control prison. The plane crashed but have you considered that when it didn't crash it was because there were so many beautiful children on board? That's the only reason it didn't crash.

It's like a canary in the mind. There's one beautiful child in the nose of every plane. That motivates the pedophiles' air traffic control. Not a single crash on the Lillita Express. Need I say more? You're right. QAnon's ideology, networks, and practices are now integrated into American

politics and how the population processes current events, which is what we just talked about. The movement has attached the mainstream like a parasitic fungus, working in symbiosis with its host while causing long-term changes to its behavior. And one of the examples of this is how trafficking, the definition of trafficking, the idea of trafficking has changed. You write, the 2025 CPAC compared the topic to quote modern day slavery. On the campaign trail, Trump promoted the movie The Sound of Freedom and proposed the death penalty

for quote anyone caught trafficking children across our border, despite his immigration policies slowing down the effort to combat human trafficking during his first term. The issue was proven an effective talking point with the QAnon movement will most likely be continued to be used as a way to galvanize the Republican base. Concern for children's well-being is a mainstream value. So why shouldn't conspiracy theories about harming children become mainstream as well? And this is what I talk about, right? About the ideological entrepreneur who's able to say this far and no further. The ideological entrepreneur around like

trafficking conspiracies. One will say, I think we should have the death penalty for hurting kids. And the other will say, we should militarize the border so that no one who hurts kids can come over. And they'll keep on one-upping each other again and again and again and again. And it seems like, again, what you're describing is a huge game of one-upsmanship taking place at the level of the state about, for example, child trafficking. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, the idea that Trump is combating human trafficking, it's not true in the kind of sound of freedom way, nor is it true in the QAnon way. But the people experiencing this are, they have both of those levels of the fantasy, right?

So like the representation that the government's going to give you, the QAnon stuff that you've filled in in your own mind about what's really happening underneath it and how they have to talk about it this way because the media would otherwise accuse them of this and that and the other. Meanwhile, neither of those are true. That's what's so good. It just creates a kind of multi-level thing where you fill in all the iceberg that's underneath the water and meanwhile you don't understand that the entire thing is a falsity.

So it's really good because it kind of paralyzes people it keeps them talking online And you can do anything you want even if it's against their interests You know it's like you said Nova like it's like oh if If my social security is getting cut and then the next step is not I'm fucking angry at the person who just cut it It's like this You're processing both like what they said about the cuts and then what you believe about how it's actually like Yeah, I was pissed off about getting fired, but then I did some research and I figured out that, you know, the reason why that happened is because I deserved it. And the thing is, of the right-wing Trump supporters who got fired from government positions by the Department of Government Efficiency. The smartest among them is right now

working on becoming an ideological entrepreneur to spin the story of getting fired by the Department of Government Efficiency into something like, I was like a based forest ranger who was really great at my job. I was fired. Here's why it wasn't actually Elon Musk. Here's why it was Black Hats who have hijacked why it was, you know, black hats who have hijacked like an element of Doge who actually fired the base of the Atreids.

They're gonna have to like, ritually sacrifice one of those 19 year olds with the skin fades. Yeah, big balls or whatever it's gonna be. Yeah. Who's gonna be the first like, Doge guy to be like, kicked out for being too work and I do think it's gonna be- Big balls are gonna be like one of the gang of four. They're going to be doing like struggle sessions on his ass. So it's, it's. You know what I mean, right? The smartest one of those guys, just like the right now,

the smartest people in the US state are creating meme coins on Pump.Fun that are going to correspond with upcoming policies so they can get rich on Solana. That's the smart. The smartest functionaries of the US state are doing that right now. Just so the smartest people who are fired are probably becoming ideological entrepreneurs to explain the dissonance between what is going to happen, which is a large broad-based reduction in living standards from dismantling American global economic hegemony all at once to benefit a small number of people. They're going to be trying to spin the story of that

in a way that accords with the core beliefs of the QAnon system, like Trump is God and so on. I was fired by the secret liberal cabal in the forestry mission because I'd uncovered the conspiracy of the wood nymphs in the Fay to smuggle children in the United States. There's actually five of them, like cringe forest service.

Yeah. We had to cull part of the deer population, but what people don't know is that I was specifically targeting deer that were doing same-sex humping I was calling the correct deer and so yeah, of course on face value like Trump doesn't understand that I'm based So actually we fired him because you know, it's it's more efficient to have gay deer. They're calling themselves you know, it's more efficient to have gay deer. They're culling themselves. Ultimately, long term, the gay deer, they cause less problems. OK, the straight deer, there's always more deer.

It's too many deer. They're eating stuff. We don't want that. The gay deer, great. Perfect. They put on great musical theater. Yeah. The interior design and the woodland clearings

is incredible. So I think we can safely say, right, like the political transformation since like January 6 has been the slow Q-pilling of the Republican Party and the American state. And we talked earlier about the Department of Government Efficiency as fulfilling the fantasy of QAnon for people, which is not the whole thing, as we said, but it is like getting rid of all of the secret egalitarian conspiracy, the Marxists, the pedos, all these people who

are working hand in glove to make your life specifically worse in the ways that it traumatized you. But how a coup-held state works in practice is another sort of, again, story that I picked up, I think is really illustrative. So FBI agents this week questioned the Environmental Protection Agency employees regarding a Biden administration grant program for climate and clean energy projects, escalating a criminal probe that has already caused one veteran prosecutor to resign. At issue are grants totaling 20 billion under the greenhouse gas reduction fund, a program established

by Biden's 22 climate law. The fund seeks to leverage public and private dollars to invest in clean energy technologies such as solar panels, heat pumps, and more, et cetera, et cetera. So through community lenders in low income areas. One of the policies that is a perfect one for a neoliberal to do, right, which is we're using a market-based incentive of handouts to private companies who will target some efforts to low income areas to fix a social problem of climate change.

Tail ground recipients with a green energy program. Exactly. This is a classic type of neoliberal program. The Trump-appointed EPA administrator alleged that the money was awarded with little oversight and that the agency would try to claw back money from Citibank, which was tasked with dispersing the funds. By the way, Citibank has now stopped dispersing the funds,

but basically what the official says is, "'When we learned about the administration "'to quickly park 20 billion outside the EPA, "'we suspected that some organizations "'were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this. "'As we continue to learn more about "' where some of the money went, it's become even more apparent how far reaching and widely accepted this abuse has been. What is this, Britain?

And this is also connected as well, of course, to Eli Zeldin as well, right? Who is, but now they're claiming, right, oh, this is criminal. Well, they're assuming that it's a mirror image of the like, the PPP loans or whatever, right? So every small business tyrant in America that lightly defrauded the federal government or heavily defrauded the federal government for like small business loans or furloughs or whatever during COVID is just assuming that the same thing would have happened in reverse, right? But also what they're saying, right, is, oh, this is all gone to fund like left-wing activism

and so on. We're now starting a criminal probe against the EPA. Yeah, it's ACORN again. Um, it's just, we love to do this kind of tendentious kind of investigation. Do you know, you say this is ACORN again, I haven't shown you this article. Oh god. The EPA, this is all based on the fact that the EPA chief cited a secretly recorded video from Project Veritas. Let's go. Oh my god. This is a great time to be James O'Keefe, you know?

It's a beautiful time to be a grifter in the US. Or anywhere really. In which an EPA official said the Biden administration was quote, trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all. And again, like, you know what he actually means, which is we tried to do this climate law, we know that they're going to try to reverse it. So we want to do as much of it as possible. This is then interpreted by the like relatively Q pilled EPA people as their

and again, even if not literally Q pilled the conspiratorial view of power and politics as oh, what they're doing is they're going to fund like dark USAID using this climate money. This is clearly criminal. Dark USAID, you mean USAID? Yeah, of course. Right. But this is, but you know what I mean when I say like this this to me feels like the behavior of a Cupid state. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you find patterns and you don't realize that the pattern is Where you decided to look for corruption that the entire thing is just rot But but if you like, you know

If you if you kind of gut the government in patterns that match like your perceived Conspiracy about how liberalism has infested the system You can just keep pointing at everything you touch and going see that was corrupt see that was corrupt See that was corrupt look look at this pattern of like liberal corruption within the system But if you just did a clean sweep of the whole thing, you'd realize it's just everything The whole thing is a fucking scam It feels as though they're sort of like the first group of right-wingers in government who don't, they don't understand the difference between what you, what you say you're doing

and what you're actually doing. Like the stuff like they don't actually realize that USAID is the CIA. Like they don't understand, like they're the first, like you can say you're cutting it, but then that is how you arm the fascist paramilitary. It's like, do you actually not realize that this is, this is a thing you can say you're cutting it, but then that is how you arm the fascist paramilitaries. Like, do you actually not realize that this is a thing you like that you're cutting? Or those 20 billion dollars of giveaways for solar panels, that was a huge boon for Capitol. Right. That was like basically fixing neoliberalism.

But I think this goes back to something Julian was saying earlier. What they really hate is they hate the veneer of liberalism over the power. This is an argument not over whether the Empire should exist, but whether there should be a carrot as well as a stick. Yeah, should we have fun with it? No carrot. They hate the JP Morgan Pride logo. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. It's like forget the fucking sheen and then of course the people kind of experiencing this from the audience that are not in power that they can tell themselves whatever the fuck sheen. And then, of course, the people kind of experiencing this from the audience that are not in power, that they can tell themselves whatever the fuck they want. It doesn't really matter.

But the argument internally is about that. Do we even need the carrot? It's this Netflix way of thinking, essentially, of like, well, now that we have, like, you know, market dominance, do we even need the things that got us here? You know? Do we actually, like, need to pretend that we're doing this so that the consumer can have a better experience than using cable? No, we don't. We are the masters of this entire, you know, kind of industry or whatever. We have the monopoly. Why are we even pretending? And the funny thing is like, yeah, the liberals have, I think, like a decent argument that USAID and stuff like this does actually help getting what you want as an empire. But that is that is the argument. The argument is not about like power.

It's it's about do we even need the soft power? Why not just use the hard power? I want to go back to Q, though. So you write about the Q anonymization of all American life as a kind of folk storytelling tradition specifically to deal with the traumas and stressors that elites refuse to address. And by the way, that could equally apply to Britain, right? There are rising tides of pilledness in Britain. It looks a bit different to QAnon. A lot of it is much more local or

personal. We don't have that grand narrative in government because we have- Beans, parking spaces, grooming gangs. Yeah, mostly because the elites in charge of UK government have been able to say that our great rupture with the sort of corrupt system of the past, Brexit, is just working just very, very slowly. No one's doing Brexit properly yet. We don't have this king figure who we have to wonder why they're not fixing our lives. It's like, oh, Brexit's being delayed and so on and so on.

Brexit lived, Brexit lives, Brexit will live. So it's different here, right? But these things are still happening, and these stressors are still occurring. So you talk about, Julian, you say that QAnonization will continue in some form, because those stressors and the ideologies that stop them from being acknowledged from what they are

obviously aren't going away. But what I will say is that, so you all say, it will continue in its current vein, which is very close to QAnon, but with most of its references to actual elites going away. But what I will say is that, as you all say, it will continue in its current vein, which is very close to QAnon, but with most of its references to actual elites stripped away, and instead focusing on criminalizing government programs, firing huge amounts of government workers, punishing migrants, and so on and so on, will largely remain simply because all of the foundational events for the reformation of the moderate and Republican party around Donald Trump, which, cruciallycially as an influencer with sub-influencers, not

a retail politician, are basically conspiratorial. So you say. In fact, none of the original crop of influencers are among the most followed QAnon accounts on social media today, having been eclipsed by a handful of unhinged New Guard anonymous users. But neither the new nor old guard of purist QAnon influencers have made much of a dent in the mainstream media. The spotlight is instead occupied by people who are already public figures with government

jobs just happened to cozy up to the movement. Now we also talk in this show a lot about you know, where's the deep state actually right? Why aren't they reacting to this gutting of themselves and the destruction of the American soft power hegemonic empire? As because a lot of the mainstream Q pushers are deep state people like Jack Sobie, Michael Flynn, Cash Patel, right? These are all actual members of the mainstream Q pushers are deep state people like Jack Pesovia, Michael Flynn, Cash Patel, these are all actual members of the deep state. So just to sort of wrap it all up before I throw

back to you, the stressors aren't going away. The actual influencers are, as we've sort of gone through, in power. And what they appear to be doing, which is what we're going to get to next, is make a lot of the stressors much worse. Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's no, it's just the idea of like, there are bad elites, that's it, you know? Like we need to figure out and root out the bad elites. And of course, you know, this happens to line up with your own, you know, internal beefs. Like who fired you, who talked shit about you

within the elite circles. And so now we have essentially like a whole regime under Trump of people who've been fucked over in those back rooms, who are now pointing the finger at the people who fucked them over and saying, those are the bad elites, we need to cleanse them. So it's all like personal grievance. But then the public is being fed the story

that it's yeah, we're actually, we're getting rid of the bad ones. We're getting rid of the pedophile elites. Yeah. And here's the difficult question, I think, right? Because you can this story of we're getting rid of the pedophile elites, we're getting rid of the bad elites. What happens when the economy gets worse, when people's traumas of like daily life get worse, when the depredations of living in a country that was built on being a global hegemon, that all of a sudden is no longer

economically hegemonic because of whether it's from tariffs or whether it's because the state was removed as a source of economic activity, whatever it is, right? QAnon is half the dominant narrative. In fact, it is the dominant narrative, right? And we know that it emerged because it's a more dignified way to imagine yourself as a soldier or at least a spectator of an epic conflict rather than the victim of a colossal slowrolled system failure, right? It's this way of folk storytelling that crops up to replace dominant narratives that aren't working. But QAnon is the dominant narrative, and all of the economic indicators of the United States are pointing towards fucking pandemonium.

Yeah, well obviously the deep state pedophiles are banding together to raise the price of eggs. Yeah, well in support of their brother's cold from air traffic control. Yeah. Because that's the other thing, the pedophiles are also excellent at managing poultry farms. But no one wants to know about that. No one wants to think about the dirty end of chicken farming. But, but, you know, these, I have some graphs in front of me, right? These sort of the economic

uncertainty indices are the second highest that it's been in about 20 years. It's higher than the great financial crisis, by the way, great economic uncertainty indicators in the US. The only higher peak on this particular graph is COVID. Right? The investors are coming down off their massive amounts of Adderall,

A.K.A. the economy's doing bad. I mean, I love this kind of stuff. Yeah, fears at an all time high. It's like, you know what this reminds me of? In Argentina, when the junta came to power, the liberals and the local liberals were kind of supportive of the junta and there was a lot of messages coming back and forth

between the United States and local liberals. And then they started to realize, oh wait, they're not just piling up the bodies of leftists, now they're going for priests and liberals as well. It's this realization of like, oh wait, they meant like, us too? And the business people are now just in absolute fear. Like, wait, wait a second, no, no, no, we were supporting you, but we thought you'd pump our bags, not like, you you know do the storm Yeah, I am I woke?

Exactly Looking in the mirror and trying a new pronoun they like no you thought your bags were being pumped, but actually where are your bags? Yeah, I have taken them to my office in Parliament. Yeah There we go yeah by the way The only person whose bags are really getting pumped apparently is David Sachs who like the even minor altcoins like Cardano that were in his Relatively minor altcoins compared to some of the others that were in his portfolios like yeah They're going in the US strategic cryptocurrency reserve every everything that mirrors David Sachs his portfolio is getting exit liquidity from the US

That pump by the way has been almost entirely retraced as in like that tweet was one of the biggest, like, you know, kind of a low timeframe pump and dumps. Absolutely exit liquidity, like you said. Yeah. But anyway, but what I'm what I'm driving at here by talking about economic data is that the traumas that were like leading people to look to conspiratorial explanations of politics were life is getting worse and I don't get why. And then my guys in charge, whether that's, oh, we have our Brexit that we wanted, we have Trump in charge, the king is back, things are restored. Like peace has been brought to the land, victory has been won. Where are my spoils? A huge part of it was that. And more traumas are going to be piled on people as like they live in a world that was designed

for low wages and then low price consumer goods supported by free trade. Half of that's going away, but the wages aren't going up. And so a huge amount more uncertainty and trauma is again going to be poured onto people who are going to wonder, we won, where are our spoils? Yeah. Must be those crafty pedophiles again. It's hard to ask what's next when things are in such a state of flux, but all I can imagine

is that it's going to get much stranger and much more extreme and that more ideological entrepreneurs are going to come along and say, what if we push the envelope just a bit further? But Julian, I want to know how that strikes you. I think you're right. I think the two choices are essentially, I understand the systems of power and it's time to take arms or few states We're going we're going to Fire Island

Take so many poppers. We're doing G. We got Molly. It's time to party I mean that's I really do think like we like we're just going to step up the narcotic treatment. People are going to become schizophrenic instead of becoming radicalized and having any kind of understanding of what is actually victimizing them. I think we are definitely going to see more people spinning off more and more bizarre conspiracy theories and florid and beautiful tapestries of coke. Yeah. You know, I think this is right now, we don't know who they are yet. It will have been obvious in retrospect, but right now, the next crop of right-wing ideological entrepreneurs are getting ready to start their next round of conspiracy theorizing that's going to demand that in order to have a right and good world, the sort of fascist movement must go further. These are pedos being fired from air traffic

control right now. We don't know who they are, but at some point they're going to be running the place. Yeah, you know, so the people over the line, right, are the vigilante pedophile hunters who are stalking around the southern United States, which I might add is a proud British tradition. How long? That's bloody right. How long until another right-wing ideological entrepreneur in the Trump administration decides, hey, those volunteer pedophile hunters stalking around the Southern border, right? Those guys could be organized. They could be organized into some kind of core maybe, or maybe we could try to band them into a political consciousness and then have them support some demand of theirs that will make me, the ideological entrepreneur, more personally powerful in,

for example, the Trump administration. I'd say good fucking luck. I mean, that worked when you were giving them like methamphetamine, but everyone's on dissociatives now. Like, I don't, I don't know. Like our fry core is going to be stepping through the the floor and wobbling around Yeah, the last thing you hear before you get like hit with a bump stock in the head knocked out is I'm living the meme basically

American vigilante pedophile hunter is basically like the British NFL fan, you know, they're just like absolute plastics They're wandering around like it calls yourself Peter. I know he's never confronted a bloke in a McDonald's car park Stadium he's never made anyone observe the minute silence for the fallen I think that yes We'll have a fry core if when you look at Elon Musk you see like a Hitler someone who can fucking coherently put together a speech and is on speed instead of a guy so kitted out that he can barely string together three words. Look you know there's a lot further to fall right you know the US Empire it is being retooled

in front of our very eyes quite haphazardly I mean it's I think it's not controversial to say the American Empire is like one of the great evils of the history of the world but its presence is imbued into everything. Oh whoa you had me on for this? Fucking gotcha journalism? Have you even said thank you once? Yeah but its presence is imbued into most of the things that support a lot of living standards in the global north and they turn off the management the Empire because, you know, woke and gay or whatever, then you're going to, and because they want it to revel in its cruelty a little bit more,

then in that time of transition, you're going to see another round, I think, of emergent folkways, religions, conspiracy theories, whatever you want to call it, that are going to incorporate those stories and then spend the next four years working themselves into the mainstream. Personally, as a podcaster, I call that job security. Yeah. Oh, there'll be lots to talk about. That's for sure. Anyway, Julian, it is always, always, always a delight to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming and talking to us today.

Appreciate it. It's an honor. Love Trash Future. Would you like to plug anything to our loyal hogs? So thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. Appreciate it. It's an honor. Love Trashfuture. Would you like to plug anything to our loyal hogs? Sure. Yeah. Go check out the QAA podcast. You can find it by searching that anywhere and follow me on Twitter Julian Field. F E E L D.

That's right. And to you listening, there is also a Patreon is five sweet dollars a month. Worth less than ever. What a great discount. Yeah, one egg. Yeah. The new Trump administration. Great for podcasters, great for listeners. Yeah.

It is five bucks a month. You know the drill. Yeah. If you're wondering where where Left On Red has been, I've been recovering from a surgery. November's been unwell, but we are coming back. We're coming back hot. We promise.

We promise Left Unread is coming back. I've read the book. I've read the book and I asked, how do I feel now about myself that I've read the book? And in order to find out the answer to that question, you'll have to listen to me and November talk about Nevada by Imogen Binney, which to some of you, some of you listening, that joke makes sense and you're probably laughing right now.

Right. Also, if we may do a cross promotional plug, please help us in our quest to defeat the British entertainment industry gatekeepers. Glue Factory has been nominated for a Chortle award. Somehow. I don't know how. Please vote for it. We'll put a link in the thing. And also please vote for Big Belly comedy club for the best comedy club You have to write them in that's the way it works doing a write-in candidacy No, is it they're all right in which is crazy. We're like a drop-down. It's electable if you vote for it Yeah, but they are they are friends of the TF podcast. So we support usually where we do our live shows. Yeah, absolutely and You're gonna need to dates remain on sale.

Also Ireland tour dates. I forgot to mention these every city in Australia. You know the deal. All the big ones anyway. Adelaide, fuck you Adelaide. Fuck you Adelaide. You are one of the smaller ones to be fair. Also Ireland, we're doing Dublin, Cork, Kilkenny,

Belfast. I think that's it. Grosney. Grosney, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Grozny. Yeah. Khabarovsk. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Lepetsk. Yangon.

Indeed. Yakutsk. Every city in Karnataka. That's right. Ulan-Udey. We're going to be there. You're going to be in South Georgia Island. That's right.

So tickets for all of those on my, the live Goose Green show, also from my Accessible Only Via Glacier. That should be a sort of career goal of yours. Go to do like a Falklands live show. I think Port Stanley will be the furthest we'll get. But maybe we could do Port Stanley. Make it happen, Hoggs.

Make it happen. You have the power. Then he's going to be in Buenos Aires. He's going to finally bridge the gap. Anyway. You'll never guess where I just want to go. We got it, Ron. Julian, once again, thank you so much.

Check out QAA, and we'll see you on the premium episode in a couple days. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye bye!