TRIGGERnometry - Michael Malice: Take the White Pill

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

SPONSORED BY: Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Michael Malice is the author of many books including Dear Reader, The New Right, The Anarchist Handbook and, most recently, The White Pill. He is the host of video podcast "YOUR WELCOME" and was the subject of Harvey Pekar's 2006 biography Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story. Check out our first interview with Michael here: https://youtu.be/uoeJkNX89jo Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro  01:38 Michael’s Thinking Behind ‘The White Pill’ 05:04 Was Society Not Educated Enough on Communism? 11:52 The West’s Obsession with Comparing Today’s Issues with Past Atrocities 20:45 Our Distrust in Modern Media 23:39 Sponsor Message: Manscaped 25:00 Identifying Today’s Problems & Fighting Against Them 28:43 Why We Mustn’t Be Cynical  37:13 Are People Buying into Systems Too Easily? 40:01 Sponsor Message: EasyDNS 41:05 What’s Wrong with the Education System Today? 43:41 Our Need for Hope and Positive Change 53:57 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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America's doomed. You know, we're reaching levels of authoritarianism that should be considered impossible. And I'm like, guys, you have no idea what authoritarianism is. So my mother is Venezuelan, and I had many people explain to me over the years why Chavez was wonderful, and my cousins who had to flee from their lives from his regime were wrong and bigoted. Is there not a part of you that when you hear this, you kind of feel the need for violence toward these people? I'm not joking at all, Michael. You can literally feel my piss boiling whenever they talk to me.

family, they were one of these so-called Kulaks and my grandmother's little brother starved to death because of what was happening. So there just so many receipts of just, not to mention the gulags, of course, of atrocities that so many people whose names we will never know have been forgotten. And I'm like, you know, over my dead body, is this going to be swept into the rug of history? Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constance and Kist. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Brilliant and returning guest today is a man of many skills and talents, but primarily he's an author and his latest book is called White Pill.

Michael Malice, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much, guys. I'm very excited to be here. It's great to have you back on the show, man. You've written this book attempting to get people to think more positively about their own lives by highlighting all the horrible shit that happened in the 20th century, particularly in the country from which you and I both come. What was your thinking behind doing that?

What I was shocked at, and I would love to hear your guys' feedback about this, is that the Cold War was the absolute primary forward policy concern for both the UK and the U.S. for several decades. And now it's been won so decisively that people have forgotten it even happened. The Soviet Union is almost this historical asterisk. I mean, there's many movies about World War II in the States. You know, we talk with the Civil War, the Revolutionary War. but the fact that this was the complete utter victory over an indisputably evil empire is just kind of a shrug and it's just odd to me especially given what the people of eastern europe had to go through in many other countries of course had to go through for so long that their

story is being swept under the rug especially when this is something that occurred within our lifetimes so it's just very odd to me and you know the more research you know as you said i'm from there. The more research I did, the more I realized how poorly understood the atrocities of the Soviet Union are. Maybe perhaps there isn't a nice narrative, like with World War II. And I'm like, all right, well, people need to know more about this. And I'm someone who tells stories. So I'm going to put a stop to that. And so I did. But particularly, I mean, we can talk about the Cold War and stuff, because that really is very interesting, particularly given what's going on now. But one of the interesting things to me was the approach you've taken, which is kind of similar to the approach I took

in my book, an Immigrants Love Letter to the West, again, trying to explain to people like, things haven't always been the way they are, and things in most parts of the rest of the world have not been anything like as comfortable as what we enjoyed and what we enjoyed today. Why do you think that's such an important message right now? Well, I think for a personal level, you and I could both speak to that. This is what we went through. This is what our families went through. But something that really drives me crazy, and I don't know if this is the case in British politics, Here in American politics, especially among conservatives, there's this idea that, like,

you know, this is the end of the line. America's doomed. We're reaching levels of authoritarianism that should be considered impossible. And I'm like, guys, you have no idea what authoritarianism is. And frankly, despite having written, you know, the book on North Korea as well, I didn't really have a good idea of how authoritarianism works and how pervasive it is. In Prague, there's something called the Museum of Communism, which I sent my protege to visit because they have some really funny captions because it's not written in a respectful manner. It's, you know, very derisive about what the product people experienced. And that was the moment I realized that what we went through, you know, our families went through, is the pervasiveness of it all. Like if in the States or the

UK you hate Trump or Boris Johnson or woke ideology, you can turn it off, listen to sports, music, read any book you want. But there was nowhere else for them to go in these countries. Everything, everything, music, sports, the news, the television program, your friends had to be perceived through the filter of politics. And what that does to a people psychologically is something, I think, for all of us, it's very hard to wrap our heads around, but it's very important to try to grapple what that reality is like. Michael, do you think part of the problem is that we're simply not educated on the evils of communism? So when people see communist heroes that are Shay Guevara on a t-shirt, they go,

that's a freedom fighter, when actually, if you scratch the surface, the Cuban regime were pretty brutal, to put it mildly. I think, and that's by design, I'll put on my tinfoil hat for this, because I think Western media outlets, and this is something I cover extensively in this book, had so much blood in their hands, and they ran so much interference. Not for communism as an ideology, which we can understand, okay, someone has this worldview, they're promoting it, that's so on and so forth, but for literally Stalin and the atrocities. And there's a great movie called Mr. Jones about how Gareth Jones, who'd been a British reporter, got out of the train a few stops earlier and exposed what was going on in the Hall of the Morr with the starvation of the Ukrainians.

And it wasn't just that this was being kept quiet by Western sources, is that he was personally derided as, you know, a liar, someone who's kind of had these prejudices against the Soviet Union. So decade after decade, this wasn't just World War II where it's like, all right, we got to team up with Stalin to fight him. Hitler, we could wrap our heads around that argument. But even before that, you know, they were making so many excuses and not just excuses, but advocating for the idea that the Soviet Union is the nation of the future. And one of the cover girls on the book is Emma Goldman, you know, who was a violent anarchist who believed in bloody revolution in her own words. She got deported to the USSR. She fled with her partner in crime, Alexander Berkman. And very famously, she was in London, you know, after they left and you know when she was giving a talk standing ovation right red emma's here you know

she was the the ogy when it comes to you know red radicalism and she goes guys these this is not a nation for the workers what they're doing to these workers is things the czar would never think of and by the time she was done you could hear a pin drop and they were telling her who had just left who had sat down with lenin personally and said this isn't what we're supposed to be for we're supposed to be free speech for free speech and for the workers, they told her she didn't know what she was talking about. So that kind of idea of people in the West, these intellectuals, influencers, from the comforts of their own home, feeling comfortable explaining to people who were there that they don't know what they're talking about and how things really are is a trend that I think has continued

to this day in very disturbing ways. I completely agree with you, Michael. So my mother is Venezuelan. And I had many people explained to me over the years. years why Chavez was wonderful and my cousins who had to flee from their lives from his regime were wrong and bigoted. I have to ask you, do you, is there not a, I'm not joking at all, is there not a part of you that when you hear this, you're kind of feel the need for violence toward these people?

I'm not joking at all, Michael. You can literally feel my piss boiling whenever they talk to me. But it came to the point in my own life where I realized that talking with these people, it wasn't going to lead to anything because they had their own way of looking. They had their own way of thinking. And when Venezuela inevitably collapsed and we have 96% of the population living in poverty, they've all moved on to the next course. And the reason that socialism didn't flourish is because it wasn't allowed to flourish. It's the same old narrative. Yeah, but it's not just the narrative, which we could all wrap our heads around. It's that, oh, you don't know what you're talking about and I do.

It's like, because I read, I don't know what the newspaper would be equivalent there, but I read the New York Times, I read the Washington Post, therefore I'm an informed citizen. It's just unconscionable. And again, there are case after case of, you know, authors, vice presidents, and reporters who went to these places and feel comfortable pontificating to their lessors about what things are really like over there. Well, wasn't there this, is it Durante, the New York Times journalist who got, he got a Pulitzer for basically covering up all their.

atrocities that were happening in the Soviet Union? Technically, he got the Pulitzer earlier because he also got an interview with Stalin. So that wasn't why he got the Pulitzer. But the headline was Russians not starving merely hungry or something that effect had the actual headline. It's not. I get why you laugh, but it's like these are millions of people who are starved to death intentionally. And the thing that's really scary, he said, oh, there's no famine, nor is there likely to be.

and then he says, the Russians are merely tightening their belts. Well, you know why you tighten your belt? Because you don't have food. I mean, it's not a fashion statement. They're not doing the treadmill. And the way the, which I didn't even realize how the Holder Moore worked, you know, they wanted to requisition all the grain. They wanted to break the Kulaks.

So they would go to your home in the middle of the night. And if you weren't gaunt, if you weren't losing weight, they knew you were hiding food. Your own body would betray you. It was the law that you had. to starve and and when gareth jones the reporter went to these villages they told they all told them the same thing we're doomed there's no food coming and and it's it's a really kind of um something that's been swept on the rug historically and and thankfully i could discuss a little bit more in this book yeah right

and uh we we actually did an interview with a very good historian of the soviet union called giles yudi and in that i talked about my own family they were one of these so-called kuleks and uh my grandmother's brother starved to death because of what was happening. So when we laugh, we laugh because the line is ridiculous. But of course, he's a terrible tragedy. No one would underplay that. I got to say, I got to be pedantic. It's not a tragedy. This was done. But, you know, this wasn't some, you know, some hurricane or, you know, like some typhoon. This was an atrocity. Yeah, it's a very good point, Michael. But as well, you know, the journalists who went against grain, even very famous left-leaning journalists like Malcolm Muggeridge, I mean, it didn't help their

careers, did it? No, he talks. I taught, yeah, they, you know, when he, when you go against the kind of narrative that your industry is putting forward, you know, they asked Malcolm Mugge years later, because he was a hardcore lefty. I think his dad was in the Fabians. So he had the pedigree. And they asked him, well, what happened to you as a result of exposing this? Because he used a diplomatic satchel to get the information out of the Soviet Union. He goes, oh, me, I couldn't get work. So the fact that their depravity and malfeasance was exposed by one of their own, they knew to seek retribution. And that's certainly the case nowadays when people in certain industries step out of line their techniques to make sure that that doesn't happen twice.

Michael, what do you make of the situation now where in the West quite often people, and look, that there's some evidence that societies have become more, you referred to earlier, more authoritarian. And people go, oh, this is just like, you know, this is almost like a digital gulag. And, you know, this is Soviets. How do you feel about people doing that? Yeah, when Mike Bloomberg was mayor of New York City

and he had a ban on how big the sodas you can get at 7-Eleven was. And Mike Huckabee, who was governor of Arkansas at the time, his daughter just became Arkansas governor, said, this is like North Korea. And I'm like, I assure you, the size of the soda is not the issue in North Korea. So I think these glib handwavings are things that I find uncomfortable. And again, this is one of the reasons I wrote this is because people think authoritarianism is just like,

okay, you have to go to school and they teach you stupid things and you can't speak out about politics and everything else is fine. And if that was the extent of it, I'm kind of almost fine with that, right? We're talking about living from morning to night in constant fear, and at night you're waiting for the doorbell to ring, when you don't know who's going to turn who against each other. And the techniques that the Soviet Union used to make sure people broke, which I discussed extensively in this book, were very clever. I mean, they were very smart about how, because people sit here and think, okay, there's

nothing you can do to me that's going to make me kind of, you know, spill or sign a confession and I didn't sign, well, you have children, don't you? So when you have this kind of collective guilt and when human life and human rights don't exist, you know, very quickly, no matter how tough you are, let's get your kid in front of you and see what you're going to confess to. You had Jews confessing to plotting with Hitler, you know, since before Hitler was in power. It was just absolute madness. Yeah. Well, this was, and again, it doesn't even have to be as extreme as like, we're going to kill your child. I mean, I talk about this in my book. My grandfather said some things about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and within a very short period of time, him and his wife lost their jobs, and both their children were kicked out of university.

So this collective punishment system, and this is in the 80s, so the period you're talking about earlier, it would have been way worse. And of course, you had a system if you were married to an enemy of the people, quote unquote, that was a crime. It was a crime to be related to somebody who's an enemy of the people. It gets much worse than that because here's what happens. You're arrested, Constantine, right? Then your wife is arrested for being in any of the people. What's she going to do? She can't really plead innocent.

But right away, your kids are now orphans overnight. Now, the thing is, what happens to these kids? No, this happened to Gorbachev when he was a kid because one of his grandfathers was arrested, and in his words, his house became a plague house. Now none of the other kids are going to play with that kid. The teachers are going to make it a point to disqualification. and stuff from that kid. In fact, there's a story in the book where, you know, one girl who

overnight became an orphan because her parents were vanished, she had a family friend. They took her in, but he went to someone high up in, I believe it was Moscow or St. Petersburg and said, what do we do about this kid? And it's like, look, do you want to be associating with a daughter of the enemy of the people? Because that makes it look like you're conspiring with them. So they had to put her on the street. So there was hand-wringing in the Kremlin because all these kids are understandably killing themselves now because not only the orphans, like no one will talk to them or associate with them. So again, no matter how bad we all think it can get, there's more layers to hell in this, you know, evil place. And what it shows as well is that

the understanding that people have in the West of these issues, they can't possibly comprehend. Because in a way, Michael, to give them their due, unless you've experienced it, unless you've heard the stories, unless you've been around people who've experienced that, it's impossible to understand. It just is the life of constant fear. So one of my friends, Henry, who grew up in Venezuela and is Venezuelan, he came over to the UK and he went for a meal with my family. My parents are now very old. and Henry was talking and my dad said to him Henry you're going to need to speak louder

I can't hear you and he said I'm sorry but in Venezuela we're used to whispering oh yeah so you don't even notice you just adapt constantly and as a result

I don't think that you can read about this but unless you experience it it's impossible to understand that's the tagline on the back of the book it's almost impossible to convey to a free people

what is like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship. Let me give you, the closest parallel even I could feel was when I visited North Korea. And the thing is, if you think about your environment, right, you think about the wall behind you, the neon, your clothes, who you were talking to, the books in your room, the microphones. When every aspect is different and alien, that some of that environment is something completely impossible to describe because it's like the difference for a fish between being like in a river or being in a fish tank, it affects every single aspect of everything you do. And that kind of combination is so much bigger than some of its parts.

And again, even having only spent one week in North Korea, it's almost impossible for me to just articulate what it's like to be in a country where there's no internet and no access to the outside world. I can kind of explain it. It's like being in a dream state where you're like kind of floating in this country that's, you know, devoid of attachment to anything outside itself, but to actually physically be there to wake up and not know what day it is and not have it really matter because you don't have news. Every day is pretty much the same as the other other than the weekends. We don't know

what that's like. And here's the other thing that I think for those of us, you know, the level of horrors, they all knew they can't leave. So, you know, there's many of these countries, even war-torn countries, right? You know, the blitz. You knew this is going to end at some point, right? you knew this is, you know, even COVID, this is not going to go on forever. They were told from birth, this is your reality. And there's nowhere else to go. And don't you even think about trying to get out of here. Because if you do, someone is going to turn you in and your family.

Right. And this is one of the things that I think when people talk about this in the West, it's like the easiest line to give people to get them to understand what those societies were like was, those countries had borders to stop people getting out. I mean, that tells you enough, I think, about everything that was going on inside. We have borders. We argue all the time in the West. You know, we've got to enforce the borders because people want to come in.

Those countries had borders to prevent people leaving. And also, I talked extensively about the Berlin Wall in this book because this fell during my lifetime and I didn't really appreciate why this was such a big deal. and what a kind of monument to obscenity the Berlin Wall was, the idea of encasing. There's this great line from a history in the book where I go, it's kind of deranged. It's the only prison on earth

where the people who are imprisoned are the ones who are free because they encased West Berlin entirely. But they called it the official term, the East German term, was the anti-fascist rampart. And it worked great. Not one fascist even tried so much

as to get into East Berlin. But it's not just that you couldn't leave. they would also lie. You know, it's like you wouldn't want to leave because on the far side of the Iron Curtain, you know, it's, you know, the clan runs everything and people are homeless and they're starving. We have it so great here. There's this great scene in the late 80s when Borts Yeltsin, who was high up in the USSR at the time, went to Houston to visit NASA.

And as a side trip, he stopped into a supermarket. The supermarket's still there. And he's walking around. And this isn't filled a. with dignitaries and senators. These are like school teachers and truck drivers. And the food he's seeing, he'd never seen his life. And he's flying back to the USSR via Miami.

And on the plane, he has his head in his hands. And he's like, they had to lie because otherwise people would understand how bad we have it. So again, it's not just that there's a narrative or they're twisting the truth. There's no other way that, like, they knew how bad it was. And they lied constantly 24-7. And frankly, that cynicism toward the media was one of the things that brought down this totalitarian nightmare. And Michael, that being the case, does it worry you the cynicism that we have towards a media in our societies where we no longer trust the media? It's the best thing ever.

These people are, I mean, it's very healthy when you're trying to construct a narrative based on lies when people don't. don't believe what you say. And there's this amazing story. The story of the Velvet Revolution in Prague in Czechoslovakia is just a beautiful, heartwarming story. And people can read about in the book. But the police started beating protesters, men, women, and children. They wouldn't let them leave.

They're beating them near Wencesla Square. And rumor went out, and it was reported on Voice of America and Other Outlets, that there was a student, I'm blanking in his name, was supposed Christopher Smith, was killed by the cops. And then the protests got bigger. And there were two students by this name at the universities. And the authorities, like, he's fine. And they brought out both of them from the cameras.

They go, look, look, Christopher Smith is fine. And they were telling the truth. But after decades, no one believed them. They really thought that they killed this kid. And the protests got bigger and bigger. And a spoiler alert, the entire government resigned. And it was a peaceful transition. That's why it's called the Revolution to a liberal democracy, which remains to this day.

So there are many stories where the cynicism towards those who lie and oppress their own for a living was the healthiest response. And Michael, let's say that there's a young kid watching this. And by kid, I mean somebody in their teens, in college, and, you know, they believe in communism and all the rest of it. What would you say to this kid who may be listening and may be open to being persuaded? Don't believe your teachers. This is where the poisoning starts, the universities. And I would tell them to, I mean, this is one of the reasons I wrote this book. You know, it's to explain what this was like, what this really means in practice.

And, you know, there's this argument you guys are very familiar with. I'm sure that this wasn't real communism. Real communism hasn't been tried. It's like Lenin and Trotsky were true believers. They were the kind of evangelists. They were the prophets that, all right, we're going to. to not put anything, get anything in our way. We're not going to be weak.

We're not going to be middling. This is our chance to kind of do full-bore communism, and they succeeded. And what this book demonstrates and history demonstrates is what that actually means in practice. And again, it's not, you don't take my word for it or someone, some conservative. It was Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who were hardcore, hardcore violent revolutionaries who sought firsthand, and they were the ones who, uh, kind of warned about it in the West to completely deaf ears.

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Go to Manscape.com and get 20% off and free shipping. And Michael, that's one of the reasons I'm excited about your book being out, because I see kind of in our space, whatever that space is, a lot of people have spent a lot of time focusing on what's gone wrong. You know, postmodern neo-Marxism, or whatever it is, people go, okay, this has happened, this is what's going wrong, this is what's going bad, this is what's not working. And like you said, it does lead a lot of people into a kind of doom's space in which they feel,

you know, America's over, Britain's over, the West is tired. and, you know, we must embrace our new Russian overlords or whatever is the ending of that process. And that has caused, I think, now in me and in lots of other people now, I feel, a search for a positive vision of the future. People are starting to think about, okay, we've identified what the problems are with workness.

We've identified what the problems are with the two mainstream parties and the establishment, et cetera. The media are clearly lying to us a lot of the time, et cetera. Right. And your book is A, okay, I mean, good. As we say, in Russian, all pozo provene. Everything is understood in comparison. So the comparison is useful.

Now what? Well, I'm glad I can speak to you guys about this specifically as opposed to Americans, because the British had this before. 1979. The British Empire went from the sun never sets in the British Empire because it spanned the globe to not having electricity.

They had like four hours a day of electricity. The garbage in Leicester Square was two meters tall, it was a given that the best days of Great Britain were behind her and that the country is kind of a historical joke at this point, right? It was called the Sick Man of Europe, yeah. Right. And someone who is very controversial in your country, namely Margaret Thatcher, said, I can't bear the idea of Britain in decline.

Now, she's a very controversial figure, but you can't dispute that Great Britain in 2023 is in a far better place than Great Britain was in 1979. And the idea that Great Britain is kind of a joke and over, I don't think it's something people say with any kind of credence anymore. So this is an example in your country in not that long ago where people were saying the same thing. And with far more reason, there was, there seemed to be no mechanism to turn the ship around. It's got to be managed decline. You know, we had our run, pit bull chap, and now it's just kind of, we're slowly drifting toward the grave. And that ship got turned.

So that's one example. But the other example is, again, why do people ascribe the villains of the day to be omnipotent and omniscient? You know, one of the points that I make in this book and that I constantly talk about is the enemy class is not full of impressive people. These are Rishi, whatever his name is, I didn't pronounce his last name. Cirqueer. These aren't gods. You know, these aren't these amazing figures. And, you know, I sure wouldn't want to go up against them.

an argument, like, are you crazy? You know, so when you have this idea that, you know, the people who are opposed to liberty and freedom and human dignity are unstoppable, when you look at who these people are, they're far closer to snakes than to gods. And I'm not saying at all that they wouldn't do the worst atrocities possible. That's part of the point in the book. But the point being, they don't always get their way. Why are you allowing them to lie to you and say, we're always going to win?

because that's all they do is lie. At some point, I'm going to get what I want. Or at the very least, there's the possibility. And as long as there is the possibility of victory, people have to fight for it. Yeah. And one of the things that you are highly critical, I would say things or worldviews, is cynicism. You hate a cynic, don't you, Michael? Explain to me why.

I think it's the worst. I don't want to say worst, okay. But it's really one of the most like kind of unconscionable perspectives for people to have. First of all, it's this kind of like too cool for school. Everything sucks. Like it's true. 90% of movies suck. 90% of comedians suck.

90% of books suck possibly including my own. But you're telling me no books are good. No movies inspire you and change your life. No conversation makes you a better person. No program makes you think about our world and our place in it. So when you're a cynic, you preemptively excuse yourself from achieving anything or hoping for anything because it's just like you hand wave it away. And it's an easy trap to fall into. I think it is very much perpetrated

by the media because it allows people to just kind of, you're cool if you're a cynic, but if you have hope or optimism or anything is sunny, that's juvenile or illegitimate or kind of a joke. And that's a very useful technique to encourage people to stop fighting for their values and to stop hoping for things better for themselves and their families. And I think it's, regardless of someone's politics, if you're surrounded by this, and I think this is a very constant, you can speak to this also, I'm sure, it's a very Russian perspective. Because I remember very vividly, you know, there's this show called Russian Dolls, which was the Russian version of, um.

Oh, man, it was so good. I remember the whole family sitting down to watch it. I talk about it all the time because it was the first time you could see Russian politicians being satirized and made fun. of and it's never happened before or since really properly. Wait, there might be a different show then. Here in the States, it's our version of Jersey Shore with a bunch of Russians. I was thinking about a different one.

In the 90s, we had this show called Hukley, Puppets. It was a cool, a spitting image. Anyway, sorry. But the point I brought it up is there was this scene where this girl, she'd been struggling, she had like eight different majors, she didn't know what to do. She took an aptitude test and it said, lawyer. And she's like, oh, you know what? I enjoyed my pre-law classes.

So there's a scene. She's down with her mom. They're getting manicures or whatever. She goes, mom, you know, I finally figured out. I want to be a lawyer. First reaction, how are you going to pay for it? And she has this complete breakdown. It's just like, why is it whenever I have something positive my life, your first reaction is to

look for a flaw, to look for a problem. What, people don't know how to pay for law school? This is an, and she just loses it. And I could really relate to that because this kind of like always looking for the darkness, always looking for the way out to give up. is so pernicious, whereas opposed to me and the point of the book and just I think people should fight in general is there's the possibility that you're going to achieve your dreams. And I got to tell you, I failed a lot in my life and I'm fine with it. And I'm sure you guys have two.

Because as long as I gave it a good college try and I don't always get what I want, I feel happy and I can meet my maker knowing I did my best with what I had. Yeah, well, such an important point. One of the reasons that these cynical narratives are so pernicious and so common is, I don't know, have you ever heard of this experiment where, like, they put a rat in a cage with an electrified floor? And it gives us the rat an electric shock with a certain regularity. And what they found was, if you put a button in the cage that the rat can turn off the electric shock, the rat will carry on, you know, trying to stop the electric shocks. But if there is no button and they can't control its environment, then the rat just lies down and takes it, basically.

And I think a lot of these responses that people are tempted to go into, they're a feeling of a lack of control. Yeah. They're a feeling like there is these. And you both left and right have a version of it. You know, to the left, it's systemic whatever. It's structures of oppression. It's the patriarchy. It's whatever.

And to the sort of more anti-woke right, there's Davos and Klaus Schwab is personally, you know, you know, taking over their life or whatever it is. And it's a way of basically saying, I don't control anything. I can have no impact. I'm just going to sit here and be resigned and cynical. Yeah, I was on some conservative podcast. They were talking about how Joe Biden is putting the last nail in the coffin in America.

I'm like, we're one nail away from America being destroyed. What does that even mean destroyed, right? And it's just, and if you, your perspective is that the Biden administration in two years and 51 Democratic senators can destroy America. Well, it's a rap. And get out of this country because you hate America. Because to me, it's just absurd that a country as prosperous as we are, which certainly has problems, let me not put us a rug.

But to say that we're two years away from our destruction, to me is absolutely crazy to the point of being dishonest. And it's also these narratives are highly addictive. We all know, and we're not going to mention any names, certain channels that feed and fuel. all a doomsday narrative, they get millions of views and a lot of the time. Everything's shit. Wait, I should change the book title.

Look how shit things can get and it's coming to America right now. Yeah, exactly. Get your copy. But they put out the same narrative again and again. There doesn't seem to be very little variety in the output. You look at it and even a cursory glance will make it, or, Once you analyze it, you realize that a lot of these arguments don't have a lot of merit, yet people tune in. They love it, don't they?

Oh, and then you could have, and the thing is, then they can say that they're being rational because they could open up any newspaper and find bad news and be like, look, look, I'm not being irrational. The newspaper validates my perspective. So it does become a self-fulfilling cycle. I think COVID certainly allowed people who are, you know, neurotic or anxious or depressed now to externalize their neurosis because now it's not calling from inside the house. It's the whole country or the whole world that's experiencing this. And how can you expect me to have any hope or vision of happiness? So I think it's a very useful technique if you want to conquer a people or a peoples to convince them that their victory over you is impossible. And then you don't have to fight

because they could just go home, shrug their shoulders and be like, all right, you know, I can't win. I have no hope. The people I'm against are too powerful or have been around too long or control too many institutions. And I'm just going to kind of, you know, watch sitcoms have a pint and that's the end of that. And I think it's a very smart move on their part, but I really hope that the people listen to this don't fall into that trap. And you don't have to be this, you know, braveheart freedom fighter, but you can certainly be a better person tomorrow than you are today. We all have that power within us. You know, not everyone is going to be Joe Rogan, but we could still be successful podcasters as an example.

So when people put in that perspective, you have that kind of motivation to, you know, do something about the values that you hold. And also not all of those actions have to be public actions, I think. You know, when you, not everyone's Joe Rogan and you could be a successful podcaster, but you could also just have kids and raise them well. Or you could make a difference in the job that you do, whatever that job is. And that in itself will not only make the world better,

it actually is going to make your life a hell of a lot better versus sitting there and listening to yet another three-hour conversation about how civil war is coming. You know what I mean? And it's also, here's the other thing with cynicism. It's very important for cynics to make sure everyone around them is cynical. It's almost like a zombie apocalypse. Because as soon as you have one example that disproves your narrative

that everything sucks and we're doomed, your entire hypothesis falls apart. So psychologically it is necessarily. for them when they are surrounded by people who are, if not thriving, at least going in that direction, to pull the rug out from under them. Because otherwise, they're going to have to do some dark looking in the mirror and they're not going to like what they find. So I very much caution people if you're surrounded by this kind of negativity in your life, especially in casual friends. Make sure that this person is more of a benefit than a cost

to you because it really is very pernicious and sinister. Michael, do you think part of the problem as well is that people just buy into systems and paradigms way too much? So whatever the system may be, like the college system, they believe that you go to college, you get your college degree, and that your life when you leave will be sorted. And well, life doesn't work like that. Dife doesn't happen like that. Just because you get a college degree doesn't mean you're going to get a great job, whatever school you go to. Do you think that's part of the problem as well? Yes, and I think it's by design, and I think it starts in school.

because the whole point of school is to make people as homogenous as possible, to break young spirits, you don't want little boys running around, you want them asking too many questions, you want everyone's learning at the same rate as everybody else. Everyone is told that we all kind of basically think the same. These are things that are completely untrue. And there's this winnowing effect where if you're kind of challenging the narrative that the teacher at the front of the room, who's more often than not apologies to your audience, if they get offended at this, a mediocre person, you are really kind of taught a very bad lesson very early on, and I think this is intentional, because I think schools, I'm pretty sure it's even worse in the UK than the United States, are there to

design to teach kids not to think critically and not to challenge basic assumptions. You can only challenge within a context that is presented as you, you know, the equivalent of setting kids up for the Overton window. And I think it's very hard at a young age to kind of break out of that and not kind of be under that thumb. But it's something I think that's very, very necessary and that I personally had to do myself as well. Michael, moving on. Well, hold on a second.

Are you not going to tell him you're a former teacher? Yeah, I have my word. You do the ten times in every other episode. He slags off teachers. You say nothing. Come on, stand up for yourself. He agrees with me. I'll back you up.

Come on. No, I do agree. I actually agree with you, Michael. So in the UK, what education has in fact become, it's not it I would even say it's worse than that because education has actually become every school is now a factory for data harvesting yes it's not about teaching it's about factory it's a factory for data harvesting so that when the education minister of the day is questioned by his is one of his opponents they can then go well look the you know the grammar

you know the kids are writing better by 22% are they actually writing better no not really you're just teaching them to pass the test, which has little to no value, and it's just basically justifying your job. That's also the problem of education, is that it's now a political football as well. I would just like to say on behalf of everyone here at Trigonomwich, we believe there's some very good teachers out there, and we have tremendous respect for them, and by no means are we suggesting that you're all terrible.

I didn't say all. You just meant most. It's not a game of Russian roulette I'd want to play. You're not a big fan of school, Michael, I gather. No, not government schools especially. I don't know how they are in the UK, but here in the United States, it's probably the only place that many people experience violence in their lifetimes. And this is kind of this idea that, you know, first of all, everyone learning at the same rate as everyone else is nonsensical.

The point of schooling explicitly is to make good citizens. And what that means is people who are servile and obedient. I mean, it's a euphemism for a very pernicious goal. And to have everyone basically thinking the same things within narrow parameters. And that's how you get a, you know, powerful state. Michael, here's the thing. It's not also that. It's also to give you certain skills for you to be able to access education, the workforce.

But I take your point. Do you sometimes not worry, though, Michael? And I have this myself in that your experiences has led you to such, to have such a deep distrust of authority that you worry you can go too far the other way. No, I'm an anarchist. too far. I'm there. I've turned the dial up to 11. So you just think to yourself like, because surely some, we do need some form of government, Michael, surely we do in order to make the road, in order to make sure that, you know,

the roads. Don't say the trains run. It's about where they run to. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, the roads work, you know, the water works, whatever else. Do you not think that we need government for that? Without government, how do we have water? I think my God. No, I don't think we need government for any of that. And I think without government, who's going to imprison us in our homes for weeks at a time for no reason? My God, it's unconscionable.

No, I don't think, I think, first of all, I don't like that term we need, because that always means I want. And no, I do not want government at all. There are, of course, organizations and mechanisms that are important that establish rules and regulations within their purview. But in the sense of a government, no, I think. government's illegitimate. So how would society work without government? Society works. This is a kind of a sidebar, but society works despite government.

Everything that works in society is done voluntarily by people. Adam Smith talked about this at great length, by people fighting for their values, working peacefully with everyone else. It's only when force is introduced into a relationship via private criminals, such as muggers, or public criminals, which are governments, that you have. strife and other things like that. Well, I mean, if you remember, we talked about anarchism a lot in our last conversation, so people can go and go and check out the full conversation if they want.

Michael, so, I mean, one of the things we talked about is the need for hope and the need for the belief that positive things are possible. And I appreciate that in your conception, positive change would be to get rid of government. Wait, can I say one thing? it's not just positive things are possible. This whole book is demonstrating that positive things have happened. So this isn't some Pollyanna thing about like, oh, hope for the best. We've seen great, extremely positive things happen within our lifetime,

but they're not discussed because, as you guys mentioned, they don't fit this doomsday narrative. Well, right, and actually, I mean, you made the point right at the beginning about the Cold War, and maybe this is a good opportunity to come back to it, because I think to answer your question, I think part of the reason is it's kind of like, in a way, once something is bad is over, people just want to move on. Right?

I think that's part of it. Another part of it is the entity which previously was our enemy in the West, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. And so it was very easy to go, okay, well, that's done now. Let's not worry too much. But as we see in terms of what's happening in Ukraine now, you know, things don't, it's not like that part of the world suddenly just disappeared or all became liberal, beautiful, liberal democracies or whatever. And that legacy, I mean, that's what's happening in Ukraine now is continuing

to run, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, one of the points I make is that if someone is, anarchists get accused of being utopians, utopias don't exist. But progress does things, great victories happen on a national, international and personal level all the time. And if we, if we're going to be cynics, we're going to pretend that's not true. And it's just demonstrably false. Like everyone listening to this has had great victories in their lives, moments where things had been, where your fears, you know, there's this kind of, imagine going back in time 10 years ago and talking yourself and remembering all those fears you had, all those anxieties, many of them never ended up happening. And some of them did. And you know what? You were able to handle them. You were strong

enough. So I think that kind of is very important to have in mind to realize. But the other thing is I think we underestimate how much the media and the academia love war, love bloodshed. Because the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union was very largely a peaceful one, you don't have this triumphalism that we stormed Normandy and all these boys lost their lives. And of course, I'm not kind of dismissing what their accomplishments was and those enormous sacrifices to be fair. But that story is much more kind of easy to tell in terms of heroism than a bunch of people got together looked around and said, this is not right. And we're going to do something about and we're going to dismantle sometimes against their own will, this enormous edifice that has been built up over the decades.

What about Rocky Four? So, too. Chay. So, you know, that was one of the reasons I wrote this is because that narrative. of the victory of good over evil is not something in popular consciousness, but I think it needs to be, especially as, as you said, Russia and Ukraine are still very much in the news today for obvious reasons. And do you think part of it as well, Michael, is nowadays, I almost feel like because of this slightly, you know, we do see the world through this sort of postmodernist, everything is

relative lens to some extent. Like you say good and evil, most people couldn't even define what good and evil are anymore. Right. Well, I don't know about anymore. I think, This has been a long time where this idea of good and evil was speaking to earlier is regard as simplistic or naive or juvenile or 1950s. And this was, you know, leading up to the last third of the book, the idea was detente. Because the argument was, okay, look, we tried to fight communism in North Korea. That was in the Korean War, that was a draw. We tried to kind of Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War was a disaster for the West. the rational, sane, informed person knows the Soviet Union isn't going anywhere.

We have to make our peace with it. This is going to be a two polar world for millennia. Star Trek had check off because even in the far-flung future, it's going to be the Americans and the Russians. And Ronald Reagan, who became president in elected 1980, sat down in the late 70s and he said to his colleague, he goes, do you want to hear my strategy for the Cold War? It's simple and some might say simplistic. We win they lose.

And for him, and Margaret Thatcher with the Home Office, when she was dealing with Gorbachev, they told her these changes are cosmetic, they're not going anywhere, you don't know what you're talking about, you have to be realistic. And realism means you have to accept that this is going to be two superpowers in perpetuity. And my favorite moment, well, not my favorite up there, is when Lechfalesa, who was the head of Poland, was talking to Helmut Cole, who's the head of West Germany, and Lech Wales goes, you know, I don't think the Berlin Wall is going to be around for much longer. I mean, the way things are changing so quickly, and Helmut Cole laughs in his face,

and he goes, you're young, you don't understand how these things work, this is going to be a long process. It fell the next day, and Helmut Cole says, I'm at the wrong party, and got on a plane and got his ass out of Warsaw. So there's so many moments in this book when educated, smart, and cynical people are like, you can't expect things to get better, or if they are going to get better, it's just kind of putting a bandage on a greater wound. This disease is going to be eternal. We've tried everything we had and nothing's going to change.

And things happened gradually and then suddenly. That's so interesting because as you were speaking that, I was thinking, kind of looking 10, 15 years into the future. And I don't think, you know, five, ten years ago or fifteen years ago, anyone in the West would have really given half a shit about the leader of Russia dying, for example. Oh, okay, well, they've got a new one called Boris again. Great. You know, who cares? Right. But now that would be like a very significant moment, right? And that is going to happen in the next 10, 15 years, almost certainly.

Or at least there will be a change of leadership for sure. So we're kind of going to a world in which things really are starting to matter again in a very bad way, but also in a very significant way. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm going to push back a little towards the late 70s. early 80s, you know, Reagan kept trying to have summits with the Soviet Union, but the leaders kept dying on him because there was one old man after another, you know, and he didn't really know what to do about it. And then when Gorbachev comes in, he was the first Soviet leader to be

born after the creation in 1917 of what became the USSR. And this was a radical change in a direction that everyone listened to this, I believe, would very much be in favor of. So it certainly is the case that leadership does matter. And, you know, when Putin goes away, the next leader could be worse, most certainly, or it could be someone who's, you know, better or who knows even what those terms mean in this context. But yeah, it's interesting how forgotten this whole story was. And I think that's just completely uncommon. And it's just what would really bothers me, isn't just necessarily the Cold War, because that's kind of high politics. What's being forgotten is the oppression that these people went through. The secret police

The show, people were put on trial and forced to denounce their own families and admit to things that were literally impossible. Oh, I met Trotsky at this hotel, even though the hotel no longer had existed. And then you had the reporters defending these trials. There were so many signatories to these letters in the West saying we need to adopt the ways of Stalin and they have free speech there. And you don't know what you're talking about because you're trapped by the bourgeoisie. So there's just so many receipts of just not to mention the gulags, of course. of atrocities that so many people whose names we will never know have been forgotten. And I'm like, you know, over my dead body, is this going to be swept into the rug of history?

Michael, does it, does the experiences of your family and the experiences of writing this book, does it make you hypervigilant within your own country as to your own freedoms being eroded? I don't know, but it makes me hypervigilant about the nature of evil, because Americans have this idea that evil is someone with weird facial hair banging the desk and foaming at the mouth. And what happens in these countries, and I'm sure you guys can speak to this as well, is it's these little bureaucrats, these absolute mediocre people, just the bottom of the barrel, who are put in positions of power simply because they're following the party line and they will do everything to maintain that power and lord it over you.

Like, you know, just it's the person when you want to go to the hospital and get medicine, and he's the one guy standing between you and getting medication for your family, and he's going to make you tap dance because this is his opportunity to feel like a big shot. The best example of this was Chow Cheshoku, you know, who is the head of Romania. And in any other country, you know, if you take one look at this guy, the complete simpleton, he'd be some kind of male clerk who'd be befuddled when the address says, you know, 73 Smith Avenue, but it's 73 Smith Street. street and he wouldn't know what to do about it and just be kind of crapping his pants. But this guy was

given absolute power and was praised, you know, from sunrise to sunset in this country. And what happened to the Chowcesthus in Romania is, you know, one of my favorite stories in this book. Well, right. This is one of my favorite stories as well because it kind of shows you the thing that you're talking about, which is things change quickly and they change suddenly because he formerly at least had a 90-something percent approval rating. the day he was summarily executed, the day before he was summarily executed after being arrested. So, well, on that positive note, Michael, things can change quickly and suddenly and for the better. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

I hope everybody gets to read The WIPO. It's a great read. And before we let you go and before we do our questions for our local supporters, as they've already submitted, tell us what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? the perniciousness of the universities and those who staffed them. I think that is where the poisoning starts. And I'm very gladdened by, in America at least, it went from people thinking the fights in Washington and the government, and then they've shifted to the tactics of the corporate press. But behind them is the last leg of that stool, and that is the university system. And I'm

very, very gladdened by this because I think university staff, professors of the intelligence are as a rule not particularly impressive people and just nasty and just very small-minded. And when we take the fight to them, I think that's when victory will be achieved. And I don't think they're going to be able to put up much of a fight at all because they've never had to defend themselves. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show. If people want to get your book, if people want to find your other works online, where is the best place to do that? White pillbook.com. And I'm on Twitter at Michael Malice.

and I apologize in advance for the crap of my social media output and malice.com. Awesome, Michael. Thanks for coming on. Guys, head on over to locals where we're going to ask your questions and you'll get to see the answers and only you'll get to see the answers if you support the show.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening and we see you very soon. Another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7 p.m. UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's always available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. My version of national divorce is Texas regains its sovereignty from the occupying regime in DC,

and everyone else can fuck off and do whatever they want.