 So, so what is, sorry, well, let's, let's let me ask this first and then we can get into the philosophy. I mean, it's easy would be easy to dismiss BAP because he's a nut and the whole ideology is is insane and ridiculous and anti American and marginal and and really am pretty dumb but what you've discovered which I think is fascinating. And which is surprising to some extent I think is that many of his followers many of the people interested in him a smart. You know PhD graduates in political science is some of the best universities in the country. So he is appealing to people, we kind of kind of geeks and to people who might become teachers and might become professors and might become real influences. That to me is what is really spooky and scary about what's going on here. It's not his ideas which I think I easily dismissed. It's not him who I think is a nobody and a nothing given that you won't even come out and give it give us his name. But it's the fact that his followers are, in a sense real people they're not just crazy young people sitting in their mother's basement, you know playing video games. Well, there is some of that. But, but no, you're right. And one of the essays that I published recently titled, what's it title I've got a right here, the BAP boys and America. It's an attempt to understand and explain how and why a generation primarily of highly educated young men, not only in the United States, but around the world actually, because this is becoming a worldwide movement. And how and why they have become attracted to these extraordinarily bad ideas. And I think it's, I think it's really important for all of us to understand that the tectonic plates underneath our culture are shifting. Right. And, and this is really why I got interested in this because you know the future is always with the young and to understand where the country is going you have to understand what it is that is appealing to young people. And, and in my particular case I was interested in what young conservatives and libertarians were becoming interested in. So, it's important to begin with a kind of sociological profile of who these young, primarily men but not all men, you know, what what has brought them to this right because many, this is interesting because many of the of these young men, five, six years have thought of themselves as mainstream heritage foundation conservatives or Kato Institute libertarians. But within a very short period of time, they migrated and indeed have come to reject what they call conservatism, Inc. and libertarianism Inc. for this for this new philosophy. Now why, why is it, who are these, these young men. Look, this is a generation of primarily young men who from the time they entered kindergarten until the time they graduate from high school and then college have been told that they are racist sexist and homophobic by virtue of being white male and heterosexual. Right. And so this is a generation of young men and women, who in effect have really felt the slings and arrows of the totalitarian left right in ways that you and I would not have when we were, you know, going through elementary school and high school and college even though we had some of it back in the day, but not like them I mean that they are living in a stifling moral psychological intellectual environment and have grown up in this environment and and then all of a sudden one day you know when when when they're maybe say in their 20s and they they come to realize that Brooks Brothers conservatism and white paper libertarianism have have been feckless in defending them. They, they, they have rejected that they come to reject mainstream conservatism and libertarianism and and then all of a sudden they started looking for these alternatives. Some of them initially went with the so called alt right but in more recent years, they have migrated toward the Catholic trad cons and towards Bronze Age mindset. So, you know, on the one hand you can say and I do say in what I've been writing is that I get it I understand how and why this generation has become what I've called the last generation. They had no defenders they had no intellectual defenders and there was a vacuum that had been created by conservatism and libertarianism Inc. Right, nobody nobody's interested in in the Kato Institute producing another white paper on free market transportation policy, right, that's not what interests the young today. Yeah, there's no, there's no inspiration there's no, and there's no fight. There's no fight against the evil of the left there's no and there's no projection of of what is possible and you know I noticed, you know, five years ago again when when the old right was active, there were few, not many but a few objectivists who kind of drifted off to the alt right and when you asked them why their answer was there at least doing something. Right, right. And the idea was that by by spamming or what do you call trolling by doing memes that was doing something because these young people felt like they were fighting right there was a fight in them and nobody has rallied these young people around the cause in a way, you know we always say it's intellectual it takes decades, we have to write papers you have to write articles you have to do this stuff. They want action, they want to do something right now and and those people those young men and I think this is why it's primarily men although I'll be accused of being sexist in a minute. And given that orientation towards action action in the physical world. And it's not just the libertarians and the conservatives I mean there's very little I can tell a young person today I said, these are the things you should do act in order to change the world, because it's a big task. Yeah, it isn't a task right, but they've been seduced by the by by these very bad philosophies, and you're absolutely right. I mean I have dubbed them the fight club right. It's this generation of young men who who do want to stand up and fight and that and one can be very sympathetic to that. I mean, that's how I've that's how I've conducted my professional life for the last 30 years has been to be in the middle of a fight. I'm just remember that the Nazis said the same thing right I mean they came out and said, we need to act, we need to do something about the state of the world the left and everything else we need to act on it so it's all about. It's, it's, it's the same materialistic fascist kind of orientation towards action without thought. And we are both be fighting. But the fight takes on a different. I mean it's not a fight that everybody can be engaged in in the same way, because of the nature of the fight. Yeah, and it look I will say, I mean you can think of, for instance, BAP and his followers in terms of the good the bad and the ugly. Right, so there are some things that that I can understand how and why it is that young men today would be attracted to it. BAP is openly and explicitly anti egalitarian. Yep. Right. And, and, and, and, and not only is he anti egalitarian and and has been really a quite savage critic of the left. And it's it's primary hobby horses. He's also offering something of a positive vision, which is aesthetics so in many ways the first thing that the one has to say about BAP is that it's an aesthetic movement. He's trying to lead a kind of an aesthetic revolution, which is why you know, this can be mocked to be sure. But this is why BAP on his Twitter feed. Every day is posting photographs of sort of half naked muscle bound, usually European male models. This is the same aesthetic, exactly the same aesthetic as the Nazis and the communists. I mean, it's exactly the same if you look at if you look at communist art from the Stalin era. It's all these buff men, you know doing physical labor because you know that's what's really. If you look at the Nazi aesthetic, both in architecture, in sculpture, and in everything else that they did, it's the same kind of it's, it's, he's not original here. I mean, Nazism was very much projected as an aesthetic movement. And Hitler spent huge, given that he was at war, spent huge amounts of time designing the future Berlin and talking about with sculptors and architects about what it would look like. I mean, this is a, this is a big part of what these materialistic kind of fascists all about. Yeah, and that also translates into his political views. So, in a recent podcast, BAP praised the aesthetics of Albert Spear. Yeah, right. And the Nazi, the Nazi architect, and the mass, you know, nighttime rallies with, you know, and the theatrics of, you know, Lena, Lena, what was the director's name who directed all those Nazi movies. I mean, I'm sure that is massively appealing to somebody like that. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's anti egalitarian. It's, it's anti nihilist BAP has been profoundly influenced and you can see it in this book Bronze Age Mindset by, by Nietzsche, and Nietzsche's critique of nihilism so some of your, some of the people in your audience might know of Nietzsche's discussion of the last man in the prologue to thus big Zarathustra, and the last man is sort of the last man is in a sense of socialist man. And who BAP refers to as a bug man, right, it's the lowest form of life, which can be equated to essentially cattle, right, life in modern liberal, and by liberal I mean old liberal life in modern liberal bourgeois society, right, according to Nietzsche and to BAP is equivalent to herd life. It's like, it's like cows, whose only life is to be in pasture, eating, defecating and procreating right. That's all that's all life is in modern bourgeois society, and Nietzsche and BAP, they want to, they reject, they reject this, this, the last man or bug life or yeast life as BAP refers to it. And they, they want a new kind of politics, a politics of greatness, where great individuals right and so there's there is also an appreciation of hierarchy and inequality in BAPs writing, writings, but it's without limit without bounds. And not based on, not based on, not based on the kind of hierarchy we, I mean, not based on the mind, it's based much more on, on force and politics and in power. Oh, absolutely it is. Yeah, and he shares that with Marx, right, it's about in the end power. Exactly. Consider the name bronze age pervert or the book bronze age mindset. Bronze age what's typical of the bronze age. So, BAP wants to return to a pre Socratic age. He wants to, he wants to return to literally to the bronze age. He has said explicitly, and I'm quoting death to logo centrism, death to reason, death to philosophy, which like Nietzsche. He relates with logo centrism that is and philosophy with Socrates, and, and, and the Greek philosophers. He wants to return to a pre Socratic Homeric age, where, where individuals, I mean, he has a different kind of different view of human nature. He wants to, he wants to do away with reason, and he wants to elevate intuition instincts will. What the Greeks called Fumos, which is a kind of, which is a kind of spiritedness, he talks about innate innate blood and desire. So it's, it's, in other words, he wants a return to the Dionysian in rejection of the Apollonia. Yes, and just to remind everybody, Iron Man has a famous essay Apollo versus Dionysus. So you, you, you know, wish you contrast the two, and I think it's obvious comes down strongly on the side of Apollo. Right. And he comes down strongly on the side of Dionysus. He wants to liberate man, what he thinks are man's natural instincts, intuitions. He talks about the unquenchable lust for power. And so therefore, his view of human nature, also, so in other words, that is to say he views man's instant, his instincts, his hormones, his blood, his desire, his will as that which is most defining and fundamental about human nature, not the fact that man is the rational being. Yeah, so you said earlier that he rejects nihilism. But don't you think he is a nihilist? Well, that's, no, that's, I think that's right. I mean, he, he, he rejects the nihilism of the left. But there's a sense in which he himself is a nihilist. He's a nihilist in, I mean, because fundamentally, in the rejection of what he calls logocentrism and reason and philosophy. And there's a sense when you could say that's the ultimate form of nihilism. And by the way, that's a nihilism that he shares in common with the postmodern left, right, because they reject the same things. And so he is, in many ways, despite his rejection of, of his rejection of egalitarianism and nihilism, he does nonetheless share a great deal in common with those to that he that he's opposed to. Yeah. Right. And so his, this view of human nature that he has translates into moral action and into political action. So morally speaking, he's a kind of to use a character from Plato's Republic. And he's what I call Thrasymachian or he advocates a view of justice that one can describe as Thrasymachian, by which I mean Thrasymachus was a character primarily in book one of the Republic, who, who really makes famous the doctrine might makes right. In other words, there, there is no right, which is to say there, there is no objective view of justice or of, of human action, there is only will to power. That's what he takes directly from Nietzsche. So might makes right. And so those, those who are strongest both in terms of willpower, and of physical strength of courage. They should be allowed to roam the earth, literally, to literally roam the earth and conquer. And it bronze age. What's, what's similar, if you will, about these different strands within the within the this new right. So what's similar between the trad cons, because I can tolerate that. I mean, and commented in our commentary, I climb on review books clearly kind of embraced at least some of the back, back, backists, right in in their online publication at least. What is similar about them what's the attraction of back to people in the Catholic conservative tradition. So it's two things. First, it's, it is as I've already suggested the rejection of conservatism and libertarianism Inc. That's number one, and number two, which I've already suggested as well is their anti Americanism, by which I'm, you know, I'm using the term Americanism as a kind of as a way to sum up what I consider to be the moral political philosophy of the American Well, and the third would be a rejection of the left and the view of the left enemy and, and the be all end all of the the only thing to be focused on. And I think to some extent that the trad cons realized that they have been part of the, what did you call them the kind of traditional conservatism and that they have failed and that maybe that brings new blood or new energy or new excitement to the cause. Yeah. And, and, and I think this is something that we should all be thinking about. Right. So, I'm a proponent of a free society. That's, that's what, that's what I'm working for is is a free society. And I, I, I recognize that that the totalitarian or postmodern left is is in many ways, I think it is the primary threat to to a free society. And, and I also recognize the factlessness of of Brooks Brothers conservatism and white paper libertarianism. Absolutely. Right. And so I was in factlessness that they're not just a factlessness they not just that they ineffective but they actually do damage they much of their ideas as we discussed in your conservatism lead to back lead to inevitably because the bad ideas and their ideas based on also fundamentally of ejection of reason and individualism. So they're going to lead to these others and that's that's true both I think of the conservatives and the libertarians. Conservatives in particular right share share the same moral premise as the left which is more which is altruism. Right. And I mean, this this altruism, and it's psychological cognate, which is guilt. I mean, these have been the, I think the primary factors in in that are at the heart of this, what I call factlessness of traditional conservatism and even libertarianism. And so, you know, what we need to what I mean, what I think it is, you're on and you and I've talked about this privately before, as I've said, just in today's today show, I do think the tectonic plates the cultural tectonic plates underneath this country are shifting in in massive ways. And it's important for the proponents of a free society and objectives in particular to understand how those those those cultural tectonic plates are shifting. We have to find a way to be able to speak to this generation, this young generation that, on the one hand, has a sense of hopelessness. On the one hand, and, and on the other hand, a sense that that that what they need to do is just fight. And, and that's all there is is just fighting fighting the left, but that's in that's that's radically insufficient. Right, you have to have a you have to have a positive vision that's different than the left. That's different from the left. Because their positive vision is the same as the left. It's the same nihilism. I mean, the great tragedy, I think today in America is in somebody asked about this is, can we even define left and right aren't they all the same. Well, in a sense, they're all the same. So somebody says, can you or Thompson define right wing versus left wing ideology. It seems like the closer one examines the differences the more faint the line between them becomes authoritarian is authoritarian. You know, and I'd say, yes, authoritarian is authoritarian. They, it's useful to to differentiate between authoritarian of the left authoritarian or the right for variety of intellectual reasons to be able to combat them. But essentially the same thing there's a nihilism of the left and nihilism of the right. There's the common good of the left and the common good of the right their public interest of the public interest of the right. It's somebody, you know, it's, it's, I've always said the spectrum is individualism, collectivism, and then at some point the collectivism branches into two, right. One goes right and one goes left, but they're both collectivists and they kind of get really close to each other at the extreme. So, do you think this has traction that is, if we project out and, and, and, you know, doing these things is always risky but if we think 1015 years out 20 years out is back bigger is, is that the danger is are the trad cons more influential. What is the trajectory if nothing, if nothing is done to combat these guys. That's, that's a, that's a good end and a hard question. You know, on the one hand, I'd like to think that BAP and baptism is a passing fat that it's that, you know, eventually these these young men will grow up. They're married have kids coach little league baseball, you know, and have, and, and, and, and see the silliness of all of this. But, you know, on, on the other hand, it's, it is growing, it is, it is absolutely growing and it also turns out that the, the Catholic traffic con movement is growing. Let's just say I've heard that at one well known Ivy League University. In fact, the most likely of all Ivy League universities has has a has a substantial faction of young graduate students who are the, who are Catholic integralists. Who, who, who believe in throne and altar, who believe, you know, who is first allegiance is to the Pope, and, and they would they would like to see an American monarchy. Wow. So, so I mean I agree with that I think that what this is scary is not in the in the sense that any one of these will be exactly what the future leads to but that so many people. Are rejecting Liberty on the right now we know that this has happened already on the left are rejecting freedom Liberty the phone and really scary the funny fathers right they always used to claim allegiance to the funny fathers. That it's hard to tell what their manifestation will be in 10 years 20 years, but we know, I think that this is going to grow. And, and who knows how they use the different these movements might unite under a banner of common good under banner of authoritarianism under banner of more materialistic action orientation. Who knows what it'll what manifestation or will take but just like the old right in the sense evolved into this. This, who knows where this was going to go but it's not going in any good direction. I'll tell you where it's going, it's going toward Weimar. It's going to work by my Germany the 1920s, where the left and the right want to exclude the proponents of a free society. So that that that I mean this is this is the reason why they are attacking me so vociferously, right because I actually represent a genuine alternative to what they're proposing relative to the left, right. They have more in common with the left than they apparently have in common with me. And so I'm, I'm, I've become certainly with, well actually to be honest with both the Catholic trad cons and with the bat boys, I've become public enemy number one. Right, so since compliment. Since the pajama boy Nietzsche's essay was published. Well over 20 essays I think maybe now 25 essays have been published in response to that essay. And so I'm sort of fighting a two front war right now against both the Catholic trad cons and and the bat boys. And so, but this is the issue you're on. This won't be a passing fad. If we don't fight it. Yeah, I agree. Right, that's it might be a passing fad in the sense of the particulars of bad, but it won't be a passing fad in terms of the ideas behind it. That's right. No, I think that's absolutely right I think we are in you can see the nihilism on the left explicitly which was the same environment Germany. And shockingly, you know people always, it was the right, or a kind of unification of the nihilism of left and right, which led into which was what the Nazis were, you know, they united both the right and the left. Right. Yeah, and I mean one of the things that they've been saying about me is that they've been criticizing me for is quota punching right. Right. They're all on the chat all over the chat. Why are we even talking about this isn't the real threat to left. Why are we punching right, we should be all focused on punching left later we could deal with them. You know, and, and why is that wrong. Well, look, the first thing to say, anybody who knows me. Yeah, right and and maybe maybe your audience doesn't know. This is about you this is about me primarily because they've you know, and it doesn't matter to see to them and this is that should to back into the trade cons. It doesn't matter how much you punch left. That's irrelevant. It's the fact that you're daring to punch right that offends them it's, this is just a rationalization the fact that we're not spending every living moment of our life fighting the left is a complete rationalization because they don't want you punching right because they don't want to punch you right has now you do is. Yeah, but those those those are just labels right, which is why I reject the authoritarianism. Exactly. To repeat. I'm a proponent of a free society, and I will fight all enemies against the free society. And that is the totalitarian left and the fascist right, because the fascist right shares nothing in common. In terms of the positive political moral and political vision that they espouse with what I espouse there there there is there there are no similarities I have nothing in common with them. And, you know, I mean, this is something that I just I walked. I, in a sense, you know, I walked into by accident. I had no idea when I first published the Bajama boy Nietzsche's essay that I would spend almost a year fighting these guys and let me let me also tell you that not a single one of them has responded intellectually. I've seen the articles. I've seen the articles they're pathetic. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the they're all ad hominem. I mean, everything that has been published in response to me, either in terms of these essays, or on Twitter has all been ad hominem. And, and sometimes more than ad hominem say something about the more than ad hominem I think it's important for people to know who these bastards really are. Okay, so let me just, before I do that take a moment to promote my substack, because that's where this is all been happening recently. By the way, you can find that substack in the description below. I've linked to the substack and to the five or six articles about BAP and the dissident rate. So my substack is titled the redneck intellectual. It's at see Bradley Thompson one word dot substack.com. And in the last few months I've published a series of essays. First, in response to my Catholic trad con critics and then in response to bronze age pervert and his followers. And let me focus in particular on a couple of essays that I published in late December early January. The first of which was titled bronze age pervert and the fascist new frontier. And the second, the second one was titled German nihilism American style. And then finally there was a third bronze age pervert and or BAP and the bat boys, something like that. Anyway, they initiated on Twitter, a coordinated campaign. And this is demonstrable. When I say coordinated it was a coordinated it was a campaign actually core coordinated by BAP himself to have his minions attack me on on Twitter. And of course it's all the standard. It's all the term not mine it's all the standard shit posting, demanding that I quote post physique, describing me as cognitively female, and, you know, every other possible insult, none of which bothers me of course I mean, particularly during this all of this shit posting on Twitter against me is provided an enormous form of amusement and and laughter for me, but it took a nasty turn after BAP and the fascist new frontier essay came out when they started libeling me online. And then after they were libeling me and this again is demonstrably demonstrably provable that that they were libeling me into faming my character, then they started threatening me physically. And after they threaten me physically, then they started threatening my wife and children, and threatening to put together a dossier against me, which they were going to deliver to the dean of my college. Right. So, this is this is who these are the people that I'm dealing with. They, they, they, they continue the libel and, and they, and they also continue to say nothing substantive in response to my arguments.