 to my sound it's just not the high quality of the ideas it's not just you know the intellectual discourse it's not just you know storming the heights of intellectual achievement people want to feel something people want to you know become alive feel like everything feel like they're coming from the inside and so if people can't get that assured you're at synagogue but they're not thriving in their profession or their education all right people keep searching and so they might go to live streams they might go to stamp clubs they might join a dance class and they may take up writing or extreme sports people need to feel alive people need to feel something and sometimes the regular avenues for feeling something just aren't working and so that's what leads to large part extreme politics why do people join and Tifa or America first like why do people get into talk radio or their favorite tv pundit because these people make them feel something and so uh live streams of punditry and talk radio and your favorite you know tv hosts are good if they are a supplement to your life they are a negative force if they are a substitute for real world human connection you know our primary source of meaning and excitement should come from our children and from our family but i'm not married i don't have kids so i have to look elsewhere and so i do live streams if live streams are a substitute for real world interaction then that's obviously negative if talk radio or punditry or politics is a supplement to your real world connections then that's very possibly a good thing all right here's mother jones back in march on autumn nick for instance it came from the basement well written by ali breland okay so very derogatory headline right hey people feel alive and it came from the basement so we have all sorts of emotions and needs that come from the the basement that doesn't make them less real and less valuable all right you may have primordial needs for love and to be loved for connection to hold and to be held all right to to you know build something with with somebody to you know storm the the spiritual heights of the heavens with somebody else you may you know be looking for someone to grow spiritually or grow jewishly with you want to connect with someone jewishly or goishly right we all want to feel alive even if the emotions come from the basement right that that doesn't make them bad eight months before the white nationalist figure in nicholas j. fuentes ignited a political firestorm by dining with kanye west and donald trump at mark okay so this is an article right this is an article that seeks to dismiss dismiss and diminish it's uh it's not primarily about understanding so i'm going to take this article as a start to try to journey towards understanding rather than just you know the easy dismissal so this article aims at the easy dismissal our lago he strode out on stage to a crowd of what he claimed were 1000 followers chanting america first behind a podium flanked by two america so why do we exaggerate the the number of followers or the our accomplishments all right because we want to feel something we don't want to be losers lapania says i want elliott latin forward me to hold me but from a long distance we will spiritually be there for you bro we're not a we're not afraid of human connection here on this show in flags and one with that slogan he hit his standard beats the nation is in decline christ is king while sprinkling in some extremely troubling riffs like comparing latin your putin to hitler and suggesting the similarity was a good thing this myriad con okay so everybody needs to be understood in their genre right denis prager is the genre of no bible based morality applied to the events of the day uh bench appearance of the genre he'll say the most conservative talking points possible even if he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about uh nick fuentes has kind of a gamut mentality all right he's here to help you feel something help the zoom it feel something and so as a host or as a media entity you can choose you you want the widest possible audience even if it's a bunch of losers so um denis prager and uh ben Shapiro and you know other nationally syndicated pundits they talk you know to an average audience with at most an average IQ of 105 so you want to raise the average IQ level of your audience to like 120 such as this show you're going to dramatically cut down on your possible audience so would you rather speak to a very wide audience of idiots who have very shallow understanding of reality but you want to speak to an elite audience of you know thoughtful people and so nick fuentes speaks to zoomers and gamers and uh i don't think there are a lot of doctors college professors dentists lawyers attorneys uh therapists accountants listening to nick fuentes but for people who smoke a lot of dope and play a lot of video games who makes them feel alive he's meeting a real need that apparently churches and other more conventional organizations have failed to meet conference center worth of groipers which fuentes his fans call themselves in homage to a right wing internet frog meme had gathered in orlando for the third annual america first political action conference he was serving as the warm-up act for a secret guest of honor representative marjorie taylor green representative georgia she didn't say anything too noteworthy but her willingness to appear at an event hosted by an openly racist holocaust denier was a massive victory for his cause in becoming a member of congress screen had helped bring institutional credibility to fringe and racist conspiracy theories now she was doing the same for his brand of white nationalism it was a big deal for her to come out in okay where's my sound my my sound is back all right so this article is very much on the you know cheap put down so nick fuentes has many things but holocaust denier is not really one of his major riffs he's virtually never talks about it he once you know made some joke about six million cookies all right and to extrapolate from that and i'm sure he's you know here and there he said you know some crazy things but he's working in a particular genre of shock and or all right so people are working in a shock and or a genre all right they're going to say outlandish things but i don't think either white nationalist or holocaust denier the the proper descriptors of nick fuentes he's a shock and or you know vlogger talk show host personality who helps people feel you know something feel intense feel alive feel like they have a mission i remember when i was listening to denis prager and i was really sick it moved me that denis said to me you know you're needed in the fight for good values you need to get well soon all right who doesn't want to participate in the fight for good values right everybody wants to ride a white horse and let's say that in the real world you're just constantly meeting failure you're gonna look and look and look for areas where you can shine and so that might be in painting or in extreme sports or in extreme politics right we all have a need to shine to feel important do that fuentes said praising green after her keynote you guys know full well the risk she put herself out on a limb tonight and we here at afpack are grateful at afpack i famously said it would be a small group of highly motivated people who would change the world he added here in orlando i say we are that group of people we are going to rule this country the events evolution suggests he's made progress toward that goal the first one the idea that america first and nick fuentes again at rule the country is of course absurd but believing absurd things gives you you know meaning and purpose and passion now you can believe absurd things and still be highly effective in the world but you know frequently people who get into extreme politics or extreme causes all right believing things completely disconnected from reality generally speaking makes you less effective and in the long run that less happy and less likely to pass on your genes in february 2020 had no politicians instead featuring far-right commentator michelle malkin and patrick casey a long-time member and leader of the neo-nazi group identity europa by 2022 six republican elected officials spoke including green and representative paul gosar representative arizona okay so it sounds like american politics becoming more polarized more extreme but the circumstances and the situation has changed so what was taken for granted in america in the 1950s all right that outlook is now known as this extremist ideology of christian nationalism but many of the the tenets of christian nationalism would have been considered you know perfectly normal and people didn't get excited about them didn't even use the terminology christian nationalism but when the situation changes when when the tide starts you know rolling out so the christians have less and less influence in the world then they're going to have to reach for more and more extreme measures to try to stay relevant to try to stay alive and try to stay feeling important they appeared alongside explicit white power activists including vincent james a supremacist influencer who used his speaking i mean are there any you know supremacists uh you know outside of the quote-unquote white nationalist realm doesn't every group think it's supreme i mean come on every group thinks it's the very center of the universe and that the world revolves around it uh japan right the land of the rising sun japan believes that the sun rises first on japan and then goes to the rest of the world china means center of the earth and every group thinks that they're supreme it's not just some you know unique weirdness of uh people on the far right in slot to argue that crime wouldn't go down until even more black americans were in prison peter brimelow who found it well i think what he is a more intelligent way of arguing that is crime is not going to go down until the people who commit the most crime are in prison right and so they're right now there's a disproportionate number of certain types of young black men who commit astronomical rates of crime but in other areas of criminology like other groups commit astronomical rates of crime so you have to punish the people who are causing the most harm the most disruption to society and right now in america that means a lot of a certain type of young black men it's not young black women it's not middle-aged black men it's not old black men right it's not old asian ladies there's a certain element of young black men who are committing an astronomical amount of crime if you take the people who are committing an astronomical amount of crime and you put them away in prison for a long time you can then dramatically reduce crime rates with the white supremacist website vidare and jared okay peter brimelow from vidare vidare is an anti-immigration website right virginia dare was not the first white child born in the united states she was the first british child born in the united states so vidare wants to keep the anglo-saxon tradition strong in america so it has you know black people and asians and latinos writing for the site it's primarily an anti-immigration website taylor founder of american renaissance a racist journal i mean you can call american renaissance many things but just racist journal it's just such an easy put down right you can always call anyone racist but when terms like that are just used you know over and over again they lose all meaning right this is not an article that wants to understand and so what happens when people are deliberately put down robbed of their humanity dehumanized degraded objectified you know pointed out these are the bad people these are the horrible people these are the evil people and that's the only kind of treatment that they get from polite society well you know whether they're muslims or black nationalist or white nationalist whatever group they are that is consistently you know put in the other and in the dangerous and the awful out you know outgroup category eventually people get a revolt right on the other hand right treat people like human beings you know try to understand where people are coming from and give people a fair go and you're less likely to have a polarized situation the logistics of the Orlando conference like the previous ones we're also designed to accelerate the gop's slide toward white nationalism it was just a 15 minute drive from where the conservative political action conference again just absurd to think that the GAP is on some inexorable slide towards white nationalism now it would probably be an adaptive strategy for both parties both of the major parties in the united states ago where the votes are and so there's the highest potential republican voters out there who aren't actually voting republican right now among white americans and the democrats get overwhelmingly their untapped voters from americans of color so go where the votes are seems like a pretty sound strategy for the republican or democrat which for decades has drawn the party's biggest names and thousands of attendees was taking place the same day AFPAC started at 9 p.m after CPAC wrapped so participants could attend both in the latter half of the 20th century the GOP was pushed right by radio provocateurs like Rush Limbaugh and Fuente okay Rush Limbaugh and radio provocateurs did not push the GOP right as we saw with the fox dominion lawsuit right fox is scared to death of losing his audience Rush Limbaugh was scared to death of losing his audience he paid great attention to giving his audience what it was like name the brave people in punditry particularly right wing punditry who don't give the audience what it wants from Dennis Prager to Mark Levin to Sean Hannity they're all you know highly intent Tucker Carlson they're all highly intent are giving the audience what it wants they're not leading their following right the GOP was not driven right by talk radio right talk radio went right to the extent that it went right because that's where the audience is and almost every host who's successful right they tune in to what their audience wants and repeats the talking points that make audiences feel alive and happy and joyful and confident and supreme this is hero Pat Buchanan people who never held elected office but were deeply influential to a radicalizing party and a portent of its trumpified future today this 24 year old digital native is doing the same and on the right you can see all these articles about how the the democrats have radicalized and you know gone further left and become communist so it's very easy to just put down the other side in these dismissive terms but not particularly adaptive or sophisticated my job for went as explained in a may 2021 live stream is to keep pushing things further Nick Fuentes pushes things further to the extent that that brings in money power fame and you know the sense that he's important right why do people do things after they meet their basic needs for food and shorter right people want to feel something people want to feel alive people want to feel significant people want to feel important people want to feel like they're living from the inside people don't want to feel like they're on the margins and they'll just keep casting about until they find something that makes them feel important that they are fighting to take back civilization that they're fighting for good values that they're fighting to take back america that they're fighting for their tribe or they're fighting for their race or So they're fighting for their religion or they're fighting for their ideology, right? If you don't have family that you care about, right? You have an all likelihood of desperate need for meaning in your life. And when you have a desperate need for meaning, you are gonna be wide open to all sorts of scams, right? You're gonna be wide open to all sorts of gurus. And there are all these belief systems out there that are just highly seductive, right? There are bubbles of belief that while seductively easy to enter can then be almost impossible to think your way out of again. But if you have strong ties to your family and your friends in your community or to your profession, to your education and to your interests, right? You're gonna be much less vulnerable to the allure of gurus and causes, right? You should just find your meaning in your friends and family. But if you're not capable of finding, if you're not finding your meaning in your friends and family, then you're gonna look elsewhere and you're probably gonna make a really bad decision because the drive for meaning really sends people squirrely off into all sorts of generally maladaptive directions. And I know, I'm speaking from experience when I got really sick in my 20s, I felt fairly isolated in the world, like all my dreams had fallen apart. And so to keep myself going, I needed meaning. I needed to believe that I was desperately needed in the fight for good values. Then over the past, I don't know, seven years as I started to build more substantial community in real life, started to make more money in real life, started to build my friendships in real life, build a life that I could be more and more proud of and feel good about, have more and more self-respect than my intense need for meaning consistently diminished so that I could stand up here and go against what everybody in the chat would be saying. So initially when I started live streaming 2016, 2017 into 2018 is incredibly alluring to develop an audience that'd be in the dozens to the hundreds to even over a thousand. And I would consciously feel that tremendous tug to give the audience what it wanted, meaning reward the more extreme elements of the audience. Cause even moderately inclined people often get a charge out of more extreme positions. So someone moderately on the right will often enjoy it, get a charge, get a thrill, feel alive. And they hear presentations of ideas considerably to their right. And so I'd feel that tug to be captured by the audience. And then luckily I read a book on virtually you, the dangerous powers of the e-personality and it really kind of spelled out the dangers of going online where you feel much less constrained than you do in face-to-face interactions. So you tend to exaggerate your own importance. You tend to go into dark areas that you wouldn't normally talk about face-to-face. You tend to say things without much preparation. You tend to remove the filter that you normally employ in day-to-day life. And then you develop shock and awe habits which tend to rebound badly to not just online but they then shift how you react to people in the real world. And you start using some of the tracking language which you begin to enjoy online and it deteriorates your real-world relationships. We, because nobody else will, need to push the envelope. We're going to get called racist, sexist, anti-semitic, bigoted, whatever. When the party is where we are two years later, we're not going to get the credit for the ideas that become popular. But that's okay. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. I saw how Fuentes makes his pitch on a chilly damp day in November, 2021 when he hosted a rally in front of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City's mayor. A throng of about 100 intently watched as Fuentes waved a crucifix and railed against local COVID restrictions. One of Fuentes is... And looking at the comments on this channel, Pigger says you're needed to fight for good values to build the third temple. So the third temple is the drive to rebuild the temple of Torah Law where there are sacrifices to God and the last temple was destroyed by the Romans in year 70 of the Common Era. So if you belong to a community, it's going to have a hero system. We almost always get our hero system from our community. Most of us are not such amazing artists and scientists that we can get our hero system from our own accomplishments. Rather, we feel heroic because we conform to the value system of our community. So I joined Orthodox Judaism and much of my feeling of heroism is when I fulfill the commandments, the midst vote of the Torah of Orthodox Judaism, follow in the pathways of my adopted people, help out in my modest ways and learn Torah and follow in the hero system of the community. And by doing so, I then feel connected to something eternal. And so this is a large part of where people get sustenance in life, right? Not just from family, not just from friends, but also from your community's hero system. So if you're a part of a community that most value is education, then you think anyone who's highly educated is heroic. You're part of a community that most value is making money, then you're going to regard making money as the most heroic thing you can do or athletics or stand up comedy, whatever your community presents to you as heroic will probably profoundly shape you. His talents is pivoting from any topic to his central beliefs. It's not even just about the pandemic, he exhorted. Take a look at this city for the past year. Ever since George Floyd died, just like every city in America, the crime is out of control. Anger over public health measures provided a way to launder more extreme and racist positions and to tap into his audience's fears of being left behind. Okay, I don't think Nick Fuentes or people like him needed the pandemic to launder their more extreme opinions. They developed a particular perspective on life and they were part of a populist revolt against rule by experts. And it's not crazy to want to revolt against rule by experts. And so I'm not completely on the side of the populist, I'm not completely on the side of the experts, but I don't think this revolt against rule by experts is just if so fact a stupid, crazy, racist, wrong, bad. In certain circumstances, it's adaptive. It helps you better navigate reality, helps you to feel alive, helps you be part of something, helps you develop an in-group, gives you meaning and purpose in life. But if it's ill-judged, then it can become maladaptive and make you less effective and less happy in the world. So it all depends upon how you execute your drives, whether they're populist or elitist. The crowd, mostly white, male, and under 30, cheered. A handful waved flags and others in the... Okay, so being white, male, under 30 is a bad thing, right? Not any less valuable to God, to yourself, to your fellow Americans, to any right-thinking, kind, decent, thoughtful, sophisticated people, whether you're white or you're black or you're brown, you're under 30 or you're over 60. I mean, this article is just reaching for every cheap put down possible. The organization's riff on red MAGA hats wore blue caps reading America First. The slogan, popularized by Woodrow Wilson, was adopted by Buchanan and then by Trump and Fuentes. Well, who should Americans put first? It's often said that Americans really care about Israel. Well, Americans don't really care about Israel. Americans primarily care about Americans. And so it's kind of weird if Americans put anything else ahead of America. American Christianity is distinct. It's a whole different culture from, say, European Christianity or African Christianity or Japanese Christianity. So I would expect Australians to put Australia first. I'd expect Israelis to put Israel first. I'd expect Egyptians to put Egypt first. Like putting your own people, your own nation state first, by putting your own tribe first. All right, that seems to me pretty adaptive. Seems to me fairly commonsensical. It seems to be a normal, healthy way to live. Our quality of life is being destroyed. They want us to live in smaller houses. They want us to eat less food, take up less space, have less healthcare, have... Okay, so you can make this kind of populist anti-elite case appealing to people with a 100 IQ, all right? And that's what Nicholas Fuentes does. Now, there's a more sophisticated version of the populist case for the 120, 130 IQ crowd, but that's not where Dennis Prager or Ben Shapiro or Sean Hannity hang out. I mean, Tucker Carlson has done it on occasion, but also accompanied it with a lot of nonsense and idiocy. Have fewer children and they want us to eat crickets, Fuentes said, egged on by supportive booze. I'm not eating any bugs. So anytime you have any kind of identity, whether it's Jewish, American, Mexican, white, black, brown, Latino, Italian, French, English, right? What accompanies every strong form of in-group identity is a sense of victimhood. And if you're a strongly identifying Scotsman, you have a sense of victimhood probably against England, perhaps against the EU. If you're a strongly identifying Irishman, you have a strong sense of victimhood vis-a-vis England. If you're a strongly identifying Frenchman, you have a strong sense of victimhood vis-a-vis the Germans and probably the English as well. If you're a strongly identifying Japanese, you have a strong sense of victimhood against, I don't know, neighboring countries, against the Anglos. I mean, everyone with a strong in-group identity, whether you're Christian, Jewish, gay, if you're a strongly identifying as Ethiopian or as Australian, right? You can come up with a story. It's all an intrinsic part of a strong in-group identity is being angry at the victimhood of your people. Now, that sense of victimhood on a scale of 1 to 2 in intensity helps you because it gives you meaning purpose and an in-group to identify where it gives you a trajectory in life. It gives you a moral compass. But if you're walking around in a relatively safe multicultural society like the United States or Western Europe, walking around with a sense of in-group victimhood at a five or above is probably maladaptive. You'll be less effective at get along with people. You'll be less popular at work. People will kind of shy away from you. And then in reaction to people shying away from you, you'll intensify your in-group identity and your in-group sense of victimhood, which will increasingly make you unhappy and less effective. So all sorts of things are wonderful at a 2 out of 10 in intensity and then become maladaptive with a 5 out of 10 intensity. From Father Coughlin to Donald Trump, demagogues have long commingled racist and anti-Semitic appeals with fear. OK, so demagogues, again, they're telling people what they want to hear, right? Demagogues aren't changing minds. Hitler, Father Coughlin, Donald Trump, didn't change many minds. They released in some people things that were previously latent. But overwhelmingly, people whose outlook on life aligned with that of Hitler or of Trump, right, they supported Hitler or Trump. And then people who are opposed to those perspectives, they didn't change their minds under the influence of brilliant propagandists like Steve Bannon or Joseph Goebbels. So demagogues, pundits, talk radio stars, gurus, they meet a need that people have to feel important, to feel a sense of community, to feel alive, to feel something. People want to be passionate. People don't want to feel left out and on the margins. And people who are feeling left out on the margins, they are just waiting to be activated by some speaker, someone who can come along and give them meaning and purpose. Years of economic decline. Fuentes' power comes from layering on a generational critique that taps into young people's apprehension that their prospect. Fuentes' power comes from making people feel amazing. When Dennis Prager says the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen, he's been to reduce audiences to tears. Now, the thought doesn't hold up to analysis. But when a skilled speaker like Dennis Prager is going at it, he says all sorts of things that just make like-minded people feel amazing. And so to Ben Shapiro or Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Barack Obama, all right? Barack Obama's speeches, when you read them, they were just like nothing. But when you heard them, if you were inclined towards his point of view, you might start crying, you felt understood, you finally felt alive, you felt something, right? So the skillful orator that sets off these emotional explosions in you, how does he do that? He gets on the same page with you. He feels like he is able to connect with you, he's able to create a shared reality with you, right? He articulates what you're feeling, he articulates what's frustrating you. Now, he displays empathy for your struggles, then you feel like, oh, this speaker, he really gets me. And then he shifts you and guides you and stays on the same page, creating a new shared reality with you. And out of this interaction, you feel energized. People who listen to Dennis Prager get energized, right? His regular listeners, his fans get energized. People who listen to Barack Obama get energized. People who listen to Donald Trump are on the same page. They get energized, they feel something, they feel alive, they feel connected, they feel like they're living from the inside. And so the skilled, smooth talkers, they release these emotional bombs inside of their audience. And it's like, oh, wow, yeah, this is how I've always felt, but nobody's ever articulated it so well. Now, a lot of these emotional bombs turn out to be fatuous, they turn out to just be nothing, they turn out to be pseudo-profound BS, and that's how gurus work, right? On the more extreme end, and yeah, people like Jim Jones, who have followers who follow him to Guyana and commit mass suicide, you have this evangelical Christian pastor in Kenya who got hundreds of people to starve themselves to meet Jesus. That's just an extreme manifestation of people's desire to feel something, to feel alive, feel like they're living from the inside, that they have a community, they have an in-group, they have excitement and meaning and purpose, and that pastor in Kenya or Jim Jones was able to say things that just set off intense emotional reactions with people. But it all begins with getting on the same page, it all begins with feeling a sense of empathy. When I listened to Dennis Prager, when I talked 101 with Dennis Prager or when I attended lecture with Dennis Prager, I felt very connected, I felt like we were sharing the same reality and then we were creating a new reality together and it was very exciting and it would fill me with energy, it filled the crowd with energy. Now, this shared reality was largely pseudo-profound BS, but it's very exciting as long as you don't think too deeply. Okay, that's not why Nick Fuentes has an audience, he has an audience because he helps people feel something, he helps people feel alive, people feel agreed, gives them a sense of in-group identity. He sets off, you know, emotional explosions in people, he creates an intensity of connection with people. He relates to people where they're at and he's like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and then articulates what's bothering them, what seems to be holding them down and so he's providing this emotional service. Yeah, it's largely pseudo-profound BS, but it's not because of the economy primarily, right? It's not because of these external economic indicators, it's because people need to feel alive, people need to feel excited, people need to feel connected, MASH joined part of something bigger than themselves, that they're marching with other people to create a better world or to protect their tribe or their country or their religion. And that's what Nick Fuentes is so good at doing for a largely 100 IQ audience. Investors have all led Gen Z to question capitalism. The ranks of democratic socialists... Okay, it's not questioning capitalism that drives the Nick Fuentes movement, right? What drives it is emotion, right? He's able to say things and to make jokes and portray a certain attitude to elites and to the world around us that provides people amusement and a sense of purpose and a sense of importance and a sense that they're on the winning side, right? If you don't have several friends at your church or synagogue, you're gonna hang out there along. If your political orientation doesn't come with friends in a sense that you're on the winning team, that you got something cool, you're probably not gonna hang out very intensely in that type of politics, right? People, large part, choose their politics for aesthetic reasons. They wanna look cool to certain people. They wanna connect with certain people. They wanna be bonded with certain people. They wanna be part of a certain social clique and then they choose their politics and often their religion around their desire for social connection. Have grown as a result, but not every young person is drawn to the left. Fuentes is one of a few figures on the right who directly speak to new generations anxious about the decline of the middle class and wondering what to do about it. By combining class and economic precarity with white nationalism, Fuentes makes racism even more persuasive to a certain kind of person. This brew has helped fuel his meteoric rise from fringe YouTube star to Mar-a-Lago guest, becoming heir apparent to the American white nationalist throne. Fuentes is known for his charisma, unlike some of his right wing internet peers. Okay, so one great definition of charisma is that you pull off the impossible. And when you seem to pull off the impossible, like Nick Fuentes has apparently assembled a huge following that then gives you more resources to more successfully pull off more seemingly impossible ventures going forward. And that is the direction of charisma until ultimately you fail. So Hitler, he took over the Sudetenland and he took over Shaka's Lovakia and he took over Poland and Western Europe. And he was taking over much of the Soviet Union. He kept pulling off the impossible until it stopped working and that's when his charisma ran into a brick wall. Here's like Ben Shapiro and Tim Poole who speak in monotones and try their hardest to present as intellectuals. Fuentes prefers to grandstand while- Okay, so the idea that Tim Poole or Ben Shapiro intellectuals is just pure delusion. But a lot of people really honestly believe that. A lot of people think that when they're listening to Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, that they're listening to like premier intellectuals, right? But it's always people who are relatively ignorant in the area who think of Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager or some other right-wing pundit as an intellectual, right? The more learned someone is in a particular area, the less likely they are to fall for some pseudo-profound guru like Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager or Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer, Tim Poole. A working to provoke and engage. Another major component of Fuentes' appeal is that he provides logically consistent, albeit atrocious answers to the contradictions of modern conservatism. Again, this is nonsense. All right, Nick Fuentes' appeal isn't based on providing logical, consistent answers to the problems of modern conservatism. His appeal is that he makes people laugh, makes people feel something, makes people feel amused, makes people feel aggrieved. He makes people feel like they're gonna win. He makes people feel like they're part of an in-group, right? He makes people feel things. That's the appeal of the Nick Fuentes or Dennis Prager or Ben Shapiro or Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson, right? Their appeal is based on making people feel things. It's not based primarily upon ideology. His arguments have a way of ripping open muddled beliefs advanced by mainstream conservatives. Take their grievance against woke capitalism, which really means businesses responding to consumer expectations in a manner that bolsters the bottom line, a complaint that flies in the face of the free market worship that is core to mainstream figures on the right. Fuentes circumvents this contradiction by just never defending capitalism. Unlike many elected Republicans, he does not argue against diversity while claiming he isn't racist. He openly argues diversity is bad because of his belief in the inferiority of non-white races. The list goes on. No, that's not what drives Nick Fuentes. He is picked aside, you know, he's picked a tribe. He, you know, likes his in-group that has absolutely nothing to do whether members of our groups are superior or inferior, right? You can love your in-group and prefer the company of your in-group even if you recognize that our groups in different areas are far superior to whatever your in-group can do. Like you love your mother and father, right? Even if there are other, you know, better-looking mothers or, you know, more productive, more efficient, more effective, more affluent, more successful people than your father, right? That's not going to, you know, affect whether or not you love your parents. So too, people love their people whether or not their people has the highest IQ or the highest, you know, per capita earning or, you know, has the highest number of technology patents, right? It's all about who you love, man. Who you love, right? People love their people, love their families, you know, without regard to whether or not outsiders are, you know, greater, more effective, superior in different ways. If there is a right-wing belief that involves obfuscating and unsavory motivation, Fuentes is open about it. He speaks to the people who don't mind saying everything out loud. Yeah, a lot of people are tired of political correctness. A lot of people are tired of corporate rules. If you have a normal job, there are, you know, effectively all sorts of, you know, speech rules and repressions in the workplace. For example, you can go to work and women can feel free to, you know, dress in a highly alluring, highly provocative, highly sexual manner. But if you ever dare comment on it, you're busted. You're put in discipline or fired. So, you know, people get frustrated with the entire civil rights complex with the highly litigious society that limits the things that you can say at work or say in polite society. And so they welcome someone coming along, you know, who's a bit rebellious, who's controversial, right? The left, you know, you still love people who are rebellious and controversial. And, you know, many people enjoy stand-up comics because they stand outside of polite society. You know, they critique polite society, whether it's from the left or the right. And to the extent they make people laugh, they do it because they reveal truths, right? People are tired of, you know, unnecessary rules. People are tired of being, you know, you know, repressed and changed and smashed and held down and restricted in just, you know, expressing, you know, basic commonsensical observations. And so they enjoy, whether it's stand-up comics or right-wing pundits or, you know, left-wing activists, people who come along and, you know, smash, smash, you know, oppressive pieties that so limit normal human connection. Nick Fuentes grew up in the relative comfort and stability of a two-parent household in the Chicago suburb of LaGrange. He has said that his father, Bill Fuentes, a vice president at a ball-bearing manufacturer, is half Mexican, which Nick sometimes uses to claim he's not a white supremacist and sometimes brushes off as distant lineage irrelevant after decades of assimilation. His parents supported Nick as he broadcast racist live streams from their basement. In one, he said that growing up, his family avoided Applebee's and Red Lobster because they were commonly known as Black Fair, adding that they shared a saying about Olive Garden that contained the N-word. In December, 2000... Yeah, well, a lot of people avoid places that are dominated by, you know, outgroups that are causing them grief or that they just plain don't like. And it's not something unique to Nick Fuentes. All right, what's going on with Disney and Ron DeSantis? The second breaking Disney news update I have for you guys is Parks Chairman Josh Tomorrow finally releasing a statement that I think we've been expecting for a while here regarding the Lake Nona project. Disney is officially abandoning the project. For those of you who don't know, the Lake Nona project was previous CEO Bob Chapex plan to build a new Disney headquarters inside of Florida in Lake Nona, a very nice planned community that is up and coming that you have near the airport in Orlando. It's a beautiful area. We made a video here on the channel about two years ago taking a look at where this office was going to go, the land that Disney acquired. The media is spinning this cancellation as being due to DeSantis and the hostile business environment, which he helped to create with Disney. The reason I'm skeptical that DeSantis really had so much to do with this cancellation is because we know people in high places. You guys have seen some of the stories we've broken here on the channel in the past. I've been hearing for months that this is just a Chapec-era project that Iger wants nothing to do with. Look at how fast all these Chapec-era projects are just crumbling, turning to dust. The reality is that Disney has huge bills coming due on the streaming side. They're having issues on the earnings side of things, paying to build a big new campus, a big new headquarters in Florida, making people move from California, which is very unpopular internally and part of why Chapec was so unpopular inside the company. Iger's wiping his hands clean of this whole thing. All right, this is Tucker Carlson about 13th before he was fired. I can say, I don't think we should fight a war against China. I definitely think we should fight a war against Russia. But you can't say the world is gonna be a better place when China and Russia control the majority of it. You just can't say that. I'm sorry, you just can't. No, you can't. And yet, they're making that a dead certainty. Well, I saw Trump said he could close that in 24 hours if he wanted to. Do you think he could? Before I arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It'll take 24 hours. If it's not done before then. President, and I say this, I will end that war in one day. It'll take 24 hours. Do you think he could? I have no idea. I mean, he couldn't build a border wall in four years. So, you know, there is a gap between promises and deliveries. And maybe because he's a little bit autistic, no person can say, like, I don't think we should fight a war against China. Okay, back to this Mother Jones article on Nick Fuente. 2021, his mother phoned into his show to speculate on the race of a man who'd opened fire in a mall near her home. What flavor do you think that shooting was? Laura Fuente has asked. You know. Okay, this is very normal. All right, it's not polite. It's not praise. But when John F. Kennedy was shot, the reporter, Tom Wolf, the future novelist, went around New York and he found that every group blamed some other group that they didn't like for Kennedy's assassination. So, you know, some blame Black, some blame Puerto Rican, some blame Jews, some blame, you know, Italians. All right, everyone had some, you know, outgroup that they didn't like. They then blamed for the Kennedy assassination. Know what I mean? Before hanging up in a laughing moment, she insisted Nick had learned anti-Black prejudice from your dad. Nick entered high school in 2012, where he assembled a roster of activities that suggest a lust for attention and budding oratorical skills. He joined the speech team and Model UN, got elected student body president and was selected to greet Illinois governor during a school visit. Fuentes hosted a campus TV and radio talk show where he discussed his conservative politics. He was more moderate then, he would later admit, sometimes describing himself as a former libertarian. Bill Allen, who taught Fuentes and ran the school's television programs, told the Chicago Tribune in 2017 that none of the stuff he produced was even close to the level he's at now. So, why do people like commentators sometimes become more radical or more moderate? They're responding to incentives to a change in situation. If you're in a situation where it pays for you to be moderate, you'll have all these incentives to become more moderate and you likely will become more moderate. If to get an audience to maintain public attention, you are incentivized to become more extreme, more radical, you'll shift in that direction. So, why do people do the things they do? In large part because of events, my dear boy, events. And otherwise, known as situations. When situations change, people change with them. The libertarian to fascist pathway is well documented. And this... So, why is there a libertarian to fascist pathway and why is there like a fascist to communist pathway? Right, because situations change, people change, they have different life experiences. The world around them is changing. And so, people are trying to reach for a hero system that kind of makes sense of the world around them. Most people aren't deep, sophisticated, coherent political thinkers. They're just reaching for something that feels good, is aesthetically pleasing, helps them to associate with a certain crowd and helps them have energy, meaning, purpose and an in-group. Seeds of what his politics would become were already present in a blog post from just after... Yeah, because most people's political, cultural and psychological orientations are strongly influenced by their genes. Okay, so why would a pundit harbor a pessimistic outlook? Well, how many followers are you gonna get if you say, this is a beautiful world? You know, life is pretty good for all our problems. Life is good. I see trees of green, skies of blue. I hear children crying and I think to myself, what a beautiful world. Life is pretty good for all our problems. Life is good. I see trees of green, skies of blue. I hear children crying and I think to myself, what a beautiful world. But there's not a large audience that's going to... All right, the easiest way to connect is to outrage people. Who's the spoils of the American experiment squandered for one final time before the dying gasp of a once exceptional people as the free world and economic abundance of Ronald Reagan was inherited by the lizard people. My generation is the generation of hopelessness. In a foreshadowing of his turn to Christian theocracy, he promised to... Okay, there's no generation in America that is dominantly hopeless, right? There's every reason for hope, no matter what generation you're in, as long as there's life, there's hope as long as you're connected to your family and friends, to community, to some purpose a little higher than yourself if there's opportunities for you to volunteer and to contribute, right? There's no reason to be hopeless. But when people get caught in, particularly in a cycle of their own self-destruction, then it's very tempting to try to look for some kind of outside reason for why you're suffering. It's the Jews or it's the blacks or it's the Catholics or it's the socialists or it's the commies who are causing most of the problems. In reality, if you're living in the first world today, life is pretty good compared to what most of people have experienced through most of history. And if you're unhappy in all likelihood, in this world, the problem is primarily with you. It's not with the political system. This is Dr. Alan Burger. He says, try to use willpower when you have diarrhea. It just doesn't work. No matter what you do, if you have to go, you have to go. And he says, if you have any question of what powerlessness is like, just think about that. I love him. He was a very special man. So in this step, we are beginning to align ourselves with reality. We are learning the importance of an alignment with reality and being able to live a better life. Now remember, one way of thinking of emotional sobriety is always aiming at the best possible attitude we can have towards ourself, towards our life, towards reality. Well, this is about having an alignment with the reality of who we are. I love the quote that Roger brought in last time that live in responsibly towards reality is what self-esteem is all about. Well, we can also say that that's what emotional sobriety is about, living responsibly, being able to respond to reality in the best possible way. That's what we're striving for. Well, tonight I wanna talk about another thing that has to happen in order to get aligned with reality. We have to surrender what Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin called our special status. I love that term, our special status. That somehow all the rules that apply to other people don't apply to us. We're special. You know, I love when Herb gives us talk about, you know, when you ignore a physical law, what happens, right? Gravity is gravity just all the time. It doesn't care what you think about it, whether you think it's not happening or not. If you jump off a building and you flap your arms as fast as you can, you're still gonna fall and probably break your leg or worse, you know, die from the fall. Well, it's also true that when we don't live in honor of the reality of who we are, we're jumping off a building all the time. We are at odds with reality. And we keep trying to figure out a way to control something that we don't have any control over. And it's not until we admit that we're powerless that then that paradoxical change takes place, we're able to find a different kind of power that comes out of acceptance, not out of controlling, but out of letting go. Boy, that's something that not many of us have thought about. But now let's put that. So we have to surrender our special status if we're gonna become aligned with reality. If I think that somehow the rest of you have to surrender your powerlessness, but I'm gonna finally figure out a way to control my drinking. Well, we see what happens when people do that, right? What we say the outcome of this illness, if it's unchecked, is we die from it. We end up in an institution. We end up in jail. We end up losing everything that's near and dear and important to us. So if we go back to self-esteem, and we're using Dr. Nathaniel Brandon's model, the six pillars of self-esteem, which we really actually, he said there's seven pillars. So we're gonna start talking about his seven pillars of self-esteem and just a reminder of what those are. And then let's look at what's happening in this step in relationship to these pillars. The first was living life consciously. Well, that means seeing life as it is, being aware of what is happening for us. Does this step help us move in that direction? Of course it does. Yeah, so step one is in recognizing that you have a problem, and there's probably a more effective way to go about living your life than just following your own inclinations. All right, back to this Mother Jones article on Niquroentes. Pramilgate and preach the good word of the American restoration. In that same post written the day before. I mean, who doesn't want their people restored? I mean, Arabs want a restoration of Arab glory. Muslims want a restoration of Muslim glory. Christians want a restoration of Christian glory. Jews want a restoration of Judea glory. The Japanese want a restoration of Japanese glory. It seems like a pretty healthy and nigh universal impulse. Or Trump was formerly nominated as the Republicans 2016 candidate. Fuentes described his ascent as an opportunity. Donald Trump has created an opening. We don't know for how long and we don't know if it's big enough, but it is an opportunity for the American people to throw off the yoke of the new age orthodoxy which has enslaved us. Fuentes eventually deleted his blog and began the live streams that would make him a far right star from his parents home. After enrol- So why have many bloggers turned more to blogging? So my primary way of speaking to the world used to be writing my blog but I devoted much more energy and time to making videos because it's more fun. My writing is really hard work and it can be more lucrative and you can reach a wider audience. So many people are used to consume large numbers of blogs, they now prefer to take things in video format. Pulling at Boston University, he would broadcast nightly from the dorms. He grew more radical and established a campus reputation as an Islamophobic Trump supporter. He claimed persecution, likening the grief students gave him for wearing a MAGA hat to being discriminated against for being black or wearing a hijab. I'm sure he was persecuted. Anytime you violate social norms, you're going to feel persecuted. When Campus Conservatives tapped him for an election debate against BU's student president, Fuentes seized every opportunity to antagonize the audience. After claiming that multiculturalism is a cancer and trolling the crowd as godless hippies, Fuentes admitted to a student journalist that it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't ugly. Okay, so in some circumstances, monoculturalism is a more adaptive response. In other circumstances, like in safer circumstances, in more prosperous circumstances, then multiculturalism is probably a more adaptive response. So in times of threat, in times of great peril, in times of great danger, a monocultural approach will usually be more adaptive, make more sense. In times of prosperity and relative safety, then people more inclined towards multiculturalism because it'll help them propagate their genes. It'll be more adaptive, more efficient, more effective, more prosperous, more happy way of life. So, monoculture works best in some circumstances, particularly circumstances of great peril, and multiculturalism works better in circumstances of prosperity and relative safety. After Trump took office, he told the Boston Globe that Trump is a rocket ship and everyone is trying to attach themselves to it. While there's little record of his actions that weekend, Fuentes attended the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Confederate flags and torches were hoisted by neo-fascists, neo-nots. So Fuentes shows up at a lot of events like the Unite the Right in Charlottesville and then the January 6th protests without getting arrested, without seeming to get into too much trouble. So for, you know, right-wing extremists, he both makes dubious choices of showing up to dangerous events but somehow manages to navigate and surf the danger to avoid the same kind of destruction that's happened to so many other people. Now, anyone who would choose to show up to January 6th or to the Unite the Right event in Charlottesville is highly disconnected from reality, right? They're causing irreparable harm to themselves. They're not doing good. They're just laying themselves wide open to get fired, to get doxxed, to get harassed, to lose so many things that they hold sacred. So what kind of person shows up to these extreme and dangerous events, right? Someone who has become disconnected from reality, somebody who's become so drunk on seeking meaning and purpose that they've lost their ability to make good judgments. Someone who is largely disconnected from their families, right? Generally speaking, people who are tightly connected with their families and prospering in their careers and not showing up to events like Unite the Right and January 6th. Nazis, white supremacists, militia members, and other far-right demonstrators, one of whom killed Heather Hyer, a counter-protester by running her over a few months before. Okay, so I wouldn't show up to a Jewish rally, a Torah rally that was very likely to be dangerous surrounded and outnumbered by people who hate you. An event where people are very likely to be physically injured or possibly killed. And I'd say far away, like when there are knock bar events, right? Morning the emergence of the modern state of Israel and taking away of land that used to be ruled by people who are now known as Palestinians, right? I don't then tend to hang out at those events, wearing a yarmulke. Montez had just 2,000 followers on Twitter, but back on his own campus, he said he faced death threats from other students over his presence in Charlottesville. BU security didn't respond. Right, no one can be in public life, right? Whether it's a sportscaster, a weathercaster, a model, let alone a political pundit and not receive death threats, right? That's just the price of fame. Onto a request for comment on his claim, but contemporaneous press coverage repeating it raised his profile. By October, he had amassed 12,000 Twitter followers. The rally proved to be the terminus point for key figures on the alt-right, leaving prominent white nationalists like Richard Spencer and James Alsop either tied up in litigation or too toxic to generate mass appeal. Right, so whenever you do something, right? You engender certain reactions to you. And when you engender reactions that are far more, hateful towards you and far more effective in negating you than creating positive repercussions, right? You've usually made a really bad decision. So it's worth contemplating, how will my words, how will my actions then be perceived by people who don't have a particular ideological agenda? How will it go over with the people who are most important to me? How will it go over with people in my community? How will it affect those things that are most precious to me? What will be the implications? Hey, it may feel good for me to say or do this outrageous thing, but what will be the consequences, right? How will it affect those people who I care about most in the world? That's it.