030: Did the 'Alt-Right' Win? feat. Hannah Gais

Hannah Gais is a researcher and journalist who covers far-right extremism. She joins the show to look back on the white nationalist “alt-right” movement, eight years after the deadly Unite the Right white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia. While the movement today is a shadow of its former self, the ideology that drove it seems as mainstream as ever. On this episode, we explore an uncomfortable question: did the alt-right accomplish its goals?

Links for Hannah:

• Newsletter: Posts from Underground

• Bluesky and X (Twitter)

  
  

Transition Music: "Precious" by Depeche Mode

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Got to fucking mute my husband. Samplers saying I got to fucking
mute my husband and then use that as the intro.
Perfect. It's perfect.

(00:41):
Welcome back to posting Through IT, I'm Sherrod Holt.
And I'm Mike Hayden, and today we're having investigative
journalist Hannah Gates back to the podcast to answer a question
that I don't really want to think about, to be honest with
you, because it makes me very uncomfortable.
Did the alt right movement win? So the impetus for this episode

(01:01):
is we just passed the 8th, I think, anniversary of the deadly
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA.
You probably remember what a horror show that was.
A bunch of white supremacist gathered in Charlottesville for
a couple days of demonstrations.There was a big rally planned

(01:24):
for August 12th that didn't end up turning out it.
It just evolved into clashes on the street fighting and at the
end of it, a neo Nazi drove his car into Heather Heyer and
murdered her. What I think is most important
about that event for this podcast is that it was

(01:45):
essentially the high watermark in the popularity of what people
called the alt right movement. Now, that's a phrase you hear
less and less every year. And it's kind of been supplanted
in popular conversation by the phrase MAGA, the MAGA movement,
not the Albright movement, Trump's MAGA movement.
And there's some overlap betweenthe two, but Hannah's going to

(02:08):
explain to us how those are different and what changed.
And and about Hannah, in addition to breaking some of the
biggest stories on on the subject of right wing politics.
They're perfectly good until shebroke them, you know.
Yeah, somebody's got to do it. She claims, without evidence, to
be my boss. She works somewhere at some job,

(02:30):
and she's seemingly everywhere publishing stories.
She's a cat mom, and she lives in DC, where things have
recently gotten unpleasantly authoritarian.
And she's been on the show before to talk about Jack
Pozobic and Elon Musk's ex. But now we're going to focus on
the type of material that she really likes to talk about.
So hello. Hello.

(02:53):
As Mike said, stuff is getting pretty weird in DC.
You've got alphabet boys. That's my favorite term for
them. You know, folks from the DEAFBI,
ICE, whatever, I guess just roaming the streets there.
Trump has said he wants to federalize the police force in
DC, more or less. You live in DC though.

(03:17):
Mike doesn't live in DCI. Don't live in DC, but you do
what? What's it like?
Give us a vibe check. I mean, have you seen any of
this stuff? I haven't really seen all that
much of it. I went running down to the mall
basically like the day that he announced that he was doing this
and I expected to see a bunch ofpolice out in full force, but

(03:38):
there wasn't really anything more beyond the usual what we
have started to see over the past couple of days.
Basically just like various pockets throughout the city,
arrests, seemingly random ICE agents, other agencies out
stopping cars, checking cars. They've also taken down a bunch
of home encampments for houseless folks.

(04:01):
It's been pretty disgusting to watch mostly.
It's also scary in the sense of it's happening seemingly without
much of A coherent plan. Like I don't really know where
they're going to show up, when they're going to show up.
Sometimes the stuff is done at night, sometimes it's done
during the day, but no one seemsto really know.

(04:24):
I was going to say it, it seems very much like something some an
idea someone would have pitched on 4 Chan in 2016.
So that that's what it feels like.
And I, I guess that's kind of appropriate for the podcast
we're doing today. It's very much scare the libs
and do this full show of power against your perceived racial

(04:47):
enemies, but it's also not tremendously coherent on either
of those fronts. To add to that, whenever they do
these enforcement actions, they're spending a Hollywood
budget and Hollywood effort to try to dress it up.
Basically as my read of it is like an extension of 4 Chan meme

(05:11):
politics, right? And I fucking cringe when I say
phrases like that, but that's myjob, damn it.
You know, you get on the DHS Twitter slash X account, right?
And it's like fight for your homeland.
And I just remember seeing this stuff like when I was getting
started on the beat and whatever, like the far right

(05:32):
Internet was just drowning and stuff like this.
I I mean, what are your thoughts?
I, I mean, we all know each other because we were doing this
at the same time when we were talking to Maddie last week.
You know, I told him that Mike and I became friends because we
were getting doxed and harassed at the same time.
But I'm just curious, like it interms of the propaganda angle of

(05:54):
this, are you seeing the same kind of parallels I am?
Yeah, totally. It reminds me of like I had an
ex-boyfriend in college who was doing a paper for one of his
classes. It was a film class and he was
doing it on zombies. Like not a Nazi zombie film
specifically but like looking ata lot of zombie movies

(06:15):
throughout the years. So to prepare for that, he
watched a ton of zombie movies. And it is, I am now zombied out.
I am kind of sick of the genre, but it reminds me of that.
Yeah, I am dumb with zombies, fuck zombies.
But it really does remind me of a zombie kind of you're, we saw
this in 2016, We saw this in 20/15/2017 even.

(06:37):
And now it's basically just backin this bizarre form coming out
of the Department of Homeland Security X account.
I mean, what the fuck? What the fuck indeed.
Today we're going to talk about,you know, what the alt right was
kind of how it grew and then turned into something different.

(06:58):
I'm curious to get your take on that, whether like fell apart
and something shot out of it or it just changed forms or what.
You know, I'm I'm very curious to hear your theories about
that. But before we get there, I got
to plug the tip Jar slash Patreon.
So on Friday, some of our listeners might have seen we
launched A Patreon and starting in September, we're going to be

(07:20):
going twice a week on posting through it.
One of those episodes is going to be on the public feed and 1
is going to be on the premium feed.
We're hoping that this is going to help us, you know, keep
making the show, grow the show, that sort of thing.
So there'll be a link to that down in the description.
The tip charts. Great.
If you just want to throw us a couple bucks and say farewell,

(07:43):
we won't take offense. We're thankful for everything we
get. But if you love this show and
you want more of it and you wantto help us grow, check out the
link to the Patreon. Hannah, let's talk about the alt
right. What's the alt right?
What is that? Where did that come from?
Because I I think a lot of people kind of started hearing
about the Alt right around 2015.There was that Hillary Clinton

(08:05):
campaign speech about the Alt right that made me want to jump
out of the windows of Media Matters where I was working at
the time. Anti immigrant, anti women, all
key tenants making up the emerging racist ideology known
as the alt right. Now, Alt right is short for
alternative, right? The Wall Street Journal

(08:27):
describes it, but it's it's a lot older than that, right?
I mean, take us in The Time Machine.
Who came up with this. How did this catch on?
So basically the term dates backto 2008.
Paul Gottfried, who's a paleo conservative local philosopher.
What's a paleo conservative for people who don't know?
Does that mean they only eat salad?
Yes, yes, they're sort of like Paul Gottfried, only eat salad.

(08:55):
It's Pat Buchanan, just like roaming the countryside nibbling
on shrubs, right? Yeah, yeah.
It's sort of like a nice dinosaur now.
It's so basically paleo conservatism is this form of
conservatism that really kind ofputs anti immigration.
And at its core, I think probably the most prominent

(09:17):
figure associated with it is PatBuchanan, who has unsuccessfully
run for president, but he's alsobeen a columnist for the
American Conservative and a bunch of other outlets.
So Paul Gottfried has been involved in the paleo
conservative movement for years,and he gives the speech in 2008
at the HR Monken Club, just thisnew kind of discussion group

(09:39):
they've made-up in Baltimore. And person who publishes it at
this website called Talkies Bag is Richard Spencer.
Spencer, when he puts the speechonline at Talkies, gives it the
title The Decline and Rise of the Alternative, right?
And that's basically where the phrase comes from.
It's not mentioned in the speechitself, but basically what

(10:02):
Godfrey does in that piece is basically outline this idea of
this new right that would be able to supplant the
neoconservatives. So basically people like George
W Bush, his father George HW Bush, sort of these warmongering
conservatives who want America to be this big empire where

(10:27):
they're blowing a bunch of moneyand going on these endless wars
like Iraq, Afghanistan, etcetera.
But we'll also letting in a bunch of immigrants and allowing
kind of a multiculturalism to quote UN quote, run the book.
So the movement in its early days, the outright has ties to

(10:51):
DC politics. That's a lot of young guys,
Spencer being one of them, Some other figures that are well
known to us but probably less tomost listeners because they're
not reading blogs from 2008. People like Kevin Deanna, Marcus
Epstein, people who are conservative insiders, but

(11:12):
they're also have like 1 foot inthe white nationalism movement.
But I just want to interject onething, which is I I feel like
there's like most people associate all right, with kind
of, you know, just they're Nazisand there's anti-Semitism
because everybody knows about the Jews will not replace us
thing. But like a few of the people
that you mentioned are actually Jewish, right?
Like it's Gottfried. Marcus Epstein is at least

(11:35):
mixed. The New York financier.
Different one. No Marcus Epstein, but like no,
I mean, I just find I just find I find that kind of interesting
actually because because it really it seems to come from
like a a sort of different placethan than it ends up.
Yeah. And it's also kind of funny
because like one of the complaints that like a lot of

(11:55):
white nationalists have about new conservatism is that it's
like, quote, UN quote, too Jewish.
So you have this movement that basically starts with Jews.
These guys are in places like the Leadership Institute.
The Daily Caller notoriously hada white nationalist writer
problem. But you mentioned a lot of young
guys. And when I think of Gottfried

(12:17):
and paleo conservatives, I don'tthink about young guys.
I think of older gentlemen who, you know, have come to these
views through a lifetime of racism.
Can you talk about that generational divide?
I I, I mean, how did these two groups kind of get linked up?
That generational divide kind ofalways persists and still does.

(12:40):
I think basically on some level,like some of these older guys
sort of saw themselves as mentors to this younger crop of
local activists. You see this kind of playing out
in the HL Menken Club for sure, but then also organizations like
the Charles Martel Society, which is, I don't know, they
haven't been reported on quite as extensively, but all of those

(13:02):
names that I mentioned are people who are going to Charles
Martel Society events. It's just another discussion.
Club members only, highly secretive group that was started
by a bunch of old head racists for lack of a better
description, many of whom are lawyers, many of whom are based
in Atlanta for some reason. And they start to get in this

(13:25):
younger generation going to their events.
And it's very much this mix. You also have like someone like
Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, who was trying to kind of
distance himself from the outright around Charlottesville.
He didn't quite understand why he lost his payment processor it
seemed, but he is also very muchin the mix here.

(13:47):
So it's a lot of these figures that become really important in
2015, 2016 early on kind of coming together.
I think what's kind of confusingabout this is sort of going back
to we were talking about earlierof like people think about the
alt right and 2015, 2016 versus what it was then.
And you kind of have to see it as a movement that goes through

(14:12):
different phases. So 2008 to like maybe 2011 or
so. It's sort of this smaller
discussion club network based inDC but also elsewhere.
And then it starts to grow, partly thanks to the Internet
from 2012 to 2016. Throughout this like network of
podcasts, forums, think tanks, basically the right Stuff, which

(14:34):
is a very prominent white nationalist podcast network, is
one of the key players. Then the Daily Stormer, a neo
Nazi blog that's run by Andrew Anglin, who keeps who is
currently in the phase of I'm going to quit my website
constantly, but then he never does.
And then I think after 2016, that's kind of when the movement

(14:59):
starts going on its progression to what becomes Charlottesville.
2016 is obviously a very important time.
It's a bit, you know, it really changed all of our lives, you
know, all the listeners, us in particular, I think because not
mine. Look at us.
I'm exactly the same person I was in 2016.
I am totally the same. I have not made a career pivot.

(15:22):
I'm like I am 22 years old mentally.
But these activists, these theseactivists.
That would be so scary. That would be so scary.
These activists who many of themare like, you know, I guess you
would say white identity focusedactivists, white nationalists
among them, white supremacists, right?
They latch onto the Donald Trumpcampaign and they start to get

(15:45):
like, I, I, I remember vividly all the, oh, like pretty much
everybody you mentioned a bunch of people you haven't mentioned
in their MAGA hats. I remember them would pose their
pictures for their MAGA hats andlike, put them online.
They would, you know, everybody here had like a Twitter avatar
at some point. That was a MAGA hat, right?
I guess what happened? Why, why were these guys part of
MAGA? But then there's now a

(16:07):
distinction when we say MAGA, it's a different it, it's a
different thing. And many of these people also,
despite helping to usher in whatwe have now, are pretty
resentful of Trump. So I'm just curious like how do
how do we get from that being associated with MAGA to now MAGA
meeting something sort of different?
I think kind of ultimately you have to go back to how Trump

(16:28):
launched his campaign in 2015, which is what he wrote down that
escalator in the Trump Tower. And then he gave a speech which
was basically just full of, I don't even want to say racist
dog whistles, it was just racistand it was in.
A lot of it came from Ann Coulter's book.
Yeah, I was going to say, like ripped off an Ann Coulter book.

(16:50):
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Audios America, I believe, or something like that, yeah.
Ann Coulter, someone who is alsokind of like, you know, adjacent
to the alt right space, but there's never really in it.
And that animates the movement because they're used to neocons
at this point. They're used to basically being
the losers, being out of the right and not really having any

(17:12):
sticking power to their ideas. Like kind of before this, like
this guy's would show up at CPAC, maybe be able to do some
events, side panels at CPAC backwhen CPAC was doing side panels,
but they weren't really in the holes of power and their talking
points really weren't in the halls of power.
I will say one just one caveat to this is after 911, the like

(17:36):
outpouring of anti Muslim sentiment I think is maybe kind
of the closest parallel here. So So what exactly makes this
these guys a movement in the 1stplace?
Like why is it even a movement? Why isn't it just a bunch of
people who are kind of online ontheir computers?
So they basically kind of decideto come together.

(17:59):
I mean, Trump ultimately is the thing that really brings them
together as a movement and really unifies them.
A lot of them are white nationalists, but increasingly
the alt right hurts to bring in like neo Nazis, kind of hardcore
neo Nazis, like the traditionalist Worker Party, one
of the groups at Charlottesville, and ultimately
the thing that's really unifyingthem.
But Trump's first campaign is Trump.

(18:21):
Very similar to Mega in that regard, but it's still kind of
contested. What do you what do you mean by
that contested whether it's a movement or what what the
movement is or. What the movement is and kind of
who's in it. There's this kind of noteworthy
moment at the Republican National Convention in 2016
where Steve Bannon, then the head of Breitbart News,

(18:43):
describes Breitbart News as likethe platform for the old right.
And it gets a bunch of publicitybecause Steve Bannon is
basically saying that his website is a platform for white
nationalists. And then he.
Wasn't wrong. He was not.
Wrong, but lots of white nationalists working there.
Really. Very interesting.
But Hillary Clinton latches on to this in that cringe worthy

(19:06):
speech in August 2016. And I think the main person that
she denotes in that speech by name is Steve Bannon.
Otherwise, she basically talks about the old right as being
this merry band of deplorables. OK, she doesn't say merry band
of deplorables, but she calls them deplorables and it

(19:27):
backfires wildly. So what I remember about that
speech is she's giving the speech and then somebody just
yells Pepe in the crowd. Do you remember that?
Yep. It was like she's just walking
straight into it. Sorry guys, I thought it was
going to be funnier. I just, I remember watching it
and then just being like, Oh my God, like, why would you do it

(19:48):
like this? Like she just kind of made them
sound like both dorky and scary and but not really anything
beyond that. It was just, it was incoherent.
I mean it really, but also like,I mean in a, in a like a
straightforward way. I think it really raised their
profile right. Yeah, I think if you talk to

(20:10):
anyone who is involved in organizing at this point in
time, they will say that they got more attention after that
then they were previously. And they were still getting
profiles in the Deer Times and BuzzFeed, other other media
outlets before that moment. But they she really catapults

(20:32):
them into the spotlight. It's really interesting, right?
Because it's like, with all thisnew attention, these guys who
have been hanging out, you know,in their club named after a
satirist and just not being taken very seriously, right?
They're suddenly taken very seriously at the highest level
of politics. And then there's just this,

(20:54):
like, civil war almost that breaks out.
And it just kind of simmers in the background.
Maybe it's a Cold War. I don't know, get my analogies
mixed up. But you know, who's in, who's
out, you have the groups like Traditional Workers Party or
like the Right Stuff Network or whatever, they have members.
But otherwise, this is just a very kind of ill defined vibe

(21:19):
almost right. And I'm curious how the movement
you're talking about like tried to grapple with that, like like
when it got its moment in the spotlight in addition to the
infighting, Like how did they try to capitalize?
Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor and Peter Brimlow go off and do

(21:41):
this press conference in Washington, DC in late August to
basically define the alt right. And it's sort of like
establishes the three of them askind of figureheads of the
movement. But there's also a fair amount
of other stuff going on too. I mean, you, you have these

(22:02):
online influencers who are basically like taking up the
term, all right, and just associating themselves with it,
sort of thinking of like the Mike Sternovich's Jack the
Sobiaks. Well, I guess Laura Loomer to a
certain extent doing that as well.
And it basically becomes kind oflike this moment for people who
want to get right wingers who want to be seen online to kind

(22:25):
of like propel themselves into into relevance.
So sort of embedded in all of this is kind of ongoing
philosophical tensions between these different parts of the alt
right. It does feel a little silly in
retrospect to now just kind of call Laura Loomer A philosopher,

(22:45):
but that's not what I meant. The ideological underpinnings of
Miss Loomer Laura are in a *** Laura Loomer, our generation's
Carl Schmidt. There's a division between kind
of ideas of race, I think like someone like Jared Taylor,
someone like Richard Spencer, Peter Brimelow, even though I
don't know if he will necessarily admit it to himself,

(23:08):
kind of see race as a core philosophical idea to what kind
of political state that they want.
Someone like Laura Loomer, I don't think does she's racist,
but isn't necessarily. That's a that's another step,
but there's also this division between kind of mainstreaming

(23:30):
versus the vanguard. So that's not a distinction that
is new to the white nationalist movement.
I basically took those terms from a book called Blood and
Politics, which describes two different factions of white
nationalism. One that was active back in the
day, one that got one got a foothold in Washington was guy

(23:52):
named Willis Carto, who ran a series of publications and also
really idolized people like Joseph McCarthy, anti communist
rhetoric. And then on the other hand, you
had someone who was trying to build like this elite vanguard
outside of mainstream American politics.
And that's will it William Luther Pierce, the head of the

(24:13):
National Alliance and the authorof the Turner Diaries.
So that plays out in the all right, partly through kind of
this question of race, but also through this question of
tactics. So there's entryists who are
these people who want to get into the conservative
establishment and mainstream their ideas from there.

(24:34):
Meanwhile, the vanguardists is what kind of you see in
Charlottesville. So they want to push their ideas
forward through activism, through culture.
And I mean, ultimately what we see with that rally is a
complete disaster. But I mean, it did get talked
about. And and that's kind of still
persist today, right in the far right, you have the people that

(24:58):
like, like Chris Ruffo is a goodexample of that in my mind, who
like maybe have some far right beliefs, but ultimately think
that the path to success is by making them palatable to a
broader audience and kind of weaseling your way into
institutions. And then you have people like,

(25:20):
you know, I, what would that even be like?
Blood tribe, right? I don't think Chris Ruffo and
blood tribe are the same, to be clear.
I, I think there is, are many miles of distance between that
group and that man. But but like, that's a group on
the complete opposite end of thespectrum, right where it's like
they will walk down the street flying swastikas and screaming

(25:47):
the most disgusting thing you'veheard about people of color and,
and, you know, various racial and ethnic minority groups.
Give us a an example of somebodywho people most people have
heard of who focuses on mainstreaming.
Nick Fuentes is probably a good example, oddly, of both because

(26:07):
on the one hand, you have him coming out of Charlottesville,
basically. I mean, he was at
Charlottesville and starts to come to prominence because of
it. But he's also operating, at
least initially, kind of within the conservative ecosystem.
And I think throughout his career, he's kind of like gone

(26:30):
sort of between both because on the one hand, he sees himself
and like, portrays himself as this outsider who wants to shift
the culture through showing up on different streamers,
podcasts, things like that. The Fresh and Fit podcast is how
we change America. The Fresh and Fit podcast, Yeah,

(26:50):
that's the that's what the National Alliance really wanted
back in the day. William Luther Pierce would
fucking love that shit. They had to settle for Oprah.
Oh, Can you imagine? You live your whole life as a
Nazi and the best you get is like in appearance on Doctor
Phil where everybody says that you're a piece of shit instead

(27:12):
of being able to sit on a table like surrounded by only fans,
entertainers to tell them that you hate them that that that is.
I hate to break it to you, but Doctor Phil is like an honorary
ice agent now. He's he's not far from being
like a, a vanguard, all right guy in his own right.
So the culture, the culture is completely broken.

(27:35):
Doctor, Doctor Phil going out toWest Virginia and reviving the
National Alliance in Hillsborough, OH.
My God. They're selling land.
He could, he could go off and buy it.
Man, Doctor Phil, please, for the love of fucking God, do not
do that. But if he does and he finds some
documents on that land and he wants to give them to someone, I

(27:55):
will happily take them. So Hannah, I have a question.
You know, you've talked about sort of the early days of the
alt right, talked about coming some of the different factions
within IT, people that have different theories of change or
whatever, people infighting about who's in, who's out, who

(28:16):
is the face of the movement. Richard Spencer sucks, it should
be Laura Loomer, whatever, I don't know whatever.
But like this, this is a movement that is sounding from
its beginning pretty divided andmessy.
Is the answer to how this thing caught fire, how this thing like
exploded the Internet? Or do you have any other

(28:39):
theories as to like why this caught on?
Right place, right time. I don't.
What's your take? I think it's kind of right
place, right time. I think Trump being a big factor
and basically the media being really confused about what the
hell do you make of Trump? And like, what do you, what do
we write about Trump? And like, who is in Trump's
movement for that matter, after 2015 and particularly after

(29:03):
Trump wins? It kind of feels like a lot of
people who are writing about MAGA just kind of don't really
know what to make of it. So all of these guys who have
these cartoon peppes and are very online and sometimes like
willing to talk to journalists are kind of an easy story to go

(29:23):
to. I want to be clear.
I I mean as a journalist, I don't think journalists are to
blame for this, but. But, but also they didn't, the
journalists didn't think Trump would win.
So that was the other thing too.So that, you know, I, I, I think
that it was, I mean, wasn't there a, a degree to which there
was this vacuum of press, like conservative press?
And the Trump just filled it because he sort of killed all

(29:46):
the, he just killed all the, the, the National Review type
stuff. And, and there was like a hole
and these people had been producing blogs and things like
that and they sort of just were there to fill it.
It seems like the other thing I wanted to ask about too is to,
you know, on that note is to what degree was just a racial
resentment around Obama a factor?
Because I feel like that's the common wisdom.

(30:07):
That's the thing you hear all the time.
It's just like, oh, it was Obama.
So it's like 2 things. It's just sort of didn't, wasn't
there a sort of a gap in, in, inthe press that they filled sort
of, or in like the space where right wing media was?
And then the other thing was, you know, how accurate is that
statement of that truism that that people were feeling extra
racist after Obama? Yes, I think Obama was a very

(30:30):
big factor here because if you are concerned about demographic
change in America, like look no further than the first black
president as an example of that.And there was growing backlash
during Obama's administration tothis, but it really kind of

(30:52):
continues to fester after he's even left office.
Talk about an old bummer. Wow.
There, I got it. I got the joke in.
I am very funny. Thank you for tuning into this
podcast. So, so I mean, like right place,
right time. The Internet is popping off also

(31:14):
just kind of like zooming out over what we've covered so far.
I'm also curious your thoughts just about what happened as the
terminology of the alt right started to catch on in
mainstream MAGA spaces. So when you have the Mike
Cernovich's and the Jack Posobics and here's the
throwback Stefan Molyneux, what's he doing now?

(31:37):
Who knows? Do you know Mike?
He's never quite been the same in terms of influence since he's
been he was removed from from Twitter for whatever reason.
And, and God bless. Thank God he was, you know, he,
he was lower because that guy's one of the more despicable
racist, I think that has ever been on that platform and on
YouTube. So you have all these people,

(31:59):
they start saying I'm the alt right.
They start picking up the alt right's talking points.
They start just having a field day recycling this material and
rising to stardom with it. I can't imagine that made the
Richard Spencer's and Kevin Deanna's and you know, Scott
Greer's of the world exceptionally thrilled that
somebody was essentially like cribbing their shit and taking

(32:23):
off. Right.
I, I, I mean, what do you remember from that period?
What's your what's your take on how that sort of influenced
things? So it it kind of depends on the
guy I know. I think to some extent, like
later on, maybe not necessarily at the time, but I can't really
remember, I think Richard Spencer got pretty frustrated

(32:46):
with it depending on the person who's picking it up.
But it also sort of like was like an indicator of them having
an impact, even though like certain aspects of the movement
maybe around race were kind of being watered down by these more

(33:08):
quote UN quote normie, far rightinfluencers taking up the term.
It was still getting it out there, but it definitely did
just kind of result in my massive spats of online
infighting. I guess These guys, what?
That's like purity spiraling. These guys always refer to
purity spiraling. I would basically just remember

(33:30):
people feeding on Twitter about this shit.
I guess now they still feed on Twitter.
We live in some hellish time loop.
The website just changed its name.
We we just live at least on the Internet in like 1 perpetual
fight. I think so so the alt right was
high in the sky high on its own supply whatever.

(33:52):
However, you want to say that until 2017, August 2017, the
impetus for this episode, which is the Unite the Right rally,
which was a fucking disaster foreverybody involved a disaster in
a very morbid way, a very dark way for the people that showed
up to oppose that rally as they were dealt violence as one

(34:16):
counter protester was murdered, as I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, arrest in peace, Heather Hare, which, you know, I say
quite sincerely. Absolutely.
And then for the alt right, thisnew radical wing of the right
wing movement that had risen into prominence under Trump, it

(34:36):
was like APR nightmare. You know, they were trying to
convince people, you know, around this time, OK, Trump is
in office. It's the first year.
Everybody's looking at us now wondering what we're going to
do. Look at us.
We're so serious. We are real movement.
We're not just idiots on the Internet.
Or maybe we are, but we're also a real thing.

(34:58):
And then they finally like try to get something together and
people die, right? Is that when people stop saying
they were all right? That's when I remembered like
the Mike Cernovich's and Jack Pasovic's starting to do that
backpedaling of like, well, you know, I wasn't really like alt

(35:21):
alt right. I was like, I was all right
before it was racist or, you know, it's like that kind of.
Yeah, it's like a combination ofthat and Hailgate, which is the
basically when Richard Spencer leads that group of guys who
just start giving Hitler salutesat a National Policy Institute

(35:42):
conference right after the election.
National Policy Institute was the think tank that he used to
run. It's a combination of basically
those two things. In between, though, I mean
between the Hailgate moment, when, when there's the hail, our
people or whatever hail. Trump, Hail our people.
Hail victory. I feel like there were it's

(36:04):
forgotten that there were a bunch of different like mini
events leading up to unite the right right where?
I mean like I remember covering in May the the the first
Charlottesville event. And I feel like most people,
even most journalists who don't cover this material, don't
realize that there were actuallylike 3 different Charlottesville

(36:24):
torch. You know, I don't know if they
were all torches, but they were all events around that statue.
There was one in May, right? Like there was a bunch of little
things like that that where theywere kind of getting like hyped
up on their own pheromones and then unleashed it that August.
Yeah, there's the first Unite the Right.
Technically, the August Unite the Right is the second Unite

(36:47):
the Right. Then there's also two rallies in
Washington, DC in June. That's basically 1 is like
Rodger Stone, Jack Sobiak, LauraLoomer, those guys.
The other is like Richard Spencer and Identity Europa
dudes. And at that point, like there
had been a fissure between Spencer and kind of like

(37:11):
Pasoviak and Loomer because of Pasoviak and Loomer dorming that
rendition of. Julius Caesar.
Shakespeare. Julius Caesar?
Yeah. Shakespeare in the Park.
You're killing the gerbils. You're gerbils.
Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, Yeah, that was that was

(37:35):
something I was living in New York at the time and I remember
being like, fuck, I'm kind of bummed I wasn't at that.
It looked awful. Just they thought they were so
cool doing that. But yeah, there's there's
basically a lot of build up to this that went into Unite the

(37:55):
Right. And I think that was, I mean,
it's interesting because kind ofwhen you look at other periods
of like white nationalist activism building up to those
big events, there's always a bunch that happens before it
does not just come out of thin air.
You kind of see something very similar with January 6th.

(38:15):
I remember the crash out after Heather's murder and just like
there was you, just I just remember like all these insane
blogs and podcasts trying to spin it like something like
this, that or the other thing, Hunter Wallace AKA Brad Griffin,
just a million blogs trying to like like treating like the
Zapruder film or whatever, trying to figure out how they

(38:37):
could not be guilty. And in the end, you could feel
you didn't know what it's time. You felt like they were dying,
right? Like you felt like whatever
energy they had was dying as they tried desperately to try to
fix this. I think because all around the
world, internationally, in international papers and and
channels everywhere, they were the bad guys.

(38:58):
They were, they were, they were the villains.
And you knew they were going to get thrown under the bus by
Trump. And he's he's the big daddy of
everything. Whether he was all right or not
doesn't matter. He was going to they're going to
thrown under the bus by everybody on fox and stuff like
that. That The the the stink coming
off of the alt right was too strong.
So they end up kind of disappearing and we're going to

(39:19):
go into some of what some of thesome of where some of these guys
went wound up. I think you and I in a bit or
us, excuse me, us and I. So the alt right falls, sort of
falls away, but this Trumpism begins to take a much sharper
tone and it like it begins to sort of resemble some of the

(39:43):
things we heard in the alt right, which is why we're asking
this question of you. And so I guess the question is,
you know, did the alt right get what they wanted?
They're gone. But their movement seems to be
in some sense still alive, right?
I remember when Nick Fuentes washarassing Charlie Kirk, which we
covered on. On the episode, the biographical

(40:04):
episode of him and how scared Charlie Kirk looked.
Well, now, sometimes Charlie Kirk sounds a lot like Nick
Fuentes. So yeah, just like, did they
win? Did they get what they wanted,
these people? I think yes and no.
I think it kind of depends on who you ask to a certain extent,
but I mean, not my personal opinion.
I guess it's still the yes and no.

(40:25):
Yes, in the sense of the goal ofthe movement was always to
mainstream news talking points. They wanted people to be talking
about race. They wanted people to be talking
about the quote UN quote Jewish question.
Basically mainstreaming anti-Semitism.
X is full of that I should pointout.
X is very full of that. That has certainly happened.

(40:47):
I mean, thinking about like how Charlie Kirk talks about anti
white racism or like white identity or something.
Even though like Steve Saylor, who's like a figure that I
wouldn't have even necessarily thought about coming back into
the big leagues, like doing a world tour to promote his book.

(41:08):
I mean he was never really part of the alt right per SE, but he
wrote for the same websites thatthese guys read and.
Insufferable writing voice. By the way, I must say I like
it's It's like nails on a chalkboard every time I read
Sailor. He fucking hates me for some
reason. Like just somewhat above and
beyond normal. The reason it the reason is is

(41:28):
he's a loser. Fair enough.
You said it not me and same withlike streaming culture.
I think that's definitely I was thinking of this a lot when
Mehdi Hassan who I mean you guysjust had that great episode with
him. I was thinking a lot about this
when he did that episode on Jubilee because I was looking at

(41:49):
the people who are sitting on this fucking stream with him.
And I was like, OK, I recognize you from that podcast.
I recognize you from that podcast.
I recognize you from that podcast.
Jubilee should have you come vettheir political videos should be
like we finally found somebody who recognizes these people.

(42:12):
Yeah, or just like even like knows how they talk.
I was a little, I'm a little shocked that I, I don't know
what's going on there, to be honest.
That was supposed to be an Internet media company.
You're telling me these people had never seen anything like
that? Bullshit.
They haven't seen any of, like, goddamn Internet these days.

(42:33):
Yeah, but like I thought right after Mehdi does that show, one
of these guys jumps on on the right stuff and he's been on the
right stuff now like a couple oftimes.
It's Joseph, the guy in the pinkshirt.
I just want to remind the listeners that The Right Stuff
was the like the most prominent podcast.
It was like the radio voice of Charlottesville basically on the

(42:56):
in the run up. It was extremely important.
We're going to talk about some of the folks who are involved in
that debacle, but continue. And then, like, you also just
see some of the people who were involved in the movement
actively just popping up in various, not necessarily
positions of power, but adjacentto positions of power.
I remember at one point when Mike was out here for

(43:19):
inauguration, we walked by a guywho looked almost exactly like
Marcus Epstein. And I'm pretty sure it was
Marcus Epstein. He was walked straight by us.
And both of us just stop. And we're like, what?
And then later that night after Mike had left, I'm walking back
to my car and I walked by this guy named Mike Bentz again, like

(43:43):
I'm pretty sure it was Mike Bentz.
But he later posts a photo from an event near there.
And Bentz was this podcaster that was on a bunch of like
white nationalist sites. He podcasts under this under
this name Frame Games. He promoted Unite the Right.
And here he is at Trump's fucking January 2025

(44:07):
inauguration. It's balls ass cold and she's
walking down the street of Washington DC in the tuxedo to
go to a inaugural. Ball.
I should note that Mike Benz hassince gotten very cozy with
Trump administration agencies. I watched an interview of him

(44:28):
talking to Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, about
undoing censorship on the Internet or something like that,
and whatever the the whole censorship industrial complex
bullshit that like he's obsessedwith.
I think that that's a good, but that's an important point
though, Jared is, is that these guys are in.

(44:49):
It's not just that parts of the alt right worldview have sort of
survived and, and and made it onto Fox News.
There are literally people with with, you know, either in the
administration, right or, or with access to administration
figures who are part of that movement, right?

(45:09):
Like I don't know if Darren Beatty quite counts as alt right
or not in your mind, Hannah, butlike, I mean, he there's a good
example of somebody who certainly embraces quite a bit
of that way of seeing. I think he counts in my mind.
He would probably hate me for saying that, but I don't fucking
care. But yeah, he does.
Count in my mind. No, he doesn't have a vote.

(45:30):
If he wants to yell at me on X for saying that, he's welcome to
go to town. Darren.
It's funny because I think the clearest example is actually a
kind of minor 1 Patrick Casey, who was a leader of Identity
Europa and then later renames Identity Europa the American
identity movement. Basically to try and get away

(45:52):
from the stench of the. Sort of Max HBO Max debate of of
of suit and tie white nationalists.
Yes, exactly. He starts writing for The Blaze.
I saw that wild. Nothing matters, who gives a
shit? I I mean, we're talking about
Glenn Beck's publication, so like, the bar is pretty low.

(46:15):
Give David Duke the 8:00 PM houron Fox.
Nothing matters. It's hard to explain to someone
who hasn't been looking at this stuff for years how shocking
that is, but it is really shocking.
And I remember when his his first story there or something
after a couple of movement guys noticed it, retweeting about it.

(46:35):
I, I was not the only one that was shocked.
It was white nationalists who were shocked.
We're unpacking the argument foryes, I want to get to the
argument for no of why the alt right didn't win.
But there's a point in our noteshere where you have mentioned

(46:56):
the band Depeche Mode. Am I saying that right?
And it would be criminal if we skip that.
How young are you, Jared? Am I saying that right?
She mentioned the band Depeche Mode, which I have never heard
of because I assume that was someone who was creating music
around the time of Beethoven. You know, Mozart, I just, it's

(47:19):
like, it sounds like the kind ofmusic I would play for like my
infant child. You know, I'll play I'll or I'll
play some for Pierre, my dog. You know, I'll put him in the
crate and put on some Depeche Mode and just see what happens,
I guess. No, I you should do that.
I say that not because I'm like 12 years old, but just I have

(47:40):
not listened to the band. They're good.
You would like them? I've heard, I've heard they're.
Good you liked the new. I've heard they're good, I've
just never like sat down and listened to them.
So for clarification, I I am not12 years old living under a
rock. Everybody in the notes.

(48:01):
OK, fine, I will explain. So apparently it it was with
regards to the why they won an argument.
So basically I make a riff on Depeche Mode, who have a song
called A Question of Time, and Iincluded in the notes, I did say
with apologies to Depeche Mode, given that the band previously

(48:23):
weighed in Richard Spencer calling them the band of the alt
right. They didn't like that and they
told them to fuck off. So my deepest and sincerest
apologies for tying them once again to the movement, but the
joke was there and I had to put in the notes.
What it refers to this Question of Time is that when we're

(48:45):
thinking about white nationalists talking about the
right being infiltrated, the white nationalists talking about
the right sounding like them, Part of it is, yes, there are
people who held these beliefs that were spewing them all over
the place back in 2016. But there were also people who
was just reading this stuff and who were listening to this

(49:06):
stuff, maybe went to like an event or two, but they haven't
got doxxed and they're older. And like, I started covering
this stuff when I was 2017. I'm 36 now.
I'm more established in my career than I was then and so
are they. So it goes for the anti fascists
as well as the fascists. Thought of this particularly

(49:27):
when reading this blog from Countercurrents which is a white
nationalist website. Also promoted the alt right.
This guy Trav LeBlanc, who wrotea article about this, and one of
the points that he does bring upis that, yeah, OK, so when
Charlie Kirk starts talking about white identity or someone

(49:51):
like Candace Owens basically starts going off about Jews.
So he says, quote, you will hearpeople say, oh, I bet they've
been listening to so and so show.
And who knows, maybe they have. But much of it is due to their
producers, writers, assistants and advisors being increasingly
red pilled. It has taken this long for the
people who were red pilled in 2016 to get a position where

(50:13):
they can influence things. End Quote.
And I think that gets at a lot of it.
It's not just that a bunch of white dashless infiltrated
Konink. It's that the young generation
of right wingers were listening to this stuff.
Like you have this with gripers today.
It's not just that gripers have infiltrated the administration.
It's like people listen to Nick Fuentes who work in right wing

(50:33):
politics. Yeah, I, I, I noticed, you know,
I mean, just recently, I just recently Steve Bannon seemed to
praise him, right. Nick Fuentes.
This is like these, these are kind of shifts.
And then as a Jason Whitlock, you know, that that psychopath,
he's he, he was calling him, youknow, future president.
I mean, this is, this is happening really fast, it seems

(50:55):
like. And it, it, it does feel to some
extent almost like Nick Fuentes has inherited almost all of it,
right? He's almost inherited almost
the, all of the Thunder of the movement.
This, this, this geek. I would, I would urge everybody
to go back and listen to our episode about Nick.
Who the hell is Nick Fuentes, which we did, you know, a month
or so back. It's it's good background as to

(51:18):
who he is and where he came from.
But it's not the last time we'regoing to end up talking about
him on the show, in part becausehe's he seems to be the the heir
to a lot of what that movement was and, and, and the sort of,
you know, the the sort of aggression towards everything
mainstream that was part of the alt right.
Yeah. So I want to explore the

(51:40):
argument for no, because you said yes and no to the question
of whether the alt right got what it wanted.
If we're looking at politics today, what what is the argument
for? No.
I think it's that the people whowere leading the alt right
wanted power. Not all of them.
I think people like Peter Brimlow, Jared Taylor, I think

(52:03):
they're kind of happy going off and kind of being able to go to
these right wing events like CPAC or the Natalist Conference
that happened. That's happened in Texas a
couple of times. Going to things like that and
meeting people who are their fans and like they're happy with
that. Both of those guys are older
too, so I think maybe that's kind of a factor.

(52:24):
That feels like very retired white nationalist vibe.
You just get to hang out with Republicans.
I don't know, that sounds awful to me, but whatever, go with
God. You heard it here first, folks,
Hannah. Hannah Gates gives Chloe an
endorsement of retired white nationalist.
That's that's right. I I wish they all would retire.

(52:45):
That's actually what I want go with.
Gays said on an episode of Posting Through It.
Yes, fucking retire already. So there's that aspect.
But I think there's also like people who wanted power.
I think Richard Spencer falls into this camp.
I think maybe like, I mean, NickFuentes certainly falls into

(53:05):
this camp of people who wanted to be at the top and they were
being leaders in the movement because they wanted to get
political power and then didn't.I think the yes or no question
sort of breaks down to what you're happy with now.
But they think it's also too like kind of the watching your

(53:27):
talking points get bastardized and chewed up by MAGA to promote
Trump, to promote fealty to Trump.
My sense, and I don't know if this is like universally true of
all of them. There does seem to be kind of
like some frustration there withthat at times of like, yeah,
maybe we push through this rhetoric around race for this

(53:51):
rhetoric around immigration, butit doesn't hasn't necessarily
gotten to the extent that they want.
Yeah, it's very, it's, it's, it's all very surface level.
It feels like in some ways. And then there's the the the
whole thing of like, well, so many of these guys got their
lives totally ruined, right. And, and, and what, you know,
all the T-shirt, what is a T-shirt going to say?

(54:12):
I like, you know, I my, I got mylife ruined doing all right.
And all I got is this shitty crypto RIP off that, you know, I
mean, it seems like a lot of their life is like just tied up
in like a lot of junk capitalism, right.
And they were not necessarily, you know, that it wasn't just
straightforward capitalism, though, you know, they had a
sort of tilted view of it. But it really is just a lot of

(54:34):
like crypto gambling, it seems what it turned into.
I'm I'm, I'm going with the, I'mjust working into the no
argument here. And I'm, I'm not weighing in one
way or another. I'm just seeing that.
And then there's of course, you know, fealty from the
administration to Israel. Some of them seem to be so like
mad that they're taking their censorship.
They seem to be taking their censorship orders from like

(54:54):
Canary Mission and like groups like that, like that.
That doesn't necessarily that's not necessarily in line.
It's like authoritarianism. But wait, you know, not like
that. That's not the authoritarianism
I wanted, right? I mean, that's just my take.
Is that it? They, a lot of people got their
lives ruined, which we're about to get into, and they got the
authoritarianism, but it's not the one that they imagined.

(55:16):
So that's the through line I'm hearing here.
And tell me if this is a good way to sum it up.
Is that as an ideological project?
Sure. Maybe the alt right one.
You know, it's these talking points, these views, you know,
whether or not they are actuallygrowing in popularity with
Americans. I don't know enough about

(55:37):
polling to know what's a good poll on that or like, you know,
if those attitudes have broadly changed or not.
But at least in right wing mediaand on the right wing political
stage, absolutely. I mean, you can just tune into
Charlie Kirk. I mean, I've texted in our group
chat a few times this idea I've had where if I just pulled like

(55:59):
quotes from a 2015 episode of like The Daily Show on the right
stuff, which is a Holocaust joke.
If people pick that up, If I just pulled quotes out of that
and put it next to like quotes that elected Republicans have
made in the last six months and did like a BuzzFeed style quiz
game, like I think I could, I could get a bunch of people on

(56:23):
who said what, you know, So in that sense, maybe the answer is
yes. But like in a personal sense of
like the people who were responsible for shuttling the
football, you know, down the field, it almost reminds me of
like the Normandy invasion of D-Day, right?
Where like somebody would like pick up something and run as far

(56:45):
as they could before they got gunned down.
And then like the people behind them would come and pick it up
and run it as far as they could before they got gunned down.
And maybe that first era of the alt right is just pissed about
the people who picked up the boxfrom their corpse.
Does that sound right? Yeah, Yeah.
I think that's basically it. I think it's that and it kind of
goes back to the mainstreamers versus the Vanguards argument

(57:07):
too, because like ultimately, inboth cases, you can kind of end
up sort of sacrificing yourself.But I think that's especially
true of kind of the Vanguard position.
Like I brought up William LutherPierce at the beginning, and he
ultimately had a tremendous markon the white nationalist

(57:29):
movement. And the National Alliance was
huge at the point, but it isn't now.
They're basically, I mean, Pierce is dead, but after his
death, the organization that he built crumbled.
At the same time, The Turner Diaries is still possibly the
most popular piece of white nationalist literature, the most

(57:49):
influential piece of white nationalist literature next to
my cough. And, and I just want to point
out for for listeners who haven't actually read the Turner
Diaries and like, I would not recommend it at all.
Slop dude. Yeah, I was going to say I was
going to like, I was like, you know, I, there's never a time
when I hear how popular The Turner Diaries is with the
radical right where I don't feelsatisfied that they're reading

(58:11):
fucking dog shit. You know what I mean?
They're reading, you know what Imean, that like, I get to read,
I, I get to read to like a delightful little novel, you
know, that it was such nice prose.
And they are stuck reading something that is like, you
know, the equivalent of just walking into an outhouse.
Let's actually talk about some of the, some of the, some of the
guys and groups who were instrumental and said the, all

(58:34):
right, you know, before we go. And just like where they are,
you know where they are now. I mean, if they're anywhere, I'm
just going to pull some random dudes.
I'm just going to pull a random dude from the list that I have
here. You don't know who I'm going to
say. They're all, they're all dudes
except. What I'm taking it out of a hat.
I'm taking it out of a hat and I'm going to, I'm going to say

(58:54):
Jason Kessler. Jason Kessler, who if you don't
remember, was he's the one who got the permit for the Unite the
Right event and he fell into a Bush at one point when he was
trying to give a press conference or something, right?
Was that was that what he did? He was that's what he got done.
And, and, and most most notably was the guy who like everybody

(59:20):
else in the movement hated firstbefore they all started turning
on all of each other, they all hated Jason Kessler.
So once Jason Kessler doing now,Jason.
Kessler is, yeah. Jason Kessler was the original
vanguard of dudes fucking hatinghim.
There's my dad joke. I mean, he's mostly, He's
posting his own podcast now. It looks bad.

(59:43):
I haven't listened to it. I don't feel compelled to listen
to it. And as someone who focuses on
the white nationalist movement, that probably does not say much
about many good things about thepopularity of your podcast.
Yeah. Somebody who's just like Deep in
the Weeds looks at your podcast and it's like, yeah, that's
probably not important. I'd rather have my balls like

(01:00:05):
electrocuted than listen to a Jason Kessler podcast in in
2025. I will just say like, you know,
Jason, I just know that he was, he was, he was, he was like in a
moving company or something likethat.
He had like a moving company he got.
Fit, you know, he, he has the shape because, because one of
the things people made fun of him for was like he was, he was

(01:00:26):
kind of like kind of pudgy or whatever, you know.
Yeah, that's there's a good important, you know, thing for
our listeners. It's just you can always make a
change, right? And Jason Kessler made a change,
got fit. Good for him.
He was upset. He was he was obsessed with me.
I know he's I know he he also focused on you at one point,
Jared, but he's like, he wrote an entire thing about my family

(01:00:47):
and. I mean, it's just.
Just I never even reported on the guy.
He's obsessed with me. I got one of those two and the
whole, the whole premise of thatpiece that he wrote was like
Jared's wife used to work for USAID, Deep State Plant and like
that, that was the whole premiseof the piece.
And then he finally blocked me on Twitter after I told him I

(01:01:11):
think my quote was shut up bitchor something.
And that was the end of my contact with Jason.
Yes, I I believe that's actuallyquoted in my book.
So the SO spoiler alarm. Can't wait to beat that, yeah.
Spoiler so Jason Kessler, a guy who was, you know, probably the

(01:01:33):
the height of his fame, was getting an SPLC extremist file
and probably shouldn't even havehad that and in the sense that
he was right, not influential enough.
That's sorry Monday morning quarterback from an ex SPLC
staffer. How about Timothy Baked Alaska
GNAI had like, I love a guy witha nickname and he's a guy like

(01:01:54):
that. Timothy Baked Alaska GNA for
people who don't recall, he was at one point on BuzzFeed.
Wasn't he in BuzzFeed? Both him and Benny Johnson.
It was like an incubator for like racist dip shits, like
unbelievable. But yeah, he was, you know, he
was, he was a big thing in Charlottesville.
He actually used to get a lot ofengagement on his post in the

(01:02:16):
run up to unite the right. He got shouted out by Don Junior
yesterday. Really.
Yes, you're kidding, Cernovich. I didn't see this.
What? Wow, you don't read every single
message I drop in a group chat? How?
How dare you? So Cernovich, Mike Cernovich

(01:02:36):
wrote a actually here. Why don't I pull it up?
Because it will make sense to read.
Yeah, reading time. Parts of it.
I need your best like audible audio book voice.
OG MAGA was Gamergate where it all began.
Sargon of Akkad, Paul Joseph Watson, Stefan Molyneux, Peter

(01:02:58):
Thiel's lawsuit against Gawker showing you can fight back and
do things. It was Milo, Ellen Bukhari, Alex
Marlowe, Breitbart, Dodd Junior,Bannon, Rodger Stone.
They hate each other now. The Mercer money, Sheldon
Adelson, the Me More Veterans and Shit posters.

(01:03:21):
And this is all the caps. The people of Twitter who
boosted everything and made it impossible for sick Hillary to
hide. Alex Jones and Owen and Infowars
crew. Jack Posobia.
Scott Adams, although Scott wasn't fully endorsing Trump.
Zednick, Gonza and the Hillary Van Video.

(01:03:41):
General Flynn, Jim Hoffman, The Gateway Pundit, Cassandra
Fairbanks. 1825 is totally different.
This isn't a knock on anyone whowas or wasn't there or where
people are now. Times change.
But if you want to know the truth, there it is.

(01:04:01):
Oh God, I see what you're talking about now.
I just scrolled down and saw DonJunior reply.
Ricky Vaughn and Baked Alaska. Oh my fucking God, man.
Yeah. I remember when it was like
really scandalous that like Don Junior was like vaguely
associated with, you know, whitesupremacists and stuff like
that, that he would tax whatever.
Now it's he's just no, no one cares anymore.

(01:04:23):
No one cares. So, yeah, I don't see Baked
Alaska much. But I will say one thing for
Baked Alaska, I'm going to give him credit for one thing.
Whenever there's like a historically horrible moment for
our country, he's there. So he's, you know, he was Unite
the right, he was fucking there.And then January 6th, he's like
there, there are very few of them who do both.
So, you know, if there's some sort of apocalyptic thing where

(01:04:45):
a bunch of fucking MAGA people come in with like, guns to
police the streets, so you're going to be like, wait, is that
Baked Alaska? Because he's going to be right
in the middle of the fucking thing, because that's where he
always shows up. He's going to be, he goes where
no one else will go and live streams so that federal
prosecutors have footage to charge people with.

(01:05:06):
And for that we have to thank. Him.
We salute you, Sir. We did forget one thing about
Jason Kessler. Speaking of people who are
always at terrible events for our country.
He was also at January 6th and this really goes to Jason's
character, which I would describe as shitty after Trump

(01:05:28):
pardoned all of the Jan sexers. Well not all of the Jan sexers
pardoned a lot of Jan sexers andcommuted sentences for some of
them. Jason took to social media and
said hey guys, actually now that's safe that I can do this.
I was at Jan 6th. So basically he kind of, it's a
bit of a cuck move man, like. Is it stolen valor?

(01:05:52):
Is the real question. Yeah, it is.
I'm I'm going to use their. Yeah, it's it's stolen valor.
He's disrespecting the troops ofJanuary 6th.
We we respect all of our veterans in the great meme wars,
and it's the official position of this podcast that we do not

(01:06:12):
stand very disgracing them. And I'm looking at you, Richard
Spencer. Richard Spencer, what's he
doing? He's on sub stack now.
He's writing a book with this guy named Mark Brahman.
Sorry, is it an independent publisher?
I mean like who is Who's producing a Richard Spencer book
in 2025? I'm not sure who's publishing

(01:06:32):
it. I mean, he always is part of in
conjunction with national policyand student.
He had a publishing house. So I assume it's going to be
released through that. It hasn't been released yet.
He's on Twitter. He's been popping up on like, a
fair number of streams. But yeah, I think he's kind of
like out of the big mass organizing phase and I guess

(01:06:55):
relatively notoriously in the movement.
And also this always gets a bunch of press coverage.
He endorsed both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
OK. So yeah, Richard's a Lib all
right. Now I got another one here.
OK. Yeah, this is a big, this is a

(01:07:16):
big one. This is a big one.
What's happened to Mike Penovichand the Right Stuff Network.
And I think we actually have to fill in some gaps here.
And I also would like to also include your favorite quotes
from Greg Conti. So.
So this is a big one to end it with.
Let's let's let's just do this for the audience and then we're

(01:07:37):
going to wrap it up. But like, OK, so for people who
don't know PRS, the right stuff network with Mike Penovich, they
were all situated in parts of the Northeast.
And you know, just to humble brag, I, I, I helped ID a lot of
the guys who were, who were friends with Mike around that
time. They were all in the Northeast,

(01:07:57):
in that area there. And they started to move, they
started to like relocate, if I recall correctly, to like
Pennsylvania. And then they, they, they did
something they try to, they, they did a kind of a rebrand,
they became a new thing. So can you tell us a little bit
about that? Yes, they launched a political
party that, much like other white nationalist political

(01:08:20):
parties, did not actually run any candidates.
It was called the National Justice Party, and they launched
it in a barn in Pennsylvania that was owned by a man who
disappeared to Russia right after Jan 6.
His name is Charles Bousman, andit consisted of podcasters and

(01:08:41):
Greg Conti, who used to run operations for Richard Spencer's
National Policy Institute. And basically like a couple of
other guys, one who was formerlyhis, whose father, I guess was
tied to the National Alliance atone point.
Yeah, they all called themselveschairman.

(01:09:03):
They never actually did anythingreally political.
They just did a bunch of demonstrations and then they all
got really mad at each other. Yeah, I remember the barn
things. I remember wondering why they
never, if they were political party, why they didn't actually
register as such. But then they kind of fell
apart, right? Like they, that's the thing,
National Justice Party fell apart, right?
It just completely, the wheels came off the bus.

(01:09:25):
It looked like it was kind of, it's going to be a 2.0
situation, but there were defections.
Eric Stryker, AKA a Joe Jordan, one of the more one of the more
grading personalities of the altright era.
If no one's ever never heard himlike like, you know, just just
just gravelly ranting about Jewsand you know, he wound up kind

(01:09:51):
of leaving the group. If that's is that right now he
kind of just podcasts on his own.
They're much weaker separate, I think.
And then, and then Greg Conti accused that, accused Mike
Penovich of like stealing cryptoor something like I, I can't
remember exactly. Yeah.
It was some complicated thing involving crypto and Tony

(01:10:11):
Hovinder, who was a guy. Pocket watching.
Yeah fucking fucking hate it when people steal my white
nationalist. Crypto by the way, Tony Tony
Hovinder for people who forget who that is, there was a there
was a much hated profile of of of an alt right figure like a
like a you know, with the new white suprem face of white.
Supremacy. Whatever.
The next door, Yeah. The Nazi next door, that's what

(01:10:33):
it was. And it was it was of Tony
Hovinder. That was his, that's his claim
to fame. He was, I think he was like a
fry cook or something before then anyway.
So, so, yeah. So there's a meltdown over that.
And then and then Hannah, would you be so kind as to tell us
what Greg Conti, the the, the voice message that Greg Conti
left to the group when he was what?

(01:10:54):
What did he tell them? What did he convey to his, to
his comrades? So he published a piece of audio
to Telegram that at the end basically just went into the
National Justice Party for beinginsufficiently Nazi.
And at the end it closed with the question of are you for or

(01:11:14):
against the furor? And then he paused and said, I'm
for. And then it launched into a
musical rendition. OK folks, this is how we
entertain ourselves here. Yes, I should add one thing
about Eric Stryker is Eric Stryker was my version of your

(01:11:35):
experiences with Jason Kessler. He, when I finished grad school
and started kind of researching this stuff more full time, wrote
an article about me on his website called National Justice
that where he tried to dox me and he said that I lived in New
York with a house full of cats. Problem for Mr. Stryker, of

(01:11:57):
course, or rather Mr. Jordan, I should use his real name.
He has been outed is that I had already moved to DC by then, so
he published false information about me.
I noticed he didn't say anythingabout the house full of cats
thing though. We only have two. 2 I don't
know, I guess depends on the House, yeah. 2 is the right

(01:12:21):
number, otherwise they entertaineach other.
Hannah's house is just two cardboard boxes, each one
holding a cat. That's right.
That's right. Well, folks, we've been joined
by Hannah Gaze. This has been a lot of fun.
Hannah, where can people check out you and your work?
I am on blue sky at Hannah gaze dot blue sky dot social.

(01:12:46):
Feels weird to keep saying that.Need to shorten those links.
We'll put a link in the description.
I am also on X, the social mediaapp and everything else at
Hannah Gaze and I have a newsletter called Posts from
Underground that doesn't publishvery frequently, but if you can
want to read it you can sign up.That's the way to do it though,

(01:13:08):
because then when you do publishsomething, people are like, oh,
she definitely has something to say.
Yeah. Or like during the inauguration,
I think I published like two or three pieces and that was that
was the high watermark there. Well, before we get out of here,
just one more plug. Our Patreon is up and running.
And because we're not going to start doing the bonus episodes

(01:13:29):
until September, the first monthis 50% off if you sign up.
So go check out the link in the description.
Go ahead, get signed up early and we can't wait to see you
guys in our bonus episodes starting next month.
And I think that is it for the show today.
Our next episode is another installment in our Who the Hell

(01:13:53):
series. I'm very pumped about this one.
It's somebody that doesn't really come up in conversation
anymore, but was hugely influential in shaping podcasts,
This one excluded, I should say,but many podcasts, many popular
ones. So keep your eyes peeled for
that. I'm pumped to record that and

(01:14:13):
we'll see you next week. Bye, bye, guys.
Bye bye.