PAUL BROWN - From Watches to Warfare: A Christian Entrepreneur Exposes Woke Right Information War - The Will Spencer Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:26):
Foreign.

(00:47):
Hello and welcome to the WillSpencer Podcast.
This is a weekly interviewshow where I sit down and talk with
authors, thought leaders andinfluencers who are who help us understand
our changing world.
New episodes drop every week.
My guest this week is Paul Brown.
Paul is the founder and coowner of Wasson Watch Company, which
he started in 2018.
He has a diverse backgroundthat spans from the Marine Corps

(01:08):
and civil defense intelligenceto financial compliance, politics,
writing, abortion, abolition,and of course, running a watch company.
Most importantly, he is afollower of Jesus Christ, a husband,
a father, and a Texan.
Paul, welcome to the WillSpencer Podcast.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to be here.

(01:28):
You and I met, I think brieflyat Fight Laugh Feast, would have
been Dallas about a year ago.
And I've been so happy to seethe success of your company since
then, your growth on Twitteror X and just the continuous expansion
of Christian entrepreneurshipin reformed circles.

(01:49):
So congratulations on all your success.
Thank you.
It's definitely been a wildride and it's really happened largely
over the last year.
So it's been interesting forme to experience as well and to get
to share that experience with others.
It's a lot of fun.
So before we get into sort ofthe wildness of the ride, I actually

(02:10):
was curious, what led you tostart a watch company?
What's the history of Wasson Watches?
What's behind the name?
Like, where did all this comefrom and how did you move into that
field specifically?
Yeah, good question.
So I've always been veryentrepreneurial, so I've always had
an interest in startingbusinesses, running businesses.

(02:31):
I'd started a few sidebusinesses over the years that were
kind of partially for fun,partially to make a little bit of
spare change.
But in 2018 and leading up to2018, I knew I was really interested
in starting something bigger,something that I could move into
full time.
At the time, I was working incompliance in the financial industry.

(02:55):
I was in anti money launderingand know your customer work for a
large financial institution.
And I was seeing a lot ofdifferent businesses.
A lot of our customers werebusiness customers.
They were, you know, anywherefrom like mom and pops to midsize
to, you know, massive $10billion kind of companies.
And I was getting a lot ofideas about businesses to start.

(03:20):
And I knew, you know, there's this.
Sorry, is there an issue?
I see your hand.
No, no, I was just adjustingmy microphone.
Please go ahead.
Okay.
So I knew that there were alot of different kind of ways you
could go, I could startsomething that is a purely financial

(03:40):
Decision like I see anopportunity in a market and something
I'm capable of delivering on.
But my preference was to dosomething I was actually interested
in, you know, something that I liked.
And I've always liked watches.
And I started to learn aboutautomatic watches, which, if you're
not familiar with that, anautomatic watch is also known as

(04:01):
a self wound watch or selfwinding watch, is a watch that uses
the movement of your wrist inorder to power it.
So it doesn't have batteries.
You know, it's similar to awatch you may be familiar with where
you manually wind it, youknow, by turning the crown.
But instead of just being ableto wind it by turning the crown,
there's a rotor in there thatevery time you move, that rotor moves

(04:22):
and that winds the watch.
And so I had not been familiarwith those for most of my life.
Interestingly enough, it seemsthat most people in this day and
age are not familiar withthem, even though it's an old technology.
And as I dove into that world,I found, you know, there's this whole
niche market for automaticwatches and especially for high end

(04:45):
Swiss automatic watches,though, they can come from anywhere,
right?
They come from all over the world.
And so I, I had a specificidea in mind for a watch that I wanted
to buy.
Frankly, it was like I waslooking for this watch and I just
couldn't find it.
I found a number of watchesthat were similar, but not exactly

(05:05):
what I was looking for.
And so I thought, you know what?
I want to make this watch.
And I think I could make thisinto a business.
And the name Wasson actuallyis my great grandfather's last name.
So I had a great grandfathernamed Harold Wasson.
He was born in the late 1800sin Iowa, was a mining engineer in

(05:30):
World War I.
He joined the army, went toFrance as a captain, came back and
then was a petroleum engineer.
Went all over Latin Americabuying land with oil on it to sell
to governments and to large companies.
So he had a very adventurouslife, you know, one that involved
engineering, business,military travel, you know, entrepreneurship.

(05:53):
All things that I felt, youknow, were kind of ideas or topics
or themes that I wanted mybrand to evoke that I wanted baked
into the brand.
And since he's my greatgrandfather, you know, there's a
real story connection there, right?
It's not just kind of a story.

(06:14):
I pulled out of a hat.
I like the name Wasson.
And so I went with WassonWatch Company and our logo looks
kind of like a W that's also a castle.
And I wanted that for one, Ithink a castle evokes, you know,
power, wealth, sort of an oldschool, old world vibe, which is

(06:36):
the kind of thing that youwant to evoke with a luxury brand.
But also the castle is theinsignia for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Now, technically, I don't knowwhat Harald was.
Did in the army.
We don't have those records, unfortunately.
We just have his enlistmentpaperwork, but.
And no one thought to ask himafter the war, like, hey, what did

(06:57):
you do?
Sadly.
So I don't know if he was inthe Army Corps of Engineers, but
I know he was an engineer andhe was in the army.
And so that's just anotherkind of layer of meaning on the logo
itself.
What an awesome story to tie alot of the pieces together from your
life and your family's legacyand just sort of bring.
Bring a bit of the pastforward into the future in a way

(07:20):
that, like, you know, if only.
If only he could know.
If only your.
You said it was your greatgrandfather, I believe, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, it does.
It's not like you come from afamily history of watchmaking where
he would have expected hisname somehow.
It's like, no, I'm gonna.
I'm gonna bring my.
My great grandfather back tolife, you know, quite a long time
after his death.
That's a beautiful story.
Thank you.
Thank you.

(07:40):
It's.
It's been a lot of fun.
After I started it, you know,a lot of people don't know how long
it can take to get a businessoff the ground, but I started in
2018.
I spent three years in product development.
So that's going from idea toidea on paper to prototypes, different

(08:01):
rounds of prototypes.
And one of the reasons it tookso long is I worked for two years
with a company thatunfortunately just couldn't deliver
according to thespecifications I had.
They're very helpful with thedesign, but.
But in terms of getting theproduct that I wanted, we just.
We just couldn't do it.
And so I had to make a realdifficult decision about two years

(08:23):
in, like, either one.
Maybe I just need to quitbecause I can't.
What I thought I could do, itlooks like I'm not able to do.
I'm not able to get there.
Or two, I could just lower my standards.
I could say, well, I wantthis, but I'm just not able to achieve
that.
Let me go with this down here.
And the third option was tojust pivot and start from square

(08:46):
one and figure out how to getwhere I was going along A different
path.
And so I ended up identifyingsome different companies to work
with and transitioned to that.
And it was about another yearfrom moving over with them to getting
my final prototype done.
So July 2021 I had my finalprototype, took another year to go

(09:06):
to market.
And so we've been sellingsince about the summer of 2022.
Just going on three years now.
Yeah.
A lot of people have no ideahow difficult it is to ship a product
of any sort.
Whether it be software as aservice or a physical product like
a watch or just the sort ofthing you'd buy off a shelf at a
store.
It's, it's an incredibleamount of effort that goes into manufacturing,

(09:29):
envisioning, designing,prototyping, manufacturing and shipping
and then selling the things that.
The things that we buy every day.
Yes, absolutely, yes.
And as someone who has abackground in writing, you realize
you have a context foreverything, right?
Writing typically there's aneditorial process where the writer

(09:51):
submits something, the editorlooks at it, they either make changes
or they recommend changes,send it back, make those changes,
it goes back.
It might go through a fewrounds, but the changes that occur
are relatively simple becauseit's, you know, words on paper.
Right.
But when you're talking abouta product like I have an idea in

(10:11):
my head, I need to communicatethat idea effectively to someone
else who then needs to workwith a team to turn that idea into
a physical product.
And the, the layers ofcomplexity there, there's way, way
more things you can get wrong.
It's not.
Whereas on paper it's notreally abstract.

(10:32):
It's like this word says this,let's change it to that.
But you're describ that areabstract and then they come out physically
and it's not like you can justedit it in the same way you, you
change words on paper.
Like there's tooling, there'smachining, there's, there's all kinds
of stuff that goes into it.
And so it's been a learningexperience for me without a background

(10:54):
in manufacturing but, but Ihave a.
Definitely an appreciation forproduct development and the ability
to roll out products.
People do crazy stuff and it's amazing.
Yeah.
I have a friend who is the cofounder of Field company.
They make cast iron pans whichyou can buy on Amazon but they're
bred from their website andit's just that it's a hundred dollar

(11:17):
plus cast iron pan and I haveone of them.
And to talk with him aboutwhat he and his brother started the
company about coming up withthe idea about prototyping the pan,
about foundries and shippingand marketing.
And it's a small company.
It's not a massivemultinational corpor.
It's a small company.
But the amount that reallygoes into it to create a finished

(11:39):
product that you're proud ofis like, yes, this has my name on
it.
And I'm grateful that it hasmy name on it.
It's exactly what I wanted itto be.
It's a remarkableaccomplishment, even if you never
sell one watch, and praiseGod, you sold more than one watch.
But there is something to besaid like, no, I shipped a product.
I did the thing, and thefruits are up to God.
But to create something fromnothing, from out of your own mind,

(12:01):
and then to be able to wear iton your wrist is.
What was that feeling when yougot the first finished one in the
B.O.
Ready to.
Ready to go to market and beshipped from your website?
Man, it was.
It was a good feeling.
It was.
You know, I'm not a person that.
That usually celebrateswildly, if that makes sense.
Like, I'm a person who a lotof times I've seen, like, mountaintops

(12:27):
or peaks, and I've felt like,oh, if I make it there, it's going
to be the best.
Like, I used to run marathons,and I remember thinking, like, if
I ever run a marathon, I'mgoing to get a 26.2 tattoo.
And I ran a marathon, and I. Iwas like, oh, no, I'm not gonna get
a tattoo about this.
It is this.
This feels too normal, right?
You know, there's all theseother things.
And so, honestly, it wasn't,like, this great mountaintop experience,

(12:50):
but it was very satisfying.
And I think what was mostsatisfying about it was, was knowing
that I'd chosen not to quit,and I had chosen not to compromise.
And, you know, there I.
Just before the very lastiteration, I had, like, one last
opportunity to compromise.
I'd gotten the prototype back,and it was almost perfect.

(13:14):
But the.
The hand.
I felt that the.
The hands, the minute hand,the hour hand were just a hair too
thin and that the logo was ahair too small.
And, I mean, just a hair, right?
Just to where it was.
Like, the balance felt justslightly off to me.
And when I had that prototypein hand, I took a week to really

(13:36):
it and, you know, like, just.
Is.
Is this really what I thinkabout it?
And before sending it back forone last iteration.
And that was.
That was a hard decisionbecause I was excited to go.
But at the end of the day, Ithink just having standards and maintaining
them, it.
It ends up being worthwhile inthe long run.

(13:58):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
I, In a, In a previous life, Iwas a marketing manager, so I'd manage
teams of designers to producevarious creative products, from website
to brochures and physical materials.
And there's always that draftthat comes back where it's like,
this could be good enough, butthere is something that's off just
by a hair and like, I justcan't let this out the door.

(14:21):
And so we gotta go around themerry go round one more time until
we just fix this.
Just one click in thisdirection of having PTSD flashbacks,
respectfully of that.
I mean, you have to do it, you know?
Cause if you, if you push itout the door and you're looking at
the physical thing on yourwrist and it's bothering you, that's
not the feeling you want to have.

(14:41):
No, not at all.
Not at all.
Yeah.
So maybe you can, maybe youcan talk about, you know, one of
the, one of those momentswhere you were.
You were tempted to quitbecause you, you mentioned not compromising.
And that's a certain, that's afeeling that I think a lot of men
are, are blessed to have.
Like, no, I'm not compromisingon this, but so many times in our
life in so many differentways, we get to a place where it's

(15:02):
like, maybe I should just givethis up entirely and pivot and go
do something else.
So can you talk about one ofthe moments where you were really
tempted or you really feltlike, ah, maybe I should pack it
in or.
Yeah, just talk about that fora moment.
Probably the, the mostcompelling one was, was the situation
I mentioned earlier where Irealized this first company wasn't

(15:22):
able to get it done for us.
Right?
It was.
And it was a really.
That was, that was so temptingbecause without some creativity,
like, there wasn't an apparentway out.
There wasn't an apparent way around.
I knew I was going to have todig for it.
I knew I was going to have tosearch for it.

(15:43):
And there wasn't any guaranteeI was going to get there either,
you know, and so you.
There's also like this man,maybe, maybe this idea, maybe I've
just kind of dodged a bullethere because I only got so far with
it, you know, at least Ididn't invest more.
And, and now, now is my chanceto get out.

(16:05):
And then another time was I. Iwasn't really quite to that point
where I was considering givingup, but I was starting to wonder
if I was going to have to giveup at some point leading up to October
of last year.
So the beginning of October iswhen my content on X really started

(16:25):
to go, you know, sort of viralor semi viral, whatever you want
to call it.
And I started to get a lot oftraction, which started to lead to
more sales.
But leading up to that moment,my sales were very slow.
I mean, just like the fir inthe first nine months of 2024, our

(16:47):
sales were so slow, we werebasically just barely making ends
meet month to month in termsof our expenses.
And I started to realize,like, hey, the rate we're selling,
if this continues, even if wedo make ends meet for three, four,
five years, however long ittakes us to sell through our existing
inventory, we're going to getto the end of that time period and

(17:07):
we're going to have no moneyto show for it, you know, no money
to do our next production run,no money for anything else.
Like, this isn't a business,this is a hobby, you know, and it
was something that I waswanting to become a business.
And so I was starting to askmyself those hard questions like
what'll I do if sale doesn't increase?
And if it doesn't increasesoon, I mean, it's not going to matter

(17:29):
how much it increases becausewe'll have spent all our money that
we made for so long, right?
There's going to have to be aperiod of growth.
And I prayed about it a lot.
That's really what it camedown to is I didn't know the answer,
but I prayed and I asked Godfor help.
And I told God, I don't hear abooming voice from heaven saying

(17:54):
do this or don't do that onthe matter.
But you know, I told God, Ibelieve this is what you have for
me to be doing.
I believe that, that you'vehelped me to get to this point.
You know, I really felt likesome of the success I had with the
product development, with thedesign, even with the, the company
name and things like that,that God had helped me to get to

(18:17):
that point.
And so I was just kind ofasking God for help and asking God,
hey, if the, if this is goingto grow, if it's going to be successful,
I think it's going to need tostart that soon.
And it was really sort ofshortly after that that it did start
to grow.
And so, I mean, I can't reallytake much or any of the credit for
it because at the end of theday, all good things are from God.

(18:38):
And I really think God hasgiven me a Lot of help here.
Yeah, I definitely know thatfeeling for sure.
And it's funny because whenyou and I met at, at Fight Left East,
I noticed that it was not longafter that that your social media
really began to take off.
And I'm happy to see because Ithink at the time you had just like

(19:00):
seven or eight, maybe 10,000followers on X.
And then it just startedrocketing up from there, something
like that.
And so I was very happy to see that.
It's like, oh, I sort of.
We crossed paths at acrossroads, I guess, in the history
of your business.
Yeah, I was in the thick of it.
That was because Fight LaughFeast was right at the beginning,
end of October, beginning of November.

(19:21):
So I think it was like October31st through November 2nd or something
like that.
Yeah.
And my account had juststarted to grow at the beginning
of, like, literally on October1st, I had this post that went sort
of semi viral, and I went from800 followers I had 800 followers
in September to 5,000, like, afew days into October.

(19:43):
And then in the middle ofOctober, some pretty notable accounts,
mostly peaceful memes andJesse Kelly both posted about, about
me and about, you know, my watches.
And I went from like 5,000 tojust under 20,000.
Right.
So that's funny.
And that's where we met atFight Laugh Feast.

(20:05):
And it just kept going up andthey, you know, there were definitely
some lulls here and there,but, But, I mean, it's, there's been
a lot of traction.
Absolutely.
Now, how did you decide tomarket Wasson to the communities
that you did?
Because obviously, you couldhave gone a bunch of different directions,
you know, you could have triedto reach a bunch of different audiences.

(20:26):
What made you decide on theaudiences that you ultimately chose?
You know, I, I, I came torealize at some point that the, the
identity of Wasan WatchCompany is my identity, you know,
And I think when you're tryingto start a company, you're trying
to figure out what theidentity of your company is.

(20:48):
And I just tried to stay trueto myself and my beliefs, which in
my case, my most definingbelief is my belief in Jesus Christ
as my savior, you know, as a Christian.
And on top of that, I'm also conservative.
I'm a Marine Corps veteran.
I'm patriotic.

(21:09):
You know, these are just sortof things about me, but I'm also
very outspoken.
Yeah, yeah.
Who knew, right?
I wish there were some kind ofhint for those who are just listening.
There's a giant American flagbehind him.
Yeah, just a wee bitpatriotic, you know, So I, you know,
a little bit of background.

(21:30):
I've been involved with amovement known as the abortion abolition
movement since 2018.
And prior to that, I starteddoing what's called sidewalk counseling
or sidewalk advocacy atabortion facilities.
I started that in 2015.
I also ran for US Congress in 2016.
And so, I mean, I've been verycomfortable putting myself out there

(21:53):
with bold stances in the faceof opposition, you know, in the midst
of controversy.
Like abortion is, is acontroversial topic.
It, it's one that, you know,obviously you have people on the
other side.
There's controversy in it.
You know, they, they disagreewith it.
But even people that areostensibly on my side, you know,

(22:17):
or to some extent on my side,they agree that abortion is bad and
stuff.
A lot of people just aren'tcomfortable with the topic.
So I, I've maybe have alreadyhad a propensity towards being outspoken,
being bold in differentthings, but exercising that in that

(22:37):
the area of not just politics,but politics around abortion.
It really desensitizes you.
It really builds up if, youknow, you go from thick skin to rhino
skin, if you will, and youkind of just expect to be attacked
and you don't let it bother you.
You don't ask the questiontypically, is this going to result

(22:59):
in me being attacked?
You.
You ask the question, is thisthe right thing to do and is it prudent?
Which sometimes, you know,there can be.
There can be a gap betweenthose two things.
There can be.
This is right, but it's notnecessarily prudent.
But, but so from really kindof the very beginning, I was outspoken
about my faith with the business.

(23:21):
And what changed probablybetween say, like beginning of 2024
and end of 2024 was just, Ithink, my ability to leverage the
platform X effectively, youknow, because there is a learning
curve on that platform and ittakes time to build up traction.

(23:41):
And, and some of the buildingtraction is building relationships.
You know, you get to sort ofknow people a little bit on X and
you're commenting on theirstuff and they're commenting on your
stuff, and, and eventually youget enough of a core of a following
and of, of trust andeverything that you put something
out there and enough peoplesee it and they repost it and it

(24:01):
sort of starts to.
And so I think while mymessaging was always bold, it was
always openly Christian, itbecame sharpened and honed on X over
the period of time that I wasusing it.
Then, yeah, X is, that's whatI try to tell people, is that X and

(24:23):
YouTube are prestige platforms.
A hundred thousand followerson X is equivalent to, you know,
10 times as many on Instagram.
A hundred thousand subscriberson YouTube is similar in many ways.
And the reason why that's thecase is that there's massive learning
curves for Both X and YouTube,you know, in a way that isn't necessarily
true in other ways, but if youcan, if you can hack it through the

(24:44):
jungle and pick up, you know,the way the language works and how
to write and how to post andall that X, you can be wildly successful
on both platforms.
They're good for different things.
But that success isunparalleled, particularly networking.
I appreciate that youmentioned it's about meeting people.
X is a super.
You and I connected on Xreally in many, in many real ways.
But it's a superior platformfor networking.

(25:06):
Very, very powerful.
So I can see how that fueledyour company's growth and success
in a, in a.
In a big way.
Yeah, well, and just kind ofanother note on X is it really has
become, in my opinion, thepublic square, the true public square,
and that it facilitates publicconversation so well and like an
open public conversation,because it's not just a conversation

(25:30):
between two parties that cansort of watch.
It's a conversation betweenall the parties in which all people
can participate.
And certainly there'll be moreprominent parties involved based
on follower count and thingslike that.
But I really appreciate thatabout it.
And when I try to sort ofreplicate the same thing on other

(25:53):
platforms, I mean, you can't.
Like, Facebook is nothing like it.
Instagram is nothing like it.
It doesn't facilitate sort ofa public conversation in the same
way.
But it's some dangers thatcome along with it.
Absolutely, it does.
And it's.
It's funny that you startedmaking a big impact on X at the time
that you did, which would havebeen the second half of 2024, leading

(26:16):
into the end of 24 and thennow into 25.
And so as you say that it's apublic conversation.
Yes.
And it's also, I like it tothink of it as gang warfare.
Like I think, I think X is, isfundamentally gang warfare where
the gangs all know who's ontheir own gang, but you can't necessarily
see the gangs and they're justwar each other in dialogue and, and

(26:38):
speech and language and it'sa, it's a shouting match as much
as it is a public square basedon dialogue.
Yeah, yeah, it's.
Yeah, you.
I'd say gang warfare is a goodway to describe it.
I describe it as Informationwarfare, you know, it's, there's,
there it is a battlefield inwhich, yeah, different groups and
parties are trying to gain theupper hand in how information is

(27:03):
disseminated, how it'sreceived, you know, what people believe.
And if you get X and you'rejust kind of this unwitting, you
know, new person or whatever,you need to know that people are
battling for your mind on X.Yeah, a lot of different people,
a lot of different groups.

(27:23):
And it, it's what's reallyfascinating and also sort of terrifying
to me is X went, it wentthrough this crazy fast evolution
from this closed off platformlike many platforms were, to this
free speech platform that,that was almost like the shining

(27:43):
example of the public squarethat we've been discussing.
And then eventually the, the,the big entities who have a say so
in things recognized what itwas and started figuring out how
to have an impact to therebecause for a while they were kind
of lost.
They didn't know how to havean impact on it.

(28:05):
But they are figuring it outthrough the leveraging of influencers
and bots and foreign influenceand all the rest.
Yeah, and I'm looking forwardto discussing all that with you because
I definitely agree and you andI have been on the battlefield in
similar ways.
I want you to drill intosomething that you said though, real
quick.
What exactly.

(28:25):
So in kinetic warfare there'sall different kind of things that
any military force is tryingto achieve from the destruction of
hard targets, from thedestruction of military military
forces to the capturing ofterritory and the securing of resources.
But in information warfare,particularly on X, what is, what
is the target?

(28:45):
What is the aim?
What is the given that we'redealing with, you know, posts of
say 280 or so characters largely.
What is the thing that peopleare fighting over?
What is the territory that isattempting to be claimed?
What is the, what is the objective?
Absolutely.
So, so it's, it's our mind.
Minds.
Right.
It's the mind of theindividual and it's the collective

(29:06):
mind.
It's the minds of the peopleat large.
And it, it could be, it's overa whole bunch of topics but in, in
many cases you can sort ofboil it down to there, there's almost
this large scale battle beingwaged between you could say liberty

(29:28):
and authoritarianism.
Right, but that's maybe one,one of, one of the things that's
being fought.
But you know, and we're goingto talk about this more, I'm sure,
but you know, anti Semitismis, is a big thing and within the
topic of anti Semitism orreally umbrella over anti Semitism,

(29:50):
you have fascism, you havecommunism, right?
And fascism and communism aretwo sides of the same coin and they're
pitted, but they're very, very similar.
Right?
And frankly, both, both ofthose camps are anti Semitic.
But it's, it's about changingpeople's views by degrees.

(30:11):
And it may not mean totallychanging someone's mind from being,
let's say, pro Israel, proJews, you know, opposed to anti Semitic
all the way to being antiIsrael, anti Jewish, you know, to
being actually anti Semitic.
It's more like, hey, can Iperson who's over here just a couple

(30:34):
of steps to where they don'tfeel comfortable voicing their support
for Israel or for Jews or inopposition to anti Semitism anymore.
Right.
If, if I can do that, youknow, the, I being the, the interested
parties in this instance, thenthat's a win, right, for them.
And the more people you can dothat for, that's a win.

(30:55):
And then you measure it on thelarger scale.
So I, I looked up the otherday, Pew Research, what the, the
attitudes of Americans towardsIsrael are, and they actually did
a poll on it in April of thisyear, and they compared it with numbers
in 2022.
So in 2022, 42% of Americanshad an unfavorable view of Israel

(31:22):
and about 10% had a veryunfavorable view of Israel.
In just three years, coming to2025, it's gone from 42% unfavorable
to 53% have an unfavorableview of Israel.
So it jumped 11 points frombeing a minority to being a slight
majority.

(31:42):
The group that you know is 10%saying they had a very unfavorable
view of Israel, that jumped to 19%.
So that nearly doubled.
Right.
And so you see how moving thepopulation in a point of view by
degrees over time can have abig impact on a mass scale like that.
You know, I want toacknowledge that there can be, be

(32:05):
inconsistencies in howquestions are asked or, you know,
who your target audience areand everything like that.
But assuming things aregenerally the same, like those are
shocking numbers, that is ashocking move in, in just three years.
Absolutely.
Did.
Now, real quick, did youfigure all this out just over the
course, we'll say the past year?

(32:25):
Is it something that you'vekind of had to think your way through
over the past several months,or is this something that you were
always aware of going into Xor Twitter?
I definitely knew that, thatTwitter was an information warfare
space.
Going back a couple years,this, the specific topic of antisemitism
was less on my radar, but Idefinitely knew as an information

(32:49):
warfare space.
And so when Elon Musk boughtTwitter, which I want to say was
in like October of 2022, Icould be remembering that incorrectly.
But it then I realized like,hey, this could theoretically be
a free speech space again.
I mean the part of the wholereason that Elon Musk purchased Twitter

(33:13):
was because of the Babylon be,you know, having their account shut
down for free speech.
And it's like, okay, well ifhe's buying it for that, then that's
a good sign.
And so on my personal account,you know, the main account that I
use is my @ Wasson watch, butI've got another account called App
Paul Brown TX.
And that's an account I hadstarted years and years ago.
I just didn't use much becauseI'd been shadow banned on X for so

(33:37):
long.
Well, once I saw and startedto hear like, hey, this might be
a real free speech space, Igot on and I was using X to talk
a lot about abortion abolition.
I was using my account a tonfor that.
And I didn't get as muchtraction, you know, in terms of like
numbers as I've gotten withmy, my Watson Watch account.

(33:58):
But I was learned that's,that's really where I learned the
platform was using that.
And I started getting to knowpeople and building the relationships
that I end up sort oftransferring to Watson Watch.
But you know, you could seethe power of the information warfare
space exemplified in thesummer of last year.

(34:21):
Really, it was spring of last year.
Donald Trump was of courserunning for, for president again.
And he, one of the issues thathe was honestly not doing great on
was abortion.
He was signaling some reallytroubling kind of stances on abortion
that were getting steadilyworse as the spring progressed.

(34:45):
And myself and others on Xstarted to voice some really, I would
say heavy handed,appropriately heavy handed pushback
to what he was saying.
And there was one particularday where Donald Trump said something
along the lines that indicatedthat he was going to vote for the

(35:07):
pro abortion amendment in Florida.
Right.
And, and a lot of us on X inthat space went apoplectic like,
like this is a, this is a lineyou cannot cross.
You are going to lose our vote.
And it's, it's my belief and alot of people who, you kind of watch
this space carefully, thatthat caused him to take a step back

(35:29):
and the messaging that he wasdelivering on that issue and he,
he came out and said, no, he'snot voting for the amendment.
And he stopped making the kindof statements he'd been previously
making on abortion.
And so like, not only is it a,is it an information warfare space,
but it's an effective one.
You mobilize people who arepassionate on an issue at large.

(35:51):
It can have huge impacts, notonly on public perception, but on
specific policy outcomesbecause of the stakeholders who are
also exposed to those ideas.
Yeah, you can, if you use theplatform well, or if you're part
of a, say, an organization ora gang that's effective in pushing

(36:11):
their messaging, you canactually move the needle or at least
appear to move the needle onsome key battlefields for good or
for bad.
That's right.
That's right.
So I'm glad you brought up theanti Semitism issue because I think
that's something thatobviously I can speak a lot about
and have.
When did you first startnoticing that beginning to crop up

(36:34):
on the free speech platform?
Because I remember when Elonbought X and because I had a, I had
a, you know, account back thenand I, it wasn't right away.
It took a bit of time.
Yeah.
So I, I probably started tonotice and I noticed in stages right
there.
I had a kind of a longerperiod of maybe a more dim awareness.

(36:55):
But that kind of starting inApril, May of this year just sort
of shot up.
If there's this, if you graphit, it's be like that.
Right.
But it, I, I started to noticeit around the, started to, to gain
traction in October of last year.
As I gained traction, I gotmore followers, I got more people

(37:18):
commenting on my content.
And just every once in a whilepeople would say either blatant or
veiled anti Semitic things orthey were, you know, people were
just asking questions orpeople were, you know, kind of pushing
me to, to take a position.
You know, I, I might saysomething, you know, a lot of my

(37:40):
content is, is very kind ofspecifically going after the left,
going after communists or whatever.
But I might make a post that,that says they, like, they don't
want you to know this or, orthey want you to do such and such.
And you know, people wouldrespond with like, who's they?
But like, you could tell, youlook at their account and they've

(38:00):
got like an ss, you know,symbol in their profile picture.
They've got, they've got thesekind of clues and you're like, okay,
I think I know what this guywants me to, to say.
Yeah.
And, and so my policy for awhile for, for good Six, seven months
or whatever.
When I started to notice thiswas like, you know what, I'm not

(38:21):
going to engage with these people.
These people are fringe and Ijust don't, I don't want anything
to do with this.
I don't, I don't, I'm not antiSemitic, but I feel like if I come
out and they push me to, youknow, be opposed to anti Semitic,
it's going to be this bigthing and you know, all this stuff.
And I think there, if I'm, ifI'm being fair to myself, I don't

(38:44):
have to speak out on everysingle issue.
Right.
Technically I've, I've chosento be bold in certain areas but,
but I don't have to.
But then over time I startedto feel guilty about this, that I'm
not speaking up into what Istarted to see growing as a problem
and something that, you know,I don't know if you kind of plan

(39:07):
to talk about this or get intothis, but something that you noted
even some of my content asmaybe I was becoming desensitized
to what was sort of a growinganti Semitism and even an aesthetic
of anti Semitism.
Some people were looking at mycontent and starting to think that
I was anti Semitism, Semitic.

(39:28):
And that wasn't the messagethat I was trying to, to push across
but, but definitely sowedconfusion, which is not really what
I'm about.
And it was kind of a wake upcall that led to a couple of different
posts on my part.
One in May and then several in June.

(39:50):
And what happened was in MayI, I just came to this point where
I realized one, I, I thinkthere is some real anti Semitism
on this platform that needs tobe addressed.
I'm tired of people commentingon my stuff and trying to goad me
into this, you know, antiSemitic position.

(40:13):
And two, I really want toclarify because some people are now
questioning it wasn't justthe, the, the groipers and the Nazis
who were needling me now.
It was folks on the other sidewere needling me.
Like, like, but are you anti Semitic?
You know, kind of thing?
Yeah.
And I wanted to clarify.
So in May I just put out thispost where I essentially said, hey

(40:34):
guys, I don't hate Jews.
The Holocaust is real and thenumbers are real and Hitler was evil
and the Nazis were evil.
And if we disagree on this,like, we're not going to agree, like
there's just, you're not goingto bring me over to that side.
And that post did get some attention.
You know, it Got some views,it got some negative comments.

(40:55):
I lost some followers, butthey were quickly made up within
days.
Right.
It didn't.
It didn't really.
It was kind of a blip on the radar.
And so it wasn't until Junethat the big.
The.
The real big posts came andkind of threw a real wrench in.
In the system, so to speak.
Speak.
Yeah.

(41:16):
Let's start with that first post.
I appreciate you calling outsome of those themes because the
anti Semitism was a phenomenonthat I've seen not just on X, but
in men's circles online for, Idon't know, five, 10 years.
Right.
And so it's sort of like this underground.
Yeah.
In the.
In the masculinity movementthat was called the manosphere.
It was a subject ofconversation in private circles,

(41:38):
and.
And that's just the jokes thatmen would tell of all different sorts
of.
And so as the manosphere cameinto reformed circles in particular,
which began2021-2020-2021-2022, and as that
sort of started to happen,these manosphere ideas came into
the reformed world and itstarted kind of bubbling up on X
in places.

(41:59):
And I recognized it for whatit was, but again, like you, I had
been desensitized to it fromhaving been in that world.
I recognize it for what itwas, but it seemed to explode, particularly
after the election in 2024.
It was happening a lot.
But it.
Was after the election.
I thought it was just anexpression of everyone's angst.

(42:19):
Everyone's just like, reallyworked up about this election.
Is Trump gonna.
Are they gonna steal it fromTrump again?
Are we gonna have four moreyears of Biden?
And so as soon as Trump won,I'm like, oh, maybe everyone's gonna
breathe this big sigh ofrelief and we're gonna just kind
of go on with our lives asusual, and get back to some of the
2016, 2017, first Trumppresidency vibes.
But that's not what happenedat all.

(42:41):
Instead, it ramped up evenmore to the point where as you fast
forward six or so months, six,seven, eight months to April, May
of this year, it's dominating conversation.
And I appreciate that you tooka stance on it, because as I was
watching this take place,naturally have my own story with
it.
As I was watching this takeplace, I was starting to get very
concerned about not the menwho were talking about it, but the

(43:02):
men who were silent in theface of it.
And so I appreciate you kindof explaining your reasoning behind
all of that.
Yeah, yeah.
And it.
It's Interesting.
Like, I, I want to encourageother people not to be silent on
it, but I also, you know, was,was silent on it for, for a good
while.

(43:23):
And so I recognize wherepeople can come from.
And I don't want to be tooquick to, to vilify those who are
silent on it, but I want togoad them too.
I want to be like, hey, likethis is a growing problem.
And there may come a pointwhere like, you know, maybe you are
a villain if you're beingsilent on it.
And I say that, you know,trying to muster all the grace that

(43:43):
I can knowing, but like,they're there but for the grace of
God go I.
And.
And there but for the grace ofGod went I like for, for a while.
Right.
And so I wanna, I wanna bevery clear about the evils of anti
Semitism, that it is thisgross, disgusting, horrific evil.

(44:06):
And I also.
But at the same time, I wantto build a bridge to people who may
be in that or who may beflirting with that and go like, hey,
this is a gross, disgusting,horrific evil.
But there is redemption.
Like, you don't have to beidentified by that.
You can be identified in Christ.
You can repent and you cancome away from that and actually

(44:30):
be someone who speaks upagainst it from, from, from experience
in a way that will even havemore weight.
Yes, I appreciate that and I agree.
And I equally want to build abridge to men who are caught in communities
where that is being expressedand, and they came into that community
or that group of friends orwhatever, and it's all just fun and

(44:52):
good times until they see ittake a very dark turn, like, this
is not at all what I signed up for.
And they feel, they feeltrapped maybe by their own statements
they've made in these groupchats or maybe just not wanting to
draw attacks from friends orwho knows?
And they feel like they can'tjust quietly slink out the door as
they discover, as the lightscome on and they discover what they're
really in.

(45:13):
I mean, you have to find yourway out.
Maybe you don't have to drawthe sword and go to war, but like,
there is a bridge, there is away to exit from those communities.
As my pastor put it really well.
He said that, you know, a lotof guys wanted to go for a ride for,
in the, go for a ride in thecar with the cool kids and they didn't
know that they'd be involvedin a drive by shooting.
Shooting.
Yeah.
And so like that's, I thoughtthat was a great way of putting it.

(45:35):
It's like, yeah, you didn'tknow what you signed up for, but
you still got to jump out ofthe car.
And I think there are a lot ofmen, a lot of men that are trapped
in that position.
Yeah, yeah.
And.
And it.
Something that really has beenweighing on me as, as I kind of think
about how to frame the conversation.
I, I put out a post the otherday really addressed to people who

(45:57):
are in those chat groups andwho are in those friend groups that
are seeing this stuff andabout it.
One of the things I reallynoted, well, going back a little
bit and we can discuss thismore later.
You know, when things gotreally bad in June, I was being attacked
by just mountains of people.

(46:18):
You know, it was, it was areal effort, an organized effort
probably to take me down.
At that point, I, I startedkind of seeing some other players
on the battlefield who were onmy side, and I was, you know, posting
some of their content, they'reposting some of mine.
And I got people reaching outto me saying, like, oh, don't, like,

(46:39):
don't affiliate with those individuals.
Like they're, they're this or that.
They're, you know, theirproblems for these reasons.
But they weren't sayinganything about anti Semitism.
These, you know, these samepeople, they weren't coming out and
saying like, hey, Paul's rightabout this, or, or, yeah, we do need
to counter those things.
They weren't being antiSemitic either, but they weren't

(47:00):
speaking up about that.
They just wanted to make sureI knew that I shouldn't be all with
these other folks.
And it's like, man, there'sthis old saying in abortion abolition
work that's true in otherplaces as well.
It's like, I like the waythey're doing it more than the way
you're not.
And at this point, I thinkit's undeniable.

(47:21):
It is undeniable that there isa real fight for our minds and for
our nation on this issue.
And, and if you don't like theway certain parties are fighting
that fight, your best way tofix it is to get involved, right?
Come, come into the camp andlet's talk about it and even maybe

(47:45):
argue about it, maybe evenlike, strongly disagree about it.
But if you're on the outsidesaying, hey, this guy or that guy
or that guy is not disagreeingwith anti Semitism in the right way,
but you're not taking a stanceon it publicly, then I'm sorry, that
just doesn't have as muchweight for me.
You may.

(48:05):
Meaning well, like I'm notcalling those people my enemies or
anything like that, but it's,it's not going to change my approach
at this juncture.
Oh, there are so many examplesof those hey brother kind of emails
or DMS where it's like warningyou away, you know, from, don't get
involved with these folks, okay?
You're, and you're silent,hiding in the background.
Why should I, I, why should Ilisten to your guidance on this when

(48:28):
there's a team actually takingthis on?
Right.
I love that you, I love thatyou mentioned that.
Because a lot of what happenson X, maybe people know, maybe they
don't know.
This actually happens in DM groups.
Like what surfaces on thetimeline is just, you know, a small,
a relatively small percentageof what's going on on the platform.
Maybe not necessarily in DMgroups on X, but also on Telegram

(48:48):
or Discord or signal orwhatever where the coordination happens
behind the scenes.
Like what you, what we'rewatching on X every day.
Even if you don't post athing, what you're watch watching
every day are in many wayscoordinated plays that are done off,
off the field and then broughtonto the field.
And that's what I mean aboutbeing gang warfare is, you know,
we all, it appears as if we'reall just individual accounts interacting

(49:11):
with each other, but that isnot the case at all.
And so know that as you'rewalking onto the battlefield, that's
not like just a, it's not likea melee, it's not a battle royale,
royale in Fortnite.
You know, it's, it's actuallycoordinated warfare fair.
You just can't see thecoordination happening behind the
scenes.
Yes, yes.
And coordination is valuable.
It can work well.

(49:32):
And it can also work against you.
Right when, when, when peoplestart to see the coordination and
you realize they're badactors, you realize the, the level
of, of determination you'redealing with and you realize like,
hey, now it's time to go allin for this and, and put up or shut
up, so to speak.

(49:53):
Yeah.
So let's talk about the bigpost that you made in June, which
I think is probably the onethat I saw.
Yeah.
So leading up to, I think thepost was June 22 and leading up to
that, if, you know, we allhave 5 second memories now because
of things like X and just ourattention spans always like a racehorse.

(50:15):
Um, but, but going back to, tothat week, you know, the big thing
in the news was the potentialat that point US military intervention
with Iran because of theirnuclear program.
Right?
That's right.
And leading up to that, therewere a lot of folks saying, like,
we can't do this.

(50:36):
This is going to lead to WorldWar Three.
Very notably Tucker Carlson.
You know, he said it willalmost certainly result in thousands
of American deaths and willresult in, you know, the loss of
billions of dollars and untoldlost lives of Americans on US Soil
due to terrorist attacks.

(50:56):
You know, so I'm kind of stillwaiting for that stuff to happen,
but, but so far it hasn't.
But there were a lot of folkssaying that.
But what I noticed was reallyinsidious for me is I noticed a very
short, sharp, deep increase inanti Semitic comments and people
voicing their opposition tothe Iran conflict couched in that

(51:21):
anti Semitism, anti Israel,anti Jewish statements.
There was a lot of peoplesharing memes or whatever that I'm
not dying for Israel, youknow, various kinds, like, I'm not
dying for Israel.
I, I noticed an account that,that has since been shut down because
it was a, it was a Pakistaniaccount apparently called, like,

(51:42):
Texas Patriot.
And I was seeing his stuff onmy platform all the time, just spouting
off about Israel and aboutdying for Israel and not fighting
Israel's wars.
And, and I, you know, I try tobe very objective about things.
And I, I have a background in intelligence.
You know, I've done a lot ofwork that has, you know, been directly

(52:05):
looking at Iran and theiractivities, you know, both in the
Marine Corps and in theDefense Intelligence Agency.
And what's more, you know,I've, I've been, I've had an interest
in foreign policy and foreignaffairs my entire life and warfare
my entire life.
Like, one of my youngchildhood memories was watching Desert
Storm, you know, unfold ontelevision before me.

(52:28):
I was like 5 years old whenthat happened.
But it was a formative memory.
My dad, you know, I, Imentioned I was in the Marine Corps.
My brother was in the Marine Corps.
My dad was in the Marine Corps.
My dad, one of his bestfriends, with whom he went to officer
candidate school for theMarine Corps, died in the 1983 barracks,

(52:48):
Marine Corps barracks bombingin Beirut, which was carried out
by Hezbollah, who was backedby Iran.
So I know about Iran.
I know that they hate America,that they are deadly to Americans,
that they've been killingAmericans as often as possible for
decades.
You know, thousands ofAmericans in Iraq and Afghanistan

(53:10):
died as a direct result ofIran's support of insurgent groups
in, in both those areas of operation.
And so I recognize that Iranis a bad actor, that they're a malicious
actor.
And I also recognize thatthey're unstable in ways that most
nations are not.

(53:30):
Most people are not familiarwith Shia eschatology, right?
The sort of end times beliefof Shia Muslims.
And so Iran is unique becauseit is the only real powerful Shia
nation, right?
Yemen's Shia.
You know, there's definitelysome Shia populations in Iraq, but
Iran is like Shiaheadquarters, if you will.

(53:53):
And in Shia eschatology, theybelieve that there's this guy who's
known as the 12th Mahdi or the12th Imam, who's going to come, come,
he's kind of their likeMessiah figure.
He's going to come in some endtime and establish a global caliphate,
a global era of peace and, youknow, global Islam essentially.

(54:14):
But what's going to lead tohis arrival, to his appearance is
going to be a period ofessentially terrible tribulation,
death, war, etc.
And, and so they don't onlybelieve that that's going to happen,
but there are, there's a largesegment of people in Iran who believe
it's actually theirresponsibility to help make that

(54:37):
happen faster.
So, so people will kind of dothis false dichotomy of like, why
does North Korea get to havenukes and Iran doesn't, you know,
blah, blah, blah.
Okay, first of all, I don'twant North Korea to have nukes.
You know, I don't think anyonedoes except for the, except for North
Korea.
But there's a big differencethere in that Kim Jong Un we can

(54:58):
expect is driven by sort ofthis normal incentive to live.
If he pushes the button, we'regoing to turn North Korea into a
lava field.
Okay?
Like he knows that there's nogetting around that, so that gives
him a good incentive not topush the button.
The people in the leadershipin Iran are not necessarily driven

(55:21):
by the exact same incentivebecause, because they may be willing
to die as martyrs or to takeit upon their nation to die as martyrs
in order to usher in the reignof the 12th Imam.
And so not only do they hateAmerica, not only do they have motives
already to kill Americans, tokill, you know, all kinds of non

(55:45):
Muslims, non Shias for that matter.
As a, as a total aside, when Iwas in Iraq back, what we were mainly,
what I was mainly payingattention to was Sunni and Shia terrorists
killing each other, bombingmosques of the, the opposing sects.
But they, we know that they'reunstable, that they, they have shown

(56:07):
malicious intent and that theycould use those nukes.
So we had very real reasons asa nation Aside from Israel, regardless
of Israel to counter Iran on.
And so I knew that all thesearguments were essentially fabricated
and they were very, veryheavily pushing on this anti Israel

(56:29):
narrative.
So I know that's a longbackstory, but I want to put you
in the mindset of where I wascoming from.
I wasn't just this ideologuewho had this like, you know, go Israel,
Go America stance.
I have a basis for these beliefs.
And so I put out this, this post.
It's funny, I've got theAmerican flag behind me.
I had a big picture of theAmerican flag in this post too.

(56:49):
But I said something along thelines of here, Nazis, Groipers and
anti Semites, you are notwelcome in the Republican Party and
mega and conservatism, whatever.
Like, we don't want you here,you need to get out.
And then I addressed kind ofthe issue with their opposition to
our involvement in Iran.

(57:10):
And what was interesting aboutthat post, as you'll note, is it
was addressed to Nazis gripersand anti Semites.
It wasn't addressed to anyone else.
And I wasn't calling anyonewho opposed US intervention in Iran
a Nazi or group or anti Semite.
I do believe there are somegood actors who in good faith opposed

(57:31):
our intervention there, likefor legitimate reasons, reasons I
would disagree with, but, youknow, not anti Semitic reasons.
So I wasn't addressing them.
I was addressing the anti Semites.
And I mean it just caused likethe world to cave in.
It felt like because theNazis, Drapers and anti Semites came

(57:52):
out of the woodwork andattacked me and of course twisted
my words and started to pushthis narrative that I was calling
anyone who didn't support theUS war with Iran a Nazi or a groiper,
an anti Semite.
And like people piled on.
I usually get between 1 andmaybe on a big week like 3 or 4 million

(58:18):
impressions on my content on Xin a good week.
And I got 11 millionimpressions that week.
22,000 comments on my content.
Which, you know, in a, in agood week, maybe it's 1,000 or 2,000
or 5,000.
Right.
Not 22,000.
And the overwhelming responsewas, was heavily negative.

(58:40):
I mean, I got death threats.
All of it, all of it.
It was, it was wild.
Yeah, I remember watching alot of that go down and to really
see it's, it's difficult toget the beast to surface fully in
the open.
It's very good at hiding, it'svery good at cloaking its language.

(59:04):
It's very good at, you know,moving and moving and kind of seeing
Secret.
It is very real.
It's very difficult to get thething to pop out and to show the
mass of its bulk in the entirety.
And when it happens, I mean, Ithink a lot of people.
I've tried for a long time invarious ways to let people know what
a significant problem this is.

(59:25):
Again, I've said this multipletimes on the show.
I strongly encourage everyoneto read the book Black sun by Nicholas
Goodrich Clark, and you willsee the history of neo Nazi anti
Semitism movements in theUnited States and Europe since the
1950s.
And you will get a sense, as Idid when I read the book, the massive
scale of it, like, peopledon't believe it's fringe.

(59:45):
It's not a big deal.
That's huge.
And so in your post, itsurfaced fully.
And I'm sure you got to see alot of things that were quite shocking
as the beast reveals itself inthe open.
Yes.
Yeah.
I was surprised by both thevolume of the criticism and the just

(01:00:06):
the nature of it.
You know, how dark so much ofit was, how attacking, how quick
people were to spin lies, andthen how quickly those were disseminated
as well.
You know, like stuff that isstill being said about me today that
I can trace back to that, thatweek in June where it started off
and it's like, man, it's, it's.

(01:00:27):
It's insidious, it's evil.
But there was also, it'sisolating because there, don't get
me wrong, there weredefinitely people who came to my
side who were openly, youknow, helpful and openly, you know,
supportive.
But there are a lot of folkswho weren't, who were silent either

(01:00:47):
because, you know, maybe theydidn't see it or maybe they, you
know, didn't feel the same wayas me about it, or maybe they just
didn't want the eye layer of.
Of the negative attention thatI was receiving.
And it was kind of like thisreality moment of like, oh, man,
this is.
This is bad.
This is real bad.

(01:01:09):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think the part and themultiple people have talked about
this over the years.
I'm sure you've probably seenthem say it.
Just what happens when, whenyou see people who you formerly thought
were your friends that youwere close with, maybe you'd even
met in person, either turn onyou or remain silent in the face
of the attacks that, you know,that they're still seeing.
Like, one of the ways thatpeople get around in X is like, oh,

(01:01:31):
bro, I totally didn't see it.
And that's completely valid.
Sometimes you can have posts,do millions of views and you know,
your best friend doesn't seeit and who knows why the algorithm
works that way.
But to see friends turn on youor you know, to counter signal or
just to remain silent in theface of it is a, it's a pretty shocking
thing to experience.
For sure.
For sure.
So that, that represented abig turning point in my, my perspective

(01:01:58):
and my perception.
And it happened in partsbecause it was like, okay, I was
starting to see the anti Semitism.
I started to address it in May.
Not a lot came up from it.
In June when I rep, When Iaddressed it more with maybe a say,
a sharper ax, if you will,that's when I went from like, okay,

(01:02:20):
this is bad to this is a, anexistential threat that I, I can't
ignore at all.
And what's more, it's, it's,it's something that I've spoken about
a lot since then.
And I, I use this analogy withsomeone the other day.
Sometimes it feels like, youknow, because my account, I do hit,

(01:02:43):
do hard hitting stuff, but alot of my stuff is kind of satirical,
it's kind of light hearted,it's kind of funny, has been in the
past.
It feels like you're this funlike joker kind of a guy and you're
at this house and you go intoanother room and you see a fire and
you come back and you telleveryone like, hey, there's a fire
in the next room.
And everyone's like okay,whatever, sure.

(01:03:04):
And you like keep bringing itup because it's a big problem.
Like, no, there's a fire inthe other room.
We really need to address this fire.
And people just like, dude,you used to be so cool, man.
Like now all you talk about isthis fire, fire.
And I'm like, yes, yes, yes.
Like, yes, it's real.
And so I, I want to be the, Iwant to talk about a wide range of

(01:03:28):
important topics and I want tobe fun and be able to, you know,
make jokes and make peoplelaugh and, and all this stuff.
But I'm also like, we cannotignore this fire.
And I can't, I can't ignore itwith on.
You know, in my conscience.
We all have to give anaccount, right?

(01:03:49):
And, and I've.
My whole life, you know, Imentioned I've always had a, a big
interest in foreign affairs.
I've, I've been aware ofgenocide for most of my life.
And it's always been one ofthose things, even as a young child
where I was like, how couldthis happen?
How could people let this happen?
How could people not doanything about it?
Why didn't people do anythingabout it?
And obviously people have donethings to try to prevent genocides

(01:04:12):
historically, quickly.
But I, I see this as a, justan important point in time where
the time to counter apotential genocide is now.
Because frankly, if we get tothe point where it starts, it's too
late.
It is too late.
It is way too late.
Certainly you can and shouldresist a genocide at the point where

(01:04:34):
it's starting, where it'sbeginning to start if it's ongoing.
But you're not going to stop,stop it at that point.
Certainly not as an individual.
What stops genocides is largerarmed groups or the, the bad actors
running out of steam orchoosing not to follow that as a
policy objective anymore.

(01:04:58):
So the time to stop it is.
I agree.
It's funny, I, you know, I,as, as I've been looking at this
for a while, I have heardpeople talking about genocide, about
worries about it and I'vealways been sort of like, I'm not
really sure where the energyis really going to come from to create

(01:05:19):
that in the United States.
But as you were saying that, Ijust remembered that someone had
posted the other day aboutmass formation psychosis.
Maybe you remember that termfrom COVID where it really doesn't
take a whole lot of people toset off a chain reaction that suddenly
crystallizes or catalyzeveryone's perceptions that suddenly

(01:05:40):
we're facing this threat.
Like ultimately, why did Covidbecome a thing?
I think it ultimately became athing because of flight attendants
and public school teachers andnurses freaking out about it.
And that was enough to createa mass formation psychosis.
That's my theory, 100% me thatthose are three kind of bureaucratic

(01:06:00):
choke points for aroundAmerican culture.
And it sort of catalyzed,particularly through women.
You know, it catalyzed theAmerican population as a whole.
That's my theory.
May for another time, but it would.
Please, please jump in on thatif you'd like.
Yeah, no.
One of the scariest things.
So one of the reasons I've,I've had sort of a, my eye on international

(01:06:22):
affairs is my dad's beeninvolved in international missions
my whole life.
So you know, he would travelto Sri Lanka or the Philippines or
Bolivia or somewhere when Iwas very young and I, and I, you
know, learn about these places.
You know, most three, four,five year olds don't can't find Sri
Lanka on a map.
But I like, oh, that's whereSri Lanka is.

(01:06:43):
And this is what's going on inSri Lanka.
And.
And he.
I mean, he's traveled all overthe world.
He's done a lot of work in Africa.
He's done work in Sudan andUganda and Kenya.
And he.
He went to Kenya shortly after that.
And I can't remember what yearthis was, but there was like a minute,

(01:07:04):
very localized genocide thatoccurred in this one region.
He was at that.
I can't remember what thenumbers were, if it was 10,000 or
tens of thousands of peoplewere killed in this.
This one small area.
And my dad was there againjust very shortly afterward.
And he talked to people, youknow, like, about what happened.

(01:07:25):
And one thing he kept hearingfrom people is we didn't believe
that that could ever happen.
He here, you know, and it's.
If you've ever read Lord ofthe Flies, which, you know, that's
been required reading in a lotof schools over the years.
So a lot of people have read it.
The whole point, the wholepremise of that book was countering

(01:07:46):
the concept or the idea thatthat barbarism was something that
only, you know, maybe specificpeople groups or specific segments
of the population could fall into.
Right.
One of the theories afterWorld War II and it.
This was, you know, among say,British society, for instance, the

(01:08:09):
author of Lord of the Flieswas British.
Was like, well, I mean, thatcould never happen in England, obviously.
Like, that was.
That was a German thing.
It's those Germans, you know,in their Germanic ways or something.
And he just.
He just illustrated how peopledevolve into terror, into evil, and
descend into barbarism undercertain circumstances.

(01:08:31):
And obviously, if you'reChristian, you recognize all of us
have that capacity.
All have sinned and fallenshort of the glory of God.
Man is not basically good, soto speak.
But a lot of us have troublewrapping our minds around the capacity
for violence, for massviolence that is inherent in individuals

(01:08:54):
and in groups of individuals.
I think most Americans reallydon't believe a genocide could happen
here.
You know, most Brits to thisday probably don't believe a genocide
could happen there, wherethere are probably certain specific
circumstances that would berequired to lead to it.
So I don't expect it to happenspontaneously tomorrow.

(01:09:16):
But under the rightcircumstances, if we stay on this
path that we're.
We seem to be on today, itcould be a very realistic prospect
in 10 years.
And that man, that.
That is both terrifying and so sobering.
It's incredibly sobering.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Because maybe if the idea of agenocide didn't seem plausible, to

(01:09:40):
me, thinking about it in termsof a preference cascade or mass formation
psychosis that took placeduring COVID which we all watched
not that long ago, that Icould actually see happening and
that you talk about the shiftof the American public toward the
anti Israel shooting shiftfrom 42% to 53%.

(01:10:00):
And as, as you, as theinformation warfare escalates on
X and now that it's escalated,not even in inside X, just on the
platform, it's also outside,you know, with Candace Owens and
so many other influencers nowI think I would say that the information
warfare battlefieldperspective on this issue comes into

(01:10:21):
focus much more clearly thatyeah, there is actually the possibility,
there is actually thepossibility for some sort of mass
violence.
Not out of like someunderground communities that have
been fomenting a plan like,like the, like the Day of the Rope
or whatever.
I can't remember the name ofthat book right now.
Not like that, but just where,where the American public gets sort

(01:10:43):
of captured by this idea thatjust runs like wildfire through the
population.
Yeah, that, that I couldactually see happening.
Okay.
Oh yeah, that is definitelysobering and scary.
Yeah.
And, and also like in my mindas I potential for something like
that, I don't see it as aspontaneous uprising of the citizenry

(01:11:03):
to carry it out.
I see it as resulting in thecapturing of our institutions.
Right.
If, if we're, if we're 10years out from our population being
at that level, I mean we'retalking about then the rise of, of
the 21st century American Hitler.
Right.
That, that precedes it, thatthen you start to see people voting

(01:11:24):
for people based on theperspective of like.
Well, you know, they recognizethe problem is the Jews.
Right.
I mean that's an importantsort of prerequisite for taking office.
If they don't recognize thatthen I can't vote for them and that
then it's just only a fewsteps removed from there.
But we know there are alreadypeople thinking like that, that kind
of.
That a basic prerequisite orrequirement for them to be on the

(01:11:48):
same problem, same page withpeople is to recognize that the Jews
are the underlying problem.
Right.
You just see that rhetoric allthe time.
All they have to do is spreadthat belief to a larger percentage
of the population.
If they do that, then they'veeffectively won or they've set the

(01:12:09):
stage so that they can win.
And what, what, what, what hasbeen the fundamental, I would say
kind of just world changingshift in my mind is you go back a
ways and obviously you havethe anti Semitism that comes out

(01:12:32):
of this sort of anti Israel,pro Palestine position that we often
see.
Right.
But that has, hashistorically, and by that I mean
going back a few years ormore, been resigned to the left.
Left, you know, and so as longas the left was championing that
position and it was the leftexclusively, it wasn't the kind of

(01:12:54):
thing that I ever thought wasgoing to get that much traction,
at least not on the right,because it's the left.
As long as the right, we justhold our position and we, you know,
do the right thing, we'regoing to counter them.
And if anything, especiallybecause Trump won in 2024 is like,
ah, we're winning.
And the other we're going tohold off the left and we're going
to be able to defeat these things.

(01:13:15):
But, but what was reallyterrifying is seeing these same talking
points and same ideas begin togain traction on the right or what
is seen as the right with, asyou mentioned, Candace Owens and
Tucker Carlson and, you know,tons of these influencers who are
right leaning or right brandedor whatever else that are now saying

(01:13:40):
the exact same things that theleft has been saying about Israel
and Palestine for years.
Yes.
And that's the part, that'sthe part that's shocking is that
I had seen that process takingplace in the underground of the Internet,
through the Manosphere and4chan and the Donald on Reddit and

(01:14:01):
all of these, all thesevarious sub communities.
I had seen that happening.
And I always thought, this ismy mistake.
I always thought that men ofvirtue and rationality would be able
to put brakes on their train,which is to say that they would be
able to understand that, okay,I'm now exposing myself to bad ideas

(01:14:23):
or fringe ideas and I need tomaintain a sense of skepticism around
them and be as skeptical aswhat I'm seeing online as I would
be from what I'm seeing fromthe New York Times or CNN or whatever.
But I have not seen that.
I have consistently not seen that.
In fact, I have seen men thatshould know better, that should be

(01:14:44):
able to keep their minds andtheir rationalities and their passions
in check.
Absolutely.
Just rip the brakes off thetrain and start going, maybe slowly
at first, but at anaccelerating pace, ever more into
more radical ideas to thepoint where they become, their character
is no longer recognized.

(01:15:04):
They're not the same guys sixmonths, nine months down the road
they were that I met them.
And so that was kind of what Iwas worried about was what had been
happening with you when wetalked about that image from American
History X is that, you know,that's what I was.
I had seen that so many times.
I'm seeing it today.
I could name names of men thatI'm watching it happen to.
And I saw that happening toyou, and I was quite sad about that.

(01:15:26):
And so when you finally.
And so we chatted about thatand when you finally did your post,
I was like, oh, praise God.
God either.
Ultimately, wasn't you beingseduced by radical ideas and having
to put brakes on your train.
It was you clarifying theposition that you had always held,
which is equally, if not more, noble.
But so many men never think tolike, okay, maybe I need to slow

(01:15:47):
down.
Maybe I need to jump out ofthe car.
Maybe I need to turn the wheeland take a look at where I'm going.
Men are just not doing that.
And so many, I would sayfirewalls that would ultimately at
one point have protected menin particular from bad ideas have
failed to the point wherethese bad ideas and the passions

(01:16:07):
that they inspire are now inflames up to some of the highest
levels of politics and culture.
And it's happened in a year.
I'm baffled by it.
Yeah, yeah, you know, one, I'mbaffled by it as well, and I'm sad
about it.
But I'm also optimistic.
I tend to be optimistic.

(01:16:28):
One of the things that my.
I don't.
I don't just kind of have apropensity towards being bold.
I have very specific design in mind.
I want to be bold in order toinspire others to be bold.
So I, and I, I've gotten tohave some really rewarding experience
in that where, you know,whether it just be on a specific

(01:16:50):
topic or just across a widerange of topics.
Being bold in my faith, beingbold in.
In my beliefs, and seeingpeople go, you know what, I.
What, Like, I can do that too.
If this watch company can.
Can be bold about truth, like,why not me either other business
owners or individuals even,you know, we can speak the truth

(01:17:12):
on controversial topics.
We don't have to, you know,let the.
We don't have to sort of livein this destiny we've created by
the.
Don't talk about religion orpolitics at the dinner table, which
I think is an absurd kind of construct.
It's like, hey, you know,there are people talking about politics
and religion.

(01:17:32):
The way we understand it as asociety is by having these difficult
conversations at the dinner table.
But I digress.
You know, I hope that peoplesee I've taken a hit because of these
perspectives.
I mean, my follower accountwas Going up as much as a thousand

(01:17:56):
or more per day in, in themiddle of June.
Like I was on this growthstreak and you know, you go in streak,
so it wasn't necessarily goingto stay at that level forever, but
you know, I was increasing that.
My, my sales were going great.
I took a big hit in my salesand I had a lot of pre orders that
were canceled during that weekand in the week or so afterwards

(01:18:18):
as a direct result of theposition I decided to take.
And so for folks out therewho, who are like, hey, you know
you're gonna take a hit.
If you take this position, formost people on X, it's not gonna
be a business hit.
It's gonna be a hit to theirfollower account or it's gonna be
a hit to like, the number ofimpressions and likes they get.
Whatever, it's, it's basicallyan ego thing.

(01:18:39):
What I encourage you is justas there's no dollar amount that
you can put on doing the right thing.

(01:22:51):
There's no number offollowers, there's no number of clicks
or likes or shares or socialcapital capital that you can use
to justify not doing the right thing.
I'm gonna keep being bold andI, I don't believe I'm gonna lose
my business because of this.
I think that Watson Watch isgonna be successful and continue

(01:23:13):
to be successful and grow overthe next couple years.
But if I do, it will have beenworth it.
It'll have been absolutelyworth it because at the end of the
day, I can't take, take it toheaven with me.
Right?
I know where my treasure is.
And I would encourage all mento remember where your treasure is
and to act accordingly.

(01:23:33):
Amen.
Amen.
I relate to that very much.
Between July leading up ToJuly of 2024, my podcast was growing
at a pretty reliable clip.
I was comfortable with my, mynumbers were going.
They were on an upward kind ofhockey stick trajectory.
And since over the, over thecourse of the past year, particularly
between July and October, thatturned sharply because it was July

(01:23:53):
and October that I not onlystarted calling out a lot of the
anti Semitism, I also startedcalling up, calling out what would
ultimately be labeled the woke.
Right?
And those two things inparticular appear to have angered
what were once a largepercentage of my listeners.
YouTube has made up a huge, ahuge, A huge bit of that, which has
been a big blessing.
Maybe a conversation foranother time but like, yeah, like,

(01:24:16):
bye, guys, go listen tosomething else.
You know, it's, you know, Iwas ready to lay it all on the line
and Say, if I need to lay downmy platform as a result of this,
well, guess what?
I'm going to speak the truthand I'm going to speak for what's
good and right and beautifuland true.
And if that cost me everyone Iwas listening to, then I must have
been doing something wrong tobegin with.
Yeah, right.

(01:24:36):
It's like, what was I doing?
And again, in my case, I canprobably point to some of the things
that I was doing.
What was I doing that so manyof my followers were so ready to
unfollow me as a result ofopposing anti Semitism?
But I'm glad you brought upthe term woke, right, because I think
this is a, a really importantterm for our time.

(01:25:00):
And it's one, you know, we'vetalked about the dynamics between
left and right a little bit.
And you know, one of thethings that has shaped me is this
kind of recognition that theleft lies incessantly, right.
That you just, you.
That the left is not reliable.
The left, you can't trust them.

(01:25:20):
And so, so for a long time theterm woke right up to two or three
months ago or even lesspossibly, I would have rejected the
term woke right as just somemade up leftist propaganda.
Right.
Because the left, they're all.
The left has always calls theright, bigots and racists and Nazis.

(01:25:41):
As, because of my work inopposition to abortion, I've been
called a Nazi hundreds, if notthousands of times.
No exaggeration.
Yeah, right, yeah.
For that stance.
And so I was just like, Imean, it's made up guys, you know,
just, they're just calling usthat to get a rise out of it, out
of us.
And so, so I'd heard the termwoke, right.

(01:26:03):
It wasn't really real to meuntil like midway through that week
where I was getting, you know,ganged up upon and I, I not only
saw just the, the depths ofdepravity in what people were saying
to me, but it started tobecome really clear that the vast
majority of those people areembedded in the right.

(01:26:26):
You know, whether you want tocall them truly right leaning or
not, or truly conservative ornot, you could, you could have all
kinds of debates around it.
But they see themselves as onthe right and to a large extent they're
accepted by, if not leveragedby many people on the right as well.
Um, and so that was that sortof aha, moment of like, oh, there

(01:26:49):
is a woke, right, and it'svery active and it's growing and
it, that that truth has onlybecome more relevant and more clear.
To me over the last couplemonths, as I've been continuing to
stay engaged in this topic,James Lindsay, if you're.
Watching, I'm going to make adeposit in the James Lindsay was

(01:27:10):
right jar.
Yes, absolutely.
Man.
He's been banging this drum for.
For a long time.
And what.
What's really, you know, tome, what, what is really sad is,
you know, there are a lot ofChristians out there who are afraid
to talk about this.
And James Lindsay is not, atleast as of yet, a professing Christian.

(01:27:36):
And he.
He's talking about this.
And James Lindsay is someone who.
He made enemies of the leftyears ago.
All right?
He.
He attacked their sacred cowsand he made enemies of them, and
now he's got enemies on both sides.
And I, I cannot tell you howmuch I respect what he has done and

(01:27:58):
what he is doing.
It doesn't mean I agree withhim on, you know, every nuance of
every topic or whatever, buthe has moral courage, and he's.
He is exemplifying a lot moremoral courage than I'm seeing in
a lot of Christians and that.
I mean, I don't say that to,like, be this angry kind of.
I don't.
I'm not trying to nag peopleabout this, but be inspired by that

(01:28:22):
and have the moral courage todo the same.
Amen.
Amen.
And I agree.
I've had a lot of people whoare not happy about the fact that
I interviewed him for like,three or so hours on the podcast.
And I was like, like, look,you know, he was talking about.
I'm interviewing him based ona series of six hours of lectures
he gave in 2022.
That's what we're.
That's what we're talking about.

(01:28:43):
This is a man with moralcourage who's calling these things
out.
And I think he's worthy oftalking to.
And a lot of people, you know,say, oh, they don't trust him or
whatever.
It's like, well, yeah, I mean, he.
Maybe he made enemies on theleft because he called their stuff
out.
But a man who's good atcalling out one set of problems should
also be good at calling outanother set of problems.
And you can fight two front wars.

(01:29:03):
You know, it's not like wehave to pick sides in this way.
I think as Christ Christiansor people inspired by a Christian
moral character, their enemies.
There are ditches on bothsides of the roads on the road, and
we can talk about both of them.
And I think that there's ahabit, I would say, of many Christian
leaders Today they're happy tocall out the sins on the left, but
when it comes to the sins onthe right, they're silent on it.

(01:29:24):
It's almost like they don't exist.
Like there's no enemies on theright thing.
Exactly.
The woke right loves noenemies on the right.
Or the friend enemydistinction that they derive derived
from Carl Schmidt, the Nazipolitical legal architect, so to

(01:29:44):
speak.
Yeah, I found that that's beena whole kind of rabbit trail I've
gone down is seeing how many,you know, supposed conservatives,
you know, folks on the newright are willing to quote Schmidt
or reference Carl Schmidt intheir sort of political positioning

(01:30:07):
of this friend enemy distinction.
And, and, you know, they don'thave to.
Is.
That's the interesting thing.
You could just describe the noenemies to the right position without
invoking Carl Schmidt's name,but they choose to invoke his name.
And to me, that's very telling.
I think, I think it's a really ob.
In my opinion, it's a veryobvious dog whistle that, like, yeah,

(01:30:30):
I'm quoting a Nazi here.
Maybe he wasn't the best Nazi,but he was a Nazi.
That's right.
That's right.
And it's so strange to me thatso many men, they say things like,
well, I've been called a Naziso many times, I might as well become
a Nazi.
It's like, well,congratulations, then, you're a Nazi.

(01:30:52):
How is that proving any point?
All you've done, and this iswhat makes me so upset, is that so
many men are proving right.
Everything that feminism saidabout men for decades, that's what
they're doing.
Feminism said men are this,this, this, and this.
And so women need theirindependence from men in order so
that they cannot be under thetyrannical rule of these men.

(01:31:12):
And so men listen to that.
It's like, okay, well, youknow what?
You've been calling me that,so now I'm going to be it.
Well, congratulations.
You just proved the left right.
And that's the part that Idon't understand why men can't seem
to find.
I think it's the inner moralcourage, the moral strength.
Strength, discipline, whateverword you want to use to take a higher
road and to say, I'm not goingto become the monster that people

(01:31:34):
call me no matter how manytimes they call me that.
Yeah, I don't get it.
You know, I think some of it'ssatanic, right?
Satan wants to always drivepeople to sin.
And Satan, you know, he's not God.
But as far as ourunderstanding of the universe and

(01:31:55):
different entities.
It works.
We, you know, it.
It's generally people's beliefthat Satan is maybe the highest creation
of God, that he, you know, sowe should expect that Satan has a
certain amount of intelligence.
Right.
And that he watches human behavior.
And.
And you can see when societyno longer has momentum in one direction

(01:32:19):
of sin, okay, what.
You figure out what's on theother side of that and push that
direction.
I've been saying this for awhile, as we've said, seen a decrease
in public acceptance of LGBTQstuff, especially the trans stuff.
We're starting to see somereal pushback to that.
And, you know, I would pointto, like, in 2024, during June, pride

(01:32:45):
Month, which I call BiblicalMarriage Month, a lot of companies
change their logos to these,you know, Pride logos or whatever.
That didn't happen this.
This year, for the most part.
The.
The Major League Baseballchanged it for one day, and they
got attacked so much that theytook it down in the same day.
I mean, so.

(01:33:05):
So what.
But what I've been tellingpeople is I've been seeing this,
which is encouraging that, youknow, people are moving away from
this, you know, public movetowards transing.
Everything is like, hey, whatthe companies are going to do is
they're going to go back tothe hyper sexualization of everything,

(01:33:27):
of this, like, this, you know,heterosexual, heterosexual sexualization
and push us back that way,which, frankly, was the foundation
of our move into the lgbtq, Right?
Like, you hollow out people'smorals sexually, and then you just
push down and down until youget more and more and more depraved,
which is how we've ended upwhere we are today.

(01:33:48):
You know, and it happened inthe 70s, 80s, and 90s, you know,
after the sexual revolution inthe 60s, right?
So what do you see come rightafter Pride Month?
You see Sydney Sweeney's jeanscommercial, right?
You see this overtsexualization in order to make sales.
And, you know that theAmerican Eagle ad campaign was successful

(01:34:10):
enough that we're going tostart to see way, way more companies
jump onto this.
That.
And because men, humans,people lack discernment, we're just
jumping on board, like, oh,yeah, this is showing the left.
What's up?
Like, no, dude, like, this is.
This is insidious.
This is evil.
They're.
They're leveraging your lustto try to get you to buy things.

(01:34:31):
But more importantly, Satan isseeing how the tides are changing,
and he's using jiu jitsu.
He's using his opponent'sweight and movement against Them,
it's like, oh, okay, well, thehomosexual stuff's not working.
Back to the heterosexual.
Hey, it's all sin, man.
It's all sin.
And we've got to be on our guard.
So I was.

(01:34:51):
I was gone from my wedding andfor my honeymoon, and I deleted X
off my phone for about threeweeks just so I could be fully in
the moment, because what couldpossibly be happening on X that would
be even close to the level ofimportance of a wedding and a honeymoon?
So I came back to X earlierthis week to find everyone talking
about the Sydney Sweeney ad,which I haven't seen.

(01:35:12):
I was like, what does everyone argue.
Arguing about Sydney Sweeney, Beyonce?
I had to ask Rock what wasgoing on.
So for those who haven't seenit, and I don't want to go look.
Can you describe what theSydney Sweeney ad was as far?
All I know is that she waswearing a pair of American Eagle
jeans.
It said something about theplay of pun between jeans and, like,
blue jeans and genetics andSydney Sweeney being a woman of,

(01:35:34):
we'll say, ample assets, let'sput it that way.
There's a series of ads, right?
And so there.
I think there's some videosand probably some.
Some.
Some photos and stuff.
And.
And I haven't gone looking forthem, so I haven't seen them all,
but I have.
I have seen some of them.
And, yeah, she's just dressedin an overtly sexual way that highlights

(01:35:57):
some of her features.
And she's.
It's like Sweeney has good genes.
She's not.
She's not topless.
No, no.
But I think there's one whereshe has, like, a jean jacket and
it's like, you know, pulleddown, like, pretty low or whatever,
that kind of thing.
Cleavage.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm not, like, I. I'm notgoing to go into too much detail
describing it all, but.
But it's very clear, like,what the appeal of the commercials

(01:36:21):
are.
And I probably.
Since most folks didn't deletetheir ex for three weeks, like you,
almost everyone who watchesthis will.
Will have seen that.
Will have seen these ads.
You know, they're.
They'll be familiar with them.
And, you know, I'm.
I'm grateful that I'm notseeing them every day because there
was like, a week or two whereit just seemed like they were just
popping.

(01:36:41):
Popping up every single day,you know, in.
In one way or another.
And I think Babylon Bee did agreat job of satirizing it.
They.
They said something along thelines of, like, you know, big companies
go Back to sexualizing womento sell crap, you know, or something,
something like that, you know,and it's like that's, that's what
it is, man, that.

(01:37:03):
But, but we have to.
And I can't even remember howwe got on this topic, but, but I
think it was something alongthe lines of, you know, you're talking
about the way that societyshifts and movements shift and so
on, but Satan wants to destroyus and he wants to destroy us with
our own sin.
Like people think Satan canmake them do things.

(01:37:26):
Satan's proven approach is to lie.
He lied in the garden, right?
He lied to Jesus in trying totempt him.
He's called the father of lies.
Satan can't make you believelies, but he can and he will tell
you lies.
And the purpose of those liesis to pull you into a trap of sin

(01:37:48):
to destroy you.
And Satan wants to pullAmerica into the trap of anti Semitism.
And he does that with liesabout Israel and lies about Jews,
lies about history, lies aboutwhat's going on today, and, and he
can't make anyone believe them.
But if we're not on our guardas a.

(01:38:10):
Speaking about the collective,we, our nation, we will believe them
and we will fall into thattrap and it will be utterly destructive
for us.
Why does Satan want to pullAmerica into lies about anti Semitism?
Satan?
Well, several things.
Satan hates the image of God,so he hates all mankind.

(01:38:33):
You know, when as soon as Godidentifies man as being made in his
image, well, Satan hates God.
So just as we are to love Godwith all our heart, soul and might,
we're to love our neighbor as ourself.
Because man is made in God's image.
That's why.
That's right under that same command.
Satan is the inverse of that.

(01:38:54):
He hates God with all hisheart, soul and might, and he hates
mankind almost just as much.
But Satan can't destroy God.
You know, what he can do iswork to bind up souls, to bring them
to dwell in the lake of firewith him for eternity.
Not so he can havecompanionship, just so he can see

(01:39:14):
them destroyed out of hate.
And so not only does he hateall mankind, but he especially hates
the Jews because.
Because they are God's chosenpeople, which is another theological
conversation arounddispensationalism and covenantal
supersessionism, et cetera, et cetera.

(01:39:35):
But there are people that Godset aside for his worship and for
his glory and to proclaim himto the nations.
And Satan hates that just ashe hates children.
I think one of the reasonsthat human sacrifice is so prevalent
in so many corrupt societiesis because starting in Genesis 3:15,

(01:39:56):
when God said that Satan wouldbruise the heel of the offspring
of the woman and his heelwould bruise his head.
Right.
The head of the serpent, Satanrecognized who his enemy was.
It was the offspring of the woman.
All right, let's kill all thechildren through human sacrifice
through abortion.
Right, right.
So in the same way, Satan hasidentified this people group, the

(01:40:19):
Jews, and he wants to destroythem, but he wants to destroy all
of us.
And he knows that.
You know, again, this is myspecific theological interpretation.
I know there are those outthere who disagree, but God said
he'll bless those who blessyou and curse those who curse you.
So if we're applying thatpromise to Israel, well, if America

(01:40:41):
curses versus Israel, it'sreally not going to work out well
for us in the long run.
That's right.
Yeah.
No, these eschatologicalissues are not things that I've explored
deeply, but I understanddefinitely as a result of something
that Spencer Smith, who's aguest I've had on my podcast several
times, he's an independentfundamentalist Baptist preacher and

(01:41:03):
a documentary filmmaker.
The Third Adam series.
Highly recommended.
He said in one of his Twitterposts, he said that the end result
of all conspiracy thinking isa hatred for the Jews.
And having been in theconspiracy world from before I was
a Christian, I thought thatwas very interesting because it's
actually true.
And so I've looked into thatworld and I see all the different

(01:41:25):
ways that all the differentways that antisemitism pops up in
the conspiracy world, and thenthere it is in the left, and then
there it is in the Middleeast, and then there it is here,
here, here, and now here it ison the left, the right.
And it seems like so much ofthe world, not necessarily in a technical
every human being on theplanet sense, but so many different,

(01:41:47):
we'll say subcultures thatreject Christ in various ways all
end up hating the Jews.
That seems to be theconsistent theme.
And I had never really thoughtabout that before.
Like, how interesting.
And I thought that took on aspiritual significance once those
pieces clicked into place.
Yeah.
When you look at how the Bibleoffers a really clear example of

(01:42:10):
the same pattern in the Bookof Esther, Right?
You look at Haman, Haman endsup being the victim, I use that term
loosely, of his own antiSemitic conspiracies.
Right.
He sees Mordecai, andMordecai, because he's a Jew, refuses,
and he's an observant Jew.

(01:42:31):
And he refuses to bow downHaman in a way that Mordecai believed
would result in an overexaltation of Haman in a way that,
that would be kind of puttinghim on the level of God, you know,
putting him above, above humans.
So Mordecai refuses to do that.
And Haman sees this, doesn'tlike it and has this, this just burning

(01:42:54):
hatred for him that is notexclusive to Mordecai.
He blames it on all the Jews, right?
And he doesn't just like, I'mgoing to get Mordecai, he goes for,
I'm going to kill all theJews, not just all the Jews here
in my town or my country.
I want to kill all the Jews inthe known world.

(01:43:16):
Is what, what he ends up goingfor, which is, you know, essentially
the Persian Empire at itsextent at that time period.
And what's interesting too isthe pattern that we've seen play
out through history.
He follows through, it's gonna happen.
It looks really bad for the Jews.

(01:43:38):
God in his divine mercyrescues the Jews and then turns it
around and turns it on theenemies of the Jews.
And you know, a lot of people,a lot of people will talk about,
you know, especially as theyget into sort of crypto history or
whatever and they talk aboutGermany and they say, well, a lot
of people don't talk aboutwhat the Russians did to German Germany

(01:43:59):
after World War II and theatrocities that were committed there.
And like, as a human being,it's not for me to take things into
my hands and to, you know,cause destruction and suffering and
violence in a malicious nature.
But in the same way that Hamanand his allies were destroyed by
the Jews in the same way thatGod pronounced judgment on the nations,

(01:44:23):
that he used to judge Israelin the Old Testament Testament, you
see him talking about Babylon,the Assyrians, which he used to judge
the, the Northern Kingdom andthen he judges them for it.
He uses Babylon to, to judgeJudah and then he judges them for
it.
And Germany, you know,Germany, you know, perpetrates the
Holocaust against the Jewish people.

(01:44:46):
And you look at what happenedto Germany after that and you look
at the death and the mayhemand the destruction that took place.
And I'm not justifyingcommunists or communism or the Russians
for doing that.
What they did is evil and, andthey should be judged for the, the
evil that they did.
But we shouldn't be surprisedwhen that happens to Germany, right?

(01:45:10):
We shouldn't be surprised thatif anti Semitism takes up, picks
up in a meaningful way inAmerica and grows and, and gets worse
that the exact same thingwon't happen to us too.
Absolutely.
I'm so glad you're saying thatbecause last year I interviewed Dr.
Mark Musser in his book Nazi Ecology.

(01:45:31):
And one of the things thatbecame clear from this book, 550
pages, he wrote it like a textbook.
Took him 10 years.
And the book is entirely abouthow the, how the Nazis, the Nazis
were informed by pagan nature worship.
You know, they were not Christian.
They used Christian languageearly on in their campaign for power,

(01:45:53):
but once they had achievedpower, became clear that they were
very much, very much rejected.
The, the biblical dominion mandate.
That's what the book is about.
And about how all throughoutthe 19th century, the 1800s, Germany,
which had been blessed withthe light of the Reformation, just
started throwing all of itsChristian heritage overboard in,
in various, in various ways.

(01:46:13):
And so it was that discardingof their Christian heritage that
allowed for the rise of theNazi attempt at empire.
And so, and so the Naziattempted empire had a distinctly
ethnic character to it.
So the, the Nazis viewedthemselves as the superior race,
particularly superior to theSlavic peoples, the Slavs to their

(01:46:36):
east.
Then this is all in Nazi ecology.
They were going to conquereastward because they wanted to turn
Eastern Europe into the, theirfactory grounds.
Like we kind of use Chinatoday and Mexico and Pakistan.
They wanted Eastern Europe tobe where they would keep all of their
manufacturing so they couldkeep lands pure.
So they look down at theSlavic peoples as subhuman and the
Russians as well.

(01:46:57):
So when the Nazis invadedeastwards trying to conquer Russia,
they were pillaging and rapingand destroying and committing all
these war crimes against theRussian people on explicitly ethnic
basis.
It was that they regardedthese people as subhuman beneath
them in an evolutionaryDarwinistic kind of sub evolved kind
of way.
And, and so when Germany wentahead and lost the war, what happened?

(01:47:22):
Well, you have the Red armycome through and now I could use
graphic language for this, butI won't.
But now, forever, the Slavicblood is forever now mixed with the
proud German ethnic blood.
Right?
Forcibly.
So that's judgment down to agenetic level.
And that doesn't make it right.
That doesn't make it good.
That doesn't make it somethingto advocate for.

(01:47:44):
But it is God's justice if webelieve God is sovereign over all
things.
So I'm glad to hear you saying that.
Germany was judged probablynever to rise again, actually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know, and it's, it'ssad because Germany does have such
a rich history of, ofReformation and, and there's so many
things, like I've, I've notbeen to Germany except briefly on

(01:48:05):
my way to and from Iraq.
You know, we stopped there fora couple hours at Ramstein, I believe,
if I'm remembering right.
But, but I mean, literallyjust got out of the plane in, in
the airport, got back on andleft and, and, but I've learned a
lot about Germany and their culture.
There's so many lovely thingsabout Germany.

(01:48:27):
But again, it's a shame thatthat's a part of their history.
We don't have to make that apart of our history.
And in fact, we are obligatedto do what we can to stop it.
And so I think for us, kind ofthe next steps for conservatives,
for Christians, for people whosee themselves on the right is primarily

(01:48:47):
like one first and foremost,foremost look after your own heart.
Like, have, have your heart toheart with God and, and be in prayer.
And you know, are youharboring some lies in your heart
that could lead to hate oralready harboring some hate?
But then let's hold our ownaccount accountable.
Our, our family members, ourfriends, but other people around

(01:49:09):
us who are conservative, whoare, who, who profess to be Christian,
who, who reject these lies,this, this false, unbiblical position
of no enemies to the right ofthe friend, enemy distinction, this
idea that you can't criticizepeople on the right because of, of

(01:49:31):
the, the rise of what's on the left.
You know, what, what ishappening within the right now is
making us as bad or worse thanthe left.
There is no point in, if, ifyou think that, that, you know, having
these fights within the rightis going to undermine our ability,
ability to fight the left.
It's really irrelevant becausewe're becoming indistinguishable

(01:49:54):
from the left through this,this apparent evil.
And it's, it's just notbiblical, right?
God says Jesus said a littleleaven leavens the whole lump.
God very clearly makes itclear to us in his word that we should
be directly talking to ourbrothers about sin and even gives

(01:50:15):
us a whole picture process bywhich to do it, one that does end
up with it being talked about publicly.
So we have the, we know whatwe should do.
We have the tools to do it.
And now we just need to do it.
We can't sit back on ourlaurels and watch things unfold around
us.
We have to take action,particularly as men.

(01:50:36):
We have to have courage tostand up to the bullies in our midst.
Doesn't matter who you are,whether you think of yourself in
that way you don't have toadopt the identity as the man who
stands, stands up.
But I think men are called tostand up and say no, we won't participate
in this and sort of committhemselves to a higher moral order.
Because you know, I hear a lotof guys and I'm surprised it took

(01:50:59):
me this long to make this joke.
You know, they talk aboutknowing what time it is.
Right.
And right.
But there is a degree wherethat's true.
But ultimately, no matter whattime it is, we still have eternity
to think, think about.
And if the things that you'redoing because of what time it is
means that you lose eternity,which a lot of men seem to be on

(01:51:20):
that path.
You know, I'm not one to judgehearts or eternal destinies, who
knows, right.
But certainly to watch men'smoral character change as they try
to quote, save the westbecause of what time it is, that
seems to me to be a profoundlyshort sighted mistake.
And, and I think more, moreChristian men need to stand up and
start saying these things.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.

(01:51:41):
Yeah.
So what does the future looklike for Wasson watches?
Well, you know, we just, I'vehad my watches on pre order for several
months.
The next round of the Wassonautomatic field watch, which I'm
wearing one of the old ones,but I got my first box of them the
other day and so I've startedshipping those out.

(01:52:04):
The next round that we'repretty pre ordered.
We've got a few differentmodels in the works.
We've got a women's watch thatwe're working on that I, I believe
we'll have a prototype readyin the next week or two.
As soon as I have those inhand, you know, I'll got to evaluate
them and see if they're readyor if we need, they need more work.
But once they're ready, I'llbe, you know, kind of publicly showing

(01:52:27):
those.
We're also working on a divewatch called the Dominion.
It's named after Genesis 1:20, 28.
Right.
You know, where God tells manto, to be fruitful and multiply and
to take dominion.
So it's kind of based on, onthat and I'm excited about it from
just a messaging perspective,but also just it's going to be an

(01:52:48):
awesome watch and it's goingto be our first watch that's assembled
in the United States.
If you know much aboutmanufacturing, it's difficult.
You know, there's a lot ofespecially cost barriers and there's
also some talent barriers thatWe've lost some of our manufacturing
capabilities, the U.S. but,but I really do want to manufacture

(01:53:09):
in the US and long term, Iwant to bring more of my manufacturing
here, but that'll be our firstone that's, that's assembled here.
And so for on the watch front,those are the big things we, we have
at least in this sort of nearterm developing.
But beyond that, man, I just,I'm gonna stay in this fight.
I, I'm hoping that this fire Ireferenced in the other room that

(01:53:34):
we can get it from, put out sothat I'm not always having to talk
about the fire that's goingon, so to speak.
But as long as it's going, youknow, I'm here for it.
I'm not going to give it up.
What are some of the positivethings that have come out of, out
of your experience of tryingto wake people up to the fire?
Man, I've had a lot of peoplereach out who are Jewish or of Jewish

(01:53:57):
descent and, and also just forthe casual listener out there, you
know, Jew is typically, peoplethink of it and they, they don't
know if you're talking aboutthe religion or the ethnicity, but
Jew is an ethnicity.
There are a lot of ChristianJews, there is a lot of atheist Jews,
and of course there are Jewswho follow Judaism.

(01:54:18):
But so I've had a lot of Jewsreach out and just express their
gratitude that they, that, youknow, I talked about feeling isolated.
A lot of times they feelisolated as a people group and they
feel like they look around andthey don't feel like they see a lot
people of allies.
They kind of see the worldclosing in on them.
And so it's been anopportunity for me to, you know,

(01:54:38):
to project the light of Christon them and to, to point them to
Christ and to share the gospelwith some of them or some of them
who are believers to encouragethem right in, in, in our, our brotherhood
in Christ.
You know, I've met, I've madesome new friends and I, I've met
some people who, who havegotten to witness their, their moral

(01:54:59):
courage.
You know, like I'd mentionedJames Lindsay as someone who, who
I would call a friend at this point.
I didn't know anything abouthim before, but, but he's someone
I'm honored to call a friend.
You're someone I would call afriend that, you know, we don't talk
all the time or anything, butyou're an ally that I see.
You're out there across thebattlefield and, and it's like I

(01:55:21):
Do look forward to a time.
Time it when in glorificationwhere there's no more death and no
more pain and Christ wipesevery tear from our eyes.
I look forward to that.
But there's also somethingabout being in the fight and knowing
that you're, you're fightingthe good fight, that's rewarding.

(01:55:41):
And if this is like what Godmade me for and that and the time
that he made me for and I'mdoing what I'm supposed to be doing,
then, then that's great, youknow, I can, I can do that all day
as long as God will have me doit and as long as I'm alive to do
it.
You know, to live as Christand to die is gain.

(01:56:01):
Sounds like you certainlydidn't expect that this was the journey
that starting a watch companywould take you on.
Definitely not.
Definitely not, man.
Not.
Not even close.
I couldn't, I could not havepredicted this.
The longer I live, live, themore things I've experienced in life,
the more I know that I cannotpredict what's coming.

(01:56:23):
Right.
You look forward.
There have been so many pointsin my life where I've stopped and
I've looked back like fiveyears prior and said like, no, I
never would have seen myself here.
And that, that only becomesmore extreme and how true it is over
time.
So I don't, I don't knowwhat's going to happen five years
from now, man.
I'm not even, I'm not evengoing to try to predict that.

(01:56:46):
Right.
You make watches, not time machines.
Yes, so far.
So far.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Well, Paul, I reallyappreciate your generosity of time,
the generosity of telling thisstory and of course your courage,
speaking up and being morallyconvicted about what you're seeing
and saying something like,hey, I'm not with those guys.
This is where I stand.

(01:57:07):
And then.
Right.
Riding out, you know what Ican only imagine was a massive wave
of hatred that I don't knowthat we're necessarily as people
meant to endure and yet endureit we must.
So I thank you andcongratulate you on that.
Thank you, Will.
I appreciate you.
I appreciate your courage andjust you as an ally and for having
me on the show.
It's definitely been fun andyeah, I look forward to people getting

(01:57:30):
to check it out.
Definitely.
So where would you like tosend people to find out more about
you and what you do?
Yeah.
So two points.
Places Wassonwatch.com W-A S SO N watch dot com.
That's our website.
You can buy our watches there,find out more about our company.
And then on X, you know, we'vetalked about X a lot.
My, my Twitter handle on XIsson watch.

(01:57:53):
Follow me there.
That's where I'm definitelymost active online.
You can read about me on mywebsite, but you can actually sort
of witness what I'm saying anddoing and thinking day to day on
X.
Wonderful.
I'll be sure to send peoplethat way.
Thank you so much, Paul.
Thank you.

(01:58:29):
Sa.

All Episodes

PAUL BROWN - From Watches to Warfare: A Christian Entrepreneur Exposes Woke Right Information War

KEY TAKEAWAYS

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

CONNECT WITH PAUL / WASSON

FOLLOW US FOR MORE

ADVERTISERS

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}PAUL BROWN - From Watches to Warfare: A Christian Entrepreneur Exposes Woke Right Information War