It's Hyperreal Fascism then? // 242

We discuss the proposition of hyperreal fascism as presented in this video essay (https://youtu.be/R9fpm-lorIU) and its relationship to current events and the Trump Administration

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
I may be just a country YouTuber, but I wanted
to know from my political theorist slash politically historically aware
of friends, are we really now truly officially in fascism
or is it all just clickbait? And speaking of clickbait,
just as I say this, I'm checking either yesterday or today,

(00:33):
Johnny Harris is trying to view count and probably successfully
view count magmi on my video. Are we in fascism yet?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I saw that Johnny Harris is a weird like I
feel like he made cool videos, and then his videos
started getting I don't know, to YouTube.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, they're very YouTube like. It's almost like they're
created by the algorithm instead of him making them for
people to actually watch. This is the hyperreal Yeah, exactly,
they got algorithm and chasing. But then there's another thing
that I've noticed a lot of creators.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Doing and including you Pills by the way, that I
find interesting and in my mind it almost seems like
a counterintuitive and maybe it's not a strategy. Maybe it's
just because the longer your creator you're a creator on YouTube,
the more compulsively you have this this need to do this,

(01:28):
which is make longer videos and It's the reason it
sounds counterintuitive to me is because people's attention spans, Like
you'd think that it would be better to make shorter
videos because people would be more likely to finish it,
But maybe that's not the way the algorithm works. But like,
and that includes Johnny Harris. I mean, I feel like
his videos used to be like twenty minutes, thirty minutes,
another like an hour and ten minutes a year. Last one,

(01:48):
which we're going to talk about today, is fifty six minutes.
Our friend where in Hell. I mean, he's been making
video says for for a while, but he makes like
two hour, two and a half hour videos, and it's like, fuck,
am I going to sit down and watch this whole
fucking thing? Like Jesus Christ, Is it just self indulgence
of YouTubers or is there a reason you're doing that?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
No, that's a that's a intuited performance reason that I
think it was funny that you bring that up, because
I was talking to Worre and Hell exactly about this
topic and we agreed there was a big meta shift.
There's a metashift probably about three or so years ago,
and it just turns out that you know, before a
twenty minute video was like ideal. Yeah, and there's like

(02:28):
diminishing returns if it's longer than that. Now, if you
have like a forty minute video, you get way more
views than if you had two twenty minute videos. Like
it's much better to have a fourty minute video. It'll
get more than double a twenty minute video about the
same topic. It seems that's so weird.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I wonder why. I wonder what the YouTube like corporate
rationale is for that, because you would think that it's
like you want to playoff of people's attention spans, right,
And you even said.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Something no, no, no, no, no, I don't I don't think
or I don't I don't know if it's an algorithm thing.
And I'm not suggesting it's an algorithm thing. I think
it's more of a change in people's viewing habits because well,
COVID is a part of it. COVID you're sitting down
to watching to sit and watch a video. Now, I
think people treat YouTube a lot more like a podcast.

(03:18):
Oh yeah, they put it in their ear and then
walk around doing other things, or put it on the
TV and do other things, maybe even watch it in
the car.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Podcast yeah, background noise yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
And I think that's also because there are a lot
more like filmed podcasts on YouTube. It makes up a
lot more of the top channels. Now. Yeah, So people
go there expecting, you know, a longer viewing experience. So
if they see the time length and it's only like
twenty minutes, then they're thinking, well, I can't do that.
I can't do very much in that time, So I'm
not going to sit down and watch this. I'm going

(03:52):
to click this long one instead, because there's it'll take
up more of my my earspace.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Oh holy shit, you're actually I'm realizing that I might
even be doing this because but only only at very
specific times in the day. At night well exercise, yes,
But also I tend to fall asleep, Like I tend
to like leave something running on my laptop, although usually
it's like podcasts and then I just like put them
on low volume and just like leave it running. And

(04:17):
I will say that I sometimes look through like my
YouTube algorithm and then if I see something that's like
under thirty minutes, I'm like, well, I don't know if
that's going to be long enough for me to fall asleep.
Is that gonna stop, so I do click on longer stuff.
So I guess maybe I'm contributing to this algorithmic change
also myself, even but it's interesting. It felt counterintuitive to
me anyway. It's not really what we're here to talk about.

(04:39):
We're here to talk about a video that you recently released. Pills,
your latest video. I believe it was about a week ago.
It's called the Age of Hyperreal Fascism, and I found
it very thought provoking. This category of fascism is certainly
something that I have thought about that has definitely come
up in the podcast a few times. But maybe we

(05:00):
could just start people. Some of you have probably already
watched the video, maybe some of you haven't, but I'm
curious about where the idea for the video was percolating.
Was it something that's been kind of like because I
obviously I do this podcast with you every week, So
when I watched the video, I definitely did feel like,
oh okay, Like I think there's things that he's said

(05:21):
during the podcast, and I can see that they're kind
of all being put together into this video. So how
did it come about?

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I was actually nothing to do with Trump. It was
quite simply from Christy Nomes's announcement when she was in
Texas wearing a stupid looking cowboy hat and then called
that lady that got shot in the Honda Pilot a terrorist.
Oh yeah, okay, I had seen south Park prior to that,
but I didn't even know who Christy Nome was. I

(05:48):
didn't know anything about her.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
I kept waiting for you to have a clip of
south Park in the video, but maybe you couldn't do
it for copyright reasons of like her face melting, I
thought you were, You're going to have that.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
That is too crue. That's far too crude, okay from
my sensibilities. No, no, uh, that video it was that whole,
the look of the video, the content of that video,
the guys with the machine gun boats on the side,
and it just gave me the sense that I was
trying to replicate in the video, like is this real?
Is this supposed to be real? What is this? And

(06:21):
who is this for?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah? So what is the thesis? How would you succinctly
put the thesis of the video? Like what do you
think the point you were trying to make? Just for
listeners who haven't like listened to or watched it yet,
Like what were you trying to say?

Speaker 1 (06:35):
The point was both to draw continuities with the past
and to show what's different from the past. But really
what I wanted to get at is what what does
this estheticization feel feel like? What does it feel like
when half of the feed is AI slop? What does
it feel like when there's these edits of of UH

(07:00):
deportations and people breaking into houses getting arrested, and it's
like set to pop music and all these fucking weird
commercials like what is this overall administration unify their dog shit?
Just obviously fake aesthetics with a hodgepodge political program that's

(07:22):
thrown together that seems to draw a lot of inspiration
from historical fascism, and then how is it that's good?
And then of course the sheen of militarism put on
top this like tough guy, tough girl talk, Yeah we'll
blow you up, but just with like the most profoundly undisciplined,
unintelligent people that are putting this all out and thinking

(07:43):
like this is a great idea, This makes them look good.
So really the only way to express it is in
video form, just to show them talking, to show the
commercials they put out to put show the aesthetics that
they put out, thinking this is fucking awesome, because that
shows more than you could ever say.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
It's kind of a well, even the militarism itself is
a form of aestheticization, right, Like you almost wonder like
part of the motivation has got to be like some
kind of an aesthetic motivation to just show that there's
like people on the streets, Like there's like military on
the streets, and you know, give people. I think I'm
guessing Trump's goal is he wants to give his supporters

(08:22):
the sense that he's really doing something about mass migration, right,
He's really look at all the people on the streets,
you can see them, right, and it gives you this
probably emotional, i don't know, reassurance obviously for his supporters, right,
Like I think I feel like that's that's the intent,
it seems to me.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, even the far right, like the Gropers, their complaint
Nick Foints complain about Trump is that he's doing this
all for show. It's all TV. And the problem is,
of course he's not actually deporting enough people. So the
image shit is a problem for all detractors.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
So one of the concepts that you Drew on is
this hyper real? And I found and as someone who
doesn't know Bodriard, I think you did a good job
of kind of of pointing out where everyone gets hyperreal
hyperreality wrong. So I'm curious if you could say more
about what this common mistake that people make.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Well, this is just the metaphysical order of things that
we commonly understand, and we still understand. It's that we
have real stuff originals, then there's copies, and there's fakes.
These are second degree, their second order, and then last
we have hyperreal and that's when there's no division between

(09:41):
those two things. So the mistake that people make with
respect to Disneyland, like in a video, I looked at Wikipedia,
I asked chat GBT, and both told me that Disneyland
is hyper real when it's not. In the text, it
specifically says Disneyland's a fake, and we go to the
fake that replace this is the real. So the real

(10:01):
is the thing that used to be real, it's not
the thing that is now fake. And that's the mistake
constantly made. Now they are connected because in the hyper
real there's not really distinctions between reels and fakes. They
can be confused, but if you want to make a
guess at it, look at something that you think is real.

(10:24):
That's probably the hyperreal. Not something that everybody knows is fake.
Not VR, not fake dinosaurs, not Disneyland. It's things that
people tend to believe are real. Those are much more
likely to be hyperreal. So the dinosaur example, the dinosaur example,
like Rick Roderick, he's great on some things, but not this.

(10:46):
Dinosaurs are a terrible example because there aren't any real ones.
But go something better is something like democracy. Do we
live in a real democracy or a fake democracy? Most
people believe we live in a real democracy. So then
you got to ask are our votes? Is our voting
process truly democratic? Or is it something pseudo democratic? Harder

(11:07):
to answer? Or again my first YouTube video ever. If
we watch reality TV shows all day, we watch people
fall in love for money and fame. That's fake, obviously,
But is there real love that isn't that because the
show makes love fake because it's instrumentalized that they're doing
it for fame and money. But is it possible to

(11:28):
have love that isn't instrumental at all? Like what we
call true love? In a fairy tale, when a prince
falls in love with a commoner. Is that possible because
of so many fakes, seeing so much fake true love
that the idea or concept of true love becomes hyper realized.
So look at what is believed in as a real

(11:49):
thing for hyper reality, not the obvious fakes. The obvious
fakes sort of pave the way, but they're not the
stage in the process of hyperreality.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
It replaces reality, but it collapses the distinction like that.
There's like the matrix theory as well, right, Like, like
you know, we all experiencing the matrix, and there's still
some real world out there somewhere, but what we experience
is the matrix, and it's just as good, if not better,
And we're all just like that guy who chooses like

(12:20):
the steak and the orgasm and all that stuff that
the matrix can give you over the real kind of
disappointing world. But that's not Boudriard's point at all, and
famously didn't like the matrix.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
And I think, you know, like the.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Asceticization of politics goes back to Walter Benumine, right, and
he opposes it to I mean, I guess if it's
a dialectical movement of history where you know, technology and
what he refers to as the apparatus of perception, so
things that extend the eye and the ear and the

(12:57):
nervous system, like cameras, photography and film and sound technology.
When those things encounter politics, there's a dialectic there of
the aestheticization of politics, which is he puts on the
fascist side, and then the politicization of esthetics, which is

(13:20):
supposed to be like the communist response to the aestheticization
of politics, like if he says, you know, fascism wants
to glorify war and the leader, and like everybody looking
at a single image of the crowd looking at a
single figure like in Lenny Reefenstahl's Triumph of the Will,

(13:43):
then communism has to respond with the politicization of esthetics,
which which is more like a democratization of the image
and a taking over of the image by the masses,
because that's ultimately what mass media is supposed to bring,
the image individually to every household where everybody can criticize

(14:06):
it and make what they want of it. But again,
like you know, Bougriard's more recent than Benyamine, and there's
a lot of resonance there. But I think Benjamine still
kind of has the zion in his The politicization of
aesthetics is just like the zion of the real, right

(14:27):
right where there's still some reel out there, and.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Like Jurassic Park and Disneyland, and people point to those
as examples of hyperreal. But and I took you to
be saying, hey, those everyone knows those are fake. And
the point of hyperreal is something that feels real that
you don't know is fake.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, real and fake is one of the main orders.
But there's also like original versus counterfeit, original versus copy,
or like real and model or real in the map
as a comment once, so like we use tons of
polling data to predict how an election is gonna go.
But then the candidates watch the polling data and start

(15:03):
to do politics or quote unquote politics hyperreal politics based
on polling data instead of whatever real politics used to be,
which is like changing who has power or reorganizing power.
They don't do that. They see the charts and see, oh, okay,
I'm I'm slipping with black people. I'm gonna go get
my photo taken out of black church this weekend. Oh,

(15:25):
the models say, conservatives want me to be strong at
the border. So I'm gonna get a cowboy hat and
a gun and go get my picture taken at the border,
and then Conservatives will move to the middle and vote
for me instead. So the hyper real bit is not
the performance aspect, not the getting your photo taken bit.
It's that your politics is now causally derived from models

(15:45):
instead of whatever used to be real politics, which is
something more like I don't machiavellian or being willing to
exert real state power over problems. So in that sense,
like the Democrats are more hyperreal than the pure image,
pure surface Republicans.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Right, and then so how does that apply to to
what's going on now with like Christinome and Trump and
like this aestheticization of politics, Like where do you see
the hyper real aspect? Because obviously people who don't agree
with Trump are clearly seeing Christinome wearing a cowboy hat
and they feel like it's not real.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Probably right, Well, I mean it's both. Christinome's hyper reality
is that she literally has real authority in the American government.
She's the head of the DHS, and she can create cops,
and at the same time she dresses up like a cop,
which is not a real cop, Like, what are you faking?
You're faking something that you also have, And she can

(16:46):
go a point, real cops, real real ICE agents with
real authority, but their authority like what is that it's
real because they have a gun or is it fake
because they can't actually legally arrest American citizens and then
they do any It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
They're killing people.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, they can't be fake because they can still shoot people,
and they are. But then, you know, there's the precession
of Simulacra and Bogyard as well, because it throws the
real into question as well, because ice are ice. People
call ICE fake cops. Yeah, and then the follow up
question is what's a real cop? We find out we

(17:25):
have no answer to that, and then we go, oh shit,
that's what the hype reality of it is is. Oh
there's no oh shit, the realities. There's no reality to
be found. But before we had the fakes, we never
doubted that a real cop was a real cop. There's
no reason to doubt it.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Right right, that's interesting, yeah, yeah, because they point to
they're fake cops, but then but they're actually killing people
and like detaining people, so that seems pretty real.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
But yeah, Another example just came to mind is the
Charlie Kirk assassination. The Charlie Kirk assassination and any assassination
from here on out is going to be planned with
the media spectacle in mind. It's planned with fakes. Having
Aren was about to say, so every assassination here there
can never be another real one. They're all going to
be fake. But now we think what was a real one?

(18:08):
Is a real one? Does be done because it's more
politically effective, because an assassination can have real outcomes? Is
it done because someone is more deserving? Like right, arch,
did Archduke Ferdinand deserve to die? Is that what made
that political assassination real? Or were they never real?

Speaker 2 (18:26):
It's kind of interesting to me because in both those cases,
when people say that's not a real assassination, that's not
a real cop, the real aspect that they seem to
be saying is not located seems to actually be some
kind of moral content because in the case of they're

(18:47):
not real cops, I think what most people mean is
they're not upholding, you know, like idealistic principles of what
police are supposed to be, which is, you know, protect
and serve the public. Right there, they're out there, they're killing,
so they're not real cops. So I don't know. I
wonder if there's And in the case obviously the assassination
you just said it that it's like it's not a

(19:07):
real assassination because it's not for you know, virtuous or
practical like good strategic reasons or whatever, like a real
assassination would be doing something, would be contributing to the
furtherance of some kind of a goal. So that's interesting
because it seems like there's a slippage or like a

(19:29):
or like a an equivocation or something like from an
empirical claim about something being real to a moral claim.
But maybe we can also reject the distinction between a
moral and a factual claim there. But I don't know
if you get what I'm saying there. But that's I
don't know if that complicates anything.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
But it does well the core by which the thing
is accepted by everyone to be real, because that's what
reality is. It's everything. Everyone accepts it. So if Valkyrie
had succeeded and Hitler was killed, would that be a
real assassination? I think most people would say, yeah, that
would have been real, yes, But shooting a podcaster because

(20:10):
you know it's gonna be on TV because you don't
like you don't like him, this, this doesn't seem to
have like the the efficacy behind it. Also, if you
kill Hitler, like there's a good chance the Nazi party
falls right then and there. Yeah, if you kill Charlie Kirk,
what happens? Nothing?

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Nothing, nothing, Maybe even TPOs gets stronger, your.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Wife sells more merch.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
It just feels like any of these events, according to Boudriard,
or according to Thinking with the hyper Real, all of
these events are completely fabricated, like reality itself is a
complete fiction of the media. Like it's all just just

(20:54):
I'm just trying to use like very basic terms like
reality itself is just an effect of the media. Right,
we have these event based reality that media presents us,
and that's but that's it. It's just fiction, that's it.
That's all we get. There's nothing real behind any of

(21:17):
these events that are presented as quote unquote real, which
is why, like you can show the clips in your
video of of of Christy Nomes sitting there on CNN
just arguing with the anchor about what she said and

(21:38):
what happened like you know, oh she was dragged out
of the car or like something like whatever, whatever, it
doesn't even matter.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's known that they were that they were terrorists.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
She went back on what she actually said, she said
something different than what she actually said, and then what
she actually said is completely contradicted by the video footage.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
But none of it matters. She can just sit.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
There and say so can contradict herself, contradict what the
video actually shows.

Speaker 4 (22:10):
Nobody really cares.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
And then the top comment on some of her footage
speaking elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Is like, this looks fake.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
This is all fake, Like it looks like she's just
got a green screen behind her and all of that
is fake, and that it's like, okay, so then where
are those people who are projected on that green screen
behind It doesn't even matter because the fake theory that
what's behind her is fake is probably coming from the
right that supports her anyway, and it's it's just a

(22:43):
it's just a hall of mirrors, but there's nothing there's
no origin of the reflection. The reflection is originated somehow
in the mirrors, and there's no there's no point where
it all stops. That's I mean it's weird.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
So I wanted to ask you all we're talking about
all the stuff that happens, and I wanted to ask
you My goal, I said, was to make you have
the feeling of what hyper real fascism specifically feels like.
The militarism, the clips, the lies, the truths, the mix

(23:19):
and I would describe it as sort of like a
discussed a funny disgust. It's funny disgust thing. What do
you feel when you see a clip show like that?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
It is? Yes, yes, I would say, I'm grow Look
I've said a couple of times on this podcast too,
that lately, I find it very difficult to keep up
with what the Trump administration's doing, and I feel like
your video sort of captured. Maybe the reason why is
because it's so over it's so overwhelmingly like performative and aestheticized,

(23:55):
or there's an attempt to but it's sloppy. That's the
other thing that I find kind of fascinating about it
is I was gonna say when Eric was talking that,
you know, to bring it back to fascism, or to
pivot a little bit to the concept of fascism. I
feel like the fascist move that like Christinome is doing
in that interview where she's like, no, that's not what happened,

(24:16):
Like that's her. That is in a way a fascist
move because it's trying to just decide what happened and
silence any sort of opposition. She's doing it in a
very light way because the journalist is still able to
be like, well, I saw the video and that's just
not But it's like she's getting ahead of herself almost,
That's what I mean. When it's kind of sloppy. It's

(24:38):
like she's acting like because Trump won, they have all
this power to just decide what reality is and you know,
and silence their opposition by with brute force in this case,
with like brute rhetorical force. But it's sloppy. It's like
it like doesn't really work. You know, it might work

(25:01):
for some of the for some of the really like
diehard supporters, but it's like she's getting ahead of herself,
like the way that she's rhetorically just trying to define
what happened, like what the reality of that situation is
kind of by brute force.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, I find it notable because you both mentioned the
same thing about her like pounding on this contradictory account
of what happened and just refusing to, you know, be
accountable for having eyeballs. And like it's like this authoritarian
expression that she believes the reporter, I think it's Jake Tapper.

(25:40):
Jake Tapper has to accept what she is saying it
because she is saying it because she has this position,
because she has power. And that's a weird tick. I mean,
I'm not gonna look, I'm not gonna quate this with fascism.
I'm not going to go that far. But it's a
very it's like a very simple minded person's understanding of

(26:00):
what power is. It's saying, like, my guy one, I'm
in charge. I'm in charge of DHS. Therefore you have
to listen to me. You have to listen to what
I say reality is and how you're challenging me, and
that's you can't what are you doing? You can't do that?
And this seems like this doesn't seem like some sophisticated

(26:21):
fascist propaganda campaign. It sounds it seems like the emergence
of a stupid person. An elementary school kid gets to
be the teacher special helper, and she's abusing that position.
That's that's what it seems like. It's not. It's sophisticated
in that the machinery seems to have this like purpose

(26:46):
that is happening despite the fact that all the people
doing it are too stupid to actually wield this power
in the way that we are led to believe fascists
have in the past.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
I was also going to mention and like you also
kind of anticipated this when you were mentioning that the
estheticization of politics is not limited to fascism, because one
of the thoughts I had. I don't know if you
said that in the video, by the way, but one
of the thoughts I had when I was watching it is, well,
it's like, obviously the communist regimes were sort of doing
the same thing, right, like the Soviet Union they were,

(27:19):
they were doing the same kind of estheticization. Would we
call them fascist?

Speaker 3 (27:24):
No?

Speaker 1 (27:25):
I mean I wouldn't. You can make a You can
make an entire career off saying that communism and fascism
are the same thing if you're Tim Snyder. But no,
that this is why they invented the term totalitarian, just
so they can they can pretend that Horrseshoe theory is real.
But no, if I said, I said, if any if
anyone's responsible for the aestheticization of politics, it's not even

(27:50):
the fascist most of all. It's American capitalists most of all.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
No, No, I know you're not equivocating, but I was
just more curious about, Like, I guess that was another
reason why I feel like there's something. I guess like
the point of bringing up the Soviet example or other
kind of communist whatever they call totalitarian regimes is another
point of like in the case that this temptation to

(28:18):
silence opposition is trans ideological. It's just a basic, I
think human temptation that when you're a group and you
have power, I think there's a temptation to aestheticize to
silence opposition. It's kind of like what I was talking
about a few weeks back about how no one really
likes free speech, like that whenever someone else has power,

(28:39):
they're like, they will argue in the name of free
speech when their speech is being affected, but then once
they have more cultural power, they're happy to in most
cases silence the speech of people that they disagree with.
Like there's a basic human frailty there, and I think
there's something parallel going on, which is why I don't know,

(29:02):
like you know, insofar as silencing opposition and trying to
control the terms of how things are aestheticized and like
the values are determined, I think is just a basic
human temptation.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Okay, no, no, no, we're I don't even know where
we are right now. But if we're just saying, like
Christy Nome trying to tackle over Jake Tapper in an
interview is fascism, then we're way too far away from
any any functional definition of what fascism is. Yes, I
know you're just making a point about her, I guess,
but yeah, are we can we can we maintain this

(29:37):
distinction rather than getting it blurry? It's too blurry right now.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Well, that's the thing that that's the thing that I
agree with you, like, I'm I'm I'm all for like
making distinctions. I guess that obviously in this case, the
distinction would be the intended outcome of those efforts. Right. So, communists,
like at least nominally at the beginning, wanted to have
a communist society that helped workers. It kind of degenerated,

(30:04):
but that was the original intent. And fascists obviously will
sometimes speak in the name of workers, but don't speak, don't.
I don't think that their interest in the outcome. I
think the distinction is in the outcome. But I'm saying
that the tactic is maybe universal.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Well what is if that's If it's universal, then this
isn't fascism, So what is fascist about it? Because if
it's not fascism, then I just used fascism in the
title as clickbait, and then Johnny Harris is just using
fascism in the title as clickbait.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yes, well, that was kind of what I was trying
to build up towards because I generally agree with and
you even saying at one point in the video, which
I appreciated, you said, you know, I don't want to
I don't want to blur the lines too much. I
want to try to make a distinction. But then when
you started focusing on aestheticization, I was kind of like, well,
aestheticization just happens with tons of political ideologies, like that's

(30:57):
you know, maybe except for liberalism, but liberalism kind of
does have its own estheticization too.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
I mean, the estheticization that's not my term. That's what
Walter Benjamine said fascism does and communism does not do.
But he says this in what nineteen thirty six.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
I mean the huge we have to historicize these things,
like because the huge difference is like liberalism is pre information,
pre mass media. I mean, I mean like electronic mass media, right,
whereas fascism is very much like a creature of twentieth

(31:36):
century media, right. And I think that's huge to keep
in mind. Like I was looking at at Umberto echoes
essay on fascism, and he just kind of says, it's
a collective. It's a grab bag of contradictory things. Like

(31:59):
if you're looking at you know, the Franco regime, you
have this hyper catholic Falangism, he calls it, or you
have Nazism, which is pagan, polytheistic and anti Christian.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
He says.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
He says here fascism became an all purpose term because
one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more
features and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take
away imperialism from fascism, and you still have Franco and Salazar.
Take away colonialism, and you still have the Bulkan fascism
of the Mustachias, the Eustaches.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
Add to the.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Italian fascism, a radical anti capitalism, and you have Ezra
pound add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism,
which is completely alien to official fascism. And you have
one of the most respective fascist, one of the most
respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola end quote, who if you

(32:58):
look at Ivola's like modern and followers, Yeah, they're strange
people who like love Nordic mythology and and like flexing
and and bodybuilding at like like fascism is is tailor
made for the hyper real, which is why going back
to Pills saying, how does this make you feel? Like

(33:21):
it's not the term is wrong, but it's surreal, Like
surreal is the wrong term for it, but it's it's
it gives you this because surrealism, you're looking at it
and it's like, Okay, this is dream like, this is psychoanalytic.
These things are all obviously impossible together, but they're there.
Hyper real is like the inverse. It's like all these
things are so normal that like they're too normal. Like

(33:45):
you have this trad wife tendency of hyper traditionalism and
extremely well defined gender roles sitting side by side, like
Christine Gnome, who's completely subverting as you pointed out in
the video, Christynome is basically like a transvestite, like you know,

(34:10):
being this ice Barbie dressing up in all the same
things that classic Barbie did, like in like traditional male
roles and occupations, and then you end up with this
strange thing that I thought is like you have progressive
you have a progressivism within fascism, and that's fine. You

(34:31):
have all these things because fascism has no center, and
it's a creature of the modern media, and silencing opposition
is really only an issue when all reality is is
just constituted by community. It's just an epiphenomena of communication,
media and nothing else. So of course silencing opposition is

(34:56):
the modern version of warfare. It's just you know, killing
your enemies is silencing them. There's no difference. That's that's
as far as it goes. And of course we try
on the left in our like kinds of often pathetic
ways of participating in that silencing, but it completely backfires

(35:17):
because leftism still has I think leftism just still has
roots in a pre media, pre information age and it's
still kind of fundamentally at odds with this. I think
fascism is a creature of this stuff. It's like Batman, like,
you know, we merely adopted the media, but fascism was

(35:38):
born in it, right, Like we just can't cope, I think,
I don't know, maybe maybe that's part of the ongoing problem.
But I don't know if I want to see a
fascism or like I don't want to see like the
leftism that has the same kind of parents as fascism does.
But I don't know what it be leftism anymore.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
It's just collapse.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
That's I don't know, but I guess Boudriard's point is that, like,
you know, the distinction between left and the right just
collapses at this point.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, I feel like part of it is just that
the left just hasn't had any meaningful political power, is
maybe like a more institutional way of putting it, so
it hasn't had the opportunity to actually take its participation
and do what like Trump is doing by putting police
on the streets to like, I don't know, whatever, do

(36:28):
something equivalent that the left would want, like go after
you know, arrest cops, arrest cops or like arrest people
who are accused of white supremacy and go like send
them on the street and go arrest them, right, Like
that would be I guess the equivalent, and maybe in
those efforts would accidentally shoot a few innocent white people,
right and be like, oh, well, we're just trying to
get the white supremacists right, and it's like, whoops, we

(36:51):
shot some white people by accident. We went a little
too far. And obviously the left is nowhere near that.
So I obviously am in no way trying to morally equivocate.
I just want to make that crystal crystal clear. I
was just more saying that that I think there's like
why I think the term is you is sometimes use
less or obscures is because I think it's like a

(37:12):
tendency that is that is ever present, Like to want
to do something that cements your power is just a
temptation that exists. But then in the case of this video,
like I don't know if we actually I do think
it's maybe a bit clickbait because I don't think that
you gave a like a like you said, You're like,

(37:33):
I'm going to give a clear definition, but I feel
like you kind of didn't. You kind of just talked
about you focused on the aestheticization which, like I said,
I think could apply to a lot of politics on
all sides.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
I think the closest I got to definition was this
is a science system, because a bunch of Marxists pointed
out something that I I meant as subtext that if
you're if you're going to look at the material connaction
of fascism, it's basically just capitalism. The distinction between capitalism

(38:06):
in decay and fascism, I think is the semiotic distinction
between them. And that's why I didn't call Trump a fascists.
I still think that's a bit of a stretch, but
in so far as insofar as motivation matters, right, insofar
as belief matters more than the appearance of belief, which

(38:29):
becomes something that's hard to distinguish. But one thing I
found also that we haven't brought up specifically yet is
house Fascism's always been this boogeyman, right, and now there's
all these signs of it. But this is so stupid.
It's so stupid that it almost dares you to believe

(38:50):
in it. And then you think, like, was it this
way in the twenties and thirties, was it the same
way the last time around?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
You read Benyamine, you read Himer like Eclipse of Reason
or probably a bunch of the Frankfurt school. They they
kind of take this seriously as like intellectual occlusion done intelligently,
done out of manipulation. And it's really hard to give
these guys any of that credit. Like even Stephen Miller

(39:19):
is the most rhetorically fascist, but he's kind of just
a very a very dumb guy. He's arguing exactly, he's
arguing with one of the uh, he's arguing with only
the Obama podcast guys on Twitter, and it's like, you
will rue the day you betrayed the proud American Republic.

(39:40):
You shall be called betrayer in the attles of some
ship like that. And this is like one of the
smart ones they have. He's got at least double the
IQ of Christine Nome and he talks like a stupid,
an angry nerd on Xbox Live.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Well, that's kind of what I was trying to get
at when I was saying that, like it's so sloppy,
like it's so bad, and it does make me wonder
about like I said, it's like a half big almost
feeling that I have that there's something about the media
environment that I guess I wouldn't be surprised if we
went back to like Mussolini and the people around him,

(40:15):
or Hitler and the people around him, and we would
find that these people were just as clownish, Like we're
not actually like that smart, But something about the way
that the like the limitations of the media, the slowness
of the media back then, that just made it possible
for them to seem and be in a way more serious,

(40:38):
less constrained, So they don't appear as clownish because they
don't like have a chance to be exposed as clownish,
whereas today, like like before the attempt can get taken seriously,
I feel like there's something about the media environment that
kind of prevents it from getting serious, and any sort

(41:00):
of clownishness is sort of exposed before it can become serious.
Like I don't really think that people around Mussolini were
that smart, Like I don't think that the people around
Hitler were that smart, like I think a lot in fact,
there's reason to think a lot of them were kind
of like dumb dumbs and were sort of middling or
like not very successful people. When they joined these movements.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
I think we can all agree that at the beginning
of the of Pill's video when we see that YouTuber
I guess ross.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
I showed that video two pills a while ago.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, you guys showed that to me on the podcast.
Really just.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
For right authorization, I mean just yeah, just putting his
illiteracy on complete display for everybody. This guy's like a
multi millionaire by the way it has had. I think
he interviewed Trump. Yeah, he got he got in trouble
for getting Andrew Tait in trouble or something like that.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
I don't know, like he's he's this, that's that's it.
It's just this this utter like I don't know, I
don't like.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
They also just bought the house from Breaking Bad I
just saw today.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Wow, that's weird, Like it is a kind of illiterate
stupidity that fascism just uses as a platform, Like you
can't even pronounce it fascism And yeah, far right what
what what did he say? Far right?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Far right authorization?

Speaker 5 (42:29):
A far right authorization.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
An ultra ultra and atia analism.

Speaker 5 (42:34):
Like ultra oh my god lytist analyst Ultrana just couldn't.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Even handle it.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
And and then he's also just like a vessel for
these ridiculously like either evil forces, like straight up evil
like like like involved in freaking human trafficking or like
whatever Trump is. He's also a platform for that. And

(43:07):
he's just also just this famous rich guy. It's like, Okay,
you have like fascism thrives in that, but it's not
any of those things either, Like I think again, I'm
pretty sure like Mbirdo echoes pointing out what fascism is
just all these grab bag of contradictory features, but it's

(43:28):
somehow still a thing. Again, It's like it's like art
and pornography, Like you know, they're different. We know him
when we see him. We can point things out about them,
but we can't define them.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
One thing that kind of seems different from all the
Triumph of the Will that I watched, which was a
lot more than all but Triumph of the Will, you
get the sense. And again, this might be just a
trick of the camera, right, but it seems like there's
true belief behind this movement, and that's what the purpose
of the film was, was this true belief. And then

(44:04):
we can compare that to belief in Trump today because
belief in Trump today, the true believers are like kuks
and everyone around them knows them as kooks. But in
addition to the true believers, then we have wide swaths
of not true believers, people that will say, well, I

(44:25):
don't really like what he's doing or how he's doing it,
but you know he's ultimately he's better than the left
or something like that. So this this distinction of true
believers being like, I don't know, rare rarefied because of
all this shit going on, Like Steven Miller cannot have
actual fans. It's just it's impossible or Christin. No, there's

(44:46):
no one who can actually believe in these people and
be like, yeah that like this, this is what I'm
going for. But you can have someone like Tim Poole
who goes, haha, it's my boot. I like that, my
boot's on you.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Ha.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yeah. God, that guy's such a fucking clown.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
So this is like an this is like an unreal belief,
and I again, I wonder what it was like, Well,
it was like one hundred years ago. Because it the
non true belief much outweighs the true belief. But the
untrue belief is kind of getting the job done. And
I even said this about Christino herself. It doesn't there's

(45:22):
no real indication that she's like aware, that she's like
obfuscating for a purpose, like an actual end goal, rather
than just obfuscating in the moment because she obviously looks bad.
Like it gives all the indications that there's a conspiracy
going on, But there can't be a conspiracy because they
literally do not have the capacity to conspire towards an

(45:46):
end goal besides like diverting the marketing budget to your
friend or starting up a pump and dumb crypto scheme.
But besides that, it just seems like their only goal
is to not be embarrassed because then Trump will be
mad at them for looking bad on TV. It seems
like the only thing that they're working towards.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, it's mind numbing and it also, I mean, I
have to say, it just reminds me again of Jijik's
whole thing, the about Neil's boor and the horseshoe, Like
I feel like there's a lot of people right now
who don't really believe it but think it works. Even
if you don't believe it, like if you just go
along with it, and you're kind of like, this is

(46:28):
kind of clownish, but I feel like maybe it's still
gonna get me the thing that I want, even though
it's ridiculous, Like the horseshoe. Obviously it's not a good
luck charm. I don't believe in that, but I'm gonna
put it up anyway, because you know, it works even
if I don't believe it. And it does feel like
there's a lot of people who can't earnestly believe in

(46:48):
Stephen Miller or christinom but they just kind of are like, well,
maybe it'll maybe immigration will Maybe I am concerned about immigration,
and like maybe it'll be a better outcome, but it's
obviously also ridiculous. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Ye, yeah, I mean it says something about belief, how
appealing whether or not we call all those sort of
mainstream far right, even if we call them far right
people are fascist, Like fascism has that undercurrent of occultism
and all that strangeness that lies underneath it.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Celtic and.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
Nordic and Roman mythology.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Yeah, like Himmler spent government money trying to find the
Holy Grail and Thor's Hammer, Like maybe they were always.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
This stupid yeah, and like all that stuff that Vola
put together and all those like syncretous things, like official
fascism is just like sort of really boring and austere,
and it's just like a guy in a military outfit.
But then all these undercurrents that are associated with it
are all over the place, like the Holy Grail and

(47:58):
the protocols of the Elder Zion.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
And the.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Holy Roman Germanic Empire and all these different things go
underneath it. The appeal to people's beliefs are at least
capturing the imagination, like all of this stuff that runs
under the surface captures your imagination. And then you have
this sort of boring, austere, kind of plane faced fascism

(48:25):
on the surface of it, or whatever it is, far
right authoritarian, totalitarian, anti modern whatever, drain the swamp and
burn the bridges kind of mentality that actually is doing
the work, and you know, Brexit and tariffs and whatever
else is being sort of justified like that. That all

(48:50):
is then just like the tip of the iceberg. And
then you have this massive undercurrent of all these syncretic
elements that don't really fit together, none of it. If
you try to go through it and rationalize all of
it and put it into this neat like belief system.
It's not gonna work, yeah, exactly. Somehow it does work,
and it brings people on, and it captures people's belief

(49:14):
and imagination, and then it has just these Yeah, it
just has this effect of laundering and and and justifying
the surface ship, which is just really boring stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Oh, I submit that. Ultimately, I think the term is unhelpful.
I think ultimately it's better, like because first of all,
the people who are advocating for the things don't I
self identify as fascist obviously, Like it's like it's it's
obviously a pejorative. It's kind of like the way neoliberalism,

(49:50):
like there are no neoliberals, like no one, no one
calls themselves a neoliberal right like it's it's just it's
purely pejorative. So then that's why I alway think it's
better to just point to specific things that specific people
are doing and then explaining why they're bad, Like, just
do that, just stick with that.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
I think it remains a useful term. I agree, well,
I sympathize with what you're saying, but I think it
remains an interesting term a useful term, just like, for example,
you know, fascism tends to have this really anti modernist

(50:28):
element to it, like it it can be very.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Originally it was very modern, like the Mussolini type was
extremely modernist.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
Well that's what I mean.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Like you can have like these sort of you know,
like the futurist poets, right, like like glorifying technology, like
aestheticizing war like Ben Yumine even mentions this, like people
like Marinetti was his name, Yeah, like glorifying war and technology.

(50:56):
And then you have Hitler going around calling modern art
degenerate art and loving classical art. And so you have
these two elements like extreme anti modernism and technology worship.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
But he also loved like modern architecture.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, well you have this grab you have these two
opposite things.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Hitler did not like.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Modern he didn't, okay, but he didn't like, Oh, you're right, you're.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Like neo classical.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
You're right.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
Hitler was a Hitler was a dedicated classicist, and he
thought modern art was degenerate art when we theme it
when we try to make fascism thematic, like, oh, fascism
is anti modern, but what about the futurists, Like fascism
is anti religious, but what about like the pagan element

(51:45):
of it, Like fascism is really traditionalist, but what about
what about you know, ice?

Speaker 4 (51:53):
What about ice? Barbie?

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Aren't you making my point here that it's not useful?

Speaker 4 (51:58):
No?

Speaker 3 (51:59):
No, because it allows us to hold together these contradictory elements,
which I think is important.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
I don't know that it does. I think it's just confuses.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
It allows us to hold together these unity of opposites
because we know, again, well, if we take benumines, you know,
saying this all has a direction, and the direction is war.
That's that's what the estheticization of politics. The ultimate outcome

(52:28):
of the aestheticization of politics is war. It's a kind
of cynical thrust towards a wartime mentality, I think, And
and even what like Schmidt and the permanent state of emergency,
Like I think, I think there are some unified tendencies

(52:49):
if we try to itemize it and say, you know, oh,
fascism is is authoritarian, an ultnationalist, and totalitar but we
can always point to examples where those things don't apply.
Then how do we define the thing. While fascism remains
a useful term because we say, well, some versions of

(53:12):
fascism have this, Some versions of fascism don't. Some versions
of fascism like it. You know, I don't know it
remains useful because it holds together all these opposing elements,
Like I think, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Sure if it does hold them together, But I would
say that you've persuaded me that to some extent. Maybe
for us intellectual elites, it's it's it's useful, but I
guess I submit that for most people. I mean, I'm
saying that, by the way, sarcastically about us being intellectual elites, Okay,
but you know, I do feel like for most ordinary people,

(53:50):
I would say that it encourages a laziness about being
politically informed. So people just Trump a fascist and then
if you like say, like, why do you think he's
a fact? Like what is he doing? Like most people
will just like not have a good account, Like That's
why I just think like sticking to like what are

(54:12):
the specific things that Trump is doing? Uh, is a
way of being better politically informed. Then to throw around labels.
Labels enable people to stop thinking because they're just like, well,
he's a fascist and they are, And it encourages I
think laziness about being informed about what is actually happening
in our society.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Okay, what about my definition, which was fascism is a
signifying chain that begins with the signifier of the true nation.
And this one I think I got because we started
with are we we covered Lacan in a bunch of episodes,
and right after Lacan we watched a Nick Fuentez video,
and that I think is where I got the definition,

(54:56):
because I was like, this is the thing. Yeah, he
unifies everything because all the stuff we're talking about modernism,
anti modernism, traditionalism. If you have your master signifier, and
the master signifier is the true nation, then really it's
whatever's convenient, it's whatever's at hand to add it on.
So you don't need a unified religious project, you don't

(55:19):
need a unified military project. You can have imperialism, you
cannot have imperialism as long as you have this true nation,
and the true nation is kind of defined in Schmidian terms,
which is whatever constitutes us at the time, then it
also actually I can put forward it also furthers to

(55:40):
explain Trump's upswinging in like Latino voters, for example. But
this would also give you a way to say Trump
is not a fascist because I don't see any indication
that he believes in the true nation. Trump kind of
believes in Trump more than any other grand project. By

(56:00):
that definition, he could be not a fascist. Part of
the administration could be not a fascist, and another part
could be.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
And then but what about what about Like I weren't
the Soviets appealing to the true nation also.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
The true nations as the workers?

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yes, yes, the real blood ins of the real soil,
people who are doing the work in the fields, like
these are the true nation.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
No way, it's Workers of the World Unite and the
Communist International. Plus they have they do have a glorious
a glorious future in the rebirth and the death of
the capitalists. But there is no mythic past.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
And they kind of have the past about interms so
far as they like, they glorify the peasant.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
I think the ultra I think the ultra nationalist thing
is probably one of the better, the more consistent things.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
You don't think the Soviets were ultranationalists.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
I don't think the Red Army like the Motherland. Are
you kid me? Like there's ultranationals. I think I would say.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
You know, obviously nationalism predates fascism like quite quite a while,
at least at least a century, and not not all
nationalism is fascist, but I think, I think, I think
the ethno ethno nationalist xenophobic kind of undercurrent is probably

(57:24):
one of the more consistent things.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Except Mussolini was not really xenophobic at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yeah, I don't. I don't think the ethnic is the base,
but there is an ethnic element, and you can say
possibly that at some point or another the USSR slips
into that, like trying really hard at the Olympics. I
don't know. But in theory, the people the true nation
are the proletariat, and the proletariat are not ethno ethnic
or geographic, and it's it's universal. And also it's a

(57:53):
thoroughly modernist project. The past is bad, there's no there's
nothing like a rebirth because they don't they old like.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
What was the American one, the Maga, you know, the
maga communist people who are trying to sort of combine patriotism,
which whatever nationalism by another name, I guess with communism
just ends up making like a kind of fascist communism.
But I think, you know, communism in the sense that

(58:25):
you know, like Marx would finish his addresses with like
you know, workers of the world unite.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Many many of the strains are internationalists, Like the Trotskyists
didn't get along with the Stalinists because the Stalinists had
a national communism, right, Like you know, the communism in
one country was the big dividing one of the big
dividing points, right, Like the Trotskyists thought they were being
truer to Marx's legacy because they were internationalists.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
And and I don't think I think again, but.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
That's where the temptation, that human temptation comes in, where
like they start with these ideas, but then they get
they degenerate into these like I think this sort of
emotional impulse towards what we kind of call fascism.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Like also, unlike fascism, it changes politics, it changes the
ownership structure. Fascism exists to keep the existing owners in place.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Yes, I was about to say, I was about to
say that maybe one I am somewhat persuaded that the
hearkening to the past, that the kind of like temporal relationship,
the temporal imagination I think is maybe distinguishable where the
Soviets are much more forward looking and much more like

(59:48):
like would not glorify the past, right, because I feel
like communism, the whole thing, was moving forward, moving beyond feudalism, right,
And I think in a way like fascists might be
tempted to look back to aspects of feudalism and say
there was something right about that, whereas I don't think
that a communist would ever say that. So I think

(01:00:08):
I'm open to the temporal imagination I think being different.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
And again, you could point to and Pills showed us
this on the Forbes list of all the immigrants, where
all the billionaire immigrants who are obviously not the ones
being targeted by the anti immigrant sentiment, and yet you
buy into an ethno nationalism right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Well, and the feminism thing, and I mean this actually
maybe cleanly brings us to the final point in Pills's video,
which I kind of agreed with him, because in his
video he says something like, oh, like most of you
stopped watching, but this is maybe the most interesting part
of the video where you kind of analyzed the gender
and family aspects of Christy Nome. Because you know, if

(01:00:59):
I could make the point that I think you were
making at least in part, and then you can finish
it is you were observing. I mean, traditionally fascism would
divide a man's work and a woman's work cleanly and
be like, there are realms of work, there are realms
of society. Public certainly like the public activity that would

(01:01:21):
be the man's domain, right, leadership, policing, like being out there,
and then the woman would stay home. But Christy nomes
the estheticization of her as a woman, but you know,
dressed in police police uniforms and out there doing all
these like nominally traditionally male roles seems to defy the

(01:01:43):
traditional fascist imagination. So I don't know, could you say
more about that, because that was very interesting. How did
you explain that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
And perfectly repeating the like Barbie mythos too, Yes, exactly,
which is which is what I thought was interesting, like
a progressivism within fascism, Yes, subverting gender roles.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Like a woman can do anything, she can be out
there doing these things.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Which again is another contradiction to the traditionalism where you
have you know, traditional gender roles.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
But yeah, which kind of works with fascism because we're
kind of just if there's a point to this episode,
we're kind of getting to it, which is just whatever
whatever advances the cause is fine. It doesn't matter if
they're contradictory signs inclusive signs. But yeah, this it's a

(01:02:33):
very it's a deviation from traditional fascism to have not
just a woman wearing man's clothes, but the woman doing
man's work essentially. And basically that just came about because
I was comparing Christy Nomes's self propagandizing to twentieth century

(01:02:54):
fascist propagandizing using something called the Gramasque square or a
semi audic square that shows sort of internal contradictions and
how signs relate to each other. And that's because I've
been on a semiotics semiology kick lately, and Gramas was
a Lithuanian French semiutitian. But he didn't use the square,

(01:03:17):
the semiotics square, to analyze politics. He used it to
analyze like myth, Lithuanian myth and Lithuanian folklore. And he
found also that the square was useful for organizing like
marriage rights and who's allowed to marry who in like

(01:03:37):
tribal primitive societies or whatever. So he didn't use it
for anything like this, but I don't know. I was
kind of dicking around and it kind of proved to work,
and it worked. It worked in that what it showed like,
it looks like it's progressive, but it's progressive at the
expense of where they think the true battle is. And

(01:03:58):
the true battle is of course trans because the schools
are turning all your kids trans, that thing has to
stay there. The transgender has to stay there so they
can rest their antagonism audit that and immigration. So what
looks like a progressive movement is actually if you look
at the entire square, it's a defensive one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Put on a police uniform but still true look as
much like a Barbie doll and maxim like be maximally
feminized while still doing these like But then also the
other funny thing is like she's not actually doing any
of that shit. She's just LARPing. It's doing that shit.
She's not actually out there on the streets policing, right,
So I don't know if that's relevant, but like that
was one thought I had. I was like, is she

(01:04:39):
doing any of this? She's pretending.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
I think it matters that the images are accepted rather
than rejected.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Yeah, the semiotic square is so interesting and useful because
you can you know, the narrative. Narratology is a major
aspect of semiology, right, like analyzing narratives. You can use
the semiotic square to plot major like organizing features of

(01:05:08):
narratives like like yeah, like like man and woman or
life and death, right, and then so you plot those
on the square, and then you have to have in
the other in the other corners non life and non
death or or non man and non woman. And it's
a way of breaking down the binaries and seeing what

(01:05:29):
sort of happens in the middle. Right, So when you
have life and then you have non life, like what's
unlife like zombies and vampires, death and undeath, Right, you
have all these sorts of categories that are in the
middle that don't fit on either side. So you can
have man and woman, and then you can have you

(01:05:51):
can have Christy Nome sort of in the middle woman
who is a police officer, or like I guess, I
guess they don't have the other side like what is
non man. But yeah, the semiotic squares is an interesting
tool for analyzing these sorts of as you say, fascist

(01:06:12):
narratives like traditionalism and modernism.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Yeah, and you can see from from where fascism came
out of the time period and the time period now
it's basically just cope because you're facing a changing a
changing scenario where there are modern forces colliding, like especially

(01:06:37):
the bureaucratized state is colliding with you know, traditional values,
and you want to have them both at the same time.
So how do you how do you unify these opposites.
You bring super cool paintings of planes together with the
legends of King Arthur and say, oh, yeah, we're in

(01:06:58):
favor of both of these things. We're in favor of
both of these things. So don't worry about politics because
I'm giving you things that you like together. That really
is what it is. This is just cope. It's cope
for babies because they're saying, here, there's a bunch of
pit things in the same picture, and we're gonna give
it to you. It really is like you get to

(01:07:19):
you're you're gonna get to see airplanes. They're so fast
and they're so cool. I think you are also gonna
get to see swords because we are knights of the
ancient roundtable. And those teachers that said you weren't going
to amount to anything that look down their nose at you. Uh,
they're gonna cry.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
It is worrying when you showed in the video that
that sort of like fascist barbie stuff, because yeah, it's
it's another it's another movement within the narrative because if
you have you have liberal progressivism having having the kind
of monopoly on on multiculturalism and gender progressivism, and and

(01:08:03):
now fascism's found a way to include that too, So
it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Just post racial fascism.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
Yeah, we saw that, we did, so, you know, fascism's
finding a way. It's the semiotic square again, like if
if if progressivism can include this, traditionalism can include it.
Because things are sort of built on their opposites as well.
So if one side makes an advance, the other side's
going to find a way to make an advance in lockstep,

(01:08:31):
because that's what that's you know, semi semiology and structuralism
are going to tell us that you know, these these
opposites are bound together, right, They work off of each other.
They're not separate in any simple way. It's the unity
of opposites.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
And we're kind of fucked right, right, Like the non
right the non right is fucked because all the way
from the Democratic Party to Marxist we have to we
have to fight belief that can withstand any contradictions. It
uses the contradictions and expands them. It has no need

(01:09:14):
to appeal to reality in order to in our terms,
expand the semiotic square. It can just do that because
it only has one interest and that's not changing anything.
So anyone who wants to change things, you have to
believe more than a system that is just built on
excess belief. And we have not figured out how to

(01:09:36):
do that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
Which is interesting though, because because institutionally you have leftist
intellectuals and non right intellectualism is still institutionalized, which is
why universities are still you know, the nest of whatever.
Used to be the nest of the red and now

(01:10:00):
it's the nest of wokeness and whatever. It's whatever, the
universities aren't going to represent, and the right hasn't quite
penetrated that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:09):
Barrier yet, but it's trying.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Right we've seen we've seen the right wing universities popping up,
but right wing intellectuals tend to take the influencer route,
which is coded non intellectual.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
But that's how.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Yeah, if you can call them intellectuals, you have to.
You can be anybody to be an intellectual on the right,
and then the left is busy eating its own the
non right eats its own intellectuals. Anyway, In conclusion, Victor,
is your professional political science opinion that we should be
retiring fascism?

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
I think I'm I'm I tend to be yeah, unless
you want to define it clearly, I'm kind of skeptical
of I think that they often obscure more than they clarify,
and especially when we're trying to describe contemporary social phenomena,

(01:11:09):
I think they encourage a kind of laziness of just
being like, well, he's a fascist, or they're what or
I mean the right does it too all the time,
with like oh my god, what's it called? Biden is
a socialist? Right, It's just like this is not helpful,
Like this is just this is not telling us much.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
I think would you call nineteen thirties Spain, Italy and
Germany fascist?

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
I mean I probably would would, but I also think
that you could just it's more helpful to describe the
specifics of what was going on, what was Mussolini doing, right,
he was I don't know, destroying the press, I assume
violently suppressing his adversaries. Just say those things. That's enough
of an analysis. Just describe what's happening. That tells us
everything we need to know. Without the term. You can

(01:11:56):
just describe what Trump is doing. And like the way
that he's sending putting ice on the streets and killing people,
and he's called the press the enemy of the people,
and you know, he's ending he ended a bunch of
like funding for you know, like working class people. He
ended a bunch of tax breaks and raised tax and
lowered taxes on the rich. Right, those are all horrible

(01:12:19):
things that he's doing that we can concretely point to
and say are bad. And that's all we need.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
I guess it's just is it a helpful comparison?

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Is really the question?

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Then? My point is that like I mean even okay,
but like even the way that the right calls Bernie
Sanders a socialists, it functions to dismiss rather than describe
their substantive disagreement. And I'd rather that people describe their
substantive disagreement than dismiss. And I think fascism functions in
the same way and there is so much substantive that

(01:12:49):
you can say about what makes Trump horrible. There's just
so much to say. You don't need the term fascism,
just say the things that he's doing that are horrible.
There's so much to say. And I mean again, and
I guess in the case of this, because there's so
much to say, it's frustrating, whereas maybe obviously someone who's
more sympathetic to Bernie Sanders, maybe the right does this

(01:13:10):
because they don't really have that much substantive to say, right,
so they just they hide behind the term because you know,
if they were like, oh, Bernie Sanders just wants to
help poor people, like that horrible, that's terrible, right. I
don't know, but you know, some of them, probably some
of the libertarians would be like, he's gonna you know,
they'll have substantive disagreements. They'll maybe say he's gonna you know,

(01:13:32):
create like damage the economy and you know, push of
the US into a recession by funding too many social programs.
I'm not that sympathetic to that argument, but that's something
substantive that they could say, right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
Yeah, I guess it's it's the difference between like it's
used as a term of abuse, and it's used as
a rally and cry, like fascism term of abuse. Socialism, Yeah,
it's used as a term of abuse if you're not socialist.
And then sometimes the terms being used as rallying cries.

(01:14:07):
I don't know, Yeah, you have other terms for that.
I guess America first or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
And I know, I know you don't have time to
continue the argument, but I do want to at least
off of my appeal, final appeal for why should we
should keep the term? Because contrary, I don't think it mystifies.
I think it actually demystifies, and in this case, what
we've been discussed in this episode, it demystifies the contradiction

(01:14:36):
that are not treated as contradictory terms. Uh so, yeah,
I think I think it can at least demystify that
weird relationship, because when you see it, it's confusing. Why
is my why is my dad following for trad modern
purgation myths? And you say, oh, that's why it's fascism.

(01:14:57):
It's fascism unifying opposites again. Okay, but uh, that's what
I think it's useful for. We'll leave it there, though, fascism,
Is it cool? Is it for babies? You decide, Take care, listener,
and take care you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
All right, So that was a good discussion. Thanks guys,