Episode 45 — Josh Neal on Intolerant Interpretations and Paranoid Politics

Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics The Backlash-Ep45- Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:01:01 ] You're welcome to The Backlash. I am your host, Rebecca Hargraves. I am joined, as always, by Mr. Dave Riley. David J. Reilly [ 00:02:38 ] How you doing, Rebecca? Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:02:39 ] I'm okay. How are you? David J. Reilly [ 00:02:40 ] I'm good. We had a little bit of a late night last night. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:02:42 ] Okay, not really. I got home at like 10, 15. David J. Reilly [ 00:02:45 ] I got home at like midnight. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:02:47 ] I promised my mom and husband that I was not going to meet with this journalist. David J. Reilly [ 00:02:52 ] But we did, yeah, we'll talk about that in the super chat section, yes we will. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:02:57 ] I have funny there is a hellacious hit piece that's coming out on us from Mother Jones, from Mother Jones, yeah, oh yeah, where Dave tried to get ahead of it by calling himself a Nazi artist, No, I said I'm an artist. David J. Reilly [ 00:03:12 ] Being a Nazi is like performance art to me. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:03:14 ] I think you said. David J. Reilly [ 00:03:16 ] Something to that effect. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:03:17 ] Nazi artistry was what was used. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics David J. Reilly [ 00:03:20 ] I don't know. And then I complained that if somebody had just let me make a painting, maybe I wouldn't be doing this podcast. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:03:25 ] No matter. You know, Mother Jones. David J. Reilly [ 00:03:27 ] Just, you know, can't have nice things around here. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:03:31 ] Indeed. Indeed. You can find us on X at Real Backlash. Our website, thebacklash. net. Support us on Subscribestar slash thebacklash. Thank you so much. David J. Reilly [ 00:04:10 ] Antelope Hill are reading first, yes, yes, yes. We can do that. Uh, this episode of The Backlash was brought to you by... I'm kidding. Antelope Hill publishing is fighting to keep history alive against the regime of anti-White censorship and to publish a new generation of dissident, radical right-wing researchers, philosophers, polemicists, and writers. They have an eclectic catalog that includes veteran right-wing authors and academics like Kerry Bolton, Ricardo Duchesne, Paul Kersey, as well as newer figures like Lord Miles Routledge of Afghanistan, Josh Neal, who we'll be talking with today, and Christian Secor. In addition to a long list of original translations or modern reprints of otherwise inaccessible historical works from eras such as Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, and even Medieval Europe. Their original works include groundbreaking investigations into the causes and funding behind transgenderism and the opioid crisis, books on Christian nationalism and American folktales. Additionally, Antelope Hill contributes to the regeneration of our culture and rebirth of our family values through their top-quality fiction, including books like 'Let Them Look West' and 'Worlds Separated', and a collection of beautifully illustrated and wholesome children's books. Whatever your interest is, you are bound to find books that you'll like at Antelope Hill. All professionally published with cover art that will grace your bookshelves. Help us and help our people by checking out companies that share our values and work to preserve the birthright of our history. Visit Antelope Hill Publishing today. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:05:45 ] Thank you so much for joining us, Josh. You are a former psychology lecturer and clinician. You're an author, a musician. You have an excellent Substack, jneil. substack. com. We're going to be talking about his book, Intolerant Interpretations. But he has also written a book called American Extremist: The Psychology of Political Extremism and Understanding Conspiracy Theories. So thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you. Josh Neal [ 00:06:12 ] Nice, excuse me, uh, what it's an honor to be asked on, uh, I've actually been a big fan of both of you folks for several years, so Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking with you guys. Thank you so much. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:06:26 ] Let's get right into your new book. Tell us a little bit about the premise of Intolerant Interpretations. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Josh Neal [ 00:06:35 ] So it's, there's two parts to the book and basically 100 pages. Deals with kind of elaborating the conspiracy culture within the United States, and in that way this book is sort of an extension of my previous book, 'Understanding Conspiracy Theories', which was preoccupied entirely with the question of what makes a conspiracy theory what it is, where do they come from, why are we in this hyperpolarized culture of conspiratorialism. The second half of the book reviews very well-known social science literature from the last 10 or 15 years. Names you probably have heard, books you've probably read before-Jonathan Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind', Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking Fast and Slow', Paul Bloom's 'Just Babies' on the Origins of Good and Evil in Infancy. And while there are two separate kinds of subject matter, the first 100 pages from the last 100 pages, the unifying theme is this concept I developed called 'suspicion culture.' Which, to just summarize briefly, is saying: you know, what are the social forces that intentionally produce and reproduce paranoia, skepticism, doubt, suspicion? So, the first 100 pages deal with sort of the historical political phenomena. I make the argument that basically, you know, the scapegoat is part of the American consciousness. You know, we've always been a conspiratorial people, right down to our founding. And so when people want to dismiss conspiratorialism, away people who propose alternative suggestions as well they're just skits in the american context it's not an insult you know we own that that's who we are to be that way we've always been right to be that way um so yeah this idea of suspicion culture on the one hand it's political You think it's biological in the sense of tribal conflict. But it's also academic and ideological. And we look at the universities in the cases of Jonathan Daniel Kahneman. We look at I coined this phrase ethnoscience or. I coin it so much as I reappropriate it. I make the argument, and as very few folks are familiar with Kevin MacDonald, Kevin MacDonald made the argument that there's a certain evolutionary style to Jewish ideology and Jewish social conduct. I take that a step further and I say, well, if you look at some of the most important contributions in the social sciences from Jewish academics-that is, it's the title, 'Intolerant Interpretation'. So I need to look past the words that they're using; we need beyond arm's-length thinking. The legitimate motivation is gone. No, there. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:10:03 ] I'm going to fix something with your internet really quickly; it's really, really choppy, but I do have a follow-up question about that. If you can just hang tight for just one second. Fix it, Dave. David J. Reilly [ 00:10:11 ] I don't know even how to fix it. Dave, fix it. I think it's on Josh's end because I just did a speed test. I'll do another speed test. Can you turn his video quality down? It is automatically turned down, which is why it looks pixelated. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:10:26 ] Well, I'd rather have good audio than good video. I'm sure you're the same. Psychological mechanisms, like cognitive bias, do you identify in your book as fueling these ideological stances, these intolerant ideological stances? Josh Neal [ 00:10:52 ] Can you say that again? I'm sorry. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:10:54 ] Oh no. Can you not hear us? Josh Neal The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 00:10:59 ] No, I heard you just fine, but I didn't quite grok the question. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:11:02 ] Okay, so cognitive biases, emotional triggers, what kind of psychological mechanisms do you identify in intolerant interpretations specifically as fueling that in the idea of intolerance like what do you see in the culture and in the people you talked a little bit about paranoia things like that Yeah, so even though I am a psychologist, I'm not actually making a primarily psychological argument for a lot of these things. Josh Neal [ 00:11:33 ] It's more of just reviewing the literature and sort of just using good old-fashioned logic and reason to point out the weaknesses in the arguments, the incoherency. So it's more that there's a set of logical inconsistencies, logical fallacies that give away the fact that when, for example, Daniel Kahneman or Paul Bloom make the argument that In the case of Daniel Kahneman, when he makes the argument that humans are hopelessly irrational, and therefore we need a credentialed technocratic expert class to make decisions for us, that there's logical, there's fallacious arguments being put forth in that. There's certain presuppositions that are being made that are not justifiable. And those presuppositions are not examined. They're put forth as just factual observations of human nature. Elaborate edifice, intellectual edifice is created. It but really it's a cat is a sand castle so in the case of Daniel Kahneman, you know I'll give you a snapshot of one of the chapters in the book. There's a very famous debate in the behavioral sciences. It goes back some 30 or 40 years between Gerd Gigerenzer, a very celebrated German psychologist, and Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky. They're a pair of Israeli psychologists. Daniel Kahneman was actually a psychologist in the Israeli Defense Forces. And basically, they spent their whole career demonstrating that human cognition is you know not even as good as a coin flip in terms of making decisions, coming to rational judgments, statistical inferences, things like that. He developed all these sort of logic puzzles that were intended to demonstrate that we have a fallacious ability to reason. And so he makes the argument that because of this innate irrationality. And there's a couple of things that are really funny about the argument. These are all evolutionarily informed social scientists. So they're basically presuming that evolution works, except it doesn't really work for the human brain. The fact that we've evolved these intuitions over several millennia, whatever, somehow this evolved capacity. All this intensive selective pressures that have been put on the human species have resulted in a situation where we're not actually. We can go to the moon. You know, we can develop the Internet. We can develop vaccinations. We can develop the nuclear bomb. But somehow we can't tease out Jewish word puzzles because we can't tease out these Jewish word puzzles. We need, we need people like Cass Sunstein to censor us and nudge us and direct us in the proper direction. So Gerd Gigerenzer makes the counter argument that he's an ecological thinker which means he views human cognition as being spoken. Oh, come on. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:14:54 ] We might have to go audio only. David J. Reilly [ 00:14:57 ] Do you think that'll even help? Josh Neal [ 00:15:00 ] Geographical parameters. David J. Reilly The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 00:15:04 ] Yeah, I think it went audio. Can you guys still hear me? Yeah, we can. It went audio only automatically, auto-magically, auto-magically. Yeah, please continue. Sorry, the internet just-I don't think it's on my end, but it is not happening today. Please continue. Josh Neal [ 00:15:21 ] Alright. I apologize. Yeah. Well, Gerg Gegranzer makes the argument that human cognition is spatially bound. And so when you think of the types of decision-making abilities that we have, that it's always about certain physical parameters, physical challenges. Evolution didn't give us this unbounded irrationality. Unbound. Did. Rationality, he gave us this bounded rationality: we are body the brain in space and so cognition is conscious, right? And so when we say that humans are irrational, that's actually a good thing. Or rather, it's a necessary byproduct of the evolutionary condition of who we are. Um, So when you get to Daniel Kahneman, who makes these arguments that, well, we're not like some kind of supercomputer where we can access all of the information out there and use that to inform our statistical judgments or our decision-making. That's sort of like an impossible standard to impose on the human brain. And it introduces problems into psychology that don't illuminate the human condition and really blows apart decades of social science, cognitive science research. So it's not that there's just like a, you know, well, this guy, you know, paranoid personality disorder. Like it's a sort of. Um, it's an ethno-science basically is the point I'm making is that that these people get involved in the uh in the social sciences they're doing information warfare; they're not actually trying to lead to more uh to broaden our understanding. Condition to answer these perennial questions about the mother using the scientific method to antagonize us with their discoveries, in the case of Paul Bloom. Or, to perform some kind of self-defense conduct. James Cudahy said that that's basically what Sigmund Freud was doing, an ordeal of civility, that this whole concept of psychoanalysis is like a very elaborate cover story to justify bad Jewish behavior. David J. Reilly [ 00:18:10 ] The left as well, I also wanted to point out like in the first chapter of your book you kind of like trace the line of this suspicion culture from like the beginnings of the Anti-Masonic Party which was the first third party in American politics which was like what, like the mid-mid to late 1800s when people started to get this idea that maybe there was a secret society working behind the scenes that was kind of orchestrating things, uh, and not exactly following the Republican or Democratic right. And you kind of drew a straight line straight through the John Birch Society all the way to QAnon. So I'd love to hear more about that. Josh Neal [ 00:18:55 ] So the first question, yes. Regardless of political affiliation, regardless of ideology, human tendencies abound, right? And I would say, you know, paranoia is. Now it's treated as like a pejorative, almost like a Soviet-style way to disparage or discriminate against people who are ideologically opposed to certain things. That's why I propose the concept of suspicion culture. Suspicion is morally, semantically neutral. And as the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. To Dave's question, yeah, I mean, this is what I was getting at at the top of the interview. was founded oftentimes clandestinely, pseudonymously; the people who were involved in settling and setting this country and breaking it away from Great Britain often did that with assumed names. It was done cloak and dagger. The United States were founded amidst the backdrop of existing great powers, great international powers, operating around the world; international finance, operating around the world. Secular societies, like Freemasons, and so it's Uh. Also uniquely had the challenge of, I mean, we're dealing with the Great Replacement now, replacement migration now. That's sort of the story of the United States from the very beginning, that there's been this continual wave or influx of people from the world. States has always been wrestling with this. And as even when you get That really is the impetus for the formation of the country's first third parties that you had. Millions of Germans coming in. Millions of Irish coming in. Millions of Italians coming in. They're filling up the cities. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics They're creating sort of an ecological problem. They're creating a political problem. And, you know, the United States was always sort of leery about Papism, about Catholicism. And suddenly you've got German Catholics coming into the country, Italians, Irish Catholics coming into the country in millions. So, yeah, the early parties were you had the Know Nothings, the American Party. Anti-Masonic Party, um, and, and they were all basically opposed to you know their arrows replacement, migration; they were all opposed to uh international finance; they were all opposed to these sort of clandestine super societies that are that are working against the United States and the interests of the United States; and, and specifically I mean the reason I trace this to the John Birch Society in Q Anon um is if you look at like the contemporary center-right, There still is this anti-communism. And this is sort of like the unsolved problem of right-wing radicalism going back to the 1950s, you know, Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch with the John Birch Society, that's the United States from roughly 1880 or so was dealing with the issues of anarchist violence, socialist violence, communist infiltration. By the time you get people like Robert Welch, Jr., the head of the John Birch Society, Joseph McCarthy, who had partnered with Roy Cohn to do a lot of his dirty work. Roy Cohn was sort of McCarthy's hatchet man. The country had already been, in effect, subverted-bold or blanket term, but there were successive red by the time that you get the John Birch Society. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:23:28 ] Josh, before you go any further. Well known. Would you mind turning off your video? At least we could get the audio feed to people. I think it might improve the audio quality. It's a little choppy. It's just too choppy. I'm sorry. Let's see if that helps. Josh Neal [ 00:23:44 ] No problem. Sorry, I'm giving you all this trouble. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:23:47 ] Oh, it's okay. Josh Neal [ 00:23:49 ] It is not helping. But yeah, as I was saying. David J. Reilly [ 00:23:53 ] Really? No. You just lied three times. Josh Neal [ 00:23:58 ] Oh, my God. David J. Reilly [ 00:24:00 ] Palantir is coming after us. They're fucking with our internet connections. Geez, old Pete. Maybe I should have taken it a little bit easier on Peter Thiel the other day. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:24:09 ] Never. David J. Reilly [ 00:24:10 ] Yeah. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:24:10 ] Never go easy on them. Josh Neal [ 00:24:11 ] I'm honored to be with you guys, your lowest viewership show. David J. Reilly [ 00:24:14 ] Jeez. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:24:16 ] No, it's okay. I think that might help. David J. Reilly [ 00:24:18 ] We'll try. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:24:20 ] Sorry, proceed. David J. Reilly [ 00:24:20 ] Please keep going. This is fascinating. The book is fascinating. Josh Neal [ 00:24:25 ] All right. So, yeah, so the problem when people look at the at the this the schizophrenia right today and they talk about all of the insane unjustifiable paranoid conspiratorialism, I mean I think there's really two explanations for that and this is what the first chapter of the book is about. On the one hand, it's obviously the fact that the federal government has been engaged in this sort of subterfuge campaign against the population, and it's been that way for at least 100 years. The last five years are sort of this very small blip in the history of kind of governmental. subterfuge 2020 being a banner year for that people look at covid they look at the george floyd riots they look at the stolen election in 2020 and they say oh my god the conspiratorialists were vindicated um and and yes but on the same on the same token it's like that's not led to you know there's no arrests there's no revolution there's no people taking control of their government again all their all really the significant consequence of that has been the sort of normalizing mainstreaming of this rampant. conspiratorial ideation. It seems to mutate more and get weirder and stranger and harder to parse. I don't know how you folks feel about the Candace Owens of the world, but on the one hand, you have people who are like, they're doing the JQ. It's like a variety show. It's like a carnival act. They're doing the JQ one day. They're doing Bridget Macron as a secret man the next day. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:26:04 ] Who are you talking about? Josh Neal [ 00:26:08 ] Not to name names, but I mean, there are certain people who are like the face of this sort of bizarre armchair conspiratorial point of view. And I say basically there's two reasons for that. One, as I mentioned before, the real nature of conspiracies as an actual phenomenon. But two, it's the failure of the radical right within this country for at least 100 years to grapple with the actual political problems. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics When you look at people like Robert F. Welch Jr., I mean, one of the famous things about the John Birch Society that people still don't really talk a whole lot about is that they had ousted some of their more radical intellectuals precisely for the reasons of pointing the John Birch Society in the direction of the Jewish question. Revelo Oliver is a very famous example; he basically said that the John Burke society was overtaken by Jewish interests and he was cast out. Again, this is where things like you have to take a 30,000-foot view at the question because at the same time that that's true, the ADL was also attacking the John Birch Society. So, I mean, when people want to talk about the Jewish question and say, well, you know, you can't say that Jews are a monolith and you can't say that they do X, Y, and Z because look at what's happening here and look what's happening over there. It's like That's we need to take a step back and we need to; this is why I invoked Kevin McDonald earlier: we need to take a sort of biological or evolutionary view, and say that there are certain tendencies that groups have, and that when they engage in the political process, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, they're engaged with these certain tendencies. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:27:59 ] Do you think that this is an organic phenomenon, like Candace Owens and Tucker talking about Jewish special interests in the United States, and the monolith, like you just mentioned, but then mixing it in with this conspiratorial slop? Do you think that this is just their organic tendency to engage in these thought processes, or do you think that this is more malicious, and is an attempt to discredit all of our better, more profound points about Jewish subversion? Josh Neal [ 00:28:30 ] Um, That's a difficult question to answer because I'm not a mind reader. And these sorts of things, you know, the only. then The difference between a conspiracy-minded person and someone who isn't is just how much more information do they have, right? Like the difference between legitimate skepticism and just crankery is how much more digging did you do than the next person, right? That's kind of always the question. JQ skeptics, for example, will say, you know, well, prove to me that, you know, such and such claim about the Jewish question. statistical data points that I researched that you didn't know existed right so I mean maybe it's the case that um there's something going on between behind Candace Owens or people like Candace Owens I hate to keep invoking her I don't have a personal issue with her I don't want to make difficulties for your program but she's just a very emblematic face of that phenomenon I mean, I think she was also one of these. Isn't it basically the case that all these conservative talking heads come through the same Israeli like modeling company or whatever it was? Eric Stryker did a did a piece about that. David J. Reilly [ 00:29:47 ] Scott Press was it Scott Pressler and Candace? And I think there was one other famous person who was part of this talent agency that got recruited. That is. That is true. The other thing I wanted to point out, because we namedropped them, the John Birch Society. Interesting to note, and I think it's Matthew D'Amurgo is his name. He wrote a book called 'Birchers: Inside America's Radical Right.' Really interesting book. It does talk about the ADL campaign against the John Birch Society, and it also reveals, if my memory is serving, I think on page 174, it talks about how Meyer Kahana was a member, like a founding member of the John Birch Society. And I think he went by the name Tony Marino or something like that. Anyway, really, really interesting fact of the book. And by the way, we are going to have the John Birch Society on the show on July 28th. Oh, really? Yeah. Their new spokesman, Christian Gomez, appears to want to finally, after like 75 fucking years, wants to finally start grappling with the Jewish problem. I wonder why. And it's interesting. My dad was—I'm a card-carrying member of the JBS, and my dad used to be, goofy thing that they had put out basically explaining away why communism was not a Jewish phenomenon when in fact everybody knows that it was. It was, of course. So, anyway, just an interesting aside: if you're into the John Birch Society, tune in July 28th, we'll be talking with Christian Gomez. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:31:25 ] The fact that they're grappling with this now is a little late. I do have a distrust for anybody who's addressing this question at this point in time. I'm happy to see the Overton window shift, but why are people addressing it? To retain some element of their credibility by addressing the issues at hand. And that leads me to believe that they're going to undermine our arguments, the power of our arguments, because they're addressing it so late. David J. Reilly [ 00:31:51 ] Could be. We'll see. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:31:54 ] Sorry; dialogue with leftists. Mother Jones was Danny. Josh Neal [ 00:32:30 ] So. I don’t, and this is another argument I put forth in the book. Um. I guess I should say that there will be no leftist journalist hit piece about this episode because they won't be able to understand what I'm saying. I apologize, guys. So one of the arguments I make in the book is that, in effect. Democratic politics, mass society, it's all pretty much done, right? And not in the like sort of wacky-sieg mask claim of like, there's no political solution. I don't believe that. I just sort of define what political solutions are differently. If the question is, should we be doing electoral politics? Should we be hosting national debates? Should we be trying to build a coalition? I mean, these sorts of things, I think are the time for that is past. And I feel like the incidents going on in California. Sort of a good example of that. I mean, we can't even. For the most part, we can't even maintain order in single states, single territories in this country; we can't reliably. We can't reliably maintain law and order. There's no law and order. We can't do it. So, I mean, for me, I think the only solution really is exiting mass society, exiting the democratic process, um, and you see, and, and you know what? I kind of envision. And I'm not the only person saying this. I'm certainly not the only person doing it. You know what I kind of envision is sort of a return to a city-state model. This rubs people the wrong way. This touches on like all these sort of existential questions about what we ought to be doing. Should we be reclaiming the cities? Should we be running to the countryside? Should we be trying to convert the normies? Should we be focusing on optics? These are all sort of nice thoughts and questions that are sidestepping what is ultimately the only solution for anyone in this country, which is a return to personal agency, a return to personal agency, a return to political agency. You need to save yourself. You need to save your family. You need to save your community. We don't need to worry about saving the country. We don't need to worry about saving the white race. We don't need to worry about saving Christendom. These are things that can't fundamentally be done. You can save yourself. You can save the people you care about and you can network with like-minded people. So, if I were of the mind to restore Christendom or restore America, then the solution would be me and 30 of my guys; we move somewhere, take that place over it's our place and somebody else does that two or three states over. Right now, we're not talking about the nation-state model; we're talking about a sort of regionalism. We become sort of like an ethnic mafia that controls I don't know, three, four, five, six, seven states right that's practical, that's something that can be done, right? Because all of the sort of structural problems in the country make that a possibility – the aging Boomer population, the fact that most local politics are governed by these sorts of out-of-touch, hapless Boomer types. If you want to save the white race or bring Christ back or rescue America, whatever – and in some way, these are all the same thing. To argue for any one of those is sort of to argue for every other goal. Well, then it's ultimately you need to restore personal agency. And you need to restore political agency. I don't know if me talking to Anna Cashian and Ron H. Herbert and freaking Rachel Maddow is going to accomplish any of those things. Does that do anything? I don't think so. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:36:32 ] It was something of a rhetorical question. I kind of knew that we're all in the same place on this. Do you think that you're projecting something of a – I know you're not a libertarian, but we all come from kind of a libertarian background. Yeah. What we believe is a more moral life, a more stable life, a more cohesive life. And then in that way, we don't have to rely on their ability to develop autonomy, which I think they're kind of incapable of doing. David J. Reilly [ 00:37:32 ] Even this statistic is crazy. Sorry, I don't mean to derail again. Oh, the internal monologue, right? 25 to 30% of people don't have an internal monologue? Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:37:40 ] I don't understand this at all. What the? I don't understand. I watched an interview with somebody that did not have an internal monologue, understand how you could tie your shoes without doing this, but she said that she sees things in um, in actions so like when, when you think uh, 'tie your shoes you're having a discussion or something like that; she sees like the the visual portrayal of that in her mind what, but I, I, I don't know how anybody can function with without this, that's; I've heard that there are problems with this study as well. We didn't mean to derail you. David J. Reilly [ 00:38:15 ] I derailed, I apologize. Josh Neal [ 00:38:17 ] The parade of distribution is visible in most areas of social life, right? The 80-20 dichotomy is a pretty ironclad law. Insofar as there's like a law of social science, like a law of physics, the parade of distribution seems to be one of those. So, and this to your point about like, should we be converting to the normies? Should we be creating these coalitions? I mean, that’s all mass democracy mentality. stuff, which isn’t going to work for the very reasons that you just said. Most of these people don’t have autonomy. Let’s put aside the sort of, and I’m not accusing you of this at all, but let’s set aside like all of the sort of like cynical things that people will say about the masses, right? They don’t have the time to do it, right? Materially, they don’t have the time and resources to do it. Let’s forget about they don’t have the psychological resources. They don’t have the material resources. Most people don’t have the material resources. So it's about organizing that 20%. That's what matters. And what captures the other 80% is social proof. It's proof of concept. The other 80% will believe or be made to believe or whatever, conform to our norms when they see that we have something that works, right? People are looking at the Orania model and they're saying, 'We can do that now', right? You have guys like Eric Orval doing the return to the land project. It's like that's obviously downstream of Orania. People look at Aranya and they say, 'This is possible.' So you have to make again to throw another cliché your way, like if we build it, they will come. Right? If we want to capture a larger swath of the white American population, if we want to light the white man's consciousness on fire, then we need to those of us who have the agency and the ability and the resources and the time have to do Do it first. And then we can fire up the flare. And then, you know, what happens from that is sort of an open question, but that's obviously what we're looking for. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:40:29 ] Are there psychological concepts that apply? Both to conspiratorial thinking and this concept of intolerance? Is it really all the same things that are at play that are plaguing our society? The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Josh Neal [ 00:40:50 ] I don't know what that was. There's a certain personality style for sure that is emblematic of like the classical conspiracy theorist. And there's basically somebody who's schizotypal. Schizotypy is sort of a spectrum condition. It's not quite schizophrenia. It's not quite schizoid personality disorder, but it's sort of this, you know, in the same way we talk about autism spectrum, we talk about the schizotypal spectrum and, you know, paranoid delusions, delusions of persecution, magical thinking. I mean, these are medical psychiatric terms that basically describe psychological processes. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:41:39 ] You cannot tell me that doesn't apply to you. David J. Reilly [ 00:41:42 ] Just because I believe that the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ. No, no, no. I'm not talking about the Catholic thing. And I think that there are people out to get me. Doesn't mean I'm wrong. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:41:52 ] Not talking about transubstantiation. David J. Reilly [ 00:41:54 ] No. That's magical thinking, right? I suppose, yeah. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:41:58 ] But you are highly paranoid. David J. Reilly [ 00:42:00 ] I'm paranoid for good reason. Yeah. I've done the research. Maybe. I have a reason to be paranoid. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:42:05 ] I don't know. I feel like when I'm paranoid about people coming to get me or anything like, like nothing ever happens. True. Or paranoid? Mostly you. I'm paranoid. This is a problem on the right. David J. Reilly [ 00:42:20 ] But I don't think it's a disorder. Like I said, I'm paranoid for good reasons. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:42:23 ] This is a problem on the right, though. We develop a victim mentality because we believe that people are out to get us. But like you said, that doesn't mean that people aren't out to get us. David J. Reilly [ 00:42:32 ] Right. Rebbeca Hargraves The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 00:42:33 ] I don't know. I think that this is pervasive in the right wing in a way that is probably not in the left. Josh Neal [ 00:42:40 ] Well, I disagree, and I'll say why. One, I specifically eschew psychological explanations because my view is that the problem you're describing, psychology is the last link in that chain. And the earlier links in that chain are sociological and technological. And I do make an argument in my previous book that this sort of population-wide schizotypal syndrome is not primarily a genetic psychiatric phenomenon. It's downstream of developments in information technologies, developments in communication technologies. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:43:22 ] You're off the hook, Dave. Josh Neal [ 00:43:24 ] The sort of ecological pressures that we are dealing with are so novel and they are so geared towards the human mind that. It's not a psychological issue necessarily. It's a technological phenomenon. People are just bombarded with more information. They are more engaged, more stimulated, more stressed, more pressured, more alienated. This is a condition that no human, as far as we know in the history of the species, has ever dealt with. And so when we are playing the game of psychology, I feel that we're also playing the regime's game. Individual psychological processes that are the problem. You're not the problem. What's going on between your ears is not the problem. It's what's happening around you. It's the fact that when you walk out the door, the first 15 faces you see are Pakistani, a pierced face with a face tattoo. That's the first problem. It's that the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning isn't stroke your baby's forehead or prepare a good breakfast. It's that you're checking Twitter, dealing with the hangover, popping your medications. It's all of these trappings of the mass technological society that have so much encroached into our lives. Again, I'm not saying anything no one said before. We're barely even human at this point. Those are the problems. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:45:02 ] Right. And isn't that the problem with libertarianism, right? Especially with this Glenn Greenwald thing. That was the thing of the week. Everybody's saying like, well, this doesn't affect you. This is somebody's private life. But in this technological age, this affects us. This affects us all. This damages the tapestry of our nation, of our people, of our well-being. I go into Des Moines and I see like all I see: morbidly obese people covered in tattoos, tons of trans individuals. And what do libertarians say to this? Well, they're really just doing this to themselves. It's not affecting anybody; it's affecting the people that have to see this and see what their society has become, because it removes the safety of living in a community when you see people like this. Josh Neal [ 00:45:50 ] True, I haven't thought about that – individualism of the libertarian, which is entirely ideological. I don't know that that's a genetic or personality typology so much as that's what ideology does to reasoning faculties, right? Because when they say, well, it doesn't affect you that a third of your hometown is now Puerto Rican. For example. It doesn't affect you personally. And when they say that, they mean one of those Puerto Rican people aren't knocking on your door late at night to stab you in the throat. It's like, okay, that's the sort of myopia that is not grappling with the real question. The real question is the community is no longer the community. It is now this sort of multicultural pursuing their reasoned interpersonal interests, which is a fiction. It's an ideological fiction. And so I think the psychological question worth examining is the way that ideology impinges on the rational thought The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics process of the individual person engaged in the ideology. It's the same thing like when you look at communists and they want to say that, well, it's not the foreigner that's the problem. It's the billionaire that's the problem. It's like that is an ideological position that is not justified by sort of. A blank slate rational analysis of what's going on because the sort of blank slate rational analysis would say: guess what, the foreigner in the billionaire are sort of all one thing, right? They're not disparate phenomena that don't impinge on one another. It's part of it's a systemic issue, right? So to the degree that we want to talk psychology, I think that the important thing is to look at the relationship between ideology and its effects on rational thought and rational analysis. Now, you said before, you don't see this sort of insane paranoia on the left as is common on the right. And respectfully, I disagree. And I think the very obvious reason why that that's not really Drift. Take, for example, and I don't want to go too far down this territory because it might be, I don't know, you guys are on YouTube. I want to be polite. But take, for example, the issue with the trans bathrooms and the whole trans identity, and we've been saying or we've been hearing forever that um there's a trans genocide going on, and that any sort of reasonable, modest, moderate policy initiative, that would try to address the progressive overreach, is necessarily going to lead to trans genocide. Is sort of an unjustifiable, entirely paranoid, persecutory fantasy of these people. You're totally right. I retract that. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:49:10 ] I retract that statement. Josh Neal [ 00:49:12 ] Because there's a certain point in that process where if enough of those policies get initiated. then it certainly would be the end of trans identity and the quote-unquote trans community right if there was an unbroken chain of a nativist conservative policies in the same way we've had this unbroken chain of progressive ideology then there is at a certain point maybe it's 30 chains down in the link uh or whatever then it could conceivably result in the end of the trans era, so to speak. Maybe pharmaceutical companies get sued and they shut down, blah, blah, blah. Maybe various NGOs and activists get shut down and blah, blah, blah. And then we can say way down the tunnel of time, oh, that really was the end of those people. It kind of was like a genocide. And that's sort of a mirror reflection of what we say. When we say that for example, encouraging large scales of legal immigration is going to eradicate the white population. It's like, okay, that's several, several chains down the link, but it will come and that will happen. And that isn't a persecutory delusion. That isn't a fantasy. That's people with foresight who are willing to look down the tunnel of time and anticipate the consequences, the all too obvious consequences of certain policies. Initiatives, so I just think that, um. The types of dysfunction you see on the right, the vitriol, the paranoia, the persecutory fantasies, the sort of like outrage porn, the slop fascination. That's a human condition. Everyone on the political spectrum is engaged in that process. We know what we are familiar with. We're familiar with the right. So, so I don't hang out on like trans Reddit. So, so I don't know like day in and day out exactly what they're going through, but that's a, that's a sort of universal human condition. Right. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:51:22 ] I mean, I think it's because I'm immersed with people on the right, but I do see a lot of this, especially with things like, like flat earth. When people, yeah, but when people realize that they've been lied to their entire lives, they continue this deconstruction of reality to a point where it just leads you to not understanding anything at all. And I see that on the right because I engage with it. I'm sure some things like this are happening on the left as well. David J. Reilly [ 00:51:51 ] Oh, it totally happens on the left. It totally happens. I mean, I remember, I think I did a tweet about this where like, I had run into somebody up at the Athol Super 1 or something. Was it Athol or The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics Athrom? I can't remember. But, you know, at the Super 1, and he had a stand for the flag, kneel for the cross shirt. And I'm like, oh, look, this guy's probably pretty normal. Let me ask him, what do you think about J. D. Vance? And he goes off about how like Princess Diana is Barron Trump's mother. And then the guy, the dead guy from Fast and the Furious replaced J. D. Vance. Whoa, buddy, you went too far. And I'm like, bro, you don't even live in reality anymore. What the fuck? Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:52:28 ] Yeah. David J. Reilly [ 00:52:29 ] And that happens. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:52:30 ] But leftists are not living in reality either. They're not living in reality either. David J. Reilly [ 00:52:33 ] No, no, no. I mean, like, again, like they think that men can become women, that, you know, women or that men can be pregnant. All kinds of weird shit that just is not reality. So, I mean, yeah, I think that this is affecting both the right and the left, and I think that it is a technological thing. Go ahead. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:52:50 ] Oh, I was just going to say, outside of building small communities and regionalism, how do you think we can protect ourselves from this brain rot that is happening because of these widespread technological advances and the logical fallacies that we've discussed? Josh Neal [ 00:53:10 ] Um, so haha. This, this, this is probably counterintuitive or counterproductive recommendations. Um, if you are not someone that's going to get in the ring, so to speak, then you probably should not be hanging around in the parking lot outside the venue. And by that, I mean if you are not going to be actively participating in the discourse, for example, writing, publishing, editing, whatever, or if you're not going to be structurally involved with other people doing that. Then you probably don't need a Twitter account. You probably don't need to be engaged in the culture war. The culture war itself is this sort of stage-managed theatrical construct which justifies like conic and all of the dumb slop stuff that goes on, that's just theater for the normies. If you are someone who's troubled by the things we're troubled by, well, that's sort of a call to action and you should get involved. And I think the brain rot and slop problem is people who are troubled by what's going on, but they are not willing to then take the first step to doing something about it. And whatever that first step-it doesn't mean you have to put your face in front of a camera and threaten your career and your family. It could mean that you send an email. To your favorite content creator and say hey, let me help you organize your website, let me help you uh whatever, the skills you have to contribute. You should look to plug into like a community would. Really, the solution is to treat the online space like a physical space. If we were all hanging out in the town center, the three of us, and we were doing a live version of this, then people would come up to us and they would say, hey, really great. You could use some better lighting. I'm an electrician. I'm going to do X, Y, Z. That's what would happen in the real world. People would acknowledge the physical community. And they would try to plug into the physical community in their individual way. And what I would like to see is that the online space, as close as possible, one-to-one mimics the physical communities. People plug in and they engage in a sort of very narrow, specific, particular way. And then they disengage; once this show is over, I'm not gonna like follow you guys home, you know; I'm not gonna like bake a cake with you know, like we're not; I'm not gonna be The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics involved in every aspect of your life like we're doing this sort of very narrow relationship right here. And if we were in a real relationship in a real community, it would be like that also, unless there was reason. To grow our relationship or whatever point being like and that's always a possibility; the more involved you get, things deepen, more intimacy, more connection... blah, blah, blah. Um, the slop and brain rot problem is passivity; it's people treating racism as a sort of consumer identity. Which is a problem. Like, we're not in here, whether we're doing racism or, you know, Christendom or whatever, whatever node people are plugging into this conversation through-this isn't the consumer identity. You know, it would be cool if I went out in the world and saw people wearing the Backlash shirts; that would be fucking awesome. But like, it should not be like. We should not be trying to recreate like what MSNBC is for libtards, where it is a sort of consumer identity. It's this sort of superficial cultural trapping that doesn't reflect in their personal lives in any way. They just become increasingly histrionic consumers and then that's sort of the end of it. So I could probably keep rambling on. I'll put a bow on it there. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 00:57:19 ] Did you have a question, Dave? I interrupted. David J. Reilly [ 00:57:21 ] I did, but I'm picking up the pieces of my brain right now. He uses big words. No, I'm kidding. No, I think you're right. And I mean, I think that identity is something deeply profound. And yeah, being a racist, being an anti-Semite, whatever, this is not real identity. I mean, again, I'm of the opinion that your identity comes from your understanding of how you fit in with your creator, right? That could be your parents. It could be your heritage, your ancestry. It could be God. But that, I think, is way more foundational than just taking selfies on the internet, or what media you consume or any of that. I guess I wanted to, my question was that I've been unable to formulate properly. I'm thinking about it and trying to figure out how to put this in. How about like, There's something that's been going on the past couple of days with this L.A. situation where specifically I think the entire country has become a little paranoid of things like FISA courts, of the mass surveillance state, and then this whole Palantir thing kind of broke down the door last week where everybody, right, left, and center is talking about the mass surveillance of Palantir. All of a sudden you have this like massive riot that begins in LA and voices like Laura Loomer are coming, I think I even tweeted at her, was it last night or this morning? Let me see if I can pull this up, I mean just total uh total craziness! In my opinion, yeah. Here it is: Laura Loomer comes out, 'When can we begin the mass surveillance of mosques' with Palantir. And it's like, when can we begin the mass surveillance of synagogues? See how this works, Laura Loomer? How about less spying on Americans? The FBI was literally investigating my church two years ago. Let's not do this. And I guess my question is, like, about suspicion culture, paranoia culture, and how that fits into like this almost, I feel like it's kind of like a play that's unfolding right now in LA with these riots as kind of like a contrived. Excuse me, occurrence to get people in America to be begging for more surveillance, begging for Palantir to come and save us from illegal Mexicans, and then we can plug it towards Muslims, and then eventually it'll be, oh, well, we got to go after Catholics. But never Jews. Well, I mean, Alex Karp created this thing. That's neither here nor there. I mean, we've discussed it before. Alex Karp is a completely paranoid Jewish guy that created Palantir, defenestration from America. He has said that very explicitly multiple times. But anyway, what are your thoughts on having written Understanding Conspiracy Theories and Intolerant Interpretations? How does the LA riots plug in to all this? What's your take on it, on the Palantir thing? Josh Neal [ 01:00:26 ] I have a very probably banal, boring answer to that. I just think this is sort of the natural consequence of a multiracial society in decline. Whatever orchestration does or doesn't happen. I mean, this is sort of a thing that's always frustrated me about the conspiracy community. Before I got involved in the alt-right 10 years ago, I was very interested in the conspiracy stuff, Alex Jones, whatever. And one thing that these people would always say, and they still do. Is whenever there would The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics be a major happening, they would say, 'Well, this is a pretext to bring about the world that they really want.' And it's like, let's take a step back-they have the world they really want. They're doing the things they want to be doing. They're implementing the policies and technologies they want to be implementing. If you don't think that right now, Palantir or whoever isn't mass surveilling, data collecting, it's already happening. So the things that we are terrified that are yet to come are all already here. And the only thing tomorrow will bring is more of what we already have. That's pretty much a guarantee-outcome. Tomorrow will bring more surveillance. Tomorrow will bring more data collection. Tomorrow will bring more multiracial violence. It'll bring more anarchism. It'll bring more back-dealing NGO activists orchestrating whatever. Um. I will say this about the L. A. riots. What irritates me about the Conservative Inc. response to this. And even some people in our thing, the radical right, they say, 'Isn't it funny that these people are waving flags of a country they don't want to live in? The flag. The flag represents the people as much as it represents the governmental structure of the territory they're from. When they wave a Mexico flag, it means I'm a cholo. It means, hey, man, come on, let's go. It means, like, I'm here to conquer you. It doesn't mean, oh, jeez, you know, I'm a Mexican national. It partly means that it also partly means I'm a Mexican on your territory and I'm going to take your shit. I'm going to plant my flag. And conservatives like, isn't it? They don't see the hypocrisy of waving a flag that they don't want to from a place they don't want to live in. It's like, dude, you do not understand how symbolism works. Yeah. Symbols have multiple meanings. Same with the gay flags. David J. Reilly [ 01:03:10 ] It's the same thing with like the gay flags. When they start flying the gay flags in people's communities, it's like, you know, hey, we conquered you. That's our territory now. Josh Neal [ 01:03:26 ] Sorry, I missed the mute button. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:03:29 ] We finally lost him. David J. Reilly [ 01:03:30 ] Like, oh, no, I said something wrong. Anyway, the other thing I was going to point out. Oh, God, my Swiss cheese brains just isn't working this morning. I needed more coffee. More coffee. More coffee. Oh, God, I needed more coffee this morning. No, I guess. What do you say to people? Because, you know, with this, which I'm sure we'll talk about more, there's this hit piece that's being done by Mother Jones about us. That you know a couple of people getting together doing a podcast and having conversations is somehow a greater threat to society, democracy, government, our community. Meanwhile, L. A. is fucking burning. There are like literal race riots that have been happening in 2020, today. You can see that society is falling apart, but it's people like us who are trying to grapple with this and figure it out and find some way forward. We are the biggest problem that America faces-the fact that we can speak freely and have conversations that I just don't even understand; the mentality that's there is that like a form of leftist suspicion culture or something, what's going on with that? Josh Neal [ 01:04:55 ] Yeah, that's um... not to disagree with you. I feel like I keep saying I disagree with you guys. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:05:01 ] That's okay. We're often wrong. Josh Neal The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 01:05:04 ] Well, no. We believe in diversity of opinion here. I don't think leftism is a thing. That's its own conversation. I almost wouldn't even philosophize it. I think it's very simple. The guy has a job to do. This is how he makes his living. David J. Reilly [ 01:05:22 ] No, no, no. I'm not talking about Michael Hayden. I'm talking about the people who begged him Jones to dispatch him as a reinforcement because they, you know, Krista Hazel, Matt Blatt, Paul Van Noy, these types of people that are all working in coalition together against right-wing populism, which has been present in the state since like the 1890s, which I really want to do a podcast on that at some point, but that's neither here nor there. You know, they somehow think that doing one more hit piece is going to solve the problem or something like that. I don't get it. I'm just curious for your take. Josh Neal [ 01:06:04 ] I hesitate to say that they're doing the right thing from their point of view. This is sort of like the crux of the problem, I think, is that people on the left have a deeply existential view of the crisis that we're going through. Now, they've obviously created a lot of the crisis and they are continuing to throw more gasoline on the fire, but they understand it as an existential phenomenon. And people on the right broadly do not engage in politics as an existential phenomenon. Most people on the right, certainly not us. on the radical right but most people on the right certainly in like the broader conservative sphere um They just have a lot of sort of like bourgeois affectations like Lefty activists, lefty NGO types, lefty billionaires, they don't ever take their hat. When they walk home after a long day of white genociding, they don't take their hat off, put it on the coat rack, kiss their wife on the cheek and say, well, honey, geez, I'm going to kick up my feet. Man, it's been a rough day. Let's watch some baseball. It's like, no, they're like 24-7 white genociding. It's just 24-7, 65. The hat never comes off. Never take off their work boots. They're always on. And that's not how the right operates. And I guess the question to me would be, why is that like that? Like, why do right-wing people not bring the same level of existential intensity to this? That I don't have an answer for. SPEAKER_3 [ 01:07:50 ] Hmm. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:08:20 ] To the world, their look um their activism and I don't know I don't see that on the right as much, yeah. Well, I agree with that. Oh, he agrees with us finally. There we go. Well, that's good. No, I do. I've said some things in this that I regret. I'm going to have to rethink some of my positions, Oh, boy, That's not good, No, that is good, Identity crisis? No, Okay, Because this is not my entire identity. Josh Neal, do you want to tell people where to find you a little bit about your sub stack? Of course, Antelope Hill, you can find his book there. Go ahead, Josh. Josh Neal [ 01:09:00 ] Let me just say, one, thank you so much. You guys are very generous. Two, I'm so sorry for ruining your show. Oh, no, no, no. You can find my content at jneil. substack. com. I've read a lot of essays there. Some of my recent essays build on the material from these books. I would really appreciate if you became a paid subscriber. It would help me publish more frequently. Find me on Twitter, still jneil. That's where you'll find my half-cocked hot takes. My first two books are with ImperiumPress. org. American Extremist sold thousands of copies, very widely reviewed, very well received. Understanding Conspiracy Theory is also ImperiumPress. org. Intolerant Interpretations is the first maybe of several books with Antelope Hill. When it first came out, it was number one on Amazon. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics So it's also definitely well received. And yeah, check me out if you like what I do. I will take some of the money you give me fix my internet with it, thank you so much Josh, we really appreciate it, we'll talk to you soon, God bless, take care. All right, that was great. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:11 ] We got to crop this out so that it's not so depressing. What do you mean? With this empty chair. The empty chair. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:17 ] I can just remove it. I was saying you should sit over there. Chat. What should we do? Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:21 ] But I think it looks good framed up like this. It does. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:23 ] But, you know. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:24 ] Okay, I should. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:24 ] And then I was thinking also we could maybe like wheel the TV over for when Cameron's on. We could just put him on like a TV next to us. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:30 ] That is such a good idea. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:31 ] Oh, shit. Now I got to do something. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:33 ] We should do that. But shorts are your priority. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:35 ] I need to make shorts this week. That's true. Not wear shorts. That was great. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:38 ] I'm sorry about the tech issues in the beginning. If you're just starting the stream or you're going back, well, saying it this at the end is not really helpful, but it does get better. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:46 ] It does. Rebbeca Hargraves The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 01:10:47 ] It does get better. All right, cool. Let's talk about Boise. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:52 ] Boise. Boise. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:53 ] They get really mad if you say Boise. David J. Reilly [ 01:10:56 ] Boise. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:10:57 ] It's like saying Spokane. People just get furious. Boise. David J. Reilly [ 01:11:01 ] Spokane. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:11:02 ] Spokane. I know. It's like saying Spokane. Spokane. It looks like Spokane, to be fair. David J. Reilly [ 01:11:07 ] There's an E on it, to be fair. Yeah. Well, so yeah. What are we talking about? Boise. Hetero Awesome Fest is going to be happening June 20th, Friday and Saturday, June 20th and 21st. We're going to be down there. We're going to be there. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:11:22 ] If you want to murder us, we will be there. David J. Reilly [ 01:11:26 ] You can do that in Boise. It'll be great. We'll be live streaming. We should have some interesting guests on, if all goes well. Ryan Matta, Ian Carroll. What's his name? The Native Patriot? He's an interesting guy, Native American dude. And probably. Mr. Fitzpatrick and other people around Boise. Should be a good time. I think we're also going to be doing cotton candy. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:11:50 ] Oh, yeah. David J. Reilly [ 01:11:51 ] We got a cotton candy machine. Nice. So, you can get some extreme cotton candy from us at the Hetero Awesome Fest. And while you're there, if you decide to come to Boise, you can also visit Idaho Tallow. They're going to be there with a booth. It's going to be wonderful. They have some of the best soaps. It's tremendous. Why did I do that? I've backed myself into a corner here. If you're tired of skincare packed with chemicals, don't do it, man. Rebbeca Hargraves The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 01:12:20 ] Don't do it. David J. Reilly [ 01:12:21 ] If you're tired of skincare that is packed with chemicals you can't pronounce, you've got to try North Idaho Tallow Company. They keep it simple with grass-fed tallow, time-tested ingredients, zero junk. Our soaps, balms, and lip balm are packed with bioavailable nutrients your skin actually needs. No filters, no endocrine disruptors, just rugged, reliable skincare that works. Ditch the synthetic garbage and switch to North Idaho Tallow Company. Get yours at IdahoTallow. com. You can also shop with Bitcoin. With iDahotel, they have a Bitcoin store. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:12:52 ] Just can't help yourself, buddy. I'm doing a promo. David J. Reilly [ 01:12:56 ] And, you know, it is really good stuff. I was out yesterday; hold on, let me try to get rid of this. Boo! Can I? No. Oh, well. Ah. Anyway, sorry. I was trying to fix something on my end. I was out yesterday, did a little bike riding. I went on like a little six or seven-mile bike ride down to the beach and hung out there for a while. I used some of the Idaho Tallow Company sunscreen. Can't call it 'sun balm.' Sun balm, it's not sunscreen. Can't call it that. And I put it on, and I'm not sunburned today. Nice. So, it works; it's very good. Can you say that? I don't think so. I was in the sun, and I was unaffected by it. And I was wearing Idaho Tala product, and it had nothing to do with it. It was totally coincidental. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:13:44 ] No, they're great; we love Idaho Tala. David J. Reilly [ 01:13:46 ] IdahoTala. com. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:13:46 ] We also love Atlas. I guess we're going to talk about this. Stu Peter's rug. David J. Reilly [ 01:13:51 ] Well, a little bit, yeah. I mean, this has been, I don't have anything really pulled up, Twitter. com. We've got our friend Lucas Gage. First thing that pops up when I pull up Twitter is Lucas Gage. Everyone who exposes our scam is Jewish. Stu Peters. Coin J proof appears to have kind of gone off the deep end. Let me see if I can coin market cap. Let me pull this up, J-proof. There it is. J-proof soul. Oh, man. This is not good. You know, here's the chart. I'm not saying anything; I am just showing you the chart. We had a very nice person who sent us a lot of equipment that we really needed. And along with that, there were a lot of messages like, 'Hey, guys, you should buy Jproof.' Guys, please buy JProof. And if we had bought J-Proof, we would have lost about 90% of whatever we had put in. So full disclosure, we did not buy J-Proof. Sorry, bud. Sorry, but this you could have seen coming from 100 miles away. I'm sorry. I'm also very sorry to all the people that this was your first exposure to cryptocurrency. But listen. Don't fucking shitcoin. Don't shitcoin. If you had been plugging your money instead of into shitcoins, if you had been plugging your money into gold and silver or Bitcoin, you would be up right now. Bitcoin is up over $108,000 today. What? I told you not to fucking sell. Anyway, Bitcoin is up. Gold is up. Silver, by the way, silver. Have you seen it? Silver is on an absolute tear right now. SPEAKER_3 The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 01:16:06 ] Wow, look at that. David J. Reilly [ 01:16:07 ] Stock trading app. Let's go just even over the past six months. Silver is up 27%. Bitcoin is up 11%? I mean, if you had bought the dip. At $74,000, you'd be at 40%. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:16:27 ] No one ever buys the dip. David J. Reilly [ 01:16:28 ] I bought the dip. I bought the dip. Gold is also going up, and it looks like it's consolidating. It's up 25% in the last six months. So when you are, this is not financial advice, but when you are investing, when you are thinking about your future, don't put your money into anything that requires trust. Holy shit, that is so important. It is so important. Gold and silver are real things that have real-world uses. Silver is used in, oh shit, there's this website called silverwars. com. We should do a segment on that at some point. Silver is used in torpedoes. Really? It's used in F-35s. The Department of Defense needs it. There's a silver shortage right now. They've been artificially suppressing the price of it, but you can actually build real things with silver. Gold is necessary for transistors and cell phones and chargers, electronic stuff. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:17:29 ] Infrared shielding. David J. Reilly [ 01:17:31 ] Yeah. So, I mean, like, even if you want to be all anti-Bitcoin or whatever, which is stupid, by the way, If you want to be anti-Bitcoin, fine. But these people are like anti-Bitcoin and they're like, 'oh, we got to buy J-Proof.' It's like, what the? No, stop gambling. Stop gambling. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:17:49 ] Bitcoin is gambling. David J. Reilly [ 01:17:50 ] Bitcoin is not gambling. It is the future of finance. SPEAKER_3 [ 01:17:54 ] Bitcoin. David J. Reilly [ 01:17:56 ] is completely different than any other cryptocurrency. There is no CEO. The founder, Satoshi, is probably dead. We're going to talk about this. We're going to get you to swallow your medicine, we're going to have, what's his name, Dr. Jack Cruz on the show at the end of this month. He's a neurosurgeon. He's a Bitcoiner. He lives in El Salvador. He's going to explain it to you. It's going to be fine. But anyway. Much better than J-Proof. Please go visit our friends at atlasbullion. com/slashbacklash, where you can invest in gold and silver, shit that actually means something. You can hold it yourself. You can custody it yourself. And you can buy a little bit at a time. They have gold and silver subscriptions. They have diverse subscriptions with different kinds of metal with plans as low The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics as $55 a month. Is that their new motto? Shit that means something. Shit that means something. From Kenzie today, it's like you guys are the worst-stop doing the worst sales people ever! But uh, yeah, so they have the best prices I've looked at other exchanges at other gold and silver bullion dealers. These guys get it; they give it to you cheap, as cheap as they can, and it's great stuff. They test everything too, that comes in. I was talking-oh really? Oh yeah, they have an IT'S called an XRF machine where they actually like scan the coins and bullion as it comes for lead testing. Yeah, yeah. They also have ways that they can help you roll over your IRA and 401(k) so you can get it out of the stock market, kind of like what Josh was talking about, you know, just kind of going your own way. I think that, you know, investing in gold and silver and holding it yourself is a great way to do that. I also think that Bitcoin is a great way to do that. And you can do that with River Bitcoin. We have a link on our website. If you want to buy Bitcoin, you can do that at river. com. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:19:49 ] You know, people often wonder what we talk about offline. We have a meeting to keep the podcast on track. And every meeting, I'm like, Dave, shut up about Bitcoin. Stop talking about Bitcoin. The audience hates it. And he's like, I'll try. Why do I just go Trump? Did you see that? I'll try. I'll try. He's like, I'll try to scale it back. David J. Reilly [ 01:20:09 ] I'm sorry we're talking about the most important fucking financial discovery of like the last 500 years. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:20:14 ] He can't help it; it's like his autistic compulsion to try. But what you guys should take to heart is that he thinks it's going to make everybody rich and he loves you guys enough that he wants you to get rich too, that's so true. Yeah. I care about you. So this is an expression of his love for you. I know that we all find it really annoying. But he's doing it because he loves you. David J. Reilly [ 01:20:40 ] I could either do the Bitcoin evangelism or I could just be like, 'You're all going to hell except Jesus Christ right now.' Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:20:47 ] That's the alternative? David J. Reilly [ 01:20:49 ] I've got two personalities. Accept Bitcoin in your life or accept Jesus in your life, and I feel like the audience doesn't want to hear about Jesus. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:20:59 ] They don't want to hear about Bitcoin either, dude. David J. Reilly [ 01:21:01 ] But they need to hear about it. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:21:03 ] I think they need to hear about Jesus more. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics David J. Reilly [ 01:21:05 ] You might have to put on a different hat. Yeah. I could put on my River Bitcoin hat over there. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:21:09 ] Oh, my God. I will murder you. David J. Reilly [ 01:21:11 ] Oh, thank you. This is good stuff. We got some super chats. We did get some super chats. Let's talk about them. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:21:16 ] I hope that they weren't questions for Josh. David J. Reilly [ 01:21:18 ] I don't think they were. Bane Koof sent $5. Check out Dave Lee's song about Portnoy. And then there's like a little YouTube link there, you can screenshot that and go listen to it, very nice, thank you Portnoy, what a dude, anonymous sent five dollars, are you going to do more call-in shows? Nice to have based people to talk to occasionally, right? Blonde... Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:21:40 ] Yeah, I don't know why I read that as something snarky. It was not snarky at all. No, I like this Twitter space idea. We're having a problem streaming from Twitter to YouTube, so I don't think that we're going to put our Twitter spaces on YouTube anymore. David J. Reilly [ 01:21:52 ] Let's just keep it on Twitter. Yeah, it sounded apparently like it was coming through a tin can or something. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:21:57 ] Yeah, people really hated it when they were listening to it on YouTube. So we're going to keep it to Twitter. We're going to do them every Friday. David J. Reilly [ 01:22:01 ] Yeah, the thing I like about the Twitter spaces is it kind of, um. It's kind of like going to a bar, except that you're not actually at a bar. And the conversation is infinitely better. Because, like, if you go to a bar, you have to talk about sports with somebody. And, like, I don't want to do that. But at least, you know, on Twitter, especially if you get, like, the right people, the right mix of people, you can really learn a lot. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:22:24 ] Right. And I don't have to get a babysitter. David J. Reilly The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics [ 01:22:27 ] And you don't have to get a babysitter. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:22:28 ] Although my baby was trying to strangle the cat a lot during the last Twitter space. That's funny. She just picks the kitty up right by her neck. I'm like, put the cat. You're going to kill the cat. David J. Reilly [ 01:22:41 ] Anonymous sent $5. Dave's not paranoid. He's always the first to punch up and write. He was going to quit, but we decided to be accepting for Rebecca's sake and soft heart XP. Aw. Thank you, Anonymous. I feel like this is just my wife anonymously super chatting him. Is it? Probably not. Maybe it is. I don't know. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:22:58 ] I suspect she does that sometimes. Sometimes. David J. Reilly [ 01:23:01 ] Anonymous and five dollars the rights more individualistic and personal prosperity focused so less collective action three primary human drives are betrayal abuse and destroy higher IQ and cultural consequences fix it somewhat but it is genetic and learned, yeah I agree with that largely largely okay let me just check uh entropy real quick see if there's anything I'm missing. Oh, there is. Look at this. The Boo Man sent $10. I learned about River Bitcoin here. More Bitcoin talk. That's your wife. Thank you. No, it's not. It's from The Boo Man. It's like, look, my wife does not know how to use Entropy. She has no clue. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:23:45 ] I don’t believe that anybody in our audience wants Dave to talk about Bitcoin more. David J. Reilly [ 01:23:50 ] I’ve been getting tweets. I’ve been getting people sending me tweets saying, ‘Please, more Bitcoin talk.’ I’d like to understand it more. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:23:58 ] You’re on your own, buddy. Why does that come so naturally to you? David J. Reilly [ 01:24:02 ] I’m just an Italian. Look, he’s hunched. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:24:04 ] He’s hunched over. David J. Reilly [ 01:24:07 ] I’m going to make you rich. See? Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:24:10 ] Totally trust him. And buy our shit coin. The Backlash - Episode 45-Josh-Neal-On-Intolerant-Interpretations-And-Paranoid-Politics David J. Reilly [ 01:24:13 ] No shit coins ever, ever, ever. Get it out of your system. Don’t do DAOs. Don’t do any of this bullshit. I mean, I’m at the point where I view the stock market as a giant shit coin. The U. S. dollar is a shit coin. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:24:27 ] Yeah, I agree with that. David J. Reilly [ 01:24:28 ] Everything is a shit coin, except for gold and silver, Bitcoin. You know, everything else. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:24:35 ] I'm inclined to agree with you there. David J. Reilly [ 01:24:37 ] so much for joining us sorry about those audio problems and video problems it did get a little bit better it did yeah he's he's a great guy and by the way the book is it's very dense it is very well written i mean it's written like a like a dissertation you know footnotes the whole nine yards you should definitely check it out intolerant interpretations and you can buy it on antelope hill um this is the backlash you can find us on x at real backlash Our website, thebacklash . Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:25:09 ] net. Support us on Subscribestar. Patreon? And find all of our links on the backlash . net sub to our YouTube channel, please. So that I don't have to stream on my YouTube channel anymore. That is at real backlash. And then our rumble is backlash podcast. Please sub to those. We, we, I don't even think we've broken a thousand subscribers on YouTube. David J. Reilly [ 01:25:30 ] It's pitiful. And by the way, we're also on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:25:34 ] Yep. David J. Reilly [ 01:25:35 ] So if you are more of the, like to download it and drive around type of thing, as opposed to like streaming it or whatever, you can do that. You can do that as well. Rebbeca Hargraves [ 01:25:43 ] I'm Rebecca Hargraves. This is Dave Riley. We'll be back with Cameron McGregor on Wednesday, and we will see you then. Bye-bye.