Proof That the Unraveling of MAGA Has Begun | James Lindsay

0:00This unmasking, what I'm talking about is honestly, ever since Charlie Kirk was murdered, they just took the brakes off or something. What they're doing is positively not in line with MAGA or the conservative movement or President Trump. And it's starting to concern people. The ignore it thing assumes that we're the primary audience that's monetizing their content. And we're not. The primary audiences that are monetizing their content are very likely to be recent immigrants to Europe and Canada because the Internet's global. Right. So you have all these welfare queens, Muslim welfare queens that came in and they, you know, for to a household that are watching content that affirms their hope and belief that the West is turning on Israel and Jews.

0:34How many people from the third world are on this platform now that were not on this platform, say, in 2015? 200 million new users. You know, the clicks are there. So this is the most amazing part of kind of totalitarian psychology I've ever seen. And here the left and right touch each other again, because you have kids. I mean, even before he died, Charlie Kirk was interviewing Turning Point kids on camera. The guys are sitting there saying, like, I can't buy a house, but we give$3 billion to Israel. Like, somehow those are connected. They're capable of tying up your personal problem into the omni issue of the day.

1:04That issue is the explanation for why your challenge is wrong. Hassan Piker is the voice of the next wave. Hassan Piker is their new poster boy for, you know, the next probably two years. This is really the direction. They're embracing assassination culture and political violence. It's not social democrat. It's hard communism. So what do the sane people have to do so that we don't wake up, holy cow, we just gave it away like we're cooked?

1:40I'm Dave Rubin. This is The Rubin Report, and joining me today is my old friend, founder of New Discourses, an excellent swordsman, according to pictures on the internet, James Lindsay. James, how are you? I'm good, and those pictures do me a lot of credit, so that's all I'll say about that. We'll throw up a couple of the pictures, and I'm not even going to comment any further unless you have anything else you want to add about your sword clay. They're glorious is all I got to add. How are you feeling about the state of America at the moment? You're somebody who gets things a little early usually.

2:12Are you feeling okay at the moment? Yeah, I mean, I'm still generally optimistic. I'm feeling, I mean, we're in a dangerous spot. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. And, you know, we've maintained that you and I both have been saying that for a decade, that we're careening in a dangerous way. But I'm actually a little more optimistic. Certainly compared to the last two years, I'm more optimistic. Things are, in my opinion, having been unmasked a little sooner than maybe they might have otherwise. Otherwise, people are kind of catching on and people catching on is always a good sign that something good might happen.

2:46So and, you know, big 250th celebrations, hard not to be optimistic about the country in the light of that. All right. So talk to me about unmasking, because I know it's easy for us. And, you know, you've been on the show probably 20 times over the years. It's very easy for us to critique what's going on the left. And both of us have spent an awful amount of time in our career doing that. But you've spent, you particularly, although we both have, have spent a lot more time attacking parts of the, attacking or exposing or unmasking parts of the right in the last year or so. So why don't we talk about the unmasking of both?

3:18Because I think it's happening on both sides right now. It is. It's right. We're kind of in this moment where there's like a scissors, like the left on the radicals of the left, which is mostly all of the left at this point, are like coming in their way. And in fact, there's going to be a new way. We're all going to be talking about the left again soon. I'm almost positive. that's all going to be Hassan Piker flavored. Nobody's going to like this at all. There's going to be lots of tinges of violence, I think, underneath the hood. And then, of course, there's this weird radical right that has sprung up, it seems, out of the woodwork, but it's continuous with the alt-right of 10 years ago.

3:47So it did not spring up out of the woodwork. It just kind of laid quietly until Trump was approaching his second and final term. And thus, the moment of opportunity arose for a change of direction in the conservative movement, which I think they're taking advantage of. But, you know, a year ago we were talking or so, and it's like I was telling all these people, you know, who's an example of this woke right? And I'd say, Tucker Carlson. And they would say, no, it can't be. Now, this unmasking, what I'm talking about is pretty much, I mean, honestly, ever since Charlie Kirk was murdered, they just took the brakes off or something.

4:22And almost immediately people started realizing that whatever's going on with this kind of, you know, it's like a network or a group of people. They seem to be working together. They always circle their wagons around each other. And what they're doing is positively not in line with MAGA or the conservative movement or President Trump or America at all, for that matter. And it's starting to concern people. Okay, so what would you say, we can name some of the people, and obviously, you know, Tucker seems to be the center of gravity around this thing, and there is some concern about where J.D. fits in with that that a lot of people bring up.

4:56You know, I've interviewed J.D. a million times. I basically like him. I think he's a good communicator. My only hesitancy with him is that it's unclear where he falls on this specific issue. But what would you say is the idea set of these people? Like, what is the thing that's bringing them together at the moment? Aaron Ross Powell Fundamental transformational change of the American experiment, whether it's because they want to destroy the woke, whether it's because they think that there's just been too much freedom and liberalism and allowed people to get too decadent, whether it's because they want political power.

5:28They want to get the kind of almost the constitutional order of the country out of the way and replace it with something different. I think that it's if we're being intellectual enough about it rather than, you know, just kind of street radical about it. The vision that they are aiming for looks something like the book called Regime Change published by Patrick Deneen in 2023, which J.D. Vance has sat alongside Deneen and promoted this book with him and endorsed this book. And so this is this idea that, you know, what we might need is a little bit more elitism in this country. We need the right elites in power.

6:01We got to get rid of these leftist elites and replace them with a kind of right wing elite that believe in a little bit of aristocracy, maybe a little bit more of the old WASP order, maybe even a monarch. Maybe it is, you know, Trump's not a king, but maybe it's a little bit of a king. I mean, that's what regime change calls for is a monarchy combined with a limited aristocracy combined with limited Republican democracy and a new economic system in particular that is based on ordering the society and the economy for what they call the common good. And so the common good conservative ambition, which is, you know, collectivism.

6:40So where do you think Trump falls in on this? And do you think he's paying attention to this? Because, you know, once I finally came around to Trump, which wasn't long after he got elected, even though I didn't vote for him the first time, what I started realizing was it seemed to me that he was holding together liberalism and conservatism. There were obvious reasons that he was a conservative. Abortion would be the easiest one and what he was doing with the courts. And then he also didn't really care about gay marriage. And then ironically, he as a person probably doesn't really care about abortion.

7:09So he was – those are simple versions of it, but that he was trying to balance these two things and that's what made MAGA such a wide tent. Do you think he is aware of what is going on here? Do you think he cares? Do you think he's a part of it? Or do you think he's just governing and we'll see? I do think he's aware. I do not think he's a part of it. I do think, however, that his administration is pretty heavily infiltrated by players that do think this way. And I know that that's some tension within the administration. And so Trump, of course, is an interesting guy. The way that he governs is interesting.

7:44You know, he's kind of well known for liking to see people kind of argue it out and then pick one of the paths. It's strongly been suggested to the point where I think it's probably true that the MOU, this memorandum of understanding that he issued with Iran that, of course, wasn't going to work, was an argument between J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. And finally, Trump just watched them arguing was like, we're taking JD's path and JD, you're going to wear it. And Marco, stay quiet for a week and see what happens. And that's sort of what went down. So he governs like this way. I think he likes the strife and the chaos, but he certainly is aware of Tucker Carlson.

8:20He called him low IQ to which Tucker Carlson made a brand of hats that no one in their right mind would wear that said low IQ on it. And so he's certainly aware that something's going on and he's not happy about it, but I'm not sure he understands the depth of it. It's always a bad bet to underestimate what Trump understands in these kinds of social dynamics and things that make people or his movement or his project or his electoral chances look bad. So I think he's probably playing a savvy game and may well be setting some of these people up. But I also know that's a little bit of cope on my part.

8:52I want that to happen. So I don't know for sure. But I don't think he's one of them. Right. Right. So where does the – well, let's do this version first. Where do you think Israel and the Jews falls into this? Because that seems to be a catch-all for a lot of the crazy people who now find – you know, you got the Tuckers that now have more in common with far more of the extreme leftists than they do with anyone who would be considered a conservative. Yeah, I can't tell Chukar and Chukar. I just called him Chukar. Tucker Carlson and Shank Uyghur. I can't tell him apart anymore. So we just call them both Chukar and we're good to go.

9:26They say almost the same stuff about almost everything at this point. And they're even talking about maybe it's time for a new party and a new alliance and I can never vote for a Republican or whatever. Israel is the scapegoat here. It's the tool. The Jews are like the slightly one step more advanced version of the same scapegoat. It's something that they could introduce, that they can drive that's very divisive. It plays upon a lot of sentiments that are flowing. I mean, the left is already fully cooked on pro-Palestine Gaza, straight basically like 1979 Soviet propaganda that has never gone away.

10:00And now we have this thing putatively on the right that has decided that Israel is some kind of a mastermind and it's doing all these things and we can't get ahead because Israel and our arrangement with Israel. And we have these isolationist kind of tendencies. Even during World War II, we didn't get involved until 1941. Like we're dragging our feet to get involved in basically anything. And so we don't want to go to war. We're all mad about – I think every conservative is at least a little bit mad about the debacle of Iraq, the debacle of Afghanistan to the degree that they were mismanaged. Maybe some of that was very necessary, but it didn't come out good.

10:39And we don't want more, right? And so this is a tendency that's very easy to play up. So now Trump wants to stop a nuclear weapon in Iran. He wants to make sure the Strait of Hormuz is open for business for the globe, a few other things. And then you can just blame Israel for every bit of conflict that happens. You know, Lebanon shoots a rocket. Syria shoots a rocket. Gaza shoots a rocket. Israel retaliates. Israel broke the ceasefire. And you can blame Israel for all these problems. And this has been shockingly effective and shockingly infectious. It's now becoming a litmus test or they're attempting to make it into a litmus test, even for right wingers, since October 7th.

11:16So now three years deep. So how do you gauge how effective it is? It seems to me like the Israel and Jew thing on the left, it's complete. Like the infection is complete. It is obvious. I mean, the fact alone— Complete and then John Fetterman. Well, right. So, well, I was going to say the fact alone that Josh Shapiro should have been VP choice and Kamala in the book basically admitted that it was because he was Jewish. That shows you enough. And then you've got Fetterman, except they hate Fetterman. I mean, it's Fetterman and then outside, you know, yeah, you've got Bill Maher and a couple other people on the outside.

11:52But in terms of the party itself, Schumer's done. Hakeem is, they're all cooked. I mean, you know, we're back to talking about the left, but here we go. Yeah. And well, now you've got, you know, these these recent elections in New York, you got Hassan Piker out there pointing at a camera and saying, you know, this is it. This is the proof you support Israel. You're done. And that's for the left going to be the litmus test. But we're seeing the exact same narrative being pushed on the right. It's just not as successful. So that was ultimately your question was, you know, how much is this penetrating?

12:20And what I'm I'm getting, you know, trans movement 2019 vibes or 2021 vibes. It's like I'm having moms call me. I'm really worried about my son. He's like saying Hitler got unfairly treated by history. What do I do? And I'm like, your son is trans. That's what you're dealing with. It's the exact same thing in mirror image. And this seems to be very effective at reaching kind of dislocated is the right word. Like they're dislocated by COVID, by BLM, by being raised in schools that told them they're the problem. You have all these pissed off young men, 15 to 25, who are searching for something. And this Israel is the scapegoat.

13:00Israel is the wedge set of narratives is working very well with them. And it doesn't seem to be working very well on anybody else. So what do we do about that? You know, there's always the argument that, you know, maybe you ignore it. And if you just ignore it, they won't get the clicks or attention. They'll move on to something else. Then there's the confronted direct thing. I've tried to do a little bit of both. I still at this moment think that the left is a way bigger danger. So I focus more on that. But I'm not sure I'm doing it properly. I don't know that anyone is. Well, I mean the ignore it thing assumes that we're the primary audience that's monetizing their content and we're not.

13:40The primary audiences that are monetizing their content are very likely to be recent immigrants to Europe and Canada because the internet is global. So you have all these welfare queens, Muslim welfare queens that came in and they're four to a household that are watching content that affirms their hope and belief that the West is turning on Israel and Jews because that's the main thing they want. And I've heard actually kind of here and there that that is a major demo. If you run your demos on who's watching your anti-Semitic podcast, that's who's tuning in. And so that's the demo they're chasing.

14:10So you and me ignoring that or telling all of our friends on Twitter to ignore that doesn't change the fact that that's a gigantic monetizable audience with disposable income that wants to buy that. And so it doesn't change the economics of the incentives of the Grifter equation there. So ignoring it can't be the right solution. Engaging, it's difficult because it's not exactly based in facts. But what I've found is that there's some degree of success in asking people who are kind of like flirting with these narratives to like, let's go together. You can do this in real time now because of tools like ChatGPT and Grok.

14:42Let's go together. Let's open up Grok right now and just ask it a kind of very neutral question. You know, for example, you know, what is the return on investment for the United States for all of this$3.8 billion we give Israel every year? What does the U.S. get out of this? And Grok will give you like this answer. And I've watched jaws just flop open and hit the table when they realize it's 20 ,000 American jobs. When you dice out everything, it's about$50 billion in increased economic activity in the United States, blah, blah, blah. And plus all the security, all the intelligence, all the Israelis dying for American security, etc.

15:19And this is actually – it's that moment I had in 2017 or 18 when somebody – it had to be after 17, right? Because it was the very fine people quote. And this guy on Twitter that I was friends with sends me a message. Have you ever watched the whole clip of Trump saying very fine people? Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it. No, no, no, not the 19-second one, the minute and a half one. No. Will you watch it? Okay. And I watched this and Trump denounces white supremacy, says the very fine people thing next. And then the narrative is Trump never denounced white supremacy. He said it in the previous sentence.

15:47Like, what are you talking about? And I was like, oh, my God, they're lying. And once that happened, I kind of cracked open and started to accept Trump. My Trump derangement fell apart. And this Israel derangement works the same way. You have to help people see that they're being lied to. But they have it's like you have to lead them to it and let them discover for themselves. You can't tell them you have to like go ask Rock, see what it says. And they all take Grok as an authority, which is its own can of worms, but it works. As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Angel is offering a great deal.

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17:03when we were all sort of lefties and we were, you know, to one way or another, we were mostly lefties, let's say, and we were calling out this nonsense on lefts, we were being ignored and or attacked by our own side, getting no mainstream help. Yeah, we were getting clicks, meaning people were paying attention to us because people were waking up with us, but there was no institutional help. Now we see what's happened to the left. On the right, it does seem to be different. The pushback that we have seen in this last year from institutions, you know, conservative leaning institutions from a much wider set of influencers or talkers or whatever you want to call us.

17:40And I would just say people in general, like just the general populace, it has been different, right? That's the thing that gives me hope here with the right. Yeah, I've noticed like with kind of normie conservatives talking to my neighbors and, you know, people I run into at the barbecue, but not at like a conservative event or something is like Their values just didn't change. Of course, Israel's good. We're Americans. We love Israel. It's just it didn't move. And so they haven't been swayed by this stuff at all. They think if they know about what's going on with Tucker at all, which often they don't because they don't actually watch him since he's not on TV anymore.

18:12He's on his podcast. They think he's gone weird. They think something's up. So it's not penetrating the normies. Right. But then the evangelical Christians smelled this pretty early. Like they figured out like, wait, not only is this wrong, but it's against our religious values and it's an attack on us. Like they're very aware that they are. Let's not forget there's no one that Tucker hates more, right, than Christian Zionists. In essence, he was saying evangelical Christians more than Jews. Exactly. And him saying that actually really woke up that group of people. And, of course, they have institutional apparatuses.

18:44They have institutional power. They're very influential. They're very big also. So that's a different group. And then the turning point in a sense that's very crucial is once Tucker decided to interview Nick Fuentes, this was its own thing. And it's not that. It's that due to a very – I mean it's like we live in a time of miracles that nobody recognizes. I feel like we're living in like the wandering in the desert and like God's mad that nobody recognizes the miracles and trusts the next one coming. Look at my atheist friend. So there's this weird hop of the ball that happened back at the end of October.

19:18So Tucker interviews Fuentes. Then somebody at the Heritage Foundation, by total coincidence, I have found out and confirmed by total coincidence, decides it's time to clean up one of their donor pages, deletes Tucker Carlson's name because that was a thing that was relevant back in June. It's now October 25. They delete this. And some journalist notices, you know, two days after the Tucker interview with Fuentes, you have Heritage Foundation distances itself from Tucker Carlson. And it was literally routine website cleanup. And so Kevin Roberts had to come out and make a statement about it. This, of course, turns into like HeritageGate.

19:53And then what happened was basically the entire kind of politically involved, not I don't want to say the establishment because people think like, oh, you know, the rhinos. But no, like everybody who's like mainstream institutional MAGA all of a sudden was like, oh, no, this is real. Like this isn't an Internet problem. This is a problem problem. them. And ever since then, I've been, I keep getting invited to go talk and I keep refusing. I won't go on stage, but they're like, James, will you come speak for our group and tell us what happened to Tucker Carlson? And I'm like, no, I will not speculate about an individual on your stage, but I'll tell you the broader movement or whatever.

20:27So it's, it's that like set off a flare that all of a sudden it's very different here. It was very, very bad on the left. It was like every door slammed and hits you on the back on the way out. And, you know, if you knocked on the door, it was locked and somebody might yell out the window and call you some name. And here something woke up and something is happening. There are actually people with values that are institutionally connected that are concerned and don't want to lose the conservative movement in its direction. So it's much more helpful. One of the quotes that you often bring up is that the issue is never the issue.

21:03The issue is always the revolution. And I quote you on that on the show all the time because it's so obvious to me now that the Palestine thing has just become the omni issue. It's just the new BLM. It's the new trans thing. these people have no idea I mean you pointed out with the Grok thing how you can sort of disconnect them from the lies but they have no idea the history, they have no idea the geography, the queers for Palestine have no idea what would happen to them if they walked into Gaza but the fact that this has become the center of all that you've probably seen the Venn diagram about this it's sort of, you have to give them credit in some sense for doing something so evil here now again we're sort of back to the left But it includes some of the people on the right that we're talking about.

21:48Yeah. And so, OK, so I keep trying to tell us. I'm glad you brought it up. I mean, we don't necessarily have to keep talking a lot about the left, but this actually. No, no. It keeps it keeps. I keep trying to do the right, but it does bring us back. Because they're the same. Yeah. They're two blades on a pair of scissors that doesn't work without both blades at some point. But this is this the explanation for queers for Palestine for the issue is never the issue. issues, always the revolution, which, by the way, is a quote from David Horowitz, who brought it out of his time being a leftist and the Students for a Democratic Society, which is a communist front organization.

22:20And that's what he reported in Prodigal Son was his what is big takeaway about how the left operates. The issues are completely throwaway. The point is to destabilize. But it's actually on the last page of the Communist Manifesto why this is the case. So all the way Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848, they publish, you know, a few sentences down is, you know, workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains or whatever. So you're up a couple of sentences and it says in black and white. I mean, I'm not going to quote it from memory, although I usually can. I can paraphrase this one.