Transcript/829: Chatting with Talia Lavin
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Hello Alex, I'm a first-time caller, I'm a huge fan
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I love your work
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knowledgefight
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knowledgefight.com
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Hello everyone, welcome back to Knowledge Fight
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I am Jordan, without my co-host again
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However, today I am joined by Talia Leven
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Talia, thank you so much for joining me
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Hi, it's awesome to be on
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Ready to fight about some knowledge
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Yeah, that's something like what we do
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You're the author of Culture Warlords
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You have a substack called The Sword and the Sandwich
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Are there any other credits that I could get?
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I believe you're a Fulbright scholar?
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God, I mean, yeah, if you really want to get fancy with it
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I went to Harvard, I was a Fulbright scholar
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I worked with The New Yorker, but now I'm a bum with the newsletter
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I'm working on my second book, but
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the place that I really put a lot of time and energy
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is this substack, The Sword and the Sandwich
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I sent you like 10 million links before we recorded, so my apologies
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No, no, no, no, I like it
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It's not unlike if Buddy Glass had a food blog
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If that makes sense to you, that's for very few people
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I don't know who Buddy Glass is, so I'm assuming he's Ira Glass's younger brother
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No, no, Buddy Glass is the Salinger character who writes the Zoe Franny stories
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the Glass family stories, see?
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That's what I'm saying, it's not even for you
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That is for zero people, basically, that reference
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No, I think a lot of people have read Franny and Zoe
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Unfortunately, my Salinger was limited to Catcher in the Rye
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Alas
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Hey, you know, if you don't make it past that, you're fine
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Yeah, is Buddy Glass notably... Anyway, moving on
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It's, yeah, it's like a food blog and then I write about the far right
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and the Christian right and then whatever else crosses my path
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that seems worth writing about
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Yeah, well, I mean, today I wanted to get into Culture Warlords
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I hadn't read it before, so I got a copy and I tore through it
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and I've got plenty of notes for you that we can go over
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The first thing to start with, though, is fairly simple
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Could you kind of give an overview of the timeline of Culture Warlords?
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Yeah, so I wrote my first feature about the far right in 2017
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I wrote about the Daily Stormer's quest for a new domain
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and how they kept getting kicked off
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that whole saga
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And then over the next two years, I kind of kept writing about it intermittently
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It was something I was really fascinated by
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Also, if you're a Jewish woman who writes about the far right, they pay attention
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and then, like, I found their harassment of me kind of got me more enmeshed and whatever
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and I wound up selling a book proposal around, I don't know, late 2018
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and then I spent 2019 writing the book
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and then in 2020, there was this, I don't know if you know, but there was this sort of world-shaking event
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so I wound up finishing the book in COVID lockdown, which was just...
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I was gonna say, which one in 2020?
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Yeah, all of them, right?
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No, I finished the book in COVID lockdown
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and then, you know, we published it and then January 6th happened
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a couple of months after it was released
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I think it came out in November 2020
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So it's a little dated, but not, like, horribly
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I think what's aged well is, like...
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I talked about some of the dynamics of radicalization and the...
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I don't know what emotional truths behind it and what these communities are like
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Like, I tried to give it legs, you know what I mean?
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Oh, no, absolutely, I think you do a great job
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When you say you were writing the book, that encompasses a whole lot of stuff
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Like, you were going undercover in all of these far-right spaces
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concocting over, what, how many false identities over the course of the book?
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I think at least six?
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Yeah, and there were a lot that, like, didn't really pan out so they didn't make it on the page
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Like, I had a whole tradwife persona that, like...
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But, like, the tradwives are just a lot better at info security than their male counterparts
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And they were like, who are you? Like, no one's seen you before
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Um, you know, like, we need someone to vouch for you before you can join our page on Facebook
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That kind of thing, so I didn't make a ton of headway in the tradwife community
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Uh, but I did have several identities I concocted to try and get in
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Um, but, you know, and there were a couple of other things that didn't pan out
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I mean, I was playing, like, ten different people over the course of a year
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And sometimes different people in a day, I mean, it was a real head trip overall
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That is the, that is the start of the question that I wanted, though, is
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Which and what of those characters did you kind of take with you, I think?
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I don't think you can play a character without bringing something away from it that kind of...
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Maybe you don't necessarily even want
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So, did you have a favorite character that you were playing?
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Oh, God, I mean, well, I'd like to think I haven't become, like, a neo-Nazi at any sense
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Uh, from any of the, any of the characters
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Um, I mean, obviously my favorite, sort of the splashiest and funniest, was playing Ashwin
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This, um, this character, uh, who I used to infiltrate, like, I used...
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I was a little sloppy, I reused the identity a couple of different times
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
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You know, that's, that's so strange because you've been trained in undercover work
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So, so well by the FBI, by Harvard, right?
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That's, it's definitely not something that you just started doing, right?
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Oh, yeah, no, my comparative literature degree also featured, like, heavy undercover infiltration
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Of course!
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Whatever, um, so Ashwin was this character I created initially
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And this actually was before I even sold the book
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I just, like, encountered this site, whitedate.net
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Which is a still-existent, um, dating site for white supremacists
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Um, and they were so short on women that they had a page called The Mini Flyer
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Where they had this flyer that they suggested you hand out to women, random white women you meet
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Even if you don't think they're hot
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Uh, and it said...
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Even if you don't think they're hot?
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Yeah, it might be one of your white brethren, my, my enjoyer
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Literally, it was like, and the text of the flyer was...
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Our existence is as important as the existence of the Siberian tiger, or survival
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As the Siberian tiger, join us on whitedate.net
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And you were supposed to give her the flyer and then take it back?
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Like, just very weird, like, I don't...
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You know, and the site is run by a woman, or someone I believe to be a woman
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Like, she's been on podcasts, her name is Liv Heide, she's German
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And she has a lot of content, like, she doesn't show her face, but she has a feminine-sounding voice, I don't know
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Um, but maybe not so familiar with how humans interact
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Anyway, I saw that they were so short on women they had this bizarre scheme
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So I was like, well, this seems like a very ripe catfishing opportunity
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, if they're desperate, you're in
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Yeah, so I chose the name Ashlyn because it just, like, sounded really white
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And I said I was from Iowa because that's the whitest state
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And from, like, a small rural community
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And I just started, like, getting messages from all these men
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And, like, browsing their profiles and just being, like...
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I mean, it felt a little like some sort of anti-fi anthropology thing
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Like, I don't even know, I just kind of started doing it on my own and then folded it into the book
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Um, it was just, I mean, for me, I think what wound up making it into the book was some stuff about
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Basically the banality of evil
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Like, you see all the time in mainstream coverage this, like, oh my god, like, a white supremacist said a, you know, complete sentence
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Or, like, doesn't live in a compound, in an Aryan nation's compound, like, and is able to cook dinner, like...
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Richard Spencer wore a tie!
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Right
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And that's all you need for a New Yorker article, apparently
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Right, I mean, the, I think the Tony Hoveater profile in the New York Times is sort of the, like, archetype of this
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Or maybe it was the Atlantic, it's the one where it's like, oh, like, we went, like, to dinner with him and his girlfriend
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He has a girlfriend, they eat food, and it's like...
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Hahahaha
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Like, you know...
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Nazis, they're just like us!
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I mean, it's A, Nazis, they're just like us, and it's like, what were you expecting?
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Of course they're human beings with, like, the same, I don't know what, like, humanity as anyone else
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They've just, like, made really, really bad choices and continue to make really, really bad choices
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And, like, the fact that...
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I say this in the introduction, like, the people we're talking about are human
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Obviously, with everything that comes along with that, their humanity does not absolve them
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And in my mind, it indemnifies them further
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Because they have chosen, out of the beautiful, complex tapestry of human life to spend theirs propagating hate
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So, you know, how is that in any way an absolution?
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Sure! Sure!
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No, there was one thing about white date, not that I really, really didn't enjoy
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Enjoy is the wrong word for it, but you had to send a little, like, here's why I should be allowed into...
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Or no, this was with one of your male characters in a...
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It wasn't a dating website, it was an incel community, right?
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Yeah, it was incels.is, the sort of, the big incel message board that, like, served...
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I mean, it's sort of... was, is the biggest incel hub on the net after Reddit, like, shut down the incel communities
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Sure. Well, the reason that I wanted to ask about that specifically is because you had to write a little
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Like, here's why you should invite me into the incel community, you had to write a cover letter, essentially
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Explaining why it is that, you know, you hate women
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And one of the lines that I thought was so fucking funny is, and I feel like you almost could have shortened it down to just
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I feel very alone
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And I read that and I was like, oh, that's speak friend and enter
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That's what that is
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And then, and then I was going, and then I went right back to white date
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Do you know what I mean? Like, those communities...
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How many women could possibly be on white date?
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You know, it's not that there aren't racist women
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They're just not on that site
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No, no, no, no, no, that's what I'm saying
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That's what I'm saying
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Women, well, again, the Tradwife community that you had trouble infiltrating, right?
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I can't imagine that any women but undercover Antifa people are on white date.net
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It's just me on feds, like...
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It's right, doesn't that seem right?
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Yeah, I mean, I think it was started by a woman, at least purportedly, I don't know
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But, but yeah, I mean, there's got to be some
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But like, I think now they charge a subscription fee for joining
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But I don't think the gender imbalance has resolved
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Let's put it that way
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Like, I think that maybe just like the men part of this community are just like
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We're open with security risk or whatever, but like, I don't know
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I mean, I think there are a lot of women with a lot of hate in their hearts, but or whatever
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Like, who are, but like, also, it's such a misogynist community
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That there are just very few women figureheads because, you know, they hate women too
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I mean, if you're a female white nationalist, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to find
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other white nationalists through like, OkCupid, they're available
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Yeah, or just like your DMs
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Yeah, absolutely
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You have an army of the worst simps in the entire world
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Yeah, I mean, oh God, it's also been a while and now I'm like trying to access the self
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that was like doing all this shit
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Like that was a really crazy year of my life
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Like I was just really, I was on these chats and forums posing as different people for
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like 10 plus hours a day
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Like, you know, and then editing and then rewriting and writing and writing and writing
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But the incel thing was very funny
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So you were writing concurrently while you were, so you weren't just like taking notes
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as this was going on
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You were trying to come up with complete chapter-based storytelling through this as you're doing
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it
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Yeah, God, I don't really remember
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Like the writing process was such a blur and like lockdown happened and, yeah
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But yeah, I mean, I had basically like I had nine months to produce a complete manuscript
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And like, so yeah, I was concurrent research and writing as I'm currently attempting to
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do
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And it was just, God, I was either like writing about hate, like in these hate chats or like
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reading like surfing telegram
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Like it was so weird and like such a dark place, but occasionally quite funny
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The incel thing was funny just because I had initially written a cover letter that was
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very bare bones
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Like just like, oh, like I'm interested in connecting with people more like me, you know,
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very boilerplate
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And they were like rejected, not enough information
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So I literally had to make a persona
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Like I literally had to like get deep into the mindset of an incel
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And like they write so fucking much about their feelings that it's like not hard to
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copy that
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But I really was like, OK, OK, Talia, like, you know, now you're a male incel
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Like what are you going to write?
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Did you go to a mirror and try and do the Travis Bickle thing?
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No, I looked into a mirror and like all of a sudden, you know, I was I watched my face
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morph into like my bones
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Are you racist to me?
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Are you racist to me?
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Yeah, I like it
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Yeah, I mean, I think it was more like the Beauty and the Beast mirror scene where like
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you take the magic mirror and it shows you just like a horrifying, tragic scene while
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we're referencing classic mirror scenes in cinema
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But yeah, I mean, it was just very funny
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So then the persona had to become more fleshed out of that load up the like kind of I did
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a fake out chapter or I was like, it's like maybe she interviewed someone else
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But I'm like, no, it was me
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There is there is a very good progression of escalation I feel like throughout throughout
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the book
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You start with a fairly straightforward history of the far right and how those movements go
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And then it kind of goes from, you know, the the social media people who are just talking
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shit to the infiltrating the the dating to the infiltrating the incels
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And then you finally wind up with, you know, out and out
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Let's go light stuff on fire people
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That kind of thing
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I'm interested to see do you feel like there were other people who followed along with
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the same journey?
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If that makes sense
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Do you do you think that there was some earnest person who's going on white date realizes
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that there aren't any women there?
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Women goes to an incel community.
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Do you know what I mean?
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Maybe I mean, I guess I could see someone being like, well, like I've been radicalized
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like now I'm a white supremacist looking for my perfect woman goes on white date.
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No women.
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This must be a problem.
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No women.
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This must be a problem with the women.
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There's something fundamentally wrong with women.
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They're not based enough.
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I'm going to become an incel.
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Maybe.
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I mean, a lot of the guys on white date were older were like, like, like divorced.
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There's a lot of divorced men, very divorced, just strong divorced energy on white date.
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Yeah, that sounds right.
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Like, like every night I eat like pork and beans from a can.
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How are you kind of vibes?
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Um, can't like, well, I would say the most manipulative thing I did and like, I mean,
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there are a lot of things it's like, I am still proud of culture warlords.
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And obviously like people still want to talk to me about it on a podcast three years later
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and that's tight.
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But like some of the things I did were a little out tray, like, which is sort of, I mean,
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I think it makes the book more propulsive read, but like I got the men on white date
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to write me love letters to their ideal white wife.
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And then I printed them in an anti-fascist book, which is sort of an objectively funny
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if manipulative thing to do.
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I was, I was going to say we were going to get there.
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I was going to say how much of your behavior do you feel like, yeah, I'm going to tell
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my kids about that.
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I'm real proud.
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I don't say, I would say I feel like ashamed of, of really anything I did.
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I think it is like the one thing is like, there was a lot of push from the like publisher
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to make it more of a memoir-ish feel, include more me.
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And that wasn't necessarily Hunter S. Thompson going undercover in the right wing kind of
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thing.
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Yeah.
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That like I was a character and like, I'm trying not to do that in book two.
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Like it's something that hopefully as my writing matures, like it obviates the need to like
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kind of center of the self.
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I think it can be kind of reflexive.
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I mean, and every first book is not a biography as they say, but, but in this case it was
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pretty, it was pretty extreme.
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The other undercover bit and the one that was like by far the most emotionally involved,
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I'm sure you were going to get to this and I'm getting all your questions out of order
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and ruffling your beautiful hair.
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No, no, no, you're golden.
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Um, no, but, um, I, I was like enmeshed again, as sort of Ashlyn, but like, I think I had
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a different, I had a different username on Telegram, like, um, like Aryan Queen, whatever.
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Oh my God.
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I swear to you, this is, this is how stupid I am.
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I swear to you.
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And I wrote it down in my notes.
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I saw Ashlyn 1488 and my first thought was, she's 550 years old.
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And then I was like, right, right, right, 1488, the 14 words and then the high, I got
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you now.
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Yeah, no, she's also a time traveler from the Carolingian era.
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Um, no, I'm not very clever.
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It's it's like, as I've moved away, like the current book is a lot more about mainstream
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figures, mainstream politics.
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It's still about radicalization and violence, but it's more about like the Christian right.
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But like, it's less, I mean, there's still like specialized knowledge and shit.
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Like you just have to read what they write about.
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Like, we want to take over the country.
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We believe there are profits.
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Like we are explicitly have this goal of theocracy and like, here are like all of our representatives
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on school boards and in state legislatures, like it's a little more straightforward.
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You don't have to download any encrypted apps.
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You can just like, you can just like watch videos of school board meetings.
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Um, I will say that like, I think some people in the like researching the far right community
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can get a little like enamored of kind of knowing who these obscure people are and like
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knowing all their codes.
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And like, I think I was a little bit in that mindset, but like 1488 isn't that obscure.
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It's it's kind of a,
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Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm with our show is thoroughly familiar with 1488.
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There's no need to, to go any further into that.
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Uh, everybody here is more than familiar with Hitler.
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Yeah.
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Uh, just to just be clear, he's bad.
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I just like him.
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Bad guy.
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Um, no.
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Have you ever seen the movie Imperium?
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No.
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Okay.
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So it's really funny.
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It's like very cringe and it has a good heart, but it's so weird.
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It's it's it's, um, with Daniel Radcliffe and he plays, uh, this real life guy.
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I think it's Mike German.
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The name might be familiar to you.
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This guy, like an actual fed who like went undercover with white supremacists and like
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has been kind of warning about them ever since, but the movie is like Daniel Radcliffe plays
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him like going undercover with a bunch of Nazis, uh, and like goading them into like,
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or like they have a plot to like blow up a dam and then he like sort of both goads them
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and then interrupts it at the last second.
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But it's, I think it's a partially based on a true story.
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It's also just like Daniel Radcliffe is a very tiny person and he, he's like pretending
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to be this ex Navy Seal who like is their security expert.
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Anyway.
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He was way more believable as a corpse that could talk and be a boat.
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I really believed in that one.
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I was like, that's a Harry Potter performance right there.
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Yeah, no, I mean, I enjoy that he spent his post Harry Potter career just taking on the
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weirdest roles possible.
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But anyway, at one point, the only point of this anecdote was just like at one point,
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like the dialogue is so bad.
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They're just like, he's like, they greet each other, white supremacists greet each other
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like 1488 brother.
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I mean, the problem is that's not far enough off from reality.
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Like that's not bad writing.
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That's bad Nazis.
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They're just not that creative.
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They do have a blow up dance.
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It's just, it was so funny.
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Like he had this great conversation with a Nazi punk about how like herchers, like labels
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on food that say that they're kosher or like because Jews are controlling the food supply.
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It was very funny.
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It was interesting to see it in a movie with Daniel Radcliffe in it, but, but like occasionally
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I'll just like find myself with an intrusive thought of just like wanting to be like 1488
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brother to say hello.
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But like my brain is poisoned, so don't take anything I say seriously.
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See there we go.
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Now we're talking about the things that you took away.
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It's true.
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Like, yeah.
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I mean, I, I was in a really dark place after I read the book, like, like is all of humanity
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like this?
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Like everyone I've talked to for the last year wants to kill everyone like me.
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Like it really seeps into your bones.
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It makes you feel scared.
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And then I did have, when the book got published, like the FBI showed up at my door and they're
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like, um, you know, like they're rape and death threats against you.
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I'm like, I know.
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From the FBI?
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No, the FBI wasn't threatening to rape and kill me.
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But it was like, I got a visit from like the, yeah, the counter, a counter-terrorism squad
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at the FBI.
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And they were like, people want to rape and kill you.
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I'm like, I know, I know.
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And then a year later, I was going to say, yeah, they, they met up with me and were like,
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one of the people that like threatened you the most is now in jail and the other like
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is barred from using the internet in his country.
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I'm like, can you give me more details?
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And they're like, nope.
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I'm like, okay, cool.
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Good meeting.
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We're the FBI.
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What do we help?
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Come on.
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Yeah.
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But like, I've taken security measures since then.
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It's so it's weird.
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I mean, I think none of it helped with my anxiety disorder.
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Let's put it that way.
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Sure.
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Sure.
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Well, no, I mean, there was one question that comes up early on in the, in the book and
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it's not quite a question so much as it is.
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You see a tweet or something from somebody that's just, would anyone rape Talia Leven?
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Right?
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I think it was in a telegram chat.
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It was in a telegram chat of people affiliated with like, um, the bull patrol podcast, which
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was like straight up like autumn boffin, like terror.
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It's like terrorists being like, should anyone rape her?
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Only with a shotgun.
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I mean, fuck with your head.
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That's the thing that I couldn't stop thinking about besides, you know, the, the visceral
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nature of it.
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I, I assure, I assume must've been just beyond fucked up to not be yourself and to hear people
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talk about you behind your back.
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They posted a picture of my feet in a Nazi chat that I was lurking in.
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It was so weird.
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Um, I think at the time I was like, well, I guess I'm doing something right.
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I will say that as a woman and as a Jew, but as a woman, I think there's an element of,
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of covering this stuff that gets very visceral because the misogyny is really at the beating
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heart of these movements.
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And that includes the Christian right, by the way, but like when we're talking about
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these terror movements, when we're talking about white supremacy and white supremacist
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terror, right.
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And, and, and in seldom, obviously, um, Saudi is the beating heart of it and like they really
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hate women.
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They really hate feminism and like they are very violent people.
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And so their heads go to gendered violence right away.
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And like when I talk to men who are in the sort of like, we're weirdos who research the
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far right kind of community, most of what they get in terms of opposition.
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And I wonder if this is your experience is like, I was like, okay, like I'm Lex Luther
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and you are Batman, like, you know, this sense of we're, we're rivals, but we're equal, um,
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you know, and I'm going to fuck with you and I'm going to be say violent things, but it's
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not like I am going to like rape your corpse.
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Like you are sub, like you are subhuman.
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You are not worthy of my rivalry because you are a woman.
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Like the constant talk of rape, the constant discussion of my body, like it, you know,
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um, and my face and like, like using a picture of me as evidence that like Jews are non-human
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and are closer, more closely related to like Australopithecus because of their giant hips.
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Like just weird stuff.
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Have you had people analyzing your body and face and feet and threatening rape?
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Physiognomy in 2023 is just great.
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But no, I mean for us, no, and we're more than aware that if we were women, it would
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be completely different for us because as it stands, we're just ignored.
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Nobody talks about us.
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Nobody really comes after us.
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No, we just, we just sit in our little corner of the internet and are left alone essentially.
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Um, but if we were not, uh, two bearded white dudes, if we were two women, uh, especially
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women of color, we would be exoriated on, on a fucking daily basis by hundreds of people,
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if not thousands.
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Um, so I mean, that's why I, I, I asked the question to you because obviously I can't,
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I can't understand it.
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You know, like when I read that somebody would post something like that, like my first instinct
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is like, wow, this needs to be against the law or something.
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I don't know what to do with this.
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I don't know what to do with this beyond say, whatever happened needs to stop.
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You know?
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I can't feel the visceral element of, of it being directed towards me.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it was not like a high top 10 moment of my life, that, that moment, although it
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did make for a very dramatic copy.
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Um, I will say that I, I hired my own fact checker cause that's what you have to do for
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books.
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Like they don't provide one.
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Um, that's why I write fiction.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Um, but she reviewed all of the screenshot, like I took screenshots of every interaction
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I had, including that one.
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And I traumatized my fact checker.
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She's like, I read through all this stuff and I like vomited and I'm like, I'm so sorry.
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And I paid her extra out of my, I'm like, this is a hazard pay.
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You got the Nazi tip.
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You got the Nazi tip.
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Hey listen, you get an extra 50%.
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Hazard pay.
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Cause like you have to read these fucking disgusting chats about like this muck.
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And it's like, I think the one thing, and you notice how also like many of the people
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who are reporting on this stuff are white men, right?
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And there's a lot of reason for it.
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Like there are, you know, first of all, it's like, and it's, it's a, um, not as heavy a
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lift to constant, like you're not constantly engaged with people who want to eliminate
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you off the face of the earth, um, as, as your job, right?
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The psychic toll is far less high.
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Uh, I mean, there's still a psychic toll, like you're looking into the howling void
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of hell, but like, Oh yeah, I'm insane.
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We've listened to Alex Jones nigh every day for seven years.
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I've lost my mind completely.
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Yeah.
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But like the howling void isn't like looking at you, assessing your looks and deciding
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whether you're worthy of raping.
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Right.
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Um, I do think that like, first of all, there's, there's also a really fucked up like sense
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in journalism that like, Oh, anyone with a stake in the matter, like can't be objective.
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So like women can't report about misogyny.
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Only white men can be objective.
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Right.
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And that's an unsubtle factor in why the press core in the U S looks like such as it is.
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Looks the way it does.
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Clearly it's an objective opinion.
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But I think a lot of reporting on extremism, not, not all of it, not all of it, but, but
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a lot of reporting on extremism is at the very least rarely acknowledges how central
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misogyny is to the, to the, to these movements, uh, because it is not viscerally directed
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at the reporters themselves, because it is sort of also so ambiently present in the rest
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of culture that it's easy to ignore.
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And perhaps like, you know, um, everyone has internalized bias as, you know, reporters
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and non-reporters alike, but I think the biggest thing that I would say is like living through
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kind of being an avatar, uh, a recipient of this kind of gendered hate is like recognizing
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how central misogyny is and anti-Semitism like, I think I knew they hated Jews, right?
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Obviously I'm not stupid and I've been writing about it, but it's like, then you get into
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it and you're like, Oh my God, no, like they hate Jews, but it's not just that they hate
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Jews.
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It's that the hatred of Jews is the scaffolding on which, from which every other hate is hung.
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It's the, it's the overarching sort of canon.
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It's the world explanation, um, that provides like a support structure for all the other
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hate.
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So it occupies this very unique niche.
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So as, as a Jewish woman reporting on this world, it, it like, it felt very personal
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for me.
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And I think that explains like why I went so gonzo, why I felt so out for revenge.
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Cause like, I was like, these people want to murder my family.
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They want to rape me to death.
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Like they obsessively fantasize about subjugating all women and killing all Jews.
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So yeah, it did feel like a personal fight.
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And like, on the other hand, everything in the book is, is factual and fact checked.
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Of course.
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I didn't let my emotions blind me to the truth.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:48.719)
All right.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:49.719)
All right.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:50.719)
Let's not, let's not, uh, I'm not a cute, I'm more just saying like, I know, I know.
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I'm just kidding.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:55.599)
Uh, Oh, Oh, calm down.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:57.599)
No, no.
Unknown Speaker (00:35:58.599)
I, I think, um, it's okay, baby, don't worry.
Unknown Speaker (00:36:05.800)
Um, so it was, it did feel very personal and it's not maybe like an objective journalistic
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chronicle in that sense, but like, I do feel like there was stuff I learned while I was
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writing it.
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Like I really learned more about the history of antisemitism in America, the role antisemitism
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plays and how people get radicalized.
Unknown Speaker (00:36:27.599)
That's, that is the next, that's the next step.
Unknown Speaker (00:36:31.920)
Um, because that is a really interesting part of this book from, from my reading of it is
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you were radicalized, you know, like the re the element of your book is you are going
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through a journey of somebody's radicalization, you know, through these different groups.
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And then at the end of it, you are thoroughly radicalized, uh, just not in the way that
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they would have appreciated you, you be.
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And that leads me to the question of like, you know, you said, I don't necessarily appreciate
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that I took, made these guys write letters to their perfect white wife, right?
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In the face of what you deal with, I don't know what's unjustified and what's justified.
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Do you know what I mean?
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And I, and I mean that in a very serious way, because when you say radicalized, it it's
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fascinating to me.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:29.039)
And you say it in the book, I'm not putting words into your mouth.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:31.360)
Correct?
Unknown Speaker (00:37:32.360)
No, no.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:33.360)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:34.360)
I'm, I just want to clarify.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:35.360)
I became radicalized like as an anti-fascist.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:37.360)
Yes.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:38.360)
I, but, but I mean, yes, you were.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:41.360)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (00:37:42.360)
Oh my God.
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Like, you know, I think so much of radicalization is just like being in a bubble where you get
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exposed to like the same cell, like reinforcing material every day, every hour where you're,
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you know, in this bubble of like-minded people.
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And I would say that like being in those bubbles as someone whose identity is like diametrically
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opposed to everything they stand for and like knowing that they wanted to, they, they, they
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not only personally, but also just like on an identity category basis, like as a feminist,
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as a woman, as a Jew, like they want me dead was, yeah, you're a triple threat.
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Literally.
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Yeah.
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It was a tremendously radicalizing experience.
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It was like, I was like, fuck you.
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You know, I went, I went from like, fuck you to fuck you.
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Like just like totally, totally deservedly so deservedly so I don't know how a question
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like would anyone rape Talia Leven not radicalize you?
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How?
Unknown Speaker (00:38:52.280)
How could it not?
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Right.
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For the crime of like having like written a couple of articles like about, I don't know,
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the far right.
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Like it's just, yeah.
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Well, I mean, and it's just a confusing and, and a disgusting question that, that like
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means so much, you know, it is, it is an expression of, again, there is, there is a, there is a
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there, there like loneliness in their, their hatred for women that, that is, is, you know,
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like they can't even say like, Oh, does anybody find Talia Leven attractive?
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They can't do that.
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And that's not the question they're asking, but the question they're asking also isn't
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the question they're asking, you know, they're, they're expressing some feeling that is violent
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and hate filled and, and lonely and, and just horrendously awful, you know?
Unknown Speaker (00:39:43.840)
Well, it's also, what's interesting, it's like, it is a gendered performance, like totally
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like 100%.
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And when you're in these all male, majority male spaces, especially because I'm honey
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potting half the time, you just realize how much of it is like guys showing off to each
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other.
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Like, and I think the dynamic of sexually humiliating and degrading women to other men
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is very much a performance of, of masculinity.
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Yes, yes.
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That was the, yes, yes.
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And they're obsessed with hyper-masculinity.
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Sorry, I got excited.
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No, they're obsessed with hyper-masculinity.
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There was the other like episode where I adopted another identity to like talk with white
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supremacists who wanted to do a Christians versus pagans, like fight in the woods.
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Um, Oh yeah.
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That one would be fun.
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Oh, just hilarious.
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What was the name of it?
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Oh God.
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I don't remember.
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It's been a while, but it was like, they, it was like the rumble and whatever they were
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going to do, like a fight, like good natures, like Christians versus pagans, neo-nazi.
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We're all white nationalists here, but we have different religious beliefs.
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Let's settle this through violence like we always do.
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Yeah.
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And it was to raise money for Augustus Invictus' presidential campaign.
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That's a like white nationalist, wife beating piece of shit, like started off his career
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drinking goat blood and like challenging Marco Rubio for his Senate seat in Florida.
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I think now he's a trad-cath, um, but he just like beats women.
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That's his other thing.
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I mean, so misogyny, hyper-masculinity, misogyny as part of hyper-masculinity and performance
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for other men.
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Um, this like, am I tough enough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough kind of vibe.
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I think the, the, the degradation, humiliation and specific targeting of women is part of
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that performance, which isn't to say it doesn't come from a place of like all kinds of fucked
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up in a rage, but I think part of it is, is also showing off for other guys.
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How much can we lose?
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Well, that's what I was thinking about.
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Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (00:41:55.380)
Well, that's what I was thinking about with whitedate.net, sorry for interrupting you.
Unknown Speaker (00:41:58.559)
Uh, but what I was thinking about was how much of the messages that they sent you are
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them with this mistaken impression or, or, you know, in your case mistaken, but perhaps
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a reasonable impression that any woman who would go on white date is looking for the
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most white, white nationalist man she can find.
Unknown Speaker (00:42:19.440)
Right.
Unknown Speaker (00:42:20.440)
Yeah.
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And um, so a lot of those messages to you are tinged with a certain amount of like,
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I gotta, I gotta really up my white nationalism for this lady.
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I gotta really, I mean, when I go to the store, I'm like, ah, I don't like black people, but
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this lady, I need to be really white nationalist for it.
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Yeah.
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And it's like, I want you, it was so fun.
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It was just like the, the, the, the messages were just like, you seem like the good submissive
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mother of my babies.
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And like, let me prove to you how much I hate minorities and Jews.
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Um,
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I can't believe, I can't believe there aren't a ton of women on white date.net.
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I know.
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The thing is like, like the whole white nationalist terrorist movement, which was like at this
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point, one of the things that's shifted in my thinking is like, it is a fascinating and
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destructive subculture.
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It's also like, since I wrote that book in 2020, like the Overton window has shifted
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so far that like to focus on like, like the violence is coming from inside the capital
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H house.
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Like there has been a seismic shift in like where the centers of violence are, like, you
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know, who sort of makes sense to study as like a primary target.
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Um, I'm also not really doing undercover work anymore.
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Um, just cause I was like,
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I can't do that again.
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Like I'll go crazy, um, crazier, uh, and there's more than enough stuff.
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I mean, I am planning to attend at least one conference either about like prophecy, homeschooling.
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Ideally both in chronicling the Christian right, but like, I will not be undercover
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at that point.
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Like I will be a, a me, um, person attending, um, hopefully I won't get chased out again.
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Um, like I said,
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Where did you get chased out of?
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A conference organized by Andy Ngo and Tim Pool.
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I met two, uh, two titanic intellectuals.
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I met them both at that event.
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Um, Ngo was like very awkward and like not confrontational.
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Um, he wanted, uh, I met Tim Pool.
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I asked him if his beanie smelled bad.
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That's a good question.
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He was like, no, I have, I have a few and I washed them.
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Um, I think one or both of them wanted to take a selfie with me and I was like, no,
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Nope.
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Why not?
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Fuck you.
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I'm not going to be a prop.
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What are they going to do with it?
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They're going to prove it.
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They're going to use it to be like, look, this is our enemy and she loves us.
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I'm like, no, I'm just here to cover the fucked up things you say.
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It was very weird.
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It was like, and also at a casino and like Philadelphia.
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Um, it was kind of cool cause there were like some Antifa folks.
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I was like, I, I was outside smoking for a lot of it.
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I went to some of the panels, but like, I also just wanted to talk to people who like
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showed up to like see Sargon of Akkad in person in like Philadelphia.
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Can't miss it.
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When's Sargon going to be back in Philadelphia?
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Come on.
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I know.
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Like, I'm like, like, so you know, what are you up to?
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Like I wanted to talk to them and there was this one lady who was like, I just think the
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races should be separate.
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And I was like, cool.
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Can I like take your photo?
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Let's talk.
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What's your name?
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She's totally cool with all of it.
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And then she's like, yeah, like I just don't think people of different races should marry.
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And I posted that to my Twitter.
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I was like live tweeting in retrospect.
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That was a dumb idea.
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I wasn't really like such an expert on reporting from adversarial situations, but it was like,
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she got this other guy to like gang up on me.
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Someone else is following me around.
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I had a friend who had like driven me there.
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He was like playing blackjack cause this was all in a casino.
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And at a certain point I had like three different people following me around yelling at me and
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I was like, it's time to cut bait.
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And so I, I like, you know, it was like, let's get out of here.
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And so, you know, I kind of made a dash for, for his vehicle and that person is currently
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my boyfriend.
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You know, I'm not saying this is the test for dating me, but like, can you safely extract
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me from a conference full of white nationalists isn't like a bad litmus test.
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It's a good quality.
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It's a good quality to have.
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One that most people won't need, but you know, you never want to be without it.
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So I would say that I, I was like leaving and I was running, like I wasn't running.
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I was just like, I'm going to like hit, hit the trail, right?
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Like let's get out of here.
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A couple of people were yelling after me.
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Um, we get in the car, we speed away.
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And I was like, I was just, I like tweeted, like, I was just chased out of this conference,
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especially because they were like building it as like, we're so reasonable, like, uh,
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you know, we're like, we're really open to other perspectives.
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And I was like, Hey, I was just chased out of your conference.
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Like, so, um, and they were like, they found the post-millennial was like, she, like they
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claimed that I wasn't chased out, I waddled away, um, that I wasn't like at a full tilt
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run.
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And like, then they were like, we talked to the casino security about like, whether anyone
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was chased out.
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And I was like, people running, like were yelling at me and following me around.
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And I like left at reasonable speed, like, you know, maybe casino security wouldn't have
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noticed.
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Like, we're going to produce the security footage that proves this is a lie.
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And they never did, but they were like, Oh, she's lying.
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And I'm like, no, it reminds me of like 1940s journalism where they'd be, where they'd just
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go into a paragraph on a woman's appearance on a, on a story about like the building was
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falling down and then they've got a, her, her shoes were a little bit too high and you're
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like, Jesus Christ.
Unknown Speaker (00:48:42.119)
Well, it's just another example of like how visceral this stuff is and like, okay, so
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like I show my face, right.
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And the Post Malone, I swear it published, a woman who looks like a pigeon is, is actually
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Antiva and she's going to ask you misleading questions and lie about you on her blog.
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The guy who said that at the, um, mic in the session I was in, um, was someone who had
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told me like, Oh, like I'm not a white nationalist.
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I'm a civic nationalist.
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So I, I think there's a diversity of opinion here, uh, and I posted a photo of him anyway.
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I don't think I looked like a pigeon.
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I'm not covered in feathers.
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So there, but it was just, it's like, I don't, I don't even know how to handle the concept
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of a nonstop barrage of appearance based insults.
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Like it, it never ends.
Unknown Speaker (00:49:40.960)
Yeah.
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I mean, that's, that's the fucked up truth of it is that it never ends.
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No.
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And for a while they were obsessed with the idea that in like a few pictures, my fingernails
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appeared dirty and like someone made a collage of like different photos of my fingernails,
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including several where I was like at the beach and just like had sand in my nails.
Unknown Speaker (00:50:04.320)
Um, but it was like this filthy fingernail Jew and I like started getting really self-conscious
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and like stopped including my hands in photos.
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Like it's like, it's just, it gets to you like you're human.
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That's fucking unbelievable.
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So when I've talked to people who've been brigaded and swarmed by hate, I'm like, like
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a lot of times they feel guilty for letting it get to them.
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Like I've talked through like specifically a lot of women through the process of like,
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so like you wound up being like the target of Tucker Carlson's show today, or like 4chan
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found your blog post and suddenly gone from being like a random person to like being the
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target of an avalanche of hate.
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And it's like very weird.
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It feels like the roof has blown off your life and I've talked them through it.
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And like inevitably it's, it's mostly been women and inevitably there's this feeling
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of guilt of like, shouldn't I be stronger?
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Like I'm letting this get to you and I'm like, no, like you're a human being.
Unknown Speaker (00:51:02.199)
We like evolutionarily respond to criticism because we don't want to be rejected from
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the tribe and like left alone to starve.
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Like it hurts to hear people say stuff like you are too ugly to rape or like this disgusting
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dirty fingernail Jew is like an example of Neanderthalism and not a homo sapiens.
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Like it's like weird.
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It makes you feel weird when you look in the mirror, like, uh, you're like, God, do I really
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look like the, you know, that caricature of a Jew they always have, it's like the guy
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with the hook nose bending over sort of rubbing his hands.
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I'm like, like, sure, sure, sure.
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Why would other people see you when they look at me?
Unknown Speaker (00:51:48.639)
Like it's just like, you know, and I've had some time and I've had some therapy, but like
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for a little bit it was just like, Oh my God.
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Like, you know, when you deal with like very direct comments and attacks on like your appearance,
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who you are, like your gender, your ethno religion, whatever it is, like, and it's all
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intertwined.
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It does fuck with your head.
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So that wasn't, you know, I think that was part of my process of radicalization was just
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being like, leave me alone.
Unknown Speaker (00:52:23.559)
Yeah, of course.
Unknown Speaker (00:52:25.000)
No, I mean, it, it, it makes me blindly filled with rage to, to hear that.
Unknown Speaker (00:52:32.119)
Like, I mean, honestly, I, I, I, you can see my body language, I hope, but I'm, I'm fucking
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shivering with how much I can't, I can't even con I can't, I can't conceive of the idea
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of wanting to say that.
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Not even, not even saying it, saving it, saying it is beyond my comprehension entirely.
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I'll say just like what female researchers of this stuff endure is staggering.
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And this story is included in the book, but you had Molly Conger on the podcast.
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I love her.
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She's an amazing person.
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She came to Seder with my family one year.
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I adore her.
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She's a delightful human being, friend of the show.
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We love socialist dog mom.
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Yeah.
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Do you know what happened to her over the course of, and this, I included this in the
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book.
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I watched this unfold in real time.
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Do you remember Paul Neelan, does that name sound familiar at all to you?
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He ran against Paul Ryan for the house in, what is it, Wisconsin.
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Anyway, he's fucking nuts.
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And like he kind of wound up like not winning obviously, but he became increasingly more
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and more antisemitic over the course of his campaign.
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He also works in water treatment, which is insane because I'm like, this guy's gonna
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put cyanide in the water in Wisconsin, but whatever.
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Anyway, he had a specific rage hard on against Molly and this other woman who had both done
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research on anti-fascism.
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Sure, sure.
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This was right around the Unite the Right area.
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This was after, this was during the writing of-
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Charlottesville.
Unknown Speaker (00:54:12.000)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (00:54:13.000)
So that's when Molly became more active, but this was a couple of years later, Neelan had
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already lost.
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He had a Telegram channel.
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He like went deer hunting.
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He named two deer after these women.
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He shot the deer labeling them after these women.
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He lynched the deer, the dead deer.
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And then he made deer meat sausage and spelled Molly's name out in meat.
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That's psycho.
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I mean, yeah, I can sense, I can feel why that would be threatening, absolutely.
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But to me, that's more confounding.
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The number of ideas that you have that lead to that point so outweigh any kind of rational
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behavior.
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The moment you're like, well, I've killed the deer.
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Now I got to string it up.
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You should have somebody around being like, this is just, I mean-
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You shouldn't be allowed to chemically-
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We have a phrase called beating a dead horse.
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You shouldn't be allowed to chemically treat water at that point.
Unknown Speaker (00:55:27.000)
Yeah, that's not complicated.
Unknown Speaker (00:55:28.960)
But yeah, no, I mean, but imagine this happening to you.
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Someone named a deer after you, they murder it and they hang it in effigy.
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That's how visceral the violence against women and the hatred of women is.
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And I interviewed Molly about the whole thing.
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I mean, after a certain point, we get this sense of Morden humor.
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I think the women who study this stuff have an even darker sense of humor than the dudes
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because we've been to hell and back.
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And it rolls off your back.
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But then also, I take very serious precautions.
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I don't post photos where I am.
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I still, even though it's been years and no one's coming after me, probably, there is
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a sense where I'm like, knowing that enough people have wanted to murder and rape you
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over the course of your life does sort of put a permanent dent in your feeling of safety.
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I still think it was worth it writing this book.
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I still think it's worth it writing book two just because whatever my emotional distress,
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this is existential for the country.
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This is existential for so many people.
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It's worth doing the work, but it does take a toll.
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And particularly if you are female, that toll is gendered in very extreme ways and not in
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ways that are necessarily readily visible to men interfacing with this world.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I talked to Sean Norris, a journalist from Britain not too long ago.
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And in her book, she wrote, until women have complete reproductive freedoms, they will
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never be free.
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If that is a true statement, then you're also kind of saying that women will never be free
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because the vast majority of human beings, regardless of gender or anything, are inherently
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misogynistic on this fucking planet.
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Do you know what I mean?
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Most religions at their core are misogynistic or at the very least subjugate women.
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Most institutions, most jobs, most businesses, most everything, the fucking government.
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Like all of these things are a raid against women.
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And that's just the people who don't send you messages.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I think at the same time, fighting for freedom is still worth it.
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Even if it's really far away, like even if, you know, I think it takes power and courage
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to imagine utopia, it takes courage to resist how shitty things are.
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I recently had a great conversation with a wonderful feminist author, commentator Moira
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Don again, and she said, every time a woman summons up the courage to get mad about how
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unjust things are and speak up about it, it grants other women the courage to do the same
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every single time.
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And there are real stakes that come with that.
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There are real stakes with poking the status quo in the eye and the status quo fucking
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hates women.
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But like, yes, attacks on reproductive rights, as we've seen in so many states, it makes
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women second class citizens, it makes pregnancy very close to a crime, you're also surveilled.
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And as I'm writing about extensively in this book, the curtailment of reproductive freedom
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is fundamentally about a worldview that wants to see all women, every woman, every woman
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submissive, subjected, oppressed, and fundamentally dependent.
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Like this is the dream that they want to achieve.
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And forcing us to get pregnant when we don't want to be is part of that.
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And some of them are very open about wanting to, about not being sad if someone who tries
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to get an abortion illegally dies.
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Like that the deaths of women are just collateral damage that they're not even particularly
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sad about.
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Like all the shit about babies is a smokescreen.
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It's all about controlling women.
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It's all about making sure that, like I've chosen not to have kids for a variety of reasons.
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That choice is one that is no longer available to a lot of women.
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That's really scary.
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And it's life altering and it's tragic.
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And so the stakes are very existential and so as I'm writing book two, it's like, these
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aren't people that are going to say, I'm going to come over to your house and rape you.
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They're in state legislature saying, I am going to curtail your rights.
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That's why, yeah, I go back to the white date.
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When you enter in a space for these men where they feel like they're okay to say whatever
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it is they want, right?
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They wind up saying shit that they would never say out in the real world.
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There are millions upon millions of those guys who would say the same stuff, who think
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the same stuff as like, I'm looking for my perfect white submissive wife, but they're
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not on white date.
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So you don't hear them say it.
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They just look for their perfect white submissive wife.
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Or try to beat down anyone that they date into that mold that they have in mind.
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The other thing is that, how do I put this, I mean, there's a lot to say.
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I personally also left a religion.
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I grew up Orthodox Jewish.
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I left, not ultra Orthodox, but modern Orthodox is a subset of Orthodox Judaism that let me
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go to college.
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But I was like- You idiots, you fools.
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I know.
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You've only educated me to defeat you.
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I know.
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Well, I'm not in the business of defeating my past, but I will say it was like, I was
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a smart kid in high school.
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I peaked in high school.
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I was the captain of the debate team and I wasn't allowed to lead prayers because of
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my gender.
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There's all this stuff that's very misogynistic that's baked into the religion.
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Baked into every religion.
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Yeah, but it manifested very physically in Orthodox Judaism.
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We were required to pray in school and there was a division, literally like a partition
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between the sexes.
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In many synagogues, the women's section is much smaller and more uncomfortable because
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women not only can't make up a prayer quorum, they can't lead prayers, they're not obligated
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to be present, they're expected to be home taking care of the kids.
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So it was just very, very physical and I, at a very early age, I think I was 19, I was
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just like, I don't want to be part of the faith that says that I am inherently inferior
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because of my religion.
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And just one funny moment from that was like, so I married very young.
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We got divorced and we went through a religious wedding and a religious divorce ceremony.
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The Orthodox Jewish divorce ceremony is that you're in front of a panel of three rabbis,
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a religious court.
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The man hands over the divorce decree, only the man can initiate it.
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Men who refuse are socially ostracized but can keep their wives in this state of limbo
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where they can't remarry.
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But what was supposed to happen was that he handed me the divorce decree and there's this
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doctrine of silence as acceptance.
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I was supposed to take it quietly and back out of the room.
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And I didn't even remember this, but I was recently reminded that apparently during that
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moment, I was so pissed off at the whole thing that I moonwalked out.
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Nice, nice.
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I like that.
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I moonwalked out.
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I moonwalked backwards.
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I was like, take this silence as acceptance, my bitches, whatever.
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I find it hard not to like shit in my hand and throw it on the walls and say, this is
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all arbitrary.
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All of this is pretend.
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You're all making it up as you go along.
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This is stupid.
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What are you talking about?
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You also left a stringent faith.
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Am I wrong?
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Is that not something you want to discuss?
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I left the shit out of a stringent faith.
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Yeah, I think the difference between leaving a form of Christianity that's oppressive and
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leaving a form of a minority faith in this country that's oppressive is that I'm not
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like going to tar and feather, like I'm not comfortable being like, I think that, how
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do I put this?
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Sometimes people who have experienced religious trauma and spiritual abuse in Christian contexts
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are very eager to say like, all religion is shit.
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All religion is oppressive.
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All religion is arbitrary.
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I don't disagree.
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But like some of that anger is more appropriately directed at hegemonic faith that's trying
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to proselytize and oppress and like not all religions are equally harmful to society.
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And I get a little touchy when like ex Christian atheists who don't really realize that they're
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still Christian influenced are saying stuff like kosher laws are stupid.
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Like, oh, like, God, God doesn't want you to use a magic microwave and like they're
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older than like fucking time.
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Like, just if people want to keep kosher in their own kitchens, whatever.
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Like that's the least of our problems with religion at this moment in time and like you're
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not proving how equal you are by like shitting all over Judaism or whatever.
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So I get protective also because I've like dealt with a lot of anti-Semitism.
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Anyway, I'm not trying to, to,
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No, no, no, you're fine.
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Go for it.
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I think sometimes, uh, not you, I'm just like experiencing something, talking about something
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I've experienced, which is that sometimes people who grow up Christian, especially evangelical,
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and then become atheists have not necessarily unlearned evangelical Christianity.
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They just like reversed it.
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They flipped it and reversed it.
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Like you have to believe what I believe.
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Everything else is stupid.
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It's just now it's about atheism.
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And I'm like, you have a lot of shit to unpack.
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Not you.
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Like people.
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Anyway, that's a very big thing.
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I did have a lot of shit to unpack and I unpacked it.
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It was very nice.
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It was a pleasant experience to unpack my shit.
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Like, God, I mean, but now I'm writing about evangelical Christianity and I sent you a
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series I wrote about child abuse in the evangelical context.
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It's it's more in line with like what the current book and current work is.
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Uh, Oh my God, ah, like what are these parents doing to their kids?
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Like it's really fucked up.
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I mean, I, it's, what's, what's fun about it is a lot of what you talk, what's fun.
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What's fun.
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What's hilarious about child abuse.
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The top funny things about, no, um, it is like all of the stories of abuse that you
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are describing and telling and retelling, uh, from other people, uh, are ones that I
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experienced, uh, you know?
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And so what's funny about that to me is that it is treated with such, uh, emotional reverence
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and it, and for people for whom it is, it should be, you know, the problem is my reaction
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to that was becoming a comedian, you know?
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So it's hard for me to like read my story reflected as, as like this, this, uh, I mean,
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you know, tragedy whenever I'm walking around being like, all right, so when my parents
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beat me to shit when I was five, you know, like it's, it's a, it's a joke to me, uh,
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to have, have lived through this.
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And that's, that's because it's how I'm dealing with it.
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Not because I believe it to be a joke.
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Does that make sense?
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Well, totally.
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Like, let's just say that there's a reason I was drawn to the topic and I'm not without
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a stake in the matter.
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And that's all, as far as I'll elaborate in public, um, we all cope in different ways.
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Um, I think for me, like a radical empathy is like part of it, or just like being like,
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how can the experiences I had enrich me as a writer and reporter and like someone who
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can hear and hold pain, but like at the same time, and also just someone who can be like,
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this is wrong.
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It's fucked up.
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Sure.
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But also some of it is objectively like a little bit funny and in horror by, in horrifying
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ways, not, not people's stories, but like if you read James Dobson's books, the focus
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on the family guy, he opens a thing like, I remember the day my mom beat me with her
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girdle and like, I felt every strap and like, that was the day I knew I would be saved or
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whatever.
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I'm like, that was the day you developed this fetish that you spent the rest of your life.
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Exactly.
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No, the, the, the difference between fetish and the things that they, that all of these
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books start with as far as like their, their origin story are the same as somebody being
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like, and that's why I go to a dominatrix every week.
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Like it's the same exact story.
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And that's how I knew I was really into feet.
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But like in this case, it's like, that's how I knew Christ wants you to beat your children.
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Like I knew I needed to annoy women on white men date.com to about their feet.
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That's what I knew.
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And yeah, no, I, I, um, by the way, there is a, a wiki feet men, but it is for, it's
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for gay men.
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Why are men so much more prone to foot fetishism than women?
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It's a mystery.
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Anyway, that's a tangent Dobson also opens one of his books with like an epic description
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of how he spent a weekend beating the shit out of a dachshund for sleeping on a fuzzy
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toilet seat.
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He's a fucked up man and like so many people, millions of people took him as gospel for
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how to raise their kids.
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And he's the reasonable one compared to other folks because he's like, wait till they're
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like a toddler to start beating them.
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Yeah.
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I mean, when Ted Bundy tortures animals as a child, we correctly go, oh, that's disqualifying.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Whereas like Dobson's like, my, like, you know, I am America's Reverend, like, um, it's
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just really like, and this idea, and I think it is tied up in, in some of the current political
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struggles in school boards and libraries, you know, this idea of parental, absolute
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parental rights, um, over what your child consumes, over the ideologies your child is
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like allowed to encounter, I think it comes from this attitude of my child is my property.
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And I think that mindset is very intimately related to, I can abuse the shit out of my
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kid.
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It's my kid.
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So it's their arm.
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And if I break it, it's nobody's business, but mine kind of a, a deal.
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Um, I think these mindsets are very interrelated and like, I know it's hard to be a parent,
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but like, it's not that hard to not break your kid's arm.
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It's really not like, you know, um, and, and, and then believe that like, it's okay.
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Cause of a verse in Proverbs, like, um, anyway, you wanted to talk about my book.
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I wanted to talk about something else and I totally derailed the conversation.
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I forgot.
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No, I'm, I'm down where we can keep going.
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I'm, I'm happy with this.
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Yeah, no, I understand completely where you're coming from.
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It is, it is tragic.
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Not those, the ones where it's a abuse from abuses sake.
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It's tragic.
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The believers, the ones who are weeping as they hit their kid, you know, the ones who
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are going, if it weren't for God telling me to do this in the form of Dr. James Dobson,
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if it weren't for that, then I really, I don't want to hit my kid.
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This is a small human being that can't fight back, you know, which was, which was very
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interesting to me.
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Reading those stories is also one of the biggest differences in misogyny versus, uh, you know,
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um, uh, anything really is just, there was a mo- you know, I got the shit kicked out
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of me, uh, but there was a moment everybody knew was coming where I would be big enough
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that you couldn't do that shit anymore.
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And everybody kind of, cause it happened to my older brothers, you know, my older brothers
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got the shit kicked out of them.
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But then there was a, there was a time when it's like, if you want to start shit, I will
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fight back.
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And that was almost like a, a, a rite of passage moment in a, in a, in a way, you know, the,
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the first day that he, he comes over to, to hit you with the belt and you say, fucking
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hit me, let's go.
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You know, that was a moment.
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And that's not a moment that my little sister had.
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That's not a moment that other, that women have had, uh, I mean, most, most women I'm,
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I'm assuming haven't had that, but that is a moment.
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Well it's a moment where you get to say like, I am now sufficiently masculine that you can
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no longer abuse me in this way.
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Exactly.
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That's a moment that I am afforded that is taken.
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Yeah, or that, like, because of also like specific evangelical social conditioning of
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women to be submissive, submissive, submissive, submissive, never fight back, never complain.
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There isn't that moment.
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You don't prove your femininity by beating the shit out of someone, uh, much as I would
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love that to be the case.
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On occasion.
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Why not?
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God.
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I think I'm, I think I'm interested in that question.
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Why not?
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I mean, you've been radicalized.
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Do you know what I mean?
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Like whenever we start saying the word radicalized, I say, based on the amount of shit that they
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put you through, it is entirely fine with me for you to go throw a punch.
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I'm fine with that.
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No.
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And also I would say that part of it is growing older.
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Like I'm in my, the amount of shit I went through in my twenties, like just in terms
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of, of, of dating, but in terms of the way like men would just like interact with me,
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like now I'm just like, like the reason why men talk about sell by dates and like women
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being too old is cause like I'm 33 and I'm just like, don't talk to me that way.
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Like, sorry, like don't fucking talk to me that way.
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I'm not going to put up with your shit.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:34.960)
And like the younger woman is the more pliable, the closer she is to a socialization of like,
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be nice.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:41.560)
Be nice.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:42.560)
Be nice.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:43.560)
Be nice.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:44.560)
Be nice.
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Oh sure.
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That's why the quiver kids get them started at zero.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:48.020)
You know?
Unknown Speaker (01:16:49.020)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:50.020)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:16:51.020)
I mean like the, and again, it comes back to reproductive freedom, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:16:57.840)
You entrap a woman into child rearing at 18.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:01.460)
She never has this process of maturation or she can say, this isn't for me or I can make
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independent choices, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:17:08.800)
It's this very gross like property transfer from like father to husband.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:13.439)
No, my little sister was married.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:17.840)
She was married in a church.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:20.439)
You know, the whole thing, a childhood pastor there.
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And he read first Timothy 2.11, which is let a woman learn and all submissiveness.
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I permit no woman to hold authority over man because Adam was created before Eve, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:17:36.180)
He read that out loud in a church and my little sister and her husband just got married to
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it.
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You know?
Unknown Speaker (01:17:43.960)
Like that is a totally acceptable thing to hear and not be like, Hey, by the way, fuck
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you.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:50.119)
I'm just not going to do that one.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:51.119)
I would be fine if she had just been like, yeah, but we're not going to do that one.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:54.439)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:17:55.439)
But like you can't, you can rarely like, and this is, this is why I'm a little bit skeptical
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of all the people who are like, we just do radicalize all the Nazis.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:06.359)
Right.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:07.359)
And like, that's a very emotional experience.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:09.000)
Like you'll probably get radicalized in the bargain.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:12.359)
How emotionally close do you want to get to like some rando who like wants to beat up
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Jews?
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Like, okay.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:17.800)
I'm more of the like make them social pariahs route and like protest every time they show
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up.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:23.119)
But like you cannot pull someone out of an oppressive or hateful belief system like externally.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:33.159)
You can't do it.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:34.640)
There has to be a breaking point from within.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:38.800)
And in your case, that was the moment, you know, you walked away, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:18:42.640)
In my case, I walked away from a faith.
Unknown Speaker (01:18:45.520)
In my case, I also experienced like the very extremities of, of misogyny and, and it strengthened
Unknown Speaker (01:18:51.840)
my identity as a feminist, like whatever process we go through to attain the beliefs we do
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or that shape our beliefs, like the experience of like getting extracted from an oppressive
Unknown Speaker (01:19:06.159)
belief system via someone sort of explaining to you how your beliefs are wrong, I think
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is very vanishingly small.
Unknown Speaker (01:19:15.920)
Which is not to say that these beliefs shouldn't be opposed.
Unknown Speaker (01:19:18.279)
It's just that like, you can't rescue people unless they're willing to be rescued.
Unknown Speaker (01:19:25.840)
And I've learned that in a variety of different contexts, you know, whether it's abusive relationships,
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spiritually abusive faiths, all sorts of things.
Unknown Speaker (01:19:42.159)
And I had like a disastrous, the reason when you were like, I'm kind of intense and like,
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is this a debate podcast?
Unknown Speaker (01:19:48.039)
Just cause I had a fucking disastrous podcast appearance with Brianna Joy Gray where she
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was like, shouldn't we just like gently talk to Nazis and like de-radicalize them?
Unknown Speaker (01:19:57.239)
And I was like, no, like that's not ever going to work.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:01.680)
Eh, see, this is why, this is why you gotta, like, I'm, I'm, I am a person who is a soft
Unknown Speaker (01:20:12.779)
yes on white genocide famously, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm fine.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:18.800)
People, people don't give a shit what I have to say anymore because I'm a little bit too
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far to the left, which is why my question to you then becomes the word radicalized.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:30.680)
I know I keep coming back to it, but I'm interested in the definition of it because I don't think
Unknown Speaker (01:20:35.199)
anybody agrees on it quite specifically beyond to say that it is the transformative process,
Unknown Speaker (01:20:43.039)
you know, from I was here and now I'm here.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:46.399)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:47.399)
I mean, I think it, it, it contains multitudes, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:20:51.460)
It's not a simple word.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:52.680)
It doesn't mean the same thing for every person.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:55.560)
Right.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:56.560)
So when you use it in the book.
Unknown Speaker (01:20:59.119)
When I use it in the book, God.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:03.680)
Or when you use it now, which whichever it is that's, that's more visceral for you to
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answer, I suppose.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:09.000)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:10.000)
I think that I wouldn't necessarily use that phrase to describe myself now.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:15.880)
Like I would say my politics are radical.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:18.640)
I am also disabled.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:20.039)
I have a condition that makes it hard for me to leave my house.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:25.060)
So I'm not on the street.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:26.060)
I'm not throwing Molotov cocktails.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:27.060)
I'm not doing, I often feel very like horrible that I can't show up for the movements I care
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about.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:37.159)
And so to use that phrase, like I'm some radical, like I try to be radical in my writing.
Unknown Speaker (01:21:42.239)
I try to, uh, you know, I think that like maybe exercising radical empathy or using
Unknown Speaker (01:21:53.880)
a radically outsider framework or whatever, just like not giving like evangelical Christianity
Unknown Speaker (01:22:00.319)
a lot of quarter or credence in and of itself as a radical act in a hegemonic Christian
Unknown Speaker (01:22:06.359)
society, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:07.979)
I would say that like I was more comfortable using that term in 2020 cause I was just so
Unknown Speaker (01:22:11.439)
like reeling from, from the experience.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:14.359)
Sure.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:15.359)
Um, well that's, that's why my, my interest in it, especially in regards to this is I
Unknown Speaker (01:22:21.439)
feel like what you've danced around in that answer is that the immediate assumption that
Unknown Speaker (01:22:27.079)
everyone has now is that it's violence.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:30.539)
Which like in my case, like literally I'm just like, no, it's okay to punch a Nazi,
Unknown Speaker (01:22:35.199)
like do it.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:36.439)
And you'd be amazed.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:37.439)
Sure.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:38.439)
I'm like, I don't want liberals to say this and that I'm like team Antifa all the way.
Unknown Speaker (01:22:44.680)
Like fuck Moms for Liberty that they're whining that like, you know, people like protested
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fuck Andy Neale, like fuck, uh, like the gender crits who are like gender critical turfs
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who are like, someone threw soup on me, um, go throw soup.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:04.119)
Um, that's part of it.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:07.600)
I think radicalism can mean you just like have achieved like a certain, I think when
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I wrote it in the book, I'm like, I hate these people and it is a visceral bone deep hate
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that like is almost equal to the hate they feel for me.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:28.520)
And that was an emotional process for me.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:31.560)
That's that's what interests me about the journey of the book as far as the radicalization
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goes, is that I don't know quite, I mean, I think the way that the term is used is fairly
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interchangeable with, I wasn't, and now I am ready to kill somebody.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:50.800)
I mean, is in that generally how we use it?
Unknown Speaker (01:23:54.060)
Explain to me how it's not.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:55.319)
No, I, I think you're, I think you're right.
Unknown Speaker (01:23:58.399)
I just don't like, I have agoraphobia and panic disorder and I don't leave my house
Unknown Speaker (01:24:04.840)
hot and like, am I ready to kill someone?
Unknown Speaker (01:24:07.199)
I will say this.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:08.199)
Guess what?
Unknown Speaker (01:24:09.199)
Like during, during this radicalization process, I started collecting swords.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:13.800)
I have like 12 swords, uh, in my house.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:18.920)
Um, was it because like, and I, when I hold a blade, I feel safer.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:26.560)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:27.960)
If someone like came into my house to kill me, like I probably grabbed one off the wall.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:31.720)
Hopefully I'd get murdered in the process, but like, yeah, I was like, I need to be safe.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:36.680)
As you are not a great swordsman yet, you must train with a Muramasa obviously before
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you can defeat.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:43.520)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:44.520)
Like I need to go to some sort of mountain fastness and learn like wuxia moves.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:53.840)
That would be cool.
Unknown Speaker (01:24:55.640)
Um, like ideally Michelle Yeoh would like teach me how to sword dance in like some sort
Unknown Speaker (01:25:05.039)
of isolated, um, buttressed place.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:09.800)
But uh, no, I, yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:12.760)
So what can I say?
Unknown Speaker (01:25:14.239)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:15.239)
I started thinking a lot about like, is someone going to come murder me and like, what am
Unknown Speaker (01:25:17.600)
I going to do about it?
Unknown Speaker (01:25:18.600)
And um, the answer was like to collect an increasing number of medieval swords.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:24.199)
All right.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:26.359)
So is that radicalized?
Unknown Speaker (01:25:27.359)
I don't have a problem with that.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:29.039)
I think that answer.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:30.039)
Does that answer your question?
Unknown Speaker (01:25:31.039)
Maybe it does.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:32.039)
Listen, I don't go around fantasizing about murder, but like I did say, that's, I think
Unknown Speaker (01:25:37.399)
that maybe the, the radicalization point was me saying, am I willing to die for this work?
Unknown Speaker (01:25:45.760)
Yes.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:47.000)
All right.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:49.520)
That's a good definition.
Unknown Speaker (01:25:51.159)
I appreciate that much better because I'm, I'm finding it through my conversations with
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so many people who, uh, uh, profess a lot of the, the words associated with, uh, uh,
Unknown Speaker (01:26:03.560)
you know, all of this stuff generally have a definition of their own that they are not
Unknown Speaker (01:26:10.359)
sharing, uh, and are instead kind of allowing the, the, the parlance of the day to carry
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a lot more weight.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:18.939)
And to me, I don't necessarily think that radicalization means now it's time to fucking
Unknown Speaker (01:26:23.960)
kill people.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:25.520)
I think that your definition is far better as a way of describing something that does
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radicalize you.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:33.000)
And that's what I find so interesting about that is that in this case, I, I don't think
Unknown Speaker (01:26:40.720)
that the white nationalists on in cell places or, or white date or whatever are radicalized.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:48.159)
I don't think these people are willing to die for whiteness.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:51.239)
I think they're willing to talk a lot of shit about it and about how they're the heroes
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of the day.
Unknown Speaker (01:26:57.159)
I think some of them are willing to kill.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:00.439)
And that's the roulette you play with stochastic terror, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:27:04.680)
Is that you're hoping when, as you produce this propaganda and this perpetual motion
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propaganda machine is that you are hoping to instill in someone the willingness to kill.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:14.479)
And like in America, the way massacres work is you usually die or go to jail for life.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:22.600)
So am I willing to die?
Unknown Speaker (01:27:24.159)
Am I willing to kill?
Unknown Speaker (01:27:25.159)
Like, these are the central questions of radicalization for me.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:30.199)
I'm not like particularly a violent person in the times in my life, I've been in extreme
Unknown Speaker (01:27:37.600)
physical danger.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:38.640)
I have wound up reacting by screaming extremely loudly, which weirdly like works.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:45.039)
I have a pretty eardrum piercing scream and that's just like my go to, um, very sticky
Unknown Speaker (01:27:53.640)
situations.
Unknown Speaker (01:27:54.640)
Uh, like I kind of freeze up, but I am very strong, like I probably could punch someone
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out.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:00.960)
I don't fantasize about it.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:01.960)
I don't want to kill someone.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:02.960)
I am willing to die.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:03.960)
If someone kills me because I spent my life writing about people who want to subjugate
Unknown Speaker (01:28:12.640)
murder and destroy the lives of others, that will to me have meant I died a good death.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:26.239)
That wasn't for salient when I was writing about like terrorists who were personally
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threatening to murder me.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:31.119)
But like at the time, that was what I felt.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:36.000)
I still feel that way.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:37.800)
Like if, you know, I am writing right now about people who murdered George Tiller, who
Unknown Speaker (01:28:43.640)
bomb abortion clinics, you know, like I'm always skating close to the edge.
Unknown Speaker (01:28:49.720)
When you write about people who are willing to move heaven and earth, who are willing
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to, who want to move earth closer to heaven and are willing to bulldoze a lot of people
Unknown Speaker (01:28:59.560)
to get it out of the way.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:02.239)
I mean, you're talking to people who've already committed violence.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:05.359)
It doesn't seem like a big stretch for them to take another swing at it.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:09.840)
Yeah, exactly.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:12.159)
That being said, after this book, I am going to write a book about sandwiches.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:15.720)
I already have that planned.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:17.720)
I'm like, I think it might be time for me to move on from staring into the void because
Unknown Speaker (01:29:22.960)
like it would be nice to do work at least for a while, maybe not forever.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:28.239)
That doesn't make me want to like jump in a volcano.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:33.359)
But anyway, yes, I think my definition of am I radicalized is like, I have internalized
Unknown Speaker (01:29:39.439)
the idea that this work is so existentially necessary that I'm willing to give my life
Unknown Speaker (01:29:45.159)
for it.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:46.159)
That, that's where we settle after, after I've been dancing around the answer for a
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while.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:52.680)
Excellent.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:53.680)
I love that answer.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:54.680)
I like it a lot.
Unknown Speaker (01:29:56.720)
Are you willing to die to talk shit about Alex Jones?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:00.760)
Me?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:01.760)
Come on, I'm bipolar type one.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:06.359)
I spend every day waiting to die.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:08.479)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:09.479)
I know.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:10.479)
I feel like dying is the least of my concerns.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:13.119)
I'm dreaming of the day where it's not my fault because then I won't have to worry about
Unknown Speaker (01:30:17.920)
it.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:18.920)
I know, right?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:19.920)
I mean, this is like, like mental illness, like 101, but it's like, yeah, you have days
Unknown Speaker (01:30:23.319)
where you were just like, give me a reason not to die today.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:28.399)
And so I'm like, yeah, like some Nazi like shoots me in the head, uh, for, because he
Unknown Speaker (01:30:33.960)
didn't like, like my book, like, awesome.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:37.079)
I get to be a martyr.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:39.279)
Oh, hell yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:40.640)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:41.640)
That's great.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:42.640)
I didn't really, I didn't, I mean, first off, I didn't particularly ask to be here.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:46.880)
I don't particularly like being here.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:48.880)
The people around me are all fucking Nazis.
Unknown Speaker (01:30:51.359)
What am I doing?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:52.359)
Why bother with this?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:53.359)
Why?
Unknown Speaker (01:30:54.359)
I'm not sure it's an emotionally healthy perspective, but at the same time you can't really be emotionally
Unknown Speaker (01:31:00.840)
healthy while doing this work, which is another reason why I would like to write book three
Unknown Speaker (01:31:05.359)
about sandwiches.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:07.640)
If you read my newsletter, I have 67 essays following Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches
Unknown Speaker (01:31:14.359)
in alphabetical order.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:16.920)
And a lot of them go into history and culture and generally it's been like a breath of non-fetid
Unknown Speaker (01:31:26.760)
air in like my life.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:28.920)
Wow.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:29.920)
The one about the Belgian sandwich, the, the, the deep dive into who invented the sandwich.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:36.159)
Was it this guy in 1946 or was it some other asshole across the street?
Unknown Speaker (01:31:41.560)
I know.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:42.560)
I, I sent you, I sent this, it's the sandwich called the Bosna and I went on like a sandwich
Unknown Speaker (01:31:48.640)
investigation and was like reading like very long excerpts from media and Salzburg.
Unknown Speaker (01:31:56.039)
Um, I mean I did address, I do address like some heavy shit, like the history of barbecue.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:02.479)
The barbecue sandwich one was like all about slavery.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:05.159)
Yeah, that's usually how it goes.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:07.880)
Like Dutch one was all about Dutch colonialism of like Indonesia, like it's not like, like
Unknown Speaker (01:32:14.119)
you can tackle heavy topics through a little scrim or you're not like, you're like, you're
Unknown Speaker (01:32:19.239)
like personally, like I'm writing about people that personally want to like subjugate slash
Unknown Speaker (01:32:24.079)
murder slash destroy like me and my family.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:28.520)
Like that's very immediate and like that's where I've been for the last like five years
Unknown Speaker (01:32:32.960)
and I'm just like, um, after this, like this is my last adventure.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:38.600)
This is my last heist.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:40.560)
We're doing one last job.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:44.520)
You're fucked.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:45.520)
Oh God.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:46.520)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:47.520)
No, I'm like, I'm going to show you a picture of my beautiful family.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:52.439)
No.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:53.439)
Oh my God.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:54.439)
Oh, McBain.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:55.439)
Here's my beautiful, McBain here's my beautiful family.
Unknown Speaker (01:32:59.079)
I can't wait to get on the speedboat and retire.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:03.800)
You're about to, you're about to become Ashland 1488.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:12.039)
Well I think, I think that's an excellent spot to end.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:16.000)
I appreciate the interview.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:19.079)
This was absolutely fantastic to do and a delight.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:22.640)
Could you please go ahead?
Unknown Speaker (01:33:24.439)
It's Culture Warlords of course.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:26.319)
Yeah, Culture Warlords, my journey into the dark web of white supremacy.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:30.319)
If you like the silky smooth tones of my voice, it's also available on audio book and ebook.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:36.760)
I do accents in the audio book.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:40.239)
Oh no.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:42.319)
Which is, uh, like, you know, um, which is not like cringey Southern ones, but whatever.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:50.720)
I do accents.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:51.720)
Um, if you like that sort of thing, um, please, please, please subscribe to my sub stack,
Unknown Speaker (01:33:57.199)
the sword and the sandwich.
Unknown Speaker (01:33:59.159)
Uh, it's, I guarantee there are not a lot of newsletters that are similar.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:07.119)
Like every week I'm taking a break this month for, for, cause I have a big book deadline,
Unknown Speaker (01:34:13.079)
but every week you will get like an essay about some aspect of American politics and
Unknown Speaker (01:34:18.760)
like a very bizarre essay about food that will probably make you hungry or angry or
Unknown Speaker (01:34:23.560)
both.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:24.560)
Uh, so that would be fun.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:26.239)
And um, what a joy, what a pleasure to talk to you.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:30.920)
Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:31.920)
Uh, yeah, of, uh, absolute delight and, uh, I hope people pick up your book.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:37.239)
Uh, thank you.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:38.520)
And, uh, I suppose we'll be back for another episode of Knowledge Fight.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:42.520)
Yeah.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:43.520)
All right.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:44.520)
Take care of everybody.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:45.520)
Andy in Kansas.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:46.520)
You're on the air.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:47.520)
Hello Alex, I'm a first time caller, I'm a huge fan.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:51.600)
I love your work.
Unknown Speaker (01:34:52.600)
I love you.
