Chris, first tell me what you’re seeing around these flash points. I described the trial in Charlottesville. Ted Cruz is a-okay with the Nazi salute.
This week was a very busy week for people in the intelligence community and especially folks, like myself, who specialize in focusing on the far right. People who are basically looking to become domestic terrorists. For Ted Cruz, a Senator who is a lawyer um and a smart one at that, to decide that on the third anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre that he would use the Nazi salute uh as an example of First Amendment speech that’s protected. Like yes, and uh Merrick Garland responded appropriately, it is protected speech. But for that example to be at the forefront of his mind and at the forefront of the probably young staffer who wrote it is really telling. You know what I watch uh not just on mainstream TV of the hearing live, but on what I call the hate machine; my extra computer uh where I monitor Telegram and Gab. Real Nazis—I’m not talking about hyperbolic terms, I’m talking about people who put swastikas behind them for their live stream podcasts who self-identify as Nationalist Socialists, who self-identify as Nazis, were ecstatic with Senator Cruz this week. And that was in the midst of celebrating Josh Hawley, the Senator Josh Hawley, you know leader of the insurrection caucus who uh you know was coming at Merrick Garland as if uh the Attorney General was you know the greatest threat to our democracy. It is truly upsetting to me, as someone who went to war for this country, to see these sitting Senators right now discrediting the intelligence community, discrediting law enforcement, attacking the FBI, attacking the Attorney General—not because uh of some sort of misconduct, but because of this disinformation campaign that they’ve convinced themselves that uh parents are being targeted by the FBI. No, parents aren’t being targeted by the FBI. Neo-Nazis are producing videos where they’re explicitly talking about going to these school boards to recruit and radicalize Republicans who are upset because they’re watching Tucker Carlson all the time. You know, when I use the word Fascist, when I use the word Nazi, I’m not talking about Republicans. I’m being specific with my language; these are the people who are celebrating you know some of the most popular Republican Senators today, Chris, tell me what you’re seeing um on the sites you monitor about Tucker Carlson’s upcoming documentary calling 1/6 a false flag. Yeah, so Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes, just about uh everyone in uh the insurrection movement, people who actually advertised to “Stop the Steal” live, like, physically traveling around the country from state capital to state capital doing practice runs like when they invaded uh the Georgia capital. These, and in Michigan uh, these folks are ecstatic because they have the biggest voice on cable not just to help them get their message out, but to help them build all of their followers, all of these gullible people who watch Fox News who, you know, unfortunately are duped into this—not alternative reality—but mythology. They’re willing to throw their money at them because they think that’s like the patriotic thing to do. It’s, again, as someone who’s defended this country, who served in uniform in a combat zone, I am disgusted. I am deeply upset and I’m having a hard time even talking about it right now.
So, Jason Johnson, you and I have been having a version of this conversation for five years. This isn’t new. It isn’t even surprising that the natural extension of seeing good people on both sides of the KKK rally is that Donald Trump’s closest ally in the media is the sort of place where one of the defendants in the Charlottesville civil trial gets his legal advice. That said, we’ve been breaking the glass now on this program around this table since before there were virtual conversations; for so long, I wonder why nothing happens?
You know, I think what concerns me most, Nicole, things are happening right there. I mean we’re calling out people like Tucker Carlson in a way—in a normalized way—that maybe wasn’t happening five or six years ago. I mean, I’m old enough to remember when it was controversial to say that these guys are racist and these guys are dangerous. So there’s been, I think, some progress in the public discourse in the way in which these people are discussed. The problem is, that has not trickled up enough into the people in positions to hold these men and women accountable. When I look at what happened on January 6th, I’m not surprised that Tucker Carlson is making this crazy video and we have a great colleague, you know, Eamon, who did a tweet earlier today. He’s like, if a Muslim American tried to do a false flag video on 911, that wouldn’t get past production, right? They wouldn’t—they would have been escorted out of the building. So that’s what we’re talking about here. That level of racism and discussing behavior in the case of Fox News. But the other part of it is, there’s not enough aggression from our current administration about how dangerous these people are. Nicole, we saw last year that there were activists for Black Lives Matter who were being dragged in by the cops for simply liking tweets about protests and they were being dragged into jail and they were being questioned. How the heck can we have sitting members of Congress who were basically DM’ing and tik-tok’ing back and forth with insurrectionists and they’re still walking around scot-free?! That’s what makes me concerned, not that there are still bigots out there—because that’s always been the case in America—but we don’t have an Administration that has a wartime consigliere who’s serious about holding these people accountable.
Yeah, I mean, Jason, I would just say there’s something that paralyzes and I want to say the Left, I mean myself, everyone that is on the side of Democracy, that is on the side of truth. They are almost more paralyzed by how public and brazen the racism, the getting in bed with white supremacists, the, you know, I haven’t heard of any advertisers pulling any ads from Tucker Carlson, who basically has a White Nationalist-inspired false flag dock airing on the network or on the streaming site. So I wonder whether that is—again, this is a bleak assessment—but you’ve got Kenzinger purged from the Republican caucus; Liz Cheney, the only person who has paid a price in that caucus when you’ve got a bat-bleep crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene who’s paid no price. No, Kevin McCarthy, didn’t try to cut up her donors, just Liz’s. What does it say that the more brazen and public the association with extremism is on the Right, the more paralyzed the Left and everyone else is by it. I think it’s because you have it—I think there’s a racial component that’s a political opponent component to this. I think large numbers of white Americans who are not bigots—and the vast majority of white people in this country aren’t crazy white nationalist racist—but I don’t think they really understand how their racist friends, neighbors, and colleagues operate. So they always seem to believe that this is something that could be negotiated and discussed and they don’t recognize: No, your uncle is gone; no, your co-worker is gone; these people can’t be convinced it’s not economic anxiety. And as long as the party that’s in a position to possibly do something about it still thinks that beneath all of this they can talk to their friends again, we will be in this situation. That’s what I think the core issue is because, honestly, Nicole, large numbers of white people and certainly people of color have been ringing the alarm bells about this for 10 years now! John McCain was talking about this 15 years ago when he said we’ve got to do something about neo-Nazis going into the armed forces.
Yeah, I mean, Chris, if you can just speak to what the reaction is when you flag extremist content that moves from protected speech to operationalizing violence. What do people do? They jump into action: is that a clear line when something more can be done, how do people respond?
I can’t talk about how law enforcement responds to any tips, I mean, that they don’t tell me when I send this information to members of Congress. Congressional staff Democrats are very concerned. I can say that in all the years that I’ve been working on foreign disinformation campaigns targeting service members, veterans, and our families—that’s how I got into investigations—I’ve never had a Republican office reach out to me to proactively see, like, what’s going on; who’s trying to take advantage of service members and veterans. Because, any time that I mention anything about the internet, all they want to do is say, like, ‘Oh, you know, we’re conservatives, we’re being censored,’ you know? And one of the mistakes that I make, and I’ve made it on your show, is I come here and I ring the alarm bells, but I don’t give solutions, and I want to fix that today. If you want to help make a Nazi cry today, you can go to Integrity for America and you can donate to them to support the Charlottesville website. If you want to help protect your school board, what you need to do is find out when the next meeting is, show up, and sit there quietly and respectfully, and just watch your neighbors. And when you see the crazy neighbor down the street shouting their heads off, take a video of them, post it on your Facebook, post it on Twitter. Let your friends and family know what’s going on in your neighborhood so that people realize how close to home it is. It’s not just on, you know, MSNBC and Fox News and CNN. This stuff is going on in every neighborhood around the country and we can all fight back, you know? Make a Nazi cry, go to your local school board meeting, sit there quietly, respectfully; support those people who’ve been taking so much abuse for the last couple of years and donate to Integrity for America.
This week was a very busy week for people in the intelligence community and especially folks, like myself, who specialize in focusing on the far right. People who are basically looking to become domestic terrorists. For Ted Cruz, a Senator who is a lawyer um and a smart one at that, to decide that on the third anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre that he would use the Nazi salute uh as an example of First Amendment speech that’s protected. Like yes, and uh Merrick Garland responded appropriately, it is protected speech. But for that example to be at the forefront of his mind and at the forefront of the probably young staffer who wrote it is really telling. You know what I watch uh not just on mainstream TV of the hearing live, but on what I call the hate machine; my extra computer uh where I monitor Telegram and Gab. Real Nazis—I’m not talking about hyperbolic terms, I’m talking about people who put swastikas behind them for their live stream podcasts who self-identify as Nationalist Socialists, who self-identify as Nazis, were ecstatic with Senator Cruz this week. And that was in the midst of celebrating Josh Hawley, the Senator Josh Hawley, you know leader of the insurrection caucus who uh you know was coming at Merrick Garland as if uh the Attorney General was you know the greatest threat to our democracy. It is truly upsetting to me, as someone who went to war for this country, to see these sitting Senators right now discrediting the intelligence community, discrediting law enforcement, attacking the FBI, attacking the Attorney General—not because uh of some sort of misconduct, but because of this disinformation campaign that they’ve convinced themselves that uh parents are being targeted by the FBI. No, parents aren’t being targeted by the FBI. Neo-Nazis are producing videos where they’re explicitly talking about going to these school boards to recruit and radicalize Republicans who are upset because they’re watching Tucker Carlson all the time. You know, when I use the word Fascist, when I use the word Nazi, I’m not talking about Republicans. I’m being specific with my language; these are the people who are celebrating you know some of the most popular Republican Senators today, Chris, tell me what you’re seeing um on the sites you monitor about Tucker Carlson’s upcoming documentary calling 1/6 a false flag. Yeah, so Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes, just about uh everyone in uh the insurrection movement, people who actually advertised to “Stop the Steal” live, like, physically traveling around the country from state capital to state capital doing practice runs like when they invaded uh the Georgia capital. These, and in Michigan uh, these folks are ecstatic because they have the biggest voice on cable not just to help them get their message out, but to help them build all of their followers, all of these gullible people who watch Fox News who, you know, unfortunately are duped into this—not alternative reality—but mythology. They’re willing to throw their money at them because they think that’s like the patriotic thing to do. It’s, again, as someone who’s defended this country, who served in uniform in a combat zone, I am disgusted. I am deeply upset and I’m having a hard time even talking about it right now.
So, Jason Johnson, you and I have been having a version of this conversation for five years. This isn’t new. It isn’t even surprising that the natural extension of seeing good people on both sides of the KKK rally is that Donald Trump’s closest ally in the media is the sort of place where one of the defendants in the Charlottesville civil trial gets his legal advice. That said, we’ve been breaking the glass now on this program around this table since before there were virtual conversations; for so long, I wonder why nothing happens?
You know, I think what concerns me most, Nicole, things are happening right there. I mean we’re calling out people like Tucker Carlson in a way—in a normalized way—that maybe wasn’t happening five or six years ago. I mean, I’m old enough to remember when it was controversial to say that these guys are racist and these guys are dangerous. So there’s been, I think, some progress in the public discourse in the way in which these people are discussed. The problem is, that has not trickled up enough into the people in positions to hold these men and women accountable. When I look at what happened on January 6th, I’m not surprised that Tucker Carlson is making this crazy video and we have a great colleague, you know, Eamon, who did a tweet earlier today. He’s like, if a Muslim American tried to do a false flag video on 911, that wouldn’t get past production, right? They wouldn’t—they would have been escorted out of the building. So that’s what we’re talking about here. That level of racism and discussing behavior in the case of Fox News. But the other part of it is, there’s not enough aggression from our current administration about how dangerous these people are. Nicole, we saw last year that there were activists for Black Lives Matter who were being dragged in by the cops for simply liking tweets about protests and they were being dragged into jail and they were being questioned. How the heck can we have sitting members of Congress who were basically DM’ing and tik-tok’ing back and forth with insurrectionists and they’re still walking around scot-free?! That’s what makes me concerned, not that there are still bigots out there—because that’s always been the case in America—but we don’t have an Administration that has a wartime consigliere who’s serious about holding these people accountable.
Yeah, I mean, Jason, I would just say there’s something that paralyzes and I want to say the Left, I mean myself, everyone that is on the side of Democracy, that is on the side of truth. They are almost more paralyzed by how public and brazen the racism, the getting in bed with white supremacists, the, you know, I haven’t heard of any advertisers pulling any ads from Tucker Carlson, who basically has a White Nationalist-inspired false flag dock airing on the network or on the streaming site. So I wonder whether that is—again, this is a bleak assessment—but you’ve got Kenzinger purged from the Republican caucus; Liz Cheney, the only person who has paid a price in that caucus when you’ve got a bat-bleep crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene who’s paid no price. No, Kevin McCarthy, didn’t try to cut up her donors, just Liz’s. What does it say that the more brazen and public the association with extremism is on the Right, the more paralyzed the Left and everyone else is by it. I think it’s because you have it—I think there’s a racial component that’s a political opponent component to this. I think large numbers of white Americans who are not bigots—and the vast majority of white people in this country aren’t crazy white nationalist racist—but I don’t think they really understand how their racist friends, neighbors, and colleagues operate. So they always seem to believe that this is something that could be negotiated and discussed and they don’t recognize: No, your uncle is gone; no, your co-worker is gone; these people can’t be convinced it’s not economic anxiety. And as long as the party that’s in a position to possibly do something about it still thinks that beneath all of this they can talk to their friends again, we will be in this situation. That’s what I think the core issue is because, honestly, Nicole, large numbers of white people and certainly people of color have been ringing the alarm bells about this for 10 years now! John McCain was talking about this 15 years ago when he said we’ve got to do something about neo-Nazis going into the armed forces.
Yeah, I mean, Chris, if you can just speak to what the reaction is when you flag extremist content that moves from protected speech to operationalizing violence. What do people do? They jump into action: is that a clear line when something more can be done, how do people respond?
I can’t talk about how law enforcement responds to any tips, I mean, that they don’t tell me when I send this information to members of Congress. Congressional staff Democrats are very concerned. I can say that in all the years that I’ve been working on foreign disinformation campaigns targeting service members, veterans, and our families—that’s how I got into investigations—I’ve never had a Republican office reach out to me to proactively see, like, what’s going on; who’s trying to take advantage of service members and veterans. Because, any time that I mention anything about the internet, all they want to do is say, like, ‘Oh, you know, we’re conservatives, we’re being censored,’ you know? And one of the mistakes that I make, and I’ve made it on your show, is I come here and I ring the alarm bells, but I don’t give solutions, and I want to fix that today. If you want to help make a Nazi cry today, you can go to Integrity for America and you can donate to them to support the Charlottesville website. If you want to help protect your school board, what you need to do is find out when the next meeting is, show up, and sit there quietly and respectfully, and just watch your neighbors. And when you see the crazy neighbor down the street shouting their heads off, take a video of them, post it on your Facebook, post it on Twitter. Let your friends and family know what’s going on in your neighborhood so that people realize how close to home it is. It’s not just on, you know, MSNBC and Fox News and CNN. This stuff is going on in every neighborhood around the country and we can all fight back, you know? Make a Nazi cry, go to your local school board meeting, sit there quietly, respectfully; support those people who’ve been taking so much abuse for the last couple of years and donate to Integrity for America.
