A

Foreign. Folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream number 300. How is that even possible? I mean, I guess you do 299. You do one more and that makes it 300. I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein.

B

330.

A

330, right. All right. I. In my defense, it is the middle of the night for me, but, um, yeah, I. In my defense, I do think I saw an email that said it was 300. Probably just a typo about 30 episodes ago, I'm sure. No, no, no. This was. This was today. It was hot off the presses. But in any case, I digress, as I often do. I'm Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Hying. I did just come in from Britain and so I'm discombobulated. It's the middle of the day here. It's. I don't know what time in Britain right now, but anyway, time to head

B

home from the pub.

A

It is. If you're not. Yeah, you. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. That's pretty much where things are.

B

Oh, I don't know if that's true. Maybe, maybe, maybe the pubs are closing kind of early in. In England these days.

A

I don't know. But I would imagine that in a very nice British accent, that's what they say if you're there. Closing time.

B

Fair enough. So it's June. It's pretty beautiful. It's beautiful out. June has been appropriated in America for pride. So we're going to talk about pride and we're talking about sun and we're going to talk about fascism. Today.

A

It's all. It's all one really Junish. Yeah, it's all.

B

It's all pride, sun and fascism. It's all Juniperus, no Q and A today. We did one last week. I think maybe I'm misremembering that, but they're always up on locals. We encourage you to join us there. And if you're watching on YouTube, please, please do subscrib. Trying to. Trying to figure out how to get some of the YouTube magic back. Something I don't even know. But, you know, they demonetized us a long time ago and then they quietly remonetized us with just a trickle, a trickle of. Of our former funds coming in. And we would love to know what that's about and see if you guys who are already watching, liking, subscribing, do so if you find yourself unsubscribed, subscribe, subscribe again. Yeah, so let us start with our three sponsors, as we always do, right at the top of the hour, and then get into our discussion of. What did I say? Pride, sun and fascism.

A

Yeah.

B

Yep. Yep. So our first sponsor today is Dose. Modern life is rough on our bodies. Processed foods, stress, environmental toxins, late nights. It adds up. Your liver is working overtime to filter all of that out. And if you've been feeling sluggish or just off, your liver might be trying to tell you something. Dose for your liver is a tasty liquid supplement that supports liver health. Your liver has hundreds of functions in your body, most famously as a filter. It's an organ of detoxification. Dose for your liver, taken in a daily 2 ounce shot, was formulated to cleanse your liver of unwanted elements. Dose for your liver has four active ingredients, milk thistle, ginger, dandelion and turmeric. And it's all in a base of delicious organic orange juice. Dose is gluten free, dairy free, sugar free and vegan. And it tastes fantastic. Dose. Yeah, the milk thistle doesn't actually include any real milk. That's why it's vegan. And it tastes fantastic. Dose comes in sleep.

A

That's a good point. I had not caught up to that yet, but you're right.

B

Dose comes in sleek. Mm, just bit my lip. Dose comes in sleek glass bottles and arrives with a stainless steel shot glass with which to take your dose. You can drink it straight or add it to other drinks. Try it in fruit smoothies, for instance. Zach, who was drinking a daily dose for a while, thought the dose for your liver would be excellent in coffee. I'm not so sure about that, but Zach's going to do Zach and you should do. You dose for your liver's in house. Clinical studies found significant improvements in standard measures of liver health after study participants drank Dose daily for as little as eight weeks. The liver produces and regulates cholesterol, stores venom, venoms, venoms and mitarins, vitamins and minerals. It impacts digestive and metabolic health, among many other things. Dose supports liver function, aids digestion, eases bloating and can even boost energy levels. Stick with dose and feel the incredible benefits. Over time, you find that you have more energy, better digestion, reduced bloating, healthier liver enzyme function, reduction in brain fog and better sleep. Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily co darkhorse or enter darkhorse to get 35% off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you. Let's do something for it that's D o s e D a l y.co darkhorse for 35 off your first month's subscription. All right, all right.

A

Slogan for dose.

B

Slogan for dose. Here we go.

A

Dose. Because when it comes to your liver, you're still using it. With apologies to Monty Python.

B

Oh, yeah, you remember. Is it meaning of life?

A

Yeah, we have your liver. Yes, the meaning of life. Exactly.

B

Yeah, yeah.

A

It's a large glandular organ. I know what it is, but I'm still using it.

B

Yeah, yeah. And I believe that they may take it anyway.

A

Yes. Actually, that is now something. Another thing that Monty Python has correctly predicted is the recovery of organs from people who are still using them. Wow. Yeah.

B

Were they completely wrong about anything?

A

Not as far as I can remember. They and the Simpsons have an unbearably good track record of predicting ridiculousness.

B

Yeah. Indeed. All right. Our second sponsor is back with us for a second growing and harvest season, and we are thrilled to be working with them again. It's Sundries Farm. We're which froze the most outstanding garlic. Eat garlic because it's delicious and exceptionally good for you. Numerous studies attest to the health benefits of garlic on heart and immune health. As an antioxidant and anti inflammatory, garlic is a staple in many culinary traditions for a reason. For good reason. Eat Sundries Farm garlic because this is a family farm of amazing people who care deeply about the land and their product, who know garlic in all of its intricacies, and who produce a diversity of garlics that is, in my experience, unparalleled. They grow 11 varieties of garlic, each one notably different. Some mild, some hot, some ideal for baking, others great to eat raw. Really? Some have huge cloves, others store for a very long time. Garlic takes on the terroir of its environment, and Sundries Farm and Idaho's rich volcanic soils is ideal for growing perfect garlic. 73% of the world's garlic is produced by China, and 80% of the garlic consumed in the US is grown in China. Imported garlic is always fumigated with methyl bromide, which is so toxic that it was phased out of use in 2005 in the United States, except for critical uses and application to some agricultural products, including all imported garlic. So, once again, 80% of the garlic consumed in the US is imported, and all of the imported garlic is fumigated with methyl bromide, which even the US Government, which does not have a good track record on such things, phased out of use in 2005 on account of its incredible toxicity. In comparison, the amazing garlic from Sundries Farm is naturally grown on a Four year rotation with COVID crops. Crops. I'm just using all the wrong consonants today. With COVID crops to suppress weeds and build soil. And Sundries Farm does everything by hand. Cloves are separated by by hand for planting hand planted, hand weeded scapes picked by hand, hand harvested, hand hung up to dry, hand trimmed, hand sorted and hand packaged. It's a labor of love and it shows. We loved Sundry's Farms music, garlic and potato salad, Chestnut red garlic and Venezuelan green sauce and nootka rose garlic and marinade for grilled chicken. It is all so delicious. It is also delightful to unwrap the different varieties of garlic and discover their secrets. Sundry's Farm offers hardneck and soft neck varieties, selling a year's supply of gourmet garlic for your kitchen and also offering seed and gardening pack. Sundry's Farm is a real farm selling real food. They grow one crop a year and when it sells out, that's it for the year. For their 2026 crop, they're taking pre orders now in June. Rare varieties. Rare varieties often sell out by mid July. The garlic cures for four weeks after an early July harvest, with trimming happening in early August. To prep for shipments to go out by mid August. That's the first moment that you'll get some of Sundries Farm delicious garlic. Get your pre order in now and then eagerly await your amazing garlic to come in. Go to www.sundriesfarm.com to place your 2026 garlic order and enter code DARK HORSE for 10% off. That's sundriesfarm.com code DARKHORSE. Check them out and get yourself some absolutely amazing garlic. Once again, that's Sundries. S U n D R I e s sundriesfarm.com all right, I think I

A

got this one too. Sundries Farm garlic. Because the vampires aren't going to cancel themselves.

B

Oh, okay.

A

I mean, right? Yeah. Yeah.

B

And for all we know, methyl bromide makes vampires stronger. Oh.

A

It probably at least weakens the garlic with respect to its utility. Versus vampire.

B

Vampire.

A

Yes, exactly. All right, our final sponsor, Heather, this week is Clear. Clear is a nasal spray that supports respiratory health. It's widely available online and in stores, and both it and the company that makes it are fantastic. It's clear. That's X L E A R. Pronounced clear. Improvements in senate improvements in sanitation and hygiene have had huge impacts on human longevity and quality of life throughout history. More. More so than have traditional medical advances. For instance, when doctors started to wash their hands. Between handling cadavers and helping women give birth, the rate of maternal deaths went down. Breathing polluted air and drinking tainted water have hugely negative effects on human health. Clean up the air and water and people get healthier. Nasal hygiene, however, often gets overlooked. Consider this the majority of bacteria and viruses that make us sick enter through our mouth and noses. It has become cultural norm to wash your hands, and that's a good thing. But it's rare that we get sick through our hands. Rather we get sick through our mouth and nose. So wouldn't it be valuable to use something that blocks bacterial and viral adhesion in the nose? Enter Clear. CLEAR is a nasal spray that contains xylitol, a 5 carbon sugar alcohol. Our bodies naturally contain 5 carbon sugars, mostly in the form of ribose and deoxyribose, which are the backbone sugars of RNA and DNA. Xylitol is known to reduce how sticky bacteria and viruses are to our tissues. In the presence of xylitol, bacteria and viruses, including Strep, SARS, COV2, and RSV, don't adhere to our airways as well, which helps our body's natural defense mechanisms easily flush them away. CLEAR is a simple nasal spray. Use it morning and evening, and it takes just three seconds. It's fast and easy and decidedly healthy. Personally, I don't love taking. Personally, Heather doesn't love taking anything daily that isn't food or drink, nutrition or hydration. So she ends up forgetting to use Clear on some days. But whenever she is going to be traveling or otherwise in a small space with lots of people and poor ventilation, she is sure to use Clear. And she thinks that she's getting respiratory infections less than she used to.

B

That totally happened to you.

A

Nobody will notice that I was editing on the fly. The founder of clear, Nathan Jones, spoke with me on the Inside Rail in 2024 and 2025. And in 2025, Lon Jones, osteopath and inventor of Clear, spoke with me about how xylitol interacts with respiratory viruses. We recommend those conversations, and we highly recommend CLEAR as a daily habit and prophylactic against respiratory illnesses. That's CLEAR with an X, X, L, E, A, R. Get Clear online or at your pharmacy, grocery store, or natural products retailer and start taking six to improve your nasal hygiene and support your respiratory health. Clear. It's for everybody except spelling sticklers.

B

So that's actually here. Don't want to obscure our beautiful table. Random piece of paper. That's actually a great segue because there you were messing with pronouns on the fly in order to make everyone feel correctly identified and honored in their current instantiation in the world. And here we are going to talk about Pride Month because as it turns out in California, if you want some pretty snazzy perks, you gotta prove you're gay.

A

Prove you're gay to the state. Yeah. One even do that.

B

Yeah. Well, we're gonna find out. We are. We are going to share. We already know. We're gonna share with our, with our viewers, some of whom probably already know as well. Can you see my screen? That Chris Ruffo and his co author Austin Hufford, whom we do not know, wrote this week in City Journal a piece headlined Inside California's Gay Certification Program. The state is pressuring utilities to award $633 million in contracts to LGBT businesses. Now, it's basically exactly what it sounds like, but I'm going to read a little bit from it here. So we have. This was published. Yeah, just a couple days ago. Americans are used to handouts for favored groups, affirmative action and university admissions, corporate diversity initiatives, and minority owned contracting requirements, direct opportunities, resources and contracts to supposedly oppressed groups such as women, Native Americans, blacks and Hispanics. In California State, Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism, contracts for state certified gay owned businesses. The scheme operates through the California Public Utilities Commission cpuc, which regulates privately owned utility companies. California utilities spent more than $43 billion in 2024 on contractors, fuel suppliers, surveyors, engineers and others whose work helped deliver water, gas, electricity and Internet service to California's 39 million residents. In 1986, Governor George Duke Magian signed Assembly Bill 3678 which required certain sepuc regulated utilities to submit annual plan plans for buying goods and services from women and minority owned companies. 1986, we were still living in California then. I remember Governor Duke Maan. We were in high school. I do not remember that happening.

A

No, no.

B

I think even though at that point I was in favor of affirmative action, I would have objected to that. So. But There it is, two years later. That would have been in 1988, CPU created its, quote, supplier diversity program, which would enforce the law and set contract contracting goals for large utilities. Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay owned businesses. In September 2014, then Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPAC to recognize, quote, LGBT owned businesses as eligible for supplier diversity benefits, etc. Etc. And of course, Gavin Newsom has continued to expand this ridiculousness. But as we've talked about before and as I've Talked about, written about at length among things in the LGBT universe, are unique among other demographic markers in that you can opt in and it's your say versus anyone else's. So this is an obviously gameable thing. Now, until the insanity of transness hit the United States, however long ago that happened, you couldn't opt into being a woman. And of course you still can't. But some people think that you can. You couldn't opt in to being Latino or black or wheelchair bound or, you know, any number of other things. There were some. Some of these identifiers are issues of degree and they could require qualitative assessment, but you can't choose an identity for it for a long time for, for most of these. And now, of course, trans has changed that. And I will argue so has another one of the things included in here. Did you want to add something before?

A

Yeah, I do want to add something. So I, I see there's a, as two fundamental flaws here with the whole logic underlying this and some extrapolations from it. But one of them you're pointing to here, obviously something that you can opt into. There's a cost benefit analysis. Now, you might be morally constrained not to opt into this just to get benefits, but the point is, obviously there's a calculation to be had which is not there for an inherited characteristic. But I also think there's something. So, okay, affirmative action is presented as a remedy for the consequences of past oppression. It's presented initially as something that is finite in time, because sooner or later you will have compensated enough that there won't be a further justification for it. It's a temporary measure that of course vanishes very quickly as soon as you institute affirmative action. But that was the basic idea. There's been long standing oppression. It has accumulated, and it is time that we right that wrong temporarily until it is having no net effect. This does not apply to being gay, it does not apply to being trans, because these things are not passed down in a lineage sense. So the point is, even if we say there has been tremendous oppression of gay people, true. That oppression stretches back basically indefinitely. True. Okay. But the fact that you show up as gay in this generation does not mean that you have the accumulated disadvantage of all those gay ancestors. The point is we all sort of equally have whatever oppression our gay ancestors experienced. And so the point is, the logic doesn't make sense because there's no. You as a gay person are not carrying a burden that is excessive.

B

And I guess the one, the one caveat there is that whether or not it's, you know, in the genes or environmental. There is some tendency for gay children to be the result of gay parents.

A

A very, very weak tendency.

B

But it's. But it's weak. And so your point is there is. There is no inherited burden. There is no lineage level burden to correct. Right, right.

A

And then there's a second layer to this.

B

And just, just so, you know, like, we still have a bunch of the pieces to get through.

A

I know. But just as long as we're putting those pieces on the table, there is no accumulated burden. And in the present, there isn't discrimination. So the point is, the whole logic of correcting anything doesn't make any sense. Because the point is, at the moment you can be gay and proud and naked in the street in a parade. If you challenge the right of people to be gay and naked and parading through the streets of your town, well, then you might face some oppression.

B

You might need to put on clothes if you want to actually get the utility contract. But I don't even know if that's true.

A

You certainly don't need to defile online,

B

but you don't need to what online?

A

To put on clothes? To file your.

B

Oh, I thought you said defile online.

A

Oh, I don't know what that is, but I don't. So, no, but anyway, I just, I just think, you know, first of all, this makes a mockery of any reasonable use of affirmative action because it doesn't correct for anything in the past, because it isn't inherited, and it doesn't correct for anything in the present because frankly,

B

gays are liberated, because it's being done in California. You know, if this, if this were

A

in Saudi Arabia, in Saudi Arabia, you'd have a different situation.

B

Right. The first point still holds. But, you know, it's exactly the case that these, that always. These sorts of moves happen in the places where the problem is already either solved or absolutely on the way to being solved. And so what it does is creates this incredible backlash as opposed to actually, you know, actually working to continue the, you know, the good work of reminding everyone that we are all humans, no matter what it is that we believe or look like or have in our bedrooms.

A

Actually, I think that's a third layer of profound criticism, which is on top of those other two. The places that are going to institute a measure like that are the places where it is absolutely least necessary. And that the thing is so logically invalid on its face that the fact that the state would defile itself by engaging in this kind of discrimination which is, of course, an absolute violation of our obligation of, frankly, equal protection under the law.

B

Okay, but. So California is doing this, and even California has figured out that this might be a problem if all you have to do is be like, oh, yeah, I'm gay. I have a utility company, I have a contract, I run a business that could get a contract to help with California utilities, and all I have to do is say it. Well, no. And so, Rufo, and apologies. Hufford. I think, continue. They go through some of, like, the percentage goals. If large CPUC regulated utilities met these goals in 2024, they would have sent roughly $633 million to LGBT owned firms. Okay, that's a lot of money. Yeah, that's a lot of money. This scheme raises an obvious question. How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an LGBT organization attesting their sexual preferences, proof that a newspaper identified them as lgbt, or three letters from personal contacts written on company letterhead attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who falsely represent their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Now, I actually want to go through this document and, and, and show you some of the even more ludicrous things, but I will actually. I'm going to show you the gay certification letter document from the National LGBTQ plus and Allied Chamber of Commerce. You know, there's a Chamber of commerce

A

for lgbtq, Chamber of Gay Commerce, or I.

B

Who even knows? Like, I. They just don't seem like the same types of things. If you put those two things on the opposite side of the scale, what does the scale even do? But, like, what could it possibly be measuring that a Chamber of Commerce and LGBTQ are even like the same units? Like, one's pressure and one's mass, like they're just not the same type of thing.

A

Yeah.

B

You know. Okay, here we go. Marianne Horton. Marianne Horton has experienced this journey firsthand. Horton, an early Internet pioneer credited with helping develop the email attachment, is a white male who transitioned and is now married to a woman. Horton's company, Red Ace, is registered in California as a woman and LGBT owned business. The application process, Horton told City Journal, required a mess of documentation to prove that Red Ace was lesbian owned. Horton sent Supplier Clearinghouse a domestic partner affidavit to establish that the business was woman owned. Horton submitted a birth certificate, which had been reissued in Washington state Post transition to Prove transgender status. Horton filed a therapist carry letter, a document from a medical professional certifying transgender identity. These designations came with perks. After Red Ace secured these labels, Horton said San Diego Gas and Electric brought the company on as a part time cybersecurity contractor. During the hiring process, Horton told us a company official said that being on the diversity list made the contract much easier to secure. If I was a straight white male, Marianne Horton said, I might be concerned I don't have the same opportunity. It worked out great for me. Oh, white male.

A

Okay. But all right, two. Two points of order here. Yeah. One, it's not a birth certificate. It's a redefinition certificate. Has nothing to do with birth. And in fact, pretending that it's birth is exactly ridiculous. But the other thing is. Okay, let's follow their logic through one further space.

B

Oh, let's.

A

Gays and lesbians have experienced discrimination in some way that has accumulated in burdens present gay and lesbians. Even though the discrimination doesn't exist anymore, in fact, it's now positive discrimination. Okay. However, will we compensate modern lesbians for the oppression that they are, I don't know, infused with by society by giving a man advantages for.

B

This is exactly the despicable nature of the trans movement.

A

Yeah, this is.

B

This is it right here. I mean, I mean, more important is that they're destroying children and you know, least important on my list forever has been like, I care about women's sports, but that's a lot less important than destroying lesbians, than putting adult women at risk and then destroying children.

A

Right.

B

But like taking opportunities away. It's a stupid program. But if the program exists, it should go to people who actually grew up with and came of age in like, this is a tech guy with. I think he. I think he got a PhD in 1981. Straight white dude who then transitioned and lives with a woman because of course he does. He's a straight white dude and is now getting preferential treatment in the state of California. Right.

A

Thereby out competing actual lesbians for this pool of money that shouldn't be granted anyway. But if it is going to be granted this. So the point is, it is attack on lesbians disguised as perk for lesbians to compensate for disadvantage. It couldn't be more ridiculous.

B

Yep. So I pulled up the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

A

Oh, you did?

B

Did you document. And their document is called the LGBTQ status qualifiers for business owners. I don't know why the Chamber of Commerce doesn't include queers. Like, what do they have against Queers. So it's the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, but it's the LGBTQ status quo. So my point is the Alphabet. People can't even keep their Alphabet straight, right? Like there's sometimes there's a Q, sometimes there's an asterisk and a double A and a Q. Spirit and this, that and the other, and sometimes there's not.

A

I hope it's not too deep in the weeds, but I want to revisit. I did an experiment back in the early days on Twitter and I said, please tell me if you took the cue away from lgbtq. Exactly. Who would that exclude? And nobody came up with anything because obviously whatever queer is is a non thing and it's covered by lgbt.

B

Yep. Okay. The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce's Supplier Diversity corporate partners have made a commitment to buying back from the LGBTQ community. Buying back the. Okay. The NGLCC National Certification Committee, in accordance with the LGBT Business Enterprise Certification Standards and procedures. Now, it does sound very officially acronyms, does it not? A lot. A lot of capital letters strung out together and without breaks.

A

Fairly careful work.

B

Asks for status qualifiers to establish LGBTQ identity in order to demonstrate to all stakeholders that the NGLCC is working on behalf of LGBTQ business owners. Therefore, the committee reserves the right to ask for several LGBTQ status qualifiers in order to authenticate the affidavit and corroborate each LGBTQ status qualifier document with the other. It goes on and on and on and on. Unless otherwise noted, the following documents are acceptable forms of LGBTQ status. The more an applicant can provide, the more unequivocally it can be determined that the owners owner parentheses is lgbtq. Okay, there's a lot. Some of them are exactly what you would expect. Evidence. I've just highlighted a few that struck me as notable evidence of completed or attempted parenting and family building efforts made by LGBTQ applicants and same sex partner. This could be in the form of a second parent adoption petition for second parent adoption, adoption records and or state required documents for adoption in vitro fertilization procedure, proof of procedure from a medical facility, a letter from a doctor that performed the procedure and or medical records and insurance records citing the procedure. Surrogate mother arrangements, proof of surrogacy in the form of a surrogacy contract, proof of payment, medical records and or letter from surrogate mother and doctor. What this puts me in mind of is I started working in the 80s, I had a lot of jobs starting when I was like 13 and I did a lot of. I did retail work I worked scooped ice cream, I worked in a video store, I worked in a bookstore. I like, I just did a lot of different kinds of work. And I became familiar pretty early on with what potential employers could and could not ask as a woman. They were absolutely not allowed to ask about my current marital status, if I was pregnant, if I was intending to become pregnant. Because those historically had been questions that meant that they could predict accurately or not what my intentions with regard to the job might be and thus perhaps choose someone. If I said, yes, I'm trying to get pregnant, which I don't know why I would say that in a job interview, but if I. If they had asked and I had answered honestly at some point, that that was true, that of course was not true in the 80s, but then they could have made the decision and had some cover story that they did not want to go with someone who might be about to need maternity leave, for instance. Right. So that all made good sense. Employers shouldn't be able to ask private questions about your personal life that you do not believe will have bearing on them, but could. But having been hired into a full time position, again, I was not looking for full time positions in the 80s, but having been hired into a full time position, a woman should then be able to make decisions for, you know, her own desire to build a family that the employer doesn't get a say in.

A

So the law, I think correctly, was protecting you from a kind of discrimination. It was protecting the employer from asking you something that might result in your being discriminated against as a woman who is therefore capable of getting pregnant, for example.

B

Precisely, yeah. In order to potentially get lucrative California contracts the likes of which your merely straight white male colleagues don't have access to, you might be asked to provide evidence of applying for adoption, in vitro fertilization procedures, surrogate mother arrangements. This seems like a much bigger breach. And of course it's not about. The framework is illegitimate. This shouldn't be on offer to anyone. But having it be on offer and then having to prove your gayness by one of these methods is rather extraordinary.

A

Well, I agree with you. It's crazy that these categories come up, but these categories are not exactly evidence of being gay.

B

Well, it's, you know, made by LGBTQ applicants and same sex partner.

A

So, yeah, you know, all right,

B

what can you tell from the, from the name that there's the same sex partner that, like, there's just. There's obviously a lot of wiggle room and the whole. They're really working to make this seem Concrete, linear, reductionist, quantitative, you know, all give it the gloss of sciency things so that people stop asking so many questions.

A

Well, especially in light of the fact that it is the very same folks who are blurring the lines that would tell you for sure that two women together are in fact gay. Because one of those women might well be a man.

B

Exactly. So another thing that would would satisfy them. A letter from a recognized LGBTQ organization attesting to LGBTQ status signed by organization leader or board member. So you just gotta find some organization. That organization could have just been started yesterday, right? And they just have to be like, yeah, you, you, you're lgbtq.

A

We're an organization that you're not vetting and yep, we're a gay organization.

B

And letters must be accompanied by signed affidavits. Oh, must they? Okay. Social media profile for the business or a public personal profile. Accepted social media include LinkedIn, Instagram X threads, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. Must be accompanied by link to, post or profile. Must be accompanied by a different qualifier from list B. Only one social media post or profile will be considered. Additional poster profile will not be considered. However, an additional thing could be a business website stating that the business is LGBTQ owned. The business website merely has to state its LGBTQ owned. So my point is the entire, the entire framework wherein utilities contracts in California are giving preferential treatment to LGBT organizations is illegitimate. But given that it is what it is, they have both incredibly invasive questions that they would ask of people. And it's also obviously incompletely gamble, but it's also gameable in a way that we haven't even talked about yet, because we've talked about the T, we've talked about the Q, we haven't really talked about the L and the G, which are just sexed versions for homosexual, lesbian and gay. But what about the B? What is going on with the baby? Well, we have. There's been many headlines lately about how very lgbt, lgbtq, lgbtq, whatever you want to add to it. Gen Z is right? And the headline has just been that, oh, Gen Z is so is so. I want to say queer to replace all the rest of the letters, but I know that's not a real thing. So, like lgbt, right? Well, it's not that straightforward. And in fact, it's much more straightforward and it's much more obvious once you hear it, and egregious because it's not the young men who are deciding who are declaring themselves LGBT in massive numbers in Gen Z compared to generations before. It's the Young women. So we have here Dr. Randall S. Olson, his substack. The rise in LGBTQ identification is mostly young women. And he's pulling this from a Gallup survey, and he's put together an excellent graph. So I'm going to show you this rather than go to the Gallup survey directly. The rise. Let me see if I can make this just a little bit bigger. The rise in LGBTQ identification is mostly young women. So let's just start at the bottom. Among the silent Gen. This is, again, according from a Gallup poll from 2024, the most recent data for which Gallup is available at this point. Silent generation, 1.8% of the population declare themselves LGBT. LGBTQ boomers, born 1946-64, 3% Gen X, that's us. Born 65 to 85.1% overall. And then Gallup started also reporting a gender split in generations after our generation for millennials and Gen Z. So for millennials born between 1981 and 1996, they report 9% of men identify as LGBTQ and 18% of women do. That's high. That's a huge leap from Gen X. But in gen Z, born 1997-2006, which frankly doesn't seem like a long enough generation, so they're going to have to extend that out. But put that aside for the moment. That's just going to be like, I guess people younger than that aren't old enough to be queried yet. Probably. So for Gen Z, born 1997, 2006, 12% of men are identifying as LGBT. Q and 31 of women. Wow, 31%. Okay. And that's huge. That sounds ridiculous. Until you realize. Let's see. I don't actually. Here it is. Yeah. That the label doing most of the work is bisexual. As Olson says in his sub stack, among LGBTQ members of Gen Z, most are bisexual. Among the oldest LGBTQ adults, almost none are. Older generations are mostly gay and lesbian. Younger ones are mostly bi. My argument is that bisexuality in women is the newest social contagion. It's popular. It's actually harmless. It's way better than cutting yourself or declaring that you're a dude. And, hey, guess what? It also opens up opportunities for contracts in California.

A

Whoa.

B

So we have a generation that is, yes, more LGBT identified than any generation that came before, but it's not that flat. It's three in 10 women among Gen Z's are calling themselves LGBT, but the vast majority of these are actually saying I'm bi. And what does bi mean? You were once attracted to a woman that's bi enough for some people. And if that's all it takes. And then you have doors open up to you because affirmative action now includes lgbt. And why wouldn't you? Like, given that we have a generation of people who are losing opportunities based on AI taking work, and they've had their soul stolen by COVID lockdowns and the screens that they're glued to. If you see a way to both join the crowd, be part. Be one of the cool girls, and also have more doors open up for you down the road, why wouldn't you? Like, I wouldn't have, but I know a lot of people who would.

A

Right. And I mean, I know this. This is. This is what you're describing, but at some level, there's no downside for a woman declaring herself bi, even from the point of view.

B

There's no ew factor. There's no. Like, it doesn't.

A

No, it's the opposite. It's, like, considered edgy and cool and sexy. So the point is, if you're completely mercenary, then of course, if you get contract advantages and it sets you apart from your competitors in the mating and dating market.

B

But not that much apart anymore.

A

No. Because a lot of people have figured it out. But, yeah, it's crazy. And once again, who pays the cost? Like real lesbians.

B

Real lesbians.

A

Real lesbians are being out competed by a bunch of straight girls who want to claim that they're, you know, in. In the. In the club.

B

Yep.

A

I also think this is just a weird argument. It's so weird that I'm hesitant to even make it. But isn't this whole thing actually discriminatory against closeted gays? You have to come out to get a disadvantage. The point is, anybody who's in the closet can't access this stuff. Right. You have to be out and proud. And so the point is, it's like driving people to be out who not want to be public about this. You know, what if you're just, you

B

know, just like a woman's status with regard to thinking about forming a family back in the 80s, 90s and oughts some people actually want to keep their interests in the bedroom to themselves.

A

Yeah. Right.

B

Maybe. Maybe privacy is a value, but not according to. To our new rolls and rags.

A

Right. Which from the point of view of this, that's obviously revolutionary movement. And I don't mean that in the positive sense, but it's obviously hostile to civilization and how it functions. From that point of view, outing as many people as you can. So you can claim the numbers are higher than they actually are is to their benefit. And what's more, it comes with a lot of money that you can shunt to the people in the community that you like. Yeah, right. Insane. Yep. There's also a bunch of stuff missing from that list of how you would demonstrate that you were gay.

B

Well, I didn't read the whole list.

A

Oh, okay.

B

Okay. Go for it.

A

I just want to know. What if you're a guy who makes cupcakes,

B

do you think that's sufficient?

A

I do. But that's just me.

B

It's just you?

A

Yeah, it is just me. It sure got quiet.

B

I think. Yeah, I don't know. I just. I think you don't. You don't get any more cupcakes now.

A

I'm not a big consumer of cupcakes.

B

Well, I have a few for you. No, I actually brought some for you. I know.

A

Man made them.

B

I don't think you get them. No, I think they're not for you anymore.

A

Wow.

B

That they have raspberry and almond. Some of your favorites.

A

I don't believe her in fate, but that does seem like somebody was sending me a message.

B

Yeah.

A

Yeah.

B

Okay. You know, I want pride, sun and fascism. Really, it makes the most sense to go on to the fascism story from this because, well, you'll see. So we may. We may save the sun story for next time, depending. Okay. So our good friend Dave Stevens, whom you actually just saw, recently introduced me to an Umberto Eco essay that I had not been familiar with on the subject of what Echo is calling ur fascism, which is sort of just the, like, the generalized, like the platonic ideal of fascism. But Dave's story, in terms of how he discovered the essay, was a good one, and he told me I could share it. So he was watching a video that popped into his feed, as happens to all of us. And the scene was a familiar one. There was someone from the blue hair cult calling someone from the red hat cult the fascist. And I believe those are his terms. They're great. I hope I'm not going too far here, Dave. And the typical move in this encounter is the red hat cult dude is like, you don't even know what fascism means. And the blue haired cultist argues and quails and reveals that they in fact don't know what fascism means. And everyone watching sort of chuckles. But Dave, true to form, being honest and wickedly smart and therefore aware of when he doesn't actually know something, was like, huh? I'm actually not sure that I can really clearly define it. So let me figure out what fascism is. And of course that took him down various rabbit holes and there's a lot of fuzzy boundaries and people disagree. And of course, Umberto Eco's essay on the subject from 1995 and the new York Review of Books is hardly the end all and be all of the arguments, but it is quite a good article. It's very long and meandering. I'll link to it in the show notes, but I want to share just a couple of paragraphs. And then what he does in the end is. Has like 14. 14 traits of a fascist movement or a fascist society. And I just want to kind of spring them on you and see what. See what you think. So first though, let me find the essay. Here we go. So this is New York Review of Books not coming all the way to the top. I don't know.

A

Okay.

B

I don't know why my computer is behaving this way. Let's never mind. You will not show my computer just yet. I'm going to read a couple of paragraphs from the essay from 1995, Umberto Eco's essay on Earth Fascism. He says, nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak, in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. I feel like there's words missing there. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Here's Eco setting up the argument that it's not one thing, and maybe even predicting that there would be people of various extremes calling one another fascists, that it would be hard to disagree except to say you don't know what that means, but maybe neither do I. He continues slightly later in the essay. Fascism became an all purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti capitalism, which never much fascinated Mussolini, and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail, mysticism completely alien to official fascism, and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola. So he's pointing out that you can have something called fascism over here which has, you know, items A, B and C, and it moves slowly over time into various different movements. And here you have another thing that is equally well identified as fascist, even though it has elements def. That is to say, the two things both of which are identified as fascist may actually have nothing in common that you could use to identify them as such. So that is one of the main points of his essay. Do you want to say something before I. Yeah.

A

I want to say that this is an interesting feature of fascism, that basically you have a cluster of characteristics that occur together but none of them are the sine qua non. There's no essential element. And that what that suggests. And actually this fits with my argument for what communism is. Communism is a naturally evolving state. At the point that you have a sufficient number of people in society who have no investment in the continuation of a system that condemns them to losing in competition, they overthrow it. In this case, fascism is going to be a naturally evolving syndrome that you recognize because it has symptoms, but not because it is a thing invented by someone of which all of the various adherents are following. It's a naturally evolving failure mode as,

B

as is communist, as is communism different. And yet it seems to me that communism often fails further into fascism.

A

And in fact that's going to be an interesting characteristic because there's a question about the ideology.

B

Right.

A

The conscious presentation and then there's a question about the behavior, you know, know how you enact this thing.

B

Right.

A

And so I, I don't think that's impossible at all.

B

Yeah. Okay. So here I have a summary of Umberto Echo's 14 Features of Ur Fascism from his 1995 New York Review of Books. We have. And so I. This is, this is a summary generated by me and by Claude together. The, the AI one, the cult of tradition syncretism that treats primeval wisdom as a complete source of knowledge that sounds a little arcane, but no further advancement of learning is possible because complete truth has already been discovered. In this one, I feel. And in the next one, a strong anti scientific bent in what Eco is describing as fascist, which we actually also see kind of across society now in different forms as the word science has been taken to mean something that it is not. And the people who are pretending to champion science are mostly championing something that is quite not actually.

A

I think interestingly, this sort of fits the. The God shaped hole.

B

Yeah.

A

Idea because this is one of the places that I'm getting Hung up. Now, very frequently with religious folks who are otherwise fellow travelers. Right. Have some shared values and an easy time talking. But when I say actually, you know, scientifically speaking, whether or not there's a God, looks to me like if there is one, he used evolution to do it all. There's no flaw in the story. There's a flaw in the way we tell the Darwinian story, but I don't see that obvious an indication that there's a flaw. And what I'm told is actually Darwinism has been falsified. We know what did this. It's written. And then if you push and you're like, that was written by people who were also fallible and didn't know everything. The answer is actually no. God's wisdom is perfect. It has been transmitted to us.

B

So complete truth has already been discovered.

A

Yeah. It's been revealed. Yeah, yeah,

B

okay. 2. The rejection of modernism. Similar but distinct in echoes. Listing this is a direct quote from him. The Enlightenment, the Age of reason is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. And I think that it does not map on to say, what's going on with, with the wokists now. And that is a closer map on to some of what is going on the right now. The idea of like, we're just rejecting Enlightenment because look what it has brought to us. But it's, it's interesting that eco sees that in, across many fascist traditions as well.

A

Well, it is literally reactionary.

B

Yes.

A

And you know, I must say this is part of the confusion of landing where you and I have landed. Ideologically, our values haven't shifted very far, but our understanding of how many things did go too far and are now threatening those values. There are a lot of things that we would, you know, turn back the clock on because actually what we did that looked like progress to somebody turned out not to be. So I guess the point is the problem with a reactionary movement is that it tends to be completely unnuanced. And it's like, yes, the Enlightenment was an error, let's undo it. And it's like, no, no, no. There were certainly errors stemming from it.

B

It is necessary but not sufficient to get us into the future Enlightenment era thinking. The rationality, analysis and logic that, that the age of reason brought to us. Necessary, but no, not sufficient. Three, the cult of action for action's sake. There's a belief sees echo in fascist traditions that thinking is emasculation. Culture is suspect because it implies criticism. There's a general distrust of the intellectual world and you know, of course, we see this in, in Maoist China. We see this, I believe, among the brown shirts. I know that history a little bit less well, but the idea that first, first you take out the intellectuals, first you go after the professors, the actual, the, the actual holders of, of knowledge who might disagree with you, who might stand up and say, hold up, you take them out first. And then you also dismiss knowledge as emasculating.

A

Yeah, actually it's quite right. It's one of the most surprising features of these movements is how, how much they seem to care about going after, you know, professor types.

B

Yeah.

A

Why would you care what, you know? You're powerful. They talk. What's the problem? And the answer is. Oh, the problem is they talk. They talk, they talk.

B

And some of them have courage and

A

some of them have occasionally and, and you know, what they say has currency because it's well constructed. It's not, not, you know, a chant occasionally. Yeah, right.

B

All right. 4 in echoes 14 features of ur Fascism, Disagreement is treason. And this again, a quote directly from him. In modern culture, the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For UR Fascism, disagreement is treason. And this so fits with what we've just been talking about.

A

Yeah, perfectly so. I mean, that's especially received wisdom. What's there to talk about? What insight exactly are you going to add to it? It's received. And so.

B

And so, you know, I mean, I think this list is fascinating because so many of these run exactly like, exactly hit what we were trying to do in the classroom and what we've been trying to do here on Dark Horse, saying, you know, the Enlightenment, the ways of the Enlightenment are necessary and insufficient to move us forward. And these are your tools. These are your human tools. And do not believe them when they tell you there is nothing new under the sun. That is a hopeless, pessimistic conclusion to have come to. Of course there are new things under the sun. Of course we do not know it all. Of course we will never know it all. And from that you should garner hope and excitement and optimism. Not the opposite. But how is it that you keep people down? You assure them that it's already known. You whisk away inconsistencies between the received knowledge as if they don't exist. And you tamp down dissent and you create a people who have no hope except for. Who have no hope and no passion except for whatever it is that you steer them to. Hate that, maybe love that, but more often hate that thing.

A

Yeah, it demotivates all of the Lines of inquiry that might steer you in a more reasonable direction. And so the point is, okay, if what you want to do is create brown sugar, if you effectively want, you know, meat robots to do your bidding, then this is the way to go. You tamp down all of the things that might attract their attention, cause them to question any of those things.

B

Yes. Five. Fear of difference. Seeking consensus by exploiting fear of intruders. An appeal against outsiders. UR fascism is racist by definition. So this feels like one of the more obvious points, except that I would say that, that most of the extreme movements that we can point to right now on the so called right and the so called left do exactly this. The, you know, the, the getting rid of straight white men from workforces is, as we have pointed out over and over and over again, it's a rejection of difference. It just happens to come under the banner of the embrace of difference. It's just because the banner says the opposite doesn't mean that they're not doing the same. Same thing.

A

No, they're doing the same thing. And the question which I think is really a, a open question is what happens when the circuitry of lineage against lineage violence and therefore racism gets trained on something that isn't actually race? Like when it gets trained on a red hat, you know, yeah, you can.

B

Blue hair, red hat, trans person.

A

Right. The hallmarks of. And one way to read the outbreak of shallow, phony sympathy with and participation in movements like LGBTQ is okay, if you're going to go after the straight white males, then what happens if you're a straight white male who would not like to be gone after. Well, the idea is if I signal that I'm actually going to switch teams and I'm going to be on your side of this battle and we can all go after the straight white mouse together, even though I am one. Right. Then the point is. Oh, allyship. This is why allyship looms so large in these revolutionary movements is because the point is game, theoretically, what you want to do is get as many people who are in your sights to switch teams and do your bidding instead and do it extra ferociously. That's the mythology in, in these far left circles, is that, you know, why people, you need the white people in your movement out front to take the confrontation with the cops directly.

B

Yep. They don't get to speak, but they do get to take the hits.

A

Yep.

B

Yep. 6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. Echo writes, Ur fascism speaks to those concerned about both those with more and those with less than them. They are suffering economic or political humiliation from above, while also. And again, Echo's language, frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. Now, this feels like a more general recognition that anytime you've got a middle class that is feeling legitimate pressure from both sides and is being tightened because largely the people above, you know, with more. Are taking ever more and thus reducing the size of the middle class, you will have a frustrated middle class who is ready to be appealed to. But I think. I think Echo's distinct contribution here is watch for the appeal to the middle class. Like, watch for that to happen, because that will, of course, be that. Like, that's. That's another piece of your army right there.

A

So this is the powerful signaling to the middle class. This is our revolution. Am I reading that correctly? The fascist.

B

No, that comes later, actually. I don't. I don't see that in this one. He does. He does have that as one. As one of his examples, but I don't really see that. This is just. This doesn't specify what is. Where it's coming from. It's just that the middle class is part of. Is the target of the movement.

A

Yeah. Okay.

B

Obsession with the plot. Nationalism grounded in besiegement. The followers must feel surrounded by enemies, often through xenophobia, with an internal enemy. Jews are the classic target, simultaneously inside and outside. Now, again, obsession with a plot just sounds to me like humans. Like stories. Like, we're interested in stories. Plot may be more specifically about conspiracy. And I've seen other summaries of Echo that suggest here that this is. That there tends to be conspiracy thinking in. In fascist movements. You know, all such discussions fail to acknowledge that positing conspiracies will sometimes be correct.

A

Yes. And that conspiracy itself is a ubiquitous feature of human interaction. So the idea.

B

I mean, that's what. That's why it will sometimes be correct.

A

Yeah, well, sometimes correct, but I mean, just the idea that. Actually, you should expect that at any given moment, there are many, many conspiracies. Presumably most allegations are wrong. But anyway, fascination with a particular plot. Yeah, I guess the question is, is it right or wrong?

B

Is what right or wrong?

A

The allegation. The plot in particular becomes the focus.

B

Right, right. Okay. 8. Enemies are both too strong and too weak. Followers are made to feel humiliated by the enemy's ostentatious wealth and force, yet convinced that they can overwhelm them. Hence, fascist regimes are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating enemy strength and are condemned to lose wars. It's a pretty strong argument that Echo makes. And I. I put that in here, in the summary, precisely because I'm not, I'm not convinced it's true. I don't know my history well enough across various would be fascist regimes to know. But fascinating. I think it gets to one of his themes, which he doesn't have as one of his points here. I don't think about just there being an inherent tension between incompatible stories, beginning with the very first point about all the wisdom has already been received and the fact that some of the stories don't agree. We're just not going to talk about that. That, so there's, there's a constant tension that, that Echo sees in fascism that I think, I think leaves a hopefulness about an inherent way out if, you know, if, if there's a tyranny taking over your, your home.

A

Well, I, I mean, this, this is a fascinating one because of the final piece of it, the tendency to lose wars, effectively because.

B

Condemned, he says. Condemned to lose wars. That's his language.

A

Condemned because you bought your own press. Yeah, Right. You're selling a story that you then come to believe and it misleads you as to your own power relative to those you're challenging.

B

You can't objectively assess your own enemies.

A

Yeah, yeah. Now, I guess one thing that I would want to see, and I know you've got a few more to go here, but one thing I would want to see is an analysis of how many of these things are actually general to some much larger category.

B

Well, yes, and this is actually. Yeah. I made this point to our friend, a friend, Dave, after reading this essay, it feels like there, there are some that if you were trying to make a phylogeny, and that's not quite the right word, but like a, a compact, as compact a list as possible that was actually not shared by other, other kinds of movements. It would be a very different kind of a list.

A

Yeah.

B

So, you know, he's, he wasn't trying to be concise. It's a sprawling essay. And so this is, this is what it is. Number nine. Life is struggle. Life is permanent warfare. Therefore, pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. The hatred of pacifism, Echo is suggesting is because that is a rejection of what the fascists, all fascists, he would claim all fascist movements have understood life to be inherently a struggle. And I, I, I thought this was interesting in part, obviously because of the name of Hitler's autobiography.

A

Right.

B

You know that he uses the word in German. And, you know, I believe Echo was writing in English here, but of course he's Italian. But, you know, the word, I think, is intentional. The discussion of. Of struggle as the fundamental state of being is both something that we can recognize from evolutionary biology, but also not the thing that you have to be focused on all the time, as Echo is arguing fascist regimes do.

A

Yeah, I'm hung up on the word pacifism, because on the one hand, and if I was to list my characteristics that are inherent to fascism, one of them would be militarism. But there is a difference between being peace loving or peace seeking and being a pacifist. Yes, right. I find pacifists pathetic, but I don't find the desire to reach peace pathetic. It's quite the opposite. It should be our objective. But the point is, you have to be willing to fight at the point that. That you are called upon by history to do so.

B

Whereas you don't.

A

You.

B

You. You might. It might be honorable to turn the other cheek the first time, but, you know, at some point, you don't keep turning the other cheek.

A

You don't. You fight back. You just have to, or you get erased by history. And so I do see in what I know of fascism a distaste for basically peace seeking people who. Who would then be dismissed as pacifists because that would put them in the category of the despicable in many people's eyes.

B

Yeah. So it may be that the word isn't the right word here. Yeah, I hear your objection. Contempt for the weak. Which is, again, related to what you were just saying about his ninth point. Every citizen is the best of the world and party members the best of citizens, but the structure is rigidly hierarchical and each rank despises those below. So this reminded me of Animal Farm. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

A

Yeah, I just.

B

That feels like it's exactly that point. That you can simultaneously be claiming that we're all comrades here. And now get to work. When I'm gonna go off my caviar.

A

Yep. Now, curiously, nowhere in that list did I hear, we're not done. Oh, sorry. Squinting to see it. Go ahead.

B

There's 14. We have four more. Everybody is educated to become a hero. Heroism is the norm and is linked to a cult of death. The hero craves heroic death and also sends others to die. There's a lot in that one. But the idea of heroism is the norm. Reminds me of. And I am not making the claim that the K12 schools in the United States have been fascist entities for the last many decades. However, the. Everyone's a winner. Everyone Gets a gold star. Everyone is already awesome and doesn't have to do any work to be awesome. You're already there. Insane ideology that has taken over the schools and, and helped generate a whole generation of helpless, hapless people is part of this.

A

Well, I think it's almost the inverse. I think the everybody gets a trophy thing is like a challenge to the possibility of heroic action. That it's like transferring the glory of doing something heroic and redistributing. It's like. It's like the communist inversion.

B

Well, I'm. I can go back and reread this section of the essay, but I think he's arguing everyone is told they're a hero, but that that inherently dilutes what heroism is. Yeah.

A

Although in the context of fascism, I would say everybody is told that you are part of a heroic effort. Right. You are. You are a piece of something truly grand. And it's different than everybody gets a trophy for nothing. Yeah, right.

B

Yep. That's true. That's true. Okay, this 12th one, I don't know. Machismo. Transfer of the willow to power onto sexual matters. Disdain for women. Intolerance of non standard sexuality and weapons as air sexual. That's phallic exercise. This is written in 1995. I see a lot of the rest of the things that he's talking about in what has become the pride movement. And of course that is not this. This thing is not found there. But what we. What we actually see in some ways is an inversion. Like, you know, an absolute sort of a rejection of. I don't think I've ever used the word heteronormative. And I'm not going to start now I just said it. But a rejection of the kind of sexual relationships that have gotten us here a few billion years after we started and an embrace of all sorts of kinks and fetishes and simultaneously an encouragement of some of the most grotesque forms of. Yes, the, you know, cis. Heteronormative. I just did it. Sexual tendencies. But only if they come in the form of men who are now pretending to be women.

A

Yeah, no, it is the inversion. It's the. The deviance is now the non deviant. And yeah, the normal people are deviant in the eyes of the movement.

B

Yep, exactly. Okay, two more from echo. Individuals. And this is something you were getting to earlier. Individuals have no rights as individuals. And this is a quote from him. The people is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the common will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common Will the leader pretends to be their interpreter, having lost their power of delegation. Citizens do not act. They are only called on to play the role of the people. Thus, the people is only a theatrical fiction. Now, that feels a little bit like how any mass movement operates that has a leader, and all mass movements have a leader. But that sounds like, frankly, any cult, many religions, any. Any organization in which you are led to believe that you are a member of something great. And so you subsume all individual rights into the greater thing. And it might be called the greater good, it might be called something else. But what that obscures maybe from you, if they're doing their job as they want to be doing, is that you have simply given over everything to person who's leading the thing.

A

Yeah, I. I see something different in the religious modality with an ancient religion.

B

Yeah.

A

I don't find, in ancient religions, I don't find, you know, the leaders appearing to reflect the will of the population of believers. They are reporting to the population of believers the interpretation of something that. That may displease the people that they're talking to. It's not the contemporary leader. It's not the Hitlerian figure giving voice to the population's frustrations or anything like that. So I would exempt that. But you're right, it's very general. It exists in a lot of movements.

B

Okay. And finally, in echoes 14 features of ur fascism, he says UR fascism speaks Newspeak, an impoverished vocabulary and elementary syntax to limit the instruments for complex critical reasoning. And we, of course, see this, We've talked about this a lot ever since Evergreen blew up. But then we also see this additional thing as we were talking about when we were discussing what's going on in California with giving preferential treatment to gay contractors is the proliferation of jargon, especially, you know, these acronyms that you use at once. And you seem like a person in the know and who's in control of information and someone who should be trusted and who should be listened to. And that in combination with Newspeak, is frankly enough to befuddle almost anyone. Like, it's very hard to follow along what is being said when it's a combination of jargony acronyms and reduced content language, and you're left with. You're having to wend your way through these things.

A

Yeah. I mean, the question is, why? Why does that evolve? And is it just. Is it simply disguising a mechanism or does it have another function? Right. Like. Like, is it part of the deindividuation?

B

Well, I think it's I think it's part of the de individuation and I think it's part of the de intellectualization. Right. That you know, if, if education works and if the people, the professors and the people whose job it is to think things actually are doing a good job of thinking things. And of course you and I both are on record many, many times acknowledging that that is not really the job that most people who supposedly hold such positions now in the United States and the west in general are actually doing a good job of love for a variety of reasons. But if we had a relatively intact call it a professoriate. Right. Then making the in group, the cool crowd be ones who speak language that is impoverished, that is reduced, that can't actually be used to make complex arguments, you inherently reduce the power of those who can make complex arguments because they are required to use the language that is no longer accepted to do so.

A

I like that and I think, I think that that is the function. It's like a dual function. It impoverishes the capacity to phrase challenging ideas at the same time. It is self referential. Right. If you speak this nonsense language, you have to speak it to others who speak it and anyone who doesn't is suspect. Right.

B

Yeah.

A

So I mean this is, this is, this is true of the, the, of the wokes.

B

Yes.

A

That you know, they can, we all know the various things that you, you know, that you rattle off that to them sound like they're having an intellectual discussion. And to us sounds like you realize that was one sentence after another of non sequiturs. Right.

B

And you see it in, well, you see it in the pseudo intellectual writings of like Judith Butler is to use a perfect example. But you know, really the post modernists, the post structuralists, they, they go on and on and on. And the point is to confuse, not to bring clarity.

A

Yes. The point is to, to confuse and present a kind of false enlightenment, like a sense of understanding as you know, you know, Ibram X Kendi, you know, there's. It's not good enough to be not racist. The only, you know, thing to be is anti racist. Okay. Interesting. Right? Yeah, it's just, it's gobbledygook, but it sounds, it's gobbledygook.

B

And you just said his thesis in two sentences and somehow he made. I don't know if that was a quarter of a career, a third of a career.

A

He did well. He did well with it. Yeah, for a while he crashed and burned, but you know. Yeah, but it was a good it was a good run. But what I didn't see in that list is the fusion of government and corporate power.

B

Yeah, you know, he, he winds his way through some of that in the rest of the essay and basically says, I don't always, I, Umberto Eco, in thinking about various fascist regimes throughout history, don't always see it. And that may just be because, you know, the 20th century is kind of the century of the corporation. And so, you know, you go farther back in time and you're not going to see that in the same way. It might be church and state rather than corporation and state. Yeah, I, I don't know. I'm.

A

Yeah, it might be something like the, the co opting of government power by other forces.

B

Yeah.

A

Yeah.

B

Although I mean, I agree with you that I don't see co opting of power explicitly. Yeah, explicitly here. But yeah, I, I wanted to present that to you and, and, and see what you thought.

A

Yeah, it's a very surprising list. It's longer than I would have imagined for a list of characteristics. Some of them are intuitive and some of them are surprising but resonate. Some of them are surprising and I wonder about them. But anyway. Yeah. And then there's the question really, as we talked about earlier, about what actually is actually it. Is this a naturally evolving failure state of civilizations? What are the preconditions?

B

Well, and I don't Echo doesn't do it in his, in his essay and I didn't otherwise go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what, what we think, what, you know, we humanity think about sort of origins of, and instances of fascism. But I wonder when we think it starts. Right, so this would get to some degree to your question of, you know, it's evolved, you know, it's made of things that evolved, so therefore it evolved. But is it. Do we only start identifying things as fascist above a certain population density, population size, once there's enough complexity in either governmental or non governmental structure. So I don't even know what the so would be there. Does it require again enough population size and density perhaps so that something can happen behind the scenes and not get noticed until it grows? Like I, I don't know the answers to any of these questions and I don't know if, you know, are there examples that historians would call fascist from 1200? I don't know.

A

That's a good question. And I wonder if they are effectively impossible to recognize because religious authority is too primary and it may be just incompatible. It may be that this is a failure of secular Society. It's one of the failures of secular society, which communism certainly is.

B

Yes.

A

And so, you know, there's a start date at the point that enough people have become secular that this thing can get catalyzed.

B

But that's going to be it.

A

I, I think, I think it might be, yeah. And actually I think it's something. This is, this is the big question, I think, for scientific materialists like us, which is suppose we're right about scientific materialism. Now all of you out there who jump every time I say something like that, don't. Right. I'm trying to make a point. Suppose we're right, hypothetically speaking.

B

You know that doesn't work, right?

A

It, it does if you do it enough time. Seriously, I'm making a point. You haven't given anything up. I'm not asking you to accept it. I'm just, just saying for the sake of this next few sentences, accept it. Suppose we're right about, about the completeness of a physicalist explanation for that which is manifest in the physical world. Not saying there couldn't be something outside of it, a creator. But suppose what we are studying, when we study nature actually is self consistent and complete, so that we don't need to invoke an explanation from outside in order to explain anything that happens within the universe. That's what it would be for secular for materialists to be. Right. Forget secular. The question then becomes what if that were true, but that the game theory caused an embrace of that, that truth to destroy any society that did embrace it fully? In other words, what if it was perfectly necessary to have a dyed in the wool belief in a transcendent something in order for the game theory not to crash and burn your society each and every time. Which I think is quite possible that that's true.

B

And I'm again, I'm saying there's a density dependence.

A

Well, that there is a.

B

That you above some threshold of the population not believing in a religion, things fall apart.

A

It's fatal because you're effectively. It's like the cells of the body embracing their own interests rather than subordinating to the body's overall interest. Right. People who don't believe in a higher power that is truly profound and capable of punishing you severely and that has, you know, a desire for things to go this way and not that way. You know, something that defines what right and wrong is, that as soon as you abandon that belief structure, then certain failures follow naturally and those failures have no brakes on them. So basically the game theory, the game theoretic failure of somebody who actually sees

B

all the safety is there, all off, right?

A

It's like, well, why, why shouldn't I do this? You know, why shouldn't I declare myself by. So that I can get an advantage on a contract, right? And the point is, what prevents that is that you are forbidden to do it by something that you can't fool, right? Whether or not that something exists, I'm not saying it does. I'm not saying it doesn't. But the belief that there is something that cares and that you cannot fool. Let's put it this way. If I, if I reel it all the way back in, scientific materialism, let's say it was right. I think what it would say is that the game theoretic failures that follow from too short a time horizon, from focusing on how will I succeed in the next generation, rather than how will I succeed without compromising my species five generations out, right? Or my people five generations out, that that is a fatal project. And that the materialists, because they are focused on what is true and not focused on things like terminal game theory in general, miss this and they think, oh, we've become enlightened. We no longer need that God stuff.

B

And again, necessary and not sufficient.

A

Yeah, right. And so, and so the question, I think is there has to be a reconciliation. I think the religious folks have a point that the secular materialists have been ignoring almost completely for a very long time. That point needs to get recognized. And the religious folks need to recognize something that's coming from this secular materialist perspective that most of the secular materialists don't know. But the responsible people on both sides are going to have to have a conversation if our very survival depends on how we live under a story that successfully arrests that game theoretic failure.

B

Very good, Very good. I think maybe we'll stop there.

A

All right.

B

I'll bring the sunlight back when we come back in just a few days.

A

We could actually even go out into the sun now.

B

But they don't know that.

A

They don't know that.

B

That we're gonna. Right, yeah, no, but I'm gonna talk about the sun next time. I. I suggested that we would talk about it today, but I think. I think what we're gonna do is save that. But just a. Just a teaser. Consider skipping the sunscreen. That's it. That's the teaser for next time. Okay, so check out our sponsors this week. Once again, dose sundries, farm, amazing garlic and clear with an X, X, L, E, A R. Check out our locals and and if you're on YouTube, especially subscribe and like and share and do all that good stuff. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love. Eat real food and get outside.

A

Be well everyone one.