Speaker 1: What uh inspiring networks of violent accelerationism, my nihilistic loss
Speaker 1: of faith in the possibility of human progress. And I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know. That's probably not a good
Speaker 1: way to Yeah, i'd beat like that sometimes, Garrison, what
Speaker 1: are we What are we talking about today? This is
Speaker 1: it could happen here podcast, Bad Things, World Falling Apart.
Speaker 1: There's just been a big shooting in Boston. You probably
Speaker 1: hear about not Boston, not Boston, Boston, not Boston, not this.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the Boston bombing. Oh, there we go.
Speaker 1: It's also not really in Chicago. We should know. It's
Speaker 1: like thirty right, Yeah, yeah, it's like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a northern suburb. Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: And it's because I've heard a bunch of people say
Speaker 1: it's like a super rich neighborhood, and then I've heard
Speaker 1: other Chicago folks say that, like, no, it's like an
Speaker 1: upper middle class neighborhood that used to be richer. And anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's not like Chicago that and yeah, we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about it because it's it is an incident that fits
Speaker 1: within a pattern of behavior that very few people understand
Speaker 1: nor really prepared to think about. And it's part of
Speaker 1: why is because if you actually understand what's going on
Speaker 1: with this shooting, there is no political utility in what happened.
Speaker 1: Um And I mean that the number of ways. There
Speaker 1: is no if you are someone who is supportive of
Speaker 1: more stringent gun control, there is not political utility in
Speaker 1: the shooting for a number of reasons, including the fact
Speaker 1: that Illinois has strict gun laws and while a lot
Speaker 1: of Illinois gun crime has to do with weapons that
Speaker 1: coming from other states, he bought his legally in the
Speaker 1: state of Illinois. Um And even though like this guy
Speaker 1: was on police radar, he had made threats before they
Speaker 1: had confiscated all of his knives, and he's still allowed
Speaker 1: to buy guns, even though Illinois has a red flag
Speaker 1: law that very easily if you can confiscate Amand's knives
Speaker 1: they could have confiscated. Has stopped him from buying guns
Speaker 1: or whatever. Plenty of laws on the books to have
Speaker 1: stopped this, And it's useless in a left right political
Speaker 1: sense of the word, because there are this guy does
Speaker 1: not graph onto any of that I have. I think
Speaker 1: it is there's a value and kind of putting out
Speaker 1: some of the Trump imagery he's put on only because
Speaker 1: the right has immediately left on calling him a transgender
Speaker 1: anti for shooter. And I guess in terms of a
Speaker 1: social media thing, sharing him draped in a Trump flag
Speaker 1: is the quickest way to like rebut that, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean he's not it's not not actually understanding what's
Speaker 1: going on. Right, Yeah, there's very this is it's it's
Speaker 1: in a pattern of shootings that are becoming more common
Speaker 1: the past few years. We saw it at the UH.
Speaker 1: There's a school shooting last like October or November that
Speaker 1: the shooter had a very similar profile. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a part of this growing online trend using
Speaker 1: imagery related to mental illness too encourage and justify mass
Speaker 1: acts of violence in some rebellion from how our regular
Speaker 1: society is structured and how people usually think of reality.
Speaker 1: So it's it's something that we generally people who spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time researching this, myself included trying to
Speaker 1: be very careful about how we talk about this, right
Speaker 1: because we we don't want the wrong things boosted. But
Speaker 1: also everyone just being in the dark isn't great either, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's frustrating, right, If people are curious, they want
Speaker 1: us start to look stuff up, and it's better that
Speaker 1: they have someone who knows what they're talking about explaining
Speaker 1: to them. Then then just have them being the wild
Speaker 1: West of the Internet on site image boards or forms
Speaker 1: learning about these nonsense propaganda styles. There's there's a few
Speaker 1: things that are unique about this guy. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was not only making the propaganda, but he also did
Speaker 1: he also did a violent act that is actually more
Speaker 1: unique than usual. Usually the people who are involved in
Speaker 1: making this type of propaganda that he was making, he
Speaker 1: made YouTube videos, music, he was he was very prolific
Speaker 1: in what he was putting out content wise into the Internet.
Speaker 1: And usually the people who put stuff out in this
Speaker 1: style of propaganda and this style of like of a
Speaker 1: very very like meme driven violent mental illness fetishization subcultures,
Speaker 1: they don't generally the people who make the stuff don't
Speaker 1: go and do the stuff. This is what instance where
Speaker 1: this this did happen. So that's actually unique for a
Speaker 1: few reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting about that is that and this is
Speaker 1: something that has not been discussed nearly as much as
Speaker 1: I think it ought to have. In the wake of
Speaker 1: the shooting, this guy basically released an A r G
Speaker 1: at the same time as he carried out his shooting,
Speaker 1: Like basically, we're gonna get to that. I mean, because
Speaker 1: in some ways this is a really good explanation, not explanation.
Speaker 1: This is really an example of the post manifesto, like
Speaker 1: post manifesto terrorism um where there's not there's not a
Speaker 1: written manifesto. It's someone's entire online presence and their entire
Speaker 1: online documentation is is that that serves as their manifesto,
Speaker 1: the whole image of them online, everything they've put out,
Speaker 1: it represents the thing that they want spread. It's not people.
Speaker 1: These types of people are are less likely to write,
Speaker 1: you know, like a ten page thing about how about
Speaker 1: why they hate X minority. Instead, they're gonna leave piles
Speaker 1: and piles of clues and puzzle pieces, music videos and
Speaker 1: content that lead people into what they want to project
Speaker 1: as their mental state to be. UM. So it's like
Speaker 1: everything isn't everything is part of what they want to
Speaker 1: put out. Yeah, and I think both you can see
Speaker 1: the act itself, the shooting itself, as an attempt to
Speaker 1: spread the art that he was making and to spread
Speaker 1: this like profile that he had built. There's a reason
Speaker 1: why that logo that he had for himself, UM was
Speaker 1: all over everything. There's a reason why unique logo, very
Speaker 1: unique logo. He put out. Some of the videos, one
Speaker 1: from ten months ago showed the location he's believed to
Speaker 1: have started shooting from. It looks like um, so he
Speaker 1: was planning this for a while and he I think
Speaker 1: this was this was meant both as almost as like
Speaker 1: an advertising campaign for this guy's EP, if you want
Speaker 1: to look at it that way, but in a broader sense,
Speaker 1: like like like it's it's it's it's more circular than that. Right.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just trying to spread his stuff, but he
Speaker 1: was trying to spread his stuff in this this imagery
Speaker 1: and branding that he had created for himself and in
Speaker 1: order to put other people in that same mind state.
Speaker 1: It was. It was also very personal to him. Um,
Speaker 1: he's I've spent the past few hours watching watching hours
Speaker 1: of the stuff that he's put out. UM, and I
Speaker 1: mean he's there's there's videos that he's animated of him
Speaker 1: doing a suicide by cop. Um, there's there's music videos
Speaker 1: he's made about doing a school shooting. Um, these are
Speaker 1: these are ideas and thoughts he has been grappling with
Speaker 1: for a long time and he finally did the thing.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm unsure currently if he always knew that he
Speaker 1: was going to do this or if he was actually
Speaker 1: trying to fight it. Now that's that's honestly not even
Speaker 1: worth debating because it's not useful to what's going on
Speaker 1: because he did it, because because he didn't. But we've
Speaker 1: had you can see the types of stuff he's been
Speaker 1: putting out, like, Yes, the street that he did the
Speaker 1: shooting on, he has a long along zooming clip of
Speaker 1: that same street in videos that was posted like over
Speaker 1: a year ago. Um, so he's been he's been thinking
Speaker 1: in this way for a long time. This isn't like
Speaker 1: a fast radicalization. This is someone who has been heavily
Speaker 1: steve in very very small niche online some cultures for
Speaker 1: a long time. I like the guy is twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, he's he's had his Twitter account since two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. He's been online so much. Um, it's deeply
Speaker 1: online person deeply alienated, socially isolated, uh, deeply like disassociative.
Speaker 1: And this is this is by the way, consistent with
Speaker 1: what his friends have said, consistent with what people who
Speaker 1: knew him and worked with him and put music and
Speaker 1: albums together with him have have repeatedly. A number of
Speaker 1: them at this point come out and said variations of like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: he got like really weird, like it was it not
Speaker 1: not like and not in the way that like, oh
Speaker 1: he got super into Q or like he became a Nazi,
Speaker 1: but like he got weird in a way I didn't
Speaker 1: understand and I stopped associating with he got he got
Speaker 1: detached from parts of of like modern reality in ways
Speaker 1: that are really hard for people to understand. Um, and
Speaker 1: I think it's it is important to emphasize just that
Speaker 1: the deeply online nature this he he had. He made
Speaker 1: a whole music video titled I Rely on the Internet,
Speaker 1: Um that you can't find anywhere, so don't even try
Speaker 1: to go. You don't need to, you don't need to.
Speaker 1: But like, but it opens, but it opens by him
Speaker 1: saying I get mad when other people are more popular
Speaker 1: than me on the internet. And the mass shooting is
Speaker 1: in line with this, with this style of thinking, right,
Speaker 1: he's he is he is trying to reify himself into
Speaker 1: him into a memetic image to spread around the same
Speaker 1: way many mass shooters try to do this same thing.
Speaker 1: But he is doing this extremely intentionally. Um. He wants
Speaker 1: to be the thing that represents a very specific idea,
Speaker 1: and I'm it's again. We are always trying to be
Speaker 1: carrying a careful but like, how much we get into
Speaker 1: this because you don't want to boost the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: But it's important to talk about because it's costing a
Speaker 1: lot of people in their lives and no one really
Speaker 1: knows how to deal with this problem right now. One
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things about our current age is that
Speaker 1: if you are someone like if you are someone who
Speaker 1: researches tourism, extremism, violence, particularly in the American context, although
Speaker 1: certainly not exclusively Christchurch in the whole Germany, I don't
Speaker 1: need to go into it. But if you are someone
Speaker 1: who focuses on this stuff, UM, you will repeatedly have
Speaker 1: the experience of encountering a new subculture online or a
Speaker 1: new trend, a new like species of meme and find
Speaker 1: yourself wondering, like when the first shooting is going to be? UM.
Speaker 1: I made a significant chunk of my career because I
Speaker 1: was paying attention to one particular group of folks online
Speaker 1: when they did their shooting. And I am not primarily
Speaker 1: I've not been in the you know, we've talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about schizo wave, which is kind of broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: the thing that this guy most embodied. Um that is
Speaker 1: that is the propaganda style which has a bad name. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's obviously endorsing its name. This is the style that
Speaker 1: people who involved in this only community use. It's about
Speaker 1: fetishizing parts or fetish using media driven aspects of mental
Speaker 1: illness to encourage violence. That's what it's about. Obviously illness, Yes,
Speaker 1: the aesthetics and mental illness. Right, people who are who
Speaker 1: actually you know, deal with mental illnesses are much less
Speaker 1: likely to commit violent acts. They're actually more likely to
Speaker 1: be the recipient of of of violent acts not documented.
Speaker 1: So like this is this is like I think important
Speaker 1: to actually get people to like understand because this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that if you look at like
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, for example, like how Alex Jones was buond
Speaker 1: to all these shooters, the thing they pivoted one of
Speaker 1: the things they've pivoted to is, oh, it's because all
Speaker 1: these people are on antidepressants and it's like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna talk about So there was there was
Speaker 1: this tweet. But I hate talking about Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 1: I think it's useless to talk about her and it
Speaker 1: only gives her inflates the thing that she represents. But
Speaker 1: but but uh, she had this tweet about a picture
Speaker 1: of of him that that that that he that he posted,
Speaker 1: and she's asking is he in jail or a have
Speaker 1: center or psychiatric center in this photo that's on his bedroom?
Speaker 1: What drugs are psychiatric drugs or both? Does he use?
Speaker 1: And the image here is of an image very clearly
Speaker 1: photoshopped of this person sitting in like sitting in like
Speaker 1: a mental institution, holding a Bible. And it's part of
Speaker 1: this thing that it's like a fetishizing the aesthetics of
Speaker 1: mental illness, right, It's like, oh look at me, I'm
Speaker 1: I am so detached from reality. I be I belong
Speaker 1: inside a mental institution now, and the aesthetics of Christian fascism,
Speaker 1: which is also a weird part of it. There's a
Speaker 1: photo one of the like images he posted in four chan.
Speaker 1: I think it was fortunately I may be mistaken about
Speaker 1: the exact location, but it was like it was a
Speaker 1: Catholic saint with like the sacred heart like in her hands,
Speaker 1: with the head replaced by like some anime girl. I've
Speaker 1: I've I have not seen that yet. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: image that he made of of inside this this the
Speaker 1: hospital that that is that is part of the joke
Speaker 1: to him, right, the joke, Like I don't think he
Speaker 1: would actually assume that someone would think this is an
Speaker 1: unphotoshopped image. I think he would he us like Margine
Speaker 1: Taylor Grey is just like just like unable to determine
Speaker 1: the most basic photoshop that you can see the edge
Speaker 1: marks very clearly. So but but this, but like this
Speaker 1: is part of the joke, right, And everything getting into
Speaker 1: what he actually believes about reality and stuff isn't important
Speaker 1: because everything about this is has to do with like
Speaker 1: post to ironic violence and post ironic like comedy, post
Speaker 1: ironic like ideas of reality. It's the difference between this
Speaker 1: what is sincere and what is real and what is
Speaker 1: ironic and what is fake don't matter. They as long
Speaker 1: as they're happening, that's what's happening. So it's all as
Speaker 1: real as anything else. So getting into specific ideas about
Speaker 1: what he personally believes. Doesn't actually matter because one we
Speaker 1: don't know if that's genuine at all. He's he's putting
Speaker 1: everything out intentionally. And two it doesn't matter on the
Speaker 1: actual material circumstances. What are producing effects inside our world
Speaker 1: right now, like these types of like acts of violence,
Speaker 1: But it's it's everything is put out, should be but
Speaker 1: it'll seem like contradictory, it will seem confusing. Right He
Speaker 1: opened a video of his that he was like doing
Speaker 1: a live stream like like I think, like over like
Speaker 1: a year ago, and he he calls everyone who's watching
Speaker 1: his live stream of like he calls them communists. He's like, hey, communists, um.
Speaker 1: And it's not because they're actually communist. Is not because
Speaker 1: he likes communism. It's not because he's necessarily fascist either.
Speaker 1: It's that all these things are so blurred and you
Speaker 1: use them interchangeably to produce this sense of meaninglessness and
Speaker 1: the reaction to this meaningless world that he's constructed for
Speaker 1: himself and these types of online subcultures try to construct
Speaker 1: the only sensible reaction to this meaningless world is for
Speaker 1: them to do these types of acts of violence. That is,
Speaker 1: that is the point. So the actual details of what
Speaker 1: they're saying aren't important, because it's all about constructing this
Speaker 1: world that is utter really meaningless and self contradictory and
Speaker 1: confusing and nothing makes sense and the only way to
Speaker 1: respond to that is to get out of it. And
Speaker 1: that's part of what they're they're trying to do. And
Speaker 1: there are I mean, and again, part of the frustrating
Speaker 1: thing is that there are all of these things that
Speaker 1: people try to kind of simply affix to this our
Speaker 1: pieces of it. Yeah, American gun culture, the fetishization of
Speaker 1: violence as the way to achieve positive ends in our
Speaker 1: culture is a part of this. It's why, it's part
Speaker 1: of why the natural response to everything is meaningless and
Speaker 1: confusing is going agalling spray exactly. Um. And likewise, the
Speaker 1: fact that politics is where it is where you have
Speaker 1: like this one party that's the Republican Party, that is
Speaker 1: almost entirely dedicated to like owning the Libs and just
Speaker 1: purely attacking people rather than trying to do anything because
Speaker 1: their policies have been unmitigated disasters for the country, and
Speaker 1: the other side just kind of blindly tells people to
Speaker 1: vote like that hopelessness that like that that kind of
Speaker 1: nihilistic aggression on the right all feeds into this. And
Speaker 1: you can say that like a great deal of right
Speaker 1: wing media, particularly right wing ault media, is kind of
Speaker 1: firms a heavy component of like the milieu that this
Speaker 1: guy was radicalized in. But it's more like that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff provided a language for him than it is
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff was specifically like his motivating. I
Speaker 1: mean the same thing with like Trumpism, right, like he
Speaker 1: he engaged with Trump is m only in a way
Speaker 1: that it helps kind of destabilize things, And is this
Speaker 1: like orbit of chaos, right, That's that's why it that
Speaker 1: that that's why it's into it. Right, he was deeply
Speaker 1: into stuff run conspiracy theories, paranormal deep nihilism um, getting
Speaker 1: cut off from consensus reality, getting awakened to some like
Speaker 1: greater truth. Everything that he's actually into is all just
Speaker 1: to serve to serve those types of means. Politics aren't
Speaker 1: the core part of that, but it's a reaction to politics,
Speaker 1: and then he's going to use it as just as
Speaker 1: just another tool. It's because yeah, many of them are racist,
Speaker 1: maybe they can share racist memes, but that's not actually
Speaker 1: the the the center point of of what's going on um,
Speaker 1: and you know, in some ways to be easier if
Speaker 1: it would, because that gives you something actually easy to target.
Speaker 1: Otherwise right now, you know, when you're trying to address
Speaker 1: this whole propaganda style that is encouraging these things to happen,
Speaker 1: it's a harder thing to climb down on because it's
Speaker 1: it's like an endless game of whack a mole trying
Speaker 1: to find out, you know, who's the big people pushing
Speaker 1: content like this right now and like these weird niche communities,
Speaker 1: how can we get them taken down? And they just
Speaker 1: always pop back up, right It's always it's it's this
Speaker 1: end this game. So it's hard to target, and that
Speaker 1: leaves you with the feeling of like hopelessness on how
Speaker 1: this situation will be solved, which is like also part
Speaker 1: of the point of why these attacks happen is to
Speaker 1: is to get that reaction. Um. But it sucks, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's always bad to just have the
Speaker 1: like the only thing you think about is like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I don't see a way to solve this. It's just terrible.
Speaker 1: But that's part of the intention here, and man, it's
Speaker 1: it's not good because you know, you this This isn't
Speaker 1: the first shooting that has happened from this skits awave
Speaker 1: aesthetic there there, there has another ones, but these things
Speaker 1: are norms are going to start hearing more and more
Speaker 1: about this, and that sucks. Um, It's gonna become more
Speaker 1: of a of a thing that people are going to
Speaker 1: be aware of. Right as soon as as soon as
Speaker 1: MPR starts talking about it, you're like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: this is fully this is this is fully escaped the box.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's one of those things when um, because
Speaker 1: I was just I was saying earlier, like what it's
Speaker 1: like when you finally when you find yourself staring at
Speaker 1: it something that is going to blow up in a
Speaker 1: violent way and just not knowing when you are one
Speaker 1: of a number of folks who I've known who are
Speaker 1: kind of particularly dealing with this space. And it's been
Speaker 1: like two years that folks have been saying like there
Speaker 1: is there will a bit like and the thing that
Speaker 1: is most almost as frightening as like anything else is that.
Speaker 1: And then fucking Brett Bear is gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: schizo wave on the news like we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to deal with like Joe Rogan trying
Speaker 1: to parse this ship out while stoned, um, while stoned,
Speaker 1: and and well talking about the Kellyuka, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the fucking Caliga, which does lead us into the
Speaker 1: board ap Yacht Club gas. So are we gonna are
Speaker 1: we gonna seget So we're gonna talk about one thing
Speaker 1: dealing with Schitz. We finished talking about one thing dealing
Speaker 1: with schitzowave, and then when I enter into other thing
Speaker 1: that the only accurate way I can describe describe this
Speaker 1: is that my my dives into this, into this theory
Speaker 1: are the equivalent of what it feels like to have
Speaker 1: a psychotic episode. And that's not that's not disparaging at all.
Speaker 1: It's about the actual thing is your brain does when
Speaker 1: that happens. How you take one meaningless piece of information
Speaker 1: and project meaning onto it to make it super important. Um,
Speaker 1: and how that kind of cascades down. Oh boy, So
Speaker 1: the board the board Apiacht Club a k A. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess the board ape Nazi Club because people online
Speaker 1: have decided that they're really good at researching Nazis. I
Speaker 1: guess somebody happened too the fucking subreddit and tell us
Speaker 1: that we needed to be all right, we needed to
Speaker 1: be dealing with this. Yeah. So I was like, like, randomly,
Speaker 1: I like visited some of my friends in Chicago who
Speaker 1: are like normies, and like they were telling me about
Speaker 1: this video and I was like, oh, no, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is. It is again. It has fully escaped the
Speaker 1: box now and that's part of the problem. So there's
Speaker 1: this YouTuber who made a video in partnership with a
Speaker 1: quote unquote internet artist um about how the Board Apiacht
Speaker 1: Club friends of the pod are secretly this Nazi op
Speaker 1: to troll everyone into spreading esoteric Nazism. That's that's the claim. Now, first,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that the guy who made this video
Speaker 1: was in partnership with this internet artist who at the
Speaker 1: same time launched a rival ape based n f T project,
Speaker 1: and this video served as an ad for his rival
Speaker 1: ape n f T project. And to be clear, his
Speaker 1: Ape n f T project was taking the art that
Speaker 1: the Board Ape Yacht Club used for their apes, making
Speaker 1: no changes to it, and just selling it to people
Speaker 1: on a different platform, which is like intellectual property theft, right, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I never want to be the guy saying the board
Speaker 1: apes are legal, right, I can't believe, like, we are
Speaker 1: not defending board Ape Yacht Club and I want them
Speaker 1: to be hit with a brick. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: this because people are appropriating the term, appropriating the almost
Speaker 1: like the aesthetics of anti fascist research started selling their
Speaker 1: own products. They are appropriating the aesthetics of anti of
Speaker 1: scholarship focused on extremism um in order to sell n
Speaker 1: f T s. That's what's happened with this, the board
Speaker 1: Ape Yacht Club or Nazis video. So it gains So
Speaker 1: all the information comes from this from this guy whose
Speaker 1: arrival arrival n f T internet art. What's his name,
Speaker 1: hig writer Rips. I think, yeah, writer Rips, because he's
Speaker 1: being sued now by the board Apes or whatever, and like,
Speaker 1: good god, I and I mean everything, I I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna if you watch the video that we're referring to,
Speaker 1: I'm not disparaging you in case you thought it was convincing,
Speaker 1: because I mean that was part of the editing, because
Speaker 1: he was trying to make it seem convincing. But every
Speaker 1: every single thing is like cherry picked and squished together
Speaker 1: to resemble meaning. But once you actually open it up,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is actually nothing. Um. The whole
Speaker 1: thirty minute section on the cipher is about them doing
Speaker 1: cipher's badly to get a result out of the clues
Speaker 1: that they were given. They're looking for specific results to
Speaker 1: match whatever they want to see um. And everything else
Speaker 1: is the connections are so tangential um. And it's it's
Speaker 1: like synchronicity gone bad. Right. It's people who take these
Speaker 1: things and protect meaning onto them, when in reality, that's
Speaker 1: just how everything in the world works. And it's not
Speaker 1: actually meaningful or important. It's just because you're focusing on it,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna see it everywhere. Is it the same
Speaker 1: thing we were talking about in our food factor is
Speaker 1: conspiracy video or a podcast? Sorry? And and it's basically
Speaker 1: one of the things that has made this, I think
Speaker 1: spread so viral e is that there's a germ of
Speaker 1: not truth. But there's there's a single convincing point that
Speaker 1: it all starts from. And the single convincing point is
Speaker 1: that the board Apiat club logo was ripped from that
Speaker 1: other Nazi logo. Absolutely very is very much patterned off
Speaker 1: of like the the old s s Death's Head because
Speaker 1: you shouldn't. Yeah, because the number of things going on
Speaker 1: there because the Nazis were really good at graphic design,
Speaker 1: and because also that's not originally a Nazi thing. It
Speaker 1: has its origins and a Prussian military unit, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason why the death's head went so far, and
Speaker 1: it is generally like, for example, when you see a
Speaker 1: death's head on in the Ukrainian soldier in like Ukraine,
Speaker 1: that dude's probably got some pretty Nazi fucking beliefs. It's
Speaker 1: not a it's it's not a again, So the fact
Speaker 1: that you see something that looks like it may have
Speaker 1: an inspiration in that um but like is a worthwhile
Speaker 1: point to start looking at stuff. Absolutely, but once you
Speaker 1: go at it with a conclusion in mind, then find
Speaker 1: things just to back up your own conclusion. That's not
Speaker 1: how you do good research. Because man, like one of
Speaker 1: the founders is Jewish, not saying Jewish people can't be
Speaker 1: fascist or whatever, but like half the people who started
Speaker 1: it are ethnic minorities. They're really bad writers, and they
Speaker 1: put together this thing that's complete nonsense, and people are
Speaker 1: now assuming it's this, yeah, make a conspiracy, and it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just because it's so. And I think part of
Speaker 1: why people are so so, I think part of why
Speaker 1: a chunk of the people who hate it want there
Speaker 1: to be a conspiracy is because this thing has made
Speaker 1: so much money, and it is utterly banal and an idiotic,
Speaker 1: and it is utterly been all in idiotic and part
Speaker 1: of the thing. A lot of this comes out of
Speaker 1: and a lot of the strength that kind of this individual,
Speaker 1: this thing has, this this video has comes out of
Speaker 1: the fact that years ago a number of folks, some
Speaker 1: of whom our present company here, started warning people about
Speaker 1: the ways in which fascists would hide things like fourteen
Speaker 1: and eighty eight and all of dog Whistles, hidden imagery,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff here is and and so
Speaker 1: people started to get primed to the fact that that happens,
Speaker 1: that the Nazis hide ship, and that that that you
Speaker 1: should be on the lookout for it. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that has been forgotten, I think, in kind
Speaker 1: of the rush to do that for ship like this,
Speaker 1: is that it's not just the fact that they're hiding
Speaker 1: like and in the in the specific case of people
Speaker 1: are putting fourteens and eight eights and ship. When I
Speaker 1: was discussing that was nearly always in the context of
Speaker 1: like members of Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys and
Speaker 1: affiliated groups who were beating people in the streets. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're not you don't just have the imagery. You
Speaker 1: have someone going out and doing things that like they
Speaker 1: are claiming I have nothing to do with fashions, but like, no,
Speaker 1: you can see like you haven't and their Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have an eighth that's numbered one eight, which is
Speaker 1: the thing in the video, because there's like ten thous
Speaker 1: these apes and they're all numbered in numerical order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the fact that in a group of a
Speaker 1: set of ten thousand apes, one of them is a
Speaker 1: number of four eight is not Nazi dog whistling even
Speaker 1: anymore than it would be Satanic dog whistling that there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a six six six in there. It's just
Speaker 1: like there's one that's six nine six nine, just like
Speaker 1: there's one that's two three four seven. Whatever. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like that thing people used to do were like
Speaker 1: I don't know if people still do this, but like
Speaker 1: they were when I was a kid. People would like
Speaker 1: you get someone who'd like pull out a grid of
Speaker 1: a city and they start drawing pentagrams on it. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, yeah, there's a bunch of random
Speaker 1: lines if you can. Yeah. But the other thing, that's
Speaker 1: that's a really problem. That's a big problem about this.
Speaker 1: It's not only it's passing off bad extremism research to
Speaker 1: sell their own n f T product, which is bad
Speaker 1: in of itself. It's also saying the stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be said out loudly to a huge audience,
Speaker 1: all while using the fast wave image style, and that
Speaker 1: sucks because it's talking about things like traditionalism. It's talking
Speaker 1: about types of esoteric Nazism that usually we don't want
Speaker 1: to put a giant megaphone on because when people get
Speaker 1: really into this, you get stuff like the shooting that
Speaker 1: happened a few days ago. That's that's Those are the
Speaker 1: same Internet communities that this stuff is really fostered in.
Speaker 1: So we don't like to amplify it because the more
Speaker 1: people who are in these communities, the more their brains
Speaker 1: slowly get chipped away at by these people making this
Speaker 1: making these types of like hypnotic propaganda. So when we
Speaker 1: have a YouTuber that has a video with millions of
Speaker 1: views talking about the Caluga, talking about Julius A. Vola
Speaker 1: talking about a whole bunch of stuff around like extremely
Speaker 1: niche occult Nazism. That's not great, especially when they're using
Speaker 1: the fast wave style of video editing to make it
Speaker 1: seem really cool and scary, and when they're doing it
Speaker 1: ultimately to make money in an n f T scheme. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's more than just this is not just
Speaker 1: somebody did research that was like bad um. This is
Speaker 1: somebody crafted a viral thing using the aesthetics of research
Speaker 1: um and dropping some really dangerous shit into the consciousness
Speaker 1: in an irresponsible way to sell the same ape drawings
Speaker 1: they were attacking. Extremely frustrating because even the whole cipher
Speaker 1: section of the video I'll still real against because it's
Speaker 1: about people using a bad jillion cipher methodologies to get
Speaker 1: specific results out of it that they want, and all
Speaker 1: the results they get out of it also are like
Speaker 1: not problematic and are kind of explainable, Like all of
Speaker 1: them refer to something about monkeys anyway, So even if
Speaker 1: they are true, it's not it's it doesn't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to be referencing this obscure thing in traditionalism. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, that's because it's the name of a fucking monkey.
Speaker 1: And I don't again, I don't. I don't have any
Speaker 1: actual opinion on whether the board a fiat club has
Speaker 1: someone working for it that is hiding in secret references
Speaker 1: because honestly, I don't care because all because what it's
Speaker 1: viewed publicly as is this supid thing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not viewed publicly with people who use
Speaker 1: it as a secretnazy conspiracy because if it is, what's
Speaker 1: the impact, What's what's the impact that it's like, how
Speaker 1: how would it matter if it's a secret Nazi conspiracy theory?
Speaker 1: What's it? What's it doing? It's it's bad pictures of monkeys.
Speaker 1: When when we talk about the first wave of this
Speaker 1: and like they need to explain, you know, the symbols
Speaker 1: that people were hiding in these like right wing street
Speaker 1: movements of a bunch of whom wound up feeding into
Speaker 1: JAM six, It's easy to say, well, what the harm was?
Speaker 1: They were going out, they were beating people, they were
Speaker 1: planning terrorist attacks, right, Like, yeah, it's doing terrorist attacks.
Speaker 1: I have I again, I fucking hate these Board eight motherfucker's.
Speaker 1: I think this is the stupidest fucking I don't know
Speaker 1: trend I've seen in my entire goddamn life, I cannot
Speaker 1: point to anything even vaguely Nazi they have supported or done,
Speaker 1: like and among other things. If you want to know
Speaker 1: if something is a dangerous conspiracy or a stupid grift,
Speaker 1: one question you should ask your off And this isn't
Speaker 1: always relevant, but one question you should ask yourself is
Speaker 1: is Jimmy Fallon involved? Because if Jimmy Fallon is involved,
Speaker 1: it's probably just a dumb grift. Because I mean, the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole, the watching this guy breakdown how you get
Speaker 1: secret messages out of these ciphers is it's it's the same.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as like Q and on ship.
Speaker 1: It's people wanting to get an answer out of numbers
Speaker 1: and things and then pushing that answer as truth, even
Speaker 1: if it's like not not based in any form of reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so, it's it's really frustrating to watch people
Speaker 1: basically start using Q and on style research tactics to
Speaker 1: justify their hatred of an n f T project, which
Speaker 1: is like, no, you can just dislike it from being
Speaker 1: an n f T thing. You don't need to rapid
Speaker 1: in a in this package. That is just really bad
Speaker 1: extremism research. Part of one of the things that's scared
Speaker 1: me about this attack and about like what's going to
Speaker 1: happen kind of in the media after it is that, Um,
Speaker 1: I think kind of inevitably these aesthetics are just going
Speaker 1: to get co opted on a wider and wider basis.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening on TikTok right now, is that these
Speaker 1: these types of fast wave and schizoweve aesthetics are just
Speaker 1: becoming a core part of the zoomer online aesthetic, and
Speaker 1: that sucks. The The other point I was I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention about the Highland Park thing is like this,
Speaker 1: this guy that did this is such a perfect profile
Speaker 1: of this type of de attached like gen Z Like
Speaker 1: almost I like like post politics terrorism, um that Like
Speaker 1: he is such a perfect example of someone who has
Speaker 1: been online since he was a very very little kid,
Speaker 1: trying to make content online. Right, everyone in gen Z
Speaker 1: needs to be performing all of the time, right, Your
Speaker 1: whole life is a performance for the internet. Um, he
Speaker 1: was doing that same thing. He's been making the making
Speaker 1: music and video, was in ships since he was he
Speaker 1: was like younger than me. Like, he's been doing this
Speaker 1: for a long long time. Um. And the types of
Speaker 1: like you know, like nested communities that you get like
Speaker 1: that you like fall into. It's such it's such like
Speaker 1: a clear example of the very types of things that
Speaker 1: you know, me and others have been talking about and
Speaker 1: warning about for a while. Um. And it's the whole
Speaker 1: like muddled nous of reality that we even get with
Speaker 1: this like board ape, Nazi clip video, right, they're all
Speaker 1: part of this same problem with the Internet, Like our
Speaker 1: brains weren't designed for this much information coming at us
Speaker 1: at the same time. We cannot sort it all out. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's not ideal. Um, I was, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not great. I would rather it not be like this.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to like come at people with
Speaker 1: a solution to this, because this is an unsolved problem.
Speaker 1: It's like, come up with a solution for the fucking
Speaker 1: um the fact that emissions like are not going to
Speaker 1: be reduced, you know, because the world because the world
Speaker 1: does suck. But the very be very cognizant of video
Speaker 1: propaganda styles and anyone that uses flashing like classic or
Speaker 1: Catholic um like imagery, be very very careful, be very
Speaker 1: careful of people who fetishize the authetics of mental illness.
Speaker 1: Be very careful about about people that that you wrap
Speaker 1: these aesthetics of of mental mental illness and like a
Speaker 1: very violent package because like that that's what we get
Speaker 1: with with with the shooter. He was like doing doing
Speaker 1: videos about about you know, these types of mental illness
Speaker 1: that end with him just like a picture like a
Speaker 1: drawing of him holding a gun. Um, you know, way
Speaker 1: before he bought a gun, he was making art about
Speaker 1: about this. Um. I think the one that's stuck out
Speaker 1: to me most was him repeatedly referring to himself as
Speaker 1: a sleepwalker. Yeah, which which I don't know, like obviously
Speaker 1: that is very much in line with the skizawave aesthetic
Speaker 1: stuff that like you have been talking about. It also
Speaker 1: kind of makes me think, I mean it. It brought
Speaker 1: me to thinking about Barbara Tuckman, who is a historian
Speaker 1: who wrote a book called The Guns of August that's
Speaker 1: a history of World War One. Um, that that describes
Speaker 1: kind of the machinery that got set up and marched
Speaker 1: everybody into that situation exploding like sleep sleepwalkers right, Um,
Speaker 1: Like this system has been set up and the people
Speaker 1: are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that, uh,
Speaker 1: everything is just kind of marching with a with a
Speaker 1: sense of inevitability towards a worse and a worse endpoint.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what scares me most about this. I've
Speaker 1: I've listened to many of his horrible songs and there's
Speaker 1: and there's lyrics very similar to that idea, um about
Speaker 1: that kind of inevitable like fate driven nature of our
Speaker 1: current situation and how reality has become so muddled with
Speaker 1: the internet. Um and like we there's been uh an intentional,
Speaker 1: top down effort to destroy any nature of consensus reality
Speaker 1: and make everything up for debate of there's there is,
Speaker 1: there is. Facts no longer are a thing, like they
Speaker 1: just don't exist. And this is the world that results
Speaker 1: from that happening. When there's people in power who put
Speaker 1: are pushing for this, like you know, like Steve Bandit
Speaker 1: is among you know, one of many people who are
Speaker 1: pushing for this type of world. Um, this is the
Speaker 1: result that we get, and this is the result that
Speaker 1: they kind of want us to get. It's it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because if everything is true, and that's fine, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: like what they're going for is this idea that like
Speaker 1: everything is true and nothingness everything. Yeah, and if every
Speaker 1: like and if you hit that state, you can do anything, right,
Speaker 1: like to steal a quote, who was that with that
Speaker 1: fucking Crowley? Um the but but like that's very much
Speaker 1: nothing is true, everything is permitted. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to the assassins. They sure sure, sure,
Speaker 1: um but no, but it is like that is that
Speaker 1: is the thing, right if you mean even the even
Speaker 1: the shooter guy had numerous Discordian references in in his ship. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about the same stuff. It's all it's all
Speaker 1: dealing with these same problems. And you're right, obviously, if
Speaker 1: if you know, if you deal with dissociation as I
Speaker 1: sometimes do, if you you know, like parts about the
Speaker 1: discording aesthetics and like like the kind of ideas they
Speaker 1: play with, that does not make you an inherently dangerous person.
Speaker 1: That's that's not the problem here, um the right, Like
Speaker 1: you could like, I'm you know in some ways, but
Speaker 1: I think about a lot of a lot of these
Speaker 1: same topics because I look at all of this I'm
Speaker 1: I look at all of this research all the time.
Speaker 1: So it is my brains in a similar isn't a
Speaker 1: isn't a similar place? That's that's that doesn't make you
Speaker 1: a bad person, that doesn't make you dangerous. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think it's important to be cognizant of the type
Speaker 1: of propaganda that people are pushing, the types of propaganda,
Speaker 1: trends and styles that are producing material effects in the world,
Speaker 1: like these types of shootings. Yeah, and so I don't
Speaker 1: know what else to say, honestly, because it's bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a problem. I would say, if anyone ever
Speaker 1: tells you about something they saw on the internet, hit
Speaker 1: them and run away screaming. That's a good that's a
Speaker 1: good way to move forward. Um, and please don't don't
Speaker 1: start the other things like you know, we're gonna, we're
Speaker 1: gonna the right is going to have two possible reactions
Speaker 1: to stuff like this, Right, They're gonna one do a
Speaker 1: satanic panic, then be like, oh, look at these people
Speaker 1: doing a cult shit. Um, let's do another. Let's do
Speaker 1: another satanic panic, which would suck. There, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: there's that option obviously that would tie into like transphobia,
Speaker 1: that would tie into a whole bunch of whole munch
Speaker 1: of bullshit. Um. The other option is that people start,
Speaker 1: you know, using mentally ill people as a scapegoat and
Speaker 1: start of saying we should lock up people who deal
Speaker 1: with mental illness. Also not that would suck, wouldn't solve
Speaker 1: the problem either, wouldn't do it. Yeah, Like that's the
Speaker 1: thing I've I've actually been seeing this in the last
Speaker 1: really like probably three months, is there's been a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who have been calling for like bringing like
Speaker 1: bringing sort of old school asylums back. That's that's exactly
Speaker 1: what the people, the people who make this propaganda, That's
Speaker 1: exactly what they want. That's that they want you to
Speaker 1: have that reaction that would make things so much worse.
Speaker 1: If you put people like this in an asylum for
Speaker 1: ten days then they get out there, they are so
Speaker 1: much more likely to to do these types of things.
Speaker 1: Not because they're actually like not because like not nothing
Speaker 1: to do with their actual whatever like mental things they
Speaker 1: have going on. It's because of the the aesthetic styling
Speaker 1: is right. They want to be a character in a story.
Speaker 1: If they feel like their life is going in a
Speaker 1: direction that they are a character in a story. They're
Speaker 1: getting put in these situations that they've memed about. Right,
Speaker 1: this guy's pictures, he's photoshoph of himself inside mental institutions. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's a character in a story. If you do that,
Speaker 1: you're playing right into their hands. It is that is
Speaker 1: not what that That should not be the focus of
Speaker 1: what we are doing. Um, Like carsonal problems are not
Speaker 1: the solution to these types of things, especially for people
Speaker 1: who are who are like just making music online, Like,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Fucking arrest people for the
Speaker 1: like for the music they make, like, that is not
Speaker 1: the solution. Don't let people turn this into targeting people
Speaker 1: who have actual like mental like mental things that they
Speaker 1: deal with. Don't make them the scapegoat of this um
Speaker 1: And be very careful if anyone tries to do any
Speaker 1: kind of satanic panic nonsense about secret occultists who are
Speaker 1: trying to alter your kids reality or whatever. Very careful
Speaker 1: because anyone who uses that type of framing for this
Speaker 1: problem is not genuine. They do not actually care. They
Speaker 1: are pushing something that they want. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons why the idea that these
Speaker 1: people are kind of seeing themselves as part of a
Speaker 1: narrative is important is because it presents a discontinuity with
Speaker 1: the way mass shootings have worked for most of the
Speaker 1: time that people listening to this have been alive in
Speaker 1: the United States prior to a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Really twenty nineteen was the big break year for this.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of mass shooters were also committing suicide.
Speaker 1: That was part of the goal. That was what happened. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you are an individual with a gun who
Speaker 1: has just committed a series of murders, it is very
Speaker 1: easy to make sure you die in that attack. It's
Speaker 1: extremely easy. Um. That is why so many of them
Speaker 1: did it. That has that has stopped being given in
Speaker 1: the way that it used to be. The change I
Speaker 1: think was christ Church was the main inflection point for this.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these guys go down alive. The
Speaker 1: Buffalo shooter taken alive. The last, the last schitzu Awave
Speaker 1: shooter from a few months ago, I was taken in alive. Um.
Speaker 1: Is intriguing because if I was to watch all this
Speaker 1: video propaganda beforehand, I would have assumed that this guy
Speaker 1: wanted to die within the act. A lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff was written about him doing this to kind of
Speaker 1: end his life and escape into whatever is next. That
Speaker 1: that's the kind of feeling I get a lot of
Speaker 1: his writing, and yet he didn't of the imagery he
Speaker 1: was putting out, particularly the ship with him in in
Speaker 1: the asylum, as kind of evidence of where like part
Speaker 1: of it was part of why I suspected like he
Speaker 1: had he intended to get taken alive. That is, that
Speaker 1: is that is very possible. I mean like because in
Speaker 1: some ways, yeah, I'm not going to speculate, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the most useful. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna speculate further.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of a lot of possible things
Speaker 1: to to think about there, which I will do so
Speaker 1: because I have all the stuff. Don't no one else please,
Speaker 1: it's you don't don't look at this stuff because it's
Speaker 1: like forbidden, right, don't don't don't seek it out because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's forbidden knowledge that they don't want
Speaker 1: you to see. It's dangerous. Oh that that's that that's
Speaker 1: not the point. The point is it's bad and that
Speaker 1: it's also hard to find. So like, just like, don't
Speaker 1: not watching like it's not it's not even it's not
Speaker 1: worth watching. It's not like a bunch of stuff, like
Speaker 1: like in the immediate wake of it, and like, my
Speaker 1: what happened to me was I got a fucking headache.
Speaker 1: You get a headache, you feel bad. It's it waste,
Speaker 1: It wastes your time. Like like if if, if you
Speaker 1: want to get this like the experience of this without
Speaker 1: having to like do this ship like fucking eat a
Speaker 1: bunch of like eat a ship tone of candy. Watch Watch, Watch,
Speaker 1: Watch Pink Floyd's The Wall Jesus Christ, except except if
Speaker 1: you eating a bunch of candier, watching the fucking Wall
Speaker 1: like it's actually good, whereas this is just like it's
Speaker 1: it's only the bad parts of that. But I only
Speaker 1: look at this because it's my fucking job and it sucks. Yeah, alright, well,
Speaker 1: um you know I'm gonna I'm gonna say we're probably
Speaker 1: done here. Um, so I don't know until next time. Again,
Speaker 1: if anyone tries to tell you about something that happened
Speaker 1: on the internet, strike them and flee. Remember run hide,
Speaker 1: fight from people trying to tell you about things happening
Speaker 1: on social media. These are this is this is the
Speaker 1: good strategy going forward. It could happen here as a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone media For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.