WEBVTT - Why Fascists Have Adopted A Suicidal Penguin as a Mascot 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:04.960 Cool zone Media. 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:10.000 Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Amidst 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:13.920 attempts by President Trump to seize control of Greenland last 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:18.840 month during the World Economic Forum, administration officials started posting 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:23.320 images of a penguin. On January twenty third, the White 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:26.599 House shared in artificial image of Trump walking hand and 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.080 flipper alongside a penguin holding an American flag across a 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:35.479 snowy tundra towards mountains bearing the flag of Greenland. The 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:40.879 caption read, embrace the Penguin. The flags look like poorly 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.559 photoshopped stock images, while the rest of the image appears 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:49.239 to be generated by AI. Immediately, this post sparked ridicule 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.600 across various online platforms based on the fact that there 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:58.360 aren't any penguins in Greenland. Erm Penguins don't live in 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.440 the Northern Hemisphere save Zoos and the Glapcos Islands of Ecuador. 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.560 So haha, the foolish Trump has been bested once again 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:11.600 in the arena of facts and logic. Except this White 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:16.160 House penguin post was actually in reference to a TikTok 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:20.920 meme that was currently going super viral in mid January. 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:25.280 Remixed footage from Werner Herzog's Arctic documentary Encounters at the 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.800 End of the World, featuring a lone penguin breaking off 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.720 from the flock and marching towards some icy mountains, started 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:36.400 spreading around. TikTok synced to an organ cover of Lemour Tejoure, 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:39.560 a song which has been adopted by far right anti 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:49.440 immigration groups in Europe the past few years. This combination 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.880 of music and footage soon spread to other short form 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.440 video platforms like Instagram reels, with the featherless subject being 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:02.720 dubbed the Lonely Penguin. On January twentieth, a more explicitly 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.040 political version went kind of viral with over twenty thousand 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.040 likes with the addition of a Frederick Nietzsche quote, I 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.000 know of no better life purpose than to perish in 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:18.720 attempting the great and impossible unquote, with the caption save 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:24.440 Europe hashtag remigration. That same day, an edit with thirty 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.079 six thousand likes by the TikTok account epic History thirty two, 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:33.440 captioned do the Hard Thing played the documentary footage with 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.120 herz Aug generation overlaid with images of historical figures and 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:41.600 pop culture characters like Alexander the Great, Caesar, Joan of Arc, 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:45.600 King Richard First King Baldwin Fourth, Genghis Khan Aragorn, John 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:50.640 snow Luke, Skywalker, and Spider Man. An op ed and 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.520 Fox News by the daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.800 referred to these as quote unquote Western heroes. To quote 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.160 this op ed, in the film, Herzog shows a lone 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.200 penguin peeling away from the safety of its colony and 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.120 heading inland towards certain death according to Herzog, but the 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:13.680 online right saw something else. Users, mostly male, saw the 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.960 penguin as a powerful rebuke of secular modernity. They interpreted 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:20.680 the penguin not as lost, but as a free thinker. 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.800 To them, he was rejecting the colony. In today's terms, 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:30.040 that means rejecting secular postmodern orthodoxy and marching toward a 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:36.440 greater purpose. So though Herzog in this documentary refers to 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:40.640 this penguin as deranged as a meme, users identified with 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.440 the penguin as a symbol of masculine rebellion against what 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:49.600 they view as mainstream culture and the solitary trek up 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.840 the mountains as a metaphor for the struggle of individual greatness. 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:58.960 Clips of men on outdoor adventures and climbing mountains Zarathustra 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.040 style with the caption be the Penguin spread wildly online, 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.800 the most popular reaching four point two million likes, and 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:10.440 oother penguin themed videos getting hundreds of thousands of likes. 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.840 The Herzog penguin meme piggybacked and partially merged with an 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:18.760 older right wing penguin based meme video from two years 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.479 ago of a drag queen asking a kid about boys 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.520 wearing makeup. The kid responds that boys can't wear makeup, 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.039 So the drag queen asks the kid who told him that, 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.560 and this confused child looks around and sees a cartoon 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.640 penguin on the wall, points to it and says that 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.560 penguin over there. Six hundred and eighteen thousand likes. 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.320 What do you think about men wear who wear makeup? 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:51.400 To boys who said the penguin? Is there the penguin? 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.320 This video and this figure of the has since been 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:06.400 used as a symbol for masculine resistance to the LGBTQ agenda, 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:11.159 and this new penguin meme pertains to tap into a 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:16.440 uniquely masculine urge, as explained by this TikToker who racked 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.760 up forty two thousand likes. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:20.479 I hate to be the one to say it, but 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.640 the penguin didn't make it. But does that mean he 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.040 died in vain? No, his life was not a tragedy. 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.120 It was an inspiration. He left a legacy most of 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.640 us could only hope for. It would be easy to 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.080 quote Nietzsche here, but that wouldn't do it justice. That 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.159 penguin spoke to something inside all of us men, a 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.840 desire for more, to push our limits and see what 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.520 we're truly made of. Sometimes our purpose is the impacts 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:48.599 that we leave behind. 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:53.120 On January twenty third, the Department of War Rapid Response 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.920 account posted be a Warrior Embrace the Penguin with NAI 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.480 generated image of five men wearing the uniform of each 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.840 military branch walking towards the mountains alongside a penguin. Secretary 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:10.240 Kennedy posted a make America Healthy Again edit of the 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.839 penguin meme with the organ music over an AI video 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.200 of RFK Junior and a penguin walking to the mountains 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:22.600 on screen. Text reads the mainstream made us sick. Choose 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.960 the healthier path. The Health and Human Services government account 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.760 quote tweeted this video with the caption locking in after 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:37.760 watching that penguin edit unquote, soy occupied Government, an anti 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.240 immigration advocacy account, created a viral aiimage of a large, 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:47.240 evidently prosperous colony of penguins gathered under the banner of multiculturalism. 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.200 It reads that as a giant banner, juxtaposed to a 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:56.239 lone penguin facing the mountains and a sign reading remigration 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:01.159 now across the pond. The London mayor candidate for the 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:06.000 far right Reform Party in the UK, Lila Cunningham, copied 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.239 Trump's version of the penguin meme with an artificial image 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.120 of her holding hands with a penguin walking towards some 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:17.400 snowy mountains surrounding the Tower Bridge in London. The caption reads, 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.320 choose a new path for London before it's too late. 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.920 The last penguin post will consider is a video edit 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.960 from the Department of Homeland Security. It starts, like many 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:34.720 of the viral TikTok and reels videos with footage and 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:38.720 narration from Herzog's documentary, which I will finally play here. 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.200 But one of them caught our eye. The one in 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:47.120 the center, he would neither go towards the feeding grounds 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:51.080 at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony. 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.720 Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains, 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:05.720 some seventy kilometers away. Doctor Ainley explained that even if 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.560 he caught him and brought him back to the colony, 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:19.440 he would immediately he right back for the mountains. But why. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.440 After the narration cuts out, the music continues as a 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:30.560 fan cam style montage plays Trump, military helicopters, swat style 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.199 home raids, and ice and Border patrol arresting people. The 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:39.840 video is captioned, Americans have always known why. In response 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:44.560 to Herzog's query, this post from the DHS asserts that 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:49.120 part of the essence of America is breaking away from 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.880 the herd and forging your own path. Those who don't 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.640 understand Trump's desire to control Greenland at the risk of 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:01.160 further damaging our geopolitical standing just suffer from heard mentality 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.400 and will never be strong enough to take the kind 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.760 of risks that are core to the existence of this country. 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.960 On January twenty fourth, the White House posted the penguin 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.280 does not concern himself with the opinions of those who 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:21.120 cannot comprehend. For Trump, Venezuela Greenland imperial expansion is an 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:26.560 existential mission to achieve some mythic frontier greatness, and only 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:32.400 true Americans can understand why the Fox News penguin op 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.120 ed by Christian nationalist Sean Duffy's daughter, Wow, that's a 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:40.440 nightmare sentence reads quote for Trump, the penguin is an 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.160 apt symbol for the President's decade long fight against the 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.800 radical left. Everything Trump does is opposed by the global 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.880 power brokers. Even the President's pushed to obtain Greenland has 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:57.480 been fanatically opposed by hysterical European elites. America was built 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:02.280 by penguins, and by that I mean pilgrims, frontier men 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.000 and women, conquistadors and cowboys. We are a nation founded 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.160 by risk takers who left the colony for the mountains. 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:11.680 We are descended from men who suffered and died to 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:19.080 carve civilization out of wilderness. It is our inheritance unquote. Now, 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.800 what this DHS penguin video doesn't include, but has already 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.120 been alluded to by some of the other videos I've played, 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:32.760 is the actual context of this lone bird's journey and 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.760 its sad fate. We will return to discuss penguin insanity 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:52.600 after this ad break. We're back, though. The twenty twenty 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:56.800 six version of the penguin meme was dubbed the Lonely Penguin. 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:01.160 Earlier meme videos of this documentary foot from years past 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:07.120 carried the titles deranged penguin or nihilist Penguin. Before the 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:11.600 footage of this lone Penguin plays in the documentary, Herzog 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.480 asks a penguin expert if they can experience insanity? 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:22.079 Is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:26.079 to avoid the definition of insanity a derangement. I don't 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:31.040 mean that a penguin in might believe she's lending a 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:32.800 Napoleon Bonaparte. 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.079 But could they just go crazy because they've had enough 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:41.679 of their colony? 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.760 Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing his head against 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:52.680 the rock. They do get disoriented, they end up in 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.120 places they shouldn't be, long way from the ocean. 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.400 The political invocations of this foot largely ignore Verner Herzog's 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.840 own speculation on why the penguin is marching towards the 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.439 mountains in the far off distance and its inevitable fate. 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:15.640 One of these disoriented, deranged penguins showed up in the 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.040 New Harbor diving camp, already some eighty kilometers away from 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:25.920 where it should be. And here he's heading off into 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:31.679 the interior of the vast continent with five thousand kilometers 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.800 ahead of him. He's heading towards certain death. 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.959 The penguin is not the uber match. The penguin will 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.079 not achieve individual greatness at the summit of the mountain 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:49.480 because it's never going to get there. As Front of 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:53.079 the Pod Dan Olsen so eloquently put it, the penguin 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:56.360 is going to die. Though the penguin does not bash 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.880 its head on a rock, this separation from society is 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.840 still an act of suicide. The deranged penguin has literally 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.640 turned its back on food, water, shelter, and the colony 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.720 to die, wandering towards mountains that it will never reach. 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:16.000 The Trump administration's embrace of this suicidal penguin as a 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:20.280 that's literally me figure is a shockingly open display of 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.480 fascism's relation to the death drive. It's just so naked 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.400 to make your mascot a symbol of suicidal defiance against 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.439 perceived cultural norms. They're doing a first as tragedy twice 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:36.640 as farce for fascist death emblems. The Nazis get the skull, 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.880 we get a fucking penguin. But the penguin is not 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:46.360 the first modern American suicidal folk hero. The Kildozer rampage 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.880 of public destruction, which ended in the suicide of the perpetrator, 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.640 has been a mascot for the libertarian right for over 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.959 two decades, and in twenty eighteen, a twenty eight year 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:02.640 old airport ground service a named Richard Russell hijacked in 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:07.360 empty plane at SeaTac to fly over Mount Rainier before 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:11.920 killing himself by purposely crashing the plane. Very similar to 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:16.600 Herzog's deranged penguin. Russell left behind a wife of six years, 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:20.960 but became a sort of nihilistic folk hero to overly 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.600 online young men, especially among the online far right on 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.200 places like four Chan and Telegram, where he was dubbed 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:33.600 sky King. Last August, a Congressional Republican from Georgia Mike Collins, 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:38.440 who serves on the Republican Transportation Committee, posted a glowing, 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:43.120 multi paragraph memorial for Richard Russell on the anniversary of 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.520 his suicide, signing off the message with rest in peace, 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:53.640 Sky King, but the direct identification of the Trump administration 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:59.359 with a suicidal penguin is a step farther. The fascist 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:03.240 appetite for death is well understood, but the death drive 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:07.720 represents a usually subconscious desire to not only harm or 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:12.840 kill others, but ultimately yourself, an attempt to ease the 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:17.160 tensions driving social life by returning to a prior, in 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.800 organic state. This desire can be channeled through the politics 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:27.240 of fascism, which allow for violent, paranoid manifestations of repressed 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:31.960 internal contradictions which attempt to be resolved through death. But 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.560 fascism itself is a contradiction between a primitive war machine 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.280 and a stable state apparatus, and the way that tension 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:45.400 is released is also self destruction. In the second volume 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:49.440 of Capitalism at Schizophrenia A Thousand Plateaus by philosopher Jills 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:53.520 to Lose and psychoanalyst Felix Squatterri, they discuss the ways 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:58.120 in which fascism and toutlitarianism differ. They write that totalitarianism 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.040 is a state affair made up of of material components 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:06.720 that over manage society. Quote. Even in the case of 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:10.040 a military dictatorship, it is a state army, not a 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.920 war machine that takes power and elevates the state to 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:18.920 the totalitarian stage. Totalitarianism is quot essentially conservative. Fascism, on 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:23.320 the other hand, involves a war machine. When fascism builds 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.320 itself a totalitarian state, it is not in the sense 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.680 of a state army taking power, but of a war 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:36.160 machine taking over the state unquote. This analysis from Deluze 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.480 and Guatairie is building off of an essay by the 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:45.480 French writer Paul Verilio called The Suicidal State, where Virilio 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.320 argues that in fascism, the state is far less to 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:54.040 talitarian than it is suicidal. An evolution of this state 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.080 that quote no longer pretends to be guided internally by 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:04.119 reason and progress, but rather non progress and terror, founded 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.280 on the repulsion and fear of all development in this 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:14.439 civil domain. This repulsion and fear were manifested in the 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.879 accelerated destruction of state institutions during the first few months 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:22.320 of Trump's second term and Doge's scorched earth approach to 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:27.159 slashing government agencies. Verilio writes that during the disappearance of 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:31.840 public service quote, infrastructures of service are reduced as the 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:37.760 wire taps of the Hmacht are restored colonial geometry of decolonialization, 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:44.120 so as the federal government rescinds public services, the everyday 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.440 presence of the federal government is reduced to masked armed 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:51.560 agents in the streets, disappearing our neighbors and shooting civilians, 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.080 while the president fights in court for the ability to 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:58.919 deploy the military against American citizens within our own territory. 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.840 During the tension of total war or total peace, Rilio says, 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:09.760 the system expands and reproduces itself, a material process without 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:14.439 an end, but no longer without limits. To quote the 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:19.199 Brazilian philosopher of Vladimir's Foughtley, the suicide state quote, is 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:22.719 not just a manager of death. It is rather the 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.240 ongoing agent of its own catastrophe, the maker of its 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:31.840 own explosion. To be more precise, This new state mixes 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.359 the death management of entire sectors of its own population 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:40.000 with an ongoing and risky flirtation with its own self 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:56.400 destruction unquote. Rilio's idea of the suicidal state emerges as 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.399 this new mode of governing to solve the crisis of 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.720 post war liberalism in Germany after World War One, as 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.919 well as risked by the United States after each of 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.959 our many wars. Quote. One of the keys to the 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:15.359 present situation is, on one side, the overly informed status 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.720 of experts of the system, and on the other the 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:23.440 underinformed status of all those who are supposedly thinking outside 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:23.600 of it. 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:24.639 Quote. 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.679 Verlio says that the experts no longer know how to 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.600 use their hordes of information except to gain money and 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.520 status by continually adding to their body of work. Meanwhile, 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:40.639 the outsiders produce the political and cultural undercurrent of modern 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:46.240 folklore and ordinary life. But this limp dichotomy cannot last 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:50.240 for very long on its own. Soverareali proposes the new 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.880 emergence of a third category of people who make use 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:58.280 of information for an end, the ultimate end the directors 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:03.640 of the suicidal state, while the outsiders, ideologues and artists 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:09.359 simply try to simulate Catharsis. Quote. By contrast, the third category, 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.280 the suicidal state it self produces a feeling for the 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:17.760 real better it aims to retain the exclusivity of its production. 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:22.480 This feeling is a contempt for and hatred of the 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:30.080 every day Unquote, to paraphrase Virilio, the fascist project exploits 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:38.680 man's alienation from his environment through pollution, economic insecurity, emotional insecurity, desocialization, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:43.119 and seeks to replace any legitimate grievance he has with 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:48.200 society with a more repulsive and expressive force, the fear 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:53.320 of society, which is superimposed on a new military schema 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:59.560 of total war and internal invasion, all towards a nihilistic 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:05.359 end of dropping the bomb on ourselves. The oscillation of 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:10.000 external and internal destruction epitomized by the death Drive is 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:14.120 mirrored by the imperial boomerang, where the violence of colonial 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.359 expansion is forced to return to its homeland. Once home, 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:23.760 the drive remains, resulting in a war on society directly 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.119 or through other means. But this is a war on 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.600 its own people. Whereas Trump would say the enemy within, 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:36.440 to quote a paragraph from a Thousand Plateaus, so called 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:41.440 total war seems less a state undertaking than an undertaking 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.440 of a war machine that appropriates the state and channels 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:49.960 it into a flow of absolute war whose only possible 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:54.399 outcome is the suicide of this state itself. There is 0:21:54.760 --> 0:22:00.320 in fascism a realized nihilism, unlike the ttalitarian state, which 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:04.520 does its utmost to seal all possible lines of escape. 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:09.280 Fascism is constructed on an intense line of escape, which 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.520 it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition. 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.240 It is curious that from the very beginning the Nazis 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.320 announced to Germany what they were bringing at once, wedding 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:25.280 bells and death, including their own deaths and the death 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.520 of the Germans. They thought they would perish, but that 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:33.000 their undertaking would be resumed all across Europe, all over 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:37.000 the world, throughout the Solar system. And the people cheered, 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:41.480 not because they did not understand, but because they wanted 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:45.480 that death through the death of others, like a will 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:49.360 to wager everything you have every hand to stake your 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:54.480 own death against the death of others. Unquote in a 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:58.160 Thousand Plateaus, De Luze and Guatai quote an excerpt from 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:03.040 Klaus Man's nineteen thirty six novel Mefisto, which contains fascist 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:08.280 speeches and ordinary conversations from Nazi Germany. The quote they 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.840 include is eerily similar to the visuals of Trump as 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:18.119 the suicidal penguin quote. Heroism was something that was being 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:21.760 ruled out of our lives. In reality, we are not 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:27.199 marching forward. We are reeling, staggering. Our beloved fear is 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:31.800 dragging us toward the shades of darkness and everlasting nothingness. 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:34.920 How can we poets who have a special affinity for 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:40.639 darkness and lower depths not admire him unquote. Delus in 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:45.879 Guatrie then write, suicide is presented not as a punishment, 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:49.080 but as the crowning glory of the death of others. 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:53.960 The insufficiency of economic and political definitions of fascism does 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:57.440 not simply imply a need to tack on vague so 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:02.520 called ideological determinations. We prefer to inquiry into the precise 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:06.439 formation of Nazi statements, which are just as much in 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.280 evidence in politics and economics as in the most absurd 0:24:10.359 --> 0:24:15.040 of conversations. They always contain the stupid and repugnant cry 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:19.119 long live death. Even at the economic level, where the 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:24.080 arms expansion replaces growth in consumption, and where investment veers 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.520 from the means of production toward the means of pure 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:33.280 destruction unquote. Verilio calls this a psychosis which governs its 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.920 entire politics of production, and he writes that the replacement 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:42.040 of the American industries of the automobile and the cinema 0:24:42.400 --> 0:24:48.000 with the military industrial complex quote does not involve a rational, functional, 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:54.840 or useful choice, but rather entirely psychological, or rather psychopathological. 0:24:55.440 --> 0:24:59.399 It stems from contempt for an abandonment of productive rapport 0:24:59.440 --> 0:25:03.479 with the million you every investment is made to escape 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:08.359 from it unquote. For contemporary reference, go check out the 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:12.639 stock price of Pallanteer. And on the larger economic and 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:17.879 international level, Trump's tariffs, his trade wars, and the self 0:25:17.920 --> 0:25:21.880 destruction of the United States geopolitical standing are all expressions 0:25:21.920 --> 0:25:27.119 of this suicidal state in action. Filio claims the state 0:25:27.160 --> 0:25:30.560 of total war, where the economy of war has become 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:34.800 the economy of peace, is facilitated by a transformation in 0:25:34.880 --> 0:25:39.600 the American sense of freedom, where quote unquote, the free 0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:42.399 as a subject as in the Land of the Free 0:25:42.800 --> 0:25:47.040 quote is no longer properly spoken of as a citizen. 0:25:47.520 --> 0:25:51.119 He has an anonymous organism, without culture, without society, and 0:25:51.200 --> 0:25:56.360 without memory. This figure has no historical precedent. Assistance has 0:25:56.400 --> 0:26:02.640 become survival non assistance, a condemned to death. All liberation 0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:07.520 henceforth has for him invariably the appearance of death of 0:26:07.600 --> 0:26:13.160 the end suicide or murder unquote. This sort of freedom 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:18.520 from social services, freedom from this state, freedom from assistance 0:26:18.920 --> 0:26:22.240 as a movement of the death drive also provides insight 0:26:22.280 --> 0:26:26.440 into people's willingness to and even desire to vote against 0:26:26.480 --> 0:26:30.960 their own material interests, especially when their political struggle has 0:26:31.040 --> 0:26:37.240 turned against society itself. Only in transformation of ordinary social 0:26:37.320 --> 0:26:40.400 life into the horrific in the minds of the populace 0:26:40.800 --> 0:26:45.520 can the fascist quote find their surest means of governing. 0:26:45.880 --> 0:26:50.120 The legitimization of his politics and military strategies, and right 0:26:50.200 --> 0:26:53.320 up to the end, far from weakening the repulsive nature 0:26:53.320 --> 0:26:56.840 of his powers, the ruins, the hoarders, the crimes, the 0:26:56.960 --> 0:27:02.000 chaos of total war will generally own only increase in scope. 0:27:02.920 --> 0:27:07.639 In Hitler's nineteen forty five telegram seventy one, he writes, 0:27:08.240 --> 0:27:13.480 if the war is lost, may the nation perish. Here 0:27:13.800 --> 0:27:17.480 Hitler decides to join forces with his enemies in order 0:27:17.520 --> 0:27:21.800 to complete the destruction of his own people by obliterating 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:25.240 the last remaining sources of its life support system civil 0:27:25.280 --> 0:27:28.600 reserves of every kind, put up a water fuel provisions. 0:27:29.280 --> 0:27:32.879 This is the normal outcome of the politics of dialectical 0:27:32.920 --> 0:27:36.920 retreat from the man who had written the idea of protection, 0:27:37.400 --> 0:27:45.920 haunts and fulfills life. Fascism hijacks the mechanism of evolutionary 0:27:46.040 --> 0:27:51.520 and revolutionary escape and reverts it into a mechanism of destruction. 0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:57.040 Instead of resolving crises, it produces constant crisis for it 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:01.160 to feed off of forming, as del and Guatris say, 0:28:01.680 --> 0:28:06.040 a war machine instead of resonating in a state apparatus, 0:28:06.720 --> 0:28:10.119 A war machine that no longer had anything but war 0:28:10.520 --> 0:28:14.040 as its object and would rather annihilate its own servants 0:28:14.400 --> 0:28:19.240 than stop the destruction. To quote a thousand plateaus, this 0:28:19.320 --> 0:28:23.440 is war not for conquest or revolution, but war as 0:28:23.640 --> 0:28:27.639 its own end. The hollowing out of public institutions and 0:28:27.680 --> 0:28:32.760 social services, the divestment from the milieu of life, leads 0:28:32.800 --> 0:28:36.760 people to turn towards the suicidal state as the only 0:28:37.000 --> 0:28:41.680 force of movement, resting on, as Filio says, quote, the 0:28:41.760 --> 0:28:47.200 advanced exploitation of our instincts for death. A new totalitarian 0:28:47.240 --> 0:28:52.880 state defined by the constant ascent of statistics toward planetary death. 0:28:53.600 --> 0:28:57.080 Crime and madness will no longer be the defects. The 0:28:57.120 --> 0:29:01.920 madman and the assassin are the legitimate children engendered and 0:29:02.080 --> 0:29:07.800 recognized by the suicidal state unquote. And what phenomenon has 0:29:08.000 --> 0:29:11.840 risen in the United States the past few years the Conspiracy, 0:29:11.880 --> 0:29:15.720 Theorist and the Assassin. The embrace of total war and 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:19.800 the campaign of civil fear necessitates a break from sanity 0:29:20.200 --> 0:29:24.719 and the bizarre strangeness of means that inevitably result in 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:29.400 a self destructive end. Vrillio claims there is an insanity 0:29:29.480 --> 0:29:34.000 at the heart of the fascist project. The imaginary potential 0:29:34.040 --> 0:29:38.080 of the fascist state arises quote from a finished world 0:29:38.360 --> 0:29:42.200 where insanity has become the goal of order, the very 0:29:42.320 --> 0:29:47.600 product of organization. Unquote. There's a quote from Goebels to 0:29:47.760 --> 0:29:52.040 one of his aides, Prince Frederick Christian. The world in 0:29:52.080 --> 0:29:56.760 which Hitler moves is a world of absolute fate, a 0:29:56.800 --> 0:30:01.960 world in which even success makes nos sense. It's not 0:30:02.040 --> 0:30:04.880 a mistake that the White House has cast itself as 0:30:04.960 --> 0:30:09.479 a lost penguin marching to its own death. They know 0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:13.280 the absurdity of their replies. They know the world looks 0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:17.160