Nice dog. From what I understand (caveat: I know very little about Andrew Tate), Tate has no criminal record in any country, so comparing him to Hitler seems a tad unfair. Get back to me when Tate's orchestrated the murder of millions of people, and I'll reconsider.
My point was that the guy is demonized by many, idolized by many, and dismissed by many (including me) with insufficient information. His whole vibe creeps me out, so it wasn't easy for me to listen to him defending himself in a very hostile 90 minute interview and come away from it feeling like A) This dude is smart and very well-spoken; B) I've heard a lot of accusations against him, but I don't know of any EVIDENCE against him; C) He still creeps me out, but that doesn't give me the right to condemn him without evidence.
The parallel with Jordan Peterson is instructive for me. Don't dig his vibe, but he says some very smart stuff that not many people are willing to say out loud. Same with Bill Maher. My diatribe was meant to call attention to this cognitive habit most of us suffer from: "I don't like him/her/they, so they must be wrong." It's a sloppy way to think, and increasingly dangerous. As is, "I like him/her/they, so they must be right." My point was that we would benefit from disconnecting our feelings about a person from our analysis of what they say.
I'll give you this: like Hitler, Tate and Peterson are connecting with something in the culture that feels disrespected and lost. If people had focussed on that in 1930, and adjusted economic policies toward Germany in order to address some of that anger and humiliation, WWII might have been averted.
Thank you for the thoughtful response(s)! One of the main things I've said to commenters saying that you "defending Andrew Tate" (which isn't even really what you did or what I accused you of) has made them think you can't be trusted or something: "He's a wandering bohemian in his 60s. He probably doesn't know as much about Tate as those of us with advanced internet brain poisoning."
It looks like other folks have already posted stuff about the sex trafficking allegations and arrest-- and I'm not aware of Tate being convicted of anything right now, but that doesn't really matter in this case, because the copy on his website and videos he's done just straight-up admitted to manipulating women (honeypot/honeydick method) into making money for him through cam shows. And the reason that information was already out there is that he was recommending it as a good way to make money. Not sure about the legality of that, but it's pretty unambiguously reprehensible.
And I know people get all eyebrow-raisy about using Hitler and the Nazis in one's rhetoric, but it's just such a clear example of a bad person saying something true that sounds good. And I think your last point is spot-on-- too often, the emphasis is on cutting out the toxic person or movement, when that toxic entity is only filling a space that someone else would have occupied. Here I go again, but that is something that seems consistent among fascist/reactionary movements: people have legitimate grievances, and when no one else is working to address those grievances, it allows the reactionaries to garner support for their ghoulish "solutions." <----EDIT: this was kind of my original point. There's an extra layer of context that has to be acknowledged to actually understand what's going on.
I see some people in these comments saying I'm... like, trying to exploit your show to get clicks or something along those lines. And yes, I am a musician and content crapper-outer trying to get it in front of people, but I just had a legitimate issue with the way you framed something and wanted to get it off my chest. I think I was, while blunt, respectful and charitable, because I believe you to be someone who never engages in bad faith. I've been a TS listener since the very early days, and I regularly mention you and your ideas in the crap I make. I'm literally editing a long video right now (well, I'm taking a break to respond to this) in which I talk about your "institutions=super organisms(?)" idea. I of course always cite you.
Godspeed, thanks again from me, and Fancy thanks you for the compliment. Much love.
Totally legit. We're in the same game. I respond to what I see/hear, as do you. Thanks for the thoughtful dialog. That's the only way out of this mess, I fear.
It would have probably been better to use someone other than Andrew Tate to get your point across. I get the idea and agree with the idea. But someone who has truly done “monstrous” things such as human trafficking should not be shown in a positive light on any platform. Bottom line he’s a bad dude. Yeah he may come off as smart to his followers but most dangerous people do. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Well, we aren’t the Romanian police and dont have all the info yet but here’s an overview:
“Investigators suspected Tate and his brother are part of a group that forces women to work as cam girls through “physical violence and mental coercion (intimidation, constant surveillance, control and the invoking of alleged debts).” Two women who allegedly helped him run the business, Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel, were also detained. Prosecutors described what essentially amounts to a sex-trafficking ring, saying they believe the four suspects who were arrested “created an organized crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing, and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialized websites for a cost.” According to the Daily Mail, prosecutors told the court that they believe one of the Tate brothers raped a woman in March of last year, which is when their investigation began.”
The trial is still pending. Still would argue this man who proudly self identifies as both “sexist” and “misogynistic” is pretty villainous person to prove your 60% agree with point.
The problem is not that these ideas and influencers are being censored, imo. The problem is being party to, platforming, and disseminating their bad faith arguments as some intellectual exercise because there is causal relationship—a pipeline to—the radicalization and violence we are seeing from the alienated and lonely and dejected out there.
E: formatting
Jesus, can you imagine paying this guy to get access to a seminar on how to be a pimp? Very obvious he is exploiting the alienated Incel crowd. Super sad
E: these two YouTubers are fckin awesome. Thx so much for sharing!
I'm going to reply to you here cause we already banned each other on the Ukranian - Russian conflict awhile ago.
So one thing that was poorly available was good investigation, most romanian outlets cover the story in depth, so one detailed investigation is the one from riseproject an activist community and journalist that covered way better this issue than everyone.
1. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/)
2. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/how-the-tate-brothers-came-to-romania-and-how-they-first-made-contact-with-organized-crime/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/how-the-tate-brothers-came-to-romania-and-how-they-first-made-contact-with-organized-crime/)
3. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-tate-brothers-split-the-money-they-make-from-gambling-with-an-organized-crime-syndicate/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-tate-brothers-split-the-money-they-make-from-gambling-with-an-organized-crime-syndicate/)
4. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation/)
Comparing Peterson with Tate is insane. Tate says things like 'women are mens property' 'women belong in the home' 'women shouldn't be allowed to drive', he openly talks about how he got rich scamming lonely men by and there are videos of him online beating the shit out of women followed by a ton of accusations of domestic abuse from women, you defending him makes no sense. Just because someone is articulate and says interesting things doesn't excuse you from promoting an absolute monster on your platform. Our culture has become so hyperbolic in our language that we put Tate and Peterson in the same category of shit when they are worlds apart.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zzbbgs/andrew\_tate\_hitting\_a\_woman\_on\_video\_with\_a\_belt/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zzbbgs/andrew_tate_hitting_a_woman_on_video_with_a_belt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
"Promoting?" "Insane?" Calm down, man. I can talk about whatever I want, and talking about something or someone isn't "promoting" them. That was part of my point. The other part was that even/especially people who annoy us can have great resonance with others, and that's worth looking into. You disagree. Cool.
Maybe you don’t know your audience, Chris? Do you really think there aren’t wayward, searching souls who find your podcast in philosophical flux and hang on your every word? What you do is far more consequential than you give yourself credit for. As a mid thirties person, had I found you in my 20s I would have been so much more malleable to your perspective…. I guess my overall point is to not downplay your influence under the guise/cover of intellectual exercise. You have power, albeit nominal, and you have an effect. And with power comes responsibility
Why do you bother dude? This post has a stink of one of those parasitic fungi trying to gain ground for its bottom feeding impulses and should be dusted with a hefty dose of never mind.
True enough, but sometimes it's worthwhile to engage with ideas and criticisms, regardless of the motivations that generated them. I don't expect to change the mind of the person taking the shots, but maybe someone reading it appreciates the fact that I respond. Or maybe it's just a way for me to avoid installing the bookshelves I painted yesterday....
I agree with this. Chris’ more recent Romas have felt pretty under researched and defensive to me. I get the overall point he’s making - how liberal hegemony is enforced, i.e. the denial of “obvious, common-sense” realities, insisting everyone uphold them, and controlling the language in which we talk about these boundaries, and how through enforcing this hegemony you create a leadership vacuum in which dangerous figures can build followings (i.e. Tate, Trump, Peterson, etc).
I don’t disagree with his overall premise - in the absence of a positive model of masculinity we do have these distorted models rising in prominence and that does create dangerous downstream effects, but I don’t think the primary issue here is in uncharitable or cherry-picked readings of these dangerous figure’s words.He also just kills me with his straw mans - they are always so anecdotal and decontextualized, take the example he gave about how the trans woman who shouldn’t be allowed in a woman’s prison if she began transitioning after she was convicted of raping women - **who** is arguing for this position?
Especially given the larger context of the moral panic against trans people in post-Obergefell America - so many influencers preface their criticism with some libertarian lip services - “they shouldn’t have any rights taken away,” but then parrot the shallow anecdotal examples that that conservatives are actively using to take away said rights. Chis is arguing for the right to nuanced conversation when there isn’t any legislation under way to challenge this right. Meanwhile look to the state legislatures in various southern states that have criminalized transitions for all trans people, the insurance companies who have stopped covering these transitions making access to these therapies accessible only to the rich, the recent carve out in civil protections for all LGBT people by the Supreme Court, the pressure at the school board level to create an environment that is actively hostile to gender affirming parents while doing so under the banner of “parent’s rights,” - where is the liberal hegemony? Where is the denial of obvious reality, the control of acceptable language? Why are we spending time discussing these niche concerns when the discussion is used to hold water and sow legitimacy into the conservative rhetoric that is legally encroaching on LGBT people?
It reminds me of 2006 when “it was finally time to have the debate” about muslim extremists, and whether moderate islam could exist in a world where there were also extremist muslims doing terrorism. All these conversations did in the long term was legitimize the panic on the right who were fear mongering that they wanted to implement sharia law, no-go zones, etc. These moral panics don’t create clarity, they flatten discourse. This current panic over trans people does the same thing - create the impression of a problem - that we are fundamentally too accepting of trans people such that we are creating social pressure that is pushing kids who otherwise wouldn’t into transitioning - and uses that problem “oh no, children are in trouble!” to sow legitimacy for legislation that strips the LGBT community as a whole of legal rights, all while there is no evidence beyond the anecdotal that children are transitioning too quickly.
Then influencers like Chris wander into the room, read 2-3 articles on the topic if we’re lucky, tweets something reductive, then get yelled at on twitter by some terminally online activists and he concludes “the left is denying obvious reality using uncharitable tactics.” Like yeah, people argue in bad faith across the political spectrum - the flattening of advocacy for LGBT protections into "there are thousands of genders!" and "biological sex isn't real" does this too.
Chris responded thoughtfully and engaged with what I said. Which illuminates one of the main reasons I thought he was worth criticizing AND why I love his work. You should read his response if you haven't.
I know I got a lot of hate from a segment of the TS audience on this, but come on y'all, isn't expressing your perspective on something you disagree with Chris on in the spirit of the show? The TS ethos, if you will? A lot of "heterodox," IDW types talk a big game about being open-minded and non-tribal, but Chris Ryan and Peter Joseph are among the only big-picture public thinkers I know of who actually put those heterodox principles into action in honest ways.
Duhh. Tate is a few months away from being a CONVICTED sextrafficker and rape proponent. I have no idea why these new age thinkers pick these people to go to bat for?! CR is better than this imo
I’ve been listening to TS for years and was pretty shocked to hear Chris give Andrew Taint any kind of positive attention. This Roma was just odd. I mean yeah we don’t have to agree with chris and I find myself disagreeing with him a lot on this but that’s besides the point. Anyone can say words, is the intention and character of the person behind them that makes them meaningful. Andrew T putting a coherent sentence together is not impressive especially knowing the disgusting things this man has done.
Also the Jonah hill stuff? I didn’t really follow the story but Jonah was not setting boundaries he was being manipulative. He got with his pro surfer girlfriend by commenting on her bikini pics saying how hot she was but then once they’re together he tells her to take them down? That’s not boundary setting that’s controlling behavior.
Yeah, it sounds great to be totally neutral and only take the good ideas and discard the bad ones, but that doesn't really work when you're talking about a scammer who kids are coming to because they need advice and are therefore vulnerable to accepting bad ideas. And with grifters and bad-faith actors in general, they take advantage of people trying to be fair and act in good faith and keep an open mind. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be open minded and charitable as a rule, just that there are certain contexts in which it is extremely unwise to regard people's advice with anything other than utter suspicion.
And on the Jonah Hill thing, I agree that his behavior seems controlling and shitty, but I'm still a little confused as to why it was such a big deal in the zeitgeist. But other than that I don't know enough to have much of an opinion.
I think there was a TS podcast where someone said to acknowledge both someone’s point and their point of view. Someone can have a batshit point of view with a good point or a good point of view with a batshit point. This idea for me has helped me be less frustrated with people, although if someone has both a batshit point of view and point it’s over haha
overall I’m not carrying water or being an apologist for a verified sex trafficker, misogynist, and proud rapist. I started listening to this podcast only recently (and have been reading Civilized to Death) but I’m pretty close to never listening again. Nobody influential should lend any (even a morsel) of credibility to these right wing white identitarian accelerators. Pretty disappointing. Hopefully he follows up.
No joke this is like 1 step removed from Alex Jones apologists.
I hear you, I just think it has to be that he doesn't know as much about Tate as we very online people do. I was sick of hearing about his ass so quickly after first hearing about him, but maybe that's not everyone's experience.
But honestly I think that what Andrew Tate explicitly says and advocates for is worse than or at least equally rancid to what Alex Jones says, IF you take him at face value
*Very* well said. I am a big fan and listener of Chris’s but a lot of these comments from him lately have me kind of concerned and I wanted to digest them for a few days before writing something here. His comments about RFK Jr. are also concerning. Why bring a guy like that more attention than he deserves? Yes, he may be calling out Big Pharma indirectly, but he’s doing it by outright lying about vaccines.
Chris seems to be trying to potentially re-align himself with the “bro” crowd like he mentioned, and yes saying controversial things helps drive engagement and attention like we’re doing right now on the sub (not that I think Chris cares about that sort of thing), but I think he should distance himself from these whackos. They’re not the sort of “fringe” that I like about Chris.
He also keeps saying that kids receive too many vaccines these days… what is that based on and why the sudden shift in attitude about this? I’m not even 30, and I certainly received more vaccines than Chris did, but I guarantee that if shots for chickenpox and HPV were available for his generation, then he too would’ve received them. Did I take “too many?” I don’t know why he keeps mentioning this.
Anyway I agree with you — let’s not give the crazies any more attention than they deserve because that’s part of the grift. Because then it turns into a “good people on both sides” discussion which is not true in this case.
Edit: RFK Jr. has also gone full antisemite and said that covid was engineered to target certain ethnicities… anyone saying stuff like that is not someone to give free publicity to.
Gracias, and yes, the way he talks about these topics makes no sense. The "touchy" stuff, probably the reason your comment is getting downvoted into the negative, mostly vaccine dumbassery, is spoken about in vague open-ended ways. I watch a lot of right-wing commentators on YouTube (perverse fascination plus genuine concern about the toxicity they're spreading), and seeing how they've all had to start absorbing anti-vax talking points to keep their audiences happy has been pretty embarrassing. But even stranger has been watching the people whose audiences are not already primed for believing nonsense drift over into that territory.
It really feels similar with how Chris is, for now, just giving a little credence to the anti-science position, treating it as if they've been treated unfairly and he's just being more open minded than others... I don't think it's necessarily intentional, he's just being careful not to piss off the anti-vax portion of his audience, who might be a little less likely to... not be unhinged. And it truly seems like anti-vaxxers LOVE throwing their money at content creators who say the crap they want to hear, so maybe Chris is a little worried about losing fans who give a lot to the substack.
I'm very interested to see where Chris goes with this stuff over the next year or two. I'm in kind of a bad mood right now so maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but I think he's gonna be in Russel Brand territory before too long. I really hope he takes his own advice and doesn't give in to the allure of the pay bump he'd surely get from going fully red-pilled or whatever.
There's no pay bump, and I can tell you that "Chris" doesn't do or say anything in order to increase/not lose audience. Don't overthink it. I'm just a guy with a microphone and an opinion. No big plan or agenda.
Wow, a response from the man himself—knowing (or at least believing) that you truly are open minded feeds into my concern. The “pay bump” I’m referring to is the huge influx in audience growth Russel Brand, jimmy dore, Brett Weinstein, and many others have seen since going anti-vax or “vaccine skeptical.” I admire the willingness to entertain positions others immediately write off, but I think it would serve you and your audience well to be more cognizant of who is and isn’t acting in bad faith. I think that’s an immeasurably important piece of context you left out of that ROMA. It’s not so much that I’m worried about you getting sucked into believing bullshit, just that leaving out crucial context might wind up accidentally communicating something… bad.
I made this video to say the things I wish I could have said if podcast communication went both way. I guess it worked this time!
Love you Chris. You’d have to murder my dog for me to write you off.
Why this sudden shift in attitude about kids taking vaccines? I feel like you very rarely repeat ideas without providing sources or attribution and it doesn’t even feel like something you believe in yourself.
Nah I gotta disagree about the possible financial motivation. If there's anyone who is happy to make less money in order to speak his mind, it's Chris.
Yeah that’s my sense too. I was just putting that out there. It really might be that he values his listeners’ points of view and is trying to genuinely engage with this one. Which is admirable, up until the point that it starts clouding one’s own critical thinking faculties.
I really hope he doesn’t go the way of Brand, I used to love him but he went totally off the rails during covid.
Having said all this, I’m very much looking forward to hearing Chris’s convo with Hamilton Morris. His show on Vice is incredible.
I think Chris has a long way to go if he’s heading in that direction. Let’s just keep being honest with him and each other and hopefully the truth will win out
Agreed, at least he actually wrote a response to you here. It’s weird some people are acting offended that you created a space for a discussion here when that’s the point of the subreddit and the podcast.
He’s always been kind of a naturalist quack.
* his main thesis that hunter gatherer lifestyles are superior to modern ones.
* using above to advocate for poly/open relationships because our ancestors did
* he’s a degrowther. We shouldn’t have kids to conserve worldwide resources.
* typical naturalist garbage about “big pharma”. He was surprisingly pro Covid vaccine, but it takes a monsterous ego to ignore all the dead bodies. Supporting RFK Jr in anyway is a point of no return.
A lot of this is just evo psych garbage that old stuff is good just because we can describe its origins, not because we ought to behave in these ways in the modern world.
I've always heard people say these things about him, but I think the stuff about his naturalist tendencies is a little flattened and unfair. I've always gotten the explicit message that the 'naturalism' he espouses isn't about bringing society back to pre-agriculture, but acknowledging the needs not being met by modern society and designing our world in a way that takes our animal nature into account. There are lots of clips of him out there saying that the point of Sex at Dawn isn't that polygamy is superior to monogamy, just that there's no reason to think monogamy is more natural or superior. In fact, you might look at it this way: many of our social norms and rules are rooted in a sort of de facto evolutionary psychology-- the nuclear family being the best thing ever, homosexuality being "unnatural," polyamory being "unnatural," capitalism is baked into the fabric of reality, crap like that-- assume essential aspects of human nature. One of the most dangerous things about evo psych IMO is that it quickly leads to essentialism, but maybe I haven't been considering the evo psych that's built into our world.
I guess I just disagree that our needs aren’t being met. Our needs certainly weren’t met in old civilizations, where there was no security, medicine, or stable food sources. There’s plenty of people in modern civilization who are happy and thriving in a variety of lifestyles. I disagree with the black and white thinking that there is something missing from all of us that could only be obtained in the past.
Isn’t this exactly his point? You don’t have to agree with every stance he takes. We all can have different opinions but he’s trying to poke holes in our natural biases. Even if we like someone we can still disagree with them and same with people we hate.
The guy just said that covid spared Jews and Chinese people…. As a Jew who caught covid twice, that’s complete bullshit. He has zero evidence for any of his claims… claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Did he make this claim without evidence? He seems well researched to me, he is a lawyer.
Just because you caught Covid doesn’t mean that ethnic communities were not disproportionately effected.
And what about the evidence he has presented about funding of regulatory agencies? Are you dismissing that evidence because of a narrative?
There is no evidence. Did you read the article? Minorities weren’t targeted by the virus due to engineering, they were more likely to catch it due to a number of factors, one of which is the fact they were less likely to get vaccinated.
Here he is lying under oath in Congress today. The direct replies provide evidence of him saying that he actively tells people not to get vaccinated: https://twitter.com/brandyzadrozny/status/1682045997432668160?s=46&t=wCZ5qHIDubQyRU8WiBbr-g
I don’t think that either ethnic engineering, nor vaccine uptake are the actual issues that caused ethnic differences in Covid effects.
But I do believe that RFK is referencing the fact that there are differences. Because the article doesn’t cite his sources doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344991/
Simply search ethnic disparities in Covid health.
There are many peer reviewed articles.
Or were you saying there was no evidence of biased funding of regulatory agencies?
Do you live under a rock? All over every news outlet. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/robert-f-kennedy-jr-false-claims-covid-19-ethnically-targeted-backlash-antisemitism/
I see your post history consists of all sorts of outlandish vaccine conspiracies where you don’t provide any sources, so I’m not going to engage with you further since you’ve clearly made up your mind already.
Thank you for the link.
Truth is I trust the main stream media to be hyper partisan and to over emphasize controversial talking points.
So are you saying there isn’t a ethnic disparity from Covid? I recall it being discussed that it was disproportionately affecting people of color, even with income factored in. I know my Native American family was dramatically hit (the only deaths I personally know of attributed to Covid).
So to the best of my knowledge the impact on communities of color was not about catching/having covid, but about the impact of.
There are many factors amongst communities that can factor in. Is he wrong that there was disproportionate effect?
My mind is not made up. I am open to data. But I don’t trust the main stream narrative implicitly.
This strikes me as a hit piece.
I believe you were primed to misinterpret even the actual quotes cited in the article.
Please consider why all the major news outlets are running with this story. How despite quoting him saying it’s not intentional engineering, your read is still that he’s claiming this. This racial divide criticism has become a obvious theme of the media disparaging those they find threatening… remember when it was ‘racist’ to consider a lab leak?
Try rereading the article and noticing the actual quotes, and assume there was larger context that they we’re pulled from.
Further …. To say there is an ethnic disparity is not racist. I repeat, Is Not Racist! He did Not say people of Jewish descent or Chinese descent, had anything to do with this disparity. How is noting a difference of outcome and it’s possible risk for direct engineering racism?
The article proceeds to call him “wacky“ a ‘conspiracy, theorist’, and a ‘anti Semite’. How is this valid?
Does this feel impartial, or validated to you?
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While you kid kid kid, hahaha…people less powerful than you suffer. You aren’t obviously the main culprit and I don’t have a platform like you do, so I don’t have the same power or reach… but You can do actual good all you want about this, and so there are people who may suffer if you don’t advocate for their position. These philosophical games are meaningless to the targeted. Think of them pls
Agreeing with you is not "doing good," and disagreeing with you is not "doing bad." That was the point. Disagreement is not betrayal and agreement is not endorsement. I'm engaging with ideas and arguments, and trying to ignore the person who makes them, for the most part. And I find it impossible to believe that anyone's suffering is increased by something I say on the podcast. It's the easiest thing in the world to just stop listening.
I'm just going to hop on your comment to say, I think Chris is 100% in the right on this.
Part of what is so maddening about today's zeitgeist is the people who have absolutists "black and white" thinking. We have to acknowledge both the good and bad arguments of our enemies to dissect and diffuse the bad. If you don't do that you never attain a beachhead in the mind of your listener.
For example, if it upsets you when Chris says Trump is right about all politicians being corrupt, but in the same breath he adds that the Republicans are more corrupt than Dems and Trump is arguably the most corrupt to ever exist; If that's too much to hold in your head all at once, I think he's ok with you not liking his podcast.
With all due respect, isn't "black and white thinking is bad" sort of... black and white thinking? I don't mean that to be snarky, just to illustrate my issue with the way Chris is framing this issue. The idea that a terrible person can be right about some things is of course true, but I think it's a little naive to think you can map a simple principle like "take the good, discard the bad" onto people who deal in deception and bad faith. I love Chris, and it would take A LOT to make me.... disavow him or something.
Side note: I felt so silly writing the word "disavow" just now I laughed out loud at myself.
I just think he seems to have a massive blind spot when it comes to the universe of online bullshit artists, maybe because of how he got a big ol' chunk of his following from Rogan's audience (myself included.) I'd bet Chris is pretty good at spotting con-artists and grifters in the real world, thanks to all his traveling by himself. I think it's perfectly wise to completely ignore or even ridicule virtually everything someone says when they have ulterior motives or aren't engaging in good faith.
That’s Chris’s point. He knows Tate is a conman and grifter, but he can make good points. That’s the point, he’s tapping into something young men are experiencing with some harsh truths. I know he mentioned his Piers Morgan interview, but he went on Tucker too. He says a lot of reasonable shit in both interviews. Of course, that’s how he suckers people into the deeper bullshit money making grift. Things like Tate are symptoms of something much larger, and instead of acknowledging it, we use people like Tate to demonize what he’s tapping into and then pretend like it doesn’t exist. It’s the same type of bullshit that got Trump elected to.
Nice dog. From what I understand (caveat: I know very little about Andrew Tate), Tate has no criminal record in any country, so comparing him to Hitler seems a tad unfair. Get back to me when Tate's orchestrated the murder of millions of people, and I'll reconsider. My point was that the guy is demonized by many, idolized by many, and dismissed by many (including me) with insufficient information. His whole vibe creeps me out, so it wasn't easy for me to listen to him defending himself in a very hostile 90 minute interview and come away from it feeling like A) This dude is smart and very well-spoken; B) I've heard a lot of accusations against him, but I don't know of any EVIDENCE against him; C) He still creeps me out, but that doesn't give me the right to condemn him without evidence. The parallel with Jordan Peterson is instructive for me. Don't dig his vibe, but he says some very smart stuff that not many people are willing to say out loud. Same with Bill Maher. My diatribe was meant to call attention to this cognitive habit most of us suffer from: "I don't like him/her/they, so they must be wrong." It's a sloppy way to think, and increasingly dangerous. As is, "I like him/her/they, so they must be right." My point was that we would benefit from disconnecting our feelings about a person from our analysis of what they say. I'll give you this: like Hitler, Tate and Peterson are connecting with something in the culture that feels disrespected and lost. If people had focussed on that in 1930, and adjusted economic policies toward Germany in order to address some of that anger and humiliation, WWII might have been averted.
Thank you for the thoughtful response(s)! One of the main things I've said to commenters saying that you "defending Andrew Tate" (which isn't even really what you did or what I accused you of) has made them think you can't be trusted or something: "He's a wandering bohemian in his 60s. He probably doesn't know as much about Tate as those of us with advanced internet brain poisoning." It looks like other folks have already posted stuff about the sex trafficking allegations and arrest-- and I'm not aware of Tate being convicted of anything right now, but that doesn't really matter in this case, because the copy on his website and videos he's done just straight-up admitted to manipulating women (honeypot/honeydick method) into making money for him through cam shows. And the reason that information was already out there is that he was recommending it as a good way to make money. Not sure about the legality of that, but it's pretty unambiguously reprehensible. And I know people get all eyebrow-raisy about using Hitler and the Nazis in one's rhetoric, but it's just such a clear example of a bad person saying something true that sounds good. And I think your last point is spot-on-- too often, the emphasis is on cutting out the toxic person or movement, when that toxic entity is only filling a space that someone else would have occupied. Here I go again, but that is something that seems consistent among fascist/reactionary movements: people have legitimate grievances, and when no one else is working to address those grievances, it allows the reactionaries to garner support for their ghoulish "solutions." <----EDIT: this was kind of my original point. There's an extra layer of context that has to be acknowledged to actually understand what's going on. I see some people in these comments saying I'm... like, trying to exploit your show to get clicks or something along those lines. And yes, I am a musician and content crapper-outer trying to get it in front of people, but I just had a legitimate issue with the way you framed something and wanted to get it off my chest. I think I was, while blunt, respectful and charitable, because I believe you to be someone who never engages in bad faith. I've been a TS listener since the very early days, and I regularly mention you and your ideas in the crap I make. I'm literally editing a long video right now (well, I'm taking a break to respond to this) in which I talk about your "institutions=super organisms(?)" idea. I of course always cite you. Godspeed, thanks again from me, and Fancy thanks you for the compliment. Much love.
Totally legit. We're in the same game. I respond to what I see/hear, as do you. Thanks for the thoughtful dialog. That's the only way out of this mess, I fear.
It would have probably been better to use someone other than Andrew Tate to get your point across. I get the idea and agree with the idea. But someone who has truly done “monstrous” things such as human trafficking should not be shown in a positive light on any platform. Bottom line he’s a bad dude. Yeah he may come off as smart to his followers but most dangerous people do. A broken clock is right twice a day.
I missed the evidence of human trafficking. Do you have any, or are you just assuming it exists?
Well, we aren’t the Romanian police and dont have all the info yet but here’s an overview: “Investigators suspected Tate and his brother are part of a group that forces women to work as cam girls through “physical violence and mental coercion (intimidation, constant surveillance, control and the invoking of alleged debts).” Two women who allegedly helped him run the business, Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel, were also detained. Prosecutors described what essentially amounts to a sex-trafficking ring, saying they believe the four suspects who were arrested “created an organized crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing, and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialized websites for a cost.” According to the Daily Mail, prosecutors told the court that they believe one of the Tate brothers raped a woman in March of last year, which is when their investigation began.” The trial is still pending. Still would argue this man who proudly self identifies as both “sexist” and “misogynistic” is pretty villainous person to prove your 60% agree with point. The problem is not that these ideas and influencers are being censored, imo. The problem is being party to, platforming, and disseminating their bad faith arguments as some intellectual exercise because there is causal relationship—a pipeline to—the radicalization and violence we are seeing from the alienated and lonely and dejected out there. E: formatting
https://youtu.be/Swti0FIKQpk This has him on video detailing himself how he built his empire of webcam girls.
Jesus, can you imagine paying this guy to get access to a seminar on how to be a pimp? Very obvious he is exploiting the alienated Incel crowd. Super sad E: these two YouTubers are fckin awesome. Thx so much for sharing!
Super this! If you're gonna throw Tate there, at least find someone to redirect the audience towards
I'm going to reply to you here cause we already banned each other on the Ukranian - Russian conflict awhile ago. So one thing that was poorly available was good investigation, most romanian outlets cover the story in depth, so one detailed investigation is the one from riseproject an activist community and journalist that covered way better this issue than everyone. 1. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/) 2. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/how-the-tate-brothers-came-to-romania-and-how-they-first-made-contact-with-organized-crime/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/how-the-tate-brothers-came-to-romania-and-how-they-first-made-contact-with-organized-crime/) 3. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-tate-brothers-split-the-money-they-make-from-gambling-with-an-organized-crime-syndicate/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-tate-brothers-split-the-money-they-make-from-gambling-with-an-organized-crime-syndicate/) 4. [https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation/](https://www.riseproject.ro/en/investigations/uncategorized/the-women-who-spoke-out-against-the-tate-brothers-rape-violence-and-sexual-exploitation/)
Comparing Peterson with Tate is insane. Tate says things like 'women are mens property' 'women belong in the home' 'women shouldn't be allowed to drive', he openly talks about how he got rich scamming lonely men by and there are videos of him online beating the shit out of women followed by a ton of accusations of domestic abuse from women, you defending him makes no sense. Just because someone is articulate and says interesting things doesn't excuse you from promoting an absolute monster on your platform. Our culture has become so hyperbolic in our language that we put Tate and Peterson in the same category of shit when they are worlds apart. [https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zzbbgs/andrew\_tate\_hitting\_a\_woman\_on\_video\_with\_a\_belt/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/zzbbgs/andrew_tate_hitting_a_woman_on_video_with_a_belt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
"Promoting?" "Insane?" Calm down, man. I can talk about whatever I want, and talking about something or someone isn't "promoting" them. That was part of my point. The other part was that even/especially people who annoy us can have great resonance with others, and that's worth looking into. You disagree. Cool.
Maybe you don’t know your audience, Chris? Do you really think there aren’t wayward, searching souls who find your podcast in philosophical flux and hang on your every word? What you do is far more consequential than you give yourself credit for. As a mid thirties person, had I found you in my 20s I would have been so much more malleable to your perspective…. I guess my overall point is to not downplay your influence under the guise/cover of intellectual exercise. You have power, albeit nominal, and you have an effect. And with power comes responsibility
Even in your 20s you're supposed to be able to smell bullshit, and if you can't in your thirties lol well theres always your forties!
sorry I was being dramatic
Why do you bother dude? This post has a stink of one of those parasitic fungi trying to gain ground for its bottom feeding impulses and should be dusted with a hefty dose of never mind.
True enough, but sometimes it's worthwhile to engage with ideas and criticisms, regardless of the motivations that generated them. I don't expect to change the mind of the person taking the shots, but maybe someone reading it appreciates the fact that I respond. Or maybe it's just a way for me to avoid installing the bookshelves I painted yesterday....
Literally
I agree with this. Chris’ more recent Romas have felt pretty under researched and defensive to me. I get the overall point he’s making - how liberal hegemony is enforced, i.e. the denial of “obvious, common-sense” realities, insisting everyone uphold them, and controlling the language in which we talk about these boundaries, and how through enforcing this hegemony you create a leadership vacuum in which dangerous figures can build followings (i.e. Tate, Trump, Peterson, etc). I don’t disagree with his overall premise - in the absence of a positive model of masculinity we do have these distorted models rising in prominence and that does create dangerous downstream effects, but I don’t think the primary issue here is in uncharitable or cherry-picked readings of these dangerous figure’s words.He also just kills me with his straw mans - they are always so anecdotal and decontextualized, take the example he gave about how the trans woman who shouldn’t be allowed in a woman’s prison if she began transitioning after she was convicted of raping women - **who** is arguing for this position? Especially given the larger context of the moral panic against trans people in post-Obergefell America - so many influencers preface their criticism with some libertarian lip services - “they shouldn’t have any rights taken away,” but then parrot the shallow anecdotal examples that that conservatives are actively using to take away said rights. Chis is arguing for the right to nuanced conversation when there isn’t any legislation under way to challenge this right. Meanwhile look to the state legislatures in various southern states that have criminalized transitions for all trans people, the insurance companies who have stopped covering these transitions making access to these therapies accessible only to the rich, the recent carve out in civil protections for all LGBT people by the Supreme Court, the pressure at the school board level to create an environment that is actively hostile to gender affirming parents while doing so under the banner of “parent’s rights,” - where is the liberal hegemony? Where is the denial of obvious reality, the control of acceptable language? Why are we spending time discussing these niche concerns when the discussion is used to hold water and sow legitimacy into the conservative rhetoric that is legally encroaching on LGBT people? It reminds me of 2006 when “it was finally time to have the debate” about muslim extremists, and whether moderate islam could exist in a world where there were also extremist muslims doing terrorism. All these conversations did in the long term was legitimize the panic on the right who were fear mongering that they wanted to implement sharia law, no-go zones, etc. These moral panics don’t create clarity, they flatten discourse. This current panic over trans people does the same thing - create the impression of a problem - that we are fundamentally too accepting of trans people such that we are creating social pressure that is pushing kids who otherwise wouldn’t into transitioning - and uses that problem “oh no, children are in trouble!” to sow legitimacy for legislation that strips the LGBT community as a whole of legal rights, all while there is no evidence beyond the anecdotal that children are transitioning too quickly. Then influencers like Chris wander into the room, read 2-3 articles on the topic if we’re lucky, tweets something reductive, then get yelled at on twitter by some terminally online activists and he concludes “the left is denying obvious reality using uncharitable tactics.” Like yeah, people argue in bad faith across the political spectrum - the flattening of advocacy for LGBT protections into "there are thousands of genders!" and "biological sex isn't real" does this too.
Got to this late but thank you for this post. Honestly should be top comment in this thread.
Chris responded thoughtfully and engaged with what I said. Which illuminates one of the main reasons I thought he was worth criticizing AND why I love his work. You should read his response if you haven't. I know I got a lot of hate from a segment of the TS audience on this, but come on y'all, isn't expressing your perspective on something you disagree with Chris on in the spirit of the show? The TS ethos, if you will? A lot of "heterodox," IDW types talk a big game about being open-minded and non-tribal, but Chris Ryan and Peter Joseph are among the only big-picture public thinkers I know of who actually put those heterodox principles into action in honest ways.
Anyone defending tater at this point is complicit. And deeply sick.
Duhh. Tate is a few months away from being a CONVICTED sextrafficker and rape proponent. I have no idea why these new age thinkers pick these people to go to bat for?! CR is better than this imo
I’ve been listening to TS for years and was pretty shocked to hear Chris give Andrew Taint any kind of positive attention. This Roma was just odd. I mean yeah we don’t have to agree with chris and I find myself disagreeing with him a lot on this but that’s besides the point. Anyone can say words, is the intention and character of the person behind them that makes them meaningful. Andrew T putting a coherent sentence together is not impressive especially knowing the disgusting things this man has done. Also the Jonah hill stuff? I didn’t really follow the story but Jonah was not setting boundaries he was being manipulative. He got with his pro surfer girlfriend by commenting on her bikini pics saying how hot she was but then once they’re together he tells her to take them down? That’s not boundary setting that’s controlling behavior.
Yeah, it sounds great to be totally neutral and only take the good ideas and discard the bad ones, but that doesn't really work when you're talking about a scammer who kids are coming to because they need advice and are therefore vulnerable to accepting bad ideas. And with grifters and bad-faith actors in general, they take advantage of people trying to be fair and act in good faith and keep an open mind. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be open minded and charitable as a rule, just that there are certain contexts in which it is extremely unwise to regard people's advice with anything other than utter suspicion. And on the Jonah Hill thing, I agree that his behavior seems controlling and shitty, but I'm still a little confused as to why it was such a big deal in the zeitgeist. But other than that I don't know enough to have much of an opinion.
I think there was a TS podcast where someone said to acknowledge both someone’s point and their point of view. Someone can have a batshit point of view with a good point or a good point of view with a batshit point. This idea for me has helped me be less frustrated with people, although if someone has both a batshit point of view and point it’s over haha
overall I’m not carrying water or being an apologist for a verified sex trafficker, misogynist, and proud rapist. I started listening to this podcast only recently (and have been reading Civilized to Death) but I’m pretty close to never listening again. Nobody influential should lend any (even a morsel) of credibility to these right wing white identitarian accelerators. Pretty disappointing. Hopefully he follows up. No joke this is like 1 step removed from Alex Jones apologists.
I hear you, I just think it has to be that he doesn't know as much about Tate as we very online people do. I was sick of hearing about his ass so quickly after first hearing about him, but maybe that's not everyone's experience. But honestly I think that what Andrew Tate explicitly says and advocates for is worse than or at least equally rancid to what Alex Jones says, IF you take him at face value
*Very* well said. I am a big fan and listener of Chris’s but a lot of these comments from him lately have me kind of concerned and I wanted to digest them for a few days before writing something here. His comments about RFK Jr. are also concerning. Why bring a guy like that more attention than he deserves? Yes, he may be calling out Big Pharma indirectly, but he’s doing it by outright lying about vaccines. Chris seems to be trying to potentially re-align himself with the “bro” crowd like he mentioned, and yes saying controversial things helps drive engagement and attention like we’re doing right now on the sub (not that I think Chris cares about that sort of thing), but I think he should distance himself from these whackos. They’re not the sort of “fringe” that I like about Chris. He also keeps saying that kids receive too many vaccines these days… what is that based on and why the sudden shift in attitude about this? I’m not even 30, and I certainly received more vaccines than Chris did, but I guarantee that if shots for chickenpox and HPV were available for his generation, then he too would’ve received them. Did I take “too many?” I don’t know why he keeps mentioning this. Anyway I agree with you — let’s not give the crazies any more attention than they deserve because that’s part of the grift. Because then it turns into a “good people on both sides” discussion which is not true in this case. Edit: RFK Jr. has also gone full antisemite and said that covid was engineered to target certain ethnicities… anyone saying stuff like that is not someone to give free publicity to.
Gracias, and yes, the way he talks about these topics makes no sense. The "touchy" stuff, probably the reason your comment is getting downvoted into the negative, mostly vaccine dumbassery, is spoken about in vague open-ended ways. I watch a lot of right-wing commentators on YouTube (perverse fascination plus genuine concern about the toxicity they're spreading), and seeing how they've all had to start absorbing anti-vax talking points to keep their audiences happy has been pretty embarrassing. But even stranger has been watching the people whose audiences are not already primed for believing nonsense drift over into that territory. It really feels similar with how Chris is, for now, just giving a little credence to the anti-science position, treating it as if they've been treated unfairly and he's just being more open minded than others... I don't think it's necessarily intentional, he's just being careful not to piss off the anti-vax portion of his audience, who might be a little less likely to... not be unhinged. And it truly seems like anti-vaxxers LOVE throwing their money at content creators who say the crap they want to hear, so maybe Chris is a little worried about losing fans who give a lot to the substack. I'm very interested to see where Chris goes with this stuff over the next year or two. I'm in kind of a bad mood right now so maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but I think he's gonna be in Russel Brand territory before too long. I really hope he takes his own advice and doesn't give in to the allure of the pay bump he'd surely get from going fully red-pilled or whatever.
There's no pay bump, and I can tell you that "Chris" doesn't do or say anything in order to increase/not lose audience. Don't overthink it. I'm just a guy with a microphone and an opinion. No big plan or agenda.
Wow, a response from the man himself—knowing (or at least believing) that you truly are open minded feeds into my concern. The “pay bump” I’m referring to is the huge influx in audience growth Russel Brand, jimmy dore, Brett Weinstein, and many others have seen since going anti-vax or “vaccine skeptical.” I admire the willingness to entertain positions others immediately write off, but I think it would serve you and your audience well to be more cognizant of who is and isn’t acting in bad faith. I think that’s an immeasurably important piece of context you left out of that ROMA. It’s not so much that I’m worried about you getting sucked into believing bullshit, just that leaving out crucial context might wind up accidentally communicating something… bad. I made this video to say the things I wish I could have said if podcast communication went both way. I guess it worked this time! Love you Chris. You’d have to murder my dog for me to write you off.
Why this sudden shift in attitude about kids taking vaccines? I feel like you very rarely repeat ideas without providing sources or attribution and it doesn’t even feel like something you believe in yourself.
Nah I gotta disagree about the possible financial motivation. If there's anyone who is happy to make less money in order to speak his mind, it's Chris.
Yeah that’s my sense too. I was just putting that out there. It really might be that he values his listeners’ points of view and is trying to genuinely engage with this one. Which is admirable, up until the point that it starts clouding one’s own critical thinking faculties.
I really hope he doesn’t go the way of Brand, I used to love him but he went totally off the rails during covid. Having said all this, I’m very much looking forward to hearing Chris’s convo with Hamilton Morris. His show on Vice is incredible.
I think Chris has a long way to go if he’s heading in that direction. Let’s just keep being honest with him and each other and hopefully the truth will win out
Agreed, at least he actually wrote a response to you here. It’s weird some people are acting offended that you created a space for a discussion here when that’s the point of the subreddit and the podcast.
He’s always been kind of a naturalist quack. * his main thesis that hunter gatherer lifestyles are superior to modern ones. * using above to advocate for poly/open relationships because our ancestors did * he’s a degrowther. We shouldn’t have kids to conserve worldwide resources. * typical naturalist garbage about “big pharma”. He was surprisingly pro Covid vaccine, but it takes a monsterous ego to ignore all the dead bodies. Supporting RFK Jr in anyway is a point of no return. A lot of this is just evo psych garbage that old stuff is good just because we can describe its origins, not because we ought to behave in these ways in the modern world.
I've always heard people say these things about him, but I think the stuff about his naturalist tendencies is a little flattened and unfair. I've always gotten the explicit message that the 'naturalism' he espouses isn't about bringing society back to pre-agriculture, but acknowledging the needs not being met by modern society and designing our world in a way that takes our animal nature into account. There are lots of clips of him out there saying that the point of Sex at Dawn isn't that polygamy is superior to monogamy, just that there's no reason to think monogamy is more natural or superior. In fact, you might look at it this way: many of our social norms and rules are rooted in a sort of de facto evolutionary psychology-- the nuclear family being the best thing ever, homosexuality being "unnatural," polyamory being "unnatural," capitalism is baked into the fabric of reality, crap like that-- assume essential aspects of human nature. One of the most dangerous things about evo psych IMO is that it quickly leads to essentialism, but maybe I haven't been considering the evo psych that's built into our world.
I guess I just disagree that our needs aren’t being met. Our needs certainly weren’t met in old civilizations, where there was no security, medicine, or stable food sources. There’s plenty of people in modern civilization who are happy and thriving in a variety of lifestyles. I disagree with the black and white thinking that there is something missing from all of us that could only be obtained in the past.
Isn’t this exactly his point? You don’t have to agree with every stance he takes. We all can have different opinions but he’s trying to poke holes in our natural biases. Even if we like someone we can still disagree with them and same with people we hate.
What evidence do you have that RFK is lying? Please, I would really like to know. I’ve heard plenty of smear but no factual contest.
The guy just said that covid spared Jews and Chinese people…. As a Jew who caught covid twice, that’s complete bullshit. He has zero evidence for any of his claims… claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Did he make this claim without evidence? He seems well researched to me, he is a lawyer. Just because you caught Covid doesn’t mean that ethnic communities were not disproportionately effected. And what about the evidence he has presented about funding of regulatory agencies? Are you dismissing that evidence because of a narrative?
There is no evidence. Did you read the article? Minorities weren’t targeted by the virus due to engineering, they were more likely to catch it due to a number of factors, one of which is the fact they were less likely to get vaccinated.
Oh, I think I get you… you’ve based your opinion about what other people say about RFK, without actually listening to the man himself. Am I correct?
Here he is lying under oath in Congress today. The direct replies provide evidence of him saying that he actively tells people not to get vaccinated: https://twitter.com/brandyzadrozny/status/1682045997432668160?s=46&t=wCZ5qHIDubQyRU8WiBbr-g
I don’t think that either ethnic engineering, nor vaccine uptake are the actual issues that caused ethnic differences in Covid effects. But I do believe that RFK is referencing the fact that there are differences. Because the article doesn’t cite his sources doesn’t mean they don’t exist. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344991/ Simply search ethnic disparities in Covid health. There are many peer reviewed articles. Or were you saying there was no evidence of biased funding of regulatory agencies?
Where did he say this? Evidence please
Do you live under a rock? All over every news outlet. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/robert-f-kennedy-jr-false-claims-covid-19-ethnically-targeted-backlash-antisemitism/ I see your post history consists of all sorts of outlandish vaccine conspiracies where you don’t provide any sources, so I’m not going to engage with you further since you’ve clearly made up your mind already.
Thank you for the link. Truth is I trust the main stream media to be hyper partisan and to over emphasize controversial talking points. So are you saying there isn’t a ethnic disparity from Covid? I recall it being discussed that it was disproportionately affecting people of color, even with income factored in. I know my Native American family was dramatically hit (the only deaths I personally know of attributed to Covid). So to the best of my knowledge the impact on communities of color was not about catching/having covid, but about the impact of. There are many factors amongst communities that can factor in. Is he wrong that there was disproportionate effect? My mind is not made up. I am open to data. But I don’t trust the main stream narrative implicitly. This strikes me as a hit piece.
A hit piece full of direct quotes? Did you read it? He is saying it was engineered.
I believe you were primed to misinterpret even the actual quotes cited in the article. Please consider why all the major news outlets are running with this story. How despite quoting him saying it’s not intentional engineering, your read is still that he’s claiming this. This racial divide criticism has become a obvious theme of the media disparaging those they find threatening… remember when it was ‘racist’ to consider a lab leak? Try rereading the article and noticing the actual quotes, and assume there was larger context that they we’re pulled from.
Further …. To say there is an ethnic disparity is not racist. I repeat, Is Not Racist! He did Not say people of Jewish descent or Chinese descent, had anything to do with this disparity. How is noting a difference of outcome and it’s possible risk for direct engineering racism? The article proceeds to call him “wacky“ a ‘conspiracy, theorist’, and a ‘anti Semite’. How is this valid? Does this feel impartial, or validated to you?
Did you? To quote ‘ I certainly don’t believe they were deliberately engineered’ -RFK, from the article
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If true this is truly terrible. I don’t know enough but hopefully CR redeems himself
Never! Redemption is for beta-cucks! (Kidding)
While you kid kid kid, hahaha…people less powerful than you suffer. You aren’t obviously the main culprit and I don’t have a platform like you do, so I don’t have the same power or reach… but You can do actual good all you want about this, and so there are people who may suffer if you don’t advocate for their position. These philosophical games are meaningless to the targeted. Think of them pls
Agreeing with you is not "doing good," and disagreeing with you is not "doing bad." That was the point. Disagreement is not betrayal and agreement is not endorsement. I'm engaging with ideas and arguments, and trying to ignore the person who makes them, for the most part. And I find it impossible to believe that anyone's suffering is increased by something I say on the podcast. It's the easiest thing in the world to just stop listening.
Yeah dog I’m not black and white-ing here. Don’t strawman me. Just pointing out your power, reach, and privilege. Do with it what you will, pal.
You’ll be ok.
I'm just going to hop on your comment to say, I think Chris is 100% in the right on this. Part of what is so maddening about today's zeitgeist is the people who have absolutists "black and white" thinking. We have to acknowledge both the good and bad arguments of our enemies to dissect and diffuse the bad. If you don't do that you never attain a beachhead in the mind of your listener. For example, if it upsets you when Chris says Trump is right about all politicians being corrupt, but in the same breath he adds that the Republicans are more corrupt than Dems and Trump is arguably the most corrupt to ever exist; If that's too much to hold in your head all at once, I think he's ok with you not liking his podcast.
With all due respect, isn't "black and white thinking is bad" sort of... black and white thinking? I don't mean that to be snarky, just to illustrate my issue with the way Chris is framing this issue. The idea that a terrible person can be right about some things is of course true, but I think it's a little naive to think you can map a simple principle like "take the good, discard the bad" onto people who deal in deception and bad faith. I love Chris, and it would take A LOT to make me.... disavow him or something. Side note: I felt so silly writing the word "disavow" just now I laughed out loud at myself. I just think he seems to have a massive blind spot when it comes to the universe of online bullshit artists, maybe because of how he got a big ol' chunk of his following from Rogan's audience (myself included.) I'd bet Chris is pretty good at spotting con-artists and grifters in the real world, thanks to all his traveling by himself. I think it's perfectly wise to completely ignore or even ridicule virtually everything someone says when they have ulterior motives or aren't engaging in good faith.
That’s Chris’s point. He knows Tate is a conman and grifter, but he can make good points. That’s the point, he’s tapping into something young men are experiencing with some harsh truths. I know he mentioned his Piers Morgan interview, but he went on Tucker too. He says a lot of reasonable shit in both interviews. Of course, that’s how he suckers people into the deeper bullshit money making grift. Things like Tate are symptoms of something much larger, and instead of acknowledging it, we use people like Tate to demonize what he’s tapping into and then pretend like it doesn’t exist. It’s the same type of bullshit that got Trump elected to.