I Watched Every Minute of Turning Point USA's AmericaFest So You Don't Have To

The Left is so unhappy. …tend to be very angry, bitter people. They don't like America. They hate us. They're after you. They are after our country. They are seized by a spirit of destruction. They're not attractive. They're not sexy. Conservatives are sexy. It's not the vibe, STOP. Oh, hi. It's me. Your funny uncle who's better in small doses. Last December, thousands of conservative activists

descended on Phenix, Arizona for something called America Fest, a conference put together by the right wing

activist group Turning Point USA. The conference was billed as an event aimed

at “taking America back” and featured some of the biggest names in

conservative politics and media. Now I know I should probably ignore shit like

this because life is hard enough as it is, and I'm going

to give myself an ulcer, but I was curious. For the past few years, Republican politics

have been defined by the presidency of Donald Trump. Whatever Trump wanted was what the party wanted and the GOP's central function was to protect

their leader. This is Donald Trump's party, and I'm a Donald

Trump Republican. And that's fine when you're the incumbent, but the problem with cults of personality

in politics, is that eventually the cult leader loses. And if you don't have a clear ideology that

unites you, some policy agenda that you're trying to get

done, you're going to end up with a bunch of people wondering why they're still wearing these

stupid red hats. Well shit. What are yall doing? So that's what I wanted to figure out: what does the Republican Party stand for after

Trump? And to answer that question, I watched every single minute of this godforsaken

conference. Part one of this video will be a breakdown

of what happened there. And part two, if any of us get there, will be my attempt to make sense of what happened. Fair warning: transphobia, pedophilia, extreme

cringe. I mean, it's called America Fest. What do you expect? I'm going to cast a quick protection spell

before we get started. [eldritch chanting] Okay, let's go. Your computer is not glitching. This is the actual footage that was broadcast

from the conference. They wanted to start with this moving rendition

of the Star Spangled Banner, but the feed went haywire. So instead, we get this unsettling audio peaking

nightmare. I think it's called hyperpop. Then, straight to the pyrotechnics. If you're wondering how a grassroots organization gets a budget for an event like this, this is not a grassroots organization. Turning Point gets millions of dollars every

year from right wing mega-donors like the Koch

brothers, Foster Friess and Bernard Marcus. America Fest, in particular, was sponsored

by the Koch Brothers Heritage Foundation and the Murdoch family's Fox Nation. So this entire conference is just billionaires

paying millionaires to pretend to hate the ruling class. Speaking of which, please welcome your M.C. for this conference, Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk. For far too long, we have allowed self-interested

politicians to take advantage of us. No more. We're taking back our country everybody. We're not going to let it happen. Kirk starts off the conference by going after a bunch of the GOP's favorite punching bags: bashing Critical Race Theory Wokeism diversity, equity and inclusion. bashing trans people Only women can become pregnant. That's it. I said it. I know. bashing Fauci. Fauci should be in prison for how he handled the Chinese coronavirus. Actually, the bulk of Kirk’s speech is about

the pandemic. He peddles a bunch of dangerous and ineffective

treatments. Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D,

vitamin C, azithromycin, aspirin, Club, nother club Intensive care unit. We are waking up against the medical industrial

complex. Kirk makes clear, though, that the purpose

of this conference isn't really to talk about policy. It's about something deeper than that. We'll talk about high taxes and low taxes. We'll talk about free markets. We love all of those things. But we know there's a deeper game being played

everybody than tax policy right now in our country. The game that's being played is very simple. Are you thankful that you're an American,

or are you angry that you're an American? And are you willing to do something about

it? Kirk finishes his speech by taking a second

to remember Bill Montgomery, the other co-founder of Turning Point USA,

who died a few months before the event. This all started when I was 18 years old, and I want to just say thanks to Bill Montgomery, who's passed away for his amazing mentorship

and help. You'll notice that Kirk doesn't mention how

Montgomery died, though. Do you want to guess why? Well, if it isn't the consequences of my own

actions. Next up, the host of America's White Power

Hour, Tucker Carlson. I don't like when it walks. So Tucker's speech starts off pretty normally

I guess. He makes fun of Biden for being old, complains about mask vaccine mandates, and defends the people who rioted at the Capitol

on January sixth. We just arrested people for walking down the

hall in the Capitol building. But then Tucker does the same thing that Kirk

did, arguing that the difference between the Left

and the Right in this country isn't really about policy. People are standing up and saying, "I have an idea, let's get rid of the cops, because I know that's going to make things

better." So why would you say that? Well, there's only one reason to say that, and that's to destroy things for its own sake. There is a spiritual dimension to this. They are seized by something, by a spirit

of destruction. This argument goes on for a while. Tucker says Democrats are too scared to be

good leaders. Oh, the whimpering dog is going to lead the

pack. That's a good idea. No, whimpering dog gets to the back. And argues that the real reason the left wants

to control you is because they secretly hate themselves. Maybe you're in this business in the first

place because there's a huge hollow space inside

that you can't fill. A huge, hollow space that can't be filled. Huh? Well, he's half right. Dad, I'm sorry. There are only two kinds of people. You're either creating something beautiful

or you're tearing it down. That's it. Now, a part of me wants to take the bait here, and make a three hour response video explaining

how, actually, it's the left that wants to build things. It's literally called Build Back Better, dude. Debate me on this. Debate me on this. Debate me bro. DEBATE me on this. Oh shit. Thanks for the subs fam. Shout out to all my obnoxious teenage boys

out there. This is what thoughtfulness looks like, baby. This is all for you. But I don't have it in me. Tucker Carlson does not believe a word of

this shit. He is a trust fund elitist who admits he only

says this stuff because he knows that gullible conservatives

will eat it up. I've made an entire video about Tucker's schtick

that I invite you to rage watch once this is over. But what's interesting about his speech is

how explicitly nonpolitical it is. Kirk and Tucker start America Fest by arguing that being a conservative is not really about your ideology or policy preferences, it's

about your vibe. I definitely don't want to be around crazy

people who want to wreck stuff. I want to be around happy people who want

to build stuff. Are you a creator or a destroyer? Do you love America or do you hate it? Are you a tough dog or scared dog? They tend to be very angry, bitter people. They're always trying to destroy and they've never built anything in their

life. It seems like nobody wants to work these days. That's so true. The whole thing sounds less like a political

action conference and more like a lifestyle brand or a New Age

church. And that's actually how Day One ends, with Tucker encouraging people to flee from

liberal cities, move to the countryside and await the dawning of a new, more righteous era. The whole interior of the country has been

abandoned. It's unpopulated. You can live there if you want. And then you can wait for the dawn, which

is coming. Thank you. Turning Point Action welcomes Donald Trump

Jr. That walk. Oh my goodness. I'm crying. Day two starts with Don Jr describing a country

that has been completely taken over by the radical left. They got pop culture. They got sports and academia, the grooming

grounds for our children. They've taken over the upper echelons of law

enforcement. They've taken over the upper echelons of our

military. He hits all the classics:

Critical Race Theory, a transgender swimmer at the University of

Pennsylvania, Jussie Smollett for some reason, still. It's the kind of shit you'd expect to hear

from Fox and Friends, which is almost certainly where he got it

from. Their ideas suck. Their ideas are garbage. Wow. That was so powerful. Then things get a little darker. Don Jr brings up Kyle Rittenhouse, the guy who shot and killed two people during a racial justice protest in Kenosha, and celebrates the fact that one of those

victims had been previously convicted of sexually

abusing a child. Doesn't mean they maybe deserved to get shot, but if someone's going to get shot, it might as well be a pedophile. He then goes on to defend the January six

riot, specifically condemning the Republicans who

spoke out against the insurrection. We don't need more Mitt Romneys. But if you fight, we're all going to go to

war for you. Just really dark shit all around. And it only gets darker from here. Please welcome Sarah Palin! Actually, I'm already tired of this intro

music, and thanks to my patrons, I don't have to monetize my videos on YouTube, which means I can start adding in my own intro

music. Smack my ass like a drum. It comes down to, you know, darkness and lightness and good versus evil. This interview is about as heavy on substance

as you'd expect. Critical Race Theory abortion The cameraman takes a cigarette break in the

middle of the interview, resulting in this long, uncomfortable zoom

in on Kirk's face. The prophecy is true. Hey, say something deranged about vaccines. I want you to raise your hand if you or someone

you know had a serious adverse event to this vaccine,

raise your hand. Huh? What's going on here? That's not how vaccine research works. Facts don't care about what you saw on Facebook. Eventually, Kirk just stops talking to Palin

entirely and goes on another unprompted rant against

trans people. It is not freedom to have a nine year old chemically castrate the way God made them. Teachers are now recruiting students into

transgender lifestyles. I don't want to give this vile shit any more

airtime, so let's fast forward to something a bit more

reasonable. PSYCHE. Did you actually think this was going to get

more reasonable? We're living in a failed state, baby. It only gets worse from here. The reason why you've seen me attacked this

way is because they hate us. She's got a point. Greene has gotten pretty good at not repeating

her QAnon, anti-Semitic beliefs when the cameras

are rolling, so she pretty much sticks to the script here. Build the wall. End abortion. Creepy, homophobic and transphobic stuff. Nancy Pelosi completely erased gender this

year. I'm kind of one of those gender people. I'm all about the male and the female. Ew Michelle. Most of her speech, though, is spent defending the January six rioters, peddling a conspiracy

theory that the insurrection was actually a false

flag operation designed to help start a communist revolution. Democrats call it an insurrection, but I think we can start calling it a fed-surrection. What we're going through, ladies and gentlemen, is a communist revolution, because ever since

January sixth, we've seen Americans hunted down, their houses

raided by the FBI. Alexa, what is communism? Communism is when the government does something

I don't like. Communism is whatever I want it to be. Words have no meaning. Hail, hydra. No. Alexa, stop. Alexa, STOP. Then comes this guy who gets on stage and actually starts making what sounds like

a serious policy argument about inflation and government spending. Prices keep rising, thanks to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and all

the rest of the Biden Inflation brigade. Obviously, I think his argument is wrong. My whole next video is about this topic, but

it is an argument and I was getting excited to mark this down as a serious policy idea being discussed at

America Fest. And then... The good news is you can protect yourself

and your family with wealth, with gold and silver. My new book, Real Money for Free People... God dammit. The whole thing was an ad to get you to buy gold and silver. He's the live version of all those goddamn

Fox News commercials trying to scare boomers into giving away their

money. We'll be raffling off a tube of 20 silver

eagles. You don't need to be present to win, just fill out a slip at the table. Doesn't count. Mark it zero. You think I'm fucking around here, MARK IT

ZERO. Next up. Oh, boy. Next is a panel discussion titled How Cultural Marxists Hijacked America, featuring three white guys who've never read

a book in their goddamn lives. Most important thing you really need to know

about Critical Race Theory is its calling everything that you want to control "racist" until you

control it. Nope. That's bait. I've already made an entire video about Critical

Race Theory. Not doing this again. Because they want to actually create a situation

where people who are considered authentically black get

all the power. You let this happen. They take over everything. It's the end of the country. I said I'm not taking the bait. Honestly, I was tempted to just skip this

panel entirely. But about halfway through, this guy starts

getting a little high off the feedback he's getting

from the audience and decides to kick this shit into high gear. Critical Race Theory is a funnel into Queer

Theory, and I know I've shared a stage with you many

times and said, "Well, Queer Theory is a topic for another

day, Charlie." That's today. Uh oh. This is what Mao Zedong did. He separated the culture into five categories

that were considered red, for communist, and five categories

that were considered black for being bad. Where is this going? So if you're white, you have a black racial

cultural identity. But if you become gender fluid, you have a

red one now. And what you have is Critical Race Theory,

creating both a distraction from it and, AND a funnel for

the white, straight male kids to want to start

identifying this way. Holy shit. For the record: this is not some random dude

who walked on stage. This is James Lindsay, a man who has appeared

in every right wing media outlet you can think

of. A man who is constantly referred to as an

expert on wokeism and cultural Marxism, arguing that the point of Critical Race Theory is to make straight white guys so ashamed

of being white that they choose to become queer so they can

be minorities too. They got us boys. The jig is up. This is sexual and whatever else grooming. The Communists have a handshake agreement

with the pedophiles. I'm not even going to exaggerate. Okay, enough. Speaking of enabling pedophiles: please welcome Congressman Jim Jordan, a man who's been credibly accused of turning

a blind eye to the molestation of his own students while

working as a wrestling coach at Ohio State. Here's the fundamental issue. The left, which now controls the Democrat

Party, they don't like America. Critical race theory bad. Fauci bad. Trump good. Who's next? It's Byron Donalds, a Florida congressman

who voted against the certification of the 2020 election, but who claims he's here to talk about the

real issues. I know we could talk about immigration. We could talk about spending. We could talk about the debt. We can talk about inflation. We can talk about Afghanistan. But I ran for Congress for one reason, and that's because we got a country to save. The first thing is, if you're going to save

America, what you actually want to have is a country

where you're allowed to free... you're allowed freely, to think, to speak, to post, you can share

memes. You are a sitting member of Congress. What the fuck? Sorry about that, guys. I had to take a quick shit post, but I feel

much better now. So we got "memes good," I guess. Any other big policy ideas for us, BYRON? Let's talk about economics. I'll talk a little bit about money. Taxes. We should keep them low. You see, they like to talk so much about how

the people at the top take so much money. Last time I checked, when I was a kid, man we begged our moms for $130 to go buy

a pair of Air Jordans. Michael Jordan didn't make me buy his sneakers. You know what? That counts. He technically made an argument about economics. We're taking it. He also goes on to say that we should be doing more domestic oil drilling, which makes sense

given that he, like America Fest, is heavily funded by donations from the oil and gas industry. The cameraman reads a little too much queer

theory and decides to give us a quick zoom in on

the congressman's nuts, and then it's on to the next thing. Stand beside her and guide her through the

night with the light from above. From the mountains... This is an ad for a company that sends you a box Of raw meat every month. God bless America. My home sweet home. Girl, find the note. If you don't know what Good Ranchers is, that

means you have not been listening to Charlie Kirk's

podcast enough. Actually, it turns out that a huge chunk of

this conference is just commercials for companies that run

ads on Charlie Kirk's podcast. This is an ad for Patriot Mobile, a pro-America cell phone service that's been

promoted by a bunch of right wing podcasters lately. Voting alone is not enough. We must use our dollars to support like minded

companies who fight for our rights and beliefs. Just for fun, I looked up some of the reviews

for Patriot Mobile and um... HOH BOY. Hot mess scam! The grift is strong with this one. Agents are not truthful. A part of me does feel bad for the people

who fell for this scam, but this is what you get for putting your

faith in the free market. At least you get to keep your novelty fuck

Biden T-shirt. Next up is Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who opens her speech with this absolute banger

of a thesis statement. The country has changed. There is a culture war going on and you need to understand that this country is the greatest country on earth. Why are you all clapping? Those words don't mean anything. In fairness, though, Pirro's speech is weirdly one of the most policy focused of the entire

conference. She focuses on law and order, blaming the

recent rise in homicides on the defund the police movement and fear

mongering about the amount of fentanyl crossing the border. Two grams will kill you. It'll kill all of us. To be clear, both of these arguments are wrong

on the merits. The police have not been defunded and border fentanyl seizures are actually

up under Biden, but she is still technically making arguments

about government policy, so it counts. Policy wonk, Jeanine Pirro, everyone. Next up is a speech from the founder of Jimmy

John's sandwich shop. Yep. Jimmy John's is run by a right wing weirdo. I'm sorry to be the one to break the news

to you. Smells are only free because they exploit

their workers. And closing out day two, Florida Congressman

Matt Gaetz, another Republican credibly linked to allegations of sex with minors. Jesus Christ. Bring on the midterms, baby. Gaetz's speech is all fire and brimstone. Critical race theory, Hunter Biden's laptop, cringey immigrant bashing. I think every illegal immigrant that we deport should get one original Hunter Biden painting. Lame, booooo, tomato, tomato, tomato. But most of the speech is spent describing what Republicans should do to Democrats if

they retake power in the upcoming midterms. Every committee gets an investigation to run, every Biden agency gets a colonoscopy and Hunter Biden finally gets a damn subpoena. Gaetz never really explains what these investigations

should be about or what they would try to accomplish. But to the audience, it doesn't seem to matter. The radical left today deserves confrontation

and contempt, and condemnation, not civility masquerading

around like surrender. Okay. So actually, Gaetz says something else in

this speech, something that I think is really remarkable. But I want to save it for the second half

of this video. Don't freak out. I'm just building an argument here. Daddy's got you. For now, just know that day two ends sounding

a lot like day one with almost biblical language about the arrival

of a new dawn. This last year has been tough on many, and I'm no exception. I can assure you that. When it's darkest is just before when those

great rays of sunlight are about to shine through. America's oldest president might come just

before America's youngest. Will Charlie Kirk be old enough to run for president in 2024? This is James O'Keefe, right wing con artist famous for publishing

fake exposes about the radical left, lip synching in a 20 minute musical about

his life narrated by him. What on Earth they got you on? I have no idea. I haven't been charged with anything yet. You haven't been charged? I ain't never seen nothing like this before. Felon, terrorist, white supremacist, racist,

pervert. Was this really worth it? They hired dancers for this dance. They rented out rehearsal space. What are we watching? That's it. There's no speech. It's literally just the musical. I said why are we at drag brunch? Speaking of right wing things that are kind

of gay, please welcome Benny Johnson, a guy who got fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarizing, demoted at IJR for plagiarizing, and now works as a full time Tucker Carlson

impersonator. You deserve to know these facts. Benny Johnson, everybody. This scares the libs so much. Libs are sitting alone in an apartment right

now with some hairless cat eating Uber Eats. Wait. Is this fucking play about us? So I just got to that part of the Benny Johnson

speech, and I am alone in my apartment, and that is Uber Eats next to me and I do have a cat, but he's not hairless, so fuck you Benny Johnson. Libs don't want to procreate. They're not attractive. They're not sexy. Conservatives are sexy. We are the sexy, happy parents of America. And we're creating the next generation of

freedom.. Okay, well, if we're being petty, I know Benny Johnson is in his hetero era

right now, but he has publicly tweeted about getting

served targeted ads for gay sex cruises before, so let's just say there's a good chance he's plagiarizing his sexual orientation- Johnson's speech is the definition of head

empty, just vibes arguing that the problem with leftists is

that they're not cool enough to be the heroes of

a movie. Your hero, in your favorite story, it would suck if the hero in that story was

a modern day, whiny, sad, miserable, entitled, spoiled,

pretentious, conformist, leftist. This is seriously his whole argument. He shows clips from Star Wars, Home Alone

and The Lion King, asking the audience to imagine how bad the

movie would be if the main character were a lib. Do we like lib Simba or do we want red pilled Simba? What's going on with you? What are you talking about? He also includes a clip from the movie Mean

Girls because you know... The dolls are the dolls. Pretty amazing how Regina George actually is literally the fascist. Whereas you have Cady here, she charts her own path against the... What are they called? The mean girl squad? You know they're called "the plastics" sis. Probably had it on Blu ray. Benny invites his wife on stage for a very heterosexual kiss for the audience. This is definitely fruity. And he closes his speech by encouraging people to grab their guns and defend their country. Like Kevin in Home Alone. We're going to save America. We're going to complete our hero arc. I know you all have guns, probably bigger

than BB guns. And we're going to defeat the destructive

elements that want to wreck our house. Okay, sis. See you on Grindr. Up next, an entire panel about how the election

was stolen featuring two congressmen who helped incite

the January six riot. I'm not stopping for this. We have to move on. Now, please welcome every service worker’s

worst nightmare. They aren't after me, folks. They're after you. They're after our children. They are after our country. Critical race theory, defending the rioters, making fun of Hunter Biden. Actually, most of her speech is just straight

up name calling. It's kind of wild. I'm tired of having brother marrying, violence

inciting, parmesan smoking, terrorist supporting, child sniffing commies wreck this country. And then, without missing a beat, Father god, I thank you. I thank you for the blood of Jesus. Not thank you, Jesus after all that. As we have the armor of salvation, the sword

of the spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, the Boots of Elvenkind, and the Bag of Holding! Christian Dominionism is just Dungeons and

Dragons if the final boss were your own intelligence

score. That's right. Some jokes are just for me. I was bought and paid for by the blood of

Jesus. Actually, she was bought and paid for by her husband's oil and natural gas company, a fact that she tried to hide from the public despite introducing bills that would personally enrich her family. At this point in the conference, I was starting to zone out a bit and I figured

I'd basically gotten the gist of what America Fest had to

offer. And then. Kyle Rittenhouse, just a month after he was acquitted for his killings in Kenosha, walks on stage to a standing ovation from

his supporters. Just a few weeks earlier, Rittenhouse had

been sobbing about how traumatized he was by his decision to gun down civilians on the street. Now, he was receiving a hero's welcome, promising to take revenge on the media outlets that had covered his trial. I don't know, but some accountability is coming. I'd be on the lookout. Accountability may be coming. I don't have anything to say about this that hasn't already been said by smarter people. The whole thing breaks my brain. Let's just power through the rest of this. Next to the stage is Jack Posobiec, a neo-Nazi collaborator who tweets Nazi propaganda and hangs out with neo-Nazi organizers. One Nation under God. And closing out Day three. It's Ted Cruz. This isn't me. This is the actual song from the conference. Like many of the speakers at America Fest,

Cruz starts off sounding like he's actually going to talk

about real policy issues. We're seeing an assault on our constitutional

liberties, an assault on free speech, an assault on the

Second Amendment. But that is literally as specific as he gets. There's no mention of a bill being debated or a court case being decided. Congress is not seriously considering legislation

on any of these topics, and we have a 6-3 conservative

Supreme Court, so I am genuinely curious as to what assault he is talking about here. But that is the last we hear of it before Cruz falls back on the same schtick as everyone

else. There is a difference between boys and girls. Jesus Christ, that's Jason Bourne. The left is so unhappy. They're shrill. They're angry. They're pissed. How many radical leftist does it take to screw

in a light bulb? That's not funny. You're the one bombing. Believe it or not, day three ends even more depressingly than

the others. Not with religious language about the arrival

of a new dawn, but with Ted Cruz, one of the most powerful

members of the U.S. Senate, begging the audience to subscribe to his podcast. Find your kids or your grandkids, and get them to subscribe you to the podcast. Homestretch, everybody. It's not your computer. The feed glitches out again. Every time they try to perform the national

anthem, it's just like, "please do not tag me in this

shit." The last day of America Fest starts with,

you guessed it, another panel on Wokeism featuring a bunch

of straight white guys. This one's called The Culture War in the American

War Machine and for a brief second, I hoped that this

might be like a libertarian critique of the military industrial

complex or something, but... nah. The war machine is good. We just don't want it to be trans. When you're in combat, you have to accept the situation for what

it IS man. When you ask me to say that a man can be a

woman... What else can you convince me to say? You can convince me to say whatever you want

me to say. They're shrill. They're angry, they're pissed. Which brings us, mercifully, to the final

speech of the conference, during which Charlie Kirk returns to the stage to give a dire warning about the state of

America's youth. This is the most depressed, most suicidal,

most drug addicted, most childless generation in American history, And we should take a pause and ask ourselves

the question, “what is causing this and what are we doing

to stop it?” It's a genuinely good question, and an excellent opportunity to talk about

some of the issues that are actually causing hopelessness among

the next generation. To talk about any of the big systemic problems that you might expect a political party to

have some policy ideas for addressing. So what solutions does Charlie Kirk have for

the next generation of desperate, anxious, genuinely

screwed Americans? Here is the amazing message of positivity

and optimism I have for you. Through Jesus Christ, through the teaching

of the Scriptures, every single person here can break through

any of that cycle of negativity you're in right now. Read the Bible. Have you tried dedicating one day out of the

week to the Lord and turning off that stupid smartphone? Use your phone less. I think technology is playing a huge role

in this. Don't waste your money on college. You have a business idea. Go do it. That's so true. And most importantly, learn something new

every day, preferably by listening to Charlie Kirk's

podcast. Listen my podcast, you can listen to Tucker. Whatever it is. America Fest ends not with a policy vision

for improving the country, but with this Jordan Peterson style demand

to focus on yourself and stop complaining so

much. We used to tell young people "you're the problem and you have a lot of work to do and America

is wonderful." Now we say to young people, "You're wonderful and America's terrible," and this generation is going to turn, get

it? The trajectory of the nation towards one that

is filled with liberty and virtue and eternal things. God bless you guys. Thank you so much. And that's it. Congratulations bitch, we've been through

it. And you fucking made it, girl. I'm not a dicktit. You're a fucking dicktit. So what is this? What? What? In his book, How Fascism Works, philosopher Jason Stanley outlines the ten

pillars of fascist thinking. The ten themes or ideas that show up over

and over again in fascist movements. And uh.... hoh boy. They are all here. You've got the really obvious ones, of course: the obsession with law and order, the hatred of academics and intellectuals, this sense of being victimized by minorities

and outsiders. They're after you. But you've also got some of the less common

b-sides here: the intense paranoia around gender and sexual

predators, a fear of cities as being overrun by thugs

and criminals. And most notably, this distinction between

us and them, real Americans and anti-Americans. At the heart of fascist propaganda is this

idea of a perfect enemy: a left that is both scared and weak, but also in control of every aspect of society. A left that wins elections not because of the strength of their ideas - they have no

ideas - but because they lie and cheat. A left that is motivated not by good faith

policy differences or even by natural explanations like selfishness

or stupidity, but by a spirit of destruction. This deep and inexplicable desire to hate

their country and destroy what does not belong to them. A liberal might hear this kind of thing and

laugh, right? You're never going to win the popular vote

talking like that. But the point of fascist propaganda is not

really to win elections. It's to lay the groundwork for rejecting them. After all, if a deranged mob were trying to

wreck your house, as Benny said, you wouldn't ask them to put

it up for a vote. You would defend your house, grab your gun like Kevin. Mow them down like Kyle. Why not kill them? They might be pedophiles. And don't you know that all communists are

basically pedophiles? And don't you know that all of them are basically

communists? Let's stop the communist revolution. In fascist propaganda the whole idea of elections starts to feel undemocratic, just another

way that the lying, cheating left takes advantage of the

silent majority. Which explains why nearly every speaker at

America Fest voted to overturn the results of the last

election and why, at both Q&A sessions at the conference, the first question the crowd asked wasn't "How do we win over moderates?" or "What policies shall we enact?" It was “when can we start shooting them?" The Second Amendment is designed to basically retaliate against the government whenever they go to tyrannical. And my question is, when do we draw that line? Considering all we hear about Fauci, Biden and all the treason in the past 11 months, are they going to take applications for the

firing squad? Because I'll be number one. But as scary as that all is, it's not really what surprised me about America

Fest. In a past life, I used to go undercover to right wing conferences to keep track of what

they were saying. Here's me at CPAC 2012, posing with the head

of the country's largest anti-gay group at the

time. Yes, she was eating a Nature Valley bar in

this picture. And yes, this is me trying to dress like a

straight conservative .

This "the left hates America" shit has been bubbling up on the right for a long time, and this has always been where it's headed. But what surprised me about America Fest was

just how empty it all felt. They didn't prepare me for this. America Fest billed itself as a conference

about taking America back, about sticking it to the ruling class and returning power to everyday Americans. But after four days of speeches, I still have no idea what that's supposed

to look like. For a political action conference, there was almost no talk of political action

at all. Barely a mention of economic policy or health

care policy. No mention of what should be done about the student debt crisis or the medical debt

crisis or the housing crisis. Nothing about our country's infrastructure, Or the fact that the rich are getting richer while bosses steal billions from their workers. Even on COVID, there was lots of complaining

about masks and vaccine mandates, but no explanation

of what the government should be doing instead, or why America has one of the worst COVID

mortality rates for wealthy countries on the planet. Instead of a set of policy ideas, what you got was this Fox News bullshit about Jussie Smollett and Hunter Biden's laptop and only women can become pregnant. Instead of a coherent ideology, what you got was this middle school fantasy

about the libs being unfunny and conservatives being

sexy heroes. A part of me wants to describe this as identity

politics, but identity politics are usually about getting

something done. Queer people band together because they want to secure specific legal protections. Racial minorities band together because they want to fix racist policing practices. What happened at America Fest was identity

instead of politics, all resentment and fake patriotism with no real political project attached to

it. We know there's a deeper game being played,

everybody. And look, if you're Charlie Kirk or Tucker

Carlson, I get it. If all you're trying to do is rile up your

audience so they stick around for the next commercial

break, it makes sense that you'd argue that politics isn't really about policy. The beauty of this head empty just vibes crap

is that it never really ends, so you can spend your

whole career complaining about woke libs while cashing

in checks from whatever meat box company is sponsoring

you that month. But at America Fest, even the politicians

seemed to be arguing that politics is nothing more than a big show. One of Congress's most renowned performers

recently criticized the Freedom Caucus for using performance as

a tool to rally our legions and retake power. When did we become a movement that dogged

on a good performance? Reagan was an actor. I'm on a stage with a whole lot of pyrotechnics. Stagecraft is statecraft. So the operative question is not whether your representatives are performers. We all are. The question is: for whom? In Right Wing Culture In Contemporary Capitalism Mathias Nilges argues this type of empty, performative virtue signaling is actually

one of the central functions of fascist propaganda. Taking people's legitimate feelings of frustration

and anger and channeling them towards meaningless, apolitical

bullshit. The extreme right has traditionally relied

on a semblance of rebelliousness, billing itself

as a political mass movement while ultimately depoliticizing the public sphere. This connected set of tactics obfuscates structural

problems and puts pseudo political slogans, Let's go Brandon! disinformation campaigns, This is sexual grooming. and conspiracy narratives Calling it a fed-surrection. in place of political analysis, debates and

programs. I'm sorry, guys. I don't know why the left writes like this. Just bear with me, okay? The co-optation of revolutionary energy and

its displacement to broad forms of anger directed at enemies who are said to threaten mythical notions

of racial and national purity is part and parcel

of fascism. In other words, fascist propaganda takes the anger that should

be directed at the ruling class and launches it flaccidly

in the wrong direction, creating the illusion of rebellion without actually challenging the people in

power. And if you look for it, you can see this hijacking everywhere at America

Fest. Speakers would rail against the medical industrial

complex when talking about vaccines, but Republicans fight tooth and nail against

any legislation that would actually regulate pharmaceutical

companies. Speakers railed against the influence of special interest in politics, but Republicans have squashed every effort

to pass campaign finance reform, and nearly every

speaker on stage was bankrolled by super PACs or the oil lobby. And maybe the most shameless example came

during that first panel on cultural Marxism, after the bizarro rant about queer theory, when one of the panelists said this. Cultural Marxism is the greatest gift to the

super elite left. These are people who have corporations, they want to operate unencumbered by the government

or by the people, and they've realized instead of Amazon treating their warehouse workers well or Google treating black people well, all they have to do is post a black square

on Instagram and then all of a sudden they can do whatever horrible stuff they were going to

do. They're not actually trying to have equitable

distribution of the wealth to the workers in the Amazon

warehouse. All they have to do is virtue signal by sending

a check to communist, Marxist, Black Lives Matter and they announce they’re the greatest people

on the planet. It's not a bad argument, right? Corporations do pay lip service to woke causes to make themselves look good while they exploit

their own workers. Corporate Democrats do the same shit, making cringey symbolic gestures instead of

passing legislation that would improve the lives of

working class Americans. This argument is actually the kind of thing you might expect to hear from a leftist or

communist. But in the context of America Fest, it's deranged. The right doesn't give a shit about regulating

corporations or redistributing the wealth. All Republicans have done for the past 20

years is pass corporate tax cuts and roll back protections for workers and labor unions. America Fest started with a quote from Ronald fucking Reagan blasted over an image of MLK and Rosa Parks. Sorry about slipping into my falsetto, everybody. This seemingly paradoxical combination of

anti-capitalism with policies aimed at benefiting the ultra

wealthy is a central aspect of the right wing strategy. These connected strategies serve to protect the economic elite whose interests are threatened by the anti-capitalist sentiments that current

crises generate, but that fascism collapses into a concern

with culture and identity, fostering a grotesquely distorted version

of a mass movement whose aims are contracted to hatred and violence. The day may come when our movement calls for the master legislators, the skilled compromisers. But this is not that day. Let's not prove our valor by enduring pain. I'd like to start dishing it out. Less fortitude, more attitude. In fascist thinking, politics is not about

taking care of each other or even about taking care of ourselves. It's about dunking on the enemy. Arrest Fauci, defeat communism, there are

only two genders. These phrases have the same function as shit

like build the wall and lock her up. Not so much a statement of a political goal

as they are a slogan to signal which side you are on. But what happens when dunking on the enemy

isn't enough? When it turns out that tormenting trans people and arresting Fauci doesn't make you any less

sick or broke or miserable? Instead of political solutions, what fascism offers are purely individual

ones. You get COVID because you had to work during

a pandemic to pay your rent? Take some Advil or ivermectin. Didn't save our co-founder, but maybe it'll

save you. You feel powerless in the face of giant corporations that exploit and manipulate you? Give your money to these conservative corporations that will also exploit and manipulate you. You feel desperate in an economy that's rigged against the working class? Invest in gold and silver or crypto or any

other scam that promises to protect you from the horrors

of the free market. And when that doesn't work, when you're still hopeless and anxious, living paycheck to paycheck while billionaires

get another round of corporate tax cuts, pray to God. Love your country. Clean your room. Hell, go shoot someone if you have to. Do anything other than question whether the radical leftists they keep warning you

about are actually the ones who are screwing you

over. This is why fascists and capitalists always end up on the same side. Why the Nazis were supported by big businesses

and corporations who bankrolled the party, and why right wing billionaires give dipshits

like Charlie Kirk millions of dollars to put on events like

America Fest. Not because the ultra rich really care about

the Jewish question or the gender question, but because ultimately fascists and capitalists want the same thing: a public that thinks of politics as nothing

more than the fucking Hunger Games. A spectacle of cruelty and revenge where you can cheer for your team and take joy in the suffering of your enemy, but that never truly threatens the people

in power. As Henry Giroux wrote in 2019: operating under the false assumption that

there are only individual solutions to socially produced

problems, neo liberal fascism renders human beings numb

and fearful, immune to the demands of economic and social

justice, and increasingly divorced from matters of

politics, ethics, social responsibility, all the while becoming increasingly susceptible to political shocks and the seductive pleasures of the manufactured

spectacle. Now I know what you're probably thinking. What has Carlos been eating? Ass, okay? Can you focus for 5 minutes? You might also be thinking, “well, what are we going to do about it?” What are we gonna do about it? Every time I talk about this stuff, half the

comments are like, “nice video dicktit, but what are we going

to do about it? I don't know, Jenanda. Jenanda? Fascism is a virus that destroyed entire countries of fully educated adults before I was even a glint in my father's nutsack. Sorry. Parent's nutsack. Forgot Pelosi banned gender. I am not sexy or cool enough to think that

anything I say is going to stop someone from falling down the right wing rabbit hole, okay? But I will say this. I don't think head empty fascism is the kind

of thing you can beat with facts and logic. You can't beat it by appealing to shit like

compromise or civility. To be honest, I don't even think you can beat

it by just passing popular policies. As ridiculous as it was, the stuff you saw at America Fest is basically

indistinguishable from what happens on Fox News every night, and Fox has been the number one cable news

network in America every year for the past 20 years. Because for all that fascists get wrong, and they get nearly everything wrong, what they get right is their understanding

that, when people are angry, vibes matter a lot more than good governance. The reason that young people turn to fascism

instead of Marxism is that while Marxism presents them, fascism represents them. The appeal of the focus on identity lies in

the sense of personal validation and recognition that

it offers, and fascism understands that the desire for

representation is a powerful tool for the depoliticization

of the working class, posting folk and fatherland as a substitute for their own thinking caste. God somebody tattoo that quote on my fat- Fascism may not offer solutions to people's

problems, but what it does offer is a simple us versus

them story, easy targets for people to direct their anger

at. And as much as I wish that you could just

debate people out of that, calmly explain that trans people are not the

source of their suffering and that none of this reactionary bullshit

has ever helped anyone except the rich assholes

who sell it... It's just not realistic. Humans are still deeply emotional, ego driven

creatures, and if you don't give them somewhere to put

their anger, they're going to end up aiming at whatever

marginalized group fascists tell them to blame first. What we need is a better story, a better "them" for us to rage against. A political project that takes people's legitimate feelings of resentment and frustration

and channels them not towards head empty nonsense, but towards real revolution. Reforms that will actually challenge the ruling

class and improve the material, nay, physical conditions of people's lives. I'm talking about class war Jenanda. Eating the rich. Abolishing billionaires. Rolling out some guillotines, metaphorically. Okay, no. Alexa, stop. Not that song. We need a new song. I'm talking about good old fashioned economic

antagonism, baby. I know, I know, the sweet little liberal in

my head is horrified at the thought of it. Wishes we could just talk through our differences over bipartisan beers in the Rose Garden, like in the good old days. I just wish we could all get along like we

used to in middle school. I wish that I could bake a cake made out of

rainbows and smiles. And we'd all eat it and be happy. But those days are over now. We are a country on the verge of real democratic

collapse, with a government that seems incapable of

doing the bare minimum to take care of its people. Rage is the correct response to the way things

have been going lately. The only question now is which side gets to

claim and wield it. And it should not be the side of mega-corporations

and oil barons cosplaying as revolutionaries. People want a vibe? Give them a vibe. People want a spectacle? Give them a spectacle. I guess what I really want for the left is a little less conversation and a little more God damn… You can share memes. Some people might, you know, they don't really like them. A wave of workers strikes sweeping across

America thousands across different industries have

already walked out demanding better pay, better working conditions. The bosses will keep getting richer and we'll

keep getting poorer unless we get together. After years of frustration, it feels like

a dam is bursting. Workers are standing up everywhere. … another sign of the rising spirit of activism

and solidarity in the American labor movement. What we're going through, ladies and gentlemen,

is a communist revolution.