Big Manky American Christian Fascists

Hi, folks. It's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

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Be useless in Jerusalem, you crow-cut owners. Welcome to the Blind Buy podcast.

If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. Before I begin, I have some exciting news.

I'm going to be doing a new tour of Wales, Scotland, and England in a year's time in October 2026.

because Because I've already done a fucking tour, and that was a lot, so I need a year before I do another one.

However, there's a huge amount of cracking tans that listen to this podcast, so I'm gonna come back and do some gigs. So, I'd like to announce my new tour of

Wales, Scotland, and England. I like that order, I like that order.
Wales, Scotland, and England in fucking autumn 2026.

I'm gonna be in Brighton, the Brighton Dome, Cardiff in the New Theatre, Coventry in Warwick Arts Centre, Bristol at the Bristol Beacon, the Barbican Hall in London, can't wait to do the Barbican, Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, the Glasshouse in Gateshead, fuck me, where the fuck is Gateshead?

Uh the theatre, right, good old Nottingham. Maybe I'll see the Viking Museum this time, I missed it the last time, good old Nottingham.
Can't wait to get back to Nottingham. Gateshead.

I haven't a fucking clue where Gateshead or what it is. I don't know, but I'm gigging there.
That means there must be

some 10-foot declines in Gateshead if there's a gig booked. I don't book these fucking gigs.
Clearly, if I'm just hearing that a place called Gateshead exists, but

by fucking next year, I'm gonna be dripping in Gateshead. I'm gonna know everything about Gateshead.
Just like when I went to

Becks Hill. I'd never heard of Becks Hill before, but I gigged.
That was a strange fucking place that was

when I gigged in Becks Hill. I don't regret it.

I don't regret it. It felt very purgatory-ish.

Actually, I fucking love Bex Hill. What a weird place.

I stood on the beach where William the Conqueror came. Where William the Conqueror came and did a bit of 1066.
I stood on that beach.

I stayed in a very strange and odd little hotel. A strange hotel where everyone who worked there was like 16 and everyone who stayed there was either me or an year old

and then I nearly drowned

I went out to the beach the William the Conqueror beach in fucking Bexhill and misjudged the tide

and the tide came in and I nearly died but fuck it Bexhill was great I'm not doing any gigs in Bexhill but I'm glad I went there Gateshead I've got my eye on you. I don't know what you are.

I don't haven't a fucking clue where you are. But I'm gigging in Gateshead, right? On the 29th of October 2026.

Oh, and I'm gigging in Guildford. Guildford on the 24th of October 2026.

Again, I don't haven't a fucking clue where Guilford is, but Guilford.

Guilford's actually quite special to me because, and the only reason I know the name Guilford is

when I was a child, a teenager, but 13.

I used to, I used to read a magazine called Viz. My brothers had it, a very funny comic.
And in Viz magazine, this is the 90s, they used to sell equipment for growing cannabis and cannabis seeds.

And one of the shops you could order this stuff from was a place called Esoteric Hydroponics in Guildford.

And I saved up with about 13, 14 years of age, listening to Cypress Hill. Fucking obsessed with Cypress Hill.
Pure fucking autism. I'm sure I've mentioned this on a podcast before.

There's a full podcast in this.

I was obsessed with Cypress Hill. I was obsessed with the fact that they had cannabis leaves on everything.

You couldn't get...

You could get hash in Ireland, but you couldn't get weed. Weed was not a thing, not in the 90s.
Weed was a post-9-11 thing. When I was growing up in the 90s, there was hash.

There was five spots, there was ten spots. That was it.
No one had weed. Weed was something that I had to hear about on Cypress Hill rap songs, and I had to look at weed leaves.

And I became obsessed with cannabis. Fucking obsessed.
So, without incriminating myself, I

saved up all my money, I'd say, for a year and a half.

14 years of age, a year and a half, and I ordered from Esoteric Hydroponics in Guildford I ordered a mercury vapor light

for growing certain plants and probably seeds as well and a book I ordered a book called the marijuana grower's guide by mel Rosenthal which had photographs of cannabis plants on the inside this is the 90s there was no fucking internet there was nothing but this Here's the thing, this wasn't like

just some bold teenager growing cannabis, like it wasn't that. This was this was undiagnosed autism.

It wasn't even about the cannabis. It was obsession.
Fuck, I'm talking consistent, continual obsession about cannabis, cannabis plants, how to grow them.

And that book that I got, the marijuana growers guide,

it wasn't just a book about growing cannabis. I still have it.
I still read it. It's one of my prized possessions.

It's not even a book about growing cannabis. It was

a very, very rigorous book about horticulture, about plants, about nutrients. And I fucking ate this book up.
I would read it every single day.

I would retreat to my safe fucking space at home and I would read this book and drink tea and listen to Cypress Hill.

And it's one of those things when I think back to being an undiagnosed autistic child.

So I was in junior cert. So that means I was 13, 14.

and I was not paying attention in school, and I was highly disruptive, and I was missing a lot of school, and I was failing everything.

And then when it came to sitting or actual junior cert,

on the day of the exam, I requested a paper, and it was a paper of it. It was a subject that was not being taught at my school.
The subject was agricultural science.

I asked for the fucking agricultural science paper.

And the teachers it probably wasn't the day of the exam it might have been like a week beforehand or something but the teachers were like we don't study agricultural science at this fucking school you don't even take the class this is highly unorthodox and I'm like I want to sit agricultural science for my junior cert so they couldn't refuse me So on the day of the exam, I fucking sat the agricultural science paper and I loved it.

I fucking loved it.

Not only

like the questions were about, I remember one question specifically was about mulch, you know, how to create a mulch using bark and stuff. And another question was about

legumes, which are plants that can take nitrogen from the air and put them into the soil, like clover and vetch.

And I answered every question on this agricultural science paper. And not only did I answer every fucking question,

I wrote out sheets and sheets and sheets, A4 sheets. I wrote voraciously on stuff that wasn't even included in the exam

and I got the results came back I got a hundred percent I got 100 in this agricultural science exam

and I failed everything else not failed I probably passed English I'd have gotten an A and ART but I'd have had a shit junior cert I would have failed or barely passed the vast majority of my other subjects in this exam

so when my results came back of

here's this highly disruptive student

they've failed everything and then there's this agricultural science exam and they're after getting 100%

and we don't even teach this exam.

Like do you think I was praised? No fucking way I was dragged up to the principal's office. I was dragged up to the principal's office and quizzed.

How did you cheat? Why is this happening? What type of trick is this? What joke is this? Why Why did you get 100% in an exam that we don't even sit in this school, in a subject we don't even teach?

And I couldn't answer it. I couldn't answer it.
The answer to the question was,

I have spent the past year and a half thinking about nothing other than how to grow cannabis. And maybe doing it.

I can't say that.

But I have been thinking about nothing other than how to grow cannabis, how to

what photosynthesis is, how phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, how to make these things out of banana peels, how to make your own for like I was obsessed with absolutely everything about growing plants, about horticulture, about growing cannabis, about cannabis itself.

I couldn't say that, I couldn't tell the principal, I couldn't say, I couldn't say, well,

I actually haven't been paying attention in school.

All I've been doing is listening to this band Cypress Hill, who I'm fucking obsessed with and can't stop thinking about all the time and reading about how to grow cannabis.

That's all I've been doing for the past year. I don't think I'm able to do anything else other than that.
When I do that, I'm really happy and I've been doing most of it autodidactically at home.

And this is how I just got 100% in a fucking exam

in a subject that we don't even teach in this, that you don't even teach in the school. That's how this has happened.
I couldn't say it. I couldn't say it.
So

I just got in trouble. I got in trouble.
And

they couldn't outright accuse me of cheating in the agricultural science exam, but

they kind of did because they certainly didn't shake my hand.

Like if a student got 100% in any exam in the junior cert, you'd get a little pat on the back. You might even get mentioned by the principal over the intercom.

I got 100% in one exam and they all just went, he's after doing something mad, sneaky, and wrong. We don't know what it is, and we can't prove it.
So just let's just forget it.

And that story is very important for me, knowing now as an adult that I am autistic.

That period,

that incident in my junior cert, that's the one time in secondary school where my needs were met as an autistic person. And I excelled.
I got 100% in an exam. Why?

Because I was pursuing a special interest. At that time in my life, my special interest was growing hash.
It was growing cannabis. I understand that that's illegal.
I know it is. But I was obsessed.

I couldn't stop talking about light bulbs. There was like, I was mercury vapor,

fluorescent. I used to walk into light shops in Limerick asking questions about different types of fluorescent whites, the light spectrum, cool white, warm light, warm white.

I'd ask,

until they'd eventually figure out what I was coming in for. They would eventually,

why is this fella wanting the exact mix of cool white and warm white fluorescence to replicate the full spectrum of sunlight? Oh, I know what you're doing. Oh, and you want it to fit into a wardrobe.

Is that I know what you're doing. And I'd get kicked out.
And it's like,

sorry for making you an accomplice of a crime here, but it's

this wasn't about I want to grow hash or I want to sell weed

or breaking the law. It was It was obsession.
It was fucking legitimate obsession with

growing cannabis. I wasn't trying to be a drug dealer.
I wasn't trying to break the law. Anything like that.
It was curiosity, fascination, and obsession that I could not control.

And it just happened to be illegal.

And it probably

it was probably just tied in with that teenage rebellion thing and adoring and loving Cypress Hill.

Cypress Hill were this amazing rap group and all they rapped about was smoking weed and growing weed. But I

I taught myself autodidactically.

I was reading that book which I still have, The Marijuana Grower's Guide by Mel Rosenthal.

That's college level. That's a college level book about horticulture.
It's not easy to read. It is not easy to understand.
It's a very serious book.

about botany and horticulture and gorilla gardening and then when I was 14 and I i was failing everything in school and i was in a class which was

the dunce class they would have called it the dunce class um

i don't think they do this in school anymore but i was in the the worst class there was only like 15 kids in my class and everyone who was in this class were

children who basically weren't allowed into other classes and in this class, there was when I look back

kids who were either neurodivergent or experiencing the trauma of poverty, and that's who was in this class. And it was tough going because

being neurodivergent, being autistic, that meant that it was very easy to bully you.

And my way of not being bullied was to be insane, to be fucking mad, to be the most disruptive, disruptive fearless rebellious anti-authoritarian class clone capable of absolutely anything smoking fags at the back of class telling teachers to fuck off literally everything in order to survive to not be bullied if you don't want to get bullied in school especially if you're in the class with other kids that are troubled in some way

the way to survive is you're either able to fight or able to make everybody laugh because you're so crazy. So I went with make everyone laugh because I'm so fucking crazy.

But we're also teenage boys, so I had to pretend that I wasn't. I had to hide that I might have been smart.
I had to pretend that I was dumb.

I had to pretend that I had no interest, that I didn't care about learning, that I wasn't curious about things.

But I couldn't turn that switch off. So instead, what happened is

my curiosity had to intersect with rebelliousness. My love of science became

taking fireworks apart, getting illegal fireworks,

taking them apart and making bigger fireworks.

Or reading copies of a book called the Anarchist Cup book and learning how to make explosives from bleach, which was really a curiosity, a love of science, a fascination with chemicals and how you can actually make bombs from fireworks.

Just get enough fireworks and put them together and you've got a fucking bomb you can blow up a bin you see you're not a nerd you're you're not you're you won't be picked on and called a nerd or called weird or strange when your interests become

destructive and

troublemaking and

get you labeled as a mad bastard a crazy fucker and then the other thing was growing hash I know how to grow hash. I knew there's the starlings.
The starlings have not left.

They're outside the window. What time is it here?

26 minutes past 7 in the evening. The starlings have just marmorated past the window.
It's raining outside. And growing hash.

I was obsessed. Obsessed with growing cannabis.
I wasn't even that. I wasn't even a stoner.
It wasn't about weed.

It was about heart to culture. I was fascinated by heart to culture.
I was fascinated by botany. But growing this plant and knowing everything about this plant that Cypress Hill talk about.

That's illegal. The fucking guards will get involved if they find out.

That fellow over there, you know, he's grazing mad contempt. Ask him anything.
He grows hash. He does, he's got lights and everything in his wardrobe.
See, that makes you a legend.

That brings you social approval, approval from your peers. And my peers were, like I said,

kids with dyslexia, dyspraxia, or other kids who just grew up very, very tough. And their family might have been criminals.
And they themselves went on to become criminals so i i channeled all my

my my curiosity and my voracious the worst thing you could be called was a nerd

a swat or a nerd was one of the worst things that you could be called

because we were in the class was called 3b2 i think i spoke it about it on a podcast years ago

we were in the the cat the class for kids who are unteachable the kids who are very very bold

you get labeled by the teachers We were seen as very bad. This was junior cert.

The principal used to come in, the vice principal used to come in, and

they could see, they couldn't kick us out of school because we were too young. But they would encourage us to not come back to school next year when you were like 15, 16.

Just leave school after you're junior cert. Don't worry about this leave-in cert shit.
That's not for ye. That was the career guidance we used to get.
We were 13, 14.

It hurts to know that you're in that class. It hurts to be separated from all the other students.
Like, why is that class only 15, 16 people? Why is everyone in that class a fucking lunatic?

Like, we knew what that meant.

And it hurt deep down.

But when you're that age,

you flip the heart around and you turn it into a badge of honor. And the badge of honor, you become fucking Bart Simpson.
I'm a rebel.

You can't tell me me to do anything. Fuck teachers.
Fuck the system.

Fuck everything.

I'm so bad I can't even be let into a normal class. They have to put me over here with that fella and that fella.
And we smoke fags in front of teachers. That's what we do.

You're over there, we smoke fags in front of teachers and if the teacher tells us to put the fag out we tell the teacher to fuck off and the teacher leaves us alone because they've given up.

And we sniff glue. We sniff glue through our school jumpers and we set fire to cans of deodorant in class.
And sometimes teachers don't even fucking show up.

We've got free classes all day because teachers don't even show up because they know there's no fucking point. And that's what I had in second year and third year in school.

I know it's fucking years ago and it doesn't matter now. But I'm just saying

that's that's the experience I had in school in my junior cert years because I was autistic and no one knew.

But the wonderful happy memories that I have from that time in my life it's not being in school it's being at home listening to Cypress Hill drinking tea and reading about how to grow cannabis and reading about this little shop in Guildford off the back of a fucking magazine called Esoteric Hydroponics

and ordering from them a mercury vapor light it was 90 pounds

and ordering

I won't say whether I ordered seeds off him.

And ordering that book, The Marijuana Grower's Guide. So I'm so happy to be doing a gig in Guildford.
I can't f just for that. Just I didn't know I was gonna be gigging in Guildford.

I saw it on the list and I went, holy fuck, I'm gonna visit. I can't wait to go to that shop.
I never, ever. I'd forgotten about it.

And when I saw the name Guildford on the list of fucking gigs, I went, esoteric hydroponics. Esoteric hydroponics.
And I'm I'm going to go into that shop that shop

that sold

cannabis growing material to a 14 year old in the 90s in Limerick

and how did I even pay for it I used to go to the bank with cash and get a money order because I couldn't go to my parents and like can I have can I have a check please da here's some money da can you can If I give you this money, will you write me a check?

What's it for? I just want to buy these lights for growing plants over in England. Is that like that's not gonna happen?

So yeah I've got it I've got a tour of England, Scotland and Wales. Alright go to fan.co.u

fan f-a-n-e fan.co.uk forward slash blindbuy and

you know if you are gonna come to those gigs get your tickets now because they will sell out even though the gigs It's not for another fucking year, right? This is it's a year away.

But go and get your tickets now, especially if I'm in your area. I'm wondering if you can hear the sound of that rain.

It's raining quite heavily on the roof of my office, and

we're just gonna have to welcome the sound in. It's not the worst sound in the world, the gentle pitter-patter of rain.

But I just thought I'd name it. In case you're wondering what the fuck that sound is.
It's rain. Rain on a tin roof.

But yeah, back the back.

That's what you had to do back then. You had to order things off the backs of magazines.

I mean, before the internet. Well, the internet was there, but

you'd have had to go into an internet cafe and pay money in a cafe to use the internet. That that that was the reality of the situation.

So, to order anything strange, such as what used to sell, they used to sell cannabis seeds, cannabis growing lights, legal highs,

I think sex ties,

aphrodisiacs,

this shit called Spanish fly.

Stuff that you'd be embarrassed to walk into a shop to buy, but also they're not selling it in any shops that you know. Like today now in Limerick.
Jesus Christ, they're selling dildos and duns.

Like they've got those Jorx sex toys

beside the baby's nappies in every supermarket now.

But even fucking hell, there's about five shops in Limerick selling lights lights for growing cannabis and selling cannabis seeds. Very, very easy to come by now.

But what got me thinking about buying shit off the back of magazines

is the Charlie Kirk situation this week. I'd like an uninterrupted hot take on this Charlie Kirk situation.

So what I'm going to do is I'll do an ocarina pause now so that I have a feeling it's going to be a bit of a long one. So I'll do an ocarina pause now.
I don't have an ocarina.

Some people are getting upset that I no longer have an ocarina or trying to offer me ocarinas. Let's just sit with the anxiety of it.

I quite enjoy having an ocarina pause every week, and there's no ocarina. I'm actually alright with that.
This week,

I think I'm gonna crinkle. I'm gonna crinkle this bag of antiseptic wipes,

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Beautiful, kind of a piney antiseptic wipe smell.

Gorgeous crinkling.

That was the antiseptic wipe pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

if this podcast brings you mirth merriment entertainment distraction whatever the fuck as you listening to this podcast please consider supporting it directly via patreon all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it and if you can't afford it don't worry about it you can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free Everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living.

This is my full-time job. It's how I I rent out my office, it's how I pay all my bills.
This podcast is only possible because of listener support, direct funding.

I've just told you about that new tour. England, Scotland, and Wales.
Gotafeign.co.uk forward slash blindby. If I listed out any dates,

then what have I got? Vicker Street is sold out. That's next week, that's sold out.

Few tickets left for Derry on the 27th of September. And then after that, Halloween night up in Mead at the Puka Festival.
Also I meant to say this

if you can access BBC Radio 6

right I don't think you can hear this in Ireland right but BBC Radio 6 the music station

they they asked me to

make a music show about being autistic.

It's a radio series, music radio series on BBC Radio 6. It's called Grounding and it's presented by NeuroDivergent artists

and we're talking about our experience of being NeuroDivergent and also playing music. And the other artists are Emogene Thackeray, Afro Deutsch and fucking Gary Newman.

Like Gary Newman, Cars Gary Newman, the pioneer of electronic music. He's autistic.
So I'm very proud to be in that company. But anyway, look, as you know, I'm a fucking music nerd.

I'm an an absolute music nerd some of my earlier podcasts were about music i had to stop doing music podcasts because

i can't do a music podcast without playing you examples of the music and if i play examples of the music the podcast will get taken down so i had to stop making music podcasts but anyway this fucking radio show grounding bbc radio 6

They gave me six hours, right? It's three episodes, two hours each, of me playing music, speaking about music, speaking about the importance of music to me, and speaking about being neurodivergent.

There was very little

interference. I got to make the radio show that I wanted to fucking make.

I've never been asked to do a radio show in Ireland, ever. RTE, no one.
Even with my podcast, I don't know what the story is. I think they're scared of me.

But Radio 6 came to me and said, look, do whatever you want. Be as nardy nardy as you like with the music.
Speak about being autistic. So this radio show is called Grounding.

I'm incredibly proud of it. I'm so proud of this piece of work.

All I want, what I want from this more than anything, obviously I want autistic people to listen to it and to feel a bit more normal. But what I really want is the gorilla podcast hug.

I'm aware that this is going out on BBC Radio 6.

I know that there's going to be people tuning in who've never heard of me, who haven't a fucking clue what's going on and I want like a taxi driver in Bristol.

I want someone working a night shift to just have the radio on and then I lull them into a relaxed state with some of the music that I'm choosing.

and then hit them with a few strange weird hot takes and then make that person think that their radio is broken.

that there's what the fuck am i listening to what the fuck is this and i really think i managed to to do that with these episodes because they gave me free rein they basically said look don't libel anybody and don't curse but other than that be as weird as you want this is two hours of being autistic just go nuts so i said fuck it i will so look up bbc radio 6 grounding to get the full programming of all the artists and and my episodes

My first episode is going to start next Wednesday next Wednesday the 24th right at 11 o'clock at night

my first episode is it's two hours of me speaking about creativity and playing music that I feel inspires creativity so next Wednesday is the first episode 11 o'clock at night BBC Radio 6 grounding then the second episode is going to be Thursday the 25th of September and then the third episode is Monday the 29th of September and again if you're living in Tanland then you should have no problem accessing this and listening to it on the fucking player or whatever you do over there.

I don't think anyone can hear it here in Ireland. There might be a way with VPNs and

I'm not promoting the use of cannabis even though I just

if I was living in a country where it was legal, I would listen to these shows with with a little gentle giant

because the combination of the way that I'm speaking, what I'm speaking about, and the music, it just works perfectly with that.

Not promoting anything illegal, just in case someone in Canada maybe wants to listen to it. The rain is no joke out there tonight, lads.
It's battering off the window, it's battering off the roof.

I haven't been able to put a limiter on my voice tonight. We just have to go.
Look, it's fucking raining.

The continual sound of rain on the tin roof is part of the podcast this week. We're just gonna have to deal with it.

And as background noises go, it's not the worst.

There's a peacefulness to it. Okay, let's talk Charlie Kirk.
So, Charlie Kirk was murdered this week. Charlie Kirk,

if you're listening to this in the future,

was

a right-wing,

an American right-wing Christian nationalist with far-right views.

And

he was giving a talk on behalf of his

organization, Turning Point USA, in Utah, and he was shot dead. He was shot dead.
We don't know. Well, there's someone arrested.
We don't know why he was shot dead. Can't say for sure why.

It was either, it could have been one theory is that it was gripers, which are that this is right-wing infighting, that a right-winger shot Charlie Kirk because he wasn't right-wing enough, or the theories is that it could have been someone on the left, a leftist, someone who disagreed strongly with Charlie Kirk's very right-wing views,

or it could just simply be another American school shooting.

And there is no great

ideological motive behind the shooting of Charlie Kirk. It's just another American school shooting.

Because the one thing we know based on what we're told is

the person who shot him with one shot left behind three bullet casings. But on these bullet casings, I can't even remember what was written into them.
The messages are incredibly obscure.

and hard to decipher.

So one message I remember is like, I think it says, catch this fascist.

Which on the surface you'd think, oh, okay, this person is an anti-fascist. But then you look deeper and you realize that, no, that's a quote from a video game called Helldivers 2.

So it might have nothing to do with fascism at all. It's very confusing.
But one thing's for sure is that...

Charlie Kirk is being turned into a martyr by the Trump administration and by the American right and that's quite that's quite frightening because the fear is that his murder will be used to justify further authoritarianism.

The White House deputy of staff Stephen Miller is a very frightening individual because he's quite overtly right-wing and would appear to be a fascist

with a

just a troubling record of racist opinions. So this fella Stephen Miller, he's the fucking deputy chief of staff.
This man has power. Today, he has vowed vengeance

for

anyone online who

appeared to celebrate the murder of Charlie Kirk.

He

is referring vaguely to terrorists. He's saying the terrorist organizations.
He said this, so J.D. Vance was the fucking vice president of America, right?

J.D. Vance,

he hosted an episode of Charlie Kirk's podcast, because Charlie Kirk had died. Vance on this episode, this was yesterday,

basically said

that liberals, people identifying as liberals, are largely to blame for the political violence. Then he brings on Stephen Miller.
who's a scary fucker.

And then he says Stephen Miller starts saying that this is a vast domestic terror movement.

And it appears that who he's talking about, he's talking about liberals, he's talking about anti-fascists, he's referring to these people as

domestic terrorists.

And this man who's in a position of actual power says, with God as my witness, we're going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy those networks and make America safe again for the American people.

It will happen and we will do it in Charlie's name. And now, what's disturbing there is the use of the word terrorist network.
What's disturbing is the use of

the weaponization of a moment of grief and shock, right? The weaponization of a moment of grief and shock to potentially remove people's rights.

Miller's statement reminds me there of when fucking 9-11 happened. When 9-11 happened,

big shock, big public mourning,

and then the US brings in this thing called the Patriot Act, where the Bush administration, because 9-11 had just happened because people were afraid of Al-Qaeda, the Bush administration came in and said, Look, we got to keep everybody safe, all right?

We got to keep everyone safe. So, because of this, we're going to bring in the Patriot Act.
This is an act of patriotism. But in practice, really, what it was is it removed a lot of people's rights.

It

expanded surveillance of American citizens in a way that would have been unthinkable before.

It broke down walls between intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, the police and the FBI, the police and the CIA. It ushered in the normalization of the militarization of the police.

So now you look at police in America and they just look like fucking soldiers and they're going around in tanks. That was unthinkable before 9-11.
Fucking unthinkable.

That would have been seen as totalitarian and strange and frightening.

Now it's normal all the fucking all the police look like the military now now that was 25 fucking years ago and i'm just getting the vibe that the trump administration is now looking for its patriot act except this time it's a lot more fucked up

the fbi are

searching online and compiling a database of anybody who appears to approve of charlie kark's murder or anyone who's making jokes about it or anything like that

and

they're just being very vague about labeling people as domestic terrorists.

Cause I have a feeling who they're referring to is people who protest, people who protest in favor of Palestine, people who criticize the Trump administration, people who

hold views that are in any way left of right, that these people now can be labeled as domestic terrorists and the murder of Charlie Kirk will be used as justification to strip away people's rights.

And that's what fascist states do. That's literally, that is what they do.

That's how fascism gets worse and worse. That's what happens.
I'm seeing the weaponization of grief.

9-11, that the grief of 9-11 was absolutely weaponized by America. And that doesn't mean that that...
No, that's a disrespect to that grief.

That is an absolute disrespect to anyone who died in 9-11 for that to be cynically used to remove people's rights and then to engage in an illegal war.

And I'm concerned that that's what they're trying to do now if there's not pushback against it.

It reminds me of there was a fucker called Harst Vessel. He was a Nazi

in Germany. This was before Hitler took power.
And he was in a group called the Starma Bite along the SA.

They were just little fucking Nazi shitheads.

Nazi youth kind of street gangs that supported Hitler, a militaristic unit. So anyway,

he was shot dead by communists. This is before Hitler took power, 1930.
He was shot dead by communists. I think he was young, maybe 1920, horse vessel.

But the Nazis weaponized his killing and turned him into a martyr. What's my opinion on the Charlie Kark thing? I mean, I witnessed his murder.
I saw a bullet slit his throat basically

and

I watched blood pour over his perfect white t-shirt that had the word freedom on it.

I had to remind myself that

that was real

and not

something in a movie. It's like someone wrote that in a script.

I fucking disagree with everything Charlie Carke was standing for, everything he was saying.

I think that he was a person who

consistently pushed viewpoints that were really, really fucking harmful, really harmful, and just furthered the interest of billionaires. And then at the same time,

when I saw him being shot, I'm just thinking about his little kids. I'm thinking about

He's got a three-year-old and a fucking one-year-old.

And I'm thinking about

little gorgeous three-year-olds who haven't a clue about politics.

Three-year-olds don't know what hatred is. A three-year-old's worldview and experience of the world is so

removed

from right-wing hatred.

Three-year-olds like ice cream and butterflies and tickles, and they love cuddles from their mammies and daddies. So when I saw Charlie Kirk getting shot, I thought about his little three-year-old.

I thought about his little three-year-old who can't even understand where dad has gone and what happened to dad and why dad has gone.

And I thought about that three-year-old getting older and becoming a teenager and I thought about him being bullied, bullied with images of his father's assassination. That's what I thought about.

And I thought about all of these things

because I am an adult. I am an adult who is capable.
of holding conflicting opinions at the exact same time.

I'm capable of engaging with issues with the full spectrum of emotions and thoughts and critical thinking and empathy.

And I bet you when you're listening to me now, you're thinking, yeah, that's fair enough, blind boy.

You really disagreed with everything that Charlie Kirk stood for. Yeah, absolutely disagreed with it.
But then at the same time, you were also sad for his three-year-old. Yeah, I can see that.

I can understand that, blind boy. It's absolutely fine when you're listening to me.
I did not express any of this on the fucking internet though. On social media.

I didn't express any of this on social media

if I said on social media Charlie Kirk Jesus Christ I hated everything that he believed in but I feel sad for his children you say that on social media Instagram Twitter blue sky whatever the fuck you say that on social media and then what happens is other people say

what about the children in Gaza

what about the toddlers in Gaza I saw that I saw that happen multiple times online. I'm online.
And I see a person go, oh my God, Jesus, Charlie Kirk was shot. That was awful.
His poor kids.

And then I'm thinking, are you a homophob? Do you agree with Charlie Kirk? Why are you expressing sympathy? And then I have to go, hold on a second.

Like imagine being in a kitchen, a kitchen with your family. And one of your family or a friend comes in and says, Jesus, that Charlie Kirk thing, his poor kids.

And then in a kitchen in real life, you turn to that person and say what about the kids in Gaza you wouldn't do that would you you would you wouldn't because that'd be fucking mad that would be antisocial strange odd you might think it you wouldn't say it instead you'd kind of sit with that person's reaction you'd look at their body language you'd listen to the tone of their voice and you'd go

yeah that person just saw Charlie Kirk getting shot and then they heard that he had tiny kids and they they're feeling sorry for that yeah I don't infer from their reaction that they now support things that Charlie Kirk said, this very right-wing reactionary nationalist Christian.

But it's perfectly normal on social media. Perfectly normal.
You see, you feel sorry for Charlie Kirk's kids. What about the kids in Gaza? Perfectly normal position on social media.

On social media, I witnessed multiple people performatively laughing about his death, saying that he deserved to die. I saw people saying, fuck his children.

These are educated people with otherwise balanced opinions. But they're performing.
They're performing that reaction to very clearly let social media land know.

No, no, no, I'm on one side over here and I disagree with everything Charlie Kark has said. So therefore, fuck everything.
I'm taking one position over here.

Again, not something you're really going to hear in the pub. You're not going to hear that one out in public.
You're not going to hear a person in public say, did you see Charlie Kirk getting shot?

I did, yeah, fuck his kids. What? Do you really believe that? No, but I really need you to know that I definitely don't agree with anything Charlie Kirk stood for.
That would be insane.

That would be an absolutely bizarre, strange, out-of-the-ordinary thing to happen in the real world. Because here's what I know.
And I've said this a lot of times, but here's what I know.

Social media is a space that's designed by billionaires, which forces all discourse into turn and response combat. The very normal human reaction of

Jesus, Charlie Kirk said a lot of very fucking nasty things.

But I also feel sorry for his three-year-old child. You can't have an opinion like that on social media.
It's not possible because social media is not designed to accommodate nuance.

Social media only accommodates turn and response combat and polarization, especially around any issue where there's heightened emotion. That's its business model.

Social media doesn't work if we can all agree with each other and understand each other, because then you'd log off. Social media needs to keep you arguing.

to heighten that emotion, to earn money from your data. This isn't conspiracy.
It's design. It's on purpose.

It's why Twitter and Facebook or X and Meta have their corporate headquarters in Dublin where they can not pay tax on the billions that they earn from all of our polarized arguments.

They earn money from the utterly bizarre position that

if one person is thinking about

Charlie Kirk's three-year-old,

then that must mean they are not thinking about the three-year-olds in Gaza. And Charlie Kirk's murder appears to be

it's when that online polarization that video game that turn and response combat bleeds into fucking real life and how someone's shot dead and my fear is how that then becomes weaponized how he gets turned into a martyr by the Trump administration to remove people's rights so the Charlie Kirk discourse made me get off social media this week.

I didn't post about it and I avoided other people's posts about about it. And now again if I was to say that on social media people would say so you're burying your head in the sand.
No I'm not.

There's just very there's very little of value being discussed on social media.

And then the news sites, news sites which have to survive in the environment of social media, there's very little adult discourse around the Charlie Kirk situation.

They're just trying to exist in the algorithm, repeating lines that are coming out of the White House and trying themselves to provoke turn and response combat.

Because if you're on if you're in the comments section on Instagram or TikTok of the New York Times or Sky News and you're having a scrap with someone and the thread is 50 comments long,

the news site benefits from that. That means you're engaging with their post, multiple people are and now more people see their post in the algorithm.

So our news sites, our journalism is now incentivized to polarize. So but I went to my safe space online.
Now I could just not look at any screens at all. Just go for a walk, ignore all screens.

I don't want to do that. Because I remember.

I remember before social media when the internet was a wonderful, wonderful place full of information and fun. And I remember before that, when I had magazines.
when I'd read magazines.

And my safe space on the internet is the internet archive.

internetarchive.org,

specifically the magazine section.

You can go on to internetarchive.org and they have hundreds and thousands of magazines, anything you can think of from the 20th century, scanned as PDFs.

And you can just read magazines, and that's what I do.

If I want a safe space online, where it's not stressful, where I'm not seeing polarized opinions or arguments, I just look at random magazines on archive.org.

You can look at an Argos catalogue from 1982

from the late 70s. You can go online and find a scanned PDF

and flick through an Argos catalogue from 1977. You can look at hairdryers from 1977.

And what I'm most fascinated with with old magazines is it's not the content of the magazines, it's the adverts that are in the magazines.

Like I said, when I was a kid, I used to buy Viz, and in the adverts, they were selling like

you know, how to grow cannabis or cannabis-growing lights.

You learn so much about society from the adverts that are in old magazines. The adverts in old magazines are a bit like

there's this thing called marginalia, right?

In

old Irish medieval manuscripts, okay,

the books where our mythology is written down, I'm talking 5th century, 6th century, 7th century. Some of the most important information that's derived from old Irish manuscripts

isn't necessarily in the texts that the monks are writing down. You know, they could be translating bits of the gospel, they could be telling Irish myth.

Some of the most important information that we've gotten isn't from those texts, but from the marginalia.

In the borders of these old manuscripts, the monks would write little notes. They'd write little notes, or sometimes they'd even have little arguments with each other.
Like,

there's a book called The Annals of Ulster. This was written in the 9th century.
And in the margins, there's just one sentence, and the sentence says, There's a great wind coming tonight.

It will not carry off the Viking ships. Like that one little sentence, that one little piece of a poem in the margins of these annals,

this tiny little personal opinion of a monk who wrote this in the 9th century told us so much about the behavior of the Vikings in Ireland, the fear that the monks would have had.

This monk is basically saying, look, I'm here in this in this monastery writing this manuscript, translating these gospels, but the wind outside is very strong. Good.

It means that tonight at at least the Vikings won't raid and that's the margins so that told us so much about society at the at the time another huge one is a little poem called on Pangerbon now this was found in in Germany in a manuscript in Germany from the 9th century again probably a book of gospels and then just in the corner written is this little poem called On Pangorbon and it's a monk it's a monk writing a tiny poem about his white cat catching mice.

But because this poem is written in Old Irish, that one tiny little poem that we have on Pangor Bon,

because it was written in Old Irish,

its grammatical structure was used to help us understand

other Old Irish texts that we couldn't read. So that poem was like the Rosetta Stone that unlocked a lost old version of the Irish language.

And then you go to this piece of text that has some piece of Irish mythology written in old Irish from the 6th century, and now you can understand it, and stories are unlocked.

The point I'm trying to make is I go online to archive.org and read old magazines from the 60s, 70s. Not necessarily to read the magazines, but to look at the adverts and the pages of the magazines.

These are the marginalia which tell us about society at the time, people's desires, people's fears. Like, you know, when I was a kid,

if you wanted to buy sex ties, aphrodisiacs, or equipment for growing cannabis, it had to be done from the back of a magazine. Now, I can just get these things in Limerick.
Just walk into it.

Very easy to find any of this stuff in any shop. And like I said, sex ties are in Dunn's stores now.
Sex ties are in the supermarket.

It's you can buy a vibrating cock ring around the corner from the tomatoes in Dunn's stores in Ireland now. Perfectly normal.

In the 90s, that was hidden away and had to be ordered in the backs of magazines through mail order. Clandestine, it was taboo, it was secret.
So that tells us a little bit about society in

fucking the UK and Ireland in the 90s. So I'm on archive.org, getting away from social media, flicking through old magazines, picking them at random.
And I see one, I go, fuck it.

I'm gonna read a bodybuilding magazine from 1977 an American magazine so I look through it it's what you'd expect photographs of bodybuilders exercises advice on diets and then the adverts mostly fake steroids supplements

with weird ingredients purporting to be better than steroids but legal and alongside all these photographs of you know men with muscles looking super masculine and these ads for supplements that make you more masculine.

Then there's this other ad that just it stands out because it's just a very good ad, it's well designed. There's an excellent drawing in the middle.

There's a drawing of a very angry man in the middle, and he's holding a baton.

The advert says, You don't need a gun when your worst nightmare becomes real, and suddenly you are face to face with a mugger.

It's an advert for a self-defense baton, this extendable self-defense baton known as a Kiyoga steel cobra.

This is a very dramatic advert and it markets itself for men as this baton you carry around for defense against, I quote, muggers and maniacs. And there's so much fear in this advert.

It's such a dramatic ad for this extendable baton.

It's like, what are you afraid of? What are you scared of?

And then I look at the magazine and it's men and muscles and then more ads for self-defense and this picture, like the marginalia reveals to me, oh, this is a magazine about fear.

Whoever's reading this magazine is terrified. They're afraid.
This is a magazine for men. And what they're afraid of is that they're not manly enough.
These men are not manly enough.

And not only are they frightened of not being big enough and muscular enough, they're clearly frightened of being attacked.

And that's why in the pages of this magazine, they're selling a weapon, this Kyoga steel baton.

And I love reading this because it just feels like such a different space. It's so different to social media.
You know, I'm hearing a magazine from 1977 and then I start thinking, you know, fuck it.

I'm going to Google.

I'm going to see if I can find this exact steel baton that they were selling to frightened men in this bodybuilding magazine in 1977. I wonder if any of them still exist.
This Kyoga steel baton.

And I go looking and looking, and I can't find any online. I was just curious as to, you know, were these things popular? Did they work?

And then I, as I get deeper and deeper to the company who was making these steel batons and putting the adverts in the magazines, I arrive at this fella called Harold Van Braunhut.

So he, this Harold Van Braunhut,

he was this mad American fucker who pioneered

male order stuff from the backs of magazines. He invented x-ray specs.
He invented live sea monkeys. I don't know if you remember sea monkeys.

They were like, they're like little shrimp and you could hatch them. They were ties.

But he invented sea monkeys.

But also,

I think I might have mentioned this fella on the podcast before.

That fucking steel baton, right, that I saw in this bodybuilding magazine from 1977 that I just came across,

all of the money for that went to the Klu Klux Klan. This Van Braunhoot fella, even though he was Jewish, was a notorious

racist.

And this fucking baton that was being sold in these magazines of fear, men who were afraid that they weren't masculine enough, who were afraid that they didn't have muscles and needed to own this baton.

All of the profits from that went to a fella by the name of Richard Butler. This fella was...

In last week's podcast, I mentioned British Israelism.

This crazy offshoot of Christianity that believes that Eve fucked the devil in the Garden of Eden and she had two kids and everyone who's born of Eve's kids,

everyone who was born of the spawn of Eve and the devil, is a defective human being, basically. And this was used to justify racism, British Israelism.

Then this went to America and became Christian identitarianism.

Well, this fucking Richard Butler fucker,

he's the one who started all of that. He was an American Nazi.
He started the Aryan Nations. He was associated with the KKK.

Right-wing racist

American Christianity that aligns aligns with right-wing white supremacy. And it was so covert.

There you are in 1977.

You're a man, you're not worried, you don't think you're masculine enough, you don't think you're strong enough, you get your bodybuilder magazine maybe to grow some muscles.

You don't feel good enough, you're anxious, you're frightened. You're the type of person who buys self-defense weapons because your entire outlook on life is based on fear.

And here you are being preyed upon by Christian Nazis.

You'd have had no way of knowing this in 1977 before the internet existed but if you bought this baton from this fucking magazine all your money goes to the Aryans and the KKK

you're on their mailing list they send you the baton now they have your address and next thing you know

A couple of weeks pass

and you're getting right-wing racist literature in the post.

And you don't know why you're getting this, but it's like, yeah, you just bought the baton from the muscle magazine, but you didn't know that was to fund the KKK.

But now they have your address and now they're targeting you. They're now sending you literature that plays upon your fears.
Because they know.

You're reading the muscle magazine.

You think you're weak. You think you're pathetic.
You think you need to defend yourself. So now they're sending you their magazines.
And this Richard Butler fella

he pioneered. And this Richard Butler fella, he pioneered male order Nazi magazines basically in the 70s and 80s in America.

So you buy this baton and now they're sending you fucking literature which is like you need to be proud to be white. You need to stand up for America.
You need patriotism.

All these immigrants are coming in, the Jews, the blacks, the communists, gay people. This is why you're weak.
This is why you feel weak. You need to stand up and be strong against this.

This is the threat. This is the actual threat.
I came here to a magazine from 1977 to get away from Charlie Kirk and the fucking social media algorithm. And then I realized this is the algorithm.

This is what this is. This is targeted algorithm.
It's just in 1977.

Racists and right-wing Christians were able to identify men who felt weak and they could target them with their racism.

It was an algorithm, it was just analogue, and it might have taken years to radicalize a person.

Years of snail mail sending your Nazi literature, getting slowly but surely getting a little bit more extreme with each magazine.

Could have taken years to radicalize a person, it mightn't have worked. Now, the same thing takes a week via social media.
And it all took me back to Charlie Kirk. And what annoyed me was

I'm not seeing enough

serious adult

interrogation by journalists around who the fuck was Charlie Kirk where did he come from what did he represent

and I certainly haven't seen enough interrogation around his organization Turning Point USA

Charlie Kirk was just a giant pile of money. He was a personification of a gigantic pile of cash that was not his.

So, first off, I want to tell you about a report that came out today.

This report

is from the UK. It's from the UK.
Now, I know I'm talking about American Christians here, but it's all connected. Bear with me.

So, a report came out today, and it said that since 2010, which is 15 years ago,

the UK public, the UK taxpayer since 2010, has paid 200 billion in taxes 200 billion to private companies.

Public services, water services, rail, the bus service, energy, mail services have all been privatised and since 2010

the UK public has paid 200 billion to these private companies that now own all the public services. Let me put it a different way.

Private companies have stolen 200 billion from the British public since 2010. They have stolen 200 billion in taxes that's supposed to be used for public services like water, rail, bus, energy, mail.

Instead,

these taxes that people pay that they think they are paying for the public good are going to private interests and creating billionaires. This is fact.
This report came out today.

Now I'm speaking about the fucking UK because this report came out the day and it's relevant right now. This same thing is happening in America.
It's happening in Europe.

It's happening in fucking in Ireland. This is the reason why there's loads of billionaires.
This is the reason why you don't have the standard of living that your parents had.

This is the reason that people can't afford houses. This is why everything's so expensive.
This is why it's so hard to exist. This is why everything feels hopeless.

This is why you can't put trust in politicians. This is why there's a rise of fascism in the global far right.
This is why there's more racism. This here is a massive problem.
It's neoliberalism.

That's what this is. It's an economic system where public services are privatized.
Government oversight is stripped away so you get deregulation. You get deregulation.

What happens is safety standards go down. Workers' rights disappear.
Unions disappear.

Industries that are supposed to be for the public good, housing, rail, fucking mail service, electricity, water, everything that's for the public good that you pay for with taxes has now been handed over to private interests, private companies.

We're still paying taxes. And now a rich person has put themselves in the middle and set up a little toll booth.
That's what this is. Public services handed to private interests.

It's been like this for 45 years. It started in the early 80s.
What the fuck does this have to do with Charlie Kirk? Well, this started in America.

This is neoliberal economics. It's Reagan, Ronald Reagan, Reaganomics.
In Britain, it was Thatcher. Christianity used to not be a part of American politics.

In America, for most of the 20th century, religion and politics, church and state, very separate. Presidential candidates did not speak about being religious.
This was taboo. This was unprofessional.

The first American president to actually come out and speak about Christianity and faith was bizarrely, it was Jimmy Carter.

Now, Jimmy Carter was no saint because, at the end of the day, he's still president of America and Empire. But as American presidents go,

Jimmy Carter is the closest that you could get to a good person. I'll put it this way.
We would not have the climate crisis today

at the scale that it is if people listened to Jimmy Carter. I've done podcasts on this fucker before, years ago.
I can't remember the name. Jimmy Carter, right?

He... He became president in 1976, president of America.
Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1976, okay?

He knew about climate change. He knew what was going to happen.
He was prepared to regulate industry to prevent the climate collapse that we are now living through right now.

Jimmy Carter recognized the state of Palestine. Jimmy Carter believed in racial equality, civil rights.
Jimmy Carter believed in the government providing people with social housing, health care,

with compassionate state help.

Jimmy Carter basically believed that people shouldn't be poor, people shouldn't be sick and not have a house just because they're poor. That there should be some compassionate

a compassionate system that helps people just because for the common good. I wouldn't call Jimmy Carter a socialist, but as American presidents go, he's the closest they got.
He was no saint.

He did some dodgy shit in fucking Cambodia. But here's the thing: Jimmy Carter,

he was quite open about Christianity. This was very shocking to the American public.
What the fuck do you mean this president is talking about being a Christian?

Presidents don't talk about their religion. That's private.
Church and state are separate. But Jimmy Carter would speak about his faith.
But he would speak about his faith compassionately.

Jimmy Carter would use the fact that he was a Baptist and he was a Christian as this is why I believe in the common good. This is why I don't want to destroy the planet.

This is why I'm actually trying to be kind as a leader because I'm a follower of Christ and Christ was fairly sound, wasn't he?

And this really, really pissed off the Republican Party who were conservative. This really pissed off very, very, very wealthy people in America.

This pissed off people who owned industries, people who this pissed off oil companies. This pissed off all of the people who were very very wealthy and who profited from destroying the planet, who

profited from privatization. This pissed off wealthy people who didn't want to pay taxes.
No, I'm not paying fucking taxes. You want me to pay taxes to put a poor person into a house?

Fuck you, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter pissed off a lot of wealthy people.
Jimmy Carter pissed off wealthy Christians. So you started to see a backlash.
The backlash came from like Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan started running against Jimmy Carter.

And Reagan's thing was neoliberalism. Something that hadn't really been tried out yet.
They tried it out down in fucking...

Oh fuck, where was it? Down in Central. It was a Chile.

after they'd gotten rin of Allende

that's a separate podcast but Reaganomics Reaganomics is neoliberalism trickle-down economics privatize everything

no regulation right get the government out of business let wealthy rich people do whatever the fuck they want create a perfect environment for business and what will happen is the wealth will trickle down fuck this social welfare thing the state shouldn't be involved no taxes no interference.

Privatize everything. Let the wealthy business people take control.
They know what they're doing. That's regonomics.
That's neoliberal economics.

American right-wing Christians helped to bring that into power. Jimmy Carter opened Pandora's box.
He was the first president to go, you know what, I'm a Baptist. I'm a Christian.
I'm a Christian.

Don't worry. I know that freaks you out, but...

Christ was all about kindness and love. He was Jimmy Carter was Ned Flanders.
He was fucking Ned Flanders. That's what Jimmy Carter was.

I'm all about love and Christ and I want kindness and social responsibility. That's how I was raised as a Baptist.
That's what we do. That really pissed off greedy people.

It pissed off greedy Christians. It's like, shut the fuck up, Jimmy.
Shut up, Jimmy, because I'm wealthy and I'm fucking greedy, but I also go to church. So you're making me look bad.

I don't want to pay taxes. I don't want to give money to needy people.
Fuck them, but I still want to be a Christian. Shut the fuck up, Jimmy.

So what happens is this fucker called Jerry, Jerry Falwell emerges.

Jerry Falwell was, this is late 70s, Jerry Falwell was a televancy, a televangelist, okay, American right-wing Christian televangelist.

And what Jerry Faldwell starts going after is morality, morality, right?

So if Jimmy Carter's like, I'm a Christian, peace and love, kindness, generosity, okay? But then Jerry Falwell comes in and goes, fuck this.

What about all these gays? What about the homosexuals, feminists, communists, abortion? This is sin.

So Jerry Falwell, who's this Christian right televangelist minister, he then founds this organization called the Moral Majority. So now this becomes about morals.

How can Jimmy Carter be a Christian when he's granting freedoms to homosexuals, to abortionists? This is disgusting.

Where are the family values? Where is the morality? Where's the morality in this Jimmy?

So, this televangelist, Jerry Falwell, who has a massive audience, because he's on fucking TV preaching all the time.

This is huge. He's got this huge, massive following.

For the first time, like the Christian right decide,

let's team up with the Republicans. And then they find Ronald Reagan.

Now, the thing with Reagan, Reagan was a TV star. Reagan had been divorced.
Reagan wasn't a fucking Christian, but Reagan was a neoliberal. Reagan wanted privatization,

no government involved in business. He didn't want unions.
No taxes for the rich people. Fuck social welfare.
If you're poor, you're poor. But then what you also start to see too is the rise of

what you'd call

prosperity theology

or the prosperity gospel.

It's a very unique strand of American Christianity. It's basically

the neoliberalism of Christianity.

Prosperity theology,

they're all over Trump at the moment.

It's this really weird type of American Christianity that basically believes that if you're wealthy, if you are multi-multi-millionaire in America, then that means that that money has been blessed.

God has given it to you. But if you're really, really poor, that means that you have a lack of faith.
So wealth is proof of God's blessing. And poverty means that you're morally corrupt, basically.

And all you got to do is see this preys on poor people if you just give money to your pastor then that will trickle down to you god's blessing will come to you this is the prosperity gospel and prosperity theology it's it's fucking trickle down economics it's neoliberal trickle-down economics

give money to your pastor make your pastor rich and then that will come to you via god's blessing

Don't tax rich people. Let billionaires be billionaires because the jobs and the money that they will create will trickle down to you, poor person.

So, prosperity theology and neoliberalism, they're fucking hand in hand.

So, anyway, long story short, Jerry Falwell and the moral majority, that's what gets Reagan elected to president to the president of America.

It was a reaction against Jimmy Carter's use of Christianity as kindness that was dangerous. Jerry Falwell rallied all the right-wing American Christians and said, You're part of politics now.

You're now part of politics because America is at stake.

The moral soul of America is at stake. They'd just seen the 60s and the 70s, you see.
They're going to look at all these hippies.

What's with all these.

There's African American people who appear to be human now. They have jobs.
They have rights. What's this about? Gay people are out in public holding hands.

I want America to be white, straight, Christian again. That's what I want.
And it worked. It worked.

Morality, fear, Christianity

was used as the story, the emotional story,

to basically push neoliberal economics, to push neoliberal economics, because neoliberal economics is boring. That's boring.
But

I'm uncomfortable with these gay people.

I don't like abortions. I love Christ.
I need to feel better than black black and brown people. Uh, those people are actually a threat, they're dangerous.

Uh, we need greater law, law enforcement and gun rights to keep ourselves safe because I'm in a perpetual state of fear. That's brilliant storytelling, that's great fucking storytelling.

So, what Jerry fucking Falwell and the Marilyn Majority figured out was we can now attach this very simple Christian fear-based narrative

in with the Republican Party and neoliberal, neoliberal economics, which is boring as fuck, but we can actually attach this lovely story to it and get the masses, the moral majority, to vote in economic policies that are actually going to crush them and their fucking children for generations.

But we can get these people to vote this in because the wealth is going to trickle down, just like the prosperity gospel says. So that's the 1980s.
Reagan gets into power.

One of the first things Reagan does, he takes the soda panels off. Takes the solder panels off the fucking White House roof.
Says that climate change is bullshit. Privatizes industry.
Globalization.

I've done the neoliberal podcast, lads. Fast forward to Charlie Kirk.

So Charlie Kirk, like I said, he was the face of a giant pile of money.

And the giant pile of money was...

And there's an organization called Turning Point USA. So what was Turning Point USA? What is Turning Point USA? So it's...
They call themselves grassroots, but what it is, is it's astroturfing.

A grassroots organization is

a movement that begins with common people on the ground. This sense that the people on the ground, regular Jawsopes, get together and this is what we care about.

Like the moral majority, this is what we care about and we want our politicians to listen. Astroturfing...
is when wealthy interests go into a community and then create issues.

We're seeing this in Ireland at the moment with

anti-immigrant stuff in Ireland is being stalked up.

Small groups of far-right organizers go into communities in Ireland, the same people, like 12-13 people, and they go in and stalk things up and then create an issue. That's called astroturfing.

So, Tarning Point USA was an astroturfing organization specifically targeting young people at colleges and schools. Charlie Kirk was the face of this because Charlie Kirk was

really good communicator very smart well able to talk what are the goals of Turning Point like this isn't even conspiracy so Turning Point's goals literally according to themselves is it's a grassroots organization it's not it's astroturfing

to organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets and limited government. That's Reaganomics.
Straight up, right? That is neoliberalism.

Charlie fucking Kirk was, he grew up in Chicago. His da was

he grew up a multi-millionaire. He'd grown up in the part of Chicago where home alone was.
You know, he grew up in those suburbs, so he grew up in a home alone house.

American upper middle-class millionaire. His dad was an architect of luxury houses.
His dad got badly fucked over in the 2008 financial crisis. Charlie Kirk, when he was like 18, he was a Reagan.

Reagan was his fucking hero. Wasn't even into religion when he was younger.
Reaganomics, Ronald Reagan, was just this, this fella is the best. So explicitly, Turning Point USA is

an organization to promote the benefits of neoliberalism to students as a reactionary.

Charlie Kirk and Turning Point identified that college campuses in particular were a hotbed for what they saw as like anti-capitalist ideas, socialism, whatever the fuck you have, fairness and bloody compassion.

So how does a young fellow with an interest in

Reagan in 2010 when he was only 18,

how does he end up becoming the face of this giant

astroturfing organization? Well because of the wealthy backers. So who who's the money behind Turning Point? Well, the biggest donors and the co-founder were the Bradley Foundation.

So the Bradley Foundation is an American conservative Christian family foundation. They pumped millions into Turning Point.
What are the Bradley Foundation into?

Privatization of education, deregulation, anti-union. tax breaks for businesses and privatizing schools that's the big one school school public education should not exist.

All public schools should actually be owned by a company, not paid for by tax. Well, paid for by tax, but organized by a private company who then received that tax money for profit.

So that's the co-founder of Turning Point USA, pumping millions in. So if you're pumping that fucking money in, you want something in return.
Then you've got the Ooline Family Foundation.

They're again Republican family loads of money. What's their thing? Anti-regulation, deeply Christian, conservative, culture war stuff.
Another huge contributor, the Donors Trust.

What is the Donors Trust?

It's a way for people to give money to like

far-right organizations, organizations that are like anti-tax, anti-regulation, climate denial groups, far-right groups.

The Donors Trust allows wealthy people to put money into this fund to fund things but for it not to go back to them.

So I don't know, if you're a very wealthy American and you appear liberal on the surface or you appear to have respect for your workers, you can use the Donors Trust

to then fund an organization that might be involved in union busting. So Turning Point used to receive a lot of money from Donors Trust.
Still does.

Turning Point received massive donations from the Koch Network, the Koch Brothers, KOCH.

They're into fossil fuels, fucking chemicals, oils, oil pipelines.

I mean, what are the Koch brothers into? They've got their fingers in a load of fucking pies, but what they fund is groups that are climate change denial,

dismantling the welfare state, union busting.

You get the point. That's just the...
Turning Point USA, which was the Charlie Kirk was the face of this organization, right?

And he used to go to campuses all over America as part of the Turning Point USA. When he was shot last week, the Turning Point branding was everywhere.
And it's like there's a turning point now

on campuses. We're going to fight back against the liberals, against the communists, against the transgender people,

against the gay people, against the black people. We're going to fight back and make America great again.
What's really happening here?

It's just a giant pile of money to perpetuate neoliberalism right neoliberalism only benefits billionaires it does not benefit

the middle class is disappearing because of neoliberalism

so turning point is it's trickery it's it's it's trickery

So just like the fucking moral majority people, right, in the 80s who were using Christianity, morality, that simple narrative, that simple, lovely story, turning point we're using the culture war, this online polarization, whatever it is,

trans people, Black Lives Matter,

George Flyde, the Earth is Flat, Coronavirus, conspiracy theories, whatever is causing huge fights online, turning point and organizations like it, they take that

Charlie Kirk would take the contrarian position. Whatever the liberals were against, Charlie Kirk was against.
But really what's happening here is it's just neoliberalism being pushed.

Neoliberalism is being pushed. Free markets, you don't want the government involved, the government is bad, taxes are bad, the welfare state is bad.

It's an astroturfing organization. It goes to college campuses and Charlie Kirk fights with feminists or fights with

people who are anti-school shooting and it's astroturfing for neoliberal policies. And Turning Point was huge for, you know, tied with Donald Trump for getting Trump elected.

Not just getting Trump elected, but specifically turning younger voters, younger college-age voters who might feel the pressure to be liberal.

If you know, if you're a contrarian, a reactionary, come over here. And then Charlie Kirk.

So at the start, he wasn't even that Christian, but then he became very Christian and

shit hot at quoting the Bible, very good at quoting the Bible. So just to show you,

like, so that Jerry Falwell that I mentioned from the 1980s, who got Reagan into power. So his son, Jerry Falwell Jr.,

right?

In 2019, who does he team up with? Charlie Kirk.

And Jerry Falwell Jr. and Charlie Kirk started a think tank organization together called Falcirk.
So Jerry Falwell Jr., like

Christian, the same as his dad, right-wing fucking evangelical Christian, same might not be evangelical, I'm not sure. Right-wing American Christian, same as his dad.

So Falcirk, and again, this is out in the open. This is what the organization said.

So in 2019, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Charlie Kark start this

think tank together. And the point of it, Falkirk, is to put effort into proving that Jesus Christ was not a socialist.

Kark said when Falcirk was founded in 2019, we're in a culture battle right now where you have to fight and play offense. and part of this effort is to try and play offense against the secular left.

The goal of Falkirk really is

how can I convince people that you can be a Christian and also be greedy? That's it. It was clear that

this online argument of Jesus was a socialist, he fucking was by the way. I mean Jesus went into the temple, the moneylenders and threw up the tables.

Christ hung around with fucking poor people and thieves and prostitutes and like Christ was,

I mean it's there, like a very compassionate individual, and he most definitely would have been, Christ would have been in favor of social housing and very wealthy people giving up some of their wealth for people who have less.

So, Charlie Kirk and Jerry Falwell Jr. started the Falkirk organization to quite literally figure out a way to push neoliberal economics

in the benefit of Donald Trump while still being Christian and to dispel this idea that Jesus might might be socialist and that's what Falkirk was.

Now, why did Falkirk stop existing? Because Jerry Falwell Jr.

He

in 2020

he was what would be called a cockholder

His what it Jerry fat he's a fucking Christian. His da was the bloody moral majority Ronald Reagan fell out in the 80s so Jerry Fanwell Jr.
in in in 2020

he was in his 50s so was his wife they met a 20 year old pole boy

and basically he used to ride Jerry Falwell's wife while Jerry Falwell sat in the corner watching

so

he used to like to watch 20 year old men have sex with his wife and she used to like it too and this got out and became a huge scandal because he's a fucking evangelical Christian, obviously, talking about morality and the family.

And it's like, well,

you like sitting in the corner of hotel rooms while a young fella fucks your wife. Here's the thing:

like, there's nothing wrong with that. It's like, oh, right, you're an adult, do you? Oh, and your wife is also an adult.
Oh, and that man there is an adult too. And what are you into?

Alright, your wife likes to have sex with him. Okay.

Are you consenting? You are? Are you consenting? Great. And Jerry, what about you? Well, I quite like to watch this.
Great, so you also consent, Jerry. Fucking fantastic.

Three adults having a bit of group sex, whatever. None of my business.
Fucking none of my business. Work away.
You might get hit by a car tomorrow. No one did anything wrong.

Three consenting adults did a bunch of sex stuff. No one was abused.
No one was victimized. But because.

and you know, maybe he was

possibly bisexual. I don't know.

He's in a room. There's another man with his balls out.
Maybe, I don't know.

I don't want to say that

people who are into cook holding are necessary bisexual. I don't know.

But

it's not great if your whole thing is fucking sexual morality and sex is between a man and a wife and this is a covenant with God. It's not great.

So Falkirk fell apart and had to change its name after that. The point I'm trying to make is

I haven't seen any fucking decent...

Why is this not the thing that's been spoken about? Whatever about the culture war stuff.

The circus.

Charlie Kirk ran a fucking circus. A circus that was entertain.
That's the thing with this shit.

This is actually a form of entertainment. The culture war is actually a a form of entertainment.
Even though it's really dangerous, it's really harmful.

It hurts trans people, gay people, women, fucking black people, brown people are victimized. But this is actually a circus of entertainment and media plays into it.

And figures like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro or fucking Donald Trump, they're...

entertainers they're storytellers in the circus but it is all a huge huge distraction from neoliberal policies that are destroying the life of everybody who isn't a fucking billionaire Charlie Clark was the face of that he was the face of a giant pile of cash a giant pile of pile of cash that's explicitly out there in the open

a pile of cash that's there to push neoliberal policies into fucking government

using the culture war as the vehicle. It's not conspiracy.
They say it themselves. It's out.
Anyone can see this.

The vast majority of journalism I've seen the past week has focused instead on the circus.

It hasn't focused on the ticket sales behind the circus. It hasn't focused on the people that are building the tents.
And this is happening the world over. That's what all this shit is about.

And it's being driven by social media networks. It's being driven by...
Like I said, who's inventing the town square?

The town square where these things are happening is fucking social media companies.

The billionaires that are benefiting from all of this are also creating the platform for most of the discourse occurs where they have set the rules for what the discourse is turn and response combat Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg their companies are here in Ireland not paying tax there's many uh quotes that Charlie Kirk said

that I could be I could be speaking about but the one that really

grinds my gears is in 2024 Charlie Kirk and it was on his fucking podcast he said I can't stand the word empathy, actually.

I think empathy is a made-up new age term.

It does a lot of damage.

Sympathy is saying, I'm sorry you're going through that, but empathy is, I'm going to feel what you feel, and that's a terrible idea for a leader. And

that there,

the thing is.

Empathy, empathy isn't just

I feel what another person is feeling. Empathy is

the effort of thinking about what it's like to be another person or thinking about what that other person is going through. Okay?

And

sympathy. See, you can be a good Christian and still have sympathy.

What the Christian right would like is for the supporters to have sympathy, but not empathy. You see, with sympathy, sympathy, you get to see a poor person on the side of the road.

Oh, that's terrible. Oh, that poor person.
Isn't that so sad? Look at them, they're dirty, they don't have clothes, they can't eat food, they're begging. Look at that person, that's so sad.

And then you move on.

You can then label that person, you can label them as poor, you can say something like, Well, you know, they're poor probably because they deserve it.

It's awful that they're poor, but that person could lift themselves out of that poverty, I'm sure, like I could do that. But you see, if you go with empathy, it's different.

Look at that person who's poor. Wow,

I I wonder what they went through that they're in that situation. I wonder have they experienced trauma? I wonder has that person experienced

maybe

classism, racism?

I wonder that that person have a mental illness that I don't know about or a physical illness that I can't see. I wonder

what must it be like for that person. I wonder what their childhood was like.

What circumstances led to this? You see that's empathy. And once you start using empathy, you have to start thinking systematically.

And once you start using empathy, you can't blame someone for poverty when you're using empathy.

Sympathy alone,

you get to think that you're a good person because it's like I feel sad for them, but you haven't gone that step further and you can still label them.

Empathy is critical thinking. That's what empathy is.

And empathy isn't just

feeling.

you are sad, so I feel your sadness. Empathy is also the fact that you want to think about why the other person might be sad.
It's critical thinking. It's affording someone else

your cognitive fucking time

to have a think about what they're going through and what it's like for them. Imagination, creativity.
And empathy is the road to compassion.

It's the road to compassion and the road to self-reflection and the road to thinking, oh fuck it, that person has less than me. I wonder, can I help him?

And that's the Charlie Kirk quote that really grinded my gears.

It revealed a lot. It's like, of course, you don't like empathy.
Because then it might push critical thinking. And then that might make people go, hold on a second, who's funding you and why?

So taking it back to neoliberalism,

it's the... the transfer of public wealth into private interests.
It's been happening for the past 45 years. It hasn't really stopped.
It's still continuing.

And this is driving a lot of the problems in the world today

and fueling the flames of conspiracy theories and culture wars and hatred. And it's happening everywhere.

Like there was flag protests there in fucking Ireland and also over in England there the past month. Who's paying for the flags and why?

Like there was a very blatant attempt in Ireland.

Just all these Irish flags started showing up and being they were being put up on flagpoles.

And someone was trying to recontextualise the Irish flag so that it became anti-immigrant because they were hoping that the government would take down Irish flags, and that's astroturfing.

Get them to take down the Irish flag so that we can say you're not allowed to be Irish in Ireland again. Make Ireland great again.
Who's funding it and why? Is it about flags?

Is it about flags or is it our very wealthy interests just wanting to push more neoliberalism? And to take it back to empathy,

I can strongly disagree with all of

some of the things that Charlie Kirk did and said when he was alive and at the same time be heartbroken for his little kids who are grown up without a dad and don't even understand what's happened.

And a part of me to be heartbroken for him that he doesn't get to be there for his kids and hug his kids and and that there is that's the complexity of human emotions right there that

i love being able to think that way but also because because the spectacle of charlie kirk's death was so

so fucking traumatizing and it it did hurt a lot of people people who'd never even heard of charlie kirk it was so frightening and there's people out there who are quite compassionate with big hearts and they saw a brutal thing happening and they're thinking about his kids.

Some of those people are now vulnerable to the the martyrdom

you see the trump administration is going to turn him into a martyr and use the the way that he died to associate his viewpoints with righteousness and goodness and i can already see them they're trying to make there's narratives emerging that this is

trans

violence, that this is that trans people did this, this is about trans people. I can see that emerging already where they're trying to associate trans

with violence. Because again, there's an unfounded rumor we don't know that possibly the shooter, the person who's been arrested, may have had a partner who was trans.

But this is again unfounded rumor. We don't know.
So that's that's my take on the matter. That was a very long podcast, I'd imagine there now.

Fucking hell, how long was that? Jesus Christ.

All right, I'll catch you next week. God bless.

Wink at a a swan.

Gen your fleck to a wren.

Blow kisses at a robin redbreast.

Haven't seen a robin redbreast in a while. I'll be looking forward to them cunts coming back.
Proud fuckers.

Alright, dog bless.

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