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In The Audit, comedian Dave Anthony and screenwriter Josh Olson audit a variety of online classes, docuseries, and other media products created by noxious political figures and boil them down to the good stuff. By which they mean… the bad stuff.
With the rise of MasterClass, TED talks, and celebrity biographies, the country’s political elite are bombarding us with information so we can be just like them. But who has time to devote to all that self-congratulatory navel-gazing?
That’s where The Audit comes in. Dave, Josh and a rotating coterie of guest hosts will consume depraved educational content for the time-pressed listener, then regurgitate a short-form review detailing the sociopathy and insanity baked into the messages. It’s like listening to someone present a book report — except all of the authors are deranged lunatics who are poisoning American culture.
[AUTO GENERATE TRANSCRIPT]
[00:00:00]
Josh Olsen: So, uh, hey, we're back. Just gonna do it. We're back. Are we? Yeah, we're back. It's been a while. Define, define back. We're back. We're back. We're back on the, well, what is it? We're not on the air. We're on the, we're on the tubes. We're back on the series of interconnected tubes. And, uh, it's been a while and we'll have an explanation for you shortly.
I think you'll appreciate. But, um, uh, uh, do you wanna do the, you're listening to whatever the fuck
Dave Anthony: you're listening to the audits with Josh and David. Excellent. That was great.
Daniel Bessner: The,[00:01:00]
Josh Olsen: oh yeah.
Uh, so this podcast is brought to you by the Lever, the award-winning reader supported investigative news outlet. We are, we're actually, we're very proud to be part of that network. I would say, wouldn't you say? Yeah, super. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, in fact, I wanna talk about something they did recently that was kinda nice in a minute.
But, uh, if you wanna support this show, there's a few ways you can do it. First, you can go over to lever [00:02:00] news.com/audit and hit the Become a Supporter button at the top of the page and become a subscriber. Uh, that'll subscribe you to the Lever right off the bat. You'll get immediate access to the full length episodes of our show, the audit every week.
You'll also get access to the Lever Premium podcast feed with extended interviews, lots of special bonus content, and then plus, uh, you'll have exclusive access to all of the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism that the Lever does. And I gotta say, in the time we have been gone, they have done some amazing stories.
Uh, they also, they just won the, uh, the Izzy Award for some work they've done. And we'll talk about that actually later episode. Izzy, Izzy Stradling's Award. Yeah, Izzy. Yes, that's exactly right. That's rhythm, rhythm guitar. You can also, we don't do a Patriot anymore cuz uh, it felt bad to like done people every month when we're off the air for period time.
I didn't feel bad. I was fine with it. Yeah, Dave was fine taking your money. I had a attack of conscience. So now you can, um, you can help out if you want with, uh, one time tips to our [00:03:00] Venmo account, which is at the audit. Which is one word, and it's, uh, under businesses on Venmo. And that money doesn't just go to, um, feed our wild, uh, uh, cocaine habits.
Um, it also goes to help out our, uh, our team, uh, Colin McCoy, AKA Diesel Boots, who does the, the song you just heard? Shit, you know what? Do it Now, but here before you hear his new song, cuz his new song is such a dementedly, evil earworm, you're actually gonna wanna go to his house and take money from him after you hear it.
I would say, um,
Dave Anthony: I get my cocaine from Donald Trump Jr.
Josh Olsen: Well, okay. And yeah, and you need more money for that. It also goes to, um, uh, Brian Siano, who's our, uh, free floating agent of chaos, uh, our research guy. But yeah, our new theme song, I've been waking up at like four o'clock in the morning with that fucking song stuck in my head.
It's, it's the new ones. The new ones Bad folks. Um, you can also, uh, it really is, it's terrible. Colin, Colin should be [00:04:00] arrested. Uh, you can email us at the audit podcast@gmail.com and follow us on Twitter at the audit podcast. But on the subject of the Lever, I wanted to talk for a minute cuz we have been just outta this shit and it's like every time something happens, I'm like, I wanna talk about it on the show.
And then we're not doing the show. But, uh, the Lever did a nice piece last week on the fact that, uh, Clarence Thomas, you know, Clarence Thomas, Dave, I've heard him, you know, the whole thing. Like he's been, uh, uh, while, while he was enjoying wild gifts and treat. From, um, uh, how would you describe this guy? Uh,
Dave Anthony: creepy billionaire.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. Very, very much. Not a Nazi, but a Nazi tchotchke enthusiast.
Dave Anthony: Very much not a Nazi, but, um, but pushes and funds policies that are naziesque while, uh, having Nazi stuff all over his house.
Josh Olsen: Harlan Crowe, what is the name, gentlemen, but Yeah. But, but very much not a Nazi. And, uh, I [00:05:00] know that because like every, uh, right wing creep and oral crawled out from under the woodwork to tell me last week that he was not a Nazi.
Um, and, uh, but the lever had a nice piece about how while he was hanging out with this guy and flying around the world and going to these luxury cruises with him and not reporting these gifts, um, uh, Thomas, and while he was voting, he was passing voting to pass Citizens United, which made it a lot easier for dark money groups to influence elections.
But you noticed he actually wrote, um, in his opinion, passing Citizens United, that, citizens U Citizens didn't, that Citizens United did not go far.
Dave Anthony: Hmm. Yeah, you can tell that.
Josh Olsen: Gotta hear. This is for the piece. It's also what Vital said, this court should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements.
He argued that donors, he argued that donors could face retaliation and ruin careers when they disclose their political spending. Uh, citing an example [00:06:00] from California in which supporters of a ballot measure ending same sex marriage were allegedly harassed for donating to the ballot measure campaign.
Dave Anthony: Yeah, they were, because they were from out of fucking state and pouring money in from Utah. Uh, that all backfired on 'em anyway. But yeah, of course, exactly what the situation we're talking about. A guy has a bunch of Nazi stuff in his house and he is getting backlash because, uh, you know, normal people don't like it when you're complete and total fucking asshole.
Yeah.
Josh Olsen: Well, my favorite of all people came out, Charles Murray, you know, the, uh, what is it called? Yeah, the Bell Curve. Famous, famous, uh, uh, racist, Charles Murray. He came out and, and said something along the lines of like, you know, I can tell that none of the people complaining about this know Harlan Crow.
Cuz if they knew him, they'd know what a nice guy he is.
Dave Anthony: Oh no, he as though somehow, yeah, he, yeah, he knows them very well. There's a painting of them together. That's how much
Josh Olsen: No, he's, he's saying, he's saying that the people criticizing him don't know him. Cause I know I'm saying he did know him.
Dave Anthony: [00:07:00] Charles Murray.
Josh Olsen: Of course. Charles.
Dave Anthony: So Josh, how many paintings do we have together? You and I, uh, painting? If you and I
standing on a porch. Yeah. No, it's not the one stuff us standing on the porch. I'm worried about people finding out about Dave.
So I'm just saying he more than kind of knows him. There's paintings of them together.
Josh Olsen: Yeah, they're buddies. They're pals. They're pals. But I don't, don't you love, like, when, when you're out there, people are accusing of maybe being a Nazi, maybe having like a very high profile racist come out and saying, you're a nice guy, guy.
Dave Anthony: It's, but that's all he has. Those are all the Yeah. It's like everybody from the American Enterprise Institute, which is just like, yeah.
The most right wing, horrific organization. No, he's good. Yeah. They could not find one slightly decent human being to be like, he's okay. They're all terrible people.
Josh Olsen: You have no idea that SWAs the kinda key chain he gave me that thing cost a thousand dollars. Man, that is a good person. He's not just handing that key.
Dave Anthony: That's, that's how you [00:08:00] tell a nice, that's how you tell a nice guy. Um, but the house thing is the best.
Josh Olsen: What, what's the house thing?
Dave Anthony: The, the Clarence Thomas House thing that came out in the lever today? Um. Let me make sure I have this completely correct because it's Oh, it was ProPublica. Um, yeah. But, but yeah, Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas and his mother.
Josh Olsen: Oh yes, yes, sure.
Dave Anthony: And then spent thousand, tens of thousands of dollars redoing the house. Mm-hmm. She still lives there. Sure. So he, I'll get your point. It's so, it's so, the corruption is so, like off the charts that it's like, I don't, it's gonna be so fascinating.
Josh Olsen: I've done that for you. See, tell, tell, tell to our [00:09:00] listeners who owns your house.
Dave Anthony: You own my house. And that's why we have new bathrooms. Um, it's, it's, this is gonna be fascinating because to me, the court for a while, I mean, it's always been a terrible court, like in history, but yeah. It's, it's been super illegitimate for a while. This is going to be, if he's, cuz they're not gonna get rid of him.
There's no way to get rid of him.
Josh Olsen: That's the thing. Yeah. Nothing's, do you think anything's gonna happen?
Dave Anthony: No, nothing's gonna happen, but the court will become so de-legitimized that we get to have the discussion. Can you ignore the Supreme Court? And the answer to that question is absolutely yes, you do.
You have to. You have to. So, so thi hopefully that's where this goes, because nothing could be better than a de-legitimized Supreme Court, particularly right now when it is run, when it is mostly cultish. They're they're cult members [00:10:00] on that court there. Yeah. Extreme radical lunatics. So nothing could be better than to completely de-legitimize it and have everybody who's not a conservative go fuck off.
Yeah. That, that's the best case scenario. So hopefully, I mean, ideally he stays on there and everybody just says, go fuck yourself court. Like that would be the ideal sort of solution
Josh Olsen: to this. Yeah. Well, and then we saw aoc, was it last week? Um, you know, when the Texas Court blocked, uh, what's the abortion drug?
I can't, but Miff PR stone, is that how you pronounce it?
Dave Anthony: Yeah. Um, that's not just an abortion drug, but Yeah.
Yeah.
Josh Olsen: But you was saying that, I mean, it's such a absurd obscene ruling that, that, um, Biden should just ignore it and refuse to, it's hard to do that or to prosecute it, and she caught a lot of shit.
But I, I will say it is, it is a step in the right direction to actually see an elected official saying that in the mainstream press.
Dave Anthony: But it's very hard to do that when you've [00:11:00] allowed a crazy judge in Florida to get rid of masks on airplanes. So you've set precedent that you listen to judges. And, and then you, so you can't pick and choose like you have to do both of those or none.
Yeah, she's right. Like there's absolutely no reason to go along with they are crazy religious lunatics. They should have absolutely no saying over what we're doing. Like if it's not in the Constitution saying they are absolutely, uh, justified and we are forced to do what they say, then fuck it. Right. They all believe in the constitution, so let's believe in the Constitution. Yeah.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. By the way, it's a nice, a nice segue into we should, we should talk to folks about what it is that we're doing on this, uh, current iteration of our show. So, um, you kind of already gave it away what you just said, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead with this anyway.
Hey, Dave, what did Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, Candace [00:12:00] Owens, Nigel Farage, Danes DeSouza, Larry Elder, the late lamented, much lamented Charles, crowd Hammer, Michelle Malcolm, Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder, Brett Stevens, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Michael Nows, Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk all have in common.
Dave Anthony: They all support me for President.
Josh Olsen: Exactly. Right. And that's why we're back with the audit to Wait. What? Hmm. You know what? I was putting that list together. I'm not kidding. This is not, I'm not doing a bit. I realized as I, I wrote down Bench Shapiro, and then I wrote down Charlie Kirk, and I went, wait, I just said, And then I was like, oh, wait.
And then I had to Google them and I realized they are, I can barely, except for the fact that one of 'em, I think Charlie Kirk, somehow his face is like too small for his head. Yeah. Yeah. Can you actually tell the, can you tell the difference between those two guys? Oh, yeah. Because I realize every time I see Charlie Kirk, I just think it's like Ben Shapiro has had some [00:13:00] kind of bout with a flu or something. They, they Shapiro blended together in my mind. Well, I don't listen to either of 'em really.
Dave Anthony: Uh, no, they're very several different people. I mean, they have the same opinions, but, um, yeah, no, Ben Shapiro's voice, uh, it's horrific. And you should be able to tell 'em apart by that.
Josh Olsen: So, yeah. Actually the, um, uh, the thing they all have in common is that they're all, I guess presenters mm-hmm. At Prager u
Dave Anthony: they all give, um, they're guest professors.
Josh Olsen: Guest, well, they don't call 'em professors. They're, they're presenters. And, uh, Ted Cruz doesn't actually present, he's a guest, but I just wanna throw 'em in there. But, uh, yeah, at Prager u the Internet's biggest phony educational resource, um, and we've been talking about them for a while, and I had somehow managed to be oblivious to how big, how big are they, Dave?
Because I, I was like, oh yeah, it's that asshole. Dennis Prager's been around forever, did not realize how enormous they were. [00:14:00]
Dave Anthony: Yeah, they're ma it's a massive propaganda organization. Millions and millions of views all. Facebook and everything else and, and in schools and it's a big deal.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. They pump a lot of money into, into Facebook.
Um, they are pretty much why your crazy right wing uncle continues to be crazy right wing uncle. Like, you know what they do is they do these little five minute videos so that he can go like, look, look this proves that there's no racism. Yeah. Cause I got a black guy talking about how there's no racism.
But, um, yeah, they're this big deal. We're gonna get more into him as we go. But basically Dennis Prager was this, do you remember Amber Mac in the nineties? Yeah. Were you out here where were Yeah. He was like this radio right wing radio talk show guy. And he was like, you know, this is like peak rush Limbaugh years, I guess.
And he was kind of the uh, uh, the sort of rational rush limba. He, he didn't, uh, [00:15:00] uh, he didn't, uh, his, his, his veins didn't bulge and he didn't scream and he, he wasn't in a, uh, anything. He wasn't an explicit racist, but he kind of used, you know, essentially, uh, his, he sort of used mdic wisdom to arrive at his and seeing conclusions.
And um, he passed for an intellectual on AM talk radio, uh, among the crowd that bought that shit. And, uh, but he stuck around, man, I had no. In fact, we were, we were, uh, my mother-in-law remembers him from, um, she lives out here. She remembers him from back in the seventies, I guess. He was writing books on Judaism.
And, uh, my wife, my wife brought up the fact that we were doing this. And she goes, mom, do you know Dennis pr? She's like, oh, yeah. And then she says that she goes, he had some weird ideas.
Dave Anthony: Yeah, yeah, he had some weird ideas.
Josh Olsen: Um, big on really, really down the homeless. Uh, not, not a fan of the homeless and terrible views on [00:16:00] education.
And he was really down on gay people for a while. He seems to have sort of come around a little bit on that, but, uh, yeah, he started this thing. I guess he wanted to start a university, found it was too expensive. Teamed up some hack TV writer, and they, they, they went this route and they do, I mean, Prager u I I can't count.
There's no system as far as I can find. We've been dealing this for a month. There's no system to find out exactly how many videos there are on Prager U, but hundreds, couple thousand. Yeah, hundreds. Yeah, easily. Hundreds. Um, and, uh, they're bonkers. That's a,
Dave Anthony: yeah. Uh, heinous. Bonkers, uh, horrific. Monstrous. Yeah. Stupid, pathetic, childlike.
Josh Olsen: Kind, evil. We've said this before.
Dave Anthony: Uh, I would, yeah. Evil's a good word.
Josh Olsen: Uh, he's a good word. And and Dennis likes to use that word a lot too, so it's safe. He likes to he [00:17:00] does. Yeah. The left is one of the interesting things though. I'll, I'll say this. Credit Dennis, Dennis does lately seem to understand the difference between liberals and the left, but or he understands that there is one he still doesn't quite understand.
Yeah, he does. He doesn't know what it is. But, but, um, yeah, but they get about 40% of their funding comes from like 130,000 online donors, which is absolutely insane. Um, and he also gets money from some big money donors. Uh, my favorites are, you know, Harrison or Ferris and Dan Wilkes, uh, who made their billions in fracking.
Oh, sure. Yeah. Um, and for added chuckles, they, uh, they also, they started a church called the Assembly, the Assembly of Yahweh, where Ferris preaches, uh, he's compared homosexuality to Beastiality and he's declared that climate change is the will of God. So wonder if you guess Yeah,
Dave Anthony: God, God wasn't like, [00:18:00] Hey, drill, take all this stuff. I put on the earth out he and burn it. And he was like, ah, I put that in there. Leave it.
Josh Olsen: Well, God, God, how
Dave Anthony: wouldn't that be a temp? One of those temptations? Wouldn't, would that be like a temptation? Don't touch that. Like, doesn't God have a bunch of things where he's like, I put it there to tempt you, but you're not supposed to do it. Isn't that, shouldn't that also be fossil fuels?
Josh Olsen: Is that not? But he, he did do the rain, the 40 days of rain thing, which, uh, we just finished up here in LA folks not quite as bad as in the Bible, but we didn't
Dave Anthony: finish. It's raining my house right now. It's raining your house right now. It's been raining all day.
Josh Olsen: It's, it's a sunny day here. Um, congratulations. But yeah, but take a wild guess what, Prager's positioned on climate changes. Uh, it's so great. Yeah, but not only do they clog Facebook and, and the Internets, um, they, they also, they show this stuff in schools, high schools [00:19:00] and universities all over the country.
And that's the part that really bugs me, honestly, especially at a time where like, you know, the, the, the big word the right likes to use is, um, Uh, groomers, they're big on groomers.
Dave Anthony: Well, they always get mad about what they're doing. They always scream about what they are doing. And that's what they're doing here with PragerU.
They, they're putting propaganda in the schools and so they're gonna scream that other people are doing it. They're the ones doing it.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. It's astonishing. And it is hard to find out exactly where this stuff is, is being dropped. I mean, obviously like Jerry Falwell University's showing them, there's nothing you can really do about that.
But we're kind of going out this time with a bit of an agenda. I would say. We not only want to kind of expose them a little bit and mock 'em into our usual thing, it's um, uh, we are, we are hoping that out of this we can at least get some of the schools that are showing these things, especially to kids, [00:20:00] uh, to stop showing them.
Cuz it's clear that in some cases people don't quite know what their teachers are showing kids and they need to. Cause not only is this stuff ideologically appalling in a lot of cases, it's also factually indefensible. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and these things are weird to watch, man. If you've never gone, I don't know, describe a pr like Dave, you go to a PragerU video, what, what do you get for five minutes?
Dave Anthony: I mean, it's absolute nonsense. Like it's, it's, it's the worst, dumbest right wing stuff. I've, I've seen like, it's on, on the level of the absolute stupidest worst, like,
Josh Olsen: But it's all, it's all also, it's pitched at such a dumb level. I mean, you watch these things and you're being talked down to, no matter what this subject is, you're being talked to.
Like you're 13 years old, like you're eight years old. And I, I cannot imagine this stuff reaching people, but it [00:21:00] does.
Dave Anthony: Well, it does. If you're showing it to kids in schools and they're, you know, very young. Um, mommy high school in Ohio, they were offered extra credit to watch Prager U videos. Um, you know, it's the, if teachers can get away with it, they will.
Like why wouldn't a teacher who is right wing teaching, you know what civics or anything else history show prager you videos. Right. Why wouldn't they? They, it's not like they're completely restricted from showing things like that.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. But these things are just, they were appalling. Um, so yeah. So we're, we're gonna be going for the next, at least 10 weeks.
We're gonna be diving into this shit, trying to dismantle them cuz uh, and it's a risky thing too, cause um, we've, we've, uh, we've put a bunch of these episodes together already and I can feel my brain [00:22:00] softening, turning to mush. Um, We can't possibly in the past, in our various other endeavors, we have covered everything in totality.
That can't be done with Prager. You, you would go insane trying to detail and break down even a, a quarter of the videos in this site. So we've breaking down a, we've taken a bunch of the best ones, by which we mean the worst. And each week we're going to sort of sequester them by, uh, by a theme, a thematic concept.
And we're gonna bring in, uh, a different expert on that subject will be our study buddy for the week to kind of help us break it down. But it is a risky job. Um, Dave, I stumbled across this new one that they just put up today. I have no idea who this guy is. His name is, uh, Javier or Xavier, uh, Dar Russo.
Um, he's a one-time b l m activist and apparently he tried to do the same thing we are doing and it didn't go well for him. And this is my biggest fear. So, uh, here's, [00:23:00] here's, uh, Zavier Javier Dar Russo. Um, explain what happened to him when he tried to do what we're doing.
VIDEO CLIP: I was going to make a series debunking PragerU videos, and one by one I unintentionally dismantled the entire narrative that I was indoctrinated with.
Or in other words, I accidentally Redbull myself.
Dave Anthony: What an idiot.
Josh Olsen: See, I think that's what, I think this one just went up, uh, this week cuz it's um, yeah, April 11th. So it came up technically last week and it's only been up a couple days, so it's, and it's already gotten 269,000 views on, uh, Prager's channel, um, on the Prager U Channel. And, uh, let's take, let's take a look cause they also put these up on YouTube.
Um,
Dave Anthony: He on his YouTube, uh, on his Twitter page it says he has a PhD [00:24:00] in gaslighting.
Josh Olsen: Jesus Christ. Yeah. 228,000 views Here. You gotta, I I, I hate to say this, but we're gonna be pushing a lot of these and you go to our show notes and you look at the entire videos if you want to. So we are gonna be shunting some business there way.
It's unavoidable, but you gotta watch this cloud's video cuz I have never seen anybody wear his ridiculous issues on his sleeve so clearly. And you watch him and it was like, it was only a matter of time before this guy, this poor, sad black man, uh, found some excuse to see him with white supremacy and Prager u was it, it could have been anything, but, uh, it's, it's pretty, pretty astonishing.
Um, so that's, that's the deal. Um, it's brutal, man. I'd tell you this is the worst thing we've ever done, wouldn't you? Yo George Bush was brutal, man. Yeah, but it was like,
Dave Anthony: it's, it's, no, it that is, that is redoing the image of a war criminal. Sorry, [00:25:00] I can't,
Josh Olsen: yeah, but they, they redo the image of like 50 war criminals on PragerU and they reach more people.
Dave Anthony: I know, but that's still, I gotta go bush.
Josh Olsen: And honestly, I gotta say by the end of the Bush thing, it was like, yeah, he belongs in the Hague. But if I, you know, if I had to hang out and have a beer with him, he'd be fun. Dennis Prager. None of these, I don't want to hang out with any of these people. Every time I watch one of these, I just, I despise these people even more on a personal level.
I think, uh, the, the, the horrifying thing about Bush is that he has, on a personal level, kind of, kind of a cheerful moy liable guy. But yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna go with this one. I mean, I think morally you're probably right. Uh, but, but Prager also fires so wide and covers so many subjects. I think they may be doing more general evil than George w Bush's masterclass in leadership, but
Dave Anthony: Yeah.
But you didn't ask me that. You just asked me, well, what's worse? And watch what's worse. Do that for hours
Josh Olsen: worse. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll ask you again when we're done. We can, [00:26:00] we can see if we've survived this. It's not gonna, it's not gonna change, but, um, anyway, uh, so yeah, so that's, uh, that's it. So this week, uh, we're doing, we're gonna kick it off with world history.
Our study buddy this week is Daniel Bessner, who's an associate professor of International Studies in the Henry Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. And he's also co-host of the very great podcast, American Prestige, which you should be listening to. Um, so let's get into it.
But first, As promised or threatened, uh, the Great Diesel boots has blessed us with another one of his amazing theme songs. Seriously Trigger Warning, this, this shit isn't earworm. It will stay in your brain for the rest of your life and wake you up at three o'clock in the morning.
VIDEO CLIP: Good morning class. Good morning, professor. Today we're learning all about socialism, deviant [00:27:00] sex and devil worship. And how cool. It's oh, shimmy science fiction is next week. If you finally had enough of hippie college, left wing fluff, get yourself a real degree from Prager University. Good news class. New gates is here to give everyone free vaccine. Yay. Science is a com plot. Our professors can't be bought. All textbooks are so rose free at Prager University. My pronouns are he and him. Loser. No more guilt, no more blame. No more Headrow white male. Shame no. Wes on your family tree at Prager [00:28:00] University.
Did you look up He never
Daniel Bessner: got a graduate degree, right? He never
Josh Olsen: got a, we're getting, yeah, don't worry. No. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Daniel Bessner: Oh yeah, let's get, he implies that he,
Dave Anthony: Yes, he did.
Josh Olsen: Sort of. It's artful. It's artful. We'll, we'll get into it. Unlike our guest, however, who I believe has a, uh, don't you have some sort of degree there, Danny.
Um, Daniel Bessner is an associate professor of international studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. And he also co-hosts the amazing podcast, American Prestige, which probably by the time you hear this, I'll, I'll have been on talking about movies for some ungodly reason.
But, um, uh, but he also wrote a piece. Um, and full disclosure, Danny's a friend. He's been on our old show, the West Wing thing, but he recently wrote a piece, uh, in the New York Times, uh, of all places, um, the dangerous [00:29:00] decline of the historical profession. And it seemed like a great, uh, just the perfect person to have on as we discuss Prager University's approach to history and foreign affairs.
Safe to say, Danny can legitimately claim to knowing a thing or two. About both those things.
Dave Anthony: Yes,
Daniel Bessner: I'm, I'm, I'm an lead who's wasted my life. So this is the one thing I was
Josh Olsen: built to do. Exactly. And, and, but there's a couple things. There were two things in the New York Times piece I wanted, like, one I thought was really, um, uh, I mean it's, it's, it's simple and it's obvious what it's true that entire areas of our shared history will never be known because no one will receive a living wage to uncover and study them.
And that is a depressing, depressing fact because I don't have to go to school to study history, to, uh, benefit from the fact that there are people out there who do. And, um, it is depressing how much that profession is being hammered. Uh, well, hang on, I'm getting to [00:30:00] you in a minute, Anthony cuz the next thing he says is, I love this.
Uh, and I thought you instantly when I read it, uh, without professional historians history, education will be left more and more in the hands of social media influencers, partisan hacks, and others unconcerned with achieving a complex empirically informed understanding of the past. He then goes on to talk about Bill O'Reilly and Rush.
I, of course immediately thought of my friend Dave's podcast, the doll.
Daniel Bessner: I didn't say podcasters,
Josh Olsen: but, but I, I'm, I'm gonna argue, and I bet Dave's gonna agree even if you weren't on our show, that that actually, um, uh, the doll in fact does provide a fairly complex and empirically informed understanding of the past. Um, would you agree, Dave? I'm not asking Daniel. I
Dave Anthony: mean, I mean, yeah, look, the, it's the same thing with, um, with Covid.
Uh, there is a eight now, a dearth of actual healthcare professionals and [00:31:00] people who can handle this sort of thing. Um, you know, sociological, uh, epidemiologists and all that, all those sort of things. So those, there's not that many of them. And, and the void is filled by economists like, uh, Emily Osser and, uh, ex economy writers like David Leonhardt, um, at the New York Times.
So the void gets filled, and that's exactly the same thing here. The void is being filled, um, yeah, by mostly idiots. The, the terrible thing about the void being filled is, is that the rich will pay the. Piece of shit conservatives to fill the space. Right. And and that's what, that's what happens. The,
Josh Olsen: the space PR u Yeah.
Yeah.
Dave Anthony: I mean it's, it's the perfect example. Prager u fills the void of a total lack of history teaching that's going on. I mean, there's just, and it was never that great to begin with. We were mostly told to American exceptionalism. [00:32:00] But you know, you're, you're right. You brought it up about the 1619, you know, project that the, the right is always a reaction.
If you read history, I mean, they did it. They do it again. Right.
Daniel Bessner: You know, and I, I think it's also just important to like, recognize the scale beyond podcasts. Bill O'Reilly's books are the bestselling history books in human history. Right. So the scale we're talking about. Yeah. The best non-fiction, I believe books as a series.
Josh Olsen: They're so fucking good. I mean, I've, I confess, I've never opened one. I'm being guilty of a terrible set of, uh, bashing something I'm ignored of. But
Daniel Bessner: for you to adapt one.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. Have you, have you actually cracked any of 'em? Have you read any.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah, no, I had to read some of them for the, I didn't feel comfortable making a claim about it in the piece.
And, and no, I read that. Yeah, they're, they're basically, um, there's, it's interesting because they're not, it's really just kind of a repetition of facts, you know? Mm-hmm. It's [00:33:00] like dramatically told stories. They're, they're not especially ideological in an interesting way. It's not like Danes DeSouza. Uh, and that's, I think what, what allows them to be like so huge, because it's not just for conservatives, it really isn't.
Um, I was expecting to find more ideology in them than I did. Uh, and it's really like, kind of like, uh, simply told pretty short story about this individual figure. So the problem with O'Reilly is sort of the entire way of focusing on individuals to the absent of like, structure and context, the Marxist way to understand thing, uh, less so dsh, DeSouza, which is like the Democrats did slavery, and they're the same as Democrats today.
So there is a difference in sort of like what's going on there.
Josh Olsen: Why, why do you think, uh, O'Reillys are so popular in that? Cause I would imagine there'd be some resistance from people who aren't tapped into his ideology to, into reading those things. But
Daniel Bessner: they're, they're like brisk stories. They're, they're [00:34:00] literally like 30 serial adventure stories that that's how, that's how they're written.
It's not, it's like, I mean, there's Amer, like Dave said, it's all Amer steeped dripping in American exceptionalism, but that's a bipartisan thing, you know? Yeah. Um, yeah. And so that's what I think allows it to be, you know, that's his fair and balance thing that's his whole shtick.
Josh Olsen: Does, does, um, I, I, I should've, I should've prepped for this.
It's a simple question. Does he co-write him, quote unquote, with somebody? Do you think he actually writes 'em, or does he have a he's got a ghost writer. A co-writer? Yeah.
Dave Anthony: Oh yeah. He has to. Yeah. I would imagine. I would imagine.
Daniel Bessner: But no, it's, and it's a stated ghost writer, I believe. I, I, from what I recall, um, each one,
Josh Olsen: maybe there's a couple, like with Bill O'Reilly or by Bill
Daniel Bessner: O'Reilly and Martin Martin Dugard, uh, is is the author.
Yeah. He seems to be on all of these Martin Dugard. Great. So, yeah, and
Dave Anthony: you know, you know, you bring up the, the scary thing is where you [00:35:00] go when you don't know history. Um, uh, Christopher Hitchens always brings up, that's like one of the main, main way of fashion fascism arrives is just a total lack of understanding of history.
It's, it's incredibly dangerous, but I would just make the argument that. You're talking about something that's already, it's already happened. It's like, I think you, you left a little bit of hope in there as far as, you know, we, we need to change this now. But I think it's already, you know,
Daniel Bessner: I totally agree.
I think it's done. I think it's done. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the time to unionize here, we 30, 40 years ago. Yeah. You know, I think, I think the American University is now something that's not, you ever hear the phrase like, Harvard is a hedge fund with a college attached. Uh, I think that describes a lot of the modern university.
It's something different than a place where you go to study history. You know, people think that's good or bad. It's just, to me a fact.
Dave Anthony: I mean, they really, [00:36:00] they really just are eager to turn out people who are gonna jump into the business machine. Um, I mean, when I went to school, they, they really pushed, I was studied earth science and they, they really pushed me to jump into this thing called remote sensing.
Um, and so I did, and then I got out and, and the, the technology was so rapidly moving that by the time I graduated, what I had already learned was obsolete. And I was just like, right. I, I didn't wanna study that, but you told me to study it for a job. And now it's totally, doesn't it, you know, they're just trying to make a buck and, and you know, someone had sold them on these, uh, computer, you know, software shit, and they bought it and, you know, it's just, it's just a fucking racket.
Daniel Bessner: Capitalism capitalism's,
Josh Olsen: right? Yeah. That's bad. I majored in, I majored in repairing Walkmen, so
Dave Anthony: that's, that's far more applicable than what I did.
Josh Olsen: Well, let's, let's just get into these, cuz cuz we got a bunch, Danny [00:37:00] picked a few choice ones and you know, the amazing thing, there's just so much to pull from on this site.
I think one of the things that, that we've been getting sort of, uh, at least I have been getting sort of lost in this morass of content. The Prager University website has got so much stuff, they're just churning this stuff out and, and I think part of it is they just beat you down with the, uh, uh, the enormity at all of it all.
It's because I see very little, I don't see a lot of people coming at them these days, um, at all. And, uh, or, or at all. And it's bizarre. And part of it is cuz it's hard to do. You know, Dave and I like our, our previous podcast, the West Wing thing, and then previous, um, arcs of this show. We have taken things, whether it's, uh, an entire TV series or it's a masterclass and we've walked through the entire thing, beginning, middle, and end and, and hopefully left, you know, left no stone unturned and left, you know, a, a crater where, you [00:38:00] know, your, your belief in these things used to be.
You can't do that with Prager. You can't go through all the Prager videos. Nobody can, I, I'd be amazed if there's somebody at Prager who's, you know, seen more than half of these things. Danny picked, uh, an interesting, uh, variety of stuff, um, on the kind of, uh, history and foreign affairs, uh, tip. And let's, let's just go.
I wanted to kick it off with, I think this is like the seminal prager argument. It is, it is just the, the perfect encapsulation of, of what they do, um, of what so many on the right do. It's so absolutely insane that, that charlatans like him have been making this argument for decades now and still doing it.
In fact, they're still doing it. Blows my mind. Uh, Danny referred to it a little bit a minute ago, but, um, this one is called and, uh, uh, it's five minutes and it's, uh, called The Inconvenient Truth about the Democratic Party. And Carol Swain [00:39:00] is, I guess she's a historian of, of sorts. Um, she's a political scientist, I believe, at Vanderbilt, political scientist.
Um, in 2015, she wrote an opinion piece, uh, for the Tennesseean entitled Charlie Hebdo Attacks, proved critics were right about Islam. Um, she, uh, taught at the time at Vanderbilt. She eventually left. She ran for mayor of Nashville, uh, which she lost. Um, she, uh, the students at, at, um, Vanderbilt assigned a petition, uh, for her temporary suspension for that article.
Um, she's also gone through, I don't know if this is pertinent or not, it's just interesting, several major religious shifts over the years. She started as a Jehovah's Witness, became a Pentecostal in the late nineties, and now she's a Southern Baptist. And her politics, from what I could see, have just been shifting further and further and further the right over time.
Um, she recently appeared in Dne DE's Hillary's America movie, and she worked, oh gosh. Um, as vice president of the Trump Administration's 1776 [00:40:00] report. Which, uh, you must have read that right, Danny?
Daniel Bessner: I did read that. Yeah. I I read that. I read that. Yeah.
Josh Olsen: You okay man?
Daniel Bessner: Yeah, I, if I recall correctly, it was like, um, you were like weird typos in it, if I recall.
That's like the thing that sticks out. Cause you can imagine what it says, but like, there was weird, like, I don't think I'm wrong. Weird syntactical and grammar stuff that just indicated like how quickly they did it. That's what I remember most from it. I, I hope I'm not wrong about that, but I don't think I am.
Josh Olsen: Jesus. Well that's you, you brought him up earlier too, a little while ago, and then he came up and her thing, and I'm just, do we have to do Steven, uh, or what's his name? Uh, Danes Desouza's, uh, movie output at some point. Dave. Oh
Dave Anthony: God. I mean, it's so, ugh. I mean, I don't know. Let's, let's think about that.
That's really,
Daniel Bessner: do, do you guys know like Desouza's history? Like he was the head of Don't this Dartmouth magazine in the eighties. He was a Dartmouth, um, uh, I think Laura in [00:41:00] Inger or Ingram I think might have been there with him. Um, don't, don't shoot me if I'm wrong, but he was doing stuff like, if I recall correctly, outing gay students and things like really vicious stuff, uh, in, you know, the middle of AIDS paranoia.
Um, so he's like, um, quite a, quite a figure to explore in light of the history.
Josh Olsen: Yeah, I know. It just seems so he's, it's one of those things, he's just such a frigging dope.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. And like consciously so he's so condescending. He basically thinks people are idiots and that he's gonna make money off them.
That's basically all it is.
Josh Olsen: So anyway, here's, here's let, let's get into it. Cuz this one always just blows my mind as though, somehow, I mean, her being four years old and grappling with a concept that institutions change over vast periods of time. But, um, if that one's hard for you to gra grapple with, you will, you might fall for this argument, but, uh, let's, let's, here's, here's a little bit of our intro.
When you think about [00:42:00] racial equality and civil rights, which political party comes to mind? The Republicans or the Democrats? Most people would probably say the Democrats, but this answer is in. Yes, it is not. Do you know why?
Dave Anthony: Uh, it's hard to, hard to Jesus
Josh Olsen: Christ. I mean, but they still do this. It's 2023.
Dave Anthony: This is something you see online from right-wingers all the time. Sure. Like they, you know, this is one of their things they Democrats were against, you know, fucking, it's just,
Josh Olsen: it's, it's up there. The only other one that's just as good is when they find out that the Nazis were, you know, the National Socialist workers.
Oh, see, socialists. Socialists. Yeah. Hitler was a socialist. It's silly arguments. Yeah, I know. Well, that's why we wanted to get like a, a, a, a [00:43:00] world renowned historian to come on.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. I mean, like you, like Josh. I think you, you put in a nutshell, institutions change over time and like, she, she says something at one point in there that um, Democrats didn't elect the first black congressman, their first black congressman, um, cuz Republicans had earlier until 1935 and now, yeah.
What changed in the twenties and the thirties was that the Democratic party was undergoing a shift towards a more progressive vision that was organized around sort of northern urban populations that was, did begin to incorporate African Americans into its constituency. So the party began to change in the 1930s, even as it once held onto it's dixiecrat, you know, Strom Thurmond wing until what the sixties.
Right. And it's just like to a total illusion of all of this stuff. In any, um, serious way. And it's just so insulting. That's what I think jumped out to me that how insulting these videos are to people's intelligence. It's just so condescending and so ugh.
Josh Olsen: But somehow they work, [00:44:00] you know? And, um, uh, cuz I guess in a sense they're creating an argument in which you get to speak to, you get to take this argument and go out and speak to somebody else like they're an idiot somehow.
I mean, just the logic here is, is on par with like, OJ Sim, you know, is like, uh, uh, you might think OJ Simpson is a terrible person for murdering his wife, but did you know Right. He's actually not. He's a good person cuz he was a great football player or some, it's crazy. Anyway, she gets into the Klan, which is fun.
Little, little known fact apparently. Uh, the demo clan, the Klan was a democratic organization that was, and how was all of this enforced by Tara? Much of it instigated by the Ku Klux Klan, founded by Democrat Nathan Bedford. For as historian Eric Fauna himself a democrat Notes in effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party mind boggled.
Daniel Bessner: I, I love that. [00:45:00] The way she, like, she's like Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is bad because he's a democrat and then phoner is like talking about the Democratic Party. So it's like the tension is literally on the surface. Why is Eric phone. Bashing the Democratic Party if Democrat, Eric Funner is doing this. So like there's a tension there that she doesn't mm-hmm.
Explore at all, obviously. Um, and it's just, um, shows again, this sort of way, it insults the audience.
Josh Olsen: And then she brings it up to sort of, uh, uh, more recent history. And she doesn't thing that I always really love, uh, when she gets into lbj. Um, let's, let's hear this clip. And when all of the efforts to enslave blacks keep them enslaved and then keep them from voting had failed, the Democrats came up with a new strategy.
If black people are going to vote, they might as well vote for Democrats as President. Lyndon Johnson was purported to have said about the Civil Rights Act, I'll have [00:46:00] them as voting Democrat for 200 years. She, she's using the word there. There's no president said that one. Well,
Dave Anthony: here's the He did, but that, that exact quote is not that one.
They can't find the source of, there's other quotes where he used it in. Yeah, that's what's
Daniel Bessner: interesting about Johnson, right? He was a racist guy from Texas who nevertheless yeah, promoted one of the great civil rights legislation. I mean, you might call it the dialectic of Enlightenment, but instead of using this as a sort of entry point into a, a complex discussion about something like that, it's just tarring and feathering with its broader brushes humanly possible.
And as unsophisticated a brushes humanly possible.
Josh Olsen: Well, by the way, you know, you know, who else thinks, um, her line of reasoning is absolutely moronic, Dennis Prager. And we live in the age of, of real, I have to say, I'm sorry, the age of stupidity, because people [00:47:00] actually think feelings are more important, but they're not.
How people behave is infinitely more important than how they feel. That's why when I'm told, oh, wow, we heard that so and so said in, in a private conversation. This reporting of private conversations is, is an example of, of the age of stupidity in which we live. I don't care what people say privately, I care what they say publicly and what they do, but not what they say privately.
Say whatever you want privately. So she, she may want to have a word with the Dean of Prager University on that one. He then goes on to explain why it doesn't matter that Trump's a racist, which of course he doesn't know Trump is a racist, but it's a, it's a pretty interesting clip. Uh, here's one more piece from that.
Democrats falsely claim that the Republican party is the villain when in reality it's the failed policies of the Democratic Party that have kept blacks stand [00:48:00] massive. Government welfare has decimated the black family opposition to school choice has kept them trapped and fell in schools. Politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime.
Daniel Bessner: What I liked about that one is there's no
Josh Olsen: argument. It's just stating yes,
Dave Anthony: like
Daniel Bessner: these culture war talking points. The other part was like this and this, and therefore that. Mm-hmm. This is just like boom, boom, boom, culture war talking points, boom, boom, boom. It doesn't, even toward the end, it didn't even pretend.
It's like, and this is why there is African-American poverty, uh, poverty. It's because of the Democrats that that was the argument. No, no actual
Josh Olsen: argument. No democratic policies. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not, and again, it's, it's, I just feel stupid to say stuff like this, but it doesn't come up to even the most basic rudimentary academic standard.
Oh, yeah.
Daniel Bessner: Oh yeah.
Josh Olsen: I mean,
Dave Anthony: yeah. No terrible.
Josh Olsen: And, uh, this is a, uh, tax exempt, uh, [00:49:00] educational organization. Well, that, I just wanna start off with something ultimately brilliantly stupid, but actually they're all, they're all kind of up there. Um, let's, let's get into, uh, uh, here's a fun one on, um, who you have to thank if you live in freedom.
You ready? You ready for this? Oh yeah,
Daniel Bessner: this
Dave Anthony: is a good one. The last 400 years, what power has done the most to spread the ideals of limited government, an independent judiciary, certain inalienable rights and free markets.
Josh Olsen: Would that be white power?
Dave Anthony: That power would be the British empire.
Josh Olsen: Well, there you go.
There you go.
Daniel Bessner: Who, who is this for? Who the hell? Yeah. So let's, it's such a weird thing.
Josh Olsen: Yeah, it is. And I don't, it's really odd. So this is HW Crocker iii. He's, uh, conservative Catholic. Um, he's written, uh, what is his, like the politically incorrect guide to the [00:50:00] Civil War, uh, Robert E. Lee on leadership. Um, three volumes on Custer.
Dave Anthony: Wow, that's a flip coming up.
Josh Olsen: And don't, tre, can you imagine three volumes on George Armstrong Custer, and don't tread on me. A 400 year history of America at war, from Indian fighting to terrorist hunting, which he said he wrote because I wanted to bust a lot of myths about American history, including the myth of the Indian as a noble s.
The myth that America has always been a non imperial power. The myth that the Southern Confederacy was wrong, the myth that the American military relies on big battalions rather than on extraordinary individual courage and skill of the American fighting Man, the myth that we lost the Vietnam War Perez, we won.
Yeah, that's a Democratic Congress shamefully gave it away. And the myth that the Iraq war is, I guess this is what he said, it, a disaster among others. Uh, he also stated that, uh, if he had been around in 1861, he would've [00:51:00] cited with a confederacy
Daniel Bessner: for state's rights reasons.
Josh Olsen: I imagine like Robert E. Lee, I would've opposed a session but opposed even more of the idea or the reality of killing my fellow Americans to keep them within the union.
Yeah,
Daniel Bessner: yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah. How does someone like this sleep at night? It is like worst of the worst type of position to, to take it is morally aho to defend the confederacy. Um, that's like defending Nazis. It's the
Josh Olsen: literal equivalent. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so here's the guy. Um, this is, this is, yeah, you're right.
Why, why this, why, why would, well, this goes to like Dennis Prager's got this weird fixation with kind of old school morality. He's always going on about Judeo-Christian values, but he's also always trying to wrap them in. To give them kind of a secular basis as well, I guess. So that, yeah. Should we talk about Jeo
Daniel Bessner: Christian values now, or
Josh Olsen: should we save that?
Oh, we're gonna get to 'em. Don't worry. Okay. But, [00:52:00] um, let's, let's, let's get into how great the, uh, the, uh, the British Empire was.
Dave Anthony: Freedom was an Englishman's, right? And wherever he went, he took that right with him. Whether he was an English colonist in America, governing himself through a locally elected assembly, or an English adventurer like Sir Stanford raffles, oh, creating the free market city, state of Singapore, or an English officer like Te Lawrence, leading Arab tribesmen against the Turks.
The British always thought of themselves as liberators, as bringers of freedom. The British believed the final and necessary justification of their empire was a moral one. The British kept the peace, they brought sound, honest administration, and they insisted that basic moral standards were honored. I mean,
Josh Olsen: can I, before you get into, the British believed that they were bringing moral, is that, is that, does he actually believe that [00:53:00] other colonizers did not believe they were acting from a moral position?
This, that's some help. This is,
Dave Anthony: it's so crazy what he's saying is so crazy to me that I don't understand what's happening. That he can just say it without, I mean, there had have been texts like, all stop, I keep laughing. Stop. I gotta do this again. Like, but like he brings up ex examples of what they were as if, to make his point.
But it makes the opposite point that Raffles guy I is like a classic example of, of someone who just sort of took credit for what he did not do. Um, he was a, he was a of spectacular asshole. Uh, he essentially was a sex trafficker. He, he brought women from all like, over like 500 women or something, just so this crazy weirdo could fuck them.
Like he did not know this. Yeah, yeah. He was like con he like, you know, classic colonialism, just conquering and destroying. But then he, he, [00:54:00] he's like known for like having founded Singapore, but he didn't, he was there for like 30 days. Puts was a total fuck up. Put another guy in charge who then did it and did everything.
And then he got back and he was like, oh, this guy's done a really good job. I have to get rid of him. And then he took credit for founding Singapore when he's not the guy who did it. He's, he's just a hundred percent fraud bullshit asshole. Like, he's just a terrible human being. He, he'd be a great dollop.
He is. He's just exceptionally awful.
Josh Olsen: But he believed he was moral.
Dave Anthony: Yeah. They had to, they had to kill the savages. I mean, that's, that's right. Just,
Daniel Bessner: yeah. The imperialist argument, I mean, it's like literally what someone said in 1820, what I mean, but what, what a liberal British imperialist would, would say is that what they're doing is bad, but it's necessary for human progress and human civilization.
That's essentially what he's saying. Right. He's like, they did do this, but like it [00:55:00] got us the good things. Nile Ferguson later, it's a much more sophisticated version of that where he mm-hmm. He, he admits the sort of traumas of empire, but says that it was still a step forward. This guy is just operating in the literal 19th century without like any Yeah.
Thought to something else. Now, Ferguson's more, way more sophisticated version
Dave Anthony: of this stuff. That's a, that's a, that's a horrifying thing
Josh Olsen: to say.
We, we will get to him. They were
Dave Anthony: under no illusions about making Arabs or Afghans or Zulu and Englishmen. They were more at that to leave people alone, to let them be themselves, the government with the lightest possible hand, what
Daniel Bessner: the fuck? Yeah. It's crazy. I think, what the fuck? It's totally wrong. Yeah.
It's, it's just flat out not true and stretch of the imagination.
Josh Olsen: And then, and then it's also how did they govern? Yeah. [00:56:00] I mean, honest to God, my, my big, yeah. What
Daniel Bessner: he's doing. So there was this argument that the British Empire was unique in that they, that, that even if like over time they did settle large spaces, they were really like founding, particularly in, in the British, British India, the Raj, sort of these like cities on the coast and then would like, kind of allow people on the inside to govern themselves.
Um, but it's just not true. And then he basically wants to make sure that they're not responsible for genocide. Uh, and then like in total, total ignoring like the church Churchill's famine on the subcontinent, the many brutalities of British slavery. Uh, the total extraction of resources from colonies to the benefit of the metropolitan, the awful conditions of things like slave ships, um, to basically present this thing as a positive good.
And it's just, again, it's just a lie. Or at the best you could say, a quarter truth, you know? And it's, it's again, insulting to people. I think you're gonna get [00:57:00] that a lot. Yeah. These videos are insulting.
Josh Olsen: That's, that's a good word for it. I really did my, my fear in doing this, that was, that eventually just, it would just devolve into me and Dave and our guest cackling.
What the fuck? As we played clips, we did make it 30 minutes before that happened, the British
Dave Anthony: Forest, a Pax Brittanica putting down pirates, taming head hunters, and keeping the peace between previously warring tribes and religions. There, you, I mean, the
Daniel Bessner: old argument for imperialism, right? Like the British come in and then help the locals, uh, civilize themselves.
It's literally 1820. He could be talking, he could be writing in punch in like 1848 or whatever that British magazine
Dave Anthony: and Yeah, that's what the, that's when you think of the British and colonialism, you think about all the peace they brought
while respecting and often ruling through local leaders. The British still insisted [00:58:00] on certain Judeo-Christian moral standards. They were not in that respect, multiculturalists. They had a firm sense of right and wrong.
Josh Olsen: See, there you go. That's, but it is, you got a point. He is, he's looking at it from the perspective that they looked at it at the time.
Right. And he's had, he's had, uh, at least a few decades. I mean, that's reflect on some of the mistakes you would think that uh,
Dave Anthony: I mean that's the thing you, I, you, you brought up like, it, it is a total lack of sophistication. It's like he can't, he's not even smart or clever enough to have like a modern day, uh, argument for this.
It's just this, cuz we know that everyone knows the history now. There's nobody that's like, yeah, no, he is making a good point. It's right all.
Daniel Bessner: Right. And this is what makes Nile Ferguson much more sophisticated because his argument is [00:59:00] that every human being does things like murder and pillage. What was different Yeah.
Was that you also got this, that's a much more, this being like Western enlightenment and, and that's good for the world. That's a much more sophisticated argument that admits the violence of empire, but basically says it was worth it. This guy is just making up, again, telling a quarter of the story from the subject position of an 1845 British imperialist.
Josh Olsen: I mean, I'm, I'm obviously naive. I didn't realize the word that many of these people still around and they're really nice. I startled the response to, well, but I, there's, there's, I, I still think I stand by the best movie of the year, uh, rrr the Indian film. Um, that, uh, it's just a wild day scene. I dunno if you've, have you seen it, Danny?
Have you seen it yet? Yeah, I saw parts of it that saw parts of it. Get outta here. But, uh, uh, they caught so much. There was, there was such an uproar on social media of peop by people [01:00:00] for the fact that this movie that is sent in the, what is it, late, no early, early 20th century in India portrays the British as just, you know, evil fanged villains.
They're, they're portrayed like Nazis watch movie. The movie. Like yeah. That's, that's how they, and people were just out. How dare they portray the British this way? So
Daniel Bessner: who was outraged? Like, like what? Like group, like basically very right.
Josh Olsen: I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the fact that anybody was just boggled my mind.
I thought there was like, Hillary Clinton
Daniel Bessner: wouldn't agree with this, you know, like, like Bob Standard Democrat would not agree with this. It, it, like, I think very far right. Would agree with this. Yeah. I think she, even Nile Ferguson doesn't agree with this,
Josh Olsen: you know, by the way, say what you owe about Nile.
He's seen all of Rrr Danny. Um, yeah, I bet he'll Let's one, one last word here from this gentleman on Dave and, uh, my favorite people, even where
Dave Anthony: the British have merited criticism as in Ireland, [01:01:00] there's more to the imperial story during negotiations to create the Irish Republic, for instance, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who could speak Welsh, reminded the Irish nationalist and Gaelic extremist Iman di Valara that the Celts never had a word for republic.
Well, there you go. It was an idea given to them by the English. Whoa,
Daniel Bessner: that's such a crazy thing to say, like the Irish extension. Are
Josh Olsen: you gonna have an IRA without the word republic?
Dave Anthony: I just can't even, like it's when I heard that I was just, my brain broke. I'm just like, what is going on right
Daniel Bessner: now? Like
Dave Anthony: the people you conquer.
They didn't have the name Republic on the tip of their tongues. I just can't, like,
Daniel Bessner: there's a couple funny things about this one, one the Irish like, yeah, okay, fine. They were bad in Ireland to get i e [01:02:00] against other white people is the subtext there. Like, he'll admit that. Ah, good point. Anyone wants to have his cake.
That's a good point. Do you know who you have on? Uh, but then, uh, he also tries to have his cake and eat it too and be like, but actually the English are better. But this is actually kind of, um, interesting thing because one of the things that a lot of western European countries do, I'm sure you guys have been to like Western Europe, is you'll often see that they'll have some sort of betrayal of like a Celtic leader meeting a Roman leader or something along those lines.
Mm-hmm. Because a lot of the national histories of these places basically say they're the best of Rome with the best of sort of indigenous, indigenous cult, sort of socialist, communist. We're in it for a people politics. So like even the English, like the, the, the far rights of, of like the uk like now, now they might be a little different, but there's a far right tradition of basically glorifying the Celts and being as like, we made it better.
Yeah. We transcended sort of the logic of Rome with the, the hardiness and [01:03:00] com communality of the Celtic peoples. So this is just like a totally confusing American inflected, you know, thing that doesn't make sense at all. Even even by the terms of a, the far right wing
Dave Anthony: it, it's, it's. It's just so fucking stupid.
I mean, that, that's the, like, that's the thing about it. It's like, it's like you can't, you don't just get to like, they didn't have the term republic. Yeah. They have a different history and a different timeline also, you know, fighting amongst themselves and then conquered by you. Like it's just the fucking craziest shit.
Yeah. I don't know why they didn't have what you had. It had nothing to do with your, uh, your interference at all.
Josh Olsen: Well, let's, let's, uh, let's move on. I believe, uh, Danny actually knows our next gentleman. Uh, am I correct, Daniel? Yeah, we overlapped.
Daniel Bessner: Uh, I, I did a year in Ithaca. I was a postdoc there and Andrew Roberts was a, um, a believe I faculty fellow, [01:04:00] uh, my year. Done
Dave Anthony: a couple times. Did you guys hang out at coffee shops?
Daniel Bessner: And, uh, we did. We did not hang out with coffee shops. Well, do
Josh Olsen: you know, do you know, uh, do you know how you have to, uh, if you ran into Andrew Roberts today, do you know how you would have to address him? Please tell me. Because as of last year, thanks to, uh, gone but never forgotten, Boris Johnson. Uh, Andrew Roberts is now Barron Roberts of Belgravia.
Um, do you want me to give a little bit of description of this guy too? Would that make you heal mean? He's a, uh, uh, kind of, yeah, give a description. Well, I would say extremely right wing. He hangs out with, uh, the national front, which if you don't know about them. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Sort of the British version of, kind of a cross between the Klan and, uh, Nazis.
Um, he's spoken to, uh, uh, he's spoken at dinner of the Spring Box Club, a group that regards itself as the shadow white government of South Africa. Um, oh my God. [01:05:00] Yeah, the national front, uh, policy
Daniel Bessner: national. They did play Front city.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. Uh, national front. We want our countries back and believe this can now only come about by the reestablishment of civilized European rule throughout the African continent.
Um, he's a big fan of masking civilians. Uh, do you know about the arm? I did not know about this. The arm. Emirates are massacre. It's one of the ugliest episodes in the history of the British Raj. Um, and, uh, he has defended the slaughtering of, uh, hundreds and hundreds, uh, actually 10,000, uh, unarmed Indians.
Um, he's just, he's worth digging into. And if you were say, going to any university, I think even, uh, the, the, the most right wing one in America, and you saw this stuff, this guy believed you might have second thoughts about letting him, uh, near your brain, but, um, this is the guy, he's very,
Dave Anthony: that
Daniel Bessner: he, he's [01:06:00] just quickly, he's very much kind of like a 1950s national review guy because he's at the very outer edge of acceptable, like he, he's published the last time I checked in like mainstream British magazines, right?
He'll like do reviews and stuff, Amanda. So he is not like off. He, at least last time I checked in the uk, he's like still in the circle of what people will allow to publish. Maybe that's changed, but certainly when he was at Cornell, he was at that level. Wow. And this is your
Dave Anthony: coffee buddy.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. Hey, like we talked about a lot of things.
Matrix the girls, you know, things that broke our hearts,
Josh Olsen: but, uh, so this is the guy Yeah. That the exceedingly moral Dennis Prager has on to argue the merits and explain what after all. Here's the question. One I ask myself frequent. What is the Cold War? But it was certainly
Daniel Bessner: not [01:07:00] cold for the Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and others who got caught up in the communists relentless drive to destabilize the free democratic capitalist world.
Yeah, I mean, that's basically it.
Dave Anthony: I can't, I can't think of any, I can't think of any, um, sort of examples of maybe the opposite of that happening. Like, um, I don't know all of South America, I can't really think of any situations where the capitalist went absolutely bug fuck and killed everybody who was a leftist.
I have no, I have no Operation Condor in my vocabulary. It
Daniel Bessner: gets so wild on that, that specific points. But the Cold War was at its core as clear a conflict of good versus evil as World War II had been just like that war, the Cold War was a death match between the forces representing freedom and the forces [01:08:00] representing totalitarianism.
Dave Anthony: We,
we put, we put human beings in concentration camps in South America and that, you know, that doesn't even go into like Indonesia and everything. Fucking, like, it's just insane that you can say this out.
Josh Olsen: What, what is served by, by this, by, by trying to portray it in such incredibly simplistic terms. I mean that just
Daniel Bessner: seems so, I think a lot of this, a lot of the, the people in Prager, and I think this kind of what unites them is, is there kind of war on products of the war on terror, at least in their modern instantiation.
So a lot of these people believe that the, the west needs to rule the world, or Barbara is and will reign. And I think that's what unites someone like Prager who really is focused traditionally on the Middle East with someone like Robert who basically wants to say that like the western empire is necessary for global governance.
So that's who I think is served the people who want the US to rule the world. [01:09:00] Now I'm forever,
Josh Olsen: and I, and I wonder cuz you know, we're gonna be talking about him a lot over the next few weeks as, as he's the man whose name hangs on the door of this university. But Prager is like, I, I should put a clip here, I should have pulled it earlier, but I got a great clip of him going basically I, I really don't like evil.
Um, he, he thinks in these terms. Yeah. Like, you wonder sometimes if maybe this guy is, is yanking your chain. Maybe, maybe not. Prager seems sincere with that shit. He genuinely seems to believe that there's, um, you know, I think, I think he's going to fight with this shit or something.
Dave Anthony: I think, I think that's very common for these, these people on the right.
I think it's really, they really do think it evil. You know? Yeah.
Daniel Bessner: It's war and terror thinking, you know, that that was like a really big cold war. You know, you had the nineties interregnum when the US was like trying to save the world, the [01:10:00] responsibility to protect all of that stuff. And then once, uh, September 11th happened, you get right back to the return to this mannequin dualistic way of thinking.
Josh Olsen: But, uh, let's, so how, who, who, who's responsible is the question, who, who started the Cold War is my big question.
Daniel Bessner: The instigator of this war was Joseph Stalin, the mass murdering dictator of Russia, and of the many non Russian peoples. He had incorporated into what was known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union.
For short, Stalin knew that his Soviet armed forces could not take on the might of the free West. Instead, he decided to wage this fight through the use of proxies and by a massive use of disinformation and misinformation. Yeah. So like, again, this flattening of an incredibly complex historical reality like Salvan Stalin was not blameless for the Cold War by any stretch of the imagination, but the, the, the, the US [01:11:00] did just as much, I would probably argue, because it was so much more powerful.
It was actually more and morally responsible for the, for the creation of the Cold War. Um, but it did just as much as the Soviet Union did. When Stalin threatened, both Greece and Turkey, president Harry Truman finally had enough, the so-called Truman Doctrine was born. The United States and its allies would not permit any further expansion of the Communist empire the Cold War was
Josh Olsen: on.
That seems sort of true. I mean, he's giving it a moral context. That's But am I, am I wrong? No, no, no. You're, those are, those are events that happened.
Daniel Bessner: No, no, for sure. But it wasn't like, oh, now we can't let the, the grubby Soviets get away with it. It, it was this incredibly complex to your long process that involved various moves made by, by both, uh, countries in Berlin in particular, and in Germany in particular.
[01:12:00] Um, that sort of snowballed, uh, until you get the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March, 1947. But it's just like, doesn't take account of the historical reality whatsoever or what was going on and lays the United States as both completely blameless and then like sort of be ha having to do it. You know, like you couldn't possibly let Stalin do this, which is embedded in no.
A notion that the United States should govern the world. So it's all of these assumptions that just go, like are assumed to be correct that make it totally historically illiterate.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. Let me, let me ask you, do you think it's possible to do a five minute video that explains the Cold War? That's, um,
Probably not. Is it? The entire exercise inherently fraudulent. Yeah.
Dave Anthony: Yeah.
Daniel Bessner: But they,
Dave Anthony: I mean they, conservatives love, love, love simplicity. Yeah. They want it [01:13:00] really, really simple. And so this really speaks to their, their brains.
Josh Olsen: But I think that's, that, that goes to the problem with, you know, you're going sort of, why isn't there a leftist version of Prager University?
And it's not that it wouldn't be biased, it's not that it wouldn't be inaccurate often, it's that the, there's a, a rejection of that notion that you can boil things like this down into five minutes and be accurate.
Dave Anthony: Well, I mean, the, the Gravel Institute is the closest thing we have, um, that, you know, but it, it comes down to funding, like who's, who's gonna fund the lefties to put out this propaganda.
But they have some really good videos. They're much more complex and thoughtful.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. I have a question. Are, are, do, do podcasts have a left and liberal bias? I imagine they do, right? I imagine that there are more successful liberal and left-wing podcasts than right-wing podcasts. Is that correct?
Dave Anthony: Uh, you know, I don't know.
I mean, like where's Shapiro has a popular one? [01:14:00] Uh, Joe Rogans, I would say. Right.
Daniel Bessner: Um, I would say center right, though. Right? Like within the bounds of mm-hmm. Yeah. Acceptable discussion. Definitely.
Dave Anthony: I, uh, there are definitely popular, like the big names, the, the Charlie Kirks and the, the Ben Shapiros, um, have bigger ones.
But as far as like, just a ton, like there's a bunch of leftist podcasts, there's definitely very successful, very successful liberal podcasts.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. I, I, so I would say like podcasting cause it's, it's a form that naturally lends itself to sort of like talky complexity that Right. I bet it is more pop, that there are more on the liberal left.
And I bet you if you like, tallied up every ideology, it would be more on the liberal side and left side.
Dave Anthony: Yeah. I think, uh, like the, I think the, the model before podcasting, that's the perfect example, would be NPR radio type stuff,
Daniel Bessner: right? Mm-hmm. Right. And even Rogan has like, he's into [01:15:00] like drugs, you know, and sort.
Yeah. Like he ro I mean, Rogan's politics don't really map on to left and Right. Really very often. It's very American, you know, left and right comes from Europe. Rogan's like a very American figure. It doesn't really, not in this sort of like, we have to move beyond left and right. It's just that like, it's more American than anything, I would say.
Yeah. Like this peculiar sort of like freeholder, drugged out, but like individualist, masculine, you know, thing that is really unique to this wonderful country.
There are nonetheless, as they were even at the time, those who argue that the Cold War was an overreaction by the west, that the ambitions and strength of the Soviet block were greatly exaggerated, and that America with its massive defense buildup was just as responsible for the Cold War, as was the Soviet Union.
But this simply isn't true as an immense amount of archival evidence from Russia [01:16:00] not available until after the Cold War ended. This is weird because the most famous use, uh, of the Russian archives is this book by these guys, Zube and, and pov, um, which basically makes the opposite point. So I'm, I'm very curious what he's referring to because the big book on this is like, actually the Soviets were more willing to pursue daytime than we had thoughts.
Um, so I really wonder what he's actually referring to. There's a book
Josh Olsen: called We, is he just coasting on the fact that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg turn out to have been.
Daniel Bessner: I guess I, with
Josh Olsen: the
Daniel Bessner: Soviets, is that like, well, Josh Ethel was not as far as I know, it was just Julia. So like, hers, like what?
Josh Olsen: You know what I'm saying?
Like that, that came out, that was supposed to be the end of the argument forever for all of us on the entire Cold War, and you're kinda sitting there going, yeah. And so,
Daniel Bessner: but he refers specifically to Russian archive. So I, I, I would actually be curious what he's talking about. Yes. The Soviet [01:17:00] Union could not have beaten the US in a head-to-head confrontation, but it didn't have to Victory in the Cold War would've allowed it through intimidation and subversion to dominate the globe, making communism rather than democracy and capitalism, the preeminent ideology.
Dave Anthony: That's, you know, that's the old argument. Comedy's. Comedy's gonna take it all.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. Which there were many times, basically impossible. There were many times during the five decades of the war that it seemed like this would be the case. But thanks primarily to the strong leadership shown by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul ii.
The Cold War ended not with a bang, but a whimper.
Josh Olsen: That's exactly how I remember it.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. This is the eighties argument. Yeah. It's, it's like, first of all, it's kind of funny he put John Paul second in there, you know, like one of these things [01:18:00] usually isn't included in, in this list. Um, and that, that I thought was interesting.
I wonder there's, I wonder if there's like a Catholic connection there, um, that, uh, I don't know. But, um, the, uh, all the scholarship suggests that it was mostly internal Soviet issues, even if the Reagan buildup did have an effect on what the Soviet Union Gorbachev felt that he could spend money on. But again, I I, I would be curious to what scholarship he's referring here, because it's just like, not the consensus, even if you're on the right, you know, cuz you can make the conservative argument, which is that the Soviet Union fell because communism was unworkable.
Uh, you don't need the, Reagan won the Cold War argument. It's, again, it's related to this like, America needs to rule the world thing. Does he
Dave Anthony: even need to have any scholarship to back it up? Uh, can't he just say this shit? Because no one's gonna like check. Like, really it's PragerU. There's not gonna be someone like, all right.
[01:19:00] Holding on there. Well, let's see your resources. Like, uh, I just don't see, you know, you could just say that, well, the, the, the library has got opened up and now here's what I'm gonna say. They
Daniel Bessner: add. Yeah, I, I think that's precisely right. Communism had failed in every possible way, economically, politically, morally.
It had tried to create a utopia on earth and instead created hell for
Josh Olsen: all of the nations
Daniel Bessner: sway. Yeah. It's just so, I didn't see
Josh Olsen: that coming.
Daniel Bessner: It's just so, so unsophisticated.
Dave Anthony: It's just so dog brain, man. I just, yeah.
Daniel Bessner: It's just so unserious. It
Dave Anthony: really is. It's just incredibly stupid. Like also those things he just named, uh, the, you know, all the turmoil and the, that's what [01:20:00] America is now, essentially.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. It's, yeah,
Josh Olsen: it's absurd. Uh, well, let's, let's move on to something, uh, some sort of related, um, uh, let's talk about Gloria Alvarez for a minute.
Dave, you've, uh, you uh, she's a political scientist and a radio broadcaster, and she's done a few of these for, uh, brother Prager. Um, you found some interesting stuff about her.
Dave Anthony: Yeah. So she, um, she clearly comes from a, a wealthy family. Um, her, her father or grandfather worked, um, under, I think it was grandfather.
Uh, he was, uh, a, a rightie in cub. Uh, working with Batista, um, worked for Nestle and then, um, the family and either her, the father, her, uh, then they started, you know, doing a lot of work in Guatemala for Nestle. Um, uh, he, he, the other side of her family, [01:21:00] her, her mom's side, um, the classic, uh, uh, white, uh, they married the Hungarian side of the family, so now they're, now they're the, the light-skinned people in, uh, central America doing terrible things.
Um, so she had a lot of, uh, wealth and connections and she, you know, got her own radio show at 19 in, um Oh wow. In Guatemala. Um, and, and then, you know, became like this voice of the right and, uh, she had her own TV show starting in 2015 and it's just all anti commie. She, she, her list of, she interned at, uh, the Cato Institute.
Um, she has a postgraduate degree in applied anthropology, uh, from Sepia Dema University and, uh, a master's degree in Leadership in public Management, um, at the [01:22:00] school of government, Guatemala. So she's, she's just got tons of education cuz she's clearly a rich kid who just goes, gets to go do that stuff.
Um, her whole thing is against. Any Venezuela, Cuba, like, you know, evil morales, like anybody who's left and had, and she talks about how to destroy them. Like that's her whole, um, thing. So that's who she is. My favorite thing that she said during an interview, uh, she was asked about the Guatemala and genocide.
If people don't know, um, under Reagan, uh, we helped to just, um, annihilate, uh, in indigenous people in Guatemala, and she said, uh, quote, I wouldn't categorize what happened in Guatemala as a genocide. Actually, there's an industry of victimization that benefits from recreating the conflict because of that, we never forgive.
So, uh, it's not genocide, um, when [01:23:00] they just killed hundreds of thousands of people in villages. Um, it's just victimization that they are. So that's where she's coming from. She's, uh, she's the classic, she's the classic South American right wing, uh, not completely indigenous, you know, light-skinned, rich asshole basical.
The usual,
Josh Olsen: the standard. And she, uh, she wants to, uh, warn us about the perils of celebrating she gu vara, which I mean, most of this was just a litany of like, what an asshole Shea was. Danny, you were, um, what, why did this one leap out at you and what, uh,
Daniel Bessner: just because this is like the classic thing that you always get on the Latin American rights, and I was just interested to see how they would portray, um, Che and it was basically what you would expect, sort of like naive, immature and whatnot.
And this one I probably had the least to say about that, all them. But I, I thought I chose a couple of clips that,
Josh Olsen: uh, might be interesting to talk about. [01:24:00] Yeah. Yeah. Here's one about, uh, Cuba's economy.
Daniel Bessner: People have long forgotten that Cuba in the 1950s before Fidel Anze took over was one of the strongest economies in Latin America.
According to a 1957 UN report, the average wage for an eight hour day in Cuba is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France, and Germany. Right? So this whole thing, again, it's like this half truth thing where like she's pointing to these macroeconomic statistics, but then this leaves open like, oh my God, why would there be a revolution?
Everyone was so happy and rich and wealthy, right? It's, it's, it's this like re ridiculous half. Half of the story thing that doesn't say anything about Batista or connections to the United States or the way Cuba has been treated as a colony by Spain and then the United States. And just totally ignores why someone like Castro might have been able to succeed in a revolution.
Um, and so again,
Josh Olsen: and do they ignore that or do they have some weird, is it just communism? Is that their [01:25:00] answer? It's just, it's communism. Is that this video, there wasn't
Daniel Bessner: anyone how, how they explain it? Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. It wasn't in this video at least.
Dave Anthony: I mean, you know, she also leaves out the fact that her family, you know, worked under Batista and was, you know, connected to that.
So, you know, probably landowners I would assume, and, you know, stripped up their land and everything else. Like it's a it, this, that's what they always are. It's always personal with them. They always lost land, um, right. Yeah. And I'm sure they were treating people great on that land. You know,
Daniel Bessner: no doubt. What may be worse than chess, endless lies about himself is that so many people lied for him.
I'm talking about the left leaning journalist, academics, and a-list. Hollywood stars and directors, they are the ones who built up, marketed, and have perpetuated the constellation of falsehoods that surround the hate field Revolutionary. Why did they do it? One [01:26:00] simple reason. Because Shepherd signifies anti-Americanism hatred for the United States.
That's what the obsession is really all about. So I just wanted to ask you guys, as Hollywood, as Hollywood elites, why do you like,
um,
Dave Anthony: to get into the guilds? You have to say how much you love
Daniel Bessner: America. I mean, that's, that's that is fair. That's what I thought, but I just wanted to confirm.
Josh Olsen: Uh, it's a bizarre thing to say.
Daniel Bessner: It's a crazy, it's a bizarre, right? It's bizarre.
Dave Anthony: It's bizarre. Yeah. Her whole, her whole thing, uh, her main, uh, thing is against populism, which, you know, left wing populism is as she, she is always attacking it.
So I, I, but it's still strange to me that she is a Guatemalan talking head and she's saying the stuff about [01:27:00] America, knowing the history, the recent history of what we've done down there, it's so crazy to me that you would make these points. You ju I just wonder how big her following is to make this video.
It's just like the America has just fucked over Guatemala so badly. I don't. The
Daniel Bessner: anti-Americanism is not just a left wing thing in Latin America, you know, because it's, again, it's been so dominated by the United States for so long that it's like a peculiar type of rightwinger who was pro-American in this way.
Right? Because like even the center right in Latin America is not like we love the United States, like the dictator Porfirio Diaz, the famous quote, you know, Mexico so close, uh, so close so far from God so close to the United States. PIO Diaz was not on the left, right? So that's what also makes this so strange in the Latin American context.[01:28:00]
All this stuff is like strange, right? Like, I think that's what I wanted to highlight in my picks. Like these are people who like, don't even quite fit on the right in a lot of situations. It's like this peculiar politics in the pice prager, you talked, it's more interesting than just like weirdo right-Wingers.
It's stranger than that.
Josh Olsen: That's why. Well, they show up. I mean, Ben, Ben Shapiro done some of these things and you'll, you'll get those guys. But yeah, it's like, I, you wonder where he found these people and yeah. I, I don't know. Um, the next one is interesting. It, it's uh, uh, cuz this guy who's Father Wilson, Ms.
Campbell, I believe it's the only one this guy has done. He's a fairly conservative Catholic. This is, um, and, and there's nothing particularly remarkable
Daniel Bessner: real deal historian, like real historians. He is like, I knew him. Yeah, you
Josh Olsen: did? Okay. Not personally, but I knew he was. His, his, his fiber thing is on, uh, whether or not it was wrong to drop the bomb, uh, on Hiroshima.
Hiroshima. And, um, you [01:29:00] know, this one didn't strike me as, uh, you know, what, you
Dave Anthony: know, let's, you know, what struck me is you're just total erasure of I I right there.
Josh Olsen: Yeah, exactly. Roche, no, no, no. That struck too, this is not an argument. This is, I don't wanna say
Daniel Bessner: anything that struck me too.
Josh Olsen: It's, it's not, this is, this is a perspective that's pretty common, um, you know, amongst liberals as well as conservatives.
It's not like he's taking some fringe view in trying to normalize it here, which, which I think makes it interesting actually, such as that written by members of the so-called Atomic Diplomacy school. These historians disgracefully alleged that Truman proceeded to drop two atomic bombs on a Japan, which he knew was on the verge of surrender.
So as to intimidate the Soviet Union in the already developing Cold War. That spacious [01:30:00] interpretation must be refuted, fully must it. So
Daniel Bessner: this is what was interesting to me about it, because I think that there was a time in the sixties when people overstated that argument and they made the claim that the US dropped the bombs to intimidate the Soviets.
But I would think in 2023 it, it was an element of the, this very complex decision making process, right? Absolutely. US decision makers, when they dropped the bomb, did consider that question and didn't think it was the worst thing in the world to show Stalin that the United States was the most powerful nation on earth and had world ending weapons.
I don't think it was the primary reason that they did, but I just found it interesting that he was so dismissive of it, to call it disgraceful when it I think was an element of this strategic calculus.
Josh Olsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's taking a very sort of hard line. Yeah. It was a strange perspective. Yeah. All the [01:31:00] viable alternate scenarios to secure American victory all would've meant significantly greater American and allied casualties and much higher Japanese civilian and military casualties.
And that's the argument you always hear.
Daniel Bessner: Right? And then this to me doesn't consider the question of you just opened Prometheus's box. Right. And this is, this is, this is the whole, that's the important question about atomic bomb, right? Is that those statements are true on its face, but that's not the question that people are really asking.
Uh, no one thought that, like if you kept the, no one thinks that if you didn't drop the atomic bombs, uh, and the war kept on going, there wouldn't have been more deaths. Right? That's like obvious. The question though is, was it worth nuclear izing international relations? So again, it's this, it's this sort of weird, a lighting of the actual question that is interesting about what he's talking about
Josh Olsen: that I wanted to highlight, right?
And trying to [01:32:00] portray opposing views as less sophisticated than they are, right? Like
Daniel Bessner: less morally astute when he's not. It's not the argument that people are having
Dave Anthony: these, these feel. Uh, so I was in radio for a little while and I, I was, uh, taught how to do talk radio by a, an expert in the field. And it was always take your, take your, your stance, take your opinion, and back it up no matter what, and make that point.
And these have a very talk radio feel to them. There's no nuance. There's no, it's, it's all one thing. It can't be anything else. It's all very direct, but it feels very right wing radio, eat, um, sort of topic. And that's
Daniel Bessner: fine. That's an
Josh Olsen: education. That's where Prager comes from, right? That is where Prager comes from.
And then
Dave Anthony: I guarantee you, he brought in people that he knew.
Josh Olsen: To produce the legend. Yeah, yeah. Who knew could deliver on that front, and maybe he knew them from, from those days. But yeah, [01:33:00] he was a very popular right wing radio talk show host in Los Angeles for Well, yeah, cuz he ha
Dave Anthony: he has a good voice for radio, but his physical appearance is horrifying.
Uh, it's like someone put a bomb inside of a ghost.
Daniel Bessner: Prager U is classified as an educational nonprofit. Yeah. So that's, that's what it is. Right. So it's not a a, a private, um, a private group. They're a nonprofit technically. Yeah.
Josh Olsen: Got it. Yeah. Okay. But they approach everything like their, you know. Right.
That's
Daniel Bessner: radio. Right. Precisely.
Josh Olsen: Truman's use of the bomb should be seen as his choosing the least awful of the options available to him.
Daniel Bessner: Even in
Josh Olsen: retrospect, far removed from the pressures that Truman faced in 1945, his critics
Daniel Bessner: can offer no serious and convincing
Josh Olsen: proposal regarding a viable and less costly alternative.
The judgment of history is clear [01:34:00] and unambiguous. The atomic bombs shortened, the war averted the need for a land invasion saved countless more lives on both sides of the blood, so conflict than they cost, and ended the Japanese brutalization of the conquered peoples of Asia. Given the alternative. What would any moral person have done in Truman's position?
Yeah. I do feel like he's leaving one thing out that, uh, dropping that bomb caused that, you know, condemning the entire species to, uh,
Daniel Bessner: right. This is my question. If in 10 years there's a nuclear war, does, does he change, does he change his opinion? And if the answer is yes, then what he's doing here isn't presenting the argument fairly, because you can't just ignore the nuclearization of international politics as an outcome of dropping the atomic bomb.
You just can't. Right. So he just is totally [01:35:00] dismissive saying that no serious person could possibly be against the atomic bomb, which means that he is valuing short-term over medium and long-term concerns. But he never says it, and that's the problem. Right?
Dave Anthony: Yeah. So if, if, uh, going by this sort of argument, if, uh, Pakistan is ama amassing troops on the border and India drops a nuclear bomb, then that's good.
Daniel Bessner: Right? Right. Right. Exactly. And like, at what level does that become bad? So I just wanted, on a level of Kissinger, you should get him on
Josh Olsen: the path. Uh,
Dave Anthony: he what? Yeah. Oh my God. Could
Josh Olsen: you imagine? Still around. Still around.
Dave Anthony: Pointed out, someone pointed out that like the, the first honorary Harlem Globetrotter on the list is Henry Kisser.
Josh Olsen: Oh my God. Oh God. Uh, so good. Well, speaking, speaking of Henry, nice, nice [01:36:00] segue into our next topic, which is, uh, uh, the truth about the Vietnam War. I, I wanna say, You know, he said a bunch of these and basically gave, gave Danny kind of free reign into pick the ones he wanted to discuss. And, uh, th this gave me, Dave, do you remember this guy?
I had memory holded Bruce Hershenson. I had not thought of him in decades. And he's, this, this idiot had worked in the Nixon and the Reagan administration and, and he ran for Senate a couple times in California in the eighties. I remember that popping up on tv. He ran against Barbara Boxer and he was kind of a, he was very much a prager, right?
He was this kind of very, he had this doe-eyed fo sincerity that, that very much reminds me of Prager. And, um, he wasn't gonna win against Boxer anyway, but he did get outed cuz he was very, you know, he was ran on morality and family values and so forth. And he got outed as frequenting the seventh veil on Sunset Boulevard, uh, here in Hollywood.
Which, um, what's that? You know, it's a strip club. I mean, it's just a [01:37:00] strip club. It's just a guard variety strip club. And God bless him, but, uh, it, it, uh, that was not good for him. And I should say that the veil is still there. Um, well, Bruce, Now sleeps with the fishes. But, uh, I was shocked. I literally had not thought of him in forever, and I saw his face and I just, I shuttered.
I had this sort of momentary Well, you're welcome,
Daniel Bessner: Josh.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. So, so thanks for that. But, but he, he came on to tell us the, the truth about the Vietnam War, which is kind of like, what is he like? We want it. Is that his No, this
Dave Anthony: is, this is something I've, I've been seeing pop up. It's not that. It's, we, we, we would've won it, but the Democrats in Congress stopped us from winning it.
That's the point.
Josh Olsen: Well, yeah. I mean, and that, that goes back to this gentleman. Did we get the win this time? You know, the great John Rambo. But, uh, let's, let's jump into Bruce Hershenson on the Vietnam War. Jesus God. And remember this guy, this guy came up under [01:38:00] Richard Nixon announcing that the Paris
Daniel Bessner: Peace Accords had been initialed by the United States, south Vietnam.
North Vietnam. The Vietcong and the Accords would be signed on the 27th. What the United States and South Vietnam received in those accords was victory. Victory. That is wild. Even the people negotiating that did not think that they were achieving victory. The notion was this, that you would get a quote unquote decent interval between the signing of this in the fall of South Vietnam.
That was like a right wing. That was what Nixon and Kissinger wanted. So it is just absurd.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. It it, where, where does that come from? Is that a thing or, I
Daniel Bessner: actually don't even know where the, there's been this like revisionism recently, but, but it's in, it's interesting because at the actual time, the reason that they were able to like get out of Vietnam was that the right had turned against it [01:39:00] by the, the, the early to mid 1970s right wing people were like, this isn't really worth it any longer.
So the effort to kind of rehabilitate Vietnam is again part of this like nineties and beyond project to make the US be like the dominance, imperial power, because this is, again, this is again, really far out there, even on the right wing. This is a really far out their position.
Dave Anthony: Imagine how bad your war has to be going for the right wing to turn against it.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. They decided like it wasn't worth it. They're like, these kids are protesting, you know, we're not even getting big defense contracts anymore. You get the 73 oil shock. And so now one of the big arguments as to why America did finally end, it was because right wing Congress people had turned against it.
So again, this is just really far out. Three months after his resignation came, the November Congressional elections, and within them, the Democrats won a landslide victory for the new Congress. And many of the members [01:40:00] use their new majority to defund the military. That the United States had promised peace for
Josh Olsen: peace, breaking the commitment that we made
Daniel Bessner: to the South Vietnamese in Paris to provide whatever military hardware the South Vietnamese needed in case of aggression from the North put simply and accurately.
A majority of Democrats of the 94th Congress did not keep the word of the United States. Again, this obsession with Democrats. That's a Ram
Josh Olsen: position. Yeah. Well, Ram two, Rami, uh, Ram two. Yeah. Rambo, that's, that's the first one was called First one
Daniel Bessner: First Blood. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Sorry, I apologize. Um, again, the obsession with the Democrats and then, yeah.
This, the United States had just funded this war for, for infinity. I guess 21 years wasn't enough. 1954 to 1975. Bizarre position. Even on the right. Well, it, it's
Dave Anthony: also just insane to think if [01:41:00] we had just given them, uh, money and weapons, that they would've been fine. Like what? Like it's all, just, none of it makes sense.
Daniel Bessner: If the South Vietnamese had received the arms that the United States promised with the result
Josh Olsen: of indifferent, it already had been different. The North Vietnamese leaders admitted that they were testing the new President, Gerald Ford,
Daniel Bessner: and they took one village after another then. Then provinces, and our only response was to go back on our word.
The US did not resupply the South Vietnamese as we had promised, again, 21 years. If the country falls in about 25 seconds, that to suggest the utility of the United States pouring. I mean, conservatives always talk about that. There's no free lunch, uh, pouring tons of money and people into this war. It, it, it again, extreme even on the [01:42:00] right.
Very extreme.
Dave Anthony: Yeah. The
Daniel Bessner: US knew that North Vietnam would violate the accords, and so we planned for
Josh Olsen: it. What we did not know was that our own Congress
Daniel Bessner: would
Dave Anthony: violate
Daniel Bessner: records and violate them of all things on behalf of the North Vietnamese.
Dave Anthony: That's what happened.
Daniel Bessner: Again, it's like this traitor thing where like the, the Democrats are traitors and, and they did it on behalf of North Vietnam.
It's like so wild.
Josh Olsen: But you could, here's, here's my question cause I just wanna bring it back to this. If this were a real university, could, could you get away with teaching this?
Daniel Bessner: It'd be tough. Um, I think n no, this, this one in particular? No. Probably actually all of them. No. I'm trying to think. Ms. Campbell. You could. That's like, [01:43:00] I get it. Even though I bet, I bet you could get away with that. Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but no, this is like historical mal. You would be lying. I think this is lying
Josh Olsen: to historical malpractice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Anthony: 10.7 million views, by the way. Yeah.
Josh Olsen: What's that? That video, the vi the Vietnam one. Yeah. Jesus Christ.
Dave Anthony: How many? That's so crazy. 10. 10.7 million.
Josh Olsen: That's so crazy. Wow. Bruce Hershenson getting 10 million views on a, uh, well, let's, let's get That can't be true.
Dave Anthony: Prager University is extraordinarily successful and these things are passed all around Facebook and everywhere else.
Like this is how a lot of people are learning history. Yeah. Because people like Danny aren't stepping up.
Daniel Bessner: I
Josh Olsen: know. We're just following. Yeah, no, that's true. It's a million. It's, oh my God. It's so many boomers [01:44:00] just going, see Billy, I told you and they put up this video.
Okay, well let's, let's get to, uh, some of that. The closest we have to an actual real academic in all of this little legitimate one is Nile Ferguson. Um, and, uh, he's got an interesting one called Why the West Won. According to folklore, Mahama
Daniel Bessner: Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization.
He replied that he thought it would be a good idea. This was supposed to be a joke, but forgive me for taking the other side. I think Western Civilization was and is a good idea. This is the nearest thing to heresy that exists in modern academic life. At most universities, in the English speaking world, there are demands to decolonize the curriculum.
As a result, fewer and fewer students now graduate with any [01:45:00] understanding of what has differentiated the west from the rest of the world. They leave with the misleading view that the defining features of Western civilization are slavery, imperialism, and. So I wanted to highlight this one because I don't think it's accurate that I think people view, particularly, let's talk about the history, discipline as a left wing discipline, and it's really not, it's really mm-hmm.
Center left and there's a lot of buy-in to the Western project. Of course, there, there are outliers who, who take it like a, a very, um, strong decolonial or anti-colonial stance, but it's just not the median or the average of
Josh Olsen: Yeah, that's what I want. It's, it's, yes.
Daniel Bessner: It just isn't, you know, factually isn't. So I just wanted to highlight that because this is something you always hear where like, I'm by far among the leftier people in my subfield of history.
Um, and so again, it's just like kind of not true. And he, he knows that it's not true, I would say.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. The totality is not being rejected. They're [01:46:00] just pushing at the edges and we are starting to expand our, our, our view of these things. It's not the same thing as an outright rejection, but uh, that is the paranoid view of it, of course, is that, um, this is the same thing, you know, as soon as you start teaching Tony Morrison in class, uh, uh, we'll be outlawing white people is sort of the right, the extreme version of this.
Well,
Daniel Bessner: I think the idea is like you're only learning Franz Fana or you know, a Mary Baraka or Angela Davis and not learning like Max Babe. You know, or something like that, which just I don't think is true. You know, like within the first week of college I was assigned the Protestant ethic in the spirit of capitalism.
And I don't think my, my, my experience is so out there. Um, so that's what it, it's, it's, it's an inaccurate understanding of what the profession actually is. And this western bundle of institutions still seems to offer humanity the best hope of [01:47:00] solving the problems we face in the 21st century. Maybe the biggest of these problems is not the rise of China, radical Islam or carbon dark side emissions, but our own loss of faith in the civilization
Josh Olsen: we inherited from our ancestors.
Ancestors. Yeah. I'm gonna go to carbon dioxide emissions
Daniel Bessner: citation needed. Right? I mean, such a strange claim. You know, it's like, I don't think he believes that. I don't think he, you know, that, that's what's so strange. There's no way he at the very least thinks the rise of China is more important than the faith loss in, in Western civilization.
You know, it's just like, again, condescending to, uh, the audience. Cause I don't think he
Josh Olsen: believes that. Yeah. To this audience. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Bessner: I don't think he would say that to historians. I don't think he would say the loss of faith in the greatness of Western civilization is what is the major problem that I think he would say it was a problem, but I don't, he would say it's the problem and that's what he does in that sentence.[01:48:00]
Josh Olsen: That's a good question too with any of these people. Is this what you would say to your peers?
Daniel Bessner: Yeah, that's a good question to ask of all of these. Yeah. Yeah. The answer is probably no. Winston Churchill was no friend of Gandhi in 1938. Churchill defined the central principle of Western civilization as the subordination of the ruling class to the people and to their will as expressed in a constitution.
Maybe you know, of another civilization that came up with that simple but uniquely powerful idea. I don't, he knows that's not how it works. Yeah. I mean, he knows that, that this is not how things work. Like I I know that, yeah, he's written about it that, that like how, uh, western societies are structured. So again, just saying something, basically
Josh Olsen: just saying something he doesn't believe for the sake of, of looking the rubes
Daniel Bessner: into.
Yeah. I mean, he's written, uh, [01:49:00] a pretty actually could book on Kissinger that like, takes Kissinger seriously. Uh, and he knows how these things actually work. So, It's just, you know, what he's doing for Prager you.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. And it's interesting, like one of the things, you know, early on when we started doing this, and I remember I sent some video to Dave and um, uh, I thought he was, you know, ob obviously David seen these before, but it was the first time we were really diving in and I sent this video and, and I was like, can you believe this?
And Dave goes, oh yeah. That, that one's done for kids. And they do have a kid's school, if you will, on this, but this was not, this one I said was not done for children, but they are all pitched as though they're talking to children. Right. That's the thing. That's what you're It's it's, he's not, he's not coming to this.
Yeah, go ahead. I, I, I think they're
Dave Anthony: speaking to, to, uh, you know, Americans who aren't really that educated and they know that, they know that they're dealing with an audience that isn't [01:50:00] that bright and hasn't been that educated. Well,
Josh Olsen: but, but yeah. But you can do that without being patronizing and condescending and lying.
Yeah. But, and I'm not about to tell you that the left or Democrats are already better at that. They have their own way of, of being patronizing, dickheads, but
Dave Anthony: no, they're, they're, they're not different, but it works. Yeah. Like they are reaching their audience. These are being done perfectly. Yeah, we think they're condescending, but people are enj enjoying them and passing them around.
Daniel Bessner: Like, it's very weird. I would, I love to get, I would love to see who the viewers were, you know, class Stratum in particular. Yeah. I'm, I'm curious who's, who's really sharing these, uh, obviously that data will never be released, but, you know, maybe Prager you will do ad Well, they're a nonprofit, but they could do advertisements and then, you know, they'd have to maybe release some data.
That
Dave Anthony: would be interesting.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. Right. Uh, well, let's, let's wrap it up [01:51:00] with Big Daddy himself. Uh, Dennis Prager. Um, this one, you know, we could spend a year just breaking down Dennis Prager's, just his fireside chats and his, his, his little essays that he does and, and never run outta material. But this, this one is kind of, um, I dunno, it's just, it's quintessential, it's, it's Dennis Prager, uh, on the Middle Eastern problem.
You guys ready? You strapped in when I
Daniel Bessner: did my graduate studies at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University's School of
Josh Olsen: International Affairs. Uh, so Prager went to Brooklyn College, graduated with a major in history and Middle Eastern studies. Now, I don't think what he just did is lying cuz he's, he's fudging a little bit.
He took courses at Columbia, at the, uh, school of International Public Affairs and at le but he left academia. Finishing a graduate degree. Mm-hmm. And obviously when you put it the way he did it, you want [01:52:00] people to walk out of it thinking you did, but he ain't lying.
Daniel Bessner: No, he doesn't say I received an MA from Columbia.
But he is sure as shit implies that he received an MA from Columbia. You know, it's like a, what is it? It's a of omission almost than it is of coalition. Right.
Dave Anthony: Which is all, which is all Prager You is right. Yeah.
Josh Olsen: I, like I say, he holds an honorary doctor of laws from Pepperdine University, believe it or not, where
Daniel Bessner: Hersh concern was.
Right?
Josh Olsen: Oh yeah, that's okay. I, um,
Dave Anthony: when I, when I heard him say that, I was like, I didn't know he had that background. Like, I thought he got what he's implying he did like it.
Josh Olsen: Did he study some stuff? Hey, I went to film school for a couple years before I, uh, took off and came to Hollywood and made movies.
Yeah. So, you know, let's, let's get into, uh, big Daddy's summary of what's going on because I, I would like to know what's going on in the Middle East. I find it very confusing. It
Daniel Bessner: may be the [01:53:00] hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain in a nutshell. It's this one side wants the other side dead.
Israel wants to exist as a Jewish state and to live in peace. Israel also recognizes the right of Palestinians to have their own state and to live in peace. The problem, however, is that most Palestinians and many other Muslims in. Do not recognize the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist, Daniel?
Well, that's it. I mean, one side wants one dead. Okay.
Josh Olsen: So we'll be back next week. So,
Daniel Bessner: yeah, I don't see,
Dave Anthony: uh, I, I've, I've spoken to some Israelis in my time and um, the thing that they always say is how much they love Palestinians and want them to exist.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. It's just like, so again, one-sided, this mannequin view this, this sort of like, good [01:54:00] versus evil. I mean, and this is just more extreme cuz this is one instance when Prager, but it's so extreme.
Yeah. Prager. Well cuz he has an identification with Israel. You know, he grew up, he's a post holocaust American Jew. And so he has a particular identification, uh, to this state. I mean, I'm sure he, he, yeah, he was born in 48, so he was 25 during the 73 Arab Israeli war. So he was definitely politicized in this moment.
So he's being extreme partially because he, he himself occupies this particular subject position. Yeah. So Israel gave land for the promise of peace with Egypt. And it has always been willing to do the same thing with the Palestinians. All the Palestinians have ever had to do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state and promise to live in peace.
But when Israel has proposed trading land for peace, as it did in 2000 when it agreed to give the Palestinians a sovereign state in more than [01:55:00] 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, the Palestinian leadership rejected the offer and instead responded by sending waves of suicide terrorists into Israel.
There you go. Yeah. I mean, we don't have to go into the Oslo Accord situation, but that is just a, a very particular gloss on, on what happened in the 1990s. I,
Josh Olsen: I would actually say we do, if you can briefly, cuz I, I think we need to provide detail with this stuff. Um, uh, cuz it's just so, and it's, it's challenging cuz it's so dumbed down.
It It does. I know. It feels like degrading to have to go. Well, no, that didn't happen that way. But it's,
Dave Anthony: it's all, like you said, it's dumbed down. It's super selective. Like every single thing that we've, like, they describe, uh, Chay and they talk about what he said when he was 24, but nothing after his transformation.
They talk about Gandhi stuff. He said when he was young and didn't talk about his [01:56:00] transformation, what he said afterwards. Like, it's all, it's all very, yeah. You know, everything, every single thing they cover is just this little selection of, of shit.
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. And I mean, at the very least, to not get into like the back and forth and negotiations.
This doesn't take seriously Israeli occupation since 1967, right? Like even if you're gonna take the absolute most pro-Israeli stance, any honest observer is going to have to say like, there's an occupation and consequences due to that occupation, oftentimes within human conditions. Again, people on the right would admit that.
So, uh, that I think it's, it's, it's very, very selective.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. And that's, that's the odd thing we keep running into that. We've run these arguments. He's making that, that even people on his own quote unquote side would, would have trouble with.
Daniel Bessner: Meanwhile, Palestinian radio, television, and school curricula remained filled with glorification of terrorists, demonization of Jews, and the daily repeated message that [01:57:00] Israel should cease to exist.
Dave Anthony: How do they, what, how does the, uh, how did the schools work with no power and no running
Daniel Bessner: orders? And also like, if it, it was just bizarre. Again, the Israeli liberal, which doesn't really exist anymore, but the Israeli left just points out, there's a lot of anti-Arab stuff going on within Israel. Again, just one side of the equation, not the other side.
Finally,
Josh Olsen: strange. Yeah. I resisted looking this next part up. Cause I actually wanted to hear what you were saying. Cause I, I, I had never heard this before and I can begin to claim to be expert on this topic. The motto of
Daniel Bessner: Hamas, the Palestinian rulers of Gaza is we love death as much as the Jews love life.
Again, a total dehumanization of your people. I mean, this is what this is, this is what Yeah. Um, people say, is that a thing? I, I think he's referring to, uh, I I, I can't cite chapter in verse, but there are statements like that in sort of the founding documents of Hamas. But again, [01:58:00] totally decontextualized, totally de historicized.
And then basically saying, it's also
Josh Olsen: not their motto. It's not the thing they put on their t-shirts or their
Daniel Bessner: baseball. I actually, I, I, I don't know. But if it wasn't, doesn't matter. Like that's, that's the point because it's just basically an oppressed people trying to be to, to, to, to rally themselves in the face of the power that's just much more powerful.
So again, it's just like a total dehumanization of your enemy saying they are not human. They, they like death. That's not a human thing to do. Right. And, and that is, I think, like very racist and very, um, you know, will, will, will not result in anything good in the medium or long term dehumanization like that is, is never, uh, the path to some positive thing ever,
Josh Olsen: but he's gonna solve it.
The old Dennis, as I
Daniel Bessner: said at the outset, it is a simple problem to describe. One side wants the other dead, and if it. There would be
Dave Anthony: peace. See?
Daniel Bessner: Yeah. That's it. It's simple. [01:59:00] Which side? One side is not human, one side isn't. The other side is God, I,
Josh Olsen: yeah,
Daniel Bessner: please remember this. There has never been a state in the geographic area known as Palestine, that was not Jewish.
Israel is the third Jewish state to exist in that area. There was never an Arab state, never a Palestinian state, never a Muslim or any other state. Yeah. So I think he's just saying that there literally wasn't a separate unit called Palestine because obviously the Ottomans ruled the area that is now Israel Palestine for hundreds and hundreds of years.
So I guess that's what he's saying. It's like there wasn't a formal individual thing, but again, it's like this, this 20% truth. Mm-hmm. You know, that just characterizes the whole phenomenal phenomenon.
Josh Olsen: Yeah. And just kind of the whole, the whole approach he said with all of these, it's amazing. And as we'll [02:00:00] see as we go through other topics, it's, it's, I think he's right about this.
They seems
it is, but you know, here's, here's some facts and now we're gonna go into like crazy land with them.
Dave Anthony: So that's it for this week's show. We'll be back next week with more of our deep dive into PragerU. If you want this episode's bonus content and believe. You do, go now to lever news.com/audit and become a subscriber.
It's definitely worth it. Definitely. And remember, follow us on Twitter at the audit pod and remember, follow us on Twitter at the audit podcast and Venmo tips at the audit, one word and other businesses cuz we businessing.
Josh Olsen: We are businessing. And also, uh, and I hesitate to do this, this could be dangerous.
You can email us at the audit podcast gmail.com. Um, if you wanna tell us how great we are, that's [02:01:00] fine. If you wanna pick fights with us, we'll probably ignore you. But mm-hmm. If you have great clips of Prager or any of these people at Prager, you saying absolutely insane Shit. Believe me, we have not seen everything.
So send it to us and if it's really good, maybe we'll bring it up on a, uh, future episode or maybe we'll make a funny video out of it. So we'll be back next week. Maybe good with more pr You
Dave Anthony: Good Morning class.
Daniel Bessner: Good morning, pronoun. Today we're learning all about socialism, deviant sex
Dave Anthony: and devil
Daniel Bessner: worship.
And how cool it
Jesus. Oh
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