About 100 minutes in, Richard Spencer says: “The anti-gay animus was one of the last gasps of implicit white identity.”
“Trump was pro-gay rights. We’ve gone past hot button politics, safety valve politics, and it is just about identity.”
“No, I don’t think homosexuality is the last stand of implicit white identity. This whole thing kept blowing up… The way that I sunk it was not to argue against it, but to own it and I would make ridiculous jokes, such as playing bingo was the last stand of implicit white identity. It became a meme and that was a way to lessen the power of it.
“I was interviewed by a Canadian TV station after Texas A&M and at the end the host asked, what would you like to say to Canada, and I replied, ‘Hail Canada!’ The way you can diminish the things that can sink you is through laughter. TRS (The Right Stuff) proved this. TRS advanced our cause through humor, some of it too edgy for me.”
Millenial Woes (MW): “There was going to be a left-wing version of TRS.”
Richard: “You can’t. You’ve got to make fun. You have to tell the emperor that he has no clothes but the emperor is the Left.”
MW: “Any tension will be shallow or affected.”
Richard: “Will they use Pepe? Check your privilege! It just doesn’t work.”
“The Left has lost humor. Humor is about saying the emperor has no clothes.”
“I remember liking The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert because I too thought the Bush era was a total joke. When Jon Stewart would attack neo-conservatives or conservatives or George Bush, I agreed… Sending up the pomposity of George W. Bush and the Religious Right.”
“When Stephen Colbert would play his character, an amalgamation of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, I thought that could be funny. In this other age, they’re not funny. They’re just self-righteous. When Jon Stewart came back on the Colbert show with his “You don’t own this country,” it was pathetic.”
“The right-wing equivalent of the Daily Show is TRS and the Twitter trolls. When I see Pepe putting someone in a gas chamber, probably not something I would do, but there is something outlandish about it that you can’t help but laugh.”
“One of my favorite memes is this little white boy [below].”
