The Growing White Boy Problem
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I find the daddy stuff so unbelievably off-putting and weird and creepy. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, in its state of America. Good night and good luck. Hey folks, it's Rick Wilson. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast.

My guest today is a returning guest to the show, Dr. Peter Simi. He's an expert on extremism and political violence. And I had him back on the show today because in this moment where the January 6th criminals and terrorists were released this week, I have a theory of my case that

A lot of these folks are now going to have learned nothing and will be more dangerous than they were before. So I wanted to talk to Peter about that today. And Peter, thanks for coming on the show. And tell me a little bit about where you see the psychology and the sort of sociological impact of releasing a sort of cadre of this kind of folks back into society.

the American political system and the populace. Yeah, well, thanks for having me back. You know, it's really devastating on so many different levels.

In terms of, you know, the psychology, you know, is that they've been emboldened. They've got the stamp of approval from the White House, from the most powerful, arguably the most powerful person in the world, who has repeatedly over the years referred to them in glowing terms as patriots, as hostages, prisoners, and, you know, all of these things.

you know, really affirmative language that's been used to describe what they, you know, they believe. They believe that they were taking, you know, justified action. They believe that an election had been stolen. They believe those things, as incorrect as they may be. And now they've gotten the affirmation that they really desire. And so that's a huge psychological shot of adrenaline. And you see it immediately, the emboldenment, the

You see it online, telegram channels, you see it X, you see it on the streets. So it's a real devastating psychological impact for us in terms of folks that are concerned about public safety, folks that are concerned about national security.

And it's also simultaneously delegitimizing the system, the very system of governments, the rule of law, system of law and order. These things are being completely undercut by these actions. Fortunately, we're seeing judges, for example, saying some very important things that are really necessary at this moment in time. You know, I was thinking about this the other day. Adam Serwer in the first administration famously wrote that for Trump, the cruelty was the point.

I have a theory of the case that right now, the lawlessness is the point. That the giving these people the knowledge that they have committed a crime and they've been set free for a political purpose...

empowers them tremendously. But it strikes me that it's also about scaring the hell out of the normies in the world and scaring the hell out of everyone else that with the knowledge there is a group of lawless people who are absolutely above punishment or sanction for committing criminal acts as long as they stay in good with the president. I couldn't agree with you more. I think sometimes we forget Donald Trump is not a politician.

He's not a statesperson. He is a cult leader, first and foremost. He is running a cult, and it's a very large one, unfortunately. And this is about playing to that base of supporters who make up a very substantial part of this cult and keeping those folks happy. You know, some folks have pointed to the fact that I think it's about 58% of Americans do not support these pardons, which is good news in some respects. 58% is the majority, obviously.

But that also, obviously, the basic arithmetic means that somewhere around 42% are okay with that. That's not a small number of folks. Talk to me about this. And this is a number I just don't know. When you have a radical movement in a country, it doesn't take a huge number of them to have a massive impact in society.

When you have people willing to exercise political violence, it doesn't take a massive number of them to overthrow systems and to disrupt normal politics, normal life, normal economics.

This cult doesn't have to be enormous to be enormously dangerous is the point I'm trying to get to. Can you talk to me about like what scale is required for that sort of thing to happen and why it's dangerous, even though there are only 1,500 of these guys? But I think they represent a sort of scary cadre is what I'm trying to get to.

I think to successfully undercut a system, you know, you need different layers at work. And, you know, the smallest number of people are going to be those that are willing to take the most extreme action. You don't ever have necessarily a large number of folks who are literally willing to potentially sacrifice their lives in the name of the cause. That always, by definition, is going to be a smaller number of folks. And so,

The fact that it is a smaller number is not something we should feel comfortable about or that we should somehow write this off as not potentially impactful. That's a huge mistake.

But it's also, you know, simultaneously what we've done is we've, you know, really pushed the Overton window and normalized a lot of this. And so while that number of folks who are willing to take the most extreme action remains relatively small in number, we do have larger and growing numbers of folks who are on some level okay with it, who are on some level supportive of it. Right. We might call them sympathetic bias. Mm-hmm.

Say more about that because I'm just having this thing in my head. It's like the Viet Cong were a relatively small number, but they had the support of the villagers in a lot of places. And it's like not every one of these people that was a Jan 6 person, they don't reflect those values across all of MAGA, but there are enough of the folks in the MAGA movement who were okay with that.

Yeah. And that, you know, being okay with it can mean a lot of different things. It can mean a little bit more active type of sympathetic bias or you're actually aiding and abetting in some respect. You're providing cover. Uh, and I mean this in, in a literal sense, you might like literally provide, um,

safety and refuge for folks that are on the lam, so to speak, on the run from the law. But it's also more of a figurative type of support as well, where individuals, members of the community are not denouncing what is clearly, I mean, just before our eyes, we can see the videos, the violence that was committed that day, the weapons that were used.

And for us not to be able to uniformly denounce that and to as a nation come together and view this as a day of shame and as a tragic situation, that's really telling. And that's because there are a certain number of these sympathetic bystanders who have come to believe and see January 6th through a totally different lens. They've bought into the idea that it was a peaceful day, that there weren't any weapons present that day. You know, all of this propaganda really. Right.

And that's, you know, had a devastating impact on people's perceptions. And it's literally rewriting, you know, we're in this struggle as to which history is going to be recorded, the accurate one or this propaganda version. Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that we've got a very dark moment here where a lot of the folks that in Congress in particular who are trying to rewrite that day

were the same people who were hiding, crouched down behind doors and tables and benches and desks in the building when these people came through to attack the building. People who were scared to death, who thought that was the end, are now out there saying, "Oh, these are heroes. We're going to bring them back. We're going to honor them. We're going to praise them."

I just find that like when you have a movement like this, that's got infrastructure at the very top supporting it like that, but folks at the very highest level, that to me strikes me as an even more concerning and sort of troubling aspect of this than, than the normal sort of, you know, more generic support down at the lower level at the base with those, with those bystander types. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And you wonder what's in their psychology, how many of these folks have come to convince themselves and also basically become susceptible to the propaganda.

that they're helping circulate or how many of them are just really cynical in terms of they're taking advantage of the grifters and they're taking advantage of the situation, opportunity to manipulate people's perception because it furthers their political careers. And, you know, that's a non-zero number, but it's hard. It is hard to quantify. Right.

Yeah, exactly. So that's always hard. And it's always a combination. And I think Trump himself represents this combination of sorts where obviously a lot of this is for its own personal gain. He's creating a cabinet and administration of people through personal connections and people who've done things to him that are close to him in some ways through religion or money or other sorts of things that have furthered his career.

you know, gains, you know, you know, that there's definitely that aspect to him, but he's also, you know, has an agenda in terms of this, this cult that he's been able to create. And that's, that's also a powerful motivator for why he's doing so. That cult is a, is a definitional aspect now, excuse me, of the Republican party. It's a definitional aspect of, of,

The movement that Trump has built. It's not particularly ideological or political, I think. It is more that dear leader kind of personality cult. It's a lot more like North Korea. Someone argued with me this morning. I thought it was actually a strikingly good point.

And he said, you know, yeah, you can compare Trump and that movement to the Nazis. But the more accurate feeling about it is the North Korean Juche, that personality cult that the Kim family has now maintained for 80 years of power.

Undying loyalty, unending propaganda, unmitigated lying about everything all the time. And so the North Koreans now, after three generations, have no frame of reference for the truth anymore.

Does that strike you as a valid sort of analogy? Well, you know, to be honest with you, I hadn't really thought about that. But, you know, as you're describing it, I do think that that fits quite well, frankly. And

You look at MAGA and you look at the inability for so many, and again, obviously some people are able to see through and ultimately come to be disaffected. So it's not a deterministic aspect in terms of once you go into MAGA, that's it forever. But it has been, there has been a very kind of undying loyalty and a willingness to just

be okay with the repeated lies or not see them as lies and this inability to discern any kind of truth or lack thereof when it comes to Trump and what he stands for. It is a very compelling component of what defines MAGA is this kind of undying loyalty and a view of Trump as kind of a savior of sorts.

In the daddy references. So creepy. I find the daddy stuff so unbelievably off-putting and weird and creepy. But it is...

There is like an infantilization process in the Trump cult where he has to be everything. No one else can be right. No one else can have an opinion. No one else can be a leader, really. They're all in the shadow of daddy, which, again, I find that unbelievably off-putting.

I think it was Charlie Kirk who memed with his inauguration photo, the kind of the stern look that he had. He said, I think the tagline was "Daddy's come home." "Daddy's back" or "Daddy's home," something like that. Yeah. So this thing requires this constant bubble of propaganda around it. All authoritarian leadership, all cults do. And I don't want the show just to be about how grim and everything is.

What are some ways that people can help people get out of that bubble, out of that cult? What are some ways that we ought to approach it as a society, and I think individually, to help people walk back from the things that make the MAGA cult and the extremism elements, like we saw this week, so intense?

Well, that's a it's a great question and an important one. It's not an easy one to answer in part because we are in somewhat unchartered territory, certainly at least in recent history, to have this large of a political type of cult have this much power and the kind of fuel that's driving it. Things like the digital technology, these kind of platforms that are now in some cases controlled by technology.

you know, folks that are right there in bed with the cult leader. So you've got X and Elon Musk and the role that they're playing. So it is a very powerful set of obstacles that are in place here that are helping prop this up and that make this type of intervention really difficult to kind of, you know, create any kind of architecture and implement.

Again, I agree with you. We've got to try and find where the cracks are. To me, the biggest struggle at the present moment, well, there's a lot of different struggles. I think the courts are really critical. This is absolutely ground zero for whether we save this republic or not. It's the courts and some of what have already been filed, some of the suits.

And I think the actions, the judges I mentioned earlier, I think those are so important. Anything we can do to highlight the words that have been offered by the judges about what happened with these pardons and how really important.

how much they're undercutting our system of governance. That's critical. This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. While MeUndies can't totally help your love life this Valentine's Day, they can offer you insanely comfy undies and loungewear to buy or gift. MeUndies has so many awesome Valentine's Day prints and styles. Plus, you can match with your partner, friends, or even your pets.

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Does seeing those things declared unconstitutional or illegitimate in court affect these people as much as some other type of failure on Trump's part, like the economy going south or him not handling a crisis well, as we know he's not a good crisis handler, manager? Is it...

Is it going to be, is it going to, are the courts going to change their minds more or will the economy and the sort of overall status of Trump's leadership do that? No, that's a good point. I mean, I don't think the court, I think the courts are important for another reason, not for changing MAGA, you know, individual members of MAGA in terms of.

in terms of changing their mind. I don't think that's all that effective. I do think it's more of the latter. It's the central failures that are going to be hard lessons for all of us, unfortunately, not just for MAGA folks. But that's where I think you start to see some movement in terms of on a larger level. At the individual level, you can see movement, individuals through various experiences.

through contacts that they may have with individuals that they care about who kind of can chip away at it. Because usually the problem with this is, is that if you present the counter narrative, oftentimes people, it just further reinforces and they become more entrenched in the belief system. So it really at an individual level, it requires more of a chipping away versus an actual like exposing the,

Say more about that because I think there are a lot of my friends on the left who have taken a position for a while. It's like, well, if you just explain to them why they're being stupid and wrong, they'll stop being stupid and wrong. And I have not found that to be a particularly effective model of persuasion. I mean, people, they've asked me a lot like, why aren't you trying to persuade the red-hatted guy? I'm like, I don't think he's super persuadable for the one thing.

So that's why I'm always sort of searching for, you know, are there ways to make the inevitable failures of Trump's administration, make them start questioning the bullshit they're hearing in this big disinformation ecosystem that they live in? Well, so what we're dealing with is kind of what you might call sacred values, what some folks call sacred. These are highly, you know, highly important, highly emotional values that people are holding on to.

And there's a lot of fear and anxiety that are built into why people have come to embrace MAGA. And because of those values that are so central here, if we take a judgmental standpoint and essentially tell people that, well, there's something wrong with you for believing in these things.

which in some cases there may be, but nonetheless, that's not effective. You're not going to reach people's hearts or minds by telling them there's something wrong with them. And so a lot of times when we try and counter these things,

types of movements, these kind of extremism, it's done through a very kind of judgmental perspective or lens. And that actually sends the message to the individual that, oh, the messenger is the problem. So they discount the message entirely. They totally, whatever facts, whatever information that the person has tried to provide, that gets totally lost in the shuffle.

And what it does is it puts the messenger in a bad light because they're essentially telling the person there's, you know, they're stupid, there's something wrong with them, something along those lines. And that just builds up defenses and people become, you know, very guarded at that point. And certainly any openness that might have existed would be closed at that point.

There's a lot of focus right now on the questions of immigration. And as somebody who's been in Republican politics my entire life, adult life certainly, immigration has always been a thinly-coated racial play for the party. It's always been a thinly-coated way to talk to white working-class voters, Republican and Democrat. There's a real through-line of a lot of these groups, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, etc.,

and a lot of the other ancillary groups that are out there that are less known of white supremacist thinking and of nativist thinking. And I'm curious if you see

a risk factor of those groups getting more mainstreamed as Trump centers his administration on the immigration fight. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we see it already. Yeah, I mean, they're offering up their services to help with the so-called mass deportations that are coming. And we even saw it before the election. We saw it, you remember back not that long ago, there was that debate between Harris and Trump where he talked about the dogs, eating the dogs.

And that was literally fed up to him on a silver platter. I don't know if that's the right way to phrase that, but it was served up to him by literally white supremacist groups that helped

basically, you know, platform that on social media. Little neo-Nazi groups, one of them, Blood Tribe, for example, played a major role in platforming that issue out of Ohio. So we already have seen the way in which they've been able to impact and influence the political narrative and in the process helping normalize themselves. You know, we saw this deal with Elon in the

what some have described as an awkward gesture, but what looked an awful lot like a Nazi salute. It's like, it's a terrible double bind that we're in because if we don't pay attention to that, then we're helping normalize it. And white supremacists, you know, they love that salute. They're calling it a Nazi salute, that's for sure. Yeah. If the Nazis are calling it a Nazi salute, it's a Nazi salute, folks. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, all of this is helping normalize. And immigration has for a long time been a bread and butter issue for them that they believed could help do what's actually happening right now. One of the things that you've done in a lot of your academic work is study how these networks exist, how they form. There's a lot of this that the mainstream media and most Americans just don't see. They don't understand how thoroughly connected a lot of

the J6 people were into a political and activism and media ecosystem that exists below the radar screen of even things like Facebook and Twitter, that exists on Telegram and Discord and all these other sort of odd corners of the internet.

Talk to me about where that world is going and why it's so important to understand that they're not going to be, we're not going to find all the worst elements of this extremist movement in plain sight. Yeah, that's a really important point because sometimes people will look out, you know, their window, so to speak, and say, well, gee, it does seem, I don't see that many of them. And there's, you know, how is this really this big of a problem? And why are we talking about this so much? And

And it is because of the lack of visibility to some aspects of it. Certainly, we've seen a greater visibility, I think, in the last decade. But there are segments of these networks. If you think about it as a universe, really, we call it a constellation that exists. Some of it is visible and some of it is much less visible. And you see different aspects.

aspects of it, depending on how closely you're paying attention. And oftentimes, in people's busy lives, they aren't able to look closely at these issues. And so they seem much smaller. And of course, we're hearing that they're a much smaller problem than they actually are. We've heard this a lot with the confirmation hearing with Pete Hegsest about extremism in the military, which is a very serious problem and has been a very serious problem for quite some time. And yet,

No. Not anymore. They closed the office looking into it. I've never been looking at it in the first place. That was just a woke agenda. Well, it is something that I just – if you get in those rabbit holes, folks, if you start chasing down where these groups operate and talk and communicate and coordinate, it will melt your brain how many of them there are. I've always had a huge concern that the more you scratch into those things –

you find so many law enforcement guys in these groups. And that, to my mind, you know, and not just three percenters, like law enforcement officers involved in actively, and not like behind a lot of whole obscured screen names either. There are a lot of these guys that are involved actively in these very far right, racially inflected groups. That has been something that I

I worry about it in terms of the rule of law because, you know, there are going to be people who don't follow a court order, law enforcement, people who won't follow a court order or who, who will take actions that, that they believe will make Donald Trump happy rather than, you know, following the law. It just, that, that element of, of law enforcement folks being involved in this white supremacist stuff. I think it is a massive, massive problem. It's a national scandal as well.

And it's been a longstanding one again. And now you can imagine if somebody like Patel is. And it makes good it makes good and legitimate cops look terrible. Absolutely. It does a disservice to everybody who carries the badge and who takes on the responsibility and obligations to go along with that and put their lives in jeopardy on a daily basis. And it's a real disservice to those individuals who are trying to do the right thing.

And, you know, you imagine with, you know, the FBI, for instance, in 2006, put out a report about this problem. Can you imagine Patel spending any time at the FBI looking at this issue and acknowledging it as a serious problem? Absolutely not. He is, in my mind, you know, for a lot of reasons, he's Trump's most dangerous appointee.

Not only because he is deeply inflected with a lot of this incredibly cuckoo conspiracy business and because he has an enemies list that he wants to deploy against Donald Trump and his own political enemies and opposition, but because he will deploy the power of the state to do it.

And that, to my mind, is a world that I don't think Americans understand just how bad it will be if we end up going down that road.

from more fringe arenas into actual state power in a way that, again, at least in recent history, we just haven't seen. Certainly on this level, not on this level. Seeing Stuart Rhodes yesterday from the damn Oath Keepers, a guy who was one of the prime architects of this attack, having lunch at a cafeteria on Capitol Hill with Representative Gus Bilirakis kind of blows my damn mind.

kind of shocks the senses because they really want to be mainstreamed into a place where they are even more politically invulnerable. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what they want. This is what, you know, this is just lifeblood for them to be able to have these kinds of opportunities, to have this kind of, you know, connections and support and recognition and affirmation.

You can imagine when you're involved in these kind of extremist groups and you don't have those things, it's kind of a tough go. You have to really do a lot to keep yourself in it, to sustain yourself and keep yourself believing in the cause that you've got all these obstacles out there. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. So many of these groups lived in obscurity.

And recruiting new people was difficult and raising money was difficult and doing things that kept group cohesion together was difficult. But now it seems like

We may have greased that path a little bit as a country now for these folks, even the most radical types, to be able to say, well, I can do this and join us and you'll also be invulnerable to the law. Join us and Trump will pardon you too if you do something vicious or violent or dangerous. That's a really good point. Yeah, it's really scary because you've removed potential points of deterrence.

That, you know, you think about a young person who might be attracted to the excitement and maybe they're kind of getting into some of the beliefs. And but, you know, normally you would say, well, geez, do I really want to put myself at risk? Do I really want to potentially throw away my life? You know, I might not be able to go to college or I might not be able to get a job if I do this. Right now, all of a sudden you've kind of removed those things, given that we're kind of rolling out the red carpet for these folks.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, Dr. Peter Simi, thank you, sir, again for joining us on the Lincoln Project podcast. I always appreciate your insights into extremist movements in the country. And sadly, we have a hell of an extremist movement in the country right now. Thanks again for coming on and we'll talk to you again soon.