Written by This week has gotten off to a very interesting start, to say the least of it.
As discussed on Monday, I had a rather lively discussion on a forum dedicated to discount web hosting, which exposed a number of important people to the reality that Leftist identity politics is a hateful and destructive phenomenon.
Some provocative demonstrations over the weekend gave rise to a controversy on the Right, and I had no shortage of things to say about this. I’ll try to save most of that for the uncensored production Friday, but this gave rise to some concepts which I think fitting for this members only venue.
I mentioned that I would be inviting a controversial guest onto the uncensored production. That guest has since accepted and I do plan to go forward with this. There was some criticism of my doing so however, and that seems fitting for here. I’m going to block quote a lengthy Telegram exchange here, but rest assured I have original material to add to this when we go live this evening at 9:30pm US Eastern as we do every Wednesday on our weekly SurrealPolitiks Member Chat.
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On Telegram, Steve said the following;
@ChrisCantwell – “Obviously, I have to try and get the guy on the Radical Agenda. I’ll work on it.”
I don’t think it’s a good idea, Chris. I understand the guy may be an interesting character and you may consider it good ‘content’ for the show, but I for one would rather you focus on the big ideas and less on such individuals.
We’ve seen these clown show circus villains come and go over the years, and they never seem to accomplish anything except to give subversive elements exactly the fodder they are looking for to discredit all of us. You’ve seen this kind of tactic yourself – they’ll pick the craziest guy in the room, plant a mic in front of his face, wait for him to express some stupid, roided-up, poorly articulated asshole opinions, then claim that everyone else in the room agrees 100% with THIS guy, and he speaks on all of our behalf. It’s bullshit, and I’m tired of it happening over and over.
I get that people are complex, and there is more to meet the eye with us all, but the guy goes by ‘Boneface’ and has a tatted up face and a sketchy history. That’s the rhetorical equivalent of showing up to give a speech with your dick hanging out of your pants. At that point, nothing you say even matters — not your ideas, not your argumentation, not the nuance of your opinions. As you said yourself in your other post, it’s not simply a matter of ‘optics’, but that the efficacy of your entire approach is sorely lacking.
If you give this guy a platform, you’re giving him a degree of legitimacy that I don’t see evidence that he’s even earned, other than just looking colorful. For me, I’m tired of all these low character, shit-tier clown show villains. In a few months he’ll probably disappear off the internet, then a few years from now we’ll find out he’s either in prison, or turned out to be a stealth Commie, or a Fed informant, or some such thing. I’d rather see guests on the show who exhibit high character and have good ideas, not spergs who make a spectacle of themselves on some banner drop on a bridge.
It’s your show of course, but that’s my 2 cents on the matter.
I appreciated his thoughtful commentary, and responded as follows;
I appreciate your thoughts here, and not to diminish the value of what you’ve said, but I’ll offer a response and be sincerely interested in what you have to say about it.
I was very hesitant to interview Hammer, largely for the same reasons you describe here. If you haven’t seen that episode, I hope you’ll check it out.
It is my most watched video on Odysee right now, and I think that is an important data point.
People who do not listen to me, tuned in, to hear Hammer.
If you saw/heard that episode, I think you’ll agree with me that while I treated the man with respect and gave him an opportunity to get his points across, anybody who was paying attention to that interview would come away with the view that I was more the adult in the room, and if a thinking man were to choose which of the two to follow, he’d not long deliberate.
If I have the opportunity to reach those who are considering following a misguided course, and to deter them from that course, I think that presents me with an opportunity to do some good, and while I don’t believe this literally, it closely enough approximates my point to say that it may serve as repentance for prior sins.
Hammer is actually a pretty good example of one such prior sin. I am not blameless in what he is doing. He was a Radical Agenda listener. He started doing this crap after I went to prison. I have tried to talk him down, unsuccessfully, and I endure no small degree of guilt and anxiety about this.
For the existing audience, you know, I have struggled with a question in my mind of how much faith I should place in them to make their own decisions wisely. Clearly most of the people I engage with on a regular basis, at this point, are discerning listeners, and I value this highly. But that surely has not always been the case, and even now I have no certainty that it is 100% of the audience. So I try not to be reckless in the ideas I expose them to. Last thing I need is to put a bad thought in the mind of an unhinged listener, and the next mass shooter is wearing one of my RWDS hats, and a hoodie full of bullet holes.
But I find great artistic satisfaction in bringing on a man who some might see as less than human, and demonstrating that this view is as misguided as anything that individual might be doing.
I do not think this distracts in any way from the gravity of their misguided behavior. In fact, I think it adds to it. If Hammer goes to Ukraine and dies and nobody gives a fuck, there is not much to learn from this. If Hammer goes to Ukraine and dies and you saw him thoughtfully interviewed and understand that he has sincere motives and a head on his shoulders, this is actually a far greater tragedy. Now we are talking about the loss of a real human being, and some genuine potential. When people do things that have the potential or likelihood to go tragically wrong, it’s actually something to care about, instead of one more stupid f** failing Darwin’s test.
Steve replied;
First of all Chris, I’ve been a RA listener, off and on, since around 2017 and have seen you go through many different permutations of your public persona. You can be extremely entertaining, which is important, but I think you’ve learned over the years that leaning heavy into the ‘agree and amplify’ Nazi / Day of the Rope shit doesn’t do a whole lot to help our cause other than ruin the potential of volatile young guys by getting them tossed in the clink and making all the rest of us look like meth-head retards. While I personally found the phone number thing with GO-NAZI in it to be really funny, and understood that you were LARPing on purpose to get a rise out of people… this kind of approach has likely hurt your reach by limiting the people who will even touch your show, while at the same time you’ve tended to attract garbage tier individuals who have done yourself and the rest of us no great favors.
I suspect, based on the success of other platforms and pundits in affiliated circles, that the collective thirst for ideas expressed on your shows is much larger than your current audience, but I don’t think you’ll ever see the benefit of such growth if you’re constantly focusing on the meth-heads. That is not to say that you should be boring and turn your show into Meet the Press. It should be interesting and entertaining of course, but you’ve got a serious mind and an articulate mode of expression, and I’d like to see that get the traction I think it deserves.
This is ironic, in a way, in that many people unfamiliar with the show see you as just one of these clown show villain characters, but anyone familiar with the show knows this is far from the case.
“I was very hesitant to interview Hammer, largely for the same reasons you describe here. If you haven’t seen that episode, I hope you’ll check it out.
It is my most watched video on Odysee right now, and I think that is an important data point.
People who do not listen to me, tuned in, to hear Hammer.
If you saw/heard that episode, I think you’ll agree with me that while I treated the man with respect and gave him an opportunity to get his points across, anybody who was paying attention to that interview would come away with the view that I was more the adult in the room, and if a thinking man were to choose which of the two to follow, he’d not long deliberate. “
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I missed that one, actually, so I’ll check it out. I understand your reasoning here, and that perhaps you may have siphoned off some of his fans to a more reasonable position, but you still put him on, thereby conferring him degree of importance, as every guest on your show functions as a kind of ambassador on behalf of all of us.
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“For the existing audience, you know, I have struggled with a question in my mind of how much faith I should place in them to make their own decisions wisely. Clearly most of the people I engage with on a regular basis, at this point, are discerning listeners, and I value this highly. But that surely has not always been the case, and even now I have no certainty that it is 100% of the audience. So I try not to be reckless in the ideas I expose them to. Last thing I need is to put a bad thought in the mind of an unhinged listener, and the next mass shooter is wearing one of my RWDS hats, and a hoodie full of bullet holes. “
—————-
Right, exactly. I’m glad you feel responsible for the opinions expressed on your show, as the last thing we need is such an unhinged listener committing such an act of violence.
To be perfectly honest, Chris, the biggest problem I’ve had with your show over the years is not with you, but your audience (oh, but not YOU, dear reader… I mean those OTHER guys, of course). I’m tired of the meth-head retards who do nothing but cause trouble and end up making us all look bad.
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“But I find great artistic satisfaction in bringing on a man who some might see as less than human, and demonstrating that this view is as misguided as anything that individual might be doing. “
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I don’t necessarily think you need to debate such guys just to ‘Own the Spergs’ or something like some Normie Alt-Lite fag, but that’s the frustrating thing for me — there in nothing all that ‘radical’ expressed on your shows other than a strong distaste for chaos, disorder, and degeneracy. That should not be a ‘radical’ position at all. Neither should being unapologetic for the circumstances of your birth. Neither should the wish for strong, healthy families and a cohesive cultural hegemony.
One hundred or so years ago, those were opinions most people held. They were not radical, they were normal. It’s only because our culture and cohesiveness has been so badly eroded due to laziness, vice, and subversion that we’ve gotten to a point where people have been gaslit into feeling they need to apologize for their identity or way of life.
I want these notions to be mainstream, not part and parcel to some fringe, criminal element. I just question whether that goal is furthered by highlighting such individuals.
Again, I’m not trying to tell you how to run your show, but I thought you’d appreciate the input from a listener’s perspective. Obviously, not all will agree and that’s fine.
I came back with this;
You have nothing to apologize for here, I appreciate the thoughtful critique and you may rest assured it is by no means dismissed.
I’ll ponder it at greater length.
For now, I’ll offer as my initial thoughts that, I am to some extent a prisoner of prior errors.
You began listening in 2017. At some point in the not so distant future, I’ll make it easier to get hold of older episodes. There are good reasons why I do not want them in circulation. But our enemies have them catalogued and transcribed.
While I think the same thing drives me today as when I started doing the show, I was very uninformed about the problems we face when I began producing media. Much of what I know today was learned on air, live, quite as a shock to me.
I say this to illustrate a point that, while I do not think it impossible to recover from my prior mistakes, it would be the understatement of a lifetime to say that I have made many mistakes from which it is no small task to recover.
I stumbled into this movement in no small part as an effort to be edgy, because that was my thing. I was an edgy libertarian who did not have much thought about the potential for greatness or how what I say today might impact my choices tomorrow. I drew inspiration from the Opie & Anthony show and was stuck in this radical libertarian mindset where the State was a gang of thieves and the proper response was to treat its agents as an armed man treats a burglar.
So, I didn’t think I was taking a very big risk by saying racial epithets on camera. I had already advocated the violent overthrow of government and I didn’t think it got much more “edgy” than that.
I learned otherwise, the hard way.
When I got out of prison, I was more determined to get away from this image I had built up, but that met with disappointment from the existing audience, and no small degree of artistic dissatisfaction internally. So, I have tried to sort of walk a more nuanced line and produce two separate shows, but it is not lost on me that the longer I produce anything resembling the Radical Agenda, the longer it will take for me to recover from this.
I’ll think more about what you’ve said, and while I’ll disclose that I’ve already invited the man and hope he does accept, it will weigh on my future hesitations.
Steve again;
I had to wait up to see your response. A few brief points:
– On the old ‘errors’: I was a witness to all of that, as I caught on to your show prior to the whole C’ville debacle. I can’t blame you for being a bit naïve to the threats you faced, as I’m sure you would have tread a completely different path with the benefit of this hindsight. I think we’ve all seen that the cultural tides aren’t gonna be shifted with a few Tiki torches and some shouting.
– On the show branding: I get the shock jock thing, but that only works if you’re a leftist degenerate who isn’t a threat to the system. I remember those old shows, and the way that particular group (you know the one) would invade the call-in system just to fuck with you and discredit your ideas made some of them totally unlistenable. That’s a classic Antifa tactic that we’ve seen wherein they can’t beat you at the game of chess, so they flip the table to prevent the game from ever occurring.
That said, I think there’s a way you can still be charismatic and entertaining without being either a cuck or a sperg. Neither can you be the dry news anchor dude; that doesn’t suit you at all anyway. While I understand there may be a certain contingent of your audience who gets a kick out of it when you rant about the JQ or whatever, I suspect that is always going to be a small group and the key to growth is in taking a more intelligent approach to the discourse in a manner that is nevertheless truthful and unapologetic.
Realizing this could go on for awhile, I signed off for the night with this;
There is a creative process underway to synthesize something new. Whether it nets me the success my talents deserve remains to be seen, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in entertainment or intellectual terms.
This could obviously be discussed at some length, but I’ll for now just thank you again for your insight, and for sticking around after those admittedly unlistenable moments you referenced.
As I said, I have more to say on this, and will share my deeper thoughts once we’re alone. I’m looking forward to that.
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If you miss the live show, you can always catch the replay in the member content section here https://surrealpolitiks.com/category/membersonly/.