Michael Malice is a political thinker, podcaster, and author. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Michael's Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelmalice
Michael's Community: https://malice.locals.com/
Michael's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5tj5QCpJKIl-KIa4Gib5Xw
Michael's Website: http://michaelmalice.com/about/
Your Welcome podcast: https://bit.ly/30q8oz1
The New Right (book): https://amzn.to/34gxLo3
Dear Reader (book): https://amzn.to/2HPPlHS

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Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
4:07 - Putin and the Russian soul
11:10 - Love and trolling
21:40 - Problem with government
27:12 - Anarchism
49:16 - Politics
51:08 - Are most people capable of thinking deeply?
58:17 - Willy Wonka and Albert Camus view of life
1:04:16 - Trolling
1:08:35 - Conspiracy theories
1:25:52 - Donald Trump and the Election
1:33:06 - Trump Biden presidential debates
1:37:24 - Journalism is broken
1:44:04 - Communism
1:50:11 - Presidential candidates
2:00:42 - Libertarian party
2:11:04 - Objectivism
2:20:26 - Trolling
2:31:30 - The New Right
2:39:38 - Cancel culture
3:09:25 - Book recommendations
3:14:17 - Fear of mortality
3:17:17 - Meaning of life

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The following is a conversation with Michael Malice, an anarchist, political thinker, author, and a proud, part-time, Andy Kaufman-like troll, in the best sense of that word, on both Twitter and in real life.

He's a host of a great podcast called You're Welcome, spelled Y-O-U-R.

I think that gives a sense of his sense of humor.

He is the author of Dear Reader, the unauthorized autobiography of King Jong-il, and The New Right, A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.

This latter book, when I read it, or rather listened to it last year, helped me start learning about the various disparate movements that I was undereducated about, from the internet trolls to Alex Jones, to white nationalists, and to techno-anarchists.

The book is funny and brilliant, and so is Michael.

Unfortunately, because of a self-imposed deadline, I actually pulled an all-nighter before this conversation.

So I was not exactly all there mentally, even more so than usual, which is tough because Michael is really quick-witted and brilliant.

But he was kind, patient, and understanding in this conversation, and I hope you will be as well.

Today I'm trying something a little new, looking to establish a regular structure for these intros.

First, doing the guest intro like I just did.

Second, quick 1 or 2 sentence mention of each sponsor.

Third, my side comments related to the episode.

And finally, fourth, full ad reads on the audio side of things, and on YouTube, going straight to the conversation.

And as always, no ads in the middle, because to me, they get in the way of the conversation.

First, SEMrush, the most advanced SEO optimization tool I've ever come across.

I don't like looking at numbers, but someone probably should.

Second sponsor is DoorDash, food delivery service that I've used for many years to fuel long, uninterrupted sessions of deep work at Google, MIT, and I still use it a lot today.

Third sponsor is Masterclass, online courses from the best people in the world on each of the topics covered, from rockets to game design to poker to writing and to guitar with Carlos Santana.

Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I hope to have some conversations with political thinkers including liberals and conservatives, anarchists, libertarians, objectivists, and everything in between.

I'm as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump worship as you probably are.

I really work hard to be open-minded and let my curiosity drive the conversation.

I do plead with you to be patient on 2 counts.

First, I have an intense, busy life outside of these podcasts.

So sometimes life affects these conversations.

Like in this case, I pull an all-nighter beforehand.

So please be patient with me if I say something ineloquent, confusing, dumb, or just plain wrong.

I'll try to correct myself on social media or in future conversations as much as I can.

I really am always learning and working hard to improve.

Second, if I or the guest says something about, For example, our current president Donald Trump that's over the top negative or over the top positive, please don't let your brain go into the partisan mode.

Try to hear our words in an open-minded, nuanced way.

And if we say stuff from a place of emotion, please give us a pass.

Nuanced conversation can only happen if we're patient with each other.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review the 5 Stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Michael Malice.

There was a Simpsons episode where he starts mixing sleeping pills with pet pills, and he's driving his truck, and I'm like, I wanna see what happens if he makes Red Bull and Nitro cold brew.

Yeah, so 1 thing we'll eventually somehow talk about, it'll be a theme throughout, is that you're also Russian.

No, because you came here a little bit when you were younger.

I came here when I was 13, so I saturated a little bit of the Russian soul.

I marinated in the Russian soul a little deeper.

I haven't told anyone this, but I'll be glad to tell you, Davidish.

And next summer, it looks like me and my buddy, Chris Williamson, who's also a podcaster.

gonna go for the first time to see where I came from.

It's gonna be a lot of panic attacks, I feel.

No, you can't talk Russian in Ukraine or it's like they get offended.

Yeah, but then you also want to go to Russia.

For me, there's several people in Russia I want to interview on a podcast.

So 1 of them is Gagarev Promen, who's just a mathematician.

When he had Merkel with him, do you know this story?

Merkel's scared of dogs, like petrified of dogs.

So he brings in his like, like, like a black lab.

It's like the sweetest animal and it's all over her.

And there's pictures and she's sitting like this and she's terrified.

He's aware of the sort of the narrative around him.

He goes, I realized you guys aren't like us at all.

And then I started telling him stories about the upbringing and he's like, oh my God.

And as I'm telling them, I'm like, wow, this stuff is really crazy.

I'm saying the way Russians are brought up and the way maybe, I don't think it was just my family.

He had a problem with his roommate, so he crashed at my place.

I went to the gym and I come back and he goes, and my apartment building is 4 apartments, so it's not like a huge thing.

He goes, oh, there was someone knocking at your door.

So, you know, I told him blah, blah, blah.

And for me, and I wonder if you're the same way, if I'm at someone's house that's not my own and someone knocks on the door, I wouldn't even think to answer it.

Like if I had an apple here, maybe I'd eat it, I'd cut it, whatever.

I'm not gonna, it just doesn't enter my head to smash into my face.

The thought of answering the door, if it's not my house, it would never enter my head.

But he's an American, so someone's at the door, he goes and opens it, even though it's not his house.

That is so strange that you pick some very obscure thing to delineate Americans and Russians.

I don't think that's obscure, because I think it speaks to how we perceive strangers.

With Americans, everyone's friendly, and with us, it's like, no, no, like you have that moat.

And I think that percolates into many different aspects of how we relate to people.

You're right, there's the relationship I formed there where in Russia, we're very deep, we're close.

And then there's the strangers, the other that you don't trust by default.

It takes a long time to go over the moat of trust.

For a long time until recently, whenever I said anything to anyone, my brain ran a scan that said, if this person turns on you, can they use this against you?

And I would do this to everything I said with strangers.

And after a while, it's like, you know what?

Maybe they will, but I'm strong enough to take it.

People ask about like advice for work, right?

Like I had this, there was this party I went to and basically everyone had their own problems and everyone else gave their advice, right?

And someone's having a problem with the coworker and the advice these 2 boy Americans gave them is, oh, sit down and have a talk with them.

Like first you have to see what you can without showing your hand, showing your vulnerability.

Only when everything hasn't worked out, are you like, all right, let me sit down with you and try to have it out with you, probably.

But for them, the first thing is like sit down and be like, oh, you're causing me problems and blah, blah, blah.

So I perceive that right away as a threat, that this person sees an antagonism between us and also as a weakness that I'm getting to them.

So my reaction isn't how do I make it better?

My reaction is to reinforce my position and see what I can to marginalize them, usually.

I haven't worked in a corporate setting in a long time, but it's not, I don't approach it the way an American would, like I'm glad you came and talked to me.

Now I probably would, because it's gonna be a friend.

So you attribute that to the Russian upbringing as opposed to you have deep psychological issues.

Wait, would you think differently maybe a few years ago?

I think you lost me at the, because you kind of said that, you're kind of implying you have a deep distrust of the world.

I think the default setting would be distrust, yeah.

But I would put it differently is I almost ignore the rest of the world, I don't even acknowledge it.

I just savor, I save my love and trust for the small circle of people.

I agree, but when that person is being confrontational or as they perceive it as being open, now there's a situation.

Like a cold wind blows, you just kind of like.

Yeah, but it's not like this is an opportunity for us to work out our differences.

It's a cold wind, it's not a good person.

But it's not a source of, like, I'm not suspicious of, like, I'm not anxious, I would say, or like living in fear of the rest of the world.

Oh, I agree, but you're not receptive to that person.

So speaking of which, let's talk about love.

Which requires to be receptive of the world.

How do we put more love out there in the world, especially on the internet?

1 mechanism I have found to increase love, and that's a word that has many meanings and is used in a very intense sense and it's used in a very loose sense.

Sure, love is a strong sense of attraction toward another person, entity, or place that causes 1 to tend to react in a disproportionately positive manner.

So for example, if you- Why not proportionally?

Because like if you're, someone's about to, who you love is about to get harmed, you're moving heaven and earth to make sure, or like a book you love, you know, like I love this book, like you're going through the fire to try to save it.

Whereas if it's a book you really like, it's like, oh, I'll get another 1.

So you're going with the love that's like, you're saving for just a few people, almost like romantic love, like love for a close family.

But what about just love to even the broader, like the kind of love you can put out to people on the internet, which is like just kindness.

Sure, I would say in that case, it's important to make them feel seen and validated.

And I try to do this when people who I have come to know on the internet, and there's a lot, I try to do that as much as possible because I don't think it's valid how on social media, and I do this a lot myself, but not towards everyone, it's just there to be aggressive and antagonistic.

You should be antagonistic towards bad people and that's fine, But at the same time, there's lots of great people.

And especially with my audience, and I would bet disproportionately with yours, there's lots of people who are, because of their psychology and intelligence, are going to be much more isolated socially than they should.

And if I, and I've heard from many of them, and if I'm the person who makes them feel, oh, I'm not crazy, it's everyone else around me who is just basic, the fact that I can be that person, which I didn't have at their age, to me is incredibly reaffirming.

But I mean love in the sense of like, you know, you care about this person and you want good things for them, not in a kind of romantic way.

But I mean, you're using a broad sense now.

Yeah, but you're also a person who kind of, I mean, attacks the power structures in the world by mocking them effectively.

And love, I would say, requires you to be non-witty and simple and fragile, which I see it as like the opposite of what trolls do.

Trolls are, if there is someone coming after what I love, there's 2 mechanisms, right, at least 2.

I go up and I'm fighting them, and in which case you bring in, if you are getting hurt in a knife fight, even if you win the knife fight, or if you disarm them and you preclude the possibility of a fight and you drive them off or render them powerless, you keep your person intact as yourself and you also protect your values.

1 of the most effective mechanisms for those in power, we're much closer to Brave New World than

The people who are dominant and in power aren't there because of the threat of the Gulag or prison.

They're there because of social pressures.

I was on the subway not that long ago in New York City.

No 1 cared who I was until I put off the mask.

I was in the subway that long in New York City.

And I put this on my Instagram, I've told this story before.

There was an Asian dude in his early thirties.

It's not like he had a rickshaw or something.

An older man in his fifties stood up over him on the subway, screamed at him, said, go back where you came from, you're disgusting, I'm gonna get sick.

If you think this guy's a vector of disease, which is your prerogative, why are you coming close to him?

the rate, sorry, so it was because he was Asian?

It was the not having a mask gave him the permission to act like a despicable, aggressive person toward him.

And the point being, a lot of these mechanisms for social control are outsourced to low quality people because this is their 1 chance to assert dominance and status over somebody else.

So the best way to diffuse that isn't with weaponry or fighting, it's through mockery because all of a sudden their claims to authority are effectively destroyed.

What about fighting that with love, with patience and kindness towards them?

I don't think kindness is, I think that would be a mismatch and inappropriate.

And Superman's job is to help the good people, and Batman's job is to hurt the bad people.

And I will always be on the Batman side than the Superman side.

1 has pointy ears, both are ridiculous, so it's a...

The one's a billionaire who gets, you know, he's swimming in trim.

I'm under educated on the superhero movies, I apologize.

Okay, but you're just saying you, your predisposition is to be in the Batman side, is to fighting the bad guys.

But just to play devil's advocate, or actually in this case, I am the devil because it's what I usually do.

Which is- I'm the devil, you're the angel's advocate.

It's like, I feel like mockery is a path towards escalation of conflict.

So you're not, I mean, it's kind of like guerrilla warfare.

We're winning on a daily, this is my next book, we're winning.

Is that we are winning, the most horrible people are being rendered into laughing stocks on a daily basis on social media.

I disagree with you because there's side effects that are very destructive.

It feels like you're winning, but we're completely destroying the possibility

Your concept of a cohesive society is in fact a society based on oppression and not allowing individuals to live their personal freedom.

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Michael Malice: Anarchy, Democracy, Libertarianism, Love, and Trolling | Lex Fridman Podcast #128