On March 13, podcast king Joe Rogan asked his guest: “When did Hitler start going after the Jews?” It was a grim turn for Rogan, who conquer
by Seth Mandel
This combination of arrogance and ignorance is a hallmark of the “just asking questions” influencer corps. At the same time, there is something telling about Gaines’s crazy statement that no one knew what a Zionist was until October 7, after which “people started looking into this conflict.” On October 7, only one side was carrying out violence, and all that violence was against innocent Israelis. There’s an echo of this same idea near the end of the Joe Rogan–Ian Carroll interview. Carroll goes on a rant about the Jewish state being essentially a criminal enterprise founded and governed by mobsters and terrorists. Then Rogan cuts in and says: “And what’s interesting is, you can talk about this now, post–October 7.” To which Carroll responds: “Exactly. It opened wide open.”
October 7 was a moment of Jewish vulnerability, and it brought a particular coalition of alienated Internet celebrities out of the woodwork: washed-up UFC fighters, wannabe pick-up artists, pseudo-historians and philosopher-bros chasing respectability, trust-fund Instagram royals seeking validation from serious-minded people, right-wing populist lay preachers with a persecution complex. These are self-styled tough guys (and gals) who can’t explain how a state made up of supposed genetic degenerates keeps coming out on top. Israel is the Jew of the nation-states; how did it field a fearsome army and a network of super-spies? It must be lying, cheating, and stealing.
Nick Fuentes, ironically, has been the most honest and forthright about the envy and frustration of the tough guys and the “master race” types. In December, a bit over a year after the war started, Israel had turned the tables on its pursuers. Fuentes, on his America First show, had a radically self-aware meltdown. “It’s time for a little self-reflection, it’s time for a little honesty,” Fuentes said smiling, palms held up as if in surrender. “Do you know how much it sucks being on the other side of Israel?” Then came a brief airing of grievances: “They killed everybody in Hezbollah. They made Hezbollah look like an absolute b—ch when they blew up all their pagers. And then they blew up all their other stuff the next day, and then they killed them all.” He concluded: “Damn, this sucks. It’s just watching this defeat in slow motion.”
The world of right-wing influencers is obsessed with conquest and superiority, and on October 7 they thought their time had finally come. Yet 18 months later, they’re back where they started. So they have taken their quest to the 21st century’s version of the wise men atop the mountain: the podcast maestros with massive audiences and an endless appetite for questioning everything. They are crowdsourcing their war on the Jews.