Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by Dan Baltic, editor of the New Right Podcast and sometime lawyer.
Speaker: He's also the author of Nutcranker, which is a novel about a hero of the West being unceremoniously unjustly canceled.
Speaker: tons to say about this book.
Speaker: And I'm really excited to have Dan on.
Speaker: So welcome to the show.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Thanks so much for having me on, Bennett.
Speaker: We had you on New Right a little earlier this month.
Speaker: And yeah, no, it's great to be on your pod and to keep the Mutual Appreciation Society going here.
Speaker: So the highest praise I can give this book is
Speaker: I just finished it is that I feel sick.
Speaker: I like my, my guts are all twisted up.
Speaker: Oh, good, good.
Speaker: It, uh, I meant for it to make people feel stuff and, uh, that's, that's a feeling.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so, well, okay.
Speaker: So I, I, I talked about him being, uh, being unjustly canceled.
Speaker: This guy is, is, uh, he's the worst.
Speaker: He's, he's horrendous.
Speaker: And I guess what I found so compelling about this, it's a horror story, right?
Speaker: And the horror to me is that all of my half-truths, all of the sort of lies that I have told to get by in the world,
Speaker: are obvious to everybody that I'm naked in front of everybody.
Speaker: And the only one who doesn't know it is me.
Speaker: Like it's, it's a gut wrenching read.
Speaker: And I, I want to, I want to start with, so you, you, you, cause I, I, I feel like I know this guy.
Speaker: I feel like I know 10 of this guy.
Speaker: And you captured him so well that I want to get... It seems like you can't really catch a guy like this unless you either love him or you identify with him in some way.
Speaker: Like there has to be some...
Speaker: some proximity to this character.
Speaker: And because he's such a loathsome character, I'm fascinated by how that, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: How that happens.
Speaker: So tell me about that.
Speaker: Your relationship to Spencer.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, I've spent a lot of time with Spencer, so we have a very close relationship by this point.
Speaker: But yeah, so I was writing this when COVID hit.
Speaker: I was, you know, I had already started this as a short story.
Speaker: And then kind of my industry slowed down.
Speaker: So I, you know, in earnest began writing the novel, and
Speaker: and writing like two to three hours every day.
Speaker: I finished it in about three months.
Speaker: So yeah, for that kind of intense three-month period, Spencer became a friend of mine, shall we say.
Speaker: And as for like how I met him, how I came across his voice, whatever, my practice, my writing practice was
Speaker: And I think it depends what type of writing you're doing.
Speaker: Some people, if you're writing a thriller, if you're writing something that is more plot-driven, you want to make it more plan out, storyboard the plot.
Speaker: do all of that stuff.
Speaker: But for literary fiction, for the type of fiction that I do, my practice is to just sit down and write and write until I find a voice that I like.
Speaker: And so that's more or less how I found Spencer.
Speaker: I was just writing and, you know, eventually his voice kind of, and the novel though, it's in the close third person.
Speaker: It's essentially in Spencer's voice.
Speaker: And his voice kind of, you know, shined through.
Speaker: It, you know, came to me.
Speaker: And then once you have like a solid character voice, you can start writing in that character's voice.
Speaker: And that solves a lot of problems also, by the way, in terms of like, well, how do I get from this scene to that scene?
Speaker: Or is this, you know, what the character would really do or not?
Speaker: Because once you have an authentic voice, you don't have to worry about any of that because you're kind of like speaking...
Speaker: through the character or the character is speaking through you.
Speaker: And with regard to the, perhaps the most interesting part of your question, my, you know, kinship with Spencer, shall we say, I mean, all characters, you know, they emerge from you if you created them.
Speaker: So yeah, like, I mean, perhaps Spencer would be kind of like my, uh,
Speaker: Yes, my fears about how maybe I am seen by some or my id run wild.
Speaker: Ultimately, you suggested that you can only write a character like Spencer if you love him or if you can relate to him.
Speaker: And I would say both.
Speaker: You know, I can relate to him.
Speaker: I hope I'm – I believe I don't actually appear to be Spencer.
Speaker: But I certainly have empathy for him.
Speaker: And I think that's why you couldn't write this story, in my opinion, if you didn't have empathy for Spencer Grunhauer, if you didn't have empathy for the kind of –
Speaker: Edgelord incels on the chans and like you yeah you you need to you know like if if some lib wrote this it would just be a caricature and it would be boring and it would be just kind of like.
Speaker: You know, character assassination wouldn't be fun to read.
Speaker: Similarly, like, frankly, if I were to write about some like, you know, big woke, you know, Antifa guy or whatever, it would probably be pretty boring because I would just be like kind of like my disdain would shine through and there wouldn't be a connection with the main character.
Speaker: I think if you're going to do satire effectively for like a novel length satire, you have to have an emotional connection with the character.
Speaker: And yeah, you know, Spencer's, he's a messed up guy, but he's, he's my guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's such a,
Speaker: there's well and you sort of you sort of deal with this internally uh in the book itself when his uh when his novel his his treatise is discovered yeah yeah there's this go on well there's there's this i i have i have confronted in my own life um the fact that the things that the thing the things that
Speaker: I know the most about and the relationships that I know the most about, which are the things that I would, you know, be inclined to write about, um, are, are people and relationships that I, that I care deeply about.
Speaker: And so there's always been this tension of like,
Speaker: can I summon the honesty to really write about this effectively?
Speaker: Because if this thing were to be published, then people would know, uh, if I'm, if I'm writing well, they'd know me, they'd know what I think and, and, and, uh, and what I think about them.
Speaker: And like, you know, there's, there's, uh,
Speaker: That was a big part of what was so like, you know, twisted my guts a little bit when I was reading this.
Speaker: I was like, oh, man.
Speaker: Not like, you know, because again, like you, I hope that I'm not literally that guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but I have shitty takes, right?
Speaker: And I, and I, I'm unfair to people.
Speaker: And, uh, we all are right.
Speaker: And, and, and to, to be a writer is to put, uh,
Speaker: all of that into the world and, and let it be judged.
Speaker: And, uh, yeah, yeah, it was, uh, um, made me sweat to read it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, so crucially, I think that, so yeah, this kind of provides some insight into my psychology, but, and I'm not just saying this, the character of crystal there, there is no crystal.
Speaker: It's just like a composite of, you know, I was single for God, like 10 years in New York City, more or less single.
Speaker: So a composite of women I've known, no one in particular.
Speaker: So like it's, and Spencer himself is kind of like my, you know, id running away with itself.
Speaker: So, like, yes, this does, you know, it is like, surely, yes, it is embarrassing to have people read Nutcranker.
Speaker: That I will, you know, admit off the bat.
Speaker: But to me, it's kind of almost, and I've done fiction where it's more kind of like me trying to portray my draw, like pull directly from life and portray myself as I see me.
Speaker: fairly and other people who would maybe recognize themselves to me that would probably be more uh potentially mortifying because like this is obviously a sort of funhouse mirror of like yeah projections and and so like a lot of frankly a lot of like fiction that is written today literary fiction is
Speaker: is like these kids writing about their the parties they go to and as like 25 year olds the like literary part is navel gazing stuff but nevertheless they are they are writing about their real lives and real people and to me like that's pretty like cringe or like it's not not necessarily bad writing
Speaker: But it is the type of thing where, like, if I say, like, oh, I was at that party.
Speaker: Wow, this is a really, like, you know, good dramatization of what happened there.
Speaker: That's kind of, you know...
Speaker: to me, that's the type of writing that is really like on the nose, potentially embarrassing.
Speaker: And like, while yeah, while Nutcranker, I mean, you can't write something as horny and crazy as this and have it not be a little embarrassing.
Speaker: Sure, it absolutely is.
Speaker: But like, it's at least in my mind, it's like a different type of embarrassing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, no, and I could totally I could sense
Speaker: I could sense that you wanted the reader to understand that you understand.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I get that this person's crazy.
Speaker: I thought it was really interesting the lengths you went to humanize
Speaker: everybody else, like, like everybody else is responding in these very organic, like, I mean, they're, they're, you know, they're libs, right.
Speaker: But, but they're, but they're real people responding the way real people would respond to a guy like this.
Speaker: And, and yeah, you, you, you, basically it's almost a, it's almost a story of,
Speaker: how, like, you know, I can't remember exactly the line, but it's something like, he rarely felt peace because of the influence of global Marxism.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: He's having his post-nut clarity, which is his brief reprieve from global Marxism.
Speaker: It's everywhere, the global Marxism.
Speaker: The real culprit that I feel like is ruining this guy's life is like, he just has, I have this occasional like semi-serious joke on Twitter about the world being really, really discriminatory toward autistic people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, like, not not just like in the sense that life's unfair, but like, the way things are where there are no rules and everything has to be negotiated and everything has like, you have to suss out and vibe out what the appropriate action is in every situation.
Speaker: I can't imagine the hell that some of these guys live in where, uh, the tickling incident where he, he, he tickles this girl until she, and it's like, right.
Speaker: And it's like, well, she's laughing and he has autism and he's like, well, she's laughing.
Speaker: I don't, what's the problem.
Speaker: And, uh, yeah, I just, it's, um,
Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, he has no ability to judge kind of how other people are perceiving him.
Speaker: He's kind of like wrapped up.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not sure I would say it's exactly autism, but he's wrapped up in his own delusions about the way he thinks the world is and the way he thinks he sounds and looks.
Speaker: And so, and that, but I mean, the thing I knew you noted that it seems like I'm fully on the same page as the reader is,
Speaker: and everyone else in understanding how crazy he is.
Speaker: And like, I absolutely am.
Speaker: And that is kind of the take that I think enables it to be very funny because I hope,
Speaker: because it creates a sort of dramatic irony where the reader knows and, and you know that the character is behaving outrageously, but the character himself doesn't know.
Speaker: So it's kind of like the office when Michael Scott says something that is just so like, you know, uh, delusional and off the wall and like literally everyone else is just like, you know, so it creates a, also creates a communion between the reader and the author.
Speaker: because you both kind of get the sense that you're like winking at each other, watching the proceedings.
Speaker: And so, yeah, that's, that's very much intentional.
Speaker: And I, I think, um, a part of a large part of the humor that comes from nutcranker.
Speaker: There's, I mean, there were, there were definitely like laugh out loud moments.
Speaker: Cause he he's, he's, thank you.
Speaker: He's absolutely nuts.
Speaker: Um, it, it,
Speaker: it's any of one, one of them that I loved was like, he like, he like discovers that he can lie his way into crystals pants and he's, he's acting like he's, he's invented steam or something like, yeah, like, yeah, no, he's like, he's really running with it.
Speaker: He's Prometheus, uh, because he's made shit up and get laid.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: I, I, I, one of the things, and this is maybe like in, in the sense that it's, it's, you know, it's, I like that not everything is, is the libs fault here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like that, that, I mean, honestly, primarily this is about a guy who's the self-destructive and crazy.
Speaker: And, and, you know, it's, it's,
Speaker: the world that we all inhabit is unremittingly hostile to him.
Speaker: And he interprets it in like this, this Don Quixote, like the world is against me because I'm the great hero.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: what's that?
Speaker: There's like a Lovecraft reference.
Speaker: I can't remember where I read this, but it was like, what if you're like a microbe and you're like caught inside an internal combustion engine?
Speaker: It's like, like the environment, yes, is incredibly hostile to you, but there's no meaning to it.
Speaker: There's no, it's not, it's not trying to kill you.
Speaker: It's just going to kill you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker: He like is stuck in this world that like, like, yes, I am, you know, right wing myself.
Speaker: and, uh, the, the character Spencer obviously is, and, uh, the, you know, he's in a world that is not designed for his flourishing.
Speaker: Uh, nevertheless, he, uh, you know, he is not able to calibrate his takes, his, his whatever to, to get by in, in any sense.
Speaker: And so this, uh, you know, leads to just the type of stuff where he gets fired at work for writing, uh,
Speaker: discovered writing a manifesto for the pairing of women with older men for the government-mandated wives program, the spousal distribution system, as he calls it.
Speaker: And they don't appreciate that as his nonprofit job.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Well, and it shows how a lot of these systems that we have a problem with, they exist for non-crazy reasons.
Speaker: And like, obviously, his is a case where
Speaker: like it, it makes sense that the system is not going to tolerate what he's doing.
Speaker: And it really has nothing to do with like any kind of conspiracy against, against him or even against like a particular strain of thought.
Speaker: It's, it's just like you're making everybody uncomfortable and it's really hard to run a business when everybody's uncomfortable.
Speaker: And it like it's, it's a, I just, well, did you have in mind people reading it through that lens and like, and it being kind of a, a meditation on cancel culture or, or where was your head at on that?
Speaker: So, I mean, I have to admit that like in writing it, like questions of like, how will people perceive it are kind of like secondary to the process.
Speaker: So like, I just found Spencer's voice.
Speaker: I wrote it out with Spencer's voice.
Speaker: And so like, I didn't modify anything.
Speaker: uh, with regard to how people would think of it or digest it.
Speaker: I, I did think about that later.
Speaker: And I, I, my thought was that generally, um, to the extent anyone on the left reads it, they would probably, I guess, uh, think that, well, of course no one could sympathize with Spencer.
Speaker: So this must be a parody or criticism of, uh,
Speaker: the alt-right, edgelord types.
Speaker: And I assumed that our guys would hopefully read it.
Speaker: And there's a long tradition of kind of poking fun at ourselves on the side of the internet and see kind of like a sympathetic portrayal of someone who maybe is, in some respects, his heart is in the right place, but he just doesn't get it.
Speaker: That is to put it mildly.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, I wonder if there is, if it's possible to build a world in which people like this guy could be healthy and could be healthy.
Speaker: Well, so again, I think it has to do with everything being negotiable.
Speaker: Like, and he's, so there's, there's the, there's the, the progressive version of everything's negotiable, which is everything's about consent and everybody just has to talk everything out.
Speaker: And that's really hard for a guy like this to do.
Speaker: There's also this Nietzschean, like, I'm going to write new laws on new tablets and,
Speaker: I'm the author of my story.
Speaker: And because this guy has this effortless ability to take whatever happens to him and snap it into his narrative.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: It makes him just completely unmoored from reality.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: If a guy like this had healthy people giving him some scripts and some stories to...
Speaker: to snap his life into, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Like there's, there's one version of this guy, which is everything fits my, my heroic story.
Speaker: And that's, and that's why I'm going to implode and go to prison and get raped.
Speaker: Um, but there's another version of this guy that's like, um, everything, everything fits my story of, of, uh,
Speaker: of God loves me and, and loves the world.
Speaker: And therefore all of my sufferings are, you know, uh, they have a purpose and all of my joys are part of this greater thing.
Speaker: And like, like there is a sense in which, in which this facility with, with story, uh, can actually make you robust and can make you resilient.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
Speaker: He is, I mean, while I don't think he's exactly telling himself the wrong stories from like a moralistic point of view entirely, because, you know, I think we both are, you know, more conservative.
Speaker: you know, culturally conservative, but he, he fails to kind of assimilate it into a, a worldview that is helpful for him.
Speaker: But I mean, crucially, he's also just like a kind of delusional and grandiose guy.
Speaker: So he would be, have trouble, I think in any system.
Speaker: So he needs, so he, he's in a unique situation where he has kind of an,
Speaker: outsider narrative and he himself is kind of like a delusional narcissistic guy maybe if he was left wing that would work out better because he'd be at least in you know in step with the dominant narrative
Speaker: And he'd be like, you know, the biggest, you know, wokester on campus or at the job.
Speaker: And people would be like, oh, cool it down a little bit with that stuff.
Speaker: But, you know, they'd be like, okay, okay.
Speaker: And, but no, but I mean, his ideology is the opposite.
Speaker: And so as a result, he comes off as, you know, extremely discordant in society.
Speaker: And so like, yeah,
Speaker: not to give away the ending, but he does kind of come to terms with, he comes, he embraces a story that allows him to coexist with modernity and with the current year.
Speaker: And like, I think that is kind of what he was, you know, not, not what he was looking for all along, but like, had he embraced that story from the beginning, there never would have been a novel.
Speaker: because he never would have gotten into any of this trouble.
Speaker: So, yeah, I don't want to exactly give away the ending, but I guess he comes to realize that it's, in some sense, easier to go along to get along, shall we say.
Speaker: Well, and it, you know, I won't give it away either, except to say that he...
Speaker: the story that he comes around to is much more truthful.
Speaker: It's a much more honest statement of who he is and what his goals are.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Like there's a, there's a,
Speaker: And in a way, it was a pretty dark ending.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It was meant to be.
Speaker: I mean, some people told me the ending, like, oh, I'm happy it worked out for him.
Speaker: And I'm like, you didn't quite capture what I meant there.
Speaker: But it did in some sense work out for him, but not in a good way, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's more of a... He's a worse piece of shit, but he's a more adaptable piece of shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: I'm happy it worked out for him.
Speaker: He's pursuing, as he says, by the end, he's pursuing the Spencer Project.
Speaker: right and arguably he was always doing that so yeah yeah he just he just gets it now yeah um well it it's it's a lot of fun um nutcranker uh terror house publishers um is that is that is that on amazon where do they get that book
Speaker: So you can buy it straight from Terror House's website or it's also on Amazon.
Speaker: So preferably buy straight from Terror House, but really you can order it from Amazon, either or.
Speaker: I'm certainly happy as long as anyone buys a copy of the book.
Speaker: And that's crucially Nutcranker.
Speaker: Without an ER at the end, it's Nutcrank, then the letter R. And Dan Baltic is the author, of course.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Well, tell me about what's next.
Speaker: What are you working on these days?
Speaker: So right now I am working on a short story.
Speaker: It certainly seems like it's in the similar vein or thematic style of Nuckranker.
Speaker: called the Doxing Dom.
Speaker: And this is about a TikTok type personality who men pay to threaten to dox them.
Speaker: And it's her relationship with a particular customer.
Speaker: Like from an S&M perspective?
Speaker: Kind of, yeah.
Speaker: It's from that perspective, but to threaten to dox them also politically because she's like a big TikTok lib and she makes them tell her political secrets that would be doxable and threatens to.
Speaker: And that's part of the kink for both of them that she threatens to dox him.
Speaker: Ha ha ha ha
Speaker: so it's uh it only gets further from here that concept is just so bananas that's golden um yeah i mean from man that we're finishing up that short story today before uh before the pod so it's almost ready should be oh i'm
Speaker: I'm probably going to post it as the inaugural post on my sub stack.
Speaker: I'm starting a sub stack so I can post short stories, posts which I may like release also with the terror house and other outlets at the same time and start releasing, you know, just maybe essays.
Speaker: I want to get more regular in my writing habit because the past year has been like gearing up, getting you right out.
Speaker: We've done 46 episodes.
Speaker: And we're going to continue to do that.
Speaker: But I want to drill down in 2023 on my writing more.
Speaker: And of course, also a lot of 2022 was promoting Nutcranker.
Speaker: So going on, having friends who are gracious enough to have me on their pods like you, talking about Nutcranker, posting about it until people are angry at me, and continuing just to get it out there.
Speaker: One last thought on the first chapter of the book as I was reading it.
Speaker: So when I'm reading our guy's stuff, I am sort of bracing for Spencer's voice a little bit, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I'll be honest with you, I didn't know what to expect from this book.
Speaker: And so when I open it and I'm reading Spencer's voice, I went, oh no.
Speaker: Like, oh geez, I'm going to have to talk to Spencer.
Speaker: And like, I was able to push through that because I had already spoken to you.
Speaker: And like, so I knew that wasn't like where you were, but like when you're doing...
Speaker: Well, and this is also to sort of segue into a broader conversation.
Speaker: One of the reasons why exit is not like anti-cancel culture per se, like it's not, cancel culture is not the point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is because there is Spencer Grunhauer to think about.
Speaker: And like,
Speaker: And like, and, and, and, you know, occasionally he'll, he'll, he'll sign up at, we, not, not, I won't get, give details, but like, there was a guy who was like a big, a big, like circumcision guy.
Speaker: And we were halfway through our call and he was like reading me his poetry and like behind him, I noticed that he had like six black dildos on his nightstand with votive candles in front of them, like a shrine.
Speaker: And I, and I was like, ah, you know, man, I don't know that this is necessarily, uh, the, the, the product for you.
Speaker: Like, and there's, there's a, there's a, it, I, I think spaces that, that, that are explicitly like, Hey, we're free speech absolutists.
Speaker: I think that they can be a draw to people who are like, I'm the weirdest person on planet Earth and I alienate everybody.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so it makes me mad and I want to live in a society where I don't alienate people all of the time.
Speaker: And in their mind, the way to get there is to like make it a rule that you're not allowed to be alienated by this guy.
Speaker: And that's just not how it works.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You do need to have standards and communities.
Speaker: And yeah, so like Spencer, he would not make it into exit, I would hope.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You couldn't get anything done.
Speaker: And so I think it is this, you have to be about something bigger than that.
Speaker: You have to recognize that like,
Speaker: The problem is not that everybody can't just run their mouth all the time.
Speaker: The problem is that people with actual reasonable good things to say are like basically what is happening is people are, when someone is defending the regime, let's call it,
Speaker: When they're defending all of these mechanisms of social enforcement, the sort of bloody flag that they wave is this guy, right?
Speaker: That's who they'll say, you know, that's who they say you are, right?
Speaker: If you oppose these systems, it's because you're this guy.
Speaker: And you're just frigging weird, man.
Speaker: And you're harshing the vibe.
Speaker: And, uh, yeah, no, no, absolutely.
Speaker: And I mean, the, I mean, the crucial difference is like, as I see it with exit with, you know, the kind of, uh, political culture that we're trying to build, um, outside of the mainstream, uh, outside of the, you know, the regime is it's not, and I had this, uh, comment at a recent Christmas party.
Speaker: where we were talking about libertarianism.
Speaker: And to my mind, I'm not a huge fan of it really because it's the absence of values and the valuing of its absence and of procedure.
Speaker: And to me, it's nothing positive.
Speaker: There's nothing positive about that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like,
Speaker: The issue isn't that people, the regime people are more, well, they're more normal than Spencer, so they're right.
Speaker: They're still wrong.
Speaker: And you know that, of course.
Speaker: But I'm just saying that, elucidating this concept, they're, you know,
Speaker: Of course, like the people who accept the dominant ideology are going to get along better in everyday life.
Speaker: How could you not?
Speaker: But that doesn't mean that the ideals and the philosophy that they've signed on to is right.
Speaker: And of course, your listeners know and I know that everything that's wrong with cultural liberalism and progressivism
Speaker: And, yeah, you certainly don't have to be Spencer Grunhauer to point out that the morality or the health of the society should be kind of tied to the health of the family.
Speaker: and policies that promote it.
Speaker: And, you know, and indeed, like Spencer, he doesn't quite understand that either with his spousal distribution system.
Speaker: So... He does take this... Yeah, like his interest in all that is...
Speaker: so nakedly self-serving.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's, it's very much that like, Hey, it should be a rule that everybody should put up with me.
Speaker: Um, which ultimately kind of, it kind of explains his foray into, uh, male feminism.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: At the beginning.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's, I mean, you know, on the one hand he's, he's chasing tail, but he's also like, he's that classic.
Speaker: Like when, when she catches it, when she catches him, she, she, she, she reads his manifesto and I, and he's like, no, no, I don't believe any of that.
Speaker: I wore the pussy hat.
Speaker: You saw me wearing the pussy hat, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: backpedaling and trying to say that it was like a series of letters in an epistolary novel.
Speaker: And obviously it was not.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just like this just seems like a bunch of Nazi blog posts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Crucially, where she is continuously referred to as the piglet, which she did not appreciate for some reason.
Speaker: She didn't like being called the piglet.
Speaker: Because of global Marxism, because of feminism, she didn't appreciate being called the piglet.
Speaker: As she put it in the utopia, yeah.
Speaker: In Spencer's utopia.
Speaker: The, uh, the piglets would all be very happy.
Speaker: Oh man.
Speaker: Well, there actually is a chapter, I believe in titled, uh, Spencer's nut buddies and the degraded utopia.
Speaker: Well, and another way in which this world sends him these mixed signals, right, is, I mean, he meets her on an S&M site, right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And so, like, and this, I think, is such an interesting, and I don't, I mean, I don't even know how much I want to get into this, but, like, but there are a lot of guys on our side of things that,
Speaker: um, who really don't get any of that.
Speaker: Like the, like, um, the, the, any, any of, uh, the, the signals that, that, that women's send about, um, about, about valuing aggression, about valuing, um, valuing dominance in men.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's,
Speaker: those signals and, and like, again, partly it's their fault for not the men's fault for not getting it, but partly it's also like a bigger picture problem of like, we really have no idea how to talk about any of this.
Speaker: And just as a society, we've completely lost the plot.
Speaker: And, and so everybody's confused.
Speaker: Everybody's getting their feelings hurt.
Speaker: Like it's just, uh,
Speaker: You really appreciate from this book the value of living in a time and a place when
Speaker: It's not even like you want everybody to be told what to do in this coercive way.
Speaker: It's more just like, man, give me a template to work from.
Speaker: Give me a default setting.
Speaker: We all run on the default setting for 90% of this, and we can renegotiate the other 10, but we can't synthesize
Speaker: Every woman I meet, we can't synthesize our relationship dynamics and our sexual ethics and every little thing about our agreement.
Speaker: We're not going to hammer that out from stellar hydrogen.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Give us a place to start.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so like the, not to harp on BDSM, but the, you know, kind of like the way Crystal and I think some women kind of like are attracted to this and, you know, and some people
Speaker: men for the same reason they're like um reverse engineering normal sexuality because right accepted these ideas about like the way men and women are supposed to relate and but nevertheless there is the erotic draw of uh you know male
Speaker: dominance over women sexually that they have to find a way to kind of like couch it in terms that make political and ideological sense so um so it's almost done it's yeah yeah so like spencer's main problem here is he doesn't understand that crystal um she wants this on a uh you know a sexual level
Speaker: But she does not want any of the philosophical trappings that would come with a more traditional society.
Speaker: And, yeah, he I mean, for his part, he is, you know, perhaps less than entirely earnest here and is just like looking to get his rocks off.
Speaker: But, yeah, so there's.
Speaker: you know, a fundamental misunderstanding that lies at the heart of this, not just between, uh, Crystal and Spencer, but, uh, between them and themselves really in society.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, uh, man there.
Speaker: And I, I think almost, almost what I'm,
Speaker: what I have the biggest problem with in all this is like the only rule is that you can't have any rules and you can't, you can't, you're not allowed to say that this is not okay or that it like, and, and so what, what comes of that is this total, uh, like, nope, nobody, nobody in this book is happy.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It's a great... And I think you buy yourself... And I don't actually know how people outside our spaces will read it.
Speaker: I feel like I'm dug in too deep to really speak authoritatively on that.
Speaker: But I suspect and I hope
Speaker: that by making the right-wing guy kind of the Don Quixote and making everybody else the straight man, that you've bought yourself some credibility with some sensitive people in the mainstream who could...
Speaker: Pick up some of the women.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I will say like, just, um, I guess just Spencer's, you know, the kind of, even though like, yes, I'm portraying him as a Don Quixote as character, some of the kind of like harsh language he has about women.
Speaker: Well, mostly about women.
Speaker: For instance, Nutcranker is based off of a short story that I started and I workshopped in one of those.
Speaker: In a lot of big cities, they have writing classes in the evening taught by literary fiction authors who can't get jobs.
Speaker: So they host, you know, writing workshops.
Speaker: And this is for like, you know, lawyers or bankers or whoever who like, you know, are creative and want to do stuff in the evening.
Speaker: So like I signed up for one of those and I wrote the first couple of not the not the first chapter in the novel, but I wrote a first chapter that does feature into the novel in the novel.
Speaker: And so I workshopped it with the class and this woman said to me, well, you, you obviously know how to write well, but why would you choose to write something like this?
Speaker: That to me is just kind of like, well, you know, that's I, I wanted to write it.
Speaker: That's why I wrote it.
Speaker: I, I didn't, uh,
Speaker: write it to advance your politics or to advance my politics actually well Jennifer it's because I'm a pervert and a monster exactly yeah she was a real kind of like woke loptard type so
Speaker: No, but you know what?
Speaker: I'm watching as everybody with a scrap of aesthetic sensitivity is just, I mean, it's just clawing for something different, anything different.
Speaker: There's just no air in that room.
Speaker: And, uh, and, and so we have, we have this really powerful, um, opportunity when you, um, what, what are you seeing that excites you as you, as you interview people on the podcast?
Speaker: What's, uh, what are some projects that look cool?
Speaker: So just really like so much out there.
Speaker: It's just like, it's all the wild west.
Speaker: Everything is just, you know, um,
Speaker: there's so much room for people to build and grow and do things.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: Nationalist with a man's world.
Speaker: And it's just like, it's now like he's coming out with a second annual for man's world.
Speaker: It's this like, you know, it's, it's actually recaptures what a men's magazine is supposed to be.
Speaker: And so like, I, I have the, the first annual, you buy it from Antelope Hill.
Speaker: I, I bought it and, um,
Speaker: My dad was reading it on my coffee table and flipping through it and liking it.
Speaker: And like, of course, he doesn't really know what it is.
Speaker: But I yeah, I enjoy it in that same manner, too, because when I was a kid in like the 90s and I would read Esquire and I would read like Playboy for the articles.
Speaker: And what have you.
Speaker: There were articles that were relevant to men and to our interests, and they were fun to read.
Speaker: But now, like Esquire, Playboy, whatever, those magazines...
Speaker: They have content and articles that are like how to talk to your gay wife or how to, you know, be woke on the job or I don't know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like it's yeah, it's just it's unreadable.
Speaker: It's clearly not written for heterosexual men.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: ROAG, you know, doing that.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Astral.
Speaker: Astral is building out his podcast.
Speaker: He has a great second season Astral Flight Simulation with kind of like a real range of guests.
Speaker: Everyone from The Last Pirate to Amy Therese.
Speaker: And it's just like he's got that going on there.
Speaker: Art of Darkness, those guys, Kevin Kautzman and Brad Kelly, they continually come out with their pod is they profile with each episode a sort of tragic artist and give like his biography.
Speaker: And so they put in a tremendous amount of work.
Speaker: I do a pod and Matt and I, we probably do a couple of hours of prep for each episode, doing the reading, whatever.
Speaker: These guys are reading books and books about the lives of whatever author they're doing.
Speaker: And so they have a second season coming out.
Speaker: They just did an episode with Peachy Keenan, who's another one we might have on New Right soon, who came out with a book called The Domestic Extremist.
Speaker: It's her.
Speaker: She's talking, I guess, about being a based wife and mother.
Speaker: And she did a pod with the Art of Darkness guys, reviewing, doing a kind of group watch of The Big Lebowski.
Speaker: And, God, I mean, there's, like, so many.
Speaker: That's such a domestic extremist.
Speaker: That's such an obvious.
Speaker: Like, I'm amazed nobody grabbed that earlier.
Speaker: That's so perfect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good for her.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Blower.
Speaker: Obvious in hindsight, I say.
Speaker: Not to say that it was obvious.
Speaker: But, like, anyway, that's just so clever.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: with Apocalypse Confidential.
Speaker: That's another literary magazine that's coming out with some great stuff.
Speaker: Of course, Passage Prize, run by Lomez.
Speaker: We all know who the original judges were, Zero HP, Yarvin, Geo, and Ben Braddock.
Speaker: As for the new judges, I'm not sure who they are, but I'm sure it'll be great this year as well.
Speaker: I know the deadline is coming up.
Speaker: And, yeah, no, I mean, there's just so much out.
Speaker: I'd be remiss if I didn't say IM1776.
Speaker: That's an excellent magazine.
Speaker: We had Mark Granza on the show.
Speaker: I just bought IM Magazine.
Speaker: It's a Florida issue.
Speaker: They have articles from Bog Beef, The Good Old Boys, and a bunch of other – Yeah.
Speaker: No, I mean, they're just – I mean, you listen to me right now.
Speaker: I could keep talking for –
Speaker: I probably want to cut you off.
Speaker: I can keep talking for like 15 minutes about all the great stuff that's going on out there.
Speaker: No, it's incredible.
Speaker: It's such an exciting group of guys.
Speaker: And there's a part of me that wishes I wasn't so busy because I would love to be.
Speaker: Like I am feeling some intense regret that I don't have a submission for Passage Prize this year.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: It's hard to find time to write.
Speaker: And that's what I was talking about earlier.
Speaker: Between the pod and having a full-time job, it's just like you got to fight for that time.
Speaker: And you know this because you wrote Amira, which we talked about on my pod.
Speaker: And that was one of the best pieces of writing I've read coming out of our side.
Speaker: So you have the talent.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: you know, I, I know it's just to fight just to have the time to sit down and use it.
Speaker: No, I had to, uh, I had to take three separate, like eight hour stints at the library.
Speaker: And it was right around this time of year.
Speaker: It was, it was like two days from the deadline.
Speaker: And I, I, I turned that bad boy in at 11 59 and a half PM.
Speaker: Um, it was, it was hot and heavy for a minute there.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And I'm half tempted to do it again.
Speaker: You got time.
Speaker: You got two or three days here.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: But yeah, man, what a cool... You mentioned the Wild West, and I think a lot of us... I have this hobby horse that...
Speaker: It's really never been easy.
Speaker: You know, like doing anything really genuinely cool and meaningful.
Speaker: It's never been easy.
Speaker: And I wrote a piece called Pilgrim's Egress for like two Thanksgivings ago.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: No, I saw that on your site.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: It's about...
Speaker: All the crap that the pilgrims went through to get like, you know, you hear the you hear the bolderized elementary school version of the story of the pilgrims and then you never touch it again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You hear that story when you're six and you hear the version that's appropriate for six year olds and then you never hear it again.
Speaker: And I mean, these guys, the level of deprivation that they went through to be independent of...
Speaker: of a similar similar forces, you know, the people telling them what they were allowed to think and what they were allowed to say and who they were allowed to associate with.
Speaker: I mean, they lived in poverty in a place called stink alley in Holland.
Speaker: And they, you know, they basically, what they realized was they had kind of already made their exit from England and they were in this place that they were allowed to be, what's the word?
Speaker: They weren't Puritans, but the other kind.
Speaker: Anyway, they were willing to practice their beliefs, but like their kids were growing up in this like,
Speaker: urban proto industrial, uh, kind of depravity situation.
Speaker: And, and they were being worked the bone for these, for these miserable wages in this like kind of urban hellscape and the leader of the colony.
Speaker: And like, they were like, they were dying at age like 45 and stuff from just overwork and exhaustion.
Speaker: And the leader of the colony was like, we're either going to literally die or,
Speaker: the culture that we are building is going to evaporate.
Speaker: It's going to cease to exist.
Speaker: The situation is not sustainable.
Speaker: And so they, they had to, they, they negotiated a passage to America with cooperation from like, like it always gets framed as like, it was just them, but like they were right alongside this very mercenary sort of, uh,
Speaker: the people who supplied the capital were just very businesslike.
Speaker: It was not a religious thing for them.
Speaker: And they kind of had to make this deal with these people and sort of tolerate the rough characters that they were on the boat with and who they would be sharing the colony with in order to carve out their little slice of the new world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, um, I just, I, I, when you, again, going back to the wild west thing, um, anytime where there's opportunity, um, it literally, if it, if it was easy, everybody would do it.
Speaker: And absolutely.
Speaker: That's the moat that you have built around you is that it's not easy.
Speaker: And, uh, and I think in the literary scene, like just if you've got the talent, um, you should be creating.
Speaker: And, and I, do you have, do you have advice maybe for people who are, I mean, you're, you're a, you're a, an attorney, you're busy.
Speaker: Do you have advice for people who are in that situation of how to, how to create and how to get it out there?
Speaker: Yeah, no, I absolutely do.
Speaker: You, you know, frankly, you just need to, as hard as it sounds, you have to find the time and you have to find the time to sit down and write.
Speaker: And the truth is, and it's a hard truth, but the,
Speaker: less frequently you're able to write, the harder it gets.
Speaker: So you have to try to find a regular writing schedule.
Speaker: And if before work every day is too tough, then maybe every other day, then maybe, you know, at the least, maybe every weekend morning.
Speaker: And obviously this becomes tough.
Speaker: You know, I, I don't have children yet.
Speaker: So my weekends are, you know,
Speaker: my own and my girlfriend's and you know she's she still lets me write so we're good there but it's yeah you need to do whatever you have to do to find a little bit of time and so there's also there's the inclination to be like well you know I need time to settle down and get the writing out there and think and ruminate and
Speaker: And, you know, not everyone has that luxury.
Speaker: So if you don't have a lot of time, you really do.
Speaker: You can't like, you know, walk around and sip coffee and look out the window.
Speaker: You actually do have to sit down and write and bang it out.
Speaker: And it might not be good.
Speaker: It might not be what you want, but that's what editing is for.
Speaker: Then you go back and you rewrite it.
Speaker: And the point is like, as far as writing goes, even if it's, you know, you're not writing a kind of,
Speaker: spy thriller, you're writing something that you think is more, requires more
Speaker: I don't know, kind of meditation about character motivation or, you know, deeper whatever.
Speaker: Nevertheless, you still have to treat it like a grind.
Speaker: You have to sit down, you have to bang out the words and you have to do it with some regularity.
Speaker: And one thing that I've always found helpful, well, one thing that always I found to be difficult, and this is something I use to help me get through it,
Speaker: is like all writers, I have a tendency to want, well, everything I write has to be good.
Speaker: I can't write something that's bad.
Speaker: So that's where writer's block comes from, in my opinion.
Speaker: And so I tell myself, whatever you're writing, you don't have to share it with anyone.
Speaker: If it's shit, it's shit.
Speaker: But just write it and we'll see.
Speaker: But I mean, the only way you can be sure
Speaker: that whatever you're writing is going to be bad, will be bad, is if you're very concerned about it being good.
Speaker: So you don't really write that much.
Speaker: You write very, you know, kind of very focused sentences, very careful sentences.
Speaker: That will not be good writing.
Speaker: So you just need to throw caution to the wind, bang it out, and then you can edit.
Speaker: And tell yourself as you're doing it, like, well, if it's bad, it's an exercise in getting it done.
Speaker: And if it's good, then it's good.
Speaker: And that's a good way to kind of trick your brain into letting you free, free to write.
Speaker: There's an analogy to, I think people have this with their life trajectory as well.
Speaker: They're in the shit job that they hate.
Speaker: And they're like, I wish I was doing something more meaningful, but it's got to be really meaningful.
Speaker: Like it's got to justify me upending my whole situation.
Speaker: And so they sort of think and think and think and think and think.
Speaker: And it doesn't really get anywhere because they haven't, because their creative process is,
Speaker: well, they haven't done a creative process.
Speaker: They're just thinking.
Speaker: And I think the act of writing it down, or in our case, of articulating your desire to another person, part of what that allows you to do, I mean, like, the fear that you have is that you'll articulate it, and then you'll look back at it and you'll go, oh, wait, that's stupid.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: that process of looking back at what you wrote or what you said and going, Oh wait, that's stupid.
Speaker: That's a huge part of the creative process and you have to have it.
Speaker: Um, there's a, there's a quote by Ira glass.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's fairly easy to find.
Speaker: I I'll paraphrase it, but he basically says like, you're, you have really good taste and that's what got you into the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like every, every writer, um,
Speaker: who's for real, they know good writing.
Speaker: And the challenge there is that your skill, certainly in the beginning, but even later, your skill almost never matches your taste.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: It's almost never perfect.
Speaker: And so you have to fight through this period of like, I know this isn't what I want it to be.
Speaker: I know that the sculpture, you know, does it like Napoleon Dynamite.
Speaker: He draws that girl's face and I've spent hours on the shading on your upper lip.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: you have to draw that horrifying monstrosity of a drawing.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Like that's, that's so much of the courage of, of creativity is to be willing to, and you don't have to, like his mistake was showing it to her.
Speaker: Like, but you have to draw it.
Speaker: You have to draw it.
Speaker: So go draw it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And one of the advantages we have now is that the mainstream is the traditional publishing industry or whatever industry you're thinking about really is so bad.
Speaker: That, you know, your stuff won't, you know, probably be much worse.
Speaker: It very likely will be better.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, like, could you really do worse than some of the stuff they're putting out on Netflix or some of the like literary fiction novels that are like the night my frog sang too quietly or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, you'll probably be at least as good as that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: It's an exciting time.
Speaker: As good as a starter?
Speaker: Maybe not.
Speaker: But that's a struggle.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: Well, it's been really good to talk to you, man.
Speaker: I really appreciate you taking the time to come down and talk about your book.
Speaker: It's a fun read.
Speaker: I was in the throes of reading the last chapter when we started the podcast.
Speaker: I finished it literally right before we went on.
Speaker: So my emotional state was a little bit intense.
Speaker: It's a very good read.
Speaker: It's just an intense read.
Speaker: So go out, check it out.
Speaker: It's another experience of productive discomfort.
Speaker: I think you will have productive discomfort reading this book.
Speaker: So yeah, check it out.
Speaker: I mean, thank you for having me on.
Speaker: This for me has been productive and comfortable, the podcast.
Speaker: So yeah, no, I really, I appreciate your reading, Nutcranker, and having me on to talk about it.
Speaker: It means a lot.
Speaker: So thanks, man.
Speaker: You bet.
Speaker: So you can follow Dan at Baltic underscore Dan, right?
Speaker: On Twitter.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And by Nutcranker with no E wherever books are sold.
Speaker: So thanks for coming on, man.
Speaker: It's good to have you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Thank you.
