Episode Summary
If Samuel Johnson was right that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, surely trolling is the last refuge of people who cannot win an argument. In the modern political landscape, the far-right movement that dominates Republican politics has increasingly turned to trolling as a strategy to compensate for the intellectual bankruptcy of its core beliefs. Incapable of engaging in genuine debate, Republicans under the tutelage of Donald Trump have become the troll party—using harassment, misinformation, and online provocations to discredit opponents and manipulate public discourse.
Even if Trump had never come along, however, it was almost inevitable that the online trolling culture that began emerging in the early 2000s on websites like 4chan would eventually merge in with the Christian far right, not necessarily because they agree on their worldviews, but because their personal extremism and misogyny overlap perfectly. Online communities such as incels, “groypers,” and other extremist factions within the far-right have embraced trolling as a tool to spread their misogynistic ideologies. These groups, often sidelined in mainstream society, find empowerment in digital spaces where they can attack women and feminists without facing real-world consequences.
Rather than attempting to persuade through reasoned argument, the far-right focuses on destabilizing public discourse, making it harder for truth and reason to prevail. This strategy not only poisons political debate but also reinforces the toxic elements within the far-right itself, as it encourages a cycle of hostility, extremism, and intellectual stagnation.
In this episode, I’m joined by Robyn Pennacchia, a writer at Wonkette.com who has been covering the online misogyny space for more than a decade.
The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.
This episode aired previously on July 22, 2021.
Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
10:42 — Turning Point USA versus Nick Fuentes and the "groypers"
20:54 — Debate culture and conservative hypocrisy
23:32 — The evolution of online misogynistic groups after Elliot Rodger
29:19 — "Gamergate" as the crossover moment between trolls and Republicans
34:03 — January 6th and the alt-right's media attention
37:43 — Mainstream journalism still hasn't figured out how to cover right-wing trolls
44:52 — Non-troll Republicans still haven't realized that it's not their party
53:20 — The old-guard Republican oligarchs still draw the line at pro-public economics
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Robyn has been looking at online misogyny for quite some time. And I figured she would be one of the best people I could talk to about all this. She used to write a column for Wonkette that was called “The Week in Garbage Men,” and I love the term on that, because certainly there are a lot of garbage right wing men on the internet, but Robyn, you, had been covering that subject, for a lot longer than your time at one cat. I understand since about, 2012, can you tell, tell us a little bit about. What got you interested in this subject?
ROBYN PENNACCHIA: I'm actually not sure where I first came upon, um, the PUA hate site. It was a long time ago. I think mostly like we, a bunch of feminists at the time, like feminist bloggers had found a lot of these sites, that were just directed. Towards straight up misogyny. And one of them was PUA hate, which is, where all of the incel stuff first started for the most part.
I mean, there were non [00:02:00] misogynistic incels at that point. but this like that whole, aesthetic, I guess, really like just stated and was born at PUA hate. com, which no longer exists and was taken a member of that group, Elliot Roger, went and murdered a bunch of people in 2014.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I mean, and that was, he really kind of inspired a lot of these people afterward, like they refer to him as a St. Elliot, and make memes glorifying him, just as if he was a, A Christian saint or, or whatever, I mean, it's really disturbing and a lot of people, even now I feel like are not aware that this stuff exists. Would you say that?
PENNACCHIA: I mean, it was a huge, huge, huge thing for a while to the point where, like, it's been a storyline on several different television shows, most recently “Evil,” the show where they're like, exorcizing demons and whatnot had a whole incel storyline last season. where not spoiler alert, this guy who is evil and like a demon of some kind. and also the guy from lost, I don't, really understand what his deal is, but he convinced this one guy to go and join an incel group and try and murder a bunch of people, but.
It didn't work out. So
SHEFFIELD: yeah. yeah, well, and, but at the same time though, I think while people may be aware of it, it exists more than before. They, I, there's, I, I found that there's kind of a similar, thought pattern about, the religious right, the Christian right in general, also that people are like, yeah, they're out there, but no, they're just not relevant.[00:04:00]
to anything. No one cares what they do. They're just dumb. Like, everyone knows they're dumb. is that, is that something you, you encounter from people?
PENNACCHIA: To some degree, although I do think that, the amount of people that they've actually murdered, has resulted in people taking them pretty seriously.
SHEFFIELD: As somebody who writes about the Christian far right a lot, when tweets about it, a lot of times I will. Encounter. And this is especially true from like centrist media outlets. They'll be like, ah, no one cares about what these people say. They're irrelevant. and like, they're just a joke and like, why write about them?
Is, have you ever had, has anybody said something like that?
PENNACCHIA: Well, I think everyone collects like very few people. are trying to justify them unless they're, Jordan Peterson, who is a very big fan of justifying them. But they have had an influence, I would say, on the larger, right wing anti feminist bent more so than probably, Any other, group thing other than Christianity.
So they have like a lot of the same anger towards the sexual revolution, a lot of the same anger towards, women being able to do whatever they want. And a lot of the, there's been a lot of, mingling, I would say, even if everyone says, Oh, these guys are losers who cares about them.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
Yeah. Oh no, that's no, you're right. That that's exactly how they fit in. and there's a, there's an interesting, book out there, that I would recommend people if you're interested in, in how sort of a lot of this stuff correlates, it's called the long Southern strategy. and [00:06:00] it's by Angie Maxwell and Todd shields.
they're Professors at the University of Arkansas and, it kind of shows how misogyny is really interconnected with a lot of other things that you wouldn't necessarily think. So, such as racism or such as, Christian supremacy. and what's, if you look at right wing politics over time, cause it started mostly in the 1940s, 1950s, in the United States as a formal conservative movement, quote, unquote, and in the beginning, a lot of the popularity that they had was racially based.
So opposition to segregation, that was how the religious right originally got engaged in politics, because the. Government was closing down the, segregation academies that they had created after Brown versus Board of Education, or it was going to tax them. And that got them interested in supporting Ronald Reagan.
And then after that, kind of the Christian supremacism is very strong, for a lot of, boomer and older people. And then among younger people, let's say young Gen X and younger, Anti feminism seems a very strong, component in what they do. Like, they hate like real, they're obsessed with you guys.
PENNACCHIA: Somewhat. Yeah. Well, I think what they're really upset about is that, feminism generally won, like they're outside of like trad wives and like very specific, genre groups generally speaking, like women work. women, Have no problems speaking their mind. And most of all, women are not just like getting married to the first dude who comes along and.[00:08:00]
staying with him forever because she has no, because she has no other choice, which frankly, you know, considering Betty Broderick and whatnot, you would think would be good for them. But
SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, why don't you explain that reference there?
PENNACCHIA: Betty Broderick was a 1980s who killed her husband. after he left her, but she had put him through college.
She had supported him the whole time. And when he left her, she had nothing and wasn't able to, or, earn a living or really do anything because she had just been a housewife for so long. And, she had never been able to, achieve her dreams. And as a result, when they got divorced, she was screwed.
And this had happened to a lot of other women. But a lot of these men really like this idea of women being trapped in this way because they don't, they're angry about no fault divorce. They're angry about, a lot of these things that It's like permit women to leave. they're mad at things that permit women to, wait a long time before getting married and having kids, anything like that, because they have just, these ideas of how things would be better for them if that were the case.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and, and so a lot of that kind of intersects with, of course, the Christian rights view of how women should be, that their place is in the home and, and you should obey your husband. And so, and, and what's been kind of interesting though, is that, so you do have this sort of intersection of cultures where people who, are, may not necessarily be religious, but they are anti feminist and they're, or they, [00:10:00] are anti Muslim.
and so you're, you're seeing an influx kind of into Republican politics of non white Christians in recent years. So like for instance, Donald Trump in 2020 improved his, his voting performance among Hispanics, among African Americans, and among white women. compared to 2016 and actually why he lost was that he had, he had, actually lost quite a bit of white men in his vote, because they were like, holy shit, this dude is crazy.
Like my friends had told me that he was crazy. Maybe they were right. And it was educated white men who basically left. and that's why he ended up losing.
Turning Point USA versus Nick Fuentes and the "groypers"
SHEFFIELD: Um, so, but you know, and, and one of the, we've, we had an incident recently with One of these new conservatives who has come in, her name is, she's a, a porn actress and her name is Brandy Love.
There's a picture of her on the screen there. She's got her Trump shirt, and doing a selfie for everybody. and, She is a, very famous in the industry. I would say, she's kind of like the, the Jason kid of porn, if you will. and, so very well known and she tried to go to the, a convention run by the Turning Point USA.
group, which is, this group that basically functions as a propaganda organization for young people and to try to propagandize them with basically Christian nationalist Republican, talking points and brainwash them. And it's an interesting group because unfortunately for them and people, they don't get a lot of attention from the mass media, but one thing they did become known for was.
They had a guy, they had some college students wear diapers and baby clothes [00:12:00] to protest what they said was childish censorship on the part of liberals, because liberals couldn't handle disagreement and so they were just like babies, according to Turning Point. And so, and of course, needless to say, everybody thought that was absolutely hilarious that they were going to own the libs by dressing in diapers.
And they became national news after that. And, but more recently, though, they have kind of been under attack by this alt right Christian supremacist group, who collectively refer to themselves as Gropers. can you talk a little bit about that group and what they've been trying to do to turn any point, Robyn?
PENNACCHIA: Okay, so they, have mostly coalesced around, this, white nationalist, Nick Fuentes. Like, they are all fans of his, and there's been a lot of drama between Turning Point and the Groypers going back to, probably about 2017, like a few years actually. this one member of Turning Point was photographed hanging out with, Fuentes and a bunch of the other, white nationalists, but in trouble.
Right wing watch, showed. Charlie Kirk, the pictures of them hanging out and he denounced white nationalists and, they, she got severed from the organization and everything. So they've basically been like bickering since then. And they didn't get along too well before then either, but that's been like the main, issue like that started everything.
And ever since then, the gripers have been going and, to various TPUSA events and trying to cause trouble. at this particular event, So Nick Fuentes has been banned for, from the TPUSA convention for years, but several of his followers [00:14:00] went. And one of the ones who went actually saw Brandy Love and started, putting it out on Telegram.
Oh, they won't take Fuentes into the TPUSA, but they'll let this porn star in. And so there was a whole bunch of drama. She gets kicked out by email. She ends up posting about it online and. All of these conservative people are like, no, we don't like porn stars. We don't like what you do. That's actually not okay with us at all.
as it turns out, we are really sex negative, except oddly for Ben Domenic. I think that's how you pronounce his last name, but Meghan McCain's feller. he came out and defense of her saying that the GOP should be a big tent party, but she's also written for the Federalists, so.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it's important also to note here that, so I'm going to just put on the screen, this is a picture that, that Brandy Love took, When she was, had arrived there at the, at the convention of the turning point, this is a student action summit, as they called it.
So it's geared toward high school and college students. and she obviously was dressed appropriately. And she was an attendee. she's got her regular, she, she paid for a VIP, backstage pass, or like granted access to some rooms, but she wasn't a speaker. She was just literally showing up there to watch these awful people speak.
And like, that was too much for Turning Point because, and, and I, I think, the something that people don't realize about this feud and is that, Fuentes, his a huge part of his mojo is basically taking the Christian Nationalist stuff and turning it up [00:16:00] to not just 11, like 15 and being like, well, look, you say that you're a Christian conservative.
Well, what have you conserved? Look at all these women out here who have jobs. Look at all these Porn stars who are, at our conservative events look at all these things here. And, and, and by the way, the Bible says that there's nothing wrong with racism. so no, and of course he's right.
the Bible says slavery is okay. and that slaves need to obey their masters, as a matter of fact, in that in Romans 13. It literally says it's a sin to, oppose the government leaders. so, but apparently that doesn't apply to Joe Biden.
PENNACCHIA: No, it literally only applies to Republicans. That is the law.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and so, Basically, they have been, going out there to these events and being like, So, you say you're a Christian, well then, how come you support, same sex marriage? Or they'll say that to various people. and, like, they have no answer. Like, how can you reply to that in an authentic way?
Because if you're basing your entire political ideology on I know what is in the Bible. The Bible is true. I have the objective truth on my side because I advocate for Christian fundamentalism. Then if somebody's just more extreme and more fundamentalist, how can you address that? I don't think you can other than censoring them.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah. No, there really isn't, any kind of option there. And so they've basically just kicked him out of all of their events, because the thing is, for the most part, they actually agree with him. I think on most things, generally speaking, the right usually agrees with the far right. They just don't want to look too bad.
like [00:18:00] they don't want to be explicitly white nationalist, which is where he catches them a lot. Like he accuses TPUSA, even Donald Trump Jr. of being, insufficiently pro white, and has no problem saying that. Whereas, the others try and sort of cover it up a little bit.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and, and then the other thing is that he does play on their, continual they brand themselves as, oh, we're against cancel culture, we're against censorship.
Well, if that's true, you gotta let this dude into your convention then. Because, don't all voices have to be heard in this marketplace of ideas? and like, and they have nothing to say about it. These, these people
PENNACCHIA: Conservatives don't ever get in trouble for hypocrisy. Like, they don't.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well We're against
PENNACCHIA: culture.
Or whatever you want to call it, trying to ban people and various things since the dawn of their entire ethos. And, it's different because, as long as you're not banning people for reasons that they don't like, that's fine. And they don't, in general, they don't get in trouble for any kind of hypocrisy from their people.
SHEFFIELD: Now, yeah, but what about in the mainstream press? I would say that that's even true there, too. Like, When have you seen Republicans asked about, well, like this Brandy love thing. I mean, it was all over Twitter this week in the weekend. but there weren't any stories in the mainstream media about it.
like this is a significant story as it relates to the Republican. Christian nationalists movement, and they didn't even talk about it. I mean, why wouldn't you talk about a story about porn stars and, and, right wing bigots? Like, that's an awesome
PENNACCHIA: story. Like they don't want to embarrass people.
It's like, there's like, Oh, it's like, there's like, [00:20:00] there's only so far you can go to their faces. You can't actually, for some reason, I don't know why I would probably ask, harder questions, but you can't directly say like, so what's the problem with porn stars? Why do you guys hate porn stars?
because they don't really want to answer that question. They don't want to touch it. So, They're not, you're not gonna get an interview with them, I guess, if you ask them
SHEFFIELD: about Yeah, no, I, I, and I think you're, you've hit on that's what it is. Because so much of mainstream journalism is about access.
Mm-Hmm. , they don't do research, anymore, like investigative research. Almost everything that they get is just handed to them by somebody else. and the problem is, of course. If you're depending on people handing you stuff, well, then you kind of can't piss them off and you have to coddle them.
Debate culture and right-wing hypocrisy
SHEFFIELD: I mean, I mean, it's like, look at, all these people like Charlie Kirk, the president of turning point TPUSA, this guy never does debates with anyone.
Ben Shapiro never does debates with progressive pundits. And like, Steven Crowder, who is this right wing YouTuber, he literally got scared. Of debating another, a left wing YouTuber named Sam Cedar. Like he, he literally cut off the stream when, when, he was recently, when he was, somebody else brought him in to debate with him, like he, these people are, are cowards and they have no arguments.
and then at the same time, they're going off and saying that liberals are cowards and have to censor people.
PENNACCHIA: And also at the same time, they've spawned a generation of men who feel very entitled to debate women and other people and are constantly asking for debates. So, oddly enough.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, although, yeah.
I don't think debate
PENNACCHIA: is the best.
SHEFFIELD: Well, although, again, like, they can't even win the [00:22:00] debates where they do have. Yeah, no. And, and like, it's fascinating, like what you were mentioning, like, Ben, the one person who Ben Shapiro has been begging to debate is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
Like, he will not debate, he doesn't want to debate anyone else. oh, I'm sorry, he does like debating. Freshmen college students. Because like that, that is effectively the, the intellectual caliber of their arguments. Like they just don't know what they're talking about. And so, yesterday, for instance, on Twitter, I did a thread looking at how this, this, guy who, who writes at the Federalist and elsewhere, he was trying to say that Republicans are not overrepresented among people who don't want to get vaccinated.
And his polling was like four months out of date. And then I, I told him about it and he never took it down. He never corrected it. Because that's
PENNACCHIA: not the point. Like, that's not what the point is.
SHEFFIELD: What do you, well, what is the point? The
PENNACCHIA: point of putting that out there is to make whatever point he wants to make.
It's not, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It just matters that he, is making the point he wants to make and can point to something that, seems like. It's relatively true because no one who reads him is going to, go and say, Hey, this isn't true. Well, your solidarity is that pure solidarity if nothing else.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
The evolution of online misogynistic groups after Elliot Rodger
SHEFFIELD: Well, so, in the years that you've been covering the, garbage men on the internet, how, how have things changed for this group? Would you say since you first started paying attention to
PENNACCHIA: Well, I'd say like after Elliot Rodger, There was a huge, huge, huge spike in the amount, in the number of message boards in the, the amount they were like reeling people in, and [00:24:00] not just in cells, but like MIG Tows, men going their own way, red pillars, all of these various groups were, attracting a lot of attention ever since then.
However,
SHEFFIELD: would you mind? Explaining what these groups are because, not everybody is as what is a Ming Tao. Yeah.
PENNACCHIA: Okay. So you've got your incels, your involuntary celibates who are not having sex, but would prefer to be having sex and feel entitled to sex from women. And then you have men going their own way,
SHEFFIELD: but only good looking women.
PENNACCHIA: Oh yeah. Exclusively.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah.
PENNACCHIA: they're extremely harsh about how women look like more so, and they're also extremely harsh about how they look like they're talking about like, Oh, Two inches of bone is on their face is the, or sorry, two millimeters of bone is the difference between Chad, who's the, their ideal Chad and incel, Chad is like the ideal man.
And so you've got,
SHEFFIELD: then
PENNACCHIA: the MIG does are. men going their own way and they're men who have decided they are done with women period like
SHEFFIELD: But they're not going to be gay
PENNACCHIA: They're not going to be gay They have decided that women only want men in order to you know Support them and they want to like marry them take all of their money and then leave so that's a big thing for them and so they You Talk a lot about like how they're, learning to live on their own.
and they make their own meals and they're really sad looking because none of them can cook. And they just basically think that women are evil and they want nothing to do with them.
a lot of the time those guys are [00:26:00] divorced. And they're like, Oh, we know the reality about how women are evil and the red pillars.
are, it's the matrix thing where, the red people, the red pill, people know the truth, the blue pill, people are, content living, live their content, living a lie. And the real truth, the red pillars know are, is that it's actually men who are oppressed rather than women.
SHEFFIELD: And how do they say that?
Who's oppressing them?
PENNACCHIA: So their whole theory is that like, all of these, women say that they're oppressed and everything, but, actually, men, are, I don't, who even knows at this point, but different theories as to why, women get, can do whatever they want.
They look a certain way, but men can't. it's generally kind of shallow crap like that. They're also obsessed with, false rape accusations and other things like that.
SHEFFIELD: yeah, they, they do seem to be. And, no, and then I guess you've maybe got Kind of your fourth group, which is you're you're white nationalists.
Yeah. And I mean, what's the, I think you could argue that a lot of what we see today in our right neo Nazi type politics. It originated from this, and so, but can you tell, tell us about the history of how that worked, and like Gamergate and some
PENNACCHIA: of that? Well, a lot of the main, yeah, a lot of the main people, in the alt right, alt light, Literally came from the manosphere,
SHEFFIELD: what is the man?
Oh,
PENNACCHIA: the various [00:28:00] factions of, anti feminist men,
on the Internet and, men's rights activists and what have you. So, like, Cernovich was an M. R. A.
SHEFFIELD: Men's right. For a
PENNACCHIA: long time, this guy, Roosh, was trying to join, he was like a big pickup artist guy. He was trying to join the alt right, but because he's not a white person, Was roundly rejected.
And also because of the fact that he, pushed the whole pickup artistry, sleep with as many women as possible thing, which they were not into. They were like, no women need to be virginal and pure. And you're, polluting all the women. by having sex with them. well, or raping them because he was a pretty big fan of, explaining to men how to rape women or date rape women.
So in various countries, but so he ended up trying to, be like, Oh, I've converted. I'm, totally anti sex now. I'm going to, marry a nice Christian. I'm a Christian. Yeah.
SHEFFIELD: I'm a fundamentalist just like you guys. Yeah. Okay.
PENNACCHIA: Well,
SHEFFIELD: okay. Interesting.
"Gamergate" as the crossover moment between trolls and Republicans
SHEFFIELD: Well, okay. So, so then what, what was gamer?
PENNACCHIA: Oh my gosh. so it's really hard to do that in a concise way. Sorry. There, there was already a lot of tension in the gaming community. Because, men felt that, women were having an outsized influence on a thing that, they liked. They were mad at Anita Sarkeesian for, writing
SHEFFIELD: about Who was who?
PENNACCHIA: Oh, she was just a critic of misogyny and sexism in video games. And so she did all these, [00:30:00] videos, talking about the ways in which. Video games were super sexist and the men were really upset about that and they were also very upset about new games that they felt were influenced by like social justice and feminism rather than just like, blowing people up and killing hookers.
So, I am dying for a glass of water.
SHEFFIELD: yeah, so basically, there was this, and these were people who primarily were not that political, but they became very, enraged at, what they saw was an intrusion of women into a male space, and so they basically decided to team up and expose, Her and expose how it was all just a big lie.
and that, no one wanted to hear what she had to say. and anyway, they, they came up with some stuff and it was honestly not very good, from a reporting standpoint. but you know, then they kept trying to force people to talk about it in the mainstream media. and they actually had some success, but as they were, getting together and engaging in activism, kind of, they kind of collided, not collided, they sort of discovered this, discovered 4chan, and the 4chan neo Nazi board of Paul, P O L, and the people from Paul started getting interested in this too, and they basically made a lot of converts.
and Paul itself had kind of originally started off as more libertarian, Ron, Ron Paul type people. And they got basically, because the thing that a lot of people don't understand about, right wing intellectualism is that it doesn't exist. and so basically because they have [00:32:00] no real ideas, no policies, nothing that they're driving toward accomplishing in terms of serving the public.
Basically, they're just perpetually drifting ever rightward, like that's the only thing they can do because the insane people, they have ideas, they want to make divorce illegal. They want to, like some of them literally call themselves advocates of Christian Sharia, like they call it. and so.
and so basically that's where the alt right came from. And like, that's a story. I feel like Robyn, that a lot of people would you say, do they know that story?
PENNACCHIA: it depends if you're a person who covers this.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. They just say the average political general,
PENNACCHIA: probably not. No. I mean, I probably the average person doesn't even know all the players in the, regular, Game as far as this goes, as far as the whole like alt right goes, if that's what they're even calling themselves anymore.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well,
PENNACCHIA: with new names constantly. So
SHEFFIELD: they do. And the other, the thing that, is like, it's really kind of disturbing in terms of mainstream journalists that they, they dropped the ball on covering the, the, the boomer Christian right. they never told the public who these people were and what they were up to and what they wanted and what they were doing.
and then their children basically, went and launched the alt right, and, all these other splinter movements and whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. and they still don't. talk about it really much at all, other than, like if every once in a while, like in the case of Elliot Rodger, you're like, you'll see some people be like, Oh, holy shit.
This thing happened here. Let's, let's talk about them for five minutes. and then let's move on to, Oh my [00:34:00] God, did you see what Trump said on Twitter? like, well, I do
January 6th and the alt-right's media attention
PENNACCHIA: think it, Certainly became a thing after January 6th, because so many people with that kind of ideology were the people who were getting arrested after it.
SHEFFIELD: So like
PENNACCHIA: the, there were a lot of proud boys. there was baked Alaska who was like. notorious troll, was one of the people who was there. And so, I think that when that, whenever something big like that happens, there's like, a little bit of interest from the mainstream media, for a little bit, but like, honestly, keeping up with this stuff is like, not the most pleasant of the activities.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And there's also a lot of different characters.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah.
SHEFFIELD: And you have to keep. Like a soap opera,
PENNACCHIA: and not a very.
SHEFFIELD: Interesting. Yeah, a really shitty.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah.
SHEFFIELD: and so, but, the and the thing also that I think also is off putting to them is that none of these people is, are elected to elective office.
No. And so, the mainstream press is very, very Congress or president focused, and almost to the exclusion of everything else and anyone else, no matter what they're doing. I mean, like in the case of.
PENNACCHIA: Partially why, four years ago, they missed the beat on Trump. Like they were like, who would even like this guy?
And. That is one thing that I was like, no, there are all these people who are who like him and will absolutely vote for him because he said he was going to grab people by grab them by the pussy. Like that is what they are into. And he's gonna win. And people were like, Oh no, you're crazy.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, but even now I would say that a lot of people don't [00:36:00] understand that, and, and I think this is, pretty common among more centrist Democrats and probably even like some of the more socialist oriented people who basically spend their time attacking Nancy Pelosi, like that's all they do.
and, like for them, they're like, Oh, whatever, Fox news is dumb. Like everybody knows it. and it's like, no, they don't. and and, and to some degree, I actually kind of blame Jon Stewart for that, I would say. because Jon Stewart, like he was correct that these people were stupid and didn't have any ideas.
But he just, made, he made people think of them as a big joke. what do you, what do you think of that thesis Robyn?
PENNACCHIA: I would say that that's true to a degree. I think he did a good job in certain ways, as far as like, even letting people know that some of those people existed, which was, it's very easy to sort of get into your own bubble and like, have no idea that these people even exist or are saying crazy things.
But at the same time, I don't think he ever really took them too seriously and they kind of like, they shouldn't be taken seriously in terms of their ideas being considered as like, reasonable ideas in the marketplace of ideas. But, they should be taken seriously in the way that like they are an actual danger to people like.
I mean,
Mainstream journalism still hasn't figured out how to cover right-wing trolls
SHEFFIELD: yeah, well, and, and, and honestly, like, I think you can see that happening again with the rise of these, junk right wing sites like daily wire and some, all these other ones, like, the mainstream press. [00:38:00] Or outward like Newsmax, OAN, like they just, they think that these media companies don't matter because they're so ridiculous.
And they interview people who don't know what they're talking about. and their stories are, they never do any reporting. They just whine and complain about other people's stuff. and so they think that because they're so obviously ridiculous that they don't matter. But NPR just this week, Oh yeah, the Ben Shapiro thing.
Yeah, it came out with a study that showed that Daily Wire and other things owned by the company that owns them, which is not owned by Ben Shapiro. it's actually owned by these. to Christian nationalists. Like they are absolutely freaky people. they're, they're, referred to as the Wilkes brothers.
And one of them literally is he, well, he retired as the pastor, but he was for the longest time, the pastor of this cult in rural Texas that basically said that, Christians are the real Jews, and we're the children of God and we're going to take over America and impose, well, basically, man made steel type stuff.
Like, that's who, Is funding Ben Shapiro, and like, and then at the same time, Ben Shapiro also has no problem, getting in bed with white nationalists also, like, he's repeatedly talked about how, now he claims he doesn't believe this, but like he wanted to, commit, he wanted to have ethnic cleansing in Israel and get rid of all Palestinians, out of Israel.
And, and he, and then, and a lot of people don't know this about Ben Shapiro, but he even went on a alt right podcast in 2014 and literally talked about secular and atheist Jews and said that they're, they're trying to destroy [00:40:00] America. They have a war on Christianity and a war on white males, and they're so terrible and they don't even believe in, they don't care about being Jews.
So basically, fuck them. you guys can do what you want to, and like the New York Times and all these other publications continue to talk to him as if he's some sort of credible source, but after doing all these things like it's outrageous,
PENNACCHIA: because he's, he's put together. He is in his own way.
Well spoken. And so sometimes when that happens, the blinders go up and they're like, Oh, he's respectable. Therefore, we should treat him as such. I think one of the big problems is that you have a lot of people who really do believe that if you ignore something, it goes away. Like, when you're a kid and you get bullied and they're the teachers who are like, Your problem is that you're not ignoring these people well enough.
and I think that there are a lot of people who believe that, the more attentive these people are only doing this for attention and the more attention you give them, the worst they'll get. However, that is generally not actually the case because usually what ends up happening is that a lot of attention gets put on them and then they end up getting kicked off of whatever platform they were on.
So they have much less influence.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the other thing also is that they don't understand that they actually believe the things that they, they think that it's just about. Trolling, owning the libs, but no, they actually do want to make divorce illegal. They do want to make birth control illegal, not just abortion, birth control.
and like, they, they want these things and like, to pretend You know, and, and like, I, I think, in [00:42:00] 2016, the media obsessions over Richard Spencer, the Alt-right. Racist, activist, I mean, they, it was just a disgrace. I, I remember reading, profile, and this was in Mother Jones, actually a progressive Oh, I remember that.
Yeah. They, they, the lead of the story was not good, Spencer. is eating flecks of tuna with chopsticks. and he's so dapper. And it's like, wow, do you not remember what the media did with David Duke when he came on the scene? It's literally the same act. and they just go for it. and they, and they fall for it.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah. I mean, well, this is the thing studies have shown, over and over and over again, that when someone is nice looking and well put together, People are insanely forgiving of almost any terrible thing they want to do. This is happens with crime. This happens with like, Nazis. If you hear, it's a lot easier to demonize someone if they, seem like a schlub.
then if they look like Richard Spencer and they've got, nice phone structure and, neat little haircut there. there's a desire. And I think a lot of people, especially, The MSNBC kind of people, like those pundits and everything, to just have a very hard time believing that someone who looks a certain way is actually bad.
SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah, and then, and then the Also is that they have a tendency to think that people who aren't are uneducated or poor, that they can't accomplish anything by banding together. and, and, and when you look at what a lot of, I mean, cause a lot of these far right. [00:44:00] Activists, they're unemployable.
no one wants to hire them. So they, they live off of welfare, literally, a lot of them. and of course they never mentioned that, but, and they, so, but, and so they, and a lot of them do kind of, look bedraggled and, and whatever, and there's this tendency, oh, well, they're, they're no threat, they're just a bunch of deliverance wackos, that's all.
And they're
PENNACCHIA: tacky. There's a terror, America has an absolute terror of tackiness. And if you're, classy, if you know which salad fork to use, people are a little bit more forgiving. You look like a schlub, you look, like most of these people do. They're gonna, treat you like that and also think that you have no influence on anyone else because who would ever listen to those people?
Non-troll Republicans still haven't realized that it's not their party
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and at the same time, though, I do think, just going back to the Brandy Love, episode that we just saw, so she's, she's non religious, as she has said, and she said that she was raised as a Republican, and so, for me, as somebody who came out of a non religious background, Republican background, after I left Mormonism, that was non religious and Republican, and, I, I, I, for the longest time, I had this idea that they were a lot more tolerant, or rational, that my, the people that I was with, that, that that's what they, that they were like me, I projected my own image onto them, because, as I supported same sex marriage and, I supported, abortion rights and like, I was okay with those things.
And, and I, I, I had this idea that a lot of people who were on the political right agreed with me. And, and [00:46:00] so when I saw this happen to Brandy love, she basically was reliving what happened to me, in so many ways. so I, I really felt sorry for her. and she still doesn't get it that way.
PENNACCHIA: No, well, because there's a little bit of a battle going on, I think, between like the 4chan Republicans and the usual suspects right now, like there are these people who really thought that. The, the Republican Party is for freedom. They would never legislate morality. And that was one of the things that she retweeted that, someone had said, and they're like, you can't be a Republican if you want to legislate morality, which is literally all Republicans want to do.
They're the only ones legislating morality. They are completely alone in that. they're the ones who want to, ban same sex marriage. They're the ones who want to ban abortion. of course they want to legislate morality. but these people have sort of taken this idea that, oh, the Republican party wants us to have guns.
They want us to be able to be racist without any consequences. And they want,
SHEFFIELD: and they want to get rid of taxes.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah, well, I think a lot of the new ones don't even really care about the taxes thing. I really don't. I think a lot of them, oddly enough, from what I've read, are almost starting to veer to the left economically.
the whole like Anne Rand thing has sort of seen its day. And I've seen people, oddly enough on the Donald, that subreddit that is no longer a subreddit say that they were in favor of a UBI. They have no idea what the Republican Party stands for at all. .
SHEFFIELD: Mm-Hmm. all, yeah. All, all they know is, it's all
PENNACCHIA: they know really is that they want to be able to say racist things on social [00:48:00] media and have no consequences.
And, and be sexist.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and to be sexist. yes. Yeah. And, and, yeah. Well, and, and, and, and it's, it is really illustrative of the intellectual collapse of of, of the American, right. Because like. They, it was constructed as a Christian nationalist movement, like William F.
Buckley, the creator of National Review, his first book was called God and Man at Yale, and the point of that book was to get them to fire professors. Yeah, which they're still trying to do. to fire professors who didn't believe in the resurrection or Jesus's divinity. like that was the point of what they were doing, to stop atheist, godless communism.
that was how they started. and now they've devolved to, well, we just want to be able to be a dickhead on the internet.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah, really, it's like, the cruelty is the point. They just want to be terrible people without anyone being, hey, saying, hey, you're an asshole. Like that is the main goal for almost everything.
And, they have various ways at which they want to be terrible human beings without any consequences, but that's really the only thing that unites them right now.
SHEFFIELD: Well, and that's, and here's the thing though, when I was, conservative activist and, somebody would, would have said something like that.
I would have been offended at that remark, because I was projecting. My own perspectives onto, onto my co, my, my co, conservatives. and I really had no idea. Huh?
PENNACCHIA: Which is kind of what they're all doing. They're sort of choose your own adventuring it [00:50:00] and then assuming that everyone agrees with them.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, so can you think of any other. examples, recent ones where, these, garbage men on the internet have had some interesting episodes besides this Brandy Love thing.
PENNACCHIA: well, fairly recently, the National Review, I'm sorry, I was looking for, cause I thought you wanted me to send it to you.
SHEFFIELD: you can talk about it, but
PENNACCHIA: basically it was, along with their whole like political discriminate, it was political discrimination as a civil rights struggle. Their whole idea that, Oh, you shouldn't be able to fire people for saying racist shit on the internet or sexist shit on the internet.
The main way that they, their, the main weight of their argument was that, Oh, women don't want to sleep with Trump supporters. And that's bad. And they have too much power. And what that now means is that when Trump supporters try and go get jobs, these women who don't want to sleep with them are not going to hire them.
And now it's going to be like their big civil rights struggle. And A lot of the anger from the men's groups is, Oh, women won't sleep with us. That's the big problem. There was also in the Federalist recently an article about how, they should not have subsidized, we should not have subsidized childcare, not because of any kind of, Oh, it's expensive.
We don't want to pay for that reason, but specifically because they want women to stay home and raise babies. that if you make childcare available, they might not do that and they might not choose to do that.
SHEFFIELD: So, yeah. Well, yeah. No. And, and actually your, that national review piece, yeah, it was, it was interesting because it's yet another example of how, everything they do is in bad faith.
[00:52:00] They're not concerned, for instance, that on dating websites, black women are least likely to get responses from people or, and Asian men are least likely to get responses from people like that. Doesn't concern them at all. And it's only about their own. dominant group. but then, but then specifically that they're trying to privilege their own speech.
everything they do is about that because again, like they don't, they don't want to talk to Randy Love to hear what she has to say. Say they don't want to talk to, they run away from Sam Cedar. Like they won't, debate anyone. and, but they do want their own beliefs to be privileged. it seems like,
PENNACCHIA: and at the same time, they don't want to get rid of at will employment, like, which would actually solve their problem, but they know it's not a real problem.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well,
PENNACCHIA: and but it's firings would absolutely solve the problem that they claim is a big problem where they're going to be just kicked off of their, fired from their jobs for loving Donald Trump too much. there is a solution to that, but they don't actually care about it because it might actually help someone else.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah.
The old-guard Republican oligarchs still draw the line at pro-public economics
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and, and that's, you were talking about how some of these newer conservatives have beliefs that are, maybe left of center on the economic front. But they're just running into a buzzsaw because the elected Republicans will never do any of that stuff. and like even, even the ones like, like Josh Hawley, who pretends to, have some, Make some overtures toward economic progressives, like it's all fake.
Like he voted for the Trump tax cut. The Trump tax cut literally raises taxes [00:54:00] on the bottom, quintiles of taxpayers, or in the long run, it raises their taxes. It's not a, a tax bill that protects lower income people. it does nothing of the sort and Josh Hawley loved it.
PENNACCHIA: No, he doesn't care.
All they care about is like, do I get to be a shitty person? What do I have to do in order to achieve this goal that I have? Like,
SHEFFIELD: that's
PENNACCHIA: kind of it.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, now, do you think, what can our listeners and your readers, my readers, like, do you think that they should be What can they do to help the mainstream media understand some of this better?
What would you say if people wanted to help with that?
PENNACCHIA: I think just asking people more direct questions would help, honestly, instead of coddling everyone, and acting as if they don't actually have nefarious intentions at all.
SHEFFIELD: I think
PENNACCHIA: assuming that, they're always, I also think that, actually saying what the Republican Party believes in as often as possible would be very helpful.
SHEFFIELD: I mean, some of that is the fault of Democrats too, though. They don't talk about it very much at all. And it's bad.
PENNACCHIA: A lot of Democrats want Republicans to vote for them. So there's like this sort of bind where they can't insult them because they want their votes.
SHEFFIELD: Well, I think also that one of the problems we have in our politics is that after the conservatives took over the Republican Party, a lot of people who were moderate Republicans didn't Just drifted over to the [00:56:00] Democrats.
and so the democratic party has a lot of people in it who actually are Republicans, like that's their, their mindset. And they agree with a lot of this stuff, like on things like that or regulations. and so for them to go off and say. That these ideas are, they would never go off and say these ideas are wrong.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah. Because a lot of,
SHEFFIELD: they agree.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah. And they have money and actually want to hold on to their money. So,
SHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and so I would say, something that people can do is, well, one immediate thing is that, both your site, one cat, And, my site Discover Flux or Flux on, internet.
We have a, a Patreon. You can, visit patreon.com/discover Flux to help us get the word out. And Juanette also, you guys are reader supported. I thought that was an interesting development. Was that a, a decision that you guy, that you personally were involved with? you were, you guys had ads for a long time.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah, we didn't have ads for a long time. Then you
SHEFFIELD: got rid of them.
PENNACCHIA: Yeah, that was all Rebecca.
SHEFFIELD: Okay, well, I'll have to talk to her about that because I think that that is, people need to stop giving money to the corporate mainstream media, like they can't, they failed at their jobs. They don't know what they're doing.
don't, don't pay for subscriptions to them, like cancel your cable, your cable TV, because you're, you're subsidizing Fox news, even when you do that, like, even if you never watch Fox news, they take a cut out of your subscriber fee. Every month. well,
PENNACCHIA: unfortunately, they, a lot of the cable company or internet companies, charge you more if you just want to get [00:58:00] internet.
SHEFFIELD: they, they do, they do, but you still do come out ahead though. with not having both servers, they do raise your internet price, but your overall combined price is lower still. but I would, Yeah, include that and the phone. Yeah, and I mean, like, another thing that people should be doing, I think is, there, so cable companies in other countries are not allowed to have bundles.
That's what they call them packages. where you have to, you're forced to buy one, the channels that you. you're paying for channels that you don't want, in other countries, they don't, they don't have that. A lot of other countries that you can just say, okay, I want these five channels and this is what you get.
like that should be how things are in this country, because I think tens of millions of people would not want to pay for Rupert Murdoch's welfare. cause he doesn't need it.
PENNACCHIA: No. I would probably just get the ID channel, but
SHEFFIELD: yeah, all right. Well, so, we're coming to the end here. so I will put up on the screen.
So, Robyn Pinocchio is on Twitter. She's, at Robyn Elise. That's R O B Y N E L Y S. and are you, do you have any other social media profiles that you want to tell people about Robyn? I
PENNACCHIA: mean, I'm on Facebook, but I don't really mess with that. I can do one social media profile at a time.
SHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, you are, one of the many fun writers at wonkette.
com. So I hope people can check that out as well. So thanks for joining me today, Robyn. Thank
PENNACCHIA: you for having me.
SHEFFIELD: I wanted to just remind people that Theory of Change is part of a network that I have launched called Flux, and it's flux. [01:00:00] community is the address, so be sure to check that out. And then of course you can also follow Theory of Change, it's theoryofchange.
show, and And on Twitter at TheoryChange. I'm Matthew Sheffield, and I appreciate everybody joining us today.
How Republicans became the party of misogynist trolls