October 17, 2019 • 46 mins
In Episode 90, Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to discuss the war on clowns.
FOOTNOTES:
- Apu Apustaja
- Clown faces fine for protesting neo-Nazi march
- Virginia Man Using Accordion-Playing Clowns To Get Revenge On White Supremacist
- Swedish neo-Nazis met by clown activists
- Clowns Attack KKK Rally in Charlotte, NC with Humor
- Clowns Kicked KKK Asses
- Producers, The (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Springtime For Hitler
- The best way to fight neo-Nazis is to … laugh?
- Why Nazis Are So Afraid of These Clowns
- Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson has a sad day in Albany
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
What's violating my OSHA guidelines. I'm Robert Evans, the host
of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And today my guests Cody Johnston, Katie Stole.
How are you guys doing great? Oh yeah, we're we're here.
We're alive. We just recorded worst year ever and now
(00:22):
we're recording we did and you know, I made a little,
very subtle reference to violating ocean. Now you want to
tell us a little bit about the objects that I've
assembled on the table here. Well, we got okay, we
got some English muffins wrapped in twine. We've got a
bag in mini bagels. I've got him at machete that's
the Billy Wayne Davis podcast. We've got a large knife,
(00:45):
kitchen knife, and Sophie's got a which blade gave Sophie
my walking around knife. It's everyday night, your standard, miss standard. Yet.
And that's not to mention all the various snacks and
beverages that are also on this table. But I think
these are the items you were referring to. So the
twine wrapped around this entire box of Thomas brand English
muffins with the the original nooks and crannies. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:09):
this is a sling, shepherd sling. Um, it's a it's
an it's a weapon from the ancient world that a
fan of ours, a fan of mine, made very generously,
specifically to throw bagels. But we're out of bagels. I
threw quite a few of them and did some damage
to the other recording room when Sophia was in here
and we talked about the Fallwell family. One of the
things I've learned, Uh. One thing I haven't learned about
(01:31):
how to use this is how to make anything I
throw go in the direction I wanted to. Oh, you
don't know how to aim? It appears to be impossible,
But I have not. I have refused to read the
very helpful guidelines that the creator of this object left me,
and instead have just been recklessly tossing things. And yeah,
I think, uh, step one fling, you step one thing
and no other steptep step to watch. Didn't they advise
(01:52):
that you never use it indoors? Yes? Um? Now, so
when I started experimenting with this, uh, and and it
really is that I couldn't control the direction of it.
I also realized that the best thing to do would
be to play a little game where I fling packages
of bread based food products at y'all, and you all
have large knives to try to knock them out of
the air, much like a pinata, but flinging into the air. However,
(02:15):
since I can't direct the device the objects to go
where I want them to go, I figured the safest
thing to do would be to arm everyone in the
room with a different kind of bladed objects, stand in
different areas well. It's also the best steel that counts
for a lots of there's not a lot of. I
did not bring enough machete. All steel can defend you
(02:37):
from a bread product. And I'm sorry. It's not the
size that matters, it's how much steel is there. The
size does matter. Give me the machete. Wow, I mean,
I have not decided who gets what you guys. I
feel like whoever gets the machete Sophie, Sophie wants to
know you want to be that's not going to work. Well,
this is not a democracy. This is not a democracy.
(02:59):
Give me the ess In between the recording of Worst
You're Ever and behind the master pus or, Sophie becomes
a Republican radicalized. Wow, so we're not gonna fling objects
around the room, um with dangerous weapons and everyone stands
quite yet quite just yet, okay, quite yet finished. That's
(03:21):
what we call I don't know what we call that.
I'm not aware of other podcasts that do this. Well,
you're the only podcast I am. What do we what
are we talking about today? What are we talking about today?
Have you guys noticed some clowns I hate all around
the internet, in people's posts and like Twitter profiles of
(03:43):
people and like online people dressing up like cloents of prose? Yeah,
I see some clowns around. Yeah, because known as the
President of the United States shared a video themed after
take on Me that at one point has one of
the people he's talking to, uh in clown did not
for some strange reason, why did not happened? To today's
about why are the clowns all over the place these days?
(04:09):
A couple of kinds of clowns, actually a couple of
kinds of clowns. So in our modern era of shiny
new fascist movements tromping through the streets in various guises,
the kind of folks who don't like fascism have found
themselves at a bit of a crossroads. At one end
are the Black Block and the Antifa, who have become
the boogie men and women of Breathless TV anchors. These
people say fascists need to be outnumbered, overwhelmed, and sometimes
(04:29):
even confronted with physical violence in order to force them
off the streets. And on the other end of things,
you have folks who believe the best action is no action.
If we ignore the fascists, they'll go away, and confronting
them in the street only earns them sympathy. Most in
the activist community tend to land in the middle, advocating
a diversity of tactics, and for years one of the
most prominent tactics was clown based mockery. And we're going
(04:51):
on a little bit of a journey for this one,
so I hope you're all excited. The history of clowns
as organized parts of activit goes back at least as
far as two thousand three, when a small group in
the UK formed the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army or Circle.
They trained cadres of clowns who would show up at
the front lines of protests and confront right police with
(05:12):
seltzer water, honking red noses and that one weird sculptrip
clowns do um I presume now um Their purpose was
mostly to boost the spirits of activists dealing with police violence,
washing mace out of their eyes and cringing away from
truncheons and such. At their height, circle had around a
hundred and fifty professional clowns in Edinburgh, Scotland alone, and
cadres performed in other cities in Europe and the United States.
(05:36):
So that's cool, cool, sounds nice. Still hate clowns, Still
hate clowns more or less okay with those clowns. Um,
you might say that a guy like Vermin Supreme today
it's kind of like the modern incarnation of that attitude
towards clowning at protests where it exists a kind of distress. Everybody,
de escalate things, distract people. Yeah, there's yeah, there's a
sense of a yeah, de escalating and sort of like me,
(05:58):
like this is we're having this is a silly time.
This is a silly time. We can have some fun
with it. But also the thing fascists hate the most
is being mocked and not taken seriously. They hate it.
We're going to get to that goodness. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's a that's the sea, and I think it's a
complicated issue. Just discussed touch on that, yeah now um.
In two thousand and five, the National Socialist Movement decided
(06:20):
to hold a parade on the capital steps of Olympia, Washington.
It was to be your standard Nazi affair, a dozen
ish guys in uniforms waving flags, trying to trigger people.
The ostensible goal of the march was recruitment, which the
group could sorely use. A year or so later, the
National Socialist Movement would barely be able to scrape together
eighty people from across the entire United States. So, according
to the Seattle Times, instead of shouting or worse, attacking,
(06:42):
protesters dressed up as Nazi clowns to mimic the rally.
Ever see a Nazi clown goose stepping, it was like
springtime for Hitler. David NewART, the journalists covering fascism since
forever says, after a time onlooker seemed to forget about
the deflated white nationalists entirely. That was the most striking
defeat I've ever seen dealt to neo Nazis, and Neward
still kind of holds this line. That's the most effective
way that you can. You can confront these people in
(07:03):
the streets. That's pretty good. In two thousand seven, a
group of fascists calling themselves vin Landers decided to hold
a march and Knox Built, Tennessee. They were confronted by
a clown block made up of members of the group
Anti Racist Action or a r A. Again, the clowns
pantomime Nazi salutes and goose stepping, basically holding their own
clown themed version of the rally. When the Nazis chanted
white power, the clowns shouted back, white flower and then
(07:26):
through fistfuls of flower in the air. That's fun. That's fun. Yeah,
that's nice. But they were so mad. I bet they were.
All This piste off Alex Linder, the rally organizer, so
much that he charged at the clowns and attempted to
assault them. He was arrested by Knoxville police immediately. Again,
the clowns dealt a startling blow too, roughly a dozen Nazis.
That's good, that's pretty good. I'm coming around on these silly,
(07:48):
make them angry, triggered them triggered them, and then they
do the violence and then they get Yeah. Speaking of triggered,
I can see that Sophie and Katie are passing notes
and I don't know what's happening. Okay, you just give
me a really cool stick and gave her a sticker. Sorry,
I feel like somebody's trying to take my throw and
slang away no no, no, no no no. Also by yeah,
(08:10):
she asked for once. I brought it and I didn't
want to give it. Before I forgot I was listening. Okay,
he's cradling the sling. I didn't mean to offend you.
You sling today. You couldn't use it as much as
you want, buddy. All right, Well, when the police come later,
I'm going to tell them you said I could use
it as much as I want. I'll vouch for you.
Thank you do. Crimes Save Lives Beautiful. In two thousand twelve,
(08:36):
the National Socialist Movement again held a rally, this time
in Charlotte, North Carolina. They drew about fifty supporters, making
it one of the more sizeable gatherings in the group's history.
Several hundred clowns showed up to counter protests. Outnumbering the
Nazis five to one by some accounts, again they tossed
white flower in response to Nazi chance of white power.
This counter protest was organized by the Latin American Colson.
(08:57):
Their youth coordinator, Lacy Williams, said this did Will you
see and see the message from us is you look silly.
Were dressed like clowns, and you're the ones that look funny. Yeah, okay,
not inaccurate, Not inaccurate. In January two seventeen, more than
five hundred Swedish Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement held
a rally in the city of Falloon on International Labor Day.
(09:18):
They were confronted by the activist group We Are to
larn Up, many of whom showed up yet again dressed
as clowns. Ivan Midget, representative of the counterprotesters, shold Radio
Sweden that he had come to believe humor was the
most potent weapon against fascist extremists. Angry people. They know
how to meet anger, they know how to meet hate
and violence, but they don't know how to meet humor.
We could see they were very troubled by having us there. Now.
(09:40):
Midget said that his clown rally was directly inspired by
the ongoing activism of clown cadres in Finland, who had
shown up in clown block to counter the anti immigrant
group Soldiers of Odin for years. By two thousand seventeen,
the idea of confronting fascists with clowns was rather popular
with activists all over the globe. From an optic standpoint,
this sort of activism was certainly successful. The mainstream new
sources were markedly more positive towards activists who dressed his
(10:02):
clowns rather than in black, even when the activist dressed
in black didn't do anything. Now. Justin Bates is from Charlottesville, Virginia.
In the wake of the two thousand seventeen rally that
killed Heather Higher, or in which Heather Higher was murdered
by a Nazi, uh, he started to get racist robocalls
from Scott Rhodes of IDAHOL. You guys remember Scott Rhodes
Road of Power. We talked about him during the MIDI
(10:24):
fun guy. I love when these colorful characters come up again.
It's like it's like in Frasier when somebody from Cheers
would come in once the season that it's comforting the
American fascist cinematic universe. Yeah, yes, and everybody's Woody Harrelson. Now, um, yeah,
(10:48):
So he starts getting these robocalls, these very racist, very
anti Semitic robotcalls from Scott Roods of Idaho. Um. Now,
Bates decided to counter this by organizing an event where
people would dress his clowns and play accordions outside roads
his home. Quote, he targeted my home in town. So
I said, Okay, if he wants to use his First
Amendment rights to spread his ridiculousness, then I'll use my
First Amendment rights to spread my own ridiculousness. And you
(11:09):
know what, why not do it in front of his
house for as long as possible. Because if he's going
to torment my friends and neighbors and their homes and
businesses with his stupid shit, if he wants to get
into a stupid ship competition, I'll win that every day.
That's a quote. It's a good quote. It's just as
stupid expletive, But I think it's staying stupid shit. Yeah,
that's real good. Now, that does sound like a fun idea,
(11:30):
And unfortunately, I've actually found no evidence that Scott ever
made this happen, somebody does find it. I would I
would love to be corrected on that, um. But what's
interesting to me is that all the coverage at the
time focused on the idea and a video he made
of like a clown um. Bates announced in two thousand
eighteen that he'd planned to do this next spring, but
as pharma is, I'm aware nothing happened to this spring. Nonetheless,
(11:52):
it's interesting to me how much media attention he received
for this idea that didn't actually happened, versus how much
media attention is received by a lot of rallies from
activists I've seen who've gotten hundreds or even thousands of
people to show up and like nobody cares about it.
Here's a short list of the sites that covered Bates
is Not a Clown stunt, stunt that didn't happen. Florida
Politics dot Com, uh UK News dot Yahoo, Spokesman dot Com, Blavity,
(12:17):
Huffington's Post, Bonner County Daily, b Newsweek in kh q UM,
all of those, All those people covered it with like
Man's response to the Nazi robo caller send clowns, that's Newsweek.
A Virginia Mound founder hilarious way to troll the racist robocaller.
Like the it got a lot of coverage, nothing ever happened, weird. Interesting.
(12:37):
Maybe a sign though, that it actually is a good
tactic if there's more follow through, because the media seems interested. Yeah,
it's a story that they can latch onto. Yeah, and
they're not gonna fall into the trap that they always
do with the false equivalence and things like that. It's
just like, no, here's yeah, that's just what's going on.
Not like they're not making a judgment really, yeah, about
(12:58):
whether or not someone should protest outside somebody's house, Yeah,
or whether or not one side is just as dangerous
as the other, because yeah, they're just very straightforward, uh,
supportive of the silly thing as opposed to framing it
like it's a serious issue. And because if it's a
serious thing, you have to be So what are they
both saying? Are they both the same as one violent one?
(13:20):
You know, interesting lessons there now. Uh, it's hard for
me to judge the actual efficacy of the tactic of
confronting Nazis with clowns, because, for one thing, it does
not seem to actually dissuade Nazis from continuing to march.
And May eighteen, the Nordic Resistance Movement marched again and Ludvika,
Sweden again with around five people. Clowns Against Racism rallied
(13:40):
against them and they drew more activists than ever to
show up in Clown Block, which proved to be a
problem because for the first time the clowns drew in
enough numbers that they had to have a permit to march,
and since they hadn't gotten a permit, the police reported
the organizer for contravening the law on public order. But
again these guys kept marching after being confronted by clown
If you're trying to make the case how to stop them,
(14:02):
kind of get a long road to go there, even
though there's some evidence that it can be very effective
and can trigger them to, you know, make a bad
optics decision. Has happened in Olympia. It seems to be
like effective in in certain ways, but yeah, but not
in the main way. It's not a silver bullet. They
are scared of clowns, like I am. Yeah, they're not Katie.
They aren't and if they were Katie, they wouldn't be Nazi.
(14:25):
They wouldn't exactly, it wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, something
to that, just like they know how to they know
how to deal with anger because there that's where so
much that comes from. Yeah, and they know like, oh,
if I'm triggering you, then I'm going to stay calm
and I'm gonna be like, well what everyone's racist, you know,
just because I say this, And they know how to
handle that. But they really it doesn't stop them. But
(14:47):
it doesn't stop they don't, but they don't handle it
very well. Yeah, now dire or then all of that
is the fact that in recent months Nazis themselves seem
to have a found a way to adopt aspects of
this tactic for themselves. And this brings me, rather unfortunately
to the Honkler meme. Honkler Honkler, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
(15:11):
that's literally. Yeah, if you spend a lot of time
on Twitter or any of the other foul corners of
the Internet, log off and yes, burn your computer, walk
outside petticat. But if you spend time on those places,
you've probably run across strange images of a green frog
dressed as a clown. That's a peppe. This is Honkler.
(15:33):
He's essentially a Peppe meme in clown face. I'm going
to quote now from an article by Jared Holt from
right Wing Watch. Online personalities and far right and white
nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti
Semitism to an image of a cartoon character, Peppe the Frog,
depicted poorly drawn and as a clown, and that effort
has gained notable traction recent months. Far right proponents want
the broader Internet to believe the character directly represents their
(15:56):
world view, but the situation in the whole represents an
attitude shift in far right sir was online and a
slow inching forward even towards more radical elements of the movement.
Now that might sound a little bit weird, but the
more radical view is a sort of hardcore nihilism that's
currently sweeping the ranks a very online fascists see, they
were pretty optimistic for the first couple of years of
(16:17):
Donald Trump's election, um, thinking that he was going to
do all of the Nazi ship they wanted him to do,
but he only did some of it, um not nearly enough,
not being explicit about it either. Still, and their lives
still suck, which is a problem. For them. Um, So,
a lot of these guys have begun to lose hope
of ever instituting the murderous ethno state they so desire,
(16:37):
And so all of these clown references are a reference
to the fact that they believe modern society is a
clown world where races intermix and genetically superior specimens like
themselves go tragically unfucked, and that that stands the world
is clowny, ridiculous, and if we keep the clown world going,
And what is it? Piss earth is another terms. Yeah,
(16:58):
there's a whole bunch of them. You know what's not
piss earth? Oh? I bet uh fuck, it's on the
tip of my tongue. I can't think of what it is.
Products and services. Sophie's getting ready with a knife, and
(17:20):
I think that has just prompted me to when we
come back finally toss these crannies and nooks. Story. Look,
the machete is up and for grabs. People just grab
the weapons. They are products, and we're back. But we're back,
and there's an arms race going on at the table.
(17:41):
I couldn't stand up. Everybody got to arm themselves, get
something to hit these these nooks and crannies. Thomas is
out of the air. I don't know what direction they're
going to go in. One weapon is for me, one
is for Anderson. She has no thumb. Katie Stapler, okay
in first all right, I'm just gonna wind up myself.
(18:06):
I'm very sad this is happening. It went backwards him.
They went the most opposite direction to be a safe
way to do You're not done? Is there needs to
be someone behind me. I need to be surrounded in
a forest of knives so that I can throw this safely. No, Cody,
(18:28):
don't pay the sacrificial lamb. I mean you can't. Second,
we need you for words, your ever, There's no way
to know how this is going to go. I'm going
to throw it all right now. I think the way
to do this is to swing it above my head
and yeah, oh it went sideways very violently. Are we
not done? Let's let's try this again to the next
(18:50):
ad break. Somebody has to hit it with a blade.
All volunteers air, well, this is this is very embarrassing.
I thought it was lovely. Daniel. Did you get that video? Sophie?
This is a podcast? Thank you, Robert. Is it your
first day. Thank you Cody, Thank you Katie for not
(19:13):
being a fansplating podcasting saying it's audio related and no
visual elements. Okay, five stars, no notes. So, like all
good memes, the Honkler and clown World memes evolved in
a decentralized fashion. The website no your meme has tracked
(19:36):
its entire evolution and I'm going to quote from them now.
In February, en racist and anti Semitic variations of the
character named Honkler began appearing on four Chance Pole image board. Additionally,
the characters associated with the term honk pill, which is
often described as an absurdist alternative to black pill nihilism,
allowing a person to appreciate the humor in an absurd universe,
interpreting existence as a cosmic joke. Take the honk pill.
(20:00):
Everything's a pill these days. Yeah, I'm just I don't
want to take any more pills. Yeah, take some so
much like medicated. Isn't that a pill? It is a
great pill. Yeah, we should. Someone should go back in
time to the Wachowsky sisters and be like, don't make
it a pill. Don't don't make it right. I know
this is a fine from a narrative standpoint in but
(20:22):
we're all going to regret it. Yeah, pill like an enema.
Yeah yeah, that's interesting. You've been animal. Just be honked.
I'm it's so ready for when deep fakes allow us
to replace that scene in the matrix with with Keanu
Reeves getting an enema. The actual Honkler image was first
(20:46):
posted on four Chune that January with the message what
emotion does this image evoke from you? Almost immediately users
hit upon the idea of using the meme as he
had another dog whistle to signal national socialist beliefs. So
this is the you can see this is Honker. You've
seen this guy floating around Twitter. Yeah so uh the
guy says that, uh and then uh. One of the
(21:09):
first responses is um, someone saying Hong Kong equals h
h heil Hitler. If you honk you're a honky taking
back the rainbow, mocking the parentheses. That means something is
Jewish clown world. Clown world insiders to say the clown
world is created by the Jews. Uh. And then somebody
quoted that and said, why Hong Kong is the next
okay sign? Uh? And then someone else said taking back
(21:32):
the Rainbow Brother doesn't belong to faggy sodomites and trans freaks.
Honk Honkler And they have a picture of of Honkler
with the uh the rainbow wig on in front of
a gas chamber. Yeah, so that happened very quickly. Um. Yeah. Yeah.
(21:53):
They really were like, yeah, let's turn this into another Nazi.
This is literally the only thing we do anymore on
the Internet. Yeah, is make things Nazi. They do not
have to clear my schedule. Let's do that. I have
nothing else going on. On February eleventh, users on four
Chains pull Board launched Operation Honk with the goal of
spreading the Honk Theer meme across the Internet. Their goal
(22:13):
was to get it into general circulation and hopefully convince
Normans to start spreading it around without any idea as
to its origin. From one of their posts, they will
adopt our child and post Honkler on social media under
mainstream memes already in circulation. There will come a time
when we must take him back, whether of the Honk
or not. We must perpetuate this meme to show the
world our ideas so dumb, Whether Honk or not, all
(22:37):
these shootings um, yeah, very frustrating that we have to
care about this. I would love to ignore these people,
really would That would be great if you didn't, if
they weren't a concern, if they if if a detectable
fraction of them didn't shoot up random Walmart's. Um, it
would be nice to ignore them and like talk to
each other and talk to each other and try to
(22:58):
get each other to yeah, cool stuff. A honk Facebook
page was quickly created, and the meme rapidly spread outside
the confines of the Chance and into the wide world
of other incredibly shitty people. One of those people was
noted actor James Woods. Celebrated actor James Woods on April eight,
(23:18):
he posted this little Jim to his Facebook page. Now,
what is that? What is that? What does that look
like to y'all? The bottom one, I mean, it looks
like Honkler. It is Honkler? What was in front of
an African American lady? That's not quite all of the subtext.
Do you recognize what that image is based off of?
(23:39):
Katie's a picture Honkler in a car mugging towards the camera,
and it's basically just traced over a drawing of the
Christ Church shooter in his car. That's what it is.
It's the christ Church shooter. It's Brenton Tarrant as Honkler
in front of a YouTube personality to not get Jesus. Yeah,
that's and that's James Woods sharing a of the christ
(24:03):
Church mass shoot. You think he knew that it was shooter.
Hard to say, because like you guys didn't. That's part
of why an instant like I was like, oh, yeah,
it's the car. That is that image that we know.
It's strange to think of sharing something, but yeah, I
guess I have no idea if Woods knew, like he
knew what the clown world because the clown world has
(24:23):
taken on two meetings. Both of them are that the
world's fundamentally absurd because of all this multiculturalism bullshit. But
the two different ways of taking that is the like
not explicitly Nazi way is that like, well, these sj
Ws and these liberals are just so absurd, but the
world and it's a clown world because of that. And
then on the explicitly Nazi side, it's the Jews are
(24:43):
the ones making it be that way, and that's why
it's right. It's always that like that little leaf you
need to make. Yeah. And I mean I've seen even like,
uh about Tim Pool. Yeah, yeah, Like he's done videos
where he's like people say the Honker thing is like
about Nazis and stuff, but it's actually not. It's just
because the world is so nuts and it's like, yeah,
ye helping their buddy. Yeah, it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating.
(25:07):
I don't believe that James Woods is as four Chanders
would say, jew pilled um, which I don't think he
understands entirely what he's saying. He's old, he's old and
not smart. Um. It's like internet stuff, and its internet stuff.
Like someone probably told him it's a conservative thing and
(25:27):
he was like, well, okay, and what specifically why he
posted he was declaring war with hashtag clown Lady and
the clown lady in the picture. The woman who the
Tarrant client is looking at is a is a YouTuber
named little Lunchbox, and she provoked the ire of the
right wing when she complained about the Honkler meme, and
particularly complained about the appropriation of rainbow imagery by the right.
(25:48):
She said, I'm ready to go to motherfucking c l
war clown war over this. You're not going to take
a symbol of happiness and acceptance and multiculturalism and turn
it into something racist and antiseptic and homophobic. I think
she meant EDTI semitic and try ansphobic. Um, So that's like,
that's the reaction they wanted. That's the reaction they wanted.
And James Woods is declaring war on her in this.
(26:08):
But then his surponses got really weird because like, um
would spent the rest of the day like watching more
of and more of her footage, and like it seems
like he actually seriously did start to enjoy her stuff,
and then he started posting positive things about her. She's
my new favorite person on Twitter. I mean, she's certainly
committed to her position about things. She's willing to go
to war. I like her. I'm not kidding. I mean,
(26:29):
there's the clown stuff and the nuts of liberal stuff,
but she's likable. I don't know why I'm still smiling.
I started out making fun of her video, but now
I'm really curious about her, so, I mean that's charming
to me. He also might just have been backtracking with
someone was like, oh you you spread terrorist propping anity
and he's like a fuck but yeah, Now I was
lurking on h and the same day this happened, and
(26:51):
so I was able to watch them react to this
because they had created the original image that then got
chopped up of of Tarrant as honklude like that stuffed
on a chance Bull board. So they were very excited
to see someone is relatively mainstreams James would share it,
and they immediately then started taking pictures of little lunch
boxes face and photoshopping her with green skin and a
rainbow clown wig and turning her into a honkler, which
(27:12):
is just sort of the way the Internet works when
it does stuff like that. Um but I will say
I don't think James Woods quite knew what he was doing. No,
I mean, it's it's what happened. It's like their goal,
like you're not He's not looking at this and going
oh yeah, the terrorists and Hitler stuff. It's like he's going,
oh yeah, these clowns is clowns. When Donald Trump retweeted that,
(27:34):
um eh chan mem Hillary Clinton with a star of
David on it, that's the most it was like he
didn't think that was a Starve just said someone else
hates Hillary Fuck yeah. Yeah. It's it's the fact that
you are so connected to these communities that's the concern.
It's that, like, how did you see this racist thing
(27:55):
and why did you connect to it and and retweet it?
Like James would has some access to uh and relationship
with people who are sharing these Nazi things, He's just
not going, oh, yeah, they're Nazis. I guess their goal.
It's uh, it's stop set up, stop setting it's it's
it's not great. It's not the way I would prefer
(28:18):
things work in national politics. But here we are secret
Nazis tricking famous people into sharing their yes, yes, yeah,
that would be that would be good if that didn't happen,
and famous people reacting to it by generally saying, well,
I guess I'll defend Nazis now rather than admit that
I got tricked. It's great. I really love nineteen Yeah.
(28:39):
Pretending that it's not the problem and that there's nothing
nothing going on and there isn't a community of people
that actively do this on purpose, it makes me think
might just be a pretty good year comparative ever, the
best year of all of them. That seems negative ever ever, ever,
(29:02):
Welcome to the best of the yep, yep, you know everything,
so smart smart smarts. Yeah. Now, I don't know what
was going on with James Woods, and I won't pretend to,
but I do know that the ship posters on eight
Chan took to honk their memes like a duck takes
to racism. When I started writing this episode, I looked
through my giant document and saved a Chan posts, and
(29:24):
the first honkler me and I found on there was
from eight which was yeah again the same day that
James was made that post, although I think it happened
earlier than that, and I just didn't choose to save
those images. But here's a here's a here's here's an
example of one of the more baffling versions of this
meme that I really don't even know what's trying to
be conveyed there. Um, it's clearly based off the shining.
(29:45):
You've got, yeah, an axe coming through a bathroom where
a woman is half dressed. Uh, and then the hankler's
little face peering through the wall. Oh, she she's dressed
all sexy. Yeah, there might be some insult ship there.
It's really hard to say, uh yeah, yeah, I honestly
(30:11):
have no idea what the message of that is even
supposed to be. I guess keeping tom kind of thing.
I don't know thing going on there, No, I doubt it.
There's dildos on the shelf though, so I bet they'd
call her a stacy or something, right like, there's there's
some mixed messaging there, it seems, yeah, or maybe they're
just saying we're going to kill women who like dildo's yeah,
something like that, or just women the women, you know
(30:37):
what doesn't kill the women? What the products that support
this podcast? Yeah, I hope, I hope. Yep, they don't.
They don't good We've had all of our products, Daniels
saying this is a good idea. Well, I feel safe,
thank you. Got to buy them now. I thought they
were gonna harm women. But my knife, Yeah, everybody should
get their knife. Come back from the break. It's going
(30:59):
down alright. Time to get my staple a out products.
I don't know to this. Well, we're back, and because
we're coming back from a break, I'm going to attempt
to properly fling the thing with the sling and enough
of the direction that somebody with a weapon is able
to hit them out of the air and make these
(31:21):
now rather crumbled English muffles burst like a pinata filled
with gluten a gluten yata. Alright, alright, call shot. Yeah, no,
you're getting better. It went. It went to where it
was supposed to stay in this lane. Not eventually, but initially.
(31:45):
I'm enough to build up. Yes, whoa if you did
not duck, there's truly no way that I could have
defended myself from that. I mean ducking, that's right, if
I had. Robert, sorry to Katie for almost killing her. Katie,
(32:07):
I'm sorry for almost killing you. I was trying to hit,
so Katie, I don't have any choice but to accept
your apologies. I think you need it more than I do. Now, see,
if the machete had been there, you could have hit
the bagels. Will you toss back? I would have hurt
myself with a machete. You would have saved it. You
would have cut him in half. And we were like, oh,
it's amazing, how much damaged. No, no, they're mushed up, Daniel.
(32:31):
Daniel said, not enough, Robert, you're still employed. Good job. Well,
we'll have to change that. Cassing papers doesn't have quite
the I love tossing. I'm just a toss fan. I'm
a tosser. I don't know what that means, but British
(32:51):
people say, I think it has something to do with swivel, go,
swivel your tosser and then you do like oversea. That's
the British for for the butt your tosser. Oh, I
thought it was something else. I mean it might be
about uh analingus. Is that what you're referring to. I
don't know either way. I don't know what it means
(33:12):
that somebody with a tendency to show off or brag
an excessive and embarrassing way. Well there you go, because
I bragged about my tossing. Yeah, and it worked your
a tosser about yours. Boy. I hope nobody relies on
these English muffins for breakfast. Oh good? Were you? Are
you going to put them back? Well? Yeah, I'm not
(33:32):
gonna waste food. That's good. Thank you, Thank you for
praising me. You're good. I love being braised. The Honkler
meme quickly generalized into the clown World meme, which we
we talked about a little bit earlier. But it started
with the Honkler and then turned in the broader cloud
world thing it memes you're confusing. Clown World obviously involves
references to clowns aimed at making the point that our
modern world is social justice and treating women like people.
(33:54):
It's fundamentally absurd. Who actually has its origins back before
the Honkler meme. So this is one of the things
that's confusing about this. That wait, that women, Uh no, no,
the clown world. That yeah, I found clown world references
on archived discord conversations between fascists as early as two
thousand seventeen, which is well before the start of the meme,
(34:15):
although they seem it seems to have just been a
term that we're using rather than sort of a meme
in and of itself. Um So I'm gonna read a
little conversation from the Vibrant Diversity chat room, which was
frequented by many of the people who marched and organized
the Bloody Too thousand seventeen Unite the Right rally and Charlotte'sville.
A lot of those people do terrorisms. Sure, sure weird
that a lot of those people doing terrorism, A lot
(34:35):
of them, Like that's like a statistically significant non of
them have done a terrorism or like every couple of
months you see a terrorism done or like a suspected
terrorism done, and you're like, that person looks familiar. Oh,
here they are marching literally next to this other two
there marching right next to this terrorist. Cool quite something.
So these posts came after a long discussion about whether
(34:57):
or not transgender people should be able to serve the military.
Very woke takes ye, take a lot of things in consideration.
Horatio carry. Honestly, putting trannies on the front line is cruel.
Camp and Carl to the enemy. Horatio carry L O
L Vanguard. Seriously, they should be put in frontline service.
(35:18):
Horatio carry cannon fodder, Camp and Carl just don't wait
stinny armor weapons on them. Horatio carry tranny Core, Northern Underscore,
Confederate l O L. Such clown world. Thankfully, our president
all caps and a ri E has a simple solution
to trannies. No, so that's good. That's good. That was
unpleasant to listen to. That's the first reference I can
(35:40):
find a clown world in like one of those really
clear discussions. Thank you for hating it. It is good job, Robert,
as is usually the case, the clown World and Honkler
memes quickly traveled from the most extreme corners of the
Internet to more mainstream not get out of town, get
(36:01):
out of town Nazis. But then if somebody gets hit
when you're telling Nazis to get out of town, you'll
be declared domestic terrorists. It's the same. I love our assistant,
it's helpful, it's good, it has no flaws. I'm going
to read from right Wing Watch again. Punkler and clown
(36:22):
World memes were recently incorporated into goy Talk, a new
but growing web based white nationalist podcast. The show's hosts
advocate white nationalism in an attached way and embody the
same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white
supremacist movements in the United States conveyed in the reputation
of the word clown World. Goy Talk hosts express racist
and and do semitic views as a staple of their programming,
(36:43):
with guests that include David Duke, Christopher kent Well, and
Patrick Little. Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state
of the world and their ability to change it without
mass organized action, reminiscent of the violent writings of James
Mason in his book. Yeah, so always feel bad. I know,
a lovely Chris can't Well, who's a wonderful director whenever,
fortunate to have Hall and catch Fire a lot of
(37:06):
great sketch comedy back in the day too. Yeah, anyway, Yeah,
it's yeah, it's unfortunate. It's ironic that the good Chris
can't Well directed Halt and catch Fire because the bad
Chris Can't Well. I would not have a problem if
he were to halt. There is nailed it beautiful. So
guys like Christopher can't Well and David Duke are are
fundamentally different parts of the fascist media ecosystem from say
(37:30):
the guys on four chan. Um, and the fact that
folks associated with them had latched onto the Honkler meme
is evidence that it had essentially spread to the uncool
sections of the Nazi right by by this point, by
kind of like the middle of this year earlier, you know, quarter,
first quarter this year, the end of that quarter. Um.
So my guess is that the channers behind Honkler probably
reacted to this into the same way we all did
(37:52):
when our parents first got onto Facebook and started with
the spreading minions memes like this is kind of bat
for Nazis, and they're like David Duke's and on it
to find a new Yeah, the crying Nazis doing it now.
Fuck yeah, here's a here's a note. Yeah, you're all
fucking torks. None of you're not cool. Stop it. You're
(38:14):
as cool as David Duke. That's your note for the Nazis,
for the Nazis. Well, I'll let the Nazis know. Yeah,
like you were really directing that directly. The Nazis made
direct Robert. I will let the Nazis please let them know. Yeah,
it is now filtered. That it being Honkler has now
filtered thoroughly out of the weird right wing Internet and
(38:34):
into the streets. I'm not precisely sure when the first
fascist demonstrators started marching in clown gear. The first time
I saw it was in May two nineteen, when Joey
Gibson of Patriot Prayer held a rally in Albany, New
York with the tiny gaggle of Proud Boys. Now, this
wasn't away game for Joey, who usually marches in Portland
in Seattle, and it was a huge flop. Nobody even
showed up to counter protest him. Only one journalist showed
(38:57):
up to write about it, and the whole event was
forgotten basically as soon as it happened. The only noteworthy
part of this rally was the fact that several proud
boys showed up in clown face and guys, I I
will include some of these pictures on the site. You
do owe it to yourself. This is There's been some
sad clowns in the past. I feel like that's a
thing that was regularly done. This guy here is the
(39:18):
saddest clown. Oh, you're a sad Your pity is warring
with your disgust, isn't Oh yeah, it's like taking an
an acid after drinking a bunch of acid one I
think it is. I don't know. Is it that one good?
He just looks so dejected, like the snoopy music is playing.
(39:41):
Charlie Brown. Yeah, somebody pulled a fucking football out from
the under the kids that kids clown shoe. Uh yeah, um,
I was expecting one. I got another one, delicious tree.
There's some great ones. There's some really great ones. Now.
A month or so later, the clown World meme reached
what I have to suspect will be it's saddest form,
perhaps it's apothesis. Alex Jones featured it on info wars
(40:06):
now Cool. Jones has a long history of pulling content
from four chan and e chan, mainly in the form
of conspiracy theories and the very dumbest of memes. This
time he appropriated the term clown world, which again was
first coined by literal Nazis to describe the nihilistic rage
that they felt with their inability to stop people from
race mixing or accepting LGBT people. Jones, however, used it
for his special coverage of the Democratic debates. Info wars
(40:29):
dot com presents clown World, the Greatest comedy show on Earth.
The promotional graphic features all the Democratic candidates in crudely
photoshopped clown face. Elizabeth Warren also wears a Native American headdress.
Bernie Sanders is a mime. Joe Biden is for some reason,
done up as Jack Nicholson's version of the joker. I'm
really I really don't understand like that all they're all
(40:50):
different types of clown, like Elizabeth Warren. Okay, obviously that's
the one thing. Like everyone clazy, right wing pundit hits
her for the most terrified get I get Sanders from
mine because he's the oldest stuer, So like, yeah, you
haven't be the old timiest clown. Why is Joe Biden
Jack Nicholson's show weird because he carries an absurdly longhandgun
(41:11):
that he uses to shoot the bat plane out of
the air? Does he actually probably you know what? Points
to Alex Jones. That's fair. Well, he also fell on
that bad of acid and Joe Biden's I exploded that
before that from this is before that is before I
exploded the night before that was later. Very cool, very cool.
(41:36):
Check out the podcast Knowledge Fight if you want some
coverage of Jones's clown World show. But obviously it wasn't good.
And yeah, and he's not even fun anymore because so
many people are threatening to and actively suing him that
he can't he can't even be that fun. Yeah, he's
(41:56):
really trying trying to tone it down, trying realizes, oh,
I guess I can get sued for Yeah. Yeah. Now,
about a month before I wrote this, at the end
of September two, nineteen, a straight Pride parade was held
in Boston. It was organized by a coalition of fascists,
outright Neo Nazis, and Milonei Illanopolis. During a powerfully sad
(42:19):
press conference for the event, one of the organizers was asked,
what do you say to taxpayers who want to know
why you're wasting the city's resources because you three guys
can't get laid. The organizer responded, the world is clown world.
The world's gone crazy because there's nothing wrong with being straight.
What great? Okay man, okay man. At least it's very
listen and like a clear thought, really an answer, really
(42:43):
a solid answer. Several attendees at the parade were photograph
dressed as clowns. Two men wore Honkler costumes complete with
green face paint. Oddly enough, the counter protest of this
event also included clowns. Well. Activists on the ground, Yeah well,
activists on the ground battled with the Boston police, who
went a little bit nut fuck on the demonstrators. Online,
anti fascists started flooding Twitter and other social media apps
(43:05):
with pictures and footage of large groups of clowns, tagging
the footage as part of the Straight Pride Parade. It wasn't,
of course, this was just unrelated clown footage. But that's
where things sit now. We've gone from activists dressing as
clowns to keep each other's spirits up to marching in
clown costumes to counter serious uniform neo Nazis too, fascist
demonstrators willingly dressing themselves as clowns, while online anti fascists
(43:27):
flood the internet with fake clown footage in order to
distract from their real event. You guys excited about that's
fun where we are? What a fun little episode? What fun?
I'm more excited about where we're heading. I went on
regarding clowns, hating clowns, starting to like them, back to
(43:47):
hating them even more than I hated them originally. I
do hope that what we see, if this evolution continues,
is two large groups of functionally indistinguishable clowns beating each
other in the street while the police just go, who
do we tear gas everybody? Yeah? I think I think
that's what we call a civil war. Yes, it's that,
it's that false equivalence. Uh, you're help, you're helping a
(44:10):
little bit where it's like it's like the sneeches, you
keep switch sneeches on beaches. Yeah, you keep switching back
and forth, and you're like, well, who's the clown? What
are you protesting for or against? Oh? You you you're
you're a fascist, but I'm not. But to you, I am.
I guess we're both clowns. Now, it's great, that's not
(44:31):
I disagree. Sorry, well, I hope this was helpful. Very
I now I know I have a new enemy. Yes,
clowns still clowns, still clowns. Still speaking of clowning. Oh,
he's going to do one more. I'm gonna try it.
I'm gonna try it. I don't think you're gonna do it.
Don't try do it. Thank you, Cody, Thank you for
(44:51):
believing in me. Absolutely start off by going down. Not
a bad decision. I gave you the machete. I can't.
I'm I'm specifically not Cody, get the machete scares me.
Daniel has the machete, Daniel has jail. You'd be careful
of that. So if you make sure the ocean guy
(45:13):
doesn't come in. All right, I'm gonna close my I'm
gonna do this like like Luke Skywalker. Yeah, oh my god,
Well that wasn't great. Well, guys, it's another episode done,
another miserable failure in the bag. In the bag, we
(45:33):
did it, You did it, Robert. You guys have some
plug doubles to plug Yeah Daniel still check out our
new Yeah. Also our podcast Even More News. That's the
one that Cody and I do and YouTube show called
Some More Same. Checkout video versions of the news. You
(45:58):
can help support that by gonna have a Patreon dot
com slash Some More News. So much to check out,
so much to check out. And if you want to
endanger the people around you by throwing breakfast food recklessly,
Thomas Breakfast like no other, the original Knooks and Crannies
English Models. He threw Knooks and Crannies that I love you.
(46:20):
You can find this podcast behind the Bastards dot com.
You can find uh T shirts on t public. You
can find me it at Bastards pot uh and you
can listen to the Worst Year Ever, the podcast that's
about a year that's not gonna be very good. Do it,
do it, do it, do it, do it. You're gonna
let it cool
What's violating my OSHA guidelines. I'm Robert Evans, the host
of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And today my guests Cody Johnston, Katie Stole.
How are you guys doing great? Oh yeah, we're we're here.
We're alive. We just recorded worst year ever and now
(00:22):
we're recording we did and you know, I made a little,
very subtle reference to violating ocean. Now you want to
tell us a little bit about the objects that I've
assembled on the table here. Well, we got okay, we
got some English muffins wrapped in twine. We've got a
bag in mini bagels. I've got him at machete that's
the Billy Wayne Davis podcast. We've got a large knife,
(00:45):
kitchen knife, and Sophie's got a which blade gave Sophie
my walking around knife. It's everyday night, your standard, miss standard. Yet.
And that's not to mention all the various snacks and
beverages that are also on this table. But I think
these are the items you were referring to. So the
twine wrapped around this entire box of Thomas brand English
muffins with the the original nooks and crannies. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:09):
this is a sling, shepherd sling. Um, it's a it's
an it's a weapon from the ancient world that a
fan of ours, a fan of mine, made very generously,
specifically to throw bagels. But we're out of bagels. I
threw quite a few of them and did some damage
to the other recording room when Sophia was in here
and we talked about the Fallwell family. One of the
things I've learned, Uh. One thing I haven't learned about
(01:31):
how to use this is how to make anything I
throw go in the direction I wanted to. Oh, you
don't know how to aim? It appears to be impossible,
But I have not. I have refused to read the
very helpful guidelines that the creator of this object left me,
and instead have just been recklessly tossing things. And yeah,
I think, uh, step one fling, you step one thing
and no other steptep step to watch. Didn't they advise
(01:52):
that you never use it indoors? Yes? Um? Now, so
when I started experimenting with this, uh, and and it
really is that I couldn't control the direction of it.
I also realized that the best thing to do would
be to play a little game where I fling packages
of bread based food products at y'all, and you all
have large knives to try to knock them out of
the air, much like a pinata, but flinging into the air. However,
(02:15):
since I can't direct the device the objects to go
where I want them to go, I figured the safest
thing to do would be to arm everyone in the
room with a different kind of bladed objects, stand in
different areas well. It's also the best steel that counts
for a lots of there's not a lot of. I
did not bring enough machete. All steel can defend you
(02:37):
from a bread product. And I'm sorry. It's not the
size that matters, it's how much steel is there. The
size does matter. Give me the machete. Wow, I mean,
I have not decided who gets what you guys. I
feel like whoever gets the machete Sophie, Sophie wants to
know you want to be that's not going to work. Well,
this is not a democracy. This is not a democracy.
(02:59):
Give me the ess In between the recording of Worst
You're Ever and behind the master pus or, Sophie becomes
a Republican radicalized. Wow, so we're not gonna fling objects
around the room, um with dangerous weapons and everyone stands
quite yet quite just yet, okay, quite yet finished. That's
(03:21):
what we call I don't know what we call that.
I'm not aware of other podcasts that do this. Well,
you're the only podcast I am. What do we what
are we talking about today? What are we talking about today?
Have you guys noticed some clowns I hate all around
the internet, in people's posts and like Twitter profiles of
(03:43):
people and like online people dressing up like cloents of prose? Yeah,
I see some clowns around. Yeah, because known as the
President of the United States shared a video themed after
take on Me that at one point has one of
the people he's talking to, uh in clown did not
for some strange reason, why did not happened? To today's
about why are the clowns all over the place these days?
(04:09):
A couple of kinds of clowns, actually a couple of
kinds of clowns. So in our modern era of shiny
new fascist movements tromping through the streets in various guises,
the kind of folks who don't like fascism have found
themselves at a bit of a crossroads. At one end
are the Black Block and the Antifa, who have become
the boogie men and women of Breathless TV anchors. These
people say fascists need to be outnumbered, overwhelmed, and sometimes
(04:29):
even confronted with physical violence in order to force them
off the streets. And on the other end of things,
you have folks who believe the best action is no action.
If we ignore the fascists, they'll go away, and confronting
them in the street only earns them sympathy. Most in
the activist community tend to land in the middle, advocating
a diversity of tactics, and for years one of the
most prominent tactics was clown based mockery. And we're going
(04:51):
on a little bit of a journey for this one,
so I hope you're all excited. The history of clowns
as organized parts of activit goes back at least as
far as two thousand three, when a small group in
the UK formed the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army or Circle.
They trained cadres of clowns who would show up at
the front lines of protests and confront right police with
(05:12):
seltzer water, honking red noses and that one weird sculptrip
clowns do um I presume now um Their purpose was
mostly to boost the spirits of activists dealing with police violence,
washing mace out of their eyes and cringing away from
truncheons and such. At their height, circle had around a
hundred and fifty professional clowns in Edinburgh, Scotland alone, and
cadres performed in other cities in Europe and the United States.
(05:36):
So that's cool, cool, sounds nice. Still hate clowns, Still
hate clowns more or less okay with those clowns. Um,
you might say that a guy like Vermin Supreme today
it's kind of like the modern incarnation of that attitude
towards clowning at protests where it exists a kind of distress. Everybody,
de escalate things, distract people. Yeah, there's yeah, there's a
sense of a yeah, de escalating and sort of like me,
(05:58):
like this is we're having this is a silly time.
This is a silly time. We can have some fun
with it. But also the thing fascists hate the most
is being mocked and not taken seriously. They hate it.
We're going to get to that goodness. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's a that's the sea, and I think it's a
complicated issue. Just discussed touch on that, yeah now um.
In two thousand and five, the National Socialist Movement decided
(06:20):
to hold a parade on the capital steps of Olympia, Washington.
It was to be your standard Nazi affair, a dozen
ish guys in uniforms waving flags, trying to trigger people.
The ostensible goal of the march was recruitment, which the
group could sorely use. A year or so later, the
National Socialist Movement would barely be able to scrape together
eighty people from across the entire United States. So, according
to the Seattle Times, instead of shouting or worse, attacking,
(06:42):
protesters dressed up as Nazi clowns to mimic the rally.
Ever see a Nazi clown goose stepping, it was like
springtime for Hitler. David NewART, the journalists covering fascism since
forever says, after a time onlooker seemed to forget about
the deflated white nationalists entirely. That was the most striking
defeat I've ever seen dealt to neo Nazis, and Neward
still kind of holds this line. That's the most effective
way that you can. You can confront these people in
(07:03):
the streets. That's pretty good. In two thousand seven, a
group of fascists calling themselves vin Landers decided to hold
a march and Knox Built, Tennessee. They were confronted by
a clown block made up of members of the group
Anti Racist Action or a r A. Again, the clowns
pantomime Nazi salutes and goose stepping, basically holding their own
clown themed version of the rally. When the Nazis chanted
white power, the clowns shouted back, white flower and then
(07:26):
through fistfuls of flower in the air. That's fun. That's fun. Yeah,
that's nice. But they were so mad. I bet they were.
All This piste off Alex Linder, the rally organizer, so
much that he charged at the clowns and attempted to
assault them. He was arrested by Knoxville police immediately. Again,
the clowns dealt a startling blow too, roughly a dozen Nazis.
That's good, that's pretty good. I'm coming around on these silly,
(07:48):
make them angry, triggered them triggered them, and then they
do the violence and then they get Yeah. Speaking of triggered,
I can see that Sophie and Katie are passing notes
and I don't know what's happening. Okay, you just give
me a really cool stick and gave her a sticker. Sorry,
I feel like somebody's trying to take my throw and
slang away no no, no, no no no. Also by yeah,
(08:10):
she asked for once. I brought it and I didn't
want to give it. Before I forgot I was listening. Okay,
he's cradling the sling. I didn't mean to offend you.
You sling today. You couldn't use it as much as
you want, buddy. All right, Well, when the police come later,
I'm going to tell them you said I could use
it as much as I want. I'll vouch for you.
Thank you do. Crimes Save Lives Beautiful. In two thousand twelve,
(08:36):
the National Socialist Movement again held a rally, this time
in Charlotte, North Carolina. They drew about fifty supporters, making
it one of the more sizeable gatherings in the group's history.
Several hundred clowns showed up to counter protests. Outnumbering the
Nazis five to one by some accounts, again they tossed
white flower in response to Nazi chance of white power.
This counter protest was organized by the Latin American Colson.
(08:57):
Their youth coordinator, Lacy Williams, said this did Will you
see and see the message from us is you look silly.
Were dressed like clowns, and you're the ones that look funny. Yeah, okay,
not inaccurate, Not inaccurate. In January two seventeen, more than
five hundred Swedish Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement held
a rally in the city of Falloon on International Labor Day.
(09:18):
They were confronted by the activist group We Are to
larn Up, many of whom showed up yet again dressed
as clowns. Ivan Midget, representative of the counterprotesters, shold Radio
Sweden that he had come to believe humor was the
most potent weapon against fascist extremists. Angry people. They know
how to meet anger, they know how to meet hate
and violence, but they don't know how to meet humor.
We could see they were very troubled by having us there. Now.
(09:40):
Midget said that his clown rally was directly inspired by
the ongoing activism of clown cadres in Finland, who had
shown up in clown block to counter the anti immigrant
group Soldiers of Odin for years. By two thousand seventeen,
the idea of confronting fascists with clowns was rather popular
with activists all over the globe. From an optic standpoint,
this sort of activism was certainly successful. The mainstream new
sources were markedly more positive towards activists who dressed his
(10:02):
clowns rather than in black, even when the activist dressed
in black didn't do anything. Now. Justin Bates is from Charlottesville, Virginia.
In the wake of the two thousand seventeen rally that
killed Heather Higher, or in which Heather Higher was murdered
by a Nazi, uh, he started to get racist robocalls
from Scott Rhodes of IDAHOL. You guys remember Scott Rhodes
Road of Power. We talked about him during the MIDI
(10:24):
fun guy. I love when these colorful characters come up again.
It's like it's like in Frasier when somebody from Cheers
would come in once the season that it's comforting the
American fascist cinematic universe. Yeah, yes, and everybody's Woody Harrelson. Now, um, yeah,
(10:48):
So he starts getting these robocalls, these very racist, very
anti Semitic robotcalls from Scott Roods of Idaho. Um. Now,
Bates decided to counter this by organizing an event where
people would dress his clowns and play accordions outside roads
his home. Quote, he targeted my home in town. So
I said, Okay, if he wants to use his First
Amendment rights to spread his ridiculousness, then I'll use my
First Amendment rights to spread my own ridiculousness. And you
(11:09):
know what, why not do it in front of his
house for as long as possible. Because if he's going
to torment my friends and neighbors and their homes and
businesses with his stupid shit, if he wants to get
into a stupid ship competition, I'll win that every day.
That's a quote. It's a good quote. It's just as
stupid expletive, But I think it's staying stupid shit. Yeah,
that's real good. Now, that does sound like a fun idea,
(11:30):
And unfortunately, I've actually found no evidence that Scott ever
made this happen, somebody does find it. I would I
would love to be corrected on that, um. But what's
interesting to me is that all the coverage at the
time focused on the idea and a video he made
of like a clown um. Bates announced in two thousand
eighteen that he'd planned to do this next spring, but
as pharma is, I'm aware nothing happened to this spring. Nonetheless,
(11:52):
it's interesting to me how much media attention he received
for this idea that didn't actually happened, versus how much
media attention is received by a lot of rallies from
activists I've seen who've gotten hundreds or even thousands of
people to show up and like nobody cares about it.
Here's a short list of the sites that covered Bates
is Not a Clown stunt, stunt that didn't happen. Florida
Politics dot Com, uh UK News dot Yahoo, Spokesman dot Com, Blavity,
(12:17):
Huffington's Post, Bonner County Daily, b Newsweek in kh q UM,
all of those, All those people covered it with like
Man's response to the Nazi robo caller send clowns, that's Newsweek.
A Virginia Mound founder hilarious way to troll the racist robocaller.
Like the it got a lot of coverage, nothing ever happened, weird. Interesting.
(12:37):
Maybe a sign though, that it actually is a good
tactic if there's more follow through, because the media seems interested. Yeah,
it's a story that they can latch onto. Yeah, and
they're not gonna fall into the trap that they always
do with the false equivalence and things like that. It's
just like, no, here's yeah, that's just what's going on.
Not like they're not making a judgment really, yeah, about
(12:58):
whether or not someone should protest outside somebody's house, Yeah,
or whether or not one side is just as dangerous
as the other, because yeah, they're just very straightforward, uh,
supportive of the silly thing as opposed to framing it
like it's a serious issue. And because if it's a
serious thing, you have to be So what are they
both saying? Are they both the same as one violent one?
(13:20):
You know, interesting lessons there now. Uh, it's hard for
me to judge the actual efficacy of the tactic of
confronting Nazis with clowns, because, for one thing, it does
not seem to actually dissuade Nazis from continuing to march.
And May eighteen, the Nordic Resistance Movement marched again and Ludvika,
Sweden again with around five people. Clowns Against Racism rallied
(13:40):
against them and they drew more activists than ever to
show up in Clown Block, which proved to be a
problem because for the first time the clowns drew in
enough numbers that they had to have a permit to march,
and since they hadn't gotten a permit, the police reported
the organizer for contravening the law on public order. But
again these guys kept marching after being confronted by clown
If you're trying to make the case how to stop them,
(14:02):
kind of get a long road to go there, even
though there's some evidence that it can be very effective
and can trigger them to, you know, make a bad
optics decision. Has happened in Olympia. It seems to be
like effective in in certain ways, but yeah, but not
in the main way. It's not a silver bullet. They
are scared of clowns, like I am. Yeah, they're not Katie.
They aren't and if they were Katie, they wouldn't be Nazi.
(14:25):
They wouldn't exactly, it wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, something
to that, just like they know how to they know
how to deal with anger because there that's where so
much that comes from. Yeah, and they know like, oh,
if I'm triggering you, then I'm going to stay calm
and I'm gonna be like, well what everyone's racist, you know,
just because I say this, And they know how to
handle that. But they really it doesn't stop them. But
(14:47):
it doesn't stop they don't, but they don't handle it
very well. Yeah, now dire or then all of that
is the fact that in recent months Nazis themselves seem
to have a found a way to adopt aspects of
this tactic for themselves. And this brings me, rather unfortunately
to the Honkler meme. Honkler Honkler, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
(15:11):
that's literally. Yeah, if you spend a lot of time
on Twitter or any of the other foul corners of
the Internet, log off and yes, burn your computer, walk
outside petticat. But if you spend time on those places,
you've probably run across strange images of a green frog
dressed as a clown. That's a peppe. This is Honkler.
(15:33):
He's essentially a Peppe meme in clown face. I'm going
to quote now from an article by Jared Holt from
right Wing Watch. Online personalities and far right and white
nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti
Semitism to an image of a cartoon character, Peppe the Frog,
depicted poorly drawn and as a clown, and that effort
has gained notable traction recent months. Far right proponents want
the broader Internet to believe the character directly represents their
(15:56):
world view, but the situation in the whole represents an
attitude shift in far right sir was online and a
slow inching forward even towards more radical elements of the movement.
Now that might sound a little bit weird, but the
more radical view is a sort of hardcore nihilism that's
currently sweeping the ranks a very online fascists see, they
were pretty optimistic for the first couple of years of
(16:17):
Donald Trump's election, um, thinking that he was going to
do all of the Nazi ship they wanted him to do,
but he only did some of it, um not nearly enough,
not being explicit about it either. Still, and their lives
still suck, which is a problem. For them. Um, So,
a lot of these guys have begun to lose hope
of ever instituting the murderous ethno state they so desire,
(16:37):
And so all of these clown references are a reference
to the fact that they believe modern society is a
clown world where races intermix and genetically superior specimens like
themselves go tragically unfucked, and that that stands the world
is clowny, ridiculous, and if we keep the clown world going,
And what is it? Piss earth is another terms. Yeah,
(16:58):
there's a whole bunch of them. You know what's not
piss earth? Oh? I bet uh fuck, it's on the
tip of my tongue. I can't think of what it is.
Products and services. Sophie's getting ready with a knife, and
(17:20):
I think that has just prompted me to when we
come back finally toss these crannies and nooks. Story. Look,
the machete is up and for grabs. People just grab
the weapons. They are products, and we're back. But we're back,
and there's an arms race going on at the table.
(17:41):
I couldn't stand up. Everybody got to arm themselves, get
something to hit these these nooks and crannies. Thomas is
out of the air. I don't know what direction they're
going to go in. One weapon is for me, one
is for Anderson. She has no thumb. Katie Stapler, okay
in first all right, I'm just gonna wind up myself.
(18:06):
I'm very sad this is happening. It went backwards him.
They went the most opposite direction to be a safe
way to do You're not done? Is there needs to
be someone behind me. I need to be surrounded in
a forest of knives so that I can throw this safely. No, Cody,
(18:28):
don't pay the sacrificial lamb. I mean you can't. Second,
we need you for words, your ever, There's no way
to know how this is going to go. I'm going
to throw it all right now. I think the way
to do this is to swing it above my head
and yeah, oh it went sideways very violently. Are we
not done? Let's let's try this again to the next
(18:50):
ad break. Somebody has to hit it with a blade.
All volunteers air, well, this is this is very embarrassing.
I thought it was lovely. Daniel. Did you get that video? Sophie?
This is a podcast? Thank you, Robert. Is it your
first day. Thank you Cody, Thank you Katie for not
(19:13):
being a fansplating podcasting saying it's audio related and no
visual elements. Okay, five stars, no notes. So, like all
good memes, the Honkler and clown World memes evolved in
a decentralized fashion. The website no your meme has tracked
(19:36):
its entire evolution and I'm going to quote from them now.
In February, en racist and anti Semitic variations of the
character named Honkler began appearing on four Chance Pole image board. Additionally,
the characters associated with the term honk pill, which is
often described as an absurdist alternative to black pill nihilism,
allowing a person to appreciate the humor in an absurd universe,
interpreting existence as a cosmic joke. Take the honk pill.
(20:00):
Everything's a pill these days. Yeah, I'm just I don't
want to take any more pills. Yeah, take some so
much like medicated. Isn't that a pill? It is a
great pill. Yeah, we should. Someone should go back in
time to the Wachowsky sisters and be like, don't make
it a pill. Don't don't make it right. I know
this is a fine from a narrative standpoint in but
(20:22):
we're all going to regret it. Yeah, pill like an enema.
Yeah yeah, that's interesting. You've been animal. Just be honked.
I'm it's so ready for when deep fakes allow us
to replace that scene in the matrix with with Keanu
Reeves getting an enema. The actual Honkler image was first
(20:46):
posted on four Chune that January with the message what
emotion does this image evoke from you? Almost immediately users
hit upon the idea of using the meme as he
had another dog whistle to signal national socialist beliefs. So
this is the you can see this is Honker. You've
seen this guy floating around Twitter. Yeah so uh the
guy says that, uh and then uh. One of the
(21:09):
first responses is um, someone saying Hong Kong equals h
h heil Hitler. If you honk you're a honky taking
back the rainbow, mocking the parentheses. That means something is
Jewish clown world. Clown world insiders to say the clown
world is created by the Jews. Uh. And then somebody
quoted that and said, why Hong Kong is the next
okay sign? Uh? And then someone else said taking back
(21:32):
the Rainbow Brother doesn't belong to faggy sodomites and trans freaks.
Honk Honkler And they have a picture of of Honkler
with the uh the rainbow wig on in front of
a gas chamber. Yeah, so that happened very quickly. Um. Yeah. Yeah.
(21:53):
They really were like, yeah, let's turn this into another Nazi.
This is literally the only thing we do anymore on
the Internet. Yeah, is make things Nazi. They do not
have to clear my schedule. Let's do that. I have
nothing else going on. On February eleventh, users on four
Chains pull Board launched Operation Honk with the goal of
spreading the Honk Theer meme across the Internet. Their goal
(22:13):
was to get it into general circulation and hopefully convince
Normans to start spreading it around without any idea as
to its origin. From one of their posts, they will
adopt our child and post Honkler on social media under
mainstream memes already in circulation. There will come a time
when we must take him back, whether of the Honk
or not. We must perpetuate this meme to show the
world our ideas so dumb, Whether Honk or not, all
(22:37):
these shootings um, yeah, very frustrating that we have to
care about this. I would love to ignore these people,
really would That would be great if you didn't, if
they weren't a concern, if they if if a detectable
fraction of them didn't shoot up random Walmart's. Um, it
would be nice to ignore them and like talk to
each other and talk to each other and try to
(22:58):
get each other to yeah, cool stuff. A honk Facebook
page was quickly created, and the meme rapidly spread outside
the confines of the Chance and into the wide world
of other incredibly shitty people. One of those people was
noted actor James Woods. Celebrated actor James Woods on April eight,
(23:18):
he posted this little Jim to his Facebook page. Now,
what is that? What is that? What does that look
like to y'all? The bottom one, I mean, it looks
like Honkler. It is Honkler? What was in front of
an African American lady? That's not quite all of the subtext.
Do you recognize what that image is based off of?
(23:39):
Katie's a picture Honkler in a car mugging towards the camera,
and it's basically just traced over a drawing of the
Christ Church shooter in his car. That's what it is.
It's the christ Church shooter. It's Brenton Tarrant as Honkler
in front of a YouTube personality to not get Jesus. Yeah,
that's and that's James Woods sharing a of the christ
(24:03):
Church mass shoot. You think he knew that it was shooter.
Hard to say, because like you guys didn't. That's part
of why an instant like I was like, oh, yeah,
it's the car. That is that image that we know.
It's strange to think of sharing something, but yeah, I
guess I have no idea if Woods knew, like he
knew what the clown world because the clown world has
(24:23):
taken on two meetings. Both of them are that the
world's fundamentally absurd because of all this multiculturalism bullshit. But
the two different ways of taking that is the like
not explicitly Nazi way is that like, well, these sj
Ws and these liberals are just so absurd, but the
world and it's a clown world because of that. And
then on the explicitly Nazi side, it's the Jews are
(24:43):
the ones making it be that way, and that's why
it's right. It's always that like that little leaf you
need to make. Yeah. And I mean I've seen even like,
uh about Tim Pool. Yeah, yeah, Like he's done videos
where he's like people say the Honker thing is like
about Nazis and stuff, but it's actually not. It's just
because the world is so nuts and it's like, yeah,
ye helping their buddy. Yeah, it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating.
(25:07):
I don't believe that James Woods is as four Chanders
would say, jew pilled um, which I don't think he
understands entirely what he's saying. He's old, he's old and
not smart. Um. It's like internet stuff, and its internet stuff.
Like someone probably told him it's a conservative thing and
(25:27):
he was like, well, okay, and what specifically why he
posted he was declaring war with hashtag clown Lady and
the clown lady in the picture. The woman who the
Tarrant client is looking at is a is a YouTuber
named little Lunchbox, and she provoked the ire of the
right wing when she complained about the Honkler meme, and
particularly complained about the appropriation of rainbow imagery by the right.
(25:48):
She said, I'm ready to go to motherfucking c l
war clown war over this. You're not going to take
a symbol of happiness and acceptance and multiculturalism and turn
it into something racist and antiseptic and homophobic. I think
she meant EDTI semitic and try ansphobic. Um, So that's like,
that's the reaction they wanted. That's the reaction they wanted.
And James Woods is declaring war on her in this.
(26:08):
But then his surponses got really weird because like, um
would spent the rest of the day like watching more
of and more of her footage, and like it seems
like he actually seriously did start to enjoy her stuff,
and then he started posting positive things about her. She's
my new favorite person on Twitter. I mean, she's certainly
committed to her position about things. She's willing to go
to war. I like her. I'm not kidding. I mean,
(26:29):
there's the clown stuff and the nuts of liberal stuff,
but she's likable. I don't know why I'm still smiling.
I started out making fun of her video, but now
I'm really curious about her, so, I mean that's charming
to me. He also might just have been backtracking with
someone was like, oh you you spread terrorist propping anity
and he's like a fuck but yeah, Now I was
lurking on h and the same day this happened, and
(26:51):
so I was able to watch them react to this
because they had created the original image that then got
chopped up of of Tarrant as honklude like that stuffed
on a chance Bull board. So they were very excited
to see someone is relatively mainstreams James would share it,
and they immediately then started taking pictures of little lunch
boxes face and photoshopping her with green skin and a
rainbow clown wig and turning her into a honkler, which
(27:12):
is just sort of the way the Internet works when
it does stuff like that. Um but I will say
I don't think James Woods quite knew what he was doing. No,
I mean, it's it's what happened. It's like their goal,
like you're not He's not looking at this and going
oh yeah, the terrorists and Hitler stuff. It's like he's going,
oh yeah, these clowns is clowns. When Donald Trump retweeted that,
(27:34):
um eh chan mem Hillary Clinton with a star of
David on it, that's the most it was like he
didn't think that was a Starve just said someone else
hates Hillary Fuck yeah. Yeah. It's it's the fact that
you are so connected to these communities that's the concern.
It's that, like, how did you see this racist thing
(27:55):
and why did you connect to it and and retweet it?
Like James would has some access to uh and relationship
with people who are sharing these Nazi things, He's just
not going, oh, yeah, they're Nazis. I guess their goal.
It's uh, it's stop set up, stop setting it's it's
it's not great. It's not the way I would prefer
(28:18):
things work in national politics. But here we are secret
Nazis tricking famous people into sharing their yes, yes, yeah,
that would be that would be good if that didn't happen,
and famous people reacting to it by generally saying, well,
I guess I'll defend Nazis now rather than admit that
I got tricked. It's great. I really love nineteen Yeah.
(28:39):
Pretending that it's not the problem and that there's nothing
nothing going on and there isn't a community of people
that actively do this on purpose, it makes me think
might just be a pretty good year comparative ever, the
best year of all of them. That seems negative ever ever, ever,
(29:02):
Welcome to the best of the yep, yep, you know everything,
so smart smart smarts. Yeah. Now, I don't know what
was going on with James Woods, and I won't pretend to,
but I do know that the ship posters on eight
Chan took to honk their memes like a duck takes
to racism. When I started writing this episode, I looked
through my giant document and saved a Chan posts, and
(29:24):
the first honkler me and I found on there was
from eight which was yeah again the same day that
James was made that post, although I think it happened
earlier than that, and I just didn't choose to save
those images. But here's a here's a here's here's an
example of one of the more baffling versions of this
meme that I really don't even know what's trying to
be conveyed there. Um, it's clearly based off the shining.
(29:45):
You've got, yeah, an axe coming through a bathroom where
a woman is half dressed. Uh, and then the hankler's
little face peering through the wall. Oh, she she's dressed
all sexy. Yeah, there might be some insult ship there.
It's really hard to say, uh yeah, yeah, I honestly
(30:11):
have no idea what the message of that is even
supposed to be. I guess keeping tom kind of thing.
I don't know thing going on there, No, I doubt it.
There's dildos on the shelf though, so I bet they'd
call her a stacy or something, right like, there's there's
some mixed messaging there, it seems, yeah, or maybe they're
just saying we're going to kill women who like dildo's yeah,
something like that, or just women the women, you know
(30:37):
what doesn't kill the women? What the products that support
this podcast? Yeah, I hope, I hope. Yep, they don't.
They don't good We've had all of our products, Daniels
saying this is a good idea. Well, I feel safe,
thank you. Got to buy them now. I thought they
were gonna harm women. But my knife, Yeah, everybody should
get their knife. Come back from the break. It's going
(30:59):
down alright. Time to get my staple a out products.
I don't know to this. Well, we're back, and because
we're coming back from a break, I'm going to attempt
to properly fling the thing with the sling and enough
of the direction that somebody with a weapon is able
to hit them out of the air and make these
(31:21):
now rather crumbled English muffles burst like a pinata filled
with gluten a gluten yata. Alright, alright, call shot. Yeah, no,
you're getting better. It went. It went to where it
was supposed to stay in this lane. Not eventually, but initially.
(31:45):
I'm enough to build up. Yes, whoa if you did
not duck, there's truly no way that I could have
defended myself from that. I mean ducking, that's right, if
I had. Robert, sorry to Katie for almost killing her. Katie,
(32:07):
I'm sorry for almost killing you. I was trying to hit,
so Katie, I don't have any choice but to accept
your apologies. I think you need it more than I do. Now, see,
if the machete had been there, you could have hit
the bagels. Will you toss back? I would have hurt
myself with a machete. You would have saved it. You
would have cut him in half. And we were like, oh,
it's amazing, how much damaged. No, no, they're mushed up, Daniel.
(32:31):
Daniel said, not enough, Robert, you're still employed. Good job. Well,
we'll have to change that. Cassing papers doesn't have quite
the I love tossing. I'm just a toss fan. I'm
a tosser. I don't know what that means, but British
(32:51):
people say, I think it has something to do with swivel, go,
swivel your tosser and then you do like oversea. That's
the British for for the butt your tosser. Oh, I
thought it was something else. I mean it might be
about uh analingus. Is that what you're referring to. I
don't know either way. I don't know what it means
(33:12):
that somebody with a tendency to show off or brag
an excessive and embarrassing way. Well there you go, because
I bragged about my tossing. Yeah, and it worked your
a tosser about yours. Boy. I hope nobody relies on
these English muffins for breakfast. Oh good? Were you? Are
you going to put them back? Well? Yeah, I'm not
(33:32):
gonna waste food. That's good. Thank you, Thank you for
praising me. You're good. I love being braised. The Honkler
meme quickly generalized into the clown World meme, which we
we talked about a little bit earlier. But it started
with the Honkler and then turned in the broader cloud
world thing it memes you're confusing. Clown World obviously involves
references to clowns aimed at making the point that our
modern world is social justice and treating women like people.
(33:54):
It's fundamentally absurd. Who actually has its origins back before
the Honkler meme. So this is one of the things
that's confusing about this. That wait, that women, Uh no, no,
the clown world. That yeah, I found clown world references
on archived discord conversations between fascists as early as two
thousand seventeen, which is well before the start of the meme,
(34:15):
although they seem it seems to have just been a
term that we're using rather than sort of a meme
in and of itself. Um So I'm gonna read a
little conversation from the Vibrant Diversity chat room, which was
frequented by many of the people who marched and organized
the Bloody Too thousand seventeen Unite the Right rally and Charlotte'sville.
A lot of those people do terrorisms. Sure, sure weird
that a lot of those people doing terrorism, A lot
(34:35):
of them, Like that's like a statistically significant non of
them have done a terrorism or like every couple of
months you see a terrorism done or like a suspected
terrorism done, and you're like, that person looks familiar. Oh,
here they are marching literally next to this other two
there marching right next to this terrorist. Cool quite something.
So these posts came after a long discussion about whether
(34:57):
or not transgender people should be able to serve the military.
Very woke takes ye, take a lot of things in consideration.
Horatio carry. Honestly, putting trannies on the front line is cruel.
Camp and Carl to the enemy. Horatio carry L O
L Vanguard. Seriously, they should be put in frontline service.
(35:18):
Horatio carry cannon fodder, Camp and Carl just don't wait
stinny armor weapons on them. Horatio carry tranny Core, Northern Underscore,
Confederate l O L. Such clown world. Thankfully, our president
all caps and a ri E has a simple solution
to trannies. No, so that's good. That's good. That was
unpleasant to listen to. That's the first reference I can
(35:40):
find a clown world in like one of those really
clear discussions. Thank you for hating it. It is good job, Robert,
as is usually the case, the clown World and Honkler
memes quickly traveled from the most extreme corners of the
Internet to more mainstream not get out of town, get
(36:01):
out of town Nazis. But then if somebody gets hit
when you're telling Nazis to get out of town, you'll
be declared domestic terrorists. It's the same. I love our assistant,
it's helpful, it's good, it has no flaws. I'm going
to read from right Wing Watch again. Punkler and clown
(36:22):
World memes were recently incorporated into goy Talk, a new
but growing web based white nationalist podcast. The show's hosts
advocate white nationalism in an attached way and embody the
same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white
supremacist movements in the United States conveyed in the reputation
of the word clown World. Goy Talk hosts express racist
and and do semitic views as a staple of their programming,
(36:43):
with guests that include David Duke, Christopher kent Well, and
Patrick Little. Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state
of the world and their ability to change it without
mass organized action, reminiscent of the violent writings of James
Mason in his book. Yeah, so always feel bad. I know,
a lovely Chris can't Well, who's a wonderful director whenever,
fortunate to have Hall and catch Fire a lot of
(37:06):
great sketch comedy back in the day too. Yeah, anyway, Yeah,
it's yeah, it's unfortunate. It's ironic that the good Chris
can't Well directed Halt and catch Fire because the bad
Chris Can't Well. I would not have a problem if
he were to halt. There is nailed it beautiful. So
guys like Christopher can't Well and David Duke are are
fundamentally different parts of the fascist media ecosystem from say
(37:30):
the guys on four chan. Um, and the fact that
folks associated with them had latched onto the Honkler meme
is evidence that it had essentially spread to the uncool
sections of the Nazi right by by this point, by
kind of like the middle of this year earlier, you know, quarter,
first quarter this year, the end of that quarter. Um.
So my guess is that the channers behind Honkler probably
reacted to this into the same way we all did
(37:52):
when our parents first got onto Facebook and started with
the spreading minions memes like this is kind of bat
for Nazis, and they're like David Duke's and on it
to find a new Yeah, the crying Nazis doing it now.
Fuck yeah, here's a here's a note. Yeah, you're all
fucking torks. None of you're not cool. Stop it. You're
(38:14):
as cool as David Duke. That's your note for the Nazis,
for the Nazis. Well, I'll let the Nazis know. Yeah,
like you were really directing that directly. The Nazis made
direct Robert. I will let the Nazis please let them know. Yeah,
it is now filtered. That it being Honkler has now
filtered thoroughly out of the weird right wing Internet and
(38:34):
into the streets. I'm not precisely sure when the first
fascist demonstrators started marching in clown gear. The first time
I saw it was in May two nineteen, when Joey
Gibson of Patriot Prayer held a rally in Albany, New
York with the tiny gaggle of Proud Boys. Now, this
wasn't away game for Joey, who usually marches in Portland
in Seattle, and it was a huge flop. Nobody even
showed up to counter protest him. Only one journalist showed
(38:57):
up to write about it, and the whole event was
forgotten basically as soon as it happened. The only noteworthy
part of this rally was the fact that several proud
boys showed up in clown face and guys, I I
will include some of these pictures on the site. You
do owe it to yourself. This is There's been some
sad clowns in the past. I feel like that's a
thing that was regularly done. This guy here is the
(39:18):
saddest clown. Oh, you're a sad Your pity is warring
with your disgust, isn't Oh yeah, it's like taking an
an acid after drinking a bunch of acid one I
think it is. I don't know. Is it that one good?
He just looks so dejected, like the snoopy music is playing.
(39:41):
Charlie Brown. Yeah, somebody pulled a fucking football out from
the under the kids that kids clown shoe. Uh yeah, um,
I was expecting one. I got another one, delicious tree.
There's some great ones. There's some really great ones. Now.
A month or so later, the clown World meme reached
what I have to suspect will be it's saddest form,
perhaps it's apothesis. Alex Jones featured it on info wars
(40:06):
now Cool. Jones has a long history of pulling content
from four chan and e chan, mainly in the form
of conspiracy theories and the very dumbest of memes. This
time he appropriated the term clown world, which again was
first coined by literal Nazis to describe the nihilistic rage
that they felt with their inability to stop people from
race mixing or accepting LGBT people. Jones, however, used it
for his special coverage of the Democratic debates. Info wars
(40:29):
dot com presents clown World, the Greatest comedy show on Earth.
The promotional graphic features all the Democratic candidates in crudely
photoshopped clown face. Elizabeth Warren also wears a Native American headdress.
Bernie Sanders is a mime. Joe Biden is for some reason,
done up as Jack Nicholson's version of the joker. I'm
really I really don't understand like that all they're all
(40:50):
different types of clown, like Elizabeth Warren. Okay, obviously that's
the one thing. Like everyone clazy, right wing pundit hits
her for the most terrified get I get Sanders from
mine because he's the oldest stuer, So like, yeah, you
haven't be the old timiest clown. Why is Joe Biden
Jack Nicholson's show weird because he carries an absurdly longhandgun
(41:11):
that he uses to shoot the bat plane out of
the air? Does he actually probably you know what? Points
to Alex Jones. That's fair. Well, he also fell on
that bad of acid and Joe Biden's I exploded that
before that from this is before that is before I
exploded the night before that was later. Very cool, very cool.
(41:36):
Check out the podcast Knowledge Fight if you want some
coverage of Jones's clown World show. But obviously it wasn't good.
And yeah, and he's not even fun anymore because so
many people are threatening to and actively suing him that
he can't he can't even be that fun. Yeah, he's
(41:56):
really trying trying to tone it down, trying realizes, oh,
I guess I can get sued for Yeah. Yeah. Now,
about a month before I wrote this, at the end
of September two, nineteen, a straight Pride parade was held
in Boston. It was organized by a coalition of fascists,
outright Neo Nazis, and Milonei Illanopolis. During a powerfully sad
(42:19):
press conference for the event, one of the organizers was asked,
what do you say to taxpayers who want to know
why you're wasting the city's resources because you three guys
can't get laid. The organizer responded, the world is clown world.
The world's gone crazy because there's nothing wrong with being straight.
What great? Okay man, okay man. At least it's very
listen and like a clear thought, really an answer, really
(42:43):
a solid answer. Several attendees at the parade were photograph
dressed as clowns. Two men wore Honkler costumes complete with
green face paint. Oddly enough, the counter protest of this
event also included clowns. Well. Activists on the ground, Yeah well,
activists on the ground battled with the Boston police, who
went a little bit nut fuck on the demonstrators. Online,
anti fascists started flooding Twitter and other social media apps
(43:05):
with pictures and footage of large groups of clowns, tagging
the footage as part of the Straight Pride Parade. It wasn't,
of course, this was just unrelated clown footage. But that's
where things sit now. We've gone from activists dressing as
clowns to keep each other's spirits up to marching in
clown costumes to counter serious uniform neo Nazis too, fascist
demonstrators willingly dressing themselves as clowns, while online anti fascists
(43:27):
flood the internet with fake clown footage in order to
distract from their real event. You guys excited about that's
fun where we are? What a fun little episode? What fun?
I'm more excited about where we're heading. I went on
regarding clowns, hating clowns, starting to like them, back to
(43:47):
hating them even more than I hated them originally. I
do hope that what we see, if this evolution continues,
is two large groups of functionally indistinguishable clowns beating each
other in the street while the police just go, who
do we tear gas everybody? Yeah? I think I think
that's what we call a civil war. Yes, it's that,
it's that false equivalence. Uh, you're help, you're helping a
(44:10):
little bit where it's like it's like the sneeches, you
keep switch sneeches on beaches. Yeah, you keep switching back
and forth, and you're like, well, who's the clown? What
are you protesting for or against? Oh? You you you're
you're a fascist, but I'm not. But to you, I am.
I guess we're both clowns. Now, it's great, that's not
(44:31):
I disagree. Sorry, well, I hope this was helpful. Very
I now I know I have a new enemy. Yes,
clowns still clowns, still clowns. Still speaking of clowning. Oh,
he's going to do one more. I'm gonna try it.
I'm gonna try it. I don't think you're gonna do it.
Don't try do it. Thank you, Cody, Thank you for
(44:51):
believing in me. Absolutely start off by going down. Not
a bad decision. I gave you the machete. I can't.
I'm I'm specifically not Cody, get the machete scares me.
Daniel has the machete, Daniel has jail. You'd be careful
of that. So if you make sure the ocean guy
(45:13):
doesn't come in. All right, I'm gonna close my I'm
gonna do this like like Luke Skywalker. Yeah, oh my god,
Well that wasn't great. Well, guys, it's another episode done,
another miserable failure in the bag. In the bag, we
(45:33):
did it, You did it, Robert. You guys have some
plug doubles to plug Yeah Daniel still check out our
new Yeah. Also our podcast Even More News. That's the
one that Cody and I do and YouTube show called
Some More Same. Checkout video versions of the news. You
(45:58):
can help support that by gonna have a Patreon dot
com slash Some More News. So much to check out,
so much to check out. And if you want to
endanger the people around you by throwing breakfast food recklessly,
Thomas Breakfast like no other, the original Knooks and Crannies
English Models. He threw Knooks and Crannies that I love you.
(46:20):
You can find this podcast behind the Bastards dot com.
You can find uh T shirts on t public. You
can find me it at Bastards pot uh and you
can listen to the Worst Year Ever, the podcast that's
about a year that's not gonna be very good. Do it,
do it, do it, do it, do it. You're gonna
let it cool
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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