Alt-Right Racism Adapts: from Evalion to Brittany Pettibone.
14 July 2019 [link youtube]
Here are the remnants of Evalion's youtube career, preserved by Leafy (LeafyIsHere) making fun of her: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjbbE817Q-SNS4biXLeDIDW6LahYh5qQo
Youtube Automatic Transcription
happy birthday to you happy birthday
it's a [ __ ] Hitler it was only in the year 2016 that a valiant briefly became world famous here on YouTube a valiant was a political extremists seemingly a ranting lunatic with her sincerely or insincerely here on YouTube and she had videos reaching 5 million 10 million 20 million people or more don't you hate those lazy [ __ ] who are never satisfied even after they are given reparation nope I really can't say I do so as many of you guys know a few days ago we found a very unique youtuber and that youtuber went by the name of availa on she was racist and was literally being promoted by the [ __ ] KKK not a joke do you despise the Jews as much as I do and for millions of people those videos by that fringe lunatic figure here on YouTube that was the context in which for the first time they heard the political term alt-right a lot of people today even critics of the old right forget just how extreme the meaning of the term already was back in 2016 when a lot of people in the mainstream press even in the mainstream youtube viewing audience were encountering the word for the first time coming out of the mouth of haveli on another lunatic fringe political figure who came to prominence at that time was Brian Rua how can I tell some anecdotes about him in this video because I wants to talk to the guy I also want to reflect a little bit on how the erasure of political extremism from YouTube has changed both political reality and the perception of these people and how we can cope with extremism and political problems just googling around now I see unsurprisingly that most of Brian ruas videos here on YouTube have been deleted valiance videos long long time ago all of them were deleted and she repeatedly tried to start new YouTube channels and were also shut down completely understandable but the result is in her case the only videos that remain up are actually some comedians making fun of her in a sense that's important it's important that we have the echo of what happened historically at least we have the critique of her the comedian is ridiculing her those two under the current guidelines you tube there at least demonetised they might well be deleted in the fullness of time here on youtube if you criticize someone for being racist that is treated as tantamount to being racist yourself I've had to deal with this and I guess I should pause here and put in a disclaimer ethnically I'm Jewish I'm not a member of the Jewish faith I mean politically right now if I had to choose between voting for Bernie Sanders and voting for Donald Trump I would vote for Bernie Sanders within a European political context I think I'd be a pragmatist near the center but you know politically I have absolutely no sympathy with the old right or far right people I especially have no sympathy with these of these figures and it's strange that I think people including critics of the all right they now tend to remember the old right as if it went been more moderate all along whereas in fact it was much more extreme but most of the evidence of that extremism even from us recently as 2016 has been deleted it's just literally been erased from the Internet and the members the outright themselves had to adapt by using code words and indirect forms of expression so this doesn't just change the perception of the problem it changes the problem itself so what I saw today in googling around for Brian Rula is that there's almost no trace of just what an extremist he was he does have a current YouTube channel or any trace of his history as a neo-nazi and as Hitler sephora's is gone and I see a few websites and a few other YouTube channels trying to warn people look this guy Brian Rua is going giving lectures he's doing this and that as a political activist he's still trying to be a spokesperson for Buddhism he's still presenting himself as an expert on Buddhism it's a religion um but you need to be aware there's this other side there's this darker side to his character there's this darker side to what he represents and advocates for but looking around YouTube today or even google searching the whole Internet today you're not gonna find it so look obviously I mean what these people represent politically is terrible but by taking away their ability to state their terrible views honestly and openly what have we done we've created this really really strange difficult inextricable puzzle where people can't really criticize Brian brewer for what he is they can't criticize Valiant for what she is they can't show clips of these people seeing what they really say you know you'll be censored yourself if you do this and in a weird way in Brian ruas case the result is that he gets to carry on with impunity he now gets to present himself to the world as some kind of respectable scholar of Buddhism which he is not or as a lay preacher lay disciple of the tera vaada Buddhist faith you know and in the case of a valley on we're lucky in a sense that we have a record about what an extremist she was preserved by some comedians we'll give a link below this video some people making fun of her and have clips of what she actually said in the course of criticizing or making fun but now if that disappears then then what are we left with and then as I say the the the next stage in the evolution was just that it trained the alt-right to present themselves with these complex code words just as we take Constantinople it's a fun way of saying you know we might be in a chaotic situation in a few years in Europe hey everyone it's Cory McCarthy this is a video I never expected to make and it is certainly not fitting for this channel but that said it had to be made this once as some of you may be aware by now someone who I will on name but who is involved in a good deal of vegan internal drama on YouTube has released a video about me accusing me of being a racist I didn't watch the whole thing but I can speak clearly about where I come from my thoughts for clarification on this matter if you want to find out more about this topic the golden one share as many of my views so I suggest you check out his channel as he discusses these topics in far greater detail as I tried to spread the good word the sacred word of enlightenment on Facebook and I have and I have 22,000 followers there but at the end of the day this is not a victory for the people who reported two-year-old picture I I am NOT jesting it's a two-year-old picture with a pro-european message I don't have the picture here right now but it was nothing hateful or anything it was just our Pro natural East European message now youtubers partnered up with ADL to silence right-wing channels if you watch my videos and I'm not ultra cleared with everything it's just that I can't say everything outright the course yeah yet again when I reminisce about all these years and a tremendously hard work of putting into everything I don't want to jeopardize it by you know the need for being ultra clear in all regards just as really take Constantinople it's a fun way of saying you know we might be in a chaotic situation in a few years in Europe that said I have no problem with limited immigration so long as those immigrating genuinely love the country its people its culture and its values they have to have a strong desire and intent to assimilate to the best of their ability I don't for one second believe that anyone should be treated as less due to their ethnicity nor do I harbor even an ounce of hatred for anyone I simply believe that everyone has a right to cherish and preserve their own homelands ethnicities and cultures yes I am proud of my European ancestry and I do not feel any white guilt for goings on in the past by people of the past I think the whole concept of white peel is absolutely absurd and as you can imagine take issue with many of the thoughts remoted by globalists and the mainstream media I also do not believe that multiculturalism works northern importing hordes of people with vastly different cultures to our own is beneficial to either them or us in the long run just look at the turmoil and violence ever increasing in Europe and the racial tensions we already have in the United States as it is the the next stage in the evolution was just that it trained the alt-right to present themselves with these complex code words indirect forms of expression so on and so forth that only makes it more difficult for all of us to address you know what their beliefs really are what their assumptions really are even to present facts even to carry on a discussion or a debate where we really get to you know the basis of what their concerns are or what their goals are what their what they're trying to accomplish I mean ultimately in a democracy no political claim can be treated as unthinkable it takes tremendous terrible patience to really address the public's concerns I'll give you a great example I mean you know the collapse of the the World Trade Center after September 11th a lot of people's concerns about that are stupid and ignorant and it takes tremendous patience to set out an argument we look at the facts of the architecture explain what happened and why explain how this is how this is possible even getting into the technical details of how the airplanes were hijacked but don't you think that's an important role in a democracy don't you think it's important to explain to people how these things were possible how they happened um people are stupid and ignorant and it's got to be the role of someone to educate and engage the public and so our society can roll ahead and become more sophisticated and more cosmopolitan and not retreat into more and more self-righteous ignorance I guess I guess that's really the fundamental concern I have it's not ignorant it's the overlap of self-righteousness and ignorance it's real it's really dangerous and as all these people show its appealing it's appealing to an audience so look how did I end up having a conversation with Brian Roth this is years and years ago I would guess about six years ago five and a half years ago I talked to this guy via Skype and I'm sure I still have the emails that led up to the conversation if I wanted to figure out the exact date once out Scott when I talked to Brian Rua at that time he did not have a single video on YouTube that had anything to do with right-wing ideology that had anything to do with Hitler he did not have a single video on YouTube to do with the Nazis there was no overt indication at all of his fascination with that kind of political extremism none there was nothing overtly anti-semitic however because I was a scholar of Buddhism when I watched his videos just about Buddhist philosophy I could tell that he was using Nancy sources I could tell I knew the source material well enough so I mean it's really hard to come up with a parallel in Christianity but like if someone really knew different trains of thought in the interpretation of the Gospels and they could identify Oh like you know your interpretation is from this school of thought you could tell I could tell just from what he said about about Buddhism at that time that he was on the slippery slope into becoming an outright fascist or Nazi that he was reading that kind of that kind of material now I was in a very strange situation when I decided to reach out to him and talk to him by by Skype Brian at that time he openly said on his channel I think it was a little bit vague I'm not criticizing it for this but he vaguely stood that he had recently been divorced and moved to a new home and it was obviously a period of transition he was obviously you know kind of vulnerable I think I think it's not unfair to say that he was he was in danger of losing his mind he looked like he was kind of on the edge of a collapse or breakdown and in the other hand I could see that he was in part really sincere in preaching Theravada Buddhism so I really was an expert in tera vaada Buddhism as much as much as any sane person was at that time and I say that advisedly you know I met and spoke to many of the greatest scholars terrified of Buddhism that were alive during my generation and of course there were there were greater scholars than myself what was rare was to meet someone who had done the scholarship and it remained sane and detached and down-to-earth and honest and it would actually answer questions you had so I could give an example if you want to talk about the history of slavery in Buddhism good luck you talked to one of those guys somebody's really ideologically committed to tera vaada Buddhism or someone who's just gone crazy after being stuck this way for years you are not gonna get a straighter honest answer about the history of slavery in the Buddhist religion where I was someone who even if I was a less accomplished scholar I'd done the reading I've done the research and I tell you the truth about something like that even if the truth was embarrassing to the history of religion I'll mention also a once had a had a conversation with a genuinely devout Buddhist monk a Buddhist monk who even though I dislike the guy personally I really do I can say as a sincere compliment to him that he really was a sincere monk and a sincere scholar of the foot ISM he tried in his way to live to live that life he tried to walk the ancient narrow path and he said to me one day we were in his library in a monastery in Sri Lanka and he said to me one day sitting in the humble chair next to the bookshelf and it's a small room full of books he said to me you know I saw many of the scholars he said most of the scholars who study he put his philosophy they'd go crazy and I'll always remember use the phrase they lose their marbles and he sat there laughing just we're calling just thinking about it was like you know he was recalling the different scholars have put a semi new you know over over decades I guess and that they they've gone crazy and you know of course there's a lot of evidence for that I know from meeting some of us people face-to-face but also if you read their writing carefully even when it's been edited sure a lot of the scholars of Buddhism went crazy it was an interesting wistful moment he was sitting there reflecting on this but this is how I replied without missing a beat I leaned in and I said to him you presume that they were not crazy before they chose to become scholars of Buddhist philosophy so they had a chat about that because that's a different kind of skepticism I have is how sane or how crazy with these people before they got started and yeah in this context we could ask this about Brian Rula also it's not so easy to say that he got involved with Buddhism and went crazy and it's not so he said he got involved with Nazism in one crazy anyway I decided this is again something like six years ago I decided to reach out to the guy and offer to speak to him by Skype partly just because of that most simple sympathetic thing I thought if our positions were reversed I would really value it if someone like that reached out to me because here I was my position was I'd already been a scholar of Pali of tarapada put a summon at this experience and I could recognize in him the little bit of you know sincere work and good intention he done but I could also recognize that he was either going crazy or really was crazy he'd gotten divorced from his wife and so on it seemed like he was in a difficult transitional period in his life he could probably use the help or at least using the conversation so a god touched them by email set up a Skype conversation and we had this one long Skype call and the issue of the extent to which he was flirting with or reading nasi sources I waited until about the middle of the conversation so I didn't just confront him with that I didn't just abruptly say to him look are you secretly some kind of see but I did bring it up um one of the interesting things about that conversation you know he was formerly married to a woman who was not white not European he was he was married to this woman which again given that the guy is literally a neo-nazi he's literally a pro-hitler neo-nazi who he literally grows the moustache and everything he's some facetious amidst photos this is a little bit surprising but you know he told me that you know he fell in love with this woman and married her they were together I guess for years you know I forget and that she was a spirit medium you know she would channel spirits and she would do these performances these rituals involving ghosts and she earned her money that way you know people paid a significant amount of money for to do these I know if you call them seances or ghost channeling ceremonies and it was obvious to me that part of the reason he fell in love with her in part of their relationship was that he really respected this about her or you know he also had some kind of spiritual curiosity at least at the time when they first got together as husband and wife and you know we talked about the turning point in his life where he really had to admit to himself that this was a kind of scam there was something you know this was something ultimately fraudulent that people were paying money for something that was misleading or insincere around real and I thought that was interesting because we were having this conversation in the context of him still being committed to quite a lot of supernatural and impossible stuff within Buddhism he was still defending those beliefs and then also he was reaching out for and bringing in even crazier more more ridiculous stuff and adding it to Buddhism if you like so he at that time had both YouTube videos and I think website pages discussing his beliefs in UFOs meaning space aliens and UFOs discussing his belief in Sasquatch let leprechauns like any anything like this and he would try to construe that like the belief in leprechauns was validated by ancient Buddhist texts and you know in the friendliest way possible I confronted when that said look why would you do this with this just this discredits you as a scholar of Buddhism and the ancient when the people who wrote this ancient text wrote it you know they couldn't possibly have been thinking of the modern American idea of a sasquatch so like nobody what are you doing here and I was I was you know politely enough challenging him on his whole kind of supernatural approach to those texts now you know a second I'm ethnically Jewish it's somewhat bizarre for me to reflect that after that conversation I had with him and I must be one of very very few people to have challenged him on you know his view of Buddhism I mean I know he spends time with Buddhist monks he still leaves lectures on Buddhist philosophy to this day that shortly after that he got into this downward spiral of alt-right extremism he did an interview with a valium the infamous neo-nazi who's been mentioned here that's one of the things he was most famous for I mean a valley and had millions and millions of views and then as soon as his name was attached to her they did a series of videos together not just one so he had several videos with her appearing on his channel and he interviewed her and so on um you know he became notorious on the internet for these you know Nancy extremist views that he that he started spouting I do have to wonder looking back if my challenging him on the supernatural hocus pocus aspects of Buddhism at that time when he was reflecting on his divorce in his marriage and his disillusionment with spirituality and ghosts to some extent a wonder of that resulted in him trying to reach out for something real reach out for something more meaningful in his life I've been talking a lot lately to Faraday speaks Faraday speaks in the YouTube channel the guy's real name is Caleb Cain and you know Faraday has been doing this work trying to rehabilitate or chair all right people people who believe in these right-wing and sometimes racists and I was anti-semitic ideals and you know at the same time I think he recognizes I think this because I've talked about him I've talked about with him in his opinion he recognizes that a lot of people are reaching out for something meaningful they're reaching out for something real they're reaching out for a way to make the world a better place and it's tragic that this is what they they kept on to they grab on to this horrible conspiracy theory nonsense but nevertheless you know you have to recognize the intentions they're on a really really basic level and then the next element of it that's tragic it's argue this with Faraday just a couple days ago is that a lot of these people the reason why their parents don't intervene and don't say hey wait stop you're going crazy the reason why maybe their girlfriends or boyfriend's don't intervene and say hey wait stuff go crazy is that for many of them the way they respond to making contact with this extremist ideology is they get more motivated with their health with fitness they get motivated to start reading history I mean you know stereotypically all of a sudden they're interested in history of the Roman Empire all of a sudden they're interested in you know more important nonfiction literature about the history of Europe the history of quote-unquote the West they get interested in these kinds of things it's very easy for the people surrounding these ideologue the people surrounding these true believers to observe their first steps into an extremist cult as positive rather than negative and of course I think that's an interesting contrast to how people might perceive someone stepping into Buddhism or what have you but there's no doubt that for a lot of those people they find in that ideology just like just like the ideology of Jordan Peterson they find in it's some kind of motivation some kind of touch to quit playing video games for many of them quit watching pornography that's always an issue they want to talk about to get on a more or pure Tanika self-disciplined lifestyle but also as they say for them they start exercising that part of their character that's ultimately caring and concerned about making the world a better place what I hope is that for a lot of these people it's a phase that they'll grow out of when I look at the ideologies that have come and gone during my lifetime I remember being on the streets when the the Occupy Wall Street protests were happening I was married at that time you know split up with the woman I was married to I remember both of us were there and we both said look this Occupy Wall Street movement it's gonna come and go in just a couple of years maybe a couple months maybe a couple years whatever we said them but this is this is not gonna last and meanwhile there's this other set of protests that we were really interesting to like that were going to there these protests were First Nations people the indigenous people Canada Native Americans Korea's give way more there were these other protests going on at the same time like this struggle this political problem this has already gone on for at least a hundred years and this is still going to be going on ten years from now it's probably a lot of 50 years now 100 this is really important this is really deep we could see the difference between something evanescent and shallow something really deep and durable there in the same way I really don't think any of the elements of all right right current fashionable right-wing extremism I don't think any of them are durable I hope that the desire to make the world a better place the desire to help and the curiosity that led people into that outright trap I hope that that will be durable I hope that that will survive it and I noticed that Brian Rula is crazy and evil as he may be he seems to have given up on that extremist ideology and gone back to trying to be some kind of Buddhist preacher I know that a valiant as crazy as she was she made statements on the internet they were in written text form explaining that she was no longer racist she no longer believed in killing or hating anybody she made a whole series of statements about how she went through a personal progression and she realized that a lot of the things she believed about the history of world war ii and history of europe were wrong she's probably probably both of them are still crazy probably both of them are still crazy but they may at least be less dangerous and unfortunately with the way internet censorship has changed the public can't see that transformation the erasure of the steps along the way it makes it difficult to hold those people to account like if someone today and Vancouver is wanting to check who is this guy giving a lecture on Buddhism who is he really what is it what's his political background noise represent when you google that now you're not gonna find any that evidence the evidence is gone it makes it harder to hold them to account and I think it makes it impossible for most regular people to learn from their mistakes [Music]
it's a [ __ ] Hitler it was only in the year 2016 that a valiant briefly became world famous here on YouTube a valiant was a political extremists seemingly a ranting lunatic with her sincerely or insincerely here on YouTube and she had videos reaching 5 million 10 million 20 million people or more don't you hate those lazy [ __ ] who are never satisfied even after they are given reparation nope I really can't say I do so as many of you guys know a few days ago we found a very unique youtuber and that youtuber went by the name of availa on she was racist and was literally being promoted by the [ __ ] KKK not a joke do you despise the Jews as much as I do and for millions of people those videos by that fringe lunatic figure here on YouTube that was the context in which for the first time they heard the political term alt-right a lot of people today even critics of the old right forget just how extreme the meaning of the term already was back in 2016 when a lot of people in the mainstream press even in the mainstream youtube viewing audience were encountering the word for the first time coming out of the mouth of haveli on another lunatic fringe political figure who came to prominence at that time was Brian Rua how can I tell some anecdotes about him in this video because I wants to talk to the guy I also want to reflect a little bit on how the erasure of political extremism from YouTube has changed both political reality and the perception of these people and how we can cope with extremism and political problems just googling around now I see unsurprisingly that most of Brian ruas videos here on YouTube have been deleted valiance videos long long time ago all of them were deleted and she repeatedly tried to start new YouTube channels and were also shut down completely understandable but the result is in her case the only videos that remain up are actually some comedians making fun of her in a sense that's important it's important that we have the echo of what happened historically at least we have the critique of her the comedian is ridiculing her those two under the current guidelines you tube there at least demonetised they might well be deleted in the fullness of time here on youtube if you criticize someone for being racist that is treated as tantamount to being racist yourself I've had to deal with this and I guess I should pause here and put in a disclaimer ethnically I'm Jewish I'm not a member of the Jewish faith I mean politically right now if I had to choose between voting for Bernie Sanders and voting for Donald Trump I would vote for Bernie Sanders within a European political context I think I'd be a pragmatist near the center but you know politically I have absolutely no sympathy with the old right or far right people I especially have no sympathy with these of these figures and it's strange that I think people including critics of the all right they now tend to remember the old right as if it went been more moderate all along whereas in fact it was much more extreme but most of the evidence of that extremism even from us recently as 2016 has been deleted it's just literally been erased from the Internet and the members the outright themselves had to adapt by using code words and indirect forms of expression so this doesn't just change the perception of the problem it changes the problem itself so what I saw today in googling around for Brian Rula is that there's almost no trace of just what an extremist he was he does have a current YouTube channel or any trace of his history as a neo-nazi and as Hitler sephora's is gone and I see a few websites and a few other YouTube channels trying to warn people look this guy Brian Rua is going giving lectures he's doing this and that as a political activist he's still trying to be a spokesperson for Buddhism he's still presenting himself as an expert on Buddhism it's a religion um but you need to be aware there's this other side there's this darker side to his character there's this darker side to what he represents and advocates for but looking around YouTube today or even google searching the whole Internet today you're not gonna find it so look obviously I mean what these people represent politically is terrible but by taking away their ability to state their terrible views honestly and openly what have we done we've created this really really strange difficult inextricable puzzle where people can't really criticize Brian brewer for what he is they can't criticize Valiant for what she is they can't show clips of these people seeing what they really say you know you'll be censored yourself if you do this and in a weird way in Brian ruas case the result is that he gets to carry on with impunity he now gets to present himself to the world as some kind of respectable scholar of Buddhism which he is not or as a lay preacher lay disciple of the tera vaada Buddhist faith you know and in the case of a valley on we're lucky in a sense that we have a record about what an extremist she was preserved by some comedians we'll give a link below this video some people making fun of her and have clips of what she actually said in the course of criticizing or making fun but now if that disappears then then what are we left with and then as I say the the the next stage in the evolution was just that it trained the alt-right to present themselves with these complex code words just as we take Constantinople it's a fun way of saying you know we might be in a chaotic situation in a few years in Europe hey everyone it's Cory McCarthy this is a video I never expected to make and it is certainly not fitting for this channel but that said it had to be made this once as some of you may be aware by now someone who I will on name but who is involved in a good deal of vegan internal drama on YouTube has released a video about me accusing me of being a racist I didn't watch the whole thing but I can speak clearly about where I come from my thoughts for clarification on this matter if you want to find out more about this topic the golden one share as many of my views so I suggest you check out his channel as he discusses these topics in far greater detail as I tried to spread the good word the sacred word of enlightenment on Facebook and I have and I have 22,000 followers there but at the end of the day this is not a victory for the people who reported two-year-old picture I I am NOT jesting it's a two-year-old picture with a pro-european message I don't have the picture here right now but it was nothing hateful or anything it was just our Pro natural East European message now youtubers partnered up with ADL to silence right-wing channels if you watch my videos and I'm not ultra cleared with everything it's just that I can't say everything outright the course yeah yet again when I reminisce about all these years and a tremendously hard work of putting into everything I don't want to jeopardize it by you know the need for being ultra clear in all regards just as really take Constantinople it's a fun way of saying you know we might be in a chaotic situation in a few years in Europe that said I have no problem with limited immigration so long as those immigrating genuinely love the country its people its culture and its values they have to have a strong desire and intent to assimilate to the best of their ability I don't for one second believe that anyone should be treated as less due to their ethnicity nor do I harbor even an ounce of hatred for anyone I simply believe that everyone has a right to cherish and preserve their own homelands ethnicities and cultures yes I am proud of my European ancestry and I do not feel any white guilt for goings on in the past by people of the past I think the whole concept of white peel is absolutely absurd and as you can imagine take issue with many of the thoughts remoted by globalists and the mainstream media I also do not believe that multiculturalism works northern importing hordes of people with vastly different cultures to our own is beneficial to either them or us in the long run just look at the turmoil and violence ever increasing in Europe and the racial tensions we already have in the United States as it is the the next stage in the evolution was just that it trained the alt-right to present themselves with these complex code words indirect forms of expression so on and so forth that only makes it more difficult for all of us to address you know what their beliefs really are what their assumptions really are even to present facts even to carry on a discussion or a debate where we really get to you know the basis of what their concerns are or what their goals are what their what they're trying to accomplish I mean ultimately in a democracy no political claim can be treated as unthinkable it takes tremendous terrible patience to really address the public's concerns I'll give you a great example I mean you know the collapse of the the World Trade Center after September 11th a lot of people's concerns about that are stupid and ignorant and it takes tremendous patience to set out an argument we look at the facts of the architecture explain what happened and why explain how this is how this is possible even getting into the technical details of how the airplanes were hijacked but don't you think that's an important role in a democracy don't you think it's important to explain to people how these things were possible how they happened um people are stupid and ignorant and it's got to be the role of someone to educate and engage the public and so our society can roll ahead and become more sophisticated and more cosmopolitan and not retreat into more and more self-righteous ignorance I guess I guess that's really the fundamental concern I have it's not ignorant it's the overlap of self-righteousness and ignorance it's real it's really dangerous and as all these people show its appealing it's appealing to an audience so look how did I end up having a conversation with Brian Roth this is years and years ago I would guess about six years ago five and a half years ago I talked to this guy via Skype and I'm sure I still have the emails that led up to the conversation if I wanted to figure out the exact date once out Scott when I talked to Brian Rua at that time he did not have a single video on YouTube that had anything to do with right-wing ideology that had anything to do with Hitler he did not have a single video on YouTube to do with the Nazis there was no overt indication at all of his fascination with that kind of political extremism none there was nothing overtly anti-semitic however because I was a scholar of Buddhism when I watched his videos just about Buddhist philosophy I could tell that he was using Nancy sources I could tell I knew the source material well enough so I mean it's really hard to come up with a parallel in Christianity but like if someone really knew different trains of thought in the interpretation of the Gospels and they could identify Oh like you know your interpretation is from this school of thought you could tell I could tell just from what he said about about Buddhism at that time that he was on the slippery slope into becoming an outright fascist or Nazi that he was reading that kind of that kind of material now I was in a very strange situation when I decided to reach out to him and talk to him by by Skype Brian at that time he openly said on his channel I think it was a little bit vague I'm not criticizing it for this but he vaguely stood that he had recently been divorced and moved to a new home and it was obviously a period of transition he was obviously you know kind of vulnerable I think I think it's not unfair to say that he was he was in danger of losing his mind he looked like he was kind of on the edge of a collapse or breakdown and in the other hand I could see that he was in part really sincere in preaching Theravada Buddhism so I really was an expert in tera vaada Buddhism as much as much as any sane person was at that time and I say that advisedly you know I met and spoke to many of the greatest scholars terrified of Buddhism that were alive during my generation and of course there were there were greater scholars than myself what was rare was to meet someone who had done the scholarship and it remained sane and detached and down-to-earth and honest and it would actually answer questions you had so I could give an example if you want to talk about the history of slavery in Buddhism good luck you talked to one of those guys somebody's really ideologically committed to tera vaada Buddhism or someone who's just gone crazy after being stuck this way for years you are not gonna get a straighter honest answer about the history of slavery in the Buddhist religion where I was someone who even if I was a less accomplished scholar I'd done the reading I've done the research and I tell you the truth about something like that even if the truth was embarrassing to the history of religion I'll mention also a once had a had a conversation with a genuinely devout Buddhist monk a Buddhist monk who even though I dislike the guy personally I really do I can say as a sincere compliment to him that he really was a sincere monk and a sincere scholar of the foot ISM he tried in his way to live to live that life he tried to walk the ancient narrow path and he said to me one day we were in his library in a monastery in Sri Lanka and he said to me one day sitting in the humble chair next to the bookshelf and it's a small room full of books he said to me you know I saw many of the scholars he said most of the scholars who study he put his philosophy they'd go crazy and I'll always remember use the phrase they lose their marbles and he sat there laughing just we're calling just thinking about it was like you know he was recalling the different scholars have put a semi new you know over over decades I guess and that they they've gone crazy and you know of course there's a lot of evidence for that I know from meeting some of us people face-to-face but also if you read their writing carefully even when it's been edited sure a lot of the scholars of Buddhism went crazy it was an interesting wistful moment he was sitting there reflecting on this but this is how I replied without missing a beat I leaned in and I said to him you presume that they were not crazy before they chose to become scholars of Buddhist philosophy so they had a chat about that because that's a different kind of skepticism I have is how sane or how crazy with these people before they got started and yeah in this context we could ask this about Brian Rula also it's not so easy to say that he got involved with Buddhism and went crazy and it's not so he said he got involved with Nazism in one crazy anyway I decided this is again something like six years ago I decided to reach out to the guy and offer to speak to him by Skype partly just because of that most simple sympathetic thing I thought if our positions were reversed I would really value it if someone like that reached out to me because here I was my position was I'd already been a scholar of Pali of tarapada put a summon at this experience and I could recognize in him the little bit of you know sincere work and good intention he done but I could also recognize that he was either going crazy or really was crazy he'd gotten divorced from his wife and so on it seemed like he was in a difficult transitional period in his life he could probably use the help or at least using the conversation so a god touched them by email set up a Skype conversation and we had this one long Skype call and the issue of the extent to which he was flirting with or reading nasi sources I waited until about the middle of the conversation so I didn't just confront him with that I didn't just abruptly say to him look are you secretly some kind of see but I did bring it up um one of the interesting things about that conversation you know he was formerly married to a woman who was not white not European he was he was married to this woman which again given that the guy is literally a neo-nazi he's literally a pro-hitler neo-nazi who he literally grows the moustache and everything he's some facetious amidst photos this is a little bit surprising but you know he told me that you know he fell in love with this woman and married her they were together I guess for years you know I forget and that she was a spirit medium you know she would channel spirits and she would do these performances these rituals involving ghosts and she earned her money that way you know people paid a significant amount of money for to do these I know if you call them seances or ghost channeling ceremonies and it was obvious to me that part of the reason he fell in love with her in part of their relationship was that he really respected this about her or you know he also had some kind of spiritual curiosity at least at the time when they first got together as husband and wife and you know we talked about the turning point in his life where he really had to admit to himself that this was a kind of scam there was something you know this was something ultimately fraudulent that people were paying money for something that was misleading or insincere around real and I thought that was interesting because we were having this conversation in the context of him still being committed to quite a lot of supernatural and impossible stuff within Buddhism he was still defending those beliefs and then also he was reaching out for and bringing in even crazier more more ridiculous stuff and adding it to Buddhism if you like so he at that time had both YouTube videos and I think website pages discussing his beliefs in UFOs meaning space aliens and UFOs discussing his belief in Sasquatch let leprechauns like any anything like this and he would try to construe that like the belief in leprechauns was validated by ancient Buddhist texts and you know in the friendliest way possible I confronted when that said look why would you do this with this just this discredits you as a scholar of Buddhism and the ancient when the people who wrote this ancient text wrote it you know they couldn't possibly have been thinking of the modern American idea of a sasquatch so like nobody what are you doing here and I was I was you know politely enough challenging him on his whole kind of supernatural approach to those texts now you know a second I'm ethnically Jewish it's somewhat bizarre for me to reflect that after that conversation I had with him and I must be one of very very few people to have challenged him on you know his view of Buddhism I mean I know he spends time with Buddhist monks he still leaves lectures on Buddhist philosophy to this day that shortly after that he got into this downward spiral of alt-right extremism he did an interview with a valium the infamous neo-nazi who's been mentioned here that's one of the things he was most famous for I mean a valley and had millions and millions of views and then as soon as his name was attached to her they did a series of videos together not just one so he had several videos with her appearing on his channel and he interviewed her and so on um you know he became notorious on the internet for these you know Nancy extremist views that he that he started spouting I do have to wonder looking back if my challenging him on the supernatural hocus pocus aspects of Buddhism at that time when he was reflecting on his divorce in his marriage and his disillusionment with spirituality and ghosts to some extent a wonder of that resulted in him trying to reach out for something real reach out for something more meaningful in his life I've been talking a lot lately to Faraday speaks Faraday speaks in the YouTube channel the guy's real name is Caleb Cain and you know Faraday has been doing this work trying to rehabilitate or chair all right people people who believe in these right-wing and sometimes racists and I was anti-semitic ideals and you know at the same time I think he recognizes I think this because I've talked about him I've talked about with him in his opinion he recognizes that a lot of people are reaching out for something meaningful they're reaching out for something real they're reaching out for a way to make the world a better place and it's tragic that this is what they they kept on to they grab on to this horrible conspiracy theory nonsense but nevertheless you know you have to recognize the intentions they're on a really really basic level and then the next element of it that's tragic it's argue this with Faraday just a couple days ago is that a lot of these people the reason why their parents don't intervene and don't say hey wait stop you're going crazy the reason why maybe their girlfriends or boyfriend's don't intervene and say hey wait stuff go crazy is that for many of them the way they respond to making contact with this extremist ideology is they get more motivated with their health with fitness they get motivated to start reading history I mean you know stereotypically all of a sudden they're interested in history of the Roman Empire all of a sudden they're interested in you know more important nonfiction literature about the history of Europe the history of quote-unquote the West they get interested in these kinds of things it's very easy for the people surrounding these ideologue the people surrounding these true believers to observe their first steps into an extremist cult as positive rather than negative and of course I think that's an interesting contrast to how people might perceive someone stepping into Buddhism or what have you but there's no doubt that for a lot of those people they find in that ideology just like just like the ideology of Jordan Peterson they find in it's some kind of motivation some kind of touch to quit playing video games for many of them quit watching pornography that's always an issue they want to talk about to get on a more or pure Tanika self-disciplined lifestyle but also as they say for them they start exercising that part of their character that's ultimately caring and concerned about making the world a better place what I hope is that for a lot of these people it's a phase that they'll grow out of when I look at the ideologies that have come and gone during my lifetime I remember being on the streets when the the Occupy Wall Street protests were happening I was married at that time you know split up with the woman I was married to I remember both of us were there and we both said look this Occupy Wall Street movement it's gonna come and go in just a couple of years maybe a couple months maybe a couple years whatever we said them but this is this is not gonna last and meanwhile there's this other set of protests that we were really interesting to like that were going to there these protests were First Nations people the indigenous people Canada Native Americans Korea's give way more there were these other protests going on at the same time like this struggle this political problem this has already gone on for at least a hundred years and this is still going to be going on ten years from now it's probably a lot of 50 years now 100 this is really important this is really deep we could see the difference between something evanescent and shallow something really deep and durable there in the same way I really don't think any of the elements of all right right current fashionable right-wing extremism I don't think any of them are durable I hope that the desire to make the world a better place the desire to help and the curiosity that led people into that outright trap I hope that that will be durable I hope that that will survive it and I noticed that Brian Rula is crazy and evil as he may be he seems to have given up on that extremist ideology and gone back to trying to be some kind of Buddhist preacher I know that a valiant as crazy as she was she made statements on the internet they were in written text form explaining that she was no longer racist she no longer believed in killing or hating anybody she made a whole series of statements about how she went through a personal progression and she realized that a lot of the things she believed about the history of world war ii and history of europe were wrong she's probably probably both of them are still crazy probably both of them are still crazy but they may at least be less dangerous and unfortunately with the way internet censorship has changed the public can't see that transformation the erasure of the steps along the way it makes it difficult to hold those people to account like if someone today and Vancouver is wanting to check who is this guy giving a lecture on Buddhism who is he really what is it what's his political background noise represent when you google that now you're not gonna find any that evidence the evidence is gone it makes it harder to hold them to account and I think it makes it impossible for most regular people to learn from their mistakes [Music]