Part Two: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'

Also media.

All right, listeners, update.

I went over to Elizabeth the not so Dying Squirrel, and she's scurried.

Away and welcome to behind the bastards.

But to the sipe, yeah, what a funk off.

You're gonna do a good You're gonna do a normal intro.

Some of us professional someone.

Just to say, maybe I was right not to smash her with a rock and to feel sadness on the inside, and maybe she's.

To evaluate her with myself. So I just said, if she's suffering, you should smash her with the rock. That's the humane thing to do.

You know, Well, in that case, I mean smash We're we're all suffering in a.

Way, and are we not all praying.

For begging to be smashed the rock?

At the end of the.

I hope Elizabeth and not so dying squirrel scurried away and now is like.

You know, I hope she's fine now an acorn if you're not. If something's not fine, you always have rocks. A big enough rock can stop anyone's pain. You know, that's about rock.

I always have my phone that can call you who has rocks.

I've got thoughts. I got so many rocks.

I'm not throwing a rock at Elizabeth.

You don't throw the rock. That's not nearly like. That's the odds of you missing and just injuring the animal. You know, that's just inhumane.

Carry I've been carrying around the same rock for for twenty years, and I'm shocked. I'm shocked how easy it is to get a rock onto I mean, I mean, Jimmy.

You're very experienced killing, like we've we've established that on the show.

Start this shit again, Okay, listen, I can't afford this anymore. This has followed me. I just got back from my book tour and these accusations have followed me around the country.

That's right, that's right. I've been yeah, yeah for those for those deaths, and fuck what was the town I made up? You killing people?

And oh my god, I can't forget. I can't at me all the time. Unbelievable. There's so many people who like, I've signed a book and then they've leaned in conspiratorially and said, I'm okay with what you did in Grand Rabbids.

Good.

You know there's sickos.

We're manufacturing consent so that when you do have to kill somebody, everyone's like, it's fine for Jamie to do this.

This is a psychological experiment.

I'm giving you a get it out of jail free card here.

Look, and now I feel like I shouldn't even say it, Like, but how easy it's.

Take out the jewelry pool. It's gonna be like a fucking Luigi situation. She must have had a reason.

Look in his defense, I mean, Louis. The Luigi defense is you're honored? Will we put this hotty behind bars? I think not Rod, He's too He's just simply too. Are you not foaming? Are you not foaming? Come on, I just I've been bringing I've gotten a rock, like a rock that could proble probably do some damage through like airport security all the time. It's really just.

Because the rocks don't set off the metal detectors. I don't think there's specifically a rule against taking a rock on a plane, because like there's gym girls. You know it's I think it's probably fine to take a big rock on a plane.

You know, I can I can confirm you will not have a problem with the rocks.

You know what, I'm a company money to book like twenty different flights in the course of like two weeks and just repeatedly take flights with larger start with a small rock, and just to go up by like a half inch diameter each time and see at what point they're like, you can't take that on a plane.

I bet my guess is they'll be a point where they'll be they'll ask, and then there's going to be a point where they say we cut off, and then you should, and then you should just be like, where's the rule? Yeah, where's the r It's like airbud, what's the rule that says a dog can't play basketball? What's the rule that I can't have a rock on a plane. It's a souvenir you can't.

It's a souvenir rock from wherever I found it. So, Jamie, this has all been fun. You know, it's not going to be fun with the rest of the Returning to Pete Hegseth's Fascist Manifesto.

I cannot believe. I've thought for sure we were you were finishing the book, but it was just starting.

No. No, there's so many there's almost a normal book's number of words in this book, or roughly a normal book's number of words in this book. Shocking.

I feel like they're they're like, really, you know, pamphlety.

I mean, you know, actually I happen to agree. You know, some of the some of the quotes on the back of the book. One of them stated, this is this is Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog, which, since it came out a couple of years before your book, was a weird statement to make. But you know, it is true that publishers who commune regularly with the sacred spirits of the Oracle of Delphi have been awaiting your book for generations.

You know, it's it. Look, I realized that it was fulfilling your prophecy of sorts.

Yeah, there are references to Raw Dog, and oh fuck, it was going to be a great joke. I forgot the name of the oldest story ever, fuck with the with the fucking the monster and the guy with the sword. God damn it.

What's the oldest book in the world.

Yeah, like the oldest like proper no idea, not novel.

Uh, you're talking about the epic of.

Gilgames Gilgamesh, God damn it, Jesus Christ.

Okay, so what were you what were you gonna say, Robert about the epic.

Of I was going to say there were references to raw Dog and the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I forgot the name of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I just ruined the whole bit. It's fucked.

It's okay. I fact checked it for you.

Thank you, thank you, Sophie, Jesus Christ. Oh God.

Technically it was a poem, but you know, yeah.

It's a poem. Whatever, it counts. Just like Pete Ra raw Dog, Yeah, the American Crusade.

I love a good name competition. It would be it would be great if there was a right wing book that couldn't use the title raw Dog.

I was just thinking how funny it would be if, like you get made Secretary of Defense next and like journalists at like New York Magazine are like quoting from Raw Dog to try to determine how you'll run the military.

A bunch of woke bullshit.

We really don't know where she's gonna go. Actually, this is this is anybody's game. Impossible to predict your policy on Iran based on this hot talk book.

Look, there's a I think some of my policies are in there. My international policy remains absolutely inscrutable.

I know, and you do spend there is that weird chunk in the middle of Raw Dog where you spend forty pages arguing in favor of the littoral defense ships that the US Navy was building for a while, which I.

Think that when you read it it sounds out of context, but when you read it, it actually makes quite a lot of sense. Why it's there.

They are the hot dogs of the sea, a lot of sailor seas.

That's exactly it.

So we're now seven minutes in. Pete's next chapter is called twenty twenty Death, Divorce or Dawn, which I do love, like for a man who's been divorced this many times, Death divorce or don Right, that's him talking about the different paths the country could go down. We can either die, we can have a national divorce, or we can have

He's a politician, he has to hedges bets.

Yeah, he's just a dick and a fascist. Anyway, his journey is one we've seen a lot of Trump's inner circle go on.

Right.

The reason why they've been able to go from this guy should never could absolutely never be president, be a disaster to uh, you know what, maybe he's the savior

Right.

And obviously Pete's documented history shows this. This is a guy who always wanted politics and always had really regressive right wing views that he largely used to attack people he thought were less than him.

I like, I just just I mean, where do you in southern California do you think he was when you saw when he saw this? Do you think he is like Disneyland.

He's hammered it not very farm Probably he's got a puke on a roller coaster.

He's in the fast pass line for Great Thunder Mountain. He's like, you know what I'm going to give.

So one thing I do believe is when Pete asserts that Trump taught him how to wage political combat, which is accurate from what we can see, right, because this is a guy who failed to get a start in politics because he didn't really understand what Trump did, right, And Trump proved you don't have to pretend to be respectable,

Right, I'm scared to know.

It's from the Ever Clear song Santa Ana wind which is very much a Southern California tune about being the kind of person Pete hates.

Yeah, his favorite band is Ever.

Clear, Ever Clear right, which is fascinting, particularly weird because the lead singer ever Clear, Art Alexakis, describes himself as a left wing Christian who despises conservative Christianity and wrote a song called Jesus was a Democrat?

Has he listened to the listened to the very Clear?

Also not a Santa Ana Windes. Not a song about like fighting, really like, that's not what it's about. It. It's about living in southern California. It's about the Santa Ana Winds.

Really good, a trump spine just to stack a diet.

Come again, folks, don't make art, you know, burn, Go go out there right now and you know, destroy a bunch of vinyl records, you know, annihilate human culture. I'm on the AI team now there's no.

Disco demolition the people. I think people should always make art, especially if you're bad at it, because if you're bad at it, keep bad, keep it.

You're gotta say that, Jamie, until we get until we get the fascist leader who's like holding up raw Dog and he's like this, based on this book, we have to expel all the immigrants.

So many of his You should know better than anyone's history. His greatest monsters were failed art. Is just keep making the bad art. If George Bush had just painted his damn landscape.

You're right, you're right. I mean that. That is my actual stance is that we need a whole government department that like provides fake fans to untalented conservatives who want to succeed in Hollywood. Oh yeah, everyone loves your TV show. They can't get enough of it. Don't try going out to any of the regular conventions. Go to this one that we're putting on. Your fans will all be there.

I would be a crisis actor in that department.

It's just it's mission critical, Yeah, honestly, just some soft reinforcement. Yeah, just like like an elite military corps who show up at the stand up Nights that these guys put on and are like they have like a Navy seal hell week boot camp for how to pretend to laugh at them.

Although when you put it like that, they are kind of doing that.

Yes, no, this would be protecting the nation much more than any military action in my lifetime.

Yeah, like, we have to keep selling out those men and women as long as I promise to never run for office.

Oh my god, you had to listen to Michael Knowles's stand up, like my country is a pus our bravest soldiers, our bravest soldiers. Yeah.

So it's like this whole chapter is like, I mean, it's so diabolical where he he's acting like a rom com character who's like and I could really be my full self now I can just be awful.

I could be like this song I clearly don't understand because Trump taught me how to be racist and not feel bad about it.

Now.

The next few pages of Pete's book are accounting of Trump's rise to be leader of the Republican Party, and again, this isn't really worth going over. We all know what happened. What is interesting is the account that Pete gives this of his own first attempt at getting into politics his twenty twelve Senate run in Minnesota. I A, which is not what it's called. During Yeah, Minnesotia. During the Senate run, he attempted to defeat Amy Klobachar. I say attempted because

I don't know, Jesus, they shocked that one.

That looked they can't all be winter, they can't all be winner. Cloba shocked. Yeah, that's got that's better. So he blames his loss on the Star Tribune, which he calls Minnesota's communist paper of record. Weirdly, and here's what's weird. It's like so I look into him, like, oh, so they must have like said, don't vote for Pete. Hegseth Right,

When any type of fascist calls a centrist paper radical, You're like, I wouldn't you wouldn't it. Yeah, it was like now ultimately serving your project.

Phrasing the Star Tribune because they're their analysis was just shitty, like wells of veterans will probably win, right, discounting the fact that Pete hag Seth can't do anything right. That like he's he sucked at the last time he ran. At this point, he's had two different like NGO's that he's been a part of, and he spent all the money on drugs and partying. You know that veterans, Yeah, yeah, veterans could be some of the most fucked up people

He was like, doesn't it it sounds like that he's like wasted money that was supposed to go to veterans before, right.

Well, it was supposed to be used by a veterans organization. Is what right wing politics this? They were not helping vests somebody like ultimately, they were trying to push more support for the surge in Iraq, right, and then attack Obama. You know, like, I'm not saying it was. I'm not saying like, oh, it's a shame he wasted that money, right,

He was.

So this is right after he loses the primary. Although heg Seth had previously said he would not run in a primary if he did not win his party's endorsement, he sent out a cryptic email to supporters Wednesday that raised serious doubts about that pledge. The email was titled the Fight Continues and did not say he planned to support state Representative Bills, who decisively won the GOP nod

Love a good refuse to give up. Well, obviously needing to give up.

Obviously, right, It's beautiful stuff. So in his book years later, Pete would insist that he was glad now he's glad that he didn't win, and he says specifically, I'm glad that patriots didn't vote for me then, right, because they were right. I was still a Rhino or Republican in name only at that point, right, I didn't really know the way. You know, I hadn't accepted Trump as my word savior.

People were thinking about of that yard.

It's good that they wonn't because I wasn't. I wasn't enough of a fascist yet.

Yeah, cope.

So we conclude this chapter with another rant that the American left is an exit sestential threat to freedom. Then we have the obligatory call to violence that he swears isn't a call to violence if left to succeed, and turning it in it the United States into something else. Then, as strident as it may seem, divorce is imminent. If they turn into King George the Third, find me a town square in Lexington or a bridge and conquered to

There do a crusade with gun, There do a gun crusade, And so actually make a lot of sense that it is. It's just so fucking embarrassing. Yeah, good for him, Good.

For now The chapter ends with one final little rant about how twenty twenty is our last possible chance to prevent the collapse of the United States. You know, no more shots after this. The leftists will have taken too much control.

Anyway, so it would be nice.

The Pete Hegseath, who wrote American Crusade in twenty twenty, was no less committed to forcing a far right Christian theocracy on the rest of the country than the Pete of today. But he was quieter about it, not a lot quieter. But there's still even a little bit in twenty twenty more kind of creepy. You gotta put onto it so that it doesn't sound too bad, Like the far right still kind of felt like they had to respect some kinds of properly patriotic diversity, at least in public.

Some of the evidence there might not be much more.

Yeah, some of his evidence, the evidence from his time in the service paints an image of a man less convinced than his present iteration of like a lot of the fascist stuff. He's gone on record about his upbringing in a Christian home, but in keeping with the traditional reborn and the spirit evangelical narrative, it's clear he doesn't consider he will now claim that like young Pete wasn't really a believer, right, not the way I am right

Christ, you know, right, Well, it sounds like, yeah, there's a difference between growing up in a religious household and like enacting and being religious.

I mean, I think it's more because, as we'll talk about, the evidence suggests he was very religious and always has been. It's more, if you are talking to an evangelical audience, there is an expectation that you will give your narrative of like your own personal journey to faith has to be a hero's journey. So it can't just be I've always been religious and always been great. It has to be like, no, I rejected God. I was living this

It's still talk of the dome, Robert No.

I stole that from the movie Margo, which I talked about a lot on.

This show often. That's terrific.

It's beautiful stuff.

It's beautiful stuff, really really good.

Pete Hegseth has claimed in a recent interview with the Nashville Christian Family that his parents were Baptist, but quote, my home life was not political, but it was very faith and family based. Now, again, this is nonsense. This is a common sentiment from people who are raised in very right wing environments that my upbringing wasn't political because conservatism is just common sense, you know, it's not politics,

Which I still think is more commonly accepted, like it across the board than it should be.

No, and it's one thing I'll give because I have a lot of issues with my parents and the conservatism I was raised with. But they never said we were a.

Politically they were are.

We are very political right wingers, right. That was always my parents' attitude. So at least there's that, right. I just have no respect for this. So I wasn't political. Yeah, my parents donated exclusively to Republicans, and like, I edited a Republican newspaper in college, and we went to church three times a week. But I wasn't really religious, you know.

Barrister's what a pick I do It's so funny because like the the narrative you're describing that he wants to apply to himself, like it is kind of available to him where he, you know, like lived a whether he wants to admit it or not. A very real but yeah, right, But you'd have to be willing to stop doing that in order to have the narrative. So he's got to make one up.

Yeah, yeah, he's got to make one up. And you know what else we have to make up? What for all of the people listening to this podcast for free by going to ads right now? You sickos, you freaks, you monsters. You I don't know, he roes. I love you and we're back. You know, every time I say I love you to the listeners, I'm thinking about one specific listener, and it might be you, you don't know. But everyone else I don't love. In fact, I hate, and I'm actively working to sabotage. But one of you,

Every time I hear you speak to your listeners, I'm reminded that uh parasocial relationship could also be based in antagonism, and it's oh, I've read the book.

Yeah, that's that's the bible of how to be a good podcast game gold Leaf?

Did you know there's a gold Leaf like version of that book?

Why it's about it?

I know, I know this one.

It's like him and the guy who first came up with the alpha wolf concept, just like, oh, man, I I really this thing that made me famous and noteworthy was a real mistake.

This thing that made me millions and millions of dollars.

I fucked up. I fucked up.

And then the humiliating pivot you get. Whereas the guy who wrote the game, I think, Neil Neil Strass just like we're just st gonna freaking love my wife.

Yeah forget, I'm happy. Yeah, like like I just trid out. This made me miserable, and loving and respecting a woman is made me happy.

I'm glad he knows he's wrong. But I'm also like, uh, stop publishing book a.

Little faster, man. Maybe yeah, maybe you don't write any more books. Maybe you think I feel differently about the wolf guy, right, he really was just trying to do good wolf research and just a just a fuck up. You know, it's not his fault. Like he didn't try to be like I'm gonna make alpha wolf a thing. He was just describing wolf behavior, and weirdos ran with it.

I guess I'm not as familiar with his trajectory. He was literally just talking about wolves.

Yeah, he was. The concept of the alpha wolf developed from this wolf scientist who was studying wolves in captivity and describing their hierarchy. I've read, yeah, and then and then it turns out that like, actually in the wild there's like alpha wolf behavior does we don't see it because like it's not really evolutionarily beneficial. It's a thing that happens when wolves are put in an unnatural situation. Basically, it's a thing that happens in wolf prison, not in

Looking for this. But the day of this book, I saw a friend from college like a year ago, and I was like puting up to She's like I'm getting really into like wolf's smut, which was not the answer I was expecting.

No, No, that's probably just straight up pornography.

Yeah, but otherwise she was she was doing really well. I mean, this is a part of it. But she she like recommended a book and I listened to it for a while, and you know, if this is your thing, go with God. But I was like, oh my god, there's First of all, there's so much. There's so many of them. It was one of those like the Bodyguard's Wife's Accountant type titles. I'm going to find it. Keep hegsathing, I'm going to find this. So, you know.

Pete claims obviously that like, yeah, he was secular at his core, he just had a Christian veneer I have. The reality is that, you know, he's always been pretty religiously far right and politically far right, but he was as a young man just wanted money, right, Like that's all he really gave a shit about. He claims that the first thing that starts to radicalize him towards Christian nationalism.

Good and eaten by dogs, eaten by dogs.

Like, seriously, I get like, obviously, there's a very strong arge be made that, Like, well, the Jesus of the Bible was one that was probably conflating a couple of different actual guys who are like Messianic guys who claimed they were the Messiah wandering around the Holy Land in that period, right, like eaten by dogs? How would you even prove that? Why would that be an argument that a professor would make it? And it was definitely eaten by dogs.

And why would this be the first we're hearing of it, that is, speaking of dogs? Though I have got the name of the wolf porn.

I was, Oh, thank god, the audience has been on the edge of their fucking seats for.

This, And if this is your thing, I like, I don't want to hear more about it, but I respect it. Here is the name of the book that I read, part of the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate, which is one word too many, but it's got three points.

It's a long title.

It's got like we have similar scores on good Reads. Okay, the Air, followed by the Air apparents rejected Mate, followed by the Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate.

Oh, real, rejected mate. Fetish going on? Here is what I'm reading.

Yeah, it's all about Well, what is about is like falling in love with a with a fuck ass wolf who kind of is nagging you. There's a lot that's how I would refer to, Okay, the Tyrant Delpha, but you could also easily call the Tyrant Delpha a fuck ass wolf.

Sure, yeah, that scans. So there's no real evidence for any of what he's claiming about his fucking professor here, or the fact that you know, he starts doing serious Bible research that proves the historical I don't think he does any research. Right. Again, He's raised to believe this shit, and it like funds fuels his narcissistic sense of superiority.

That's also yeah, for lack of a better like, he needs to be not like other girls for this narrative to work.

Yeah, And again, his initial goal is to get rich, and then the global War on Terror gets in the way and Pete winds up gravitating more towards the military. He claims, though, that during this time he spends more than a decade studying Christianity, which kind of conflates with other things he says, because he's argued in this same interview that his faith didn't become real until twenty eighteen.

I mean it seems like he has no issue with any of this at any point in his life. But he needs the narrative. He needs the narrative there and and I would be so curious. I feel like this happens in all sectors of public life. Of how many times you're going to keep telling the same story about yourself to keep yourself like relevant and to keep yourself kind of an underdog.

Right, you always have to be an underdog, even once you've like succeeded, you know. Yeah, I mean that's a big part of my ego. Right, Nobody believed that we could have the largest history podcast on the internet, you know, No, aside from all the people who believed in me and fought for me and advocated for me and guested on the show and whatnot. Like, nobody nobody believed believes you, right, aside from most people.

Right, you were, yeah, you were, you were podcasting from Uh, you know, just like prostrate on the floor. Nothing you had.

Not exactly exactly I was. I was at the lowest demand can be, you know, living in an apartment on the edge of Santa Monica.

So in a way you also found God in idea. Yeah, you have that in common.

My God was was the pod. Uh you know, yeah, Sophie, if we register as a church, do we get to stop paying taxes?

Oh?

Yeah?

Also strick in the book.

Oh shit, I shook. All right, we're going offline. We'll talk in some more about this offline. So in like the kind of early chunk of the Trump years.

Uh.

He and his family first moved to New Jersey to attend a community church called Colt's Neck, led by pastor Chris Durkin. I found a year old YouTube video published by the church in which Pastor Dirkin reads out five ways Christian families are under attack, which proves that Christian media is always about a decade behind because they've only just discovered listicles, right, this is like twenty twenty fucking four.

Uh.

Now, the video does not have a lot of views, but Dirkin is a guy that Hagstef is later going to claim was like a big influence on him, and so it's kind of worth listening to some of what he says. Uh. In a summary for the video, Durkin writes, more than any time in our lives, it feels like Christian families are under attack. Are these contemporary attacks random or is there a deeper battle going on beneath surface? He spells, they're wrong, But I'm just being petty here.

Well, no, no hand is asked to him. Also, I mean, do you do have to hand it to him that he did not change his name from dark and he didn't know.

And he really should have he really that's why he hasn't blown up in the way the next preacher we're going to talk about has.

But should have been Gunner.

I will say. The way he talks his speech is so the speech is written so similarly to how heg Seth talks. It's either just evidence of how much this guy influenced heg Seth, or maybe they shared a writer, right, I don't know, not impossible. It's also probably the case that this is more the result of Christian grievance, conservative

Right.

It's made very clear in this segment of the five ways Christian Families are under attack speech by Pastor Chris Derekin, which Sohi's going to play for you now.

Designed by God as a gift from God, that through marriage, not only is it good because it's not good for man to be alone, that through marriage not only are we commanded to be fruitful and to multiply, but also in the New Testament, marriage is a picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself, whether you're talking about God's character and plan and creation, or even talking about Jesus Christ, his life, his death is resurrection, his love for his people,

Right, the argument there he's making is that like, yeah, gay marriage, all of these different culture like it's literally the devil right, like anything anytime you urge anything outside of like what Christians believe about this, Like no, God decreed what marriage is. So you are literally on the side of Satan, right, yeah, which is you can't have a secular society with these people. You can't be free with these people in your country.

Right.

And this is like his reality.

This is baseline, This is his baseline. Theistical nature really does crack me up.

I do love that it's alistical.

Yeah, my college, what do they call it? The guy who talked at my college, did my commencement speaker, mister j. Leno delivered No, no, he delivered his speech in the form of a list, and that was ten years ago and it was old Laurance.

Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so yeah, let's so let's let's get back to this lovely stuff, this lovely, lovely esipode. So yeah. The underlying truth that is revealed by reading American Crusade is that people like Pete Hegzeth and his fellow event angelical dominionists have no desire to coexist with

Right.

What little fun there is in reading American Crusade comes from looking at hegxa's predictions for what will happen if the left wins in twenty twenty and comparing that to what actually happened. My favorite example of this comes right at the end of chapter two. If Trump loses in twenty twenty, I fear America is doomed. The Democrats, on track to nominate a radical leftist would complete the political domination they already maintain in our culture, media, and schoolhouses.

Let's just say that what in particular, fuck it sticks out like ASORTA.

Well, just how immediately all of these Ivy League institutions, like most of them just caved Trump.

Like you know, yeah, it's incredible, incredible well, Pete, unfortunately you didn't call that one, and I mean no, certainly is benefiting from that not having happened.

Once again, we desperately wish for a Democratic party that functions the way Republicans pretend it functions. Yeah, like, how nice that would be.

Radical leftists, anti Israel, radical leftists.

Yeah what God oops? So again the big takeaway, the actual practical takeaway you should get from reading lines like this, is that there was never any hope for the Democratic Party to pull away modern Republicans or fracture Trump space right. That was never possible, not from Biden, not from Harris right.

Well, yeah, I mean it's yeah, something that just like another example of the right, big, far more like organized for lack of a better term, than the left, is because there are people who didn't vote for Kamla because she would not move left, Like I don't know.

It's just the the idea that there are good Republicans buried inside the party and we can shake them out of voting this. No, no, no, Even the people who are like good, who have more reasonable stances, who you know, had issues with Trump, what they wanted most is to win and as soon as you like like because of this is the project of twenty something thirty years of

I reflect often on that, like that the phase of her campaign where there is a series of cam paining commercials that were encouraging women, like conservative women to vote for her behind their husband's backs. Do you remember that?

Yeah, that's just gonna offend people, Like, it's not gonna you don't. It's just just bad choices, just bad choices.

I do. I do believe that there were probably voters like that, but it's like, that's not the fucking way too, and that's not gonna exactly, that's not as that's not as effective as actually moving left.

Again, Like oh wow, you know this swing state has a massive number of like Muslim voters. I wonder if they'll be angry at us completely failing to reign israel In on a genocide. Probably not. They'll vote for Blue no matter who.

We don't need it, of course, it's it's them who gets blamed by cool.

That's not the only reason Harris lost, right, That's that explains like one state. There's a bunch of reasons, but the whole we're going we can we can get these people, you know, we can. We can break off a lot of them because they're basically reasonable people. Doesn't work because they're not. They're not. Their brains have been damaged by decades of propaganda, and the damage is permanent. Anyway, This

Had, A useful one.

A useful one, yes, Ok. Pete winds up in a passage laying out the things he admires about Islam, and this is part of he's still he's making the broader case that it's an existential threat to Americans in freedom. But he writes this, almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to and learning to read from the Koran. Contrast this with our secular American schools, in which the Bible is nowhere to be found, and you'll understand why

I don't think that was Pete's focus and around school teachers. Okay, So, I mean it's just more Christian fundamentalism that.

Wow, they're all reading the Bible, they're all perfectly informed about their religion. They're constantly thinking about it, as opposed to like, yeah, most Muslims are like most members of any other religion where they're like, yeah, you know, on the holiday or whatever, but like, I got shit to do the rest of the time. You know, maybe I get more serious about it if I get sick or something, but like the people, yeah, they're people, right, they got

Right, Yeah, and if you play the record, yeah, like there couldn't be anything more conspiratorial, Like well if you like okay, and.

Yeah, he's like in this mirror Muhammad's own journey, right, because Muhammad was like a military leader, right.

Uh.

And basically the point he's making is that Islam inherently leads to violence if you follow it honestly. Now, this is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, a few chapters earlier, when he was talking about his friend Texas Omar, he'd made a big point that Omar is a practicing Muslim and also one hundred percent American, which seems like it's not something that really should be possible based on how heg Seth describes Islam here. But he's

He forsakes three and it just adds one.

Yeah, well, and he just doesn't really understand what the hideths are that like, it's a collection of sayings. It's not really a book in the traditional sense. Discussing Islamic religious texts in a way that's accurate isn't something he can do because then you have to acknowledge it, like, oh wait, wait, the Torah is like venerated in Islam, and so is the New Testament, even though they don't

You would always Europe.

Right.

It's better to pay a tax and have some rights than be tortured by the inquisition.

You know, not a fair ask.

Yeah. Again, I'm not trying to whitewash any of these Islamic empires. They're empires. They did some pretty terrible things, like all empires do. I'm just saying, if you've got to choose between being massacred by drunk peasant crusaders in a pagram or like pay an attax, most people probably say, pay the tax. It's a better deal.

I guess. It's just I mean, it's so his like binary thinking. It's every chapter so far has been like, well, here's here's what I agree with, including a I am increasingly convinced he made up.

And it's also just like this whole obsession that they all have with like European history, Western history, you know, the great works of philosophy, you know, Plato and Aristotle, these, like a lot of great classic European think and Western thinkers. We only have a lot of their writing because it was preserved by Muslim scholars during the period which Christians were destroying everything that was pre Christians. So anyway, again not to whitewash any faith. All religions were all organized.

So which is interestingly demonstrated through the work and actions of one Pete heg Seth.

Of one Peter heg Seth. Yes, so right after this paragraph he tries to do a minor mia culpa, and he winds up being both historically wrong and committing heresy. There's so much inaccurate in this next paragraph. I don't know how to summarize it. So I'm just going to read it to you. First, prior to the Life and Teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, many of these same things could have been said of the Bible in Christianity. The God of the Old Testament was violent, vengeful, and

Just ignored it in his list of holy because it.

Was again, they don't view Jesus as the Messiah, right, they don't believe the same things about it, But like there is that is in the faith, right, Yeah, it's just wrong to say that it's completely absent any point.

Whether whether he actually knows this or not, it's just like it's so clear that like this book is just predicated on how poorly educated his his target audience is.

And it's this very common thing with conservatives that like Islam whatever is the most radical thing you can find that was ever written by a Muslim. That's what everyone believes and does at all times, as opposed to like, no, I mean, Islam's like Christianity and other religion where like, well, you can find some awful things and people who are like and that awful thing is exactly how you should

Mean personally, my holy texts are are are titles like the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate, but it is interesting.

Learning that is that is my religious text as well?

Yeah, what about Installment number four, His Curving No, see, I'm actually I consider that like the Gnostic Gospels, like that's that's not canon.

After the we had our own Council of Nicia, which was held in Atlantic City. To be honest, we didn't really get around to deciding what was cannon we were We were mostly just partying.

I'm very devout. I've I've read His Curvy Rejected Mate forty times once.

Yeah, you've memorized it like like like like Muslim students are supposed to memorize the Karan, yes, but like, yeah, there's there's lots of bullshit people like the common conservative belief that like yeah, you just put pigs, you know, pig fat on the bullets and then they can't go to heaven. That's not part of Islam. Like that's just

Yeah, yeah, it's just like his whole platform depends on Yeah.

Now, the wrongest part of that paragraph, and the thing that I really recognized because my dad used to make the same argument, is the idea that virtue was human beings couldn't be good before Christianity. There weren't really good

Yea, you could, you could be all right, that's such a weird like you know, scale to be on Like you could be okay, you could be all right, you could inch towards goodness. But it wasn't until yeah.

It wasn't until Christianity that we really knew how to be good people. It just wasn't possible. And again, let's go back to those drunken peasant crusaders who just decided to massacre all the Jews in their neighborhood because they didn't have enough money for a boat to the fucking Middle East.

Right, really christ like behavior.

Yeah, Jesus would have loved that. He hated his own people. Yeah. So Hegseeth attacks Islam for being quote not just a religion but also a system of governance. And I find this really interesting, and he brings out sharia law as

Right.

He's done all this while complaining about the injustice. This is a big thing he winds about in later writings that because he writes another book about fucking warrior ethos shit that we'll talk about at some point. But in twenty twenty one, he gets like basically, I'm gonna quote

Yeah, Sam Weird kicked him off of Wiki feet for speaking truth to power, Like you're okay, Yeah.

Now you know who will never get kicked off of Wiki.

Feet, the products and services robot.

No, they are the foundation of Wiki feet. You know, send them pictures up your feet, be nice to them. They'll love that.

And don't check before you do it. Yeah, it should be a nice surprise.

Yeah, yeah, let it be a surprise. We're back. We're all sending feet picks to whoever sponsors the podcast. They're gonna love that. And also now, thank god, well now that we have a Trump is the presidency again. Feet picks are legal. You know that. You can use them for currency, you can use things.

They can bathwater.

Yeah, they count as assets if you're trying to get a mortgage. You know.

I'm on wikifeet dot com. I think they have a for sure, I just had this open. I think they have a dating dot com. Everyone check out matchsouls dot com.

You know that's actually that's not a bad name. That's not a bad name.

You know what it was right there?

You get a couple, you get it, you get some kudos for that.

They've updated their interface. Anyways, Okay, sorry, get to eat Pete Heg Seth.

Yeah he's Pete Seth right, So continuing, Pete Hegg Seth's book right after Uh talking about how awful Sharia law is and how Islam is evil because it's a political system as well as a religion. He writes, voting as a weapon, but it's not enough. We don't want to fight, but like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must oh great again.

Well, why you ain't got no alibi?

That's literally what he sat. So after the twenty twenty election ended with Joe Biden winning, and if you believe Fete or Pete feet. If you believe Pete, his military career ends shortly thereafter due to anti Christian persecution. He moves his family to Tennessee, where they attend the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is part of the Communion of Evangelical Churches, which is basically a denomination, right, It's like

It's not even a positive thing. But he does care about his own bottom line more than he cares about the project of fascism. It sounds like this idahope his pastor would really put a lot on the line for fascism. But even the way that he's writing this book is he's writing to meet the moment of the amount of fascism you can get away with and still be viable at the exact time this book comes out.

That is precisely what he's doing, right, which is why he's more milk toast than present Pete in some sections, because he just didn't think some of that stuff was acceptable. Right, And it's worth noting again, Wilson's written a bunch of books laying out a blueprint for how Christians should and must take over the country and dominate violently everyone else. Pete his book is not a blueprint, right, He's advocating

Hot. Okay, So he's so he's an effective.

He is an effective building and again not just in it for himself and his own birth, like in it to build a movement.

Right.

He's very different from Pete. I would be shocked if he really likes to respects the guy. But he's also very smart. He knows how to use a guy like Pete. Right, And he's you know the fact that he before he became the sec deaf, was seeing that this guy had had the potential to go somewhere if Trump won again, because like you know, especially after Trump got out, he really gravitated to the people who were just complete toadies and lickspittles, right.

And for this exact kind of guy exactly.

And Wilson was smart enough to be like, this guy might go somewhere. I should start getting in good with him, right, And Wilson, this, this guy is so committed. Even during the period of time in which evangelical like Christian nationalist figures had to pretend they weren't, he would openly preach

Great cool, awesome, yardstick.

A nice stuff. So while head Seth was, by his own admission, squishy for most of his adult life, Wilson has been a howling committed fascist for decades. My interpretation of their relationship behind the scenes is that Wilson recognized hag Seth as a useful person who was desperate for a place in the movement, and Wilson was happy to give him that in exchange for having a future Secretary

Wow called it, called it, and he's now going by ya ya yay, yes, no, no, no ya ya he changed it again.

Oh I missed that update, thank you, So.

I stopped keeping that. That was funny. That was.

Kanye is on he can't lose, He'll never lose his mind.

Well, which arguably like he already had.

Yeah, oh yeah, no, he's very.

He was an active crisis. Well, uh cool, so we've got ever Clear and Kanye West.

Ye, Kanye West, God my two heroes.

You know wow talk about building a coalition.

And putting together a team.

My favorite part of that quoes when he said here he what he when he's talking about how like he he went, all.

Really do it? And You're like, yes, you're not broken, clock, You're right.

Yeah. So we get another example after this of how inconsistent Pete's own account of his own past is. Hag Seth tries to draw comparison between kanye upbringing, which he describes as rooted in good Christian values, in his own claiming that faith in Jesus was front and center in his childhood upbringing, which is the opposite of the claim

But it's like he's he's so committed to this conception he has of himself. Yeah, but the more we talk about it, the more I'm like, you know what you're described. It's like technically less compelling, but it makes him seem more competent than he is of like I was like born to occupy this role. I feel like that is an equally compelling narrative that he's just too insecure to even admit. Right, Yeah, like I was born to be a far right like yeah fails sun that rises the power that seems to be true?

Yeah, I mean yes, that is like you were crafted in a lab to be this exact shithead. Yes, and nothing about our society did anything but encourage it. So in the next segment of the book, he claims to be self aware of his sinful nature, and he says this, without knowing, fearing, and recognizing God, I would be like a ship lost at sea, wrecked and sunk. You get wrecked plenty as it is, buddy, And trust me, I have almost been sunk more times than I can admit

Oh my god, he's so controversy. He's so oppressed, you guysse about it. I think, you know, really brave of him to call the American military toxic masculine.

I think he may. He's making fun of the left here, right, Like that's the point of it. But it's also very fun to be like, yeah, there was a war crimes controversy. Like, dude, per your own claims to the New Yorker, you complained that you were scared your unit was going to commit war crimes.

Well two nine. Pete can't come to the phone, right, Yeah he can.

Also, he notes in this that there's there's too much to write about in terms of his like sins and failings. He can't. I can't actually go into all that detail, right Like.

Well, legally, yeah, he probably can't.

Legally he shouldn't, but we can, Jay Jimmy Loftus, we absolutely can. Yeah, So let's talk about the allegations against Pete hag seth are sexual assault. We've already heard about all of his drinking and carousing and spending the money from his different charities in order to party and pursue women, and repeated claims in that whistleblower report that he and others sexually harassed women who worked for the orgs that

James Patriot even at his slowest.

Yeah, and then per npr Dough then intervened, telling the employee that they were Republicans and apologized for heg Seth's behavior. Right, I love I love it.

That's the shorthand for a drunken argument. And no, no, no, no, officer, you don't understand. We're Republicans. We're supposed to act this way.

And because of the lawsuit that comes later, we have this woman's texts from that night, and some of them she like one of them. She says he wears a ring on his pointer finger. It creeps me out. Like these messages, they're pretty There's one. I'm just gonna read the message chain. Do you know Pete Hegseeth? She asks, name sounds familiar. Who is he? He's a Fox contributor. I guess he does Outnumbered and Fox and Friends. Anyway, our ladies are freaking drooling over him. Oh okay, he

Refer to Pete's previous writing on the subject.

And she she says, I do recall saying no to him repeatedly, right, And you know, she eventually files a sexual assault claim against him, right, that he sexually assaulted her. Right. He maintains that any physical interaction was consensual. I wouldn't be surprised if he was blacked out too, given his own Like, I don't know what memory Pete actually has

Yeah, this is just fucking vile. I mean, it's not surprising at all that it didn't move forward, but the fact that it went far enough that she had to submit her text. I mean, were there like kids done or anything like that, Like I that's.

Yeah, I don't think like I think by the time because she didn't initially want to report it at all, Like it's the case it often takes long enough that like you don't get as early as you need for that kind of screens. Yeah.

I read a really interesting book. I was just randomly recommend it, but I just finished it last week called The Secret I think it's called The Secret History of the Rave Kit, and it's really good of just like how how much technology there is there that is just

Yeah, and it does. And I got to read in terms of because again Pete makes the statement that like, oh, yeah, I was a bad guy, but like he's he's basically pretending and like the bad stuff is I wasn't enough of an outright fascist, right, Like yeah, that's like mostly the kind of claim that he's making is that like, yeah, I imperfect because like I wasn't as big a piece

Oh my, well that's what I call good business consulting.

Yeah, that's oh my god, I mean that's his fucking mother, like Jesus nic anyway. Yeah, I just love it when he's like, oh, you know, I'm imperfect, but God uses imperfect people. It sounds a lot better than like, no, I'm a real fucking piece of shit, Like I am a gigantic who does not at all live consistently with my stated values. I violate every rule God set for human beings.

On a weekly basis, on.

A constant basis.

Yes, it is interesting, like he's presenting like even as like a piece of effective propaganda. This bo is a fair because it's so inconsistent with like who does he want to be perceived as? You know, like it just seems like he'll say he'll switch the narrative from moment to moment depending on what is the most effective thing here, what are you going to like the most? What makes

You know, it's just uh, it's awesome. It's good shit, it's.

The yeah, the allegation together, it's like even, I mean, and that's unfortunately, is like a pretty standard allegation for a guy like this. And of course it's just like means nothing not to mention the civilian jets. I like, well, this guy rocks.

So we're gonna wrap up here. The second to the last chapter, though, I should note is chapter thirteen is called the front Lines Education in Israel, and it's ninety percent of it is about how evil the education system is. Pete is like, you can't send your kids to colleges because you're fun the enemy. You should destroy literally burn your own like graduation certificate or whatever, like, and he

That story is Israel as omar from Texas, as far as I'm concerned.

After complaining that like college is evil, because this is the whole theme of this chapter, is that like college is evil because of what it makes Americans think about Israel. So after several pages of branding about colleges, he writes, you might ask, what in the world does the state of Israel have to do with any of this? I live in the United States. Why is Israel the front line? And of course the answer to that is that Israel is quote central to the story of Western civilization, of

A week going going out on a chapter at Israel. I guess I didn't expect better, but Jesus fucking And then he wrote another book called The War on Warriors.

Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that one day. That's his book about Yeah, how America like we don't make people want to be violent enough, right, like we we shamelan for killing and stuff and like yeah, it's just it's just we'll get into it one of these days. But no, rush rushay not.

I fucking hated every second of that.

Yep.

Yeah, no, so so an average episode.

There a normal episode of Behind the Bastards. Yes, this was meant to be like an easier week for me, but I still wound up having to do a bunch of research because God, there's just you can't just not talk about the reality of Pete when you're looking at like what he claims about himself.

No, because I mean one thing I was I mean not necessarily surprised about. But there's so many approaches to this kind of book and he approaches and I wonder how much of it is just legal But like he says stunningly little about himself while also presenting no ideas. It's really just racism.

Yeah, it's just racism. And you know, like callow self interest, right, he wants to be a big man, an important man. That's all that really matters.

Look at the cover. Yeah, I was like, you could kind of like glean the contents of the book by looking at the cover. It's a book by a deeply insecure man who's about to get an undue amount of power.

Right. Ah, God, we love it when deeply insecure men get great amounts of power that they absolutely are not prepared to wield.

It's the American tradition.

It's the American tradition. So go out take power for yourself and then get corrupt and you know, destroy huge swaths of the human race. You know, that's my challenge to all of you listeners. Go take power somewhere in the world, become corrupted by it, and you know, send us further down the slalom to complete collapse.

And I'll all say, is Michigan, don't believe what you've heard. I'm a good person.

Yeah, and let her into your corner store hand or an acts. It's safe.

I'm not saying you could and you would be fine.

It's absolutely safe. For sure.

I hope to be welcomed in your borders and in due time, but I understand the healing is only just begun.

That's right. Well, you got anything to plug?

Yes, I should plug my Cool Zone Media Podcast, sixteenth minute We are currently on hiatus, but it is a weekly podcast in which I talk to and reflect on the main characters of the inner, catch up with them years later, and uh talk about how how broken the Internet has made us. Check that out. Check out my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about Hot Dogs and in paperback now so it doesn't cost as much money, or just get it from the library or honestly even

Well, I think you are royalty, Jamie, Queen of podcasts.

That's way better than what you usually call me, which is a murderer. So I'll take it.

Look name a queen. It wasn't a murderer, Jamie.

That's so true. Okay, I take it back, I take it.

Yeah, all right, everybody, I Love you.

Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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