Marc Andreessen (8:37)
Yeah. And so I should start by saying the reason why this situation really matters, and actually I think matters a lot, is the. The SPLC specifically, and Kit as well. But the SPLC specifically played a dominant role in the debanking and censorship and cancellation programs of the last 15 years. And I cannot tell you, I was in so many meetings in so many contexts with so many companies where the SPLC's word was gospel. Like, it was just like, oh, it's the splc. It was almost like they're the outsourced US Department of, Like, I don't know, racism, detection or something. It's just like if the SPLC says you're bad, you're bad, and you're bad means you get kicked off of all the social media platforms. It means you get debanked. It means you can't get a job. It means, like, just like. It's just like total, absolute, like, you know, social, economic death. And in my view, you know, I've been very vocal on the debanking and censorship topics. In my view, that includes, you know, very deeply un American and I think in many cases, unconstitutional removal of both free speech rights and also literally the ability to bank. And in fact, you know, our partner, Ben's father himself was. Was. Was specifically tagged and attacked by the SPLC for. For unfairly, very unfairly, for being racist and was himself debanked and, you know, really like, directly threatened his livelihood in a. In a really, you know, egregious way. And then, by the way, the significance of this is, of course, it's not literally the U.S. department of Racism. It's actually arguably worse than that. It's not a government agency, and so it's not subject to any level of government oversight. It's a completely, as I say, it's an ngo, Right. And so it lives in this twilight world. It doesn't have the business responsibilities of a company. It doesn't have any of the legal oversight that a government agency has. It lives in this kind of twilight world where it gets to do. Fundamentally gets to do whatever it wants. And then, by the way, on top of that, it raises money as a nonprofit. So on top of that, everybody gets a tax break. And so it's this kind of shadowy thing. If you didn't agree with his politics, you were just like, wow, this is a weird star chamber shadowy thing, like, what the hell? But it had really, really, really, really intense power, particularly in the business world, particularly in the financial sector, particularly in Silicon Valley. It was like a death star to be able to aim at obliterating people's reputations and rights. And so this is a really big deal. By the way, many of the big corporations and including big tech companies, funded it directly. And so the money trail on this is not just major philanthropists and political activists, but also actual companies. And then, by the way, they also had a long history of actually cooperation with certain government agencies, including, I think, for a long time, they quote, unquote, trained FBI agents on basically, essentially catching racist and therefore sort of presumptive domestic terrorists or something. And so just like a very powerful outfit. And then this thing that dropped is that they've been now criminally indicted by the U.S. justice Department. And I should say that the indictment reads like a novel. No, it's an indictment that splc, in fairness, has not had a chance to present a defense. And so presumably in court, we'll get both sides of this, which I'm sure will be an absolutely spellbinding experience. So, of course, I want to say all of the things that are in the indictment are allegations and innocent until proven guilty and so forth. You know, however, the allegations are eye watering, right? And the allegations are that the splc, using donor funds, was directly funding, among other organizations, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Let me just repeat that. The Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, as well as an array of other sort of extreme hate, you know, literal hate groups. And, you know, and funding them, and not just funding them, not just like funneling money in, but like funneling money to very senior members or leaders of these organizations. And then the kicker is, among the allegations is, as they were directly funding one of the leaders of the January 6th, whatever you want to call it, riot at the Capitol. Oh, sorry, no, I'm going to. Let me back up. We need to clip that. I'm sorry, I can't remember if that was the one. But for sure, what I meant to say was the Charlottesville riot. So the Charlottesville riot in 2017, that played such a central role, you know, in our politics at the time, you know, the, you know, the kind of. The famous, they're good people on both sides, you know, kind of thing, you know, which was like one of the big crises of kind of that. Of kind of that era. The SVOC was directly Funding, evidently. Allegedly they were directly funding one of the organizers of the January 6 riot. And apparently they were also paying for transport for rioters to go to the Capitol. Right. And so, like, if this is true, you know. Yeah, I mean, if this is, if this, you know, what could you conclude if this is true? Well, number one is like the allegation is they broke the law doing that. There's additional allegations in the DOJ indictments that they committed, you know, various kinds of money laundering crimes, you know, other kinds of crimes. And so that, you know, that, you know, that's a big deal. And then I've been asking the obvious question, which is if any of these claims are true, what did their donors know? And you know, were the donors all totally oblivious to this or did the donors, you know, work closely with them also, by the way, the companies that worked with them, you know, did they, did, you know, what did they know of what was happening? And so I, you know, I do wonder whether there's like a, you know, I wonder whether over time what we're going to discover is this was a, you know, sort of sprawling network, you know, of which there's, you know, a legal, the legal term would be conspiracy. You know, that was, that was going on around this. And so I think this needs to be fully undressed. You know, look, the other thing is, you know, this raises the obvious question is were they the only one? And so there's a variety of these groups that had, you know, degrees of the kind of power that I was talking about and tremendous amounts of funding along the way and the ability to basically, again, direct some combination of state and private sector sort of obliteration raise at American citizens. There have been rumors for years, I mean, there's been rumors for years on this, by the way. There's been incidents like this in the past. Like, this isn't the first time this has happened. But if, if the, if, if the allegations are true and the SPLC was doing it, I think it raises the very direct question of like, okay, who, who else is? It's hard to believe they were the only one. And so who else was doing it? And then, yeah, and then we're back to our astroturfing thing, which is, yeah, you know, where are they constructing the boogeyman, you know, that they claim to be fighting? And by the way, and this is where you get into the sort of self interest component of it. This is where you get back to the suicidal empathy thing, which is like, okay, how, how suicidal is it? If you're the anti KKK group to fund the kkk. Like part of, I don't know, maybe it's suicidal if people find out about it, but if they don't find out about it, like, that's not, that's like the, that's like the opposite of suicidal because like, wow, like what, you know, wouldn't you like to get to like, if you're, if your group's entire purpose for existing is to fight an enemy, then you need to make sure that that enemy exists to do that. Of course, of course, of course you would fund them. And so yeah, you, you. I don't know what is that? That's like the reverse. The snake eating the tail. It's the, you know, sort of a, you know, you're creating a self fulfilling prophecy. And so, yeah, I mean, look, we're going to, I mean this all needs to be ventilated. I'm really fascinated to see like what the reality is underneath this. But you know, at the end of the day and what this means about what we've all been told all these years about all these groups.