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- [00:00]
Host/Announcer
In hard soil, how does the church take root and continue to grow? Now I know it's tempting to become cultural warriors, spending our energy trying to reclaim what the church has lost. But there is a better way. The Culture of God's Word by Harold Sankpel and Lucas Woodford calls us back to faithful mission in a post Christian world. Not to win a culture war, but to plant the seeds of God's word and to trust him for for the harvest. Request your copy today with the gift of Any amount@solarmedia.org offers you have two options.
- [00:36]
Caleb Waite
You can take the blue pill and you can go back to having your herd sheep life and be ignorant of the harsh reality that is. Or if you take the red pill, then you can wake up to the dream world that you've been living in and you can know how things actually operate and who the controllers of the the real world are. And so Neo takes the red pill, wakes up to the harsh reality that is. And so mainly the voices in this movement and phenomenon, their point is to just wake people up to say you feel disaffected, alienated, we're just going to validate you and we're going to validate all of your bitterness and we're going to help those things fester. But they don't have very strong, productive visions of what they're asking for.
- [01:43]
Host/Announcer
Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Zinn, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.
- [02:00]
Mike Horton
When we talk about the online world shaping men today, what is this ecosystem? What forces, influences and ideas are forming them? Why are so many young men going online looking not just for entertainment, but for identity, meaning and a kind of moral clarity they feel they're not getting anywhere else? And for us as Christians, what happens when these online narratives become the catechism for young men long before scripture, community or the gospel ever gets into the picture? To discuss these questions and lots more are Mike Horton, Walter Strickland and Bob Hiller. And we have a special guest and good friend, Caleb Waite. He is the director of content for Sola Media, a friend to all of us. He makes us look good, sound good, along with the rest of the whole Sola team. And so thanks for being on this side of the camera and joining us, Caleb. It's great to have you here here. And he's going to join us to give us a tour of the online culture shaping young men and men in general today and will help us see where these figures and trends, where they come from. And so again, thanks for being here. Caleb, let's just get started with you and start out giving us why are men logging on and going to Reddit x Twitter? And what do they see as they scroll? What are the kinds of voices, the vibes and messages that they tend to encounter?
- [03:27]
Caleb Waite
Yes, well, let me paint a picture of what it looks like for many young men to go down this kind of online rabbit hole today. So if you're growing up and you're in high school, in your early 20s, you've been a part of this de churching movement where 40 million Americans over the last 25 years have not been raised with any relationship or connection to religion at all. There's so many young men today who are not brought up in religion church. They've really kind of been pacified through their childhood with screens, iPads. They were not reared in local communities and networks. So these kids, they grow up and they have not seen, modeled for them a way to apprentice kind of into adulthood. And then when you turn 18 and you're rudely awakened with these questions of okay, what major do you want to do? Where do you want to go to school? Actually, if you go to that school, your student loans are going to be a lot of money. Maybe you should go to this school and do this major instead. So if you do that, you'll be able to get into this job market. But that market's pretty competitive, so you kind of have to be at the top of your class to really even get an entry level job, to hope to start to pay off student loans, to hope to save up for a down payment on a house. And all these poor kids were told was to find your passion, follow your dream, do what makes you happy. And they're just really left with has the barrier to entry on life's big milestones always been this layered and complicated and difficult? And if you ask that question, the answers you get aren't exactly always encouraging. No fault of their own. A lot of the previous generations crises, mistakes and mismanagement of our cultural institutions have left the wake and created the consequences of this dense, bureaucratic just more of a confusing modern life that these kids are growing up into. And what's more, if you ask your parents for advice, a lot of their advice just doesn't map on to things today in the same way. Love my dad, I can ask him advice on how, hey, how should I act in a way to be a good applicant for the job market? And he can tell me how to, you know, stand up straight, look someone in the eye, shake their hand just be a good, reputable character, and that will go very far. But networking in his day is a little different than trying to network on LinkedIn, where you're one of 10,000 applicants for an entry level, you know, growth, marketing, analytics, project manager position. My dad's advice isn't really going to help me right there. And so, again, where do you go when you're 18, 20, 22? You go online, you say, who has done it? Who's a few steps ahead of me, who can give me some practical advice on how to actually have a good life and what is the good life actually in any way? These kids are left with a real vacuum in a sense of a loss of meaning, purpose, agency, of how to grow into life and adulthood. And all of this creates a sense of isolation, insecurity, uneasiness. Who's to blame for this? And that creates this vacuum in space where what has been called the content creators and influencers, a part of a red pill kind of movement or phenomenon. These are the people they're speaking into with these insecurities, grievances, disaffection, and disillusionment. So before we get there, do you guys know where the term. What movie. Where the term red pill comes from?
- [08:10]
Walter Strickland
It is a Matrix.
- [08:11]
Bob Hiller
Yeah.
- [08:12]
Adriel Sanchez
Alice in Wonderland.
- [08:14]
Caleb Waite
So have. Have you guys seen it? Right?
- [08:16]
Bob Hiller
It's.
- [08:17]
Caleb Waite
It's a classic.
- [08:18]
Walter Strickland
I actually haven't seen the whole thing, but I did my research for this episode.
- [08:23]
Adriel Sanchez
I saw it in the theater. Yes, I was Irvine Spectrum. I know where I was before.
- [08:29]
Mike Horton
Before you talked about, like, a previous generation that messed things up. And you're younger than me, so I'm. I'm assuming you're talking about boomers. Someone else besides the Gen X crew, right, Caleb?
- [08:42]
Caleb Waite
It's mainly boomers who get all the hate.
- [08:44]
Mike Horton
Good. That was a descriptive sentence. Who do you want to blame?
- [08:49]
Caleb Waite
Who do you want?
- [08:49]
Bob Hiller
Boomers, of course.
- [08:51]
Caleb Waite
Oh, man. If I'm being jaded and cantankerous, yeah, it's the boomers.
- [08:56]
Mike Horton
No, but seriously, I mean, just as you were describing it, you kind of feel the flood of like. Okay, so thank you. That was.
- [09:06]
Adriel Sanchez
Can I ask one other quick question, Kayla, before we get to the red pill? You said young men are having a hard time understanding what the good life is, and maybe this is what you're going to answer with the red pill, but what is the good life? They're being sold, that they're pursuing.
- [09:21]
Caleb Waite
Yeah, well, there's a few different ones. There's really not a comprehensive vision. There's not an Easy box to check of what that is basically in these movements. The point. So to explain just what the term is. In the Matrix, the protagonist Neo is confronted by Morpheus, the wise, sage guide figure. He says, you have two options. You can take the blue pill and you can go back to having your herd sheep life and be ignorant of the harsh reality that is. Or if you take the red pill, then you can wake up to the dream world that you've been living in and you can know how things actually operate and who the controllers of the real world are. And so Neo takes the red pill, wakes up to the harsh reality that is. And so mainly the voices in this movement and phenomenon, their point is to just wake people up to say you feel disaffected, alienated. We're just going to validate you and we're going to validate all of your bitterness and we're going to help those things fester. But they don't have very strong productive visions of what they're asking for. Does that make sense?
- [10:49]
Adriel Sanchez
Yes, it makes tons of sense.
- [10:50]
Caleb Waite
So there's one more pop culture artifact that is important in this movement that kind of helps picture things are. It's another movie from the 90s. Can you guys guess what it is?
- [11:02]
Mike Horton
Fight Club.
- [11:02]
Caleb Waite
There it is. You're right.
- [11:05]
Mike Horton
Well, as you were describing, this is great because as you were describing the texture of the red pill with the Matrix, I was like, that also feels a little bit like Fight Club, like the choosing your identity. What plates define me, what clothes define me, and all of that kind of pushing against that. Anyway, I want to hear you talk about it, not me.
- [11:23]
Adriel Sanchez
We can't talk about it. We can't talk about Fight Club.
- [11:26]
Mike Horton
Yes, true.
- [11:28]
Caleb Waite
That's the rule. But, you know, the main character there, Ed Norton's character, is, you know, disillusioned with modern consumerism, just being stuck in the corporate cubicle. One out of thousands meets Brad Pitt's character, this charismatic soap salesman, Tyler Durden, who says, you need to come to this fight club, this underground bare knuckle boxing ring, and you need to really activate your more primal, visceral identity. And through their fight club, that all of that is released actualized. And of course, they eventually join a, what is it, anti capitalist terrorist group. But all of that's connected to
- [12:18]
Bob Hiller
what
- [12:18]
Caleb Waite
you hear in these movements, which is just disillusion for the way things are. The institutions, the narratives about religion and society itself.
- [12:28]
Bob Hiller
And so let's burn it down.
- [12:30]
Caleb Waite
That's right. It's about burning it down.
- [12:34]
Mike Horton
Let me tell A story about Fight Club. Real quick. I want you to get back to it. This is amazing because you're describing what happened to me emotionally after I watched it. This is great because I was with a bunch of friends. We're all Christians. I was getting ready to preach. I watched my friend's house. That was a Saturday night. I'm going to preach the next morning in Atlanta. And I watched it. It messed me up because it was all about identity. And the whole thing is like, who you are, the good life questions, all of the stuff you've been talking about. And I went to bed. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I woke up and I called my friend and. And I was like, I have to throw my sermon away because I don't like. I am undone by this movie. Now, that might say a lot about me. That's not good or anything, but the Lord used it in a wonderful way. And he said. I was like, I don't even know what to do. And he said, well, you're going to preach the gospel, but how about you just go straight up Ephesians identity. You're wrestling like this mess with you go for it. And so to hear that, those two movies, which were two of the. The most significant movies for me, of getting me to think through some of these questions as well. And the way you're describing it, Caleb, is spectacular. So I don't want to get you off track. If you want to keep going with Fight Club. I don't mind this one bit.
- [13:43]
Caleb Waite
Well, there's two sides, two narratives that are equally as cynical in this conversation. And culture war, when you use the term red pill, that's often associated with people who are. Who are not progressive and who are not traditional or conservative, who, again, like Mike said, you just want to burn it down and get back to something more primal and vitalistic. We'll talk more about what that is. But the two cynical competing narratives here. One, America and modern life as we know it is evil. A force of imperialism. Capitalism and all of its entailments are inherently oppressive. Any normative visions of what it means to be a man or woman or family in society is inherently oppressive towards minority groups. And the society as it is just doesn't work. And we need to make things equitable for lower classes, identities, minorities, so on and so forth. So that's one cynical interpretation of reality that some of the more progressive voices are saying. You need to wake up to that harsh reality. And the other is, again, this kind of Fight Club version, which is America, is actually Weak. It should have been more imperialistic. The natural hierarchies embedded in nature have been destroyed by modern life, and it's been overrun by this managerial class that is just trying to imprison you. And it's your right to dominance and power that is really the only purpose there is. And so you need to work hard at rejecting all of the constraints of modern, polite, respectable life. It's two sides of the culture war, but it's the same kind of cynicism and irony that comes out of a lot of postmodernism. Mike, I'd be interested to actually hear some of your reflections on that.
- [16:01]
Bob Hiller
Something that really strikes me, too, in a lot of the comments. I mean, I think of Nick Fuentes, for example, who on the one hand will say things like, I'm not sure about the Holocaust, I'm not sure it ever happened. And then the next sentence, well, it may have been millions who were gassed. And there's a kind of intentional ironic pose where he just undermines any sense of true propositions. What are you saying? What are you actually. What argument are you making? I'll be honest, I hear this in a lot of the speeches of Donald Trump as well. Regardless of your politics, I'm just talking about what's happening in the culture with the leadership. They're getting it from the top down. And you get shiftiness. You get a kind of making one statement to undermine this group and then another statement to undermine that group and cover your rear end. That sort of shifting back and forth is perfect for a TikTok world. Whereas my generation, I think we look at that and say, what is your policy? What is the America you would like to see? It's not entirely clear. There's a nihilism. That's where the irony. I think the foundation of the ironic pose that Friedrich Nietzsche took was based was rooted in a nihilistic worldview, which was not the nihilism of Schopenhauer, which was depressed that there is no God and there's no meaning of life. Nietzsche was an optimistic nihilist who said, thank God there's no God.
- [18:07]
Caleb Waite
Yeah, make your own meaning.
- [18:08]
Bob Hiller
We can create our own meaning. And all the little people, all the weak people that Christians have supported over all these centuries can get trampled on.
- [18:18]
Walter Strickland
Well, it's just interesting because I think you're right. Making your own meaning is central here. And a lot of the meaning is to sort of point to and kind of empathize or even just illuminate people's fears and. And frustrations. And they feel seen in that sort of pointing at those things, but in so doing because there's so many different groups that are looking to an online influencer. That's where the sort of dissonance comes in, where that person embodies so many contradictory ideals because they're really not looking for the affirmation of a certain position. They're just looking at sort of getting at somebody's sort of core fears in just existential crisis of it all.
- [19:05]
Bob Hiller
Yeah. Not to keep beating up on Nick Fuentes, one of the things that has been commented on that he does is speaks in interviews, in Instagrammable clips, easily posted little clips. And I think that's what we're getting memes instead of meaning. We're getting to a point in the culture where it's really gesturing, not conversation and conclusion of thought and going deep. It's being very superficial and clickbait.
- [19:51]
Caleb Waite
And theology then is either in service of that in the, you know, Fuentes calls himself Catholic and a Christian, but really all of theology is. Goes into service of what you're describing there, Mike.
- [20:07]
Bob Hiller
Correct.
- [20:07]
Caleb Waite
Or if you're not a Christian and you're young and you're watching all this content, you can see why. What use is theology if this is the truth, if this is the harsh reality of life, what use do I have with theological truths, with the resurrection, et cetera? It just kind of misses what you're saying, Walter, the existential angst here.
- [20:31]
Bob Hiller
This is another part of the irony, I think, because what is possibly in the whole modern era, the most anti Christian philosophy ever invented, it's Friedrich Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophy that gave birth to fascism. Not that Nietzsche himself necessarily was a Nazi, anticipated Nazism, but in some ways he did. And he certainly was drawn on by the Nazi movement. And not just Nazis, but fascists all over Europe, but the most anti Christian. His sustained antagonism is directed at Christianity more than any other group or movement. And yet people like Nick Fuentes and others turn Jesus into Nietzsche.
- [21:31]
Mike Horton
Yes.
- [21:33]
Bob Hiller
And that's what the Nazis did. The Nazis said, turn Jesus into the Ubermensch, turn him into the strong man who conquers the weak. But this preaching of Paul on the cross, let's get rid of that, that's weak and that's, you know, so I don't know when he says he's a traditional Christian or traditional Christian values or the theology isn't Christian and the values aren't Christian, they're Nietzschean.
- [22:12]
Host/Announcer
At Sola Media, we're committed to helping Christians deepen their faith through clear Christ centered teaching rooted in the riches of the Reformation. Every podcast, article and resource we produce is offered free of charge and it's only possible because of generous monthly supporters. When you become a partner today, you'll receive two remarkable books as our thanks Rediscovering the Holy Spirit by Dr. Michael Horton and Praying with Jesus by Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We believe these books can guide you into a clearer understanding of the Spirit's work and a richer prayer life. To become a partner and receive these two books, visit solamedia.org partner.
- [23:05]
Caleb Waite
Those are kind of the cynical narratives that you kind of have to choose between the one that's more leftist or the one that's over here that's just anti what is and so in this ecosystem of content of the red pill movement is multiple different kinds of influencers that address different topics. We'll come to again to Fuentes shortly. But most commonly now, the term red pill online, as far as I can tell, is associated with influencers who talk about gender dynamics, dating between men and women. This is really wildly popular and it is meant to sow and affirm the suspicions that men might have of women, women might have of men. So for example, the red pill influencers in this environment actively encourage men to not get married. Do not pursue the narrative that you've been sold, that is you should work hard to get married, provide for your wife, start a family, traditional values. Yeah, that's a lie. That's why they're not conservative, they're not traditional. The hermeneutics of suspicion here are all women, whether it's due to their ontology and nature or whether it's due to just the fact of they're helpless because they've been reared in a modern society, post feminism and sexual revolution. It doesn't really matter. All women today are hypergamous. They only want status, wealth, power, money. They don't want a real personal relationship with you. And so your best option forward is to maybe let your ambition run wild, make as much money as possible, that is Andrew Tate and sire as many children with different women if you can, but definitely don't get married because the system has been rigged against you men in a way that is not beneficial towards you because when you're left you have to flip all the financial responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. What's interesting, Nicholas Carr is an author. He's written a lot about the Internet, the shallow media. Yeah, yeah. He recently gave a fascinating talk where he was sharing new research being done and the research this study was done at an apartment complex in Irvine, interestingly enough. And what they did is the people in the same apartment building because they're such in close proximity and they were able to witness each other's just humanity and their goings about in life. Even when their neighbor did something wrong, annoying like leaving the trash out outside of the trash bin and they put it on the ground instead. Because the neighbors in their close proximity saw the humanity of their neighbors, they had more empathy and understanding. Oh yeah, that's Joe, he would do that. He was busy, he was late, whatever. There's more standing in charity there. But even just a few hundred yards away in the other apartment building, when they would see those neighbors do other mistakes, there was much more a projection of bad motives of like those people in that building are always doing that and they're always, you know. Anyway, Nicholas Carr says that mapped on to social media we are essentially if we're isolated, young men don't really have a lot of real relationships and friends with women. They're only viewing them through this distance of social media and they're only growing more and more and more suspicious of all interesting, all their behaviors, activities, what they're really after. And it's not that all of the men interested in this content have this self entitlement. A lot of them have experienced rejection and just have a lot of self loathing.
- [27:49]
Bob Hiller
And a culture that really has made men the focus of all evil in the world.
- [27:55]
Caleb Waite
Again, another cynical narrative on the other side in Caleb.
- [27:59]
Walter Strickland
What's funny, Mike, you said other movements have made men the focus of hey, you're the source of evil. But the red pill movement is saying, well there's an assumption that men are supposed to sacrifice our lives. There's this bribe of being put in the history books or making a monument out of us. There's more war deaths by men, men have more suicides, shorter life expectancy, mortality rates between breast cancer and prostate cancer are just as high. But breast cancer awareness gets all the hype and the fundraising. And so there's this assumption of we're called the cause of the problem, but really we're being devalued. And so that's a theme that I'm seeing that sort of causing. And thanks for helping me put this together, Caleb. Especially as that's applied to dating. They're just clashing in that way.
- [28:45]
Caleb Waite
Yeah, yeah. And another movement you've mentioned, Nick Fuentes. I don't know if he uses the term red pill for himself, but it fits the mold and he's in this media ecosystem that is focused primarily on speaking to folks with the grievance of how come it's so difficult to get a good paying job and become successful and industrious in my home country where I was born. And so he's speaking into those grievances, those experiences.
- [29:30]
Bob Hiller
He just told me, all these women and immigrants have taken my jobs.
- [29:34]
Caleb Waite
Yeah. And he tweeted this today. He said, we are done with white guilt. I don't care if you call me a racist. I don't care if you put another smuggled Jew in front of me, wagging his finger about the Holocaust, crying about his grandpa. Our civilization and everything we love about it is being raped and killed. Wake up again.
- [29:54]
Bob Hiller
Wake up.
- [29:55]
Caleb Waite
This refrain of waking up and burning down the things right now that are not working, by the way, wake up
- [30:06]
Bob Hiller
comes from the Gnostics. That phrase, wake up. The Gnostic Jesus comes to one of the disciples, all this is fake and says, wake up. Wake up. From the material world to the real world, which is a dream. And that fits with Nietzsche saying, look, religion and values and all these things, these are noble lies. Yes, but he was cynical. But he said we have to have them. We live by lies. We couldn't survive without lies. I believe lies, I accept lies, but just know they're illusions. Along these lines, this is from First Things, Bethel McGrew, Nick Fuentes and Richard Heninius. Paganism. I don't know a latter person, but the popularity of Nick Fuentes is in a way a fulfillment of Ross Douthat's much quoted, ominous prophecy that the post Christian rite will replace the Christian rite. David Mahoney correctly identifies Fuentes as an avatar of the new pagan rite, owing much more to Nietzsche than to Jesus, as he openly admires totalitarians and seeks to position himself as a political power broker. And he goes on to say, you know Richard Hanania, who lived in the alt right fever swamps, reinvented himself as a left wing progressive, but still Nietzschean. And she says, yet he and Fuentes still have something in common. In their distinct ways. Both of them see the world through pagan eyes and analyze it with pagan logic. Their political projects may be at odds, but their post Christian vision, or rather nostalgically pre Christian pagan vision, is shared. And then she goes through, gives some examples and then how both of them say that non white people are stupid and weak. He goes on a monologue about demythologizing Hitler. I saw something where Cuentes said Hitler is cool, he's awesome.
- [32:32]
Caleb Waite
Yeah, he says he's awesome.
- [32:34]
Bob Hiller
And also holding up the possibility of pederasty. She says the fascination is most grotesquely evident in Fuentes long paper trail of hypocrisy on sexual ethics, where he pays lip service to the Christian ethic while indulging in the most depraved sexual power fantasies. He holds forth on the evils of pornography only to turn around and circulate 4chan r cartoons. He loves to imagine himself having his way with submissive female or male partners, sometimes in a pederastic key. In other words, he longs to be a high status man in the old pagan empire he pines for. He says explicitly, we need, just as the Jews created their own state, the Christian nation needs to rebuild the Roman Empire. So this is not Christianity, this is pagan Rome.
- [33:36]
Adriel Sanchez
So his quote and the things you're reading there, I don't know if he actually believes that stuff. So he tweets today, I'm done with all this, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- [33:47]
Mike Horton
You're not.
- [33:47]
Adriel Sanchez
You didn't just like come to that realization today. You've been saying this stuff. And he uses like six buzz phrases that are going to get him attention. Like, I think the last line of that article is the key. He just wants to have power. He just wants to be on top. Like it doesn't matter how he gets there, the more attention he gets, that's all that matters.
- [34:05]
Bob Hiller
Getting attention. Isn't that what all this is about? Getting attention?
- [34:08]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah, it's just, it's like, it's like a frankly, like that tweet you said, Caleb, that's like a whiny kid who knows what's gonna make his parents mad.
- [34:16]
Caleb Waite
For sure.
- [34:17]
Adriel Sanchez
He knows that's what's gonna get him attention. And yet he says all the phrases that attract people who are disenfranchised and now they've got all the right enemies.
- [34:26]
Caleb Waite
What he's teaching them, Bob, is, and here's the people who are his apologists and defenders is to say, listen, if you asked him if you really wanted to go out and gas people and commit these atrocities, he would say, no, of course not. But it's like, well, actually you kind of said those things. You say, Hitler is awesome. The whole point is this performance of whether they're ironic or not ironic. You never know. They're just gesturing and winking at this. That doesn't matter. What matters is you used to be able to dig up a former social media, an old social media post from someone that was, quote, unquote, you know, homophobic. Transphobic, racist, misogynist, anti Semitic. And you could use that to like cancel them or fire them. But if you just embrace all of those things, if you just embrace those things, Fuentes is saying, you become invincible, whether you really believe in them or not. So therefore the goal is to be as loud about them as. And you're rattling your sabers to say I'm invincible. Your fake words can't hurt me. They're all modern, they're made up, they don't matter. You can't hurt me. And that's how he's total Nietzsche empowering his followers there. Which sets us up for one of the main old school kind of influencers. Not that old school in Internet years. He's old school, but one of the figures upstream of this. Have you guys heard of the anonymous figure, the Bronze Age pervert through you?
- [36:08]
Walter Strickland
Yes, unfortunately. And researching for this episode. Thank God, this is the first time I interacted with him.
- [36:16]
Caleb Waite
Yeah, it's BAP for short. Interestingly enough, his followers are the Baptists.
- [36:22]
Walter Strickland
I was offended by that.
- [36:23]
Caleb Waite
But continue rightly. Yeah, come on. I would be too, Walter. This figure's work has been cited and reviewed by former White House officials and Yale's Brian Garston, both of whom say this figure's writing's philosophy is winning over theirs. So they say these figures in these elite institutions say he's a force to be reckoned with. And he basically. Well one, his real name is Kostin Alomaru, I think is how you pronounce his last name. He is a Romanian immigrant, came here when he was 10, went to MIT, studied mathematics, then went to Yale, studied political philosophy under Stephen B. Smith, who was his advisor. When he turned in his dissertation, his advisor was shocked and horrified, horrified that he found out his student was basically a pro authoritarian ideologue and said basically, how could you? You're betraying. You fled to America and now you're betraying America. He still signed off on his dissertation because he said he wasn't his censor, he was his advisor. But he kind of repudiated his students teachings. But he writes under this anonymous avatar, Bronze Age pervert, that to advocate for a Bronze Age mindset, pre modern, before modern, liberal, respectable sensibilities. Here's some quotes from his manifesto, the Bronze Age mindset. He says, I was roused from my slumber by my frog friends. He writes again in many memes and broken English on purpose. And I declare to you with great boldness, I am here to save you from great ugliness. And then he says, what is the ugliness he's speaking of? He says, there is a crease. You see this in people's faces, a crease around the eye that tells it it looks like cyborg gone off script. These people have an inhuman gaze and are vehicles for something else. You see this also in the chiefs of the EU bureaucracy with tiny mole man eyes behind small glasses and the tiny lenses that reflect light. You see it in the dead robot eyes of the new human automatons running government departments, the dmv, the brutal zombies running the security in airports or hospital healthcare rooms under vicious yellow fluorescent lights. You see how it sounds like Fight
- [39:08]
Mike Horton
Club sounds like it's straight from the script.
- [39:10]
Caleb Waite
He goes on, he says, listen, you don't need Darwin to believe in heredity and even evolution. People knew about heredity and the different lineages of man long before Darwin. In the political sense, the promotion of Darwin teaching and its application to mankind is a great good. The left and its many robots, I will talk of their origin later, want nothing more than to hide truth about human nature and Darwin. Evolutionary science in all its forms is a great weapon of truth against them. The hereditary nature of the qualities and the suitability of an organism to its environment and vice versa, all of this is just true observation. That true observation about heredity is in the end enough. You don't need more than to utterly crush all the designs and vanities of the bugman. That's what he calls modern men, modern people. The bug man fears heredity and nature, not Darwin. And so basically he's picking up on these tropes coming from these anti Semitic ideas in the 1880s, 1890s. That takes Darwinism, survival of the fittest, the fact that a healthy organism can be infected with something. When that became more popular at the end of the 19th century, people just map that onto race. And the Germans after World War I said, well, that's why we lost World War I. It's because the 600,000 Jews who are in our country, even though they're well assimilated, they infected our healthy organism and they destroyed us. That's why we actually lost the war. And those tropes, they've been on the fringes for a long time.
- [40:54]
Bob Hiller
And also not just in Germany, at the same time in the United States and England. And England. Rudyard Kipling, for example, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, yeah, but also the leading Social Darwinists were leaders of the social Gospel movement. They called themselves Evangelical Social Gospel or even Christian Socialists or whatever. But it was thoroughly Darwinian. One of the leaders. Josiah Strong said, if I'm not mistaken, our powerful Anglo Saxon race will impress itself, show its power and impress itself on the imagination of mankind. We will sweep down to Mexico. Then we will da, da, da. And he goes on to at last be the answer. The final solution to the dark problem. That's how he ends the final solution. Hitler's line before Hitler, the final solution to the world's dark problem. And after that, he was catapulted to the head of the Evangelical Union of America. He was a social gospel guy. Rainsworth. I mean, we go through the whole list. These folks were Rauschenbusch. They were American imperialists believing that the Christian nation, God shed his grace on thee, and this Christian nation is going to reform itself, just like Finney taught. And then we're going to purify the world. Yeah, to the world by force if necessary.
- [42:37]
Caleb Waite
Yeah. So all of these. It's pseudoscience, it's quackery, and it's kind of repackaged today by the online media influencers. Again, speaking to aggrieved young folks unsatisfied with the way things are. I mean, these figures, this BAP guy, he believes in the transmigration of souls in reincarnation. You know, it's all very mystical. It's utopian. He believes that, you know, in the right of the elite to dominate. Nature itself isn't a Christian understanding of nature. The aristocracy he wants is complete dominance and power over, as you said, Mike, people who are born to be in their lower class and stations. And so if he's saying, hey, you have a right, kids. You have a right to exercise and to achieve and to be a part of this project that is much more human than the people who are running HR departments who want to police your language and talk about microaggressions. All of that is pathetic in his mind. Right. Christianity, likewise in the cross, completely useless and foolish from you being able to actualize your spartan kind of destiny.
- [44:15]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, we're right back to the criticism that Romans had of Christianity. Rome had no place for values like compassion. A great leader was not compassionate. A great leader was glorious in battle. And that's what Nietzsche said. We've lost because of Christianity. We got to go back to that. And that's what I hear from a lot of these guys. You know, Nietzsche said that really the. The weakest part of Christianity is the cross. Like a symbol of an electric chair people wear around their neck is a horrible symbol. It keeps people from wanting to advance and become the supermen. And, you know, you think of it this way, Jesus, what is weaker? To be a tyrant, to take power, to take. To bulldoze other people just because you
- [45:08]
Caleb Waite
can,
- [45:10]
Bob Hiller
or to have all the power in heaven and on earth because you created it, and surrender it at the foot of a wooden cross to be nailed to it? Because no love has any man that is greater than that, he would die for his friends. That's strength.
- [45:35]
Mike Horton
That strength it is. Caleb, we are grateful for you in guiding us through this. If there's one thing in this conversation that it makes clear is that the online world is not neutral. It's forming people very deeply. And what we've seen, thanks to Caleb in our discussion, is that this formation is often a interesting blend of irony, anger, performance, and a longing for meaning that never quite gets met, always moving. And our aim isn't to critique online trends or dunk on bad ideas. It's to celebrate a theological biblical vision that's big enough, beautiful enough, strong enough to meet the real questions young men are carrying. Questions about agency, responsibility, transcendence, sacrifice, hope. How do we think through these things? And here's our hope, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's not fragile and it's not defeatist, and it's not competing for algorithms. And it speaks directly and clearly to the hunger beneath all of this swirl and noise, which is desire for identity, purpose, strength, belonging, and truth. The cross is not weakness. It's God's strength, made known in the only place that can actually bear the weight of our lives. The cross is not defeatism. It's actually realism. The theology of the cross doesn't celebrate suffering for its own sake. It names the world honestly as a place where suffering, sin and injustice and death are real and destructive. And it declares that God meets us precisely there, not in our illusions of someone else's strength or our own strength. So far from killing agency, the cross actually restores it. When your identity and justification are anchored in Christ and not in your performance, you're finally freed to act with courage rather than fear. You can take responsibility. You can work, you can. You can sacrifice. You can serve not to earn your righteousness, but because it's been given to you already in Christ.
- [47:45]
Host/Announcer
Thanks for listening to this production of Sola Media. If you enjoyed this episode, would you share it with someone you think would benefit from it? Your support helps us spread the riches of the Reformation and apply historic Christian theology to every area of life.