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Zero Hour with James Poulos
Ep 64 | Are We All Racist? I Matt Walsh
00:30:45
Matt Walsh, host at the Daily Wire, joins James Poulos to discuss his new controversial movie, "Am I Racist?" and the pressure society puts on people to push systemic racism.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
James Polis
Are you a racist? Am I a racist? Is Matt Walsh a racist? He's here to tell us now. I'm James Polis. Welcome to Zero Hour. Matt Walsh is, anyway, he slices one of the right's most influential voices and faces when he's not in disguise. He hosts the Matt Walsh show and is coming out with his next major film, Am I Racist? It's out now. Welcome Matt.
- [01:23]
Matt Walsh
Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
- [01:24]
James Polis
Okay, well, I mean let's, you know, spoiler alert. Are you a racist?
- [01:30]
Matt Walsh
Well, I'm white, aren't I? So strike one. Yeah. The answer is automatically yes based on that fact alone, as we discovered in.
- [01:40]
James Polis
The film Three Strikes. How are you feeling after having gone through this experience? Are you feeling at peace with your racism? Are you feeling like you need to be reeducated? Just like, where are you at psychologically?
- [01:56]
Matt Walsh
Well, the journey never ends. So I feel, you know, you don't get to the end of it and as you continue along the journey, you just feel worse and worse about yourself. That that's really the goal. You just have to keep hating yourself more and more with each passing day. So I, yes, I'm, I utterly despise myself at the end of the journey. But it has only just begun.
- [02:18]
James Polis
It's a trip. Because you know, obviously in one sense this is all very droll and humorous, but in another sense this is like actually the plan, right? Like the actual program is to get millions and millions of people to feel incredibly depressed and despairing and self loathing. And then, you know, it's much easier to control people when you have them in that state.
- [02:38]
Matt Walsh
Right, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's. And that's the thing, you know, the movie that we, we've made is we classify it as a comedy because it's funny. But as is often the case with comedy, you know, underneath the humor is tragedy. And the tragedy in this case, unfortunately is society wide. You know, it's across our entire society. And it's exactly that that you have these grifters promoting this agenda and their goal is to build up resentment, self Loathing, suspicion, guilt, all of these things are very profitable to them if we feel that way about ourselves and about each other. And so that's ultimately their goal. And we have to say that they've been very effective in pursuing that goal, especially over the last decade or so.
- [03:33]
James Polis
Yeah, terribly effective. And the really creepy thing is it doesn't stop with white people. Like this mind virus, as some like to call it, has already sort of breached containment. And now if you're white adjacent, you know, that's also bad. There's basically a reason to hate yourself and to despair for everyone, no matter who you are.
- [03:55]
Matt Walsh
Right, right, exactly. Well, and it's the way it breaks down, I think, to just simplify it, which it is. It is very simple, really. This, this, their, their core message is a simple one, which is that if you're a white person, then you are the villain of the story. You are history's great villain, and you have much to be, to be ashamed of and much to atone for, although you can never really atone for it. And then, but if you're not, if you're anywhere in the non white category, which of course is a, is a vast category, then you're automatically the victim. You're oppressed, you have no control over your life, you have no agency. Right. No real autonomy. And there's. If you believe that and you're not a white person and you believe that, then there's a lot of self loathing that comes with that as well. So it's a very demoralizing and dehumanizing message to everybody, I think.
- [04:55]
James Polis
All right, well, let's just kind of try to size things up where they stand right now. You go back to the 90s. This was very much an academic concept, strategic concept, worked its way through academia, hit wave after wave of college students, got out into the wild. Now, we've been through several generations here. If you talk to a guy like Chris Rufo, who you probably know as well or better than I do, his book, that concept there was, look, cultural revolution happened in America because of the intellectuals. I'm wondering, going through this film, did you feel like you came out of it considering the intellectuals, the academy, to be the main villains here in taking people spiritually to such a dark place? Or do you think that at this point it's a popular movement in its own right?
- [05:54]
Matt Walsh
It begins with them. Yeah. The ideas start there and then they filter their way down into the broader society. It's the same thing with, you know, the first movie we made was what is A woman which deals with gender ideology. And it's the same, exact, same exact process happens where you have these, these ideas, these rather absurd ideas that start in academia and you really aren't exposed to them unless you're, you know, unless really you're, unless you want to be, unless you're going, and you're looking to be exposed to them. But then after a while they make it out into broader society. So for example, the idea that white, that white people are inherently racist and that only white people can be racist because, you know, power plus prejudice equals racism is kind of the equation that these anti racist people have come up with. That idea would have been totally foreign and alien to almost Everybody. Even like 20 years ago. Certainly, certainly 25 years ago prior to like the 2000s, you wouldn't have heard that. I mean, the idea that like only white people can be racist is something that you could only encounter if you are in academia and you're, and you're pursuing these kinds of ideas. But now it's really kind of taken for granted by a lot of people in society that they might not articulate it in the same way and they don't understand where these ideas came from. But a lot of people take that for granted. In fact, even the people who reject that idea still end up basically accepting the premise. Because you'll hear even conservatives say things like, you know, reverse racism. Reverse racism is real, they'll say, and they think they're standing up to the left when they say that. Well, hold on a second. What do you mean reverse racism? No, it's just racism. Like if it's a black person is racist, it's not reverse racism, it's just racism. Reverse racism makes it sound like racism is an inherently white thing. And so if a white person is the victim of racism, then it's been reversed on them like they're getting a dose of their own medicine. So, you know, that I think that's how firmly this stuff has seeped into the kind of cultural consciousness.
- [08:10]
James Polis
What do you think works to stand up to this movement? I mean, we've seen, you know, kind of the old judge them by the, the content of their character mode that kind of got washed away. You got the reverse racism thing that hasn't proven to be very effective. What's the, what's the magic trick here? What, what's it going to take to roll it back?
- [08:30]
Matt Walsh
I think what it ultimately takes is, and again, simplifying. I'm a simple man though, so I think in simple terms and I think what it ultimately takes is at this point basically just leaving people alone. I don't know that we need a competing message about racism so much as we just need to, like, we don't need to talk about it all the time. And that's something that, you know, there was Morgan Freeman In a 60 Minutes interview 25 years ago or so, kind of a famous clip where he's, he's asked this question about, well, what do we do about racism? And he says, stop talking about it and that. And I don't know if you asked him today if he gave the same answer. I hope that he would, but I think that that's basically correct and that if you let, if you leave people alone and you don't demand that they focus on race and racism all the time, then the kind of default position of most people is that they not, you know, they're not that worried about it, they're not thinking about it that much. And we saw that in the film. We went and talked to, of course, we're talking to a lot of the crazy academic, anti racist, so called scholars and so forth, but we also went and talked to just normal people who are living outside of this bubble really, and have, and haven't been exposed to a lot of the DEI stuff and white and black. And that was kind of their position. They said, hey, I don't, you know, I don't if you're white or black, I don't, I can be friends with you. It doesn't really matter to me and I don't think about it that much. So I think that would be the default position for most people if not for this agenda being foist on them.
- [10:06]
James Polis
When you were out there talking to people, did they give off a vibe of feeling like they were oppressed and hemmed in by this sort of blob that was starting to eat America? Or was it more of a vibe of like, yeah, the weirdos are out there, but you know, they're, they've, they've kind of got their own, their own side of the board to live on.
- [10:25]
Matt Walsh
It really depends on, I guess, you know, it depends on who, who you're talking to and where you go. You know, we talk just, just for example, we talked to, we went down to New Orleans to the black community, Very, very poor, you know, black community in New Orleans. We talked to a mechanic named, named Milton. And I was kind of talking to him about the issues of systemic racism and how much that affects his life. And his answer was like, doesn't affect, I don't I don't think about it all. He didn't even know what I was talking about. He had never heard of any of this. He had never. I talked about Robin DiAngelo. He had never even heard, didn't know who she was, didn't hear of any of it, wasn't interested. And so for somebody like that, you know, he's not feeling hemmed in by any of it. He's just kind of living his life and he's not worried about it. But I think the closer you are to this, I mean, if you work in corporate America and you have to endure the DEI brainwashing sessions, then you're going to have a very different perspective and you're going to feel a lot more affected by it, obviously.
- [11:28]
James Polis
Well, yeah, I mean, this is sort of the demented thing to me is, yeah, there's some evidence that certain corporations there's starting to undo their DEI bureaucracy or whatever. But I think a big reason that so much of this has become so deeply rooted into people's just mindset is that it's become a jobs program. There is a large sector of the population that is spending their time getting paid to just keep talking about it. And it's not just commentators and it's not just, you know, we can talk about your experience at the DNC and just kind of the professional sort of career politicians who talk about it, but, you know, people who make their livelihood in corporate America just continuing to talk about it, to continue to have the struggle sessions, to continue to sort of reprogram, reeducate, update people's firmware every month. You know, there's a sort of new identity or new problem that needs to be talked about and discussed. How do you get people to stop talking about it when it's so much of people's everyday lives and their livelihoods?
- [12:32]
Matt Walsh
Yeah, well, that's. You're exactly right that you have some people, that they have a vested interest in this because there's a lot of money in it for them and there's a lot of influence and power. And so in that way, it's not very confusing where this comes from. It's a tale as old as time. I mean, in particular, using race, using race as a means to control people and, you know, divide people. This nefarious forces have been doing that for a long time. Same thing's happening now. And so for these DEI types, it's. Yeah, there's. There's the money. I mean, and we don't, by the way, in the movie, we even go so far as to put up on the screen the amount of money that we paid these people to appear in the film, because we're not hiding from that. It's part of the story that, you know, they claim to care about racism in America and we say, hey, dude, we're doing a documentary. You want to talk about race and racism? And. But, well, they need to be paid and sometimes a lot of money to talk about it. So there's the money for them, but there's also the. I think maybe even more potently there's the. They have assumed the position of kind of moral gurus and moral authorities and people are going to them for guidance. People are going to them to find out how they can be like good people in the world. They've kind of taken the position that if you're a Christian, this is the position that your, your priest or your pastor has.
- [14:02]
James Polis
Yep.
- [14:03]
Matt Walsh
And. But the people that get sucked into the anti racism stuff, most of them are, are, you know, secular. They're not, not members of what we would call, I guess, traditional religion. And so really I think they flock to this in a lot of ways for, for the same reason that people need religion. It's kind of a replacement for religion in their lives in a lot of ways.
- [14:23]
James Polis
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that. The spiritual hunger, the spiritual thirst in the country is immense. And you can go all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville, sort of observing that Americans have this kind of panic about them where they feel like by the time that it takes me to actually get prosperity, then my life is going to be over. It's going to slip through my fingers craving a sort of immediate, direct spiritual experience because they feel like they don't have the time or the leisure to go about it patiently, efficiently and slowly. And then you get these folks riding into town offering really spiritual snake oil. And it's sad, but people lap it up.
- [15:02]
Matt Walsh
And I think that part of the reason that they lap it up is that while there's a real human need for religion, for spirituality, that's an actual need that we have. Bob Dylan. You got to serve somebody. And there's a lot of truth to that. And also I know as a Christian that all people are sinners. And so we are a fallen people. And that means that we all carry guilt around. We all have guilt for things that we've done and said. And we should feel guilt when you do something bad or you say something wrong, or you tell a lie or what have you. You should feel bad about that, you shouldn't wallow in it. But guilt is an appropriate response. But I think for secular people, they still experience the guilt, but they don't really know how to understand it because they don't have a concept like sin that doesn't exist in their world. At least they don't think it exists. And so they're carrying this around and they don't really know what to do with these feelings. And then you've got Robin DiAngelo or someone like her who comes along and says, hey, I'll tell you why you're feeling that way. I'll help you understand those feelings. It's because you're white and you carry the legacy of slavery around with you. And here are all the steps you need to follow to atone for that sin. Although, as I said, turns out that you can't actually atone for it ever, or be relieved of the guilt. So that's. That's part of the scam here.
- [16:28]
James Polis
Yeah, really just kind of taking the conceptual structure of Christianity and ripping it off and disfiguring it. That's it.
- [16:38]
Matt Walsh
It's.
- [16:39]
James Polis
I don't know. I think it's pretty undeniable, and I hope people increasingly wake up to it. Them. But you were at the DNC in disguise, or I guess what worked as a disguise for those who did not instantly recognize your face. Was it like being in some kind of religious revival? Was it like being on another planet? What was it like in there?
- [17:03]
Matt Walsh
Yeah, it always is going to have the feeling of being around creatures from another galaxy a little bit. I will say that I wasn't there. So we weren't able to be there for very long. We went. The DNC was two different buildings. They had the building, the arena, where they were actually holding the convention, and then they had a separate building a few blocks away with their kind of Dem expo thing where they had all their booths set up. And we went there first and tried to talk to. I talked to one person, really, and was kicked out in like 20 minutes. It didn't last for very long. Escorted out by, you know, flanked by security and police and everything. Kicked us out, said we couldn't come back, but they didn't say anything about the other building. So we went there next and yeah, again, not there for very long. I mean, of course, the disguise that I use at the dnc, it's the same one in the movie. It's not a CIA level disguise. I'm not going to be a spy in an enemy territory with a Disguise like that not intended to be so recognized pretty early. And the funny thing is that they were very mad that I was there. There was a lot of backlash. And I didn't do anything. I honestly didn't. All I did was just attend and walk around. I didn't do anything to interrupt. I didn't cause anyone any harm.
- [18:28]
James Polis
You turned it into an unsafe space.
- [18:30]
Matt Walsh
Right. Which is always interesting. Just like simply being there, you're very present. If they don't agree with you, then your very presence in their vicinity is somehow threatening to them.
- [18:43]
James Polis
Yeah, it's like spiritual warfare. It's like a psychological attack.
- [18:49]
Matt Walsh
Yeah, I think it is. I think it's just like it's the same thing. If you're a conservative and you go speak on a college campus. I mean, we've all seen this. I've been through it a million times where you go speak on a college campus. And you would think that, hey, if you don't, if you're not interested, if you don't agree with me, if you hate me, you could just not attend and go about your day and it's not going to hurt you, but they don't want you there. They don't want to be around you at all. And, you know, I think there's a lot that goes into it. Part of it is a fundamental insecurity that they have, I think, about their worldview. They're not confident in their ability to defend their own worldview. And so the best defense mechanism is to sort of insulate themselves from people who would challenge that worldview and to just make sure they're never around those people. And then if you end up inside that bubble, it's like you've punctured their little safety balloon they've made for themselves, and they get really upset.
- [19:45]
James Polis
Yeah, well, you know, there's this weird meme floating around. The catchphrase is the woke. Woke is more correct than the mainstream. And I think this is sort of like speaking to what that meme is supposed to represent, which is you do have a lot of people now on the left who do think in terms of spiritual warfare. And they're not sort of those, you know, oh, God isn't real. And, you know, I just say save the whales or whatever. That kind of garden variety, sort of secular 90s, 2000s liberalism used to be. It's more becoming sort of this recognition that a certain kind of spiritual vacuum did open up in America and they're taking steps to fill it. And sometimes it seems like they've got a Little bit more gumption or a little bit more ambition to fill that spiritual vacuum than some folks on the right. So I think you're right on about the way that these kind of spiritual categories or experiences are mapping onto what's going on over there. And I wonder, you know, looking ahead to November, it does seem like a kind of clash of the spiritual titans is shaping up here. Obviously, you know, there's all. Everything's kind of bundled into this, finance and economics and politics and geopolitics and all the rest. What are your expectations for November? Just how intense do you think this battle is going to get?
- [21:06]
Matt Walsh
Well, I'll say. Well, I'll answer that. But just backtracking to it, as I was thinking about what you were saying, the woke kind of understand, at least in a weird way, they understand the spiritual element of this more than even some conservatives do. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And that's also why, and I've been pointing this out, I'm not the only one, I've been pointing it out for years, that on the left, they're much quicker to make the moral argument for their positions than people on the right are. In fact, this has been the secret. This has been like the not so secret secret of the success of leftism in this country for years now is that they argue for their positions on moral grounds first. Always. They often just ignore the practical implications entirely. And so they'll say, this is what we got to do for the climate. This is what we got to do with, you know, health care for all. This is this and that. And the right will respond by saying, well, yeah, but if we do that, then it's going to bankrupt us. It's going to have all these bad, bad practical effects. And leftists say, well, you know, it's the right thing to do. It doesn't matter. We have to just do the right thing. And it turns out now their moral arguments are always deranged and wrong. But the fact is that the moral argument is compelling, just like arguing for things on those grounds is obviously compelling to people. Conservatives have been too, has been too shy about that for way too long, too shy to say, hey, this is what we're standing for first and foremost, because it's just right, it's the right thing. And then downstream, here are all the great economic benefits and so on. So, and I, and I to transition into the 2024, the election. I think we see again, some of that dynamic happening right now between the two candidates as far as what's going to happen. I, you know, I'm a terrible political prognosticator. I'm almost always wrong when I predict what's going to happen politically. So I won't even try to. Instead, I'll take the cop out, which I think is correct. That, you know, I do think it's like 50, 50 right now. It's going to be really tight. I don't think that anyone predicting a landslide on either side is full of it. We're just not, we're not a country where a landslide can even happen at this point in a presidential election. I don't even think that's possible. I don't care who the candidates are. It's like no matter who runs, it's going to come down to the wire. And so that's what I would expect.
- [23:37]
James Polis
Yeah, that seems about right to me. Maybe we can narrow, tighten up the question a little bit and get you, get you going on the record a little bit. But Donald Trump has been, I think, trying really since the beginning to form, like a solidly multiracial coalition. I think that comes from a lot of places. For him, probably being from New York is one of them, being like a big, big national celebrity, having the TV shows really trying to rope in a big cross section of the American people. 2016 didn't really work out. There's some kind of glimmers of May, a lot of hype during the off years for Trump. You know, maybe he can do it now. Maybe we can really change, you know, really change the kind of the way the demographics shake out politically. And now, you know, you look at some of these polls and maybe it's actually starting to happen. You know, it's starting to look more like a gender split, where you got like, black and Latino guys being like, this is insanity. You know, get me off of this train. I'm getting on the Trump train. Do you think that Donald Trump is going to come out of this election one way or the other with that sort of demographic realignment in the gop?
- [24:50]
Matt Walsh
I don't, I wouldn't predict. I wouldn't count on that happening. Maybe he'll get a little bit more of the, you know, minority vote, the black vote. I think he's going to do pretty well in the Hispanic vote, but that happened in 2020. If we're talking about the black vote specifically, maybe it's a little bit of a larger share of that, but I wouldn't expect much there. I actually think that's a little, that's like, it's it's, it's a, it's a false hope. It's a fantasy land that you find with some Republicans that, you know, I've even seen, I think we've all seen the tweets from various commentators saying Donald Trump's gonna win the black votes, right? No, he's not. He's just, he's not. I know I said I'm a terrible political prognosticator. I'll prognosticate that. I'll put all my money that he's not gonna win the black vote. In fact, he's going to get crushed. I mean, he's going to get crushed in the black vote. It's going to happen. And does it always have to be that way? Like, does the Republican Party just have to accept the fact that, that the demographics work out this way politically and it's always going to be that way? No, but, but this is a long term, I mean, to turn around this trend, this is a generational trend. It's probably going to take generations to reverse it. Trump isn't going to do that. Which is all the more reason why, and I've said this before, that I think this is one of the mistakes that Republicans often make, and we're seeing it even with the Trump campaign, that they make a specific appeal to black voters, to Hispanic voters, to Asian voters, to women voters. They'll go out and say, here's what we're going to do for this particular group. The only group that Republicans will not try to specifically appeal to is white men. They'll never say, okay, here's all the great things to do for black people, for women, for Asians, and also, here's why white men should vote first. They'll never say that. They'll never say it. They'll say about every other group. They will not say it about white men and because they're afraid of being called racist and sexist. But I think that's a mistake. Yeah.
- [26:56]
James Polis
You think that's gonna change? Think it's gonna be okay not just to be white, but to make explicit political pitches on the basis of whiteness?
- [27:04]
Matt Walsh
It should change. Why not? I mean, if you, there's no one can articulate any reason why not. If you can do that with every other race, why can't you do with white people? I mean, why is white the one, like, unspeakable group that you can't, that you can't care, that you're not allowed to admit you care about specifically? It's crazy. It's crazy to me. And Meanwhile, white men, I mean, look, if Trump wins, it's going to be because of white men. That is his base. And you have to mobilize your base first and foremost. You got to get bring in more people. Yeah, but, but you gotta start by mobilizing your base. Democrats are not shy about mobilizing their base and speaking to their base and acknowledging their existence. And I think the Republicans, not just Trump, but Republicans generally should be doing that a lot more.
- [27:45]
James Polis
Well, what I'm hearing from you is that basically, for the foreseeable future, millions and millions of Americans who would not consider themselves to be proud racists are going to be accused publicly of, in fact being racist. Tell them what they should say, how they should respond.
- [28:05]
Matt Walsh
I'll tell you what you should not do. You should not respond by desperately trying to prove that you aren't racist. That is a lose, lose game. You can't win because when you're being called racist, it's an unfalsifiable claim. And no matter what you say in response to it, it's going to automatically be taken as proof that you are racist. So if you deny that you're racist, that's just more evidence that you are racist. Because, hey, that's exactly what a racist would say. So the best way to respond to it is to not play the game. And what I found outside of making a film like this, but in my everyday real life, if I'm not playing a character for a film and somebody calls me racist, I mostly just ignore it and say nothing. If I do say anything, it's going, my message is going to be, hey, I don't care that you think that of me. These labels that you're putting on me have no power over me. I don't care. I'm not going to try to prove otherwise. I'm just not interested in doing it. I don't have to prove myself to you. You, in fact, are not my spiritual advisor that I'm coming to to look for guidance and all of that. You're just a person. And so I don't have to prove myself to you. You can think whatever you want, it doesn't matter. It has no impact. And I think that has to be the message. The people that use these labels as a weapon, as a cudgel, to beat their opponents over the head. The only way to stop them, the only way to take that weapon away from them is to make it clear that it has no power over you. And so I think that's what we have to do.
- [29:44]
James Polis
Yeah, well, what I. What I found in the. In the film, from the clips that I've seen that really impressed me was just your. Your tolerance, your capability for withstanding incredible awkwardness, and that maybe one of the best ways to deal with that kind of situation is to just make it as awkward as possible for the. For the other people around. You really don't know how you did it, but the film is. Am I a racist? Matt Walsh, thanks so much for being with us, man.
- [30:08]
Matt Walsh
Appreciate it. Thank you.
- [30:10]
James Polis
All righty. That's all the time we got till next time around. I'm James F. This is Zero Hour, and may God have mercy on us all.