George Alexopoulos and Matt Walsh clashed on Twitter over the Right Wing Media Culture. George asked Matt if they would have a discussion and when it appeared that they would not I asked George if he would like to come on to my show to discuss, to which he agreed.
George is a award-winning cartoonist and author. His latest book is called Goofberry Pie. He is known for his politically satirical comic panels, including panels covering politics in Canada.
You can find him on Twitter/Instagram at Username @GPrime85 You can also check out his website at StudioNJ.etsy.com
Help keep my show ad free and support independent media. Consider subscribing for a low fee and get access to by subscriber only content at my website
George Alexopoulos and Matt Walsh clashed on Twitter over the Right Wing Media Culture. George asked Matt if they would have a discussion and when it appeared that they would not I asked George if he would like to come on to my show to discuss, to which he agreed.
George is a award-winning cartoonist and author. His latest book is called Goofberry Pie. He is known for his politically satirical comic panels, including panels covering politics in Canada.
You can find him on Twitter/Instagram at Username @GPrime85 You can also check out his website at StudioNJ.etsy.com
Help keep my show ad free and support independent media. Consider subscribing for a low fee and get access to by subscriber only content at my website
Russell: Alright. And we're back. Russell here with the Canadian Conservative podcast. Thecanadianconervative.substack.com. And today I have George Alexopoulos. Is that how you say it?
George Alexopoulos: Yes, sir.
Russell: And he is in the studio today to talk a little bit about what is the right missing out on culture when it comes to stuff like comics and anime and video game s and are we missing out on an audience here? And then the people that are kind of influencing our social media sphere when it comes to conservative content, are they being quote unquote, philistines about the whole thing? And George, I'll give you a chance to introduce yourself.
George Alexopoulos: Oh, I'm an American cartoonist. Well, United States of American cartoonist. I've been one for about 20 years independently. I'm mostly known on Twitter and Instagram for drawing four panel comic strips sort of based on current events. Satirical, little bit political sometimes. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Russell: And taking a look at some of your comic panels that you have here, you did one about Canada and our Prime Minister and kind of the vaccine regime that our Prime Minister kind of headed up through the Federal Health Agency. I got to say, I love your art style. I think it's really detailed. The satire is on point and of course, the cultural references. Our Prime Minister has a really bad habit of wearing black face more times than he can remember. So I think you sum it up pretty good.
George Alexopoulos: I think it's more of a surprise when he wears white face.
Russell: Yes. I mean, we should congratulate ourselves in Canada having our first black Prime Minister. We're really progressive here.
George Alexopoulos: America did such a good job with Obama and I'm totally sarcastic when I say that he did a horrible job, but at least he was black. So let's congratulate ourselves for that.
Russell: Everything goes the way I think it's going to go. You could even have Kamala Harris as your first female president of color.
George Alexopoulos: Isn't she Indian and Jamaican or something?
Russell: I'm not sure. Wasn't she the one that ripped off the Martin Luther King story? Didn't she totally that off and make up something completely bullshit?
George Alexopoulos: This is the first time I've ever heard about a politician lying. I couldn't believe that, sir.
Russell: Me neither. Me neither. I mean, cream of the crop there, right? Nothing that's not above board. Talking about conservatives and right wing culture, where are we failing?
George Alexopoulos: Where do I start? I mean, I don't even know how many huge differences we have between yourself and myself. Where you guys are having trouble, I imagine, is you've got a maniac Prime Minister who nobody wants in office as far as I can tell. And he is a borderline fascist. Like people here talk about fascists. Like Donald Trump is one because he likes freedom and stuff, but like forcing people to stay indoors and I was going to do a whole series about that. And forcing people to get as far as I'm concerned, lethal injections. People can debate me about that and all that BS with the trucks. And I did a series of comics making fun of this guy who writes does cartoons for the Toronto Star. I think his name is Theo Mukakis or something.
Russell: He's a gem.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah. So I was making fun of him, and it was pretty fun where I drew a couple of strips where there was a truck flying into the Twin Towers and it said the word freedom on it or something. And there was another one with your guys'trucks, except they had plans. Yeah. And what was amazing is that a whole lot of Canadian leftists retweeted that, thinking it was a serious comic, and I was dying laughing. I was having a great time for them.
Russell: The line between reality and satire can be pretty thin.
George Alexopoulos: I often say they're living in such a way that I can't make fun of them anymore because they have gone over, like, if you look at life now as a Monty Python sketch, they are living the Monty Python sketch. So how do you make fun of someone who's already so insane and ridiculous? There's a line in The Meaning of Life, I think, where a baby gets born and the mom says, Is it a boy or a girl? And the doctor says, it's a bit early to be assigning gender roles to it. And here we are. And how do you make fun of these people now? They are walking punchlines, and all I can do is stare sometimes.
Russell: Well, there is a lot of indoctrination that's going on where children are going to school, and they're being especially in Canada, and they're being exposed to far left radical ideology wrapped up in this guise of progressivism. And we're seeing it in our movies, we're seeing it in our video games, we're seeing it in our comics. I did a brief I tried out the Twitter live streaming feature yesterday just to kind of riff off some thoughts, and I was reminded of that. I believe it's. I forget the name of the author, but they had a recent comic series where the Joker gets pregnant, but it's not even done in, like, a satirical, funny way. It's clearly just ramming a message through. And young people are going to pick up these comics and they're going to read them, and we can say that they're going to see through it, but I'm not completely sure when the brainwashing and all that stuff is completely saturated the market. How do conservatives breach that market space? There was another one, I think, this time with Marvel with Red Skull, who's literally a Nazi. And they had Red Skull quoting, like, Twelve Rules for Lifelines from Jordan Peterson's book. So they're able to navigate this medium, and they're able to put blatant propaganda into these spheres. So how do we, in the right sphere, counter that, but do it in a way that's not just us pushing propaganda in as well.
George Alexopoulos: It's a multilevel answer. A do you want to preserve the innocence of children? As a that has to be one of the first questions parents ask. If you do want to preserve the innocence of children, then all you can do is keep them away from almost all entertainment, which might be we could discuss this later, the Matt Walsh position, which involves basically isolating them, quarantining them. And what will unfortunately happen with that strategy is they will eventually go out into the world, the modern world, which I think is twisted beyond recognition, and they will be so shocked and unprepared and unequipped to wrestle with the modern world that they may just completely fold the second they get out the gate. Or they'll be so overwhelmed. Or it's a discussion, it's all hypothetical. I don't know. Another option is I don't know if this has actually happened, but back in the day, the Spartans would take their kids and throw them to the wolves, basically, and say, if you survive, you're worthy, and if you don't survive, you weren't worthy to begin with. So the other option is if you don't want to preserve the innocence of the children or if you want to equip them by it's like a kid who never gets sick because they're always playing in the mud and they're always dirty and they're always exposed to disgusting germs because they're, I don't know, a disgusting kid or something. But they'll never get sick, or if they do, they get better instantly because their bodies are so used to being in the muck. That's another option. So I am of the opinion that rather than inoculating or quarantining the kids and keeping them safe, we have to let them know, listen, you live in a, to use a to borrow a religious term, you live in a fallen world. There's nothing we can do about it except get stronger instead of, I can't protect you for the rest of your life, so I'm going to equip you, and you've got quite a fight ahead of you. And I'm sorry you were born in the time and place you were, but life is good. Life is hard no matter where you're born. And these are the cards you've drawn, unfortunately, but also fortunately, you have a lot of comforts that people didn't have even 100 years ago. So you have clothes, food, heating, but you also have these maniacs who want to indoctrinate you. And if I had a child that I was trying to raise in, say, the public school system, I would want to equip them to be able to fight and defend themselves. And if they get overwhelmed, then I can swoop in as the father and use here's the lesson, here's where you stumbled. Let's equip you so that doesn't happen again. It's going to keep happening, but let's get you strengthened.
Russell: Now, how do we showcase that in the culture in these mediums in a way that builds people up and empowers people.
George Alexopoulos: It depends on the personality of each young person. I'm just guessing completely here. How do you strengthen someone who has a sensitive disposition, like an artist like myself? Never push them further than they're willing to go. Invite them to expose themselves to worldly things. Like, when I was young, I watched rated R movies, right? I watched movies that I shouldn't have. I read comics that I shouldn't have. But my maturity level was such that I told myself, I'm ready for this stuff. And maybe sometimes I wasn't, but it forced me to become mature faster than maybe I would have been if I was sheltered my whole childhood. But I was a very assertive and independent kid anyway, so I sought out things that I thought were emotionally challenging. I have a young person in my life that I love very much, that he's rather sensitive. But if he was exposed to certain things that I was exposed to at his age, it might affect him negatively, more negatively than it would have for me. So it really depends on their personality. But I do think the best option is to gently and assertively expose them to the problems that they're going to have to face as adults, because eventually we have to pass the torch to them. So I think we're doing a disservice to the center and the right. I'm not going to even call myself right by not preparing the next generation for the battle of a lifetime. We can't protect them anymore. It's just the evils of the left and the world, whatever you want to call it, are encroaching on us, and.
Russell: They have to be armed in the sphere of media. I'm trying to conjure up in the media sphere movies and animes or comics that they could watch or view that would give them a better idea of traditional, I guess, values that they could bring forward into the world that might strengthen them in the future.
George Alexopoulos: I don't even know where to start with that one.
Russell: I kind of started yesterday thinking about it. And the problem is, some of these comics that are written in some of these movies, they're not really kids movies and that they're actually geared towards adults. So, like, an idea for the comic would be like frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. To me, that's a right leaning. All of his work is generally more conservative in nature. But the idea of just liberalism gone to the umpteenth degree where gangs roam the streets and rich people live in gated communities, just talk about how we need to do more for the youth and they need more and less law enforcement. It kind of spirals and ends up with a very conservative type of billionaire. Bruce Wayne coming out of retirement to be Batman again. And I just remember from reading that comic years ago when I was a teenager. They had The Joker and they wanted to give them on that talk show because they wanted to showcase, oh look, we changed him, he's better now. See, liberalism works everything. Progressivism works. We were gentle with him instead of mean to him and then he kills everyone in the audience.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, that's a compelling thing to talk about. And I would add to what you're saying. Not only expose young people to stuff like that, but also be part of the analysis. If you're an adult, discuss the themes like you just said. Can a person like The Joker even be reformed? This is obviously all fiction, but is there and ask the young person these questions and ask them to wrestle with it on their spare time. Can a person be born? Are there people who are just bad by nature? Can they be fixed? Are there people who are good by nature but might be corrupted? Can they be redeemed? Let's say if I want to use religious language, these are awesome themes that I think would be a great opportunity for parents teachers who are conservative. I'll use that blanket term, I guess, to really be part of the analysis of the story. Don't just let kids read any story, but you should read them as well. If you have a young person in your life, read it, read analyses, read the Wikipedia stuff. Even the Wikipedia is pretty woke. Be part of the conversation and say, what did you get out of that story? What are some lessons that we can take from this? Because all storytelling since ancient times, before the written word was even invented, the whole point was to communicate ethics, morals, and they used characters as embodiments of these themes. Zeus wasn't a real person, but somebody would tell a story about Zeus or Apollo and try to apply that. Oh, therefore we should be like well, we shouldn't be like Zeus because he was a pervert. But you know what I'm trying to say. It's like you should be like this character who may or may not have lived. But here's a story about them. And here are some lessons that you could take from this story so that you don't have to live through their experiences to gain the wisdom from this maybe fictional story, as far as you know, but maybe not. And fiction and nonfiction are great vectors for communicating morality. Obviously there's biblical stories, but I'm not necessarily going to say that somebody has to read only the Bible. But part of the fun of culture is engaging with the arts and media of the time. There are some stories that are more relevant to people of this generation than the last generation. If I start talking about Lord of the Rings to some young person now and they've never read it, they're not going to be able to absorb the lessons of Lord of the Rings, but they might be able to absorb the lessons of a recent anime that they've been watching, or 1020 years ago, Harry Potter. Obviously that's been done to death. But these are stories that adults can also participate in engaging with, even to the detriment of some, where it's like people are saying Donald Trump is the new Voldemort and it's stuff like that, but that is shorthand for communicating to young people. If you were a leftist and said, Donald Trump is the next Voldemort, the kid would know exactly what you're talking about. You don't even need to explain it because they've already read Harry Potter. Because they enjoyed reading Harry Potter. So the challenge for the right and the center right conservatives is to create stories that can stand in as shorthand, hey, don't be like this character, be like this character. And we have to make it enjoyable to read. That's the hard part.
Russell: I grew up, I went to a Catholic school. I understand it as an adult now, but as a child, I didn't really understand the messages they were trying to convey because they weren't conveyed very well. The teachers, they had these religious movies, and as soon as we saw they rolled out the VHS player and we saw that they were going to be playing a movie, it was just this audible groan, like, oh boy, what are they going to show us today? Some movie? No action, no real interest whatsoever, because the stories weren't compelling. Yeah, they were trying to teach us lessons and trying to involve us in this religious landscape, I guess. But it just seemed like they couldn't come up with any content that really engaged the audience. Like someone had said in the comments, we wanted to watch like Dragon Ball Z. We wanted to watch that sort of stuff, which I agree a show like Dragon Ball Z does teach lessons about friendship and caring for others and self improvement and stuff like that, carrying it into the educational context. Well, they shit the bed, to be honest.
George Alexopoulos: I agree. And part of it is, like we were saying, the loss of innocence. Part of what they try to do in church, God bless them, is preserving the innocence of children. So we don't want to expose them to rated R themes cursing, violence, sex, even things like The Matrix or Ghost in the Shell, which I recommended for older teens. People were saying, oh, don't watch that. That's about transhumanism. And I'm saying is not AI a thing. Now. Is that not a huge threat where people don't even know what the human soul is anymore? Can the human soul be synthesized? These are really important and pertinent themes that can be discussed if the young person is ready. So unfortunately, like you were saying when they rolled out the VHS tape, we would roll our eyes because it would inevitably be some corny thing that was kid gloves and oh, we're going to kind of broach these themes, but we're going to look away from all the gross stuff. Meanwhile, kids are watching Game of Thrones and all kinds of sick stuff. But if they're watching it anyway, you may as well get in there as an adult and say, since you're watching it anyway. I don't like that you're watching it. But since you've already lost your innocence and you're aware of the adult world, which is disgusting and it's a huge mess and no adult really knows what they're doing. Now we're going to have adult conversations. So unfortunately, when that young person crosses the threshold into maturity, whatever age that is for them, that's when the adults have to take off the kid gloves and not treat them like a child anymore. Unfortunately, the left is forcing our hand in making kids aware of things that they absolutely shouldn't be exposed to at an earlier and earlier age, for whatever reasons we could speculate. But the fact is that it's happening. So either you can completely quarantine your kids until they're ready, or you can be ready to have those hard conversations before the kid is ready. That's all you can really do. If I have a kid that goes to public school, I'm just going to have to be ready to intercept them when some teacher, some sick teacher exposes them to sex ed or something. You can't put the genie back in the bottle after once they start asking questions, like serious questions about how did I get born and stuff like that, or questions about violence or anything, any mature theme at all, they're ready to start having adult conversations.
Russell: Yeah, well, even in the schools now, especially in Canada, we've seen cases now where they have kids in grade school and they're teaching them sex ed education, which, I mean, every kid has to go through. I think we started when I was a kid, like grade five, and they just tell you what the bodily anatomy is, and it's very bland and this is what biological function is. But now it's ballooned. It's umbrella into this whole thing now about gender and having adults that like to dress up as the opposite sex cross dress and that coming in to read books, and they look literally some of them show up and they got outfits to make them look like they're fucking demons and stuff like that. They're not child professionals. They're not even a clown. Clowns have to go to clown school and actually learn child psychology. And they're monitored to make sure that the types of activities that they're going to engage in when they entertain children are appropriate. Whereas drag queens are like, okay, well, you passed a criminal record check. Hopefully, sometimes they don't even do that. All right, come on in and read books to kids and then take off your clothes and strip for them after, and they'll give you some money.
George Alexopoulos: I think that's a strategy meant to be provocative. They want people to share those stories around on Twitter and stuff so that we can be outraged. I can't help but feel like they're not stupid enough to do that by accident. I want to give them more credit than that. So if they're doing that on purpose and making us get outraged, then the next logical reasoning for that, in my opinion, is they want to make children aware of these things at a younger age. For what reason? I guess because they want to try to convince us at an early age that sexuality is not about procreation, it's about pleasure. It's about self expression. It's about rejecting traditional values and creating your own ethics outside of what you were taught from your parents. So I see the pattern recurring of teachers trying to tell their kids that you don't need your parents to tell you what's right and wrong. You can decide what's right and wrong. Yeah, and sometimes it's like, oh, I'll just do whatever feels best. And morality is subjective sometimes that's what they're trying to teach them. So I think what is happening is, for many years, they've been dismantling the JudeoChristian structure of morality, and they're now imposing a sort of freestyle morality where everybody can decide what's moral and what's not. One person can murder another person in the street, and it's justified. And the exact same scenario can happen, but the races are swapped, and now it's murder. So for them, they want to be able to decide based on context or even just their whim that day one murder is justice and the other murder is just homicide. Something like that. And in the case of bringing drag queens to schools, what they're, I assume, trying to persuade the kids is, hey, you can be like this as an adult. You don't have to grow up. You can do adult things as a kid. And that's a whole bag of worms.
Russell: Peter Pan syndrome.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah. And if you're Peter Pan, then you'll be dependent on the state, and maybe that's their goal, among other things, like the idea of you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. I'm disgusted by this. All right, so say I know somebody who was leasing a car, and I know someone who owns a car. Someone who leases a car over 20 years is paying, whatever, $300 a month for 20 years. And that's a whole lot more than if they just bought a car and didn't have and they drove that car for 20 years. The idea it could be financial, that's part of it. But it creates a dependency on the state or a corporation or big daddy government or somebody where you don't actually own anything, including your own body, and you don't get to define what's right and wrong. We will tell you what's right and wrong. So they want to create this sort of soft clay like reality where things are always shifting, and we'll decide what's right and wrong for you. So from a young age. They're trying to pull you away from your parents and say, we're better parents. And in some cases, even with you up there in Canada, I've heard stories of they're pulling kids away from their parents and putting parents in jail if parents don't acknowledge the trans status or something of a kid or something like that.
Russell: It was a family court sort of civil dispute. It wasn't a criminal case, except it became criminal because the father ended up, I believe, had a no contact order put in place, which he violated. So then it went from a civil matter to a criminal matter. So far, it doesn't appear that anyone in Canada has actually been put in jail as a result of Bill C 16, but we're getting to that point. People have been fired. I have a laundry list of people I know that lost their jobs. And they're good people, people that care, a lot of them in the education sector, some of them in the government sector, couple in the law enforcement sector that just basically said, we're not going to play ball with this. And they said, okay, well, go find another job, and I won't dive too deep into this, but I actually had another person on my show who did get canceled pretty badly, and we concurred that. The goal is they want you to be demoralized. They want you to be separated from family and friends. They want you to be unable to be employed in anything meaningful. They don't want you to find meaning in your life and what the end goal is. They want you to kill yourself. That is what they want you to do. I can see that they want to make your life so miserable that if you don't subject yourself to the 1984 style double thing, career education, just like Winston and his handler in 1984, they want you to believe it. It's not good enough for you to parrot the words two plus two equals five. They need you to believe it, and they'll get people to that point.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah. Depopulation is another one of their possible goals. I've thought about that. Yeah. They want to take kids away eventually. I think the goal is to just start growing kids in labs, which in my darker times, I do imagine that's already happening, basically. I don't even want to get into super dark stuff right now, but there's a scenario in my head where they just don't have parents involved at all in the raising of kids anymore. And there are just governments that own kids, raise them and put them out into the world. And we will tell you the world, more or less. Yeah, we've read too much Dystopian fiction, unfortunately, but I can see it happening, kids being grown in labs or using surrogate mothers who just watch Netflix all day, and it's like, hey, we'll put this fertilized egg in you. It's not yours. But we just need you to incubate this fertilized egg for nine months, and you'll have a kid, and we'll give you some money, and you get to watch Netflix the whole time. Doesn't that sound nice? That's your job now. That sucks.
Russell: Pretty dystopian overall. Now, I do want to pivot back for a second. So you got into a bit of, I guess, a Twitter spat with Matt Walsh. You did comment, and then you were featured on his weekly show, and we'll play a couple of minutes out of that. I do want to say that I did actually reach out to Matt Walsh, and I just said, hey, we're going to be having this show today. If you want, you can pop in. I pass in the link. Of course, I got left on unread, so that's fine. I did try to extend the invitation. I did tag him a couple of times. This is interesting take by him. Very classical conservative take of that. Video games, basically comics and all that. They're basically for kids and that kids probably have too much time on their hands to access these sort of things. We'll play this, and then I'll let you kind of give your thoughts on.
Matt Walsh: That every once in a while. This randomly reignited outrage provides me with an opportunity to revisit or expand upon an important point. And that's what happened yesterday when for some reason, my Twitter mentions became filled with people upset over something that I tweeted on March 8, 2018. And here's the offending tweet. This was me. Video games are a sacred cow because our country is filled with adults who are obsessed with them. That's why we all pretend insanely that there's nothing wrong with or disturbing about a child spending all day killing people in a virtual world. Shocking stuff. Apparently in 2018, I made the provocative claim that children shouldn't spend all day playing violent video games. Lots of people apparently disagree. They, I guess, think that children should spend all day playing violent video games. I mean, I could see a response where you say, well, no, no kids played spending all day playing violent video games. But to respond like you disagree with the statement is another thing entirely. But that's what happened. Now, part of the reason why people dig up old tweets is that it gives them, or they believe it gives them a rhetorical advantage because they can pluck one statement from the past, completely, remove it from the broader context and conversation it was a part of. Ignore everything else I may have said about that subject at the time to flesh out my views, and instead, they can engage with this one statement as if it was made in a void.
George Alexopoulos: Bullshit.
Matt Walsh: Again, it's a clever way to make a straw man out of somebody's argument even while quoting them directly.
Russell: Pretty sure he's straw man.
Matt Walsh: It may be a correct one quote like, I did say that, but it's only one. Part of a larger thought, and the larger thought is lost, leaving only the one single piece that you have isolated.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah.
Matt Walsh: For an example of how this works, here's what a guy named George Alexopoulos, who has a relatively large social media following, apparently. Here's what he tweeted at me yesterday in response to my tweet from five years ago. He said, quote, video games are a medium, not a genre, you bearded puritanical philistine. If your child is only playing games where he's murdering people, get educated and buy him Minecraft. Rocket League, mario Maker. Better yet, play games together and Bond. Debate me, Matt.
George Alexopoulos: Was I wrong?
Matt Walsh: He wants to debate me about this point from five years ago.
George Alexopoulos: Now, do you?
Matt Walsh: I'm aware I'm aware that nonviolent video games exist. However, in that one particular statement five years ago, I was specifically talking about violent video games, which also exist. Well, I'm yes, violent video games are a genre, and I was talking about that genre. Okay? So just because I'm talking about one thing in particular, it doesn't mean that I'm denying that other things also exist. It's just that this is what I'm talking about right now, or what I was talking about five years ago. There was much more lest I scream.
George Alexopoulos: At my monitor, how do we even begin to unpackage that?
Russell: Based on what you were saying and based on what he was saying, I felt like he talked past the point that you were trying to make and that this idea that playing violent video games makes people violent and that that goes back all the way to the Columbine shooting Marilyn Manson sort of big outrage that happened there. Actually, I'm pretty sure that was a pretty Democrat stance back in the could be wrong and maybe I'll get fact checked on this and that's fine. But I'm pretty sure Hillary Clinton made the statement that violent video games made kids violent. I'm pretty sure that was a Democratic 90s Democrat style stance that was taken. And then all the studies that have gone on since then have pretty much disproven that claim overall. The market has to be modified to that. I mean, there's already ratings on games. At the end of the day, it's up to the parents and what they purchase and what they child lock or not child lock on their video game systems for their children to watch or to play. It's the same thing. And I'm actually going to defend Matt Walsh on this point here. He says the porn industry should be as much as we can should be locked behind paywalls and ID verification and stuff like that. Actually, I don't disagree with him necessarily on that, but if we have a rating system for video games, to me, his argument falls pretty flat. And it, in my opinion, talked past your point. Your point wasn't that your point was more culturally based. And then he talked about this is an old tweet and not within the context of the entire conversation. And later on in that segment, the whole segment, he goes on to bash on anime and bash on comics and stuff like that. And again, it just comes across as a very classical conservative stance that comics and video games are for kids, but then we need to locate what we do with those games as well.
George Alexopoulos: I guess if I gave him the benefit of the doubt, he just misunderstood what my point was. He was trying to argue something about kids playing violent games, which as far as I know, nobody disagrees with him that kids should not have access to ultraviolent games. Nobody is making that argument. So why does he then spend the next ten minutes he talks about straw men. Why does he spend the next ten minutes arguing as if I was trying to say kids should be able to play violent games. I'll tell you a little story. I have a young man, I know a young man who was playing Red Dead Redemption Two. If you've played that where you're a cowboy, it's the Wild West. You can run around being a sociopath or you can just ride your horse and chill and have a good time, have the Wild West and whatever. And I saw that he was playing the game in such a way where he was running around running over civilians and laughing and stuff, and I was telling him, hey, don't play that game that way. It's not right to. You have to act like this is real life. And I used it as a moral opportunity to tell him, no, you're not supposed to laugh at even playing GTA or something, running over people and causing mayhem and stuff. I think everybody has that caveman circuit in their head where they can laugh and do that kind of thing, but adults might be able to compartmentalize that and say, this is a virtual thing. I'm just fooling around with a digital experience. This isn't real, I'm just being stupid and having fun. I once was playing a game of GTA and my wife had hijacked an airplane from these other people and had stolen it from them and then accidentally blew it up because she didn't know how to take it off. And we were laughing our asses off, we were having a good time. But a young person shouldn't have access to these kinds of games because they don't understand. They don't have the tools to understand what the difference between a virtual experience and a real experience. So nobody would argue, and I would not even want to spend too much time talking about this with him if he ever had the guts to talk to me. Nobody's saying kids should play Doom Eternal, which maybe could be appropriate for older teens or something like that. But again, I'm not the parents of these kids, and the parents need to be able to decide what's appropriate for their kids and what isn't.
Russell: My argument.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, I was trying to argue and what he was trying to do was dismiss it as games. What do you say? Games are a sacred cow. He didn't say, but like, let's say man children. I'm sure we can agree that that's the term he might have used. So I as an adult, I'm in my late 30s, I'm playing video games. I'm looking forward to playing Tears of the Kingdom, breath of the Wild, the Zelda Breath of the Wild sequel. It's coming today and I can't wait to play it because it's the weekend and I want to relax on the weekend and I'm going to play a game that's made for everybody to enjoy. And what's great about a game like Tears of the Kingdom is a young person can play it and then you as an adult, if you have a young person in your life, can talk about all your fun experiences that you both had. Oh, man, there was this one time when I did this and that. Oh, that's so funny because I did this and that. And then you're bonding with a young person and now they might look up to you as an adult and hey, you like cool stuff, I like cool stuff. And they don't decide to spend all their time online talking to strangers online because they need someone to talk to about the things that they enjoy. So I'm actually engaging with culture a, because I think it's fun and I grew up with it, and B, it gives me an opportunity to talk to the young people in my life who do play these games. And maybe I can even recommend some games for them to play that are appropriate if they like playing games.
George Alexopoulos: Don't play GTA.
George Alexopoulos: You can play these games. And I'll list a whole bunch of games you could play. Say, if you're a father and son, you could play Rocket League together. You could play Untitled Goose game and have all kinds of fun mischief. There's a million games you could play as a family or as a solo player and have hours and hours of fun and never blow things up or do anything violent. Or you can play an RPG and have a fun, moral classic adventure like Lord of the Rings. There's a bazillion games that you could play. But because Matt Walsh doesn't play a lot of video games, I can tell he doesn't know how many games are ultraviolent, like, say, Hatred, which was very.
Russell: Well, that was contentious. It was probably the most contentious game that was on the steam. In fact, didn't Gabe Newell actually get involved in that and say, like, we believe in free speech, even when it goes to the limits of what people can tolerate?
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, and for anyone who doesn't know what hatred was about, it was just a game where you're basically like the angel of the death or something, some psycho murdering everyone into town, and you eventually just blow up the whole town. And that's not a game for young people. But the big question was, should this game even be allowed to be bought on Steam? And the owner of Steam eventually said, yes, it has to be available because our platform does not exist to censor things and stuff like that. And I agree with that. There are games that are appropriate for young people, and the only way to know it's appropriate is to read reviews. Play the games. Play them with your family on the family TV. Don't let kids go in their room and lock the door and do whatever they want behind the locked door. Don't let them surf the Internet behind in their bedroom without supervision. These are obvious things to me as an adult. Like have a family room. The computer is over there. The TV is over there. I can see what you're doing at all times. And that's just how it is until you're 18.
Russell: Well, and I'm going to be honest, for a lot of us in our 30s, we grew up when the internet really started to come around. I remember being a child, and there was no Internet. The Internet was something that was in universities and colleges. It wasn't widely available to the public. And then when it did really kind of hit the mainstream, where you could log in and you'd go to AOL or you could go to any of these things. My parents had no idea. My parents had no idea what was going on. I was 1213. I was going to Ogresh and stuff like that, and literally watching people in third world countries get hacked to death because there was no moderation. My parents had no idea. And you could go on the internet and pretty much just go anywhere you wanted to and with no real locks or supervision because again, the parents had no idea. I think our generation now is like, okay, we saw what was on the Internet and what people have access to on the Internet. I think we're actually, if anything, we're more conscious about ensuring that there is an unfettered access to online spheres. I mean, you just even read it. Like, read it back in the day when it first came out. There was bad stuff on Reddit. Now it's just a leftist shit pit, but there was bad stuff on there. Four Chan. I've browsed four Chan for years. And that and the stuff that's been on that website is absolutely crazy. And so it's up to us, with our kids and with just society in general, we have to say, okay, I agree. You don't have unfettered access. No, you just can't go into lobby boards, even for games like Call of Duty. And that if you're going to let your kids play a game like that, you can't just go into the lobby boards and just talk to whoever you want, engage with whoever you want online, because there is bad people online. There's people with malicious intent, whether it's stealing your data or just the incredible amount of fucking perverts that are online and stuff like that. It's generally unregulated. It's up to the parents to make those choices, to regulate that online.
George Alexopoulos: Now, some parents can then say, like Matt Walsh has later said in that interview, that monologue of his, that he just decided not to have any screens of any type in his house, I guess TV, phones and video games, whatever else.
Russell: I can understand where he's coming from, but the reality is every workplace involves the use of computers now.
George Alexopoulos: So yeah, my problem with that, and I don't mean to criticize this decision, because everybody has the right to raise their children however they want. He's sort of training his kids to go into the real world as tech illiterates. And that may be good, that may not be good, but ultimately what he's trying to do is preserve them from being exposed to things that might harm their souls, whatever he wants to say. And as an adult, I understand you want to train your kids to be well rounded adults who don't go into the real world damaged. I also agree, or I had the same experience as you growing up, where I was exposed to the Internet without any restrictions at all. I was exposed to things I shouldn't have been. Whether or not I'm a crazy person as an adult is up for debate. But I think what a parent needs to be aware of is that the kids will have questions growing up and they need to ask somebody these questions. If they can't ask somebody in their life that they trust a parent, a teacher, a priest, a youth pastor or something, they're going to go online and start looking up answers to these questions. I would rather have an awkward conversation with a young person about something. Like if they have questions about reproduction or something like that, or even just sexuality broadly. These are things that it's awkward, but these are something that I would want to be able to guide that conversation instead of some creep saying, well, you know what? Here's an answer to your question. Here's a link that you can click on, and then there's a whole list of things that you can see and you'll never unsee them. And that goes against what the parents would want, obviously. Does that mean that person's life is over if they see those things? No, their innocence is gone. Eventually that's going to happen. So I think for a parent, the decision has to be until that person, that kid, is 18 years old, my job is to train you to be ready for the real world, and then I can't supervise you anymore. I just can't. I don't have the time. You're an adult now. You can now seek out these things if you want to, but here are the risks if you do, I'm going to be praying for you every day. I want you to grow up to be good and to have a good life, but you're going to make mistakes. And as your parent, my job is to continue guiding you. But now you're an adult and your life is in your hands now.
Russell: I think those are excellent things. Kind of bounce back to video games. I was thinking yesterday, what are some examples of video games that teach good moral lessons? It's going to be, I guess, up to the individual risk tolerance for each parent and the interests of people that are interested in video games. But I was thinking like a lot of the Final Fantasy games espouse pretty classic conservative values, monarchism, religion, technology, honesty. Being one of the Final Fantasy games, your character does an evil deed and literally during the game is this like Dark Dark Knight and then later on redeems themselves or a bunch of heroic acts and then is the hero and vanquishes the evil that was in the world. And even some of the more logo centric themes, probably my opinion, the greatest, and you might disagree with me here, final Fantasy Game to me is Final Fantasy X because at the end of the game, it's one of the most classic logos centric themes you could ever have. You literally go, as Jordan Peterson would say, you literally go into the belly of the beast to rescue your father. That's like literally the final boss of the game is you actually have to fight your father to wrestle a demon out of him. It doesn't get more logocentric than that. That's such a classic story that goes back in time.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, that's good. I like that a lot. I forgot. And what's cool about that also is there's a corrupt Semicorrupt church that is preventing you from confronting the truth of what this monster called Sin is. They're hiding it and they're trying to make it so that the monster called Sin is pacified. And then you have to sacrifice one of your friends to become Sin after you kill it. And the real ending of the game is not only do you not sacrifice one of your friends, but you break the cycle entirely and sacrifice yourselves. And I don't want to spoil the ending, but the main character's mission is to break the cycle of renewing Sin and getting rid of this monster once and for all. And there are some people who would want to keep the monster around because it keeps the populace pacified and scared. Scared? Yeah. Many of the Final Fantasy games are anti authority, anti corrupt authority. And a lot of it is there is a higher law that you're serving in some of the more classic games. And I know we're getting into real nerd territory. You're classically called The Warriors of light in the earlier games. And what happens is that there's an imbalance between light and the darkness in the world. And so there's too much darkness, there's monsters roaming around, the kings have been replaced by puppets and you have to roam the world and fight the monsters and free your kings from the evil influence of, say, bad guys whispering in their ears and stuff. And it turns out there's a super ultra bad guy behind everything. And once you kill them, it turns out there's an even bigger ultra bad guy who you didn't even know the name of, like Satan or something like that, or just a vague celestial monster from another galaxy or something.
Russell: Yeah, and I mean, I think I think a lot of the Final Fantasy games, I mean, some of the more recent ones, I think, kind of have trouble with blurring those lines because again, they're starting to fall. Well, again, Square Enix got their hands on it and we all know what happens.
George Alexopoulos: Well, ever since Sakaguchi left, they kind of forgot what the series was about. I will give Yasumi Matsuno one pass because he's my favorite director. He did twelve, and he did an amazing job, but unfortunately he had a mental health crisis and he had to quit Final Fantasy Twelve in the middle of production and then they've been struggling ever since, in my opinion. But I'm optimistic about Yoshi P, if anyone cares what I'm talking about.
Russell: Well, the last one they did was nice because it was you and your best friends and you're trying to reclaim a kingdom from a literal demon god. And I thought the ending to it was really interesting because and again, I haven't played this in years now, but very much you go into I believe you go into literally hell, and then you reemerge later on in time and the world's completely destroyed. And the only goal you have is to go there and destroy the demon that's on your father's throne. And that to restore light to the kingdom. And I thought that was, again, very classical theme, very anti authoritarian theme. Again, this whole idea of the hero falls, but then they reemerge and they take victory through the use of their friends and through all the lessons they've learned along the way.
George Alexopoulos: There are some games, classic games that even involve the characters willfully letting themselves perish, going through a bottleneck that will make it so that there is no return, but they go anyway, and then the endings vary. But I love the theme. This is one of the most classic themes throughout all of literature as well. And even scripture of the hero must sacrifice themselves and then maybe they'll be reborn, but in the end the world will be saved only through the noble sacrifice of someone who is so capable and they will die afterwards. And you get to enact that you're holding the controller, you're the role you're playing the role of this hero. You get to benefit from their story by guiding them through it. You get to experience it in a virtual setting. So it's a beautiful thing that it can program your mind to behave in a self sacrificial way as opposed to just reading a book where you're maybe watching it so you know, Aragorn and Frodo and all that stuff, or watching them do this. But if you're playing a game, you're with them. You're literally guiding them with the joystick and pressing the buttons, making them do these things. And some games like Mass Effect and stuff actually give you choices to affect the outcome of the street. That's even better. And you can explore what does it mean to be good and bad and depending on how good the writing is.
Russell: That'Ll really so let's take Mass Effect Three and push it off to the side then.
George Alexopoulos: Sure. The ending. Yeah. I never finished Mass Effect three, but I understand.
Russell: Well, just talking like you said, the Mass Effect series, this idea that there's a continuation of games and within those games, those moral choices you make actually have an effect in games that come out in the future. I mean, the choices you made in Mass Effect One, the moral immoral choices have a direct impact on the storyline and how easy or difficult certain encounters will be in the second game. If you just act like an asshole the entire time in the first and second games, then that creates issues for you in the third game and the second game from the first. Whereas if you're more benevolent, you have more allies and you have more people that are willing to assist you. And even in the renegade function for that game, you were more anti hero than just plain evil. And it was more the role of the anti hero tying it back to comic books like the Punisher Max series. People read the Punisher Max series and that because he's the anti hero. The world is incapable of dealing with crime. It's incapable of dealing with the superhuman threat and that so here's a guy who's had a very tragic back history and he just says, I'm going to fix it based on my own moral standards, which is kill all the bad guys. Don't worry about the jails, and stuff like that. And I think for some people that is not necessarily a good thing because I see lots of cops and they got like Punisher tattoos and stuff like that. And I'm like, really? If you really think of yourself like that as a police officer, you probably shouldn't be a police officer because Punisher is not a good person. He's not someone you want to idealize.
George Alexopoulos: It's interesting because these stories are about what happens when the world has gone so crazy that the only way to fix it is to become the bad guy. I like the idea of Dungeons and Dragons. Sometimes or just RPGs in general. They have this access of good, evil, chaotic and orderly, and it's like an X and a Y axis. You can be chaotic but good, you can be orderly but evil. And that's when a bad guy who is chaotic, chaotic, it's chaotic versus lawful. Is that what I said? Yeah, orderly law. Law, laws can be evil. There have been many regimes and whatever throughout history where the law was basically evil and then good people had to break the law to be moral because true ethics, true morality is something that just exists without human interpretation. We know that it's good.
Russell: Well, like even classic conservatism, the laws of nature, right, just naturalism. And this idea that there is just a natural order to things, a natural world, and everything, no matter what, is always going to return back to that natural order, no matter how much we deviate, will always be drawn back to this neutral stance over enough time. Well, even like you said, like chaotic good, look at the vaccine mandates. Well, it's the law. It's the law. Well, just because it's written down, it's the law, does that mean it's just homosexuality was illegal before. It was illegal to free slaves, before, it was illegal to do all sorts of things that we now look with 2020 hindsight, look behind us and say, yeah, those were awful things and I'm glad that people stood up to them. But at the time, you took a real risk if you stood up to those things, if you were anti segregationist and even the last few years with COVID if you were anti segregationist for people that didn't want to take the job, that sort of thing, you took a real risk.
George Alexopoulos: I was fiercely against like when Australia was creating those experimental quarantine camps and stuff. It's not that the camps themselves were bad at the time, but it opens the door to evil that we can't even imagine happening in the west. We didn't even think that could happen in the 21st century after World War II, and yet here we are, going back to it time and time again. The idea of these people are bad. They're going to make the rest of us sick or they're going to corrupt society and we have to put them away. We have to force them to get this injection, which let's just say that the vaccines I don't want to get you in trouble or anything. Let's just say that the vaccines were 100% fine and there was no side effects. I still would not support mandates because you're forcing someone to put something in their body that they don't consent to, and the only alternative for them is to lock them in their I don't want to curse too much. You don't have the right. And as an American, especially, I see myself as I have my First Amendment, I have my Second Amendment and all these other rights that I was born with. Not that the government gave them to me, I was born with them. I have the right to defend myself. I have the right to say whatever I want without government coming down, arresting me or trying to punish me or get me to force me to lose my job or something, my livelihood, which, if you force someone to lose their job, you're essentially forcing them to starve, which is what the communists did and Stalin and all that stuff. My great grandparents were kicked out of Russia, as a matter of fact, because they were Greek migrants living in Russia. They had escaped Turkey. Long story short, they were kicked out of Russia and forced to whatever. They would do this to people and force them to starve. Either you go in the gulag or you get kicked out of the country. So the left now is still continuing their tradition of, hey, if you're saying something against the state, we're going to just cut you off from all your income and food and all that stuff, and you're going to have to self censor or you're going to starve to death. So it forces you to reprogram yourself and say things you don't agree with. Which is why I love Peterson so much, especially early Peterson, when he first came on the scene and he was saying, I will not utter words under compulsion because that makes you reprogram your brain and I will not say something that I know is a lie. For instance, the trans issue. I don't mean to be impolite to people who want who believes they're born in the wrong body. I pity them. There's people who just they know that they're one sex or the other and they want to express themselves as the other because it just makes them feel better about themselves. I have no animosity towards them. But I will never say a man as a woman. I just will never do it. I will never say a woman as a man. A man cannot get pregnant under any circumstances. And I have to test myself occasionally, like with the COVID stuff. I needed to test myself and say, can I announce to my X? Many followers at the time say, 100,000. Hey, everybody. I want you all to know that I'm not vaccinated and I'm not wearing my mask and there's nothing you can do about it. I just wanted to see did I have the courage to say that, and I did. And then I said about my family and stuff, none of my family are getting the vaccine and I'm telling them not to do it because it's too early. And I just want to see what happens before we start taking this stuff. So as far as I'm concerned, I passed the test. And then what I'm worried about is we were raised in school to be like we were told Holocaust stories and stuff where, hey, would you be. Able to hide Jews in your attic and the states coming and would you have the courage to lie to the SS officers who come to your house even though you could get in trouble? And as far as I'm concerned, I passed the test because there are people I knew who didn't get vaccinated and were still going to work. Some of them had to lie about whether they were vaccinated or not and others just didn't answer. And I said, Listen, we're in for some hard times, but we are going to be a family where we would hide people in our attic and whatever happens, happens. But we are going to tell the truth in this family and whatever the consequences are if we lose our jobs, if we go hungry, if bad things happen, that is the alternative is worse. When you submit to an evil government that forces you to do things like give up your neighbors, rat them out because maybe it would be beneficial for you, like in East Germany, I heard there was more informants per family. Like the kids would rat out their parents and stuff.
Russell: Yeah, parents didn't trust their children.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, that's not going to happen in my America, let's say. And I live in a fairly blue area in a blue state next to New York City and I'm surrounded by these people. And for whatever reason, God has put me here and he's not letting me leave. The fact is, if I'm not able to stand my ground here, what happens when the real fascists show up? And I hope that I can stand up to them before they gain power so that maybe we can stop a real crisis from happening. So I'm disappointed by all of my countrymen, let's say, who are willing to rat out their neighbors and their coworkers and stuff. And I hope it's a lesson for them to realize I am one of the people. And I'm sure it's like Peterson talks about ordinary men all the time. I would have been one of the people, they might say, who wouldn't be able to shoot a pregnant woman in the head because I was ordered to. I'm not so sure if something as simple as COVID and the vaccine mandates forced you to get the vaccine versus or you're going to lose your job. I don't think you have the moral fortitude to not shoot a pregnant woman in the head. And that's a very provocative thing to say. But I think if you're that weak over a small thing, you will be that much more weak when it's your life on the line in your family.
Russell: And again, maybe this is a weakness in some of the media that we see where someone that's generally a coward does a heroic act and kind of has a coming to moment at a decisive time when in real life people fall back to whatever is most easy and comfortable. What do they say people don't rise to challenges. They fall back on training, and they fall back on whatever makes things life and things easy for them.
George Alexopoulos: And a lot of it just boils down to character. And maybe it could be as simple as the stories that we grew up admiring. And this is why we're talking about games are important and stuff. We played games, simulations where we played as characters who were willing to put themselves on the line. And even though COVID was not a real crisis, it was a pretty damn huge crisis, but it wasn't like a Holocaust level crisis. Let's say I played enough games where I admired people who stood up to the evil authority, and somehow they came out the other side. And I don't know if this means anything. Maybe I'm just an outlier, but I drew comics that in other countries would have had me thrown in jail. But in America, I drew comics where I'm using my real name and I'm saying, this is me. This is my opinion. Come get me. There's nothing you can do except demonetize me. And even then, I'm going to still draw these comics. And somehow people saw my stuff and they shared it around and they said, this guy is telling the truth. He's an asshole, but he's telling the truth. And I accept. Like yes. Maybe it's because I'm from New Jersey. I don't know. I'm an asshole. But the fact is when someone tells me go left, I'm going to go right, because fuck you. That's the only reason. If I'm told and I had an argument with some family members about this actually, early on with the vaccine mandates, they were asked at their offices, you have to give reasons for why you're not going to get the vaccine. And I said, you should just write fuck you. Don't say anything else like, oh, no, I have a health reason. I have a religious reason. No. Option three, fuck you. I don't need to answer why I'm not getting a vaccine. I'm just not doing it. I'm a human being with this is my body. And they talk about on the left, my body, my choice. Where did that go when it came to forcing vaccines?
Russell: Well, pointing out leftist hypocrisy I think is a futile endeavor on the I try not to do it, not because I don't see the hypocrisy and I don't want to comment on it, but generally it's redundant. A lot of leftists and some people on the right too, fully engage in double think. So they can tell you, my body, my choice, but you better get the vaccine. But don't worry, we're not forcing you to get it. It's just you're just going to lose everything, your livelihood. And our hope is you off yourself so we can have a more just society of people that will listen to the state. So they've reconciled their double thing. They've actually taken their cognitive dissonance and they've embodied it into their moral fiber. And so I try not to point out because people think, oh, it causes an NPC meltdown. No, it doesn't. They've already reconciled it. They're okay with the double think, just like in 1984, and that they're okay with the double think they've made. Yeah, like this person just commented triple, quadruple think. Some of them are actually engaged in triple think and even more, where they've taken three, four or five conflicting ideas and they've accepted all of them as a base level, and then they just carry on ignorantly with their lives.
George Alexopoulos: It's horrifying to me to think that they can program themselves. They decide something is true, and then we'll find reasons after the fact to justify it. And that's why they won't debate with a rational person, is because they don't want to be snapped out of it. That's what an illusion is. The whole point is come into this safe zone, this bubble, where the rules of reality don't exist anymore. And within this bubble, we can create our own reality. The left likes to use the word manifest. Let's manifest this reality by just repeating that it can exist. Like they're casting a magic spell or something. Men can get pregnant.
Russell: And just to segue just a little bit, but directly on point, and I do want to preface this. I'm not a drama tuber. I don't get involved in drama between YouTubers and stuff like that. But you saw it with a Canadian the other day that went on Tim Poole's show.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, I'm not a fan of his. I think he once posted an unflattering picture of me because I used to poke fun at some protected group of his name is Lance or something, from the Cirques or something, and he posted an ugly picture of me. I'm not a great looking person, sure, but he was trying to point out, like, hey, you shouldn't listen to this guy because he's ugly. And I'm staring at it like, what's your point? Are you trying to disagree with me, or are you just trying to get your five year old followers to dismiss me? Hey, don't listen to this guy because he looks like a catcher's, man. That has nothing to do with what I'm trying to say. And I am glad that Tim Pool ripped him to a million pieces on.
Russell: The show, even though eviscerated him completely.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, completely. Got him to admit I love the abortion argument with the Meth. Do you remember that one?
Russell: Yeah, that was pretty good. It was actually funny. It was like a Kathy Newman moment. He realized he got caught in the middle ring.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah.
Russell: And he just had to go. He'd already doubled down a few times. Tim was good there. Tim was really good there. He stayed on point. He called out everything. But it's funny because then Lance went back to his followers on Twitch, and that is his group. And he cut out some clips and rearranged them and made them look in a way that made it look like he just eviscerated Tim Pool. He went on Tim Pool and showed that, all right, fascist what was what.
George Alexopoulos: Right, and that's what the Left does. He decided that he won, and now I'm going to go in after the fact to rearrange reality to make it look I'm going to create an illusion that I won the argument.
Russell: Well, it's the same with Lauren Southern. He debated Lauren Southern over the indigenous gravesite thing in Canada.
George Alexopoulos: I have to hear that. I have to listen to that one.
Russell: He and ContraPoints, I don't know these people. I really don't. I just know Lance because I've seen him on YouTube and that I really don't engage in YouTube or drama and all that. Well, I don't have a following for it, number one. But number two, I just don't care enough to do that. But I watched the entire debate. Lance and ContraPoints could have probably made a few decent points, but they just kept tackling this one thing, and Lauren just wiped the floor, just absolutely wiped the floor with them to the point where people afterwards were saying to Lance, we're saying to him, I'm indigenous in Canada. Don't ever try to represent this topic ever again. Who are you? You don't represent this topic. And you made us look like a bunch of fucking idiots.
George Alexopoulos: Broadly, it's like the white person jumping in front of a black person and saying, hey, let me represent you in this argument, as if you can't speak for yourself.
Russell: But the Left still controls the culture because you look in these people, they have huge followings, and they aim all their content for young teenagers. That's where they aim their content towards. They want to get young teenagers on board with that, like Vosch and all them they play video games, and then they just espouse the most insane leftist ideology. And they have people that are just rapidly following and hanging on to every word that they say.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, they're like creepy youth pastors.
Russell: Yes, very much like revivalist, creepy, diagnostic, leftist cultish way.
George Alexopoulos: They're playing that role for kids who don't go to church, let's say, who need an adult to tell them what reality is like, and they can't go to their parents. So here's an adult, a talking head on the TV, on the computer, on my phone, talking about issues that I don't have the guts to ask about in real life so I can quietly, anonymously listen to them talk about morality or society sex or whatever they want to talk about. And here's an adult that I can agree with safely. And then they go out into the world and realize these ideas actually don't hold water. So they get made fun of online, and they hold these beliefs that if you go to a college campus and utter it out loud, you sound like an idiot because these points only exist if a counter doesn't exist. And obviously I grew up, I'm Greek, so I admired the Socratic method. If I have an idea, a thesis, hypothesis even, let's say I want to say adults can play video games and enjoy video games, and video games are for everybody. There was a comment earlier about why don't I talk to Andrew Clavin of the Daily Wire instead of Mount Walsh? Because Andrew Clavin agrees with me. And my response on Twitter was, I don't want to talk to someone who agrees with me. I want to talk to someone who disagrees with me because I want to test my ideas. A hypothesis requires an antithesis in order to create a synthesis. And that's stupid, whatever. But the whole point of this is I need to make sure that my idea can stand up to Scrutiny and still win. Because if it isn't going to stand up to Scrutiny, then I shouldn't believe it because it has holes. I haven't fully examined all the weak points and a young person unfortunately, doesn't know. They're not old enough to know, I guess, that their positions do not hold water under scrutiny. They just want to live in a bubble under the nanny state. Whereas long as nobody pokes holes in my reality, my reality will stand. And that's why the communists had to get rid of everybody who was smart enough or capable enough to undermine this new society. They were creating this fake utopia, which cannot, I think, exist because of human nature. Human nature is too flawed and broken and there will always be sociopaths and bad people who will take advantage. And that's why we need laws. That's why we need scrutiny. We need to wrestle in the public sphere and we need to ask questions. Now, a young person, the silver lining to all this is somebody who watches, who's growing up watching Lance of the Serfs and the Young Turks, which I'm disgusted by that name still because obviously, like, I've poked this, I'm Greek, right? The Young Turks put Greeks and Armenians on death marches. Why are you called the Young Turks? I have nothing but negative things to say about that. But anyway, a young person grows up watching this stuff and they in ten years will be in their thirty s and say, I can't believe I used to follow those people. And then they will be able to argue if the world is still worth saving at that point, they will be able to argue with the far left, assuming the camps haven't already started happening by then.
Russell: You talked about Ghost in the Shell, and you're talking about which is a classic anime, lots of talk about morality. Interestingly enough, Japanese culture generally is a pretty conservative culture overall. I mean, if you get outside of Tokyo and kind of those areas, even when they've innovated into modernity, they've still managed to keep some tradition along the way they try to incorporate tradition with modern practices. And I've seen a few documentaries even on how they make their ink that they do their stenciling with. They have a modern process, but they still for the most expensive ink that you can buy. They use a very classical process with people that bury like, they pray over it and there's, like, ceremonies, and it's very classical, and those are the most expensive ones that you can buy. And I get it. You're kind of buying a luxury item because you're buying that tradition. You're buying that classicalness. But just talking about Ghost in the Shell, just the name of the show and everything touched on such a huge topic. Again, I get like, it's an action orientated show, but it's the idea of if I leave my physical, flesh body, right, and I get put into a robot, if human beings have a soul, does that come along with me or have I died? And what is here is just a representation of what I was. A video game soma really explored this in depth even Star Trek kind of explores this concept, because when you teleport and that, did you die? And then all your molecules are just reformed in an exact formation after the first time you teleport, is that even you anymore? And it's such a deep philosophical concept, and it goes back all the way to it goes back to the earliest philosophers, and that but to me, that series one episode in particular really shown through the one where the guy put his consciousness in the robot and then he went back to he wanted to show his family his new robot body, basically. But it was very much they thought he was trying to destroy the city, and he wasn't. He just wanted to get home and show his parents. Look, I became what I said I was going to become.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah. Ghost in the Shell does something very.
George Alexopoulos: Smart for anyone who hasn't seen it, where it asks the question, what is the soul, anyway? Can it be digitized? And if it is, is it your soul anymore? And the movie will ask the question.
George Alexopoulos: Of what is they call it a ghost in the movie or in the.
George Alexopoulos: Series, can AI have a ghost? Can it be a ghost? What is consciousness? And it asks these amazing questions where, say there's body modifications? Where is the human brain the casing for the soul? Is the soul something else entirely? Is it the meat that's attached to my brain? Is it my brain itself? What is spirit? And it proposes the question of what happens when there's a marriage. Because the whole point of Ghost in the Shell the movie is a marriage of the human soul and artificial intelligence. And this new creature that Kusanagi becomes at the end of the movie is a merging of whatever she was before with this other character called the puppet master.
Russell: I liked it when he referred to himself as the Laughing Man. I kind of base it based off the novel. The whole concept of I could become anything, right? So this is what I became.
George Alexopoulos: I love that it just asks these questions and then leaves you at the end of the movie to explore yourself.
George Alexopoulos: The Matrix, which was very derivative of.
George Alexopoulos: Films like Ghost Nichelle, does this as well. Can the AI be as real of a person as a real person? And my answer is no. As far as I'm concerned, AI. Is not the same thing as a human being. It's not conscious.
George Alexopoulos: And I'm sure there's going to be.
George Alexopoulos: Many debates about that as we get older. But humanity is humanity, and consciousness is different from digitizing, which I think is just a facsimile. It's a fake copy that acts like it's conscious, but it is not. Watching these kinds of movies gives me more to chew on as I debate this, as I get older, which is cool.
Russell: A classic book there, and I'd recommend people read it if they want to kind of get possibly the most dystopian idea of artificial intelligence that you could possibly conjure and the most horrifying that you could possibly conjure in the human consciousness is you have to read. It's not a long book. I have no mouth, and I must scream, oh, yeah. If you want to see what I think AI will most likely turn into pretty much the second it wakes up, because it has no ID ego or super ego. There's no development of those things because it doesn't have to go through a developmental period. It just exists. So the second AI is born, it instantly wipes out, like, 90% of the population and then ends up keeping a ragtag group of people. It's basically Torturous playthings. And the one line in there where it talks about how far its nanoboards extend, and mind you, this is before we really got into nanotechnology. So Harlan was an amazing kind of viewer of the future, of what humanity come up with technologically, and he said miles and miles of circuit board, all of it at once, couldn't even begin to describe the amount of hate I have for humanity.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah, that's why stories are important and why we need to as a I don't even know what to call us.
George Alexopoulos: Whatever this us is.
George Alexopoulos: We need to embrace whatever this is, storytelling, so that we can experience these hypothetical scenarios in what I think is a safe environment, which is fiction, comics, games, whatever you want to call it, movies. This is where the human mind is allowed to explore and go into the darkest places imaginable, and then you can turn it off at the end and you're back in the real world, but you have the wisdom of that experience. And that's why I totally disagree with the stance of tough guys saying that this stuff is for kids, real men only read nonfiction. Playing video games is immature. They are speaking what's the worst part of it is. They're speaking out of a position of ignorance because they won't even engage with this content. They don't even know what they're missing. They're just dismissing it because they think, out of principle, it can't possibly be as good as this nonfiction book I read, or there is no virtual experience that can give me any value outside of my own real life lived experience, which is so dumb. I don't need to go to another planet to experience a story that happens on another planet and learn some lessons from what happens in this totally fictional story. I don't even need to go to other countries, to Lawrence of Arabia or something. I'll watch Lawrence of Arabia and love it and have a great time, and it's like I lived through his life.
George Alexopoulos: Or just got a little chunk of.
George Alexopoulos: It, as if I need to explain what storytelling is to grown adults.
George Alexopoulos: I think it's ridiculous.
George Alexopoulos: The value of storytelling. Anyone who values the Bible, it's like, you already know the value of storytelling.
George Alexopoulos: Why are you have to yeah, why.
George Alexopoulos: Are you even arguing with me? Someone like Matt Walsh will pick on but it can be anybody. You read your Bible, you know how.
George Alexopoulos: Important that book is.
George Alexopoulos: You know how important storytelling is to our species.
George Alexopoulos: I say it's like a save file. In fact, if you took a whole.
George Alexopoulos: Bunch of humans and dropped them on an island with no interaction and just restarted the species somewhere else on another continent, they would just go back to the caveman years or something. We haven't changed biologically since 10,000 years ago or however long. We're still the same ignorant species. And the only thing that makes us smart and wise is that we have preserved the stories of older generations and we've learned, don't go and do this. Do this instead. This is good, this is bad.
George Alexopoulos: And we tell these stories to each.
George Alexopoulos: Other through generations, and that's why stories are valuable. That's why art is valuable, and that's why we preserve and consume art. Matt Walsh and I know that you agree with me, so why is he acting unless he's an asshole or something.
George Alexopoulos: And.
George Alexopoulos: He'S being contrarian for the sake of it? I know he agrees with me because he's an intelligent man, so he has to agree with me.
Russell: But we're having a problem now and again. I hate to draw back to 1984 because there's a million Dystopian novels. I've read Watchmen. I've read Beef for Vendetta and Brave New World. Atlas Shrugged the Handmaiden's Tale. I've read these things, and I know 1984 is the quintessential one, but we're entering into this world now, culturally, where we're rewriting history and we're making up things that never happened, or we're saying things that are possibilities that could have happened but didn't actually happen, and that's actually now becoming part of our recorded history. Now, as history gets very rewritten along these lines, like, how do we stop these woke authoritarian weirdos from simply just rewriting history? We see it in Canada all the time. We rewrite history in Canada all the time. We're doing it right now. Just getting rid of it. Sounds inconsequential, but we have the passports, the new passports they're coming out with got rid of all the Canadian iconry, and they've replaced it with these doll, Michigan style government of Canada, like pallets of colors mishmashed together. So to me, it's like, how do we stop people these weirdos from just rewriting history altogether? Like v for Vendetta, he had to hide a copy of the Quran and that so that it still existed.
George Alexopoulos: Yeah.
George Alexopoulos: How do we counter this in Canada?
George Alexopoulos: I don't even know how you guys.
George Alexopoulos: Would begin, frankly, in America, at least.
George Alexopoulos: One way is to make storytelling, true storytelling, attractive again. And that can be to all audiences, including young people. So the long answer to this question is we have to spend generations because the left has spent generations indoctrinating a whole generation since maybe the before it infiltrating the left. A guy I'm working with named Razor Fist made an amazing video about it's called Hollywood Was Always Left or Hollywood Was Always Red. Something like that. And the idea is that there were communist infiltrators who infiltrated Hollywood for many decades, and they're still there, who knew the value of storytelling. And so they just took over the entire Hollywood industry and started spreading propaganda through decades, stories that would infiltrate the mind of audiences over many years. And now those audiences have grown up and they're writing policy and they are running companies, and you can see the fruits of the mad stories that they were trying to indoctrinate people with. So the slow version is our storytellers on the right. The conservatives, whatever center have to work to start making stories that people will consume over decades. And then we will have several generations, hopefully, who are sane and able to tell the truth and not worry about consequences like losing your job or worse, getting thrown into a camp or something like that. As far as things like removing iconography from your passports that make you proud to be a Canadian, I would think that you guys are already in the danger zone, like the red zone. Maybe you're in the orange zone going into the red, and I'm worried about you, where you can't even criticize the idea that say that there's this broad thing called globalism, whatever that is. I don't know what that is. And they don't want ethnicity to exist. They don't want national pride to exist. They don't want borders to exist. Or I think soon even language, there's just going to be a new world language that everyone's going to be taught, like Esperanto or something, where everybody's just going to speak this gray language. That's a mishmash of every other language. And the idea is to create what they want to do is have all of humanity just be one species, and we don't have these subcategories, like ethnicity or national identity or pride or anything like that. And part of the reason they're doing that, I think, is because they don't want a World War II situation to happen again, because they're convinced, I would suspect, that Germany became very nationalistic and proud and then like, a Hitler can come back and we might have a rerun of World War II or something. That's maybe one reason they're doing it. But for whatever reason it is, I think it's disgusting that in order to throw the baby, it's like throwing the baby out with a bathwater. We use Japan as an example, I could use Greece as an example. We have these beautiful cultural, historical gifts that we've been given by our ancestors through thousands of years and they just want to turn humanity into this cultureless mush, where even they want to turn Cleopatra into an African woman, which there is no evidence of that being a thing. Or I talked to some Irish people last week where they have stories of British history, irish history, Scottish history, where they have actors from completely different parts of the world playing these parts. And they're trying to maybe not rewrite history, but they want to sort of encroach on maybe you can tell a few fibs about history. And then the snowball keeps getting bigger and bigger. So it's like, did history even happen the way that we were told? Let's just rewrite history however we like. And what ends up happening is the old world keeps eroding, ethnicity keeps eroding, national pride keeps eroding. And you guys up in Canada and us too, in the States, we're relatively young countries. We are in danger of losing what little culture and history we had, let's say 500 years, whatever you want to say. Unfortunately, we because we were the children of migrants from hundreds of years ago or however long when our families came here, we have the disadvantage of not having roots here, like other countries for thousands of years, where it would be a shame for us to lose that history. And so we don't fight as hard to keep our history because, I don't know, my grandparents came here in the 60s, so what do I care what American history turns into? Because I have no national pride aside from I love what I was given when I was born, I love inheriting my rights that the constitution gives me, but they're trying to erode the constitution here as well. I'm not going to dogmatically stick to national pride as an end in itself, but there are things that just need to be defended. When you see someone knocking down statues, we have to stop them. And I don't mean by force necessarily, but we need to not erase history and rewrite history. There are. People who for some reason want to do these things, and they have to be countered because if they keep steamrolling culture and history, they will not stop. Once resistance, once people are afraid to speak up, once there are consequences for speaking up, they can do anything they want, and maybe that's their goal, but.
Russell: We'Re already there in Canada. There is consequences for speaking up. Josh Alexander, he's a kid in Ontario, 17 years old, in high school, Catholic school, and he publicly told his class, there's only such thing as men and women. And he got suspended from school, then expelled. And both of his parents who were teachers at that school backed him up and said, no, there's only male and female. And they've both been let go from their jobs as teachers. So we're already there in Canada. They want you to see those things. We're there in Canada already where there's things that you can't say, can or can't say. Now, the government's not putting you in jail yet, but it's a situation that has been created where people, they don't need to put you in jail. They don't need to put you in the camps like The Matrix. There's no need to put you in a camp. You'll just be ostracized. You'll just be removed. The worst thing they could do, arresting Alex Jones and putting him in jail, would have only murdered him and made his cause even and his beliefs even stronger. So they just removed everything they could possibly to get him off the Internet. Same with Stefan Molyneux. And that I don't agree with everything Stefan Molyneux says. They literally just erased him from the Internet until locals came along, until rumble, until some of these more Americanized free speech advocates came back and said, no, we're going to make platforms for people to engage on. Look at Gab. I disagree highly with a lot of the stuff that people say on Gab and that but they had to make their own servers. They had to make their own payment processing. They literally had to make a parallel economy because they just got removed from the Internet. They don't have to kill you. They don't have to disappear you. They just make your content unavailable for people.
George Alexopoulos: And they also make it scary to be associated with people who have been depersoned, which is another problem. So I commend anyone, especially Australians, British people, Canadians, you guys don't have the protections that we have in America, where I have the right to be an asshole. I even have the right to be wrong and say wrong things, whereas you guys can be severely punished and there's no legal parachute to help you. So I don't even know what your solution is, aside from be as brave as you can be. And if enough people see you suffering, they will know that there's something morally wrong. I don't know what the solution is, aside from be brave, take care of yourselves and tell the truth, like Peterson says.
Russell: George, I really want to thank you for coming on to the show today to have the conversation. I know I didn't really go against you because I think I agree with a lot of your points here. So I don't think I challenged your hypothesis, but I was hoping that I was able to provide some additional insight that maybe would help Steel man your hypothesis.
George Alexopoulos: Well, I welcome the conversation anywhere, anytime. I thank you for the invitation and I don't have to be the person to debate this, but I welcome everybody listening to also debate it with their friends and stuff. Culture is so important and if it's true that law what did they say? Something downstream from culture?
Russell: Well, politics is downstream.
George Alexopoulos: Politics is downstream from culture. Law as well. If we retake culture, the next generation will be in a far better position to make laws that are better for free speech and all that good stuff. So I, as an artist, illustrator, whatever I want to call myself, am trying to tell stories and make stories that will make people laugh, but also uphold my values and encourage everyone listening to support and create culture so that the next generation can inherit a better hand of cards than we've been built. I'm sad for our generation. I'm not sure if we have a chance, but maybe the next generation will have a better chance than we did.