Ep. 244 Jason Rink On His Controversial Documentaries
Jason Rink explains his documentaries on the so-called Q-Shaman and Nick Fuentes, as well as the pushback he’s received.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube video of this interview.
- Jason Rink’s posts (here and here) explaining what happened with FreedomFest.
- Bob Murphy Show episode 174 explaining the Viking guy (Q-Shaman).
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
I found most of the interview agreeable, but:
– Crying about being de-platformed while still using (and de-facto supporting) the censorious platforms; “We set up this interview on twitter”, ugh.
– Talking about people being de-banked in 2022 — as if it hasn’t been happening for decades — while not spending or accepting cryptocurrency (particularly a privacy coin like Monero). [Note Bob Murphy and Mises.org accept crypto — unfortunately no privacy coins, yet]
Hypocrisy is a bad lifestyle choice and I’m happy to see folks incrementally cleansing themselves of it. But clinging to the illusion that the scope of the Empire of Lies is limited to your current 3×5″ comfort-zone of dissent is not a path to sainthood.
To grow your way out of a caged mind, create multiple online personalities. Determine and define a set of personas to explore and discuss different counter-regime domains and use different VPNs and browsers (or better yet, computers) for each of them.
Level up your skills in avoiding: enemy currency, enemy products, enemy services, enemy platforms, enemy operating systems, enemy software, and enemy hardware.
Bob’s devil’s advocate challenge, verbatim:
“Let me ask you one last concluding question – again more of a devil’s advocate thing. So I get you’re justifying what you’re doing and saying lookit, there’s these — what if a left-libertarian says I think we should make a film about, you know, some lesbian teacher who lost her job because she told some sixth graders about her girlfriend and the right’s callin’ her a groomer and all this crazy, you know, all these throwing these names, and, you know, we, I think a lot of the older boomer right-wingers do not understand what’s goin’ on with these kids comin-up who have, y’know, identity issues and we need to be more sympathetic. And you could imagine a bunch of people on the right saying, “Are you out of your mind right now? No, we don’t want to be anywhere near that stuff. The public is so mad about this, no, we don’t even want to be in the same zip-code is it looking like we’re defending talking to kids about sexual stuff.”
I think Jason failed to identify obvious objections to Bob’s hypothetical devil’s advocate challenge. The comparison is apples to oranges because:
1) The hypothetically objectionable comment to 6th graders about a female teacher’s girlfriend would not be seriously beyond the pale for most conservatives. Sex-ed just before pubescence has been a standard part of most US schooling since the 1980s. The putatively objectionable content here is that the teacher merely mentions the existence of her lesbian relationship, which isn’t even out of scope for sex-ed for pubescents. What is objectionable to conservatives in 2022 is pushing a pro LGBTBBQ — particularly a gender-dysphoric indoctrination program — to children in their first few years of schooling. If the hypothetical had been about pressuring 7 year olds to declare themselves the opposite sex and undergo genital mutilation against their parents wishes, it would have been legitimate.
2) The hypothetical is not about personal freedom of speech; it’s about the content delivered as part of an educational curriculum.
3) The parties involved in the hypothetical discussion are not adults engaged in online discussion but rather, the content that a community finds appropriate for adult educators to be transmitting to children as part of a curriculum.
Rink would have aced the test if he’d pointed out the incongruity and inapplicability of Bob’s supposedly inverse hypothetical, and then added that he’d just as vigorously defend that teacher’s private speech online.
Neither Dr. Murphy nor Mr. Rink mentioned it so I’m afraid you two don’t know: Ali Alexander is a bad actor and should be avoided at all costs. I’ve tracked him for years now and have seen him pop up several times. He’s a well-spoken crook. A con man, a shady political operative, a grifter, etc. He will say whatever needs to be said to produce the outcome he’s seeking, and the outcome he’s seeking may be quite different from what he says overtly. Anything Ali touches is dangerous and may well be a trap.
https://epistemology.locals.com/post/1731192/ali-alexander-born-ali-abdul-razaq-akbar-is-a-bad-actor-avoid-at-all-costs
Fwiw, Robert Barnes says Fuentes is a grifter, there is no evidence he was on a no fly list nor that half a mil was seized. I will add: where would a kid get half a mill? Especially since he’s demonetized everywhere. Doesn’t pass the smell test.
So maybe the reason Freedom Fest didn’t want to associate with him is not because they’re afraid to be seen promoting a racist but because he’s full of it.
I don’t know him. He has nothing interesting to say for me, a bit like Tim Pool or Lauren Southern (though those two are genuine I think, just boring for me).
What I do know is Barnes isn’t a guy who doesn’t like someone just because he’s hated by the mainstream. Barnes loves Alex Jones and has even defended him in the court. But he believes Fuentes is a total fraud. Do what you will with it.
Btw I believe Jason Rink is a real deal himself. I wholeheartedly agree that a “racist” who’s been wronged is worth defending.
But in this case he may just have been played.