The Genocide Mindset

Bret Weinstein on the Joe Rogan Experience

2,228 words

Four years ago, Joe Rogan had a very instructive conversation with Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein about Adolf Hitler. Most have probably heard of this last person, as well as the first two. The third, Weinstein, is an evolutionary biologist who attained notoriety in 2017 when he stood up to Evergreen State College in Washington State when they attempted to kick white students off campus for a day. Since then, he’s done podcasts and debates and has gained fame as part of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” where mainstream academics like himself and Peterson can be a little less mainstream.

Their conversation on Rogan’s podcast was tolerably good, albeit frustrating, given the anti-Right and anti-white biases of the principals involved. It was also long, clocking in at nearly three hours. It took place in September of that year, so the recent riot in Charlottesville came up a lot. So did Donald Trump, the Alt-Right, Pepe the Frog, and other contemporaneous topics. Surprisingly, however, Hitler came up hardly at all until the very end. And this is where a lively discussion between two knowledgeable and relatively edgy guys turned a bit sinister.

Of course, both Peterson and Weinstein agreed that Hitler was a “monster.” However, they remained impartial enough to credit him for not only being an effective leader and organizer, but also, from an evolutionary standpoint, for allocating greater resources for his people. Even Germany’s defeat in World War II did not render Hitler’s plan a complete failure, according to Weinstein, since many resources that had been in Jewish hands later belonged to Germans. While making it clear that they both deplored Hitler, Peterson and Weinstein then began to display what I would call the Genocide Mindset. Such a perspective assumes that human beings not only possess latent potential for committing genocide, but that this potential could be triggered at any moment — as if any one reason or another out of the blue could do the trick. Therefore, we must always be on our guard lest the next Hitler take us unawares.

At the 2:27:47 mark, we get this exchange:

Jordan Peterson: Part of the reason you’re walking through this, so the track of this remains self-evident is to caution people against — to alert people to the fact that the sorts of programs that Hitler both ran and elicited from people are lurking in our, let’s say in our genome, in our set of biological possibilities. And we have to be very awake to that fact on an ongoing basis.

Bret Weinstein: They are lurking in our genomes, which does not mean that we as adults have this as a possibility. Many people will not go along with this. Other people have it lurking to be triggered. And I think, you know, what worries me is that Trump, I think very cynically, utilized this lurking program in order to gain office. That he played on upon that fact that certain people were waiting to hear those noises.

So with the potential for genocide baked in the human cake, so to speak, a person possessed by the genocide mindset would necessarily and (in his mind) justifiably harbor baleful suspicions about anyone not a part of his in-group. Such people would be frightfully quick to attack or oppress anyone who does not enthusiastically conform to whatever anti-genocidal code of ethics they wish to inflict on others.

A kid in a MAGA hat smiles at a Native American? Nazi. Quick, ruin his life. Jared Taylor runs a pro-white website that disavows violence, you say? He’s probably plotting another Shoah. Quick, ban his books and cancel his PayPal account. Bret Weinstein stands up for the rights of white people? He’s not a Jew for Jesus. He’s a Hebe for Hitler! Let’s protest in front of his office until he resigns. Sure, none of this behavior is ethical. But we’re talking about preventing genocide. All these little peccadillos don’t even amount to the merest lampshade when compared to the Holocaust! If oppressing a handful of Nazis is the price we have to pay to keep the world safe from genocide, then so be it!

Perhaps this sarcastic aside is a bit jaundiced. We should consider, however, that when someone we trust says something controversial, we tend to interpret his words in a positive light. Conversely, if someone we don’t trust says something equally controversial, we tend to interpret his words in a negative light. A perfect example of this occurred during the second Iraq War when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used the word “slog” to describe US military efforts in Iraq. The anti-war, anti-Bush press seized on a negative dictionary definition of the word while Rumsfeld insisted he meant a different and more positive definition.

It can be inferred from the above quote that Bret Weinstein believes that people voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because they wanted to commit mass murder. Here I am interpreting what he says in a negative light, and it is my right to do so since Weinstein himself interprets Trump just as negatively. Of course, a more positive and nuanced interpretation would give Weinstein the benefit of the doubt and absolve millions of Trump supporters of the genocide libel (perhaps downgrading them to merely being ignorant, selfish, and xenophobic). In either case, it seems that neither Weinstein nor Peterson realized how insidious, outrageous, and offensive their statements were. People voted for candidate Trump because he spoke up for legacy America, tradition, patriotism, gun rights, and all the other things that made America great in the past. He promised to put America’s needs before the needs of other countries. He also at least claimed to recognize the obvious danger of uncontrolled immigration. For millions of Americans, there really wasn’t any other choice besides Trump in 2016.

You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s novel Charity’s Blade here.

For Bret Weinstein to openly suggest that Americans were motivated in any way by genocide — and for Jordan Peterson to sit there and let him do it — not only reveals their inherent anti-white racism (because, let’s face it, only whites get accused of genocide these days), it also reveals how possessed by the genocide mindset they really are. One does not responsibly accuse a person of stealing a stick of gum without proof — yet suddenly it’s responsible to accuse tens of millions of the most heinous crime imaginable with absolutely no proof? And this is coming from two people who are ostensibly on the Right. One would have to be blind not to see the injustice here.

The above examples focus on race, but as we move away from race, we can see how well the genocide mindset explains the cultural degeneration which is now engulfing the West. I’m reminded of how, years ago, certain members of the deaf community (if you can even call it that) were actually opposed to the development of technology that could cure or alleviate deafness. Why? Because that would amount to cultural genocide. In a world in which everyone can hear, there can be no deaf community. If you identify as deaf, then such technology promises not freedom but oblivion. Ridiculous, yes. However, it got me thinking about how people have been splintering into innumerable gender-related identity groups for the past few decades and then fiercely defending these identity groups from — you guessed it — genocide.

Regarding all gender/sexual identities, from plain vanilla gays and lesbians (quaint, I know) to rainbow swirl non-binaries, to peppermint birthday cake bubblegum trannies, cultural genocide is the first thing on their minds. They are constantly aware that any reactionary culture shift, even back to the bad old days of 2011, would eventually lead to the eradication of their identity group. Hence the speech policing of pronouns. Hence the vindictive cancel culture. Hence the looking the other way when Y-chromosomed people dominate what used to be called female sports. All of this makes sense within the context of the genocide mindset. These people really believe that they will be annihilated if Western culture were to even lean Right again, let alone go there.

Thankfully, Peterson and Weinstein are smart enough not to be so petty and asinine. However, they don’t seem to realize that they exhibit the same impulses as those who oppress them. Both of these men have been canceled for offending the genocide mindset of any number of identity groups on the lunatic Left. Yet, after complaining about how they themselves have been oppressed, they then started griping about how people on the Right have too much freedom of speech. For example, they both approved of ostracizing the Dissident Right. Also, at various points in the podcast, they criticized Donald Trump’s statements after Charlottesville because he did not condemn the Right sufficiently enough. Just by placing Right and Left on equal footing and stating that there were bad actors on both sides, Trump supposedly blew a dog whistle for his genocide-loving supporters.

To test the reality of the genocide mindset, let’s compare it to what it isn’t. When conservatives or people on the Right witness, say, sexual perversion or gender transitioning, their revulsion is natural and visceral. It’s not informed by a phobia of genocide but by a refreshing resistance to artificial mental conditioning. Basically, these acts are gross and violate the standards of any prosperous society throughout history. No explanation beyond that is necessary.

Things have gotten interesting, however, now that whites have begun to adopt a genocide mindset of their own. This is why Greg Johnson was so far ahead of his time when he propagated the idea of White Genocide years ago. As whites become more and more of a minority in the West, they will start to behave like minorities and believe, due to their lack of numbers or influence, that their very future is in doubt. They will need to act with the urgency that only a genocide mindset can provide. However, White Genocide is not something that can be triggered out of the blue. It’s quite different than the hysterical and immediate genocide mindset of Weinstein and Peterson. It describes a long-term devolutionary process by which whites in the West cede resources and influence to more ethnocentric non-whites until they are easily oppressed, enslaved, and bred out of existence. Think of the Zoroastrians in Iran, the Uyghurs in China, or the Carthaginian diaspora after the Third Punic War. This has happened before. It could lead to disaster for the white race. Or, if whites summon the nerve in time, perhaps not.

The genocide mindset of Weinstein and Peterson, on the other hand, is cartoonish in comparison. First, it requires a villain, i.e., Nazis. And since Trump supporters acted on their genocidal impulses when they hit the polls in 2016, it seems the definition of what is or isn’t a Nazi is fairly fluid. Secondly, as mentioned above, it does not require any motivation. Genocides, apparently, can spring up for no reason at all and at any time. Third, it’s historically ignorant. Regardless of whatever we believe the Germans did to the Jews of Europe during World War II (and I will defer to David Cole on that), any anti-Jewish hatred from that time period must be placed within the context of the far greater atrocities committed by the disproportionately Jewish Soviet leadership in the previous two decades. The Nazis were keenly aware of this. I don’t deny the Jewish Holocaust, but Weinstein’s genocide mindset rings hollow when he presumes that only Nazis are capable of genocide and that Jews are wholly innocent of comparable historical crimes. Thus the suspicion can only go from Left to Right, from Jew to White.

Finally, Bret Weinstein, whether he realizes it or not, offered up a justification of genocide himself. Where Jordan Peterson claimed that the potential for genocide exists for all people, Weinstein singled out only some people — Trump supporters — the vast majority of whom are white. By implicating these people for a crime they didn’t commit, he tacitly draws a target on their backs and implies that they are a threat and therefore fair game. If an easily identifiable segment of the population carries the threat of genocide within its very genome, then what’s to stop any reasonable society from preemptively oppressing this population? And if this genocidal segment of the population one day starts acting assertively in its own interests, then why shouldn’t any reasonable society solve this problem by genociding them first? Bret Weinstein did not say we should ever do this, but he didn’t say we shouldn’t either. Apparently, he didn’t think that Trump supporters deserve such consideration.

In spite of all this, I do see Weinstein and Peterson as voices of calm and reason, at least among the centrists. They have a strong understanding of the dangers posed by the Left, and within that context, they make sense more often than not. It might be too much to ask that they overcome their genocide mindset, but if they ever do, they will learn what most of us reading this article already know: that the only way to defeat the Left is with a strong, committed, and ethnocentric Right. In order to prevent genocide in the future, it’s necessary to overcome the genocide mindset today.

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