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[Music] Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast
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Network. I'm Cara Swisser and I'm Scott Galloway. So, we have a special uh emergency uh
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video episode because of uh Utah authorities have arrested a suspect accused of assassinating uh conservative
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activist Charlie Kirk after a two-day manhunt. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was taken into custody late Thursday and is
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believed to have acted alone. Officials say Robinson made incriminating statements to relatives and sent discord
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messages about retrieving a rifle from a drop point. Uh investigators also say they found uh on messages messages on
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the ammunition, the bullets, including anti-fascist slogans and references to video games and online memes and also an
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anti-gay uh remark. Uh Robinson is registered voter in Utah but doesn't have a party affiliation. and his family
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is seems to be Republican uh Christian uh gun oriented uh as many people in Utah are. Uh Scott, what are your
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initial thoughts when you heard about this suspect? Well, my initial thoughts are how
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disappointed Representative Mace, President Trump, and Jesse Waters might be that it's not a transgender
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uh woman with blue hair working on immigration for AOC. Yeah, exactly. They have all promised us
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that in exchange for this needless death that they were going to declare war. And
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so my question is, are they going to declare war on young white heterosexual men who come from Mormon families who
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traditionally have voted Republican or gun ownersh? So the notion somehow that they are
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trying to pin this on quote unquote the radical Yeah. left. Yeah. Is just so insane. And well, I'll let
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you respond and then I have some thoughts about solutions. Well, here's the deal. Um, I I think
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saying something before we knew anything, I was hoping, you know what I mean? We all are like hoping that this
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doesn't give them what they need, but particularly two people that well besides President Trump who absolutely
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abregated every one of his responsibilities as the commander-in-chief by immediately
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accusing people of things and then front-loading the entire thing. He gave a a speech this I mean a interview this
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morning on Fox News that was insane. Actually, I've I've always thought that he is batshit crazy, but this was even
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by those standards, it was batshit crazy. Um, and it was uh it was violent. It was it was talking about war, etc.,
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etc. I found two people in two well now three. Mike Lee, the Utah uh senator. Um, three people just terrible. Jesse
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Waters at Fox News, you know, if if Matthew Dow was fired from MSNBC, he should be fired from Fox. Secondly, the
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way he talked about war were at war were um uh Nancy Mace calling it a [ __ ] killer is as usual as unhinged as ever.
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Listen, this is we don't know why this guy did this. We don't actually know a lot about him. We know his family
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background. We know, you know, obviously uh a little bit about him from what's written, but really we don't. All we
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know is one thing that I would say and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is that he's extremely online. He is
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obviously the stuff on the bullets. Anyone who has any minute I was trying to figure out is he Groper which is sort
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of the Nick Fuentes gang. I can't tell. There's so many different memes going on
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here and they're all dank by the way. So I couldn't even say was it Nick Quentes?
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Is he you know there was a bit of Antifa in there. There was all kinds of nasty [ __ ] um that he was but I do know he was
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steeped in dank memes of the internet that are uh radicalizing young people, you know, especially mostly men, mostly
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young men, mostly young white men, right? Um, and I think it's really troubling and you know, you've just
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you're about to come out with a book about this, but so I'd love to hear solutions, but it's eminently clear this
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kid was online, deeply and unfortunately online. I would say there are two fairly obvious common
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sense solutions that unfortunately cost a lot of money or diminish the shareholder value of key companies that
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are driving our entire economy and get in the way of the political narrative of special interest groups in charge right
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now. The first and most obvious solution is that Australia and the UK just don't
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have cultures that much different than us. The last time they had a mass shooting, they put in place sensible gun
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control. What do you know? No mass shootings. Since Charlie Kirk was murdered, more people have been shot and
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killed in the US than will be shot and killed in the UK over the next year. The UK will lose 30 people to gun
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violence in the next 12 months. We lose 120 people a day. That's a lot. Their numbers,
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right? So, if you want to take down political violence and all gun violence, you just have to have sensible gun
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reform. And we like to think that we live in a democracy. No, we don't. We have a passive majority that is bested
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by wellorganized special interest groups. Gun control. Number two, every one of these political assassinations,
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almost all heroic acts of people trying to regain social capital, heroic acts of
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violence are young men. And 40% of the market cap of the S&P in our entire economy right now, US is increasingly
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used to be a platform for prosperity and rights. It's become increasingly a platform for shareholder value. Full
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stop. 40% of the S&P is now 10 companies. And the primary objective of those 10 companies
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is to create more and more engagement and more and more time online. I get that these are not malicious bad people,
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but the algorithms they have programmed have figured out that enragement equals engagement. And when you have men
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sequestering from work because of remote work, when you have men spending more and more time online finding Reddit,
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when you have algorithms that want to convince them that their enemy is a Republican or a Democrat or an
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immigrant, as opposed to saying, "Oh, no, actually your enemy is the CCP or Russians pouring over the border of
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Ukraine." And they're not going to church. They're not they're not establishing romantic relationships.
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They sequester from their family. And when you put an orca killer whale in a tank alone, it goes crazy. When you when
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you when you leave a dog alone, it goes crazy. And when you take an individual who has a profit incentive behind him of
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the god-like technology commanded by these companies and convince that person they don't need to have relationships
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with other people. When young men don't have guardrails, they go down rabbit holes and they get radicalized. Yeah. We
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need gun control and we need third spaces and we need more involvement in young men's lives or this is only going
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to get worse and we need regulation against these companies. From what I can tell, this kid had a
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very close family by the way, FYI. And which is interesting, but one of the things that was is coming out of some of
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the reporting and I urge people there is so much misinformation out there. You do
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not know what is happening with this kid. We don't know anything yet at all. and don't believe, including do not
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believe the president of the United States on what he says about this. He's inaccurate. Okay? Don't believe a lot of
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your leaders about this. Wait until we get good information about what happened with this kid. Secondly, um he's what's
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really critically important here is to calm the [ __ ] down, right? That the the
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the the instant trying to now I understand. Let me just give a minute of empathy. I understand that these people
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have lost a friend, okay, in a terrible, murderous way. But it doesn't give them
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as leaders rights to take it out on the rest of us. And taking it out on trans people, taking it out on without any
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knowledge is incredibly irresponsible and not what we deserve as citizens of this country. And we ourselves are
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responsible, too. We cannot listen to this. I don't know what whether this kid is. He's definitely not uh like a
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Democratic liberal. That's for sure. But what I we don't know anything about him.
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What it feels like is that he's a nealist. That's what it feels like. And too many kids are feeling this way
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because of what Scott was just saying was being extremely online and feeling isolated and feeling a rage and then
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having access to a weapon, having enormous access to weapons. Look, I I I we gun control does not mean not being
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able to have guns. It means not being involved with this many guns in the hands of people who who really don't
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have an ability to figure out what they're doing. And so I don't know what made this kid climb up on that roof and
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kill someone. It's just an astonishing leap. Uh but it cannot keep happening. And it does keep happening. And I I urge
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everyone to calm down. And again, Spencer Cox actually gave the best speech here again is go touch some
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grass. I can't believe I heard touch grass from you a Republican Utah Sen uh governor, but touch grass. Get out
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there. Get offline. Stop being angry scrolling incessantly. These companies do not care about you. I keep saying
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that. And Scott doesn't say they're malicious. I think it's become malicious. Whether they are or not, get
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offline. They're here to make money off of you. And it's time for us to to to take control of ourselves. Scott, you
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finish up. Well, Mark Beni off compared social media to cigarette companies, but when
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you smoke a pack of Mal Bros, you then don't decide to self harm or get radicalized and convince yourself the
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right thing to do is to take up violence against others. If if we continue to let
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uh guns be everywhere and have social media platforms that have godlike technology
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and we have these paleolithic institutions uh subject to regulatory capture not able to regulate them, we're
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going to take more and more young people offline. And what social media does to young girls is it convinces them to harm
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themselves. And what it does to young men is it convinces them or gives them license to harm themselves. and harm
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others. This is going to get worse unless we face obvious but expensive solutions that unfortunately will take
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the value of these 10 companies from 40% of the S&P to 38%. And our platforms uh armed with lobbyists and our
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government have decided that that 38% versus 40% is worth the cost of violence. Absolutely. We are at war, but we're not
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at the war you think we're in. We are we've got to put a stop to this and bring peace to this country. It's just
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I'm not doing thoughts and prayers. I'm not doing let's be peaceful. This is going to take an enormous amount of
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effort and pugnacity on the behalf of a lot of people and it's it's long past time uh to to put put an end to this and
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get it out of our bloodstream. All right. Uh that's the show. Thanks for watching this special episode and be
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sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, go out and touch grass,
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please. I I demand it. Great advice. Thanks, Cara.