Why Does the Ruling Class Lie to Itself? | Over The Target

Spectacular show this morning. This time, we'll be speaking with someone who is based in Europe right now, the great Mark Granza, who's an editor of this stunningly brilliant new political cultural magazine called I Am 1776, and I will advise all of you to check out I Am 1776 as soon as you get a chance. The gentleman we had on the show last week, Lafayette Lee, has written many articles for them. People like Michael Anton have appeared in its pages, a long interview with Steve Bannon. One of their great writers is a guy named Daniel Miller, who's also an important editor over at I Am 1776, and we're going to cover a lot of ground today. We're going to talk about how we describe this show, we're going to talk about propaganda and the elites, why the elites believe the nonsense that they're pushing, but we're going to start off talking about the culture war, because it's especially relevant just today with Mr. Elon Musk tweeting out different issues on the culture war. But before we get to Mark, I just want to remind you, if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, we will be cutting away at the 20-minute mark to go to Epoch TV exclusively. Make sure you make the jump with us. I'll give you a bit of a countdown at the 20-minute mark. Make sure you join us, because it's a great show. You're not going to want to miss a minute of it, a second of it. Mark is fantastic, and we're going to go to him right now. Mr. Mark Granza, welcome to Over the Target Live. Thank you for being with us this morning here in America. I know where you are. It's a little bit later, so thank you for joining us. Well, thanks so much for having me, Leon. I'm excited to be on, and great to meet the audience. Very good. You and I were just in contact a little bit before the show about what Elon Musk was talking about. It seemed that he was engaging, I got to say, for the world, especially considering he's the world's richest man. That guy's spending an awful lot of time on Twitter. I imagine he's not going to be doing it for the rest of his life. It's going on right now. But he's engaging someone with a conversation about the culture war, and I think we'll be able to get that up on screen for people who aren't on Twitter all the time. Just so you see. Can we make that a little bit bigger? Is it possible to make that a little bit bigger so people can see it? Thank you. That's great. There's Elon Musk. What do you think of the culture war? I think the right needs to start funding more artists, filmmakers, and writers. Sorry for looking away from the camera. I'm looking down here so I can read. Writers instead of politicians and super PACs. You don't win a naval war without any ships, and you can't win a culture war without any culture. We've been reacting too long. Time to go on the offensive, and of course, this comes back to something a lot of people on the right have been saying. Here's Elon Musk. Just to continue. I am neither conventionally right nor left, but I agree with your point. The woke mind virus has thoroughly penetrated entertainment and is pushing civilization toward suicide. There needs to be a counter narrative. This of course is where Mark and his colleagues stepped in on I Am 1776. This is something that people like Andrew Breitbart had spoken about, describing politics as downstream from culture. What does that mean when we're talking about culture? Are we talking about art? Are we talking about movies? Are we talking about novels, poems? Are we talking about a larger idea of culture? How people live? What their values are? I think both of those things are intertwined, but Mark is the person I want to get this answer from since he started a magazine about this. What is the culture war? Yeah, I mean, what do we need? What we're talking about when we talk about culture war. I think that the previous tweet that you showed, the guy who replied to Elon Musk, never come across him before. But he makes an excellent point. I mean, you don't win a war without any ship. You don't win a naval war without any ship, you win a culture war without any culture. And essentially the problem that conservatives and the conservative movement and the mainstream conservative movement for the past arguably decades, I would say, they've been completely neglecting the cultural aspect. They've been engaging with the culture war. They've been debating the left when it comes to cultural issues. They've been making arguments. They've been funding, obviously, political candidates. They've been funding all sorts of organizations and think tanks and other networks of influence. But they've been completely neglecting the production aspect of culture. You have to produce culture if you want to influence the culture. That's the common sense that, you know, when you find yourself talking about it, it seems like even incredible that we found ourselves in this place. So when I started a magazine, this wasn't apparently obviously clear to me. It wasn't very central to the project, although I've always been more interested in culture and I'm sort of like a bit of an obsession when it comes to producing something, trying to produce something beautiful, aesthetically pleasing. I tried to do it with aesthetics on the magazine. I would try to do this now with the print issues as well. And I didn't want to step in one second. The magazine is beautiful. If I can ask my colleagues and production of you guys, you can find any. There it is. There's I am 1776. This is the this is their new issue. Correct, Mark. This is about Florida. And we're going to get to that in a second. We're going to talk about the stuff that's going on in Florida. But I want to get the first one. I want to get the basic. There's the there's the first issue. It's it's it's it's beautifully designed. Thank you. The cover and the inside, it's beautifully designed. And I think that in itself is really important to have to have a beautiful object to be to have something that looks nice and that feels nice. And you open it up. And I think aesthetics are are are very important. What is the beauty of what is what are beautiful things? Because we look around right now, we look at the different corruption, the the moral and political corruption. And so much of it is so visibly disgusting. The aesthetics, the optics of the the cult of the mask. This is disgusting. So to have beautiful things in front of us, like what Mark has produced, I think is really important. Oh, thank you very much. And it's very flattering and appreciate the kind words. I will say, yeah, aesthetics are very important. You know, like you also have to like the credibility, right? Because if you talk a lot about beauty, if he talks about the importance of beauty, you try to claim yourself as the side that promotes beauty. But then you present your product somewhere that without paying too much, giving too much care to what you do, to how you design it. I mean, you also kind of lose a little bit of credibility and obviously aesthetics in and of themselves. They're not they're not all I mean, they're just they're more sort of like a they're more of a door in a way that, you know, that there has to be like a content has to be depth to what you're saying to the counter, what you're writing or to the to the art itself. You know, it can be aesthetically pleasing, but it can be just also like meaningful, meaningless. And so you have to combine the two. Now, to go back to your previous question, I think when people talk about culture, when we talk about reclaiming culture, you know, you might come across a little bit of as a person to say online. But, you know, especially after today, I would say that that, you know, when Mila essentially Elon Musk tweeted or responded to is essentially what we've been saying for a long time. I don't know the person who tweeted that that reply to his original tweet, but it's not too farfetched. It's actually quite possible that, you know, he came across our publication with many other people in our sphere that have been that have been saying this over the past year. And some of them, some of us have been longer than that. So what are we talking about when we're talking about all of that, all of the all of the fields of cultural production can be movies, books. Obviously, we're a lot more invested into literature, of course, because we're we're a magazine and we're planning on launching a published house as well. But it has to be visual art. It has to be music. It has to be every single it has to be any sort of thing that can reach out to people and and and and touch them to some degree and speak to them. You know, like how many people do we know that have reached their opinions because they read some essays or read some book by some statement of thinker? Unless you are a thinker yourself, unless you're interested in ideas as an intellectual or someone involved in our industry, you're likely you're likely being influenced even on an unconscious level by by by culture, by movies, by literature. I mean, if you're a literary oriented person, by by music, likely by whatever is promoted by by our cultural institutions. And so the idea that that you can face and you can battle the left and you can sort of like have any sort of effect into society by simply making arguments, even if you're right, your your rate is limited. And so there has to be a viable production on the production side when it comes to the conservative, right, when saying, of course, this this obviously leads to the the big elephant in the room when you're talking about art, which is that you cannot politicize it. We can we can go much a bit deeper into that, if you like. But just to make clear, we're not arguing for explicitly political art. We're not arguing to to to force our messages into the artistic product, whether it's a movie, it's a book, it's a novel or it's visual art itself. It has to be genuine. It has to be it has to be it has it has to come from from a genuinely artistic, you know, source and that and that has to be it's not going to come it's not going to be neutral. There's going to be that perceivable political or an idea into it. And it's the job of people like us to understand which artists and the conservative donor class to understand which of these kind of people deserve to be promoted, deserve to be funded, deserve to be helped and deserve to to to grow. And so this is essentially what we're talking about when we talk about funding artists, what this guy that replied, I don't know what it is, but when we say about funding artists, we're not necessarily talking about like funding artists that can express our ideas as in like force them into the product, but artists that are genuinely that talk about beauty, that can express beauty, can express human nature and and the deepest aspect of humanity, the deepest, truest and the truest aspect of humanity and communicate them, whether it's visually or literally or or in a movie or whatnot. And this is very important because this is something that you and I have spoken about a bit in the past. Before that, we just have a question from a viewer, Seymour, what does I.M. stand for and I.M. 1776? I.M. used to be the initial of my old blog, which I yeah, which I essentially turned my blog into a publication two years ago. I would say the summer of 2020, late summer of 2020. And I was I was I was reading an article yesterday about, you know, a few few magazine like hours to start. I was interviewed by this by this guy for this German magazine called Cicero. And he and he just came out yesterday and he opened with a line, you know, when an intellectual when an intellectual gets stuck, they start a magazine. And I laughed because that's actually not the case for me. You know, I was an intellectual and I didn't know, I guess usually is the case. Maybe that's a funny line. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, it's a famous quote from Arvind Howe, the scholar, so but it wasn't the case for me. I just had this blog and essentially I was completely neglecting it. I knew that the solution weren't going to come for me. So I reached the point was like, what I'm going to do now. And then the idea of giving this platform to other people came up. And so I just kept the initials. And I like the identity play, you know, because if you spell it out, I am sounds like you're saying I am as in like my name is or like I am Mark. And so I think identity in this era of like emptiness and spiritual decay and really and really crisis of identity, I would say it's a crisis of identity where we're going from mainly to not only. I really like that, that play, that that sound of it. And then so, yeah, that's what the I am stands for essentially. Wait, this is interesting. You said you think it's an age of a crisis of identity. If that's then let's use that to get into what you mean by conservative culture, because, again, you and I have had we talked a bit about this in the past. And my opinion is, is that fundamentally artists must be conservative in one important regard. And that is but I don't I don't consider this conservative. I consider this formal. Right. And insofar as a writer must tell a story. Right. And stories have structure. And if you're a painter, if you're a sculptor, if you're a musician, all of these things have form. And I think that one of the things that we're looking right now is formlessness. Right. We're looking at different people think that also whether whether we're talking about whether we're talking about trans, whether we're talking about the United States generally open borders. And, you know, and part of this does have to do with it's political and cultural. Right. The idea like, no, the different things that you believe about your history that you believe about American history are not true. And we're going to change all of these things right in front of you. So for me, that that's what culture and art has to be. It gives form. It gives shape to individual expression as well as a national expression. And the narrative, I think, that Elon Musk is talking about is it's a narrative without form. It's like throwing a whole bunch of garbage against the wall and seeing what sticks. So sorry for the long lead up, but I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out how we talk about what is conservative art or what is conservative literature? Are there are there different ideas that people have to advocate for them to be a conservative or what does it mean? Yeah, I think I think you're right. I mean, what essentially what we're witnessing now is like people from from an artistical and cultural production side is people putting their horse before. What's this question? Sorry. We need a car before the horse. Sorry. No, it's a different expression. Translating. But what we're essentially what we're witnessing, people that are forcing their ideas on today, their their their their product. But it's not it's not coming from from a genuine sense of of exploring your, you know, your your deepest self and who you are and what you feel, what you believe at a deeper level. You know, when we talk about essentially helping out and contributing to a revival or reclaiming of our culture and a revival of the arts, essentially what we're talking about is is redefining the process of producing art itself. So, you know, I can make I can make it like a practical example. You know, I'm doing as you showed before, like we're doing this for the issue. And and I was going through like several like I asked online, you know, what are the main what are the best Florida movies? And they mentioned a few spring breakers, you know, Scarface, of course. But it was like this movie called Moonlight, which actually is the one that won the Oscar in 2016. And and I've seen it before. Right. And it's not exactly something I endorse. I mean, that is the story essentially of like this this young kid basically follows this young kid for his life, like first stage of his life, very young middle teenager and then like leading to his 20 or something like that. But it's basically like a very is is I guess you say like an LGBT movie, you know, like essentially it turns out to be not to be gay. It turns out to be exploring sexuality throughout his life, throughout the movie. So it's not something that we call conservative. Right. But but it's the I probably the only recent movie that I've come across in the last 10, 20 years or so that I will still call I will still call somewhat of our art itself. So I'm not necessarily. Plain that there is no force. The message is forced on you. It's just like a very realistic, very genuine exploration of this actual neighborhood of Miami, the Haiti neighborhood. I forgot the actual name. There's a particular name, but it's this particular neighbor of Miami. And so the message is obviously, I guess you could say left wing, but it's definitely it's definitely something that can still be called art. So I'm not necessarily making a claim that we anything that can be are called art has to be right wing or conservative. But we ought we ought to actually, you know, on a more sophisticated and probably more strategic level, we ought to find people that can do the same thing with with right wing ideas, be conservative ideas, patriotic ideas, ideas that promote beauty and human nature and and and greatness and and human achievement and that sort of thing. That's that's the sort of society that I want to live in. I want to live in a society that glorifies beauty, that glorifies greatness, that glorifies, you know, can be artistic beauty, can be physical beauty, can be all sorts of beauty that emphasizes the important culture on land and attachment to your to your people and to your country. That sort of thing. And the trick is obviously to find someone that can express those kind of ideas from an artistic perspective without forcing them on the audience, but by telling a genuinely true, genuinely story without without without forcing the message onto it. You know, I mean, we know that patriotic movies do very well. Maverick Top Gun did very well. American Sniper did very well. All all sorts of all sorts of movies like this. This is what people like seeing. And and nonetheless, nonetheless, Hollywood makes very, very few of these films. We're going to we're going to cut away. As I said, if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook, please make the jump of this. We're going to talk with Mark about culture, about conservative culture, about countering the narrative, as Elon Musk was saying on Twitter this morning. We're going to talk about Mark's new issue and also want to talk about the culture that the elites have constructed, the culture and the propaganda that they've constructed and are pushing. So stick with us. Make the jump. I'll see in about 30 seconds, maybe less. Thanks. See you in a sec. The idea that people will not be able to travel unless they have a vaccine passport. Vaccine passport could be built into the international health regulations as early as next year. Joe Biden and his top public health officials like Anthony Fauci promised that if you take this vaccine, don't worry, there's no chance of further infection, no chance of infection, no chance of transmission. When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected. One point three million adverse events reported on the vaccine, adverse events reporting system. The CDC changed the definition of a vaccination in 2020. These folks have been lying to us for more than two years. A much more comprehensive, more thorough, digitized vaccine passport. And you can just imagine they'd be able to implement this much more rapidly and more broadly. So welcome back. Thank you for making the jump. Good call. And we'll get right back into it. Mark Ranz here.