It Pays to Be Gay: The 330th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Jun 18

Published date: June 18, 2026
Hosts: Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. Heather Heying
Podcast: DarkHorse Podcast
Episode: The 330th Evolutionary Lens livestream
Transcript source: SRTX transcript file

Video: Watch on YouTube
Audio: Listen on Spotify

Summary

On this, the 330th Evolutionary Lens livestream, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying discuss pride and fascism. They begin with California’s gay-certification program for utility contracting, including the kinds of evidence business owners may be asked to provide in order to qualify. They then discuss Gen Z’s embrace of LGBTQ identity, especially the rise in young women identifying as bisexual, before turning to Umberto Eco’s fourteen features of Ur-Fascism.

Hosts:

Dr. Bret Weinstein Bret Weinstein is co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast, co-author of ‘The Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century’, and a former professor at The Evergreen State College. He and his wife, Heather Heying, resigned in the wake of 2017 campus riots that focused in part on Weinstein and Heying's opposition to a day of racial segregation and other college “equity” proposals.

Dr. Weinstein earned a PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan, where he was given the Don Tinkle Award for distinguished work in Evolutionary Ecology; he earned a BA in Biology from UCSC. His scholarly research is focused on evolutionary trade-offs. He has worked on the evolution of senescence and cancer, species diversity gradients, and the adaptive significance of human morality and religion. He has written and spoken on a wide range of topics, including free speech, medical freedom, AI, and complexity; at venues as varied as The Wall Street Journal, the Joe Rogan Experience, and the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Heather Heying Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist who earned her PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan, has been a visiting Fellow at Princeton University, and was a tenured professor at The Evergreen State College. She has been invited to speak about science, higher ed, the evolution of sex and consciousness, and the culture wars, in venues as varied as the U.S. Department of Justice, the Krishnamurti Institute, Joe Rogan, and Oxford University.

Her first book, Antipode, is based on her life in Madagascar while studying the sex lives of poison frogs. Her second book, co-authored with husband Bret Weinstein, is A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life. A New York Times best-seller, the book provides an evolutionary toolkit for living a good and honorable life as a modern ape. She also writes Natural Selections on Substack, the Field Notes column for County Highway, and co-hosts with Bret a popular weekly livestream on the DarkHorse podcast.

Mentioned

Timestamps

00:00:00: Bret is Back from Britain
00:02:30: Sponsor: Dose
00:05:29: Sponsor: Sundries Farm
00:08:53: Sponsor: Xlear
00:12:10: California's Gay-Certification Program
00:36:47: Gen Z's Bisexual Boom
00:41:27: The 14 Features of Fascism
01:22:47: Teaser for Next Episode: Skip the Sunscreen

Main Topics

Bret’s return from Britain
Pride Month
California LGBTQ business certification
utility contracts
same-sex attempted parenting evidence
transgender status documentation
TikTok and identity verification
Gen Z LGBTQ identification
bisexuality among young women
social contagion
Umberto Eco
Ur-Fascism
fourteen features of fascism
skip the sunscreen teaser

Search Keywords

Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, DarkHorse Podcast, Evolutionary Lens 330, pride, fascism, Ur-Fascism, Umberto Eco, LGBTQ certification, California utility contracts, gay business contracts, City Journal, Christopher Rufo, Luke Hufford, NGLCC, Gen Z LGBTQ, bisexuality, social contagion, sunscreen

Transcript

[00:00:04] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse podcast live stream number 300. How is that even possible? I mean, I guess you do 299. You do one more and that makes it 300. I'm Dr. Bret.

[00:00:17] Dr. Heather Heying: One 330, 330.

[00:00:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. All right. I, in my defense, it is the middle of the night for me, but, um, yeah, I. In my defense, I do think I saw an email that said it was 300, probably just a type O.

[00:00:32] Dr. Heather Heying: About 30 episodes ago.

[00:00:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I'm sure. No, no, no. This was, this was today. It was hot off the presses, but in any case, I digress as I often do. I'm Dr. Bret Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Heying. Um, I did just come in from Britain and so I'm discombobulated. It's the middle of the day here. It's, I don't know what time in Britain right now, but, um, anyway.

[00:00:55] Dr. Heather Heying: Time to head home from the pub.

[00:00:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It is, if you're not, yeah, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. That's pretty much where things are.

[00:01:03] Dr. Heather Heying: Oh, I don't know if that's true. I don't, maybe, maybe, maybe the pubs are closing kind of early in England these days.

[00:01:10] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I don't know, but I would imagine that in a very nice British accent, that's what they say if you're there at closing time.

[00:01:15] Dr. Heather Heying: Fair enough. Uh, so it's June. It's beautiful. It's beautiful out. June has been appropriated in America for pride. So we're going to talk about pride. We're talking about sun and we're going to talk about fascism today.

[00:01:30] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And so it's all one really.

[00:01:31] Dr. Heather Heying: June-ish.

[00:01:32] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it's all, it's all, it's all.

[00:01:34] Dr. Heather Heying: It's not in fascism.

[00:01:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's all June-imborous.

[00:01:36] Dr. Heather Heying: No Q and A today. Uh, we did one last week, I think, uh, maybe I'm just remembering that, but they're, uh, always up on locals. We encourage you to join us there. And if you're watching on YouTube, please, please do subscribe. Uh, we're trying to, trying to figure out how to, uh, get some of the YouTube magic back, something I don't even know, but, uh, you know, they demonetized us a long time ago and then they quietly, uh, remonetized us with just a trickle, a trickle of, uh, of our former funds coming in and, uh, we would love to know what that's about and see if you guys who are already watching, liking, subscribing do so if you find yourself unsubscribed, subscribe again. Yeah. So, um, let us start with our three sponsors as we always do right at the top of the hour and then get into our discussion of, what did I say? Pride, sun and fascism.

[00:02:29] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:02:29] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Yeah. So our first sponsor today is Dose. Modern life is rough on our bodies, processed foods, stress, environmental toxins, late nights. It adds up. Your liver is working overtime to filter all of that out. And if you've been feeling sluggish or just off, your liver might be trying to tell you something. Dose for Your Liver is a tasty liquid supplement that supports liver health. Your liver has hundreds of functions in your body, most famously as a filter. It's an organ of detoxification dose dose for your liver, taking a daily two ounce shot was formulated to cleanse your liver of unwanted elements. Dose for Your Liver has four active ingredients, milk thistle, ginger, dandelion, and turmeric. And it's all in a base of delicious organic orange juice doses, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and vegan. And it tastes fantastic dose. Yeah. The milk thistle doesn't actually include any real milk. That's why it's vegan. And it tastes fantastic dose comes in sleep.

[00:03:20] Dr. Bret Weinstein: That's a good point. I had not caught up to that yet, but you're right.

[00:03:23] Dr. Heather Heying: Dose comes in sleep. Mmm. Just bit my lip. Dose comes in sleek glass bottles and arrives with a stainless steel shot glass with which to take your dose. You can drink it straight or add it to other drinks, Triton fruit smoothies. For instance, Zach, who was drinking a daily dose for a while thought the dose for your liver would be excellent in coffee. I'm not so sure about that, but, uh, Zach's going to do Zach and you should do you. Dose for Your Liver's in-house clinical studies found significant improvements in standard measures of liver health after study participants drank dose daily for as little as eight weeks. The liver produces and regulates cholesterol stores, Venamals, Venamals and vitamins and minerals and impacts digestive and metabolic health. Among many other things, those supports liver function, AIDS, digestion, eases, bloating, and can even boost energy levels stick with dose and feel the incredible benefits over time. You find that you have more energy, better digestion, reduced bloating, healthier liver, enzyme function, reduce reduction in brain fog and better sleep. Ready to give your liver the support it deserves. Head to dose daily.co slash DarkHorse or enter DarkHorse to get 35% off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you. Let's do something for it. That's D O S E D A L Y dot C O slash dark horse for 35% off your first month's subscription.

[00:04:37] Dr. Bret Weinstein: All right.

[00:04:38] Dr. Heather Heying: All right.

[00:04:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Slogan for dose. Slogan for dose. Here we go. Dose because when it comes to your liver, you're still using it with apologies to money pipe.

[00:04:50] Dr. Heather Heying: Oh yeah. Yeah. Remember, is it a meaning of life?

[00:04:54] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Can we have your liver? Yes. The meaning of life. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a large glandular organ. I know what it is, but I'm still using it.

[00:05:02] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Yeah. And I believe that they may take it anyway.

[00:05:05] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. Actually, that is now something. Another thing that Monty Python has correctly predicted is the recovery of organs from people who are still using them.

[00:05:14] Dr. Heather Heying: Wow. Yeah. Were they completely wrong about anything?

[00:05:18] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Um, not as far as I remember, they in the Simpsons have an unbearably good track record of predicting ridiculousness.

[00:05:26] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah, indeed. Uh, all right. Our second sponsor is back with us for a second growing and harvest season. And we are thrilled to be working with them again. It's Sundries Farm, which grows the most outstanding garlic eat garlic because it's delicious and exceptionally good for you. Numerous studies attest to the health benefits of garlic on heart and immune health as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Garlic is a staple in many culinary traditions for a reason, for good reason. Eat Sundries Farm garlic, because this is a family farm of amazing people who care deeply about the land and their product, who know garlic in all of its intricacies and who produce a diversity of garlics that is in my experience, unparalleled. They grow 11 varieties of garlic, each one notably different, some mild, some hot, some ideal for baking, others to eat, great to eat raw, really. Some have huge cloves, others store for a very long time. Garlic takes on the tour bar of its environment and Sundries Farm and Idaho's rich volcanic soils is ideal for growing perfect garlic. 73% of the world's garlic is produced by China and 80% of the garlic consumed in the US is grown in China. Imported garlic is always fumigated with methyl bromide, which is so toxic that it was phased out of use in 2005 in the United States, except for critical uses and application to some agricultural products, including all imported garlic. So once again, 80% of the garlic consumed in the US is imported and all of the imported garlic is fumigated with methyl bromide, which even the US government, which does not have a good track record on such things, phased out of use in 2005 on account of its incredible toxicity.

Dr. Heather Heying: In comparison, the amazing garlic from Sundries Farm is naturally grown on a four year rotation with cover crops, crops, I'm just using all the wrong consonants today with cover crops to suppress weeds and build soil. And Sundries Farm does everything by hand. Cloves are separated by hand for planting, hand planted, hand weeded, scapes picked by hand, hand harvested, hand hung up to dry, hand trimmed, hand sorted and hand packaged. It's a labor of love. And it shows. We love Sundries Farms, music, garlic, and potato salad, chest knock, red garlic and Venezuelan green sauce and new carose garlic and marinade for grilled chicken. It is all so delicious. It is also delightful to unwrap the different varieties of garlic and discover their secrets. Sundries Farm offers hardneck and softneck varieties, selling a year's supply of gourmet garlic for your kitchen, also offering seed and gardening packages. Sundries Farm is a real farm selling real food. They grow one crop a year and when it sells out, that's it for the year. For their 2026 crop, they're taking pre-orders now in June. Rare varieties, rare varieties often sell out by mid July. The garlic cures for four weeks after an early July harvest with trimming happening in early August to prep for shipments to go out by mid August. That's the first moment that you'll get some of Sundries Farm delicious garlic. Get your pre-order in now and then eagerly await your garlic, your amazing garlic to come in. Go to www.sundriesfarm.com to place your 2026 garlic order and enter code DarkHorse for 10% off. That's sundriesfarm.com code DarkHorse. Check them out and get yourself some absolutely amazing garlic. Once again, that's sundries, S-U-N-D-R-I-E-S, sundriesfarm.com.

[00:08:32] Dr. Bret Weinstein: All right. I think I got this one too. Sundries Farm garlic because the vampires aren't going to cancel themselves.

[00:08:38] Dr. Heather Heying: Oh, okay.

[00:08:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I mean, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:41] Dr. Heather Heying: And for all we know, methyl bromide makes vampires stronger.

[00:08:45] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Oh, it probably at least weakens the garlic with respect to its utility versus vampires. Yeah, exactly. All right. Our final sponsor, Heather, this week is Clear. Clear is a nasal spray that supports respiratory health. It's widely available online and in stores and both it and the company that makes it are fantastic. It's clear. That's X L E A R pronounced clear. Improvements in Senate improvements in sanitation and hygiene have had huge impacts on human longevity and quality of life throughout history. More so, more so than have traditional medical advances. For instance, when doctors started to wash their hands between handling cadavers and helping women give birth, the rate of maternal deaths went down. Breathing polluted air and drinking tainted water have hugely negative effects on human health. Clean up the air and water and people get healthier. Nasal hygiene, however, often gets overlooked. Consider this. The majority of bacteria and viruses that make us sick enter through our mouth and noses. It has become cultural norm to wash your hands. And that's a good thing. But it's rare that we get sick through our hands. Rather, we get sick through our mouth and nose. So wouldn't it be valuable to use something that blocks bacterial and viral adhesion in the nose? Enter clear. Clear is a nasal spray that contains Xylitol, a five carbon sugar alcohol. Our bodies naturally contain five carbon sugars, mostly in the form of ribose and deoxyribose, which are the backbone sugars of RNA and DNA. Xylitol is known to reduce how sticky bacteria and viruses are to our tissues. In the presence of Xylitol, bacteria and viruses, including strep, SARS-CoV-2 and RSV, don't adhere to our airways as well, which helps our bodies natural defense mechanisms easily flush them away.

Dr. Bret Weinstein: Clear is a simple nasal spray. Use it morning and evening and it takes just three seconds. It's fast and easy and decidedly healthy. Personally, I don't love taking. Personally, Heather doesn't love taking anything daily that isn't food or drink, nutrition or hydration. So she ends up forgetting to use clear on some days, but whenever she is going to be traveling or otherwise in a small space with lots of people and poor ventilation, she is sure to use clear. And she thinks that she's getting respiratory infections less than she used to.

[00:11:01] Dr. Heather Heying: That totally happened to you.

[00:11:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: No, but we will notice that I'm editing on the fly. The founder of clear, Nathan Jones, spoke with me on the inside rail in 2024 and 2025 and in 2025. Long Jones, osteopath and inventor of clear spoke with me about how Xylitol interacts with respiratory viruses. We recommend those conversations and we highly recommend clear as a daily habit and prophylactic against respiratory illnesses. That's clear with an X X L E A R get clear online or at your pharmacy, grocery store or natural products retailer and start taking six seconds each day to improve your nasal hygiene and support your respiratory health. Clear. It's for everybody except spelling sticklers.

[00:11:48] Dr. Heather Heying: So that's actually up here. I don't want to obscure our beautiful table, not random piece of paper. It's actually a great segue because there you were messing with pronouns on the fly in order to make everyone feel correctly identified and honored in their current instantiation in the world. And here we are going to talk about pride month because as it turns out in California, if you want some pretty snazzy perks, you got to prove your gay.

[00:12:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Prove your gay to the state. Yeah, the state. Yeah. I don't even do that.

[00:12:22] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Well, we're going to find out. We are, we are going to share. We already know we're going to share with our, where their viewers, some of them probably already know as well. Can you see my screen? That Chris Rufo and his coauthor Austin Hufford, whom we do not know, wrote this week in city journal, a piece headlined inside California's gay certification program. The state is pressuring utilities to award $633 million in contracts to LGBT businesses. Now it's basically exactly what it sounds like, but I'm going to read a little bit from it here. So, uh, we have, this was published, yeah, just a couple of days ago. Americans are used to handouts for favored groups, affirmative action and university admissions, corporate diversity initiatives, and minority owned contracting requirements, direct opportunities, resources, and contracts to supposedly oppressed groups, such as women, native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics in California. State Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism contracts for state certified gay owned businesses. The scheme operates to the California public utilities commission, CPUC, which regulates privately owned utility companies. California utilities spent more than $43 billion in 2024 on contractors, fuel suppliers, surveyors, engineers, and others whose work helped deliver water, gas, electricity, and internet service to California's 39 million residents. In 1986, governor George Duke Magin signed assembly bill 3678, which required certain CPUC regulated utilities to submit annual plans for buying goods and services from women and minority owned companies. 1986, we were still living in California then. I remember governor Duke Magin. We were in high school. I do not remember that happening.

[00:14:04] Dr. Bret Weinstein: No, no.

[00:14:05] Dr. Heather Heying: I think even though at that point I was in favor of affirmative action, I would have objected to that. Uh, so, but there it is. Two years later, that would have been in 1988, CPUC created its quote supplier diversity program, which would enforce the law and set contract contracting goals for large utilities. Under a series of democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay owned businesses. In September, 2014, then governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize, quote, LGBT owned businesses as eligible for supplier diversity benefits, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, Gavin Newsom has continued to expand this, this ridiculousness. But as we've talked about before, and as I've talked about, written about at length, uh, among things in the LGBT universe are unique among other demographic markers and that you can opt in and it's your say versus anyone else's. So this is an obviously gameable thing now until the insanity of, of transness hits the United States. However, long ago that happened, you couldn't opt into being a woman. And of course you still can't, but some people think that you can, you couldn't opt into being Latino or black or wheelchair bound or, you know, any number of other things there were some, some of these identifiers are issues of degree and they could require qualitative assessment, but you can't choose an identity for it for a long time for, for most of these. And now of course trans has changed that and I will argue, uh, so has another one of the things included in here. Did you want to add something before?

[00:15:44] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I do want to add something. So I see there as two fundamental flaws here with the whole logic underlying this and then some extrapolations from it, but one of them you're pointing to here. Obviously something that you can opt into, there's a cost benefit analysis. Now you might be morally constrained not to opt into this just to get benefits, but the point is obviously there's a calculation to be had, which is not there for, uh, an inherited characteristic. But I also think there's something. So, okay. Affirmative action is presented as a remedy for the consequences of past oppression. It's presented initially as something that is finite in time because sooner or later you will have compensated enough that there won't be a further justification for it. It's a temporary measure that of course vanishes very quickly as soon as you institute affirmative action, but that was the basic idea. There's been long standing oppression. It has accumulated and it is time that we right that wrong temporarily until it is having no net effect. This does not apply to being gay. It does not apply to being trans because these things are not passed down in a lineage sense. So the point is, even if we say there has been tremendous oppression of gay people, true, that oppression stretches back basically indefinitely. True. Okay. But the fact that you show up as gay in this generation does not mean that you have the accumulated disadvantage of all those gay ancestors. The point is we all sort of equally have whatever oppression our gay ancestors experienced. And so the point is the logic doesn't make sense because there's no you as a gay person are not carrying a burden that is excessive.

[00:17:43] Dr. Heather Heying: And I guess the one caveat there is that whether or not it's, you know, in the genes or environmental, there is some tendency for gay children to be the result of gay parents.

[00:18:00] Dr. Bret Weinstein: A very, very

[00:18:01] Dr. Heather Heying: weak sentence. But it's weak. And so your point is there is no there is no inherited burden. There is no lineage level burden.

[00:18:11] Dr. Bret Weinstein: To correct. Right.

[00:18:12] Dr. Heather Heying: Right.

[00:18:13] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And then there's a second layer to this.

[00:18:15] Dr. Heather Heying: And just just so you know, like we still have a bunch of the things to get through.

[00:18:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I know. But just as long as we're putting those pieces on the table, there is no accumulated burden. And in the present, there isn't discrimination. So the point is the whole logic of correcting anything doesn't make any sense because the point is at the moment you can be gay and proud and naked in the street in a parade. If you challenge the right of people to be gay and naked and parading through the streets of your town, well, then you might face some oppression.

[00:18:48] Dr. Heather Heying: You might need to put on clothes if you want to actually get the utility contract. But I don't even know if that's true.

[00:18:53] Dr. Bret Weinstein: You certainly don't need to defile online, but

[00:18:55] Dr. Heather Heying: you don't need to what online

[00:18:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: to put on clothes to file your own

[00:18:59] Dr. Heather Heying: defile online.

[00:19:01] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Oh, I don't know what that is. But I don't know. But anyway, I just I just think, you know, first of all, this makes a mockery of any reasonable use of affirmative action because it doesn't correct for anything in the past because it isn't inherited and it doesn't correct for anything in the present because frankly, gays are liberated

[00:19:18] Dr. Heather Heying: because it's being done in California. You know, if this if this were in Saudi Arabia

[00:19:23] Dr. Bret Weinstein: in Saudi Arabia, you'd have a different situation. Right.

[00:19:27] Dr. Heather Heying: The first point still holds. But, you know, it's exactly the case that these that always these sorts of moves happen in the places where the problem is already either solved or absolutely on the way to being solved. And so what it does is creates this incredible backlash as opposed to actually, you know, actually working to continue the, you know, the good work of reminding everyone that we are all humans no matter what it is that we believe or look like or have in our bedrooms.

[00:20:00] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, actually, I think that's a third layer of profound criticism, which is on top of those other two, the places that are going to institute a measure like that are the places where it is absolutely least necessary. And that the thing is so logically invalid on its face that the fact that the state would would defile itself by engaging in this kind of discrimination, which is, of course, an absolute violation of our obligation of, you know, frankly, equal protection under the law.

[00:20:31] Dr. Heather Heying: OK, but so California is doing this and even California has figured out that this might be a problem if all you have to do is be like, oh, yeah, I'm gay. I have a utility company. I have a contract. I mean, I run a business that could get a contract to help with California utilities. And all I have to do is say it. Well, no. And so Rufo and apologies, Hufford, I think, continue there. They go through some of like the percentage goals. If large CPUC regulated utilities met these goals in twenty twenty four, they would have sent roughly six hundred thirty three million dollars to LGBT owned firms. That's a lot of money. Yeah, it's a lot of money. This scheme raises an obvious question. How does a business qualify as officially gay paperwork? Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can can secure certification by providing a letter from an LGBT organization, attesting their sexual preferences, proof that a newspaper identified them as LGBT or three letters from personal contacts written on company letterhead attesting their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who falsely represent their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Now, I actually want to go through this document and and and show you some of the even more ludicrous things. But I will actually I'm going to show you the gay certification letter document from the National LGBTQ plus and Allied Chamber of Commerce. You know, there's a Chamber of Commerce for LGBTQ

[00:22:06] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Chamber of Gay Commerce.

[00:22:10] Dr. Heather Heying: Or I do even know is like I they just don't seem like the same types of things. If you put those two things on the opposite side of scale, what does the scale even do? But like what could it possibly be measuring that a Chamber of Commerce and LGBTQ are even like the same units like one's pressure and one's mass like they're just not the same type of thing. Yeah. You know, OK. Here we go. Mary Ann Horton. Mary Ann Horton has experienced this journey firsthand. Horton, an early Internet pioneer credited with helping develop the email attachment, is a white male who transitioned and is now married to a woman. Horton's company, Red Ace, is registered in California as a woman and LGBT owned business. The application process, Horton told City Journal, required a massive documentation to prove that Red Ace was lesbian owned. Horton sent supplier clearinghouse a domestic partner affidavit to establish that the business was woman owned. Horton submitted a birth certificate, which had been reissued in Washington state post transition to prove transgender status. Horton filed a therapist carry letter, a document from a medical professional certifying transgender identity. These designations came with perks after Red Ace secured these labels. Horton said San Diego Gas and Electric brought the company on as a part time cybersecurity contractor. During the hiring process, Horton told us a company official said that being on the diversity list made the contract much easier to secure. If I was a straight white male, Mary Ann Horton said I might be concerned I don't have the same opportunity. It worked out great for me. I'll get it straight white male.

[00:23:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: OK, but all right. Two points of order here. Yeah. One. It's not a birth certificate. It's a redefinition certificate. It has nothing to do with birth. And in fact, pretending that it's birth is exactly ridiculous. But the other thing is, OK, let's follow their logic through one further space.

[00:24:11] Dr. Heather Heying: Oh, let's.

[00:24:13] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Gays and lesbians have experienced discrimination in some way that has accumulated in burdens present gay and lesbians, even though the discrimination doesn't exist anymore. In fact, it's now positive discrimination. OK, however, will we compensate modern lesbians for the oppression that they are, I don't know, infused with by society? By giving a man advantages for

[00:24:41] Dr. Heather Heying: this is exactly the despicable nature of the trans movement. Yeah, this is this is it right here. I mean, I mean, more important is that they're destroying children. And, you know, least important on my list forever has been like I care about women's sports, but that's a lot less important than destroying lesbians and putting adult women at risk and then destroying children.

[00:25:01] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:25:01] Dr. Heather Heying: But like taking opportunities away. It's a stupid program, but if the program exists, it should go to people who actually grew up with and came of age in like this is a tech guy with I think he's I think he got a PhD in 1981. Straight white dude who then transitioned and lives with a woman because of course he does. He's a straight white dude and is now getting preferential treatment in the state of California.

[00:25:32] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. Thereby outcompeting actual lesbians for this pool of money that shouldn't be granted anyway. But if it is going to be granted this. So the point is it is attack on lesbians disguised as perk for lesbians to compensate for this advantage. It couldn't be more ridiculous.

[00:25:52] Dr. Heather Heying: So I pulled up the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

[00:25:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Oh, you did.

[00:25:57] Dr. Heather Heying: Did you document and their document is called the LGBTQ status qualifiers for business owners. I don't know why the Chamber of Commerce doesn't include queers. Like what do they have against queers? So it's the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, but it's the LGBTQ status quo. So my point is the alphabet people can't even keep their alphabet straight. Right. Like there's sometimes there's a queue. Sometimes there's an asterisk and a double A and a spirit and this that and the other. And sometimes there's not.

[00:26:26] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I hope it's not too deep in the weeds, but I want to revisit. I did an experiment back in the early days on Twitter and I said, please tell me if you took the queue away from LGBTQ exactly who would that exclude? And nobody came up with anything because obviously whatever queer is is a non thing and it's covered by LGBT.

[00:26:49] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. OK, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce is supplier diversity corporate partners have made a commitment to buying back from the LGBT community. Buying back the NGLCC National Certification Committee in accordance with the LGBT Business Enterprise Certification Standards and Procedures. Now, it does sound very official. Oh, yeah. The acronyms, does it not? A lot of capital letters struck out together and with outbreaks.

[00:27:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Fairly careful work.

[00:27:21] Dr. Heather Heying: Asks for status qualifiers to establish LGBTQ identity in order to demonstrate to all stakeholders that the NGLCC is working on behalf of LGBTQ business owners. Therefore, the committee reserves the right to ask for several LGBTQ status qualifiers in order to authenticate the affidavit and corroborate each LGBT LGBTQ status qualifier document with the other goes on and on and on. Unless otherwise noted, the following documents are acceptable forms of LGBTQ status. The more an applicant can provide, the more unequivocally it can be determined that the owner's owner parentheses is LGBTQ. OK, there's a lot. Some of them are exactly what you would expect. Evidence, I've just highlighted a few that struck me as notable. Evidence of completed or attempted parenting and family building efforts made by LGBTQ applicants and same sex partner. This could be in the form of a second parent adoption petition for second parent adoption, adoption records and or state required documents for adoption in vitro fertilization procedure, preferred procedure from a medical facility, a letter from a doctor that performed the procedure and or medical records, insurance records, citing the procedure. Surrogate mother arrangements, proof of surrogacy in the form of a surrogacy contract, proof of payment, medical records and or letter from surrogate mother and doctor. What this puts me in mind of is I started working in the 80s. I had a lot of jobs starting when I was like 13 and I did a lot of I did retail work. I worked scoop ice cream. I worked in a video store. I worked in a bookstore. I like I just did a lot of different kinds of work and I became familiar pretty early on with what potential employers could and could not ask as a woman.

Dr. Heather Heying: They were absolutely not allowed to ask about my current marital status. If I was pregnant, if I was intending to become pregnant, because those historically had been questions that meant that they could predict accurately or not what my intentions with regard to the job might be and thus perhaps choose someone. If I said, yes, I'm trying to get pregnant, which I don't know why I would say that in a job interview, but if I if if they had asked and I had answered honestly at some point that that was true, that of course was not true in the 80s, but then they could have made the decision and and had some cover story that did not want to go with someone who might be about to need maternity leave, for instance. Right. So that all made good sense. Employers shouldn't be able to ask private questions about your personal life that you do not believe will have bearing on them, but could. But having been hired into a full time position, again, I was not looking for full time positions in the 80s, but having been hired into a full time position, a woman should then be able to make decisions for her own desire to build a family. That the employer doesn't get a say in.

[00:30:23] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So the law, I think correctly, was protecting you from a kind of discrimination. Exactly. It was protecting the employer from asking you something that might result in your being discriminated against as a woman who is therefore capable of getting pregnant, for example.

[00:30:39] Dr. Heather Heying: Precisely.

[00:30:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:30:41] Dr. Heather Heying: In order to potentially get lucrative California contracts, the likes of which your merely straight white male colleagues don't have access to, you might be asked to provide evidence of applying for adoption in vitro fertilization procedures, circuit mother arrangements. This seems like a much bigger breach. And of course, it's not about the framework is illegitimate. Like this shouldn't be on offer to anyone, but having it be on offer and then having to prove your gayness by one of these methods is rather extraordinary.

[00:31:26] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, it's I mean, I agree with you. It's crazy that these categories come up, but these categories are not exactly evidence of being gay.

[00:31:36] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, it's, you know, made by LGBTQ applicants and same sex partner.

[00:31:42] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So yeah. All right.

[00:31:44] Dr. Heather Heying: What can you tell from the from the name that is the same sex partner that like there's just there's obviously a lot of wiggle room and the whole they're really working to make this seem concrete, linear reductionist, quantitative, you know, all give it the gloss of sciencey things so that people stop asking so many questions.

[00:32:05] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, especially in light of the fact that it is the very same folks who are blurring the lines that would tell you for sure that two women together are in fact gay because one of those women might well be a man.

[00:32:19] Dr. Heather Heying: Exactly. So another thing that would would satisfy them a letter from a recognized LGBTQ organization attesting to LGBTQ status signed by organization leader or board member. So you just got to find some organization that organization could have just been started yesterday. Right. And they just have to be like, yeah, you're your LGBTQ.

[00:32:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: We're an organization that you're not vetting and we're a gay organization and

[00:32:44] Dr. Heather Heying: letters must be accompanied by signed affidavits. Must they? OK, social media profile for the business or a public personal profile accepted social media include LinkedIn, Instagram, X threads, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok must be accompanied by a link to poster profile must be accompanied by a different qualifier from list B. Only one social media poster profile will be considered. Additional poster profiles will not be considered. However, an additional thing could be a business website stating that the business is LGBTQ owned. The business website merely has to state it's LGBTQ owned. So my point is the entire the entire framework where in utilities contracts in California are giving preferential treatment to LGBT organizations is illegitimate. But given that it is what it is, they have both incredibly invasive questions that they would ask of people. And it's also obviously and completely gameable. But it's also gameable in a way that we haven't even talked about yet, because we've talked about the T, we've talked about the Q, we haven't really talked about the L and the G, which are just sexed versions for homosexual, lesbian and gay. But what about the B? What is going on with the B? Well, we have there's been many headlines lately about how very LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQ, whatever you want to add to it, Gen Z is right. And the headline has just been that, oh, Gen Z is so is so I want to say queer to replace all the rest of the letters, but I know that's not a real thing. So like LGBT. Right. Well, it's not that straightforward.

Dr. Heather Heying: And in fact, it's much more straightforward and it's much more obvious once you hear it and egregious, because it's not the young men who are deciding who are declaring themselves LGBT in massive numbers in Gen Z compared to generations before it's the young women. So we have here Dr. Randall S. All sign his sub stack. The rise in LGBTQ plus identification is mostly young women. And he's pulling this from a Gallup survey and he's put together an excellent graph. So I'm going to show you this rather than go to the Gallup survey directly. The rise. Let me see if I can make this just a little bit bigger. The rise in LGBTQ plus identification is mostly young women. So let's just start at the bottom among the silent. This is again, according from a Gallup poll from twenty twenty four, the most recent data for which Gallup is available at this point, silent generation one point eight percent of the population declare themselves LGBTQ boomers born 1946 to 64, three percent Gen X that's us born 65 to 80, five point one percent overall. And then Gallup started also reporting a gender split in generations after our generation for millennials and Gen Z. So for millennials born between 1981 and 1996, they report nine percent of men identify as LGBTQ and 18 percent of women do. That's high. That's a huge leap from Gen X. But in Gen Z, born 1997 to 2006, which frankly doesn't seem like a long enough generation, so they're going to have to extend that out. Put that aside for the moment. That's just going to be like, I guess people younger than that aren't old enough to be queried yet, probably. So for Gen Z, born 1997 to 2006, 12 percent of men are identifying as LGBTQ and 31 percent of women. Thirty one percent. OK. And that's huge. That sounds ridiculous until you realize.

Dr. Heather Heying: Let's see. I don't actually hear it is. Yeah. But the label doing most of the work is bisexual, as Olson says in his sub stack among LGBTQ plus members of Gen Z, most are bisexual. Among the oldest LGBTQ plus adults, almost none are older. Generations are mostly gay and lesbian. Younger ones are mostly bi. My argument is that bisexuality in women is the newest social contagion. It's popular. It's actually harmless. It's way better than cutting yourself or declaring that you're a dude. And hey, guess what? It also opens up opportunities for contracts in California. So we have a generation that is, yes, more LGBT identified than any generation that came before, but it's not that flat. It's three in 10 women among Gen Z's are calling themselves LGBT. But the vast majority of these are actually saying I'm bi. And what does bi mean? You're once attracted to a woman. That's bi enough for some people. And if that's all it takes and then you have doors open up to you because affirmative action now includes LGBT. And. Why wouldn't you like, given that we have a generation of people who are losing opportunities based on A.I. taking work and they're they've had their soul stolen by covid lockdowns and the screens that they're glued to. If you see a way to both join the crowd, be part be one of the cool girls and also have more doors open up for you down the road. Why wouldn't you like? I wouldn't have. But I know a lot of people who would.

[00:38:24] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. And I mean, I know this is this is what you're describing, but at some level. There's no downside for a woman declaring herself bi, even from the point of view

[00:38:36] Dr. Heather Heying: of you factor.

[00:38:37] Dr. Bret Weinstein: There's no like it does. No, it's the opposite. It's like considered edgy and cool and sexy. So the point is, if you're if you're completely mercenary, then, of course, if you get contract advantages, you know, and it sets you apart from your competitors in the mating and dating market.

[00:38:54] Dr. Heather Heying: But not that much apart anymore.

[00:38:56] Dr. Bret Weinstein: No, because a lot of people have figured it out. But yeah, it's crazy. And once again, who pays the cost like real lesbians, real, right? And real lesbians are being out competed by a bunch of straight girls who want to claim that they're, you know, in the in the club. I also think this is just a weird argument. It's so weird that I'm hesitant to even make it. But isn't this whole thing actually discriminatory against closeted gaze? You have to come out to get this advantage. The point is anybody who's in the closet can't access this stuff, right? You have to be out and proud. And so the point is, it's like driving people to be out who might not want to be public about this. You know, what if you're just, you know,

[00:39:44] Dr. Heather Heying: gay and just like a woman's status with regard to thinking about forming a family back in the 80s, 90s and aunts. Some people actually want to keep their interests in the bedroom to themselves.

[00:39:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, right.

[00:39:57] Dr. Heather Heying: Maybe privacy is a value, but not according to our new roles and regs.

[00:40:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. Which from the point of view of this, you know, obviously revolutionary movement. And I don't mean that in the positive sense, but it's obviously hostile to civilization and how it functions. From that point of view, outing as many people as you can so you can claim the numbers are higher than they actually are is to their benefit. And, you know, what's more, it comes with a lot of money that you can shunt to the, you know, the people in the community that you like. Right. Insane.

[00:40:34] Dr. Heather Heying: Yep.

[00:40:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: There's also a bunch of stuff missing from that list of how you would demonstrate that you were gay.

[00:40:39] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, I didn't read the whole list.

[00:40:40] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Okay.

[00:40:41] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay, go for it.

[00:40:42] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I just want to know what if you're a guy who makes cupcakes?

[00:40:47] Dr. Heather Heying: Do you think that's sufficient?

[00:40:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I do, but that's just me. Yeah, it is just me. It sure got quiet in here.

[00:40:56] Dr. Heather Heying: I think, um, yeah, I don't know. I just, uh, I think you don't, you don't get any more cupcakes.

[00:41:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Not a big consumer of cupcakes.

[00:41:05] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, I have a few for you. Oh, no. Wow. I brought some for you. I wasted on my own Picard. I know man made them. Right. There you go. I don't think you get them. No. I think they're not for you anymore.

[00:41:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Wow.

[00:41:18] Dr. Heather Heying: That they have raspberry and almond, some of your favorite.

[00:41:20] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I believe her in fate, but that does seem like somebody was sending me a message.

[00:41:23] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:41:24] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:41:25] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay. You know, I want a pride son and, and fascism really, it makes the most sense to, uh, to go on to, to the, uh, to the fascism story from this because, uh, well, you'll see. Uh, so we may, we may save the son story for, uh, the son story. Save the son story for next time, depending. Okay. So, um, our good friend, Dave Stevens, whom you actually just saw, uh, recently introduced me to an Umberto echo essay that I had not been familiar with on the subject of what, uh, echo is calling or fascism, uh, which is sort of just the, like the generalized, like the platonic ideal of, of fascism. Um, but Dave story, uh, in, in terms of how he discovered the essay was a good one and he told me I could, I could share it. So he was watching a video that popped into his feed as, as happens to all of us. And the scene was a familiar one. There was someone from the blue hair cult calling someone from the red hat cult, the fascist. And I believe that those are his terms. They're, they're great. I hope I'm not going too far here, Dave. Um, and it, you know, the typical move in this encounter is the red hat cult dude is like, you don't even know what fascism means in the, in the blue haired cultist, you know, argues and quails and, and reveals that they in fact don't know what fascism means. Uh, and you know, everyone watching sort of chuckles, uh, but, you know, Dave true to form, being honest and, and wickedly smart and therefore aware of when he doesn't actually know something. He was like, huh, I'm actually not sure that I can really clearly define it. So let me, let me figure out what, what fascism is. And of course that took him down various rabbit holes and there's a lot of fuzzy boundaries and people disagree.

Dr. Heather Heying: And of course, echo, Omerto, echoes, uh, essay on the subject from 1995 and the New York review of books is hardly, uh, the end all and be all of, of the arguments. Uh, but it is quite a good article. Uh, it's very long and meandering. I'll link to it in the show notes. Um, but I want to share just a couple of paragraphs and then, uh, what he does in the end is has like 14, 14 traits of, uh, of a fascist movement or a fascist society. And I just want to kind of spring them on you and see what, see what you think. All right. Uh, so first though, uh, let me find, uh, the S the essay. Here we go. Uh, so this is New York review of books not coming all the way to the top. I don't know. Okay. Um, I don't know why my computer is behaving this way. Uh, let's nevermind. He will not show my computer just yet. Um, I'm going to read a couple of paragraphs, uh, from the essay from 1995 Omerto, echoes essay on or fascism. He says nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche. That is a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak, in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. I feel like there's words missing there. On the contrary, fat fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. So here's echo setting up the argument that it's not one thing and that, uh, you know, and maybe even, you know, predicting that there would be people of various extremes calling one another fascist that it would be hard to disagree except to say you don't know what that means, but maybe neither do I.

Dr. Heather Heying: He continues slightly later in the essay. Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away cult colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism, which never much fascinated Mussolini, and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism, completely alien to official fascism, and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola. So he's pointing out that you can have something called fascism over here, which has, uh, you know, items A, B, and C, and it moves slowly over time into various different movements, and here you have another thing that is equally well identified as fascist, even though it has elements D, E, F, that is to say, the two things both of which are identified as fascist may actually have nothing in common that you could use to identify them as such. So that is one of the main points of his essay. Do you want to say something before I?

[00:46:08] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I want to say that this is an interesting feature of fascism that basically you have a cluster of characteristics that occur together, but none of them are the Sinquana. There's no essential element. And that what that suggests, and actually this fits with my argument for what communism is, communism is a naturally evolving state at the point that you have a sufficient number of people in society who have no investment in the continuation of a system that condemns them to losing in competition. They overthrow it. In this case, fascism is going to be a naturally evolving syndrome that you recognize because it has symptoms, but not because it is a thing invented by some one of which all of the various adherents are following. It's a naturally evolving failure mode as is communism.

[00:47:03] Dr. Heather Heying: As is communism. Different and yet it seems to me that communism often fails further into fascism.

[00:47:15] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And in fact, that's going to be an interesting characteristic because there's a question about the ideology, right, the conscious presentation, and then there's a question about the behavior, you know, how you enact this thing. And so, hey, I don't think that's impossible at all.

[00:47:31] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Okay, so here I have a summary of Umberto Eco's 14 features of Ur-Fascism from his 1995 New York Review of Books. We have, and so I, this is a summary generated by me and by Claude together. The AI. One, the cult of tradition. Syncretism that treats primeval wisdom as a complete source of knowledge. That sounds a little arcane, but no further advancement of learning is possible because complete truth has already been discovered. And so in this one, I feel a, and in the next one, a strong anti-scientific bent in what Eco is describing as fascist, which we actually also see kind of across society now in different forms as the word science has been taken to mean something that it is not. And the people who are pretending to champion science are mostly championing something that is quite not.

[00:48:36] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Actually, I think, interestingly, this sort of fits the the god-shaped whole idea. Yeah. Because this is one of the places that I'm getting hung up now very frequently. With religious folks who are otherwise fellow travelers, right? Have some shared values and an easy time talking. But when I say actually, you know, scientifically speaking, whether or not there's a god looks to me like if there is one, he used evolution to do it all. There's no flaw in the story. There's a flaw in the way we tell the Darwinian story, but I don't see that obvious an indication that there's a flaw. And what I'm told is actually, Darwinism has been falsified. We know what did this. It's written, and then if you push and you're like that was written by people who were also fallible and didn't know everything, the answer is actually no. God's wisdom is perfect. It has been transmitted to us. So...

[00:49:32] Dr. Heather Heying: Complete truth has already been discovered.

[00:49:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it's been revealed.

[00:49:34] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:49:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:49:37] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay, two, the rejection of modernism. Similar but distinct in Eco's listing. This is a direct quote from him. "The Enlightenment, the age of reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity." And I think that does not map on to say what's going on with the Wokists now, and that is a closer map on to some of what is going on on the right now. The idea of like we're just rejecting enlightenment because look what it has brought to us. But it's interesting that Eco sees that in across many fascist traditions as well.

[00:50:14] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, it is literally reactionary.

[00:50:18] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[00:50:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And you know, I must say this is part of the confusion of landing where you and I have landed ideologically. Our values haven't shifted very far, but our understanding of how many things did go too far and are now threatening those values. There are a lot of things that we would, you know, turn back the clock on because actually what we did that looked like progress to somebody turned out not to be.

[00:50:42] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:50:42] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So, you know, I guess the point is the problem with a reactionary movement is that it tends to be completely unnuanced. And it's like, yes, the Enlightenment was a, you know, an error. Let's undo it. And it's like, no, no, no. There were certainly errors stemming from it.

[00:51:00] Dr. Heather Heying: It is necessary, but not sufficient to get us into the future.

[00:51:04] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:51:05] Dr. Heather Heying: Enlightenment era thinking the rationality analysis and logic that that the age of reason brought to us necessary, but no, not sufficient. Three, the cult of action for actions sake. There is a belief sees Eco in fascist traditions that thinking is a masculation. Culture is suspect because it implies criticism. There's a general distrust of the intellectual world. And, you know, of course we see this, uh, in, um, in Maoist China, we see this, I believe, among the brown shirts. I know that history a little bit less well. Uh, but the idea that first, first you take out the intellectuals. First you go after the professors, uh, the actual, the, the actual holders of, of knowledge, uh, who might disagree with you, who might stand up and say, hold up. Uh, you take them out first and then you also dismiss knowledge as emasculating.

[00:52:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, actually that's quite right. It's one of the most surprising features of these movements is how how much they seem to care about going after, you know, professor types. Yeah. What, why would you care? What, you know, you're powerful. They talk. What's the problem? And the answer is, oh, the problem is they talk.

[00:52:21] Dr. Heather Heying: They talk.

[00:52:21] Dr. Bret Weinstein: They talk. And some of them have courage. And some of them have occasionally and, and, um, you know, what they say has currency because it's well constructed. It's not, you know, a chant.

[00:52:32] Dr. Heather Heying: Occasionally. Yeah.

[00:52:34] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:52:36] Dr. Heather Heying: All right. Uh, four in echoes, 14 features of Ur-Fascism. Disagreement is treason. And this again, a quote directly from him. In modern culture, the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. And this so fits with what we've just been talking about.

[00:52:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Perfectly. So, I mean, that's, that's especially received wisdom. What's there to talk about? What insight exactly are you going to add to it? It's received. And so,

[00:53:05] Dr. Heather Heying: um, and so, you know, I mean, I think this list is fascinating because so many of these run exactly like exactly hit what we were trying to do in the classroom and what we've been trying to do here on DarkHorse saying, you know, the enlightenment, the ways of the enlightenment are necessary and insufficient to move us forward. And these are your tools. These are your human tools and do not believe them when they tell you there is nothing new under the sun. That is a hopeless, pessimistic conclusion to have come to. Of course, there are new things under the sun. Of course, we do not know at all. Of course, we will never know at all. And from that, you should garner hope and excitement and optimism, not the opposite. But how is it that you keep people down? You assure them that it's already known. You whisk away inconsistencies between the received knowledge as if they don't exist and you tamp down dissent. And you create a people who have no hope except for, who have no hope and no passion except for whatever it is that you steer them to hate that. Maybe love that, but more often hate that thing.

[00:54:15] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it demotivates all of the lines of inquiry that might steer you in a more reasonable direction. And so the point is, OK, if what you want to do is create brown shirts, if you effectively want, you know, meat robots to do your bidding, then this is the way to go. You tamp down all of the things that might attract their attention and cause them to question any of those things.

[00:54:35] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes. Five, fear of difference. Seeking consensus by exploiting a fear of intruders and appeal against outsiders. Ur-fascism is racist by definition. So this feels like one of the more obvious points, except that I would say that most of the extreme movements that we can point to right now on the so-called right and the so-called left do exactly this. The, you know, the the getting rid of straight white men from workforces is as we have pointed out over and over and over again, it's a rejection of difference. It just happens to come under the banner of the embrace of difference. It's just because the banner says the opposite doesn't mean that they're not doing the same thing.

[00:55:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: No, they're doing the same thing. And the question, which I think is really a open question, is what happens when the circuitry of lineage against lineage violence and therefore racism gets trained on something that isn't actually race? Like when it gets trained on a red hat, you know, yeah, you

[00:55:39] Dr. Heather Heying: can blue hair, red hat, trans person.

[00:55:41] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. The hallmarks of.

[00:55:43] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:55:44] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And one way to read the outbreak of shallow, phony sympathy with and participation in movements like LGBTQ is, okay, if you're going to go after the straight white males, then what happens if you're a straight white male who would not like to be gone after? Well, the idea is if I signal that I'm actually going to switch teams and I'm going to be on your side of this battle and we can all go after the straight white males together, even though I am one. Right. Then the point is, oh, allyship. This is why allyship looms so large in these revolutionary movements is because the point is game theoretically, what you want to do is get as many people who are in your sights to switch teams and do your bidding instead and do it extra ferociously. That's the mythology in in these far left circles is that, you know, white people, you need the white people in your movement out front to take the confrontation with the cops directly.

[00:56:51] Dr. Heather Heying: Yep. They don't get to speak, but they do get to take the hits.

[00:56:55] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yep. Yeah.

[00:56:58] Dr. Heather Heying: Six, appeal to a frustrated middle class. Echo writes, "Earth fascism speaks to those concerned about both those with more and those with less than them. They are suffering economic or political humiliation from above, while also," and again, Echo's language, "frightened by the pressure of lower social groups." Now, this feels like a more general recognition that any time you've got a middle class that is feeling legitimate pressure from both sides and is being tightened because largely the people above, you know, with more are taking ever more and thus reducing the size of the middle class, you will have a frustrated middle class who is ready to be appealed to. But I think Echo's distinct contribution here is watch for the appeal to the middle class, like watch for that to happen because that will of course be that, like that's another piece of your army right there.

[00:57:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So this is the powerful signaling to the middle class. This is our revolution. Am I reading that correctly? The fascist, the powerful.

[00:58:09] Dr. Heather Heying: No, that comes later actually. I don't see that in this one. He does have that as one of his examples, but I don't really see that. This doesn't specify where it's coming from. It's just that the middle class is part of, is the target of the movement. Yeah. Okay. "Obsession with a plot. Nationalism grounded in besigement. The followers must feel surrounded by enemies, often through xenophobia with an internal enemy. Jews are the classic target, simultaneously inside and outside." Now again, obsession with a plot just sounds to me like humans like stories. Like we're interested in stories. Plot may be more specifically about conspiracy, and I've seen other summaries of Echo that suggest here that this is, that there tends to be conspiracy thinking in fascist movements. All such discussions fail to acknowledge that positing conspiracies will sometimes be correct.

[00:59:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes, and that conspiracy itself is a ubiquitous feature of human interaction. So the idea... I mean that's why it will sometimes be correct. Yeah, well sometimes correct, but I mean just the idea that actually you should expect that at any given moment there are many, many conspiracies. Presumably most allegations are wrong, but anyway, fascination with a particular plot. Yeah, I guess the question is, is it right or wrong?

[00:59:46] Dr. Heather Heying: Is what right or wrong?

[00:59:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: The allegation. The plot in particular becomes the focus. Right, right.

[00:59:53] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay, "Eigh, enemies are both too strong and too weak. Followers are made to feel humiliated by the enemy's ostentatious wealth and force, yet convinced that they can overwhelm them. Hence, fascist regimes are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating enemy strength and are condemned to lose wars." It's a pretty strong argument that Echo makes. And I put that in here in the summary precisely because I'm not convinced it's true. I don't know my history well enough across various would-be fascist regimes to know, but fascinating. And I think it gets to one of his themes, which he doesn't have as one of his points here, I don't think, about there being an inherent tension between incompatible stories. Beginning with the very first point about all the wisdom has already been received and the fact that some of the stories don't agree, we're just not going to talk about that. So there's a constant tension that Echo sees in fascism that I think I think leaves a hopefulness about an inherent way out of if there's a tyranny taking over your home.

[01:01:07] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, I mean, this is a fascinating one because of the final piece of it, "A tendency to lose wars, effectively because..."

[01:01:15] Dr. Heather Heying: "Condemned," he says, "condemned to lose wars." That's his language.

[01:01:18] Dr. Bret Weinstein: "Condemned because you bought your own press." Yeah. Right? You're selling a story that you then come to believe and it misleads you as to your own power relative to those you're challenging.

[01:01:28] Dr. Heather Heying: You can't objectively assess your own enemies.

[01:01:31] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:01:31] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[01:01:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Now, I guess one thing that I would want to see, and I know you've got a few more to go here, but one thing I would want to see is an analysis of how many of these things are actually general to some much larger category.

[01:01:48] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, yes. And this is actually... Yeah, I made this point to our friend Dave after reading this essay. It feels like there are some... If he were trying to make a phylogeny, and that's not quite the right word, but like a compact, as compact a list as possible that was actually not shared by other kinds of movements, it would be a very different kind of a list. Yeah. So, he wasn't trying to be concise. It's a sprawling essay. And so this is what it is. "Number nine, life is struggle. Life is permanent warfare. Therefore, pacifism is trafficking with the enemy." The hatred of pacifism, that go is suggesting, is because that is a rejection of what the fascists, all fascists, he would claim all fascist movements, have understood life to be inherently a struggle. And I thought this was interesting in part, obviously, because of the name of Hitler's autobiography. That he uses the word in German. And I believe Eko was writing in English here, but of course he's Italian. But the word I think is intentional. The discussion of struggle as the fundamental state of being is both something that we can recognize from evolutionary biology, but also not the thing that you have to be focused on all the time, as Eko was arguing fascist regimes do.

[01:03:29] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I'm hung up on the word pacifism. Because on the one hand, if I was to list my characteristics that are inherent to fascism, one of them would be militarism. But there is a difference between being peace-loving or peace-seeking and being a pacifist.

[01:03:51] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[01:03:51] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. I find pacifist pathetic. But I don't find the desire to reach peace pathetic. It's quite the opposite. It should be our objective. But the point is you have to be willing to fight at the point that you are called upon by history to do so.

[01:04:06] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah, you don't, you, you might, it might be honorable to turn the other cheek the first time, but, you know, at some point, you don't keep turning the other cheek.

[01:04:13] Dr. Bret Weinstein: You don't, you fight back. You just have to, or you get erased by history. And so I do see in what I know of fascism, a distaste for basically peace-seeking people who would then be dismissed as pacifist because that would put them in the category of the despicable in many people's eyes.

[01:04:37] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. So it may, it may be that the word isn't the right word here.

[01:04:41] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:04:41] Dr. Heather Heying: I hear your objection. Contempt for the week, which is again related to what you were just saying about his ninth point. Every citizen is the best of the world and party members the best of citizens, but the structure is rigidly hierarchical and each rank despises those below. So this reminded me of Animal Farm. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Yeah. Absolutely. That feels like it's exactly that point that you can simultaneously be claiming that we're all comrades here and now get to work. I'm going to go off my caviar.

[01:05:16] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yep. Now, curiously, nowhere in that list did I hear, we're not done yet. Oh, sorry. Squinting to see it. Go ahead.

[01:05:24] Dr. Heather Heying: There's 14. We have four more. Everybody is educated to become a hero. Heroism is the norm and is linked to a cult of death. The hero craves heroic death and also sends others to die. There's a lot in that one, but the idea of heroism is the norm, reminds me of, and I am not making the claim that the K-12 schools in the United States have been fascist entities for the last many decades. However, everyone's a winner. Everyone gets a gold star. Everyone is already awesome and doesn't have to do any work to be awesome. You're already there. Insane ideology that has taken over the schools and helped to generate a whole generation of helpless, hapless people is part of this.

[01:06:16] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, I think it's almost the inverse. I think the everybody gets a trophy thing is like a challenge to the possibility of heroic action, that it's like transferring the glory of doing something heroic and redistributing. It's like it's like the communist inversion.

[01:06:37] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, I can go back and reread this section of the essay, but I think he's arguing everyone is told they're a hero, but that inherently dilutes what heroism is.

[01:06:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, although in the context of fascism, I would say everybody is told that you are part of a heroic effort. You are a piece of something truly grand and it's different than everybody gets a trophy for nothing.

[01:07:05] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Yep, that's true. That's true. Okay, this 12th one, I don't know, machismo, "transferred the willow to power onto sexual matters, disdain for women, intolerance of non-standard sexuality, and weapons as ersatz phallic exercise." This was written in 1995. I see a lot of the rest of the things that he's talking about in what has become the Pride Movement. And of course, this thing is not found there, but what we actually see in some ways is an inversion, like an absolute sort of a rejection of... I don't think I've ever used the word heteronormative and I'm not going to start now. I just said it, but a rejection of the kind of sexual relationships that have gotten us here a few billion years after we started and an embrace of all sorts of kinks and fetishes. And simultaneously, an encouragement of some of the most grotesque forms of, yes, the cis-heteronormative, I just did it, sexual tendencies, but only if they come in the form of men who are now pertaining to be women.

[01:08:24] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, no, it is the inversion. The deviance is now the non-deviant and the normal people are deviant in the eyes of the movement.

[01:08:33] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah, exactly. Okay, two more from Echo. "Individuals," and this is something you were getting to earlier, "individuals have no rights as individuals." And this is a quote from him. "The people is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the common will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act. They're only called on to play the role of the people. Thus, the people is only a theatrical fiction." Now, that feels a little bit like how any mass movement operates that has a leader, and all mass movements have a leader. But that sounds like, frankly, any cult, many religions, any organization in which you are led to believe that you are a member of something great, and so you subsume all individual rights into the greater thing, and it might be called the greater good, it might be called something else. But what that obscures maybe from you, if they're doing their job as they want to be doing, is that you have simply given over everything to the person who's leading the thing.

[01:09:41] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I see something different in the religious modality with an ancient religion. Yeah. I don't find, in ancient religions, I don't find the leaders appearing to reflect the will of the population of believers. They are reporting to the population of believers the interpretation of something that may displease the people that they're talking to. It's not the contemporary leader, it's not the Hitlerian figure giving voice to the population's frustrations or anything like that. So I would exempt that. But you're right, it's very general, it exists in a lot of movements.

[01:10:28] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay, and finally, in Echo's 14 features of Ur-Fascism, he says Ur-Fascism speaks newspeak, an impoverished vocabulary and elementary syntax to limit the instruments for complex critical reasoning. And we of course see this, we've talked about this a lot ever since Evergreen blew up. But then we also see this additional thing as we were talking about when we were discussing what's going on in California with the giving preferential treatment to gay contractors, is the proliferation of jargon, especially these acronyms that you use at once and you seem like a person in the know, and who's in control of information and someone who should be trusted and who should be listened to. And that in combination with newspeak is frankly enough to befuddle almost anyone, like it's very hard to follow along what is being said when it's a combination of jargony acronyms and reduced content language. And you're left with you're having to wend your way through these things.

[01:11:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I mean, the question is why does that evolve? And is it simply disguising a mechanism or does it have another function, right? Like is it part of the deindividuation?

[01:11:51] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, I think it's part of the deindividuation and I think it's part of the deintellectualization, right? That if education works and if the people, the professors and the people whose job it is to think things actually are doing a good job of thinking things. And of course, you and I both are on record many, many times acknowledging that that is not really the job that most people who supposedly hold such positions now in the United States, in the West in general, are actually doing a good job for a variety of reasons. But if we had a relatively intact, call it a professorial, right? Then making the ingroup, the cool crowd be ones who speak language that is impoverished, that is reduced, that can't actually be used to make complex arguments. You inherently reduce the power of those who can make complex arguments because they are required to use the language that is no longer accepted to do so.

[01:13:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I like that. And I think that that is the function. It's like a dual function. It impoverishes the capacity to phrase challenging ideas at the same time it is self-referential, right? If you speak this nonsense language, you have to speak it to others who speak it. And anyone who doesn't is suspect, right? So, I mean, this is true of the of the Wokes. That they can, we all know the various things that you rattle off that to them sound like they're having an intellectual discussion and to us sounds like you realize that was one sentence after another of non-sequiturs, right?

[01:13:48] Dr. Heather Heying: And you see it in, well, you see it in the pseudo-intellectual writings of, you know, like Judith Butler, this to use a perfect example, but, you know, really the post-maritists, the post-structuralists, they go on and on and on. And the point is to confuse, not to bring clarity.

[01:14:08] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. The point is to confuse and present a kind of false enlightenment, like a sense of understanding as, you know, Ibram X. Kendi, you know, there's, it's not good enough to be not racist. The only, you know, thing to be is anti-racist. Okay. Interesting, right? Yeah. It's just, it's gobbledygook, but it sounds...

[01:14:34] Dr. Heather Heying: It's gobbledygook and you just set his thesis in two sentences and somehow he made, I don't know if that was a quarter of a career, third of a career.

[01:14:42] Dr. Bret Weinstein: He did well. He did well with it. Yeah, for a while he crashed and burned, but, you know, but it was a good, it was a good run. But what I didn't see in that list is the fusion of government and corporate power.

[01:14:56] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. You know, he winds his way through some of that in the rest of the essay and basically says, I don't always, I, Umberto Eco, in thinking about various fascist regimes throughout history, don't always see it. And that may just be because, you know, the 20th century is kind of the century of the corporation. And so, you know, you go farther back in time and you're not going to see that in the same way. It might be church and state rather than corporation and state. Yeah. I don't know. I'm far afield here.

[01:15:25] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it might be something like the co-opting of government power by other forces. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:34] Dr. Heather Heying: Although I, I mean, I, I agree with you that I don't see co-opting of power explicitly.

[01:15:40] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:15:41] Dr. Heather Heying: Explicitly here. But yeah, I, I wanted to present that to you and, and, and see what you thought.

[01:15:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. It's very surprising that it's longer than I would have imagined for a list of care, characteristics. Yeah. Some of them are intuitive and some of them are surprising, but resonate. Some of them are surprising and I wonder about them. But anyway, yeah. And then there's the question really, as we talked about earlier, about what actually is it? Is it a naturally evolving failure state of civilizations? What are the preconditions?

[01:16:16] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, and I don't, um, Eco doesn't do it in his, in his essay. And I didn't otherwise go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what, uh, what we think, what, you know, we humanity think about sort of origins of and instances of fascism. But I wonder when we think it starts, right? So this, this, this would get to some degree to your question of, you know, it's, it's evolved, you know, it's made of things that evolved, so therefore it evolved. Uh, but is it, do we only start identifying things as fascist above a certain population density, population size once there's enough complexity in either governmental or non-governmental structure? Uh, so, uh, I don't even know what the so would be there. Uh, does it require, again, enough population size and density perhaps so that something can happen behind the scenes and not get noticed until it grows? Like I, I don't know the answers to any of these questions and I don't know if, you know, are there examples that historians would call fascist from 1200? I don't know.

[01:17:25] Dr. Bret Weinstein: That's a good question. And I wonder if they are effectively impossible to recognize because religious authority is too primary and it may be just incompatible. It may be that this is a failure of secular society. It's one of the failures of secular society, which communism certainly is.

[01:17:44] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[01:17:45] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Um, and so, you know, there's a start date at the point that enough people have, um, become secular that this thing can get catalyzed.

[01:17:54] Dr. Heather Heying: But that's going to be it.

[01:17:56] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I think it might be.

[01:17:57] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[01:17:58] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And actually I think it's something, this is, this is the big question I think for, um, scientific materialists like us, which is suppose we're right about scientific materialism. Now, all of you out there who jump every time I say something like that, don't right. I'm trying to make a point. Suppose we're right. Hypothetically speaking,

[01:18:18] Dr. Heather Heying: you know, that doesn't work, right?

[01:18:20] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It does. If you do it enough time, seriously, I'm making a point. You haven't given anything up. I'm not asking you to accept it. I'm just saying for the sake of this next few sentences, except suppose we're right about, about the, um, completeness of a physicalist explanation for that, which is manifest in the physical world. Not saying there couldn't be something outside of it, a creator, but suppose what we are studying when we study nature actually is self-consistent and complete so that we don't need to invoke an explanation from outside in order to explain anything that happens within the universe. That's what it would be for secular, no, for materialists to be right. Forget secular. The question then becomes what if that were true, but that the game theory caused an embrace of that truth to destroy any society that did embrace it fully. In other words, what if it was perfectly necessary to have a dyed in the wool belief in a transcendent something in order for the game theory not to crash and burn your society each and every time, which I think is quite possible that that's true. And I'm again, I'm

[01:19:42] Dr. Heather Heying: saying there's a density dependence.

[01:19:45] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, that there is a, that

[01:19:46] Dr. Heather Heying: you above some threshold of the population not believing in a religion, things fall apart.

[01:19:59] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's fatal because you're effectively, it's like the cells of the body embracing their own interests rather than subordinating to the body's overall interest, right? People who don't believe in a higher power that is truly profound and capable of punishing you severely and that has, you know, a desire for things to go this way and not that way, you know, something that defines what right and wrong is that as soon as you abandon that belief structure, then certain failures follow naturally and those failures have no breaks on them. So basically the game theory, the game theoretic failure of somebody who actually,

[01:20:41] Dr. Heather Heying: all the safeties are off, right?

[01:20:43] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's like, well, why, why shouldn't they do this? You know, why shouldn't I declare myself by so that I can get an advantage on a contract? Right. And the point is what prevents that is that you are forbidden to do it by something that you can't fool, right? Whether or not that something exists, I'm not saying it does. I'm not saying it doesn't, but the belief that there is something that cares and that you cannot fool, let's put it this way. If I reel it all the way back in, scientific materialism, let's say it was right. I think what it would say is that the game theoretic failures that follow from too short a time horizon, from focusing on how will I succeed in the next generation rather than how will I succeed without compromising my species five generations out, right? Or my people five generations out, that that is a fatal project and that the materialists, because they are focused on what is true and not focused on things like terminal game theory in general, miss this and they think, oh, we've become enlightened. We no longer need that God stuff.

[01:21:59] Dr. Heather Heying: And again, necessary and not sufficient.

[01:22:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, right. And so, and so the question I think is there has to be a reconciliation. I think the religious folks have a point that the secular materialists have been ignoring almost completely for a very long time. That point needs to get recognized and the religious folks need to recognize something that's coming from this secular materialist perspective that most of the secular materials, materialists don't know, but the responsible people on both sides are going to have to have a conversation if our very survival depends on how we live under a story that successfully arrests that game theoretic failure.

[01:22:40] Dr. Heather Heying: Very good. Very good. I think maybe we'll stop there.

[01:22:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: All right.

[01:22:48] Dr. Heather Heying: I'll bring the sunlight back when we come back in just a few days.

[01:22:52] Dr. Bret Weinstein: We could actually even go out into the sun now.

[01:22:55] Dr. Heather Heying: But they don't know that.

[01:22:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: They don't know

[01:22:57] Dr. Heather Heying: that we're gonna.

[01:22:59] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right.

[01:23:00] Dr. Heather Heying: No, but I'm going to talk about the sun next time. I suggested that we were talking about today, but I think what we're going to do is save that. But just a teaser, consider skipping the sunscreen. That's it. That's the teaser for next time. Okay. So check out our sponsors this week. Once again, Dose, Sundries Farm, Amazing Garlic, and Clear with an X, X-L-E-A-R. Check out our locals. And if you're on YouTube especially, subscribe and like and share and do all that good stuff. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love, eat real food, and get outside.

[01:23:43] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Be well, everyone.

DarkHorse PodcastEvolutionary LensBret WeinsteinHeather HeyingLGBTQPrideCaliforniaGen ZBisexualityFascismUmberto EcoUr-FascismPoliticsEpisode 330

Jennifer Donogh