Michael Knowles is an American conservative political commentator, actor, author, and media host, working for The Daily Wire since 2016. He graduated with a B.A. in history and Italian from Yale University, where he produced the first English rendering of Niccolò Machiavelli’s play Andria in 2012. In 2017, Knowles released a book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide. The book, which contained 266 empty pages and an extensive bibliography, became the top-selling book on Amazon. His second book, Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, also became a number one bestseller in 2021.
Is there any reason for the average American, not belonging to any ‘oppressed’ minority, to vote for the Democrats?
Part of the reason the Democrats have been successful, and why ordinary citizens have voted for them, is that people have a lot of other things to do rather than worry about politics, and their connection to political issues is largely conditioned by the media, their education, and the big technology platforms—and liberals control all of these things completely. The problem is that the ordinary voter knows [that the things they are told] are simply not true. For example, the voter is told by the media that the George Floyd riots, which killed dozens of people from coast to coast, were harsh but “mostly peaceful” protests, and conversely is told that what happened on January 6th in Congress represents an insurrection and a coup by racist, evil, violent right-wing extremists who killed police officers. None of that is true, the only person who died, at the hands of an officer, was a Trump supporter, and it was the police who opened the doors to the alleged insurgents. This is my defence of the ordinary liberal voter: they are most likely people who go about their lives, jobs, and families, who are told things that aren’t true and don’t question them.
Then, with the advent of social media, many people saw for the first time that what they were being told by the media did not reflect reality and, coincidentally, that moment saw a resurgence of populism. People who traditionally voted Democrat began to look for information in other channels and when they saw someone who spoke directly to them, such as Donald Trump, there was a shift. However, all the pundits were telling us that there was a 99% chance that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. 99%! Everyone was shocked.
The media can hide the truth, true, but can you hide the image of a president like Joe Biden who wants to run for re-election?
It doesn’t matter, because what liberals care about is keeping power, installing their judges, directing their policies, maintaining foreign policy, and silencing conservatives. Whether Joe Biden is awake or asleep doesn’t affect any of that. Especially since liberals have not only taken over state administration, democracy, and even the Deep State, they are also very comfortable with a government of bureaucrats. That’s why they don’t care. The president is nothing more than a name on a wallet to them and, even if they have to pull his strings like a puppet and give him lots of coffee to keep him awake, it’s okay because he’s not the one implementing the Democrats’ policies.
Even so, don’t they have anyone better, even if he’s just a pretty face?
The best argument against impeachment of the president is the vice president, who is even more unpopular. So she can’t hold the office. There are others who would like to take that step, but there is one candidate who could be a real threat, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. He’s done a horrible job in that state, which is basically sinking into the sea under his leadership, but he has a good image, he speaks well, and he runs good campaigns. He could excite the Democrats, but the problem is that if Joe Biden, who is doing well in the polls, does not run for re-election, this could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. So replacing Biden, even with a much better candidate, could hurt the Democrats’ chances. Even if Biden wants to withdraw, I think he will do so after the election.
You mentioned California and I have been told about a curious phenomenon. Apparently, many people leave California because of its disastrous policies and move to Republican states, but once there, they vote Democrat again. Is this a kind of Stockholm Syndrome?
When I moved from Los Angeles to Tennessee, which is a conservative state, I was looking for a house and a woman asked me in a bookstore if I was from Tennessee. I said no, and she asked me if I was from California, to which I said yes. Then the woman said to me, “Don’t make California my Tennessee,” by which she meant don’t take California politics there. I replied, “Listen lady, I’m not your problem. I promise you I’m probably more right-wing than anybody else in this state”.
The truth is that there is this fear that people who leave progressive states move to much better states and bring with them the stupid progressive policies they fled from. But I believe that those who leave for conservative states do so to be with like-minded people. There are more conservatives in Los Angeles County than any other county in the country; the problem is that there are even more liberals. So, when those conservatives move, they bring some liberal habits with them, but when it comes to voting I’m convinced that the vast majority vote conservative. They have moved to conservative states for a deeper reason than taxes.
In your other book, Speechless, you argue that the free speech movement is nothing more than a means to control and prohibit free speech.
The trap we have fallen into on the Right is to believe that the battle was between free speech and censorship. The Left started their censorship campaigns with something called the free speech movement. They pretended to be the defenders of free speech, but they only did so in order to destroy the old standards, norms, and taboos of a normal society, because all states and societies necessarily have standards, taboos, and limitations. Going back to early America, the United States has an explicit tradition of free speech and yet there was speech that was not protected: threats, insults, deception … these were things you were not allowed to say. The battle we really face is a battle between two different kinds of standards. For example, in 1950 you could teach the Bible in schools, but not pornography. Today, you can teach pornography and queer gender, but what you can’t teach is the Bible. Does this represent an expansion or a restriction of free speech? Neither, it’s just a change in standards and norms. Conservatives have been concerned in recent years about procedural norms, about a public square based on honesty and neutral values, but no public square can be neutral; everything has meaning. Procedural norms are fine, but the Right has to focus on substantive goods, because without them procedural norms mean nothing. Freedom of speech in the abstract means nothing to people who have nothing to say.
Antonio Gramsci talked about changing the cultural basis of society, and now pornography is the new cultural basis.
Yes, and appeal to basic human passions. Gramsci, when he was trying to instigate his cultural revolution by recognising the failure of Marxism, understood that it was necessary to hold on to common sense if you want to succeed in revolution, because people don’t like abstract theories. They like their way of life and their traditions, and you have to infiltrate that and wage a war of positions, rather than a war of movements. The Left has done this by infiltrating the institutions and controlling their power. Today, the Left controls virtually every institution in the United States, including much of the military, which has always been conservative.
The Left has been very good at retaining power, not just here, but in many other countries in the West, and this has not been a five or ten year campaign—this is a hundred year campaign. If we are going to turn that around in Western nations, we are going to have to recognise that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we are going to have to build our fortitude and have a long-term political vision. Fortitude is not just a virtue, it is a prerequisite for other virtues, and without it we will achieve nothing.
