The Free Speech Controversy: The Daily Wire's Audience Revolts as Candace Departs | Comrade Cast

Comrade: Greetings Comrades, and welcome back to another episode of the ComradeCast. Thought I was going to get an episode out on time this week. Sadly it eluded me yet again. However, we are going to get an episode out this week and this week in comparison to the last episode we had. I'm hoping it will be a little bit more upbeat, a little bit more positive. We're going to do maybe, more drama themed episode. Maybe talk about some, well, they are still related to heavy political topics. It's go

ing to be more drama surrounding these heavy political topics. So hopefully we'll have a little bit of fun. So today, yes, we're going to talk about drama, mostly from a right wing perspective, but it is going to give me the opportunity to tie it into, some residual drama from the left wing perspective, and tie it into a larger point I've been wanting to make in general. about left wing politics and, specifically talking about left wing politics online. Should be interesting. I'm hoping it's goi

ng to be, again, a little bit more of an upbeat, positive, and hopefully enlightening episode for you guys. So in case you haven't figured out what I'm talking about, let's start with the tweet which I believe will shake the conservative movement for at least quite some time. This is from Jeremy Boring. Jeremy Boring, if you do not know, is the CEO of one of the most well known conservative media outlets out there, which is the Daily Wire. So, of course, The Daily Wire has its well known collect

ion of right wing personalities, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Matt Walsh, and used to be Candace Owens. And up until, of course, recently, which we have this tweet from Jeremy Boring, the CEO, as stated before, March 22nd, 2024. The Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship. And that's pretty much been it. There hasn't been a lot of elaboration on any side as to exactly what's happened. There's been some kind of, speculation here and there, trimming around the edges, hedging yo

ur bets in terms of what people want to say. In fact, I believe it was either today or yesterday as of recording which is the 28th of March 2024. Ben Shapiro went on Piers Morgan and Piers Morgan asked him about it and Ben Shapiro was basically like, yeah I'm not gonna talk about this, we're not gonna talk about it. But here's who wants to talk about it. And the reason I want to talk about it is because not only am I just eating this delicious drama up because it's a shit storm of their own maki

ng, but I actually do think that this is going to have profound impact for at least the daily wire. And maybe within the conservative political movement as a whole. So why do I believe this exactly? Well, personally, not to really spend a whole bunch of time belaboring exactly what it is I believe and how I see this panning out. I personally see that this will be a huge disaster for the daily wire. I think this is a massive mistake for them. But In case you're one of the people who would like me

to give you several reasons why I think this is a bad idea. Well, here you go. Actually, before I do that, let me give you a little bit of context as to exactly why she is out at the daily wire rather than just reading you the vague tweet. Sometimes I have this really bad habit of just assuming everybody already knows all the context or is already up to speed with the same amount that I am and not really explaining everything that's going on. Regardless, just a real quick rundown from this arti

cle from The Hill here. Conservative commenter Candace Owens is out at The Daily Wire, the company announced on Friday. In a social media post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, I love that. It's just, I love how that's, they've decided that's how they're going to refer to it. Daily Wire co founder Jeremy Boring wrote, Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship. Jeremy Boring did not provide any additional details on what led to the separation. The Hill has reached out

to Daily Wire for additional comment. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The announcement comes after weeks of chatter about the relationship between Owens and the most prominent commentators on the right and the Daily Wire, a growing hub for conservative podcast streamers and shows and other forms of new media. Owens has sparked backlash over the months with her commentary on the U. S. role in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. and statements about the Jewish people in politics a

nd media more generally. After the Anti Defamation League, the ADL, this week, highlighted the fact that white supremacist Nick Fuentes was praising Owen's rhetoric on Jews, she responded on X, I don't know Nick Fuentes, but you already know that. What I do know is, That everyone can see what you guys are doing to me. Your pattern is well established and the world is waking up. My crime is having Stood up against myself against your network of smears. She wrote to the ADL My crime is that I do n

ot believe that American taxpayers should have to pay for Israel's wars or the wars of any other country I do not change my mind. So the question is what will you do to me next? The world is watching. Candace Owens has sparked criticism internally at the Daily Wire with prominent host Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, last fall calling her rhetoric on Israel and Hamas disgraceful. That sparked boring to issue a statement saying that the company would not fire Owens based on a desire not to regulate th

e speech of our hosts, even when we disagree with them. Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben's, he wrote at the time. Unless those opinions run afoul of the law or she violates the terms of her contract in some way, her job is secure and she is welcome at the Daily Wire. So, before I move into our actual list about why I think this whole thing is going to blow up for the Daily Wire, It is clear to note that at this time we don't know exactly whether or not the Daily Wire fired h

er or she left of her own volition. My strong suspicion is that they let her go. The reason being is because she had a secured contract with the Daily Wire. Meaning that if she were to leave, she would potentially be in breach of contract. So it would be more so up To the daily wire to dissolve that contract somehow. Again, this leads me to highly speculate that it was the daily wire who did the breaking up with and not Candace herself. So with that out of the way, let's move into reasons why th

is will blow up in the daily wires face. Number one, it goes against the whole vanguard of free speech drum that they have been beating for a decade. They definitely don't call themselves the vanguard of free speech, but I call them the vanguard of free speech. Of course, one of the most common tropes and common Mantras that the conservatives have been saying over the past decade is that we are the true champions of free speech. We're the defenders of free speech. We're the defenders of people's

right to say whatever they want. And those evil mean lefties, they just want to come in and they want to tell you what to do and how to think and what to say and so on and so forth. For me personally, I have very little interest in telling people what to do. or what to think. I am much more interested in getting my political vision across through articulating my points, find better ways to communicate my ideas to you, and actually connecting with people on more of a human level. And one of the

things I think is when you tell people, Oh, you can't say that, or it's not right that definitely puts up a barrier in between them and makes it harder to communicate on that human level. That being said though, I think that there are times when speech can be absolutely egregious and there needs to be some sort of punishment. But I think that those lines are very far away, you know? As someone who is a big believer and big supporter of trans rights, I personally don't believe that even though it

's an incredibly disrespectful and shitty thing to do to another person, I don't think that you should go to jail for misgendering somebody or getting their pronouns wrong or something like that. I don't even believe you should lose your job with the caveat unless you're actually harassing another person repeatedly over social media or over the phone or something like that. Because at that point, that does fall into an actual legal framework, the legal framework of harassment. So unless you're a

ctually harassing people, I don't think you should go to jail. I don't think you should lose your job for what you say. But I don't think you should get all up in arms and start pearl clutching when people tell you you're an asshole when you're being an asshole. For the conservative conception of free speech, it is definitely more extreme than this, which is effectively that you have every right to be an asshole, and people that push back on you are just snowflakes, or they're triggered, or wha

tever, or just so overawed by your correctness and your truth bombs that they're just stunned into submission. They seem to want to be able to say whatever they want without any consequences whatsoever. That includes social consequences from people around them. And then we're not talking about legal consequences or economic consequences or career consequences, but any consequences whatsoever. They want none of that. And so the thing is for me personally, When I ask myself, would I have fired

Candace if I were Jeremy Boring, and if I were in Jeremy Boring's position? Would I have fired Candace for what she said? Yes, absolutely. But, then again, I never would have hired her in the first place. She's not exactly in my political wheelhouse, so for me, it is very strange that when you hire a person like Candance , and you're well aware of her passion for saying things which grab attention. And this is the thing about Candance , is I personally don't believe that she believes anything wh

at she says. I believe she is a pure 100 percent grifter through and through. And she just happens to be one of the most, Exceptionally gifted at it. So, in that sense, I almost respect her grift, or I respect her ability to grift so well because this woman can maintain attention and maintain headlines better than just about any political personality I've seen in my entire life. And we'll touch a little bit more on that on number two. But again, for when it goes to a number one, even if for what

ever reason, Candace decided to leave on her own, the reason she will say is because I felt like my expression was repressed at the daily wire. So no matter what, even if they didn't actually end up letting her go, they're still going to receive the ramifications for this. But the thing is, when you bang this drum for a decade and you say that, yes, we are the free speech vanguard, you can say whatever you want, feel free to have no repercussions whatsoever. You are going to cultivate an audienc

e that believes that and accepts that. And the moment you go against that kind of mantra, which you've chanted for over a decade, these people are going to get extremely upset and turn on you very quickly. And we are seeing that happen rapidly for the daily wire. As someone who likes to keep his ear to the ground, try and figure out what's going on the political pulse on the right. What I am reading right now is that they are very much so in revolt against the Daily Wire. They are not happy with

this at all. And the main reason is because it goes against what they believe is their principles of free speech. They believe Candace has the right to say whatever she wants on the platform of the Daily Wire, particularly that Daily Wire is a right wing platform and not even a right wing platform. It's more on the fringe, although not anymore. They're very rapidly moving into that kind of Fox news mainstream right wing media slot. But the point here is you've cultivated this audience of peop

le who are, again the free speech absolutists. And then when you go against that. They're not going to be happy. It's obvious that they're going to see it as a massive hypocritical move and you are going to pay for it. And I think that the Daily Wire is going to feel this for a very long time to come. I don't think that kind of core right wing audience, particularly because this kind of freedom of speech issue has been one of the ones they have banged the hardest over, This, sorry, that they've

banged the hardest over this decade because it has gained them a lot more political success than just about any other issue. So when you're going against one of their perceived golden gooses, oh man, they are going to revolt against you hard. So let's move into our second reason here. Candace has the ability to grab and keep the media's attention. And this is something that we alluded to a little bit previously, as I mentioned, Out of any political figure that's really emerged out of the kind of

the millennial generation, because she's surprisingly just a bit older than I am. So of any political figure that's really emerged out of our generation, she is one of the ones that has had the ability to grab and keep the attention of the media more so than as I alluded to just about anyone in my lifetime and anyone that I can recollect right now, she always seems to be getting headlines for doing something goofy, something weird, something ridiculous, something that's extremely controversial

. And this has garnered her an extremely large and affectionate fan base within the right wing political movement. A fan base which I would definitely wager is a lot more loyal to her personally than it is to the Daily Wire. So, What I'm trying to say here is that by getting rid of Candace Owens, I think that the Daily Wire Personally is losing one of their greatest assets Well, maybe having the ability to grab and keep the media's attention might not be the best attribute to have for Many other

types of companies, but let's say that you were a media company like the Daily Wire Having someone who could do that would be really beneficial to your bottom line, and getting rid of them, it's gonna hurt you. And now for number three, and I will be real, I'm being slightly hyperbolic here, slightly facetious, and it's, Now you look like a bunch of racists. And I'm not saying you guys are racists, but now you have a company which has fired its only minority woman of color and whose front faci

ng employees happen to be all old white men. A few middle aged white men and one young white man verging on middle aged white men. Oh, I guess there's also what's her face, a femme Shapiro. Don't know if she consists of the all star cast yet But yeah, you're gonna have to have somebody replace Candace Owens, Because as much as conservatives like to say that they do not like to play identity politics and they don't want to play Identity politics they certainly love to Hire a person like Candace O

wens For the purposes of shielding themselves from attacks on grounds of identity politics. So, we'll wrap this up with the number four. The number four reason here is that I would put good money on the fact that more people watching the Daily Wire probably agree with Candace than with Ben. And that is in the sense that they believe that in her words that America, they shouldn't be spending money on fighting other countries wars. They shouldn't be spending money on any foreign aid, which that i

ncludes Israel, and that would of course include Ukraine, or any other country out there. That is actually one of the things that I think has really driven a wedge between sort of the mainstream right, And the populist or, more populist coalitions on the right. And this is interesting, because this is on the left, too, the more populist coalitions and the more mainstream coalitions. And this is only in the United States, though. In other countries, the populist left and the mainstream left are o

n the same page. Which is that the populist right is very much so against Israel. They're against funding Israel. They're against continuing to give them any aid whatsoever. And then of course, the mainstream, the establishment right has been since its inception has always been all in Israel. We have to do everything we can to defend them, give them everything they need. There are many things you could speculate as to why the populist right believes what they do about Jewish people. But that wou

ld take a whole other video to dive into some of those. Insane and quite frankly disturbing reasons, so we'll leave those alone for now. The point here being is that I don't think that the Daily Wire is going to shed the majority of its viewers or anything like that over this spat over this firing, but they are going to see a hit and there are going to be a lot of people who kind of tune them out or don't take them seriously in the future. Even if they keep watching them, and that is again becau

se the daily wire has cultivated more of that populist right fan base than that establishment right fan base. Going back to what I personally feel, I'm surprised that they actually pulled the trigger and ended up letting her go. Part of me thinks that there was maybe some kind of personal beef between her and Ben or something more personal that going on that we don't know about because it just seems like such a stupid decision for the daily wire and I feel like they must know this logically on

some level that this is a terrible business decision But there is got to be some sort of like personal grudge or personal beef. That's overriding that logical decision and I don't know call me cynical, I don't know why The daily wire is shocked that Nick Fuentes is agreeing with Candace Owens. This to me does not seem like a very, shocking thing or surprising thing. Seems to me like a very obvious thing. You know, if Nick was out there agreeing with some of my positions, some of my opinions, th

en I would be a lot more concerned. I would be a lot more worried. But obviously we are in very different political realms. So I guess maybe I'm being a kind of naive here or something, but it's like, why would you be so surprised that when you cultivate this kind of audience and this kind of people that have these kind of leanings and have these kind of conspiratorial views of the world? Why would you be so, shocked and outraged when they agree with some of the more conspiratorial and out there

things that your hosts say? It just seems like something that would logically go hand in hand with your business model. So that's my ultimate take here is I think that there is something more personal going on that we don't know that really Has been simmering underneath the surface and I don't know if it's these recent comments about Israel that has caused the whole dam to snap But regardless the dam has snapped and the relationship between the Daily Wire and Candace Owens is officially over.

It makes me think that really all along Candace Owens was stealing Ben Shapiro's wife and that's what started this whole storm, but we'll probably never know for sure. So what do I think that socialists should do, leftwing people should do, as a result of this news? Well, I think we should be dancing in the streets because of it. Because this is just the perfect example of the kind of internal contradictions and toxic mentality that the right has been breeding for so long and we're finally seei

ng a lot of it come home to roost for them. I've always wondered how the Daily Wire could maintain its audience, maintain its cohesion in the face of this real diametrical opposition between the sort of establishment rights view on Israel and the populist rights view on Israel. And personally, I only think that this kind of friction and this kind of infighting within the right is going to get worse and worse. We've already covered a few examples of it on the show. And we've talked about it befor

e, how the 2010s was the decade and the era of left wing infighting. Now in the 2020s, we're going to see the decade and era of right wing infighting. And I just think it's going to get worse from here for the right that is for us as left wing people and particularly if you are more my mindset, a far left person, a socialist or syndicalist or anarchist or communist, our goal, I think, should be within this chaos within this drama. To establish ourselves as the dominant forces and the dominant p

ositions within the left wing political movement itself. The one thing we really need to do, and the one thing that holds us back so severely from accomplishing a lot of our political goals, is the neoliberal establishment. So, something like this tells me that this kind of chaos, this kind of instability within the right, is the perfect opportunity to assert ourselves and our own political movement, and finally let neoliberalism die. Because goddammit, has political ideology clung on to power

for far too long. Okay, sorry, I gotta get myself together because I am struggling to move on to the next point that we have to talk about. Well, I don't know if we really have to talk about it, but it is something that I've been wanting to talk about for a while. And I've been struggling to find, the right kind of way to frame it. And let's just say that something happened. Now, unfortunately, this is several weeks old, because I've been so busy with so much crap going on, I haven't really ha

d the chance to talk about it. So part of me, It's hesitant to bring it up now because it's like dead. No one's really talking about it But at the same time it is a convenient way for me to frame what I want to talk about. So not to beat a dead horse or anything, but I do want to talk a little bit about Vaush. You had no idea how many times I had to do that before I could do it with a straight face. I just, I can't get over the middle one. The one right in the middle. Where he's half horse and h

alf human. Oh my god. Oh, fuck. Okay let's pull up some a little bit more presentable for the guy. But there is a reason I wanted to talk about this. I don't want to linger too much on exactly what happened. But to give you the details, because if you don't know, it might have been living under an internet rock for the last little while, but about two or three weeks ago Vaush, who happens to be a very famous socialist left wing streamer, opened up a file on his computer which happened to contai

n a folder full of porn and not just any porn. Not only did he just happen to open up his whole porn file in front of thousands of people all over the internet at the same time. It just happened to be a variety of porn which is particularly Gross, And one of the things is I'm not a guy to sit here and kink shame anybody I don't know if I ever come up with Comrade's razor or Comrade's rule. You know how house always goes around and says my number one rule is that everybody lies. Well, my number o

ne rule is that everybody's a pervert. That's the one thing if you are on this planet long enough, you will just realize about human beings, we're fucking perverts. We're fucking disgusting. When it comes to something new or some sort of new invention, the first two inclinations that come to our kind of basic lizard brain are, can I kill with it and or can I have sex with it? But even with my, I would like to think, very high level of sexual permissibility, there's gotta be a line that is drawn

somewhere, and that line for me as kids, or kid type body types. And that's what this particular variant of porn happened to be. Man, I can't believe I'm fucking talking about this on the show. Which is basically anime porn of women drawn to look like young children. And it's pretty fucked up. to say the least. So as someone who has two young kids, needless to say, this whole topic of conversation makes me fairly uncomfortable. So that being said, I'm not going to belabor the point too much. D

o I think the guy should go to jail? No. Do I think he is the worst human being ? No. But, wouldn't be comfortable letting him around my kids, I'll say that. Not that he would probably want to be around them, but, you understand what I'm saying. When you're on the left though, you can get away with being more of a freak in the sheets, if you will. Because sexual expression, sexual inclusivity is part and parcel of our political ideology. But like I talked about, we have a line that we have to d

raw somewhere. And I've been thinking like if this were something like Matt Walsh who was caught in a similar circumstance, I would definitely be tearing him a new asshole from pillar to post. The main thing here is that sort of sexual purity is one of Matt Walsh's core principle, ideological, Pillars, right? It's one of the things that he stands on. Not really the same over here. And in that regards though, this does bring me to the number one absolute problem I have with Vaush. Which is That

by and large, I agree with his political takes. And when it came to the entire discourse about what happened, nothing was about his actual politics itself. It was all about the man, and all about his sexual proclivities. No one was actually talking about socialism, or communism or any of the actual core political nuts and bolts of what the guy believes. It's all a discourse about the guy himself. But the thing is that as a left wing person, you have to understand that and you have to be prepared

for it. Because one of the things that right wing people don't understand is that many of their talking points against the left don't actually involve real political core tenants or logically thought out arguments. They're more built upon. Stereotypes that they have about left wing people and or responses that they think left wing people will have to what they say. So my point here is that how can anybody take you seriously when you're talking about politics when they look at you is that, for

me at least now, I have trouble getting that middle horse, that half horse person out of my brain. Long story short, is he ends up making the discourse about the man and not about the actual politics. So I, as a left wing person, really want to keep the conversation about the actual politics, and keep things as focused as I can, laser focused as I can, on the actual politics, on what I actually want to achieve, and the things that I believe. And the reason for this is when you actually do that a

nd you don't engage with and you don't have a lot of those negative stereotypes that they associate with a lot of left wing people around you, they actually have to engage with your core philosophy and your core ideas, and it's very difficult for them to do. Because, as I said, the entire argumentation tactic is built around engaging with these kind of side parameters. Oh, we can't take him seriously because he has these weird sexual fetishes. Oh, we can't take him seriously because he's got bl

ue hair. Oh, we can't take him seriously because he's in an open relationship. Oh, we can't take him seriously because he's not married or he doesn't have kids or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you strip away all of that, then they actually have to, again, engage with that core idea. And it's very difficult for them to do. Which is why I, as a left wing person, try very hard to abstain from some of the more Stereotypical things that you would associate with left wing people like I you know I'

m a guy who lives a traditional quote unquote lifestyle has two kids works a full time job Doesn't have blue hair been together with my wife for over 10 years. When someone like me comes out and starts arguing for trans rights, they actually have to engage with the real issue. political philosophy of the debate because they can't just dismiss you out of hand and say, Oh, you wouldn't understand because you're not a parent. Well, guess what? I am a parent. I've got two kids. I know exactly what i

t's like to raise fucking kids. So what's your next actual argument? And there never is one. And now the unfortunate thing that for Vaush, I think he's really done here is that Unless you're already within left wing circles telling other people that you listen to Vaush will probably turn them off because they're immediately going to associate it with this whole clusterfuck drama. But, that's what it is, in the political streaming world. Another left wing streamer who has a very bad pension for

making, their content more about themselves rather than the politics is Hassan. I would actually say Hassan is probably my least favorite by a huge margin of all the left wing streamers or content creators out there. Even with this drama and whatnot when it comes to Vaush. His political takes are still by and large correct in my opinion. Don't believe that so much when it comes to Hassan, particularly when it comes to Hassan's take on geopolitics and international relations. Oh my god, it is bra

in meltingly bad. And that's another weakness I think on the left is a lot of left wing people don't have the best foreign policy takes. They don't have the best understanding about, the whole geopolitical chessboard and stuff like that. This is fortunately something I do think that is changing slowly in the modern age. However Hasan is not exactly an exemplar for that change. But, my main point here, and one of the things that My message is, to left wing people in general. It doesn't matter if

you're a content creator or whatever. If you want to be effective in spreading left wing politics, and getting people who might not be left wing to engage with left wing ideas, You have to make it about the political values. You can't get sucked into these like culture war traps or speed bumps or whatever else. You got to keep it about our message because I think our message is extremely powerful. And with that is going to take us to another end of our show. I want to thank you guys for watching

. This has been another ComradeCast. Slowly trying to get back on that horse. Didn't talk too much about how Things are going with my kid at the start of the episode. Unfortunately, his teething is still bad. He's still struggling when it comes to his sleeping patterns. But his separation anxiety is getting better as he slowly starts to interact with things in the world, and he starts to find other things that gain his interest, and he wants to explore, and he wants to play with. He's getting a

little bit less clingy, But it feels like he's still got a ways to go in that regard. So i'm still doing my best to try and keep the podcast on the weekly schedule as much as I can i'm really struggling with trying to get gaming content out right now But the main reason why is just I don't have time to record It's very difficult to get recording time for long spates of nice quiet atmosphere with a nice quiet atmosphere like this where I can actually sit and talk. I'm actually working towards som

e pretty big changes in my personal life that will hopefully open up a few more doors for me and in addition allow me to spend a little bit more time doing the type of things that I want to do. It's funny there, I watched this kind of TikTok trend about how people were asked like, What's your dream job? And their response was like, well, I don't have a dream job because I don't really dream of labor. And well, I definitely agree with that sentiment. I think that's a very thumbs up sentiment. The

funny thing is I do dream of labor, but it's like labor on things that, I'm passionate about I dream of putting my labor into this podcast into my videos into other side projects that I desperately want to do and want to, bring into the world, but just don't have the time to do. So yeah, I guess I do dream about labor, but it's just the kind of labor that I'm passionate about. So I guess I'll leave you guys with that until next time. This has been DaComrade signing off for now and until next ti

me you guys take care.