Name: Episode 153 - Gavin McInnes
Uploaded: 2019-06-23T04:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Episode 153 - Gavin McInnes' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-06-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Episode 153 - Gavin McInnes' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-06-23. Transcript available.

Episode 153 - Gavin McInnes

And now, Tim Dillon is going to hell!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tim Dillon is going to hell.
This is Tim Dillon.
We're doing an episode today that not everybody is going to love.
I think there might be some people that have a negative reaction to this
episode.
And understandably so, you know, perhaps.
I think the reaction of the person might be negative, and that's understandable.
But I don't think the reaction to the conversation will be negative.
This is somebody that I've wanted to have on for a while because I have a
personal history with this person.
This person has done many things in his career.
He's a co-founder of Vice.
He's had many different shows.
And I think many of you know who I'm talking about, and it is Gavin McInnes.
And Gavin, for those of you who don't know, had a show that a lot of comedians
went on.
He had hour-long conversations with comedians you would know, comedians that
were left-wing, comedians that were more right-wing.
And Gavin was a frequent guest on Red Eye, and a lot of comedians would go on
Red Eye, and we would all sit there and yuck it up with Gavin.
You know, Gavin has had many differences of opinion with comics, and they were
all done in a respectful way.
And my personal story with Gavin is that I did a show a few times, and I think
he was the one who got me on Red Eye, which was a show that Tom Shalhoux hosted
on Fox News.
And it was at 3 a.m.
Not the highest-rated show on the network, clearly, but it was a show where a
lot of comedians would go on and, you know, have fun and talk shit.
And basically, there was this weird intersection of comedy and politics and
culture, and that's where Gavin lived.
I mean, Gavin was a funny guy.
He was kind of a troll, and he was, you know, a lot of the things he would do
had a performative aspect.
And, of course, a lot of people know the story, you know, about the Proud Boys,
which was, you know, in some people's mind, and I think in Gavin's mind, it was,
you know, he would tell you it was a harmless men's club, and some other people
might tell you it's a violent gang, and maybe the truth is somewhere in the
middle, and we'll let him tell you that.
But for me, the story is about a guy who co-founded a large media company, a
billion-dollar media company, Vice, and a liberal media company.
And then, now, is banned from many, if not all, social media platforms.
I think it's an interesting story.
That's an interesting trajectory for a career to take.
And to me, knowing Gavin, not well, but knowing him, you know, somewhat
socially, it was an interesting conversation to get into how that happened.
And, again, there's going to be a lot of people that criticize my choice to
have him on, you're giving somebody a platform, blah, blah, blah.
You've heard all these arguments before.
And, you know, Gavin still has a podcast.
He's on YouTube.
He's somebody that I think has a story, and that that story in and of itself is
fascinating.
You may hate him.
You may think he's dangerous.
You may think that the, you know, Proud Boys are a violent organization.
You might think that he is a net negative on public discourse, and you might
think that he should be completely shut out of every outlet.
He shouldn't be able to speak.
But the way that I think about it is that if your fear is violence and you want
a world that is less violent, you can't shut down all the avenues to
communication.
That's something that I believe.
That's something that I think people that I respect believe.
Which is why Joe Rogan has had certain people on, because he's having
conversations with people.
Gavin has said things that I would absolutely disagree with, and I would
absolutely call him out and go, that's bullshit, and we could have a debate
about it.
But I don't think simply that him uttering any of those things makes me feel
unsafe.
I don't believe that that is a good way to think about having conversations,
and that words and conversations necessarily make people unsafe.
I think that actions make people unsafe, and that's why we have laws, that we
have laws that protect people, and that's why you have to defend the rights of
people you disagree with, and the rights of people that you feel you feel their
ideas are dangerous.
That's the reality.
Nazis have a right to speak.
The KKK has a right to speak.
The Supreme Court ruled on those cases, not because they like Nazis, but
because the right to speak is a fundamental right, and those people have ideas
that are dangerous.
But Gavin's more interesting than that.
I think there's much more of a gray area here, and I know that we're very
uncomfortable living in a gray area, but if I'm going to do a show where I talk
to people, I'm going to have to live in that gray area to an extent, and I'm
going to have to make personal choices and live by them.
And the gray area is where comedy comes from, okay?
Great comedy doesn't come from rigid fundamentalist thinking.
It just doesn't.
Neither do great conversations and great discussion.
You have to be open to talking to people, and that gray area is, I think,
something that needs to be explored, and I don't think we should push people
into black and white.
We shouldn't put people in boxes.
By the way, this is not to say that I agree with any of the decisions that
Gavin has made, and this is not to say that he doesn't regret a lot of those
decisions, but I feel the same way about Gavin that I feel about Alex Jones,
and that I feel about lots of different people.
People who have said things that I may consider to be abhorrent or maybe have
inspired actions that I disagree with directly or indirectly.
I believe that there's probably a lot of people are willing to concede or admit,
and so it's in the spirit of that, and it's in the spirit of somebody who makes
a living.
I make my living speaking into a microphone, whether it's on a stage or while
doing a podcast.
That is how I make my living.
I can never cheer for the deplatforming of people, and I can never cheer for
the silencing of people.
That's not in me.
I was on a debate team in college, and I loved arguing with people, and that
was part of what I thought the strength of this country was, was that you could
do those things.
I just can't, and I may, you know, think that somebody is just completely
helpless, meaning that I can't reach them, that logic and argument has
completely failed.
But at that point, you have to really make a decision, and the decision is you're
living in a country with a lot of people that are never going to see eye to eye
with you.
Are you going to coerce them forcefully, physically, violently to agree with
you, or are you going to adopt some form of live and let live?
You know, fundamentalist Christians don't think that gay people should get
married or adopt kids or anything like that.
You know, am I going to spend the rest of my life converting everybody who
believes those things?
Am I going to spend the rest of my life chasing those people down, harassing
them, making sure they can't earn a living, making sure that they shouldn't be
able to have a business?
Is it a good use of my time on planet Earth?
Is it a good use of anyone's time?
And by the way, this isn't to minimize the violence clashes or whatever that
the Proud Boys have been involved in.
I don't, I'm not claiming to have any information about that that is, you know,
definitive.
I don't, I've said all groups suck.
I wouldn't want to be in any type of club, and I certainly wouldn't want to be
in a club where you're running around getting in violent altercations with
people that disagree with you politically.
It's completely ridiculous.
You know, that being said, I think this podcast is about a conversation with
somebody that I knew I had a personal relationship with, never close.
We didn't know each other that well, but he always treated me with respect.
And I went on his show and he said some crazy fucking things.
Some of them were very funny.
Some of them were just very crazy.
And that person I've seen spiral out of control.
And a lot of the events around him seem to spiral out of control.
And I wonder how much control he had over some of them.
And maybe he had more than I thought.
I don't know.
But watching it and then watching people, you know, basically decide that this
guy is Hitler and this guy should never have a platform and this guy should
never be listened to.
And there's no curiosity about what happened and how it happened and how this
guy that, you know, would sit down and talk to comedians and goof around on red
eye became public enemy number one.
You know, and the FBI watch list and I think they took them off.
They reclassified the Proud Boys.
I don't really know.
But watching this stuff happen and watching this unfold has been kind of wild
to me.
And I kind of had a front row seat for a lot of it, not for a lot of the events
that I'm describing, but for the very beginning, just meeting Gavin, knowing
him, going on the show along with a lot of other comedians.
And then just sitting back and being plugged into the climate that we live in
and watching people get deplatformed and watching what's happened to Gavin or
watching the whole situation kind of spiral out of control.
And you can make your own decision on Gavin and you can make your own decision
on what he's saying.
You could if you find him to be truthful or if you I'm not my goal is not to be
like this is a sympathetic character.
It's not to be, you know, this is not a PR thing, but I just want to have a
conversation with a guy that I kind of knew.
About how things got so crazy.
So if you're mad at me about that, I don't know what to tell you.
This is really this is the podcast.
We've had a lot of people on the show.
Some of them I agree with.
Some of them I don't.
But everybody I've had on the show, I find that it's either been entertaining
or it's been interesting.
And if you don't live a little bit in those gray areas as a performer or as
somebody who communicates, I don't know what you're going to do.
I don't know what kind of show you're going to have if you're only going to
have people on that are approved by the Twitter mob or by mainstream media
outlets.
If you're just going to talk to those people, you know, you're going to have a
certain kind of show.
But that's never the show that I wanted to do.
And those are the stories that have never really interested me.
These are the stories that interest me.
And so we're going to have this conversation.
No, we're not.
I'm not at home.
Oh, good.
You're at an undisclosed location.
Yes.
Like Dick Cheney.
Yes.
How are you doing?
Because I know that you've had a lot of you've been you're off all these things.
And it's got to be for a guy like you who this is your whole career.
This is what you did for a living for years is communicate with people.
Is this driving you nuts?
You know, I started this, I started Vice in 1994.
I've been doing this a long time and I've seen all these ups and downs.
And I remember, you know, the PMRC when it was all about rock and roll and Twisted
Sister are going to ruin our kids.
So this is just one of the many waves that I've seen come and go.
But, you know, for a few years before Twitter, I didn't have Twitter and I did
okay.
It's frustrating on a different level, though.
It's frustrating that the culture has come to this.
Yeah.
And that's that's irritating.
I mean, I got my new site out now, freespeech.tv.
And Twitter, the annoying thing about not being on Twitter is not not being on
Twitter.
It's that someone is controlling the conversation and deciding who gets to say
what and how they can say it.
And that's what's disturbing.
It's more like the concept.
It's not the actual day to day or me personally.
I just don't like it as an American.
And I and I think you more than most people, unfortunately, are unable to
defend yourself against some of the things that are said about you, because I
have arguments with people about you.
And they say things like Nazi an