Also: 22:25 Jason: He’s not making any statements that are pro Neo-Nazi. He’s simply choosing not to be forced into a corner to sign some petition that you guys say is necessary in order for him to prove himself.
Sarwark: He’s choosing to not offend his part of his market. These are people who buy his, subscribe to his podcast, and buy entry into this Facebook safe space, and buy tickets for his float-o safe space, you know, I get, as a marketer…
Jason: Are you talking about his cruise that he and Bob Murphy do?
Sarwark: Yes, I’m talking about the one where he says, “You know where you won’t hear libertarian infighting”. You know, he’s a relentless marketer and he’s good at it. But, you know, for a guy who likes to talk about he’s outside the bounds of acceptable opinion, he’s very quick dismiss people as either leftists or low IQ, to block them and to not respond to any arguments that are outside the bounds of his contrarian world. He has a market and he has an audience AND HIS AUDIENCE DOESN’T WANT HIM TO SAY THESE THINGS SO HE DOESN’T! He actually has his own 3x5 card of acceptable opinion. It may be a mirror image of the 3x5 card that, I don’t know, that the New York Times has, that’s his tag line, but he does go out of the way to not say things that would offend that segment of his market. And they ARE PART of his market, they are part of his fans.
Jason: I don’t how you could possibly know that other than to read some Neo-Nazi rag that says they like him.
Sarwark: Well, there’s that. There’s the comments on his blog. There’s the comments on his YouTube channel. There’s Twitter.
Jason: Do you realize...I don’t know what the Libertarian Party is doing, Nick, but I can tell you I have a private group of about 8,000 people and we do a screening process before anyone comes in and it still takes a team of people to comb through that private Facebook group and get rid of people who are there just to cause problems. I think it’s frankly unfair for you to look at a guy who has a following and to carve out a portion of that following who say really terrible things and to make that an explanation or an example of what his entire movement and his entire message is about.
Sarwark: I understand that you think that that's unfair. I have no problem saying very explicitly that racists and white nationalists are invited to leave the libertarian party. You have no problem in your private Facebook group setting out particular rules for what is and isn't acceptable behavior. So when the opportunity arises to say look, what I'm talking about is not what those guys marching in Charlottesville are talking about, it's different, those are people that I don't agree with, those are people that I don't want to be my supporters or my fans, I'm not interested in that, this is an unacceptable opinion. He has the opportunity to say that. He's very quick to say it's unacceptable to be a leftist. He's very quick to say it's unacceptable to be a Communist. He's very quick to say these things are unacceptable and there's one thing that won't come out of his mouth. He will not say it's unacceptable to be racist. He will not say it's unacceptable to be a white nationalist. He won't say THAT because that would offend a portion of his audience. Now maybe he won't say it because he's just gosh darnit stubborn and contrarian and he just won't sign things that people ask him to. That's fine and he can make that argument and whether it's persuasive or not is up to the listener and it's not up to you and it's not up to me.
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