I Cannot Stress Enough that Dave Smith Is a Huge Nazi
"If you're taking in some people from Sweden or if you're taking in some people from war-torn Syria, I think there might be a difference. And I will make a value judgment on that one. I think one's worse."
In a new episode of his podcast this week, the comedian and Libertarian podcaster Dave Smith argues that Jews are behind mass immigration to the west—or, no, sorry, he simply argues that it’s not antisemitic, racist, or conspiratorial to argue that Jews are behind mass immigration to the west, and that if one wants to combat antisemitism, one must concede the legitimacy of the argument that Jews are behind mass immigration to the west.
Along the way he also argues for biological racism, claiming there are genetic reasons Black crime rates are higher than white crime rates and Africa is poor while Europe is rich. It’s obviously preferable to bring in immigrants from Sweden than from Syria, he reasons further, and better to bring in small numbers of immigrants than large ones: “When you bring in small numbers of people, the pressure is to assimilate, to fall in line. But when you bring in huge numbers of people, you end up with Minnesota. They don't come over and assimilate. They come over and they do their own Somali thing here with our government.”
Somewhere in the midst of all that, his cohost Robbie Bernstein suggests that a solution to our immigration woes may lie in “second-class citizenship” regimes or “safe places of internment” until immigrants can be sent somewhere else.
Seth Simons
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: these people are nazis. They are racists and antisemites and white nationalists. Nor are they exactly fringe figures. Although Smith was still somewhat marginal when I started writing about him in 2020, his star has risen considerably in the years since. He’s a frequent guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast and and UK broadcaster Piers Morgan’s YouTube show; he has nearly half a million YouTube subscribers and nearly a million Twitter followers; his commentary on the Gaza genocide has received praise from the left-wing news outlet Drop Site. Somehow his invectives against immigrants and Jews haven’t earned quite the same attention.
As usual, I’m going to share a transcript of the relevant segment, chopped up into hopefully reasonable portions. The following comes amidst a discussion of a clip in which the right-wing intellectual Sam Harris laments antisemitic conspiracy theories about “the Jewish hand in immigration.” Harris’s guest responds that Jewish people were a voice for refugee resettlement throughout the 20th Century, which Smith takes as a concession that the conspiracy theory is correct:
Smith: So Sam Harris and them, they sit here and have this conversation and they're like, "Oh, it's this awful conspiracy theory that Jews are behind open immigration." And then essentially they just go on to explain that, yeah, Jews supported open immigration because we benefited from it in the past.
And I don't know, Rob, it's like, again, with all these things, there's also a whole lot of Jews who are border hawks. And so it doesn't make sense to blame Jews as a whole, but I've always just found this to be an odd—me and you have talked about this for years. In fact, I remember whatever it was 10 years ago when you came on the show when we first started podcasting together. We used to talk about these things where there'd be like the—in fact, some of them were like Bari Weiss clips and stuff like that, but where she'd be talking about antisemitism and all of this. And I always feel like, okay, but if you're gonna have this conversation, at least just have the conversation. Just be honest about it. Let's actually talk about this.
Smith is referring to an episode of his podcast I wrote about in 2020, in which he argues that the best way to fight antisemitism is to concede that Jews are disproportionately responsible for the death of society. He makes roughly the same argument here: you gotta admit that the antisemites have some good points.
Smith: And that doesn't mean you have to come to the conclusion that, yeah, it's right to hate Jews or something like that. In fact, but I don't really think too many people are seriously arguing that. [Ed. note: sure they are; Smith had one of them on his podcast in October.] But you go, "Hey, I mean, open immigration has been a disaster for America. It's been a disaster for Europe"—and it is particularly in Europe in a sense, you ever look at the projections, Rob, that it's like we're only a few decades away from like Irish people are gonna be a minority in Ireland, British people are gonna be a minority in Britain, Swedes a minority in Sweden.
And that is—look, I could look at this a lot of different ways and I can understand—again, I grew up in New York City. I'm not—I don't know. I can understand people going, "Yeah, what difference does it make? What does it matter if this changes or that changes or whatever?" But on some level you're like, "Yeah, but maybe that's kind of profoundly fucked up."
"Okay, well, hey, we're a part of this group, it's like 2% of the population in America, much less than that globally. And yeah, we came in and we advocated for all these policies that resulted in this because we thought it was better for us."
Irish people—first off, Ireland's a great example just because they have none of the white guilt or shouldn't have any of the white guilt that plagues so many of these other countries. Ireland never dominated anyone. It's just, never did anything. They did fucking—as far as I know, they didn't have a slave trade. They never conquered anyone. They were just getting their asses kicked by the British. That was their entire style. And Irish people, real deal fucking fought and died for their independence, for their autonomy, for their people to continue. And then if a bunch of politicians against the will of the Irish people just decided to completely change it so that Ireland goes extinct, well, you could certainly see where a lot of people would have a problem with that.
Bernstein: Muslims don't even eat potatoes. Or drink. Talk about the end of Ireland.
Smith: That's true. You brought in a bunch of people who don't drink to Ireland. [Ed. note: as of the 2022 census, there were fewer than 100,000 Muslims in Ireland, out of 5.1 million people, of which 86% are white.)
And then you're gonna sit there and go like, "Okay, well, hey, we're a part of this group, it's like 2% of the population in America, much less than that globally. And yeah, we came in and we advocated for all these policies that resulted in this because we thought it was better for us."
All right, but if that's the case, then I just don't see how the next thing you wouldn't say is like, "So I understand why we take a lot of heat for that. I understand why that pisses a lot of people off.” Because isn't it kind of obvious? Isn't that obvious why that would get some people to go, "Oh, that was kind of fucked up?" And I don't know. I don't think that's right.
We'll fast forward past a bit where he brings up the case of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, acknowledging that maybe it's good not to send people back to their deaths—"but you can't extrapolate from that that therefore you can take in tens of millions of people. It's just a lot of these things don't work like that. And I really do think the major problem with immigration is the sheer numbers.”
Smith insists, of course, that he's not arguing any particular racial group is so bad in and of itself. He magnanimously takes issue with the right’s demonization of Muslims, reasoning that he grew up alongside Pakistani and Afghan immigrants who actually loved America and baseball and waved little American flags. “There's a difference between importing immigrants who go through a process and get a lawyer and pay a fee and do a thing, and then just taking millions from a war-torn region,” he says, bringing it back to the Jews: “We ended up doing a whole lot of the latter. And yeah, if you're advocating for that as it went down, yeah, you're kind of caught with your pants down now that everybody realizes it was a big, huge mistake. That's gonna lead towards some people resenting you for advocating for those policies.”
After a brief word from his sponsor, the organic chip brand MASA, he asks what his cohost thinks:
Bernstein: Even in the case of, because I've had this, someone breaks up with someone, got a crash on your couch, it's a year later and you're like, "Hey, you were supposed to crash on the couch. It's a year later." And there's something to be said when people come to countries because there's shenanigans in their country, that it's not like they pick up and go afterwards. Even the Holocaust Jews, I don't think they were looking to go back. Or the Syrian refugees, I don't think they're looking to go back.
There's something to be said for like, "Hey, you've got a bit of an emergency situation." So I feel like we're not comfortable enough with the concept of like a second class citizenship or even maybe like safe areas of internment or something. I don't know. It seems like there is a bit of a middle ground between, "all right, it's not safe for you out there anymore, so you can be here forever," versus "you can ride out this wave, but you can't stay."
Smith: Yeah, no, that's a very good point. That's a very good point. It doesn't have to be the extreme of either.
Let’s be clear: that’s Smith agreeing with Bernstein that perhaps immigrants should be given second-class citizenships or confined in internment camps.
Now we reach the biological racism part of the show, which is also the transphobia part of the show:
Smith: I also just think, I think that generally speaking, right, this is broad brush here, but generally speaking, I think the left wingers in general cartoonishly make everything environmental, but there's also a tendency on the right, particularly on the far right, to make everything genetic. And I think now this is maybe like the most centrist view I have, but the truth is like you're always getting it wrong if you say it's all nurture or you say it's all nature. Because it's always both. It's always a mix of both. And actually nurture is very, very important. Your environment matters a lot.
It's not everything. There is such a thing as genetics, there is biological realities. Now obviously you could all think of environments or, excuse me, you could all think of examples where the left does this like to a cartoonish level. Obviously the trans issue is the most obvious one where it's like, guys, you can't, like there is a scientific reality here and you can't just wish that away because you don't like the way it makes you feel. Like, whatever. It's just you're arguing—it's like, I'm a man, but I feel like I'm a woman, therefore I'm a woman. Well, however you feel that person should be treated, just like no, you don't get to just say your feelings trump reality.
And of course people on the left, if you were to ask why it is that there's such a higher crime rate in the black community than the white community, or if you were to ask why Africa is so poor and Europe is so rich, immediately they have to go to environmental factors. That just has to be the answer. It's oppression, imperialism, something. Something was done to them. There's no way this group could be here and this group could be here in any field for any reason other than environment, which is silly. There are differences between different groups of people. But at the same time, I think right wingers have a tendency to really downplay environment.
Let’s fast-forward again through the bit where, to make the point that nurture matters too, he explains that if he and his wife raised “the worst Bin Ladenite head-chopper running the Syrian government” from childhood, the guy would not be chopping heads off: “He would be a functioning member of society because we would love him and raise him right.”
We’re in the presence of a great mind here.
Smith: So in other words, if you take the one member of ISIS as a newborn one day old baby and you give them a loving, nice environment, he's not gonna turn into a member of ISIS. But if you bring all of ISIS over here and then ISIS just raises their kids, you just get ISIS over here. You get my point? So it's not—when you bring in small numbers of people, the pressure is to assimilate, to fall in line. But when you bring in huge numbers of people, you end up with Minnesota. They don't come over and assimilate. They come over and they do their own Somali thing here with our government, you know what I mean? And so this really is—I think the failed logic of this mass immigration is that just because something works in small doses doesn't mean it can scale.
A bit of context: Smith is one of many comedian-podcasters dazzled by the YouTuber Nick Shirley, whom the right has credited with exposing massive welfare fraud by Somali-owned childcare centers in Minnesota. Shirley's viral video purporting to do this was a sham, but that didn’t stop the federal government from freezing certain childcare funds to Minnesota and four other blue states.
The other comedians enamored of Shirley include Theo Von, who mentioned him in a podcast with Bernie Sanders yesterday (on the alleged fraud: “who even cares about paying taxes anymore if we're just gonna let them slip out of the bottom?”) and Matt McCusker, who said in yesterday’s Patreon-exclusive episode of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast: “Guy’s a fucking boss. I’m back to my fucking right-wing grift now. Dude, what he did was so fucking important.”
Back to Dave Smith (with apologies for his use of an ableist slur):
Smith: And so even like when people would say, "Oh, America is a country of immigrants or something like that. "It's like, yeah, to some degree we are. That doesn't mean there's no limit to how many we can take in. That doesn't mean that—it's not deduced—it's almost like, and this is why I did that debate last year at the SoHo Forum, because I just think this is an important topic for libertarians, particularly, to get good on, is that even if you want to say something like in theory, if you were gonna go make the economic argument that freedom of movement, goods and labor all being able to cross borders is more economical or something like that. It's like, okay, how about this? Is there any theory other than like retarded leftism, egalitarian, "everything is environmental down to even your gender or your species" or whatever, how far you want to take the logic.
"You let 30, 40, 50 million people into the country illegally, it's like, 'Ah, shit. Well, what are you gonna do? How the fuck are you gonna get rid of that many people?'"
Aside from that retarded way of looking at the world, if we were to get—is there anything that tells you—let's say we were to bring in 10 million people from Canada or we were to bring in 10 million people from Okinawa, are you telling me that's exactly the same? There's no difference? Why? What would you deduce that from? They're obviously like—they're different nations and different races and different religions and different cultures and different lots of things. So I think it's reasonable to think it might be different. Without even making a value judgment, like better or worse. Again, if you're taking in some people from Sweden or if you're taking in some people from war-torn Syria, I think there might be a difference. And I will make a value judgment on that one. I think one's worse.
And so like, now we sit here and one of the things, and I think this is what's very frustrating to a lot of people like us, is that what you're seeing with like these ICE raids and just like how stupid and kind of cruel the whole thing is, is that you go like, well, this is the problem with a policy like mass migration. It's kind of different than any other policy because it's really, really hard to undo. What can you do now? You let 30, 40, 50 million people into the country illegally, it's like, "Ah, shit. Well, what are you gonna do? How the fuck are you gonna get rid of that many people? " Essentially, you can't. I mean, Trump can do—so instead, what Trump can do is have this performative cruelty without really dealing with the problem.
Finally he comes back to the Jews:
Smith: And anyway, listen, this shouldn't be something that Jews get blamed for because there's a lot of Jews who oppose this shit and there's a lot of non-Jews who were right there supporting it as well. But those people who supported open borders for all of these years, or those people who supported this mass migration policy, there's gonna be backlash and resentment over that because it was a bad idea. It was bad policy and the results have been pretty disastrous. So you're gonna get heat for that.
And if you want to have an honest conversation about that, then fine, let's do it. But to just sit there and say, "Wow, it's racism, it's conspiracy theories and racism." Well, the thing is, right, Rob? As we just kind of showed you, if you just listen to what Miriam Adelson and her friend there are saying, that would sound like an antisemitic conspiracy theory if me or you just said it, right? They would call that an antisemitic conspiracy theory, except the Jews in question are saying it themselves and broadcasting it.
So again, I've always said, if you're talking about real-deal Jew hatred, as me and you would define it, like normal people actually define it as hating a group of people or blaming members, blaming people for an immutable characteristic when they themselves are not guilty of anything—okay, if you want to have a conversation about the rise in Jew hatred, how the fuck do you ever put out that fire if you can't even start by having the conversation? You can't even just actually talk about it and go, "Okay, well, this is the thing and this is what people are fucking angry about and here's where they got a legitimate point, here's where they go a little bit too far." But all the Sam Harris guys, all the Bari Weisses, all the Miriam Adelsons, all the Mark Levins, all they want to do is just call you names, say, "You're a racist, you're a bigot." It's like, all right, when was the last time that ever shut anyone up?
It’s an interesting place to land. Smith’s ultimate position is that it’s not antisemitic to blame mass immigration and the resulting decline of western civilization on Jews, because Jews are indeed responsible for mass migration and the resulting of western civilization; what would really be antisemitic is to hate Jews simply for being Jews. Ah! Well, okay then.
As always, you can find Dave Smith every Monday at The Stand as part of the Legion of Skanks podcast.
Seth Simons
