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The Nick Fuentes interview with Piers Morgan was a good demonstration of how boomers do not understand Gen Z rhetorical tactics at all. One example is the “agree-and-amplify” strategy.
This strategy came from The Red Pill/PUA community. The idea is that girls will try to throw you off your game by making some unfounded criticism, to test how secure/powerful you are as a man. It’s called a “shit test.”
The “agree-and-amplify” strategy says the best approach is to do exact that. Example: Girl says “Wow that’s a big truck, are compensating for something?”
Loser response (no getting laid): “No, my penis is slightly above average! I just like trucks!”
Agree-and-amplify: “Hahah yeah, micropene. 1 inch. It’ll have you screaming tho.”
The latter projects confidence, she knows your joking of if she believes you, you can neg her about it. She made it sexual and gave you an opening. Etc. All in good fun.
Fuentes did the same thing repeatedly, and Morgan just does not grasp it at all.
For example, paraphrasing:
Morgan: “Are you racist?”
Loser response: No, I have friends who are black! I just think [crime statistics]!
Morgan: Sounds like you’re racist.
Game, set, march. Better is the Fuentes agree-and-amplify:
Fuentes : “Haha yeah. I don’t want any black people around”
Morgan: [clutches pearls]
Fuentes: I have black friends though. They are also concerned about [crime statistics]
Morgan: But you said you were racist!
It makes it feel like Morgan is not in on the joke. It denies his moral frame that any hint of racism = bad. He needs to come up with a more concrete argument. When he instead tries fails to re-establish the frame through repetition, it doesn’t land.
I was reminded in a way of the classic Charlie Kirk owning libs on campus. The key is that the libs did not really come into the bait understanding Kirk’s beliefs or tactics, but Kirk understood theirs inside and out. This let Kirk win easily every time.
Morgan is a wiley veteran and won some parts of the interview. But overall he did not know how to handle Nick’s tactics at all.
In the end, it is turning into a debacle for Piers Morgan. As the dust settles, he comes across as the evil defender of a decrepit regime going after some dude’s dad. He was forced to pretend to not understand basic statistics, causing him to appear either stupid or malicious, depending on your gullibility. In many ways, he was the perfect heel employing dirty tactics to get an edge.
And to make matters worse, his decision to focus on the Catholic Nick’s virginity has backfired horribly, with everyone learning about his wife cheating on him with everyone from internet randos to the literal pool boy. How true are these accusations? I honestly don’t know, but they are already cemented into the hivemind’s collective beliefs.
I could really never stand the rambling nature of Nick’s show and never watched more than five minutes, but I agree with most of what he said on Tucker and Piers. On my scorecard, total groyper victory. Curious if others agree.
finally got around to watching the interview. On balance I think Fuentes out performed but made a lot of errors. On the school shooting thing I think he needed to explain the per capita thing, when the fact check came back from Morgan and he said they both do school shootings at about the same rate he should have said "so your example of whites misbehaving is the one area the behave as poorly as blacks" I was baffled by him not making the point.
I was shocked he didn't know the black vs white homicide rates off the top of his head. Any self-respecting internet racist should.
You can't just say the words "per capita" and act like it resolves the question. You need to say the actual per capita numbers. That is what resolves the discussion.
In some parts he had clever prepared responses and seemed to navigate the conversation pretty well, but that's such a basic thing. It's like watching someone sink tons of three pointers but can't even dribble.
Which in turn feeds the narrative regarding Fuentes being a "Fed"/"Trojan Horse"/"Controlled Opposition" that you'll see in more conservative aligned spaces. The fact that this interview is coming from a nakedly progressive partisan like Piers Morgan only fans those flames.
Is piers Morgan a nakedly progressive partisan? My understanding is that he's what passes for a respectable centrist type in bonger land.
I don't know what he was like before coming to the US but my understanding is that he's a normal establishment progressive by the standards of Europe which puts him well into "far left" territory by the standards of US Politics.
I first became aware of him during the the 2012 election while he was at CNN where he described Mitt Romney as a dangerous far right authoritarian and claimed that the republicans were going end women's suffrage if they won. He was a outspoken supporter of woke cancel mobs and social media censorship through Obama's second and Trump's first terms, and nothing I've seen from him to date has made me think that he doesn't still hew to those views.
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Piers Morgan is a little bit complicated. He's middle-class, but not really upper middle-class. He's not as posh as he sounds, turns out he's half-Irish (so ironically both he and Fuentes were raised Catholic, at this stage I am starting to believe in the Papist World Domination Plot given how many in the public eye turn out unexpectedly to be "yeah Catholic background/raised Catholic") and only gets the double-barrelled name from his stepfather, who was a pub landlord:
So while "Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan" sounds rather posh, he's not really. He's probably personally a liberal, but he worked for the Murdoch newspapers so publicly he pushed a somewhat down-market pro-Tory line and mostly adopts whatever will grab headlines, so that means controversial/clickbait takes, be that very to the left or very to the right, whichever sells best at the moment. Here's a typical example of him talking out of both sides of his mouth:
Seemingly he's voted for both Conservatives and Labour candidates, depending on whatever the phase of the moon at the time was (or something):
So he started his career in journalism working for the Murdoch press, which is working-class/down-market pro-Tory right-wing. The News of the World was a pure scandal sheet, in my childhood during the late 60s/70s it was vaguely disreputable, racy type of paper you wouldn't admit to reading but bought on Sundays for all the scandal-mongering:
Morgan then leaves the centre-right paper for a centre-left paper, claiming he resigned of his own accord but more a case of "jump before he was pushed":
He moved into television presenting, and has continued his chameleon-like style of being friends with/never heard of them (according as the wind blows) regarding various celebrities and public figures, e.g. "Morgan was briefly a friend of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex before she became the Duchess of Sussex, but said she cut him off early in her relationship with Prince Harry. He has been a regular critic of the couple since then, alleging they are hypocrites and claiming the Duchess is a social climber."
He wore out his welcome in UK media circles, hence the move to the USA. Mostly he has a good nose for controversy and isn't afraid (whether deliberately or not) to look like an idiot in his pursuit of headlines. Because he is such a chameleon, I would say not to take very seriously any stance he holds on any topic, since give him ten minutes and he'll swing to the opposite position if that's more tenable for public interest/attention.
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Piers Morgan's a leftist, but not a progressive partisan. Like Bill Maher, he's very critical of the excesses of the far left (anti-white racism, misandry, trans women in sports, etc.).
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That's implausible because the two red lines for the feds are... extremely conservative attitudes towards women and antisemitism. Nick is, as far as I can tell, completely genuine- he's an antisemite, closeted homosexual, simply doesn't have the same concern about Hispanic immigration as the far far right(which is often hung up on stupidity like deporting a third of the country anyway).
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