There’s nobody quite like Michael Malice.
In 2006, before his ascendance to infamy in online-right circles, his life story was already the subject of Ego & Hubris, a graphic novel by Harvey Pekar - one of the most revered comic book writers in history. His own books, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, The New Right, and The White Pill: A Tale Of Good And Evil, exhibit his irreverent-yet-tender style and have won acclaim across the political space. Today, he hosts his own podcast, “YOUR WELCOME”, and is on the verge of publishing his first graphic novel - Unwanted.
Why did we invite him on?
”People think dumber people have fewer facts, or are just slower to understand things. That’s not true - they process things differently, and it’s deleterious to democracy. In times passed, the Dean of Havard Law would be on a pedestal. Now, you can see their tweets.”
Michael’s a staple of our trips to the states. Previously, we’ve hosted him to debate anarchy and recount the histories of McCarthyism and the Soviet Union.
It feels like every time we come to America, the country’s in a more puzzling place. Michael - as an outsider in almost every way you could imagine - has a remarkable ability to put the baffling and alien in cogent, empathetic terms, and we hoped he would apply his one-of-a-kind lens to current proceedings. This time, we wanted to have a more free-roaming chat, whether that be on Iran, Israel, the upswing in the ‘New Right’, and the future of American politics.
When Michael sat down across from us in full North Korean dictator-style regalia, we knew we’d come to the right man.
What did we talk about?
The fracturing of the American right, and more specifically the ‘MAGA coalition’, has been a subject of discussion for approaching a year now. Just when you think the civil war can’t get any more intense, another scandal worsens things. Iran, then Epstein, then Iran again, it feels like Trump cannot go more than a couple of weeks without alienating a meaningful percentage of his base.
Michael’s not surprised.
”Human beings define themselves by opposition. We see this in non-political situations. If you have a party with kids and adults, they see themselves as different. If the adults leave, it’s boys vs girls. You shouldn’t be surprised by the Trump coalition falling apart. The common enemy is gone. We are not truth-seeking animals; we are narrative-seeking animals. We don’t run a true-false filter; we run an us-them filter. I don’t know where this goes, but I know it will be entertaining.”
’Where this goes’ is ultimately a question: who inherits MAGA after Trump?
To a section of the coalition, ‘greatness’ is measured in might. With Trump’s election, the time of America rolling over and letting itself be trampled upon was over. Its power was no longer implied, but real, and the movement’s future should be defined by an increased capacity to throw the country’s weight around and shape the world in its image.
To others, MAGA was a promise - a promise of a protectionist, non-interventionist reinvention of the American body politik. MAGA means less presence, not more. Their image is that of a concentrated brilliance. No more empire.
Michael sees things much more simply.
”MAGA is whatever Trump says. It’s not a well-thought-out, Aristotelian philosophy; it’s a combination of preferences, most of which I think are good.”
As it stands, the heir apparent to the Trump’s electoral dynasty is his veep: J.D Vance.
In Michael’s words, this divide is “screwing him up.”
”He’s trying to walk two tight-ropes simultaneously. He’s trying to be Trump Jr, when this clearly makes him very uncomfortable. I don’t know how he navigates this in terms of getting the nomination. 2028 is not a lock for him.”
Say what you will about his politics - J.D. is no dummy. In 2024, Trump might have been the star, but Vance had the indispensible supporting role - he gave credence to Trump’s ideas that the President himself couldn’t lend them. So far, he’s done a good job of spinning the plates - deferring to Trump in such a way that shows support while still granting himself plausible deniability if it goes wrong. Konstantin puts it to Michael: isn’t that enough?
”J.D. is extremely smart, but in all the ways that don’t matter in politics. Trump only selects for loyalty. You look at the first administration and see who’s still there, and there’s 3 of them. He’s hyper-sensitive to people talking badly about him. If J.D. tries to throw him under the bus, Trump won’t be able to keep his mouth shut.”
With war breaking out in Iran, the rubber has well and truly met the road. To one wing of the coalition, it’s one of Trump’s finest political achievements - Ben Shapiro recently called it the “single bravest foreign policy move of [his] lifetime”, and he’s not alone. After all, what could be more MAGA that deposing the violently anti-US Ayatollah and laying the groundwork for a flourishing pro-West democracy in the Middle East?
Yet, to just as much (if not far more) of the coalition, it’s a line in the sand. Any semblance of support for Trump they might have had is gone now. A great deal of this attitude is rooted in the belief that Trump, despite all his promises to the contrary, has failed to put America first. The Iran war, to them, is the most irrefutable proof yet that the President is putting the interest of another country before his own: Israel.
From his outsider vantage, Michael can see both sides.
”It’s hard to make the case that the Iranian war is in America’s interest. It’s also not at all the case that Iran was an imminent threat to America. But people fall into these traps where they blame everything on one factor. ‘It’s the trans people’, ‘It’s Israel’, ‘It’s Trump’ - if any of them vanished, all the problems would go away. If Israel vanished today, I don’t think the American war machine would stop for one second. This is basic liberty analysis.”
Even if you take the Shapiro line of thinking, Iran’s liberation is no guarantee. America might well find itself in a less desirable position than it was in before. To Michael, it’s a near certainty.
”No matter how unpopular the President is, if a foreign nation took them out, America would rally around the Vice President. You’re not going to be in favour of the guys bombing you to oblivion … And when people, especially young men, feel a sense of desperation and have no ability to achieve anything, and think they can make their name elsewhere, they will.”
Several major commentators have been sounding the alarm regarding ‘blowback attacks’. And it’s not mere theory. Earlier this month, a bar in Austin was shot up by a man wearing a “Property Of Allah” hoodie - the incident is being investigated as a potential terror attack.
Just when you think Michael has settled into being appropriately serious…
”We’re at the point now where there are so many mass shootings, the only difference would be that they speak Farsi instead of being trans.”
Francis argues that we in the West don’t understand the Islamist mindset.
We presume everyone thinks like us, even when it’s radically apparent that that isn’t true. For evidence, Francis points to their extreme tactics in- ”What do you mean by ‘extreme?’”
Michael’s question disarms us.
