When The Right Goes Too Far with Xaviaer DuRousseau

_THE INTERVIEW_

This interview was edited for clarity.

Ari: Did you see that Kanye West just released a music video for his song “Heil Hitler?” It's actually very catchy, unfortunately.

How did we get to this point where one of the biggest stars in the world, someone considered a music genius, is now making songs about that kind of content?

Xaviaer: I mean, it's called mental illness. It really pains me to my core to see the way he is going out — sadly. I'm from Chicago, I'm from South Side Chicago. As a kid, I used to think that I was Kanye. Kanye is one of the absolute GOATs, an undisputed legend, and to see him take this toll on his own career is really sad.

He's been on a steady decline for a while, especially since his mother died. He started drinking more, doing drugs more, and allegedly hanging out with P Diddy. P Diddy has always been a toxic individual. It's not something new. So all of this has been problematic.

I don't know if you've heard about the whole Woke Right thing, and not going to get too political too quickly, but when it comes to this Woke Right, look at some of the shady characters that Kanye had been hanging out with — a couple that I'm not even gonna name because I don't want these people coming after me at this point.

He started hanging out with some shady characters who really like to push this idea that he has to be as erratic as possible in order to get his point across. It's sad to see that he's taken the bait.

Ari: We're gonna talk about the Woke Right in a second, because I've been totally obsessed with following and trying to figure out exactly what Woke Right means, who it entails, and why it's happening.

But one of the interesting things about the whole Kanye saga is that once Kanye went off the rails, he had that first set of tweets about the Holocaust and about going after Jews and DEFCON and all that stuff.

I noticed that people still listen to Kanye, and if you go somewhere and people are partying, there are still Kanye songs playing. What does that say about our society? Does it mean that we're just disassociating the artist from the crazy stuff that they say? Or is there something deeper there?

Xaviaer: I have gone back and forth on this for a while. A lot of the time, I'll just skip a Kanye song because, as I'm listening to him, I can't help but think about how disappointed I am as a longtime, lifelong fan.

When it comes to art, there is a level of being able to differentiate the art from the artist. I would be lying to you if I sat here and said that if I heard Kanye West classics, I wouldn’t still sit there and vibe. I can't sit here and pretend like I haven't loved this artist for so long.

But at the same time, I don't subscribe to the ideology, obviously, that Kanye West has. Would I run and listen to a new album of his at this point? No. But the music that I already have a relationship with — I'm not going to allow him to take that away from me. The joy that I have gotten from a lot of his hit songs, I'm not gonna take that away.

Am I going to promote a Kanye West song any time soon? No. So I don't think that it's necessary for people to go out of their way to never listen to him again. It's important to realize this is not someone that we should look up to in the same way. Kanye used to be one of those people — not only did I listen to his music, but I would love to hear his cultural commentary.

I would love to know what Kanye thought about certain situations, or what he thought about fashion, or what he thought about all these different things in the culture.

But now I would never seek his approval for anything, or his guidance for anything, or his perspective on anything. I have completely shut down that part of my fan behavior toward Kanye West — that's just totally gone for me.

And I've realized in general, when it comes to celebrities, it's really important to stop subscribing to so much of their ideology. As influential as they may be, these are human beings, and sometimes human beings lose their mind.

Ari: In tandem with all this stuff, and you've been at the forefront of this, is that young Americans are moving towards the right. There’s this whole vibe shift happening, especially on social media.

What are you seeing now with the Woke Right? Which we can try to define in a second, but it looks like the right is now getting a little bit more complicated with what it believes: anti-Israel stuff, pro-Israel stuff, isolationism, etc.

Do you see people joining your brand of conservatism, which is more traditional in a way, rather than this more extreme Woke Right?

Xaviaer: The Woke Right has always been there. Now, suddenly, there's a buzzword that defines them. It's this fringe side of the right that is growing in prominence, obviously.

And how I define Woke Right is people on the right, typically the far or the fringe right, who are displaying the same behaviors as the far and the fringe left.

We all know the horseshoe theory. If you don't, it's basically the further you go, whether it's further left or further right, it tends to horseshoe and become a mirror of each other, just from different perspectives.

Woke Right behavior typically has to do with excessive cancel culture, refusing to fact-check, blatant hypocrisy, and just refusing to examine anything with nuance.

The way you can tell that you're about to hear something that's Woke Right is that you'll usually hear it prefaced with the phrase "if the roles were reversed" or "if it were the other way around.”

That is inherently saying that you are going to take the foundation, the approach, and the mentality of the far left and use that as the standard of your own perspective. And that's what we're seeing a lot of on this fringe Woke Right.

It's definitely something to fight. It's something that frustrates me because my full-time job is being in the political commentary space. It's very frustrating for me as someone who has tried to bring more people from the left over to the same side of the right, and then they're coming over, they go on X, and then they see these Woke Right characters.

The reality is that most of these people are just online. Most of these people live in basements — they're fringe. They don't go outside or see the air. These are not people who you would interact with often. These are the basement incels. That's how I describe them.

The people that you will meet out and about in public or during your day-to-day, more often than not, if they are conservative or right-leaning, they're the more sane side of the right wing.

That's the side that's popular, that's the side that's MAGA, that's the typical conservative, somebody who is much more practical. The majority is still practical. The majority of the right is still right of center. This far fringe Woke Right — they might be the loudest, but they're surely not the majority.

And it's the same thing with the left. You meet your average liberal who leans left. They're not the radical leftists that you see online. It's just the ones that are radical tend to be the loudest. So we can't allow the fringe side of either side to define that entire part of the spectrum.

Ari: When I put myself in the shoes of these young people who right now might be getting into politics and might be starting to pay attention after the “podcast election,” and I go on X and start looking through what people are saying, the Woke Right are saying some pretty crazy things.

It's picking up engagement. It looks interesting. It's different from the usual mainstream political conversation.

Do you think it’s a problem that younger generations are attracted to that type of content? What do you think is going to happen there?

Xaviaer: It is very concerning because so many people are coming over to the right. Two things can possibly happen. There are going to be people who come to the right, and then they just go down that rabbit hole and become the far fringe right because that is what's entertaining online.

Or, there are going to be people who start to come over to the right — and this is what I think is going to be more common if it doesn't get properly addressed — they're going to see the far fringe right and be completely turned off and then go back to the left.

I always say, as quickly as we won the culture, we can lose the culture 10 times faster. I need people to understand that reality.

The reason I feel it's becoming such a problem right now with the Woke Right gaining prominence is because of how the pendulum tends to work. When you are in a position where you are going against the grain, when your perspective starts to become the mainstream, the only way that these political commentators feel like they can maintain relevance is if they go more extreme or become more unhinged.

For the last four or five years, it was against the grain to have any conservative views at all. If you simply said that there are only two genders, you were edgy and cool. If you said that BLM was a scam, then, wow, you are so rebellious. How dare you!

But now that people are realizing the gender stuff went too far. BLM is factually, objectively a scam. Now that that has become the normal popular opinion and something that's a normalized discussion, a lot of these people felt like they were losing relevance.

They were losing views, they weren't getting the clicks that they were getting before. So they decided to go more fringe and more extreme in order to keep themselves in the headlines.

And unfortunately, it's working.

Ari: That's a fascinating way to look at it. I'm seeing a lot of those people who decided to take that route, especially after October 7, and maybe take a serious anti-Israel, anti-Jew type of rhetoric on their podcasts. They got so many viewers. They're still leading the podcast charts.

It's scary that so many people are actually tuning into that and taking that in as serious content and conversation, and the fact that these people are making money off of it. There's a really great incentive structure for them to do that, which is pretty wild.

You've been leading the conversation online about the rhetoric coming from the anti-Israel left and right. What do you see happening there? How did the right start going anti-Israel?

Xaviaer: I think a lot of it is fringe. I'm at the point where I will entertain almost any conspiracy. I'll at least look into it because so many conspiracies are true, but tend to be overlooked for a long time. But a lot of people have taken it too far.

A lot of people have just gotten so excited at the thought of a conspiracy. You throw any conspiracy out there, and they just take it and they run with it, and they don't fact-check. They just go with whatever is gonna be more entertaining and whatever in their mind in the moment tends to make sense.

A lot of people on this far fringe right, they take conspiracies, they don't fact-check, they don't look deeper into anything. They don't look objectively at the other side. They only try to research for confirmation bias. So a lot of people have just gone this more conspiracy theory route.

Then you also have the reality that, unfortunately, the truth is really hard to find. We may live in the age of information, but the truth tends to be really inaccessible a lot of the time.

I feel fortunate that I went to Israel and I learned the reality of what was going on in the conflict before October 7. Post October 7, you go online, and it’s so difficult to find accurate information.

You go on TikTok, for example, and you search Israel, it's going to show all these different things about apartheid and about being racist, and you'll see that they have Muslim quarters, and people will start saying, “Oh, the Muslim quarters are where the Muslims are forced to live.”

People don't dare to go and actually look deeper into it and start to realize that it's factually not apartheid.

There are Arabs in the Israeli government. The Muslim quarters — it's not where Muslims have to live. There are people who aren't even Muslim who live there. It's like in America, where you have places like Little Italy, Little Haiti, Chinatown, Koreatown. It's just a concentrated area of that culture.

People don't look deeper at the actual substance. They just run with a narrative that is more convenient to either their conspiracy or to the confirmation bias that they already seek.

Ari: What did you see in Israel that surprised you or made you look at the whole conflict differently? What are your takeaways from being someone who was actually there and able to compare what you see in the news versus what you see there on the ground?

Xaviaer: There are two sides to that. When I went before October 7, I didn't really have much of a perspective on Israel. I was just there on vacation, and I was there to learn what the culture was all about.

I didn't know much about the history, and one of the first things that shocked me was that I expected Israel to be an extremely white country. People try to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict look as if it were white people versus black people.

Then you get to Israel, it's 50 shades of brown over there. It's the most multicultural place I have ever seen. You hear so many languages, you see so many people interacting. You see so many black people there. You see Christians there. You see Muslims there. You see a lot more than just Jewish culture there.

That was really fascinating to me. I also realized how cool and helpful people are there and how out of their way Israelis will go to help someone who's visiting or help their neighbor. It's a different type of community there compared to anything I've seen in my entire life.

After October 7, I still to this day think a lot of people don't realize how disgusting October 7 was and how brutal the attack was. I went to the Gaza envelope twice. I went on two different trips.

I watched a 47-minute film, which is a compilation of different footage from October 7, seeing how Hamas would call their family members, bragging about the fact that they just killed all these Jewish people and bragging about all the horrors.

You see just how deeply rooted the hatred is. When you go there and you actually see the reality of everything that happened — and I do wish more people were educated about it because there are a lot of people who are vocal about the situation who still to this day don't even know what October 7 was.

I tell this story often about when I snuck in with my friend Cam Higby to the UCLA encampments that were happening a year ago. There was a Zionist counter-protest outside that encampment.

I saw these students going over and saying, What is this video? Is this the IDF bragging about what they did to Palestinians? They had no idea what it was.

When I said, “That's footage from October 7,” these five kids who had spent two weeks inside of this encampment sharing gender neutral poop buckets, they looked me directly in the eye and said, “What's October 7?” That blew my mind. These people are so passionate about what they've heard online, but they're passionate with no foundation of real, credible research.

Ari: That's insane. It's very hard for me to wrap my head around how a lot of these people don't know about October 7 and the full extent of it.

On October 7, Twitter was filled with all these crazy, insane videos. People were like, Is this stuff even real? What's going on there? The day after that, all those videos were pretty much gone.

And then the anti-Israel narrative starts going. That's one way that those people were able to miss the crucial facts that are on the ground.

What do you think these people — maybe college students or people who are vehemently anti-Israel or even anti-Jewish — what do you think they need to see in order to make them think differently?

Xaviaer: It depends on the person. There are some people who I wish would actually go to Israel — I wish everybody would. I strongly encourage people, if they're truly passionate about it, to go to Israel. Go there and see it yourself.

A lot of people think it's way harder to go to Israel than it is. Just book the flight and go. Go do your research in person.

That's why I went 90 days after October 7, because I wanted to see with my own eyes. People were denying at that point that October 7 had even happened. So I went there to see it for myself.

There are some people who really do want to see the truth. If that's the case, read books. Nobody wants to go to a library these days. Going on TikTok for all of your research — I get it.

I get that TikTok is the most convenient, but sometimes the most convenient is not the proper way to research. Hell, you can even use ChatGPT. That will give you a better perspective on research than going on TikTok.

Stop researching with confirmation bias and maybe seek out sources that aren't inherently going to be biased. Look at the more objective sources because there are some outlets where you can find it.

Ari: I totally agree with you.

Xaviaer: PragerU has a bunch of videos. PragerU has a huge foundation, even pre-October 7, that'll teach you a lot about Israel. It teaches you about the fact that there were five different attempts for a two-state solution. It'll teach you about the origin of Israel and what Israel stands for.

It's so funny that people try to make it seem like Israel is this oppressive state, which is so ironic because they are the beacon of light, bringing democracy and bringing tolerance to the Middle East. A lot of the allegations against Israel — they describe the countries around Israel, not Israel itself.

Ari: We're going to link to PragerU in the interview, so we'll make sure that everyone sees it.

To your point about having people actually visit Israel, I think that is really critical, and I've been there a handful of times. My biggest impression from the first few times I was there was that you see a society where people just want to live.

They are clearly very serious about building a very solid society, taking this country that didn't exist 80 years ago and building it into something that looks modern. Then you're eating at different places, or driving down the road, and realizing these are the same spots where terrorist attacks took place.

I was getting ice cream at some mall, and there was a plaque there because a few years ago, there had been a massive terror attack where many people died. Or you drive past different schools, elementary schools, or preschools that were exploded, and the remains of the schools are still there.

It's hard for a lot of people to imagine what the reality is in Israel, where the threat to life is such a real thing, and that people are just defending themselves most of the time.

Is it right to think that these people view Israel as attacking for no reason? Do they actually see it that way?

Xaviaer: They do. A lot of people don't realize that Israel is always just trying to defend itself. This was how it was described to me.

I went to a military base while I was there this last week. Something that was said really stuck out to me: “The IDF fights because they love the people behind them. Hamas fights because they hate the people in front of them.” That really shows the difference in their approach.

You learn true stories about the IDF. On my show, Respectfully, Xaviaer, I actually interviewed an IDF soldier named Noy Lieb. He was explaining to me the amount of integrity that the IDF — they go out of their way — to have. And the way that they do everything possible to save lives.

I saw this with my own eyes, where there are Palestinians and even people who try to conduct terrorism, who get hurt in Israel, and they get taken to the hospital, and they're still given care. It's a huge, debated topic in Israel, but these hospitals will take care of them.

When I was there 90 days after October 7, there were Palestinians there who came over to conduct terrorism and were being treated in Israeli hospitals. Personally, I would never — they're better than me in that sense.

My hat's off to them, but this is the type of preservation of life and forgiveness that Israel has on their side of the aisle that the other side just does not reflect.

Ari: To that point, so many people don't realize that the south of Israel that was attacked on October 7, those people were the absolute most leftist part of Israel that wanted peace with Gaza.

They wanted to bring the two-state solution to make it happen. They wanted to live with them side by side. They had this really fairytale vision of being able to live together, and those were the people that the Palestinians attacked. Pretty crazy stuff.

Have you seen the whole Dave Portnoy thing that's been happening recently?

Xaviaer: I have not. I'm a little bit off the grid right now, and I actually do wanna say one more part about the conversation we were just having. In this interview I had with Noy, one of the stories he told me really stuck out to me, just to show the difference in the mentality.

If you go to a 7-year-old girl's home in Israel and they have a 7-year-old daughter, and you see the posters that she has on the wall, she's likely going to have pop stars or maybe Justin Bieber or different people that you would expect a young child to be looking up to.

When Noy, this IDF soldier, went through Gaza and he was going into different homes, he saw a 7-year-old girl or a young girl's room. The posters on the wall were actually of Hamas members — literal terrorists.

You have little boys who are looking at these Hamas members who literally put nothing but hate into the world. That's who they're looking up to. “I want to be like them.” That's what they're educated to idolize.

And then you have little girls who romanticize terrorists, and that's part of why, just fundamentally, their baseline values are rooted in hatred. That is something that needs to change before you can even think about having a two-state solution.

Just look at their chants, chanting "from the river to the sea." They have no intention of having coexistence or peace with Jews, Christians, or any Israelis. They simply want to wipe all of Western society off the map, not just Israel. They want to come after America next.

Going back to Dave Portnoy, I have not because while I was in Israel, I tried my best not to look at politics. I needed a break.

Ari: Good for you. We're not gonna get into that. My final question here is, it's been crazy since October 7 in terms of watching all of the sentiment in America. We're still battling it today, the same way we were two years ago.

Do you think this somehow goes away? Has America changed forever in terms of there being this very radical, young element in the country? What do you think the next few years or the next few decades look like?

Xaviaer: Not to sound pessimistic, but there's never going to be a point in America, at least not in our lifetime, where there aren't going to be radicals. Unfortunately, the American system of politics is inherently designed to keep us divided.

One of the differences between Israel and America, and not saying that Israel's political climate is perfect by any means — there's definitely a big divide between the left and the right there.

And mind you, there are 40 different registered political parties in Israel, in that small country, so not saying that their politics are perfect by any means, but because they have such an existential threat at all times, they're arguing about how they can move their country forward and try to unite. They're fighting for the ability to try to make their country better.

And America, we're not fighting to make our country better. We're fighting to win. We're fighting to stomp out the other side. The left's entire goal is to eradicate the right, and a lot of the right's entire goal is to eradicate the left.

Unfortunately, our system is not designed for us to figure out what the best compromise is. It's only to try to win. It's perpetuated by the media.

A lot of the same large organizations, entities, and individuals that are the biggest donors, or even the owners of a lot of major right-wing media outlets, they're also owning the left-wing.

What is the best way of getting them to be the most profitable? If we're more divided.

People like to see this reality TV version of politics, and that's why our political climate has gotten so unserious. You have people who voted in the presidential election not on policy but on vibes, on personality. I don't care about the personality of a politician. I want to know if you are going to be the best thing for our country.

But that's not where we are anymore. Politics is all theatrics. It's literally political theater, and all that to say, the more our politics becomes unserious, the more you're going to see these radical characters trying to make themselves the center of the spotlight.

Ari: Is Gen Z going to bring more seriousness back into the American political landscape, or is it going to make it worse?

Xaviaer: Gen Z is at the very least going to make politicians become more authentic, or at least more transparent. A big reason why Kamala Harris fell through is because a lot of Gen Z saw through her, especially Gen Z males.

It's like constantly being told, “Hey, look over here at the social justice causes. Totally ignore the fact that our policies on the border, the economy, and all these different things have destroyed our society. Don't pay attention to that. Pay attention to the vibes over here. Why would you care about the economy crumbling when we have Beyoncé on stage, we have Megan Thee Stallion twerking?”

That doesn't work anymore. That's not going to work with Gen Z.

We want to actually see substance and Gen Z tends to get this bad rep of being totally unserious and yes, there are high schoolers that are, but when it comes to those that are college age — so I'm the very first month of Gen Z at 28 years old — what is my age range looking at?

We're looking at Jubilee videos, for example. The reason that Jubilee became so popular is that people like to see a range of discussion. People like not being adamantly told what we need to think, rather than having the ability to make decisions for ourselves.

We are the first generation to grow up knowing that you can't just trust the mainstream media because back in the day, the media used to give you the information so you could make your own conclusion.

But for far too long, what Gen X and Millennials became comfortable with is that mainstream media was giving them the conclusion, and then they just never sought out the actual information.

Gen Z is shifting that culture back. Gen Z is making politicians realize they need to come with more substance. That's why you saw President Trump going on podcasts, sitting down, and having conversations with people who are going to ask straightforward questions.

Yes, people wanted to see the vibes, but people actually cared about what Trump had to say, and I think that is why he ultimately walked away with the win in 2024.