Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow addressed high school students at Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit on Wednesday in Washington, DC.
Marlow advised young conservatives to familiarize themselves with American values, left-wing strategies, the consequences of immigration policies, threats to freedom from large technological firms, and the importance of grit.
1 -Learn American Values — And Know They Are Under Attack
Marlow drew on Dennis Prager’s conceptualization of American values depicted in Prager University’s The American Trinity, its three pillars being In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum, and Liberty.
Marlow said, “What are American values? I think we have the best value system on the planet. … It’s fairly simple what we stand for that’s unique and different from other countries, past and present. Thinking through what they are and then understanding that they’re mostly under attack by the institutional left – and even sometimes, by the conservative establishment, too, but mostly by the left.”
Marlow examined the motto of “In God We Trust”:
Think about how brilliant In God We Trust is as a motto. Not only does it show that we have a God-based ethical monotheistic society, but we’re not prescribing a specific religion, which would be too alienating and doesn’t tend to go well. Can you name for me a godless society, a purely secular society, that ends up improving? If you look at the most brutal regimes of the 20th century, [they have] something in common: godlessness. If you look at what’s happening in Europe, right now, they’re leaving the churches. It’s becoming entirely secular. They’re not reproducing, and what ends up happening is they’re losing their culture at a rapid rate that’s unprecedented. It’s not being discussed much in the establishment press. Part of it is because they don’t have that God-based value system.
Marlow described the ethos of e pluribus unum (from many, one): “This is a fantastic value, as well, because this is true multiculturalism. We’re living in a society that is accepting. We do like the idea of other cultures coming in, merging with our culture, assimilating together and growing, but the problem now is that the left is looking to divide people based off of culture.”
Marlow spoke about liberty: “What does liberty mean? I think it’s most embodied by the First Amendment, and I think there’s a war on the First Amendment. There’s a war on freedom of speech that’s taking place, and a lot of it, now, is taking place through these corporate boycotts; a lot of it led by big tech. Breitbart’s been subject to boycott after boycott over the last year and a half.”
The left’s values amount to “the opposite” of liberty, said Marlow. He remarked, “[Leftists] think they know better for what you should be reading [and] what content you should have at your disposal. When you guys try to get information, try to find alternatives to the establishment press.”
Marlow connected liberty to governors having the consent of the governed and representative government. He said, “We are a people with a government, not a government with a people. I think a lot of the people in the D.C. swamp — both sides — think of their role is to execute on their own behalf, to try to make their own personal lives better, to increase their lot in life. The goal is not to make it so that the people come up, so that the people have a greater rate of return, better quality of life, [or] more freedom.”
2 – Identity Politics: It’s All the Left Has
Marlow advised young conservatives to familiarize themselves with left-wing paradigms, criticizing the left’s political strategies. He said of leftists, “All they have is identity politics. What does that mean? It is dividing people by race, gender, and class.”
Marlow added, “They’re trying to move people as a unit in order to have a political end. This is all about politics. They do this to move voter blocks, to cut out individual liberty, and to move people without having them think freely for themselves. They’re using bullying tactics. What were trying to do in our movement is to enable individuals to think for themselves and think freely.”
Marlow also mocked the news media derision of Breitbart News as “racist” despite New York Times Magazine reporting its atypically diverse newsroom with a record of promoting women and minorities.
3 -Establishment Media, Politicians Hide Truth About Immigration
Marlow described the status quo of illegal immigration as fueling the Democrats’ voter base via demographic change: “The Democrat establishment wants, as Jay Leno puts it, undocumented Democrats. They want people to come in knowing that if they’re not going to vote, their children are going to be — if you want to call them anchor babies, or not — they’re going to end up voting Democrat, by and large. … Part of this is about trying to get new Democrat voters who will be taking in news sources that are primarily in Spanish. These news sources are going to convince them to vote Democrat, overwhelmingly. So that’s a big deal?”
Marlow added, “The establishment Republicans want cheap labor. That’s what that’s about.”
He went on, “If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a nation. How can you have a nation without sovereignty? How can you have sovereignty without a border? It’s all impossible, and it’s all illogical.”
Marlow criticized House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI): “Last I checked, we were supposed to have a wall at this point, Mr. Speaker of the House.”
4 – Masters of The Universe: Big Tech Is a Big Problem
“Big tech is a another problem,” said Marlow. “I could spend a lot of time on who we call the Masters of the Universe.” He spoke of technology companies censoring conservative content online via shadowbanning, demonetization, the misuse of 18-and-over paywalls, and manipulation of search results. These tools, he warned, can “swing elections.”
Marlow noted how Wikipedia — the world’s most-consulted information database — is replete with politically oriented misinformation.
He advised his audience to be aware of Google’s aggregation of user data and surveillance of its users.
5 – Have Grit: You Can Reach Your Dreams with Determination and Fight
Marlow recommended students adopt resilience in the face of political acrimony:
The last thing I want to talk about is something overarching, which is the concept of grit. I think that one thing that I’m very afraid of for your generation — my generation, too, I’m 32, a little older than you guys — is the concept of grit. … This is an ongoing theme in my life since I started to be a little bit political in high school, going into college, and of course, going into Breitbart. The left is not actually interested in what I have to say. They’re not interested in who I am. They’re only interested in calling me a racist, or an idiot, or a moron, or whatever it is. That’s the way they behave and it will never stop, because they don’t have arguments. They’re not going to want to debate you [or] take you on in the battle of ideas. Here’s the key though: It doesn’t matter.
…
Don’t get too addicted to your smart phones, and your air conditioning, and your meal delivery services. I know. It can all get our bellies very soft. You’ve got to get in the gym. You’ve got to work out your stuff. Start from a humble perspective. Be open-minded. Start at the bottom. You guys are not special … yet. But you can be special in this country with so much opportunity if you work hard, and you really do believe in a cause, and you fight for it, and you’re prepared — not only to not be lazy — but to show determination and willingness to get your hands dirty.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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