Episode 15: Internet Radicalization is a Danger to America

Today’s episode goes straight into the darkest corner of American life: how the internet is radicalizing our kids into political killers. This is not clickbait. This is about the attempted assassination of President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the alleged targeted murder of a young College Republican at Brown University, and the anonymous threats and hit lists that conservatives on campus are living under every single day.​

You will hear how anonymous apps, gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, Discord servers, extremist networks like 764, and even professors and media are grooming vulnerable Gen Z kids to believe that conservatives are “Nazis” who must be eliminated. This is a spiritual war as much as a political one, and if America does not wake up now—if we do not speak truth boldly, defend our youth, and put on the full armor of God—there will be more bloodshed. Buckle up, watch to the end, and then share this with someone who still thinks “it’s just the internet.”

Transcript

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What's up guys and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Now I know you're probably thinking oh my gosh this is a different setup. Y'all will be seeing a lot of different setups over the next month. I will be traveling a lot of different places while I am out of school so this is just the first of many new backgrounds that y'all will be seeing and you'll be seeing a lot from Arizona because I am so excited to announce that I will be going to AmFest to record some great content, new interviews, and tons and tons and tons of videos and content from some of the best speeches over the course of the event so I'm so excited to be bringing that to y'all this week. Now today we have a really deep topic that we're going to be talking about and that's going to be the online radicalization that is destroying America and that is destroying America's youth and I know this is something that a lot of older people really talk about and that the media has pushed but I think that we need to take a bit of a different look into it and a really deep dive into what's actually happening in America because we now have a ton of national tragedies that are being done by radicalized youth within this country. So in recent years we've seen the reality of the consequences of online radicalization and the violence that it promotes within the U.S. Everything from the attempted assassination of President Trump by Thomas Crooks. He was a young young man. The assassination of Charlie Kirk allegedly by Tyler Robinson who was also a young man. The Brown University shooting which I'm recording this on a Monday and I saw the news last night that they released the suspect and currently cannot find the perpetrator of the crime so we don't know who he is, how old he is, any of that information but still we have the Brown University shooting, the multiple attempted attacks upon ICE agents and border patrol agents, the arson on the Pennsylvania governor's mansion and the planned assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh a few years ago. So this is a really predominant issue. The political violence is alive and well in this country and I feel like we're aware of it but we try to push it to the back of our minds and like Charlie Kirk's assassination happens and it's really really big in the news. It's really really big in all of our hearts and then after two months it you know kind of dissipates and we're still all aware of it and still frightened by it but we go back to everyday life but this is something that really really needs to be addressed because as we saw on Friday it's not it's not going to stop and this isn't the great migration into the U.S. that we've been talking about, the Islamification of the U.S. that we've been talking about. These are real Americans that have genuinely been radicalized to hate certain groups and to want certain groups dead. So these are just a few examples of the violent attacks that we have seen from deranged radicals over the last couple of years and these are tangible. There are tons and tons of other examples. There are anonymous threats from online sources and social media specifically. We've talked a lot about YikYak, the online social media platform for college campuses that promises anonymity to users. There have also been other social media threats that aren't anonymous. We've they're literally if you go into the air traffic controller subreddit there are air traffic controllers they're genuinely trying to sabotage flights to make the Trump administration look bad. They have genuinely come out and said that they are going to sabotage the flight plans of Air Force One to kill President Donald Trump and these are legitimate threats upon our sitting U.S. president and upon his administration the the lives of Americans that they are threatening just to make his administration look bad which is absolutely ridiculous and absolutely deranged. Then we have the anti-ICE demonstrations that are leading to the physical attacks of ICE agents the prevention of them from doing their job from deporting violent criminals that are trying to kill Americans and trying to take advantage of American systems that are in place and attacking these ICE agents and Border Patrol agents vehicles as a means to prevent them from doing their job. We have looting, rioting, and burning during the BLM protests which literally resulted in the deaths of multiple African Americans. We had protests because of George Floyd's death that resulted in the death of other innocent African Americans not that I'm saying George Floyd is innocent because he wasn't but there are so many other examples too of the the not so tangible literal assassination assassination attempts this minded it's protest it's free speech when in reality it's violence and it's political violence and it's radicalization so political violence in America is rapidly growing and here is really the root cause of the issue so let's look at Gen Z. Gen Z is the first generation that has been raised predominantly online I am Gen Z and I am not the oldest of Gen Z by far I'm kind of on the older side but in the middle and I remember when my family had a VHS tape I remember how to use the VHS tapes and when the tape would get all messed up I remember when we transitioned to DVD players and they would get the scratches on them and then it was Blu-ray and then I was able to rent movies and buy movies on iPads and iPhones and I remember when my mom transitioned from her Blackberry with that little slide out keyboard or whatever and it like kind of was sideways and kind of was vertically and it was multi-purpose and really weird she transitioned from that to an iPhone it was a super big deal I remember when she got her first iPad and it was a super big deal and I got to play Minecraft on a portable device for the first time instead of playing internet games like PopTropica on my mom and dad's laptop and I remember when my school moved to iPads I remember how big of a deal it was that we got iPads in class for learning and we got to take them home and learn how to use them and had typing classes at school and all of that so I was part of this shift from you go outside and you play and you color and you learn how to knit and crochet I guess to this group of people that is predominantly online I very very distinctly remember this shift and the world looks I'm only 21 years old and the world looks so so different from when I was young and I tangibly remember this change and within this change I don't have siblings I don't have older siblings or younger siblings but within my generation a lot of my friends and my peers they do have older siblings and these siblings were more tech savvy so they were introducing friends of mine to things like Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and those were in the early days this is like 2011, 2012, 2013 then later when I got to high school you got Reddit, 4chan, Discord I'm sure they were around before I got to high school but that's really when I remember my friends talking about it and using it and then I never had like a console I always had a Wii I didn't have a PlayStation or Xbox or anything but you also had games in the early 2000s mid-2000s like Call of Duty which allowed players to use voice chat with each other they could communicate from far away places about the game that they were playing but it was completely unmonitored you can say whatever you want when you're on those video game voice chats and then in recent years you've gotten Fortnite, Roblox and this has completely globalized the entire network of young kids and even older adults that are playing these games it is completely globalized and completely connected for them to chat on mic for them to message each other through Discord, text, group chat however they choose to do it and these changes have allowed anyone and everyone to communicate whatever they want across state lines across country lines across everything and a lot of it is highly unregulated because they're not posting on social media where there are guidelines in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination we saw the true and utter depravity of these online communities we saw teachers, students, employees across the nation literally sharing their excitement over the murder of somebody that was conservative, Christian and who spoke common sense to the American population we saw people online reenacting his murder celebrating his murder and calling for more attacks on Republicans I saw a post that literally said great one down however many left to go it was truly depraved and it was truly truly horrific in the wake of vigils across the country and even on college campuses specifically on college campuses because I saw it firsthand students protested in person they protested a vigil for a man that was murdered in cold blood that was assassinated for sharing his beliefs they attacked conservatives in broad daylight one of my friends one of the members of our college Republicans executive board was slapped in the face with an F Trump sticker because we were out tabling and they made these anonymous threats online through YikYak through other forms of social media and I was the target of many of these threats so I am speaking as somebody who knows this firsthand who has experienced this firsthand and students were threatening me they were saying that they wanted to shoot me that they wanted to kill me that I deserved to die I was the target of a hit list that was allegedly spreading online I know very well the true depravity of these online communities and the radicalization that the internet can cause and unfortunately these individuals understand what constitutes a threat a threat is a direct target of a specific action upon a specific individual and their name is utilized and that action in person are being threatened at a specific location or at a specific time and unfortunately these people on the internet know that they know what a threat is so when you call law enforcement when you call people that can help you and they use a nickname because many of these online people did start using nicknames or they're not super specific or they leave off a time or they leave off a place or they leave off an action if they leave out any one of those three things the law enforcement can't do anything they can't investigate it they can't do anything and from my understanding law enforcement has very very little access to these anonymous uh social media platforms such as yikyak they don't have a great way to access some of the chats and things unless they have a warren if it's something within discord so it's very very frightening because these deranged maniacs that are bent on murder understand how to use the system they're not naive and all of these are examples of the rampant radicalization that we have seen via the internet and within these online communities that we've been talking about now the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry wrote in january of 2025 and this is a long one so bear with me here teen boys who spend large amounts of time socializing and discussing politics online are most vulnerable other risk factors include isolation family separation mental illness bullying and trauma adolescents increasingly seek social connection through social media and forums online communities are often organized around shared beliefs forming echo chambers which are environments where a person only encounters opinions that are similar to their own social media algorithms often deliver progressively extreme content based on user interest relative anonymity afforded by the internet makes engagement seem less risky recruiters for online radicalized groups have been known to preferentially target adolescents through video gaming and social media they may start by using slurs or making radical statements during online gaming forwarding links of propaganda videos or websites to those who respond such sites often initially appear harmless but feature hidden extremist rhetoric end quote that's everything that we've talked about so far the video games the online communities the radical rhetoric the extremism all of it's in there and it's being perpetrated by specific individuals on the internet that their sole purpose is to spread propaganda to young and impressionable americans games like fortnite and roblox are actually being used right now for this exact purpose after charlie kirk's assassination there are literally multiple articles you should go look it up multiple articles from september 11 september 12 september 13th right after his assassination talking about how over 100 roblox servers were removed because they depicted the event of the assassination for children as young as five years old to see a lot of very very young children play roblox because it's animated it doesn't really take a lot of skill to play and deranged lunatics are creating servers so in roblox you can kind of play in all these various worlds that people make and they're creating these servers that five-year-olds can join and young americans can join and young people across the world quite frankly can join and it literally shows the shooting of charlie kirk in an animated format where people can stand there kind of in the grassy area and watch it and it's it's truly truly horrific and radicalizing and the bible tells us like little ones beware of what you see a five-year-old has no clue they don't know about charlie kirk they don't know about left versus right they don't know about democrats and republicans they don't even know about civics so imagine what they're thinking when they see this they have no clue it's wrong i mean they might know it's wrong because somebody gets shot and they know that's wrong but they have no clue the true extreme extremism and radicalization that they are witnessing on a game that should be seemingly innocent now we have another situation and it's that these groups are somewhat organized some of these groups are organized some of them are lone wolf extremists but a lot of these groups are organized so 764 is one of the predominant groups pushing this extremism the fbi states quote according to the affidavit in the district of columbia 764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the united states and abroad seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations which often include minors the 764 network's accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order including the united states government the fbi continues and goes on to state in multiple instances defendants threatened and caused their victims to engage in self-mutilation online and in-person sexual acts harm to animals sexual exploitation of siblings and others acts of violence threats of violence suicide and murder so there are groups online that are trying to corrupt the most innocent within our society and these groups are multinational i know one member of 764 was actually arrested in north carolina and another member was arrested in greece it is multinational targeting the youngest of americans which is something that we also hear in the bible this is biblical what is happening because the bible talks about those that will try to lead the youngest astray and that will try to lead them away from understanding the bible and being able to learn that will try to manipulate them into doing these horrific violent acts so we know that this is true we know that this is destined to happen and it's truly horrifying because of how predominant the internet is and that most young people have access to it and for the most part it's unrestrained because parental guidelines don't always do what they need to do parental restrictions don't always do what they need to do many of these groups and online communities operate within discord which is an online chat forum i guess you would say it's um very similar to creating a group chat on text but it's an app for it so think like signal like what pete hegseth was using think telegram which a lot of conservatives and others use think group me which a lot of college organizations do to um share when upcoming events are going on and important announcements it's like that but it's specifically dedicated to the gaming community now this is the same site that tyler robinson used where he allegedly planned and confessed to murdering charlie kirk according to the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation called glad it found that in 2024 one in five gamers identified as lgbtq and what's crazy that's 20 that's 20 of people that are gaming that identify as lesbian gay bi trans queer or whatever the other letters are because now they've just added a plus and i i don't even know what the letters stand for at this point there are too many but that includes people that specifically identify as one of those things that doesn't include what they call the allies that doesn't include the people that aren't identifying as any of those things but that are okay with it and promote it and support it which that number is a lot higher so not only are we seeing the radicalization of people evil people radicalizing young people we also see the festering of the lgbtq community within gaming communities where a lot of this radicalization and extremism is being pushed and is being created and manifested and we know that some of the members of the lgbtq community community not all because i have friends that are gay i have friends that are lesbians i've known a lot of great people that do identify with some of those things but there are radical extremists within that group like any population that has radical extremists and it just happens that the extremism is really festering where those communities lie and where those communities are seen and where they're most prevalent now this corresponds with tyler robinson's alleged furry fetish his alleged playing of furry video games and his alleged romantic relationship with his boyfriend that was a male transitioning to a female it is obvious it is prevalent we have seen it play out in the news so many different times we have seen violent lgbtq members trans members trans people going into christian schools and churches and creating or committing mass shootings it is something that we have seen and it shouldn't be surprising additionally many of the divisive accounts online on x have been revealed as foreign now x it launched this new feature where it shows it uses geolocation to show where these accounts are based out of like what country they're based out of and where they're being run and this has raised a brand new level of alarm because a lot of the most divisive accounts and the most influential accounts for u.s politics have actually been coming out of completely foreign countries like nigeria and it really leaves us to be alarmed and to wonder how much foreign influence is being used upon u.s politics and u.s policies and u.s opinion and it also raises a question about where other accounts are located from aside from x where tiktok accounts located out of where are these people located out of that are playing games and propagandizing american children and our youth and what are their true intents for the future of the u.s why are they targeting the most vulnerable u.s population and the group that will one day take over this country because i assure you their intentions are not pure and they don't just have these radical beliefs that they're just sharing for the fun of it they want to see the downfall of american culture and american society just like the fbi discussed concerning 764 that online radical group now as if the internet radicalization isn't enough because it should be that should be enough professors the media high school teachers employers are all calling conservatives nazis fascists pedophiles you name it we've been called and this is really really concerning because when you use this rhetoric upon young children who's are not fully developed mentally they're not they can't make perfect decisions nobody can make perfect decisions but they're not fully fully developed so when you're using this rhetoric upon them it empowers them to become radicalized and it empowers the ones that are already radicalized to commit these horrific violent actions with the idea that they're being heroes they're being completely manipulated and completely used like the american academy of child adolescent psychiatry said these individuals are most likely lonely and they want to fit in they think that murdering conservatives is the way to the heart of their online communities or that it's the way to the heart of the far left base or they genuinely are deranged enough and quite frankly they're mentally ill enough to think that they're actually saving the world from another hitler because that is what is being preached to them online on the media by their professors by their high school teachers it's what they're constantly devouring and quite frankly that they're devouring without any intention to devour it sometimes and they literally think that that they're doing the world a service that they're a hero that they're you know if you've watched the hunger games or read the hunger games that they're the katniss everdeen rebelling against the fascist evil authoritarian government and they're not that's not what's happening but they've been so brainwashed and so radicalized by so many different avenues that that's genuinely what they think they're doing tiktok's live streams on um websites like twitch which is for gamers to stream their games but some streamers go on their own live stream to talk about politics like hassan piker who is extremely radical and is going through a lot of controversy right now the chats on video games and communities on discords and in subreddits they all work to radicalize young americans to commit horrendous violent so so violent attacks and they are oftentimes against republicans i'm not going to say that every single time it's against a republican there are a few probably enough that i could count on one hand attacks that have happened on left-leaning individuals on democratic individuals but for the most part these are being acted out upon republicans and upon conservatives we now have a young innocent girl at brown university that has been murdered she was the vice president of brown university's college republicans she has been murdered in cold blood we don't know what if it was targeted but sources say that it was targeted and sources say that this individual whoever it is maybe we'll find out by the time this gets published tomorrow but sources say that whoever this is knew that this young woman that ella cook was studying in this specific classroom in this specific building at brown university and that they found her first they shot her in the face and then they continued shooting and killing the second victim and nine other individuals who were wounded so it is alleged that this was a targeted attack and i believe it because i was targeted too and it's sick and it's evil and it's depraved we have influencers like benny johnson matt walsh cat turd and lara loomer who have been threatened by a radical leftist stalker and this is just one they all come out and have admitted that this is just one of many that they're dealing with right now 32 year old and i'm going to butcher this name i'm sincerely sorry but 32 year old andrew nikhil ire who was captured because of doorbell cameras from the neighborhood of one of the influencers as he stalked their home in their neighborhood additionally podcaster tim pool of timcast his house was shot at last week now loomer came out and said this stalker didn't just knock on doors he showed up ready for war talking about finishing the job on conservatives who dare to speak the truth matt walsh came out and said these are not random weirdos they are ideologues fueled by the same venom that paints us as some kind of existential threat and i think that quote is perfect because they genuinely do think that conservatives are an existential threat to their existence and to america as a whole and they think that the only way to solve it is murder not using the ways that we have established the the communities the committees the ability for individuals to write and present legislation to their representatives to call and email their representatives to advocate for change they don't think to utilize those avenues that are established in our constitution they want anarchy they want murder and they want to kill people like you and me because they have been so brainwashed by the academic system by the internet and by the media to believe that we genuinely are an existential threat to the united states of america to its future and to their existence this violence has to stop the name calling has to stop the violent rhetoric online and in the media has to stop the hate in the university system has to has to stop the lies have to stop i genuinely do not care what political party you are what you believe politically it does not matter because lives are at stake right now and we literally have a national emergency on our hands when we see young conservatives getting murdered for speaking their truth and for being christian if we cannot come together as a sane and rational population of humans on both sides of the aisle within this country there will be continued radicalization there will be continued bloodshed of innocent conservatives it is time for us to be bold to step out and to proclaim the truth and i'm talking the entire truth we need to proclaim our conservative beliefs we need to proclaim that jesus is king and we need to proclaim that the armor of god will protect us this is a spiritual war that is occurring within our country and the only way to stop it is to use truth and a strong strong strong unexplainable faith and only that will pull us out of this extremely dark chapter in our nation's history thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the reagan faulkner show i know that this was a long one and that this was a deep one but i'm so glad that y'all listened and i look forward to filming the next one i look forward to going to amp fest and i look forward to bringing y'all some amazing amazing content within the next week so if you want more before then be sure to check us out on instagram tiktok and x that's going to be at the reagan faulkner show and at the wilmington standard and check us out online at reaganfaulkner.com the wilmingtonstandard.com brand new merch for the holiday season at the wilmingtonstandard.com so be sure to check it out and until then enjoy the content that we have on our social media platforms and i look forward to seeing you on the next one