When Nick said that he was allowing Theroux to attend AFPAC 2 and to do a bunch of other filming for a BBC hit piece, I was, like most other people, pretty skeptical. It did not seem like a good idea. Nick is now saying “see – you should have trusted the plan, this documentary is awesome.”
And I mean – apparently he was right. I don’t really know what else to say. Apparently, he understood that he was bulletproof, and that any hit piece would only function as a promotional piece...
After noting how good the documentary makes the movement look, the second thing you notice is that Nick isn’t hardly even in it. Theroux seems to have become obsessed with Beardson Beardly, and basically made him the star of the film.
I don’t know if this was purposeful or just a result of Beardson really upsetting Theroux personally. Theroux went to his house in Kentucky, and he was talking to him in his front yard, and after a bit of friendly chit-chat, Theroux starts asking him why he did a Nazi salute out of a car after AFPAC. Beardson said he never did that. And Theroux kept pressing him, until Beardson told him to leave, effectively having not gotten any interview at all.
I have to say – this was really amateur hour in terms of basic interview technique. What you’re supposed to do in any interview – especially when you’re trying to make a person admit to something or otherwise make them look bad – is form a rapport with them, then spring the “hard questions” on them, so you catch them off guard. You want to make them think you’re just a friendly guy, and then spring them. Instead, Theroux talked for 45 seconds in a friendly manner and then was like “so why do you love Hitler so much, Nazi?”
Honestly, I don’t even understand how someone who has been making these hit piece films like this for twenty years or whatever could screw that one up so badly. There is no doubt he could have goaded Beardson into saying some stuff that looked bad, but he didn’t even try.
This is like if you go up to a woman at a coffee shop and chat her up for 45 seconds, compliment her, whatever, and then say “HOW ABOUT YOU SUCK MY DICK RIGHT NOW, SLUT?” (The difference is, there’s a nonzero chance the woman would be like “yeah, okay.” No person who knows you’re a hostile interviewer is going to keep going after you accuse them of being a Nazi.)
Anyway, by all appearances, the fact that Beardson told him to fuck off and told him to get off his property seemed to really upset Theroux, which meant that the rest of the documentary was about Beardson, primarily.
Beardson went on stream immediately after telling Theroux to leave, and then Theroux called him on the phone from his car and was like “I’m watching you.” What a weird thing to say? Beardson told him to fuck off again and hung up on him.
So then Theroux went to Brittany Venti’s house to hear about how Beardson had abused her. He played a tape to her of Beardson saying he was going to anally rape her. This was clearly bad optics, and the worst optics in the whole thing – but still kind of funny. I think it was the anal part that was the bad optics though. If it would have just been “I’m going to rape you,” then okay. Or even if it would have been “me and the boys are going to gang rape you” – still, better optics than anal.
For the record, Beardson has said he shouldn’t have said that. But I mean – if that’s the worst thing you can dig up about an entire movement – a bad joke on a livestream that allegedly hurt a woman’s feelings – you’re doing pretty bad in terms of your hit piece.
So then the other main character was Baked Alaska. He’s even the person featured on the promo material.
Baked came across as Baked, just kind of silly and irreverent. I don’t think it was bad optics, and in fact, it really sort of breaks the narrative of “this is the new rising KKK hate movement that wants to do a genocide.” You have to have really high levels of cognitive dissonance to say that Baked Alaska is a genocidal KKK Nazi planning to exterminate everyone.
Theroux sits and listens to an entire rap from Baked, and you can tell he’s trying not to laugh. I just don’t even understand what the point of including that was.
