Checking in on Kevin Barrett in Saidia, Morocco

Kevin Barrett, “Oujda, Sept. 4, 2023. Photo shop I visited to take a picture for my residency application. The secret of the Moroccan monarchy is ‘Every man a king.’ (Not quite the Huey Long version).”

LD: On 9/15/23, you emailed me, “Glad I escaped that madhouse. Thank you for encouraging the move.” We must be insane for having abandoned the greatest country on earth and in history! Now that you’ve been in Morocco for seven months, are you still feeling relieved?

-Yes. I’m glad I got out before the next lockdown. Or the civil war. Or the collapse. Or the mandatory universal gender reassignment. Or whatever they’re cooking up for us.

If it’s World War III, Morocco may not be any better than rural Wisconsin. But at least I’m further downwind from the big bullseye: the nuclear missile silos in the Dakotas.

Meanwhile it’s a relief to be in a country where almost everybody sides with the Palestinians. If I were in the USA right now, surrounded by people who are mostly OK with arming and funding the genocide of Gaza, I would be burning with anger. But unlike Aaron Bushnell, I would be more inclined to want to burn the guilty. Biden’s walking corpse, for example, is desperately in need of cremation.

In Muslim countries, you can criticize Jews and the Satanic West openly. Has this intellectual climate affected you? I’ve pestered you for using Zionists instead of Jews, and we have a mutual friend, the Palestinian Maisoon Rice, who is similarly baffled. Protesting outside his former synagogue, Henry Herkovitz had a sign, “Jews Bomb Hospitals.” If Jews are committing genocide, and they’re also doing it in Ukraine, why not say Jews?

-I don’t think it makes sense to have a rigid rule “always say Jews, never Zionists” or vice-versa. I have had issues with Iranian media that edited my articles by arbitrarily changing “Jew” to “Zionist.” I would write something like: “Are younger American Jews turning against Israel?” And they would change it to: “Are younger American Zionists turning against Israel?” Which makes no sense, because Zionists are defined as people who support Israel, whereas Jews are basically just people who consider themselves Jews, usually due to an accident of birth, but sometimes also because of their religious beliefs.

There are all kinds of ways that both words can be used and misused. I just try to use words accurately. I often say “Zionist Jews” because that’s what I mean. For example, “Zionist Jews make up between one third and one half of America’s richest billionaires, and are equally overrepresented in financing American politics.” In this case I’m not talking about Zionist Christians, nor am I talking about rich but non-Zionist Jews (assuming there are any).

Let’s talk about your day to day life. There’s a lot of anger and hostility in the US. Just pointing this out, I’ve provoked enraged comments, with one man regretting I wasn’t bombed as a child. Of the roughly 40 countries I’ve visited, the only one more tense than the USA was South Africa. Is Morocco a hotbed of Muslim fanatics just itching to blow you up or chop your head off?

-Moroccans in general are more friendly, helpful, and polite than Americans. I lived here for most of a year in 1999-2000, and have visited many times before moving permanently last July, and the only Moroccan I can think of who has ever gotten mad and yelled at me is my wife. And even then I usually deserved it  ; - )  But to be honest, I haven’t had that many problems with Americans either, at least in real life. The internet is a different story. I received death threats in 2006 after Lynn Cheney’s anti-academic-freedom group ACTA published my campus email address and urged its mailing list to email me and tell me what they thought of my “9/11 conspiracy theories.” So I can relate to your problem with the AWPs [Angry White Pussies].

Anyway, if Morocco has any violent extremist fanatics—and there have been a smattering of “incidents”—they’re probably trained by the Zionist element of NATO that created ISIS. Your chances of running into any such people during a visit to Morocco are basically zero. The only problem you might have with Moroccans is fake tour guides and people trying too hard to sell you stuff.

But “Moroccans angry with America”? If only! Sure, there are lots of demonstrations against the Gaza genocide in Rabat, Casablanca, and Tangier. That’s a long way from Saidia so I haven’t attended any. But I’m sure Americans would be warmly welcomed. As you’ve noticed, Americans are far more popular everywhere than they deserve to be, and Morocco is no exception.

Your 1994 book, Dr. Weirde's Weirde Tours: A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco, has serial killers, murderous rapists, satanists and other “scoundrels.” It’s certainly a useful guide for those seeking to have “a brief, mutually-degrading physical encounter on a sagging bed in a roach-infested unfurnished room” with a novel soulmate in the Tenderloin. Like you, I’m awfully fond of that city, but we disagree about its deterioration. At least until recently, you didn't think crime has gotten out of control in SF and other American cities. By contrast, I clearly see Jew-stoked mayhem. With Soros installed prosecutors like Alvin Bragg in Manhattan and Larry Krasner in Philly, there’s a surge in crime and chaos across the USA, and Jewish Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security is allowing all these illegal immigrants to flood in. You don’t see their plan behind this madness?

-It sounds like you and Anton LaVey liked the same parts of A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco. (UFOlogist Jacques Vallée, who knew LaVey, told me LaVey loved the book.) But it isn't just about criminals, occultists, and conspiracies. My favorite parts is about Emperor Norton, the bum who declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, had currency printed up with his face on it, and convinced local merchants to accept it. He was Jewish, and basically did the same thing the Rothschilds do, but openly, as a joke. People enjoyed playing along with it, pretending to obey his imperial edicts. 10,000 people showed up at his funeral.

I lived in San Francisco from 1981 to 1994, and visited most years between 2012 and 2021. The two obvious things that have gotten worse since the 1980s are the urine-drenched streets and the price of housing. I don’t think the murder rate has risen much. I knew two people in the local music scene who were murdered by random strangers in the 80s and early 90s. Car stereo break-ins were constant and unavoidable in the 1990s, so I don’t see how those could have gotten any worse. Drug gang shootings were also pretty bad back then. Purse snatching was common. The block I lived on near 23rd and Mission averaged one or two gang murders a year. Shoplifting was routine. Maybe that’s worse now, or so the media tell us. 

I don’t think crime is a “Jewish plot to destroy America.” You could indirectly blame it on Jews by saying that two underlying factors are inequality and the breakdown of Christian family values. Since Jews took over from WASPs as the most powerful ethnic group, they’ve liberalized the economy, driving inequality, and also liberalized sexual mores, leading to the breakdown of the family. One result has been high crime rates, which have been around since the 1960s. But those developments are only loosely correlated with Jewish power, and not part of some Elders of Zion plan.

And immigration doesn’t have that much effect on crime rates. So to the extent that Jews (rather than capitalists in general) are behind the open borders policies, it isn’t a plot to create crime.

Getting back to your move to Morocco, how have your sons adjusted to their new lives? What have your family missed about living in the USA? What would it take for you to return? You said Biden should be cremated, but absolutely nothing would change should that happen, in my opinion. Resistance will only be galvanized by a meaningful assassination, so the next American hero will likely be a maid, cook or chauffeur, but I’m not hopeful. Do you think the US is done?

-My sons are in their 20s. They like it here and are making progress learning the language. Like me, they miss some of the outdoor activities of rural Wisconsin, like hiking in the woods, fishing, gardening, long bike rides, cross country skiing, and kayaking. I had a big garden with 40+  4’x4’ raised beds and an earth-sheltered greenhouse I built with my sons. I miss puttering around in the garden and building things with my tools, most of which I sold or gave away before we moved. We’re starting to do some gardening here but on a smaller scale. There’s a very productive lemon tree in the front courtyard, and we’re planting other fruit trees, including fig, kumquat, and pomegranate. I’ve got pots of parsley, cilantro, thyme, sage, and oregano starting on the sta’, the rooftop patio, and will be planting tomatoes and peppers among the fruit trees out back. We have to get permission from the local authorities to build a fence out back so the goats and sheep don’t gobble everything up. (“Out back” is a rubble-strewn vacant lot that is supposed to be a community garden, but nobody has taken the trouble to get it going.)

Another thing I miss about America, or rather Lone Rock, Wisconsin, is hanging out with my crazy conspiracy theorist friends. I used to do a lot of that, but my local friend Mark the conspiracy auto mechanic died in a car crash ten years ago, and the rest of them lived at least an hour away. Some of the people I used to like talking to, like Daniel the bookstore owner, went woke. Others are hippies who turned out to be closet Zionists. The mask-free café at the far end of a 17-mike bike ride, a nice place to hang out during Covid, was run by evangelical Christians who aren’t exactly intellectuals. My more respectable professor friends from my university days pre-2006 sort of fell out of my life. I probably seemed like a living rebuke to the choices they’d made. So I was kind of alienated from social life in Wisconsin, where I increasingly couldn’t relate to anybody. Here in Saidia my alienation is more the result of the language barrier. I enjoy chatting with some of the locals here, and as my Moroccan Arabic gets better I’m enjoying it more and more. (My fluent French and intermediate+ Modern Standard Arabic are okay for getting by, but to really appreciate Moroccans you need to speak darija, the local Arabic dialect.)

I don’t expect to return to America under any foreseeable circumstances. But of course Allah has the last word. I guess if there were some kind of anti-neocon coup and the new regime requested my services (fat chance) I would consider it. But by the time that happens I probably will have forgotten English.

You last taught at the University of Wisconsin in 2006. You had just one course, an introduction to the history and culture of Islam. Due to your view on 9/11, the university received more than a thousand emails and calls protesting your employment, and the often slanderous Anti-Defamation League also caused a huge stir. To make amend, I expect the U of Wisconsin to rename Bascom Hall after you, with a bronze statue of you fronting it.

As a college drop out, I’m no academic, but before being canceled, I was often asked to teach a course here and there, including in Germany. Now, I’m an untouchable among American writers, but like you, I’m free to say what I want, according to my conscience. Even if one or both of us are completely wrong, we’re not censoring ourselves. History will not look kindly at the American intellectual scene. Tied to the academy and cowed by the media, American intellectuals have sold out. I know a UCLA professor who is so frustrated by the intellectual climate, she’s had flashing thoughts of driving into the ocean, but of course, she won’t let go of her job, for it has given her not just a middle-class lifestyle, but social standing among her peers. Unlike you, she’s terrified of crazy conspiracy theorists, or even car mechanics.

Thanks, Kevin, for this conversation. Is there anything else you want to add?

-Nothing much to add, except that you are welcome to come visit! 

“Muse the fierce watch-cat guards the house. Woe to any cat burglars who might sneak in to steal his fresh fried sardines!”

“Mosque at Morocco’s biggest Sufi headquarters, the Boutchichiyya Zawiya in Madagh, 20 km from Saidia.”

“Our house is a five minute walk through Eucalyptus woods to Saidia’s 9-mile-long beach, one of the best on the Mediterranean. Great place for corn-on-the-cob—beats the rural Wisconsin county fairs!”