Well-Known Entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu Would Have Hosted Mussolini

When a person exhibits extreme financial ambition and wants to save the world, the latter desire often yields to the former.

That seems to be the case with Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of Quest Nutrition, a company valued at over $1 billion, and the face of Impact Theory, a company “designed to facilitate global change through the incubation of mission-based businesses and the cultivation of empowering content.”

During an Impact Theory live-stream posted on YouTube this month, Bilyeu went on a rant about how he is willing to literally learn from anyone and he doesn’t consider moral character when sharing his influential platform:

If Mussolini would come on the show and I could pick his brain, I’d (expletive) pick his brain!

Maybe Bilyeu still believes the myth that Mussolini kept the trains running on time?

To refresh Bilyeu’s memory, Mussolini was a murderous dictator who partnered with Hitler during World War II, sent thousands of Italian Jews to their certain deaths during that period and imposed a brutal dictatorship on millions of his own people. The Guardian succinctly summarizes Mussolini’s crimes:

Benito Mussolini’s invading soldiers murdered many thousands of civilians, bombed the Red Cross, dropped poison gas, starved infants in concentration camps and tried to annihilate cultures deemed inferior.

Perhaps Bilyeu’s oft-repeated mission statement is meant to be ironic?

Our mission is to free people from The Matrix. Said another way, we want to end the poverty of poor mindset.

Bilyeu unironically said he would be willing to interview and learn from a mass murdering madman who imposed one of the worst matrices of all time on his fellow countrymen, all with the overall aim of freeing people from “the matrix.”

Upon listening to Bilyeu during the live-stream, I realized that when he speaks of freeing people from the matrix, he means he’ll help them be financially successfully (which will also help him be even more financially successful than he already is). Morality is not a consideration.

Lest you think I am taking one comment out of context, or that Bilyeu may have been joking, he was crystal clear while following up his Mussolini comment during the same live-stream:

If you’re looking for reasons to shut people down, anyone, if you’re looking for reasons to not listen, to ignore them, to say that they’re stupid, all of that, then you’ve already lost…you need to open yourself to a good idea from wherever it comes…

At no point during the minutes-long rant did Bilyeu delineate any moral failing that would prevent a guest from appearing on Impact Theory. Instead, he set-up a strawman argument that any viewer with moral concerns is essentially saying, “I don’t give a (expletive) about the message, all I care about is the messenger!”

The scary part is that Bilyeu has big goals for his companies and philosophy, as explained to Press Pass LA: “His goal with the content? To become the modern day Disney, in the sense that the company will become a studio with a clear and recognizable brand image.”

A man with plans for narrative domination who would learn from Mussolini (and literally anyone else)…thank you very much, but I think I’d rather find a “matrix” with some clear moral values and standards.