Kind: captions
Language: en
These are not academic questions. We are
waging both economic and kinetic wars
right now as we violently renegotiate
the world order. How we decide to move
forward will affect generations to come.
And few people have thought more about
these issues than Douglas Murray. As a
war correspondent, best-selling author,
and lauded public intellectual, he's
been at the heart of many of these
crucial debates and can help paint a way
forward. And today, he's with us. So
without further ado, I bring you Douglas
Murray. How do we make sense of the fact
that we can't even agree on who the good
guys are and the bad
guys? Well, I I mean that's a perennial
problem. Of course, it's it's it's been
something that in any conflict, any any
political situation is is is normal. I
think that the there's been a change
since the age of social media, which
I've uh described before as being the
move from the era about
disagreeing um about our interpretation
of events to not agreeing on what just
happened. In other words, having a
different opinion is very 20th century.
In the 21st century, we have different
facts. And I think that that is one of
the things in our era which has proved
especially divisive. Um has all sorts of
uh positives uh greater access to
knowledge, greater access to a wider
range of opinion. These are all good
things. But I think that the uh
increasing inability to agree on what
just happened is one thing that is
massively dividing all of our societies.
Is there a world on the other side of
that or do we have to somehow someway
come to a shared understanding of facts
or this is just uh there is no way to
reach common ground? Well, I I I mean my
hope is that there is is a way we'll
never find common ground, but we can we
can we can agree on certain uh
principles perhaps or say what the
ground is that we're standing on uh and
whether it's desirable ground. I mean, I
think that the era we're in, I've
occasionally described as what I call
the second dark
age. That is, the first dark age was
characterized by an inability to access
knowledge or information. Uh, literally
people didn't even have access to or
knowledge of the one holy book. Um, in
our age, it's quite different. Our dark
age is characterized not by an inability
to access knowledge but by a surit of
knowledge, a surfitit of information
and stories, details and much more. So
that none of us can actually be on top
of everything, but there's an
expectation that you're meant to have
opinions about everything. Uh I've
characterized this as the um the oddity
that you you will have noticed as well
online of the people who were are
experts on tariffs this week were
experts on Ukrainian mineral deposits uh
last month and before that they were
experts on how to withdraw from
Afghanistan and also on uh pandemics.
Some of these things are so important
that we do have to have well we we have
certainly have the right to have but we
most sensible people would want to form
opinions about them but even that is
dictated increasingly by what is pushed
your way uh by the confirmation bias
that we're all have a tendency to
already hardwired into us but the
confirmation bias of the algorithms and
much more. Um, but I my hope is is that
we can push through this second dark age
as we did the first as a species and
that we will get a better knowledge.
Maybe it'll come in our lifetimes, maybe
afterwards. I hope in our lifetimes of
where we can actually agree on what just
happened and then get to the substance.
All right, talk me off a ledge. Um I
have so my whole thing in life is I'm
not interested in being right but I'm
deeply interested in identifying the
right answer. An answer that has high
predictive validity that if I think in
this way make these base assumptions
that I can both look backwards at
history and go yeah that all makes sense
based on what I believe and then ideally
that means that looking forward I'll
have some sense too much complexity to
get things perfectly right. Um but am
always trying to update my thinking. The
way that I think about this moment is uh
it's this profound renegotiation of
everything in a time where we don't
share facts and more importantly in a
time from where I'm sitting anyway where
we don't share morality. And so we're we
don't have an anchor by which we can
navigate through these things. And so
when I think about what happened in the
cold war against Russia when it was US v
Russia um they it was a cold war but
they were fighting over whose ideology
was better and there was an actual
winner like the USSR ran out of economic
steam and they were no longer able to
fight and if they wanted to have any
sort of allies whatsoever they had to
tear the wall down. they had to give up
their system. And you said when you were
talking that we pushed through the dark
ages. And when you said that, I thought,
oo, there there's a lot of uh lives lost
in that very simple statement. And so my
concern is that this moment is going to
be devastating in loss of life uh as the
whole world sort of gets thrown up in
the air. Whether it's the economic
warfare between America and China,
whether it's the hot wars that you've
been um reporting from on the lines of
Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza.
Um, do you think that that is too dark
of a view and that we're going to be
able to find a way out of this without
fighting for supremacy of
ideology or do we have to fight?
Uh, we'll see. I mean I'm very fond of
quoting uh something that CS Lewis said
in a sermon in Oxford in 1939 when he
pointed out that although that the age
that his country my country of birth was
in was not in a propitious moment uh
nevertheless he said he said human life
was always lived on the edge of a
precipice that if you look back even
times that seemed relatively uh uh
peaceful like Europe Europe in the late
19th century when you look back at it
were also like our age like CS Lewis's
age were filled with alarms and panics
and crises and much more. The important
point he makes, which is one that I've
always tried to live by and which I uh
always say, particularly when I have the
opportunity to speak to university
students or anyone young, is to say what
CS Lewis went on to say, which is um
that if mankind had put off the search
for beauty, meaning, purpose until the
conditions were right, the search would
never have begun.
And I take great comfort in that that
although you always live in the middle
of the
whirlwind. Um know that that doesn't
mean you should be distracted from doing
what you should do. Um does this moment
feel different to you though? Like as
somebody who grew up in the 80s, this
moment feels distinctly different. It's
extremely hard to say because uh
everybody has the ability in the rear
view mirror. everything looks clear. Um
I'm very fond of a quote from the great
Czech writer Milan Kandera who said in a
book of his in the '9s testaments
betrayed he said um mankind walks
through life uh uh in a fog and we
stumble along and we create a path as we
walk it. That's not the interesting
thing. The interesting thing as Candera
said is that if you look back, you see
the man and you see the path, but you
don't see the fog.
Everything looks clear in hindsight. In
hindsight, people of our generation
might look back and view the 1980s as a
a time of in relative tranquility. But I
have no doubt in my reading of the era,
talking to people from the era, said it
felt very different from that at the
time. Everyone now expected that the
Soviet Empire would crumble, but in the
1980s, by no means everybody did. Same
thing with the 1990s. Some people look
at it and say, "Look what a Hian time it
was." Uh, the whole world was talking
about a single [ __ ] Um, but in
fact, the '9s were filled with their own
crises and alarms and uh and so on. So
yes, it it always feels different. It
always will feel like that. And um sure,
there are certain things that
characterize our own era and are
particularly concerning, but I don't
think that they're uniquely so. And I
don't think they're uh irreoverably so.
I certainly don't think we should be
demoralized in the face of that. I like
that take. Uh let me give you why I
think that um in my language there's
higher predictive validity to see this
moment as a different time. Certainly
from uh my lifetime. I'm sure this is
repeated in history a gazillion times.
But uh there was what I'll call moral
clarity in the 80s. America good, Russia
bad. It was really simple. And so we uh
I mean you're never going to get 100% of
anything, but it really felt like uh
everybody was prepared to fight for
America. We had the confidence of our
beliefs. We felt good about who we were,
about our country. And one of the things
that your book really does a phenomenal
job of is holding up um a morally
repugnant act and then following the
chain of but there are a whole lot of
people that don't think this is morally
repugnant. Now, it may just be that with
social media, you can see all the people
that thought the same thing back in the
day. You just couldn't see them. But
now, I'm being confronted with, whoa, I
I don't see what the nonre
relativistic moral ground is that I'm
meant to stand on. And that makes us
feel particularly strange because the
internal fighting inside of my own
country, uh, certainly the UK has got
its woes as well. And that makes and
obviously I'm I'm very familiar with
your uh work on the strange death of
Europe. And so it's like that feels like
the very thing that set the stage. And
so that book and this book to me feel
like there's some compendium nature to
them. And it's like failing to get that
common ground leads to the strange death
of Europe. I agree. I I'm I actually
moved to America some years ago, which
um you might take as being uh telling in
itself about my views of of the old
continent. I haven't given up on it
entirely. that one of the things that
has concerned me in recent years is that
what I charted uh in the the let's say
the demoralization among other things of
Europe in the last 80 years a
demoralization that starts from very
obvious reasons
um ends up with a sort of a healthy
societal
self-criticism turning into a very
unhealthy societal self-loathing and
eventually self-destruction.
uh this is a very complicated process
because as I as I've often said western
self-criticism the tradition of
self-criticism is one of the great uh
advantage points of the western uh
civilization. It's it's it's it's good
to adapt when you're doing something
that's wrong. You don't want to keep
doing something that's wrong either
technologically or morally or anything
else. uh that but there is a some liinal
moment when the self-criticism can be
pushed upon you by people who want you
to go further down that path because
they want you to do it for a reason. And
I believe that America has undergone
maybe resisting at the moment a bit more
but has undergone a period of similar
demoralization and self laceration to
the version that Europe has been through
in recent decades. And what I mean by
that really
is where American
selfcriticism turns into the self-hatred
which has been pushed on many young
Americans in particular where instead of
believing if there was a time when young
Americans brought up to believe that
America was uniquely good, they are very
often brought up now to believe that
America was uniquely bad. And if any
group abroad or other system of
governance uh may in the past have been
portrayed as innately inferior,
uh a generation is to a very great
extent being brought up to today to
believe that any other form of
government or system of values is
innately superior to ours. I think
that's where the problem comes for
America. I analyzed that quite a bit in
my last book, The War on the West, where
I was very interested in why America was
engaging in this not healthy
revisionism, but deeply unhealthy
self-destruction
uh whereby everything from the origins
of America onwards were being seen in
the most negative light. I regard that
as being a civilizational turning point
because I think it's perfectly natural
for any group of people wherever they're
born in the world to have a natural
predisposition to feeling that their way
of doing things is good and that it's an
unhealthy position for any society
uh let alone the world's foremost
democracy to get into the position of
thinking that anything they do in the
world or at home is uniquely bad. And
and that's where that's where I start
have started to worry in recent years
about America following Europe's path.
Yeah. So reading the most recent book on
democracies and death cults, um you're
really confronted with a stark reality
of you don't mean this metaphorically.
So, if if you don't mind, walk us
through what is a death cult uh and why
in the book because the book is largely
I don't know if you'll like this uh
encapsulation, but it seems so true to
me. It's largely a um looking at October
7th and what happened in Israel with the
Hamas attack through that lens. And so,
it is this unrelenting
um recantation of all the things that
happened. And it was stark reading it.
like I've obviously been paying
attention to it, but whoa, like when you
hear it one after another, like
following that timeline, it's is pretty
grave. And so I walked away, and I don't
know if you wanted me to, but I walked
away feeling um coming to the conclusion
that solving this problem is going to
require a total victory on one side or
the other. And we'll we'll get into that
because I have beliefs that I think uh
YouTube at large takes deep exception
with. And so we'll see if if you can
beat it out of me or if we uh rile each
other up. I don't I don't know how
that'll play out. But um one, does that
feel like a fair read of the book? And
then two, what is a death cult? Very, uh
succinctly.
Uh firstly, uh I don't mean the book to
be unrelenting. Uh I think I tried to
relent a bit at various points. I
certainly try to finish by the end on a
somewhat positive note, which I feel
it's not faked by any means.
on democracies and death cults starts
with the morning of October the 7th
because for me um several things
happened that I thought were enormously
telling and that's why I spent most of
the last year and a half in uh the the
area covering the war uh in Israel,
Gaza, Lebanon, elsewhere. I've also been
in uh Ukraine and so on.
It's largely about the Israel Gaza war
because uh when the news started to come
out from Israel on the 7th uh having
reported from there and been there many
times I was first of all of course
horrified by the the things that were
coming out I secondly knew that um this
story of what had happened the murder of
1200 civilians kidnapping of 250
civilians from Israel by Hamas was going
to be um passed over quite swiftly
because the world media for various
reasons uh tends to like to talk about
Israeli retaliation more than they do
the thing that's caused Israel to
retaliate. But I uh I I was aware from
24 hours after the massacre. Firstly,
that I needed to go to Israel to get
firsthand what had happened, but
secondly, I became aware that there was
going to be something going very badly
wrong here at home in America and in
other Western countries. And I knew that
because I had a glimpse of it in Times
Square on October the 8th when the
massacre was still going on. And I went
down to Times Square because there was a
protest, a pro- Hamas protest, an
anti-Israel protest that was glorifying
the massacres.
And I thought, "Okay, get ready. This is
going to get a heck of a lot worse
because this is before any Israeli
reaction to the atrocities had even
started."
You ask what a death cult is. I I mean
in a way I I put the the title on
democracies and death cults. I put it in
clear um antithesis because I believe
they are uh absolute opposites. We've
seen many death cults in history. What
unites them is they do not share what
many people in America and the rest of
the west assume is the
natural predisposition of mankind. Ask
your average college student, you know,
do people in the world feel roughly the
same everywhere and want the same
things? And they'll say, yes, of course.
Everyone in the world basically wants
the same thing. And my inclination,
having traveled very widely in the
world, is to say, whoa, hang on
there. Many people want different
things. And the more you travel in the
world, the more you realize that. But
the thing that I write about here is is
something which many people most people
in in the world of peace simply cannot
comprehend. And that is that there are
some people who literally not only do
not value life but literally worship
death.
We have seen this many times before in
history. In the 1930s in Spain, a great
Spanish philosopher of the era, Miguel
Dunamuno, who wrote the book The Tragic
Sense of Life, gave a lecture at his
university in which the Francoist, the
fascist students, who he was trying to
pull back from the
brink, resist his attempt to um civilize
them and end up chanting Viva
Lamuete, long live death. And Unimuno
leaves and dies shortly afterwards. An
extremely disappointed and disillusioned
man as he says this necrilic chant long
live death. Well, Hamz like Hezbollah
uh is a similar death cult. Its leaders,
its members literally have spent decades
saying we worship death. We love death.
They say we love death more than you
love life. The now late leader of
Hezbollah and Azarella said for years
the great weakness of the west is that
they love life whereas we do not. We
love
death. And the fact that that exists is
an extremely troubling and difficult
fact. And it's a particularly troubling
and difficult fact for Israel because it
happens to have neighbors who have this
view. Really fast. Is that
definitionally born of Islam? Uh or is
this just a an algorithm that can be
tripped inside of the human mind? Uh as
I hope I show by giving the example of
1930s Spain, it is something that can be
uh um created for many many different
backgrounds, many d directions. It can
come from the left, it can come from the
political right. It can come from uh the
poor, the rich, uh uh the advantaged,
the disadvantaged. It can come from
absolutely anywhere. But in the case of
the death cults that Israel faces, Hamas
and Hezbollah and their backers in the
Iranian revolutionary government in
Iran, it obviously has its origins in a
very violent, the most violent and most
appalling version of the Islamic faith
uh which is the jihadist death cult.
That's yes believes in martyrdom. the
the highest value in life is to die in
the cause
and indeed to take other people with you
to kill and to die in the name of the
cause. Some people may think I'm
exaggerating this. I'm not at all. I
mean I give example in the book of the
Hamaz leader Ishmael Haneir who was
living in a luxury apartment in in
Qatar. Um he gets the news that his
three sons who are also Hamas leaders
have been killed in an air strike in
Gaza. And he's absolutely joyful that
they have
been. Much of the western mind cannot
comprehend how any father could be
joyful that his sons have all died. But
he is because he believes that they have
died in this cause.
And uh I believe that this is very very
hard for the western mind to
comprehend. The people in the south of
Israel who stared this in the face
literally on October the 7th, they know
what this is now. I don't think many
other people in in the rest of the West
in Western Europe or America, North
America do understand. But there is this
follow-on question which I spend much of
the book meditating on which is why are
there so many people in our own midsts
who want to excuse or to uh promote or
to uh even
admire the death cults. And I think this
is a very very important question for us
to ask because we should have some
ability as we were saying earlier to
have the zones of agreement and the
zones of agreement should
include not supporting the deliberate
rape of women. Not Yeah. One one would
hope. All right. I have a read on this.
I'll be very curious to get your I'm
sure far more thoughtful take. But uh as
a student of history, I look at that and
I recognize in what's going on in Israel
and Gaza the revolutionary mindset and
the framers of the constitution here in
the US understood very clearly the
reason that what happened in France or
any time that you have a revolution it
tends to lead to tyranny is because once
you click over that algorithm once it
turns on in the human mind everything
becomes about revolution. It is a
revolutionary frame of reference in
which you can tear anything down. Uh no
one prizes stability. It's fighting for
the sake of that idea, whatever that
idea is. And once you have this thing is
worth dying for to actually manifest
that in the world, you've got to share
that idea. You've got to get that idea
to take shape in the minds of everybody
around you. And once you create that, or
I should say once that momentum gets
going, it is extremely hard to stop. And
so hearing Alexander Hamilton and George
Washington both talk about like, hey,
we've got to get these guys to chill
because otherwise we're going to go from
overthrowing the British government to a
civil war that just tears us apart.
We've got to get people outside of that
mindset. And so if I always look at
humans as a super organism and there's
just so many patterns that we don't feel
as individuals, we always just feel like
we see the world the way that it
actually is. All these other idiots,
they're caught up in something. But if
you instead go, "Oh, this is this is a
thing inside the human mind that has a
justification, which is we um I have a
thesis that humans as a superorganism
abore uh plateaus." And so we have
something in us that runs that says,
"Oh, we're getting mired in something.
We're getting stuck. We're being
oppressed." Whatever. Boom. That
algorithm kicks in. The first person
realizes they would rather die than sit
still. We get thrilled by that. I mean,
there are plenty of people in history
where we're like, yo, they died for the
cause. It's incredible. You talk about
some people in your book that were like,
we we revere them for their willingness
to go try to save lives and to be
willing to give over their life. We'll
be back with the show in just a moment.
But first, a brief history lesson.
Throughout history, one pattern repeats
with absolute certainty. Economic
instability. The Great Depression, the
70 stagflation, the 2008 crash. Each
time paper wealth evaporated overnight
and each time those who owned physical
gold preserved their purchasing power, a
tangible asset created by exploding
stars that can't be printed away or
deleted with a keystroke. American
Alternative Assets makes protecting your
wealth simple. They provide the white
glove concier service that serious
investors deserve. Their team guides you
through every step of securing your
financial future with precious metals.
Don't wait for history to repeat itself
while you're unprepared. Call
1888-6158047 or visit tom
getsgold.com. Again, that's
18886158847 or go to
tomgetsgold.com. This is a paid
advertisement. And now, let's get back
to the show. For Israel, this is a
dangerous moment where now they run the
risk of becoming the death cult who's
like, "Well, we now have our thing that
we're willing to fight to the death
for." Do you see that risk? There's
always risks. Um, and as I say, from
every direction. Um, I believe, however,
there is every difference in the world
morally and strategically
uh to fight uh for death and to fight
for life.
I believe there's all the difference in
the
world of um carrying out an
unprovoked unnecessary attack on
peaceful people in their homes on a
Saturday
morning and for instance going in to
Hamas
stronghold and trying to either kill the
leaders of Hamas or get the hostages
back. Uh I believe that although
uh some people claim that there is no
difference between these two things
because if death is the result it's it
all comes out in the wash. I disagree
with that. I think that uh somebody who
goes into a firefight to save lives as I
give examples of in the book many and I
could have given many many more. Going
into a a place of conflict to save lives
is the exact opposite of going into a
conflict with the express desire to take
as much human life as
possible. And Hamas's aim everywhere
always like Hezbollah is to take as much
human life as possible. And even and
this is one of the added perversions
even to to make your enemy take as many
lives on your own side as possible. I
believe that's a very very different
thing. Uh these two things stand as
opposites and uh I'm very happy to to
argue through why uh uh
that exists that difference. I think
that would be helpful because one thing
I want to know is what do you anchor
your morality on? And the bad news for
this conversation is I share your anchor
or at least as I interpret you. Um, but
some people clearly they need they need
an anchor and it seems like they're
anchoring off of uh weak, good, strong,
bad. Very simplistic but it's an anchor
and it's giving a lot of fervor to the
people in the west. Um, what what do you
anchor the what is to you and I obvious
that if you're fighting for life that's
very different than if you're fighting
for death.
Well, one thing is that I'm uh unashamed
to say that I'm on the side of my own
civilization. Um, I'm I I'm on my own
side as it were. I I want uh my own uh
societal side to win out against uh when
it's challenged in a fight. I want it to
win against other visions of how to
organize human life. I'm on the side of
the democracies winning against
communism, but that's a fight from
previous generation. I'm obviously on
the side of the democracies that fought
against and destroyed Nazi fascism.
I believe that in a conflict between
your your friends, your allies
um against people who are not just their
enemies but yours as well. It isn't that
hard to know which side to be on. That
doesn't mean of course you shouldn't be
or can't be critical of your side's
actions and certainly when your side
does something which is wrong that
should of course uh uh uh be criticized.
But I think that one of the things that
has caused a lot of uh disputation in
the last 18 months since this war's been
going
on is that first of all I mean many
people do not actually understand
anything about the nature of war. I have
yet to hear from any of my
critics any scenario in which they know
how you would rescue 250 people from a
densely packed area in which they're
being hidden underground by a group that
uses its own civilians as human shields
and uses its tunnel networks to store
its weaponry. that literally as a leader
of Hamas said the other month when he
was interviewed on Arabia, the
interviewer said to him in Arabic, why
uh why don't you allow the Gazan
civilians to shelter for many bombings
uh from the air? Why don't you allow the
shelter in the extensive tunnel network
which you spent 18 years building in the
Gaza? This Hamaz leader said, "But the
the tunnels are not for the citizens of
Gaza. They're for our fighters and for
our rockets." Um, I have yet to hear a a
decent explanation from anyone, a
military historian or an amateur or
interested observer or anyone else. I've
yet to hear anyone say how they in a
situation like this would retrieve the
hostages and destroy the leadership of
the terrorist death cult that abducted
them and killed 1,200 of their fellow
countrymen. And just to put it in some
perspective, uh I know your audience
will be able to understand this, but I
know some audiences who haven't been
able to understand the idea of
extrapolation out from population size.
Uh Israel is a is a country of only 9
million people and obviously uh the
United States is many times that uh size
population wise. But if you look if you
uh do the uh extrapolation of numbers
out uh what Israel suffered on the 7th
of October is the equivalent of about
44,000 Americans being murdered on one
day on the American homeland soil and
about 10,000 Americans being abducted
from their homes and held in a
neighboring country. Nobody can persuade
me that if 10,000 Americans were being
held
hostage and 44,000 have been massacred
and raped much more. Nobody can persuade
me that America wouldn't want to have a
strategy to reverse that, to address it,
to stop it from ever happening again.
And if you do agree with that, what is
your plan for retrieving the hostages
and for killing the leaders who did this
or bringing them to justice?
The bad news is their reasoning. They're
they're going to have a [ __ ] answer.
They'll give you one. They're going to
say that's bad. You go in softer. You
negotiate. You blah blah blah. All the
things that will never be able to run
the counterfactual. But I think that
there is a moment earlier in what you
were saying that you actually schism
away from the people that you're trying
to get that answer from. And I think I I
am very much mind readading and so
you're closer to the problem. By all
means, um, correct me if you see
something wrong, but this is my mental
map. uh that they would say uh that's
the price you pay. You are a colonial
power. You have uh been occupying
people. This is an act of resistance.
And yeah, you don't have the right full
stop to come in and have a
disproportionate response. So I don't
know what you want me to say. You don't
get to. You need to negotiate. You need
to find a way to free these hostages.
That's nonmilitary. Like that's crazy.
Well, um, yes, Israel is accused of
every single sin that the rest of the
West is accused of. It's accused of
colonialism just as America is accused
of colonialism, just as Britain is
accused of colonialism. By the way, in
the case of Britain, it's a valid
accusation. I have to concede. Um, but
uh um not for some centuries, I should
stress. Um, in the case of Israel, it's
also accused of u genocide and and much
more which it's not guilty of and which
I lay out why that's obviously a slur in
the book. But America is accused of the
same
things. So just just run with me for a
moment on this. If America is uh being
accused of all the same things that
Israel has been accused of, in what
world would we say that the murder of
thousands of Americans on American soil
and the abducting of many thousands more
is a reasonable response to historical
injustices carried out by Americans who
are long
dead. Um, you don't even have to do that
with this country. You could do it with
any even rival country or even a
challenger country or even a country
whose leadership professes itself to be
an enemy of the United States like the
revolutionary Islamic government in
Iran. The revolutionary Islamic
government in Iran that backs Hamz,
Hezbollah, the Houthis and others who
are waging war on Israel and others.
Um they uh they have had Iran uh in uh
captivity that regime since
1979 and belleaguered and and much
oppressed one of the great civilizations
I think in the world the Persian uh
people.
Um, if however a group was to
uh go into Iran, select peaceful people
going about their lives, burn them alive
in their homes, kidnap other Iranians
and so on.
I could make uh uh the the argument that
and I will will make it quickly now that
Iran the Iranian revolutionary
government today is literally a
colonialist power. It is the most
colonialist power in the region perhaps
in the world. In my own lifetime it
obviously colonized Iran. The Ayatollah
went on to colonize Iraq after the
vacuum left by America. It colonized
Syria. It colonized and helped to
destroy the formerly gray country of
Lebanon and it has colonized Yemen. So
Iran in our own day is literally guilty
of the greatest amount of colonialism of
anyone in the era. And yet, if on a
Saturday morning any group went in and
started randomly slaughtering and raping
Iranian women because of this
colonialism and said, "Well, you're
guilty by dent of being
Iranian." I would like to think that
everybody in my friendship circle and
anyone I wanted to know would say, "It
doesn't matter. That's still wrong.
Um, why has that ability to make a
judicious
judgment
seemed to evade so many people in the
West? Why does so many people in elite
institutions
from UCLA to and Berkeley to Colombia
and much more? Why do they find it so
hard to believe all
women or not victim
blame? Why do they want to make excuses
for the most
violent anti-semitic but also
anti-western terrorist groups of our
time? It suggests a profound breakdown
in our ability to be
judicious for sure. And it's one that
should trouble us all.
Do you have an answer for that? Like
what what algorithm are they running
that makes that so it's it's conflict
free in their mind? Like watching uh
even I mean this is obviously much
lighter than some of the things you just
painted, but watching Claudine Gay um
try to tap dance, use legal language
around the genocide. Yeah, genocide. It
does create a problem. I'm just going to
say it. Uh she just wasn't going to
bring herself to do that. Um, but I
think, and look, I'm often accused of
mind readading, and I will admit I try
to mind readad as much as possible. Uh,
I feel like I have a high predictive
validity take on what she is doing. Um,
do you have a sense of the narrative
that she tells herself or whatever that
governs her morality? Yeah, absolutely.
Um, when those three university uh
presidents sat before that congressional
committee,
uh, I knew that they were reading out
uh, statements that they had been given
by the university's legal team, uh, they
wanted to make sure they weren't opened
up to class action lawsuits and much
more. And since many Jewish students on
their campuses and others have been
racially attacked in the last 18 months,
just two days ago at Princeton
University, Jewish students had chance
of of being told to go back to their own
homelands, which is interesting, of
course, because it seems that Jews can
never do anything, right? If they're in
the Middle East, they should go back to
Poland. If they're in Poland, they
should go to Avitz. if they're in
America, they should go back to
somewhere. It's a a very dark thing that
but
the universities where that's happened
on have happened across the country, by
the way, would not be agreed on from
anywhere else. It would not be agreed on
from any other direction. If if um black
students on an American campus had
right-wing maniacs screaming at them to
go back to Africa, I would like to think
not only that those students or the
people doing it wouldn't get away with
it, but all of us would join in a
condemnation of that. We would all join
in the condemnation of that. We wouldn't
say what if or but you have to
understand the context or anything else.
But with Jewish students, it's
different. It's for some reason well for
various reasons I outlined in the book
is that it's a it's been made into a
different case but but the interesting
thing with Claudine Gay and the other
university heads was that they were
reading out lawyerlike statements
clearly to protect their own
backsides and of course that didn't work
but when it happened I phoned a friend
of mine who was teaching at one of these
universities and I said to him what they
were reading sounded to me like legal
ease and he said, "Really, it sounded to
me like chat GPT." And so, as I say in
the book, we tried an interesting
experiment, which was to type the
questions that Representative Stefanic
and others put to them. Is it legitimate
to call for genocide? Is it right? And
so on. And um we put that into chat GPT.
And Chat GPT was very clear. Um it said
genocide is recognized as being wrong in
all known moral systems.
And as I say in the book, it just goes
to show that sometimes chat GPT can be
more moral than the president of
Harvard. Um the point is is that uh
these uh university heads and others are
basically trying to cover their own
backsides against legal challenge and so
on. But what they do in the process of
it is to nod through the utterly
reprehensible.
uh and I understand I think the uh place
they're coming from and I understand I
think the place that the people that the
the the students who are actually doing
the aggressing are coming from. I think
the students and others who are doing
the aggressive actions and the
intimidation and the thug much
more are under the belief that Israel is
actually doing the things they're
accusing Israel of. They believe
themselves to be anti-colonialists and
they believe that Israel is a
colonialist power. They believe they are
anti-racists and they believe that the
world's one Jewish state is a racist
power. They believe that they are
anti-Nazi and they believe that Israel
is a Nazi
country. So some of them are simply
wicked, simply side with the death cult,
simply proame and profoundly
anti-western in every way. stated and
otherwise. By the way, the Columbia
students group who've got quite a lot of
attention in the last year in their
objectives they state that one of the
things they want is the quote complete
destruction of Western civilization.
Fun. Complete destruction of Western
civilization. Interesting. Interesting.
At least they say it. At least they're
open about it. Yeah. So, some of them
they simply want to turn over the whole
darn table. They are the people that the
founding fathers and others recognized
in their time and others have recognized
throughout history. There are some
people who just want to wade through
blood, other people's blood or their
own, and they think the spilling of
blood gets you somewhere. It's a very
dark and ugly uh um aspect of some human
minds. But others of those people who
agree with them are simply massively
massively lied to. They actually believe
the things that they're chanting. They
actually believe that if
you make the Jews
leave their historic homeland and clear
them out from quote the river to the
sea, from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean, something great will
happen.
Now they're never quite clear what and I
think
uh to some extent we're in the realm
here not of geopolitics or of the ethics
of war but in the realm of magic.
A lot of people seem to
Well, most of my adult lifetime I've
heard from politicians of the left and
the right, conservative, Republican,
Democrat, Labor, I've heard the claim
that uh if the Palestinians have another
state, and I say another state because
my view they already have two, or they
had another chance most recently with
Gaza,
um if they had another Palestinian
state, the region would all be Okay, it
would be good. In fact, the argument is
that it's the key. If you solve the
Israeli Palestinian dispute, it's the
key that unlocks every other problem in
the region. I always thought that was
rubbish. I always knew it was rubbish
because in my observation, even if there
was another Palestinian state, it
doesn't mean that the economy of the
Yemen is going to
blossom. Even if there was another
Palestinian state, it doesn't mean that
women in Iran are going to be given
equal rights. And even if the
Palestinians were given another stage,
it's not like the gay bars would open up
in Riad. Um it's it's obviously uh
nonsense. But the idea is now beyond the
region because the uh intersectionalists
and others believe that all oppression
is interlocked and to unlock one
oppression is to start to unlock the
others.
Some of these people actually seem to
believe that um if you address the issue
of Palestinian statethood once and for
all
um you also
address women's rights, trans rights,
gay rights, uh economic injustice,
historical injustice, colonization and
so on. It's magical thinking uh of a
very familiar kind. If we just solve
this one problem, the age of Aquarius
will come. Do you think there is one
umbrella problem that if you solve that
gets moving in the right direction or
No. No, I think it's fantasy thinking
and uh um and is one of the things that
can cause fanaticism, of course, because
if there was one thing that would if
addressed, solve all the world's
problems, what wouldn't you do to get
that one thing sorted?
All right. By way of over uh simplifying
this, ridiculously so, um I do want to
reveal my thinking on this, which is I
the closest thing that there is, I
think, to solving this problem long term
is you have to get everybody in the
region to focus on uh making my child's
life better in this life here on Earth
uh better than mine and that their kids
have an opportunity to make their lives
better than their parents. Uh and so
when I look at this again knowing this
is oversimplified but believe that this
is the thing that you can begin sort of
pulling things apart until you don't
have the revolutionary spirit and until
people go I want my kids life to be good
here on earth uh I I don't see a way out
of this but if you do solve that now you
at least have a northstar that forces
you to ask okay what has done that
around the world uh and you end up even
if you want to go to just the Chinese
system where it's still authoritarian
fine but it's
Okay, we're going to turn um the
economic engine on and off as we see
fit, but like we get that that's how you
get people out of poverty. You give them
this goaloriented mindset and and now
things begin to work. That feels like
again recognizing it is oversimplified,
but nonetheless is true. If they were
running that algorithm, then you at
least begin the very long slow process
that has led the Western world over time
to correct the wrongs.
Uh I agree and I think it's unlikely. Um
but yes
uh any system of uh thought that any
system of morality
that seeks the improvement of I'm trying
to keep away from any theological or
political language but seeks the
improvement of the lot of the next
generation.
um would not indulge in what Hamas and
others indulge in. Um I I think this is
the same with I I think that is one of
the reasons why you can identify
totalitarian mindsets and death cult
mindsets is that they they simply
have demands which are so unreasonable
in the pre in the present but are also
highly undesirable in the long term.
um they uh believe in our view or
nothing. They believe in death or
nothing. And I say repeatedly and I say
in the book that you know and by the way
this is I'm not the first person to say
this. Many other people, golden among
them have said this. But the moment at
which there could be peace between the
Israelis and the Palestinians would be
the moment when the Palestinians realize
that for their children to lead better
lives, they should put their um energies
into creating a state for their children
rather than trying to kill the children
of the state next door. Um, if they put
if they had put their energies into
building a state in Gaza rather than
trying to destroy the state next door,
the history of the last 19 years would
be very different. When you debate
people at that moment, what what is
their answer? Is it the open air prison,
apartheid, uh where do they go? Because
that seems so self-evident. Yeah, they
do they do all those things. They throw
uh lie after lie and misunderstanding
upon misunderstanding.
But um I mean there are plenty of
Palestinians, Arabs and others who have
identified exactly the same problem in
their own
society that the you know the onus on
Palestinian
leaders to actually
accept their Jewish
neighbors.
Um that that's not where they feel
they're they that's not where they go. I
mean Yas Arafat
famously terrorist though he was I mean
he he had the opportunity again and
again Bill Clinton said this recently
again had the opportunity at Camp David
25 years ago now to get 99% of what he
had asked for all his life and he walked
away not actually because he wanted that
one extra percent but because he knew
that if he made an agreement he was
he'd be over. The um his own people
would reject it.
And this is this is a very deep problem
and I think that it's one worth staring
in the face. I'd love to see it solved.
Uh I'd love to see I'd love to uh be
able to dream the same dream that many
of the people in the kabuts, the
communities in the south and indeed the
young people at the Nova party dancing
in the early hours of the morning. I'd
love to be able to dream the same dream
that they dreamed that uh they always
dreamed of living in peace with their
neighbors. Many of them work, but they
didn't get it. We'll get back to the
show in a moment, but first, let's talk
about something that stops most people
from starting an online business.
Overwhelm. When you're staring at a
blank screen wondering how you'll create
product descriptions, set up payment
systems, and figure out shipping, that's
when most people give up. But with
Shopify's AI tools, you don't have to
figure it all out on your own.
Entrepreneurs with zero technical skills
can launch successful stores because
Shopify handles the hard parts. Their AI
assistant, Shopify Magic, writes
compelling product descriptions from
just a few keywords. It creates
personalized FAQs for your customers and
even helps craft email campaigns that
actually convert. Shopify powers 10% of
all e-commerce in the US. From firsttime
sellers to household names like Mattel
and Gym Shark, they give you everything
you need to succeed with award-winning
support every step of the way. Turn your
big business idea into with Shopify on
your side. Sign up for a $1 per month
trial period at
shopify.com/impact all lowercase. Go to
shopify.com/impact now to grow your
business no matter what stage you're in.
Now, let's get back to the show.
given how much you're steered by moral
clarity. Uh when you look at this
moment, what's the calculus that you
run? Because um at the end of the day,
when you look back all through human
history, you the only way that you're
going to get peace is if you win a
decisive military victory. Now, that
doesn't stop you from having
insurgencies. That is for sure. Uh but
that's just how these things have been
settled all throughout human history.
you just break the will of the other
side to fight. And when I look at what's
going on in Israel, Gaza, I think a lot
about America. And so for people that
don't know their own American history,
and I'll give it to you in the world's
tiniest nutshell, uh we run up on a
country that already has people on it,
um we through disease and warfare, um
knock out the first group and then we
get to uh basically Mexico, but it's in
the form of California, etc. and uh
President Pulk is like, "Yep, I want
that, too." And uh has his run of four
years and literally um displaces them
and his own generals were like, "This is
a stain on America that we'll never be
able to wash off, but hey, don't worry.
People have very short-term memories.
We've washed it off." And now we have a
country, and the crazy thing is when I
say that, I'm like, "That's so icky."
And yet if um if China rolled up on the
California coast where I live, I would
fight. So I'm like, okay. And I would
fight and I would be screaming from the
rooftops, decisive military victory. So
when I look at Israel, I'm familiar
enough, obviously people could drag me
into the weeds and be like, I don't
know. But uh I'm familiar enough with
the history to know that there's a very
similar roll out that's like, "Hey, if
we can get enough people here to this
area for reasons that obviously make all
the sense in the world post World War
II, like we've got to go somewhere."
They go, and at first it's like, "Well,
now we can be economically powerful. We
can start being politically powerful."
And you just get to the point where
you've got enough people that you're the
dominant culture at that point. And then
from that, you end up building the
state. And honestly, man, when I look at
the UK, I'm like, guess what playbook is
being run on you guys? It's that
playbook. You've got a bunch of Muslim
people coming in. They're not
assimilating. And on a long enough
timeline, like that just seems that's a
question of demographics. Who's having
more babies? Uh, and then what are they
teaching their children? If they teach
our children English values, great. If
they don't, then whatever they teach
them, if they become the dominant
culture, then that's what that nation
becomes. And so, man, I hate to have
this super detached thing because these
are human lives and I I don't want to
diminish any of that, but when I look at
this, the the thinking of, okay, we've
got two issues. We've got real people
are dying because bombs are going off,
guns are being fired, and then we have
the ideological battle of but we also
want to win international support. We
don't want to end up getting isolated.
That's going to matter. Um, so if you're
advising Israel, how do you do that on
one two step of, okay, there are going
to be people that feel some kind of way
about the formation of the state always
and forever, just as people feel some
kind of way about the way that America
started. Um, but you're here. So now
that you're
here, do they not need to pursue total
military victory, full stop, period, end
of story, regardless of what the
international pressures are?
um not totally regardless but um they
need to do as any country does what they
what is best in the security and safety
of their own people and always with that
remembrance I mean you mentioned people
coming from Europe to Israel but only
onethird of uh Israelis are of European
ancestry and descent most are entirely
indigenous to the region um it's always
interesting to hear people talking about
indigenous peoples. They they don't talk
about indigenous peoples in Britain. You
notice by the way. Um but even just to
really make this difficult and I hear
you and that we we should come back to
that. But to stare at the hardest parts
of this, if Mexicans and literally I'm
looking at Mexicans right now. If they
came to California, not not came to
they've been here forever from an
ancestral standpoint. If they were like,
"Okay, we are not interested in
assimilation anymore. We want to bring
our family over. We want to
deamemericanize this. We want now
California, Arizona, New Mexico. We want
that to go back to a Mexican state. We
feel way more kinship with Mexico." I
would fight against that and I would
say, "Hey, if you're coming to America,
you've got to assimilate." But I'm not
blind to the fact that we just won. So,
we won a war and now there's a trip that
flips in my brain that says, "Hey,
you've got something. You've built a
country here and now it's full steam
ahead." And I'm married to a criate
whose family lost their land when Turkey
invaded. I've actually marched in the
streets of London saying, you know, the
Turkish troops need to get out of
Cyprus. But the reality, my actual
belief is like it's it's done. Move on.
like it to loop endlessly there makes no
sense to me. You I'm very glad you went
on that demonstration. I feel very
passionately about the criate cause and
I'm always startled by the fact that uh
the fact that a NATO member state is
still occupying half of an EU member
state that Turkey is still occupying
northern Cyprus seems to me a great
injustice. And although you are about
the first person I've ever spoken to in
America who has marched for that cause,
it stands out because uh you do not see
American students or any massive
movement on American streets saying uh
nothing in the world will be sorted and
writed until uh the Turks give up uh
northern Cyprus. Nobody says that. But
that's a real occupation. Uh that's real
colonialism that the Turkish government
is doing right there. Um the thing with
wars is there is a misunderstanding in
the modern age. A misunderstanding of
one of many, but one of the most
profound is that most wars finish with a
sort of compromise around the table. And
that's just historically not true. As I
say in the book, most wars end because
one side's won and one side has lost.
There's an important follow on point
which is that the side that's won needs
to know it's won and the side that loses
need to know needs to know it's
lost.
Um the only way in which uh we destroyed
Nazi fascism was that it happened on the
battlefield and on the realm of ideas.
These two were as one. It was destroyed
on the battlefield and destroyed as an
idea. never goes away completely but is
pretty much chased out. Communism was
not destroyed as completely on the
battlefield but it was and it wasn't
completely destroyed in the realm of
ideas not as much as some of us would
like um but it was almost completely
destroyed.
uh the Hamas death cult
ideology must be destroyed to my view
not only on the battlefield but in the
realm of
ideas. It must be made clear that any
Palestinian who wants any kind of future
for their people must accept the Jewish
people as well. that they will not be
able to continue to they will never
thrive as a people so long as they want
to annihilate their neighbor. And I
really hope that after this last round
of conflict, which I've often said is
must not be the latest Gaza war, but the
last Gaza war, not the third Lebanon
war, but the last Lebanon war. My hope
is that this uh death cult, it can be
destroyed on the battlefield and in the
realm of ideas. For that to happen, the
Palestinian peoples and anyone who
supports them and is on their side
abroad must encourage them to realize
that the annihilation of their neighbors
is deadly for their neighbors and deadly
for
them. Yeah, there's no doubt. Now, going
back to um Cyprus, so I'm not sure if it
came through in what I was saying. I
marched in that, but I marched in that
basically to show love to my in-laws.
Uh, and to be honest, I didn't even
understand it. It was I I will say I
felt very good about it. Um, but the
reality is now as I get older and I um
am trying to be morally consistent about
how I think these things ought to go.
Um, I look at America, it took its land
by force, and I love this country and
I'm proud to be an American and just
accept that this is the way of the
world. Um, and so I look at Israel, same
thing, and I go, hey, it's the way of
the world. They were able to, even if
you're just going to give them
politically, they were able to
politically come in and unify the land
under their banner and then win attack.
They were able to win those wars. And
so, right, they've got it. And so to be
consistent with that, when I see
Turkeykey's been there for 50 years, I'm
like, "Kids, it's over." Like I if
you're either you got to fight back,
which would be obviously a horrible loss
of life, and I would not advise it
because we're 50 years later, things
have settled, people have moved on. Um,
but to continue to loop on that, like
that doesn't make sense to me. That's
exactly from where I'm at, and you can
tell me I'm crazy. I totally hear you on
the death cult thing. It gives it a
totally different energy. And if the
Turks had death cold energy or the
Greeks had death cold energy on Cyprus,
that whole thing would be a different
ballgame. But uh my takeaway is you
fight until you're not willing to fight.
And then if you're saying, "All right,
we're done. We're out of this." That uh
to spend the rest of your life like in
this killing each other a little bit
here, a little bit there, a little bit
here, a little bit there. like there's
it's just no way to live, man. I don't I
I can't wrap my head around that. It it
isn't a good way to live. But um in the
case of Israel, this is it's 80 years
since the reformation of the state, the
reestablishment of the Jewish state and
Jewish homeland. And if after 80 years,
almost 80 years now, uh some people
don't accept it in the West, in other
parts of the West, and also in the
region, that is to their great
detriment. Um because there is
um state of Israel is not going
anywhere. Agreed. And I think they
should go ham. But my question directly
to you is I see Israel in the way that I
see Turkey in Cyprus, not the way that I
see Greece. Do you see Israel as Greece
or Turkey equivalent?
I I I wouldn't say I see it as being
either equivalent. Um for lots of
reasons.
Um first of all um uh Turkish
expansionism is its own thing. Um uh
Turkey and the Ottoman Empire has
historically been very good at expanding
way beyond its borders and wishing to
build up an empire. It is has been
historically a very colonialist and
expansionist power. Um although there
are and that's a red line for you
ethically doesn't have it doesn't have
to be. I'm broadly against it. Yes. But
um I believe in nation states but I also
believe that nation states uh um borders
can change but you as you say you better
be up for that um if you're going to do
it. Uh, Israel's uh borders are um are
disputable in three arenas, have been
disputed in three arenas, principally,
the Gaza, the Golan, and uh Judea and
Samaria. Um I see all of that as stuff
that can be sorted out. I The Goland is
Israeli. Gaza is a mess. West Bank
negotiate.
Um and again we'll
see but I do think that uh something
which everybody has to realize about the
region is that first of all it is the
place it is the one place that um is the
Jewish homeland. Um Muslims have many
different homelands. Um like Christians
have many different homelands. Uh the
Jews have one homeland.
um they're in it and as gold famously
said to Joe Biden, they have a secret
weapon which is they have nowhere else
to go. And the people who uh sometimes
um uh
fantasize about Israel's enemies winning
a victory over Israel should realize
that should should recognize that. I
think it's just it's a very strange
thing. I'm I'm glad you brought up
Cypus. It's a very strange thing the
world to fixate the amount that it does
on this one particular territorial
dispute which is a real territorial
dispute but it's it's it's telling that
it's the one that gets the world's
attention. The Western Sahara question
does not. Cyprus does not. There are
many territorial disputes around the
world. It is a very interesting one this
one and one of the reasons I think it is
so important is because I think that the
anti-Israel people have chosen their
target well they have realized correctly
that the Jewish state
Judaism foundational to the
Judeo-Christian tradition which is
obviously whether you like it or not
foundational to the foundation of the
West. They realize that if they take out
Israel, they can take out something very
fundamental to the West. I think they
are right. But I simply don't want them
to succeed. Um, do you do you think of
then um the Israel conflict as a flag
bearer for the Western world and it's
like, hey, you've got this in our region
and so we're treating this like a
splinter. Because literally until that
sentence came out of your mouth, I would
have said certainly for my own sake that
this is about Jews and has nothing to do
with Jews as representative of the West.
Just because when I look back in
history, I remember one of my fir my
earliest awakenings to patterns of
history was my sister who was obsessed
with uh Russian history was telling me
about pilgrims and I'm like why always
the Jews like I don't understand. So and
you confront that in your book. So I
suppose my my question is two parts. one
is what's going on in Israel from an
international perspective them as
harbinger of the west irrespective of
being Jews or is what's going on over
there uh Jews just represent something
man that for a long time has wound
people up I think it's both um I I think
since the west is based everyone knows
on Athens and Jerusalem um you would not
want to take out the legacy of Jerusalem
any more than you'd want to take out the
legacy of
Athens. Um, and but either would be
devastating
uh to to the Western tradition. Um and
at the same time Judaism the Jewish
people are their own thing and uh
they as you say throughout history have
come in for disproportionate amount of
hatred and uh as I say in the book there
are very very clear reasons for that and
I think among other things that the
human desire to find a scapegoat which
Rene Girard among others wrote about so
eloquently is absolutely hardwired into
us. The Jews are almost perfect as a
scapegoat for absolutely anyone. They
could be a scapegoat for the Christian
world and they can be a scapegoat for
the Islamic world. They can be a
scapegoat for the rich and for the poor
for the uh um for people of left and
right politically.
uh and I go into the reasons for that
and uh I but I believe that the moments
when society's become
uh filled with this sort of
noxious thing of anti-semitism is a
thing when you can tell the society
itself is starting to go rotten
and they're looking for someone to blame
looking for it is as I say it's a mirror
for the failings of anyone who indulges
in it as I quote Vastly Grossman, tell
me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll
tell you what you're guilty of. You
might be amused, of course, to know that
that works for governments as well as
for individuals. The Turkish government
calling the Israelis occupiers is one
that particularly amuses me because all
it does is tell us about the Turkish
government.
Yeah, it's uh the whole idea of
projection is very very interesting.
Um, why this moment? What's going on
right now that is resurfacing an
unbelievable amount of
anti-semitism? It is, as I say, a
demonstration of a failure in society
and failings that are going on. Uh I
believe that the
uh the anti-semitism we've seen the last
18 months uh it's not isn't to say I
should stress I always stress it isn't
the case that any criticism of Israel is
anti-semitic but treating Jews by double
standards is and um I believe that much
of what we've seen not all of it but
much of what we've seen is anti-semitic
in in its origins in its
nature I think it tells tells us that
our societies are feile, more febral
than we might wish them to be. And that
uh when as again as Gman said, when um
systems in your own society go wrong,
you search for um other things to do.
Um it's not just the scapegoat thing but
uh it's it's it's it's startling
historically to look at the way in which
anti-semitism is I mean for instance and
we see it in America today um Jews can
be uh hated for being rich and for being
poor for being religious and for being
secular but most interestingly they can
be hated
for being absorbed and integrated into a
societ society and for not being
absorbed and integrated into a society
and that is a that is a sign of as I say
you can anti-semitism tells us it holds
up a mirror to the person who accu who
who who feels it holds up a mirror to
the failings of the person or social
structure that feels it and it only
tells us about them it tells us never
anything about the Jews
it's really interesting um I had a
conversation with a guy that does a
Jewish podcast. Uh, and we were talking
about that and my hypothesis is really
simple.
Um, one you have a and the only sort of
um stick in the spokes is that I had
never thought about uh how they have
been historically in Europe persecuted
for being poor. But my thinking was
always, okay, you have a really powerful
strategy, which is that you help each
other. That's that's unreasonably useful
when I think about um what makes a
nation work. You all work together
against the rest of the world. What
makes a family work? You all come
together against everybody else. What
makes a team work? Same thing. And so
they have a tradition of really helping
each other, but it's extremely hard to
convert to their faith. It's not
impossible, but it's very hard. So
there's this sense of you're being kept
out of a club and a club that
historically has been very successful.
So they can come into an area um fleeing
the previous pilgrim, have to rebuild
from scratch are able to do it. Uh I was
talking to Jordan Peterson at one point
and I was like, "What do you think it
is?" And he was like, "Well, they um
almost certainly have a standard
deviation above the norm uh IQ." And
he's like, "Look, that's controversial,
but if you have uh an insular group that
for better or worse is a standard
deviation ahead of the average from an
intelligence
perspective
and they're really good at helping each
other. So now you drop them in and
basically anywhere they go, they're
going to be successful." And if you just
understand economies, you know, you want
to put yourself at the heartbeat of
that. There's a reason Alexander
Hamilton, who was not a Jew, understood,
I want to be Secretary of Treasury. like
that's where I want to be. I'm
essentially going to invent this country
on the back of controlling how money
works. And even saying that phrase,
controlling how money works, sounds
evil, but read Hamilton. You'll be like,
"Oh, damn." Like, "Thank you. I owe you
a debt of gratitude. This is
unbelievable. I live in this incredible
society because you had these insights
into how to balance it." Like, they
didn't even have the word velocity of
money, but he intuitively understood the
need to address that. Oh my god. Anyway,
brilliant. So they find themselves at
the heartbeat of a thing that people
really care about. So I look at that and
I'm like, yeah, if your society is
beginning to degrade, things are not
going well, but you can see a group that
sort of keeps you out. Um, and they're
doing well almost regardless of where
we're at in society. It is like this
perfect storm married with what you've
been talking about about the death cult
mentality that can through time for
totally different reasons just
absolutely take over the operating
system of the human mind.
Uh utterly fascinating. My own people
the Scots were also big bankers back in
the day and uh it was for reasons that
the historian Neil Ferguson has written
about. Scots and Jews were very similar
in their organization in money. And uh
one of the explanations for it is
nothing to do with genetics or IQ. It's
to do with high trust. It's to do with
high trust.
Um, you could be, if you're a Scottish
banker or Jewish banker, you were in a
community where if you, um, if you were
to cheat somebody, um, it's not just
that you're cheating them out and they
could legally get you, you are going to
damage your own reputation in the cir,
the community of trust, and that's not
worth it. Anyway, however, fortunately,
from my point of view, the Scottish
people are not currently being held
responsible for all of the woes of the
world. That is a nice uh switch.
Yeah. Now, going um to put a bow on the
book part of this conversation,
um you end on an optimistic note. What
do you want people to take away from
what was really this really feels like
the most honest word from my end of one
experience? It was confrontational.
Reading your book was confrontational. I
realized how much I had pushed some of
those early ideas of what was going on
to the back of my mind and I didn't want
to think about them. and just carrying
those through and hearing the stories
one after another. It it really was
like, "Oh, I'm being asked to look at
evil and to ask the
question, does evil exist? If it does
exist, can we come up with a universal
definition?" And then if we all agree,
even if we can't agree there's a
universal definition, if we do agree
that evil exists and that almost
biblical dialogue is the right way to
understand what's going on, how do we
get on the other side?
Um, people will have to read the book to
see what I think about that obviously
and I don't want to sum everything up,
but um, I do believe uh, and have
believed even more since my reporting
coverage of the last 18 months. I do
believe that the force exists in the
world, can descend in the world, which
you can only really use the theological
term of evil to describe. I I I I I
don't believe that they're just simply
people who are misunderstood. And of
course that's sometimes the case. I
don't believe it's just people who had
bad childhoods. Lots of people have bad
childhoods. Uh I think there are forces
in the world. You should be able to use
the dated but necessary language of evil
about
um it's
unconquerable as a force in the world.
But I suppose that I mean in you know
one of the ways in which people have
always understood this problem is to
recognize that it is something that runs
through the center of every human heart
uh and everyone must fight their own
battle with internally as well as
externally. When it comes to what I
really want people to take away from
this it is quite a lot of things.
um not just a better understanding of
the areas I'm writing about, the people
I'm writing about, the problems I'm
writing about, but I think of a problem
which I think America in particular must
address. Um I discuss that issue of the
greatest generation and the way in which
everybody who came after the generation
of the 1940s weighs themselves against
that generation. And we almost always
presume that we will not rise to the
task if in your example California were
to be invaded or America were to be
invaded or it sounds preposterous to say
that of course it's not something that's
ever likely to happen by by sea. Uh
Europe is in a different position now
particularly Eastern Europe. The further
east you go in Europe the more people
are fearing that some kind of uh kinetic
land war is possible.
Nevertheless, um, one of the things that
I've taken away from my last last 18
months of war has been that,
uh, the time of trial can come
about and some people
unexpectedly rise to the
moment and uh, they do so for lots of
reasons. one is events but another is
that they are well
cultured well
instructed you know they don't have to
be well educated they have to be well
created good human beings who orient
themselves in a particular
direction and I say toward the end of
the book that when I've when I've been
with the young men and women who older
Israelis thought had gone weak and were
just wanting to party in Tel Aviv even
beyond Instagram and Tik Tok. When this
young
generation stared real evil in the face
and realized it had to defend its
people, they have not only stepped up,
they've been
extraordinary. And I think constantly of
their counterparts in America and
Britain and elsewhere.
They've been to a great extent, and we
talked about this a bit earlier, they've
been indoctrinated into a into a culture
of
victimhood where the greatest victim
wins, where to be oppressed is almost
the greatest
good. And uh I believe I've always
believed that this is a very bad idea. I
said this in the strange death of
Europe. It was an undercurrent in the
war on the west and in the madness of
crowds. But I believe that there's an
answer to this problem and it is
literally to decide whether you want to
orientate your society and yourself
towards courage or whether you want want
to orientate it and yourself toward
victimhood. And uh in my last book in
the war in the west I talked about the
perils of the victimhood mentality.
And in this book, what I finish on is
the admirable nature of courage, of true
human courage. And I hope that people
take from the
book remorseless though you describe it
as being in
parts a courageous and optimistic
ending.
It's one of the most engaging books
you've written and I'm pretty sure I've
read all the books that you've put out.
Uh yeah, it it is it's unflinching in
something that I resonate with, which is
making me look at the truth of the human
condition. All I care about is
accurately mapping what this life is
really like. Uh so that I can navigate
it well for myself, uh any larger
structure that I'm a part of that I can
do my little bit to nudge it in a
direction that makes sense. Um yeah, it
it is a message that I think this
generation needs very badly. Now, this
is where my lens maybe becomes a little
bit more paranoid than the average
person. Um, I look at the world and I I
really believe what I said in the intro.
Th this is a period of renegotiation the
likes of which no one alive has seen
before. I mean, this is really really
everything is up in the air. Uh, from
what is morality, people can't decide on
that. Uh, who's the good guy, who's the
bad guy, people can't decide on that.
Uh, how should war be played out? People
don't agree on that.
Um, it's just there's a lot of things
all the way down to uh u America let
China simply quietly pass it
economically and not uh ruffle feathers
avoid Thusidity's trap by accepting
second place or do we fight back? So,
um, man, there's going to be a lot
happening right now. There was this
incredible meme that was such a gut
punch to me that your book is very much
the antidote to, which is the meme was,
"Oh, so you want to bring manufacturing
back to the US and it shows these
morbidly obese people moving really
slowly, non-dextrously on these sewing
machines, and you just see a bunch of
people doing that clearly. They don't
know what they're doing. They're like
fumbling with, you know, like
screwdrivers and stuff and then it's
like make America great again." And I
was like, "Oh man, that is a little too
real." uh in terms of we've just lost
that the like fighter spirit. The people
that came and were and I'm going to say
the words that people are going to hate.
The people that came here and literally
conquered a completely wild land and
that sense of like adventure of danger
of not being able to guarantee survival
but you had a shot that nobody was going
to be able to stop you. you were going
to be able to build what you could build
and if you were willing to fight for it,
you could have it. And I felt that
coursing through the veins of
America until about maybe 10 years ago.
And then it just you could feel it like
flagging and you're like, wait a second,
what's going on? Like you get such a
different vibe from kids. So anyway,
hearing your book talking about this
young generation as um basically the
punchline being every generation will
realize what they're capable of when
they're called. Um and uh I certainly
hope nobody's ever called. I don't want
that for people. I am certainly not pro
war, proviolence. I don't want to see
it. Pro readiness, pro love of whatever
team you're on. I don't expect everyone
to be on team America. I want them to be
on their own team. Um but that like
energy of innovation of trying to like
really do the extraordinary it's just I
don't feel it in the gas tank right now.
We have been through a period of what
I've described in my previous books as
being deliberate
innovation. Innovation that is
deliberate
exhausting. We've been put through a
period in the west of deliberate
exhausting of our energies to the most
fundamental levels. We've been having to
spend years talking about the most
fundamental thing that we knew as a
species, boy or girl, man or woman. We
pretended this was an impossible
conundrum and that nobody could
say this is deliberately
deenergizing. I would like to think that
America is better than that and that
this country, our society can be
re-energized.
Uh, but for that to happen, a lot of
crap's going to have to be pushed out of
the way, and a lot of people are going
to have to get going now with the thing
they should do with their lives.
Yeah. And we're going to see if there's
something that can be put out into the
culture that's going to spark that.
Certainly, Donald Trump is um the
attempt at voting someone in that
captures that energy. Do you think that
populist figures like him and others
around the world are going to um light
that spark or are they a wrecking ball
that's just going to make a mess of
things?
Um sitting awfully close to him
currently in
DC. Um we'll see. We'll see.
Yeah, this is uh this is certainly a
moment. Douglas, I can't thank you
enough for your time, man. I cannot
thank you enough for the books you
write, for the wars that you cover, um,
and for your dogged tenacity. Now, I did
promise a friend that I would ask a
point blank question of you, and that
friend, I'll let him remain nameless,
says, "What is your favorite thing about
Michael Malice?"
Um I just if you gave me all day I
couldn't think of a single
thing comes to mind. He's a man without
any qualities or attributes. It's it's
very sad for him
and many friends.
It's tough to watch. All right, I'll
pass it on, brother. Thank you, man. Uh
hopefully this is the first of many and
I wish you the best on the rest of your
book tour and uh yeah, please let the
people know where they can find you.
Yes. Uh, you can find me on X Douglas
Kari. You can find me uh my books all
available at every place where books can
still be bought. Uh, Barnes & Noble in
the US, Watson's in the UK, and of
course, Amazon everywhere. I love it.
Awesome. Guys, if you haven't already,
be sure to subscribe. And until next
time, my friends, be legendary. Take
care. If you like this conversation,
check out this episode to learn more.
Sunzu famously said, "The supreme art of
war is to subdue the enemy without
fighting." But in today's highstakes
tensions between America, China, and
Russia, what if the ultimate battlefield
isn't military, it's economic? Today's
guest, Edward