Oct. 18, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
47:52
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
| because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not gonna stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
| MAGA media. | ||
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
| Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | ||
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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War room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | ||
| Band. | ||
| Friday 17th of October. | ||
| Anno Domini 2025. | ||
| Hanwell here at the helm. | ||
| Very, very delighted to introduce our two guests to kick off the show today. | ||
| Michel Yves Bolloret and Olivier Bonassi. | ||
| Excuse my French. | ||
| If I handled that relatively well, they've written a book, um, which I remember when that came out in Italy a couple of years ago. | ||
| I was absolutely fascinated with it. | ||
| The basic thesis of this book is that the secularist or materialist explanation for the universe for all that is for humanity is insufficient. | ||
| Um and therefore it's the hypothesis that the world has a a creator, a god creator, um, is by no means incoherent. | ||
| We're gonna be exploring that theme as we go forward. | ||
| And I hope by this the 25 minutes as we discuss this to furnish you with arguments that you might use with more skeptical friends and family. | ||
| Um it's not the point of the book isn't specifically evangelical, it is and it's not even to suggest that that religious faith, religious Christian faith and science are compatible. | ||
| It goes a bit further than that and suggests the simple rational scientific no god explanation for the universe and for and for life, all life on earth, in it it has gaps in it. | ||
| Um and the natural response to that is it's to hypothes you know to hypothesize God. | ||
| Before I bring the guests on, let's just have a quick look at the book itself. | ||
|
unidentified
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The Book of the Book of the Book | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| so you both have scientific backgrounds. | ||
| Welcome onto the show. | ||
| Michelle, your background is as a computer engineer and Olivier, uh you studied uh science and maths. | ||
| So your approach isn't primarily theological with this book. | ||
| I think it's trying to make an an approach to the world of science that dismisses too quickly the the possibility of God. | ||
| Why don't you say something um in your own words as to why you have put this book together with the specific viewpoint you have chosen? | ||
| Yes, exactly as you said then, materialism, which has been a dominant current view uh during the early 20th century has become recently uh a belief which is almost irrational. | ||
| It's a belief which is extremely difficult to keep and hold. | ||
| And the recent discovery shows that the reasonable way is to believe that there is a creator God. | ||
| This all these discoveries that the materialism is a difficult belief, is known by the scientists and know all the difficulties, but it's not known by the general public. | ||
| And the goal of our book is to make known to the general public here and in Europe that materialism is a belief like any other, but it's a belief which has received so many shocks and has so many problems that it is probably today an irrational belief. | ||
| Would you mind just uh explaining the term I mentioned in my introduction, you you mentioned it yourself just now. | ||
| Would you mind defining materialism? | ||
| Yes for me. | ||
| Materialism is a belief that there is nothing else in our universe than matter, space, time and energy, and that's all. | ||
| Which means that if there is only matter in which has come from materialism, if there is a not that, there is of course no God, but there is no devil, there is no spirit, there is no angel, there is nothing, it's just matter organized by chance and necessities and by the laws of nature. | ||
| This is the definition of materialism. | ||
| Well, Robert Wilson, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of cosmic radiation, uh, the background radiation that ripples right across the universe following the big bang, has written the forward to your book. | ||
| And in that book, he says, although the general thesis that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me. | ||
| I can accept its coherence. | ||
| If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation. | ||
| So, Olivier, my question to you, following on Robert Wilson wrote there is that even though you have a Nobel laureate right the forward to your book, and he doesn't share your conclusion. | ||
| Do you think this suggests that a new frontier isn't belief versus science, but humility within science? | ||
| Yes, uh Robert Wilson is a very important Nobel Prize winner because he was with Arnaud Penzias, one of the two we discovered, as you said, the what we can call the proof of the big bang. | ||
| And uh he was uh the the one who wrote the preface of our book uh in the beginning in France and in Italy. | ||
| Now is one of the endorsements of the book. | ||
| Uh and as you said, he said that he is not a believer, but he was an atheist and he became an agnostic. | ||
| And he said that the his discoveries of the beginning of the universe cannot we cannot avoid after death the question of the creation, as you said. | ||
| And it's very important because uh you he recognized that the hypothesis of God is uh coherent and uh that uh but he said for myself, I'm not sure that it's the only way to explain the things. | ||
| So that's the case of many, many uh Nobel Prize winners that we are meeting today. | ||
| We were in Princeton in and in Berkeley uh a few weeks ago to discuss those uh topics with them, and uh many of them recognize that the hypothesis of God is coming back, and that for the moment they have nothing to explain the beginning and the fine-tuning of the universe. | ||
| But they said perhaps one day we will find something. | ||
| So, what we are saying with this book is that there is a great reversal in science, A great reversal, which means that for centuries, science seems to be able to explain the world without the hypothesis of God, but now things have changed. | ||
| Okay, so let's have a look at the two primary theses then that about this book about the origins of the universe, the big bang and the origins of life, all life, all DNA-based life on planet Earth. | ||
| Because we have to lean, in fact, I think part of the genius of your book, and the way you've put this out, is you're actually using science itself and philosophy to suggest that there are gaps in science. | ||
| Um to do with the the origins. | ||
| The arguments themselves, I think that you're presenting, are an updated version of what Aristotle was suggesting two and a half thousand years ago about the need of the prime mover, the unmoved mover. | ||
| Um that which being unmoved moved, uh moves, excuse me. | ||
| That that that's how Aristotle framed it. | ||
| Would you just in your own words explain what this argument is about causality, uh, the principle of causality, um, and what arises from that, which is determinism determinism, the principle of determinism, | ||
| and why that are they are absolutely essential to contemporary science, and the fact that they can't resolve the origin either in um with regards to the big bang and the origins of the universe or the origin of life, why those are fundamental issues that that um that need to be responded and cannot be responded to uh according to the science itself. | ||
| Well, even before Aristotle, uh there was another philosopher, a Greek philosopher whose name is Parmenides, and um he used to say already uh it was in Latin, ex nihilo niel, which in English is from nothing, uh nothing can come. | ||
| So um it's very important, and today 99% of the scientists and philosopher they agree on the fact that from nothing, nothing can come. | ||
| So there is a consequence on uh this principle on which uh everybody agrees, is that um the universe, if you want to be a materialist, the universe cannot have an absolute beginning, uh a beginning from nothing, because it had a beginning from nothing, there is a necessity for a cause. | ||
| So it's extremely interesting and important to know that all the materialists today they believe or they have to believe that in one way or the other, our universe is eternal. | ||
| And surprisingly, during this last 100 years, several discoveries, several evidence came. | ||
| We count six or seven evidence showing that it is almost impossible that our universe could be eternal. | ||
| Um we it is today highly highly probable that our universe had a beginning, and then in that case, of course, uh we have the reason for a cause, a cause which would be different, and this cause, of course, in philosophy, a cause which has a capacity to make the universe. | ||
| We call it with a name, we can call it with a different name, but we call it with a name, which is God, and this is the creator God. | ||
| So this question of the materialism, it's one of the aspects that it has making the materialism uh an irrational belief, because today to believe that the universe is eternal is a very uh difficult uh hypothesis to sustain today. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| What what you were saying just now, right? | ||
| If I've understood this correctly, about the collapse of a number of hypotheses in the last century, is this principally we're talking about the the collapse of the argument Of the big crunch, right? | ||
| So you have the big bang sort of 14 billion years ago, and then the gravity of all the matter and energy inside the universe causes the universe to collapse in on itself and then have an infinite succession of big bangs and crunches. | ||
| That hypothesis was very convenient for scientists, for materialists, because it sort of allowed them to avoid. | ||
| I actually don't think it was. | ||
| I actually don't think it was a satisfactory explanation. | ||
| Because even if you had this infinite series of expansion and uh contraction, you still need to explain why they're what sparked the um the big bang. | ||
| I think this goes back to to Newton, right? | ||
| That you can't have um you can't have any effect uh that doesn't have a prior cause. | ||
| This is part of the principle of causality. | ||
| Um but but put that aside, put that put that aside. | ||
| In the 1990s, the scientists realized that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, yes, uh, so great that actually the idea that it was going to implode in and of itself, um uh that that gravitational force wasn't sufficient. | ||
| So it was it's not an infinite series of expansion and retraction, it's a one-off from nothing, the big bang, all the matter, all the energy, all the time, space in the universe, just emerged out of nothing. | ||
| That's what the scientists want us to believe. | ||
| Um and with the collapse of the big crunch theory, they really do need to come up with um either an explanation for that, which they can't do, because it breaks the principle of causality, or they need to read your book and be far more um showing more far more integrity about what they don't know and accept the need for something outside of the system to have it having created the system in the first place. | ||
| Olivier. | ||
| Yes, what is sure is that the the discovery of the big bang was a very big problem for the materialist people, and we have a chapter in our book uh saying that uh all the Russian uh scientists would discover the we discovered the the big bang with Alexander Friedman, | ||
| they were persecuted and killed uh in order to avoid this hypothesis of a beginning by the communist Marxist regime of Russia, and also in Germany it was the same. | ||
| Uh and the reason is that the beginning is a problem, as Micheliv said, for the for the vision of the world of the materialists. | ||
| And after this, when uh it was not possible to infer from the big bang, they invented the idea that perhaps after the big bang, you will have a big crunch and an infinite number of big bang and big crunch in the past. | ||
| But in fact, as you said, it does not work for many reasons. | ||
| Uh you mentioned uh Saul Perlmutter, uh, who discovered in 1998 that uh after eight, nine billion years, the universe accelerate its expansion. | ||
| And we were with him in Berkeley a few weeks ago discussing all of this, and uh that's one of the reasons of the impossibility of the big bang and big crunch in in the past, but there is many others, because for example, if you have an infinite number of big bang and big crunch, | ||
| the entropy should be at a maximum, the black holes should be very numerous, the cosmological constant should dominate and you should have uh universe uh looking like a cigar and and not uh homogenous and isotropic as it is really. | ||
| So, as you said, to summarize the hypothesis of the big crunch and big bangs in an infinite number of big bangs and big crunch in the past, does not work. | ||
| So it's uh one of the problems of the materialist because there is no explanation of the beginning, and there is no also good explanation of the fine-tuning. | ||
| Gentlemen, will you stand by just for for 30 seconds, a minute, and I'm gonna come back and we're gonna dig on in this a little deeper. | ||
| Folks, I gave out the birch gold telephone number to text. | ||
| I'll do it again if you if you if you now got your pen and paper. | ||
| You need to text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N-989898. | ||
| That's Bannon 989898 and Philip Patrick at Birch Gold and his team are standing by waiting to give you advice and help you should you want to roll your existing IOA or 401k into an IRA in gold. | ||
| That's Bannon 9898. | ||
| On with the show. | ||
| Michelle, you were saying earlier, and I want to dig in on this, because I think there were two themes here in the book. | ||
| The first theme is that science doesn't have all the answers, and that the more we understand about the universe, the more the lack of those answers becomes um significant. | ||
| Which is which is sort of the reverse of what most people think. | ||
| But most people would think the more we know, the more the argument for God disappears, and that's really not the case. | ||
| The more we know, the more science is discovered, especially on the astrophysics level, the more the sort of the gaps are becoming apparent. | ||
| That's I think the first part of your book, which I I think would be very helpful if people had a wider appreciation of the second part of the book, and I think you put this very well, um, is the idea that if you just take the secularist materialist view of the universe on its own, | ||
| that requires some degree a religious type of faith to sustain. | ||
| Michelle, could you just explain a little bit about that? | ||
| It's uh it's clear that uh the recent discoveries, which is since I would say since one century, are bringing in fact are bringing evidence. | ||
| We cannot say proof because absolute proof are just in field uh of knowledge like mathematics. | ||
| We don't have absolute proof in the real world, but in the real world we have evidence, and we have now many evidence that the world that cannot be explained without the creator God. | ||
| And let's let's take the main discoveries which are bringing that. | ||
| The first one is that our universe cannot be eternal. | ||
| Today, the science uh has six or seven evidence that it is almost impossible for our universe to be eternal. | ||
| There has evidence coming from from the physics, from the thermodynamics, from the expansion of universe, from uh quantum mechanics, from mathematics, etc. | ||
| So uh the cause, if there is an absolute beginning, there is a problem, of course, and everybody understands that. | ||
| But not that's not all. | ||
| There are many others. | ||
| The fine-tuning of the universe is a fantastic discoveries. | ||
| It's a discoveries which is quite recent because it's dating from the 1960s. | ||
| Uh discoveries which means that all the numbers of the universe, which are guiding the universe, ruling the universe, these numbers are so finely tuned that in some cases it's a 15 decimal after the main number, which cannot be changed. | ||
| If we change them just by one, our universe would not exist anymore. | ||
| And it's it's very important to know that several uh top scientists have changed their mind, they were materialists and they have changed their mind, discovering the fine-tuning. | ||
| And for example, it has been the case with Fred Oil. | ||
| Fred Oil was uh top scientist uh in the United States, uh, and the one who was mocking Georges Lemaitre about the theory of the expansion and and the big bang, and he invented the word big bang, which then had uh a big success. | ||
| But when uh Fred Oil uh was confronted with the fine-tuning of the universe, uh he decided himself that he would change his mind, and from Atheist, he became a deist. | ||
| So it is a big change, and G shows that the evidence that we have today that there is a creator God are not small evidence, they are not small things, they are very, very serious. | ||
| So the world has changed, and this is why we call we name it in our book that there is a reversal of science. | ||
| For centuries, science seems to say we don't need a God to explain our universe. | ||
| And the philosopher said if we don't need a God to explain the universe, there is a reason which is very simple and very obvious is that just God does not exist at all. | ||
| So this is what they say. | ||
| And now we are just in an opposite situation. | ||
| Look, in 90 minutes, perhaps I could go back to uh 90 seconds, excuse me. | ||
| Perhaps I could go back to um Livier. | ||
| Could you just give me one minute and just say why you think that there are areas of science that require as big a leap of faith as that required um in Christianity? | ||
| What uh I would like first to say that you said that uh there is uh uh uh uh great lack of answers. | ||
| Uh in fact, uh it's not exactly this. | ||
| It's now you have we have new questions. | ||
| The question of the beginnings uh we we talk a lot, but also all the questions of the fine-tunings and also many enigmas in uh history of humanity that we are pointing in that in the second part of our book, and also the in biology, for example, in biology, you we discovered that uh the miracle life is a miracle, in fact. | ||
| Even at people uh we discovered the DNA. | ||
| For example, uh uh Francis Crick, he said uh the apparition of life on earth is a miracle, and he was a pure atheist. | ||
| So, how is it possible? | ||
| Uh in the past we thought that coming from enough matter to living uh being uh it was something very simple, but at the end we discovered that every living being on earth uh depends on cells, and cells are all coded by DNA, and DNA appears on earth uh 3.8 billion years ago, and it was already perfect. | ||
| It was the laws of the universe produce uh marvel of technology that uh the density, just to imagine the the density of information in the DNA is 40 billion times more than what we can do uh in the best chips uh today on the on our century. | ||
| So the scholars, the the scientists are absolutely astonished when they discover such technology that is absolutely essential to produce life with uh because as we said, uh all the bacteria, all the human beings, all the plants and all the animals need the DNA. | ||
| So the mystery is great. | ||
| We've run out of time now. | ||
| Very grateful for the two of you. | ||
| I know you're in demand all over the world to promote this book, and I strongly recommend it, especially as we're coming up to Christmas. | ||
| I strongly recommend it as a as a Christmas talking gift for perhaps your your your friends who or family who haven't given Christianity a chance because they think that science has resolved all of the questions. | ||
| Olivier Bonnecy and Michel Yves Bolloway, very quickly, where do people go to learn more about the book? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Where do people go to learn more about the book? | ||
| The website first. | ||
|
unidentified
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The website on the website there is everything. | |
| Okay, and that website is God the science, the evidence. | ||
| God the science the evidence.com. | ||
| Many thanks for joining us, folks. | ||
| We'll be back at 10 a.m. tomorrow. | ||
| And thanks to Will at Real America's Voice and Vittorio for putting this show together. | ||
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| Friday, 17th of October, Anno Domini 2025. | ||
| Harnwell here at the helm. | ||
| Good evening. | ||
| There are few newspapers as sedate and anti-sensationalist as the Financial Times. | ||
| So when they published a recent article headlined, Did the Political Establishment Pave the Way for Trump and Farage. | ||
| That caught my interest, and it is quite a subversive argument. | ||
| We're going to go through it now. | ||
| The theses inside this article are definitely worth... | ||
| The warroom posse's consideration on this. | ||
| And the academic featured at the heart of this article, Lawrence Gunther, Dr. Gunther from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse, joins us tonight from Toulouse. | ||
| Dr. Gunther, thank you very much for joining us. | ||
| Your thesis, let me get this right. | ||
| Your thesis is effectively that it's the action or the lack of action on behalf of the political mainstream that actually created inadvertently the rise of these populist and nationalist movements right across the world. | ||
| Why don't you give us the in your own words the uh what led you to concentrate on this specific branch of research? | ||
| Yes, so um I became fascinated by the topics of what we call the rise of populism now. | ||
| Um during the rise of the AFD in Germany. | ||
| Um a few years ago, maybe eight years ago or so. | ||
| And um I read an article about the topic that summarized what researchers had done so far. | ||
| And I noticed that the issue of the presentation was not at all considered. | ||
| Um the question whether mainstream parties, the parties that existed until then, represented the political opinions of um voters, in particular in Europe. | ||
| Um there was little research on that. | ||
| So I started this research, and then I analyzed um you know the attitudes and political positions of politicians and voters and found. | ||
| Um that the particular full fury of populism is quite correct. | ||
| And uh in particular that uh mainstream parties are basically all cultural and social topics much more liberal and much more left-wing than um most voters. | ||
| And populists who do this, what I call the presentation gap. | ||
| They um often like politicians from right-wing populist parties often have attitudes that are relatively close to those of the average voter, a bit more right meaning, but relatively close. | ||
| Um this term which you've coined representation gap. | ||
| Your analysis effectively shows that voters and mainstream politicians have long been broadly aligned on the economic issues, such as tax spending, public ownership, and what have you. | ||
| But on the socio cultural issues such as immigration and criminal justice, there's a huge gap between the political parties and the various peoples around the world. | ||
| Um, and that therefore Western publics uh having long desired a greater emphasis on on order control uh and cultural um in integration, uh uh noticed that the politicians themselves have tilted in the opposite direction, uh favoring what could be called inclusive and permissive approaches. | ||
| And that is, I think the the a perfect synthesis here of this representation gap. | ||
| Uh It seems to me though, Dr. Gunther, that the best thing that the political mainstream could do if it finds the rise of what it calls the far right alarming is actually pivot to where the public is, uh, on on especially on the issue of immigration. | ||
| But that's not what's happening, is it? | ||
| Um, so I do agree um that to win back voters, I think the optimal thing for mainstream parties to do is real political action on cultural issues, in particular regarding immigration, that would mean uh limiting immigration and particularly asylum immigration. | ||
| Um do think that uh for a long time there was no real action. | ||
| There were some attempts by mainstream parties, and here I'm talking mostly about Europe. | ||
| There were some um attempts by mainstream parties to co-opt the rhetoric of um populist writing parties, but usually without any action, and if they tried action, then usually this action did not any results, like the plans of the Tories um to um um to re migrate, and in the end it did not uh did not have any tangible results. | ||
| Um I do see that slowly on the European level there is a move toward more restrictive immigration policy, but this is happening very slowly. | ||
| Um and and often it doesn't have uh uh results so far. | ||
| So that I think is the is the perfect analysis. | ||
| The response of the so-called Christian democratic center right has been to try to imitate in a certain extent the vocabulary and the rhetoric of what of what the mainstream calls far right, but without the follow-through of the actual action. | ||
| Um that's why in our movement in the in the economic nationalist sphere, we term these groups effectively performative. | ||
| Their discourse is a performance and doesn't really get to the heart of the issue, which means so much to the voting public. | ||
| Dr. Gunther, what really interested me about your research and your argumentation is that it cuts across a lot of the narrative coming from the political mainstream, | ||
| that the these what are called far right political movements are somehow fascist, anti-democratic, uh and like you mentioned the AFD in Germany, basically the AFD is almost a prescribed political party now. | ||
| Um the courts are constantly intervening with its candidates, and not only in Germany. | ||
| The the interesting thing about your your research and the way you frame this is that in fact that analysis from the mainstream, you know, from the mainstream media, but also the political mainstream would actually be incorrect. | ||
| What you're what you're pointing out here is that these groups are responding to a democratic need which isn't being catered for by the mainstream political parties. | ||
| And that's not that doesn't that makes these far-right groupings far from being anti-democratic, but part of an essential part of the democratic process. | ||
| So I think this is a very fascinating point. | ||
| And this I think uh reveals some struggle over democracy that we have um underlying this discussion about concrete politics. | ||
| Um, because you know the um uh the thing is I think most probably the majority of voters would interpret my results the way you do. | ||
| Um but uh the interesting thing is uh most uh researchers or politicians that I've talked to have a very different interpretation because their interpretation is well if um if populist parties have the same um attitudes as the average voter, what that means is that the average voter is a fascist. | ||
| Because uh these um like uh I think uh many mainstream politicians and and and also um uh many researchers and and journalists are very convinced because of the positions of um life-ing populists that they are fascists, so everyone who's like that is then also um is it also a fascist, and I think democracy um is also defined in very different ways by the uh people across a different spectrum nowadays. | ||
| So um again, I do think that many voters would like define a democracy like you or democratic behavior like you, if you represent large part of the electorate, then this is uh a very democratic act because democracy is fundamentally about representation in the eyes of many people, | ||
| but but not in the eyes of all people, no, like um particular politicians from liberal parties, mainstream parties that I've talked to, they really highlight liberal institutions as being democratic. | ||
| So um and they do not think that representing voters is that important within the democracy. | ||
| Um so they think, well, uh, say um right-wing populists um try to uh push through with some uh initiatives um uh that judges don't like, then they are anti-democratic, and if voters agree with that, then they're also anti-democratic. | ||
| Hold on to that point, Dr. Gunther. | ||
| We're gonna come back to that uh in just two short minutes. | ||
| Um because that is that that I think what you the confession there uh what you said is really at the heart of what is wrong with what many uh of our viewers who think is wrong with the with the with the the democratic the the inverted commerce democratic mentality of the of the centerground. | ||
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| Dr. Gunther, coming back to you, can you just repeat what you just said? | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Could you just repeat what you what you said about how um speaking to center-right and mainstream politicians, they don't actually feel as if it's their responsibility to respond to some of the democrats, | ||
| some of the desires of the electorate, if they can just dismiss those desires as being fascist and anti-democratic, such as the uh the desire for greater controls on immigration. | ||
| Yeah, so um I do think that there's a very strong uh tendency in uh mainstream parties um to not seeing themselves as um representatives, uh like uh at least not in the first place, but rather as leaders. | ||
| So uh I have the impression these um these politicians think that they figured out the right policies on all kinds of topics, for instance, immigration, um, that are objectively good, and um that most voters, | ||
| if they disagree with these policies, and most voters do disagree, this is what uh my my research shows, then it just means that the voters are either uninformed or stupid or some some related concept, or they are deeply immoral, like fascist also. | ||
| In any case, I think politicians do not mainstream politicians do not think it's it's their main responsibility to represent these attitudes, but but to lead the way and educate voters that the policies that the politicians uh find good are correct. | ||
| There's also some hard data on that. | ||
| So in some of my papers, you know, uh and other data where politicians are explicitly asked. | ||
| So say you have one opinion, your voters have a different opinion. | ||
| Now, what should the politician do? | ||
| And like more than 80% of um parliamentarians say, well, politicians should follow his own um judgment. | ||
| Now, uh, interestingly, so among um populist parties, even there, like a relatively large share has this opinion, but it's much less. | ||
| It's it's more like around a half. | ||
| If you ask voters, of course, they say, well, politicians should represent the uh just the voters, uh, should follow the voters. | ||
| And I think this is the struggle that we that we have. | ||
| You know, what's the democracy? | ||
| Voters say, just represent me. | ||
| Politicians want to be leaders. | ||
| As an academic who studies this, are you not um what is your emotional reaction when you see this disparity between the expectations of what is it is appropriate from the political class with respect to the peoples, | ||
| you know, that as someone who who's who's whose job it is to pull over these statistics, to ask questions, to go and talk out and focus group with voters and then talk, come back and talk to politicians. | ||
| When you see them looking you in the eye, uh and they say quite uh without any shame whatsoever, we don't really think it's our job as elected response as elected politicians to respond to uh the the elect the the interests of our electorate. | ||
| Um what is your reaction from that? | ||
| And and how does that differ from uh your colleagues, your professional colleagues, because there aren't that many people looking into what you're doing with this degree of uh resisting to to make a value judgment on your findings. | ||
| Yeah, so um I mean, as you said, no, that's science. | ||
| So I I try to be not emotional about these topics, and I just uh I just uh try to analyze things um as they are. | ||
| Um so I was very I remember my main reaction, my first reaction was just surprise, because um uh I never had much exposure to politicians before I wrote these papers, and I always took it for granted, just talking to you know, family and friends. | ||
| I took it for granted that it was the job of a politician to just represent opinions, and I was very surprised that that many people I talked to had a very different opinion. | ||
| Um I mean, you know, of course. | ||
| Uh in theory, there is some point that they have, you know, like uh of course voters can have biases, voters are misinformed, but I and but this is not emotional, this is an intellectual point. | ||
| I do think my my hunch, strong hunch, is that they are really wrong. | ||
| Um in the sense that they overestimate strongly the misperceptions people have, and that they also do not realize that they themselves have cognitive biases, they also have misperceptions. | ||
| There's some interesting research comparing how biased politicians and voters are, and politicians tend to be even more biased, you know. | ||
| So if you you you don't you take the decision away from voters, okay, you eliminate the biases of the voters, but you just replace it with your own biases, and these uh I think are often often um often larger. | ||
| It's it is fascinating because there is this expectation that most people working in this arena of social science is going to be basically communist. | ||
| Um so to find someone who's brave enough to look at the research and the analysis in the face and come out and say it is exactly as it is. | ||
| Um I can't commend you enough. | ||
| And of course, the other thing is that that comes out of what you're saying, and to most people who follow this show, what you're saying is just absolute obvious. | ||
| I mean, it is it is exactly the case as you're describing it. | ||
| The problem is that the whole 99% of academia, they won't go near what you're saying, and they certainly won't report on it neutrally. | ||
| They will say basically, as you're saying, as the politicians are saying, if the people are fascist, they then it's inappropriate to respond to them. | ||
| And that of course creates as you were just highlighting just now, towards the end of your remarks, this um a paradox, basically, that a that huge swathes of the political spectrum of the center ground, in order, in Germany. | ||
| I think this is the clearest example of this. | ||
| In order to not respond to the democratic will with regards to the immigration crisis, are are recount, you know, by dismissing it as anti-democratic. | ||
| They themselves, using the state apparatus and the and the secret police and the intelligence services to clamp down on the AFD, both candidates, incumbents and and also supporters, are themselves assuming the very anti-democratic paraphernalia that they that they that they set out uh trying to oppose. | ||
| That is the I I think the the the contradiction that really comes forward out of your research, Dr. Gunther. | ||
| And I hope more people spend time uh we'll put the links out to your stuff, and I hope more people will take a look at it and and and uh and circulate it. | ||
| So on um on social media, where can people go to get more on your on your research? | ||
| Yes, so the main um would be substack where I um post um some articles, some analysis, and X. Um, where I um not so often, but you'll find me there, if have some substack article and I mean post it on X. And that's perfect. | ||
| And would you mind just reading reading out your your handle on X your profile? | ||
| What is it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um Gantar Lawrence. | |
| It is Gunther Lawrence. | ||
| That that's it, perfect. | ||
| Dr. Lawrence, thank thank you very much for coming on the show, and I wish you all the best with your research and do come back and update us on your further analysis in due course. | ||
| Thank you. |
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