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Aug. 24, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:12
THE INSURRECTION THAT WASN’T Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 160
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In a stunning admission, the FBI now says that January 6th was not a coordinated attack, was not an insurrection, was not a terrorist act, was not an effort to overthrow the government.
I'll spell out the implications.
Also, media star Trish Regan joins me to talk about what happened to the media idea of objectivity.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
In a stunning admission, the FBI is now conceding, is now acknowledging publicly that January 6th was not a coordinated attack.
It was not an insurrection.
It was not an organized act of terrorism.
It was not an effort to overthrow the government.
And all of this is coming out in a series of interviews and perhaps leaks to Reuters, an article, Exclusive FBI Finds Scant Evidence U.S. Capitol Attack Was Coordinated Sources.
We've known for some time that not a single one of the January 6th protesters is charged with sedition or insurrection.
Interestingly, they're not even charged with racketeering.
Racketeering here refers to the kind of RICO statutes that allege a kind of organized conspiracy, people working together to create some sort of a massive illegal scheme.
So the charges are severe in some cases, obstructing a government proceeding.
Jacob Chansley, the so-called shaman guy with the horns, he's facing 28 years in prison for doing what?
Basically prancing around and waving and shouting, but not fighting, not hurting anyone.
So they're going after these people.
But the point is they're now saying publicly that this was not organized.
And it wasn't even organized, not even by Trump.
Trump didn't organize it.
And neither did these groups.
Some of the groups may have coordinated beforehand.
Some of them boasted, oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
But these were the vast, vast majority of people in the Capitol were what the FBI itself calls one-offs, which means one guy who goes, I'll go in there, I'll see what's going on, I'll take some selfies, I'll then leave.
Think of the significance of this, because for months now, through the second Trump impeachment, through these various hearings, there has been constant references to an act of terrorism.
To a seditious conspiracy.
To insurrection. That's been the kind of guiding word.
And think of all the responses to January 6th.
The militarization of DC. The presence of the army.
Automatic weapons on full display.
Third world style. All of this is because there was an insurrection.
The Capitol Police who testified before Pelosi's kind of bogus task force.
Insurrection, insurrection, insurrection.
Words are really important here because you might remember going back through most of last year when these massive riots were going on around the country.
And in some places like Portland, they never stopped.
By and large, what the left was doing is sending out...
Messages to the media, don't call this a riot.
Don't call this violent.
And that's where you got all the rhetoric from CNN. Mostly peaceful protests, even though flames behind the reporter, people are dropping like flies.
Mostly peaceful. So this ideologically freighted or loaded rhetoric is designed to immunize the left while putting maximum weight on the so-called offenses of the Trumpsters.
On the first glance, I was tempted to say, wow, this is the FBI, finally, you may say, reluctantly dragging and screaming, producing a moment of honesty.
But the FBI is not known for its honesty.
And normally, when they make a public admission like this, you have to ask, why are they doing it?
Even if they thought it wasn't an insurrection, are they having a pang of conscience?
We better say what it really is.
I don't think so. I think what's really going on, and I'm not the only one, by the way.
Here's Matt Getz. I just want to quote him from his tweet.
The game you're watching is not the game being played.
He goes, today's narrative change is all about protecting FBI assets and militia groups who animated the criminality on January 6th.
So what is Gates getting at?
What he's getting at is he's saying that the FBI, now that their hand is in the cookie jar, and now that people are starting to ask questions like...
What was your role, FBI, in January 6th?
To what degree did you instigate this?
To what degree did you provide planning materials?
To what degree did you show where the exits are?
To what degree did you provide funding and perhaps even instructions on what to do?
The FBI does not want to go there.
It wants to shut that whole line of inquiry down.
One way to do that is to eliminate all investigations and examinations of coordination.
Just saying, okay, well, it's not a coordinated attack.
It was kind of a one-off.
So now we can just move ahead with the prosecutions of individual cases.
Let's not really turn a spotlight to what we did.
In a recent column, the columnist Glenn Greenwald said, look, with the FBI's role here, since we know now that the FBI infiltrated all these major so-called white supremacist groups, not really white supremacists, but nevertheless, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the FBI was in all of them.
So, either they knew January 6th was coming and they did nothing.
They were so incompetent, such losers, they couldn't even stop an attack that they knew about.
Either that or, more likely, they were in on it.
They were part of it. They were themselves pushing it.
And given the history of the FBI, I think we know which of those two options is more likely.
And so, on the one hand, while this is a welcome public admission, it seems to me pretty clear that the FBI's public acknowledgement now that January 6th was not a coordinated attack is kind of a tacit admission that they are the ones who coordinated it.
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One of the strongest indications that the FBI was an instigator of January 6th is the FBI's role in the Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot.
Now, I've talked on this podcast before about how a number, as many as five or more of the 14 people involved in the plot, were FBI agents or informants.
So the FBI was part of this, of baking this cake From the very beginning.
And they played a critical role and new details are now emerging on the extent of the FBI involvement.
Now, one of the guys charged in the plot is a guy named Brandon Caserta.
And his lawyer, Michael Hills, recently filed a document saying that an FBI informant Identified as Dan, was lying, deleting messages, was basically trying to cover up the FBI's role in the Whitmer kidnapping.
I can see here an exchange of text between the FBI and its own informant.
And the informant is kind of spilling the beans in these texts about his role.
And here's the FBI, SHIT. How did this SHIT happen?
Be sure to delete these.
So here's the FBI, which does not want a record that can later be looked at by a court or by a jury.
The FBI is trying to minimize its involvement by deleting messages.
And on another occasion, according to Michael Hills, the FBI is trying to falsely implicate a third party, a third guy who has nothing to do with it.
The FBI is sending text messages saying, hey, Dan, you should lie and accuse a third party guy of being a federal agent spy.
So here's the FBI in a very nefarious way.
Not only steering the plot, but shutting down evidence that might emerge later of what the FBI did.
So kind of wiping its fingerprints, you may say, off the crime scene.
Notice that the FBI, by the way, just as it hasn't released the 14,000 hours of footage of January 6th, they've never released all the texts in the Whitmer kidnapping plot.
So again, if you really want to know what happened, you need to see all the texts.
This is a government agency.
Why can't we look at them?
Why can't we see what the FBI's role was?
Well, it's because they don't want you to know.
So the issue here is entrapment.
The issue here is, would these plots even occur?
And of course, it's the contention of Hill and his client.
No, they would not occur.
Now, look, all of this got started when the FBI, going back to the war on terror, they started out by going after some really bad guys.
Think of a guy like Ramzi Youssef.
That's the guy who bombed the World Trade Center.
He's a real terrorist.
He worked independently in foreign countries.
He got military training.
He had access to funds.
And this is a guy with explosives, with intention, a really bad guy.
But what happened is pretty soon, as often happens with these kinds of missions, they begin to get corrupted.
See, it's kind of hard to be a real terrorist.
It's not very easy to get your hands on explosives.
It's not very easy to train in Asia or Africa, unless you're like a former SWAT team guy or military officer.
Not only are you not going to know how to do any of this, you don't know anyone else who does.
So what happened is, you basically had these sort of jihadi types, you know, boastful 19-year-olds, and the FBI realized, well, listen, we can constantly be solving cases, and we can constantly be boosting the agency's reputation, and we can be getting loads of more money for ourselves.
Let me just point out, the FBI budget for this kind of anti-terrorism stuff in 2002, right after 9-11, $3.5 billion.
It's now over 10 billion.
So in other words, the FBI needs to create cases in order to say, hey, this is why you need the FBI. This is the kind of amazing work we do.
And so what happened is for a whole bunch of FBI agents working really over the past 20 years, this is all they know.
To them, being in the FBI means orchestrating plots, finding 19-year-old jihadis, kind of putting them up to it, giving them the materials, and then busting them, being on the scene, photographs, posing, cover of Time magazine.
So this is the fraudulent operation that we now call the FBI. And from the Whitmer plot, we get an indication that it's not just about January 6th.
It's not even just about the Whitmer plot.
It's about the modus operandi of thugs with badges who have been at this now for the better part of two decades.
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I am delighted to welcome to the podcast Trish Regan.
Trish, of course, a TV star, journalist.
TrishIntel.com, by the way, is her website.
She's also a podcaster on the Salem Podcast Network, just like this podcast.
Trish, it's really a pleasure.
In fact, I'm so used to being a guest on your show that I guess the roles are reversed today.
And I'm the host and you're the interviewee.
But let me start by just asking you a little bit about your story, because I'm just curious, just a little bit about how you grew up and how you developed your views.
And tell us a little bit about yourself.
Ah, that's very kind.
And I like this role reversal.
It's nice to be on the other side for a change.
Dinesh, I grew up in the great live free or die state of New Hampshire, which I think was probably pretty instrumental in terms of helping me develop a lot of my My views on things.
I never considered myself political, per se.
In fact, you know, growing up, actually, my family tended to be much more on the left.
But, you know, I will tell you this.
There's something about sort of the old-timers in New Hampshire, right, where, you know, left or right, nobody wanted taxes going up.
Everybody wanted small government, and everybody wanted to really have Power to the individual.
I mean, that's changed significantly in many ways with the Democrat Party and certainly in New Hampshire as well.
But growing up, that really informed a lot of my thinking.
I mean, you can't be a little kid, you know, and this high and read live free or die on every license plate and not have that affect you in some way.
So, yeah, I think that I've always been a big believer in the power of the individual.
There's a sort of almost libertarian streak, I think, to a lot of my thinking and a fiscal conservatism that has lasted me my whole life.
My feeling very much is, you know, you've got to keep government on a short leash.
Because they will spend whatever they get and they will not spend it wisely.
In New Hampshire, we actually have in the state constitution that you have to balance the budget every single year.
And there's no income tax, there's no sales tax, and somehow, Dinesh, you know, they make it work.
Absolutely. You know, I think about when I was at Dartmouth, I remember encountering in New Hampshire the poet Robert Frost, and you have this New England sensibility, this guy who sees nature as being very tough, but it's our job to survive in nature, self-reliance, responsibility, all those, you know, ideas packed into that type of poetry.
Do you feel like you share some of that kind of tough New England sensibility, and is that part of what anchors your political views?
Absolutely. I think that that's a fair characterization.
You mentioned Robert Frost.
I grew up, you know, bedtime stories where Robert Frost, my father loved his poetry and would read to me from, you know, Robert Frost poems every night.
So I don't think I've ever necessarily thought of it in that way, but I think there's a stoicness perhaps to a lot of New Englanders and certainly those in New Hampshire and pride.
And a sense of the individual really being what anchors everything.
And that is a philosophy that has really just governed me throughout my entire life.
Now, I've been a journalist for a long time, a financial journalist, an economic journalist, and one that covers...
Politics through an economic lens.
And so keep in mind that individual sense, right?
And the importance of sort of conservative fiscal thought has infiltrated my views on politics for sure.
But that said, yeah, I think ultimately it's recognizing that we as individuals, we matter, Dinesh.
And that was something that I grew up believing and is kind of a religion to me.
The importance of the individual and individual choice and respect for the individual and the understanding that people can make their own decisions and we should elevate them so that they're in the position to do so.
That's a big part of who I am.
How is it, Trish? Now, you went, as I did, to sort of the elite colleges where you have a collectivist mentality that I think has gotten worse over the years.
How were you able to kind of conserve your individualist views in the face of political climate that might have been hostile at the university level?
So what I would say is I noticed it at Columbia.
I did not notice it.
I went to Phillips Exeter as well, which is a wonderful place.
A prep school in New England, in New Hampshire.
And it makes me feel old because I think back then, and I am older, but nonetheless, back then, when I was in high school at Exeter, there was a real appreciation for and a longing for Understanding all sides.
That really actually, believe it or not, and yes, there's a progressive bunch there and et cetera, but even then, back when I was in school, it really did anchor a lot of our classes and in our discussions we really sought out and tried to understand I mean, to me, Dinesh, as an intellectual, you can't possibly fully understand an issue unless you understand where the other side is coming from, right?
That's just, to me, part of really appreciating thought.
And so that was very much part of our discussions.
It was sort of a regular thing.
I mean, it had begun to change.
I've noticed, I've been back to give speeches, and for some reason, I always get in trouble.
I think you know that feeling as well.
You know, you just can't win.
But there's a political correctness now in academia that is crazy and off the charts.
And we've gotten so far away from the intellectual roots that once governed these institutions and this appreciation for That diversity of thought, Dinesh, that's really what makes us unique as a country.
We need lots of different perspectives and we need to be able to respect, and you may disagree, but you need to be able to have civil conversations.
When we come back, I want to turn to some of the political issues and financial issues of our time and ask Trish Regan what she thinks about them.
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I'm back with journalist and podcaster Trish Regan, her website trishintel.com.
Trish, let me turn to what we've been, I would say, enduring under Biden over the last six or seven months.
Are you a little surprised at the aggression with which Biden has moved on all these different fronts, the border, kind of promiscuous spending, of course the whole catastrophe in Afghanistan?
Do you see all this as a continuation, perhaps, of what happened earlier under Obama?
Or is Biden sort of taking things to a new level?
Oh, I think he's taken it to a new level for sure.
I mean, I think this is the next, you know, this is the next chapter, so to speak.
This is Obama 2.0, you know, plus, plus, plus, right?
Because the aggression of these policies is so much more.
When you look at what's happening at the border, I mean, it's really, it's a tragedy.
It is absolutely a tragedy.
And, you know, there's such a thing as the law of unintended consequences.
And boy, are we seeing that play out, you know, with little kids being sent on their own across the border.
So the border's an issue.
The economy, I anticipated that one.
I knew. I mean, we've been talking about it a lot, and Dinesh, you and I have had a lot of conversations about this, about the creep of socialism, right?
We knew that one was coming.
What's curious to me is he has changed.
Joe Biden has changed significantly during his 30 years in politics.
I remember meeting him as a kid, actually back in New Hampshire, way back when, a lot of years ago.
This is not the same Joe Biden that once was campaigning for president years ago in New Hampshire in the primary.
This is not the same Joe Biden at all.
He's been corrupted by the left wing of the party.
And I don't know, maybe he, you know, this is what he figures it takes to get elected, and so he's trying to court them.
He's certainly courted the likes of Bernie Sanders.
This is a dangerous direction for the country.
I anticipated that.
What I didn't fully expect was the absolute total ineptitude in foreign policy.
I mean, look, I'm all for not spending extra time, money, and lives Policing the world.
And I understand there's certain things you need to do, right, as the hegemonic power of the world, as the world's reserve currency.
But then again, you don't want to be wasting your resources.
So I understood and supported a plan to exit Afghanistan.
But my gosh, I mean, not like This.
Dinesh, I've never been so affected by a news cycle as this one.
I mean, I just look at it and it's so futile what happened.
It could have been prevented.
And it really makes you sick to your stomach when you see what's going on and the human tragedy.
And the loss that will happen.
I mean, I look at it as a woman.
I remember you mentioned Columbia University years ago.
I remember studying pre-9-11 about, you know, learning about the Taliban and the challenges for women in Afghanistan years ago.
And my heart broke then.
And now I look at it and my gosh, I mean, where are the women?
Where's Ilhan Omar?
Where's AOC? Nobody wants to stand up for the women that are over there.
Nobody's working aggressively to make sure these Americans are getting out.
We got our CIA chief having to go over and meet with the Taliban.
What the heck is going on?
Yeah, I mean, it seems like even in Vietnam, when we think back to the 70s, the United States didn't leave all this material behind, let alone Americans.
I mean, there was later a quest to bring back Americans who, you know, MIAs and people who died in Vietnam, bring the bodies back.
But the idea of leaving thousands of Americans at the mercy of not just a foreign power, but a hostile foreign power, where we are now at their behest, and I'm sure part of that meeting you just alluded to was all about the money.
In other words, the Taliban are like, listen, we'll help you get some people out.
How much are you going to pay us if you do that?
So here's the United States reduced to not only having left goggles and helicopters and all kinds of guns, but is now discussing providing aid To the Taliban to consolidate the regime that we have fought 20 years to prevent.
Now, in some ways, I would just say, well, I don't think Joe Biden is that bright.
I actually really don't. I mean, he may be politically swift enough to get himself elected as much as he has, but I don't think there's a whole lot going on upstairs, and I think that's deteriorated in recent years.
I look at, though, Antony Blinken, and I'm like, this is a guy who was far too wedded to his To his viewpoint, we talk about the importance of understanding all sides in order to make the best decision, and this is someone who only saw his side and couldn't anticipate what really was going to happen.
I mean, there are reports that the generals were warning them.
They didn't want to hear it.
They only wanted to sort of solve for their equation And so now we're in the situation we're in now.
You mentioned the weapons. Dinesh, that's our money.
Our taxpayer dollars, billions of dollars effectively thrown away and handed into the hands of terrorists.
And now they're negotiating to try and get people out and it's going to require more of our money?
I mean, come on.
It's really an atrocity.
And you know what? He's going to go down in history for this.
And this is not political at this point.
I'm sorry. Both sides recognize how wrong this was.
I mean, when I think about it, the guy who's really disappointed me is General Milley.
Because when I see guys like Blinken or Ned Price, I mean, these look like the kind of guys I went to college with.
They're like, I want to get in this fraternity, you know?
In other words, I realize that these are people with no experience of the world.
If you're talking about India or Afghanistan, We're good to go.
And the other 45% is essentially black or Latino.
It's extremely important to hold this group of people together and make them think and act as one.
Why would you put out a poisonous, divisive ideology into the military that would essentially fray the confidence and the trust, the mutual trust, among the soldiers?
It's an excellent point.
I mean, and the one thing I think where we've really seen the spirit of meritocracy and working together and really being a colorblind society is the military, right?
They've done an outstanding job at that.
So to your point, why would you tear that apart?
That is a tremendous success, right?
It's It's actually, it's heartbreaking, and this story has really affected me because I just think it's all so preventable.
But, you know, look, not to over-dramatize, but as a student of history, I mean, I look back and there are great civilizations that have fallen.
And when you look at the similarities between some of what's happening now, and again, not to over-dramatize, but look, you can go right back to the fall of Rome.
We should take and learn from history, right?
Our lessons and try to prevent the same mistakes going forward.
And yet, it's like we just can't get out of our own darn way.
You know, it's almost like, it's almost like, Dinesh, we've...
We've been really lucky, right?
We're that fifth generation.
You come here as an immigrant.
You work hard. You hope your kids are going to have a better life.
They do. And it maybe continues on for a couple generations.
And then at some point, the kids, they get too used to it.
They don't really understand what's at stake.
I feel like America has kind of gotten to that point where we take...
We've lost our edge, and this is very problematic, because I'll tell you who's got edge, it's China.
And if we're not careful, we're going to be the next France, or better yet, perhaps the next Venezuela.
So we've got a lot at stake, and we've got to do a better job.
When we come back, I want to ask Trish Regan about the media and also the atmosphere of censorship that now hovers around America.
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I'm back with Trish Regan.
Her website is trishintel.com.
Trish, you've been in media most of your career, really all of it, and one of the fundamentals of having a free media is the ability to speak your mind.
And Americans have always taken that for granted.
You know the phrase, I may disagree with what you have to say, but I would defend your right to say it.
And suddenly we find ourselves, and this seems to have happened within a very short space of time, we're suddenly living in a country where, and I'm not just talking about digital platforms, I'm talking about the fact that you say the wrong thing at work.
Or somebody at work finds a tweet that you did years ago and suddenly you're on probation, suddenly you're fired.
What happened to free speech in America, do you think?
It's gone. I mean, I struggle with this daily.
I say to my friends, I feel like I live in North Korea.
And I'm stunned by how quickly we have lost this.
It may be in part because of social media, but to your point, it permeates all aspects of society.
I mean, to the point where people were afraid to wear red hats and Like a red hat, you know, to support your favorite team that somebody might mistake for a MAGA hat or, you know, if you're wearing the flag.
I mean, it is so far away.
You know, off the charts in terms of this cancel culture, and they can use it for anything.
You look at what BOMO just went through, and I'm not giving any excuses for the guy's behavior, but you talk about boomerang, right?
Because, and that's probably perhaps, Dinesh, a bad example, because again, you know, the stories are not good.
But my point being that there is this sort of cancel culture, and anything that you've You've done.
Anything that you say, anything that you tweet can and will be used against you.
Now, maybe to a certain extent, you and I, we kind of expect that.
But this is now affecting everyone, right?
People that are not in the public space.
You're not allowed to have an opinion.
If you have an opinion, it's got to agree with the left's woke opinion.
Side of things. And if it doesn't, God help you.
And that's a very scary place I think as a society for us to be in.
Now, I want to ask you, you mentioned earlier that you have a strong kind of libertarian streak, and two of the libertarian sort of doctrines that I trace back to my early years are, number one, the idea that the threat to free speech comes from the government.
It doesn't come from private sector entities because they're outside the reach of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment only limits what the government should do.
But then we look at these digital platforms and they are private.
But nevertheless, they are the primary instruments of censorship.
Now, they're being prodded by the government, but they seem to be doing it very willingly.
They're not being forced.
Dorsey isn't being forced.
Zuckerberg isn't being forced.
Does this mean that we're in a kind of a new phase where, in a sense, the sharp line between the government and the private sector is blurred today, and therefore our free speech threats don't just come from the Biden administration— They also come from these leftists who control private platforms but are willing to use them.
I mean, you'd think you and I have large followings on social media.
You'd think that they'd want to think twice about, say, banning us or kicking us off because it's kind of like, why would a corporation that wants to maximize its profits and do well do that?
But it seems to me quite obvious that these people are motivated by ideology far more than they are just making the corporation successful.
I think that that's a very big part of it.
I think they feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders, that they've got to control and influence what everybody's thinking, and they better control and influence it in the way that, quote-unquote, is right to them, again, with there only being one sort of view of the world.
That said, there's something else going on.
I think these companies are positively, absolutely terrified of That they might actually be broken up.
I mean, there's been a lot of talk of Facebook being too big.
Ultimately, I don't know if that's really going to be as much the issue as it is sort of Facebook controlling what we all see.
And they need to have some other kind of system in place so that people can consume whatever it is that they want.
But they're terrified that they might be broken up.
They're, you know, trying to work with this administration.
In some ways, they even tried to work with the last administration.
You know, Donald Trump, former President Trump alluded to, remember, his dinner with Mark Zuckerberg.
I mean, they're all sort of courting the administration, but it's terrifying to me.
I look at it and I'm like, wait a second.
You know, is he like Jack Ma now?
I mean, is he operating at the, you know, sort of at the...
Decision of the U.S. government.
So I think there's two things going on.
I think that they're very much in that leftist camp, and they figure that they are well within their right to, you know, shut down anything that they don't agree with.
But simultaneously, they're getting this push from the administration who's admitted as such, right?
They came out and said that they're flagging posts on Facebook.
And so they kind of feel like they've got the sort of...
The blessing, if you would, to go ahead and do this.
And so it's the worst possible combination, Dinesh.
Krish, just to close out, how are you enjoying the podcast on the Sailed Network?
It's a little different, I guess, than what you were doing on Fox Business.
Is it fun? Are you enjoying it?
Tell us about that. I'm going to tell you, I love it.
And you know what I love about it? Nobody's looking over my shoulder saying, you can say this, you can't say that.
There's something to be said, as I've always said, for freedom.
And I'm not afraid to call it like it is and say exactly what I think.
And I'm now in a medium where I can do that, Dinesh.
So it's completely...
Uncensored, unfiltered, very raw, very me.
And I love it.
I love the connection I've been able to establish with all these wonderful listeners and these wonderful viewers.
And you know what?
My days of sort of the big media conglomerate having any say over me, they are long gone.
And I like so much this new space.
This is awesome. Trish, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I appreciate it. Glad to be here, Dinesh.
Thank you. Debbie and I just ordered the new MyPillow quilt.
It goes with our Giza dream sheets and the verdict is we just love it.
These quilts are just the right weight and warmth and they come in a variety of colors.
We got the gold mushroom color.
Just awesome. Don't wait.
Order now and save 30% off these new MyPillow quilts.
Call 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com.
But to get that discount, you got to use promo code Dinesh.
We live in a society that is obsessed with diversity and too easily we hear it said in schools and in the media and the diversity is wonderful, it is an asset, it makes a corporate meeting more interesting, generates more creative ideas, it makes society better.
Now all of these are, I would call them hypotheses.
Because no proof is ever offered for why this is so, or how this is so.
If you look, for example, at history, you find that societies by and large have grown and become strong, not through diversity, but through homogeneity.
The Islamic writer Ibn Khaldun talks about tribal solidarity as being the glue that holds a strong civilization together, and he argues that when that dissipates, the civilization kind of falls apart.
I want to turn not to Khaldun, but to Shakespeare.
I've talked in the last couple of segments about Othello, and I want to turn to the issue of religious diversity, which is to say Jews and Christians, by looking at one of Shakespeare's more controversial plays, The Merchant of Venice.
Now, the Merchant of Venice, very importantly, is situated in Venice, which is a very cosmopolitan city.
By cosmopolitan, I mean that even though the vast majority of the Venetians are Christians, there are some who are not.
Specifically, there are Jewish communities in Venice, and this is part of the financial sector of Venice.
It's no accident that Shylock, as a profession, is a moneylender.
Let's remember that many Christians stayed out of banking because of the kind of old prohibition against usury, which was interpreted as charging interest.
And so that became essentially a field that was left to the Jews.
Let's also remember that Othello, who's a Moor, a convert to Christianity, is also in Venice.
So Venice has this kind of diversity.
But it's not a diversity that sits all that easily in Venice.
Now, what brings these diverse people, Othello, Shylock, Antonio, why are they even in Venice?
What are they doing? Well, one of the things they're doing is they're trading.
They're engaged in commerce.
And this is really, you may say, the level playing field of Venice.
Venice is a commercial city.
There was a saying attributed to Voltaire, He was talking actually about the London stock market, but he said of the London stock market that this is a place where the Christian and the Jew and the Mohammedan, he means the Muslim, all come together and they only use the term infidel to describe a man who cannot pay his debts.
So this is another way of saying that in a commercial society, people may not agree with each other.
They may not have the same race or skin color or not even the same religious beliefs, but they can buy and sell to each other.
That becomes the place in which they meet.
They meet, you may say, on the Rialto where this kind of hustling and buying and selling takes place.
But even though commerce is the kind of unifying force of Venice, we notice that right from the beginning, Shakespeare sets up this dramatic contrast between Antonio, the Christian—he's the merchant of Venice, by the way—and Shylock, the Jew. Now, it may seem that this is just a contrast between two individuals.
Antonio happens to be a Christian.
Shylock happens to be a Jew.
But Shakespeare's not really after...
He's going after a bigger game.
Because from Shakespeare's point of view, Antonio and Shylock represent...
Two rival worldviews.
Two worldviews that are connected.
Think about the way the Old Testament is connected with the New.
But here Shakespeare highlights the differences between Jews and Christians.
And he argues, in a sense, he shows that Judaism and Christianity give rise to completely different human types.
People whose priorities are different, whose worldview is different.
And I want to just talk a little bit about that before continuing this discussion in the next segment.
So, we sometimes think today in our kind of lackadaisical way of looking at these things that, oh, you know, these differences between the Jews and the Christians, it's kind of one giant misunderstanding.
You know, one is, these are just differences of history or just differences of perspective.
And if these people only sat down and kind of had a lengthy conversation, they could kind of find a lot of common ground.
But Shakespeare's view is no.
The reason that you have conflict is because you have deep convictions, and these convictions at the root level do not agree.
So let's look at the issue of lending money.
From Antonio's point of view, Money lending is terrible.
Only low, disgusting people lend money to make a profit.
And here, of course, Antonio has the view that lending money is not like growing crops or it's not like making a building because you're creating something.
Lending money is essentially just using somebody else's need, exploiting it, to make money grow upon itself.
This was the sort of ancient critique of usury.
So for Antonio, you only lend money to your friends, and you don't really lend it.
You sort of give it. They'll give it back if they have it.
If they don't have it, well, that's what friends are for.
Now, for Shylock, it's not like that.
For Shylock, this is a ridiculous, impractical worldview.
And you notice that both Antonio and Shylock have a very low opinion of each other.
When Shylock first sees Antonio, he says something like, What a fawning publican.
So here's Shylock.
He's the Pharisee. And he sees this kind of humble Christian bowed over.
And to Shylock, this is not a man of the world, which Shylock does not mean as a compliment.
Shylock is a man of the world.
And Shylock believes the world is kind of a difficult place.
It's a harsh place.
And in this harsh place, one of your securities, a really important thing to protect you, is money.
Is your money. It's what's yours.
And for Shylock, even his family, his daughter Jessica, for example, her value is that she is a part of his tribe.
Now, there's a remarkable scene later in the play where Jessica runs off with a Christian.
She actually takes some of Shylock's money, and Shylock goes into the marketplace.
He's distraught, and he goes, Oh, my daughter!
Oh, my ducats! And all the Christians are laughing at Shylock.
It's sort of like, Really, Shylock?
Your money is as important as your daughter?
But for Shylock, his money and his daughter...
A part of what is his.
A part of a single community.
It's not that he doesn't love his daughter.
But for him, loving his daughter means that his daughter must be a Jew.
Must marry a Jew.
Must establish a Jewish household.
If she doesn't do these things, she's no longer his daughter.
And this may seem like a very harsh and sensitive code, but very interestingly, here's Shakespeare, and you know, Shakespeare is sometimes accused of a very anti-Semitic portrait of Shylock, but you can see here Shakespeare is portraying Shylock not in cartoonish terms, not as sort of the diabolical moneylender, but as a very sober, severe man who lives by a very harsh code, but it's one that he's willing to impose on himself no less than on his family.
It's not an accident that at the end of the play, Shylock, like Othello, comes to a very bad end.
And as we explore this play further, we'll begin to see how diversity, which is supposed to be this kind of easy, wonderful thing, can produce terrible conflicts that bring rival worldviews into angry juxtaposition with tragic consequences.
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