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May 18, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:01:04
Carbon Mike III
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I love Danny Poe!
Welcome to the DeliPod with me, James DeliPod.
And I really am, I'm like the Ferrero Rocher ambassador.
I really am this week.
I'm spoiling you with an abundance of podcasts.
And you're going to get even more excited when I tell you who this week's, or rather this particular day's special guest is.
You crave him.
And rightly so.
He speaks golden words in his beautiful, rich speaking voice.
It's Carbon Mike.
Hello, Carbon Mike.
That's a very nice intro.
So far, so good.
Have you heard the dick discussing you yet on our podcast?
No, I have not.
No.
No, no, no.
I think you'll be quite amused.
Are they going to have to challenge him to a duel?
Is this the kind of...
Are we going to have to do Pistols at Dawn?
No, no.
We both love you, as everyone does.
But I think you'll enjoy the conversation because I talk about how basically what you've made me realize is I am actually black.
And we go into the details of that.
Jesus.
Yeah, no, stop.
Don't laugh.
Hey, blood.
Blood.
Jesus.
Don't laugh.
I tell you, if this were Apocalypse Now...
Yeah.
I realized I would not be the Martin Sheen character.
I would not be the Marlon Brando character.
I would be one of those black dudes with the bandanas.
Maybe the guy's in the dugout.
Wait a minute.
Smoking loads of weed.
Through the barrel of the gun.
That'll be me.
Will you be Larry Fishburne's character in the patrol boat?
Yes!
That is me.
I am Larry Fishburne.
Get all that automatic weapon and start hosing down lefties.
One of my friends from Breitbart Got his doctoral thesis writing about river patrols in Vietnam.
Ah, yep.
Quite a good subject for a thesis, eh?
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Anyway.
The Brown Water Navy is what they used to call it.
That's right.
Do you share my fascination with the Nam?
I don't, I mean, we, Englishmen of my generation, I think, you know, Dick is the same.
We just, the Nam, we can't get it.
I think part of the thing was...
It's a very interesting war.
We grew up in an era of VHS, or even Betamax, rental videos.
When we were growing up as teens, we had no kind of teen life.
We just sat at home watching rental videos, so watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
But an important part of our education were NAMM videos.
I've seen them all.
I tell you what I hadn't seen before.
Well, I suppose it hadn't come out when I was a teenager.
Yeah.
And that was that Mel Gibson movie.
You know the one?
Once We're Soldiers, Once We're War, something like that.
Yeah.
About the thing, the campaign in the Ashaw Valley.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
And I... I didn't think it was the best.
I didn't think that...
I just thought...
And I'm cribbing here because I know that somebody I read on Twitter who was ex-military made this criticism.
They said, look...
Soldiers in action do not expose themselves in the way that all the grunts were exposing themselves in this particular movie.
I know part of the point was this was the first major confrontation between the US Army and the NVA. Nevertheless, I just thought it was a bit unrealistic.
Hmm.
Yeah, I haven't seen that movie, and I haven't even heard that much about it, but I've kind of, I often, I spend a lot of my life on media blackout as far as movies are concerned.
But I have, I'll tell you what I have seen that you, I don't know if you've seen this movie, Hamburger Hill?
Yes, it's not my favourite, but I, maybe I should go back to it.
You've got to go back to it.
Well, I tell you what, what I do remember, the one standout line I do remember from that film, is that they have a text appear on the screen, don't they?
And the text says, is a quote from either a Viet Cong or a North Vietnamese army person, saying that what they used to do was they used to shoot an American, and then they'd wait until his buddy would come and Come and treat him, try and rescue him, apply first aid, bandage, whatever.
And then they'd shoot him.
And they'd shoot the next one, and the next one, and the next one.
I remember that.
But that was how the film felt, just watching grunts get tragically wasted.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, it was...
I liked it just because it kind of had more of a view of the...
I don't know, the...
The camaraderie and how the soldiers interacted with each other when they weren't on patrol.
Well, we like all that.
Yeah, and then the interaction between them and some of the racial stuff.
I think it was really cool.
Funnily enough, and this is quite a segue here, but I think it just about works.
Have you watched an Israeli TV series called Fauda?
F-A-U-D-A. It's on Netflix.
Check it out.
Check it out.
I will.
F-A-U-D-A. It's brilliant.
It's now in its third season.
Whatever you do, do not watch the dubbed version.
I don't like dubbed versions of anything.
Absolutely use the subtitles.
But what's really fascinating about it is because it's made by Israelis, not by some wussy American politically correct...
What's the one about the About the girl who comes back and she's from the Middle East and we're not sure whether she's a double agent.
Homeland.
Okay, yeah.
Homeland, which is based on Israeli series.
But that's got a kind of an American-ish take on the Middle East.
This is a kind of worm's eye, insider's view.
And what is very clear throughout is that the...
Hamas and, you know, the Palestinian terrorists and the people on the West Bank generally have much, much more in common with their Jewish enemies than they care to admit.
You know, they seem that they eat the same diet, pretty much.
They're used to the same arid climate.
There's just...
Well, they are both Semitic peoples.
They're peoples to the book.
And the fact is, I think it might be a saying from over there that the worst kind of fights you will have are the fights with your brother or with your cousin.
Do you know what I'm saying?
So it kind of makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
It would be like you and me having a fight.
It would be vicious, wouldn't it?
Because we are basically...
That's the thing.
So let's never fall out of carbonite.
I think mom always liked me better.
Go on.
The relevant point I remember, which prompted my segue, was this, which is that after about the second season, the plots are really quite similar.
You're fairly familiar with what's going to happen next.
But what appeals to me about that series is the camaraderie.
It's about an Israeli undercover squad whose job it is to kind of take out terrorists and rescue people and stuff like that.
And they all speak fluent Arabic and they all pass as Arabs.
I mean, they really do.
But But the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the banter, the way they look after each other, almost like lovers.
It's a beautiful thing, man.
Yeah.
So watch it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like...
Hey!
Yo, tell me.
No, no.
I was just going to say, hey, we just plunged straight in there, didn't we?
We plunged in there like Neil Ferguson going to his...
Going to his mistress's...
No, actually, she comes to him, doesn't she?
She leaves her marital home.
She does come to him.
Her £1.9 million.
We are on the wrong side of the political argument, are we not?
Clearly.
The money is with the Liberals.
Yes.
I mean, I... Well, first of all, I mean, listen, I'll take what I get, right?
It's like, you know, cosmic justice...
I've learned over the years that cosmic justice often works like this, is that it's not...
It doesn't come down for the thing you think it's going to come down for.
So, you know, this guy, you know, single handedly tried to destroy British agriculture.
Well, as they tried, I mean, you know, whether it was whether it was intentional or not.
The fact is that he right.
He destroyed British agriculture, you know, inflicted untold misery on farmers up and down the nation.
You know, fomented panic was wrong on everything and and had the nerve to, you know, to wave his his computer generated guesswork under the nose of the government and kind of worm to wave his his computer generated guesswork under the nose of the government and um Into the graces of, you know, high ministers of the government, right?
And didn't have the integrity, put it that way, didn't have the integrity to stand by his work.
And what does he get taken down by?
Some sordid little affair.
You know, being a hypocrite.
You know, being a fraud and a liar.
Yeah.
Although, how sordid was it, really?
I mean, one could get all sort of morally judgmental.
I... I'm really glad.
Listen, listen, listen.
It's sorted.
It is sorted.
All right?
I'm sorry.
You know something?
You don't have to be...
It's like, she's married, she has two kids.
You know, she's got no business traipsing around the city.
You know what I'm saying?
No, it's unseemly.
Yes, no, actually, you're right.
You're right.
I suppose what I'm thinking is that we can...
We can focus too much on the immorality, or however you want to put it, of this guy having an affair with this married woman.
Oh, I see what you mean.
I see what you mean, yeah.
But it is, isn't it?
I said this in an article.
It's a bit like Al Capone being busted, not for the St.
Valentine's Day massacre, but for tax evasion.
That's right, that's right.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember you saying that with Toby, yeah, with Toby Young, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it just strikes me as wrong.
There's a piece in The Telegraph today that somebody pointed out to me by Paul Newkey, their global health affairs correspondent, or some ridiculous title he's got.
And I see The Telegraph is advertising that you can sign up to get daily bulletins so that you can be given the up-to-the-moment information on coronavirus and what's happening.
And This guy is saying that history will judge Neil Ferguson kindly.
And I'm thinking, if that really is the take home of a conservative newspaper, you know, you get columnists like Sherelle Jacobs taking my line.
But the point is that the news agenda of the Telegraph is still working hand in hand with the government's agenda.
So it's basically relaying official propaganda to its readership in the guise of being objective news reporting.
Yeah.
Now, that strikes me as, well, worry.
Worrying, disappointing for those of us who used to work at The Telegraph when it was a conservative newspaper, but really, really quite scary.
I mean, I'd hoped this was going to be the turning point.
By accident, the fact that Ferguson's been caught with his trousers down would give the government the excuse they need to distance themselves from him and just perform a U-turn on the disastrous policy, which was inspired by his dodgy study.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, here's what I think.
Again, you know more about what's going on over there than I do.
You have more context.
But it strikes me that, look, they've got to be very—they are, of course, aware of the optics of this thing.
And they are also aware that they have they have to be aware that they have just about stretched the British public's patience to the breaking point.
But at the same time, being bureaucrats, being a government, they also don't want to be seen to make an abrupt U-turn on the back of this thing, because then how would that look?
You know, it's like, oh, you got right.
So so I think, you know, that I read some some excerpt, some headline that said apparently from Monday they're going to relax the the restrictions that, you know, they're going to do this.
They're not going to do this all of a piece.
They're going to kind of stage it out to make it look like they didn't get caught out there.
But they know they got caught out there.
And I think they know very well that they're sitting on a powder keg right now.
Again, I'm always amazed by the tremendous civic patience exhibited by the British people, by the public, in the face of In the face of things which are frankly outrageous.
And I think your government has to be aware that, okay, we've got to turn this around because it could get ugly.
Go on, sorry.
I love your faith, A, in the British people, which I don't think I share anymore.
I think that they have revealed themselves to be a bunch of Snitching, cowardly, panty-waist tosses, frankly.
You keep bundling in all the classes with this.
This is the urban, kind of middle-class, kind of effete elites.
It's not just...
No, it isn't.
You don't think so?
No, it's not.
Really?
No, I totally don't.
This has been one of the tragic revelations of this whole business.
I mean, this...
We thought, last year, me including...
That Brexit was the great litmus test, the great separator of the sheep and the goats, and that you could decide somebody's, judge somebody's soundness based on where they stood on Brexit.
You know, did they stand for independence, sovereignty, a proud future as the kind of maybe as the Singapore of Europe?
Or did you want more government regulation?
Did you want more faceless officials and so on?
Brexit is now completely meaningless, and what has shown it to be meaningless, in my eyes anyway, is that a lot of people who voted Brexit and advertised the fact that they're Brexiteers on their Twitter profile and such like, are actually COVID bedwetters.
In fact, that particular constituency, I would say, surprisingly, because I would have thought they were We're better than this, are the working class, the sort of the blue, no actually that's the American terms, sorry, the working class constituencies in the Midlands and the North, which lent their vote to Boris Johnson believing that he was their best chance of delivering Brexit.
They have an authoritarian streak.
They actually believe in the power of government.
They just didn't want EU government.
But it wasn't that they didn't want big government.
That was my mistake.
That was the mistake of people like me and Martin Durkin and all those kind of...
The libertarian strand of Brexit, who believed that, you know, it would give us a chance to be a free-booting economy and to reduce regulation and so on.
We were, I now realise, a minority.
Actually, the bulk of the Brexit voters were working-class authoritarians who didn't necessarily want less government.
Not sad.
I don't get that sense.
Look, what you're saying may be true.
We get a skewed view of anything by looking at it through the online lens, by looking at it through the social media lens.
Now, I will admit that certainly here in the US, I'm seeing that a lot of people who I thought were sound, we didn't have a litmus test event like Brexit, but I am seeing a lot of conservatives Who I thought were sound, definitely turning into kind of bedwetters.
There's one or two people.
There's one guy in particular I'm very disappointed in who writes for the American Conservative.
Oh, tell me.
Name the name.
Well, I have to say Rod Dreher.
Well, you don't have to.
No, I mean, it's fine.
But, you know, Rod Dreher, D-R-E-H-E-R. I don't know.
I always thought of this guy as a righteous cat.
He's a southerner.
He wrote very compellingly about a family member who had a terminal illness and the divisions in his family and their work as a family to repair some of that.
He wrote this book called The Benedict Option, which I think is very much misunderstood, but a very relevant book right at this time, very much needed.
Whether or not you're a Christian as a matter of fact.
But what you're saying, he's dead now.
He's dead to me.
He's dead to us.
He's toast.
I'll tell you who else is...
Yeah, go on.
Sorry, turn on.
No, I was going to say, you know, he seems to buy in a little bit too much to that we all have to be terrified and if you leave your house, you're killing people type of thing.
And it's like, I don't know what happened to him.
I don't know what happened to him.
I tell you what happened.
I know exactly what happened.
These plants came down from outer space and they fire these kind of spores and they turn you into pod people.
I've seen the movie.
It happens.
I've seen it.
They even get Donald Sutherland at the end.
I was just going to say, well, you know, I mean, here's the thing.
It's, look, everyone, I think the 80-20 rule really does apply.
We don't need 100% of everyone to be kind of rock-ribbed libertarians, live free or die.
We don't need that.
In the same sense that, well, it might be nice, but maybe not.
Because maybe, look, maybe the saying that it takes all kinds to make a world, maybe that really is true.
In other words, society only works because large numbers of people get up every day and do the same thing and do it well and do it reliably, okay?
So, I'm not inclined, and as a matter of fact, I'm very disinclined to kind of down-talk those people, even if they have bought into government propaganda about how frightened we should be about COVID-19 or whatever.
I'm not inclined to down-talk them because of that.
The people who I'm going after are the media people who set themselves up as the guys who are going to tell us what's going on.
And because those are the ones who are responsible for, who are supposed to view governments and their ministers with skepticism.
Those are the ones supposed to be asking difficult questions.
You know, those are the ones supposed to be kind of pushing back against official narratives and what have you.
And by the way, I got to get something off my chest.
You know, speaking of people who've set themselves up as as as, you know, askers of questions and and and speakers of truth to power.
You know who's really dead to me?
Well, first of all, the feminists were dead before, but now especially they're dead to me.
All the online feminists, all the essay writers, all the Jezebel.com people, the people who saw patriarchal conspiracies, Yeah.
Right?
It's like, I remember, you know, as a kid, right?
So my mom's a registered nurse.
She's retired now.
So I remember reading her medical books.
I remember learning about the human body.
I remember her telling me about when a baby's born.
And how a woman's body makes this thing called colostrum, which is like the very first milk that is let down, and how this colostrum is this miraculous substance that kickstarts the baby's immune system, and how that's so important.
And I remember my outrage at seeing these stupid online feminists talking about how, just to say that it is better for a woman to breastfeed her baby from birth, just saying that it's better, Is misogynistic and is some kind of patriarchal conspiracy to keep women in some kind of position.
So they saw these conspiracies everywhere, in music, in movies, in Shakespeare, right?
In the classics, okay?
And now, the governor of New York State tells you, get your ass in the house and stay there until you're told otherwise.
And what do they say?
Okay.
And by the way, don't touch anybody.
And I'll be watching from a drone.
And by the way, we're going to have an app for you to download on your phone so I can keep tabs on you and who you talk to and how close to them you get.
So watch it.
And what do all the feminists say?
Okay.
Where are all the feminist protests against having this epidemic mansplained to them?
I thought science, I thought all of science was a patriarchal conspiracy, huh?
I thought it was all just a power game that men were playing to keep the women in the house.
Little did I know that all that was necessary is for Andrew goddamn Cuomo to say, get your ass in the house and don't come out until I tell you, huh?
And so, let's leave them aside for a second.
What happened to all the trans activists to whom biological reality was just a power game, huh?
It's a social construct.
Basic biological fact was a social construct, huh?
What happened to all these people?
Oh, I don't, you know, all your rules and regulations and da-da-da-da-da, and you can't tell me how to da-da-da-da-da, and I can define myself.
They define their asses right back in the house.
When the authorities said, get your ass in the house.
Huh?
All the screeching harpies that were talking about bodily autonomy.
It was never about bodily...
You know what it was about?
It was about self-indulgence.
And now, because they're afraid, because they're scared, they can indulge themselves by following orders.
By gratefully accepting the leash and doing what they're told and snitching on their neighbors.
That's who I'm down on.
Never mind, never mind people who, you know, live in, in, in middle America or live in the regions on your side of the water.
And, and, and, you know, they watch a certain amount of TV and therefore they're getting this thing, you know, over and over again.
And, and they, and they buy into it.
You know, I, I, I got, you know, I got some time for that, but these people, the revolutionary socialists, whatever happened to the socialists who saw capitalist conspiracies everywhere?
Huh?
Everything was a conspiracy of, of, of, of the capitalists against the working man.
Huh?
And now when big government teams up with big capital and tells everyone to stay at home and says, well, Walmart can stay open, but the local hardware store has got to close.
Huh?
And you can't and you can't buy seats.
What happened to all the anarchists who wanted to go live on a kibbutz and plant vegetables and what have you?
What happened to when the governor of Michigan, is it, closes all the garden stores and says, you can't sell people seeds, huh?
You can't buy seeds in the store.
No public, no public, what did she say?
Whitmer, that governor's name?
No public gatherings, no private gatherings.
And all these people who've been bending my ear for goddamn ever about conspiracies and this and that, people who thought 9-11 was an inside job and this and that, and they're all plotting against us and what have you, silent, silent in the face of being ordered inside your houses and being told to await the downloading of this app that's going to track everyone you get close to.
Unbelievable!
How frightening is that?
You understand.
By the way, I agree with your rant totally.
I'm not moving on because I think you're mad and I disagree with you.
What do you make of this tracking stuff?
In fact, let's talk about conspiracy theories which probably aren't a conspiracy theory.
This whole It's a power move, isn't it?
By people like Bill Gates, by the sort of big pharma, by governments which want to be able to track us and force us to have injections, whether we like it or not.
How do we fight back against that?
Because at the moment, it seems a lot of people seem to be happy to be railroaded into this new authoritarian world that I don't think I voted for and you voted for.
No, absolutely not.
Well, here's the thing.
Because I have a different perspective about that, well, first of all, these kinds of efforts are to be resisted utterly.
That's without question.
Yeah.
Nothing you hear me say should be taken to mean that we should acquiesce to this nonsense.
They should be resisted utterly.
And I'll go so far as to say, to the death.
Like, no, you're not going to track me wherever I go.
No, you're not.
No, you're not.
And if it comes down to it, it's going to have to be a fight.
No.
But I also don't...
I'm also kind of...
I am also somewhat of Peter Hitchens' opinion that a lot of this is down to panicky bureaucrats and not to sinister moves by either government or capital.
In other words, big capital is sinister because it's big capital.
Um, but, but it's, it's kind of inherently sinister as opposed to, as opposed to being kind of, uh, uh, actively plotting against, I mean, and, and the only reason I say this is because again, having been in the industry that I'm in, right?
Software industry, um, You come across a lot of big capital people, especially when you work for startups for most of your career.
You end up sometimes in the same room with venture capitalists and people of that ilk.
The fact is that most of these people are not that bright.
I mean, they're just not.
It's like they're not...
They're just lucky.
They're just lucky.
Exactly, they're just lucky.
They cropped up at a particular time in history.
They made some good deals, and they had some luck.
And look, to be fair, they worked hard.
And that's what it is.
Now, in retrospect...
You know, when the fawning technology press does the interview, they'll say, oh, how did you know exactly what to do and exactly what time?
And they'll talk about how well, you know, I saw that.
But in reality, if you talk to an honest venture capitalist, for example, they'll tell you.
It's like no one knows anything.
No one knows anything.
No one knows what's going to make one company a hit and another company fail.
No one knows.
More than half of all startups fail.
More than half of them.
Right?
So, I mean, that's big capital for you.
The few that go platinum pay for all the other ones.
And by the way, that's the same model as...
I mean, Hollywood, movies, things like that.
We were talking about movies earlier.
You know, more than half of all the movies that are made, that are ever made, fail.
Like, lose money.
And the blockbusters pay for all the other ones.
So, if these people were so bright, if these people could organize such far-ranging conspiracies that, you know, if they could do that, then they could organize more reliable profits.
But they can't because they don't know anything.
So now, again, that doesn't mean they're not to be resisted because, like, their ideas—the thing is, they really do have terrible ideas.
And also, you know, we don't need—it doesn't need to be the case that all of them are conspiring.
You could just have a couple of worm tongues in there who really do want to bring about some kind of totalitarian thing and know how to surf on the wave of money and power and influence to get what they want.
In some sense, I think that was Neil Ferguson's thing.
I mean, you know, again, that's just an opinion.
I don't have any facts to back that up.
I just have this sense that constitutionally, again, you talked about this with Toby Young.
Not that he's sitting in a room rubbing his hands together and cackling with glee, but just like, well, that's what he is.
He's an element that if you drop it into this thing, he's going to say, well, of course, we're going to destroy...
We're going to destroy the farming industry in Britain, you know?
The sooner the better, why not?
Do you think, do you share my view that this pandemic and the hysteria, the fake news hysteria that's been generated and the media's complete failure to ask governments the right questions or hold their policy to account is really the MSM's last...
It's over now.
It's Armageddon.
We've seen that their sales are collapsing, their credibility is collapsing, their advertising is collapsing.
I don't see any way out of this.
I mean, okay, so you'll still find, for example, in my old paper, The Telegraph, you will find some brilliant columnists, but basically they're controlled opposition.
They are...
They are right-wing voices within the context of left liberal, big government, Silicon Valley is a good thing, values.
They're not representing people like us.
They're not representing, I think, the ordinary people who actually need guidance on what's really going on.
They're not doing their job.
The mainstream media is not fit for purpose.
That is certainly correct.
But here's the thing.
I don't think we should count on mainstream media simply falling over.
They need to be pushed.
I think that our side tends to lose because when something big like this happens, we're like, ah, this is their last stand.
And then we forget that with a big enough engine, even a brick will fly.
And there is effectively unlimited money behind those enterprises.
Right.
So, we shouldn't count on, just because their credibility is at rock bottom, well, we think it's at rock bottom, but who knows?
Could they go any lower?
Maybe.
Okay, when 9-11 happened, there were a lot of people saying, this has got to be the last, this is such a colossal intelligence failure.
This has got to be the last gasp for the American intelligence apparatus as we know it.
Was it?
No such thing.
Right.
So we shouldn't we shouldn't count on watershed moments like this to to me what this is.
In other words, this is what we what we would be doing is we would be taking events as strategy, you know, Events which happen to go our way, or an event which happens to go our way, is not the same thing as a strategy.
It's not the same thing as a move.
Our enemies receiving a setback is not the same thing as us having advanced the state of play.
We have to actually advance the state of play.
So while I'm delighted that, for example, Neil Ferguson has been publicly caught out, I'm very much aware that now is not the time to...
I mean, you know, certainly we should celebrate, but it's like now is not the time to just rest on that.
Not to rest on our laurels.
We've got to push.
We've got to push because what that shows us is the edifice is weak.
What that shows us is the edifice of scientism is weak.
Um, so, you know, we got, we got to push on that flank and, and push all the way.
Like, Oh, is the, you know, the, the, the computer aided guesswork that resulted in this lockdown.
Well, that was a disaster.
Well, again, because still we're, we're only starting to have the conversation about, about how terrible this software really is and how, and how, um, how can I put this about, um, About how divorced from proper working practice these people are.
I think we can do a lot to pound on that in a way that ordinary working class people can understand.
Let me give you an example.
I've done these explainers where I've talked about different issues.
I've talked about the virus.
I've talked about aversion control, what have you.
I don't necessarily expect that...
That cats who don't write software for a living and have never written software are gonna jump into this with both feet and get the whole context.
You couldn't drop me into their working environment and expect me to get context right away.
But there are touch points between the two.
For example, everybody knows about standing by your work.
If you talk to working class guys in any country, in any language, they know.
If you're a man, you stand by your work, right?
My uncle used to be a welder.
He used to weld in all kinds of places.
He was very good, so he got jobs in nuclear subs and power plants and places like that.
When you're welding in that environment, They inspect your work, and the first thing they do is they look at your welds, and then your welds will be x-rayed, okay?
They'll be x-rayed.
But here's the thing.
If they look at your work and the work is ugly, it's like, do it again.
Like, I'm not going to bother x-raying this.
Maybe it's metallurgically sound, maybe not.
But you know something?
Grind it out and do it again.
It's got to look good and then it's got to be good.
So, you know, everyone knows, has an instinctive sense.
You know, every man who does real man's work for a living has an instinctive sense of, yeah, man, the supervisor is going to come by and take a look at what you did.
He's going to look at it and say, you know, this looks like shit.
Can I just pause you there?
Yeah.
I think you're kind of, well, I'm kind of disappointed because what I've been hoping you were going to say was that The time has come for you and me to put on our bandanas, to strap 50 cal rounds over our shoulders.
You probably have to carry the 50 cal because I'm buggered if I can.
I just haven't got the size or strength.
Put some WP, some Willie Pete grenades round our strap.
Make sure they don't go off because that would be awful when they do that.
They just burn you like really horrible and you have to cut off with a bayonet.
And we just go in there and we just take out the MSM. But seriously, for a moment, you're saying we can't just rest on our laurels and watch the mainstream media die on its feet because it won't.
But actually...
I'm not sure that writing interesting articles about...
Sorry, being a bit sarcastic at the moment.
I'm not sure that writing articles about programming for kind of working class peoples who might otherwise not get it is going to cut it.
No, it's not going to cut it at all.
So what do you reckon we can do to push the destruction of the MSM? I'll tell you what I think I'm going to do.
I'm increasingly going to...
Well, basically...
It's dead to me.
I've already stopped any association with the BBC. I just will not do stuff for them now.
And this is quite new for me.
Five years ago, I would have leapt at the chance of doing a BBC programme.
The BBC is the enemy.
I think all these shows are the enemies.
And actually, when you try to treat with them...
I mean, I know Toby Young will take a different view, but actually, I'm with Paul Joseph Watson on this.
You just...
You effectively endorse them.
Yeah.
Okay, so you might be reaching a wider audience, but you are also endorsing a product which is poisonous.
Yes.
So I'm not doing the BBC. I'm not doing, okay, probably if the male or the son calls me to do a piece.
But they won't increasingly these days because they're so – people like me are just – We'll be on the pale as far as the MSM has become.
And it's not because we've suddenly drifted rightwards.
It's because they've drifted leftwards.
And I think that the way we do this is just by forming communities like I'm doing on my new Patreon page and just move off the grid, as it were.
Or off the plantation, if that's the phrase.
Well, don't start.
Don't start that shit.
No, but that is it, isn't it?
The MSM is the plantation, basically.
Well, but here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
You know, yes, but this is going to demand more of us than just...
So, one, you're correct.
Two, some of what needs to happen is that people need to write articles such that working class people can develop new...
You see, here's the thing.
So I was talking to Hector Drummond a while ago, and we were talking about every age being captive to its reigning metaphor.
And I suggested that one way that you can get out of being captive to your reigning metaphor is to develop new literacies.
So in the West, during the Industrial Revolution, we were captive to the reigning metaphor of machinery and industry and time and motion and steam and all that stuff.
And now in the computing age, we are captive to the metaphor of computing and computability and algorithms and uploading and downloading things into the brain as if it were a computer, which it is not.
And the way we got out of the reigning metaphor of the last age was by developing new literacies about that system, about those systems.
You know, the general level of knowledge about machinery and steam and what have you came up.
It didn't mean that everyone became a boiler maker.
It didn't mean that everyone became an expert on steam engines, but it became over.
You know, as a society, we actually became smarter about that.
And so I don't want to underestimate the degree to which ordinary folks can kind of look at a good analogy and get it.
You know, Claire Fox, who is just always excellent, talked about that, talked about, you know, going up and down the country when she was doing her thing with the Brexit party.
And finding that, like, ordinary blue-collar people went, I was like, oh, yeah, we're having an argument about tariffs.
You know, like, you know, so I don't think.
I think we don't give people enough credit that, yeah, man, they'll go and do the research.
They will.
The thing is that people in my industry, as it happens, I think because we...
Look, so much of this current age is driven by the machinery of computing, which is a white-collar type of system.
You see, in the previous age...
The world of steam, the world of industry, was alien to a lot of people, but it was very much a blue-collar world.
And if you went from doing one kind of work, from doing farm work to being a boiler mechanic or something like that, then it was still a blue-collar thing.
I think the problem now is that you have a lot of these...
Just because of the way the country has developed, I'm talking about the U.S. now, we don't have a lot of touch points between blue-collar guys like my dad and guys like me.
But there's nothing inevitable about that.
That's something that can be created.
And so, one, I don't think we should underestimate the degree to which, yes, we do need to develop new forms of communication to let people know, to pull the curtain aside and to show people, you know, this thing that they're telling you is this big deal or whatever, it's not really.
This thing, this AI thing, you know what this is?
This is algebra and statistics because that's what it is.
That's what it is.
Artificial intelligence is linear algebra and statistics.
You know, people can understand that.
They go, oh, this is math.
It's not, the computer really isn't thinking.
It's doing math.
That's all.
It's doing math, and it's going to get a bunch of answers from actual people who are like, okay, you know, so that, in conjunction with people like you forming new communities and forming new kind of publishing outlets, you know, going underground, as it were.
Well, like our thing, like our thing, that we should do it.
Yes, yes, we have to do it.
I said that we should do it probably once a month in the first instance, and I then got bogged down in details like what the design would look like.
And you said, well, don't worry about that.
That'll...
But I... My big beef...
Well, correction.
One of my big beefs about what's happened to the media that I've been part of for all my working life.
So we're talking 30 years here.
And it has undoubtedly changed.
And I was...
Looking back on the Telegraph when I used to write for it, was it a golden age?
Well, not necessarily.
I think that the feature writing was probably a lot less sassy than it is today.
I mean, you know, newspapers were a bit more staid.
But at the same time, I think there were values which had been lost.
But anyway, that's a digression.
Actually, what bothers me particularly is I remember, as a young man, buying GQ and Esquire occasionally.
And the reason I bought those magazines were they had lots of good kind of stuff on gadgets, lots of good stuff on fashion, and lots of good stuff on diving with Great White Sharks, my trip through the war zone, You know, hanging out with Colombian cartels, this kind of shit.
If you go and look at GQ now, they're all about...
Well, there was an infamous one, wasn't there, where they had that racing driver thingy, you know, the current world champion.
Name's gone temporarily.
Dressed...
Dressed as a woman.
Jesus.
Actually wearing a bloody dress.
They are gag-inducingly politically correct.
Disgusting.
And they're worthy and they're telling men that you can't be masculine.
Actually, that's really bad and you can't lust after women.
You've got to wait until they kind of basically ask you out because this is the new world we live in.
And I would like to...
To produce a kind of magazine or online or whatever.
We've discussed this, haven't we?
We're thinking on the same lines.
Yes.
Where...
Where stuff is not tainted by left-wing politics, and the left has tainted everything.
This is one of the reasons I formed the Foundationist Society in the first place, was as a source of expertise and infrastructure to people who wanted to do this kind of thing, okay?
So, you know, and it's got to be an all-in thing.
It can't be just like one, you know, one magazine isn't going to cut it.
We should do our thing.
Yes, we should.
But we need to...
You know, other people who are like-minded need to start their own news outlets, need to really take this thing seriously and kind of go all in on it.
And it's...
A bit like pamphleteers in the Civil War.
Right, exactly.
Well, you know, I think I said...
And then you're talking about our Civil War.
The roundheads and the...
Yeah, exactly, right?
So...
Yeah, the real Civil War.
The English Civil War, right?
Yeah.
The idea being that...
You know, it's not...
Look, it's not even necessary for the edifice, for the hated mainstream media edifice, to fall all the way over.
If enough of the spirit flees from the edifice, it can stay right where it is, but it casts less of a shadow.
And there...
No, I agree.
It's happening already, isn't it?
It is.
This is happening already.
I've actually had messages from my Patreon.
Sorry to keep bashing my Patreon, but I'm very excited about this.
Where people say to me, look, you know, not only are you doing the right thing by going onto your Patreon, but also, ultimately, when all this is over, you will have more mainstream media credibility when you come back, when what's left of the mainstream media rebuilds itself and tries to rediscover its credibility.
It's the people who are kind of clinging on.
I mean, I'm not going to say Toby's career is toast, but nevertheless, I do look at some of my Comrades in arms.
And I think, you know, you're slightly making compromises in order to keep your ass safe.
And actually, are those compromises worth it?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, look, I mean, we're always going to have...
The thing we have to watch out for is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, right?
So we're always going to have people...
Certain people will always be with us.
What matters is that we shift the dynamic so that, again, there is a critical mass of informed people who are being informed by something other than the official line.
That doesn't mean that I can somehow, just because I'm a tech and I know how to produce certain kinds of media, I'm going to build something that's going to rival the New York Times.
I don't have to rival the New York Times.
I can plant seeds.
In other words, what we need is a Johnny Appleseed strategy.
In other words, this thing needs to be disrupted from the bottom up, which means we seed, we seed, we seed.
How many people can start a local news outlet that just focuses on one thing?
I have a friend out west I won't say his name because he probably doesn't want to be put on the spot, but he's a retired Army colonel.
And we talk on a regular basis, you know, very conservative guy, great human being.
We always have a good time talking on the phone.
And he talked about, you know, when he reads the news, again, because having been in the Army, having been a guy on the ground who commanded soldiers, having worked in the Pentagon, right, at a certain point in his career, there are certain things that he...
There are certain things that he wants to know.
And he's like, you know, he would like to be able to open up some news outlet and always see a certain set of facts.
What is the current disposition of U.S. forces around the world?
What is the current economic situation?
What is the, you know, certain kinds of metrics that you just always want to come back to?
And it's devilishly hard to find those kinds of things.
Now, how hard would it be to have something that was kind of almost a dry kind of thing like the CIA World Factbook or like Jane's Defense Weekly, right, where it just focused on these are some facts that every week we're going to come up with this thing and you'll just know these facts.
And that can be just one thing.
You know, come on, man.
A dozen, half a dozen geeks...
With a little bit of infrastructure, could come out with that on a regular basis.
And then, you know, you cobble together these things.
But here's the thing.
I have to say, people like you have to be more aggressive, have to be less fatalistic, okay?
And have to be less...
More aggressive.
And more aggressive.
Like, you know, don't...
Like, you and I talked about doing our thing.
Well, let's fucking do it, man.
Like, seriously.
And don't, you know, don't allow that kind of a declinism.
To get at you because that is the enemy's advantage.
Like I said, these people are not that bright, obviously.
Okay, so if they win this thing...
If they win this thing, that's our fault.
It's like they don't have...
And I think sometimes I think that the vast conspiracy theories that we think up, you know, the thing of like...
I mean, George Soros himself.
Well, George Soros, okay, he's got a lot of money.
George Soros, I guarantee you the dude is not that bright.
I guarantee you he's not that bright.
Now, he may be cunning with respect to money.
He may be clever with respect to making and holding on to money, but he's not that bright.
There is a kind of a healthy contempt...
Welcome to my show!
I want to hear less declinism and less fatalism and more, what are we going to do this week?
What are we going to upload to a server this week?
Pieces I would like to read on our site.
I would like to read a piece by Tom Holland, not Superman Tom Holland, but the classical historian.
I want to know about just how gay...
The Greeks, the ancient Greeks were, and who were the gayest, and who were the, you know, like the Theban band and the Spartans, and whether this was their gayness was, you know, just stuff about gayness and war, basically.
That's quite a good one.
And I would like...
Anything by Victor Davis Hanson on war and the classical world.
One of my favorite Victor Davis Hanson books is a book called Culture and Carnage, which is about how free people will always fight better than slaves, which is why, you know, ever since, well...
Salamis, for example, where, against the odds, the Greek city-states beat the might of the Persian Empire.
Why?
Because, well, those Persian ships were rowed by, powered by slaves, and they just didn't.
The Greeks were fighting for shit.
So I'm trying to think what else.
You know, something about tanks.
There seems to be a war theme coming up.
Something about gentlemen's Gear.
So, something about movies.
Stuff that we can read and not go, oh, that's a bloody lefty who wrote that piece.
And he's put gender politics into it.
And he's making ghastly political points about gayness in the Spartan article.
I don't want that stuff.
I just want to know, you know, how gay were the ancient Greeks?
All right.
So you, well, not quite.
LAUGHTER Listen, listen.
You know something?
I'm not going to say my friend's name, the retired colonel from out west, but I am going to read from some of what he emailed me because we had this discussion about the news and what have you and how dissatisfied he was.
So, talking about things he feels he needs to know that he's not getting from any one source.
Well, one, of course, which writers he can trust.
When you read it.
Yeah.
Can you read it in a kind of retired colonel's voice?
I like to think of this guy on Hamburg Hill.
I'm not going to read it in a retired consulist.
So, must know which writers I can trust to give me the true data with decent analysis.
Then some kind of worldview that quickly grabs me.
The elements of power, economic power, current value of the dollar as compared to major currencies, euro, Japanese yen, probably South Korean won, probably pound, maybe the ruble.
Trade balance, national debt to include all unfunded liabilities.
these numbers compared to about three of the best performers worldwide right now Political power.
Where we are strong, where we are weak.
Maybe three to five of each.
Focus on Asia, then Europe.
Domestic political power.
Maybe a quick look at three to five others.
Not just Republican versus Democrat, but maybe something of an international trend with Britain and Israel in the mix.
Then military power.
The 35-ish ongoing combats with the nature of their opposing sides.
Emerging military powers.
Chinese Navy, maybe India's naval initiatives.
A quick look at the size of our Navy and the trends up or down.
Do we have anything like a national strategy?
Does Asia deserve?
Cultural power.
Signs of international dissatisfaction with American entertainment, theater, music.
Standards of conduct.
Domestic cultural power.
Who seems to be winning and why?
Trying to stay with metrics.
These are some of the things where, again, we don't have to have necessarily a long academic essay on what does it mean for...
Just like a couple of pages in a PDF document that comes out once a month where this is the breakdown.
You can go elsewhere for the essays and the long NPR type thing of whatever.
That's learned.
That's totally cool.
That's totally cool.
And I was, you know, I wouldn't say I was getting hard during that.
Easy, easy.
Take it easy.
No, no.
What I was saying, what I'm saying is I really like that idea.
It sounded really good.
And to a degree, it's what the spectator does.
The spectator Fraser Nelson, the editor, is very keen on metrics.
And I'm all for that.
But it's a sidebar.
It's also very hard to...
You know, I mean, if your guy can produce that stuff, what do you do?
I just think you're going to have your work cut out trying to find out somebody capable of providing that information.
Okay, that's why you lose.
That's why, what you just said right there, that's why you lose.
All right?
Listen, listen.
No, I'm not.
I'm saying it's your job to find that person.
No, no, no.
I'm saying it's not my job because you have however many people going to listen to this podcast.
Someone in your country, someone in mine, maybe multiple teams of people at the same time might say, hang on a second.
We know so-and-so who used to be in the army.
I know so-and-so who used to be in the SAS, who, whatever.
We're talking on this planet-sized network, are we not?
You know, we're communicating with those people.
You have however many Twitter followers.
I have however many Twitter followers.
So, what I'm saying is that you still tell me about obstacles, and I'm talking about this is what is available to be done.
And these are small pieces of testable work.
It doesn't have to be a full-length thing like The Spectator.
It can be a two-page PDF that comes out every week or every month or what have you.
All right, so I'm telling you, man, it's like, and anyone listening to this, it's like, if you think, oh, yeah, but what about the data, then that's why you lose.
That's why even the New York Times, as pathetic as it's become, can beat you.
If that's how you think about this, then that's why you lose.
And that's why you're going to lose.
And you're going to keep losing.
Well, don't forget.
Yeah.
Don't forget, I'm not as clever as you because I can't write Python.
You don't have to know Python.
That's what I'm here for.
What you've got to do is to get rid of this kind of dreary...
See, part of it is the weather in your country.
Just this dreary, rainy kind of...
Listen, we've had nothing but sunshine.
I'm currently almost as dark as you probably are.
I'm...
Yeah, I am.
We've had, it's that global warming we've all been promised.
I know, but listen, I think, look, I'm going to go and make a cup of tea now.
I've really enjoyed our chat.
I think what you say is great.
And you were absolutely right to put me in my place there as regards my negativity, because you're right.
All we need to do is ask somebody.
We just sort of, in a way, we sort of contract out, don't we?
We say, okay, we need somebody to provide these metrics.
Who wants to do it?
A bit like your other thing.
Exactly.
All the tools are there for us to do this.
Now, people have to be compensated.
That's a separate question.
But even then, man, come on.
In your social circle, you can find a few people from whom you can raise some money to say, listen, I want to produce a pilot run.
Of six episodes or six issues of whatever or something?
Can we go around and raise some money so I can pay these journalists to write pieces and to do whatever?
And again, you're in the situation.
I'm not.
I'm just saying that you need to start thinking, how can we, instead of thinking, yeah, but...
You know what I'm saying?
And there's going to be barriers.
There's going to be obstacles.
There's going to be things.
But, you know, change your thinking.
You've got to change your thinking.
Because the enemy is not going to rest.
The enemy is not standing still just because Neil Ferguson got caught with his pants down, literally.
So, okay, we've got a temporary victory.
Okay, well, all victories are temporary.
Okay, so what's next?
What's our counter?
Let's go.
That's for the next episode.
That's for the next episode, exactly.
That's right.
How long have we talked for now?
About five hours?
No, no, no.
We've been on about an hour.
We got on at about 11.30 something, yeah.
So we've been on for about an hour, yeah.
Okay.
All right, man.
It's good to talk to you, as always.
Yeah, I think that's great.
Listen.
I love you.
I love your cover, Mike.
And listen, strap on those Willie Pete.
You know what Willie Pete are.
White phosphorus.
White phosphorus, Renee.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, why is it white phosphorus, racist?
Huh?
Why is it?
Yeah, sorry.
Okay, well, we'll get some special...
Black phosphorus!
We'll get some VPs for you, okay?
Get some black phosphorus.
Hey, what does black phosphorus, what does it do?
I don't know, but it's got to be.
Do you think it's more evil?
It's got to be more evil.
It's got to be.
It's more of everything.
It's more of what you're fighting for.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, brother.
All right, talk to you, man.
Okay, bye.
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