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Jan. 18, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #831

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Low Seasers episode 831 for today, Thursday the 18th of January 2020.
	I am your host Connor, joined by Carl and special guest Ralf Schollhammer.
	Thank you very much for joining us in the studio.
	Thank you so much for having me.
	Do you fancy introducing yourself to the audience?
	I'm sure you can do a much better job of it than I can.
	Well, I'll try.
	I'm always very nervous when I speak to a British audience because they're the ones I try to impress the most.
	So I'm going to give my best.
	So as you probably can tell from my flawless English, I'm not born here.
	I live in Vienna.
	I'm Austrian by birth.
	I teach economics and political science at a small American university in Austria.
	I'm also a visiting fellow at the MCC Budapest, which is a conservative think-tank.
	I would argue it's the conservative think-tank in continental Europe at the moment.
	I write for several English publications, Spiked, Unheard, and others.
	And I'm very, very happy to be here.
	I think the Low Degrees is one of the best podcasts out there, so this is a great moment for me.
	I hope that people will remember episode 831 in the years to come.
	Yeah, fantastic.
	Well, we met because you were torching the WEF on Neil Oliver's show in the GB News green room, so I just knew we had to get you in at some point.
	So, speaking of our topics today, we're going to be discussing why we want what Europe has, particularly its migration policy, because England doesn't seem to have any deportations in sight.
	Have you even read John Locke?
	We're reviving that meme, because we're litigating the liberalism debate.
	Much to... Happy to.
	Something I've got a lot to say on.
	It'll be great fun.
	And was January 6th an inside job, per the recent Iowa caucus?
	I thought we'd look at some of the suspicious CCTV footage and talk about federal involvement there.
	But before we do, as it's Thursday, 3 o'clock today, UK time.
	If you aren't a premium subscriber yet, still time to sign up.
	But we do have Lads out.
	It's episode 20.
	Ralph will be joining us for it.
	And it's what would you do with Elon Musk's net worth?
	I have a lot of answers to this.
	How would you be the world's dictator for a day?
	I wouldn't even be the world's dictator, I'd just be far-right propaganda wall-to-wall on every TV station all the time, but anyway.
	Yeah, so it's going to be a fun one.
	Obviously, towards the end, we're going to take some of your comments and questions, so if you aren't a subscriber yet, £5 a month, you've still got time to sign up beforehand and then We'll get to interact with you, but without further ado, let's jump into today's stories.
	So, European politicians have started to push back against mass immigration, which is great for the Europeans, and I must admit, as a Brit, I'm just a little bit envious.
	Now, for those who don't know, the Rwanda Bill passed yesterday.
	That thing where we have to pay for five years of an illegal migrant's bed and board to send them to Rwanda as some kind of deterrent, but the Rwandans can deport them back at any time and we have to pay for the flights.
	if the migrant commits a crime.
	And judging the rates at which they commit crimes here, it's probably likely they're going to commit a crime in Rwanda.
	So not brilliant, no.
	It was going to have some amendments.
	There were about 60-odd Tories that voted for Robert Jenrick's amendments.
	Robert Jenrick was the former immigration minister, resigned when he realised, in his own words, that Rwanda was never meant to work.
	And so he implemented four amendments with himself and Sir Bill Cash, and this was to age-verify through medical documents whether or not you were an actual child migrant, because we've had lots of cases where Grown men have posed as schoolboys to stay in the country.
	And also, if you are trying to do an extenuating circumstances argument, why you shouldn't be boarding a plane to Rwanda, you also have to do a medical check, so you can't just keep appealing to the ECHR.
	None of those got through.
	And so at least 11 Tory rebels stuck with their guns and they said, we're not going to vote for this at all.
	Not just not going to abstain.
	We're going to vote against it.
	And this included Bill Cash, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Andrew Jenkins, Mark Francois, Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger.
	Some of the ones that deserve to keep their seats.
	They're about the handful of Tories that do, but they're going to be quite deservedly wiped out in the next election.
	And the reason they're going to do that is because you look at the asylum numbers, the Telegraph has published as of last week, Britain actually approves asylum seekers at a rate of 75.1% up until 2023, so that's up from 31.1% in 2018.
	So that's pre-Brexit, lower.
	Post-Brexit, much higher, especially with a much different composition of said asylum seekers.
	The five main countries they're coming from?
	Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Syria, and Sudan.
	Iran?
	Yeah.
	Yes, they're going toward Pakistan now.
	They're also not all the Iranian women who were burning their hijabs and being persecuted by the state.
	And, just a small suggestion, none of those countries really share our values.
	I mean, I know I'm wearing a black shirt, but it's not far right to notice that they are countries of a high proportion of terrorism, and so the likelihood of having lots of people unvetted coming from those countries to ours might constitute a security risk.
	Maybe?
	Again, just looking at Europe as well.
	So we're now double that, the asylum acceptance rate, of countries like France.
	So France is 30%.
	Sweden's 32%.
	We're also 50% higher than Italy, which is 46%.
	Sorry, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.
	Sweden's only 30%?
	Yes.
	We're 75%.
	How are the soft Swedes kicking our asses on this?
	Correct me if I'm wrong, you might know a bit more about this, but weren't the centre-right Swedish party recently elected and they promised to crack down on migration?
	Yeah, they did.
	I mean, they're not part of the government, but they kind of support the conservative government.
	And the Swedes, this is true for the Scandinavians generally, the Danish are even stronger than this.
	For whatever reason, we can talk about this as well, because the answer is going to drive the left crazy.
	Usually they're much better in changing course when they see that the reality kind of resorts itself.
	And this was the case in energy policy.
	It's the case in migration policy.
	It was, by the way, also the case in welfare state policy.
	Like so many people, like Bernie Sanders, they'll talk about, we have to be like Sweden.
	You might want to take a closer look at Sweden, how they actually do it.
	No, no, no, let them cook.
	The big irony is, of course, that one of the strengths is that most of the Scandinavian countries have been, until recently, very homogeneous, Swedish, Danish, Finnish states.
	And that plays a role, because if people have a sense of identity, if they have a sense of belonging, it makes the execution of policies much easier.
	Eric Kaufman's book, White Shift, and I did a really good interview with him recently, we spoke about how diversity is not a strength because if you have these fractionating ethnic, cultural, and religious interest groups making up increasing coalitions and voter blocs in your country, then because they're not particularly liberal and enlightened, they're not going to
	Want to reach collective solutions they're going to want to vote themselves power wealth and resources as part of their interest in group and so that's why African nations compared to their more homogeneous counterparts find it difficult to get infrastructure projects together because you've got so many tribal interest groups they can't vote where you dedicate the money to build the next bridge for example it's just a disaster and so we're importing that sort of politics over here and wondering why we can see the decline all around us well we're not because we're in Swindon all the time but everyone in the London bubble is going what do you mean diversity is still a strength right
	Even if it would not be about the redistribution of resources, it would be a problem.
	Robert Putnam, who is really not a right-winger, wrote, it must have been in 2017, so this was really quite a while ago now, he wrote this great paper called the Pluribus Unum, so if some of the viewers and listeners want to look it up, I think it's free and available.
	And he's pro-diversity, but he kind of builds his argument.
	He says, well, if a society gets more diverse, at the beginning, it's really problematic, but then somewhere down the road, it's really good.
	And he uses all this empirical data, where he says, for example, you know, public participation in public events, neighborhood activities, all these things go down.
	The only thing that increases is watching TV, because people stay at home on their own, right?
	They stay among their families, they stay along a smaller and smaller community.
	But social life, social capital, social trust, It's probably the most important lubricant for a society to function.
	All of this is declining.
	And this is the big irony.
	You mentioned it.
	Of course, what happens if societies, if individuals cannot for themselves maintain social cohesion?
	Then more and more people turn to the government and say, you have to jump in and play the role that we no longer can play for us.
	And this is something so interesting because we have empirical data to show this.
	That diversity is a strength is a slogan.
	The actual empirical data shows the exact opposite, but that's completely ignored.
	The way I always question it is, well, whose strength, right?
	When they say our, the first person plural doesn't include us, actually.
	It's just the left-wing state.
	It includes the state that's trying to manufacture consent for the expansion of its powers because it has to surveil over a population that is increasingly fractionated.
	Because the other thing that increases, and he wrote about this in Bowling Alone as well before that paper, It's TV watching and protest marches.
	And it's because those interest groups consolidate, they get organized, they get well-funded, and they brush up against each other, particularly in the streets, as we're now seeing every single weekend in London with mass marches in favor of Palestine after the massacre happened on October 7th.
	So I mean, it is definitely someone's strength.
	The state has got massive, by comparison.
	Yeah, but it's our weakness, or our entertainment, maybe at the best.
	This is also something that Callum mentioned earlier in the week, but I wanted to just highlight it to you gentlemen, and that is that Onward, normally a left-leaning publication, one of those Westminster Tory think tanks, did a poll of about 4,000 people.
	And it found that 9 in 10 parliamentary constituencies want to see immigration levels reduced and controls tightened.
	75 constituencies wanted fewer controls and higher numbers, but the majority of those constituencies, 52 of them, were in the London bubble, where the majority of said immigrants are.
	Obviously they want chain migration for their family members, so that's a sort of ethnic and cultural in-group preference.
	It doesn't represent the rest of the democratic mandate in the country.
	The most liberal seat is actually Bristol Central.
	Yeah, because that's the Portland of England, essentially, where there are... I know, it's terrible.
	Yeah, it's not a nice place.
	I wish the flooding were to increase.
	Anyway, the fascinating thing, though, is this is at the level of immigration salience that is probably peak that there has been for quite a while.
	But the majority of the country think net migration is only 70,000.
	So they are saying, we want immigration overwhelmingly reduced.
	And they think it's 10 times lower than it actually is.
	By a factor of 10, they're underestimating it.
	So imagine if they knew just how bad the issue truly was.
	So, staggering stuff.
	I just want to say, this is going to come up in the lads' hour afterwards.
	What would I do with 200 billion?
	Well, that is the thing.
	I would say net migration is 700,000 just on every billboard in this country.
	I'd buy a million rubber ducks and just push them off the shores towards Calais.
	But just, you know, I would make sure that everyone knew, you know, because they don't know.
	Yeah, quite.
	That's the problem.
	So, people that do know, and this is actually your article in UnHerd, which is very fortuitous for you coming in, are the Dutch, because the Dutch ran a study recently, and I'll just scroll down to what you've said, because you're more than welcome to explain this for us, but this was from the University of Amsterdam, and it estimated the Dutch government spends 17 billion a year on migration between 1995 and 2019.
	And they, if I'm right, they broke the ethnic composition down of various migrants and they found that European migrants, positive economic contributors, Oriental Asian migrants are positive economic contributors, but Turkey, the Middle East and Africa never actually create positive economic contributions during their stay in the country.
	Do you want to take away some of the rest of the analysis you did?
	Yeah, they broke it down mostly by Western and non-Western, but the Danish finance minister did a similar study where they broke it down in non-Western, Western and Middle East, North Africa.
	The French were very bad at collecting that kind of data because they claim everybody in France is French and therefore we don't, we ignore all of it, but they start to change this.
	They tried to do a similar study, they came to similar results with a very interesting outcome.
	There is one group that outperforms the native French and those is immigrants from what is nowadays Vietnam and was back in the day into China.
	So very similar to what we see in the United States, right?
	That Asian Americans, and the term doesn't yet exist, maybe one day it will, Asian Europeans, if we want to say that, usually tend to outperform the native population.
	And all of this shows you something that I think deep down, everybody always knew that the cultural background, the values people hold, of course, have an impact on their economic fortunes as well.
	I mean, there is a very good example there.
	I think there are only two people, two peoples in the world who always highly valued reading and never had a long period of illiteracy.
	And that's the Armenians, the Jews, and I think the Korean, no, the Icelanders, right?
	And this is a difference.
	We know that education plays a very, very crucial role in Asian culture.
	So we know all of this.
	But we're not willing to talk about it.
	And I think there's one phenomenon, I did not go into this in this article, but I think this is a great opportunity to talk about it.
	I'm sure you all remember there was a time, was it in the 90s or was it before, when people had like little wristbands that said, what would Jesus do?
	And I don't want to be blasphemic here, because I do consider myself at least culturally a Christian.
	But I think what we have reached in many stages in the West, in many areas, is we have this kind of, what would Hitler do approach.
	And what I mean by this, what I mean by this is, I'm quite serious.
	In an Austrian accent that's even funnier.
	Austrian man arrives, what would Hitler do?
	You look at a policy and then you say, would Hitler approve of that policy?
	And if the answer is yes, then you get this, I'm not even saying, you're not even trying to make the rational argument, but you get this gut feeling of saying, then it must be wrong.
	And you see this in immigrants, you say, But when we say, as we just discussed before, you have all the empirical evidence now, contemporarily, and also the studies department, that says if you get more diversity, if you have uncontrolled mass immigration, it really is a problem.
	It has many negative effects.
	But the thing is, you say, so what would Hitler do?
	And he would probably agree with that proposition, so it must be bad.
	And this is much more, I would argue, a cultural phenomenon than another one.
	And it also, I think, dovetails nicely with what you said, is Most people who have not been socialized and marinated in higher education and universities don't necessarily subscribe to the worldview.
	I mean, there's this kind of this gaslighting when we say people with higher levels of education.
	I mean, you might as well say people with higher levels of indoctrination.
	So the idea, the reference, right, to the Third Reich, to Germany, to Hitler is much more popular in those circles than in others.
	I mean, you saw this, just as a quick point here.
	The American presidential campaign starts, the first big event by Joe Biden, and I think it was like the fifth or sixth sentence was, well, this reminds me of what happened in Germany in the 1930s.
	I mean, he's old enough, he probably was around in Germany in the 1930s, so he might be an eyewitness to all of this.
	Everybody knows exactly what he's talking about, what he means.
	I mean, can you imagine if a German politician would say, or even an English politician would say, or a British politician, pardon me, would say, well, this reminds me of what happened in the United States in the 1860s, right?
	Everybody would say, why is he referring, what did the United States with the 1860s have to do with the UK now, with Austria now?
	But if an American presidential candidate says, this reminds me of Germany in the 1930s, everybody immediately says, I know what he means.
	And this is the quote unquote what I mean by this when I say, so what would Hitler do?
	Yeah.
	And then you look at the other candidate and if you say what this candidate is doing would be approved by Hitler, therefore he must be a fascist, he must be a Nazi.
	It's radioactive.
	Exactly.
	What I'm always surprised is that nobody uses these arguments against vegetarians.
	This is why I'm for the smoking ban.
	I'm against the smoking ban, you know, because I mean Hitler would definitely be...
	Yeah, but he was also vegetarian, right?
	Nobody said all vegetarians are Nazis.
	Well, Julian Peterson might at this point.
	Just a quick thing there, though.
	What I think is interesting is the instrumental nature of the analysis there, because that is all true, obviously, and everyone knows that People from different kinds of backgrounds have different kinds of work ethics.
	But one of the things that that analysis doesn't reveal is intentionality.
	One of the things that we have to be honest about is that certain cultures have different levels of goodwill embedded in them.
	And frankly, I know that from personal dealing with some of these cultures, some of these people, but a lot of them don't come here with goodwill.
	Like, so if someone from Europe comes to Britain or someone from East Asia comes from Britain, they're going to think, right, they're going to be coming thinking to themselves, right, I can make a lot of money by working really hard.
	Well, actually, a lot of cultures don't value that, and a lot of cultures see us as absolute saps and rubes and fools for having welfare systems they can just actively exploit because they come from a very low-trust, insular, clan-ish society in which, actually, it's acceptable and normal to take advantage of some idiot who's willing to be taken advantage of.
	And we're just not cognizant of this, but that's the reality for a lot of these other countries.
	Yeah, I mean, I think this is a fantastic point, and this is one that always bothers me so much.
	I sound like a really old man, I sound much older than I am, but nobody knows anything anymore, right?
	Exactly what you say.
	So when we talk about culture, for example, very often it's not about a particular, you know, dress code or a particular food.
	That can be part of it, but it's something exactly what you described.
	we tend to forget that particularly in Europe or in the West generally, and this was due not intentionally, but it just happened historically, that the family, particularly the tribal family, the clan, the large family structure, was broken down by Christianity, was broken down by the Catholic Church.
	This is how a more small family-based individualistic society emerged, exactly what you said.
	And then it was much easier to create the very, very fine-tuned and interesting relationship Europeans, Westerners, have developed to their state.
	But that is very different, exactly what you said.
	For example, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, a good friend of mine, she's from a Pakistani family, a very prominent one, she says, I mean, politics in Pakistan are oriented in many ways towards the last name, the family name, towards the clan, the tribe.
	But who runs?
	They say, but they have elections.
	They do.
	Who runs for elections is decided by who is where within the clan structure.
	And who votes for that person is decided by their surname.
	And the point is not to demean it, but I think this is a completely different approach towards society.
	This is a completely different approach towards authority.
	And I think to ignore that or to forget that is a very, very dangerous game.
	And that bothers me.
	It's so ignorant.
	Why is it always particularly those who are in favor of multiculturalism, who always deny that there are actual differences between cultures.
	But I think what we discuss here, that is true multiculturalism.
	It is showing a genuine interest and curiosity about how things are done at different places.
	It's the other side that constantly says, well, you know, we're basically all the same.
	If you take somebody who grew up their entire life in Afghanistan, you bring them to Great Britain and within two weeks they're British.
	I mean, even people who are very much enjoyed and like to read, like Christopher Hitchens, and I don't mean to talk bad about somebody who died, made the similar argument when he said Western civilization is so seductive, right?
	You are here, you watch a bit of porn, you drink a couple of pints, and then you're British as the next guy.
	This is not how it works.
	I wish it would be.
	But it's not magic soil, quite.
	And the reason why they're so set on denying cultural differences is because they have a utopian pipe dream, undergirded by sort of universalist liberalist assumptions, which I'm sure we'll get into in the next segment.
	That if we just suppress the native culture enough, and allow the expression of this other culture enough, that there won't be a conflict, and if we can Stop the mediation of all conflicts and we can all peacefully coexist.
	And that doesn't take into account human motivations or the fact that you're importing people who might not consider themselves your neighbor, so they might not consider themselves your moral equal.
	And so it's a plan that's just not going to work.
	Well, the thing is, they don't understand the message they're telegraphing to these foreign groups either.
	Because what they say to this foreign group who consider themselves not an individual, like we view ourselves as individuals, But they view themselves as part of a cohesive structure.
	And so what the government is telegraphing to these people, and they say, no, look, these people can't say this to you.
	These people can't do that to you.
	And we're actually going to take their money and give it to you and expect nothing of you in return.
	That group of people thinks that they are superior.
	The privileged class.
	Yeah.
	Because they can't help but think.
	Essentially, this is a subjugated people we're taking money out of, you know, and it's, it's a very old world way of looking at the thing, but.
	No, and I think there's nothing wrong with talking about this.
	Maybe Osama Bin Laden is not the perfect person to quote, but I'm sure many of your viewers also know that his supposed famous saying that if people see a strong horse in the weak horse, they're automatically attracted to the strong horse.
	But that is not wrong.
	I mean, we all do the same thing.
	To give you one example, just in a little more less provocative way, but usually after presidential elections in the US, they retake polls and say, so for whom did you vote?
	And what it then turns out is like when they then add up the post-election polls, they get above 100% because many people have voted for the losing guy after the election say, oh, I voted for the winning guy.
	I knew that he or she is going to win.
	And that's exactly this phenomenon.
	You want to be on the winning side.
	You want to be on the side that has, quote unquote, I never know exactly what this word means, so I hope I use it correctly, the side that has swagger, right?
	That seems confident, that seems strong.
	And this is exactly what you just said.
	We think we present ourselves understanding and sensitive, but very often we present ourselves as weak.
	And I don't want to go into this topic because I don't know nearly enough about it as I should, but for example, the grooming gang things that in Britain, right?
	Apart from the atrocity and the, I can only use the word evil, I don't have another, but it's also a sign of weakness.
	If you live in a world where you are more afraid of being called a racist, than supporting or helping a girl that is most likely being raped and impregnated against her will.
	I don't know how much more weakness you can show.
	You can tell, this is the thing, but you can tell yourself that it is a form of strength, but nobody buys it, right?
	Nobody believes it.
	Especially not the people doing the victimizing.
	Exactly.
	They think that you are so profoundly weak that you won't even stand up for vulnerable children.
	So, I mean, again, the message that we send to them when we do that is just the total opposite of impersonate what we do, admire our values and integrate into the values.
	It's like, well, why would I?
	Your values are pathetic and it makes you unbelievably not respectable in any way, shape, or form.
	So anyway.
	This is when we can look at a data set here.
	I think Callum mentioned it earlier as well.
	The Dutch looked at the crime rates perpetrated by the native Dutch versus new immigrants.
	And they actually found, and this is, I think, because they think they can get away with it, that people of immigrant background were about two to four times more likely to commit violent offenses in the Netherlands.
	This is because every single Western government has basically been telegraphing to these entire continents, come here and commit crimes.
	That's essentially what we've been saying to them.
	It's like a sensible country.
	If a foreign immigrant came over and murdered someone, that person would be hanged in public for everyone to see.
	So look, this is what we do.
	If you come to our country and don't follow the rules and you murder someone, you get hanged.
	They get nothing.
	They don't even get a slap on the wrist.
	They don't even get deported now.
	Probably even not with the new Rwanda legislation either here.
	Exactly.
	And so the message we send to them is actually, we want you to come here and do this to us.
	We've got some sort of masochistic fetish for this kind of thing.
	That's the message they receive.
	I mean, this was kind of, you know, in days back.
	I forgot what year it was.
	It must have been in the 18th century or something.
	And I'm sure that some of you have heard the story about Sir Charles Napier.
	He was responsible for a certain part, I think, in India during the colonial times, during the imperial times.
	And he encountered the then still widespread tradition of suti, right?
	The widow burning.
	And apparently he said, so what are you guys doing here?
	And they said, well, it's our custom here.
	If somebody dies, the widow then gets burned with the the dead husband, the late husband.
	And apparently that's how the story goes.
	He said, well, that's a very interesting custom.
	So we have also a custom.
	And then he told his carpenters to build something next to the funeral empire.
	And the people were very curious and said, what are you building there?
	And he said, well, a gallows.
	And I said, why did you build a gallows?
	Because he said, well, I said, because where you are, you burn widows.
	Where I come from, people who burn widows are hanged.
	And first you follow your customs and then we follow ours.
	And it was done.
	I mean, again, these days we would say this was very culturally insensitive.
	Oh, good.
	That's the thing.
	You cannot, at the point, but what I also like about the story is, There was an understanding you cannot have two cultures or these two values exist at the same time.
	It's impossible.
	Either burning a widow is a crime or it's not.
	You cannot say it's OK from Monday to Wednesday, but it's a crime from Thursday to Sunday.
	And there's this idea that you can, when it really goes to the matter of things at the heart of cultures, it's very hard to have compromises between different cultures.
	There must be in every country some kind of what it is ultimately we'll see.
	It's only a very short period of time where you can have these different cultures coexisting right next to each other.
	Because as human beings, and you mentioned this before, this is not how we work.
	My favorite English philosopher is Thomas Hobbes.
	First of all, he was funny.
	He has a great biography.
	There's a lot about him that I like.
	But I think he had this kind of vision, this idea that if we just accept that life is what it is, it's so precious, it's most likely so short, so why do we constantly engage in all these fights over symbols and flags and vanities?
	And if we can get rid of this, then we can basically live and let live and everybody does as they please.
	But this is not how we function.
	We care what our neighbor does.
	We care what somebody else does.
	And we want at some point to impose our values on the other side, and one side is going to Ultimately, it's going to win.
	And this is, as you say, what we call tolerance, I think, is justifiably, in the eyes of others, weakness.
	And I think that's the only way we can put it.
	Sorry, there's also another aspect to this.
	If these were totally alien people who had never heard of us, then maybe you could expect something Encountering more of a maybe enlightened position if this was you know some sort of remote island who a British man I've never heard one of those but actually these people carry a long baggage of imperialism as our former subjects.
	And so they don't look at this as, oh, it's year zero.
	We've arrived at the new liberal dawn.
	And so the slate is washed clean.
	And now, okay, well, the British are acting a bit weird, but fair enough.
	No, a lot of them carry an ethnic resentment against the West.
	A lot of the tweets back to you are with a flavor of vengeance.
	Yeah, and I'm not, you know, I'm not relishing the fact that that's the case.
	I'm not pro-imperialism or anything like that, but that just is the case.
	And again, it's just something that our political class has completely lost their minds over.
	Can I throw one last thing in there, because this is... I don't want people to say these are three extremely good-looking, but yet...
	kind of boring white males who are just going to rehash all the culture wars because they matter and they matter from other aspects.
	So we talked about kind of what it meant domestically, but it also matters internationally.
	And I said before the show that we're going to throw out all kinds of historical anecdotes.
	So let's leave out to our promise.
	But we see that the Don Pacifico affair in the 1840s, it's this story about this Portuguese Jew who also happened to have British citizenship and And he was in Athens and in an anti-Semitic riot, they burned down his house and his will and a couple of his belongings.
	And he was very upset.
	But unfortunately, I think a son of a Greek minister was involved, so they didn't want to restitute him for the losses yet.
	So he did.
	What a smart move.
	He said, well, I'm also a British citizen.
	So he went to the British government and said, look what happened to me in Greece and they don't want to give me what they owe me.
	And the reaction of Palmerston, who was the Prime Minister back then, was, the story's a little bit more complicated, but in essence, they laid a blockade to Greek ports until the guy got what he was owed.
	And when Palmerston was asked, I mean, you know, isn't that a little bit much for like one guy in one burnt house?
	And he said, and I try to paraphrase him, but he said, just like a Roman of old knew that saying, Sivis Romanus Sum, right?
	I'm a Roman citizen, had meaning.
	So he expects that a British citizen knows that the strong arm and the watchful eye of England will be there no matter where they are.
	And that matters.
	And why am I telling this story?
	Because now we have a situation where you have from Hamas, if people with British citizenship are taken hostage.
	They can do this because they're not afraid of the reaction.
	You have a ragtag army like the Hoodies, right, blocking a major artery of global trade at the moment, at least, or sabotage, whatever you want to call it.
	They can do this because they're not really afraid of retaliation.
	And this brings me back to Unfortunately, I think Rumsfeld said that weakness is a provocation.
	And I think that's completely true.
	And I think that's absolutely true.
	And it's been true all throughout history.
	And it spreads, because if we want to look at what's currently going on internationally, I think you can, at least in insignificant parts, trace it back to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
	Because the world saw, we went to Afghanistan, we deposed the Taliban, then we were there for 20 years, we left, and we did not leave a single trace.
	Afghanistan is now exactly how it was on September 10, 2001.
	This is a failure of epic proportions.
	And, you know, Boris Johnson always used to say about wind farms, the world is watching.
	I'm not sure if they're watching the British wind farms, but they have been definitely watching what happened in Afghanistan and they draw their conclusions.
	And this is kind of the world we live in now.
	I mean, while we speak, You have Iran bombing Pakistan and Pakistan bombing Iran, Turkey bombing Northern Syria, Northern Iraq.
	Like everything is kind of spiraling out of control because the supposed automaker or the superpower, whether we call it the US or the West, are no longer taken seriously.
	And everybody thinks this is our moment and they jump on it.
	And as we say, the culture wars have actual political repercussions domestically and internationally.
	Yeah, that's a great point as well, because this is a direct outgrowth of very left-wing philosophy.
	Exactly.
	project this weakness around the world i mean do you remember um obama and biden uh essentially funding the iranian nuclear program yeah they um they've reinvigorated that now so a brief explanation of that the funds were held in a south korean bank account because the south koreans were purchasing oil from iran and as a threat of withdrawal of american troops from south korea
	The Biden administration reinvigorated that, and even though the funds haven't been released yet, about a month later the Iranians then started subsidizing Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
	And so even though the money hasn't been directly sent there, It's now just a fungible thing that they're almost guaranteed to get.
	So, you're emboldening the terrorists.
	If I could just breeze through... No, no, it's fine.
	The conversation's fantastic.
	I'm just conscious of time.
	So, this is what the Europeans are doing, and I'll get a brief explanation from you, because, again, you're very on the ground with this stuff.
	So, the Dutch have recognised this, and recently they had one of their elections.
	Now, Gert Wilders is still seeking, in a subsequent election, a majority.
	He's trying to ally with the Farmers' Party and the Conservatives.
	Now, this is an article that's behind the paywall for GB News, but I'll summarise it quite quickly.
	As seeking the coalition, he's dropped a few pieces of draft legislation.
	So he's dropped banning expressions of Islam, to stop dual nationals from voting, to stop dual nationals from holding office.
	But the fact that those are the sort of marginal policies that he's trying to do, the most fringe ones.
	He's doing Trump's big ask, where he's put forward the most far-right policies he's got, dropping them to build a coalition, and then still committing to the deportation of criminal illegals.
	Which, pre-Enlightenment politics, totally reasonable thing to do.
	And then we look at Germany.
	I mean, look at the polling.
	The AFD are now second in the polls.
	They're at 23%.
	Beau has interviewed their leader on our website, so you can go and look at that.
	I gave a speech in Parliament when they were on, like, 10% in German Bundestag.
	It was the very first piece of premium content we put up on the website, actually.
	It's me talking about what white fragility is to the Germans, and basically explaining, look, I'm really sorry, this is essentially the Anglo disease of liberalism that's coming home to you guys now, so I'm really sorry.
	But I wonder why they're so high in the polls.
	Maybe it's due to the fact that knife crime has reached a ten year high in Berlin.
	Might be a correlation there.
	This is from Remix.
	The latest statistics aren't broken down according to immigration status, but previous data from Berlin shows a vast over-representation of people of foreign extraction in knife attacks and violent crimes.
	In 2017, the Morgan Post reported that nearly half of all crime suspects in Berlin were of foreign extraction, a number highly disproportionate to their share of population, and in 2019, half of all prisoners in Berlin were immigrants.
	They now spend 1.5 million euros a day accommodating migrants in just 12 buildings.
	So that amounts to nearly half a billion every year.
	I wonder why people might be voting for the AFD if they're promising things like this.
	We will return the foreigners to their homeland by the millions.
	I bet that's a winning campaign slogan.
	You're not going to get rhetoric that strong in the UK, hence my jealousy.
	This is Rene Springer and he's said directly on Twitter, and this is a translated tweet here, we will return foreigners to their homeland by the millions.
	This is not a secret plan.
	This is a promise for more security, for more justice, to preserve our identity for Germany.
	And then they were saying, well, were you going to denounce this?
	This clearly, what would Hitler do policy?
	And then the leader just came out, Alice Vidal, and she just said, yeah, we're going to do mass deportations.
	Order must be closed, migrants must be turned away without exception, etc.
	Now, you've got your ears to the ground in elections in Austria and Germany.
	You're familiar with the German farmers' protests.
	As you said, this weekend you're talking to Neil Oliver about that sort of stuff.
	What's your take on what's going to unfold?
	Well, I think what we've seen in Germany is this.
	There's another famous anecdote by Lenin, supposedly, who once said that If the Germans want to storm a train platform, they first buy a ticket to actually be allowed to get on the platform.
	There's even a funnier one, which is true.
	In 1944, the German propaganda minister from Goebbels felt obliged to issue a statement that if you are on a train platform waiting to have your ticket clipped, And the sirens go off because the bombers are coming.
	It's more important to seek shelter than to wait for the conductor to clip your ticket, because that's how unlikely the Germans are to revolt.
	So this is, I would say, a very significant event, even though the media, most of it at least, is quite silent on it.
	And you can see, I think about 68% of the German population is supporting, for now at least, the farmers' protest.
	Because there's a general sense, it's of course much more than just the farmers.
	There's a general sense.
	I think that sense is true in Great Britain.
	I think it's more mature also in continental Europe.
	It just took a while for now to really take hold, let's say, in the public imagination.
	But a significant part is that governments don't really prioritize their own people, right?
	This idea that the priority of a government is the well-being and the needs of its own population, and then to save the world, whether it's climate or anything else, that they got their priorities entirely inverted.
	And the other thing which you guys mentioned, I think quite importantly, is there was still an underestimation of the dimension of migration.
	And I think there was, and this I have to admit is a blame I lay 100% at the feet of the media, that we have constantly been told that these are all fantastic people.
	I remember in 2015, and that's a direct quote in 2015, the then Chief Economist of the Deutsche Bank.
	I mean, if you look at the stock index of the Deutsche Bank, it explains their hiring policies.
	They probably have the wrong people in high position.
	But he said, Volkers Landa was his name, he said the refugees that are going to come to Germany, and this was in 2015, he said this is going to create a new renaissance.
	- All these doctors, lawyers, and engineers. - It is the best that can happen.
	And of course, you know, or the Green Party, of course, at the famous, you know, we get quote unquote free people.
	It's also great.
	It's also wonderful.
	But in the aftermath of October 7th, what happened in Israel, and particularly under the mass demonstrations, you had all over Europe.
	I think this also played a role in the Netherlands.
	You saw, no, no, these people never really arrived here.
	And the other thing, which in this debate, also with what the AFD is saying, there are two ways to look at citizenship.
	One way to look at it is it's a piece of paper, it's a passport.
	The other one is it's also a commitment to the kind of country to which you have now, you know, which granted you citizenship.
	But it's more than that.
	And I think many Germans, many people in Britain see it this way.
	So if someone says, we can't deport these people because they are British citizens, I think many people will say, are they really?
	They have the paperwork.
	But are they really citizens?
	They're not my neighbors.
	Exactly.
	And this matters.
	There's this idea that you can entirely shift real life into a kind of legalistic process.
	For most people, it's absurd.
	And I think there should be ways.
	And I think it's outlandish if you read The Guardian and The Economist, but I think for most common sense people, the idea of somebody got granted citizenship then actively joins with what I can already describe as, you know, Her Majesty's enemies, then I think that citizenship should be revoked.
	I mean, this is not, there's a reason why this is my all-time favorite phrase in English or British politics.
	Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
	I think that's a beautiful phrase because it says you are the opposition, but you're still loyal to the country.
	Like, You disagree on policy, you disagree on certain elements, but you don't question, let's say, the system itself.
	Oh yeah.
	But there are many people who do that, who basically say, your system is crap, we want ours.
	Whether it's Islam4UK or all these other movements.
	I mean, more British Muslims joined ISIS than the British army.
	And that tells you everything, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I've got a friend, a Norwegian friend, who just summarized it really good.
	He was like, look, they failed the test of friendship.
	They're just not your friends.
	And they're taking advantage of the legal structures you put in place to advantage them.
	But there's no, you know, kind handshake there.
	And it's like, okay, well then you can't, you can't be friends with these people.
	You can't have them.
	And this is the distinction.
	Everyone knows, okay, legally you might have the legal right to be here, but we're not, there's no we that connects us together.
	And with that, thank you very much for that topic.
	I am an Englishman.
	For once, very envious of the Germans.
	Yeah.
	Right, on to the next one then.
	Carl, you ever read Locke?
	Too many times.
	Right, okay, well it turns out that lots of famous liberals just sort of haven't.
	Yes, I know.
	I learned that recently.
	They think liberalism started and ended with MLK's I Have a Dream speech.
	Yes, I learned that, yeah.
	Which is ironic because he was also a communist.
	But the point being, what I want to bring up here...
	Is that Carl recently upset some prominent liberals on Twitter by suggesting that liberalism and communism are not inseparable, in a way intertwined, and that communism is executing on the unfulfilled promises of liberalism.
	Yes.
	Which is ironic, because on the same morning, and check the website very soon on premium content, we recorded a podcast, Why Wokeness is Liberalism.
	It is weird how that converged.
	God has a fantastic sense of humor.
	I'm sure he does.
	So don't roll your eyes.
	Lauren Chen nearly got you yesterday.
	Also go listen to Carl's chat about this with Lauren Chen that was aired yesterday.
	But I'm going to just preface this with the body of work that we've done on the website that you have done to set the stage for why you're an authority to talk about this.
	And Ralph particularly wanted to disentangle this topic, so very fortuitous.
	So you've done two articles on the five false assumptions of liberalism.
	Ten in total.
	Yeah, and you have plenty more for projects in the future, I am sure.
	So do you want to give a quick summary of what the false assumptions are?
	Sure.
	Liberalism evolved out of England, mostly, in the 17th and 18th centuries.
	And this corresponds with the development of the concept of ideology, because prior to that this didn't really exist.
	And It's a very, very long subject, but essentially the problem with the Enlightenment, I think, is the sovereignty of reason taking itself as the sole epistemological tool of conception about the world.
	And so as soon as you locate all valid knowledge in what is purely conceptually understandable, then you realize actually there's a huge amount that you're taking away there.
	And this means that if you are going to rationally construct a philosophy that begins on a set of premises, then follows through to a logical conclusion, actually, it's inevitable that you will have left behind a lot of information.
	Because Locke, in fact, had a great turn of phrase for this.
	He says, all abstraction is subtraction.
	You are seeing a thing, you're extracting something out of it, and then whatever you're leaving behind, you're subtracting out of it.
	And this is what Professor Michael Oakchalk described as the draining off of the moral, the liquid of the moral tradition to find the grit of the moral specifics.
	And so instead of being able to simply drink all of this down and get the good morals, the good governance, the good politics, we've drained all that out and we're trying to choke down the grit.
	of the ideological rational assumptions and okay well maybe that works if you are say the english-speaking americans who are essentially just having what you believe just parroted back at you and so you're still in the moral fluid of your tradition but when you take that out and then you apply to say france that doesn't have the kind of english political tradition well you get the french revolution you get the russian revolution you get
	all sorts of terrible things that happen because these things are based on something that is outside of your cultural experience and moreover if you start examining actually what the presuppositions of these liberal thinkers were you realize they're nonsense they're not true these things didn't happen and so this primarily i would say comes from the problem of the state of nature A man never lived as an isolated individual in the forest, and he didn't come together to form a civilization, and therefore everything that comes on from that.
	And so, if you are to ideologically, outside of this cultural fluid, take liberalism and apply it somewhere, it just fails.
	And we're seeing, we're living through the failure of it right now.
	Part of the problem of that is that an ideology is intended to export a political tradition from a particular time and place and think it's applicable elsewhere.
	For example, the Americans thinking that we can just export democracy to Iraq and we can just bomb it into being liberal.
	But as Joseph de Maistre, one of the critics of liberalism, quite contemporary at the time, observed, different governance styles are ergonomic to different peoples, different cultures, even different geographic landmasses.
	It's easier to think of yourself as an individual, frankly, if you're on an island like UK rather than if you're a German with a set by all sides possible invading enemy states.
	So it just doesn't come as naturally to us.
	And so one of the things that we did to execute on this series internally within Lotus Seers is that we had a three-part debate series on liberalism with our colleagues Josh and Stelios who are very well read.
	Josh knew a lot of the psychological literature on individualism and he's a libertarian, decided to play a bit of devil's advocate as well.
	And Stelios thinks of himself as a very learned classical liberal because he was elected York University on philosophy.
	Exactly.
	He knows what he's talking about.
	Absolutely.
	And so our critiques of Stelios's classical liberalism were that, frankly, not every liberal is as smart as you, as we'll see shortly.
	Not everyone has read the theory.
	And unfortunately, there is this antagonistic dyad in liberalism because you value freedom and equality.
	They're not the sole values.
	There's also progress and universality, pitfalls of its own.
	But freedom and equality can often be in conflict.
	And so if the Marxists come along and say, well, you haven't achieved equality, and that means people aren't free, then they can subvert liberalism from within, judo flip it, and have some momentum to transition the liberals from the Marxists.
	And the liberals don't have much of a defense against that.
	Any thoughts on this so far?
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I love to debate it.
	I think this is such a crucial, important debate, and it's exactly the kind of debates we should have, because ideas have consequences, as the famous saying goes.
	So understanding where ideas come from, and where they differ, and where they're actually very similar, or potentially the same, is an incredibly important discussion to have.
	And I was very much intrigued by, I think, a very quick tweet you made, I think, was it, communism is liberalism, or liberalism is communism?
	I didn't, no, no, I'm not saying they're the same thing.
	Communism isn't separate from liberalism.
	I would like to, just for the sake of provoking a little bit of a debate, but I think it's an important one and I'm curious to hear what you guys think about this.
	If we even go beyond the 17th century, if we go back a little further, I think of course one of the connecting things between all these Western ideologies, I would argue, is, and I don't mean this as a criticism, but I think we have, in my opinion at least, this is something we have at least to discuss, is that a common root that they share is Christianity, I think you see in many ways, right?
	The universalism of it.
	The kind of the idea, the very idea of the, you know, the oppressor-oppressed relationship.
	I think these are all things that grew out of the Christian worldview.
	It morphed into something, even vocism, I think, has philosophically, not theologically, a lot in common with certain aspects of Christianity.
	As I said, I consider myself a Christian, so I'm not speaking at this from an atheist viewpoint, but there are many of the things, and this is, I find, one of the things we also discussed early on, The true proof of culture, cultural values, is if you have internalized those values so much, you don't even recognize that you have internalized them.
	And this brings us back to the immigration debate.
	We have the sense that somebody who comes from a country that is different from ours, that is poorer, that is more authoritarian, we immediately see them as a victim.
	We immediately see them then through this Christian lens that this person is a victim, therefore, He resembles, not even, but even the atheist might, just not in different terms.
	It resembles kind of Jesus on the cross, right?
	This is somebody, I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean, right?
	Somebody who deserves our admiration.
	This is why the United States have sometimes these things, you know, where people then go to the Southern border and clean the shoes of people that cross over the border in a kind of sign of, you know, but that's exactly what it is.
	But the Pope did that, I mean, he's a Marxist, but the Pope did that recently, washing the feet of African migrants.
	Exactly, right?
	And this, I think, shows you that the connection is even stronger.
	And what I find particularly interesting about this is because, in many ways, when we talk about Western civilization, that kind of behavior would be completely alien to a Roman or an ancient Greek.
	And what I find even more interesting is there is only, and I say this to be very clear here, I must be very careful, there's a difference between understanding and approving, or understanding and endorsing.
	But even in many ways, the communist ideology is, I am exaggerating here, right?
	But I think it is fair to say that in many ways it takes at least some cues from Christianity.
	Again, the idea of the uprising of the proletariat kind of against the oppressed class.
	There is the oppressed center.
	Again, also what's the essence of wokeness?
	And that ultimately the oppressed is going to win.
	And just this one last point, only philosophy, And this, of course, makes it even, I guess, funny with the German accent.
	The only philosophy that really diverged from this, if you want, was kind of late 19th century German philosophy around Schopenhauer, around Nietzsche, and then, of course, even National Socialism and Fascism is more different than I would think.
	But that, in a sense, right, was this idea that, wait a moment, why exactly should it be the moral right thing to be to support the weak, right, to be on the side of the weak?
	Why shouldn't we do something to support the strong, to make sure that they can flourish, right?
	That whole ubermensch and supermensch idea, and this idea by Nietzsche that Christianity is a slave religion.
	So again, I prefer Christianity.
	This is, as I said, this is understanding, not approving.
	But this is very often why I don't like the contemporary debate.
	And that's why I think Karl made such an interesting, succinct and important contribution.
	We need to get beyond the right calls everything they don't like Marxism.
	The left calls everything they don't like fascism.
	And that is supposed to be a debate.
	That is not a debate.
	That is not a philosophically implied debate.
	This is just name calling.
	And there is, just as a last quick point on this, I think that at least since 1945 is a random date, but I think it's not entirely wrong.
	Philosophy has become a debate about different shades of liberalism, but it's not really a debate about potential alternatives.
	Now, let me also be very clear.
	I mean, this is what Socrates was more or less saying, right?
	Philosophy can be dangerous, because I admit that we would have a debate about Hypothetically.
	Wow, this is so difficult.
	But is it possible that the Nietzsche's of the world got something right?
	But I mean, this can be a very uncomfortable debate and potentially a dangerous debate, because once you say, well, you know, you say maybe they had a point, you potentially shoot out the legs under liberal democracy, which is again, going back to Socrates, is what Is what he said, right?
	He said, I mean, if you look at the trial of Socrates, basically Socrates first defends his position, but later on he also defends the position of the Athenian government to sentence him to death because he's aware that philosophy can be really dangerous.
	And I think that's, at least in settings like this, we should have these conversations because otherwise, to be honest, it just gets boring.
	Yeah.
	I think you're completely correct and that's why Nietzsche is something that people talk about now.
	There's a reason that his critique actually had teeth.
	There's a reason that it scares people.
	His name is ominous when it comes up in a conversation because actually there was something true about what he was saying.
	And, I mean, it can be uncomfortable in polite society to explore it, but you can't just sit there denying a true aspect of reality.
	This is the two sides of the post-liberal right, particularly in America, particularly in Washington DC, and that is the traditionalist, Latin mass going Catholic, vitalist revivalists, and the BAP acolytes, who are vitalist, but almost like neo-pagan, and have very different ethnic and cultural particularities.
	And so, That has been marginalized by the Broad Tent Coalition, particularly the influential people like James Lindsay, for example, as, well, that's not liberalism, therefore we must brush that aside as being equivalent to fascism or Christian nationalism is sort of dead-end, even though I haven't read the book.
	But anyway, point being, so we did a little mini-series on James's stuff, because I was frustrated by the fact that he Went to war of Christian nationalism without defining what it is.
	Are you still blocked, Karl?
	Yeah, I'm still blocked, yeah.
	I mean, I don't consider it a great loss, to be honest.
	No, it's a badge of honor, frankly, at this point.
	Well, it's not even a badge of honor.
	I liked James Lindsay just fine, and then, I mean, as you can see by his reaction to me, it was just really childish and ill-informed.
	Like, I thought he would be able to explain to me what his position was, and he couldn't.
	And he gets personal really quickly.
	Yeah, and I was like, okay, well, if you think I'm your enemy, then that's your problem, because I've defended James Lindsay on many occasions.
	Why did I do that if this is the kind of response I'm going to get, right?
	Because I wasn't just being bigoted about it or anything like that.
	I've long studied the liberal tradition.
	I've come out of it and been like, okay, actually I think I've identified some concrete problems on this.
	James Lindsay just acted like a child.
	So I was just like, okay, well then I didn't lose anything.
	To put it in a perfect frame of reference, you were acting like the loyal opposition and he saw you as an existential enemy.
	I think it betrays a fundamental insecurity about his own knowledge of his own tradition, whereas you are very learned and you can identify the vulnerabilities in thinking that you're going in the same trajectory.
	But more of a just quick thing.
	I'm an Englishman, therefore I'm naturally biased for the things liberalism wants, right?
	So I want to end up with those things because that's the English political tradition.
	I'm not abandoning that.
	But what I can't do is agree that we're going to continue with liberalism to get those things, because we're not.
	We're going to go somewhere else, which is going to be atrocious.
	So we need to challenge what liberalism's core assumptions are.
	OK, they're actually quite easily challenged.
	We could change them.
	Yeah, and I think that's, again, that's just a good point, because we've really narrowed in many ways the discourse, even those who want to broaden it.
	I mean, I'm sure you... I met you there, right, when the ARC conference took place in London, right, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
	And I think it was an interesting event.
	And, you know, it's great if people engage and you have some big names who really try to make a difference.
	But even there, this new approach kind of to find a utilitarian version of Christianity.
	I don't really believe in God or the gospel or Jesus, but it might be helpful.
	And this again brings me, that's even worse.
	But if you're a convicted atheist and say, this is all nonsense, OK.
	But to say, I kind of still agree with the atheist, but for my own psychological health, I pretend to believe.
	And there is no, as Eric Hoffer would say, To revive your civilization, if we say that is the goal.
	And immediately admitting that the tool you want to use is something you don't really genuinely believe in.
	I'm sorry, that is not a great recipe.
	We tend to underestimate.
	Even in positive movements, you need a certain, almost fanatic conviction.
	It's got to be sincerity.
	It has to be.
	There's no substitute for it.
	And no amount of pretending just because it's functionally... I could not agree more.
	Yeah.
	Because it goes back to what you said before.
	It's basically the same enlightenment thing.
	You say, we are so reasonable now that we understand whatever the positive effects of Christianity without actually believing in it.
	And that might be, you can do this maybe with a certain, you know, layer of society if you want.
	But if you want to reinvigorate an entire society by saying, pretend to believe in it, even if you don't.
	I don't.
	If that's really going to work, I have a soul.
	You need a soul.
	Because, I mean, one of the things that people who discuss ideology always forget is this is a naturally self-selecting thing for people who are quite intelligent, who have the capacity for extremely complex abstract reasoning.
	Well, the average person's got 100 IQ, actually.
	They're not all PhD-holding mathematicians like James Lindsay.
	Exactly.
	And if you want them all to come with you, you've got to stir the emotions.
	It's just, you've got to make them truly believe.
	And you have to make them.
	They have to truly, authentically believe.
	And it's just the way the thing works.
	There's nothing you can do about it.
	Push forward with the framing on this then.
	So just to set the stage, so this Twitter debate was ignited because Oron McIntyre pointed out that DEI, as you said, isn't just a form of Marxism.
	Yes, they're the long marches for the institutions, as Chris Russo has well documented in his recent book.
	However, they were successful because liberalism is the fertile soil in which these bad seeds could germinate and grow.
	Just a quick thing though.
	No one ever asked, why do the communists always want to use liberalism to get to communism?
	And it's because the communists never challenge any of the original presuppositions of liberalism.
	They agree with the framing.
	Yeah, we want total liberty and total equality.
	Okay, great.
	What does that mean?
	Well, that means all of civilization has to be gone.
	That means no one can own anything and no one can be dependent on another person.
	And the liberals begin at that point.
	They literally begin at that point.
	They harmonize the concepts of liberty and equality into being the abstract individual who owns nothing and lives in the state of nature.
	And the communists agree.
	And the reason they're angry, if you read the Communist Manifesto, it is vengeful.
	The liberals have destroyed all of the sentimental bonds that held us together, and then they own their property.
	Well, why did we even come out of the state of nature in the first place?
	Well, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all say, well, to protect our property.
	So yeah, because in the state of nature, you don't have property.
	And so the Communist Manifesto is just them saying, no, no, no, we're not stopping your bourgeois freedom.
	And literally Marx is just Exactly.
	This is what he says.
	This is your bourgeois conception of freedom.
	No, no, we're going back fully to the state of nature.
	You're not having any property.
	We're all going to be totally equals.
	Everything is going to be as you promised in the beginning.
	That's why the liberals are still hanging around and the communists are hanging around in the liberal camp.
	Well, the communists are liberal accelerationists as well.
	And this is something we discussed in that premium podcast.
	And that is that because liberals value progress, they don't have an argument against adopting technologies that get more yield out of less energy.
	So they have some sort of directive momentum to their historical narrative.
	And so the communists are saying, well, yeah, great.
	So do we.
	You say that we had the anthropology of the state of nature.
	We want to return to the state of nature.
	We just think we can do it now.
	But the thing is, if the liberals say, well, we can adopt private property measures as some compromise between freedom and equality to manage scarcity.
	Well, if the liberals keep generating abundance, they abolish scarcity.
	Exactly.
	If you get to a position of abundance, what's the point of property rights if you're no longer negotiating rationing?
	So the liberals will arrive at communism through technology and they won't have an argument against it.
	When they reach communism, they'll just go, well, our procedures are redundant.
	Now we're all communists.
	And that's why they're constantly saying, well, Star Trek's the communist future.
	No, it's the liberal utopia.
	But that was always the argument.
	Well, no, it's very liberal.
	It's like, oh, actually these things harmonize into the same thing in the very end point.
	Yep.
	That's the problem.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so that's why James took umbrage with a very mature- He's got no argument.
	He's got no argument on this, because I'm right.
	Quite, yeah.
	Also, individual liberty versus collectivism by state edict.
	Yeah, but the state edict is socialism as a transitional mechanism towards communism.
	And every socialist said this.
	Yes, and even, and I've made a video on this in going into all the Marxist texts to say that because scarcity exists, the promise of communism is a pipe dream that people will use to sell to you so they can get dictatorship and power for themselves and remain at socialism.
	But if liberalism greases the wheels of the engine that will provide abundance, then you can actually get to a state that's classed as communism.
	Because the state and scarce rationing and the allocation of private property rights no longer matters.
	But for some reason a man who's read a lot of communism doesn't understand that.
	Yeah, and I think there is, just as a quick add, because this is such a wonderful point, and I think just an arrow, even the kind of individual liberty versus collectivism by state edict, history is more complex and complicated than this.
	One, and you mentioned, I think, Carl, I think you tweeted it today or maybe yesterday.
	We're going to say that the sense of belonging is what we talked before, but also kind of be part of a community, kind of finding moments in your life where you actually give up your individual liberty is something that we do enjoy.
	Like there's a sense, sacrifice has a positive element.
	There is, as John Milton says, you know, what is better to, or as some character in John Milton's Paradise Lost says, it's better to serve in, no, it's better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
	Yeah, Satan.
	Yeah, right.
	So when I say communism is satanic.
	The main character, as I said.
	But this is really a crucial distinction.
	And we did, we tend to, and this bothers me so much because we tend to forget, at least particularly in the 19th century, states, governments, institutions did attempt to forge collectivism in a sense, like nationalism, this idea.
	And I think this was In the broader sense, a good thing.
	I think the idea of national anthems, national authors, you know, a national language, these were good things.
	Did they kind of infringe?
	We can say it's kind of sad that there is now one Italian language and I don't think like these 74 different forms that they had in the 1860s.
	There is something lost there.
	I'm the first one to admit it.
	But do we think it's good that they unified into Italy?
	I think it was good.
	I think in the German case, we can have a debate.
	Do you think it was a good thing that, you know, that the Welsh, the Scottish and the English and parts of the Irish, if you will, kind of have a unified United Kingdom that I still believe historically, whenever it counted, stood on the right side of history?
	I think that is a good thing.
	But this was also done through symbolism, through, you know, certain rituals and certain acts.
	But that's not a bad thing.
	So I don't like this.
	Oh, it's either individual liberty or the state forces some community on you.
	Well, yes.
	But if it helps, I mean, Rousseau literally coined the phrase, we're going to force you to be free.
	The ultimate liberal state will literally make you maximally dependent on the state and minimally dependent on one another.
	So you will be forced to be that atomized individual who gets no one's friendship or love or companionship or anything like that.
	So either way, this isn't an either or discussion.
	Both sides could be bad.
	You know, we've got to navigate.
	Exactly.
	And so crucially, this is kind of what Patrick Deneen makes in his book about liberalism, exactly this.
	So the idea that the once vision, I think that's probably the one where communist liberals went wrong, that at some point the state is going to fade away.
	It's the exact opposite.
	Because as you say, if you break down bonds of community, something is supposed to replace it.
	And this is the state.
	But the problem is, at least nowadays, in the modern liberal vision, this is, for example, the unconditional basic income.
	The state is not supposed to ask for anything in return.
	And there is, again, I think it's psychologically damaging to get a reward without any kind of obligation.
	I think this is a problem.
	You create a sense of entitlement that pervades so much of our society in a negative sense, which is why, again, we talked about all these problems with immigration, right?
	But if I, for example, go to the London Tube and I step over a 16-year-old, again, I hope I use this term correctly, you know, English trollop who's passed out to her own vomit, that's also not something that I would say, well, look at English civilisation!
	Oh, I bloody would!
	Christ!
	But also, she's the apex of freedom, isn't she?
	She's consuming what she likes, she's got no bonds of obligation to anyone else.
	So, yeah, the apex liberal woman is the drunk, passed out trollop.
	But you're completely right.
	And I'm just saying this as a father.
	I would never give my children something without having them earned it.
	Yes.
	They have to work for something if they want.
	But here's the thing.
	But then at some point in the liberal utopia, the state is going to step in and say to your children, you don't need your father.
	Yes, exactly.
	Because that's ultimately liberty in that sense.
	The clan, which I think was a good thing, the clan was destroyed.
	But now it's kind of also moved to the kind of the small family formation where parents are.
	And the funny part about this is, if we would have said this a couple of years ago, they would have said, oh my God, the whining, the alarmism.
	But this is exactly when you have laws that say, for example, that a school or a doctor has to support the transitioning of a child, even if she is 12 or younger, without informing the parents.
	This is exactly what we're talking about.
	This is precisely this.
	So a state bureaucrat who Who doesn't know the individual has more of a say, potentially, in a young person's decision than the people who have known her or him, or whatever it is, their entire life.
	And we would assume, I think in 90% of the cases, most parents love their children.
	Even the automatic assumption is that parents want something bad for their children, but the state is the institution that wants the really true good.
	It's monstrous.
	And the idea that a state bureaucrat doesn't see you as anything other than a number on a spreadsheet.
	It's just baffling.
	I agree.
	Yeah.
	It's just, you know, come on.
	These don't, they don't know you.
	They don't care about you.
	In fact, every number that crosses through their spreadsheet is an inconvenience to them.
	Like they, they don't, they don't get paid by the number.
	They don't get paid to be invested.
	They get paid regardless.
	So every number that comes through the bureaucrats, it's like, right, get it off, get it right.
	I can go home early, you know?
	So just saying, well, opinions like this is what got you blocked.
	Well, yeah, maybe.
	Which was a really mature rejoinder, you know.
	Protecting children from the interventionist liberal state is apparently a blockable offence.
	And then, someone did weigh in, I'll just finish on this, because I made my point at the start, the assertion that liberals haven't read Locke.
	Helen Pluckrose, who was James' co-author on Cynical Theories.
	James also co-authored a book with Peter Boghossian, who's coming in soon.
	Peter's great, Peter's not got this attitude at all.
	Well, I assume Peter was who titled the book, How to Have Difficult Conversations, and not James.
	But Helen Pluckrose wades in and has a large breakdown.
	Oh, maybe... I don't know what's happening there.
	Yeah, good thing I screenshotted that, really.
	Yeah, so here's a screenshot.
	She examines... Just to explain this.
	So, I was due to have just a friendly conversation with Helen, who's an academic, about my articles on liberalism.
	And this was her notes that she had made, because she had to go to New Zealand for a family issue, so it didn't happen, and this had all kicked off.
	And so I screenshotted this, because she's literally making the argument I'm making in those articles.
	Because the first point being pre-Social Manifest Nature, and she says, I don't know what that means, I'm not familiar with those philosophers.
	So the foundational liberal philosophers?
	Grotius, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and a couple of others.
	And she says, I'm not familiar.
	So, okay, well, We can't have a conversation about the philosophy of liberalism if you're not familiar with those philosophies.
	She literally hasn't read Locke.
	In her bio, it is liberal principles and evidence-based ideas.
	I further interrogated her argument before she blocked me.
	You got blocked there as well?
	Yeah, I wasn't rude at all.
	No, you weren't.
	I was very polite, like when I was dealing with Pete Hitchens.
	And I just got her to explain her position.
	Her view is that liberalism begins with Mill.
	There's a strong argument to make, Mill isn't really a liberal.
	So, he comes out of the liberal tradition, but I don't want to get into the weeds of it, but like... He doesn't really believe in natural rights, he's utilitarian.
	Yeah, and he doesn't believe in the state of nature either.
	So, you can definitely argue that utilitarianism is a successor ideology, but not the same as liberalism.
	And, um, Helen begins at the point of, I'm a utilitarian, Mel was right.
	And it's like, Mel wasn't right about anything, actually.
	I'm probably going to write a treatise one day on how utilitarianism is nonsense.
	You can't collectivize and redistribute happiness that exists exclusively on our heads.
	It's all wrong.
	It's all anyway.
	So just to finish off with this as well, even if you haven't read about the state of nature, I think it's fair to say that liberals act as if it exists, because something that Helen did include in her notes was references to Steven Pinker, and this is something we've said in our long-form podcast coming out soon.
	Steven Pinker writes the blank slate talking about how
	The State of Nature is a fallacy, references Locke, goes through all of the literature available to him at the time on evolutionary psychology and neuroimaging to say there are differences between peoples, between men and women are unconscious, and then writes Enlightenment Now, saying that the redistribution of material resources will make everyone equal and equally enlightened, and The Better Angels of Our Nature saying that society is on the long arc of history bending towards justice, observable by the fact that states are decreasing their amount of crime.
	Now Stephen, Fascist states also have a lot low crime, so that might not want to be the standard that you implement there, because it kind of underwrites your liberal ideal.
	And also, we had a low crime rate before we had a massive state, and then the 20th century happened.
	Hmm, quite.
	So, if you're a liberal, maybe read some Locke.
	Well, speaking of the Lockean Project, shall we get on to America and wrap up, shall we?
	So, Ralph, here we go.
	Thank you, Lord.
	The internet forgets nothing.
	Exactly.
	Look, you're a great commentator, especially all the stuff you've been doing on Julia Show recently, setting the climate policy right.
	You did have a dud take, though, and I wanted to talk to you about it to see if your opinions changed over time.
	So you've endeared yourself to our audience with all the Lenin and Hitler quotes.
	Let's see, let's see if this is any different.
	So this was an old article you did for Newsweek saying that you were encouraged by the January 6th committee and you referenced the Beer Hall Putsch, which I think might have been a bit of a hyperbolic comparison.
	Did I?
	Did I?
	Can you scroll down to the next slide?
	You did say, sort of, there we go, 2022 to Weimar Germany, recall that of March in 1920, bits of the German army of nationalists and monarchists sent to overthrow the democratic government, etc.
	So, bits of references to sort of pre-Hitlerian Germany there.
	Yes, but okay, very well, I have to defend myself immediately.
	But I was making the point that it was not like this.
	Oh, okay, right.
	Okay, so that's my misreading, fair enough.
	Totally fine, what did I say?
	But, I will say, the title?
	Restoring Your Faith in US Democracy.
	Now.
	To be fair, often these titles are created by editors.
	Of course.
	Not the writers.
	Yes, yes.
	So this was about nearly two years ago now.
	Blimey.
	And I think it's worth reassessing some of the information that's come out since.
	Particularly in the light of the slap on the wrist that a certain Ray Epps was given.
	Yes.
	So, the reason I say this as well is because the Iowa caucus was in the past few days, and Vivek Ramaswamy has since dropped out of the presidential race, thrown his support behind Trump, and when he did so, they were chanting VP at him.
	So he's top of the list for picks, and Vivek has some good policy positions.
	As of today, Trump has come out on Vivek's advice against CBDCs.
	All great stuff.
	But at the debate with the four candidates back when the man Mountain Chris Christie was still in the race, he said that why am I the only person on the stage who can say January 6th looks like an inside job?
	And he repeated this later on at a CNN town hall when this presenter kept interrupting him.
	And during the CNN town hall, he accused the FBI of having informants in the crowd, just like the Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot.
	And the government was withholding over 200 hours of footage depicting police officers admitting protesters into the capital and firing tear gas and rubber bullets in the crowd.
	And when those pieces of footage were released, what did it look like?
	We'll get to those.
	Yeah, okay.
	So, contentious claims, sure.
	And for the uninitiated, perhaps who had faith in the democratic processes, who were thinking the January 6th committee was on the up and up, they might be thinking, well, a bit outlandish.
	I want to draw your attention to this.
	Gentleman by the name of Ray Epps.
	Now, the reason I'm mentioning Ray Epps is because when Senator Cruz questioned one of the heads of the FBI, Jill Sanborn, she's the Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch, He asked her multiple times, were there FBI informants present?
	How many were there?
	Can you say who they were?
	And she said, Senator, I can't disclose the nature of ongoing investigations.
	So that wasn't a no.
	And we know with intelligence agencies, when they don't say no, it's probably a yes.
	And when they do say no, they're lying and it's probably a yes.
	The reason I bring this up is because Ray Epps, the man behind a lot of January 6th conspiracy theories, whoo, Despite tons of arrests, we've had $1,200 arrests, 700 sentences, people are in jail with a waiting trial since January 6th.
	Yeah, three years on.
	Riots!
	A man who on camera was inciting the capital riot got probation.
	Yeah.
	A year of probation, which is kind of curious.
	So, Politico, just as a quick thing as well, I've seen lots of footage of January 6th.
	He is the only person I have seen actually say, we have to go into the building.
	Yep.
	He's the only one.
	Yep.
	Well, well, yeah, exactly.
	So we've got, we've got all that footage here, actually.
	I'm just going to play a little bit.
	And you go into the Capitol!
	Into the Capitol!
	What?
	- Get into the capitol.
	What?
	- What? - What?
	- What? - I love the response. - Peacefully.
	- Fed, Fed, Fed, Fed. - Yeah, get on baked Alaska.
	There's loads of this as well.
	I'm just going to mute it and let it run in the background.
	Because even Politico, not exactly the far-right outlet, you know, they said the sentence of Ray Epps is more lenient than the six months of prison time that prosecutors requested.
	And it marks the conclusion of one of the strangest January 6th subplots in the saga of Epps.
	The former oath keeper from Arizona, among the first pro-Trump rioters to breach barricades, then became the target of far-right conspiracy theories.
	What, like the fact that he's got a lenient sentence despite being basically the only guy on camera who's saying we need to breach the Capitol?
	Yeah, but I mean, just a quick thing.
	A lot of far-right conspiracy theories seem to come true.
	So, yeah, that's not a judgment.
	Well, as you were saying before the show, far-right is meaningless now.
	You're calling Russell Brand and Joe Rogan far-right.
	Yeah.
	No, I mean, I have to admit, I have a real problem.
	I'm a happy warrior, because I like resolve, I don't like anger.
	I think one should be concerned, but I don't like despair.
	But I have to admit, so this is why things like you do with the Lotus, it just gives you lots of hope.
	As long as these things exist, I think the battle is not lost, we're just at the beginning.
	But one of the things about January 6th, I remember precisely when all this video and everything came out, when it happened.
	I mean, they had weapons.
	They found two pipe bombs.
	Three policemen have been bludgeoned to death, right?
	So the information came out at the beginning that really sounds... I mean, oh my God, right?
	This is an armed...
	I mean, it was never an insurrection, because as I did say, what did they expect, right?
	That all of a sudden the guy with the horns will be the commander-in-chief and the US military international guard will, you know, pledge allegiance to Trump for eternity.
	The guy with the lectern.
	But the way how the media jumped on it, or the mainstream media, as we say, how they jumped on it and were willing to run with absolutely unverified things.
	And then, you know, kind of even once contrary information came out, they were unwilling to retract.
	I guess the term would be misinformation that they let out or that they spread.
	That really worries me, because the problem with what we said before, when we talked about, you know, what would Hitler do?
	The problem, of course, is if you honestly believe, and I think that more of them, that's what I underestimated.
	I thought this is all hyperbolic in political competition.
	But I think there are people from the BBC, to the German public broadcasters, to the New York Times, who really think that the other side are fascists and Nazis and therefore Everything is permitted, even lying, like even bending or negating the truth because they truly are, as we said, Nazis and fascists.
	I always thought they only say it, you know, for dramatic effect.
	I think they really believe it.
	On that point, then it's very curious that Ray Epps is the only January the 6th rioter to get a positive write-up by the New York Times.
	Yeah, what would I have to do to get a positive write-up on the New York Times?
	Insult Jess Phillips a bunch more.
	There's nothing I could do to get this right up that Ray Epps is getting right now.
	It's mad.
	And so when Vivek Ramaswamy said, I don't know, bit suspicious, maybe he's a federal operative, a bit like the Gretchen Whitmer case, people go, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist.
	It's not like the Gretchen Whitmer case was riddled with feds one-to-one.
	They always are.
	There was one where there was like nine of them and eight of them were feds.
	It's like, really?
	This one, the indictments... I'll read a bit here, but I think there are up to 12 federal agents involved in this.
	It's mad.
	So the Whitmer kidnapping plot, this came out just before the election, so it was a scaremonger about far-right extremism.
	So these were 30 men...
	Basically, yes I know!
	I'm not lying, you know.
	These were the Wolverine Watchmen and they were charged with plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer.
	So six of the men, this is Croft, Garbin, Harris, Fox, Carcetta and Franks, were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
	Eight others were charged with providing material support to a terrorist group.
	Nine of the men were convicted, five were acquitted because the five were entrapped by FBI informants.
	So this was Adam Fox, the accused ringleader, He was living in the basement of a vacuum shop and brushing his teeth and using running water from an adjacent Mexican restaurant.
	So he was a loner and a homeless man, and he had been convinced to do this stuff by a guy, his name is Dan.
	He's an FBI informant, Big Dan Chappell, and he was a former Iraq war veteran.
	He was the one that was encouraging him to say, or maybe we should kidnap, or maybe we should shoot, or maybe we should blow up the house.
	This fella, this homeless fella, he was playing with alcohol at a cookout and he's just going, yeah man, yeah.
	And the guy was wearing a wiretap going, see, they're plotting it.
	Obviously it's just hypothetical hyperbole by a man who has none of the resources to commit this stuff.
	But you're dragging him through the courts and putting it on trial because, and of all people BuzzFeed knew broke this, it's advantageous ahead of the election to scaremonger about far-right extremism.
	Now despite this, and again, call me a conspiracy theorist, as Vivek points out, The FBI head overseeing the Detroit field office during the Whitmer plot, the guy that was in charge of these federal agents, was appointed head of the DC field office three months before Jan 6th.
	Oh really?
	Curious that, innit?
	That's fascinating.
	Maneuvering there.
	Just failing upwards.
	Clearly no entrapment going on, would be a conspiracy theorist.
	Good on Vivek for posting all this stuff as well.
	Yep.
	He is the shatterer of narratives.
	Yeah, good for him.
	So, speaking of narratives, nothing better than visual proof.
	What about all those security footage of the alleged exist?
	Well, here's the Capitol Police just sort of standing around.
	Average riot.
	This is what the insurrection looks like.
	Well, look, they're all there.
	They're well-armed.
	Again, we've both been around the capital before.
	You have to submit yourself to security checks.
	I haven't been around the capital.
	Have you not?
	Oh, okay.
	I'll probably be there this year.
	Well, it's not shocking that they thought they were just allowed in if the police were ushering them in and it's open on any given day.
	I just can't get over, oh yeah, there was an insurrection.
	Really?
	How many guns did they have?
	Zero?
	Really?
	Yeah, the only person that was shot was Ashley Babbitt.
	But just the one country on Earth in which there was an insurrection and not one gun was used?
	No, I don't believe you.
	The right wing insurrection in the United States will be done by unarmed men.
	Will be done by the guy in the Viking hat, as you've said.
	And this is something that Tucker showed on his show shortly before he was cancelled from Fox.
	It was about 20 seconds in.
	He got the security footage that ended up exonerating Jacob Charnsley because he's being escorted through the capital by the police officers.
	Well, he stayed within the velvet robes, didn't he?
	Yes, like most of the violent riots in 2020.
	Oh wait, not an insurrection yet again.
	And so after this, his appeal was deemed successful and he was let out because obviously he doesn't think he shouldn't be there.
	The capital police officers wearing masks are opening the doors for him!
	Just come on!
	So yeah, there we go.
	Sorry, not this way, it's the other way, sorry.
	Yeah, yeah.
	My apologies, Viking man.
	Look, they're all just standing there.
	Okay, whatever.
	Another man has also been acquitted because he reasonably said, the judge had judged this, that he was allowed to enter the capital on the grounds the capital police were letting him in.
	That's because they literally opened the doors for them.
	Yeah, so this is now a trend.
	Some of the officers weren't as accommodating to the tourists, so I'll wrap this up quick just because we're getting on for time.
	There is footage of officers just indiscriminately firing rubber bullets at the crowd and throwing gas grenades in there and all that.
	I'm sure that wasn't designed to rile them up.
	Yeah, quite.
	But this was only at one entrance, because at the back entrance, the officers that they were corresponding with were letting them in.
	So why were there two different strategies at two different entrances?
	Why were they just firing indiscriminately on a crowd that hadn't attacked them yet?
	Not exactly the best police practice there, but there you go.
	Again, maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist.
	All right, then.
	On to the next bit, though.
	Even after all this, even after all this has come out, U.S.
	Attorney, D.C.
	U.S.
	Attorney Matthew Graves is now saying that even if you didn't go in the building, even if you weren't violent, any American that was in the D.C.
	area during January 6th may now be liable to prosecution.
	It's a political show trial.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They're just prosecuting their political opposition, quite clearly.
	Now this is, at this point of recording, so this is late January 2024, there's been 1,200 arrests, 170 people convicted, 710 people pled guilty with 720 receiving sentences.
	Only two people have been fully acquitted and some other appeals have gone through.
	So that's a lot of people and it still isn't enough for the Biden DOJ, but all right.
	And just to point out, this isn't an insurrection.
	Palestinian activists literally breaking down the border barricade outside the White House the other night.
	Not an insurrection when Palestinian protesters occupy the Cannon House building.
	Not an insurrection when feminists occupied the Capitol building during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
	Not an insurrection when the 2020 rioters burned down St.
	John's Church.
	Actually, they accused Trump of doing a photo-op instead of burning down a historic church there.
	Yeah, so why is all this happening?
	Just to finish.
	Because of this.
	Trump is winning in a landslide in the GOP primaries.
	Only 2% of the votes came in and the New York Times already declared it a win for him.
	They are bleep scared of President Trump winning a safe and secure election and so they want to manufacture consent as much as possible to take him off the ballot.
	Just to round this off, not to throw you under the bus, Ralph, because you have great takes on pretty much everything.
	So has your opinion changed since January the 6th?
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	As I said, I have a huge problem with this.
	Unfortunately, in many areas, luckily one can always learn, but I have entirely underestimated the willingness of Let's say the leadership or the main actors in crucial institutions to subvert the democratic process or the will of the people to further entrench their powers or support their candidates.
	I openly admit, I mean, the United States is a very good example for this.
	The federal government, parts of the judicial system, this is not how this is supposed to work in many cases.
	But the argument is often that if after 10 years of a trial, the defendant actually wins to say, well, you see the system works.
	No, it doesn't.
	Because the trial is the punishment.
	If you drag somebody their entire life for 10 years through a trial, even if they win at the end, the life is over.
	They owe the house and the money to the lawyers.
	Their reputation is shattered.
	Their family life is there.
	So you ruin somebody's life and at the end say, the process works.
	Well, I'm not so sure if this is the case, but it goes back to, I mean, we see this, just as a quick note on this, and this really worries me.
	So you have in Germany debates about banning the AfD.
	You have similar discussions in Austria about whether you can do something against the Freedom Party.
	You have the attempts in the United States to get Donald Trump off the ballot.
	So there is a trend, as it now becomes clear that it will be harder and harder to keep right-wing I don't call them populists.
	I call them popular politicians from sharing or getting into power.
	And I don't think there are any bounds.
	I mean, you see the same with the European Union.
	And I'm full disclosure that I work for Hungarian think tank, but nonetheless, everybody can look this up.
	But the European Union is tuned to Hungary.
	That's liberal imperialism, right?
	This is the attempt to force a worldview, to force the acceptance of certain policies onto a country where a majority of the people says, we don't want this.
	And what do they say?
	Well, then you don't get money.
	Or now, for example, Hungarian students can no longer participate in student exchange.
	They can no longer participate in the Erasmus program.
	So if I want to be facetious, it's not harder for a Hungarian student to get into a German university than it is for a Middle Eastern terrorist.
	And I have to admit, then, something's wrong there.
	But I think it goes back to what we said before.
	If you're a patriot, if you're a nationalist, if you identify with Western traditions, you are seen as the threat.
	And if you come from something else, as you just mentioned, if you're going to... To give you another example, I'll show you a quick one, which is so funny.
	In Austria, as everywhere else, we have very strong traffic laws.
	And when you ride a car, you should use a seatbelt.
	Except you lean out of your window and wave a Palestinian flag, right?
	And all of a sudden, they say, well, there's nothing we can do.
	It's like protesting over here during COVID.
	Exactly.
	If you're dark enough in skin tone and you're doing it for the right reason, then it's fine.
	Precisely.
	And this, I think, is the big shift.
	Because they have shown, again, from London to Vienna, that during COVID, right, they could pretty much arrest you.
	In Austria it happened, I don't know about you, but if you walked your dog, they could arrest you.
	But now all of a sudden, if you call for, you know, let's say the beheading of Jews, they say, oh, old chap, there's nothing we can do.
	Freedom of speech.
	It depends on the context.
	Exactly.
	Now, more and more people say, wait a moment, that doesn't seem right.
	And I think this is why these parties are winning, because my, in many areas, I would say what within the You know, the editorial board of the Guardian or the Washington Post or the New York Times is far right, is for most people, or a growing number of people, common sense.
	And I think this will be harder and harder to conceal.
	Yeah, spot on.
	That's why I wanted to go over that.
	It wasn't to drag you through the cause.
	It's to show that you, an incredibly intelligent man who operates in good faith... There's no but now.
	There's no but now.
	No, no, there isn't!
	I wouldn't have you on the show otherwise, but these institutions try and pull the wool over the eyes of the people that still believe that the process is fair, impartial, and just.
	And actually, as you articulated, the process is the punishment.
	So yes, it's not a conspiracy theory to say January 6th was an inside job.
	And with that, let's go to the written comments on the website.
	Do you want to do some of these?
	Yeah, I'll do them.
	Sophie says, just want to say, Ralph is a fantastic guest.
	Ah, thank you so much, Sophie!
	There are lots of people who are saying that, so that's good.
	Michael says, Ralph is right, there can be no compromise on people's culture.
	I work in dairy in Cornwall and they can't even agree with Devon on the jam-cream debate and have blazing rows about it.
	Yeah, Josh would be inflamed about that as well.
	Yeah, but the thing is, the Cornish are wrong about the... So, ancient debate in England, you've got a scone, you put the cream on first, then the jam, or the jam on first, then the cream.
	I love the English.
	I love it.
	And as it's about citizenship, I still hope that I find an English girl mad enough to marry me.
	But there is, you know, empire, great language, fantastic.
	Many things I love.
	Cooking, cuisine.
	My father had this great joke that the three thinnest books in the world are the Italian hero's myth, the Swedish wine book and the British cookbook.
	That's all true.
	I'm not going to lie about that, but I will get into that argument another time.
	Obviously cream on first because it acts like butter.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's just the Cornish are just wrong about how to make a load of scones.
	Silly language, silly cuisine.
	Thomas says, uh, Ralph's bang on point.
	We've not gained, we've not engaged enough, uh, F A F O internationally for a hundred years, especially for the right reasons of defending British citizens and British interests.
	That's totally true.
	Uh, the last time was of course, Thatcher in the Falklands.
	That went great.
	I made a point, you know?
	Anyway, Matt says, if you think 75% asylum claim approval rate is bad, Ireland has 94.4% approval rate last year.
	Why did you blow up our cars?
	What was the point?
	Genuinely.
	I mean, I grew up on military bases during the Troubles, right?
	And so we had warnings about the IRA and terrorism everywhere.
	You know, there were constant signs up being like, don't walk the same route to work every day.
	You know, um, check under your car with the mirror to make sure there's no bomb under it.
	Now we were on a base in Germany, so of course that didn't happen.
	You know, that's not where the IRA are going to go.
	But it was just, you could see it was in the thinking of the forces, right?
	The Irish nationalists are going to be constantly under attack.
	Uh, but now the Irish nationalists will be like, Oh, are you guys refugees too?
	Yeah.
	Ireland's for everyone.
	You know, like they've gone totally woke.
	They're just like glitter bombs.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They've gone totally woke.
	And honestly, I find it embarrassing for the Irish.
	Like, cause I mean, like, okay, didn't like the IRA, but at least I could respect the At least I didn't like, Oh, okay.
	They're pathetic.
	You know, at least, at least they were, they were, they were something important and you had to pay attention to them.
	Not now.
	Anyway, they become like the Catholic church, at least in the West, right?
	But that's, I'm a long suffering Catholic, so I am nodding.
	I mean, I always say that I will, I mean, I'm still a member of the Catholic church.
	I still pay my dues.
	I continue, but honestly, I keep my fingers crossed that we finally get one of those African Popes who is actually a Christian.
	Absolutely.
	He wants to abolish the UN.
	Good for him.
	New Pope, please.
	The Pope, when he said, well, there are many ways to salvation, it doesn't have to be... I mean, come on.
	I say that it's okay.
	It's like the head of Manchester United saying, sure, I mean, winning is great, but there are other great teams out there as well.
	The best one, not to bring up the spirit of Hitler again, but the Pope the other day said, I hope that hell is empty.
	It's like, Really?
	That's interesting.
	Everyone's up there, is he?
	Everyone?
	OK.
	I'm just saying.
	The Shadow Ban says, I doubt a single person could be deported.
	NGOs will fight tooth and nail legally.
	And that's exactly the problem.
	And the Conservatives, with their 380 seat majority, did nothing.
	They could have just repealed these laws and should have just repealed these laws.
	So there's literally no ground for purchase for the NGOs to use.
	But what can you do?
	Brandon says, Britain approves a high percentage of asylum claims in Europe.
	Not very racist if you ask me.
	I know that's the problem.
	Matt says, I'd like to say Ralph has been an excellent guest.
	Very erudite and pointed in his comments and analysis.
	Yeah.
	Lonerovar says, if I'm honest, I've never read Locke either, but even without having read him, I can use my common sense to see that James is hilariously wrong on every count because he's dealing with an industrial bout of cognitive dissidence, arguing with Carl.
	Well, this is the thing.
	If I was someone who was intrinsically oppositional to liberalism, I think this would actually have been fine for James.
	I think he would have been on much stronger ground.
	Yeah, if he was arguing with me.
	Possibly, yeah.
	But I've come from within the tradition.
	Well, you did a two-hour chat with him.
	You offered to do it again, and he was like, it wasn't very productive the first time.
	Why?
	Because you lost.
	You weren't even thinking about winning and losing because Benjamin Boyce doesn't do that sort of show.
	He thought he lost.
	Yeah.
	I agree.
	And I mean, Andrew says, God's sake, I think Lindsay's responses strike me as nothing short of embarrassing and childish.
	You tried to engage him in sincere and serious discussion and he seems to have dismissed it out of hand.
	Yeah.
	And I don't know.
	I don't know why, but, um, you know, I think I'm right on that.
	Didn't he have similar conversations with Yoram Hassouni as well?
	That again became very personal very quickly.
	We covered that in our two parts.
	That was one of the impetuses for talking about his beliefs on Christian nationalism and liberalism.
	He was saying that no one should read Schmitt because Schmitt once threw his lot in with the mid-century Germans before renouncing his membership because they were persecuting Catholics and was later befriended and translated by Jews.
	And I pointed this out to him and he just went, you're a Nazi and not worth talking to.
	I was like, thanks for immature.
	Moving on to the third segment, man, because that's not worth talking about more.
	Andrew says, loving today's show.
	Definitely would be great to have Ralph on again.
	Wonderful hearing all the historical anecdotes.
	Yeah, no, it's been really great, as you can see from the audience.
	Justin says, America, where there is a gun behind every blade of grass, but none of the January 6th riots.
	Yeah, I know.
	Isn't that, like, it's just preposterous.
	And honestly, I'm not even going to get into it.
	Kevin says, I find it amazing that the FBI have been able to find and arrest people who are just in the back of the crowd at the Trump address to the crowd, but not in the Capitol building, but they can't find the pipe bomber, even with several videos in this kind of number plate.
	Right.
	So what happened with the pipe bombs?
	Because they just disappeared.
	Yeah, they've fallen out of the narrative.
	Yeah.
	I honestly have to ask, I'm wondering if they ever really existed.
	Well, it's the same with the three police officers that were supposed to be bludgeoned to death.
	One of them committed suicide and two died of a stroke like weeks or months after.
	It was all lies.
	We found a pipe bomb at the Democrat and Republican headquarters.
	But those have to have been planted well before even the barricades were breached.
	So how could Trump have incited that?
	But why would you bomb both?
	Like, was this an independent pipe bomber?
	It was like, no, I vote Libertarian.
	That's Khazinsky's last act of defiance.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Like, you know, anyway, I just don't understand it.
	But unless, of course, you were, I don't know, a member of the FBI and you're covering your bases.
	Yeah.
	And this was entirely confected.
	But he says, also, the reason for the delay in releasing of J6's video is because they haven't finished blurring out the faces of the individuals not involved.
	For that, read Our FBI Agents.
	Quite.
	Yes.
	Quite.
	And Paul says January 6th was pretty mild compared to many protests at their capital, which of course is totally true.
	Well, the George Floyd riots that cost two billion dollars in damage and killed over a dozen to two dozen people, very few prosecutions for that.
	And you could literally see Washington DC on fire.
	Well, the vice president said they will not stop and they shouldn't stop.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	And do you remember when Trump was, uh, the White House was attacked and Trump had to retreat to a bunker?
	That was on the firebombing of that church.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Um, no, no increase for that.
	They actually just insulted him.
	But anyway, we are running close on time.
	Before we do so, uh, Ralph, we're just going to plug your social media cause please go and follow Ralph.
	I mean, yes, please do.
	Please do.
	Cause I have a vast ego.
	My vanity knows no bounds.
	Every follower, everything is very much appreciated.
	You always post clips of whenever you go on Mainstream News and you're going to be on Neil Oliver's show this weekend.
	Also support Neil because he's one of the best voices over on GB News.
	Ralph's Instagram and Twitter are up here.
	Join us back in about half an hour for Lads Hour, which Ralph will be sitting in on and telling more historical anecdotes and putting $200 billion to good use.
	Thanks very much for the show, gentlemen.
	I thought it was exceptional.

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