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Dec. 9, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:29:16

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1059

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	Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the podcast, The Low Seaters, for Monday the 9th of December 2024.
	I am joined by Stelios and Josh.
	Lou.
	And today we're going to be talking about the fall of the House of Assad, the woke right, and bringing back mammoths from the dead so we can have juicy mammoth burgers.
	And other things.
	And other things.
	Well, we can have other thing burgers as well.
	Not bugs.
	To be honest with you, there's something hyper-carnivore about it that I really appreciate.
	I don't just eat meat, I bring things back from extinction to eat them.
	I also like the idea of the bigger the animal you're eating in your burger, the more of a man you are.
	Yeah, there is something about that too.
	Anyway, right, so before we begin though, we have finally got the ability on the website to allow you to purchase premium subscriptions for other people.
	I realise this has taken a long time but now we have that and you can purchase whatever lover you want as a gift subscription and give it to someone else just in time for Christmas.
	So if you'd like to support us and you'd like to give someone a subscription to the website so they can enlighten their mind with our premium content, do go and do that right away.
	Anyway, let's get into the news.
	Nothing's been happening, I understand.
	Right.
	So in the past few weeks, there has been a cataclysmic series of events that has led to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad.
	He has fled Syria and he has been given asylum by Russia.
	And everyone is now asking what is going to be the next day for Syria and what will also that mean for Europe and the world at large.
	But before we say more about this, you can visit our website.
	We have a suggestion to make if you want to buy someone a Christmas present and you don't know exactly what to buy, we have this good option.
	You can buy them a subscription on our website.
	I think this doesn't apply for people who are already...
	It's not a subscribe for themselves, it's a subscribe for other persons.
	So definitely visit our website and consider that option.
	Right, so back to our topic.
	The war in Syria is a very complex war.
	The conflict has started since 2011 and it has gone through several phases and there was a sort of balance up until recently.
	That balance It was resting on an agreement that the president of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, had with Bashar al-Assad.
	They had a ceasefire agreement, but now this balance has been completely disrupted.
	And all hell broke loose for Assad and his regime failed.
	So what happened here is That the previous balance had lots of Kurds controlling the northwest, northeast part of Syria.
	There have been several Turkish-backed forces in the north fighting the Syrians.
	There is also a rebel coalition here named HTS. I think it's called the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.
	And Assad was controlling most of Syria, but all this felt like a house of cards.
	So the question is, why did this balance get disrupted?
	There are several reasons.
	Part of it has to do with the transitional period in the US. Trump hasn't been sworn in, but he has been vocally against meddling into the affairs of Syria.
	We will talk about it, but I think the main reason has to do with the war in Israel.
	And especially Israel in Lebanon attacking Hezbollah and Iran.
	So what's going on is that the Assad regime was backed mainly by Russia, Iran and also Hezbollah.
	The attacks of Israel in Lebanon made lots of Hezbollah supporters and Hezbollah members, as well as Iran, to focus their attention and their forces on Lebanon.
	And a lot of people said, well, this is right now the opportunity to make gains.
	So we have HTS in the northwest.
	They launched a surprise offensive.
	They captured several villages and provinces of Aleppo.
	They blocked the M5 highway, which connects Aleppo to Damascus, which is the capital here in the south.
	And everyone started making advances because it was evident that Assad had lost the backing of the army.
	His army wasn't particularly enthusiastic and also Russia, who is his main ally, was his main ally, has all its focus on Ukraine.
	They were a bit committed elsewhere.
	Yes.
	So what happened was that they took Aleppo, they took Hama.
	A lot of rebel coalitions in the south attacked Damascus from the south.
	They captured southern provinces.
	Then we have some other forces here, backed by the U.S., Who attacked Damascus from the north.
	Then the HTS continued attacking, continued its advance south in Horm.
	We had also the Turkish-backed forces making advances, also the Kurds making advances.
	So literally everyone now is competing for a pie of Assad's previous grounds.
	Listen, I've got about 3,000 hours in Rome total war.
	Here's how Assad can still win this, right?
	Exactly.
	I hope that translates, because I've got an embarrassing amount of hours in total.
	I know.
	Right, so here, as we say, Assad is leaving, and everyone is focusing now attention on the leader of HDS, who is called Al Jolani.
	He looks like Zelensky with a tan a little bit, and a beard.
	I think that's on purpose as well.
	You notice he's ditched the kind of jihadi camo.
	Right, so what happens here is that they essentially, as they say, the military since early in the civil war had depended heavily on outside forces to reinforce its lines.
	Iran and the Syrian regime rolling militias from Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
	Russia had provided warplanes, air defenses, and military advices.
	Yet as Assad dialed for help from foreign governments in his last house as Syria's leader, He found he had run out of allies and military allegiance, and I think late this Saturday he left.
	He fled Syria.
	He went to Russia.
	Right, so here Rabel sees Damascus, and there are several considerations about what is going to happen.
	The rhetoric in some groups seems a bit more friendly towards Christians, let's say, but this is always something to beware of.
	You can see this is trending.
	There is anxiety about what's going to happen.
	We have people essentially saying that these people are Islamists and that's bad news for Christians.
	And however much people blamed Assad, Assad was someone who could hold this area under control.
	And he also could be good for the Christian population of Syria.
	So people can scroll down here and look at all the videos that we have.
	Yet, personally, I'm very worried.
	I have to say that, I'm very worried.
	And I don't sympathize with lots of the statements coming from the EU and the West about how this is a brand new day and an excellent day and everything is just rosy.
	It's not.
	Yeah, let's pause on that for a minute.
	Go ahead.
	I was just going to say, well, there's lots of potential for some unfortunate circumstances.
	At least Assad was a stabilising force, whereas we don't know whether there's going to be a significant radical Islamic terror group establishing itself.
	I think we do, because the guy who we'd previously just looked at is a terrorist.
	Well, it's more as if...
	Obviously, there are lots of different groups competing, and we don't know which one is going to ultimately triumph, and so that's what I was getting at here.
	But with the Kurds as well, they've obviously got history with communism and liking it, which I don't like.
	So we've got this wonderful blend of, do we get communists?
	Do we get Islamists?
	I mean, whatever happens, whatever the outcome is, I don't think it's going to be good for our side of politics, personally.
	And the people celebrating it are very naive.
	They're very premature.
	Just to think, I'm not even worried about our side of politics.
	Syria is essentially a kind of artificial state, right?
	It's a kind of, you know...
	Something that I don't doubt the Western powers essentially carved up.
	And now we're trying to stitch together a bunch of people who just don't want to be in a political state with one another.
	I think Aristotle's right, the base of the state is friendship, and these people don't have that.
	And so you've got these dramatically competing groups.
	And we're just going to be like, okay...
	Well, Assad's gone.
	There are a bunch of people who I'm just going to describe as jihadis taking over, as well as other ethnic interests who are also ideological.
	This is going to become a real...
	I don't want to swear.
	It's going to go very badly.
	It's not going to be good, no.
	I don't think if I would phrase it in the exact way, but I think that one of the interesting things to look at here is whether in this case, in this area of the world, religious identity matters more than ethnic identity.
	Some people view themselves as Syrians, others view themselves as Muslims or Christians.
	There's also ethno-religious identities, where certain tribes are certain kinds of that.
	It's a paradigm of religion, right?
	And so, you know, you've got different particularities where you can't just say, oh, well, it's just one abstract.
	These are Christians.
	These are this.
	These are that.
	And therefore, this all maps conveniently to a kind of philosophical framework.
	It's not that simple.
	It's all about relations because it's all tribal.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And now one of the considerations has to do with how are all these people going to coexist?
	And one of the persons who has put himself forward as the potential leader of the new coalition of forces is Abu Mohammed Al Jolani.
	I think he was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia.
	And he has been associated with al-Nusra.
	A lot of people say he founded it.
	And if he wasn't alone, he was one of the founders.
	And al-Nusra was supposed to be closely affiliated to al-Qaeda.
	But a lot of people are saying that he has at least rhetorically tried to take some distance from it.
	Okay, okay.
	But let's pause there, right?
	So you've got a foreign ideological leader.
	Who's been leading a jihadi insurgency against the Syrian regime.
	For what goal?
	Well, it's not for the benefit of Syrians, is it?
	No, it's going to be the benefit for a dogmatic Islamic regime, right?
	And it's not like we haven't seen this before.
	So it's just like, okay, but why would you want that guy?
	Like, if you were a Syrian, why would you want that guy?
	I mean, he's literally a terrorist.
	He's not allowed to enter Britain.
	He would have been arrested.
	And as you've got there, well, maybe we'll take him off of it.
	It's like, So, what, the Taliban coming off the terrorist list?
	I mean, like, is all that is required to not become a terrorist anymore is knock off the government, and now you're not a terrorist?
	Yeah, well, objectively, yes.
	Exactly, right?
	But the point is, and the fact that the West is essentially going to massage his reputation in the West, like, well, you know, look, guys, I know he's a part of al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and all this, but, you know, he's literally a terrorist.
	But he is diversity-friendly.
	And it's like, oh, God.
	Come on.
	Yeah, this is the overextension of the quiz for Palestine rhetoric.
	Very much so, yeah.
	Now it expands throughout the Middle East.
	Sure, but what it demonstrates is that the Islamic jihadis are not only not native to Syria, like they weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan, But they're also being used by the sort of neocon establishment in the West as a way of knocking off allies of Russia and Iran.
	Now, I'm not saying we can't knock off allies of Russia and Iran or anything like that, but I want us to be honest about it and not be like, oh yeah, well actually, these are the good guys.
	No, they're just a convenient political tool that we're using to attack our enemies.
	That's fine.
	Just be honest.
	So I've got a couple of things to add.
	First of which, I don't think that we should intervene.
	This is none of our business.
	Or America's, really.
	And I also think one thing that is likely to happen is that Israel is going to try and hoover up a lot of territory of what was formerly Syria.
	And it's probably going to continue to take more because it's going to be relatively disorganised and they can capitalise being an organised force against Israel.
	I'm sure that a lot of people are like, Turkey's probably eyeing up territory in the north.
	I would imagine so, yeah.
	But this is what happens when a kind of inauthentic state like Syria ends up collapsing.
	So what do we default back to, if not the kind of nationalistic construct of the late 19th, early 20th century?
	Well, we go back to ethnic tribal groups.
	Okay, well maybe it should have been carved up that way in the beginning.
	I agree.
	Well, I think that it may lead towards that, unfortunately.
	It may lead towards this.
	Yeah, but is it unfortunate?
	Or is it essentially a kind of restoration?
	Well, probably the means with which people are going to lead towards that is going to be unfortunate.
	I don't think they're going to wake up one day and say, okay, fine, take this area, take that other area, and we're going to live in peace.
	Because a lot of the ideology a lot of these groups have is very expansionist and seems to be directly opposite to a solution of the sort.
	But also, like...
	We're just going to see the same effect that removing Saddam had.
	Which is, okay, you've killed the bloodthirsty dictator, but you've left a massive power vacuum.
	And the people the dictator was persecuting weren't also good people.
	They weren't like liberal democrats who were like, yeah, we just want democracy and political representation and constitutionalism, guys.
	No, they were actually worse than the dictator in many ways.
	There are some parts of the world where everyone is bad.
	Well, not even necessarily just everyone is bad, it's just the political factions are worse.
	So, like, I remember a few years ago reading a book about the beginning and rise of ISIS, and these guys were just mental.
	Absolutely mental.
	No way.
	Yeah, I know, you struggle to believe it, but basically a career criminal was converted in prison.
	Not converted, but radicalised in some sort of Jordanian prison.
	And he was an insane thug who would go around raping men and things like this, right?
	And then suddenly, oh, well, we're going to have a provisional government in Iraq.
	What you're going to get is incredibly devoted bands of really bad men going around doing terrible things.
	And that's what they did for years.
	And the same sort of environment is being created in Syria right now.
	It's like, okay, this is just...
	Again, I'm not like some humanitarian.
	I don't really care what happens in Syria.
	But you're going to get a lot of terrorism coming out of this.
	That's it.
	So Donald Trump issued a statement and he sort of echoes Joshua's sentiment.
	He says that the US should have nothing to do with it.
	This is not a fight.
	Let it play out.
	Do not get involved.
	Suffice it to say that the US is backing the Kurds.
	But I will say that there seems to me to be something behind this.
	I really don't think that this is as simple as he says.
	Yeah, I don't agree.
	And I really doubt that the US is going to pull out, as Trump says.
	Well, just a quick thing on that then.
	Okay, so there seems to be quite a lot of evidence at this point, and Keith Woods actually did a really good thread showing that the Israelis have been giving aid and succour to the jihadis in Syria, and they have been for years.
	It's like, okay, well, I mean, again, they're not doing it because they're sympathetic to the cause.
	They're doing it because they're a useful tool.
	It's like, okay, well, who gives...
	All of this money and material to Israel to be able to do that?
	Well, it's the United States and the rest of the West.
	So, okay, this is our problem, actually.
	You will see where my segment is heading because you have anticipated some of the stuff I'll show towards the end.
	J.D. Vaughan says the same thing.
	He also says, I'm nervous because the last time that people were celebrating about things like that in Syria, we saw the mass slaughter of Christians and a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.
	So, now we have a lot of people from a lot of Syrian nationals who are across Europe cheering.
	Here we have them in Germany, in England, in Belgium, in Greece.
	They're everywhere.
	Well, they can all go home now, can't they?
	Because, you know, the oppressor Assad is gone and they can have their Islamic utopia.
	So, I look forward to seeing every single one of them step on a plane and never come back.
	Some of them are fighting in the UK. No, this is a meme.
	Okay.
	It's basically a real thing.
	Of course it is.
	I mean, it makes sense, because if countries import people from areas in conflict, well, a lot of these loyalties don't get suddenly erased.
	They can be replicated.
	Spartans fighting on the streets.
	Too many Greeks.
	I'm joking.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so basically what I wanted to say is that the fighter groups now are saying that Israel is next.
	I'll take that with a pinch of salt.
	Yeah, right.
	When do they ever attack Israel?
	I'll take that with a pinch of salt.
	What's that?
	You've got a page of message.
	But, as you'll see, you'll see where this segment is going.
	Right, so the Israelis now are airstriking targets in Syria in the south and also in Damascus because they want to destroy equipment.
	So it doesn't fall into the hands of the rebels.
	And there should have been a link here, but there isn't.
	But anyway, so what the issue is here?
	We are trying to think of what is going to happen now in Syria.
	First of all, I don't think that it's going to be peaceful.
	I'm not saying that I don't want peace there.
	I won't, but I sadly think that there won't be any peace.
	The major players now are going to be the Kurds in the Northeast and lots of Turkish-backed forces in Syria.
	Now, Turkey and Israel are having a sort of a feud because Erdogan is saying that Netanyahu is essentially a war criminal and a...
	Someone who represents a satanic state.
	That's what Erdogan says.
	Netanyahu says that He who doesn't stop lying about Israel slaughters the Kurds in his own country and denies the terrible slaughter of the Armenian people shouldn't preach to Israel.
	Erdogan, stop lying.
	So, just a quick thing.
	It always cracks me up when Middle Eastern regimes try to morally grandstand against each other.
	Just own it, yeah.
	Yeah, just, guys, guys, you're all awful.
	I know.
	I just say, yeah, I killed them, and I'm happy about it.
	Like, come on, man.
	So, what I think is going to happen now is the following.
	That the Israelis are going to try to form an alliance with the Kurds.
	Maybe, yeah.
	The Turks want to hurt the Kurds, and they also want to project might in the region, and they are already somehow backing the HTS. I think that this is going to continue.
	So if the HTS controls Syria, and the HTS has really strong ties to Turkey, then the borders between Turkey and Israel are really close.
	They're not as far as they used to be.
	Trump says that he's going to stop backing the Kurds and stop backing people in the region.
	I don't believe that.
	If Israel says that they're going to form an alliance with the Kurds, I think Trump is going to aid Israel and also aid the Kurds.
	I just found this, which I think confirms that there are some tendencies for this.
	Israel's foreign minister calls for ties with Kurds and other minorities in the Middle East.
	They're saying they're natural allies for Israel as relations with Turkey sour.
	But we need to also remember it isn't just with Turkey that Kurds are bordering with.
	It's also Iran.
	And Iran is yet another enemy of Israel.
	So it seems to me that We are going to look at a lot of conflict there.
	It isn't going to stop.
	Most probably, there are going to be extra migration flows to Europe.
	And it seems to me that everyone who is cheering is cheering really prematurely.
	Yeah, I think it's crazy.
	Somehow it's going to be my tax dollars and my tax dollars shooting each other again.
	But, yeah, no, I think nothing good comes of any of this, actually, and brilliant.
	What a wonderful development for the end of 2024. Glee says, as someone who's racked up thousands of hours of hearts of iron, I can conclude that Assad used the wrong occupation garrison template.
	Well, I think Assad's problem really was relying on Syrian troops.
	The Syrians have always been terrible soldiers.
	Where else would he get them from?
	Well, I mean, foreign mercenaries?
	I don't know.
	Machiavelli wouldn't have advised it, but if your choice is between Syrians and foreign mercenaries...
	I think there's a long and storied history, isn't there?
	Yeah, there is.
	But the thing is, there's a long and storied history of the Syrians not being great warriors.
	So...
	We were talking about this before as well, weren't we?
	I could have sworn that the Syrian archers for Rome were quite good.
	It might just be because in Rome 2 they're some of the best units.
	There may have been a small unit of auxiliary archers from Syria who were notable, but that's not an army.
	That's true.
	It's not an army.
	Anyway, Dragon Lady Chris says, remember when the Libyan slave markets came back after Gaddafi was overthrown?
	This feels like a sort of repeat.
	Yeah, well, this is the point, isn't it?
	Okay, yeah, I'm not a fan of Middle Eastern dictators, but at least Gaddafi had swag.
	No, I'm joking.
	He did, but, like, the point being, what the secular dictators did is persecute the jihadis, who want to literally start cutting off people's heads, because that's what the Prophet Muhammad would have done, or some stupid nonsense like that.
	And so, like, we're looking, oh, look at all these Syrian refugees in Europe.
	Hey, why are they refugees?
	Why was Assad persecuting them?
	Oh, right, they were...
	Well, it's a ridiculous sort of notion that all of these American foreign office people think that if you get rid of the secular dictatorship, you'll get liberal democracy, but what you actually get is Islamic theocracy.
	Your choice is between secular dictatorship or Islamic theocracy.
	You can't really have...
	Oh, PHUK here, and I'm not entirely against this either.
	He says, I'm for a dogmatic Islamic regime in Syria.
	Like, yeah, okay, fair enough.
	I mean, that's, you know, if that's what is going to happen, I'm not necessarily even against it.
	It might not be inappropriate for the region or something like that.
	But, like, the reason that the West demonizes the secular Arab dictators is just because they're allied with people like Russia, right?
	We were big fans of Saddam Hussein right up until the point where he was just like, no, I don't want to have any of it.
	And then we overthrow him.
	It's not, like, I'm sick of the, oh, look at the human rights violations.
	It's like, oh, shut up.
	You know, we don't care about that.
	No.
	That's a total cover.
	We didn't have to pay for it, and we didn't have to take the refugees.
	I wouldn't care what was going on in Syria.
	It's not a problem.
	They don't care either, which is why they were allied with him while he was doing these terrible things.
	And so it's all such a flimsy front for everything, and I'm just like, look, it's all just naked self-interest between different ethnic groups in the Middle East.
	Fine, whatever, just solve it.
	Just resolve it however you want.
	I don't care, it's not my business.
	Let's move on.
	So, there has been an upset between the classical liberals and the woke right, quote-unquote, that we have seen play out mostly on Twitter, obviously, but that's where all the interesting discourse is actually happening, and it's been going on throughout 2024, and it kind of came to a head recently.
	I thought it was just worth actually talking it out a bit and Trying to examine some of the underpinnings of the discussion because I think there is actually something quite substantive here.
	So, I mean, we can begin in February 2024 when Constantine Kissin wrote a Substack article just called Tucker Carlson and the Woke Right where he's describing what he thinks the Woke Right is in contrast to classical liberals and how Tucker Carlson fulfills that.
	I personally didn't respond to any of this because I was just like...
	I don't know if I'm woke right.
	I don't think I'm woke right.
	And this kind of bubbled on the back burner.
	Andrew Doyle wrote something similar in November.
	And James Lindsay decided to push this to the fore by essentially tricking a Christian nationalist publication that I'd never heard of by rewriting large sections of the Communist Manifesto.
	Rewriting them in great detail as well.
	So you would have to...
	I mean, to be fair, it should never have got past their sort of smell test because there are some obvious allusions to the Communist Manifesto in it and they should have known they were being essentially ragged on.
	But they didn't.
	But the point being, the...
	Bits that he had interpreted weren't promoting communism, they were promoting Christian nationalism, and that's why they published it.
	And James, when challenged on this, had to default back to, well, it's the same logical structure.
	It's like, well, the logical structure is there is something we don't like, and we should change it.
	Therefore, yeah, you could apply that to literally anything.
	I mean, liberals would be fine with that.
	So this kicked up a huge amount of stink, and back in October, Connor had written an article saying, well look, there is no woke right, and what this really is, and I think he's right on this, is cracks showing in the woke coalition.
	charges of wokeness are being leveled at various figures by politically homeless liberals.
	The problem with the term woke right is it'll find self-contradictory and a tactical blunder for an anti-woke coalition to use.
	And so I think this is something worth talking about, because there is essentially the argument being made from the liberal side of this, that, okay, the problem with the woke left is that it's woke and not that it's left.
	That's, I think, really the issue.
	Because they would summarise woke as being a systematic critique of power relations in society.
	And drawing attention to oppressions and injustice.
	Now, the average liberal should have no real problem with that concept, because that is, of course, what liberalism itself was founded on.
	The purpose of liberalism was to critique the aristocratic regimes under which they lived.
	Point out that they had no moral justification according to a different moral analysis and, well, frankly, bring about revolutions, which is what the American and French revolutions were about, and instantiate a new liberal order.
	And so to say, well, we can't have a systematic critique of power and injustices is kind of off the table for the liberal.
	The liberal has to admit that they're fine with that because that is, of course, the very nature of liberalism.
	Disagree at all yet?
	I disagree, yeah.
	Respectfully.
	On that critique, what do you disagree?
	Okay, so...
	I think I heard that someone said that the problem with the woke left is that it's woke, not that it's left.
	I think that this isn't accurate.
	The criticism is...
	And when I say the criticism, right now, I'm essentially...
	Arguing for my own view because it's not that someone instantly has to say, you know, you're with this person or with the other person.
	Right now, let me just rephrase the whole thing.
	Well, hang on, before we go on, did you object to my characterization of liberalism?
	Yes.
	Why?
	Because liberalism has a political dimension which manifests historically in constitutional monarchy and republicanism, classical republicanism, mainly these two areas, and they do have They do tend to come with a realistic critique of how power works.
	A lot of people when they talk about liberalism, they're either criticizing deranged leftism or a caricature of libertarianism, which is, okay, just the state should have nothing to do with it.
	Essentially something close to ANCAP. Sure, but if being woke is defined as applying a structural critique of power relations...
	From my understanding of this conversation, it isn't just the applying the systematic critique, because, for instance, realism, which we could say a lot of the US founding fathers...
	And also Burke and his critique of the French Revolution they were using.
	The issue isn't that there is a systematic critique of social phenomena.
	The issue is that there are some overlaps.
	And that this systematic critique takes some particular forms.
	And what Lindsay and Kissin are saying, and lots of people, is that, for instance, the same way lots of people on the left are saying, well, it's the white straight male who's responsible for everything.
	They say, for instance, that lots of people are saying this for the Jewish people.
	Or lots of people are saying this for the classical liberals.
	So what they're trying to do is they're trying to say that there are lots of, you know, attitudinal overlaps between the way these two people, these two camps think.
	And they have lots more in common than they would like to think.
	Sure, but drilling down into it is the point I'm trying to make is...
	The idea of just labelling a systematic critique as a woke position, which a lot of people are doing, and we'll get to in a minute how other people are doing.
	Well, if that's woke, then liberalism itself was always woke.
	Then everything is woke, yeah.
	Almost everything except...
	Not necessarily everything, but everything in modern politics then.
	By that standard, right?
	There are definitely political views that aren't systematic critiques of things, but liberalism began as a systematic critique of the way that society and the justified forms of...
	Yeah, it was essentially saying that human beings occupy the same position in the great chain of being, and the feudal system was based on the idea that some people are naturally superior.
	Yeah.
	And so it is in and of itself.
	It has to be that.
	So if the classical liberals say, well, being woke is the problem, then, well, are you really a classical liberal then?
	Because classical liberalism has that baked into it.
	But the point being, I think, is the issue that actually it's the systematic critique from the left rather than one from a centrist or right-wing perspective.
	I think it's when it takes particular forms.
	The problem isn't that there is a systematic critique.
	The problem is when we have very low resolution analyses.
	I don't even think it's that.
	I think the problem is the impulse that underpins the nature of the critique.
	Why are you leveling a critique that renders straight white men as the enemy of civilization?
	Like I said, they're responsible for everything.
	They're kind of the authors of civilization, actually.
	So why is the critique being leveled from that perspective?
	The idea of the critique itself is fine, and so that's not the issue with being woke.
	The issue with being woke is attacking the majority population of the country.
	Yes.
	Right.
	So, that's the point I was trying to drill down to.
	Like, the classical liberal has to concede that there is, of course, a critique of power and structure contained within liberalism, so that's not what they're objecting to.
	And I've noticed that the...
	The point that they want, though, is to arrive at, well, I'm happy with the 90s liberal establishment consensus.
	And so if you are to, say, go any further than that and engage with critiques made from the left by what I think are quite brilliant left-wing thinkers, whether you like them or not, you have to concede their skills, then suddenly they view this as, oh, well, that's communism.
	Okay, well, look.
	The reason you're afraid of this is because you don't properly understand it and you feel like you have no defense against it.
	I personally am never going to become a Frankfurt School communist because I'm not any kind of communist.
	I'm for hierarchy.
	I'm not against it.
	I'm not trying to achieve their goal.
	But after reading various members of the Frankfurt School, for me it's Marquise, Horkheimer and Dorno, I can't deny that these are brilliant thinkers and that they have incisive critiques of the world.
	Whether you like them or not, and I know you don't like them, they are impressive thinkers.
	Well there's a reason that the left have captured these institutions, right?
	Exactly.
	There's a reason that we live in the shadow of these people, and that everyone's running around screaming like they're Satan.
	And so, I mean, in this, Marquise's One Dimensional Man, it is a good critique of what liberal democracies end up unconsciously doing to themselves.
	Go and watch my book club on the website.
	In fact, gift a subscription to someone else so they can watch it too, right?
	Because I spent literally like a month studying this book, trying to properly understand it.
	And he is right that there is a kind of totalizing perspective within enlightenment and liberal democracy.
	As in, it feels that it has to...
	Not even feels, it has to.
	It can't help but...
	Disenchant the world and make no space for the legitimacy of non-rational thinking, right?
	There's just no question of that.
	So, first of all, I'm a rationalist, so when you're talking about the legitimacy of non-rational thinking, yeah, okay, count me in.
	Yeah, well, I'm totally against you.
	Yeah, same.
	We will fight.
	Yes, so when it comes to what you were talking about, the disenchantment of the world, I would say that a lot of people who are critiquing, who are suddenly discovering the internet and they can talk about everything instantly.
	The disenchantment of the world has lots of reasons, lots of causes behind it.
	Most of it are technological, and they have to do with metaphysical positions, for instance, like materialism.
	I'm not a materialist, but materialism is a completely orthogonal view on this.
	I don't know if it is.
	And I don't want to get into the long debate of it now.
	But point being, it is a worthwhile debate to be had.
	Yes, definitely.
	And Marcuse was making an incisive critique of what was happening.
	But, just one sentence.
	What I find insufferable about critical theorists, what I find insufferable is they're constantly talking about problems without offering solutions.
	So constantly they say, okay, instrumental reason is destroying all the world and all these bad people.
	Do you have the guts to actually go back to traditionalism in metaphysics, traditionalism in philosophy?
	They didn't.
	I know.
	They constantly spoke about the problem lamenting, but they didn't have the guts to go back to antiquity.
	I know.
	And the...
	I didn't want to get into it, but like, yeah, they're essentially just, it's a one long big lament that communism is never really going to come about, right?
	That's all of this is.
	And like you said, they don't have the guts to actually accept that...
	A slightly, I guess we just call it traditional frame actually has legitimacy, blah, blah, blah.
	And it's actually funny in this where Marcuse goes, well, the problem with instrumentalizing high culture is that you destroy it and a true high culture requires an aristocratic class that can separate it from the everyday material world.
	I like that you're looking at me, yes.
	I agree.
	And he reluctantly admits that that has to be the case, or else you get, like, you know, you listen to Bach or Mozart in the elevator with elevator music, so there's no transcendental experience when you're enjoying it.
	There's nothing new, there's nothing that takes you out of the world, and it becomes just melded into the one-dimensional, you know, you're sat in your fluorescent lit office listening to something that does nothing to you, and It brings you no new experiences.
	And it's just like everything gets mushed down into the same layer.
	It's a great critique.
	It's very incisive.
	I would argue that a lot of these things, a lot of the magic of the modern world is the proletariat...
	proletariatization of the world in that everything is very accessible to the lowest common denominator.
	And I think that's terrible.
	I don't want it to be.
	That's exactly his critique.
	He's like, look, these things can only essentially be magical when they're not freely available to everyone.
	When they're not just played in the elevator...
	It has to be something special and held back.
	And so, am I woke right for thinking that?
	I have no idea.
	You're not.
	I don't think I am either.
	Also, you're not according to most of the definitions you're putting forward.
	Well, let's get to definitions of woke right.
	Because I think the issue here is that the classical liberals are just...
	Essentially afraid of the intellectual development that the philosophical culture has made throughout the 20th century.
	They don't want to engage with it, they don't want to accept it, and they want to kind of just default back to something that, you know, John Stuart Mill would have had.
	Okay, I think that what is going on here is that a lot of people in, let's say, on the right or in lots of classical liberals, let's say, they are worried that a lot of people, especially on social media, are adopting the no enemies to the right tactic and they are pandering to audiences of people without drawing red lines.
	So what happens is that they are trying to propose where to draw the red line.
	I agree that a red line has to be drawn, but obviously there is a question to be had as to where it has to be drawn.
	So that's what I think is happening here.
	Sure, and we've got a line drawn here by James Lindsay.
	The woke right are modern-day fascists in exactly the same way the woke left are modern-day communists.
	Well, there's an interesting admission that, like, fascism's left-wing.
	Sorry, go on.
	Woke left, modern-day communists.
	There's overlap there, sure, but...
	They are definitely communists, but it's like saying, you know, my childhood self is me, and I'm the modern-day version of my childhood self.
	It's like, yeah.
	I feel like it's unsatisfactory.
	Yeah, it's a terrible definition.
	Yeah, because communist conjures up the notion of a conventional communist like Lenin, Mao, Karl Marx, and it's ideologically distinct even though there is crossover.
	I don't know if I'd say it was ideologically distinct.
	The woke left are descendants of those people, because people like Lenin were like, okay, why hasn't the Communist Revolution come about?
	And a lot of people...
	And then he, of course, is instrumental in the Russian Revolution, but then you have people like Gramsci who are like, okay, well, why didn't it come about in the West?
	And then you've got a very long and autistic history of people looking at the concept of ideology and saying, right, it's the things that the West believes and instantiates into itself that prevents communism coming about.
	And therefore, you've got Kimberley Crenshaw who directly picks up Gramsci's argument that...
	We would need a war of position rather than a war of manoeuvre against the establishment and governments of the West in order to dissolve the cultural fabric of our societies, which is exactly the point of intersectionality.
	And so it's not that they're not communists.
	What they are are communists who are like, oh, we failed there, we failed there, we failed there.
	We need a tactic in order to win.
	So they are communists.
	They're doing exactly what the communists have always done.
	If Marx had lived in this day and age, rather than back in the 19th century, he would have done exactly the same thing, because he would have been given access to the intellectual equipment and tools that our modern communists have.
	So, you know, it is true they are modern-day communists, but it's not really describing what has happened.
	I mean, to sort of give the devil its due here, I think the closest thing that the woke is to communists is, as you said, the use of intersectionalism to create these divisions and basically divide and conquer, isn't it?
	Except rather than it being on a class basis, it's on lots of different demographic details and therefore it's more effective.
	No, no, because what the communists want is the dissolution of society, right?
	Because it is in society itself that inequality and hierarchy are formed.
	That's what I mean.
	Yeah, but that's intersectionality is just a tool to continue on down that path.
	The idea behind this demarcation isn't that they are exactly the same.
	It's that they have sufficient commonalities that are corrosive of society.
	I think what we can agree on is we don't like them and we want to crush them politically.
	No matter whether they're woke or communists.
	But the point being, say these are just modern day fascists, and it's like, okay, but...
	The fascists are not what the dissident right are, because fascism, again, is itself a rationalistic philosophy, whereas the dissident right are more in the sort of Burkean tradition, the sort of postmodern Burkeanism, frankly, where it's not that they have a single structured plan where it's not that they have a single structured plan for the entire world.
	And then you get the Christian nationalists.
	I don't think it's fair to call them fascist.
	I'm not saying they're not going to be authoritarian, but they're going to be theocratic, which obviously fascism wasn't.
	But the question here is whether you think that this is desirable or not, because, for instance, as you said, fascism as a rationalistic view...
	I think fascism was precisely anti-rationalistic.
	That's why they prioritized irrational stuff like blood.
	No, no.
	Well, no.
	Fascism didn't prioritize blood.
	It prioritized statehood.
	It was Nazism prioritised blood.
	But anyway, it's like, I'm actually kind of tired of people saying, oh, fascism is just irrational.
	It's like, yeah, but it wasn't though.
	So, okay.
	On some level, yes, but on other levels, no.
	Okay, so.
	Except of the liberal construction of the state.
	Okay.
	So, sorry, go on.
	No, I would say that temperamentally.
	Sure.
	There are some people who say, okay, I'm bored of constantly listening to the problems of fascism and also the moustache guy.
	Yeah, me too.
	Right.
	I think we should constantly listen to this, but also we should constantly listen to Stalin.
	So for me, it's important.
	One of the things that lead to totalitarianism is slow habituation into viewing violence as something that is more acceptable than it should be.
	Sure.
	So when particular views are constantly desensitizing people with respect to this, then you have lots of people who forget.
	So my point is, yeah, it may be boring, but I think people should constantly be reminded this from both sides, not just one.
	Sure.
	And say, well, I don't like hearing constantly about one guy or I don't like constantly hearing about the other.
	Okay, well, moving on.
	Constantine decided he was going to withdraw the term woke, which is fine.
	Again, I never felt attacked by it.
	I don't know what it's supposed to characterize.
	If you mean Christian nationalist, just say Christian nationalist.
	I just don't see the point of creating an otherizing term, which, as you pointed out when we were talking about this before, that's what this is.
	It's a way of just saying enemies are...
	Yeah.
	Compared to France, which is pure Schmittianism, which is fine.
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with you doing that.
	You have to draw the line, and remember that a lot of the criticisms of classical liberals is that they haven't been drawing lines.
	Sure.
	That's definitely a left-wing criticism of classical liberals.
	But the point being, he says, okay, well look, provide me a better term.
	And this is essentially the definition that he's trying to get to, right?
	And I think this is perfectly fine for us to discuss.
	It says, thinking the West is bad and siding with its enemies.
	Right, so I don't think there are any groups on the right that think the West is bad.
	I think what there are are groups on the right that, at worst, think that the regime that controls the West is bad.
	As in, they're against liberalism and internationalism.
	And therefore they like people like Assad and Putin because they see in Assad and Putin a kind of totemic force against global homogenization of the entire world.
	And so it's not that these people are necessarily desperate for the Russians to take over the West and replace the Western population with Russians or something like that.
	What they see is just anti-liberalism.
	Well, I would say one of the very few things uniting all of the right is a certain sense of Western chauvinism, isn't it?
	The West is the best, and it is, undeniably.
	Yeah, an absolute sort of aggressive parochialism.
	My issue with this is that there are many conceptions of the West, so some people view West entirely as biological, and others view it culturally, others view it as Christianity.
	Others view it as a strand of Christianity.
	It's a very vague statement.
	Vague statements do lead to confusion.
	Sure.
	I think Constantine would argue that it essentially means the Anglosphere and Europe.
	Yeah, but what about them?
	Because if you constantly change the mix of the population, let's say, in those areas, you basically destroy the West.
	Yeah, I agree.
	I know, I know.
	But the point is, someone in woke right would have to think the West is bad and siding with its enemies.
	So, again, I don't think that people are against the West, as we've defined it there.
	What it is, they're against the regimes that control the West, such as the European Union, the Democrat Party...
	The international deep state, whatever it is.
	So that, I think, essentially makes...
	These criteria essentially don't refer to anyone.
	That's the problem.
	So the next one is playing identity politics on the basis that their group is oppressed by a secret invisible force controlled by another group slash groups.
	It's like, okay, well, I mean, to say that identity is...
	and concerns of identity...
	Make you woke right.
	Because this is a very, very specific and narrow definition that would carve out a very small constituency of hysterical people on Twitter.
	But to suggest that, say, identity politics that represent a group as being oppressed by not even a secret force...
	Just any invisible force that's controlled by other groups.
	Well, that's obviously true, right?
	So, the example being left-wing activists who staff our institutions.
	Again, they're not secret or invisible, but they are actively discriminating against straight white men.
	Take the example for the...
	Air Force recently were like, oh, we're just getting useless straight white men applying as pilots and we're not going to get them.
	There is definitely a group of people who have a particular ideological agenda who are discriminating and oppressing, therefore, using state power and institutional power, the majority population.
	I mean, there was an example of the police force in Cheshire where this guy had wanted to become a cop his entire life.
	He was like the perfect candidate and he got refused and then sued them And prove that they had racially discriminated against him.
	So, it has to be true that there are identity politics based on group oppression, or else why would we complain about woke?
	There won't be borders if that were in the case.
	Exactly.
	What would woke then if that wasn't true?
	I have particular objections from this coming from Constantine Kirsten because, of course, he was the person who was telling the victim of the grooming gangs not to talk about identity.
	And I think that that really left a sour taste in my mouth.
	And to be honest, I think...
	Well, that was an identitarian issue.
	There was a particular group oppressing someone else because they belonged to another group.
	And I think that you can't close Pandora's box now if you want to raise the issue of ethnic identity.
	The way in which you avoid getting taken advantage of is to stand up for yourself.
	And I don't think that telling people that engaging in identitarianism is now bad Because if we don't do this, we will be taken for a ride, as we are.
	We will have to pay benefits for foreigners and other people, because we can't distinguish the native British population, say, or the native whichever country it is, from the people who've come here taking advantage of us, basically.
	But also, it means you can't apply a structural critique about the problems that the left has created.
	So if the left institutionalizes a load of minoritarian-based anti-majoritarian racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality policies, then, okay, but to be able to root them out, we have to be able to at least identify them and say, well, look, this group is pressing this group for X, Y, Z reasons.
	So, like...
	That is us having to look at the identity politics and address it.
	Even if you want to be a pure formal proceduralist about it, you have to accept that the structural critique is valid.
	Otherwise, what are we even doing?
	And otherwise, what you've done is allow the left to drag our institutions radically to the left and And they go, right, okay, guys, this is where we're staying.
	We're staying neutral now.
	It's like, no, we don't want to be neutral now.
	That's not the future I want.
	You know, I don't want my children being institutionally discriminated against because of their race.
	And so we have to accept that there's a critique.
	Anyway, having an obsession with group-based victimhood and grievance, well, it depends on how much it's affecting your direct personal life.
	Like, why is it my children, the teachers in my schools, are trying to get my children to go to mosques And bow in prayer as a way of, like, you know, sharing their culture with us.
	But the Muslim children are never brought to a church, and they engage in prayer in a church, right?
	Like, this matters.
	You're right on this, and I fully agree with you here.
	And here is where I think that they are going very astray with this because philosophically speaking, identity politics, well, you can carve identity in all sorts of ways in the same way you can do that with West.
	There are all sorts of friends and enemies and everyone is drawing the red line somewhere.
	So depending on whether you draw the red line, you have at least two identities that matter.
	I agree.
	I totally agree.
	And it's also very abstract because, you know, we shouldn't just examine it in the abstract.
	It's just we're talking about a society, a society with particular problems that have arisen historically.
	So could it be that group-based victimhood has arisen historically?
	For group-based reasons.
	If yes, then people should view it.
	And also, the nature of victimhood doesn't have to be a grooming gang, right?
	It can be something that's more subtle, that you don't want to call being a victim, but is...
	In some way sort of a sandpaper effect to the culture.
	You could say anything relating to a two-tier society.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that.
	And this is a problem we live in now.
	So again, like to say, well, being concerned about that essentially puts you in the work right is to say, no, I'm fully committed to the atomic liberal perspective on what a human being is.
	And actually, I don't think that's correct.
	And I can see in my real life, everyday life, I agree with Napoleon on that one, that one to be honest.
	Reacting to disagreement with name calling, ostracism and bullying.
	Well, who has done that, James Lindsay?
	Who has been calling people woke right as an otherising term?
	Like, sorry, you know, when Tim Paul came out and was like, well, that makes James Lindsay and the classical liberals the woke right, the right hand of the left.
	Yeah, well, that's true by this own definition.
	Sorry, you know, and then creating a culture of fear among more centre-leaning people to prevent criticism.
	It's like, well, I don't think this should be a culture of fear, obviously.
	What amazes me though is why people react so much against this.
	Why is it that people react as if they're like demons and you throw garlic or holy water in them?
	I made a post and a lot of the people that now are trashing Lindsay, they did the same to me and even worse.
	Yeah, I know.
	I think it's just the nature.
	I'm just asking myself, why did they not ignore it?
	I mean, it's the same with, like, the James Lindsay fans calling me a communist because I was like, no, I think that actually these people had good critiques of modern society and we should take them seriously because they're highlighting our weaknesses that we can solve.
	And they're like, oh, right, you're a full communist now.
	It's like, that's right, comrade, you know.
	Collectivize the means of production.
	I'm only a business owner.
	Yeah, I want the state to take over my business.
	Fucking idiots.
	Can I say something?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	A confession.
	That's funny, but when you debated, you and Connor debated Phil Labonte and Tim Pool on Liberalism, I posted and said, Phil, if you need help with these commies, call me.
	I mean, of all the things to call me a communist is so funny.
	Anyway, we'll leave that there because I know I've been going on for quite some time.
	But basically, what are we even trying to do here?
	It's fine to have structural critiques.
	It's fine to have an identity.
	And it's fine to want to protect that identity.
	And that might not be most doctrinaire liberal position, but sorry, we live in the world in which we live.
	We don't live in homogenous 90s societies.
	Things have changed.
	We have to change with them.
	I'm just going to read a couple of comments, super chats, quickly.
	The Engaged View says, I agree with Stelis' arguments, but it would be easier to support his positions if he ran a comb through his hair.
	Yeah, Stelis, I didn't want to bring it up, right?
	I don't like getting a haircut.
	I hate getting a haircut.
	I can tell.
	Oh, it's because they're all Turkish barbers, isn't it?
	I've actually found non...
	Really?
	Yeah, places.
	Oh, you tell me afterwards.
	Keep that secret.
	Don't shut down.
	This is a nice philosophical discussion, but it doesn't dissuade me from my belief that communists need to be driven back to hell with a flaming sword.
	Well, no, that's what we're trying to explain is necessary.
	Matthew says he's a great thinker.
	James Lindsay thinks he is.
	Then why is he having such a hard time making the complex understandable about what he really means by work right?
	Because if he said that what he really meant by work right, he would essentially have to admit that in his most fundamental presuppositions, he's a communist.
	Looking forward to that being clipped.
	I also think that simple people try and sound smart and smart people try and sound simple.
	I watched a bunch of James Lindsay's sophistry on Twitter the other day.
	He was like, well look, they're putting their ethos under their logos.
	Ethos means ethics.
	It's like, no, ethos means authority.
	These are Aristotle's three methods of persuasion.
	You've got logic, authority, and persuasion, and emotion, and James Lindsay just didn't even do the basic.
	Using jargon is one of the most pathetic things to my mind.
	I've been through the whole thing where I've had to read neuroscience papers, and it's just a lot of...
	A lot of work to understand words, but if you're willing to put it in, anyone can do it.
	So it's not impressive, and it doesn't make you look smart, and it makes you a bad communicator.
	It's a gatekeeping mechanism.
	That's what it is.
	We're bamboozling people who don't properly understand the subject.
	That's why I wasn't impressed with Lindsay's arguments.
	But anyway, we'll leave it there and we'll move on.
	Okay, so, we might be bringing some animals back from extinction very soon, and this is obviously quite controversial, and I'm going to be talking about the ethics of this, and I know, Carl, as the resident Luddite, you might have some reservations.
	No, I want mammoths to spin.
	I want mammoths to come back.
	Alright, well, I agree.
	But...
	I think that part of our duty on this planet, to sound a little bit like an environmentalist, I have talked about environmentalism on my show before, but I have a very different view than that of the left.
	I sort of really like the biblical view of stewardship over the land.
	You're sort of like a shepherd to all of life on Earth.
	And you have a duty that no animals go extinct under your watch.
	And I think that that's a fair thing to say.
	And I think that if they have gone extinct, they should be reintroduced into the wild if they went extinct because of modern human action.
	So I don't necessarily mean like, you know, we should bring back dinosaurs.
	I don't want Jurassic Park.
	I'm in favour of that.
	But I'm not in favour of reintroducing wolves into the English countryside.
	Well, wolves haven't gone extinct from the planet, have they?
	No, but they weren't extinct from England.
	Who cares about that, then?
	There's plenty of...
	We've got no shortage of wolves.
	Okay, just checking.
	I think that the loss of an animal species is like the burning of a sacred piece of art.
	It's a real travesty.
	It's a real loss to the experience of life on planet Earth.
	I don't know.
	I think when we exterminate, like, eye worms from the Congo or something...
	It's in the Congo, who cares?
	Exactly, see, I don't know, I think...
	Yeah, but I'm on about Europe.
	Oh, right, okay.
	And North America.
	Okay.
	Places where we actually have the capacity to wipe animals.
	It's certain kinds of animals, right?
	It's animals that we personally find aesthetically pleasing.
	Or have a significant role in the ecosystem, for example.
	So, I'm going to ask a question.
	Yeah.
	If tapeworms go extinct, we're not going to cry about it.
	Oh, I don't care about tapeworms.
	Horrible creatures.
	So just because we can do it doesn't mean we should.
	Because may I remind you both of the quote from Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park.
	Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
	Do you agree with this in this context?
	Yes.
	You do?
	Hang on a minute.
	Sorry, could you please repeat it?
	Basically, just because we could bring back extinct versions of tapeworms, should we?
	Well, I don't mean tapeworms.
	Who cares about tapeworms?
	No, no, I do.
	I want to use the worst possible example, right?
	We should bring back some historical personalities.
	Well, no, the point is it forces you to be more specific with what you're saying.
	Yeah, okay, all animals, yeah, okay, not all animals, but some animals that are noble and otherwise aesthetically pleasing to us or, you know, fun to hunt or something like that, that's fine.
	Tapeworms for my enemies.
	Fluffy animals for me.
	Prehistoric kittens for me.
	Sure.
	Although they'd probably be pretty lethal.
	So one animal is...
	This is the Pyrenean Ibex, obviously.
	Incredibly impressive.
	We should definitely bring it in.
	So I'm going to use this as a little story to introduce people into the concept of how this would go about.
	And then I'm going to talk about a few other animals that...
	What was that, sorry?
	I'd like to hunt one.
	Well, we need to bring them back first.
	So, it was found in the mountains of northern Spain and Portugal and southern France.
	Surprise, surprise, that's where the Pyrenees are.
	And it went extinct on January 2000, when a falling tree landed on the last surviving member of the species.
	Might explain why they went extinct.
	They're at the top of a mountain in a fallen tree.
	I know.
	It's bad luck, isn't it?
	But anyway, less than a year before she died, this final example of the species, biologists took skin biopsies from her ears and put them into cold storage.
	Because, believe it or not, when you have the last of something, you try and preserve it, don't you?
	And this allows for the sequencing of their genome.
	And there's a company called Advanced Cell Technology working with the Spanish government and other researchers which have sought to revive this species of ibex and reintroduce it.
	And what they do need for this though is a species that is closely related that is able to carry the embryo to term.
	And this is a massive issue with renewing the populations of white rhinoceros, for example.
	And also the babies need a similar gestation period and also birth weight as well because of course they've got to be born.
	And also you need to implant the embryo at just the right moment and so there's lots of different factors and then I think they got to the point where they produced 500 cloned embryos, and they implanted 154 into various female ibexes that were related to this species, and only five ended up pregnant, and then only one managed to give birth, and then it had a normal heartbeat, its eyes were wide open, it was actively kicking its legs, she just couldn't breathe, and it died.
	So it's one of the few species that actually has gone extinct twice.
	So researchers learned that the cloned goat had been born with an extra lobe in her left lung, which took up too much space in her chest and kept the lung from inflating properly.
	And so they were relatively close, but this is directly from the researchers.
	Physical defects in the lung as well as in other organs have been reported in neonatal cloned sheep that have failed to survive as well.
	And so this seems to be one of the problems that they need to crack.
	And they said, at present, it can be assumed that cloning is not a very effective way to preserve endangered species.
	However, in species such as the Bacardo, cloning is only possible to avoid its complete disappearance.
	And I think that's another name for this ibex.
	So they've advised taking tissue and cell samples from endangered species to make sure that when we do have the technology in the future, we can revive them if they do go extinct.
	And I very much support that.
	Even though, you know, my opinions on cloning, particularly people, I feel like there's got to be some very strong ethical constraints on this.
	Otherwise, it could go down a worrying direction.
	I want a clone.
	I want a clone of myself so he can do half the work I do.
	That would be nice, wouldn't it?
	I have thought about that before.
	He won't a meanie me.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I do a lot of work and I deserve a day off.
	That's all I'm saying.
	So if you want to fund Carl's Clone Program, you can sign up to our website.
	But what you can also do now, this is a new feature that we have released today, well, at the time of recording anyway, You can purchase and gift subscriptions to people.
	If you want to know how to do the process, it is very simple.
	It's right at the top of our FAQ, which is right at the bottom on our website.
	There's a video showing you how to do it, so there's no excuse.
	You've got to send out those gifts, because Carl needs his clone.
	If you want more Carls in this world, you need to sign up to our website.
	Imagine how much content, if I was battery cloning, like me.
	By the end of this, like 90% of YouTube videos...
	Don't do it too much.
	You still need some variety of opinions.
	You still need, say, employees.
	Oh yeah, sure.
	Good point.
	We're going to clone Josh next.
	Oh, that works.
	To be fair, quite in demand these days.
	Anyway, let's have a look at something else.
	I believe there should be a picture there, Samson.
	Would you be able to pull it up?
	So, rather than spoiling that.
	So, I think we're both familiar with the Tasmanian tiger.
	Yeah.
	So, there should be a photograph here.
	There we go.
	This is the Tasmanian tiger.
	Last photograph.
	This is the final one in 1933. Obviously, this has been colourised.
	So, Europeans in Tasmania basically blamed them for killing sheep and chickens and things, and they believed that they were interfering with livestock.
	Maybe they were.
	Who knows?
	Oh, they doubt this way, yeah.
	But they exchanged their pelts for government bounties, and this meant that thousands of them were slaughtered and they became extinct, because it turns out if the government interferes, even in nature, it causes problems.
	There's something of a cryptid now, actually, because I've seen, you know...
	Videos of people like, oh look, it's Tasmanian Tiger or something like that.
	And Australia's a big place.
	So maybe...
	Well, these are Tasmanians.
	No, no, but they could be on Australia.
	They could be in Australia too.
	So, you know, they're saying, oh, in the Australian Outback, something that's still them.
	Who knows?
	I don't know.
	So just a quick thing.
	I'm not that synthetic.
	I think if something goes extinct, it must have kind of sucked.
	But it went extinct because we deliberately targeted it.
	And obviously, if we deliberately target anything, eventually we'll make it extinct.
	So I feel like we have a duty to look after these animals.
	God created these animals and it's not up to you to kill them, okay?
	We should bring dinosaurs back after they were killed.
	Your atheist, rationalistic mind.
	I'm a bit more Nietzschean on this.
	I'm Darwinian.
	It's the survival of the fittest.
	And if you died off, then you didn't deserve to survive.
	This is my view on politics, but when it comes to animals, I have a different view.
	I'm a hypocrite.
	I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	Humans have the capacity to survive in these circumstances.
	Animals don't.
	But it was Tasmania's apex predator, and so it occupied a very important niche in controlling certain populations.
	would be better if they were knocking about again.
	But anyway, Colossal Biosciences, a company that's Texas-based, announced it plans to bring it back.
	They made this announcement in August of 2022.
	They also plan to bring back the woolly mammoth.
	And they've also received significant funding.
	Apparently, just for this project alone, they've received $5 million Australian dollars from one donor and haven't disclosed how much they've received from other people as well.
	But previous attempts to bring it back were quite underfunded relative to this one, so it seems like it's going to be successful.
	And at the point they said they were in the process of sequencing the genome.
	It's also not an easy thing to do as well because we only recently sequenced the human genome.
	And of course there's no shortage of humans.
	I am one, despite popular belief.
	Josh's Mark Zuckerberg moment.
	I was human once.
	Well, normally the allegations are sort of vampire or otherworldly creature, which, you know, is a smidgen of truth.
	But anyway, they've almost completed, this was October of this year, the genome, which is quite impressive because they took the genome, I believe, from just a museum sample.
	And they said the genome is more than 99.9% complete, with just 45 gaps, which will soon be closed, which is very impressive, actually.
	And they said the next goal is to have a de-extincted, phylocene-ish thing.
	That's their words.
	That's what the lab has said.
	Very scientific.
	The thing is, there is this kind of...
	Again, the Jurassic Park thing was, this wasn't really a dinosaur.
	This is a kind of modern interpretation of a dinosaur.
	Well, what they said is it might be 90% philocene, though the ultimate goal eventually through breeding will be 99.999% philocene again.
	It's always going to be slightly inauthentic.
	Ever so slightly.
	But then again, there'll be enough inauthentic DNA that with enough generations of breeding it will disappear eventually.
	And what their plan is, is that eventually they'll get to a point where they can breed around 100 individuals, and that's enough genetic diversity to release them back into the wild and not have too many problems.
	They're not all going to be cousins and what have you, supposedly.
	I don't know.
	Something will happen.
	I'm not...
	Like, woolly mammoths roaming Siberia again.
	That'd be cool.
	Speaking of which, the woolly mammoth.
	Apparently, this same lab is working on it, and I'm going to read a quote here.
	Ben Lam, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Bioscience, told Live Science, the company aims to produce its first mammoth lookalike calves by 2028. So, it's only about three years away now.
	It's highly likely that one could see another species before then as well.
	So, this seems to be...
	Coming about now, that we're going to be able to bring animals back from extinction.
	So the way that it works here is that they insert mammoth genes into the genome of Asian elephants, its closest living relative, and they've also fully sequenced the Asian and African elephant genomes as well.
	So that's another roadblock out of the way.
	So it seems to be coming along and we can finally have our mammoth burgers because, of course, it's similar to how hunting promotes the preservation of animals because the hunters have a vested interest.
	Well, farming, you know, one of the most populous animals in the world are chickens, and that's because we like eating them.
	Cows.
	Pigs.
	There definitely weren't this many cows and pigs around before we started husbanding them.
	If you want more mammoths, start eating them.
	Yeah, no, but that's true, and I think that's a cool thing.
	You know, we have a mammoth range.
	Go hunt yourself a mammoth.
	Eat it.
	Don't apply that to people.
	If you're concerned about human birth rates, though, don't start eating...
	Elon, stop!
	The Papua New Guineans have already got that covered.
	We don't need any more of that.
	But it also seems to be the case that the dodo is going to come back.
	This is from March of 2022. Apparently, there was a small slice of fragment of the dodo...
	Which they could extract DNA from the Natural History Museum.
	So our 19th century eccentrics collecting animal specimens have actually sort of helped us out here.
	So the Anglo autism has led to a rejuvenation of animal life.
	There we go.
	Quick thing on the dodo though.
	Apparently they tasted awful.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't want to eat one then.
	Because aren't they closely related to pigeons?
	And pigeons taste great.
	I've never had pigeon.
	But the reports at the time were just that it was really, like, fatty and not really edible.
	Is it a bit like a duck?
	No, no, no.
	Well, yeah, but duck's nice.
	But apparently the dodo was just really not good to eat.
	And this is from, like, 17th century standards.
	Imagine the guy cracking up.
	And they were probably starving on a boat.
	Yeah, exactly.
	They were like, oh great, a bird.
	So apparently, yeah, we can bring back dodos but only as a comic relief.
	Keep them in zoos or as pets or something.
	I guess so, yeah.
	And apparently the closest living relative, there's a little diagram here explaining how it works for the dodo, is the Nicobar pigeon, which it diverged from 43 million years ago.
	So that's quite a distance.
	But apparently they're going to slowly introduce DNA into some select in-captivity pigeons, obviously.
	And then eventually you'll get to the point where there's enough code in one of the embryos that it can be carried by a chicken surrogate, which is sounding very convoluted.
	It's a bit mad scientist-esque now.
	A cheeto.
	Chicken carried the genome at dodo.
	Cheeto, yeah.
	Cheeto.
	I prefer the other approach, which is reverse engineering.
	The latent DNA in chickens to give them teeth and stuff like that.
	Reverse engineer a dinosaur out of a chicken.
	I'm all for that.
	Yeah, I'm for that.
	I mean...
	It's probably incredibly unethical to do these things, but I am sort of curious just to see what monsters we can create.
	Even though I don't think it's probably a good thing for humanity, and it could be our undoing.
	Aliens will come back to our planet and see, well, what happened to all these humans that we're knocking about?
	And it turns out we genetically engineered a super chicken that killed us all, or something like that.
	But, obviously, it's in its infancy.
	I don't think it's as much of a danger quite yet as AI, unless you get squashed by a woolly mammoth.
	But they're probably all going to be in Siberia anyway, so who cares.
	And then the final thing I wanted to touch on...
	Is the passenger pigeon and I think this is one of the ones that is probably the best candidate for bringing back because it was very very populous and it was explicitly brought to extinction by human hunting.
	So what is a passenger pigeon?
	One of those.
	It's just a kind of pigeon.
	So it was once the most abundant bird in North America, and this was crazy to me.
	The flocks were so vast that they took days to pass overhead, and they blocked out the sun.
	So the cumulative beat of their wings was so powerful that the ground beneath them chilled underneath them, and it's estimated that they numbered in the billions before human beings started hunting them.
	Alright, and we just shot them.
	We just shot them.
	We had competitions where we would just shoot loads of them.
	But there were billions of them.
	Well, that's what they thought, and look what happened.
	So they went extinct before any meaningful effort could be begun to save them, and the last individual in captivity called Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoo on the 1st of September 1914. So, there were many museum specimens to actually extract DNA from, and they're very genetically similar to the band-tailed pigeon, which is another common species of pigeon.
	So this one should be quite easy to bring back and might be one of the candidates for the most likely.
	And also the least objectionable, because they're a pigeon, yeah, they'll fly about.
	But I would be curious to see these massive clouds of pigeons.
	I wouldn't want to stand underneath it.
	Yeah, no.
	Not without an umbrella.
	But...
	What do you think?
	Now I've laid it out.
	Do you think we need to bring these animals back?
	I think we should.
	I know you want dinosaurs, Carl.
	Push the dinosaurs out.
	There are definite ethical questions, but it'd be interesting.
	Do you not feel the obligation to bring these things back?
	Humanity wiped it out and it was our actions, our irresponsible attitude towards the natural world that's brought this about.
	Well, again, I'm more of a ruthless Darwinian when it comes to this sort of stuff.
	Why can't you be more like that in politics?
	Leave the poor innocent animals out of it.
	They've not done anything.
	Human beings deserve it.
	Sure, but I don't know.
	I'm joking, by the way.
	If an animal can't survive in the modern world, then it's not fit for survival.
	But also, if we applied that attitude to all living things, we'd be the only living thing other than maybe bacteria.
	I don't agree.
	There are loads of animals that are fit for survival.
	That's why we farm them.
	I mean, Carl, I think the most resilient...
	Resilience isn't necessarily an indication of worth because, for instance, if there is a nuclear holocaust and things get destroyed, I think the only two species that are going to survive are going to be cockroaches and crocodiles.
	I wouldn't want to be a cockroach.
	I'm not saying you're going to become a cockroach.
	What I'm saying is, absent a nuclear holocaust, a thing has to be able to exist and be able to get along on its own.
	Because the thing is, we can't just hand-hold every species.
	Exactly.
	That's why we don't want them to go extinct.
	No, no.
	People...
	Like, these pigeons were just firing into the big crowds and just wiping them out for sport in a sort of sadistic, evil...
	Well, there are a billion of them, and we still killed them.
	That's bad.
	We eat 75 billion chickens per year.
	Do we?
	That's a lot of chickens.
	I contribute my fair share, I think.
	I'm not against them doing this.
	Do it with interesting animals.
	I'd love to see a mammoth.
	That'd be cool.
	They're massive.
	Genuinely gargantuan.
	So that'd be an interesting thing.
	I want to bring back Sabretooth Tigers and have them patrolling the coastline along, like, Greece and Italy just to keep the migrant caravans out.
	Maybe introduce the...
	Sabretooth Tower!
	Barbary Lion to take out a few.
	Something that's really interesting about the Sabretooth Tigers is they keep evolving.
	It's like things turning into crabs and tortoises, turtles.
	Like, the body shape just keeps evolving.
	And so there are three different unrelated species of what we call Sabretooth Tigers.
	And they just evolved into that Yeah, they just keep evolving these giant sabers because apparently they're useful to have a couple of massive daggers.
	I suppose it's why there's a cane and an alligator and a crocodile, right?
	Yeah.
	Because they're all basically applying the same knee shape.
	Yeah, the body shape just keeps coming back.
	Same with crabs.
	There are loads of things we call crabs that aren't crabs.
	They just look like crabs, and so it's just like, okay, well...
	I didn't realise there's this great crab conspiracy.
	But anyway...
	Same with turtles.
	There are things that become turtles because it's a good body shape for survival.
	But I feel like I survive better as a person than a turtle.
	You're not 100 million years old.
	I just sound like a doubting evolution now.
	But anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that this is going on.
	Whether you like it or not, it seems to be happening.
	And maybe we can bring back some extinct species from beyond the grave and have some nice mammoth burgers.
	Dragon Lady Christmas, great point.
	Remember this when you extinctivize the grey squirrel.
	Yeah, we're going to bring the red squirrel back.
	Bring peanut back.
	Adorable, yeah.
	Franken peanut, yeah.
	Right, let's go to the video comments.
	I assume we have some.
	Charlie also says, by the way, I personally see as sad as a modern Joseph Tito, a dictator that was able to rule a multi-athletic, multi-religious state, and just as what happened when Tito died, I suspect the same will happen now as sad as gone.
	Yeah, doubtless.
	Nothing good's coming.
	Comment here.
	I hope to see...
	I hope this means, sorry, that we get the American carrier pigeon back.
	I'd love to see the massive flocks of them flying in the wild.
	Well, there we go.
	They presaged what I was going to talk about.
	By this logic, we should bring back the Neanderthal.
	I think we've already got the French, so we don't really need to double up on them.
	Neanderthals were sophisticated, and probably the reason that we're intelligent and creative.
	I think we could give ourselves a bit more credit than that.
	I want to reclaim the good name of Neanderthals.
	I do know that Neanderthals, Ozzy Osbourne has a disproportionate amount of DNA from them.
	So before he dies, they need to extract his DNA. Ozzy Osbourne, 32% Neanderthal.
	I think it was something like 7 or 8%, which is a lot.
	The average European is like 2 or 3%.
	Maybe Brummies are just the lost tribes of Neanderthals.
	It would make so much sense.
	That's very funny.
	Let's get to the first video comment.
	We can't hear it, Samson.
	Are you on yet?
	Stelios, you've got a strange looking face.
	What is this, Stelios?
	I have good hair.
	I have good hair.
	Silence, Stelios.
	The onion of deception.
	Is that meant to be audio?
	No, but that's the onion of deception.
	Very clearly.
	It looks very sacred.
	Thanks.
	For such an unholy artifact, why does it look so godly?
	Because it is godly.
	It always looks good.
	That's the point.
	Ah, yeah, good point.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Vox Populi.
	Chat wanted me to do Redwood Tree Week, and that's coming soon.
	First, some groundwork.
	There are just three extant species.
	Coast Redwood is the most famous one everyone knows.
	It has the biggest range from coastal California up into Oregon.
	Giant Sequoia live in a narrow range opposite the other side of the valley within California only.
	Last is the Dawn Redwood, which was only confirmed to exist in the 1960s due to its extreme rarity, and it's native to...
	China.
	Oh, I didn't expect that to be native to China.
	Well, there we go.
	At least it's the least populous one, talking about invasive species.
	I like that we're being racist to foreign trees.
	You need to step up your racism game, Carl.
	You need to be racist against trees now.
	Let's go to the next one.
	The old bridge of Biddeford dates back in its original wooden construction to 1280, being rebuilt in stone during the 1500s.
	Despite the new material, the uneven width of each of the arches was retained, likely due to the known footings of each base.
	Local parishes were required to contribute to the upkeep for each arch, so poorer ones could be assigned smaller spans.
	Widening and reconstruction have always taken care to leave the previous structures visible.
	The Trust has a delightful story of a strange annual payment of 10 shillings, 50p, for the right to drive sheep over the bridge, last exercised in 2012. Very cool.
	I went through Biddeford to play golf this summer, so that was the last time I was there.
	But yeah, North Devon is where part of my family comes from, so a very soft spot for me.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel and haul this shit out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane?
	You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that fucking thing or winterize it?
	In its 20-year lifespan, it won't offset the carbon footprint of making it.
	And don't get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery.
	And never mind the fact that if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don't have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities.
	Always winterize your wind turbines.
	Something I'm very concerned about.
	Yeah, they're giant phallic symbols of vanity, aren't they, really?
	Of the eco-people.
	I might be sold on them if they were.
	I think they're just crap.
	Yeah, they're ugly and disgusting and a waste of time.
	And the thing is, they're just crap.
	Oh, it's not windy today.
	No electricity for you.
	How funny we've got the nuclear power plant.
	I'd say something very controversial, but I think the old-timey coal power plants look quite cool.
	And, you know, having these big things billowing smoke out is still pretty cool.
	And I don't mind seeing them overseeing wind turbines ruining lovely country views.
	Turn the cities into horrible smoky hellholes like they used to be.
	They used most of the power anyway.
	Make them do it.
	Let's go to the next one.
	At least that makes me feel very good about myself now that I'm actually trying to learn how to draw.
	I'm loving the Lotus Eaters daily.
	That's a really great idea and I just need to keep practicing so I can draw some furry porn and send it to Stelio so I can traumatize him further.
	You don't need to be scared of my comments, Stelios.
	I don't bite.
	Unless you want me to, but that's fine.
	Your comments always bite, Sophie.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Now that the Assad regime has been removed, I assume all these people will be returning home and any new applications from Syria will be rejected.
	Apparently, yes, Austria and Germany have refused new applications.
	Of course, there's going to be a wave of people who are fleeing jihadis shortly, I imagine.
	Is there another one, Samson?
	There is.
	Blimey.
	All right, on the left side of my screen, I have the California electoral votes for Trump v.
	Harris.
	And on the right, I have, in orange, all of the Harris votes, or people who intend to vote for Harris if they were able to vote in the US election.
	And all the blue ones are for Trump.
	And I have to go all the way down to Romania before I find an equivalent to California.
	That is insane.
	The only ones that are willing to vote for Trump over Harris are Russia, Serbia, Georgia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia.
	That's it.
	See, I think the Republicans should definitely be looking at California and New York as not blue states.
	Like, 6 million Trump votes.
	So you can get on the ground, do something about it.
	You know, come on.
	If I were the Democrats, I'd be like, Christ, why have we lost 40% of the votes?
	Well, you should be looking for complete victory.
	Any state being blue is a failure.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Get in there.
	Deal with them.
	Kevin says, Yeah, that's basically how they're going to be used.
	And it's not going to be good.
	One last comment.
	Maria says, The West should treat any Islamic land or grouping as a potential enemy.
	I don't know if we necessarily have to treat them as an enemy, but I think we should definitely just assume that they're going to be Too parochial to try and build into coalitions, frankly.
	That's how I'd be at.
	Anyway, we are out of time there, folks, so thank you so much for joining us.
	We will be back tomorrow at the same time, and in the meantime, if you want to support us, go and buy someone a gift subscription to the website.

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