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Feb. 27, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:27:29

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1110

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	Islander issue 3 is now available to purchase from shop.lotuses.com and is the next step in the story that we are telling with this magazine.
	For this issue, we have collected piercing and esoteric essays from the finest right-wing minds on the theme of our civilizational winter.
	Each of our authors is an expert in bringing forth the most important hidden revelations from the lowest reaches of the soul, and it has all been beautifully rendered in a medievalist, revivalist aesthetic.
	For this issue, I commissioned a new translation of the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, and have written a companion essay exploring how it is a reflection of our modern experience.
	I personally feel that this is the most important thing I've ever written, so I will be looking forward to your feedback on it.
	We have resolved our distribution issues, with the magazines being printed in advance of the orders, So we can guarantee that you will receive your copy very soon after ordering it.
	You will also receive email updates so you can see exactly where it is.
	Hopefully, Issue 3 can provide you with the space and context to engage in deep reflection about the nature of our circumstances, to discover hidden truths about yourself and find the resolve to make it through our spiritual exile.
	Oh, hello there.
	I didn't see you there.
	I was just enjoying Islander Magazine, you see.
	There's this wonderful new publication that's come out.
	You might want to pick it up.
	I hear it's very good.
	I've enjoyed it so far.
	Very nice aesthetic thing.
	But anyway, I am joined by Bo and Harry today.
	Hello.
	And other than sitting here reading, we're going to be talking about...
	We would like to just sit here and read for an hour and a half for you instead.
	Sort of ASMR. But it's just the sound of pages shuffling along.
	But instead we have to do our jobs.
	Well, Harry is talking about...
	Living in the shadow of the post-war consensus.
	Constantly.
	Every day.
	I see him everywhere, except it's just a big shadow of Hitler.
	That's how the British...
	That's being cut out of context.
	That's how all of the establishment in all of the West treats everything.
	Everything is just Hitler is waiting to jump out from behind a corner like the monster in Mulholland Drive.
	Every time.
	I'm going to be talking about South Africa, and Beau's going to be talking about Salman Rushdie.
	Well, take it away, Harry.
	Was that it?
	That's it.
	Alright, okay, that's it.
	That's it.
	It's over.
	We're over.
	It's so over.
	We're done.
	No.
	We're back.
	Back to 1938. Again.
	And again.
	And again.
	Forever.
	And ever and ever.
	Until we're all dead, in which point our grandchildren, their grandchildren, and their grandchildren will all be living in 1938 forever again.
	It's like the worst kind of Groundhog Day.
	Time is a flat circle, Josh.
	And in that circle is a tiny little swastika that is always going to try and leap out unless you, the daring Churchill, decide to swat away the Neville Chamberlains of the world, at which point you'll be able to slam back down that swastika.
	And I don't know where this analogy is going anymore, gentlemen.
	Basically, I hate the fact that everything is World War II constantly all of the time.
	We're facing new Hitlers every single day.
	We have got new Churchills or new wannabe Churchills every single day.
	And I'm bored of this frame of reference because it has been used endlessly to just try to propagandize people into having endless wars for pointless causes.
	And lost causes, in the case of the one that we're talking about today, that being Ukraine.
	Everyone's Hitler.
	Putin's Hitler.
	Nigel is Hitler.
	Hugh Fernley Wittenstuhl's Hitler.
	Aisley Harriot's Hitler.
	Alice Weedle in the AFD. She's Hitler now.
	Obviously Trump is.
	Famously Hitler was a lesbian Zionist.
	Sure.
	In these people's frame of mind, it seems.
	But I tell you what isn't a bad thing that I'm annoyed about.
	This!
	Islander!
	Buy it!
	It's brand new and available on the website.
	You can't get Islander 2 anymore.
	And there was some trouble with some of you getting Islander 2 in the first place, but we've solved that this time, thankfully, so you shouldn't have to worry.
	It's got wonderful articles from people like Benjamin Swizduk.
	Connor Tomlinson, Callum Darragh, Luca Johnson, Carl Benjamin, and many, Dr. Nima Parvin, many, many more.
	It's wonderful, it's excellent, it feels lovely.
	I'm going to give it a cuddle after this podcast is done.
	And you can buy them on the website for $14.99.
	Anyway...
	On to the news that I was talking about.
	So let's just go through some of the updates that have been going on with Ukraine, Russia at the moment.
	And there is a lot of negotiations going on.
	I believe that Keir Starmer, if he hasn't already, will be meeting up with Trump today.
	And that is what some of the negotiations are going to be based around.
	And where one of the main articles that I'm going to be looking at is focused on as well.
	Because our old pal William Hague...
	Everybody's favourite Tory has some encouraging words of advice for Keir Starmer on how he's going to pull Trump away from the brink of peace and get him back onto the warpath.
	That makes peace sound bad.
	I didn't realise peace was scary, Harry.
	The British and Western establishment, when it comes to Russia in particular, despise peace.
	They hate peace.
	They don't like peace.
	They want you and your family to go and die for the sake of no peace.
	So just to get that clear, peace is bad, but war is good.
	Yes.
	All number 10 is saying is give war a chance.
	Yeah.
	It's a beautiful message.
	It's a beautiful message.
	Anti-John Lennon here.
	Really.
	So obviously when they meet up today, it's going to be the number one item is Ukraine.
	And there's been some statements made about it, which is that the annexed Ukrainian territory, which I believe is about 15% of Ukraine's total landmass, which has been annexed by Russia, is completely non-negotiable.
	They've taken about five Ukrainian regions and they're saying, well, we're not giving them back.
	That's not how negotiations work.
	I imagine that...
	All of this is posturing.
	Yes.
	And when eventually Ukraine inevitably surrenders some territory to Russia, they're going to be like, well, I said that they shouldn't surrender anything, so it's not my fault.
	I think that that's part of it, because realistically, they're not actually thinking that that's a feasible outcome for Russia, are they?
	Potentially, but still, at the same time, yeah, Russia is one.
	I don't know if you could make any kind of argument to Ukraine being able to make any kind of credible comeback in the conflict at the moment without actively involving other European nations on the ground.
	I mean, Ukraine has not been fully invaded, so they've done well to get that far.
	They've still got a country, which is not nothing.
	I think politically it is a bit difficult because I've heard Zelensky say, and I don't think he's lying, that he's not allowed, like he's constitutionally not allowed to accept that loss of land.
	So whether Ukraine will have to change government or they'll have to change something in the letter of the law of their constitution or something, because if the Kremlin just simply won't budge, which they won't, right?
	They just simply won't.
	So that's their sort of immovable object.
	Then, and Ukraine's got something similar, politically speaking, then someone somewhere along the line has got to give, and it will almost certainly have to be the Ukrainian side of the ledger.
	But if by law the Ukrainian president, whoever that might be, or the government, is not allowed to do it, then there'll have to be some sort of workaround.
	I mean, I'm kind of stating the obvious there, but how it will actually play out, how it will...
	How they'll do it, I don't really know.
	I think what's going to happen is Zelensky's going to step down and there's going to be some sort of election about them.
	There might be a ceasefire.
	Zelensky steps down.
	They elect someone else that then has some sort of backing to negotiate a peace.
	I would guess that that would be the way it would go.
	They just might have to amend their actual constitution, as I understand it.
	It might just have to bypass a law.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, look at the US. It happens all the time.
	Reality has to take precedent over any bit of paper, doesn't it?
	And Josh is right.
	You can always find a friendly judge to say, I guess it's legal.
	Before the war, everyone was talking about how corrupt Ukraine was.
	I'm sure if enough people want something done and there's enough money changing hands, anything is possible.
	Yeah, and this is all on the US side as well, because they're brokering a mineral deal with Ukraine at the moment as well.
	And Boris Johnson's all in on that.
	Boris Johnson, you know, one of the men who was one of the architects of keeping the conflict going to the point where it's got right now.
	Now that Ukraine is going to have to potentially, as well as giving up a load of its own territory, going to have to give up the rights to the minerals that are on its land.
	Boris Johnson's like, two thumbs up, asset strip that place for all it's worth.
	Thank you, Boris.
	What a service you did to the Ukrainian people.
	You're such a good man.
	Churchill reincarnated.
	and the rest of the european establishment don't like to be kept out of this they don't like that they are not getting much of a place on the table so ikea star was going to meet with trump today and that's why a lot of the eu council uh the president antonio costa said on thursday that he'd invited zelinski to a special summit of eu leaders on march the 6th to discuss future support to ukraine the eu and its member states are ready to take more responsibility for europe's security
	we should therefore be prepared for a possible european contribution to the security guarantees that At the same time, Finland has agreed that they are going to pledge 660 million euros in military equipment to Ukraine.
	And, of course, as well, Starmer is going to host Zelensky and the other European leaders at a London summit, because Zelensky's going to meet with Keir Starmer on Sunday.
	So, within Europe, there's a lot of planning going around, because I've mentioned it many times before on this, it seems that the US is less interested in keeping this conflict going on now.
	They've had the regime change into Donald Trump.
	He didn't want this sort of conflict going on in the first place.
	Very famously, he was saying that if he'd been president back in 2022, when this conflict started, So, he's not interested in continuing to sink resources into it, and in fact, he seems to be very interested in...
	Getting as many resources out of it as possible.
	Now, the Ukraine-US minerals deal is being brokered at the moment.
	I don't know if it's exactly been signed yet, but there is some information that we know that is available to us.
	So he's going to meet with Trump on Friday, Zelensky is, to sign an agreement that will give the US access to its deposits of rare earth minerals.
	Zelensky said that he hoped the preliminary agreement with the US will lead to further deals, but confirmed no American security guarantees that have been agreed to yet.
	So if there are security guarantees, it does look like they might have to come from Europe itself in a peace transition period.
	Trump said that a deal would help American taxpayers get their money back for aid sent to Ukraine throughout the war, but said the responsibility of Kiev security should fall on Europe...
	Because Donald Trump has said, what, that they sent off $500 billion worth of aid to...
	Ukraine, which I don't know how accurate that is.
	It's a very, very contested number, but he's trying to get everything that he can.
	Yeah, I think he's got his businessman's cap on.
	He's thinking about value for money for a business deal.
	That seems to be the terms in which he's sort of framing it in.
	Like, we've given you some money, we want something in return.
	And, I mean, it sounds like they're probably going to get a pretty good deal out of it that they get minerals that they don't have to pay to defend because it's going to be European militaries that are...
	Protecting Ukraine once there is peace brokered.
	Yeah.
	And what I gather from what's being discussed, at least.
	And here's a nice handy-dandy map where all of this red part are the territory that has been annexed by Russia thus far, and you get some nice views of where all of these mineral deposits are across the rest of the country as well.
	So obviously Russia has access to quite a bit of it themselves, but there's still plenty for the US to be able, well, for Ukraine to be able to deal with for the US as well.
	The majority of them there, haven't they?
	Yeah, they absolutely do.
	Also as part of this team...
	The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Denis Shmal, said that they've finalized a version of the agreement where it envisages an investment fund that will be set up for Ukraine's reconstruction.
	So this sounds almost like Marshall Plan.
	...esque, where Kiev and Washington will manage a fund on equal terms, and he said that Ukraine will contribute 50% of future proceeds from state-owned mineral resources, oil and gas to the fund, and the fund will then invest in projects in Ukraine itself.
	The New York Times reported as well that the US, on a draft document, would own the maximum amount of the fund allowed under US law, but not necessarily...
	All of it.
	So this money, whether it's in a joint fund or not, sounds like majority owned by U.S. So the U.S. gets to keep a massive level of interest, investment, and influence in Ukraine following this.
	So Ukraine, if it was under the U.S.'s thumb before, still very, very...
	Even more so, yeah.
	Even more so right now.
	Another vassal state to add to many.
	And a source in the Ukraine's government told the BBC that the provisions of the deal are much better for Ukraine now because, of course, I think at first Donald Trump was just like, give us $500 billion.
	Dr. Evil.
	Play hardball on him straight away.
	I mean, that was the money that they supposedly gave them, so it's not actually that unreasonable to say, well, give us some money back, but then where are they going to get it from?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so...
	Half of it never turned up in the first place, right?
	That's true, yeah.
	Yes, there's been a lot of tricky accounting for where a lot of that money went, and I'm sure that a lot of yacht businesses and other style ventures have made a pretty penny.
	Lots of chateaus in France, perhaps.
	Maybe, maybe.
	But that's the American side of it.
	On the...
	British and European side, we're still going a little bit crazy about this whole thing with an agitprop, like this sort of thing that's been coming out in The Times, where they've said, Trump can't eat here!
	Where they've got a, I'm sure, a very, very pleasant Ukrainian woman and her very, very pleasant Ukrainian restaurant saying, like, why does this need to be a story?
	Why does this need to be in The Times?
	Why does anybody need to know this?
	Oh, it's because...
	The British establishment are still wanting to go full bore on this, because they want to be able to say, they want to convince Trump that, no, no, no, no, we can take the 15%, we can take that territory back from Russia if you just keep pumping money into it, because we need defence guarantees.
	And as if Trump wants to eat in this rinky-dink, tin pot, end-of-the-peer restaurant, it might be lovely, I've got no idea, but one, as if he wants to, and two, if he insists on it, like, she's going to stand up to the Secret Service.
	They come in mob-handed, two dozen Secret Surface guys a week ahead of time saying, the president is eating here.
	She's going to be like, no, don't make me go ballistic on you.
	She'll hold her hand out like the rock and then she'll just go...
	Just bring it.
	Just bring it!
	And then she'll hit him with a rock bottom and it'll be amazing.
	Donald Trump won't know what hits him.
	And then she'll give him a stunner for good measure.
	No, that's not what's going to happen.
	What's going to happen is that this doesn't matter at all.
	I don't actually...
	Have any problem with normal Ukrainian people being upset that the war has gone so terribly?
	In all honesty, yeah.
	I've got sympathy.
	And then, of course, you see that, well, it seems like the US is trying to expand its influence even more in Ukraine now and trying to, in a certain way, asset strip the place.
	I have seen opinion polls of Ukrainians, and they do support ending the war.
	And it's understandable.
	I imagine that every family has lost someone.
	You know, a male in their family from this conflict because the human cost of it is catastrophic.
	Of course.
	And so, at this point, I think they're just glad to see the end of it.
	On my part, I've been vocal since the beginning, or since 2022, that I'm pretty firmly anti the Zelensky government.
	But I've got loads of sympathy for you, the average Ukrainian person.
	Of course, yeah.
	I think it would be psychopathic to not have sympathy for them.
	Right, yeah.
	The average Ukrainian patriot.
	That just doesn't want their country being invaded.
	Of course I've got sympathy for them, but it's just the reality of the Russian army.
	You have to take stock and say, unless you are willing to escalate the conflict to who knows...
	You had two or three summers to push them out of that bit of land, and you've got billions of dollars of military aid to do it, and you failed.
	I'm sorry, it's like...
	Playing a sports game.
	You've got the 90 minutes or whatever it is to win or lose and the final whistle has come and you lost.
	That's it.
	That's the end of the game, I'm afraid.
	And it's sad.
	It's really bitter and sad that you lost, but you lost.
	Yeah.
	But some people want it to keep going.
	They don't want to accept that it's lost and they want to, as William Hague does, evoke Churchill.
	To woo Trump.
	Oh, everyone's Churchill.
	Well, everybody who's pro-war.
	He firmly witnessed Churchill.
	Churchill.
	As long as you are in favour of a war somewhere, anywhere, that makes you a freedom fighter, that makes you Winston Churchill, greatest Britain to ever live, if you say, maybe this war is lost and we need to wind this up, then you're a Neville Chamberlain, which is just a cynic.
	Everyone's Neville Chamberlain.
	For a coward.
	So Empire's back on the menu then?
	Is that alright?
	We're bringing back the British Empire?
	I don't know.
	I don't think he means that part of Churchill.
	I don't think he means that Churchill.
	Not the good parts of Churchill.
	You're right, it is pathetic and sad and annoying, the endless parallels with Hitler, Chamberlain and Churchill.
	You remember when Zelensky went over to Congress, like, what, a couple of years ago now, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and a number of others, literally and explicitly a number of times said, he is the Churchill of our age.
	Yeah.
	Get some new material.
	Yeah, yeah, right.
	There have been wars since then that we don't evoke.
	I mean, I don't know why you'd want to evoke the Vietnam War in such a way, for instance.
	But I think it's the fact that it's been presented as the good war means that it can always be used as basically a mind virus to get people to think, well, this will be my good war.
	This will be my good war.
	You can't do that with Vietnam.
	You can't do that with Korea.
	You can't do that with Afghanistan because they are all examples of war being bloody and hopeless and in many cases ultimately pointless, especially when America is the one getting involved in these foreign conflicts.
	But they can always just point to World War II and see, that was the good one.
	That was the good one.
	We did the good things in that one, so we'll do the good things this time and it won't end up like all the other disasters.
	We definitely haven't.
	Pushed Ukraine into escalating and continuing a war that could have wound up a few months into the initial conflict, losing them thousands and thousands of men, making the women flee as refugees to foreign countries across Europe, and now are asset-stripping the place.
	Old town shelled into oblivion.
	I would argue that all of Europe lost in World War II, right?
	Every country.
	And if they're drawing parallels to World War II, well, hasn't all of Europe lost here as well?
	Because we've pumped lots of resources into a country.
	I understand that there's talk of it potentially coming back to us eventually.
	In that they were saying that there were loans.
	I think there's some discussion whether the money that was given by the US and Europe counted as a grant or a loan.
	So there's some haggling being done over how much actually needs to be paid back in many cases.
	But at the minute, it seems like all of Europe is out of pocket and the US is getting something in return, whereas we're, again, on the hook for all of this stuff.
	It seems like.
	We want some of that sweet titanium.
	We want some of those sweet rarer minerals.
	Give us your minerals, Ukraine.
	Give us your minerals.
	What's going to happen?
	Good God.
	Zelensky is like DM and Putin is like Ho Chi Minh.
	No, wait.
	No, that doesn't work.
	Oh, wait.
	Yeah, you can't really do that one, can you?
	Wait, who's the Saddam Hussein in this situation?
	Saddam's also a baddie.
	Who's George W? George W is Zelensky, and Saddam is Putin, obviously.
	Oh, okay, obviously.
	That makes sense.
	And that was a good war.
	Apparently.
	Apparently so.
	Apparently.
	Ended very, very well for everyone involved, and nobody was a war criminal.
	Fantastic how that was.
	I just love that he's trying to evoke Churchill as well, because, right, can't Trump just turn around and say, hey, didn't you just have his portraits removed from Parliament?
	So the actual messaging that's going on here is completely contradictory and doesn't seem to have any internal consistency.
	Well, the portrait of Wellington was replaced by Yvette Cooper, so she's really...
	With her cult portrait, yeah.
	She's really the real Churchill, isn't she?
	I mean, aren't we all?
	Maybe the Churchill was within us all along.
	As soon as I decided to start a war.
	Yeah, when I open a bottle of whiskey, maybe.
	And the interesting thing is that a few months back, following the Marta Maid controversy, we actually had a discussion on this subject, a roundtable, where we had the Churchill question.
	And I thought it was a really interesting and productive conversation.
	And the point that I made that I think still stands and is being shown to be correct over and over again is no matter the true historical context of it, the narrative that has been built up is always used to...
	To justify these wars.
	And Stelios mentioned at the time, and this was a fair point, that in terms of realpolitik, if they want the wars, they'll have the wars.
	They'll come up with a different narrative.
	And that's true to an extent, yes.
	But I do also think that on a leader like Boris Johnson, and in the minds of these leaders...
	It works as a motivator for themselves because they can see themselves as shrouding in that glory that's been put on to Winston Churchill.
	They're appealing to a mythology of modern Britain, aren't they?
	And it also is so all-encompassing in Britain that it trickles out to other countries as well.
	You're saying about how Nancy Pelosi and the likes were referring to him as a Churchillian figure.
	And I think that because it's been so mythologized and They've painted Churchill as this flawless, heroic figure who stood up to the pesky Germans.
	Then it's painting yourself in a veneer that is unearned, I think, as well.
	Well, they both rejected peace overtures a number of times.
	There is that parallel.
	You could make a kind of joke that if Keir Starmer did pointlessly escalate a war into an enormous continental conflict in Europe, that would be the most Churchillian thing of him to do.
	But I wouldn't make that joke.
	I wouldn't make that joke.
	I wouldn't say such a thing, because such a thing would be anti-patriotic of me.
	Anyway, it's that the spectre of the 1930s German government looms over not just wars, but it looms over...
	All politics and is a driving motivator for why we live in the world, what we do.
	It's called the post-war consensus.
	And the absolutely hysterical tone that is drawn up amazes me.
	Sometimes you think that you've seen it all, and then you see an article in the Telegraph like this talking about the recent German elections from over the weekend, saying to be optimistic about Mertz, but the specter of the 1930s remains.
	Now...
	I'll just read a few excerpts from this, and tell me if this sounds like a reasonable interpretation of a country which has been absolutely beset and humiliated by mass migration, all of the foreigners coming in, abusing their people, causing all sorts of trouble.
	And just multiculturalism in general for decade upon decade.
	In general.
	A country like that may be sliding towards a more anti-immigrant party who has managed to get, what was it, 20% in the votes recently?
	Yeah, that was it.
	So, here you go.
	Germany cannot face the risk of being led by charlatans who would betray civilization to its enemies.
	Great start.
	When Germany surrendered unconditionally in 1945, great start to the article there, okay?
	Almost everyone assumed that the Nazis would be a threat for many years to come.
	Even in 1949, the First Secretary General of NATO, Lord Ismay, summed up its purpose as to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in...
	And the Germans down.
	But the Nazi revival never happened.
	For 75 years, the Federal Republic was conspicuous as Europe's most successful economy and an exemplary civil society, giving the lie to Spenglarian prophecies of doom.
	Until now.
	Until now.
	Spengler re-emerged.
	Somehow Spengler returned.
	We're so back.
	Sunday's election saw the first serious threat to German democracy emerge since the defeat of the Third Reich.
	That threat goes by the name of Alternative for Germany.
	Dun-dun-dun!
	Dun-dun-dun!
	Since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago, the AFD have been the dominant party in the former East Germany, but now they are the most popular choice for younger voters right across the country.
	for now the oldies have saved german democracy still if this trip you know they've sold out their own children their grandchildren their safety and well-being but no they've saved an abstract concept of democracy thank god guaranteeing many more rapes Yeah.
	This is a party that tells Germans that they have been enslaved since 1945 by a guilt cult imposed by the Allies.
	Quite literally true.
	Yeah, that's a statement of fact.
	That was what denazification was, okay?
	They quibble over how many of the SS should be seen as war criminals, or whether the Holocaust was just a speck of bird-ess on their nation's otherwise spotless history.
	The AFD is so openly pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, and authoritarian that even...
	Even Marine Le Pen and Georgia Maloney will have nothing to do with them.
	The AFD's leader, Alice Weedle, is not just a Lenny Reifenstahl fantasy version of Nigel Frost.
	So they are the second coming of Hitler.
	Alice Weedle's going to grow herself a little moustache.
	It'll be incredible.
	No one will ever have seen anything like it.
	It'll be terrific.
	And they're going to, I assume, do bad things.
	Do very bad things.
	And next Austria.
	Annex Austria.
	The state and land, the Rhineland.
	Well, can you guess what the forward thinks that they're going to do?
	Invade Poland?
	Oh, blimey.
	Of all of the publications out there, the insane...
	Socialist Communist Daily Forward is one of my favourites because they are absolutely bonkers.
	They are absolutely mad and publish some really ridiculous...
	Alice Veedle, who is a Zionist and has said explicitly in her interview recently with Elon Musk that she is all in on support for Israel.
	Apparently...
	That's the head of AFD. That's the head of the AFD. Has apparently going to cause...
	The second coming of Hitler.
	It's always those who you least expect.
	I know, I know.
	I know.
	It's absolutely ridiculous, but I would read a bit of this, but I don't want to get in trouble.
	So I hate the framing of the Second World War, and I would like to ask our leaders very politely, please, please, please, can we move out of 1938 and into a different era?
	That would be very nice.
	Thank you very much.
	Got a bunch of rumble rants there.
	Hang on, I'm trying to get the mouse.
	I can't see the damn thing.
	You need to read them anyway, so...
	I can see them just fine, thank you.
	Alright, so Glee777, US, I consent.
	Russia, I consent.
	European Union, isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
	The European Union does hide under people's beds.
	Telling them off for posting naughty tweets.
	Ryan Hinnigan.
	I did not care for the Ukraine war.
	It assists upon itself.
	That's actually...
	Quite true.
	It does, yeah.
	It really does.
	The engaged few.
	I'm having trouble envisioning Churchill dancing in high heels, snorting fat rails of booger sugar, or playing piano with his dong.
	You know, I've never seen any of those sitcoms that Zelensky starred in before he was president.
	So, with that glowing advertisement, I still do not intend to.
	I have never heard booger sugar before.
	Really?
	That's a good one.
	Yeah, it's a good one.
	I like it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You like booger shoe, do you?
	Bolivian marching powder.
	I've heard loads and loads of euphemisms, but never that one.
	That's new to me.
	Well, you can use that next time.
	I didn't mean to add anything there.
	Yeah, I'm not.
	I don't.
	He's a good boy.
	Yeah.
	We're all good boys.
	bald eagle 1787 but if the u.s leaves the ukraine war how will the eu tyrants launder money in large amounts and line the pockets of their military industrial complex donors they'll have to find a new patsy state and chris k112 isn't ukraine sovereign if it wants to keep fighting let it by itself without support i don't like western countries forcing peace deals in war in wars that aren't there i suppose that's fair as well
	but given just how entirely reliant on the western powers that they've been through the entire thing if they did decide they would fold immediately yeah that like You think that Russia wants to take all of Ukraine?
	Well, if they did, and they tried to do that, then yeah, they would.
	If it was a straight-up fight between Ukraine backed up with no help from anyone versus Russia with no help from anyone, which is basically...
	It would be no contest.
	When they first went into Crimea in, what, 2014, the little green men, they just walked in.
	It was like...
	The Ukraine hadn't even...
	It wasn't built about yet.
	Yeah, the Ukraine...
	Anyway, so yeah.
	We are being tardy, as usual.
	The podcast did start a few minutes late, Josh.
	That's true.
	We're not going to shortchange you, dear audience.
	Don't worry.
	But anyway, I'm going to be talking about South Africa because obviously it's been in the news a lot and America has taken an unprecedented position after Donald Trump has basically said that they're going to stop funding and start looking at interfering with the South African government.
	The ANC is in a coalition government currently.
	And it all basically started with...
	Land seizures.
	But first, if you want to support the work we're doing and get something wonderful in return, you can buy our magazine.
	It is a beautiful work of art, as you can see.
	All of the pages have wonderful artwork in it.
	It's a lovely sight to behold.
	And there's lots of written articles from very insightful people in here.
	And I'm very much looking forward to reading this.
	I'm not in this one.
	I was in the last one.
	But I've always enjoyed these.
	Rory does a fantastic job putting them together, and it's something that will look very nice, and I'm sure you'll enjoy reading.
	It's well worth the money.
	They smell nice, too.
	That's true.
	It's nice and sturdy as well, isn't it?
	It's not like tissue paper.
	It's actually...
	No.
	You want something aesthetic that'll expand your mind?
	Look no further.
	If a woman comes to your house, sees that on your shelf, you're sorted.
	Even if you yourself are a woman.
	Anyway.
	So, it all started with this.
	It was Cyril Ramaphosa signing an expropriation bill into law which said that the government can basically expropriate land from anyone with no compensation for pretty much any reason.
	And, understandably, landowners in South Africa were upset about this because they're rather attached to keeping their own private property, funnily enough.
	And it's just seen as a cynical way to take land off of the white farmers, which...
	Is clearly the case, isn't it?
	Because it's not exactly like a new tactic in that part of the world, is it?
	It happened in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as I call it, and it's happened to some extent in South Africa already.
	And what happened is, Trump accused South Africa of massive human rights violations, which is true.
	You have a right to own your own property, your own private property, and just because it's politically expedient to the ANC who are trailing in the polls, I think they got less than 50% in the latest election for the first time since 1994 and the end of apartheid, and so they're worried, and so what they were doing was trying to get win-up support, as far as I'm aware, by saying that they're going to do this, but it's not going to end well for them.
	And in fact, after Trump said this, and after he suspended aid, there was lots of support from white South Africans, as you can imagine, because they're obviously being targeted for this.
	And they agree that they are victims of anti-white racism, which is undeniable.
	It's written into the law.
	That's literally the point of the law.
	It is, yeah.
	You can't argue against it.
	Not to mention the endless evidence of the quote-unquote farm murders.
	Of course, yeah.
	It's just...
	Irrefutable, yeah.
	It's just, as far as I'm concerned, some sort of low-burn genocide.
	Yeah.
	Well, the ANC's not doing nearly enough about it to prevent it.
	In fact, they're enabling it, aren't they?
	It's a state-sanctioned pogrom, really.
	So, I always like bringing this one up.
	It's the number of racialised laws in South Africa.
	And you can see a graph here, and there's a big dip that bottoms out in 1994, and then it goes up again.
	So, you had racial laws.
	Under apartheid, it dropped down again, and then it goes back up and exceeds even the apartheid era for the number of racial laws, this time against the white minority.
	So it is literally revenge?
	Yeah, of course it is.
	Two wrongs do make a right.
	I see.
	I understand.
	You can hear it from black South Africans all the time, where they're just spiteful.
	They look at the success of white people in South Africa and they don't understand that it comes with hard work and understanding and being educated.
	They don't understand all of the work that goes into European civilisation, basically.
	And they just think that we've somehow cheated them out of it like it's their birthright.
	And this is very similar.
	We actually talked about cargo cults, didn't we?
	In the Andaman Islands, in one of my Contemplation series on the website.
	And they believed that all of the goods that the Americans had in World War II, they were on the island, and they saw all of this advanced technology.
	They were living in the Stone Age.
	And they thought that these things of technology, these were created by their ancestors because they never saw the Americans making them.
	They couldn't conceive of the notion that they were manufacturing it at home and bringing it along.
	They thought, well, we work hard.
	Therefore, these things belong to us.
	They couldn't put the two and two together, and I think exactly the same phenomenon is going on here.
	Yeah.
	And what has actually happened is parties have accused the white minority groups of treason for this.
	How does that work?
	Treason to what?
	A government that's trying to steal their stuff?
	It was South Africa's ex-president, Jacob Zuma, who's got the backing of the Zulus, filed a treason complaint against AfriForum, which is an Afrikaans group.
	So, white group.
	Okay.
	It's basically him saying, you're being treasonous to the people of Africa.
	By not giving us your stuff.
	Yes.
	Obviously nonsense.
	They're trying to describe it as, you know, we've just added this to allow us to develop our economy, but as we can see from newspapers here, they're just describing them as land grabbers, and they're just moving onto farms in big crowds, as you can see, just trying to take stuff.
	That's all it is.
	There's nothing really to it.
	It's just black people want to take stuff from white people and they feel like they deserve it because they don't understand the work that went into creating the civilization that they can neither understand nor recreate themselves.
	Or even maintain.
	No, or maintain.
	And also, correct me if I'm wrong, is the dominant...
	Black ethnic group in South Africa, is it now Bantus and not Koi?
	I think so.
	I'm not entirely sure.
	So, I mean, it's not even like they were there before the Afrikaners, the people who...
	Well, they justify it as, well, we've got more right to it because at least we're African.
	That's the way that I think that they'll square that circle.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	But, I mean, surely if they want to make that argument, it's the Koi and people like that who should have a say.
	So...
	Not that I think they should steal it.
	We're seeing things like this, where they're reporting on the majority of farm ownership here, 72% white, which is why the farms grow food, and there are people like this guy, the real genocide happening in South Africa is towards black people.
	Oh really?
	Who's doing that then?
	Oh no, they're making all our food!
	I'm literally dying!
	Oh, they're feeding me!
	Terrible.
	I saw this about a while ago now, maybe three or four years ago, something in that ballpark.
	It was that the farm murders were getting a bit of traction in some of the mainstream media.
	So the BBC put out a big piece about how actually, if there's any large-scale murdering, organised murders going on, it's against black people in South Africa.
	Well, we'll soon see.
	From a black man in South Africa, that's not true.
	But I'm not going to get onto that quite yet.
	Because it seems like they're trying to respond and sort of fob off Trump, which is not going to be a smart move, by deliberately going to get nuclear deals with Iran and Russia.
	It's like a thumbing their nose at this.
	Because this was only a few days after Trump said what he did.
	It's very obvious to me that they're going to turn to them and rub the US's nose in it.
	But it's a very flawed strategy, really.
	They're just going to alienate themselves from a lot of the world that they rely on.
	Back in the 90s, in the Blair era, Britain and the United States, as some sort of bloc, did deals with both South Africa, the Nelson Mandela South Africa, and Libya.
	When they still had Gaddafi, they did deals of, we'll give you all sorts of stuff, but just don't start a nuclear, like a uranium or plutonium enrichment program.
	Just don't do it.
	And they got the deals.
	There's pictures of Blair in a tent with Gaddafi and stuff.
	And they did one with South Africa.
	But the thing is, sort of let them.
	The technical ability to make fissionable material will be beyond them.
	If they can't really maintain farms or any sort of agriculture...
	They don't even have electricity.
	Or running water anymore.
	They can't maintain electricity pylons.
	They're probably not going to be able to enrich uranium to a weapons-grade level.
	I mean, how do you know, Poe?
	Is there a scientific study proving that?
	It's just my gut.
	Okay, so not scientific.
	No, no, no.
	Anecdotal evidence.
	Yeah, anecdotal.
	Let's have a look at some of the race relations going on.
	And I found this interesting.
	So this guy, he's...
	I think he's the top guy in the police in KwaZulu-Natal, which is where all of the Zulus are, in the east of the country.
	And I'm going to play a short bit of this, just to hear what he's saying.
	Because in the current political climate in South Africa, this was quite impressive.
	I'm going to skip it ahead a little bit.
	Hang on.
	Where is it?
	I'm just going to get to about there.
	Okay.
	Our perpetrators, Premier.
	We felt we must put this light so that we can identify what is our problem.
	Because we need to analyze what is the problem.
	The problem we had, you forgive me on this, but this is not me talking, these are the stats.
	We have a problem with the black man in South Africa.
	We have a problem with the black man what?
	In South Africa.
	So he goes on to list, I'm not going to play the full video because I think a lot of people won't be able to pick up on the accent.
	Out of the 60,000 crimes in his district, 57,000 were black men, and presumably a minority of them were black women as well.
	So that's a pretty...
	And that's in the past five years as well.
	And so he's saying, like, listen, we can basically blame white people all we want, but the problem is us.
	So when the BBC was saying, oh, actually, it's black people who are victimised more than anybody else, imagine my shock.
	That it's black people doing the victimizing.
	This man understands per capita.
	This man knows how he'd feel if he didn't have breakfast this morning.
	Fair play to him.
	Honestly, for such a racialized country like South Africa, where it's so divisive, fair play to him for actually saying it.
	Yeah, credit to him.
	And the funny thing is that this guy is pretty beloved.
	There are loads of...
	Here's an article basically singing his praises about how he does such a good job, and I wasn't able to find a bad word about him, which is interesting.
	He's basically saying, listen, the problem isn't the white people, it's us.
	The one not-corrupt man in South Africa.
	And there are lots of posts here that have done quite well on X of people just praising him.
	they're at it again talking about just shooting criminals all the time, which is great.
	That's what you need to do.
	Loads of people saying he's cleaning up KwaZulu-Natal, taking down all the criminals.
	Every post I was able to see, and I looked for quite a while, was glowing with praise.
	And just to sort of hammer this home a little bit, I found a quote from him, and he says, It is up to God to judge the criminals for their barbaric actions.
	However, it is up to me to make sure that they meet him sooner than expected.
	That's a great line.
	That's great.
	If that came out of the mouth of a real badass sheriff from New Mexico or something, you'd be like, yeah, cool!
	Yeah, he's our guy!
	But clearly what's accidentally happened is this man has internalised whiteness.
	It's terrible to see the self-hating racism this man is projecting by protecting his communities.
	Is he our guy?
	He's like the online riot of South Africa.
	He needs to start making memes.
	He needs to start churning out memes of this guy.
	All he needs to do is do his job.
	And that's enough for us.
	What there is a lot of, though, is this sort of thing.
	There's a guy here talking about double standards.
	Remember, your tax money funds this organisation.
	And this guy says, you're no longer whites, you now are Neanderthals.
	Now you know your place.
	Human rights are for humans only.
	Oh, strong words.
	We see this a lot from people in South Africa.
	Here are some more people.
	White people are an inferior species to us.
	They have Neanderthal blood in them, which is true.
	It's great.
	That's a good thing.
	Where do you think I got this brow from?
	We are dealing with the weakest whites, which I don't think is even true either.
	White people are just below human beings.
	I mean, to describe the settlers and the boars as some of the weakest whites, no.
	It's the opposite.
	Absolutely not.
	They're the frontiersmen.
	They're living amongst very violent people that want them dead, and they're supposedly weak, apparently.
	You're negotiating with an animal, a wild dog.
	Says one of the most dysgenic people ever.
	I know.
	Look at them.
	The weakest whites in his...
	Look, his biceps are the same width as his forearms.
	But we're the weakest.
	Okay, fine.
	He's fed more by UNAid than he is by his own parents.
	As Survive the Jive, Tom Roussel points out here, someone needs to inform these gentlemen that if 2% Neanderthal DNA makes Europeans non-human, then them having up to 19% ghost species DNA doesn't exactly reinforce their argument.
	They are homo sapiens and we aren't.
	Which is true.
	And, uh, of course, there's...
	You don't have to make value judgements off of any of this.
	You mess with Survive the Jive at your peril.
	Oh yeah.
	Great stuff.
	He's going to dunk on you if you start talking about genetics.
	Yeah, he has all of the information at hand at all times.
	I don't know how he does it, but he does.
	But this is very true.
	We've talked about this before, haven't we?
	When we talked about the evolution of humanity, that there's this ghost species that exists in Africa and also there was some interbreeding between...
	Modern Homo sapiens in Africa, and also Homo erectus that preceded them as well.
	There's an overlapping period, and that could be traced.
	Well, it's just really, really complicated, isn't it?
	There's the old, now really out of date, out of Africa hypothesis, where there's Australopithecus, and there's like a single African mother from which everyone is descended, which is now, that's not the case.
	Yeah, there were hominids outside of Africa long before modern humans existed.
	We digress.
	As much as I'd like to go down that rabbit hole, I don't have the time.
	So let's have a look at what this is resulting in.
	Well, South Africans have to have massive gates in their house, in the middle of their house.
	This isn't their front door.
	This is a gate between, I think, their bedrooms from the rest of the house.
	So they had to turn their own home into a prison because of this sort of thing.
	And then, of course, if you point this out, The ADL will call you racist and obsessed with the white genocide that they put in quotation marks, but it's undeniably happening, let's be honest.
	And there are possible issues for the government in South Africa, thankfully.
	They've postponed their budget for the first time, because they're in a coalition government for the first time since the end of apartheid.
	And basically the pro-business DA, Democratic Alliance, And also some of the ANC itself have objected to a proposal to increase VAT by 2% to 17%, and this has basically scuppered their entire budget.
	And Ramaphosa here explicitly said about this crisis that budget fallouts are how governments collapse and brought up Germany.
	There are other examples as well, some in Africa.
	I think it was, where was it, Kenya, I think?
	Somewhere like that.
	I'm really stretching my memory here.
	But even he's acknowledged, listen, this is an existential threat to our government here.
	So it is entirely possible that if they don't come to terms on this budget, then the ANC could be out of power for the first time since 1994, which would be massive.
	Whether a worse party takes their place is difficult to say, but I would be quite surprised.
	But who knows?
	Who knows what the future holds?
	I don't really know anything about South African opposition, because my gut reaction to that was, good, the ANC have run that country absolutely into the ground, turned it into some sort of living nightmare.
	But, yeah, I don't know what would come next, though.
	It might be something even worse.
	There are some parties there that aren't as bad, but there's no clear frontrunner to my mind that would be...
	We haven't got one of those here, have we?
	That's true.
	To be fair, yeah.
	So, with that pointed out, let's have a look at just some of the decline that the ANC has overseen.
	I know we've covered some of this before, but just to refresh your memory, you look at 2010 versus 2023, it's obviously got worse.
	The decline from the apartheid era infrastructure is obvious.
	You see paved roads versus dirt roads.
	And I wonder why this is.
	Oh, here we know.
	Here we are.
	You can see how we know this, because they pickaxe up the road and sell it on.
	Because rather than having an actual real job, they just destroy their own infrastructure for their own short-term financial benefit.
	So they sell broken-up slabs of asphalt?
	Yes.
	To who?
	For what purpose?
	Is there much of a return on that?
	I don't think so.
	To my mind, that is a lot of hard work for something that's not only counterproductive but doesn't even pay that well.
	Classic workman.
	One guy doing stuff.
	Everybody else watches.
	He's never got the right kit for it either, has he?
	I've never seen that before.
	I have seen people dismantling electricity pylons for the steel.
	You've presaged me perfectly.
	But they're doing it even to tarmac.
	Oh my god, how short-sighted.
	They were taking oil out of electrical transformers to use it for cooking.
	Which, by the way, safety announcement, that's not a good idea.
	Yeah, that's not going to be healthy.
	But it's got to the point where even hospitals in Johannesburg, in the city of Johannesburg, are not able to maintain their electricity because before they were trying to insulate.
	This was from 2023. They were trying to insulate lots of hospitals from all of the power outages and making them exempt.
	But it's to the point now where lots of hospitals are not exempt from load shedding, as they call it, but actually it's just they don't have enough power to power the entire country because it's approaching being a complete failed state.
	And you can even see it in their education.
	Apparently 80% of grade 3 pupils still cannot read for meaning, as in they can't read and understand the meaning behind it.
	And I think it was only 17% possess the expected foundational knowledge and skills, and only 3% demonstrate advanced reading comprehension, which, if you want a functioning country, is not a good thing.
	I don't need to tell you that.
	It's obvious.
	In a modern economy, certainly.
	Because reading things is kind of important.
	Now does my statement about having the technical capability to run a uranium enrichment program start making a bit more sense?
	I agreed with you anyway.
	I'd like to see the kind of instructions they'd draw up for themselves if they can't read.
	If you hit the uranium really, really hard, you might split the atom with a hammer.
	That's not nuclear advice, by the way.
	Just to be clear.
	Uranium ore and a pickaxe is all you need.
	That's what they were trying to do.
	They weren't trying to dig up the roads.
	They'd put some uranium down and they were trying to set it off.
	That's what it must have been.
	Here are some South African government employees dealing with a flood.
	Here they are.
	Working hard.
	Wow.
	This reminds me of the African fire department, the fire services that we saw in that one video.
	Oh, where they were throwing rocks at the fire.
	And continually missing even the fire.
	They're throwing rocks at a fire they couldn't even hit, yeah.
	This is terrible.
	They're wasting their time, obviously.
	A bucket at a time and they're just pouring it off.
	It's a bit lethargic.
	Yeah, they're not exactly being impassioned.
	Also, why are they not using the bucket to scoop it into?
	That would be way quicker.
	Josh, Josh, this is government bloat.
	Although, if you just scooped it up, then those other two people would be unemployed.
	These are actually USAID employees, I think.
	Yeah, that would make sense, actually.
	The absolute...
	Reluctance to actually do some work.
	Do some hard work.
	I wonder why the Dutch and English settlers built civilisation in South Africa.
	I can't put my finger on it.
	Three jobs were made through that effort, right?
	Okay, GDP, the gains were immense.
	Line goes up.
	Yeah, the line went up, all is well.
	South Africa is winning as the line went up.
	Well, that's my update on South Africa.
	I'll be keeping an eye on it, and if anything else happens, I'll make sure to cover it, because it is very, very important, and I know we've made light of some of this, but the situation for the white minority in South Africa isn't anything to laugh about, and if you are in South Africa, my heart does go out to you.
	I'm not going to do the same thing as Elon, though.
	Yes, stay safe and know that there are people outside of South Africa that want to help you and are doing their best to have your back.
	We've got a few rumble rants.
	Okay.
	Is the UK going to have a reverse Boer War and help the whites break away from South Africa?
	I don't know.
	I would be surprised with Keir Starmer.
	I can't read that one, Ryan.
	Honestly, that kind of thing that's suggested there, that is, like, the one case where I'd actually be in favour of some kind of, like, military action is basically to save the Boers.
	Well, if anyone has a case for being a refugee...
	Yeah, exactly, right?
	To retake Rhodesia.
	That'd be one.
	To reinstall the Boer Republic, the Free Orange State or something.
	Give me Frontiers to reconquer, please.
	I was built to be on the Frontiers.
	Instead, I'm yapping.
	You can indeed.
	Would you like a mouse mat as well?
	I don't know.
	It should be fine, I think.
	It's going in raw.
	Okay, I thought we could talk a little bit about Salman Rushdie.
	What happened to Salman Rushdie?
	Because it was a few days ago now, best part of a week ago now, his attacker, his trial came to an end and he was convicted.
	He was found guilty of attempted murder and other things.
	But before I go on, I must...
	I've got orders from above to show our new magazine, The Islander.
	There it is.
	It's really good.
	Nice and thick feeling.
	It's not flimsy.
	Great people in there.
	It is really interesting.
	What, do I not sound insincere?
	No, it's good.
	What?
	No, it's great.
	You're doing a great job.
	Dr. Parvini, Paul Benjamin, Connor, Morgoth, Morgoth, Luca Johnson, genuinely great.
	Sounds like I'm being sarcastic now and I'm not being.
	It's good.
	Buy it.
	Buy it.
	It is legitimately good.
	Yeah.
	For the low, low price of £14.99.
	It's good value.
	It's good value.
	And they don't stick around either.
	Once they're gone, they're gone.
	So £14.99 for something that's going to stick with you forever.
	And also, you can support us by signing up to our website.
	But if you support us by buying our magazine, you not only get physical media that the internet cannot remove, you know, the government, but also, you know, it's a nice aesthetic thing.
	Put it on a shelf.
	Frame it.
	Why not?
	We might even kiss a copy for you.
	You don't know.
	You might get a kissed copy.
	We are demonetised by YouTube, so we kept going by subscriptions on the website, our merch store, and things like this.
	So thank you.
	Yeah, thank you for people that do give us money.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, Salman Rushdie, I'll mention, I'll start the story because a lot of people, perhaps younger people, might not be aware of him at all.
	You know, some Zoomers or people that are not British or American.
	I am some people.
	Really?
	You don't know much about him?
	I don't know much about him.
	I know that he wrote the Satanic Verses and that got him in trouble and they had a, was it a fatwa put on him?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's about the extent of my knowledge.
	Alright, so he's an Indian-born British citizen.
	I mean, he's Sir Salman Rushdie, he's got a knighthood, but he was Indian-born, Muslim, but an apostate, i.e.
	he...
	Left Islam.
	Now, that in and of itself is a death sentence.
	It's a tough gig, yeah.
	To be an apostate, it's just simply not allowed.
	But anyway, so it's a British, he wrote many, many books, novels, largely.
	And one he wrote back in, because he's old now, he's in his late 70s now.
	But back in 1988, he wrote The Satanic Verses, which is like a big 600-page thing, took him five years to write.
	And it's a novel, it's just a fictional story.
	And in that, there's some characters that are loosely based around the Archangel Gabriel and Muhammad.
	He's given them different names, but their parallels are really obvious.
	And in that, he has the character, the Muhammad character, getting instruction from the Archangel Gabriel, as is in the theology.
	But then instead of conveying the exact words that...
	The archangel said to him, he changes them slightly when he lets the rest of the world know.
	Okay, that's it.
	That's it.
	That's his crime.
	That's his blasphemy.
	So, okay, I mean, if you believe that the Quran is the exact unaltered, unalterable word of God, then suggesting something like that is blasphemous.
	Well, the following year, in 1989, the...
	The theocratic leader of Iran, the Ayatollah, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, which is a call to murder him.
	And anyone else connected to the publication of it.
	So, like, the Japanese translator was murdered.
	The Italian translator was very nearly murdered.
	The Norwegian publisher was shot at point-blank range and left for dead, but didn't actually die.
	He himself...
	Had many death threats.
	Even Christopher Hitchens, who's just his friend, got death threats.
	And for like nine, ten years, he was in full-blown hiding.
	And the British state had to pay full of that.
	In the end, in the end, the ayatollahs or the mullahs of Iran sort of formally ended the factoire.
	But that doesn't mean that there aren't still sort of militant fundamentalists who still wanted to see him dead or hurt, at least.
	He's already on their radar, isn't he?
	And so they see him as an enemy of Islam and then fair game for them to take out their anger.
	Well, as I say, I mean, even just being an apostate is enough.
	It is enough, almost.
	OK, so it was in the news.
	OK, that's what happened.
	But then back in 2022, so many, many years later, he was on stage doing a talk in America, in upstate New York somewhere.
	And this 27-year-old dude comes out of the crowd and stabs him 15 times real quick.
	It's like a proper sort of...
	Prison-style shanking.
	Just stabbed him in the neck, in the eye.
	Slit his throat.
	Stabbed him in the liver, on the kidney.
	He's got damage in his arms.
	His hand's a bit gimped up or whatever.
	It was really bad.
	He nearly died.
	He was in surgery for like eight hours or whatever.
	He lost an eye.
	One of his eyes is now gone.
	Shocking he lived.
	Yeah, right.
	It is, yeah.
	Yeah, because he was already in his mid-early 70s.
	He was very, very lucky, yeah.
	I mean...
	So that's what happened.
	And finally the guy finished his trial and was found guilty.
	Two years?
	Yeah.
	They got him on video doing it.
	Yeah, there was video of it.
	I mean, play this clip.
	You don't need any sound and it's not graphic.
	You don't see the actual stabbing.
	It's just to show that it actually happened.
	So don't worry, it's not actually graphic.
	So finally, when he was convicted just a few days ago now, and he hasn't been sentenced yet, but they expect he'll get loads, he'll get like 30 years maybe, or something like that.
	Because in America, there's one thing often they do do well.
	If you are convicted of something, they usually do hand down pretty decent sentences, custodial sentences, right?
	Often, not always, but...
	Sometimes, depending on the...
	Depending on the state, and depending on the judge, but they hand out...
	Life imprisonment without parole.
	A lot more than we do.
	A lot more than European countries do.
	We've only got a handful of people that have got that.
	A whole life sentence, we call it.
	No chance of parole.
	Whereas in some states in America anyway, they do it a fair bit.
	So anyway, that dude is going to go down.
	And when he was asked, they did an interview with him.
	I think the Washington Post.
	Or maybe the New York Post.
	One of the big papers did an interview with him over the phone from prison shortly after.
	And the obvious question, why did you do it?
	And he was like, well, because of the satanic verses and things.
	And they were like, have you read it?
	And he's like, no.
	And they're like, do you know much about Salman Rushdie and his life?
	And he's like, not really.
	I just know he's sort of, as far as I'm concerned, as an Islamist.
	And I know I need to kill him.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So...
	I mean, it wasn't even alive in 1988 or 1989 when it was first published and when the Facto was first issued.
	So, OK, I want to shine a little bit of a light on this, but it was in the news a bit, so you can just run through some of these links.
	The Independent did a bit.
	Free Speech Centre.
	Go to the next link.
	Got it.
	OK. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, BBC. So it was mentioned in the mainstream media.
	I'm not trying to say they completely blanked it.
	But they didn't make a big thing out of it.
	Yes, it's always interesting, isn't it, in the news, when they really push and highlight a story, they'll milk it for every tiny little detail.
	And sometimes it can be stories that the public's not interested in.
	I think that in a case like this, the reason that they're not putting it in the spotlight more is pretty obvious.
	It's that you can write a book that makes a very subtle criticism to a European eye, at least.
	Of Islam, perhaps.
	And for the rest of your life, you'll have to live in hiding.
	Which, of course, has happened to many people in Britain and elsewhere.
	That school teacher's still in hiding, isn't he?
	Well, it happens.
	It's not just this.
	The reason why Salman Rushdie, I think, is a case study is that he didn't even, you know, do the full burning of the Quran.
	Or anything like that.
	He didn't draw a picture.
	He didn't draw a picture.
	He didn't put bacon on the handle of a mosque.
	Which is a death sentence in the UK. Right.
	Yeah.
	So his quote-unquote crimes are really quite mine.
	His blaspheming was minimal.
	I mean, he wrote a novel.
	They were fictional characters.
	But there you go.
	And all these years later, all these years later, he's still sort of in fear for his life.
	Now, I don't agree with every single opinion I've ever heard Salman Rushdie say, not at all.
	But the point is, is that it highlights the spectre of fundamentalist or militant Islamism.
	And that in the West, in the Anglosphere, whatever you want to say, there's this mass project to just pretend it's not there, pretend it doesn't exist, pretend it's not happening.
	The Salman Rushdie assault.
	Attempted murder, rather.
	It's just something that happens.
	He sort of brought it on himself.
	In fact, that's one of the things that has been said.
	Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great, talked a bit about this.
	How various people would side with...
	This is an older version of the document.
	Anyway, other people would side with the Ayatollah.
	So he mentioned that the Pope at the time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head Rabbi of Israel, the head Cardinal of New York, someone like Hugh Trevor Roper, a historian, John Le Carrier, a novelist, they all sided with the Ayatollah, saying, look, it's not right or fair particularly that Salman Rushdie should be hiding in fear for his life.
	But he has done something wrong, though.
	He has offended...
	He's guilty of blasphemy.
	And obviously a lot of multiculturalists and globalists would also often go along with the same thing.
	It's like actually wagging a finger at Salman Rushdie for daring to blaspheme, for daring to offend the religious.
	I really, really dislike this sort of thing because it's a wonderful opportunity to show, listen, these people...
	We'll drive someone to the ends of the earth for very gentle criticism.
	And that shadow should live over anyone who isn't Islamic, right?
	Or perhaps even people who are Islamic that might want to leave.
	And rather than saying, okay, obviously this is bad, and having a pretty strong moral position, they're doing the cowardly thing and siding with the Ayatollah.
	And saying, you did a bad thing, even though they themselves don't believe in it.
	It can only be described as cowardice.
	Yeah, I mean, absolutely, yeah, moral cowardice, yeah.
	Or that they truly believe that blasphemy is more important than sort of the secular rule of law.
	You should be allowed to, in a free and open society, where there's freedom of expression, you should be allowed to criticise.
	Within reason, anything you want.
	I mean, they have a very different conception of law than we do.
	It's not secular.
	It's not supposed to be sort of equal rights for people.
	We know what their version of law is.
	Well, you remember the Danish cartoons when that came out?
	A long time ago now, I mean.
	I remember that being in the news cycle and the mainstream media will just get some cleric on.
	And he'd say, yeah, they shouldn't have done the cartoons, though.
	They shouldn't.
	They have done something wrong by depicting Mohammed or whatever.
	Or after Charlie Hebdo or something.
	So, yeah, the murders are terrible, but they brought it upon themselves.
	And then you'll find people of other faiths backing them up on that.
	Saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we condemn the bloodshed, but...
	Yeah.
	Well, the unfortunate thing is that you don't even have to have done Anything wrong.
	Not that I think, you know, criticising Islam is doing anything wrong in the first place.
	But you can just be walking down the street in Germany.
	You could be, you know, in Belgium or France or England.
	You could be in any one of these places and have done nothing to a Muslim and they will kill you just for the crime of not being one of them.
	You don't have to have done anything anymore.
	I think that...
	You can be a baby in a pram and a car hits you.
	In the middle of a market, right, yeah.
	I mean, Christopher Hitchens called it a challenge to civil society.
	He's putting it lightly, yeah.
	This sort of religious fundamentalism or militant Islam.
	It's antithetical to civil society, isn't it?
	An outrageous invasion.
	We have to put up with outrageous invasions and insults endlessly.
	He says it's impossible to imagine a greater affront to every value of free expression.
	It's partly horrifying and partly grotesque.
	Yeah.
	He said that the literal mind, i.e.
	someone like the Salman Rushdie attacker, the literal mind does not understand the ironic mind and in fact always sees it as a source of danger.
	You're not allowed to write a novel that someone like the Ayatollah considers to be blasphemous.
	You're not allowed to.
	The penalty is death.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	It's just barbaric, isn't it?
	That people allow this to happen as well and try and bend over backwards to justify it because of their own moral failings.
	And these people are still allowed to have a position in civil society and aren't laughed out of the room for being a pathetic coward.
	Not allowed to criticise it.
	If you do criticise Islam, it's just labelled as Islamophobia, isn't it?
	You might have all seen the clip of Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer sitting down and just both agreeing with each other.
	Yes, Islamophobia is a terrible scourge on our society and all that sort of thing.
	Well, I'm sure it was Islamophobia that carried out the Manchester Arena bombing, wasn't it?
	Or the 7-7 attacks.
	It was all Islamophobia that did that.
	Well, Christopher Hitchens called Islamophobia a word created by fascists, used by cowards to manipulate morons.
	It's quite...
	Too far off, yeah.
	Quite succinct.
	Anyway, the last link there, again, if we just let...
	A lot of our Christian viewers probably...
	I hate Christopher Hitchens, but I thought he was...
	Again, I don't agree with everything Christopher Hitchens said by any stretch of the imagination.
	I think he was wrong about the Iraq War and a number of things.
	But on this, he was super strong.
	On this sort of thing, he was super strong.
	If you go to the last link, and let's just watch this, and he's talking about Islamophobia.
	Back in 2009, he said this.
	This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you.
	Resist it while you still can, and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing.
	You will be told you can't complain, because you're Islamophobic.
	The term is already being introduced into the culture, as if it was an accusation of race hatred, for example, or bigotry, whereas it's only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion.
	Watch out for these symptoms.
	They are the symptoms of surrender.
	Very often ecumenically offered to you by men of God in other robes, Christian and Jewish and smarmy ecumenical, these are the ones who will hold open the gates for the barbarians.
	The barbarians never take a city till someone holds the gates open for them.
	And it's your own preachers who will do it for you and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you.
	Resist it while you can.
	Boom!
	C Hitch at his best.
	Wasn't wrong there, was he?
	Prophetic in many ways.
	Absolutely prophetic, yeah.
	Okay, that's the end of that.
	Okay, do we have any video comments, Samson?
	Oh, we've got two more rumble rants, and then do we have video comments, Samson?
	We can't hear you.
	I can't hear you over the sound of my islander, Samson.
	It's very noisy.
	Speak up.
	We do have some.
	We do have some.
	Rumble rents first.
	Samsung's just giving us the silent treatment.
	Go ahead, Bo.
	Oh, there we go.
	Okay.
	What's this?
	Okay.
	Ryan Hennigan.
	With a three in it.
	Okay.
	Ryan Hennigan says, Mohamed...
	I can't say that.
	I basically said it.
	I almost said it.
	After he said it.
	Oh, no.
	I can't say that.
	They're all that segment.
	Mohamed...
	He's alleged to have put seeds in his ears so when doves ate them and it looked like doves were whispering to him he used this to claim God spoke to him directly.
	I've never heard that.
	What a lunatic.
	It sounds like the Quran to be honest.
	The engaged few says when someone is given a life without parole sentence they should be put in a cell and the door should be bricked over.
	They used to call that Being walled up.
	That used to be a crime often for women that were adulterous.
	You'd get walled up.
	But that's quite a quick death, though, relatively.
	Well, yeah, at that point, that's just a waste of space and bricks.
	Just give them capital punishment if you're going to do that.
	Life without parole sentences.
	What's the point in clothing them and feeding them and just keeping them alive until they end up dying naturally?
	Just get it over with.
	Yeah, it wouldn't be a whole life sentence because you'd be dead within three or four days of dehydration, wouldn't you?
	Three day sentence.
	Yeah Yeah yeah Okay Bald Eagle 1787 says Honest question about the Islander Would you guys consider releasing an issue That contains all the previous Islanders in it Like Islander 10 contains the previous Nine also Or like an Almaniac or an annual I don't know.
	We're not really the people to ask.
	Send an email to the main email address and it'll get considered.
	I think what he's talking about there is called a book.
	Possibly a book that's just a compilation of all of the articles that have been published in it.
	Which sounds interesting.
	Yeah, maybe.
	I'd love for us to have a publishing arm releasing original stuff.
	But no, that's not for us.
	That's not for our ears.
	Not for my pay grade, I'm afraid.
	A hardback, big coffee table books at £149.99.
	A low, low price.
	A steal for £149.99.
	It'll be so hardback that you could bludgeon a home invader to death with it.
	It's actually a protective device.
	It doubles up.
	For our South African fans.
	Oh dear.
	Shall we watch the video comments?
	Of course.
	Monkeys at the Monkey Mountain in Japan.
	We saw this one yesterday.
	I'm happy to see it again.
	Always happy to see monkeys.
	You're a big fan of monkey news.
	I am, yeah.
	chimpanzee that.
	I'd be a bit scared of monkeys that big.
	I feel like their grip strength is better than mine.
	Like, if it did come out, if it was going berserk, it could rip my face off and there wouldn't be a great deal I could do about it.
	I reckon I could take a monkey.
	I feel like the monkey...
	They were big ones, though.
	They were, like, what?
	I could take a...
	Four foot tall.
	I'm basically a big monkey.
	I'll take a monkey.
	I think a monkey could have a mutual understanding with a person, though, because you see them sometimes...
	Mutual respect.
	You see them sometimes where they steal, like, someone's shoe or their phone and then they're like, come on.
	Pay up the food, and you hand them the food, and then they give you your item back and run away.
	They sort of understand what they're up to.
	Like a little one with a tail, like the one Ross had as a pet in Friends.
	That's okay, because I could pick that up and throw it, and it would be fine.
	Just rip it in two, it would be fine.
	But one that's like...
	Think about doing this to monkeys often.
	One that's like four foot tall and weighs like 150 pounds, and its forearms are more powerful than mine.
	Like, then I'll be a bit worried.
	Like a mandrill.
	And fire is worse than humans.
	I'll get working on the grip trainers.
	There you go.
	Do some bouldering.
	That'll give you some juicy forearms.
	And then you're ready to take that monkey bow.
	You're not one of those people that think you could take a bonobo or a chimp in a one-on-one...
	Not a chimp.
	I'm not insane.
	I'm not crazy.
	Even an adolescent chimp.
	I'll feed it a banana laced with some sort of thing that drugs it.
	And while it's asleep, I'll beat it.
	So you're being a sneaky, evil scientist about it.
	As expected.
	No, that's not allowed.
	I'm talking about a one-on-one...
	Bare knuckle boxing match.
	Bare knuckle, one at one to the death, unarmed, you versus a four foot chimp.
	Yeah, no chance.
	I'm not saying I'd enjoy it, but I'd give it a try.
	If it were boxing rules, I might win on points.
	Spites and clawing and eye gouging are all allowed.
	Oh, well, I feel like I don't really have the experience with that.
	Can I sneak a knife point into a steel toe boot?
	Unarmed, unarmed.
	Entirely.
	But surely if it's got claws and its teeth, that's an unfair advantage, like it's got weapons, so...
	You're allowed to use your teeth if you want.
	Yeah, but I've got human teeth.
	I know, yeah, exactly.
	This is the point I'm making.
	Anyway...
	Why don't I just shoot the monkey?
	Why don't I just shoot it?
	We've got some more Japan stuff here.
	We made tools for this, Beau.
	You're ridiculous.
	It's like a hot spring, isn't it?
	Yeah, it must be.
	I went to the geezers in Iceland when I went there ten years ago.
	They're really spectacular to see and you can feel the wave of heat coming from them.
	I'd recommend anybody to go and see them if you can.
	Just don't swim in them.
	No, do not swim in them, you will die.
	This one's for Bo and Dan.
	So unlike other RPGs that tend to take place in a specific time period, I'm writing my game to cover all time periods, and I'm breaking it up into three books, medieval, modern, and sci-fi.
	As it so happens, back in episode 1002, you guys inspired me to write a sci-fi campaign about defending the peaceful and wealthy Dantopia on Venus from the attacking Martian Dade Raiders.
	And in episode 1108, I've been compelled to write a gentleman spy campaign about infiltrating and stopping a tyrannical far-left government.
	With your permission, Yeah, of course.
	Don't even have to ask.
	I hope the Dade Raiders, the badass Dade Raiders, whooped those pussy willow venusites, Dan Tub venusites.
	There you go.
	I think that is a full seal of approval right there.
	Yeah, no, it sounds cool.
	Make it happen.
	Is that all?
	Okay.
	So, roleplay game.
	It's also rocket-propelled grenades, right?
	That's right, yeah.
	Okay.
	Don't want to get those mixed up.
	So I see RPG and I immediately go...
	Explosions.
	Rocket-propelled grenades, yeah.
	But no, okay, roleplay game.
	Okay, got it.
	No, he doesn't want to make a rocket-propelled grenade out of you and Dan.
	A four-dimensional rocket-propelled grenade?
	What would that be?
	That is a physics breakthrough and a half, isn't it?
	Anyway.
	I think that might end the world.
	Alright, so some of the comments from the website.
	Ewan Baker, The Left Wing Mind, here's a song for you.
	Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, Hitler's watching you.
	I should have sung it.
	I'm going to save that for our...
	Premium subscribers.
	Yeah, like so many others, we just have no leg to stand on.
	What's our bargaining chip here, lads?
	What have we got to do?
	Other than just keep throwing money at Ukraine to send its sons and daughters into the meat grinder.
	I mean, we do have a pretty good military, and we did give Ukraine the most money in Europe, so those are two things, I guess.
	But we've already done, you know, the giving of money, and you've got to sort of have terms.
	Yeah.
	I don't know whether we're going to get anything back.
	Alpha of the betas.
	Zelensky made peace talks illegal, so he can't really complain that Ukraine isn't in peace talks.
	People are in prison in Ukraine for proposing peace.
	Well, that is true.
	That was, I mean, the very famous case of Coach Redpill, Gonzalo Lira.
	Who died because he was against the Ukrainian effort in the Ukraine war.
	Now, I will say that was a very stupid thing of him to have done.
	What actually happened?
	Was he killed on a battlefield?
	How did he die?
	I think he was held in prison and mistreated and basically not given the right treatment to be able to continue living.
	He wasn't fed.
	He was tortured to death.
	I don't know if he was tortured.
	I can't say anything official.
	The most that I know is he was basically...
	Malnourished and died.
	So, pretty, pretty awful.
	A somewhere person says, it's not allowed to be 1938 until we return to 1938 house prices.
	That'd be nice, wouldn't it?
	Are we talking, like, Great Depression house prices?
	Or a functioning economy house prices.
	I'll take depression house prices.
	Yeah, it'll still be better.
	It'll still be better.
	Derek Power says, It's morbidly funny that the current clown world order thinks they are somehow not repeating the same mistakes made in 1938 regarding the sedate and land in Czechoslovakia.
	Looks like they're making a different kind of mistake, though.
	C'est la vie.
	Alright.
	So, Andrew Narog says, South Africa needs to be recognised as a nation unrepentantly hostile to Western interests and treated accordingly on the world stage.
	Yeah, well, the ANC, I think, are enemies of white people everywhere and need to be politically destroyed.
	It's interesting.
	If you see that South Africa offered in the UN the most vocal about having a pop at Israel about stealing people's land.
	It's like a bit rich, isn't it?
	Oh, yeah.
	Weren't they the one that put forward the UN resolution?
	It was, yeah.
	And they also put it forward in The Hague as well to declare Netanyahu a war criminal or something.
	They're trying to cozy up to the Bricks and the Russians, aren't they?
	More generally.
	And so that anything that hurts the US is good for them.
	Chad Kuala says, oh, calm down.
	I'm sure seizing complex modern farms from highly skilled experienced farmers and handing them over to whoever has the right political connections will be great for everyone.
	It worked out fine in Zimbabwe, after all.
	I mean, it's not like it caused an economic collapse or famine or anything.
	Oh, wait.
	Excellent sarcasm there.
	Very true.
	Hector X, Josh, you need to understand the Tartarians being oppressed by the white farmers.
	The fake British black royal family.
	The AI images.
	The Tartarians.
	It threw me off.
	I was just like, the Tartars?
	What?
	The steppe people?
	I can't believe it's fake black history.
	Captain Charlie the Beagle says, regarding the white farmers in South Africa, but I was told by Fraser Nelson that if...
	You were born in a country, you are no different to the natives, so South Africa's government are persecuting minority communities and should be condemned.
	Yeah, Fraser, condemn the ANC. You've heard it here first.
	You won't.
	Okay a few comments from my one Alpha of the Beta says The satanic verses is akin to Monty Python's life of Brian A very English absurdist religious satire The notable difference is Monty Python mocked the followers of Christ For being unchristian The satanic verses mocked Mohammed As a dishonourable self-serving liar Right Yeah So it's a much worse punishment.
	Okay.
	Baron Von Warhawk said...
	It is a sad day when the creators of South Park have more moral backbone than the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury when it comes to Islamic terror.
	Yeah, I think South Park have actually depicted Mohammed.
	They have.
	Well, they tried to, or they did, in the original edit, but then Comedy Network, at the last minute, forced them to black it off.
	Oh yeah, because Comedy Network said, we don't want to be murdered.
	We don't want to get Charlie Hebdo'd.
	That's an understandable fit.
	Bloody liberals.
	Don't want to be murmured, soft and flabby liberals.
	A somewhere person says, the Rushdie Fatwa was for effectively writing a what-if style novel, and I can't help but think that the UK government of today would either arrest him or hand him over to Iran rather than protect him.
	I'm very disappointed Le Carrier sided with the Ayatollah, especially given his background and the subject matter of his novels.
	It would be like saying he deserved it if the KGB came after him for making them seem incompetent, or because his cover was blown by the Cambridge Five.
	Right, yeah.
	John the Carrier wrote lots of espionage.
	I'm surprised as well that Hugh Trevor Roper decided to come in and be like, oh, it's terrible, but he basically brought it on himself.
	Why would you say that?
	Well, very, very eminent historian, but also like that Evans guy.
	What, Richard Che Evans?
	Like Richard Evans.
	My favourite historian.
	A court historian.
	A court historian.
	So he will toe the line.
	Yeah.
	That's a bit like what Hugh Trevor Roper was.
	I mean, Hugh Trevor Roper was embarrassed ultimately, wasn't he?
	Because there was this fake set of Hitler diaries.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	And he put his reputation on the line saying they're real.
	And then they were shown scientifically that they could not be real.
	Yeah.
	And other historians, which we shouldn't name, had been able to just flip through them and say, no, none of this makes sense and the dates don't add up, so this isn't real.
	Or just scientifically, though, like, this ink didn't exist in the 40s, or whatever.
	Or this paper, whatever it was, did not exist then, so it cannot be authentic.
	Anyway, he was shown to be...
	he got embarrassed a bit, he had a rope in the end, but anyway.
	Well, that is all we've got time for.
	I hope you enjoyed it.
	Make sure to tune in same time again tomorrow.
	You know what to do once you're done watching.

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