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May 12, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1162

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	Hello, everyone.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Load Seaters.
	Today is Monday, the 12th of May, 2025, and this is episode 1162.
	I'm your host, Elias, and I'm joined today by Stephen Wolff and by Firas Modad.
	Hello.
	And welcome both to the team.
	Stephen, you're with us for some time.
	Firas, it's not your first.
	No, this is the first time I prepare a segment, though.
	It's your first time you're preparing a segment, and you're going to be with us, and I'm sure you have lots of good things on the pipeline.
	Thank you.
	I've heard some things.
	Check them out.
	Be on guard.
	Thank you.
	We're looking forward to it.
	Thank you.
	So we are going to talk about Trump giving refugee status to white South Africans, very Brexity things, and we're going to ask whether Catholicism can save the West.
	I'm sure we're going to have a very great discussion on this.
	Right, so let's talk about South Africa and U.S. relations.
	The Trump administration granted refugee status to white South Africans, and the left is on life support.
	And I want to say that the left has acted in particularly shameful ways, and I want to call them out, and I think that they are deeply hypocritical, morally complacent, and they are actually turning a blind eye to really horrendous rhetoric, rhetoric that is...
	Genocidal in the making, but also they're turning a blind eye to the terrible practices which very often have victims.
	And lots of them are disproportionately white.
	So what happened?
	We need to give some context about it because this is a subject that we have talked about it before.
	Josh has done several segments about it and has done an interview which we are going to talk about with Ernst von Zyl.
	Let me show it to you here.
	Definitely check it out.
	They were talking about the fate of South Africa.
	And you can find it on our website.
	Go and check it out.
	So this is a topic that we have spoken about before, but we need to address several people and maybe they don't know the context.
	So I'm going to give you some of the context here.
	South Africa is governed by the ANC party for about 30 years.
	There's the party of Nelson Mandela, which came with great promises of liberation, but it looks like everything is worse.
	I don't think that this is...
	I don't think anyone can really say that South Africa is in a better position than it was 30 years ago.
	It's not particularly controversial.
	Basic things, electricity, security, trains, the value of the currency.
	On all of these details, they're just doing a horrific job managing their country.
	Yes, and it's declined periodically, and not only that, the impact that it has on nations around there that was reliant at one stage upon the largest economic power, it slipped behind countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, which are growing because they're freer.
	Exactly, and they say that on every metric, South Africa has gone backward.
	Education, health.
	Employment, everything seems to be going downhill.
	And they are saying that the ANC party had the support of the majority of South Africans for almost 30 years, but last May, I think, the support has dwindled.
	It has become lower than 50, and there is a kind of lack of governance.
	And this has led the ANC party to try to sort of...
	Pick a segment of the population and blame everything on that segment of the population.
	And there are several parties, especially, we are going to talk also about the EFF, led by Julius Malema, who are openly calling and chanting, kill the boar, kill the white man.
	Which are things that shouldn't be, we shouldn't turn a blind eye to them.
	We should constantly talk about them.
	Because they are essentially pro-genocide rhetoric.
	That's how it works.
	Are they the two main parties at the moment?
	There used to be a few more than them, if I remember rightly.
	But they've now risen to effectively be the two main political parties opposing each other.
	Because one was supposed to be a splinter group of the other, wasn't it?
	So the EFF is a splinter of the ANC.
	And then there are two other major parties representing the parliament.
	Well, they can never beat the ANC.
	And they can never beat the ANC and the EFF together.
	And what the EFF does is that it sets out a far more extreme position that the ANC then must meet.
	Remember, you don't have to win politically.
	You don't have to win the election.
	You just have to make the ruling party implement your agenda.
	It's like coalitions and coalition governments like now with the CDU, CSU in Germany and the SPD.
	Somehow the SPD is on the government yet again.
	Yes, somehow.
	A few months ago, Cyril Ramaphosa, the leader of the ANC, signed a very controversial bill, the land seizure law, which calls for expropriation of land without compensation, which effectively means there are no property rights.
	And if there are no property rights, people's lives become incredibly more precarious.
	Imagine being in a country where you are...
	The minority.
	And you suddenly have the government being able to come and tell you, I can confiscate everything you have.
	Good luck.
	Yep.
	Well, that sounds like they did it next door in Zimbabwe.
	They did exactly the same.
	Yes, it's not exactly unheard of.
	It's not a theoretical possibility.
	It's a very live possibility.
	So Donald Trump took issue with it and he made a post in Truth Social saying South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly.
	This is a bad situation that the radical left media doesn't want to so much as mention.
	A massive human rights violation, at a minimum, is happening for all to see.
	The United States won't stand for it.
	We will act.
	Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed.
	And in reaction to Trump, Cyril Ramaphosa here talks about approaching Iran and Russia for a nuclear deal.
	So, I don't know, Firas, do you have a comment about the wider geopolitical...
	The angle of the conversation.
	Yeah, so I think about it this way.
	With what's happening in the Red Sea and with the United States unable to get the Red Sea shipping lanes open again without a deal with the Houthi, it becomes even more important to make sure that the Cape of Good Hope route is available and is open.
	And now with the ANC saying that they're going to draw closer to Iran and Russia and they're already extremely close to China, It becomes a problem to lose this prime geopolitical real estate.
	And so if there's a situation where there's talk of Cape independence or something of that sort, you can argue very convincingly that the strategic interests of the West require it to defend an independent Cape and to support an independent Cape against essentially China, Russia and Iran.
	Now, with Russia, you might get a reconciliation, but...
	This is the kind of consequence of us starting to try and mess geopolitically with what is perceived now as the two largest enemies, Russia and China.
	Russia is simply the gateway to China.
	As one security service in the UK mentioned to me, it says, Stephen, we've always disliked Russia.
	England has disliked Russia since the 1600s.
	But we never really saw them as a major threat.
	What they are is a threat if they're a friend to China.
	So by weakening Russia, we can then prepare our legitimate...
	of been aware of this for a long time.
	They were aware of it financially in the markets.
	They're aware about it economically, the way they've expanded outwards.
	So when you get dictators like this who are ready to butcher white people over land and use excuses...
	All we're doing is giving these people an opportunity to fall into the arms of those because we're making it explicit now.
	And someone over the weekend who's living in northern Pakistan said it's China using their weapons through the Pakistani military to test them out against French military airplanes so that we can see this.
	And they're becoming a friend in that region.
	So we're now dividing the world.
	Into this potential...
	Not just that.
	The bigger danger is this.
	The more pressure is placed on unnatural allies of China, like Russia and Iran, who are stuck with China rather than China, the stronger the Chinese become.
	So if you want to be clever about it, create distance between Russia and China.
	And you can't make both of an enemy at the same time.
	No, you can't.
	Sorry.
	Let us continue.
	So here we have Julius Malema openly calling for the killing of the boer.
	It's not the ACDC song.
	He's literally talking about killing boers and farmers.
	Now...
	To my mind, this is just incitement to violence.
	This is the rhetoric that accompanies the demonization of white people.
	And whenever groups are demonized by rhetoric, that rhetoric also is seen as justifying the violation of their rights.
	So this should be taken seriously.
	We have here a thread by Visegrad for Julius Malema, if you want to check out.
	It's really interesting.
	And here we need to say also that there are more, even more, race laws right now than there were during the apartheid high times.
	We have here from the Free Market Foundation this article.
	Definitely check it out.
	And these laws now are mostly anti-white.
	They're anti-white, not mostly.
	So it looks like the left is trying to create a narrative according to which every criticism of South Africa constitutes far-right extremism and racism.
	Whereas, in fact, it looks like the regime that is governing South Africa is even more racist.
	Right, so what happened?
	Now we're fast-forwarding to today.
	So we have here the first white South Africans boarding the plane for U.S. under the Trump refugee plan.
	This is an article by Reuters Today, which you can tell that the person who wrote it isn't particularly happy about it.
	And they're saying here that Trump's offer of asylum to white South Africans, especially Afrikaners, the group with the longest history among white settlers, In South Africa, it coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs that have dogged domestic politics since the end of white minority rule.
	And as I say here, the granting of...
	Refugee status towards South Africans, who have remained by far the most privileged race since apartheid ended 30 years ago, has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities who say...
	The Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.
	So why are they not, in this particular case, looking at the definition of the UN Refugee Convention and assessing that people are asylum applicants if they fear terror and abuse politically and materially on their side of things because they're white, which we clearly see if someone says, kill the boar.
	They are the Boer.
	That's a particular individual case that's saying about an individual group.
	We know that there's been a rise in violence in South Africa against white people.
	We know that people have been killed.
	We've seen that on there.
	So that is a legitimate class of individuals.
	Whereas those within this article that they're talking about, the non-white refugee admissions, particularly the 200,000 to 350,000 a month that are going up there through Biden, were economic migrants of which Indians...
	I mean, this is from India.
	We're the third largest group of people going through that southern border.
	They're all economic migrants.
	They're not fleeing terror in the same way.
	In the minds of the Reuters author, if you are European, you are by definition privileged.
	Yes.
	And this racial hierarchy that they've created...
	Is deeply symptomatic of the way that wokes invent a new holy victim for themselves.
	Because they miss Christianity, they insist on creating new holy victims.
	And for them, they've decided that rather than the holy victim being Christ, it must be the so-called oppressed.
	Now, in the case of South Africa, you constantly see attacks by South Africans against Zimbabweans or against other foreigners in South Africa.
	Absolutely.
	And you see them obviously against whites, but that doesn't fit their religious dogma.
	And so they can't see it and they can't recognize it.
	And they must insist, therefore, that this isn't a legitimate claim of asylum.
	It's built in.
	And then there's something else that must be said, which is it's totally fair to expect migrants and refugees to be prioritized based on their ability to assimilate into the host country.
	There's nothing wrong with saying that.
	It's perfectly normal.
	But to their minds, no.
	That's a violation of their religious beliefs.
	The point is that I think that...
	I phrase it in terms of ideology.
	I think the core of the ideology of these people is that there can be no such thing as a white person who is a victim of racism.
	These are the people who have been educated in the Ivy League universities that have been pushing.
	Not necessarily, not just the Ivy Leagues, but they have been educated in the universities who have been pushing the critical race theory stuff, which demonizes white people.
	It's not the colorblind 90s.
	If they really were to truly look at a philosophical and intellectual argument, they would be looking at the poor white South Africans who were living in the estates, the working class, the poverty class, that got worse.
	after the change and the increase of the ANC in power.
	They've been isolated, and they're the ones who should really be clearly looking for a way out through asylum into the US.
	But they'd equally be looking at the poor across the rest of Europe who are white, or whatever.
	They're the ones who are suffering.
	Look at their historical context.
	People like my grandfather, who was a crofter, had to wheel things across Manchester, collecting things and trying to sell it.
	Before that, his parents were working in the factory.
	And also, completely absolving.
	The rulers of South Africa of any responsibility for the mess that they're in.
	As in, why is South Africa in a much worse economic state today than it was at the time that apartheid ended?
	Well, it's still the white people's fault.
	But what about the ANC?
	Does it take any responsibility for the corruption, for the mismanagement, for the economic policies, for the socialism, for the explosion in welfare?
	Absolutely not.
	Why?
	Why was communism there still killing 20-odd million people?
	It wasn't the fault of poor old Stalin.
	He was such a lovely man.
	He just really had to suffer from the czars before all those hundreds of years in which he didn't have the opportunity to rectify the impoverishment in this country, so he had to kill them.
	This is really integral to wokeness because wokeness separates the population to oppressed and oppressors, and whoever is named an oppressed can do no wrong.
	They have been targeted as oppressors.
	Anything that they do is wrong, and no one should speak about them because they can't be victims.
	And if anyone insists that they can be victims of racism, but also of bad policies, that's a far-right conspiracy, as far as the left is concerned, which is ridiculous.
	So South Africa here criticized the U.S. as trying to interfere with its constitutional democracy.
	And they are talking about this move as being a politically motivated.
	I think that this is just ridiculous.
	Trump responded by describing Afrikaners as victims of racial discrimination and that, as you can guess, violates the tenets of the woke.
	Ideology.
	Doesn't the South African Constitution say that racist laws are illegal unless they serve the cause of racial justice?
	Yes.
	Something ridiculous, some kind of ridiculous.
	I wasn't aware of that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's something interesting.
	That's how social justice is being weaponized in order to promote the special interests.
	Racism is illegal unless it's against the right people.
	Exactly.
	Yes.
	Unless it's against the racism I don't like, in which case racism is fine.
	Fine, that's perfectly okay.
	Legal racism.
	And that's embedded in the Constitution.
	And that's embedded in the Constitution.
	I'm going to have to look that light up.
	And that Constitution was praised by the UN and by all the expert classes as being incredibly fair and so on.
	And I want to show you some reactions and I think they fit the power.
	The pattern we're talking about perfectly.
	So here we have someone called Kim Heller next saying, Nelson Mandela extended the hand of reconciliation to white South Africans after we committed acts of inhumanity against black South Africans, and we have failed the humanity test.
	We have largely remained unrepentant and racist.
	I want to say that this is textbook ecophobia.
	Ecophobia is the...
	Hatred of one civilization.
	There's a great book by Benedict Beckel on it, who I have interviewed multiple times.
	This is really tied to wokeness in a way, because it shows how, and according to that theory, towards the end of some civilizations, basically every civilization, there is a tendency to identify with others and constantly view their own people as bad.
	And as guilty and as the worst thing ever.
	It is portrayed as a virtue.
	It is portrayed as a virtue within that theory to say bad things about you.
	But also this is deeply hypocritical because it completely robs people of agency.
	We're looking at it.
	It's made very clear in the word we.
	Yes.
	We.
	It's not trust.
	We remain unrepentant and racist.
	So the framing here is a framing of original sin.
	Absolutely.
	The framing here is a framing of original sin, and that's the only way to make sense of it.
	It's essentially a Christian heresy where Christian charity is extended to extremes towards rivals and is denied to friends.
	And that's the essence of heresy, really.
	We have here from Blue Sky someone called John Cryer saying, Trump has been a racist for decades.
	As he violently expels legal immigrants of color, he invites white refugees from South Africa.
	I think this is a perfect response because they are using racism yet again.
	Why?
	Because Trump wants to grant refugee status to people who are victims of racist policies.
	There's no other way about it.
	I mean, I don't know who John Cryer is.
	I mean, certainly Peter Creel there.
	That line there, every white South African is racist.
	Every white Englishman is racist.
	Every racist is a Brexiteer.
	You heard that line when through the campaign.
	It's every.
	It's all of one colour.
	You can only be one.
	And if you happen to be like me, Peter Creel, a white person, I must flagellate myself by...
	Throwing one of those irons that they have in Iran across my back to prosecute myself on my knees to them.
	This is a dream.
	There's another one saying here, make no mistake, Trump is bringing those Afrikaners here to be violent extremists just like how they were in South Africa.
	Stay vigilant, I think.
	This is just ridiculous.
	So instead of the KKK, it's going to be the AAA.
	Incredible.
	Here we have Dr. Alison Wills giving us yet another delusional take.
	White South Africans should not come to America.
	We don't need any more racist people.
	We're full to the brim.
	We don't need any more white people.
	Sorry.
	Open brackets.
	Hold on.
	If you go back to that one, she says black people cannot be racist.
	Yes.
	I think that comes to the essential religious element of it.
	That's right.
	The perversity is this.
	Original sin is ascribed to every single human being.
	We all carry the burden of original sin.
	In the woke heresy, some groups do and some groups don't.
	There are pure groups and there are dirty groups.
	That's why wokeness invariably results on a morally complacent two-tier system.
	Yes.
	And that's what it justifies.
	In this case, it is weaponized against white people.
	In every case, pretty much.
	And sometimes against Asians.
	Yes.
	Asians are seen as white adjacent and therefore equally guilty of white supremacy.
	Same with Jews.
	Anyone from Israel.
	Same with Jews.
	Same with Jews.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Right.
	And here we have yet another one.
	Colin Robinson saying, I don't want any new white people from South Africa in my town.
	I'm racist.
	Racist.
	You can't even spell, Colin.
	Yeah, I think that's a...
	Yeah, there you go.
	That's not even your image.
	Maybe that's a trolling one.
	Right, so definitely check out the interview Josh did with Ernst von Zyl about the fate of South Africa.
	And it's really important, and we will go back to the issue, because it looks like South Africa is close to the end point of what this ridiculous critical race theory is doing in the West.
	And we don't want to emulate this.
	We shouldn't emulate this.
	Right, so let's go to the, read the comments.
	OPHUK.
	Well, I can't read this out loud.
	I can't read this out loud.
	Please don't, stop with the Fed hosting.
	We can't read some comments out loud.
	Right.
	So, are we going to talk about very Brexity things now?
	Yeah, no, this is this.
	In a way, one likes to say the phrase shocking, but it just generally isn't anymore.
	I think we've got to a stage where most of us are surprised if this doesn't happen on a daily basis.
	Huge amount of interest over the weekend for many people in the press, if everyone's seen it, about this 71-year-old pensioner, Julian Fawkes.
	This is the individual here.
	Julian is from Gillingham in Kent.
	And during the course of the past few months, six officers from the Kent Police Force piled onto his house.
	Camera footage capturing him and arresting him for a free speech attack.
	The idea that this 71-year-old, 69, I think he was at the time this was happening, was a danger to society.
	Look at him.
	I can see the muscles there.
	He clearly has archetypal tattoos of Nazis all over him, guns behind him, etc., etc.
	He's really a massive threat that requires...
	Six burly police officers turning up at his house and arresting him for a tweet.
	He also had some suspicious literature.
	Oh, no, we're going to come to that.
	So I just want to give the basic story on there.
	As we run through this, they ran through his belongings, including all his personal pictures about his daughter who died, killed by a drunk driver, hit and run whilst on holiday in Ibiza, and all that one of the officers said is, ah, that's sad.
	I mean, I'm sorry, but for first of all, any of those six officers just turning around saying, ah, that's sad, should be holding their heads in shame for the utter disgrace that they have for filing through an individual's memory and images of their daughter who'd been killed.
	That's a personal thing for someone who's got children.
	And this is from a body cam that he got from his own Freedom of Information requests and GDPR requests that he got.
	He was searched.
	Then they took him to the Kent Police Station, where he admitted a caution for a breach of...
	I think at the time, it's not very clear, but I suspect it was Malicious Communications.
	I don't know which section that they had him on.
	He said at the time he admitted it because he was frightened he wouldn't be able to go and see his remaining daughter in Australia and have an impact.
	The interesting point about this chap is that he actually worked as a police officer for 10 years in the same station as most of these in there.
	And that is generally...
	The crux of it at this stage.
	So I think one of the things I put here next is that this, what is it that he actually said?
	And this is it.
	So Swayla Braveman had put up a tweet complaining about the hate marches that were going on and calling those anti-Semites at the time.
	And it was very clear that some of the people were chanting for Hamas, down with Israel, down with Jews, and some of that language was clearly anti-Semitic.
	This individual, Mr Ethical, whoever he was, said, call me an anti-Semite, I will sue you.
	And Julian Fuchs had been talking about...
	A particular incident in Dagestan in Russia where individuals had stormed a plane to pull Jews off that plane.
	And he was saying it was this language and what happened in the hate marches, clearly I can read it as that, is one step away from storming Heathrow looking for Jewish arrivals.
	So for me, that is saying that someone hates Jews and he was being pro- The Jewish community and supporting their rights to live and exist.
	I can see that in there.
	That is not what the police said.
	They actually said that he was being anti-Semitic.
	And that's one of the reasons why they were looking into him.
	Now...
	They're that thick, are they?
	Yeah.
	I mean, clearly are.
	But I'm going to...
	Point to who the thickos are in this because it all links into my current campaign against our security services and people involved in them.
	They are either that thick or they're deeply malicious themselves as individuals and their kind of internal souls, in my view, are becoming darkened by every day that they're working in these institutions if they're willing to seek out individuals like this.
	And I'm trying to find the clip, if it's there, of...
	I thought there was a video on here That you could actually see.
	It may well be in this, where you do it.
	And I want to play it because there is a clip in here about looking at his books.
	Here we go.
	Is that turning on?
	If they think that they're quite safe, they can just sit at home and maybe just knock out a little tweet that they think is a bit edgy or whatever.
	We can stop there.
	If I can get that.
	Look at that book.
	That is a Brexit book, The Demise of Free Speech.
	I mean, I particularly read it.
	I may still have it on my own library.
	But I'm not sure whether you clearly hear what is said by the police officer, but we've got quotes of what it is.
	Of the climate out there at the moment.
	She says to her colleague, ooh, look at this.
	It's a very Brexity thing.
	As though this amounted to the dangerous individual.
	And then they turned around to other books that he had, including The Death of Europe, and said, look at this.
	This is a form of extremism for having that book on his shelf.
	I can't understand how they are saying that they went to investigate him for...
	An anti-Semitic comment, which, I mean, there are endless anti-Semitic comments you will make, but they cited also a book by Douglas Murray who isn't exactly against Israel.
	No, he's not exactly against Israel, but he is a Brexiteer and he's got language about how the world could change so badly that doesn't fit into our agenda.
	But it's a danger.
	This man is a danger because he's got a book on freedom connected to leaving the European Union and he's got books on immigration.
	And this is deeply concerning about what is in the mindset of those police officers at that time.
	What is the training that the College of Police are giving them?
	What is it they're saying about malicious communications to fit into that particular act that they go away and say that this is so dangerous and then they pull him off?
	Obviously, as we're scrolling down, you've got here Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, saying it's completely unacceptable.
	And my point about it is looking at this as not just the material, And what is said, and the whole scenario, because he's not the first.
	We've had Alison Pearson.
	We've had others arrested for tweets, really.
	And we've led us to J.D. Vance saying Britain is no longer a free country because of that.
	But who is it?
	It's doing it.
	And one of the points that I looked at from reading through the articles, and we talked about it in coming down here, was that it said that...
	The Kent police here had been seen only by 26 times.
	26 times.
	26 people.
	It wasn't the individual I expected to have complained about this, which is the individual that he was replying to.
	No.
	The X had not been reported by the public.
	It was reported by a specialist MET unit, usually focused on terrorism and extremism.
	And this is where I think we've now delved into something much deeper, much darker, and much more dangerous.
	So I had to have a look into finding out who they were and who it is, and this is the organisation that's involved in it.
	This was the specific group within the counter-terrorism policing within the Met.
	It's counter-terrorism demand.
	They're the ones now who are looking at the levels of threat, and you see in the corner there we have a current level threat of substantial in the UK.
	For terrorism.
	To justify their jobs, but they're too weak to do anything about jihadi risks.
	Yes.
	And so instead, they try to focus on a 71-year-old guy.
	Yeah, reading a Brexity book.
	On, what's her name, Caroline Farrow.
	Yes.
	On a few other types of this sort, who are clearly not any kind of physical threat to anyone.
	Nope.
	In any shape, way, or form.
	But...
	They can't do anything about the physical threats, and they were too cowardly to stop Salman Abdi because they thought that that might be racist.
	That's right.
	Absolutely.
	I love how this links to the South Africa story because it sort of shows you how...
	It's a pattern.
	Yes.
	And it shows you an ideology.
	It's more than a pattern.
	Yes.
	It's a system of beliefs.
	It's an ideology that's deeply embedded.
	Yeah.
	Into the psyche of the leadership of this country, the actual leadership, not the elected leadership, and of the West in general.
	And it's horrific.
	It is horrific how people who are employed by the counterterrorism policing, they go...
	Okay, quite legitimately.
	I want to stop people dying in a bomb in Manchester.
	God, good on you.
	Well done.
	I'm behind you every minute of the day, if only you'd actually arrest the people who were about to do it, instead of a 71-year-old.
	But you're sitting there, looking at this tweet, looking at who it is, having to identify where this person lives, working out he's a 69-year-old man, and you're going to yourself, hmm, let's have a glance down here.
	Is he a man found with 3D printing firearm manual sentencing for terrorism offences?
	No, he's not one of them.
	Is he a former soldier jailing over spying for Iran?
	No, he's not one of them.
	What about a Russian spying operation?
	Is he going to give our secrets out to Ruskies?
	No, he's not one of them.
	He reads a Brexit book.
	My God, arrest him now.
	After they went to his book.
	After they went to his house, though.
	Because it's not that the accusation...
	No, I appreciate that.
	It's not that if they went to the House on the pretense that this is a Brexiteer.
	They went to the House on the pretense of anti-Semitism, which is weird because there are lots of anti-Semitic comments that they do nothing about.
	But also there's the issue of free speech.
	There is the issue of free speech, we've got that, but there would also, being the super counter-terrorism policing they are, no doubt it would have not just crossed their minds just to scroll upon his feed.
	Maybe just look up and see what he actually says, many of us have done, and say, nope, doesn't seem anything there, but no...
	Clearly is at the top of the list to join this special array of individuals and groups of people as a mass terrorist for Britain.
	And, of course, the reaction is we've seen it in Alison Pearson.
	It's not new.
	These individuals were involved in doing this and then identifying which police force has to go to your home.
	Alison Pearson had a claim against her.
	They then apologised.
	Then they didn't apologise.
	Then they apologised again.
	Then they said we don't know if it's right.
	Then they said it's wrong.
	Then an independent organisation said they should have actually charged her with an NCH.
	They are just not sure about what to do when they're up against people like her immediately.
	Yes.
	And get this.
	But...
	We'd have not really known about Mr Fuchs if it wasn't for the Free Speech Union.
	And Toby Young, who hates to be called Lord Toby Young, I have to admit, he's said that many times.
	His organisation is growing enormously, and it shouldn't have to.
	He's now got 29,000 members.
	I think they've got five permanent lawyers.
	They've got 200 cases on the go across the country protecting people like Julian Fuchs.
	And if they had not come and supported him, then the police would not have backed off.
	No.
	And that's what's terrifying.
	Yeah.
	It's just not acceptable in our world on free speech or anything else that an individual like that should be I think that this is really important and what they are doing at the Free Speech Union is literally God's work because a lot of people want free speech for themselves but not for others and it's important to uphold free speech because...
	If we don't uphold free speech, we are giving the illusion that the state is going to do everything for us.
	But it's not going to do this.
	It's essentially being lazy.
	It's outsourcing responsibility that we have as citizens to speak our minds and think freely.
	Look, I take a slightly different view.
	I think every state has a dogma and will try to protect its dogma.
	I think what we should recognize is that the police are enforcing the state's dogma.
	Depends how you mean that they're going to enforce the dogma.
	Well, in this case, through threats of prison or actual placing people in prison.
	We saw it with the Southport incident where they pretended that there was a massive far-right conspiracy and they locked people up for Facebook posts.
	but you never hear about people being locked up for pro-Palestinian posts or pro-Palestinian positions.
	Not that I'd want them to do so, but there is a state dogma that is being enforced.
	And it's the nature of the state to have a dogma and to have a set of beliefs.
	And we should just be honest about that.
	I agree with you on this.
	The question is how restrictive they are.
	Quite.
	Absolutely.
	There are some people who want to literally ban every criticism.
	The left will not be satisfied until they have total control.
	The left will not be satisfied until they're back in the days of communist land again when they have a few people.
	This is their nature.
	And the problem is there's a depth of thought.
	In previous incarnations of my life, I've met senior police officers whose sole goal is that we need to protect the public and the way that we need to protect the public is to give me more and more weapons on the street.
	I want my police officer all to be armed.
	I want to have more legislation to be able to lock people up and keep them locked up for a long period of time.
	So they have this determination in their psychology that they are the determinants.
	Yes.
	The determinants of what is right and wrong in this country.
	And they pretend that it's the politicians and the people that want that.
	But they lost policing by consensus decades ago.
	Now it's policing by coercion.
	It's no longer a question of consent.
	It's a very naked enforcement of a...
	Dogma adopted by a tiny minority of people but has gained disproportionate power through control of the institutions.
	And what I find deeply upsetting is because the vast majority of people...
	That are working within the police, between the criminal justice system and the CPS, are honest, decent individuals who really want to have the whole proper crimes of individuals sought out and dealt with.
	Whether it's a rape, a burglary, whether it's someone committing violent assaults as I was just seeing in the streets here in Swindon before I arrived today and what I saw in Paddington last week.
	It seems to be the eruption of violence at normal parts of the day now.
	Those people are being dragged into it unwittingly and unkindly for them by a small minority of individuals.
	The committed minority is always more effective than the complacent majority.
	And there must be a criticism leveled at the public in the West.
	Please accept it from me as an outsider.
	The public has become very complacent because it's lost its sense of history and belonging and identity.
	The Western public doesn't know what it is anymore.
	It doesn't understand its own legacy.
	It doesn't understand its own identity.
	It doesn't understand its own dogma that underpins its assumptions.
	And that has resulted in this minority being able to push against an open door using all kinds of nasty tactics without facing consequences.
	A more aware public wouldn't have allowed things to get so far.
	But the rot is old and we're experiencing the climax of it now as a result of this loss of respect.
	And I get that, and I understand, and I deeply feel that many in our country have just forgotten who we are and what we are.
	But I also understand that through history, for example, myself as a student of the Peterloo massacres in Manchester, where I was from, the same individuals that took charge of the murder of individuals, children and all, in Peterloo, just because they were attending a freedom of speech event, we'd call it now but really a whole act of saying that women should be participating in society.
	All of them were massacred but then they also had the same kind of police as it was then in those terms and judges that sentenced individuals for those same of acts in a similar way to do that those individuals existed then I just think like you say that kind of characterization of those individuals is spread further down yes and there's no fight back yes There's no defence of the individuals within the institutions.
	And we have to rely on free speech unions.
	And then an apology came, obviously, as a consequence of that.
	But it's not a fulsome apology, as we'd expect.
	He did ring him up, and he said, look, I apologise for it, for this.
	And I think this was in the Jewish Chronicle.
	And he just simply says that, I'm sorry.
	And then you have that.
	But I look at this and I go, this is a really interesting article by Sam Ashworth Hayes.
	Actually, in some ways, it's following on what you've just been saying for us.
	It's talking about how the raids over social media is showing a country no longer at ease with itself.
	And it's actually now using the police to determine what is fair between groups of individuals.
	Yes.
	Rather than policing by consent, they're looking at who's the biggest group.
	Who's the most vocal?
	Who's the most violent?
	And we're saying we'll leave them alone.
	Yes.
	And who's the one that's most amenable?
	Who's the softest?
	Who's the easiest to attack put in prison on an opposing group who might have a differing of opinion?
	The 71-year-old, let's arrest him.
	And that is not an acceptable element for our society.
	No.
	And I think we're working on this as a basis, looking over here.
	Do we really, I mean, in your views now, I've been listening to some podcasts from, like, on the other side, who say that we're not in a two-tier policing system.
	It's actually just us really defending the rights of liberalism in here.
	I think that's just straightforwardly false.
	The ideology of the current state is wokeness, wokeness invariably results.
	The two-tier society, the very structure of the ideology says, in order to address historic injustices, we need to give affirmative action and we need to help the oppressed.
	So this is what they are literally saying.
	This is just hidden in plain sight.
	More than affirmative action, we need to...
	Punish the descendants of people who are supposed to have wronged other groups.
	So it's more than that.
	And I failed to see how this guy was a threat to liberalism or how Alison Pearson is a threat to liberalism.
	I failed to see it too.
	The pretense of liberalism is that the organs of the state are ideologically neutral and should be ideologically neutral.
	We're seeing the exact opposite.
	I don't agree with this, but we'll have lots of time where we discuss this.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	But we're seeing a complete lack of neutrality.
	On the part of the organs of the state.
	Tommy Robinson is in isolation, but Axel Rudabadenka, whatever his last name is...
	He's free to throw boiling water.
	And so is the brother of the Manchester bomber, and so are numerous others.
	You see Connolly, who does a tweet, is still locked up and not even given her rights under law that enable her to actually go out and see her family when they're ill or sick or dying.
	You see this...
	Time and time and time and again.
	The state has a dogma.
	Every state will have a dogma.
	The pretense of neutrality isn't there.
	And I agree.
	I'm looking at that, and what we're saying flows very clearly, I think, to that paragraph there, which he says, as Britain has become more diverse, the state has reordered itself around this new reality.
	Nation-states, homogenous and governed as such, slowly neat into a cultural and institutional framework that allow for luxuries such as policing of consent of a singular community.
	The incentives given by this model are very perverse.
	Yeah, no, no, go ahead.
	To be honest, I want to say that I think that basically this is anarcho-tyranny because they are saying, well, look at the...
	I can't understand exactly what it is that they go after here, so I can't understand exactly what the dogma is, but I agree with you that there is one in this case.
	I don't know exactly what they went after, but they did seem to go after a man that couldn't defend himself in a way.
	Yes.
	And they understood that there would be no...
	They thought that there was going to be no backlash.
	Yes.
	In a way that they thought that there would be a backlash if they investigated the grooming gangs.
	Yes.
	Because of the number of times that there was no backlash.
	They assumed that this time would be no different.
	And I think...
	What's happening is, you know, I've recently been in meetings with people saying, well, okay, we've watched what's happened on the left.
	They've organized with Hope Not Hate.
	They've organized the LGBT movement around one organization that's infiltrated different businesses to have a particular agenda.
	We've seen what's happened with the Black Lives Matter movement when we saw a black individual who looked as though he was a criminal.
	Then we'd suddenly say, he died.
	We can all defend itself for a political void.
	Why are we not doing the same?
	And I think we are beginning to get there.
	I've seen it on different organisations.
	Free Speech Union is obviously a very important part of that movement to say, no, we need to stand up in exactly the same way.
	A movement that suggests different think tanks that work together, different voices that work together, organisations that fight back.
	Because otherwise, as this article suggests, we might get to where David Betts is saying, Explicitly organized our country to be split, fractionalized, polarized that could lead to a civil conflict.
	That's the nature of diverse societies.
	In a diverse society, all politics is identity politics.
	Because all politics involves a question of identity.
	When we say we're in politics, we're pursuing the common good.
	Well, what's common if you have different identities?
	And what's good if you have different values?
	It becomes impossible to define a common good outside of a particular identity.
	So it stops being about common good.
	It starts being about good for us.
	And there are many different us's in a diverse society.
	And that's what's happening in Britain.
	And now what you're seeing is that throughout the West, the Europeans are becoming aware again that they're a separate identity and a separate group.
	And the real risk is that this will turn completely Nietzschean and much more dangerous.
	And that common good, going back in history, we obviously had King Alfred that decided he needed to bring...
	Christianity is the common good to unite England.
	We eventually had to make the Vikings, who were opposed to that, eventually join into that.
	We saw that going across Europe when we created a common good which related to certain values and principles, common law principles.
	What I get with the liberals and those of the liberal views of the Alistair Campbells of this world is that for some reason they think that the us, the many groups...
	Can unite themselves around just the symbols of the House of Commons.
	Yes.
	They can unite themselves just the fact they live in England and we have a vote.
	Well, his friend Rory Stewart should have taught him how well that worked in Iraq.
	He should have been able to explain things to him, but Rory Stewart is sort of too blinkered to be able to explain anything to anyone.
	And this is where we're all breaking down in all the different scenarios with South Africa in this.
	I think I'm just going to whip through a couple of these looking at the timing levels we've got here.
	So that was where Sam was saying we're terrified of revolt and free speech crackdowns like this won't save them.
	I want to just very quickly say this is a long-term plan.
	In some ways.
	Maybe born out of the kind of initial Race Relations Act of 1965, which was quite broad, in a sense, in that it was just looking around and saying, we shouldn't allow people not to have jobs just because of different colour or different religions.
	And I think it was like the classic liberalism that we had, about the fairness.
	But the language that went within that was the base.
	The basic point of which has been built on by various legislations thereafter.
	I mean, I think I've got a couple of screenshots here.
	We've led us to the Malicious Communications Act.
	Now, you've had these various iterations starting from then, and we've had them literally every five to eight years of a new piece of Race Relations Acts, Human Rights Acts.
	And now, communication acts in the late 1970s, early 80s, to the Tony Blair's Malicious Communications Act 1988, which has now been extended upon and applied through the College of Policing.
	So you make the idea, you send an electronic message that conveys indecent, grossly offensive, threatening material or information.
	Now, it's not just that.
	It's offensive.
	It's not grossly offensive.
	It's simply offensive.
	And in law, as a lawyer, grossly offensive had a distinct meaning.
	It was quite extreme.
	It was quite severe, what you had to say.
	But the principle of being offended was still there.
	Through what we saw early on in the police officer saying a very Brexit-y thing, it's any offence that was there now.
	Now, on here, Suela Braverman.
	It comes out, like many others, and says it's an outrageous attack demonstrating the serious crisis facing freedom of speech in the UK.
	We live in dangerous times when you face a knock on the door for the police for speaking the truth.
	Law-abiding men shouldn't be investigated.
	Was she in government at any point?
	Yes, she was.
	And indeed, she was the Home Secretary.
	And she says she tried to get rid of NCHIs and all this legislation.
	But they too were in power.
	She allowed it to happen.
	She was in a government for 14 years that is now with Chris Philips and everybody else saying that it's gone too far.
	And yet they were there.
	But I want people to kind of close your eyes.
	Remove Swayla Braverman from that.
	Remove the fact of the words in the UK and put GDR.
	Russia.
	Czechoslovakia.
	Poland.
	Hungary.
	It was the same language there that would have been said about anyone under those communist rules.
	And now we're using the same phraseology.
	When you face a knock on the door for the police for speaking the truth in the UK.
	Yep.
	And how?
	I entered law.
	Because I genuinely believe that we had a common law system that was to enable ourselves to imprison those and capture those who have committed serious crimes.
	But we had this underlying principle of freedom of speech, the ability not just to be able to enter your home for the sake of it.
	How did I go from just 20, 30 years ago of studying law to becoming a barrister to get into a situation where today I'm looking at language being used in my country?
	Against those I opposed in communist East.
	You became just as atheist as the communist East.
	And that's it.
	That's what happened.
	It was the explosion of atheism and unbelief that has allowed this, in a real sense, because to have any...
	Free speech is not the principle.
	The principle is the right to speak the truth freely.
	Or at least your best guess at the truth.
	Yes.
	This is why there are libel laws and free speech.
	If you say something thinking that it's true, that should be a defense.
	If you say something that is true, that is a defense.
	Under the system, it isn't.
	And the reason is because the state has become God, filling the gap left by the godlessness of society.
	Or it just has found a way to approach...
	Arbitrariness, which is what lots of statists want.
	They want arbitrary rule.
	And what they found was that they could weaponize the harm principle that says physical harm should be penalized.
	And they say, okay, let's include the psychological one.
	The psychological one is a subjective category.
	It gives tremendous power to those who have the power to interpret the law.
	But it can adjudicate in any way.
	It isn't arbitrary.
	It is.
	No, it's highly selective.
	Your average sermon in a decent mosque should result in five, ten police visits.
	And then you see the police saying, no, jihad has a spiritual meaning, not really.
	They weren't talking about armed jihad, as if they'd know the difference.
	So it's not arbitrary.
	If they are using double standards, isn't it arbitrary?
	No.
	Why?
	Because you have decided that there is a hierarchy and that in this hierarchy this group is protected and this group is targeted.
	Arbitrary implies that randomly Muslims will get a knock on the door because something in the Quran is offensive to Christians or to Jews.
	And they said it in public and therefore they'll receive punishment from the state.
	That never happens.
	And I suppose it's also looking at arbitrary would be whether it's a different chief of police in a particular area would say that personally is one that we should follow up guys.
	Let's go and look at that because it's just not right for us at this particular time.
	The point is though that they could use it against Muslims in the future as well.
	They could.
	Nothing prevents them from doing so?
	Nothing prevents them from doing so except for the mob and the threat of the mob.
	I'm talking about from a state perspective that they could.
	But anyway, we're hijunking your...
	No, no, no.
	And this is exactly what I wanted to bring out because it's really important when you talk about the mob.
	All I think about is what happened with Cicero in Rome.
	You know, at the time that Caesar wanted to take power, he used others to actually gear up the mob.
	To actually challenge him and challenge others that were opposed to Caesar, even though Caesar wasn't in power.
	He bided his time and then he managed to work his way through.
	The mob was able to be arbitrary about who they wanted, but it wasn't arbitrary at the top.
	They were using the legislation at that time to be able to select which groups and individuals they could take down.
	Of course, at that time, the individuals were much more powerful people in the Senate, there were the military, those backers who were financially...
	I think it's looking back at your point.
	We have this kind of ideology of individuals thinking, I'm in a nice, comfortable, safe place.
	I'm a white chief of police.
	I'm a white politician like Rory.
	I'm living in my nice house.
	I've got my nice money.
	All the rest of it.
	And all these poor white working class over there, they're not near me at the moment.
	But we do have others coming in.
	And they look like they've got their billionaires behind them.
	They've got their supporters coming in buying the businesses.
	I'll stick with them for the time being because it keeps me and my family comfortable.
	And I will work with them because they're the new future.
	Yeah.
	It's a sort of decision to rub the noses of the right and diversity and to benefit from that politically.
	Well, I'm going to try and finish off with two things.
	One is because this will annoy...
	The Left and the Wokes, because here we go.
	This was Malcolm X. I read a lot of Malcolm X when I was 17, 18, and 19. Malcolm X, William Dubois, all the rest of it.
	And he says here, this was an interesting point, when he was kind of having, I don't know whether it was a Damascene conversion completely, but he was starting to think differently.
	When you have to pass a law to make a man...
	Let me have a house.
	Or you have to pass a law to make a man to let me go to school.
	Or you pass a law to make a man walk down the street.
	You have to enforce that law.
	And you have to be living actually in a police state.
	It would take a police state in this country.
	Applies to South Africa today.
	But I've kind of looking at that saying, in many ways, that's where we are now.
	Yeah.
	Looking at this.
	So I kind of changed it.
	I had a play on it this morning.
	I was thinking about how I can turn it around.
	When you have to pass a law to make someone let me speak my mind, or you have to pass a law to make someone let me share my views online, or you have to pass a law to make someone let me express my beliefs in public, you have to enforce that law, and you'd be living in a police state.
	It would take a police state in this country to protect free speech through such laws.
	That is my interpretation of a Malcolm X phrase that he applied.
	The left won't like it, and certainly we shouldn't like it.
	And sadly, I feel that Mr. Fuchs is an example of something that will only get worse in here, unless we do have more free speech attacks and challenging them.
	Great.
	Okay, so let's go and read some comments.
	The hapsification.
	Don't worry, our alleged coke head leaders will save us.
	Sigilstone17 says, showing the population...
	Well, interesting.
	Right.
	So now we need to go to the third segment, and we will take some extra time to do this.
	Sure.
	So your first segment.
	Good luck.
	Thank you very much.
	So, on the back of this discussion, can the Catholic Church save the West?
	And I would argue here that really it is pretty much the only hope for saving the West.
	So you say that you want to be trad-based and conservative.
	Let's meet Mr. Louis de Bourbon, the Duke d 'Anjou, who is...
	The claimant to the throne of France.
	He wants to reverse the French Revolution.
	He wants to make France into a kingdom again.
	As far as I'm concerned, that's about as trad and based as it gets.
	And his initial reaction to the election of a new pope, it is with great joy that I learned of the election of the successor of St. Peter.
	I assure His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, of my greatest fidelity and my most fervent prayers.
	We saw some attacks on the Pope from people claiming to be trad-based and conservative themselves, and I wanted to just highlight that the most traditional and conservative live actor has a slightly different position.
	But before getting into that, it's worth understanding, well, why do we have a Pope and why do we have a papacy?
	We can go through the religious and spiritual arguments.
	This was the inheritance given to St. Peter by Jesus Christ, and there has always been a united church, and it is still the Catholic Church, but there is a little bit more to it.
	We've run the experiment.
	We've seen the outcome of different kinds of Christianity.
	And I think they've more or less hit a dead end.
	We had the first disagreement with Orthodoxy.
	With Orthodoxy, part of the disagreement was a bit about the conflict between the state and the church, the role of Caesar and the role of the church, with the Catholic Church asserting that it is an independent moral authority that gets to govern itself regardless of what temporal authorities want.
	Why is this important?
	Because when the temporal authority is also the moral authority, it will justify any action that it takes and claim that it is moral.
	Kind of like what the British state is doing, kind of like what communist states have done throughout time, what's happening in South Africa.
	The state says, what we're doing is right, everything that we do is right, we are the arbiters of right and wrong, and the Catholic Church is saying, no.
	There is a separate authority.
	As Pope Galatius put it, there are two authorities, a temporal and a spiritual, and the temporal would be wise to accept the authority of the spiritual over it, but it can't be imposed by force.
	And this is one of the arguments that was taken when we had three popes, Charlemagne, all that area where we're challenging whether a king had the ability to take over that view, another saying, nope, sorry, it is divisible.
	It is.
	One authority, indivisible, vested in the church.
	Meaning indivisible.
	You've got yours, and the church have ours.
	Exactly.
	So the church gets to appoint its own bishops, the church gets to decide on its own matters, and the pontiff is sovereign.
	The pope is sovereign, he governs the church, and nobody gets to interfere with him.
	Huge dispute throughout Christian history.
	The Orthodox took a slightly different view, in some cases elevating the role of Caesar or the Tsar to give him greater authority over the state and choosing to govern by councils and by kind of consensus rather than having a single head.
	And anyone who's been on a committee knows the dangers of...
	Yes.
	Governing in this way.
	But also the Orthodox countries have been surprisingly resistant to wokeness and all the...
	Because you didn't have to deal with Protestantism.
	No.
	Because wokeness is the direct descendant of the Protestant claim that everybody is his own moral authority and gets to decide based on his reading of the Scripture.
	We are going to talk about Protestants and the wonderful things that they have brought us.
	And even though Orthodoxy has had less problems with wokeness, we have seen the Orthodox Church take a not very solid view on abortion and a not very solid view on divorce.
	So there's been this...
	This discrepancy there.
	And what we've also seen is various incidents where really we've had the question of church autonomy become deeply linked with affairs of state.
	So with the Ukraine war, we saw a new split in the Orthodox Church where basically the Ukrainians decided that, no, we're going to set up our own church.
	And really there was no theological basis for that.
	None whatsoever.
	Totally political.
	Purely a political play.
	Purely political.
	Absolutely.
	And it's reflected in other areas.
	We saw some cases where there are allegations.
	Can't get this translated.
	Anyway, what it says is that the Ukrainians accuse Russian monks of participating in intelligence work against the state.
	Now, it's coming from the Ukrainians, so take it with a heavy, heavy grain of salt.
	But we've seen that this problem has really persisted.
	We look at the Protestants and we see, okay, what's going on there?
	And the answers are pretty shocking.
	The Episcopal Church has announced its new pride shield.
	Do we need to say anything about this?
	I'm just wondering which one in the top left is it?
	Is that supposed to be the Church of Christ?
	Is it an inverted cross, which could be like the devil?
	I don't understand it either.
	I'm trying to work it out.
	I have no idea what's going on there.
	Oh, there we go.
	It's the upper left blue corner of the Episcopal Church shield logo and incorporates elements of the traditional pride flag.
	Thank you for that.
	There we are.
	I mean...
	What is this?
	I don't know.
	I don't understand it.
	I know the trans and black colors.
	I know the...
	Like, why?
	I drove around the States for a couple of weeks, and pretty much every church had a gay pride flag.
	And it was just depressing.
	I mean, what do you stand for if you don't stand for a traditional family?
	And what's Christian about this?
	I don't get it.
	And how big is the Episcopal Church in the U.S.?
	It's one of the biggest.
	It's one of the biggest.
	The Baptists are, I think, the biggest.
	They will have all of that.
	The Baptists?
	Yeah, they'll have that.
	I never thought that, actually.
	They'll have that, too.
	You see it pretty much across the board with, basically, churches up and down the country having these flags.
	You see it with the Methodists.
	You see it with Evangelicals.
	You see it pretty much across the board.
	Evangelicals too.
	Some of them at least.
	Some of them at least.
	And then the other consequence of Protestantism is, okay, what are you standing on?
	Like, how do you guys decide when you disagree?
	Wouldn't you say though that...
	If we check it out, not just from an abstract point, because I get the discussions.
	From an abstract point, you could say, when people have a text and they say, this is the final authority in Christianity, go and interpret it, they could give all sorts of interpretation.
	And some of them are good, some of them are bad.
	And some people who see this and they think that this leads to particularly bad social outcomes are saying that we need to go back to the...
	Fewer people who are interpreting the Bible and their voice has a greater authority.
	More people reading the Bible, fewer people interpreting it, yes.
	Yeah, but wouldn't you say that if we check it out historically, Luther and the Protestants did have a point when they went against the Catholic Church of their time.
	So, for instance, let's talk about the selling of indulgences.
	Even then.
	Weren't there many people who were selling indulgences?
	Indulgences.
	Even for future sins.
	Clearly.
	With the blessing of the church.
	Indulgences were an important part of that time, but it wasn't the sole reason.
	I'm not saying it's the sole reason.
	So, of the theses of Luther, the church replied in detail.
	I think it was in the Council of Trent.
	Yes.
	And it made it clear that it never, as a church, condoned the selling of indulgences, but that certain bishops had.
	Yes.
	And if you go back in history, even during the Arian heresy...
	Which was perhaps one of the earliest heresies.
	There was a good number of bishops who sided with the Arians.
	So in the church, there is this weird complexity whereby the church has big disagreements internally.
	And these disagreements result in...
	Sometimes political conflict, sometimes theological disagreements, sometimes chaos.
	And then the church steps in and says, okay, now I have to say something about this.
	Here's the final opinion.
	You guys are right.
	You guys are wrong.
	That's how it works.
	So the sale of indulgences was happening, and it was wrong, but it was never condoned by the church, because the church teaches in all kinds of ways, and the main teaching, as you know, is through the magisterium.
	If something is in the magisterium of the church, that's it.
	It's there.
	It's never changing.
	That's the actual meaning of infallibility.
	It's not that Pope Francis doesn't make stupid political moves.
	It's that papal infallibility relates to fundamental church teachings that are unchangeable.
	So it was never within the church's magisterium that you could sell it, but you did have corrupt bishops.
	Back then, as you do now, As you have in the Lutheran Church, as you have in any institution where human beings are present.
	Supposedly more learned historical texts by some of our supposedly greatest historians, that they always concentrate on the bishops who are getting money for these indulgences and the so-called fighting of wars on the back of the indulgences, raising revenue from that, without actually looking into the detail.
	And in many ways, I find it interesting because you have to look yourself for the documentation, which is exactly what Lufo is saying.
	He's go off, read it yourself.
	But they're actually hiding those facts into the little notes where they don't really point out.
	those little aspects for us.
	Yep.
	Now, the Church of England is a strange example of the blending of an extreme form of Caesaro-Papism with a claim of orthodoxy.
	It had a claim of orthodoxy.
	We kind of see how it's going.
	They put a helter-skelter slide in Norwich Cathedral.
	They're celebrating their non-binary priests.
	I mean, look at this guy.
	And you have to ask yourself, well, you know, what do we conclude?
	I think what we conclude is this.
	We think of To the extent that we can know anything about politics and about religion, history is the experiment.
	We have to treat history as an experimental science.
	And this experiment has been run, and we've seen what are the alternatives to Catholicism.
	And they are national churches that splinter for political reasons, and they are absolute moral and mental chaos throughout the Protestant world.
	And they are essentially failure.
	So this is the context in which we Catholics think about the election of a new pope.
	We start with the fact that all kinds of other Christian ideas have been tried.
	Here we are today.
	What are we going to do?
	We have a new pope.
	The base trad thing to do, if you are of this mindset, It's to congratulate the new Pope, to pray for him, to welcome him, and to think with the Church.
	It doesn't mean that you don't disagree about anything, but it does mean that you are a loyal son of the Church, and your first duty is a duty of fealty for the entire establishment of the Church and its head.
	See, it's difficult.
	I was born, I brought up a Catholic.
	I went to a Catholic, former Catholic seminary school.
	I fervently supported Catholicism through school and through the beginning of my political career.
	But seeing how, having met the supporters of the Archbishop...
	Of London, our own Archbishop of Act of Leo Canterbury, here when I was talking about immigration way back in 2014-15, going up to London, going up to Victoria.
	And finding them being totally alongside all the images and pictures that you've set, that started to deeply concern me.
	And actually some of the statements from our previous popes that were trying to open it up in what they regarded and why the press are so supportive of a much more liberal view of things.
	I'm hoping to be opened up the mind that he is not, the current Pope Leo XIV is not one of them, and he's not going to follow the same lines.
	But it's hard not to say that it seems that they've lost their way of what seems tradition, and that they too, within the Catholic Church, is following on the lines of the Church of England and the Episcopals.
	So maybe, this is why I'm thinking very carefully about what you're saying.
	That's a fair question.
	Before I go into what we know about what the Pope actually said about immigration, we, under Francis, had a problem in the following sense.
	Firstly, Pope Francis was not an excellent communicator.
	Pope Benedict was, and he could parse his sentences and statements extremely carefully, whereas Pope Francis was more of a shooting-from-the-hip kind of guy.
	I've heard several people have said that he wasn't necessarily pro-mass migration the way many have portrayed it.
	The second problem is that the media, both left and right, will find whatever fits its narrative, blast it in a headline, tweet it, and then it just sort of explodes and it gives the impression that this is all that was said.
	And that happened with the LGBT stuff when Francis took...
	Conservative positions while also saying, you know, if somebody who's gay walks into church, don't begin by hectoring him and telling him how he's going to burn in hell.
	Don't start the conversation that way.
	Even though, yes, we accept that it's wrong and Pope Francis would say that it's a disordered tendency.
	So there were these issues where people cherry-picked what they wanted and spun a narrative.
	And most people took it uncritically, unfortunately.
	On immigration, Pope Francis said all the time that we should be welcoming towards migrants and that states have the right to decide what capacity they have.
	Well, I tried to find a number of papers when I started through the Rerums and Rerum Nostra and all the rest of it to find exactly that last sentence.
	Because when I was in the European Parliament, someone pushed one across exactly, said it was down to the states.
	Yes.
	But I've not been able to find it when you go on to the...
	I'll try to find something for you.
	If you can find it and show me that.
	Historically, I remember writing about it in 2015-16 and saying, this is exactly what the Catholic Church is saying, is that we should welcome people here and treat all people with dignity and respect.
	But the nation-state also has its ability to be able to say that we should control it because of the people living here, looking after their interests too.
	So the balance is with that.
	And I no longer can find that.
	Well, I'll see what I can find.
	Okay.
	But I very much remember seeing that and sort of...
	Hold on a second.
	This is what I was being told in the media.
	Yeah.
	And that was probably before I converted.
	Yes.
	But it struck me as quite important.
	And here, as to what Pope Leo is saying, it's pretty straightforward, if you ask me.
	I need to do something about the volume, but I don't know.
	Maybe.
	Samson, can the audience hear?
	Time and again, since his very first trip as Pope, when he went to this little community, and I-Thank you.
	So to summarize, it's, you know, someone who speaks clearly.
	It's a problem.
	The people keep on coming.
	The flows need to be stopped by addressing their causes.
	The first reading in the gospel make very clear a message which Pope Francis has given.
	Been hammering home time and again since his very first trip as Pope, when he went to this little community, an island in southern Italy, the town of Lampedusa, where all these immigrants continue to come.
	It's a huge problem, and it's a problem worldwide, not only in this country.
	There's got to be a way both to solve the problem, but also to treat people with respect.
	Every one of us, whether we were born in the United States of America or on the North Pole, we all are given that gift of being created, the image and likeness of God.
	And the day we forget that is the day we forget who we are.
	We forget who Christ has called us to be.
	Fair enough?
	That's the long and short of it.
	I don't think we can disagree, and certainly from my background, is that we all have to treat people with dignity and respect.
	I'm often questioned.
	How can you oppose the asylum seekers coming to this country?
	How can you oppose people being placed in houses?
	And actually, it's not a question of opposing them.
	It's not a question of looking at them without dignity and respect.
	I do want them to be able to live, as we all know, that most of them would prefer to live in their own homes, in their own areas, connected to their own families, except those that we know that are being pushed here for different reasons.
	And so that is the dignity.
	That's the respect.
	But dignity and respect is two ways.
	Absolutely.
	And so we should be looking at this as Catholics, as Christians, to be able to see how we can solve the problem that all humanity's lives can be improved, but not without the diminution of what will become the host state.
	So there is this tension that's always existed between the church and temporal authorities.
	Where the church tries to temper the worst tendencies of the temporal authority, which it should do, which it always should do.
	And the temporal authority says to the church, look, these are our resources and this is what we can do.
	And this dialogue is going to continue.
	But this dialogue is not like choosing a political party or a football team.
	Belonging to the church is fundamentally a spiritual matter.
	And it's got to do, if you don't want to think about it just spiritually, Which I really encourage you to do, to think about it spiritually.
	It's also got to do with recognizing what the West is.
	When we were talking about the extent to which liberty has been eroded in Britain, well, the bedrock of British liberty is partly its Christian faith.
	And the bedrock of any conception of liberty in the West is Christian.
	And it's the church that has fused together Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem in a way that It respects religion and the rights of God and respects the individual created in the image of God.
	And it's through this balance that you begin a process of restoration.
	And without that balance and without this sense of community that is fostered by the church, nothing is going to be saved.
	So when we say I'm critical of the West for having forgotten its legacy, that's exactly what I mean.
	You can't go into a medieval town, or a town that has existed from medieval times, and not see the imprint of Catholicism on that town.
	So how do you think then this Pope is going to try and improve and save ourselves?
	Well, firstly, he's an Augustinian.
	St. Augustine is the one who defended the crushing of the Donatist heresy, which claimed that any priest who was bad can't be a priest.
	And we know that the Pope has a confessor, partly because, like the rest of us, he's a sinner and he needs one.
	So that's a no-go.
	And St. Augustine supported using the temporal power of the state to end heresy because he understood the kind of civil conflict that that heresy had generated.
	And St. Augustine is also quite a systematic thinker, a very rigorous...
	Thinker.
	And we see it with this pope who's also not only a bachelor in mathematics, but also a master's and a doctorate in canon law.
	Meaning that we're going to get a pope who will speak clearly, and we are going to get a pope who thinks very carefully about theology and what he says.
	He's making every signal he could make to the traditional faction in the church to say, I'm on your side.
	Or at least I'm not hostile to you.
	He's a fan of the traditional Latin Mass, the old pre-1962 Mass.
	So that's always a pretty good sign.
	He took the name Leo XIV.
	Pope Leo was very hostile to Americanization.
	Not America, but making America into a new dogma, which is part of what we see in Britain today.
	Hostile to secularism and the idea that you can have politics separate from moral authority.
	So all of the signs that we're seeing so far are pretty strong.
	And even with a bad Pope, quote-unquote, I want to pull up here two quotations.
	One from G.K. Chesterton.
	I do believe in Christianity.
	And my impression is that a system must be divine, which has survived so much insane mismanagement.
	And people say Catholics don't have a sense of humor.
	I've not seen that one before, but that is actually quite fun.
	Is that really a chest?
	Yes, yes.
	Someone's pulled it out.
	Yes.
	And, you know, there is going to be some problems with the curia.
	Having three popes was a part of insane mismanagement.
	Having three popes was insane mismanagement.
	Having all of those schisms was insane mismanagement.
	And then, perhaps slightly more amusing, a quote around Napoleon.
	During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out, Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?
	The Cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully, Your Majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the Church for the last 1800 years.
	We have not succeeded and neither will you.
	Like it or not, the anchor of Western civilization is the Catholic Church.
	Being an active, loving participant from the inside is going to produce much better results Attacking from the outside.
	So this is what I would say.
	We obey the teaching authority of the church regardless of the Pope.
	If your problem with the church is the Pope, we obey the church regardless of the Pope.
	Because we believe that the gates of hell shall never triumph over her.
	We believe in this spiritually, with every fiber of our being, in our soul.
	And we know that it's true.
	And we know that there's no restoration without Catholicism.
	So if you want to be conservative, you're not going to be as conservative as Louis de Bourbon.
	Pray for the Pope.
	That's interesting.
	Challenge my thoughts on him.
	Nice.
	Okay, so we have a comment by OPHUK.
	I think I can read this.
	If I do see anything, Fadi, I'll stop.
	Okay, so he says, I didn't leave the church.
	The church left me.
	The last couple of popes have cared more about hearing praise from the wolves than taking care of their flock.
	They were bad shepherds.
	Look, even if you are to believe that, this still doesn't excuse leaving the church.
	It's not a football team.
	No.
	Okay, so that's a random name.
	Also, if Feras gets his own geopolitical program...
	I want him to wear historical hats, helmets, based on the region he's covering.
	Challenge accepted.
	Send me helmets, please.
	That's a random name.
	Again, thank you for the donation.
	Just wanted to congratulate...
	Steven and Firas on joining the Lotus Seaters.
	Really looking forward to seeing your perspectives and expertise regarding world events.
	Thank you.
	Sigilstone17 says, Oh, and check the talk page of Pope Leo's Wikipedia article if you want to laugh.
	The commie editors at Wikipedia were having a conniption fit trying to call him anything but American.
	Ramshack Lotus says, Please look into British Orthodoxy in their crusade against ecumenism.
	Okay, if there's anything you want to recommend, tweet it at me, please.
	Okay, and Sigilstone17 says, I want to congratulate the Vatican on their move to avoid Trump's tariffs by electing a Pope made in America.
	Okay.
	That is very, very good.
	Right, so let's go to the video comments, and we will take extra time to read comments from the website.
	I do like that one.
	Okay, so let's go.
	Good morning, Lotus Eaters.
	The high country's finally starting to open up.
	With a snow line at a bit over 3,600 feet, I thought that going back to the Alpine Lakes wilderness now that it's not buried with snow would be a good idea.
	It's dumping rain now, but the weather held out just enough to make for a good time.
	There's plenty of big trees on this trail as well.
	My backpack for scale on this guy.
	I bet when this tree fell in the forest, it made a sound.
	I'll send the pictures from the upper lakes tomorrow.
	Have a good one.
	I'm enjoying this chap.
	I have to admit a few that we've seen.
	Some beautiful sights.
	Absolutely stunning.
	Absolutely beautiful nature.
	Let's go to the next one.
	North America is incredible.
	North FC Zuma.
	Until in 2023, it reached nearly one million.
	That's about the population of Birmingham, our second largest city.
	That's not control.
	It's chaos.
	And look, they must answer for themselves.
	But I don't think that you can do something like that by accident.
	Sponsored by the Tony Blair Institute.
	Hilarious.
	It is.
	Amazing.
	I like the way he's mixed up those voices from different speeches.
	Nicely done.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Zesty King.
	Oh no.
	I thought you were going to do something else there.
	I thought you were going to do something else.
	Cruel, but funny.
	Cruel, but funny.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Okay, right.
	So we have the comments to go to.
	So Lord Nereva says, White South Africans are what genuine refugees look like.
	An entire ethnic group being systematically oppressed by the government they live under, who are in danger of their lives.
	Not Ahmed, who just came across the channel from Iraq because he has a human right to a slightly nicer house.
	Alpha of the beaters.
	By the way, Lord Nereva always...
	You give us great comments and thank you.
	Alpha of the Beatles.
	The Afrikaners have been in Africa since the 1600s when the first white South African refugees arrived in the US.
	We will live in a world where remigration based on race is a reality.
	Remigration is back on the menu.
	Look, South Africans made it to the...
	Whites made it to the Cape before...
	Blacks did.
	And people try to forget that.
	And now I think that the people who live in South Africa weren't involved in the previous conflicts that are regularly cited for white oppression.
	Also, Arizona Desert Rat.
	Is the South African president trying to buy or sell nuclear weapons?
	If the South African president is trying to buy, where is he getting the money from?
	If he's trying to sell, who would trust the quality of the weapon?
	Sophie Liv.
	They haven't got nuclear weapons in South Africa, have they?
	No, but they want to make him, don't they?
	The white regime did, and then they decommissioned their nuclear program, and they had had Israeli help for the nuclear program.
	Sophie Liv says, for me, the solution to this is pretty simple.
	Remove every single white person from South Africa for just one single year.
	See what they feel about it after that.
	And Arizona does a rat, but...
	Don't you all know white South Africans can be refugees?
	They're white.
	That's exactly what CRT people are saying.
	Stephen, do you want to read them, or do you want me to read for them?
	There's only three, so I'll...
	Isn't there?
	It looks like there's only three.
	Oh, there's actually a few more on there, so I will take author of the beaters.
	There are 30 daily arrests for speech crimes in the UK, and the police had every confidence that this one address would go under the radar, as thousands before, and thousands will do afterwards, I think you mean to say.
	An apology without condition or change of behaviour is meaningless.
	And I think that's mainly the point that we're trying to say, is that this is happening more regularly and that it wouldn't have been spotted without the free speech union and others that are going to try and pick this up.
	A friend of mine is a police officer, says ramshackalotta, open brackets, crone, close brackets.
	They don't know which side it is regarding Israel Palinstein.
	They don't know what river to see.
	And this is why I'm saying I'm saddened about the police officers, the ones that I know, is that they are the ones who are on the front line of this.
	College of policing teaching them.
	And we should be giving them every opportunity to do what they really entered the job to do, which is to police real crime.
	Omar Awad says, They'll toss you in jail for owning the wrong books, but they won't stop you buying them or tell you which ones.
	This isn't a cacistocracy or anarcho-tyranny.
	It's ruled by Reddit moderator in all his petty and vindictive glory.
	There are some really good ones here today.
	Garlic Goblin.
	Love the name.
	Absolutely.
	I'm loving that Garlic Goblin.
	Are you sure you're not a French Garlic Goblin?
	That might be a bit different.
	There we go.
	These police officers clearly possess intellects far too long to be trusted with the power that they wield.
	It's genuinely terrifying.
	That's a good comment.
	He went Garling Goblin mode.
	He went Garling Goblin mode.
	Roman Observer.
	The Strange Deaf of Europe.
	Brexity.
	1984.
	Brexity.
	Brave New World.
	Brexity.
	The Bible.
	Brexity.
	Yeah.
	And it goes on with burning of books, you know, back into German time.
	The illegal truth.
	How did the police obtain a search warrant for a tweet?
	Well, that's pretty easy now, to be honest.
	It's part and parcel of the process.
	And Matt D., I have 1984 on my bookshelf.
	Are you at risk?
	You are if you don't have Brave New World next to it and read both together.
	Otherwise, I'm coming onto your door to knock on it, quite frankly.
	Right, and Firas, do you want to read your comment?
	Sure.
	Baron Vaughan Warhawk, very appropriate.
	The Episcopal Church's new pride shield was disgusting to look at.
	Yes, a church should demonstrate no pride at all.
	Correct, as it's one of the seven deadly sins.
	It also shouldn't be inclusive, as only true Christians or those seeking redemption should be included in the church.
	You know, no.
	When we are commanded to go and make disciples of all the nations by Christ, I think I'll take that commandment seriously.
	Demonstrating pride flags proves that this church isn't truly Christian.
	Agreed.
	They care more about social justice than the word of God.
	Yep, that's pretty much it.
	I guess he missed those pride flags flying outside some Roman Catholic churches as well.
	Every Christian denomination is guilty of having heretics.
	Yes, there are some Catholic priests who speak in favor of LGBT.
	No, that is not the position of the Church.
	Yes, the Church can and should do more to discipline them.
	I hope that's a fair answer.
	If Catholicism is what will save the West, then why then do Catholic countries suffer from the exact same issues as Protestant countries?
	Because the...
	Fight with Protestantism has been won by the Protestants with the rise of the American Empire.
	But we as individuals are not the arbiters of truth.
	God is.
	Yep.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And on this note, we have run out of time and we are going to be together with you at 1pm tomorrow.
	Thank you very much, gentlemen.
	Thanks very much.
	And good afternoon.
	See you tomorrow.
	Good afternoon.

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