The Lotus Eaters #1360 dissects Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s global reach—El Mencho’s death sparked attacks on banks, airports, and civilians, exposing state corruption tied to presidents López Obrador and Scheinbaum. Shifting to Britain, it contrasts Reform UK’s coalition risks with Restore Britain’s push for policies like ancestry-based citizenship, warning Farage’s rhetoric risks empowering fringe groups while ignoring rape gang inquiries. The episode ties these themes to Turkey’s Aya Sophia conversion and Austria’s suppression of Sobieski’s legacy, questioning how wokeness and human rights regimes distort history—ultimately framing 2034 as a deadline for cultural and democratic reckoning if moderates fail to act. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Road Seaters episode 1360 for Monday the 23rd of February 2026.
I'm your host Luca joined today by excellent co-host Firas and Stelios.
And today we're going to be talking all about the cartels absolutely wreaking havoc in Mexico.
We're then going to be talking about how the media are basically gone, you know, they've all joined together, they've all called the banners and they're waging war on Restore, which was inevitable of course.
And then we're going to be talking about the cancellation of Poland's Theodon, one of the great heroes of Western civilization.
And it'll be charged in the fields of Palinor against the orc.
Sometimes known as Vienna.
And it should be a good history cultural segment, but also topical as well because of stuff going on in the news.
Before we get through the segments, though, let's just talk about the fact that Firas has had a Real Politique at three o'clock.
You're going to be talking all about the most recent developments with Iran.
Yep.
And also, I just wanted to draw people's attention to the fact that I've had two chronicles come out and not really been here to promote them.
So I just wanted to draw your attention to them because I'm really happy with them.
They're good work as far as I'm concerned.
One is Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
So if you don't want to have your understanding of this classic tale tainted by the recent film that's come out, you can always go over to my chronicles and I'll give you a more accurate reading of what Bronte meant with this classic piece of work.
And the other one is a wonderful conversation that I had with medievalist and head of the Pendragon Foundation Nathan Hood, where we talked all about the classic Arthurian tale Segawain and the Green Knight, which is a magnificent tale of fortitude, of faith, and you know, against temptation, and about what it means to be chivalric and to conduct your life with honor.
So if you're interested, we have those for you on the website.
They sound wonderful.
Jalisco New Generation Cartel Showdown00:15:31
So Mexico kicked off again.
And before explaining what happened, I thought it was worth going back and giving a bit of context.
This is the Jalisco New Generation cartel led by El Mencho, the man that we're going to be talking about today, or whose death triggered all kinds of events in Mexico today.
And this is just them showing off some of their capability in 2020.
So let's just have a look and see what kind of weapons and kit they have.
Armored vehicles, heavy machine guns, advanced personal rifles.
I think this one's got a grenade launcher at the bottom of it.
Yeah, that's a grenade launcher.
Another one with a grenade launcher.
You know, some kind of anti-tank weapon at the top of that vehicle.
So they are quite capable and quite serious, and they've been ridiculously violent for some time.
Worth reading a little segment here from 2003.
On a quiet spring night in Puebla, Mexico, a city characterized by the tranquil religious nature of its residents, Mexican Special Forces soldiers discreetly surrounded the home of Benjamin Arlando Felix.
At the time, he was the head of the Tijuana cartel, once considered the most powerful and dangerous drug trafficking organization in the world.
The soldiers rapidly entered his home, surprising him and his family as they were preparing for bed and took him without a single shot.
Yet the cartel remains alive, is undergoing a process of reorganization.
After Felix's arrest, the attorney general warned that new leaders would emerge to replace those who have been killed or arrested.
Such is the paradox of an increasingly prunitive and militarized drug policy coexisting with the enormous capacity of regeneration of drug trafficking organizations.
This is from 2003.
And they'd been fighting the cartels since 2000 when I think it was Vincente Fox who took over and decided that he was going to try to crush the cartels militarily.
Pretty much got nowhere with it.
I was going to say they've been fighting them since this time, and that fighting seems to only have been going in one direction.
It really has been favoring the cartels more than anyone, largely because of the corruption of the Mexican state.
Now, what happened yesterday was that the leader of one of the most important cartels, perhaps the most powerful cartel in the country, got killed.
And he got killed using American intelligence.
He was killed in his home, I think, in Tapalpa, Jalisco.
And the retaliation was pretty crazy.
They went across almost a dozen states, a third of the states of the country by the last count, where they burnt all kinds of property, attacked banks that are owned by the state, that are there to sort of, among other things, distribute pensions and pay salaries and things of that nature.
They attacked an airport, and you see people here running away.
That's also an international airport, I think, isn't it?
That's Guadalajara airport, basically.
Yes, exactly.
And they just went on a rampage there, shot up the place.
They did pretty much anything that they wanted to do, largely because nobody could stop them.
Burning vehicles, attacking civilian infrastructure, surrounding beaches where there were tourists, and told everybody that if you got out on the streets, we're going to kill you.
Just stay at home.
And as a result, in around a dozen states, the governors issued warnings saying, stay at home, don't you dare get out.
We have no idea what to do about this.
Now, a little bit about this guy's background.
He was an illegal migrant in the United States, arrested for being a thief, went back again, arrested on drug charges, three years in jail, sent back to Mexico.
What do you do after you get arrested twice in the U.S. and get sent back to Mexico?
You join the police.
So he joined the police, started an avocado business, joined a smaller cartel.
When the cartel's leadership was killed, he set off on his own and founded a new cartel, went to war with the Sinaloas, at the time the most powerful cartel in the country.
He says initially worked under the Sinaloa.
Yeah.
Initially worked for them and then he went to war against them.
Because as the Mexican government took out some of the leaderships of the older cartels, initially there was just a dozen, more smaller cartels sprang up and they went to war trying to figure out what to do and how to gain control of territory.
Essentially, this cartel is present on every continent except Antarctica now.
And it has branches in Romania and it has branches all over the Africa.
It has a presence in Asia.
It's pretty much everywhere.
And they, when their leader was killed, they pretty much sent an instruction to their special forces saying just go and wreak as much havoc as you can.
Around the world, in those other branches.
Throughout Mexico.
Right.
Throughout Mexico.
Throughout Mexico.
And it doesn't look like the Mexican state can do anything about this.
They seem to have no capability to deal with them.
They're just going around hunting the National Guard, attacking the military, attacking prisons and releasing their captives.
And they seem to have launched a full-on insurgency across the country.
So it's just Mexico is just a failed state.
Mexico is a failed state.
Mexico is a failed state.
And the Americans are saying that they provided the intelligence to do this.
But the question here arises whether it's that the state cannot do anything because it can't do, or whether it won't do because lots of the people in the state are being bribed by powerful mafia cartels.
Well, that's the thing, because you could say, for instance, that the same happened in El Salvador with Bukele.
There was this notion going around that it's just unfixable.
It's one of the worst and least safe places in the world.
And he fixed it.
Yeah.
I'm going to get to exactly that point as to what should be done about this and what is wrong with the Mexican state.
But here's just another video.
They took a fuel tanker, parked it in the middle of the road, shot the driver, and then set it on fire just to show that we can control anything that we want to control.
Downright terrorism.
Downright terrorism.
Attacking state banks, burning fuel stations, pretty much doing anything that they want to do.
I think it's also an issue of arbitrariness here.
It just says that you are never safe.
You're never comfortable.
Precisely.
Precisely.
Yes.
Just a reign of terror.
Yes.
Mexican reign of terror.
And the police are in on it because this is a phone call from the same guy to the police, giving the police orders and telling them to stand down.
And, you know, the alternative is that they get killed.
And the Mexican state is unable or unwilling to protect its police officers.
And the structure of Mexico, I think there's something like 40-something states, 30, 40 states in Mexico, which means that a lot of the police responds to the state authorities, meaning that there are a lot more people that you can corrupt and bribe, essentially.
Which is working to the advantage of the cartels.
And if you don't comply, you get this.
Here's the same cartel in 2025.
Oh, I remember covering that.
You remember that video where they just executed a candidate alive, a good one, because he was standing up to the cartels and saying that the president of Mexico, Gloria Scheinbaum, is complicit in helping the cartels, which is true.
And this is why, you know, this cartel is pretty much operating all over Mexico.
If they are, just a question on me from this, actually, because I'm no expert in the Mexican politics.
But if it was the case that this recent leader has just been killed by, you know, soldiers from the Mexican state, then why would she do that?
I'm not obviously.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What is the American pressure?
Right.
American pressure means that they have to hand over some scalps sometimes when they're told to.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's another question I have here because it seems to me that maybe I'm anticipating again the point that we are going to go to the towards the end.
Tell me if I did.
Sure.
But if we go back to the previous link.
Yep.
The assassination of this candidate.
Yes.
He was a candidate for mayor, not a mayor.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So that was incredibly terrific.
I remember it.
So they basically eliminate them before they can take power.
But that so that's the point.
You know, you have heard the saying that a lion isn't concerned with the opinions of sheep.
Yes.
So killing people is, in a sense, in this case, also the manifestation of an anxiety that these people could potentially do something.
Yes.
And that's why the police.
Yeah, they don't just go just do it out of nowhere.
You're no threat.
Because if you're a lion and you don't care about sheep.
Yes.
So basically anybody who is peacefully opposing them gets killed.
And that's why Mexico has this rate of politicians getting killed and of journalists getting killed whenever they cover the cartels.
And you couldn't even have local militias of just Mexican civilians, right?
It's not like America with Second Amendment where, well, we've got our guns.
It's like, okay, yeah, sure, you might have your guns, but they have armored cars and grenades.
So what can you realistically do?
Yeah, but also just I want to say something which is going to sound a bit, it may sound a bit crazy.
I don't focus so much on the psyops because people who usually do psyops online and they try to make videos of how powerful they are, they almost regularly suck at war.
Actually, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, these guys have a pretty good social media game.
And they are showing that they can back up their threats with actions.
And they do that regularly, and it's enabled by the Mexican state.
And the reason the Mexican state is in the condition that it is is because the former president who groomed Gloria Scheinbaum to be his successor, Amlo Lopez Obrador, was accused by the United States of taking money from the cartels.
And it was published across a range of media saying that people around him took something between two and four million dollars from the cartels.
And when you consider that this is a 50, 60 billion dollar business, this is chump change.
This is chump change for them.
And so they're able to use their financial resources to bribe the politicians.
Plus, the cartels are in every single business you can imagine.
So they're in fuel theft, obviously.
They're in all kinds of extortion businesses.
They are even in timeshares for holiday homes and things like that.
They extort money from pretty much anybody.
So they've diversified across a whole range of criminal activities.
They're even in avocados.
So when you buy an avocado and you think you're helping the environment, you might be helping a Mexican cartel, just FYI, in addition to destroying the environment because it requires the same amount of water.
With a lot of products, though.
With a lot of products.
Not just avocados.
So they've taken control of huge chunks of the Mexican economy and nobody can do anything about them at this stage.
Or this is the current perception.
And so you are stuck in this mess.
And it's worth mentioning here that some of this is as a result of the Ukraine war.
Because a local Mexican newspaper was quoting officials in Jalisco, in the state where this cartel is strongest, saying that their members, along with a bunch of Colombian drug traffickers and criminals, were being taken to Ukraine.
Sometimes they fight.
Sometimes they got training.
As mercenaries.
As mercenaries.
And one of the things that they learned to use is how to use drones.
But actually, I have some questions here.
What is the statement made here?
The statement being made here is a couple of things.
First, that because of the criminality that is so prevalent in Ukraine, they are working with other criminal groups.
Yeah, but that's just not just Ukraine.
It's just throughout the entire world.
Throughout the entire world, criminal groups work with each other.
In Ukraine, it's giving them a unique opportunity where they can access the modern battlefield, learn from it, get trained, and come back and do things like this, essentially, where they are using drones.
No, hold on.
This is the right one.
Here you see.
So look at this.
This is a drone controller in his hands.
He's piloting one drone in the air during the fight, during a gun battle.
And a second drone, you will see it in a second, is on the ground about to be deployed.
And so they have learned these military tactics.
They form these special forces units within the cartel, with one of them being called Delta.
Criminal Experiences Abroad00:05:06
I mean, yeah, but you frequently have this phenomenon where you have people who are fighting in wars, and then they are saying, well, the veteran pension isn't enough for me.
Let's go somewhere where more money is given.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
It's a sad phenomenon.
But in this case, in this case, criminal elements from Colombia and Mexico are going to Ukraine, gaining experience, and coming back with some of the equipment.
And given their connections to China, because they get their precursors mainly from China and Turkey and India, they also end up buying Chinese drones similar to the ones that are being used by the Russians and the Ukrainians.
Not yet the advanced stuff like a Shahad drone, but the quadcopter drones that you can fly around and drop bombs in the enemy, which are quite effective in this environment and very effective against personnel and vehicles, less effective against heavy fortifications.
So basically these guys have built an army in Mexico and they've shown that they can make a third of all states of the country shut down whenever they want to.
That's what's been demonstrated.
And because of Mexico's geographical position, this is destabilizing to both North and South America.
Yes.
But that's also increasing the perceived necessity for actually doing something about it.
Because if you're saying there's always the limit that if you transgress it, at some point the state fights back.
And that's always with the mafias.
Was always this uneasy relationship where you say, right, you have a the state was willing in some cases to say you're gonna have some small pockets in which you're gonna operate until it gave much it became much bigger and destroyed them.
Yep, absolutely.
But it looks like if you're saying they are in retaliation, they're just creating a situation of emergency in 15 states of Mexico, which is seen all over the world.
And also, let's not forget that Mexico is going to stage the World Cup in a few months.
Yes.
Which is this just communicates to the entire world that the country is unsafe.
Completely.
It's massive, completely symbol.
It's very symbolic, also.
Yes.
Yeah.
So, but this may increase the perceived necessity for doing something.
No, absolutely.
I mean, in this report here, which is from IISS, which is a serious think tank, whatever criticism you might have against it, they claim that they're in control of ports or in partial control of ports up and down Latin America.
So the level of influence that they have is crazy.
Yeah, I mean, we note this.
Yeah.
And basically, you have the situation where a country like Brazil is run by criminal gangs.
Colombia is run by criminal gangs.
Mexico is run by criminal gangs.
Ecuador, similar problem.
Guatemala, I think very recently there was again another politician who was killed with his wife while they were walking in the streets.
And we had Trump release the former president of Honduras who was actually convicted of smuggling drugs through Honduras.
So the extent of the problem of criminality in Latin America is insane.
And Mexico just showed that when these guys want to shut down the country, they can just shut down the country.
And really the only answer is to execute every single drug dealer.
And the only way to avoid execution should be you confess everything and then you get 10 or 20 years in jail.
Throwning like El Salvador.
Exactly.
But who's got the power to implement it?
But who's got the power to implement it?
Who's got the political will to implement it?
Surely it must be America.
Well, the problem is that I would bet serious money that huge numbers of American politicians are on the payroll of the cartels already.
Yeah.
Which raises the following contingency for the future.
If this happens also in the future, the amount of power that the cartels are going to have on the U.S. is going to rise exponentially.
Exactly.
So if they don't stop it now, it's going to become much worse.
But also there's the other danger, which is even more tragic, is that it could be the case that the state takes action, the state takes action against one cartel for the sake of other cartels with the facade of doing something about it.
So it's likely that we are going to see the state do something about it.
Whether they're going to do something about it that is going to improve Mexico significantly or not remains to be seen.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Online Communities and Ancestry00:15:19
Yep.
And so here we are.
Graham, over to you.
Yeah, thank you.
All right.
No rumble rants doesn't seem so.
I'll just carry on with.
Oh, there are some, are they?
That's all right.
Just.
Hello, Lisa and Gen. We just sit back, twiddle your thumbs.
We'll be back.
You got them, Samson.
That's okay.
Yeah, it's.
I mean, in terms of the timeline of events, though, do you think sooner or later?
I don't know how the Americas are going to respond to the show of force.
But it's certainly a problem for them at a time when they're planning to bomb Iran.
But also, a question before we go to the next segment.
Do you know much about whether there have been many victims?
I haven't seen that.
I was thinking about the second time.
We haven't seen a number.
El Pais to try to figure that out.
We haven't seen a clear number of victims.
Right.
Sorry, are there any rumble rants, Samson?
Okay, well, I'll just carry on with this segment and we'll read them from the previous if we get through this.
All right, then, ladies and gentlemen.
So it's been an enjoyable weekend.
And my goodness, aren't the knives out for Restore?
Because, you know, they started off and continue to be on a very, very strong footing, patriotic, unequivocally believe in the existence, the survival of Britain and its people.
And I think that the emphasis that Restore puts on the survival of Britain as a people, as Rupert Lowe said it in his original speech when he launched Restore Britain as a party, is really the thing that people outside of that paradigm who don't want that to be the case, as mad as it may seem that you wouldn't want the British to survive in Britain and to put our own people first.
But there is a very powerful faction out there who do want, you know, the bad ending when it comes to Britain in the 21st century.
And I wanted to go back to this article back from 2019, back when Jeremy Corbyn was defeated in the general election by Boris Johnson.
Hard to know which one I'd be more in favour of these days of those two.
But nonetheless, the point is that we all, and I was guilty of this as well, you know, laughed at Corbyn at the time for coming out with this and just basically deriding it as cope.
And when Corbyn said, we won the argument, but I regret that we didn't convert that into a majority for change.
And the thing is, Corbyn was right.
He did win the argument because all of the institutions of Britain continue to govern themselves in the line of Corbyn's idea of Britain, multiculturalism, diversity, DEI hires, just allowing in an unlimited number of illegal immigrants into the country.
And this was obviously Tory failure, and they should have resisted this subversion and stopped it.
But they didn't because they actually agreed with it.
Because they're Blairites.
In principle, exactly.
And so we have been living in this world, the one that Corbyn's argument, the progressive argument, won in Britain for a very, very long time now, as you say for us, for as long as the Blair Riot experiment has continued on for us.
Just as little by little, the progressives have just chipped away and chipped away and chipped away and kept taking more and more territory, you know, corrupted more and more of our institutions and made things very, very hard for British people.
And the reason that I bring all of this up is because Restore Britain has to do two things by the time of 2029.
It has to, one, win the election, and two, it must win the argument as well.
Because if we do not win this argument, we cannot be forced into, as reform do, basically pushing away actual patriots who care about the survival of Britain.
And Farage played his hand very, very vocally this morning where he said that, well, in fact, I'll just let him say it himself.
Unless we are able to provide a proper democratic antidote to this, then I fear that we will see a rise of a really worrying, dangerous form of extreme right ethno-nationalism.
And I think we're beginning over the last couple of weeks already to see some specimens of it.
Nobody, nobody over the last quarter of a century has done more to defeat the genuine, intolerant, abhorrent, extreme far right than me.
We did it with the British National Party and will do it with whoever else follows.
But it's important we get a grip on this because there is no issue other than legal and illegal immigration that has broken the bond of trust between the voters and those that govern us more than this issue.
And I have spoken out consistently on it for now nearly 25 years.
But I'll leave it there.
So the point that I wanted to make with this as well is the fact that he has totally, and it's obvious that he's talking about Restore because they are now the nexus of power for putting a you know a British people first agenda.
And but the thing that Nigel isn't understanding here is that this idea that like reform is sorry, that restorer has just become like some outright venomous, hateful party just because it says we want to put our own people first, right?
And when you actually look at who Restore is a party, you're talking about departing from the country, right?
It is the foreign rapists, the criminals, all of the illegals, the people who haven't assimilated, who've spent all their lives on benefits, who haven't learned English.
And Farage is coming out and dying on the hill of no, we will do whatever it takes to keep those people in the country.
This is incredibly predictable.
And this is something I was telling many people to be mindful of.
And they didn't listen to my advice because whether they like it or not, politics to a very large extent is a reputation game.
The fact that you can get away with saying some things on online communities doesn't mean that you can get away with them outside these online communities.
So this was the most predictable way, the most predictable thing that was going to happen.
And I think that I have told you before, and Firaz, you don't know it, but I really like Rupert Lowe.
And I said that he does have the leadership material way before other people said this, way before he left Reform, UK.
I really think he needs to get down with the policies for reform, not just the deportation leaflet that came from Restore Britain.
I really want to see the policies made.
But the thing is that it's incredibly, that's incredibly predictable.
Yes, right?
And there are ways to fight against it, both in terms of substance and in terms of tactics.
And I will say before, the same way I criticized lots of people on the Groyper side and here, there's a difference between online presence and offline presence.
You don't win elections only with online presence.
But the line between the two is becoming more and more less obvious.
We'll see about that.
Let me try something else.
Sorry, let me just finish because I'm not attacking you.
No, no.
I'm not attacking you.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
So the same way I said this is that if you want to enter into politics, you have to think not only in terms of what helps and what works in particular online communities, you have to bear in mind what works in real life.
And this kind of reputation destruction thing with Nazism and all this thing, it was 100% predictable.
And I will say one thing.
When people start saying, for instance, let me just give you an example.
Well, people start saying that, well, you're a PDF file.
If you're not, you can either start say, you can have two ways of acting, at least two ways.
One is to say, no, you're uttering nonsense.
The other is to start doing the whole ridiculous based Olympics BS is to try to accept the term and not take distance from it and start to act based.
This may help in particular online communities.
It's about to crush you in the real world.
That's all I'm going to say.
Sorry, what was your point going to be, Ferras?
My point was going to be that the issue here is claiming that any kind of ethnic identification is inherently worrying and dangerous and associated with the BNP.
Because the reality is that the nation is a family of families that come from similar ancestry or the same ancestry.
And that is the accepted definition globally.
So Malaysia has very strong policies promoting the interests of Malays.
Chinese investment laws are all about the interests of China.
Indian investment and trade laws and tariff laws are all about the interests of Indians.
So there is nothing original about saying that the priority of the British government is the British, who are a definable group.
It is neither hateful nor dangerous nor worrying.
The question has been for a very long time, which lies are people willing to bend the knee to and the answer is to say no lies at all and to speak the truth as it is.
You can't be a trans woman in the same way that you can't be trans-British.
Now, nationality is less binary than that because you could have mixed ancestry, in which case, fair enough.
But the position of Restore is a very sensible one.
If you're not contributing and you don't integrate and or you're a criminal, then you shouldn't be here.
Perfectly moderate position.
Which is the same law that exists in Egypt, where Laila Cunningham is from, the same law that exists in India and Pakistan.
In India, I think you can't have citizenship without ancestry, which is the same law in most of the world.
You must have ancestry to claim nationality.
So this isn't controversial on principle.
And even then, Restore isn't saying everybody who doesn't have British ancestry is being deported.
What they're saying is if you're not contributing, you're actively promoting jihad, and or you're a criminal, then you don't belong here.
And by definition, if you're an illogical if Rupert comes with very clear policies.
That's exactly what Restore has been saying.
They've been saying exactly that.
So it's not an issue of saying it's an official voice.
Right, right, right.
It's not an issue of hearing this or that, you know, a media personality speaking for Restore.
There has to be an official voice that says we have these 10 policies or 14.
Yeah.
Well, I know that they're being developed, but one point that I wanted to make as well is that with this framing, with Farage outlining this mission, what is really the difference other than tactics between the mission of this and hope, not hate?
Right.
Are they not both actually after the same thing, which is to make sure that the actual British people don't have anything?
What's genuinely dangerous?
Sorry.
What's genuinely dangerous in what Farage is saying is that he's casting it as there are two options either Blairism or the far right.
Well, people are sick and tired of Blairism.
Be careful not to will into existence the demons that you keep warning people of.
So Restore has taken a very sensible centrist position, which makes sense for the British people.
Calling that dangerous form of ethno-nationalism is itself irresponsible because you're increasing the appeal of that, which isn't even restored policy.
I mean, right, okay, I don't know if Farrell is a Blairite, but we'll see.
We'll see about that.
But when it comes to the thing from a Machiavellian perspective, I think it almost always works.
It's the center of one area of the spectrum, side of the spectrum, has a sort of implicit alliance with the extreme part of the other bit.
Of the other area of the spectrum.
Why?
Because, for instance, let's say the far left is going to take votes from the left.
That is also good news for the centre-right.
And also the centre-left is going to take the far-right is also going to get votes from the centre-right, and vice versa.
And that's good news for centre-left and centre-fair enough.
And the far-left, vice versa.
So you could say that in some cases, there is an implicit, although an unholy alliance in these cases.
That's why you see the tactics.
But one thing that we do know for certain is that if for whatever reason the election came around and there seemed to be a bit of a split and it came between reform forming a government, but in order to do it, they had to either create an alliance with the Tories or restore.
I don't think we actually have to spend a long time guessing which side they would be forming the coalition with.
It would obviously be the Tories.
And Nigel continues with each passing week to stack the party with more and more of these Tories.
But the other point that I wanted to make as well is that Farage talks about this worrying, dangerous rise of ethno-nationalism, which is just basically recognizing that there is an ancestral component to British identity, as you point out, as there is to any identity.
And ultimately, he thinks that this is going to create something very, very bad, that we're going to see violence on the streets, that we're going to see all sorts of ruinous things.
But is that not what we're going to do?
Is this not what we've been forced to watch powerless for decades now?
And ultimately, as well, and this is a point that Stelius and I talk about often.
What are we really fighting for, ladies and gentlemen, if not character?
Why "Angry" Means Illegitimate00:12:45
Right?
We are doing this because we are moral, upstanding people, because we care about the safety and prosperity of our children and the future generations of Britain.
And all of these perfectly noble, pure things, right?
None of this is, even though there is a lot to be angry about and A lot to hate, I would still be on this path anyway, because it is one born out of love for the particularisms of home first and foremost, and not against not framed by vengeance.
And when we get to this point about, well, Corbyn saying we won the argument, the argument that we are having is simply that those who have existed here for generations and generations who have made England into the envy of the world, and there's a reason why beyond 10 million people have wanted to come here, other than the benefits, since the beginning of the 21st century is because our ancestors did such a wonderful job making it,
and we simply want to pass it down to our children as well.
And so all of a sudden, we see the, as I said, the knives coming out.
And just pay attention here to articles from the Telegraph where they were talking about Rupert Lowe, because you can see here there is October the 1st, 2025, November 26th, and then there is an enormous gap right up until Rupert starts making this new party again.
But there was actually something else that happened in the middle of all this, which was quite important.
And that was the fact that Rupert Lowe and Sammy Woodhouse and many other good people led an independent rape gang inquiry into the worst crime that has happened in Britain up and down the country.
The Telegraph never reported on that.
The Telegraph never once mentioned it.
But nonetheless, let's hear them out and let the Telegraph explain to us why they're somehow the moral voice in all of this.
Because Tim Stanley, just this morning, I believe it was, or yesterday, wrote this piece saying, Reform is turning into a Tories 2.0, and that is a tragedy.
But restore Britain is not the answer.
It has become a magnet for angry young men with very short hair.
I mean, it's not really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not really.
But the point is, just sorry, just want to say because it's sort of like growing.
I don't understand.
No.
Don't grow my hair?
No, I shouldn't.
Where does Harry fit into all of this?
Start wig maxing or something.
What I want to say is that look at the phrasing the angry young men and blah blah blah.
It's just yeah, sometimes you can be justifiably angry.
Well, this is the point, isn't it?
As well.
He's trying to make angry synonymous with illegitimate.
Right?
He's trying to say, oh, if you're angry, then you're too hot-headed.
You couldn't possibly be looking at this rationally.
You know, you can't be trusted to deal with this.
Let the grown-ups in the room who write for the Telegraph and don't report on rape gangs be the voice of reason here.
This is the thing.
Wrath is a sim.
Righteous anger is not.
Righteous anger against real injustice, like the rape gangs, is actually a key defining feature of having any kind of morality.
Whereas ignoring an injustice at the scale of the rape gangs shows low character.
So it's not just low character, it's just monstrous.
It's villainous.
It's monstrous.
It's generally.
So, I mean, this is kind of things that things people should be about should be angry about.
Exactly.
And the idea that you can just sort of try to brush this under the carpet and not report on it because it's Rupert Lowe who's leading the charge shows that you are not to be taken seriously on any question of morality.
And the fact that reform wouldn't engage with this inquiry as well, because it might harm them politically or make it look like there might be a more competent politician in the room.
Again, I'm sorry, that's not an acceptable excuse.
And it's not an acceptable compromise.
It's, I mean, even Kemi, to her credit, supported the rape gang inquiry.
Yeah.
The fact that Farage didn't shows a level of moral complicity that is just stunning.
So, and then you have the Telegraph saying, well, you know, don't look at Rupert Lowe because we've ignored his rape gang inquiry.
I mean, who are you to police opinions when your morality is in this situation?
With the, and as you say there, the sort of like, you know, mid-20th century German illusions there with the very short hair.
I won't bring up the fact, Tim, that you only ever refer to Kemi Badenock as mummy in your articles.
I'll just skip past that.
But the other thing to say is that...
So let's start going through it as well, because this is, in a way, a fascinating article by Tim Stanley.
Because really, he starts out by talking about, I'll won't read it extensively for the sake of time, but he talks about the fact that, you know, it originally seemed like reform might change, you know, the current settlement with the OBR and they might actually bring the Bank of England back under some sense of government oversight.
And obviously, after what happened where they coupons trust.
Which is the way it was since the Bank of England was founded in the 1600s.
Yes.
So, like, you know, we've had this brief interregnum where the Bank of England ran amok, inflation exploded, debt exploded, monetary policy went to hell, and therefore restoring what was the norm for 300 years is far right.
I don't understand the logic.
I don't understand what's being said.
I mean, the OBR dates to what, George Osborne, who was literally Peter Mandelson's best friend.
Come on, guys.
And he goes on to say, he goes on to say himself, I doubt Nigel Farage will win the Gorton and Denton by-election this Thursday.
Reform's classic voter is poor and white.
In Manchester, the whites are rich and the poor are Asian.
So again, just accepting the fact just say he's already accepting that there are just ethnic voter blocks that will not support reform.
Not just that, he's saying that the only people who have to suffer the consequences of diversity are poor whites.
And then he's using that as a platform to attack Restore, which says, look, the consequences of diversity have in some cases been horrific.
And the legitimacy of the attack is based on what exactly?
Like, Restore is saying we need to take care of poor whites so that their daughters don't get raped and abused.
And Tim Stanley's position is this it's far right to protect white girls.
Apparently so.
Explain the logic here.
Walk me.
I'm stupid.
Explain it to me.
Well, he also goes on to say as well that that's why.
Sorry, what to do.
This week's Daily Tea podcast will feature a pollster, Scarlett McGuire, who says voters admire Farage's convictions, but believe he lacks two things, policies and a team.
And that's why he's hiring so many ex-Tories and calling it a shadow cabinet.
Robert Jenrick auditioned to be Chancellor recently gave a keynote speech at the glamorous Plaistras Hall in London.
And it was not your usual reform crowd.
No cabbies, no dockers, just floppy-haired boys in shirts by Thomas Pink.
Moneyed youth flocking to a winner like goals around a whale.
Yeah, but Tim, you say this, they're flocking to a winner, but what is your qualification for winning in this?
You've already accepted that there are entire ethnic voter blocks in Britain that are not going to touch anything that is painted slightly with a veneer of British patriotism.
You're saying that the whites who can afford to move away from these enclaves all do, but only the left-behind poor stick around.
And you're saying that there should be no regard for these poor whites?
Because is it because they're poor or because they're white?
Which one is the disqualification?
What makes them more inhuman and less worthy of concern?
Their poverty or their whiteness?
And another point that I just wanted to add here was it says, enter Rupert Lowe, a former reform MP who has launched the rival Restore Britain party and already claims around 80,000 members.
This schism is personal.
So he's trying to, again, just tarnish restore and just dismiss it as, oh, it's just one big revenge on Nigel Farage.
No, it isn't.
It's entirely dedicated to Farage's obvious failure.
Failures that you are chronicling in your own article, Tim, where you're saying, look, he's disappointed on this.
He's going to keep the Bank of England independent.
No, we're going to continue to have sectarian voter blocs in every single by-election and constituency up and down Britain as time goes on, more and more.
And it says here, Lowe seems to have fallen foul of Nigel and Zia Youssef.
A speech Rupert gave calling for mass deportations was used as an excuse to boot him out of the party.
Yes, and I really want to make clear on that point as well.
The reason, most likely, that Rupert was kicked for a mass deportation speech is not because of the use of the technical language.
After all, Zia Youssef, Nigel Farage, all of the rest of them, they've been able to say mass deportations many, many times over now.
The reason that they kicked Rupert from the party was because Rupert actually believed in them, right?
That's why they kicked him, because they knew that Rupert would actually want to implement the policy and he wasn't just using them as mere populist talking points to garner voters that he can then betray and disappoint, exactly like we've just had from 14 years of Tory misgovernance.
And so all of these things come together.
And as Morgoth points out here, what the true article is called is just my message to old people on the right.
Do not join an actual right-wing party outside of the containment zone.
And it absolutely is a containment zone because it is, and you can see here as well, it came out from Spiked and they collaborated with Matt Goodwin to do an interview.
And then GB News as well, where Anne Whitticomb also said, oh, yes, I've looked at Restore.
And it's just not plausible.
And she just seems to make a lie that suggests that Restore think they're going to be able to deport 2 million people in 24 hours, which, knowing Harrison, I don't think someone of his temperament and understanding of the political climate would ever suggest that.
So it's all obvious nonsense.
The thing is, Anne Whitticom used to be the butt of every joke on Have I Got News for You?
And she was characterized as the, you know, most evil older right-winger for decades.
And for her to now sort of make this concession is okay.
I mean, it's just not worth it.
I will just say one more thing from the Telegraph article as well, which was where at the very end it says, let me address my conclusion to the sane young people who I know and like and who I've seen signing up to Restore.
Don't do it.
If you join Reform now and help it to win, you could be elected an MP or working as a SPAD in government within a few years, getting stuff done.
Stick with Rowe, who could say something truly mad that will destroy your reputation by association, and you will waste the very best years of your life on a lost cause.
I mean, I personally take that as a threat, right?
He's just saying we will make life healthier if you go down this road.
He's saying that if you admit the reality that Britain is for the British, we are going to destroy your reputation and make sure that you don't have a career.
He's admitting that this is a standard practice because otherwise, why would he say it?
And he's using it as a way to promise people, I'll give you power if you compromise with me.
Gatekeeping and Meaningful Change00:04:16
But all the same, it's not.
This is how we got here in the first place.
But it's not power, is it?
I mean, really, because it's not...
Yes, exactly.
I'll give you importance.
Yes.
I'll give you a position on a good pay.
I'll massage your ego.
Yes.
And nothing will change.
And nothing will change.
So that's the devil's bargain.
Because you know where people who actually do want to commit to change, actual meaningful change that was saved Britain go from reform, they get kicked out of it.
As Bo got kicked out of it, as Rupert got kicked out of it, as Ben got kicked out of it, as Dan got kicked out of it, and so many more people in Nigel Farage's storage history of confrontation with people who outshine him and who actually want to, as I say, create some meaningful change.
And so we also got here as well the fact that now, because of Restore entering the fray, all of a sudden, this complacency that had been around reform for quite a long time, they've suddenly had to shake it off and go, oh, good God, we actually have to fight for these people's votes all of a sudden.
And isn't it interesting that when you put them into that frame of mind, they immediately tack to the right and not the center, as is where they say that the votes actually are to be gained.
And we see here, sorry, were you going to say something?
That's what I was saying before, that, you know, when you have parties on the right, they're essentially fishing from the same pond.
Also, that's with parties on the left.
Yes.
They fish from the same pond.
That's why they are.
But I want to say one thing because I'm looking at it, I think, from multiple angles.
Listen, with a no-gatekeeping thing, people can be simultaneously pro-tribalism and against gatekeeping.
Tribalism involves gatekeeping.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And also the people who are very frequently banging the drum of no gatekeeping, they can't shut up about who to gatekeep.
So it's not about whether people gatekeep.
It's about who controls the keykeeping.
Any movement should have some kind of gatekeeping, yes.
No, no.
That's why you always see people on the right attacking people on the right and people on the left attacking people on the left.
And I want to say something because this actually makes me a bit, you know, furious at some point.
It's just when was the last time that if we take particular figures, when was the last time they focused on the left?
Particular figures from it.
That's something that actually drives me very mad.
It's like for the last year, and this is going to continue also now in the US, because they're going to have Republican primaries a lot.
This is going to happen.
It's just almost no one focuses on the left if you're on the conservative side, the actual one.
Well, absolutely right.
Do we do enough to attack the left?
Wait, wait, wait.
That wasn't what I was talking about.
It's the folks of the attack and the criticism.
Right.
Okay.
Sorry, I realize I've scattered about a bit on this segment, but there is another point as well from Spiked as well, where I just wanted to draw on a Matt Goodwin quote, which he gives in the article where he talks about his recent campaigning in Gorton and Denton, and obviously the fact that he's had quite a bit of support from the Sikh community.
And he goes, Goodwin goes on to say: the question I would have for some people on the right is, what do you think would have happened with Brexit if you'd have run a Rupert Lowe-style campaign?
It wouldn't have gotten anywhere close to 50% because we know one-third of minority Brits came out and said, No, we want national sovereignty, we want to end mass immigration, and we want to put the tax-paying, hard-working majority first.
What would their version of that campaign have looked like?
It would have been a 5% campaign.
One thing that I want to point out in there is that implicit in it is the fact that he, by saying, because we know that one-third of minority Brits came out and said no, that the implication is two-thirds came out and said yes, right, and said, No, we are actually pro Britain's sovereignty being stolen by Europe and all these sorts of things.
Policies Gone Wrong00:04:50
So, it goes to show that actually, in the majority of cases, foreigners are ideologically opposed with globalism and the erosion of our borders.
But the other point as well that I wanted to add was just that all of if Restore's policies are so wrong, so bad, and then just one step away from being brown shirts, why do reform just keep copying them in a sort of semi-skimmed milk sort of way?
Because we have here again, restore put forward a policy about imposing uh visas from certain countries, and now reform have followed it up.
And we also say here uh they'll protect uh the Christian heritage of the United Kingdom.
Well, that was something that Restore recently came out from as well.
And the other point that I want to add is just that this isn't, they're all missing the point, and this is why it comes down to, as I keep coming back to, the argument about who is British and who is this election being fought for.
Because ultimately, Z Yousuf can say, Oh, well, we'll preserve Britain's heritage.
And they talk about the fact that they would simply upgrade, uplist all of the churches around Britain so that they can't be changed, so that they can't be converted into mosques and all these sorts of things.
It's like, okay, fine, that that is a that is a fine policy, that's a perfectly fine policy, but it doesn't stop the people from burning the churches down, does it?
Because they've been listed in a certain way, right?
And this is the underlying issue: the actual antagonism by foreign forces.
And this isn't something, you know, just particular to Britain as well.
This is particularly infamous by now in France, where churches are going up almost every other week.
I mean, one of the contributing causes to the First Crusade was the attempt by the Fatimid Caliph to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Yes.
So it's an older problem than that, shall we say?
And then you get all of these cases where, unfortunately, churches are put up for sale and the developers burn them down because they can bring down the price.
There's a reality here that isn't being tackled by saying, you know, we're going to save the culture, we're going to promote the culture.
Mohammed's Dean Yusuf is going to promote Christian culture.
Okay, fair enough.
Maybe.
Yeah.
And so my message to people is just genuinely, what do you have to lose?
And at the end of the day, all of their messaging around restore is incoherent.
On the one hand, they want to paint them out as villainous neo-Nazis and say that their policy is beyond the pale and then simultaneously just adopt each one of their policies because they see that they're popular.
And at the same time, as we've said, their entire project is predicated on denying you a right that is owed to you, which is to have yourself recognized as the actual British people of this land.
And as we say time and time again, is no unique thing and is an extension and courtesy that any people should be entitled to in their homeland, whatever part of the world they hail from.
And so there is nothing evil going on here.
There is nothing dubious or underfoot.
And why would you not want to put your faith in the people who have actually stood up and will carry out the policies that they're saying?
They're not trying to just placate you, win the election, and then you may get 10% of it and then a bit of red meat when the next election comes round.
And by the way, if we don't get on this now, 2034 is going to look like a much worse England than it does even now if we don't get on top of this and tackle it from the root in real time.
And so I would encourage everyone once again, please, if you haven't done it, it's a Monday.
It's a wonderful time to go and join Restore Britain for £20 a year and put your money to people whose trust is actually earned, right?
Who are worthy of your trust and your representation.
And so go and join Restore Britain because this is the movement and we can win this.
All right.
I will.
We have some of the comments.
I'll just scroll through them.
I expect there's...
Oh, go on then.
Fair ass money.
Just of course.
I wish it was slightly like a hockey puck.
Yeah, from one side to.
So just from your segment, Habsification says, if the cartels are smart, they better behave them during the World Cup because if they don't, it'll give them everyone a casserole's belly.
Targeted Lawfare in Vienna00:02:24
Anime Extremis says, you mentioned Gripers, you want to keep far away from.
Well, they're not really relevant to anime because they're in America, so.
So and for the sake of time, I hope I'd mean you no disrespect, sir.
$5.
Dwight Powers says, how do I send a video comment into the show?
I managed to stitch Farage up with a cameo message the other day and want to send it in after I figured out how to clip it.
I don't know.
Samson, can you deal with that one for me, please?
And thank you.
Well, hopefully it just shows Farage that actually he shouldn't be wasting his time on cameo.
Though I suspect if he's not learned it after six years, he never will.
All right, then, still, yes.
Europeans have complete...
Sorry, we don't have my links.
Oh.
Thanks, mate.
Okay.
Right, so Europeans have completely lost their minds with cultural affairs and also their identity.
They have forgotten who they are to a very large extent.
And this makes them incredibly vulnerable to subversion.
And when it comes to subversion, it's subversion across several levels and playing fields.
And it's also legal.
Right?
And wokeness.
The human rights regime.
Yeah, wokeness also, for instance, and all these notions, all these phobias like Islamophobia, are creating an environment that is so subjective where almost everything can be targeted as being against the law, which makes a very arbitrary environment.
And only the political friends of the governments can get away with it.
Those who are political enemies of the government are essentially being targeted by these laws.
And these laws aren't just an issue of saying do not offend this or that person, where you can absolutely do this.
It's also an issue of forget your culture and forget your cultural debts to other people and also forget who you were, forget where you come from.
Forget, for instance, that Europe to a very large extent is a Christian continent.
You can talk about atheism, but Europe is to a very large extent Christian, especially when it comes to culture.
Ottoman Legacy and Colonization00:15:32
And this time we're going to talk about something that is a very interesting topic and suggests a huge amount of subversion in Vienna, especially in Austria.
And I will talk about the Polish Theoden, as we called him.
As if you know the Lord of the Rings, I think Tolkien, as you also told me, was inspired by the king we are going to talk about when he was writing about the Rohirim and Theoden particularly.
And we are going to talk about this monumental battle in European history in 1683.
What happened and how from 1683 we come to 2026, Vienna, 2026, Austria, and this kind of ridiculous state that we are in right now.
So, do you know the name John the Third Sobieski?
I do.
Bit of a chat.
Yeah, king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
He led the Rohirim, the OG-winged Hassan.
The winged Hussars, yeah, against the Ottoman army that was besieging Vienna by the time.
And what is in a nutshell happening here is that the Polish have built a statue of John III Sobieski and they want to give it to the Austrians to put it on the very hill where history was made.
And Christendom was saved.
And who wouldn't want that?
You have to remember the significance of this.
After that siege of Vienna, it triggered a series of military defeats for the Ottomans and for the Muslims in general.
They had been surging for a thousand years and slowly attacking Christendom one time after another.
Obviously, the most devastating blow being two years before that in the capture of Constantinople.
And since then, they had been in 1450.
Yeah.
So 200 years before.
Yeah.
Until then, they had been sort of, they had defeated the Russians and taken Ukraine.
They had gone into Bulgaria and Romania.
And they were literally at the gates of Vienna being the center of Christendom at the time and the heir of the Holy, you know, the heirs of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire.
So that defeat began a cascade of events that ended with the colonization of the Middle East, which was part of a series of wars that began with the rise of Islam itself.
So John Subieski's role here is like that of Charlemagne.
Charles Martel and Charles Martel.
Yeah, yeah.
Charles Martel.
I'd say it's more accurate, say Charles Martel in this.
Correct, correct, correct.
Literally, you could say Eugene of Eugen of Savoy had more success later on.
Okay.
But literally a savior of Christendom.
Yes.
Also, one of the direct consequences was the establishment of the Holy League in 1684, a year afterwards.
So who doesn't want this to be commemorated?
Who actually thinks it's Islamophobia?
Well, the people who lost Santa.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But From an Austrian perspective, why wouldn't you want to commemorate a symbol of resistance against brutal expansionism?
Because that's what John III Sobieski represents here.
Yeah.
Right, let's see what happened here.
Vienna cancels statue of Polish kings over Islamophobia fears.
Vienna rejects Sobieski monument due to extremism fears.
Let's say what they say here, when they tell you, they say Vienna has rejected long-standing calls to erect a monument to John III Sobieski, the Polish king celebrated as the liberator of Vienna for holding Ottoman forces from invading the city in the 17th century.
The city announced that the proposed monument set for Kallenberg Hill in the 19th district where the historic battle took place would or could be instrumentalized for xenophobic agitation or to stoke anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish sentiments.
According to cultural counselor Veronica Kauphasler of the Social Democrat Party.
May I interrupt here for a moment?
The message here is that if you remember your history, you will understand how humiliated you are today.
And you will understand how unnatural today's world is.
That's the subtext of.
I don't think that this is it because it's not centered around you not feeling bad comparing your present with a glorious past.
It's much more an issue of multiculturalism.
And I will show you even more that is going to anger both of you.
Right.
So let's look at it.
But let's look at this here.
The justification for not doing it is it could be instrumentalized for xenophobic agitations or to stoke anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish sentiment.
May I just say it could apply for everything.
Yes.
Well, may I just say.
Which takes me back, sir.
It takes me back to the point I was saying before.
It's entirely selective application.
Wokeness and the alliance between Islamic extremists and communists, Islamic communism.
They are creating this kind of environment where you're guilty, where the presumption of innocence turns into the presumption of guilt.
You are guilty, and if we like you, we may grant you permission to carry on.
But the framework is a framework that says, well, you're guilty because you violate the rules we are setting you.
Because what you're doing could be involved in extremism, could stoke agitation.
Everything could.
Even talking about a crime could do this.
So it's talking about a crime, something that they shouldn't do.
Is Austria are the social democrats of Austria saying that people shouldn't report on crimes committed by people of Muslim origin in Austria because it could be instrumentalized for xenophobic agitation?
Well, that was why the British state tolerated the rape gangs.
So your question is not far off from reality.
It is literally reality.
Yeah, but also I'm trying to show from a very logical perspective, not to people who are died in the wool leftists, but to people who are taped into it, people who just are a bit naive.
May I just say something as well on the anti-Turkish sentiments, which is the fact that the whole premise of multiculturalism, obviously I understand that it's just innately anti-white because it's only the white countries that actually have to accept it or are told that they have to accept it for their own enrichment.
But obviously, it works on the proviso that actually, once we come here, we're kind of shorn of our histories in some way, right?
Like Londoners, right?
Londoner used to mean people generations of families who'd lived in London.
Now, a Londoner is literally someone who just arrives there yesterday.
And all of a sudden, you've got this new identity.
It's like a clean slate.
And all of a sudden, you're just this thing.
And actually, in doing that, it obviously there's like a French Revolution style, the old London, like the old regime, the old London, and then there's a new multicultural London.
And what it is saying is that if we put these old heroes up on statues in the past, and it reminds them that there's actually a history there of where they come from, that the Turkish people living in Austria should be immediately provoked by something that happened 350 years ago, and that actually no amount of multiculturalism can ever override that because a Turk is naturally going to look at that.
And so they accept the continuity of civilizations.
They accept the grievances of all of these people.
And that actually these are reasons to muster a spirit and make you irate about things.
It says here, that's an article from the European Conservative.
Definitely check it out.
It's by where should they have TBC News, I think.
It's a good article.
Right, so it says here, Social Democratic Councillor calls Plan the Historical Monument Islamophobic.
And further reasons that have been given for it, as I said before, it's the political instrumentalization, the rhetoric of victory.
The city government has pushed for a memorial of peace, say, rather than a traditional military monument, arguing that celebrating a 17th century triumph over an Islamic empire is triumphalist and doesn't fit the city's multicultural identity.
Who was the aggressor in this war?
Are they forgetting that it was the Turks that came to Austria?
Are they forgetting that the Turks just took Aya Sophia and made it into a mosque again out of triumphalism?
And that no Turkey is not available.
I don't think that there have been also Turkish people involved here.
I don't think that they are campaigning for taking statues of Turkish and Ottoman conquerors down in Turkey.
I haven't heard of them saying so.
And I wouldn't expect that.
The Turkish state's media production is focused on promoting the greatness of the Ottomans.
And they do it in all kinds of TV shows that then get dubbed into a million other languages and sold across the world.
And here we have the, and also the, of course, it's the association with the far right.
Again, it would stoke far-right extremism.
Well, as we were, you know, just chuckling in the office, how else do you interpret what went on at Vienna?
It's literally about defending your own city.
We have here Aslihan Bozatemur.
She's an SPA.
That's the Social Democrat Party of Austria, a city councillor and member of, it says here, a member of parliament.
I checked, it's not the Austrian parliament.
She's a member of the Vienna Council and state parliament.
It's not the Austrian parliament.
But she's very much involved into the Social Democrat Party.
It says, in Vienna, there is no place for a monument that promotes xenophobia, Islamophobia, or anti-Turkish sentiment.
That was literally the defining feature of the Habsburg Empire for centuries.
Yes.
Who did the Habsburgs fight most against?
They fought against the Bourbons and the Turks.
These were always the end of the world.
I will say something about Louis XIV later on, who has many fans, and I'm not a fan, but I will say something.
Oh, no, you're right in a bit.
I know where you're going.
You anticipated what I'm going to say.
Go on.
Right.
So, and I checked out, she is in Austria.
She is of Turkish descent, and she is seen as the bridge between the Austrian and the Turkish community.
And she's, as I say, she's campaigning.
Her campaigns are focused a bit more on women.
But the point is that she is promoting also that line.
And also the communists and the socialists, and in this case, I say the Social Democrat Party are saying this.
And what is the issue here?
Is that John III Sobieski is not some, I don't understand the bitterness here.
No, I mean, I get it, but it's not that John III Sobieski is someone who won the Ottomans there and then proceeded to destroy the Ottoman Empire.
And, you know, they'd say, well, no, he also attacked us.
He's a symbol of resisting brutal expansionism.
So people don't.
They're all such fans of anti-colonialism too.
So I'm sure they have no problem with that.
Yeah, yeah.
Also, so the Sobieski statue is in Krakow now.
It's ready, but the Austrians aren't accepting it.
It's an awesome statue, too.
Yeah, it's in Krakow now, but the Austrians haven't accepted it yet.
They're saying that they're not going to accept it.
This happens for years, by the way.
It didn't happen right now.
It's an ongoing issue.
And here's this politician I mentioned you before.
And one thing I want to say here, I want to talk a bit about the Siege of Vienna and also show that the Umayyad Caliphate wasn't the only case of Muslim expansionism, brutal expansionism in Europe.
Firas, you know it.
Yeah.
You know it, Luca, but lots of people don't know it.
And they talk about the Umayyad Caliphate and the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, where Charles Martel won the Umayyad Caliphate.
And what happened there is just it stopped the further Muslim expansion.
And then there was the Spanish Reconquista.
But there were other issues here.
That was, you know, the Britannica entry for the Battle of Tours.
Here there was also the Muslim Sicily.
People don't know that the first Reconquista wasn't the Spanish.
It was the Norman Reconquista of Sicily.
Started from the 1060s and ended in 1091.
The Muslims invaded Sicily in 827 AD.
They conquered it by 902 AD.
And then the Normans got it back in the late 11th century.
That's the Reconquista.
And so there has been expansionism that lots of leftists don't want people to remember.
And when they talk about colonialism, they forget the Umayyad Caliphate, they forget the Yaglovites.
Well, they don't forget, they ignore.
Yeah, but also they also forget other cases where Europe was invaded.
Like you can talk about Persians in the 5th century AD.
No, BC.
You could talk about Mongols.
You could talk about lots of people.
And also here, the Siege of Vienna was an incredibly important case because it saved Christendom.
And it also saved Europe as we know it today.
Because even if Europe isn't as, for instance, Leopold I, who was the Habsburg emperor at the time, wanted it to be, it would be different if the Ottomans conquered it.
And look at it here.
The Battle of Vienna happened here in Vienna, and it was an incredibly strategic point because had they conquered Vienna, it would be much easier for them to invade France, Germany, Italy.
So Europe would be completely unrecognizable.
Ottoman Colonization's Complexity00:04:39
And one thing to say is that people who have visited people who have visited the Balkans or know a thing or two about the Balkans here would understand how being colonized by the Ottomans was very different to being colonized by other forces.
Yes, yes.
It could essentially sometimes create good infrastructure.
Because people talk about colonialism all the time.
The same people who are telling you to forget this kind of colonialism are also decrying other forms of colonialism that created chaos after the withdrawal.
Because that's a sad phenomenon.
You see, after decolonialism, lots of countries have collapsed into chaos.
Think of Haiti, for instance.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
We have General Barbecue now just roaming the streets.
It's not a good place to be.
So this was the extent of the Ottoman expansion in Europe in 1683.
And what happened there in the Battle of Vienna is actually really interesting because the 17th century was incredibly bad for Europeans.
We have to say this.
It's not the first time where the Ottomans tried to take Vienna.
There was also a famous siege that failed 1529 by Sleiman the Magnificent.
But what was interesting, particularly in the 17th century, is that the 17th century is a horrific century for Europeans.
Because there was a 30 years war, and then there were so many other conflicts, and there were really bad harvests.
It was just a nightmarish century.
There were a lot of witches at that time.
Which is many such cases.
But also it was such a bad century that it allowed the Ottomans to play balance of power against the Europeans.
And as very correctly Faras pointed before, the French had the habit of teaming up with the Ottomans.
And Louis XIV was invited by Leopold I of the Habsburg Empire to aid the Christian effort there, and he declined.
Interesting.
And at that point, he was helped by the Papal State here, and the Pope at that time was Pope Innocent XI, and also by the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And what happened was that a mistake from your perspective, it wasn't a mistake, but it did contribute there.
Leopold I wanted to repeat what I think Ferdinand III or II tried to do when the Thirty Years' War started.
He tried to impose Catholicism throughout the empire.
And that led lots of Protestants in Hungary rebel, team up with the Ottomans, and it created a sort of havoc there.
And they teamed up with the Ottomans and they were besieging.
What did they extend to do?
They were besieging Vienna.
You're telling me that heretics behaved like heretics, yes.
To their credit, there were Protestants who aided the there were good people on both sides.
Okay, but what was happening is that the Turks did a strategic mistake in negotiation.
They told the Austrians that they should surrender unconditionally, that if they resisted, they would be completely annihilated.
This isn't the kind of message you want to get across if you don't want the other person to fight like hell.
Because the other person is going to actually think, well, I either going to flee, which Leopold I did, also 60,000 of the other Viennese did with him.
But those who stay, they fought like hell.
Because they said, well, death in battle is much preferable to serve them and enslavement.
So what happened was that after two months of siege, lots of forces came from the German states, from the Papal States, and from the Polish Lithuanian kingdom.
And John III Sobieski had cobra patience.
And he really had the he was tenacious.
He also had the wisdom to strike at the right time.
And that was the largest cavalry charge in history.
Schrodinger's Greeks00:06:31
I think it still is, isn't it, as well?
Yes, still.
And they completely destroyed the army.
It started fleeing.
And yeah, that was it.
Essentially, this is a symbol of defense against brutal expansionism.
And they fought.
For the left, that's not acceptable.
For the left, that's unacceptable.
You should simply and it's just Islamophobes.
So if you protest, according to the social democrats of Austria, if you protest against brutal expansionism and you want to commemorate a symbol of resistance to brutal expansionism, you're an Islamophobe.
You're far right.
And the fact that they come down on it so hard goes to show that actually, even though it is 350 years ago, all of this still matters.
Yeah.
All right.
I'll just go through.
Do you want to go through your rumble rants or?
That's a random name.
European colonialism brought civilization to Stone Age peoples.
Ottoman colonialism brought genocide and misery.
So obviously the leftoid subversives love the Ottomans.
The Habsification, when a Turk does a DNA test, they go full denial mode about the fact they're mostly Balkan and Greek and only about 3-7% ancestral Turk.
I don't think that's exactly accurate.
I will say this.
This is going to be a bit funny.
But, you know, they're making fun of some Greeks.
Greeks make fun of other Greeks when it comes to commenting about Turks.
It's like they're the Schrödinger's Greeks.
If they do something good, we say they have Greek DNA.
If they do something bad, we say they're Turks.
That's the Schrodinger's approach on this.
both times uh and then uh oh opunk for five dollars uh Thank you.
Just says, every other street in Istanbul is named Gezi, Holy Warrior, Jihadi.
Something are named after some sultan who murdered Christians, stole the children.
Yeah, that's absolutely terrible.
All right.
Do we have video comments, Samson?
I think we've got time.
You seem to have one.
Just one video comment.
Great.
Samson is Euromaxing.
He is taking his time.
He is.
That's all right, Samson.
The reason our world is in such a mess is that the men who created it moved on, and those taking over don't understand it.
This isn't maliciousness, it's incompetence.
You may dislike Bill Gates and Windows, but you cannot deny the Titan Microsoft was since he left.
The new leadership doesn't understand what the company actually does and turned its products into slop.
The same is true for Apple and Google.
So too with political leadership.
Those in charge inhabit structures built up by others without understanding why those structures are so.
They cannot innovate, so instead they seek to optimize.
This is why it looks so much like socialism.
Socialism is ignorant political optimization.
Really well put, Alex.
Yeah, thank you.
All right.
Do you want to go through a few of your comments?
Oh, is that that's all of the video, isn't it, Samson?
Oh, no, okay.
Carry on.
Zesti King.
See there.
Hey, Lucy, he says, I'm in Dudley Castle.
Right behind me here.
Now, something quite unusual about this castle is that it's actually in a zoo.
Just down there, you can see the beautiful Italian-style apartments made in the 1540s for John Dudley, Earl of Warwick.
And down there, you can see the Meercan enclosure.
ComparetheCastle.com.
Simple.
That's a really good one.
A beautiful, beautiful castle.
Okay, any more video comments, Samson?
Samson is taking his time.
No, all right, then.
Well, in that case, we'll probably draw it to an end there, ladies, and just so I've given you a few comments, one or two from each.
Okay, it's 29 past, so it's not even.
Yeah, all right.
I was just thinking about Firas having to be back live.
Okay, go on then, Firas, from your segment.
All right.
Drones from the cartel hitting the Gulf would be quite a headache for American infrastructure.
Not sure who is worse, ISIS or the cartels, in terms of fanatic brutality.
The cartels are really properly savage.
I mean, we're talking about worse.
They're pretty much the same.
Terror toddler Wilfiras touch on what's happening with Hungary and then blocking the next aid package due to Ukraine destroying a pipeline.
It's, I think, Hungary and Slovakia, I believe, because the Ukrainians aren't allowing Russian oil to get into their countries through pipeline.
And so they're saying to the Ukrainians, we're going to stop supplying you with fuel and we might stop supplying with electricity unless you let us have our cheap energy.
And it's really important because, especially for Hungary, Viktor Orban's industrial policies rely on cheap energy from the Russians, as did German industrial policy.
And it's not his war, so he doesn't want to get involved in this whole thing.
So that's what's happening.
Is there any chance of other cartels trying to put this down so that it doesn't escalate to something actually being done?
Like the US military getting involved?
No, I expect the cartels to join together.
And if you look at some of the rhetoric that comes out of them, it's quite nationalistic for Mexico against the United States.
So they might as well just launch a full-scale insurgency and negotiate from there is my guess.
From my segment, Michael Drabelbus says, Farage is a political chameleon.
He changes with the colour of the environment he's in.
Essentially, he's an opportunist.
Yes, he does change like a chameleon, unless it is actual nativist rhetoric.
He never seems to change quite that far.
And Omar Arwad says, can't remember who said it, but if you call everyone everything people want, far right, people will eventually even totally conclude that the far right is everything they want.
Well, this is a point that Farage doesn't seem to get.
You can win the election and say, oh, we've won the civic nationalist argument and everything with the majority, but like it's the truth is above politics, right?
Political Chameleon00:01:49
It's above, it exists in a state beyond the reach of what you can't change it, right?
The British people are a thing, irrespective of who wins the election.
And even if all of the legislation were changed forever, saying that everyone on the planet were to be British, the paper wouldn't make it more so.
So he's, I mean, you can either learn that or get out the way.
All right.
Okay, Michael Dreibelbis says pattern recognition isn't Islamophobia or xenophobia.
And Annie Moss, I think Poland should keep the statue.
It's a great piece of art.
And the invaders will just trash it if it is in Vienna.
And Lukatz Brozek, and as a token of appreciation, the Austrians assisted with partitioning Poland and erasing us from the map for 123 years.
Yeah, that wasn't good.
The partition of Poland was a very brutal and bad chapter in history.
Yeah, very.
And Jan Rofowski, Sobievsky is somewhat controversial in Poland, portrayed as a good general but incompetent ruler, Vienna being his biggest blunder, wasting resources to save a rival who later went on to partition the Commonwealth.
I understand why you see things this way.
Very interesting.
Oh, and Mr. Michael Drabelbis, I did reply to your email just to let you know.
So I just wanted to check that you'd managed to get that.
All right then.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.
Do come back at three o'clock and join Firas where he's going to talk all about Iran.
Much to talk about.
Not to understate it.
Have you been to the Zagros Mountains?
No, I have not.
No, I have not.
Well, there's still time.
Some proper on-the-ground research.
Anyway, well, and if not, ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you back at 1 o'clock tomorrow.