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Feb. 7, 2024 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:01:16
Beyond Your Borders

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comFriend of the show Academic Agent joins us to discuss the border crisis, the differing dynamic between American vs European nationalism in general, Tucker’s interview of Vladimir Putin, and much more!

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I was just about to talk about the border bill, but I'll just leave that.
But do you have any thoughts on this?
Are there similar things occurring in the UK in the sense that migration is becoming the, at least for the moment, the chief issue?
It's something like liberals are turning around on and liberals are claiming to be...
Closed-border defenders, or closed-border enjoyers, I guess.
There actually is, because Keir Starmer, the labor leader, who is kind of a Blair apprentice, basically.
I mean, direct apprentice of Tony Blair, is basically strafing the Tory party from the right on immigration and on...
Especially illegal immigration, which is how I think the powers that be hope to contain the issue, really.
In America, it's all about the southern border.
In this country, it's all about the quote-unquote small boats, which, I mean, it is remarkable that, you know...
This nation has been an island nation for over a thousand years.
And suddenly, in the 21st century, we've forgotten how to stop boats coming.
I mean, we stopped the Spanish Armada with a much worse technology than we have now.
But it is becoming an issue.
Playing the centrist, which is the path to power, basically.
That's what I sensed many years ago, even, but yeah, go on.
Well, it's very funny, Richard, because Keir Starmer looks like you, as everybody points out.
He kind of looks like your uncle or something, or like he could be your uncle.
He might literally be, yeah.
And he is hated by the left in this country, who call him the Daily Starmer.
That's his nickname.
Because he's completely purged the Corbynista left, the far left of the party.
I mean, it really was like a kind of Stalinist purge of all of them.
And he has completely taken control of the party and walked back all of the promises that he made when he became the leader.
So, I mean, at this point, Labor...
It's interesting how they all go in parallel.
Because remember four years ago, Bernie Sanders was on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination.
He had won Nevada.
He got crushed in South Carolina.
And it was this weird dynamic where this old white man was able to command the black vote in the South.
I mean, it's just...
Bizarre. It's like always with things the opposite of what you expect is what you should bet on happening.
It's funny.
We could even use this to segue into what we're going to talk about, which is that one of the things that has interested me is the harmony of legislation since the Second World War.
So, I mean, you will all know about the 1965, was it 64, immigration?
65, immigration.
65 immigration bill when they basically opened up the borders again in America.
But what is probably less well known is that at exactly the same time as LBJ was doing all his great society stuff in this country.
There was a race bill passed.
There was an immigration bill passed, basically allowing former Commonwealth people to become automatic citizens of Britain.
There was criminal justice reform, basically liberalizing the system in harmony with what America was doing at the same time.
um so and there is that pattern uh
Basically holds, I mean, you know, when you had Reagan, we had Thatcher.
So there is this kind of, you know, when you had Trump, we had Brexit.
There's this strange harmony that happens.
And one of the weirdest things is that actually the UK tends to get in a couple of months before the US often, where there's a, you know, like Brexit happened a little bit before Trump.
Right. And if you have a look at all of that...
Thatcher was in 78 or something like that?
Thatcher was 79, Reagan was...
79, yeah, just a little bit before Reagan.
And all of that kind of liberal immigration stuff happened in 63, 64 here.
And that happened in 64, 65 there, right?
So that is one of those things I've never quite been able to work out why there's that harmonization.
I mean, I've got my own...
Perfectly easy explanation, which is that Europe, since World War II, has essentially been a vassal colony to the kind of unofficial empire of the Americans.
And Britain's role in that empire is essentially to be the regional...
How would you describe it?
Like the regional lieutenant or the regional...
Right. You know, to oversee...
Are you suggesting that as well?
Not only the guinea pig in terms of domestic policies, but also to oversee the region of Europe and to make sure Europe is kept in line.
I mean, I have a slight conspiracy theory, but I have a view that the pro-Brexit forces in this country were actually sneakily American-aligned.
And that the anti-Brexit forces were quietly working towards a geopolitical agenda that detached Britain from under the wing of the eagle.
And this has only really become fully obvious, I think, in the fullness of time since Brexit happened.
I mean, I should mention that.
I voted remain, by the way, which is very controversial.
Well, I came out against Brexit, and I was, of course, I mean, I am a contrarian.
I mean, it's very true.
But nevertheless, it doesn't mean I'm wrong.
And I just, I came out against Brexit, and yeah, all the typical things were said about me, and then five years later, they all agree with me.
Isn't that funny?
But they don't give me credit.
Isn't that also funny?
It's all just very funny.
One thing I will say, though, you can explain a lot with what is, in effect, a sort of elite conspiracy theory.
They have this agenda, and they're going to roll it out at the same time across different lands.
They might even try it out here first.
That's fair enough, and I'm sure there's actually an element to that.
But I think there's a kind of bigger question about this, and this goes to my own general outlook, which might be different than yours, which is that I do obviously think there are elite actors,
of course.
But I'm not sure they're as in charge as...
Alex Jones thinks they are.
And I think they actually...
Guys, when you come in, mute.
I think they might really lack vision and lack a coherent long-term agenda.
I think Alex Jones, to use him as just a placeholder here, is wrong.
And I think there's a lot to be said for what I guess could be called collective social mood.
And convergence.
I mean, I recently read a short history of the Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick, and it's really uncanny the degree to which the Soviet Union was converging culturally and even psychologically with the United States,
say, post-Stalin.
And there does seem to be a way where communism found its way to capitalism and then capitalism found its way to communism and they just kind of converged into one thing.
And even the promotion of consumerism was happening quite a bit in the Soviet Union.
I think we miss this as people in the West.
And so, again, I'm not going to dismiss An elite conspiracy theory.
But I'm also not going to endorse it.
I think there are consensual factors.
We are a herd animal.
And you see, just to use an evocative example, birds flying in a flock, it's actually impossible for the bird on, say, the far left of this moving body To know what the bird on the far right is doing.
He or she can't see it.
He can't hear the sound, but they move simultaneously.
I don't want to sound too woo-woo here, but we have ways of communicating.
There are ways of acting as a larger group that go beyond the rational.
Let me put it that way.
Mm-hmm.
No, I mean, I effectively agree with that.
The collective subconscious might be one related concept that you're getting in.
Yeah, I think there is one.
And to understand what that is, is interesting.
How we communicate, how the vibe changes.
You know, people use that word, and it's kind of silly to use it, but it's also very true.
I think social mood is a really interesting phenomenon.
Why does this movie...
Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist, yeah.
Why does this movie appeal to us right now?
Why does this song appeal to us?
I think those are interesting questions.
I mean, I do agree with that, Richard.
I wrote, funny enough, before this stream, and partly inspired by a conversation I was having, a friendly joshing I was having with Mark on Twitter, I wrote an article called...
I'm having to pull it up because I can't remember the name of it.
It's called the James Lindsay Debate Club Theory of History, right?
I saw that.
Where I essentially outline why I think a lot of elite decisions are exactly, as you say, non-logical, downstream of feelings in the moment, okay?
I mean, I'll give you an example, right?
We mentioned that 1965 immigration legislation that came in.
Now, one of the things that happened in America, I don't need to explain this to the people on this call, was that there was a kind of mini circulation of elites within America.
The so-called Ellis Island Coalition came to prominence, and there are statistics that show that by the...
Mid-60s, 50% of all of the law faculty in America were Jewish, for example.
Now, why were those lawyers, who basically all campaigned for civil rights and so on, so in favor of immigration?
And as I say in the article, it doesn't have to be anything more sinister than the fact that...
Those, as recent immigrants from a minority group, may have felt safer in a country that was welcoming immigrants.
It kind of makes sense, right?
Recent immigrants tend to be more pro-immigration to the country they're going to, because it just makes sense.
It doesn't need to be this kind of long-term overarching plan or anything.
It could just be that they are...
Responding to what Pareto call their sentiments, if you want to put it that way.
And you could argue that the evidence that it wasn't very well thought through is the fact that Jews in America, and especially in Europe, are now wondering if this was such a good idea.
Because, as you've discussed in this show many times, the less homogenous population is actually more...
Hostile to them than the society has existed in the mid-60s and the 70s.
Oh, yeah.
There's no doubt about that.
As Douglas Murray is lamenting, he wants his country back.
We're a Zionist island.
We always have been.
Yeah. That blessed isle.
Apart from the few hundred years where they were expelled, yeah.
Right. Well, yeah.
Yes. Yeah, go on.
Well, so we wanted to have a joust on petty nationalism.
I mean, do you want to introduce the idea, Mark?
Well, yeah, I think it would actually be better if academic age, because it's his idea ultimately, which I think he can outline better than I can.
But I think that, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll give a kind of general outline of what I think he's saying.
And that's essentially that, you know, it's actually kind of, I mean, this is something that's existed in the DR for a long time, this argument.
Though, of course, academic agent, I think, is putting his spin on it and is bringing a kind of new, fresh, original perspective to it, of course.
But this idea has existed in the DR is that You know, the sort of the racial problems or the political problems in Europe are distinct from those in America, because in Europe there is more sense, and some of this is sort of undeniable,
you could argue, but there's a kind of ethno-nationalist perspective among the various, you know, independent European countries where they are.
They're concerned about preserving Frenchness.
They're concerned about preserving Britishness and so forth, or at least they are in the kind of dissident right.
This is, you know, this is obviously a sort of phenomena among some people in the dissident right.
Whereas in America, there is this idea of a kind of more a blended or homogenized white that is not, you know, French or is not British, but rather is this kind of new
But that we, the concept of white is even kind of an American concept.
This is the argument that I think academic agent is going further with that thought and saying even the idea of like identifying as white.
Is ultimately a kind of American idea, or at least a colonial idea, because probably he would apply it to Australia or South Africa as well, it seems, because it's a similar colonial experience where they're interacting with the non-white and so forth.
But I don't want to put words in his mouth, you know, because he's an academic agent, so he can be as articulate at least as the rest of us.
Probably more so in a lot of cases.
So I'll let him present the case.
Yeah, I mean, I should really explain that the genesis of this idea that many of our ills ultimately come from America has to go back to Julius Evola and also Francis Parker Yockey,
who heavily influenced my thinking on this.
And actually, it was their stuff that made me look again at the history of U.S.-U.K.
and U.S.-European relations.
And I mean, just to very quickly outline the kind of Evola-Yoki line, during the Cold War, they argued Europe was caught between two civilizational enemies.
Russia to the right and America to the left.
And the argument was basically that even though Russia was a deadly foe, which would basically be like a brute stamp on your head, America was in a way an even worse enemy because rather than rubbing you on the head,
it would slowly poison you from the inside, pretending to be your friend.
Whereas, in fact, it's like a kind of civilizational acid that destroys all distinctions, dissolves all localities, and ultimately dissolves the races as well.
Probably the most easy, short introduction on this is Evola's pretty controversial essay, Negrified America.
Obviously, he was writing in the mid-century, so forgive his language.
But he basically argues that because of certain things that happened as historical quirks in America's history, there is something about the Negro culture soul,
if you want to put it that way.
That has seeped into the American character in all sorts of hidden ways.
And there's various other influences as well, including Jewish influences, that have basically led to this kind of deadly anti-traditional cocktail that in time...
He argued would end up destroying old Europe.
Now what's striking about that essay and his other essays on America is that he was writing in Italy in the 60s and the 50s.
Like a pretty much 100% Catholic country back then.
And probably people thought he was crazy.
But now you can fast forward to see the world of 2023.
And I turn on my television and it's...
Just chock full of black people 24-7 pretty much.
And the European, you know, it really feels like many of these things are being imposed on Europe from without, right?
You know, it comes back to what we were saying about the strange harmony where, you know, it just so happens that as America is experiencing a massive invasion of its southern border and huge immigration problems, So these policies are being imposed here and all across Europe.
In the German case, the American army is still literally there.
But in fact, the Americans still have bases in this country, going back to terrible and traitorous deals that Winston Churchill did.
And I've been doing a series recently kind of exploring the history of exactly what went on between the wars and during World War II, And I mean, I've come to the conclusion that Winston Churchill is probably one of the worst leaders in this country's history,
if not the worst, because basically what he ended up doing was mortgaging off the entire empire and essentially gifting large portions of British property, territory, colonial territories to America,
you know, just because he had this belligerent, almost Almost psychotic need to defeat the mid-century Germans.
I mean, you can do your own studies psychologically on why that may have been.
Maybe it was his debt.
Maybe it was because he was half American or whatever.
But it is very difficult to look beyond what went on there and the fact that the experience of Europe since World War II is basically to become more and more Americanized.
This used to be a topic that the left would talk about a lot when I was growing up.
They called it American media imperialism.
I don't know what's happened to the left.
They don't seem to talk about that anymore.
They seem to have been captured.
They've all become voucher or whatever.
They all seem to be happy with this now.
But there are, I think, deep psychological differences between the The character of old Europe and the mentality of the American as a kind of archetype.
The easiest way I would put it would be that if you think of Lord of the Rings, the hobbits of the Shire and the idea of the Shire.
And the idea of loving your home and kind of wanting to dig in roots and defend the castle, I think is deeply ingrained in this country.
Whereas in America, because of its big open spaces and its open roads, there's always been this attitude that actually you can just leave, you can just move.
I remember reading a stat once.
That the average American moves 11 times in their life, and possibly up to 14 times now.
That's a lot.
I think in Britain, it's four times people will move here.
And if you have a look at the way that America has dealt with its deeply ingrained problems, like the racial issue and so on, it has been a story of white flight, basically.
Well, you can't really do that in Europe, and you certainly can't do it in Britain.
Because there's nowhere to move.
There's nowhere to go.
But nonetheless, this way of living seems like it's being imposed.
Thomas Carlyle called it nomadism, as opposed to the idea of the Shire, which is kind of static.
And, I mean, Spengler even talks about becoming a plant, like the peasant becomes a plant.
And, you know, America just isn't like that.
It's a nation of bourgeois, if you want to put it that way.
And these are kind of deeply rooted issues.
And, I mean, in a way, the position I've been arguing for the last year, two years, three years, It's basically been the default position on the right in Europe forever.
You know, it's not just Evelyn and Jocky who argued along these lines.
It was almost every European racist up until World War II pretty much saw things in that way.
I'm not saying that.
I mean, there are other issues to do with the Constitution and textualism and...
Propositional nation and so on and so forth.
But why don't we start there?
Let's start there and see where it goes.
Well, I...
Richard, do you want to...
So long as you don't have the feeling that we're ganging up on you, because I think you're making excellent points and so forth.
But I just don't want you to get that impression.
Of bad hospitality.
I'm actually happy to have Richard have a discussion with you just so that impression is not given, or one of us.
But, you know, you understand my point.
You're a welcome guest here, and we're just having fun.
So I would like to make my points as well, but I want to remove that impression.
And if other people have, if there's a caller that is more of academic agents mindset, they can also chime in as well.
But I think there'll be enough representation from sort of the pan-European perspective.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to what you've said.
And I've actually mentioned this in previous discussions here.
I mean, the the Negro philia is an important component of these things.
Now, you see very strong Negro field in France as well.
I've never read, but I've often seen it about this obsession in the early 20th century, particularly 1920s and so on.
And it is a kind of weird situation where these people were enslaved, they were another class.
But I think it's also wrong for To think of American slave owners as hating their slaves or being sadistic.
I mean, I'm sure some or maybe even many were, and I'm not defending chattel slavery as an institution, but I think there's an interesting book called Roll Jordan Roll and others where it's like the predominant emotion.
Of slave owners to slave was, in fact, love.
And they were treated as innocent hobbits, maybe even, to borrow your metaphor from Tolkien.
And this flips from, you know, almost hating, you know, there's a fine line between love and hate.
It kind of flips between hating them, oppressing them, but then...
Kind of secretly being fascinated by them and looking at them in an almost racist way as more connected with vital energies or even animalistic energies.
And you can see that in pop music.
You can see that in jazz.
You can see that all over the place.
And I don't know.
I guess I have some ambivalent feelings about that.
I also...
I despise rap music, but I don't also want to discount African Americans' contribution to popular music.
But I can see that.
And, you know, Frederick Jackson Turner, very famously, and one of his, he was not a prolific writer, but a brilliant one.
He also agreed with you.
That there is just a profound difference in the American psyche to old Europe.
And he saw this in the notion of the frontier, which is one motif that he brings up.
The word means the opposite in the United States as it means in Europe.
So we think of doctors without borders or médecins sans frontières.
They are without borders.
So the frontier means a border in Europe.
If you're a Prussian, you're surrounded by hostile actors.
You've got to guard the border.
You know, Prussia was an army in search of a nation.
Some other people have made caustic, although insightful, comments about the German-Prussian spirit in that sense.
And in the United States, the frontier was the exact opposite of a border.
It was a wide open space that you can go out into and transform to your liking.
And you can see some analogs to that, maybe even the movement across Siberia.
You can find some analogs of that in Europe, but it is uniquely American.
And I think it added to our psyche.
Jack Turner also had some really interesting lines about how technology would decrease as you went into open space.
So in Boston, you were riding a trolley car.
And then as you moved to the Midwest, you were riding a wagon.
And then as you went to, say, the Pacific Northwest, you hopped into a canoe.
So you were going forward while going backwards in terms of technological development.
There's also an interesting connection of The Bostonians loving the latter books of the Bible, like the Gospels, and then once you get out deep into open space, you're reading Exodus and the Hebrew Bible and so on.
A lot of fascinating things that I think are still impactful on American character.
I agree with so much of what you're saying, but I guess I would...
Push back in the sense of, wasn't Europe really at its best when it connected with that kind of desire for expansion and exploration?
And isn't it, in a way, kind of at its worst when it's acting like they're hobbits living in the Shire?
And, you know, I often will put these things into historical context.
If you want to thank someone for the nation-state in Europe, you need to thank one man, and that is Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the most intelligent president, certainly the most intellectual president in American history,
although I guess he has some rivals in that regard.
But he offered, in contrast to Bolshevism or communistic...
He offered the nation-state and ethno-nationalism as his response or answer to Bolshevism.
And what has been the history of Europe under segregation than a sort of shire?
American tourists love this when they go to old Europe and they...
They go to some little Italian town where someone's using a screwdriver on a Vespa and they're drinking espresso.
It's just so authentic, isn't it?
Well, all of that is the authenticity of subjugation.
And Americans, their long-term strategy of American empire is putting you into a little nation state where you can't fundamentally challenge The United States,
global power.
And so I guess I would, I mean, look, I agree with you in a lot of criticisms of American culture.
But first off, I guess my rejoinder would be, I wonder what exactly it is that Europe is offering.
Because you can't, like...
You can play defense, but at some point you've got to score on the other team.
You can't just say, you're advancing, you're advancing, you're advancing, unless you advance.
The best defense is an offense, so to speak.
Offering the shire or rootedness, this seems to be a kind of quaint, if attractive, but fundamentally Weak rejoinder to an obvious fact that America is a dominant power.
Historically, what I'd say is that there's no getting outside the issue of class and even the issue of caste, which again is something that has been a little bit alien to the American Spirit,
although I am aware Virginia, etc., had kind of aristocratic pretensions and in many ways forms, right?
But unfortunately, that was defeated by the Civil War.
So it was the North that won, and the North was not like that.
But historically, the plant-like...
Peasant, if you want to put it that way.
The Hobbit, the Shire, you know.
And in fact, Tolkien himself has got an amazing quote that somebody put on Twitter the other day about not being part of the Shire himself.
And actually, like, in his darkest moments, like, actually despising how stupid the people of the Shire are and so on.
But then wanting to kind of protect them and make sure that they always had it.
And he actually dramatizes this through the Lord of the Rings.
Because if you remember, certainly in the movie version, right?
If you remember the movie version of Lord of the Rings, Frodo doesn't want to go back to the Shire.
Because Frodo is essentially an aristocrat who develops an adventurous crusading spirit during his journey.
And he's like, I don't want to go back.
I think he ends up going...
Off with the elves or something at the end.
He doesn't want to go back to the Shire.
So that the conquering element, the crusading element, was always kind of outsourced to the warrior class.
If you think of the Spanish conquistadors, it was only, what, like 10,000 men or something, 20,000 men?
It wasn't all of Spain that did it.
It was just a few exceptional men.
And so it was with...
Most of the empires.
It wasn't, you know, so you have to then think, well, there's a relationship between the warriors who look after the peasants in exchange for taxes and so on and so forth.
They get to live in the Shire and be safe and occasionally, you know, should they volunteer, get called up for war or whatever.
The warriors do the warrior-ing.
And, I mean, there are other castes, priests and merchants as well, who enter into the picture.
So, I mean, that is how it's worked historically.
But, of course, none of that exists anymore because we are now prone to think about, you know, all things have to involve all people and be open to all people.
So, again, this is a...
Kind of a, you know, it's a traditional versus modern way of thinking, I guess.
The American, how can I put it?
Well, I guess what I would suggest, just a quick rejoinder, I think the Shire is a modern way of thinking.
Come on.
Well, that's kind of why I was trying to turn the tables on you, in the sense that...
I mean, this is almost like a touchstone or watchword for me, but the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 established this notion of you have a right to a homeland.
I mean, this is what people say totally understandably.
I say it myself about Palestinians.
You have some right to live in your own little shire and to be happy.
That's a modern notion.
Maybe it is a romantic notion, maybe it's a backward-looking notion, but it's a modern notion.
That notion of opening things up to more people, expansion, regulation of the planet, this is also an ancient notion that you can see with Alexander, you can see with Rome,
for better and for worse.
I guess my fundamental Rejoinder is that whatever we want to say about Hollywood, it taught the world new ways to dream.
It offered a fantastical, attractive, forward-looking, maybe even dangerous notion of togetherness or so on that was articulated through Americanism.
And for that to be defeated, you have to have an equally, if not more, compelling vision.
And I guess I would just say that the Shire ain't it.
It wasn't even it for Frodo, as you yourself admitted.
Hey, if I could jump in.
Yeah, and I'll try to make my points succinctly, so I allow both of you guys time to talk as well.
But, yeah, what I would say is that, I mean, bringing up Lord of the Rings is interesting, too, because part of it goes to a sort of interpretation of that work.
What is Tolkien saying?
And what he's saying is interesting in the sense that it's unclear that he's...
You talk about his ambivalence as it concerns the Hobbits, and I think that that comes out in the work as well.
It does seem that the Hobbit is a kind of subtle caricature to some extent, a kind of self-effacing caricature, ostensibly of the Englishman.
But I think that that is generally what he's saying, even of the sort of petty nationalists, right?
Though it is interesting that a lot of the names appear to be Frankish, like Pippin and so forth, right?
There could be another, you know, and he himself has said that, though I think that this is not entirely true, that he dislikes sort of the kind of one-to-one comparison and symbolism and so forth.
I think the dwarves, for example, have a kind of striking resemblance to Jews, and that does seem intended.
But there could be a kind of more looseness in general to his metaphor.
But yeah, so what I would say, though, is in that book as well, we see, and I surmise that this is a kind of metaphor about, because he was a Catholic, it's about, you know, imagining the way that a Catholic West can stand up to these encroaching forces of darkness,
whether they're Islam or...
You know, anti-Christian, but also anti-European forces.
So this famous scene that's depicted in Peter Jackson's film where Aragon says, men of the West stand, right?
And before that, this sword, which I have to guess represents a kind of cruciform or cross.
And maybe that's not the case, but it represents a kind of unifying of, you know, these different factions.
Whether they're dwarves or elves and man and so forth, of the good people versus the bad people.
And when that sword becomes whole and Aragon wields it against the orcs and these sort of underworld creatures, that almost what he's saying, it's almost a kind of pan-Europeanist vision,
you could argue, that Tolkien is almost sort of...
You know, placing a kind of pan-Europeanist vision, and in some ways might even be making a kind of subtle argument against the Shire, which is kind of depicted as a sort of declining phenomenon.
Or at least to the associate, you know, there's this idea that they're going to the West, especially the elves are disappearing and so forth.
And the elves, I think, probably represent, at least in part, a kind of Nordic, you know, older, maybe pagan type.
You could, you know, at least from Tolkien's perspective.
So it is an interesting thing to talk about in this context.
But to your other arguments, though, I mean, I think that there is definitely a kind of tradition of, and a relatively old tradition as well, on the right of Europeans thinking about pan-Europeanism.
I mean, we see it with Nietzsche, of course.
I guess we could say Nietzsche is neither on the right or left, but if we were to put him somewhere, I think that it's in good faith.
I think that we can put him on the right, even though people on the left try to claim him, and probably as a way of mitigating him.
But I think that we can classify him as a thinker on the right.
Napoleon, of course, would have been a pan-Europeanist.
I'm sure as an Englishman, you don't necessarily identify with Napoleon, but he's an example, of course, of a European, and modern in many ways, of course, I would hasten to add.
But others before him, of course, in the philosophical or literary world, in France, Victor Hugo, and...
Who's a good, like an Englishman, but this is a modern example, of course, or a relatively modern example would be Mosley.
Mosley was a big, you know, pan-Europeanist.
And how significant a figure he is, is another question.
Yaki, I do, you know, I've read Yaki as well, and I enjoyed Yaki.
He wrote when he was very young, though, so I think there's a kind of incompleteness to his worldview.
I mean, I like...
But his idea, too, though, of course, is this idea of Imperium, which I think that it sounds like from you I'm getting a kind of pan-Europeanist perspective, which is better than a petty nationalist perspective, from my view.
I'm a pan-Arianist, so we want to be included, too, man.
But, you know, if we're not, I think that, you know, this perspective is, I think, ultimately the kind of correct perspective, you know, from my understanding, a kind of pan-Arianist view, a globalist view, ultimately.
But I, and then Evola, you mentioned this.
I'm kind of aware of their view of both Russia and Europe, or rather Europe's place between Russia and America.
I mean, I think it is interesting that Yaki Because Yaki, of course, more than Evola, is a kind of radical anti-Semite.
He has all these euphemisms he uses for Jews, like the culture distorter and so forth, right?
One word that I really appreciate, or one term that he developed that I really like is the culture bearing stratum.
I think it's a very useful term, or it's a kind of cool like sort of ideal, especially for people that are sort of presently out of power for them to kind of develop a culture bearing stratum in the way that I'm looking at or interpreting it is maybe even as a kind
of nascent aristocracy or nobility, at least of spirit and intention or goals and aspirations and so forth.
I think that, you know, it is interesting, though, that Yaki is kind of making these distinctions with Russia and America.
I think that speech laws are a factor here,
often, because they can't really say, well...
I mean, ultimately, it's a Jewish problem, essentially.
So, in other words, America could become a kind of euphemism in some cases,
right? You know, to your point, though, it's...
And the other thing, too, is, of course, is that the world has changed.
And you say that the leftists did complain about this kind of American imperialism, which, again, had a kind of strong sort of Jewish engine to it or Jewish component to it.
But that is something the left would not point out, of course, right, because that would be anti-Semitic.
So I think that that is part of...
What people are deciding is a kind of American influence.
I think that a huge part of that, of course, is Jewish, essentially, in origin.
And, you know, so, you know, and I am reluctant to, you know, on some level, I'm reluctant to defend myself as an American because, again, I see myself first and foremost.
As Aryan of the white race and so forth.
On the other hand, I think that we do need to have a kind of sober understanding of this phenomenon.
Otherwise, we're misdiagnosing it.
In any case, I think that I've said enough.
I'll probably add more later, but I'll let other people jump into the conversation.
Yeah, can I say a thing about this hate speech thing?
I don't really think it's true that it has a chilling effect on speech, because my experience is that Europeans tend to be much more vocal about these issues, even though they all hate speech laws.
So, what was I going to say?
Europeans are more bold?
Yeah. About what?
About the racial issues and immigration and such, I think.
Well, that's definitely not my experience.
Yeah, because I can't really think of what you might call a prominent influencer or something of the equivalent who has been arrested for political stuff in Sweden or something.
On the contrary, but I have this experience when I talk to Americans that...
Like, all of them say that,"Oh, I can't get involved because I will lose my job." Or,"I can't show my face because I will lose my job." And it's just like...
I've never even had that experience with Swedish people who are quite open with going to demonstrations and such.
Yeah, but they're putting people in jail in England.
I mean, let's be honest here, right?
Yeah. So, what people used to say is that...
I'm going to let Academic Agent jump in because he's the guest.
Oh, hang on.
When we say Europe, we're talking about continental Europe.
Or are we talking about Britain?
Well, I mean...
I would agree that the Europeans are more overtly quote-unquote racist than the British are, in my experience.
Like the European nationalists that I've met tend to be a bit more forthright, apart from the ones from Germany who have to be more clever, obviously.
But even them, even the Germans I've met, privately are more kind of...
You know, a bit more gung-ho about it.
Yeah, I mean, I would generally agree that, but it's kind of anecdotal, you know.
There are some...
Yeah, go on.
So speech laws may or may not be a factor here or there.
Would you say that they're not a factor in terms of the diagnosis of...
I mean, in terms of my...
An American phenomenon rather than a Jewish phenomenon?
In terms of the way I'm thinking, Mark, is that I'm not really even thinking in terms of the...
I mean, the Jewish element is a factor in what has happened to the culture.
You know, we negrified America and jazz and all of that.
There's an unmistakable Jewish role in what you might call...
And what's happened to Europe.
And what's happened to Europe, right?
Because it's become Americanized.
Judea would be another way of saying it, right?
That is all undoubtedly there.
But one of the problems, I guess, I have is that the geopolitical incentives, if you want to put it that way, cannot really be overlooked.
And especially what has actually happened since Wilson, but especially since FDR.
FDR, among other things, was a pathological anti-colonialist.
I think you'd all agree with that, right?
And one of the things that Evola and Yoki turned me on to is what people might call Cold War revisionism, right?
There's a kind of cartoon version of the Cold War that it's capitalism, right-wing American capitalism versus left-wing Russian socialism, right?
But that's not really the story.
And there are many examples of the Americans and the Russians actually basically being on the same side when it came to decolonization of the European powers.
And in some cases, I mean, there's a very interesting case study in Angola, for example, where there was no kind of left-wing You could attribute all of that to who happens to be in charge of America,
but I also feel like there's something about the unit, the political entity of America since its founding, that Basically was founded in rebellion against the whole world,
if you want to put it that way.
And the story that I've seen, you know, the more I've studied it, is that essentially wherever America could screw over the European powers, including Britain, it has done, basically.
Especially when it comes to dismantling the old colonial, the old empires.
That's also been the story of France and England, though, you know, in England and Germany and so forth, right?
Well, I mean, they were more a case of overt rival powers who actually had wars, you know, Napoleon versus the British Empire.
You know, old-fashioned fights over territory.
We'll fight with the Dutch for a while, and then there'll be a fight with the French for a while, and then, you know, you ally with the Germans against the French, or ally with the French against the Germans.
That is just basically how Europe always was up until the imposed peace since 1945.
And, I mean, there's an argument to say, And I don't know how I feel about this, but I have seen this argument made that that competition between the various powers of Europe actually is what gave it its vitality.
It is what made it so innovative and vital and what spurred these powers on to essentially take over the entire world.
Yeah, Charles Murray seems to kind of insinuate that a little bit.
I forget.
What's the name of his book?
It's about achievement.
Yeah, it's like human greatness, human accomplishment or something like that.
He doesn't make that argument directly, but I think that he points to periods where innovation is correlated with warfare or military success among this European power.
In any case, continue your point, please.
There's certainly some truth.
I would say that a lot of American A lot of the greatest American moments came out of its competition with the Russians, right?
I mean, with the USSR.
They kind of spurred each other on.
And, you know, sometimes they spurred each other on in good ways, like for technology.
In other ways, they spurred each other on in really bad ways.
Like, for example, I've seen quite a bit of evidence to suggest that a lot of the...
Civil rights stuff and social liberalism and kind of what we might say kind of more gay direction that America has gone in since the 50s was pretty much spurred on by Soviet critiques,
essentially. So as long as the Soviets could say, oh, look at how you treat the blacks or...
Look at how, you know, you say you're the country of freedom, but why you got Jim Crow's rules then?
Or, you know, so a lot of the left-wing moves of the Americans during that period, you could argue, was in response to Soviet critique.
So they would look better, you know, in the eyes of the world versus the Soviets in that kind of...
Game for the hearts and minds of everybody.
Have you guys come across that sort of material?
Oh, yeah.
Undoubtedly, so much of the great society thinking, etc., was a response to the Soviet Union.
No doubt.
But, you know, for better and for worse, there wouldn't have been a moon landing without the Soviet Union and etc., etc.
So I think it's...
I just noticed that we're at the end of an hour.
If you can stay longer, we would love it.
I've got about 10 minutes.
I did find that Tolkien quote as well, by the way.
So I'd like to read that before I go as well.
That'd be great.
But did you want to come back on any of that stuff?
No, no, no.
I think I've said my piece.
The Tolkien quote says, I should like to save the Shire if I could.
Though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and I felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.
But I don't feel like that now.
I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable.
I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.
So, that is the...
That is a quotation from the Fellowship of the Ring.
Yeah. There was one thing I wanted to come back on you, actually, Richard, where you talked about Wilson and the nation and the Shire.
Really, the conception of the Shire that I had in mind was possibly pre-nation-state or pre...
It's more or less a feudal conception where...
You know, it's a lot more local.
You know, the Shire is a local, is a small little place, a village where the peasantry have allegiance in vassalage to their local baron or lord, who in turn has allegiance to,
you know, the Earl or the Duke or the King, you know, in a kind of hierarchical great chain that is, you know, a much older conception.
But really, I think that is a structure, enduring structure, that animated a lot of Europe.
And there's an argument to say that even things like the Industrial Revolution, things that are typically attributed to capitalism and things like that, were actually built on...
the skeleton of those enduring structures.
There's a very interesting treatment of that by Joseph Schumpeter in his famous book, which I forget the name of now,
Socialism, democracy, and capitalism.
Oh, yes.
Yeah. But he basically argues that the only reason that so-called laissez-faire capitalism or industrial capitalism worked so well
for britain is because it could essentially leech off the old enduring structure of society and he argued that in time the uh corrosive effects of the market essentially which basically dissolves or always dissolves social bonds would in time wreck the very thing that it was built on and i mean you know The fullness of time has probably
borne that out because very few of those structures now exist, right?
Right. So there is an argument to say that that whole way of being was part and parcel of what was called Europe or what was called Western Man,
which now feels like it's coming to the end.
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