April 26, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
50:47
3272 How Feminism Destroyed Europe | Iben Thranholm and Stefan Molyneux
The massive feminization of culture has had a major impact on European politics and the decisions which have lead to the European Migrant Crisis. Iben Thranholm joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss the deficiency of masculinity in European culture, how feminism has programmed women to see men as the enemy and the future of western civilization. "As the refugee crisis erupted and overwhelmed Europe, its political leaders - spearheaded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel - acted like timid mother hens, not as strong men responsible for guarding their country from an invasion." - Iben ThranholmIben Thranholm is one of Denmark’s most widely read columnists and is a former editor and radio host at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Thranholm has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Italy, the United States and Russia to carry out research and interviews. She has been awarded for her investigative research into Danish media coverage of religious issues.For more from Iben Thranholm, please go to:https://www.rt.com/op-edge/authors/iben-thranholm/http://russia-insider.com/en/users/iben-thranholmFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
She is an award-winning Dutch journalist, a former editor and radio host with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and has recently written extensively on the European migrant crisis.
We'll link to a couple of her videos below.
She is a passionate advocate for all the stuff we're going to get into during this conversation.
Iben, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you for having me.
Okay, so my background is European, though I currently live in Canada, and particularly in America, of course, currently consumed with the machinations of the presidential nomination process.
Not seeing as much, I think, of what is going on in Europe, certainly that you see, I think, more perceptively than most of the Europeans that I've talked to.
What is the big picture of what is happening and what do people outside of Europe need to understand that they're not getting now?
I think the Europeans are starting to understand that our politicians are not capable of protecting us.
I mean, the recent terror attack in Brussels, I think it really woke up people a lot because there has been a lot of surveillance exactly in this city.
And there has even been some kind of training for if a new terrorist attack would happen, and yet it happened.
And it seems that people are starting to understand that what our politicians are trying to promise us is not going to happen.
They repeat over and over again that democracy is going to win this fight or this war, but we are seeing the opposite, that we are losing it, and we don't have control over the situation.
So I think all Europeans right now have really a sense of a deeper crisis.
And this problem is much more serious than we thought.
In the beginning, you know, I come from Denmark, which is the land of the Mohammed cartoons.
We thought in the beginning we could fight this evil just with freedom of speech.
Now, last week, our politicians actually are ready to pass a law where, you know, imams that would preach hatred and fundamentalism and be very extreme and radical that they can be expelled from the country.
So this is a completely new thing.
They're going to, you know, actually make laws against freedom of speech because of this problem.
So things are changing a lot and nobody really knows where Europe is going to I mean, where things are going to end right now.
And I think people here are very insecure.
They feel that our politicians are not able to protect us in the right way and protect our borders.
So, you know, it's really a deep crisis here.
What do you think are these specific, because I run a philosophy show, so when I look at a problem, I always try and get to the errors or misapprehensions or confusions that are at the root of how problems manifest socially.
Do you have a sense of what mistakes are made in thinking that have led to this kind of crisis?
Yeah, I think right now people understand that That it's not only a matter of trying to get more surveillance, more control, We need to ask some deeper questions.
How come that these radical movements, these radical people are actually growing in number in Europe?
How come that they don't want to have a free democratic society like we have?
So we have to ask ourselves some questions.
And I think one of the biggest mistake is actually that we don't want to acknowledge that there is a religious, that there is a kind of religious issue here.
Because Europe is very secular, so we don't really...
See people who have a religion as somebody who is, you know, a true democrat and a modern person.
But that's wrong because modernity is full of religion.
We see that everywhere in the world except from Europe.
So we don't understand that many of those very violent people, those terrorists, they actually have a religious or cultural reason for doing this.
And we don't want to address this.
We hear over and over again the same sound bites from our politicians.
That Islam is a peaceful religion, it has nothing to do with religion.
And we see, yesterday I saw a new kind of investigation that shows, I think it was like 40,000 people that has been asked, that those people who are very religious, Muslims that are very religious, They actually tend to be more violent, and we don't want to face those facts.
So I think that we are using the wrong means to fight terrorism, and this is the real problem of Europe, is that we lack values to fight this evil.
It's not a matter of military force, it's not a matter of surveillance, because it is, you know, a mindset that we have to go against.
And we certainly don't have the right tools to do this, and I think The confrontation with radical Islam in Europe shows us that post-modernity has failed.
All the post-modern values have failed because they're simply not strong enough to defeat this evil.
And this is the real problem in Europe.
Yeah, I mean, certainly, when I was in grad school, postmodernism seemed to me more a negative than a positive.
In other words, it seemed to be an opposition to all of the traditional Western values, and a sort of celebration of the other.
So it seemed to me more nihilistic than positive in its approach.
And When Europeans, of course, like most of us, have become less religious, more secular, more materialistic, more hedonistic, you could almost say.
I think it's hard for Europeans to understand what it means to be dedicated to an eschatological large cause, much bigger than you, that you may be willing to sacrifice your life for, because such demands have not been made on Europeans for generations.
No, I think right now Europe are seeing the consequences of, you know, has turned its back on its Christian roots.
Because, you know, Islam has tried for centuries to defeat Europe, but they never succeeded because there was this Christian unity.
There was this strong Christian faith.
We have to defeat those people.
We have to keep them outside our borders.
And there was a kind of unity in Europe because of the Christian faith that we lost.
There were also other moral values.
Right now, as you say, it's hedonistic.
It's a very selfish society.
Everybody's just thinking about their own happiness.
And we have legalized a lot of postmodern values like, you know, kind of completely corruption of the family.
People are getting divorced.
The legalization of homosexual marriages.
So it's a kind of culture that is, you know, abortion and also euthanasia now.
It is a...
A kind of culture that is not really, maybe you could even say it's kind of the culture of death.
And it means that when you don't have a culture that is built on true values, values that promote life, sooner or later this society will collapse because it's built on something that is not true.
And I think that post-modernity was a kind of illusion, a kind of lie in a way.
And now we see that it's not strong enough to defeat this radical Islam.
So I don't think if Europe is not going to wake up and return to its Christian roots, it's not going to look very good.
It's going to look really bad for Europe.
Because you have to keep in mind that all the old Christian kingdoms like North Africa, Minor Asia, the Holy Land, all those areas are now, they used to be, you know, huge and strong Christian kingdoms.
Today, they're all Islamic.
So it means that, why not Europe?
I mean, Europe are inviting those people themselves.
So it's really, but I think a lot of people have not acknowledged this problem yet, but sooner or later they will.
Well, syllogistically, you know, philosophically, it's a very easy problem to solve because people say that tolerance and multiculturalism is a value.
And okay, there's arguments about that, but let's just say that that's true.
If tolerance and multiculturalism are a value, then how do we evaluate tolerance?
Cultures that are intolerant and against multiculturalism.
And that to me is simple.
So saying, well, multiculturalism is a value, therefore we should invite intolerant and anti-diversity cultures into a multicultural society.
That's like a 10-second argument.
And it's really frustrating to those who are sort of trained in logical thought how a 10-second argument that could save European civilization simply refuses to be discussed in any significant public sphere.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's also because of the lack of masculinity.
Like I wrote in one of my op-eds that one of the problems with the migrant crisis is actually the lack of real men.
It means that all the old heroic virtues like courage and honor, self-reliance and self-discipline and all those old values, they're lost.
It means that the culture is getting weak and we're just acting like mothers want to be a care for people, inclusive and all this.
And, you know, it's nice, but this political situation is a completely different situation.
So it means that we're going to destroy ourselves.
We don't step up like real men and, you know, have a kind of iron fist to say, stop, we're not going to But this is not the ideology right now in Europe, because it's very politically correct to have all those inclusive values.
But I think there is a big gap between our politicians and the people in Europe.
And more and more people in Europe, they see that you need a different political approach than what our politicians are actually promoting.
And I don't know how long it's going to take for the politicians to change their mind, because many of them will not be re-elected if they continue like this.
And I think it's a very tense situation that the people are so far away from the politicians that there is this big gap.
And that, in the end, it could mean a civil war, you know, because people are then trying to...
Just take up arms themselves, just to defend themselves.
So it can be a very, very tense situation.
But I think that the multicultural project, you know, in theory it's fine, but in practice you see that it's deadly.
It's deadly for our culture.
And sooner or later I think somebody will have to face it and act accordingly.
Even when I was growing up in the 70s, and you sort of talk about masculine values and falling away from Europe.
But when I was growing up in the 70s, there was endless waves of propaganda that I even got as a kid.
Male chauvinist pigs and patriarchy and, you know, man, bad, woman, good.
Man, bad, woman, good.
Rinse and repeat.
So it seems to me that after a couple of generations of at least the popular culture, the mainstream media and so on, Really viciously denigrating traditional male values, it seems almost impossible that there would be a fine way to resurrect them, particularly if it's like, well, men, we need you now, so now we're going to like you.
I mean, there may be a certain amount of skepticism on the part of men to join that after so much abuse has been heaped upon men.
Well, I think reality will teach us to come back to those values.
You know, I also wrote that we need a male revolution in Europe to come back to the real virtues.
And I think, unfortunately, I think we're going to see more terrorism.
And I think in the end, people will be desperate to do something.
So maybe that will wake up the real male virtues again.
But, you know, it's just very tragic that it has to be so...
That we need to face a kind of catastrophe before people will wake up.
But I think, I mean, already now, you can see people even from, I mean, people that normally would be on the left wing, they start to say, close the borders.
Because this is not going to, you know, this is not going to...
It cannot continue like this.
And just one year ago, you would hear the same people say, well, we should just welcome all the refugees, all the migrants, no problem.
But today, at least in Denmark, you see more and more people say, stop it.
We don't want this.
Unfortunately, our politicians are not saying the same.
But I think there will be more and more pressure on the politicians.
And in the end, I think when people are threatened and they're afraid to die or to get killed, they will act.
It's terrible for all thinkers that disaster tends to be the only thing that motivates people rather than rational and empirical arguments that could help avert disaster.
But that's perhaps a topic for another time.
Is there any sense even about...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
But I think people are so...
Much into this kind of illusion that everybody can just have a nice time together if we have dialogue.
Because what is very characteristic for the secular humanism is that it doesn't believe in evil.
Because they think basically if you give people a nice house and a job and a car, you know, there is no evil.
And you can just have a dialogue and everybody is nice.
And this is the big failure in secular humanism.
It doesn't really understand that there is something that is evil just because it is evil, you know, because it has, you know, lost the sense of spirituality.
And in the spiritual world, there are evil forces that are just evil because they're evil.
And you can't fight them just with democracy.
It takes another spirituality to fight them.
And this is the real problem in Europe is that they don't really understand that evil exists.
And they don't acknowledge it right now.
Yeah, I think most people on the left and even some on the right would say that it is economic determinism that forges human nature.
And therefore, people who are hostile, they're dysfunctional, it is because they lack resources.
And so if we take people from Africa, North Africa or the Middle East, we put them in Europe, we give them resources, they will magically change.
Human nature or culture or history or religion or community or tribalism or racialism The idea that this vanishes like human beings are just water and you pour them into various containers and they just take the shape of that containers the idea that there are fundamental embedded ideologies transmitted through thousands or I guess in Islam 1400 years the idea that it's not just going to change when people cross from one border to another I find that incomprehensible,
this idea that we're just so moldable, like clay on a potter's wheel.
And the idea that all dysfunction results from a lack of resources is false.
I mean, the majority of terrorists are middle class.
I mean, the argument should not even exist.
Yeah, but that's because of this kind of relativism.
It means that there is no truth anymore.
It's just a matter of, you know, everything can go together.
And, I mean, one truth is just like the other truth.
And this is also because of the lack of the Christian tradition.
It means that you don't have any kind of discernment anymore to understand what is right, what is wrong, what is false, what is good.
And this, I think, now we see the consequences of this attitude that there is no truth anymore.
So it means that there are certain truths and then we've got to face the consequences like we're doing now.
Yeah, I certainly think that every rejection of objective values leads to an endless series of compromises and appeasement until crisis occurs.
And then people magically rediscover universal values, absolute truth, absolute morality.
And we, of course, hope it's not too late at that point.
Now, what about, it sort of has struck me, even, that The EU, like the European Union experiment, seems to be going particularly awry in this area, right?
I mean, I sort of think, you know, if Greece hadn't been part of the EU, they wouldn't have had the EU's credit, they wouldn't have been able to run up so much debt, they wouldn't have ended up with this huge resentment against the EU's central bank refusing to bail them out for the third or fourth time or whatever it was.
They would have had more of a sense of national unity, national pride.
They wouldn't have lost their feelings of sovereignty to, you know, distant banks in Brussels or whatever.
And they may have actually defended their borders rather than sort of giving it up.
And that's just one sort of the many dominoes that has led to this problem.
Is there any sense where you are and the people you talk to that the EU needs to be re-evaluated, particularly, of course, the Schengen and the open border side?
I don't think people, at least not here in Northern Europe, have a lot of confidence in the EU. Actually, we have very many skeptics here that are not very happy with the EU Union.
And I think people are afraid exactly that decisions will be made and they will suffer from it because they don't have any kind of sovereignty anymore.
And I've Don't know the future, but I don't think it's unlikely that it will be dissolved somehow, because people don't believe in this project.
And at least here in Denmark, people never believed in it.
And we don't have the euro as well.
And we're very skeptical towards it.
And I think now we see that they're not capable of, you know, holding Europe together in the kind of unity that works.
So I think if they don't If they're not able to cope with this crisis and it's just gonna get worse, I think the EU Union would face a deep crisis too.
Because how should people be confident in it anymore?
Right, right.
Now, it seems that You referred to them earlier, sort of female values.
And I get that we're putting, you know, everyone in a big bucket.
There's lots of exceptions.
But sort of female values of sentimentality and to some degree emotion over, you know, hard empiricism and so on seems to be dominating, or at least until recently, has dominated the political discourse in Europe.
And I haven't really heard much from men.
At least, you know, there are male politicians, but they're generally following the more engaged female voting patterns.
Do you think that it may be an imbalance in sort of the overabundance of female sentimentality that may be leading towards these kinds of problems?
I think because there has been this feminist war on masculinity for decades.
And it means that many males here in Europe, they don't know how to be male.
I mean, many of them were brought up by mothers from the 68 movement that wanted their boys to be like women.
So they were actually taught how to be women, not men.
And that has left many men very insecure about the masculine nature.
So they don't know how to be men.
And that's also why we have so many divorces, because many men do not know how to be the head of the family.
They don't know how to respond as a man.
And, you know, the nature in many women, they're very masculine, many women, but yet they're also very feminine.
So they want a man to be responsible and to be a man.
And when he cannot, I mean, she doesn't want to spend time with him.
So it means that many men, they don't really, you know, there is a huge crisis for many men here because they don't know what is masculinity.
And I think we see also this in our politicians and the way that they behave.
For instance, here, Minister of Justice.
He's a man you could see with almost tears in his eyes on the TV screen when he's interviewed about how he thinks that we should care for the refugees and we have to be this kind of good people.
For instance, a couple of months ago we had a huge crowd of refugees and migrants that came to Denmark because they wanted to pass the country to go further on to Sweden.
And they were walking on the highway which is forbidden in Denmark.
But the police just gave up and, you know, they could not force the law on them.
And this minister said, okay, we have to let those people walk on the highway.
And he was so, you know, he was so emotional.
He said, look, we're good people.
We're doing this.
The fact is, we don't know how many ISIS terrorists went with this crowd.
So nobody knows what's going on in the country.
So it means that they were acting like a mother, you know, That just wanted to be nice to her children.
Not like men who said, well, there is law in this country, you have to follow the law, and if you don't do that, we're going to arrest you and you will be put to jail.
This is normally what a man would do.
But these politicians, they acted like soft mothers, said, just let them pass.
We don't even want to register them because we should be good people.
And if you ask any critical questions, you will be called a racist or a bad person or a fascist.
So nobody wants to criticize anything.
And I think it's also this political correctness that is still here.
So it means you can't ask any, you can't raise any critical questions because then you are a bad person.
And these politicians, they are It's a culture of like, Europe is like a battered wife, you know, that keeps the door open to this violent husband, that she can come back again and again and again, and she will always excuse him.
This is the way we are actually dealing with the situation, I think.
With regards to crime within Denmark, I know, of course, that Sweden, I think, is now second only to South Africa in the rape capital of the world, or close to it.
And, of course, the vast majority of these rapes are being committed by migrants.
I mean, one in three African men has admitted to being a rapist in their home countries.
And so it seems to me that there is this title, genuine, not the sort of made-up feminist stuff, but the genuine rape culture sort of pouring into Europe.
Is there, in people's daily lives, is there a sense of concern or danger?
Or are the migrant communities still so self-segregated that they're not affecting people's general lives outside of the no-go zones or the ghettos or wherever they are?
Well, it's much worse in Sweden than it is in Denmark.
And unfortunately, the police told women in Sweden a couple of weeks ago that they should not go alone in the streets.
They should always go together, be together with another person and not be on their own in the street.
I think that's incredible.
That the police lack resources to protect the women.
And now the women have to protect themselves or they have to ask somebody to join them if they're going somewhere.
But I think we will face the same situation here in Denmark very soon because there is this kind of, you know...
Very soft approach by our politicians.
And I think it's incredible.
It's incredible that the police is just telling the women to take care of themselves, not to try to get control over the situation.
And unfortunately, we also have those Parallel societies in Denmark, and it's just growing and growing.
And there are zones here where the police really do not have any control.
And it's everywhere in Europe that you see that those societies are actually on the rise.
And that's very worrisome.
Well, that is a foreign occupation.
I mean, I don't know why this is—I mean, if you have a section of your country where you cannot enforce the laws, where your police and your citizens cannot go, that is foreign-occupied territory.
I mean, that is—societies can function if the majority of people obey the law, respect and obey the law, and there are a few, you know, people who don't.
But when you get significant groups of people who, A, do not respect and obey the law, such as walking along the highway, to put it mildly, is sort of the mildest of the disobedience that's occurring.
And secondly, the problem is, of course, that, you know, in sort of white Western European societies, if you go to jail, generally, you feel bad and you come out and hopefully you try to do better.
But one of the problems, as far as I understand it, is that when you send the migrants to jail, they tend to get radicalized by the other Muslims who are in the jail.
So you're sort of sending them to jail to become more dangerous, on average, than before you sent them to jail.
So the traditional punishment of jail is the exact opposite of its intended purpose.
Yeah, but I think we also soon have to face the fact that our democratic law is not useful anymore.
We need to change it to survive.
And that's a very, very hard fact to face, that we have been living in peace since the Second World War.
Everything has been fine.
We have been developing this very...
It's a very well-functioned democracy, the welfare state, and suddenly now they can use our law, which gives a lot of freedom, to put us into slavery.
And this is a really big paradox, because they're actually using our law to gain freedom of speech, to use their democratic rights, and they have the right to do this.
I think it's very likely that we will have to face the fact that we have to change our law.
And this kind of democracy we have right now, it's only hurting us.
It is becoming too dangerous for us.
But what kind of society will we have then?
This is the big problem.
I mean, how much freedom can we have?
Because, you know, I don't like all this surveillance because it means that I will be surveyed as well.
I mean, everything I do, I mean, the governments will know exactly where I'm going, whom I'm talking to, what kind of books I'm reading.
And this can also be used for other means.
So I think we have to think really carefully about what is happening right now and what kind of laws that we are passing.
But it is a big threat.
It is a big threat that we see those very violent persons taking control over our society.
And many terrorist attacks are quite impulsive.
I don't think those terrorists a couple of weeks ago brought us that.
They planned it like years before.
Because it's very easy to get those things that you need to make a bomb.
You can do it in a week or two.
And you can do it spontaneously.
So it means that if they're already radicalized in those parallel societies, it's very easy for them to get angry about something that is said or done and they just, you know, execute those terror attacks right away.
So it's impossible to have control.
So either you have to expel people, say you can't live in our country, or you have to change the laws and be much more strict.
Well, and though, of course, nobody likes to talk about expulsion, I mean, I think that the rational choice, rather than create an all more powerful state surveillance apparatus and starting to get all kinds in 1984, which, of course, was primarily what the Second World War was fought to end of the war, the Cold War was fought against autocratic dictatorial regimes.
Rather than slide that way, is there any sympathy for just the idea of, hey, you know, I mean, I don't mean to trivialize it, but it's like, hey, we had a couple of dates, didn't work out, I think we might need to break up.
I mean, is there any idea that it might just be, sorry, it's an experiment that failed, as Angela Merkel said about multiculturalism in 2010, it's failed, and say, okay, you know, everybody back to their corners.
I'm sorry you can't stay here because there's just no particular compatibility.
In fact, there's significant incompatibilities.
I think we have to face that we are in a war.
Because that's what we don't want to, you know, acknowledge that we are in a war.
And what do you do in a war?
I mean, the stronger part wins.
So you have to go to war and say, okay, we want our society the way we want it.
And we don't want you to be part of that if you don't want to comply to our values and our rules.
But yet, so far, our politicians are too soft to use this iron fist and say, well, this is the way it is, or you leave the country.
But, I don't know, maybe that's the only thing that is...
I mean, that is the only solution in the end.
I don't know, but it will change our society no matter what.
I think right now we are at a kind of crossroad and our society will change because we won't have the same freedom for a long time as we used to have because it's not possible because of those people.
Right, right.
And of course, the sensitivity towards the images, you know, let's say that there's some movement towards expulsion.
Well, that's not going to be pretty.
I mean, it's not like people are just going to line up and say, well, you know, no problem.
Where do I find my flight, right?
It is going to be strongly resisted and it's going to require a significant amount of, well, let's just say police presence to enact this and it probably is going to be quite violent.
And I think people at the moment, I mean, you're there.
I'm just sort of getting the sense of it.
But the same thing is happening some places over here.
I think people are just like, can I just not deal with it for the next five minutes?
It's literally come down to, well, there was nothing bad that happened today, so maybe nothing bad will happen.
It's down to that kind of tiny time slice.
I think everybody knows.
That a huge challenge is coming, and the longer it's deferred, the worse it's going to be.
But I think people are just like, you know, can I at least finish my TV show in peace?
I think it's come down to that kind of time slice.
Yes, but I think, I know you are a philosopher, but I think it's very important to address the topic of spirituality.
Because if you're going to fight an evil like this, you need to believe in something that is higher than you.
You need to have a God.
You need to have spiritual strength, to have moral strength, to have faith.
Because democratic values are not enough.
It's It's evident now that even though we talk a lot about democracy and we praise it and it's like a new religion, actually, it has no power against this kind of evil.
So, I mean, that was what our ancestors used to do.
They were united in faith.
And I think even though it's not a postmodern value to have faith in God, I think this would help the Westerners a lot.
If they started to pray, if they started to actually have faith in God and say, listen, this is really, really a very bad moment in history.
Can you help us?
Because we're going to fight for...
For instance, Islam is built on, at least what we see here in Europe, on fear.
The Gospel actually tells you that there are two ways to live your life, either in fear or in faith.
You can choose between those two things, fear or faith.
Islam is imposing fear on us because people are getting very fearful.
I think even the Muslims are very fearful themselves because they are afraid of Allah and they're afraid that he's not merciful and they should be punished.
So Islam promotes fear.
Hatred, control.
The gospel, at least the way it is written in the gospel, is love, it's peace, it's hope.
So it means that it's actually the opposite of what Islam is teaching.
So you need to have...
I mean, they cannot just be a kind of cultural values.
They need to be...
Infused with spiritual force, kind of, you know, divine, what do you call it, purpose.
So the Europeans have lost this completely because very few people go to church, very few people have this kind of prayer life and this faith in God.
And there are many examples that it was because of faith that the Christians were able to defeat Islam back in history.
It's the first time in history that Europe has to defeat Islam without Christianity, and so far it's not working very well.
So maybe it was an idea to go back and look at history and say, what did they do to overcome this evil before, back in history?
I know it's not...
I know it's not very modern to say, but I think, for instance, I have traveled a lot in Russia.
And Russia is very interesting because after 75 years of atheism, they have returned to the Orthodox Christian faith, which gives them an enormous strength to overcome even the hostility from the West, which hates Russia for the time being.
You know, the spiritual foundation of a society is very important.
It's the most important thing.
And this is what Putin is stressing again and again, yet nobody reports that in the West.
And this is, this fundament is what is lacking in the West.
And that's why we are so vulnerable.
That's why we are so weak.
And this is why it's so extremely easy for the terrorists to control us, because there is no substance in our values anymore.
And I think, like I said before, I'm certainly not going to push back against that kind of eloquence.
I find atheists quite frustrating, to put it mildly, because it seems to me that atheism was used to remove Christianity to allow socialism into the world.
And that became this economic determinism Which creates the endless desire for social engineering and large governments and dependent populations.
So maybe that's a whole other conversation, but I am finding these days that I have much more respect and significantly more in common with religious faith than I do with atheism, which seems to have devolved into a kind of hysterical selfishness where Atheists are constantly launching these crusades against things that don't matter.
And I mean mostly the secular left.
Making up grievances and making up problems and creating huge victim classes and so on.
And so it seems to me that Christianity need to be moved out of the way to create the worship of the state.
Just, of course, has happened more directly in Russia after 1917 when the communists got in and started killing all the kulaks and the Christians.
Because not because they fundamentally opposed irrationality or faith or something like that.
But just because they wanted to tear aside that which stood in the way between them and near infinite political power.
So, sorry, I don't mean to make a big speech, but I have significant sympathy for that and the fact that atheism seems to remove from people, as you say, the sense of anything larger than themselves.
And it also seems to make people pretty barren.
I mean, tell me, why, why, why?
Because, you know, even if these problems are solved, or even if no more migrants come in, the demographic lines are pretty clear that Europeans are going to end up as a minority in their own countries within a couple of decades, just based on birth rates.
Why have people stopped having children?
Because of selfishness, in a way.
I think this is the fact that we have been promoting a culture of individualism and no soul sacrifice.
And it's just all about me and my happiness, very materialistic.
And, you know, for a certain time it works because we're still having a kind of Christian heritage.
You know, to build on.
But now this heritage is used.
There is sort of eroded.
There's nothing left soon.
And then you see that it's, like you said, it's barren.
There is nothing.
I mean, people don't even want to have children anymore.
I mean, John Paul II, the former Pope, Pope John Paul II, he called Europe the culture of death.
And I think that's very interesting because we're actually...
Praising values that lead to death, like abortion, euthanasia, and that we are not having many children anymore.
So it means that we are sort of committing a cultural suicide.
And that's very, very depressing.
It's terrible to see that the Europeans are just committing suicide.
And it's like they have lost the energy of the joy of life, in a way.
I mean, the biggest problem in Europe is loneliness and depression, even though we have welfare states.
And that's a mystery, you know, people are not really...
I would say because of the welfare state, but that's probably a topic.
People are not very happy individually.
They're not very happy.
They're divorced.
They're lonesome.
They don't have enough children.
They take these happy pills.
And in Denmark, people drink far too much.
I mean, we have a very high alcohol abuse in many ways, even within good social circles.
So, there is something in our culture that is, the culture is sick, but I think this sickness is a kind of spiritual sickness.
It's not a political sickness, it is a spiritual sickness.
Unfortunately, people are now so far away from the idea of having faith in God, so it's going to take time for them to understand that this is what's needed.
You know, sometimes I get very pessimistic and I think like the Roman Empire completely collapsed because of moral corruption and the wrong values, we might see the end of Europe as well.
And then we will see that Christianity or healthy cultures would resurrect somewhere else, perhaps in Russia.
I think it's very interesting to see that after 75 years of communism and atheism, that there is this revival of Christianity in Russia.
I have been traveling there for some time, and it's fascinating to see that the churches are full of people, and even though people don't attend church, they agree that Orthodoxy is the right foundation for Russia.
And, you know, it's a miracle because just like 30 years ago, it was unbelievable that it would happen.
So maybe the same thing will happen in Europe because I see that after communism collapsed in Russia, it did not die.
It just moved to Europe because we have right now cultural Marxism here.
It is disguised in freedom and democracy and freedom of speech and all those things, human rights.
But in the end, it's totalitarian, and we have this kind of political correctness that is ruling everybody, and people are very silent because they don't dare to speak up.
And, you know, it sounds like a huge paradox, and like, I'm not telling the truth, but in Russia today, you have more freedom of speech than you have in Europe, for many people.
So I think maybe this kind of spirit of cultural Marxism, this spirit of atheism, is now doing a lot of chaos here in Europe.
But maybe we will have the same...
We will go down the same road as Russia.
So finally, society will collapse and something new will resurrect somehow.
I don't know.
I hope so, because I love European culture.
I mean, the real, authentic European culture is...
One of the best cultures in the world.
And it grieves me so much to see right now that it's just under such an attack and that our own leaders are, you know, they have made a kind of unholy alliance with the radical Islam to destroy the Christian culture.
And I think it's so tragic and it really grieves me.
No, I agree with you.
I mean, my love of Western culture and European values knows almost no bounds.
And one of the things I think that's so important about the childless Europe is basically the sort of one-two reality of how you defend a culture.
Number one, men are required to defend it.
Number two, they fight for their wives and their children.
And so if you can get men to not get married, or even if they're married to not have children, you know, after I became a father...
My time horizon of where I plan is much more than my own life.
It goes into infinity, into my daughter and her children and her children's children, like I have a forward-looking zoom lens of what needs to be defended rather than my particular comfort of the next five minutes.
And so separating husbands from wives, separating men from families, and in particular, separating men from offspring has, I think, broken the back Of that which is necessary to defend European civilization.
Exactly.
I couldn't agree more.
And many children today are not growing up with their father.
It means that they're fatherless.
And it also have an impact on the spirituality, but because nobody really have an image of God as a father, because they don't have a father anymore.
So, you know, it has a lot of consequences, and it means they don't know how to be men.
I mean, small boys do not learn how to be men, and they have no image of what a father is.
So it is a fatherless society, and it means that it's getting weaker and weaker and weaker.
And I don't know how this male revolution can start, but it needs to start somewhere if this culture is going to survive.
Well, I think it's going to need to start from women apologizing to men for the verbal abuse of the past 60 or 70 years.
So I've made that case before.
I won't make it again here.
And listen, I mean...
I'm on the fence, you know, and I think I'm where you are.
The optimism and the pessimism sort of swings back and forth like this hysterical pendulum in my heart because part of me says, okay, well, it's too broken to be fixed or whatever.
But the other part of me says that European culture, the whites, whoever, whatever you want to call it, have been up against the wall many times in history.
And there is, you know, I've said this before that Europeans are really, really nice people until they're not.
And then they're really, really not.
Like, there's this switch that gets flipped in European nature.
Like, I think I've talked about this before in the show.
Like, in England under Chamberlain in the 1930s, it was appease, appease, appease.
And then it wasn't.
And then it was like, we are going to bomb...
Germany back into the Stone Age and you get Churchill and you get like, so there, but that was still a male respecting culture, but there is something in the European spirit that we're going to be really, really nice and then if we really get that we're being taken advantage of and our interests are being threatened, there's like this Viking switch or something that happens in Europeans that makes them unrecognizable to the people who thought they were easy to overtake, if that makes sense.
Yeah, but it's going to take time this time because we are brainwashed with this ideology that we have to be inclusive and caring and that you are racist if you don't allow people to enter your country with a different cultural and religious background.
And many people are very afraid of this because of this political totalitarian correctness, which I say is cultural Marxism.
So it will take some time like it did for the Russians to stand up against it and say no more.
But I think Russia gives me hope, because if this could happen in Russia, it was a very totalitarian country.
If this could collapse like it did, you know, things can collapse in Europe as well.
I'm not sure how long it's going to take, but if you look at social media, you see people are getting more and more angry.
They're aggressive and they don't agree with the politicians.
Yet they try to be respectful.
But I think, as you say, there will be a point where they're not nice anymore.
What I'm afraid of, that it's going to be a civil war, that it will not be the government who wants this war, but the people.
And then they will take up arms themselves and they will, you know, try to defend themselves.
And they will attack, you know.
And this is a very chaotic situation if that's going to happen.
But I don't think it is impossible that it will happen because you have already seen demonstrations at Calais.
You have seen it in Germany where people gather and they are very, very angry and dissatisfied with the situation.
And if we see more terror attacks, this spirit, so to say, would grow, I think.
Because I see a lot of people writing comments on social media that they really disagree with the political approach.
Oh, I think that's absolutely right.
And just for those who are outside of Europe, the degree to which individuals can very much suffer by speaking out their minds.
It's not just, you know, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
The consequences can be significant for people's careers, for people's lives.
And so it is it has totalitarian elements to it insofar as, you know, people of good conscience and people of moral integrity can always stand social disapproval.
In fact, you know, a lot of times social disapproval is your marker that you're doing the right thing and challenging people's opinions in that old Socratic gadfly method.
But the repercussions for people in Europe for speaking out can be very severe.
And the idea that there's freedom of speech to talk about challenging issues to do with race or ethnicity or religion, I would say that for most people functionally, there's almost no freedom of speech because the repercussions can be so harsh.
Exactly.
But I think, you know, like in the US now, you see a new movement with Donald Trump in many ways, that people are fed up with this political correctness.
And I think that's why he's so popular, because I don't know if he's fake or real, but at least he's very refreshing.
And I like to listen to him because he doesn't, he's not under this kind of, you know, political correctness that is controlling what he's telling people.
And I think the reason why he's so popular is actually because people are fed up with Washington and all this political, all the lies, all the political correctness.
So maybe there is also something going on in America right now where people are starting to say, we want a change.
We want a real change.
We don't want this society anymore.
And maybe this could also have an impact on Europe.
I don't know, but I hope it will.
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that if Donald Trump is elected, And he closes the border with Mexico and deports the people who are in America illegally.
Then there's no doubt that the American economy will undergo a significant revival.
Because the basic reality is that people say, well, what do you have against the migrants?
It's like, I don't wake up every morning thinking what I have against.
Nothing against the migrants.
It's just that for every migrant that comes into Europe, that's one less European child that's going to be there because the taxes have to be taken from families to be given to the migrants.
So it's not that I don't want migrants in.
It's just that migrants, every migrant that comes in is one less European.
And that means Europe becomes that much less European and more and more like Africa and more and more like Islam.
So the idea that this controversial is just shocking to me and just shows how far this politically correct speech has gone.
But if Donald Trump were to get elected and if he does what he says he's going to do, and I... I'm open to the possibility.
And if that is significantly successful, that will give a lot of ammunition, so to speak, to the people in Europe who want to start restricting this kind of migration.
But I think people are starting to get a notion of that this kind of false compassion is destabilizing all our societies.
Because it is a sort of false compassion to say, let's just embrace everybody when we see that our society is suffering from it.
It's not a true compassion, actually.
It is a false compassion which is used in a political way to destabilize society.
And I think people start to understand that kind of mechanism.
Oh, it's called moral posturing or moral signaling.
People just want to be perceived as good and nice by saying nice and right things, no matter how self-destructive.
And false morality in the Bible, as well as all rational philosophy, false morality or sophism or moral self-congratulation for unthought-out opinions is one of the greatest evils because it is through that evil that most other evils manifest.
Exactly.
And this is the situation both in the U.S. and Europe today.
And I think that since human beings are moral beings, which has a certain, you know, conscience, they will understand sooner or later if they're told lies.
I mean, like in the Soviet Union, people for a long time they believed what they heard, but in the end they knew that it was all lying, you know.
And I think the same thing is going to happen here in the West, that people will start to understand this is a big fat lie and the truth is something different.
And then they will act somehow, I think, I hope.
I believe so.
And I think the very fact that we're able to have this conversation without the gatekeepers of the mainstream media is one of the great strengths that will save us, hopefully.
Well, Ivan, I really, really appreciate your time.
Thank you so, so much for the work that you're doing to bring these issues to light.
I know it's not always the easiest path to take, but, you know, of course, as Christianity says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And I think we can really see this manifesting in Europe at the moment.
