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June 3, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:43
Lauren Southern's Farewell Interview: "Borderless" and Retirement...
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Hi, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux.
Lauren Southern is back in the house.
And I was actually just today trying to remember when we did our first show a couple of years ago, for sure.
We've had some adventures together.
But I think it was three or four years ago that we did our, our first show based on your book.
It's been a minute.
In fact, I just saw on Skype.
It was like last chatted one year ago and I was thinking that's definitely not the last time we did a video but our last ones would have been in person in Australia.
Right, yes.
No, we are the king and queen of deplatforming and exciting the local media to feverish fits of honey badger upset.
So we've got together I guess today to talk about two things in particular.
The first is the new documentary that I will even sacrifice this show if people only have a certain amount of time.
Stop watching this.
Go watch the documentary Borderless that was just released a couple of days ago, and also the other announcement, which I'm sure is certainly out by the time this show airs.
But let's talk first about Borderless.
My goodness, what a trip.
What a story.
What an amazing piece of work.
Let's talk a little bit about the genesis of it, the filming of it, how it all went down, and How the reception has been?
Well, once it was finally able to break out of the gate?
Yes, thank you very much.
Yeah, I was quite nervous initially publishing the film, I'm not going to lie, because it definitely does come from a very neutral perspective, certainly for content that I've posted in the past, and it's also quite sympathetic to the migrants themselves and refugees themselves, as I think I mean, most both of us have never had any real animosity towards refugees or migrants.
It's always been arguments of, well, what are the economic costs?
What's realistic?
What about people's safety?
So I was I was worried that the almost media boogeyman descriptions of right wingers, that they would be outraged.
How dare you be sympathetic to migrants might come out.
But it turns out Everyone was perfectly OK with it.
My right wing audience and even left wing audience were cheering it on because from the beginning, a lot of the arguments for closed borders have been from a sympathetic standpoint to Europeans, Americans, whoever it might be, saying we can't afford this.
This leads to chaos.
What about potential terrorists?
What about criminal record checks?
But an often ignored perspective that many people do hold Is there's also a sympathy for these migrants themselves, and we understand they're going through hard things.
But does that mean we can forego borders altogether?
And that's the question that Borderless explores.
Looking at both sides, sympathizing with both sides, is this more chaos than it's worth?
And does it lead to any sort of real world solution for anybody?
Well, and that was a really striking part of the documentary.
I've sort of argued for that, as you know, in the abstract, like it's not going to be good for everyone in the long run.
Taking on massive financial burdens when the West is already horribly in debt is just a terrible idea all round.
But it really struck me, you know, it's the old look, you know, from the data, from the charts, from the math, to the actual person's eyes, I was really struck, you know, you're talking to people like they've given up their life savings, they've left their home, they may have even abandoned wives and children to get to the West, to this paradise where they hope they can get work, as you talked about, you know, even in France, some of the blacks who came in from Africa speak French fluently because they're former colonies and so on.
And just after all of that sacrifice and that danger, the danger of the passage and the human trafficking and the fortune that they have to pour into it, that they can never get back, of course, they just end up sleeping in a tent in Paris with no particular future and no way to get back.
That is horrendous by any calculation.
Yeah.
And it's the only person who really benefits in the end Are the people who are making money off this, which are the NGOs and the traffickers, the people taking them across the water, and they'll say anything.
They'll say, yeah, of course it's a paradise.
Your family, you want them over there?
You'll be able to bring them no problem.
Look at what Merkel's saying.
Look at what Macron's saying.
Look at what Trudeau's saying.
They're saying open borders, refugees, migrants welcome.
So why wouldn't what I'm telling you be true?
So the traffickers have the mainstream politicians backing on the propaganda they're selling to their customers.
Little do these customers know that these politicians also are just doing it for their benefit to get votes.
And when you go on the ground, when you meet these migrants and refugees that have made the trip, they've paid all the money, they've been given the promise, they get there, and none of these politicians are fulfilling their promises.
The traffickers have told them, rip up your passport, rip up your ID, so they can't even apply for refugee status, let alone a work permit or anything.
I mean, it's really tragic that Once again, it seems the appearance of kindness and the appearance of just being good is just that.
It's just an appearance.
It's just an image.
It's not actually anything substantial.
And that's unfortunately what a lot of people don't realize, that sometimes being good doesn't mean you get praise.
Sometimes doing the right thing means the entire world vilifies you.
And that's a lesson that's been Very strongly forgotten in our society.
People think they're brave because they stand up and they hold up a sign that everyone is going to clap and agree with.
Raping is bad.
Sexism is bad.
Racism is bad.
No one is contesting that in the modern Western world.
But you tell people open borders is not helping the very people you are purporting it to help, and you're going to get in some trouble.
So sometimes doing the right thing doesn't mean you're going to get praise.
But we have confused the two.
We have confused Being good with being popular.
Well, but that's what addicts do, right, Lauren?
I mean, they do what feels good in the moment, regardless of the long-term consequences.
I mean, it was years and years ago I put out a presentation pointing out the unarguable fact that if you bring a refugee to the United States, for the cost of doing that, you could help 12 refugees in the Middle East.
Now, you know, call me crazy, I would actually like to see 12 people get helped.
I mean, I would like it to be private charity, but given the system the way that it is, I would like for 12 people to get helped instead of one person to get helped.
Those who are genuinely in need deserve charity and sympathy and care.
And, you know, suddenly I look anti-migrant.
It's like, no, no, no, I want 12 to get help, not one.
I want 12 more people to get helped.
How is that anti-migrant?
But it is, of course, posturing for votes.
It is posturing for praise from the media.
And, you know, this is also something that is kind of running through like the red seam through the documentary and through some of the material that you released even last year.
There is A lot of profit in this, not just for the smugglers, but for the NGOs.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you know what?
We actually had a Syrian refugee working with us at one point on the project itself, and a man who works within camps outside of Europe.
He works in camps in Turkey, and he works in camps in Jordan.
And we spoke to him, we did an interview with him, but it didn't end up making the final cut.
It may be on the DVD.
He was just telling us whenever I work in one of these camps and someone tells me they want to make the trip to Europe, I beg them not to.
I beg them not to go because I don't want them to drown.
I don't want them to go over the Turkish-Bulgarian border and potentially be taken away by, I mean, it gets really dark.
Some of the stuff we didn't include in the documentary, there's organ smuggling and trafficking that goes on where these refugees or migrants are basically faceless, nameless people.
So they can be sold a trip to Bulgaria and then be taken to have their organs traded, basically.
He warns them all not to, not only because of all the dangers, but he knows that they're not going to actually get what they want.
He knows that they're going to end up under bridges.
And he knows that, I mean, he told us, and this is a man who isn't European, he's not white.
He was telling us when we were discussing this, this isn't good for Europe either.
These people, they don't have the education.
They're a generation of people that have been in warfare and conflict.
And they've, all they know is warfare.
You need to rebuild their home countries.
You need to try to stop the conflict in their home countries.
And that is the greatest thing you can do for them, rather than just saying, fine, we'll drain the entire Middle East, we'll drain all of Africa.
In the end, it's not going to help anyone.
And there's certainly arguments against the war.
intervention in Syria that can lead to, oh, who caused this?
But the solution isn't, okay, we'll invite them all to the West because you've destroyed their countries.
That is not the solution.
It's maybe stop destroying their countries, maybe help rebuild them.
Yeah, I mean, it is...
It is brutal.
And my understanding is that just fleeing a war is not enough to get you the certainly asylum, right?
So asylum is if you're being persecuted for your religious or political beliefs, and so on by a specific, I think, government agency.
Being a refugee from a war zone, you know, it's tough.
And I'm really torn about this because it's easy to talk about it from the relative security of where we are, but I just wonder how Europe would have fared if all of the young men had fled the fight against Nazism and gone to the Middle East to go on welfare, if such a situation had occurred.
Because I really dislike the draft.
It's one of the worst forms of incarceration and slavery that exists in the world.
But at the same time, if all wars are abandoned at their post and the young sort of fighting age men come to the West, you're handing your countries over to the bad guys in general, right?
If you're talking about the ISIS and so on.
That's tough, because again, I'm not faced with that choice.
So on an individual level, I can completely understand.
Well, you don't want to be, you don't want to fight the bad guys.
You want to come to the West.
I get that.
And I, you know, I'm really torn about it because I understand that.
But at the same time, there would be no West to come to if all the young men in the West had done the same thing.
And that is a good point to make.
Most of the people we ran into, certainly in Morocco, I don't think we met, we met maybe one woman in the camps in Morocco.
Most people were male.
They were young, fighting-aged males.
And they weren't children either.
Some in the camps in Greece were, but they were the minority.
And this is easily admitted by even the NGOs working there.
You're not helping necessarily the poorest of the poor or the most desperate of the desperate.
And most of these people aren't even fleeing war.
Yes, they've been in countries that are impoverished.
Yes, there's a lot of crime in those places.
But another realistic thing that isn't often discussed is the fact that when these people come over to Europe, if they pose as refugees, if they're just coming for economic reasons because their country is poor, well, yes, they're coming from an unfortunate place and I can sympathize with them, but there are people that are genuinely fleeing persecution.
Christians that could be beheaded if they stay in their country, people that are women and children leaving war, and now a fighting age man who wants a good job.
In Europe, like any of us would want, but still he's going to be taking their spot.
We'd love to think we have unlimited resources.
We do not.
We don't even have unlimited resources for our own citizens within the West.
There is homelessness, there's child poverty, there are huge lines at hospitals.
So we do unfortunately have to pick and choose who needs the most help.
And you are letting people take the spot of I don't like that.
potentially well-vetted genuine refugees when there is an open borders policy.
We do not have unlimited resources.
I don't like that.
It's not a fun reality, but it is reality and we have to accept it.
Well, there's no faster way to run out of resources than pretending that money is like air.
And why would you want to deny anyone air?
They've got to breathe, you selfish monster!
And the other thing, of course, I was impressed with the... I mean, this sounds bad, so let me just try to find a way to phrase it, because, you know, it's so easy to be misinterpreted when cold-eyed ears are listening.
I was impressed at...
The entrepreneurial energy and intelligence of a lot of the migrants and you know in hindsight after watching the documentary I'm like well that makes sense you know to have the courage and the fortitude to get up and march into The unknown, and human smuggling, and treacherous seas, and organ extractors, and you name it, right?
I mean, it's like strolling through a horror movie that ain't being filmed and never ends.
But my concern, of course, is that the most energetic and entrepreneurial people are exactly the ones needed to rebuild the country.
And that's sort of my concern, that we're kind of getting the creme de la creme, so to speak, in the West.
And again, for each individual, I understand that decision.
But what it means, of course, is the country is much less likely to be revived.
The country is much less likely to achieve any kind of stability or success.
And this, you know, cream of the crop skimming, in a sense, that the West is doing, both in terms of immigration and just in terms of accepting migrants, For each individual migrant, it may be a decent decision for the politicians.
It makes them look good.
But it is, I think, eviscerating the chances for any stability or progress in the sending countries.
It's true.
We often think of the brain drain in the sense of legal migrants, which is still a problem.
You know, the West is constantly stealing the best of the best through legal immigration.
And I mean, I get I get why they want to come here.
Don't get me wrong.
But there is a realistic problem we need to address with countries needing more, more doctors, more well-educated people.
But you're right in an illegal sense as well.
Many of the people we met in these camps, not stupid people.
Some of them spoke multiple languages.
Some of them had businesses and careers and education back home.
And that's how they had money to be able to pay for the trip and pay the smuggler.
You know, I've heard this is great.
The politicians over there have said it's great.
They've said if I get over there and I requit my passport, I can apply and then bring my family over.
I'll figure it out.
I'll be able to get a job.
No worries.
Unfortunately, these people who are very intelligent and able to make these massive journeys and take these massive risks get screwed over as well.
But not only that, you're right.
They've left their home country and they aren't able to contribute to that economy.
And that's just entrepreneurial culture either.
They aren't able to use their skills there, which is very, very sad.
Well, and there's an old saying about the production of medicine, you know, that the first pill cost you $10 billion and the second pill cost you like 10 cents, right?
And, And to me, the greatest value that the West has to bring to the world is not money, because, you know, foreign aid corrupts a lot of local governments and disrupts and distorts local economies.
And, you know, you dump food aid in a country and suddenly the farmers can't sell anything and they start giving up on farming and run to the cities to get the free food.
And then you end up with this late Roman Empire freefall of money printing corruption and price controls.
So how to help other countries, to me, is a lot to do with we've got a pretty we had a pretty good blueprint.
We're sort of drifting from it quite a bit now, but a pretty good blueprint, which is to try and have a government that's accountable to the people, try to minimize government interference in the in the free market, respect property rights, respect contract rights and so on.
We've got a pretty and, you know, it was a pretty painful sort of blueprint, so to speak, to to develop.
But it's been pretty well hashed out, and if you look at countries like India, and And China that have followed this kind of blueprint of allowing the market to function and trying to minimize corruption within the state, enforce contracts and so on.
I mean, that has been by far the biggest reduction in human poverty over the past 30 to 40 years that has ever occurred in the history of the world.
Now, of course, you don't hear about it from a lot of people because they're kind of invested in capitalism as evil and exploitive and predatory and so on.
But we kind of got it down.
And it's not patented, you know.
No one's going to say to some country that implements these changes, no, sorry, you'll have to pay us a royalty from here to eternity because, you know, John Locke's kids need to live in plenty.
And so I think that the transmission of these ideas in local languages, using local media and so on, is the best way in the long term to help.
Rather than importing the people who can rebuild these countries, let's work harder to export the ideas that allow them to function much better in their home countries.
Right, and this is what's sad as well.
Because of this refugee-migrant crisis, because it's been portrayed so much as Oh, it's just people trying to come over the water.
They're all refugees.
They're all fleeing war.
They have no other choice, which is not true.
That's not the case.
That's what people are pumping their money into.
They're pumping their money into these NGOs that are out in boats that are just basically the last leg of a trip for human traffickers who say, okay, you're going to meet this boat at the end and they're going to finish the trip.
Thanks for your 2000, 3000 bucks.
When there are, I mean, I'm sure people who have actually been working in Worldwide aid that have been laying the groundwork for some of these countries are shaking their heads thinking, I wish our projects helping education in this country, helping micro loans for business in this country would get as much funding as this thing that is very popular in the media that's actually leading to people living under bridges.
There are so many ways to help these people and help them stay in their country and thrive in their country rather than inviting them to some false paradise just because it feels good instantly.
Right.
And the amount of money that is behind this, this is not exactly a spontaneous migration of people.
It's not the Bataan Death March.
It's not Hannibal getting elephants across the Alps.
This is paved with a huge amount of money and some of the ways in which you track this was really startling.
I won't get into it because I really want people to watch the documentary.
And let me tell you something else, Lauren, that I was thinking about while I was watching this with my envious brain slack-jawed at the accomplishments of you and your team.
This, of course, is the kind of thing that the corporate media should be doing and should have been doing.
This is the biggest crisis in the West and certainly since, I don't know, I mean, you could argue since the Second World War.
In the Vietnam War and so on there were reporters embedded with the troops and getting all of the footage and now it's much easier even to do.
I mean you and Caelan and George did this on a very modest budget.
This is the kind of thing that the mainstream media should be doing, the corporate media should be doing.
Why do you think they have so steadfastly avoided this very necessary exploration of a very complex topic?
In three words or less, I insist.
In three words or less, yeah.
Well, first of all, I think for anyone that wants to be extremely politically reactionary, which the mainstream media, despite all of their claims that they're neutral and all of this, we know they're politically reactionary, you can't spend a lot of time actually delving in depth to a topic and understanding it from both sides because they would have to admit And acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of people that are not refugees.
There are a lot of people that regret their journey.
In fact, the migrants said it themselves.
When we were in the Moria camp, they were telling us, you know, a lot of journalists have come here.
They've talked to us.
They've made the quick trip to Greece, but they've never told the full story.
They never tell the full story.
They never mentioned that ISIS are in this camp attacking us.
That would embarrass them all a lot, because these journalists for the last five, ten years have been telling us every single day that it's right-wing bigots that have been saying there are potential terrorists coming over.
They have been saying that these are all refugees, that these camps are working great, that we need to have the NGOs working in this area, that there's no corruption going on, that this is all a refugee crisis, people choosing to come over here on boats.
So if they went and they properly and fairly covered this, they would find the migrants themselves saying, this is filled with corruption.
The NGOs are in on it.
The doctors are in on it.
They're making us pay bribes to get to Athens.
I mean, we're being persecuted here because you've invited everyone instead of just genuine refugees.
It's insane.
One thing actually that I probably should have mentioned earlier that I didn't talk too much in depth about in the documentary is how the business works.
People don't actually just choose to come.
They don't go out and actively seek out boats on the shore.
They don't go out and find a smuggler and say, we're desperately fleeing.
We've got to get out of boat now and get to Europe.
How it actually works is there are salesmen.
They've got tons of different levels in the business in both Morocco and Turkey, and the people at the bottom They are basically salesmen and they get a cut of the money if they can go and find clients.
So they will approach people that look like they're from Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria on the streets.
They'll even go in as salesmen in some of the already set up refugee camps in Turkey and they'll pitch their offer.
So they'll say for this price, we'll give you, they have different prices.
So one trip on the boat for this price, if it fails, then That's it.
If you want to pay the higher price, then we'll let you have as many tries as you want until it succeeds.
They do meal plans for the Bulgarian route.
It's a business.
These aren't people that are desperately fleeing to get on boats.
I don't doubt there's a minority.
They're absolutely like, okay, we got to get on a boat right this second.
We got to find someone.
But for the vast majority of it, the people told us they were approached.
Well, they were approached with, you know, promises of the land of milk and honey with no real way to verify it.
Yeah, exactly.
And unfortunately, they often end up disappointed.
And, you know, it's a very smart business tactic for the traffickers to tell them to rip up their passports so that they can't get back and kick their asses for selling them a false dream.
Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that angle.
Yeah, that's a very, very good point.
So the film, I'll put the link to it below.
I know it was a little bit exciting to get it off the ground on its premiere, but the backup did work and the movie is available for free.
I would strongly, strongly urge people to help out with the costs if they can, but we'll put a link to that below.
And of course, your other excellent documentary about South Africa, we'll link to that as well.
Let's talk about the other aspect of this call, which is your decisions about what you're doing going forward.
Because of course, you know, the idea is, wow, just released one of the most powerful documentaries of the decade.
What's she doing next?
What am I doing next?
I am taking a step back.
I'm taking a step back from politics.
And Obviously, I think we agreed this interview will be released after I publish my little letter announcing that I'm leaving, so people have probably already heard.
But this interview will be one of the last on video interviews people see about me or with me.
I guess I should go into that more?
Yeah, why not?
I could ask you the prompting questions or you could just wing it.
Okay.
A long consideration about my time in politics and my time making videos.
It's been about four or five years.
I mean, I started doing this when I was 19 and my whole life has been, my entire adult life has been consumed by politics.
That's a little crazy.
I've already taken a step back from YouTube with my documentary making.
So for the most part, even though I was on the ground doing interviews, I wasn't on social media that much and in the constant rat race of things.
And in doing so and taking a step back from social media, I certainly feel I gained a little better of a real world perspective, a little more clarity in my thinking when you're not constantly getting the opinions of thousands of
And I feel that while I've had so much experience on the ground and so much time all over the world, I've traveled to so many countries these last four years, we often see in this society two things.
We see people who get thrown into the fray of real world contentions and they give their perspective from on the ground and people that Give their perspective from ivory towers.
They're very well educated.
They've read all of the books and they've looked at all the studies they can, but they don't necessarily know what it's like to be on the ground and how they would act in a situation themselves.
They observe it from their ivory towers and give an analytical position on it.
And then the people who are thrown into real world fray contentions, they have a very honest take on things, but they can't necessarily fully analyze or articulate what they've been through afterwards or even during because they don't have the academic side to it.
So I think, I think I'd like to go back and add a little bit of an academic lens to all the things that I've seen in the world.
And, uh, it's, that's, that's one part of it.
I want to go back and do some studies and focus on my, my education, uh, adding the academic lens.
And then the other side is, I don't believe that we can have it all.
I think that there is a common misconception in the world that we can just have it all.
You can be the internet meme constantly traveling the world, making documentaries, making videos, doing interviews on Twitter all day, and also have a contemplative life and a family life.
And that's been really hard for me to balance these last few years.
You know, it's something that I've really struggled with because not only do I feel a duty to be political and take part in some of the most important discussions in my life and in the world, but I enjoy it.
I do enjoy this.
This is, I feel like I'm at a cross point in my life where I can choose to keep going on the Vita Activa, constantly going on the road forever and then ignore a large part of what it is to be human, which is to have human connections, relationship, a family.
And that's something that I really want and I'd like to pursue.
So while I feel that me and everyone that has supported me, oh my goodness, you've been one of the only reasons I've been able to do anything, all my patrons and even those that just share my videos, We've accomplished a lot.
We've made some of the biggest groundbreaking films on modern political conversation and just had created robust conversations around some of the most important topics of this day and age.
And for that, I will forever be grateful for and proud of.
But I think it's time for the sake of my personal life and for the sake of growing as a person and in my political engagements for me to focus on my family and my education.
Well, and it is to me, one of the things that I've enormously admired about you and still do, Lauren, is that, I mean, I got into this game in my 30s.
And it was, you know, a bit of a tumble sock in a dryer hurly burly for me.
And you get in at the age of 19.
And you have been at this, as you say, for sort of four or five years.
And just for those who don't know, the rough calculation is that every year in alternative media is a dog year, right?
So it's about the equivalent of seven years in any, so you've lived almost three decades of compressed,
experience in uh you know less than than half a decade considerably less than half a decade and I mean you've handled it with with with grace and and with passion and with positivity and with rationality and commitment and it really is admirable and I I say this out of admiration for you as a friend and also just to remind people that you can do some amazing things and one of the things that I got out of the documentary was the the poor fellow who who's in the camp
With, you know, ISIS fanatics circling around and he's an atheist.
Now, he's not giving up.
I mean, he's hanging in there.
So to me, you know, I hope that Lauren shows young men and young women in particular that you can go out, you can be a great success, you can will the most extraordinary achievements.
Yes, you will get some hate, you will get some pushback, you will get some hostility and so on.
The alternative being what?
We let the people who generate that hate and hostility just ride roughshod over the beautiful cathedrals of our civilization?
No.
So, I mean, certainly from my perspective, you've well more than earned it.
And I think it's going to be a wonderful experience.
I just wonder though, I just wonder if after having a relatively sane life for a little while, it'll be like, yeah, you could go back on cocaine.
What do you think?
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
I think people don't realize that social media is definitely a bit of an addiction, whether you're political or not.
And there's always an excuse for why your cause is more important than Reading that book, why your cause is more important than going to that family dinner, why your cause is more important than having a relationship in some cases.
And if you can't find a balance between that, then you lose perspective.
And you're one of the people that I think I can genuinely look at and say, you've found a balance in your real life and your political life.
You've found a way to make sure you have both.
But I've run into people in this world that unfortunately have not, and I pray and hope that they are able to find that balance.
It's a difficult thing to do.
People may think it's easy, but it's a bit of a treadmill that never stops.
There's always something to comment on, there's always a big breaking story, there's always some drama, there's always some lies being told about you, and just one person can't answer it all, and you'll always be constantly on your phone, constantly distracted, and there's not a whole lot of time for contemplative life in that.
Or having something that you need and want to protect, right?
The old saying is that the soldier doesn't fight because he hates what's in front of him, but because he loves what's behind him.
And to have something that you want to protect only fuels your commitment.
And that doesn't mean being a workaholic.
It means sort of being really focused and measured in what you do.
But, you know, the fact that I have a family and the fact that I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I want My daughter to grow up at least having the freedoms that I had growing up.
You have to have something that you love.
You have to have something to protect.
Otherwise you're going to run out of fight if that makes any sense.
So to me, you know, developing a life that you love only strengthens your courage and resolution in the long run.
Whereas I think simply just fighting, fighting, fighting hollows you out.
Uh and and you end up it's like it's like the guy who only ever goes to the gym and never actually plays any sports like it's not great and in this this will I think this this approach does hollow people out in whatever this loosely movementy thing is that's going on.
It is easy to hollow yourself out.
You need to fill yourself back up with love, with peace, with positivity.
And I think that's the best way to make sure that you are guarding something you love rather than the danger always being, as Nietzsche said, be careful when you fight monsters that you don't become a monster yourself.
Right.
And when every single one of your interactions becomes through a screen, you forget that you're dealing with other people as well.
And you see this on both sides of the political spectrum.
I mean, I wonder sometimes the liberal journalists that I talk to that scream at me, you're a white supremacist, a bigot, this, that and the other.
It's like, I'm pretty sure if we sat down for a drink around a fire and you didn't know who I was, we'd get along pretty well.
And you just forgotten you're talking to another person on the other side of the screen.
And that goes Vice versa.
It's become so toxic and so hostile.
And I get it.
People are passionate, but you got to have you got to.
I mean, part of the human experience is definitely politics.
It's definitely engaging in these important debates, protecting your society, protecting your country.
That's absolutely a duty.
But you're right.
You have to have something to protect.
You have to have a human side to you that is engaging with other people, family and community.
And, you know, being Being a public figure, being a face, it's a difficult thing to do.
And it's a big part of this discussion.
But some of the most impactful people in one's lives don't always have any fame at all.
Sometimes they're just a community leader, a teacher, someone who's never had any sort of fame or notoriety at all.
And we forget that sometimes community is a very important thing.
And lots of people that are the most engaged in this online world, they don't have a whole lot of community.
in their life.
So they may be big people online, but their relationships with real people and real humans have suffered because they haven't found a balance.
And I can look at that and I can say, "I'm human too and I could fall into that trap and I don't want to." So while I'm still young, I'm going to, I may come back, but I'm going to take the time to cultivate something real outside of this.
Well, I think that's, I mean, I fully support and I think it's a great idea.
So, So let's give you the last word, because this may be what people who've loved your work and followed you or hated your work and stalked you for years, this may be the last thing that they hear from you for a while.
And what would be your summation?
And what would you like to say to the people who have been involved in what you do?
Well, first of all, I am incredibly thankful for everyone that has supported my work, shared it, enjoyed it.
We've done some incredible things together these last few years.
Changed the discussions on South Africa, changed the discussions on migration, on feminism.
I mean, in some cases with Yusufan as well, we've caused riots and ruckus, but all of it has been for the sake of something bigger than ourselves.
And that is not a small feat.
That is, I mean, we care about The Western world, we care about our freedoms, we care about our families, our values, and we've all been fighting for them.
And as far as I'm concerned, every single person that's been helping and supporting me is just as responsible for the work I've created as I am.
And I'm incredibly proud of us all.
And as for all the people that have called me names, whether it be Nazi, bigot, this, that, and the other, I have no apologies.
I can't apologize for things I never was.
And I can't apologize for things that I never did.
And the people who matter to me, the people who I care about and who know me, they know who I actually am.
And that's what I care about.
And I'm proud of who I am.
I've made mistakes, but I've definitely, I think, come out on the right end of things.
And just, once again, I'm incredibly blessed and incredibly humbled by all of the people who have followed my work these last few years and all of the people that I can call friends, like yourself, Stefan, for backing me up And supporting everything that I've done.
So thank you so much.
It's been my pleasure and my honor.
So this is Stefan Molyneux signing off for today and Lauren Southern signing off for a little bit longer than today.
And we look forward to seeing you back when you're good and ready.
And I wish you the very best with the next phase of your life.
Thank you, Stefan.
Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
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