Bannon's War Room - September 03, 2026


WarRoom Battleground EP 1082： With FR. JOSEPH FESSIO, Founder Ignatius Press; And PROF. FRANK FUREDI, Former Director MCC Brussels


Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

140.99

Word count

7,590

Sentence count

317


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:00:07.000 Pray for our enemies.
00:00:09.000 Because we're going medieval on these people.
00:00:12.000 I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
00:00:17.000 The people have had a belly full of it.
00:00:19.000 I know you don't like hearing that.
00:00:20.000 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that,
00:00:22.000 but you're not going to stop it.
00:00:23.000 It's going to happen.
00:00:24.000 And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
00:00:27.000 MAGA Media.
00:00:29.000 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:34.680 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:38.440 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:00:44.660 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:00:48.040 Thursday, 3rd of September, Anno Domini, 2026.
00:01:00.780 Harnwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's War Room.
00:01:04.140 Well, it's not often, folks, that I'm slightly starstruck on the War Room,
00:01:10.420 but my next guest is a pretty impressive figure.
00:01:13.980 His CV reads like the intellectual life of the Catholic Church, the U.S. Catholic Church in the last half century.
00:01:25.820 Personally mentored by Henri de Lubac, writing a dissertation on the ecclesiology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,
00:01:35.980 The Lubac recommended my next guest to a Regensburg professor called Joseph Ratzinger, future Benedict XVI, but that's not why we've got him on the show today.
00:01:50.320 I would suggest that our guest here is probably more than any other living person, responsible in somewhat for the shaping of American Catholic life over the last 50 years.
00:02:07.900 And it's because of what he did after he was ordained as a priest in the Jesuits in, I think, 72.
00:02:15.760 He founded Ignatius Press, and you can broadly tell the seriousness of any American Catholic family by how many books by Ignatius they have on their bookshelves.
00:02:33.220 Here's mine. Here's my offering. This is the Ignatius Study Bible, and I cannot recommend this book enough, right? I cannot.
00:02:43.380 You know, we all have books that we read occasionally and think, oh, I'd have paid twice for this book.
00:02:48.920 I would have paid ten times what I paid for this book.
00:02:52.640 Study Notes by Scott Hahn.
00:02:55.740 It is one of the best books that I go to constantly.
00:03:01.180 And folks, and I say this to our largely evangelical audience,
00:03:04.640 The background text of this Bible is the Revised Standard Version, which is prepared essentially by American Protestants and then worked on by Catholics.
00:03:16.860 This is the second Catholic edition here.
00:03:18.880 Cannot push this book, again I repeat, I cannot push this book more heavily.
00:03:24.480 It is absolutely superb.
00:03:26.520 Father Joseph Fessio, welcome on to the war room.
00:03:30.700 Very honoured to have you here this evening.
00:03:33.000 and we have you here this evening not to talk about this book
00:03:37.880 but about a new book that you have published called You Cat, Love Forever
00:03:45.160 which is basically a marriage guide but much more than that for young people
00:03:51.800 and I think, and here's where I'll start with my first question to you
00:03:56.540 I think that the scope of what you're doing here with this book
00:04:00.160 which is assembled from, I think, a thousand or so questions that you had submitted to you,
00:04:06.200 to the publishers at Ignatius from around kids from around 30 or so different countries.
00:04:13.180 I think the scope of what you're trying to do here with this book
00:04:15.900 is fill in the missing formation that would have taken place in earlier times
00:04:21.480 by the family, perhaps by the local parish community.
00:04:25.940 But seeing as formation isn't what it once was,
00:04:29.600 You're filling in the role here, I think, of missing that so that young people, when they approach marriage, can do so.
00:04:37.400 Knowing basically what's expected of them to try and strengthen the possibility that the marriage might work.
00:04:44.980 But in your own words, why are you publishing this book at this moment in time, Father Fessio?
00:04:52.400 Well, that's a very simple answer to that question.
00:04:55.440 And it's because it is originally in German.
00:05:00.240 That's the UCAT.
00:05:01.200 We're all German of origin.
00:05:03.960 And since they published it, we decided we better publish it.
00:05:07.880 So the question of why publishing it now should be asked to them, not to me.
00:05:11.860 I can expect that.
00:05:13.320 However, Vittorio, you don't sound like a Vittorio to me, but I want to make a couple
00:05:20.480 remarks about your introduction which is very very generous uh and also a little excessive
00:05:25.900 uh but you held up that wonderful book the ignatius study bible but you're behind the times
00:05:31.780 that's the new testament we now have the full bible old and new testament i'll hold up mine here
00:05:38.880 so you can see that's the new one so and we'll try what you got it okay and we're going to charge
00:05:46.900 you 10 times the normal price for this since you've offered to pay that uh but i'll give you
00:05:53.380 discount i would i would i would definitely pay 10 times not 20 times i have to say when i got
00:06:00.400 this book like 10 years ago the old testament hadn't yet been published because you you pushed
00:06:05.740 out the new testament um first so i i i got that um by the way just for the record but i almost
00:06:13.020 don't want to say this victoria is far better looking guy than i am he's the producer of this
00:06:18.760 show um my name's ben harnwell i'm not victoria you you i i am not victoria um okay he's connected
00:06:26.500 to this call victoria puts these shows together i just do the easy part i just i just sit in front
00:06:32.640 of the camera and speak for for for an hour my name's ben ben all right benjamin uh so look
00:06:41.400 You asked the question, why we publish this now?
00:06:43.780 And I said, because the German came out now.
00:06:45.800 And by the way, we're going to be in Rome on October 6th and 7th for a presentation of this and a relaunch of UCAT.
00:06:56.360 I mean, this all began with Youth Catechism UCAT, you know, back 10 or so years ago, maybe more.
00:07:02.720 And that was done by basically a group of German families that got together and wanted to make the Catechism of the Catholic Church more accessible to young people.
00:07:17.960 And so that became the UCAT, which is general Catholic doctrine, moral teaching, and so on, liturgical, sacramental.
00:07:26.920 Then there was the DUCAT after that, which was more focused on the social teaching of the church.
00:07:32.720 And then there's a confirmation book, there's a Bible for young people, but obviously we have a problem in the West, especially, of declining birth rates, marriage breakups, single parent families, and so on.
00:07:54.720 And so it's clear that the church's teaching has to be made more accessible, readable, appealing to young people.
00:08:03.980 So this book, you know, Love Forever, basically contains the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church on human beings, male, female, sexuality, gender, preparation for marriage, all the questions of sexual morality that come up.
00:08:25.340 But it's done in a way, a question and answer way, with wonderful pictures and commentaries and, you know, various kinds of graphics.
00:08:39.940 It makes it very interesting for younger people.
00:08:43.240 By the way, I mean, it looks like we're on the war room, right?
00:08:48.360 Yeah.
00:08:48.560 But I say, make love, not war.
00:08:53.520 Love forever.
00:08:55.340 okay then i think our host our principal host steve bannon would give me permission for the
00:09:01.860 next 17 minutes to change the name of the show from steve bannon's war room to steve bannon's
00:09:08.540 love room just in in a in in appreciation for the festival of your presence here on the show
00:09:14.900 just for as i was saying in your introduction that we do do a show every wednesday specifically
00:09:20.180 on developments in Christianity within the Catholic sphere, also within the Protestant sphere,
00:09:29.440 a special dedicated show.
00:09:30.940 Most of our audience is, however, American Protestant, American evangelical, conservative evangelical broadly.
00:09:41.360 Seeing as we have you here on the show, there is some occasionally misunderstanding
00:09:46.420 within our Protestant brothers and sisters who sometimes say things like,
00:09:51.240 why don't you Catholics get with the times, update your teachings?
00:09:55.480 You know, it's 2026, you need to be more relevant.
00:09:58.980 And there's this whole idea that, I mean, for Catholics, that's a strange proposition
00:10:04.820 because for Catholics, one of the things that's most appealing about the Catholic Church
00:10:09.040 is the unchangeability of its message because it's based on the gospel.
00:10:14.480 But in your own words, why would I need to come back to this? Why is this book necessary at this time? Why? Why is it? Why, you know, young Catholic kids, why would they need to read a book that would effectively prepare them for marriage as if they wouldn't be prepared ordinarily?
00:10:34.780 Well, I'll approach this, Ben, as you did, with the question of evangelicals and Catholics.
00:10:40.600 And I have to say that especially in the United States, there's a growing, growing, and in my lifetime I've seen this and experienced been part of it,
00:10:50.120 a growing sense of fellowship and camaraderie between evangelicals and Protestants in general and Catholics on precisely the issues of life.
00:11:00.860 the pro-life cause has been I think one of the greatest ecumenical activities in my lifetime
00:11:05.880 that's brought us together praying together working together I could tell you a lot of
00:11:10.860 stories about that but I don't think the question about why we need better formation for young
00:11:19.560 people in sexual morality I mean that is pretty obvious of course especially obvious to me
00:11:27.360 We're celebrating in the United States now our 250th anniversary as a country.
00:11:32.460 I've actually lived through one-third of that, more than one-third of that.
00:11:36.720 So I've experienced a lot of things happening in our country.
00:11:39.840 When I grew up, generally marriages were more subtle.
00:11:44.540 We didn't even know what divorce was.
00:11:45.940 We guess we knew what it was, but we didn't experience it very often.
00:11:49.740 People had large families.
00:11:51.660 People owned their own home.
00:11:54.080 uh it was a the mother primarily took care of the large family the father was the breadwinner
00:12:00.600 uh and we had a pretty healthy society now why did it collapse so suddenly i don't think it was
00:12:06.420 vatican two by the way although vatican two accelerated for catholics uh but the the united
00:12:12.880 states and other countries we've lost our minds i mean if you have to you know sophie cunningham
00:12:22.720 of the Indiana fever becomes notorious because she says, well, after all, men shouldn't play
00:12:28.980 women's sports, should they? So we have a confused society. You know, there's in the book of Jonah
00:12:39.120 where we're told that the Ninevites were so confused they couldn't tell the right from their
00:12:45.040 left. Well, you can be confused sometimes about which ways what, you know, where's east, west,
00:12:50.220 north whatever but to not know a man from a woman and to defend that position so something's wrong
00:12:57.900 uh and this is a way the catholic church uh tries to contribute to society by helping people
00:13:08.080 understand what is the meaning of god's creation of us male and female what's the meaning of marriage
00:13:13.860 what's it for how does it work and by the way you say you know why doesn't the catholic church
00:13:19.760 get with the times and update
00:13:21.860 his teaching
00:13:22.440 I will say this
00:13:24.840 as soon as human
00:13:27.900 nature changes
00:13:29.140 the Catholic Church's teaching will change
00:13:31.920 Father Fessio I'm going to
00:13:35.900 come straight back to that
00:13:37.140 provocation in just a moment
00:13:39.180 time to do an ad shout out
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00:16:44.860 increasing turbulence. Back now to Father Joseph Fessio, founder of the legendary
00:16:51.640 i should say founder of ignatius press father fessio so your provocation just now before
00:16:58.600 the break was human can i make it quick when human nature changes yes of course i want it
00:17:06.600 okay i just want to comment on your on the commercial i have a sub stack post called
00:17:11.900 imagine a trillion because you can't imagine it but you can compare it to something so if i gave you
00:17:20.000 $100 for every inch
00:17:22.580 you walked
00:17:23.420 you'd have to walk to the moon and back 12
00:17:26.560 times to equal the national debt
00:17:28.700 if I gave you $100
00:17:30.480 every second
00:17:31.840 which would be $8 million a day
00:17:34.700 it would take 12,000
00:17:36.940 years to pay off the national debt
00:17:38.840 that's what the trillions mean
00:17:40.960 unbelievable
00:17:42.040 I've never heard it quite
00:17:46.880 put like that before but
00:17:48.540 let me ask i i did wonder i i must come back to your provocation um no but however however however
00:17:56.000 however seeing as you frame it like that because it is unusual for catholic priests for theologians
00:18:03.160 to be versant in these issues so let me ask you just throw you this question considering that and
00:18:09.840 this is very much the war rooms the love room steve bannon's love rooms um position here that
00:18:15.380 america's national debt is an issue of national security right now so let me ask you do you think
00:18:22.500 that the catholic bishops conference is significantly that does from time to time
00:18:30.180 make intervention on political matters publicly do you think that the bishops conference
00:18:35.700 is um considering the seriousness of the national debt is sufficiently familiar
00:18:45.380 with the seriousness that confronts the flock?
00:18:50.240 You're forcing a public confession of me, Ben,
00:18:54.560 that I don't have much confidence in bishops' conferences,
00:18:59.720 except for the fact I think it's good for the bishops to get together
00:19:03.300 and socialize and know each other better.
00:19:06.100 They have no doctrinal position in the Catholic Church.
00:19:10.240 They can have some useful functions, it seems to me, and they do that.
00:19:15.380 But I honestly don't pay too much attention to them.
00:19:20.340 You know, I've got very limited talents and I focus on what I can do
00:19:26.060 and what I can't do, I really don't pay too much attention to.
00:19:31.060 So when Vittorio reached out to you to see if you'd come on the show,
00:19:36.200 he made me promise I was going to behave on the show today
00:19:39.420 and stay clear of the vision.
00:19:43.200 I made no promises, though.
00:19:44.740 i made no promises no that's that's that's that's my that's my escape route on on that point um
00:19:52.160 okay so i i did i did uh i wasn't going to ask you anything about because often on this show
00:19:58.720 we have certain words um that some might construe as critical criticism towards our our not not
00:20:07.700 only in America, our pastors. Okay, so we will leave the bishops aside. The national
00:20:17.200 debt, for America, it is an issue of national security, no doubt whatsoever. Father Fessio,
00:20:25.340 you mentioned, in the way you phrased it, I think does illustrate the point here of why
00:20:30.400 the Catholic Church can't, as it were, update its teachings, hat tip by hat tip to the Second
00:20:41.000 Vatican Council when it comes to updating and adjournment. Again, I'll stay clear of these
00:20:47.780 issues and will stay clear of the Second Vatican Council whilst I have you as the guest for the
00:20:52.440 next six minutes, Father Fessio. The reason that the Catholic Church can't update its teachings
00:20:58.500 on human sexuality because they're fixed.
00:21:01.540 They're fixed because human nature is fixed.
00:21:04.960 Sin is fixed.
00:21:06.640 Temptation is fixed.
00:21:08.920 Human pride is fixed.
00:21:10.420 These are fixed variables.
00:21:12.020 They're not variables.
00:21:12.900 They're constants.
00:21:13.780 They're fixed constants.
00:21:15.300 That's why the Catholic Church's teaching is unchangeable
00:21:20.000 because it's based on the unchanging word of God,
00:21:23.180 the unchanging revelation of God to mankind in Jesus Christ. And it can't
00:21:30.500 change. If it were to attempt to change these things, then it wouldn't be the
00:21:37.180 Holy Spirit working behind those changes, but the Lord of
00:21:42.740 this world. On the issue of, because my ears pricked up what you were talking
00:21:48.940 about before about the the formation of of young people in preparation towards
00:21:56.920 marriage let me ask you this question because I don't think it gets the degree
00:22:02.500 of attention it ought to seeing as you flag up the different you know as you
00:22:07.840 said that when you were a kid you mentioned there was that some of these
00:22:12.340 issues weren't even part of the conversation that they're knowing the
00:22:17.320 difference between right and wrong um what did you cite that as as as the book of jonah right
00:22:23.380 um not knowing the the ninawites not knowing the difference between right and wrong
00:22:27.440 is a perfect illustration of contemporary western right and left right right right and left is
00:22:34.240 excuse me excuse me right and left it it's it's illustrative of contemporary western man's
00:22:41.480 inability or at least claimed inability to know the difference between man and woman let me ask
00:22:47.020 you this question in where do you think this confusion is coming from what is the spiritual
00:22:52.360 source of this confusion oh hmm where is it coming from um well probably a lot of factors in it we're
00:23:06.440 affluent uh if we had to really work hard for survival we wouldn't have time to to have a lot
00:23:13.660 of speculative things going on, especially in academia, about things, we'd be working, you know.
00:23:22.720 I think we've become affluent, wealthy, and you know what Jesus says about wealth,
00:23:29.540 it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven and so on. And so it's always a distraction.
00:23:36.000 And we have so many things that were unthinkable for ordinary people centuries ago.
00:23:43.460 I mean, running hot and cold, running water, you know, cars, telephones, electricity, light bulbs, and so on.
00:23:53.700 All that's taken care of.
00:23:55.520 And so we think we can control everything.
00:23:59.480 And then ultimately, this idea that as we lose our faith in God, then we become the gods, right?
00:24:09.820 And just as in the Garden of Eden, eat this fruit, you know, and you'll be like the gods.
00:24:16.740 You know, you'll be like God.
00:24:19.520 So, I mean, it's not kind of a rambling answer, but I just think that the individualism and affluence and lack of faith have led to man thinking that he can control everything,
00:24:35.580 including himself, including his gender.
00:24:40.180 Man, it's just, it's not possible.
00:24:44.200 But I'm not satisfied with that answer, but, you know.
00:24:47.400 So we're drawing the pieces together.
00:24:49.680 Seeing as you're mentioning the Garden of Eden and Genesis,
00:24:53.220 then you're implicitly referencing our adversary, right?
00:24:58.580 The tempter, Satan himself,
00:25:00.680 as fundamentally at root of the confusion in today's modern world.
00:25:08.740 Yeah, that's right.
00:25:10.580 That's why Beelzebul, you know, Lord of the Flies, is a source of confusion.
00:25:19.620 I mean, whether you believe in the devil or not, think about this.
00:25:24.720 In Genesis, the very first thing God says to man in the revelation of himself
00:25:29.380 himself is be fruitful multiply and fill the earth so if you wanted to create an anti-god
00:25:36.780 personality what would that personality be promoting don't multiply don't be fruitful
00:25:44.480 don't fill the earth well contraception abortion zero population growth i mean
00:25:52.240 if it's not demonic it's at least anti-god
00:25:55.800 perfect all right that's all we have time for father joseph all right fessio um founder of
00:26:06.700 the legend you've got yours there i've got mine here legendary of ignatius press
00:26:10.740 folks i cannot the the book i have in my hand i cannot i i promise i give i vouch for this
00:26:17.460 i cannot praise this book more highly with regards to your to your book there uh for for
00:26:24.460 you cat on love forever where do people go on for ignatius press in order to make their order their
00:26:30.480 copy well first go to your catholic bookstore support your local catholic bookstore but
00:26:35.780 otherwise avoid the behemoth avoid leviathan go to ignatius.com father joseph fessio very very
00:26:46.300 grateful indeed to have you here on steve bannon's love room i hope you'll come back and stay in
00:26:53.340 touch with us uh once again ignatius press the best catholic publisher back in two minutes after
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00:31:48.180 All of my content, 24 hours a day, want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? Go to Getter.
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00:32:04.720 Welcome back. Well, I'm joined on the show now by Professor Frank Ferreide,
00:32:09.660 former executive director of MCC Brussels.
00:32:14.660 And for those just joining us, the Matthias Corvinus Collegium was principally the most
00:32:25.580 important think tank involved in the West, being supported very heavily by Victor Orban.
00:32:38.280 This was one of the great legacy projects that Viktor Orban had spent after spending, I think, 20 years cumulatively, 60 years back to back in government.
00:32:49.460 The MCC was one of the big organizations that he was investing heavily in to continue the fight that he was engaged in after he left office.
00:33:02.920 And now many people are thinking that it's not only being suppressed, but being suppressed illegally.
00:33:10.720 One of the first consequences of that is, and you might have seen some headlines about this already this week,
00:33:17.120 is that Frank Freire, who joins me here on the show today, announced he was resigning as executive director of MCC Brussels
00:33:26.420 because the Hungarian government had blocked the salaries.
00:33:32.320 After laying off, I think, about half or so of your staff, Frank, in Brussels,
00:33:37.660 they'd blocked the salaries for the last two months.
00:33:40.660 And you said that's tantamount to winding down the organisation,
00:33:44.820 putting the organisation in legal jeopardy with regards to its financial responsibilities in Brussels.
00:33:51.880 A lot of people think this was a particularly petty move.
00:33:54.620 And it goes right to the top because Peter Magyar, the new prime minister who replaced Viktor Orbán, mentioned MSEC explicitly just after he was elected.
00:34:05.780 And he said he was going to cut the financing, which he appears to have done.
00:34:09.700 In your own words, Frank, thanks for coming on the show, by the way.
00:34:14.020 In your own words, can you explain what has happened this week?
00:34:18.800 Well, I think what has happened is that this week I resigned because not only were we faced with the closure of MCC Brussels, which I already anticipated, given the hatred of both the Hungarian government, but also of the European Union's bureaucracy.
00:34:41.420 I think this was a kind of coordinated attack upon us, but also they basically starved us of any fun.
00:34:52.380 So a lot of my colleagues, many with children, had received no salary for a couple of months, which is intolerable.
00:35:00.960 But to make matters worse, the Hungarian government actually prevented us from going bankrupt.
00:35:09.020 Because if he had been able to go bankrupt, then at least my colleagues would have been able to receive some aspect of their salary and an element of compensation.
00:35:20.220 But to make matters even worse, by forcing us to continue with no resources, they basically tried to silence us because nobody would be allowed according to their contract to raise any criticism.
00:35:34.080 So I figured I needed to resign in order to carry on with the fight, and I took the decision already a month ago that it was very important that our work would carry on because MCC Brussels had developed a reputation for being the most effective and the most effective and powerful conservative think tank in Brussels and other parts of Europe.
00:36:00.860 it was widely recognized even by our opponents so for me to continue the work to find new resources
00:36:07.000 i was forced to resign and that's what i did a couple of days ago well i can actually
00:36:13.120 corroborate what you just said about the effectiveness on about mcc even though you
00:36:19.220 you started your brussels chapter after i list brussels over the last what five or so years i've
00:36:25.080 spoken at your events um in hungary in poland um great events by the way uh very impressive events
00:36:35.100 very impressive turnout and engagement um but you don't need to take my advice from this talk to
00:36:41.660 anyone who's involved in the culture wars especially here in continental europe and basically anything
00:36:49.340 any side any side of victory uh on our part of the fight and you'll all trace it back and mcc is
00:36:55.500 going to be there um let me come back frank if i may to what you were just saying as part of your
00:37:01.180 explanation as to what has happened this week you said it was a coordinated attack on on mcc by
00:37:08.620 without putting words into your mouth are you suggesting that the coordination
00:37:12.380 was between the eu and the hungarian government together well it i don't know whether it was
00:37:19.580 formally or informally organized but the european commission had more or less told the hungarian
00:37:26.940 government that if the hungarian government was going to get a fund from brussels which
00:37:32.460 it was owned they needed to clear up the old regime they needed to get rid of organizations
00:37:40.220 like MCC. And it seems to me that the idea was that if you do this by the 31st of August,
00:37:48.380 then there'll be a likelihood that Hungary, the Hungarian government would get, you know,
00:37:52.460 a large amount of money back from Brussels. So there was this incentive, which they created.
00:37:59.180 And you have to remember that over the last, particularly the last two or three years,
00:38:03.820 the Commission, European Commission, along with some of the socialist mayors in the Brussels area,
00:38:10.220 along with Antifa, have been trying to prevent us from having meetings in Brussels. They've
00:38:15.920 been trying to drive us out of Belgium. That was the basic policy. In fact, if you look on the
00:38:22.220 webpage of Antifa, they got my picture and my communication guy as enemy number one that they
00:38:29.600 had to get rid of. So we felt under pressure from the new Hungarian government, from the
00:38:35.400 Commission and Antifa. And I think that's what led to not just the closure, but the petty act
00:38:42.260 of vengeance, which this has been done, because it's one thing just to close us down and allow
00:38:47.080 us to get on with life. It's another thing to try to paralyze us from having our voice. So
00:38:52.020 some of my colleagues and I decided that we're not going to just roll over and just give up the
00:38:59.080 But what we're going to do from next month onwards, or probably late this month, is to set up another organization, another think tank that would carry on the work of MCC Brussels.
00:39:13.080 And that's really what I'm busy doing at the moment, trying to sort of find sources of support and financial support, because I think our work is too important to allow it to kind of just simply subside and disappear.
00:39:29.480 oh it's absolutely essential what you what you've been doing um absolutely so i wish to some extent
00:39:35.640 that our american audience could have an intimation of just how active mcc has been
00:39:43.720 in um over the last few years it's been up it literally has been behind every victory i think
00:39:49.240 that we've had culturally um on these issues and it has absolutely been and i mean they know what
00:39:56.200 they know what they're doing when they wanted you shutting down they knew what they were doing they
00:39:59.640 knew what they were working towards let me just ask you again because i need to clarify this
00:40:05.000 but i don't want to put words into your mouth you did you just suggest to me that um
00:40:14.440 that the european commission had made had communicated informally to the hungarian
00:40:21.320 government that unless they close the mcc down hungary as a nation its own funding
00:40:31.640 support from the the the the european union via the european commission would be in jeopardy and
00:40:38.840 i open brackets that is simply a case of dispersing back to the national state money that was raised
00:40:46.040 at the national state national level and given to brussels in the first place but brussels does have
00:40:52.120 um that's that i think it's an illegal abuse of that power but it does have the power
00:40:57.320 um the the the de facto power to to to refuse to hand that money back and that's exactly what it
00:41:05.320 that that's exactly what was on the line here so let me get this right let me get this right
00:41:09.640 Professor Feredi, the message was made to the new Hungarian government to cut your funding,
00:41:16.920 cut the Matthias Corvinas Collagium's funding, otherwise Hungary itself wouldn't receive
00:41:24.280 these, inverted commas, EU funds, which was exactly what the EU was doing under the Viktor
00:41:32.120 Orbán government. It was illegally blocking the disbursement of those funds. Is that correct?
00:41:39.640 Yes. So the message that they communicated to Hungary wasn't simply that it was MCC Brussels,
00:41:48.760 but it was all these different organizations and civic organizations and think tanks
00:41:54.840 that were roughly in our orbit. And basically what they were arguing was that it was very important
00:42:00.840 that they used this very subtle language of reforming these organizations that didn't
00:42:07.400 actually say, oh, go ahead and close that MCC Brussels. But the message came out that this was
00:42:12.520 really the precondition for relations between Brussels and Budapest to be improved. And that's
00:42:19.020 why if you looked at the manifesto of the TISA political party that got elected, they basically
00:42:26.580 had in their manifesto a commitment, an explicit commitment to close that MCC altogether. It was
00:42:34.200 the only organization that they mentioned explicitly.
00:42:38.360 Now, just have a think about it.
00:42:40.060 How often do you see a political manifesto
00:42:43.440 which deals with the big issues of the day
00:42:45.520 actually undertake the promise that MCC will be shut down?
00:42:50.120 That's one of the first things that we'll do.
00:42:51.800 And indeed, when they got elected,
00:42:53.880 they basically launched a campaign of vengeance against MCC.
00:42:59.660 It's almost as if that was like their first priority
00:43:02.500 rather than all the other challenges that Hungary faces.
00:43:06.680 And I think that that goes back to what Brussels really wanted,
00:43:10.620 which is they wanted us in particular to disappear off the face of the earth
00:43:15.360 because we were raising issues that nobody else had raised about Brussels.
00:43:19.780 We were, in a sense, the most publicly vociferous defenders of Western civilization,
00:43:26.980 reminding Brussels every single day about what the European civilization was all about.
00:43:32.500 And that was really something that made them feel very uncomfortable.
00:43:37.440 Let me put it like this for our largely American audience.
00:43:44.280 MCC occupied the space in the imagination of Europe's left
00:43:49.020 that George Soros occupies in the imagination of America's right.
00:43:54.960 And Europe's right as well to some extent.
00:43:57.300 Basically, the organisation of our political opponents whose tentacles are always there trying to frustrate us, it's the same sort of thing.
00:44:09.500 You have George Soros and his Open Society on one hand, and you have the Matthias Corvinus Collegium on the other as sort of rival entities.
00:44:18.300 I would frame it like that, and that's why the Commission wanted to close you guys down.
00:44:23.980 Now, Professor Ferreira, remain with me for just one quick moment.
00:44:28.240 I need to give a shout-out to our sponsor of the show,
00:44:30.880 and then I'll come back to you and talk about what you were just talking about now,
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00:47:14.220 alright back now in the final
00:47:16.640 minutes of the show with Professor
00:47:18.460 Frank Frady
00:47:19.520 former executive director
00:47:22.700 of MCC
00:47:24.980 Brussels
00:47:26.420 Frank, let me just ask you something, which I wasn't able to get to the last time you were on the show, but I think it's illustrative, considering how most of the cultural proponents, academic proponents in the West are moving to the left or wherever they were on the sliding scale, they're moving to the left.
00:47:50.940 you made the opposite journey you started off in the 80s as a trotskyite on the hard left
00:47:58.380 um of course that's probably not so unusual in academia um but you moved in the opposite direction
00:48:08.540 uh you moved to the to to to embrace free market capitalism let me just ask you in your own words
00:48:15.820 seeing as i say uh many people now culturally are moving further as you see the rise of the
00:48:23.420 socialist democratic party in the united states people are moving there's a gravitational pull
00:48:28.540 towards the left why did you make the opposite direction in the 1980s why did you move from the
00:48:32.940 left to the right and what do you think that might uh what lessons could could people learn from that
00:48:38.220 today? Well, I think that two things happened. One is the world has changed. And, you know,
00:48:46.880 as the world changes, the way you look at things also alters. But very importantly, even when I
00:48:53.360 was on the hard left, I always had certain ideals and attitudes that was different than the rest of
00:49:01.920 my colleagues at the time. For example, I always had a very strong affection for my relatives,
00:49:09.800 for my family. I always felt that communities were really quite important. And there was an
00:49:16.300 incident, I remember, when I was sitting around with some people having a drink, and they were
00:49:21.520 all complaining about the fact, about how much they didn't like their moms or their dads, they
00:49:26.300 hated their family, they were going on and on. And at some point, I interjected and I said,
00:49:31.920 I don't quite understand you guys because I actually love my mother.
00:49:35.980 I'm very close to my father.
00:49:37.820 My family is really very important to me.
00:49:40.600 And they all looked at me as if I was Dracula messing up their drinking session.
00:49:47.120 And at that point, I began to realize that I wasn't like them,
00:49:51.140 that I had certain emotional connections, certain attitudes towards life
00:49:56.900 that distinguished me from the way that they were kind of behaving.
00:50:01.620 And I remember that when I started thinking about it,
00:50:04.440 I realized that something was driving me in a particular kind of direction.
00:50:10.220 And the way that it worked is that I began to realize how important it was
00:50:14.680 to defend the family, to defend communities, to defend traditions,
00:50:19.820 to defend the organic connection between generations.
00:50:24.060 This is a really important accomplishment.
00:50:27.280 And at some point, in terms of my own research and everything else,
00:50:30.820 moved in a very different direction. It's not like I read a particular book and I said,
00:50:36.740 I'm moving from this ideology to that ideology. It was just that my whole personality
00:50:42.600 came to express a certain view that is seen very often as being similar to conservatism.
00:50:52.120 And in particular, I began to realize that there was something really, really valuable
00:50:57.960 in the Western way of life,
00:51:00.800 in the kind of legacy of Western civilization
00:51:02.780 that wasn't just simply about big ideas up there,
00:51:08.620 wasn't just simply about big philosophical notions,
00:51:11.520 but it was very much about the way that we live our life
00:51:14.360 and the way that we conduct our relationship,
00:51:17.360 the way that our view of humanity exists.
00:51:20.780 And I think that's something that I've really kind of internalized,
00:51:24.780 which is why I've been obsessed and preoccupied,
00:51:28.780 especially the last 10, 12 years with the culture wars.
00:51:32.780 And I've been mobilising support in different parts of Europe
00:51:37.780 to fight the culture wars because it was really important that we win that.
00:51:44.780 That's fascinating to hear that, not only as a sociologist,
00:51:50.780 as a professional sociologist, but your personal recollection.
00:51:53.780 collection there's so much i i could draw draw out of that but we don't have time we've got 30
00:51:57.980 seconds left professor faredi where do people go on social media to keep up with your analysis and
00:52:03.780 please come back on the war room as well uh to brief us with what's going on with your fight
00:52:08.960 to set up your your new think tank on social media where do people go well i think my sub stack is
00:52:16.360 It's called Roots and Wings with Frank Ferretti.
00:52:20.940 I think that's where I write on a regular basis.
00:52:24.580 And also, if you get a chance to follow me on Twitter,
00:52:27.820 my piece of paper is written over there.
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