Juno News - Visegrad24 founder on Ukraine War, journalism and social media success

00:00:00.000 If you spend any time on social media, you will undoubtedly come across footage of war and unspeakable tragedy, whether it be in Ukraine or Gaza or even smaller scale conflicts.

00:00:13.260 Social media, and in particular X, has become a new front in war.

00:00:17.380 Influencing hearts and minds, amplifying voices, and trying to sway public opinion to one side's advantage has now become a major tactic in modern combat.

00:00:26.780 But how do people get their information and news about war, and where does that information come from?

00:00:32.640 Well, one account that you have likely interacted with on social media that reports on war and conflict is Visigrad24.

00:00:39.320 Now, the Visigrad24 media group is one of the largest news aggregator services on social media.

00:00:45.280 They don't hide their beliefs or their biases.

00:00:47.840 But who are the people behind this incredibly influential media group?

00:00:51.340 Now, that is the subject of the latest episode of The Faulkner Show.

00:00:55.040 All right, we are now joined by Stephan Thompson, the founder of the Visigrad24 media group.

00:01:02.100 Stephan, thank you so much for joining us.

00:01:04.220 Harrison, thank you for having me.

00:01:06.100 So I want to begin with the dieting mission of Visigrad24. 0.77

00:01:11.140 Millions of people interact with your social media accounts on a daily basis, trying to learn more about what's going on in wars and around the world.

00:01:19.080 But what is it that guides your group and the work that you guys are doing, sort of your ideology behind the account?

00:01:26.420 It's an interesting question.

00:01:29.800 I'm very open about the bias, the foundational bias of Visigrad24.

00:01:33.420 I'm obviously a conservative, and I'm guided by the principles of liberty, of freedom, of the defense of the rights, the God-given rights, and human dignity of every single individual.

00:01:46.840 And much of the work that we have been doing in the last few years has been about amplifying the voices of people who are being oppressed, be it Nigerian Christians who are being murdered in the hundreds of thousands in the Fulani plateau by Islamist militias,

00:02:02.960 be it the Ukrainian people who have been invaded by Russia, be it Jews facing anti-Semitism today, or Christians as well who are facing Christianophobia on an unprecedented scale in the West.

00:02:18.420 So there is a wide variety of struggles that we have been following.

00:02:21.880 I mean, obviously, we're guided by the truth.

00:02:24.060 Fundamentally, there's also, you know, Muslims are being oppressed in China.

00:02:27.240 Obviously, we all know about what's happening to the Uyghurs under the CCP.

00:02:33.260 So it's not, there isn't a, there isn't a, I don't pick and choose my fights in the sense of, you know, there's some fights that I'm obviously more interested in,

00:02:41.480 and there's some struggles that are more personal to me than others.

00:02:44.820 But those are the, those would be the guiding principles of Visigrad.

00:02:49.240 And I want to ask more just about you personally.

00:02:52.100 How did you end up running one of the most influential media groups on social media, disseminating and reporting on information, particularly about the war?

00:03:01.920 But as you said, on other events around the world, how did you end up in this position of influence?

00:03:07.480 Because it's pretty, it's pretty significant.

00:03:11.460 Hmm.

00:03:11.980 That's an interesting question.

00:03:13.880 How did I end up here?

00:03:15.800 Well, actually, there's a very simple answer.

00:03:18.480 And that answer is consistency.

00:03:19.920 It's been essentially consistent posting, reliable posting.

00:03:27.460 I mean, obviously, we've made mistakes.

00:03:29.080 Every single media company, media outlet in the world makes mistakes.

00:03:32.740 We have made some mistakes.

00:03:34.280 But, but, but broadly speaking, it's consistent and reliable reporting.

00:03:38.640 And also, I do believe that there is an appetite for an openness of a media company that is very open about its bias.

00:03:45.780 I don't pretend to be anything I'm not.

00:03:49.260 Me, the team behind Visigrad24, it's obviously not just me.

00:03:52.260 There is a team that works on this.

00:03:53.680 All of us are very open about, about, about the way, the angle we're coming from.

00:03:59.200 And no one, there's no pretense of being impartial.

00:04:01.680 There's no pretense of being objective.

00:04:03.740 And there's no pretense of knowing the absolute truth.

00:04:06.800 We report things as we see them.

00:04:08.920 We also try and not fall into a trap.

00:04:11.660 I do believe there is a trap that some conservatives and right-wingers fall into of becoming victims of being, you know, hostages to their own audiences and sort of operating within an eco-chamber in a bubble.

00:04:27.280 Our Ukrainian reporting is very uncomfortable to many conservative Americans who are tired of the U.S. sending aid packages to Ukraine.

00:04:39.780 That hasn't prevented us from writing about that, even though there's been some very strong pushback from American conservatives.

00:04:47.700 The same way, you know, there's also uncomfortable things that happen in Israel during the Israel-Hamas war.

00:04:56.120 We haven't shied away from reporting those things.

00:04:58.320 And I think that's where, I think that is really the key of the success of Visigrad24.

00:05:03.700 And obviously, this is just the foundation of it all.

00:05:06.720 This is the foundational stone.

00:05:08.300 We have a lot more that we're working on.

00:05:11.360 And, I mean, obviously, the most exciting work we're doing is the investigative work.

00:05:15.100 We had multiple hidden undercover journalists around seven American campuses, Emory, Queens, Rutgers, UCLA, Berkeley, Columbia, and Yale.

00:05:26.420 That undercover reporting led to Mohamed Abdu, the visiting archipage professor at Columbia University of Modern Arab Studies,

00:05:32.420 being fired by Minou Shafiq, who was cross-examined in a congressional hearing, where our undercover videos were quoted multiple times by American congressmen.

00:05:42.520 And that led to the firing of Mohamed Abdu.

00:05:44.340 I mean, that was really kind of this investigative journalism here.

00:05:47.980 That's not just sort of rehashing and repackaging these.

00:05:53.320 That really was doing sort of deep investigative work.

00:05:56.540 We're currently embedded in a large left-wing organization in the U.S.

00:06:01.080 We're very excited about what's going to be released.

00:06:03.500 And this is kind of, this is hopefully the beginning of a great adventure.

00:06:06.600 Amazing.

00:06:08.320 And so you don't have, do you have a conventional journalism background?

00:06:11.680 Or did you, did you fall into this through a different angle?

00:06:14.680 Because I think one of the things that we've noticed about journalism today is that a lot of the people that are in the mainstream media have a conventional journalism background.

00:06:24.220 They went through journalism school and they've been kind of, you know, almost bred to be journalists in a specific way.

00:06:30.920 It doesn't sound like you have that conventional journalism background.

00:06:33.980 No, I have a background in public relations and marketing.

00:06:38.920 I ran a PR company for many years.

00:06:42.120 And I don't consider myself, full disclosure, I don't consider myself to be a journalist.

00:06:46.820 Right.

00:06:47.520 Obviously, Visagrad is, it is, it's a media group.

00:06:53.480 I think that's the right way to approach that.

00:06:57.400 And I am looking to hire conventional journalists with a background that is journalistic.

00:07:02.780 I do think there is an era of, I mean, social media has essentially turned everyone into a journalist with, by taking away this monopoly on the ability to create, in essence, not news, but narratives.

00:07:20.520 Because that is what the mainstream media has been doing for decades.

00:07:25.000 It has been shaping narratives and pursuing.

00:07:28.320 And you can see it in, there was a very interesting post recently showing a bunch of headlines from mainstream media companies about the Harris and Waltz campaign.

00:07:39.940 Full disclosure, it's a well-run campaign.

00:07:42.040 It's properly done.

00:07:42.820 I mean, it's very impressive.

00:07:43.560 And it would appear that right now, at this current moment in time, they're even edging out Trump.

00:07:49.340 But there was this very interesting, it was a collage of headlines.

00:07:52.380 And all of them were using the same rhetoric of, this campaign is fueled by joy.

00:07:58.000 It was an interesting kind of, fueled by joy, the joyfulness of the House.

00:08:03.260 And this repeated over and over again.

00:08:04.780 And at that point, you sort of go, oh, is this journalism or is this actually the mainstream media sort of displaying its real bias?

00:08:10.880 So there is this incredible moment in time where all of us with a social media camp can become a citizen journalist.

00:08:19.600 And there's obviously some dangers to that and some pitfalls that I think we do need to be conscious of.

00:08:27.220 That there is, it is very, very easy to fall victim to fake news.

00:08:31.780 Absolutely.

00:08:33.520 Yeah.

00:08:34.380 Well, in previous interviews, you've discussed that one of the objectives of the Visigrad Media Group is in cases to counter hostile state disinformation when it comes to it.

00:08:45.880 Yeah.

00:08:46.120 And so I want to ask you what that looks like.

00:08:48.880 What does some of that disinformation look like from Russia and from some Iran-backed countries?

00:08:57.260 You know, how is that being used to shape hearts and minds?

00:09:01.800 Because we know that that's part of the modern war effort across both the two major wars.

00:09:07.580 Absolutely.

00:09:08.460 I mean, social media has become a battleground and an informational battleground where posts, you know,

00:09:15.960 obviously it sounds a little bit clichéd, but sort of tweets and posts have almost become bullets in this war.

00:09:23.460 There is a concerted effort by a series of nefarious state actors to undermine the West, to destabilize it.

00:09:31.080 And one of the main tools that is being used is the amplification of extremes on both sides,

00:09:36.860 fueling the far right, fueling the far left.

00:09:38.600 And we see this very, very clearly with the pro-Hamas, the pro-Palestine protests, and the way that they've been organized.

00:09:46.360 And you see this on one hand.

00:09:48.180 So the four main states involved in these operations are on one hand China, so the CCP, with its main tool being TikTok,

00:09:56.060 where the algorithm essentially is their weapon of choice.

00:10:01.600 And you can see that very clearly with the amplification of pro-Palestinian content.

00:10:07.480 Again, it's interesting because the Chinese don't really have a stake in the Israel-Hamas war,

00:10:11.600 but they've used it in a very concerted effort to lead to mass protests,

00:10:16.140 directly and indirectly, to lead to mass protests and instability in Western countries that they see as a natural opponent.

00:10:22.840 We see this again with the Russian state, obviously with their very famous bot farms.

00:10:27.160 And this is a lot of the content that we're seeing is not generated by real users.

00:10:33.380 It's being generated by bot accounts being run by paid Russian trolls working from troll factories in Algino, for example.

00:10:42.320 And then you see this again with the Iranians and their proxies who've been doing very similar operations.

00:10:48.380 I mean, with the Iranians literally infiltrating to some extent the White House, 0.95

00:10:52.200 that was also part of that as information warfare.

00:10:54.780 And then you see it with states like Qatar, who've incredibly managed to co-opt in some sense Western academia with several billion dollars.

00:11:04.860 It's about $4.7 billion funneled to American campuses between 2001 and 2021.

00:11:11.420 And you can see the direct effect of this money.

00:11:15.620 This gas money that's being accepted as a gift is not free money.

00:11:20.020 It doesn't come with no strings attached.

00:11:21.840 And this is, you know, in many senses, we're kind of, it's this terrible, terrible paradox of the great freedoms of the West.

00:11:32.920 Here we have essentially that the pinnacle of human civilization has been achieved across the West.

00:11:39.580 Record liberties, record wealth, record social mobility.

00:11:43.520 I mean, we have, I mean, no one in the history of any of our families ever had it this good in the West.

00:11:51.540 This is as good as it gets from the medical to the technological to the economic.

00:11:56.320 But perhaps maybe the boomers had a little bit better on the economic side of that. 0.67

00:11:59.720 But leaving that aside, broadly speaking, we live in incredible times.

00:12:04.560 And these very freedoms that we have make us ripe for being exploited by the operations of these states.

00:12:12.420 So we have this very strange moment, for example, where it's interesting because when Ukraine was invaded by Russia in 2022,

00:12:22.660 that led directly to many, I think the majority, I think all of the European Union countries banned the operations of Russia today,

00:12:29.760 of, of, and of Russian state media, which was a sensible move given that it was obviously parroting Russian propaganda,

00:12:37.900 which is, and there was a very direct hybrid warfare that was even more than informational.

00:12:43.140 The Russians sent, this is what the beginning of Visegrad 24 was, the Polish border, our eastern border,

00:12:49.960 we have a border with, with Ukraine, with Ukraine, obviously, and then to the north of Belarus.

00:12:54.860 And the Lukashenko regime in collusion with the Kremlin was flying in migrants from the Middle East

00:12:59.400 and Africa, and then bussing them to the Polish border to destabilize Europe. 0.96

00:13:04.240 And this was obviously being defended in Russia today, and other Russian affiliated outlets.

00:13:08.960 So banning their operations made sense.

00:13:11.380 But then, for example, we have Al Jazeera English, which is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece.

00:13:17.840 I mean, let's remember the Qataris when, when, when we were at war with, with the, with the Taliban in Afghanistan, 1.00

00:13:23.260 the Taliban are being hosted in Doha by the Qataris.

00:13:26.200 The leadership of Hamas is being hosted in Doha right now, as we speak.

00:13:31.660 So this is not a neutral state.

00:13:34.000 It presents itself as a modern Arab state and as a mediator.

00:13:36.640 This is not a neutral state.

00:13:38.380 They've been funneling money into every single, pretty much every single famous Muslim, 0.98

00:13:43.460 radical Muslim terrorist organization on, on, on planet Earth.

00:13:46.380 And yet they're allowed to operate Al Jazeera in a completely unhindered manner all around, 0.86

00:13:52.140 all around the West.

00:13:53.600 And it's a very influential outlet that, that is further radicalizing people.

00:13:58.220 And we saw it at the DNC yesterday with the DNC being literally physically charged by pro-Palestinian

00:14:05.180 protesters.

00:14:05.760 And, and, and it's, it is, it's fascinating to see that these protesters don't come out

00:14:10.880 and march for the Muslims being slaughtered in Syria by the Assad regime.

00:14:15.300 They don't come out and march for the Uyghurs in China being massacred by the CCP and put

00:14:19.840 into re-education camps.

00:14:21.340 And there've been thousands of mosques that have been either, either sinified or, or literally

00:14:25.440 physically destroyed by the Chinese, by the Chinese communists. 0.64

00:14:28.600 They, they don't come out to march for any of these men.

00:14:30.820 And they don't come out to march for the Congolese being exploited in, in, in mines with multiple

00:14:35.460 children dying every single day.

00:14:37.440 And yet here we have this one topic that has been highly weaponized, that has been very

00:14:43.160 instrumentally used, that is poorly understood by the majority of the people involved in the

00:14:48.220 protests, but that is very, very successfully, I mean, driven a massive wedge between our

00:14:54.500 societies.

00:14:55.420 And you see this, especially in our age demographic, you see it amongst Gen Z and millennials, probably

00:15:00.380 more so than you see it amongst, um, amongst, amongst older generations.

00:15:05.440 And how do you make sure that the Visigrad media group doesn't fall into the, the, the same

00:15:12.280 pitfalls on the opposite side as say in Al Jazeera English does?

00:15:16.960 I mean, your media group has a lot of influence.

00:15:19.480 Millions of people are interacting with it and it's disseminating important information.

00:15:23.960 So what are the processes that you go through to make sure that information that is being posted

00:15:28.540 is accurate and that it's, it's not being, it's not being pushed to you for nefarious

00:15:33.880 reasons?

00:15:36.360 It's an excellent question in the sense, I mean, in a, in a, in some sense, you have to

00:15:44.800 respect Al Jazeera, A, because it's an incredibly successful operation and, and B, because it

00:15:49.260 unapologetically defends the interests of the Qatari state.

00:15:53.460 Um, from, from that perspective, I obviously disagree with them.

00:15:57.420 I disagree with their form of Wahhabi Islamism, but I, I have to respect that their operation 1.00

00:16:02.660 is, is on brand and ideologically on point.

00:16:05.520 Right?

00:16:06.240 So to kind of respond in a semi-joking way to your question, I, I, I would like to be the

00:16:13.600 Al Jazeera of the West.

00:16:14.940 I am unapologetically pro-Western.

00:16:17.280 I don't, I don't obviously, I don't obviously think that the West hasn't committed serious

00:16:21.060 mistakes, but I do think that our virtues greatly exceed our vices.

00:16:26.180 And in that sense, I don't, I don't make any, any excuses for, for, for defending the values

00:16:33.060 and principles and beliefs that turned the West into what it is.

00:16:36.680 And I, and I think that there is a danger of war.

00:16:39.460 Once you walk away from the principles and the values and the virtues that turned us and our

00:16:43.880 societies into what they are today, that, that, that we will become, unfortunately, much weaker

00:16:49.780 and, and, and, and most likely much poorer for it.

00:16:53.160 So, but, but, but to answer your question, which is a very, a very important one, I've

00:16:59.500 been very critical of mainstream media for many reasons.

00:17:03.580 And I think there are many reasons to criticize mainstream media, especially the, the way that

00:17:10.700 they turned themselves into gatekeepers of the truth of a, of a, in a very cynical way and

00:17:18.840 in a, in a way that was quite exploitative of their audiences and of the naivety of their

00:17:23.960 audiences.

00:17:25.160 But as Visegrad has grown and as it's gained influence, we've done 7.3 billion impressions

00:17:31.100 in the last 12 months, 1.1 billion video views.

00:17:34.100 Um, we're followed by some of the most powerful people on, on earth.

00:17:38.980 It's about a, a, a combined total of about 20,000 journalists across various media outlets

00:17:44.860 from left to right that follow us.

00:17:46.280 So the, and the, the, the ramifications of what we have been posting obviously have been, have

00:17:51.000 far exceeded that number because we've ended up in mainstream publications.

00:17:54.480 We've ended up generating news cycles.

00:17:56.160 Um, and, and as this has been happening, there's actually been a, a sense of great responsibility

00:18:02.560 on my shoulders that, that the, the more, the more influential it becomes and the more

00:18:07.680 it grows and the more followers we have, the, the more I've been kind of actually looking

00:18:11.860 at how the mainstream media has been trying to implement processes to stop itself from

00:18:18.360 posting fake news.

00:18:19.400 And, and that's been something that's actually quite a discovery in the sense of going from

00:18:24.100 this position of being someone who, who looks at the mainstream media and goes, ha, this

00:18:28.140 is, I'm very critical of what you've, what you've done and what you're doing to realizing

00:18:32.780 that actually many of the processes and, and security mechanisms that have been implemented

00:18:40.180 are, are actually in many ways very useful.

00:18:43.380 So that is what I've been doing.

00:18:44.860 We, we've been, we've been doing our very best to implement various safeguards.

00:18:49.660 Um, and I think they've worked.

00:18:52.660 I, I think given that we've posted about 50,000 stories in the last four years, um, having

00:18:59.900 just over a hundred community notes is, is not necessarily a tragic score.

00:19:05.180 And I think whenever I've seen the hit pieces that I have seen about visa grade 24 written

00:19:10.300 by mostly by far left outlets or, or very antisemitic Muslim outlets, um, they'll bring up three

00:19:18.780 stories in general, um, as evidence of us being a fake news outlet.

00:19:23.660 One of them being posting of a fake story, which we retracted within about an hour that

00:19:28.580 Leonardo DiCaprio donated $10 million to Ukraine, um, two years ago.

00:19:33.460 And, and I find the fact that, that these, that these hit pieces point to that as this kind

00:19:39.700 of, look, here's the evidence.

00:19:41.420 That's a story that was retracted within an hour, um, as being, look here, this is evidence.

00:19:46.660 These guys, these guys are always wrong.

00:19:48.780 Um, I actually think it's a testimony to the fact that we have been a very credible source

00:19:53.900 that they can't, no one can take something that's obviously palpably fake.

00:19:58.700 Um, I mean, even when we were reporting the initial stages and I was, I spent a lot of

00:20:03.580 time on the ground in Israel, um, and the West Bank documenting the Israel Hamas war,

00:20:08.260 um, you know, when we were reporting the stories, there were initial reports right at the beginning

00:20:15.540 of beheaded babies.

00:20:17.740 Again, the language that we used was incredibly cautious.

00:20:21.500 And, um, and actually I, I think that no one can go back in time and say, oh, visa grade

00:20:26.220 24 claimed this.

00:20:27.180 We never did, um, because we had implemented us a series of, a series of mechanisms to

00:20:33.380 ensure that we don't kind of fall for, and it's very tempting, right?

00:20:37.660 And, and you know, this, you work in media, Harrison, you, it's obviously incredibly tempting

00:20:40.820 to go, let's take the most shocking headline possible.

00:20:44.660 Let's post that.

00:20:45.900 That's going to do clicks.

00:20:47.700 And no, this is, and obviously, and as we've been growing, um, the investigative unit, which

00:20:56.340 I've told you about is, is a very important addition and we're slowly, but surely implementing

00:21:01.820 sort of these, these daily briefs about sort of news from various parts of the world.

00:21:06.900 Um, and, and, and, and I think I, I want to really focus on as we move forward to really

00:21:12.880 focus on the things that there are, most niches have been filled by various media operations.

00:21:20.720 And I, I do think that the one space that remains, which is where visa grad has been growing has

00:21:27.320 been to document protest movements, resistance movements, be it the, the, the, the Venezuelan

00:21:33.880 opposition dealing with Maduro's election fraud or, or the Hindus in Bangladesh facing Islamist

00:21:40.700 violence.

00:21:41.280 And, and, and these are kind of very important stories, especially in an increasingly globalized

00:21:47.160 world, especially in a world where Western countries are increasingly multicultural and

00:21:52.460 the problems that we are seeing in Bangladesh today are, are not going to be unique to Bangladesh.

00:21:58.460 Um, as I mean, you see it, for example, in, with the tensions in the United Kingdom, where

00:22:05.280 you have tensions between Hindus, that there's a large Hindu minority, obviously India is part

00:22:09.780 of the British empire, you have a large number of, of, of Indians.

00:22:13.060 It's one of the largest communities in the UK and you have very large numbers of Pakistanis

00:22:16.820 who are Muslim.

00:22:18.120 And that, that tension at the, at the Indian Pakistani border has now replicated in various

00:22:25.680 communities around various cities and towns in the United Kingdom.

00:22:28.860 So those stories can have become, we've seen it in Canada too, actually.

00:22:32.280 Have you?

00:22:32.860 Yeah, we've seen it in, in, in cities outside of, uh, outside of the GTA, um, not just between

00:22:39.100 the, uh, Indian and Pakistani groups, but also, um, in between, uh, Sikhs and Hindus in our

00:22:45.540 communities.

00:22:46.120 Um, and that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you, which was, what do you see as the

00:22:51.700 biggest threat facing Western society at the moment?

00:22:55.540 Well, the, the, the largest threat that we have is internal and, and I, it's completely internal.

00:23:02.480 It is what Gad Saad, speaking of another Canadian, what Gad Saad refers to as the parasitic mind.

00:23:08.860 It is without a doubt the, the crisis of identity that the West faces, where we have a complete and

00:23:15.660 utter uncertainty of who we are and where we are going.

00:23:17.980 And there is a, there's an anecdote that I, I, I, I, I like where an architect is about

00:23:24.760 a hundred years ago or so.

00:23:25.900 An architect is asked why the moderns no longer build cathedrals, obviously referring to the

00:23:31.160 great cathedrals of the Gothic and, and, and, and, and Romanesque times.

00:23:35.020 And, um, and the answer, the simple answer that he's provided with is, um, it, it, it takes

00:23:40.740 more than beliefs and opinions to, uh, to build a cathedral. 0.95

00:23:44.240 It takes convictions and there is, and obviously it's, you know, it's a, it's a silly, silly

00:23:48.620 sort of anecdote, but there's a lot of truth to it.

00:23:51.260 There's no great conviction in the West.

00:23:53.400 There's no great religious conviction.

00:23:55.500 There's no great moral conviction.

00:23:58.260 I mean, the only sort of conviction that we have is, is, is the wokest one. 0.92

00:24:02.840 And I, I, I dislike the term for a variety of reasons because it doesn't, it's become overused

00:24:07.820 and abused in many ways, but it does reflect some broad truths of a, of a, of a, of a Western

00:24:14.100 world, which is busy self-flagellating and repeatedly sort of bringing out all of what

00:24:21.200 it, what is worst in our history, all of the things that we did wrong, forgetting and wiping

00:24:26.020 out every single one of our achievements and, and, and sort of pointing out, and this is

00:24:31.840 Francis Fukuyama wrote about this interestingly in the end of history, pointing out that a people

00:24:36.580 who have, who have no struggle, and, and this is really true of about three generations

00:24:43.160 in the Western world, outside of obviously the, the post, the post-communist world of

00:24:47.980 sort of, you know, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, but, but, but three generations

00:24:53.340 after World War II of economic growth, economic comfort, technological improvement, um, upward

00:25:00.000 social mobility, every single metric that you can look at.

00:25:03.820 And, and this is, I, Steven Pinker has documented this beautifully.

00:25:07.160 Every single metric you look at has improved.

00:25:09.320 There is no real struggle.

00:25:10.400 Right?

00:25:11.400 We, we don't have Nazis to defeat.

00:25:12.400 We don't have communists to defeat.

00:25:14.400 Um, you certainly don't have a great moral battle.

00:25:18.100 And, and, and this is what Fukuyama described.

00:25:20.440 And he, he talked, talked about it about 30 years ago saying that, you know, people who

00:25:24.060 don't have a struggle will end up making one up.

00:25:26.560 And I think that's very much what we're seeing right now.

00:25:28.520 And, and this internal chaos and, and it really is coming from within because it's, the migration

00:25:34.820 crisis is not the fault of the migrants that are coming. 0.99

00:25:38.260 I don't blame anyone for wanting to move.

00:25:40.600 I'm half South African.

00:25:41.600 I've spent extensive amounts of time in, in, in South Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa.

00:25:46.600 I know Africa very well.

00:25:47.600 I, I don't blame a single African for wanting to leave those countries, but I think the only 1.00

00:25:51.720 people to blame for mass migration, be it to Canada, to the US or, or, or, or to Europe

00:25:57.600 are Europeans who've not implemented proper border policies.

00:26:00.640 You know, if you don't have a proper border policy, you can't keep being surprised that

00:26:05.180 people are arriving at your doorstep.

00:26:07.700 So this internal decay is something I'm incredibly concerned with.

00:26:12.880 And it's, it's, it's something that I, and I, and I think this is where, this is where looking

00:26:19.700 to our past and trying to understand what it, and I, and I see, you know, the, the far left,

00:26:25.780 which looks to that top past and which brings out various mistakes and says, oh, we're bad

00:26:30.580 because this, this, and this obviously oftentimes it's, it's slavery and, and the left forgets

00:26:35.100 that actually it was the Western world and the Christian world that ended slavery at, at

00:26:40.280 a great financial cost to the United Kingdom, by the way, who had to use its own Navy to,

00:26:44.420 to stop the process of the Arab trade slave slave, which was, which was massive, which was

00:26:48.700 massive in the 19th century.

00:26:50.340 So, you know, it is sort of, but the, the, the left is, is, is correct in one way that

00:26:55.140 they look back and they say, okay, this, we did wrong, this, we did wrong, this, we did

00:26:58.060 wrong, this, we need to fix.

00:26:59.480 And in many ways we should do the same thing and look back and say, this is what we did,

00:27:02.960 right.

00:27:03.460 That was correct.

00:27:04.740 This was good.

00:27:06.020 This, we should replicate.

00:27:07.780 For sure.

00:27:08.260 And, you know, I, I want to, I want to build on that, but I also want to make sure that I get

00:27:12.420 a chance to speak with you more in depth about Ukraine and Russia, because really for me, at least

00:27:17.660 that's where I first came to start interacting with your account.

00:27:20.800 And I think many of, uh, many Canadians, um, would say the same thing.

00:27:25.400 I want to ask you, because right now the, the decision as to what the West should be

00:27:30.720 doing in order to help Ukraine is of major debate in the U S presidential election.

00:27:35.420 It's increasingly becoming more of a debate in Canada as well.

00:27:39.000 What do you believe the West's role should be in Ukraine?

00:27:42.200 Is it to continue what's, what they're doing?

00:27:44.560 Is it to move towards boots on the ground or is it to push for a diplomatic end to this

00:27:49.480 war?

00:27:49.880 What do you, what do you think the West's role should be?

00:27:53.220 It's a very good question and an incredibly difficult one.

00:27:56.680 And one that I have on a, on a, on a personal level, very, very mixed emotions about, um,

00:28:03.100 I've been to Ukraine recently.

00:28:05.240 I, I traveled through the country.

00:28:07.260 Um, I met with many people in the military, met with many people in Keef, Kharkiv and,

00:28:13.760 and line zero.

00:28:15.220 And, um, it's an incredibly difficult, look, it's, it's, it's a, it's a horrible war that

00:28:24.080 is costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

00:28:27.040 Um, I think that the decision at the end of the day lies in the hands of the Ukrainian 1.00

00:28:32.700 people and the Ukrainian leadership.

00:28:34.200 If the Ukrainians have the will to keep fighting and the desire to keep fighting, and if they 1.00

00:28:41.280 believe that they can defeat the Russians, and, and I don't think it's an implausible 0.88

00:28:46.940 proposition, um, then I think, I, I think we can only respect their wishes.

00:28:52.700 I, I don't think we can force and decide for the Ukrainians.

00:28:56.540 I, I wouldn't really want to speak for them, especially because I, I'm, I don't, I'm not

00:29:01.120 Ukrainian.

00:29:01.620 Right.

00:29:02.160 I've spent a lot of time in Ukraine.

00:29:03.840 I, I lived there briefly in 2018 and 2019.

00:29:07.020 And, um, it's a country I have a great, great fondness for and a great affinity for.

00:29:11.680 But, um, I, I think they have proven on a, on a military level that they are capable of,

00:29:20.340 of, of, of at least holding the Russian bear back.

00:29:24.300 And, and, and they've done it with, with impressive success.

00:29:27.000 You know, the three days theory of, of Keefe will be taken and, and the Russian propagandists

00:29:32.320 who sort of, sort of prophetizing the demise of, of, of Zelensky and his administration

00:29:38.120 within days, uh, couldn't have been more wrong.

00:29:40.860 So credit where credit is due.

00:29:43.080 I, I think that, I think that obviously there are some, some concerns to be had, especially

00:29:48.800 about corruption.

00:29:50.120 Um, obviously it's far worse on the Russian side, but I, I do think that unfortunately

00:29:53.680 there are some issues with corruption in Ukraine.

00:29:55.360 But, um, but yeah, if, if, if, if Keefe believes that it can keep the fight going and if Ukrainians 0.98

00:30:01.920 want to keep fighting, then I think, I think we should leave that decision to them.

00:30:05.860 Right.

00:30:06.040 And, and what do you think victory looks like?

00:30:08.240 It's not something that we often get an insight into from the Canadian side.

00:30:12.940 When we, when we fund the effort, we don't know what that victory looks like.

00:30:17.120 So in your opinion, what would that be?

00:30:18.700 Would that be taking back the occupied territory?

00:30:21.340 Would that be, uh, would that be solidifying lines and just downing tools?

00:30:25.920 What, what do you think that looks like?

00:30:28.260 From a Ukrainian perspective, victory is, is very obvious.

00:30:31.280 Victory is a return to, to, to the, the internationally recognized borders of before the Russian aggression. 0.81

00:30:37.720 And I'm not talking about the aggression of 2022, but of 2014.

00:30:41.400 Right.

00:30:41.720 From, from a Western point of, correct.

00:30:44.820 From a Western point of view, um, for me speaking as a, as a, as a Polish citizen, um, to, to me, to me, victory would, would most certainly be, um, an end of the Putin administration in, in, in Russia and a disintegration of, of the Russian Federation into multiple states.

00:31:04.960 Um, this isn't, um, this isn't, I don't believe this is a stated goal of the, of the Ukrainian administration, but that, that from a Western perspective, I mean, I, I think that obviously this is a, a, a, a complicated matter for, for Americans to understand and for Canadians to understand.

00:31:20.260 Um, even, um, even though I know you have a physical proximity to Russia that we forget about because the world is, world is a globe, but, but being, being, being, being Polish and having a very difficult history with, with our Russian neighbors, um, two of my grandfather's brothers were massacred in the mass graves of Katyn and Starobielsk in 1940, um, part of the, the, the, the purchase of the Polish intelligentsia.

00:31:42.580 So it is a very personal animosity to me, um, we really believe that, you know, Russia is a, is an existential threat and it is an imperialist power that has, has not given up on any of its imperialist beliefs, just as the West exactly has given up these ideas of imperialism and, and retreated very much from large parts of the world, that the Russians haven't, and the Russians see certainly my country, Poland, as, as, as their rightful sphere of influence.

00:32:12.580 So to me, Russia is, is, is, is still, um, is a terrifying neighbor and it's a, it's a terrifying power, um, even in its current sort of weakened form. 0.98

00:32:24.120 So a disintegration of, of Russia into multiple states would be kind of, I think that would be victory to me. 0.99

00:32:30.620 Right.

00:32:31.220 Well, that's all the time that we have, uh, we have for this interview, uh, Stefan, thank you so much for giving us a really interesting insight into yourself and the operation and, uh, the people behind.

00:32:41.880 An account that so many of us interact with, we really appreciate it.

00:32:45.460 Thank you.

00:32:45.880 Appreciate the interview.

00:32:46.620 Thank you so much.

00:32:47.380 All the best.

00:32:47.780 Thank you.

Juno News - August 22, 2024

Visegrad24 founder on Ukraine War, journalism and social media success

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