RadixJournal - July 14, 2020


1453 All Over Again


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

150.90807

Word Count

2,418

Sentence Count

124

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

In the wake of the recent announcement that Hagia Sophia will be turned into a mosque, many in the Western world are concerned that this might signal the coming to an end of 20th century liberalism. What does the Pope have to say about this?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Topic 2. 1453 All Over Again
00:00:04.800 This past week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Hagia Sophia will, once again, be converted into a mosque.
00:00:15.080 The cathedral was completed in the 6th century during the reign of Justinian I,
00:00:20.660 and in 1453, Hagia Sophia was seized and made a mosque by the invading Ottomans,
00:00:26.560 who brought the ancient world to an inglorious end.
00:00:30.620 In 1934, the secularizing Turkish government converted the cathedral into a museum,
00:00:36.020 and it was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations.
00:00:40.460 Many in the Western world express shock and alarm by the latest developments.
00:00:45.920 The Pope, reportedly, is sad.
00:00:48.840 But being that Hagia Sophia was taken from the West more than 500 years ago,
00:00:53.340 are we really in any position to object?
00:00:55.820 The panel discusses this symbol of Roman triumph and medieval conquest,
00:01:01.500 and how this might signal the coming to an end of 20th century liberalism.
00:01:06.640 1453 is now.
00:01:12.480 It's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think what we've seen over the past week in near Asia
00:01:21.960 is at least somewhat reminiscent of that world historical point
00:01:29.780 that was the Ottomans' conquering of the Roman Empire,
00:01:36.580 the continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, or Constantinople,
00:01:40.860 and the building of minarets around the magnificent Hagia Sophia Cathedral of the 6th century,
00:01:48.860 which almost lasted 1,000 years,
00:01:51.100 and the transformation of the ancient world,
00:01:56.060 kind of the final ending of the ancient world, you could even say,
00:01:59.020 the transfiguration of the 2nd Rome.
00:02:05.780 And we're seeing it again.
00:02:07.500 So Erdogan gestured towards this over the past month
00:02:13.480 that he might very well be transforming Hagia Sophia to a mosque,
00:02:18.800 and he did it.
00:02:21.540 And he has declared that it will be open to visitors,
00:02:25.160 and those include non-Muslim visitors,
00:02:28.160 and I, of course, think that that is a good thing.
00:02:31.120 I actually have visited Hagia Sophia
00:02:32.780 when I was invited to speak at Hans-Hermann Hoppe's conference,
00:02:37.100 I guess in 2010, I believe, and maybe 2011.
00:02:41.660 You know, it's a magnificent building,
00:02:43.740 but I actually was quite disappointed with the condition that it was kept in.
00:02:49.320 But, you know, the way that I would look at this situation is,
00:02:54.720 I think a lot of, you know, you've seen patriarchs
00:02:59.220 in the Eastern Orthodox Church and so on,
00:03:01.160 and other people object to this matter.
00:03:05.440 And understandably so.
00:03:09.140 But I ultimately support returning Hagia Sophia to a mosque,
00:03:15.360 because I think it establishes the returning of Hagia Sophia
00:03:21.940 to a capital of a greater European empire of the future.
00:03:27.860 And I know that probably strikes many as outlandish,
00:03:31.060 but this is how I think that we should be thinking about these matters.
00:03:36.300 It was transformed into a museum, technically,
00:03:40.300 even though some of the accoutrements of the mosque remained,
00:03:45.460 but it was transformed into a museum during the Atatürk period.
00:03:50.080 So this was the attempted transformation
00:03:53.060 of the kind of rump state of the Ottoman Empire
00:03:56.720 into a secular nation state by Atatürk,
00:04:01.640 and the kind of secularizing nationalist influences.
00:04:05.260 And I think the transformation of that cathedral
00:04:10.380 into a museum was a kind of full expression
00:04:14.360 of 20th century liberalism,
00:04:17.660 or you could say the end of history,
00:04:19.540 in the sense that this site is no longer sacred.
00:04:24.420 It's actually a site that you can attend,
00:04:27.100 much like the Metropolitan Museum,
00:04:28.580 and you can look at the dusty old artifacts from the past
00:04:34.660 and think about how different they are
00:04:38.440 from our secular individualist world today.
00:04:42.500 And I think it kind of desacralized that building,
00:04:47.620 which does express our civilization at its very heart,
00:04:53.340 that is Rome.
00:04:54.080 And it also expresses our own humiliation in 1453
00:04:59.680 with the conquest of Near Asia by the Ottoman Empire.
00:05:05.180 And I think making it a mosque again is more honest.
00:05:09.420 It also is a way of, again,
00:05:12.680 ending this 20th century liberalism,
00:05:14.680 which I think we have to overcome.
00:05:16.560 And so the idea of retaking Constantinople,
00:05:20.920 retaking Hagia Sophia,
00:05:22.240 making it a capital again,
00:05:24.080 kind of re-enters our thought process.
00:05:28.100 It is a sacred site again.
00:05:31.000 It's not just some museum
00:05:32.420 that fat tourists can go visit
00:05:35.040 and gaze upon the past.
00:05:37.020 It's now a real thing
00:05:39.580 that is connected to a tradition.
00:05:42.300 And it is also now a kind of humiliation again.
00:05:46.300 It isn't, we don't,
00:05:47.380 we can't tell ourselves that,
00:05:49.180 well, all of those things from the past are over.
00:05:51.560 It's now just some neutral museum
00:05:55.240 that we can visit.
00:05:57.420 We now can think of it,
00:05:59.560 as we should properly,
00:06:01.520 as an expression of the greatness of our civilization
00:06:05.620 and an expression of our own humiliation
00:06:08.320 and our tendency towards decline and defeat.
00:06:13.120 And so I ultimately think this is a very good thing.
00:06:16.280 I have a deeply ambivalent take on Erdogan,
00:06:21.740 but I ultimately think this is a positive thing going forward.
00:06:26.140 It almost has to happen.
00:06:27.280 Yes, I agree.
00:06:30.960 I quite like the symbolism of it.
00:06:32.920 I quite like what it's saying.
00:06:35.560 And I can't help but have a certain degree of respect
00:06:38.880 for the chap that's in charge of Turkey.
00:06:41.300 He's taken it over, Erdogan.
00:06:43.580 He's taken it in a particular direction.
00:06:45.300 It's a direction of empowerment.
00:06:46.700 It's a direction of making the country more formidable.
00:06:49.080 It's a direction of making the country more of a player in the world.
00:06:51.900 And he's motivated by religion,
00:06:54.760 which a lot of these kinds of people,
00:06:56.700 societies that are dominant in the world tend to be.
00:06:59.980 And so, yeah, I think we should take stock of what's happened here.
00:07:09.820 So I'm not unhappy about it at all.
00:07:14.380 Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where it's like,
00:07:16.680 it's certainly a sign of like a return to a sacred place,
00:07:20.280 as Richard was saying,
00:07:21.140 but it's also a sign, of course, of our defeat there
00:07:23.400 and the want to want to retake a sacred place back.
00:07:26.460 Because the interesting thing under liberalism
00:07:28.200 is everything becomes kind of like a museum, right?
00:07:31.660 It becomes a universal world heritage site,
00:07:35.140 which I guess, you know,
00:07:35.780 the idea of world heritage sites
00:07:37.240 was actually kind of respectable.
00:07:38.920 And that was like a conservationist movement
00:07:40.680 of how, you know,
00:07:42.160 human architecture was played off the land and the environment,
00:07:45.040 which I think is respectable.
00:07:46.140 But what ends up happening, of course,
00:07:48.320 is the idea here is that like
00:07:49.920 everything that is sacred
00:07:51.600 is just simply passed in time as an artifact.
00:07:54.860 And we've been in this enlightened age
00:07:56.780 where we have a universal rationality.
00:07:58.940 We have the UN designating,
00:08:00.560 this is a heritage site.
00:08:01.720 And, you know,
00:08:02.140 we can all come together and dialogue.
00:08:04.020 And the interesting thing about that
00:08:05.360 is when you push that message,
00:08:07.060 you're basically saying,
00:08:08.500 yeah, I respect the particularity of your religion,
00:08:10.980 but I don't actually really believe it enough
00:08:12.840 to think it's sacred.
00:08:13.660 Because, you know,
00:08:14.340 in your own particular socially constructed
00:08:17.560 contingent circumstances,
00:08:18.920 your religion is, you know,
00:08:20.440 just a construct.
00:08:21.640 But here we are being respectful
00:08:23.120 because we acknowledge that.
00:08:24.800 And what are you actually saying
00:08:25.920 to the person in that religion?
00:08:27.160 You're basically saying that
00:08:28.400 it's just completely constructed, right?
00:08:30.580 And so it's a way of deconstructing it
00:08:32.680 through the idea of dialogue.
00:08:34.100 So then when you have like this heritage site,
00:08:36.760 and it's basically like,
00:08:38.120 you know, treating the past
00:08:39.440 like just some artifact
00:08:40.620 and the secularization
00:08:41.860 upon this universal rationality.
00:08:44.580 So when you're returning to that,
00:08:47.060 it's returning it from an idea
00:08:49.340 where, you know,
00:08:50.660 it represents universality,
00:08:53.120 which means it's everywhere
00:08:54.320 and if something's everywhere,
00:08:55.500 then it's really nowhere.
00:08:56.360 It has no home.
00:08:57.180 And that's what the global condition
00:08:58.780 of liberalism is,
00:08:59.740 is global homelessness.
00:09:01.380 And so when you're returning it
00:09:02.180 to a sacred place,
00:09:02.960 you're not only saying
00:09:03.860 this is a place,
00:09:05.660 this is what we have,
00:09:06.480 this is what we've conquered,
00:09:07.480 but it's also like, you know,
00:09:08.780 maybe come and get it, right?
00:09:11.220 It's a bit of a flex,
00:09:12.320 but this is the return away
00:09:14.780 from liberalism is the recognition
00:09:16.540 that, you know,
00:09:17.620 we don't all have the same
00:09:19.080 universal interest
00:09:20.020 when it's not always sacred.
00:09:21.400 The way in which someone
00:09:22.580 takes something that was sacred to you
00:09:24.700 and puts their own on it,
00:09:26.600 like that was originally
00:09:27.600 what it was in the first place
00:09:28.780 when it was first conquered.
00:09:30.100 And so this is just a rebirth of history.
00:09:33.060 Yes.
00:09:33.400 I think what this guy is saying,
00:09:34.860 what they're saying by doing this,
00:09:36.180 they're saying,
00:09:36.560 we Turkey have been through
00:09:38.220 this secular phase,
00:09:40.580 this phase where we,
00:09:41.980 where we supposedly at least
00:09:43.280 haven't been religious,
00:09:44.340 where we haven't had a sense
00:09:45.360 of our own eternal importance,
00:09:46.680 where we haven't had all of these
00:09:48.180 values which are,
00:09:51.180 which permit you or group
00:09:53.600 to better survive
00:09:54.640 in the struggle between groups.
00:09:56.900 And that phase is over.
00:09:59.060 And we are now looking
00:10:02.240 towards eternity again.
00:10:04.320 Yeah.
00:10:05.380 That's what it's saying.
00:10:06.920 We are the future
00:10:08.740 and this decadent phase
00:10:11.580 that we've been through,
00:10:12.540 this decadent phase
00:10:13.820 where we just imitated the West
00:10:15.660 and where we thought the West
00:10:16.600 was better than us
00:10:17.620 and where we,
00:10:18.660 even if they are to the point,
00:10:19.980 we thought the West
00:10:20.760 was better than us
00:10:21.520 and we felt inferior to them
00:10:23.600 and whatever
00:10:24.000 and we adopted their ways
00:10:25.700 of thinking
00:10:26.140 and we took our
00:10:27.480 most sacred religious places
00:10:29.180 and just turned them
00:10:30.120 into the hollow tour.
00:10:31.540 It's over.
00:10:32.580 We're moving away from it.
00:10:34.100 It's the past.
00:10:34.880 It's gone.
00:10:35.380 It's dead.
00:10:36.700 And I think that's
00:10:37.720 an important statement
00:10:38.920 that they have made.
00:10:40.400 Even from a conservationist perspective,
00:10:42.620 you could argue
00:10:43.860 that this is,
00:10:45.740 that Hagia Sophia
00:10:46.520 will be preserved better
00:10:48.060 when it is connected
00:10:49.420 to eternity
00:10:50.180 and not connected
00:10:51.200 to mere tourism.
00:10:53.620 And again,
00:10:54.280 I visited Hagia Sophia
00:10:56.120 and I was overwhelmed,
00:10:57.480 but I was also very disappointed
00:11:00.120 with the upkeep
00:11:01.980 of the facility.
00:11:03.480 If it is a sacred place
00:11:05.360 and declared as such
00:11:06.540 by the state,
00:11:08.300 you know,
00:11:08.620 one could argue
00:11:10.220 that the Muslims
00:11:11.020 are going to tear it down
00:11:12.100 and destroy it.
00:11:12.740 I don't think that's going to happen.
00:11:14.040 But one could also argue
00:11:15.340 that they are more likely
00:11:16.820 to maintain it
00:11:18.460 in a continuous condition
00:11:23.180 and a serious condition
00:11:26.940 as it is connected
00:11:28.600 to God
00:11:29.360 and not connected
00:11:30.600 to some tourist
00:11:31.960 from Ohio
00:11:32.660 who pays five bucks
00:11:34.200 to take a selfie
00:11:35.960 outside of it.
00:11:37.320 And so, yeah,
00:11:38.380 I think it's just
00:11:39.560 an overarching good thing.
00:11:42.220 And the people
00:11:43.080 who don't like this
00:11:44.180 are the same people
00:11:46.040 who don't want us
00:11:47.100 connected to eternity
00:11:48.100 as well.
00:11:50.100 They're the same people
00:11:51.160 who would want to,
00:11:52.360 you know,
00:11:52.760 turn the damaged
00:11:54.220 Notre Dame Cathedral
00:11:55.300 into a Disneyland park
00:11:58.140 or who, you know,
00:11:59.820 want to conserve tradition
00:12:01.500 but only in the sense
00:12:02.460 of putting it
00:12:03.400 in a museum somewhere
00:12:04.320 where the public
00:12:05.280 can go gaze
00:12:06.640 upon the past.
00:12:09.060 And, yeah,
00:12:11.260 I would,
00:12:11.920 in a kind of funny way,
00:12:14.240 trust this cathedral's
00:12:17.720 upkeep to Muslims
00:12:18.980 before I would,
00:12:20.040 I would really trust it
00:12:21.280 to liberals
00:12:22.340 who simply would want
00:12:24.380 to neutralize it.
00:12:25.500 They might very well
00:12:26.240 maintain it
00:12:26.860 and that is something
00:12:28.520 that is respectable.
00:12:30.000 On the other hand,
00:12:31.360 though,
00:12:32.800 you could get
00:12:33.520 certain branches
00:12:34.620 of Islam
00:12:35.240 that were opposed
00:12:36.060 to art
00:12:37.420 and whatever
00:12:37.820 that were iconoclastically
00:12:39.020 tear down
00:12:40.820 some of the
00:12:41.880 historical artifacts.
00:12:44.380 I don't think
00:12:44.720 they're going to do that.
00:12:45.460 I think on one level,
00:12:46.960 even though they won't
00:12:47.580 admit it,
00:12:48.400 is that it is
00:12:49.700 a source of pride
00:12:50.680 in the sense
00:12:51.460 that it's something
00:12:52.000 that they conquered.
00:12:53.060 I mean,
00:12:53.220 that was one thing
00:12:54.120 that I noticed
00:12:55.900 when I was visiting Turkey
00:12:58.840 is that it,
00:13:01.220 maybe this was
00:13:02.060 just my perspective,
00:13:03.020 but it felt like
00:13:04.300 it was occupied territory.
00:13:06.900 There were these,
00:13:07.500 you know,
00:13:08.160 red flags
00:13:09.440 flying over places
00:13:11.540 that almost seemed like
00:13:12.940 they had just been
00:13:14.460 stamped down
00:13:15.500 into the ground
00:13:16.280 by a military.
00:13:18.660 It seemed occupied.
00:13:20.660 There seemed to be
00:13:21.320 a kind of disconnect
00:13:22.280 with the older parts
00:13:24.060 of the city
00:13:24.620 and the state.
00:13:27.340 And I think
00:13:28.300 they might very well
00:13:29.180 want to keep it
00:13:30.000 as a,
00:13:30.620 you know,
00:13:30.860 sign of their
00:13:31.860 badassery,
00:13:33.360 which is,
00:13:34.220 again,
00:13:34.880 something that I respect,
00:13:36.680 even if it's not
00:13:37.780 the badassery
00:13:39.180 that I would want
00:13:40.280 to promote.
00:13:40.720 Yeah,
00:13:43.380 well,
00:13:43.500 right now it's,
00:13:44.320 you know,
00:13:44.660 it's on a geologic
00:13:46.160 fault line.
00:13:47.580 It's,
00:13:48.180 I think I read somewhere
00:13:49.300 that it's like
00:13:50.120 looked after maybe
00:13:51.660 once a month
00:13:52.380 with a worker
00:13:53.000 at the moment.
00:13:53.980 So maybe it'd be
00:13:55.000 better with,
00:13:56.080 if it becomes a mosque,
00:13:57.080 at least when it comes
00:13:57.600 to preservation,
00:13:58.980 but that also might,
00:13:59.960 they just might change
00:14:00.940 more things about it
00:14:01.900 when it comes to
00:14:02.620 redoing the maintenance,
00:14:03.540 which could be
00:14:04.920 rather unfortunate.
00:14:07.740 Yeah,
00:14:08.400 and in terms of
00:14:09.820 the West,
00:14:10.720 if you really
00:14:12.320 want it preserved,
00:14:13.060 why don't you
00:14:13.320 take it back?
00:14:15.320 You know?
00:14:15.760 I mean,
00:14:16.400 why are you
00:14:17.080 complaining?
00:14:18.640 You know,
00:14:19.360 this is actually
00:14:20.120 in our control.
00:14:21.260 We had multiple
00:14:22.240 opportunities
00:14:23.180 to retake
00:14:24.600 Constantinople
00:14:25.460 and we failed
00:14:26.660 because we were,
00:14:27.780 we were weak.
00:14:30.140 So it,
00:14:31.260 it,
00:14:31.540 it stands
00:14:32.480 as a kind of
00:14:33.600 challenge
00:14:34.120 that I think
00:14:34.720 will wake up
00:14:35.620 white people.
00:14:37.040 I,
00:14:37.580 I want it too.
00:14:38.800 I want to tear
00:14:39.660 down the minarets.
00:14:41.160 Although we would
00:14:42.060 do it
00:14:42.440 safely and humanely.
00:14:45.400 But I want this
00:14:46.660 to be ours.
00:14:47.680 I want this to be,
00:14:49.080 you know,
00:14:49.480 if I could imagine
00:14:50.600 a capital
00:14:53.420 of
00:14:54.520 the coming
00:14:56.100 ethnostate,
00:14:56.780 it would certainly
00:14:57.480 be in near Asia.
00:14:58.900 It would be
00:14:59.120 Constantinople.
00:15:00.260 I want us
00:15:01.260 to do this.
00:15:02.080 but so we've
00:15:03.580 got to do it
00:15:04.160 and stop
00:15:04.640 complaining
00:15:05.160 about people
00:15:05.940 or,
00:15:06.320 or,
00:15:06.700 or just
00:15:07.200 regressing
00:15:07.960 to some
00:15:08.520 20th century
00:15:09.340 liberal mindset
00:15:10.480 of,
00:15:10.960 you know,
00:15:11.440 oh,
00:15:11.860 we should
00:15:12.160 keep it
00:15:12.600 as a museum,
00:15:13.460 a tourist
00:15:13.880 site.
00:15:14.580 That's,
00:15:15.100 that's,
00:15:15.620 that's bullshit.
00:15:16.160 We need to
00:15:17.020 overcome
00:15:17.320 liberalism
00:15:17.980 ourselves
00:15:18.660 and we
00:15:20.280 need to,
00:15:20.960 to take it
00:15:21.560 back.
00:15:23.400 Well,
00:15:23.760 it's really
00:15:24.040 illusion breaking.
00:15:25.100 I mean,
00:15:25.240 that's what the,
00:15:25.880 the UN
00:15:26.500 and all these
00:15:27.360 other bodies,
00:15:28.400 that's the appeal
00:15:28.980 they're making
00:15:29.440 to.
00:15:29.800 It's like,
00:15:30.120 it's an appeal
00:15:30.660 to universal
00:15:31.240 rationality where
00:15:32.340 there is no
00:15:32.780 difference between
00:15:33.600 where you are,
00:15:34.540 who you are,
00:15:35.060 what your race is,
00:15:36.380 religion,
00:15:36.840 like that.
00:15:37.240 It's just like,
00:15:37.680 well,
00:15:37.780 don't you want
00:15:38.220 to keep this
00:15:38.680 as a nice site
00:15:39.500 for the world?
00:15:40.880 You know,
00:15:41.040 you think twice
00:15:41.720 about what you're
00:15:42.260 doing.
00:15:42.680 This is,
00:15:43.320 you know,
00:15:43.480 come on,
00:15:43.780 be reasonable
00:15:44.320 about this.
00:15:45.500 And,
00:15:45.800 you know,
00:15:45.920 reason here
00:15:46.520 is of course
00:15:47.080 Western liberal
00:15:47.800 reason.
00:15:48.720 And so this
00:15:49.200 is like really
00:15:50.280 breaking that
00:15:51.180 illusion that
00:15:51.940 this Western
00:15:52.440 liberal reason
00:15:53.060 is something
00:15:53.420 that's universally
00:15:54.120 shared.
00:15:55.600 In this sense,
00:15:56.480 it's a necessary
00:15:57.080 process.
00:15:59.500 Yes.
00:16:00.940 Yeah.