In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by my good friend Richard Lewis to discuss the current state of immigration in the United States and the UK. We talk about immigration reform in America, immigration in Britain, and the strange harmony of legislation since the Second World War.
00:00:09.380Are there similar things occurring in the UK in the sense that migration is becoming the, at least for the moment, the chief issue?
00:00:21.380It's something like liberals are turning around on and liberals are claiming to be closed border defenders or closed border enjoyers, I guess.
00:00:32.900There actually is, because Keir Starmer, the labor leader, who is a kind of Blair apprentice, basically, I mean, direct apprentice of Tony Blair, is basically strafing the Tory party from the right on immigration and on especially illegal immigration,
00:00:57.240which is how I think the powers that be hope to contain the issue, really, to focus.
00:01:05.480In America, it's all about the southern border.
00:01:09.320In this country, it's all about the, quote unquote, small boats, which, I mean, it is remarkable that, you know, this nation has been an island nation for over a thousand years.
00:01:24.300And suddenly, in the 21st century, we've forgotten how to stop boats coming.
00:01:31.760I mean, we stopped the Spanish Armada in, you know, with a much worse technology than we have now.
00:03:35.20065 immigration bill when they basically opened up the borders again in America.
00:03:39.560But what is probably less well known is that at exactly the same time as LBJ was doing all this great society stuff in this country, there was a race bill passed.
00:03:55.100There was an immigration bill passed, basically allowing former Commonwealth people to become automatic citizens of Britain.
00:04:06.760There was a criminal justice reform, basically liberalizing the system in harmony with what America was doing at the same time.
00:04:19.900And there is that pattern basically holds...
00:04:25.760I mean, you know, when you had Reagan, we had Thatcher.
00:04:29.220So there is this kind of, you know, when you had Trump, we had Brexit.
00:04:34.580There's this strange harmony that happens.
00:04:38.660And one of the weirdest things is that actually the UK tends to get in a couple of months before the US often, where there's a, you know, like Brexit happened a little bit before Trump, right?
00:04:58.30079, yeah, just a little bit before Reagan.
00:05:00.540And all of that kind of liberal immigration stuff happened in 63, 64 here.
00:05:07.460So, and that happened in 64, 65 there, right?
00:05:10.360So that is one of those things I've never quite been able to work out why there's that harmonization.
00:05:18.100I mean, I've got my own perfectly easy explanation, which is that the Europe since World War II has essentially been a vassal colony to the kind of unofficial empire of the Americans.
00:05:33.640And Britain's role in that empire is essentially to be the regional, how would you describe it?
00:05:45.140Like the regional lieutenant or the regional, you know, to oversee...
00:05:52.800Well, yeah, not only the guinea pig in terms of domestic policies, but also the...
00:05:58.800To oversee the region of Europe and to make sure Europe is kept in line.
00:06:05.760I mean, I have a slight conspiracy theory, but I have a view that the pro-Brexit forces in this country were actually sneakily American aligned.
00:06:19.920And that the anti-Brexit forces were quietly working towards a geopolitical agenda that detached Britain from under the wing of the eagle.
00:06:38.600And this has only really become fully obvious, I think, in the fullness of time since Brexit happened.
00:06:45.680And, I mean, I should mention, I voted Remain, by the way, which is very...
00:07:27.080What is, in effect, a sort of elite conspiracy theory?
00:07:31.720Like, they have this agenda, and they're going to roll it out at the same time, you know, across different lands.
00:07:39.600They might even try it out here first.
00:07:41.460That's fair enough, and I'm sure there's actually an element to that.
00:07:46.720But I think there's a kind of bigger question about this.
00:07:50.740And this goes to my own general outlook, which might be different than yours, which is that I do obviously think there are elite actors, of course.
00:08:05.120But I'm not sure they're as in charge as Alex Jones thinks they are.
00:08:18.020I think they might really lack vision and lack a coherent long-term agenda.
00:08:26.640I think Alex Jones, to use him as just a placeholder here, is wrong.
00:08:31.560And I think there's a lot to be said for what I guess could be called collective social mood and convergence.
00:08:42.820I mean, I recently read, like, a short history of the Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick.
00:08:50.200And it's really uncanny the degree to which the Soviet Union was converging culturally and even psychologically with the United States, say, post-Stalin.
00:09:04.800And there does seem to be a way where kind of like communism found its way to capitalism and then capitalism found its way to communism and they just kind of converged into one thing.
00:09:19.560And even like the promotion of consumerism was happening quite a bit in the Soviet Union.
00:09:24.540I think we miss this as people in the West.
00:09:27.740And so, again, I'm not going to dismiss an elite conspiracy theory, but I'm also not going to endorse it.
00:09:44.440And, you know, you see, like, just to use an evocative example, I mean, birds flying in a flock,
00:09:51.280it's actually impossible for the bird on, say, the far left of this, you know, moving body to know what the bird on the far right is doing.
00:11:03.660I think those are interesting questions.
00:11:05.180I mean, I do agree with that, Richard.
00:11:06.780And I wrote, funny enough, before this stream and partly inspired by a conversation I was having, a friendly joshing I was having with Mark on Twitter.
00:11:20.440I wrote an article called, I'm having to pull it up because I can't remember the name of it.
00:11:25.200It's called the James Lindsay debate club theory of history.
00:11:29.460Where I essentially outline why I think a lot of elite decisions are exactly, as you say, non-logical, downstream of feelings in the moment.
00:11:46.900I mean, I'll give you an example, right?
00:11:51.160And we mentioned that 1965 immigration legislation, okay, that came in.
00:11:59.500Now, one of the things that happened in America, I don't need to explain this to the people on this call, was that there was a kind of mini circulation of elites within America.
00:12:07.580The so-called Ellis Island Coalition came to prominence, and there are statistics that show that by the mid-60s, 50% of all of the law faculty in America were Jewish, for example.
00:12:26.800Now, why were those lawyers who basically all campaigned for civil rights and so on, so in favor of immigration?
00:12:40.240And as I say in the article, it doesn't have to be anything more sinister than the fact that those, as recent immigrants from a minority group, may have felt safer, you know, in a country that was welcoming immigrants.
00:13:00.980Recent immigrants tend to be more pro-immigration to the country they're going to, because it just makes sense.
00:13:08.140It doesn't need to be this kind of long-term, kind of overarching plan or anything.
00:13:15.880It could just be that they are responding to what Pareto call their sentiments, if you want to put it that way.
00:13:23.160And you could argue that the evidence that it wasn't very well thought through is the fact that Jews in America, and especially in Europe, are now wondering if this was such a good idea.
00:13:36.500Because, as you've discussed on this show many times, the less homogenous population is actually more hostile to them than the society has existed in the mid-60s and the 70s.
00:14:33.500Which I think he can outline better than I can.
00:14:36.160But I think that, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll give a kind of general outline of what I think he's saying.
00:14:43.240And that's essentially that, you know, it's actually kind of, I mean, this is something that's existed in the DR for a long time, this argument.
00:14:52.660Though, of course, academic agent, I think, is putting his spin on it and is bringing a kind of new, fresh, original perspective to it, of course.
00:15:03.000But this idea has existed in the DR is that, you know, the sort of the racial problems or the political problems in Europe are distinct from those in America, because in Europe there is more sense.
00:15:19.260And some of this is sort of kind of undeniable, you could argue, but there's a kind of ethno nationalist perspective among the various, you know, independent European countries where they are.
00:15:30.540They're concerned about preserving Frenchness, they're concerned about preserving Britishness, and so forth.
00:15:36.140Or at least they are in the kind of dissident right.
00:15:38.040This is, you know, this is obviously a sort of phenomena among some people in the dissident right.
00:15:42.440Whereas in America, there is this idea of a kind of more blended or homogenized white that is not, you know, French or is not British, but rather is this kind of new, part of this new ethnogenesis, the American, right?
00:16:00.540But that we, the concept of white is even kind of an American concept.
00:16:05.140This is the argument that I think academic agent is going further with that thought and saying even the idea of like identifying as white is ultimately a kind of American idea, or at least a colonial idea.
00:16:23.220Because probably he would apply it to Australia or South Africa as well, it seems, because it's a similar colonial experience where they're interacting with the non-white and so forth.
00:16:35.600But I don't want to put words in his mouth, you know, because he's academic agent, so he can be as articulate at least as the rest of us, and probably more so in a lot of cases.
00:16:51.600Yeah, I mean, I should really explain that the genesis of this idea that many of our ills ultimately come from America has to be, has to go back to Julius Evola and also Francis Parker Yockey, who heavily influenced my thinking on this.
00:17:15.580And actually, it was their stuff that made me look again at the history of US-UK and US-European relations.
00:17:29.360And I mean, just to very quickly outline the kind of Evola-Yockey line, during the Cold War, they argued Europe was caught between two civilizational enemies, Russia to the right and America to the left.
00:17:48.640And the argument was basically that even though Russia was a deadly foe, which would basically be like a brute stamp on your head, America was in a way an even worse enemy, because rather than rubbing you on the head, it would slowly poison you from the inside, pretending to be your friend.
00:18:12.640Whereas in fact, it's like a kind of civilizational acid that destroys all distinctions, dissolves all localities, and ultimately dissolves the races as well.
00:18:29.000Probably the most easy, short introduction on this is Evola's pretty controversial essay, Negrified America.
00:18:41.240Obviously, he was writing in the mid-century, so forgive his language, but he basically argues that because of certain things that happened as historical quirks in America's history,
00:18:58.200there is something about the Negro culture soul, if you want to put it that way, that has seeped into the American character in all sorts of hidden ways.
00:19:13.160And there's various other influences as well, including Jewish influences, that have basically led to this kind of deadly anti-traditional cocktail that in time, he argued, would end up destroying old Europe.
00:19:36.960Now, what's striking about that essay and his other essays on America is that he was writing in Italy in the 60s and the 50s, like a pretty much 100% Catholic country back then, and probably people thought he was crazy.
00:19:51.280But now you can fast forward to see the world of 2023, and I turn on my television, and it's just chock full of black people, 24-7 pretty much.
00:20:05.080And the European, you know, it really feels like many of these things are being imposed on Europe from without, right?
00:20:14.380You know, and it comes back to what we were saying about the strange harmony, where, you know, it just so happens that as America was experiencing a massive invasion of its southern border and huge immigration problems,
00:20:29.240so these policies are being imposed here and all across Europe.
00:20:34.000In the German case, the American army is still literally there, but in fact, the Americans still have bases in this country, going back to terrible and traitorous deals that Winston Churchill did.
00:20:49.120And I've been doing a series recently kind of exploring the history of exactly what went on between the wars and during World War II.
00:20:59.120And, I mean, I've come to the conclusion that Winston Churchill is probably one of the worst leaders in this country's history, if not the worst,
00:21:06.960because basically what he ended up doing was mortgaging off the entire empire and essentially gifting large portions of British property, territory, colonial territories to America,
00:21:21.540you know, you know, just because he had this belligerent, almost psychotic need to defeat the mid-century Germans.
00:21:33.320I mean, you can do your own studies on psychologically on why that may have been, maybe it was his debt, maybe it was because he was half American or whatever.
00:21:41.700But it is very difficult to look beyond what went on there and the fact that the experience of Europe since World War II is basically to become more and more Americanized.
00:21:59.360Because this used to be a topic that the left would talk about a lot when I was growing up.
00:22:04.540They called it American media imperialism.
00:22:08.100I don't know what's happened to the left.
00:22:09.580They don't seem to talk about that anymore.
00:22:12.860They've all become vowsha or whatever.
00:22:14.500They all seem to be happy with this now.
00:22:16.080But, you know, there are, I think, deep psychological differences between the character of old Europe and the mentality of, you know, the American, you know, as a kind of archetype.
00:22:37.560The easiest way I would put it would be that if you think of Lord of the Rings, okay, the hobbits of the Shire and the idea of the Shire and the idea of loving your home and kind of wanting to dig in roots and defend the castle, I think is deeply ingrained in this country.
00:23:02.540Whereas in America, because of its big open spaces and its open roads, there's always been this attitude that actually you can just leave, you can just move.
00:23:17.140I remember reading a stat once that the average American moves 11 times in their life and possibly up to 14 times now.
00:23:27.400I think in Britain, it's four times people will move here.
00:23:30.860And if you have a look at the way that America is dealt with its deeply ingrained problems, like the racial issue and so on, it has been a story of white flight, basically.
00:23:43.740Well, you can't really do that in Europe.
00:23:46.440And you certainly can't do it in Britain because there's nowhere to move.
00:23:52.620But nonetheless, this seems like this way of living seems like it's being imposed.
00:24:05.020Thomas Carlyle called it nomadism, right, as opposed to the idea of the Shire, which is kind of static.
00:24:11.340And, I mean, Spengler even talks about becoming a plant, like the peasant becomes a plant.
00:24:20.240And, you know, America just isn't like that.
00:24:22.960It's a nation of bourgeois, if you want to put it that way.
00:24:25.100And these are kind of deeply rooted issues.
00:24:32.780And, I mean, in a way, the position I've been arguing for the last year, two years, three years, has basically been the default position on the right in Europe forever.
00:24:46.540You know, it's not just Evelyn and Yoki who argued along these lines.
00:24:51.200It was almost every European racist up until World War II pretty much saw things in that way.
00:26:09.240Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to what you've said.
00:26:16.480And I've actually mentioned this in previous discussions here.
00:26:19.640I mean, the negrophilia is an important component of these things.
00:26:25.500Now, you see very strong negrophilia in France as well.
00:26:29.280There's actually a book I've never read, but I've often seen it about this just obsession in the early 20th century, particularly 1920s and so on.
00:26:41.660And it is a kind of weird situation where these people were enslaved.
00:26:52.340But I think it's also wrong to think of American slave owners as hating their slaves or being sadistic.
00:27:02.080I mean, I'm sure some or maybe even many were.
00:27:06.320And I'm not defending chattel slavery as an institution.
00:27:09.760But I think there's an interesting book called Roll, Jordan, Roll and others where it's like the predominant emotion of slave owners as a slave was, in fact, love.
00:27:24.400And they were treated as innocent hobbits, maybe even, to borrow your metaphor from Tolkien.
00:27:33.040And this flips from, you know, almost hate.
00:27:40.080You know, there's a fine line between love and hate.
00:27:42.260It kind of flips between hating them, oppressing them, but then kind of secretly being fascinated by them and looking at them as in an almost racist way as more connected with vital energies or even animalistic energies.
00:28:29.520And, you know, Frederick Jackson Turner, very famously, and he was not a prolific writer, but a brilliant one, he also agreed with you that there is just a profound difference in the American psyche to old Europe.
00:28:50.060And he saw this in the notion of the frontier, which is one motif that he brings up.
00:28:59.740It is, the word means the opposite in the United States as it means in Europe.
00:30:11.780Turner also had some really interesting lines about how technology would decrease as you went into open space.
00:30:19.600So in Boston, you were riding a trolley car.
00:30:23.220And then as you moved to the Midwest, you were riding a wagon.
00:30:26.800And then as you went to, say, the Pacific Northwest, you hopped into a canoe.
00:30:30.740So you were like going forward while going backwards in terms of technological development.
00:30:37.980There's also an interesting connection of the Bostonians loving the latter books of the Bible, like the Gospels.
00:30:46.820And then once you get out deep into open space, you're reading Exodus and the Hebrew Bible and so on.
00:30:54.280A lot of fascinating things that I think are still impactful.
00:30:58.720They still are impactful on American character.
00:31:02.160But I guess what I would – so I agree with so much of what you're saying.
00:31:08.000But I guess I would push back in the sense of wasn't Europe really at its best when it connected with that kind of desire for expansion and exploration?
00:31:25.480And isn't it in a way kind of at its worst when it's acting like they're hobbits living in the Shire?
00:31:34.100And, you know, I often will put these things into historical context.
00:31:38.740Like if you want to thank someone for the nation state in Europe, you need to thank one man, and that is Woodrow Wilson.
00:31:47.120Perhaps the most intelligent president, certainly the most intellectual president in American history, although I guess he has some rivals in that regard.
00:31:59.020But he offered, in contrast to Bolshevism or communistic revolution, he offered the nation state and ethno-nationalism as his response or answer to Bolshevism.
00:32:17.580And what has been the history of Europe under segregation than a sort of Shire?
00:32:29.560You know, like American tourists love this when they go to old Europe and they go to some little Italian town where, you know, someone's using a screwdriver on a Vespa and they're drinking espresso.
00:32:44.720Well, all of that is the authenticity of subjugation.
00:32:49.840And Americans, their long-term strategy of American empire is putting you into a little nation state where you can't fundamentally challenge the United States' global power.
00:33:08.100And so I guess I would, I mean, look, I agree with you in a lot of criticisms of American culture, but I, first off, I guess my rejoinder would be, I wonder what exactly it is that Europe is offering.
00:33:25.260Because you can't, like, you can play defense, but at some point you've got to score on the other team.
00:33:32.820Like, you can't, you can't just say, like, you're advancing, you're advancing, you're advancing, unless you advance.
00:33:39.300Like, the best defense is in offense, so to speak.
00:33:42.920And so, like, offering the shire or rootedness, this seems to be a kind of, like, quaint, if attractive, but fundamentally weak rejoinder to an obvious fact that America is a dominant power.
00:34:04.760Yeah, I mean, historically what I'd say is that there's no getting outside the issue of class and even the issue of caste, right?
00:34:17.660Which, again, is something that has been a little bit alien to the American spirit, although I am aware Virginia, et cetera, had kind of aristocratic pretensions and, in many ways, forms.
00:34:34.760Right, but that was, unfortunately, that was defeated, right, by the Civil War.
00:34:39.840So, it was the North that won, and the North was not like that.
00:34:45.240But, historically, the plant-like peasant, if you want to put it that way, the hobbit, the shire, you know.
00:34:52.600And, in fact, Tolkien himself has got an amazing quote that somebody put on Twitter the other day about not being part of the shire himself.
00:35:01.480And, actually, like, in his darkest moments, like, actually despising how stupid the people of the shire are and so on, but then wanting to kind of protect them and make sure that they always had it.
00:35:14.400And he actually dramatizes this through the Lord of the Rings, because if you remember, certainly in the movie version, right, if you remember the movie version of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo doesn't want to go back to the shire.
00:35:30.880Because Frodo is essentially an aristocrat who develops an adventurous crusading spirit during his journey.
00:35:42.080And he's like, I don't want to go back.
00:35:43.640I think he ends up going off with the elves or something at the end.
00:35:47.280He doesn't want to go back to the shire.
00:35:48.660So that the conquering element, the crusading element, was always kind of outsourced to the warrior class.
00:36:00.300If you think of the Spanish conquistadors, it was only, what, like 10,000 men or something, 20,000 men.
00:36:10.460And so it was with most of the empires.
00:36:16.860It wasn't, you know, so you have to then think, well, there's a relationship between the warriors who look after the peasants in exchange for taxes and so on and so forth.
00:36:32.400They get to live in the shire and be safe and occasionally, you know, should they volunteer, get called up for war or whatever.
00:36:46.040And, I mean, there are other castes, priests and merchants as well, who enter into the picture.
00:36:51.060So, I mean, that is how it's worked historically.
00:36:56.640But, of course, none of that exists anymore because we are now prone to think about, you know, all things have to involve all people and be open to all people.
00:37:10.620So, again, this is a kind of a, you know, it's a traditional versus modern way of thinking, I guess.
00:37:16.880It's the American, how can I put it, the...
00:37:23.260Well, I guess what I would suggest, just a quick rejoinder, I think the shire is a modern way of thinking.
00:37:31.640Well, that's kind of why I was trying to turn the tables on you in the sense that, I mean, this is almost like a touchstone or watchword for me,
00:37:40.020but the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 established this notion of you have a right to a homeland.
00:37:50.560I mean, this is what people say totally understandably.
00:38:04.100And maybe it is a romantic notion and maybe it's a kind of backward-looking notion, but it's a modern notion.
00:38:09.680There are that notion of opening things up to more people, expansion, regulation of the planet.
00:38:19.840This is also an ancient notion that you can see with Alexander, you can see with Rome, I mean, for better and for worse.
00:38:29.180And so I guess my fundamental rejoinder is that whatever we want to say about Hollywood, it taught the world new ways to dream.
00:38:41.300Like it offered a fantastical, attractive, forward-looking, maybe even dangerous notion of togetherness or so on that was kind of articulated through Americanism.
00:39:01.520And for that to be defeated, you have to have an equally, if not more compelling vision.
00:39:11.260And I guess I would just say that the shire ain't it.
00:39:17.780Well, I mean, it wasn't even it for Frodo, as you yourself to admit.
00:39:23.180Hey, if I could jump in, if I could jump in just for a second here.
00:39:27.500Yeah, and I'll try to make my point succinctly, so I allow both of you guys time to talk as well.
00:39:33.500But, yeah, what I would say is that, I mean, bringing up Lord of the Rings is interesting, too, because part of it goes to a sort of interpretation of that work.
00:39:48.780And what he's saying is interesting in the sense that it's unclear that he's, you talk about his ambivalence as it concerns the hobbits, and I think that that comes out in the work as well.
00:39:58.760It does seem that the hobbit is a kind of subtle caricature to some extent, a kind of self-effacing caricature, ostensibly of the Englishman.
00:40:09.180But I think that that is generally what he's saying, even of the sort of petty nationalists, right?
00:40:16.000Though it is interesting that a lot of the names appear to be Frankish, like Pippin and so forth, right?
00:40:22.520There could be another, you know, and he himself has said that, though I think that this is not entirely true, that he dislikes sort of the kind of one-to-one comparison and symbolism and so forth.
00:40:35.900I think the dwarves, for example, have a kind of striking resemblance to Jews, and that does seem intended.
00:40:40.740But there could be a kind of more looseness in general to his metaphor.
00:40:45.440But yeah, so what I would say, though, is in that book as well, we see, and I surmise that this is a kind of metaphor about, because he was a Catholic, it's about, you know, imagining the way that a Catholic West can stand up to these encroaching forces of darkness,
00:41:09.520whether they're Islam or, you know, anti-Christian, but also anti-European forces.
00:41:15.720So this famous scene that's depicted in Peter Jackson's film, where Aragon says, men of the West stand, right?
00:41:24.320And before that, this sword, which I have to guess represents a kind of cruciform or cross, and maybe that's not the case,
00:41:34.160but it represents a kind of unifying of, you know, these different factions, whether they're dwarves or elves and man and so forth, of the good people versus the bad people.
00:41:45.620And when that sword becomes whole, and Aragon wields it against the orcs and these sort of underworld creatures, that almost what he's saying, it's almost a kind of pan-Europeanist vision, you could argue,
00:42:02.700that Tolkien is almost sort of, you know, placing a kind of pan-Europeanist vision, and in some ways might even be making a kind of subtle argument against the Shire,
00:42:14.460which is kind of depicted as a sort of declining phenomenon, or at least to the associate, you know, there's this idea that they're going to the West,
00:42:22.760especially the elves are disappearing and so forth.
00:42:25.580And the elves, I think, probably represent, at least in part, a kind of Nordic, you know, older, maybe pagan type, you could, you know, at least from Tolkien's perspective.
00:42:37.040So, but, so it is an interesting thing to talk about in this context, but to your other arguments, though,
00:42:42.800I mean, I think that there is definitely a kind of tradition of, and a relatively old tradition as well, of, on the right, of Europeans thinking about pan-Europeanism.
00:42:55.740I mean, we see it with Nietzsche, of course, who, I guess we could say Nietzsche is neither on the right or left,
00:43:03.040but if we were to put him somewhere, I think that it's, in good faith, I think that we can put him on the right,
00:43:09.340even though people on the left try to claim him, and probably as a way of mitigating him.
00:43:14.380But I think that we can classify him as a thinker on the right, you know,
00:43:19.900but Napoleon, of course, would have been a pan-Europeanist, you know, I'm sure as an Englishman,
00:43:27.600that's not necessarily, you know, not necessarily, you don't necessarily identify with Napoleon,
00:43:32.300but he's an example, of course, of a European, and modern in many ways, of course, I would say, hasten to add,
00:43:39.140but others before him, of course, in the philosophical or literary world, in France, Victor Hugo, and who's a good, like an Englishman,
00:43:51.200but this is a modern example, of course, or a relatively modern example, would be Mosley.
00:43:56.220Mosley was a big, you know, pan-Europeanist, and how significant a figure he is, is another question.
00:44:03.600Yaki, I do, you know, I've read Yaki as well, and I enjoyed Yaki.
00:44:09.920He wrote when he was very young, though, so I think that there's a kind of incompleteness to his worldview.
00:44:16.880I mean, I like, but his idea, too, though, of course, is this idea of Imperium,
00:44:21.060which I think that you're, it sounds like, from you, I'm getting a kind of pan-Europeanist perspective,
00:44:26.540which is better than a petty nationalist perspective, from my view.
00:44:31.320You know, I'm a pan-Arianist, so we want to be included, too, man.
00:44:38.040But, you know, if we're not, I think that, you know, this perspective is, I think, ultimately the kind of correct perspective,
00:44:44.960you know, from my understanding, a kind of pan-Arianist view, a globalist view, ultimately.
00:44:51.960But I, and then Ebola, you mentioned as well.
00:44:58.180Yeah, so I was, I'm kind of aware of their view of both Russia and Europe, or rather, Europe's place between Russia and America.
00:45:10.760I mean, I think that it is interesting that Yaki is, because Yaki, of course, more than Ebola, is a kind of radical anti-Semite.
00:45:21.820He has all these euphemisms he uses for Jews, like the culture distorter and so forth, right?
00:45:27.900But one word that I really appreciate, or one term that he developed that I really like is the culture-bearing stratum.
00:45:35.620I think it's a very useful term, or it's a kind of cool, like sort of ideal, especially for people that are sort of presently out of power,
00:45:43.500for them to kind of develop a culture-bearing stratum in the way that I'm looking at or interpreting it,
00:45:49.280maybe even as a kind of nascent aristocracy or nobility, at least of spirit and intention or goals and aspirations and so forth.
00:46:02.200But I, what I would say, I think that, you know, it is interesting, though, that Yaki is kind of making these distinctions with Russia and America,
00:46:13.320given how much of an anti-Semite he was.
00:46:15.560Because the other thing, and I think that this also may, to some extent, I think that Europeans,
00:46:21.380especially of a kind of petty nationalist perspective or of a pan-Europeanist perspective
00:46:27.120that is seeking to exclude America or differentiate itself from America,
00:46:32.880I think that speech laws are a factor here, often, because they can't really say,
00:46:41.740well, I mean, ultimately, it's a Jewish problem, essentially, or, or, so America...
00:48:19.240And, and I think that, in any case, I think that I've, I've said enough.
00:48:24.840I'll probably add more later, but I'll let other people jump into the conversation.
00:48:29.560Yeah, can I say a thing about this, like, the hate speech thing is that, yeah, I don't really think it's, like, true that it has, like, a chilling effect on speech,
00:48:41.580because, you know, like, my experience is that Europeans tend to be much more vocal about these issues, even though they're all hate speech laws.
00:48:58.300About, like, your racial issue and immigration and such, I think.
00:49:06.660Well, that's definitely not my experience.
00:49:09.500I mean, I, I mean, yeah, because I can't really think of, like, what you might call a prominent influence or, like, something of the equivalent has been, like, arrested for, like, political stuff in Sweden or something.
00:49:21.660Like, like, on the contrary, but I have this experience when I talk to Americans that, like, all of them say that, oh, I can't get involved because I will lose my job.
00:49:30.920Or I can't show my faith because I will lose my job.
00:49:33.680And it's just, like, I've never even had that experience with, like, Swedish people who are quite open with going to demonstrations and such.
00:49:39.900Yeah, but they're putting people in jail in England.
00:49:42.860I mean, let's, let's be honest here, right?
00:49:57.760Well, I mean, I would agree that the Europeans are more overtly, quote, unquote, racist than the British are, in my experience.
00:50:10.760Like, the European nationalists that I've met tend to be a bit more forthright, apart from the ones from Germany who have to be more clever, obviously.
00:50:18.120But even them, even the Germans I've met privately are more kind of, you know, a bit more gung-ho about it.
00:51:28.080But one of the problems, I guess, I, I have is that the geopolitical incentives, if you want to put it that way, cannot really be overlooked.
00:51:43.280And, and especially what has actually happened.
00:51:46.040So, I mean, since Wilson, but especially since FDR, FDR, among other things, was a pathological anti-colonialist.
00:51:57.060I think you'd all agree with that, right?
00:51:59.220And one of the things that Evola and Yoki turned me on to is what is, what people might call Cold War revisionism, right?
00:52:09.260There's a kind of cartoon version of the Cold War, that it's capitalism, right-wing American capitalism versus left-wing Russian socialism, right?
00:52:22.440And there are many examples of the Americans and the Russians actually basically being on the same side when it came to decolonization of the European powers.
00:52:36.340And in some cases, I mean, there's a, there's a very interesting case study in Angola, for example, where there was no left, there was no kind of left-wing force in some of these places until America went in and set them up, right?
00:52:57.360And so that there's a kind of, now you could attribute all of that to who happens to be in charge of America.
00:53:05.160But I also feel like there's something about the unit, the political entity of America since its founding, that basically was founded in rebellion against the whole world, if you want to put it that way.
00:53:23.200And the story that I've seen, you know, the more I've studied it is that essentially wherever America could screw over the European powers, including Britain, it has done basically, especially when it comes to dismantling the old colonial, the old empires.
00:53:47.060And so that's also been the story of France and England, though, and, you know, in England and Germany and so forth, right?
00:53:55.060Well, I mean, they were more a case of overt rival powers who actually had wars, you know, you know, Napoleon versus the British Empire, you know, old fashioned fights over territory.
00:54:09.660They will fight with the Dutch for a while, you know, you know, you ally with the Germans against the French or ally with the French against the Germans.
00:54:18.620I mean, that is just basically how Europe always was up until the imposed peace since 1945.
00:54:28.500And I mean, there's an argument to say, and I don't know how I feel about this, but I have seen this argument made that that competition between the various powers of Europe actually is what gave it its vitality.
00:54:47.580It is what it is what made it so innovative and vital and what spurred these powers on to essentially take over the entire world.
00:54:59.420Yeah, Charles Murray seems to kind of insinuate that a little bit in his forget what's the name of his book.
00:55:08.160But yeah, it's like human greatness, human accomplishment or something like that.
00:55:12.320He doesn't make that argument directly, but I think that he points to periods where innovation is correlated with warfare or military success among this European power that in any case, continue your point, please.
00:55:30.760I mean, look, I would say that a lot of American achieved like a lot of the greatest American moments came out of the fact out of its competition with the Russians, right?
00:55:42.320I mean, with the USSR, if they kind of spurred each other on and, you know, sometimes they spurred each other on in good ways, like for technology.
00:55:52.760In other ways, they spurred each other on in really bad ways.
00:55:56.640Like, for example, I've seen quite a bit of evidence to suggest that a lot of the civil rights stuff and social liberalism and kind of what we might say kind of more gay direction that America has gone in since the 50s was pretty much spurred on by Soviet critiques.
00:56:25.640So as long as the Soviets could say, oh, look at how you treat the blacks or look at how, you know, you say you're the country of freedom, but why you got Jim Crow's rules then?
00:56:37.360Or, you know, you know, so a lot of the left wing moves of the Americans during that period, you could argue was in response to Soviet critiques.
00:56:50.300So they would look better, you know, in the eyes of the world versus the Soviet in that kind of game for the hearts and minds of everybody.
00:57:04.740Have you guys come across that sort of material that?
00:57:07.140Oh, yeah, I undoubtedly, oh, so much of the great society thinking, et cetera, was a response to the Soviet Union, no doubt.
00:57:19.720But, you know, for better and for worse, there wouldn't have been a moon landing without the Soviet Union and et cetera, et cetera.
00:57:50.940The Tolkien quote is says, I should like to save the Shire if I could, though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words and I felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.
00:58:41.440Really, the conception of the Shire that I had in mind was possibly pre-nation state or pre-it's more or less feudal conception where, you know, it's a lot more local.
00:58:55.260You know, the Shire is a small little place, a village where the peasantry have allegiance in vassalage to their local baron or lord who in turn has allegiance to, you know, the earl or the duke or the king, you know, in a kind of hierarchical great chain.
00:59:17.460That is, you know, a much, a much older conception.
00:59:23.140But really, I think that is what that is something that that is a structure, enduring structure that animated a lot of Europe.
00:59:34.960And there's an argument to say that even things like the Industrial Revolution, things that are typically attributed to capitalism and things like that, were actually built on the skeleton of those enduring structures.
00:59:55.000There's a very interesting treatment of that by Joseph Schumpeter in his famous book, which I forget the name of now.
01:00:04.780It's a Socialism, Democracy and Capitalism.
01:00:08.020But he basically argues that the only reason that so-called laissez-faire capitalism or industrial capitalism worked so well for Britain is because it could essentially leech off the old, enduring structure of society.
01:00:28.880And he argued that in time, the corrosive effects of the market, essentially, which basically dissolves or always dissolves social bonds, would in time wreck the very thing that it was built on.
01:00:48.080And I mean, you know, the fullness of time has probably borne that out because very few of those structures now exist, right?
01:00:56.660So there is an argument to say that that whole way of being was part and parcel of what was called Europe or what was called Western man, which now feels like it's coming to the end, you know, as peer prophets of doom may be coming to the end of its, you know, maybe that whole civilization is moving off into the sunset.
01:01:26.160So like the elves in, like the elves in Lord of the Rings, I don't know.