RadixJournal - Fire and Ice

00:00:00.000 Let's put it this way. If you look at Trump's statements on paper and you put aside some of the rhetoric about, you know, they're sending violent criminals and rapists, when you actually look at what he's saying, it isn't that fundamentally different from a lot of the Republicans.

00:00:21.240 He seems to endorse legal immigration. The problem is the illegals, and it's a problem of crime. It's not really a problem of demographics or race and culture and things like that. 0.88

00:00:34.180 But Trump says these things, says these in a way mundane things with such gusto and such visceral energy and toughness that that's why he's gotten under the skin of his critics.

00:00:52.160 And that's why he's kind of inspired people like me, is because he gives us the impression that he gets it, maybe on a visceral level and maybe not on an intellectual or policy level.

00:01:02.780 But he just seems to have it in his gut. He knows that something really bad is happening.

00:01:09.060 And the only way to articulate that now, at least in the mainstream, is by talking about, you know, some crazy gang member who kills someone.

00:01:19.820 But that it's ultimately really about the future. And that's why he's exciting.

00:01:26.400 It's kind of like Trump is interesting on a subliminal way. But actually, if you listen to what he says, it's not too different from Scott Walker or whatever.

00:01:37.780 It's different than Jeb Bush, certainly, but it's not too different from those who have at least made gestures towards immigration reform.

00:01:46.520 What do you think about that?

00:01:47.320 I think that you're right. You're right. What Trump has actually said is very moderate.

00:01:54.160 He simply doesn't like legal immigration. He hasn't said anything about legal immigration at all this time around in the past.

00:02:02.220 He has. And he has said, for example, that he doesn't like he thinks that they ought to be ought to bring in Christians from Syria rather than Muslims, which is what which is that some of these things don't get picked up for reasons which are worth speckling about.

00:02:16.940 He has in the past said, for example, that he's he thinks it's too hard to come here from Europe.

00:02:21.980 Interesting.

00:02:22.200 He said that a couple of years ago, but he's not saying it now.

00:02:26.240 Now, I don't personally agree that what he's saying is is what he has said is particularly fierce rhetoric. 0.97

00:02:32.980 He simply says that the Mexicans are a disproportionate crime committed by Mexicans. 0.98

00:02:39.440 Right. And he's right. I mean, we don't have good numbers on this because the government, as the federal government and everybody else, every other aspect of the government doesn't want to know and the media doesn't want to report it. 1.00

00:02:50.540 But all the evidence that we have points towards, you know, excessive crime by disproportionate crime by Mexicans and some very bloody and unpleasant crimes as well. 1.00

00:03:00.600 That, of course, is completely suppressed in the mainstream media and then the little discourse.

00:03:04.680 So to that extent, he's bombed through it. But he isn't saying anything particularly savage.

00:03:08.340 He said in his in his introduction and is when he declared, he said, some, I suppose, are good people.

00:03:14.900 You know, that's put it for the reason. I don't see what he said.

00:03:19.620 You're being too. That's what I guess I'll go back to what I said before.

00:03:25.020 You're being too literal. You're looking at the words and not hearing his body language and tone.

00:03:31.180 You know, like when he said, and I'm sure some are good people.

00:03:35.120 I thought that was hilarious.

00:03:36.420 But he didn't say that. He did put that marker down. He just doesn't get any credit for it.

00:03:41.640 I mean, I think you're right. I think with Trump, there's a subjective aspect, an objective aspect.

00:03:47.420 Subjectively, he's not he's not all that radical in immigration.

00:03:51.560 In fact, he's less radical than Santorum and Scott Walker are, both of whom have discussed reducing legal immigration, which he hasn't addressed at all.

00:04:00.140 But objective, of course, the fact he better fight on the issue is all that really counts.

00:04:06.040 Right. Scott Walker is just very, very boring. He's almost like a parody of a boring Nordic from Minnesota or Wisconsin.

00:04:16.100 I mean, sorry to insult my fellow white people, but he's just you just look at him.

00:04:21.600 I can't imagine someone like that would be a national leader.

00:04:25.480 Well, on the other hand, Richard, what he did in Wisconsin, winning three elections there and defeating a recall and so on and taking on the teachers union, that takes a certain amount of guts.

00:04:41.680 So so I wouldn't complete.

00:04:43.240 I mean, there are lots of Republicans in blue states who would simply have gone along with the teachers union.

00:04:48.260 What he did was extraordinary.

00:04:50.500 Sure. Yeah. I mean, he was, you know, fighting other white people and taking away their pensions. 0.88

00:04:56.480 And it was a kind of I don't know. I don't want to I don't want to focus too much on him.

00:05:00.480 I mean, I'll grant you that it takes a certain amount of guts.

00:05:03.840 But nevertheless, you just have to go by your eye test.

00:05:06.720 I mean, he's just shockingly boring.

00:05:08.380 My own interest in life is immigration.

00:05:12.420 But, as you know, I wrote a whole book about the economics of education, the teacher union.

00:05:16.580 Yeah, yeah, that's true.

00:05:17.780 And he I mean, he's done essentially what I said ought to be done in that book.

00:05:22.920 You know, the union has to be broken for all kinds of economic reasons.

00:05:26.380 So to do with the way in which society works and to do with the way the the economics of education work.

00:05:33.620 So he's done it. So you have to give him credit for that.

00:05:35.640 I mean, I mean, the Bushes didn't do it.

00:05:37.120 I will give him credit.

00:05:39.160 But let's let's go back to what something you mentioned, actually, just before I turned on the recorder.

00:05:44.460 And that is that you actually read the the transcript of the debate and that you you said that Walker seemed to be indicating that he wanted to reduce legal immigration, but that he never articulated it clearly.

00:06:01.420 But so I'm very curious about that.

00:06:03.420 So what did you pick up?

00:06:05.180 He said it's in code, interesting that that we could pull it up.

00:06:10.140 He said that he wanted to design an immigration policy which put American workers first.

00:06:17.960 And, you know, the simple idea that immigration is going to do with the living standards of American workers is radical and the entire political establishment doesn't want to think about it.

00:06:30.120 You know, and Bernie Sanders has done the same thing.

00:06:33.920 There is a late market impact of immigration and Walker's aware of it.

00:06:37.460 And by the way, he did say on Hannity, apparently, after after the debate, he expanded on that and explained he wants to reduce legal immigration, which is what which is what he said before.

00:06:47.320 Interesting.

00:06:48.520 What do you think the prospects of something like that happening?

00:06:52.020 I mean, let's let's say a Republican wins in 2016, which is certainly possible, despite all of the demographic changes which you have chronicled.

00:07:04.140 But that that is possible.

00:07:07.480 Let's say that I'm wrong and that Scott Walker is his boringness or maybe it's actually his boringness is his greatest strength and he he becomes president.

00:07:18.340 What do you think the possibilities of actually reducing legal immigration for the first time since I get when was the last time we we seriously reduced immigration was in 1924.

00:07:31.140 Right.

00:07:31.760 So and and but, you know, at least turning around this kind of, you know, ever increasing of immigration since the 65 Act.

00:07:38.980 So what do you think the possibility of that is?

00:07:43.300 Well, I think it would be a miracle.

00:07:44.760 But on the other hand, miracles happen quite often in politics.

00:07:47.200 I mean, nobody you're too young to remember this, but nobody expects the Soviet Union to collapse.

00:07:51.760 Oh, yeah.

00:07:52.200 I know.

00:07:52.900 Yeah.

00:07:53.040 In the early, you know, nobody expected, nobody, nobody expected Ronald Reagan to win the presidency as early as January of, as in late, well into 1979, well into early 1980.

00:08:04.940 The conventionalism was it couldn't possibly run.

00:08:07.080 So my win.

00:08:08.440 So my answer is it could be done.

00:08:10.940 And what will happen, of course, and the reason why the no goodniks are so hysterical about it is once one step is taken, it will become obvious that other steps can be taken. 0.65

00:08:20.200 Partly because it will assemble a constituency.

00:08:23.200 I mean, the problem that the Republicans have is they're not winning the white working class vote above all in the northern tier of states.

00:08:30.100 You know, New England, greater New England from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

00:08:33.540 And this would do it for them.

00:08:35.360 And once they realize that, and they'll have to see it.

00:08:38.160 You can't explain it to them.

00:08:39.380 I've been trying to explain it to them for 20 years.

00:08:41.720 But once they see it, I think they will start to take additional steps.

00:08:44.520 And that's why any discussion of immigration reduction at all is met with such hysteria in the mainstream media because they know that perfectly well.

00:08:55.020 What should we talk about here, Peter?

00:08:57.220 I do want to talk about the 20th anniversary of alienation.

00:09:01.760 But I feel like we've only kind of touched on some of the more timely things.

00:09:07.000 Yeah, let's talk more about Trump.

00:09:08.200 Go for it.

00:09:08.540 I think it's completely correct that what he represents is style.

00:09:12.320 I mean, for example, at the time of, I know you're not interested in this issue, but at the time of Mike Pence's capitulation on the religious freedom issue in Indiana,

00:09:23.920 I wrote a piece in which he said that these Republicans don't have the faintest idea of how plural culture works.

00:09:31.620 And all he had to do, among other things, was to say there's certain key words which have entered the political discourse,

00:09:37.880 even though the left doesn't like political correctness, and he should have said he was opposed to the political correctness. 0.98

00:09:43.540 Now, that's exactly what Trump did say when he was challenged on this stupid war on women point. 0.98

00:09:47.740 He said he didn't have time for political correctness, and it was greeted with applause. 0.99

00:09:52.160 And similarly, he said, what else did he say?

00:09:53.740 He didn't have time for something else.

00:09:57.380 He didn't have time for tone.

00:09:59.360 He was being attacked about tone.

00:10:00.440 These are all things that conventional professional politicians would have fled from, but he just brushed them aside.

00:10:08.200 Yeah, but don't you think the Republicans have always kind of engaged in some kind of race baiting

00:10:15.180 and pushing people's buttons while never actually doing something?

00:10:20.420 I mean, Republicans, I just think that focus on crime, Fox News, which of course isn't obviously the Republican Party,

00:10:26.760 but they're attached at the hip.

00:10:30.460 They kind of reinforce one another.

00:10:32.620 I'm not sure which leads the other.

00:10:34.180 But they love to talk about the knockout game, sweeping the country.

00:10:40.380 I guess what I'm getting at is that I think what in a way makes the right even more infuriating 1.00

00:10:46.420 than the picture you're painting of it as feminine weaklings who aren't afraid to get tough

00:10:53.640 is that they're actually master manipulators who kind of like to touch on these things without ever doing something.

00:10:59.860 So, like Ben Carson denounced political correctness.

00:11:04.160 They're not master manipulators.

00:11:05.480 If they were master manipulators, Obama would never become president.

00:11:08.400 I think it is true.

00:11:09.620 They do pretty good for the demographic hand that's been dealt them.

00:11:13.440 You know, I mean, they keep white people voting for them.

00:11:16.240 Well, as you know, Richard, first of all, the white turnout in the last two presidential elections has fallen.

00:11:26.460 And secondly, the Republicans simply do not get that high good a share of it.

00:11:30.620 I mean, Nixon and Reagan both got well into the high 60s of the white vote.

00:11:34.760 And the Republicans have come nothing, were not within 10 points of that for many years.

00:11:38.800 So, no, I don't think they're that good at it.

00:11:40.240 Well, they do occasionally do it, and certainly Bush wanted it when he ran against the caucus.

00:11:47.940 Oh, yeah.

00:11:48.740 He was just lucky, I saw.

00:11:50.340 He had somebody who was prepared to take these issues up.

00:11:53.440 Right.

00:11:54.680 I think there's also an issue of what Kevin MacDonald calls implicit community, you know.

00:12:00.240 I mean, the Republicans are an implicit white community.

00:12:03.640 Without doing anything at all about it, they just are.

00:12:06.560 And similarly, the Republicans, you know, in the South have succeeded in getting very high shares of the white vote, as high as nearly 90 percent in Mississippi, without doing anything to deserve it at all. 0.61

00:12:18.260 In fact, the first possible opportunity, they'd piss all over their white base with this backing off down the Confederate flag question. 0.70

00:12:25.180 Right.

00:12:25.500 So, I guess this is kind of what I'm saying.

00:12:27.460 I mean, it's –

00:12:28.440 Well, I mean, if they were – 0.94

00:12:30.260 They're trapping white people. 0.98

00:12:31.260 If they were really trying to mobilize the white vote, they would have said, look, the Confederate flag is the flag of the white South. 0.98

00:12:37.940 Get lost.

00:12:39.160 But they didn't do that.

00:12:40.700 I actually don't think they really understand why they win elections half the time, you know.

00:12:44.580 They just – they genuinely do think people are voting for capital gains courts.

00:12:48.640 Tax courts.

00:12:49.960 Right.

00:12:50.200 No.

00:12:51.280 No, I agree.

00:12:52.180 I think we both – we both agree, actually.

00:12:55.000 I think we just have kind of different emphases.

00:12:57.400 But Governor Perry has recently, twice, been asked about legal immigration.

00:13:03.000 Governor Perry of Texas.

00:13:04.560 And on both occasions, he was completely unpaired to answer the question.

00:13:07.740 He simply rambled off discussing illegal immigration. 1.00

00:13:10.980 Now, what this means is – I think Perry is a fool. 1.00

00:13:14.300 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:13:14.560 He's an obvious idiot. 1.00

00:13:16.100 I mean, just listen to him. 1.00

00:13:16.860 I also think that, you know, he has people around him because they're batting on to these various campaign consultants whose job it is to prepare them for debates.

00:13:25.340 And it's obvious that they hadn't thought about this question of legal immigration either.

00:13:28.760 They just hadn't given him any answer at all.

00:13:30.480 He didn't have a good answer or a bad answer.

00:13:32.060 He just had no answer.

00:13:33.260 He just didn't know what to say about it.

00:13:34.600 So I really do think that there's a staggering amount of ignorance in the political class.

00:13:38.820 And they generally do believe what they read in the New York Times and the Republican political class, I should say.

00:13:44.100 They generally do believe in what they read in the New York Times.

00:13:47.680 And they have no ideas beyond what.

00:13:49.700 Well, I think also there's a kind of – and I don't want to seem ageist or something.

00:13:54.500 But there's a kind of generational factor to it all.

00:13:57.940 And I can definitely see in someone like Kasich or someone who's this almost kind of good old boy, backroom dealer, local politician, writ large, you know, in his mentality and talk.

00:14:11.840 He would say things like the minority community.

00:14:15.320 And I actually – I read somewhere that he actually used the word – there are a lot of ethnics here.

00:14:18.960 Like, it's people who have a very – they come from a very different background.

00:14:24.340 They have a different vision of what we're going through.

00:14:26.920 And their vision is that America is, you know, 90% white and there's a kind of minority community of blacks. 0.98

00:14:35.060 And we have these illegals that are a big problem. 1.00

00:14:37.940 And that made sense in 1960.

00:14:42.280 But it's just, you know, I think for someone of my generation – I mean, I'm 37.

00:14:47.700 I'm not exactly young.

00:14:49.000 Someone, you know, younger than –

00:14:50.840 That's pretty young, Richard.

00:14:52.320 Okay.

00:14:52.840 Well, I'll hang around you more.

00:14:55.060 Particularly for politicians.

00:14:56.280 Right.

00:14:56.740 But they just don't get it.

00:14:59.220 They don't understand the world we live in.

00:15:01.260 And they don't see it.

00:15:02.460 And they think only in terms of, like, patronizing white people who can bring in the minorities, the ethnics, through conservative values.

00:15:12.200 They don't get the world we're going to live in.

00:15:15.120 And they probably will never get it.

00:15:16.660 Because it's very difficult for people to really change a paradigm at the age of 60 or 50.

00:15:23.580 I mean, the people – people can, but those people are very rare.

00:15:26.680 And so I really – I mean, again, I don't want to sound – this might sound terrible. 1.00

00:15:31.620 But we're just going to have to let the Mike Huckabees and John Kasichs and all these idiots die. 1.00

00:15:39.100 Because they're never going to get it. 1.00

00:15:42.180 And we just need to make sure that the coming generation gets it. 0.99

00:15:46.520 And I think they will inherently get it.

00:15:48.400 It's in their face every day.

00:15:50.500 They've been to universities.

00:15:52.120 They've lived through it.

00:15:53.060 They've been to a big city.

00:15:54.320 So, you know, it really is a kind of generational paradigm that just has to change.

00:15:59.000 Well, you know, I said in Alien Nation that people generally don't change their minds about anything after the age of 21.

00:16:07.280 And it's true, actually, not just in macro-political questions.

00:16:12.540 But it's true, you know, as you know, in academic life.

00:16:15.300 And you get theories become dominant in all kinds of abstruse topics and all kinds of academic specialties.

00:16:22.660 And generally speaking, it's not that a new theory tramps by debate.

00:16:25.800 It's just that the older people die off. 1.00

00:16:27.160 Yeah, well, Thomas Kuhn had a very, it's a very famous book about paradigm shifts.

00:16:31.440 And he kind of, he questioned that notion of whether there's this, you know, linear ascent of knowledge.

00:16:37.260 And, you know, no.

00:16:39.360 There's basically these paradigms where you'll have groups that are hegemonic.

00:16:45.100 And they will either kind of become bankrupt or they'll just simply die.

00:16:49.620 And then a kind of new way of seeing the world comes into place.

00:16:53.080 And I think that's going to happen.

00:16:55.040 I said specifically in Alien Nation that this was the reason why the immigration debate hadn't really gelled in 1995.

00:17:03.180 It was because the thing on the act and the subsequent illegal immigration influx only began in the late 60s.

00:17:10.040 So most of the people who were then around in 1990 had basically grown up at a point where it wasn't, it simply wasn't an issue.

00:17:17.020 Now, I have to say, though, that we've gotten absolutely nowhere in 20 years.

00:17:20.820 And there is another fact at work here, which is the increasing intensity of political correctness.

00:17:26.100 And, as you know, John Derbyshire, who, like me, is a fellow geezer, is extremely depressed about, you know, the younger generation because he thinks they really are brainwashed.

00:17:34.820 Now, of course, he's looking at the National Review, the people who knew the National Review, but he really thinks they are brainwashed in that they do believe this stuff and they're incapable of responding to things like that, as you say, are right in their face.

00:17:45.200 I don't think they are brainwashed.

00:17:46.960 I actually have a lot of hope for millennials because they're experiencing it firsthand.

00:17:52.060 But what I would say, they're not going to become conservatives.

00:17:54.900 I mean, I think the whole conservative paradigm is just totally over.

00:17:58.220 It's just, it is utterly bankrupt, and I think it, most pressingly due to George W. Bush and his years, but it just doesn't have any resonance anymore.

00:18:10.100 I think for younger people, the idea of hyper-patriotism and hyper-religiosity and, you know, all this kind of stuff just strikes them as a joke.

00:18:20.980 I mean, I don't think there's any future to conservatism.

00:18:23.600 However, is there a future to, you know, identitarianism or just simply a kind of white identity within this, you know, new multi-culti world?

00:18:34.720 And I think the answer to that is yes.

00:18:36.200 I mean, I think it's happening.

00:18:38.920 It's going to happen.

00:18:40.280 And, you know, in a way, conservatism has to die so that something more vital will rise in its place.

00:18:47.780 I mean, it's just, I don't know, that's the kind of way I see it.

00:18:50.000 But I don't, I have a lot of hope for millennials. 1.00

00:18:52.140 I don't think they buy into the illusions of their parents and grandparents about, you know, the American dream.

00:18:59.920 And we can just, you know, say these magic words like the Constitution and democracy and it's all going to be okay.

00:19:06.160 I don't think they believe in any of that hokum. 1.00

00:19:09.380 And so I actually have a lot of faith in them.

00:19:12.400 I think they're going to be different.

00:19:15.320 I'm married to millennials, so I'm inclined to agree.

00:19:17.700 Yeah, I'm going to keep my daughter away from you, Peter.

00:19:26.120 Anyway, yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about alienation because I can actually remember purchasing a used copy of your book in a used bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia.

00:19:40.480 And, you know, like 2001 or 2002, I can't remember.

00:19:44.440 So it's been a while ago.

00:19:45.560 But it's actually the 20th anniversary of alienation.

00:19:49.600 So let's just talk a little bit about, let's talk about a couple of issues.

00:19:53.440 And I'll just set them out and then I'll let you go.

00:19:56.740 But first off, what was it like getting that book published 20 years ago in 1995?

00:20:04.200 And also, what has been the trajectory of the immigration reform movement?

00:20:12.400 Because you've kind of given a hint of that, of we've accomplished nothing.

00:20:17.180 But what was it like in the 80s and 90s?

00:20:20.840 And then, you know, what do you see, which direction you see the arrow pointing and so on and so forth?

00:20:27.060 And then maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, the future of immigration reform and going beyond immigration and all that kind of stuff.

00:20:33.380 But let's start with that first one.

00:20:35.040 What was it like getting that book published in 1995?

00:20:39.920 Well, you know, Richard, Derbyshire and I have this concept of an interglacial.

00:20:44.100 If you look at the way in which the mainstream publishing business operated, there was a moment and a window, really, in the 1990s when it was possible to get all kinds of books published, notably for the bell curve and so on.

00:20:57.520 It was something to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

00:21:00.320 It did really disorient the left a great deal.

00:21:02.960 For a brief while, you were able to get this stuff published.

00:21:07.300 I wrote this book in this big cover story in National Review in 92, and a famous agent called Andrew Wiley contacted me and urged me to do this book about it, and he was able to get mainstream publishers interested.

00:21:28.840 Now, I have to say that when I tried to revise Alien Nation ten years later or do a later version, his response was to sever our professional relationship because the blowback from publishing Alien Nation was so fierce that he obviously didn't want to represent anymore.

00:21:45.580 He was an animal.

00:21:46.320 He had no political interest.

00:21:47.460 He just thought it would capture a certain mood and it could sell lots of books.

00:21:52.240 Right.

00:21:52.820 It did.

00:21:53.520 I mean, I noticed when I first saw it, or maybe when I looked at it a little bit later, that David Frum blurbed it.

00:22:00.900 And I probably saw that at a time when I hated – David Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and I probably hated him more than any other intellectual.

00:22:12.280 You had the paperback on the back.

00:22:14.500 We were quoting the first review.

00:22:15.880 Oh, you were quoting a review.

00:22:16.840 Well, he gave it a favorable review.

00:22:18.800 He did indeed.

00:22:19.360 Yeah, and so it was interesting.

00:22:20.360 It was almost – even the neocons, you could say people like you and I are very far away from, you know, ideologically, but even they were picking up on these things.

00:22:33.300 And actually, a lot of neocons have been fairly good on this question.

00:22:37.560 So there really was a kind of moment of that, you know, mid-late 90s when there was a chance of this becoming a major, you know, intellectual movement.

00:22:51.560 You know, there is – there is a famous thing about people who have more illnesses that they go through of several different phases, denial, anger, bargaining, denial, and acceptance.

00:23:02.320 That was true for this – for the immigration issue.

00:23:05.420 I mean, the first response is denial that anything was happening.

00:23:08.240 And then there was anger, and we got a lot of anger.

00:23:10.420 But we did get breakthrough as far as the bargaining stage.

00:23:14.880 And you would say – people would say things like, everybody knows there's something wrong with the immigration system, and, of course, we should be reoriented towards skills and all this stuff.

00:23:24.380 But obviously, it's gone too far.

00:23:25.920 And if you look at the early reviews, that was quite a common reaction.

00:23:29.600 But what happened after that was a ferocious counterattack.

00:23:32.660 It was partly because there was legislation actually in Congress at that time, which was the Smith-Simpson bill, which would have reduced legal immigration.

00:23:40.780 And, of course, Proposition 187 passed in California in 1994.

00:23:46.760 And it really looked like there was going to be a reduction, a serious reduction in legal immigration at that point.

00:23:54.720 It's hard to believe now, but it was commonly thought to be an inevitable thing.

00:24:00.580 And it took a great deal of lying and lobbying on the part of the left and the business lobbies and the nail conservatives to stop it.

00:24:08.020 Do you think there's a connection between what we could call social mood and immigration where – because remember the late – the early 90s, that was a kind of different time.

00:24:21.440 There was a – the stock market had, you know, gone through a major downturn.

00:24:27.980 I remember – you know, I can remember back then, and I was, you know, a young guy.

00:24:34.060 But there was just a lot of talk of too much debt, of national decline, and so on and so forth.

00:24:40.220 I mean, it was kind of ironic because that was coupled with the we just won the Cold War and it's the end of history kind of stuff.

00:24:47.500 But there was always a lot of, you know, Japan is going to kill us. 0.98

00:24:51.560 We're declining as a nation, so on and so forth.

00:24:54.700 There was a lot of pessimism.

00:24:56.060 And maybe that almost – do you think that goes alongside a kind of a sense of we shouldn't be a universal nation.

00:25:06.300 We should be this American nation.

00:25:07.920 And that sometimes America can flip over to this, you know, euphoric, grandiose social mood of, you know, say the late 90s when you had the tech bubble.

00:25:18.480 And at other points, even the 2000s, where, you know, we're going to change the world.

00:25:22.580 We were a global nation, blah, blah, blah.

00:25:24.040 Do you think there's a kind of correlation there, a psychic correlation?

00:25:30.060 No, actually, Rich.

00:25:31.140 You know, I think the course of the immigration debate in the U.S. is absolutely abnormal.

00:25:35.920 I think if it had cleared like an all political issue, there would have been a resolution by, you know, some form of Smith Simpson would have been passed and it would have gotten under control.

00:25:48.520 I mean, it's extraordinary.

00:25:49.500 You look at Ann Coulter's book now, you know.

00:25:51.140 But I think it's American, which is a very fine book, by the way.

00:25:53.940 I think very highly of it.

00:25:56.000 What she's advocating is exactly what I advocated today in the nation 20 years before.

00:26:00.100 Oh, yeah.

00:26:00.380 I mean, it's moratorium and the reorientation towards skills and a recognition that the U.S. is an organic nation, that it does have an Anglo core. 0.59

00:26:11.300 And it won't survive without it.

00:26:14.160 It took a great deal of intense pressure to drive those arguments out of politics.

00:26:22.120 As you know, one part of that was we lost control of National Review in 97.

00:26:25.960 And I really do think that that was a serious development, because if National Review had been around, had been in the right hands, I think it would have made quite a big difference to the Republican Party.

00:26:35.240 So, I mean, it's an extraordinary thing to see a party in the GOP committing suicide here, because the course of the art is suicidal.

00:26:40.920 And that takes some explaining.

00:26:44.600 And I put it down to, I mean, I think the role of the nail cons, you know, has really got to be examined closely.

00:26:50.020 I mean, these are people I knew very well and was very close to personally and professionally in the 80s.

00:26:58.560 And, you know, it was a shock to me to find out how hostile so many of them were on this question and unreasoning.

00:27:04.920 So, there's something really odd going on there.

00:27:10.640 Why do you think that is?

00:27:12.520 Just to face the point, you know, Derbyshire and I have this contact with an interglacial, but now there's a new ice age.

00:27:18.780 I mean, I think the intensity of political correctness is far in excess of, it's abnormal.

00:27:27.700 I mean, it's tempting to call it a new McCarthyism, you know, people being forced out of work because they had to rent an act because he gave money to, you know, the wrong cause and all this kind of thing.

00:27:38.280 But McCarthyism, first of all, McCarthy was right. 0.98

00:27:40.860 The work can't be surrounded.

00:27:41.940 And secondly, you know, it didn't last anything.

00:27:43.900 It lasted, well, how many years?

00:27:45.380 He was censored when?

00:27:47.320 In 56 or 57?

00:27:49.800 No, so it didn't even last 10 years.

00:27:52.120 But this has gone on for 20 or 30 years now, and it's getting worse and worse.

00:27:55.900 Yeah, absolutely.

00:27:57.540 I mean, so you have to look.

00:27:59.200 It's not just a passing fad.

00:28:00.740 I mean, it's some deeper issue and a kind of moral issue, I think.

00:28:05.340 I've got this concept that I occasionally write about on Vida.com of American anti-America.

00:28:10.960 And I say there's really two nations here warring in the buzzer of one state.

00:28:15.240 And there's one nation which is fundamentally white and essentially a white nation.

00:28:18.880 And it's what we call a historic American nation, which has been evolving here since before the revolution.

00:28:27.240 And then there's another American nation, which consists basically of minorities of various types.

00:28:33.180 And I call it anti-America.

00:28:36.660 And they're struggling for the control of the polity.

00:28:39.480 And that's, you know, they know, the Democrats know that it will be very easy for the American party to cut off immigration.

00:28:50.520 If it could reverse immigration, it could throw all these illegals out, if it felt like it. 1.00

00:28:54.720 It could strip them of citizenship, the ones who have erroneously got citizenship because they were born here.

00:29:01.700 They know all that.

00:29:02.580 And that's why they're so desperate to keep this issue out, out of politics.

00:29:07.900 And that explains, I think, the hysteria about Trump, who in himself is not a particularly conservative figure.

00:29:12.760 There's no reason.

00:29:13.320 It's not like Reagan or something, where he actually does have a long list of conservative beliefs on various things.

00:29:18.900 Trump is obviously a fairly moderate Republican, apart from his mention of this immigration issue.

00:29:23.080 And apart, of course, as you said, from his personality.

00:29:27.120 Anyway, the point is they've got to stop this from coming into politics.

00:29:30.080 So is it just going to be nastier and nastier?

00:29:32.300 Yeah, no, I guess I just see it very differently.

00:29:36.460 I think it's a little bit optimistic to call this the true America is against this.

00:29:41.340 I think you have to look at something deep in the ideological core of America, and in a way in the kind of moral core of Americans,

00:29:50.980 that they can't think of themselves as a people, that they must think of themselves in terms of values or ideology.

00:30:02.300 And that that's what they resonate to.

00:30:04.960 And that this is kind of the direction the country has been going, actually, for a long time.

00:30:10.140 And in a way, the exception are people who go against it.

00:30:13.180 And the people who go against it have often been anti-American.

00:30:16.360 At least they were very skeptical of its founding ideology.

00:30:20.920 It doesn't matter what they formally say.

00:30:25.760 If you look at the opinion polls, you'll find that white America and everybody else diverge fundamentally and systematically on a whole range of issues.

00:30:32.720 They really have very little in common.

00:30:34.580 I mean, the Washington Post unguarded an opinion poll the other day about how many people would actually deport all the illegals in the country.

00:30:42.080 And, of course, the answer is very high, but it's overwhelmingly high among whites.

00:30:46.460 Whites respond to these issues systematically differently from the minority.

00:30:49.600 I think there are more important things than issues, is kind of what I'm saying.

00:30:54.480 Issues are like epiphenomenon, but you have to get at something much deeper.

00:30:58.380 I mean, you have to answer, like, why is America like this?

00:31:02.140 And it's just a deeper question than, like, political tactics.

00:31:06.300 It isn't clear to me, America.

00:31:07.820 If you were to look at the white component alone, it's not clear to me it is like this.

00:31:12.300 I think the way they respond to issues is so different from the way everybody else responds to issues,

00:31:16.380 and, for that matter, the way they put the very elite response to issues.

00:31:19.300 But you can see there is some type of identity there, which is, you know, that's the point, of course, that you made earlier.

00:31:24.180 I mean, whether or not it expressed itself in traditional American patriotism,

00:31:29.440 there is clearly a group that has an identity here, which it is in coy, conscious of, or some very deep level aware of.

00:31:37.400 Yeah, no, I agree with that.

00:31:38.700 We just have kind of a – we just diverge on some kind of ideological questions.

00:31:42.920 But I agree with a lot of the fundamental things you're saying.

00:31:47.020 But, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about that.

00:31:50.320 Let's talk more about the movement aspect of immigration reform.

00:31:54.420 Because I believe at your talk at American Renaissance, I think you said something like when they founded FAIR,

00:32:02.720 the Federation of American Immigration Reform, that you expected that it would take 20 years for there to be actual immigration reform.

00:32:12.540 And that's what happened in the first quarter of the 20th century.

00:32:16.760 If I'm misrepresenting what you said, please correct me.

00:32:21.360 But you basically saw this as this is where it begins, we're going to become conscious of this issue,

00:32:27.160 and then there will be a political effect later.

00:32:30.000 But that actually hasn't happened.

00:32:31.980 So maybe talk about a little bit of that, the trajectory of the immigration movement.

00:32:36.000 Well, you know, last time there was a serious immigration problem like the current one, 0.98

00:32:41.100 the last – what is sometimes called the first great wave of immigration from 1920 – 1880 to 1920.

00:32:47.400 Somewhere around about 1890, the major immigration reform group,

00:32:52.400 which we call the Immigration Restriction League, was founded.

00:32:55.120 And it prevailed after about 25 years.

00:32:58.740 So – and that comports what we said earlier.

00:33:01.560 You know, it takes a long time for people to get new ideas through the head.

00:33:04.140 So I just – in the early days of Vidae.com, which was in the early 1990s, I guess, I –

00:33:10.640 Really, 2000.

00:33:12.100 2000, yes.

00:33:12.880 These decades –

00:33:13.720 You were on the internet in 1990.

00:33:18.300 This will happen to you, too, Richard.

00:33:20.200 This will happen to you, too.

00:33:21.440 Anyway, I just did a calculation as to what we could expect the issue to actually surface in politics.

00:33:27.280 And the answer was about 2010.

00:33:28.900 And as I said, in Tennessee, for American Renaissance, it actually did surface.

00:33:37.900 If you look at the 2010 election, and all across the country, there were all kinds of local initiatives against immigration that were going on there.

00:33:46.280 And what happened was they elected all kinds of people locally.

00:33:50.540 And then they were systematically betrayed by the Republican Party, by the Republican people they elected.

00:33:55.220 All of these local issues were undermined, and, of course, none of them were taken up at the congressional level.

00:34:02.260 I mean, at that point, after 2010, the Republicans had control of the House.

00:34:06.140 They could have started to pass legislation and force the Democrats to vote against it and force the president to veto it and this kind of thing.

00:34:12.880 But they didn't.

00:34:13.680 They did absolutely nothing on immigration throughout that Congress, with the result, of course, that they lost the general election in 2012.

00:34:20.900 Now, again, in 2014, I think you could argue that immigration was clearly an issue, and it was working at an inchoic, grassroots level.

00:34:29.160 And the Republicans did seize control of the Senate.

00:34:33.940 But, again, the Senate has done absolutely nothing on any of these issues.

00:34:38.620 And so this is kind of an unusual situation.

00:34:41.540 I don't see that the Republican Party can survive, frankly.

00:34:45.460 I mean, it really is a House department.

00:34:47.720 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:34:48.220 Let me put this out there, because this might actually, in a way, marry our two views.

00:34:54.620 And that is, I totally agree that immigration is, it's the gorilla in the room. 1.00

00:34:59.980 It's this implicit thing that really riles people up, and they sense it in their bones.

00:35:05.620 But they're not always able to articulate it in the best fashion.

00:35:10.540 And it affects elections, even when you wouldn't see that by looking at specific issues.

00:35:16.580 You know, it is an identity.

00:35:17.940 It's an implicit identity issue that informs the elections, even when you think this election is actually about, you know, religious freedom or abortion or something.

00:35:27.600 It's, in a way, about, you know, implicit identity.

00:35:32.340 And so I totally agree with you there.

00:35:36.140 But maybe the reason why fair and the immigration movement failed is because it, in a way, wasn't like the early 20th century immigration reform.

00:35:47.420 Because that really was a heady, idealistic movement.

00:35:52.900 And, yes, you can't create a political movement based around professors or something.

00:35:59.460 Of course, I agree with you.

00:36:00.340 But you need to be able to articulate something.

00:36:03.260 You need to have those power of those big ideas that attract all levels of society and that kind of trickle down to people who aren't intellectuals and who are, you know, blue-collar, normal people.

00:36:15.360 And that is when a movement can succeed.

00:36:19.200 I mean, that's how the left works.

00:36:22.000 You know, the left isn't ultimately born out of, you know, labor unions.

00:36:27.040 The left is born from intellectuals and it kind of trickles down to them and it kind of integrates them and so on and so forth.

00:36:33.160 But it also kind of captures people's imagination.

00:36:36.260 And in the first quarter of the 20th century, you know, natural conservation was a movement that attracted some of the best people.

00:36:43.680 Racialism and eugenics attracted these great people and great minds. 0.98

00:36:49.380 And I feel like the contemporary immigration reform movement, it doesn't do that because it's all kind of, like, quantitative.

00:36:58.440 The names of the organizations are like numbers or carrying capacity.

00:37:03.220 It's this kind of wonky, which is not an intellectual thing.

00:37:07.640 Wonky stuff, you know, makes real intellectuals run.

00:37:13.440 It's not what they're into.

00:37:14.420 It's a kind of wonky movement that isn't idealistic and therefore kind of doesn't reach either intellectuals or the people.

00:37:22.520 You know, like a real white identity movement would, that is not supremacist and is not racist, quote unquote, as that word is usually used.

00:37:33.100 It's about, you know, in the sense of hating people or so on and so forth.

00:37:36.140 It's a real idealistic movement.

00:37:38.260 That could attract heady intellectual people and it could actually resonate with blue collar people.

00:37:45.640 But when you're just talking about numbers and statistics and new policies and blah, blah, blah, you're not going to attract either of those.

00:37:55.540 So actually the answer to building an immigration reform movement is for us not to act but to think, to come up with bold, idealistic dreams that capture the imagination, that light a fire in someone's mind.

00:38:12.360 Because I'm just speaking for myself, you know, numbers and fair, I don't read anything they produce.

00:38:18.620 I don't, I have no connection.

00:38:20.340 I don't want to, I don't need to hear what they say because I get it, it's obvious.

00:38:25.120 But I am interested in things that are exciting and dangerous and that that is how, that's how the left has always operated.

00:38:33.680 And the right is always pragmatic.

00:38:36.680 And pragmatism is ultimately a failing strategy.

00:38:39.660 You, you have to be idealistic and a bit crazy to accomplish things.

00:38:45.020 Well, I think that, first of all, you talk, you talk about the inside the beltway movement.

00:38:50.540 Yeah.

00:38:51.320 There's no doubt that's completely crippled by the pledge of correctness.

00:38:54.920 And their own boringness, you know?

00:38:56.960 I mean, let's be honest.

00:38:57.700 Well, they're supposed to be boring because they can't say anything interesting.

00:39:00.480 Well, yeah, but they won't say anything interesting anyway.

00:39:03.100 They're, they're inherently boring.

00:39:04.400 It's about, it's about stats and numbers and this kind of, you know, movements should be about, you know,

00:39:09.660 feelings.

00:39:11.040 That's all they're allowed to talk about and retain their access to the mainstream media.

00:39:15.160 When I started VDARE.com, and for that matter, in Alien Nation, I deliberately went beyond what the bounds of, I pushed the envelope.

00:39:22.420 I started to talk about race and stuff like that and, and, and, and, and culture and so on in ways which were not used.

00:39:29.340 They would never talk about racial balance and so on.

00:39:32.300 Uh, and the result of that is that, uh, that, uh, the Southern Party Law Center denounced, uh, announced we're a hate group and all of our bookings from the mainstream media prominently dried up.

00:39:41.280 That was the end of our relationship with the mainstream media.

00:39:43.320 Uh, and that's been very, very damaging to us.

00:39:45.920 Uh, although, of course, thanks for the internet, we found, we found, we found, we can find our own audience.

00:39:51.380 But there's a real price to making that step, and there's people inside the bell where people are acutely aware that, that, that it's too dangerous for them to take, they think.

00:39:58.940 And that's why they're crippled, and that's why they're impotent. 0.91

00:40:01.480 Uh, you know, so we're, my position is basically to go back, you know, go back to the hills and start, start trying to mobilize people to the grassroots level by, by, by discussing these things.

00:40:12.960 Uh, I, I mean, I think it's true for political discourse generally.

00:40:17.440 I mean, I think the concept of coxervatism, although, um, you know, uh, it's, uh, vulgar and everything, it's profound.

00:40:26.360 I mean, there are a lot of conservatives who will not address these issues and consequently are, uh, uh, bound not to reproduce themselves.

00:40:33.040 Oh, yeah, I, I love coxervative.

00:40:34.880 I mean, yeah, it's great.

00:40:36.440 It's the power of naming, you know, right?

00:40:38.600 It, it, Ruppel Stiltskin knew the power of names.

00:40:41.560 Exactly.

00:40:41.880 Exactly.

00:40:42.520 I mean, it's a very important concept, actually.

00:40:44.900 And it is true that the establishment right is, is, uh, is, is not willing to fight on them.

00:40:49.840 And I think also the people who are, this kind of circles back to what I was talking about before.

00:40:54.680 The, the, the people with whom coxervative, the, the meme is popular are, you know, millennials or younger people on Twitter.

00:41:04.120 They're people who aren't connected, certainly aren't connected with Beltway politics.

00:41:08.480 They're people who are, like, liberating themselves from them.

00:41:11.760 They're, they're kind of, it's kind of like an, you know, an abused wife decides to just leave.

00:41:17.440 You know, I mean, that, that's almost what I feel it's like.

00:41:19.300 It's just like, I'm done with this.

00:41:21.240 I'm gone.

00:41:22.040 And I, I think that is what this coxervative meme, that's why it's powerful. 1.00

00:41:26.780 And, and that's why we have to keep it away from, uh, you know, silly conservatives who want to turn it into, you know, a euphemism for liberal or something.

00:41:34.620 We, we need to keep it as ours because it's a way of saying, you're, you're, you're done. 0.91

00:41:39.540 We're done with you.

00:41:40.240 You're not going to reproduce yourself. 1.00

00:41:41.800 You're, you're committing suicide. 0.94

00:41:43.500 Your, your whole being is, is towards the destruction of your people and civilization. 1.00

00:41:48.760 So, fuck you. 1.00

00:41:50.060 I mean, that's what it's about. 1.00

00:41:51.320 And, uh, I think it's great.

00:41:53.000 I, I think it really is a sign that, that younger people are, are kind of getting it.

00:41:57.840 And that we're going to have a new kind of, a politics emerge.

00:42:01.760 Well, I hope you're right, Richard.

00:42:05.160 Yeah, so, uh, I, I'm not changing course.

00:42:08.880 So, so, so, I wait for it, I wait for it with great interest.

00:42:12.920 Okay.

00:42:13.400 What do you mean changing course?

00:42:15.280 I mean, I, obviously, I, I, I can't go back.

00:42:18.160 I mean, that's one of the problems that, uh, alienation was, uh, decisive for me professionally.

00:42:23.360 Yeah.

00:42:23.540 Because you can't, you can't really unsafe things like that.

00:42:26.620 I hadn't, you know, and it was, it's been extremely damaging.

00:42:30.100 I mean, uh, the, the, uh, you know, it's been extremely damaging to be professional.

00:42:36.180 Uh, on the other hand, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm called up here in, uh, in, in the

00:42:41.720 Connecticut Berkshire.

00:42:42.520 So, I don't, I don't care.

00:42:43.720 But, I mean, this is the interesting thing about Anne.

00:42:45.660 I mean, she's again, as I do, pushing the envelope.

00:42:48.900 Uh, and I, I just don't know if she can survive.

00:42:53.680 That is an interesting question.

00:42:55.020 Because Anne, Anne, I mean, again, I, no offense meant by this.

00:42:59.320 But Anne, Anne was, is much more popular than you were in, I mean, again, in the sense

00:43:06.060 that she, she has a following.

00:43:07.720 There's a lot of young people.

00:43:08.700 Like, when she goes to CPAC, she, it's like a rock star or like a comedian event.

00:43:13.380 You know, she tells all these jokes and people love it.

00:43:15.500 So, she is really, uh, you know, for better or for worse.

00:43:19.920 Because I, to be honest, during the whole Bush years and, and the Iraq war, I, I hated

00:43:24.960 Anne Coulter, to be honest.

00:43:26.180 Um, she was just the, she was just the expression of this, like, mindless war mongering. 0.99

00:43:32.000 And anyway, I won't go into that.

00:43:33.780 But yeah, she has a huge following. 0.95

00:43:36.080 And she's definitely going out there.

00:43:37.900 The fact that she really did, you know, she, she denies, she actually denies the existence

00:43:42.720 of race.

00:43:43.340 She denies Darwinian evolution.

00:43:44.740 She denies all this kind of stuff.

00:43:46.640 But the fact that she says, you know, uh, A, this is going to destroy the country.

00:43:51.760 And it's, you know, whether it's illegal immigration or legal immigration, it doesn't matter.

00:43:56.240 It's the same, ultimately the same thing.

00:43:58.420 It's just whether you filled out the paperwork correctly.

00:44:01.300 And I think that is very powerful.

00:44:03.300 I agree.

00:44:03.800 I, I think we should watch this because, uh, you know, it, it, it, it's, it's, it's going

00:44:08.980 to be interesting whether, uh, she, she can survive this or whether this is maybe her last

00:44:14.620 book.

00:44:15.260 I don't know.

00:44:16.020 Maybe that's too pessimistic.

00:44:17.160 We have this concept of the, uh, dot com, you know, what we call the curse of Stein.

00:44:23.160 And that's because Dan Stein, who was the head of, uh, uh, when I first started writing

00:44:27.760 about this issue, actually quite surprisingly said to me, why are you interested in this?

00:44:32.600 Everybody who gets into this issue, it destroys their careers.

00:44:36.540 Uh, kind of a hard thing to say if you're head of fair, but I appreciate the spirit in

00:44:40.260 which you said it.

00:44:41.040 And you know what?

00:44:41.620 He's right.

00:44:42.580 I mean, look at what happened to Luke Dobbs.

00:44:44.460 I mean, there's, there's, there's maybe, maybe 20 people who've been involved in this

00:44:48.980 issue and nasty, always nasty things happen to them.

00:44:51.900 And so Anne is really taking a really serious risk here.

00:44:55.040 Um, and, and, uh, I think, you know, it's, it's greatly to her credit.

00:44:58.660 Yeah.

00:44:59.200 The thing about, uh, about Anne, Richard, is that although you're right that she doesn't

00:45:05.440 directly address the subject of race, she does directly address the subject of ethnicity.

00:45:09.180 And she says that the, that, uh, you know, um, uh, and the other side know this and complain

00:45:15.460 about it.

00:45:15.800 She says that you, the, the, the, America was fundamentally a, a washed country. 0.94

00:45:20.100 Yeah.

00:45:20.380 And, and it, it can't be, uh, extended, uh, the, the, the, beyond a certain point ethnically.

00:45:26.460 You know, and, and, uh, and, uh, what's happening here is that, uh, through the, uh, through the, uh,

00:45:31.620 immigration act of 65 is, you know, basically the government is, is dissolving the people

00:45:36.000 and electing a new one.

00:45:37.580 And, and, uh, that's, that's a very, uh, disturbing point to the left because they are very, very

00:45:43.160 concerned that, that Americans not, not think of themselves as an ethnicity.

00:45:47.940 They're very concerned that they think of themselves as an idea.

00:45:50.660 Oh, yeah.

00:45:51.160 And some of the reviews, they, they really, they really, uh, pick, not that she's got that

00:45:56.360 many reviews, by the way.

00:45:57.560 Again, this is a book that's been possible because of the internet.

00:46:00.000 Yeah.

00:46:00.060 It's not, it's not, uh, it's not, uh, uh, she's almost been completely shut out of the,

00:46:06.020 the establishment media, uh, the establishment press and so on.

00:46:10.320 Uh, but still, the reviews that you see, you can, you can see that the idea that she's mentioned,

00:46:16.180 uh, the sort of North, Northern European nature of the, of the historic American nature is nation.

00:46:22.140 It's very, very disturbing to the other side.

00:46:25.460 I totally agree.

00:46:26.560 Well, Peter, let's, uh, let's put a bookmark in this conversation.

00:46:29.280 Um, uh, thanks for being on.

00:46:32.020 I, I really appreciate it.

00:46:33.400 And, uh, and I guess, you know, uh, thank you for what you've done over the past three

00:46:38.000 years.

00:46:38.420 You've, you've, you've strapped on the suicide vest of, uh, immigration reform.

00:46:43.500 Well, I, what I failed to do, I'm afraid.

00:46:47.360 But we keep, we keep plugging away.

00:46:48.900 As I say, miracles happen.

00:46:50.860 As I say, miracles happen.

00:46:51.540 Thank you.

RadixJournal - August 08, 2015

Fire and Ice

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