RadixJournal - Yankee Go Home!

00:00:00.000 Final issue, Yankee Go Home. The panel discusses Yoram Hazoni and his attempt to Americanize

00:00:08.040 European nationalism. Hazoni. All right, we'll just jump right into it. February 4th, Rome,

00:00:17.840 Italy. There is a major conference on national conservatism. I guess my first question is,

00:00:26.660 I mean, certainly we will be invited. I mean, we're some of the major nationalist thinkers on the

00:00:35.400 scene. I mean, perhaps even Ed Dutton is guest of honor. No, psych, nothing like that is happening.

00:00:44.680 This is the latest attempt by a man named Yoram Hazoni, who actually recently published a book

00:00:55.140 on in defense of nationalism. And he had a major event in Washington, D.C. at the Ritz-Carlton,

00:01:03.600 in which, among others, John Bolton and Tucker Carlson and some collected paleo-conservatives

00:01:09.580 attended. And now he is going on the tour of Europe. And none less than Prime Minister Victor

00:01:17.900 Orban and Matteo Salvini from Italy, who I guess is out of power now, but will be in attendance.

00:01:25.760 I'll just mention this real quickly. I was obviously being sarcastic when I said that we would be

00:01:30.960 invited. I'm sure we would be expelled if we got within 10 feet of the conference. But as many of

00:01:40.020 you will remember, and I don't want to make this all about me, but I do think this is significant.

00:01:45.180 In 2014, I actually co-organized a conference in Budapest, Hungary. And it was a kind of pan-European

00:01:56.100 event. There were many nationalists and identitarians who were invited, some interesting controversial

00:02:04.000 figures as well, who were all meeting in Budapest. Everything was going well. And about a week before

00:02:10.840 the event, it became a big thing in the press in Hungary. And Victor Orban denounced it. We had all

00:02:19.480 these things canceled. We went through with it. And so most of the attendees were actually there. We got

00:02:26.940 to meet up in a pub. But we were being surveilled by the Hungarian police. And I ended up spending a

00:02:33.540 weekend in a Hungarian prison. It was quite an ordeal. The prison life was interesting. I'm glad I 1.00

00:02:42.760 went through with it. But it was a real, genuine attempt to have... I mean, it wasn't even a rally.

00:02:49.460 I mean, it was an academic conference. It was obviously peaceful and lawful. We were tourists in a

00:02:56.260 foreign land. But it was cracked down upon hard. And by Victor Orban, who is viewed by many as a savior

00:03:05.100 of Europe. Now he is the guest of honor at this kind of conference that it's the conference that

00:03:12.080 would or should have been our event. And now he's speaking at a conference that is, you know, hosted

00:03:20.200 by this Israeli Hebraic scholar. And it seems to me to be an attempt at Americanization. The subtitle

00:03:31.540 of the conference is God Honor Country, President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and the Freedom

00:03:37.360 of Nations. It is an attempt to basically integrate European nationalism within an American context.

00:03:49.980 And I have to be honest, I find it all rather sad. So Tyler, you've talked a lot about Hazoni. What do

00:04:01.360 you think about this event? Yeah, well, I got two points to make. The first point is that Hazoni

00:04:07.360 has explicitly stated that his project is to claim nationalism from the distant right and put out a

00:04:13.660 deracialized version of it. Now, if you read the book, The Virtue of Nationalism that he put out,

00:04:18.960 he contains extended arguments for the interests of Israel and expansionism, as well as arguments

00:04:25.680 that could be interpreted in favor of the American unilateral order. And so while he argues in the book

00:04:31.980 that I'm trying to overthrow a global liberalism in which everything is the same, he still argues that

00:04:38.020 in order to have a nationalism, and he doesn't say it this way, of course, but it's still a global order of

00:04:43.620 nation states that needs to be enforced. And so there's arguments in there, you know, some nation

00:04:48.120 might not be quite ready to be nationalist, so we're going to have to give him that little push.

00:04:52.540 And so he inserts within his political realism, a certain amount of intervention that could be

00:04:58.720 justified and taken to be an American internationalist line, right? And the second point I would make is that

00:05:06.860 when it comes to this conference, I saw you had a debate, it was yesterday about this conference,

00:05:12.360 and it was about whether or not Hezoni is being successful. And the point came up, well, his book

00:05:16.660 is not outselling, say, Bronze Age Pervert. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. And the 0.53

00:05:22.520 reason it doesn't matter is because he is clearly speaking to elites and people actually make the

00:05:27.940 decisions in these countries. And he's pushing a petty divide and conquer little nation state model,

00:05:33.740 which is not going to be an effective bulwark against American power. It's dividing Europe

00:05:38.600 further into these little nation states that are not going to be able to uphold any defense against

00:05:43.040 that system. And in fact, if you don't deal with the American problem first, any nationalism you're

00:05:47.680 going to put is either going to be subservient to America, or if you don't want to go along with

00:05:52.280 American imperial interests, then you're going to get destroyed, probably economically. So he's clearly

00:05:59.180 successful. He's speaking to elites. It doesn't matter how famous or well known he is in the

00:06:03.600 media or how his books are doing. But he is speaking to the people that make decisions and

00:06:07.760 the people that we want to incentivize. He's pushing us out of the discourse.

00:06:12.500 Yes, we have been deplatformed. I mean, I MPI hosted three or four, I guess, four major conferences

00:06:20.900 in Washington, DC. We had, you know, Guillaume Fay, Alain de Benoit, myself, you know, all these

00:06:28.660 other people speaking at these events that were actually quite hoity-toity or fairly expensive.

00:06:34.120 We were in the nation's capital, suit and tie, really serious events. You know, I attempted a

00:06:40.860 pan-European event, which was not about integrating a bunch of nation states into the American order,

00:06:46.140 but was about the future of Europe, Europe as an independent force, even as a countervailing force

00:06:53.280 to the United States. All of these things have, in some way, been deplatformed. And the person

00:07:01.000 who is doing, I mean, again, I'm speaking from jealousy, you could say doing what I should be

00:07:06.540 doing, is having some level of success. And so there are two ways of dealing with the dissident

00:07:14.240 right. The first is the hard way. And that is, we deplatform them. We call them all Nazi lunatics. 0.72

00:07:22.100 We, you know, basically try to demoralize them and just erase them from the sphere. 0.95

00:07:29.620 Hazoni is taking a much more insidious, but you could also say brilliant tactic, and that is that 0.77

00:07:35.820 we become them. And we integrate them into what we've always wanted to do. So, I mean, at that

00:07:41.920 conference, you had Tucker Carlson. And Tucker Carlson, to his credit, has been, you know, against

00:07:47.900 the Iran, you know, escapade, has said some powerful stuff on demographics and so on. I mean,

00:07:56.560 he's, you know, I'm more critical of Tucker than most, but he's been good. And he's, at the very

00:08:02.160 least, been interesting. He's standing there alongside John Bolton. He's standing there alongside some of

00:08:08.340 these kind of palatable paleo-conservatives, my old colleague Dan McCarthy and those people,

00:08:15.880 people like Paul Gottfried, maybe a little too edgy, was not invited. But it's this ability to

00:08:21.480 absorb those paleo-energies, which were present, the Buchananism, were present in the Donald Trump

00:08:28.760 campaign, and basically integrate them into what they've always wanted to do, which is

00:08:34.960 neoconservative foreign policy, you know, attacking states that are threats to Israel,

00:08:41.200 you know, low taxes and, you know, whatever, but just calling it nationalism now. And he has

00:08:48.260 successfully done that. And now he's looking at Europe again. Do you look at Europe and start

00:08:53.780 freaking out and saying, you know, this is Mussolini and Franco and Hitler on the rise again? Or do you

00:08:59.620 say, actually, they are not nearly that radical and potentially destabilizing? We can kind of absorb

00:09:09.060 them, as opposed to doing the religious right stuff in America, we'll do the Catholic traditionalist

00:09:15.380 stuff in Europe, we'll just kind of put a gloss on it, but we will basically promote Americanism in

00:09:21.920 Europe, we'll just call it nationalism. And the fact that they even mentioned Ronald Reagan,

00:09:27.120 I mean, it's just, I mean, it's just like, I don't know, if someone came to the United States,

00:09:32.580 and, you know, I don't know, did like, created the, I don't know, Conrad Adenauer Society or so,

00:09:38.680 I mean, I just, it's kind of like, get out of town, you know, like, even if I might have some

00:09:44.280 admiration for him, that it's not what we're about. And, you know, this is going to be a movement,

00:09:49.620 ultimately, that calls itself nationalist, that makes evocations of Catholicism, or whatever,

00:09:57.120 but is ultimately about the flat tax, and supporting American foreign policy. I mean,

00:10:02.140 you know, it is a, it's a cynical move on his part, but it's actually quite brilliant. But what

00:10:08.400 they will not integrate is a nation that is has, say, nuclear capabilities, or serious military

00:10:16.300 capabilities, that is in opposition to the American order. So you can be your happy little homeland 0.92

00:10:22.820 somewhere, so long as you are under the American umbrella, and to a large extent, the military

00:10:29.840 nuclear umbrella. The second you start messing with that, the second you're, you, you are a threat

00:10:36.440 to America and potentially support states that are threats to Israel, you are, again, literally Hitler 0.84

00:10:43.480 and a Nazi, and Hazoni will not invite you to a conference. So, I mean, this is what's happening. 0.56

00:10:51.160 I'm, you know, as I said, I'm jealous to some degree, in the sense that these are the kind of

00:10:55.400 pan-European events that we should be having. But I also see through it. And I think it's also like,

00:11:03.420 look at these people, there's a lot of, you know, fanboying of Viktor Orban, and, and other people

00:11:10.420 like that among the dissident right. And I think we should actually, in Matteo Salvini, I think we

00:11:16.640 should start to view these people much more skeptically. And this is just a sign that that

00:11:23.380 that is in order.

00:11:25.620 Yes, I think, I think that Salvini and particularly Viktor Orban have got a difficult tightrope to

00:11:31.800 walk, because they can't, they've got, for the good of their country's economies, and therefore their

00:11:36.140 own political interests, they've got to come across as reasonably cooperative with, with the,

00:11:41.520 well, frankly, the left, but whatever, let's call it the neoconservants, the neoconservants,

00:11:45.280 whatever. But, but, but on the other hand, I think there's a degree in which they know what

00:11:49.460 they want. And that, and that balance was struck as well with, with your conference. So I'm not too

00:11:54.280 concerned about that. I think maybe, maybe someone like Orban thinks it's good optics to go to

00:11:58.160 something like that. As for this guy, what's his name? The writer of the, Hazoni, yes. So I was

00:12:04.940 looking at his book, and he clearly explicitly states that nationalism is about what he calls

00:12:09.380 a tribe. Well, a tribe is inherently a genetic thing, a tribe, but that's, that's, it's a bunch

00:12:14.740 of clans. And then, of course, since then, because it doesn't look very good to say that, he's kind

00:12:19.720 of gone back on that. And now he talks about this concept of civic nationalism, and even Israel

00:12:24.600 not being an ethno state, and Israel being absolutely preposterous, if you think about 0.96

00:12:30.840 the way that the Ethiopian Jews are treated in Israel, and are not regarded as part of,

00:12:37.140 truly part of the ethno state. Of course, it's an ethno state. And consistent with that, Judaism 0.95

00:12:42.260 is generally by ethnic descent, rather than conversion. They don't accept conversion to converts to come

00:12:47.980 and live in the state of Israel. So that's nonsense. So again, as this whole phrase again, having 0.68

00:12:52.480 good cake and eating it, whatever you want to say, that he, he obviously supports Israel to be

00:12:57.340 an ethno state, but all other countries to be a civic nationalist state.

00:13:02.540 And it goes a little bit further, because one interesting thing in his book, and I don't,

00:13:07.220 I don't completely disagree with him. But an interesting thing in this book is that he

00:13:10.900 promotes the concept of nationalism as Judaic, as emanating from the Old Testament and being

00:13:17.700 opposed to Babel, which is an empire. And I actually don't even fully disagree. But the move 0.89

00:13:24.020 he's making is to place that little meme in the mind of any nationalist. Don't get out of hand.

00:13:32.240 Remember, everything that you're doing is Judaic. It's biblical. It's Judeo-Christian. And that you 0.97

00:13:39.840 can't have a coherent nationalism without recognizing that, because we Jews invented it. You know,

00:13:44.820 we invented the left, we also invented the right, and we invented the center, and we invented the

00:13:49.160 margin. And it's this kind of way of saying that, you know, you're being Jewish by being a nationalist,

00:13:56.660 and you have something at stake in Israel by being a nationalist. So it's this thing that's actually

00:14:03.240 not new. It's this kind of Judeo-Christian right, the anti-Islam right that we saw throughout the Bush

00:14:09.500 administration. It's being kind of, you know, reinvented here. But I would just, you know,

00:14:14.700 point this out. One thing that I gained from reading his book is that, to be frank, we've got

00:14:21.320 to get away from just pure tribalism. And we need to become Babel. And empire is good. And the way you 0.73

00:14:31.340 affect geopolitics is that you are a bigger group, a powerful state that can be badass and force your

00:14:40.000 will on the world. And that's not going to happen through little nation states without military

00:14:44.940 capabilities of a couple million people. I'm sorry, it's not gonna happen. He's pointing out

00:14:52.380 a threat, which is very interesting. He's pointing out the threat and attempting to neutralize it.

00:14:58.560 And I think we can kind of learn from our enemies in this sense.

00:15:01.380 That's true. That's true. The other thing is there's no, I mean, them calling themselves

00:15:04.920 nationalists is like one of these researchers like Gardner saying, oh, everyone has a different

00:15:08.940 kind of intelligence. It just means the concept of intelligence becomes meaningless and another

00:15:12.360 word is found. It's the same with nationalists. For them to call themselves nationalists, I was

00:15:15.480 looking into one of the groups that's involved in organizing this is a group called the Beau

00:15:19.160 Group. And this is a group that's based on the left of the Conservative Party. So former

00:15:26.280 chairmen include Leon Britton, who was Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, on the left of the

00:15:31.040 Conservative Party. Christopher Brockelbant Fowler, who defected from the Conservative Party to the

00:15:36.380 Social Democrats, which was a Labour breakaway group. Sam Guima, who was a Conservative MP who

00:15:42.520 then defected to the Liberal Democrats a couple of last year or a couple of years ago. So this is the

00:15:47.660 left of the Conservative Party, not just the right of the Conservatives, the left of the Conservative

00:15:51.760 Party. So there's nothing nationalistic about this. This is just conservatism dressed up in a

00:15:57.420 word that might possibly be attractive. Right. And they'll come up with another word in 10 years.

00:16:04.500 Oh, yeah. Identitarian. They'll even, they might even take identitarianism. I mean, it's just,

00:16:08.980 yeah, it's just putting, you know, it's like these debates with, there was this debate between Brett

00:16:15.480 Stevens and, and Harzoni, and it's, they're both just fighting for Israel. They're just like using 0.78

00:16:23.440 different words, you know, for like, what's good for Israel. It's just, it's not much of a debate.

00:16:30.200 In fact, it's just a debate about language.

00:16:36.280 People will see through it.

00:16:38.440 Yeah, I was just gonna say the arguments in the book are fairly weak. I mean, I know,

00:16:42.400 for example, he talks about the tribe, and Ed said, okay, well, there's a genetic basis there.

00:16:46.200 But in the same book, he actually says he doesn't mean race. Like, he explicitly states that. He

00:16:51.320 says, okay, but you can also allow outsiders in, and they can become integrated into the tribe. And

00:16:55.740 so he does make that argument. And in many ways, there's parts of the book that are exceptionally

00:17:00.620 weak. But as Richard was saying, there's also parts of the book, where what he doesn't say ends up

00:17:05.580 making a stronger argument, for example, in favor of empire. I mean, he's arguing for an order of

00:17:09.680 nation states. At the end of the day, that is still an imperial order that's coming from somewhere.

00:17:13.640 And when you start getting into the realistic aspects of actually enforcing that, which he

00:17:18.380 does get into at the end of the book, so it starts looking more like an empire.

00:17:22.100 Who's the kahuna of the globe? Like, you know, you can have all these nation states, but at some 0.75

00:17:28.300 point, there's going to be that exceptional actor who enforces the borders of the nation. So, you know,

00:17:34.260 in order for there to be a league of nations, there has to be a superpower that can prevent,

00:17:39.720 you know, border disputes and, you know, wars, and etc. And, you know, who is that going to be?

00:17:46.220 So at the end of the day, Hezoni is just reinforcing the American order. And there's going to be a big

00:17:53.900 kahuna on the planet, which is going to be Washington or, you know, in competition with the 0.95

00:17:58.380 Soviet Union, now Washington alone. And you can have all these little nation states in the big 0.70

00:18:03.600 kahuna's shadow. And that is what he's won. That is what he ultimately wants, even though he's not

00:18:09.160 willing to say it.

00:18:11.520 Yeah, I was going to say, there's a symmetry here between what we were talking about earlier with

00:18:15.300 the woke left versus the Bernie crowd. And now that they adopt a similar language, and they're

00:18:19.760 fighting over what that struggle actually is. Well, that's the same thing we're in here

00:18:23.460 with national conservatism, is they're adopting our language, but then they're

00:18:27.660 moving, kicking us out of our spaces and taking the attention. And so there needs to be, I think,

00:18:32.480 a stronger critical effort on our part to actually write books and combat this and hold conferences

00:18:38.120 and combat this. And there's no way that you can combat this without entering into the arena

00:18:42.780 and challenging it directly on our own terms.

00:18:45.600 Well, maybe we should hold a big conference in Jerusalem.

00:18:48.300 That'd be interesting.

00:18:53.740 They might actually let us do it. We'll see.

00:18:58.860 But yeah, I think that would be the analog to what he's doing, holding it in Rome. I think

00:19:05.000 the Rome aspect is utterly shocking. But we'll see.

RadixJournal - January 23, 2020

Yankee Go Home!

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