Yankee Go Home!
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Summary
In this episode, the panel discusses Yoram Shavuosi's trip to Europe and his attempt to Americanize European nationalism, and why this is a bad idea. The panel is moderated by Tyler Cowen and Alex Blumberg.
Transcript
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Final issue, Yankee Go Home. The panel discusses Yoram Hazoni and his attempt to Americanize
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European nationalism. Hazoni. All right, we'll just jump right into it. February 4th, Rome,
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Italy. There is a major conference on national conservatism. I guess my first question is,
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I mean, certainly we will be invited. I mean, we're some of the major nationalist thinkers on the
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scene. I mean, perhaps even Ed Dutton is guest of honor. No, psych, nothing like that is happening.
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This is the latest attempt by a man named Yoram Hazoni, who actually recently published a book
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on in defense of nationalism. And he had a major event in Washington, D.C. at the Ritz-Carlton,
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in which, among others, John Bolton and Tucker Carlson and some collected paleo-conservatives
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attended. And now he is going on the tour of Europe. And none less than Prime Minister Victor
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Orban and Matteo Salvini from Italy, who I guess is out of power now, but will be in attendance.
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I'll just mention this real quickly. I was obviously being sarcastic when I said that we would be
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invited. I'm sure we would be expelled if we got within 10 feet of the conference. But as many of
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you will remember, and I don't want to make this all about me, but I do think this is significant.
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In 2014, I actually co-organized a conference in Budapest, Hungary. And it was a kind of pan-European
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event. There were many nationalists and identitarians who were invited, some interesting controversial
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figures as well, who were all meeting in Budapest. Everything was going well. And about a week before
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the event, it became a big thing in the press in Hungary. And Victor Orban denounced it. We had all
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these things canceled. We went through with it. And so most of the attendees were actually there. We got
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to meet up in a pub. But we were being surveilled by the Hungarian police. And I ended up spending a
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weekend in a Hungarian prison. It was quite an ordeal. The prison life was interesting. I'm glad I
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went through with it. But it was a real, genuine attempt to have... I mean, it wasn't even a rally.
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I mean, it was an academic conference. It was obviously peaceful and lawful. We were tourists in a
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foreign land. But it was cracked down upon hard. And by Victor Orban, who is viewed by many as a savior
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of Europe. Now he is the guest of honor at this kind of conference that it's the conference that
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would or should have been our event. And now he's speaking at a conference that is, you know, hosted
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by this Israeli Hebraic scholar. And it seems to me to be an attempt at Americanization. The subtitle
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of the conference is God Honor Country, President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and the Freedom
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of Nations. It is an attempt to basically integrate European nationalism within an American context.
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And I have to be honest, I find it all rather sad. So Tyler, you've talked a lot about Hazoni. What do
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you think about this event? Yeah, well, I got two points to make. The first point is that Hazoni
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has explicitly stated that his project is to claim nationalism from the distant right and put out a
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deracialized version of it. Now, if you read the book, The Virtue of Nationalism that he put out,
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he contains extended arguments for the interests of Israel and expansionism, as well as arguments
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that could be interpreted in favor of the American unilateral order. And so while he argues in the book
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that I'm trying to overthrow a global liberalism in which everything is the same, he still argues that
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in order to have a nationalism, and he doesn't say it this way, of course, but it's still a global order of
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nation states that needs to be enforced. And so there's arguments in there, you know, some nation
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might not be quite ready to be nationalist, so we're going to have to give him that little push.
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And so he inserts within his political realism, a certain amount of intervention that could be
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justified and taken to be an American internationalist line, right? And the second point I would make is that
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when it comes to this conference, I saw you had a debate, it was yesterday about this conference,
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and it was about whether or not Hezoni is being successful. And the point came up, well, his book
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is not outselling, say, Bronze Age Pervert. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. And the
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reason it doesn't matter is because he is clearly speaking to elites and people actually make the
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decisions in these countries. And he's pushing a petty divide and conquer little nation state model,
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which is not going to be an effective bulwark against American power. It's dividing Europe
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further into these little nation states that are not going to be able to uphold any defense against
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that system. And in fact, if you don't deal with the American problem first, any nationalism you're
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going to put is either going to be subservient to America, or if you don't want to go along with
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American imperial interests, then you're going to get destroyed, probably economically. So he's clearly
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successful. He's speaking to elites. It doesn't matter how famous or well known he is in the
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media or how his books are doing. But he is speaking to the people that make decisions and
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the people that we want to incentivize. He's pushing us out of the discourse.
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Yes, we have been deplatformed. I mean, I MPI hosted three or four, I guess, four major conferences
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in Washington, DC. We had, you know, Guillaume Fay, Alain de Benoit, myself, you know, all these
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other people speaking at these events that were actually quite hoity-toity or fairly expensive.
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We were in the nation's capital, suit and tie, really serious events. You know, I attempted a
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pan-European event, which was not about integrating a bunch of nation states into the American order,
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but was about the future of Europe, Europe as an independent force, even as a countervailing force
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to the United States. All of these things have, in some way, been deplatformed. And the person
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who is doing, I mean, again, I'm speaking from jealousy, you could say doing what I should be
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doing, is having some level of success. And so there are two ways of dealing with the dissident
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right. The first is the hard way. And that is, we deplatform them. We call them all Nazi lunatics.
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We, you know, basically try to demoralize them and just erase them from the sphere.
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Hazoni is taking a much more insidious, but you could also say brilliant tactic, and that is that
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we become them. And we integrate them into what we've always wanted to do. So, I mean, at that
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conference, you had Tucker Carlson. And Tucker Carlson, to his credit, has been, you know, against
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the Iran, you know, escapade, has said some powerful stuff on demographics and so on. I mean,
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he's, you know, I'm more critical of Tucker than most, but he's been good. And he's, at the very
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least, been interesting. He's standing there alongside John Bolton. He's standing there alongside some of
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these kind of palatable paleo-conservatives, my old colleague Dan McCarthy and those people,
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people like Paul Gottfried, maybe a little too edgy, was not invited. But it's this ability to
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absorb those paleo-energies, which were present, the Buchananism, were present in the Donald Trump
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campaign, and basically integrate them into what they've always wanted to do, which is
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neoconservative foreign policy, you know, attacking states that are threats to Israel,
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you know, low taxes and, you know, whatever, but just calling it nationalism now. And he has
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successfully done that. And now he's looking at Europe again. Do you look at Europe and start
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freaking out and saying, you know, this is Mussolini and Franco and Hitler on the rise again? Or do you
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say, actually, they are not nearly that radical and potentially destabilizing? We can kind of absorb
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them, as opposed to doing the religious right stuff in America, we'll do the Catholic traditionalist
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stuff in Europe, we'll just kind of put a gloss on it, but we will basically promote Americanism in
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Europe, we'll just call it nationalism. And the fact that they even mentioned Ronald Reagan,
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I mean, it's just, I mean, it's just like, I don't know, if someone came to the United States,
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and, you know, I don't know, did like, created the, I don't know, Conrad Adenauer Society or so,
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I mean, I just, it's kind of like, get out of town, you know, like, even if I might have some
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admiration for him, that it's not what we're about. And, you know, this is going to be a movement,
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ultimately, that calls itself nationalist, that makes evocations of Catholicism, or whatever,
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but is ultimately about the flat tax, and supporting American foreign policy. I mean,
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you know, it is a, it's a cynical move on his part, but it's actually quite brilliant. But what
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they will not integrate is a nation that is has, say, nuclear capabilities, or serious military
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capabilities, that is in opposition to the American order. So you can be your happy little homeland
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somewhere, so long as you are under the American umbrella, and to a large extent, the military
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nuclear umbrella. The second you start messing with that, the second you're, you, you are a threat
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to America and potentially support states that are threats to Israel, you are, again, literally Hitler
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and a Nazi, and Hazoni will not invite you to a conference. So, I mean, this is what's happening.
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I'm, you know, as I said, I'm jealous to some degree, in the sense that these are the kind of
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pan-European events that we should be having. But I also see through it. And I think it's also like,
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look at these people, there's a lot of, you know, fanboying of Viktor Orban, and, and other people
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like that among the dissident right. And I think we should actually, in Matteo Salvini, I think we
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should start to view these people much more skeptically. And this is just a sign that that
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Yes, I think, I think that Salvini and particularly Viktor Orban have got a difficult tightrope to
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walk, because they can't, they've got, for the good of their country's economies, and therefore their
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own political interests, they've got to come across as reasonably cooperative with, with the,
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well, frankly, the left, but whatever, let's call it the neoconservants, the neoconservants,
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whatever. But, but, but on the other hand, I think there's a degree in which they know what
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they want. And that, and that balance was struck as well with, with your conference. So I'm not too
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concerned about that. I think maybe, maybe someone like Orban thinks it's good optics to go to
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something like that. As for this guy, what's his name? The writer of the, Hazoni, yes. So I was
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looking at his book, and he clearly explicitly states that nationalism is about what he calls
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a tribe. Well, a tribe is inherently a genetic thing, a tribe, but that's, that's, it's a bunch
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of clans. And then, of course, since then, because it doesn't look very good to say that, he's kind
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of gone back on that. And now he talks about this concept of civic nationalism, and even Israel
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not being an ethno state, and Israel being absolutely preposterous, if you think about
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the way that the Ethiopian Jews are treated in Israel, and are not regarded as part of,
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truly part of the ethno state. Of course, it's an ethno state. And consistent with that, Judaism
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is generally by ethnic descent, rather than conversion. They don't accept conversion to converts to come
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and live in the state of Israel. So that's nonsense. So again, as this whole phrase again, having
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good cake and eating it, whatever you want to say, that he, he obviously supports Israel to be
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an ethno state, but all other countries to be a civic nationalist state.
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And it goes a little bit further, because one interesting thing in his book, and I don't,
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I don't completely disagree with him. But an interesting thing in this book is that he
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promotes the concept of nationalism as Judaic, as emanating from the Old Testament and being
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opposed to Babel, which is an empire. And I actually don't even fully disagree. But the move
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he's making is to place that little meme in the mind of any nationalist. Don't get out of hand.
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Remember, everything that you're doing is Judaic. It's biblical. It's Judeo-Christian. And that you
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can't have a coherent nationalism without recognizing that, because we Jews invented it. You know,
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we invented the left, we also invented the right, and we invented the center, and we invented the
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margin. And it's this kind of way of saying that, you know, you're being Jewish by being a nationalist,
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and you have something at stake in Israel by being a nationalist. So it's this thing that's actually
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not new. It's this kind of Judeo-Christian right, the anti-Islam right that we saw throughout the Bush
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administration. It's being kind of, you know, reinvented here. But I would just, you know,
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point this out. One thing that I gained from reading his book is that, to be frank, we've got
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to get away from just pure tribalism. And we need to become Babel. And empire is good. And the way you
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affect geopolitics is that you are a bigger group, a powerful state that can be badass and force your
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will on the world. And that's not going to happen through little nation states without military
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capabilities of a couple million people. I'm sorry, it's not gonna happen. He's pointing out
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a threat, which is very interesting. He's pointing out the threat and attempting to neutralize it.
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And I think we can kind of learn from our enemies in this sense.
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That's true. That's true. The other thing is there's no, I mean, them calling themselves
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nationalists is like one of these researchers like Gardner saying, oh, everyone has a different
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kind of intelligence. It just means the concept of intelligence becomes meaningless and another
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word is found. It's the same with nationalists. For them to call themselves nationalists, I was
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looking into one of the groups that's involved in organizing this is a group called the Beau
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Group. And this is a group that's based on the left of the Conservative Party. So former
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chairmen include Leon Britton, who was Home Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, on the left of the
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Conservative Party. Christopher Brockelbant Fowler, who defected from the Conservative Party to the
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Social Democrats, which was a Labour breakaway group. Sam Guima, who was a Conservative MP who
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then defected to the Liberal Democrats a couple of last year or a couple of years ago. So this is the
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left of the Conservative Party, not just the right of the Conservatives, the left of the Conservative
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Party. So there's nothing nationalistic about this. This is just conservatism dressed up in a
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word that might possibly be attractive. Right. And they'll come up with another word in 10 years.
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Oh, yeah. Identitarian. They'll even, they might even take identitarianism. I mean, it's just,
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yeah, it's just putting, you know, it's like these debates with, there was this debate between Brett
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Stevens and, and Harzoni, and it's, they're both just fighting for Israel. They're just like using
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different words, you know, for like, what's good for Israel. It's just, it's not much of a debate.
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Yeah, I was just gonna say the arguments in the book are fairly weak. I mean, I know,
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for example, he talks about the tribe, and Ed said, okay, well, there's a genetic basis there.
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But in the same book, he actually says he doesn't mean race. Like, he explicitly states that. He
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says, okay, but you can also allow outsiders in, and they can become integrated into the tribe. And
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so he does make that argument. And in many ways, there's parts of the book that are exceptionally
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weak. But as Richard was saying, there's also parts of the book, where what he doesn't say ends up
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making a stronger argument, for example, in favor of empire. I mean, he's arguing for an order of
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nation states. At the end of the day, that is still an imperial order that's coming from somewhere.
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And when you start getting into the realistic aspects of actually enforcing that, which he
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does get into at the end of the book, so it starts looking more like an empire.
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Who's the kahuna of the globe? Like, you know, you can have all these nation states, but at some
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point, there's going to be that exceptional actor who enforces the borders of the nation. So, you know,
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in order for there to be a league of nations, there has to be a superpower that can prevent,
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you know, border disputes and, you know, wars, and etc. And, you know, who is that going to be?
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So at the end of the day, Hezoni is just reinforcing the American order. And there's going to be a big
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kahuna on the planet, which is going to be Washington or, you know, in competition with the
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Soviet Union, now Washington alone. And you can have all these little nation states in the big
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kahuna's shadow. And that is what he's won. That is what he ultimately wants, even though he's not
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Yeah, I was going to say, there's a symmetry here between what we were talking about earlier with
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the woke left versus the Bernie crowd. And now that they adopt a similar language, and they're
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fighting over what that struggle actually is. Well, that's the same thing we're in here
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with national conservatism, is they're adopting our language, but then they're
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moving, kicking us out of our spaces and taking the attention. And so there needs to be, I think,
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a stronger critical effort on our part to actually write books and combat this and hold conferences
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and combat this. And there's no way that you can combat this without entering into the arena
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Well, maybe we should hold a big conference in Jerusalem.
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But yeah, I think that would be the analog to what he's doing, holding it in Rome. I think
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the Rome aspect is utterly shocking. But we'll see.