The Art of Manliness - #220： Tyrants-- A History of Power, Injustice, & Terror

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast since the days

00:00:18.800 of ancient greece a battle between two political forces have been going on in the west democracy

00:00:23.380 versus tyranny but what makes a tyrant a tyrant how has tyranny changed throughout western history

00:00:28.980 and what is its connection to masculinity well my guest today has recently published a book that

00:00:33.320 explores these questions his name is waller newell he's a professor of political science and

00:00:37.020 philosophy at carleton university in canada i've had waller on the podcast before discuss his great

00:00:41.240 book the code of man if you haven't listened to that episode go check it out but today on the show

00:00:45.060 we discuss his latest book tyrants a history of power injustice and terror waller and i talk about

00:00:50.100 the three types of tyranny that pop up in world history what we can learn about tyranny masculinity

00:00:54.020 from the ancient greeks and romans how some tyrants paved the way for liberal democracies

00:00:58.140 how isis is a form of modern tyranny and what the antidote to tyranny is this is a fascinating

00:01:03.520 podcast with lots of implications on today's geopolitical environment after the show make

00:01:07.780 sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash tyranny all right waller newell welcome back to the show

00:01:20.540 nice to be with you brett well so last time we we had you on we were talking about your books on

00:01:26.720 manhood the code of man what is a man uh you got a new book out about the history of tyranny

00:01:33.160 i'm curious how does how is this book the history of tyranny sort of continue your work about manhood

00:01:41.260 and masculinity throughout the west um yeah how is that how is it a continuation of what you've been

00:01:46.560 doing for the past couple years well i've always stressed that the traditional conception of

00:01:54.060 manliness has quite a bit to do with an interest in public affairs if if you go back to the classical

00:02:03.120 notion of the callous kagathos the gentleman um aristotle for example says that prudence the hallmark of great

00:02:12.220 statesman is is the highest virtue short of philosophical contemplation and in cicero's dream

00:02:21.120 of scipio for example you have this model of a balance of civic virtue and the life of the mind

00:02:29.140 and that civic virtue is higher than battlefield courage and this whole notion of an interest in

00:02:38.460 public affairs continues throughout the renaissance with civic humanism um if you think of the american

00:02:46.340 founders uh they read classics like cicero polybius and sallust in in college they emphasize that you

00:02:56.200 must always prefer cato to caesar as alexander hamilton said you must always prefer the servant of the

00:03:04.540 republic to the republic to the dictator so these lessons i think became very real and and very

00:03:11.900 formative for uh the american political tradition as well and i'd also note mention the notion of the

00:03:20.660 tremor the notion of tactical flexibility for a long-term goal in politics churchill for example said

00:03:29.980 that abraham lincoln was the classic trimmer so i think that whole notion of an involvement in public

00:03:38.000 affairs as a part of what it means to be a man but at the same time avoiding extremes and and trying

00:03:46.380 to plot a kind of moderate course gotcha so your your new book uh the history of tyranny it's called

00:03:53.620 tyranny um talks about the history of tyranny and so i'm curious uh how do you define tyranny and why

00:04:02.300 why write a history of this form of government well tyranny is both a form of rule and a kind of

00:04:13.460 psychology at bottom tyranny is lawless rule by by an individual or by a group it it treats people as if

00:04:23.160 they were objects for manipulation with no rights of their own and no right to say in how society is

00:04:31.080 governed why did i write it well i would point out that the history of tyranny is also the history of

00:04:38.620 its eventual defeat by free self-governing society so it's not a pessimistic account in a in a way it's a

00:04:46.780 hopeful one you can go all the way all the way back to the greeks think of their 3 000 tiny city

00:04:54.920 states uh versus the huge multinational persian empire the battles of marathon thermopolis salamis

00:05:03.980 this confrontation or struggle between free societies and tyranny has been repeated many times think of

00:05:11.920 waterloo dunkirk the defeat of hitler the defeat of the soviet empire so uh tyranny has always been

00:05:18.560 with us and we have to be alive to that danger but at the same time so far uh tyranny has never

00:05:25.480 succeeded in prevailing and what do you think most modern western democrats right democracy people

00:05:33.400 live in democracy what do you think they get wrong about tyranny i would say to some extent that

00:05:39.560 we're victims of our own success in other words because we do live in comparatively peaceful

00:05:46.380 uh historically unprecedentedly wealthy societies where the rule of law is the norm maybe we don't

00:05:56.120 always live up to it but it is the norm i think that can lull us into a kind of amnesia whereby

00:06:02.660 we forget that this way of life has been successful mainly in the west we have a tendency however to

00:06:12.600 project it on the rest of the world and to convince ourselves that everybody is that way or is on the

00:06:19.180 verge of becoming that way i think it's reflected in what is sometimes called the rational actor theory

00:06:25.660 of political behavior which is that people are motivated primarily by material self-interest

00:06:33.180 and that if you can provide them with material prosperity their aggressive impulses will fade away

00:06:41.480 that might work in the west it took us 400 years to cultivate those values of individualism

00:06:49.660 but i think history shows that it's at least doubtful that people everywhere in the world

00:06:56.780 are are motivated solely by a desire for economic prosperity yeah and we're going to talk about

00:07:03.500 that later on because you you make the case uh that what we're seeing with islamist jihad and isis

00:07:09.500 it's a it's a form of tyranny we'll talk a little bit more about that later on um so let's talk about

00:07:15.020 the types of tyranny that you you argue exist uh the first one you describe in the book is garden

00:07:20.720 variety tyrants uh so what are the traits of garden variety tyrants well i would say that uh this is

00:07:30.020 this is at once the oldest form of tyranny and one that is still everywhere around us today garden

00:07:38.140 variety tyrants rule an entire society you might say as if it were their own private

00:07:44.860 property uh to exploit for themselves their families their cronies sometimes this involves immense

00:07:52.380 personal hedonism and luxury think of these notorious uh roman emperors like nero caligula

00:08:01.500 it's really something that stretches back from hero of syracuse to the samosas of nicaragua

00:08:07.820 or bashar al-assad today who and by the way plato would have instantly recognized assad uh as this

00:08:16.220 kind of tyrant now these figures can do some good the greeks sometimes gave power to tyrants sort of like

00:08:25.580 a shogun uh someone more effective than a traditional monarchy at winning wars improving the city's economy and

00:08:34.700 and defenses but of course they always had to be on guard because at the end of the day these people

00:08:41.980 really do treat an entire society as if it were their personal property to exploit and that is going

00:08:50.060 back to the ancient greece the ancient greeks and kind of exploring the idea of garden variety tyrants you

00:08:54.780 there was a great section of my favorite sections that was in the book kind of exploring the connection

00:08:59.660 between greek ideas of masculinity or manliness and politics and it seemed like there was this

00:09:05.580 this tension in greece so on the one hand they had this heroic ideal from homer where it seemed like

00:09:13.900 the garden variety tyrant was sort of uh set out as an ideal you had this chieftain who had his his

00:09:19.580 kingdom and he treated his his kingdom as if it was like the people were like he's part of his family

00:09:24.140 but then you had thinkers like plato and aristotle who were saying they were trying to put a check

00:09:30.220 on that that compulsion so can you talk a little bit about that tension that existed within greek

00:09:35.660 culture itself about the role of i mean tyrants and how masculinity uh affected it yeah it it is quite

00:09:44.540 fascinating because in a way homer's achilles was the ideal of greek manhood and he was a kind of bronze

00:09:52.860 age chieftain uh a king in his own right almost like a viking chieftain in a way he would you know

00:09:59.900 lead his men into battle personally but it was also a lesson in the danger of supreme personal ambition

00:10:08.780 and how it could go awry it's his rage over a perceived insult from his commander-in-chief

00:10:16.460 that sparks the entire trojan war uh and and and it's terrible uh bloodshed everything is about

00:10:26.700 him he's a kind of narcissistic figure uh he's magnificent but but he's flawed and yet even when

00:10:35.420 the greeks themselves sort of left the you know went went beyond their bronze age heritage and and

00:10:42.620 became self-governing city states they no longer had bronze age hero kings like achilles but they

00:10:50.700 still idolized achilles so that's the tension right that that they were living as free societies where in

00:10:58.380 fact an achilles could never really be part of the constitution and yet a lot of young men still

00:11:04.140 looked up to achilles is this ideal so plato's answer is to try and redirect achilles kind of

00:11:13.340 ambition from personal power and glory to the honor that you derive from serving the common good in

00:11:21.820 cooperation with your fellow citizens and for this you need a new education in moderation and self-control

00:11:30.300 something that is very unlike homer's depiction of heroism in a certain sense plato's republic is all

00:11:38.060 about how to forestall achilles from from emerging okay and besides oh go ahead i i should correct

00:11:47.180 myself i i shouldn't have said by the way that the achilles rage sparked the trojan war that was

00:11:54.140 because of the abduction of helen but it was certainly his rage that prolonged the war because he

00:12:00.220 withdrew in a huff from the fighting uh and and that made victory for the greeks uh take a long time

00:12:07.660 to come gotcha um so so you had this tension in greek within greek culture itself where that is ideal of

00:12:15.180 personal ambition um at the you know with the homeric uh poems but then trying to control that ambition to

00:12:24.380 serve the greater good to serve the polis but besides that tension there was a tension between

00:12:29.580 greek culture itself and uh the east or persia you know it's people always talk about oh yeah the

00:12:35.580 greeks they they're persian was their enemy they thought them the sort of weirdos or whatever but

00:12:39.260 they actually got a lot of inspiration from persian borrowed a lot of things so can you talk about

00:12:44.780 the tension between greek culture itself and persian culture and how that they combine the two sometimes to

00:12:50.700 create tyrannical governments yeah right i mean in the west you had this tradition going back for quite a

00:12:59.900 long time of small self-governing city-states in the east by contrast you had huge multinational empires

00:13:10.060 uh powerful wealthy huge standing armies in a way it was a form of rational despotism

00:13:17.020 if you try and if you think of the pharaohs the babylonians cyrus the great these were prosperous

00:13:24.620 powerful societies they were well run and the greeks were impressed they were impressed by the

00:13:30.860 persian empire even though they feared that it was trying to extinguish their freedom so you know

00:13:38.860 basically when when alexander the great conquered the persian empire it was as if achilles had taken over

00:13:46.860 a world state because achilles was one of those many excuse me alexander was one of those many young

00:13:56.220 men who admired achilles and alexander then used that captured world state to spread the values of greek

00:14:07.900 culture everywhere so so i think um there was this really important synthesis between you might say

00:14:16.140 uh the uh the the greek heroic standard of of manliness but at the same time they really learned

00:14:23.740 an awful lot from the persian empire and in in a certain sense they took over the legacy of the persian

00:14:31.900 world state uh and hellenized it and um how would you describe like the the persian empire i mean was it

00:14:42.140 a tyranny because i mean the way you describe it is that yes they they conquered people but then

00:14:47.020 it seemed like the the leaders would give their subjects a lot of leeway in terms of the religion

00:14:52.060 how they governed themselves so what was what would you call the dynasty is it just despotism what's going

00:14:57.020 on there strictly speaking from a greek perspective you would have to call it a tyranny because there was no

00:15:05.580 form of representative government the persian king was a master uh the word in greek despotes literally

00:15:16.540 means that he had the power of life and death over every single member of his empire from the highest

00:15:24.060 lords to the lowest peasant he could dispose of them as he wished yet at the same time the power of that

00:15:32.220 state when properly used by people like cyrus created road systems promoted the economy promoted trade and

00:15:42.220 cyrus began the persian tradition of extraordinary tolerance of religious diversity uh cyrus famously

00:15:50.540 rebuilt the temple in jerusalem he encouraged the subject peoples of his empire to retain their

00:15:57.900 religious faith he may no attempt to interfere and he also encouraged people to rise on their merit his

00:16:04.860 own elite became multinational so in many ways cyrus the great was the paradox of a liberalizing despot

00:16:15.180 uh and by the time the greeks you know encountered his successors the persian empire still had many of

00:16:22.940 those qualities and i think that's an interesting point you made throughout the book is that

00:16:28.140 i think what a lot of modern individuals who live in the west get wrong about tyranny is that

00:16:33.020 a lot of times people prefer tyranny over republicanism because like as you said there's a lot of freedom

00:16:40.940 um they they did things to improve the the lot of their subjects um and and so i'm curious um when did the

00:16:49.660 idea that tyrants were completely bad like you would never want a tyrant you would you'd prefer

00:16:57.580 individual government individual liberty when did that take hold in uh in the psyche of the west

00:17:04.940 that's a that's an interesting question i i would say that that

00:17:10.060 particular sort of

00:17:12.620 hatred of tyranny is present from very early on uh in in thucydides for example the the story of

00:17:20.780 harmodius and aristogaiton um and later people's profoundly mixed feelings about julius caesar

00:17:31.020 some of whom saw him as a tremendous benefactor for the common people of rome but others who absolutely

00:17:38.700 loathed and despised him as a tyrant who wanted to crush roman liberty the interesting thing about the 0.99

00:17:45.980 grico-roman heritage is that it had all of these nuanced judgments uh about tyrannical rule you know

00:17:54.860 there there were there were good and bad varieties or or or you know uh there there were there were

00:18:03.820 more preferable versions less preferable versions so i mean the the romans at bottom had

00:18:09.660 a totally uncompromising intolerance for the notion of even a monarchy let alone a tyrant in fact for the

00:18:20.860 romans the word rex king was simply another word for tyrant that's how fiercely resistant they were

00:18:29.420 to any form of non-republican authority and yet even they i mean think of how the debate

00:18:36.780 to this day about how we think of julius caesar we we're still debating this right i mean there are

00:18:43.020 there are people who see him as a as a tremendously beneficial figure and others who just excoriated him

00:18:50.860 as the death of roman liberty yeah that's that's interesting i mean and speaking of the romans so how

00:18:57.180 going back to the romans how did they go from uh the you know the republic where they just loved individual

00:19:03.420 uh liberty um they aboard kings or any type of monarchy or or a tyrant how did they transition

00:19:12.540 to an empire that was led by a tyrant this is one of the most fascinating stories i think in political

00:19:21.900 history right really you can say after the defeat of carthage rome woke up one day and found itself the

00:19:29.820 master of the world and yet it was still in effect a small greek city state it was a self-governing

00:19:37.740 city state in possession of an empire and the way that they got around this was because they had such

00:19:46.060 a fierce aversion to monarchy they pretended that the emperors beginning with augustus were merely the

00:19:53.900 first citizens in what was supposedly still a free republic a city state so it was a hellenistic

00:20:02.380 monarchy outwardly garbed in the traditional forms and rituals of a republic and that was you can say

00:20:12.060 sheer genius in a certain way that they managed to contain that contradiction by that kind of

00:20:19.180 constitutional fiction in in a sense so that we just talked about garden variety tyrants tyranny uh

00:20:26.780 the second class of tyrants you look at are what you call reforming tyrants uh what are their traits

00:20:32.620 and what are some notable examples of reforming tyrants in western history well i think some of the ones

00:20:38.300 i mentioned like alexander julius caesar augustus these are people who want complete power and glory for

00:20:46.060 themselves but they want it at least in part to do good things for their people right they build roads

00:20:53.980 they build sewers they they beautify their cities they distribute land to the poor uh and unlike a lot 0.99

00:21:02.620 of garden variety tyrants these sort of you know uh hedonists like like nero uh they often have a very

00:21:12.940 strong degree of self-control that they they are able to master their passions for the sake of this

00:21:21.020 long-term goal and then if you turn to the modern age you you can look at these modern state building

00:21:29.900 despots as i call them uh who aim to uh crush the church centralized authority under the secular state

00:21:40.620 the tutors louis the 16th frederick the great peter the great napoleon i think they all fit into this

00:21:48.780 category yeah and speaking of i mean i thought it was really interesting is that you make the case that

00:21:55.180 these enlightenment ideals of individual liberty the consent of the governed uh were actually made possible

00:22:02.940 by reforming tyrants like the tutors and henry like so can you explain how did tyrants make the make

00:22:09.580 pave the way for uh individual liberty and sort of self-governance right it it's it's an interesting

00:22:17.180 story it's full of paradoxes but you can basically say that europe followed two paths to modernity

00:22:25.580 following i would say machiavelli's script machiavelli said the state could be ruled effectively

00:22:32.540 either by people's meaning republics or by princes the goal of either was to maximize the security and

00:22:41.980 well-being of all now in england and america self-government evolved more or less peacefully not not

00:22:50.300 entirely so there were civil wars but compared to europe more or less peacefully because by the time the

00:22:58.540 constitutional governments were formed the values of individualism and commercial self-interest were

00:23:05.740 already very deeply rooted now in europe by contrast the forces opposed to modernity the aristocracy the

00:23:15.180 church remained very much stronger and more formidable so that their societies had to be modernized from the top

00:23:24.300 down but with the same ultimate goals in mind you think of napoleon napoleon exported liberal values

00:23:33.820 through his conquests self-government religious toleration more rights for women meritocracy and so

00:23:42.220 by the 19th century i would say that having taken these two very different paths europe and america met in the

00:23:49.340 same place gotcha uh and then also you talk about how the top down um reforms took place in russia as well

00:23:58.460 with frederick the great and the like absolutely yeah um but they saw them they saw themselves as

00:24:07.340 creating societies where the individual would be liberated they they sincerely saw themselves as

00:24:14.540 wielding power to bring about modern societies in which the lot of the average person would be improved

00:24:22.460 but did they still want to maintain power oh absolutely absolutely you can't take the tyrant out of the

00:24:29.020 tyrant they they were often supremely ambitious people or very militaristic like like frederick the

00:24:36.380 great i mean he spent half his life in the saddle they they often wanted to in enlarge their domains

00:24:44.620 they wanted bigger countries to modernize and and that was a part of the paradox they they

00:24:51.420 they certainly did not believe in democracy or self-government they might have wanted to help

00:24:57.020 improve a lot of the average person but they were definitely going to remain in the driver's seat

00:25:03.180 and i mean did they i mean here's another question i think is important so is it possible to be i mean

00:25:08.700 are these classes of tyrants are they mutually exclusive or is it possible to have shades of all

00:25:13.020 three so you can be a reforming tyrant but still be a garden variety tyrant as well i think it's possible

00:25:19.180 to have shades of all three they're not uh they're not fixed distinctions they they kind of

00:25:26.060 blur into each other on occasion i mean i would say somebody today like vladimir putin

00:25:34.860 is a combination of of all three i i i would describe them as uh as a as a kleptocrat and a reformer

00:25:44.380 with a side dish of millenarianism okay well let's speak of speaking of millenarianism the the third type

00:25:50.940 of tyrant third class is called millenarian tyrants and you argue this is actually this type of tyranny

00:25:57.020 is a modern development um so what sets it apart from the other two types of tyranny and how did it

00:26:03.180 develop what i think sets it apart starting with the jacob and terror of the french revolution

00:26:12.060 in 1792 was the attempt to return to what the jacobins called the year one

00:26:18.780 uh a golden age of of alleged complete equality no property no classes and the individual submerged in

00:26:30.700 the collective of a totalitarian state in other words it was an attempt to create utopia on earth

00:26:37.980 overnight it begins as i said with robespierre robespierre thought he was bringing about

00:26:45.020 john jacques rousseau's golden age the state of nature when we all lived in bliss and equality

00:26:52.860 and i think starting here as well is that there's always a group some race or class that stands in

00:27:01.020 the way and has to be exterminated so that all mankind can live in bliss forever for the jacobins 1.00

00:27:09.500 it was the bourgeoisie and the aristos for lenin and stalin it was the kulak or so-called rich peasant 0.63

00:27:17.020 for hitler it was the jews so i'm arguing that this line of descent runs from the jacobins to the

00:27:23.900 bolsheviks the nazis chairman mao the khmer rouge and jihadist groups today like isis

00:27:31.260 so i mean that's interesting uh yeah that rousseau was kind of the guy i mean what did did rousseau

00:27:39.180 like did he advocate for this sort of thing like this sort of return or did individuals read his work

00:27:45.020 and they were like you know we're just gonna actually make that happen i think it's more the

00:27:49.580 latter a fair reading of rousseau probably would would make you conclude that he didn't intend

00:27:57.340 that sort of outcome but on the other hand his rhetoric was very inflammatory right property is

00:28:04.860 theft man must be forced to be free when someone like robespierre came along he could cherry pick

00:28:12.220 those inflammatory phrases and convince himself that he was bringing about

00:28:17.660 jean-jacques dream of the state of nature in in the here and now gotcha um so

00:28:26.060 part of the the millenarian tyrants uh tactic is to to cleanse the earth right use mass killing

00:28:33.580 to cleanse the earth so they can get back to this what you call history behind the history 0.80

00:28:38.300 um but you know garden variety tyrants and reforming tyrants would also kill thousands or hundreds of 0.72

00:28:42.860 thousands of people to further their agenda how does the violence of millenarian um tyrants differ

00:28:50.700 from you know garden variety tyrants and uh reforming tyrants it's it's a fair point um i would first

00:28:58.860 point i guess to the sheer scale of the violence in other words in a mere year and a half during

00:29:07.340 the jacobin terror in france something like a quarter of a million people were killed uh and of course later 1.00

00:29:16.060 on uh with full-blown totalitarianism that became millions and tens of millions of people the the

00:29:24.940 methodical slaughter of entire races and classes what what is sometimes referred to as the industrialized

00:29:33.820 murder of the holocaust i would say this began with the jacobins too because the jacobins did not kill 0.87

00:29:42.460 randomly they liquidated entire groups of people they began the whole litany of horrors of mass firing

00:29:52.780 squads and pits they sometimes just opened fire with cannons on people uh it it was really the kickoff to

00:30:01.420 what became all too familiar in in the 20th century and i'd also say that it's different

00:30:09.020 from other kinds of tyrannical violence because of this genocidal component in other words if you're a

00:30:17.100 member of the designated race or class standing in the way of utopia you're going to be killed whether

00:30:24.460 you oppose the regime or not even if you support it and that's not true of ordinary tyranny i think

00:30:31.900 assad kills people because they threaten his monopoly on power if you give in you won't be killed 0.96

00:30:39.420 if you were a jew willing to give in to hitler you'd still be killed just as isis will kill you if you are 1.00

00:30:46.940 a christian so i think i think that's an important difference okay so yeah you make the provocative 0.97

00:30:53.100 argument that islamist jihadism uh that with we're seeing with al-qaeda isis etc get most of its

00:31:00.860 inspiration from rousseau heidegger and sartre and these like you know french philosophy existential

00:31:06.540 philosophers rather than islam um you know islam is a component of it but the the inspiration of what

00:31:12.620 they're doing um comes from these existential philosophers and rousseau so can you explain that

00:31:18.860 a bit that argument you have yeah um i'm basically arguing that the notion of an authentic people of

00:31:29.020 destiny which heidegger identified with national socialism makes a migration from the far right to the far

00:31:40.540 left left under neo-marxist thinkers like fanon and sartre so that

00:31:48.220 the proletariat of classic marxist theory is now replaced with this notion of the people

00:31:55.820 and the destiny of the people now as to its connection with jihadist ideology

00:32:03.660 first of all i'd say that it's pretty well documented and and i try to show it in the book

00:32:11.260 other scholars like bernard lewis have made the same sorts of connections just to take one example

00:32:17.340 the intellectual godfather of the iranian revolution ali shariati studied in paris and was influenced we

00:32:25.820 know by sartre fanon and heidegger just like paul pop by the way uh at roughly the same time

00:32:34.300 so uh i i think that it's important that um we understand the extent to which

00:32:43.100 jihadist ideology is really in my opinion a totalitarian ideology that is masquerading as a

00:32:51.100 religious movement and i mean why is it important that you know western democracies understand

00:32:58.940 that jihadism is a strand of millenarian tyranny i think it's important because we need to 1.00

00:33:06.700 bear in mind that islam traditionally doesn't believe that man can create a perfect society on earth

00:33:15.500 through his own efforts especially not through secular revolution any more than do christianity or

00:33:23.980 judaism shariati said repeatedly he wanted to create a classless society in iran that's that's marxism

00:33:33.340 and not only that but all of these jihadist groups have no interest in the history of their own

00:33:40.140 religion they simply erase the history of islam with its centuries-long experience of statecraft 0.99

00:33:49.580 and its high culture so i think it's important to encourage moderate muslims by signaling that we

00:33:59.580 non-muslims understand that jihadism is a perversion of their true faith and i think that precisely by 0.98

00:34:07.820 refusing to discuss it or name it we actually allow the perception to grow that islam is indistinguishable

00:34:16.380 from islamism and going going bring the connection back to masculinity so you know a common argument

00:34:22.700 that i've read in the past 10 years about why young men are drawn to jihadism uh and it usually the the

00:34:32.300 rational actor theory is thrown out they don't have money there's no jobs the economy is terrible but

00:34:37.420 you met you argue and you point out it's true that most of the people most of the young men who

00:34:42.300 join jihad like they come from middle class or well-to-do families um so what's drawing these young

00:34:49.980 men to jihadism when they you know they they're middle class they're going to schools they can have

00:34:55.740 they enjoy comforts what's the draw what's the appeal yeah in many cases they're already enjoying all of

00:35:02.700 the benefits of western society so so what what's the problem well i i think that we have a chronic

00:35:10.940 tendency to underestimate the power of conviction we still go on believing that somehow if people have

00:35:21.020 more prospects for jobs if they have more prospects for economic affluence that the sources of their

00:35:29.980 aggression will melt away but unfortunately i think it's possible for people to have a principled

00:35:39.100 conviction that the west is despicable and needs to be brought down now you can say do they always have

00:35:48.060 that sincere conviction no some of them are just nihilists right they just enjoy mayhem and violence but

00:35:56.060 some of them really do have that uh that righteous zeal and and the belief that they are serving a

00:36:02.940 higher cause and i i think we just have to realize that even if the vast majority of potential uh terrorists

00:36:12.620 could be won over by economic progress there's still going to be a significant rump of people who are

00:36:21.500 motivated by conviction and so i mean what's the best way to approach millenarian millenarian tyrants

00:36:29.260 who are convicted who are convinced that their cause is righteous and that is i'm gonna put you on the

00:36:34.220 spot here while you're going to solve this problem right now um what's the best way to defeat isis

00:36:41.020 um you know in addition to what i said about encouraging moderate muslims

00:36:47.020 uh uh by the way something like 50 percent of american muslims do not believe that their own

00:36:54.780 leaders are forceful enough in criticizing extremism but unfortunately in the case of isis i think it's

00:37:04.380 got to be military defeat in the first instance and and here's why all jihadist movements want to control

00:37:12.540 a state where they can create their utopia right jihadism is always a two-pronged enterprise it's 0.56

00:37:20.460 bring down the west but it's also build a truly muslim state now before isis only the iranian revolution 0.68

00:37:29.020 had achieved this and isis's allure today has a lot to do with its claim to have established such

00:37:38.300 a theocratic theocratic state the stepping stone to a worldwide caliphate and i'm afraid that that

00:37:45.100 allure really has to be removed at its source all right and that's done militarily militarily yeah and

00:37:53.580 and of course you know i i don't have the expertise to say how precisely but because a lot of isis's

00:38:02.620 revolutionary a law comes from this claim that this is the stepping stone toward the worldwide

00:38:10.300 caliphate i i think until you can sort of shatter that claim that the appeal of it is going to be

00:38:18.620 very hard to eradicate okay so at the end of the book you argue that one of the antidotes to tyranny

00:38:25.100 is reading the great books so how does reading the iliad or the city of god or the prince how does

00:38:32.380 that prevent tyranny what i'm trying to say is that people have to have what i call a homeopathic

00:38:40.460 cure for the temptation to tyrannize in other words you have to know something about tyranny

00:38:48.140 both as a form of government and as a psychological category before you can spot it coming and that

00:38:57.340 means studying the history of statesmanship great literature wherever we can find depictions of the

00:39:08.300 varieties of tyranny the personality types and their struggle uh with the forces of of freedom

00:39:17.900 people have to immerse themselves into this in a way they have to enter the imagination of the tyrant to

00:39:25.020 an extent uh before they're going to spot this danger either abroad or or or in our in in our own midst

00:39:34.140 okay and so in the book you you provide a great reading list at the very end with a bibliography

00:39:39.340 of uh books that hit on this topic right yeah i i call them the next best books uh we need we need the

00:39:49.500 great books but we also need history to to kind of fill the gap in people's experiences especially young

00:39:56.860 people um and so i've got i've got about 300 of what i consider to be really great histories and

00:40:05.740 biographies some novels uh about statesmanship and tyranny to supplement the great books well waller

00:40:15.020 this has been a great conversation um before we go i mean is there any where people can go to check

00:40:19.340 out more about your work and learn more about your book tyranny uh well the book uh is available from

00:40:26.380 amazon and barnes and noble it was just published in the uk and europe there may soon be italian and

00:40:33.740 portuguese translations and my website wallernewel.com uh contains information about all my publications and

00:40:45.020 appearances and pretty much everything i've done great well waller newell thank you so much for

00:40:49.500 your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure brett thank you for having me my guest today was waller

00:40:55.100 newell he's the author of the book tyranny you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:40:59.420 also make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash tyranny for more links to resources

00:41:04.220 where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:41:19.420 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:41:23.500 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this show i

00:41:27.820 would really appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher or recommend us to a friend

00:41:32.540 it goes a long way as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay

00:41:36.780 telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 26, 2016

#220： Tyrants-- A History of Power, Injustice, & Terror

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