When is it time to leave a place where things have become difficult? And when it's time to settle in and fight for the place where you're from? In this episode, I chat with Ernest Gynning about this question, and why it's important to fight for your home.
00:01:49.220And just a little bit of context here for tonight's broadcast here from the dark continent is that I'm currently sitting in the middle of a rolling blackout.
00:01:58.160So that's why my lighting is a bit ominous.
00:02:00.360I'm using my backup little battery light here.
00:02:03.280And then also my internet modem is hooked up to a small battery, but otherwise it's pitch black dark out there.
00:02:12.560Yeah, it's the excitement of broadcasting from South Africa.
00:02:17.360And we'll get into a lot of the implications of that here as we go along.
00:02:21.900I know that the organization you're a part of has a lot of different approaches to that kind of thing.
00:02:27.380So that'll certainly work into our larger discussion.
00:02:30.820But the reason I wanted to have you on is there was this debate at the beginning of the year.
00:02:36.020A lot of people in our sphere probably saw it.
00:02:38.660It was Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, and Peter Hitchens.
00:02:43.640And they were going back and forth about the future of Britain.
00:02:48.540Peter Hitchens, to his credit, has been saying for many, many decades that Britain was in a very bad state, much worse than people understood.
00:02:57.040That things like the Tory party were actually a great threat to Britain, not a vehicle for conserving it.
00:03:05.620And, you know, again, in his defense, he was right about a lot of those things.
00:03:09.700But kind of his approach was, okay, well, this is over.
00:03:16.640The only thing left to do now is leave Britain and start somewhere new.
00:03:20.540And Carl Benjamin took umbrage with that.
00:03:23.180And he said, you know, look, this is my home, and I don't care how bad things have gotten, you know, whether you think they're in a fixable state or not.
00:03:34.320I want this for the next generation of Englishmen.
00:03:37.920And so they kind of had a back and forth.
00:03:40.220And they've kind of made up in certain ways since then.
00:03:43.120But the first thing I thought of was your essay.
00:03:45.920You did an excellent essay, and I am 1776, about kind of what it means to fight for your country when you need to leave and when you need to stay.
00:03:55.480You've thought about this kind of thing a lot.
00:03:57.780And so I wanted to have you on to talk a little bit about that subject.
00:04:02.120So I guess let's go ahead and start at the beginning.
00:04:05.040How does one know when it's time to leave a place where, you know, things have become very difficult, not a place that maybe people want to live with their families?
00:04:16.820And when is it time to kind of settle in and fight for the place where you're from?
00:04:23.160So I just wanted to quickly mention something that's very ironic, specifically from my experience as a South African and Afrikaner, is the fact that the top destination where South Africans immigrate to is the United Kingdom to flee from South Africa.
00:04:39.760So that's just something that I found very funny regarding the context that you gave before the conversation.
00:04:45.480Now, that whole question about when is the time to move and when is the time to hunker down and to fight for something bigger or towards an ideal, this is something that specifically Afrikaners have been really fighting with and thinking about for a very long time.
00:05:05.000That's specifically why in my piece I use the history of the Afrikaner specifically to convey my point.
00:05:11.240All these different points in all these different points in our history, we've been faced with that question many times over hundreds of years.
00:05:18.340Just to name two major examples, the first time this will help answer the question is specifically with the Great Trek.
00:05:25.520So in 1806, you have the British Empire taking control of the Cape, 1806, and instituting a ruthless process of Anglicization and cultural suppression there at the southern tip, there at the Cape Colony.
00:05:45.020And as empires tend to do, I think this is not something unique to South Africa, and that was the primary inspiration behind the Great Trek, where my ancestors, the Boers, trekked into the unknown interior.
00:05:58.000They had decided that it was a time to move, and maybe to demonstrate the point of this is not just a move away for more material wealth or for more security or for better prospects.
00:06:10.540This is actually quite the opposite, they're moving for immaterial things, they're moving for things that can't be quantified.
00:06:18.020So they would have been far better off materially if they had stayed in the Cape under British rule, under British occupation.
00:06:27.460They would have had better business opportunities, better security, better infrastructure, better schools, better pretty much everything, service delivery, everything.
00:06:37.260And then they chose to leave behind their farms, leave behind most of their belongings and trek into the unknown.
00:06:44.160This is during a time where there's very little known about what's north, where are we going?
00:06:48.180Well, anything's better than living here where we're being, our identity is being wiped out.
00:06:52.900So they were trekking for something that you can't quantify, you can't put into, put a monetary value on it.
00:06:58.920So the second example is the example of not moving, but when it was a time to dig, the first and the second.
00:07:08.940During that war, that's after the Boers had trekked into the interior, they had established two fledgling republics, the Urania Freistad and the Transvaal Republic.
00:07:18.240And those two republics then discovered gold and diamonds.
00:07:22.700So once again, the eyes of empire fell on them and the British pretty much wanted that gold and those diamonds.
00:07:31.900And that leads to the breakouts of the first and the second Anglo-Boer war.
00:07:36.840And during that time, the Boers didn't move.
00:07:39.140They then decided now is the time to dig a trench, quite literally.
00:07:43.100So when faced with an existential crisis, this time around, they decided that this time they have to stay and fight.
00:07:50.680But at both times, it was an existential threat that needed an answer.
00:07:55.080But both times, they chose their identity and their culture and their community over material wealth, over security, over prosperity, if you will.
00:08:05.220They chose something bigger or higher than themselves, something that you can't really put into monetary value,
00:08:10.840which I find very interesting, which then leads to the answer to your question.
00:09:33.560You have to start over is, you know, there was a point at which the globe had places.
00:09:40.220You know, you could head to the heart of Africa, you could head, you know, to to to the new world, you could head westward and expand and people could escape this kind of thing.
00:09:51.500But it's increasingly clear that when you're fleeing one area, you're only heading to a place that's heading the same direction, but slower.
00:10:01.160You know, I know you've said this many times.
00:10:03.540You know, you guys are a few decades into the future of much of the West.
00:10:08.440And that's a difficult thing, for sure.
00:10:11.740Yeah, it's a it's the saying of living somewhere where the future has already happened somewhere.
00:10:18.380The future has already happened somewhere like many European countries in the United States.
00:10:22.840You're still living in a blissful past where you're still waiting for the future to happen.
00:10:28.100But why would you give up the opportunity to get a free glimpse into the future?
00:10:33.660I mean, that's the most perfect opportunity.
00:10:35.100But there's another important point that you made there about in the past there were places to to run to or to flee to a good example is specifically what Alistair Sparks, a South African political commentator, wrote about in the early 90s.
00:10:51.360So he wrote then when power, when the 1994 elections were on the horizon, he wrote about the cultural anxiety that he saw Afrikaners experiencing around him.
00:11:04.140And he himself wasn't an Afrikaner, he was an English speaking South African, but he understood the anxiety he wrote.
00:11:10.820He wrote in his book that because what he saw around him, he just looked at his own experience and the experience of the Afrikaners.
00:11:16.820And he realized that should this 1994 experiment of new South Africa not work out, Alistair Sparks realized that he could emigrate to as an English South African to any other country in the Anglosphere, whether that be Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England and the like.
00:11:34.820And he would still be relatively at home in a community that speaks his language and largely shares his values and his culture and his British heritage with him.
00:11:43.480That's not the case with the Afrikaners.
00:11:54.540We very clearly and distinctly become our own cultural group and our own group here at the southern tip of Africa, the folk, if you will.
00:12:05.620And we don't have anywhere else where we can go.
00:12:08.600We will be surrounded by our people, people that speak our language and that share our culture.
00:12:13.660And a good example of that is where during the Anglo-Boer War, the Boer General Christian de Vete, I think it was Christian de Vete that said, let me just check here, that said, yes, that I would rather stand with my people on a dunghill than in a palace among strangers.
00:12:35.840So that's at the end, near to the end of the Anglo-Boer War.
00:12:40.180And you have to understand it in the context as well of nearing the end of the Anglo-Boer War is that you're in a situation where your guerrilla fighters are fighting against this empire, against the existential threat.
00:12:54.240But your women and children have been put into concentration camps and they're dying at a rate where more women and children died during those concentration camps, Boer women and children, then soldiers on both sides combined.
00:13:05.460And then the Boer resistance basically came to the conclusion that it's worth our extinction.
00:13:13.040That was pretty much the conclusion that they came to.
00:13:15.420We have to surrender because if we keep fighting, we're fighting for our sovereignty, but there's not going to be any of our women and children left if we do.
00:13:23.200So, once again, that's the point that they've reached.
00:13:30.740van Weyck Lowe, one of the great Afrikaner philosophers, that actually demonstrates this perfectly where he says,
00:13:37.240as is always the case in South Africa, it is the Afrikaner who is once again in the trenches.
00:13:42.380Because of him, because for him, it is not primarily about profit or loss, but about survival or ruin.
00:13:50.480So, again, you're at this point where it's not just a case about deciding, should I go to somewhere where I'm going to have better opportunities or not, better safety or not?
00:13:58.920But it's a question of, am I willing to move somewhere and my identity going extinct?
00:14:04.640Am I willing to be part of that generation that forgoes our Afrikaner identity and becomes and assimilates into a new one abroad?
00:14:13.540Yeah, I think it was really important, too, when you were talking about, like, look, sometimes you might have to move to preserve your people and your way of life.
00:14:22.440It's not always about just staying. It's it's it's not focusing on the material.
00:14:28.140And that's really important because, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people today in America have this narrative of the land of opportunity, which it certainly was like it's a it's a real part of the American experience was the people who better their fortune and materially prospered, you know, by taking chances in America.
00:14:48.180But people also, I think, then forget that so many of those who fled to America were themselves attempting to protect their identity, were saw themselves as persecuted, saw their way of life as being eliminated in other parts of, you know, Western society at the time.
00:15:04.740And they wanted to move somewhere, you know, to protect that as well.
00:15:09.160And so that focus and that understanding of, you know, the material might be part of the story, but really, at the end of the day, whether you're moving or staying, it's the protection of a way of life and a culture and a people.
00:15:22.960And I think, you know, and you mentioned this a little bit before we get started, so we'll kind of get a little deeper into this, but I think one of the big one of the big differences between like Hitchens and and and Carl Benjamin was that I guess maybe Hitchens thought that the way of life could continue or that there was no cost for leaving the geographic region of his ancestors.
00:15:50.080As where Benjamin was specifically like, no, we're here, this is where I want my children to be raised, it matters to me.
00:15:57.300It's not there, you know, we're not just moving somewhere else and fundamentally changing the way we live and the people around us and the land around us so that, you know, we don't have to deal with difficulty.
00:16:09.420We're going to be here and we're going to be part of this and that's going to be an essential part of who we are and who my children will be.
00:16:16.600And I think that's something that not enough people understand when they say, oh, just move, it'll be fine.
00:16:21.700Yeah, Oren, this is where it gets a bit controversial, not in a sense that YouTube is going to do anything to you, but in a controversial way, it gets emotionally controversial because it is a difficult decision for many people.
00:16:34.380I mean, I come from a culture that is now being very negatively affected by a very high immigration rate.
00:16:40.760A lot of Afrikaners are immigrating to other countries and have been for a long time, but there is a critical question here that needs to be addressed or a critical perspective rather that needs to be looked at.
00:16:52.880A lot of people that advocate moving, like Mr. Hitchens, will often have a bias towards just looking at all the benefits of moving, but when they are asked and they will pretty much just in passing mention the cost and say, yeah, of course, it's not going to be all sunshine and roses and some vague passing comment, but they don't really get into the real dark side of the real implications of moving.
00:17:20.520Like I said, as I mentioned earlier, one of the heavy costs is the fact that your children will not grow up sharing your identity.
00:17:31.260If an Afrikaner like me were to immigrate to Australia, to Canada, to the United States, my children will be growing up as young Americans, Canadians or Australians.
00:17:41.420They will not speak Afrikaans if they are very young.
00:17:44.320If they are born there, they will definitely not speak Afrikaans as their first language.
00:17:48.160Even if I do everything within my power to raise them in Afrikaans, my language, they will not marry another Afrikaner in the United States or Australia, except if I'm an incredibly cruel parent and say that they're only allowed to marry another Afrikaner in that country.
00:18:06.440It's almost certain the next generation will be Americans, Australians, Canadians, whatever.
00:18:33.880My ancestors have been here since 1688.
00:18:37.240My ancestors have been in South Africa or Southern Africa longer than the United States has been a country.
00:18:42.580They've gone through wars and treks and a lot of trials and tribulations, and they're still here.
00:18:47.780And for me to move now, especially to move to the Anglosphere would be a very big, a strange thing if I were to tell my ancestors this is what it's come to.
00:19:01.920You fought against the British Empire, and your descendant is now moving to the center of it.
00:19:11.420The main thing, and I've written extensively about this, but in Afrikaans, because, like I said, the whole immigration question is a very sensitive but also important debate within the Afrikaner community.
00:19:35.620They are costs that you can't, like I said, put a price on.
00:19:38.380They're not costs that you can quantify.
00:19:41.460They are costs that your ancestors understood very well.
00:19:44.500My ancestors understood them very well.
00:19:46.820But if you're willing to make those costs, take those costs where the people that come after you, your descendants, don't share your identity, your culture, or your heritage, that's fine.
00:21:44.620But you should also, or are you moving or staying to preserve your identity or to practice your religion or many of those things that you can't put a price or a quantity on?
00:22:07.020But again, I think it is because it is dealing with things that are very deep.
00:22:10.980It's dealing with things that, that are not willing to admit that this all is about matters as deep as identity and your existential, existential issues.
00:22:24.720Your subconscious understands that it is.
00:22:27.480And that's why it's such a provocative and emotional debate because your subconscious and deep down, you know what's at stake, even if you're not really willing to admit it openly at that point.
00:22:39.980Get unlimited grocery delivery with PC Express Pass.
00:22:56.200Now, I'm interested, and obviously this dynamic might be very different in South Africa, but it is a dynamic that I think plays out in both America and Britain.
00:23:05.560So maybe you can tell me if there's a similar one there.
00:23:08.260I think a lot of this for people is generational.
00:23:12.200I think that a lot of the previous generations in both America and the UK felt like they were doing fine, or maybe some of them realized that something was wrong, and like Hitchens, they pushed back, but they weren't really effective in it.
00:23:27.900And now that perhaps the tipping point has come, so many people of that generation, you know, kind of the boomerish generation or the late Gen X, they look at it and they say, well, I did my part and it didn't work.
00:23:42.260And so there's just no solution now, as opposed to where it's the young, I think, who see this as something that has to change.
00:23:50.940You know, the ones saying, no, we can't just sit back and say, the game is done.
00:23:57.780And so I wonder if, again, it could be very different in South Africa, but is there a generational aspect to this as well?
00:24:05.500In South Africa, not as, in my experience, not as clearly in South Africa, there's more of a heritage or background aspect to it.
00:24:18.900So if you grew up in a household that didn't really instill values or a sentimental nature or appreciation for your culture or a pride or appreciation for being a Boer or for your heritage or taking pride and taking many positive emotions from your identity and your identity is very important to you.
00:24:42.820If you grew up in that type of household, then in my experience, those types of people are a lot more connected to Africa and would rather stay here, even if things get tough, to give their children that opportunity as well.
00:24:58.200Because there are things that are, like I said earlier, keep getting back to that.
00:25:02.120There are things that you can't quantify.
00:25:03.580There are things that, I mean, I wrote about this in a recent piece for the European Conservative as well, where if you compare Africa to Europe or the Western world, I mean, there's a lot of security and material prosperity in the West, but it's also being ravaged by mental health catastrophes and a struggle to find meaning in monotonous modern life.
00:25:27.300There are things that you have many youth communities of identity, and the thing is, it doesn't really happen in places where people have a strong sense of identity.
00:25:41.040When you have a strong sense of identity, there's something that roots you, there's something that you can stand on some solid ground, even if things around you are quite tough.
00:25:50.060And I think Samuel Huntington actually put it best where, I mean, he wrote that very seminal and very inspirational and prophetic essay back in 1997 called The West and the Rest.
00:26:05.000And in that essay, he says that in the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among people are not ideological, political, economic, they are cultural.
00:26:16.500People and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face, and that question is, who are we?
00:26:23.140And they are answering that question in the traditional way, by reference to the things that mean most to them.
00:26:28.400So that again comes back to that point of you have to personally ask yourself what is most important to you.
00:26:33.740That's going to vary from person to person.
00:26:35.600You can't really prescribe that to any specific person, that these are the things that you have to value.
00:26:40.420You're going to have to ask yourself genuinely deep down what are the things that at your core form a part of you and that you can't just throw away.
00:26:50.320And that's important because if Huntington is right and that our time is going to be defined by quests and the quests for identity, quests for community,
00:27:01.200that we have boatloads of here in my community here in Southern Africa, as dysfunctional as it may be.
00:27:09.740Me and my colleagues, for example, know exactly who we are, where we come from, and where we're going.
00:27:14.460And that, I mean, I'm here, if what I was telling you here, Oren, if I was just LARPing, or if I was just pretending,
00:27:23.840I think that would be a very dangerous LARP if I'm here in Africa.
00:27:28.260I mean, I'm kind of the proof of my own theory or the proof of my own convictions that I'm still here sitting in a rolling blackout.
00:27:36.620Well, I wonder, do you think, is it a function of affluence and ease, the inability to maintain and find meaning through identity?
00:27:47.860Do you think that's a major component in eroding that?
00:27:51.600It's interesting that you mentioned that because just the other day I read about, so there was this cartoon strip in the newspaper in the 1950s,
00:28:05.640in the Afrikaans newspaper about the Afrikaners.
00:28:08.460And in that comic strip, it was telling the story of, so you have this people here, the Afrikaners at the southern tip of Africa,
00:29:22.560Yeah, and yeah, a huge question, of course, here in America as well.
00:29:28.340And I guess, you know, one of the, you want to, I'll just go ahead and read the line because I really enjoy this line from your piece here.
00:29:35.060Again, if you guys haven't read it, it's over at IM1776.
00:30:00.480The benefits of living in good times is that you have ample opportunities to live a comfortable life.
00:30:05.480And the advantage of living in hard times is that you have plenty of opportunities to live a great life.
00:30:10.420And I think there also really dovetails with something else that you said in that piece about the cowardice of asking your children to fight this for you later.
00:30:34.680And you don't really need to worry or sacrifice on its behalf.
00:30:37.680But that's exactly, it feels like when it's not secure, when things could so easily fall apart.
00:30:43.900Like you said, that's the greatest temptation.
00:30:45.460And just, you know, the need, you have to care about something even if you think it might, even if you think times are good.
00:30:55.300Because when you don't, that's when things will get particularly difficult.
00:30:58.480Right. And that's actually a conclusion, that line that you just read from my piece is actually a conclusion that I've come to just from seeing the contrast between the province where I used to live and the province where I live now.
00:31:12.180So I grew up in the Western Cape, which is much better off in regards to job opportunities and service delivery and security than many of the other provinces.
00:31:22.960And now that I live here in Gauteng, it's a lot different.
00:31:28.100Here it's, when it comes to service delivery, security, it's a whole different ballgame.
00:31:37.540And I realized that there was a good example of it is with neighborhood watches.
00:31:41.920So in the Western Cape, a lot has changed recently, the Western Cape has actually woken up now and started to take their security a lot more seriously.
00:31:50.100But back in the day when I was growing up, things like neighborhood watches weren't really that big of a deal in the Western Cape.
00:31:57.360They were things that people almost did like a hobby, but not really out of necessity.
00:32:01.320But when I came here to Pretoria in Gauteng, here it's a lot different.
00:32:06.040Here people don't do neighborhood watch because it's like a hobby.
00:32:11.020So you get, it's not just a bunch of people that are bored, that are driving around.
00:32:15.300It's people that are very serious about their community because they realize if they don't do it, nobody's going to do it.
00:32:21.340And then their family and their community is at stake.
00:32:24.320So a lot of people always in the U.S. and in Europe, I see, specifically young people, I see lamenting the fact that where are all these great men?
00:32:34.300Where are all these great figures that we read about in history?
00:32:38.400Well, if the temperature isn't high enough and the pressure isn't high enough, those people don't have to come to the fore.
00:32:44.480It's almost like a certain type of pressure or a certain type of temperature where then those people rise to the surface, almost in like a chemical reaction.
00:32:54.800If you're living in a society where the emergence of great and courageous men is not really necessary, then those people, those men will not come to the fore.
00:33:04.440So it's not surprising that in places where it's still going very well, you're not seeing this type of man or this type of person coming to the fore.
00:33:12.900That only happens when times get tough.
00:33:14.880So to get back to that line, yes, in good times, you have the opportunity to live a comfortable life and an ample opportunity.
00:33:22.600And in the hard times, you have ample opportunity to live a great life.
00:33:25.920In hard times, you're also going to have a lot of opportunity to witness great men and women come to the fore, great heroic figures around you.
00:33:33.640That's also going to be one of the things that you will notice during tough times.
00:33:37.780And don't get me wrong, what you're going through in the United States is not the hard times.
00:33:43.220No matter how many black pulls you take, you are still living in very, very comfortable, nice times.
00:33:49.460You can talk to me again when you've had only three hours of electricity a day for a year.
00:33:56.460Then we can start talking about hard times.
00:33:59.480And when you hear about people down the street, people breaking into their house and violently assaulting them,
00:34:07.980or hearing about massive unrest where dozens of trucks are being burned and people are being assaulted and attacked just on the highway
00:34:17.040because there's a massive unrest there.
00:34:20.120Things can get a lot worse, and you have to keep that in mind.
00:34:23.280I think there's a lot of danger, specifically in Western countries, for getting too ahead of yourselves and regarding,
00:34:30.100oh, now the tough times are here, the hard times are here, this is the hard times that they're talking about, the good times are gone.
00:34:38.040A nation is not something that happens overnight.
00:34:40.900It's something that happens over decades.
00:34:42.660It's not something that you're going to wake up, just as an empire doesn't fall overnight.
00:34:48.200So, too, does hard times not just appear on your door one morning, at your door one morning when you wake up.
00:34:55.900It's something that slowly and insidiously seeps into your environment and into your community.
00:35:19.860And you won't notice until it's upon you.
00:35:22.000But like I said, it doesn't happen overnight.
00:35:23.980But one day it will feel like it happened overnight because it really does catch you off guard.
00:35:28.160Yeah, I think you're right to point out that we're only at the very, very, very beginning of things here in the United States.
00:35:36.620There's still incredible material wealth and safety comparatively to situations that many, yourself included, are in.
00:35:44.180And I do hope, you know, but that's one of the reasons we have this conversation, right?
00:35:48.760One of the reasons we're talking to someone from the future is in hopes that it might change, you know, because we are seeing those things.
00:35:57.460You know, those little things that you're talking about, those signs, those indicators that do tell you that the thing, what's approaching, they are here, right?
00:36:08.640We do have unchecked riots in the streets.
00:36:12.100We do have cities that simply allow, you know, mass theft without any penalty.
00:36:18.540We do have, you know, police unable to arrest criminals due to political restraints.
00:36:27.260You know, we do have these things starting.
00:36:29.640We do see, you know, I believe, I'm trying to think, as Wells Fargo just announced that it's going to pare back its mortgage lending,
00:36:38.040except for minorities here in the United States.
00:36:41.660You know, we do see this deterioration that has occurred.
00:36:47.380The, you know, favored groups, unpoliced crime, we see this.
00:36:51.800And so it's not something that, it is here.
00:36:56.380It's nowhere near as advanced, but it is here.
00:36:58.940And so I think many people are hoping, you know, that there are options, that there are opportunities, that there are ways to advert, you know, some of this.
00:37:06.700And so that's kind of the second part I wanted to talk to you about, because I know a big part of what you do is being involved in an organization that is about the trench digging, right?
00:37:15.900And so now that we kind of have talked about, you know, when and why you might dig trenches, I want to talk a little more about what that actually looks like, because so many people in America are looking at the system and saying,
00:37:30.060this can't be solved, the institutions are redeemable, what do we do now?
00:37:36.680And I think you're living in a situation where the state institutions are already well beyond that.
00:37:43.500But you guys are looking at alternatives in order to protect your community and ensure the well-being of communities like that.
00:37:51.800Can you talk a little bit about kind of the work with your organization, the work that they do, and these alternative institutions, you know, that might be able to help people through difficult times like that when they're trench digging?
00:38:02.840Hmm. So what the organization that I work for is called AFRI Forum, which is a community-based solutions organization and also a civil rights organization.
00:38:14.840Not in the, it's strange in South Africa, when you mention civil rights, Americans think of very much specifically in their context.
00:38:23.540But South Africa has its own context surrounding that. But anyway, so we have 300,000 donating members.
00:38:31.660So it's not just a little button that you go click on the website and you become a member, like liking a Facebook page.
00:38:37.700It's you have to give a minimum amount of a donation. So you have 300,000 of those.
00:38:43.700Actually more now, I think 310 as of this week, 310,000.
00:38:48.620And we've established many things. We've established 150 neighborhood watches all across the country, farm watches as well.
00:38:56.960We've developed emergency service, emergency support services, and we have more than 155 AFRI Forum branches all across the country.
00:39:06.940And these branches do everything from painting street signs, filling potholes, planting trees, planting community vegetable gardens to help people in their community that need it.
00:39:18.620And a lot more, we've got our own publishing company, film and documentary production company, own theater, and that we are just one branch or one part of a much larger solidarity movement.
00:39:33.380So the solidarity movement has many other organizations as part of it in a network.
00:39:39.580And these organizations focus on other things.
00:39:42.040So they focus on, for example, helping the hunt, helping hand focuses on helping people in the community that need assistance, like the children that don't have food or funds to go to school.
00:39:56.140And they need the type of support, but also the solidarity movement has built, for example, well, firstly, it's established academia, which is a private tertiary education institution.
00:40:08.540And then also Soltech, which is a world-class technical college campus that we've built for, I think, 350 million rand, which was a large part of that was just through donations from our membership base.
00:40:23.160And those donations were all 10 rand donations.
00:40:28.940So the largest donation that someone gave was a dollar towards, well, less than a dollar towards building a world-class technical college that enforces and the teaching is Afrikaans, seeing as the tertiary education, the state-based tertiary education, the universities are phasing out Afrikaans.
00:40:52.460Afrikaans is under full assault and attack on South African campuses.
00:40:57.120Students are being prohibited on South African campuses from even speaking Afrikaans in public if they live in a residence, like in Afrikaans or in South Africa, you call it a residence, almost like a hostel where a bunch of students stay.
00:41:10.300They're really trying to force Afrikaans out of the public campuses, and therefore we're building, through community-based initiatives, private campuses.
00:41:19.520So, but there's a critical difference what's happening here.
00:41:22.980It's not the just libertarian line of, well, the free market will solve it.
00:41:32.440It's not just leave it up to some corporation will have a profit motive and they'll start a private university that will protect your culture.
00:41:42.340We are, as a community, organizing around a nexus and then using those funds that we gather to build what we need, cultural infrastructure.
00:41:52.620So we're not just leaving it up to the market.
00:41:54.820We are creating a de facto reality and then de jure reality will follow.
00:42:01.060That's the thing when it comes to our model, is that we are building a reality that can't be ignored.
00:42:07.720We're building a reality and then the laws will have to adapt to it.
00:42:12.440But yeah, in the end, AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement is probably the biggest proverbial trench-digging operation on the entire African continent.
00:42:23.580Definitely the largest organization of its type in the entire Southern Hemisphere with 300,000 members.
00:42:29.400But there's something very important that needs to be understood.
00:42:32.780And that is, we can't, nothing that we do can be achieved without the community and our culture and people that share our values and our vision coming together and doing their part.
00:42:47.180It's not some billionaire swooping in to come save you, organizations not funded by Afrikaner billionaires or by corporations or by the government or by anything.
00:42:58.600We have a membership base of hundreds of thousands and those people give, in dollar terms, probably three or five dollars a month.
00:43:07.380And we use that money to then build all these institutions and to build all these solutions and to fill thousands of potholes and to establish 150 neighborhood watches that get very special training in regards to being able to keep their community safe.
00:43:22.880And this is the only way, but this is what you're going to have to understand is, firstly, you can't just say, well, we'll just leave it up to the market.
00:43:29.800You're going to have to organize actively around a common vision and an ideal.
00:43:34.720You can't just say, well, if the demand is there, the corporates will fill the void.
00:43:41.560But then secondly, to rally around, you can't just say the profit motive is going to is going to result in this.
00:43:52.780It's it's a very the solidarity movement is very clearly a reaction to an existential question and an existential threat.
00:44:00.040It's not a for profit thing that just happened because some Afrikaner millionaires saw a gap in the market.
00:44:12.740I'm so glad that you brought up that point, because I think it's really essential for a lot of people in America, American conservatives especially understand, you know, there there's a lot of faith in the market and there's a lot of faith in business and understandable because so many conservatives built their, you know, middle or upper middle class existence out of the business community.
00:44:39.940You know, I just had Matthew Peterson on from New Founding yesterday because because I kind of wanted this week to be a little solutions based episode or week.
00:44:49.460And and, you know, he's talking about business solutions and networking and alternative economies.
00:44:55.740And all those things are great because you need, you know, funding has to happen and people need jobs, people need that kind of stuff.
00:45:03.200But I'm really glad that you brought up that that's not the only piece that if you strictly focus on the business, you strictly focus on the market, you won't have the organizing principle.
00:45:12.800But because these large, you know, multinational corporations, they make money by dissolving a lot of this stuff, right?
00:45:20.080Like they actually make money by making, you know, by by homogenizing a lot of this stuff and erasing the interests of different groups.
00:45:28.620And I think that making sure that people understand that if you want to protect your culture, that means an active participation by people involved in the culture, not just sitting around and waiting for some billionaire.
00:45:44.360And I mean, if it's just purely a for profit motive, I mean, then you build your your perfect institution and then some guy just comes along and say, I'll give you double the value and I'll just buy this from you.
00:45:56.840And then, of course, if it's just profit, you sell it.
00:45:59.560But our campus, for example, that we built, if some trillionaire or billionaire from somewhere says, I want to buy this campus and turn it into a world class institution, English institution,
00:46:12.100that will serve people from all across the world, we won't take that offer, even if he offers 10 times the value.
00:46:18.400That's like we're not going to take that offer because it's built for a different reason.
00:46:23.200And I keep getting back to it, a reason that you can't put a monetary value on.
00:46:27.740But what I think is also very important, there was an example from what happened in something that happened.
00:46:33.840I think it was last year in South Africa where there was an opinion piece from one of these typical, I think our version of David French here in South Africa.
00:46:41.220He wrote a piece and he said, it's all well and good that what we really need is an Afri Forum and solidarity for everyone, like one organization that represents everyone.
00:46:55.480And then my one colleague summed it up very well.
00:46:58.360And he says, well, if we represent everyone, we won't represent anyone.
00:47:01.600The whole point of Afri Forum and solidarity is that we represent, that we are working towards a very specific goal.
00:47:09.700We are working and we are, that we have a mission, that we are working towards an ideal and that we represent our members.
00:47:17.000We don't just represent some vacuous idea of like the nation or the humanity or one of those types of concepts that just, we just want to serve the globe.
00:47:31.800We, it's, it's, it's, that doesn't work.
00:47:34.680If you try to be something for everyone, you end up being something for nobody.
00:47:38.740Then you just become this ship without a captain, but because you're, if you, if you load a ship with a bunch of people that want to go to every location in the world, that ship's not going to get to any of those locations.
00:47:51.860But if you load that ship with just people that want to get to a specific location, that you're going to be damn sure that that ship's going to arrive at that location as fast as possible.
00:48:00.740So I think that's a very important point when it comes to your mission.
00:48:04.080But there's also something, I think, just something that I thought of now that that's also important on that specific topic.
00:48:13.160And that is the implications of your actions.
00:48:15.760So, or the implications of your projects and everything that you attempt.
00:48:20.540But if, if you, for example, think it's very important, this gets back to the core question of like a time, whether to move or whether to stay.
00:48:30.680Let's take the example of, and this is something that's in our circles has been talked about a lot.
00:48:35.780And you reference it very specifically sometimes like the, the need to win or the, the wanting to win.
00:48:42.460But there's a critical question that needs to be answered.
00:48:45.100And that is, are we willing to give up everything to win?
00:48:49.640Or are there some things that just can't be forfeited?
00:48:53.580And it pretty much means that we forfeit our soul in order to win like that very famous verse of what would it profit a man if he were to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?
00:49:06.280And I think that's one of the things that needs to be, that needs to be discussed robustly and honestly is that if you are willing to give up your core values in order to win, if you're willing to give up the very things that make you and your community and your people what they are, if you're willing to give up those things in order to win, then how valuable are they really?
00:49:27.560What message are you sending to people?
00:49:29.500If your whole thing is, how can you expect people to stand up for your values and for your principles and the things that you hold dearly, if you send at the same time, simultaneously a message to them, I want you to stand up for these things, but also we're willing to give to forfeit and sacrifice them in order to win.
00:49:48.660You can't expect people to stand up for their community or be proud of their heritage or their identity and that's, and if you, you can't expect young people to, to view their identity and their heritage and their community as things worth fighting and sacrificing for,
00:50:14.940if you also tell them, but you should also be able to give up those things if the going gets a little tough, you can't have both.
00:50:24.100Either these things are integral parts of who you are, your heritage, your identity, either they are integral parts of who you and your family and your community are or they're not.
00:50:35.580If, if, if you don't see them as, as that important, if you don't see them as integral, I'm going to be very hard and frank, then your culture and your identity
00:50:45.880Then being American is just your hobby.
00:50:47.880If they are not integral, if you're not willing to fight for them or to sacrifice them, then your identity is just a hobby.
00:50:53.880Yeah, no, I, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
00:50:57.880And I think the key is whether it's looking at a positive vision or whether it's looking at winning, whenever you're trying to understand either of those concepts, they can only exist if you understand the people they are in service
00:51:11.880to, right? If you're going to create a positive vision or you're going to win on behalf of a group, the only way it can happen is if you understand the values and the, you know, what does winning look like for a group involves the continuation of its values and its culture.
00:51:28.880And so if you win by decimating every bit of that, then yeah, you, you may have won nothing in, in the process, which is a really essential part of, you know, to keep it, keep in mind.
00:51:39.880I have one more question before we get to some super chats that are starting to stack up here. One of the things whenever I talk about parallel institutions that I hear from people is, well, eventually they'll just come for those institutions, right?
00:51:53.880Eventually they'll just come and they'll take whatever you built and they'll destroy it and then you'll have done nothing.
00:52:00.880What do you say to people who say, well, there's no point in building these parallel institutions because eventually at the end of the day, the state will just come and they'll, they'll demand them and then you'll have, you'll have nothing out of it.
00:52:10.880Well, the, the, the, the head of the solidarity movement flip base, or as one of my mates calls him flip based as the, as always has a very short answer for me.
00:52:19.880When I asked him that very, I asked him that very same question a few years ago.
00:52:23.880And he told me the only thing that's a bigger risk than building these institutions is not building them at all.
00:52:31.880The, the only thing that is a bigger certainty of defeat, uh, would be to just actually just accept defeat in that moment.
00:52:41.880At least we are attempting, at least there we are at the, the odds are stacked against us.
00:52:46.880There's a lot of risks and, uh, dangers in, in, yes, we are trying, we are, we are building towards something.
00:52:56.880Cause that's what our ancestors did and was successful.
00:52:59.880Our ancestors, the Boers, when they took on the British empire, I mean, you could have just said, well, it's lost.
00:53:04.880We, we can't just stand up against the biggest empire on the planet, but they did.
00:53:09.880Um, the, the Boers, when they, when they trekked into the unknown, they could have just said, well, there's no way we can survive out there.
00:53:16.880We, we just have to stay here and, and live under British rule.
00:53:19.880And, but they went on that trick and they survived and they built two republics.
00:53:27.880It's an, it, it is definitely something that can't be ignored.
00:53:30.880It's, I see one of my, one of my mates there is, uh, is naming him by his nickname.
00:53:35.880Um, it, you have to, you have to realize, uh, as flip says that, um, the only risk that is greater than trying is the risk of not doing at all.
00:53:47.880That is the biggest risk that you can take is then defeat is almost certain.
00:53:51.880So it is, it is definitely, uh, it is definitely a question that we often ask ourselves a lot, but then at the same time, uh, I don't think if, uh, if everyone, for example, in the solidarity or movement or an Afri forum, uh, if we all thought.
00:54:09.880That defeat is certain, I don't think any of us would be doing as, uh, Cortez did and, uh, burning our ships, basically.
00:54:17.880Uh, if, if, if defeat and death was certain, I don't think we would be trapping ourselves here.
00:54:23.880Um, trappings may be a strong word, but, uh, anchoring ourselves here, I should rather say.
00:54:28.880Um, I mean, technically, uh, if you really look at it, uh, if, if I took all of my meager possessions that I have and I sell everything that I have, I take out all my savings that I have.
00:54:40.880I probably could, uh, immigrate to some better, materially better off country and live not very luxuriously there, but, uh, I would be out of South Africa and Africa.
00:54:55.880But, uh, would that really be the, a better life?
00:54:59.880Would that really be, um, uh, I always think about personally, I think if my ancestors were to see what, uh, if I were to do something like that and I were to go back in time and tell my ancestors, this is what it's come to, they would, they would not look at me very approvingly.
00:55:16.880Because my ancestors, if I were to go back in time, I'd probably meet them in some cave hiding out during the Anglo-Boer War or I would, uh, meet them during the Great Depression or I would meet them working in a mine.
00:55:29.880I mean, my great grandfather during the Great Depression had to sell his farm and to go work on the mines because he didn't have, he couldn't keep the farm anymore just to, to support his family.
00:55:39.880And, uh, he did that, he, he did that sacrifice.
00:55:43.880But, uh, if he didn't do that sacrifice, I would probably not be here.
00:55:47.880So my ancestors have gone through much worse.
00:55:49.880And that's maybe a final thoughts on that question.
00:55:53.880Specifically Afrikaners, but also Westerners today.
00:55:58.880But our ancestors have gone through a lot worse.
00:56:00.880They've taken a lot worse gambling odds than us.
00:56:03.880Our odds are not great, but they're not as bad as some of the odds that our ancestors have gained.
00:56:08.880Our ancestors have gambled on and, and won.
00:56:11.880So yeah, just to finish again, I think that I always just go back to that quote from Flip where Mr. Bass said that the only risk greater than doing something would be to do nothing.
00:56:24.880And of course, fortune favors the bold, right?
00:56:27.880If you, if you go out there and take action, even if your chances were smaller before, they'll be greater than they were if you had done nothing at all.
00:56:45.880He says the fact that the U S has yet to reach the point of South Africa and their digging trenches means we should too.
00:56:52.880Winning may not occur in our lifetime, but we can turn the tide.
00:56:57.880And yeah, you know, think about those quotes.
00:57:00.880Uh, you there, there's that famous one from GK Chesterton, you know, Rome wasn't, uh, uh, uh, people didn't love Rome because it was great. Rome was great because men loved her.
00:57:12.880And if you're, if you're not willing to make that investment now, then, you know, you're like, like you said in your piece that your children will suffer for it.
00:57:21.880So, you know, like, like you said, America is pretty far away from South Africa right now.
00:57:26.880And then that, that's a good thing for us, but you know, for being willing to make those sacrifices now might, you know, increase the chances that the, your children don't have to, uh, endure that.
00:57:37.880And that's kind of worth pretty much everything at the end of the day.
00:57:42.880And just to, uh, respond to that as well, seeing as, um, I think, uh, what's relevant to conquest theory, super chat is something that I wrote about recently is that, and that specifically also the value of place.
00:57:53.880So we've been talking a lot about identity, but also specifically to zero in a little bit onto place.
00:58:00.880And that is the fact that, so you were talking about, uh, Chesterton's quotes, and I think that's perfectly demonstrated through the fact that we live now in the, I would almost say the, the, the mobile age where you can live anywhere you want and you can work mobile, mobily through the internet.
00:58:16.880And a lot of people, I mean, you probably have seen this phenomenon.
00:58:20.880Um, a lot of people are choosing now to go live in these idyllic destinations, uh, because they, these desirable little hideaway towns or whatever.
00:58:31.880They're escaping the cities, going to live in some little romantic town and they just work from home.
00:58:37.880But the thing here is, and this is critical to understand, is that with those people that move to these places, their top priority is to live in a, to work in an office with a postcard view or to live a life where they don't have to fight for their community.
00:58:54.880They move or act or moving to places, which those people that live there currently, those people have invested their lives in those places.
00:59:09.880Their ancestors have lived there for generations.
00:59:11.880They've been in those little towns and those beautiful little places through thick and thin.
00:59:16.880The reason why those places that you're moving to that are so beautiful and serene and idyllic, these trad little towns, the reason that they look like that is the fact that the people there didn't move.
00:59:28.880The people there have been working and investing and preserving those towns and their identities for hundreds of years, generations.
00:59:37.880And now a lot of these Johnny come ladies are coming to live there because they are escaping the city hell holes and to come live with a postcard view.
00:59:46.880But they're picking the fruits of intergenerational responsibilities and sacrifices that they and their ancestors didn't make.
00:59:54.880And they are oblivious to these intergenerational sacrifices and responsibilities and traditions that made those little places great that they fleeing to.
01:00:02.880So most concerning is that there's, there's little to no guarantee that these new residents that are moving there from worse places will stay and fight when similar challenges arise in those places, which made them leave their previous home in the first place.
01:00:21.880So you just move to every place as long as the going's well there, as long as it's nice and beautiful, you live there.
01:00:27.880But then when the going gets tough, when the same challenges arise, when the water rises again, you just move to higher ground again.
01:00:33.880And everyone just gets trapped in this globalist mentality of the world is your oyster.
01:00:38.880So you just move to higher ground every time the water rises until one day, the very last day, all of mankind is just, you're just trapped in, in one little spot where there's no more place to run to.
01:00:52.880Everything is gone. Everything is underwater. There's just one little island left.
01:00:57.880Then there's nowhere to run to anymore. And you've, you've failed to build walls. You've failed to build dikes. You've failed to build what was necessary to stop the, the water from rising or to stop the rising tide.
01:01:10.880You just kept fleeing until the point where there's no more ground to flee to.
01:01:15.880So that's, I think that quote from Chesterton is very important.
01:01:19.880The fact that Rome was great because people loved her, those little places that people are fleeing to and those towns, those aesthetic, beautiful traditional towns that people are going to live in now are the way they are because of intergenerational sacrifices and responsibilities.
01:01:37.880And unfortunately, frankly, the people, most of the people going to live, they just are completely oblivious to that fact.
01:01:44.880Yeah, that's so important. And this is just dominating America right now. You know, so much of America's system is federal. And this is supposed to save us because each state can live in its own way and its own culture and make its own decisions in certain areas.
01:02:00.880But what we're seeing is that red and rural America is simply being invaded by Californians and New Yorkers who are coming in and like you said, just picking the fruits of these states that said no to all these things that their states, you know, wholeheartedly embraced.
01:02:17.880And now when they arrive in Texas or Tennessee or Florida, they immediately, of course, like you said, they don't have those values, they don't care about them.
01:02:26.880And so just by their presence, they immediately start changing the the nature of those places.
01:02:31.880All the housing prices skyrocket. The people who live there in the first place can't live there anymore.
01:02:37.880The the churn of the the people coming in completely changes that intergenerational investment that you're talking about.
01:02:43.880And all of a sudden, the places they flee to look exactly like the places they left from.
01:02:48.880And so, yeah, that and the the covid in the in the mobile working option is only accelerated that phenomenon.
01:02:57.880So I think that that's a really essential observation. Yeah, we've got our post here for 999.
01:03:03.880Thank you very much, sir. Catching this late, but just wanted to say that Ernst is a real mensch.
01:03:08.880Absolutely. Is the catabolic breakdown of South Africa inevitable or is there any reality of recapturing governance over the whole nation?
01:03:20.880Let me answer that very quickly and very briefly. I don't think Afrikaners have any interest or any anything to gain from controlling the government apparatus.
01:03:34.880The thing that happened when during apartheid, when Afrikaners were in control of the government apparatus was it just degenerated our culture into state dependence.
01:03:44.880We we just got to a point where everything that the state was doing or everything that we didn't want to do, the state did for us.
01:03:53.880So we don't have to preserve our language. The state did that for you.
01:03:56.880You don't have to raise your children morally. The state did that for you.
01:03:59.880You don't have to preserve your monuments and your heritage. The state will do that for you.
01:04:03.880You don't have to start businesses and create jobs. The state will create the jobs that we need up until the very point you lose control of that state.
01:04:12.880And the state becomes an active antagonistic force against your people. Then then you're high and dry.
01:04:18.880And now suddenly then you realize the dark situation that you yourself had gotten yourself into.
01:04:24.880Now you have to start preserving your heritage from scratch. You have to fight again to preserve your language.
01:04:35.880You have to start building your own schools again because now the schools are under the administration of a government that actively wants to destroy your language and is antagonistic towards your culture.
01:04:45.880The very same apparatus that you used in the previous generation to preserve your culture and your heritage and your language is now actively being used to destroy your language and your culture and your community.
01:05:00.880So that's the lesson that we've learned is that you can't save your community through the state Leviathan.
01:05:07.880You can't keep chasing this philosophy of if only we get control of the Leviathan, then everything will be fine again.
01:05:15.880Like, no, there are costs and benefits to everything. The cost of controlling the Leviathan is that you lose all of you forget all of your abilities of being able to run your own communities yourself and to be sovereign in your own community.
01:05:29.880You give everything over to the state. You give everything over to the state. It's just a natural progression of what happens.
01:05:36.880So, yeah, to get back to the question or to the comment, it is a question. I don't think that's something that Afrikaners wish for.
01:05:44.880The loss of state control was devastating for Afrikaners culturally and we had to start from scratch again.
01:05:54.880But it was a very important lesson that we learned and now we are slowly taking things into our own hands again in regards to preserving our language, our culture, our way of life, our values.
01:06:07.880Everything now is from grassroots level being preserved and rebuilt and it's got our name on it now.
01:06:14.880It's not a government that is that's everything is not hinging on on this big government that is doing all of that, because one day that can all just be taken away from you and then you're being left high and dry.
01:06:26.880That's the lesson that we learn. So I think that's that's an important lesson that I think for Americans specifically as well.
01:06:32.880You should be careful that you don't just end up getting lost in this chase to get control over the Leviathan and without realizing that riding the Leviathan is also not it also comes with its own major costs, often insidious costs that you only realize after you get off again.
01:06:50.880All right, guys. Well, thank you for your questions. And Ernst, thanks for coming in. It's been a great discussion. If people want to find, you know, the things you've written, follow you on Twitter, you know, check out what you're working on. Where should they go?
01:07:03.880Well, they can find me at Conscious Caracal. That's on Twitter and on YouTube. On YouTube, I have a channel where I interview specifically guests that talk about topics pertaining to South Africa, but also in a broader sense, topics that people abroad can learn from.
01:07:21.880And then I also post and comment a lot on Twitter. So specifically those two platforms. And yeah, it's basically that. Thank you very much for the opportunity or enough that this is a topic that I think speaking to someone on the outside looking in as well helps me get new insights or come to new insights when it comes to it's an ongoing debate.
01:07:44.880I think it's something that's something that Afrikaners are struggling with, but struggle in a good and a negative sense. It's this weird duality where we are struggling constantly with, should you give up your identity for a secure and prosperous future or are you only two or three generations down the line?
01:08:05.880But yeah, I think what's also important, just the final thought to keep in mind is the fact that you're going to have to ask yourself, Americans, British, Europeans, Germans, whatever, all of your listeners are going to have to ask themselves personally a question.
01:08:25.120That is, whether you're willing to go down in history as the weak link, which has severed your great cultural chain connecting you to the past and the future.
01:08:35.520Are you going to be remembered as the first generation of your people who, when faced with the existential challenges of your time, answered that the challenges are too great and too insurmountable?
01:08:45.580I don't, I don't, I don't have, I don't have, have it in me to, to say that I'm going to just give over to being, saying fine, the challenges are too big and I'm willing to go down in history as the first generation to say that.
01:09:01.600Because I know I'm the first, I would be the first generation to say that because of the generations before me had said that the challenge, the existential challenges of their time were too great.
01:09:10.120I would not be here today. So I refuse to be the first generation in that chain to sever it.
01:09:16.140And I think that's maybe the last question I would leave your audience with is they have to personally ask themselves, are they willing to be part of the, the, the first generation to say the challenges facing us in our time are too great.
01:09:29.800We're going to have to throw in the towel. That's it.
01:09:32.460Then you're going down in history as that guy. You're going down in history as the first generation to say that.
01:09:37.460Are you willing to do that? That's the question.
01:09:40.800No, a really powerful question. And even though, like you said, we're in very different places along that journey for that question, it is one that I think a lot of people have to face.
01:09:50.400So it's definitely good to speak with people at different stages of that journey so we can better understand, you know, the answer to it.
01:09:57.140So I appreciate it. Glow in the dark here jumped in real quick. Wanted to get you before we go for $5. Thank you, sir.
01:10:04.640We're south of the USA understands. We have a lot of Yankee gaslighters and corporations tearing down statues.
01:10:11.480And yeah, I mean, that's, that's very true. There's, like I said, the, you know, the, the northern invasion of many of the red states is, is very real.
01:10:19.500And it's got a very serious impact. But like Ernst said, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to decide, you know, that, that is going to exist no matter what.
01:10:27.800And you have to decide, are you going to be able to stand up for that?
01:10:30.020And more importantly, are you going to be able to form a community that's able to defend it outside of perhaps, you know, some of those failing institutions, which I think is, is the most interesting thing that, that many people like Ernst who are in kind of a little bit of a future situation can bring some wisdom to for people like us who aren't quite there yet, but might need to learn those lessons in advance.
01:10:53.180All right, guys. Well, thanks again. I appreciate all the questions. Ernst's a great guest. Always love having him on. Thanks for coming by. And as always, we'll talk to you next time.