The Auron MacIntyre Show - A Time to Dig Trenches ｜ Guest： Ernst van Zyl ｜ 1⧸13⧸23

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00:01:29.980 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:01:35.360 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:01:37.340 I've got a great stream with a great guest.

00:01:39.740 He's returning, been here before, and people really enjoy him, so I'm glad he's back.

00:01:44.580 Ernest, thanks for joining me, man.

00:01:45.760 Thanks for having me on again, Oren.

00:01:47.920 I'm looking forward to the chat.

00:01:49.220 And 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.

00:01:58.160 So that's why my lighting is a bit ominous.

00:02:00.360 I'm using my backup little battery light here.

00:02:03.280 And then also my internet modem is hooked up to a small battery, but otherwise it's pitch black dark out there.

00:02:09.760 There's no power in my entire area.

00:02:12.560 Yeah, it's the excitement of broadcasting from South Africa.

00:02:17.360 And we'll get into a lot of the implications of that here as we go along.

00:02:21.900 I know that the organization you're a part of has a lot of different approaches to that kind of thing.

00:02:27.380 So that'll certainly work into our larger discussion.

00:02:30.820 But the reason I wanted to have you on is there was this debate at the beginning of the year.

00:02:36.020 A lot of people in our sphere probably saw it.

00:02:38.660 It was Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, and Peter Hitchens.

00:02:43.640 And they were going back and forth about the future of Britain.

00:02:48.540 Peter Hitchens, to his credit, has been saying for many, many decades that Britain was in a very bad state, much worse than people understood.

00:02:57.040 That things like the Tory party were actually a great threat to Britain, not a vehicle for conserving it.

00:03:05.620 And, you know, again, in his defense, he was right about a lot of those things.

00:03:09.700 But kind of his approach was, okay, well, this is over.

00:03:14.000 This is done.

00:03:14.880 There's nothing left to save.

00:03:16.640 The only thing left to do now is leave Britain and start somewhere new.

00:03:20.540 And Carl Benjamin took umbrage with that.

00:03:23.180 And 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.

00:03:31.400 My family lives here.

00:03:32.820 My children live here.

00:03:34.320 I want this for the next generation of Englishmen.

00:03:37.920 And so they kind of had a back and forth.

00:03:40.220 And they've kind of made up in certain ways since then.

00:03:43.120 But the first thing I thought of was your essay.

00:03:45.920 You 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.

00:03:55.480 You've thought about this kind of thing a lot.

00:03:57.780 And so I wanted to have you on to talk a little bit about that subject.

00:04:02.120 So I guess let's go ahead and start at the beginning.

00:04:05.040 How 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?

00:04:16.820 And when is it time to kind of settle in and fight for the place where you're from?

00:04:21.900 Right.

00:04:23.160 So 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.

00:04:39.760 So that's just something that I found very funny regarding the context that you gave before the conversation.

00:04:45.480 Now, 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.

00:05:05.000 That's specifically why in my piece I use the history of the Afrikaner specifically to convey my point.

00:05:11.240 All these different points in all these different points in our history, we've been faced with that question many times over hundreds of years.

00:05:18.340 Just to name two major examples, the first time this will help answer the question is specifically with the Great Trek.

00:05:25.520 So 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.

00:05:45.020 And 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.

00:05:58.000 They 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.

00:06:10.540 This is actually quite the opposite, they're moving for immaterial things, they're moving for things that can't be quantified.

00:06:18.020 So they would have been far better off materially if they had stayed in the Cape under British rule, under British occupation.

00:06:27.460 They would have had better business opportunities, better security, better infrastructure, better schools, better pretty much everything, service delivery, everything.

00:06:37.260 And then they chose to leave behind their farms, leave behind most of their belongings and trek into the unknown.

00:06:44.160 This is during a time where there's very little known about what's north, where are we going?

00:06:48.180 Well, anything's better than living here where we're being, our identity is being wiped out.

00:06:52.900 So they were trekking for something that you can't quantify, you can't put into, put a monetary value on it.

00:06:58.920 So the second example is the example of not moving, but when it was a time to dig, the first and the second.

00:07:08.940 During 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.

00:07:18.240 And those two republics then discovered gold and diamonds.

00:07:22.700 So once again, the eyes of empire fell on them and the British pretty much wanted that gold and those diamonds.

00:07:31.900 And that leads to the breakouts of the first and the second Anglo-Boer war.

00:07:36.840 And during that time, the Boers didn't move. 0.87

00:07:39.140 They then decided now is the time to dig a trench, quite literally.

00:07:43.100 So when faced with an existential crisis, this time around, they decided that this time they have to stay and fight.

00:07:50.680 But at both times, it was an existential threat that needed an answer.

00:07:55.080 But both times, they chose their identity and their culture and their community over material wealth, over security, over prosperity, if you will.

00:08:05.220 They chose something bigger or higher than themselves, something that you can't really put into monetary value,

00:08:10.840 which I find very interesting, which then leads to the answer to your question.

00:08:15.640 When is it time to move?

00:08:16.840 When is it time to dig a trench?

00:08:18.200 Well, I think that's going to be up to you about what you value.

00:08:21.480 And we can get into that into this chat, but specifically what is of value.

00:08:25.100 But I think the crux of that answer to that question would be any one of your viewers personally asking themselves,

00:08:31.880 what do they value most in this life?

00:08:34.460 What do they what do they value most in regard to their family?

00:08:37.540 Do they value their house? Do they value their bank account?

00:08:40.500 Do they value their history? Do they value their identity?

00:08:45.340 Very long list of things that form a hierarchy in regards to what they value most.

00:08:50.040 But that's the roots of it.

00:08:51.340 They're going to have to ask that question, every one of them personally, to themselves.

00:08:55.240 What do they value?

00:08:56.280 And that's going to bring them much closer to the answer of whether it's a time to move or a time to dig a trench.

00:09:01.520 Yeah, there's a lot of good points there that I want to unpack.

00:09:04.520 I think there's there's a lot of important stuff there.

00:09:07.560 So the first thing you said is that, you know, the first place that so many Afrikaners want to leave to go to is the UK.

00:09:16.620 Right. And this very debate that is kind of spurred this stream was about the future of the UK.

00:09:22.300 And so that brings up, I think, you know, we'll get to the other reasons why.

00:09:27.720 But that brings up a really just a logistical question for a lot of people who would say, oh, you have to flee.

00:09:32.500 You have to start something else.

00:09:33.560 You have to start over is, you know, there was a point at which the globe had places.

00:09:40.220 You 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.

00:09:51.500 But 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.

00:10:01.160 You know, I know you've said this many times.

00:10:03.540 You know, you guys are a few decades into the future of much of the West.

00:10:08.440 And that's a difficult thing, for sure.

00:10:11.740 Yeah, it's a it's the saying of living somewhere where the future has already happened somewhere.

00:10:17.260 It's like South Africa. 0.82

00:10:18.380 The future has already happened somewhere like many European countries in the United States.

00:10:22.840 You're still living in a blissful past where you're still waiting for the future to happen.

00:10:28.100 But why would you give up the opportunity to get a free glimpse into the future?

00:10:33.660 I mean, that's the most perfect opportunity.

00:10:35.100 But 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.

00:10:51.360 So 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.

00:11:04.140 And he himself wasn't an Afrikaner, he was an English speaking South African, but he understood the anxiety he wrote.

00:11:10.820 He wrote in his book that because what he saw around him, he just looked at his own experience and the experience of the Afrikaners.

00:11:16.820 And 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.

00:11:34.820 And 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.

00:11:43.480 That's not the case with the Afrikaners. 0.99

00:11:45.420 We have nowhere to go to.

00:11:47.120 It's often a common misconception that people just think we're just Dutchmen living here at the southern tip of Africa.

00:11:52.760 It can't be further from the truth.

00:11:54.540 We 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.

00:12:05.620 And we don't have anywhere else where we can go.

00:12:08.600 We will be surrounded by our people, people that speak our language and that share our culture.

00:12:13.660 And 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.

00:12:35.840 So that's at the end, near to the end of the Anglo-Boer War.

00:12:40.180 And 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.

00:12:54.240 But 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.

00:13:05.460 And then the Boer resistance basically came to the conclusion that it's worth our extinction. 1.00

00:13:13.040 That was pretty much the conclusion that they came to.

00:13:15.420 We 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.

00:13:23.200 So, once again, that's the point that they've reached.

00:13:28.280 And there's a great quote by M.P.

00:13:30.740 van Weyck Lowe, one of the great Afrikaner philosophers, that actually demonstrates this perfectly where he says,

00:13:37.240 as is always the case in South Africa, it is the Afrikaner who is once again in the trenches.

00:13:42.380 Because of him, because for him, it is not primarily about profit or loss, but about survival or ruin.

00:13:50.480 So, 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?

00:13:58.920 But it's a question of, am I willing to move somewhere and my identity going extinct?

00:14:04.640 Am I willing to be part of that generation that forgoes our Afrikaner identity and becomes and assimilates into a new one abroad? 0.92

00:14:13.540 Yeah, 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.

00:14:22.440 It's not always about just staying. It's it's it's not focusing on the material.

00:14:28.140 And 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.

00:14:48.180 But 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.

00:15:04.740 And they wanted to move somewhere, you know, to protect that as well.

00:15:09.160 And 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.

00:15:22.960 And 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.

00:15:50.080 As where Benjamin was specifically like, no, we're here, this is where I want my children to be raised, it matters to me.

00:15:57.300 It'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.

00:16:09.420 We'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.

00:16:16.600 And I think that's something that not enough people understand when they say, oh, just move, it'll be fine.

00:16:21.700 Yeah, 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.

00:16:34.380 I mean, I come from a culture that is now being very negatively affected by a very high immigration rate. 1.00

00:16:40.760 A 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.

00:16:52.880 A 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.

00:17:20.520 Like I said, as I mentioned earlier, one of the heavy costs is the fact that your children will not grow up sharing your identity.

00:17:28.960 Let's take an Afrikaner, for example. 0.88

00:17:31.260 If 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.

00:17:41.420 They will not speak Afrikaans if they are very young.

00:17:44.320 If they are born there, they will definitely not speak Afrikaans as their first language.

00:17:48.160 Even 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. 0.96

00:18:06.440 It's almost certain the next generation will be Americans, Australians, Canadians, whatever.

00:18:14.160 They're not going to be Afrikaners. 1.00

00:18:15.620 They're not going to have a connection to the Boer War.

00:18:17.620 They're not going to have a connection to the Great Trek.

00:18:19.540 They're not going to have a connection to the Afrikaner identity.

00:18:22.240 They will have a new identity.

00:18:24.200 Now, for many people, that's not a big deal.

00:18:26.700 That's fine.

00:18:27.220 I'm not judging anyone for that.

00:18:28.740 For me, it's too high a cost.

00:18:30.020 For me, it's my ancestors have been here.

00:18:32.760 I'm ninth generation.

00:18:33.880 My ancestors have been here since 1688.

00:18:37.240 My ancestors have been in South Africa or Southern Africa longer than the United States has been a country.

00:18:42.580 They've gone through wars and treks and a lot of trials and tribulations, and they're still here.

00:18:47.780 And 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.

00:19:01.920 You fought against the British Empire, and your descendant is now moving to the center of it.

00:19:07.300 But, yeah, that's a different topic.

00:19:11.420 The 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.

00:19:25.140 And for me, it's very simple.

00:19:26.860 It's all about what costs are you willing to bear.

00:19:30.220 And those costs, when you move, are not material costs.

00:19:33.980 They are immaterial costs.

00:19:35.620 They are costs that you can't, like I said, put a price on.

00:19:38.380 They're not costs that you can quantify.

00:19:41.460 They are costs that your ancestors understood very well.

00:19:44.500 My ancestors understood them very well.

00:19:46.820 But 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.

00:19:58.560 I'm not willing to take up that cost.

00:20:01.980 And there's a good example, again, from my own history or the Afrikaner's history that demonstrates that.

00:20:08.420 And that's the fact that the majority of my ancestors are French Huguenots.

00:20:12.980 And they also moved for a specific reason.

00:20:16.340 French Huguenots moved because they were being persecuted in their homeland.

00:20:20.520 So a lot of them moved to South Africa to continue practicing their religion.

00:20:24.480 They didn't move to preserve their French identity.

00:20:27.920 They moved to preserve their religious identity, to be able to still practice their religion and worship their God.

00:20:34.920 And the reason is, well, the result is that nobody in South Africa speaks French anymore, has any connection to France.

00:20:44.560 But we're still Christian.

00:20:47.120 I can't string a sentence together in French.

00:20:50.720 I only know omelet du fromage, and that's about it.

00:20:54.640 But when it comes to my religion, I'm still a Protestant, just as my French Huguenot ancestors were.

00:21:02.520 So they succeeded.

00:21:03.420 They were able to ensure that their descendants were still able to practice their religion.

00:21:10.920 But they didn't move to preserve their French language or their French identity.

00:21:16.020 Because that would be, in their time, they would have known that would be preserved in France.

00:21:19.740 So that's not a big deal.

00:21:21.100 The identity, even if they were to lose their identity, they would always be Frenchmen and French in France.

00:21:26.940 So that just demonstrates that point of, I think the critical question here is the reason for moving.

00:21:34.620 Are you moving to give your children a better opportunity, to give you and your family more security?

00:21:40.880 These are all noble goals.

00:21:42.400 I mean, I can't knock any of them.

00:21:44.620 But 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?

00:21:55.420 And it's a difficult question.

00:21:57.360 It's not, it's something, like I said, it's in South Africa, very sensitive and controversial debate.

00:22:03.960 It gets, it can get very heated.

00:22:07.020 But again, I think it is because it is dealing with things that are very deep.

00:22:10.980 It'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.

00:22:24.720 Your subconscious understands that it is.

00:22:27.480 And 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.

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00:22:56.200 Now, 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.

00:23:05.560 So maybe you can tell me if there's a similar one there.

00:23:08.260 I think a lot of this for people is generational.

00:23:12.200 I 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.

00:23:27.900 And 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.

00:23:42.260 And 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.

00:23:50.940 You know, the ones saying, no, we can't just sit back and say, the game is done.

00:23:55.520 This is over.

00:23:56.220 We have to find ways forward.

00:23:57.780 And so I wonder if, again, it could be very different in South Africa, but is there a generational aspect to this as well?

00:24:05.500 In South Africa, not as, in my experience, not as clearly in South Africa, there's more of a heritage or background aspect to it.

00:24:18.900 So 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.

00:24:42.820 If 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.

00:24:58.200 Because there are things that are, like I said earlier, keep getting back to that.

00:25:02.120 There are things that you can't quantify.

00:25:03.580 There 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.

00:25:27.300 There 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.

00:25:41.040 When 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.

00:25:50.060 And 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.

00:26:05.000 And 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.

00:26:16.500 People and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face, and that question is, who are we?

00:26:23.140 And they are answering that question in the traditional way, by reference to the things that mean most to them.

00:26:28.400 So that again comes back to that point of you have to personally ask yourself what is most important to you.

00:26:33.740 That's going to vary from person to person.

00:26:35.600 You can't really prescribe that to any specific person, that these are the things that you have to value.

00:26:40.420 You'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.

00:26:50.320 And 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,

00:27:01.200 that we have boatloads of here in my community here in Southern Africa, as dysfunctional as it may be. 1.00

00:27:09.740 Me and my colleagues, for example, know exactly who we are, where we come from, and where we're going.

00:27:14.460 And 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,

00:27:23.840 I think that would be a very dangerous LARP if I'm here in Africa.

00:27:28.260 I 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.

00:27:36.620 Well, I wonder, do you think, is it a function of affluence and ease, the inability to maintain and find meaning through identity?

00:27:47.860 Do you think that's a major component in eroding that?

00:27:51.600 It'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,

00:28:05.640 in the Afrikaans newspaper about the Afrikaners.

00:28:08.460 And in that comic strip, it was telling the story of, so you have this people here, the Afrikaners at the southern tip of Africa,

00:28:16.040 and the devil wants to destroy them.

00:28:17.640 So the devil tries first by putting them under imperial administration, that doesn't work.

00:28:24.040 He wages two major wars against them, doesn't work.

00:28:27.640 He makes them go through a small civil war and a rebellion.

00:28:32.700 And then he says, fine, I'll use my most powerful weapon.

00:28:35.920 I'll give them prosperity and see if they can survive that.

00:28:38.440 And that's, I think that's very relevant to your question in regards to where does a lot of this come from?

00:28:47.260 I think it comes from comfort.

00:28:49.000 It comes from convenience.

00:28:50.420 The convenience and prosperity, but specifically convenience, is the devil's most favorite tool of temptation.

00:28:56.880 To have people give up their most cherished cultural treasures, their most foundational sovereignty.

00:29:06.800 They'll give up for comfort, for a little bit of just enjoyment or pleasure or comfort.

00:29:13.700 It does definitely seem to be a connection.

00:29:16.840 So that always just, that stuck with me when I read that.

00:29:19.380 Can your people survive prosperity?

00:29:21.780 Well, time will tell.

00:29:22.560 Yeah, and yeah, a huge question, of course, here in America as well.

00:29:28.340 And 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.

00:29:35.060 Again, if you guys haven't read it, it's over at IM1776.

00:29:38.620 Really, really excellently done.

00:29:41.200 But let me see here.

00:29:43.880 Where'd they go?

00:29:51.080 Now I've lost it.

00:29:52.060 I had it marked right here.

00:29:53.860 It was one about, it was one about the times in which you, you could have material.

00:29:59.600 Here you go.

00:30:00.480 The benefits of living in good times is that you have ample opportunities to live a comfortable life.

00:30:05.480 And the advantage of living in hard times is that you have plenty of opportunities to live a great life.

00:30:10.420 And 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.

00:30:20.980 Right.

00:30:21.460 To put this aside.

00:30:22.680 And when you feel like you have this prosperity and things will be fine, you feel like the future of your children is secured.

00:30:32.000 Or the future is in general secured.

00:30:34.680 And you don't really need to worry or sacrifice on its behalf.

00:30:37.680 But that's exactly, it feels like when it's not secure, when things could so easily fall apart.

00:30:43.900 Like you said, that's the greatest temptation.

00:30:45.460 And just, you know, the need, you have to care about something even if you think it might, even if you think times are good.

00:30:55.300 Because when you don't, that's when things will get particularly difficult.

00:30:58.480 Right. 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.

00:31:12.180 So 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.

00:31:22.960 And now that I live here in Gauteng, it's a lot different.

00:31:28.100 Here it's, when it comes to service delivery, security, it's a whole different ballgame.

00:31:37.540 And I realized that there was a good example of it is with neighborhood watches.

00:31:41.920 So 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.

00:31:50.100 But 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.

00:31:57.360 They were things that people almost did like a hobby, but not really out of necessity.

00:32:01.320 But when I came here to Pretoria in Gauteng, here it's a lot different.

00:32:06.040 Here people don't do neighborhood watch because it's like a hobby.

00:32:09.160 They do it because it's a necessity.

00:32:11.020 So you get, it's not just a bunch of people that are bored, that are driving around.

00:32:15.300 It's people that are very serious about their community because they realize if they don't do it, nobody's going to do it.

00:32:21.340 And then their family and their community is at stake.

00:32:24.320 So 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?

00:32:33.120 Where are all these heroes?

00:32:34.300 Where are all these great figures that we read about in history?

00:32:38.400 Well, if the temperature isn't high enough and the pressure isn't high enough, those people don't have to come to the fore.

00:32:44.480 It'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.

00:32:54.800 If 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.

00:33:04.440 So 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.

00:33:12.900 That only happens when times get tough.

00:33:14.880 So to get back to that line, yes, in good times, you have the opportunity to live a comfortable life and an ample opportunity.

00:33:22.600 And in the hard times, you have ample opportunity to live a great life.

00:33:25.920 In 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.

00:33:33.640 That's also going to be one of the things that you will notice during tough times.

00:33:37.780 And don't get me wrong, what you're going through in the United States is not the hard times.

00:33:43.220 No matter how many black pulls you take, you are still living in very, very comfortable, nice times. 0.53

00:33:49.460 You can talk to me again when you've had only three hours of electricity a day for a year.

00:33:56.460 Then we can start talking about hard times.

00:33:59.480 And when you hear about people down the street, people breaking into their house and violently assaulting them,

00:34:07.980 or hearing about massive unrest where dozens of trucks are being burned and people are being assaulted and attacked just on the highway

00:34:17.040 because there's a massive unrest there.

00:34:20.120 Things can get a lot worse, and you have to keep that in mind.

00:34:23.280 I think there's a lot of danger, specifically in Western countries, for getting too ahead of yourselves and regarding,

00:34:30.100 oh, 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.

00:34:38.040 A nation is not something that happens overnight.

00:34:40.900 It's something that happens over decades.

00:34:42.660 It's not something that you're going to wake up, just as an empire doesn't fall overnight.

00:34:48.200 So, too, does hard times not just appear on your door one morning, at your door one morning when you wake up.

00:34:55.900 It's something that slowly and insidiously seeps into your environment and into your community.

00:35:03.660 And it starts with little things.

00:35:05.480 It starts with graffiti that's not being cleaned.

00:35:07.680 It starts with a cemetery that was vandalized.

00:35:10.920 It starts with an 80-year-old woman getting mugged in the street. 0.99

00:35:14.340 That's the first little signs of hard times.

00:35:17.620 But it's very small and very subtle.

00:35:19.860 And you won't notice until it's upon you.

00:35:22.000 But like I said, it doesn't happen overnight.

00:35:23.980 But one day it will feel like it happened overnight because it really does catch you off guard.

00:35:28.160 Yeah, 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.

00:35:36.620 There's still incredible material wealth and safety comparatively to situations that many, yourself included, are in.

00:35:44.180 And I do hope, you know, but that's one of the reasons we have this conversation, right?

00:35:48.760 One 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.

00:35:57.460 You 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?

00:36:08.640 We do have unchecked riots in the streets.

00:36:12.100 We do have cities that simply allow, you know, mass theft without any penalty.

00:36:18.540 We do have, you know, police unable to arrest criminals due to political restraints.

00:36:27.260 You know, we do have these things starting.

00:36:29.640 We 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,

00:36:38.040 except for minorities here in the United States.

00:36:41.660 You know, we do see this deterioration that has occurred.

00:36:47.380 The, you know, favored groups, unpoliced crime, we see this.

00:36:51.800 And so it's not something that, it is here.

00:36:56.380 It's nowhere near as advanced, but it is here.

00:36:58.940 And 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.

00:37:06.700 And 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?

00:37:15.900 And 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,

00:37:30.060 this can't be solved, the institutions are redeemable, what do we do now?

00:37:36.680 And I think you're living in a situation where the state institutions are already well beyond that.

00:37:43.500 But you guys are looking at alternatives in order to protect your community and ensure the well-being of communities like that.

00:37:51.800 Can 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?

00:38:02.840 Hmm. 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.

00:38:14.840 Not in the, it's strange in South Africa, when you mention civil rights, Americans think of very much specifically in their context.

00:38:23.540 But South Africa has its own context surrounding that. But anyway, so we have 300,000 donating members.

00:38:31.660 So it's not just a little button that you go click on the website and you become a member, like liking a Facebook page.

00:38:37.700 It's you have to give a minimum amount of a donation. So you have 300,000 of those.

00:38:43.700 Actually more now, I think 310 as of this week, 310,000.

00:38:48.620 And we've established many things. We've established 150 neighborhood watches all across the country, farm watches as well.

00:38:56.960 We've developed emergency service, emergency support services, and we have more than 155 AFRI Forum branches all across the country.

00:39:06.940 And 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.

00:39:18.620 And 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.

00:39:33.380 So the solidarity movement has many other organizations as part of it in a network.

00:39:39.580 And these organizations focus on other things.

00:39:42.040 So 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.

00:39:56.140 And 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.

00:40:08.540 And 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.

00:40:23.160 And those donations were all 10 rand donations.

00:40:26.480 So 10 rand is not even a dollar.

00:40:28.940 So 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.

00:40:52.460 Afrikaans is under full assault and attack on South African campuses.

00:40:57.120 Students 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.

00:41:10.300 They're really trying to force Afrikaans out of the public campuses, and therefore we're building, through community-based initiatives, private campuses. 1.00

00:41:19.520 So, but there's a critical difference what's happening here.

00:41:22.980 It's not the just libertarian line of, well, the free market will solve it.

00:41:29.400 It's something different.

00:41:30.660 It's the community will solve it.

00:41:32.440 It'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.

00:41:41.100 That's not what's happening.

00:41:42.340 We are, as a community, organizing around a nexus and then using those funds that we gather to build what we need, cultural infrastructure.

00:41:52.620 So we're not just leaving it up to the market.

00:41:54.820 We are creating a de facto reality and then de jure reality will follow.

00:42:01.060 That's the thing when it comes to our model, is that we are building a reality that can't be ignored.

00:42:07.720 We're building a reality and then the laws will have to adapt to it. 0.97

00:42:10.920 That's how it works.

00:42:12.440 But yeah, in the end, AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement is probably the biggest proverbial trench-digging operation on the entire African continent. 0.64

00:42:23.580 Definitely the largest organization of its type in the entire Southern Hemisphere with 300,000 members.

00:42:29.400 But there's something very important that needs to be understood.

00:42:32.780 And 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.

00:42:47.180 It'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.

00:42:57.020 We don't get massive donations.

00:42:58.600 We have a membership base of hundreds of thousands and those people give, in dollar terms, probably three or five dollars a month.

00:43:07.380 And 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.

00:43:22.880 And 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.

00:43:29.800 You're going to have to organize actively around a common vision and an ideal.

00:43:34.720 You can't just say, well, if the demand is there, the corporates will fill the void.

00:43:41.560 But then secondly, to rally around, you can't just say the profit motive is going to is going to result in this.

00:43:52.780 It's it's a very the solidarity movement is very clearly a reaction to an existential question and an existential threat.

00:44:00.040 It's not a for profit thing that just happened because some Afrikaner millionaires saw a gap in the market.

00:44:08.100 Yeah, I'm really glad.

00:44:12.740 I'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.

00:44:38.080 And so I think it's great.

00:44:39.940 You 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.

00:44:49.460 And and, you know, he's talking about business solutions and networking and alternative economies.

00:44:55.740 And all those things are great because you need, you know, funding has to happen and people need jobs, people need that kind of stuff.

00:45:01.840 And I think it's essential.

00:45:03.200 But 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.

00:45:12.800 But because these large, you know, multinational corporations, they make money by dissolving a lot of this stuff, right?

00:45:20.080 Like they actually make money by making, you know, by by homogenizing a lot of this stuff and erasing the interests of different groups.

00:45:28.620 And 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.

00:45:42.360 I think that's really essential.

00:45:43.480 Yeah.

00:45:43.620 Yeah.

00:45:44.060 Yeah.

00:45:44.360 And 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.

00:45:56.840 And then, of course, if it's just profit, you sell it.

00:45:59.560 But 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,

00:46:12.100 that will serve people from all across the world, we won't take that offer, even if he offers 10 times the value.

00:46:18.400 That's like we're not going to take that offer because it's built for a different reason.

00:46:22.120 It's built for a reason.

00:46:23.200 And I keep getting back to it, a reason that you can't put a monetary value on.

00:46:27.740 But what I think is also very important, there was an example from what happened in something that happened.

00:46:33.840 I 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.

00:46:41.220 He 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.

00:46:55.480 And then my one colleague summed it up very well.

00:46:58.360 And he says, well, if we represent everyone, we won't represent anyone.

00:47:01.600 The whole point of Afri Forum and solidarity is that we represent, that we are working towards a very specific goal.

00:47:09.700 We are working and we are, that we have a mission, that we are working towards an ideal and that we represent our members.

00:47:17.000 We 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.

00:47:30.100 We just want to serve the world.

00:47:31.800 We, it's, it's, it's, that doesn't work.

00:47:34.680 If you try to be something for everyone, you end up being something for nobody.

00:47:38.740 Then 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.

00:47:51.860 But 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.

00:48:00.740 So I think that's a very important point when it comes to your mission.

00:48:04.080 But there's also something, I think, just something that I thought of now that that's also important on that specific topic.

00:48:13.160 And that is the implications of your actions.

00:48:15.760 So, or the implications of your projects and everything that you attempt.

00:48:20.540 But 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.

00:48:30.680 Let's take the example of, and this is something that's in our circles has been talked about a lot.

00:48:35.780 And you reference it very specifically sometimes like the, the need to win or the, the wanting to win.

00:48:42.460 But there's a critical question that needs to be answered.

00:48:45.100 And that is, are we willing to give up everything to win?

00:48:49.640 Or are there some things that just can't be forfeited?

00:48:53.580 And 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?

00:49:06.280 And 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?

00:49:27.560 What message are you sending to people?

00:49:29.500 If 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.

00:49:48.660 You 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,

00:50:14.940 if 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.

00:50:24.100 Either 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.

00:50:35.580 If, 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

00:50:44.880 are just your hobbies.

00:50:45.880 Then being American is just your hobby. 0.86

00:50:47.880 If they are not integral, if you're not willing to fight for them or to sacrifice them, then your identity is just a hobby.

00:50:53.880 Yeah, no, I, I think there's a lot of truth to that.

00:50:57.880 And 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

00:51:11.880 to, 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.

00:51:28.880 And 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.

00:51:39.880 I 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?

00:51:53.880 Eventually they'll just come and they'll take whatever you built and they'll destroy it and then you'll have done nothing.

00:52:00.880 What 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.

00:52:10.880 Well, 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.

00:52:19.880 When I asked him that very, I asked him that very same question a few years ago.

00:52:23.880 And he told me the only thing that's a bigger risk than building these institutions is not building them at all.

00:52:31.880 The, the only thing that is a bigger certainty of defeat, uh, would be to just actually just accept defeat in that moment.

00:52:41.880 At least we are attempting, at least there we are at the, the odds are stacked against us.

00:52:46.880 There's a lot of risks and, uh, dangers in, in, yes, we are trying, we are, we are building towards something.

00:52:56.880 Cause that's what our ancestors did and was successful.

00:52:59.880 Our ancestors, the Boers, when they took on the British empire, I mean, you could have just said, well, it's lost.

00:53:04.880 We, we can't just stand up against the biggest empire on the planet, but they did.

00:53:09.880 Um, 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.

00:53:16.880 We, we just have to stay here and, and live under British rule. 0.60

00:53:19.880 And, but they went on that trick and they survived and they built two republics.

00:53:25.880 So it's, it's a difficult question.

00:53:27.880 It's an, it, it is definitely something that can't be ignored.

00:53:30.880 It's, I see one of my, one of my mates there is, uh, is naming him by his nickname.

00:53:35.880 Um, 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.

00:53:47.880 That is the biggest risk that you can take is then defeat is almost certain.

00:53:51.880 So 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.

00:54:09.880 That defeat is certain, I don't think any of us would be doing as, uh, Cortez did and, uh, burning our ships, basically.

00:54:17.880 Uh, if, if, if defeat and death was certain, I don't think we would be trapping ourselves here.

00:54:23.880 Um, trappings may be a strong word, but, uh, anchoring ourselves here, I should rather say.

00:54:28.880 Um, 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.

00:54:40.880 I 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. 0.83

00:54:53.880 I'd be, uh, uh, away from here.

00:54:55.880 But, uh, would that really be the, a better life?

00:54:59.880 Would 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.

00:55:16.880 Because 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.

00:55:29.880 I 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.

00:55:39.880 And, uh, he did that, he, he did that sacrifice.

00:55:43.880 But, uh, if he didn't do that sacrifice, I would probably not be here.

00:55:47.880 So my ancestors have gone through much worse.

00:55:49.880 And that's maybe a final thoughts on that question.

00:55:52.880 Yeah.

00:55:53.880 Specifically Afrikaners, but also Westerners today.

00:55:58.880 But our ancestors have gone through a lot worse.

00:56:00.880 They've taken a lot worse gambling odds than us.

00:56:03.880 Our odds are not great, but they're not as bad as some of the odds that our ancestors have gained.

00:56:08.880 Our ancestors have gambled on and, and won.

00:56:11.880 So 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.

00:56:23.880 Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:24.880 And of course, fortune favors the bold, right?

00:56:27.880 If 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.

00:56:35.880 Right.

00:56:36.880 All right.

00:56:37.880 Well, let's go ahead and take a look at a few of these, uh, super chats here real quick.

00:56:42.880 Uh, we've got conquest theory here for $10.

00:56:44.880 Thank you very much, sir.

00:56:45.880 He says the fact that the U S has yet to reach the point of South Africa and their digging trenches means we should too. 1.00

00:56:52.880 Winning may not occur in our lifetime, but we can turn the tide.

00:56:57.880 And yeah, you know, think about those quotes.

00:57:00.880 Uh, 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.

00:57:11.880 Right.

00:57:12.880 And 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.

00:57:21.880 So, you know, like, like you said, America is pretty far away from South Africa right now.

00:57:26.880 And 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.

00:57:37.880 And that's kind of worth pretty much everything at the end of the day.

00:57:40.880 Right.

00:57:41.880 Yeah.

00:57:42.880 And 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.

00:57:53.880 So we've been talking a lot about identity, but also specifically to zero in a little bit onto place.

00:58:00.880 And 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.

00:58:16.880 And a lot of people, I mean, you probably have seen this phenomenon.

00:58:20.880 Um, a lot of people are choosing now to go live in these idyllic destinations, uh, because they, these desirable little hideaway towns or whatever.

00:58:31.880 They're escaping the cities, going to live in some little romantic town and they just work from home.

00:58:37.880 But 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.

00:58:54.880 They move or act or moving to places, which those people that live there currently, those people have invested their lives in those places.

00:59:06.880 Uh, they've loved dearly though.

00:59:08.880 They love dearly those places.

00:59:09.880 Their ancestors have lived there for generations.

00:59:11.880 They've been in those little towns and those beautiful little places through thick and thin.

00:59:16.880 The 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. 0.99

00:59:28.880 The people there have been working and investing and preserving those towns and their identities for hundreds of years, generations.

00:59:37.880 And 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. 1.00

00:59:46.880 But they're picking the fruits of intergenerational responsibilities and sacrifices that they and their ancestors didn't make.

00:59:54.880 And they are oblivious to these intergenerational sacrifices and responsibilities and traditions that made those little places great that they fleeing to.

01:00:02.880 So 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.

01:00:19.880 You just become a prosperity nomad.

01:00:21.880 So 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.

01:00:27.880 But then when the going gets tough, when the same challenges arise, when the water rises again, you just move to higher ground again.

01:00:33.880 And everyone just gets trapped in this globalist mentality of the world is your oyster.

01:00:38.880 So 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.

01:00:52.880 Everything is gone. Everything is underwater. There's just one little island left.

01:00:57.880 Then 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.

01:01:10.880 You just kept fleeing until the point where there's no more ground to flee to.

01:01:15.880 So that's, I think that quote from Chesterton is very important.

01:01:19.880 The 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.

01:01:37.880 And unfortunately, frankly, the people, most of the people going to live, they just are completely oblivious to that fact.

01:01:44.880 Yeah, 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.

01:02:00.880 But 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.

01:02:17.880 And 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.

01:02:26.880 And so just by their presence, they immediately start changing the the nature of those places.

01:02:31.880 All the housing prices skyrocket. The people who live there in the first place can't live there anymore.

01:02:37.880 The the churn of the the people coming in completely changes that intergenerational investment that you're talking about.

01:02:43.880 And all of a sudden, the places they flee to look exactly like the places they left from.

01:02:48.880 And so, yeah, that and the the covid in the in the mobile working option is only accelerated that phenomenon.

01:02:57.880 So I think that that's a really essential observation. Yeah, we've got our post here for 999.

01:03:03.880 Thank you very much, sir. Catching this late, but just wanted to say that Ernst is a real mensch.

01:03:08.880 Absolutely. Is the catabolic breakdown of South Africa inevitable or is there any reality of recapturing governance over the whole nation?

01:03:20.880 Let 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. 1.00

01:03:34.880 The thing that happened when during apartheid, when Afrikaners were in control of the government apparatus was it just degenerated our culture into state dependence. 0.84

01:03:44.880 We 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.

01:03:53.880 So we don't have to preserve our language. The state did that for you.

01:03:56.880 You don't have to raise your children morally. The state did that for you.

01:03:59.880 You don't have to preserve your monuments and your heritage. The state will do that for you.

01:04:03.880 You 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.

01:04:12.880 And the state becomes an active antagonistic force against your people. Then then you're high and dry.

01:04:18.880 And now suddenly then you realize the dark situation that you yourself had gotten yourself into.

01:04:24.880 Now you have to start preserving your heritage from scratch. You have to fight again to preserve your language.

01:04:35.880 You 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.

01:04:45.880 The 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.

01:05:00.880 So that's the lesson that we've learned is that you can't save your community through the state Leviathan.

01:05:07.880 You can't keep chasing this philosophy of if only we get control of the Leviathan, then everything will be fine again.

01:05:15.880 Like, 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.

01:05:29.880 You give everything over to the state. You give everything over to the state. It's just a natural progression of what happens.

01:05:36.880 So, 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. 1.00

01:05:44.880 The loss of state control was devastating for Afrikaners culturally and we had to start from scratch again.

01:05:54.880 But 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.

01:06:07.880 Everything now is from grassroots level being preserved and rebuilt and it's got our name on it now.

01:06:14.880 It'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.

01:06:26.880 That's the lesson that we learn. So I think that's that's an important lesson that I think for Americans specifically as well.

01:06:32.880 You 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.

01:06:50.880 All 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?

01:07:03.880 Well, 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.

01:07:21.880 And 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.

01:07:44.880 I 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?

01:08:05.880 But 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.

01:08:25.120 That 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.

01:08:35.520 Are 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?

01:08:45.580 I 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.

01:09:01.600 Because 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.

01:09:10.120 I would not be here today. So I refuse to be the first generation in that chain to sever it.

01:09:16.140 And 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.

01:09:29.800 We're going to have to throw in the towel. That's it.

01:09:32.460 Then you're going down in history as that guy. You're going down in history as the first generation to say that.

01:09:37.460 Are you willing to do that? That's the question.

01:09:40.800 No, 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.

01:09:50.400 So 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.

01:09:57.140 So I appreciate it. Glow in the dark here jumped in real quick. Wanted to get you before we go for $5. Thank you, sir.

01:10:04.640 We're south of the USA understands. We have a lot of Yankee gaslighters and corporations tearing down statues. 0.97

01:10:11.480 And 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. 0.84

01:10:19.500 And 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.

01:10:27.800 And you have to decide, are you going to be able to stand up for that?

01:10:30.020 And 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.

01:10:53.180 All 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.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 13, 2023

A Time to Dig Trenches ｜ Guest： Ernst van Zyl ｜ 1⧸13⧸23

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