The Auron MacIntyre Show - English Identity and the Future of Nationalism ｜ Guest： James Orr

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00:01:09.340 Hey guys, you know that I've been discussing the nature of nationalism and national identity quite a bit lately.

00:01:16.800 And this discussion obviously isn't just happening in the United States.

00:01:19.980 It's also very prominently happening in the United Kingdom.

00:01:23.640 One of the biggest issues, very strangely, that's come up is whether the English are even a real people,

00:01:29.060 a real ethnicity, a real identity that one can organize a country around.

00:01:34.100 I want to speak with someone who has himself thought deeply about these issues.

00:01:37.840 He is the chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation in the UK.

00:01:40.700 He's a professor at the University of Cambridge.

00:01:43.440 James Orr, thank you so much for coming on.

00:01:46.020 Aaron, it's great to be with you.

00:01:47.220 So I'll just start with, I guess, kind of the most basic question here.

00:01:53.480 I've watched this kind of strange scandal unfold as many of your leaders struggle with just kind of the very basics of ethnos and identity.

00:02:03.120 And this is in no way unique to the UK.

00:02:05.820 Of course, in the United States, this is a very contentious issue.

00:02:09.340 Many leaders, even conservative leaders, even right-wing leaders are very worried about touching this topic.

00:02:15.900 But I think more and more, we cannot ignore the reality that this is a discussion that's going to have to happen across the entire Western world.

00:02:24.940 So maybe for people who are not familiar, I know this is going to seem very obvious to you,

00:02:28.860 but for people outside the UK, Americans who may not be familiar with really the constituencies inside the UK,

00:02:34.960 can you explain what English identity would be versus, say, British identity,

00:02:39.480 and what other ethnosis or identities make up the United Kingdom in their main parts?

00:02:45.520 Well, look, I'll get onto that, Oran.

00:02:47.140 But just as you were speaking, I was reminded of that wonderful commencement address by David Foster Wallace,

00:02:51.980 where he gives that wonderful joke of the goldfish going for a swim one morning and sees another goldfish.

00:02:58.480 And the goldfish says, how's the water?

00:03:01.260 And the other goldfish goes, what's water?

00:03:05.140 And my sense is that the reason we're so baffled and inarticulate when it comes to talking about questions of English identity

00:03:13.300 and English ethnicity is that it's been the water that we've been swimming in, in England, in the British Isles,

00:03:19.220 for 1,200 years, for 1,500 years.

00:03:21.500 We just haven't had to ask the question before.

00:03:24.060 What do you mean, what is water?

00:03:26.520 We don't know what it is, but in the last 25 years, we've seen the effects of mass unchecked demographic change,

00:03:36.240 mass migration, and that has forced us into a kind of ethnic self-consciousness

00:03:40.600 that we're very uncomfortable with here in Britain.

00:03:42.880 We don't like talking about it.

00:03:44.060 We've never had to talk about it.

00:03:45.160 We don't know how to talk about it.

00:03:47.140 And I think, you know, to be kind of charitable to our politicians and our leaders

00:03:51.240 and our leading commentators, you know, they're as confused as the rest of us.

00:03:56.900 And it's not something we're comfortable talking about because it's not something we've ever been really comfortable talking about.

00:04:02.540 If you look back to go to the heart of your question, I mean, look back over the last 1,200 years of English history

00:04:08.880 or the history of the English, the people, let's just say the people from, what, 400 to 800 A.D.

00:04:17.600 We have massive influxes of the Anglo-Saxons.

00:04:20.800 From 800 to 1,000 A.D., we have a mass influx of the Vikings.

00:04:25.600 In 1066, we have a few thousand Normans come along, but they really throw their weight around

00:04:30.000 and start carving up the nation and imposing their tyranny upon us.

00:04:35.220 And then we have, you know, slow influxes.

00:04:38.040 But, you know, the Huguenots, the Protestant Huguenots in the 16th century from France, we welcome them in.

00:04:42.500 We have quite moderately large influxes of Irish in the 19th century.

00:04:48.120 And we're not really, you know, who are the English?

00:04:50.920 I mean, the English in many ways, you know, the self-consciousness emerges.

00:04:55.360 Contrast is the mother of clarity.

00:04:56.680 And it's our relationship with the Scottish, probably, first and foremost, but also the Welsh,

00:05:01.040 defines our sort of sense of self-consciousness as a people, let's just say as a people rather than as an ethnicity.

00:05:09.200 But you might say that the United Kingdom is born relatively recently, just a few,

00:05:13.580 maybe a few decades before the American Republic in 1707, when, as it were,

00:05:19.420 England and Scotland forged that act of union.

00:05:22.260 Ireland comes along about 100 years later.

00:05:24.460 Wales is folded into England.

00:05:25.760 And so there's this sort of sense of being British, which is at once a kind of a sense of,

00:05:31.500 there's a deep sense of heritage there.

00:05:33.840 We are people of Britannia.

00:05:35.960 We are people of, we are Britons.

00:05:38.420 We're people who belong to this particular place, this particular island.

00:05:41.540 But also there's a sense, even before empire begins to emerge, of a sense of,

00:05:46.120 well, you know, to be British is to be a kind of part of a kind of conveniently confected identity where we don't need to talk about our distinctiveness as an Englishman or as a Welshman or as a Scotsman.

00:06:00.200 And then, of course, empire, you know, within, by the peak of the 19th century, we are dominating nearly a quarter of the globe.

00:06:09.140 And so Britishness inevitably opens up into something, as with the Roman Empire in the second, third and fourth centuries,

00:06:15.980 into something that is much more of a kind of a civic identity, a political and legal identity.

00:06:19.780 And so, and actually, I would say we cope with that very well.

00:06:24.880 We didn't have the mass, the sort of ethnic strife and racial tensions and sort of conflicts that characterized continental Europe,

00:06:33.660 or if I may say so, the continental United States.

00:06:37.320 It's only really in the last five, 10, 15 years, you know, just a blink and just a flash in the grand sweep of our long history

00:06:46.240 that we're starting to have these questions.

00:06:48.100 And they're not comfortable for us, but, you know, we've got to put them on the table.

00:06:51.740 We've got to start addressing them because they are the most important.

00:06:55.520 It is the most important issue, I think, the question of who we are, what is the first person plural.

00:07:00.440 It is coming to dominate the British political landscape like nothing else.

00:07:04.960 Yeah, and we're seeing this again across many different countries, including the United States.

00:07:09.960 I think the reason, as you point out, that perhaps there's a little more history, of course,

00:07:15.120 ethnic conflict in the United States is we imported a large number of very different people early on,

00:07:21.060 as where the UK, while certainly has, you know, other Europeans flooding to it,

00:07:26.740 really hasn't seen a large influx of non-Europeans until recently.

00:07:31.180 And the contrast has been pretty stark.

00:07:33.540 And I think this is one of the hard things, because when people talk about these identities,

00:07:37.620 they get very scared, because, to be fair, there are, you know, very rigid, you know,

00:07:44.360 one-drop genetic racialists out there who want identity to just be a pure matter of blood

00:07:51.420 and in exactly what percentage of, you know, which background you came from.

00:07:56.100 And that's the only way to understand what's going on.

00:07:59.600 Traditionally, heritage has always been part of national identity.

00:08:03.580 It is ultimately a nation, a true nation, a true people is an expansion of the family,

00:08:08.500 an extension of the family.

00:08:10.080 However, you know, there is always this, just as families can always add people through marriage

00:08:14.980 and adoption and other methods, these nations always had, there was a permanability in what

00:08:20.840 the national identity was.

00:08:22.240 You could bring in a certain amount of people, they could marry in, they could adopt the religion,

00:08:26.540 they could learn the language.

00:08:27.620 And after many generations, they too could become part of what it meant to be that people.

00:08:33.500 However, because we have become so obsessed with defining very rigidly, even, you know,

00:08:38.980 the people who are the most progressive or are, in theory, the most worried about hatred being

00:08:43.600 raised up by the creation of national identities, they are ironically the most rigid when it comes

00:08:49.080 to putting everyone in a box and getting it exactly right and making sure that we categorize

00:08:53.220 and manage the relationship with everyone who's got the right box checked.

00:08:56.460 And this creates a situation where race becomes the salient factor, as opposed to perhaps

00:09:02.480 other aspects of ethnic identity that previously dominated.

00:09:06.940 And I thought that was very interesting because, of course, the left is obsessed with many of

00:09:12.020 these racial identities, ethnic identities, and they celebrate many of these racial and ethnic

00:09:16.160 identities.

00:09:17.100 But part of the reason that this kind of English identity became a little bit of a controversy

00:09:23.580 was that, you know, you had different English figures asserting, no, yes, you may be British,

00:09:29.560 you may have moved here from India, your family may have come here with Windrush or whatever,

00:09:33.480 but you are, you are not English, you may be British, but English is a very specific ethnicity.

00:09:39.460 And you might be part of a wider British identity, but you cannot be this.

00:09:43.200 And the simple fact that someone drew a line somewhere with a, with a identity that is

00:09:49.040 European instead of, you know, African or East Asian or something, the fact that there was

00:09:54.600 a category that you could not fit all of these people into, this became just a complete outrage.

00:09:59.700 And so it's very difficult for people to even have basic conversations about the difference

00:10:04.700 between, for instance, an ethnos or a wider imperial or national, you know, nationalistic identity.

00:10:11.440 It's very difficult for people to parse these things.

00:10:13.700 And the minute that someone gets excluded, we get an extreme amount of offense, especially

00:10:17.320 if those excluded are, you know, being excluded because they are not European in some way.

00:10:22.920 Absolutely.

00:10:23.660 I mean, isn't it funny that it's the way in which people talk about ethnic minorities is

00:10:29.080 the very people who talk about ethnic minorities who want us to keep talking about ethnic minorities,

00:10:33.160 who want to sacralize ethnic minorities, who want to put membership of an ethnic minority

00:10:38.240 over and above membership of a common collective moral political community who refuse to countenance

00:10:45.580 talk of an ethnic majority.

00:10:48.200 That is to say, you know, the logical corollary of there being an ethnic minority is that there

00:10:53.140 is an ethnic majority.

00:10:54.560 But if you say that, if you try to invoke it or try to work out what the complex relationship

00:11:00.520 might be between an ethnic, a dominant ethnos and other constituent ethnic minorities, then

00:11:07.920 effectively, you know, you are counsel from polite society.

00:11:12.200 And these are not comfortable conversations, but, you know, we are where we are.

00:11:17.520 And I sometimes think that, you know, I think back to, for example, 2004, when here in Britain,

00:11:22.240 we passed the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

00:11:24.800 I was at law school at the time, and I remember thinking, gosh, this is, you know, this is going

00:11:29.860 to wire in the gender ideology effectively into English law.

00:11:34.980 Is that really a good idea?

00:11:36.500 I remember having that thought over 20 years ago.

00:11:39.360 But I was convinced at the time by liberal friends that, no, there's actually a strong

00:11:44.120 liberal case for a kind of indulging in a kind of compassionate fiction for that tiny percentage

00:11:49.160 of the population who just, for whatever reason, would feel, you know, psychologically relieved

00:11:54.780 if they were, if the British state was able just to pretend to engage in a compassionate

00:12:00.520 fiction that this man was, let's say, a woman, or this woman was, in fact, a man.

00:12:06.160 And I think where you've got a dominant ethnos, you can indulge in the kind of compassionate

00:12:11.640 fiction of civic nationalism.

00:12:13.580 You can say, look, yes, you know, you're English, you know, just as, you know, you might say to

00:12:22.060 the man who thinks he's a woman, yes, you're a woman.

00:12:25.680 And we're happy to go along with that for now.

00:12:28.260 But I think, you know, where you've got a dominant ethnos that is not being toxified,

00:12:33.760 that is not being challenged, whose history and heritage is not being trampled upon, then

00:12:38.260 in fact, you probably do have, broadly speaking, propitious conditions for a kind of confected

00:12:44.900 compassionate fiction of a sort of civic nationalism, where ethnicity and questions of ethnicity and

00:12:50.360 race and religion can recede.

00:12:52.020 And you can just about have a flourishing and integrated multi-ethnic or multi-religious

00:12:58.700 community and society.

00:13:01.380 But that's not what's happened.

00:13:03.320 In fact, we've had a progressive elite that time and time again, over and over and over

00:13:08.260 has been demonizing the ethnos, where it has been, you know, to all intents and purposes,

00:13:13.420 criminalizing or at least stigmatizing the flying of the English flag, or even the flying

00:13:18.820 of the Union Jack, you know, that one simple that kind of transcend, that should transcend

00:13:23.340 all political affiliations, all kind of identitarian concerns.

00:13:27.580 And, you know, the worry is that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's very hard to know how

00:13:35.260 to put it back.

00:13:35.980 Once the sort of the sense of English self-consciousness as one ethnicity among others in this place

00:13:43.060 emerges, you know, what's the reverse gear here?

00:13:47.940 It's not obvious.

00:13:49.240 And, you know, I look ahead with, you know, with some foreboding, as I see riots breaking

00:13:53.560 out all over the country here, even today in England, and over the last couple of days,

00:13:58.480 we've been seeing St. George's flags being put up, Union Jacks being put up, and some

00:14:04.120 councils trying to take them down, saying that this is not conducive to community cohesion.

00:14:08.680 Palestinian flags are fine, Ukrainian flags are fine, every nationalism is fine, except

00:14:14.600 our own loyalty, expression of loyalty to our own nation.

00:14:17.860 So, you know, we're in very, very sort of, you know, tense times, I would say, just to

00:14:25.160 understate matters somewhat.

00:14:27.700 So there's an interesting parallel, again, between the US and the UK in this way, but

00:14:33.340 it doesn't apply to every Western country that is undergoing this experience.

00:14:36.900 So you pointed out that English identity has to become British identity as you expand out,

00:14:42.980 bring in more kingdoms.

00:14:44.160 And then as you become an empire, and you're managing many peoples across the globe, there's

00:14:49.080 another layer of this happened to the Romans, US similar experience, we more or less got

00:14:54.980 handed the baton of the British Empire after World War Two, and have ourselves found that

00:15:00.700 we are in many ways losing this understanding, because just as you guys are experiencing, we

00:15:07.040 started, you know, we've always had a decent amount of immigration to the United States,

00:15:10.580 but we really started bringing vast amounts of people from radically different places.

00:15:15.340 And, you know, again, with your analogy of the fish and water, you know, being wet, we

00:15:20.680 slowly recognize that these other groups are leveraging their racial solidarity, their ethnic

00:15:28.840 identities, whether we recognize ourselves as people or not.

00:15:33.080 And so this creates, this raises the salience of race and identity in the society, as you say,

00:15:38.660 when there's this more or less uniform understanding of what England or what the United States

00:15:43.460 was, then a few people come in, it's not a big deal, you can kind of do your thing, and

00:15:48.780 we can try to include you, because we're very confident in who we are, we're very familiar

00:15:52.260 with that, this isn't going to disrupt our way of life.

00:15:54.760 But so many people are now vying for so many pieces of the pie, that there's really not much

00:16:00.120 left other than for you to recognize that you're actually now in a competition.

00:16:04.220 You're no longer the dominant ethnos or the dominant identity inside of this, and you more

00:16:10.200 or less dictate where things are going, you have to become one of these people who's squabbling over

00:16:15.100 the different aspects of, you know, institutions and power and religion and all these things.

00:16:21.060 And we've seen this in other societies, we know that, you know, there are multi-ethnic

00:16:24.880 empires that manage themselves during this, but they usually do it by separating these peoples,

00:16:30.600 giving them all kind of their own jurisdiction inside their area, and then kind of bringing

00:16:35.640 it all together under a king, an emperor, some, you know, some figurehead who can negotiate

00:16:40.220 between these different peoples.

00:16:41.460 But that's fundamentally different from kind of the nation state understanding that we have

00:16:45.860 had the last few hundred years in the modern world.

00:16:49.960 And so I wonder, do you think that it's the empire itself that creates this scenario?

00:16:55.200 Because there are other countries like, you know, Australia, obviously they were part of the

00:16:59.840 empire, but they don't, there's no, you know, greater Australia that's going to be pushing

00:17:03.940 its way somewhere into Mongolia anytime soon.

00:17:06.820 So why are we seeing this in all these European countries, some which had empires and can buy

00:17:11.620 into this narrative, but others never experienced this?

00:17:15.160 Yeah, no, well, you're absolutely right.

00:17:17.160 I mean, I, you know, I think over the, you know, in 1948, you know, in the post-war period

00:17:22.340 where we pass our first sort of Citizenship Act, National Citizenship Act, we've got maybe 98,

00:17:27.940 99% of the British, of Britain is broadly speaking, ethnically British, ethnically English, ethnically

00:17:34.420 Scottish.

00:17:35.500 And then over the course of the 1950s and 60s, broadly speaking, we have a very successful,

00:17:40.680 you know, relative sort of balanced inflows of migrants from, from West Pakistan, as it

00:17:48.200 then was from India, from sub-Saharan Africa.

00:17:50.760 And generally speaking, they integrated quite successfully because there was this sense of

00:17:55.800 being a subject of empire, having benefited from the fruits of a, one of the most successful

00:18:03.300 empires that the world has ever known.

00:18:06.000 And so, you know, they wanted, you know, they wanted to make the trek from far away to our,

00:18:11.340 you know, rainy little island with terrible food and spending time with people with terrible,

00:18:17.240 terrible teeth and, and in rationing and a kind of war-torn Britain.

00:18:20.920 And, and, and they did that because there was a sense of, of signing up to, to, to, to the

00:18:25.900 values, to what it was to be British as an identity that transcended race, that transcended

00:18:31.000 ethnicity, that transcended religion.

00:18:33.100 And that project, to some extent, worked pretty well, at least if you compare it to the track

00:18:39.620 record of other post-colonial empires and their efforts at assimilation.

00:18:43.580 Think of France, for example, and all the terrible troubles that France has had with its

00:18:48.440 aggressive doctrine of secularity with respect to integrating Muslims from the Maghreb and,

00:18:54.500 and, and North Africa.

00:18:55.900 And, but I think, you know, as that sort of sense of repudiation of empire and the imperial

00:19:01.940 legacy has got more aggressive and more intense, we've lost that sort of mechanism to articulate

00:19:08.680 the monoculture.

00:19:10.300 The monoculture, it seems to me, is monoculturalism is the only way that you're going to be able

00:19:15.460 to integrate, um, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial moral community, a moral political

00:19:23.180 community.

00:19:23.760 And what does liberalism give us?

00:19:25.680 The very opposite.

00:19:27.260 It fetishizes, sacralizes multiculturalism.

00:19:31.020 And that has been a complete catastrophe.

00:19:33.240 And because, because that is what's, that's, that's what sort of generated these silos.

00:19:37.240 And of course, it's not just multiculturalism.

00:19:39.060 It's what my dear friend, Eric Kaufman, a great sociologist here in Britain calls asymmetric

00:19:44.420 multiculturalism.

00:19:45.420 That is to say, you know, equality only goes in one direction.

00:19:49.020 That is to say, it is a kind of, a kind of sacred status for ethnic minorities and, and

00:19:54.860 the very opposite, a stigmatized status for the dominant ethnos.

00:19:59.180 And that is a recipe for social chaos.

00:20:01.120 It's a recipe for dissent.

00:20:02.820 It's a recipe for, for conflict, for the dissolution of trust.

00:20:06.780 And so, you know, I don't know if we could have made it work, but certainly the very

00:20:13.340 worst, worst path we could have taken was embracing the doctrine of multiculturalism.

00:20:18.400 That was, as it were, you know, the only thing that could really have made everything work

00:20:22.700 is the sort of, a sense of a shared horizon, a common culture.

00:20:26.780 And broadly speaking, a post-imperial monoculture could have worked.

00:20:32.140 In effect, what we're seeing now is that the British Isles, you know, the British Empire

00:20:35.900 is being replicated within the British Isles.

00:20:38.560 You talked earlier about how empires, you know, can be multicultural, but they require,

00:20:43.780 you know, carefully delineated and segregated demographic silos.

00:20:47.740 And in fact, I think that is probably what we're beginning to see here in Britain.

00:20:52.380 We're seeing, as it were, the British Empire condensed, distilled in microcosm onto our tiny

00:20:57.600 island.

00:20:58.000 And so that, you know, there are certain parts of the country now, certain parts of certain

00:21:03.440 urban centers that are completely dominated by Islam.

00:21:06.660 And you're simply, it is very clear that you're not welcome if you are not a Muslim.

00:21:10.480 There are parts of certain cities where it's very clear that you're not going to be welcome

00:21:14.980 if in a Hindu area and so on and so forth.

00:21:18.980 And of course, that will drive the emergence of a sense of English ethnic self-consciousness.

00:21:24.540 And I think that's, you know, it's heartbreaking.

00:21:27.660 And I think there might have been a way we could have made it work.

00:21:30.980 But politicians have got a huge job on their hands now.

00:21:35.040 And I think the government, looking at the British government now, it's clearly in a state

00:21:39.220 of complete paralysis.

00:21:41.180 The Tory party hasn't got any ideas.

00:21:43.740 Reform UK has got some promising ideas.

00:21:46.400 And I think it's, you know, it's got a sense of Britishness.

00:21:49.760 It's got a sense of national confidence, national preference, putting the nation first, which

00:21:56.200 is transcending race, transcending ethnicity.

00:21:59.000 So we'll have to wait and see how Nigel Farage and Reform UK do.

00:22:02.780 But we've got, the politicians have got an enormous job on their hands.

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00:22:37.360 You know, I too have wanted, I've struggled with this issue quite a bit because innately,

00:22:46.180 you know, just being a good classic talk radio American conservative, like, yeah, of course

00:22:50.580 we can do the multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, not going to be a problem.

00:22:55.580 We won't call it multiculturalism.

00:22:57.200 We'll call it something else.

00:22:58.420 But the more I look at this, the more I wonder, especially when it comes to religion, because

00:23:04.140 I think of Huntington's clash of civilizations and the way that he understands, you know,

00:23:08.800 these civilizational blocks that are mainly defined by the religions in those regions.

00:23:14.100 He identifies that as the core binding agent for different peoples.

00:23:18.680 And I mean, can you ultimately have a shared culture between religions with very different

00:23:25.660 values?

00:23:26.140 You know, and I don't mean that you, well, we can't, you know, you can have 10 Muslims

00:23:31.140 gathering together somewhere.

00:23:32.700 You can have a Hindu service in a, you know, community center, or it's not the end of the

00:23:37.320 world.

00:23:37.560 But I mean, can you really operate a shared culture when people have fundamentally different,

00:23:43.900 you know, their entire worldview is radically different the way that they understand knowledge,

00:23:50.480 the way that they approach learning and rule of law and the role of men and women and

00:23:55.260 everything else?

00:23:56.460 Can you really have a shared culture when you don't have that binding agent of religion?

00:24:02.540 I think in the UK, I mean, obviously this is happening everywhere, but it feels like in

00:24:06.620 the UK, it's specifically vulnerable to this scenario because it's a very atheistic society

00:24:12.820 at this point.

00:24:13.340 It's a very secular society.

00:24:15.160 And so that all attempts to bind you together on some kind of shared value outside of just

00:24:20.620 literally skin color.

00:24:22.360 Well, you don't have a religion to do that.

00:24:23.960 You don't have something that can actually move across those communities.

00:24:28.400 And so the only thing to do is to adopt some kind of free floating propositional, we've

00:24:33.340 got British values thing, but that's only skin deep.

00:24:36.420 You know, at the end of the day, a Muslim is going to be a Muslim before they're British.

00:24:39.940 A Hindu is going to be a Hindu before they're British.

00:24:42.080 And the British don't know what to be because they're not Christian anymore.

00:24:45.500 And so it feels like that is itself a huge issue because I am more and more skeptical about

00:24:51.920 the idea that even the civic nationalism based on this, like just, you know, free floating

00:24:57.620 idea of shared values somewhere either in the United States or Britain is actually a way

00:25:02.460 to bind people of very different actual cultures together.

00:25:06.220 Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.

00:25:09.280 I mean, in many ways, English culture, when we talk about English culture, we just are talking about

00:25:14.340 Christian culture.

00:25:15.380 The very first history and the dominant kind of history of the English people is Beads,

00:25:22.500 history of the ecclesiastical history of the English people.

00:25:27.220 So that's, as it were, you know, to be English, what stitched England together was this sense

00:25:34.140 of a kind of common Christian inheritance.

00:25:38.060 And Alfred the Great, you know, typically seen as our sort of our first, you know, our founding

00:25:42.740 king, the founding king of England is very self-consciously a Christian king.

00:25:46.920 He sees England as a Christian dominion and that runs through the centuries.

00:25:52.260 And so I think you're right that it's very, very difficult to separate out questions

00:25:57.020 of religion from questions of culture.

00:25:59.620 And so what are we trying to do?

00:26:01.140 Yes, you know, at the moment, you know, over the last 30, 40, 50 years, we've entered into

00:26:06.880 what you might say is a post-Christian phase in Britain.

00:26:10.040 And we are dominated by the dogmas of liberalism, in particular Rawlsian liberalism that insists

00:26:16.040 that we must bracket all of what Rawls calls our comprehensive metaphysical doctrines,

00:26:21.080 as it were, for the sake of civic peace in the public square.

00:26:24.360 We cannot invoke the kinds of fundamental questions that religion is so good at addressing,

00:26:30.380 because if we do, then we're going to be in a state of conflict and everything's going

00:26:35.460 to unravel.

00:26:36.780 And so you've got that kind of agnostic nervousness and neuralgia around these kind of questions

00:26:41.680 of deep fundamental questions that are never going to go away.

00:26:44.560 You know, there's that old line that, you know, Christianity always, or religion always

00:26:49.220 buries its undertakers.

00:26:50.300 You know, you may try and drive it out from the front door, but it's always going to come

00:26:53.680 rushing in through the back door.

00:26:56.420 And the fact of the matter is that, you know, there is a sense that with the passing of Christianity

00:27:00.600 and the rise of a sort of culture of what Roger Scruton calls a self-repudiation, there's

00:27:07.440 just, you know, there's a kind of civilizational exhaustion.

00:27:09.900 And we're bringing in an extraordinary, unprecedented numbers, people from different parts of the

00:27:18.320 world who do have a deep commitment to the transcendent.

00:27:22.080 In the case of Islam, who have a deep commitment to the Ummah that will always supersede, will

00:27:26.920 always transcend any local national loyalties.

00:27:30.720 And, you know, that's the same with other religions, too.

00:27:34.100 I mean, that's especially true of Islam.

00:27:36.340 That's not to say that Muslims can't be, you know, dedicated and, you know, successful,

00:27:43.780 successfully integrated members of the British polity.

00:27:48.100 But it is it's an enormous challenge, particularly when people are coming in at scale and particularly

00:27:53.520 when there isn't any kind of rival set of norms and orientations and horizons that could

00:28:02.660 substitute for religion or at least, you know, to some extent, supersede it or or domesticate

00:28:08.060 that deep impulse towards towards the Ummah in the case of Islam or in the case of of Hinduism

00:28:15.920 towards towards India, you know, to be a Hindu, you know, is Hinduism is deeply rooted in

00:28:22.760 a particular place in the subcontinent.

00:28:25.140 What does a Muslim of what does a British Muslim do five times a day?

00:28:29.140 He works out where Mecca is.

00:28:31.880 That is to say, he physically orientates himself towards a place that is not Britain.

00:28:37.760 Right.

00:28:38.760 And, you know, it and that's not just a, you know, that's not an incidental obligation

00:28:47.600 within Islam.

00:28:48.600 It's one of the five pillars.

00:28:49.600 You know, that is what you've got to do every day, orientate yourself away towards a centre

00:28:54.940 of gravity, a centre of geographic gravity, as it were, that is the Arabian Peninsula.

00:29:00.600 So liberalism simply can't cope.

00:29:03.440 Secular liberalism can't cope, hasn't got a story, hasn't got any unifying horizon that

00:29:08.940 can integrate these different these different demographic groups.

00:29:12.940 And I think that's why you're seeing the across the political landscape, not just in Britain,

00:29:17.600 but all across the West, particularly in Europe.

00:29:19.440 I mean, perhaps it's less so in America, where broadly speaking, your migration inflows have

00:29:24.720 been Hispanic Catholics.

00:29:26.440 And I think that has actually made life a lot easier for you than it has been, than

00:29:32.600 it has been for us.

00:29:33.460 But it's an enormous headache.

00:29:34.660 And I don't think there's any solution to it.

00:29:37.360 You mentioned Rawlsian liberalism there.

00:29:40.020 And it's kind of amazing to me that people are still pitching the original position and,

00:29:43.980 you know, the veil of ignorance when I feel like Carl Schmitt dismantled this pretty handily

00:29:49.100 with the friend enemy distinction in the first place.

00:29:50.980 It's very clear that ultimately there are lines on which these communities are willing

00:29:56.520 to die and kill for their identity and that those things don't suspend themselves just

00:30:01.740 because, you know, you've imported into the magic soil of the West that will wash away

00:30:07.060 all these commitments and bring this forward.

00:30:09.540 But I do want to push back a little bit because he said there will, of course, a Muslim can integrate

00:30:13.840 and become, you know, part of English society.

00:30:16.880 But I'm not sure.

00:30:18.500 Like, I'm genuine.

00:30:19.480 And I don't, I'm not trying to bag on anyone here.

00:30:21.700 But again, as you describe, to be Muslim is to worship another place and to hold always

00:30:28.360 and forever that place in your heart.

00:30:29.560 You cannot be a faithfully practicing Muslim and not worship a far off land for generations.

00:30:36.540 Not just you, but your children and your grandchildren must worship.

00:30:39.620 But I mean, this was literally the concern of Americans when we started importing, you

00:30:44.000 know, the, the Italians and the, and the, and the Irish, because they were Catholic and

00:30:48.520 they brought all that potpourri over there.

00:30:50.080 There's going to be this, this European king, you know, that you're actually loyal to.

00:30:54.400 There's this European authority in the old world that you're trying to, and you'll, you

00:30:58.580 know, sign yourself up for generations of this.

00:31:01.020 And of course, eventually that faded, but it took many, many, many generations for that

00:31:06.480 to occur and also, uh, you know, in a large part, uh, many, many of those people either

00:31:11.480 converted to Protestantism or, you know, they, they modified their Catholicism in a way that

00:31:15.700 allowed them to be, uh, more, more compatible with American culture.

00:31:19.320 But I'm not sure that this is even true of Islam, you know, I mean, Catholicism and Protestantism,

00:31:24.100 or at least, you know, we're still both in Christianity, you know, or at least somewhere in the same

00:31:27.980 realm, but Islam is just not that.

00:31:30.160 And so I know, I'm sure there are individual people, you know, who ultimately work their

00:31:36.560 way into English society and become, but as a group, it does seem very specifically that

00:31:42.300 if you are allowing Muslim immigration into your country, you are necessarily creating

00:31:48.420 a fifth column that even if these people aren't malicious and many of them are, but even if

00:31:53.800 they aren't malicious, just the natural pull of their social organization will always keep

00:31:58.540 them out necessarily of British society.

00:32:01.220 And that is going to create a barrier to any attempt to, to reunify your identity and move

00:32:06.380 forward together as a nation.

00:32:08.960 You're absolutely right that the speed and scale of migration from Muslim majority countries

00:32:13.880 that we're seeing at the moment means that there's simply no incentive for new arrivals,

00:32:19.080 uh, who, uh, from, uh, from Muslim majority countries to integrate at all, to learn English,

00:32:23.960 to have anything to do with, uh, as it were, indigenous British culture.

00:32:28.680 That's absolutely true.

00:32:29.840 And, uh, that, you know, you reach certain tipping points where, you know, what is it to

00:32:34.060 integrate in Bradford, integrate into being a Bradfordian probably to convert to Islam at

00:32:41.300 this point, given the speed and scale of demographic change.

00:32:45.380 But I, I'd push back on you a little bit just to say that, you know, just as with John F.

00:32:50.340 Kennedy, you know, Catholic, but he becomes president in 1960, or even, uh, the great,

00:32:54.580 uh, Joe Biden, uh, sleepy, sleepy Joe, uh, you know, he is a Catholic, uh, well, to some

00:33:01.080 extent anyway, but clearly not really, um, uh, clearly technically.

00:33:06.360 And then we have an actual Catholic in JD Vance, your, um, your vice president and your next

00:33:12.120 president.

00:33:12.780 And so it, now, and you're right that, you know, you know, Catholicism, Protestantism,

00:33:17.240 I said, you know, that kind of, you know, that, that, they, they hang together in a way

00:33:20.540 that, that, that Christianity does not quite hang together with Islam.

00:33:24.000 But I've noticed certainly there are individual Muslims.

00:33:26.000 I mean, I'm thinking of Reform UK, some of the people that are at the top there.

00:33:30.440 I'm thinking of Layla Cunningham, this, uh, or Zia Yusuf, you know, they are kind of

00:33:34.100 political superstars within the Reform UK movement.

00:33:38.020 They are Muslims.

00:33:39.080 I mean, I don't know much about their, much about their sort of personal sort of journeys

00:33:44.160 of faith, but they are, I think, self-identified as Muslims.

00:33:47.400 But, you know, I know that they, you know, they're committed to Britain.

00:33:50.240 They're committed to saving the nation.

00:33:52.080 They're committed to its flourishing.

00:33:54.040 And so, you know, I do, you know, I know, you know, success stories of individual Muslims

00:33:58.460 who I would see as, you know, as committed to the, the, the project of, of, of British

00:34:04.520 flourishing as, uh, as I am, but you're right, you know, it, at the individual level, it's

00:34:09.680 possible.

00:34:10.480 Um, but when you, when you've got this immigration happening at scale, it becomes much, much harder.

00:34:16.560 That the, the example I think of actually is a biblical one.

00:34:19.160 I was reading the book of Ruth earlier this week, and it's a fascinating text.

00:34:23.240 You know, I'd read it before several times, but I was rereading it and I was having to do

00:34:26.840 some, some, some, some speech over in America.

00:34:29.320 And I thought to myself, you know, this is the kind of the model and this is how it can

00:34:33.140 work, but the thresholds are so high, you know, Ruth, she's a Moabitess, you know, this

00:34:38.560 sort of part of this kind of this, this, you know, this hated enemy of Israel, but she does

00:34:43.220 manage to integrate, but what does she need?

00:34:45.260 What, what is it that she famously says, you know, where you go, I will go where you lodge.

00:34:52.440 I will lodge, um, your people shall be my people, like total identity and your God will

00:35:00.160 be my God.

00:35:01.380 And that last one I think is very important.

00:35:04.120 That's very important.

00:35:05.460 But here's the interesting thing.

00:35:06.600 I had not noticed this before, even at the end of that book, very short book, she still,

00:35:12.100 she doesn't become Ruth the Israelite.

00:35:15.300 She's still Ruth the Moabite.

00:35:16.880 So the, the, the identity is not erased, but there is a sense that somehow the adoption

00:35:23.400 kind of works, that it's not subversive.

00:35:25.880 It can happen.

00:35:27.740 But my worry is, you know, it's rare.

00:35:30.080 It can happen.

00:35:30.940 It has happened in this nation in the fifties, sixties, seventies.

00:35:34.100 We had a Hindu prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

00:35:36.500 I mean, it was a year below me at school in the 1990s when we were at school together.

00:35:40.580 It never crossed my mind that he wasn't English, you know, as it were, I think it crossed

00:35:45.060 his mind.

00:35:45.480 It, it, it, it, well, it's now, well, it's certainly now crossed his mind, but because

00:35:50.800 we, you know, these questions have just become a lot more, a lot more salient as the demographics

00:35:55.440 have changed, but it didn't matter when you had a dominant, confident ethnos, it was possible

00:35:59.760 to engage in that compassionate fiction that we were all in this together because we were

00:36:03.740 all in it together.

00:36:04.360 And we did, we didn't, we didn't need to ask those kinds of questions simply because

00:36:08.620 the configuration of the different, you know, the configuration of the ethnos was such

00:36:13.480 that we could welcome in Ruths and we could still even call them Moabites and kind of

00:36:17.520 pretend that they were Israelites.

00:36:18.580 Again, I, because I don't think that ethnos is, uh, is just genetic or something like this.

00:36:27.140 I am in a hundred percent agree with you that there, you can fold new people into an identity.

00:36:33.240 Uh, but I just think it takes a more total commitment.

00:36:35.740 I think the Ruth example is a good example because she is her God, you know, his God becomes

00:36:42.360 her God that, that is a, and if you, if you look at many ancient cultures, you look at,

00:36:47.200 uh, uh, Festel Kalanja's, uh, the ancient city, he talks about how when, you know, a woman leaves

00:36:53.480 her family because it's all ancestor worship at that time, she's basically abandoning her

00:36:57.600 religion and joining the religion of her husband.

00:37:00.820 That's how she becomes part of his tribe.

00:37:02.980 That's how, you know, she's, she marries and she converts, right?

00:37:07.000 These are the things that we know help to change her identity, right?

00:37:10.420 And if you're not doing that, if you're entering into a community, and again, I'm sorry, but

00:37:15.940 Catholicism and Christianity, you know, Catholicism and Protestantism are just much closer than

00:37:20.940 Islam.

00:37:21.500 I think that ultimately, if you allow, again, certain individuals, you're going to be okay.

00:37:28.120 But if you have any moderate amount of immigration of people who retain that faith and do not

00:37:33.360 convert and do not make that commitment that your people will be my people and your God

00:37:38.040 will be my God, they will have a different culture.

00:37:40.700 They must.

00:37:41.300 That is, it is, it is the definition of what a culture is if they maintain that faith to

00:37:46.200 have a different one.

00:37:47.180 And so I, I guess, uh, you know, my point is just, I, I agree that people can join these

00:37:53.020 identities.

00:37:53.460 And I think the keys are really intermarriage and faith.

00:37:57.460 These are the things that actually throughout history have brought different peoples into

00:38:01.320 being one people.

00:38:02.380 Uh, but when we're not doing that and we're actually explicitly saying it's okay if you

00:38:06.880 don't do that.

00:38:07.440 And not only are we not, you can serve as a government minister and you can, you can accumulate

00:38:13.400 a large amount of power in society and maintain this alien identity.

00:38:17.360 I think we're opening ourselves up for this kind of attack.

00:38:21.500 I know we both know individual people who hold other faiths that we enjoy their company

00:38:26.800 and value them as people and, you know, see the contributions that they make in our society.

00:38:31.360 But I think as a general principle, I think actually it's, I think we should be demanding

00:38:36.680 ultimately.

00:38:37.700 I know that can't happen now because we, we can't even get to the point where we can even

00:38:40.960 notice that we have a religious identity in many Western countries.

00:38:43.540 But since we're just talking about what could happen in the future anyway, I think it does

00:38:48.420 have to become a certain level feature of integration that you recognize that it's going to be a

00:38:53.800 multi-generational thing.

00:38:54.900 Like you said, Ruth does not immediately become an Israeli.

00:38:57.060 She is in a way and her children's children's children will be right.

00:39:02.000 But she is not because it, you can't just become an Israeli in your first generation.

00:39:07.560 You can't just become an American in your first generation.

00:39:10.100 You can't just become someone who's British in your first generation.

00:39:13.900 It's multi-generational.

00:39:15.040 It requires you to intermarry into the culture, not to segregate yourself into ethnic ghettos.

00:39:20.260 And I think ultimately it has to be a, some way, a conversion to the religion of that people.

00:39:26.240 Because if you don't have that, then you never have the spiritual enjoining.

00:39:29.820 And if you never have the spiritual enjoining, you certainly won't have the cultural enjoining.

00:39:33.500 You will always be set apart.

00:39:35.100 You always be looking for people of your faith to marry.

00:39:37.360 You're not going to intermarry, right?

00:39:38.960 To maintain those foreign identities, you in some way have to reject the local identity.

00:39:44.760 And so I'm just very concerned that even as people are trying to find their way towards

00:39:49.860 a true definition of national identity, they're trying to retain so much of their liberalism

00:39:55.340 that they're cutting off like key markers of identity that actually show integration

00:40:00.060 and actually show you a way forward for a bonding identity.

00:40:03.200 Well, I couldn't agree more.

00:40:06.120 I mean, I've got to say, Aaron, I'm not used to being anything other than the most pessimistic

00:40:11.840 person in a conversation.

00:40:14.020 But I often steal that title.

00:40:16.500 I appreciate that.

00:40:18.440 My remarks earlier was simply more just sort of running the counterfactual of how we might

00:40:23.840 have gone about it.

00:40:24.760 I mean, I'm not even that confident that we could have had, you know, 100,000 Ruths a year.

00:40:30.040 I'm just not sure we could have pulled it off.

00:40:31.700 It would have required an enormous degree of civilizational or kind of national confidence

00:40:37.380 in a monoculture.

00:40:39.780 I mean, I think if anyone could have pulled it off, probably Britain could have pulled

00:40:42.840 it off in the 50s and 60s.

00:40:44.500 Because I think actually, you know, the sort of the imperial legacy for most of our subjects

00:40:50.040 was a broadly positive one.

00:40:51.720 And that's why, you know, many, many people wanted to come and live here, despite the

00:40:57.260 kind of not very, the purpose of unprepossessing conditions of our rainy island with terrible

00:41:03.480 food.

00:41:03.900 Because there was a sense that they could buy into the institutions.

00:41:06.400 They could buy into the values.

00:41:08.000 And somehow, you know, their Islam or their Hinduism was somehow kind of compatible within

00:41:14.140 this broader project.

00:41:16.800 Now, you know, I'm a little bit skeptical that we could have pulled it off.

00:41:20.400 I'm not quite sure how we might have done.

00:41:22.180 But I think, you know, if any sort of any empire, you know, where does where do these

00:41:26.200 sort of multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious sort of polities work?

00:41:30.960 Where are they successful?

00:41:32.080 Well, I suppose you might you might say the Roman Empire to some extent.

00:41:35.860 The Austro-Hungarian Empire was pretty successful.

00:41:39.240 I think the British Empire was quite successful, too.

00:41:41.640 But, you know, there's one of those great paradoxes that the emergence of nationalism

00:41:44.740 goes hand in hand with the emergence of liberalism, as it were, you know, kind of two phenomena that

00:41:49.860 you would have thought kind of, you know, kind of opposed.

00:41:53.080 The liberal doctrine of human nature is, you know, of kind of refusal of all unchosen obligations

00:41:58.260 and loyalties and political affections doesn't seem to sort of sit very well with the emergence

00:42:03.420 of the nation and the nation state that happens just as liberalism is emerging.

00:42:07.760 You think, you know, it's this weird way that, you know, France, the nation is born to something

00:42:11.780 really to some extent, as we know it now in 1789.

00:42:14.760 You think of the revolutions of the great national revolutions of 1848 and so on and so forth.

00:42:20.940 You think of the emergence of Germany in 1870 or the emergence of Italy in 1860.

00:42:24.980 So this is kind of strange, you know, strange phenomena where, you know, kind of sort of

00:42:30.160 doctrines of human nature and doctrines of, you know, kind of autonomy, of self-legislation

00:42:37.180 and of rights and so on.

00:42:39.860 Those, you know, those only seem to flourish within a context of a kind of a breaking away

00:42:46.720 from empire and an anchoring in a sort of concrete place of concrete belonging.

00:42:52.500 And, you know, it's a kind of a strange, strange paradox.

00:42:55.500 But, I mean, it's one that we've been wrestling with for a long time.

00:42:59.180 I mean, I've just been I'm heading off to Greece.

00:43:01.220 I'm taking my family to Greece in a few days time and been reading a lot about, you know,

00:43:05.920 fifth century Athens and the Peloponnesian War.

00:43:08.660 And, you know, one of the funny things that's going on in the Peloponnesian War is in the

00:43:13.120 conflict between Athens and Sparta is that you've got loyalty to the polis, right?

00:43:17.520 You're loyal to Corinth.

00:43:18.640 You're loyal to Thebes.

00:43:19.580 You're loyal to Athens.

00:43:20.420 You're loyal to Sparta.

00:43:21.280 But also you've got an ethnic component to the division.

00:43:24.540 You've got the Dorian ethnicity and you've got the, you might call the sort of Ionian

00:43:30.320 ethnicity.

00:43:31.140 So the Athenians are Ionians.

00:43:32.800 The Spartans broadly are Dorians.

00:43:35.220 And broadly speaking, the kind of Peloponnesian War is both an ethnic one.

00:43:39.360 You know, the city states line up, roughly speaking, along ethnic boundaries.

00:43:43.340 And they're kind of dimly conscious of a kind of polis membership and an ethnos membership.

00:43:48.680 And sometimes it crosses over, sometimes it doesn't.

00:43:52.100 But it has a, you know, it has really a sort of really tectonic impact on the geopolitical

00:43:57.340 landscape that they're often not really conscious of.

00:44:01.360 You know, you mentioned previously that there was a rise in the salience of ethnic identity,

00:44:10.180 the rise and salience of English as an identity.

00:44:13.460 And you lamented it in some way.

00:44:16.380 And I understand that on some level, because, of course, you know, just want a harmonious

00:44:21.780 society at the end of the day.

00:44:23.160 I just want what's best for America.

00:44:24.880 You want what's best for England.

00:44:26.140 And ultimately, we want to see our homes be peaceful and get along.

00:44:31.500 And, you know, I'm not looking for my neighbors to go hunting each other down based on the color.

00:44:36.700 Yeah, that's a nightmare scenario, right?

00:44:38.760 No, no one's looking for Rwanda here at the same time, though, a lot of what I hear on

00:44:44.180 the right, when terrible things happen to, say, the English or, you know, white Americans

00:44:50.460 in the United States, the response of the right is you have to stop this now or you'll see

00:44:57.380 these people recognize their identity, right?

00:45:00.260 That it's never it's never that we were being terrible to the English people.

00:45:04.960 It's never that we were being terrible to white Americans.

00:45:07.920 That's not the crime.

00:45:08.960 That's not what you should be worried about.

00:45:10.220 The only reason you should be worried or change anything is those people might notice

00:45:14.240 they're being mistreated and then begin to act accordingly as a group, right?

00:45:19.100 That's the big thing everyone is scared about.

00:45:21.920 And it's interesting because, you know, you've outlined a couple of times here that identity

00:45:25.320 in many ways is almost in, you know, back to the Carl Schmitt again, but identity is forged

00:45:31.140 in the outgroup attacking, right?

00:45:34.680 Whether it be these two Greek ethnicities or the Greeks coming together to eventually

00:45:39.740 fight the Persians because they realize that Hellenic civilization is itself like this, you

00:45:43.980 know, macro identity that they need to suddenly defend against.

00:45:49.140 You know, you have this with the Americans, obviously, you know, with throwing off the British,

00:45:54.480 you know, are we different states or are we one unified people?

00:45:57.440 We only know when we have to go to war with someone.

00:46:00.140 And so over and over again, we see that it is conflict.

00:46:03.000 It's shared conflict is one of the things that really either, you know, it decides where

00:46:07.460 because, of course, identity is always, you know, it's, you know, always the stack.

00:46:12.680 There's always these different factors involved in identity and whether you're focusing on

00:46:16.660 ethnicity or race or in between tends to be who you're in conflict with.

00:46:21.380 What is the salient identity at that moment?

00:46:23.840 But as these nations start targeting their home populations, you know, you mentioned the

00:46:30.540 ethnic English.

00:46:31.520 For many people, the assertion that there even was an ethnic English was itself offensive.

00:46:36.820 Is that the worst thing that people are raising that consciousness or is that ultimately a necessary

00:46:43.460 self-defense mechanism or is it neither good or bad?

00:46:46.020 It is just a outcome, an inevitable outcome of where we're at.

00:46:49.200 And we simply have to deal with the fact that that is going to be the new reality going forward.

00:46:53.080 Well, I think that it's probably inevitable.

00:46:58.860 And, you know, maybe that we, the English and we, the British, have been shielded to some

00:47:04.780 extent from the kind of sharp edge of geopolitical conflict that has characterized continental

00:47:12.820 Europe in the last five, six hundred years.

00:47:15.520 So, you know, to some extent, the county of Hampshire, for example, here in England is

00:47:20.360 older than every modern, you know, every European state.

00:47:25.160 And so we've, we're a very, very sort of, it's been a very, very sort of settled landscape,

00:47:30.260 a settled polity, a settled demos, a settled ethnos and a pretty unruffled one.

00:47:36.060 Yes, we've had big kind of, we've been engaged in enormous international conflicts.

00:47:41.620 And yes, that's kind of sharpened our sense of self-identity.

00:47:46.780 And so I think now, over the last 25 years, as we've seen, you know, more people arrive

00:47:51.800 in these islands by a factor of three or four than arrived in the first twelve hundred years

00:47:57.480 of our history, we just don't know what to do.

00:48:01.840 And, you know, slowly, fitfully, you know, we were never particularly, as a nation, jingoistic

00:48:08.320 or unduly kind of patriotic, generally speaking, quite a kind of reserved, stiff upper lip, shy,

00:48:15.960 kind of retiring people, not wanting to, you know, think of the French, you know, they're

00:48:20.200 so sort of irritatingly jingoistic and patriotic.

00:48:24.260 And they've got that kind of fierce national pride.

00:48:27.240 They still do in some ways.

00:48:28.840 And we've never quite had that.

00:48:30.220 And so we're not used to articulating it.

00:48:32.200 You know, it's a, it's very strange to see now on the streets of Essex today and yesterday

00:48:37.440 or the streets of, you know, streets of towns all across the country, St. George's flags

00:48:42.320 going up.

00:48:43.160 You know, this is a, this is a symbol still for many on the liberal left, you know, a symbol

00:48:48.260 of hate, a symbol of, of kind of conflict, a symbol of kind of, you know, and you've

00:48:53.720 actually got city councils pulling down flags, pulling down those flags in a way that they

00:48:58.540 would have a dream of doing for a Palestinian flag or a Ukrainian flag, or indeed a Scottish

00:49:04.680 flag.

00:49:05.600 And so, you know, I don't know where this goes, Aaron.

00:49:07.880 I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm filled with foreboding.

00:49:10.300 I don't know what the political solutions are.

00:49:12.420 I don't think that there are any kind of, you know, religious or sort of, you know, ecclesiastical

00:49:16.400 kinds of solutions.

00:49:17.820 It's not as if we have, you know, we do technically have a national church, but it

00:49:21.320 has been absent, entirely absent for the national conversation, not able in any way to kind of

00:49:28.860 stitch us together.

00:49:29.780 I mean, I think at its best, Christianity is pretty good.

00:49:32.480 I think probably the best religion there is at engaging in productive, kind of integrating

00:49:39.180 dialogue with, with other religions.

00:49:41.860 But, you know, it's, it's, it just simply has, has not helped us at all.

00:49:47.460 In fact, quite the reverse.

00:49:48.940 It seems to be sort of accelerating sort of a kind of the demographic, the emergence of

00:49:54.520 demographic silos and not, not in any way appealing to Christianity as some kind of unifying

00:50:00.720 horizon that, that might, that might, that might integrate us.

00:50:05.320 So, you know, I think, you know, I think the mood is pretty grim here in the British

00:50:09.360 Charles, and I know you came over back in February, and I think you probably picked, picked up

00:50:13.240 that, that, that mood when you were over.

00:50:16.280 And, you know, I, I don't see, I don't, can't see where the reverse gear here is.

00:50:21.360 I don't see how we, we slow down this train.

00:50:24.360 And I think we genuinely are, you know, politically speaking at a kind of, you know, a point without

00:50:29.780 any real historical precedence to, to learn from, at least as far as, you know, we're concerned,

00:50:35.760 you know, here in Britain, and it's going to take some very adept politicians.

00:50:40.720 It's going to take some, you know, it's going to take a counter elite to think very hard about

00:50:45.760 where we go, where we go from here.

00:50:48.120 But, you know, as I said, the, the immediate outlook is pretty grim.

00:50:53.760 Yeah.

00:50:54.420 When, yeah, I've been to England a few times now.

00:50:57.680 And the last time when, like you're saying, we were at the, the conference, the Jordan

00:51:03.700 Peterson's conference, I'm suddenly forgetting the name of it.

00:51:06.880 The art conference, Alliance of Responsible Citizenship.

00:51:10.080 Yes.

00:51:10.460 Back in February.

00:51:11.200 Yeah.

00:51:11.740 Yeah.

00:51:12.280 And, and it was very strange dichotomy because, you know, on the main stage, a lot of people,

00:51:18.480 you know, I could tell they felt like they were being very edgy by saying that, like, we

00:51:23.080 think that Britain might have Christian values, you know, like they thought that that was like

00:51:27.740 a very bold move.

00:51:29.660 And they, you know, that was a big theme.

00:51:30.820 And I'm glad to see that theme.

00:51:31.960 Cause I do think that's important.

00:51:33.180 I'm glad to see that, you know, there's an acknowledgement of that by many people who

00:51:38.320 have otherwise been scared to say that out loud and believe that at the same time, when,

00:51:44.380 you know, I went to a panel on restoring Christian culture and one of these dinner panels that

00:51:48.640 they had, and there were several Australian former prime ministers talking about, you know,

00:51:53.960 we, of course we're a Christian country and of course that's our identity and that's

00:51:56.700 how we're going to forge these things forward.

00:51:58.580 And the first guy to get up to ask a question said, okay, but the majority of people who

00:52:03.980 are religious in Australia already are Muslim and we're importing more Muslims than we are

00:52:09.140 any other religion.

00:52:10.080 So how are we going to be in a Christian country if the majority of people who are religious

00:52:14.860 are a different religion?

00:52:16.140 And the response of the Australian prime ministers was, oh, we just won't like, we're never going

00:52:20.000 to actually like have a Christian culture.

00:52:21.580 And culture will have to be multicultural, even though they had just spent the entire

00:52:25.400 conference preaching exactly this point.

00:52:27.400 And then I spoke with a lot of the young people and that's a whole different set, right?

00:52:32.680 Like that, they are much, much more radical than the people who are on the stages.

00:52:37.520 And they're saying, we need a strong man.

00:52:39.860 We need, you know, like we need a Franco, like they are not pulling any punches.

00:52:43.880 Things are dire.

00:52:44.800 It has to change immediately.

00:52:46.200 And so it just seems like there's a very, you know, the same thing, there's a level

00:52:51.940 of this in the United States.

00:52:53.360 There's definitely a, you can tell millennials and younger have a radically different understanding

00:52:58.140 of right-wing politics than Gen Xers or boomers in the United States.

00:53:03.280 But I think it's even more drastic, the kind of difference between young and old in England.

00:53:08.600 And I'm just worried because there's so little time, I think, with kind of what is happening

00:53:12.940 here to get ahead of what's coming.

00:53:15.560 And the people in charge in many of the other Commonwealth countries besides the United

00:53:21.920 States really are missing that, like their young people are looking for very aggressive

00:53:28.240 and radical leadership while they kind of pussyfoot around with like how many millions

00:53:33.180 of Muslims they can import every year without tearing their country apart.

00:53:36.360 And that makes them radically right-wing.

00:53:38.060 It just seems like a very big disconnect.

00:53:39.540 Well, look, you know, all the Abrahamic religions are, in their own way, universal religions.

00:53:46.220 And so, you know, it would be perfectly possible to welcome in, as we have done to some extent,

00:53:52.360 populations from sub-Saharan Africa that are Christian.

00:53:57.140 Like a lot of African Christians from the Commonwealth countries and former colonial countries.

00:54:03.280 And, you know, is that the way to recover our national identity?

00:54:09.040 You know, is Nigerian Christianity or kind of Kenyan Christianity, if we bring in 10 million

00:54:15.800 Nigerian Christians, is that going to help us be more English, be more British?

00:54:19.180 No, because English Christianity is not Nigerian Christianity.

00:54:21.960 It's a distinct kind of Christianity.

00:54:24.160 So I think it's probably a little bit-

00:54:25.640 There's a problem with importing Hispanic Catholics.

00:54:28.400 Many Catholic leaders in the United States are like, well, of course we're for open borders

00:54:31.140 because that gets us more Catholics.

00:54:32.860 But yeah, that doesn't solve your problem either.

00:54:34.480 Exactly right.

00:54:35.040 This is kind of the Adrian Vermeule line.

00:54:36.640 And it's not quite as straightforward as that.

00:54:39.100 It's not as if Christianity is really the answer here.

00:54:42.800 And so, you know, we're in this kind of terrible bind.

00:54:45.420 It's not, you know, I think you're right and I'm right to say that Christianity is an absolutely

00:54:50.780 non-negotiable constitutive ingredient in what it is to be English.

00:54:54.720 And I think in what it is to be a settler American.

00:54:57.900 And yet it's a particular form, expression of this universal religion that is sedimented

00:55:03.320 over many, many centuries in kind of the parish church traditions, in particular hymns, in

00:55:08.760 particular liturgies, in our case, in the Book of Common Prayer.

00:55:11.400 I mean, it's absolutely kind of integral to our understanding of English Christianity.

00:55:17.100 And to some extent, we've exported that all around the world.

00:55:19.600 And so there is a great deal of commonality between, say, a sort of, you know, black majority

00:55:24.840 churches in South London and, you know, St. Paul's Cathedral, a service at St. Paul's

00:55:29.300 Cathedral.

00:55:30.300 And yet, you know, you don't, you know, black majority churches are not black majority churches.

00:55:34.160 They're completely black.

00:55:35.260 You know, I once went to one or two of those services and they are just, you know, they

00:55:39.420 are silos.

00:55:40.680 They are demographic silos.

00:55:42.180 So it's not clear to me that kind of religion is the answer necessarily.

00:55:45.060 You know, I think it's part of the picture.

00:55:48.940 And I think, I think also Islam presents a set of quite sui generis challenges because

00:55:55.320 I think it's, you know, unusually resistant to integration into a sort of distinct, particular

00:56:01.800 sort of national polity.

00:56:04.800 And so, you know, I noticed those dynamics at the conference too.

00:56:10.420 And, you know, there was a kind of tensions between the boomers and the zoomers.

00:56:13.940 You know, I talked to my Zoomer friends on the right who, you know, some of them are

00:56:18.260 passionate Catholics and very few of them are still Anglicans.

00:56:21.820 But others are actually, you know, they think religion is part of the problem, that Christianity

00:56:25.460 is part of the problem.

00:56:26.860 But, you know, when a, you know, when a bishop comes out and says, look, it is the Christian

00:56:30.420 thing to do to open your borders, to welcome the stranger and so on and so forth.

00:56:35.680 You know, it's the kind of the Spengler line or the Nietzschean line that actually, you know,

00:56:38.860 Christianity has got the sort of, it's, you know, within it, it's got these ideas

00:56:42.800 that are, if they're not properly handled and integrated theologically, can be, you

00:56:47.660 know, can sort of metastasize into the sort of hyper-progressivism that we're seeing, the

00:56:52.560 valorizing of victimhood, you know, opening up, you know, opening up the borders and being

00:56:57.240 kind of blind to, you know, Galatians 3.28, we're all, we're all one in Christ Jesus and

00:57:02.900 any other kind of ethnic distinctions or any, any sorts of distinctions are, are to be

00:57:08.300 dissolved.

00:57:09.360 And so, you know, in some ways, I think for the young, the young people at the art conference,

00:57:13.720 you know, some of them very committed, others actually thinking maybe Christianity is what

00:57:18.200 got us here.

00:57:20.380 Yeah, there, there are certainly some of that in the United States as well, though.

00:57:23.940 I, I, I think it's a very, very small subset.

00:57:27.020 That, you know, the pagan or, or Nietzschean, right, is, it's a very particular group.

00:57:32.980 And, you know, some of them I'm friends with, some of them I'm even allies with, but at the

00:57:36.620 end of the day, they don't have a real community, right?

00:57:41.020 There's no living pagan tradition that they're involving themselves.

00:57:44.280 The Nietzscheans don't have any way to, to build a resilient culture that's going to allow

00:57:49.500 them to forge a society that can actually push back against any of this stuff.

00:57:52.960 And I, I, I took some heat recently, but I said, look, you know, the, the pagans and

00:57:57.100 the Nietzscheans, uh, they're just subversive.

00:58:00.120 Uh, there's just subversive guys who are opening the gates for Islam or Hinduism or something

00:58:04.820 else, because when you dismantle the real belief, the organic belief, the transcendent

00:58:10.400 belief of your society, what happens is that they don't, they don't just become enlightened,

00:58:14.200 you know, Superman like you, what happens is someone else's metaphysical dominance rolls

00:58:19.580 over your society.

00:58:20.600 Uh, and so, um, you know, I, I think you're right that those people exist.

00:58:25.460 I understand some of their points.

00:58:26.980 And of course, as you point out, when you have bishops or you have pastors, you know,

00:58:31.900 misquoting these lines from the Bible and portraying the, the idea that the Bible just

00:58:35.700 dissolves all nations and ethnicities, which it absolutely does not read a book of revelation.

00:58:40.860 If you'd like to, you know, see the actual, just direct Matthew 28.

00:58:43.880 Right.

00:58:44.400 Yeah.

00:58:45.420 But, but ultimately, uh, these people just can't, they can't, they can't forge a society

00:58:51.560 on their own.

00:58:52.180 Then whether they like it or not, Christianity is going to be part of that.

00:58:55.580 Like you said, it's not sufficient, but it is necessary.

00:58:58.220 Uh, and, and I think that's going to be the case going forward.

00:59:00.520 And we could probably talk about this for another hour, but I know you're like trapped in a,

00:59:04.460 in a, in a bar now, uh, because of your train delay.

00:59:07.440 So I don't want to keep you forever.

00:59:08.540 We do have some questions from the audience though, if you have a few minutes to run through

00:59:12.260 those real quick.

00:59:14.600 Sure thing.

00:59:15.120 Um, all right.

00:59:16.400 So before we go there, uh, is there anything that you want to let people know about any books,

00:59:23.000 conferences, uh, work you want to direct people for social media, anything you want people

00:59:27.180 to check out before we go to the questions of the people?

00:59:29.980 Well, gosh, I wasn't expecting that question, Aaron, but since you asked it, um, let this be

00:59:36.540 the, uh, an international announcement, um, um, uh, uh, of a podcast that I've started

00:59:45.920 recording called first light, and it's going to be out in about two or three weeks time.

00:59:51.820 Um, I'm going to get into trouble with my producer here, but, um, yeah, so first light

00:59:56.080 is a podcast that is looking at questions at the intersection of faith and of politics

01:00:01.120 and of culture with a particular focus on Britain, but, uh, looking across the Atlantic,

01:00:05.860 as well, we've recorded some fantastic conversations.

01:00:09.160 They're going to start thing to start to be released, uh, in about three or four weeks

01:00:12.720 time.

01:00:13.060 So, so first light with, uh, with James or, uh, it'd be great to, um, go.

01:00:18.440 So, so look it up in about a month's time.

01:00:21.460 Fantastic breaking news here on the podcast.

01:00:24.140 Make sure to check out James's work when we see that roll off the assembly line.

01:00:29.180 All right, guys, heading over to the questions of the people here.

01:00:32.880 Uh, weird e-curb says, I've been hoping I'd see you on Tucker sometime soon.

01:00:37.820 Super stoked for you, man.

01:00:39.060 Hope you, you see audience growth from it.

01:00:40.880 Well, thank you very much, guys.

01:00:41.860 Yeah.

01:00:42.000 If you didn't catch it, I was on Tucker Carlson, uh, here today.

01:00:45.480 A lot of fun, very interesting, uh, conversation.

01:00:48.820 Uh, so if you want to check that out, uh, it's, it's up over at his channel now.

01:00:52.440 Uh, based hillbilly says, immigration has been a scourge since the 1066.

01:00:59.140 Uh, yeah, obviously this is a longstanding problem for any society.

01:01:04.340 It's not like, uh, the United States or UK simply, you know, invented the idea of immigration

01:01:09.400 problems.

01:01:09.900 The Romans famously had massive, you know, immigration problems, uh, that, you know, entire civilizations

01:01:15.560 are wiped out by immigration problems.

01:01:17.840 Uh, so this is just a part of history that you have to deal with.

01:01:21.580 We're, we're, we're unique in that we're, the way we're kind of doing it to ourselves

01:01:25.300 at the scale and speed we're doing it.

01:01:27.180 The technology has increased the rapidity at which you can make this mistake.

01:01:31.060 Uh, however, uh, that is not, uh, make it, uh, somehow different, I think, from many

01:01:36.400 of the ways that you had to deal with in the past.

01:01:38.200 So.

01:01:40.300 Uh, let me just add to that, Aaron.

01:01:42.000 Yeah.

01:01:42.120 You know, 1066, the kind of invasion by the Normans of William the Conqueror.

01:01:46.620 Uh, and in a way it wasn't really immigration.

01:01:48.740 It was just an invasion by a relatively small number of Norman French mercenaries.

01:01:54.000 And yes, they did terrible damage to England in many ways.

01:01:57.880 Um, but they reorganized it in lots of other ways, but in terms of kind of actual demographic

01:02:01.800 change, it was, you know, more like an occupation where, you know, the, the, the ethnos, the

01:02:08.080 Anglo-Saxons absorbed pretty successfully the relatively small slice of Normans, um, who arrived.

01:02:14.420 And what we're seeing now is very, very different in terms of, of, of scale and complexity.

01:02:19.840 Yeah.

01:02:20.280 Important thing to point out.

01:02:21.280 Absolutely.

01:02:23.080 Paladin YYZ says, once I stunned a crowd at a bar by sinking a four, nine ball and a three,

01:02:27.960 eight ball on the break, I was lucky and drunk and in the zone.

01:02:30.860 You, sir, just did what you do.

01:02:32.740 He handed you the cue and effortlessly sunk the ball waiting for the next guy to put his

01:02:37.820 core, uh, quarters in amazing job.

01:02:39.760 And with, thank you very much, man.

01:02:40.840 I really appreciate that you guys have been incredibly kind with your support and I really

01:02:45.220 appreciate you guys, uh, watching and, uh, you know, just keeping, keeping us doing what

01:02:49.980 we're doing here.

01:02:51.620 Uh, based Hillbilly says, uh, we're all Rhodesia now we can't negotiate.

01:02:56.160 Uh, well, I mean, there, there is, oh, that, that's a much larger discussion, right?

01:03:00.760 But there is a, also a concern by many people.

01:03:03.620 And, you know, we're certainly watching it in the United States here.

01:03:06.100 I don't know what it's like in the UK, but you know, one, one of the many narratives

01:03:09.520 around Rhodesia is that, you know, the, the native black population had a large difficulty

01:03:15.100 of maintaining the standard of living that had been erected in that country once, uh,

01:03:20.900 you know, they, uh, gained control.

01:03:22.940 And this is something that a process that's also being, uh, you know, seen in South Africa,

01:03:28.360 similar breakdown to, you know, you know, a country that was once had, had its own space

01:03:33.240 program, I think at least nukes.

01:03:34.660 Right.

01:03:34.840 And, and now, uh, you know, it has a difficult time keeping the power on, uh, and keeping

01:03:39.600 any level of civil order in the United States.

01:03:42.400 We're seeing a generation of people who in many ways can't maintain a lot of the complex

01:03:48.040 systems that undergird our society.

01:03:50.400 Again, I know this could be its own episode, but what do you think about that danger of,

01:03:54.880 you know, not having enough people integrated and then trying to hand off a civilization for

01:03:59.160 them to maintain when they don't even necessarily value it, much less understand many of

01:04:03.180 the nuances of how it's maintained?

01:04:05.980 Yeah.

01:04:06.460 I mean, look, it's one of the great myths of progressivism, that civilization, that we're

01:04:10.440 just always going to get more civilized and technology is always going to improve.

01:04:14.540 We're always going to get better at wielding it.

01:04:16.740 And, uh, you know, just life is always going to get better.

01:04:19.840 And, and that's just, there is no law of nature or law of history that, uh, that determines

01:04:24.780 that.

01:04:25.180 Um, I mean, one historical precedent that comes to mind is when the Romans withdrew from these

01:04:31.040 islands in 410, you know, the, the first half of the fifth century AD.

01:04:35.960 And if what happened was, well, we Brits forgot, lost central heating for nearly a thousand

01:04:41.420 years.

01:04:41.820 We just, you know, we just forgot, we just didn't know how to do it.

01:04:45.020 And, uh, you know, I think it would have been very strange to be a Brit in kind of 550,

01:04:49.460 600 AD, and it's surrounded by the kind of, you know, kind of the architectural ghosts

01:04:54.300 of this long lost empire, you know, a world that was, you know, where you could, you know,

01:04:58.480 all these extraordinary things were built, a world in which your, your house was heated

01:05:03.320 and, um, civilization can go backwards as well as forwards, but the progressive mind can't

01:05:08.980 cope with that.

01:05:09.680 And so therefore it can't factor it in as a risk.

01:05:12.140 It can't factor in, you know, um, um, um, the kind of, the competence crisis is as, as,

01:05:17.340 as it's called or civilizational loss or a kind of technological stagnation and deterioration.

01:05:22.700 But it is something that can happen just in a generation.

01:05:25.580 All it takes is to lose, you know, one generation of Boeing engineers and that company, you know,

01:05:32.000 it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of over.

01:05:34.860 Um, and so it's something that we, you know, it's something that's, you know, deep, deeply

01:05:38.620 concerning and requires a kind of ruthlessly merit, meritocratic approach to talent formation,

01:05:45.340 talent spotting.

01:05:46.220 And I think, again, you know, the liberal progressive mind that is sort of fetishizing

01:05:51.040 diversity, equality, inclusion above all else is just not, not, not equipped to cope with

01:05:56.960 the risks of civilizational collapse.

01:06:00.600 Well, this is something that, uh, Spengler was right about is that ultimately science is

01:06:04.540 not some abstract thing that you just add to indefinitely.

01:06:08.440 It is, it is owned by peoples.

01:06:10.460 It is practiced by peoples.

01:06:11.800 And if the people lose their passion for it, if they don't invest their best minds in it,

01:06:16.480 if they don't perpetuate the tradition, then just because someone figured out some science

01:06:21.240 somewhere, it doesn't mean you get to keep it.

01:06:23.180 Like you can lose it all.

01:06:24.600 It can be gone for centuries.

01:06:25.900 You guys still haven't figured out central cooling, you know?

01:06:27.960 So that's, I'm always making fun of the British and their lack of air conditioning.

01:06:31.360 Uh, but, um,

01:06:32.180 It took us a long time, but to be honest, you know, frankly, the number of days where

01:06:36.060 it's hot enough in, in, in this country to actually need air conditioning is kind of,

01:06:39.680 you know, not many.

01:06:41.220 No, it's, it's very true.

01:06:42.760 I remember I, I was over, I had to go to, um, to Oxfordshire and I was at a, uh, uh,

01:06:48.480 a hotel there and they were apologizing to me because we know it's just a blistering

01:06:53.040 hot summer and we don't have any air conditioning and we're so sorry.

01:06:56.600 And it was about 20 degrees cooler than where I had just come from in Florida.

01:07:01.940 So I was laughing.

01:07:03.340 I was sitting there with a window open.

01:07:05.020 I'm living a dream here.

01:07:06.300 This is amazing.

01:07:07.280 If I could get a summer like this at home, I would just lose my mind.

01:07:10.860 But all right.

01:07:12.080 So we got Michael Robertson here.

01:07:13.260 He says, uh, great discussion guys.

01:07:14.620 Oren, you absolutely killed it on Tucker interview.

01:07:16.240 Excellent overview of everything in the space.

01:07:18.080 Great job.

01:07:18.540 Thank you again, guys.

01:07:19.520 Really appreciate that.

01:07:20.900 It's a, again, an amazing opportunity.

01:07:22.840 Very much appreciate you guys.

01:07:24.100 Uh, Thuggo says, why would England admit

01:07:26.340 unskilled third world men without, uh, uh, without, unless there is malice.

01:07:32.800 Yeah.

01:07:33.300 This is a question, you know, that frankly, Tucker asked me, um, and I gave my best answer,

01:07:38.020 but, but I'll pitch it to you.

01:07:39.400 Uh, you know, we understand why you might want to bring in, uh, you know, a scientist

01:07:44.080 or a doctor or a once in a generation musical talent or something like that.

01:07:48.620 But all of our countries seem to be obsessed with bringing large numbers of military aged

01:07:53.880 men who otherwise are basically unemployable.

01:07:57.900 They can only do low skill manual labor and simultaneously are trying to automate that

01:08:03.060 labor out of existence.

01:08:04.960 It seems pretty clear to anybody.

01:08:06.920 I think with a, you know, functioning brain that that is a recipe for disaster.

01:08:12.220 And yet all of our leaders are committed to it.

01:08:14.880 I can say that's just ideological, but do these people have no self-preservation?

01:08:19.640 Is there, what, what do you think is driving ultimately this desire, which seems almost

01:08:24.140 suicidal?

01:08:24.660 Well, I think there are a number of factors to point to.

01:08:28.960 I mean, one might be just a sense of kind of post-colonial guilt, you know, that we've

01:08:33.000 invaded the world.

01:08:34.280 And so it's up now, you know, the penalty that we pay is to invite the world and not put up

01:08:39.180 any kind of barriers to it.

01:08:40.740 That might have a kind of an imperial post-colonial sort of, um, sort of framing, or it might be

01:08:47.240 in the case of Germany, just a sense of, you know, remember those signs that went up

01:08:51.220 in the train stations in 2015 after Merkel kind of opened the borders, you know, big,

01:08:55.860 these big signs of the German word atonement.

01:09:00.100 There's a sense that, you know, this is, this is how we can finally chase away the ghosts,

01:09:04.460 the ghosts of our Nazi past.

01:09:06.160 I think another factor is probably going to be this sort of weird dogma of just, you know,

01:09:12.020 line go up, uh, treasury finance to finance department dogma of, you know, it doesn't matter,

01:09:18.660 you know, as long as we've got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, we've got to keep growing

01:09:23.060 the pie and we just ignore the fact that the slices of the pie are getting smaller and

01:09:27.520 smaller.

01:09:28.440 Um, even if they are kind of net drains, they're still, they're kind of, they're still kind

01:09:32.420 of enlarging the economy and that's fine.

01:09:34.520 I mean, interestingly, I, my senses here in Britain in the last three to six months, that

01:09:40.440 mood is beginning to change.

01:09:41.640 You're starting to see the kind of this phenomenon of elite defection, uh, even some quite

01:09:46.700 prominent economists and for example, the office of budget responsibility just a few

01:09:51.080 weeks ago, I think said, look, you know, this, this, this myth that migration is just

01:09:55.860 always an everywhere and economic benefit is simply not true.

01:09:59.720 Um, and I think that has been a big change in British politics in the last year or so,

01:10:05.160 uh, last year, 18 months, we've got this sense that migration has gone to the migration

01:10:09.960 has gone to the top of what matters most to, to, to, to, to, to voters.

01:10:14.200 And then if you look at the issues underneath that, that matter, whether it's, you know,

01:10:18.640 public services, housing, cost of living, the British public is waking up to the fact

01:10:24.060 that these are not isolated issues, that, you know, if you're importing millions and

01:10:28.160 millions of people who are going to be net drains on your economy, that's going to affect

01:10:31.220 your schools.

01:10:32.120 It's going to affect your hospitals.

01:10:33.360 It's going to affect all public services.

01:10:35.000 It's going to affect the cost of living.

01:10:36.580 It is going to account for, I think, 80% of housing demand in the Southeast.

01:10:41.280 Um, and so I think that lays the conditions for, you know, if not regime change, we're

01:10:46.400 not very good at regime change, uh, unlike, uh, unlike you guys, certainly, you know, some,

01:10:51.040 some, some sort of dramatic shifts, um, in the future.

01:10:54.020 What's the old joke that Americans say, what do we want?

01:10:57.420 Revolution.

01:10:58.180 When do we want it now?

01:10:59.660 And the Brits, it's, what do we want?

01:11:02.820 Gradual change.

01:11:04.320 When do we want it in due course?

01:11:07.020 We've got, uh, the, uh, Sinaiga.

01:11:12.720 Sorry.

01:11:13.020 I always say it wrong.

01:11:13.980 Uh, the motherland must be retaken Bosch.

01:11:18.060 That's, uh, there's, uh, I always forget that guy's name.

01:11:20.960 He was on, uh, some, he was, he was on like the apprentice or something, right?

01:11:24.720 The, the guy who's famous for making the videos, being extremely happy and yelling Bosch

01:11:29.260 at the end.

01:11:30.460 I'm trying to remember his name, but anyway, uh, let's see here.

01:11:33.740 We've got, uh, E. Kerb again, he says, secular humanism denies, ignores the biblical truth

01:11:38.120 that man is sinful and the world is fallen.

01:11:40.440 This, uh, faulty and naive anthropology forces radical, uh, radical immigrants and calls, uh,

01:11:46.920 the fathers of grape girls, racist.

01:11:49.820 Uh, yeah.

01:11:50.300 I mean, obviously I think the, the fact that, uh, the liberal anthropology is deeply flawed

01:11:57.300 leads them to believe that they can just adopt these people and that there is no conflict

01:12:01.920 and there is no real difference.

01:12:03.580 Ultimately the blank slate is, uh, is something that I think drives people to make a lot of

01:12:07.540 very bad decisions.

01:12:09.220 Um, I don't know if you have anything to say to that one.

01:12:13.760 No, I, I, I think the, uh, blank slate-ism has got a lot to answer for.

01:12:19.880 Uh, Paladin again, it says, funny how when asked what to do about, uh, a situation, we end

01:12:25.500 up, uh, channeling Dee Snider and the Beastie Boys with the fighting for our rights to party

01:12:30.440 and we're not going to take it.

01:12:32.200 Uh, you know, I, I, I hope at some point we see more people actually channel, uh, that,

01:12:36.740 uh, you know, as, as, uh, obviously James says there is civil unrest in England and nobody

01:12:42.720 wants to see that, but at some point, you know, you understand that this is, you know,

01:12:47.260 there has to be a cost.

01:12:48.800 There has to be a cost for leaders who harm their people, uh, intentionally.

01:12:53.660 And, uh, you know, you want it to be civil.

01:12:55.980 You want it to be peaceful.

01:12:57.200 You want it to be, uh, within the tradition that allows, uh, you to, to change what's

01:13:02.080 going on, but ultimately it keeps your society intact.

01:13:04.760 Uh, but if you keep pushing, uh, eventually one way or another, you, you will get to the

01:13:09.100 end point where the people rising up and making a change is, is worth the cost because what

01:13:15.080 they're getting now is just so bleak, uh, that there, there, there is no other way to,

01:13:19.220 to be hurt.

01:13:20.360 And that's, what's going to happen.

01:13:21.540 Um, and then creeper weirdo says, uh, why dose the British, why does the British left

01:13:27.900 hate the Bosch guy?

01:13:28.780 Okay.

01:13:28.960 Well now I really need to remember his name because the question is about the Bosch guy.

01:13:32.640 Do you know who I'm talking about?

01:13:33.800 Uh, maybe it's Tony or something.

01:13:36.080 He's, uh, he's always yelling.

01:13:38.320 You know, he's always talking about what chicken dinner he's cooking and having a bunch of beers

01:13:41.580 with the guys.

01:13:42.340 And he was on some reality TV show and he's always saying Bosch at the, at the end when,

01:13:47.400 uh, he's trying to rally the British people to be excited about something.

01:13:50.980 Do you know about this cultural phenomenon or am I just.

01:13:55.540 Sorry, you're breaking up a bit there, Aaron, but I'm happy to answer the question as it

01:13:59.880 stated on the text.

01:14:01.860 Can you hear me okay still?

01:14:03.260 I can hear you fine.

01:14:04.000 Yes.

01:14:04.980 Yeah.

01:14:05.460 Um, I, I couldn't quite hear your, uh, sort of embellishment of the question, but this

01:14:09.620 is about Thomas Skinner and, um, why they can't, why they can't stand just the uncomplicated

01:14:15.780 expression of love for his missus and love for his kids and love for England without

01:14:21.480 kind of politicizing the whole thing.

01:14:23.080 Um, I mean, Tom has become a good friend of mine over the last few months and we had

01:14:28.240 a wonderful barbecue with the vice president, uh, with your vice president in the Cotswolds

01:14:33.500 here last Monday.

01:14:34.980 Um, and, uh, I insisted, I mean, I held a conference on, um, it's called now in England

01:14:41.140 and invited Tom along because I wanted somebody who could speak of England.

01:14:45.640 And I thought he's kind of England incarnate.

01:14:47.920 He's Essex on legs.

01:14:50.220 And he gave one of the most extraordinary speeches and, uh, and, and it wasn't right

01:14:54.780 wing.

01:14:55.120 It wasn't left wing.

01:14:56.020 It was just this sort of passionate expression of love for England.

01:14:59.600 And, um, and, uh, we were having a beer.

01:15:02.660 We went for pints afterwards and, and, uh, he turned to me and said, uh, you never guess

01:15:07.280 what I said, what's that, Tom, the vice president of the United States is following me on Twitter.

01:15:14.800 I said, Oh, really, Tom, that's amazing.

01:15:17.580 Do you know, I, I think you really get on with the vice president.

01:15:20.700 And he said, well, I mean, I'm never going to meet him.

01:15:23.600 Am I?

01:15:23.940 I said, well, let's have a selfie.

01:15:26.420 I took a selfie.

01:15:27.720 I sent it to the vice president.

01:15:29.460 He got back to me straight away and said, I love this guy.

01:15:32.540 He's got so much positive energy.

01:15:34.180 Social media is so negative and he just is this gleaming light of uncomplicated patriotism

01:15:40.140 and exoriusness and love of family and, and faith in community.

01:15:44.780 I said, we've got to go for pints with this guy.

01:15:47.420 And he was as good as his word.

01:15:51.040 Fantastic.

01:15:51.620 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

01:15:53.800 Let James get home.

01:15:55.300 Uh, but, uh, make sure that you're following his work when his podcast comes out and make

01:15:58.740 sure that you are enjoying that as well.

01:16:01.060 And of course, if it's your first time on this channel, you need to subscribe on YouTube,

01:16:05.260 click the bell notifications.

01:16:06.520 So, you know, when we go live, if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure

01:16:10.540 that you subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

01:16:14.480 And when you do leave a rating or review, it really helps with the algorithm magic.

01:16:18.500 Thank you once again, James.

01:16:19.700 And as always, everyone, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 18, 2025

English Identity and the Future of Nationalism ｜ Guest： James Orr ｜ 8⧸18⧸25

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