The Auron MacIntyre Show - What Can the Lebanese Civil War Teach Us About Modern America？｜ Guest： Guy Nohra ｜ 7⧸15⧸26

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00:00:24.940 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:28.080 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:32.580 Civil war in the United States.

00:00:34.620 We all feel the tensions mounting.

00:00:37.180 We all see the divisions, the political violence, the situations that seem like they are just

00:00:42.220 never going to be resolved politically.

00:00:44.720 Some people think civil war in the United States is inevitable.

00:00:47.740 Other people think it's a joke.

00:00:49.060 It could never happen here.

00:00:50.740 I thought a good way to analyze this would be to speak with someone who has experienced

00:00:55.080 civil war in his home country and is now in the United States, hoping that this can be prevented

00:01:00.620 in his new homeland. Joining me today is author Dean Norrie. Thank you so much for coming on.

00:01:06.900 Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be on your show after having hosted you twice. So

00:01:12.020 I feel like we're very close friends here already.

00:01:16.380 Absolutely. Well, a lot of my listeners might not be familiar with who you are and what you do.

00:01:21.600 So can you just give a little bit of backstory? What do you do for a living? How did you become

00:01:26.400 an expert in this kind of thing? How are you writing this book? Yes, I'll go very, very

00:01:31.080 quickly. I came to the U.S. when I was 15 years old from Beirut, Lebanon, where I had been involved

00:01:38.020 fighting in the civil war against the PLO and the Muslim coalition on their side.

00:01:44.480 came to the U.S., fell in love with the country, was fortunate, did well in high school, college,

00:01:53.240 business school, became a venture capitalist in the life sciences, which is medtech and biotech,

00:01:58.740 started my own firm in venture capital, raised $8 billion, $2 billion of fund in eight funds,

00:02:05.400 invested in 180 companies in those two spaces, got very, very aware of life sciences and medtech

00:02:12.120 and the healthcare space. Always wanted to give back. So in 2022, I ran for governor in my state

00:02:23.320 of Nevada. I did not win, but I got involved in politics. In 2024, I was very involved in the

00:02:29.000 campaign on behalf of our president. And watching what's happening in the United States, especially

00:02:36.880 as i became more public and and less spending time on on biotech uh the the parallels were were

00:02:44.240 were frightening and uh you know when you're a venture capitalist pattern recognition is something

00:02:49.840 you learn to do very very well and in my case here's this country that i adore that that accepted

00:02:56.160 me where i got to live the american dream and i'm watching it kind of slowly walking towards

00:03:02.800 the worst case scenario,

00:03:05.460 which would be people being in a civil war

00:03:08.640 and killing each other.

00:03:09.740 So that's how I end up doing the book.

00:03:11.760 And the book is a lot of anecdotes

00:03:13.420 about how ugly war is

00:03:18.080 and suburban war and civil war is

00:03:21.640 and how I don't want this to happen to us.

00:03:24.760 And that's what not on our watch means.

00:03:26.220 I don't want anybody who reads the book to say,

00:03:29.200 okay, we're not going to do this here

00:03:30.520 in the United States.

00:03:31.220 you know a lot of people here being involved in a civil war before you were even 15 and they can't 0.80

00:03:37.700 even imagine something like that like this that sounds like some kind of ridiculous you know novel

00:03:43.720 or tv show that they watch it's not something that could ever occur in a civilized country

00:03:48.700 but lebanon isn't exactly some kind of backwater it was often revered as one of the nicest places

00:03:55.520 in the Middle East. So I think a lot of people hear Lebanon today and they think of this war-torn

00:04:02.060 country. They know what's going on with the different factions of Muslim alliances and

00:04:07.900 then Israel and everything happening in the conflict right now. But it wasn't always like

00:04:13.000 that. Can you go back and tell us a little bit about the beginning of the war? Why did Lebanon

00:04:18.240 end up in the situation? Of course, it's a great story. So Lebanon at its peak was known as the

00:04:26.680 Switzerland of the Middle East, or Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. And that would go from

00:04:33.020 the period of 1950 till the mid-1970s. And it was, you know, just this amazing place. People

00:04:40.640 went on vacation there. It's a lot like Monaco. It's a beautiful Mediterranean location. You can

00:04:46.500 be skiing at 10 o'clock in the morning and at the beach at three o'clock in the afternoon.

00:04:52.000 That's right on the Mediterranean. What happened in Lebanon is what happens in many places. I think

00:04:58.260 in this case, there were several factions in Lebanon. There was Christians and Muslims. And

00:05:04.520 then the famous Palestinian story that never gets resolved, which we're still dealing with today.

00:05:10.780 the Palestinians ended up in Lebanon and were given rights by the Arab League to basically

00:05:19.680 become a state within a state. So you had this military force within a country that had its own

00:05:28.800 military and where a big segment of the population supported them because they wanted to change the 0.97

00:05:38.960 political balance equation because christians were in control and the muslims wanted to take over

00:05:45.180 and the plo was their army so it was that simple so someone like me i was premature for my age

00:05:52.680 i realized things were in trouble i lied to my parents said i was going to go to to when i was

00:05:59.060 14 said i was going to go to boy scout camp in fact went to commando camp in the mountains

00:06:04.040 and practiced for four three-day weekends before everything went bad and the civil war started in

00:06:13.080 1975, April of 1975. So you have this scenario where the creation of Israel obviously ends up

00:06:21.420 with many Palestinians being expelled. They move over to Lebanon and they are militarizing. They're 0.93

00:06:28.860 kind of creating a state within a state, which is, of course, always an extremely dangerous

00:06:33.540 prospect. And so there's a couple of important issues playing out here. One, we can see at some

00:06:41.240 level the issues of mass migration, right? We have a large influx of people migrating into the

00:06:47.380 country. They aren't part of the culture. They have a different agenda. They are from a more 1.00

00:06:53.820 violent culture, more militarized culture. You also have the dynamics playing out inside the

00:06:59.240 country. And just like America, many people want to use those immigrants who might be more violent, 0.57

00:07:05.740 who might be more militaristic to create political change inside the country. They see an opportunity 0.89

00:07:11.180 from this influx of new people. They don't have the patronage. They don't have the social

00:07:15.540 connections. They don't have all the things that you usually have when you grow up in a country

00:07:19.700 and you are part of a community. They are seen as outsiders. And so this is an opportunity to

00:07:24.920 bring them in and use them to leverage things. Old scores can be settled between Christians and

00:07:30.040 Muslims. And so there's just a lot of dynamics at play in this creation. Now, obviously, 14 is 0.76

00:07:37.300 sounds very young, right? Some people would call that a child soldier. In other ways, though,

00:07:42.560 plenty of American patriots who were fighting in the Revolutionary War were very young. Yeah,

00:07:47.360 They were 15, 16 years old.

00:07:50.540 Many people would think of them as child soldiers.

00:07:52.860 So in some sense, you're fighting as a very young man.

00:07:56.100 In other sense, you're kind of in a classic tradition of kind of revolutionary combat

00:08:01.820 where it quickly moves down to the youngest people in the country.

00:08:06.720 A lot of people think that wars are fought by older people, but that's not true at all. 0.60

00:08:12.340 It's almost entirely a young man's game.

00:08:14.540 And so that had to be a very wild moment where you joined this military so young.

00:08:22.780 What was it like being involved in these battles when you were only 14?

00:08:27.760 So I had just turned 15, just for the record.

00:08:32.280 And I was the youngest soldier in my group.

00:08:36.500 Usually it's 18 to 20 is when most people show up.

00:08:40.620 but the book actually talks a lot about me being the youngest and ironically my commanders will

00:08:47.160 try to protect me but they would try to protect me but I end up being some of the worst areas

00:08:53.280 it was just you know war doesn't decide you know where battle starts or where battle finishes you

00:09:00.120 know you just do what you can I think for me again Oren it was I just I was I was intellectually

00:09:07.980 premature, and I understood the stakes. And the stakes were pretty simple. My neighborhood,

00:09:15.740 my family, my church, my religion were going to be taken over by a foreign force and by 1.00

00:09:24.420 the old adversaries who were, you know, the Muslims in Lebanon. So it was very much defensive

00:09:31.900 on my part and uh i i came in with my eyes wide open and um later on in the war i think some young

00:09:40.280 people younger people like my age joined but in general it was always uh i could tell you that

00:09:45.240 everybody i fought with was between the ages of 18 and maybe 34 the people on my side so you know

00:09:53.240 america has had the blessing of fighting almost all of its wars off of its own soil right the the

00:09:59.600 the nature of our continent makes it incredibly difficult to invade the United States, to bring

00:10:05.220 any real force against the United States. We're never really in an existential threat from the

00:10:10.660 outside. The only warrior outside of the Revolutionary War in 1812 to some degree

00:10:16.540 that really took place on American soil was the American Civil War. And obviously, as you say,

00:10:23.200 you're already defending your home, your community, these things. So it's already an existential

00:10:28.220 crisis. You recognize that from the beginning. But a civil war is another level up, right? Because

00:10:34.680 not only are you defending your own soil, you're defending against people who at some level were

00:10:39.880 your neighbors. They were people in, or at least at some level, part of a larger community. And so

00:10:46.380 there are things that get very vicious very quickly often in a civil war. You can see house

00:10:53.160 to house fighting, neighborhood to neighborhood, people settling personal scores in the middle

00:10:58.140 of combat because they held some grudge for many years ago. What was the intensity of the fighting

00:11:06.180 like? Was the Lebanon Civil War a very standard war? Was there a lot of guerrilla fighting? What

00:11:13.280 was going on in that conflict? The closest thing I can explain it to you in the recent past would be

00:11:23.720 Iraq war for our veterans because I love our veterans and every time I meet some

00:11:28.640 of them we have these conversations so it's the Iraq war imagine concrete

00:11:33.320 buildings you know not necessarily as beautiful as what you would see in the

00:11:39.560 United States but concrete buildings nonetheless high rises mixed with the

00:11:45.560 stores and and one or two floor type things with a church here with a mosque

00:11:49.960 there so it's a lot like what people would have seen in Iraq it's a lot what

00:11:55.480 people saw in Gaza very very close to that so it's it's a it's house to house

00:12:00.940 fighting it's across the street it's mostly you know the other side is

00:12:05.140 usually across the street or in the next neighborhood it turns out that I

00:12:10.000 explained that in my book pick the favorite street in your city let's say

00:12:14.140 you're in in chicago and you pick madison and i'm sorry you pick uh lakeshore well one side of

00:12:21.340 lakeshore is them one side of lakeshore is us that simple and that happens overnight and that's what

00:12:26.860 this it was like and the intensity uh got a lot lot worse after i left uh i left five five months

00:12:34.860 later but a few years later we got a lot worse but it was pretty bad with us because we had people

00:12:39.580 had rpgs they had mortars and uh heavy you know heavy machine guns so it was it was pretty bad

00:12:47.340 uh and uh anything you can imagine about buildings blown up and and and uh uh you know

00:12:54.220 bullets in the holes and sandbags all of that was there so we're talking about pretty intense

00:13:00.700 uh urban warfare here and when you're in this scenario the scariest thing is how quickly

00:13:06.700 civilians become casualties you know sadly uh modern where warfare is often including uh you

00:13:13.080 know doing damage to civilian targets infrastructure these kind of things but when you have this true

00:13:18.740 building to building street to street urban combat schools churches uh you know uh hospitals

00:13:26.040 these things are you quickly become you know maybe even if they're not targets just collateral

00:13:31.620 damage for what's going on but sometimes they are directly targeted and there's really no safe place

00:13:37.720 for the population to go at least if the war is happening in fields it's happening out in the

00:13:43.320 mountains or something there are cities that you can retreat to their civilization to maintain

00:13:48.220 but when the conflict is happening directly in those neighborhoods there's really nowhere to go

00:13:54.500 So what kind of impact did this constant urban warfare have on the civilian population?

00:14:02.480 Was there, obviously, you ended up leaving Lebanon.

00:14:06.240 Was there a mass exodus of Lebanon?

00:14:08.860 Where did people try hard to stay?

00:14:10.880 Were people able to maintain businesses, communities?

00:14:13.360 What was the feel of the average person in the middle of this conflict?

00:14:17.060 So the first thing is how resilient humans are.

00:14:20.720 So people have stayed very resilient.

00:14:23.480 But in this case, if you look at the 20 years of the war, I would say maybe 40 percent of the Christian population emigrated, maybe 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population emigrated.

00:14:36.960 So people were leaving because everybody wants to raise their children, send them to college and, you know, have them become doctors and lawyers and so on and so forth.

00:14:46.400 so that was a so there was actually an exodus but to your point about what happens to the civilians

00:14:51.520 i'll give you the example of my family so i would serve uh you know i had a two day one day schedule

00:14:58.800 so i'd be out on the front one day two days and i'd come back one day to my house when i came back

00:15:03.740 to my house it was an apartment and it was a flat and an apartment building and my family would be

00:15:10.260 sitting uh the the rule is you sit in the middle area so you don't sit in any of the periphery

00:15:16.500 because a bomb or a machine or anything could actually the periphery you sit it so in my case

00:15:20.900 my parents and my two sisters were sitting in the middle of the house of the apartment um you know

00:15:26.820 my dad my dad had a bottle of whiskey next to him my mom had her valium uh and and my little sisters

00:15:33.060 were playing with their dolls uh and that's what everybody did that was not a fighter you know you

00:15:38.740 And then you just, the trauma doesn't get any better

00:15:42.460 because the noise of war is very traumatic

00:15:45.620 and all of your senses get attacked.

00:15:49.240 So my mom to this day, if a door closes or 4th of July,

00:15:55.620 she has trauma because of that.

00:15:59.120 So civilians actually suffer.

00:16:01.140 And the one thing that's also in the book,

00:16:02.800 which I think I'm sure you know,

00:16:04.780 is that modern war, sniping is a big deal.

00:16:09.920 Sarajevo is a great example.

00:16:12.000 While one sniper could hold down a whole neighborhood

00:16:15.320 and snipers don't care who they shoot at.

00:16:17.680 In fact, their job is to terrorize. 0.99

00:16:20.100 So the more grandmas with buckets of water you kill, 0.98

00:16:24.820 the more fear you impose on people.

00:16:27.620 So to your point, yeah, that's definitely,

00:16:30.780 it's very hard on the civilians

00:16:33.940 And it takes a huge toll.

00:16:36.040 Yeah, because obviously you had scenarios like the Germans bombing the UK throughout World War II, but they had time to build bunkers.

00:16:47.160 They had bomb shelters.

00:16:48.980 There was some amount of returning to normalcy and then going into this moment where it's obviously still terrifying.

00:16:57.660 But there's some measure of safety, of separation that you can create there.

00:17:03.360 obviously when you have this kind of uh you know uh uh street to street fighting this building to

00:17:10.800 building fighting uh that you know and then it kind of erupts very quickly as you say there's

00:17:15.340 nothing to do but kind of just basically act like you have a hurricane or a uh or a uh a tornado

00:17:21.900 outside you just kind of get away from the windows get get to the most interior room and then you know

00:17:27.140 do your best to uh kind of get through it so it's a very harrowing experience and i can imagine

00:17:33.300 that a lot of people coming out of that as you say are just looking for any kind of escape that's

00:17:38.300 why you see uh so many christians fleeing uh the country so obviously as you said uh things got

00:17:45.420 worse after you left and we know that there's still constant conflict in lebanon as we speak

00:17:51.680 now so what happened in the civil war obviously it that i'm sure many books have been written about

00:17:57.880 that by itself in its entirety. But for just a bird's eye view for people who aren't familiar

00:18:03.400 with the history, how did things progress from the time you left up to today? So, you know,

00:18:09.940 very briefly, that's kind of geopolitical thing. It was about a 15 to 21-year-old, you know,

00:18:20.660 actual fighting taking place um just like in any um especially in civil wars parties turn on each

00:18:29.900 other you know the spanish civil war is a perfect example it was the nationalists versus the

00:18:33.980 republicans but then within the republicans the anarchists against the communists the communists

00:18:38.360 against the socialists so a lot of that happened on on both sides which is very disappointing

00:18:43.120 because now you're you know you're killing your own people so that happened and then there was

00:18:47.660 a peace that was imposed by outsiders, which is one of the biggest problems with this particular

00:18:54.100 country, Lebanon. The outsiders imposed a peace. However, they disarmed all militias except one,

00:19:01.560 Hezbollah. I don't know why. And then they were under Syrian tutelage. So the country stopped

00:19:09.560 existing as an independent nation. It became a colony, if you like, of back then, Syria. 0.53

00:19:18.540 And with one militia that was allowed to stay, the Hezbollah, which obviously today 0.89

00:19:23.660 is causing all of the problems over there. So there was this very weird kind of, I'm not going 0.95

00:19:32.240 to say peace, but like some kind of armistice type situation where Hezbollah continued to do

00:19:39.180 whatever they wanted to do, attacked Israel, Israel attacked back a couple of times. Syria

00:19:44.900 intelligence ran the whole place. If anybody resisted, they disappeared, they vanished the

00:19:51.620 way that you do in autocracies. And after that, there were a couple of iterations of change of 0.69

00:20:00.380 power but never with the whole place uniting it was always uh one group over the other groups and

00:20:10.140 in this case there are three groups there's the christians uh the shia muslims and the sunni

00:20:15.900 muslims so so each one of them had their turn uh in charge and nobody's in charge now and it's a

00:20:22.220 big mess and now you know it's still it's still the last 20 10 15 years was hezbollah and iran 0.81

00:20:28.460 in charge. So nothing is solved. You can see now there's this parallel process. There's a war 0.70

00:20:34.620 against Israel going on between Hezbollah and somehow U.S. is shepherding a peace between 0.94

00:20:44.320 Israel and Lebanon when the strongest party that has all the weapons that can beat everybody is

00:20:53.740 not part of these negotiations yeah yeah so you know that's like a whole show on its own just 0.99

00:21:00.420 who's who but that's where it is today not solved uh very sad continuation of immigration 0.85

00:21:07.140 of all parties uh and and no solution

00:21:10.560 Hungry now.

00:21:15.920 Now.

00:21:18.140 What about now?

00:21:20.340 Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,

00:21:23.180 grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.

00:21:26.980 With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts

00:21:30.660 covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating.

00:21:35.520 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.

00:21:38.180 Oh, hungry. Oh, Henry.

00:21:41.500 Well, that's very interesting. I didn't realize that there was that degree of factionalism similar to the Spanish Civil War.

00:21:48.440 I'm much more familiar with that conflict, but that's very interesting that you had that level of fracturing.

00:21:54.560 And obviously, as you say, that creates an incredibly unstable situation.

00:21:58.660 No one's really in charge. And basically, the country is just a playground for foreign influence,

00:22:03.660 whether it's Palestine or it's Iran or it's Israel, there's no Lebanese people making these 0.51

00:22:12.800 decisions at the end of the day. They're really the junior factor in all of this, which also is 0.91

00:22:18.440 true at some level of the Spanish Civil War, where you had basically the communists and the fascists

00:22:23.680 kind of doing a pre-World War II showdown with Spain as the proxy there. So this is never a good

00:22:31.440 place for you to be with. You never want to become a playground of larger geopolitical powers.

00:22:37.100 That's always a very dangerous thing that always works out very poorly for the people of the

00:22:42.260 country itself. What do you think about the current situation today? Because as you said,

00:22:48.180 we're in a very tight spot. Obviously, Iran is a danger, but I think perhaps one that did not 1.00

00:22:56.340 have to be addressed by the administration at this time. However, Israel is in a very 0.92

00:23:01.040 different situation they have a much different set of geopolitical priorities understandably due

00:23:06.320 to the threat level that iran you know places on them iran might not be someone we want to have a

00:23:12.760 bomb but they're never getting one to the united states israel really does face a very direct

00:23:17.980 threat if something like that happens however they also seem to be trying to stop any peace

00:23:23.720 negotiations in order to well frankly expand their presence in lebanon uh very specifically

00:23:29.920 Again, you can understand their motivation

00:23:32.600 They're basically trying to get as much done 1.00

00:23:34.920 And remove as much Iranian and Palestinian influence 1.00

00:23:37.880 As possible before they lose the cover of the American military 0.94

00:23:41.180 But that is creating a very difficult strain

00:23:44.220 On the American-Israeli relationship 0.95

00:23:46.040 Because, well, they're not really putting

00:23:48.100 The United States' interests first

00:23:50.280 Understandable, again, that it's their country

00:23:52.660 It's their leadership

00:23:53.420 They should put their nation first

00:23:54.880 But when you're in an alliance like this

00:23:56.900 Where you're just kind of at this cross-purpose

00:23:59.020 one person is trying to end the war, the other person is trying to extend it as long as possible

00:24:03.020 to try to get rid of a threat that they think is existential to them. Again, that just has to

00:24:08.220 leave the Lebanese trapped in the middle of a very unenviable scenario. Yeah. So if I try to

00:24:17.280 simplify it, and obviously, you know all the nuances. So again, you and I can spend hours

00:24:21.880 discussing this. If I try to simplify it, Israel has an existential position. And as long as 0.61

00:24:32.900 Hezbollah exists in the south of Lebanon, which is where one of their strong population bases are, 0.96

00:24:41.240 they're going to be a threat to northern Israel. And northern Israelis want to live in peace, 0.53

00:24:46.340 go to school, run their businesses, and so on. So Israel has to stop this threat on the northern 0.93

00:24:53.620 border. And to them, whatever happens outside of that in Iran or with the US, that's not what

00:25:00.560 matters to them. What matters to them is that no Hezbollah slash Iran presence with weapons that

00:25:07.400 can reach North Israel, or God forbid, tunnels that could do what happened in Gaza.

00:25:12.700 happened. I mean, that's really Israel's campaign here. So they could do it two ways. They can 0.87

00:25:24.400 either, and they've tried this in the past, and it's never really worked very well. They can

00:25:28.660 occupy all the way to a certain area where missiles can't reach northern Israel,

00:25:34.960 or they can just get rid of the threat. And it's a constant battle between these two things with

00:25:40.900 The United States is stuck somewhere in the middle.

00:25:43.360 Sometimes the U.S. says, get rid of the threat.

00:25:46.020 Sometimes the U.S. says, don't want to just manage the threat because we have our own.

00:25:53.140 So that's where the situation is. 0.98

00:25:54.800 Meanwhile, as you can tell, the Lebanese are just pawns in everybody's hands. 1.00

00:26:00.900 Do you think that there's a future for Christians in Lebanon with the influx of Muslims, 1.00

00:26:06.700 obviously high degree of influence from foreign muslim countries in lebanon and the fact that so 0.95

00:26:13.780 many christians have fled uh the the country do you think that could ever once again be a christian

00:26:20.420 country or at the very least could have uh you know a sizable christian community with real

00:26:24.980 influence or is that is that day kind of over due to the demographic demographic shift and the

00:26:32.260 geopolitical realities in lebanon so if i give you if we gave you the demographic realities

00:26:37.900 when greater lebanon was founded in 1926 it was 60 christian 40 muslim if you do as they've never

00:26:46.680 done a census since because they don't want to but if you do a census today uh you will see that 0.95

00:26:53.040 the christians are a third the sunnis are a third the shia are third if you combine the muslims

00:26:59.640 they're 66 to 33. Nowhere in the world has Islam been majority and shared power or allowed power 0.99

00:27:09.780 to be in anybody else's hand. Never in history has that happened. Never will it happen. So this 0.96

00:27:15.100 is all playing out right now. You have people like me that left when I was 15. I'm an American

00:27:20.800 100 million percent. This is my country. I'm not going anywhere and I'm going to sit and fight for

00:27:27.720 this country. And probably there are hundreds of thousands of people like me in the United States,

00:27:34.480 in Brazil, in Canada, et cetera. There are probably a percentage of Christians in Europe

00:27:41.400 and maybe in some of the countries I've mentioned that would go back and perhaps change that balance

00:27:46.720 to 60-40 or something. But 60-40 is still majority Muslim. So how do you start a constitution? How do

00:27:56.460 you change things how do you uh there's been a lot of talk about federation and there's a lot

00:28:01.900 of talk about partition and i think that start when things start getting interested but the u.s

00:28:08.240 administration has shown no interest in any of that they want to keep you know you know i have

00:28:13.840 a lot of people in the united states saying we should ban sharia law we should ban sharia law 1.00

00:28:18.020 my governor ron de santis just signed a bill not too long ago doing this and that's great i support 0.76

00:28:23.040 that like obviously islam has no place in the united states however the thing i try to stress 1.00

00:28:28.060 to them is something that i think you're highlighting here which is you you can ban

00:28:32.440 anything you want you can write all the words down on paper you want but ultimately demographics is

00:28:37.960 destiny you know if you if you have a country that is transformed by immigration if you bring in

00:28:43.500 a massive amount of muslims to lebanon as you say whatever you've written down in constitutions or 1.00

00:28:49.580 these things, they're going to fold under the weight of the demographics that are shifting. 0.99

00:28:54.220 And so if you want to keep Muslim culture, if you want to keep Sharia law from dominating the 1.00

00:28:58.560 United States, the only option is to end Muslim immigration. If you bring Muslims in over time, 1.00

00:29:04.400 they're going to become a block and they're going to fight for their own interests. They're allowed 1.00

00:29:08.560 to organize in ways that heritage Americans are not. And ultimately, they're going to bring about 0.99

00:29:13.940 those rules no matter what you've written on paper somewhere. And I don't know what you think

00:29:19.480 about that but it's something i've had a hard time drilling into conservatives because they think that

00:29:24.380 the constitution that pieces of paper you know i love the constitution but they think it's like

00:29:28.720 some magic shield that stops this even if everything in the country changes and it's like no guys

00:29:34.640 actually the people in the country are the constitution they live the constitution they

00:29:39.740 embody the constitution and so when you bring in other people with other beliefs and other ideas

00:29:43.760 they bring that constitution with them they don't adopt yours well you're on to something

00:29:49.120 very very important and and what's interesting for me is that i've gone full circle so i came

00:29:55.720 here with a huge distrust because i saw what they would do when they are actually close to power

00:30:01.580 i became an american and i was like well everybody has a right to be here you know we're

00:30:07.080 melting pot so on so forth today i find myself at a huge dilemma which is that what you just said

00:30:14.540 is true. Numbers talk. They have air cover from the left. Let's not forget this. The left gives

00:30:23.420 them air cover here and in Europe, always, always. I don't know why it's that red green alliance thing

00:30:28.700 we talk about. So they have air cover from the left and they're going to do what they're going

00:30:32.780 to do depending on the numbers. So I've gone from American- 0.96

00:30:37.740 this episode is brought to you by fifa world cup launch edition on netflix it's a fast fluid game

00:30:47.340 where your phone is the controller and your tv is the stadium you just launch it on your tv scan the

00:30:53.700 qr code with your phone and boom you're shooting and passing in seconds plus it's included in your

00:31:00.080 netflix membership with zero extra costs go to the games tab and play fifa world cup launch edition

00:31:06.340 now only on netflix you know tolerance let it be to maybe a formally saying sharia law does not

00:31:19.860 belong in the united states and if we find anybody no matter who they are where they were born how

00:31:24.740 many years they've been here practicing sharia law we have the right to to expatriate them out

00:31:31.220 i mean that's the first thing the second thing and that's again you know we're getting into some

00:31:36.340 weird areas here but also perhaps you know when i became a u.s citizen i i i was 23 and i gave up

00:31:46.520 everything else in order to and my allegiances went to the u.s well i think we do a double triple

00:31:52.740 allegiance system if you come from a muslim background and if you break it you're gone

00:31:58.700 ever yeah whether you're 75 years old and you went to the mosque and you did or said something

00:32:06.820 off you're now this is everything that you know police state you know everything's we don't

00:32:12.780 necessarily want to do but i don't think we have a choice this is existential

00:32:16.380 you know and the other thing is just going to cut back you know we don't need 1.00

00:32:21.400 you know do we really need immigrants from somalia like what's the value add like they're working at 1.00

00:32:29.520 at the minneapolis airport uh you know selling me uh donuts at duncan donuts 1.00

00:32:35.340 i mean let's call a spade a spade here it is what it is i've seen it happen

00:32:42.360 i have tried really hard to go with the tolerance because i have become an american

00:32:48.320 but i'm also realistic been there done that it ain't gonna happen again under my watch

00:32:54.560 yeah i think we can safely say somalia is on the other side of the bell curve and we're probably

00:32:59.860 not getting a lot of biomedical investors uh out of somalia a lot more uh or even sadly uh you know

00:33:06.880 competent uh you know airport uh employees so uh i think you know obviously you fought these people

00:33:14.120 So, uh, I, I don't want to say I'm more radical than you on the subject, but I think I might

00:33:18.440 be, I think it's just, we can just, we can just shut it off.

00:33:21.460 It's okay.

00:33:22.340 You know, um, you know, we, we, we got the good immigrants, all the good immigrants who

00:33:26.000 are coming over already here.

00:33:27.520 Uh, let's, let's shut it down and, uh, and, and try to heal what's, uh, you know, left

00:33:32.200 of the United States at this moment, but that helps us transition to the next part that

00:33:36.520 I want to talk to you about.

00:33:37.660 Obviously we want to know about the civil war.

00:33:39.880 We want to understand your background and your experience, but we also want to know

00:33:43.080 how it applies to the united states as somebody who's been through this scenario who's faced

00:33:48.840 these challenges who's seen a country crack up and fall apart and neighbors go to war

00:33:53.320 uh you know i made a statement a few weeks ago that got people really angry but i said

00:33:59.800 look after charlie kirk got shot we should have had a civil war and i didn't mean that

00:34:04.800 prescriptively i'm not calling for civil war i don't want a civil war i understand

00:34:08.340 as you say how horrific a civil war is but just naturally that with the with the tensions in the

00:34:15.160 country with the position we're in when you have an event like that something that is so devastating

00:34:20.740 and so shocking and you have so many leftists out there celebrating cheering it on talking about

00:34:26.300 who's going to be next we see this continued uh culture of violence we just had uh justice amy

00:34:32.120 barrett talk about how she's being intimidated how her children are scared how she's having to wear

00:34:37.400 bulletproof vests because you know deranged leftist terrorists are constantly threatening

00:34:41.940 to kill her and all the other conservative judges when we have this moment where let's be honest

00:34:48.480 it's one side who's open to political violence and very open about they do not shy away from this all 0.98

00:34:55.040 they have you know these militant cells of antifa they're organizing constantly to do violence

00:35:00.540 protests assassinations uh you know they are vicious and when you have a moment like this

00:35:08.560 how do we walk away from something like this how do we de-escalate because like i said i don't think

00:35:13.180 we want a civil war i don't want a civil war but obviously uh you know you can't just let people

00:35:18.960 keep shooting conservatives intimidating supreme court justices trying to murder them in their

00:35:25.060 homes there has to be something to be done because of course as you probably know the reason you got 0.75

00:35:30.160 francisco franco is because the right wouldn't stop anarchists from murdering conservative

00:35:35.880 politicians and when the government doesn't act things escalate and and in spain's case

00:35:42.740 priests and nuns by the way which uh yes yes you know that was a big deal for me uh i also studied

00:35:48.620 first of all i i i i want to i hope that your followers appreciate how tuned in and to the

00:35:57.720 nuances and intelligent you are so i mean hope people know that because you the question you

00:36:03.160 asked me is so and actually did read your post when you said it uh the civil war post so the

00:36:09.660 question is why did i do the book knowing uh everything you just said uh i i think the choice

00:36:18.580 right now is between what is in my book which people will read uh awful awful anecdotes uh

00:36:26.640 horrible stories um and on and on that i actually wish were true it's the choice between that

00:36:34.000 and what i'm hoping is that or is that the the i see it on a bell curve okay antifa is on the left

00:36:43.480 of the bell curve there are some people on the right of the bell curve antifa wants to do civil

00:36:48.420 war dsa wants a civil war but the center on the right on the left either is not paying attention

00:36:53.900 or would hopefully listen to my message.

00:36:57.260 If you can mobilize those two groups based on my book,

00:37:05.000 based on what you said is going on,

00:37:07.040 and have them say, okay, politicians, figure this out.

00:37:11.880 We're not going to kill each other.

00:37:15.000 That's my hope.

00:37:16.140 That's the whole hope of the book.

00:37:17.680 That's why it's not on our watch, not my watch, our watch.

00:37:20.820 It's like everybody has to kind of go in there

00:37:22.540 and decide that this has to stop.

00:37:26.020 The problem that I have now is you're correct.

00:37:29.860 A lot of the pushing comes from one side,

00:37:32.600 but I could tell you in Lebanon,

00:37:35.520 a lot of the pushing came from one side.

00:37:38.240 The other side woke up.

00:37:41.280 And once the other side wakes up,

00:37:43.860 then now you've actually upped from DEFCON 1 to DEFCON 3.

00:37:48.540 And I thought, God bless him, because I knew him well, I thought the Charlie Kirk assassination was going to take us to deaf country.

00:37:58.820 But those same people in the middle that I was referring to, they understood for whatever reason.

00:38:06.820 Yeah, this was an extreme right guy who made a lot of noise.

00:38:10.080 It's sad that this happened to him.

00:38:12.020 But, you know, yeah, it's too bad.

00:38:16.580 nobody saw this as this is one of the most important voices in our generation to come out

00:38:23.420 and actually start pushing for the values that you in the middle of the curve live by believing

00:38:30.360 no one saw that so we dodged in a way we were okay but i could tell you that if this continues

00:38:38.440 at some point uh the somebody's gonna get upset on the right and they're gonna rally and then

00:38:45.800 And it's just a bunch of very easily for a provocateur, which they had in Spain, which

00:38:51.260 I think Iran, Russia and China would love to be in our country, as you see in social

00:38:58.140 media, they will just they would love to have two sides on both sides of the street and 0.59

00:39:03.160 shoot at both of them and have it happen.

00:39:05.660 So to answer your question, it's a it's a it's a plea for the middle to wake up and

00:39:14.160 tell the leadership, we don't want what Guy Norah talks about his book to happen.

00:39:21.000 And that's it.

00:39:22.080 Other than that, I don't know, you know.

00:39:25.420 Yeah, I think, you know, my concern, actually, well, let me frame it this way.

00:39:31.520 A lot of people say that this just can't happen in the United States.

00:39:36.480 Look, you know, Americans are too prosperous. 0.98

00:39:38.900 They're too fat. 1.00

00:39:39.980 They're too lazy. 1.00

00:39:40.980 They're too adverse to conflict.

00:39:43.820 they're too comfortable right like for for this to really happen you need desperate young men 0.91

00:39:48.700 that that's that's almost always what conflict really comes down to and you just don't have

00:39:53.600 that in the united states you know young men have a rough time but ultimately they're more likely to

00:39:59.100 go play video games or smoke pot than they are uh to go to war i understand that argument um there's

00:40:08.140 some truth to it uh but as you say i i worry that people don't understand how quickly things can

00:40:15.020 shift how on a dime you things that you thought were entirely impossible can come about uh you

00:40:21.640 know there's a recency bias of saying well i've always had this peaceful society we've always had

00:40:27.040 this orderly transition of power uh you know america's always been in this position and it

00:40:32.900 just it can't happen here it can't be something that gets triggered i think it's something that

00:40:38.320 is actually much closer than people recognize i think that there's a tinderbox that people would

00:40:43.380 like to ignore because they want to tell themselves uh that they're they're safe and that they can

00:40:47.840 continue to you know spend their lives doing whatever they like not focusing on politics

00:40:52.140 not focusing on current events uh and it will be fine you know things will continue on as they

00:40:57.460 always have. But I think that, as you say, if we don't have a real significant action from our

00:41:06.700 government, if we don't see real change enacted in a very serious way, then these issues will

00:41:13.880 compound and they will reach a fever pitch far more quickly than people realize. It's not hard

00:41:20.920 to imagine a scenario where, again, a Gavin Newsom or a Kamala Harris comes into power

00:41:25.920 And they make the Biden administration's crackdown on conservatives look like nothing. Right. They they they. Oh, you got 15, 20 million new immigrants during the Biden administration. You haven't even seen open borders. Here comes 80 million. Right.

00:41:42.720 you think that throwing the J6ers and abortion protesters into jail was a political persecution? 1.00

00:41:49.740 Oh, yeah. Well, here's every single member of the Trump administration. Here's everyone who

00:41:53.820 is attached to serious party leadership. We're going after anyone and everyone we can to make

00:42:00.120 a display that you never, ever put someone like Trump in power again. And so while I love the

00:42:05.000 Trump administration, I think they've done some really important things and made some really

00:42:08.280 important advances. One of the things that worries me is that we have not seen that response that's

00:42:14.340 necessary to kind of crack down on leftist violence and send them the message that this

00:42:19.640 does not happen, that this is an unacceptable tactic. And a lot of people say, well, I don't

00:42:24.600 know what that would look like. And I'm like, I do. It looks like what they did after January 6th,

00:42:29.020 right? Like the FBI did everything they could to track down every grandma who was within a 10 mile

00:42:34.820 radius of the Capitol, and they put them all in jail. They sent a very clear message that there's

00:42:40.200 an extreme cost for being involved in just the possibility of a riot anywhere near liberal

00:42:48.140 politicians. And I think unless Trump and his administration step up and fill that void,

00:42:53.500 we're going to continue to see ourselves move down the very path you're warning against.

00:42:57.400 Well, so if I can go on the intellectual part of what you were saying earlier, so the people who say, oh, no, that's not going to happen.

00:43:07.600 This is America. You know, there are analytical things, boxes you can check that tells you you're about to get into the conditions for a civil war are more right.

00:43:20.380 They are increased polarization.

00:43:25.040 Check, right?

00:43:26.400 I don't invite grandma to my Thanksgiving because she voted one way or another.

00:43:31.320 So that's increased polarization.

00:43:34.200 Contested elections.

00:43:36.280 We've had two contested elections. 0.99

00:43:39.020 People forget the Russian hoax. 0.96

00:43:41.760 Yes.

00:43:42.440 That's two contested elections.

00:43:44.100 That kind of hits a lot at the actual strength of a system.

00:43:52.220 The third thing is people don't follow laws.

00:43:58.540 At the end of the day, a sanctuary city is illegal.

00:44:02.980 That's not following laws.

00:44:06.080 Okay, now, so I'm trying to give examples on both sides.

00:44:08.700 The other side, which is very, very important, is a previously dominant slash powerful group that gets disenfranchised.

00:44:21.520 Can you say white men? 0.52

00:44:23.880 Yep.

00:44:24.920 Right.

00:44:25.360 And by the way, they're being disenfranchised because people are giving them a hard time.

00:44:31.100 They're not doing this themselves.

00:44:33.200 Right.

00:44:33.660 They're being put in that position.

00:44:35.700 Well, guess what?

00:44:36.540 That is another precursor.

00:44:37.860 So we have eight or nine of them. I'm just going to give you these four. So if people want to put

00:44:42.120 their heads in the sand, like my parents did, my parents would go to the other side of town

00:44:47.200 and party in discos and nightclubs when I knew war was coming. So people want to put their heads

00:44:56.640 in the sand. That's not good. We need to wake them up. We need to tell them it's not normal

00:45:02.540 that somebody gets assassinated it's not normal that there are three assassination attempts on

00:45:08.160 your president it's not you know and again we just have to start saying these things are not

00:45:12.180 normal you've got to wake up and along with that you you it's a little bit of a balance i agree

00:45:19.700 with you for instance like we have to find out who's funding antifa and cut that off because

00:45:24.820 by definition they tell you what they want to do they want to you know they just want to blow up

00:45:28.160 the whole thing you know anarchists that's what they are well that's got to be stopped um and it

00:45:33.180 has to be stopped yesterday so so but at the same time as you're stopping it you're hopefully reaching

00:45:39.560 your hand to the center left and saying we've got it too good in this country to actually let

00:45:46.000 these people and my action towards them lead us into civil war and to your point

00:45:53.300 it happens so fast you wake up one day and you have to take a side it's just that quickly

00:46:02.580 yeah i mean i hope you're right and i i hope that's how things are resolved i just worry

00:46:08.480 that there's not much of a center left left right like even people who you think of as moderate

00:46:13.500 liberals are the kind of people who cheer when charlie kirk is shot they are the people who

00:46:17.620 will call you a fascist and say you should be fired uh you know for not wanting to mutilate a 0.79

00:46:22.580 child uh you know in in transgender surgery so increasingly the issues that divide the country 0.96

00:46:28.380 are ones where there is no middle ground and that's of course the most dangerous place to be 0.87

00:46:32.280 because then you know even the appeals to we have it good material comfort these things they they're

00:46:37.920 no longer enough and that's a very scary place to be but i think your message is important i think

00:46:42.940 that this is a fate that is well worth avoiding if possible and obviously you're a man who has

00:46:48.220 seen that firsthand. So you know how dire that situation can be. And I think people would be

00:46:54.660 wise to learn from your experience. So if they want to do that, they want to learn about your

00:46:59.340 background, learn about this history and your insights into the United States. What's the name

00:47:03.940 of the book? Where can they pick it up? So the name of the book is Not On Our Watch. It is right

00:47:09.300 now on presale on Amazon. It comes out on October 6th. You can also find it at Simon & Schuster

00:47:15.440 and Post Hill Press, as far as pre-orders.

00:47:20.760 One thing, just one little thing.

00:47:24.200 Oh, sure.

00:47:26.300 When my book comes out, or even before,

00:47:29.960 I want to engage with your equivalent on the left,

00:47:33.580 and I want to hear what they have to say.

00:47:35.620 Because if we have any chance of saving this whole situation,

00:47:39.740 it's going to be what your equivalent on the left says.

00:47:42.060 If your equivalent on the left comes to my book and says,

00:47:44.540 care for your skin like you care for the game dove men plus care is an official sponsor of the

00:47:52.140 fifa world cup 2026 and has just dropped their new limited edition deodorant and anti-perspirant

00:47:58.200 collection for 72 hours sweat and odor protection helping you stay fresh from kickoff to the final

00:48:04.680 whistle visit dove.com caen slash men dash care to shop now you're full of it i don't believe

00:48:14.600 anything you're saying i'm gonna get concerned if they say well what about what these guys that

00:48:21.720 the other side is doing i want to hear i want to hear where where the the conservatives have

00:48:27.400 assassinated somebody i want to hear where the the conservatives have tried to kill a president a

00:48:32.040 couple of times i want to hear all of that because at the end of the day we've got to expose everybody

00:48:36.840 and then if if my my personal experience one-on-one has been when i speak with with so-called center

00:48:44.200 left moderates they actually they're open to my message and that's all we can hope for well i

00:48:52.360 certainly hope that's the case because as you point out very uh effectively the alternative is uh very

00:48:57.640 grim and undesirable. That said, we do have a couple questions from the audience. So let me

00:49:03.540 bring those up real quick. Cherry Coke Nixon says, who funded the Christian militias during the war 0.97

00:49:08.900 in Lebanon? Okay, great question. At the beginning, it was the Maronite church that was helping, 0.93

00:49:17.940 and we were buying our own weapons, and we had to buy our own ammunitions. So we were constantly

00:49:24.020 underarmed under, you know, we had less, less munitions than they did at the beginning.

00:49:31.320 As the war expanded, you know, inter-Arab relations were such that Jordan was helping

00:49:39.260 the Christian, Iraq was helping the Muslims, Libya was helping the Muslims, Israel got

00:49:44.760 involved and helped the Christians.

00:49:45.940 So it became bigger, but at the beginning, it was just us and our money.

00:49:51.820 Interesting.

00:49:52.300 And then he also says, who was the primary Islamist front in that war?

00:49:57.400 So there was a political arm and there was a military arm.

00:50:02.780 The political arm was the establishment Sunni politicians who, even when Lebanon was started in 1926, wanted to be part of Syria.

00:50:12.560 So they never bought into Lebanon.

00:50:14.380 That was the political arm.

00:50:15.760 The actual front that was fighting was the Palestinian Liberation Organization and probably half a dozen Muslim militias.

00:50:28.260 And interestingly, I like this, a bunch of leftists.

00:50:32.200 And in the leftists, they were Christians.

00:50:36.340 So the left is always self-loathing and they don't like it worldwide.

00:50:40.740 So I hope that was a good answer to the person, to Sherry. 0.65

00:50:44.020 No, and good insight that ultimately leftism is always a kind of a hyper religion of self-destruction, even when you're nominally Christian. As we've seen, you know, leftist Christians are some of the most enthusiastic people about destroying America as it exists now. So sadly, the Christianity takes a backseat to the leftist ideology, and we all see how terribly that's played out. 0.93

00:51:08.420 All right, guys. Well, go ahead and make sure to head over and check out his show. I've been on his show, so you can watch his show. Also, make sure that you pre-order his book as well. And if it's your first time on my channel, you need to subscribe, click the bell, notifications, all that stuff so you know when we're going live.

00:51:25.880 If you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you can go ahead and subscribe to Orr McIntyre

00:51:30.080 Show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:51:31.700 When you do, leave a rating or review.

00:51:34.300 It helps with the algorithm.

00:51:35.680 And you can pick up my book, The Total State.

00:51:37.580 It's now out in its second printing in paperback.

00:51:40.180 You can pick it up at Amazon if you'd like.

00:51:42.340 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

00:51:43.440 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 15, 2026

What Can the Lebanese Civil War Teach Us About Modern America？｜ Guest： Guy Nohra ｜ 7⧸15⧸26

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 15, 2026

What Can the Lebanese Civil War Teach Us About Modern America？ ｜ Guest： Guy Nohra ｜ 7⧸15⧸26

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

What Can the Lebanese Civil War Teach Us About Modern America？｜ Guest： Guy Nohra ｜ 7⧸15⧸26