Dr. Jeffrey Bale is an emeritus professor in the Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. Dr. Bale is a historian, author, journalist, and essayist. He is the co-author of Fighting the Last War: Partisanship and Alarmism in the Literature on the Radical Right, and The Darkest Side of Politics: Volume 1 and 2. He has also co-authored a number of articles and monographs, and is writing a new book, The Other Face of Rock and Roll Rebellion, about fascist music underground from 1978 to the present.
00:00:00.000Hello and welcome to this interview. Today I'm interviewing Dr. Jeffrey Bale, who is an emeritus professor in the Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
00:00:15.040Dr. Jeffrey Bale, I'm very pleased to be interviewing you. Welcome to the Lotus Cedars.
00:00:22.700Thank you very much. Would you tell us some stuff about your background?
00:00:26.420Yes, I'm basically a historian. I received my BA in Middle Eastern Islamic and Central Asian History at the University of Michigan, and then I received my PhD in Modern European History at the University of California at Berkeley.
00:00:46.760So I was trained as a historian, and originally I studied medieval Islamic and Central Asian history, and then at a certain point I switched over to modern history because I realized I was spending more time studying the world's most difficult languages than I was actually doing history.
00:01:06.220You know, I studied Arabic and Persian and some Turkish in addition to several European languages so I could read secondary sources, and then I was at the point where I was going to have to learn Mongolian, and then if I wanted to do the eastern part of the steppe, I would have to learn Chinese and Japanese.
00:01:22.200So I thought to myself, you know, however fascinating it is to study the nomadic tribes in Central Asia, I didn't want to spend like another 10 years just studying difficult languages and not getting around to doing history.
00:01:38.200And then, of course, ultimately you start thinking, well, if you're really studying things that seem to have so little relevance to the present that maybe you want to do something, shift to a more modern era of history so that the things you're studying have more contemporary salience or more contemporary relevance.
00:01:57.340Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, it turns out that the study medieval Islamic history has a tremendous amount of contemporary relevance and salience given the rise of Islamism and the threat of jihadist terrorism, but anyway, I shifted to modern European history and then I've always been interested in unusual topics and so my focus has really been on political and religious extremism of various kinds and then the other types of
00:02:27.340subjects that I've been interested in are covert operations, covert actions, intelligence operations, terrorism, you know, all the kind of nasty, sinister topics that a lot of people prefer to avoid, so the whole topics that we're going to discuss, that's right, topics that we're going to discuss and that obviously have tremendous amount of relevance at the present time.
00:02:49.420So, anyway, I think it just goes to show you that no matter how arcane your interests, you'll be surprised to discover just how relevant they might turn out to be, you know, depending on societal and political developments at the present time.
00:03:06.020Exactly. So let me just say to the audience that my first introduction to your work was the book you have co-authored with Dr. Tamir Barron,
00:03:15.420Coal Fighting the Last War, Confusion, Partisanship and Alarmism in the Literature on the Radical Right, and I see you have further publications from Rutledge, The Darkest Side of Politics, Post-war Fascism, Covert Operations and Terrorism, Volume 1, and The Darkest Side of Politics, Volume 2, State Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Religious Extremism and Organized Crime.
00:03:42.180Yes. And these are books, and I'm sure you have a lot of papers written on these topics.
00:03:49.180Yes, articles and monographs, and I'm writing a new book, which is probably going to be my magnum opus, called The Other Face of Rock and Roll Rebellion, which is about the international fascist quote-unquote music underground from 1978 to the present.
00:04:06.980So that's the book that I'm currently working on, and it sort of combines both my scholarly and academic interests on the radical right and also my lifelong countercultural rock and roll rebel lifestyle.
00:04:27.660Because of that bizarre background that I have, I'm probably the only person who can really do this subject, you know, properly, because I'm so familiar with those types of music and also, you know, the subject, the various currents of the radical right.
00:04:44.040So anyway, yeah, so I guess you could say there's somewhat unusual interest, but nevertheless, I think, unfortunately, highly relevant at the present time, given the fact that so many people are generating hysteria about the threats supposedly posed by the right and by the return of fascism and so forth and so on.
00:05:03.120And that's really the reason why Tamir Baran and I wrote the fighting the last war, because we just felt that the literature on the radical right was just increasingly partisan, alarmist, and frankly hysterical.
00:05:19.860A lot of the literature on the radical right, a lot of the literature on the radical right, written by academics, reads like the kind of blatantly partisan, alarmist literature of watchdog, anti-fascist watchdog groups like Hope Not Hate and the Southern Poverty Law Center and so forth and so on.
00:05:39.240And in fact, in fact, there's been an increasing amount of blending between activists, anti-fascist activists and academics at conferences.
00:05:49.180And for example, there's academic books that have chapters by anti-fascist activists who are not actually scholars.
00:05:59.660I mean, some of them know a lot, but they obviously have a blatant partisan bias.
00:06:03.820I mean, imagine the outrage if somebody was writing a book, somebody put together a book on the radical left, and amongst the people who were authors of that book were members of the radical, were figures on the radical right, or militant anti-communist activists.
00:06:21.300I mean, people would be outraged and say, well, this isn't a scholarly book.
00:06:24.360This is more like an activist approach.
00:06:27.040And that's kind of what we see with a lot of the literature on the radical right now.
00:06:30.580In fact, you can barely, unfortunately, you can barely distinguish between the activist literature on the radical right and the so-called, and the academic literature on the radical right now, because they share the same narratives.
00:06:49.420So, I think that the term far right at the moment is one of the hot topics.
00:06:55.760And also, the alarmism that you're describing with respect to the rise of the radical right.
00:07:02.140So, on a daily basis, both on mainstream media and on social media like Twitter that constitute alternative platforms, we are bombarded with virtually endless people who are using terms like that.
00:07:19.740Who are using terms like left, right, radical left, radical right, extremism, terrorism, far right, radical right, extremist right, and the same thing for the left.
00:07:32.380So, I think that what we should do, or a good idea for what we do, for what we can do in this interview, is to try and put order into that chaos.
00:07:42.420And, personally, I think that, as a historian, you are very well equipped to do this.
00:07:49.740In a sense, I'm asking the right person to help me.
00:07:54.340To help me put order into this linguistic chaos, because it seems to me that unless we combine our historical knowledge with our judgment of people's political and ethical statements,
00:08:07.540we are going to just fall victims of sloganism, like Trudeau says, Trudeau is the leader of the liberal party.
00:08:19.300Suddenly, everyone thinks that liberalism is what Trudeau is putting forward, which it is not.
00:08:24.540I'm speaking as a classical liberal myself.
00:08:27.340Trudeau is the last person I would refer to as a liberal.
00:08:31.320We're talking about somebody who's an illiberal progressive, quote-unquote.
00:08:34.620And, whenever I use the term progressive, I always put it in quotation marks, because, in my opinion, there's really nothing progressive about progressivism.
00:08:44.640But, yeah, getting back to your point about the far right and the terms, and people toss around these terms, far right, extreme right, radical right, you know, without really being very specific.
00:08:55.180And, frankly, even amongst academic experts, there's no consensus on what the terms far right and extreme right and radical right mean.
00:09:04.200And, so that's one of the biggest problems.
00:09:07.820I mean, if the experts can't even agree on how to precisely define and delimit these terms, then it's not surprising that activist types and other people who are less informed are going to be misusing and abusing those terms.
00:09:23.640And, that's precisely what we see, as with the term fascism and so forth and so on.
00:09:28.480So, maybe the best way to begin is to try to talk about the four main, the way, in terms of our categorization scheme, the four main elements of the right.
00:09:43.500And, of course, I mean, we can talk about the ideas associated with the left and the right at the time when those terms were first introduced in the late 18th century.
00:09:55.040If you want to get into the weeds of that, or we can talk, you know, clearly, if you're, let's just say, in the most general sense, that the ideas associated with the left are emerged from the European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment.
00:10:12.720And, and then, and then that movement, you know, promoted certain, certain core ideas, and so, and so that originally the term left, again, referred to people who supported Enlightenment ideas, and supported at least certain phases of the French Revolution, and as I said, who sat on the left side of the French Assembly, the States General and then the National Assembly.
00:10:40.760And then the term right was applied to defenders of the Ancien Regime, people who were opposed to various Enlightenment ideas, and who were opposed to the French Revolution.
00:10:52.440So, that, that's really where the terms left and right first, first used in a political sense.
00:10:59.200Of course, of course, since then, the terms have, I mean, the left and the right have evolved or devolved, depending on your, depending on your perspective.
00:11:11.580I mean, they've changed over time, ideas associated with the left and the right have changed over time.
00:11:17.740And, and the problem, of course, is that some of the, the way that the left evolved, evolved in a direction that I think the, the Enlightenment intellectuals would have, would have found appalling.
00:11:35.300So, for example, when you, when you actually identify the ideas associated with the Enlightenment, they can be used to support, on the one hand, the most radical forms of individualism, because one of the core ideas of, of the Enlightenment, along with rationalism,
00:11:54.300the idea that humans are basically good optimism regarding human progress, was egalitarianism, of course, the term egalitarianism can mean many different things.
00:12:06.020It can mean equality before the law, it can mean equality before God, it can mean equality of opportunity, it can mean equality of results, and so forth, and so on.
00:12:14.780But in the Enlightenment sense of the term, the term referred to the, the idea, which was really probably the most radical idea in the history of political thought, that all individuals have certain intrinsic national, natural rights that cannot be abridged.
00:12:29.100So this is the kind of idea, which is the basis for modern ideas of, of individual rights and individual freedom.
00:12:36.220And again, it's the most radical idea in the history of political thought, because all traditional societies didn't have a concept that the individual had rights.
00:12:44.780Separate from the community, and whatever rights the individual was thought to have, if they were not or never articulated, were always considered to be subordinated to the interests of the, of the community.
00:12:54.800So the, the idea that individuals have certain rights that can't be abridged is really the most radical idea in the history of political thought, and it really, it really kind of undermines and subverts traditional societies, for that very reason.
00:13:06.460But anyway, so on the one hand, you can have that kind of idea that emerges from Enlightenment thinking, and then on the other hand, you can have people,
00:13:14.780misinterpreting the ideas of Rousseau, about the general will, and so forth and so on, where you end up with the most extreme forms of collectivism, in the form of communism, or, or collectivist anarchism.
00:13:27.320So, so, so, in other words, ideas that are associated with both the left and the right, you develop in different ways over time, and, and they oftentimes develop in ways that are completely incompatible with each other.
00:13:40.300So you can really see, for example, that, that the idea of, of the emphasis on the, on individual freedom, on the one hand, and the emphasis on collectivism, on the other, of the communist type, are completely antithetical to one another.
00:13:52.760And yet both can be said to derive from, from some of the core Enlightenment ideas, you know.
00:13:58.060And, and, and, and so that's one of the issues.
00:14:01.120Now, so the first question, the first point I want to make here is that the political spectrum, the left-right political spectrum is kind of an overly simplistic spectrum.
00:14:08.960Because it, it suggests that, it suggests that people who, who have left-wing ideas, quote-unquote, are on the far pole of a spectrum from people who have right-wing ideas.
00:14:18.760So, that there's no areas where they can, where they can join or intermingle and so forth and so on.
00:14:24.320And I think that's really a, a, a, a, a, not only an overly linear way to look at it, but a very simplistic way to look at it.
00:14:31.120And I think that the more accurate political depictions of the political spectrum, spectrum, well, are like in more in a form of a circle.
00:14:40.400Whereas on the top of a circle, you have like, the most totalitarian versions of the left and the right.
00:14:48.880Like on the left side, you'd have communism be right adjacent to fascism, the totalitarian version on the right side.
00:14:55.400And on the bottom of that circle, you'd have the most, the, the, the, the ideas on the left and the right that were the most, that emphasized individual freedom the most.
00:15:03.740So, you, you, you, you, you would have like a classical liberalism and individualist anarchism on the left side.
00:15:11.100And then on the right side, you'd have libertarianism, you know.
00:15:13.840So, there you can see, you can, you can see the, so the, so they're the left and right are right next to each other.
00:15:18.220You know, the totalitarian left and the totalitarian right are adjacent to each other.
00:15:21.920They have much more in common with each other than they have with other elements of the left and the right.
00:15:26.380And similarly, the anti-authoritarian elements of the left and right are, are close to each other.
00:15:31.080And they have less, much more in common with each other than, than the more authoritarian and collectivist elements of the, of the, of the respect that they use.
00:15:40.360So, let me just summarize and tell me if I'm summarizing incorrectly your point.
00:15:45.520You would say that the initial distinction between left and right originates from the French parliament after the French revolution,
00:15:53.960where the left described those who sat on the left side of the parliament and the right, those who sat on the right side.
00:16:02.520And the left was generally speaking pro-French revolution, especially in, in its most radical forms.
00:16:09.700And the right was the supporter of the old establishment.
00:16:33.380But yeah, so it really began earlier than the French revolution and then continued throughout, throughout, through the revolution, the seating arrangements.
00:16:39.560Exactly. So I have, I have a question here about the Enlightenment, because it seems to me that a lot of the times people are talking about the Enlightenment as if it was one movement,
00:16:51.220whereas it's an umbrella term of plenty of movement.
00:16:54.720So, for instance, the Scottish Enlightenment having Hume, Adam Smith and Douglas Stewart, Adam Ferguson,
00:17:02.360they don't seem to me to resemble ideas of the left in any sense.
00:17:06.320Well, no, I think that, I think that if you think of the, the main ideas of the Enlightenment as being one that promotes like not only the use of human reason,
00:17:16.880the application of human reason to solve human problems, but also the importance of, of free, free debate and so forth and so on.
00:17:25.840And, and, and, and the free exchange of ideas, you know, that's very important when we're talking about, you know,
00:17:32.160remember like during, in, in 18th century France, a lot of the Enlightenment intellectuals met in these salons, you know,
00:17:38.340they met to discuss issues and they met with people with very different ideas and they were having lively philosophical
00:17:43.660and political discussions with, with other people and so forth.
00:17:46.980So part of the whole Enlightenment project is, is really trying to break with the rigid orthodoxy,
00:17:52.200rigid intellectual and religious orthodoxy that was, that was still, still, still dominant in, in the 18th century.
00:17:59.200And so within that idea, if you, if you, if you, if you're a person who supports, you know, reason, reason, discussion,
00:18:11.360and if you're a person who supports the idea that individuals have certain intrinsic rights,
00:18:15.040and you're a person, you're a person who supports the free, free discourse and free association of ideas and so forth and so on.
00:18:21.240And obviously that means that people can come, can come to different conclusions about, about political values, social values, and, and, and, and so forth.
00:18:32.120So even, even amongst the French Enlightenment people, I mean, there were very, very great differences between Rousseau and, and, and, and other, other, other leading, leading Enlightenment thinkers.
00:18:45.660And of course, as the Enlightenment spread elsewhere to Britain and Scotland and to continental Europe, and especially to America, I mean, the, the American founding fathers were mostly Enlightenment intellectuals.
00:18:57.280Many of them had lived in France and, and so forth and so on.
00:19:00.300And so even with the French and American revolutions, you can see a very significant difference.
00:19:05.200I mean, the French Revolution had a much more collectivist orientation.
00:19:07.920The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 was much more collectivist in its, in its, in its orientation in the Declaration of Independence, which was, which had a much more individual, individualized focus.
00:19:19.480So, so the point is, you can have, even amongst the same, the same intellectual movement, you can have very wide, wide range of opinions.
00:19:28.140And the same thing would be true of the movements that arose in opposition to the Enlightenment, which would be like, for example, the Romantic movement in 19th century Europe, which, which basically,
00:19:37.920emphasized the feelings and, and, and, uh, emotions in irrationalism, uh, you know, uh, more than, uh, as opposed to, uh, you know, overemphasizing reason.
00:19:49.420Because, because one of the ideas that the, the, the, the people who were on the right, uh, adopted, uh, to oppose the Enlightenment emphasis on rationalism was what I, what I call philosophical anti-rationalism.
00:20:01.200It doesn't mean irrationalism, but it means the, the recognition that human beings are not rational calculators.
00:20:06.540Human beings are, are basically animals with a, kind of a thin veneer of rationality, and they, they're driven by emotions and sentiments and unconscious drivers that they're not aware of.
00:20:16.800And so, to thinking that human beings can just, are simply, are simply rational calculating machines that somehow can resolve every problem, and ignoring the, the under, the underlying, uh, behavioral drivers that human beings have, which are based on non-rational elements, uh, is, is a mistake, you know.
00:20:33.980So, so, uh, so, uh, the romantic movement basically overemphasized, you could say, like the, the sentiments and the emotions and things, which, which provided great art and, and literature and things like that.
00:20:44.400But politically, it led to all kinds of, you know, had very negative consequences, emphasizing the value of irrationality in politics is not usually a good thing.
00:20:52.660Okay. Okay. So, we are, we have, let's say, uh, said that the distinction between left and right originates from the, from before the French Revolution, and it had to do with where people were sat in the French Parliament and the kind of policies they were putting forward.
00:21:09.960That's right. So, how do we go from that to the far right? That is the notion that everyone has been talking about. What is it supposed to be?
00:21:21.300Yes. Okay. Well, let me, let me just say one last thing about the, the counter-enlightenment, uh, ideas, which, which were, which were developed in response to enlightenment ideas.
00:21:30.620And those, those, those include, uh, the idea, like I said, the philosophical anti-rationalism, the understanding that human beings are not a hundred, are not fully rational.
00:21:38.840The idea that human, human nature is basically evil, you know, somewhat derives from the notion of the Christian notion of original sin.
00:21:45.800Uh, and that means you have pessimism about human progress. If you, if, if, if you don't think that people can be completely rational and you think that human beings, uh, uh, uh, uh, are basically evil, then it's hard to have a, have a faith in, in, uh, you know, the, uh, human progress, inevitable human progress.
00:22:06.480And then in response to the idea of, um, of, uh, egalitarianism, that's to say the idea that individuals have certain intrinsic rights, of course, the, the right counterposed the idea of elitism, that certain natural hierarchies, uh, needed to, needed to rule human societies and so forth and so on.
00:22:25.900And then in, in, in, oh, yeah, I didn't mention what another key aspect of the, of the, of the, of the, of the enlightenment left, which was, uh, uh, cosmopolitanism, you know, the idea that, that despite all their differences, human beings everywhere are the same.
00:22:40.180And, uh, so all human beings are part of the same family. And that's sort of an idea that's, that's associated with the enlightenment.
00:22:47.720So human beings have more uncommon, despite all the observable differences, than, than they have differences.
00:22:53.020In contrast to that, the, the right, uh, promoted particularism, you know, the idea that human beings, oh, their primary loyalty to their own communities, not, not to man, abstract, uh, universal man, you know, and so forth and stone.
00:23:08.540So, so those are things that are kind of important to understand.
00:23:41.840I'm going to, you know, he's like a fascist, you know, that person has political views.
00:23:45.280I really don't like, I'm going to call him a far right person.
00:23:47.180So nowadays the term far right is always used, for example, in the media almost to, to, to refer to almost everything to the right of progressivism, you know, including, including like, including, um, you know, uh, uh, moderate liberalism, you know, uh, and, um, certainly it's used for everything to the right of the center right of the establishment center.
00:24:08.100Um, but, but, but that's just, uh, all that does is jumble together, uh, a vast array of different intellectual currents that exist on the right side of the political spectrum.
00:24:18.300So, so, so, so using that term in such a imprecise way, uh, all it does is conflate and confuse reality.
00:24:25.620So we have to distinguish between, between, between four different, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, types of the right.
00:24:34.200But, uh, this is the categorization scheme that we've, we've outlined in our book.
00:24:40.600The conservative right is basically the establishment right, you know, basically a right that supports the system and, and supports various things that people tend to associate with conservatism, private property, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, strong military, uh, a limited government.
00:24:59.740Yeah, yeah, yeah, on the one hand, limited government, but on the other hand, law and order, you know, so it's a little bit confusing there, uh, uh, uh, uh, and market economies and so forth and so on.
00:25:18.240The dissonant right is all the currents of the right who, uh, are opposed to the establishment right.
00:25:25.200But, but which do not actually, but, but, but are willing to work within the system, are willing to work within the system.
00:25:32.200So, you know, it tends to be all kinds of, like, all kinds of currents on the right that are highly critical of the establishment right, uh, ranging from, uh, you know, paleo-conservatism to, uh, to, uh, libertarian and radical libertarianism.
00:25:47.300And, uh, and, and, and a whole slew of other things that, uh, that, that we could enumerate and discuss.
00:25:52.260But the point is that when we're talking about the dissonant right, we're probably talking about people who are highly critical of the establishment right, but who are, but who are perfectly happy to work within these, the democratic system.
00:26:05.280Uh, they're not advocating, uh, the, the subversion of the overthrow of the democratic system, the dissonant right.
00:26:11.500Then the, the next, uh, group would be the, the radical right.
00:26:15.100And now we're moving into the, to the area, to, to the, to the views where they are actually advocating the, uh, the subversion and overthrow of the system.
00:26:23.360These are people who are fundamentally opposed to the existing status quo in various ways.
00:26:28.660And, uh, who therefore feel like the, the current system needs to be, uh, needs to be changed, possibly even overthrown.
00:26:36.980Um, and here we're really talking about, uh, you know, radical nationalists, uh, Catholic ultra traditionalists, um, you know, uh, certain kinds of religious fund fundamentalists, uh, in Europe, royalist extremists, uh, uh, people who do not like bourgeois democracy and, uh, or, or people who are opposed to the, the baleful influence of big capital, um, and various other things.
00:27:02.280Uh, and people who are willing, uh, uh, to, uh, to, uh, challenge the, the, the, the, the, the validity, uh, of the democratic system.
00:27:11.840And generally that means proposing, uh, you know, to establish a more authoritarian political system, uh, that they can use to promote their agendas and, and mobilize people in support of, uh, social solidarity and, and, uh, whatever.
00:27:27.460Uh, but the radical right is, uh, you could say that the radical right is, um, uh, despite it's, um, it's anti, anti regime and anti-establishment thrust, um, is reactionary.
00:27:44.360It's reactionary in the sense that it wants to try to restore something that, uh, a pres, a presumed past golden age.
00:27:50.800It wants to restore aspects of a presumed past golden age.
00:27:54.700And so that, you know, that, again, it's backward looking in certain respects, even though it's willing to adopt modern methods of propaganda and agitation and, and subversion and, and possibly resort to violence.
00:28:06.400So that, well, we met by the radical right.
00:28:08.720So now we're talking about the anti-establishment, the right, uh, the, uh, the right that's not willing to work within the system.
00:28:14.660And then the last category is the revolutionary right.
00:28:17.060And the revolutionary right is like the radical right in the sense that it, it, it rejects the current system and wants to transform it.
00:28:25.620But the revolutionary right is even more, as the name, uh, implies the revolutionary right, it wants to fundamentally transform the system.
00:28:33.180So it wants to mobilize the masses in an, in an attempt to, to, to overthrow the system and really change the entire social and political structure, create a new revolutionary regime.
00:28:42.900You know, so that's what we're talking about with the revolutionary and that, and what are we, what kind of movements would fall into the category of the revolutionary right?
00:29:03.680So I have some questions, particularly about the distinction between the dissident right and the radical right that you mentioned.
00:29:11.300So, yeah, you are saying essentially that there are four categories in the right as you and your, and Dr. Tamir Barron are writing in your book, Fighting the Last War.
00:29:22.900So we have establishment conservatives, then we have dissident right, radical right, and then revolutionary right.
00:29:30.580So when it comes to the dissident right, would you, you said that they are highly critical of the establishment right, which would suggest that they do call for a change.
00:29:42.420They do, but the problem with the establishment right is that, is that it, you know, if you think about the conservative right, I mean, supposedly the definition of conservative implies something about conserving something.
00:29:58.320You know, the idea is that you want to conserve, well, let me just explain what I think conservatism is, and maybe that'll help clarify what we're talking about.
00:30:05.860I mean, I would actually say that conservatism is more of like a kind of disposition, almost like a psychological disposition than an actual doctrine per se.
00:30:15.340I mean, basically, a conservative is somebody, not somebody who's opposed to all change, but somebody who believes that whatever social and political changes occur should be gradual rather than sudden.
00:30:28.700The second idea that one could associate with conservatism is that they believe that the positive elements of the past should be preserved in this process of change.
00:30:39.620In other words, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
00:31:01.640They were part of the system that was in a privileged position, and they wanted to preserve their position within this system and so forth and so on.
00:31:12.040So that's what I mean by conservative in general.
00:31:15.640Conservative right is what we've already talked about.
00:31:18.940Now, one of the main things that the dissonant right believes, all the different currents of the dissonant right believes, is that the establishment conservative right has failed to conserve anything of value.
00:31:32.960That it keeps, it is incapable of resisting the push by the left to transform things, to make progress, to move toward progress.
00:31:47.980And therefore, they feel that the conservative right has been corrupted and co-opted by its privileged position within the establishment to the point that it no longer is willing to really take a stand and oppose what they consider to be dangerous trends pushed by the left.
00:32:05.760So the dissonant right, all the different guys, you're talking about race realists, you're talking about immigration patriots, you're talking about, you're talking about, like I said, radical libertarians, paleo-conservatives, neo-reactionaries.
00:32:17.940There's a whole group of dissonant right ideologies that one can enumerate, but the main thing that they all share, they don't agree with each other.
00:32:27.720All those different components of the dissonant right disagree with each other profoundly.
00:32:31.920But the one thing that they agree with is that the conservative right is part of the establishment, has been corrupted and co-opted, and is not conserving anything of value.
00:32:42.100Okay, so when it comes to the radical right, that you think is distinct from the far right, which you identify as...
00:32:50.740Well, no, no, I don't use it from the far right at all.
00:32:53.600In fact, I would say that what I call the radical right is the same thing as the...
00:32:58.420You could use the far right and the extreme right as a synonym for the radical right.
00:33:04.640I think there's, I don't think there's any, any, any, the people who tried to distinguish between the far right and the radical right and the extreme right, to me, those distinctions don't seem to be spurious.
00:33:15.800So from my point of view, I like, I prefer the term radical right, but I think it basically means the same thing as the far right and the extreme right.
00:33:24.500Okay, so I think in your book, you draw a distinction between extremism of ends and extremism of means.
00:33:31.020Would you say that this distinction is pertinent to the distinction between the radical right on the one hand and the revolutionary right, in that the radical is a bit more theoretical, whereas the others try to put it to action?
00:33:47.120I would say that in both cases, we're talking about an extremism of goals.
00:33:52.040And in both cases, we could be talking about an extremism of means in the sense that both, both might very well cross the threshold of violence and, and carry out violent actions against the system, or against their enemies, their perceived enemies in society.
00:34:07.040So I think that both the radical right and the revolutionary right would be, you know, would certainly have extremist goals, and also be willing to use extremist means.
00:34:16.520So the real difference is that the radical right is trying to restore something, something that they think existed in the past that has been lost.
00:34:24.760So they want to restore national, they want to restore national greatness, for example, they want to restore like a, like a, like some kind of religion, religion, religion, religion, centric society, or they want to want to bring the kings back, they want to bring the royalty back or something like that, right?
00:34:46.000Okay. I have two questions here. So when you, when you talk about people wanting to restore national greatness, it seems to me that this is something that virtually everyone says so.
00:34:57.460So that would have to, to require a particular conception of what it means for that, for the nation to come back.
00:35:37.240And I think that's the point. When we're talking about the radical right, the kind of nationalism they envision is an illiberal nationalism, and it's an authoritarian kind of nationalism.
00:35:45.900Whereas other people might be talking about restoring national greatness, but not necessarily having those illiberal and authoritarian dimensions to it.
00:36:05.220To my mind, when we're talking about terms, there's a distinction between the conventional meaning that the term has, and the technical or personal meaning that something means when they use a word.
00:36:17.880So, for instance, a lot of texts start with authors defining their terms.
00:36:23.800I'm just particular, I'm reminded, for instance, of Thomas Reed, who in the essay of the active powers of man starts by saying,
00:36:31.760by the liberty of the will, I understand the power that man has over the determinations of his will.
00:36:39.840So, in that sense, he's introducing a term, and he says precisely how he conceives of it.
00:36:45.720We could say that this is the personal meaning.
00:36:48.180And then we also have the conventional meaning, which is the meaning most people associate with a word,
00:36:52.980and that refers to the common aspect of language, because as social creatures, and we need to use language that is a public institution,
00:37:02.560if Wittgenstein is correct, that has a sort of, let's say, social aspect into it.
00:37:09.440And there's the meaning most people associate with a term.
00:37:13.880Now, to my mind, the term far-right has connotations to fascism.
00:37:20.700But a lot of people write, excuse me, yep.
00:37:33.980They're trying to suggest that anybody that they label far-right is akin to fascism or a proto-fascist.
00:37:41.540And that's part of the whole attempt to delegitimize and demonize all elements of the right that the left and the establishment don't like.
00:37:53.960But that comes when people don't define what they mean by the far-right.
00:38:00.560Because they could just use it as a smear.
00:38:02.480Because, for instance, you gave your classification, and whether people agree with it or not,
00:38:08.260they can say that, for instance, they can use that classification and judge future statements you may make about whether particular people or movements belong to the radical right or not.
00:38:19.580But a lot of people, politicians, journalists, activists, they are making statements on a daily basis about the far-right, and they do not define it.
00:38:31.280So I think that, would you say that they do it in order to create maximalist smearing?
00:38:39.740No, I think that's precisely the point of it.
00:38:41.580The vaguer the use of the term, the vaguer, the more expansive the application of the term can be.
00:38:50.140And I think, therefore, I mean, essentially, the term far-right essentially refers to any belief system or any movement that the current regnant establishment,
00:39:02.280which I would call the progressive globalist establishment, and people on the left don't like.
00:39:14.260If we believe mainstream media, it is the major threat in the Western world.
00:39:20.000And we could say that very frequently they react to a lot of killings of people by scaremongering about the far-right.
00:39:29.420So, for instance, last Friday, we had stabbings in Solingen, in Germany, at a diversity festival from someone who seems to be an Islamist.
00:39:41.440And the establishment response to that event was to just scaremonger about the far-right.
00:39:48.420So, it seems that every chance they get, the establishment, as people who represent the establishment in the Western world,
00:40:00.800they're trying to constantly pay their taxes, let's say, intellectually speaking.
00:40:06.400They constantly think they have to talk about the dangers of the far-right.
00:40:09.900So, they create, if people take their words at face value, they would think that the far-right, or the radical right, let's say, is the greatest threat right now in the Western world.
00:40:22.520What do you make of this, and how do we assess threats?
00:40:25.300All right, well, there's a whole bunch of things that we need to unpack here.
00:40:31.060First of all, let's talk about the biased coverage of the events, like, for example, the attack in Solingen.
00:40:38.640There's two issues that are involved here.
00:40:40.840After every jihadist terrorist attack, after every jihadist terrorist attack, the main concern of the media seems to be,
00:40:49.320oh, my God, what about the far-right response to this attack?
00:40:52.400They're more concerned about the far-right response to a jihadist attack than they are about the jihadist attack itself and the threat of Islamism.
00:41:01.480And let me just point out, and this is something that we make very clear in our book,
00:41:05.560Islamism is the most dangerous revolutionary right movement in the world.
00:41:11.660Islamism is the most dangerous revolutionary right ideology and movement in the world.
00:41:15.600And it's committed hundreds, tens of thousands, over probably 200,000 people have been killed just since the 1990s by jihadists in various parts of the world, mostly in the Muslim world, right?
00:41:28.90044,000 terrorist attacks or something.
00:41:31.180People are calculating, I don't know how, if they're using the correct definition of terrorism,
00:41:34.840but the point is that the Islamists have carried out an enormous number of mass casualty attacks all over the world and have killed tens and tens of thousands of people.
00:41:46.640You would think that any sane person would be thinking, well, if I'm concerned about the right, my main concern is going to be about Islamism.
00:42:33.820And we can get to Islamism a little bit later.
00:42:37.020But the point I'm trying to make is this kind of coverage is completely dishonest because, number one, it's not focusing on the perpetrators of the attack who are Islamists,
00:42:48.280who are revolutionary rightists of the most dangerous kind, who are living amongst us in Western societies and are being incited by Islamist groups and jihadist groups all over the world to carry out attacks on infidels.
00:43:04.840That's an omnipresent and ever-present danger in every Western country.
00:43:08.820That's where the security focus should be, not on the Islamophobia backlash and the supposed threat from the domestic right.
00:43:21.680You know, I don't mean that the domestic radical right and the revolutionary right don't constitute a threat, but that threat is consistently exaggerated,
00:43:33.960whereas the threat posed by Islamism and jihadist terrorism is consistently minimized or ignored.
00:44:50.420I mean, most people, when they think of fascism, they just think of, oh, this horrible, they think of Nazism.
00:44:54.640Basically, most people think of fascism, they think of Nazism.
00:44:56.540Oh, this totalitarian regime, the mass murdering regime, and, yeah, I mean, Nazism was one of many fascist regimes that did commit these horrible atrocities.
00:45:09.440But the point is that this is the image that people have in their mind, you know,
00:45:14.540that the goose-stepping Nazis are going to be marching on the streets and, like, overthrowing democracy and all.
00:45:23.820So let me just say a little bit of something about what fascism is, and then I'll talk about the real threat posed by the fascism and so forth and so on and the radical right.
00:45:36.940Okay, so, again, fascism is another term that even experts don't agree on, how to define.
00:45:44.320And there's a, you know, a very large number of definitions of fascism that have been generated by people who are specialists.
00:45:54.440And I would say the three main type, the three main ones we want to talk about, one would be like Roger Griffin's definition.
00:46:02.860Roger Griffin has tried to create, who's a good friend and colleague of mine, has tried to create, like, a consensus definition of fascism.
00:46:09.900It hasn't succeeded, but his idea is that fascism is a kind of palingenetic form of alternational, palingenetic, you know, means we're obsessed with national rebirth.
00:46:21.660So it's an anti-liberal form of nationalism that's obsessed with national rebirth.
00:46:33.840So the illiberal nationalism is one component of fascism.
00:46:37.920But in Griffin's definition, he doesn't include the other component, which I'm going to get to momentarily.
00:46:42.660The more common definitions of fascism are kind of laundry list definitions of various characteristics of fascism.
00:46:50.760The problem with those laundry list definitions is that they commingle ideological beliefs of fascism with the characteristics of fascist regimes.
00:47:01.300And so they get all muddled and confused.
00:47:05.700If you really want to understand an ideology, you have to focus on the core beliefs and you have to focus on it in the movement phase before any of these movements succeed in taking power.
00:47:16.200Because once the revolutionary movement takes power, then it becomes compromised and it has to institutionalize itself and so forth and so on.
00:47:23.700So to really understand the core of an ideology, you have to go back to the very earliest movement phase of these kinds of movements.
00:47:35.180So just with respect to fascist regimes, we can say that fascist regimes are very similar to communist regimes.
00:47:42.660They're totalitarian regimes that aim to control every aspect of life and transform the consciousness of everybody.
00:47:53.020And, you know, as determined by a party state.
00:47:56.440You know, so if you look at the literature on totalitarianism in the 1950s, people will recognize these fundamental similarities between fascist and communist regimes.
00:48:14.640So the ideology is one part of it is this illiberal nationalism that, like Griffin emphasized.
00:48:21.920And the other part, which Zeb Sternhell, who is, I think, the most insightful scholar on fascism, is that illiberal nationalism is combined with a non-Marxist socialism, a non-Marxist form of socialism.
00:48:35.560And, by the way, Sternhell's conception is, in fact, supported by many fascist intellectuals.
00:48:42.560I mean, I've read a lot of literature produced by fascists and neo-fascist intellectuals.
00:48:47.120And these people are extremely anti-capitalist.
00:48:50.860You know, the idea that fascism is pro-capitalist, this ridiculous idea that the Marxists are always peddling, is just complete nonsense.
00:48:57.420The fact is that the visceral anti-capitalism is a key aspect of fascism.
00:49:03.100Now, the kind of socialism that the fascists are promoting, obviously, is not the same thing as Marxism.
00:49:08.880Because we're not talking about the class warfare and the expropriation of private property or anything like that.
00:49:16.280What we're talking about is creating, like, an organic national community in which no groups are allowed to exploit other groups.
00:49:23.700So you can't have capitalists exploiting workers in a fascist state, because that would disrupt the social solidarity and the unity of this organic community.
00:49:34.840And, therefore, if capitalist enterprises behave in a way that the fascists regard as anti-national, then they're going to be politically disciplined.
00:49:44.460In the worst case scenario, they'll take all the bosses of these firms out and line them up against the law and shoot them.
00:49:49.160So the difference is that fascism is not promoting, like, a classless society, but rather an organic community where all the different components of society work together harmoniously, like the organs of a human body.
00:50:02.820So it's not some kind of leveling classless society.
00:50:06.800And for that reason, they're perfectly willing to leave the means of production in private hands, as long as it's politically subordinated to the interests of the nation, which means as determined by the party.
00:50:25.760So there is this kind of non-Marxist kind of socialist idea, the idea that capitalists, the big capitalists, what the fascists call plutocratic capitalists, cannot be allowed to exploit people or damage the interests of the nation.
00:50:45.540Yes, as defined by the ideologues or by the party, if they take power.
00:50:49.780So when you think about every fascist movement, every genuinely fascist movement, and by the way, this constellation of elements from the left and the right first came together in France in the early 20th century.
00:51:03.620But when you think about every fascist movement, every fascist movement has a left wing and a right wing.
00:51:09.600And that's because they appeal to different kinds of people.
00:51:12.140Certain elements within the fascist, who joined fascist movements are primarily, find the nationalist elements of fascist ideology the most appealing.
00:51:22.840And other people who joined fascist movements find the social revolutionary and anti-capitalist elements the most, that's what they approve of the most.
00:51:33.460So in every group, including Nazism, there's a left wing and a right wing within the fascist movements.
00:51:41.200And those factions are struggling for dominance.
00:51:45.560As it happens, because of the conditions of interwar Europe, the political conditions, the right wing elements within those fascist movements tended to come to the fore and ultimately outmaneuver the left wing elements and oftentimes purge them and massacre them.
00:51:58.140As in the case with the SA was massacred by the SS and so forth and so on.
00:52:03.400And the Straser brothers were exiled by Hitler.
00:52:08.940So that's the thing you have to understand.
00:52:10.740The goal of fascism is to bring together different currents to the left and right wing thought and to forge a new revolutionary synthesis capable of mobilizing a revolution against both bourgeois parliamentary democracy and also opposed to communism,
00:52:27.240which is internationalist, because obviously, given the emphasis of fascist on nationalism, that's antithetical to the communist notions of destroying nation states and creating an international classless society.
00:52:40.140So fascism and communism are rival revolutionary movements.
00:52:44.640It's not that one's counter-revolutionary and one's revolutionary, both revolutionary movements, but they're antithetical in terms of their goals.
00:52:51.300Okay, now, getting back to the question.
00:52:56.020So now we want to talk about whether fascism and radical right constitute a serious threat in the post-war period.
00:53:08.940And here we have to distinguish between a political threat and a security threat.
00:53:14.220From this point of view, a political threat?
00:53:17.420The fascist and radical right movements are tiny fringe groups on the margins of every Western society that have no institutional base of support.
00:53:30.040They have no resources and they have no mass base of popular support.
00:53:37.260There is no chance that fascist group groups are ever going to seize power or come to power in Western democratic societies.
00:53:48.360So anybody who claims, and that's been true ever since the end of World War II.
00:53:52.160So anybody who claims that fascism is on the march, that fascism is returned, that fascists are going to destroy democracy, those people are either living in a fantasy world or they're lying.
00:54:10.260They're lying for political advantage.
00:54:16.160Yeah, there's two exceptions, I mean, to what I'm saying as far as political threat.
00:54:22.460In the early post-war era, there were some political parties that were established by former fascists and former Nazis.
00:54:29.340So, for example, in Germany, you had the NPD.
00:54:32.180The first one established was the MSI, the Movimento Sociale Italiano, established in Italy in the mid-40s.
00:54:38.640And then you had the NPD, the Nationaldemokratische Apartheid Deutschland, established in the early 1960s.
00:54:45.600And there were some smaller parties that fascists, the ex-Nazis, had tried to create before that.
00:54:53.880Those parties never, I mean, the MSI was the one that had the most influence, but even it didn't have much influence in the electoral sphere.
00:55:01.660They elected local people, but it didn't have a strong president, never was able to form a government, was never part of a coalition government or anything like that.
00:55:10.860So there were a couple of political parties created by fascists that were participating in elections, but they didn't have much popular support.
00:55:20.100The much more dangerous group, the much more dangerous exception, is that during the Cold War, and this, especially in Italy, but also in the Iberian Peninsula and in Belgium and in parts of Latin America, radical right paramilitary groups, including neo-fascist groups, were covertly infiltrated and manipulated by factions of the Secret Service.
00:55:47.880They had different motivations, but they had different motivations for supporting these groups.
00:56:17.400But this is all well documented, and in the first volume of my book, The Darkest Sides of Politics, there's whole chapters devoted to this subject, and there's a huge literature in Italian on it.
00:56:31.280There's been judicial case after judicial investigation after judicial, about these terrorist attacks and about the links between various groups and other groups outside of Italy.
00:56:41.160So the only reason I mention this is the only time that these neo-fascist groups had any political impact was precisely when they were working together with actions of the Secret Service.
00:56:56.600And because the Secret Service then gave them cover, they were able to get away with carrying out actions without being arrested and prosecuted and so forth and so on.
00:57:03.600And so they created a climate of instability, which people within the establishment in various countries tried to exploit in order to reinforce their own power and to keep the communists from winning elections in Italy and so forth and so forth.
00:57:17.600But apart from those exceptions, if you think about the entire history of the West since the end of World War II, there has never been a threat posed by tiny fringe groups of fascists, ever.
00:57:32.080Okay, now let's get to the question of whether there's a security threat.
00:57:39.580Well, yes, whenever you're dealing with extremist groups, even small, unpopular fringe groups, there's always a security threat in the sense that radicalized individuals or small cells of people can organize violent attacks against their opponents.
00:57:56.860And certainly, when you're talking about the radical right and the revolutionary right, those fringe elements in Western societies, they have the capability of carrying out acts of violence and terrorism.
00:58:09.880I mean, most of those attacks, and again, I'm excluding the ones that were coordinated and organized in part with the help of the secret services, most of the violent attacks that have been carried out by domestic radical rightists have been relatively simple and unsophisticated.
00:58:28.960You know, like a guy will go into a public place with an automatic weapon and start shooting people or something like that, or they'll assassinate like a designated political enemy, or sometimes they'll try to carry out a bombing or something like that.
00:58:43.520But generally speaking, we're not talking about sophisticated operations when we're talking about the kinds of attacks carried out by the domestic radical rightists.
00:58:55.440Right. Now, there are some exceptions. Of course, we have Timothy McVeigh, who was a military veteran, who was able, who had knowledge of explosives, who was able to carry out the devastating bombing of the in Oklahoma City.
00:59:05.300We have Anders Breivik, who came up with a very sophisticated, clever way of carrying out a mass casualty attack.
00:59:13.920So there are exceptions, but by and large, the violent actions carried out by domestic radical rightists tend to be small scale, not particularly sophisticated, and they don't fundamentally threaten the stability of the state.
00:59:31.080So why is it that we constantly listen about the far right and to scaremongering about the far right?
00:59:38.540Because it's basically mostly propaganda, and it's mostly exaggeration. And that's just the reality of it.
00:59:45.540And in our book, Fighting the Last Word, we have a whole chapter where we compare the threat, the relative threats of the domestic radical right and the Islamic radical right, the Islamists.
00:59:58.100And there's simply no comparison. The security threat posed by Islamists, especially by Islamists waging military jihad, is vastly greater than the threat posed by domestic right-wing extremists.
01:00:15.460Statistically, and in every other way.
01:00:18.460Because also, we could talk about jihadist attacks. Many of these jihadist attacks, most notably 9-11, but also the March 11th bombings in Madrid, the 7-7 attacks in London, the attacks in Paris.
01:00:31.940I mean, many of these jihadists, especially, as well as many other parts of the world, many of these attacks carried out by veteran battle-hardened, operationally sophisticated jihadist groups have been quite elaborate, well-planned, and sophisticated operations.
01:00:49.580Much more on a much higher scale than anything that the domestic radical right has carried out.
01:00:54.700So, why would people who are supporting the establishment not highlight this danger?
01:01:02.280Well, there's a whole series of reasons. First of all, why are they highlighting the danger of the domestic radical right? Because it serves their political interests.
01:01:13.340It serves their political interests to whip up hysteria and alarmism about the threat supposedly posed by fascists and the far right.
01:01:22.440Which they, and then they, because they use the term fascism and the far right so indiscriminately, it basically applies to any, anybody that they don't, any, any, any opponents that they don't like.
01:01:33.500That they're, and they're trying to create like this, this, this, this fear amongst the population to justify, to, to, to, to, to, to, to make it easier for the state to carry out authoritarian acts of repression and censorship against their domestic opponents.
01:01:49.420So, that's why they're, they're, they're, they're exaggerating the threat of the domestic radical right.
01:01:54.020Why are they minimizing the threat of the Islamic radical right?
01:01:57.640That's a, a, a harder question to answer.
01:02:01.060But in a way it isn't because part of it, to be quite frank, is the shocking levels of ignorance that most people in the West have about Islam, about the history of Islam, about core Islamic doctrines, and about Islamism, the ideology of Islamism, and about the currents of Islamism, and, and, and so, so forth.
01:02:20.900But, you know, the, you know, the, the average person in the West, especially including those that work in our security agencies and our intelligence agencies, doesn't know hardly anything about Islam.
01:02:29.960I mean, that's the reality of Islamism.
01:02:31.780And one, one reason is kind of, you use kind of, you can, you can sort of explain it from a historical point of view, because remember that the, the great expansion of the national security state in the United States and in other Western countries occurred during the Cold War, when, when, when, when Soviet Union and, and, and the Warsaw Pact and, and Communist China were the, were the main strategic enemies of the West.
01:02:53.860And, and therefore, most of the people who were recruited into security and intelligence agencies, to the extent that they had academic training, were trained in Russian studies or Chinese studies or, or, you know, those kinds of issues.
01:03:10.580The problem is, after the Cold War ended, you still have all these people who have high-level analytical positions in, in, in, in Western governments.
01:03:19.540And, and, and, and their areas of expertise are Eastern Europe, Russia, Eurasia, East Asia, maybe Latin America, where there's, where there's communist guerrilla movements in Latin America.
01:03:31.640Very few of them had any expertise of, about, about the, about the Middle East or the Islamic world.
01:03:38.180And, and that became really painfully evident in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.
01:03:43.920First of all, the 9-11 attacks should never have happened, because it was obvious to anybody who was paying attention to what the Islamist groups were saying, to what al-Qaeda and other, other jihadist groups were saying, that they were, they had been talking about carrying out a, a major attack on U.S. soil for, for, for years.
01:04:01.940And they had planned several operations to hijack planes and to blow them up in the midair and all this kind of stuff.
01:04:08.760They had escalated attacks on American and other Western countries' facilities in various parts of the Islamic world.
01:04:14.820And they were constantly talking amongst, within their own chat sites and in their own statements, psychological statements, their own pronouncements about, about attacking the great Satan, the U.S. and its allies.
01:04:26.080And so I, I taught a class that used the University of California, Irvine in 1999 and 2000.
01:04:32.320I taught for a year there, and I taught courses on terrorism, and one of them was dealing with Islamism.
01:04:41.560And I was warning everybody, look, these people are going to carry out an attack on American soil.
01:05:02.720When they say, when they express views about something, you should always take what they say seriously.
01:05:08.680Always take what extremists say seriously.
01:05:11.100And if they're directly threatening to, to carry out attacks, you better take that seriously.
01:05:15.160And whether they have the capabilities, well, clearly they ended up having much greater capabilities than anybody anticipated.
01:05:23.720I mean, the 9-11 operation, the most sophisticated and spectacular terrorist attack in the history of the world.
01:05:30.300I mean, and, but the point is that there were a lot of people in the, in the Western intelligence and security agencies who, who really didn't understand the severity of the threat.
01:05:41.720Okay, question here, because this is something that the audience is going to think about.
01:05:47.580What you're saying about the expansion of the national security state during the Cold War seems to me to explain the kind of downplaying of the Islamist threat up until 9-11.
01:06:00.620But it seems to me that post 9-11, or at least not necessarily the immediate years afterwards, but it seems to me that right now there, there is yet again, another effort to downplay, to downsize the threat that you also talk about in the book.
01:06:18.580So what is it that happened after 9-11, what happened and why do you think that there are people who are carrying on, downplaying the threat of Islamism in the U.S.?
01:06:31.680Okay, well, there's a, there's a number of reasons for this.
01:06:33.880And, and in fact, I talk about it in, in, in, in several chapters of the, the book, The Darkest Sides of Politics, the second volume, I talk about precisely these issues.
01:06:46.220First of all, you have to understand that in the West, even after 9-11, there were a lot of people who didn't really understand the real motivations of the Islamists.
01:06:57.680You know, a lot of people, especially on the left, and even people in the establishment, said, well, the only reason they attacked us was because of a foreign, they didn't like our foreign policy.
01:07:07.180You know, yeah, and of course they didn't like a foreign policy, but that's not the reason they were attacking us.
01:07:13.200I mean, all you have to do is read what the Islamists themselves say about what their motivations are, which completely refute these kinds of naive ideas, that they were only attacking us because they didn't like our foreign policy.
01:07:23.500Okay, so there were a lot of people who thought not only that they, that it was, it was a response to Western foreign policy, but that we somehow deserved it.
01:07:31.900You know, somehow we deserve to be attacked because of the, you know, the, the ham-fisted way that we've intervened in the, in the, in, in the affairs of other countries.
01:07:41.420So even after 9-11, there were a lot of people who were trying to, who, who were mischaracterizing the motives of the Islamists and trying to almost make it seem like it was, it was the fault of the West that, you know, began, this has to do with the regnant ideas in academia, where there's, there's a, there's a, you know, there's been a long,
01:08:08.020Yeah, the anti-Western ideas are permeate the entire Western educational system.
01:08:12.980There was a long march of, of new leftists through the institutions in the, in the seventies and on.
01:08:19.660And they basically, there's been institutional capture of, of, of the educational system in the West.
01:08:24.660And, and so a lot of ideas are, there's a lot of anti-Western ideas that are, that are, that are, that are, that are, that are, that are, that students are indoctrinated to believe.
01:08:34.260And a lot of those students, then they, when they graduate or they go through, go to graduate school, then they end up going into other spheres of life.
01:08:41.660They go into work, they go working for the government and they still have these, these, they've been indoctrinated with these anti-Western beliefs.
01:08:47.780And so they, they, they have, they're also predisposed to kind of believe that somehow the, the West is responsible.
01:08:54.120The U.S. and the Western are the evil forces that are somehow responsible, you know, and, and, and without really understanding the, the nature of our enemies, even though the, even though our extremist enemies make it painfully clear what they believe, you know, day in and day out.
01:09:09.260Okay. Okay. So, um, after 9-11, of course, you did have, um, belated recognition of the Islamist threat and that, then you had like this huge reorganization of the U.S. government, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which was a, by the way, turned out to be a disaster, um, for various other reasons.
01:09:27.400Uh, and there was a, they really, they really ramped up their, their, uh, they really hardened, they wanted to harden the target in the, in the United States and, and other governments in the West are trying to harden their countries to make them more, more difficult targets for the, uh, the jihadists to attack.
01:09:43.840And that, those were all perfectly legitimate responses.
01:09:46.780And then, of course, unfortunately, uh, in the U.S., we all, we had the, uh, uh, the neocons, uh, uh, who were running Bush's foreign policy, which caused, uh, uh, which led to, um, uh, terrible mistakes, uh, uh, like the invasion of Iraq, um, uh, and also, uh, the way that we dealt with the situation in Afghanistan.
01:10:10.400I mean, we needed to do something to de-get rid of the Taliban, but we didn't need to have a hundred, we didn't need to have tens of thousands of troops there, you know, boots on the ground and all that stuff.
01:10:19.300And then going after Saddam, and Saddam is a bad guy, sure, getting rid of Saddam, you know, you could be, you could certainly make a moral justification for it or any kind of justification for it.
01:10:29.080But, but, but the problem is that Saddam and the Ba'ath Party were, are, are secular Arab nationalists.
01:10:37.140They have nothing to do with the jihadists to that.
01:10:39.580And the neocons were trying to conflate the threat, the threat posed by Saddam with the jihadist threat by claiming that the, the, the, the, the Iraqi regime was, was, was secretly working with Al Qaeda and all this kind of nonsense.
01:10:52.760And that, and then claiming that the, that they had weapons of mass destruction, you know, they were using all these pretexts to justify this invasion of Iraq, which they wanted to carry out anyway.
01:11:01.140So they wasted all this resources and this, and this bumbling invasion.
01:11:05.020And then the, the, the policies they adopted, the debaacification, which is complete catastrophe, which led, the result of this was that we presided over elections that led to Iranian back to Islamist parties winning the elections in Iraq.
01:11:17.600I mean, you, you, I mean, if you tried to screw the situation up in Iraq, you couldn't have done a better job than you did with the Bush administration.
01:11:26.840Anyway, once Bush was out of office, though, and in part his reaction against the failure of the, the, the aggressive neocon foreign policy in the Middle East, Obama comes into office.
01:11:39.020And Obama, you know, was, was much more of a progressive and a person with very naive views about the world.
01:11:47.160You know, if we just were nice to other people, they just, they'd be nice to us, we could all just get along if we apologize for the bad things we did, you know, we could reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood, we could do all these things.
01:11:58.320So, once the Obama, once Obama took office, there was a fundamental change in the American policies toward the Middle East and, and even toward the Islamists.
01:12:07.760You know, we were, the idea was we could partner with, quote unquote, nonviolent Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood, you know, against, against the violent Islamists like Al-Qaeda.
01:12:18.680And, I mean, it's just completely delusional, completely delusional beliefs.
01:12:24.040Was there a focus that, for instance, if they, if they, if they killed Osama bin Laden, that that was it?
01:12:31.740It was all just credited to a person rather than to something deeper?
01:12:49.580I mean, many people in academia and the media and in the foreign policy and even in the security establishments in Western countries are not only Islam apologists, but Islamist apologists.
01:13:02.520And part of the reason why they are Islam apologists and Islamist apologists is because they don't understand core Islamic doctrines.
01:13:08.700They don't understand the historical developmental trajectory of Islam.
01:13:13.720They don't understand the core aspects of Islamist ideology.
01:13:16.920And so they're basically living in a fantasy room.
01:13:28.360I mean, there's no other way to characterize it.
01:13:30.600You know, there's this sort of view that, that the, the West is like these evil imperialists and all the, everybody else in the world is like innocent victims of imperialism.
01:13:39.380And there are oppressed people in the West has oppressed them and wherever we, wherever we should have sympathy for the oppressed people.
01:13:45.340And even if the oppressed people are, are, are trying to carry out mass casualty attacks against us.
01:13:50.220I mean, it's just like this kind of, this kind of like 12 year old, emotionally overwrought view of the world that so many people in our supposed political elites actually adhere to.
01:14:02.420I mean, it's just, I mean, I don't know what else to say.
01:14:07.260I mean, I just, I, I, I'm shocked at the, the degree to which so many people in our security and intelligence agencies seem to be utterly clueless about the nature of Islam and the nature of Islamism.
01:14:21.020I have a particular example to share with you that I presented upon, I presented a segment on.
01:14:30.200So there is a appointee of the Biden-Harris administration to the nuclear security wing of the Department of Energy.
01:14:39.360Her name is Sneha Nair and she's promoting queer theory.
01:14:47.120Yes, queer theory as necessary and essential for improving the U.S.'s national security culture.
01:14:53.280And she has a document that I read part of it.
01:14:57.160I had the bad fortune to read a bit of it.
01:15:01.460And it's, if you read between the lines, it sort of says, if you think that the major threat isn't the far right in the U.S., then essentially you need to be reeducated or removed from office.
01:15:48.480But, but the point, the point I'm trying to make is that Obama turned out to be a disaster.
01:15:55.280I mean, not only was he a foreign policy, was he naive in terms of his foreign policy, but he, in his effort to fundamentally transform America,
01:16:03.980he egregiously politicized the government, American government agencies.
01:16:11.120I mean, you know, he, he appointed various kinds of people with radical ideas in, in, to various federal, federal agencies.
01:16:21.800And those people, and the result is that the, that the federal bureaucracy is now highly partisan.
01:16:31.260And he also promoted this, this, the equity agenda.
01:16:34.320It wasn't, wasn't quite called DEI back then, but, but that was the beginning of all this.
01:16:40.480I mean, well, beginning goes back to affirmative action.
01:16:42.920But the point I'm trying to make is this whole diversity, equity, inclusion agenda.
01:16:46.380That's now the rage in government agencies.
01:16:48.160I mean, I, I, I just read a book by J. Michael Waller called Big Intel or something like that, where he, where he talks about, like, the, the, the, the, the, the priorities within the U.S. intelligence agencies now is diversity, equity, and inclusion.
01:17:07.180I mean, you know, not merit, not, not actually protecting American security, but like, you know, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
01:17:16.360You know, I mean, it's just, it's just, it really shocked me to the extent how far the rot has spread here.
01:17:23.120You know, this is a systematic attack on meritocracy.
01:17:25.960And, and anyway, so we were, this is the world we're living in now.
01:17:29.480We're living in a world, and look at the British government.
01:17:31.600I think you can make the same argument that you've got a lot of very partisan people in the British state, the, the, the, the, the, the bureaucracy of the British state now.
01:17:39.800Who are pushing progressive globalist policies, are promoting, you know, various harmful things, like we can talk about mass and mass, mass migration, open borders, all this kind of stuff.
01:17:56.480And these are people who literally do not understand the nature of the threats that we're, that we're, the West has faced.
01:18:03.440So, so I'm a bit conscious about time, and I think we should move to the last question.
01:18:52.260So, what does the misunderstanding of Islamism imply for the European multiculturalist project that seems to me to be advocated primarily by a lot of European leaders, not necessarily by European people?
01:19:14.480But I think we can actually go back and talk about the whole balkanization thing.
01:19:18.640I mean, this is, the balkanization thing goes back centuries.
01:19:23.180You know, you had this constant invasions and migrations in the Balkan area, and then people would create states, and it would, it would incorporate all kinds of different ethnic and cultural groups within the same state.
01:19:34.180And then the areas were conquered by the Ottoman Turks.
01:19:36.380I mean, so you just have this, these polyglot communities and states, and the rise of micronationalism, and so forth, and so on.
01:19:45.560And, and, and by the way, this is something that is common throughout history.
01:19:49.220Whenever you have large imperial polyglot empires, whenever you, whenever you have, like, nation, national borders that include very different ethno-cultural groups that don't necessarily get along,
01:20:01.820and may even have a long historical past of hating each other and fighting each other, I mean, you're, you're basically creating unnecessary divisiveness and strife within your own, within your own country.
01:20:13.920So, if you have a situation like we have now, where, where Western elites, and only Western elites, by the way, are promoting, like, mass migration of people from, from third world countries into the West,
01:20:34.100I mean, you are essentially repeating the left, the mistakes that, the historical mistakes that many other empires have made, and many other regimes have made, many, many other states have made,
01:20:49.880you're basically creating a situation that, where you're going to have increased divisions, internal divisions, you're going to, you're going to undermine and weaken national sovereignty.
01:20:59.800Uh, this is going to lead to, to, to, to not only political, uh, uh, strife, but it's also going to lead to possible, uh, violent conflict between different components of your own national, uh, community.
01:21:13.320Um, and look, the real question is, why, why would it make sense for any Western country?
01:21:20.700The West has created the world's greatest civilization by any objective measure.
01:21:25.100Uh, uh, uh, freedom, uh, freedom, uh, freedom, social mobility, technological development, uh, uh, uh, pluralism, uh, uh, uh, I mean, on, on, on virtually any measure you want to, you want to use, the West has created, arguably, the world's greatest civilization.
01:21:42.160Why would you want to import vast numbers of people from the world's most backwards, dysfunctional, and corrupt parts of the world?
01:21:50.740Um, people from, from cultures that have a tribal mentality, people from cultures that have religious views that are completely incompatible with your own, with Western values.
01:22:01.540Why would you want to incorporate huge numbers of people from these regressive cultures without vetting them properly, and then allowing them to, to come to your country and to providing them with huge amounts of benefits for free?
01:22:16.840Um, and, and, and encouraging them, um, and encouraging them as, as, as per multicultural ideology to, to form their own separate communities, essentially, to, to, uh, you know, to, to, to idealize their own group, uh, the whole toxic identity, you know, it's promoting toxic identity politics.
01:22:36.000That's really what multiculturalism is, it's promoting toxic identity politics, it's encouraging other groups to, to, to promote their own selfish, narrow, ethnocultural interests.
01:22:47.960Everybody except the majority population, the majority population can't, can't promote its own, its own ethnocultural interests, but every other group in the West is encouraged to, to separate itself and to, and to promote its own, its own, uh, uh, interests.
01:23:02.960I mean, that's a recipe for disaster, it's a recipe for social dissolution, it's a recipe for, uh, the, the collapse of social solidarity, and I think, frankly, this is part of the agenda of the elites in Western countries, the, part of the agenda of, of, of, of, of globalist elites is to, um, is to basically undermine national sovereignty.
01:23:24.840They want to create a borderless world, they have this bizarre, this fantasy that they're going to create a borderless world, and that everybody's going to be like a Benetton commercial.
01:23:32.960Everybody's just going to get along harmoniously, and love one another, and, you know, I mean, it's a, it's delusional.
01:23:39.900I mean, uh, do you see any possibility that this might change in the future?
01:23:46.360I mean, here's, here's what I see happening.
01:23:48.660I think we, what we're seeing in the West is a cycle that we've often seen in the past, and that is that the, uh, elites who are, who are now in charge of the West have abandoned the values that have made the West great.
01:24:01.480And they're promoting an institutionalizing policies that are catastrophically harmful, especially to the majority, uh, population, the, the middle class and the working classes of their own countries.
01:24:15.100And as a result, uh, because they've abandoned the values that have made their civilization great, um, uh, they're creating all kinds of unnecessary problems and harming their own population.
01:24:28.300The result is, is growing popular dissatisfaction and growing popular resistance, growing popular resistance to the, to the, the, the, the delusions and the fecklessness of, of, of their own elites.
01:24:41.660And, and, and, and as the popular dissatisfaction becomes, uh, becomes more acute, then these elites feel more threatened and then they start behaving in an increasingly authoritarian fashion, uh, using repression and censorship and so forth to try to, to try to maintain their power.
01:25:01.700And so, but as they, as they, as they resort increasingly to authoritarian undemocratic measures to, to maintain their power, they lose more and more of their legitimacy.
01:25:11.640And so it's a downward spiral that they're, that, that I, that ultimately they're not going to be able to escape from.
01:25:18.300So either we're going to end up with an extremely authoritarian regime run by technocratic elites, which is really seems to be the globalist, uh, the globalist, uh, ideal, or we're going to have total social societal collapse and, and that may, may end up in some kind of civil war situation.
01:25:36.500I mean, I, I don't see, I don't see any other real, real option.
01:25:39.960I, I, I, I feel like a Roman citizen in the year 450, 26 years before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
01:25:46.640That's the way I, I feel at the moment.
01:25:48.480And let me just say one thing about globalists, because the term globalism has been misunderstood and, and, and mischaracterized.
01:25:55.400You know, some people have been inclined if you use the term globalists, it's like secretly anti-Semitic, some, you know, that kind of nonsense.
01:26:02.520What I mean by globalists is people who see themselves primarily as citizens of the world rather than citizens of their own country.
01:26:10.400They see themselves primarily as citizens of the world rather than citizens of their own country.
01:26:14.800They have more in common with each other than they have with the citizens of their own country.
01:26:19.480And in fact, they have, they have contempt for the, for the citizens of their own country and the values of the citizens of their own country who they regard as parochial, ignorant, and uneducated.
01:26:56.540Where people in the West are supposed to celebrate diversity, celebrate every other culture, whereas everybody else can demonize the West and blame the West for all their problems.
01:27:06.000So it's a one-sided kind of tolerance.
01:27:10.640The West is supposed to tolerate everybody else, but nobody else has to tolerate the West.
01:27:14.720I mean, that's really what multiculturalism boils down to.
01:27:19.600So promoting multiculturalism, promoting mass migration from the most regressive culture.
01:27:29.720Which is leading to radical demographic transformation.
01:27:33.040And then now we have the two-tiered justice that we see in Britain and we've seen in the United States for a while, but especially since the Biden administration has taken office, where designated opponents of the regime are subjected to brutal repression, to lawfare, to censorship, to all kinds of authoritarian controls.
01:27:58.040Whereas people that the establishment likes are allowed to run amok and get away with violence and social disruption and so forth and so on.
01:28:10.140I mean, where certain people are prosecuted for nonviolent crimes more severely than other extremists who carry on violent attacks are prosecuted.
01:28:18.800I mean, it's just, I mean, we really lost the plot here.
01:28:24.960And I don't see the only, there's only one way that the West can save itself as far as I'm concerned.
01:28:30.180Because we're, we're, we're, now we're in a spiral of demographic and cultural collapse.
01:28:36.440I mean, every institution of the West is under attack by its own elites.
01:28:40.140The history of the West is being rewritten.
01:28:41.900The traditions of the West are being attacked and undermined and denigrated in every sphere.
01:28:48.920So, I mean, how long can a society last when, when, when its own elites are denigrating its, its core values and its core traditions and its core institutions?
01:29:01.560So, so we're, the only way that this thing can be, can be turned around is, is for people to vote these, these globalists out of power.
01:29:14.340That's the only way that that, and there is a national, that the nationalist and populist parties have to, have to get so much support that, that, that, that when, when the elections come around,
01:29:29.780the current regnant elites can be ousted from power, democratically.
01:29:34.820I mean, that's the only way that the situation can change.
01:29:38.020But even then, look at how, look how hard it is.
01:29:43.380You know, they, they, they, they, the party with the, with the largest single number of votes.
01:29:47.440And yet the entire establishment, you know, joined ranks and, and prevented them from taking power.
01:29:53.780They form a code, a code sanitaire, you know, to, to block, to block the, the, the ability of, of anti-establishment movements and parties to, to, to come to power.
01:30:06.560And I think something that a lot of people think is that parties that claim to be anti-establishment are, are a bit compromised.
01:30:14.660That's sadly what is in a lot of people's minds.
01:30:19.040So, for instance, I'm thinking of Georgia Maloney.
01:30:21.200A lot of people had high hopes for her and they were let down.
01:30:28.460So, would you say that the only way that this could turn around is, for instance, if Trump gets elected and a lot of anti-globalists, in the sense you defined, parties, start gaining support from that.
01:30:42.660That's the only way in which this could be turned around.
01:30:48.240Let me make another very important point.
01:30:51.880You know, patriotism and moderate nationalism are not radical right ideologies, even though the left tries to portray them that, you know, patriotism and moderate nationalism are centrist beliefs that the majority of citizens in every nation state have.
01:31:10.260They're common sense belief, people who love their country and, and, and, and, and want it to, to improve.
01:31:18.980I mean, those are, those are, those are just common sense beliefs that the majority of citizens in every country accept, including every Western democratic country.
01:31:30.540Yet, yet, yet these kinds of ideas like patriotism and even moderate nationalism are smeared now as being far right and so on and so on.
01:31:37.480I mean, this is the kind of, this is the kind of propagandistic climate that we live in now.
01:31:42.600The mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda mechanism, a propaganda organ of the, of the progressive globalist establishment.
01:31:51.200Which now includes not only progressives, but the corporate establishment, the corporate establishment is another problem, but the corporate establishment used to, there used to be two components of the global establishment, the progressive and the corporate.
01:32:05.180You can't even distinguish between two different elements within the globalist elites that have different agendas, even if they're promoting the same policy for different reasons.
01:32:14.460Now they're increasingly promoting those policies for the, for the same reasons.
01:32:20.620I see that, I see that either, unless these, unless these elites can be voted out of office democratically, which I think is going to be a very difficult thing.
01:32:31.180I think that we're, we're going to either end up with an increasingly authoritarian, technocratic, administrative elite, which rules on an authoritarian, censorious way, and to suppress any kind of dissent, or we're going to have, we're going to have social breakdown, and we're going to have like some kind of civil war.
01:32:53.600I mean, I'd be the last person who would advocate that.
01:32:56.600I mean, everybody knows that civil wars are tragic events, they'd have catastrophically harmful, they'd lead to millions of deaths and disruptions in their lives and even, even more people.
01:33:05.520I mean, nobody in their right mind would, would promote, would promote civil wars or, or this kind of social breakdowns or, or, or, or violent conflict between different components within the national community.
01:33:17.420No sane person would promote those things because they'd lead to disaster for everybody.
01:33:21.700But, but unless people who are running Western countries wake, wake up and, and take their heads out of their asses.
01:33:28.400I mean, I, I really feel like, uh, you know, we're on a downward trajectory and I don't really see any way to, uh, to, uh, to, um, you know, block it.
01:33:39.800I mean, I wish I could be more optimistic, you know, but, uh, you know, one thing that studying history does, it, it, it, it, it, it turns you into, uh, a bit of a, uh, uh,
01:33:51.300a cynic and a pessimist because you see human beings making the same mistakes over and over and over again and never learning from their, never learning from their mistakes.
01:33:58.840You know, you know, those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
01:34:03.160I mean, that's, you know, it's, it's an old, old saw, but it, but it, but there's a certain amount of validity to it.
01:34:08.960And I, I just feel like, uh, we live in a world where elites live in a fantasy world.
01:34:13.720The elites live in this little insular bubble, but they just talk to each other and they can not only don't listen to what their constituents say, but they don't want to hear what the constituents say.
01:34:26.120Um, you know, they have contempt for their own citizens.
01:34:28.560And I mean, when you have elites that are that out of touch with their own, with their own people, I mean, that's a recipe for disaster.
01:34:36.600No matter what happens, it's, nothing good can come of that.