The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 04, 2026


PREVIEW LIVE： Realpolitik #58 ｜ Not A Coincidence

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1475 PREVIEW： Film Review ｜ Obsession

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Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

129.5

Word count

2,514

Sentence count

121

People

Also mentioned:
Pedro Sanchez Franco Muhammad VI Hassan II Reconquista Michael Rubin Firas Maudad Marco Rubio Melilla Barbary Sueta

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

27

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host Firas Madad and today
00:00:05.820 we're going to be talking about two things. We are going to be talking about the invasion of
00:00:10.920 Sweta in Morocco, in Spain. That's the actual issue of contention. How planned was it? What
00:00:18.460 happened? What is going on there? How will it play out? And who is responsible for it? And then we're
00:00:25.120 going to have a quick update on the war in the Middle East and what is going on there. Now,
00:00:31.360 starting off with Spain and Morocco, the issue there is that the Portuguese and then the Spanish
00:00:38.760 since the 1200s, 1300s, have held territory in North Africa. And you have to remember,
00:00:47.640 the entirety of North Africa was at one point Christian or had been Christianized and was part
00:00:53.560 of the Roman Empire. And so when Christianity entered, that whole region converted and largely
00:01:00.320 became Christian as well. Then the Islamic invasions happened. And as part of the Islamic
00:01:05.660 invasions, the Iberian Peninsula was largely captured. Then the Reconquista happened. And
00:01:13.380 before the completion of the Reconquista and the confirmation of total Spanish control over
00:01:19.840 southern Spain and the expulsion of the Muslims from Portugal, parts of North Africa were taken
00:01:25.560 by the Spaniards. And these include Melilla and Sueta. And the reason for that was obvious.
00:01:35.260 The business model of Islam during that time largely relied on raiding any territory nearby 1.00
00:01:45.500 and trying to capture slaves and trying to seize control and extract resources. 0.90
00:01:51.880 And so the Spaniards, to defend themselves, took up various positions in the Mediterranean
00:01:58.720 to make sure that this was less available to them.
00:02:02.460 The founding of the American Marines was in part a reaction to the raids by the Barbary pirates
00:02:11.680 of nearby Algeria and Tunisia and Tripoli to the attacks by Muslims on American shipping.
00:02:20.280 So this is the very briefly the history of it. And Sweta is here. And it's right across from 0.92
00:02:30.440 the Strait of Gibraltar. It's a pretty good position to police the entrance into the
00:02:35.900 Mediterranean. You see these two bays which protect you from the winds of the Atlantic to some extent
00:02:43.480 and they are very good military locations where you can keep a navy and use that navy to police
00:02:51.580 entrances and exits. So it's a pretty important strategic position. Now this has a few tens of
00:02:58.440 thousands of Spanish people living there, not a big population, and it directly abuts
00:03:05.740 Moroccan territory. But it isn't Moroccan territory by any stretch of the imagination.
00:03:12.840 This whole area, depending on where you start in history, should be part of Christendom and is
00:03:20.200 indeed part of Christendom. So what happened over the last few days is that the area was
00:03:31.120 overrun. Tens of thousands of Moroccans and other Africans just went into Spanish territory
00:03:39.560 and did what they would normally do.
00:03:50.200 and let's sort of briefly check this video you see them just overrunning the spanish positions
00:04:01.760 by the coast here where there is a customs point obviously and flooding into the old city
00:04:12.820 and just going on a freaking rampage,
00:04:17.640 trying to break into homes, 0.71
00:04:20.700 trying to break into stores and loot,
00:04:23.020 fighting, etc.
00:04:24.300 And then a large number of them,
00:04:26.180 we don't know how many, left.
00:04:29.200 You will hear the left claiming
00:04:30.820 that all of them were kicked out by the Spanish.
00:04:34.400 That is very unlikely to be true.
00:04:36.900 That is very unlikely to be true.
00:04:39.400 Two-thirds of the population of that area
00:04:41.760 went into it and like two the number of migrants who marched in was two-thirds of the regular 0.95
00:04:50.480 population of Sweta and they just marched in and the idea that they would all be kicked out
00:04:56.300 overnight it's just not realistic you did see some of them leaving you saw the numbers dwindle
00:05:02.000 but in the end of the at the end of the day the point that was proven was that this could be
00:05:07.640 overrun and here you see basically the moroccan police standing by and letting trucks dump these
00:05:16.480 people there and go on their merry way to conduct their unarmed invasion
00:05:22.760 now the way to think about it is this this was obviously organized by the Moroccan government
00:05:43.180 this is not really disputable these transportation vehicles trucks etc
00:05:51.240 They're all under surveillance by the authorities, and the smuggling of everything in Morocco happens with some kind of tacit approval by the authorities. So even the drug trade, because most of Europe's hash gets imported from Morocco, that happens with the blessing of the local authorities.
00:06:10.900 It's a source of hard currency. They allow their migrants to go in. They have agreements with Spain 0.99
00:06:17.740 that allow the Spanish to import every year a couple of hundred agricultural workers to go
00:06:24.660 and work on Spanish farms. The Moroccan government controls the flow of people.
00:06:32.020 And if all of a sudden 50,000 people show up at a very geopolitically sensitive spot,
00:06:37.220 There is no way that you can believe that the Moroccans didn't know about it.
00:06:42.340 And as other people have pointed out online, the Moroccans have form on this.
00:06:46.380 So before Franco died in 1975, in November, the Moroccan government organized a march by 350,000 people into the Western Sahara here.
00:07:04.480 this region of the country, that basically it used to be administered by Spain. The Moroccans
00:07:13.940 wanted it. Mauritania wanted it. Algeria wanted it. The Moroccans won because they were able to
00:07:21.720 infiltrate that area with their soldiers, with a small, like 10,000 soldiers, so not a small group,
00:07:28.480 but also with 350,000 civilians who just marched. And these civilians were escorted by civil
00:07:35.600 servants and they were escorted by security officers in civilian clothing to organize a
00:07:42.400 massive march into that territory and claim it for themselves. And because Franco was dying and
00:07:49.820 the Spanish government was very unstable and they didn't have enough popular support for them to go
00:07:56.440 to war over the issue, they ended up surrendering that territory to the Moroccans. It worked the
00:08:02.120 first time. Why not do it again? But here what's going on was a sort of geopolitical pressure
00:08:08.760 campaign from the Moroccans. And it's mainly intended to humiliate the Spanish government 0.55
00:08:17.140 and to show the Spanish government that they shouldn't try to build better relations with
00:08:23.280 Algeria. Now, I did a geopolitics piece on the alliance that the United States and Israel
00:08:31.020 were building with key coastal states, and that includes Indonesia, and that includes the UAE
00:08:39.920 here in the Gulf, and that includes Morocco, basically countries that are on a sensitive
00:08:47.180 geopolitical fault line. In Indonesia's case, it's the entrance to the South China Sea. It's a
00:08:54.000 requirement for all Chinese shipping to pass in very close proximity to Indonesia.
00:09:00.160 In the UAE's case, obviously, it's against Iran and against Saudi Arabia, with the idea being 0.87
00:09:06.260 that a greater Emirates and a greater Israel can live together on the ruins of the rest of the 0.89
00:09:12.500 region. And in Morocco, it is intended to police the entrance into the Mediterranean and give the 0.95
00:09:19.860 American Navy a prime position. So we've seen this geopoliticking around this area. And Morocco is a
00:09:27.980 longstanding ally of the United States. The Algerians get their weapons from the Russians
00:09:34.480 and to a lesser extent from the Chinese. The Moroccans, they all have basically American 1.00
00:09:41.800 weapons and European weapons. And the idea there, essentially, is that Algeria and Morocco are 0.96
00:09:49.820 competing over who dominates West Africa. These are the two big players in West Africa.
00:09:57.540 Morocco, in partnership with Israel, has been working on expanding its financial services
00:10:04.600 network and its communications network throughout this whole region as part of its alliance 0.93
00:10:11.720 with israel and the united states pedro sanchez the prime minister of spain is a far left lunatic 0.57
00:10:20.000 extremist everybody knows this um he is responsible for basically um regularizing
00:10:28.600 maybe 1.3 1.5 illegal immigrants and he bragged about it in the new york times
00:10:36.820 explaining we need migrants and arguing basically that these migrants make the gdp go up
00:10:45.440 and by regularizing them and giving them a um papers that allow them to live and work in
00:10:52.980 in spain um he has first recognized that spain is itself a nation of migrants which is complete 0.98
00:11:03.540 rubbish. That's not. That's not what Spain is. You know, Spain is for the Spanish people. That's 0.98
00:11:09.960 what it is. And said that it brings economic benefits. It doesn't. These people are a drain
00:11:15.380 on the Spanish treasury. They are a hugely destabilizing force. They are going to destroy 0.80
00:11:20.680 Spain in the future. But that's exactly what leftists like Pedro Sanchez want. This is also
00:11:27.820 the guy who was basically digging up the graves of people who fought for Franco and destroying
00:11:33.760 monuments for Franco and trying his best to erase the history of Spain, which can't be separated
00:11:41.460 from Catholicism. These were the most Catholic kings in Europe and were recognized as such by
00:11:50.440 the Pope. So you can't see this attempted invasion outside of the context of the Moroccans knowing 0.84
00:11:59.840 that the Spaniards today are weak. In 1975, when Franco was dying and they saw that the Spanish
00:12:06.980 government was unstable, the Moroccans did this kind of human wave attack in order to take away 0.98
00:12:14.520 the Western Desert, or what is referred to as the Spanish Sahara. And the source of the conflict 0.90
00:12:23.880 was that Algeria wanted it, and Algeria wanted to get access to the Atlantic that wouldn't be
00:12:30.620 policed either by Spain or Morocco. Mauritania, which is like, why is that even a state? I don't
00:12:37.500 know. Mauritania wanted it, and the Moroccans obviously themselves wanted it. And this is a
00:12:45.380 region that is rich in natural resources, that has a very strategic position. It sits right across
00:12:51.900 from the Canary Islands, which are Spanish possessions. And the reasoning here was, you know,
00:12:59.140 it should be Moroccan territory because some of these nomadic tribal people had once upon a time
00:13:04.920 pledged allegiance to the Kingdom of Morocco and paid taxes there.
00:13:11.520 And since the Moroccans know that the Spaniards won't open fire
00:13:16.740 and start shooting people and triggering a hot war, 0.88
00:13:20.400 they know that they can get away with this.
00:13:23.420 And since Pedro Sanchez is of the view that, you know, 0.77
00:13:27.740 when illegals come in, we're just going to give them papers
00:13:30.620 that allow them to eventually become Spanish citizens, 0.98
00:13:33.000 they know they can get away with this what happens every single time is that you have this weakness
00:13:39.360 in the west at the top levels of western governments and it's the same in germany it's
00:13:45.120 the same in france it's the same in britain it's the same in the united states even under trump
00:13:49.320 um they smell this weakness and they push and that's what happened here now to connect this to
00:13:59.720 Israel and this whole conspiracy idea that the Israelis are responsible for this.
00:14:05.040 Let me tell you what I think. First, let's start with what we know, and then we'll go to what
00:14:11.000 should we think. We have here Michael Rubin, who is a top guy at the American Enterprise Institute,
00:14:19.080 which is a super Zionist think tank based out of Washington, D.C., and he's arguing here,
00:14:25.880 basically that the Spaniards can do the same thing, that the Moroccans can do the same thing
00:14:32.860 as they did in 1975, which is march into Spanish territory, take it for themselves, and the Spaniards
00:14:39.660 won't do anything about it. And he couches this as part of a campaign against Spain because the
00:14:49.220 Spaniards have been siding with Gaza and going on about all of the horrors that are happening in
00:14:55.240 Gaza, and taking an anti-Israel position. And he's praising, he's suggesting to the current 0.76
00:15:02.540 king, Hassan II, that he should follow the footsteps of his father, Muhammad the, sorry,
00:15:10.200 he's saying to the current king, Muhammad VI, that he should follow in his father's footsteps,
00:15:17.200 Hassan II, and go ahead and repeat the Green March, and take these territories from Spain, 0.89
00:15:25.240 just by sending human waves. That's the argument that he explains with Spain's Socialist Prime 0.53
00:15:32.660 Minister Pedro Sanchez embracing the language of decolonization, Mohammed VI should reclaim 0.81
00:15:37.920 the spirit of the Green March to finalize the expulsion of Spanish colonists from Moroccan soil. 0.78
00:15:43.900 It is in Moroccan soil, firstly, and he knows this, but he's lying, and the two subjects are
00:15:51.900 not related. Saying that you shouldn't murder thousands of women and children in Gaza
00:15:56.760 doesn't put you in any position in colonization, all of that stuff. But Pedro Sanchez is an extreme
00:16:05.020 leftist, and he is vulnerable to this kind of attack. The interesting thing here is that
00:16:12.400 he explicitly says that these locations are a weak spot for European security.
00:16:19.580 So he knows that Europe in general is going to suffer from this policy.
00:16:24.600 And the Jewish organizations in Spain, in the same way the Jewish organizations in Britain and in France, 0.63
00:16:30.880 they also support infinity migration. 0.71
00:16:34.260 The problem in Spain that has to be admitted is that a lot of the organizations that support infinity immigration are Catholic
00:16:41.740 and are led by people who are within the church.
00:16:45.240 and we see regularly that the catholic church politically
00:16:50.700 is just not being realistic about the conflict that it has with islam
00:16:56.800 and that is a big part of the problem and i say that as a faithful catholic uh who will hopefully
00:17:04.020 die catholic um with no intention of ever separating myself from the church but politically
00:17:10.740 the Catholic Church is wrong. And by taking this position, it allows for this kind of nonsense to
00:17:19.840 happen. So you see the encouragement from super-Zionist organizations, and you see that the 0.98
00:17:28.100 American political system ends up following in their footsteps. So the House Appropriations 0.99
00:17:34.700 Committee, you know, this article was written in March. By April, the House Appropriations
00:17:41.400 Committee, which is one of the most powerful committees in the Congress because it deals
00:17:45.720 with the money, it makes a statement saying that the Moroccan claims on these Spanish
00:17:54.720 territories are legitimate. And then you see an ally of Marco Rubio repeating the same
00:18:03.140 stuff, repeating these talking points. So there is that connection. And that doesn't mean that it
00:18:11.620 was the Israelis who organized it, however. If you want to lay responsibility for this event,
00:18:18.700 there are two groups that are responsible. One of them is the pro-immigration organizations
00:18:25.040 that exist in Spain. Yes, they do include the Jewish lobby. They also include large elements
00:18:33.880 of the Catholic Church, which have gone in a political direction that simply doesn't recognize
00:18:40.380 the eternal conflict between Catholicism and every other religion, including Islam and including
00:18:47.760 Judaism. They've gone off the deep end. They are responsible for this. The other party responsible 0.93
00:18:53.760 is Pedro Sanchez. A leftist extremist of that type isn't going to order soldiers to open fire
00:19:01.700 to defend the border. He's just not going to do that because he's terrified that he would actually
00:19:07.360 have to spend money on his military and therefore reduce the welfare state.
00:19:23.760 Thank you.