The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1050

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotseaters. Today is Tuesday the 26th of November and

00:00:14.100 this is podcast episode number 1050. I'm joined today by Beau and Josh. Hello. And we are

00:00:21.200 going to discuss the dismissal of Trump's Jan 6th case, what would happen if Russia

00:00:27.000 attacked the UK and Walmart rolling back DEI. Before we say this, I have an announcement

00:00:33.540 to make. It's my name day. People tell me happy name day because we're commemorating the most

00:00:40.360 anti-woke saint, Stylianos of Paflagonia. And here he, if you see his, basically his patronage

00:00:47.900 is children. So he would absolutely loathe DEI wokeness. He would have none of it. Right.

00:00:56.260 Should we go? Your name day, by the way, is different to your birthday. It is a different

00:01:00.140 day because I fell for this. I thought it was like a direct translation of what you would

00:01:04.840 call it in Greek, but it's not. It's actually the day of the saint in which you get your

00:01:09.580 name. Yeah, but we call it name day. So we get twice as many presents. Very crafty. Yeah.

00:01:16.520 Were you actually named after that saint, do you think? Yeah, that's my more formal name.

00:01:21.820 And Stylianos is a bit more informal. It's like saying Jack and Jacob.

00:01:25.600 Right. Okay. Something like that.

00:01:27.180 It's just interesting. Right. I knew that about you.

00:01:30.140 Should we go to the first comment, please? The first segment.

00:01:34.080 Comments before we've even done the segment. My goodness, people are eager today.

00:01:37.440 No. Right. So, I've got some actual good news, and that is that the insurrection, I hope you

00:01:48.500 get the quotation marks if you're listening, the case against Donald Trump has been dismissed.

00:01:55.060 And I was going to talk a little bit about this, as well as just talking about the event

00:01:59.120 itself, because I imagine that this is going to play a far less significant role in political

00:02:04.620 discourse, because my opinion was that a mountain was made out of a molehill for political reasons.

00:02:11.240 And those political reasons were to try and hamper Donald Trump's ascent to power, and it's too

00:02:17.100 late for that. And so, I think that I imagine this is going to go away. And so, let's talk a little

00:02:23.560 bit about the case first, because that's the new thing. So, the judge, Tanya Chutkin, I imagine

00:02:32.400 that's how you pronounce her name, dismissed the case, and the case was formally for attempting

00:02:38.540 to overturn the 2020 election. And this dismissal follows special counsel Jack Smith's request

00:02:45.900 to drop the charges at the federal level. And that is because, of course, he's going to

00:02:51.640 be inaugurated in January, and the DOJ has a very old policy of not prosecuting sitting

00:02:58.340 presidents, because it looks bad. And they'll also drop the fight to reinstate the classified

00:03:08.040 document charges as well. You remember that? The Mar-a-Lago documents, and of course, Biden

00:03:12.920 had the same thing, where he had lots of documents in his garage, I think, or where he had his car

00:03:19.300 parked. And so, that's been dropped, and there's not necessarily any evidence that that's going

00:03:25.520 to be reinstated again. And so, this was previously dismissed by a Florida-based federal judge, and

00:03:34.080 then they were pushing to get it up, you know, to reinstate the case again, but they're not

00:03:41.000 going to do that. And it's also been left open as a possibility that once Trump leaves office

00:03:47.720 in 2029, he no longer has presidential immunity. And so, this insurrection case, I keep on using

00:03:56.620 that word, although it's not formally used in the charges, will potentially come back

00:04:03.420 again. Which, to be honest, this is my opinion here, I don't think that they're going to go

00:04:08.840 for that, because by that point, it's sort of old news politically. No one's going to have

00:04:12.920 the political will to pursue it. And also, Trump's political career will be over by then,

00:04:17.420 so his threat will be diminished, because he'll be so old that he'll be probably putting his feet

00:04:22.320 up, I imagine. Or at least not taking a primary role as, say, the president, because he won't be

00:04:27.460 able to. I think that, basically, this is one of those cases that will reopen. My guess is that it

00:04:35.840 will reopen. I think it's too good for the Democrats not to do it, not to take that opportunity,

00:04:40.560 because it seems to me that this is one of those cases where history is written by the

00:04:45.000 victor, and any time someone, any time any kind of party wins elections, it's going to revisit,

00:04:50.980 any time the Democrats win elections, they're going to revisit it. Even if, you know, it's

00:04:55.800 after Trump, you know, because he's old now, I think they will always have this

00:05:02.260 weapon against Republicans saying, you subverted the constitutional order in their framework.

00:05:10.560 So I don't think they're going to, I think they'll revisit it.

00:05:14.220 It is possible. And of course, I don't know the future. And it was just sort of a gut feeling

00:05:19.360 of they're doing this for political reasons. And therefore, as soon as it's expedient,

00:05:23.660 they won't be interested anymore. What do you think, Beau?

00:05:27.260 I mean, who knows? I suspect they probably won't. This is like their one chance to try and get him

00:05:34.200 on that. And it's essentially failed. Yeah, and the DOJ obviously will be headed by Trump picks

00:05:42.160 from January onwards. But then yeah, talk about 2029. After that, assuming the Democrats get back in,

00:05:47.760 in 29, would they then change out all the people which they would do, of course, and then reopen

00:05:53.840 this? I don't know. I think they might use it as a cudgel just in terms of rhetoric forever. But

00:06:01.880 actually bringing charges against Trump who cannot be president again. I doubt that. But who knows?

00:06:08.620 I wouldn't put it past them. I wouldn't put it past them because it'd be pure vindictiveness at that

00:06:13.340 point, wouldn't it? To try and destroy Trump after his political career. I suppose if his legacy is a

00:06:21.500 J.D. Vance potential presidency, and his legacy is also Jan Sixth in their mind, conflating the two

00:06:28.680 together, even though J.D. Vance didn't have anything to do with it, might be helpful from a rhetorical

00:06:34.040 standpoint. So there could be an incentive to do that. I think they'll use it, it'll go down in American

00:06:38.820 history as a talking point, on the left, of that time Trump tried to destroy a democracy, or whatever.

00:06:44.120 Yeah, they'll never ever stop saying stuff like that. Trump took the most armed populace in human

00:06:50.500 history and called them all unarmed to a talk. But we'll be talking about the true nature of it,

00:06:57.480 don't worry. We did a lot of exclusive work at Lotus Eaters on that sort of stuff. But let's hear

00:07:02.800 from the man himself, shall we? It was a mass trespass event is what it was, not an insurrection,

00:07:07.840 a trespass event. Trump explicitly told them not to trespass, then they did trespass.

00:07:15.380 It's not an insurrection, but they'll keep calling it that. They just will, they just will.

00:07:20.380 So Trump says, these cases, like all of the other cases I've been forced to go through,

00:07:25.100 are empty and lawless and should never have been brought. Over 100 million US dollars of taxpayer

00:07:32.000 dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party's fight against their political opponent, me.

00:07:37.840 Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before. They've also used state prosecutors and

00:07:42.940 district attorneys such as Fannie Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade, who had absolutely zero

00:07:48.020 experience in cases such as this, but was paid millions, enough for them to take numerous trips

00:07:52.900 and cruises around the globe. I love how he kept that in. Letitia James, who inappropriately,

00:07:58.800 unethically and probably illegally campaigned on getting Trump in order to win political office,

00:08:04.380 and Alvin Bragg, who himself never wanted to bring this case against me, but was forced to do so

00:08:09.440 by the Justice Department and the Democratic Party. It was a political hijacking and a low point

00:08:14.520 in the history of our country that such a thing could have happened, and yet I persevered against

00:08:20.300 all odds and won Make America Great Again. Now that is a good way to end it, isn't it? It's got a good

00:08:26.700 way of words, whatever you say about the man. So it's worth mentioning as well, once Trump does

00:08:33.620 become president, if you want daily updates on what he's up to, we've got a new channel. It's doing

00:08:39.380 relatively well so far. We're trying to post to it every day, just short clips. You know, if you want

00:08:45.620 your news on the shorter side and you want to, you know, perhaps fill in some of the cracks that we

00:08:51.040 miss out on our main podcast, which you're watching right now, then this is the place to go.

00:08:57.400 So let's actually talk about the nature of January 6th, shall we? So one of the things that we did,

00:09:02.780 and one of the things I'm very proud of, is if you remember back to the early days, the Hugo days,

00:09:08.060 we worked together on this Capitol Hill takeover timeline, because we didn't want to call it a riot

00:09:14.900 or an insurrection. Takeover seemed fair enough, right? And the things I wanted to draw attention

00:09:20.760 to are these earlier times here, because we've got these down to the minute. So at 17 minutes past

00:09:27.620 12, Trump calls on his supporters to march to the Capitol for the first time in his speech. Some of

00:09:32.580 them leave the ellipse straight away to walk towards the Capitol. You know, he's not said to do anything,

00:09:39.260 he just said to go there. By 12.53pm, some Trump supporters breach the outer barricade at the Capitol

00:09:45.820 20 minutes before his speech at the ellipse actually ends. So Trump is still speaking when

00:09:52.320 this sort of stuff goes on. Kind of hard to suggest he's directing it when he's still giving a speech,

00:09:58.540 and people are ignoring his speech, and doing things that he has not told them to do. And then 10 past

00:10:04.440 1pm, protesters at the Capitol start clashing with the police directly and trying to enter the

00:10:10.120 building. Of course, this is a few minutes before Trump's speech has actually ended again. So

00:10:15.100 it's pretty clear that this is something that happened without Trump and his assent, isn't it? And in fact,

00:10:25.740 when it did happen, Trump put this video out on Twitter, you know, previously not owned by Elon Musk,

00:10:32.380 and so this was removed. And in fact, lots of other outlets removed this video where he's saying,

00:10:39.360 don't be violent, be peaceful, go home. And he's basically saying, I know you're angry,

00:10:47.380 I understand it, but don't do this. And it got to the point where Facebook indefinitely suspended

00:10:53.200 Donald Trump, as did loads of platforms simultaneously, which when lots of things happen at the same time,

00:11:00.180 it kind of indicates a common origin of those things. My guess would be the intelligence services.

00:11:08.260 And in fact, there is evidence of that. And it's to the point where even the posting the voice of

00:11:13.100 Donald Trump was banned on Facebook for a time. Bit difficult to do that now. But let's not forget

00:11:18.900 that we went through this period of time. And when Elon actually took over Twitter, now X, of course,

00:11:24.960 he claimed that the FBI had paid Twitter to censor information from the public. And so there is a

00:11:33.340 clear link here between the intelligence services and social media censorship. And we're going to be

00:11:42.680 looking at some of the claims of the fact that January 6th was some sort of trap from the intelligence

00:11:49.080 services, mainly the FBI. And so if you could, say, incite some trouble, and then any attempts to

00:11:58.940 calm people's demeanour from the people you're trying to trap get censored immediately in a pre-planned way,

00:12:06.060 that would be a pretty compelling way to have some dirt on your political opponent when previously

00:12:12.600 you'd been through, what, four years, five years of trying to dig up stuff on Trump, and none of it

00:12:18.900 had stuck. And so perhaps there were people who had been pushing for this sort of thing that got fed up

00:12:25.960 of trying to look at his actual life and tried to make something up. That's just an idea. I'm not saying

00:12:32.940 that is definitely true, but it is entirely possible. And it's also worth mentioning as well,

00:12:40.500 that we had a bunch of exclusive photos. There's some photos here from January 5th as well. People

00:12:46.260 forget there was a day before that was perfectly peaceful. And there are lots of signs showing the

00:12:51.460 kind of rhetoric. It was your usual political stuff. You know, lots of people who are patriotic,

00:13:00.460 you know, coming out and basically supporting their political candidate. I mean, there are some great

00:13:09.020 photos here. But one of the things, for example, like they were outside tying nooses for elected

00:13:15.940 politicians. I'd like to point out that if you were to use this noose, which is not a functional noose,

00:13:21.280 they would have to be about two foot tall. So any, you know, dwarf representatives would have been in

00:13:27.800 danger. But yeah, it was a mountain out of a molehill. And then you can see the sort of intel people at the

00:13:34.960 top. And you can start to see some of the violence because the photographer that we were in

00:13:39.700 correspondence with was at the rear entrance, videoing a lot of the and taking pictures of a

00:13:46.040 lot of the violence at the back here, which was not the main event. It was interesting that this was

00:13:51.800 what happened. And so you can see here some of the Capitol Police protecting this doorway that they

00:14:00.380 are look. And you can see that people are just using things like American flags and chairs and

00:14:06.520 all sorts of improvised weapons. And eventually, people get smoked out. And then they all leave.

00:14:14.520 But what people don't mention as well is that this rear entrance, half of the people there are there

00:14:19.080 with cameras recording it. And so the number of people involved does get inflated because actually

00:14:27.240 journalists and photographers were massively overrepresented. And you can you can see it to

00:14:32.180 some extent with certain things. You can also see here people getting pepper sprayed. That's a pretty

00:14:37.540 good shot. But yes, people using crutches and things like that. This is not a very organized armed

00:14:45.800 uprising. That much is obvious. And I feel like that claim doesn't need to be taken too seriously,

00:14:50.760 really does it? Clutches are not the favorite weapon of Republicans. I get the impression it's not.

00:14:59.040 So I wanted to talk about the notion of potential federal government involvement, particularly the

00:15:04.900 FBI. And I think it's entirely possible that there was involvement in inciting this. And there are lots

00:15:11.140 of suspicious links. I've already addressed the social media ones. But there are also links to

00:15:18.100 informants in specific groups that are linked to inciting things whilst they're an FBI informant.

00:15:24.300 And I imagine if you're an FBI informant, you probably wouldn't want to be genuinely inciting

00:15:31.100 violence because they're keeping tabs on you, right? And you know, they're keeping tabs on you. So why

00:15:35.580 would you do something that is, you know, is against the law? I don't buy that they're just doing this

00:15:42.900 of their own volition. And unfortunately, there's no irrefutable evidence that I've seen so far.

00:15:50.320 But there is, I think, a strong case. And it's also worth mentioning as well that US lawmakers can see

00:15:55.920 information that we're not allowed to see as, you know, members of the public. And I'm not even a US

00:16:01.740 citizen. So even less likely for me to be able to see it. So what we do know for certain, though, is the

00:16:07.300 FBI had informants within groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and that a member of the

00:16:13.480 Proud Boys texted his FBI handler during the event itself. We know those for certain, which is, you

00:16:22.180 know, perhaps a small sliver of a greater picture, because there's no doubt more to it than that.

00:16:27.880 That's just what we've been able to find out for certain. And that comes from, of all the publications,

00:16:34.040 the New York Times. They had an exclusive about this all the way back on the 25th of September 2021.

00:16:44.060 And one of the people, one of the names that gets thrown around is Ray Epps. I'm sure you've

00:16:49.280 probably both heard of him before. And I'm going to read a little bit about what the BBC says about him,

00:16:55.680 because this is a pretty good summary of why people think he might be a Fed.

00:17:01.860 I mean, fair enough. The following day, during the riot itself, Epps was seen on another video

00:17:20.180 whispering into the ear of a man who then charged at police lines. Epps later said he unsuccessfully

00:17:25.520 tried to calm the man down. Of course. Of course, that's what it was. It's also worth mentioning as

00:17:30.980 well, whilst lots of people got considerable prison time, he got 100 hours community service.

00:17:43.740 It's funny that, isn't it? For someone who's caught on camera inciting it, he's done a lot more than

00:17:49.400 some of the people that are still in jail right now. Strange, isn't it?

00:17:56.640 Suspicious minds are talking.

00:17:58.120 It is. Yeah, it's a case of that. It's also worth mentioning as well, there was a case in September

00:18:05.320 of 2023 where Thomas Massey was talking to Merrick Garland over January 6th informants. And he

00:18:13.020 basically asked him a series of questions that I'm going to fire through very quickly. But he basically

00:18:18.280 asked him about his knowledge of federal law enforcement activities during January 6th.

00:18:24.420 And I'm going to directly quote here. That was your answer to a question to me two years ago when I

00:18:29.300 said how many agents or assets the government were present on January 5th and 6th, agitating in the

00:18:35.100 crowd to go into the Capitol and how many went into the Capitol. Can you answer that now? And he says,

00:18:39.860 I don't know the answer to that question. You don't know how many there were or were there none?

00:18:44.780 And he says, I don't know the answer to either of those questions. If there were any, I don't know

00:18:49.320 how many. I don't know if there were any. And it carries on and on and on. And he's basically saying

00:18:55.240 that you've had two years to find out. By the way, this was in reference to Ray Epps. And yesterday

00:19:02.480 you indicted him. Isn't that a wonderful coincidence? On a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, you're sending

00:19:08.920 grandmas to prison. You're putting people away for 20 years for merely filming. Some people

00:19:13.000 weren't even there. You've got the guy on video who's saying, go into the Capitol. He's directing

00:19:18.780 people to the Capitol before the speech is, Massey continues. And he says, he's at the site

00:19:24.000 of the first breach. You've got all the goods on him, 10 videos, and it's an indictment for

00:19:27.760 a misdemeanor. The American public isn't buying it. And also there are other people as well.

00:19:33.000 So this is Representative Clay Higgins. I think he's from Louisiana. He says, the FBI,

00:19:39.780 their involvement was deep and not just on Gen 6, but in the days and weeks prior. They're

00:19:44.760 not only involved in the actions on Gen 6 from within. They had over 200 agents embedded

00:19:50.720 dressed as Trump supporters before the doors were open. And I'm not sure where he's getting

00:19:55.820 that 200 agent thing. But that might be information that's only available to them.

00:20:00.420 If that is true, and I've got no idea, if that is true, if that's even close to being

00:20:05.900 true, that's an astounding number. If it was 12, that would be quite a lot. 200? Really?

00:20:16.640 Interesting. That's sort of madness, if that is true.

00:20:19.520 And the funny thing is that...

00:20:21.200 Do they count Nick Fuentes in that number?

00:20:22.820 I don't know. Possibly. A quarter of Americans believe that the FBI orchestrated it, actually.

00:20:30.460 And again, another quarter of Republicans think that it was justified, which...

00:20:39.100 No comment. But anyway...

00:20:41.820 I mean, if you look at it from a democratic politics perspective, if you think that there

00:20:49.140 has actually been fraud, you have to somehow protest. So obviously, the means that are used

00:20:58.060 are of paramount importance. But a lot of Democrats are trying to present this as a massive

00:21:05.180 anti-democracy event. And I'm talking about the gathering, not the people who trespassed,

00:21:11.020 the few who trespassed. They are doing this only from within their own framework.

00:21:19.320 Well, there's also, on the topic of framework, I think in 2020, if we cast our minds back,

00:21:26.020 the sort of atmosphere of American politics was fiery, to say the least. Obviously, you had all

00:21:32.240 the Floyd riots, where cities were burnt to the ground. And so I think what happened in a lot

00:21:38.000 of people's minds was, well, okay, if these are the standards, we're not going to go quite that far.

00:21:42.440 But we're going to make a bit of a fuss, because apparently this is okay now. And the problem of

00:21:47.300 people assuming that would be that, yeah, there's a double standard, obviously. And there was always

00:21:52.340 going to be one. And it's worth mentioning as well, the people who turned up weren't, you know,

00:21:58.480 these extremist revolutionaries. We did a huge piece looking at each individual person,

00:22:05.620 lots of the people that were arrested and the information on them and what they did,

00:22:09.920 their backgrounds, who they are, things like that. So you can find out who these people are,

00:22:14.840 and judge them for yourself. I've also spoke to Edward Jacob Lang while he was in prison

00:22:21.180 for his involvement in January 6. And in fact, at one point, he was the prisoner facing

00:22:27.300 the most charges out of any prisoner. But he's very interesting to talk to, very interesting guy,

00:22:34.320 and definitely worth listening to. And I had a follow up with him in 2023 as well, asking how

00:22:39.760 he's doing. And I think he's still holding out for a Trump pardon when he assumes office. But he's

00:22:45.720 never given up hope. And I suppose what I wanted to end on is that we shouldn't necessarily forget the

00:22:52.340 nature of this event, because it exposed a lot of things that I think otherwise wouldn't have been

00:22:57.860 exposed. There was a lot of attention on it. But the attention is focused on criticizing Trump. And

00:23:02.280 actually, I think a lot of the interesting things is just how much the intelligence agencies interfered

00:23:09.020 with US politics there, because they have their fingerprints all over every aspect of it.

00:23:14.280 There's not one where I think, okay, they had nothing to do with that. And so that I think is

00:23:20.160 the takeaway for the right, really. Because the left set the president for this sort of thing. And

00:23:26.780 the right followed up on it. And I don't necessarily think it achieved anything politically. And

00:23:30.680 therefore, I don't think it was a good idea. I don't support it, like those quarter of Republicans

00:23:35.000 do. However, there are lots of lessons to be learned from this. And I hope that people do learn this

00:23:39.880 going into a Trump presidency. I think just in the scheme of things, across history,

00:23:46.840 it's very minor, but it's not nothing, though. Like, we on the outside of the equation, try and

00:23:55.040 either underplay it, or try and describe it in just purely factual terms. It wasn't nothing.

00:24:03.040 But in the scheme of things, you know, compared to the mob marching on the tuileries, or the Roman

00:24:08.880 mob burning down the Senate House in ancient Rome or something, it's sort of nothing. It was very,

00:24:15.400 very civilised and quaint, almost, this trespass event. At most, I would call it disquieting.

00:24:24.240 At most, it's like, oh, yeah, people could just overpower the cops, whether it's an inside job or

00:24:31.020 whatever. They could just walk into the middle of the Capitol building. That is a bit disquieting.

00:24:39.500 But in terms of it being an actual insurrection, actual perversion of democracy, or a perversion

00:24:44.800 of the Republic or the Constitution or anything like that. No, of course not. I wrote an article,

00:24:49.960 I think I called it something like Kamala Harris's fever dream or, oh no, it was more like, I said,

00:24:57.800 the Democrats' Reichstag fire. They were trying to use it as like a Reichstag fire type.

00:25:01.580 Good historic example, though.

00:25:03.440 Type thing. And it's just, it's just, the evidence, the facts are just not there. It was an ad hoc thing

00:25:10.480 by some kind of silly trespassers. So we got some comments here. It was a disquieting,

00:25:18.800 but mostly peaceful event. Yeah, it really was. Ramshash Kul Otter says, Axios, happy name day,

00:25:25.200 Stelios. Thank you. And Kalev Knight says, happy name day, Stelios. Today is indeed a good day.

00:25:31.340 Got half the day off. Set a new deadlift personal record and good news abroad as well. And Stelios,

00:25:38.480 the 12th and 16th century synonym for happy gets gifts. Thank you. And also you didn't tell us

00:25:44.620 how much you lift. Do you even lift, bro? But no, I'm glad to hear you're having a good day.

00:25:54.840 Okay, so just move on to my segment then. It's bow time. All right. It's the bow show. Get ready.

00:26:00.520 Well, seeing as our PM, Sir Keir Starmer, seems hellbent on having a proxy war, if not an actual

00:26:10.000 hot war with Russia, I thought we could talk a bit about what that might actually look like if it

00:26:16.880 happened, a conventional war with Russia. Because he does seem very aggressive. Kul did a bit on this

00:26:23.820 the other day I saw. Yeah, we are in a full-blown proxy war, at least, with Russia, which is mad.

00:26:32.060 Boris and then Rishi and now Starmer have walked us into a proxy war with Russia, where, you know,

00:26:38.860 we're now designing, building and selling cruise missiles to Ukraine and then egging them on to

00:26:45.300 use them inside Russian territory. That is sort of a crazy state of affairs.

00:26:52.120 Right. Of course, yeah.

00:26:53.940 The border of Ukraine has got nothing to do with us.

00:26:56.780 We sort of butted in, in a way, that seemed very much uninvited. And I know that we do

00:27:05.220 enjoy getting involved in global conflicts at none of our business, particularly if we're following in

00:27:11.120 the Americans. We like to, you know, puff our chests out on the world stage, perhaps more than we should.

00:27:18.680 It's not just us, the French as well. Germans have sold them some arms and all sorts of different

00:27:22.380 people. But of course, mostly the United States. But yeah, we got the green light. Our establishment

00:27:28.520 got the green light from the US establishment, State Department, Pentagon, whatever. You know,

00:27:34.300 be in lock stock with our policy. And we just are.

00:27:37.320 Do you think it's a question of permission or a question of orders?

00:27:44.020 Because we talk about autonomous and sovereign states, but people forget the notion of

00:27:48.980 sovereignty, which has to do with maybe autonomy in the domestic, but also someone else dictating

00:27:54.440 your foreign policy. So is it, do you think it's an issue of permission or orders that you are

00:28:01.380 going to support the effort?

00:28:02.880 I don't know, because I've got no actual insight, but I would imagine it's not orders as such.

00:28:09.580 So, for example, if you remember during the Obama years, when they were the Pentagon and

00:28:14.500 the State Department were gunning for Assad, and they said there was like a red lion in the

00:28:19.320 sand, or red lion, if he used chemical weapons, they would just start a massive air campaign

00:28:27.320 against Syria. And then who knows what, after that. And then Assad, they said he used them.

00:28:33.880 And Obama immediately goes to the Pentagon's like, let's start, let's do, let's have a war

00:28:38.280 with Syria then, to remove the Assad regime. And we, I think it was David Cameron was Prime

00:28:43.700 Minister at the time, and we had a vote in Parliament, because we couldn't just, David Cameron

00:28:48.160 can't just unilaterally just send the whole RAF or whatever. He needed Parliament to green light

00:28:53.360 it. And we voted against it. It was one of the few things that people like Diane Abbott

00:28:57.300 and Ed Miliband have done, which is good. It was like, no, no, we don't want any part

00:29:02.500 of this.

00:29:02.820 So that's one example of when the State Department and the Pentagon and the war bastards in America,

00:29:11.340 all the Hawks, whoever they are, wanted a war, and Britain said no. Now that is sort

00:29:17.760 of an exception to the rule. But there you can say, even if they were given orders, we

00:29:23.380 didn't play ball with those orders.

00:29:24.720 I think it's less sort of orders. I doubt a general at the Pentagon rings up number 10

00:29:30.140 and says, you are doing this now. I doubt it works like that. But I don't know, it might

00:29:33.660 do. But I doubt it. I really doubt it. It's just that someone like Boris and Rishi, who's

00:29:38.940 a nothing man, an empty bag, an empty pair of trousers. But someone like Boris and Starmer

00:29:44.800 think genuinely that's what they actually think. It is a good and righteous, the right thing

00:29:49.400 to do to confront Putin. I believe they believe that. So anyway, what would it look like if

00:29:55.000 Russia was to launch a conventional attack on Britain? Now, all of this assumes that nukes

00:30:01.040 aren't at play.

00:30:03.160 Well, if it's a nuclear exchange, we won't be speculating too long how they're going to

00:30:08.160 invade because it's going to be over pretty quickly, isn't it?

00:30:11.420 I'm supposed to say about now that we've got a merch store and the Trump merch is, we're

00:30:17.620 going to stop selling that very soon. So if you want Trump 24 merch that we've got,

00:30:23.620 now's the time.

00:30:26.060 Look at that poster. That would look great on your wall, wouldn't it?

00:30:28.440 And we'll move on to...

00:30:29.620 That mug, that would look great with probably not tea in it, coffee, you know. Don't have

00:30:35.260 so much tea in America anymore, do you?

00:30:37.400 $14.99.

00:30:39.280 Bargain.

00:30:40.940 Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. That's Dutch.

00:30:43.260 Well...

00:30:43.500 Bo!

00:30:43.980 Sorry.

00:30:44.360 The Hawks from the Pentagon are telling you to shill the merch.

00:30:49.520 I just did an anti-shill.

00:30:50.860 Well, I'll get in trouble. Let's move on swiftly from that.

00:30:57.560 Okay. Assuming no nukes are at play. If they are at play, yeah, it's... I don't think they

00:31:05.360 are. I think any fear-mongering that Russia wouldn't use nukes because, of course, he would

00:31:10.040 become an actual international pariah at that point. And we would retaliate. That's the

00:31:15.680 nature of it. We have got a nuclear... We're one of just seven or eight countries that have

00:31:20.200 got a nuclear program. And we've got two nuclear submarines, one of which is at sea, hidden

00:31:25.220 at any given moment, with trident nukes on it. So we could rain down dozens of nukes on

00:31:32.240 Russia if we had to. So, apart from anything else, I doubt Russia... Highly doubt Russia

00:31:37.840 would use nukes anyway. And if they did, they wouldn't use it against countries like France,

00:31:42.540 Britain, America, because we've got... We can nuke them back.

00:31:45.400 So Swindon is out of...

00:31:47.400 Yeah. Well...

00:31:48.400 Well, you don't want to... You don't want to nuke Swindon because it'll be an improvement.

00:31:51.740 Well, unless they nuke, like, Cardiff or... Was there another one? Yeah, if they nuke

00:31:59.280 Cardiff, Swindon is... Look, we don't get incinerated immediately, but it wouldn't be any kind of

00:32:06.420 fun. All our windows would get blown out.

00:32:09.240 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If they dropped it on Bristol, we'd be in trouble.

00:32:14.220 Well, there are already a bunch of mutants in Bristol to begin with. There's no radiation

00:32:19.720 yet. Some of the Russian nukes are some of the biggest nukes still. They're not Tsar

00:32:25.440 bombicides. That was sort of a one-off, almost like an experiment. But still, they've got

00:32:29.460 the biggest... Both the biggest nuclear arsenal, just in terms of numbers, and also the biggest

00:32:34.040 warheads. I do wonder how many of them are actually ready to go, though, or how many of

00:32:39.800 them are sort of, for want of a better word, siloed. That's probably the worst word I could

00:32:45.980 use. Well, so, there's one of those things about the Russian military. On one hand, you

00:32:52.300 can be forgiven for thinking, oh, it's all antiquated. Like, they've got that one aircraft

00:32:58.080 carrier. It's sort of got a steam stack, and it seems really old-fashioned. And that their

00:33:04.300 military, on some levels, although might have very large numbers of men, isn't actually particularly

00:33:10.100 professional or brilliant. So there's one angle where the Russian military is lame. But there's

00:33:18.040 another view where it's... And it's probably one I would go along with, and I think most

00:33:21.700 military analysts go along with, is that, no, it's actually really quite good. They have

00:33:26.660 been spending and upgrading, and a lot of their stuff is cutting edge. I'll get into that in

00:33:30.780 a moment. Well, they have been in a conflict for quite some time, which, you know, you can't

00:33:35.280 replace genuine combat experience. Although it is also worth, you know, to be devil's advocate

00:33:39.520 to my own point here, it is worth mentioning that Texas has higher GDP than all of Russia.

00:33:47.780 Yeah.

00:33:48.420 So, if it comes down to economies, as it did in, say, the previous two world wars, then

00:33:55.020 the United States still has the edge. But of course, you know, it's more complicated than

00:33:59.100 that.

00:33:59.320 Yeah, but also, and also wars are not fought on paper. So sometimes some powers could be

00:34:04.500 on paper, number one or number two, but it ends up that they're not.

00:34:10.240 So a couple of things to say about, like, that Texas comparison, for example. Yeah, you're

00:34:13.080 absolutely right. One, I'm just talking about Britain versus Russia here, because if it was,

00:34:17.540 if they were to have a war with the United States, that's a whole different, whole different

00:34:21.100 thing. And yeah, you're right. Although Russia isn't fantastically rich, you know, its economy,

00:34:26.980 it isn't some sort of beer moth like China or the United States. Still, they've got enough

00:34:32.600 to be spending on designing brand new long range bombers and things. Brand new, all sorts

00:34:38.660 of brand new missile and weapon systems, countermeasures and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, Texas might

00:34:43.320 have a bigger economy than the whole of Russia, but they've got enough money, enough research

00:34:47.760 and development, which certainly outstrips us. Well, let's get into that. So assuming we're

00:34:52.940 not going to have a nuclear exchange with Russia, what would an actual conventional attack from

00:34:58.020 them look like? Because we are essentially bombing them, essentially. Right?

00:35:03.780 We've got other people launching the missiles for us, but there are missiles supplied to them

00:35:08.840 with our advisors and our training. We're doing everything but push the button ourselves.

00:35:15.800 Right, exactly. Yeah. We're giving Ukraine $3 billion a year. And apparently, anyway,

00:35:19.700 the line is, we'll keep doing that for as long as it takes. You know, those storm shadow

00:35:23.980 cruise missiles. How is that not really Britain doing it really? Like you say, it's everything

00:35:30.540 except the guy that actually presses the button. Right? So you can, if you just put yourself

00:35:35.080 in the place of Putin or Kremlin planners, for one moment, you would be like, well, Britain

00:35:42.140 is waging a type of war against us. Right? So, well, you know, people were more than happy

00:35:50.060 to talk about it when it was the Cold War, saying, oh, the Soviets are backing this faction

00:35:55.240 and we need to fight them because the Soviets are backing them. And that was fun.

00:35:59.720 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so to put that in perspective, $3 billion, you could buy a sort of, you could

00:36:06.380 pay for 78,000 nurses with that money.

00:36:11.720 As in their annual salary?

00:36:13.500 Yeah. Yeah. Or we give over $8 billion a year in foreign aid to countries, even countries

00:36:20.920 like India and China that have got a space program and we haven't. And that could buy two

00:36:25.840 more aircraft carriers. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, aircraft carriers are a bit old hat.

00:36:29.720 A bit 20th century.

00:36:31.720 Get with the time.

00:36:32.640 Yeah. Nonetheless, when you talk about, because you hear just on the news or on Twitter, you

00:36:37.760 hear the billions being thrown about for this or that. And it becomes, you get desensitized

00:36:44.300 to it. But just a few billion is a, is a gigantic, fantastic amount of money.

00:36:49.100 Yeah, I wouldn't say no.

00:36:50.400 Yeah.

00:36:51.580 Okay. Yeah. So despite all of this, despite all of the aggression the British government is

00:36:58.420 showing to the Russian bear, we also are cutting our defense budgets. We cut it by 500 million

00:37:04.820 recently, but over the last two generations or so. Well, ever since the war, World War

00:37:09.920 II, we've cut back on defense and spending just kind of constantly. Little blips here and

00:37:14.440 there. But essentially cutting back to the point now where we've got a very small army

00:37:20.420 and our, although highly professional and our Navy, although highly advanced, one of the

00:37:28.460 most advanced navies in the world, it's small. It is small. So we've got two aircraft carriers,

00:37:35.420 which, you know, is better than most countries.

00:37:38.880 Yeah. But it's, it's very few countries actually have aircraft carriers.

00:37:43.440 Right. Yeah. Very few. Yeah. Yeah. Very few. And other than the biggest players, they're

00:37:48.080 usually like an ex-Russian one from the seventies or something. I think Brazil's got one and it's

00:37:52.740 like an ex-Soviet thing or an ex-US one that they were just going to mothball or just get

00:37:56.880 rid of. So they sold it to like someone like Spain or Brazil.

00:38:00.160 Harm it off to the Brazilians.

00:38:01.160 Yeah. So we've got something in the order of six destroyers and nine frigates. That's

00:38:08.000 pretty small. I mean, they're cutting edge ships. They really are among the best of the

00:38:12.660 best, but that's not very many. And they're nearly always deployed somewhere else in the

00:38:17.720 world, not particularly guarding our coastlines. So defense analysts say, and there was a great

00:38:23.720 video. I must give a shout out to a great video by Mark Felton. Anyone doesn't follow Mark

00:38:28.440 Felton Productions on YouTube. I advise you do that because I think he's a great source.

00:38:33.000 He's a fantastic historian. A lot of what I'm talking about here is taken from his video.

00:38:38.060 But I've seen other people talk about this stuff and a bit about it myself and things.

00:38:42.720 But so most say that if Russia were to strike Britain, mainland Britain, it would be in the

00:38:50.560 form of cruise missiles. It wouldn't be like they would invade with landing crafts like

00:38:58.400 Grimsby. Thousands of little green men coming ashore.

00:39:03.600 They've allied with aliens as well, have they now?

00:39:06.380 Oh, no, you know the little green men. You know, when they invaded Crimea, it was like

00:39:10.400 this. Oh, they're soldiers.

00:39:12.440 I haven't heard that term for such a long time. I was thinking like UFOs, what? I know

00:39:18.500 they've got, you know, pretty good technology, but not that advanced.

00:39:21.120 When the Russians send in men and they, but they don't have any sort of formal Russian

00:39:26.220 military insignia anywhere on them.

00:39:28.460 Yeah, yeah, that's right. Because that happened in 2014, didn't it? In the east of Ukraine.

00:39:35.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Russia actually has been fighting wars, small-ish, limited wars, all

00:39:41.820 over the place for the last 20 years. There's like the incursions into South Ossetia, if you

00:39:46.740 remember that, and fighting in Georgia. They go all the way to Grozny, I can't remember.

00:39:51.120 But yeah, so yeah, Russia have actually got, on some level, a veteran army, which we haven't,

00:39:58.800 of course. Well, well, I don't know. We get involved all over the place. And our special

00:40:02.740 forces, yeah, we certainly have our special forces training Ukrainian troops on the ground

00:40:06.660 and all stuff like that. So anyway, if Russia were to attack us, it would probably be in the

00:40:10.980 form, assuming nukes off the table, cruise missiles. So the reality is, Britain's defences

00:40:20.320 against such a thing are woefully lacking. Woefully lacking, which does show, does mean,

00:40:27.980 that what Starmer is doing is sort of crazy. It's like real brinksmanship. If I had to put

00:40:37.340 some money on it, I doubt, I highly doubt, Putin will launch cruise missiles against mainline

00:40:42.240 Britain. But if he did, if that did come to pass, there'd be not a great deal we can do

00:40:50.660 about it. So for example...

00:40:51.740 Well, to be fair to Keir Starmer, he's doing his best to make Britain so, you know, making

00:40:59.540 the strike targets so unvaluable to strike that it will just disincentivise it. It'd be

00:41:05.680 like, you know, why Somalia doesn't have a strong standing army. It's just, you know,

00:41:11.200 who's going to invade? Who wants that? Or Haiti, they don't have a strong standing army, they're

00:41:16.760 fine. Because no one wants to take over it. Similar thing here. That's basically what Starmer's

00:41:21.880 got going for him, defence policy-wise. Yeah. I'm being a bit facetious, but there is some

00:41:26.180 element of truth to that. Yeah, no, I personally think that nothing is going to happen. And

00:41:32.880 I think that actually expressing resolution here is a good thing in this. And obviously,

00:41:39.340 I don't agree with Starmer's policies. But I think now the war is about to end. So he's

00:41:46.600 just barking, and everyone's barking. And I actually think also Putin is barking. And

00:41:52.760 the people on Twitter who are constantly saying about, you know, it's only Starmer who's going

00:41:57.280 to cause World War Three or our demise. That's actually slop, I think.

00:42:01.660 Yeah, I think that the people that try and over egg that sort of thing are trying to sell

00:42:07.100 a narrative out of self interest for amping up people and actually the reality of this situation.

00:42:14.900 Although, you know, the small possibility of a nuclear exchange is obviously worthy of

00:42:19.380 note. I think that actually people are being quite irresponsible of how much they're scaring

00:42:23.800 people, basically.

00:42:24.380 And also, if, you know, we're in a situation like that, I'd rather, so whoever is in power,

00:42:30.040 whatever political party is actually barking and is more like a war hawk than like, you know,

00:42:35.820 just, okay, let's, let's sit here and have some tea and biscuits. I'd rather someone was,

00:42:41.180 you know, more wild with statements. Because at this moment, it's, they're not veridical.

00:42:47.580 Right.

00:42:47.800 It's more like people barking to each other, you know, I'll, I'll bite your rear off.

00:42:53.380 Mike Tyson.

00:42:54.600 Two dogs are going wild at each other through a fence and someone takes the fence away and

00:42:58.100 both dogs just go quiet.

00:43:00.660 Yeah. I mean, as I say, I doubt, I highly doubt Putin will do anything against mainland Britain.

00:43:06.560 So this segment is just simply, if he did. Yeah.

00:43:09.620 Well, the point of it is to point out how we're, our defence spending leaves us woefully,

00:43:14.920 inadequately prepared for an attack, right?

00:43:17.500 So this is how woefully unprepared we are. We have a thing called the QRA, the quick reaction

00:43:22.320 alert. So if a Russian aircraft were to enter our airspace, what would we actually do about

00:43:27.940 it? Well, we've got the quick reaction alert. So this is the whole of Britain's airspace.

00:43:33.080 Yes. Four typhoons out of two different airbases. That's it. Four typhoons. We've got four protecting

00:43:41.400 the Falklands. So four for the whole of Britain. Right.

00:43:46.840 So I don't think Malay is going to necessarily launch a military invasion. I think that's kind

00:43:51.860 of going to sabotage his economic recovery.

00:43:53.980 Oh, yeah. Out of RAF Coningsby and RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. And then we've got sort of radar

00:44:01.580 stations. But again, there's only three others. RAF Swanage, RAF High Wycombe and RAF Bulma.

00:44:08.580 And there's also what they call seven other sort of more remote radar bases from the

00:44:15.920 Outer Hebrides down to Cornwall. In other words, if Putin did want to sort of poke our

00:44:23.000 eyes out, so to speak, because we've got no AWACS aircraft either. None. We used to have

00:44:27.260 some, but we got rid of them in 2021. So there would be three radar Air Force RAF bases with

00:44:35.660 radars and seven other smaller installations, none of which are defended by surface to air

00:44:42.260 missile batteries. None. Completely undefended. So with just a dozen or less, a dozen cruise

00:44:51.260 missiles could effectively pluck out our eyes. And then there's the four typhoons to take

00:44:58.600 care of. And then they've got complete air superiority over us. That's how modern wars

00:45:05.300 are now, is you take out the enemy's ability to sort of see you and then take out their fast

00:45:10.860 jets. And if you do that, then you win. You basically win. So Russia's got the capability

00:45:17.800 to do that easily. So they've got a long range bomber. What's it? The Tu-190, is it?

00:45:26.680 The Black Jacks, they call them. Or Tu-160s. Tu-160 Black Jacks. And they're like a long range,

00:45:34.040 like a big aircraft. I think that's a picture of one. Well, that is a picture of one.

00:45:37.680 They're massive. They're like, they look a bit like a Concorde. And they can hold 12 cruise

00:45:41.920 missiles apiece. Russia's got 17 of those with 10 more on order. They do buzz in and around

00:45:48.540 our airspace by the North Sea fairly regularly. I've heard about that. Yeah. That's an old

00:45:53.520 Cold War thing. Used to do that during the Cold War all the time, kind of constantly. They

00:45:57.220 stopped doing it in sort of the 90s, really, early 2000s. But they do it again now, these

00:46:02.080 days. So if we, and they go like, they're the fastest long range bomber ever built. They

00:46:07.460 go over Mach 2. Right. So if he sent 10 of those laden with 12 cruise missiles apiece versus

00:46:16.420 four typhoons. Yeah. The point is he could, he could take out our early warning systems

00:46:25.080 easily. And then, and then it was, and then it's just a matter of bouncing rubble. Right.

00:46:31.500 If he wanted to do it, he would take out, like you could take out civilian infrastructure

00:46:35.460 things, things like, because we're an island and we rely on our imports just as we did

00:46:40.760 in World War II. We rely massively on ship imports to us. Harridge and Felixstowe, giant

00:46:49.040 ports. If he blew some of the, just a small amount of the infrastructure up there or a couple

00:46:53.820 of power stations here or there. We know very, very well from recent history that it doesn't

00:46:58.360 take much at all to profoundly disrupt our supply chain. Russia would need to do very little

00:47:05.380 really in the scheme of things. Wouldn't need to be carpet bombing anything. Just blow

00:47:10.360 up a few things. Like the, if they blew up Felixstowe, for example, there would be supply chain issues

00:47:17.220 massively. I remember in the earlier 2000s, at one point, the Sun wrote an article saying

00:47:23.680 there might be fuel shortages and people were immediately queuing up around the block to

00:47:29.280 go to a petrol station to fill up their car and fill up jerry cans. Towards the beginning

00:47:33.760 of COVID, people thought there might be a shortage of things like toilet paper and people just

00:47:40.800 hauled it immediately. Go to shops and buy it all and the shelves are empty just on the hearsay

00:47:45.680 scare type thing. So if there really were shortages or really were problems with the supply chain,

00:47:53.360 the fabric of our civil society may well crumble very, very, very quickly. Once again stress,

00:48:00.000 I don't think Putin is going to do this. Just to say if he did, he's completely capable of

00:48:05.760 it. I mean, there's not that much we could do about it. So for example, Mark Felton talks

00:48:09.600 about how we could put in missile, missile defenses, like the rapier missile defense system, or we

00:48:16.400 could, we could deploy our small navy on the east coast in the North Sea, where some of their very

00:48:22.960 advanced anti-cruise missile systems would help a bit. If he fired enough of them, we would be

00:48:28.880 overwhelmed. So yeah, a bit of a worry, really. I would like to address the American in the room here.

00:48:37.040 And that's not you, by the way, Bo. I mean, in the sense of, I couldn't see a scenario where Russia

00:48:43.680 is attacking Britain, where the United States doesn't join in. Or NATO. Or NATO. We are in NATO,

00:48:49.920 aren't we? Well, they would be obliged to at that point. Yeah. And so it would, I think most of our

00:48:55.600 defense infrastructure has been set up with this alliance in mind. And we sort of fit in here and

00:49:01.840 there, assisting the United States, particularly with our special forces and some of our more specialist

00:49:07.600 equipment. And we would rely on them for a lot of that other stuff.

00:49:14.480 There's US air bases in Britain. I know, yeah. To add to this, I mean, I don't know exactly about

00:49:21.440 the NATO treaty, and whether the Article 5 would work. But okay, that's up for debate. But one of

00:49:28.400 the things why I think Putin also has no incentive to do so is because his interest now is to

00:49:36.880 end the war as quickly as possible, and resume trade as quickly as possible. And the UK is not a

00:49:44.880 force to just ignore, both militarily and economically, but also especially economically.

00:49:51.440 So I think basically, this is an extra reason why there would be no incentive for him to do it.

00:49:57.840 It's a good point.

00:49:58.640 I know the segment is based on the assumption. Yeah, I know.

00:50:02.160 No, sure.

00:50:02.640 It's a good point. One thing I would say to counter it, although I say it's definitely a good point,

00:50:07.840 is that we've already cut them off in all sorts of ways. We're already doing all sorts of

00:50:13.040 embargoes and asset stripping of Russian and Russian assets. We've already been doing that

00:50:19.200 for quite a few years. He's already outside of that club, if you like.

00:50:24.080 Well, I think a lot of things like Russian oil and gas, it's just being sold on to Europe via

00:50:30.560 countries like India, for example. I know Germany was getting some basically laundered fossil fuels

00:50:37.920 via these countries. And so they do find their way,

00:50:41.440 eventually. It's just that there has to be a workaround.

00:50:45.600 Yeah, I mean, you make a good point about sort of NATO or just the Americans that if Russia did do

00:50:49.840 anything, any sort of hot war actions against mainland Britain, would NATO and the United States

00:50:55.120 just immediately get involved in a large scale? Maybe, maybe not.

00:50:58.400 I'd like to see some Ukrainians help out. I mean, after all the help we've given them,

00:51:02.240 you know, time to return the favour.

00:51:05.920 But just if you're simply playing a game of a strategy game, like a total war game or Sid Meier

00:51:12.240 Civilization or something, you would want to strike at the

00:51:15.920 the factories that were building these storm shadow missiles, right?

00:51:26.320 Just to stop them ending up in the Ukraine and being fired against you. But yeah. Now,

00:51:31.840 what last thing to say, I suppose, is that we've got no civil defence capabilities. That is

00:51:37.840 sort of normal people, the normal populace, understanding what they could or should do in

00:51:43.200 the event of any sort of attack. Ever since the war, during World War Two, that is, and the Cold War,

00:51:49.680 there always used to be a thing. You might have some sort of shelter or any sort of instruction

00:51:56.240 about how to behave and what to do. We don't have any of that anymore.

00:52:01.120 I think some of the better educated ethnic Britons might remember the stories they were told about the

00:52:08.160 war and what was done then and sort of defer to that. But I think what would actually happen,

00:52:13.120 particularly with the New Britons, is lots of looting and chaos.

00:52:18.560 Instead of all coming together as one and acting in the interests of the greater good and the

00:52:24.480 national interest and that sort of thing, like during the Blitz, it would just be every man for himself.

00:52:30.560 Mm-hmm.

00:52:32.080 Every Bangladeshi for himself or whatever, you know, it would just be, yeah.

00:52:35.120 The greater good.

00:52:37.760 And of course, the analysts say that anything like that would be accompanied by some sort of

00:52:42.960 cyber attack as well, which the Russians seem to be.

00:52:46.240 So hold the NHS to ransom again and it'll be useless. Oh no, our useless health service is useless again.

00:52:53.360 Some have accused me of being a Putin apologist. Of course I'm not.

00:52:56.880 Just because I'm not on board with the Zelensky government. It doesn't mean I'm pro-Putin.

00:53:00.880 I was on a stream just the other day talking about just TV and films and someone said,

00:53:04.480 oh, why have you got this this Kremlin mouthpiece on?

00:53:09.360 No, no, Putin is an autocrat. He's a tyrant on some level. Like, let's not forget Litvinenko.

00:53:21.680 He does kill people to stay in power.

00:53:23.360 Yeah, he's a murderer. Yeah, absolutely a murderer. So I'm not an apologist for Putin, but yeah,

00:53:30.640 if he wanted to, he could have control of our skies quite easily, which is a worry.

00:53:40.160 That's concerning. I'm going to blow my nose quickly.

00:53:43.440 Okay, Caleb Knight. Oh, deadlifts are 80 kilograms, four reps of five and today's record is 110 on a single rep.

00:53:54.080 Good progressive overload. Nice.

00:53:56.320 Open my calluses because bad grip, but it was a proper rep. Anyway, here's a predictable.

00:54:02.720 Would it spiral to World War III? Question.

00:54:08.080 I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think none of us thinks that it would reach that.

00:54:14.880 I think everyone would be glad to see us gone.

00:54:18.960 I wouldn't. Thanks, Stelios. Stelios wouldn't.

00:54:22.000 There's no need to go so heavy. Deadlifts as well, by the way, just to that person.

00:54:28.400 It's like you're just inviting injury.

00:54:30.480 Take care of yourself.

00:54:31.360 I get it's cool that you say you could deadlift a massive amount, but if you destroy your knees or your lower back, it's never safe.

00:54:39.920 I do know lots of people that have been injured from doing deadlifts and it is one of those things where you do need to be very careful because they did know what they were doing and they still got injured.

00:54:48.720 So you need to know how to squat once you injure your neck or your back or your knees.

00:54:55.600 It's never ever the same again. It's not worth it.

00:54:57.920 Yeah, that's not you can't you can't look me in the eyes and say you need to know how to squat and then look at me suspiciously because I laugh.

00:55:07.200 But you need to squat to do it.

00:55:09.040 I know it's just the deadpan delivery with the eye contact that did it for me.

00:55:14.880 Right. So after Trump's victory at the recent US elections, it seems like the tide is turning.

00:55:21.280 A lot of people are turning their back on DEI and Walmart has become the last economic powerhouse to do so.

00:55:30.320 So that's really good news.

00:55:32.160 Now, speaking of the US elections, we are going to have this merge for for a lot for a little while.

00:55:39.040 How is it? How much? How long are we going to have it for?

00:55:42.320 I think it's still the end of the week. It's still the end of the week.

00:55:44.800 So definitely check it out and look at our lovely mugs, our lovely T-shirts, the art of the grill.

00:55:50.880 We also have plenty of sizes, small, large, medium, XL, XXL, XXXL, just it's lovely.

00:56:01.040 Go to visit our merch.

00:56:02.640 The XXXL do not function as parachutes, by the way.

00:56:05.920 Exactly. You're going to have a mug with this iconic moment.

00:56:09.120 Right. So on to a topic. Walmart is about to scrub DEI initiatives.

00:56:15.120 And as you see, some people have a particularly visceral reaction to it.

00:56:19.680 I think this is one of my favorite mildews.

00:56:21.760 That video, that was in, wasn't it at Trump's inauguration?

00:56:25.440 I think it was.

00:56:26.240 Or something like that, where he was sworn in or declared the president.

00:56:29.440 I can't remember. It was so long ago, but I remember seeing it the day it happened and

00:56:35.200 playing it over and over and over again.

00:56:36.960 And it's just classic. It's also iconic.

00:56:40.640 You can, you can enjoy these sorts of silly low quality moments every now and then.

00:56:46.160 Right. So let's see what Walmart had on its diverse and inclusion statement last year.

00:56:52.720 This is from, I think, September 2023. They say we believe we're as stronger as a company

00:56:58.400 and a country when all people are included, heard and empowered.

00:57:02.400 We expect all associates to genuinely embrace diversity and inclusion so that we don't accept

00:57:08.000 our differences, but celebrate them all the time and within every team.

00:57:13.760 Right. So that was last year.

00:57:16.560 It's a little bit like Big Brother, isn't it?

00:57:18.320 I know the 1984 illusions are probably overdone, but it's not enough that you just say you love Big

00:57:23.680 Brother. It's not enough just to say the words.

00:57:26.320 You have to celebrate.

00:57:27.520 You have to genuinely believe it deep down in your core, in your soul.

00:57:34.800 You have to believe it.

00:57:36.400 I don't know. I think it's way more Machiavellian than that.

00:57:39.680 We'll see.

00:57:40.400 Okay. To build on our work in this space and aggressively drive change inside and outside our

00:57:45.200 company, in June 2020, we announced that we would develop strategies and invest resources to

00:57:50.640 increase fairness, equity and justice. Yeah.

00:57:53.360 Because this is genuinely what businesses care about.

00:57:57.360 It is a weird development where a place like Walmart is saying,

00:58:02.560 we need to get involved in justice for some reason.

00:58:05.440 Yeah.

00:58:05.840 Yeah.

00:58:05.920 It's like, we sell you things.

00:58:07.120 So anyway, have you ever heard of, you know?

00:58:10.400 Equity.

00:58:11.120 Yeah.

00:58:11.520 Have you ever heard of diversity, Josh?

00:58:14.560 Yeah.

00:58:14.800 We want to sell you equity.

00:58:16.640 I think that diversity might be affecting their profit margin after the 2020 riots.

00:58:21.360 So some of the good things that they are about to do include removal of inappropriate sexual

00:58:26.640 and or transgender products marketed at children, closing of the racial equity center,

00:58:32.320 removal of the term Latinx from all official communication, racial equity training to be

00:58:38.480 discontinued, removal of the term DEI while ensuring a respectful and supportive environment.

00:58:46.480 That seems like a step to the right direction.

00:58:49.600 Yeah.

00:58:50.800 Removing inappropriate sexual and or transgender products marketed at children.

00:58:54.320 Yeah.

00:58:56.160 Yeah.

00:58:56.400 That was a crime to do that in the first place.

00:58:58.960 I think this is the bare minimum for a company to be able to shop there, removing this stuff.

00:59:07.040 It's like, oh, right.

00:59:07.760 You're not forcing strange things onto vulnerable people.

00:59:11.600 Great.

00:59:13.360 So Walmart are putting the woke away.

00:59:16.640 Well, it's one tick in AA's column against Aaron McIntyre.

00:59:19.680 I want to say I accept neither's framework, generally speaking, but I think they're not

00:59:26.560 going to be put away.

00:59:27.520 No, in general terms, I don't think so either.

00:59:29.280 Yeah.

00:59:30.080 So let me just give you a list here of businesses that have backed off on DEI policies as CNN,

00:59:37.120 DoorDash, Ford, Google, Harley Davidson, John Deary, Tractor Supply Company, Jack Daniel's owner,

00:59:43.120 Brown Foreman, Lyft, Microsoft, Snapchat, Tesla, Wayfair, Zoom.

00:59:48.160 So there are many...

00:59:50.320 Just to say quickly, I must say, it would only be to an extent, though.

00:59:54.400 Yeah.

00:59:54.880 Like Google put in woke away.

00:59:56.000 Well, it hasn't entirely, has it?

00:59:57.120 Yeah.

00:59:57.680 It might have dialed it down a bit.

00:59:59.200 It's donated the most to Kamala Harris.

01:00:02.640 Loads of those companies.

01:00:03.520 Which is a pretty tangible thing.

01:00:04.320 It's also worth...

01:00:04.960 Those of those companies in that list, I was like, have they?

01:00:07.680 Have they?

01:00:08.080 They might have dialed it down, but they're not...

01:00:10.560 They haven't become based, have they?

01:00:11.920 Well, DEI has also been rebranded, hasn't it?

01:00:15.200 Because now BlackRock is trotting out this bridge thing that they're trying to get everyone

01:00:20.320 on board with.

01:00:21.040 It's just like, no, this isn't diversity, equity, and inclusion.

01:00:24.560 This is something else.

01:00:27.040 Come and look at our...

01:00:28.080 You know, it's bridge.

01:00:28.880 It can't be bad.

01:00:29.600 Bridges allow you to cross rivers.

01:00:31.200 Therefore, it's not bad.

01:00:32.160 It's not DEI, which is an anagram of die.

01:00:35.280 It's a good thing.

01:00:36.080 Yeah.

01:00:36.720 But it is basically the same stuff.

01:00:38.000 It's bridge nationalism.

01:00:40.960 Right?

01:00:41.680 So how did this happen?

01:00:42.960 So one of the catalysts for this is Tennessee filmmaker Robbie Starbeck, who was preparing

01:00:50.720 a documentary about it, about the DEI policies on Walmart, and contacted them.

01:00:58.240 But apparently they seem to think, well, you might have a point.

01:01:02.240 And they decided to change things.

01:01:04.320 So most probably he is not going to release it.

01:01:07.280 And he makes several announcements.

01:01:09.520 He says, Walmart is ending their work policies.

01:01:12.560 I can now exclusively tell you what's changing and how it happened.

01:01:16.000 And last week he had a talk with executives at Walmart, and he was doing a story about

01:01:23.360 wokeness.

01:01:23.920 Instead, we had productive conversations to find solutions.

01:01:28.400 So it worked.

01:01:30.000 You could say that, you know, conservative activism worked and it actually yielded results.

01:01:35.680 So this is, I would say this is good news.

01:01:37.600 And they say that, and he says the company also reportedly pledged to end its racial equity

01:01:43.680 center, though the company noted to Starbeck that the program was established in 2020 as

01:01:49.360 a special five-year initiative.

01:01:50.960 Oh, five-year plan.

01:01:52.240 Oh, yeah.

01:01:54.240 I see what they did there.

01:01:55.920 Exactly.

01:01:57.120 Who's the CEO?

01:01:58.080 Joseph Stalin, just wearing a different mustache?

01:02:00.640 I must say that I particularly dislike the use of the word discontinue rather than, why

01:02:08.480 not say stop?

01:02:09.520 They say Walmart will discontinue the use of DEI as a term while ensuring a respectful and

01:02:16.720 supportive environment.

01:02:18.480 The company reportedly told Starbeck, our focus is on belonging for all associates and customers.

01:02:23.920 And one other thing that they did is that they use DEI also for suppliers.

01:02:29.600 And they say that, for instance, they try to have a more diverse pool of suppliers and

01:02:35.360 diversity was an issue for selecting suppliers, which is mad if you think about it.

01:02:40.080 Because as a company, you want to basically give the best product you can at the cheapest

01:02:45.840 price possible.

01:02:47.040 So why on earth would a business care about the diversity of the suppliers?

01:02:54.320 It got to the point where they had, not necessarily Walmart, but other companies, they had signs saying

01:03:01.920 black-owned business, white-owned business, woman-owned business, which, you know, unintentionally

01:03:07.840 based, I suppose, but it's probably not the direction you want to go if you want to make money.

01:03:13.840 So it's a good move.

01:03:15.280 I think that this is a step to the right direction.

01:03:17.760 Although I must say, I think that always the devil lies in the detail.

01:03:22.080 And I will specifically be patient and be cautiously optimistic because when they're

01:03:29.280 talking about a respectful and supportive environment, the question is, what do you mean by it?

01:03:34.400 And what are you going to do in order to ensure a respectful and supportive environment?

01:03:39.520 Because if what they're going to say is that we're not, stop going to calling it DEI.

01:03:45.600 We're going to call it somewhere, somewhat differently.

01:03:50.240 Well, that's not of a big change.

01:03:52.240 The whole thing is to be absolutely clear about what it is that you're doing rather than just

01:03:58.640 saying abstractly and vaguely that I want to ensure respect, support and peaceful coexistence.

01:04:06.080 The devil is always in the details.

01:04:08.560 It's always a matter of policies, whether it's company policies or the policies of a nation.

01:04:15.840 Respectful and supportive of whom?

01:04:18.560 Exactly.

01:04:19.040 And in what ways?

01:04:20.640 The fact that they, Walmart had their own racial equity center.

01:04:25.200 What a madness.

01:04:26.720 Yeah.

01:04:27.040 Again, in generations to come, I think, I hope, people look back on stuff like that

01:04:30.720 and it will be, it will be weird. It'll be really weird. It'll be like photographs of

01:04:38.160 of stuff from the 19th or 20th century, which are just alien to us now. Like they had that,

01:04:43.200 they did that.

01:04:43.840 It's a very strange thing for a society that's sort of obsessed with merit to then have a little blip

01:04:50.400 in its history where it's just like, actually, we're about race now again for a little bit.

01:04:55.280 Just a few years.

01:04:56.160 And then we're going to go back to what we did before.

01:04:58.720 It's crazy. And here we have, for instance, a really good indication of how our world and

01:05:07.360 our society has completely changed. Because for instance, we have here medical directors

01:05:13.120 are being asked to play a prominent role within the leadership team to promote diversity, equity

01:05:18.640 and inclusion, and to help identify and address the effects of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia,

01:05:24.560 transphobia, ableism, and other forms of discrimination on the health and well-being

01:05:29.280 of veterans in HBPC and of HBPC stuff.

01:05:34.640 So this is for federal positions and a medical director.

01:05:40.560 Exactly. Yeah.

01:05:42.160 So I'm a doctor of racism.

01:05:44.160 I'm going to fix your racism. I'm going to fix your xenophobia.

01:05:49.200 But also...

01:05:50.080 They're apparently not going to be able to fix the ableism, though, because they can't cure that, apparently.

01:05:54.240 But also, it shows how DEI people don't care about the outcome.

01:05:58.560 And we see this on every sector.

01:06:01.920 Let's take the police, for instance.

01:06:03.600 The police is supposed to guard to ensure public security.

01:06:07.760 For some reason, our sentiment of public safety is being decreasing.

01:06:14.240 People feel less and less public safe.

01:06:16.480 But we do have virtue signaling police forces saying,

01:06:19.360 yeah, we are combating diversity and we have a more diverse police force.

01:06:24.560 Right. So here we have also a segment that I did with Josh called Queering National Security,

01:06:30.080 talking about one of the last really strong pushes for DEI policies in the nuclear sector,

01:06:37.840 saying actually that the nuclear sector requires more queer perspective in order to

01:06:44.560 heighten the public security of the nation against terrorism attacks.

01:06:49.040 This is absolute madness.

01:06:52.640 Right.

01:06:53.040 And the thing here is that we have a really good DEI doesn't work.

01:06:58.160 It doesn't work.

01:06:58.880 We are constantly saying it doesn't.

01:07:01.760 Some people need more of a research to find out that basically we can't have everyone happy

01:07:08.640 and we cannot have a world that is based on saying that everyone should be happy.

01:07:13.520 And if they're not happy, the evil reason is racism and all sorts of negative things.

01:07:22.560 It just doesn't work.

01:07:24.400 And a lot of a lot of media outlets were invested into show into silencing stories that this wouldn't work.

01:07:34.800 We have here an excellent thread by Colin Wright, who is talking about how the New York Times and

01:07:40.720 business killed stories at the 11th hour, covering new research on DEI pedagogy and its negative

01:07:46.880 psychological impacts.

01:07:48.160 And as they say, the study showed that certain DEI practices increase hostility, authoritarian tendencies

01:07:54.960 and agreement with extreme rhetoric.

01:07:56.960 Definitely check this thread out.

01:07:59.120 And we have here people all across the political spectrum and from all kinds of groups saying that DEI is not working.

01:08:10.640 Anyone paying attention knew DEI was toxic.

01:08:13.600 A new study shows just how toxic.

01:08:16.560 This is from Free Black Thought.

01:08:18.000 DEI failed to reduce prejudice towards oppressed groups.

01:08:22.320 Increased prejudice against supposed oppressor groups made people see prejudice in interactions

01:08:28.560 in the absence of actual prejudice and made people want to punish perpetrators.

01:08:33.280 And also we have Brianna Wu.

01:08:36.320 She says that she was actively pushing for this, but at some point data suggested that it doesn't work.

01:08:44.480 Right.

01:08:44.720 So I think we should talk a bit about the issue of triumphalism because I think it's a bit misplaced.

01:08:51.120 Any kind of triumphalism is usually misplaced because it ignores the historical context.

01:08:58.640 It might be worth defining what you mean by that.

01:09:01.040 I think I know what you mean.

01:09:02.080 Just gloating that we've already won.

01:09:04.000 Yeah, we've won.

01:09:05.040 And for instance, I have a tweet that seems to me to be the most indicative of what I'm talking about.

01:09:11.360 Wait, you mean Piers Morgan isn't giving cutting edge, insightful political commentary, Stelios?

01:09:17.680 There are a lot of people who are pushing forward this triumphalist narrative that says wokeism is dead,

01:09:23.440 identity politics is dead, virtue signaling is dead.

01:09:26.400 A lot of politicians are doing.

01:09:28.560 You would sort of expect it from Republican politicians.

01:09:31.280 I mean, Donald Trump Jr. is doing it, but he's a political actor.

01:09:36.240 He's not a journalist.

01:09:37.360 Good to see Andy Ngo there saying, no, they're not in the replies.

01:09:42.400 Piers Morgan continues, says,

01:09:43.840 As Trump's massive win was a total repudiation of all the far left's progressive but actually regressive crap,

01:09:49.760 common sense will now return to a world that had gone nuts, and thank God for that.

01:09:53.840 Common sense never went anywhere.

01:09:56.320 Common sense is just a propaganda word.

01:09:59.920 I find it really annoying when people say common sense,

01:10:02.640 because I think the only thing that's held in common is stupidity, not sense.

01:10:08.240 Yeah, so I want to say something.

01:10:10.000 It looks like when we're looking at it, we're saying, okay, people must be mad in order to push forward these narratives.

01:10:16.640 But I think that there's an underlying logic that if we understand, it may reveal to us that this isn't going anywhere.

01:10:24.720 And sadly, it isn't going anywhere.

01:10:26.480 And any kind of rhetoric of the sort that wokeism is dead is actually going to have very negative effects.

01:10:34.000 It's going to make people less vigilant, less and more prone to rest on their own laurels and say, right, we won.

01:10:42.400 Now everything is going to work magically.

01:10:44.280 It's not.

01:10:45.060 Actually, now it's one major victory.

01:10:49.220 I'm talking about Trump's victory.

01:10:50.480 But things are really now starting.

01:10:53.840 They're now beginning.

01:10:55.040 It's the beginning of a cultural victory.

01:10:57.120 It's not the end of it.

01:10:58.680 Absolutely, yeah.

01:10:59.360 I was going to say we've barely begun to push back, really.

01:11:02.560 It's far, far, far too early to count your chickens.

01:11:05.960 Wokeism is dead.

01:11:06.880 Identity politics is dead.

01:11:08.140 Virtue signaling is dead.

01:11:09.320 Well, not in the cabinet room.

01:11:10.520 It's not.

01:11:11.560 Not in Sir Keir's government.

01:11:14.360 It's not.

01:11:15.040 When will virtue signaling ever die?

01:11:17.920 Yeah, right.

01:11:18.380 Yeah, that will never die.

01:11:20.480 Also, identity politics will never die as long as human beings have genetics.

01:11:26.560 Yeah.

01:11:27.220 This is a nonsense.

01:11:28.180 It's like a war on drugs or the war on terrorism or war on identity politics.

01:11:31.720 A war on virtue signaling.

01:11:33.280 It's a war on something inherent in the human condition.

01:11:36.220 War on water.

01:11:37.680 Yeah.

01:11:38.980 You're right.

01:11:39.640 A virtue signaling will never die.

01:11:41.100 People will always do that.

01:11:43.680 Just accept that it's part of human nature and, you know, you don't have to agree with it.

01:11:47.600 You can advise people not do it.

01:11:49.640 But don't delude yourself and think it's going to disappear entirely.

01:11:52.920 That's exactly why I'm saying that this has the exact opposite effects.

01:11:57.400 When you're telling people, okay, right, we won.

01:11:59.820 Good won.

01:12:00.980 So there's no more evil in the world.

01:12:03.040 No, it's not going to work.

01:12:04.360 So it's good if people turn their back to this rhetoric and learn to distinguish between political statements of, you know, triumph when upon a victory, which are, you know, good, but they are not to be taken literally.

01:12:19.140 And I think that there is an underlying logic, which is essentially the following.

01:12:24.840 Wokeness isn't going anywhere because fundamentally it is the perfect tool to divide and conquer.

01:12:30.300 And in societies of the Western type, the best way to dominate people both in their nation and country and also in their workforce is to impose a kind of framework where everyone is guilty by default.

01:12:47.340 Where everyone is so scared to upset anyone else and everyone is potentially someone who is going to be deemed a far right racist because they didn't look, they didn't say good morning to their colleague or because they criticize the government.

01:13:03.380 It's the most, the most powerful weapon to divide, to dominate people because also it's covert.

01:13:12.020 You could say that in societies that praise freedom, liberty, reason, wisdom, whatever, and virtue, the kind of infiltration and subversion didn't work when it was avert, but this is covert.

01:13:25.960 This is actually covert operation to create, to completely subvert the, you could say, a lot of classical liberal insights by saying that, right, the proper, the proper relation of society and of government isn't the idea of having a government that is supposed to owe you, that has obligation towards its people to safeguard their rights.

01:13:53.820 It's only permission.

01:13:54.820 So what wokeism does is both in the workforce and in people's country, it turns rights into permissions.

01:14:06.400 So when you have really subjective rules within your workforce, your workplace and your country, you're at the mercy of whoever is administering those rules.

01:14:19.380 That's why I think wokeism isn't going anywhere and people should definitely be vigilant against it.

01:14:27.180 Now, of course, one of its surface forms may change and here we may have some indications about it, but that doesn't mean that the underlying rationale is going to change.

01:14:37.520 And we have here some trends of word use in academia and you see, for instance, that after the turn of the 21st century, there's a spike in the words, word use of terms like transphobia, Islamophobia.

01:14:54.460 There's also in racism, sexism and, you know, words like that, but mostly if you see it's transphobia and Islamophobia.

01:15:06.240 And this is a good indicator.

01:15:08.160 That's not an indicator of support necessarily because word use just indicates discourse, but academia isn't the place of where ideal discourse is taking place.

01:15:19.760 And we should just say a couple of those graphs are very, very interesting.

01:15:25.620 The sexism one.

01:15:27.880 Yeah, like sort of third wave feminism before that just sort of wasn't much of a thing.

01:15:33.360 The transphobia thing, yeah, completely fabricated in the early 2000s.

01:15:37.200 Just tiny number of people are actually trans, let alone transphobic.

01:15:45.000 People didn't even know it existed back then, did they?

01:15:47.080 Well, it's just it's just such a tiny number of people that it applies to.

01:15:50.800 But the interesting one is Islamophobia.

01:15:52.980 And I've said this before, I'm pretty sure.

01:15:56.340 And for a lot of the younger people, the Zoomers don't know this.

01:15:59.340 But before 9-11, in Britain anyway, I think in most of the West, Islam was not a big thing.

01:16:07.340 It just wasn't a big thing.

01:16:08.780 Our countries weren't flooded with people from Islamic countries.

01:16:12.340 Islam itself, as a religion, as a creed, didn't crop up, didn't come up.

01:16:17.980 Straight after 9-11, people didn't know that usually Muslims don't wear turbans.

01:16:22.800 Usually that's more of a Sikh thing, sometimes a Hindu thing.

01:16:25.400 Anyway, wearing a turban is not synonymous with being Muslim, right?

01:16:30.200 People didn't even know that.

01:16:31.460 People were going around in some punitive attacks against people wearing turbans because they thought they were Muslim.

01:16:36.620 That's how little Islam had an impact, any sort of day-to-day impact on particularly British, I would say, or Western culture and civilisation.

01:16:45.360 It just wasn't on the radar.

01:16:47.260 I mean, you can see on that graph, look, before the year 2000, almost nothing.

01:16:52.220 Almost nothing.

01:16:52.860 The guy that owned the corner shop, or your doctor, might be a Dr. Patel, or kindly Mr. Khan in the corner shop.

01:16:58.520 That was it.

01:16:59.680 No one talked about Islam.

01:17:01.580 No one knew anything really about Islam.

01:17:03.460 There was no, it was just, it wasn't on the radar.

01:17:07.120 And that graph speaks volumes to me because that's what I remember.

01:17:12.340 Before 9-11, it wasn't a thing.

01:17:14.240 And then ever since 9-11, it's the whole, it's everything.

01:17:18.060 It's like, you can't get away from it.

01:17:19.740 But the point is that there is discourse about all these ideas and all these movements, let's say,

01:17:27.460 and what are being represented here are not compatible.

01:17:31.280 So what wokeness does is it says, okay, we are going to take incompatible groups and we're going to put them in the same area, let's say,

01:17:41.200 whether it's the workplace or it's society at large, and we're going to create chaos and big government will be needed in order to mitigate that chaos.

01:17:51.800 And people should never forget Judith Butler saying, Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of the global left.

01:18:01.680 And why do I say this?

01:18:02.760 Because this reminds me of the old Marxist maxim that communists should infiltrate all kind of revolutionary movements and unite them under one goal.

01:18:15.660 So this isn't going anywhere and people who are saying that wokeism is dead or identity politics is dead or it's never going to come back, I think that they are seriously mistaken.

01:18:28.740 It's good that Walmart is rolling back its program, but people should remain vigilant against this disastrous policies of the sort.

01:18:36.240 And anyone who doesn't know Judith Butler, pure filth, I mean, when, again, people look back on the first portion of the 21st century and wonder why the West or the world to some degree seem to have lost its mind.

01:18:53.520 It's people like Butler that did it.

01:18:56.800 It's exactly people like her.

01:18:58.160 And the people that agreed with her and went along with what she said.

01:19:03.740 Is there anyone that embodies sort of boomer chaos than Judith Butler?

01:19:08.320 And also, I have friends who you'd say are on the Democrat side who told me that basically they read it, they tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, the books she has written.

01:19:17.720 It's all nonsense.

01:19:18.820 Yeah, of course.

01:19:19.520 It's more destructive.

01:19:20.960 She doesn't even put anything positive on its own.

01:19:24.780 She just says other theories aren't perfect.

01:19:27.180 Well, OK, well, you told her, you really illuminated this.

01:19:30.660 Have you seen her lock holes with Slavoj Zizek?

01:19:33.380 No, but that was funny.

01:19:34.360 Was he touching his nose all the time?

01:19:35.920 Yeah.

01:19:36.600 I was about to blow my nose.

01:19:37.740 Right.

01:19:38.560 The last Russian says DI is being rebranded to bridge just as Kirsch has talked about it, about it will just be buried deeper within HR document.

01:19:50.160 Nothing will change unless HR is disbanded and progressives get purged from orgs.

01:19:55.440 I think that's correct.

01:19:57.180 Right.

01:19:57.800 On to our video comments.

01:19:58.860 Let's go to, what's the first one?

01:20:01.780 Russian government's human.

01:20:02.700 So, the BBC always insists on using lots of diversity in their stock photos.

01:20:10.500 I have lots of running jokes on this.

01:20:13.300 This is the norm.

01:20:14.220 We have all noticed it.

01:20:15.160 But have you also noticed where they don't use diversity?

01:20:18.760 On the recent topic of euthanasia and assisted dying, I've noticed quite a pernicious trend.

01:20:24.520 No diversity in their stock photos whatsoever.

01:20:27.300 Only white people.

01:20:28.720 It is very clear what is being implied.

01:20:32.040 Feel free to have a look yourself.

01:20:33.220 Maybe it's all in my imagination.

01:20:36.540 They definitely do do that.

01:20:38.100 They selectively pick.

01:20:39.860 If it's someone in a job, it's a black person.

01:20:42.500 If it's someone dying or something unpleasant happening to them, it's a white person.

01:20:46.500 And that is pretty explicit.

01:20:49.020 Although, to be fair, there aren't nearly as many old black people in Britain as there are young black people in Britain.

01:20:55.820 Just, well, but for lots of reasons.

01:20:58.120 One of which is a lot of them are recent arrivals.

01:21:00.920 So, they're not going to be that old yet.

01:21:03.440 Just because people migrate when they're younger.

01:21:06.540 Let's go to the next one.

01:21:07.520 To be fair,

01:21:37.520 Yeah, we have hostile Indians these days as well.

01:21:39.900 But they're not quite the same.

01:21:42.200 A bit more similar to Columbus's original intentions, really.

01:21:46.360 Do they have PhDs in engineering?

01:21:48.760 Yes.

01:21:49.820 Not in sanitation, though.

01:21:51.620 Okay.

01:21:52.140 Or refuse disposal.

01:21:53.220 Oh, I'm looking at an onion.

01:21:56.660 Stelios' favourite vegetable.

01:21:58.280 The onion of deception.

01:21:59.840 It is beautiful from the outside, just like this one.

01:22:03.960 But the truth is, the onion of deception is rotten on the inside.

01:22:10.360 And the only way to know is to peel back the layers of the onion and examine it, and you will find the rot within.

01:22:19.200 Thanks, California refugee.

01:22:22.300 This is exactly what I'm thinking.

01:22:24.220 Stage one is utopia.

01:22:25.580 Everything is fine.

01:22:26.920 We'll work on the next stages, slowly.

01:22:29.840 Before now, I've talked about the onion of historiography.

01:22:33.200 Trying to get to objective historical fact, which isn't actually possible.

01:22:36.680 But still, peel the onion of historiography to try and get to what's true.

01:22:41.040 But what I always think of when people talk about the onion of deception now, is there's a bit in Friends.

01:22:48.300 I think it's when Joey was doing some sort of play, and the director was trying to get more out of his performance.

01:22:56.680 And he was like, peel the onion of the character in the play.

01:23:01.320 But that always comes, whenever anyone talks about the onion of deception, that line from Friends comes into my mind.

01:23:06.760 I had to say it at some point.

01:23:07.940 I just imagine Stelios biting an onion like an apple, and just being unfazed by the fact he's eating an onion.

01:23:15.940 We'd have the podcast of the onion pillars.

01:23:19.740 Right, let's go to the...

01:23:20.640 Convince Carl to rebrand.

01:23:22.680 Let's go to the next one.

01:23:25.280 Ah, okay.

01:23:26.000 These are comments, okay?

01:23:27.980 Right.

01:23:28.320 Hey, that video looks exactly like our written comments.

01:23:31.080 Do you want to start with your comments?

01:23:33.060 I can do, I suppose.

01:23:34.360 Oh, they're appearing on the page in front of me.

01:23:39.660 John the Trumpeter was a DEI hire.

01:23:41.680 Very fitting name there.

01:23:43.180 It's weird how the people who love guns didn't bring them in the exact time and place they would have been perfect to overthrow the government.

01:23:50.540 Makes you think.

01:23:51.700 I know.

01:23:52.300 It's ridiculous, isn't it?

01:23:55.180 Oh, we've got a rumble chat in as well.

01:23:57.860 My favourite gents in a heart, goblins.

01:24:01.280 I, too, respect goblins.

01:24:04.060 I am the goblin whisperer of the office.

01:24:06.980 Lord Nerevar says,

01:24:08.000 All these cases against Trump are purely to grab headlines.

01:24:10.820 They almost always fall completely apart under even the slightest scrutiny.

01:24:14.520 Makes one think of the partiality of the justice system, doesn't it?

01:24:18.900 Oh, yeah.

01:24:19.440 Well, I think all of that's going to change.

01:24:21.000 And I'll do one more.

01:24:21.640 Paul Neubauer, not to mention that the FBI unit was created.

01:24:28.520 The wit market napping schemes were transferred to D.C. to do the Jan 6th riot.

01:24:34.020 I don't know about that thing that you've mentioned there, so I have to look into that.

01:24:38.440 Right.

01:24:39.220 Take us away, Bo.

01:24:40.620 Okay.

01:24:41.220 Jimbo G says,

01:24:42.840 If anyone from the Kremlin is watching, our most strategic target is Birmingham.

01:24:46.480 Yeah.

01:24:47.780 If you're going to...

01:24:48.500 Dear the Kremlin,

01:24:49.140 If you must drop thermonuclear weapons on us...

01:24:54.400 I have a list.

01:24:55.400 Oldham.

01:24:56.780 Birmingham.

01:24:58.280 Whitechapel in London.

01:24:59.320 Blackburn, Whitechapel.

01:25:00.860 Use a small tactical nuke.

01:25:02.640 Rotherham.

01:25:03.540 Rotherham.

01:25:05.000 North FC Zuma says,

01:25:06.620 Always enjoy Bo's, quote, modern warfare segments.

01:25:09.820 Would like to see him do some more.

01:25:11.340 How would X-Country versus X-Country go?

01:25:13.920 Yeah, I'd love to do that sort of thing.

01:25:15.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:25:16.540 Yeah.

01:25:16.680 John the Trumpeter was a DEI hire, says.

01:25:21.280 But Bo, if Britain doesn't go to war with Russia, how else will BAE systems get all those defence contracts?

01:25:28.460 Yeah, there is the worry, always the constant thing of that there's lots and lots of jobs and profits to be made in arms manufacturing.

01:25:35.940 You know, you see those old propaganda pictures with a really fat cat and they're drinking all the water and a little drip goes to a starved person.

01:25:46.820 I like to think of a sort of satire where it's the British population is the fat cat and the poor weapons manufacturers are that starving, skinny creature of a person that is getting that drop of water.

01:26:01.780 Adrian Webb says, more likely, I think Russia would attack us by subverting our culture and getting us to attack and undermine ourselves.

01:26:12.500 Oh, wait.

01:26:12.840 It's unfortunately the most efficient and safest way to defeat a country.

01:26:19.500 Yeah, yeah.

01:26:20.640 It's covert.

01:26:21.460 People don't understand it.

01:26:24.060 42% of the time, Britain harms itself.

01:26:27.260 Right.

01:26:28.160 Nazisi Stelios.

01:26:29.620 My wife, Steliana, shares your name day.

01:26:32.660 Happy name day for your wife as well.

01:26:34.200 What's Nazisi's?

01:26:35.620 It's, you should live, you know, live, I wish you a long life.

01:26:40.980 Oh, okay.

01:26:42.240 Jane Ginger, happy name day Stelios.

01:26:44.720 Thank you very much.

01:26:45.820 George Happ.

01:26:46.900 Just because some companies are rolling back or hiding their DEI initiatives by renaming them, it doesn't mean that the fight is over.

01:26:54.360 The culture war will take years, if not generations.

01:26:58.000 So people declaring victory are just lazy.

01:27:00.800 All these companies still hate you and don't deserve your money.

01:27:04.200 Yeah, I absolutely agree with George Happ.

01:27:07.960 It's not like Piers Morgan, you know, has much to lose if he's wrong.

01:27:12.220 I mean, he's already made his money, hasn't he?

01:27:14.260 He lives a very comfortable and insulated life from the consequences of his own opinions.

01:27:19.880 But also, when we're talking about culture wars, we're talking about institutions.

01:27:24.120 And institutions just don't guard themselves.

01:27:27.220 They're guarded by people.

01:27:28.480 So whenever we're talking about a culture that has good institutions, institutions that we praise, we are talking about, there is a necessity for the population for safeguarding them against subversion.

01:27:44.480 And that will never go away.

01:27:47.100 And Piers Morgan is sort of in the same category as someone like Rachel Maddow or Don Lemon in the sense that he sort of seems to be able to be completely wrong.

01:27:55.380 Completely shown to be utterly, utterly wrong.

01:27:58.720 And then it doesn't ruin his career and he's not taken off air or anything.

01:28:01.540 He still just carries on.

01:28:03.280 Like might once say, oh, yeah, I was wrong about that.

01:28:05.280 It's like a media cockroach in the sense that they can survive anything.

01:28:09.920 Yeah, yeah, right.

01:28:10.600 Like, you know, when he said, oh, I was wrong about COVID at the beginning when I said everyone should cover up and take vaccines and all that sort of stuff.

01:28:17.560 And then a few years later when the worm had turned, he said, oh, the science has changed.

01:28:22.640 So I've changed my mind.

01:28:23.540 It's like, oh, all right then.

01:28:26.260 Fine.

01:28:26.720 All right then, Piers.

01:28:27.320 So that science that everyone else was looking at to make up their minds, that was just, you know, disinformation.

01:28:32.340 Matt D says, I kind of put into words just how absolutely crazy and demonic it is that any company should be selling things like chest binders in the first place, let alone market it to children.

01:28:41.860 I often try to put myself in the shoes of someone born 100 years in the future and imagine how I would think about this.

01:28:48.040 I think it will be seen as full on evil if, you know, the really wrong side doesn't win.

01:28:56.560 Massively, at least.

01:28:57.340 I absolutely agree with that.

01:28:58.680 When you look back and you see the early photographs, say, of child labourers or workers in factories, little seven-year-old chimney sweeps and things, you look at those images and you think, wow, that's another world.

01:29:12.800 We really did that?

01:29:13.680 I know.

01:29:13.920 We should get back to that.

01:29:15.600 Yeah.

01:29:16.160 If you look at photographs of a lynching, you're like, oh, that's terrible.

01:29:21.000 But then when people will look back at footage of maybe Black Lives Matter people accosting random white people outside a restaurant for daring to be white in public and stuff, I think, I hope generations will look back at that and see that was an abomination.

01:29:37.980 I hope we don't.

01:29:38.700 That was a blip.

01:29:39.460 I hope.

01:29:40.040 I hope.

01:29:40.660 I mean, I've watched Planet of the Apes.

01:29:43.620 You know, that's a bad scenario.

01:29:45.120 Where's this going, Stalios?

01:29:46.440 No, no, it's just, I'm talking about the movie.

01:29:48.440 Come on.

01:29:48.660 Right.

01:29:50.240 And last comment, Richard, Monique, and them, divide and conquer.

01:29:53.140 It's worked well for millennia.

01:29:54.820 DI is going nowhere.

01:29:56.420 Subversion is a covert use of power like safetyism.

01:29:59.520 Minority rule.

01:30:00.320 What a farce.

01:30:01.340 I absolutely agree with this statement.

01:30:04.260 Yeah.

01:30:04.920 Right.

01:30:05.320 And on that note, our podcast has come to an end.

01:30:09.380 You can come and visit us tomorrow at one o'clock.

01:30:12.440 We will be with you.

01:30:13.660 We will be broadcasting, sharing our views with you about current affairs.

01:30:19.600 Thank you and goodbye.

01:30:20.860 We'll see you next time.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 26, 2024

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1050

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