TRIGGERnometry - How Elites Betrayed Working People - Batya Ungar Sargon

00:00:00.960 You look at who is doing those jobs now.

00:00:03.440 It is teenagers who have been trafficked here,

00:00:06.400 who are enslaved to the cartels who brought them here. 0.98

00:00:09.200 We are importing slaves and sex slaves. 0.99

00:00:11.440 A lot of them are children. 0.89

00:00:13.360 Mass immigration raises the GDP.

00:00:15.440 Of course it raises the GDP.

00:00:16.960 It makes rich people very, very rich.

00:00:19.440 The problem is GDP is not equally distributed.

00:00:21.760 And this was 100% by design.

00:00:25.520 We don't have a political divide in America.

00:00:27.600 We have a class divide.

00:00:29.520 I would never move to Israel.

00:00:30.960 Like if this country is going to go down for the Jews, 1.00

00:00:33.360 I'm going down with this ship. 0.99

00:00:34.720 They're going to take this country from my cold, dead hands.

00:00:38.720 Batya, so you're pretty unique 0.99

00:00:40.960 in that you must be one of the very few people in the world

00:00:43.440 who says that the polarization that everyone's talking about

00:00:46.400 in America, and maybe in other Western countries too,

00:00:48.720 isn't really happening.

00:00:51.280 What are you talking about?

00:00:52.720 Um, I'm actually not that unique.

00:00:54.400 I'm unique, I guess, in the elites and the chattering class 1.00

00:00:57.040 to have that view.

00:00:58.160 And the reason for that is because the people pushing

00:01:01.520 the fact that we're polarized as a reality

00:01:04.480 are the people who are making a lot of money off of that idea

00:01:06.640 and getting a lot of power off of that idea.

00:01:08.560 So it's elites in the media, elites in politics,

00:01:11.360 social media companies.

00:01:12.880 But the truth is, is when you look at polling

00:01:14.960 and when you talk to average Americans,

00:01:17.360 regular working class Americans, middle class Americans,

00:01:19.680 as I did in my book, you find that there is huge,

00:01:24.000 massive consensus on the issues that we think of

00:01:28.400 as the most contentious, most divisive issues.

00:01:32.480 And this has been hidden from view because the people

00:01:34.720 telling the story about this nation have a vested interest

00:01:39.040 in pushing the idea that we're polarized

00:01:41.200 when nothing could be further from the truth.

00:01:42.720 So I'll just give you a few easy examples.

00:01:45.440 Abortion, right? 0.99

00:01:46.560 You know, looks like this is a country at each other's throats.

00:01:49.520 You know, people are pro-life, people are pro-choice.

00:01:52.720 You look at the polling and half the nation says

00:01:54.800 I'm pro-life and half the nation says I'm pro-choice.

00:01:57.600 But if you dig down into those numbers,

00:01:59.920 65% of people who say that they're pro-choice,

00:02:03.040 they only want abortion to be legal for the first trimester.

00:02:06.400 So 12 to 15 weeks.

00:02:08.080 And the people who say they're pro-life,

00:02:09.920 92% of them say there should be

00:02:12.160 exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother.

00:02:15.360 So you're already looking at, you know,

00:02:17.040 there's a position here that has 80% support

00:02:20.240 among the American electorate.

00:02:22.640 And of course, this is totally hidden from view

00:02:24.720 because you have politicians on the right pushing for

00:02:27.200 total abortion bans with no exceptions,

00:02:29.440 and politicians on the left who effectively refuse to say,

00:02:33.040 OK, at what point should it be illegal to have an abortion? 0.91

00:02:35.600 What is the upper limit on that?

00:02:37.520 The same thing is true if you look at guns.

00:02:39.920 Most Americans are pro-gun and pro-background checks and pro, 0.74

00:02:45.120 you know, reasonable gun legislation.

00:02:47.680 Most Americans are pro-life but anti-ban.

00:02:52.000 They don't want to see abortion get banned,

00:02:53.760 even if they would say to you,

00:02:54.800 as many of the people in the book said to me,

00:02:56.320 I myself would never get an abortion,

00:02:58.960 but I would never take that right away from a woman 1.00

00:03:01.360 whose circumstances I don't particularly understand.

00:03:03.520 There's a sort of radical, radical moderateness

00:03:07.360 threading itself through the American working class.

00:03:10.240 Most working class Americans,

00:03:11.840 everybody interviewed for my book,

00:03:13.200 and again, polling backs this up,

00:03:14.960 want much fewer immigrants and much more access to health care. 1.00

00:03:21.360 So again, neither party is representing that point of view.

00:03:25.280 You've got one party that says,

00:03:26.960 OK, we'll talk about access to health care and expanding that,

00:03:30.160 but we believe in an open border.

00:03:32.240 And then the other party that says,

00:03:33.600 well, we believe in closing the border.

00:03:35.280 We believe in having really stricter immigration laws, 0.99

00:03:37.840 but they'll never say the word health care,

00:03:39.280 except as a slur.

00:03:40.560 And so you really had the working class, 0.83

00:03:42.320 this sort of vast American middle,

00:03:44.320 60, 65% of Americans with these extremely moderate views,

00:03:48.560 sort of falling between the two parties.

00:03:51.360 And that's really where I think a lot

00:03:52.560 of Donald Trump's support comes from.

00:03:54.560 He's not a conservative.

00:03:56.080 He really did sort of look at that sort of forgotten middle,

00:04:00.240 both from an ideological point of view,

00:04:02.320 and from an economic point of view and say,

00:04:03.840 OK, what can we do for these people?

00:04:05.120 How can we represent them?

00:04:06.480 Do you think the reason that...

00:04:08.640 It almost sounds like you're saying that Americans

00:04:11.600 don't disagree, but they are polarized by the parties.

00:04:15.040 It sort of feels like that.

00:04:17.120 Do you think that's because the parties are playing

00:04:19.840 to the extremes of their base,

00:04:22.080 and therefore taking positions that are stronger

00:04:24.960 than what the average person would want?

00:04:27.360 We don't have a political divide in America.

00:04:29.440 We have a class divide.

00:04:31.200 And so we have one party that's really getting 70%

00:04:35.440 of the working class, which is the Republican Party,

00:04:38.080 and that's increasingly of all races,

00:04:39.920 the multiracial working class.

00:04:42.240 And then you have the other party, the Democrats,

00:04:44.320 who are catering to the college-educated elites

00:04:47.760 and then the dependent poor.

00:04:49.680 So you have the Democrats sort of taking the economic polls

00:04:53.040 and the Republicans representing the middle.

00:04:55.920 And in this election cycle, it's been fascinating to watch

00:04:59.200 how that class divide has turned into a gender divide,

00:05:02.640 because, of course, women are 15 points more likely 1.00

00:05:05.120 to have a college degree in America now.

00:05:07.360 And so what that does is, when you have that college degree

00:05:10.080 in America, you have more access to the American dream.

00:05:12.720 You have more stability in your life,

00:05:14.400 which frees you up to vote on things like abortion

00:05:17.280 or symbolic issues like January 6th,

00:05:19.920 whereas working class people are really struggling.

00:05:22.560 And so they're very, very focused on economic issues.

00:05:25.760 And Donald Trump really did create an economy

00:05:28.640 that was very protectionist in nature

00:05:31.280 and managed to somehow keep inflation low

00:05:34.400 while working class wages were on the rise

00:05:36.400 for the first time in 60 years.

00:05:37.920 And I think a lot of people are feeling,

00:05:39.520 we just want to get back to 2019.

00:05:42.480 It's not like they're trying to get back

00:05:43.840 to some distant racist past as the way you hear about it

00:05:47.280 when you turn on MSNBC or CNN or read the New York Times.

00:05:51.040 They just want a little bit more breathing room

00:05:54.080 in an economy that's become very prohibitive

00:05:56.000 for working class people.

00:05:57.360 Batcha, I saw a video where you said that the Democrats

00:06:00.720 are the party of the college educated woman.

00:06:04.080 What do you mean by that?

00:06:05.040 So the polarization in this country is really along class lines.

00:06:11.280 You have an educated elite, the top 20%,

00:06:14.400 who now control over 50% of the GDP.

00:06:18.240 So the last 50 years of democratic economic policy

00:06:22.000 has effectively been an upward transfer of wealth

00:06:25.760 from the working class to this educated elite.

00:06:29.200 You know, the left loves to rail against the billionaires.

00:06:32.560 But if you compare the share of the economy

00:06:34.480 that's controlled by billionaires today

00:06:36.720 to the share of the economy that was controlled

00:06:38.320 by billionaires in 1971, which was the high watermark

00:06:41.120 for working class wages after which they started to drop,

00:06:43.920 has not significantly changed.

00:06:46.080 So what did change?

00:06:47.040 Where did all of that GDP that used to be

00:06:48.880 in the middle class go?

00:06:50.000 It went to the top 20%.

00:06:52.160 Having a college degree has become the gatekeeper 0.74

00:06:55.600 of whether you have access to the most modest version

00:06:58.320 of the American dream, home ownership,

00:07:00.240 being able to retire in dignity,

00:07:02.160 your children having the option to get an education,

00:07:05.280 being upwardly mobile, or even just being stable

00:07:07.760 and having adequate healthcare.

00:07:09.360 These are all things now that are heavily correlated

00:07:11.760 with having a college degree.

00:07:13.360 If you don't have that college degree,

00:07:14.720 you're very likely to be struggling to be downwardly mobile,

00:07:17.600 to be working two jobs, not to have the same protections

00:07:20.400 and the same safety net.

00:07:22.320 And what ended up happening was,

00:07:24.080 starting with Bill Clinton, who signed NAFTA into law,

00:07:26.960 which was a disastrous trade deal

00:07:28.560 that shipped five million very good paying

00:07:30.800 working class jobs overseas to build up China 0.71

00:07:33.360 and Mexico's middle class. 0.62

00:07:35.440 You know, you then had President Barack Obama

00:07:37.600 who defunded vocational training in schools,

00:07:41.200 which meant that this wonderful avenue to the middle class,

00:07:45.440 for people who are not studious,

00:07:47.200 for people who don't like to sit and study for hours

00:07:50.400 and hours on end, who are not good at listening to authority

00:07:53.680 and sitting in the front row of school and answering every question

00:07:56.800 and studying algebra and Shakespeare.

00:07:58.640 These people still had an avenue to the middle class

00:08:02.480 through the sweat of their brow and their brawn,

00:08:05.200 very much associated with masculinity and men.

00:08:08.560 And so these two, you know, the factory jobs and vocational training,

00:08:12.400 these were two very good avenues for working class men into the middle class

00:08:17.120 that were destroyed by successive democratic administrations.

00:08:20.720 And then, of course, both parties had a very lax immigration policy,

00:08:24.880 which meant that we were routinely shipping in millions and millions of low wage competition

00:08:30.560 for working class Americans.

00:08:32.560 And it's very interesting because at the same time that these economic policies were being put in place,

00:08:37.760 what you had was this discourse in the 80s and 90s arise around toxic masculinity, right?

00:08:44.480 This idea that somehow being a macho man, being a provider, being the head of a family,

00:08:51.040 being a man who protects and supports and hits on women in bars and knows,

00:08:56.400 you know, mating rituals and excels at them, that this was somehow poison.

00:09:01.600 And it's my view that this discourse took off because it was operating as an alibi for the left,

00:09:10.080 for the fact that they were destroying the self-esteem, but also the ability of men to provide for families

00:09:17.440 and heavily weighting the economy in favor of women who go to college, who are more studious, 0.98

00:09:24.000 who have more social skills in favor of this knowledge economy that rewards women and men 1.00

00:09:29.920 who excel at more sort of feminine qualities like, you know, social science, so social qualities that 0.99

00:09:36.560 you need in these sort of laptop desk jobs, you know, how to, you know, respond nicely to people

00:09:41.200 who ask you for things, you know, how to sit for long hours staring at a screen, talking on a podcast,

00:09:46.000 talking on a podcast, you know, being very, you know, good with authority,

00:09:50.000 knowing how to climb the corporate ladder by pleasing your higher ups and all of this stuff.

00:09:54.640 So in my view, that that's sort of how we're seeing right now really is the culmination of that,

00:10:00.000 of the class divide and the gender divide really sort of becoming one in the same.

00:10:03.760 And I've seen you talk about this where you talk about, and I think it's a great example,

00:10:08.640 which is the meatpacking industry. Can you talk about that? Because I found that fascinating,

00:10:13.920 the way you described it.

00:10:14.960 It meatpacking used to be the job to have. You would have a town where the economy was

00:10:22.320 really built around a meatpacking plant. You know, a lot of the men, a lot of the women would get 0.81

00:10:27.280 employed there. The wages were incredible. The hours were incredible. The retirement was incredible.

00:10:32.400 When you got that job, you knew that you were going to be able to support a family and retire in

00:10:36.960 dignity and have a home and have a truck and maybe have a pool in the backyard. These were amazing jobs.

00:10:43.440 And you look at who is doing those jobs now. It is teenagers who have been trafficked here,

00:10:49.520 who are enslaved to the cartels who brought them here from failed socialist countries in South 0.91

00:10:54.080 America and Central America. They get a bracelet when they start making the journey. And that bracelet

00:11:00.080 has a color. And the color tells you how much money they owe the cartels. We know that 50% of the women 1.00

00:11:07.440 who have made that border crossing admit to being sexually assaulted. So you can imagine what the

00:11:14.480 actual number is. We are importing slaves and sex slaves. A lot of them are children. And that is who 0.99

00:11:20.720 is now packing the meat. They are almost entirely staffed by undocumented, often underage workers.

00:11:28.480 It is absolutely appalling. And this was 100% by design. So every time Alejandro Mayorkas,

00:11:35.840 who's the head of the Department of Homeland Security, who's supposed to be in charge of

00:11:39.280 securing the border, was hauled before Congress or before the Senate, and they asked him,

00:11:43.520 why is the border open? He would say to their faces, our corporations are desperate for workers.

00:11:51.520 It has become the Democrats' party line that without a cast of slaves, our economy cannot survive. 0.59

00:12:00.720 And it's absolutely appalling because there is a direct correlation between downward mobility for

00:12:06.080 the working class and the rise of immigrants. So you look at 1971, again, the sort of high watermark

00:12:10.880 for working class wages. We can say, okay, what was working there that stopped working so that the 0.58

00:12:15.840 wages stagnated and then began to decline precipitously when you factor in inflation?

00:12:21.520 The share of the population here that was foreign-born was 4%. Today it is 15%,

00:12:29.840 the highest it's ever been in American history. The last time it got close to this, it was 14%,

00:12:35.120 and that was the Gilded Age, a time in American history that is characterized by radical inequality,

00:12:42.960 by an oligarchic rich, and then the masses and masses of poor people competing at the bottom of

00:12:50.720 the income distribution. And again, the Democrats very cleverly developed a language and a discourse

00:12:57.920 to hide their crimes. The alibi was this time what we'll call the white working class racists because

00:13:05.760 they oppose mass immigration. So if you're a man and you've seen your good job shipped overseas,

00:13:11.600 and then you've seen millions of competitors brought in to compete with the jobs that are left

00:13:16.160 here, and you objected to that, you were called xenophobic or racist for objecting to the selling

00:13:22.160 out of your children's future. And this worked so well because Donald Trump showed up at exactly the

00:13:28.960 right time. And if you remember his signature promise from his 2016 campaign, it was build the wall.

00:13:34.960 He was effectively saying to millions and millions and millions of working class people,

00:13:38.880 there's nothing wrong with you for objecting to the fact that you cannot support your family

00:13:44.480 anymore. We're going to restore dignity to you and to your labor. And I'll just make one more very quick

00:13:48.880 point, which is that in so doing, in saying, you know, they're racist for objecting to immigration,

00:13:56.400 in erasing the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, this was much easier to do the first time

00:14:02.480 round. Because Trump did very, very well with the white working class and much worse with people of

00:14:07.520 color. You look at how he's polling now. And of course, we'll know that the reaction, we'll know

00:14:13.280 whether this turned out to be true. But I'm very, I feel pretty certain that he's going to do very well

00:14:18.720 with black voters. He's going to do very well with Hispanic voters. He's polled as high as 40% of black

00:14:24.320 voters, which is historic. I mean, it's unimaginable for a Republican at this point. You talk to black voters,

00:14:30.080 I talked about voters in the book, and you can hear them talk about this stuff,

00:14:33.840 why they're drawn to him, why they feel disgusted with the Democratic Party for how it emasculates

00:14:39.040 men. He's polling a majority of Hispanic voters and overwhelmingly working class community.

00:14:43.920 Now that the working class that he represents is truly multiracial and multi-ethnic, the whole

00:14:50.000 edifice of this, you know, you're racist if you object to mass immigration has really crumbled.

00:14:55.760 Hmm. And one of the things, it's interesting, you're clearly positioning this as a kind of left

00:15:00.720 versus right, Democrats versus Republicans. I don't know that George Bush, for example,

00:15:06.720 was any better on, you know, globalization or any of this stuff. Is that fair?

00:15:11.040 Oh, yeah. There was a neoliberal handshake agreement between both parties.

00:15:14.640 Right. And the reason I bring this up, Batch, is that one of the things I'm kind of thinking

00:15:18.320 about a lot is how much we usually under, we think technology is very important, but we nonetheless

00:15:23.520 massively underestimate the impact that it has. And just like the colonization of America wouldn't

00:15:29.440 have been possible without the invention of, you know, sailing across oceans and lots of other things

00:15:34.080 that were created around that time, the caravel and so on. I think the same is probably true of mass

00:15:38.560 immigration in the sense that large waves of people traveling the sorts of distances that they do now

00:15:45.040 in order to get into a foreign country just wasn't possible before. And likewise, globalization,

00:15:50.000 the idea that you could ship an American job to China and then ship back the produce, that didn't

00:15:54.800 exist either. So do you think that, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure it's true to say that the Democrats

00:16:02.080 are worse on this stuff than the Republicans, but really what we're dealing with is the fact that

00:16:06.640 the entire political class has failed to recognize the moment that we're in and to think about the

00:16:14.240 impact globalization would have on people who they never meet. Because that's kind of the reality,

00:16:19.200 right? The people who benefited from globalization, which was a lot of people, let's be honest,

00:16:23.040 globalization did improve our GDP and raise wealth for lots of people, just not the people that you're

00:16:29.520 talking about in the book. I think we have a moral obligation to care first about our families and

00:16:35.840 then about our neighbors and then about our state and then about our nation. And when everybody in my

00:16:40.880 nation has access to the American dream, I'll worry about poor people in other countries. 1.00

00:16:46.320 So to me, that's from the moral point of view. I think it's immoral to care more about people

00:16:55.840 you've never met than the people who live next door to you or than your cleaning lady, you know,

00:16:59.760 or the person who does your landscaping or watches your children. To rely on the labor of your neighbor

00:17:04.800 and say, I'm totally comfortable with her never being able to own a home. I find that to be morally

00:17:11.600 disgusting. I feel pity for everybody. But that doesn't take away the fact that we have a world

00:17:20.080 based on nation states. And I'm very happy about that. You know, there's the sort of Hannah Arendt

00:17:24.080 perspective, which I totally buy into, that, you know, the only human right that we truly have

00:17:30.400 is the right to civil rights. And a civil right is something that's guaranteed by a government. It's a

00:17:36.240 contract we make with a government that we vote for. You can't, it's not a gift that, you know,

00:17:42.160 a Western nation can bestow upon a non-Western nation. It's a compact that we make with a government.

00:17:48.800 They, you know, ensure our rights. They protect our rights from themselves and from our, you know,

00:17:54.080 fellow Americans. And in return, we vote for them. And you cannot have that agreement without borders,

00:18:02.240 without citizenship. So beyond the moral question, there's this question of rights. I am zealous of

00:18:07.520 my rights. I mean, that's what it means to me to be an American, to be zealous of my freedoms and

00:18:11.360 the freedoms of my neighbor. And as a person who is zealous of those freedoms and in love with this

00:18:16.880 country that gave them to me, we have to think about how do we protect those? You cannot have an

00:18:21.840 open border and have civil rights. So there's the economic piece, of course, which is the selling out 0.61

00:18:26.560 of the working class. Then there's the moral piece. And then there's the civil rights piece.

00:18:29.920 In terms of whether the global economy has simply progressed past having borders.

00:18:35.840 No, Batya, that wasn't my point. Oh, sorry.

00:18:37.120 You don't need to convince anyone here about the stupidity of open borders. We've talked about 1.00

00:18:41.120 it plenty. I guess what I'm saying is, do you think this is largely a technologically driven

00:18:47.520 issue, which is we have a world now which is able to operate in a way that it never could,

00:18:52.720 hence the pressures on our borders. And then you combine that with, you know,

00:18:58.160 seemingly Western elites disappearing into this craziness of wokeness and whatever.

00:19:02.560 But prior to that, there was a very long period of time when globalization was seen pretty much

00:19:06.640 as uniformly good thing until people started to realize the impact it was having on working

00:19:12.080 class communities. I don't think that we have progressed to that point.

00:19:17.520 I think that having lax immigration laws, decriminalizing illegal border crossing,

00:19:24.480 which is what Joe Biden did, is very much in the economic interests of the elites.

00:19:31.120 It literally puts money back in their pockets, right? It's an upward transfer of wealth to have

00:19:35.600 an open border because the people who consume the labor of those people are all in the elites.

00:19:41.680 They're people who, you know, are working very long hours for a very good paying job and they

00:19:46.640 don't have time to do their own landscaping or clean their own dishes or raise their own children.

00:19:51.360 They go to restaurants and they want it to be cheap when they go to restaurants. They drink wine

00:19:55.040 and they want the wine to be cheap when they buy it. So they are the consumers of low wage labor.

00:19:59.680 It is very much in their interest to have an open border. It literally puts money back in their

00:20:03.440 pockets. It's wage theft of their working class neighbors and puts money back in their pockets. So to me,

00:20:08.560 there's no sort of, I think this is the problem I have with economics as a discipline, if you'll

00:20:13.600 forgive me for saying so, but it measures things in the aggregate and we do not live in the aggregate.

00:20:18.400 So every economist will tell you, every economist, there's one who won't, will say to you, well,

00:20:22.800 mass immigration raises the GDP. Of course it raises the GDP. It makes rich people very, very rich

00:20:29.120 to have a slave caste to employ rather than their fellow Americans. The problem is GDP is not equally 0.98

00:20:34.000 distributed. And the law of supply and demand holds with labor as well. The more you have of something,

00:20:39.840 the cheaper it is. The less you have of something, the dearer it is. We should want our fellow Americans

00:20:45.280 to be paid well. We should want a smaller gap between the elites and the working class. And instead, 0.97

00:20:52.480 what I think is, you know, they made the decision that opening the border would bring down inflation.

00:20:58.960 And of course they were right, because in their view, inflation was being caused by

00:21:03.520 working class wages going up. I mean, this is what the argument I'm trying to make is, it was by design, 1.00

00:21:10.640 not because this is where the world economy has arrived at, but because it was very much in the

00:21:16.320 interests and the economic interests of the Democrats base of college educated women and men. And then, 0.99

00:21:24.320 of course, the poor who don't compete with the work with, with, with, uh, with immigrants for labor 0.99

00:21:28.800 because they don't work. So the dependent poor and the educated rich.

00:21:32.320 Patrick, do you think as well, look, I think human beings by and large don't overly care that much

00:21:39.120 about things that don't affect them. But what has actually happened with the open border is suddenly

00:21:46.000 wealthy kids are dying from fentanyl overdoses. All of a sudden, wealthy neighborhoods are becoming far

00:21:53.120 less safe because of criminal gangs. And all of a sudden, wealthy people are realizing that the

00:21:59.520 homelessness problem is spiking as well as a result of the open border. Do you think it's now everybody's

00:22:06.000 just starting to wake up and everybody's realizing that, okay, you can pick up a bottle of wine for

00:22:11.440 five dollars cheaper. But if your kid is at risk of dying from a fentanyl overdose because they purchase

00:22:17.920 it's rittling on the black market, that's not really a fair trade off.

00:22:22.720 I think that would be the case if Donald Trump weren't in the picture. But he is so blinding

00:22:30.000 to the elites. Their hatred of him is so intense that I think that even though everything you're

00:22:36.080 saying is true, you know, this is the kind of discourse you would hear maybe a year ago.

00:22:40.880 It's much harder to picture people saying that now. Now what they would say is,

00:22:44.480 but what about the threat to democracy, right? So people, it's a very, I think that was definitely

00:22:49.440 something that could have happened if somebody other than Donald Trump represented reasonable

00:22:54.400 immigration policy, because that's certainly happened. Of course, very rich people, of which

00:23:00.880 there are, you know, quite a few on the left now, about 65% of Americans making over $500,000 a year

00:23:07.440 now are Democrats. You know, very rich people at this point just hire their own private security,

00:23:12.560 and so they don't have to worry about these things as much. But to be fair to them, they do have a

00:23:18.080 point with Trump because his rhetoric was unacceptable when he lost the election. It was actually,

00:23:26.720 it was unacceptable from a former president. You can't have that type of rhetoric being used.

00:23:31.680 It is dangerous and it is inflammatory. Which rhetoric specifically? Saying that he won?

00:23:36.080 Yes. And that the election was stolen. Hillary Clinton said that the election was stolen,

00:23:42.560 right? She said she called Donald Trump an illegitimate president and said he would not have

00:23:47.600 won if Putin had not, you know, changed the voting tallies. After the 2016 election, 2018,

00:23:53.600 they did a poll of Democratic voters and 66% of them thought that the election had been stolen by Putin.

00:23:59.840 So I agree with you. It's, but it's a problem that's shared by both sides pretty equally. I mean,

00:24:04.320 Trump went further because he was truly convinced that he won. But you know, it is a president's right

00:24:10.320 to pursue all of the legal avenues to challenge an election. Did he go too far? Maybe. I think that

00:24:15.600 that's something that a lot of reasonable people think. But the other side is guilty of a lot of

00:24:22.000 attacks on our democracy, including trying to imprison, you know, the most popular

00:24:26.560 politician on the other side. So I do think that it is in the nature of power to try to hold on and

00:24:33.120 expand itself. It is not in the nature of power to share itself in a democratic fashion. And I think

00:24:39.520 that the American institutions have proven very good at containing Trump's unacceptable behavior and

00:24:47.040 very bad at containing democratic bad behavior. Yeah. I mean, Hillary did call him an illegitimate

00:24:53.200 president after he was elected. I think your point, though, that many reasonable people

00:24:58.480 think about what euphemistically is now called the threat to democracy. But I think for a lot of

00:25:04.960 people, what happened on January the 6th really complicates everything with Trump. And the concern

00:25:11.120 is that he won't let go of the reins when his time is up. That's kind of, I think, what people are

00:25:16.560 concerned, from the people we speak to anyway.

00:25:17.920 I understand why people are concerned about that. I am not concerned about that. I look

00:25:22.400 at January 6th as a horrible day. He did say that they should be peaceful in their protest. I don't

00:25:28.320 think he wished for violence to happen. I think he truly believed that he won. And he still left

00:25:35.360 pretty peacefully. I mean, he, you know, could have, he did not cover himself in glory on January 6th. He's

00:25:40.720 not a person of, you know, that kind of character. But the idea that he would be a completely different

00:25:46.480 person this time around than he was last time seems to me to be fallacious. I understand why

00:25:52.320 people have a problem with his character. But I think two things on that. The first is,

00:25:57.120 you know, you have to have a lot of economic privilege to vote on character. And I wish working

00:26:03.120 class people had that luxury. You know, I wish that that was the conversation we were having.

00:26:09.920 I don't think that that's in the cards for a lot of people. They are looking for policy. They voted for

00:26:16.960 Trump on policy. They can point to the specific policies, the tariffs and the immigration policy,

00:26:23.040 the First Step Act that put money back in their pockets at the end of the month. And for people who

00:26:29.920 are really struggling with this kind of an economy, that's the most important thing. And the other

00:26:33.360 thing I would say is, you know, to character, when Trump took on this neoliberal consensus between

00:26:41.280 both parties, you know, that we should have free trade and ship all these good jobs overseas, have

00:26:46.800 very lax immigration laws, import, you know, millions and millions of slaves, defund vocational training,

00:26:52.480 you know, all of this stuff. He took on both sides, right? He was not making a very

00:26:59.120 unique and aggressive change to the status quo while having a political party backing him as

00:27:06.080 he took on the other side. He did this while taking on both sides and saying, I don't care that 100% of

00:27:13.520 the political power in America is against me. This is what I know my voters elected me to do and I'm

00:27:19.040 going to do it. And it's my view that nice people can't do that. I don't think, I mean,

00:27:25.440 it's very rare. You guys do it, you take on both sides, and you know what that's like. It's very

00:27:31.280 hard. It's very hard to take on both sides, to fight so vigorously, and then to have to call out

00:27:38.400 the side that thought you were on their side because they did something wrong. And then they all turn on

00:27:42.880 you suddenly, and they're all smearing you, right? That's not fun. It's nice people don't do that. You

00:27:49.360 have to have something in your character that says, screw all of this. I don't care what people

00:27:54.080 think about me. I'm going to do what I think is the right thing. And if you talk to economists,

00:27:58.720 they will admit, oh yeah, well, I guess on, you know, I guess on immigration and on tariffs and

00:28:03.200 trade, you know, he was good for the working class, you know, but what else did he really do for them?

00:28:07.520 You know, it's very frustrating. People will say his signature achievement was a tax cut for the

00:28:12.640 wealthy. It's like, I mean, working class people and middle class people got a much higher percentage of a tax

00:28:18.000 cut in that tax cut. Of course, you know, overall the amount was less, but they were getting 15,

00:28:24.320 20% tax cuts. And that's what they remember. They remember that money coming back to them at the end

00:28:28.560 of the month. One of the other things that Donald Trump was good on was keeping the world

00:28:37.040 relatively stable. And one of the things you've talked about a lot is why Americans support Israel.

00:28:44.720 And you've made the point that actually you think it's very different to the way that people feel in

00:28:49.040 European countries. Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:28:51.040 Yeah. It's very interesting. One of the things, so for my book, I interviewed about 100 people,

00:28:57.600 150 people across the country, working class people. What I found was very, very shocking to me. We 1.00

00:29:03.920 started with how there was, you know, near consensus on these very, very, very contentious topics from

00:29:09.920 healthcare to immigration, to abortion, guns, whatever. Another issue on which there was

00:29:15.120 extreme consensus was the war in Ukraine. I can't think of a single person who didn't, you know, 0.99

00:29:20.720 independently bring it up and say, I just don't understand why we're funding this or why this is

00:29:26.320 our problem. And it's very funny because their view was very much the view of Barack Obama in the 2012

00:29:34.160 presidential debates when they were, he and Mitt Romney were asked, well, what's the greatest

00:29:38.640 threat to America? And Romney said, Russia. And Obama laughed him off the stage. He basically said,

00:29:46.000 the 80s called, they want their foreign policy back. You know, what are we even talking about

00:29:50.320 at this point? It was his view that Russia was a potential ally in the fight against China.

00:29:54.880 And, you know, not to justify the aggression against Ukraine, but in 2014 when Ukraine,

00:30:01.520 when Russia next Crimea, this was not viewed by the Democrats as a reason for us to get involved

00:30:07.280 there. You know, this was accepted basically by the Obama administration, you know, and they just

00:30:14.880 don't see why that's our fight. They don't see Russia as an enemy or a threat. It seems pretty clear that

00:30:22.640 when democratic policy changed was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton became convinced that Putin was

00:30:28.080 the reason that Donald Trump had won. And so now you have democratic policy in Eastern Europe, which

00:30:34.080 is again, just a mirror image of their domestic policy, which is their fight against Donald Trump.

00:30:39.680 And if you talk to working class people, you'll just see that like they don't, no one has been forced

00:30:45.040 to, to explain to them why $200 billion that could be very well spent here has been spent on this fight.

00:30:55.040 So I think that was something that really surprised me. And I was of course also surprised by just the

00:30:59.600 level of support for Israel. They don't see Israel in the same way as they see Ukraine.

00:31:04.320 Why is that? 0.92

00:31:06.240 So Americans are extremely, extremely philo-semitic. There's a deep, deep love of the Jews that runs

00:31:12.640 through the working class. It runs through Christian Americans. American Christians are the only 1.00

00:31:20.880 population in human history to organize their religion around the protection of Jews rather

00:31:27.920 than oppressing Jews. There was a very famous letter that George Washington wrote in 1790 to the Jews of

00:31:34.640 Newport, Rhode Island. He visited them. They were the first Jews in America. And he said,

00:31:38.400 you will always be welcome here. You will always be tolerated here. You know,

00:31:41.200 religious tolerance was always a really big, big deal for Americans. And they were very proud of

00:31:48.640 accepting and welcoming the Jews here. Of course, Americans have this sort of Protestant ethic,

00:31:53.120 the work ethic. So being sort of, you know, seen as upstarts or entrepreneurial never hurts you here.

00:32:00.080 It's always seen as, you know, in a country that sees itself as beyond classes, that's a sort of very

00:32:05.120 appealing character trait. Whereas in Europe, I think that, you know, the stereotype of the Jew that was

00:32:10.720 considered to be something that was disruptive of the social order. But, you know, American Jews,

00:32:15.520 especially, I mean, American Christians, especially evangelicals, and then after 1967, American

00:32:20.320 Catholics as well, have always been deeply, deeply protective of Jews. And I don't know many Jews

00:32:26.240 who don't feel very grateful about that. It's so different. If you go full anti-Semite here,

00:32:33.040 you know, it's over. Like, there's no way to bring that into the mainstream in the United States.

00:32:39.120 Yeah. And it's interesting because with the point that you make, I think the white working class as

00:32:45.200 a whole, I don't think, and I've spent a lot of time working in those communities,

00:32:50.240 I've never seen a trace of anti-Semitism. I think when you look at people like Corbyn and the communities

00:32:57.040 that he appealed to, I mean, you know, with Islamic communities, there is a lot of anti-Semitism in

00:33:02.960 there. And also the people that support Jeremy Corbyn, a lot of them are actually middle class.

00:33:07.040 Yeah. Yeah. Or upper middle class. Yeah, exactly.

00:33:10.000 Well, I love hearing that. Yeah.

00:33:13.920 Let me just follow up on this stuff about Ukraine and Israel. I understand love for the Jews,

00:33:20.720 as you put it. That's fine. Although looking at Twitter sometimes doesn't,

00:33:23.520 I'm not persuaded by that. And also some of the big kind of conservative voices in this country,

00:33:30.000 too, in recent months. How do you explain that for a start?

00:33:35.040 The conservative, the far right?

00:33:36.640 Yeah. Well, I don't know. Would you say Candace Owens is far right? I don't know. But it just seems

00:33:42.320 like that's a pretty prominent conservative voice in this country, right? And she doesn't seem to be

00:33:47.440 exhibiting the sort of Christian love of the Jews that you talk about.

00:33:50.080 No, definitely not. She's gone full anti-Semite. But I think if you look at the comments now on her

00:33:56.320 videos, a lot of the names sound, they're not American. She now has a global audience. Of course,

00:34:02.800 we know there's many billion Muslims, right? Not all of them very friendly to the Jews. I mean, 1.00

00:34:08.160 I don't want to stereotype. I have very close friends, of course, who are in that community. But

00:34:12.000 globally, there's a huge appetite for content bashing Jews specifically. I mean, she really has 0.96

00:34:18.880 sort of gone past the like Israel and Zionism to just full on, you know, conspiracy theories about

00:34:24.720 Jews. And I think she's lost her... I would hazard that if somebody would take an honest look at who 1.00

00:34:30.560 her audience is now, they would find that she has lost a huge chunk of her American audience. You don't

00:34:35.840 see her doing events with Donald Trump, which I'm sure she would love to do. There was an event

00:34:42.240 announced in which she and Don Jr. were supposed to be at the same event. And within six hours of

00:34:48.560 it being announced, her face was taken off the poster because she had been added after he had agreed to

00:34:52.720 it. So she's been marginalized, I think, in a really big way, in a way that I take a lot of heart from.

00:34:58.880 Of course, the left now is sort of like, well, I wonder if she has a point, right? Like, you know?

00:35:02.880 Really?

00:35:04.000 I've seen... There's like a now...

00:35:05.440 The left is going to embrace Candice.

00:35:07.040 Well, the horseshoe, maybe the far left.

00:35:08.640 That's interesting.

00:35:09.280 I mean, she started off on the far left.

00:35:11.280 Uh, did she?

00:35:12.480 Yeah.

00:35:12.720 I didn't know that.

00:35:13.360 She was very progressive.

00:35:16.080 Well, everyone returns to their roots. 0.87

00:35:18.560 Anyway, I wanted to ask you about Israel because that doesn't make sense to me.

00:35:22.960 You can love the Jews and not think a foreign country far, far away

00:35:26.400 it merits billions in American funding and weaponry.

00:35:33.280 So, and for me, and I think we probably disagree about Ukraine, the argument for

00:35:39.440 supporting Ukraine is exactly the same argument as for supporting Israel.

00:35:43.200 Now, to an evangelical, there may be some kind of religious and historical explanation,

00:35:46.800 but on a practical geopolitical level, these two countries are our allies and it is in our

00:35:51.120 interest to not have the Western world recede.

00:35:53.680 I think, um, so I'll say how I see it because I don't want to, I, I, I, there's a huge debate,

00:36:00.640 a healthy debate about whether we should be funding Israel.

00:36:03.280 Hmm.

00:36:04.000 I, I subscribe to the sort of pro-Israel view that

00:36:07.120 Israel is being harmed by the level of aid that we're giving them.

00:36:10.800 They've given up a lot in terms of developing their own military industrial complex,

00:36:15.360 a sacrifice that has resulted in them having to cave to pressure,

00:36:19.040 not to invade Rafah when they wanted to, maybe they could have saved those six hostages and killed

00:36:25.360 Yassinwar much sooner. So I, I think Israel is paying a heavy price for taking that aid. I do 0.96

00:36:30.480 think we get a lot out of it. So militarily, when Israel, they have to spend the money in our, um,

00:36:38.160 military industrial complex. They have to spend that money with our companies. 0.91

00:36:41.600 That's also true of Ukraine.

00:36:43.280 It's also true of Ukraine. Yes. Um, uh, Israel then improves on the weapons and improves on the 0.87

00:36:49.040 planes and the jets and everything that it gets, and then gives us back that intelligence for free.

00:36:53.680 There's a lot of intelligence sharing that has led to things like the death of Soleimani.

00:36:57.840 Um, Israel is fighting our enemies, right? Israel is taking on people who chant death to America,

00:37:05.360 death to Israel. The Houthis who are shooting at our soldiers, our boys. Now we could argue about

00:37:11.200 whether they should be there. Probably I wouldn't want them to be there, but they are there and the

00:37:14.720 Houthis are shooting at them. The Houthis are disturbing trade to the United States and we're 0.99

00:37:20.080 just taking it like cowards. It's, it's horrible. Like we're just letting them make a mockery of us. 0.98

00:37:26.880 So in that sense, there are actual enemies. I mean, actual threats. I don't think anybody denies that

00:37:32.640 Iran poses a threat, maybe not an immediate one, but certainly something we need to be very, 1.00

00:37:37.840 very concerned about in terms of its stated goals. And, and so in that sense, we get a lot in a very

00:37:45.840 material way from our relationship with Israel. Now, again, I think that Israel is paying a very

00:37:50.960 high price for that by taking our aid and it should, you know, in, in the Obama version of

00:37:55.440 the memorandum of understanding, it used to be that Israel could spend, I think, 20% of the aid on

00:38:00.240 their building up their own military industrial complex. Obama made that zero. And so now they can't

00:38:06.160 even create the bullets that they need to shoot. Right. And so they've really painted themselves

00:38:10.320 into a corner and it's really, I think, time for them to start. If you think that sovereignty is

00:38:14.800 important, which I do, I'm sure we all agree on that, you know, being a sovereign nation at a time

00:38:19.440 of wars is unbelievably important. And, but I wouldn't even say Israel is like a client state in the

00:38:24.720 traditional way because of how much we receive from that relationship. And that's just in purely

00:38:30.160 material ways. Of course, there's the spiritual connection, the democracy component to it,

00:38:35.280 the religious component to it. You know, a lot of, as you mentioned, a lot of Christians feel that way.

00:38:40.240 They feel like they want to be able to go and visit and walk down the streets that Jesus walked down or,

00:38:45.440 you know, so, so there's a lot there that feels significant and feels right and feels like we're

00:38:52.640 getting something out of it such that an America first mentality could include a very close relationship

00:38:58.560 with Israel. And I just think the same cannot be said from Ukraine. What are we getting from that 0.82

00:39:05.760 relationship? I mean, we're sort of harming Russia's military capabilities, but those military capabilities

00:39:11.600 would never have been trained on us. And while I hold Putin responsible for invading Ukraine and

00:39:17.680 responsible for the tragic 500,000 dead young men, I mean, it's unthinkable what that does to a society.

00:39:26.640 At the same time, I think that we could have done much, much more to respond to what at some point

00:39:32.480 were reasonable demands, like that Ukraine not join NATO, which it wouldn't have because of the level

00:39:38.240 of corruption there. I think the US would never have allowed China to put, you know, military weapons

00:39:45.360 in Mexico. And if they did, we would have invaded. And so I think to ask of another country to behave 0.89

00:39:52.240 in a way that we would not have accepted for ourselves and our people, and to deny the recognition

00:39:58.720 of the status quo on some principle, I asked myself, what was that principle that was so important for

00:40:05.760 Kamala Harris to go out and say, no, of course, Ukraine one day will join NATO, right? Why poke the bear?

00:40:10.960 And I think that had to do with domestic policy. And I think that that's a bad reason to do this.

00:40:18.000 No, I think it's undeniable that a lot of the Western elite left has, they see Ukraine as some

00:40:26.800 sort of like LGBT type issue where it's just like, you know, but that's basically it, right? It's like,

00:40:34.160 we have the pride flag, and we have the Ukraine flag, they don't think about it as a geopolitical

00:40:38.880 issue. My argument would be about America first. And look, I'm not an American. So people should 0.85

00:40:43.920 dismiss my opinion as they wish. I just think you can't be the dominant superpower in the world

00:40:49.200 and not maintain your assets around the world and not maintain your position and allow other

00:40:55.920 countries to try and, you know, Putin and Xi, and they've all talked very openly about how they want

00:41:01.120 a multipolar world. What does that mean? That means America's thrown off its pedestal. So

00:41:07.040 you can't be America first and be isolationist at the same time. I just don't think those two

00:41:11.200 things are compatible on a practical level. And also as well, just a point to add to that,

00:41:16.000 stability is good for everybody. The moment you let Putin run rampant, you destabilize Europe. Once

00:41:22.160 you destabilize Europe, that is going to have huge ramifications globally, but particularly for America as well.

00:41:28.000 So this is, this is an argument against Obama as well in 2014, right?

00:41:31.920 Totally.

00:41:32.080 Yeah.

00:41:32.320 No, no, no. The weakness they showed then is why 2022 happened.

00:41:36.640 So you feel the U.S. should have responded with a war or with a...

00:41:40.480 No, not a war, but, but the U.S. should have made it very clear at that point that that was

00:41:45.600 unacceptable and then done everything possible to prevent 2022 from happening. And that means what

00:41:51.200 we're probably going to end up with, which is some kind of demilitarized zone between the two

00:41:54.800 countries, right? If Trump, by the time this goes out, has won, let's say, that's what he's going

00:42:00.160 to try and get to. But I agree with you that the U.S. should have done everything possible

00:42:04.080 to prevent 2022 from happening. I think they did everything possible to ensure that it would happen.

00:42:08.560 Totally agree.

00:42:09.120 By, yeah. Oh.

00:42:10.960 Well, but I think we disagree about what we mean by what they did.

00:42:16.560 Right, right, right.

00:42:17.200 You think NATO expansion and all of that. And by the way, I don't, I don't deny that that is a massive

00:42:22.880 irritant to Russia. Of course it is. But Russia didn't respond to Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania,

00:42:29.600 leaving the former Soviet Union in the 90s because they weren't strong enough and they weren't willing 0.59

00:42:34.480 to challenge the United States at that point, right? So it's all about the relative perception of power.

00:42:39.760 The reason Putin did what he did in 2022 is that he had a go in 2014. And what did he see? No response.

00:42:47.520 Weakness. That's why he felt comfortable to continue with that policy over time. That's my

00:42:52.560 view anyway. But by the way, you know, people will know that I'm very pro-Ukraine, but when I was

00:42:57.920 traveling around America with Jordan Peterson on his tour, it was the bit of the tour that I was on is

00:43:03.280 kind of like small, medium-sized towns, you know, the Tulsas, the Oklahomas. We did New York and stuff,

00:43:09.360 but mostly it was fairly small, medium-sized places. And when I was there, you know, I'd look

00:43:15.600 around, you know, I'd go to a bar after the show or whatever. I couldn't understand why those people

00:43:20.960 would care either about a conflict very, very far away because it's just very far away. But my point

00:43:27.360 is you cannot be the hegemonic superpower of the world that benefits from its global empire,

00:43:32.560 which is what America does, without at some points having to maintain that global empire,

00:43:37.680 including through force. And my sense is, yes, the Kamala Harris's and other people have sort of made

00:43:44.480 this some kind of moral crusade. On a much more practical level, the example you set for China

00:43:50.880 with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, with how you responded to Russia in 2014, all of these

00:43:57.680 sequential indicators of weakness is why I think Iran felt comfortable to orchestrate October 7th, 0.88

00:44:04.000 is why I think 2022 happened in Ukraine. It's just my view. And also as well,

00:44:08.080 the capitulation in Afghanistan sent a very clear message that, you know, you could go and do,

00:44:13.840 you had carte blanche basically to do whatever it was. I guess the point I'm making, and this is what I,

00:44:18.880 sorry, we've been talking for ages, but the point I'm trying to get to you and hear your answer to is,

00:44:24.400 I don't think America first is compatible with isolationism because America depends on being

00:44:31.280 a global empire and you can't, and if you want to maintain a global empire, you're going to have

00:44:35.680 to get physical at some point, right?

00:44:36.960 A hundred percent agree with that. I'm not an isolationist and I don't think Trump is either.

00:44:41.920 No.

00:44:43.920 It's about being strategic about which kinds of force to use. And I think Putin was very open to

00:44:49.920 the West at some point and felt very betrayed at some point. Now, again, I'm not saying that to

00:44:54.880 sanction his emotions or what have you, but I think the other side, and I'm curious what you would say

00:45:00.560 to this, has decided that Russia is allowed to have no legitimate concerns about the expansion

00:45:08.800 of Western power. And I think that if there had been more respect for a nuclear power and for what

00:45:17.920 that means, that there were ways to prevent Ukraine for sure, to get out of it after two weeks,

00:45:24.320 to get out of it after six months, and to enlist Russia in the fight against China, which is a much,

00:45:32.000 much greater threat to us. Putin just has the nukes, right? China has our economy by the balls. 0.64

00:45:41.120 And I think, you know, thinking strategically the way that some people do and some people don't, 0.94

00:45:47.520 I agree with you, of course. I don't think we should be isolationists. We should be a superpower.

00:45:56.720 But you have to have the consent of the governed in terms of deciding when to use military force

00:46:02.960 and when to use soft power. And I just think on this issue, we don't have the consent of the

00:46:08.080 governed. And that's a really big problem. And do you think partly that's because

00:46:11.600 there have been a sequence of wars abroad that are seen as just wrong? I mean, Iraq,

00:46:21.120 for example. It just, like, a lot of people supported it at the time. But a lot of us were

00:46:27.440 saying at the time, this is crazy. And those people have now been proven correct. And now

00:46:32.640 everyone's looking at it kind of going, they see every war now through that lens. Is that?

00:46:37.680 It's very interesting because they don't see Israel's war through that lens. The left does.

00:46:41.600 And I think it's because the left has forgotten what it's like to fight a just war, right? I mean,

00:46:47.200 because America has had these disastrous entanglements. I cannot feel that way about a war

00:46:55.920 that I think we could have prevented. I can't. No, fine. Forget about it. I'm just asking.

00:47:02.240 Yes. In general, I think the support for Israel sort of belies that point a little bit, I would say.

00:47:09.360 Okay. Is it possible to be Jewish now and be on the left? When you look at the attitude of some people,

00:47:19.520 thought leaders, shall we say? It's a really good question. The left will accept any Jew 1.00

00:47:27.760 that renounces their national identity, their attachment to their fellow Jews,

00:47:35.120 that portrays themselves as the good Jew, that's anti-Zionist, that hates Israel.

00:47:41.120 It's very easy to get in if you're willing to renounce your people. I find that to be utterly

00:47:49.360 undignified, a price no one should pay. But unfortunately, a lot of people in America are

00:47:57.440 paying it. And the reason for that is very interesting. I get asked a lot by Americans,

00:48:02.160 American Christians, working class Americans, why are Jews so Democrat? Why are they so affiliated with 0.96

00:48:08.720 the Democratic Party? And for many years, you know, beginning of the 20th century was because

00:48:13.920 Jews were working class. And so they were part of the labor movement. And then they were very involved

00:48:19.360 in the civil rights movement. Something like above 75% of the white people involved in the civil

00:48:25.920 rights movement were Jews in the leadership, played an unbelievably prominent, prominent role.

00:48:31.920 I think in the post-Holocaust era, they felt like this was our fight.

00:48:36.240 But when the left moved from labor to civil rights and then finally to wokeness,

00:48:43.600 abandoning the working class, abandoning civil rights, abandoning concepts like rights and equality 0.77

00:48:48.560 for identity politics and marginalization and a worship of weakness and a worship of abjection,

00:48:55.200 which is the defining characteristic of the left today. Unfortunately, a lot of American Jews go to

00:49:01.760 college, about 60% are college educated, which is double the national average. And so they study all

00:49:07.520 this critical race theory, all this crap. And what pollsters found in 2015 was that every group, 0.91

00:49:17.760 whether it's white conservatives, black conservatives, black liberals, Hispanic conservatives,

00:49:22.880 Hispanic liberals, normal people, every group in America, prefer their group to other groups.

00:49:28.160 They have a higher rate of in-group positive feeling than out-group positive feeling. That's

00:49:33.840 sort of the nature of humanity. There's one group that likes itself less than it likes all the other

00:49:40.080 groups, and it's white liberals. It's white progressives. That's what you learn in college.

00:49:45.120 That's kind of the perspective, that strength and power and being at the top of a hierarchy,

00:49:51.360 being talented in some way, having been given privileges makes you unworthy of having a moral

00:50:00.000 compass. You don't get to have a moral compass. You have to cede it to the oppressed. And unfortunately, 0.98

00:50:06.480 there's a lot of young Jews who have fallen prey to that mentality. And so I don't see this mass exodus,

00:50:13.520 and you're seeing it from older people who are sort of flipping, but people who've been through that

00:50:17.600 education system. You really have to deprogram yourself. I was woke. I remember what it felt

00:50:23.200 like to worship abjection and to feel that strength and power and dignity and believing that you have a 0.66

00:50:32.240 right to protect yourself and to protect the people you love is bad. And that white people don't get to

00:50:36.880 do that. White Jews don't get to do that. And the oppressor doesn't get to do that. And it takes a long time to 0.99

00:50:43.520 sort of think your way out of that. And I think for a lot of Jews who were in that mindset until October 7th,

00:50:48.960 there's been a real rude awakening. Do you think partly as well, it's kind of programmed into the

00:50:53.920 Jewish psyche of like, you know, let's not get above our station here. Let's not, you know, make ourselves

00:51:00.720 too much of a target because we all remember, just look at history, what happens when you make yourself too

00:51:06.480 much of a target. So therefore, let's not piss people off. I think a lot of British Jews feel that way. My

00:51:11.520 dad's a British Jew. Yeah. And I always say to him, you know, Papa, on October 7th, the British

00:51:17.280 Jew and you died and an American Jew was born because American Jews don't feel that way. We feel

00:51:22.080 like, no, this, I mean, the way I feel, I would never move to Israel. Like if this country is going 1.00

00:51:27.040 to go down for the Jews, I'm going down with this ship. They're going to take this country from my cold, 1.00

00:51:31.360 dead hands because we feel like, no, this country has been so good to us and so good to our parents and

00:51:37.120 our grandparents. Like, no way am I going to, and that's why you see so many prominent anti-Zionist

00:51:41.920 Jews at the front lines of these movements, right? The anti-Zionist, anti-Israel movement, because 0.69

00:51:46.400 we like to have our say.

00:51:51.440 But Batia, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:51:55.600 Thank you so much. Before we head over to Substack, where our supporters get to ask their questions to

00:52:01.600 you. Our final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we

00:52:05.600 really should be? Before Batia answers the final question, when the interview is over,

00:52:10.400 make sure you click the link in the description, head to our Substack to see this. How do you view

00:52:15.920 reports that both campaigns are preparing their arguments to not accept the election result?

00:52:21.120 How does she survive at Newsweek? Is she vilified by her colleagues? Is she given

00:52:25.280 journalistic independence, even if that means, for example, she writes a pro-Trump article?

00:52:29.760 This is from another brilliant name.

00:52:37.840 It's such a good question. I mean, we just had an amazing conversation about all the things I think

00:52:43.360 are most important to talk about. And I'm so grateful for that. One thing people are talking

00:52:47.760 about that I'm very glad they're talking about is how amazing this show is and what a lifeline you

00:52:52.240 both have been to people who are on the side of the good and the right at a time of very murky

00:52:58.960 morality and moral inversions. And I would like to end just by saying from the bottom of my heart,

00:53:06.720 thank you so, so much as an American and as a Jew for making the right and the good

00:53:15.120 seem cool and funny and smart and interesting and important and pressing and urgent and giving voice

00:53:22.880 to what so many people really don't want to acknowledge and don't want to hear in a way

00:53:26.800 that is unignorable due to your endless, endless charm, intelligence and humanity. So from the bottom of

00:53:33.280 my heart, thank you. Favourite guest ever. I was going to say we're British so this entire bit has made us very

00:53:41.040 uncomfortable. We're moving to America mate, I like it here. Don't get this, do you in London?

00:53:46.880 No, no one in the UK has ever said anything like that. No, no. No, the best you get after a good British 0.93

00:53:52.640 interview. Cheers for that. Yeah, thanks mate. A couple of tea was nice. All right, head on over to

00:53:58.480 Substack where we ask Batu your questions. Do you see any way back from mainstream journalism or will

00:54:05.440 alternative outlets become our only reliable source of information?

00:54:28.480 Yeah.

00:54:58.480 Thank you.

00:55:28.480 Thank you.

00:55:58.480 Thank you.

00:56:28.480 Thank you.

TRIGGERnometry - December 22, 2024

How Elites Betrayed Working People - Batya Ungar Sargon

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