TRIGGERnometry - Is MAGA Falling Apart？

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00:00:46.120 you came dressed the park because we want to talk about north korea there's also another thing you

00:00:53.120 wrote a great book about which is the new right what do you know techno anarchists and christian

00:00:58.280 nationalists and race realists and other groups have in common and now you know they're kind of

00:01:04.440 turning on each other and i don't know where this goes but i do know it'll be entertaining there

00:01:09.540 will be a lot of people on the right going we voted for trump because he promised to keep us

00:01:13.560 out of wars i didn't want any of this this isn't what i voted for the idea like you're going to

00:01:17.520 kill the ayatollah and the sun is going to be more moderate after that well you kill the sun okay like

00:01:22.180 Are you just going to keep going?

00:01:23.640 This is what doesn't make sense to me.

00:01:25.380 Who is going to be the one who is doing the surrendering?

00:01:28.540 I don't think it's at all factual to say that Iran was an imminent threat to the US.

00:01:34.900 The idea that Iran is going to shoot drones at California, I mean, obviously.

00:01:39.040 Let's hope so.

00:01:41.920 My God, I mean, someone should save us.

00:01:46.580 This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College.

00:01:49.560 Right after this episode, go check out the incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at hillsdale.edu slash trigger.

00:01:59.120 Michael Malice, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:02:01.220 Thank you so much.

00:02:02.100 It's great. You came dressed the park because we want to talk about North Korea.

00:02:06.520 But there's also another thing you wrote a great book about, which is The New Right, which is obviously what's going on now.

00:02:12.240 What's going on now, Michael?

00:02:13.680 Well, I think you have to be a little more specific, don't you think?

00:02:16.260 Well, I don't know.

00:02:18.260 What's going on?

00:02:19.060 Well, my plans are...

00:02:20.420 Some of them are doing well.

00:02:21.760 Well, you wrote a book a while ago

00:02:23.120 predicting that there would be

00:02:24.380 a kind of realignment

00:02:25.340 and a fracturing on the right.

00:02:26.960 And that is what I think

00:02:28.120 is fair to say with you.

00:02:29.220 Oh, very much so.

00:02:30.140 Especially in Europe.

00:02:31.000 It's even more kind of realigning

00:02:32.540 than here in the States.

00:02:33.560 I've been following European politics

00:02:34.900 very closely.

00:02:35.860 And it's very interesting

00:02:36.500 how it plays out in different nations.

00:02:39.920 Czech Republic just had this party

00:02:41.800 called Modris for Ourselves.

00:02:43.660 And one of the guys is kind of

00:02:45.220 accused of being this closet griper

00:02:46.700 and now he's in cabinet.

00:02:48.220 So they're the first ones to kind of break that barrier.

00:02:51.380 Okay, but go back to the big picture.

00:02:53.940 What did you say in your book?

00:02:55.840 And what did you predict in your book?

00:02:57.980 I think, well, I think that is the big picture.

00:02:59.840 The big picture is that, you know,

00:03:01.320 the so-called conservative movement of, you know,

00:03:04.140 recent decades has largely fallen away in polls in the UK,

00:03:07.940 for example.

00:03:09.680 You should both just look down simultaneously.

00:03:11.700 I don't know what the hell that was.

00:03:12.540 The Tories, we just looked down.

00:03:15.300 Yeah, the Tories in many polls are in fourth place.

00:03:18.140 something which has never happened before

00:03:19.840 and is regarded as largely unthinkable,

00:03:22.180 although now Labour is giving them a run for their money

00:03:23.940 and coming in fourth place.

00:03:26.800 You have the Swedish Democrats in Sweden.

00:03:30.440 Georgina Maloney is the PM in Italy.

00:03:32.820 The party was considered the furthest right party

00:03:34.740 as of five minutes ago.

00:03:36.440 The national rally came in first in terms of votes

00:03:39.180 in the French legislative elections,

00:03:40.820 formerly the National Front, Marine Le Pen's organization.

00:03:44.260 In Norway, the Liberal Party,

00:03:46.440 which were actually the Christian Democrats,

00:03:47.580 are in first place in the polls.

00:03:49.820 So wherever you...

00:03:51.100 Spain, the party's called Vox,

00:03:53.460 which is regarded as the so-called far-right party,

00:03:55.780 and there's that court in Sanitere.

00:03:57.140 They're not going to work with them.

00:03:58.780 They're in third, and they're spiking really heavily

00:04:01.140 in the polls at the expense of the main two parties.

00:04:04.140 And the U.S., you know, the premise of my book,

00:04:06.580 The New Right, is...

00:04:07.940 The question was on the dust jacket,

00:04:09.960 what do, you know, techno-anarchists

00:04:12.320 and Christian nationalists and race realists

00:04:15.780 and other groups have in common.

00:04:18.960 And I said nothing other than their opposition to...

00:04:21.840 Well, they hate the left, right?

00:04:23.940 Thanks for stepping on the punchline.

00:04:26.460 Nothing other than their opposition to progressivism.

00:04:29.780 Okay, thanks for the spoiler.

00:04:31.380 So I was going to get there, Constantine.

00:04:33.000 Don't worry.

00:04:33.380 Forgive me.

00:04:34.140 No.

00:04:35.100 So point being...

00:04:37.540 Premature interjection.

00:04:39.220 Human beings define themselves by opposition.

00:04:43.140 We see this in non-political contexts,

00:04:45.780 Because you have a party and there's adults and kids.

00:04:48.740 The kids view themselves as kids, as opposed to adults.

00:04:51.180 But when the adults leave, it becomes boys and girls.

00:04:54.200 So people, this is why negative attack ads are often more effective.

00:04:58.360 It's much easier to be like, I'm against Francis than I'm for Constantine.

00:05:02.420 So with the heavy defeat of leftism in the 2024 Republican election,

00:05:09.500 people are kind of a bit surprised that this Trumpian coalition has fallen apart.

00:05:14.340 but you shouldn't really be surprised because what they're against, although they make a bit

00:05:19.100 of resurgence in recent days, has fallen away as a common enemy. And now, you know, they're kind of

00:05:24.560 turning on each other. And I don't know where this goes, but I do know it'll be entertaining.

00:05:30.120 And Israel seems to become like the focal point. I've tracked the same thing and I kind of thought

00:05:35.860 that it would all start to break down for the exact reason that you described. But Israel has

00:05:41.200 served as a kind of single explanatory point in a lot of people's minds. And that seems in a weird

00:05:47.340 way, that's what the battle is about, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because

00:05:50.760 the one thing that I, you know, the narrative that, you know, President Trump is controlled

00:05:56.360 by Israel just doesn't seem to me to stack with the personality type that he is. You know what

00:06:02.440 I mean? Like the idea that he's being puppeteered by someone like all the things you might say about

00:06:06.540 him that are critical. The idea that he can be used by other people seems quite unlikely.

00:06:11.400 Well, used and controlled are separate concepts. I don't like this puppeteer metaphor because I'm

00:06:17.420 not going to absolve George W. Bush and Tony Blair and Dick Cheney of what they did. I don't think

00:06:22.960 that they had to have much pressure in order to launch the Iraq war, which was obviously in

00:06:28.860 retrospect an enormous disaster. The other point is human beings, and let's get into this to some

00:06:33.540 extent human beings aren't truth-seeking animals they're narrative-seeking animals right so it's

00:06:38.600 been a week now as a record of the iran war i don't know where this is going or when the end

00:06:45.080 goal is uh i certainly feel solidarity as i think most of your viewers do all decent people do with

00:06:51.180 the persian people and hope that everything works out well for them i'm not exactly confident that

00:06:55.480 it will but the point is this isn't the iraq war like it's it's like a week ends up it's the iraq

00:07:00.940 war. Well, the Iraq war was Vietnam when it started, but it didn't end the same way as the

00:07:05.960 Vietnam war. So as for the Israel thing, I can steel man that argument pretty well because Trump

00:07:12.680 campaigned on not getting us into war like Woodrow Wilson had. It's hard to make the case that the

00:07:18.540 Iranian war is in America's interest. I don't think it's at all factual to say that Iran was an

00:07:25.720 imminent threat to the U.S. or Israel, which I think a lot of people have been claiming.

00:07:30.960 This idea that Iran's, you know, minutes away from getting a nuke, if Saddam had had nukes,

00:07:35.960 he'd still be in power. You know, if you look at Pakistan, they harbored Osama bin Laden,

00:07:40.540 and that country's name never comes out of President Trump's mouth. So I think also it's

00:07:46.300 easy to have, not easy, sorry, it's important for people to have, and this is something I hate,

00:07:52.600 This kind of one factor, it's all the trans people, or it's Israel, or it's Trump, you get rid of this, everything, you know, goes away.

00:08:00.920 In my view, and I think this is basic kind of liberty analysis, if Israel vanished today, if every Jewish person vanished today, I don't think the American war machine would pause for one minute.

00:08:12.100 I remember not that long ago, there was a big concern in some conservative circles that there are too many black people who are getting food stamps, right?

00:08:19.500 And then the response was, oh, you know, the majority of people on food stamps are white.

00:08:25.240 And then the people were like, oh, what do you call per capita?

00:08:27.940 And then, you know, black people actually became majority and then everyone stopped talking about it.

00:08:31.020 My contention is if every black person in America got off food stamps or if they all vanished, the food stamp budget would not increase by one dollar.

00:08:38.840 There's always a rationalization for a budget.

00:08:41.320 It is never based on reality.

00:08:42.700 And it's the job of every bureaucrat or general or secretary or whatever to maintain and grow his budget.

00:08:48.360 And we even saw this explicitly not that long ago.

00:08:51.720 The Pentagon asked for however many trillion, and Congress gave them even more than they

00:08:56.100 had asked for.

00:08:57.100 So the point of anyone running an organization is to maintain its strength and control.

00:09:01.680 And as long as you have a military, especially kind of an interventionist military like we

00:09:04.900 have, they are going to find excuses to stick their nose where they don't belong.

00:09:08.600 So you think the Iran war is the military industrial complex, basically finding another

00:09:13.120 target to make more money?

00:09:14.860 To some extent.

00:09:15.980 And to some extent, obviously, this is something that Israel wants.

00:09:18.620 And Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have an extremely close relationship.

00:09:23.100 I don't think the puppeteering thing is true because he's a 79-year-old guy from New York whose daughter converted to Judaism.

00:09:30.380 Like, this is the textbook demographic for being a Zionist.

00:09:33.280 But at the same time, it's very hard for me to understand his logic because he hasn't laid out an end goal.

00:09:41.920 Like, what does the win condition look like?

00:09:43.980 My biggest fear with Iran, and I haven't heard people say this, and I think about it all the time, because this has happened a bit with Afghanistan, is Trump is very explicitly telling the people, rise up, take over your country, and my fear is that they're going to do that, and he's going to be like, all right, good luck, deuces, and leave, and they'll all be slaughtered.

00:10:04.600 We saw what happened in Afghanistan where all those people who worked with us, the U.S., for all those years, they were left to the Taliban.

00:10:13.600 And there was a reporter, I saw an interview, asking a member of the Taliban, can you guarantee those people won't be killed and tortured?

00:10:19.720 He's basically like, sorry.

00:10:21.620 So part of me even wonders if that was part of the deal that they were handed over as part of America's escape from the Taliban.

00:10:27.700 So that is my biggest concern at the moment, not to mention the more obvious concerns, which is, you know, international cataclysm and escalation.

00:10:37.020 I think it's very odd that Iran was bombing all these Muslim-majority countries in their region who otherwise would have been at least putting the pressure on Israel and the U.S. to some extent.

00:10:49.760 The, you know, the conflict between Saudi and Iran is obviously nothing revelatory for me to point out.

00:10:54.420 So it's curious that Putin seems to be helping Iran in the background to some extent.

00:10:59.800 But China's basically kept their mouth shut.

00:11:01.720 And that's an interesting one.

00:11:03.240 Well, I actually made the very same point, I think, on dire ratio before the conflict started,

00:11:07.980 because Stephen Bartlett was asking me, you know, are you excited about the possibly the Iranian people are protesting?

00:11:13.800 And I was like, well, the purpose of encouraging people to rise up is that you're going to back them to the hilt.

00:11:20.220 So then, you know, it's like in Ukraine, it's like, go, go, go, Ukraine.

00:11:23.760 but then you don't actually provide the support,

00:11:25.600 well, why were you encouraging them?

00:11:27.100 You should have been honest with them

00:11:28.520 and said, we're not actually going to help you properly.

00:11:30.520 Right.

00:11:31.540 And you saw this also happen in Venezuela

00:11:34.060 when Chavez was in power.

00:11:35.460 They would have protests.

00:11:36.400 And the people, I think his goons

00:11:37.320 would just stand their machine gun, everybody.

00:11:39.040 So there's thousands of people already dead in Iran.

00:11:43.120 And this is what I foresee happening.

00:11:45.920 And I'm very, very worried about it.

00:11:47.980 The worry is also as well, when it comes to strategy,

00:11:51.660 when you look at the actual logistics of what's happening on the ground in Iran and you think to

00:11:56.640 yourself, you have the IRGC, which is effectively an army. They number around 200,000. Not only are

00:12:03.180 they an army who are military trained, they're also fanatical. How are you going to deal with

00:12:08.120 that? How are you going to deal with the secret police? How are you going to deal with the

00:12:11.640 supporters of the regime? All of these things you're looking at and going, do you actually

00:12:17.520 have a plan for how to not only get rid of that, but also install something else in its place.

00:12:23.260 Right. And it seems like Pavlavi is someone who's been kind of making a lot of noise and Trump's

00:12:28.020 very obviously uncomfortable with him, kind of reinstating the son of the Shah. So

00:12:32.920 to your point, no one has articulated an end game, but it wasn't at all clear that he was just

00:12:40.660 going to, I was on Roseanne Barr's show, right? And Roseanne Barr's like, yeah, in two days,

00:12:45.320 we're going to be bombing Iran.

00:12:46.640 I'm like, okay, crazy lady.

00:12:47.740 And then two days later,

00:12:48.480 we're bombing Iran.

00:12:49.320 So maybe we should ask Roseanne Barr

00:12:50.740 how this is going to end.

00:12:52.240 But it's going to be interesting as well

00:12:54.240 to see what the effect of the Iran war is

00:12:56.880 on the right.

00:12:58.460 Because you have a lot of isolationists

00:13:00.600 in America, particularly on the right,

00:13:02.480 who did not want to be part of a war.

00:13:04.780 Correct.

00:13:05.460 Can't blame them.

00:13:06.320 Yeah, you can't blame them.

00:13:07.380 You can fully understand it.

00:13:08.780 And if this war goes south,

00:13:10.860 and not only that,

00:13:11.880 it then has a spike on oil prices.

00:13:14.060 Which has happened already

00:13:15.640 But it continues to grow a spike on gas prices

00:13:18.900 That in turn affects

00:13:20.780 The cost of living, food, whatever else

00:13:22.700 There will be a lot of people on the right

00:13:24.560 Going, we voted for Trump

00:13:26.060 Because he promised to keep us out of wars

00:13:27.840 Not only did he get us involved

00:13:30.780 In an unnecessary war

00:13:32.120 Where bodies have been flown home

00:13:33.980 On top of that, it's made my life worse

00:13:36.860 I didn't want any of this

00:13:38.100 This isn't what I voted for

00:13:39.340 Do you know who this is really screwing over, right?

00:13:42.680 JD

00:13:43.040 So J.D. Vance is trying to walk like two tightrope simultaneously, which is literally impossible.

00:13:48.040 Or maybe not literally, but I don't think any of us could even do one.

00:13:52.040 Because he has to...

00:13:54.040 You haven't seen me, mate.

00:13:55.040 That's true.

00:13:56.040 That's fair point taken.

00:13:58.040 He is trying to be Trump Jr. as kind of his heir to take over the nomination in 2028.

00:14:06.040 And at the same time, he was clearly uncomfortable with this sort of thing.

00:14:09.040 He was being very explicit about it in years past.

00:14:12.040 in years past, as had Trump in himself.

00:14:14.380 So I think it's going to be very hard for JD to figure out a lane

00:14:18.340 because on one hand, he's close with Tucker.

00:14:20.840 Tucker's son works for him,

00:14:21.800 and Tucker's obviously extremely against this

00:14:23.460 and quite understandably so.

00:14:25.260 On the other hand, Trump is, this is the best thing ever.

00:14:27.340 It's just done in a week. We just won.

00:14:29.620 And he's just so sick of winning.

00:14:31.240 So I don't know how he navigates this

00:14:33.760 in terms of getting the nomination

00:14:36.400 because what can easily happen is

00:14:39.460 He's trying to do what Hillary tried to do in 2008,

00:14:42.320 where she was regarded as the presumptive nominee.

00:14:44.660 Don't bother running.

00:14:45.640 She's got in the bag.

00:14:46.540 She's going to be the nominee.

00:14:47.440 Let's worry about the general.

00:14:48.920 If his numbers, if there's,

00:14:50.980 the thing is there's plenty of people

00:14:52.460 in the Republican Party who are sociopaths and narcissists.

00:14:56.040 So it's going to be very easy for someone to run

00:14:58.120 just for the sake of improving their platform,

00:15:00.340 getting speaking fees, getting book deals.

00:15:01.960 They don't run for the intention to get the nomination.

00:15:04.120 They just run to be like, okay,

00:15:05.560 like now everyone knows my name

00:15:06.700 and I can parlay this in something bigger.

00:15:08.520 This happened in British politics all the time.

00:15:10.180 It's called the stalking horse.

00:15:11.340 But if that stalking horse gets any sort of traction, then the gates will be wide open

00:15:15.860 and there'll be room for somebody else to kind of come in and put their hat in the ring.

00:15:20.400 So I don't think 2028 is a lock for JD as it looks two years out, because if you looked

00:15:27.700 at 2014 for the Republican Party, no one is even mentioning Trump.

00:15:30.560 That was not even an option.

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00:16:02.040 Well, Vance is, whether you agree with his politics or disagree, he's clearly very smart.

00:16:07.660 And if you understand public communication and have been watching what he's been saying

00:16:12.400 every time President Trump has gone into a round 12-day war or now, it's very clever

00:16:18.380 positioning for Vance because he always says, you know, the president is the greatest president

00:16:23.320 in the history of presidents.

00:16:25.020 And, you know, I trust the president.

00:16:26.800 The president knows what he's doing, which kind of puts him in a position to later say,

00:16:30.580 well, look, I voiced my opposition internally, but I'm a team guy, but privately, I was not in

00:16:39.480 favor of this. I understand why you're shaking your head, because that is a difficult line to

00:16:45.340 move. No, that's not why I'm shaking my head. I'm shaking my head because I think what you're

00:16:48.100 saying is impossible. Because President Trump, in his second administration, the only thing he

00:16:53.040 chose for was loyalty, right? And I don't think there's anyone left, maybe Stephen Miller,

00:16:58.040 I actually Googled it.

00:16:59.420 I said, who from the first administration

00:17:01.420 is around the second administration?

00:17:03.360 There are three people.

00:17:04.220 Every other bridge has been burned.

00:17:06.040 The guy from Alabama, I forget it, Jeff Sessions.

00:17:08.500 You had Bannon is gone.

00:17:10.020 You had Bill or Bob Barrios, get their names confused.

00:17:14.360 Omarosa.

00:17:15.680 They all turned on each other, right?

00:17:17.900 So he is very hypersensitive

00:17:20.140 to people speaking out against him.

00:17:23.380 And if J.D. Vance starts trying to do this thing,

00:17:25.580 oh, I supported Trump, but I'm a different person.

00:17:28.040 I don't think Trump with his ego is just going to be like, say what you throw me under the bus

00:17:32.300 in order to get ahead. He's not going to keep his mouth shut. Can anyone imagine that scenario?

00:17:37.260 So your point is, this isn't going to work. I don't, I don't know how, I think JD Vance is

00:17:42.520 extremely smart in all the ways that don't matter in politics. So Trump, I think JD thinks Trump is

00:17:50.380 in many ways a buffoon and in many ways he is from the perspective of Yale or Harvard, although he

00:17:55.340 obviously went to an Ivy League himself. But when it comes to politics itself, Trump is extremely

00:18:00.300 savvy. The fact that he took out, I think it was 14 Republican candidates, 2016, that he took out

00:18:07.580 Hillary Clinton, who's had the biggest juggernaut behind her in terms of culture of any candidate,

00:18:12.760 certainly in my lifetime, maybe since FDR, that is no mean feat. The fact that you are,

00:18:19.220 your approval ratings were in the toilet after January 6th, you're regarded as a complete pariah.

00:18:23.380 during the midterms, most of the candidates, or all of them, that you endorsed, who were in kind

00:18:28.760 of swing races, they all lost, to recapture the nomination and to recapture the presidency. This

00:18:34.800 is something that's historically unprecedented and is a testament to, in many ways, this political

00:18:40.160 acumen. He was the one who's like, let me go on the podcast circuit and put myself in front of

00:18:45.480 that firing line for three hours at a time on Rogan. That was, and this guy's, again, no spring

00:18:49.660 chicken. So I think JD thinks like Elon did, I'm going to work with this guy. I'm going to use him

00:18:56.620 to further my agenda. But Trump is really, really crafty with stuff like that. And I think he's

00:19:02.920 going to be very sensitive to any of these machinations. And he's doing it very publicly.

00:19:06.560 He's playing Vance against Rubio. There's all these articles about like, oh, Trump doesn't

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00:20:42.620 The thing is with Trump as well is that he's a once-in-a-generation political figure.

00:20:48.880 Yes, that's right.

00:20:49.700 In the same way as Blair was, in that it's very rare for somebody to be able to unite a party and a political faction.

00:20:57.560 Yes.

00:20:58.200 That is incredibly rare, because you're asking people to essentially put aside their differences and work together.

00:21:03.640 That's hard.

00:21:04.240 Yeah, and also there's this argument online that, like, who is MAGA, who isn't MAGA?

00:21:08.980 MAGA is Trump. MAGA means that which Trump's like.

00:21:11.700 It's not a ideological, you know, Aristotelian worldview.

00:21:15.160 It's just basically a series of vague preferences, most of which I think are good ones.

00:21:21.160 But it's not this kind of well thought out, coherent, you know, national review philosophy.

00:21:26.060 And you see that with the support for the war, because for all the chatter...

00:21:29.880 90% I saw in one poll.

00:21:31.160 For all the chatter online, MAGA Republicans are just like, well, Trump said it's good,

00:21:35.160 so it's good.

00:21:35.580 I don't mean to satirize too much their position, but given the level of inconsistency between his stated policy positions before the election and what he's doing now, whether you like that or not, it's still quite remarkable to have that level of support.

00:21:51.260 And I can also steel man that case because I think Trump for many of these people is the first time in their lives they feel seen by a politician. They feel this guy understands me. This guy speaks for me. You can say positive things about the Bushes if you like. It's very hard to make the case that George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush is kind of this like you're not going to see them at McDonald's. Right. And Trump eats McDonald's ironically, but also not ironically. He actually likes it.

00:22:18.900 And I think that speaks, and being a New Yorker, like a real New Yorker, I think that speaks

00:22:23.740 to a certain level of character on this story.

00:22:26.000 And what do you make of the idea that, you know, Venezuela, Iran, now Iran too, this

00:22:33.480 is all part of a big 5D chess strategy and, you know, the rabbit will be pulled out of

00:22:41.180 the hat and the magic of this anti-Russia, anti-China thing will be revealed in all its

00:22:47.140 glory down the road.

00:22:47.780 Well, I play 7D chess if you follow me.

00:22:53.800 Let's talk Venezuela.

00:22:55.760 Because this is your...

00:22:57.760 Bienvenido.

00:22:59.020 I've been to Venezuela as a kid twice.

00:23:01.440 I have enormous sympathy and appreciation for that country.

00:23:06.240 It is such a case study of how something which is just this jewel of South America and amazing people.

00:23:14.240 If you ever meet any Venezuelans, God bless you,

00:23:16.580 They're just, with one exception, they're smart, highly educated, great people.

00:23:23.060 That's the British part.

00:23:23.700 Yeah.

00:23:24.700 And what was amazing about what happened with Maduro, when I saw that photo of Maduro with the blindfolds and handcuffs, I thought it was AI.

00:23:32.820 Because I'm like, wait, this is really it?

00:23:35.100 But we basically teleported in.

00:23:37.560 The United States teleported in, grabbed the leader, teleported out.

00:23:41.220 It's like, okay, bye.

00:23:42.540 And the Democrats were like, what do we do?

00:23:46.580 Like, you can't say, oh, you went in there and killed everybody.

00:23:49.200 You can't say it's in chaos because it was in chaos before the regime's...

00:23:52.480 I don't even understand really the point.

00:23:54.460 Now, there's several conspiracy theories, and I don't use the term derisively, one of

00:23:57.860 which is they told Maduro, do you want to go get arrested and go on a nice vacation

00:24:02.760 or do you want to get shot?

00:24:04.080 And he's like, vacation, please.

00:24:06.020 The deeper argument is that he's going to reveal something about the voting machines

00:24:10.760 in 2020 because Venezuela is somehow involved.

00:24:13.920 The third situation is, okay, we got your guys,

00:24:16.920 so the number two person is now going to have to play ball.

00:24:20.740 But I was discussing, you know, in Rogan a couple weeks ago,

00:24:24.180 we just kind of stopped talking about it.

00:24:26.120 And this is something that's never happened before.

00:24:28.140 We just go in and snatch a leader and vanish.

00:24:30.740 And I mean, of course, my hopes are for the Venezuelan people,

00:24:34.220 but I don't know where this is going.

00:24:36.100 And I don't know where anyone else knows where it's going.

00:24:38.220 Well, I don't think most people know where this is going.

00:24:40.740 Venezuelan people are very hopeful,

00:24:42.140 but that comes more from a sense of desperation than anything else, because we've been under

00:24:47.200 a totalitarian leadership for 26 years. I think what they want to do is effectively Venezuela is

00:24:55.200 a de facto colony of the United States now. So we're going to see the oil companies come back,

00:25:00.320 we're going to see the oil infrastructure be repaired, oil is going to start pumping,

00:25:04.720 and what we're going to have is a leadership which is going to hold Venezuela, make sure it

00:25:09.560 doesn't crumble, but also going to be answerable to the gringos. And I think if you asked a lot

00:25:15.200 of Venezuelans after not only Chavez or Maduro, but then Chavez, but also our own disastrous

00:25:21.480 flirtations with democracy, which have been, simply haven't worked. Let's be honest about it.

00:25:27.340 They almost prefer that option. Oh yeah. You can't blame them. But here's the other one, Cuba.

00:25:32.740 Like as we speak, Cuba is about to run out of water. There's this enormous blockade. Marco

00:25:38.260 Rubio is you know can I say this on a nightly basis rubbing one out to the idea of a free Cuba

00:25:43.620 you can't blame him no uh Cubans are amazing based people Cuba was like the Las Vegas of the

00:25:49.640 Caribbean in the 1950s until you know it all went to hell and I I think a transition from Cuba to

00:25:56.660 a free country would not be that difficult and I think the people are hungry for it and their

00:26:01.540 standard of living is so low and horrific and needlessly low obviously it's just a function

00:26:05.000 the government. I mean, they're very entrepreneurial. They very quickly reestablish

00:26:08.400 themselves as the crown jewel of the Caribbean that they were, but who knows where that's going

00:26:13.500 to go also. But come back, come back with me to this 4D chess idea, which is some people

00:26:18.420 have argued that the reason the Trump administration is doing this is in part Monroe

00:26:23.640 doctrine, which is don't fuck around in our backyard, China, Russia, which they were in

00:26:27.260 Venezuela. Right. And then the Iran thing is about, look, I think you're based on my

00:26:33.300 understanding, I mean, I obviously don't have access to the secret information, but, you know,

00:26:37.160 we talked to a lot of people about it. Iran didn't have a functioning nuclear weapon or a program,

00:26:44.160 but they were enriching uranium to levels which are not remotely necessary for civilian use.

00:26:50.020 And, you know, there's some debate about, because I don't think we in the West really are capable

00:26:55.740 of processing intellectually, because it's not an intellectual thing. Are they these jihadi

00:27:02.180 extremists who are waiting for the end of the world, for their messiah to come back,

00:27:08.320 which they will happily bring about using nuclear weapons, or are they more interested

00:27:11.820 in having the threat of nuclear weapons so that they can dominate the region, which is

00:27:15.220 a much more rational, logical thing.

00:27:17.560 Or the third one, which is if they have nuclear weapons, they know they're not going to be

00:27:20.580 attacked, like Pakistan.

00:27:21.680 Right.

00:27:22.320 Right.

00:27:23.620 Yeah.

00:27:24.300 So those options are all on the table.

00:27:26.440 And the Trump administration is like, well, you can't have nuclear weapons.

00:27:30.360 We can't have more nuclear proliferation.

00:27:32.180 Not least because, and I'm sure North Korea, which we're going to come to eventually, is

00:27:36.780 different, right?

00:27:37.680 North Korea doesn't have proxies all over the place.

00:27:40.000 It's not attacking other countries.

00:27:41.380 It's not shooting missiles into South Korea every three days, et cetera, right?

00:27:45.860 And so the 4D chess explanation is, well, Trump is basically trying to rearrange the

00:27:51.100 world to the benefit of the United States.

00:27:54.200 And that is why he's doing this.

00:27:56.420 I don't, I would disagree slightly.

00:27:58.480 I don't know that he is doing it to the benefit of the United States.

00:28:02.260 I think Trump knows he's got four years.

00:28:04.640 And I think Trump's like, I've got a big stick and I'm going to use it.

00:28:08.140 And I'm going to do what I can in the White House in the time I've left to kind of make

00:28:14.060 the world, in his perspective, the sort of Pax Americana.

00:28:17.280 Well, that's what I'm saying.

00:28:18.180 That's literally what I mean, right?

00:28:20.060 He's using the time he has and the I don't have to give a shit anymore attitude that

00:28:24.980 he has to try and remake the world in the best interest of in what he perceives America's best

00:28:30.800 interest to be sure yes and I think that's also one of the reasons why North Korea was basically

00:28:35.000 his first issue in uh the first term because it's kind of the lowest hanging fruit in terms of it's

00:28:40.900 going to take theoretically not that much effort you could have maximum increase of freedom so

00:28:45.440 that does seem to be the case that you know he the extreme I the fact that we are sitting here

00:28:54.760 having a conversation about the U.S. getting Greenland, I think at a certain point, it's very

00:29:00.140 difficult to have a mental model for what is going through his head. Sure. But I think the

00:29:06.140 explanation I gave seems to me to be the most logical. But the problem is with that, and I think

00:29:11.940 it's the one you identified as earlier, is I have no idea how that is compatible with regime change

00:29:19.200 in Iran. If he just went in and destroyed more nuclear facilities, I'd be like, well, that makes

00:29:23.380 perfect sense if he went in and destroyed the drone factories which iran uses to produce drones

00:29:29.980 to send to russia to use in ukraine makes sense if he bombs iran so they can't supply all to china

00:29:36.000 anymore makes sense to me but regime change like that i mean like the idea like you're going to

00:29:43.180 kill the ayatollah and the sun is going to be more moderate after that well you kill the sun okay

00:29:47.480 like are you just going to keep going like this is what doesn't make sense to me because you know

00:29:52.060 and people who are anarchists like myself

00:29:54.240 advocate for political violence.

00:29:56.360 It's like, you know if you kill a senator,

00:29:58.840 there's going to be another senator.

00:30:00.100 It's not like you kill the office.

00:30:01.760 Oh, now we're down to 99 senators, all right, lock and load.

00:30:04.640 So if you kill the Ayatollah, it's not like,

00:30:07.740 all right, it's not chess.

00:30:08.980 It's not 2D chess where you take the king.

00:30:11.400 It's like, I win, checkmate.

00:30:13.120 The other point is, if he's saying

00:30:14.940 they want complete unconditional surrender,

00:30:18.220 how are you going to have anyone surrender

00:30:20.120 if you keep killing the leaders?

00:30:21.560 Who is going to be the one who is doing the surrendering?

00:30:24.940 I think, I think it's hard.

00:30:27.720 First of all, I don't doubt that someone in the White House

00:30:31.260 sat him down and had some sort of plan.

00:30:34.440 If not him, they game this out.

00:30:37.100 But I don't, I feel like the underpants gnomes from South Park.

00:30:40.220 You know, step one, you steal the underpants.

00:30:42.080 Step two, step three, profit.

00:30:43.760 And it's like, what's step two, right?

00:30:45.920 So I don't know what their win, like I said earlier,

00:30:50.380 what their win condition is going to look like,

00:30:52.580 I think it's going to be almost impossible to...

00:30:55.160 If you start killing and bombing, this isn't Japan.

00:30:59.220 This idea of unconditional surrender,

00:31:01.600 the thing that happens with these countries,

00:31:03.260 as Qaddafi found out, is when they let down their guard,

00:31:06.560 the people atop are personally murdered.

00:31:09.080 And if you had a free Iran or Persia or whatever,

00:31:13.660 I don't think all these people atop

00:31:15.380 are just going to go to Club Med if that still exists.

00:31:18.300 They're going to face prison sentences.

00:31:19.760 So there's every incentive for them to dig their heels in.

00:31:23.160 Obviously, the Saudis are a big problem for them as well,

00:31:25.580 and many other Arab countries in the area

00:31:27.500 are not particularly happy with Iran.

00:31:29.320 So I don't see how this...

00:31:32.820 As we said earlier, every day it seems like he's ready to be like,

00:31:36.600 all right, mission...

00:31:37.180 He said, I think, mission accomplished,

00:31:38.500 which was that infamous banner that George W. Bush

00:31:40.860 stood in front of during his administration.

00:31:44.240 I mean, it's very plausible.

00:31:45.420 He's just going to be like, all right, we bombed them,

00:31:47.140 now we're going to go home.

00:31:48.000 it's like, okay, what did that accomplish?

00:31:50.300 Absolutely.

00:31:51.040 And then you factor in the ideology,

00:31:53.740 which is a radical version of Islamism.

00:31:56.420 Sure.

00:31:56.900 So you go, how are you going to de-radicalize

00:31:59.980 a huge swathe of the population?

00:32:02.340 Because if you kill them,

00:32:04.520 then surely you're going to radicalize their family,

00:32:07.560 their friends, other members of the population.

00:32:10.360 Right.

00:32:10.620 If someone, God forbid, came to the US

00:32:14.320 and took a foreign entity and took out the president,

00:32:19.180 Americans would rally very heavily

00:32:21.080 behind whoever the vice president was.

00:32:22.520 We saw this in, after 9-11,

00:32:24.580 I think George W. Bush had 98 or 91% approval rating.

00:32:27.620 Everyone's like, right,

00:32:28.940 you know, the kind of rally behind the flag.

00:32:30.520 So the same thing certainly is happening with Iran,

00:32:33.200 where if in Tehran, the buildings were shaking,

00:32:36.660 it sounded like the doors of hell had been open.

00:32:38.360 I saw someone, a citizen there gave that quote.

00:32:41.520 You're not going to be like,

00:32:42.340 I'm in favor of the guys who are bombing us to oblivion.

00:32:45.260 And it's also, you look at,

00:32:47.080 they were talking about arming the Kurds.

00:32:49.400 Right.

00:32:49.800 So then you, my mind went back to Iraq

00:32:52.520 when essentially Iraq collapsed.

00:32:55.140 And you look at Iran and you go,

00:32:56.900 well, this could be a civil war, couldn't it?

00:32:58.520 Because the Kurds want their own nation.

00:33:00.680 That has been clear for a long time.

00:33:02.220 Right.

00:33:02.840 And if you arm them,

00:33:04.220 they're going to want to take it by force.

00:33:06.020 And that's further going to destabilize the country,

00:33:08.200 which is on the brink as we speak.

00:33:09.980 And America also has a history of arming people and then trying to fight them.

00:33:13.660 It's just really this kind of...

00:33:15.600 We laugh, but it's just like, you know, we're shaking hands with the Taliban one day.

00:33:18.860 The next day, we're invading Afghanistan.

00:33:20.700 So it's the arming...

00:33:22.460 Again, arming the Kurds.

00:33:23.760 Like, we are...

00:33:25.280 There's this fear in the States right now that Iran is activating all these sleeper cells, supposedly.

00:33:32.000 That's what we're doing there.

00:33:33.240 Like, if we're arming the Kurds and saying, rise up, we're calling out our sleeper cells.

00:33:37.180 And are you worried about that, Michael?

00:33:38.400 because I've seen some news stories.

00:33:40.260 I mean, the idea that Iran is going to shoot drones

00:33:42.040 at California, I mean, obviously.

00:33:44.520 Let's hope so.

00:33:47.380 My God.

00:33:48.240 I mean, someone should save us.

00:33:50.180 I mean, imagine if they had gotten news.

00:33:52.060 How would you know?

00:33:53.200 They might set the whole city on fire, right?

00:33:55.380 It'd be terrible.

00:33:56.940 Yeah.

00:33:58.580 But it just seems implausible to me, right?

00:34:00.840 It seems like a bunch of bullshit.

00:34:03.040 But, you know, individual people doing crazy shit

00:34:06.180 and killing people doesn't seem that difficult at all

00:34:08.280 in a country with millions of guns and whatever, right?

00:34:11.380 Do you think there's a real worry now in America

00:34:14.160 that that could happen?

00:34:16.940 I'm going to give an answer that sounds like a joke,

00:34:19.180 but it's not.

00:34:20.380 We're at the point now

00:34:21.780 where there's so many daily mass shootings

00:34:24.800 that the only difference would be

00:34:27.160 that they speak Farsi instead of being trans.

00:34:30.340 So I don't think that that's a big concern.

00:34:34.080 I think if they were going to be smart,

00:34:36.180 they would all have it all done on one day,

00:34:39.080 like a day of terror.

00:34:40.160 That would really shake America

00:34:41.500 and that would really move the needle

00:34:43.360 in one direction or another.

00:34:44.360 I don't think it moved the needle

00:34:45.540 in a direction that they would want.

00:34:47.440 Right.

00:34:47.920 But so I don't-

00:34:48.920 Because if that happened, you would get,

00:34:51.060 we were talking about this last night, actually,

00:34:52.900 because obviously there's a very strong anti-war sentiment

00:34:55.120 and there will be lots of people who say Trump did this.

00:34:58.220 Yeah, correctly.

00:34:59.180 But I think there'll also be lots of people

00:35:01.200 who say America has been attacked.

00:35:03.140 Right.

00:35:03.360 But that's a dangerous card to play on their part.

00:35:08.440 And I also think then you're going to have a lot of solidarity from Europe

00:35:10.980 who's had to deal with this sort of terrorism.

00:35:12.960 And a lot of them are going to, you know,

00:35:14.360 maybe their spines will get a little stiff.

00:35:15.660 And maybe not Sir Kier, but maybe Germany or certainly France.

00:35:19.480 Well, we obviously hope that doesn't happen.

00:35:21.320 Do you think part of the problem is that we in the West

00:35:24.520 simply don't understand other mindsets, but particularly other ideologies?

00:35:28.840 Oh, yeah. I mean, my God, it is.

00:35:31.700 Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question.

00:35:33.700 Because one of the things I've been focusing on recently,

00:35:37.240 one of the things I'm trying to defeat

00:35:39.740 is this idea of universalism.

00:35:42.320 And we're taught this in school since we're very young,

00:35:44.640 that everyone is basically the same under our skin.

00:35:47.360 Now, in certain contexts, it's absolutely true.

00:35:49.320 Everyone feels pain.

00:35:50.420 Everyone loves their family.

00:35:51.800 You know, everyone mourns when someone passes away.

00:35:54.260 But in this, I think all of us are in the same kind of tier

00:35:57.020 in terms of intellect, meaning I don't think there's anything

00:35:59.640 i believe that i would not be able to explain to the two of you or vice versa maybe there'd be some

00:36:04.160 follow-up questions but be able to understand each other i also think if the three of us sat

00:36:07.680 with a nuclear physicist and he tried to understand explain nuclear physics to us it'd be just gibberish

00:36:12.700 at a certain point be like okay maybe i can follow these analogies but i'm really not understanding

00:36:17.220 it in the same way you're understanding it but that also applies to people who are dumber so

00:36:21.460 if you look at sitcoms people think dumber people just have fewer facts or they're slower to

00:36:28.460 understand things. That's not the case. Unintelligent people think, process data in ways

00:36:34.600 that are completely different from other people. And this is something that's very deleterious to

00:36:39.400 democracy. And you see it all over. One of the great things about social media is A, people who

00:36:45.060 in times past, great example is Lawrence Tribe, who's like a dean at Harvard Law. In times past,

00:36:50.580 they would be on a pedestal. This guy's at Harvard Law. He must be amazing. You look at his feed,

00:36:55.340 and this old lesbian is tweeting like your grandma on Facebook.

00:36:58.480 It's an embarrassment.

00:36:59.660 The same time when unintelligent people express themselves,

00:37:02.280 you realize, holy crap, this person's Kathy Newman.

00:37:05.260 And if you sit down and explain to them,

00:37:07.000 they still don't pick up what you're saying

00:37:08.360 and they just regard nouns and verbs as basically a soup

00:37:12.640 and connect things in ways that are complete gibberish to other people.

00:37:16.680 So one of the other things that happens is

00:37:19.320 people cannot understand things outside their framework.

00:37:24.120 So everyone is, Farage is the Trump of England,

00:37:27.580 and in the Philippines, he's the Trump of the Philippines,

00:37:30.500 and the Trump of Brazil, Bolsonaro, and this one's the...

00:37:33.700 Maybe they're roughly analogous in that they're like a populist loudmouth,

00:37:38.580 but these are not all the same phenomenon.

00:37:40.300 And if you ask any American about some other country,

00:37:42.780 they would say, who are the Republicans and who are the Democrats?

00:37:45.820 Well, it doesn't always parse out that way.

00:37:47.440 In fact, in America, Jeb and Trump are not the same phenomenon.

00:37:51.080 They're both Republicans.

00:37:52.300 and Bernie Sanders, all those independent,

00:37:54.600 or let's say AOC and Hillary Clinton,

00:37:56.640 they're also not the same phenomenon,

00:37:58.000 although they're both Democrats.

00:37:59.500 So human beings, broadly speaking,

00:38:01.960 not only have no empathy,

00:38:03.420 which is an ability to see things

00:38:04.780 from other points of view,

00:38:05.980 they're violently opposed to it.

00:38:08.060 I always say that people don't run a true-false filter,

00:38:11.140 they run an us-them filter.

00:38:12.800 You see it every time on social media,

00:38:14.900 if you say something,

00:38:15.940 oh, you sound like a Democrat,

00:38:18.180 and the implication is therefore you're wrong.

00:38:20.380 It's deranged, but that is how unintelligent people process information.

00:38:24.300 And it's such a good point.

00:38:25.660 And then you put in an ideology as extreme as Islamism,

00:38:29.040 and we in the West simply can't get our heads around it because we value life.

00:38:33.880 What is that?

00:38:34.700 I hate that word.

00:38:36.440 What do you mean by extreme?

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00:39:42.380 What do I mean by extreme?

00:39:43.740 a version of Islam that wants to establish a global Islamic caliphate that doesn't want there

00:39:49.820 to be sovereign nations and it will kill, maim and destroy as many people, countries in order

00:39:56.140 to achieve its aims. But if you think you're here serving Allah and you think that that's the correct

00:40:02.500 course of affairs, wouldn't that be the correct thing to do? Within that framework, yes. But the

00:40:08.960 rest of us can look at that and say, if you want to kill millions of people in the name of Allah,

00:40:12.780 you're extreme, right? But I, I, I would just say you're principled. Sure. But those two things

00:40:19.700 don't have to go against each other. You can be principled and extreme because the principles you

00:40:23.980 adhere to are extreme, but I don't know. Or lead to extreme consequences. Sure. But I don't,

00:40:28.240 there's this, there's this negative connotation to the word extreme that I'm not comfortable with.

00:40:32.940 Uh, well, well, the extremism, I mean, uh, Gandhi was also very principled, but I,

00:40:38.840 And in some ways, quite extreme, too.

00:40:41.800 But I guess the violent nature of what Islamists do in reality

00:40:46.040 seems quite extreme to those of us who are not part of that framework.

00:40:50.700 But I think what happens is when you have that mindset,

00:40:54.440 you end up with Rotterdam, and you end up with where the UK is right now.

00:40:58.060 Which mindset?

00:40:59.180 This fear of extremism and this idea that we're going to vote ourselves free.

00:41:04.640 I don't follow how those two things are connected.

00:41:06.720 Sure, because if you have this idea that violence in the service of your ideology is something that's really kind of off the table and something only people who are really out there would do, when violence might otherwise be necessary, it's not regarded as part of the Overton window.

00:41:25.980 Well, the violence is, I mean, violence is the state, right? The state, which I know you're not

00:41:31.300 a fan of, but the state is controlled, organized and legislated violence. And I think the counter

00:41:37.380 argument, well, otherwise you get Rotherham is, uh, I don't, I wouldn't advocate for the response

00:41:42.820 to Rotherham being, uh, a mirror image of what Islamists are doing. I would say that's where

00:41:49.620 the state has to do its fucking job. Well, that's where you and I differ. I think that's exactly

00:41:53.060 the crux of the point. Right. And my argument would be there's, we have a police force for a

00:41:57.000 reason and we have laws for a reason. Yeah. The police force is there to protect the perpetrators

00:42:00.620 around them. Well, they were in, in that instance, but they don't have to be.

00:42:05.980 I don't know what that means. If they just, well, because their job as officially stated is to

00:42:10.340 enforce the law. What these people did was against the law. But as officially stated is a nonsense

00:42:14.960 term. It doesn't mean anything. It's like, if I tell you I've got a car and it flies officially

00:42:18.980 and it doesn't fly, who cares?

00:42:20.720 No, I hear you, but the police do do their job

00:42:23.660 in most instances of enforcing the law.

00:42:26.300 Right, so let's worry about the times when they don't.

00:42:28.620 Yeah, yeah, but that wasn't a police issue.

00:42:32.040 What that was is, hold on, Michael.

00:42:34.440 What that was is a failure to enforce the law

00:42:37.480 because they were prioritizing other concerns,

00:42:40.360 which they were effectively encouraged to do

00:42:43.020 by the society in which they lived,

00:42:44.820 which is you place social cohesion above law.

00:42:47.240 They weren't encouraged by their overlords to do what they did?

00:42:50.420 They did this unilaterally?

00:42:52.700 From the evidence that we've seen,

00:42:54.620 a lot of it was quite low-level sensitivity about social cohesion, right?

00:43:00.460 So a person at a fairly low level was worried about investigating something

00:43:04.960 because it would mean that they'd be called racist, right?

00:43:08.560 It wasn't necessarily, it wasn't, as far as we know,

00:43:12.540 the people at the top going, don't investigate this.

00:43:15.620 I don't think that's statistically possible.

00:43:17.780 There's just these few outliers because it was so pervasive.

00:43:20.460 I didn't say there were outliers.

00:43:21.980 I think on the contrary, it was a pervasive culture.

00:43:24.620 Right.

00:43:24.920 But what I'm saying is I'm not certain.

00:43:26.800 In fact, I'm quite confident based on what we've talked to lots of people about this

00:43:31.580 who know, right, that this was not a top down, this is what you're supposed to do

00:43:36.680 or not supposed to do.

00:43:37.460 It was actually something that happened because there was a pervasive culture

00:43:40.740 at the lower levels of social workers,

00:43:43.380 of police officers and others

00:43:44.620 who just thought,

00:43:46.320 A, the sensitivities about

00:43:48.660 what would it mean for community cohesion

00:43:50.560 and all this other bullshit.

00:43:52.100 And also, you know, we had Maggie Oliver

00:43:54.320 who was a police whistleblower

00:43:55.800 who blew the whistle on this stuff

00:43:57.520 who just said that because of the social background

00:44:00.880 of a lot of the victims,

00:44:02.440 there was just like, oh, they don't matter.

00:44:05.000 Right.

00:44:05.480 Which also, unfortunately, does happen.

00:44:07.740 Sure.

00:44:08.620 I don't think, my point is,

00:44:09.820 I don't think it's necessarily the dynamic you're presenting, which is either you tolerate this or you engage in extremism or the use of violence in an unorganized way on your own side.

00:44:22.760 Well, it could be organized. It's not the unorganized.

00:44:24.340 But my point is...

00:44:25.080 But that's what I mean. That's what the state is for.

00:44:28.820 Ostensibly. But in this case, the state is not for that.

00:44:32.560 None of these people who are accomplices, state agents or accomplices in these atrocities had any consequences, as far as I know.

00:44:39.180 It's certainly not the kind of consequence I would like to see them have happen.

00:44:42.580 And what any organization, if it faces no pushback, it will continue in perpetuity to try to maintain and increase its power.

00:44:50.200 So until there are, and one of the great things that Trump did when he came into office is people face consequences for the first time for the crap that they tried to pull.

00:44:58.000 So unless they, until and unless there are, all of the governors in America during COVID

00:45:05.900 who sent in diseased people into nursing homes, killing elderly people, they all got reelected.

00:45:12.420 They had no consequences for the murders that they committed.

00:45:15.940 Keir Starmer was a barrister defending some of these people, if I'm not mistaken.

00:45:20.260 So until and unless, or he had some involvement legally with the-

00:45:24.020 He was the director of public prosecution.

00:45:25.660 Okay, thank you, yeah, yeah.

00:45:26.360 Yeah, but, you know, as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of Keir Starmer.

00:45:30.500 He wasn't personally defending these people and or doing it out of choice.

00:45:35.900 You know, criminals are entitled to legal representation.

00:45:38.180 Sure, but he also made it a point in early 2025 to try to put a kibosh.

00:45:44.280 Yes, yeah, and it's despicable.

00:45:47.320 And they will, if they fail electorally,

00:45:49.800 and unless we get a red-green alliance at the next election,

00:45:53.160 they will be punished for it.

00:45:54.240 Yeah.

00:45:55.220 I don't think Keir Starmer will go to prison, though, but, you know.

00:45:57.960 That's not...

00:45:58.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:59.440 No, it's a totally fair point, but we started this...

00:46:03.100 Everything you're saying is perfectly legitimate,

00:46:04.820 but we started this with your quibble over France's use of the term extremism.

00:46:09.060 Right.

00:46:09.400 And I think the point he's trying to make is...

00:46:11.900 I mean, in America, this is easier for you guys to relate to

00:46:14.780 because you have some of your own religious people

00:46:16.400 who are kind of on that end of things, but not...

00:46:18.620 Also because we have our guns.

00:46:19.960 Yeah, true.

00:46:20.700 um but for i think for the western mind broadly speaking it has become quite difficult to relate

00:46:29.460 empathetically as you were talking about earlier to people who are willing to blow themselves up

00:46:34.460 among a bunch of innocent girls at ariana grande concert can we talk about that for a second that

00:46:40.540 concert yeah because that was one of the greatest moments in my opinion of british history do you

00:46:45.200 know what queen elizabeth did after the concert did we talk about this

00:46:47.820 getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick i like to

00:46:57.400 be prepared that's why i remember 988 canada's suicide crisis helpline it's good to know just

00:47:03.580 in case anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder

00:47:08.360 anytime 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in canada

00:47:13.340 no this is gonna sound like a troll and i want everyone who's watching this to assume i'm lying

00:47:21.500 and look up the footage for themselves after that ariana grande concert when people blown

00:47:26.180 to smithereens and many of us were injured queen elizabeth god rest her soul went to the hospital

00:47:30.800 and visited many of the victims and they were very honored to see queen elizabeth she had a

00:47:34.440 beautiful hat on and as she went from bed to bed she's like oh so did you enjoy the did you enjoy

00:47:39.160 the concert well you know other than seeing my friend's head blown off you know that encore was

00:47:43.780 really something miss your majesty so it was really a crazy moment in british history so just

00:47:50.200 come back to the no reaction okay well sorry i'm like i want to get to the end of the argument uh

00:47:56.800 so the the point being that we struggle to understand the mindset of somebody who's willing

00:48:04.780 to do that? Because we would never do that. Maybe, okay, I can explain that. Okay, here we go.

00:48:10.580 Unless you would. I can understand it very easily, and I can explain it to you very easily.

00:48:15.640 And I cover this in my book, The White Pill and The Anarchist Handbook. In the 1800s,

00:48:22.280 when Nobel invented dynamite, this was the first time for people who believed in workers'

00:48:27.980 revolution that they felt that they had a sense of equality. And there was an essay in Emma

00:48:32.660 goldman's um magazine mother earth uh talking about how the ruling class has navies armies

00:48:39.300 police military the workers have dynamite and the point being they can they the ruling class

00:48:46.280 could come at us with everything they have now we can blow them to smithereens and there was

00:48:49.800 someone named johan most who from germany moved to the states he published a pamphlet which

00:48:57.360 basically taught people how to make bombs. And this was a big kind of crucial moment in terms

00:49:02.760 of free speech. Are you going to allow this pamphlet to become publicized? In the late 1800s,

00:49:09.520 there was a meeting in the Haymarket Square in Chicago. Someone we still don't know to this day

00:49:15.120 threw a bomb. Several people, anarchists, were put on trial, some of whom weren't even there.

00:49:21.920 And one of the defendants, Louis Ling, who was on the cover of the Anarchist Handbook,

00:49:25.480 His lawyer said, not in so many words,

00:49:28.020 my client couldn't have thrown the bomb

00:49:29.620 because he was at home making bombs.

00:49:32.480 So several of them hanged.

00:49:34.420 They were posthumously pardoned.

00:49:35.640 There's a memorial to them in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago.

00:49:39.900 Point being, when people, especially young men,

00:49:45.420 feel a sense of desperation,

00:49:47.860 when they feel that they have no hope of achieving anything,

00:49:52.460 that there's no upward mobility for them,

00:49:54.300 and they have an opportunity to make their name

00:49:58.260 and same reason people join the military.

00:50:02.140 A lot of people join the military, you know,

00:50:04.020 for positive reasons thinking,

00:50:05.560 okay, I'm going to fight for my country.

00:50:07.460 I'm going to do what's right.

00:50:08.520 And it might cost me something,

00:50:09.820 but at least I'll go out heroically

00:50:11.540 instead of pushing pencils behind some desk.

00:50:14.080 So the idea is, look, yeah, I might martyr myself,

00:50:17.600 but I'm doing it in the hope of pursuing the goal

00:50:21.960 of something greater than myself in terms of my principles.

00:50:24.760 But what about killing civilians?

00:50:26.980 Same thing happens in the military, right?

00:50:28.700 You bomb people, you're going to be bombing civilians.

00:50:30.520 Not deliberately.

00:50:31.640 Sure, but I think their argument is

00:50:34.100 you can't make an envelope without breaking a few eggs.

00:50:38.520 And it's easier, in their argument,

00:50:40.380 this is not me, their argument is

00:50:42.020 if it's easier to kill a few civilians

00:50:44.600 and get someone to bend the knee

00:50:46.160 than to have full-blown war.

00:50:48.880 Which they would lose.

00:50:50.180 Which they would lose, right.

00:50:51.540 And it worked.

00:50:52.160 In Spain, during the Iraq war, Spain was part of the Iraq war.

00:50:57.120 They bombed, I think, a train station or something.

00:50:59.200 There was an election.

00:51:00.040 The leftists came in, and Spain pulled their troops right out.

00:51:02.440 So it worked in that regard.

00:51:04.340 But it's also the way the Islamists target, for instance, the Ariana Grande concert, where it's little girls.

00:51:11.600 Sure.

00:51:12.120 And we've seen with the bombing of the school in Iran, the girls' school,

00:51:16.160 that has become a national scandal in the way that it simply wouldn't in an Islamist country.

00:51:22.160 Sure. I obviously think there's few things more important than killing children, especially deliberately. I mean, this is as bad as it gets, but I'm just trying to explain kind of their thought process.

00:51:36.600 But that's not what we're arguing.

00:51:39.160 As you discussed earlier,

00:51:40.660 the three of us are capable of having

00:51:42.060 an intellectual disagreement and a conversation

00:51:44.400 which we still understand each other.

00:51:46.220 France's point, I think,

00:51:47.740 is that as a general, as a society,

00:51:51.700 the average person in our society

00:51:53.740 struggles to understand the mindset of an Islamist

00:51:56.440 because you could not get a bunch of Americans

00:51:59.540 to strap bombs to themselves

00:52:00.900 and go and blow up a children's concert.

00:52:03.200 Sure, but I think...

00:52:04.400 Right, but I think the point also is

00:52:05.820 This is a, their argument is it's a way to break down a country because at a certain point, if

00:52:12.040 enough people's kids are killed, you just give up and you're like, you know what? Fine. Well,

00:52:15.980 we're put on the hijab. It's a lot easier that way. I think most people would rather go where

00:52:21.040 they feel safe and where the power is than any kind of, you know, ideology one way or another.

00:52:26.580 Yeah. It's a good point. And I think one of the things that we come to now is talking about,

00:52:31.340 you know, authoritarianism. Sure. And I, there's the segue.

00:52:34.300 and when we're going to talk about career but it's also i don't think americans really understand

00:52:41.780 what it's like to live in under a totalitarian regime oh yeah and we see this all the time like

00:52:47.280 i walk past buildings in austin and i see things like this is a fascist state you know fascist

00:52:53.920 police you know authoritarian regime and you just think to yourself you literally do not understand

00:52:59.860 the meaning of the word or maybe i don't i don't know anymore well i i can't speak for whether

00:53:04.040 That was very postmodern at the end there.

00:53:06.880 Maybe there is no truth, but here's my truth.

00:53:09.880 The very premise of my book, The White Pill,

00:53:13.280 it starts with Ayn Rand testifying

00:53:15.400 in front of the House of American Activities Committee

00:53:17.040 post-World War II.

00:53:19.200 And, you know, she's talking to a congressman.

00:53:21.740 She was the only witness who had lived

00:53:23.980 under what became the Soviet Union.

00:53:26.200 And he's like, you know,

00:53:28.120 the way you talk about, you know, Soviet Russia,

00:53:30.300 he's like, you know, don't people have picnics

00:53:32.900 and visit their mother's-in-law.

00:53:35.280 And she goes,

00:53:36.340 it is almost impossible to convey to a free people

00:53:39.400 what it's like to live under a totalitarian dictatorship.

00:53:42.560 I can give you a lot of details.

00:53:44.420 Sure, they visit their mother's-in-law,

00:53:45.860 they have picnics,

00:53:46.580 but you understand it's impossible

00:53:48.180 for you to wrap your head around it.

00:53:49.480 And in a way, it's good

00:53:50.500 that you can't even conceive what it's like.

00:53:52.560 Try to imagine what it's like

00:53:53.700 to live in Constantia from morning till night.

00:53:56.240 And at night, you're waiting for the doorbell to ring

00:53:59.520 or someone to knock at your door.

00:54:00.940 to live in a country where human life means nothing,

00:54:03.640 less than nothing, and you know it.

00:54:05.420 We cannot wrap their heads around it.

00:54:07.760 Because one of the things in a even largely free country

00:54:12.520 is you can get away from the politics.

00:54:15.580 Like people complain that there's too much woke

00:54:17.300 in movies or music.

00:54:19.700 There are infinite choices.

00:54:21.580 If you want to read a non-woke book,

00:54:23.080 even anti-woke book, non-woke music,

00:54:25.460 every form of media you like.

00:54:27.360 But when you are in a totalitarian country total,

00:54:29.900 it is everywhere and the other thing that americans cannot wrap their heads around

00:54:35.440 although they saw it during covid the first creep is what it's like having to wonder

00:54:40.860 what happens if francis betrays me or constancy betrays me am i safe telling him this this this

00:54:47.640 until i was like in my 30s and i don't know how this got in my head because my parents never sat

00:54:52.200 me down whenever i said something to someone i ran a scan to be like all right if this person

00:54:57.200 turns on me as it's safe for them to know this. Later, I stopped doing that and it kind of

00:55:01.000 backfired on me, but that's fine. Point being, it's a mindset that, and also knowing that everything

00:55:08.420 in public life is dishonest. You had this system of public lies, private truths. You go outside,

00:55:17.100 you put on your pin, you smile and nod. And when you're behind closed doors, you know,

00:55:21.380 you kind of whisper, but the expression North Korea is, you know, the walls have ears kind of

00:55:24.880 thing. So it's, we cannot wrap our heads around it. Well, we're starting to in a way because

00:55:29.680 like, well, not just that, but I think also what's happened is increasing. I mean, you see it with

00:55:36.300 the Epstein files, right? Cause there's obviously terrible wrongdoing within that. But then there's

00:55:41.040 like a guy who sent an email that had nothing to do with it. But like every single email you ever

00:55:45.480 sent can now be used against you. If something then later turns out, do you see what I'm getting

00:55:49.900 at? Yeah, but hold on. You're, you're Russian also, you know, not to put in writing. Come on

00:55:53.060 I don't have to tell you this, am I wrong?

00:55:55.080 I'm just saying, if someone,

00:55:57.160 the average person,

00:55:59.180 if someone was to hack their phone,

00:56:01.300 they would not have a job on Monday.

00:56:04.160 I don't know.

00:56:05.600 Hack their phone and publish it on the internet.

00:56:07.440 The jokes you make with your friends,

00:56:09.100 the stuff you say in confidence to your wife,

00:56:11.140 like all of this stuff.

00:56:11.900 Maybe I'm being pedantic.

00:56:12.740 I don't think the average person is very controversial.

00:56:14.540 So I don't know if that's true,

00:56:15.900 but there are certain things

00:56:16.740 that they would be embarrassed about, you know, certainly.

00:56:19.720 Yeah.

00:56:20.680 Well, that's what I'm saying.

00:56:21.660 Sure.

00:56:22.380 I just don't know if they'd be fired.

00:56:23.660 I don't think everyone's dropping n-bombs privately.

00:56:26.200 Maybe it's different with your employees.

00:56:26.880 Speak for yourself, mate.

00:56:27.680 Maybe it's different with your employees.

00:56:29.600 Join our WhatsApp group.

00:56:31.820 But one of the things when we talk about authoritarian regimes,

00:56:35.020 which I find very interesting,

00:56:36.520 and I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this,

00:56:38.940 is we can't understand them, particularly dictators.

00:56:42.400 So we frame them as crazy.

00:56:44.700 Oh, yes.

00:56:45.360 So, right.

00:56:45.840 So the reason I wrote my book, Dear Reader,

00:56:48.620 was because it was driving...

00:56:49.880 I'm sorry, I didn't want to cut you off.

00:56:50.900 No, no, no, no, no.

00:56:51.700 It was driving me crazy.

00:56:52.980 He's written a lot of books.

00:56:53.960 Yes.

00:56:54.360 Yes.

00:56:55.440 He's a writer.

00:56:56.920 It drove me crazy how people regarded North Korea as this sort of carnival.

00:57:03.480 And I was like, they've outlasted everybody else except for Cuba.

00:57:07.920 There's a reason they're still there.

00:57:10.200 This isn't an accident, given the pressures that they're facing.

00:57:12.900 And the story in Dear Reader is a step-by-step description from Kim Jong-il's perspective

00:57:20.100 of how North Korea went from a Japanese colony, you know, pre-World War II, to this totalitarian

00:57:26.080 dictatorship that they are today. This didn't happen overnight, and this didn't happen by

00:57:30.400 accident. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, as more and more elements of freedom were

00:57:35.360 taken away from the North Korean people, you know, and here we are now. You know how at the

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00:59:34.200 can you tell us the story of north korea like assuming that people listening by the way including

00:59:42.140 myself literally know fuck all about north korea and its history can you just give us first before

00:59:46.980 we delve into the details the big picture of it how did north korea even came to come to exist

00:59:51.980 and and what was the process so do you want to their perspective of the truth

00:59:56.120 ah well why don't you give us the truth first okay and then we'll and i think telling their

01:00:01.720 perspective will then be actually very informative. That's very offensive. Their truth. Yeah. Tell us

01:00:06.040 their truth. All right. The indigenous truth. The Western truth, which is not really very

01:00:12.880 controversial or in dispute, is Korea was a nation for many centuries. Japan conquered it and

01:00:21.480 colonized it. The Japanese tried to exterminate Korean-ness in the sense that they were trying to

01:00:27.640 diminished use of the language, encouraging Korean people to take Japanese names.

01:00:33.820 The propaganda is like, Japan's the big brother, Korea's the little brother.

01:00:37.620 And I don't need to tell British people, when you're the colony, it's not always so great for

01:00:41.800 you.

01:00:42.040 I mean, yes, they build railroads and infrastructure, but at the same time, it's heavily

01:00:46.300 exploitative.

01:00:48.260 Come world, and here's the thing, it's kind of fascinating that people understand the

01:00:54.840 depravity of the Nazi regime, but we don't really talk about how bad the Japanese were before World

01:00:59.500 War II. Yeah, we've talked about that on the show. It's crazy, man. They were evil. They experimented

01:01:04.000 on people. They called them logs. What was done to women. Sex slaves. Yeah. And they were really,

01:01:13.920 the horror of the Nazi war, not extermination effort, it was very German. It was organized

01:01:20.380 and these guys just basically stabbed millions of people to death

01:01:25.040 with bayonets and shells.

01:01:26.400 Yeah, it was really...

01:01:27.840 And it's funny because when you go to North Korea,

01:01:29.940 which I can't right now because it's no longer legal,

01:01:33.080 but they hate the Americans, but they hate the Japanese.

01:01:38.120 Like, they think, you know, the Americans are their enemy,

01:01:40.260 the American government, and, you know,

01:01:42.060 they think every American is a spy,

01:01:43.780 but the level of hatred for the Japanese is just...

01:01:46.660 It's something almost supernatural and understandable.

01:01:49.220 So at that break of World War II, they're a Japanese colony, right?

01:01:52.220 Yeah, I got you.

01:01:52.820 Yeah, yeah.

01:01:53.900 Just trying to help you along.

01:01:55.780 I know how to weave a narrative.

01:01:58.320 After the defeat of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were basically trying

01:02:02.920 to divide up, you know, Germany and Japan, especially, former colonies.

01:02:07.680 So we got the Philippines.

01:02:08.660 I forget who they get.

01:02:09.780 And then it's like, what are we going to do with Korea?

01:02:11.480 So basically, they sat down and drew a line just north of Seoul, because we wanted Seoul.

01:02:17.240 and the premise was

01:02:19.040 Soviet Union is going to demilitarize

01:02:22.160 the north half

01:02:22.900 the US is going to demilitarize

01:02:24.600 the south half

01:02:25.260 and we'll worry about

01:02:25.940 what's going to happen later

01:02:26.760 after that

01:02:27.380 can I have a guess

01:02:28.080 they militarized both halves

01:02:29.860 and then had a war

01:02:30.580 well it didn't have to end that way

01:02:32.860 but point being

01:02:34.780 the Korean

01:02:35.420 North Koreans still

01:02:36.540 to this day

01:02:37.720 are very salty

01:02:38.600 because they're like

01:02:39.560 we weren't antagonists

01:02:41.060 in the war

01:02:41.460 the only two countries

01:02:42.780 that got split

01:02:43.460 was Germany and us

01:02:44.760 we didn't have anything to do with it

01:02:45.860 we were the property

01:02:46.820 of japan like what why are you splitting us in half um so stalin install installs the great leader

01:02:54.180 kim osung in the north we install the americans excuse me install our own strongman sigmund rhi

01:02:59.660 in the south both of them eventually declare themselves the legitimate government uh the

01:03:06.080 great leader kim osung launches the korean war it goes back and forth uh you know the over a few

01:03:12.280 years uh the u.s joins with the south with the force of the un because russia and some others

01:03:17.380 boycotting it so we got that resolution through stalin and mao give back up to the north koreans

01:03:23.360 and you know in many ways not many ways in every way the korean people pay the price because you

01:03:28.740 have these two rocks coming and they're in the middle and it was bombed oblivion the only things

01:03:32.300 left were like uh chimneys you could just see these landscapes uh it was just complete desolation

01:03:37.820 At one point, I think the North Koreans like 90% or 95% of the peninsula, they almost won.

01:03:42.760 And it went to stalemate.

01:03:45.080 And they're still technically at war.

01:03:47.520 I know one of the things President Trump was hoping for is to have this kind of armistice

01:03:51.920 signed into like an official treaty.

01:03:55.600 And in North Korea, they use lowercase n and lowercase s for North and South because they

01:04:01.460 say Korea is one.

01:04:02.620 That's their big slogan.

01:04:03.960 And the South is not a different country.

01:04:05.920 It's a region under American occupation.

01:04:08.940 Now, they had this big monument

01:04:11.160 of these two women holding Korea over a highway

01:04:14.420 and symbolizing Korean reunification.

01:04:17.060 They recently destroyed that monument.

01:04:19.260 So their hope, which of decades,

01:04:21.680 that the Korean people would one day be reunified

01:04:24.040 has now kind of fallen away.

01:04:27.320 If you want to cry,

01:04:30.960 I would encourage everyone watching this

01:04:32.640 to go on YouTube and watch Korean reunification videos.

01:04:35.920 because these are families who were separated for decades

01:04:38.700 because you can't communicate with foreigners in the North,

01:04:41.700 seeing each other, you know, and they're allowed one day

01:04:44.720 and then they have to separate again, never to talk to...

01:04:46.720 You're not going to watch this and not cry

01:04:48.500 because it's just the most heartbreaking thing imaginable.

01:04:51.080 So that's the fact, the history.

01:04:54.740 The North Korean argument of history is this.

01:04:58.680 Korea was the first country on Earth.

01:05:01.280 Korean was the first language spoken on Earth.

01:05:03.300 Korea was and remains the only genetically pure people on earth. So every other country

01:05:10.060 intermarried or were invaded, whatever, Koreans are the only pure country. Uh, I'm going to use

01:05:16.440 a slur, excuse me. They always, when in their language, they are in their literature, they

01:05:21.700 always say wicked Jap devils or American imperialists. They never say Japanese. It's

01:05:25.880 always used derogatorily. So the wicked Jap devils come in, uh, conquer Korea, you know,

01:05:31.040 devastated the people want to rise up they don't know how to do so until because the masses need

01:05:37.660 a leader so the great leader Kim Il-sung emerges at a very young age rallies the people uh they're

01:05:43.740 trying to get him and his uh guerrilla forces there's something called the arduous march where

01:05:49.560 they're fighting their way through snow and all these situations finally pretty much single-handedly

01:05:55.540 the great leader Kim Il-sung drives

01:05:57.920 the Japanese, the wicked Jap devils from Korea

01:06:00.100 reclaims it

01:06:01.700 according to their literature

01:06:03.280 and there's a book with this title

01:06:04.700 The U.S. Imperialist Star of the Korean War

01:06:07.900 that's literally the title of one of their books

01:06:09.280 We Invade Them

01:06:10.460 the great leader Kim Il-sung had a so-called

01:06:13.460 strategic retreat during the Korean War

01:06:15.640 and eventually he

01:06:17.680 kicked us out of the North

01:06:19.460 and now they're still occupying

01:06:21.600 their brethren in the South

01:06:22.880 so that's kind of their version of how the two Koreas came about

01:06:25.520 now that is fascinating and could I say well there's one more it's been said that when refugees

01:06:33.680 learn that the great leader Kim Il-sung started the Korean war it would be akin to one of us

01:06:40.660 learning that we bombed the Japanese at Pearl Harbor because it is the entire basis of their

01:06:45.740 history so when you learn it's the opposite like your brain doesn't even know what to do

01:06:49.180 And look, you come from, originally from communist countries, both of you, I have mom from a communist country.

01:06:57.220 There's different flavors of communism.

01:06:58.620 You've got the OG, we've got the aye-aye-aye flavor.

01:07:02.100 The aye-aye-aye.

01:07:03.180 Ay, Dios mío, el comunismo, ay.

01:07:05.660 That's racist.

01:07:06.660 I know, but it's enjoyable, so no one cares.

01:07:08.960 There's those N-bombs again.

01:07:11.260 What type of communism are they practicing in North Korea?

01:07:15.180 Is it very similar to the Soviet style, or is it their own thing?

01:07:18.180 So I don't know how to say this without sounding like I'm making a joke,

01:07:22.940 but they no longer identify as communist.

01:07:25.760 So according to North Korea, there's something called the Juche Idea,

01:07:29.500 which is Kim Il-sung's great revelation,

01:07:32.360 which is man is the master of everything and creates everything, right?

01:07:35.820 And what this means is it's an ideology just for Korea and for Koreans.

01:07:41.320 And it's this idea of total nationalism

01:07:44.020 and this total sense of

01:07:46.300 we're going to create everything originally

01:07:48.380 and we're not going to have to take things

01:07:51.480 from other nations, especially ideas.

01:07:54.820 So, for example, they have like an Arc de Triomphe

01:07:58.520 in the middle of Pyongyang,

01:08:01.320 which is where the great leader Kim Il-sung

01:08:03.220 was sworn to office.

01:08:05.000 And there's, I think, the same number of bricks

01:08:06.780 as every day he was alive.

01:08:08.160 The number of bricks is something significant.

01:08:10.380 And even though it looks exactly the one in Paris,

01:08:13.120 It's actually based on a Korean medieval-like fortress.

01:08:16.320 And they have this big obelisk,

01:08:17.820 which just looks, the Tower of the Jujia idea,

01:08:19.840 which looks just like the Washington Monument.

01:08:21.660 No, no, no, no, no.

01:08:22.360 It's not based on that.

01:08:23.280 It's based on some Korean thing.

01:08:24.600 So their insistence is everything has to be from Korea,

01:08:27.480 by Koreans, and for Koreans.

01:08:29.940 So they don't acknowledge, especially decreasingly,

01:08:33.360 anything to other countries.

01:08:35.800 So in the Soviet Union,

01:08:37.460 they have the hammer and sickle on their flag.

01:08:39.600 It's the symbol of the workers and the farmers.

01:08:42.120 they added a writing brush for the intellectuals.

01:08:46.540 So it's completely different.

01:08:47.860 It has nothing to do with the hammer and stickle.

01:08:49.140 It's just hammer and stickle writing brush.

01:08:50.640 So they increasingly downplay what role other people,

01:08:55.540 other nations had to have.

01:08:57.040 They'll mention Mao a little bit,

01:08:58.640 helping in the Korean War.

01:08:59.840 They'll mention Stalin a little bit.

01:09:01.160 But the argument is they did it pretty much themselves.

01:09:03.360 And they take pride, understandably,

01:09:06.240 in that this small nation is taking on Japan and America

01:09:10.960 and basically forcing us to our knees in their perspective.

01:09:13.600 And the regime is effectively a hereditary monarchy at this point?

01:09:17.760 So what I learned from the North Korean literature,

01:09:21.640 which I found extremely interesting,

01:09:23.640 is they acknowledge foreign criticism and they reply to it.

01:09:29.180 So when Kim Jong-il, the dear leader,

01:09:32.420 the son of the great leader Kim Il-sung,

01:09:34.120 was announced as the next leader,

01:09:36.600 this was, of course, in communist circles,

01:09:38.280 the second world enormously controversial

01:09:39.680 because we're against kings, everyone's equal.

01:09:42.800 And their argument is, no, no, no, no, no, you idiots.

01:09:45.680 He wasn't picked because he's the son.

01:09:48.060 He was picked because he understands Kim Il-sung

01:09:51.260 and the Jewish idea better than anyone else.

01:09:53.940 And all of the propaganda post that

01:09:56.480 was meant to kind of buttress this idea.

01:09:59.620 And if you read their newspapers,

01:10:02.480 it's interchangeable.

01:10:03.460 Like when I was in the plane,

01:10:04.660 they gave me a newspaper two weeks ago.

01:10:06.000 It doesn't matter because the news is all the same

01:10:07.620 because it's not necessarily that the leaders are gods.

01:10:12.360 It's the idea that everyone in the country

01:10:14.080 is a major screw-up.

01:10:15.800 So you'll have some factory, a glass factory,

01:10:18.500 and when you read the propaganda,

01:10:19.860 no one's named except for the leader.

01:10:21.680 So let's say, like,

01:10:22.560 dear leader Kim Jong-il went to this glass factory

01:10:25.280 and there was a problem with the machine

01:10:26.960 and everyone's standing around and didn't know what to do.

01:10:29.780 And then the dear leader saw

01:10:30.940 that there's this dirt trapped in this crack

01:10:32.660 and he popped it out

01:10:33.940 and then all the circuitry was working again.

01:10:35.940 Everyone starts clapping.

01:10:36.760 and it's like, okay, great.

01:10:38.320 And then tomorrow we're going to go to the box factory.

01:10:40.380 So the idea is only he's basically competent

01:10:43.240 and but for the leader, everything's going to go to hell.

01:10:47.020 And that also applies militarily

01:10:48.620 because the argument is just as the U.S. imperialists

01:10:52.400 invaded us during the Korean War,

01:10:54.980 we are biding our time to reinvade.

01:10:57.260 We have bases in South Korea

01:10:58.480 and but for now, Kim Jong-un,

01:11:01.080 they will be here tomorrow and they will kill you all.

01:11:03.780 And this national trauma of the 1950s

01:11:06.640 is still very much a part of their culture,

01:11:09.140 and you can't blame them.

01:11:10.360 I mean, the Blitz is obviously a part of British culture,

01:11:13.260 and that was nothing compared to what the Korean people

01:11:15.340 had to experience.

01:11:16.660 So what is life like for the average Korean?

01:11:19.480 North Korean, you mean?

01:11:20.220 North Korean, absolutely.

01:11:22.360 Well, they did something...

01:11:23.320 Or Korean, as the North would say.

01:11:26.200 So they did something...

01:11:29.380 The thing that's beautiful about these totalitarian regimes

01:11:32.460 is their language,

01:11:34.200 because everything is portrayed in great terms, right?

01:11:37.700 So in North Korea, they did something called

01:11:39.780 the Understanding People Project.

01:11:41.280 It had several iterations.

01:11:42.300 That was one of them.

01:11:43.440 Sounds great.

01:11:44.300 I want to understand people.

01:11:45.340 You guys want to understand people.

01:11:46.900 What they did, they did this repeatedly.

01:11:49.960 They interviewed every single person in North Korea

01:11:53.180 and they figured out what was your family background.

01:11:56.400 Were you part of the great leader Kim Il-sung's team of guerrillas?

01:12:01.660 Were you a priest or a capitalist landowner?

01:12:04.200 and it went up to your second cousin.

01:12:06.260 Based on this,

01:12:07.200 you were assigned a Songban score.

01:12:09.260 Songban is their caste system

01:12:10.640 and there's three broadcasts,

01:12:12.720 favored, hostile, and wavering

01:12:14.600 and their subcasts,

01:12:15.980 I think it's like 50 or 30,

01:12:17.220 I don't even remember this.

01:12:18.280 I mean, it's like a credit score,

01:12:20.320 a social credit score

01:12:21.100 that China's trying to do.

01:12:22.140 You're not told you're Songban

01:12:23.300 but you could figure it out

01:12:24.540 because your teacher

01:12:25.080 will treat you a certain way.

01:12:26.520 This determines every aspect of your life

01:12:28.640 including whether you can even step,

01:12:30.540 you can't travel internally

01:12:31.600 without permission.

01:12:32.680 You can't even,

01:12:33.120 I've met refugees who had low songbun and they're like,

01:12:36.300 you've been to Pyongyang? Is it amazing?

01:12:39.120 I'm like, no.

01:12:40.560 Don't you realize it's not amazing?

01:12:42.500 But to even step foot in Pyongyang, you have to have high songbun.

01:12:45.360 If you're going to be a guide, like when I went on my tour,

01:12:48.240 your songbun has to be through the roof.

01:12:50.020 You have to be very reputable.

01:12:53.180 The thing is, in the 90s, when the famine hit,

01:12:56.500 those cities, towns, which had a poor songbun,

01:12:59.500 were the last ones to get food.

01:13:00.680 And they were the first ones to starve.

01:13:02.240 So it was explicitly genocidal in terms of using food distribution to maintain the regime

01:13:08.340 and to kind of get rid of the people who you don't like.

01:13:11.060 And Kim Jong-il explicitly said, having too many people makes socialism difficult.

01:13:15.220 And let's touch on the famine, because when I was reading about it, it was horrific.

01:13:19.980 And I couldn't believe that it happened as comparatively recently as the 1990s.

01:13:24.700 So the UNK, because the thing is, for people watching this need to understand,

01:13:28.560 famine is only an issue for political reasons.

01:13:30.380 There is enough food produced worldwide, I think, to feed everyone three or four times over.

01:13:34.460 The only reason people go hungry, I was talking years ago to someone who's, my friend was dating a communist girl, and she said, as many Americans starve as people in North Korea.

01:13:45.740 And I'm like, all right, let's look it up.

01:13:47.920 And it turned out the only Americans who had starved were like people who had been like captives, you know, like someone kidnapped you and killed you.

01:13:53.360 It's not a thing.

01:13:53.980 um the un went to north korea to feed distribute food and they would take them to village one on

01:14:02.220 monday and everything's fine they took them to village two on tuesday they went back to village

01:14:07.060 one on wednesday and the people he's like we're here before no you weren't they weren't allowed

01:14:11.500 to have korean speakers on the staff and the kim jong-il said if you have these foreigners giving

01:14:18.040 them food they're not going to need us so this was a conscious decision that part of the regime

01:14:22.540 to allow their people to starve

01:14:24.240 to maintain their hold on power.

01:14:26.280 Eventually, the UN gave up and went home.

01:14:28.740 So this was a, I think, 10% of the population starved,

01:14:32.620 sewage broke down, polio came back,

01:14:35.260 and do you know what they called it?

01:14:36.960 The Arduous March.

01:14:38.380 The same thing that the great leader Kim Il-sung had to do

01:14:40.780 when he was escaping the wicked Jap devils

01:14:42.400 in the pre-World War II days.

01:14:44.280 Now, we as a nation, calling on that narrative,

01:14:47.140 are walking our own arduous march.

01:14:48.740 We gotta stay the course,

01:14:50.020 and we're gonna see things through till the end.

01:14:51.440 And is North Korea now, from a kind of Western and global perspective, now effectively a contained issue?

01:14:57.480 So it's terrible for the people who live there, but it's not a country unlike Iran or the Soviet Union

01:15:02.720 that's going to try and project its power externally and mess things up in terms of everything else.

01:15:07.700 Yeah, North Korea's biggest excursions internationally were with South Korea.

01:15:11.540 You know, they blew up a South Korean airliner because South Korea got the Olympics and Kim Jong-il was salty about it.

01:15:17.020 I talk about that in Dear Reader as well.

01:15:19.500 But they're a small country.

01:15:23.400 Their idea of expansion is where they're going to go.

01:15:25.180 Their peninsula, they don't have this huge navy to go elsewhere.

01:15:28.760 China, of course, and them have a contentious

01:15:30.520 but strong relationship in many regards.

01:15:34.720 So yeah, they're not...

01:15:36.160 The Juche idea is for Koreans only.

01:15:39.800 And they say this explicitly.

01:15:41.280 You can't export it to China.

01:15:43.300 And although the conceit is that all these countries

01:15:45.840 around the world are very interested in Kim Il-sung,

01:15:48.600 teachings and their books are translated. Oh, we all care about him so much. But the point is,

01:15:54.160 this is just for Korea. So it's not like Iran. And did they pursue nuclear weapons so that

01:16:00.180 regime change would be impossible? Right. So Kim Jong-il explicitly said,

01:16:04.120 we are going to make North Korea like a hedgehog because a hedgehog is a small animal with spines

01:16:10.720 on its back pointing every direction. And that could take on the American wolf and the Russian

01:16:15.800 bear and the Chinese dragon. And he's right. And what's the extent of the nuclear arsenal?

01:16:22.200 We don't know exactly, but it's not minor. And they're expanding on it. And here's the thing,

01:16:29.880 you don't need... Seoul is... I remember during Trump's first term, where Trump named John Bolton

01:16:36.440 as national security advisor. And John Bolton had written an editorial in the Wall Street Journal

01:16:41.080 saying basically, like, if we want to strike North Korea, I don't think we even need to tell

01:16:45.480 Seoul or we need the approval. It's like, Seoul is just across the DMZ. That's where the border

01:16:49.800 was drawn between the two Koreas. They can hit Seoul with a population of several million

01:16:55.340 easily and quickly. So it is a very dangerous game to be provocative with North Korea. At the

01:17:02.540 same time, as you saw in Romania, as you saw in Libya, if that North Korean regime falls down,

01:17:06.940 those people at the top are going to personally be hanged.

01:17:09.900 And they understand this very well.

01:17:11.540 When Ceausescu was shot in Romania on Christmas Day,

01:17:15.400 Jim Jong-il took that footage,

01:17:17.360 played it every day for the party cadres and said,

01:17:19.520 if we go down, this is what's going to happen to all of us.

01:17:22.240 And he's not wrong.

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01:17:52.900 And one of the interesting stats about the Ceausescu demise is that two days before there was an opinion poll in Romania,

01:18:00.020 which said that he had 93% approval rating.

01:18:03.220 How, I mean, are the people of North Korea

01:18:06.480 basically oppressed slaves

01:18:08.060 or is there actual real support for the regime?

01:18:11.660 It's a mix.

01:18:13.300 I spoke to someone who is fairly,

01:18:16.460 I can't, whatever.

01:18:17.320 They know what they're talking about.

01:18:18.380 I don't want to out them.

01:18:19.700 The CIA.

01:18:21.080 Mossad.

01:18:22.820 Obviously.

01:18:23.380 His point is that the people at the top,

01:18:27.680 and especially in the cities,

01:18:29.540 know it's all bullshit.

01:18:30.340 like they know that Kim Jong-un is not the greatest thing since sliced bread

01:18:34.340 they know it's nonsense but there's an enormous incentive for them

01:18:38.740 to stay the course and do what they can to try to keep the machine running

01:18:42.380 something I want people to appreciate is and this often is a problem talking

01:18:47.440 about Asian countries these aren't robots these are human beings and I said

01:18:52.300 this for over a decade now what surprised me the most is how great of a

01:18:56.840 sense of humor the North Koreans had they are fun people and that is in a sense makes it more

01:19:03.160 tragic the way I ingratiated myself to the North Korean people my guide is I took every racist joke

01:19:09.640 I knew and made the punchline Japanese so how do you keep a Japanese man from drowning take your

01:19:15.180 foot off his neck what do you call a thousand Japanese at the bottom of the ocean a good start

01:19:19.260 My guide was in tears.

01:19:21.100 And for a week, I was the funniest person in North Korea.

01:19:24.780 So, and they, what I did when I went there

01:19:30.180 is I got in everyone's face and waved as a obnoxious American

01:19:33.740 because I knew they would give me a real reaction

01:19:36.200 because they're not going to have those improv skills.

01:19:38.420 And you see grandmothers with their grandkids

01:19:40.420 and you wave at the grandkid and the grandma smiles.

01:19:42.420 She's proud of her grandkid.

01:19:43.600 And you see the teenage boys in their Adidas track suits

01:19:46.080 and they're all surly, chewing gum and looking you over.

01:19:48.440 and you see the girls laughing and giggling

01:19:50.440 and you see, we went to the maternity hospital

01:19:53.700 and in the lobby, there's a military guy

01:19:55.840 holding his baby and you give him a thumbs up

01:19:57.400 and he's proud, you know?

01:19:58.720 So the humanity is pervasive there

01:20:02.500 and shockingly normal,

01:20:05.060 which makes it that much more tragic.

01:20:07.360 They also do have a much greater sense of community

01:20:12.660 than we have in the West.

01:20:14.100 There really is this sense of,

01:20:15.820 And I think this happens in poor neighborhoods here, too.

01:20:18.900 Like, I don't have a lot.

01:20:20.260 You don't have a lot.

01:20:21.140 Like, OK, I'll do your dishes.

01:20:22.920 You do this for me.

01:20:23.780 They do have this sense of community.

01:20:25.820 I guess you have to, but that is a positive.

01:20:29.180 And one of the most interesting figures at the moment in the politics is Kim Jong-un.

01:20:36.180 Oh, of course.

01:20:36.800 So let's talk about him a little bit.

01:20:39.220 One more thing.

01:20:40.420 The sense of community is so strong.

01:20:42.360 This is going to sound like a joke

01:20:46.280 When there's like a fire

01:20:48.300 People line up to donate their skin

01:20:50.960 For skin grafts

01:20:52.800 That's commitment

01:20:54.920 I mean you laugh

01:20:57.040 But it's like that says something

01:20:58.500 Yeah of course

01:20:59.640 So very briefly Kim Jong Un

01:21:01.920 Madman as people often say

01:21:04.660 Or is he a brilliant strategist

01:21:07.220 Or something in between

01:21:08.420 I can't think of one reason

01:21:10.600 why you would call him a madman.

01:21:13.060 I hear that word all the time.

01:21:15.200 I can't think of one thing that you would say about him

01:21:17.360 that makes him crazy.

01:21:19.640 Executed his uncle, his half-brother.

01:21:21.760 Why is that crazy?

01:21:22.480 I mean, every monarch in history did that.

01:21:24.140 Yeah.

01:21:24.700 Yeah.

01:21:25.480 I mean, we obviously know King Charles killed Queen Elizabeth.

01:21:28.280 He wasn't going to go with Camilla's behest.

01:21:30.800 I mean, that's...

01:21:31.620 Tell me you're not Charles-pilled, right?

01:21:34.780 No, but I mean, that's not crazy at all.

01:21:36.760 Yeah.

01:21:37.400 What else?

01:21:37.860 uh threatening threatening to bomb south korea no i know it's just let's talk about the

01:21:45.480 threatening because that's a good one so north korea does this cycle and the west falls for it

01:21:50.920 every time so they'll oh my god you did this and this it's such a provocation it's unforgivable

01:21:57.460 but if you give us some grain you know we'll look the other way so they give them food and it's like

01:22:02.540 oh thank you and then they try to they try to be the dove and like oh let's meet let's have a

01:22:06.520 conference, oh, blah, blah, blah. And then five minutes later, oh, I can't believe how you talk

01:22:10.340 to me. I'm going to build more noobs. They just do it over and over. And it's a cycle at this

01:22:14.500 point. All right, Michael, it's been great having you back. Our time is up. That was, holy crap,

01:22:18.620 that was sudden. Okay. Our time is up. It was over. We're going to go to Substack where our

01:22:23.800 audience are going to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not

01:22:27.160 talking about that we should be? My graphic novel, UnwantedBook.com. I've been working on it for 25

01:22:32.700 years. It's the story of a band

01:22:34.760 from the 80s, a bunch of freaks who

01:22:36.600 shot for the stars and didn't quite land

01:22:38.580 there. And I'm very excited, thanks to

01:22:40.620 Eric July, to see it come to fruition.

01:22:42.760 Awesome. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:22:45.400 where Michael is going to answer

01:22:46.620 your questions.

01:22:48.400 Can you please explain what about Islam

01:22:50.700 appeals to the left? Are the left just

01:22:52.680 useful idiots in the red-green alliance?

01:22:55.100 And why don't they learn from history?

01:23:02.700 We'll be right back.

01:23:32.700 on some cash at boom973.com. Approved by Alpine Credits. Own your own home and eat alone.

01:23:39.100 Alpine Credits can help. Visit alpinecredits.ca.

TRIGGERnometry - March 18, 2026

Is MAGA Falling Apart？ - Michael Malice

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