TRIGGERnometry - Sam Harris X Eric Weinstein： Israel-Palestine

00:00:00.960 We just have to acknowledge that there is a subset of people in the Muslim world

00:00:04.920 for whom it is true, as they say of themselves,

00:00:08.140 that they love death more than we love life.

00:00:11.620 You have groups of people who are offered a state who you're not listening to.

00:00:15.260 They do not want the state that they're offered.

00:00:18.420 They're offered a choice between a state and a chant.

00:00:21.460 From the river to the sea is what they chose.

00:00:24.620 I'm just saying we have to recognize we're in a hot war.

00:00:28.000 I think this is the same problem that you're having with Trump and other things,

00:00:31.560 which is you are being invited into the abyss.

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00:01:59.140 Gentlemen, welcome both.

00:02:01.280 The reason our show works is neither Francis nor I pretend to be experts,

00:02:05.460 and we ask the questions that are on the minds of most people,

00:02:08.700 or at least we try.

00:02:10.180 I think the questions that are on the minds of most people now

00:02:13.740 is that we are in a moral quandary

00:02:17.720 because we simultaneously believe many things

00:02:20.440 about Israel and Palestine that are incompatible,

00:02:24.300 and I'll give you a list.

00:02:26.100 I don't want innocent civilians to die,

00:02:29.980 and Israel has to destroy Hamas.

00:02:33.760 These two are already internally contradictory,

00:02:36.440 and we can keep going further and further into exploring that.

00:02:41.420 But what I see is that the thing that is right to say on social media

00:02:48.080 to look smart and sophisticated and balanced and nuanced

00:02:53.100 is impractical.

00:02:54.640 It puts you in a position where you don't know what to do.

00:02:58.500 So how do we think about this?

00:03:00.160 How do we think about this issue, Sam?

00:03:02.680 Well, I'm not saying anything on social media.

00:03:04.780 That's one life hack that I would recommend.

00:03:07.520 I've been looking at social media,

00:03:10.180 and I've been seeing that it's...

00:03:14.300 I just think it's poison for us.

00:03:17.060 Even the good parts are making it impossible to...

00:03:24.180 I think it's making us ungovernable.

00:03:27.180 I think it's eroding the basis of democracy.

00:03:30.300 It's like even the true information,

00:03:32.460 even the virtue of it is that it's giving some kind of transparency

00:03:36.860 that you fear would not otherwise exist

00:03:39.620 and that is good for error-correcting on some level.

00:03:44.520 But even that in surplus is toxic,

00:03:49.840 and then there's all the distortions of it.

00:03:52.140 There are the things that are performative

00:03:53.640 that wouldn't be happening in the real world

00:03:55.700 but for the fact that it's going to be broadcast on social media.

00:03:58.720 I just think it's, as I've said many places before,

00:04:03.460 I think it is a kind of psychological experiment

00:04:05.820 that is deranging us.

00:04:07.720 Agreed.

00:04:08.640 But let's come to Israel and Palestine

00:04:10.520 because I think that's what people want to think about rationally.

00:04:14.940 How do we think about that issue?

00:04:16.520 Well, I think the most obvious error that people will make now

00:04:26.840 is to imagine that body count is the only measure

00:04:33.400 by which the moral balance swings, right?

00:04:36.660 So if Israel goes into Gaza

00:04:38.220 and inadvertently kills more people than were killed on their side,

00:04:43.860 they've done too much by definition, right?

00:04:49.340 That's wrong in all kinds of ways,

00:04:51.700 but the obvious way that it's wrong

00:04:55.260 is that it completely ignores

00:04:58.000 what people are actually attempting to achieve on both sides,

00:05:03.380 what kind of world they're attempting to build,

00:05:05.240 what their intentions actually are.

00:05:06.920 What would they do if they had more power?

00:05:08.860 If the asymmetric power in the region were reversed,

00:05:12.900 how would Hamas behave vis-a-vis Israel, right?

00:05:17.280 And the one thing is obvious.

00:05:18.680 Israel for decades,

00:05:22.320 if it had wanted to perpetrate a genocide against the Palestinians,

00:05:25.680 could have done that on any given day, right?

00:05:28.440 It would have been trivial.

00:05:29.840 Tomorrow, they could kill everyone in Gaza if they wanted.

00:05:33.500 They obviously haven't wanted that.

00:05:35.720 They obviously don't want to do that.

00:05:36.940 But now, if you reverse that balance of power

00:05:40.840 and ask what would Hamas do,

00:05:43.020 what would jihadist organizations anywhere do,

00:05:47.180 they would kill all the Jews.

00:05:49.480 And they have told us that ad nauseum.

00:05:52.340 The founding charter of Hamas said that explicitly.

00:05:55.540 It looked forward to a time

00:05:56.660 where Quranic prophecy would be realized

00:06:00.660 when the earth itself would cry out against the Jews,

00:06:03.740 where the rocks and the trees would say,

00:06:05.980 oh, Muslim, there's a Jew behind me.

00:06:07.620 Come kill him, right?

00:06:09.020 Except for one tree.

00:06:10.800 Except the one tree, yes.

00:06:11.860 Yeah, that's right.

00:06:13.140 So the difference in intention,

00:06:17.260 while people think intention is this abstraction,

00:06:23.860 intention is the software that everyone is running.

00:06:26.880 Intention is the best predictor

00:06:28.760 of what people will do

00:06:30.480 if they're given an opportunity to do it, right?

00:06:32.400 If they have the power to do it.

00:06:33.660 If they have the technology to do it.

00:06:36.400 What will a jihadist organization do

00:06:38.480 if it gets nuclear weapons?

00:06:39.640 What will a jihadist organization do

00:06:41.080 if it gets a viable bioweapon, right?

00:06:45.760 We know the answers to these questions.

00:06:48.140 These people have been telling us this

00:06:49.880 for as long as I've been alive.

00:06:52.080 And in isolated cases,

00:06:55.560 absolutely proven to a moral certainty

00:06:59.040 their commitment to nihilism and massacre.

00:07:03.300 I mean, the Islamic State,

00:07:05.720 if you knew the details

00:07:07.880 of what was happening in the Islamic State

00:07:09.460 and couldn't understand

00:07:11.040 that these people mean what they say

00:07:12.880 and believe what they say they believe,

00:07:14.660 then you're living on another planet.

00:07:17.640 So anyone who's surprised,

00:07:19.320 the only surprise here is that

00:07:20.820 there was an assumption,

00:07:23.320 and a historically understandable assumption

00:07:25.460 that Hamas was not as extreme

00:07:28.200 as Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

00:07:32.020 And it certainly seems that

00:07:34.180 some among them are prepared to be that extreme.

00:07:38.940 So, but, I mean, we're splitting hairs.

00:07:43.760 I mean, jihadism is a fairly unified concept,

00:07:52.360 you know, whatever the methods,

00:07:53.700 whatever the methods and the past behavior.

00:07:57.600 And we just have to acknowledge

00:07:59.800 that there is a subset of people in the Muslim world

00:08:02.600 for whom it is true, as they say of themselves,

00:08:06.840 that they love death more than we love life.

00:08:09.640 We being free, secular people everywhere,

00:08:13.400 Jews, Christians, moderate Muslims.

00:08:19.200 There are people who actually want to be martyred

00:08:22.060 and see their kids martyred, right?

00:08:24.960 This is not, they're not bluffing.

00:08:27.420 They're perfectly willing to die

00:08:29.640 for the pleasure and opportunity

00:08:35.060 of killing non-combatants,

00:08:37.100 intentionally killing non-combatants.

00:08:38.600 So the moral error that people are going to make now,

00:08:40.720 and they're already making it,

00:08:42.300 is to think that when Israel tells people

00:08:46.320 to evacuate northern Gaza,

00:08:48.340 and they don't because Hamas is telling them not to do it,

00:08:51.340 or it becomes practically impossible,

00:08:53.720 and Egypt doesn't let them out, et cetera,

00:08:56.120 and they drop bombs targeting Hamas installations

00:09:01.560 that have been purposefully put next to civilian areas

00:09:05.060 that will cause carnage when Israel bombs them,

00:09:07.840 like hospitals and schools and mosques.

00:09:09.500 When Israel bombs those targets and kids die,

00:09:15.100 which is obviously horrible,

00:09:18.080 that is the same thing as Hamas jihadists

00:09:23.760 coming in under cover of rocket fire at dawn

00:09:27.340 and murdering babies in their cribs.

00:09:29.360 It's not the same thing,

00:09:30.860 and body count doesn't resolve that disparity.

00:09:34.300 Agreed.

00:09:34.820 So we'll come to you in a sec, Eric.

00:09:38.260 Just join us.

00:09:39.980 As are we all.

00:09:41.460 But what does that mean, Sam?

00:09:43.220 Let me ask you this, right?

00:09:45.880 The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan,

00:09:48.500 two of them.

00:09:49.700 And after Hiroshima,

00:09:51.420 I think it was Hiroshima, not Nagasaki,

00:09:54.560 the U.S. Army went in,

00:09:56.280 and they measured the blast impact.

00:09:59.380 Not the release of energy from the nuclear bombs,

00:10:01.680 but the actual destructive impact.

00:10:04.960 And then they measured that and said,

00:10:08.180 how much conventional munitions would we have to use

00:10:11.300 to achieve the same destructive impact?

00:10:14.800 In the last year and a half of World War II,

00:10:17.420 the Allies, the British and the Soviets and the Americans,

00:10:21.160 dropped 50 Hiroshima's a month on Germany.

00:10:24.560 We flattened it, right?

00:10:26.680 Because it was a death cult that took over that country,

00:10:29.820 and Hitler said, we're going to make a last stand.

00:10:31.580 We don't care about civilian casualties.

00:10:33.480 We're going to stand to the death.

00:10:36.400 What you are saying is,

00:10:38.560 Gaza is in the grips of a death cult of the same nature,

00:10:43.600 or worse.

00:10:45.460 What does that mean?

00:10:46.920 I don't want a million children in Gaza to die

00:10:50.180 and be burnt in bomb shelters like the Germans.

00:10:53.500 I don't want that.

00:10:54.320 And I wouldn't defend our aerial bombing of German cities

00:10:59.660 and our dropping of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

00:11:03.620 I think there, there was a calculation that,

00:11:08.120 and again, I don't consider myself an expert

00:11:10.760 on recent scholarship on this.

00:11:12.960 I know that about 20 years ago,

00:11:15.800 A.C. Grayling, the British philosopher,

00:11:17.560 wrote a book about specifically the Allied bombing

00:11:23.120 of German cities and concluded that it really

00:11:27.440 was ethically unjustifiable, right?

00:11:29.480 That it's just, we told ourself a story

00:11:31.460 about how this was necessary to win the war,

00:11:36.840 and it was not a compelling story even at the time.

00:11:39.700 I'm not so sure what analysis is true there,

00:11:43.300 but what I think, I think Israel is held to a higher standard

00:11:50.500 than certainly we were 70 years ago,

00:11:53.940 and even than we, you know, the British and the Americans are now.

00:12:00.200 I think they should hold themselves to the highest possible standard.

00:12:04.580 I mean, they certainly should be alert to the difference

00:12:08.260 between committing war crimes and following the international law

00:12:11.660 that governs how you wage war.

00:12:16.060 I, you know, I think they should be

00:12:18.200 as reluctant as they can practically be

00:12:22.780 to kill innocent people,

00:12:25.940 and knowing that it's impossible

00:12:30.560 not to kill some innocent people

00:12:32.100 when you're trying to fight militants in a crowded city, right?

00:12:36.160 Especially when those militants,

00:12:38.480 based on their own completely deranged moral worldview,

00:12:41.980 are committed to using their own people as human shields, right?

00:12:45.340 I mean, that disparity is,

00:12:49.100 as far as the moral, you know, algebra

00:12:51.360 that can give you insight into the difference

00:12:54.220 between the two sides,

00:12:55.760 that disparity says everything to me.

00:12:58.860 It's like, you know, this is something I recently said

00:13:00.540 on my own podcast, but if you just imagine

00:13:02.780 the Israelis attempting to use their own non-combatants

00:13:06.100 as human shields, right, in any conflict against jihadists.

00:13:09.120 You know, let's say Hezbollah comes across the northern border

00:13:10.980 and the Israelis line up with their own women and kids,

00:13:14.120 you know, putting the barrels of their weapons

00:13:16.240 on the shoulders of their children,

00:13:18.480 thinking that Hezbollah is going to be reluctant

00:13:20.220 to shoot through the bodies of their children

00:13:21.880 to kill IDF soldiers.

00:13:24.300 I mean, it is a completely surreal, you know,

00:13:31.560 Monty Python sketch where all the Jews die.

00:13:34.000 It is not, it is laughable, it is unthinkable.

00:13:38.160 It's unthinkable at every level of it.

00:13:39.920 It's unthinkable that the Jews would treat their own children

00:13:42.520 and non-combatants that way,

00:13:45.120 given what they believe about everything.

00:13:47.900 And it's unthinkable that they would think

00:13:49.840 that their enemies would be deterred by that behavior, right?

00:13:52.580 But when you reverse it, as it is the case in the real world,

00:13:59.080 we have had to, we Westerners and the Israelis

00:14:03.700 have had to confront this behavior on multiple fronts

00:14:06.960 in every conflict against jihadists.

00:14:09.920 They routinely use non-combatants as human shields,

00:14:12.960 and Hamas is doing that now.

00:14:14.240 I think Israel has to figure out how to navigate around that

00:14:19.900 and eradicate jihadists, you know, eradicate Hamas.

00:14:26.400 We're confounded to some degree by our terminology here.

00:14:29.700 We keep talking about terrorists,

00:14:31.860 and we had a war on terror for, you know,

00:14:34.980 a quarter of a century now.

00:14:39.180 Terrorism is a tactic.

00:14:40.400 Terrorism is not the thing we're fighting.

00:14:41.820 We're fighting jihad, and...

00:14:46.460 What's the difference, Sam?

00:14:47.500 Explain to people what the difference is.

00:14:48.740 Well, jihadism is the...

00:14:52.340 the radical core of Islam.

00:14:59.360 It is this principle of holy war

00:15:01.660 that can be justified in various contexts.

00:15:04.460 Yes, there are many, many millions of Muslims, thankfully,

00:15:07.540 who would justify it in ways that we would recognize

00:15:10.620 as something we could live with, right?

00:15:13.540 So a defensive war, right?

00:15:15.140 A just war, you know, just war theory.

00:15:17.060 Okay, great.

00:15:18.160 There are other Muslims who say,

00:15:19.520 no, no, no, you don't understand.

00:15:20.660 Jihad is just an inner spiritual struggle.

00:15:22.760 Okay, great.

00:15:24.000 But historically and practically now,

00:15:27.240 jihad has all...

00:15:28.180 a component of jihad has always been

00:15:30.360 you convert, subjugate, kill the infidel, right?

00:15:38.500 It's like Islam is a religion of conquest.

00:15:42.500 It views itself as a religion of conquest.

00:15:44.300 It expects to win these contests for believers

00:15:50.720 at the end of time.

00:15:53.220 And it has an explicitly martial ethic,

00:15:59.400 which is we have to win through force, right?

00:16:05.280 And we're happy to die trying.

00:16:07.580 However long we fail,

00:16:09.000 we're ultimately going to succeed.

00:16:10.700 But we're happy to throw our bodies

00:16:14.040 and the bodies of our children into this

00:16:16.260 because this life is a total illusion.

00:16:19.880 It has absolutely no value.

00:16:21.660 This is just a ante room

00:16:23.280 on the thresholds of either heaven or hell.

00:16:27.600 And the only thing that matters

00:16:29.680 is where you go after you die, right?

00:16:31.500 And only the true believers go to paradise.

00:16:36.060 And if you kill them inadvertently,

00:16:38.880 if you blow up a crowd of Muslim kids

00:16:41.280 in an attempt to kill some soldiers

00:16:43.060 that are handing out candy to them,

00:16:44.540 as happened in our conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan,

00:16:48.900 there's no factor.

00:16:51.580 The kids, the good Muslims,

00:16:53.560 the real Muslims are going to paradise.

00:16:55.160 They're going to thank you, right?

00:16:56.460 No problem.

00:16:57.080 And the bad Muslims, the fake Muslims,

00:17:01.440 the infidels, the idolaters,

00:17:05.240 they're going to go to hell sooner.

00:17:08.420 And that's good.

00:17:09.160 That's an intrinsic good.

00:17:10.160 That's exactly what the creator of the universe wants.

00:17:12.800 It's impossible to make a moral error

00:17:14.820 when you're a jihadist, right?

00:17:16.960 If you die, it's good.

00:17:17.940 If your family dies, it's good.

00:17:19.700 If the infidel dies, it's good.

00:17:21.220 This is a death cult.

00:17:22.440 And we have been lying to ourselves

00:17:26.100 in the secular West

00:17:27.700 that there's some other logic,

00:17:30.800 some other variable that explains this behavior.

00:17:32.940 It's economics, it's politics.

00:17:34.500 The assumption is that

00:17:36.800 when you see people behaving

00:17:39.040 in this extraordinarily destructive

00:17:41.440 and psychopathic way,

00:17:43.940 they must have been pushed there

00:17:46.220 by some awful treatment

00:17:48.420 that would explain it, right?

00:17:49.740 This must be ordinary human rational behavior

00:17:51.880 in extremis, right?

00:17:54.240 These people have been so tortured

00:17:56.060 by the occupation,

00:17:58.420 by the apartheid state of Israel,

00:18:01.160 by the open-air prison of Gaza.

00:18:02.900 I mean, these phrases that are now, you know,

00:18:04.920 used reflexively in the media.

00:18:06.980 I'm not saying life in Gaza isn't horrible.

00:18:09.960 I'm not saying it's not intolerable.

00:18:11.680 We can talk about that.

00:18:12.900 But there's a layer of this phenomenon

00:18:15.100 and of this behavior

00:18:16.120 that we've been living with,

00:18:17.220 you know, most clearly since September 11, 2001,

00:18:23.140 but it obviously precedes that,

00:18:25.500 which is explained only by the religious ideology, right?

00:18:29.900 When people are doing the unthinkable,

00:18:33.400 again, you can find so many cases

00:18:37.280 where they're doing it without grievance, right?

00:18:39.380 Where somebody drops out

00:18:40.520 of the London School of Economics

00:18:41.780 to go join the Islamic State

00:18:43.540 for the pleasure of killing Yazidis

00:18:45.920 and, you know, raping their women, right?

00:18:48.220 I mean, it's just, this is,

00:18:50.160 and this was happening, you know,

00:18:53.140 ad nauseum, right?

00:18:54.260 You had, from 100 countries, right?

00:18:56.200 So this is, so what we saw Hamas do

00:18:58.680 in Israel last week is a subset.

00:19:02.320 It's just another example of that same behavior.

00:19:05.520 Yes, it has this local, political,

00:19:07.700 nationalistic struggle over territory context,

00:19:11.840 but that's not the thing that explains the behavior

00:19:15.020 and we have to get our heads around that.

00:19:18.620 We, again, I'm not talking about,

00:19:20.900 I'm not even talking about non-Muslim,

00:19:22.200 I'm talking about all moderate Muslims

00:19:24.020 desperately, the world waits in desperation

00:19:28.000 for moderate Muslims

00:19:30.080 to get their heads around the problem of jihad.

00:19:32.840 And Eric, would you agree

00:19:34.820 with Sam's assessment of the situation?

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00:20:07.060 I disagree, first of all,

00:20:09.620 with Constantine before I even get to Sam.

00:20:12.320 Excellent.

00:20:12.940 So, you know, you phrased this immediately

00:20:14.640 as what's going on in Israel and Palestine.

00:20:17.680 From the perspective of Hamas,

00:20:21.500 what do you mean?

00:20:22.140 It's all happening in Palestine, right?

00:20:25.160 So the idea is that there's a European occupier

00:20:29.520 sitting in Palestine.

00:20:31.300 You have an open-air prison.

00:20:33.140 People are oppressed.

00:20:34.360 It's completely unlivable.

00:20:37.420 And resistance was taken

00:20:40.340 against the European oppressor

00:20:43.080 in Palestine.

00:20:45.060 So I don't know what you're talking about.

00:20:47.660 So that perspective, for example,

00:20:50.320 has to do with the language.

00:20:52.580 So as soon as the frame is in place,

00:20:54.520 I can tell you what the argument is.

00:20:57.000 You know, it's like looking at different

00:20:59.080 opening tic-tac-toe moves.

00:21:01.240 I've got all the games memorized,

00:21:03.000 and so I just don't want to even participate

00:21:05.160 as soon as I hear that

00:21:06.460 because of these different mindsets.

00:21:10.640 Now, to Sam's point,

00:21:12.400 I had a big disagreement in some sense

00:21:14.660 with the way in which the new atheists

00:21:17.120 took on the problem of jihad.

00:21:21.320 And that is because it comes out of totalizing.

00:21:24.700 Totalizing ideologies are really the problem.

00:21:28.080 There's a North Korean totalizing ideology.

00:21:31.760 There's a jihadi totalizing ideology.

00:21:34.860 Sorry to interrupt.

00:21:35.620 Just for clarity,

00:21:36.660 for these people who might not know,

00:21:37.720 what does totalizing ideology mean?

00:21:39.580 Well, what I mean in this case

00:21:40.840 is that there's an entire worldview

00:21:42.700 which solves and addresses all of your issues.

00:21:47.600 How should we structure a family?

00:21:49.240 What is the purpose of life?

00:21:51.600 What risks may be assumed?

00:21:55.660 When may one kill?

00:21:57.480 You have an entire worldview

00:22:00.060 that is effectively incompatible

00:22:03.200 with the outside world.

00:22:05.200 All notions of tolerance

00:22:07.120 of coming up with two people

00:22:09.800 who don't really agree

00:22:10.820 but agree enough

00:22:11.880 in order to serve each other coffee,

00:22:14.500 maybe marry into each other's families,

00:22:16.460 you know, whatnot.

00:22:16.940 There is a sort of way

00:22:21.980 in which you're open

00:22:23.260 through moderation

00:22:24.300 and through tolerance

00:22:25.580 to the points of view of others

00:22:27.720 within a relatively broad

00:22:31.000 but still restricted spectrum.

00:22:32.800 This is outside of that spectrum.

00:22:35.560 So,

00:22:37.180 the issue is not Islam to me.

00:22:39.920 The issue is

00:22:40.740 totalizing ideologies

00:22:42.660 that provide all answers.

00:22:44.220 And there aren't that many

00:22:45.820 of them left, right?

00:22:47.080 Like, Soviet communism died off.

00:22:49.660 It was a totalizing ideology.

00:22:51.620 You see the art,

00:22:52.660 the music,

00:22:53.340 the cinema.

00:22:54.980 You can spend your entire life

00:22:56.980 in a Soviet mindset

00:22:58.120 based on what was produced

00:23:00.220 during that period.

00:23:01.360 But not all totalizing ideologies

00:23:03.820 are the same.

00:23:04.700 No, they are.

00:23:05.120 So, it's like

00:23:06.000 the martyrdom

00:23:08.080 completely changes

00:23:09.460 the game theory, right?

00:23:10.600 Like,

00:23:10.740 if Putin was a martyr,

00:23:13.680 we would feel differently

00:23:14.860 about it

00:23:15.280 than war in Ukraine.

00:23:16.520 I promise.

00:23:17.520 But I'm just trying to account for it.

00:23:18.520 Let me drag you there.

00:23:20.700 So,

00:23:21.820 the first problem I have

00:23:23.320 is that

00:23:24.320 totalizing ideologies

00:23:25.960 are

00:23:27.620 dangerous

00:23:29.060 because there's no way

00:23:30.720 from outside

00:23:31.540 to check them.

00:23:33.520 So, if there's an error,

00:23:35.640 then you end up

00:23:36.580 with whatever that error is

00:23:38.220 to the 10,000th power.

00:23:40.900 Now,

00:23:41.680 when you drop in this

00:23:42.940 as a strategy,

00:23:45.100 the next reason

00:23:46.920 I can't really respond

00:23:47.700 to what God said

00:23:48.420 is that

00:23:49.500 the language again

00:23:51.660 that we use,

00:23:52.500 like both sides.

00:23:53.800 Oh,

00:23:54.600 so,

00:23:55.040 what about

00:23:56.200 Christian

00:23:57.480 Arabs?

00:23:59.420 You know,

00:23:59.740 somehow they're not part

00:24:01.400 of the

00:24:02.240 Islamic Jihad

00:24:04.780 or Hamas.

00:24:06.380 But on the other hand,

00:24:07.400 they may have sympathies

00:24:08.160 with it.

00:24:08.660 Or on the other hand,

00:24:09.660 they may secretly hate it

00:24:11.060 and say,

00:24:12.080 how can we get

00:24:13.020 better representation?

00:24:15.120 Some of them

00:24:15.540 may pine to live

00:24:16.520 in Israel.

00:24:18.740 As,

00:24:19.400 you know,

00:24:19.540 I lived in Israel

00:24:20.180 for two years

00:24:20.880 and I had all sorts

00:24:21.660 of crazy conversations

00:24:22.740 and the spectrum

00:24:23.640 of

00:24:24.160 Arab perspectives

00:24:25.980 or Druze perspectives

00:24:27.400 or,

00:24:27.740 you know,

00:24:27.940 it's a much richer

00:24:29.940 place

00:24:31.200 and I worry

00:24:32.560 already about

00:24:33.160 the both sides-ing

00:24:34.060 because it ain't

00:24:35.520 both sides.

00:24:36.700 It's so many

00:24:37.840 different factions

00:24:39.160 and then

00:24:39.920 in order to get

00:24:41.220 at this

00:24:41.660 because

00:24:41.960 the Israeli government

00:24:43.460 will have to

00:24:44.120 take action

00:24:44.920 against

00:24:45.980 the Hamas government,

00:24:48.040 right?

00:24:48.240 And so that is

00:24:48.800 a both sides.

00:24:49.920 So let's talk about that

00:24:51.180 because you're arguing

00:24:52.440 with the frame,

00:24:52.980 so give us the frame

00:24:54.060 the way that you think

00:24:55.420 the frame should be.

00:24:56.100 Well,

00:24:56.540 my first comment

00:24:58.020 is that

00:24:58.860 you're going to use

00:25:00.460 words like

00:25:00.960 Palestinians.

00:25:02.040 You're going to use

00:25:02.620 words like

00:25:03.000 occupation,

00:25:04.120 occupied territories.

00:25:05.700 Somebody else

00:25:06.060 might use

00:25:06.520 Judea and Samaria.

00:25:07.820 Somebody else

00:25:08.360 might say Palestine.

00:25:10.420 As soon as I know

00:25:11.480 the language,

00:25:13.000 I know that the

00:25:13.540 arguments are going to be.

00:25:15.860 This is not my language

00:25:17.060 and I don't believe

00:25:17.960 these things

00:25:18.420 and I've agreed

00:25:19.080 to be more or less

00:25:20.300 silent

00:25:20.800 on a bunch of things

00:25:22.840 while there was

00:25:23.360 a peace process

00:25:24.240 because peace processes

00:25:25.820 are about

00:25:26.680 BS

00:25:27.620 to a certain extent.

00:25:28.920 You have to lie

00:25:29.680 through a peace process

00:25:30.600 in order to get

00:25:31.460 something

00:25:32.820 at the end of it

00:25:33.660 and that failed.

00:25:35.360 So,

00:25:36.160 you know,

00:25:36.540 the first thing

00:25:37.120 I'm going to say

00:25:37.680 is I don't believe

00:25:38.540 that this is

00:25:39.140 an occupied people.

00:25:42.100 I don't believe

00:25:43.080 that the Arabs

00:25:44.260 are under occupation

00:25:45.640 and that's going

00:25:46.160 to sound crazy

00:25:46.840 because you're not

00:25:47.720 exposed to any

00:25:48.840 perspective that

00:25:49.480 sounds like that.

00:25:50.160 So how could you

00:25:51.500 ever come to

00:25:52.000 that conclusion?

00:25:54.680 You have groups

00:25:55.640 of people

00:25:56.020 who are offered

00:25:56.560 a state

00:25:57.100 who you're not

00:25:58.880 listening to.

00:25:59.500 They do not want

00:26:00.440 the state

00:26:01.780 that they're offered.

00:26:03.220 They're offered

00:26:03.680 a choice between

00:26:04.420 a state and a chant

00:26:05.620 and if you know

00:26:07.400 the chant,

00:26:07.920 it's from the river

00:26:08.520 to the sea.

00:26:10.140 From the river

00:26:10.920 to the sea

00:26:11.700 is what they chose.

00:26:13.120 You could have a state

00:26:13.960 or you could have

00:26:15.280 a chant

00:26:15.720 and they want

00:26:17.760 the chant.

00:26:19.140 They are the

00:26:20.200 tip of the spear

00:26:21.600 in the global battle

00:26:23.980 against Western

00:26:25.200 hegemony,

00:26:26.340 against an occupying

00:26:27.680 European power

00:26:28.800 in holy Arab land

00:26:31.640 and they're not

00:26:35.500 going to give up

00:26:36.420 on that

00:26:38.760 as a collective

00:26:39.800 political entity

00:26:40.840 for a relatively

00:26:43.160 modest,

00:26:46.940 prosperous state

00:26:47.840 trading with

00:26:50.040 the occupier,

00:26:52.100 with joint

00:26:52.820 economics,

00:26:53.540 joint fate.

00:26:55.580 That's very

00:26:56.400 troubling to us

00:26:57.160 because we have

00:26:57.600 this idea of

00:26:58.080 why wouldn't

00:26:58.420 you want a state?

00:26:59.140 You could have

00:26:59.500 a state,

00:26:59.900 you could be

00:27:00.220 prosperous,

00:27:00.780 you could send

00:27:01.140 your kids

00:27:01.600 to Purdue

00:27:02.420 and that's

00:27:06.080 not easy

00:27:08.420 for us.

00:27:09.120 This is basically,

00:27:10.300 if you think

00:27:10.740 about motherhood,

00:27:12.020 you don't think

00:27:13.520 about monk

00:27:13.960 chasm by proxy.

00:27:16.920 Now what do you

00:27:17.600 do when you

00:27:19.880 have a mother

00:27:20.300 who comes to

00:27:20.840 the hospital

00:27:21.480 with a child

00:27:22.860 who's continuously

00:27:23.780 getting sick

00:27:24.620 and getting

00:27:26.160 harmed?

00:27:27.020 you have to

00:27:31.700 ask,

00:27:32.080 well,

00:27:32.600 is it possible

00:27:33.260 that the mother

00:27:33.800 is harming

00:27:34.320 the child?

00:27:35.140 So you're

00:27:35.600 about to see

00:27:36.640 tiny children

00:27:39.780 pulled out

00:27:40.300 of rubble

00:27:40.740 in northern

00:27:42.300 Gaza.

00:27:43.340 You're going

00:27:43.840 to see it

00:27:44.160 ad nauseum.

00:27:45.420 You're going

00:27:45.820 to see people

00:27:46.300 rushing to the

00:27:46.920 hospital.

00:27:47.460 You're going

00:27:47.660 to see mothers

00:27:48.240 wailing.

00:27:49.160 So we can

00:27:49.580 talk about

00:27:50.200 the whole thing

00:27:50.900 about the

00:27:51.380 martyrdom

00:27:51.900 and how

00:27:52.240 everybody

00:27:52.540 prays that

00:27:53.060 their family

00:27:53.520 will be

00:27:53.860 martyred.

00:27:54.760 And you know

00:27:55.200 what?

00:27:55.460 Sometimes it's

00:27:55.980 true.

00:27:56.320 Sometimes you

00:27:56.760 see on

00:27:57.060 camera somebody

00:27:57.680 saying,

00:27:58.520 thank God

00:27:59.060 they took

00:27:59.480 my son,

00:28:00.080 you know,

00:28:00.540 blah,

00:28:00.740 blah,

00:28:00.900 blah.

00:28:02.100 But those

00:28:02.420 are actually

00:28:02.720 much more

00:28:03.140 complicated

00:28:03.600 things.

00:28:04.040 Sometimes you

00:28:04.400 turn the

00:28:04.720 camera off

00:28:05.300 and the

00:28:05.520 person is

00:28:06.000 crying because

00:28:06.740 they know

00:28:07.180 what they're

00:28:07.480 supposed to

00:28:08.020 say and

00:28:08.420 they know

00:28:09.420 what they're

00:28:09.700 actually

00:28:10.080 feeling.

00:28:11.020 So my

00:28:11.600 problem with

00:28:12.220 this is

00:28:12.660 that this

00:28:14.860 is so much

00:28:15.420 more complicated

00:28:16.260 than the

00:28:17.260 discussion we're

00:28:18.560 pre-programmed

00:28:19.200 to have that

00:28:19.720 is guaranteed

00:28:20.240 to fail.

00:28:21.320 The richness

00:28:22.020 of this

00:28:23.280 problem where

00:28:24.320 Hamas is

00:28:25.000 effectively the

00:28:25.740 mother in a

00:28:26.260 Munchausen

00:28:26.760 by proxy

00:28:27.380 situation,

00:28:28.840 right?

00:28:29.200 And the

00:28:29.480 children,

00:28:30.180 you damn

00:28:31.000 straight you're

00:28:31.400 going to be

00:28:31.620 pulling babies

00:28:32.240 out of that

00:28:32.640 rubble because

00:28:33.100 that's what

00:28:33.480 Hamas wants.

00:28:34.900 And Israel

00:28:35.340 cannot figure out

00:28:36.340 how to extricate

00:28:37.460 herself from

00:28:38.580 this dance of

00:28:39.200 death.

00:28:40.480 But that's why

00:28:41.300 we're here.

00:28:42.240 That's what we're

00:28:42.780 talking about.

00:28:43.980 Right.

00:28:44.560 So what I'm

00:28:45.020 trying to say

00:28:45.620 is you don't

00:28:47.560 get out of

00:28:48.760 this.

00:28:49.340 You have a very

00:28:50.200 unconventional

00:28:50.960 foe in Hamas

00:28:52.660 and in

00:28:53.540 totalitarian

00:28:54.700 Islam and

00:28:55.380 in jihad and

00:28:56.420 in ISIS and

00:28:57.240 Al-Qaeda.

00:28:58.400 And for some

00:28:59.040 reason,

00:28:59.760 mainstream media

00:29:00.800 refuses to

00:29:03.420 show us the

00:29:04.120 images that

00:29:04.720 they showed

00:29:05.140 us during the

00:29:05.700 Vietnam War

00:29:06.560 through mainstream

00:29:08.360 outlets.

00:29:09.280 If you saw

00:29:10.500 what I've

00:29:11.020 seen,

00:29:13.540 if you

00:29:14.060 watched

00:29:15.000 the Hamas

00:29:17.300 videos,

00:29:18.520 the ISIS

00:29:18.960 videos,

00:29:20.040 if you

00:29:23.580 read the

00:29:23.960 beak,

00:29:24.260 if you

00:29:24.480 did any

00:29:24.900 of this

00:29:25.280 stuff,

00:29:26.500 you'd be

00:29:27.960 sick to

00:29:28.300 your stomach.

00:29:28.860 You'd be a

00:29:29.200 changed person.

00:29:31.240 And we

00:29:31.520 don't have

00:29:31.960 that.

00:29:32.140 I remember

00:29:32.540 that the

00:29:32.980 night my

00:29:33.540 parents turned

00:29:34.540 off the TV

00:29:35.300 during the

00:29:35.720 Vietnam War,

00:29:36.920 one of my

00:29:37.460 earliest memories,

00:29:38.240 I believe it

00:29:39.200 was G.I.'s

00:29:39.960 heads on

00:29:40.440 pikes carried

00:29:41.380 by the

00:29:41.700 Viet Cong.

00:29:43.500 You're watching

00:29:44.120 Americans severed

00:29:45.140 heads on

00:29:45.680 sticks.

00:29:47.260 If you think

00:29:47.600 about all the

00:29:48.080 Pulitzer Prize

00:29:48.740 winning photographs

00:29:49.460 from the

00:29:49.780 Vietnam era,

00:29:51.000 you're watching

00:29:51.600 a monk

00:29:52.020 burn to

00:29:52.580 death.

00:29:53.440 You're

00:29:53.660 watching a

00:29:54.080 street execution

00:29:55.180 right to

00:29:56.700 the head.

00:29:57.940 You're

00:29:58.420 watching naked

00:29:59.240 children with

00:29:59.840 their clothes

00:30:01.000 burned off

00:30:01.520 from napalm.

00:30:04.000 You didn't

00:30:04.920 see Falling

00:30:05.740 Man.

00:30:06.180 The most

00:30:06.560 famous picture

00:30:07.380 from 9-11

00:30:08.180 was basically

00:30:09.040 not shown in

00:30:09.740 the United

00:30:10.080 States.

00:30:10.540 There is

00:30:10.780 this layer

00:30:11.440 that is

00:30:12.360 determined to

00:30:13.300 push a

00:30:13.700 fiction to

00:30:14.280 us,

00:30:14.780 which is a

00:30:16.080 transparent

00:30:17.520 fiction about

00:30:19.420 the general

00:30:21.380 nature of

00:30:22.520 Islam.

00:30:22.960 Islam is

00:30:23.400 complicated.

00:30:24.220 You have

00:30:24.400 to study

00:30:24.900 it.

00:30:26.280 There are

00:30:26.580 multiple

00:30:26.940 schools of

00:30:27.520 thought beyond

00:30:28.500 Shia versus

00:30:29.340 Sunni versus

00:30:30.140 Ahmadi.

00:30:30.900 You know,

00:30:31.480 you could just

00:30:32.060 in Sunni

00:30:32.620 Islam,

00:30:33.060 different schools

00:30:33.600 of jurisprudence,

00:30:34.400 which lead to

00:30:34.820 totally radically

00:30:36.000 different outcomes

00:30:37.380 between the

00:30:37.920 Salafists and

00:30:38.700 the Hanafi

00:30:39.360 adherents.

00:30:40.660 and what

00:30:42.100 we've done

00:30:42.500 is we've

00:30:42.820 come up

00:30:43.140 with this

00:30:43.460 childlike

00:30:44.760 concept of

00:30:45.900 an oppressed

00:30:46.440 people and

00:30:47.680 a religion

00:30:48.060 of peace and

00:30:49.540 all of this

00:30:50.580 stuff is

00:30:50.900 unworkable and

00:30:51.780 it's all

00:30:52.060 mind control

00:30:52.660 and it's

00:30:52.920 all propaganda

00:30:53.520 and what

00:30:54.380 my feeling

00:30:54.980 is,

00:30:55.440 again,

00:30:56.560 is I don't

00:30:57.080 want to

00:30:57.340 start the

00:30:57.760 conversation

00:30:58.340 from where

00:30:58.940 I think you

00:30:59.420 guys want

00:30:59.780 to start

00:31:00.140 it from.

00:31:00.880 I want

00:31:01.120 to start

00:31:01.380 from the

00:31:01.700 fact that

00:31:02.060 none of

00:31:02.300 us are

00:31:02.520 prepared to

00:31:02.960 have this

00:31:03.240 conversation

00:31:03.880 because we

00:31:04.660 haven't been

00:31:05.120 exposed to

00:31:05.800 it.

00:31:06.540 We don't

00:31:06.860 know what

00:31:07.120 the real

00:31:07.460 issues are

00:31:08.120 and if we

00:31:08.520 take the

00:31:08.940 terms that

00:31:09.420 are handed

00:31:09.780 to us,

00:31:12.200 if we

00:31:12.620 have the

00:31:12.860 best and

00:31:13.520 most

00:31:13.700 intellectual

00:31:14.100 conversation,

00:31:14.960 it will

00:31:15.140 still be

00:31:15.540 completely

00:31:15.940 morally

00:31:16.460 done.

00:31:16.700 Let me

00:31:17.460 just disagree

00:31:17.980 with the

00:31:18.480 general

00:31:19.100 thrust of

00:31:19.560 what you

00:31:19.720 said there

00:31:20.040 because much

00:31:21.200 of what

00:31:21.420 you said

00:31:21.780 is true

00:31:22.300 but doesn't

00:31:22.940 actually

00:31:23.260 confound

00:31:25.240 the argument

00:31:26.480 that I'm

00:31:27.240 making,

00:31:27.640 which is

00:31:27.920 that all

00:31:29.520 of that

00:31:29.760 complexity

00:31:30.180 is true.

00:31:31.020 There's the

00:31:31.260 complexity

00:31:31.600 of Islam,

00:31:32.720 this variegated

00:31:34.360 culture,

00:31:35.620 and it

00:31:36.600 interacts with

00:31:37.340 cultural

00:31:38.560 contingencies

00:31:40.560 that have

00:31:40.840 nothing to

00:31:41.200 do with

00:31:41.420 religion,

00:31:42.000 so there

00:31:43.020 are things

00:31:43.520 that we

00:31:43.980 would object

00:31:44.400 to under

00:31:44.820 Islam like

00:31:45.560 female genital

00:31:46.480 mutilation which

00:31:47.920 doesn't have

00:31:50.540 a really

00:31:51.400 direct connection

00:31:52.060 to theology

00:31:53.120 and yet it's

00:31:54.160 correlated with

00:31:54.980 the Muslim

00:31:56.220 world but it's

00:31:56.760 not exclusive

00:31:57.260 to the Muslim

00:31:57.740 world, etc.

00:31:58.420 There's all

00:31:59.060 this hair

00:32:00.000 splitting we

00:32:00.500 can do but

00:32:01.980 there is a

00:32:02.420 very simple

00:32:03.120 core to this,

00:32:03.940 the concept

00:32:04.540 of jihad,

00:32:05.160 the concept

00:32:05.600 of martyrdom,

00:32:06.460 the very

00:32:07.780 clear

00:32:08.460 prescription.

00:32:08.820 You have

00:32:09.000 a totalizing

00:32:09.520 death cult,

00:32:10.220 I get it.

00:32:10.500 Yeah,

00:32:10.800 death to

00:32:11.480 apostates,

00:32:12.160 right?

00:32:12.380 This is the

00:32:13.700 clearest piece

00:32:14.400 of code,

00:32:14.900 this is like

00:32:15.380 eight lines

00:32:16.840 of code

00:32:17.380 that every

00:32:18.280 time you run

00:32:18.860 them produce

00:32:19.260 the same amount.

00:32:19.840 It's not the

00:32:20.160 clearest piece

00:32:20.640 of code,

00:32:21.060 it's the fact

00:32:21.620 that it has

00:32:22.180 no repressor

00:32:23.620 bound to it,

00:32:24.220 to borrow a

00:32:24.780 metaphor from

00:32:25.380 DNA.

00:32:26.180 And so in

00:32:26.680 Deuteronomy

00:32:27.940 we have

00:32:28.500 repressor

00:32:29.540 bound to

00:32:30.320 bad code

00:32:30.960 so the

00:32:31.420 code doesn't

00:32:32.100 run.

00:32:32.580 The problem

00:32:33.120 is that all

00:32:33.780 the safeties

00:32:34.260 are off the

00:32:34.760 gun,

00:32:35.460 you've got

00:32:35.820 promoter

00:32:36.260 rather than

00:32:36.760 repressor for

00:32:37.460 some collection

00:32:38.180 of people.

00:32:39.040 For some

00:32:39.300 other collection,

00:32:40.200 explain that

00:32:40.780 in a different

00:32:41.160 way.

00:32:41.560 Sure.

00:32:41.940 It's too

00:32:42.280 complicated.

00:32:43.080 It's not

00:32:43.420 that complicated.

00:32:44.400 It's not

00:32:45.180 that complicated

00:32:45.760 for you,

00:32:46.540 but it's

00:32:47.000 too complicated

00:32:47.580 for me to

00:32:48.140 understand and

00:32:48.680 therefore for

00:32:49.160 a lot of

00:32:49.440 people watching.

00:32:50.020 So explain

00:32:50.400 it simpler.

00:32:52.040 Okay.

00:32:52.920 We have

00:32:53.240 code in

00:32:53.880 Deuteronomy.

00:32:54.360 A lot of

00:32:54.880 the bad code

00:32:55.440 in Islam

00:32:55.840 comes from

00:32:56.500 Judaism.

00:32:57.540 So Christianity

00:32:58.940 and Islam

00:32:59.780 are two of

00:33:00.320 our most

00:33:00.620 popular

00:33:01.040 offshoots.

00:33:02.260 And bad

00:33:03.360 code has an

00:33:04.060 inheritance

00:33:04.460 property that

00:33:05.240 sometimes it

00:33:05.820 permeates through

00:33:06.460 the system if

00:33:07.160 everybody agrees

00:33:07.880 that the Old

00:33:08.320 Testament is

00:33:08.960 important.

00:33:10.680 In Deuteronomy,

00:33:12.100 I believe there's

00:33:12.720 a passage,

00:33:13.200 by the way,

00:33:13.680 what you said

00:33:14.080 before about it

00:33:14.620 being Quranic,

00:33:15.440 I believe you

00:33:15.900 were actually

00:33:16.240 referencing a

00:33:16.880 Hadith.

00:33:17.300 I don't know

00:33:17.640 if that's

00:33:18.000 accurate about

00:33:18.900 the ground.

00:33:19.860 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:20.600 So I want to be

00:33:21.420 clear about it.

00:33:22.380 In Deuteronomy,

00:33:23.460 there's a passage

00:33:24.160 that says,

00:33:24.800 for example,

00:33:25.380 if somebody says,

00:33:26.300 let's go worship

00:33:27.220 God's unknown to

00:33:28.820 our fathers set

00:33:29.640 upon him with a

00:33:30.340 stone.

00:33:30.620 I don't think

00:33:31.760 there's any

00:33:32.080 record of Jews

00:33:33.000 stoning an

00:33:35.140 apostate,

00:33:36.280 a proselytizing

00:33:38.080 apostate.

00:33:39.920 However,

00:33:40.780 how you get

00:33:41.680 that code not

00:33:42.440 to run is

00:33:43.840 that you come

00:33:44.320 up with some

00:33:44.900 justification.

00:33:45.720 For example,

00:33:46.840 too bad about

00:33:47.880 the Second

00:33:48.220 Temple being

00:33:48.980 destroyed.

00:33:49.460 If we don't

00:33:49.880 have the Second

00:33:50.300 Temple,

00:33:50.720 then we can't

00:33:51.520 convene the

00:33:52.020 Sanhedrin.

00:33:53.580 If the religious

00:33:54.400 courts aren't

00:33:55.080 enforced, then who

00:33:56.400 decides whether

00:33:57.500 this is just and

00:33:58.260 unjust?

00:33:58.520 Just so,

00:33:58.940 unfortunately,

00:33:59.500 the code can't

00:34:00.140 run.

00:34:00.580 So we have

00:34:01.000 got bad code

00:34:02.180 that doesn't

00:34:03.900 get run because

00:34:05.740 it's blocked

00:34:06.520 from running.

00:34:08.280 And quite

00:34:09.180 honestly, in many

00:34:09.960 places in the

00:34:10.700 world, you've

00:34:11.160 got bad code

00:34:11.980 that is blocked

00:34:12.580 from running.

00:34:13.220 And so I don't

00:34:13.540 want to have a

00:34:13.860 conversation about

00:34:14.660 you can read it

00:34:15.340 right in the text.

00:34:16.060 It's true, you can

00:34:16.740 read it right in

00:34:17.220 the text, but you

00:34:17.920 have to think

00:34:18.380 about the

00:34:18.740 epigenetics.

00:34:19.980 What is it that

00:34:20.820 determines does

00:34:21.520 this code run or

00:34:22.960 is this code

00:34:23.700 blocked?

00:34:24.360 So the problem

00:34:25.160 is you have

00:34:25.900 got a totalizing

00:34:27.020 death cult with

00:34:28.520 all the safeties

00:34:29.260 off the gun for

00:34:31.740 some subset of

00:34:32.620 people, and then

00:34:33.800 we're going to

00:34:34.140 have this

00:34:34.620 conversation about

00:34:35.760 are we going to

00:34:36.260 be fastidiously

00:34:37.380 accurate, in which

00:34:38.180 case it'll take

00:34:38.780 17 hours and

00:34:39.740 nobody will want

00:34:40.240 to watch it, or

00:34:41.660 is somebody going

00:34:42.700 to say, you

00:34:43.520 know, do the

00:34:43.840 conservative thing

00:34:44.480 to say, well,

00:34:45.000 there's some

00:34:45.280 something's going

00:34:45.940 wrong with Islam.

00:34:47.120 And then you've

00:34:47.600 got all the

00:34:48.420 collateral damage

00:34:50.160 of reasonable

00:34:51.040 normal people who

00:34:52.280 are, you know, a

00:34:52.740 vice president for

00:34:53.480 inventory at some

00:34:54.340 company who

00:34:55.820 happens to go to

00:34:56.300 the mosque, and

00:34:57.260 he's thinking like,

00:34:57.900 what does this

00:34:58.260 have to do

00:34:58.640 with me?

00:34:59.420 And then you

00:34:59.760 have got the

00:35:00.140 weird issues about

00:35:00.820 the sympathies, where

00:35:02.100 you've got sympathies

00:35:03.640 for completely insane

00:35:04.940 positions from

00:35:05.700 completely moderate

00:35:06.460 people, including

00:35:07.320 now, generically

00:35:09.540 college students.

00:35:10.560 College students are

00:35:11.700 up for people

00:35:13.360 firing automatic

00:35:14.900 weapons into

00:35:15.660 porta-potties, having

00:35:16.760 no idea who's

00:35:17.680 inside.

00:35:18.180 Is a mother, you

00:35:19.080 know, nursing a

00:35:19.740 child inside the

00:35:20.580 porta-potty?

00:35:21.220 Who cares?

00:35:22.880 And to say, I

00:35:24.140 stand with

00:35:24.780 Palestine and

00:35:26.400 show a hang

00:35:27.240 glider for Black

00:35:28.080 Lives Matter, think

00:35:28.740 about all the

00:35:29.260 Black Lives Matter

00:35:30.320 signs.

00:35:31.500 Throughout the

00:35:32.100 entire George

00:35:32.680 Floyd thing, I

00:35:33.280 was saying, don't

00:35:34.420 support Black

00:35:35.440 Lives Matter.

00:35:36.520 Now, Black Lives

00:35:37.080 Matter was a

00:35:37.780 piece of genius

00:35:38.560 called declarative

00:35:40.160 marketing.

00:35:40.640 I don't know if

00:35:40.980 you've ever heard

00:35:41.480 it.

00:35:41.680 So we had

00:35:41.940 products in the

00:35:43.020 70s called

00:35:43.640 Gee, Your Hair

00:35:44.140 Smells Terrific, or

00:35:45.720 I Can't Believe It's

00:35:46.540 Not Butter was the

00:35:47.240 name of the product.

00:35:48.200 So the name of the

00:35:48.820 product is called

00:35:49.480 Black Lives Matter.

00:35:50.320 How can you

00:35:51.300 disagree with

00:35:51.860 that?

00:35:52.540 You know, so

00:35:53.300 Save the Adorable

00:35:54.760 Puppy Dogs is what

00:35:55.680 I would call a

00:35:56.200 terrorist organization

00:35:57.180 if I had to, because

00:35:59.020 how can you disagree

00:36:00.220 with Save the

00:36:00.720 Adorable Puppy Dogs?

00:36:01.940 We're deranged by

00:36:03.080 language.

00:36:03.620 We're not watching

00:36:04.300 things in mainstream

00:36:06.100 contexts that would

00:36:07.160 make us sick to our

00:36:08.060 stomachs, and we are

00:36:08.820 becoming infused with

00:36:11.080 a radical ideology

00:36:12.300 through the

00:36:12.740 Democratic Party that

00:36:14.260 is as if it was

00:36:15.680 liberalism adjacent.

00:36:17.580 Like, you've got

00:36:18.020 radical left-wing

00:36:19.380 death cults.

00:36:20.320 That want revolution

00:36:21.680 for the oppressed.

00:36:23.240 That have a seat at

00:36:24.400 the Democratic table

00:36:25.420 at the same time that

00:36:27.120 somebody like Sam or

00:36:28.040 myself, traditionally a

00:36:30.300 Democrat, is completely

00:36:31.480 unwelcome.

00:36:32.760 And, you know, my

00:36:33.320 claim is that you're

00:36:34.640 seeing an echo of this

00:36:36.540 madness of jihadism inside

00:36:38.820 mainstream American

00:36:39.860 campuses.

00:36:41.060 And there's one thing

00:36:42.040 that I would like to add

00:36:42.860 as well, is that my

00:36:43.980 grandfather was an

00:36:45.100 Arab.

00:36:45.460 My grandfather was

00:36:46.420 Venezuelan, but he

00:36:47.180 originated from Lebanon.

00:36:48.180 His surname was

00:36:49.520 Saud, and he was

00:36:51.720 Coptic Christian.

00:36:53.020 And he was a doctor, and

00:36:55.420 when he retired, he

00:36:56.240 became a historian, and

00:36:57.420 his books won prizes

00:37:00.160 in his third language.

00:37:02.600 And we went to Israel on

00:37:04.140 holiday.

00:37:04.580 Now, I'm a Catholic.

00:37:06.040 All our family are

00:37:06.860 Catholic.

00:37:07.340 And they said to my

00:37:08.180 grandfather, we said to

00:37:09.180 my grandfather, would you

00:37:10.240 like to come to Israel

00:37:11.340 with us?

00:37:11.780 Bear in mind, this is a

00:37:12.540 historian.

00:37:12.960 This is a learned man.

00:37:13.900 And he said, as long as

00:37:15.780 I live, I will never set

00:37:17.140 foot on Israeli soil.

00:37:18.600 I will never put money in

00:37:20.060 an Israeli pocket.

00:37:21.760 And I think that the

00:37:22.740 other aspect to this

00:37:24.420 conversation that we're

00:37:25.520 not addressing is the

00:37:27.260 hatred that exists on

00:37:29.540 both sides.

00:37:30.480 And we misuse that word

00:37:32.540 hatred a lot.

00:37:33.740 I hate peanuts.

00:37:34.940 I hate the opposition

00:37:35.980 football team.

00:37:37.060 This is hatred to its

00:37:38.740 core.

00:37:39.420 And what do you do with

00:37:40.860 two groups of people?

00:37:42.000 Some of whom hate each

00:37:45.120 other in its truest sense.

00:37:46.500 Can you resolve that?

00:37:48.920 It's worse than hatred.

00:37:50.520 And it's simpler than

00:37:52.160 Eric, you're making it

00:37:54.100 out.

00:37:54.620 It's not.

00:37:55.800 Granted, there's a ton of

00:37:57.860 complexity.

00:37:58.840 But the complexity isn't

00:38:01.380 the main problem here.

00:38:04.520 So it's worse than

00:38:05.940 hatred in that, and again,

00:38:08.000 I really do think this is a

00:38:09.580 failure of empathy.

00:38:12.000 On the part of secular,

00:38:14.180 rational people, they just

00:38:15.360 can't get their heads

00:38:16.240 around what it would be

00:38:18.000 like to actually believe in

00:38:19.020 paradise.

00:38:19.920 Right?

00:38:20.040 They've never met, at most

00:38:22.300 they've met people who

00:38:23.100 pretend to believe in

00:38:23.900 paradise.

00:38:25.800 They just don't know what

00:38:27.660 true belief is like, and

00:38:31.220 therefore they can't kind

00:38:33.800 of sympathetically run this

00:38:35.100 particular piece of code and

00:38:36.480 see its perfectly rational

00:38:38.840 implications.

00:38:39.420 I mean, how would you live

00:38:40.940 if you believed that there

00:38:43.420 was nothing more important

00:38:44.720 than waging war for the one

00:38:47.080 true faith and dying in the

00:38:49.120 process?

00:38:49.460 The only straight path to

00:38:50.900 paradise was to be

00:38:52.240 martyred, right?

00:38:53.040 It's the only thing that

00:38:54.040 bypasses the resurrection and

00:38:55.540 all of the uncertainty of

00:38:56.660 whether you're going to get

00:38:57.640 there.

00:38:57.960 It's just like you're just

00:39:00.160 whisked past the velvet rope

00:39:01.560 and you're in the bottle room

00:39:03.240 with God waiting for your

00:39:04.380 friends and family to arrive,

00:39:05.560 people can't understand what

00:39:11.100 it would be like to actually

00:39:11.880 believe this.

00:39:12.980 And so they think there must

00:39:14.820 be some other motive.

00:39:16.840 So when you read an issue of

00:39:18.980 Dabiq, right, you know, the

00:39:20.240 Islamic State's highly

00:39:22.380 professional newsletter or

00:39:24.520 magazine.

00:39:25.100 Great production quote.

00:39:26.220 It was shockingly good.

00:39:28.480 I mean, when I commented on it,

00:39:30.000 it was actually a very bad sign

00:39:32.680 that it was as well written and

00:39:34.420 as well copied as it was.

00:39:35.580 They know their stuff?

00:39:36.480 It was a big, no, because it

00:39:37.700 shows you the quality of the

00:39:38.860 people they were recruiting

00:39:39.660 from Europe mostly.

00:39:43.740 But it's, and I disagree with

00:39:48.780 the analogy, the epigenetic

00:39:51.060 genetics analogy you ran, because

00:39:52.760 it's, there's not, this is a

00:39:54.960 much shorter piece of code.

00:39:56.700 The Quran, it's a much more

00:39:57.680 unified code.

00:40:00.600 I mean, the Quran, there's much

00:40:02.240 less self-contradiction in the

00:40:04.420 Quran than you find in the

00:40:05.800 Bible, right?

00:40:06.460 I mean, the Bible is, the

00:40:07.680 Bible simply does not present a

00:40:09.280 unified message, and it's very

00:40:10.680 easy to pick and choose, and

00:40:12.540 especially if you're a

00:40:13.500 Christian, you wind up with

00:40:14.760 Jesus and his better moods, and

00:40:17.620 you could live a completely

00:40:19.080 benign, pacifist sort of life.

00:40:21.940 Or you could be, you know, a

00:40:24.880 religious lunatic who's dangerous

00:40:26.700 and divisive.

00:40:27.520 You can sort of have it however

00:40:28.640 you want to have it.

00:40:30.040 It is much harder under Islam.

00:40:32.060 It's not to say this is

00:40:32.740 impossible, and as I said

00:40:34.800 earlier...

00:40:35.320 Islam is much better designed.

00:40:36.380 They absolutely need to find

00:40:38.220 their repressor hardware to

00:40:40.620 figure out how to make jihad just

00:40:43.380 a matter of just war, and just

00:40:46.080 war theory, you know, as the

00:40:48.480 Christians have it, more or

00:40:49.460 less, and spiritual struggle.

00:40:53.780 That would be great.

00:40:54.580 They have to figure out how to

00:40:55.440 do it.

00:40:55.840 It's damn hard to do it, especially

00:40:58.220 when you look at the example of the

00:41:00.060 Prophet Muhammad, who's not a guy

00:41:01.800 who got crucified and told

00:41:04.060 everyone to wait for the end of

00:41:05.140 the world.

00:41:05.540 He was a conquering warlord.

00:41:07.620 I mean, it's like having Genghis

00:41:08.600 Khan as your savior.

00:41:10.800 I mean, it's just not a...

00:41:12.520 Islam is much better designed,

00:41:14.140 Sam.

00:41:14.560 For holy war, for endless

00:41:17.660 conflict.

00:41:18.440 It's not a morally normative

00:41:19.960 observation.

00:41:21.600 It had the opportunity to look at

00:41:23.220 Orthodox Judaism and Christianity,

00:41:27.020 and it became a piece of code

00:41:31.520 that is incredibly difficult to

00:41:34.700 deal with, even down to the

00:41:35.940 engineering of a priority of

00:41:39.880 operations.

00:41:40.840 And I forget how it works that you

00:41:42.560 have the chapters, the surahs?

00:41:45.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:46.040 The ones that abrogate the other

00:41:48.340 ones, yes.

00:41:48.920 But the more violent ones abrogate

00:41:50.740 the...

00:41:50.900 So you do have mutual contradictions,

00:41:51.660 but you also have an order of

00:41:52.540 operation.

00:41:53.080 So as a piece of design, we can

00:41:57.120 marvel at Islam, but you still have

00:42:01.000 two very different traditions, one

00:42:03.360 clerical, one more akin to

00:42:05.460 Protestantism of a direct

00:42:06.800 relationship to the code.

00:42:08.760 In Sunni Islam, you do have multiple

00:42:10.960 schools of jurisprudential thought.

00:42:13.720 What I'm trying to get at is you

00:42:16.120 became fixated on the fact that

00:42:18.820 normal, ordinary Americans,

00:42:22.320 median Americans, cannot figure out

00:42:24.740 how to talk about the problems that

00:42:27.700 come out of totalitarian jihadi

00:42:29.840 ideology.

00:42:31.040 Well, worse than that is to the

00:42:32.940 point you just raised about what's

00:42:34.220 happening on college campuses.

00:42:35.280 We've got the most privileged and

00:42:38.340 ostensibly well-educated people in our

00:42:40.320 society, students right now, today, at

00:42:43.160 Harvard and Stanford, who are signing

00:42:45.560 open letters in support of the murder

00:42:49.760 of infants in their cribs, because...

00:42:52.420 Who are in support of message

00:42:53.840 killing.

00:42:54.340 Let's be very specific.

00:42:55.600 It's not murder and it's not the

00:42:57.040 number.

00:42:57.960 Message killing is different than

00:42:59.480 regular killing.

00:43:00.760 Message killing is when you engage in

00:43:02.420 an act and you make it cinematic and

00:43:04.440 you make it hurt.

00:43:05.140 You make it psychologically so

00:43:06.440 disturbing that you amplify power of

00:43:11.580 each death, right?

00:43:13.380 Saddam was an incredible practitioner

00:43:18.900 of message killing.

00:43:20.140 When you think about Luca Brazzi, you

00:43:23.080 know, in The Godfather, showing up with

00:43:26.040 a vest with a fish in it, nobody knows

00:43:27.760 how to read the message.

00:43:30.960 You have kids on college campuses who

00:43:33.720 are supportive of message killing and

00:43:37.540 you think about how do you deliver the

00:43:39.320 maximal amount of pain to a father?

00:43:41.420 Okay, but these are the same people who

00:43:44.560 are whinging about microaggressions and

00:43:48.300 they need safe spaces, they need trigger

00:43:50.400 warnings, they think words are

00:43:52.140 violence.

00:43:53.080 I mean...

00:43:53.500 No, they don't think any of that same.

00:43:55.560 There was no woke ideology.

00:43:57.520 You could not tie your shoes if you

00:43:59.880 imbibed wokeism.

00:44:01.140 It's such a contradictory collection of

00:44:04.320 things that don't make sense.

00:44:05.620 Michael Malice said on our show recently

00:44:07.600 something that I think is not untrue,

00:44:10.540 which is that these people don't use

00:44:12.240 language to communicate, they use it to

00:44:13.880 manipulate.

00:44:14.440 That's right.

00:44:15.140 Right?

00:44:15.840 However, one of the things that always

00:44:17.760 worries me about our space is we critique

00:44:21.680 others and we don't model and we don't

00:44:25.420 talk about how to think.

00:44:26.820 And I've asked, we've spent 40 minutes,

00:44:28.340 I've asked both of you how to think about

00:44:29.580 this issue.

00:44:30.060 We are nowhere near there.

00:44:30.920 So let's try.

00:44:32.400 You both put some ideas forward about how

00:44:35.160 you see this problem.

00:44:36.460 How do we think about this, Sam?

00:44:38.080 How, if you're right, let's just for the

00:44:40.840 sake of argument, this is all about

00:44:42.500 jihadism.

00:44:43.100 I have an answer for you, but I

00:44:44.080 certainly preface it by saying that

00:44:45.500 one, I'm not an expert in any of the

00:44:48.380 relevant areas that would give me

00:44:49.760 confidence in this answer.

00:44:51.160 This is the internet.

00:44:52.040 It's never stopped anyone.

00:44:53.380 So I'm not like, so I'm very...

00:44:54.980 Have you been on Twitter, Sam?

00:44:55.960 Yeah.

00:44:57.560 Not much recently.

00:44:58.560 Um, so I'm, I'm very happy that I'm

00:45:02.360 not in charge here.

00:45:03.600 Yes.

00:45:03.960 Like, so it's like, so I can say, I can

00:45:06.380 say this knowing that I have absolutely

00:45:08.260 no responsibility to actually make this

00:45:09.920 kind of decision.

00:45:11.140 But I, what I think we in the West, in

00:45:15.680 the West, however you want to conceive

00:45:18.060 it, um, should do is recognize that we

00:45:22.680 are perpetually at war with aspiring

00:45:26.040 martyrs, right?

00:45:27.100 We're at war with jihadis.

00:45:28.620 Now, how many people like, fitting that

00:45:31.060 description actually exist in the Muslim

00:45:32.600 world is as yet undetermined, right?

00:45:36.400 But it's, um, more than we should be

00:45:39.720 comfortable with and it's, and, and

00:45:42.560 still most Muslims do not fit that

00:45:45.000 description, obviously, right?

00:45:47.120 And then there are kind of concentric

00:45:48.820 circles of, of decreasing support for

00:45:51.560 the, the, the, um, the project of

00:45:54.560 jihad.

00:45:55.340 But we have to recognize that we're at

00:45:56.940 war with jihadism, it's, and it's in

00:46:00.280 whatever guise, whatever organization

00:46:02.260 or not, or non-organization it exists

00:46:05.320 in, um, and we should, and we should be

00:46:11.820 killing jihadis, right?

00:46:13.560 That we're not going to negotiate with

00:46:14.640 jihadis, we're not going to live

00:46:15.660 peaceful, peacefully with jihadis.

00:46:18.140 Um, when you raise your hand and you say,

00:46:20.640 I'm a jihadi, that should make your life

00:46:23.140 much more dangerous, uh, officially from

00:46:25.640 the point of view of, of the Israelis,

00:46:28.500 the CIA, anyone, anyone who's part of

00:46:31.780 this project.

00:46:33.160 Um, but then we're back to Dresden.

00:46:35.620 And I think this is why I brought her up.

00:46:37.260 We're back to Dresden.

00:46:38.020 I think this mostly should be covert.

00:46:40.840 I think this, I don't think we need to

00:46:42.040 take credit for this.

00:46:43.280 I don't think the Israelis should say we,

00:46:45.140 we dealt with the problem over here and

00:46:47.200 the, the, the U.S. should say we dealt

00:46:48.580 with the problem over here.

00:46:49.020 Do you mean clandestine?

00:46:51.500 What, how are you distinguishing those?

00:46:53.540 Clandestine means secret.

00:46:55.200 Covert means deniable.

00:46:58.780 Um, I'm not sure I understand all that

00:47:01.900 you've, when the CIA undertakes a

00:47:04.040 covert operation, the idea that it, if

00:47:08.200 discovered, it will be denied and that

00:47:10.860 the links to the sponsor will be severed

00:47:14.140 so that it cannot be traced back to the

00:47:16.440 CIA.

00:47:16.820 So in other words, it's a pretty big

00:47:21.260 distinction.

00:47:21.980 I just didn't know whether you were

00:47:22.960 Yeah, no, I don't, I actually, I don't

00:47:24.500 know, I don't know if, if it's important

00:47:26.620 in this case, but, um, I mean, this is a,

00:47:29.600 this is, this, this is an idea that

00:47:31.120 doesn't originate with me.

00:47:32.220 I think I first encountered this with, um,

00:47:35.460 the war correspondent, uh, and journalist

00:47:37.820 Robert Kaplan, maybe, I think it might

00:47:40.900 even be before 9-11 he, he wrote on this.

00:47:43.660 Um, but just the idea that we need to,

00:47:48.320 that all of this has to be public, all

00:47:50.260 of this has to be demonstrative, all, all

00:47:52.380 this, all of this has to be framed by

00:47:54.620 speeches, uh, that we need to declare,

00:47:57.300 we're going to go to war in Iraq, right?

00:47:59.380 You know, we're going to go to war in

00:48:00.340 Afghanistan.

00:48:01.600 Um, I mean, if any, if my thinking about

00:48:04.900 anything has changed since 9-11, the, I

00:48:08.520 mean, I was never, I was never a supporter

00:48:10.880 of the war in Iraq, I was never a critic

00:48:12.760 of the war in Iraq, I never knew what to

00:48:14.160 think about the war in Iraq, except I

00:48:16.340 noticed that it was, it seemed like a

00:48:17.880 catastrophic distraction from the war in

00:48:19.480 Afghanistan, which I absolutely did

00:48:20.920 support, um, and which was, you know, a

00:48:23.980 hopeless failure, it certainly seems.

00:48:26.900 Um, but, so if, if my thinking has

00:48:29.900 changed about anything, it's this, the

00:48:31.240 idea that we can do this project of

00:48:34.200 nation-building, that, like, by analogy

00:48:35.800 with what we did with, you know, post-World

00:48:38.560 War II with Germany and Japan, which are

00:48:41.180 miracles of, of, uh, resurrection, really.

00:48:44.940 I mean, look at, look at the enemies we

00:48:46.160 had in Germany and Japan, and look at the

00:48:49.460 state of the world now, right?

00:48:50.700 It's just the idea that they are our

00:48:52.600 friends and collaborators, and have been

00:48:54.860 for, for virtually, for as long as, you

00:48:57.140 know, we've been alive, um, it's, it's an

00:49:00.400 amazing reboot of civilization after, you

00:49:04.120 know, it's, uh, near destruction. Um, the

00:49:08.280 idea that we can accomplish that in the

00:49:10.140 Middle East and accomplish that in a

00:49:11.680 Muslim culture just because we think

00:49:14.280 everyone must want freedom on some level

00:49:16.840 and must, you know, must want to run the

00:49:18.540 same democratic code as we do and, you

00:49:21.160 know, dye their fingers and say they

00:49:22.760 voted. Um, I'm much more pessimistic about

00:49:27.780 that project ever being fulfillable in the

00:49:30.580 lifetime of anyone hearing this, um, than I

00:49:33.320 was, and so I think we should be very

00:49:35.360 circumspect about owning anything, because

00:49:38.440 the other thing is that, because all of

00:49:40.400 this is seen through a religious lens on

00:49:42.820 the other side, and it's all a matter of

00:49:45.200 sanctities and their, their trespass, as

00:49:47.720 far as the eye can see, so you bring in

00:49:49.700 infidel troops, even with the best of

00:49:51.340 intentions, to do anything good, and it's a,

00:49:53.700 it's a sacrilege worthy of the murder of

00:49:56.640 non-combatants, right? So many people

00:49:58.740 subscribe to this worldview beyond just

00:50:00.980 jihadists, that you just can't, it, the

00:50:06.580 project is over with the best of

00:50:08.020 intentions even before it starts. So I

00:50:09.880 think, again, this is, and I, I say this

00:50:12.420 as someone who, um, doesn't know all that

00:50:16.100 I'm getting wrong here, at least

00:50:17.300 pragmatically, like, I don't know, I don't,

00:50:18.960 in terms of covert or clandestine

00:50:21.080 operations, how you go about killing

00:50:24.000 jihadists wherever they exist, um, you

00:50:28.640 know, we should get as good as we can get

00:50:30.500 at that, we should get as good as we can

00:50:32.320 get at that, and so, so like, so the

00:50:34.160 leaders of Hamas in Qatar, those, those

00:50:37.540 guys, the clock should be ticking on those

00:50:39.020 guys. It is. Yeah, so, but that's, so

00:50:42.060 that's the most important piece from my

00:50:43.580 point of view, jihad, as a job

00:50:46.720 description, jihadism has to be failed.

00:50:49.180 These people aren't cowards. These

00:50:50.860 people who organize this expect to die.

00:50:54.100 So one of the things that we say is

00:50:55.340 we should fulfill that expectation.

00:50:56.460 They're cowards, they're cowardly. It's

00:50:57.240 not true. I would, I would never say

00:50:59.460 they're cowards. No one, no one has said

00:51:00.620 that. Eric, let's stop arguing with

00:51:02.000 stuff that's not being handled. Sorry, as

00:51:03.020 the old joke goes, Sam, you know, what's

00:51:04.960 the difference between a moderate Muslim

00:51:06.320 and a jihadi? Um, the harassment of a

00:51:09.900 sister at an Israeli checkpoint, you

00:51:12.260 know, the problem is you can't just go

00:51:13.680 around killing jihadis because a lot of

00:51:16.140 people express support for jihad who are

00:51:18.860 never going to pick up a gun or

00:51:20.240 strap themselves to suicide. So that's a

00:51:22.280 distinction I'm making. I mean, there are

00:51:23.660 people who, in term, the other very

00:51:27.140 depressing thing is that if we, and we

00:51:28.700 have poll results going back now decades,

00:51:31.220 when you ask Muslim communities, not just

00:51:34.820 in the Muslim world, but in the West,

00:51:37.000 what's your level of support for suicide

00:51:38.620 bombing in defense of Islam, right? The

00:51:40.880 numbers are awful, right? And so that's

00:51:44.440 not what I'm, I'm talking about the

00:51:45.960 people who are actually deciding to be

00:51:48.360 jihadis. They're going to, they're going

00:51:49.820 to get up tomorrow morning and their

00:51:52.020 goal, their, their job is how do I kill

00:51:54.140 infidels? How do I kill Jews?

00:51:55.560 When did suicide bombing in Islam start?

00:51:56.560 What was that?

00:51:57.120 When did suicide bombing in Islam start?

00:51:59.960 This is not, we don't have to talk about

00:52:01.400 the Tamil Tigers.

00:52:02.280 No, no, no. I'm telling you.

00:52:02.640 Yeah, it's, it's not, it's a tactic.

00:52:04.740 It started with the Beirut barracks,

00:52:06.260 right? Yeah.

00:52:07.040 So we're talking about a relatively

00:52:08.200 recent phenomenon.

00:52:09.560 Yeah, but bombs are a relatively recent

00:52:11.080 phenomenon.

00:52:11.100 No, no, there was the golden age of

00:52:12.180 hijacking before that. I'm not, I'm not

00:52:14.420 making any excuses for it. I'm trying to

00:52:16.400 say that you're talking about something

00:52:17.660 of such consequence. The idea that we

00:52:20.540 should, if I take covert, that we should

00:52:22.860 have a, an official policy of trying to

00:52:26.620 identify people who are jihadi, whatever

00:52:29.080 that means, which is very complicated.

00:52:30.700 They identify themselves, right?

00:52:32.720 They, they, they literally move to Syria.

00:52:35.580 I had a friend in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

00:52:38.940 who you would have identified as a jihadi.

00:52:40.980 And he said to me, once you go to Israel,

00:52:44.160 we will never be friends again. We will

00:52:45.540 never speak. Uh, I will have to hate you.

00:52:48.320 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was the

00:52:49.840 one who told me about the Hadith with the,

00:52:51.500 he says, you know, remember that this is

00:52:53.000 the tree that is the tree of the Jews that

00:52:55.320 will hide you in the earth cries for your

00:52:56.940 blood. It's an incredible mindset. I'm, you

00:53:00.820 and I are allied on it's a mindset that

00:53:03.360 Americans have difficulty thinking through, but

00:53:06.080 what you're talking about, when you talk

00:53:08.580 about the decision boundary of which jihadis

00:53:11.440 to kill.

00:53:12.520 Yeah. So air on the side of conservative,

00:53:14.980 right? I'm just saying we have to recognize

00:53:17.140 we're in a, we're in a hot war.

00:53:18.900 I think this is the same problem that you're

00:53:20.560 having with Trump and other things, which

00:53:22.560 is you are being invited into the abyss.

00:53:26.380 Okay. You're not, you're not understanding.

00:53:28.800 But wait, let me just clarify what I'm

00:53:30.280 recommending here, because if you're not

00:53:31.800 understanding it, the audience isn't

00:53:33.560 understanding it. What I'm saying is much

00:53:35.820 more conservative, at least in my view,

00:53:38.260 with respect to collateral damage and the, and

00:53:40.120 the, and the ethics of, of warfare, than

00:53:43.220 what is likely to be happening. Certainly

00:53:45.440 what's, what's, what I think is likely to

00:53:47.420 happen in Gaza, right? I think we should

00:53:50.140 You want a lot of targeted surgical stuff.

00:53:53.120 Hold on. Two things. First of all, let's

00:53:55.360 let Sam finish. And the second thing is,

00:53:57.480 Eric, I want to hear a positive proposition

00:53:59.560 from you, because you're kind of positioning

00:54:01.680 yourself in a critique place from which it's

00:54:04.240 much easier to operate. So let Sam finish

00:54:06.180 this point. And then I want to hear from you

00:54:08.100 what you think we should do, because

00:54:09.820 otherwise it's kind of asymmetrical. So go, Sam.

00:54:12.240 So our progress morally as a civilization,

00:54:17.260 especially in the West, as a global civilization,

00:54:19.980 but, but especially in the West, has been

00:54:22.440 on many fronts. But one crucial front is

00:54:27.340 that we have become more and more uncomfortable

00:54:29.600 in taking innocent life, however

00:54:34.080 defensively, when we wage war, right? So, so

00:54:39.480 collateral damage is, it's, that phrase is

00:54:41.420 a euphemism that hides just these, the, the

00:54:44.300 ghastliest outcomes where you have, you know,

00:54:49.920 children orphaned and children blown up and

00:54:52.340 every permutation of that, that horror. And we,

00:54:56.660 because we've become more and more transparent

00:54:59.820 to ourselves in how we wage war, we are

00:55:03.080 increasingly less and less capable of waging

00:55:05.880 war the way we did in World War II and, and, and

00:55:09.740 Vietnam. And, and I think that's, that's a good

00:55:12.900 thing. It's a good thing until it isn't, right? I mean,

00:55:15.100 I can imagine us getting into a war where we have

00:55:17.400 to finally say, fuck it. We, we have to, we have

00:55:21.240 to roll back our moral compass to 1945 because

00:55:25.820 this enemy is hiding behind so many beautiful

00:55:29.580 blonde haired little girls. All those girls are

00:55:32.460 going to die. Otherwise we all die, right? So

00:55:34.700 like that's, that's conceivable to me, but we, I

00:55:38.120 certainly hope we don't have a future like that. And

00:55:40.780 so I think we should have a bias toward being more and

00:55:44.880 more compassionate, more and more scrupulous, more

00:55:47.060 and more aware of how intolerable it is for, in

00:55:50.820 this case, completely innocent families in Gaza to

00:55:54.960 have 500 pound bombs dropped on their heads, right? And

00:55:57.900 it's just, it's, it's completely unacceptable. The

00:56:00.620 details are unacceptable. And I, I don't share your

00:56:03.140 view that if we just saw more of the imagery that

00:56:05.800 would help us calibrate here, because the imagery is so

00:56:08.620 provocative. The imagery of a dead baby being pulled out

00:56:11.640 of rubble is so provocative. It's impossible to

00:56:13.840 think about what should happen in the world on the

00:56:16.100 basis of that data point, right? That doesn't guide

00:56:18.340 you. That just confounds you. So I think what I'm, what

00:56:23.800 I believe, what I'm arguing for, and again, I don't

00:56:26.580 understand the practicalities of this. I mean, we need

00:56:28.980 to bring in, you know, Delta Force and the CIA and people

00:56:32.860 who actually know how you do things on that front to, to

00:56:36.660 know what's possible. But I think, yes, anyone who joins a

00:56:42.980 jihadist organization who's in the business of waging

00:56:46.520 jihad, right, that should be a death sentence. That should

00:56:50.620 be, that should be suicide, right? We should figure out how

00:56:53.880 to make that, within the, within the, the, the, the

00:56:57.440 possibilities here, we should figure out how to make that

00:56:59.360 so. And I mean, we have our friend Douglas Murray, who, you

00:57:02.680 know, we both love and who's, who's incredibly courageous and

00:57:06.100 wise on, on this particular front. He's walking around saying

00:57:10.960 that anyone who supports Hamas, right, even just anyone who

00:57:14.860 gets out on the sidewalk and, and, and stands on one of

00:57:17.260 these signs, as they have in, in this week, supporting what

00:57:23.480 happened in, in Israel, those people should lose their

00:57:27.500 citizenship and be evicted from the UK, right? And I try to map

00:57:33.480 that onto your free speech concerns in the US. How, how

00:57:37.860 practical is that? How ethical is that? Well, just so you

00:57:41.400 know, guys, Hamas is a prescribed terrorist organization

00:57:44.760 in the UK. Therefore, to express support for it is a crime.

00:57:48.300 Okay. So, okay. But, but like, try to map that onto the

00:57:50.960 American context, right? We've got, we've got Stanford

00:57:53.580 students who are effectively those people, right? Not only are

00:57:57.940 we kicking them out of Stanford, which I could sort of

00:58:00.780 support. I mean, there's more to talk about there, but like,

00:58:03.520 yeah, I mean, there's a certain form of cancel culture that,

00:58:05.580 that would make some sense to me at this moment, but on

00:58:09.760 Douglas's account, we just send them to Gaza, right? Just drop

00:58:13.600 them in Gaza and say, good luck. This is what, this is what

00:58:15.500 you wanted. This is your worldview. Okay. That's an, when

00:58:21.420 you're talking about extreme derangements of our civil society

00:58:24.340 and our politics and our, our, our way of life and, and, and

00:58:29.360 boundary problems, how do we, you know, like, like just what sort

00:58:32.000 of what constitutes support for Hamas in, in, in these last

00:58:35.120 seven days, right? On social media and, and on the quad. It's

00:58:39.760 an impossible problem. So you can be as judicious as you want

00:58:42.620 to be. I just, and I, and I would advocate that, but I think

00:58:46.640 we have to recognize euphemisms aside that the terrorism is not

00:58:52.420 our problem. Jihadism is our problem. And it's not that we, it's not

00:58:57.080 that we don't have other problems. North Korea is also a

00:58:59.120 problem. The total, other totalizing dogmas are also a

00:59:01.660 problem. This is a very specific problem that is not going

00:59:04.780 away. It will be with us for as long as we're alive and as long

00:59:07.620 as our kids are alive.

00:59:09.460 Great. So Eric, what is your vision for how we start?

00:59:16.600 My positive vision so that Sam, okay, look, because you asked

00:59:20.220 for it, I think in all of the appearances, I've never actually

00:59:23.920 shared this publicly. But you're forcing the issue and I'm

00:59:28.580 not hiding from it. It's just, if we don't do anything

00:59:32.760 different, we, we're going to get what Hamas wanted. So the

00:59:36.180 first of all, I mean, it's the level of disagreement is very

00:59:40.260 weird because it's a hundred percent agreement on all sorts

00:59:43.100 of factual things that you and I agree on. But no, the, the

00:59:48.480 pictures really do matter because when you pull a baby out of

00:59:51.060 the rubble, the key question is, is that rubble due to Hamas or

00:59:55.300 is that rubble due to the person who dropped the bomb, right?

00:59:59.300 So we have this concept of suicide by cop. You're about to

01:00:02.480 see suicide by cop or infanticide by cop or of monkism by

01:00:05.920 proxy via cop where the cop is the IDF.

01:00:08.900 Agreed.

01:00:09.320 Okay. If you want a positive vision, the baseline is Israel is

01:00:14.800 going to flatten North Gaza and there's going to be tons of

01:00:18.260 death and destruction. And I want, I would love to stop it. The

01:00:21.400 right thing to have done, in my opinion, which will not be

01:00:24.540 popular, which will be much more hated by Arabs than what I,

01:00:27.940 than the idea of killing families through collateral damage is

01:00:33.320 very simple.

01:00:35.420 I know, I know where you're going. I think I've read your mind,

01:00:39.120 but go ahead. Yeah.

01:00:41.520 Israel has a claim on a lot of land that it controls and the Arabs

01:00:46.240 have a claim on the same land. It's two competing claims. If you

01:00:49.100 take the Israeli claims, you say, look, this land is ours, but we

01:00:52.960 are not pigs and we are not so attached to this land and we are

01:00:57.460 not so blind to your needs that we would not give you a portion of

01:01:01.860 land that we consider to be ours because it comes from our

01:01:04.400 tradition. We have a schedule. If you want to live as brothers in

01:01:08.700 peace, you know, there are arguments between brothers and families,

01:01:12.240 but if you want a prosperous state, you go this many days without any

01:01:18.860 loss of life due to terror, jihad, or any of these things. And we

01:01:23.840 will cede this land to your future state so that they're guaranteed

01:01:28.780 that there will be a Palestine, even though we consider the land to

01:01:31.680 be ours.

01:01:32.040 You're interested in rape. Here's how many acres we will annex. You

01:01:41.400 interested in murder. You're interested in blowing up families. You

01:01:45.040 want to take an egghead bus over a cliff, whatever it is that you're

01:01:48.520 thinking about. Here's the schedule of the acreage that you will lose. We

01:01:53.020 will have an annexing ceremony and we will name it after your victims.

01:01:57.740 Whatever town, whatever settlement that we're going to put in that, and

01:02:00.460 it'll be permanently a part of Israel. And so that way, when you do something

01:02:04.620 to us where you're begging us to kill you and your children, to blow up your

01:02:08.800 buildings, to bulldoze your houses, we're not going to fall for it anymore.

01:02:12.880 What we're going to do is we're going to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony. And what

01:02:16.700 we're going to see is a larger and larger and larger state of Israel as your

01:02:22.280 moronic death cult continues to grind against innocent life. So rather than have a

01:02:28.140 single death, you're going to have a transfer of acreage. Okay?

01:02:32.560 But that entails a lot of death. Right. You're taking that acreage with tanks.

01:02:37.220 Because every time... First of all, there's a lot of land that Israel already

01:02:43.200 controls that doesn't need to be taken by a tank. You have a different situation in

01:02:47.800 Gaza in particular, right? So Gaza, first of all, is not occupied. It was given.

01:02:52.860 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's controlled in terms of its borders. But when you make videos

01:02:57.640 showing how, oh, look, you know, we dug up all these pipes. We figured out how to get

01:03:01.700 over the fence with paragliders, et cetera, et cetera. You understand now why the borders

01:03:07.500 are being controlled. So yes, there's a certain amount that you have to do. But you can certainly

01:03:13.060 minimize this. If suddenly a giant chunk of land disappeared from the West Bank, and that

01:03:20.800 was the response. And nobody died, for example.

01:03:23.620 But how... There are people on that land. I mean, how does nobody die?

01:03:27.980 Well, first of all, people have been transferred from land. Second of all, there are chunks of land,

01:03:32.000 you know, there are settlements and things that have not yet been formally annexed to Israel.

01:03:37.560 What I'm trying to say, Sam, is that you're speaking to somebody who speaks only the language

01:03:43.580 of violence. And the thing that I don't know how to communicate is, I have a rule that I can't

01:03:49.400 care about somebody else's children more than they care about their children.

01:03:52.540 They speak a different... There's an even more important language, which is the language of

01:03:57.720 religious symbols. This is where I thought you were going. It turns out telepathy isn't real.

01:04:03.220 Because...

01:04:03.900 No, actually, I was going there, but I saw what you were doing.

01:04:06.780 They care much more about buildings than about their children. I mean, if you really want to see

01:04:13.320 that the wheels come off, Israel could say, listen, return the hostages in 48 hours or we blow up the

01:04:20.180 Dome of the Rock, right? And they just rig that building to explode. What do you think happens?

01:04:25.140 The entire world lights up, right? I mean, we're talking about... It's like, that's Armageddon,

01:04:32.120 right? Over a building, right? This is... It's completely crazy. It's all upside down. The ethics of this

01:04:37.920 are completely upside down.

01:04:38.980 You don't mean buildings, because there are plenty of apartment buildings where Hamas has

01:04:42.960 headquarters and builds rockets.

01:04:46.060 No, I'm talking about the Dome of the Rock, yeah.

01:04:47.660 Yeah.

01:04:48.360 Yeah, so... But if you're going to talk about emotional leverage, that's the point of emotional

01:04:54.240 leverage. That's more than, we're going to kill all your kids. That we're going to kill this one

01:04:59.200 empty building, right?

01:05:01.140 Sorry, I don't know where we are exactly.

01:05:02.480 I'm just saying that that is... If you're talking about... This is where I thought you were going.

01:05:07.720 I mean, Israel... Israel does not have leverage saying, we're going to go back and take Gaza

01:05:14.420 for ourselves, or we're going to take more of the West Bank. That's not leverage. The whole

01:05:18.720 place is as big as its living room.

01:05:20.280 No, it's not true.

01:05:20.720 It's a tiny...

01:05:21.800 Sam, if you annex land to Israel, I guarantee you, the world will freak out. It won't freak

01:05:28.320 out as if you threatened Alexa. And I don't even want to talk about this, because I don't

01:05:32.720 want to get involved.

01:05:34.720 I'm not saying I recommend that. I'm saying that is how upside down the situation is.

01:05:39.920 That would be the most provocative thing they could possibly do that's actually under their

01:05:44.200 control.

01:05:44.720 Let's interrogate this idea of annexing land, because I think Sam's criticism that I hear,

01:05:50.840 Sam's critique, rather, that I hear and agree with is that if you start annexing land, you

01:05:56.840 are going to have to do it by force, which is when you're back to square one, Israel is the

01:06:01.000 occupy a state, flattening cities, killing babies, etc. How is that different to where

01:06:06.100 we are now?

01:06:06.520 I'm trying to say that in the cycle of violence, what is sought by the architects of murder,

01:06:15.500 misery, and horror is reprisal. Physical kinetic reprisal. I'm saying deny them that.

01:06:23.200 But you're not going to deny them that. You're going to make them... The jihadis, if we accept

01:06:28.120 that they exist, which of course they do, they are going to scupper that process with everything

01:06:32.960 they have by committing a trust. And then you're going to have to annex land on which

01:06:37.560 Palestinians live, in which case you're back to collateral damage.

01:06:41.540 Again, my claim, look, you've got a terrible situation, okay?

01:06:45.780 We all agree on that.

01:06:46.380 I'm not coming up with this as this is what to do when you have two normal foes that are

01:06:52.900 in dispute over mineral resources. We know what that is. This is not that. This is...

01:06:59.640 Please flatten our apartment buildings so that we can pull the babies from the rubble. We have

01:07:08.100 the cameras and we know how to do this in 4K, right? This is a completely different sort

01:07:14.320 of an enemy. And my claim is the story of Israel exercising power over Arabs who are not Israeli

01:07:28.740 citizens is a cancerous story. And if Israel does not figure out how to get out of that story,

01:07:36.940 even to the point where it's got a state that it has to go up against in a war, and I agree with Sam

01:07:41.500 that we fetishize now a level of morality due to professional military ethics that is probably

01:07:51.960 unsustainable in actual war between comparable rivals. We're going to have to get a lot less

01:07:59.320 squeamish. People are going to die. This is what happens in war. There's always collateral damage.

01:08:03.920 And the situation that I want, and again, this isn't particularly good for this 50th anniversary

01:08:13.400 attack of the Yom Kippur War. I wanted this in place 20 years ago. Nobody would listen.

01:08:20.080 And that was based much more around blowing up a pizza parlor. Okay, great. So there's land that

01:08:26.140 we've always thought was ours and we're going to formally take it and we're not going to have a

01:08:29.920 reprisal and we're not going to have a bulldozer knock over a house. Because Israel is being induced

01:08:36.840 into a game theory according to the local rules of the Middle East and then broadcast into a somewhat

01:08:44.300 anti-Semitic West, this is the strategy of the Arabs in this situation, which is how to get Israel

01:08:52.940 to play by local rules of the Middle East for exports into a sophisticated, somewhat, you know,

01:09:00.720 mildly anti-Semitic West for people particularly on the left who don't particularly like Jews

01:09:07.140 and want to be engaged in some sort of recapitulation of the civil rights era or South African apartheid.

01:09:16.980 I agree. With that, 100%. But that does not mean that the solution you proposed works. And that's

01:09:23.600 the thing that we're talking about.

01:09:25.060 We just have to imagine what happens when you grab all that land. Then Israel just has different

01:09:30.020 borders, but they're still at war with jihadists and Hamas and anyone else's.

01:09:34.820 You're going to be at war with jihadists forever, Sam. That's not going to end. And to be honest,

01:09:38.680 and I can't believe we're not pushing back on this, the idea of killing people with sympathies,

01:09:43.740 with jihadi ideologies.

01:09:45.080 I know, I said jihadists.

01:09:46.140 That's not what he said.

01:09:46.520 I said killing jihadists.

01:09:48.240 Yeah.

01:09:49.720 Sympathies, it was sympathies for jihadists.

01:09:51.620 You said, if I join a jihadi organization, does that make me a jihadi?

01:09:56.060 Well, I mean, it depends.

01:09:57.320 We've killed Majid. Let's make it clear.

01:10:00.180 No, he wasn't a, I mean, he wasn't a, that wasn't a jihadist organization.

01:10:03.260 He wasn't a jihadi.

01:10:04.140 No.

01:10:04.560 Okay.

01:10:04.840 I mean, so it's, the book I wrote with Majid based on this, you know, verbal debate we had,

01:10:11.540 Islam and the future of tolerance is there to be seen.

01:10:14.280 And Majid makes lots of interesting distinctions between jihadists, Islamists,

01:10:21.400 jihadists are a subset of Islamists, but they're also revolutionary Islamists who don't,

01:10:26.520 who aren't, you know, signing up to be suicide bombers.

01:10:29.100 And there's also Islamists who are not inclined to use violence.

01:10:33.440 They're inclined to use the democratic process in order to impose Sharia law, but it's, but

01:10:38.460 it's, they're very patient and it's, they don't support Al-Qaeda and they don't support

01:10:42.420 ISIS, et cetera.

01:10:43.800 And then there are conservative Muslims who don't support any of that, but they're still

01:10:46.880 way more conservative than you'd want them to be when you're talking about things like

01:10:49.980 honor killing or the rights of women or et cetera.

01:10:53.280 So a lot to talk about.

01:10:55.220 I'm talking about the people who are committed to waging jihad, who's like, that's the, that's

01:11:01.740 their gig now, right?

01:11:03.000 No, if the idea is that there's a bright line, which is that you own multiple suicide vests,

01:11:08.520 you know, or, or even though you've never put one on, but you're, you're certainly, you know.

01:11:13.800 But like, but like the, yeah, the leaders of Hamas who are, who are just sitting in Qatar

01:11:17.180 right now, right?

01:11:17.940 Like that, those should be the targets.

01:11:22.340 Do you think those people have long natural lives ahead of them?

01:11:23.820 I, I, I, I certainly hope not, right?

01:11:26.220 But like, but that's the, the, the front line for me is there.

01:11:29.780 It's not.

01:11:31.380 I already assumed that those people are, know that they're going to die at Israel.

01:11:36.080 Well, you know, I don't know.

01:11:36.960 I mean, we have, we have a non-assassination policy, right?

01:11:40.960 In the U S well, yeah.

01:11:43.160 Yeah.

01:11:43.360 I mean, democratic societies generally would say that you'll has a non-assassination.

01:11:48.340 No, no, no, I'm not saying, but, but it would be disavowed.

01:11:53.620 It's anathema given our current, again, I'm not even, I'm not even sure I know the rules

01:11:59.720 of war that, that would govern Israel now, but you need a military lawyer to, to talk about

01:12:05.660 the details here.

01:12:06.160 What I'm saying is that we should recognize who the enemy actually is and what the problem

01:12:14.800 actually is.

01:12:15.700 And it's not that it's a matter of people with understandable, rational grievances who've

01:12:24.740 just been pushed too far.

01:12:26.060 And if you could only cater to their, to their demand is going to be killed.

01:12:29.500 Yeah.

01:12:30.120 Well, so the, but that, that would be a good thing, right?

01:12:32.740 Nobody's arguing that.

01:12:33.960 Okay.

01:12:33.980 But there, there, there are jihadists in a hundred countries, right?

01:12:37.680 I understand that.

01:12:38.140 So I'm trying to figure out this idea, whether the CIA or the Mossad, because those are two

01:12:42.600 very different organizations that work together.

01:12:44.280 They should be unified on this front.

01:12:46.220 We should recognize that jihadism is a non-starter for the future of, of a, a global civilization

01:12:53.000 that works.

01:12:53.700 Assume that the people in our covert agencies already know that.

01:12:57.080 Well, I, I don't know if that's a safe assumption, but that, but that would be, do you remember

01:13:04.320 the Abu Dhabi?

01:13:05.220 I think it was Abu Dhabi video.

01:13:07.040 The guy checks into a hotel and then all the Israeli teams descend and they track all of

01:13:12.320 them in and all of them out.

01:13:13.760 Okay.

01:13:14.260 But given the failure of the IDF to, to not even prevent, even respond to what happened

01:13:23.100 last week.

01:13:23.840 I mean, it's just.

01:13:25.060 Well, what do you mean failure to respond?

01:13:26.480 It hasn't happened yet.

01:13:27.460 No, no.

01:13:27.920 What happened for, in the first 24 hours.

01:13:30.560 What did you expect?

01:13:32.680 What was I, what everyone was expecting a better, no one was expecting people to be

01:13:37.980 hiding in their houses for 24 hours, begging to be rescued by an IDF that didn't seem not

01:13:44.820 to exist.

01:13:46.020 Right.

01:13:46.280 I mean, this is, this is a colossal, it's a colossal intelligence failure.

01:13:49.380 It's a, it's a, it's a failure to put, to even know what's happening at the border.

01:13:52.620 It's a failure to respond to an emergency once it, once it was unfolding.

01:13:55.620 Do you know how degraded Israel is?

01:13:57.280 Okay.

01:13:57.780 But that's, that's my point.

01:13:59.600 Well, so you're asking me to assume that the Mossad and the CIA have this well in, this

01:14:03.760 assassination program that I'm wishing for, for Christmas, well in hand.

01:14:08.020 I can't make that.

01:14:08.620 I believe, I believe, I can't make that assumption when, when you have a 1500 jihadis come across

01:14:13.720 guys, you need to let each other talk and, and there's no response, right?

01:14:18.360 Because everyone, you know, because it's Shabbat and everyone's doing something, doing

01:14:22.360 something else, right?

01:14:23.180 It's, it's, it's, I don't think we can take for granted that we have this problem that,

01:14:29.820 that, that, that enough people understand what the problem actually is.

01:14:32.780 Because there's so many euphemisms and so much political correctness and so much multicultural

01:14:37.100 bullshit confounding a very clear discrimination of, that, that relates to the power of specific

01:14:43.460 ideas, right?

01:14:45.020 You get one issue of Dabiq, you should understand who the enemy is, right?

01:14:51.500 And in my experience, in my, but in my experience in talking to people, especially, you know, over-educated

01:14:59.580 academics, you know, you talk to an anthropologist about this, you just get a wall of, of confusion,

01:15:05.120 right?

01:15:06.000 Um, so hopefully, again, I don't know, I don't know how clear anyone's thinking is when in

01:15:20.200 the immediate aftermath of women, of young women being, being raped and stolen and hot as

01:15:29.320 hostages from a peace rave, you have their, their counterparts at Harvard and Stanford

01:15:37.120 celebrating it, right?

01:15:39.900 Like, so, so, I just, I don't think we can assume people know what the hell is going on and, and,

01:15:47.160 and what they should be motivated to pay attention to now.

01:15:49.900 And so that's why, if conversations like this have any value, it's in clarifying those, those variables.

01:15:55.780 One thing that I wanted to touch on very quickly is you said something very interesting, which is,

01:16:00.340 do you know how degraded Israel is?

01:16:03.020 And I don't think people understand that, and I certainly don't.

01:16:05.940 So could you just expand on that, please, Eric?

01:16:09.140 Sure.

01:16:09.960 It is my belief that we have an idea that the U.S. is the superpower that won World War II.

01:16:16.560 And I claim that that is not, we are not the same country that won World War II.

01:16:20.200 We are so different from that country.

01:16:21.760 We are also different from the superpower that we were during the Cold War.

01:16:27.300 Unfortunately, we have incredible capabilities, particularly due to our technology.

01:16:32.900 And we have some sort of problem in our own ability to project power that was manifest,

01:16:40.760 let's say, in the pullout from Afghanistan, particularly with respect to, you know,

01:16:47.000 abandoning the base in the wrong order of operations, the people who carry out certain,

01:16:54.540 who are tasked with carrying out certain operations are at different levels of readiness.

01:16:58.040 Now, the big issue between 67 in Israel in the Six-Day War and the 73 Yom Kippur War

01:17:05.180 is that Israel felt very, very vulnerable before 67 and then sort of reveals its military brilliance

01:17:14.460 and power in 67.

01:17:18.200 And then a short six years later, it is caught unprepared, the wrong image of its foes.

01:17:28.040 You know, the Arabs are always weak.

01:17:29.500 They'll always surrender.

01:17:30.480 They don't want to fight, blah, blah, blah.

01:17:32.100 Well, they don't have the wherewithal.

01:17:35.440 Okay, well, those beliefs completely cost Israel in 73.

01:17:38.620 This is a recapitulation, both directly and indirectly, of the 73 situation,

01:17:44.680 where we find out that Israel is not the Israel that we thought it was.

01:17:49.560 And as a result, it's going through a psychological—

01:17:54.380 Sam, you don't remember 73, do you?

01:17:56.560 I do not.

01:17:58.180 So I remember, you know, I remember it a little bit.

01:18:00.720 It was totally shocking.

01:18:03.080 Right now, I think what we found is that parts of the IDF are greatly degraded.

01:18:08.380 And Israel was going through incredibly stupid internal strife over Netanyahu right before this.

01:18:16.340 And, you know, I hear about an intelligence failure.

01:18:18.660 I'm sorry.

01:18:19.400 It's like I'm not part of the modern world.

01:18:21.740 It's not an intelligence failure.

01:18:22.860 You set a reminder that your grandmother is turning 97 on your calendar,

01:18:28.400 so it comes up two days ahead of time, so you remember to call.

01:18:31.220 You don't set a reminder on the 50th anniversary of the greatest surprise in modern times in modern Israel?

01:18:37.480 I just—it's almost to the day.

01:18:40.300 It's like, you know, I think Peter Thiel was the person who pointed out to me that the Battle of Vienna,

01:18:45.240 you know, happened on September 11th or something like this.

01:18:49.300 We should have a reminder on all of these things having nothing to do with intelligence.

01:18:52.740 This is a complete screw-up.

01:18:56.240 And it's reflective of the fact that—and I'm very concerned about this.

01:19:00.580 I don't think the U.S. is the U.S. it thinks itself to be.

01:19:03.420 I don't think that Israel is the powerhouse that it thinks itself to be.

01:19:07.080 It may get there in two months.

01:19:08.460 It may be that it's not so degraded that it can't snap out of it.

01:19:13.440 But I'm very concerned, you know, we're mostly seemingly, you know,

01:19:19.780 troubled by whether or not our SEAL Team 6 is transgendered enough.

01:19:27.180 We have to recognize that we have world responsibilities.

01:19:30.340 We have several politicians who want us to cultically retreat into ourselves

01:19:34.400 in a multipolar thermonuclear world with new biological capabilities.

01:19:41.160 I've been at the top of my lungs screaming.

01:19:44.100 Sam took me to Sydney, Australia, where I got up on stage and said,

01:19:48.140 we need to be exploding rare thermonuclear weapons above ground

01:19:52.740 so people remind themselves of how dangerous the world has become.

01:19:56.140 But we're in some sort of complacency in which we think Israel is this powerhouse,

01:20:02.860 but it isn't.

01:20:05.100 And, you know, it's also the case that the human intelligence

01:20:07.660 has probably degraded because Operation Magic Carpet and the like

01:20:12.940 pulled Jews out of all of these places that natively spoke

01:20:16.180 all of these languages in Muslim lands.

01:20:20.180 So you could pull, you know, an L.E. Cohen

01:20:22.780 and have an Egyptian Jew infiltrate the Syrian high command way back when,

01:20:28.840 but how many Jews can you recruit?

01:20:31.560 How many Jews are currently operating secretly inside of Gaza with access to Hamas?

01:20:36.680 Hamas is bragging that only five people knew the date and time,

01:20:39.740 you know, of this attack.

01:20:42.300 And so, you know, my concern is that

01:20:45.480 Israel is much more vulnerable because it isn't the state it thinks itself to be,

01:20:51.440 which is exactly where it was in 1973,

01:20:53.860 and it's not a coincidence that they picked the exact anniversary.

01:20:56.740 Yeah, well, I certainly agree with all of those concerns.

01:21:02.660 And the one thing I actually am confused about,

01:21:04.260 I mean, so you raised the concept once and we haven't talked about it.

01:21:07.800 I'm not confused about jihadism, and I can't pretend to be confused about it,

01:21:11.420 but anti-Semitism I find genuinely confusing.

01:21:17.960 Why?

01:21:18.120 Just the dynamics of it, the fact that even in the immediate aftermath of something like this,

01:21:25.000 it is operative in the places that it's operative.

01:21:29.300 I mean, again, at Harvard, at Stanford.

01:21:31.500 Sam, are you really confused about that?

01:21:33.340 Yeah.

01:21:33.600 Because Eric actually disagrees with me on this,

01:21:35.600 and I want to hear what you have to say,

01:21:37.120 because we had a private conversation about it that we didn't get to finish.

01:21:40.100 But isn't this the thing that all four of us have been talking about

01:21:44.440 and have been concerned about is woke, call it what you want,

01:21:50.000 ideology, worldview, a set of disconnected slogans, whatever.

01:21:54.460 The central core of it is oppressor-oppressed dynamics.

01:21:58.620 And Jews, where do they land on that?

01:22:02.640 But not in this case.

01:22:04.380 I mean, it's like it's...

01:22:05.480 Oh, no, it's the oppressor being slain by the oppressed is the argument, right?

01:22:10.000 So it makes perfect sense that you'd celebrate that.

01:22:12.580 Yeah, it doesn't...

01:22:14.120 Well, first of all...

01:22:15.820 Within their system of...

01:22:16.900 Anti-Semitism was just as real, even in America,

01:22:21.480 when the crematory of Auschwitz were still smoking, right?

01:22:24.560 I mean, literally, you have anti-Semitic speeches on the floor of the Senate.

01:22:28.560 You read David Wyman's book, The Abandonment of the Jews, right?

01:22:32.420 It's just this catalogue of the ambient anti-Semitism in the U.S.

01:22:40.200 during the Holocaust and after.

01:22:44.680 So it's like just the durability of this animus,

01:22:49.700 whether the Jews are on top or whether they're obviously on the bottom.

01:22:53.220 I mean, literally, whether they're practically eradicated.

01:22:59.880 I just find...

01:23:03.340 Yes, I understand its historical origins and they are actually theological.

01:23:09.240 I mean, so it is Christian and Muslim theology that cashes it out ultimately.

01:23:15.260 But I just don't understand there are...

01:23:17.560 So many people are anti-Semitic

01:23:19.340 and are interested in the idea that there's some Jewish conspiracy that's controlling everything

01:23:27.400 and the Jews are...

01:23:29.080 If you're very far on the right, the Jews are not white.

01:23:33.520 So if you're a white supremacist, the Jews are not white

01:23:35.700 and therefore they're the object of your bigotry.

01:23:38.800 But if you go far enough left, the Jews are extra white, you know, extra privileged

01:23:42.660 and therefore they lose in this victimology game.

01:23:49.780 It's just the fact that it's so well-subscribed,

01:23:53.440 whatever changes on the landscape, I find perplexing.

01:23:57.340 Thomas Sowell has a very good explanation.

01:23:58.700 Sorry, Francis, just this one bit and then you go.

01:24:01.000 Here's a very good explanation.

01:24:02.100 He has a chapter in Black Rednecks and White Liberals called Are Jews Generic?

01:24:06.960 And he talks about middlemen minorities all over the world

01:24:11.620 always finding themselves in this situation

01:24:15.080 because of the role they fill in society, of the jobs that they do,

01:24:20.580 being middlemen.

01:24:22.420 They're simultaneously misunderstood by the larger society and also...

01:24:27.500 This is the confusion that Kanye had about his agents and managers.

01:24:32.100 Pretty much, pretty much.

01:24:34.640 Where is Kanye?

01:24:35.960 Oh, well, he's our surprise guest.

01:24:37.960 If he was sitting here, this episode would get a lot more views, let's be honest.

01:24:43.580 But to me, it's anti-Semitism comes from a lack of control in people's lives.

01:24:49.940 Now, if you look at, for instance, the far left,

01:24:52.380 they would say the Jews are in control of the banking system.

01:24:55.700 That's what the Jews control.

01:24:57.040 If you look at the far right now, the new conspiracy theory is a great replacement theory.

01:25:04.780 And what is that?

01:25:06.080 The fact that the Jews are in control of Muslims coming to the West

01:25:12.020 because they want to eradicate white people.

01:25:14.680 I mean, it's obviously completely nonsensical, but this is what these people believe.

01:25:20.000 But there's so few Jews.

01:25:22.600 And so that even in an area where they're massively overrepresented, right?

01:25:27.980 I mean, even among Nobel laureates in physics, right?

01:25:30.820 There's still a minority.

01:25:32.080 There's like, it's not, they're not a majority of anything.

01:25:35.020 And so the idea that they're in control, it's just...

01:25:40.460 It's moronic, but that's what these people believe.

01:25:42.940 And they believe that, you know, that this group,

01:25:46.300 because that's what a lot of conspiracy theories come down to,

01:25:49.380 this group are in control, whether it's a World Economic Forum,

01:25:52.800 whether it's Jewish people.

01:25:54.000 But it's people who feel that they have no control over their own lives.

01:25:58.580 They are powerless.

01:26:00.440 Therefore, somebody else must have the power.

01:26:02.600 Therefore, it's Jewish people.

01:26:06.240 Go on.

01:26:07.020 Speaking as a Jew.

01:26:08.900 Do you understand it, Eric?

01:26:11.300 Well, better than this.

01:26:14.380 What a loving insult.

01:26:18.260 Not meant...

01:26:19.300 I'm kidding.

01:26:19.980 Go for it.

01:26:20.780 Please.

01:26:23.500 There is a spectrum of anti-Semitism.

01:26:26.820 And we're talking about it,

01:26:28.700 we're talking about the whole rainbow at the moment.

01:26:30.560 And this sort of mutant rainbow has very different origins.

01:26:38.500 So the reason...

01:26:41.700 Calling it woke doesn't really point to the fact that it's revolutionary.

01:26:46.220 It's violent revolutionary thinking.

01:26:48.200 That's what's behind woke.

01:26:50.060 The idea is we have a campaign.

01:26:57.500 And our campaign is that oppression leads to poverty.

01:27:01.780 So now you've got a real problem when you've got a very clearly oppressed group

01:27:05.880 that is not poor.

01:27:07.920 Because that breaks the entire syllogism that is being used to sign people up.

01:27:15.920 So the radical revolutionary left has to hate Jews

01:27:20.160 because they are the counterexample that gives the lie to the entire program.

01:27:25.720 And so that is why you have to have a position on the Jews from the revolutionary left.

01:27:35.300 Do they hate Japanese Americans as much?

01:27:36.980 Well, I was going to say overseas Chinese, Parsis, you know...

01:27:42.960 But that's because they're middlemen minorities.

01:27:44.600 That was my point.

01:27:48.160 We can come back to this.

01:27:49.920 But I was going to say then on the right, you have a different situation, for example.

01:27:54.000 People on the right who are...

01:27:55.680 I keep thinking about doing a show called My Friends, the Anti-Semites

01:27:59.080 because I'm actually in dialogue with many of them, not to name names.

01:28:04.820 And a lot of them are very supportive, in fact, of Israel right now

01:28:08.600 because their issue is who came up with ethno-nationalism?

01:28:14.680 That Swedes caring about Sweden is ethno-nationalism?

01:28:19.440 F you.

01:28:20.580 You know, people have a right to be in their country without somebody saying,

01:28:23.620 oh, that's just blood and soil like from the Nazis.

01:28:26.300 So their feeling is, how can you have a state that is got a Jewish star on its flag

01:28:34.600 and not bring up ethno-nationalism?

01:28:38.360 So these are the people that crowd your Twitter comments with, you know,

01:28:44.440 for me but not for thee.

01:28:45.820 That's their line.

01:28:47.200 So their feeling is, hey, you should go defend yourself and get these killers

01:28:52.460 and you should go back home to Israel where you belong.

01:28:55.680 Right?

01:28:56.680 And so that's totally different than the left-wing thing.

01:29:01.140 But now the question has to do with a word that needs to be taken out of our vocabulary,

01:29:07.760 which is underrepresented.

01:29:09.080 Now, underrepresented, we talk about an underrepresented minority.

01:29:15.220 I don't know why somebody is underrepresented.

01:29:19.140 Between 1987 and the start of the Boston Marathon in 1897,

01:29:25.140 I don't think there were any Kenyans or Ethiopians who won the Boston Marathon.

01:29:31.080 And then after 1987, it's basically straight Kenyan, Ethiopian, occasionally, you know, a Japanese guy.

01:29:39.640 Are they, are Kenyans and Ethiopians overrepresented?

01:29:44.040 Are the rest of us underrepresented?

01:29:45.320 Well, you're holding a competition that's basically anybody can start, anybody can finish,

01:29:50.000 and some people seem to be better than others.

01:29:53.300 All right.

01:29:53.700 Now, if you look at, you know, the so-called JQ, which is the Jewish question,

01:29:59.580 why are there so many Jews in all of these powerful positions?

01:30:02.360 If you believe in proportional representation, then Jews are overrepresented.

01:30:08.660 And so you have to, if you believe in underrepresented minorities,

01:30:11.360 you have to get rid of the overrepresented minority.

01:30:13.840 So these are all these language traps and language games.

01:30:17.040 And people fear, how can there be a people that look more or less like they're of European descent,

01:30:23.820 who often have names that don't tell you who they are, like McCormick or something like that,

01:30:29.440 who are privately subscribed to some sort of secret rhizome in a world in which nothing adds up.

01:30:39.980 So particularly right now, anti-Semitism is always going to get bad

01:30:44.320 when people can see that they're being lied to at scale.

01:30:47.440 I don't care who's doing the lying at scale, the Jews will be assumed to be behind it.

01:30:52.080 Yeah, that part is mysterious to me.

01:30:54.660 I mean, that could just be legacy code.

01:30:56.660 We had the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and then that just got grandfathered in so that people resort to that.

01:31:03.600 But the idea that that would be the story that everyone reverts to.

01:31:08.840 Say more.

01:31:09.940 Why the Jews under those conditions?

01:31:12.220 You said it was just as though we could just assume this makes sense.

01:31:16.640 If you look at, for example, who founded Facebook and who founded Google, right?

01:31:20.360 Tech giants.

01:31:24.440 You've got Jews in both situations.

01:31:26.840 If you imagine, okay, so our electronic communication with each other is largely mediated our ability to search, for example.

01:31:39.320 So if I put in American inventors and only black faces come up at Google,

01:31:43.680 I know that somebody's put code in there to make it appear that most of the inventors in American history are black.

01:31:51.500 Like, who would do such a thing?

01:31:54.400 Like, it's such an obvious bad faith thing to do on a search engine.

01:31:59.140 And then, of course, it's going to be, well, it's Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

01:32:03.900 You know, or if Mark Zuckerberg doesn't allow a story to circulate or whatever.

01:32:08.200 And so in part, and by the way, you may start to see this with Indian Americans.

01:32:12.840 There's this very quiet, you know, to use the vernacular of our day, Indian Americans are having a moment.

01:32:22.140 And you're suddenly going to realize that you don't understand what's going on with the BJP.

01:32:26.660 You don't know who the Shiv Sena are.

01:32:28.420 You have no idea what Indian Americans care about.

01:32:31.600 And suddenly they're in all these powerful political positions.

01:32:33.900 So when you have a powerful minority, and particularly one that's visually indistinguishable from others,

01:32:39.980 there's always going to be a fear that because you have high-ranking people in media, banking, universities,

01:32:50.400 all of these, you know, fantastically successful Jewish populations

01:32:57.280 are always going to be on the hook for the fact that people can see that their information is distorted.

01:33:02.960 And why aren't you successful, Eric?

01:33:05.840 Well, you know, the old answer I gave Joe Rogan when he asked me about why one quarter,

01:33:12.120 one percent of the world's population would get 25 percent of the Physics Nobel Prizes that we cheat at Physics.

01:33:17.480 But nobody believes that.

01:33:20.500 I think one way of answering this question is, I don't know.

01:33:24.700 I don't know why 99 of the top 100 chess players in open competition are male.

01:33:29.820 Well, it feels like a trap to answer the question.

01:33:34.700 I would say that our culture is very clear that if we want to survive, we have to do really, really well,

01:33:39.980 and we have to contribute back.

01:33:41.320 So as a diaspora culture, in part, our strategy is over-succeed, over-contribute to your host society.

01:33:52.300 Otherwise, we can't make our equation work.

01:33:57.040 So in part, it's a question of anthropics.

01:33:59.380 You're only asking the supposed JQ because there are still Jews after this many thousand years,

01:34:05.780 and the strategy works.

01:34:07.120 And, you know, just go, if you're in the U.S., for example,

01:34:09.780 go look at who donated the wings of your local hospitals and tell me what the last names are,

01:34:14.160 and I guarantee you that some of them are going to be Jewish no matter where you are.

01:34:17.160 So in part, this is how we live.

01:34:21.000 We live by being a net benefit to the societies in which we reside,

01:34:26.800 and we drive ourselves incredibly hard knowing that we're always going to be fighting anti-Semitism.

01:34:32.300 So the example I was going to give is during COVID,

01:34:35.240 I didn't understand that our family's reaction was use the time indoors to learn as much as you can,

01:34:43.400 push yourself as hard as you possibly can, would be badly received in the outside world,

01:34:49.140 which is like, of course you're doing that because you're in a position of privilege.

01:34:52.320 And you just have this attitude of, you know, for F's sake.

01:34:56.600 If you want to look at a similar culture,

01:34:59.840 there's a female comedian named Zarna Ghar,

01:35:02.960 who is explaining sort of the Indian tiger mom approach to parenting her own children.

01:35:08.260 You cannot major in history.

01:35:10.100 You can't major in art.

01:35:11.540 Or you're going to major in computer science.

01:35:13.740 This sort of drive to excel and succeed is very, very costly.

01:35:21.100 And I understand a culture that doesn't push their kids as hard.

01:35:25.300 But to be honest, if the Jews are going to survive, they have to compete.

01:35:29.860 They have to do very, very well in the competition.

01:35:32.180 And they have to give back.

01:35:33.540 And anyone who attempts to talk about proportional representation

01:35:37.720 is fundamentally messing with the Jewish equation for survival.

01:35:41.340 If we cannot compete, succeed, and give back, we have a serious problem as Jews.

01:35:48.820 What about IQ?

01:35:50.960 What about it?

01:35:51.980 I have heard that different groups have different IQs.

01:35:55.020 I've heard the same thing.

01:35:56.240 And Ashkenazi Jews, I have heard, have a higher IQ than the average.

01:36:00.140 You know, no offense to that.

01:36:02.580 I think what you really want to say is, is there anything to Jewish genetics?

01:36:06.120 And gosh, I would hope so.

01:36:08.720 Because otherwise, we don't know anything about genetics.

01:36:11.260 Why can I spit in a tube?

01:36:12.780 And it tells me what my belief structure is and what language I pray on Friday night.

01:36:17.520 It's, you know, clearly, it's both a genetic group and a belief structure that have co-traveled.

01:36:27.240 But for IQ, I always find this really strange.

01:36:32.520 IQ is just not that interesting in the upper reaches.

01:36:37.620 So I'm totally up for believing that Jews have a genetic advantage.

01:36:41.920 But I don't think that a few extra IQ points accounts for the level of creativity and the level of contribution.

01:36:49.600 I think IQ is really powerful below 100.

01:36:53.120 It's much less powerful above 100.

01:36:55.340 This is sort of something that Nassim Taleb and I, you know, have discussed.

01:37:01.700 The fetish about the fact that it's measurable causes this real problem because it's a nightmare indicator.

01:37:09.960 It's good enough to suggest that something is very real that can be tracked that has a genetic component.

01:37:15.740 But it's not good enough to explain creativity.

01:37:19.560 And I think that, for example, if you talk, if I talk to my East Asian friends, a lot of them are confused.

01:37:25.980 And they say things like, where does Jewish creativity come from?

01:37:29.020 We also are supposed to have very high IQs.

01:37:32.000 And we're still in a leader follower mode.

01:37:34.360 How is it that we get into this Jewish creativity mode?

01:37:37.740 So I happen to think that because people are dissuaded from talking about IQ, because they're dissuaded from talking about genetics, they want to focus on IQ as if it is intelligence, which it definitely is not.

01:37:51.180 It's a component.

01:37:52.660 It's related to intelligence.

01:37:54.120 But it isn't.

01:37:54.740 And then you have this problem, which is that, in some sense, what really matters is the creativity that co-travels.

01:38:05.160 And how much of that is genetic, I don't know.

01:38:07.080 But it's not a terrible thing to say that people are genetically different and that there are tradeoffs.

01:38:14.140 You know, the Jewish contribution to the National Basketball Association has been pretty meager.

01:38:20.420 I blame anti-Semitism.

01:38:23.640 Rampant.

01:38:24.280 Yeah.

01:38:24.740 Do you think it's also the fact that Jews have always tended to be outsiders?

01:38:30.500 And when you're an outsider of a group, to a group, you're always looking in, which means that it tends towards being creative.

01:38:40.560 Because then what you are doing is you're reflecting the society in a way that people who are a member of the in-group simply cannot.

01:38:48.220 There's a lot of people who say comedians tend to be outsiders.

01:38:51.780 Comedians are the ones who are reflecting what is happening.

01:38:54.140 Well, comedy, trauma, and Jews.

01:39:01.160 I mean, it's a perfect combination.

01:39:02.460 I don't think that works because, like, Roma would be outsiders to society.

01:39:07.720 And, you know, I don't think you've seen the same sorts of behavior patterns.

01:39:12.900 Having taught the Roma, having spent a lot of time teaching Roma, they are much more segregated.

01:39:17.880 They're segregated.

01:39:19.000 They're not really part of society in the way that Jews are.

01:39:22.000 There's also a lot of creativity in that culture, but without the same, you know, in-system accomplishment.

01:39:28.880 I think the Jews tend to be in-system.

01:39:32.280 They tend to work within the structures that they find.

01:39:35.220 And, you know, my wife being from the Jewish community of India, you know, I have an opportunity to see a very different world about, you know, the impact of, let's just say, you know, the Sassoon family or the way that the Parsis mirror the Jews inside of an Indian context.

01:39:54.100 So I think that, you know, there's – I don't know why we're afraid of talking about genetics and cognitive ability.

01:40:01.760 I don't know why we're afraid of talking about culture and cognitive ability.

01:40:04.700 I don't know why we're afraid of talking about culture and drive together.

01:40:08.400 But the world is not uniform.

01:40:11.040 And there is a Jewish strategy.

01:40:12.780 The great part of the Jewish strategy is that most of it is pretty much open source.

01:40:17.200 And if you want to push your children really, really hard to survive and if you want to tell them you've got a dragon with fire, breathing fire down the back of your neck because you've always been oppressed and you'll never know when you have to leave very quickly on short notice, you can duplicate the Jewish experience.

01:40:34.100 Good luck.

01:40:36.180 Sam, do you have any thoughts on this before we move on?

01:40:39.520 Please don't say.

01:40:40.280 Well, so I have zero interest in IQ, as I've always said, even though I've gotten a lot of pain for having ever touched the topic.

01:40:48.060 But my only interest in differences in human intelligence as measured by IQ or otherwise between groups is that we need to solve the political puzzle you just mentioned,

01:41:03.300 which is why does anyone think that discovering these differences would be a political catastrophe, right?

01:41:11.340 Because we know this is what we should – we should go into the science knowing this.

01:41:17.180 I'm not saying we should look for these differences, but these differences will ambush us because insofar as we understand intelligence or anything else at the level of the brain or at the level of the genome,

01:41:25.680 we will just – you know, 23andMe is just going to tell you that there are these differences between groups in the relevant genes, say.

01:41:36.860 So I'm not saying we look for these things, but we're going to be ambushed by them.

01:41:40.640 And we just have to know in advance that any human trait that is governed by genetics to whatever degree is going to be – the moment it becomes measurable,

01:41:52.900 it will be at some different mean value in different populations, however you define those populations, even spurious populations.

01:42:02.140 You could take Yankees fans against Red Sox fans, and there's – it will be a miracle if the hundred traits you're interested in to inventory are – have the exact same mean level across those two groups.

01:42:16.160 Now, in many cases, these are just going to be spurious comparisons, but insofar as there is a – there has been a genetic kind of canalization throughout human history

01:42:32.800 where you can look at someone and give a pretty good guess that they're – you know, they come from sub-Saharan Africa or from the Indian subcontinent or Japan or Norway,

01:42:44.060 and you can do that, you have to expect that there are going to be mean differences in traits that we find valuable.

01:42:53.000 And that can't matter.

01:42:55.900 I mean, the thing that we know must matter is that we are committed to political equality in all of our pluralistic secular societies, and we should be.

01:43:06.420 And the fact that there's some trait that we could eventually identify and measure that is going to be, you know, a standard deviation more or less on average in any given population, that's just – that can't matter.

01:43:24.220 And what we know is that at the individual level, it simply can't matter because knowing that I'm 50 percent Ashkenazi Jew doesn't tell you anything about my intelligence, right?

01:43:39.900 Like as an individual, I still have to demonstrate that.

01:43:42.420 And it's just not – and I get absolutely no credit if I'm not – if I'm smart and not a bit smarter, I get no credit for having – being in one population versus another.

01:43:55.600 The interesting thing is we don't have the Persian question because Persians are going to test really high.

01:44:00.420 We don't have the Irish and Scottish question.

01:44:02.560 We don't have the overseas Chinese question, right?

01:44:05.360 We don't have the Parsi question.

01:44:06.860 So I think you have to turn it around and say, look, there's a lot of asymmetry in terms of success of groups, and we only have the Jewish question.

01:44:18.140 And I think that this is what I find absolutely offensive.

01:44:21.060 No, we only have the Jewish question in Western Europe, but Thomas Sowell's point was that there are Jews everywhere.

01:44:27.380 They're just not Jews.

01:44:28.740 They're somebody else.

01:44:29.720 In Asia, it's overseas Chinese.

01:44:32.220 In the Ottoman Empire, it was Armenians.

01:44:35.120 You can go down the list, right?

01:44:36.860 So there are local Jews in every area.

01:44:40.480 They don't all look like you, right?

01:44:43.340 That's really the point.

01:44:44.680 But I think the broader point with both of what you're saying and the reason that we're terrified of these conversations is that it violates the sacred mantra of our society, which is we're all equal.

01:44:56.840 You know, this is embedded in all our conversations.

01:44:59.960 No, no, no.

01:45:00.940 We're all political.

01:45:02.100 So there's two notions of equality here that we can conflate.

01:45:07.220 Political equality does not at all suggest that every person is equally talented, equally kind, equally smart.

01:45:15.560 I mean, they're just making equal contributions to society.

01:45:18.000 But people don't make that distinction in their head.

01:45:20.060 That's why.

01:45:20.640 Sorry.

01:45:21.080 Even the communists, the aphorism of communism is what?

01:45:24.240 From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.

01:45:26.360 It's the idea that we are somehow blank slate equal is totally new.

01:45:32.100 It's beyond communism.

01:45:33.940 I don't know how to state this.

01:45:34.740 That's what I'm saying.

01:45:35.520 It's worse than communism.

01:45:36.600 It's worse than communism.

01:45:37.520 It's worse than communism.

01:45:38.360 Yeah, it is.

01:45:39.180 It is.

01:45:39.520 And the idea that human beings don't vary, including by group, is just demonstrably not true.

01:45:47.740 And the idea of political equality seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, was invented to address that.

01:45:54.240 That's the whole fucking point.

01:45:55.420 Yeah, yeah.

01:45:55.620 And we know we want a society that is fair, and that's completely independent of the differences between people.

01:46:05.460 Like, we want everyone to have the opportunity, in terms of our ethical and political commitments, we want everyone to have every opportunity they can use, right?

01:46:16.400 And if there's some people who can't, I mean, through no fault of it, like, there's someone right now being born from whatever population, with whatever genetic endowment, whatever culture surrounding them, waiting to improve their lives, with brain damage based on just a pure accident of what happened during labor, right?

01:46:34.780 So what do we do for that person?

01:46:37.400 Because, you know, in a society where we have the bandwidth to just figure out how good life can be, right, where the bombs aren't falling and we're not facing some existential threat, we know we want to marshal our resources to make life as good as possible for everyone to the degree that they can have their hopes and dreams realized.

01:47:02.840 And there are some very limited hopes and dreams that we need to cater to.

01:47:07.400 I mean, just look at, you know, Make-A-Wish Foundation, right?

01:47:11.120 It's like you have kids who have pediatric cancer who've got a time horizon of six months.

01:47:17.440 What does a good life look like in that case?

01:47:19.840 We know that success politically and economically for us in our society is to have the bandwidth to cater to that compassionately.

01:47:31.900 And that's what the project is.

01:47:34.760 And figuring out what the mean value for IQ is across groups is not part of that.

01:47:39.940 And it's not an insult to that either.

01:47:42.760 But if in our founding documents we have the idea that all men are created equal and we know that at that time women didn't have the vote and people held slaves,

01:47:49.940 I don't think it's the case that one part of our soul cries out for equality at this more beautiful level and another part of our soul says, oh my gosh, these groups are super dangerous.

01:48:06.160 They cannot accumulate more power, right?

01:48:09.060 And that part of our soul we don't acknowledge, that we have our thumb on the scale trying to figure out who really shouldn't be voting,

01:48:18.160 what information shouldn't be out in the public because it will tend to prejudice people.

01:48:22.940 And I believe that in some sense we're just not able to be honest about our conflicts when we stay things like one man, one vote, and yet Wyoming gets two senators and California gets two senators.

01:48:35.960 It's clearly honored in the breach.

01:48:37.400 And we don't make eye contact with the fact that we are of many minds about equality and about accomplishment and achievement and what constitutes fairness.

01:48:49.840 And in all of those different circumstances, we only feel comfortable with the part of the conflict that we can talk about in public without being eviscerated.

01:49:00.060 And I think that we have to just be honest that we've been very uncomfortable about what is the form of equality that we are really about.

01:49:10.600 And one of the things I love about the American Project is that our documents were abstract enough that things that weren't honored initially in the first instantiation are honored over time because there wasn't an explicit clause saying that women and blacks don't count, right?

01:49:26.960 And so as a result of this, you know, we debated should only landholders, you know, be allowed to vote.

01:49:33.120 The headroom in the documents is the thing that we should embrace.

01:49:36.440 And it's one of the reasons why the 1619 Project was so dangerous is that we happen to have the good fortune of having wonderful documents with headroom that can mean things that weren't meant when the republic was founded.

01:49:48.760 And trying to figure out how to become those people that we have never been is part of the most exciting, maybe the most exciting part of the American Project.

01:49:57.480 Francis, we've got one more topic we can open up quickly.

01:50:01.320 Do you have any thoughts?

01:50:02.480 Yeah.

01:50:03.140 So I want to deal because I want and I want to discuss this, which is hope, because it's very easy, particularly in the landscape that we're talking about social media and all the rest of it, to become pessimistic.

01:50:18.540 But let's look at hope and the grounds for hope.

01:50:20.720 Are you hopeful, Eric, as to the future, as to the American?

01:50:25.840 This is the one on which I go first?

01:50:27.500 Yeah.

01:50:27.800 Give it to Sam.

01:50:28.640 Okay.

01:50:28.980 Well, just this morning I read a Conor Friedrichsdorf, I always forget his last name, the Atlantic writer.

01:50:41.900 He wrote a piece today, which struck a note of hope in this emergency, which I'm not sure I certainly hope he's right.

01:50:51.500 So he said that just as Joan Didion in one of her books, I think it was the White Album, I'm not sure, said that the Manson murders were the official end of the 60s.

01:51:04.500 August 1969, all the idealism of the 60s just completely – once you have wild-eyed hippies murdering people, killing pregnant starlets, all the idealism of the 60s just evaporated.

01:51:23.240 So his claim – and he's possibly right – what happened on college campuses in response to what happened in Israel was the end of the great awokening in his phrasing.

01:51:39.320 It's like all of us are waiting for the pendulum to swing back from this just crazily eccentric distortion of ethics and political intuitions on the far left, and he's arguing that that bell just rang this week.

01:51:58.340 And I certainly hope that's correct because the moral – not just untenability, just the abomination we're witnessing where you have the same people who are equally exercised over Halloween costumes that are cultural appropriation, and they're defending what happened in Israel last week.

01:52:27.240 I think it's – that, you know, that dissonance, I think, is something we need to not lose sight of culture-wide.

01:52:37.820 And, yeah, I mean, I think if that happens, I think that would be a very good thing.

01:52:44.980 I mean, it would be a very good thing for speaking locally for American politics.

01:52:49.340 I mean, we have a, you know, 15 months or so of an election cycle that many of us worry could be truly ugly and divisive.

01:53:00.040 And to not have a crazy – having a decreasingly crazy far left and Democratic Party as a result would be a good thing.

01:53:09.680 If you ask me, just picking up from the Joan Didion reference, if you look at the passage, it is the White Album, which – carefully – what she says is that there was the sense that someone was going to go too far, right?

01:53:23.600 So she's really talking about a period between 1967 and 1969.

01:53:27.780 It's really only sort of two or three years when the 60s were at that fever pitch.

01:53:35.320 And then she says that it ends at that moment.

01:53:38.140 It's one of the most beautiful essays I've ever read about our time, but I don't think it's accurate.

01:53:47.300 I think that we've been in this probably since the Ruslan Ali Dear Colleague Letter in 2011.

01:53:54.480 It's now 2023.

01:53:57.200 This has been going wrong for a lot longer.

01:54:00.320 It's much more deeply enmeshed in our society.

01:54:03.440 I don't know that the hippies at the free clinic in San Francisco were akin to the administrators in the diversity, equity, and inclusion substrate that is now infesting all of our universities.

01:54:19.980 When it comes to hope, to be honest, one of the most hopeful things that happened, and I hate to put it in these terms, was the death of Dianne Feinstein.

01:54:29.000 And I'm not dancing on her grave.

01:54:32.940 I didn't particularly have any strong feelings except for the fact that she was clearly not able to do her job and was being propped up by the system.

01:54:43.300 And so without feeling good about the fact that someone died, although she lived a long life, there is the sense that we will never get rid of Nancy Pelosi.

01:54:54.000 We will never get rid of Mitch McConnell.

01:54:55.480 We will never be free of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the form of Biden and Trump.

01:55:00.540 And, of course, demography is going to have its way with the things that are blocking progress.

01:55:09.880 We have had the same people in power for so long that we have given up, in effect, trying to make a more hopeful world.

01:55:17.720 If you think about Joe Biden in 1972, he was 29 years old and a senator.

01:55:22.540 And he's been there ever since, more or less.

01:55:24.380 So hope comes from the fact that in 10 years' time, these people who seem like they would never leave the stage are going to be gone.

01:55:33.920 And we have a one-time opportunity to reorder the world around AI, around a different generation of leadership, around the fact that our phones really matter in a way that are far more consequential than a piece of technology would be expected to, much more akin to the printing press.

01:55:52.240 And there are going to be a crazy set of opportunities that, if we screw them up, we'll probably mean the end of the world.

01:55:58.720 And if we don't screw them up, we will be exploring the next systems, the successor systems.

01:56:05.320 Instead of trying to take a twin-fitted sheet and put it on a king-size mattress and that one corner was always going to pop off, that's what we've been doing for decades now.

01:56:15.880 Sooner or later, somebody's going to have to buy or manufacture a much larger sheet for this mattress to get it to stay in place.

01:56:23.760 And I think that what we're seeing is, I was previously hopeful that the post-World War II order would continue to hold so that the world didn't go multipolar with weapons of mass destruction.

01:56:33.860 I think we're about to go multipolar.

01:56:35.880 And if we survive that, then whatever structures that come after this, it's not going to be capitalism, it's not going to be communism, because you can see that ChatGPT and its successors are going to break the capital versus labor input.

01:56:48.920 This is work that I'm doing with Pia Malani.

01:56:53.760 We're going to have new economic systems, and it's not going to be the same players from the 20th century who are already a quarter of the way through the 21st preventing progress.

01:57:05.880 And it comes down to, well, what is it that people in their 30s through 50s are going to re-engineer once the silent generation and boomers move on to better things?

01:57:16.460 All right.

01:57:17.040 Well, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, head over to Locals, where we ask Eric and Sam your questions and continue with our own.

01:57:24.720 So what you're saying is you're pro-Trumps?

01:57:26.940 Yeah, exactly.

01:57:28.260 Build a wall.

01:57:29.180 Build a wall, exactly.

01:57:31.160 You have recently made the decision not to speak to some people who disagree with you.

01:57:36.620 Why is that?

01:57:37.900 I think Brett is one of them.

01:57:39.220 Let's break that bubble.

01:57:41.120 Not because they disagree with me, but because I think they've behaved unethically.

01:57:45.300 I've always thought Brett was an extremely ethical person.

01:57:51.660 I don't know how he got so turned around.

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01:58:13.140 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

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TRIGGERnometry - October 20, 2023

Sam Harris X Eric Weinstein： Israel-Palestine

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