Douglas Murray
Appearances
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
If you're going to interview historians of the conflict or historians in general, why would you get somebody like Ian Carroll?
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
But do you have any, I mean, there's been a tilt in the conversation, in both conversations in the last couple of years. And it's largely to do with people who have appointed themselves experts who are not experts.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
Have you been to the crossing points? No. When were you last there at all?
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
You can't time travel, but you can travel.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
Yeah, but if you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
No, I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country, even in passing, unless I've at least been there. Okay. It's a normal thing to do. You're talking about crossing points.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
And not only have you never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
Yeah, it is. It's not a non-argument if you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
But that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy to visit.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
One argument they say is you, Douglas Murray, and you, Lex Friedman, don't have the right to to talk about race and racism in America. It is our struggle. You are from a privileged class of people that don't know what it's like to be a black man or woman in America walking down the street.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
I really resent that form of argumentation. I really resent it. I have the right to talk about whatever the hell I want, and no one's going to stop me or try to intimidate me or tell me that I can't simply because of my skin color. And I think that if I said to somebody else the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
If I said, shut up, you have no right to criticize anything that Douglas Murray says because you've not got my skin color. Okay, it's not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a reasonable form of argument? You haven't been through everything I've been through in my life, therefore you can't comment. No, in that case, nobody can talk about anything.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
We might as well pack up, go home and isolate ourselves.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
For example, Holocaust survivors. Yes. there is a sense in which maybe a basic sense of civility when a Holocaust survivor is speaking about their experience of the Holocaust, then an intellectual from a very different part of the world is simply writing about nuanced geopolitics of World War II just should not interrupt the Holocaust survivor.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
We physically interrupt them if they're telling their story.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
With logic and reason that the experience of the Holocaust survivors somehow fundamentally has a deeper understanding of the humanity and the injustice of that.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
Well, first of all, again, we're in even deeper waters now, but in terms of wanting to listen to another person who has experienced something, yes. Yes. But not endlessly. Not endlessly. Yes. I mean, there are people who've written about the Holocaust who didn't experience the Holocaust and have written about it better than people who did.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
This idea that the lived experience, to use this terrible modern jargon, as if there's another type, this idea that the lived experience has to triumph over everything else is not always correct.
Candace
The Justin Bieber Plot Thickens! | Candace Ep 176
You're alluding to Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And, you know, everyone had criticisms of him. But when you saw what came after him, it just... It was among other things, what I learned from her and other friends from that region was that, I suppose, two things. One is, of course, is that it's a sort of central conservative insight. You know, things can always be worse. They can always be worse.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Never say this is rock bottom because, you know, like you might have a Shah with hundreds or even thousands of political prisoners in cells.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But you could always have Ayatollah Khomeini butchering them all, including the people who helped him get to power, like the communists and the trade unionists who simply were fighting against the Shah and then were very useful for the Ayatollah until he didn't need them anymore. But the other thing I learned from that particular friend and others was that was this thing that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And again, it's very hard for the Western mindset, very hard for the American mindset in particular, that there is such a thing as fanaticism, real fanaticism and real ideological and real religious fanaticism. And the thing that I described leads to the death cult mindset. That fanaticism is something which is very easy for the West to forget because we haven't seen it in a while.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You know, we get very distant echoes of it in our own societies, really. And we're highly attuned to hear them, which is good in some ways. But Khomeiniism not only vastly set back the Persian people, the Iranian nation, but has managed to keep it in subjugation since 1979. And your question of why gets to one of the really, the biggest questions really that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
the answer to which has to be understood, which is what Solzhenitsyn says at one point in Gulag Archipelago, in that passage where he describes, when we heard the footsteps on the staircase and the knock was on our neighbor's door and we knew our neighbor was being taken away, why did we not stop them?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
In the case of the revolutionary government in Iran, it's the same answer as whether it's Hamas governing Gaza with whoever the people in Gaza are who would have liked to have seen them overthrown. People don't realize that despite the rhetoric and everything else, everything changes if the other guy might kill you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And I had significant sympathy for him in finding it bewildering. Because it would be bewildering.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that, you know, when the Green Revolution in 2009 started in Iran, why was it put down? Why didn't it work? Why, like you, the sort of Iranians who I... really hope one day get their country back? Why did all these smart young students and others, why after they came out, why was it put down?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It was put down because the Basij militia will shoot you in the head and they'll take you to a prison as they did with the Iranian students and they'll rape you with bottles and kill you. And even a little bit of that goes an awfully long way to tell the rest of society not to do it again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You know, we know it happens like that from films, but too few people understand that regimes like that in Tehran operate like that on a grand scale, on the biggest of scales and with the ultimate of brutality. And that's how they stay in power. And one other thing on that, by the way, which is, I was reminded of this the other day, but you know,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
thinking about this sort of, you know, what I've just described as a sort of a problem in democracies is that we just, you know, we like to think everyone thinks like us and, you know, we'd like everyone to sort of be like us. And we, we believe fictions that were taught in films, like, you know, everyone basically wants the same things as us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And you go, you haven't stepped outside the walls of the city, if you think that. But the second thing is this thing of the death cults of why, why, why we singly fail to understand that this is possible. Harmonism is both very specific and also very strongly linked to totalitarian and radical and extremist death cult movements that are not that far in our past. There's a moment in
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
When Oriana Falaci interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, one of the very few Western journalists to do so, she says to him, these people in the street, this movement, this revolution you've begun, it's guided by hate. It's hate. It's all hate. And Khomeini says, no, no, it's love. It's love. And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And it's actually a scene that appears in the Satanic Verses of Rushdie where that exact same thing happens. But I was thinking about this recently because I was thinking, but how can you explain to a Western mindset that that's something that's going on? There are people directed by this hate that calls itself love. And I was reminded of a book I read.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
haven't read since I was probably a teenager or something, made a great impression on me then. Did you ever read The Tragic Sense of Life? Miguel de Unamuno, a great Spanish existentialist philosopher who died in the 30s. Unamuno had an encounter with students at the university in the 30s when he realized, I mean, this is the early period of the Francoists, de Rivera and all those people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Unamuno is at this meeting and the chant goes up. From the eager students who have fallen into this sort of phalangist, Francoist ideology already, they end up chanting in front of him as he's trying to defend the principles by which he has lived his life. They end up chanting in front of him, viva la muerte, long live death, long live death. And he tries to explain to them this is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
This is a necrophilic chance. Yeah. But those young men in free Francoist Spain shouting long live death, they have their counterparts today. They are the people who taunt Americans, Westerners, Israelis, and others with lines like, we love death more than you love life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, the whole data might be wiped. I... I suspect there's a weight on you because every major world leader you interview, and you've done some amazing ones, but I mean, presumably, you have a set of people saying, you've got to ask him about this. You can't not address this. And that's a very challenging one because, of course, although in an interview, the politician should not be supine,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The things you know. See, you're a real journalist. He's from one of the new, I'm all for opening up the White House press pool and all that sort of thing, but it means that you get some people in who are sort of Yeah, from a blog land, there's nothing wrong with that, but it means that you get somebody who will do something like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
nor can it be endlessly interrogative because you're not the prosecutor and they don't have to be the guilty party answering to you. And I've noticed the number of people who interview people, world leaders and others, who go in with a set of sort of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
those things and they and at some point the other party can just just i don't need this and people criticizing you don't realize that you just can't do that yeah i suppose why journalists behave the way they do although i have increasingly less and less respect for the journalists uh
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There's a very interesting line that Robin Day, who was a very distinguished interviewer back in the day, said about Jeremy Paxman, who was a very interrogative interviewer in the UK.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Robin Day, who was quite good at being rude to politicians but carefully, said the problem with the new approach, as he saw it from the 90s of political interviewing, was he said, if you think the person you're speaking to is a liar... You should get them to reveal that they're a liar. Don't just call them a liar.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The problem with that interaction, as I saw it, was that guy asked that disrespectful question. And I think it was disrespectful. I'll very quickly say why. I mean, I think that... I think that when a man comes from the realm of war into the realm of peace, the people in the realm of peace should have some respect or at least concession that the other man has come from the realm of war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And I think that is, again, it's something that a lot of people sitting on the other side of the screen don't realize, is that it may satisfy them that you call a person a liar to their face, but it doesn't do anything. And it actually reveals nothing. If somebody is a liar and they reveal themselves to be a liar, then that's something else. But yes, I mean, I hear you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Obviously, you have a lot of different voices telling you what to do. It's also difficult because one of the things that I don't think anyone really understands is that in the end, it's just you. I'm sure you have this about Putin. People say, I know exactly how you can... They could give endless advice. At the end, it's you sitting down talking to him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's like everybody knows how to behave on the presidential debate stage, but only a few people have done it. In person, it's actually pretty difficult. It's very difficult because you've got all this weird behind-the-scenes stuff as well. You've got all of the games that people play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
One of my favorite things anyone has ever said, or it's only ever happened, I know a couple of cases of this happening in private, A friend of mine once years ago was debating against the, this is before the civil war in Syria, was debating something to do with the Middle East. And one of the people on the other side was the then Syrian ambassador in London.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The then Syrian ambassador in London says something about the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. And my friend stands up and starts talking about Assad senior's massacre of the Palestinians in Hama, where they killed like 10,000 Palestinians in a day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Um, and my friend starts talking about the hammer massacre by, uh, Assad senior and the, the big fat Syrian ambassador like stands up to respond. And he says, that is, that is none of your business. And my friend was like, Oh, I thought we were going to get it in denial.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
People have very little understanding of things if they're willing to say that because you're sitting down and talking with somebody, you are ego-platforming them, advancing their cause, being used, being a shill, or whatever like that. You might be actually just finding some things out, which I think is something you do expertly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that if you're sitting in a political environment where you talk about people being destroyed and decimated and defenestrated and much more to a man who's for whom none of that is metaphorical, I think that's extremely hard to accept. And I think that probably also at that moment, there was a sort of sense of, you know, Zelensky is being disrespected by being asked about what he's wearing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And another thing your critics wouldn't realize is that life is long. And, you know, hopefully, God willing, we were both around for a long time, and therefore, you don't blow everything up at the request of some twat online. But I do think that a superpower of a kind is to identify the people whose opinion you care for and worry about their opinion and no one else's, really.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And you just keep your own guiding light. That's what's always done it for me, is that I... I've always said, I just don't really, I wouldn't care if I was the only person with my opinion and billions of people disagreed. I mean, I might be curious if the whole planet disagreed with me, but it doesn't fundamentally. That's not why I'll send you Churchill's great speech on the death of Chamberlain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, it, he says the bet. He says one of the most wise and brilliant things. I was thinking about it slightly earlier when you were talking about Zelensky, because one of Churchill's greatnesses was his magnanimity. And when his great political opponent Chamberlain died in 1940, and Churchill had just taken over as prime minister, he could have used the opportunity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And we might even say that some politicians in our day won't be able to resist the opportunity. He could have used the opportunity to say, you see, I was right. And Chamberlain didn't know what the hell he was doing, and he's led us into this mess, and you should have all listened to me. Because that would have been a good time. It would have been a good time to say that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
That would have been one for the win, as they say. But Churchill doesn't do that in his great eulogy for Chamberlain. He talks about how hard it is for mankind to operate in the world. and how you can do it successfully. He very movingly says, he doesn't even mention the name of Hitler. He says, what would never change his flaws? He says, desiring of human peace, to be seeking peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And he says, the curse that he had was he was led astray by a very wicked man. But then he has this great passage, where Churchill says a beautiful resonant passage about how he says, it's not given to men happily for them, for otherwise life would prove intolerable to foresee or to predict to any great extent the unfolding course of events.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And he says in one phrase, men seem to have been right, and in another they're proved wrong, and then there's a different scale of values emerges. And he says, what is the worth of all this? He says the only guide to a man is his conscience. The only shield to his memory is the rectitude and the sincerity of his actions. And in fact, he says it doesn't matter what happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
If you have this, he finishes, he says, however the fates may play, that if you have this shield to guard you, he says, you march always in the ranks of honor. All that can guide a man is that. If you lose sight of it, and some people do, and maybe everyone does at some point, then it's a challenge. And then you get buffeted by the to's and fro's of the waves of popular opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that's dangerous. But if you keep sight and hold on to what you believe, a million, billion foes don't matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, I get enormous encouragement from smart young people, actually. That's just the best thing ever. I was in Kiev the other week, and I was asked to speak to some students at the university. And irrespective of the rather tricky situation that they are in,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's just great to, as you know, to speak to a room full of students about things and then hang around afterwards and just answer all the questions you can and hear from them about their lives and what they want to do and remembering what you were like at their age and how goofy you were and how much you were going to get wrong and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
how much you know you had to learn and how much you're going to enjoy it and and seeing the the opportunities they have in front of them if things go right and and uh just smart young people giving enormous encouragement all the time it's that's the best thing i mean it's just yeah they're uh you can see endless possibility in their eyes and there's uh they're not like burdened by um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
when, as everyone knows, Churchill during World War II used to wear his fatigues on foreign visits. And it's sort of just that, it's to remind people that you're coming from the realm of war. And I think that probably in that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Even the cynicism, though, I mean, you can resist that. I mean, I've got quite a deep wellspring of it. But, I mean, you can't only fall into that because there's so much else it doesn't cover. It'd be like spending your life being ironic, you know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
One of the reasons why war is for a writer kind of the ultimate subject is because you see life weirdly at its ultimate. very strange thing, but it is the truth. Death, when it's in front of you, is something which gives terrible clarity to everything. You see how people will love and even sometimes laugh Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
in that moment, one of the things that would have been going through his head would be, but I mean, if this was Putin sitting here being assaulted by a journalist, you know, you'd hope your host stepped in and defended you. I mean, if, let me try this one out. I mean, if a journalist in the Oval Office, if Putin was sitting there
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
or a putative journalist said to Putin, you know, everyone knows you've had a lot of facial work done, and word is you've used the same guy that Berlusconi used to use. Can you comment on that? You'd say, well, that's a kind of disrespectful question for journalists to ask, and it's a little bit off what needs to be gone over. And it's the same thing with Zelensky with the outfit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think it was just petty and threw things off in a bad way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's also, by the way, it's an example of the frivolity of a lot of the attempts to understand what's going on. I mean, my view is that since actually most people, in fact, everybody cannot be an expert on everything, one of the things that we always do is to seize on minor and really quite unimportant things. I mean, every side does it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Look at the way in which the American right for years talked about the Churchill bust leaving the White House Oval Office in the Obama years. I didn't want to hear another darn thing about the Churchill bust after eight years because... It was in lieu of trying to understand and actually critique Obama's foreign policy. It was just an easy shorthand. I think it's the same.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
We're always tempted to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Oh, yeah. The language thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, and apart from anything else, if he had agreed to have not done it in English, he would have bought himself the extra seconds in some of his replies that he needed, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's very interesting why it has happened. Why do you think it's happened?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Let's each pick a side and call the other dumb. I had a line I used recently, it was, the necessity of people who live too long online to try to wade their way out of the memes. It is so like that, isn't it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Because yes, I mean, I can understand the people who find it very irritating that so many people who would put BLM flags or pride flags or, you know, trans flags in their bio, then put Ukrainian flags in their bio, despite almost certainly not knowing where Ukraine was. And if that happens, the inevitable instinct of a lot of people who aren't really thinking, is to say, that's really annoying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
These people are really annoying. I'll sock it to them. But that's where you've got to try to rise above that and say, actually, funnily enough, the fate of a country doesn't depend on my tolerance for memes online today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
That's very skillful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, the obvious one, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it was all Zelensky's fault, but I mean, the obvious one was at the beginning of the meeting to say yet again, as he has done for three years, thank you to America and the American people and American politicians across the aisle for your support for my country and its hour of need. We're deeply grateful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And because he, for once, forgot to say that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's not that simple. It's one reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yeah, no, sure. And they obviously failed on that occasion. But as I say, it must be bewildering to have landed in a place where people were seriously talking about Ukraine starting the war and Zelensky not Putin being the dictator.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I did the front page of the New York Post the day after the president's comments on that, saying that, the big picture of Putin, just saying, right, this is a dictator. And, you know, I think that people can be lithe enough to be able to recognize that, you know, you can make criticisms of Zelensky or the Ukrainians, but it doesn't mean you have to fall for Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And again, unfortunately, a lot of people in our time don't have that capability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
He's a dictator who's very bloody, as repressive as you can be of political opposition, internal opposition. He's kleptomaniac of his country's resources, has enriched himself as much as he could. as he has with the cronies around him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
He's not just acted to destroy internal opposition in Russia, but has gone to other countries, including my own country of birth, and killed people on their, our soil, using, as it happens, weapons of mass destruction. The use of polonium in the center of London not good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The use of incredibly dangerous nerve agents that could kill tens of thousands of people in a charming cathedral city like Salisbury, not good. If the sort of apologists of Putin would say, well, he's just a sort of tough man who's looking after his house business. Well, I don't think even if you think he has the right to do that, he should be doing it in third countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
deliberately using weapons that are meant to show that you could take out tens of thousands of British citizens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It definitely helps a chap if he's killed all of his opponents.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But, you know, I mean, seriously, you... if people are worried about, this is another of the sort of slightly Alice in Wonderland things recently about Zelensky is people are saying, why hasn't, he's a dictator because he hasn't held elections during a total war of self-defense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And it's like, well, you know, if you're really, really passionate about free and fair elections in that neck of the woods, you'd at least notice that Russian elections are not free and fair in any meaningful sense. But this doesn't mean that you have to say that, therefore, they should have Western-style elections and freedom, that Russia is ready to go and become a Western liberal democracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It doesn't mean any of that at all. It's just at least note that this is what Putin is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's what he's said for years, which is basically the reconstitution of the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I would trust most my friends in Eastern and Central Europe who certainly do think that. There's a reason why the Baltic countries are the countries that are spending highest in percentage of GDP on defense, and it's because they're very worried. I don't think they're faking it. I don't think they're faking it for me or for anyone else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and others are genuinely worried for the first time in some decades.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes. And the most obvious thing is that if Trump manages to negotiate a ceasefire, it'll be a temporary pause. And whoever comes in as president after Trump is Putin will use the opportunity to advance again. Yes. Again, one of the things that I have heard from parts of the American right and others is that all he wants is Ukraine. That that's all he wants.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that he has no history of rhetoric or actions that suggest anything else. And again, it's one of the reasons why it's useful traveling to places and seeing things with your own eyes, because I very much remember being in the country of Georgia and After Putin tried to invade in 2008.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
So I just, again, people don't have to be the greatest supporters of the Ukrainian cause just to recognize that it doesn't seem to be the case that Ukraine is the only thing in Putin's vision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's interesting. One of the fascinating things about the last few years is that there's been an act of sort of necromancy of certain figures who were totally, totally debunked in the area of Ukraine, Mearsheimer, and in the case of Israel, people like Finkelstein. And it's been interesting because these are people that one hadn't heard of for some years because...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
they were not listened to, usually for good reason. But by the way, first of all, I'm very skeptical of the term realist in foreign policy because most people, to some extent, will say that they are a realist in foreign policy. Very few people are surrealists in foreign policy. Very few people are unrealists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
A surrealist foreign policy analyst.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yeah, I mean, maybe we should introduce the term. But, I mean, if you want to say, if you want to look gimlet-eyed out across the world, you're a realist. I think the steel man of their argument would be Russia has or believes it has a sphere of influence and is regrettable, but there's very little we can do about that. that would be about the best version of that argument that you can make.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And political power, yeah, more importantly in the case of China. Political power. Non-kinetic warfare to take over areas, Hong Kong being the obvious one. Behind that, isn't there always a kinetic threat? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, you disappear some booksellers and students are protesting, of course. But to go back to this, yeah, of course.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Okay, countries believe they have or would like to have spheres of influence. I do think at some point that the so-called realists on that have to try to decide how much leeway that allows you to give to a fairly rapacious regime. It's not the easiest calculation always to make.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You have to work out whether or not, for instance, it is true that if Putin had managed to go all the way to Kiev in the first weeks of Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
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Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
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Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
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Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
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Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
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Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's possible. We'll have to see. I think it's just too early and complicated to tell. That he wants to bring a peace seems to me to be obvious. He's stated it a lot of times. Whether he can, we're just going to have to see. It's extremely hard to see some of the parameters of the peace still. And I would suggest that the most
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Not the most difficult, but one of the most difficult is that there is no peace guarantee on paper that the Ukrainians can possibly believe. I just... It doesn't matter because we in the West, we some of the countries in the West have said it before that we'd secure their peace. And we haven't. And so...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
What other than NATO membership, which is not possible in my view, what other than NATO membership would reassure the Ukrainians that they are going to have their borders secured and the peace of Ukraine secured? I can't see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
All of which still suggests that if there's enough financial interests in Ukraine, they would prevent another Russian invasion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
That would be ideal. It would be ideal if the regime in Moscow wanted it, but that's that. Again, you get into the thing of people accused of Russophobia, but I do believe that after the fall of the wall, Russia was ill-treated by the West, not treated. with some of the courtesy that it required. I do think that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And at the same time, that doesn't justify the actions of Russia in the last 20 years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's possible, but the alliance they formed with this rogue alliance with China to a considerable extent, North Korea, not useful, and Iran is... something they seem to find bearable. It's not a very good alliance in most people's analysis, but it's an alliance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think the premise is one that I've seen before. There was a famous... What was his name? Norman Angell. He wrote this book, which was a fantastic bestseller in his day, where he believed that Europe would be in a period of endless Kantian peace because the prospect of European powers going to war was so economically unviable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The book was reissued after World War I, and I never got the second edition. But I assume it was significantly rewritten.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I'm saying that the idea that cooperation on an economic and other levels is any... significant preventative device to madness breaking out is not something I see. Could deter some people. It could deter some very, very rational, economically driven actors, but it fails to take into account all of the other things that motivate people to go to war and to invade and to go mad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I agree. I'm obviously for economic cooperation. But my only caveat is not to think that that is something which is of ultimate interest or even at the top of the list of interests of despots, tyrants, extremists who want something else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
No, it could be. I hope your idea is right. I think it's about the most peaceful way for this to be resolved. My only caveat, as I say, is... And also never forget to factor in that people want different things in this world. And some people don't dream as you dream.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not by any means urging you to regard Vladimir Putin as a millenarian madman who cannot be in any way understood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
We'll see. If he can, then of course he is. He deserves enormous respect for galvanizing his people. for being elected in the first place, for galvanizing his nation at a time of incredible peril, for playing the international game of getting support for his country well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And sometimes the person who does that, not that there are many people like that, can be the person who also brings about a peace deal, and sometimes not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
That's possible. Again, it puts the onus on him, though. sort of slightly presupposes that Putin doesn't have the same human instinct on that. It is extremely hard. I've noticed this in a lot of conflicts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's extremely hard the way in which outsiders come in and others who haven't seen what you've seen or gone through what you've gone through and say, you know, it's time to get around the negotiating table and just, you know, you think you didn't see what I saw, you didn't go through what I went through. Who are you to tell me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It goes back to that thing of the visitor from the land of war and the visitor from the land of peace. The visitor from the land of peace can easily talk about getting around negotiating tables, but the visitor from the land of war has seen other things. And it's very hard for somebody who hasn't seen it to tell the person who has that they should act differently.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, that's a struggle. That's definitely a struggle. It's like asking somebody to forgive. I've seen that at a lot of ends of conflicts. People say, you know, the important thing is that we forgive and move on. And then the other person says, you know, your child didn't die of shrapnel wounds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
People online are ruthless and misrepresenting and lying?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Good God, Lex. You've discovered a new phenomenon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The one thing I would add to that, though, is don't forget that it also depends on whether or not there's a clear shot of winning. Sure. If there's a clear shot of winning, and that's the most important thing in wars is not final negotiations or anything like that. It's simply winning and losing. And if you have a clear shot of winning and you can take it and you're near it,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
then having somebody else come in and saying, why not stop just before victory is very hard. That's one of the many, many complexities of the conflict we're talking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's perfectly possible. Yes. That's the hard thing. It's very hard. It's all hard, but I'm just, again, it's. Victory can be won in wars and is often won in wars. And you're right, they can also grind on because nobody has the capability to make a breakthrough. The wisdom about civil wars tends to be that they sort of burn out after about 10 years or so for similar reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's a very good question. And you mean troops on the battlefield or military leaders or political leaders?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
No, you're right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, it's an interesting insight. It's like the way in which there's a force in nature, which is that if you amass an army, amassing it will pull you in to using it. Extremely hard to amass an army somewhere and then say, let's go back. Yes, you're right. No, it's one of many, many interesting aspects to warfare.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There's so many historical analogies you can give, but just surely not rewarding Putin's actions in any way would be a good way to deter him and other dictators from trying to grab land. in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, of course, almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everyone would like the killing to stop immediately. Of course.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I share your frustration because I've seen a lot of it with my own eyes. There was a battalion I was with the other week, and they were hit just after I left their base, and you wouldn't believe what a thermobaric bomb can do to the human body. And I share your frustration with that. At the same time, one of the things that happens if you are rushing...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
is that you do and i've seen this elsewhere you you will put pressure on the people you can pressurize and you will not put enough pressure on the people you can't pressurize and that is one of the worrying things that could happen with this simply you can put america can put extraordinary diplomatic, financial, intelligence, military pressure on Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And it can put significant pressure on Putin, but it's much easier to pressure Zelensky. And that's one of the many things that makes it harder, is that the temptation to rush for peace, accepting that peace is the most desirable thing, accepting the horrors of war, which you know, we can linger on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Accepting all that, if somebody says, we've got to get peace today, and the three of them around a table, the most likely thing is that it'll be the person who you can pressure most easily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
who will be the person that you pressure, and as a result, have an outcome which, yes, might stop the killing as soon as possible, but might also set up a situation which rewards the aggressor and effectively punishes the victim. And that's an extremely... ugly and common thing to happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, the book on democracies and death cults is a mixture of firsthand reporting and observation interviews and a wider reflection, not just on the war that's been going on since the 7th of October, but the war that's been going on a lot longer. And also, I suppose, on what for me is one of the overwhelming questions, which I'm sure we'll get to, which is the reaction in the rest of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Obviously, on the 7th itself, it was a... brigade-sized attack on Israel from Gaza. Hamas broke through the security fence and attacked all the softest targets they could. They swiftly overwhelmed things like the observation base in Nahal Oz.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
They ran through the communities in the South, very peaceful, peacenik, effectively, communities of the kibbutzim, as they're called, the communities, and murdered and raped and burned and kidnapped. Of course, they, from their point of view, had the great good fortune of also coming across hundreds of young people dancing in the early hours of the morning at a dance party and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
rampaged through that with RPGs and Kalashnikovs and grenades and hammers and more, and got within, well, 20 kilometers into Israel on places like Ofakim and Sderot, important towns, and carried out their massacres there as well. We now know that the plan was that Hezbollah did the same thing from the north.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Hezbollah joined in the war within 24 hours by starting firing rockets again in very large numbers into northern Israel from southern Lebanon. But the plan was that they would do the same thing from the north and carry out similar massacres there and effectively be able to meet in the middle and garrote Israel from the center.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The interesting reason why I think it will be found out in the future, but why they didn't coordinate better was Hamas didn't trust any line of communication to Hezbollah to let them know exactly when they were going to do it that wouldn't be intercepted. The Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran, which obviously funds Hamas and Hezbollah and trains and arms, knew of the plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It was a very successful attempt to annihilate the state, but they didn't get close to that. But they got worryingly closer than people might have thought they were capable of. I think from the Israeli side, it was obviously one of the most, if not the most catastrophic intelligence and military failure since the foundation of the state. And I think there are several reasons why.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
One is a perception problem. What a lot of military commanders and others described to me is the conception. The conception that had prevailed in Israel for some years in security and military establishment was that Hamas were content with being corrupt and governing Gaza and lining their pockets and living in Qatar and becoming billionaires, but that like many other terrorist groups and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
you know, cults that they would end up becoming just corrupt and not losing their ideology, but the ideology becomes secondary. That's the first thing was there was just a massive error of the conception in Israel. And then there were the multiple manifold security and military failures of the day and leading up to the day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Um, and there will be a, there already have been quite a lot of people held to account for that. And there doubtless will be in the future as well. Um, the, the single, uh, thing I heard, which I heard most, um, which was most distressing in a way was the number of people who described to me, you know, who survived the maskers in the South who said that,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You know, they'd said to their children, don't worry, the army will be here in minutes. And they weren't. In many places, it was many hours until the army got there. And there are reasons for that. There are some reasons that will be military failings, leadership failings. Other things were very, I discovered, were very human failings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I don't want to overstress the failure of the army because actually certain units and things got down very fast. There was a unit of Devan who got down to the junction, you know, by within about an hour and 90 minutes of the massacres starting and joined in the fight. And then there were self-starters who I write about in the book, extraordinary people who just
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
like broke orders and just realized the magnitude of what was happening and said, we're needed in the South, go, and fought very hard for hours, days, in some cases. But the complexities on the ground were unbelievable. I mean, as usually happens in warfare, but what they call the fog of war is a very real thing. You can see it in hindsight, but you can't see when you're in it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And one of the things that made it very complicated was, for instance, Hamas coming in, taking uniforms off dead Israelis, wearing them, coming in with Israeli-style apparatus on them. There's a Muslim doctor I quote in the book I interviewed who
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
describes how he was going to his, he's an Israeli Muslim Arab, and he was going to, he's a doctor, he was going to his shift at the hospital at 6.30 in the morning. The rockets start coming in because the rockets started first and then the full invasion. And he described to me how, you know, he's one of the members of this group, the United Had Salah, which is a first responders group.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And they sort of, you know, they get an alert and it tells them that you know, a car has crashed nearby and they put on their, you know, first aid kit and so on and go. And he got one of those alerts, one of the junctions, and realized there was a car that something had happened and there were some dead bodies. And he stops and he sees these men dressed as soldiers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And he's wearing his Hatzalah gear and they start firing at him. And he just thinks, what the hell? What the hell is going on? And they turned out to be Hamas dressed as Israeli soldiers. They used him as a human shield to try to protect from any air assault. And in the end, they shot him and left him, and he survived. He was a very, very brave man. So there was a lot of confusion like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There was a girl whose father I interviewed. She was at the Nova Party, and... I met him at one of the reunions of the party in the weeks after and the reunions of the survivors and the family and so on. And he described how in the last moments of his daughter's life, she phoned him on her phone like a lot of people. He reassured her that the army would get there and so on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And her boyfriend was shot in the head and was lying on her lap. And she was obviously panicked. And they'd managed to get into a car and escape the party. But they went to a community where they thought they'd be safe in the south of Israel. And they were told to stay where they were by somebody who she said was a policeman. And he wasn't a policeman. He was Hamas dressed as a police.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And she died. She was shot and killed as well. And so there was a lot of confusion like that. Hopefully, the world will find out. exactly what went wrong. Israel will find out exactly what went wrong that led to this catastrophe. But, I mean, it was a complete catastrophe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, I think... There are people who say that there were parts of the intelligence network and so on that were withholding the information. I don't know. Again, people will find out. There's an awful lot of politics inside Israel, and it's hard to know that at this stage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think most people are sort of still Israeli and not Israeli, including people who are anti-Israel, who just believe that Israeli military and particularly intelligence dominance is so strong that There must have been some kind of conspiracy. Otherwise, how could this have happened? I don't think you need to go into that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think that, I mean, for instance, some of the young women at the observation base are on the record. They've said, I've spoken to myself, who said that they had been warning in the weeks running up to the 7th that they were seeing maneuvers and training by the border, which suggested that Hamas was... was going to do something like this. And they say that they were ignored.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You speak to some of the more senior commanders about that, and they say the thing is that this stuff was happening all the time. So it's very hard to know at the moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, Hamas, in a way, quite easy to understand because they say what their ambitions are. They say what their beliefs are. They've said it from their governing charter onwards. And you also have the advantage with Hamas that they, as it were, in trying to understand them, is that they tend to do what they say and act on what they believe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
primary aim of Hamas is to destroy the state of Israel and then see. They're not an unusual group, sadly. The bit of it that is hard for some people to understand, I think, is that they really do mean what they say and that they really do mean what they say they want to do. And I give a number of examples in the book of this, but I mean, the most, uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
obvious is the case of Yahya Sinwa, the Hamas leader, who is generally regarded as having orchestrated and arranged the 7th of October. We know a fair amount about him because he was in prison in Israel in the 2000s for murdering Palestinians in Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And he was released in the prisoner swap for one of the more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners inside Israel who was released in a swap for Gilad Shalit, the abducted Israeli soldier. And Yaya Sinwa, in prison in Israel, talked to, among others, a dentist who ended up saving his life because Yaya Sinwa had a brain tumor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And this dentist identified this and actually sent him to the hospital in the Israelis famously. removed the tumor and saved Sinoir's life. But this dentist used to speak to him in the prison regularly and has related, not least to the New York Times, his conversations with Sinoir.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And Sinoir said in one of those conversations, he said, you know, he said, at the moment, you, Israel, are strong, but one day you'll be weak and then I'll come. And that's what he did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Both. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ,,,,,,, ,,,,,,, They militarized the whole of Gaza. By the estimations of troops I've been with there, every second or third house had weaponry stashed there. Bombs, RPGs, Kalashnikovs, rockets, tunnel entrances. The network that they just embedded all these years was total.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, I mean, several things. There's political angles which are forever changing, but... On the human level, as you know, if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. I'm struck by the way in which that is at a remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise. and much more.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You know, one of the many, many tragedies of this is that whatever you're reading of the rights and wrongs of the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, it was an opportunity for the Gaza to become something else. It could have become a thriving statelet. It could have been a thriving Palestinian state. It's just that Hamas, like the PLO before them,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
decided that they wanted to destroy Israel more than they wanted to create a Palestinian state. And that is to the great, great detriment of the Palestinians of Gaza, to put it at its mildest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
By the American taxpayer and by the European taxpayer as well, yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's not just about stealing the money. It's about using the money and the infrastructure to annihilate your neighbor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, a cynicism, certainly, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes. Because they've elected them. They elected them. The what-ifs are endless, but very unwise of the George W. Bush administration to push for elections in Gaza after 2005. But Hamas were elected, and they... then in 2007 killed the other Palestinian faction that was their main challenger, Fatah, killed them, threw them off rooftops, dragged their bodies behind motorbikes through the Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's very easy to get caught up in the to's and fro's of today's news, but that, to my mind, that's the single thing that struck me most in my visits there, is just the people I've met. who are fighting for a cause which, at that level, is unavoidable, undeniable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And from that point, they had total control. And this is difficult because you can get into the realm of being accused of advocating or in any way justifying collective punishment. if you talk about this, but it should be borne in mind that Hamas had effectively 18 years to run the Gaza. And that's the time that it takes from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And in 18 years, they could have presided over and produced a generation of young Gazans who were productive, productive for their people, for their society, for their neighbors, for the rest of the world, and they didn't. They spent 18 years indoctrinating the children of Gaza into a death cult and into a genocidal hatred, which
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
obviously was most dangerous to the Israelis, but it was obviously disastrous for the people of Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
If you speak to soldiers who were there in 2014 when Hamas started a war again, one of a set of rounds of war since 2005, if you speak to the soldiers who were there in 2014 going house to house and who were also involved in the war since 2003, they all say the same thing, which is the marked radicalization of the Gazan population.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
marked increase in the numbers of copies of Mein Kampf in Arabic in an average Gazan household, the protocols of the learned elders of Zion. There are so many what-ifs and other paths that Hamas could have taken, but that was the one they took. They decided to take the path of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
using their time in power to build up their infrastructure, radicalize its population, and encourage them to believe that they could destroy the state of Israel. And then on October the 7th, they gave it their best shot. And by the way, There is no organized collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Collective punishment would just be dropping bombs with no purpose across civilian areas, carpet bombing, this sort of thing. This is simply not what the IAF and the IDF have done since the 7th. They have been fighting house-to-house war against this terrorist group. They do do aerial strikes. Gaza is very, very badly beaten up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The buildings, I mean, the infrastructure that existed, there aren't many buildings standing. But this is not the result of just wild and imprecise bombing by the Israelis. It's been extremely concerted. It's extremely difficult. But when people say, well, this must be collective punishment, I think that the people who say that simultaneously, that's not true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And also, there is not a hostage who's come out who Donald Trump made this, President Trump made this point recently. There is not a hostage who's come out who I've spoken with who found any Gazan, Palestinian, who expressed even the slightest human kindness to them. If you look at the footage from the 7th that Hamas recorded themselves of them taking young Jewish women into Gaza and so on,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
you will notice that the trucks and the motorbikes and so on are not stopped by horrified guards and civilians saying, why have you got this Israeli girl whose tendons you've cut and why are you bringing her here? It's all celebration. It's all celebration. And it's the same with those couple of cases of hostages who managed to escape from the civilian houses they were being held in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
who were immediately returned by the citizens they met.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, you know, people who have either lived under Russian occupation from invading armies and then come back out into the world, having been liberated as in late 2022, or the people now, and I was most recently there in recent weeks, who were just getting on with their job as soldiers whilst the world was talking about them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You don't have to project it onto them. You can just listen to their own words. I'm sure you've heard one of many audio recordings you hear from the morning, but I'm sure you've heard the audio recording of the young man who ends up in one of the communities in the south of Israel and calls back home. Have you heard that? Yes, I've heard it. I quoted it in the first chapter of the book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
He calls back home and he says to his father who picks up. It's on WhatsApp. I think he's on the phone. He's saying, turn on to WhatsApp because I can show you. He says, I've killed 10 Jews with my own hands. Oh, father, your son has killed 10 Jews. And his father is saying, where are you? Where are you? He goes, I want to show you, dad. I want to show you. I've killed Jews with my own hands.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Your son. Put mother on the phone. Mother comes on the phone. The brother comes on the phone. This is one of many, many stories from the day that suggests that something which I would say is not just indoctrination, but yes, evil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It would be a strange type of simple sort of, I don't know, pride in war, right? to go into an 80 year old woman's house and kill her on her floor and then film her dead body and her body in its final moments and send it round to all of that woman's friends on her phone, on her Instagram account. Um, it's, it's, you may have heard different things from me, but I mean, I would be surprised, uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
if there were even the most vociferous of Russian soldiers phoning back home to Moscow and saying, Mom, you won't believe my luck. I managed to rape and kill this 80-year-old woman. That's quite unusual, even in warfare. And that's one of the things about Hamas and what I describe as the death cult types, which makes them different from other people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
No, I disagree. You commit that once. I think that there is such a force as evil in the world, and I think it can descend and it can be used. It's very hard to find a non-theological way to talk about this, but of everything I've seen, there are actions that people like Hamas committed on the 7th that cannot be described as anything other than evil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The things that happened at the Nova Party were... especially appalling. I mean, it was all appalling, but it was especially appalling because first of all, it's a sort of party which people like you and I, or at least you and I when we were younger might have been at. And so everyone knows the world of a dance party and all night, rave in the desert to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
commune with nature and the universe and to take some psychedelics and to, you know, expand your consciousness and your love and all of that sort of thing. The fact that people doing that at 6.30 in the morning then encountered people coming in to the party on trucks and military vehicles and just... massacring them and raping them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I give examples of the firsthand accounts of people who survived, but it's beyond belief of almost anything else I've covered in war. An army facing another army is one thing, A terrorist group in civilian clothing facing an army is another thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, first time was in, I was with the Ukrainian armed forces when they retook Kherson. And I was back in recent weeks and was there when the Trump-Zelensky blowup happened. In fact, I was in a Ukrainian dugout at the front lines when I was watching it. How's the morale?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
A terrorist group facing a group of young people at a dance, unarmed, and doing what they did is pretty hard to comprehend unless you use the lexicon of evil somewhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes. What has happened in response is terrible, terrible for the citizens of Gaza. I was there on the first time a couple of days early and into the ground invasion. when the citizens of Gaza were coming south.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I was in the middle of the strip and the humanitarian corridor had been set up to try to stop the hostages being taken south, deeper into Gaza, and to try to stop Hamas leadership from making it south. It actually didn't really work because they'd already got a lot of the hostages south. It was an attempt to keep Hamas there and fight them in the north so as not to be dragged
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
all the way in, in the end, dragged all the way in anyway. But yes, I mean, watching the citizens of Gaza moving through the humanitarian corridor and, you know, and they're everyone... was being checked for, for bombs, suicide vests checked for, you know, particularly young men of military age.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Um, and, uh, you know, I mean, you look at this tide of human misery and you think this is terrible, but this is a terrible thing that had been brought upon them by the people had been misgoverning the place that they lived in. And, Of course, on a human level, you feel terrible that these people are going through this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
At the same time, human empathy for them can coexist beside an unspeakable anger that they had come to this point. Because of the fact that they elected a terror group to run their territory. And one of the things, obviously, is that a lot of people like to say, and it's true, of course, that this didn't all start on October the 7th. Absolutely true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
This particular round, this particularly intense round of war started on October the 7th, without doubt. Hamas did not have to attack on October the 7th. It wasn't like they were forced to liberate themselves or something, as some of the defenders of Hamas claim. But the conflict, of course, goes back a lot earlier.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But you will have to always keep on contending with this fact that there is one central issue to the paradigm of that conflict. What used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict and now has become interestingly rebranded the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there is one absolutely essential issue to this, which cannot be forgotten, which is do the Palestinians...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And if they want to destroy the Jewish state, as they've tried many times, it's a disaster for them. It's a total disaster for them. If they want to create their own state, they've already had several very good shots at it, one of which is Gaza post-2005. But they've never shown
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that's a catastrophe for the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
To take them in order, There's nothing about Gaza that was an open air prison. They had ability to trade. They had the ability to move in and out in increasing numbers. Egypt wasn't so keen on allowing Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, still isn't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But at the time of the 7th, there was actually an interesting, one of the things the international community was pushing for was for more Palestinians to be coming into Israel every day through the Eretz crossing and others to work in Israel because they can make a better living in Israel than they can in Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And this, the, as it were, normalization route was slowly being attempted as being pushed on Israel by the international community a little bit too fast for Israel's comfort, but it happened. That completely came to an end, and that dream is done, gone, since the 7th of October. Can you clarify the dream, the normalization relations between Gaza and Israel? Gone. Really? Yeah, no normalization.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
At one level, I mean, nothing has changed much. You know, it's a sort of... It's not a... a total standoff because intermittently each side gains territory from the others. But there'd been no very significant military gains by either side in the interim period.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
No, not after that. And one of the reasons is the number of people, again, who I've spoken with who employed Palestinians, worked with Palestinians, worked alongside Palestinians, encouraged more Palestinians to be coming from Gaza in order to work in Israel, and these were their brothers and sisters and so on and so forth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
One of the reasons why the massacres of the 7th were so successful in the kibbutzim, the communities in the south, was because of the number of the terrorists who came in with detailed house-to-house maps of those communities. I, I spoke with, uh, with one man who his community, they had a security officer chief and, uh, Hamas came in, they knew to go and kill him and his family first.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And then which families it was just, I've seen the maps myself. They were, they came in with incredibly, um, accurate information about these communities. How did they have them? Because it was given to them by the, by the brothers, by the workers. by the people of Gaza who were coming in and out. There is nobody that will trust that ever again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, you know, if you've worked beside somebody and then found out they sold out your family, you will never trust again. And that, particularly in a small country like Israel, the word of that happening goes out very fast. The very beginning, there was intense, intense fear about that, including of the 20% or so of the population who are Arab Israelis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I actually think one of the few positive news stories of the period is that that population within Israel has, by and large, held. There hasn't been an intifada. One of the reasons why there hasn't been more terrorist activity in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, is because the Israelis have been very careful, along with the Palestinian Authority, to some extent, cooperating to keep that down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But there wasn't a full war on three fronts, for instance, which was at risk of happening. So I think that the sort of coexistence within Israel has pretty much held. There are some terrible examples, far too regular, but not as regular as it could happen, of Muslim Arab Israelis carrying out acts of terror in, as it were, sympathy with Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Hamas, I was in the middle of one such attack myself late last year in a town called Hadera. And those things have happened, but that particular catastrophe has not occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, he's certainly not evil. Interesting if people looking at this conflict were to be reluctant to use the word evil of Hamas and eager to use it of the Israeli prime minister, it would be sort of telling, I would say.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Isn't it also, I mean, not to be flippant for a moment, it's a little bit like Who do you show your worst sides to? The people you love. My intense irritability is something that tends to be felt most by people who are closest to me because if I express it to absolutely everybody I met at the party or a social setting, it would be hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There's a tendency to lean heavily on the people who are closest to you, the people who will put up with it. And something similar happens in international politics. You pressure the people who will listen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mean, it's one of the, I mean, one of the things you hear a lot in the last year, you know, people sort of ignoramuses in the governments in places like Britain, you know, will say we need to put more pressure on the Israelis to do X. And you go, well, you know, in part, that's because they will listen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
If you go, we need to put more pressure on the Ayatollahs in Iran to persuade them that Hamas are really bad and they shouldn't be doing this. What the hell do you think they're going to do? Are they going to listen to you? Are you going to give a damn? You're talking totally different worlds. Not just a different language, it's a different world. And by the way, that happens in Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I mentioned it earlier, but it happens in Israel. When the hostage families forum came about, I spent a lot of time there, got to know a lot of the families, and they're remarkable. But one of the things you did notice from them as well was that a lot of them They protest outside Netanyahu's house. They use klaxon horns to make sure he can never sleep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
They will put up great big posters by his house of him with bloodied hands and so on. And I have, you know, I think as much sympathy as you can for these families. The plight of knowing that your child is sitting in a tunnel in Gaza for a year, a day, an hour is intolerable. But there's a reason why the families protested Netanyahu. And that's because SINWA didn't care. That wouldn't work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yeah, I certainly, on the front lines facing Crimea, became quite familiar with people who thought that the Ukrainians in late 2022 would even be able to get Crimea back. And that struck me even at the time when I said I thought that that was an overreach.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
If you said, you know, understand my plight. I'm a Jewish mother and my daughter is thing. You think Sinois, the heads of Hamas, care? You think the leaders in Qatar who host them care? The Qatari emir's mother, when Sinois was killed, praised Sinois. You couldn't talk that language to these people, but you can talk that language to the elected prime minister of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Because that, first of all, he's somebody who might listen to your pressure, could be pressured. And secondly, he's simply the only person you can pressure. There's no one else. Hamas doesn't care. Hezbollah doesn't care. The Iranian Revolutionary Government doesn't care.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I don't see how you can call them freedom fighters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The Indian polls last month in Washington showed him at an all-time high. But you were saying...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
The most devastating thing that anyone could come up against Netanyahu is that the seventh happened on his watch. After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Golda Meir, who is a very distinguished Prime Minister of Israel and a remarkable woman, but she effectively took the political hit for the Yom Kippur invasion. by Israel's Arab neighbors happening on her watch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And I just thought that most critics, fair-minded critics of Netanyahu inside Israel and without would always hold that against him. I suppose that one of the criticisms you hear a lot as well is this thing of Israel being divided in the year before the seventh because of the judicial reforms
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I think there's a strong case for judicial reforms in Israel, but it's a sort of niche Israeli governance issue, which we don't have to get into. The point is that Netanyahu and his government were pushing these reforms through judicial reforms. And it was very divisive. And on the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities every weekend, there were protests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And the police were tired because they'd spent week after week on overtime policing these protests, which often turned raucous, not to say violent. or sometimes violent, and you could say, well, if you see that something is dividing your country this much, why don't you stop?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There is a claim by some people that one of the things that prompted the 7th was that Hamas and its backers in Qatar and Iran saw the division in Israeli society, saw the Israeli population, a significant chunk of it, every week on the streets, shutting down highways, shutting down services and so on, and thought, good, now's the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
In other words, what I quoted Sinoir as saying earlier when he was in prison in Israel was this thing, one day you'll be weak and then I'll strike. Maybe that is one of the things that Sinoir... thought. Israel was very weak. It had been divided and therefore the time strike.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There's an argument against that, which is that the seventh was in preparation and being planned before the judicial reform process in Israel began. So you can look at it several ways. But you could use that. You could say, look, if your nation was divided, don't push through anymore on that. There's lots of things like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You could say that Netanyahu was one of the people responsible for the conception. You could... There are critics of his, including critics who are in the war cabinet, who thought that he was too focused on Hamas and not focused enough on Hezbollah. Other people think he was too focused on Hezbollah and not enough on Hamas. So there's them and many other criticisms that people make of him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I would say I've interviewed, I think, every political leader in Israel from right to left, pretty much. and I have to say, I don't think there's any of them that wouldn't have responded similarly to the 7th of October to the way he has.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's strange if there is a widespread global loathing of the prime minister of a country of eight to nine million people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There's an awful lot of people to hate in the world. There's a lot of wars in the world. It's always of interest to me, and obviously it's one of the things I go into on democracies and death cults, is this question of why is this so galvanizing for so many people? And I think that is a very, very interesting question. Why? By the way, let me do a quick addendum to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You can notice something else like that when people talk about the Republican failures in foreign policy in the last 30 years or so. It's very interesting. There's a certain type of person who will immediately mention Paul Wolfowitz. Yeah. And they will say, well, you know, Wolfowitz, you mean deputy under secretary of defense under George W. Bush? You think he guided everything?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, it was a very disturbing place to watch it from. Perhaps anywhere it would have been. And, I mean, obviously it was a meeting that shouldn't have happened. It was far too early. Why do you think so? There's not enough actual pathways to peace on the table?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Why would that be? other than the fact that his name, as Mark Stein once said, starts with a nasty animal and ends Jewish. That's a good line. So I do think that there are very deep things at play. That's a good line. There are very deep things at play. Netanyahu, irrespective of anything he does, for a lot of people, is a kind of devil. And you have to say, well, why is that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Now, of course, some people will say, well, that's because his terrible hawkishness and his actions and so on and so forth. The case for Netanyahu is that he sees it as his historic purpose to defend the only homeland of the Jewish people and that that's his life's mission. And On that basis, I think he's been, by any measure, a historic leader.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
He has warned the world about the threat from the mullahs in Tehran. He warned about Iranian revolutionary expansionism across the region, across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. And after the 7th, he has held together a very, very difficult
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
set of challenges to keep, um, international pressure at a tolerable level to do all sorts of things, but most importantly to oversee the two war aims that he set out at the beginning. I thought, let me just express this to you. I thought like a lot of people, when I heard about the hostages, my immediate instinct was they're all dead. They're all going to be dead. We'll never see them again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that was the attitude of a lot of Israelis. But although there are still hostages being held, and as I've always said, the war could end tomorrow if they were handed back, or at least the beginning of the end of the war could begin tomorrow if they were handed back. Nevertheless, because of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
the actions of not just Netanyahu, but the Israeli government, most of the hostages have been returned, did not expect this to happen. And Hamas has not been completely destroyed, but it has been very, very significantly degraded. And you end up in the definition of what a total destruction of Hamas would look like. But they are not anywhere near the capability they were in November of 2023.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Their leadership has almost all been killed. The second tier of leadership, almost all gone. And this is a just response to what Hamas did. The moment, Netanyahu's reputation in Israel was at a low early on because of what had happened. But, and there's no doubt, and as I say in the final chapter of the book, I mean, General Slim had this phrase, from defeat into victory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Israel isn't at victory yet in this conflict, but when in September last year,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There were a set of operational successes so extraordinary that, I mean, it was just like every day's news was... There was one day, I remember, after the Assad regime fell, when the Israeli Air Force took out the entirety of the Syrian Air Force in a day because they didn't want it falling into the hands of the new jihadist administration in Syria.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It was story number four on the BBC News website. The leadership of Hezbollah, gone. Gone. The second and third tiers of Hezbollah, gone or wounded. Iran's Rolls-Royce, destroyed. These are very, very significant military achievements. And are, in my mind, a just response to the attempts by Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iranian proxies to destroy the Jewish state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Would another Israeli leader have been able to hold firm as Netanyahu has? I don't know, but I do know that any of them would have done something similar or would have tried to do something similar because there's no country on earth, no democracy on earth Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And now mineral deposits, obviously. I'm really speaking at the edge of my mineral deposit knowledge here. No, I mean, from what I could see, the deal that the American administration was trying to get the Ukrainian government to sign was sort of too early to... too forced. The Ukrainians were ready to sign a deal, but were obviously under intense pressure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And I think certainly Zelensky wasn't expecting to go until pretty much the day before, was obviously visibly tired and exhausted again, as you are after that amount of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
pressure for that long a time and um no i mean the thing that struck me and i i said this in my column the new york post from there that uh the thing that struck me was i said to some of the soldiers i was with uh you know what do you make of this and um you know one of them just said to me Well, you know, we're advised not to follow too closely the ins and outs of the politics of this, you know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ,,,,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But of course, everyone has Instagram or scrolls and among dog pictures and, you know, the hot women or whatever is, you know, what happened in the Oval. But what struck me was this same guy saying, I've got a job to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It could be all of those things. I think it is, and a lot more. I mean, taboos, you know, taboos can be fun to break, I suppose, and I suppose there are some people online... who have grown up knowing that, you know, since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was taboo. And they've run out of, it goes back to what we were saying earlier a bit, you know, they sort of run out of, they've got bored of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
You know, Holocaust, schmolocost, they'd say, you know, I've heard enough about that. And maybe those people have gone off in a funny direction as a result, but I don't think that's the main thing. I think that's like a detail compared to the real thing. The real thing is that anti-Semitism is back, and there is a certain type of person who's loving it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, it never goes away. It's just that since the 7th, I think that it's had a great resurgence. And this isn't to say, and that doesn't mean that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. No, it doesn't. But, as I have often said,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
If you don't ever express any interest in the murder of Muslims in Syria, not any interest in genocide in Sudan, killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen, but on the 8th of October you're on the street with a placard attacking Israel, I'm sorry, you're an anti-Semite, for sure. You may not know you are, but that's what's motivating you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I watch it. It does. I watch it. I mean, it's one of several things you can always see get huge engagement. I mean, it's like if you say that there's like a massive pedophile ring run by prominent politicians... it might be total horse shit. It's likely to be total horse shit, but it'll also get a hell of a lot of engagement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
which is very interesting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It is. And I mean, you see it with, I mean, some of the people who've made minor celebrities of themselves with a sort of made up version of history with a smattering of this and a little bit of that. And then the just asking questions and, you know, I'm not saying, but, and all there's certain, you know, rhetorical sites of hand that have, um, have helped this along.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
But as I said earlier, it's just the lowest grade explanation of a certain type of mind looking for a pattern and looking for meaning. And I mean, I can give you just one quick example of why that in the case of Israel is so extraordinary, is the number of otherwise semi-intelligent people who will tell you that The problem is simply that the Israelis need to give the Palestinians another state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that if they do, it will solve the problems of the region and the wider world. And irrespective of the fact that the Palestinians have been given to several states, the claim that this particular land dispute would unlock every other injustice in the world should be seen on its face to be preposterous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
There is no reason why if the Palestinians got another state, either in Gaza or in parts of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, there is no reason why we should expect the economy of Yemen to boom. It would not inevitably lead to the mullahs in Tehran giving equal rights to women or anything else. The most likely thing is you simply have another failed Arab state run by a sort of proxy of Tehran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
That's the best case scenario. And by the way, even lifelong defenders of the Palestinian cause, like Salman Rushdie, He said recently, he said, I've always been a supporter of the Palestinian people and their cause, but it is an unavoidable fact that if another state was given to the Palestinians, it would simply be, at best, another front for the Iranian regime in Iran. At best.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I don't think by any account it was a successful step forward, unless... To some extent, it was a play from DC to say to Putin, look, we've daft off Zelensky and now give us something. That's the only remedial idea I have about what might have been behind it. But I think it was just one of those extremely, I mean, just awful political moments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
So why the passion about... Why the unbelievable, wild passion about this? Why the... And I say some of it can be, should be argued out and so on. Some of it can be explained. But there's definitely a realm of it, a layer of it, which is simply at that level of this excites something within me. This excites something within me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Look at the prominence of semi-prominent people who are willing to play around with the idea that 9-11 was an inside job and somehow it was done by the Israelis. Or the Jews. I mean, look at the, like, this shit is going around.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Usually opening up Pandora's boxes they don't understand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, because you've got a very specific task that could be highly complicated. Yes. But you get to apply yourself to and to solve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Well, it's because there's so many variables. I mean, this is one of the reasons when you were trying to lure me onto prognostications on Ukraine, I was saying, I just, I've seen enough to know that. I just don't know because I know the amount of things that can change all the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Some years ago, I was talking to a former public servant in the UK when Boris Johnson was prime minister and COVID started. And I mentioned to this friend, I said, well, you know, it's it's pretty bad luck for Boris that, you know, he came in to do one thing, which was Brexit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And then there's a global pandemic from Wuhan, you know, and he's got to like mug up on that and then gets it really wrong. But anyway, and I was really struck by the fact that this man, a man of great insight who happened to disagree politically, but said to me, but Douglas is always like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And he said, you know, look, Tony Blair came into power in 1997 wanting to reform education in the UK, ends up trying to remake the Middle East. And I do, I mean, as I say, one of the reasons why I am scornful of conspiracy theorists And most conspiracy theories, not to say that there aren't some that do actually turn out to be, you know, to have something in them. And that happens.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
A lot of things are called conspiracy theories that turn out to be true. Lab leak. But in general, the suspicion and the scorn I have for people who fall into this is, as I say, it's a very low-grade, low-resolution look at the world by people who clearly have never seen the... wildness of actions in the world and the way that they reverberate and the number of events.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I once spoke some years ago to a politician who literally said to me, I won't name the country, but said to me, can you help us out with just how to cope and understand the day-to-day struggle we're having with the cycle. And I said, what are you talking about? And they said, our experience in government is that every day something comes up, which we have to firefight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
And that's what we do that day. And then the next day, something else comes up, which we have to firefight. And we're not getting... our policies done. And I, and I just thought for me, that rings an awful lot truer than that, that country gets the odd phone call from a member of a Jewish family telling them, I just, you know, it's like, come on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Zelensky was obviously deeply irritated by the interpretation of the war that he was hearing from Washington. It was only a week after the Trump comments about Zelensky being a dictator and people in the administration implying that Ukraine has started the war. And I think that must be, for Zelensky, a pretty Alice in Wonderland situation to be in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
I know, as you know, I start on democracy and death cults with the flight taking the Ayatollah Khomeini from Paris to Tehran. The flight that you say you wish never happened. I think it's one of the two worst journeys of the 20th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Lenin's train getting to Petrograd.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Yes, I know. I'm really a transport guy. No, wait till my book of 10 best journeys. Across the world. No, just as the train to the Finland station brought the basilisk of Bolshevism, into Russia. So the flight coming from Paris, bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini to Tehran, brought the basilisk of Khomeiniism, the most radical form of Shiite Islam, to Tehran and to Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
It's one of the great tragedies of the modern era, what happened there. Like you, actually, I have a lot of Persian friends and I had the great good fortune early in my life to have a very close late friend who had grown up in pre-revolutionary Iran, was very fond of the Shah and so on. Her father had been an Ayatollah before the overthrow of the Shah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Recruiting ad where the obese, diverse woman of color who explains how many mental disorders she has is necessarily your ideal poster child. I didn't get to see her. You never get to see her? She was great. She was like a bipolar drone operator or something.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You certainly don't want somebody on a lot of hormones in charge of a drone program. Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It feels like a lot's happened.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yes. I mean, one of the things you can say, whatever your views on Trump, you can say with certainty, and I did ahead of the election have since, which is that he does what he says he's going to do. So whether it's tariffs or foreign policy or domestic policy, border, you know, he campaigns about it and then he does it, tries to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
What always happens is something goes deranged in one direction, then you get a correction. But as we've discussed before, the question is always whether the correction goes back to level or whether it's an overcorrection that goes to somewhere equally crazy or recognizably crazy. Take that one of the COVID era and the post-COVID era. There's lots and lots of things that clearly went wrong.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
That doesn't mean, in my view, that you should discourage people from giving polio vaccines to their children. There's lots that has gone wrong in public health and lots that can be corrected, but it doesn't mean that there should be no guardrails in society. Look at the way in which the term gatekeeper is used these days, as if there should be no gatekeeping.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And actually, sometimes, people might disagree with this, but actually sometimes, if there's somebody who's an expert in a field and they should be trusted and can be trusted, they do need to draw the line of what is within the parameters and what is not. That's obviously why RFK Jr. caused a lot of concern when he came in, was, you know, is this a suitable correction or a wild overcorrection?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that the anti-Western... assault has been halted. As I say, again, we'll see whether or not it corrects or overcorrects. But I don't think that in the era of Trump's second term, that in America, that's going to be as much of a problem. Elsewhere, usual story. Our country of birth, usual story.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, I don't know when you will ask back, but my experience of going back to the UK now is that everyone is supremely depressed and doesn't think life will get better.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, everyone's going to be poorer than this generation and all that sort of thing. Yeah, I was very depressed when I went back to the UK last because I think I had just come fresh from the inauguration in DC, which was bracing for lots of reasons. But I just noticed that there are lots of opportunities for things to be righted in America and put in a more sane direction.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I am always quite amused by the people who are surprised that that, you know, What's he doing with all this tariff stuff? Every rally I covered of his tariffs was a big thing. So, yes, there are some corners of it, principally the Ukraine stuff, which I'm concerned about. But it's early days.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Again, we'll see if that happens. But I think there's a great opportunity, a whole set of great opportunities in America, economic and much more for the country, educational reform, a lot of problems that America needs to address that have now the opportunity to be addressed. Whereas Britain, like most of Western Europe, it just stumbles on. It's very depressing. It's not very inspiring.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I've noticed that my friends are all wildly depressed. I'm rather surprised at how upbeat I was. I mean, they beat it out of me. Having just come from a war zone. But, you know, within 24 hours of being in the UK, I was suitably depressed at the equilibrium that was expected.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, yeah, actually, I am. It may be a sort of dramatic overstatement, but yeah, I mean... What gives you hope in any country, whether it's a peace or a war, is whether the people in the country want to fight for the country, metaphorically or literally. And in the last few years, I think since I last saw you, yeah, I've spent a lot of time in Ukraine and more so in Israel and the Middle East.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
and seen people literally fighting for their survival and for their country, and that's always, but particularly in those cases, a very remarkable thing to see. When you then see a de-energized, enervated society... Mm-hmm. Where everyone's split and no one knows how to go forward. Yeah, it's very concerning. And I just see that for the time being rolling on in the UK.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
As I say, the stop has been put to it of a kind in the US, but...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, having... having few economic opportunities causes everything else to go wrong. I mean, I'm completely persuaded by my economist friends who say, you know, the one job of politics is to keep the economy good. And if, if you don't do that, everything else can go wrong as well.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think that's true, but I just, it's a combination of the economics of the, the, the market not working, um, growth not happening, wages being stagnant, unaffordability of housing, um, And then plus the just wild innovation of all the cultural crap. I think you can have weak economics but keep strong culture. But if you've got weak economics and weak culture... I was just watching this morning.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There's a row that's been going on because that's just something I helped to fuel. But... There's a bunch of Labour MPs who've been busily campaigning against a third runway at Heathrow Airport, which is just like, seriously, this has happened all my adult life. Any healthy country doesn't debate for 20 years a third runway at your major airport. You just get it done. Just build it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Same thing with infrastructure like HS2, which has one virtue in it, which is that the plan is to be able to get out of Birmingham faster. And these, but these big infrastructure projects have been like endlessly debated in the UK for like 20 years. And that's very depressing. But yes, a group of Labour MPs, all with diverse constituencies or not, have been busily anti-runway at Heathrow.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
but have been urging the funding of an airport in Mirpur because their constituents want to be able to get back and forth to see family. Where's Mirpur? In Pakistan. And they're very insistent that anti-building of runways in England, but very... in Pakistan. And those things are just crazy. And everyone in Britain can see it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And, you know, and then people criticized these MPs for this obvious, ridiculous double standard of saying, you know, if Heathrow expands, you know, it will kill the planet. And they go, but, meh, poor. Great.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And everyone can see that. And then people in Britain, a couple of MPs called it out, and then were immediately called Islamophobic racists by these other MPs who, you know, that's just typical Britain. It's like typical Britain and nobody knows how to get out of it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's the same thing, you know, everyone now knows, you know, you complain about anything in Britain, online or off, and these weird eunuch-ized police will...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
tap on your door with a and none of it's metaphorical you know as constantin kissin said the other week about the thousands and thousands of people who've had police come to their door because of like saying something critical of their school on facebook and this sort of it's just it's just bizarre the weak situation that britain has got into we weren't like that um we don't have to be yeah the uh
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
lost in its entirety it hasn't been it hasn't been it's just been wildly suppressed like everything else like masculinity like natural you know the kind of the natural culture of the country I wrote the other week about this ridiculous thing where the Shakespeare birthplace trust inevitably is waging war on Shakespeare you know and that the new thing is like why are we doing so much Shakespeare at the Shakespeare birthplace trust and why aren't we spending more time celebrating this Bengali poet well
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
said bengali poet wasn't born in stratford-upon-avon you jerk probably if you go to his birthplace you won't find all that much shakespeare and but you know it's just filled all of the institutions all the cultural institutions all filled with stupid thinking like that you know i think the slight difference is there's a sense of rebelliousness in america that we don't
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, there is in Britain as well. There is everywhere. It's just that you can very effectively squash it. And, you know, for some years in America, they tried to squash that in America. And Americans used the biggest hammer they could find to hit back against it, which is Donald J. Trump. And the British public haven't yet found a hammer.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, the normal problem that people find when they get elected, and in fact I think he had in his first term, is that you don't – it takes four years or so to work out which levers you can pull and something happens. And which levers pull and you get a big clown appears. And which levers you pull and just absolutely nothing happens. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I'd like to think there are plenty of belligerent buggers back home as well. And there are plenty of brave people and plenty of people who may not have left the islands, but who still have similar instincts, you know.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, you have to make them better then. Yep. I think so. I don't really like whining.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It wasn't immediate what I was thinking when you mentioned it. But no, I quite like the fact that he stood up and said what a shithole the politicians are making of his home country of Ireland at the moment. And then his statement was confirmed by the fact that all Irish politicians condemned him for saying it. That's always a sign that you're right. Yeah, always a sign that you're right.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But yeah, I admired him for saying that. I don't know, everything about him is admirable, but I admired him for saying that. Again, I mean, since when did the Irish become such weak people? When I was growing up, they were car bombers. No, I'm not joking about that. No, it was some years ago in Derry, Londonderry. It was made the European City of Culture. I'm leaping to Northern Ireland.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Very good to be back with you in your native Austin. Ah, yes, you have. You're here for 24 hours. Salubrious. Wonderful. Watching your success with great admiration. Thank you. And great pride as well, in a way.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And the moment it was announced that Derry, Londonderry, was to become European City of Culture, somebody put a car bomb outside the offices of the European City of Culture. Fortunately, it didn't go off. But as a local friend of mine said, in one way, we were introducing them to our local culture.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I think he's come in this time knowing which levers to pull and a lot of presidential orders and much more. And so it's certainly more efficient and effective so far than his first months in office in the first term.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, I tried in a book some years ago called Strange Death of Europe and said almost everything I had to say about that. How much of a Cassandra do you feel like now? I think I was pretty much right on everything. Yeah. I didn't know how fast the timeline I'd be right on or which countries, but... It didn't require a profit. It just required somebody with eyes.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
If you madly import people from all over the world who don't particularly want to be part of your society and shove them into, you know, County Kerry, you'll create problems. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Oh, there was somebody in the British government who was an advisor. Good day for bad news. Good day for bad news. That's right. And then she lost her job. Yeah. I don't think it – I think the devices we all have in our pockets speed everything up. But what I can't quite understand is that – I mean, I have to be across all or most of the news, certainly about the things I need to know about –
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Because it's my job as well as my passion. But I can't understand the people who have the buzz on their Apple iPhone for updates of news when they're They're not in the business of it. It's very, very unhealthy to my view. I think it creates a sort of cycle of panic and forgetfulness and self-aggrandizement. Oh, my God, have you heard?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There's been an earthquake in Myanmar, and that's bad, but it all flows by, and it's always like that. I'm not quite sure what people are meant to do with most of the information that's coming their way if they're not in the business. Not quite sure what's expected of them, other than to kind of, some people they think- Wallow in it. Yeah, or sort of prove they care or something. I don't know.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think things like the border are huge accomplishments. Very, very big reason for his election was we've got to sort out the border. We can't just have a porous border with Central and Southern America and indeed the rest of the world. And border crossings have gone down to almost nothing.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I wish more people would read books.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I didn't take a gap year in Thailand.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
That's right. I think I was doing the Madness of Crowns, and you were in your place in Newcastle with a mold on the ceiling. Wasn't mold.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yes. That's a big story. I often say this about some of the war zones I've spent recent years in. I sometimes come back, and usually it happens in America. I get this sense that people are fed up of the war. It's not your place to be fed up with the war. You're not in the war. You're nowhere near the war. What you're saying is you want the story to change. But the story's not there for you.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's not there for your edification or entertainment. Um... That's a very unhealthy attitude I come across quite a lot. Oh, can't it just be over? Oh, bet no one in the region wishes that. Um... Yeah, that's a peril of coming back from places where the news is real, where none of it's metaphorical and none of it's abstract.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, I just got back from Ukraine again the other day and I watched the unfortunate episode in the Oval Office between President Zelensky and the President and Vice President. And I watched it with some Ukrainian soldiers in a trench at the front line. Well, I watched it and then noticed a bit later that they'd noticed it. I was profoundly depressed by what I saw.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah. And I think that the removal of illegals who have no right to be in America and have been committing crimes whilst in America or very dangerous criminals is a very good place to start. And inevitably, when you do that, you
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, and then actually was rather energized by the fact that the response of the troops was different. Uh, how so? Well, I said to, um, I said to the command of the drone unit that I was embedded with, um,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You know, I can't help noticing that as you were scrolling through your Instagram in a down moment, that was one of the things that came across your phone along with, you know, the usual cat videos and sort of hot chicks sort of thing, you know. And there was a picture from the Oval Office and I said, do you have any reaction to that? And he said, well...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
We were kind of encouraged not to spend too much time focusing on the international to-ings and fro-ings. And he said, I was rather pleased to quote it in the post, he said, shit happens all the time, but I've got a job to do. He went out and he put the bomb on the drone and sent it off. Keep calm and carry on droning. Yeah. That's always rather encouraging in a way.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
that what people get head up about nevertheless is a level at which people are still and you know whatever one people's thoughts about that war you know he and the other people in the trench their homes are like 30 kilometers behind us and the Russians were one and a half kilometers that way so none of it is abstract you know Do you know Freya India?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But we shouldn't be of the dejected belief that people are always what they are now. One of the things that's much struck me in the last 18 months in Israel is has been that the generation that I partly write about in this new book are very largely people from a generation who their elders thought were iPhone-obsessed, Snapchat and Instagram. Brain rot. Brain rot.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Some people will holler and wail, like the mayor of Boston who insists that somebody who's been paying taxes all their life in Boston and whose predecessors also paid taxes in Boston have the same rights as somebody who recently broke into Boston and wants to squat there on the street shooting up. And quite a lot of people disagree with that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Just wanted a party and have fun and, you know, be on Instagram. That was what a lot of older Israelis thought who fought in 67 and 73 and, you know, and so on. And then actually when their country was attacked, this is a generation that has stood up and shown its met. They've been galvanized. They really have.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mean, I've been with them, you know, for much of the last 18 months and whether it's in Gaza or in Lebanon or in Israel or Judea and Samaria. And I'm constantly struck by this, that these are people whose contemporaries in America and Britain are still described in the terms that they were described as until October the 6th, 2023. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So it's not inevitable that people can't rise to an occasion or can't change. It's not inevitable that because there's a sort of virtual era you've been in that you'll always be stuck in it. I do think when I came back from the Middle East at Christmas last year, I spoke to a friend who's a politician and said,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mentioned this phenomenon of, you know, just because people have been, it does not mean that when a time of trial comes, which is something I've had on my mind a lot in recent years, it's not inevitable that at the moment of trial, a lot of people don't step up and really show what they are. for the good. And this friend said, yes, it's true. It's circumstances, isn't it?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I said, I've got a slight tweak to make to that observation, which is yes, it's circumstances. But it's not just circumstances. It's circumstances plus whether you have well-cultured people up until that moment.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
This is why I've cited a few times and I cited in this book the terrible, terrible statistics for the percentage of young Americans who'd be willing to fight for their country if it was under imminent threat of invasion. The number of British young people would be willing to fight for their country if it was an existential risk.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And this is something, I say this in democracies and death cults, but if you look at the stats, it's terrifying. Shortly after Ukraine was invaded by Russia in February 22, there was a poll asking Americans, you know, what percentage of them would be willing to stay and fight if their country was invaded.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And only just a majority of Republicans said that they would stay and fight, and only just a majority of Democrats. And as I quipped at the time, that means the rest of them would hotfoot it to Canada, assuming that Canada wasn't the invader. I think when I first made that observation, that seemed like a joke.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There are lots of people, of course, who are finding a way on the deportations thing to criticize him, some of which is perfectly legitimate, which is, of course, stuff like, you know, there have been some cases of people who have been deported who haven't done nothing wrong. And that's also something that always happens when you try to institute a policy like that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah. I'm not quite sure of the... Is that just what happens?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
We'll see if Mark Carney has the balls to do that. No, I mean, I was fascinated by that. And when that poll first came out, a lot of Americans wrote about it and said, crikey, that's not good news. But I wasn't so depressed about it because in my interpretation – the concept for most Americans of their country being invaded by a land invasion from another country is not just hard to imagine.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's impossible to imagine. It's not impossible to imagine if you live in Donetsk or indeed in Kiev, but it's not impossible if you live in Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia anymore. But it's impossible for most Americans to imagine. So in a way, it's not really a fair question It's like me saying, you know, how do you think you'd behave if UFOs landed and Martians started telling you what to do?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You just don't know. But it was the same in the UK after about a year ago, I think, partly because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But there was also, I think, the head of the chief of the defense staff said, you know, If this escalation continued in Europe, then we might have to have conscription in the UK. And again, I mean, that sounds like nobody from this generation can even imagine that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But that was just what he said. And then, of course, there's a poll and it asks young people from the ages of 18 to 40, which is the ages of our forebears, when they went to fight in 1914-18 and 1939-45. And the majority of people said that they wouldn't fight even if Britain was... at existential risk of invasion.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And by the way, when I looked at the figures, I mean, there was some great, I think it was YouGov who did it, there was some fantastic gems inside that. One was that
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
one of the main reasons why people said that they wouldn't fight was like just the most banal things that they've been told by Hollywood films and things, which is, you know, little bits of Gandhi, which was, you know, the number of people who said things like, war doesn't solve anything. You know, want to bet? Um...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So there was that, and another one I think I was fascinated by, I think 9% of the young people questions said that they couldn't fight because they had someone at home they were looking after. Also a mysterious answer to me.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I don't think it means you don't institute the policy. It means you do it better, more accurately.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Too busy bringing her tea in the morning to stop her getting... Make sure that someone doesn't kick the door down. Yeah, it's very strange. Anyway, but the point is, the reason I mention this rather laboriously is I do think that it's very, very hard to predict how people actually react at a time of trial.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
One of the reasons why I tell some of the personal stories I do about the people I've spoken to in the war in Israel in the last year and a half is because it's so interesting to see who steps up and how people react. And, you know, the heroism of some people, indeed many people,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
When you realize what's at stake, I quote at the opening of On Democracies and Death Cults, this thing I've thought about a lot, which comes up in Tolstoy in War and Peace, which is when the two armies are facing off against each other in the old Napoleonic style, you know, where they... They face each other on the battlefield and the order has not yet been issued to advance.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And Tolstoy brilliantly describes how every soldier on each side knows that the step they're going to take is not just a step. It's a movement into a totally different realm. And that in that case, you are from the realm of standing there, uniform polished, on guard, meant to be holding a line. And from the moment you're one step that way, you're in the place where you'll just have to do anything.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And, um, and that's, that's one of the reasons why I'm, I'm, uh, why I'm interested in this, because this is the, this is the, this is the most real is why war is so terrible. And also for a writer so fascinating is because it's that, that transition from one world to another totally different world seems unfathomable until you're in it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
um a lot but i would say the simplest the most important one is that it shows uh people it shows humanity humankind at its absolute worst and it also at its absolute best There's nothing comparable to it in human experience that brings out the appallingness of which our species is capable and the greatness. And sometimes at the same moment.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
An awful lot. I mean, there are some stories I tell in the book, like, I mean, there's a young woman I met early in the conflict who had lost her fiancé. He had been at the Nova party. in the desert when Hamas attacked at 6.30 in the morning. Hundreds and hundreds of young people rave.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And when Hamas terrorists fired rockets and then drove in on military jeeps and started raping and killing and butchering, He managed to get – he was one of the people who did manage – the young people trying to get into cars and get out were blockaded by him as they were killed in the cars. And then it caused a backlog of the cars of people trying to escape.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And then people were just being killed where they were. There were a couple of other exits from the party. And one, this young man found and he took four strangers in his car, drove them away. to a nearby town called Bathsheba, dropped them off, drove back. They begged him not to. He spoke to his girlfriend on the way and she said, please don't.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
He went back, filled up the car with another group of young people from the rave, drives back. He goes back a third time and on the way back the third time Hamas killed them all. But this is just amazing, amazing human greatness. There's a friend who I mentioned in the book who has a story that should be much better known. He's a wonderful young man called Nimrod.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And he, on the morning, woke up in his home outside Jerusalem when the sirens were starting to go, the rockets coming in, thousands of rockets from Gaza. And he was in reserves. been a special forces guy. And he was in reserve. He woke up, realized for messages from people in the south how serious it was, got a call from his commander in his unit in Jerusalem, you're called back.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And he said, no, we're needed south. And he drove and he picked up a pistol on the way and I think eight rounds of ammunition. He went past every police checkpoint, security, army checkpoint, the stuff and it started to go up. He said he didn't see a live body until early hours of the afternoon. But then he engaged the terrorists and he fought with them for the next 48 hours, saved many lives.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But on the way, he said to me, he said, when I got to the junction where there were all these dead bodies lying around, party goers and others, he said, when I got to the motorway junction, I was certain I would not survive that day. And he stopped, he got out of the car and pulled into a ditch and he made a phone. He got on his phone, he made a video for his two children.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And he said, I wanted them to have a message from me that when the phone was found on my body, they'd have something. And he survived. And I just am filled with admiration, filled with admiration for people like that. Amazing. Amazing. We'd be very, very lucky in America, Britain, or any other country to produce people like that, but we could. We should.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
On Democracies and Death Cults. It's currently in between a lot of Easter books. I showed you Amazon bestseller lists, yes, just before we started.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There's an awful lot of... I will explain the title, but yes, it did amuse me that I'm currently battling in the Amazon.com bestseller lists with... I'm currently at number 12, but number 13, sneaking up behind me, is It's Not Easy Being a Bunny, an early reader book for kids, beginner books. You've probably got it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I'm getting very close to catching up with a great tome you probably know as well called Hippity Hoppity Little Bunny Finger Puppet Board Book for Easter. Also, Little Blue Truck Springtime is doing very well. You know, there was a humorist in the UK many years ago who discovered that in the 70s or so, the three things that sold books in Britain in those days were...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, and they should remedy that and make sure they've got things accurate. But I think none of that means that the status quo that existed is remotely right. And this is all sort of blowback that I'd imagine that he and the people who are working with him on that would have expected. It's a little early to say what's going to happen with the market stuff and the tariffs.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
anything to do with cats, anything to do with golf, and anything to do with Nazis. So he wrote a book called Golfing for Cats with a cat with a swastika armband on the cover. How did it do? Quite well, actually, I think, yeah. I'm not sure there's a perfect crossover in the Venn diagram of those readers, but yeah, no, next time I'll call it democracies and death cults and Easter bunnies. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
No, the title goes to something I had thought about for a long time and which I try to answer in the book, which is what attitude people in free liberal societies, democratic societies, societies that are at peace, can take towards what I call the death cults. I should stress, by the way, that our societies have experienced plenty of death cults in the past.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I give the example of a Spanish philosopher from the last century who was much opposed to the rise of fascism in Spain, Francoism, and a meeting at the university he taught at, the students at one point, started chanting viva la muerte, long live death. And he said this is the moment when this necrophilic utterance, this is the moment when it all goes wrong.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So it has happened in the past, but the death cult I'm primarily writing about and talking about in this book is the death cult of Hamas and Islamic jihadists in general. I say that shortly after the 7th of October, when I went to the region, went to Israel first,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I went to a reunion of some of the survivors of the Nova Party, and one of the young men who'd survived said to me, after showing me his footage from the morning, which was... too graphic to go into. But he said, what would you do if this happened in your country? And I thought, but I didn't say to him, but it has. You know, it has happened in my country.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It happened at the Manchester Arena in 2017. It happened at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris in 2015. It happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2015. It's just that it first of all, people sort of don't know what to do about it and try to pass it over. Or it hasn't happened, thank God, hasn't happened as much.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But it really, I suppose, it's in part, as well as being a firsthand account of war, the purpose of this book is to try to answer this question that I've tried to answer all my life, which is what
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
attitude you can take and what response you can make to uh people who have totally different values to yours because there has been this presumption which we both grew up with which is what we have is what everyone has or wants to have and we all have the same desires in this life and um some people do And some people just don't.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mean, I'm not one of those people who pretends to be an expert on absolutely everything. So I'm not going to pretend to be a tariff expert. I noticed the people who are tariff experts this week are the same people who were experts in Ukrainian mineral deposits just a matter of weeks ago. It's amazing what people can know. Pace of learning on the internet.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And some people want to, you know, they want to make the world burn. And some of them want to make other people burn and take as many people as they can with them and much more. And the taunt that Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the taunt they always have is the same, which is some variation of we love death more than you love life.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And in fact, Hassan Nasrallah, who went to meet his maker last year in Beirut, the head of Hezbollah, he said this for decades. He said, you know, the thing with the infidels is that they love life and this is their great weakness. And I think that's not the case. But I know for sure, and it's one of the things that this book is about, is that it's not enough to just like life or to enjoy life.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
If you're going to enjoy life, you also have to be willing to fight for it. And sometimes that's metaphorical, and sometimes it's really not.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, I mean, I think I've said to you before, one of the things that I noticed in the Internet age was that we'd gone from the era of... We disagree about our opinions or our interpretations of an event. And then the Internet age has given us the great things if we disagree about what just happened. And that does throw up its own manias.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So one of the reasons I try to see things with my own eyes is because I'm always pretty confident that someone's going to try to tell me I haven't seen something I've seen with my own eyes. And sure enough, that happens all the time, but you have the reassurance if you know. But I do find that interesting.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There are, for instance, I mean, there are people who would like to regard themselves as civilized people, I'm sure. who just will not accept that what happened on October the 7th happened, which was one of the reasons why I went there straight away was because I knew that would happen. When did you get there? I got there in October of 2023.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I went because I was in Times Square the day after the massacre, as it was still going on. And there was an anti-Israel pro-Hammaz protest happening there. in the center of Times Square with people supporting the massacre. And I thought, well, one of the things that's going to happen is they're going to pass over the massacre. They're going to celebrate it and pass it over.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
They're going to pretend it didn't happen or try to diminish it or minimize it. And I just didn't want to see that happen. It's what many people said, but it was like watching Holocaust denial in real time. And... Yes.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mean, and in the other main conflict going on at the moment in Russia, Ukraine, you know, I mean, at the highest level of the American government, there have been people who've implied that, you know, Ukraine started the war. or is the aggressor. And that's disturbing to see because there are some things that just have to be agreed upon.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You know, it was Russian tanks that rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. It was Hamas terrorists who invaded by the thousands into Israel on October the 7th, 2023. Like, let's at least agree to that. What you describe as the sort of the online thing is definitely massively worsened. And I think it's because, I mean, the sort of all the sluices are up, all of the guardrails, all of that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But this is what Trump has said, not just for the last four years campaign. It's what he said for 40 years. He believes that America is being taken advantage of. And we'll see whether – I mean, I would have thought, my expectation, my guess, from the little I know, is it'll be quite a lot of short-term turmoil.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And that's good in lots of ways. I mean, look at what happened when our societies tried to say there's only one explanation for, for instance, you know, the COVID pandemic. virus coming out of the area where that virus was being made and that it was to do with Chinese people eating bats from a wet market and not to do with the lab that was making that virus happening to be leaky.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
We were told consistently that the lab leak was a conspiracy. And one of the reasons why that's so poisonous to the discourse as a whole is because it understandably makes people say, if I've been lied to about that, what are the other things that are true? What are the other conspiracy theories that are not conspiracy theories? It becomes a gateway drug. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I think a lot of people are on that. And then, of course, it's a great habit and it's a kind of enjoyable. And people believe everything's being kept from them. And doubtless, some stuff is being kept from us, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. But I think the conspiratorial mindset is... Flourishing. Flourishing at the moment.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And it's funny because you can... Well, it's funny, but it's also, more importantly, it's serious because it's a sign of a very unhealthy thing in society. When the JFK files were released the other week, there was a lot of excitement that, you know, finally we're going to discover exactly what happened.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And, uh, I wrote a column a while after saying, you know, the thing we've learned from the JFK files is that the president was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald with the gun that Lee Harvey Oswald owned that Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald noticed was missing from the house that morning. And, um,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It was funny because I noticed that to the extent that I monitor reactions to anything I say, I noticed how many people were annoyed. No, there's still this question. He wasn't as good a sharpshooter as he is. You can't stop it. It looks, by the way, on that one, it's quite interesting.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It looks like what happened was the CIA were monitoring him pretty carefully, Lee Harvey Oswald, because he tried to defect to Russia once before. And he tried to defect Cuba. And so the CIA were monitoring him, and they didn't want to reveal the methods by which they did that. In the process, one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the modern era was born.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I don't think I'll persuade anyone who thinks otherwise on that, who's deeply into the idea that LBJ desperately wanted to do this or X wanted to do that. And the problem is, is what you allude to, is that the problem is that the algorithm rewards the crazy. Mm-hmm. I noticed on the day that the JFK files were released, some wank rag online started a live stream that was suggested to me.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
If in the long term it doesn't sort it out, if manufacturing cannot return to America as fast as it should, then that's a problem. That's the case in every Western country, though. We've all been – satisfying ourselves with cheap goods imported from China, usually using slave labor that we wouldn't want to see at home, but we turned a blind eye.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And its title was JFK files reveal Israeli plot or something. And there was no such thing. But that gets engagement. Whereas JFK scholars reading documents live, it'll take about four months.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Less engagement. You're not going to watch them reading. the documents. And, you know, that's just the reality of the era we're in. And you can't stop it, but I think people should be alive to it, should be aware of it. This is one of the things that's being done to us by these darn devices that tell me all about Easter Bunny books.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
dynamic it feels like that has been tuned up at least over the last couple of years yeah and um as i say in this book i mean it's inevitable because historically we know this is a case and i say this is somebody who isn't jewish but it will almost always end up with the jews why is that the case very interesting question um one is that right and left can both do it
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Oh, like an equal opportunity victim. Yes. Right. Both right and left can do it. I say at one point in the book, one of the interesting things about anti-Semitism is that it's, which isn't to say that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, which isn't, etc., etc., But I think that one of the interesting things about anti-Semitism is that it's famously a shape-shifting virus.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It can come from anywhere. It can come from the political left. It can come from the political right. It can come from people wearing jackboots, and it can come from people wearing COVID masks, you know. Laterally, we've been less attuned to the existence of the second, you know, because there's always this expectation that it'll be the same as last time, but it doesn't, it moves.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But the reason why I do think that that's a perennial to the conspiracy mind is because the Jews can be blamed for everything and just have been historically. They get simultaneously blamed for being poor and for being rich. You know, 19th century British antisemitism and indeed continental antisemitism relied on the trope of the Rothschilds and of the impoverished Jews from Eastern Europe.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And they just did both at once. They can be accused of being very religious and trying to push religion and also being ultra-secularist, the most secular, pushing atheism. They can be blamed for being stateless, ruthless cosmopolitans was the line that anti-Semites of the right used to use and the left about Jews. And now they get blamed for having a state. So it's a sort of perennial.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I think if you wanted to go down exactly on why it is, it's of many reasons. There's different types of anti-Semitism. There's Islamic anti-Semitism. There's types of Christian anti-Semitism. I think that it ends up usually being that historically Jews are almost perfectly positioned to mirror whatever your own failings are.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And there's much manufacturing, many goods that there's no reason why you couldn't make them in America. Whether or not you can persuade people to actually take up those jobs, start those firms, that's another matter entirely. But if anywhere can do that, America can.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And this is a line I quote in the book from a great Russian writer, Vasily Grossman, who said in the 20th century in his masterpiece Life and Fate, he said, tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I'll tell you what you're guilty of. It's fascinating insight, this. It's a mirror to your own failings. How so?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So, for instance, the main accusation that the revolutionary Islamic government in Tehran uses of the Jewish state of Israel is that it's a colonial power.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, and, uh, it, uh, this is quite funny to me because, I mean, by the way, the Supreme leader of Iran last year wrote a thank you letter to students at Columbia and other American Ivy league universities for coming out for the last year and a half, uh, on anti-Israel protests. He wrote them a thank you letter and joining him in the anti-colonialist. Cause.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There is one country in the Middle East which has been colonizing the place more than any other in our lifetimes, and that's the Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran. They colonized the great country of Iran in 1979. They've, in the years and decades since, they've colonized Iraq, colonized Syria, colonized Yemen, colonized and destroyed Lebanon.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But they say the Jews are the colonialist power. Another very good example, just right there. The president of Turkey, sometime very close enemy of mine, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who I initiated a defamatory poetry competition against many years ago. That's a byway. You have friends in high places. I do. And then good enemies, the best.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
The Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Erdogan of Turkey, accuses the Jewish state of being an occupying power. which is hilarious if you know Cyprus at all, because the north half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey now, still, has been for 50 years. Totally illegal occupation that nobody in America or Britain or the West seems to give a damn about. So when Erdogan says the Jews are occupiers,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
All he's doing is telling us about himself. That's all. And when, I mean, it works every which way you do it. The Nazis accused the Jews of being racists.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's an extraordinary thing. And this works almost every way. Yeah, people accuse the Jews of things they're guilty of. And because they're a small enough portion of the global population and tend to outperform, not always by any means, but tend to outperform in the areas they go into, they're almost the perfect scapegoat. Is this not true of other groups too? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Never anywhere as much because of this shape-shifting thing I described and because there are very deep theological reasons for it. It took until the 1950s for a pope in Rome to say the Jews are not responsible for the killing of Christ. That's a long time for the church to confirm that. So, you know, you have many centuries of Christian anti-Semitic pogroms and much more.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
The Islamic world has not yet caught up with that, and much of it still blames the Jews. for rejecting the revelation of Muhammad because when the inventor of Islam came up with the idea and went around trying to get other people to join him, the Jews were among the first people who said, no, thanks, we've already got our religion and we'd like to keep it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ones we can buy a top for $4 and... throw it away after two uses, which, yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I don't know. I mean, I'm very wary about using other people's tragedies as mere sort of learning, you know, points. But I can tell you the few... the few sort of positive things that, that I have picked up.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And one is a very straightforward one, which I think is a very important one for the West, which I go into in this book, which is, um, because I mentioned, I mean, it's about this, these twin worlds and how does the democracy, whatever you were, Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter. Um, Labour, Conservative, doesn't matter.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But what can anyone who, broadly speaking, likes the societies we're from and wants them to continue, wants them to do well, what can they do if those societies are tested? And I think one of the things that is really very obvious to me now is you need to know what you're fighting for. You need to know that what you're fighting for is something... that you cherish and you love.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I think that there has been in the period of de-energizing, which hopefully we're coming out of, but in that period, we have all been told in America and Britain and elsewhere that what we have is not good, you know? As I said in my last book, In the War on the West, we have been told that we're guilty. I mean, this is all horseshit, by the way.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I mean, that we're uniquely guilty from colonialism or uniquely guilty from slavery or uniquely guilty from racism or all of this stuff is total horseshit. We should never have put up with it for so long. that among other things people from around the world wanted to come to countries in the West and then tell us how bad we were. Should never have agreed to that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Somebody came into my home and said they didn't like my home and they thought it was uniquely awful. I think I'd tell them to scram. So why we put up with this for so long, I don't know. But we have been, and arguably many young people in particular, younger than us, have been told that what they have been born into is not good.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And one of my first instincts when I saw that poll of young Americans and young Brits, you know, would you be willing to lay down your life for the country if something terrible happened and you had to step up? I think one of the reasons why the yes vote is so low is because it doesn't matter whether you're patriotic or not. You've been told your country's rotten.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You know, there was an article written in the Daily Mail the other week by a very smart young British guy who's right wing. I think he's a reform voter type saying, why would I lay down my life for my country when it's let me down so badly? When, you know, our politicians don't listen to us. So it's not just a left right thing by any means.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I think people have been told from a lot of different directions that our countries are not good. And I think that's not true. I never thought that was true. I've got a long enough memory and I've travelled enough, run up enough air miles in this life to know that's not true.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But if you tell people that it's the case for a long time and you de-energize them and you de-motivate them, you tell them that they're rotten, then yeah, you can really demoralize a society. I think that needs to turn around. I think that people need to recognize what we have that's good. And as I've said to you before, the footfall alone tells us all we need to know. The footfall alone tells it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Nobody is trying today to make their way out of America to get to the safe harbor of Venezuela. Nobody's even leaving Britain to go to France. Certainly nobody's leaving France or Spain or Italy to try to get to Algeria. And in turn, nobody from Algeria is trying to break into sub-Saharan Africa. Very few people are trying to break into communist China.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Absolutely no one is trying to hot foot it to North Korea. Okay, so like all of the countries that people in the world most want to come to are now what they have been for decades. America, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, and so on. So why did we put up with being told that these countries that are demonstrably the places people want to come to are bad places and everywhere else is good?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's just so sickening to me. I've had enough of it, and I think most people have.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the real colonialist thinking. That's the real orientalist thinking of our time. It's the idea that it's actually rather wonderfully sent up in White Lotus, among other things. It is that stupid idea that, you know, other cultures have like a depth of philosophy that we don't have or other cultures have a spiritualism that we don't have.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomenon I've described before of people going backpacking to see temples in Thailand. Wonderful things, absolutely. Going to Myanmar to see temples. Wonderful things to see, absolutely. But you should also visit Winchester Cathedral or Salisbury or St. Peter's in Rome or Chartres, you know. on and on and on.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It's a very interesting mindset, the Western mindset, that what we have isn't rich enough. I described this recently at Ark. I borrowed Eric Weinstein's great analogy about ice cream. Have you heard this? It's a brilliant observation.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Some years ago, Eric and I were talking about this weird thing where the West had been sort of tricked into thinking, or we'd been sort of told that we need other flavors to make ourselves interesting because otherwise we're not interesting. You'll notice, by the way, that doesn't work any other way around.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Wow. I'm going to sound incredibly old now, but when I was growing up in West London as a boy, I remember there was a rag and bone man. Yeah. Do you remember that?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Nobody goes to Ghana and says, I just can't help noticing you don't have enough Welsh people. And you could really do with it because it'll bring you some color, some much-needed diversity. Nobody would think of going to Pakistan and saying, you know, guys, seriously, you just don't have enough French culture here. But you do do it always with the West. You do do it always.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And Eric's observation, which I thought was just brilliant, that classic way he can do to sort of refine a complicated question. He said, you know, Douglas, when I was growing up, I had the impression for a while that vanilla ice cream was the base ice cream. It was like the base flavor. and that all other flavors of ice cream were flavors added on to vanilla ice cream.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And it's the same with us in the West. Vanilla, if you want to look at it like that, is a very complicated and rich flavor of its own. It's not the case that everything added to it is being added to a non-flavor. And I wish we realized that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I wish we had a little bit more... I always say I never want sort of... I don't want tub-thumping nationalist stuff, but I would like people to have some darn pride in things they should have some darn pride in.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Not really for me to say. I think it goes back to that point about seeing things at their best and at their worst at the same time, you know. I... I can't deny that when you see some things too much, too close up, it has some kind of effect on you. I describe some of that in this book, actually. But it's countered by the encouragement one gets. I don't mean encouragement for other people.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
A traveler, usually, I suspect, with a horse-drawn cart, calling out rag and bones. Yep.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mean literally seeing people who are encouraging to me in their actions. And, you know, there have been in both conflicts – I spent more time in Israel-Gaza conflict than in Ukraine, but I was very struck near the beginning of the Ukraine conflict when I was with Ukrainian armed forces when they retook Kherson from the Russians – And all these, you know, unbelievable sight.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
All these people coming out from their houses after eight months under Putin-esque rule. Coming, being liberated by their own army. And unbelievable scenes and conversations and sights. And I find real heroism there. on the battlefield, uh, a remarkable thing. I mean, unbelievably encouraging and, and, um, positive.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, I like and feel enormous encouragement from seeing, uh, people fighting for life. I think it's, uh, almost unequaled, uh, as a thing to make you feel optimism about the species.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, and particularly fighting for life against people who worship death, you know, um, I tell a story in this book about, which is, um, slightly difficult stories to retell actually, but, um, the, the mastermind of October the 7th, Yahya Sinwa, who was a proper psychopath. I mean, as you'll see when the,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
the segments about him i mean a proper psychopath you know he was in an israeli prison in the 2000s for strangling to death various palestinians who he had fallen out with you know um anyway he uh uh
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
he had such necrophilic fantasies as a, as a man, you know, promised even before the 7th of October, he said, we will go over and we will get the Jews and we will tear their hearts out of their bodies. Um, In the end, uh, he was killed by a young soldier from a regiment called the Bismarck who aren't even fully soldiers.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, and this young man who killed Sinhua within less than a year of the 7th of October was not even in uniform when Sinhua invaded. And I went into Rafa just after Sinhua was killed. I went to see where he was and was with the unit, including the men who killed him. And I thought, what an extraordinary and wonderful thing that this man high on death finally had death delivered to him.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
by someone who wasn't even in uniform. Some part-time squaddy. He created his own downfall. And that sort of thing, I mean, I think that, you know, we all know there are different ways and different philosophies and different theological systems to look at the battle between good and evil. But this one, that one is a very clear one to me.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Is that a good strategy for the future of the lab? I'm not sure about that. Eric Swalwell was the one who was found banging Fang Fang, wasn't he? Do you remember that? Chinese spy Fang Fang. She infiltrated him.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah. I always have been. I just don't care. you know, I, I, I was saying to somebody recently that I really, I mean, I slightly wonder what would have happened if I'd have grown up in the social media era and I have, you know, friends and felt more of that sort of surveillance.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I think, I think the truth is, is simply that I think that people's sense of whether you're going right or wrong in your life or your career and your whatever, um, Who takes advice from complete strangers?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And don't we all, I'm sure you as with me, you listen to advice or criticism even from people who care for you and you care for or love and, you know, who love you, who you admire and who admire you. I mean, I reckon, I mean, without getting all schmaltzy, I reckon that if you said to me, I saw this interview you did, and I think you shouldn't have said that or whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I would actually listen to that. Because, you know, there are some people who I respect whose opinion I think, yeah, that matters. But if you were, you know, just some rando online saying, why the hell would that matter? I think I've said to you before that one of the interesting things is, of course, is because the very nature of criticism is that you have to work out.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think I said this when we first spoke. You have to work out whether the person criticizing you is criticizing you to improve you or to demoralize and destroy you. And the friendly critic...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So I'm saying I'd like to think of the same thing if I said, you know, I just think, you know, you might think I wouldn't be saying something critical of you other than if I thought it would improve you in some way or make something better for you.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But I mean, you know, definitely have an advantage if you grew up before the deranging in online era, because I think some of that sense is created from that. But I mean, you know, it's it's I don't think it's a difficult superpower to acquire. I really don't.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Okay. Yeah, he was infiltrated by a Chinese Communist Party spy. Okay. Sexually? Very much so. Okay. And regrettably so. And that was a big national security breach. But yes, the others, look, Don Lemon. Why? I mean, like asking to find sense in the entrails of a chicken. His analysis is of no value. And if the Democrats listened to him, they'd never be in power again. What?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, uh, mixed, I think as with anyone, um, he got the very, very large and considerable mandate, um, won the popular vote, made it pretty impossible for people to criticize him.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
So what are the things then that you put an onus on that you don't think you have?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think that it's probably the last one, which people online, a lot of people online would be hoping with anyone they're attacking to be able to do.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
What they're hoping is that they'll do something that will demoralize you. And I imagine, I mean, I know that when I really want to demoralize someone, That's the sort of thing I'd do. I actually think the most effective form of really nasty criticism is to find out what the really weak spot is on someone.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There was a crazy woman many years ago in London who used to, she was actually Jewish, but she was the most very vicious, vicious anti-Israel protester imaginable. And She used to turn up with a group of other maniacs and like disrupt things like the Jerusalem String Quartet played at the Wakemore Hall. And they were like, gah! I attacked the string quartet. Couldn't you find a stronger target?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Um, and, but I remember writing a piece about her and, um, for some reason I knew that if I just said, you know, you're just anti, just a maniac, whatever it wouldn't, you know, she'd had it all. But I, I remember thinking, cause she would sing these mad songs. Like she'd sing something. It was a song with new lyrics by herself that were like. Hating.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And I remember just describing her as a semi-trained singer. Oh, that was the one.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Oh, yeah, they libeled me and lied about me so badly in the column that they had to pay very substantial expenses in libel damages to me. And expenses. And read out an apology in the High Court in London.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
which was they tried to do the classic thing i think i can say this um sometimes when somebody's forced to do a libel um retraction they sort of they don't tweet or publish anything and then they suddenly they do it and then they do masses of things so that it gets buried even on their own timeline but um i made sure that didn't happen How?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, I went quite big on the retweets, and Elon helped by retweeting it. And actually, I think currently it's the most viewed apology in the history of British legal cases. So I wasn't unhappy about that. You did ask. Jesus Christ. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There's a principle among journalists that generally you don't sue because, you know, it's all kind of rough and, you know, but this one was so egregious that I just... What did they do? I don't fucking repeat the libel that I've just had.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah. Well, I mean, everyone knows that. I mean, despite being a member of the press myself, I mean, you know, one of the worst things about the press is that, you know, sometimes they get something like wildly wrong, but it's like front page. And then the correction is three years later on page 49 in a, you know, small type and so on. And everyone knows that.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And, you know, it's just part of the rough and tumble. But, yeah. I think, I mean, having opinions that you disagree with or are wrong is all just fair enough. But, you know, you can't go around and just make shit up and claim that it's true.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
A very straightforward one, which is you listen to your defeat and you learn from it. And you work out what you did wrong. And I think they are, to some extent, my friends who are on the left and my other Democrats, the sensible ones are trying to do that. You'll notice that since the election in November last year, they've definitely changed their strategy a bit.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Or at least you oughtn't to, and you certainly oughtn't to if you're the Guardian Observer newspaper group and present yourselves as some kind of guardian of the truth. Holy of the now. So, yeah, but I don't do that very often, but there are a few times when I've had substantial donations from people who've libeled me, and I wait. and then act and win.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I thought I'd extend the moat around my house and build a new drawbridge, actually. Some more butlers? I'm not sure there's room for more. I mean, there's got to be a limit, don't there? You can't have...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, I mean, I'm very self-critical. One of the... I learned this from Anthony Powell years ago from his novel. There's a brilliant observation in one of them that you should always presume that people who are very critical do turn the criticism inwards as well. That's absolutely true. And I think it's actually constructive.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I mean, I think it would be wildly odd if you were critical of other people and not of yourself. But I think broadly speaking, it's a good thing to be self-critical on that. But I don't know. I don't spend much time thinking what other people think about me. I generally take the view... I mean, of course I think it's healthy because I think it.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Nobody says, I have this really unhealthy thing I like to think.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Almost nobody says, actually, I'm just not a very good judge of character. I'm just not good at telling who's a serial killer and who isn't. I just... And there are various ones like that that are very obvious.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think that, in general, my attitude is to be wary about thinking about other people's thoughts about me because I think that people who express great admiration or, you know, whatever about me, I kind of don't... Obviously, that's nice, but I don't want to absorb it too much because I don't want to become a dick or any more of a dick.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And people who really don't like what I say, I don't think that's great either. I mean, I go back to this thing. I think that, I mean, where I would be very, very sensitive would be if I made an error or something like that, because then I'd feel that I made a mistake. I got something wrong. And that would bother me.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
We haven't got Russia, Russia, Russia, and you're all Nazis so much. They're still doing it a bit, but not anywhere near as much. Partly because if your opponent has won the popular vote, it's tricky to pretend that the majority of people in America are Nazi supporters. The wiser Democrats realize that's not a good strategy. Losing strategy. Yeah. Don't insult the voters in their majority.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And does when I do, you know, I make a factual error or something that's really annoying and it has happened. But I don't think it pays to spend very much time thinking about what other people think about you. I just don't. I think it sort of means you don't get on with things and I've got a lot to do.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, this book, obviously, which has got to beat the bunnies, and with your help to the top, I'm doing a lot of travel to roll out the book, which is great, which I love. It's a funny thing with books. How's yours coming along, by the way? Yeah, hiatus at the moment. Really? Taking over.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Yeah, one of the great things about books is that you, or the odd things about books, is that when you've done the book, or when you've finished it, you haven't finished it. That's when the work starts? Just because the moment, like, I think we're talking, well, we are talking on the day that the book's officially out in America. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And so, you know, it's like from now that people start reading it. And for me, that's great because that's when the book really starts. And of course, people can listen to it on Audible where you get these dulcet. No, not you. You don't read it. I read it on Audible. And so, I mean, that's nice as well. And by the way, I mean, that is, as you know, it's fantastic.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
That's one of the great things, doesn't get enough attention, the upside of some of the tech. I mean, I discovered that there's a, you know, there's a wonderful readership, listenership, which was not there before audio books took off to the extent they have now, which is thanks partly to podcasters and the way in which people are able to, you know, are able to absorb and wishing to absorb audio,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
um, you know, information and discussion and books. Uh, and that, and that's just fantastic. There's a, there's a fantastic audience out there of people who, you know, might not come home and crack open a book at the end of the day, but we'll listen to it and they get the same thing. Plus with me in their ear. Um, so I, I love the business of a book being out. Um,
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Even one about some pretty dark stuff like this one. But, yeah. When do you do a fun one next? When do we have a nice fun one? Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I... I have a backlog of books in my head of the ones I want to write. Are there any fun ones?
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Well, yeah, now I know the frigging competition. The bunny market. No, I've always got a lot to do. Always a lot on my mind. And projects and, yeah, a lot to do.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
They should learn from it. They should. And I think they are. I think this time around, there's much less denial. And now the books are starting to come out as we knew they would be explaining that, you know, actually, you know, the Democrats kind of knew that Joe Biden wasn't there. These expose, memoir-y, ex-house staffer people.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
The people who spent the years of the Biden presidency assuring us that there's nobody who has a sharp attack in the box. And now they're all saying, oh, actually, you know, he didn't know whether he was the president of the United States or the head of NATO and things like that. And so that stuff is starting to come out. And there'll be lots more and they'll tear themselves apart for a bit.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
But the main problem for the Democrats is just they don't really have anyone leading the party. Chuck Schumer, when he made his deal with Trump on the budget the other week, immediately was the most hated person on the left. And even Pelosi criticized him on that. So it's hard to see who's really...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
sort of leading the party it's not cohesive at the moment no and um so they should they should they should learn my view is if i was a democrat advisor strategist i would say what what what anyone would from observing them which is they tacked very far to the crazy left
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
from the election onwards um first couple of months there's been very little i think pushback or rallying around against him um then inevitably there are things that are now happening you may have noticed if you keep an eye on the markets or anything like that uh which very much people are uh going for him on um but yes i mean it's it's kind of early days but A mixed bag, I'd say.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
and um the american public didn't want it uh as indeed most publics don't and they didn't want all their children to be transed and they didn't want uh all of the crazy identity politics stuff that had gone just completely deranged um they also didn't want i mean the the more sensible ones have already realized that it's a it's a party a very very distinguished party with a with a
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
considerable history. It's not a street movement. It's not a protest movement. I can't remember which one it was who the other week, I wrote about him in my column in the New York Post, who led a protest on a street in New York against Elon Musk. And I think it's probably the most illiterate speech I've ever heard against some really quite stiff competition.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
And it ended up with him saying, you take your Moscow money, you moo, moo, moo, moo. Yeah. Not good. Line for the ages. Line for the ages. Cicero would have envied it. So the wiser ones were just, that's not how you become serious again. You don't give in to the street protest people. Don't give in to the most radical people.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
There are really impressive people in the Democratic Party, but they're going to need to allow them to come up. Tim Walz. If I was a Republican strategist, I would tell the Democrats to keep going with Tim Walz. The pinnacle of masculinity. I mean, all that stuff is just a disaster. Everyone knows that he was a horrible candidate. Everyone knows that Kamala was a horrible candidate.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
You've just got to find the talent and encourage it up. But they've got time. I don't think they should panic or start, you know. But they do at some point have to have a coherent opposition to Trump and Trumpism.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
I think, as I understand it, what happened with Zuckerberg was that he discovered that, you know, with whatever it is, 80,000 employees, you set up a philanthropic wing with like 1,000 employees. And then they spend all their time warring on the 80,000 people making money and deranged the whole company. And so...
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
Absolutely. I mean, I said to you many years ago, I'm sure, with Madness of Crowds, I mean, one of the problems with all of that stuff was, you know, at some point it gets serious and the bridges start to fall down, you know. I was never totally confident that if the bridges fell down because of DEI that people wouldn't say that's just yet more evidence of the patriarchy. But it gets serious.
Modern Wisdom
#928 - Douglas Murray - Why Has The World Gone Insane?
It gets really serious at certain points. It gets really serious with the military. I'm very glad that Pete Hegseth is addressing that. You do want extremely tough, mainly men, at the forefront of your nation's military and your nation's defense. It's not about, you know, to use the most perhaps hackneyed but most extraordinary one, it's not about that, like, CIA...
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Interesting question is whether you're busy watering it.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Absolutely. Okay, you should. Absolutely. I have all four going back and looking at mistakes.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
It's a very weird thing to go back, zone in on a man, say this one thing is a mistake and should characterize him, and you ignore everything else.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
In the archives, clearly. Come on. I mean, he is not the historian of our era.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
This is the thing, Joe. This is like punching jelly. No, but you don't consume his work. What I'm saying, because I don't need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history. I understand.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Yeah, I know, but okay. So this is my point about jelly. It's a shape-shifting thing. Comedian or historian? He's not a comedian. Historian or podcast? Would be historian or actual historian? You say he doesn't claim to be a historian, but he's pumping out tens of hours of history.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Weird jujitsu move where you say, hang on, you know all about this as well. You say, I'm not a historian, but I'm going to spend my time talking about history. I'm not a journalist, but I'm going to spend my time talking about this thing. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm going to spend my time talking about this thing. It's a weird move, yeah? No. You don't think?
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
I've noticed you can. But what's the point? The point is, what are you pushing? What are you watering?
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Okay. That doesn't mean we are on the verge of a war. I mean, you keep referring to we being in wars. There's a very big difference between a country having a military that's engaged and a country being at war. This country has not been at war for 25 years. You have not been fighting for the American homeland for 25 years.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
You haven't been randomly picking on them. I mean, Afghanistan, you went... I didn't say it was random. Yeah, right. Okay. It wasn't like you suddenly decided... Just pause it for a second.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Or get Myanmar or something. We went to Afghanistan to find bin Laden and take revenge for 9-11 and stop an attack like that happening again on the American homeland. That is very different from a country being at war.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
Oh, I said it was a war. It's your use of we, as if you're personally like suffering this war.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
You take it obviously very personally and that's your right to do so, of course. I'm just trying to make sure we're accurate here.
Part Of The Problem
Thoughts on the JRE Debate
And there's a very good argument to make on that. I'm still slightly bemused about this move from I'm an expert on this and I have views to I'm a comedian.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Let's say enough people who are on the side of Israel instead of wild critics.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You'll say, oh, the crafty Paul Wolfowitz. His crazy eyebrows.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Just let me continue with the thought. So I remember those days. And his boss, Donald Rumsfeld... was like the ruler of the world at that time. He had such charisma, such genius was attributed to him for the initial invasion of Iraq. People, you can't imagine the admiration that existed in the defense establishments around the world for Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney was so powerful,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That people of right and left, particularly on the left, spent all those years in the W. Bush administration saying W. wasn't the real president. He was being run by Dick Cheney because he was the brilliant, et cetera, et cetera.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
OK, but I'm just saying it goes back to this thing of when certain ideas catch hold and what's really going on in them. To attribute American foreign policy in the last 40 years to Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Pearl is knowingly or otherwise to encourage a conspiracy that has very obvious legs. And I just urge you not to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
on no you come on what's the argument if you said to me i said a four-star general said something and there's no what's the response if if if if you said to me or somebody said to me uh don't you think there's a that some people are running the global financial system and i said uh possibly and you and i said who do you think it is and they said the rothschilds
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think I'd be right in saying there was something a bit off about the character of the person doing that because it seemed like they were playing to some kind of lazy old trope. And I think similarly that if you give the implication that a cabal of people, particularly, and you should be really careful about this because of the people who will come up underneath you,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
If you give the implication that these cabals exist and you decide to elevate the Jews or people with Jewish names in it and then play down the non-Jews, I can tell you, you will be opening up a world of madness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You said Middle East policy is Dick Pearl and Bush. Paul Wolfowitz. And I said, how about it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And now you're telling me that this is the same thing as promoting... Don't pretend to me that when you quote somebody, it's a totally arbitrary thing that you just pluck out of the air. You decided to cut that out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think that when you decide to elevate what is... a conspiracy of people who are overthrowing the governments of various countries, some of which haven't been overthrown and others of which have. By the way, we're not overthrown by American dominance, certainly not in Syria. And then you say that the people who are doing it are these people with Jewish names.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think you should be more judicious than that because you probably know what bubbles up underneath you online by now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
We could go back to that, but I disagree. I think that Israel has every right to go in and destroy the terrorist group that carried out the mass.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Again, which I think we're just not answering what I'm saying. I think I've already answered that. But just just to go back to the meat of that. I think you don't realize that actually people like me who have a voice and write and much more do think about that all the time. It's a profound concern and responsibility. I agree with that. Right, right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And don't think I don't worry all the time and make sure I intervene constantly. into the debate very carefully at times when I think some people have picked up something that I've been saying and are going to go wrong with it. that scares the hell out of me. And I do it regularly. And I do it because I have to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, but you do say, but you do say on occasion, I mean, most obvious one on that. If there is something where something really... fetid happen, something really terrible, and there's a bunch of people that decide to riot or commit violence or something like that, I know that I have to, as a duty, say absolutely this is to be condemned.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
If it is people trying to pretend that all Muslims this or all that, absolutely I intervene to stop that. I think that is, but I think that this is one of the responsibilities that comes with putting out ideas in the public square.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I think that none of us are blame free, but all of us have some kind of responsibility to know that what we put out there is very carefully watched, very carefully followed, and that we have to tread well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, maybe you have power. Maybe you have power. Both of you. We live in an era where podcasters have a lot of power. If you go on a podcast with Jake Shields and Jake Shields goes on to another podcast and says he doesn't think six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. What do you think is happening there? That's an exercise of power. Okay. And I agree with you about the breakdown of trust.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Or make sure I say which politician I think can deal with it decently and which ones will not. I mean, I've... made plenty of enemies in the European right by saying who I think is bad and who will not do this well. I just put it out there. Literally, I say it as a point of caution.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
As the great Michael Malice said, and as you quoted, one red pill, not the whole bottle.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
A lot of people, they take one of those things and they just get hungry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
By the way, what's the one in front of you? Which one? That one there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That one, yeah. It's nicotine. Oh, that's the chewing one. It's like a pouch. Chris Williamson showed me yesterday this one that he said weightlifters are using in Austin. It's like a powder or something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, it's not nicotine. It's something like it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I hadn't heard of that since like 19th century women who thought they had the vapors and he said these are smelling salts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Kind of. I've got to get to D.C., one of my least favorite cities in the country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Thank you. You can hear these mellifluous tones.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Absolutely. We have lived through an era where, in real time, we saw something called a conspiracy, the lab leak, which turns out to be true, as you and others said it might be from the beginning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It used to be racist when we were saying that it was likely that the COVID variant had come out from the place making COVID variants.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They were eating pangolins. But that one fell apart in front of our eyes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I've said repeatedly, it's kind of inevitable to me that if you see something that is called a racist conspiracy theory fall apart and become also what we used to call true in a few years, it's likely to blow a lot of people's minds. But the question then is, do you help those minds that have been blown blow?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
blow themselves out some more by doing a whole load of other conspiracy stuff, do you decide to go, hey, what else have we been lied to? Maybe Churchill wasn't a great guy. Maybe Hitler wasn't such a bad guy. Maybe the Holocaust, et cetera, et cetera.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I've seen this. I've seen this before. I know exactly what these guys are drinking. They're drinking a couple of very, very discredited historians like David Irving, and they are just regurgitating it. And it was always been the same thing. It is always an attempt to minimize Hitler's anti-Semitism actions. Eventually, down the road, you get to minimizing his actual involvement in the Holocaust.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And then you can go on to the next stage.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
My point is, why are we even talking about this guy? Because you brought him up. Yes, because he comes on podcasts like this. My point is, this is not a serious historian.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But why do you think that is, just out of interest? I'm just interested in your selection of guests, because you're like the world's number one podcast.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He is allowed to. I'm saying that there is a weird way in which figures like him, whose ideas are not being counted when they are raised... are given platform after platform to spread their views. They are welcome to those platforms. I'm not saying they shouldn't be platformed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm saying these are very, very fringe figures who are pushing ideas that are either debunked now, have been debunked before, or they will not stand up against somebody who disagrees with them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I also think it's reasonable for him to say, I don't really do debates. Yeah, I think it's weird to mainstream very fringe views constantly and not give another side. I think that's weird.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There's no contradiction. Let me clear it off if you think there is. I think there are very fringe views that have become mainstreamed on the right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Sure, you can play an epistemological game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But you do understand the concept, don't you?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm saying that there will have that if you mainstream very, very fringe views, which is easily able to be debunked, if you if you if you mainstream them. At some point, that view that was so fringe will be what eager, very disconnected, unhappy people are going to start playing with, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But can I just, sorry, it's your show, but if you're going to interview historians of the conflict or historians in general, why would you get somebody like Ian Carroll?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And if these people are such experts in how you see a society go weird, they can look at what is happening to a portion of the right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
everywhere on this stuff there is a portion of the right across the west that is playing this very dark game and they're doing it deliberately and you can't not be aware of that i am i agree with that i don't think daryl cooper is doing that but i do agree with your your characterization i think it's a pretty important distinction there you're just taking this one statement and then this where he's trying to joke around with his buddy this this churchill statement
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, because he and these other guys are all doing the anti-Churchill stuff now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
We're going to have to get into the weeds on Churchill. There is always going to be a corner which you can get me on on a bit of Churchill.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Churchill was never working with the Germans to invade Russia.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
This is... Okay. Okay. First of all, I never do Wikipedia.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
This is just what Jamie pulled up. Okay, but first of all, yes, at the end of the war, a plan requested that wasn't seen through... That suggests that after the defeat of Nazism, communism of the Soviet form is also going to be a threat to Europe was simply evidence. I mean, it's obvious. True. It's what Churchill worried about throughout the 40s. He worried about it in Yalta.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He worried about it everywhere. I'm sorry, but I have to return to this point that. This man manages to do one of the most heroic things in human history, in standing alone against evil in its most concentrate form. And he does about as much as any human being can do to save the civilized world. If you just park that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
and you go on to a plan in 1945 to try to counter Soviet domination of Europe, you see what I'm saying? This is not doing something in the round.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But do you have any, I mean, there's been a tilt in the conversation, in both conversations in the last couple of years. And it's largely to do with people who have appointed themselves experts who are not experts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
address that fundamental you say uh the the outcome of world war ii and everything happening it was the worst thing that's ever happened and the worst thing imaginable worst possible outcome you said just about you said worst possible outcome let me give you a much worse possible outcome hitler wins
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'll do that. I'm not quite sure what they add.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
So it's not the worst possible outcome.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That's just what my country and others went.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There's a very weird argument that you now hear about this. This attempt to revision this, and I know why it's happening. I don't think there's anything that's revisionist. I think there is. But this attempt to sort of say, look, at the end of World War II, what have we got? Stalin has half of Europe. What was the point? And so on. That's going on. That's going on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And there are people who are feeding it. That argument is very similar, this particular school of, as it were, history. is doing something that I've seen happen with American history as well, particularly with Lincoln. Lincoln's an interesting comparison to make with Churchill on this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There are people who will criticize Churchill for mistakes made, not hard to do, quite hard not to make mistakes while fighting at a war of total annihilation against your country. People will say, oh, he didn't sort this out in 1945. You know, it's rather like Lincoln. He didn't solve every problem in the world for all time, but he solved a hell of a big problem for his time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Who's that other dude who thinks he's an expert on Churchill?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And that requires some kind of generosity of spirit and understanding in hindsight, as opposed to I will find something that he did that I wouldn't have done. Because if I'd have been running the British Empire in 1939, I'd have known exactly how to do it. And I don't know how to hold the whole thing together. And I'd have kept Stalin back and he'd have been great at Yalta.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Absolutely. Okay, you should absolutely right all for go back and looking at me So what are you what is your argument then? It's a very weird thing to go back zone in on a man say this one thing is is a mistake and should characterize him, and you ignore everything else.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I tried. Yeah. It's pretty hard to listen to somebody who says, I don't know what I'm talking about, but now I'm going to talk. or I don't know about this, or I'm not capable of debating this historian, but I'm gonna just tell you what I think.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Okay, nor is he doing scholarly work, nor is he working in the archives. Come on. I mean, he is not the historian of our era.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
What I'm saying, because I don't need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history. I understand.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, I know. Okay, so this is my point about jelly. It's a shape-shifting thing. Comedian or historian?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Historian or podcast. Would be historian or actual historian. You say he doesn't claim to be a historian, but he's pumping out tens of hours of history.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You see my point about the move. It's like some weird jujitsu move where you say, hang on, you know all about this as well. You say, I'm not a historian, but I'm going to spend my time talking about history. I'm not a journalist, but I'm going to spend my time talking about this thing. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm going to spend my time talking about this thing. It's a weird move, yeah? No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I've noticed you can. But what's the point? The point is what are you pushing? What are you watering?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That doesn't mean we are on the verge of a war. I mean, you keep referring to we being in wars. There's a very big difference between a country having a military that's engaged and a country being at war. This country has not been at war for 25 years. You have not been fighting for the American homeland for 25 years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, you haven't been randomly picking on them. I mean, Afghanistan, you went- I didn't say it was random. Yeah, right. Okay. It wasn't like you suddenly decided to bomb, again, Myanmar or something. We went to Afghanistan to find bin Laden and take revenge for 9-11 and stop an attack like that happening again on the American homeland. That is very different from a country being at war.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Because you got dragged into the quicksand of war. Yeah, okay fine, but I thought it wasn't a war like what I don't get it was a war It's your use your use of we as if you're personally like suffering this war.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, yes when I say we Okay, fine If I went back and corrected you on every time you've used the term we to refer to your government or something like that Like if I were to say, oh we just imposed tariffs on China Would you point out that I didn't and it was a Trump administration you take it obviously very personally and that that's your right to do So, of course, I'm just trying to make sure we're accurate here
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And there's a very good argument to make on that. I'm still slightly bemused about this move from I'm an expert on this and I have views to I'm a comedian.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if you throw a lot of shit out there, There's some point at which I'm just raising questions is not a valid thing. You're not raising questions. You're not asking questions. You're telling people something. Do you think Daryl's doing that? I think there's a whole bunch of guys doing that. I think Dave is doing that, very obviously. Dave's a comedian, but he's now mainly...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm not a historian, but I'm pumping out history. I'm not an expert, but I'm talking all the time about this thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You're wildly not listening to what I'm saying. I think you have to take, I think we should agree perhaps on the following, that one major thing can break down in front of your eyes, or many major things, and it does not mean that every single one of the sewer gates should be lifted. Okay?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
saying this is a chatter on what is part of our side at the moment, is that a lot of the sewer gates are being lifted, sometimes by people who know that they're doing it, sometimes by people who don't, sometimes by people who say, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there. But at the very least, there's some damn hygiene that should be required, isn't there?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Just that. Let's have a bit of hygiene on our own side, not lift every sewer gate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Broadly speaking. And I'm sort of funny about libertarians. I'm never quite sure. I always think libertarians are essentially the bisexuals of politics. They should just choose, Joe. They should choose. It's kind of they just want everything at the buffet. It's very funny.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I know, but... Isn't it weird to go around, for instance, let's get to the last year and a half. It's a bit weird to be simultaneously saying I'm not an expert on a conflict and talking about it everywhere.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Some of them, yeah. Are you an expert? I am on some, yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, I think that you educate yourself as much as you can.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
As I say, I think that it's a weird move to say, I'm not an expert on this, but I'm going to talk about it nonstop.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Not my view. Not my view. Seems like what you're saying. I conceded already. I said a long time ago that I believe much of the expert class let itself and us all down very badly. And I think that happened in foreign policy in areas. Not every area, but it happened in some areas. I think it happened with COVID in many areas. But that does not mean that it's just a free-for-all. No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There are some things we can still verify to be true and can still agree on as baseline levels of agreement in a free society. And yes, everyone is free to air their views, but it does not mean that everyone who sounds off on an issue, whether it's World War II, the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, has an equally valid point of view. No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, that's a bit weird because also then it's like the debate me bro thing. But you just criticized Daryl for not debating.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But that is also your shtick now, isn't it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's fine. Yeah, I know. Let me just make the main point. I think what I'm trying to get at, Joe, is that it's a bit like the Twitter algorithm thing. which is, yes, everyone is and should be free to say what they like on Twitter, apart from whatever the very fringe things of like immediate incitement to violence and all that kind of thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But we all know that one of the oddities of Twitter, including since Elon took over, is that what you hope is a restored marketplace of ideas ends up pushing you really crazy shit. Yes. And that is what I'm suggesting is happening on a podcast level and maybe on a wider level beyond that. I get stuff on Twitter I just do not want.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I do not want a guy with 1,500 followers who's got some zany new view on something who isn't an expert but is an expert to be pushed at me. And effectively, what is happening with the Twitter algorithm is happening everywhere else as well. And we're all for the open marketplace of ideas. I want that. I thrive in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, you're not a geopolitics guy in general, are you?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But it is different once you get into the thing of is something manipulating the algorithm behind? Is the algorithm being pushed on me? Why am I being given this? Why am I not being given that? Why am I being constantly pushed this view?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I think that the answer to a great degree is the same thing in your world as it is in the Twitter world, which is if you go straight online and you say, you know, JFK file drops, watch live stream of Kennedy historians reading the papers live. you're not going to get any views. No one's going to watch it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That's kind of what's needed is for the people who know the documents to go through the documents. But you and I know that if, as there was some guy who did immediately, you do something like livestream Moss and Involvement in JFK. You're going to milk it. You're going to cream it online. The money comes in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm saying you've decided, being a comedian, you've decided now to become somebody who talks about Israel.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm saying that there's a similar algorithm in all of our lives that we're not as aware of as we should be, which is that we because we all know this at some level, that there are certain things that get your ability, your base going or get people going interesting and crazy. And then they start debating it and all that sort of thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And that algorithm of online seems to me to be spilling into the real world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, believe me, I write for the tabloids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I agree. Although, as I say, I think you've massively underrepresented the pro-Ukraine argument and the pro-Israel argument in the last two years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, my broad view is that, again, something to do with the algorithm, that anything that is conspiratorial about Zelensky or the Ukrainians in the conflict does very well. Anything that says actually the Ukrainian army is fighting to try to retain as much of their country as they can doesn't do as well. I think that everything that is...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
pushing the idea that, for instance, the Americans caused it or something like that does well. I think everything that says, actually, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin's tanks invaded Ukraine, and they shouldn't have done, doesn't do as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That's not my point. The point is, after that... There's a whole set of things. Let's look at, for instance, the issue of corruption. Ukraine is a pretty corrupt country by EU standards, by World Bank standards. And it's been a problem, as it is in that neck of the woods. And it's understandable that if the U.S.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
is one of the countries putting money and arms into Ukraine, then it's going to be a subject of legitimate interest to the American people and others, the European taxpayers. Nevertheless, you end up in this. And I know this because it's the same thing in the old media. You end up on like the new bit of the story. And there's always a risk that you will lose sight of the beginning of the story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
For instance, I mean, Putin's corruption is legendary, gargantuan. And not as interesting, it seems to me. The algorithm doesn't push that. And I think that's, to a greater extent, the case with the Israel-Hamaz war as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But you do get attention from that. If you'd spent the last year speaking about Myanmar, you would not be...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Sure. I mean, I think the one I think one of the interesting things that happens in this is the old cliche of losing the wood for the trees. It just happens an awful lot. And it's the nature of the old news cycle, let alone the current one, the social media era. Actually, I remember that... Sorry, I don't want to go back to World War II.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Let me just very quickly... I remember this debate with Pat Buchanan when he was debating much more learned historians on the subject of the origins of World War II. And the whole thing got lost in all of this sort of mad puzzle of views about iron ore production in the Bavarian forest and this sort of thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I remember everyone was all over the place and the moderator turned to the historian Andrew Roberts and said... Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin? And he said, World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland. And those moments come along quite often at the moment, which is, yes, there's an awful lot of very interesting things to look into.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There's a lot of very interesting things going on, which we should all be able to talk about and do talk about. But Sometimes you have to remember the origin causes of things as well. And you have to stick to keeping that in mind. Yeah, well, I think that a lot of people are pretty bad at the moment of keeping that in mind. Like you can there you can concede Ukrainian corruption.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You can concede all sorts of things and still not lose sight of the thing of corruption. If Russia rolls tanks into neighboring countries, it can't be allowed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And sometimes when you don't piss him off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He said Zelensky started the war and Zelensky was the dictator.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
By the way, this happened two weeks before the disastrous Oval Office meeting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I wrote the next day the cover in the New York Post, which was a big picture of Vladimir Putin with the headline, this is a dictator. Just again, as I say, not to lose track. in all of the melee, not to lose track of the basic facts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, I think authority matters. I think that if you just throw a lot of shit out there and then say, I'm not interested in... The alternative views on this, and particularly when it's a counter narrative that is wildly off. And when you get people, look, I just feel we should get it out straight away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You know, I was with a British military friend recently and somebody asked, what does the fog of war mean? And he gave a brilliant example of what it means on the battlefield, which a lot of people don't understand. There's a version of the fog of war in history as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The great Czech writer Milan Kundera had this beautiful phrase in a book of his from the 90s called Testaments Betrayed where he said the odd thing about mankind is he said we walk through life in a fog and we stumble along a path and we create the path as we stumble along it. So that's not the interesting thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The interesting thing is that when we look back we see the man and we see the path but we don't see the fog. Everything looks inevitable when you're standing in the present. Everything looks like it was going to happen this way. And you have these endless, often fascinating, often futile explorations of what might have been. but it doesn't take into account the fog. It's a very good point.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I feel you've opened the door to quite a lot of people who've now got a big platform who have been throwing out counter historical stuff of a very dangerous kind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And the fog of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was pretty considerable. The efforts in the 1990s to bring them into a more obvious part of the international order failed. My own view has always been that in part we missed an opportunity to pay a kind of civilizational respect to the Russians, which they deserved.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But also throughout the period that people now say there are all of these off ramps and now so many people claim that NATO went around the region desperately trying to provoke the Russians into some kind of war or inevitably leading them that way because of NATO expansionism.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They never take into account what was in my memory and experience very clear, which was NATO didn't go to go around recruiting. People came to NATO. Countries came to NATO wanting to join precisely because they feared the aggression that Ukrainians have suffered since February 2022 and indeed before. I was in Georgia just after the 2008 war began. The country, not the state.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, it has to be confirmed. Otherwise, people are like, what? Who invaded Georgia? Did we attack Georgia? They're the bastards. But I was in the country of Georgia, and Putin had tried to invade them and had seized Setia and Abkhazia. And they were desperate to join NATO. In fact, they were desperate to join the European Union.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I rather frivolously said to a Georgian friend, if you want, we can swap. You can take our British membership of the EU. But in the NATO thing, they were desperate for it. And they were desperate for it precisely for the reason that many of the Ukrainians were desperate for it, which was only way to stop Putin expansionism. So, you know, in the whole fog of the post-Soviet era,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
That is one of the many things that gets left out of the conversation. And by the way, Putin's actions in February 2022 and since, all he's done is provoke two new countries to join NATO and his borders with NATO have grown.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Finland and Sweden wanted to join. And the only reason Finland and Sweden wanted to join was because they too are scared. It's a heck of a thing to get the Swedish to join a military alliance. It doesn't come easy to them. It doesn't come natural. And these these countries joined because like Georgia, like Ukraine, they desperately feared Putinist expansionism and they weren't wrong.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
What's the other guy? Derek, what's his name? Cooper, is it? Which one is it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Who's the other one? There was one I just checked on the way here. Daryl Cooper and then... Yeah, Daryl Cooper, Ian Carroll.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
First of all, Two things. If you want that strategic empathy, which I'm not an admirer of, but if you want to do that, you can do it the other way around as well, surely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I mean, do the same thing with the Ukrainians.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Right. And I can understand why Russia thought that Ukrainian membership in NATO was a red line. I can understand that. But that wasn't why Putin invaded in 2022. And I think there's an oddity, if I can say so. Maybe this particularly comes across on the libertarian, bisexual side. But I think there's an oddity of the... Let the record show him, a happily married heterosexual man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They all say that. I think there's an oddity that sometimes particularly happens on the libertarian side, which is a presumption that things only really happen in the world because we make them so. And, you know, Russia invades Ukraine because of American policy in Eastern Europe post 1989, 1990. Something happens in the Middle East because of American policy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I think it's a very blinkered and parochial view of things, because my experience in. countries around the world, is that there's a heck of a lot going on that America is frankly not really involved in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm not saying that America is... No, no, no. But what I'm saying is, it is very... In fact, it's partly since you very kindly raised the issue, Joe. Your book.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's one of the things I find very interesting about this with democracies, which is it is one of the things in the nature of a liberal democracy... that because we have the right to air our opinion, because we have the right to criticize our government and much more, We end up doing all of that. And there is a misapprehension people can come to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Several reasons. One is when he was offered to debate the current greatest living biographer of Churchill, he said, I can't because he knows much more than me. And I admire his work and I've learned from it, but I can't possibly debate him. That's Andrew Roberts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I don't know if you do, but they can come to, which is effectively we are the only force that causes action in the world. And there's a reason for that, which is that we have, thank God, a say in how liberal democracies are run and how we're governed. And we can chew over all of the disagreements that we have. But when a liberal democracy comes against the kind of rock
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
like a death cult, a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship like Russia or the Iranian revolutionary government, there's always this temptation to say, to focus our attention on our own side because we can't do a darn thing about the other one. It's a version of, you know, the great late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said when he was ambassador to the U.N.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He had this great rule, sort of known among those who know about it as Moynihan's rule, which is, he said, if you sit at the U.N., or the U.N. Human Rights Council, or any of these bodies, you would come away with the belief that the most abused people with the fewest rights in the world live in America and other Western liberal societies. And he came because we're the ones that talk about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You know, if there's one incident of racism in America, the whole world knows about it. Everyone reads it. There'll be protests everywhere. If there's one incident of racism in North Korea, it's not going to make any news. And then you have on top of that the fact that the way in which despotisms and death cults and dictatorships work, the information just doesn't come out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And Moynihan's rule ended up being that the... In an interesting point, he said... that his rule by the end of his time at the UN was that the number of human rights violations that occur in a country happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of claims of human rights violations.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Because only the countries which care about it and which such things can be aired in are ever going to get it out. But the point of Moynihan's law and the warning of it is, Be careful not to come away with the mistaken idea that the freest and most liberal societies are the worst.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I think there's a version of Moynihan's law that applies, whether it's from the Middle East to Ukraine and Russia, which is we come away with this. People may come away with the impression that the bad things in the world effectively all come from here. And there is quite a lot to be said for some of that, but there's not everything to be said.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Much of the world runs on a dynamic and a dynamo, which you can't do a darn thing about, other than to try to understand it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if you, for instance, well, OK, but if you say I've decided that Churchill is the bad guy. It's not what he said.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Now, if you want to argue that this this I admire your appeal to authority to the head of the CIA.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You regard the view of the CIA director on that occasion as being useful for your argument. But secondly, there's an oddity to believing what Vladimir Putin says.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Neither Carroll nor Cooper have said that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He doesn't very plausibly have the opportunity to do that. He invaded Ukraine because he wanted to annex the whole country because he was trying to pretend the whole place had been run by Nazis.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
This is what he told the Russian people. You can lie an awful lot when you're a dictator and you have the ability not just to run all of the media but to kill your political opponents. I mean you can do an awful lot. None of this – I just got back from Ukraine again the other week and it's so weird.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I saw the Oval Office meeting as it happened from a trench in the front line between the Russian and Ukrainian positions in the east of the country. And it was so weird seeing the way in which this country's territory was being talked about by outsiders, and particularly by America, because...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There's so many oddities about it, but the people who are fighting there, the soldiers on the front lines, the ones I was with, they're not fighting against Putin forces because of NATO expansion or anything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They're fighting because he lied to his own army, he lied to his own people, he lies to the world, and he decided he wanted to gobble up Ukraine because he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. And as a result, these young men are in dugouts in the middle of winter fighting Russian soldiers because the Ukrainians' homes are 30 kilometers behind them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I just, I think among much else, that's stuff that cannot be forgotten about. None of this is simply about NATO expansion or this or that. It's about a country whose people are suffering in their third year of war. And it's... Almost total war. As much total war as we've got in the modern age.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, they aren't. But I mean. they weren't going to expand NATO to Ukraine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The Ukrainians wanted membership, and it was very unwise whenever anyone from the rest of the West even flirted with it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, I never saw her as the Kissinger of our era.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He invaded because of the thing he's dreamt of since falling down in the Soviet Union. Do you know how he dreams? We know a lot from what he said and what he's done since the fall of the Soviet Union and his statements, certainly very early on in his presence.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if he does have a red line and you violate that red line, is that because he's following his dreams or it's because... His dream is, as he's said many times, is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union's territory.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Something we can agree is a fiction on his part.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Just going to throw in some pro-American views.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The Soviet Union did not fall just because of Afghanistan.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The main thing was the stationing of European troops.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I don't like the word destined in that because, I mean, in my experience, things that don't work can go on an awfully long time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I thought when I went to North Korea some years ago, that couldn't go on for much longer. And on it goes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And that's again, it's tricky because the Maidan protests were genuine students in the center of the city who were uprising against a corrupt government.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And that, again, it's the people of Ukraine, like other countries, they do have agency beyond what Washington... Yeah, I'm not claiming any of those people don't have agency.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Historically, America does like to be, has liked to be on the side of people who... desire freedom over autocracy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Not in Egypt. I'm glad you joined me in my dislike of the House of Saud.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
We didn't lose our minds on that. A certain subset of mainstream media lost their minds. It wasn't even a subset.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He's certainly not an expert. He can be interviewed. I've watched Pat Buchanan debate. I watched Pat Buchanan debate against Churchill historians, and he was absolutely leveled because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into this country, billions indeed, and tries to change policy in this country. And nobody's trying to overthrow Qatar. Nobody's trying to overthrow the emir or his family. And they've been poisoning American universities, American institutions, buying up American politicians. They pour billions into this country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You're saying that we'd lose our mind if anyone tried to interfere here. There are lots of people who try to interfere here. And the most obvious one is Qatar, which has poured money into D.C. and into elite institutions and universities in this country. And I don't find from one week to the next anyone who's particularly riled up about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They're definitely succeeding with universities and others.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But, I mean, Qatar is definitely trying to influence things their way as other countries are. I mean, I cite it as an example of something that's very interesting, which is an attempt to interfere in American public life, which gets almost no attention.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And indeed, the governments, whether Democrat or Republican, still seem to adore the Qataris, even as they act as one of the backers of terrorist groups across the Middle East and elsewhere. And I cannot understand why it doesn't get more attention.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He debated against Andrew Roberts and several other historians at Intelligence Square in London. I was there. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a contrary view, and it was interesting and stimulating to hear. But if you only get the contrary view, which is, isn't it fun if we all pretend Churchill was the bad guy of the 20th century?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
His words, begging. You're referring to the funding of Hamas in the 2010s. Yes. The Qataris poured the money in, and the question on the Israeli side was what you allowed to do with funds that were going into Gaza, and the Israelis allowed the funds to go from Qatar to Gaza.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Again, I'm not sure. It's like quoting the head of the CIA, quoting the head of the Mossad. Maybe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But that's not the evidence of the last 18 years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I mean, it's kind of like, you know, again, I mean, it's just it's just an interesting thing because, again, it's a discipline about this. which is, do I only quote powerful people when they say the odd thing that I agree with? Or do I simultaneously distrust all powerful people?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Are you sure whether it's the CIA or Mossad that it isn't just if they say something that you happen to want to be the case?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They admitted that they allowed funds to go from Qatar to Hamas because Hamas... For the Gaza.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There's one claim. There's one recording of Netanyahu saying something along those lines. But look, I mean, we should get on to it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The situation, let's get on to it. The situation there on the war of the last 18 months now, more than 18 months in the Middle East, is a result not of that, but of Hamas deciding to start another war with Israel and trying to annihilate their neighbor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
At some point, you're going to lead people down a path where they think that's the view. And that's horseshit of the most profound kind.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They were not being propped up by Israel. The reason why Hamas were in power, as you know, much, much against the interests of the Israelis, was that they were voted into power after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Condoleezza Rice and other American statesfolk insisted that the Palestinians should have elections straight after the Israeli withdrawal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They had elections, perhaps unwisely, and Hamas won and then didn't have another election again and ruled the Gaza for 18 years until they finally got the great fruit of their labors on the 7th of October, 2023. And...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
went around southern Israel massacring everyone they could, including young people at a dance party, and then caused in turn the destruction of the place that they were meant to be governing. The whole thing is a great tragedy, and all of it is at the feet of Hamas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think that's exactly what they're doing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But it did not go in to level the place like that. No.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Let's just go back to the beginning if we can. Sure. Because it's important. Since you're interested in the question of the Palestinian state, the Palestinians were given another state in 2005 when every single Jew was removed from the Gaza area. by the IDF and when even the graves of Israelis in Gaza were dug up and taken into the rest of Israel.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Of all of the what-ifs of Palestinian Arab history, the era since 2005 should be one of the great what-ifs, which is what if the American taxpayers' money that was poured into Gaza, the European Union taxpayer money that was poured into Gaza, had been used... buy a government in Gaza to build a state that lived side by side with their Israeli neighbors and flourished.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And it's not like the money wasn't there. It's not like there wasn't the international will. Ismail Haniyeh and the other leaders of Hamas used that money, as you know, to make themselves billionaires and to buy themselves and their kids condos in Qatar and to live extremely well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
whilst withholding the money from the Palestinian people, whilst building their network of tunnels throughout Gaza, and building an infrastructure of terror. And that's what they did with 18 years in Gaza. And of all of the what-ifs, just consider that that one was in their hands. The Israelis did not make them vote in Hamas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The Israelis would not want a terrorist entity that wants to annihilate the state of Israel that is there on their doorstep, constantly firing rockets, starting wars every few years. Why would the Israelis want a group there that means that if you're living in towns like Sderot or Ashkelon or Ashdod, your children grow up all the time knowing that they might have to go to the bomb shelters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There are, as now... Many people to negotiate with. Mahmoud Abbas may be, I don't know, as the joke goes, currently in something like his 20th year of his first four-year term as head of the Palestinian Authority. But Mahmoud Abbas is there in Ramallah. The compounds of the Palestinian Authority, which I've been to many times in Ramallah, are there. They run their portions of the West Bank.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They could be there to negotiate with at any moment. The Israelis have said they want to negotiate with them at any moment and come to the deal. In fact, Netanyahu, you're fond of quoting, said again before this war began that he would come to the table with no red lines to begin with to start another negotiation with the Palestinian Authority.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But let's just get back to this thing because this is so crucial. I am so startled by the post-October 7th world, not just in Israel and Gaza and everywhere where I've spent most of the last 18 months, but in what's happening here in the United States of America. It blows my mind, much of the response here, and the desire to leap over the first victims of this
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
and go on to all of the proximate causes, theoretical causes, what ifs, and so on. I was, as I described in the opening of this book, I was in New York on the 7th of October, and I woke up and started seeing what was happening and discovered that later that day already, there were attempts, there were plans to organize a protest in Times Square. And what was the protest in Times Square?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Massive protests in support of Hamas as the massacre was still going on. And one of the things I just cannot get out of my head is why in the last 18 months when Hamas did what they did, have so many people made excuses for them or decided to side with them or deny their actions or excuse their actions?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Several very, very big things. One is I think people wanted to ignore the nature of the atrocity because it was so appalling that it went against much of their narrative. I was at a reunion of one of the survivors of the Nova Party on one occasion, and he said to me, what would you do if this had happened in your country?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I thought, well, it hasn't happened at this scale, but something like it has happened. The Ariana Grande arena bombing in Manchester in 2017, the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015, the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2015.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But all of these occasions when young people were murdered for being at a pop concert or a nightclub, the world's attention, the world's empathy, the world's sympathy went to the victims. Only in the case of the young Israelis dancing in the early hours of the morning on October 7th, 2023, do the victims become victimized again and not believed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The era we lived through in the late 2010s was the era of believable women. And of all the Israeli women who were raped that morning, much of the international community does not want to listen to them at all and certainly doesn't want to believe them. And there are many reasons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
One, at the most fundamental level, is that I think a part of a generation that's coming up has been told there is something especially wicked about Israel, that there is something especially wicked about Israel's existence and its actions and its people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And the problem is, is that because you, I mean, your own platform has come about because you're a very successful comedian and much more, and you do ask questions, and you are interested. But there are a lot of people who have come along, partly, I think, because they've come on this show, who have come along and they've decided, I can play this double game.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And it means that when their people are burned alive in their homes or raped at a music festival and shot in the head, they are uniquely undeserving of sympathy. And I think that people have been indoctrinated by very bad actors into this and as a result have excused atrocities or make excuses for them, make excuses for the people who do them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think, in addition, it plays to some of the darkest things of the regional mind as well as the international mind. The aims of Hamas, the stated aims, include the annihilation of the Jewish people. And October 7th, they had their best go at doing that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And the fact that in a decision between whether or not you're on the side of the people who want to dance and live in peace with their neighbors or whether you're on the side of the people who want to rampage through a dance party bar in the early morning macheting at people. I find it amazing that there are so many people who don't know which side they're on. But there are a lot of them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There are a lot of reasons for that. But one of the foremost reasons is the fact that the state of Israel has been uniquely libeled, has been uniquely lied about. Its history has been uniquely lied about. It has been uniquely put under an international spotlight and then misrepresented in a way which I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And there are... Deep reasons for it and shallow reasons for it. The deep reasons include some of the most ancient bigotries of the human heart, and the shallow reasons are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
On the one hand, I'm going to push really edgy and, frankly, sometimes horrific opinions. And then if you say... That's wrong. They say, I'm a comedian. But wait a minute. How can you tell me I'm just a comedian?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, they kind of screwed it up for themselves on the 7th of October.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, it was another state. It was different from the P.A.,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And yes, you were right. I don't agree the blockade was brutal by any means. You don't think the blockade of Gaza was brutal? How brutal do you think the Egyptians are?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Why do you think there's a blockade of any kind?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Right wing Israeli politicians. But what do you I'm getting there?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The second one is a kind of important one, isn't it? Yeah, it is. If the Palestinian leadership in Gaza after 2005 had not from the get-go decided to use Gaza as a stockpiling place for rockets to fire into Israel, all of it would be different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
If they had just resisted the temptation that so many of us do in our lives to stop keeping RPGs in our cellars and then Katyusha rockets in our children's bedrooms, all of it could have been different. If that desire to live in peace beside your neighbors had superseded the desire to stockpile rockets, it would all be different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Once guys like this get into very obvious stuff, which is- Guys like Daryl? The ones I'm describing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They weren't occupying. Well, you believe in self-determination, I'm sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And that includes the right to make bad decisions. Yes. The Palestinians in Gaza, when they voted in Hamas, made a very bad decision. Yeah, of course. And in the years after that, they made bad decision after bad decision. It was a very bad decision to continually fire thousands of rockets into Israel. It was a very bad decision.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
to use what boats came in early on and to use the smuggling networks from Egypt, not to bring in supplies you could actually build a thriving society with, but to bring in rockets. It was a very bad idea. No, there was not starvation in Gaza after 2005. No, there was no deficit of goods coming in. I've been plenty of times. There was no deficit? No. No goods were kept out? There are plenty.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Have you been to the crossing points? No. When were you last there at all?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You can't time travel, but you can travel.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, but if you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country, even in passing, unless I've at least been there. Okay. It's a normal thing to do. You're talking about crossing points.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And not only have you never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, it is. It's not a non-argument if you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert, but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy to visit whilst developing all of these views about it. I mean, now I slightly get an idea of where you're coming from. You've read about this blockade. And so you imagine that that's what it is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I imagine you've read all the people who say that Gaza was a concentration camp. And you probably think that too. Am I right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, as I say, you can't time travel back to the Nazi era, but you could go to the Middle East and actually visit it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think you should at least know what it is, what the territory is, what the situation is in the region. Yes, absolutely.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think that's the best way. It's not the only way, but it's the best way for sure. For sure. If you have never seen the countries in question, you've never spoken to the people in question. You've never interviewed anyone. You've never gone around. You've never seen the terrain and so on. And you've used Wikipedia. I'm sorry. No, that's not the same thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, I was with the Ukrainian armed forces in 2022 when they were retaking territory from the Russians.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah. I said I can see how they can win, which would be advances like that. Yeah. You said if we just fund them or if we just arm them that they can then – I said that the Ukrainian army was making great successes, which it was when I was with them in the fall of 22.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
First of all, I don't think it's a game. I don't think it's a game at all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He also said on here that he wasn't anti-Semitic until the Holocaust. There were no speeches of Hitler's in the 1930s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, but this is important. I've seen plenty of this up close. I've seen plenty of this with my own eyes because I do believe that one of the things you should do if you're talking about something is to see it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The blockade that existed to the extent it existed was a blockade to try to make sure that the Israelis and the Egyptians knew what materials were going in and out of Gaza after the first rocket fires when Hamas, in fact, before Hamas was elected.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The Israelis and the Egyptians, the Egyptians didn't do a very good job of it, were meant to be trying to make sure that the materials that went into Gaza were not materials that could be used to build up the Gaza and Hamas war machine. The reason why trucks get searched is not because the Israelis want to search through grain or flour.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's because they wanted to stop the trucks containing the arms and the munitions that the Gazan, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters were going to use to fire against Israel. And I'm sorry, it just makes the most obvious strategic sense. As the great late, great Joan Rivers once said, if if if as an appeal to authority, that one, that one I like.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah, I know. I'm saying she got everything right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But as Joan Rivers said, if if New York was being rocketed from New Jersey, we would level New Jersey. I don't think you need to level it, by the way. But you would at least try to make sure that rockets weren't being imported in larger quantities into New Jersey. Of course. Okay. That's all the Israelis were doing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Anything that could be used to build a rocket, yeah. Right. Yeah. But that's a good reason, again, not to build rockets and fire them at your neighbors. It's almost like there's a cost to pay. It's almost like there's a cost to pay for, instead of living in peace with your neighbor, constantly trying to wipe them out. And that is what Hamas did for 18 years. 18 years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
This is why I think it's so... unbelievable taking agency away from the Palestinians of Gaza is that the Hamas had 18 years, and 18 years is obviously the time from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education. They literally had the opportunity to create a generation in Gaza that wanted to live beside their Israeli neighbors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And from everything I've seen since the 7th of October in the region, and from all of the dead and the survivors and the family members I've seen, so many of them, particularly the people in the south who were attacked on the morning of the 7th, were literally people who dreamed of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They were people like Vivian Silver, whose body wasn't identified for months because there wasn't enough of her charred remains left to even extract DNA from. She spent every weekend...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah. There is no historian of World War Two who thinks that Hitler was downplaying anti-Semitism in the 1930s. That was what he was doing. He wrote a book about it in the 1920s. He got to power on it and he grew his power on the back of it. The idea that you can argue that in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler was downplaying the anti-Semitism like. There's no historian who would agree with that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
like so many people in the communities in the south of Israel, every weekend driving children with the most rare medical conditions that couldn't be treated in one of the Hamas-run hospitals in Gaza into very specialist units inside Israel.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And she spent every weekend doing that and working with Bet Salem and all of these radical left Israeli groups, and it didn't matter a bit when Hamas came in because they burnt her in her own home anyway. My point is...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
In all of the counterfactuals of this conflict, the most important one is what could have happened if instead of educating a generation into wanting to annihilate their neighbors, Hamas in power had spent 18 years building up a state, teaching peace, creating coexistence with their neighbors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
You think any of the people on the kibbutzim in the south or the young people dancing at the Nova Party weren't dreaming of the day that the Palestinian government in Gaza would have created those conditions for them to live beside as well?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He was the first president of the state.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
So why would you throw out the idea that in the 1930s, Hitler was not being anti-Semitic in public? That was what he was doing in public. He announces to the German parliament what he wants to do. So when you're throwing out claims like he was keeping it down in the 1930s, first of all, what are you doing? And secondly, why?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Okay, quite a few things. First of all, let's just get one term correct because you said you do think it's a concentration camp.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And you also say that there's a disproportionately heavy youth population in Gaza.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Do you think that's not accurate? I think the second one is accurate. Right. But it's a very strange thing to say that there's a population boom in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz in the 1940s, there was not a doubling of the population.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He said it shares many of the characteristics. Auschwitz was a concentration camp. It was ultimately a death camp, no? Yes. It started as a concentration camp. Yes, correct. You'll notice that people were not... doubling in size their number because of the children they could have in Auschwitz.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Okay, but let's just at least tidy up the language a bit. Either you think the place is a concentration camp or you think it's not a concentration camp and I don't think it can be a concentration camp or any such term is suitable. when you're talking about a place which you yourself have admitted has a disproportionately young population. So that's the first thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I didn't call it a concentration camp. You said it has many of the same characters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yes, because he said earlier that it did.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
All of which is the result of the election of Hamas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Let's get on to that then because you say it's one of the most brutal wars. It's a very brutal war. It's a very brutal war. It's certainly not even sadly among the standards of our time by any means the most brutal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
We don't need to get into the rather statistician, ugly debate about whether or not you follow the Hamas government in Gaza's figures for the death counts, which most of the world's media rely on and which I don't think are reliable to the least extent. But you don't need to rely on that to say that even by the standards of a conflict in neighboring Syria,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I don't need to give him the most charitable interpretation to be able to see what he's doing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The highest Hamas death count inside Gaza for the appalling last year and a half is less than an average year has been for the last decade in Syria during the civil war.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think there were years that were – Six to 800,000 people have been killed in Syria during the civil war there. And I give it as an example. There are far too many examples of wars in the region and in the wider – world to go to. But I think we get once again back to the issue of language on this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He says one of the most brutal wars is simply obvious that it's an appalling war, but it is not by any numerical or other standards the most appalling war of our time. It's the war that Hamas started because they shouldn't have invaded their neighbor and they shouldn't have tried to genocide their neighbor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Now, if the war can be prosecuted, could be prosecuted, it was always for two reasons, always for two reasons. The first one, as stated by the unanimity of Israeli politicians and others, was to retrieve the hostages, who we also haven't spoken about, but there are still hostages in Gaza held for the last 18 months by Hamas, including young Eden Alexander from New Jersey.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Look, anyone can look up what he said on this show and others, what these two guys in particular have said on repeated podcasts with both of you. It's an attempt to downplay Hitler and always to do down church. I don't think you downplay Hitler. No, I said in conversations with you and others, this is the shtick of these guys. They've decided it's edgy and funny. And I think this is very, very.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
if Hamas had not stolen the hostages and hidden them in their tunnels and hidden them in civilian homes, this war would have all been different. If they had have given them back, and they could give them back tomorrow, It would all be different, but they didn't. They decided to do what they did on the 7th and to hold on to the 250 hostages as it was at the beginning from the beginning.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The second reason why the war is still being prosecuted is because of the stated aim to destroy Hamas, which is the stated aim of the Israelis. Neither of these things is remotely easy. And just from a point of humility, I think, on everyone's side, we should concede none of that is easy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It is not easy to get 250 hostages back when they have been distributed across the Gaza to civilian homes, hidden in tunnels, surrounded by munitions and much more. Hamas is not an actor like Denmark. Its backers don't behave the way that our governments do in the West. They have a totally different time scale that they think along. They have a totally different scale of values as well.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The taunts of Hezbollah's leadership, of Hamas's leadership, of their backers in Tehran are annihilationist to their core.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But at any point in the last 18 months, the Qataris, for instance, or the Iranians, the Iranian revolutionary government, or the Turkish government or others could have put their pressure on Hamas to return the hostages who are still being held in captivity and everything would be different. Secondly, As you know, I'm sure, you don't have to have seen this with your own eyes to know it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
As I'm sure you know, the way in which Hamas built up the structure of the Gaza throughout the 18 years that they had was precisely to flout and use every law of war against the Israelis. Every army in a conflict has certain rules of war that you're meant to abide by. One of the most obvious is that you are identified as being a combatant, not as a civilian. OK.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Another is you don't put weapons in civilian houses and civilian buildings. You do not fire from houses of worship rockets. You do not launch attacks from hospitals. You do not keep detention facilities where you can torture and disappear people inside hospitals and other medical facilities. All of these laws of war. are the laws that Hamas breaks every minute of every day by their actions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
So if you want to get the hostages back and if you want to destroy Hamas, when you're fighting against a force which does not only not follow the rules of war, but uses your following of the rules of the laws of war against you, at least concede this is a highly specific and complex military operation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And if you have or anyone else has, and I say this genuinely, a better way to get back the hostages and to destroy Hamas, I at any rate am all ears.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Very interesting and also very dangerous because we live in an era now that the right has got some mojo back in America. We saw years of crazy left overreach where they tried to make us all say the craziest things. And completely predictably, there are now figures on the right playing with really dark and ugly stuff on their side. I agree with that. And they are mainstreaming this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I don't need to think about it. I've seen it. I know it. I describe it in my book. I describe what I see in Gaza with the Palestinians when they're moving down the humanitarian corridor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Can I ask you something? Yes, sir. Since the war in Israel began and since the war in Ukraine began, you've had quite a lot of people who are very against both in different ways. Yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They're responsible for the means of their retaliation and their war aims. Yes, of course. First of all, let me just say I totally disagree with your characterization of Osama bin Laden and what he wanted to do. And I don't think that Osama bin Laden's stated public utterances were along those lines.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But anyway, the reason why the hostages have been released, the numbers that have, is because of constant kinetic force by the IDF. Hamas does not come to the table and ever hand over hostages out of goodwill. It doesn't do it out of the goodness of their own heart. It does it because of the constant kinetic force of the IDF in Gaza.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I think it's partly being mainstreamed by the two people I just described. And both of you have kept speaking to these people. And you don't get on the historians who know about this. And that's just alarming to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And if it weren't for that, all 250 hostages would still be there. Second thing is when it comes to Hamas itself, I totally disagree with the presumption that if you tackle a terrorist entity, you will create more terrorists. Ergo, you should not attack the terrorist entity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's a commonly held argument. That if you respond to terrorism, you create terrorism. And of course, the only thing in that case is you just have to sit back and take it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
First of all, your characterization of the slaughter, it's horrible, the war in Gaza. It's horrible that young Israelis have to go in yet again to Gaza. and try to find Israeli hostages and try to get the leadership of Hamas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It is not the case. Yes, because I think there's a consequence to starting wars.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yes, at the moment, yes. But they're not being fucked over. The IDF has been moving through Gaza for 18 months. No Israeli soldier I have spoken to ever wanted to go and see the Gaza again. Okay? Nobody wanted to go back. They were dragged back because of Hamas's actions. And if Hamas had acted differently or the Palestinians had voted in different people to govern them, it would all be different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But again, that's a hypothetical. The reality of the war on the ground is that in this incredibly heavily built up area, with weaponry hidden everywhere, with soldiers, I've spoken to too many of them, they go in, you have a group of people coming out of a civilian building with their hands up,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And from their midsts come a bunch of Hamas terrorists firing at you in the hope that the IDF will fire back at the civilians. Gaddy Eisencott, one of the members of the war cabinet in the early stages of the war, lost his own son and then his nephew. His nephew was killed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
in a firefight in Gaza because the Hamas terrorists were firing from a mosque, and that was why Gadi Eizenkot from the Israeli cabinet's nephew died. The whole operating theater is hideous because of what Hamas has done to the Gaza.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The reason why Sinoir cropped up in Rafah, finally, the mastermind of October the 7th, one of the most brutal, sadistic psychopaths, to use an overrated term you can ever imagine, in an Israeli prison, by the way, for having strangled Palestinians to death in the 2000s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But anyway, the reason why Sinoir crops up in Rafah late last year is because there was nowhere else for him to run because of the actions of the IDF to pursue the leadership of Hamas that was responsible for the 7th. Now, can all of Hamas be destroyed? Probably not. Can you make it effectively impossible to function or incapable of functioning, unable to fire rockets? and govern the Gaza, yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No. Every single war of this kind will include civilian casualties, and you and I will almost certainly disagree on the numbers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But there will be almost the best case analysis is that one innocent Gazan has been killed for every one terrorist. That's the best case scenario you can hear. But that would be almost unparalleled in the laws of war, and it's not how the American or British militaries operate in terms of casualties to terrorist ratios.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But when we had the campaign against ISIS a decade ago, after ISIS's fighters had gone and massacred people at the Bataclan theater in Paris and so on, We used Turkish fighters, brilliant, brave fighters from the Peshmerga militias to work on the ground. And the French and American and British air forces bombed like hell from the air.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And we made ISIS effectively touch wood 10 years later, operationally incapable in capital cities in Europe. Has ISIS as a whole gone away? No. They still have pockets in Syria and in Iraq. But we stopped them from being able to do what they most desired to do. And the same is possible with Hamas. Will they be replaced by some other group?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Again, then we get to one of the crucial decision points for the Palestinian people. Is it inevitable that they constantly have to elect people who want to annihilate their neighbors? Or will there ever be a generation that can find a way to live in peace with their neighbors? I agree. Most people don't like being bombed. In fact, nobody does.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if the people of the Palestinians in Gaza can find it within themselves to realize the thing they asked for in the elections is the thing that has destroyed the area they live in,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And like that brave young man two weeks ago in Gaza who rose up against Hamas and was identified by the people who remain in Hamas and was tortured and his body thrown onto his parents doorstep in the Gaza and the parents started a all the family, the clan started a bit of a war against Hamas. But that's how that's how Hamas treats Palestinian dissidents.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And now they're flirting. with Holocaust denial and Hitler and absolving Hitler of blame and much more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if there were more people like that young man, and of course, as we all know, the history of totalitarian and terrorist groups running societies is They're very successful and they stay in power because they're willing to torture and use violence and much more. It's a horrible thing you have to contend with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
But if more people like that young man had come about in Gaza in the last 18 months or before, yes. Yes, it would all be different. And if they could avoid electing a terrorist group that invades their neighbors and fires rockets at their neighbors, yes, it could all be different. It could all be different tomorrow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I'll tell you again, there is not a person living by the Gaza in the south of Israel who does not dream of the day that such a generation of Palestinians emerges.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I just told you, Cooper and the other...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
They're being killed in a brutal war started by Hamas, yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
First of all, again – Go back to what is actually happening. There is no desire or aim by the IAF or the IDF to go into Gaza and kill women and children.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Hang on, hang on. There is no desire for that. Does it happen collaterally? Certainly. Certainly. And that is one of the very ugly rules of war and things that happens in war. And it's another of the reasons why it's almost like you shouldn't start a war and hide your rockets and your terrorists inside civilian buildings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, it clearly can't be made enough because there is no intention on the Israeli side to cause the death of non-combatants.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Why do you think the Israelis would want to go and kill children in Gaza?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Because first of all, I don't agree with any of the characterization you make any of it. Okay. Um, you say that the Israelis get some information as if this is like what they're making it up or you think these are going to drop a bomb or no, they they act. They act on information about where the terrorists are just like they act on information of where the hostages are. Secondly,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
When you talk about the destruction of the Gaza, something you probably haven't realized, but is one of the reasons why the destruction looks so bad and is so bad...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
is because when the IDF were clearing the areas that they'd asked the civilian population to leave and were going house to house, and it isn't just stories here or stories there, it's every second or third house in Gaza that has either munitions or tunnel entrances. Every second or third house. This is not... The odd case.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
One of the things that everybody who has been there knows is that you go into a mosque and you know there will be either rockets and or tunnel entrances. You go into a hospital and you know that there will be grenades or tunnel entrances or dungeons or whatever. Just on a lighter note, early in the conflict when the Shifa arrived.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
which is used as a Hamas headquarters and has also been used as a hospital. But even in 2014, the BBC said this is where Hamas are operating from.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
When that was shown by the Israelis to have massive weapons stores in the tunnels and cellars underneath it, they had grenades, RPGs, Kalashnikovs, and the BBC's chief Middle East correspondent was asked live on air, why would these things be in a hospital? And Jeremy Bowen said, well, it's perfectly possible because there's a lot of, you know, guns in the Middle East.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's perfectly possible the security department of the hospital had the clash in the car. I said, yeah, and did the grenades belong to the cardiologists? I mean, why? Why is this so normal that these, every civilian mill building like this and every second or third house in Gaza is a weapons dump or a place that you enter the tunnels from? But the reason why the devastation, which it is,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
in the north in particular, but also in Rafah and elsewhere, is what it is, is because every time the IDF went into an area where they had told the civilians to leave, the Hamas terrorists that remained were in civilian buildings and booby-trapped a very large number of the buildings. So what they did as they proceeded through those areas of the Gaza to clear them
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
was to set off munitions, which the American military and others use, which sets off secondary explosions in places that are booby-trapped. And much of what you see in the photographs that you see and many other people have seen from Gaza is the result of that. It is the result of the IDF trying to clear an area which has been very carefully and well booby-trapped for years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Let me make one other very quick point about the bigger picture that you said, because I think it's important. You were talking about the Syrian, you mentioned the Syrian conflict with ISIS. I think, again, it's really important to keep this in mind, what I said earlier about, let's not think we are the primary actors everywhere, or even that important.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I remember the debate over the Syrian intervention issue, and at the time, despite being, in many cases, an interventionist, I said on that occasion that we didn't know what we were doing, clearly didn't know who we were gonna back, If you remember, John McCain went to Syria to speak to some rebels, and one of them immediately turned out to be a kind of head-hacking jihadist. That wasn't great.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I said, I don't have any confidence that we know who to back. And despite many Syrian friends of mine imploring me otherwise, I said, I don't think it's something we can get involved in. However... If you look at the last 10 years or more, what is it now, 13 years of conflict in Syria, the U.S. and the Western powers are not remotely significant actors in that conflict.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The significant actors in that conflict were, always have been, the Russians, the Iranians. I mean, one of the things that blows my mind in the analysis of the regions
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
is the fact that the prime mover in the region, the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran that has been oppressing the Iranian people since 1979 and has been holding a great civilization in captivity, that the Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran has literally been colonizing the region. I have this rule about, I took it from Vasily Grossman, the great Soviet Jewish writer,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
who had this great line about, tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll tell you what you're guilty of. This absolutely runs as well with the accusations against the Jewish state and the region. The Iranian revolutionary government is constantly accusing the Israelis of colonialism, of expansionism.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It is the Iranian revolutionary government that has been colonizing Iraq, colonizing Yemen, colonizing and destroying Lebanon, and colonizing Syria. And the amazing thing, when you look at the disaster that has happened in Syria in the last 13 years, and I don't see it getting especially better under the current jihadist, the disaster is not of our making primarily. We are bit players.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I know. Well, the great idiocy of that was that Iraq notices our failings, our lack of staying power, our desire to get out as soon as possible and much more, which is all understandable.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And they moved in. And they moved in. Of course. But I was talking about Syria. In the Syrian theater, the main actors are not us. And one of the things I'm still interested in about this mindset that you have is why does it always have to be us?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying just as the left likes to play with very dark, ugly stuff. And they've done it for decades. They have played down Chairman Mao's murder of the Chinese throughout his era in power. They played down Stalin. They still march on occasions with posters of Lenin. They've spent decades trying to do down evils that were done on their side.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I think America is obviously a major actor, certainly could be, is meant to be the major actor on the world stage. I think that the history of the region and many other regions around the world is that America does not have either the staying power, the capability, the intelligence, the kind of people that you would produce in order to have the kind of impact that you actually think it has.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
American weakness in the Middle East has been, I mean, I say this as somebody obviously from Britain, but when Britain was a dominant world power, she produced the type of person who was keen to go and be a governor of, you know, a stan somewhere and learn the local dialects and, you know, run the civil service.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
The point is they produced that sort of person because they wanted to stay. America has never produced that sort of person, and it certainly hasn't in the Middle East in particular. It acts militarily on occasions, and in my view, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. But the reason why America was so badly outplayed by the mullahs in Iraq was simply that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
As you say, after the war, America had nothing like the staying power of the mullahs in Tehran, had nothing like the ability to affect post-war change like the Iranian revolutionary government did. And so, yes, if we create a vacuum like that or somebody else creates a vacuum, and after all, we did not cause the beginning of this, we, the West, I'm saying on this occasion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
did not cause the beginning of the Arab Spring, as it was optimistically called at the beginning, or the beginning of the revolutionary uprising in Syria in 2011. These things were ground up and the actors in the region moved in much more deftly and effectively than we did. It's the same with Lebanon. It's the same with Lebanon. America doesn't even have eyes over Lebanon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Iran has an army that has a checkpoint at Beirut Airport that will check you on behalf of Hezbollah when you come in there. You can't tell me that America is, just because America on paper and much more has the power... that America is the deft operator in the Middle East.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Iraq was certainly done by America, of course.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
By the way, let's just also go back, just because, I mean, the Libyan intervention I was pretty iffy about at the time. But that was done. Not to create an empire or anything like that. It was done for one very clear reason. And I remember the debates in the European capitals and in Washington, D.C. at the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There was a belief that after the uprising against Gaddafi began, that there would be a mass slaughter, genocide carried out by Gaddafi against the people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
There was a belief. Everybody believed it. He had started his son, if you remember, Saif Gaddafi, formerly of the London School of Economics, showing that we can produce the best. Saif Gaddafi stood up and said, we will fight to the last bullet and so on. And and everybody believed them. And the desire to intervene was caused in an attempt to not to people do not want the resources of Libya.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Nobody wanted Libya to fall apart or anything like that. They did it because there was a genuine belief in what was called time, which has gone out of fashion, but right to protect. And that was why they went in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And I would suggest that one of the things that is going on at the moment is despite or maybe because of what you just described, there are movements now on the right in America, subcultures, including people who follow both of you, who are very interested in playing with this absolute beyond the pale thing. Why somebody like Jake Shields wants to play around with Holocaust denial? Why?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
It's nice to hear the N-word again. The N-word?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
First of all, I would assume, I would hope that there's American military planning for absolutely everything. I would hope that there is a scenario for absolutely everything somewhere in the American pentagon or whatever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I would assume that. I would hope that any major power like America would have plans in place for almost everything that is likely. America should have started planning for some kind of kinetic force in Libya. From the 1980s. Of course. Of course there'd be plans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Why would America want to do any of those things? Who wants to do it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Yeah. Paul Wolfowitz is a great figure for almost any deep conspiracy in this country because he was a deputy secretary of defense at the highest in his life. He is forever being ascribed almost supernatural power. I don't think anyone's just ascribing. The highest position he ever got to was as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. And it's a very strange thing always when Wolfrid's name comes up because –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
He was a relatively low level person to whom almost everything can be ascribed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Not as important as Rumsfeld or Cheney, but yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
Well, first of all, before I get to the substance of it, why would they want the current situation in Libya?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
To Israel, yeah, sure. But he was... I mean, the Europeans and everybody else in NATO found that Gaddafi was a really relatively easy person to get on with, latterly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, no, but you'll notice that after he hands over the nuclear program and thus makes himself very vulnerable... unfortunately, for the future of world peace. Libya has been unutterably disastrous for Europe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I say that him being... Sorry, I should have clarified. My thing is... Him being overthrown after he's given over the nuclear weapons is a disaster because it leaves on the table this thing that you have to hold on to nuclear weapons. And if you don't hold on to nuclear weapons, you could be dead.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
No, I don't think anyone should use... what happened to Gaddafi as being a good precursor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I agree. And that's one of the reasons why... One of the reasons why Iran wants a nuke so bad. I'm not sure. It's just being sodomized to death, as you put it. But yeah, they want a nuke because they... I mean, if you like what the Iranian revolutionary government's done since 1979, you'd love what they'll do with the world when they've got a nuke. But anyway, put that aside for a second.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
I mean, the I just I'm sorry, we slightly come back to where we started. But I when you start talking about Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl, I just it's it's all awfully noxious smelling. Richard Powell was a member of the Defense Policy Board, which had an advisory capacity toward the Pentagon in the early 2000s. But it was in no by no means a policy board that dictated Pentagon policy. Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
In the last 30 years of American foreign policy, many major actors Paul Wolfowitz is a relatively major one. But we come slightly back full circle. In my view, I'm not saying you're guilty of this, certainly not knowingly. In my view, when people start talking about Paul Wolfowitz, I always remember that line of Mark Stein's many years ago.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray
And he said, you can't help thinking that one of the reasons why people find Wolfowitz so appealing to talk about is that his name starts with a nasty animal and ends Jewish. Yeah. That is a funny thing to say.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The billions of dollars that went into Gaza were largely used by Hamas leaders to enrich themselves, to build an incredibly elaborate terrorist infrastructure throughout Gaza. The misconception was Hamas leadership were happy with just being corrupt.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
That's my observation.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, a lot of people would like them to do that, of course, but that's not an option. There's a famous story that Joe Biden tells. It's actually a good story for Joe Biden. Being Joe Biden, he's told it a lot. But when he was a young senator, he once met Golda Meir, a former prime minister of Israel, indeed the prime minister during the 1973 war.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And she famously said to Joe Biden when she was showing him around, you know, you forget, Senator Biden, we have a secret weapon. And Biden thought that Golda Meir was going to tell him about Israel's nuclear project. And he said, all ears. I said, what's your secret weapon? She said, we have nowhere else to go.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
So anyone who thinks that rolling over is a possibility for Israel is simply somebody who wants them to be gone. What is clever about Hamas and its backers in Iran, the Iranian revolutionary government, is that they know exactly how to put Israel in an even more intolerable situation each time they attack.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
So for instance, they know that if you kidnap Israelis, one of the absolutely central things of the fabric of Israeli society, as with most Western societies is, you don't allow your citizens to remain behind. Just like you don't leave your soldiers behind. That if you fall behind enemy lines, if you are taken behind enemy lines, the state will do everything it can to get you back.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And that has been a compact in Israel since the foundation in 1948 and a really central thing. So Hamas knew, and I have lots of testimony from people who, for instance, overheard terrorists on the morning as they were lying dead or other things, heard the terrorists at, for instance, the Nova Party debating which of the young girls they should shoot and which they should kidnap.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And, you know, there were debates that they might have had too many people, too many girls to take back, for instance. But Hamas did the kidnapping knowing that to have 250 Israelis in captivity is to have an unbelievable advantage over the Israelis because they're going to have to come in. They're going to try to save them. They're going to try to rescue them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They'll exchange hundreds of terrorists for single Israelis. They'll exchange, as happened recently, an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for committing acts of terrorism, preparing suicide vests, trying to carry out bombings and much more, knife attacks. they will exchange sometimes hundreds of those Palestinians for, as happened the other week, the coffins of two Jewish babies.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Longer than London Underground, and as I joked to the British military friend, rather better run.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Oh, almost always where the tunnel entrances come up, they come up in children's bedrooms, in houses throughout Gaza. They come up inside mosques, they come up inside hospitals. Even in 2014, the BBC acknowledged that the Hamas leadership were coming up from tunnels underneath the Shifa hospital. which is one of their command headquarters.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
By the way, all of that is, for anyone who cares about this, completely against every law of war. The Geneva Conventions, every convention of war is, you are not allowed to fight, you're not meant to fight, in civilian clothing. You're not meant to fight and fire from places of worship. You're not meant to stockpile ammunition in hospitals.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
You're not meant to make civilian homes targets for reasons that our species thought we all understood.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
How about that for an argument? And of course, militarily, this is all to Hamas's enormous advantage, because again, they know that if there is a stockpile of ammunition or a terrorist or a tunnel entrance or whatever in a civilian home, And even if the Israelis tell all the locals to get out, the world's media will say that Israel bombed or invaded a civilian home.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
None at all. Whenever it's reported that a hospital has been hit, it's usually reported in the world's press, as Hamas wants, that the Israelis just decided to bomb a hospital, as if they're so evil, these Israelis, that they even bomb hospitals.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There was a member of the Israeli war cabinet, Gadi Eizenkot, who I quote in the book, because he lost his son fighting in Gaza in the aftermath of October the 7th, and the next day he lost his nephew, also fighting in Gaza. His nephew was killed
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Because as the Israelis were trying to do this incredibly delicate military operation to get back the hostages, destroy the leadership of Hamas and minimize any possible civilian casualties, Gary Eisenkot's nephew was fired upon from a mosque. by Hamas terrorists who gleefully opened fire on him and his unit, and they were meant to be sticking to them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Hamas were doing that, the Israelis were trying to stick to the normal laws of conflict and not just destroy the mosque, and so they lost soldiers. This is another example of the way in which Hamas do this. Any normal society that valued the life of their own civilians, like America, Britain, Israel,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
would, if it knew that its people were going to come under bombardment often, do what the Israelis did in the south and indeed across much of the country, which is you build bomb shelters in every home and you have bomb shelters in every civilian area. And across the south of Israel, that's the case, as it is in the north, because it's been being shelled by Hezbollah for 20 years.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But only in Gaza do you get a situation where And I quote one of the Hamas leaders saying this in an interview with Al Arabiya last year. This Hamas leader was asked by a friendly Arab journalist, why, if you say the civilian casualties in Gaza are so high, why can't you allow the civilians of Gaza to shelter in your tunnel networks that you've built underneath Gaza?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And the Hamas leader says, but the tunnel system is not for the civilians. The tunnel system is for our fighters and for our weaponry. And the interviewer says, well, who's to look after the civilians? And he says, the international community.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, but it's even worse than that, that, of course, an army... that fights by the laws of war, which the IDF does, like the American army, like the British army, makes mistakes for sure, like the American army, like the British army, but that fights by the laws of war, when it encounters a terrorist army like this,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The civilized army seeks to minimize the civilian casualties, as the IDF has done, and anyone who claims that it hasn't just does not know what's been going on for the last 18 months.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And believes Hamas reports.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yeah, it's, I mean, why go to a mass murderer to find out their account of their actions, you know? But the point is that when an army like that encounters an army that not just desires death for its enemy, but desires death for the people it purports to govern and with a kicker in it, seeks death itself.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
This is a realm of fanaticism and what I call it's a death cult, a cult that literally worships death. The leadership of Hamas, who I quote in the book, have for decades boasted about the extent to which they love death, embrace death. And one of the underlying things in this book, as you know, which we will come on to doubtless later, but is
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What happens if a society that actually values life encounters a death cult that worships and glories in death for its foes, but also for itself?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
We have seen such movements throughout history. We have seen them. but most of the world has forgotten about them. And I would argue that Israel to a great extent forgot about them until 6.30 in the morning on October the 7th, 2023.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
He congratulated the Western students for joining the anti-colonial struggle, not mentioning to the students that of course he, Ayatollah Khamenei, had ordered the gunning down of their contemporaries across the streets of Tehran.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
in 2009, and on many other occasions, that when Iranian students come out on the streets to protest against the actual oppression of the Islamic Revolutionary government in Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini, who congratulates the Western students for uprising, shoots the students who uprise in Iran. But that's a detail.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, there's a very healthy dose of narcissism thrown into the whole thing, which is that
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
to the extent that any students at American universities get taught anything about the Middle East, they will be taught Edward Said's theory, claim of Orientalism, which, of course, is a claim that is, by Said's own admission, spilled way beyond even the claims that he made in his book.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Said's insight, if you can call it that, was that when Westerners approached the Arab and Muslim world, they did so through the eyes of Westerners. which is an observation so banal that only the Academy could extrapolate out a whole course from it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, people like, I mean, when Napoleon goes to Egypt, one of the things he does is to order a massive catalogue of all of the riches and treasures of ancient Egypt, a catalogue which Egypt itself had not produced to that point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And one of the people who Napoleon gets on to do this, and who founds the Cairo Museum, by the way, ends up also being one of the people who breaks the code of the Rosetta Stone, giving the lost languages back to the region. But anyway. People don't need to know any of that. Another detail. It's another detail. Why do you need to know that when you can say, this is what Said really gifted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But just consider the enormously advantageous aspect of narcissism to this mix. Because the narcissistic thing that Saeed helped to give American and other Western students was nothing in the world happens unless you in the West make it happen. You make it so. The Palestinians, like all the Arabs, the Muslim world, the developing world as a whole, does nothing of its own volition.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It can't even make mistakes on its own dime. It's you that made them do it. What did we in America do to cause this is the lens, the only lens through which an American student will be taught to look at the world. Why is this happening in China? What did we do to China will be the way, but everything is interpreted.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
So this is just not fit for purpose for understanding the world, but it's hugely narcissistic because among other things, I mean, and you can see this in the spilling out of protests across American and other Western campuses.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
One of the things I say at one point in the book is, what level of delusion and narcissistic delusion do you have to be in to think that you at the University of Columbia or Berkeley or Yale or Princeton or Oxford can dictate war policy two continents away? Who was waiting for your opinion exactly? It's an extension. In counterterrorism strategy in densely built up urban areas.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
When you say that your university is central to the funding of Israel's war, what do you mean? What do you mean? You at your campus? Your campus is at the center of the war? Really? Really? You're at the center of world events? by sitting in the middle of your quadrangle in a tent?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What happened was that about 4,000 or more terrorists invaded Israel in the early morning. The Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other jihadist groups in Gaza started firing hundreds and hundreds of rockets at about 6.30 in the morning, almost exactly 6.30 in the morning. So air raid sirens went off across the country. But then something, and sadly that's kind of usual in Israel.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, yes, yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Dominance and malevolence.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I quote a student at Columbia who described himself as a first-generation, low-income student, the first in his family to go to university, certainly the first to go to Columbia. You would have thought, most of us would have thought, damn, I'm lucky.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But he describes how straightaway he was taught what he described as the rich history of protest in Colombia. And remembered thinking, when it kicks off again, I want to be at the center of it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Now, you know, I don't know about you, but I think student days should be used for many things. But... but the idea that you should make yourself central to the protest movements of your time as your demonstration of virtue in your years of study. Well, that's taught. That's taught. That young man was taught that. By the culture, too, not just by the university.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It's because the professors at totally pointless studies institutes and other things, and sometimes in serious programs, are actually telling their students this. There are a number of former faculty of Columbia that I've spoken to, and some present still, who say this to me. They say, we were teaching this for years. This was all being boiled up by us, by the faculty, for years ahead of this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But the other thing that happens then, just to add to your riff on the sin of it, is that, as you know, one of the conclusions I come to about this is that this has been projection on a vast scale. It really took talking with quite a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists about this phenomenon in the last 18 months.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
To work this out, there's this rule, as you know, that I go into in the book that I've mulled on a lot that I got from the great Soviet Jewish writer, Vasily Grossman, who appears intermittently throughout the book. Vasily Grossman had this terrific dictum in the middle of life and fate where he says, tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I'll tell you what you're guilty of.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And this is unbelievably relevant again and again and again. The Iranian revolutionary government says that the Jewish state is a colonialist enterprise. The Iranian revolutionary government is colonizing the Middle East since 1979. There's nothing colonist about Islam. Oh, no.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And as you know, Muhammad, when he spread Islam, only did through by persuasion and kindness. And that still obtains today.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But every time I mulled on this subject in recent years, Grossman's rule absolutely applied. People using the Jewish state, just as they have the Jewish people throughout history, as a projection mechanism for their own failings.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And the place where I realized this became very relevant to the American university and the Western universities was, what were the things the students were accusing the Jewish state of? Genocide, ethnic cleansing, white supremacy. So you would laugh at that one. That's a good one. But anyway, so ethnic cleansing, genocide, white supremacy. The various sins, they will always lob at Israel.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It's quite common to have air raid sirens, particularly in the south, has been for 20 years. What became clear was very unusual was that across multiple parts of the Gaza-Israel border,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And they were throwing this at Israel from October the 7th, as they had in the years before. But they really got a push on it after that. And I was thinking throughout this period as I saw the protests in the West, I thought, why are these terms so familiar?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The conclusion I came to was, and it actually was a follow on from my previous book, The War on the West, where I talked about what was being taught to a generation. And as you know, one of the things I said in that book was, we are teaching young people born in the 21st century in America and the rest of the West that they are guilty by dint of being born here.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
You are guilty of colonialism because some of your ancestors may have engaged in colonialism. You're guilty of genocide. You carry the guilt of genocide because 300 years ago, people who may not be ancestors of yours, but looked like you, did this thing, and so on and so on.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And I said in the War on the West that this was a very, very dangerous thing because it's a mechanism of guilt with no alleviation mechanism for forgiveness. There's no way to alleviate the guilt. You're just being told you're guilty and you're stuck with it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
One of the conclusions I come to is this protest movement has been projection on a vast scale. The students accuse Israel of things that the students have been told that they themselves are guilty of.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And so this is a giant mechanism of projection, which is why I say when it comes to these protesters, particularly the students in the West, I say, tell me what you accuse the Jewish state of. I'll tell you what you were taught you're guilty of. Right, of course. You would court that you're guilty of.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
thousands of terrorists broke in they broke down the fences they broke down they went to the checkpoints where guards and workers would come through each day and where aid lorries and indeed commerce occurred they went to those crossings as well attacked the soldiers overwhelmed them in quite a lot of places it was a religious holiday it's the holiday of simkat torah and it and so a lot of people were at home with their families
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Absolutely. But here is a way. And with the added thing that the Iranian proxies across the West, the Qatari money that has flooded through Western universities, not least American universities. Propagandists on TikTok. Propagandists, the organized groups.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
the organized movements it's not an accident that the same movement crops up everywhere with exactly the same slogans that you know is it generic that students at princeton again the other week are chanting glory to our martyrs this is totally imported um propaganda just placed over them and they these adults repeat and repeat and repeat but this all of this has been done so expertly
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
because it plays to the psychological weakness that exists in so many people in the West who have been taught their guilt, have been taught culpability with no means of getting rid of it. But here, here you have a means.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
We not only eradicated, we the British, not only eradicated it in the British Empire, but eradicated it on all the high seas. Right. And lost thousands of sailors throughout the 19th century. And every British household paid far more in household goods throughout the 19th century because we weren't trading with slave traders. Right. Compare that, by the way, to the fact that at the same time—
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, at the same time, the Islamic world was gloriously still slaving away. And much of the Islamic world still does, by the way, across Africa and the Middle East. It's still doing slaving. Unrepentantly and with no apology whatsoever. But positively beaming. that at the same time they can teach people in the West that Westerners born in the 21st century are guilty of 18th century slaving.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
So this is an extraordinarily dangerous moment, it seems to me, because the ground that you and I and others have identified for many years of deracination, of populations, demoralization of populations, stripping away of all legitimate heroes or ignorance of them, whether it's Wilberforce or Churchill or anyone else.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But the stripping away of the heroes, stripping away of the national story in country after country across the West leaves this vacuum.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Canada, perhaps the world leader. Australia, New Zealand, they could compete. They're doing very, very well. They are. But into this vacuum, something was always going to step.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And there is no reason why American or other Western universities or streets, because it's not just at higher education institutions, it's, you know, Union Station in New York shut down again the other week by hundreds of people chanting for Intifada. Intifada terrorism in the center of New York.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What it is is there's no reason why this death cult ideology should find itself worshipped in the free West, apart from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be deracinated and demoralized and allowed the weakest and most pernicious imaginable ideology to step into the vacuum.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, oppressor-oppressed, colonizer-colonized.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
it was 50 years to the day since the Yom Kippur War when Israel's Arab neighbors invaded in a surprise attack as well. So you might say, well, how come it's a surprise? That was one of the things, as soon as I got to Israel straight after the 7th, one of the things I was trying to find out was what the hell went wrong.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There's another strand to that, by the way, which I gave a lecture on this in New York last year for the New Criterion, which is even if somebody does use the term evil in the West these days, and people are very uncomfortable about using it, because of its theological framework. If you do hear the word evil used in the Western press, I give examples of this, what will people describe it as?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Almost inevitably, they will resort to Hannah Arendt's lamentable definition of the banality of evil. And if anyone is interested, they can go and read the essay online that I wrote about against Hannah Arendt's appalling, misguided, and provably wrong theory on the banality of evil, which she applied to Eichmann, the leading Nazi and architect of the Holocaust.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There was nothing about Eichmann that was banal. He just fooled Hannah Arendt. But she, through her half-baked theory, that's the last bit of the use of evil I notice in the public realm. Something will happen like, for instance, when a drummer Lee Rigby was beheaded in broad daylight on the streets of London in 2013.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The next day, a columnist at The Telegraph, a conservative newspaper in the UK, described the act as banal. The Guardian said it was a sort of... Yes, exactly. It's hard to see decapitation as banal unless you just have no other word to use in the environment of evil. But one of the things I want readers to come away from on Demoxes and Death Cults thinking about is exactly this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Maybe there is such a force in the world. Maybe evil really does descend. Maybe it actually exists.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, I would say one of this, and you know this well from your work on the Bible, but one of the things I suppose that would stand out as a definition of evil is doing it knowingly. and gleefully and glorying it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But then the layer underneath that is where death is offered up as a form of worship. Now, this is something the Western mind finds incredibly hard to understand within the death cults within Islam. We have some understanding about it when this arises in the form of Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, some understanding, or Maoist communism, even less understanding.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Because the Israelis have always had, certainly since 1973, a sort of invulnerability. It's not true, of course, but they were seen to be invulnerable by many of their neighbors. Impossible to catch by surprise. Impossible to catch by surprise. It's what I call the founderization of Israel, the idea that it's eyes in the sky everywhere, nothing that can be done that could surprise them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Serial killers. I think we still might be able to identify Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, or the Yorkshire Ripper as...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But imagine that with a theological framework around it, such as the kind that jihadists have. This is why, when you ask why I sort of was marling on this, it was because of something I couldn't get out of my head from the 7th onwards, which was that the...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I've seen quite a lot of war and how people act in war and regard myself as relatively unshockable, or at least aware of the capacity of human evil. But from the moment I started seeing the videos that Hamas took themselves on the morning, And I started seeing them very early.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I then saw an awful lot of them and then far more even before going to the massacre sites myself and the hospitals and the morgues and so on. But one of the things I could not get out of my head was the glee, the sheer orgiastic glee of the terrorists. At least the Nazis tried to hide their crimes. Well, this is a point I've made that has occasionally got me into trouble.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What happened on the 7th was as if for some hours in Treblinka, the Nazis had live-streamed to the world what they were doing. and were proud of it and wanted everyone to know.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I quote a late friend of mine early in the book, as you know, who fled Nazi Austria in 1938. He said towards the end of his life to me and to a historian friend, he said that he had spent his last years thinking actually, maybe there was a level of anti-Semitism even worse than the Nazis.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Absolutely. Really. And it required somebody who had fled Nazism and lost much of his family to Nazism to be able to, in a way, make that point. But the thing, we don't need to get into the competition of, as it were, which is how people see it, but it doesn't diminish anything. But this... This thing of the ecstasy in death, the ecstasy in bringing death.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I quote the young man who phones back to his family in Gaza on a cell phone and says, father, father, I've killed 10 Jews with my own hands. I've killed 10 Jews. Get mother on the phone. Turn on to WhatsApp video. I can show you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
the endless cries of Allahu Akbar, which, as I said shortly after the 7th, is not something I wanted to hear chanted on our streets much more, knowing this isn't simply an offering of prayer like the Lord's Prayer.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And if Christians had, in recent memory, been massacring people whilst screaming the Lord's Prayer in ecstasy, I think that Christians would have the decency to pipe down a bit about shouting it in public squares en masse. But the cry of al-Hawakhba that we're forever told now is simply like, it's just a prayer. Like saying, seek heil in America is just a quoting of German.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The use of al-Hawakhba by the terrorists as they're removing a young man's head with a shovel or raping girls and then killing them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
That wasn't the case. massive amounts of the security apparatus of Israel failed. Hamas were also very, very clever. They'd done a lot of reconnaissance, using, sadly, Gazan workers in Israel to do the reconnaissance, it has to be said, in the months and years ahead of the seventh. They knew how to take down things like communications.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
satanic delight to take what's highest and to subvert it most entirely yeah they yes this is these are bottomless pits as you say jordan but um There is something I think one can say about the awareness of what you're doing as being wrong to this extent, and still enjoying it. There's a story I tell.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, also with another layer, which is that you have been taught that the people you're doing this to are subhuman.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There was a rather heavy, I'll do it quickly, but a rather heavy day when I went in to see the Hamas terrorists that had been captured alive. And one of them I recognized, and that was a moment where I really did think again about the nature of evil. And yes, it's hard not to think of it in a theological context in this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There was a family who on the 7th were in their home in a small community in the South, and the oldest boy was a teenager. had already gone to the beach with friends and a landing craft of Hamas came in and they killed him and his friends. And then they went to the community and the father of the family was there in the house and ran into the bomb shelter with his two teenage sons.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
I think the boys were 10 and 12 or thereabouts. And the terrorists came in and the father, I've seen the video several times, it's pretty gruesome, but the father takes his two sons into the bomb shelter with him and the Hamas throw a grenade in. And the father threw himself onto the grenade to save his sons. And they come out of the shelter staggering, both in their underwear.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They knew how to take down the security apparatus at the border. And by the time that hundreds and then thousands of people were flooding into Israel, invading, they were going community by community through the south, village by village. They're called kibbutz. They're small communities of sometimes a few hundred, sometimes a thousand people.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And one of them, his eye had been blown out of his socket, and the other one had lost his hearing. His ear was off. And they come into the main room of the house, and again, it's all on video. And they're both completely disorientated, of course. One of them is saying, where's father? And the other one is saying, didn't you see him? Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And then the terrorists who killed their father walks into the room with a Kalashnikov and just looks at the boys, goes to the fridge, opens the fridge, and gets out a Diet Coke and starts drinking it in front of them. And also later asks where their mother is.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yeah. So inevitably, yes, you get to the question of how does so many people get taught this or encouraged into this? And I was very struck, this is very much in your wheelhouse, but one of the reunions of the survivors of the Nova Party, I got talking to a remarkable woman who was a therapist who was working with them.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And these were, of course, all deeply, deeply traumatized young people who, you know, have difficult time for the rest of their lives. But there was a therapist who'd been working with them, who I spoke with, who said to me then, and it was something I thought about a lot, which was, you know, don't forget, Douglas, that a psychopath is probably born. Sinoir was a type of psychopath, clearly.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But she said, don't forget sociopaths you have to make. And that was something I thought about a lot because of course, what would happen if you had control of a civilian population, like the almost 2 million people in Gaza, a population that doubled in the time that Israel was said to be doing a genocide there, by the way, but part of that aside is a mere fact.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What would you do if you had a civilian population for 18 years and you were a death cult and you ruled it? You would teach what Hamas taught in Gaza, which was to teach the young Gazan Palestinians how to join the death cult, to admire it, to be part of it, so that when... To strive for attainment within it. To strive for it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It's all very well documented, but the soldiers who were going house to house from... In 2014, there was a relatively minor war in Gaza compared to this one. And there are many soldiers I spoke to who were involved in the relatively minor conflict in 2014 who were also in Gaza since October 2023. They all said that they noticed when they did house-to-house clearing
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
going through trying to find hostages, trying to find weapons, trying to find tunnel entrances, and trying to find the architects of the massacre.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They all said the same thing, which was that in 10 years, there was a marked radicalization in the books, in the households, in the learning materials, in everything from, and it's not satire, you know, math textbooks of, you know, if you kill two Jews and kill another two Jews, how many dead Jews do you have? You know, this is the way you learn arithmetic in Gaza under Hamas.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
These were peaceful farming communities, and they started to go house by house through these communities, massacring the people inside, kidnapping as well. They came across, of course, because they managed to do the invasion not just by land, but by sea and also by air in hang gliders.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
This is something that many of us noticed and had warned about for years, but the fruit of this education system, the fruit of this indoctrination was October the 7th. And look at it, it was a catastrophe for the Israelis and it's turned out to be an utter disaster for the citizens of Gaza.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, this is one of my conclusions about the nature of, specifically of antisemitism, goes back to that Grossman quote, that it acts as a mirror to the failings of the person who suffers from it. So that, for instance, Israel's neighbors could notice that the society is GDP.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
That this country is doing awfully well considering the existential threat to it constantly from its neighbors since its creation, since literally the minute of its creation in 1948.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There's no oil. It's one darn bit of the region where there's no oil. And yet they make a success of it. And if you look around the rest of the region and you see... Colonial enterprise, Douglas. I know. But you look around the rest of the region, if you were Israel's neighbors in... Jordan or Egypt or certainly, you know, Gaza and Saudi, the Gulf, anywhere, it's a perfect subject for resentment.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There's endlessly someone to blame. That's convenient. That's very convenient. Very. And someone to hate. Someone to hate. That's even better. And that's a great unifying thing among much more.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But just think about how taking the wrong route Cain and Abel life has been such a disaster.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They managed to come into the dance party, the Nova party, where thousands of young people were dancing in the early morning. And there's a debate about whether or not the terrorists knew that they were going to get this really easy pickings of unarmed young people dancing in the morning.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
That's one of the reasons why, as you know, I do get theological in this book eventually, because you can't not.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, that's right. But it's two things really, Jordan. It's first is that, as you say, I think we agree that it's hard to contend with evil unless you have some kind of theological appreciation of it. And... But the second thing is, of course, that comes from that is that one of the things I think about in the book is, well, then what's the opposite of that?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes. If Israel goes, Europe goes. Well, that's certainly always been my belief. And some people might say, well, how could a state that's not yet 80 years old be so central to the West? It's not because it's just any other state.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
No. And so if you realize that, if you begin to contend with what it is the death cults are onto and what their supporters in the West might be onto, when they call for the destruction of Israel, they always do it as a precursor to the downfall of everyone else in the West. Like Iran, for example. Whether it's the Ayatollahs in Iran with the little Satan Israel, great Satan America,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Britain, Canada, medium-sized satans. Whether or not it's the Iranian Revolutionary Government doing it for their... The protesters are right. Israel is the vanguard of the West. Well, here's the thing. You see, when students at Columbia...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
when their group, as well as vandalizing their campus, chasing Jewish students across campus, assaulting janitors and much more, all of course in the name of fighting for the oppressed, when they call in their statements for the complete destruction of Western civilization, They do mean it. The spirit that possesses them means it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But whether it was luck or design, they managed to get to the party and came in on military Jeeps and trucks and motorcycles and started massacring their way through the young people in the early hours of the morning. There were a lot of questions I asked about what went wrong on the Israeli side. There's a lot to find out about and some of the answers I think I've come to.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It's just that they recognize that a country of 9 million people in the Middle East, surrounded by countries that wouldn't mind its demise, is an easier thing to destroy than a country of 340 million people like the one we're sitting in.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes. And of course, one of the, if not the, absolutely central things in the West, which is the tradition of the Bible. that the reason, the point I'm getting to is- You talked about that in terms of the celebration of life. Yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The point I'm getting to exactly is that when these people, whether it's the protesters in the West or the death cult itself in Hamas, Hezbollah, and others, I think they might have chosen their target well. I think they're onto something. They do know that if you take this out, Everyone else is vulnerable next.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
It's very clever target selection, not just because of size, but because of... Theologically. Theologically, what it means.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
What it means theologically. And that's why I get onto this thing that you see. Again, it goes back to your thing about how ignorant we are in the West about the reality of evil among much else. is the presumption that everyone wants what we want, for instance, which among other things is also just narcissistic projection. Maybe everyone else doesn't want what you want.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Maybe they want something totally different entirely.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
You know, one of the things I thought of a lot when I was thinking, when I was covering the, obviously this is also, as you know, a first-hand account of Israel's response in the conflict. One of the things I thought about a lot was what the spirit is that animates in response to the death cults. And I realize that it's there in our texts. It's there in the books. Therefore, choose life.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Therefore, choose life. Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy. Choose life that you and your descendants might live. When I was thinking about that, I thought I was reminded of that phase of the new wave atheists in the 2000s, of which I was distantly apart, who used to say things like, well, the Ten Commandments, they're so obvious. I mean, why do we need to be told not to murder? Because you were murdering.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Because humankind didn't know that you shouldn't murder.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
If you don't think that's an a priori condition, you are very naive. So I heard that for many years about the Ten Commandments, and it was done in, I think, usually naive and flippant way. But when it comes down to this one, literally, the commandment to choose life... in the face of whatever odds. Yeah, whatever odds. That's the story of Job. Exactly.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And as the psalmist says, I shall not die, but I shall live. One of the things that I recount in the book is just the number of examples I came across from people who had stared right in the face of death, right in the face of evil. and who even in the face of it and in the aftermath of it had at the core of their being, I shall not die, but I shall live.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And even in a military response, you see the difference between these things.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But although many people in their homes who I spoke to in the hospitals and in the communities in the aftermath of the 7th said the same thing to me, the thing they said was that they told their children as they were hiding in the bomb shelters, as their homes were on fire and they could hear people at the door trying to break in, they said that they'd tell their children, you know, don't worry, the army will be here in moments.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
One of the things that Hassan Nasrallah, the now late leader of Hezbollah, had said for many years is,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
was the the jihadist death taunt he had said it many times there's a famous time in the 2000s when he says it in a speech in beirut when he says the infidel's great weakness is that they love life but we we love death and this is our great advantage he and others around him really meant this they wanted just like kidnapping children kidnapping civilians
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They knew that if you go to a society focused on life, even to the extent of the minimization of deaths of their enemies, that if you go for a society that loves life, desires life, fights for life, that you can terrorize them. You could terrify them with your orgiastic celebration of death.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But as I described toward the end of the book, as the year of the conflict starts to turn around, as Hassan Nasrallah goes to meet his maker from a Beirut bunker, when Sinoir finally crops above ground in Rafah with only three other people with him, one, by the way, a bodyguard who was working for the UN, a UN agency, When Sinhwa comes above... The UN. Yes.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Again, Sinhwa's bodyguard paid for with our taxpayer dollars. But when the architect of the Seventh finally comes above ground in Rafah, which, of course, the military expert Kamal Harris had told the Israeli army not to go into because she'd looked at the maps. But it turned out when they went into Rafah, they found their enemy. And when you see these people, there is an answer to the death cults.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
there is an answer to the cult of death, which the IDF has shown is the destruction of their leaders, the killing of the psychopaths who would lead a society in this way, and a demonstration of the values of your own society.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Now, that has been incredibly hard because there hasn't been a day I've been with the Israeli Defense Forces in the last year and a half when I haven't seen how they've been operating and then read the world's news the next day and read it as if these were polar opposites of each other. As I say, you know, Israelis enter hospital.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, because the hospital was somewhere where there's footage of hostages from the seventh being taken in on the seventh and not for care. whether it's hospitals, schools, anything else, there was just nothing the IDF could do from the moment they went in, indeed from the moment before they went in, when they were not going to be misrepresented by the world's media in a grand way. But,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And I've been asked many times in the last year and a half, why are the Israelis so bad at communicating? The truth is it's extremely hard to communicate what you're doing to a world which in significant part has already decided that you're the bad guy.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And it wasn't. But it didn't fail entirely. There were some army in the area who put up a very good fight. And some of the army managed to get down fast. Some elite units managed to get to the south swiftly and had very, very intense firefights.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
No. I mean, I would say there's a saying, I quote somebody saying the book is an idiot British student survey in which a large number of people said they wouldn't be willing to fight for their country even if it was under existential threat Well, they've been taught that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, yes, and when you dig down on the reasons why they said they wouldn't even be willing to fight for their country under existential threat, as the young men and women of Israel have had to do for the last 18 months, the most common reply among young British people of the same age was, war doesn't solve anything.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well, the other one I come across is people, by the way, and they don't really mean it, by the way, because again and again, the people who say that Israel is killing women and children are apologists for at best and supporters for at worst, a group that videoed themselves killing women and children.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And many of the people who say that the Israelis are doing this are the same people who say that Hamas did not. I mean, that's another level of the psychopathy now in the West. It's like I've said repeatedly since the 7th, you know, what did we have in the 2017 period? Believe all women. Turned out, don't believe women if they're Jews. Don't believe it then.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Don't believe it if the rape is caught on camera. by Hamas and they're boasting of it. Don't believe them. But then, a year down the road in the war in Gaza, these same people who deny that Hamas raped women on the 7th will say that Israeli soldiers are raping women in Gaza. Every single time it's some form of projection, disassociation.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But yes, I mean, to go back to the main point, yes, the main response that I hear is people who say things like, I don't like war. Yep.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But one of the other things that happened was that there were a lot of people who I described, Arab, Druze, Jews, Israelis, who were what I call self-starters, just people who realized that everything was going wrong. The country had been invaded. It was war.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But the opportunity to see the opposite of that to see the opposite of the antinatalism, for instance.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And not just among the religious, among the secular as well, which is blowing the minds of a lot of demographers. As it should. As it should. You'll notice that your most secular Tel Avivians will be having more children than themselves. They have more than two children a couple on average.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And who, through some extraordinary metal or insight or whatever, sometimes just information, somebody who happened to know somebody in one of the communities in the South who was saying, you know, we're on fire, would just hurtle to the scene and save lives.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yes, but that points to one of the central things in it. You probably can't fake that stuff up. The Hungarians, for instance, and I think the Poles, when they wanted to encourage people to have more children. Economically. Economically. If you have a fourth child, you will pay no income tax on the 10th year. Maybe people don't structure their lives like that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
How about if... I mean, look at the difference between a Hungarian couple... who are working out the tax break advantages of having a fourth child but deciding not to have a second child versus an Israeli family in a war zone still creating life. Right. That's not a tax incentive thing. That is at a far, far deeper level. Right. And it is to do with a commandment. It is to do with a commandment.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And, you know, I would just add one other thing to that, which is I was talking the other day with a friend, a biblical scholar, and he said, you know that famous quote on the walls of the UN, the quote from Isaiah? and he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." Now that's magnificent sentiment, of course, and who wouldn't want to follow it? But the thing that I just realized is, look at what comes before it. Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Right. That's called a precondition, Douglas. You don't get... the idea of war being no more, or peace breaking out among nations, unless the word goes out from Jerusalem. You can have one, but you can't have it without the other. That's right. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And that's why I say that the morning of 7th was a story of catastrophic evil from Hamas and Islamic jihad, and indeed the Ghazan civilians who came in to join in the raping and the stealing and the kidnapping. By the end of the day, 1,200 Israelis were dead, many, many more injured, and 250 taken hostage into Gaza.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Thank you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Thank you.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
By proportion of population, if people were to extrapolate that out to America, it would be about 44,000 Americans killed in one day. Well, and the hostage situation is also— And 10,000 Americans taken hostage. Right. That's by proportion of population, if you extrapolate it out. There'd be 10,000 Americans being dragged out of their homes and taken into enemy territory by terrorists.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But the story was, first of all, of the evils that Hamas committed that day. Secondly, and the suffering that they imposed. Secondly, of course, the failure of much of the security apparatus in Israel from which lessons will have to be learned, and not just by Israel but by her allies.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But thirdly, as I say, it's also the story of extraordinary people rising to this terrible moment and doing unbelievably heroic things. I tell a lot of the stories of people, for instance, there's somebody who's become a friend called Nimrod who hurtled south in his car. He had been in the army, was called back to base by his commander.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But by that point, Nimrod was driving south, and he managed to pick up a gun on the way, a single revolver with, I think, eight rounds of ammunition. Went through every military checkpoint. He said he didn't see a live Israeli till the early afternoon. But when he did, he fought and killed many terrorists.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
There are other people, like there was a young man at the party I mentioned in the book whose girlfriend I met who had realized the situation, managed to get a car out of the party. The terrorists were massacring everyone as they came out by car. So they were shooting the cars, so then there was a log jam. But this young man managed to find a way out on another route.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And he took four or five young people in the car, drove them 30 minutes, dropped them off, came back, took another car full of young people, drove again, took them back. Every time they said to him, don't go back again, it's hell, it's death. But he kept doing it. And then the last time he did it, he was killed. But there are lots of... terrible stories from the day that I recount.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
But as I say, it also seems to me to be important to credit the people who survived and who didn't, who showed unbelievable heroism.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
That and one other thing, which was what was known as the conception, which I spoke about with military and other political leaders. It's a very interesting thing, this. The conception was effectively, well, it was obviously a terrible mistake, but was a belief in some of the security infrastructure in Israel.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
that Hamas were effectively like so many terrorists and radical movements throughout history, that they had been misgoverning the Gaza effectively since Israel withdrew in 2005, but they'd stolen billions of dollars of international aid. All the leaders of Hamas were billionaires. thanks to the Canadian, American, European, British taxpayers.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Well done for us. Yeah, that's for sure. Great use of our taxpayer funds.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
The billions of dollars that went into Gaza were largely used by Hamas leaders to enrich themselves, to build an incredibly elaborate terrorist infrastructure throughout Gaza, miles and miles of underground tunnels, very, very elaborate systems, some effectively crawl spaces, others large enough to drive military vehicles from one end of Gaza to the other.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
And they built that whole infrastructure over the 18 years or so that they governed Gaza. And that was the other way in which they used their money. But the conception, which turned out to be a misconception, was that part of the security apparatus in Israel believed that Hamas leadership were happy with just being corrupt. They were living in luxury penthouses.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Corrupt was sufficient. Rather like the Soviet Union by the 80s. The leaders didn't believe it anymore. They just wanted to drink and have whatever they could in the time they had.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Yeah, and many times in history that has turned out to be true. A lot of revolutionary movements have done that. But this turned out to be completely wrong in the case of the Hamas leadership. They wanted to enrich themselves and they wanted to do what they said they were going to do, which was to annihilate the Jews.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
They managed to try to have both. But if you look at, for instance, one of the central figures of the book, Sinoir, Yahya Sinoir, one of the leaders of Hamas who'd been in an Israeli jail until 2011 for killing Palestinians with his own hands, literally throttling them with his own hands and with a kefir.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
One of many, yeah. Yahya Sinwa was a true psychopath, and I'd known about him for years. A lot of people who studied the region had. He was what would have been called a true believer. after he'd been released in a prisoner exchange for one Israeli soldier who they'd kidnapped in the late 2000s.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
After Sinoir was exchanged, and by the way, having had his life saved by an Israeli doctor in prison, Sinoir went back to Gaza, seized back control of Hamas, said repeatedly in public statements that he wanted Hamas to go into Israel and tear the hearts out of the bodies of the Jews. On the 7th, he took his best shot at it. And it turned out that what Sinoir said he wanted to do, he did. He did.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
Victims we haven't understood yet. They may have had a bad childhood.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
To now, well, they're literally marching in the street, you know, in leather bondage gear, like flaunting in front of confused children standing there. Having sex on the street, actually. Yeah, right. Engaged in sexual acts. And even worse than that, they're going into the school systems. They're putting this stuff in the school. They're trying to tell my kids.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
My kids aren't in the school system, but, you know, they're trying to tell our kids.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I'm in Tennessee, so we still have that right in Tennessee so far. But then they start going into the school system and they start promoting this. They start trying to tell our kids that you should also tolerate this and accept it and embrace it and celebrate it. There's this kind of...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
you know what what they're telling kids in school about homosexuality for example is not just biology there's a moral message they're giving them a moral message and the moral message is this is okay there's nothing wrong with it it's this is you know a gay couple is equal in every way to a straight couple these are just different variations you know it's a it's morally neutral that's their message that's uh that's ideology that's not biology and um
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
and once you start doing that then it's like very clear how this affects me you know but how does it affect the society well it fundamentally transforms society and our basic priorities how we live what matters to us so we're not positive that cryptocurrency is the future of finance but we do know that what we have now is broken and dangerous debt has never been higher in this country
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Or we should look at the way that... human society was structured for thousands of years and we should probably consider that they were right about a lot of that stuff you know maybe not everything right maybe not everything but there are just certain basic civilizational truths that we have moved away from in recent decades But I don't think there was any good reason to move away from them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. You know what I mean? And gender roles is another one that, again, it goes back to human civilization worked a certain way for thousands of years, and it seemed to work.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
uh and we went from you know mud huts to uh walking on the moon if you believe we walked on the moon which i absolutely do uh well you are taking some bold positions that is bold that is bold you're taking on the entire internet So we went from there to there with a kind of basic structure, with a basic setup. Gender roles is one of them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
They were so basic, so fundamental that you didn't have a word for it. If you go back to 1700 and use the term gender roles... To anyone. They're not going to have any idea what the hell you're talking about. Even though their entire society is structured around it. Exactly. And this is true even now. If you go outside of the kind of
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
liberal western bubble which i've done which i've done once when we were doing what is a woman i went to we went to kenya we talked to the messiah tribe in in kenya did they know what a woman was they didn't know what a woman was they were confused by the question not because they didn't know the answer but because they couldn't possibly understand why it would even be asked right um
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But then I remember a lot of this didn't make it in the movie because it wasn't totally connected. But talking about gender roles with them, and again, they had no idea what that term even meant. But their whole society is completely structured around it. It was, if you're a man, this is what you do. If you're a woman, this is what you do. And that's it. And...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I remember asking one of the women, I was in her hut, which is actually made of cow dung. And it's a one-room hut and they all sleep on one bed, mud floor. And she was telling me what she does all day as the woman of the house, which is she takes care of the house, she takes care of the kids. And I asked her if she was happy doing this. And she laughed at me.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And so if human beings did something a certain way for literally millennia in every civilization that we know of, It's probably right. I mean, there's probably a lot to be said for it. Again, not in every case, but in most cases.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It was such a ridiculous question. Because of course she is. And then I asked about depression. And this might be in the movie. I said, you know, where I come from, a lot of people are depressed. And one of the guys said to me, well, we don't have that here. We don't do that. We don't have depression. That's not a thing here. Of course, there's unhappiness. It's not like a utopia.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I wouldn't want to live there, to be perfectly clear about it. But you do notice that in these societies that are structured around gender roles, there's a lot of anxiety and hangups that they don't have because they know they have a basic concept of who they are and what they're supposed to do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And we are certainly discovering that in this culture. And that's why... You can go on TikTok, which I don't recommend, but you can go on TikTok anytime. It's a whole genre of video now on TikTok where you've got these young women. It's usually young women who do these videos, these selfie videos, where they're in tears, crying.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because they went out into the working world and they found it so miserable and depressing and empty. And they just hate it. And they don't want to work and they don't want to do it. And they're in despair over it. And that's exactly what's happened. I think we were, you know, the message to women.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. Where did you get all these opinions? It's not the ideal setup. And just to be clear, I think that there are families where both parents have to work. I think there are a lot of families where they think both parents have to work, but they don't actually have to. It just depends on what your priorities are and if you're willing to make the sacrifices.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think most families, you know, people say to me all the time, well, I'd love to have, I'd love for it to be one income. I'd love to homeschool. I'd love to have a family. We can't afford it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. I was an assistant manager. Is that true? I was. That's how low their standards were towards the end.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I left Blockbuster and then they went out of business shortly thereafter. So you can connect the dots on that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It was about a year, year and a half.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, uh, yeah, I was working, I was making about $40,000 a year at the time. Half that when we first got married, but by the time we had kids, I was making about $40,000 a year. And that was only income in the family. That was the only income in the family. And no trust fund at all. No. No. No. No savings of any kind.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You know, this was a time... There was one time I remember I went to the gas station to get gas and my card was declined. Insufficient funds. And I'm in the gas station. I have no money. And the gas tank is empty. Because when you're broke, your gas is always almost empty. Yeah. And so I had no gas, insufficient funds. And I remember thinking, this is after I had two kids already.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So it's something like the, you know, gay adoption. That, and this isn't the only argument against it, but I think it is a worthwhile argument that... There's never been a society anywhere on earth, anywhere, period, where they have had two men in a romantic relationship starting a family. That's just that's never existed. It's always been a man and a woman start a family.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
This is how broke we were. But I remember thinking, I'm going to have to ask someone at a gas station for money. I'm going to have to do this. I can't believe I'm going to have to. But I didn't. I just started looking under the chair for coins. And I found about like a buck 50 in coins. And I went and paid for gas, a buck 50 worth of gas in coins, enough to get home.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then we'll figure out the problem. But anyway, the point is we had no money. We were very broke. And, you know, money went a little bit farther back then, but not that much farther. I mean, this wasn't 50 years ago, right? How many years ago was it? This was 11 years ago.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, it was the same country. And... So we decided we wanted to have one income. We wanted to have a one income family. So family of four on one income. It was not a high income at all. It can be done. I think in most cases, you just have to be willing to make the sacrifices. And a lot of people aren't. And that's fine, too, because you have to decide on what your priorities are.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And so you might say, look, it's a priority to us that we have a big enough house that each person can have their own room. We don't want to share rooms for kids. It's a priority to us that we have two cars, that we can go on a nice vacation once a year, that we can have two or three TVs, that everyone can have a smartphone with all the plans.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And we want to have five different streaming subscriptions. And we want to be able to eat out whenever we want. That's a priority to us. And okay, if that's a priority, then yeah, in a lot of cases, you're going to need double income. But if you're willing to say, okay, we're going to downsize our home. We're going to share bedrooms. We're going to have one TV. We're going to have one car.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because a lot of other stuff doesn't matter, really. It's like there's no happiness in that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's very hard. Like I said, having gone through it, it's really difficult. I much prefer having money to not having it, but not at the expense of having someone else raise my kids.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Happiness in the home is a big thing. Not perfectly happy. You're going to have your problems and your struggles, and some of them may be financial, and there can be some real misery that comes from that. I don't deny it. But it's just a fundamentally happier home in my experience when the children are being raised by their mother, by their parents. The kids are happier.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And beyond happiness, you can control how your children are raised. And you can raise them with your value system and maintain that, which is... Almost impossible if you're putting your kids in public school, let's say.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's almost impossible because the kids are going to spend five days a week, seven hours a day, nine months a year for 12 or 13 years of their formative years not with you or your wife. in this government indoctrination center around their peers. And so inevitably, they're going to be absorbing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Or in certain ancient civilizations and even some primitive ones today, you might have a man and several women, you might have polygamy. That's a pretty common feature, I would say. It's certainly common, but you never had, and why do you have polygamy? I don't support polygamy, but there was a logic to it, especially in ancient times. You got to create people.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
They're going to start orienting themselves to the world based on that, by looking at their peers, not even so much what their teachers are telling them, but what their peers are doing. And that's what's going to happen. So at a certain point, you're going to lose... You run the risk that you're just going to lose them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And that's why you have these parents who turn around and everything they've instilled in their kids seems to have just gone out the window. And I think there's a big reason why.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't think it's meaningful. Weird is... There are bad kinds of weird, but this is a good kind of weird. Yes. Yeah, I hear this a lot. People will say, well... How do you socialize them? Yeah, how do you socialize them? Do you want to keep your kid in a bubble? Yes. And it's like, yeah, I do. I absolutely want to keep my kids in a bubble. I really do. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But are they getting enough porn if they're in that bubble? Right. Well, enough porn, enough time on TikTok. I mean, all that sort of thing. That's the point. You are supposed to be providing an environment for your child... to grow and develop and mature physically, morally, spiritually, have a childhood, have actual childhood experiences.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I hear from people all the time, people my age and older that say, oh man, I remember when I was a kid and we were outside, we would run around in the woods and we would be outside all the time playing tag. And I just wish my kids had that because kids these days are just on the screens all day. They don't have a real childhood. And I say that your kids can have that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
There's no reason why they can't have it. My kids have that. I work in media and yet my kids have exactly that kind of childhood because we just determined from the beginning that our kids are going to have a real childhood. They are going to run outside and scrape their knees and climb trees. And that's what they're going to do. That's the kind of childhood they should have.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And it is possible to have it. The only difference now is that it has to be a choice. You know, I think 30 years ago, that was just the default setting.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You do. It doesn't happen naturally, right? Right. It doesn't happen naturally. That's why I said it has to be a priority. If it's an actual priority, if you really are lamenting, Kids today don't have a real childhood, which I agree. I think that many of them don't. And I think it's a horrible tragedy. It really is.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
The whole point of the family is to make children and care for them. And a family that's headed up by two gay men, that's why it's an abomination.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Well, it starts with we don't send them to public school. We have always homeschooled from the beginning, so that's a big step. They don't have phones. They don't have access to any screens except for our family TV. We have a family TV. There's a policy my wife and I have had since the beginning is we don't do screens. There will be no screens in a room that has a door on it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So we have one TV and it's in a very public area of the house where anyone can hear it when they walk in. And that's it. So we do have that. Like our kids can watch TV. They can't watch it all day, but they can watch it. And we're going to know anything that they watch. You know, they're not going to just sit there on the TV and choose something and tell us what you want to watch.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
If it's something I never heard of, well, you're not watching that until I can watch it first. Yeah. And they don't have any internet access at all. You know, no phones, no tablets, nothing like that. Laptop. No laptop, no computer at all. And our oldest kids are almost 12 now. The only exception we make is if we go on long car rides, which for us is four hours plus.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Then we have tablets that are for the car, four hour plus car ride. There's no internet on it. It's books and like educational games. And the tablets have that. And in the car, if it's four plus hours, you can use those tablets. And then when we get to our destination, we're taking the tablets back. And I've...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I've noticed this, that even this little bit of access to that kind of technology that we do give to our kids in the car in this really specific scenario, you see how this, it just has this pull on them. Yeah. And it becomes, especially if it's one, you know, we sometimes go places, it's a 15 hour, 16 hour ride over a couple of days. So during that time, they do have the tablets for a while.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And when we get there, it's almost like a detox. They're just, they're jonesing for the tap. It's like giving them one jelly bean.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Exactly, exactly. And I've had to take, you know, what some people would consider extreme steps to get them over that. How extreme? Well, to me, it's not extreme because it's like what my dad would have done. But I remember it was last year. We had just come back from a long car ride. And so we took the tablets away. And then my son, who was seven at the time, freaked out.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
He started screaming that he wanted his tablet.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I said, we're not that family. We don't have seven-year-olds screaming about tablets. We're not going to do that. And so I, I said, come here, bud, come over here. I brought him over to the, where our trash can is in the kitchen. And I said, here's where the tablet's going. It's in the trash. And, um, and that's it. We're throwing it away. You're not getting it back.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Did he have a funeral for it? Uh, you know, emotionally in his heart, he did. He was, he was shocked. He was, he was distraught. Um, but we threw it away. I didn't give it back to him. It went in the trash. And, uh, like a year later, he got a new one. Um,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Well, it's progress in the way that cancer progresses. So when I hear about progressivism... I think of progressivism. It is progress. So we're at stage four gay right now, would you say? Oh, yeah. Full on stage four. Yeah. Terminal. It's a terminal case.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It is hard. It is hard. And especially if it's easier, we have it a little bit easier because our kids are homeschooled And most of their friends are like homeschool Christian families. And most of them are on the same page. Not all of them, but most of them are. And it does make it easier. It certainly does.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
If your kid's in public school, it's going to be a lot harder because there's a whole culture that comes out of the screens, out of the devices. There's a language that comes out of it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And when I see one of my kids, like one of the 12-year-olds or the eight-year-old around one of their peers who are not part of the homeschool community, but just like a kid from public school or something, the difference is stark. It really is in every way. You can just, the way that they speak, like I said, they have a different language that they pick up. The way that they carry themselves.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think a lot of these kids are a lot more just sort of jaded and cynical. They seem a lot harder to impress. They're overstimulated. Yes. They're not interested in things outside of the screen. Yeah. You know, my son, my 12-year-old son is, and I was the same way when I was his age. I'm still this way. But he goes through these phases where he becomes really obsessed with a certain topic.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And it changes. It'll change every four to six months. He picks a new topic that he's just obsessed with. It's the only thing he cares about is this topic. And it could be anything from, he went through a phase where he was obsessed with Native American culture. It could be Lord of the Rings. It could be anything. Space. You know, he did a dinosaur thing, as a lot of boys do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And anyway, so when he's around his friends or he's around other kids, he wants to talk about whatever that is. He wants to talk about this thing that he's really interested in. And he'll learn everything there is to know about it. He'll end up knowing more about the subject than I do. I'm learning from him about it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But he'll be around these other kids and he wants to, that's what he wants to talk about. He wants to talk about, hey, let me tell you this really interesting thing I learned. And with some of these kids, they'll look at him like he's weird, you know, because that's just not, they don't do that. They want to talk about, you know, the Minecraft movie or whatever.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I've gotten a lot of trouble with some in my audience. You're not allowed to criticize video games or marijuana. Those are the two things you're not allowed to criticize. You really can't. You really can't. Which to me only validates a lot of the criticisms that people are that attached to it. Because here's my thing with video games. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
We don't do video games with our kids because it's a screen-based activity and we've just decided that our kids are not going to have a childhood dominated by screens. And so we're just not going to do that. That's a decision that we made. But there's nothing intrinsically wrong with them. I think I would...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
A lot of the gamers, they'll, anytime I offer some mild criticism of, you know, video games or anything. What's your mild criticism? It's not about the game itself. It's about the attachment to it. It's about revolving your whole life around it. And so when we get into this conversation, the video game fans will say to me, well, this is no different. You're a football fan, which I am.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I'm a big NFL fan. And they say, well, what's the difference between playing a video game and watching football on a Sunday afternoon? And I think that's a valid point. I think that there probably is little difference. I think there's a little bit of a difference, but not much. And I would say the same thing about being a sports fan, that it's fine to like sports. I do. I love football.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It shouldn't dominate your life. And there are people out there who it just – their sports fandom is the central –
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
thing about them it's their whole personality and that's excessive that should not be your personality you know your your affinity for some group of guys playing a game should not be your personality it shouldn't be your identity and i and i and that's my point about video games that's it so that's why i say it's a very mild criticism you want to play the games that's fine you don't need my permission
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But it should not be the central fact of your life. It shouldn't be your number one priority. You shouldn't have an attachment to it. You shouldn't have an excessive attachment to it. That's it. And I think that's pretty reasonable. Why are people touchy about that? People are, they, it's part of the culture. People take their entertainment and their recreation very seriously.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
We're diving right in. Day adoption is an abomination. Yeah, well, I think there I was referring to social conservatives because social conservatives still somehow get a bad rap. So, you know, so-called social conservatives, even among other conservatives and other people on the right, it seems to me. But so when I say we, I mean like so-called social conservatives.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I think for a lot of people, it just, that is their, the central fact of their identity. And so they kind of take it personally. They take it as a personal attack, which is not how I mean it. Where are you on marijuana? Yeah. I think it's awful. I think it's terrible. I used to have a more kind of libertarian view of it. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
If you were to go back 10 years, 15 years, my view was I don't like it personally, but you were never a weed smoker. I've had it. I've never been... Years and years and years ago. Not in adulthood. It's not for me. It's not for me.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But... And my view used to be... Well, it's not for me, but... Probably all this... I kind of bought into the war on drugs thing and all this money that we're spending to try to stop people from smoking it is a waste. And so it should probably just be legal, even if I don't like it. There's this argument... from the marijuana fans that, well, it's no different than alcohol.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, well, I think that there are a couple of things. First of all, it's interesting to note that when this conversation about gay parenthood first started really in earnest like 10 years ago, most of the conversation was focused on adoption and gay men want to adopt. But now what's happened is there's been a shift. And now you've got a lot of these gay couples that are turning to surrogacy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And we know how prohibition of alcohol worked out. And so if we're going to allow people to go out and get a drink, why shouldn't they be able to go out? It worked out pretty well, I think.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. I'm not convinced by the argument for that reason. I'm also not entirely convinced that alcohol and marijuana are...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
are comparable uh for one thing and alcohol can be really bad and there's addiction and it destroys it can destroy families and lives alcohol is though at least a more social it's a social lubricant so if you're with a group of people and you're having a drink it can help you have kind of loosen up you have a better time as long as you're not being excessive
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Now, if somebody gets trashed, then it kind of ruins the time for everyone and that can happen. I think marijuana is not like that. It kind of turns you inward. It makes you antisocial. So, if you're sitting around a table with some people and a couple of them are drinking a beer, even if you're not drinking, you can have a perfectly nice time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But if you're sitting around a table and a couple of the people are stoned, it's like that's It's lame. You don't even want to talk to that person. They've got nothing to contribute.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It does seem to isolate people. Yeah, I think it's isolating. I think it turns you inward. But regardless of all that, my opinion was, yeah, it should probably just be legal. But I also believe in when you get new data, you get new facts, you need to analyze them. You need to be willing to change your mind. And so we have legalized it in many places across the country, in many cities.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I've been to these cities, as many of us have, where weed is now, it's like cigarettes were 30 years ago. Everybody's smoking. And I think the early returns are not good.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I really don't. I think it's quite terrible. It's not all because of weed, but just the experience of walking around, everybody's high, it reeks of weed everywhere. How has this made anyone's life better? That's my question. That's what I want to know. I'd be willing to adjust my view on this. And I've asked this question before. I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But we've made weed legal in a lot of these places. In what way has it measurably improved life anywhere now that it's legal?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And if I was in a position of power politically, then maybe I'd feel that way.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. It makes people compliant. It makes them, uh, even more than I think people just sort of naturally are these days. And of course, in reality, these are all bad things. So it kind of goes back to how has it made anyone's life better? And I don't know, I'm a simple person. Maybe I can be guilty of being simplistic sometimes. So if that's the case, then guilty as charged. But to me, it's like,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So they're renting wombs. They're purchasing the body parts of women and renting them, using them like an Airbnb rental. Wait, I thought we got rid of slavery. Yeah, I would have thought, but this is exactly, this is in a very literal sense, the objectification of a human being, treating them like an object, using them as an object. So it's just interesting.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think a policy is bad if it makes people's lives worse and doesn't improve anything.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, and that's why increasingly when people start talking about their rights, it doesn't mean a lot to me. I don't even know what people mean when they say it. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but the next time someone says, well, I have a right to this, just ask them, what do you mean you have a right to it? What does that mean? Oh, I know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
They really have no—they don't know what they're saying. I think the vast majority of people talking about their rights, if you ask them to define the word right, they would not be able to do it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's not persuasive to me in an argument. Right. It's a term that has become not useful. And it may have been useful at a time. It may even be a term that used to have a definition or should have a definition. Right. But there are a lot of terms that are just not useful anymore in a conversation because they don't clarify anything. What? Well. Right. You know, rights. That's one.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's just not it. I'm not saying rights don't exist. I'm saying it's not a useful term in a conversation most of the time, because when somebody says, oh, I have a right to this, I don't know what they mean by that. And I think they don't know what they mean by that. Right. I don't think they care, actually.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But also racism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, any of the isms, these are not useful terms anymore because we were calling someone racist. That doesn't tell me anything about him, actually. It could be, if you're pointing to a guy saying that guy's racist, maybe he thinks that all black people are inferior and should be enslaved. That's racist. So maybe that's what you're telling me about him.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But you could be trying to tell me that that's a guy who understands that young black males are disproportionately violent and he has pointed that out. So you could be using the term to describe that also, which is not actually racist at all. So when you say racist, I don't know what you mean. So it's not a useful term. You need to be more specific. It means something I don't like. Right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
There was a study done recently, a survey a couple of years ago, actually, that found that it was like 60 plus percent of gay couples, when they think about parenting, they would prefer surrogacy. So it's a slight of hand trick you see on the left a lot where they want to bring about some social change and they present an argument for it. But then once they get what they want, they abandon that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, exactly. You're saying there's something about that guy that I don't like.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, well, we're Catholic. So, and we pray together every night as a family, which I think is, and we can get lazy about that. I think a lot of families do, but I think it's, really important. It doesn't have to be anything It doesn't need to be a two-hour routine. But you say your prayers before bed. Right. As a family. All eight of you. Well, not the babies.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
The two-year-olds, they get out of it for now. But basically, you've got a whole congregation. Yeah, we do. I think it's important to be on your knees. This is just a bodily... Physically? Yeah, physically on our knees. Why? Because it's a...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
a symbol of humility and submission before god now you don't have to be on your knees to pray there's a perfectly valid prayer if you're not on your knees but um if you can i think you should be and i think it's a good and i think it's a good image for the kids to see it's a good image it's a good it's good for my kids to see me on my knees praying it's good for them to see why um
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because to my kids, I am the authority figure in the home. I don't answer to anybody in the home. I don't have to ask anyone's permission for anything. And I'm ultimately like the source of discipline in the home, as the father, as I should be. But for them to see that, oh, even that guy, even dad...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
who in the home, this is his castle, but even he is showing submission and obedience and humility towards some power above him. I think that's a really powerful image for my kids to have and that I had with my own dad growing up. So we do that. And I think this is also...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think I'm at the point where it's kind of like my whole ideology, my political ideology at this point is that I want my kids to go to heaven. I want my kids to go to heaven and I want them to be good and happy people. That's what I want.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
so everything that we do in the home and we're not perfect, we don't get this right perfectly, not even close to it, but everything we do in the home should be tailored towards that end to help our kids be good and happy people. And, uh, and that's also, those are the policies that I support. You know, I, I, this is, this is, that, that's my, that's my, those are my politics.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Sounds like Christian nationalism, Matt. Guilty as charged.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then you kind of, you figure out what they actually wanted. So it's kind of like adoption has given way to surrogacy. And then the whole argument is, which I never bought, which is that we're rescuing kids who are in these terrible situations in foster care, that's out the window because these are not kids that you're rescuing. You're creating them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think it's, um, provide you know i'm we talked about gender roles so i i do believe that the father should be the provider in more ways than one you know you're providing financially like bringing home the bacon is a is is a really important part of that and i think that the father should do that um but you're also providing uh safety security you're protecting protecting
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I know when you say that, it sounds like, well, that's easy because what are the chances that I'm actually going to have to fight off some bad guy that breaks in the house? It could happen. It's not impossible. They're increasingly high, actually. Yeah, increasingly high. But I haven't had to do it yet. And maybe I'll never have to do it. I hope I never have to do it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But it's not just about that. You know, as a man, you should be, I believe, a stabilizing presence to your family. Like when they're around you, they should just feel safer and calmer. And not necessarily because they're worried that a bad guy is going to, that's part of it, but it's not just that. Like, the world's a confusing place. The world is a dark place. Everyone has anxieties.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And when you're there, they should just feel calmer and better having you around. And if something goes wrong, if there's, you know, the shit hits the fan, there's a problem. they should be able to know that, okay, well, thank God dad's here. Or thank God my husband's here. And I think that's one of the central duties of a father, which means that
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You know, we've gotten away from, in large part in this society, we've gotten away from, we don't talk about stoicism as a virtue anymore at all. No one really talks about that. I happen to believe in it a lot. I may take it a little bit too far. Maybe I err too much in that direction.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. It's easy to say, but I think if I was dying of cancer right now, you would not know. And I would never tell anybody. Why? Because it's not your burden.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Rather than rescuing a kid from an unfortunate situation, you're creating them to be in an unfortunate situation from birth, which is a different thing. So that's the first thing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Well, it goes back to what I said, that as the man, you should be a stabilizing, protective force in the house. You should be a calming force in the house for your family. You should be relieving their anxieties to the extent that you can. if you are verbalizing all of your many complaints and your anxieties, then you've inverted that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Now you're looking to your wife and your children to sort of carry that burden for you. It's your emotional support animals. Right, right. And you're turning to them to carry this. No, that's totally right. And I just, I don't believe in that. And I think that... that... it's just different. You know, women, it's not the same for women. I think that women are much more relational. Women share.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
They're feminine. We used to say the fairer, gentler sex. And so it's just a different thing. And I also think for women, now most women, I think I've been conditioned that they aren't allowed to say this part out loud, but I think it's true that they also don't really want a man who's going to complain and open up to them too much. Can you say that one more time?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right. Women will, we have been conditioned to believe that opening up and sharing your emotions is just a good thing. Crying in front of your girlfriend. Right. She really wants you to cry. That's what we've been told. And your girlfriend might Might tell you that. She might tell you, oh, you know what? I really want you to open up more.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yes. That's why you never cry in front of your wife or your girlfriend. Like, never. I mean, in the rarest of cases. You have a close family member dies. That's one thing. Your daughter walking down the aisle. But other than that, just never cry in front of them. Especially not because you're stressed out, because you're just dealing with some kind of anxiety.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And people think that this is extreme or they want to pretend that, well, if women can cry, the men can cry. But just imagine a scenario. Let's say you're in the car. and the weather gets really bad and then you get lost. Maybe the GPS goes out and you're lost. Weather's bad. It's really stressful. One of those stressful things. It's dark, you know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It would not be uncommon in that scenario for if you're with your wife, she might start crying. Like she's very nervous. She starts crying. Oh my gosh, we're lost. What are we going to do? And that would not be an uncommon thing. And as a man, you don't think less of your wife for that. hopefully you're there to comfort her and say, no, I got this. We're going to be fine. We got it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Now you as the man, if you started crying because you're stressed out and lost and it's dark and it's raining and you don't know where you're going, and your wife saw that, she will never look at you the same way again. She will always remember that. She'll remember the time when it was stressful and she needed you to take over and be in control and figure it out.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And you started crying like a little bitch. She will always remember it. And I think we, again, I think we all intuitively understand that. We understand that it's, okay, in that scenario for the woman to cry is normal. For the man to cry, it's ridiculous. It's shameful.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But there's also the fundamental point, whether it's surrogacy or adoption... the fundamental point is what does the child have a right to? We keep hearing about this right to parenthood. I mean, you have gay couples now that are demanding insurance cover fertility treatments as if the reason why two men can't make a baby is because of fertility problems. No, it's because of the laws of nature.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's certainly a spiritual attack. This all feels demonic because it is, in my opinion. It's also, it's all an effort, I think, to destroy the family, to upend the fundamental societal institution, which is the family. Yeah. Because all of the nefarious forces that want to control us, want to control what we do, control what we think, control what our children think,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
The family is an enemy to them. The family is the one thing standing in the way. Yeah. And so it's all about destroying the family. Even the things that seem little. Like, it's okay to cry in front of your wife. No, it's not. It's not. And that, again, that's an attack on the family. Because if a man takes that advice and starts acting feminine and emotional... it's going to hurt his marriage.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It might destroy his marriage. And so that's the ultimate goal. And I think a lot of it, I mean, you mentioned feminism. I think a lot of this does go back to feminism. I think that It was way more destructive than any plague in history. Feminism, by far and away, is the most destructive ideology in human history. It's not even close. I agree with that. Why do you say that?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Well, let's start with the body count. 60 million dead babies since Roe, just in this country. And if we're talking worldwide, you know. Hundreds of millions. But in this country, 60 million children were killed through abortion, which is the feminist sacrament. So you don't even need to go beyond that. That's kind of enough, I think, to make the point. But of course you can.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Ever since feminism took hold, divorce rates have skyrocketed. Birth rates have plummeted. I mean, we're watching the disintegration of the family unit in real time and people are less happy. They're unhappy. I mean, as much as there's this cliche kind of image of the 1950s housewife who, you know, was depressed and all the Hollywood films are always like,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
With this image of the housewife was depressed and she was on whatever drugs secretly and the husband was off having sex with the secretary. And most of that is just Hollywood. It's a Hollywood cartoon. And in reality... It's kind of the opposite. Now is when all that is happening. The women are depressed, anxiety riddled, on antidepressants. Men too.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So birth rates plummeting, 60 million dead babies, divorce rates skyrocketed. People are unhappy. They're on antidepressants. You don't need to go much farther than that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I would do the same thing, a version of what I did do. The roadmap is the same. Some of the obstacles are different. Some of the challenges are harder. Not all of them. In some ways, there are some things that are easier about today than 300 years ago, certainly. So a lot of the challenges might be different, but the basic path is the same.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And you can't give up on it because to give up on it is despair. I mean, that's just giving up. So hold fast to your faith. Number one. Number two. figure out what your vocation is, you know, and, and, you know, you'll, you'll have a professional vocation, something you're supposed to be doing with your life and go and pursue that no matter what it is and no matter how hard it is.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And that is cloaked under this, it's sort of under this umbrella of why I have a right to parenthood. You don't have a right to pay. What does that mean? No one has a right to be a parent. It's great to be a parent if you can, but you're not born with this entitlement. You're entitled to a child. What the hell does that mean?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And also keep in mind that if you're 18 years old and I say this to younger guys all the time, In many ways, I admit I'm quite happy that I'm not 18 years old, 20 years old in this environment. I am happy for that. And I'm certainly happy. Thank God that I'm already married. Certainly.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But you do have one huge advantage, one enviable advantage, which is the same advantage that every young man has had, that you're young, you're hopefully physically healthy, you're not married, you have no kids, you have no dependents. So you can, it's very low stakes. You can go anywhere and try anything. If you're looking around and saying, well, there are no jobs in my town.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I can't find any jobs. Go to a different town. Go anywhere. If you end up living in your car for a week or two months, it's not great. That sucks, but you can do that because it's just you. Now for me, I got six kids. So if things fall apart for me, it's much higher stakes. And it's not as simple as I can't just like go anywhere and try to do anything.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
At this point, I can't just like, okay, well, I'll go get a job at McDonald's. It's not going to work. I got all these kids to take care of. But for you, you can go anywhere and do anything and you can take risks. And if it doesn't work out, it'll be hard, but it won't be disastrous. So that's one thing. And that's whatever your professional vocation is.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But there's the personal vocation that I think for all men is the same, which is that every man is called to be a father. Every man. For most men, that will come in the form of biological fatherhood. Not all. There are other forms of fatherhood. There's spiritual fatherhood. I think some men are called to religious life. If you're Catholic, called to the priesthood.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You don't get married, but you are still a father in a spiritual sense. But every man is called to fatherhood in some sense. No man is called to live for himself only and serve only himself. No man is called to live a life where they go to work, come home, play video games, have no one depending on them, no one that they love. No one is called to that life. So go and pursue that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Go pursue that and go pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for and realize that there are a lot of women who are also looking for the same thing. I hear from conservative Christian men all the time saying, I'm a conservative, I'm Christian, there are no good women left. There are no women out there who share my values. Constantly you hear that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Rather than talking about the right of the parent, let's talk about the right of the child. This applies to so many of them. This applies to abortion. This applies to a lot of topics. What does the child have a right to? I would say a child has a right to a mother and a father. A child has a right to the
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But then I also hear from women all the time who are conservative Christians saying, I'm conservative, I'm Christian, there are no good men, there are no men who share my values. And I'm like, well, you guys, you're both out there. You both exist. I know you're out there. So you just have to pursue it and pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for. And don't waste your time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
As a man, don't waste your time with women who you know don't share your fundamental values. When I met my wife, we got engaged. Six months later, we got engaged. So it was quick. It was quick. And we talked about, on our first date, we talked about everything. We talked about religion, politics, everything. Just got it all out in the open.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because at that point, we were both, you know, I was 25, she was 24. But so young.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. But by today's standards, that's, you know, young to be getting married. But we didn't want to, we just didn't want to waste time. Like, what's the point? Yeah. If our fundamental values don't align, then this can only end in heartbreak. So there's no point. I'm not going to waste my time. I'm not going to waste two years of my life dating this person when there's no future.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I know for a fact that the heartbreak is coming. It's the only way it can end. And I'm just delaying it for no apparent reason. I'm not going to do that. So... We laid all that out really early on. And people ask like, well, how do you know that someone's values align with yours? Ask them. That's one way to find out. Now, somebody can lie, but you can weed out a lot of people just by asking.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then after you've done that and you go to the polygraph stage. Right. Polygraph. That's where dating comes in and you get to know them a little bit. It doesn't have to be that long. You don't need to date them for five years. It doesn't take that long to get to know someone, to know what they're really about, I think.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And if somebody is a total fraud, if they're a terrible person, most people are not good at hiding it. Like, I think most of us can tell. I could talk to someone for two hours or less. Of course. I could talk to someone for 20 minutes. Easily. And if you're dating someone for six months, that's more than enough time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I mean, all the time you spend with them, it's more than enough time to figure out what they're really about. So, and it's still possible. And that's my main message to young men is that There's this kind of, what do they call it, MGTOW, men go their own way movement online among some right-wing men in the manosphere. What does that mean, men go their own way?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
basic fundamental setup that billions of kids throughout history have had, which is a mother and a father. Now, if through the course of events, through no one's fault, that is taken away from a child, I mean, you can have a parent that dies, you end up with a single parent, you can have a divorce, which I think is terrible, but it's not supposed to work that way.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I guess it basically means the whole system is rigged against men and the family courts are rigged. Everything's rigged. It's all true. Which is true.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's true. I don't deny it. What I deny is their conclusion, which is that...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
it's hopeless men just need to go their own way do their own thing like like go be gay i don't think that they would sounds pretty gay to me to me it does to me it does uh i think in practice i don't know if it involves that in practice i think often practice just means uh go get a job live your life on your own and give up on the no girls yeah give up on the hope of uh of of ever like having a happy marriage because it's not possible wake up by yourself every day exactly
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right. Okay. That's the answer. Yeah. Yes, you're right. Okay. What now? Now that we've established that, now that we've established how bad it is, which we have, what's next? What are you going to do tomorrow? Now, we're all on the same page. It's rigged. It sucks. It's bad. I hate it. I wish it wasn't this way.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And yeah, even after everything I just said, you could still get married and somehow you end up with a sociopath who was able to hide it, which I think is rare, but it can happen. And then you have kids and she cheats on you and she takes the kids. She ruins your life. Yep. Yep. I've seen all that. That can happen. Yep.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Okay, now that we've established all of that, when you wake up in the morning tomorrow, what are you going to do? What are you going to do with that information?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right. And especially when you have kids. Once you have kids, the possibility... of tragedy increases exponentially. Oh, yeah. Wow. I mean, now you, because before it was like all the tragic things that can happen to you. Now it's, what are all the tragic things that can happen to my kids? Oh, yeah. And then times that by however many kids you have. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then you've got your wife and it's like, There are so many horrible ways that this could go.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And may. And may. Right. But then if any of that happens, what's the end result? The end result could be misery and despair. Okay. So then your solution is just to embrace misery and despair at the outset? Yeah. Because you're afraid that it might happen? Agree. And I would rather...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
For me, if I'm going to end up miserable and in some tragic scenario, which I hope doesn't happen, I'd rather it be because I went out and lived a life.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So if you have a child in foster care, you're looking for a mother and a father and to just say, okay, well, we'll give this child to two dads. You're basically giving up on that child. You're saying, well, yeah, we couldn't find the right setup for you. So instead you're getting this. And I just reject that. I reject that totally. And I also think frankly that,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's bad.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's the thing that nobody wants to think about and talk about. We should probably think about it and talk about it a lot more than we do.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I kind of agree with that. I mean, I read a book recently. There's a book that was written years ago called Denial of Death. You ever read that? No. And I'm blanking on the name of the guy who wrote it. It'll come to me. But anyway, the book is called Denial of Death. I don't agree with... It's kind of psychoanalytical. There's a lot of psychobabble in it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It was written by an author who ironically wrote this book, published it, won, I believe, a Pulitzer and died and died of cancer, I think. He didn't know that he had it when he wrote this book, but then he published the book and he died. But anyway, his kind of theory was that all of modern society is actually fundamentally set up to distract us from the fact that we're going to die. Of course.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
A lot of people won't like this, but I think we've passed the point.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That terror of death is what drives everything. And he takes that farther than I would probably take it. But... I think there's actually a lot of truth to that. I remember I read this book and I could see a lot of that in my own life.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But then I discovered that once I started actually thinking about that and meditating on it, maybe not literally meditating, but really thinking about it, I did become I became less fearful somehow of it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
No one likes anything that we're saying. A child being in foster care is far from an ideal scenario. It's very, very sad. A child going to two gay parents, I think, is worse. I think it's easily worse, actually.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't know that any of my views have, they haven't fundamentally changed. I've become more radical. I've certainly become radicalized on pretty much every issue. I'm just farther to the right on everything. My whole life I've just been, I started on the right. I come from a conservative Catholic family. And so I'm already starting like way over here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And everything that's happened in the country and also in my personal life has only just moved me farther and farther. So that's the only way that my views... Where does that lead at the end?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Where does it lead in the end?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Are we still filming is the question.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to check in.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But I think, so that's my own personal trajectory. The definition of conservatism, though, has only changed in that I think it's, It has no definition. We talked about the words that don't mean anything anymore. Words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don't anymore because of how they've been misused and abused and overused.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I think conservatism is another one of those words. When you tell me now that someone is conservative... I don't, it doesn't tell me a lot about them. I don't know what you mean.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Um, it's just more disordered. It's more confusing for the child. Um, again, neither, neither scenario was good. We don't like either thing, but, um, I, I don't see going to, you know, gay parents as an improvement over the, the, the, what they had before.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because I don't know what it is exactly is my point. I don't know what it is. I think it's... I know what it isn't, I think. So one thing that unites us is that we have this general idea of wokeness, leftism, whatever you want to call it. And we don't like that. So I think we all have that in common. When we look at a woman with blue hair and a nose piercing...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Everyone on the right, we could look at that woman and we could say, we probably don't like her. And we probably don't agree with anything she thinks. So we don't agree with the blue hairs. That's one thing we have in common.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, I don't take you seriously. If you use the word platforming as a negative, I don't take you seriously. I've already lost respect for you. I agree. To me, that's a leftist thing. To me, that's the blue. When I think of the blue hair woman with the nose piercing, I think of her as someone who scolds you for, why did you platform that person? Well, that's why I don't like her.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right. Well, I don't like her for a lot of other reasons, too, but I don't feel so. You're a lot nicer than me. But, yes, so using that term as like a pejorative, as this forbidden thing, that should be a leftist. I mean, that should be one of the quintessential – we think about wokeness.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's one of the quintessential features of wokeness, whatever that is exactly, is this idea you don't want to platform people. I just don't agree with it. I mean, what is –
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
does that even mean and also uh usually when someone is accused of platforming someone else it's like it doesn't even make sense to begin with because the person that they're saying is being platformed already had a platform like we all have platforms we're all we're out there saying what we think already so usually when they say platforming what they really mean is You talked to that person.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's not that we don't want you to platform that person. They already had a platform. We don't want you to speak to that person and have any kind of conversation with them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think we intuitively know, but also there's been plenty of studies done about, um, the mental health effects of kids that grow up in these, you know, single sex, same sex parent homes. There's been a lot of studies done about it, but, but honestly, I don't, you can look at the studies, people will fact check and they're there. I just, I don't need studies for this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I, I believe in free speech in principle. So people should, and to me, free speech is, it's not a complicated idea. Free speech means that you have the freedom to express whatever opinion or perspective you want. I can agree or disagree. It doesn't matter. Now, that doesn't extend to things like, in my mind, hardcore pornography. That's not speech.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's not an opinion that's being expressed. That is digital prostitution. But if it's an opinion, if you're just sending a message about what you believe, you should be able to do that, period. So that's the first thing. But then also strategically...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
When you start complaining about platforming, it's a bad strategy because when you point to someone and you say that person shouldn't be platformed, all you're doing, if you're worried about what that person is saying, all you're doing is making people more interested in what that person says. I know I'm that way. If I hear that there's a controversy because so-and-so was platformed,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
and I've never heard of that person, I immediately say, oh, what's this person all about? I got to look into them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I always do that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. Yeah, always. Of course. Because it's like, whatever it is you said that upsets people, I'm interested because people are so upset. I might not agree with it, but I'm interested. And I just reject in principle, like if you are telling me that I shouldn't hear that person or talk to them or take them seriously or listen to their ideas, just in principle, I want to say, no, F you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Now I'm going to listen even more. Now I'm going to listen to a two-hour podcast that I wouldn't have listened to otherwise just because you said that. Exactly.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I did. I watched. I ended up watching. I wasn't planning on watching the whole thing, but I watched the whole thing over the course of a few days. It was a long debate. And, you know, I have a different, I come in with a different perspective than maybe some people who are really interested in the debate in that I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't,
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Everyone is, I'm constantly hearing from the peanut gallery demanding that I kind of give my verdict or my take on Israel and Israel versus Palestine and all this kind of stuff. And I have given my take. And my take is I don't care that much. I just don't care that much. I'm not just America first. I'm an American chauvinist. And that I only care about my own country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I honestly don't care about other countries. I wish them well. I don't wish any of them... I don't wish them ill. I wish the people of other countries well. I think they all have a right to defend themselves and they should. I think that if you can't defend yourself as a nation or if you can't survive without being propped up by another government, say ours, then you shouldn't exist as a country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's, it's the same thing with the trans topic, you know, from the very beginning when we started talking about that, you had all these people saying, well, where are the studies? Where are the studies showing that we shouldn't chemically castrate a five-year-old or a 12-year-old? Well, there are studies now that will bear that out, but we don't need a study to tell us that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's just the way of the world. So...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, it seems like they can handle themselves quite fine. But any country, if there is any country out there that fundamentally cannot exist without being subsidized by American taxpayers... then not only should that country not exist, but that country already does not exist. It's not really... That's interesting. It's not really a country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Right, no, it's... And unless we want to go back to the old way, which was, you know, back in the bad old days, When we did real empires, you know, if you want to just be conquered and you're going to be a vassal state of ours and we're going to sort of own you, then that's one system. But we don't really do that, at least not directly anymore. So...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, not a real country. If any country that that is true. Right, that that's true of. Yeah. Now, I'm not convinced at all that that is true of Israel. I'm not convinced at all.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think that if we were to withdraw, I think we should withdraw all federal, all foreign aid from every country. I don't think we should be doing it at all.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. And I think if we did that, I think Israel would still exist. I think if we took away all the foreign aid tomorrow, next week, two months from now, Israel would still be a country. I agree with that. Yes. There are probably other countries on the planet that just would not exist anymore.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. And by the way, when I say that a country that can't survive without us shouldn't exist or doesn't exist, that's not any kind of like moral judgment. It's just this is the way of human civilization. You have to be able to... you have to be able to stand on your own two feet to even qualify as a country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I think the American taxpayers have been saddled for many years now with propping up country after country after country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
um when that that is not a responsibility that should fall to me or you or to my kids um our responsibility is is to our is to ourselves how do we it's also true of us if we could not exist i agree you know if if if we were depending on uh welfare from some other country in order to exist then i would say that like we're not a country anymore
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So, you know, take it away and like let whatever happens happens. Let the thing fall apart. And maybe from the ashes, we can build a real country. That would be my take if it was true of us. So how did we get?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
This should be intuitive. We just intuitively know it. There are certain things as human beings that we just know. And one of them is that sexually mutilating a child is bad. Another one is that a child needs a mother and father. We just intuitively know that. I don't need any study. I don't care what any academic says about it. I don't care.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think people have been conditioned that xenophobia is a great sin. And so I don't know. I don't really understand it because I've never felt it. But for a lot of people, it feels wrong to them to actually prioritize their own country. I guess it feels unnatural to people, which is crazy. It's bizarre. Because to me, it's the most natural thing in the world.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It should not be controversial to say, I care more about my country than I care about anybody else. I care more about the people in my country than I care about anyone else. And the amount that I sort of care about you, it increases the closer you are to me. That's the way people work. So I care the most about my own kids. I care more about my own kids than anyone else.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
If my kids are in a fire and someone else is in a fire, I'm saving my own kids a thousand times out of a thousand. If I had to choose between one of my kids and a thousand other people, I'd save my kid over the thousand because they're my kids, that's my blood. And then branching out from there, I care about my, my family, my, my larger family. I care about from there, my community where I live.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then, you know, there's a subsidiarity and then, and then branching out from there, I care about centric circles of obligation. Exactly. And that's, that should just be so natural. That's, that's how people work. And that's how everyone works. Like if I told you, Anyone who hears this and thinks that it sounds cruel or something.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Well, if I came to you and told you that your friend's child died, you would be really broken up, I would assume. In tears. Yeah, I would. You'd be in tears about it. If I came to you and said, you know, just a few minutes ago, a child in China was hit by a car and died. You would say, that's too bad. And then you would not think about it again. Correct.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You would move on with your life and never even think about it. Even though that's a child. It's a child. The child died. It's a terrible thing. It's really sad. Objectively, that child in China dying, objectively, is as terrible as your friend's child dying. But your attachment to that child in China is much less. It's basically non-existent. your obligation to that child is non-existent.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't think it is sentiment. I think it's the opposite. I think the idea that we should... But do you know what I mean?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And you're right that they would. So what I'm saying, they would call false sentimentality. But that is false sentimentality. This idea that we're citizens of the world and we value everyone the same is a false sentiment. No one actually thinks it. You would save your own child from the fire. Is it because you think your child has more moral worth than anyone else's child? No.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Is it because your child dying in a fire is objectively more sad than someone else's child? No. But that's your blood. That's not sentiment. That's your blood. That's your family. That means something. But blood doesn't matter. Genetics aren't real.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think it's the most, it's one of the most real things there is, you know, and, um, and, and it's obligation, you know, it's, it's, it should also be, it should be inherent. It's instinctual, but it's also, you have an obligation to your child and then branching out of the concentric circles, you have, you have an obligation to your country and you have an attachment.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You should have an attachment to your country and a pride in your country. Um, these are your people. This is your history. These are your ancestors. Um, And so that's it. I mean, and to me, it's the most natural thing in the world.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's like... Yes, it's the natural state of human being. The natural state of human being. It's the natural way that societies are organized. That's all nationalism. Why is everyone afraid of it and against it? I think it's... A lot of it is confusion, not understanding what nationalism even is. It's part of the kind of globalist agenda.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's part of this destructive... Like I said, a lot of it comes down to destroying the family. And we do that by inverting everybody's priorities. Yeah. So that... Like, they want to get you to the point where you're more concerned about...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I do see it. And I don't understand it. I don't understand why... How do we get to a point where... the dominant conversation in this country is about what's happening in other countries. I don't understand it. I don't understand the people that are obsessively focused on it, on either side of it, really. I agree.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. Yeah. Obsession with a conflict. Um, Taking any foreign country and making it the centerpiece of our political debates makes no sense to me. And I think people on either side do that. My sense is... When I go on Twitter, go on X... And no matter what the topic is, it seems it's like, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever. Yeah. Now it's two degrees of Israel.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
No matter what the topic is, it always comes back for a lot of people to Israel one way or another. And that's not how I see it. I don't see Israel as the centerpiece of any of these debates at all.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Do you feel that?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
i do and it's a shame because why are we being divided over that of all things let's be divided over fentanyl or tariffs or whatever something you know what i mean yeah so that's going going all the way back to what actually your question that i never answered i don't think i gave you a chance i was often so i was i was also off uh but about the the dave smith and douglas murray debate
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
My point was I'm going into it. I don't really have a dog in the fight. I don't know why these guys either. And I don't know either of the guys. I'm not following the issue that closely. I'm just not. I'm focused on America. And so I'm really just interested to see how this turns out. I'm listening to both arguments. And I thought that Douglas Murray, who seems like a really smart guy...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I thought he made a crucial mistake in the debate by starting. It seemed like the first 45 minutes to an hour was this kind of this litigation over who's an expert and who isn't. And that's just not, you're not going to win the argument that way. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody should want to hear it. Credentialism. You're not an expert. You know, we've seen what the expert class has done.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
given us, especially over the last five years. Pretty good job or no? I would give it a solid D minus. Very generous. Very generous. So nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to hear about calling yourself an expert. It goes back again to words that don't mean anything anymore. That's a word that should mean something. It is possible. Expertise is a real thing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
There are people who can be experts on a subject. I would hope that the pilot of my plane is an expert in flying a plane. As we've seen, we can't rely on that being the case either anymore. But that's what it should mean. But we've also used the word expert and applied it to people who are making outrageously false claims.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I mean, the experts are the ones who told us that, you know, you can castrate your son and turn him into a girl. That was the expert opinion. That was the opinion of the expert class for years and still is with some of them. So in a world like that, in a world where the experts are telling us that women have penises and men can have babies, the word expert just doesn't mean anything anymore.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, I think that it's the collapse of, well, it's just this war on, it's kind of what we started with. It's this war on normalcy, on civilization, really. It's part of the anti-family agenda, the anti-human agenda. And I think that, and that's always been there. Why did it catch on, though, to such an extent?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It should, but it doesn't. Which means that if you're going to have this conversation, skip past that. We don't need to litigate what an expert is or who an expert is. You want to begin with the merits of the debate. Right. Just get into it. It doesn't matter. This guy that you're sitting next to. Whether he's an expert or not makes no difference. I don't care if he's a scholar.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't care if he's a homeless guy you just pulled off the street. His arguments are valid or they aren't. And that's all that matters. That's all that anyone cares about. Is this one on for an hour?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't know. I honestly don't. I thought it was just a strategic error, a pretty serious one. And then by the time you actually get into the debate, then a lot of people have just kind of checked out because it comes off as kind of snobbish. Yeah. and it comes off as, you know, as credentialism as, as you're trying to invalidate the argument before it's even presented.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Um, so that, that was the mistake. Then when they actually got into the actual conversation, I found it to be, I just thought it was interesting. I really did. And I thought they both made valid points. They both know more about the subject than I do a lot more. That was very clear to me. Um, And I think if you could chop off the first hour of the debate, it was an interesting conversation.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't know. I think that... So Douglas Murray said one thing, he made one point that I thought was, was really good. It was just a simple one. I like simple points.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And at one point he asked Dave, because once they got into arguing about what happened after October 7th, how Israel responded and Dave has all of his criticisms about what Israel has done. And then Douglas Murray said, well, what would you have them do? What would you prefer for them to have done? If they want to rescue the hostages and also destroy Hamas, what do you want them to do instead?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And then from what I remember, Dave... He pointed out that, okay, destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages are kind of, are not necessarily the same objective. And then they started talking about rescuing hostages. They didn't really circle back to the destroying Hamas part. And I would have liked to see him stick on that point. Like get an answer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So if you're Israel, you have a foreign, you know, these foreign enemy that's come into your country, slaughtered hundreds of people. how should you respond to that? And I think he should have pressed that and he didn't. And so it became, it was sort of unfocused. Because I would have legitimately liked to hear the answer to that. For sure. What would you have them do?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So we could talk about maybe there are other ways to rescue the hostages, but do you think they should try to destroy Hamas, given what happened? And if you do, how else should they go about it? But they kind of moved on to other things, and it became a sort of unfocused, in my mind, sort of like circular conversation, as these debates tend to devolve into very often.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I think that the side that was supposed to stand up for the family and stand up for civilization largely failed and abdicated their responsibility to do so. You know, conservatives, the church has just largely failed. Not even failed, not even tried, really. Not even tried. Why is that? Fear, cowardice. Yeah. hypocrisy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Everything we talked about for the first, you know, hour of this conversation is, is what, like, let's talk about the war on the family. Yeah. On marriage, things that affect our kids, you know, how do we, how do we raise healthy, happy kids? Let's talk about that. Any of these issues is like serious, deep cultural issues in our country. Yes. Is what we should be talking about in my mind.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah. I think there are a lot of people invested in it not being the topic of conversation because once you start talking about it, you start noticing things that they don't want you to notice. Like what? Well, you start noticing who the, you know, the actual agenda to destroy the family, to destroy marriage. You start noticing that, you know, we veered off
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
took kind of a left turn veer off away from the way civilization was structured for thousands of years. It hasn't really worked out. You start looking at any of these things and you say, okay, well, we started making all these changes, all these reforms, all this supposed progress. And a lot of these wheels have been in motion for decades. How has it worked out? By its fruits, you shall know it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So how has it worked out? None of it has worked out. And I think you notice that. And I think there are people that don't want you to. And also some of these social issues when you're talking about families and these kinds of things, it hits closer to home. That's for sure. As it should. More than tax rates. You could hurt people's feelings. Yeah. It hurts, but it's closer to home.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And so people feel, everyone has, they have their own hangups. They have their own sensitivities. They have maybe mistakes they feel they've made in their own families or their own marriages or with their own kids. And they feel indicted, I think. so I think for some people it's just feels it's safer to talk about issues that are 10,000 miles away.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Uh, certainly don't call me. No, they don't call me to say it, but, uh, Plenty of conservative influencers, quote unquote, will, you know, they'll all say something. They'll send out a tweet. They'll attack me publicly. So I much prefer the call. I much prefer the. It's not hard to get my number if you're in the business or send me a message or something. But people don't generally do that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
That's not how people operate.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I mean, even outside of the people running the country, I automatically have at least some semblance of respect for a man if he's a good husband and a good father. And you can't always tell that, but I think often you can. And those are the kinds of people I want to surround myself with. I don't want to be around people who aren't.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
People who have disordered personal lives, I don't really want to be around them. So if I don't want to be around them, I don't want them running the country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It, in some ways it's been better than I expected in some significant ways. I think that my number one criticism of Trump in his first term was despite all the talk about how he's a fascist dictator.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I mean, hypocrisy in the actual sense, in the literal sense of not someone who says something and does another, but someone who claims to believe something they don't, which is what actual hypocrisy is. And so we have a lot of hypocrites on the right and in the church, unfortunately, who are just claiming to believe things they don't really believe.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
in reality in his first term it seemed to me he was very shy about wielding his power and his authority um he seemed to be a lot more worried about what people say about him what the media says about him a lot more focused on the coverage and all that sort of thing
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
and this time around that doesn't seem to be the case, you know, and jumping in with 2000 executive orders or whatever it was, dozens, um, touching on some real hot button, controversial issues. What was your favorite? Uh, Well, I mean, as someone who's been really invested in this issue, there's several executive orders dealing with gender ideology.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I mean, even something as simple as illegally defining what a man and woman is. We shouldn't have to do that, but we did and he did. prohibiting to the extent that it's possible from his position, the castration and mutilation of children. Now, Congress has to follow up with these executive orders and codify them into law, which hasn't happened with, I don't think, any of them.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Which I am worried about because the thing about an executive order is that when the next guy gets in there, he's a Democrat, he can undo that as quickly as it was done. So it's a band-aid. It's not the permanent solution. Why hasn't there been a law yet passed by Congress federally banning the mutilation and castration of children? Because they're for it. For it or they don't care that much?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, you approve of it or you just don't. You don't care enough to try to stop it, which effectively it's one and the same. So all that was good. I liked all that. And I think that he's using his power as authority. He's not afraid to do that this time around, which I think is really good.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
If there's one major criticism or area for improvement, it's, you know, I don't know what the deportation numbers are exactly. I think they should probably be a lot higher. Easier said than done, of course. And also we have to, I acknowledge that there are fewer people coming in now, which is going to bring your deportation numbers down. But I think that should be a lot higher.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And I think that I understand politically focusing on illegal aliens who have committed heinous crimes. We should focus on them, but not just them. I mean, we should be deporting Anyone who's in this country is not supposed to be here. I don't care if you had a speeding ticket or a DUI or a manslaughter charge. I mean, I care. That's a big difference.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
But in any of those cases, or if you had nothing... You shouldn't be in the country.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And so I think that the answer is, it's like, why don't Why aren't there enough pastors in any church, in any denomination, standing up and talking about these issues and leading on these issues? And the answer is, well, there's a lot of cowards, but also a certain portion of them don't really believe it. I mean, they don't believe –
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, well, except that, of course, I realize that this get out of jail free card does not apply to everybody.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, you feel like a sucker. But also, what's the alternative? Because if I were to say, well, hey, if they don't have to follow the law, then neither do I. Well, really quickly, the system will come along and disabuse me of the notion that this is a... That you have as many rights as a Haitian who's there illegally. Exactly. Because I don't.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
So that won't apply to me, especially as a dreaded white man. So we're kind of left with no choice.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I appreciate that. It'd be hard to accelerate it at this point.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Appreciate it. Thank you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It's like whether or not they really believe in God is a question. So I think that that's a part of it too.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Yeah, most people are. That's why I think, but, you know, so-called social conservatism is, that's why it's not popular even on the right.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
It certainly did because... Because it's always a lie, obviously, when they say, oh, this isn't, we just want to do what we want to do and we're not, it won't affect you and we don't need you to be involved. This is just what we're doing in the privacy of our own homes. That was a good argument, though, don't you think?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
And there's a certain... It makes sense to an extent that... If someone across the street from me is in their home doing some freaky weird stuff and that's it, they're just in their home doing it and I never even know about it or see it. My children don't see it. My children don't know about it. Then, yeah, it's hard to make an argument that I'm somehow impacted by that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Because I'm not, except maybe in the most indirect sort of way. But that's not how it actually works. That's just the slogan. That's not what really happens. And so we follow the trajectory, and we've seen this time and time again. It always starts with tolerance. They say, well, just tolerate this, which I guess we're supposed to think means, you know, just... People are doing this on their own.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
You don't have to. You could just stay out of it and they'll stay away from you and tolerate it. Right. Tolerance. So it starts there. But then it goes to very quickly acceptance. And then they start saying, well, you should accept this. Well, accept and tolerate are not exactly the same thing. How are they different? Well, tolerate means I just like put up with it. I allow it. I allow it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I put up with it. I don't try to stop it. Right. Is what tolerance means in the most literal sense. Accept means I'm embracing it. Right. You know, it means I'm embracing it. And... But then they don't stop at accepting. Because then they go to, well, okay, now actually we need you to celebrate it. So it goes from tolerance to acceptance to celebration.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
Pretty fast. Yeah, I think there was a time when that process might have taken 10 years and now it seems like it takes 10 minutes. So we went from decades ago, it was, hey, they're just in their private lives in their own homes doing this. Doesn't affect you.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man
I don't think so.