Niall (Neil) Ferguson

speaker

315 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Niall (Neil) Ferguson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Call Me Back - with Dan Senor · AI is Activating Antisemites Left and Right - with Niall Ferguson · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

Nobody's reading elaborate treatises on the role of the Jews and the decline of Western civilization as they might have been in the 1920s.

But John Clark Levin's contribution is to show the ways in which network platforms using algorithmic media reinforced by ever more powerful AI, together these things are allowing the memes to reach millions of people.

And it's that change in the structure of the public sphere that is absolutely critical here.

In the days of Pat Buchanan or David Duke, it just was very hard to get that kind of messaging across because the networks of television, the newspapers, the mainstream media wouldn't give it space.

Or if they did, it would be to castigate it.

That's all really gone.

In a world in which young people overwhelmingly get content online, when they watch television, what they're actually watching is YouTube.

When they're getting news, they're getting it from social, i.e.

algorithmic media.

In this new world, then the toxic content is promoted.

Why is it promoted?

And this was an argument I made now more than, well, nearly 10 years ago in The Square and the Tower.

It's because the network platform's business model, unlike, say, printing, which was the dominant technology of the period after the 16th century, that the network platforms monetize through engagement

Eyeballs are connected to screens, and then the ads can be run.

The core of the business models of the, what are we calling them now, hyperscalers?

Basically, the big technology platforms is selling ads.

And you can't do that if you can't show the people who are willing to pay you for advertising space that there is user engagement.

And the user engagement, and this has been true for 10 years, maybe more, is driven far more by, we call it rage bait,

things that get people angry than it is by mainstream sentiments like, you know, motherhood and apple pie are good.

The way you get engagement online is to say Hitler was cool.

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