Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Should You Be A Nationalist?

Transcript

Should You Be A Nationalist? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans! Welcome to a safe space for dangerous ideas.
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Here's an uncomfortable question for you. Should you be a nationalist? Is it even possible
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to be a nationalist who isn't jingoistic and white nationalist and anti-immigrant and
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a little bit racist? What would nationalism mean in multi-ethnic, multicultural, pluralistic
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liberal societies? And in an era of Donald Trump and of a global planet that's becoming
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increasingly a doggie dog world, is it actually necessary for squishy middle of the road
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countries like Australia and Canada and the United Kingdom to become more nationalist,
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but to find their nationalism in constructive ways? A quick aside, this is a premium episode,
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which means that it's pay-walled about halfway through the conversation, still well worth
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listening to the first half, but premium subscribers get access to this and literally
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hundreds of extra episodes. Add free, we can't do the show without subscribers. By supporting
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the show, you are also voting for a world that's less toxic and less judgmental and less insane.
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So a big thank you to our paid subscribers, and if you've ever been considering doing it,
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now would be the time, because this is a cracker of an app. Today's guest, David Mosscrop,
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is a Canadian writer, academic and public intellectual. He has a PhD in political science. He was a
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regular contributor to the Washington Post, and he's here to help us think about national identity
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in a dog eat dog world, about the left's overreach in the culture wars, Canadian truckers,
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right wing anti-vaxxers, multiculturalism, jingoism, how all of us can cohere better as a democratic
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people in modern liberal democracies, and most importantly, he's here to resolve the timeless
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question of why love actually is a terrible film. I hope you enjoy it. As much as I did, the one
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the only David Mosscrop.
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I'm going from Ottawa to Melbourne, the Auckland, then back to Auckland for the Auckland festival,
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then to Sydney for the Sydney festival, then back home via Vancouver. So you could either be flying
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the planet. You could either be flying from Ottawa to JFK and taking the quantus nonstop from JFK
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to Auckland. Is that what you're doing? Or, no, I'm flying through Vancouver, or you're doing
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Vancouver to Auckland, right? It's possible in New Zealand or Canada. And it's possible that I could
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have got into the US, but it's unclear whether they'd let me leave. Yeah. Now that we've got,
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you could go to, they'd let you, they'd let you leave. It would just be on their terms to a South
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American prison. So you ever wanted a one-way stop to Honduras, or would you come to Honduras?
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Exactly. I'm doing the JFK to Auckland flight in a few weeks, which I haven't done, which is
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one of the longest flights in the world. They're gearing up for either later this year or next year,
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they're going to launch nonstop flights, which will be the longest ever passenger flights from Sydney,
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nonstop to JFK, and Sydney nonstop to Heathrow. How? Never done before. How is a very good question?
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Into the atmosphere and back down while they've been trying for years to to find a way of doing
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this from an engineering point of view. And Qantas has commissioned Airbus to build a special
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purpose built a 351,000 just for Qantas, which is an ultra ultra ultra long range. And basically
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the entire plane is just fuel. And there's like three people on board and one back. This has
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Concord vibes written all over it. It's so interesting that Qantas thinks there's a market for this,
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because I mean, there probably is. People will probably pay business travels. We'll probably pay
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a premium for it. But it becomes once you're flying for about, and you will note from this,
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as regular listeners will know that I'm an aviation buff. But once you're once you're in the air for
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16 or 17 hours, the cost of carrying the next hour of fuel that you had to haul along with you
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from the beginning is like makes no economic sense. So like these are 22 hour flights. And when
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you think about it, like the fuel you need between the 21st and the 22nd hour, you have to have
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that the whole way. And it's heavy. And so like you sort of reach this kind of like asymptote
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both sides like this law of diminishing returns. But Qantas believes that people are going to be
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willing to pay for it. And I'm fascinated by this because when I'm driving my car, I'm thinking
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about things like when is the optimal time to fuel, which is to say, I'm light enough that I'm
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the beneficiary of less weight in my car and therefore more, more of fuel efficiency at really
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an infinite decimal level because this is a heavy vehicle I'm driving versus I don't want to end
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up on the side of the road to have to call the folks to come tell me because I run out of gas
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and I like idiot for the rest of my life. And these are the calculations I'm doing while listening
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to my playlist driving around to go play soccer. Well, I think the optimal, I mean the optimal way
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David would always be to almost be running out of fuel, but never have to divert to find a gas
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station, which means I think having like one of those in flight refueling aircraft fly over your car,
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attach to your car and just fuel you while you're driving along the highway would be great.
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That would be the most fuel efficient way of doing it. Now, I'm sure there's someone listening
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thinking just get an EV, but those don't exist anywhere. So that doesn't exist any. No, we decided
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we're not doing those. Is that right? It's sort of, we had an EV mandate and when the Trump
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administration came in and the business said like, no, no, we're not doing that. Well, bullshit
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anymore. We're not doing EV mandates. Canada was like, we're going to do incentives. And so we
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did away with the and so we are a Honda household, not a sponsor. And so Honda said, okay, well,
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we're going to scrap our EV plan as such. And now we're just, okay, as a household,
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this is like a real study and consumer behavior like, well, we're not going to switch to an EV
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because why would we? The infrastructure is not there. The car is not there. We'll do continue
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this hybrid stuff. I mean, I do want to worry about that for you that you are aware that the
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mere absence of a mandate is not the same as a prohibition. You are still entitled to purchase
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if you wish. Oh, no, it was more than that because of the absence of the mandate, the industry
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then said, well, we're not going to rush on infrastructure and we're not going to rush on
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run out the EV vehicles. And so the industry, because it's much cheaper just to kind of lag with
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with the fossil fuels, the internal combustion engine said, well, we're just going to keep doing,
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you know, these hybrids plug in or otherwise. And we're like, okay, we'll find because they
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didn't want to be pushed into this either because it's expensive and battery technology isn't where
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they want to be and whatever. And so we just sort of went on and said, you were like, okay,
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well, I just wanted to make sure that you're not like the government. It's a very Canadian thing.
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The government must force me to do it. Otherwise, I will not do it. I have no personal autonomy
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in this net. No, we're not allowed. Yeah, in Canada, I'm just waiting for the
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car. That's right. Like he's going to instruct us. He's like, now's the time to get an EV.
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Okay. Okay. I'm going to do it. Well, this is the rule now. If Mark Carney says you can do
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something, you can do it. I mean, this is true, not just in Canada, but in the world. Everyone's
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spent everyone in other liberal democracies has been like, wow, thank goodness, Mark Carney got
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up at Davos and like told Donald Trump that he was, he was mean because now the sun's clear
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before. It was unclear. And we didn't know if we had permission to do so. But now that the
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Canadians have where we're good to go. Speaking of the impact of Trump on Canada, this is a place
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to begin with our conversation about nationalism and democracy and how we should all think about that.
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Is that what this is about? I was going to ask. No, we're not talking entirely about aviation
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and ultra long haul flights and electric vehicles. Although we can. I mean, a couple of guys who
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don't know anything about it, talking about it wouldn't be new on podcast in podcasting.
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Couple of guys uninformed about an issue expressed strident opinions about how it would be. Let's
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do this episode of our pregnancy. Let's do this. Let's assume you have pregnancy and
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menopause. This episode is officially. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Why did chicks always whine about
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hot flashes? I mean, get over yourself. Am I right, people? That's what it's just. Do you want to
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hear the funniest joke of all time? Because you give me permission to do diversion. So I'm
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going to really lean into this before. Yes, absolutely. The onion, America's finest new source.
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Yes. Their funniest headline of all time, I think, is man finally put in charge of struggling
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feminist movement? And like full disclosure to the listeners, I am what so many people hate. I am
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a left-wing class politics person who has a lot of sensitivities to identity issues.
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But when this stuff comes up, it's really funny because my friends who are at hardcore on this
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stuff read it to and they love it. They laugh. And there's like a lot of kind of like for those who
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kind of are in on the joke, it's a good bit. And then there's people who read it differently.
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You know, we're like, no, that's not good. That's not so good. I mean, those people need to get
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what we call an Australia a sense of humor about life. I also like the in the onions,
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you know, they're anthology book of pretend headlines from the past like our dumb century.
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A headline from when from the founding of Israel in the 40s, which is like the the founding
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Israeli prime minister saying at last the Jewish people will have will have peace wedged between
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Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, what could Iraq name on? I'm a big fan of whenever something goes
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pear-shaped and just so obviously so I always like to say, what did you think was going to happen?
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Yes, like set aside any normative. Yeah, we can have all kinds of discussions about normative
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outcomes, but I always will say like, what did you think was going to happen? So I turned 40
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a couple years ago. I'm sorry. For those who are listening, you can't, you can't see, but you know,
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I, you know, I don't always present as 40. David looks like a haggard old man. He looks
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80 is what he's saying. I present to the 80 as a boyish 80. A boyish 80, a Hugh Grant
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Yes, minus the non-science 80. But so we my partner and my wife and I went to to southeast
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Asia just to go like to hang out on beaches and I wore these chucks because I wear chucks because
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I'm young and cool still. I'm sorry. I don't know what a chock is. What's a chock? A chock
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tailor kind of sneaker with very chock sneakers. Yeah, like Converse sneakers. Very poor
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athletics. And I'm walking, we're walking on this mall in Bangkok. And I said to her, I'm like,
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I think I literally cannot take another step by feet. And she basically looks at me and like,
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what did you think was going to happen? Exactly. You're 40 now. And you're wearing sneakers for
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teenagers and you're walking 15,000 steps. And I, I, I shit you not. She looked at me. She's like,
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this is a mall. I bet you they sell sketchers. No, they don't in your size. That in your size
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in Thailand, unless you're a, unless you're a 40 something man with tiny feet. No, it's somehow
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they basically had, they basically had one pair that fit me and then I became a 40 something.
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Okay. You just revealed that you are not only a boyish 80 year old, but you're a boyish 80 year
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old with size seven shoes. So that's, I know for a fact that I don't know what the Australian
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sizing is, but I know for a fact because we were talking this a little bit, I'm a 10 and a half
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in the American Canada sizing. Okay. You're lucky that you got a tie. I was so lucky. That's very
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nice. I lived in South Korea when I was young. I taught English there and for a couple of 18 months.
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And I would go in the shop and you bound your feet with Vintage like a Chinese foot binding,
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which is why you're now able to buy shoes right across the Asian continent.
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Well, quite the, quite the contrary. They would look at me and just look at me because Koreans are
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blunt, right? They're not doing niceties. They're not doing Canadian tip towing around.
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They just look at me and you're like, no big sizes. No big size. Yeah, exactly.
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Don't waste your time. I walk into, you know, yeah, I walk into a mole in Southeast Asia and they
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just shoot me away with a broom. Yeah. They're like a six one two hundred one hundred ninety five pounds.
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There's like, no. What do you plan? I mean, you don't have to brag about it just to have a
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compensate for your size seven shoes. Okay. Two hundred pounds.
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You mentioned Hugh Grant. Interesting aside, I just showed my kid. I have eight-year-old twins.
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And I thought, and my daughter loves, she's grown into that tweenie age where she loves romantic
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comedies. And I thought, oh, I should show her the best romantic comedy of all time in my opinion.
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Notting Hill. Notting Hill. Notting Hill. She loved it. And I was trying to, it's funny when
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you have kids. And they only know really famous actors from the most stupid possible movies that
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they've seen. So like, you have to, like, when I try to explain who, like Bill Murray is, it'll be
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because he had a bit part in some stupid, yeah, exactly. Like some bullshit like that. It's, it's
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it's, it offends my soul as a movie buff to be like, you know, trying to explain Robert De Niro
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on the basis of meet the fuckers or something. It's taxi driver. But I was trying to remember how
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they would know Hugh Grant. And I was like, oh, you would know him because he was the umpa lumpa
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in Wanka. And I, they said, no, he's not because they were watching Notting Hill. They were like,
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that's not the umpa lumpa. And I was like, yeah, it is. And I brought up on my phone a picture of
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the umpa lumpa. And my son looks at it and he goes, that's not him. He has orange skin and green
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hair. And in Notting Hill, he doesn't. And so then we had a conversation about special effects.
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And make up. And then I showed them a photo of what Hugh Grant looks like now. And they still
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didn't believe that that's what Hugh Grant looked like 30 years ago. So, you know, what are you going
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to do? The boyish good looked. I think of Hugh Grant. Actually, the first flick that comes to my
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head is is love actually. That's just like one day. And Bill Murray, the first movie that comes
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to my is Stripes. Stripes great movie. And I'm not going to judge you overtly about love actually,
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which I think is the most unrelated movie of all time. I think is terrible. It's a good breakfast
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of a movie. It's a horrible movie. It's an incredible. It's a boring sexist very on the nose.
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Like, I'm not usually one to be like, oh, I don't like that movie because of its politics.
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But it's just a bunch of dumb guys trying to get laid with stupid women who are gullible and
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pathetic. Anyway, it's not a good movie. No, it's not a good movie. It is a holiday tradition
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in our house, but I know. I don't know how to become a holiday tradition for everybody.
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It's also very grim in a lot of ways. For a movie that's meant to be uplifting, it's I don't
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actually think it's extremely grim. And it makes me not like Alan Rickman, which you really
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need to work over time to make me not like Alan Rickman. Yeah, we're a diehard house hold. So
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diehard. Yes, I heard Christmas Eve were watching. Yes, that's going to be my next. Actually,
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I'm glad you're I'm jutting down right here diehard as the next film for my kids. I reckon it's
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I reckon it's okay. I reckon it's okay. It's bubble because it's not that
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gruesome. My father took it my brother and I had to see Jurassic Park in 1994 or 1993 when I came out.
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I would have been nine. My brother would have been six. And I can remember the ticket taker saying
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this might be a little bit much for the six-year-old. And my dad was basically like
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mind your business. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Traumatized my brother. Oh, really?
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I mean, I was fine, but I was nine because I think it's I think you know, a certain amount of
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put this way, I would rather they they were traumatized by a little bit of fake gruesomeness
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than their minds were deadened by stupid kid cartoon. Yes, bullshit. Like, you know, come
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and watch a real movie with a real story and it might be someone gets their limbs ripped off,
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but at least it's a well-might thing and they can learn about art and storytelling and
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absolutely. And if you're of a certain age, you know, I was born in January of 84. You know,
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we were raised on the land before time and all the Disney movies and
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what's wrong with the horse gets stuck in the in the mud and died. You know, like we were
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fucking traumatized by the one where the horse gets stuck in the mud and dies. Yeah,
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it's famous and I always forget about it. John, do you know the one where the horse gets stuck
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Google it, John, the horse gets stuck in the mud and dies. Okay, it's it's
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absolutely traumatic and we we went through these movies and you go back and like
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die or it is way less traumatic than the last time. I actually in King. Yeah, I actually have a
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a policy which is like the kid that it's worse for the kids to watch like screwed up shit like they
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watched. I think it was Caroline or like the night the nightmare before Christmas or one of those
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like a Tim Burton e-type thing and there's nothing gruesome in it and there's nothing sexual in it,
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but it's it's it's it's macabre. It's like I fucked up and it screwed them up for days.
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John, I was saying is it the never-ending story? It is the never-ending story. Oh, okay. I remember
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the never-ending story. I don't remember it. There's a still you'll sometimes see the
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internet of someone trying to pull a horse through mud and I can't win the horse because I can't
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go back to watch it because if I go back to watch it, I will re-traumatize myself, but you know,
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we're like when when when Simba's father dies. Yeah, or that's powerful and yeah. Yeah,
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oh, yeah. Now you really are a boyish 80. Well, because what is this for me? What are you
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talking about? So the night they hit greatest hits of 1952. Oh, yeah. It's because we'd come home
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on Sundays because my mother like single mother would be like, well, I got to send these kids
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somewhere. I'm going to send them to Sunday schools so I can have 15 minutes to myself and so
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we'd come back from Sunday school and and I lived outside of Toronto and he'd come home and
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what's on TV? It's like the Adam's family and Gilligan's Island and movie and leave it to be
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there and then occasionally you get these old movies like Old Yeller or whatever and so we'd
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just pass the kind of consume them, but you would consume the stuff that was sort of traumatic.
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Yeah, absolutely. And it sticks with you as a core memory. I can remember sitting in a theater
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watching the Lion King and like, is is that is he going to know? He's dead. He's dead. The father's
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dead. The father died. I mean, it's the the the whole grim fairy tales and things like that. I was
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trying to I was recounting to my kids how amazing it was that these two brothers wrote all of these
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incredible fairy tales. And when you start writing them off, it's a litany of genocide, mutilation,
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incarceration, kidnapping, death. Yeah. Well, kids these days, I'll tell you what,
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David. So they get too soft. They're too soft. It's tough on them up with the Lion King, man.
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So how's Canada doing? Because you got guys got bullied around. I think the laser focus of Trump's
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IR is somewhat distracted from North America at the moment. He focused on South America for a bit.
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And he now he's on the Middle East. I think he desperately wants to come back and focus on
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Central America. Do something nice and easy in Cuba. Get another win. But you were I read a piece
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by you, I guess last February when he was really going tough on Canada, which seemed like it was
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almost a defensive nationalism, which seemed interesting.
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Somewhat worries them from my perspective as like a part of the universalist globalist elite that
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steep Ben and keeps railing on about. But you know, I kind of hopscotch between Sydney and New York
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and London and Copenhagen and all these places where like, you know, latte sipping,
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chardonnay swilling elites like us are really have more in common with each other than I do with
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people who live just 20 miles away from me here in Sydney. And so the idea that I would then
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cohere around a national identity and, you know, re-breathe new life into the demons that caused such
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trauma in the 20th century was confronting. But how did you get there?
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I struggled with it a lot. I mean, for context, Canada and the United States really do have a special
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relationship. And yeah, it's cultural and personal. We all travel back and forth.
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We live next to one another. It's the world's longest undefended border for the moment at least.
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And we'll see. But we have a trade relationship where at the trillion dollars.
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So the stakes are huge. And they are our biggest market. And we are among their biggest markets.
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So top one, two, three, depending on how you score it. And so, you know, lives and livelihoods are
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bound up. Ditto defense relationships. And we're talking like all kinds of industries, auto,
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aluminum, steel, trade, tourism, textile, all kinds of manufacturing. And so Trump comes along and
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starts, you know, musing by this 51st state idea. Starts slapping tariffs on its scale.
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We've had a trade relationship. Well, for a very long time, I had a free trade relationship going
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back to the 60s, a free trade agreement at scale since the 1980s. And all of a sudden, that all
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got upset. And then we start thinking, okay, well, this isn't just a threat to our sovereignty,
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but it's really a pocketbook issue. People are like, well, am I going to lose my job? Can I afford
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XYZ? People got really, really nervous. And my immediate reaction was visceral and emotional.
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And that was the reluctant nationalism that I write about. And it really struck me as
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disconcerting. I mean, I had the reaction that you just had. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
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I think of nationalism. I'm thinking of the 20th century. I'm thinking of wars,
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I'm thinking of Rwanda, I'm thinking about Bosnia. I'm thinking about just the horrors
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of seeing the world over. And then I tried to make sense of it. And I landed on this idea that
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it's actually kind of a civic nationalism. It's not that I think Canadians as such are better
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than anyone in the world. I just like asked as such. I think it's that we're doing something here
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collectively as a state, as a country. And we have the right to keep doing that. And I don't
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want another country coming in to tell us what to do. I think other countries can do that. Maybe
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even do it better. But I want to continue this Canadian experiment in the social welfare state,
24:08
multi-culturalism, so and so forth. And I don't want Donald Trump or anyone's coming and saying
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we're going to eviscerate you and leave you to figure it out. And so that was my my reaction.
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But I'm deeply nervous about the ethnic nationalism or any other iteration of nationalism that
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isn't bound up in common values and institutions. I mean, a couple of thoughts they just to put
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some flesh on the bones of the Canadian and American economic relationship and how disruptive
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the idea of not having free trade between the two countries is I hadn't realized until
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it was actually when I spoke to Jen Gerson, I think, from the line podcast. And she was talking
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about, and she was in a state of trauma at that particular point in time, where she was making
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the point that there are all kinds of things that would seemingly internal to the Canadian economy
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that actually touch into the United States. So like there are oil pipelines and things that go
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from one part of Canada to another part of Canada that go through the US. And there are things that
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go into the US and get refined and then come back out to the to Canada a lot of all kinds of
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manufacturing. Yeah, so there's all kinds of stuff that Canada sort of thinks of as its domestic
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production, but actually pops into the US has something done to it and then comes back out all
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vice versa. So putting a part in certain. Yeah, right? Auto parts move across the border. I can't
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remember the number of something wacky, like 10, 12, 15 times for they make it into a car.
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Right. So it's not as easy as just saying, like we're going to, it's not because I think
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a lot of people think about the economic relationship with the United States. They're like, well,
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yeah, the US is a really important trading partner for almost everybody, but not in the same way
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because of the geographical proximity. And similarly in defense, I think when Canadians worry about
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whether or not the US, you know, setting aside the, I think, implausible possibility of a US invasion
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of Canada, the question of whether or not the US would defend Canada if Canada was invaded by
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another country. I think everyone just sort of thinks, well, of course they would because it's so
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close that Canada, Canada doesn't share the security concerns of a country like Australia,
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where it really is a question as to whether or not, no matter how much the Americans say they
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would, whether they would come to our defensive, you know, China or Indonesia, invaded Australia
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on the other side of the world, whereas if they did it to Canada, of course America would have to
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because they're right there. But your articulation of nationalism as not being contingent on your
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belief that Canada's doing something special is interesting because like I remember, I remember
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a reporter asked President Obama a gotcha question about whether or not he believes in American
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exceptionalism. And he gave this incredibly cany answer, which was of course I believe in American
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exceptionalism, just as I'm sure that the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the Albanians
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believe in Albanian exceptionalism. And I thought that's a very clever way of saying you don't
27:11
believe in American exceptionalism. You're saying it's subjective. And so the question for some,
27:18
for like, I suppose the nationalist is do I defend Australia or Canada because I think that
27:26
they are doing something really unique in the world, which ought not to be derailed or do I defend
27:33
them simply because I'm a member of that country? Yeah. Does it matter? Well, it depends. I mean,
27:42
I think on a philosophical level, it matters because you might then say, well, how far do you
27:49
do you chase this? If your country starts doing something that isn't so good, what do you say then?
27:55
And I think that's part of the test. If Canada tomorrow were to say, well, we're going to start
28:00
deporting X, Y or Z group of people on SPAC. I would say, I wouldn't say my country right
28:07
wrong. I'd say that's horrendous. And I don't care why you're doing it. It's fundamentally
28:12
unreasonable, unjust, and I don't believe in that and I don't support it. And if another country
28:17
called it out, I would say, yes, thank God you're calling this out. So my love of my country,
28:23
my belief in my country's capacity and so on and so forth isn't bound up in an emotional
28:28
attachment that says my country right or wrong and we're inherently better no matter what we do.
28:33
It's that no, I actually think there's these things that we're doing that are really valuable
28:36
and important. And in some cases, an example for the rest of the world, and I want to keep doing
28:43
that. And so I find them as they bound up with the country's institutions and its policies and
28:49
its laws, not all of them. But the way that everyone must buy an electric car law, for example.
28:57
I was waiting for Mark Karin to come tell me I'm allowed. But any day, so I'll give you concrete
29:04
examples. The charter of rights and freedoms that was adopted in Canada in 1984, which enumerated
29:10
a number of negative rights in Canada and just laid them out. Was it was used to
29:18
what would I what do you mean, what kind of negative political rights, social rights, the government
29:22
can mess with your your rights to free speech, your government can't mess with your rights to
29:32
collectively assemble over years. We've read in the right to same-sex marriage. We've read in
29:37
women's rights, we're in China, indigenous rights, we're in China, in a section of the constitution
29:44
when it was repatriated from the United Kingdom in the 1980s. And that was a kind of early push
29:51
for for indigenous rights, expressly laid out in a constitution. You know, everyone has as
29:58
multicultural rights can't be discriminated based on ethnicity and so on so forth. These are
30:07
all things enumerated in the in the charter. And it was used as a document to inform the rebuilding
30:13
of South Africa in the in the aftermath of apartheid. Like it's been used around the world for
30:19
nation building state building in after after as countries democratized and moved towards
30:24
liberal democracy. This was an extraordinary document. And I'm proud of that. And I think that's
30:29
something really that is a major human achievement in in human history. And we were we built on
30:35
British common law and the American constitution obviously and Bill of Rights and so on. But it became
30:40
a model. And and I'm really proud of that. And for all its flaws, I think, you know, we should
30:44
protect and celebrate that in the same way. I believe that about multiculturalism. Multiculturalism
30:49
in Canada is flawed. There are problems multiculturalism. There are race. There are racists in Canada.
30:53
There's all that sort of thing. But you can come to Canada and become a Canadian and it doesn't
31:00
matter where you're from. Now there's some again, asterisk because there are always people who are
31:04
going to be wretched. You can't do that in every country in the world. This is something we've
31:10
sort of sorted out more or less in a way that I actually will defend against people who say what
31:15
really. But I'm like, yeah, actually really our welfare state is flawed. But we have a welfare
31:21
state that has the an apparatus for for pharmacare prescription drug care for dental care for
31:31
health care for unemployment insurance and so on and so forth. That is flawed. But something I
31:36
want to protect. We have a commitment to the natural environment, flawed, but something that we
31:41
can build. You know, these are the things that I say, I don't want anyone fapping about with that.
31:46
Because this is part of what makes this country. I think one of, and again, I'm sorry,
31:50
this is a jingoistic thing. I just think objectively speaking, all things being equal, this is
31:54
in the bad. This is a pretty decent country to live in. Yes. I mean, and I, you know, it's interesting.
32:01
The multicultural thing combined with the nationalism thing is intrigues me because Australia finds
32:08
itself in the same position, obviously, where the majority of the population has arrived since
32:13
the Second World War and it has one of the highest refugee resettlement rates of any country and has,
32:19
you know, one of the highest immigration rates of any country per capita. And the
32:25
the way that nationalism manifests itself in old countries is that it tends to peg itself to a
32:32
community, right? It's a blood and soil nationalism. It's very obvious when you're in the United
32:40
Kingdom or France that the sort of shape that nationalism should take. It's like France is for
32:46
French people, you know, Japan is for Japanese people and the United Kingdom should be for British
32:51
people. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And yeah. And so it can easily, it's a cleaner form of
32:58
nationalism in a way. It's arguably an uglier form of nationalism because it strays more easily
33:04
into racism in xenophobia, but it's a, but it's a more coherent conception of nationalism. Like
33:12
here is a British town for thousands of years or at least hundreds of years. It was inhabited by
33:18
a particular demographic group. And in the past 30 years, that demographic group has become a
33:25
minority. And now everybody's walking around speaking Hindi or Arabic, right? Like that offends
33:31
the nationalists sense of national identity. Tell it to the Celts. Yeah. That's right.
33:38
I mean, depends how far. Thank you. Put the, yeah, you turn the dial, of course. Yes.
33:44
But this is what's bad. But there's something there because these are the same sorts of people
33:49
who will say, to say, indigenous people, you know, well, too bad. We're here now. Yes. And I'll say,
33:57
okay, I don't think that should be the standard. But if that's the standard, be careful what you
34:02
wish for. Right. Right. Because on your own evaluation. Yeah. I mean, it is all about timing
34:10
to some extent. I mean, you know, there's, there are inconsistencies on both sides. I mean,
34:14
I was, I was joking about who wasn't, who got up at the Grammys and said, nobody is illegal
34:22
on stolen land. But you know, if you actually pick a part that left wing sentiment, oh, it
34:30
was Billy Eilish, wasn't it? If you actually pick a part, that sentiment, sentiment, it's
34:34
equally as incoherent as the one that you're talking about from right wing nationalists. Like,
34:37
if nobody is illegal, then the land isn't stolen because people just move around.
34:44
Well, this is one of the other. Like, if the land was stolen, then countries have a right to keep
34:51
out people who don't belong there, in which case there are illegal immigrants. And if nobody is
34:58
illegal, because people can go wherever they want, then the land isn't stolen because people just go
35:02
wherever they want. It's like, yeah, what's the rule here? What exactly is the rule? And we're
35:09
struggling with this in Canada right now because, you know, this is a country that was settled
35:16
by colonizers. That's not a normative statement. That is a fact. So I mean, we sent people from
35:22
the United Kingdom. Would that be a controversial way of articulating it in Canada? In Australia,
35:27
it would be controversial to say settled, because you would be expected to acknowledge that it
35:31
wasn't just settled. It was invited or... Well, so it's only colonized.
35:37
There's anything around discourse about colonialism and settlement in Canada,
35:43
will someone's going to have an issue with it. But one of the challenges here is that we are
35:49
have been for decades working through claims by indigenous peoples about lands and treaties that
35:55
go back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763. And when you get into the nitty-gritty of a lot of
36:02
these debates, they're actually legalistic debates about treaties and agreements with the crown
36:10
going back to the 18th century. Now, we can talk about the 15th, 16th, 17th century colonizers
36:17
and horrific things that were done and that we do talk about them. We should talk about that.
36:21
But then people will say, okay, well, you know, we had agreements. We had bargains and the crown
36:28
actually hasn't lived up to those bargains. What we're talking about is the rule of law
36:33
that stretches all the way from that Royal Proclamation on down to 2026. And you can trace
36:38
that law through the English history and to Canadian history. And some indigenous peoples are
36:47
covered by treaties, but some are ununseated land. And they aren't covered by treaties, which
36:52
is a different conversation of, okay, well, how do you then build a relationship nation to nation
36:58
in the 21st century on unseated land? Because no one is saying, no one's serious. And I talk to
37:04
indigenous leaders about this, no one is saying you have to leave. No one is saying we're going to
37:11
expropriate you. That's not the conversation. The conversation is how do we get on on a nation to
37:16
nation basis? How do we honor these agreements or make up for the fact that there was an agreement?
37:23
Especially now that you have, as a nation state in the 21st century, certain standards that you
37:26
look back on and say, well, we certainly didn't meet those standards back in the 18th century.
37:33
And the system of colonization has had downstream effects that continue to affect people to this day.
37:40
And so when people like me say, there's a structural problem with colonialism that exists
37:44
to this day. It isn't to say you, person X, Y, Z living, I'm living on unseated land, are
37:50
inherently bad person. It's to say you're in a relationship with other peoples who are suffering
37:55
still because of your forebears. Like what are we going to do about that if we don't want people
37:59
to suffer? Yeah. And so you can actually have constructive conversations about it. You just can't
38:04
have them on the internet. You can't have them on the internet. It's even tricky to have them off
38:10
the internet these days. Australia had a reasonably traumatising national experience a couple of
38:15
years ago where we had a referendum about bad ideas. Not an ideal way to bring out the most
38:23
reasonable arguments, which is not to blame either side, but sort of to blame both sides,
38:30
really, because on the pro referendum sort of left wing bleeding heart, pro First Nations side,
38:41
there was a lot of moralistic scolding about how anyone who felt like maybe you shouldn't
38:45
change the constitution in perpetuity to create a new body that you may want to reform someday,
38:52
that that person was a racist bigot. And on the other side, it was just like we have to do
38:59
something. And so you're on the wrong side of history. If you don't do this thing and you know,
39:04
forget about its flaws, but just jump and stop asking questions. It's very hard to know in a
39:10
democracy. And we can talk about this a little later about how you do democracy well, because that
39:14
was your last book, to wrestle through quite complicated ideas in a way that sheds more light
39:22
than heat. On the indigenous question, it's trickier in Australia because we have no treaties.
39:27
There was never. So the entire continent is unseated. And you know, for a long time,
39:34
indigenous representatives felt that a treaty was a bad idea because they didn't, like it's our land.
39:39
So why should we be resigning a treaty with the invaders? And now white conservatives feel like
39:45
a treaty is a bad idea because you don't write a treaty with your own country, you write treaties
39:50
with other countries. And like we're all Australians. And so we all have to figure out how to get along
39:55
with each other here and what we all need. So it's not an easy thing to one pick, especially
40:02
once you've found yourself at this point in time. That was Canada in the 60s.
40:09
We do enjoy being about half century behind most other Western democracies, but thanks for
40:15
I'm going to get to Australia and I'm just going to be pelted with beats.
40:22
First country to legalize the female suffrage was Australia. And then the key was
40:31
wasn't everything. Yeah. And then the key was because of the war. What war?
40:39
World War One. Oh, you guys were late to the party. Yeah. And then also the first country to have
40:48
I think the key was actually passed it into law and had the first election where women voted,
40:54
but Australia had legislated at first. And so that's just my way of saying, don't you get too
40:59
high and mighty? You smug Canadian. I love you guys are ahead of Australia. Not at all. Not
41:05
all the soft squishy progressives. Oh, no, no, not at all. The first world war Canada legalized
41:12
offered franchise to women because the Prime Minister thought was in favor of conscription.
41:18
And he thought, well, women will vote for me and subscription so that others were sent across
41:26
to war to end the war to bring their husbands home. So we're going to be. And then when we're like,
41:33
well, we're going to keep this. What's hot to undo? So, you know, now that we've got it,
41:39
but keep in mind, Canada is a country where in some cases indigenous people couldn't vote
41:44
subnationally until I think 1970. Oh, yes, I mean, it was not. It was not in 1969 before Indigenous
41:51
Australians got the fight. It's like, truly, but there's no high horse here. And Canada,
41:57
in the 1960s, tried to do this white paper. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the Prime Minister,
42:02
the father of Justin Trudeau, who had later become the Prime Minister. And he was a liberal, small
42:07
L in Bigel. And his philosophy was, well, everyone is equal. Everyone is the same. We're going to
42:12
protect it under the same law. We're going to try to integrate Indigenous peoples into the
42:19
country, into the constitution. We're trying to effectively erase Indigenous such and emphasize
42:25
Canadianness and oneness. Indigenous peoples said, no. No, thank you. This is at the same time
42:33
that he was preaching multiculturalism or the shoots of multiculturalism were coming up for a second.
42:37
No, we don't want to be assimilated. We want to be Indigenous nations. And this is where it comes
42:42
back to nationalism to the extent is that, you know, in Canada, we do talk about different nations.
42:48
Quebec, which was settled primarily from France, and which fought the English,
42:55
and then later has fought referendums to separate the country and may have one next year,
43:01
they think of themselves as a nation, a linguistic nation, a ethnic nation. Indigenous
43:06
nations think of themselves as nations. And we talk about having a nation to nation relationship
43:11
between the Canadian nation and various Indigenous nations. And we have to struggle with that. And
43:17
one of the things I keep thinking about and write about in this upcoming book is that, you know,
43:21
Bernard Anderson talks about nations as being imagined communities. And this comes back a little
43:25
bit to your conversation about the UK and Italy and France and so on, which is you've got to
43:32
make common cause and common identity with someone in this imagined community who you will never
43:37
know and never meet. And as much as we think of a Canada's big and diverse, Australia's big and
43:44
diverse, you go across the country and people are different from coast to coast to coast to go
43:48
go to Italy and go 250 kilometers from one area to the next. They're very different.
43:56
You know, go north to south and you know, Italians have very strong feelings, but other Italians
44:03
not to mention the fact that in some countries they're speaking totally different languages.
44:07
I mean, you know, especially alone, they're speaking a different language from the rest of Spain,
44:11
Switzerland. Yes, they've got four different languages. But the only thing you look at this and
44:15
you got to sit together this common imagined community out of that. And so whenever you press
44:20
on nationalism, you realize that it's all kind of tentative. But the difference there, David,
44:25
is that is that all of those communities can make a blood and soil argument. They do.
44:30
Right? Whereas the challenge for the multicultural, the new multicultural country is that you need
44:38
to be hitching your wagon to something that's different from like I was born here. My parents
44:46
were born here, my grandparents were born here, my great-grandparents were born here, and all of us can
44:50
articulate our sense of belonging in the context of this umbrella that we call Italy or Spain or
44:57
Switzerland. And the way that the United States has done that successfully, I think, is just by
45:03
having an extremely aggressive set of principles that everybody has to subscribe to, that are
45:08
literally etched in stone, like on the Statue of Liberty. And, you know, you have to stand up in
45:14
class and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and you go to any small town. But it ever breaks them.
45:21
Everyone is very serious about that. Exactly. Bring us your tired, your poor, your total masses.
45:26
Yes. This is based in the US big on the tired, poor and the ICE agents who are respectfully
45:33
honor, be tired, and the poor. No, but what I mean is, you know, there is what can feel to the
45:40
to the squishy Canadian or Australian eye as kind of a jingoistic, bombastic, chest thumping
45:48
patriotism, the fact that you go to a small town anywhere in the States, you know, in summer,
45:53
and the whole mainstream will be flanked with American flags, and that there'll be American flags
45:58
in people's yards. Like if you see an Australian flag in someone's front yard, that basically means
46:05
they're a racist. You know, it's like it's not like in the States where it could mean basically
46:11
anything. It just means like I'm proud of being alive and free. And that has enabled them to say
46:19
like, you know, we are the country where anybody can come and they can be an American. And as
46:24
long as you subscribe to being part of this community, then you are an American. Now of course
46:29
it sounds ridiculous to say that at the moment because it's in the country is in a state of regression.
46:35
But I think that the the the arc of history sort of proves that that is a durable way to make a
46:41
society a multicultural society cohere. It's a tougher cell when you're a bit queasy about
46:50
overt displays of patriotism and nationalism to say we're going to bring in, you know, we're
46:57
going to double our population in whatever it might be 20 years or something like that. And we're
47:02
not really going to have the backbone to require people to subscribe to anything. But we're still
47:09
going to be proud of this nation, which is really just a treaty. It's really just a thing on a
47:16
piece of paper that says that Canada is this thing or Australia is this thing that has a body
47:21
that can engage with other countries, but doesn't have a fierce spirit. We Canada had to be kicked
47:27
out of the United Kingdom's basement. We got to be between 67 and like get the fuck out. You're a
47:34
bomb. Get a job. You can't live here anymore. Like that was true. And Canada was basically
47:40
a commercial pact. It was formed truly and stitched together later by a railroad to form a
47:54
commercial pact. There wasn't anything so noble as an undertaking beyond like, you know, this
48:02
will work on the balance sheet. And it wasn't formed out of revolution. It was negotiated
48:08
literally over champagne. This is a famous story of the framers, the founders of Canadian
48:16
Confederation going over to Charlottetown with a bunch of champagne on the boat to get Trunk
48:20
that figure out Canada. And this was kind of us. And years later, decades, decades later,
48:25
and I think it was the 60s or 70s, there was a radio host that had this set of contests to say,
48:31
finish this sentence. We're as Canadian as. And the winning submission was as possible under the
48:41
circumstances. I love it. I love that. And that kind of summarizes us to this day where
48:49
but there's this kind of ironic thing where it reminds me so to interrupt David, but hold that
48:54
thought, you know, the pretend claim about how English people demand revolutionary change.
49:01
They take to the streets and they say, what do we want? Incremental change. When do we want it
49:07
at whatever time is it? This is, except for Quebec, they will go to the streets and they will
49:15
fuck you up. But in the rest of Canada, that is thoroughly us. Anyway, finish that thought.
49:22
I interrupted you. What do I tell you until there's a hockey game on and then we will just
49:26
beat the ever let a lot of blood on the ice. Yes, truly, then it's very different and you can
49:30
see that. But it was so fascinating is when the Trump stuff went down last year, the threats to
49:34
sovereignty, the tariffs 2.0 and so on, the reactions were so fascinating because all of a sudden,
49:42
hockey games between Canada and the United States felt existential sort of in the way that
49:46
games against Russia in the 70s would have felt existential, I think of 72, but are we going
49:51
to, you know, the United States, when the gold medal in the 80s, like these things feel like
49:55
big national moments, the subway sandwiches French, if subway sandwiches in Australia.
50:01
Yeah, we do. Yeah, sadly. Yeah, it's like not the best. But here, there's one down the road in my
50:09
house, from my house, they, they adopted this marketing campaign where they switched the inches
50:16
to centimeters, you know, like six sub's became, you know, whatever the equivalent is in centimeters.
50:22
Yeah. And lays ships is a 20 centimeter. And people like, give me a 27 centimeter, like the
50:31
person behind the calendar would be like, what? Yeah. What do I cut it? But and and lays chips.
50:39
And this is a fascinating study that brings back to the initial point that we launched on,
50:44
lays chips is owned by an American coming, I think it's owned by PepsiCo actually. And
50:50
fine, you know, lays chips. And when the by Canadian reaction to America started going down,
50:57
lays chips became kind of a case study because lays chips foreign multinational profits go
51:04
south Canada is a big branch plan of America. Those potatoes are farmed in Canada.
51:11
The chip plant that processes them is in Cambridge, Ontario, good union jobs, unionized
51:17
men and women who are making Canadian chips from Canadian potatoes and selling them in Canada.
51:22
Profits on aggregate flow into this American multinational.
51:27
What is that? How do you, if you're making a buying decision, if you're trying to claim a product
51:33
as yours, what is that? And there's all kinds of examples of that automobiles are good example
51:37
again. And we were like, well, I don't know. I don't know what to do. And so one of the challenges
51:43
to the contemporary nationalism, especially to the extent that it's commercialized, is how do you,
51:47
how do you sort out all these cases? Because there's a lot of them. And while we were all going
51:51
elbows up in Canada and we weren't flying to the United States and we were putting American
51:57
products back on the shelves, not buying American produce and so on and so forth,
52:02
we had invested more into the American capital markets than at any other point in our history,
52:08
including our national pension fund and big companies in Canada who were doing infrastructure
52:12
investments in the United States and individual Canadian investors who were chasing good returns off
52:16
of strong American companies tech and otherwise. So everyone's talking like, well, what are we doing
52:22
here? What is this? Get a human as well. If you've listened to this much of the episode,
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then you must enjoy it, presumably, unless you're just listening from masochistic reasons.
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