Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Trump = Hitler?" with Dennis Glover

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"Trump = Hitler?" with Dennis Glover · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and perhaps the most dangerous
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  idea in politics is that we are on the brink of a fascist future that we're sleepwalking
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  towards calamity much like people did in the 1930s and we're just not taking people
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  like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen seriously enough.
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  Dennis Glover is taking them seriously enough. Some would say he's taking them all too
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  seriously and is drawing bows that are all too long. That's what today's conversation
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  is about. Dennis is a senior speech writer. He's written for some of the most senior left-wing
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  politicians in in Australia in recent history. He's also a novelist and his new book is not a novel
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  it's called repeat a warning from history and it looks at the history of the 20th century in
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  particular Hitler and draws analogies with politics today. It's an interesting conversation.
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  It's interesting to hear Dennis begin by articulating this worldview which I would characterize as
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  being probably the mainstream left-wing attitude towards what's going on on the right and then
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  in the final third or so of this conversation I as you would expect me to do push back a little
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  bit and the responses are fascinating. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did the one
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  Dennis Glover. Well we all aspire you know in the magazines they have this thing what did you
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  have today then they have someone analyze it you know they always say oh I had a I had a mint tea
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  for breakfast and then you know hand full of yeah yeah and basically they're going to dive
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  in the starvation. Have you seen the I think it's is it Hunter Thompson or one of those
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  Gonzo guys from the 70s had a he brought down a list of everything that he ate in a day I
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  don't know if he was taking the piss on or not but it was like wake up at 11 line of cocaine half
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  of all of whiskey and then it goes basically no nutrition whatsoever it's exclusively whiskey beer
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  and cocaine. I know a couple of people like this. Fascinating book I finished it last night
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  terrifying. I don't know what to make of it quite so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it.
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  Yeah I think an interesting point that you say in the introduction is that you want you want
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  people to grasp and they quote how extraordinary and ugly current events are compared to those
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  of just a couple of decades ago. I think that's a good good what place to pick your brain what do
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  you mean by that? What I mean is that the world has changed absolutely incredibly in a downward spiral
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  and people don't realise just what a dire situation the world's in and we've got a war going on in
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  in Ukraine now a big you know series of land battles going on in Ukraine and you know we've got
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  people attempting to assassinate the US president we've got you know fascist sounding populist leaders
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  bringing up all over the world this isn't normal the world's entered a sort of a different turn
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  and we have to wake up and realise it that's pretty much my argument. The world or Western liberal
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  democracies or both? Well the problem has started outside liberal democracies hasn't it? It started
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  in these countries which have taken a turn towards fascism and or at the very least sort of
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  radical brand of populism and it's challenging us now to respond so we have to wake up.
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  Right but I mean the reason I asked the question is because I think there's a you can look at it
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  from on one level from a geopolitical perspective right and I think everyone from both sides from
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  all sides of politics within Western liberal democracies would regard this as a precarious moment
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  for Western liberal democracy as you know the the the Fukuyama model the kind of end of history
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  you know we won the world wars and now we're setting up shop and you know everything's nice
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  and stable and you know the the Cold War only see at the end of the Cold War only seals the deal
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  on the collapse of the Soviet Union only proves that we're triumphant. Clearly that's gone away
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  clearly the international and global institutions and like the hegemony of the West
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  is being overtly challenged from Beijing and from Moscow and that is causing ripple effects
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  among smaller countries and you talk quite a lot about Hungary in this in this book as an example
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  of a former democracy that's become essentially authoritarian and so that's one I just want to
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  keep that in one column yeah because then I think another portion of your arguments which is the
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  one that I think is a trickier case to make is that Western liberal democracies are facing a
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  threat that might be akin to the sorts of threats that they faced in the 1930s from populist
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  slight Donald Trump yeah yeah and you know not just Donald Trump but it's gone we've gone through
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  it with Boris Johnson he was seen off I mean France recently we've had a big challenge to sort of
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  the you know the center and the left from the RN Le Pen's party which has links to to fascism
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  and going back all the way to the second world war you know in Italy we have Malone's government
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  which is sort of a hard-right government it's everywhere around the world liberal democracy is
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  itself having to face off these threats I mean these small parties these small parties of the hard
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  right were sort of a joke not long ago just getting a few percent of the vote now they're challenging
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  mainstream parties for government in some places winning it in some ways isn't the experience of
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  Malone and of Le Pen a contradiction to the core thesis of your book which is that where that these
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  parties represent an existential threat to liberal democracy of of a scale that we've seen before
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  in place in people in the figures in figures like Hitler and Mussolini in the sense that Malone
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  did reach power and Italy is not a Mussolini style fascist state and Le Pen is not her father
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  in in the 1970s they are now a protest vote party that is basically yeah wants to massively
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  curtail immigration but it's certainly not in favour of rounding people up into concentration camps
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  well the interesting thing about Le Pen is where she hasn't got power yet so this is the whole point
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  about these people is that they sound moderate they tell us they're going to be moderate until
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  they get into power it's not to say that she will get into power and become you know reincarnation
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  of adult Hitler or anything like that it's that she'll get into power and you know start deporting
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  immigrants start you know really cracking down hard on all on minorities and really becoming
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  incredibly illiberal and threatened you know even to the extent of changing the electoral system
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  to you know water down democracy and so forth which Trump has threatened to do so it's
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  you know these people it was just like Hitler you know you think of Hitler in the 1920s and 30s
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  you know he tried to sound quite moderate when he was trying to get into power in the late 20s
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  and early 30s and then and people trusted him they thought they could control him and the
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  moment he got in well they'll for the chop sure but I mean in the in the more proximate and sort
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  of historically close case of Maloney who you mentioned in Italy she sounded more extreme while
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  she was campaigning because she wanted to drum up the values support and then in government she's
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  been more moderate yeah but the fact that these people are getting into power is the source of worry
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  I mean we thought that the the hard right would be literally killed off at the end of the
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  second world war I mean they were a lot of them were executed at Nuremberg and and you know
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  Mussolini was actually you know was was was was strung up and killed and we thought that all that
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  was behind us and now it's all come back and sure they haven't turned out to be as radical as
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  their forebears but still worry worrisome that these sorts of people who were talking about race
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  and so forth are getting quite a large percentage of the vote in mainstream countries like
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  you think of Germany the AFD they're they've almost got the same vote now as the social democrats
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  I mean I find that concretibly concerned why do you think it's happening well I think
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  after the end of the second world war we created a global economy or at least in the West where
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  the fruits of the economy were distributed fairly amongst the people and democracy was seen to work
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  for ordinary people this was the work some ways of John Mainer Cain's after Bretton Woods
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  they set up a world economy that worked for ordinary people then in the 19 late 1970s and 80s onwards
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  this started to unravel the workers who had benefited from all this redistribution of wealth
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  and income stopped benefiting saw themselves as losers and inevitably they retracted to these sorts
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  of populists and this is exactly the same thing that happened after the first world war in 1918 John
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  Mainer Cain's says right to the economic consequences of the peace in which he says the most important
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  thing we can do now the first world war is over is make sure Germany is an economic success
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  get world trade going because we can see what's happening you know east of Germany in Russia
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  where there's a revolution and a civil war people starving to death you know eating each other
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  literally cannibalism and we have to stop this sort of sliding to you know the end of civilization
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  happening by setting up an economy that works for everyone to get a sound basis for democracy and
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  in some ways we've we've um after 30 or 40 years of success we unlearned that lesson to our cost
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  unlearned that lesson in what way well um think of how Putin has come to power
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  after the fall of the Soviet Union there was an attempted sort of almost sort of capitalist
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  revolution in Russia shock therapy guided the finance minister called it which sort of led to the
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  total collapse of living standards of ordinary Russians who lost faith in liberal democracy which
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  had only been going for a few years and ended up this ended up with them wanting to put their
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  faith in a hard man who could in in store order and get their living standards back up and this
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  is what's given us Vladimir Putin with all the troubles that he's causing in the world at the moment.
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  What's feeding voters uh distrust and disaffaction that is leading them to vote for far right parties
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  in the West vote? The feeling that they've been left behind by the economy I mean if you think of
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  where Donald Trump's support um is strong you know in the old rust belt states around
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  Pennsylvania and so forth in in those parts of America where the white working class feel that
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  they've just been forgotten um the democrat they feel the democrats and the liberal elites don't
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  care for them anymore so they go for someone who sounds who talks like them who seems to care about
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  their issues even if he doesn't somebody like Donald Trump and the similar thing happened in the
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  north of England where Boris Johnson populist in a different sort of way or more sort of civilized
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  English sort of way if you can put it um have a similar effect on in the voters in the north
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  of England who used to be strong labor supporters. Why aren't they strong labor supporters anymore?
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  Well be well I think if you what is the Labor Party? What are Labor parties?
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  They're um parties of the trade union movement and the trade union movement was built on
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  organization of workers in the industrial world um huge factories um and this formed a sort of
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  the base of a pyramid upon which the Labor Party was built. Well that's all gone now those
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  those workers don't have those jobs they're not organized into trade unions that don't get their
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  view of the world from trade union leaders and trade union ideology anymore and cut a drift
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  from any thought patterns they're sort of you know they hear people like Trump and so forth and
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  they think yeah he sounds like us let's let's go for him and I think this um the the problem is
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  that a lot of this is built on things that are very inimical to to liberal democracy racism dividing
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  people by race making people angry um the triumph of lies over the truth and so forth this is how
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  populist always work and it's not good for people who believe in democracy. What's interesting is
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  that your analysis of why people would be disaffected is almost identical to the analysis by one
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  of your arch villains in the book Steve Bannon who you like and sort of to Lenin who was uh you
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  know who Steve Bannon himself has expressed admiration for yeah um you know Bannon's point would be
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  it's all very well for elites to look down their noses and you know wave their arms and run around
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  with their arses on fire about the Trump phenomenon but they created it through creating an
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  economy that's no longer working for people and um you know so this so Trump represents the people
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  seizing back control from an elite that has long since given up on them. What's is there any daylight
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  between you and Bannon on that? Well I think the analysis is correct but the answer is wrong. His
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  Bannon would uh the answer of people like Bannon and Trump and others is to make people angry
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  about what's happened to them and then just completely ignore them once they get into power they're
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  just sort of walking on the people's backs to get into power they don't have any positive policies
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  that are going to help these people they're not building a modern um manufacturing
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  economy they're not they're not increasing taxes for the rich so they can redistribute wealth.
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  Well they're not helping the people yeah you're I mean you're picking the policies that they're
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  not doing but if you ask their supporters about the policies that their supporters actually care
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  about their supporters don't talk about we need to raise taxes on the rich the their supporters talk
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  about you know we shouldn't be flooded with so many cheap Chinese goods and we shouldn't be
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  flooded with so many people across the border who who don't have a right to be here and we
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  shouldn't have so many people coming into the country so in that respect Bannon and Trump are
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  being responsive to the wishes of their base you might disagree with the analysis of the base
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  that that's what's actually in their interest but that's how the base would articulate their interests
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  you know there's too much immigration there are too many people getting ahead of traditional
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  American families the government has it's thumb on the scales of I don't know you know
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  whatever whatever pick the pick the target of target to juror that the right wing is pointing at
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  you know black single mothers who are receiving welfare benefits whatever it is that's the way
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  they would articulate the problem yeah which is exactly how Hitler articulated the problem and
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  there's our that's the problem that we have which is to blame others and so forth which isn't
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  really going to solve the problems I mean I I think they have a point in some ways I at
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  but lots of sort of liberal democratic politicians around the world now are waking up to the fact
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  that immigration has become such a political issue for democracy that they have to be ways
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  found to address it peacefully but I don't think the way to go about it doing it is to you know
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  stir up racial animosity between people which you mean recall what's happened just in the last
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  week in the UK where lots of misinformation has led to riots in which you know hotels you know
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  in which refugees are living we're tempted to be burnt to the ground people you know we can't
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  this is exactly what happened in Germany in the 20s and 30s and it's a sort of thing I think
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  any decent society wants to avoid but I mean yes and and all of it all of that is horrible
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  and it's also and it can also be the case that like I'm where I'm coming from is I'm
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  I'm wary of stumbling into God once law here where anything that anyone does that Hitler also
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  did enables us to say they're Hitler there might be things that people are doing right now which are
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  which we don't like because we're on the left but which are not as existentially threatening as
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  Hitler and which we would be more likely to head off genocide civil strife the collapse of
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  Western civilization by trying to understand then by simply saying that they're Hitler for example
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  you know the so the UK riots there are there are people who are persona non-gratas in the UK who for
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  years have been saying the levels of immigration are higher than people want them to be
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  there is too much illegal immigration 40,000 people are coming across the English channel
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  in boats every single year you know many many hundreds of thousands of people are coming in legally
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  there are towns and villages whose demography has completely changed and anyone who points out
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  that that might be destabilizing for local populations is called a Hitler and now sort of there
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  are chickens coming home to roost and of course there's completely inexcusable misinformation lies
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  barbarism arson in some cases you know brutality this is not in any way to excuse that but
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  I do want to sort of understand it at a deeper level than just being like well the far right is
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  the far right they were dropped from the heavens upon us and anytime there's anyone who smells a
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  little bit like Hitler they should be hanged you know what I mean like we got to do better than that
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  well let's take a couple of things there I think the first the first thing is that a lot of
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  social democratic and liberal politicians around the world have have recognized for a long time
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  now the problems that come with you know uncount if you could call it uncontrolled immigration
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  there's a problem of simply physically trying to control your borders and people are grappling
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  with how to do it and you know you'll find that Keir Starmer's government that's coming in now
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  is going to try and tackle it by talking to other nations from which these people are coming
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  from a giant tackle at its source so I think people are aware of the enormity of this problem
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  and the problems that it's causing for democracy it's it's it's just that people on the centre
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  left aren't going around demonizing people and stirring up hatred so they could lead to you know
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  lead to death and disaster of course then they're not doing that but they're also spending a lot of
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  time jumping down the throats of anybody who tries to flag it as a problem I'm not sure
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  that it's true that everybody has been regarding it as a problem because there's been a consensus
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  on both sides of politics to maintain very high levels of immigration for a long time regardless
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  of what signals the electorate tried to give successive governments I don't think it's a matter of
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  jumping down the throats of anyone who says it's a problem they're jumping down the throats of
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  people who were trying to use this to to cause trouble and violence and you know use it as a
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  basis for stirring up racist agitation that's who they're jumping down the throats. Well it depends
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  what jumping down the throats we're talking about I could show you a thousand tweets and you know
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  guardian columns which are which claim that when anyone says that there are there's too much
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  immigration that that person is motivated by xenophobia or racism. Well you know as the guardian
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  totally representative you know of everybody in mainstream. No no no I'm just I'm just pointing
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  out that there's a penalty that exists in public discourse and elite discourse. Yeah there's that
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  look at the other part of you question is the idea of raising the comparison with Hitler we have
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  this sort this sort of finger the godlands law thing out you know nobody's allowed to talk about
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  Hitler because everything does it eventually decends and we're talking about Hitler and we get
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  nowhere. I don't think that's right. The Hitler that the Hitler of the 1920s and 30s and early 30s
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  before he got into power and became the genocidal maniac was very much a similar figure to somebody
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  like Donald Trump and other populist figures in Europe you know he was a demo he was a radical
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  right wing populist who used the democratic system to try and get into power through the ballot box
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  who held huge rallies using demagogic language to call people you know
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  vermin who were poisoning the blood of our society attacking immigrants attacking others Jews
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  very very similar I mean I think there are lots of valid comparisons between Hitler and a lot
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  of the right wing populists we see around the world today right now and this is the early Hitler
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  mean I don't think that even were Donald Trump to getting to power later this year that he would
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  turn it necessarily turning to somebody like Hitler but I think the the lessons of history are
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  there that this can happen you know if something can happen once well it can happen again and we
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  we're crazy if we think that we're immune to repeating history because you know it can happen in fact
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  it's a lot of history is being repeated like now as we you know as we sit here talking there's a
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  big a huge battle going on involving thousands of soldiers artillery tanks and aircraft in
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  a place called kursk which was the site of arguably the largest battle of the second world war
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  on the same place and a lot of the soldiers who will be fighting in that battle would have
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  would be the great grandchildren of members of the red army who fought on the same place to get
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  rid of Hitler I mean this besides I mean in some in some ways history is repeating in front of
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  our eyes right now and I don't think we realize the degree to which it's all happening again
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  I'm glad that you made I'm glad that you make that point because one of the most sort of compelling
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  aspects of your book I think is its ability to drag us back into the kind of arbitraryness and
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  subjectivity of the moment that we find ourselves in and how we have a bias towards thinking that
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  this moment is unique in some way and that other moments were all stodgy you say like
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  that grasping the the past means recognizing that to those who lived through it it looks just like
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  it does today yeah it's not a black and white you know I think people one of the reasons why people
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  think the past can't repeat while we can't end up in another world war and so forth is that
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  all of those documentaries about it are in black and white and we you know we look at the
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  documentaries of the first and second world war I mean they're colorizing them now making them look
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  a little bit more like us but you know we think oh that's it's almost like it happened on another planet
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  in another world but in fact it was just like just like us so for example if you think of
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  um you know when her mask crossed the border and slaughtered you know those young people at that
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  at that Nova music festival in Israel well to them you know when the when the onzats group
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  and went into Poland in 1939 it was probably a beautiful sunny day as well and they probably looked
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  exactly the same and they were just as terrified the part you know the past didn't happen in black
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  and white it happened in vivid digital color exactly as it happens to us and so we're crazy to think
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  that what happened then isn't similar to what's happened now you think of the you know the
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  the destruction of cities like Marriol in Ukraine just like the destruction of Stalingrad the bombing
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  of Kiev just and the bombing of Gaza this is exactly what happened during the second world war the
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  mass bombing of cities were tens of thousands of people have killed I mean it's the same sort of
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  just that it's it's it's nowhere near the scale it's obviously feels the same to the person who
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  who's who's having a bomb dropped on their apartment building yes exactly when you look at the
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  you know the fire bombing of Dresden or the total impunity with which we prosecuted wars like
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  World War II that's not happening now well there have been incidents of you know mass slaughter
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  in Ukraine for instance on the booker when they you know booker was one of those suburbs on the
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  outskirts of Kiev in in Ukraine that was taken in the initial days of the Soviet of the Russian
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  invasion of Ukraine and once the Russian army retreated several weeks later they found you
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  know hundreds of people buried in Nassgraves in the town these things actually are happening not
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  on the horrific horrendous scale but they're very similar you know the you think of Gaza now it's
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  hard to know there's a lot of propaganda around we don't know the exact number of people who've
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  been killed in the you know in the missile strikes and aerial bombing of Gaza but it's in the
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  you know they're claiming now that it's up to 40,000 if even if it's only half that
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  that's a lot that's on us that's is actually on the same scale as the number of people who died in
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  a lot of bombing of cities bombings of cities in the second world war in a day yeah in a day but
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  you know I mean in a day we would knock out as many as Israel has in a year
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  that's true but it's still we'd knock out a hundred thousand people in some of the periods of
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  World War II well you know certainly the bombing of Tokyo and the firestorm in in Hamburg and
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  Dresden places like this a lot of the a lot of those bomb cities actually not a lot of people
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  were killed because of you know they're in shelters and the cities that are called fire anyway
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  it's very technical I mean I'm not drawing a direct moral compare a direct numerical comparison
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  what I'm saying is it's the same sort of thing cities being bombed thousands of people are being
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  killed this is all happened before we've seen this before I often try to take myself back to the
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  mindset of people for whom the most remarkable moments in history were only just unfolding because
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  you know they didn't know that they were coming yeah my grandmother when she was in Poland in
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  and she left Poland at the urging of her near-to-well French Polish boyfriend in 1938
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  yeah and the rest of her Jewish family were all wiped out yeah she you know a lot of people say
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  oh you know he must have been so wise or they had such a vision they were probably crazy for
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  being that paranoid like in the context of 1938 it probably seemed loopy to think that
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  Germany was about to relaunch another massive European conflict I mean I'm sure there were people
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  saying it obviously there were people worried about it but like the idea that you would upheave
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  your entire life and go instead of just figure you know we've muddled through before we'll
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  muddle through again was the attitude of all of the rest of their families which was probably the
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  more reasonable way to think and I sometimes wonder just temperamentally where you want that
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  setting to be at you know how cautious do you want to be at any point in time you don't
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  want to be uplifting uprooting your life all the time and constantly shrieking at windmills
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  you know it will be complacent no well the people who stage probably stayed for good reasons they had
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  a nice house a nice job they had investments they had which so we're going to lose if they left
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  and then they've mentioned if they'd left and then Hitler had fallen and that lost everything
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  that's true yeah my grandmother was 19 years old and had no money anyways yeah yeah exactly but
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  my point is that you know this could happen again and I don't have any policies that are going
• 29:53
  to stop it having again but what I do have is sort of I want our politicians to think that it
• 30:00
  might happen again I want people to start thinking historically I think one of the problems that we
• 30:04
  have in our society is the lack of historical understanding very few people study history
• 30:12
  at schools and at universities anymore and if you look at our leaders they tend to think as
• 30:21
  management consultants as bureaucrats as technocrats I don't think as in the way that statesman
• 30:27
  a couple of generations ago when all of this was unfolding for the first time and so they don't
• 30:33
  tend to take the warning signs seriously or even see them so so this is my call for our politicians
• 30:41
  is to think historically stop thinking that some little you know adjustment in the tax
• 30:49
  scales is going to solve or our problems in the world because it's not you towards the end of
• 30:59
  the book before you get to the conclusion you lay out a montage of a series of snapshots of
• 31:04
  events which kind of try to articulate the the vision that you have of what's going wrong
• 31:12
  you give one quote from Donald Trump's speech when announcing his second bid for the presidency
• 31:18
  in March of 2023 and then you jump to Hungary where Victor Orban is addressing a crowd and saying
• 31:26
  make America great make Europe great again and then you flash to may have 2024 would flood
• 31:32
  of me a Putin right after a Lexi Navalny has been murdered and he's just won his latest election
• 31:40
  Putin that is and then you flashed October of 2023 with the Hamas attack and then you flashed
• 31:48
  Netanyahu saying that you know he's going to rainfire down on on Gaza
• 31:56
  that is quite like that gives a visceral account to me of the of the different ways in which things
• 32:04
  are going wrong but I don't understand what what the common thread is is there one well the common
• 32:11
  thread is that we've seen all this before after the first world war what's the common thread between
• 32:18
  I have a sense an instinctive sense that these are causally related in some way
• 32:23
  you know so disabilization I don't know economic stagnation globalization
• 32:31
  you could point to a number of things but is there a link between Trump, Putin, Orban, Hamas
• 32:38
  Likud um savagery the world our world is becoming a savage place our politics isn't the
• 32:50
  nice soft gentle politics it was just a generation ago the world is beginning to appear into a
• 32:58
  new period of savagery I mean this was um what George Orwell observed during the 1930s by in
• 33:06
  1939 he wrote a novel called coming up for air in which he in which the characters have visions
• 33:17
  of the coming of another war after the great war of that their parents fought in and I think
• 33:26
  this is and he said that we're entering a new age of savagery where you know the concentration
• 33:35
  camps were being set up where political opponents were being murdered and assassinated where the
• 33:43
  ghoulags were being created where there were wars in Europe we're starting like the Spanish Civil
• 33:50
  War much like the Ukraine war now where right wing dictators stood you know on platforms and
• 33:59
  um you know urged used violent language and urged people to kill others I mean there's the thread the
• 34:06
  thread is the the coming back of an age of savagery which you know in some ways we're still
• 34:16
  asleep to the fact to just how bad this is becoming by the way one point that you didn't know
• 34:23
  about the Donald Trump speech when he's giving his second bid for the announcing his second
• 34:28
  bid for the presidency in March of 2023 you know why it was in Waco yeah that's the side of the
• 34:37
  the Waco yeah Mexico well and and and so March of 2023 was the 30 years anniversary yeah he said
• 34:46
  of course like everything he says he had no idea you know but yeah it's it's interesting that
• 34:51
  rather chilling isn't it yeah exactly the sort of a massacre of sort of this sort of irrational
• 34:56
  people who took on the police we got so I mean to the to the people for whom that that is
• 35:02
  symbolically resonant they would say yeah it was a massacre by the deep state slash FBI slash
• 35:10
  government gone out of control trampling over the religious and gun liberties of people who
• 35:16
  weren't hurting anybody and that's what they're pushing back against yeah and they're crazy
• 35:24
  well what's wrong with you can't just say that then you have to articulate what's wrong with
• 35:30
  that worldview well you don't have to but if you want the deep state the deep the view that
• 35:35
  there's some sort of deep state trampling on on people's rights and and coming to take away
• 35:41
  our guns and so forth just seems to me like a crazy conspiracy theory of the far right that
• 35:46
  doesn't have well okay there's an entrenched set of interests in Washington DC that in that case
• 35:52
  express themselves through literally an attempt to take away some people's guns and in the process
• 35:58
  of and to not allow them to assemble and have faith the way they source well I can't remember all
• 36:05
  the details about Waco but I assume that they have the guns illegally and people coming to
• 36:10
  enforce the law and it's right it was no any democracy we we obey the law yeah well I mean
• 36:16
  you know the so the the renegade trump supporter or the far right vote would say that's all that's
• 36:21
  all very it's a very easy thing to say when you're the one writing the laws and when you're writing
• 36:26
  laws that suit you the elites yeah but laws are made by congress which is elected by the people
• 36:32
  and that's under the constitution and that's the basis of liberal democracy we can't have the
• 36:38
  society being run by people who don't accept the basis of who don't accept the basis of democratically
• 36:46
  made laws no true but I mean one reason why congress is full of people who you would regard as
• 36:52
  being right wing not jobs is because these voters have tried to increasingly use the democratic
• 36:57
  process to elect people like marjorie Taylor Greene or whoever else these you know far right people
• 37:02
  might be who are deeply antithetical to the whole project of liberal democracy and to
• 37:08
  representative government to go to washington and take back power as they see it for the little guy
• 37:14
  yeah well I think it's really worrying you know that such a a large and growing proportion of
• 37:20
  the american electric field totally alienated from the mainstream of their political system and
• 37:25
  it's really up to us to try and create a society and an economy which you know deals them in
• 37:32
  which listens to them which talks to them I think I think one of the one of the things behind
• 37:38
  this is the way our politicians speak you know my you know my day job as well as writing books
• 37:43
  is that I'm a political speaker on one of the things I've observed over the years is that people
• 37:49
  in the centre and the left tend to talk in very managerial ways very technically they've see
• 37:56
  they don't talk in ways that ordinary people tend to understand they sound like management
• 38:03
  consultants not like politicians and then someone like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson
• 38:10
  or barn others come along and all of a sudden they sound like ordinary people they use the same
• 38:16
  same words you know they speak in the same tone they are able to articulate emotions rather than just
• 38:24
  you know they just facts and reason and this is what attracts people to them and I think
• 38:32
  people in the centre and the left have to learn again the art of speaking to ordinary people
• 38:39
  on the same level as them because really they completely completely lost touch I sort of
• 38:48
  despair pull my hair out listening to a lot of politicians they make speeches talking about
• 38:53
  inputs and outputs and productivity and management and reviews and so forth wouldn't
• 38:59
  people don't care about those things they want jobs they want they want higher living standards
• 39:04
  they want their kids to finish school they they don't want the hospitals to be you know to have
• 39:11
  long cues waiting for for elective surgery and so forth and I think democratic politicians have
• 39:18
  lost the art of speaking simply to people it was interesting when Walt when Tim Walt the
• 39:26
  the you know the democratic past presidential nominee came out and just used that word weird
• 39:32
  all of a sudden here was somebody who'd been a teacher who was more at the level of the people
• 39:37
  was able to just articulate simply how ordinary people think and talk and that's the missing
• 39:42
  sense has caused the sea change in the American election you know with with the use of the word
• 39:48
  all of a sudden he's he's caused Democrats to start thinking differently and articulating
• 39:54
  their their program differently yeah it's a simple thing like this can you know has a lot of
• 40:00
  effect it's interesting that you make that point about language and managerial speech because
• 40:05
  prior to the populist takeover of the right traditional conservatives also had difficulty
• 40:12
  cutting through I mean if you think of a kind of a Mitt Romney type or a Paul Ryan type you know
• 40:20
  the old school conservative who believes in small government you know and traditional family
• 40:26
  values also speaks like a robot just in a slightly different way than the left does what's happened
• 40:31
  is that the right got so fed up with robots and with out of touch elites that they essentially
• 40:39
  replaced at least in the United States they did they they replaced that version of republicanism
• 40:45
  with a populist version that actually on economic issues it has a more of a European right wing
• 40:52
  flavor where which is actually quite quite left wing on social issues you know certainly
• 40:57
  Trump doesn't go around talking about cutting Medicare or balancing the budget or you know
• 41:02
  cutting social benefits or privatizing social security or any one of a number of things that
• 41:07
  all of his you know four bears in the republican party did he's just let's let's talk straight let's
• 41:14
  say it straight and let's do heartland stuff yeah yeah it's um they've learnt the art of connecting
• 41:23
  with ordinary people and in some ways this on a more dramatic scale this is this is what happened
• 41:31
  in the 20s and 30s as well this is how Hitler came to power I mean Hitler was just one you know
• 41:36
  one of a number of you know Dima doesn't you know um street corner antisemites in Germany
• 41:43
  in the 1920s but he learnt the art of speaking and connecting with connecting with people
• 41:49
  he learnt the art of understanding the hurt had their feelings about Germany's lost in the
• 41:56
  second world war and about the economic collapse of Germany and so forth he learnt how to connect
• 42:00
  yeah sorry the first world war he learnt how to connect with ordinary people and that's how
• 42:07
  he goes to power through the power of his oratory and this is um and I think in some ways this is
• 42:14
  how we account for trump those huge rallies with with the the rhetoric that to us seems crazy but
• 42:22
  he knows from repetition connects with ordinary people makes them listen to him he sounds like
• 42:28
  he understands them and I think this is something we have to study in counter I'm glad we're not
• 42:34
  playing an adult Hitler drinking game where I have to take a shot every time you go back to Hitler
• 42:38
  because I'll be wasted by our Dennis uh let's let's let's talk about how the left can talk
• 42:43
  better than as speech writer like the people who do it well uh you know I think of Obama as being
• 42:48
  probably the most remarkable recent incarnation of somebody who can speak um with incredible poetry
• 42:55
  that connects to everybody's soul from a progressive place um I mean even Kevin Rudd in Australia in
• 43:01
  oh seven there was a lot of excitement about um Kevin Rudd you know he seemed to capture something
• 43:07
  that an electorate that was weary of john howard was hungry for how do you do it um
• 43:19
  it's very look it it's very difficult and it and it changes um quite a lot you let let's think of
• 43:25
  Obama Obama's in the um he's in the sort of the style of the great orators um of post-war
• 43:34
  America you think of the Kennedys um Obama was uh the new Kennedy you know all those
• 43:44
  Kennedys were great at this sort of thing um and it was a very sort of high for luten high
• 43:48
  rhetorical style um that he had and it took him a long way it took Obama from being a you know
• 43:56
  an Illinois state legislator um into the senate um he then spoke at the nominating convention
• 44:04
  for John Kerry and well done well the audience and this a no and this rhetorical ability beat he
• 44:10
  was a nobody and he used this rhetorical ability to beat the Clinton machine to become president
• 44:15
  the United States at work for him and it includes the democratic base but I think over time
• 44:21
  people sort of got a big weary of this sort of this high for luten and sort of Roman style rhetoric
• 44:27
  and it's effect war off um Professor ORL was the adjective adjective that everybody would
• 44:34
  end up using yeah yeah and um Kevin Rudd was in sort of a different style he was sort of
• 44:39
  a bit hokey down to earth wasn't he I'm Kevin and I'm here to help yeah um that sort of thing and
• 44:44
  I think that worked for a long time the problem was that um uh he then dissed once he got into
• 44:49
  government he descended in any any and he almost became what uh always used to think of Kevin as
• 44:54
  though not sort of the prime minister but the nation's number one management consultant you know
• 44:58
  he would line up um facts and figures talk about you know programming programmatic specific
• 45:04
  visibility and so forth and um you know he just completely forgot how to connect with ordinary
• 45:12
  people I mean the hokey things aside just the fellow part that didn't work I think um Julia
• 45:20
  Julia Gillard um I think she um she had a good style and she was deputy prime minister I think
• 45:29
  she connected with people she sounded like a real warm human being I don't think she she got lost
• 45:33
  rhetorically when she became prime minister and um started to try and consciously sound like
• 45:39
  a prime minister and then I think it sort of went went badly for her when did you write you wrote
• 45:45
  for Gillard right I I wrote for her um uh for quite a long time when she was in um opposition and
• 45:52
  when she was deputy prime minister and what were the what were the challenges and opportunities
• 45:55
  of writing for her um well the opportunities for writing for Julia were great I mean uh people
• 46:01
  really liked her initially um um people wanted to listen to her she was the first woman you know
• 46:07
  to get the top job um she sounded intelligent and smart um and you know it was a pleasure to work
• 46:17
  for her she's actually very you know there's a difference so a lot of people aren't good to work
• 46:22
  for Julia was very good to work for she's a very very nice person to have a she boss um uh
• 46:29
  so she was you know she was great to work with her and initially a good speech writer but I think
• 46:35
  the problem was that um she just rhetorically lost her way getting into power and just started to
• 46:41
  started to um you know she spoke slowly and deliberately and charged up tried to sound like
• 46:51
  a prime minister and I think that's where she lost and I think I think is it so this is not to
• 46:56
  sort of like attack Julia but I think there's a problem generally in Australian politics which is
• 47:01
  that we're not like the American system where you learn to speak you know at mass rallies you have
• 47:06
  to win primary votes they have a rhetorical culture and in the end when you get an nomination you
• 47:11
  have to wow an 80,000 seat stadium you know almost as big as the MCG um with your nomination
• 47:19
  address um in Australia it's all done by the back rooms so people come to power by winning ballots
• 47:27
  in the caucus they never develop the habits of speaking and winning over audiences in tight
• 47:34
  situations and um this starts in student politics where it all happens in back rooms and then it
• 47:41
  continues in local politics where it's factions make the decisions and it continues into the
• 47:48
  caucuses of all the parties in Canberra where it's all done by armed twisting and so forth so
• 47:53
  they never actually have to win over the people and I think if if anyone wants to become a successful
• 47:58
  politician in Australia become a good speechmaker because you'll stand out like a sort of um yeah
• 48:05
  well that is how I mean really Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull are two of the most popular
• 48:11
  prime ministers when they entered office in recent history both cut their teeth not amongst their
• 48:17
  colleagues but by winning over the Australian public in public interviews I mean Kevin Rudd had a
• 48:22
  regular segment on I think the today show or sunrise on morning television and was popular there
• 48:26
  and Malcolm Turnbull was a fixture on Q&A the ABC show wearing his leather jacket and taking
• 48:32
  potshots at the government um yeah it was going sort of going direct to the public that
• 48:37
  it wasn't a set wasn't set piece speech making I mean people can get good for a while at giving
• 48:42
  the sound while they're appearing as the talking head on television and being entertaining but
• 48:47
  they don't they don't get up in front of mass rallies and well audiences just doesn't seem to happen
• 48:52
  and in a sense that's because we don't have the audiences we don't have the culture that gives
• 48:55
  them to them you know during our election campaigns at most the leaders of the parties would speak
• 49:01
  two or three times to controlled audiences of a few hundred people and it's very hard in those
• 49:07
  situations to generate enthusiasm and energy and fun and laughter and all because the Australian
• 49:15
  voters and media would find it a bit unseemly I mean I just think you're probably going to get
• 49:19
  more political capital during a campaign here by being seen on a farm shaking the hands of some
• 49:25
  you know local women who've made some scones than giving a massive rally I think Aussies are
• 49:31
  not like Americans we'd probably think the candidates have been up themselves if they held a rally
• 49:34
  in front of 80,000 people yeah the big rallies are sort of in some ways it's the thing of the past
• 49:41
  in Australia and we tend not to do it anymore we've responded to television differently
• 49:45
  than in America by you know just giving the sound bite and doing the doorstop interview I mean
• 49:52
  that's what election campaigns are now they they're not big rallies every day they're just a doorstop
• 49:57
  outside of photo opportunity right a doorstop is basically where the candidate just tells the press
• 50:01
  that they're going to have have five minutes as they're coming in or out of a particular building
• 50:06
  this is the daily organization of the election campaign this is what happens now this is the
• 50:12
  the focus of the day he's getting the doorstop and having the big rally yeah one of the way when
• 50:17
  you mentioned that the that you know let-wing candidates have sort of have a tendency to sound
• 50:22
  a little bit alien because they're so mechanical and managerial in their speech one thing that I
• 50:27
  worry about as having given well greater strength to the right is the inability of the left recently
• 50:37
  to speak plainly about issues of sort of controversial cultural identity politics where they can
• 50:44
  sound like they're on a different planet because they're tripping over themselves to make sure
• 50:48
  they don't say something that's going to have a Twitter mob go after them and accuse them of either
• 50:53
  using the improper term for an undocumented alien and calling them an illegal immigrant instead
• 50:59
  or you know whether they're going to misgender somebody or they're going to say the wrong thing
• 51:03
  about precisely you know some social issue how do you wrestle with that do you think that's a
• 51:10
  nothing burger is that just a right wing beat up what do you think of it well a lot of the reason
• 51:19
  that they do this is for very good reasons we don't want to go around you know stirring up hatred
• 51:27
  against minorities we don't want to go around making people feel bad just because other angry people
• 51:35
  I don't think it's about about avoiding stirring up hatred towards minorities there's an elite
• 51:41
  consensus that seems to get handed down from I don't know academia about a new way that you're supposed
• 51:48
  to talk about something I mean in the US this is more pronounced than here but you know all of a
• 51:52
  sudden everyone will be using a term like Latin X instead of Latina and Latino which is some
• 51:57
  which is not stirring up hate against any community it's a gender neutral thing that gender studies
• 52:03
  people have come up with which no Latinos or Latinos actually use or even understand
• 52:11
  and sounds clunky to absolutely everybody except for a few people it's got nothing to do with hate
• 52:15
  speech or not hate speech it's only hate speech not to use it in the eyes of a tiny number of
• 52:23
  you know hypersensorious and very active online social justice thinkers yeah um
• 52:34
  it's a very difficult this is a very difficult question um for people I mean they both
• 52:41
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