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Daniel di Martino on Venezuela and the Romance of Socialism · Café Berlin

• speaker-1: Mm. speaker-2: Yeah. Hello, welcome to Coffee Berlin, a podcast brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. I'm Leila Nora Kish and I'm a Senior Fellow for International Affairs and Academic Integrity. And this is my co host, Ian Oksnavad, who is a senior fellow for security studies and international affairs. Hello, Ian, how are you? speaker-0: Leela, good to be here. So today our guest is Daniel DiMartino. He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose work focuses on immigration policy. He was born and raised in Venezuela and came to the United States in twenty sixteen and has drawn his family's own experience to explain how socialism transformed his native country from one of the most prosperous in the world and the most prosperous in Latin America into quite frankly a hellscape. He earned a BA in quantitative economics from Indiana University, Indianapolis, and a PhD in economics from Columbia. He is also the founder of the Dissident Project, which brings immigrants and dissidents from authoritarian countries to American classrooms to teach students about life under oppressive regimes. So this intro is somewhat special because you've seen the rise of socialism in the United States, particularly among young people and within the Democratic Party. ⁓ Episode is something of a warning. Leela comes from Hungary, ⁓ which is a former communist country, and fought communism in the nineteen fifties in the streets and failed and only r got its freedom in the early nineteen nineties. Daniel saw that process in reverse with communism coming to power ⁓ via the ballot box, which is something that could potentially happen here. So this episode of Cafe Berlin is not just talking about Daniel's experience and education, but it's also a warning to Americans who think that ⁓ what's impossible ⁓ overseas or what's impossible to happen here and ⁓ only happens over there can actually happen here and transform life as you know it. So with that, let's get started. speaker-2: Hi Daniel, welcome to Cafe Berlin. Thank you so much for joining us. speaker-1: Thank you for having me. speaker-2: Awesome. Awesome to have you. first question to you is about your personal experience. ⁓ you were born in Venezuela and you were very young when you left Venezuela. You are still very young, so ⁓ but you were really, really young when you left Venezuela with your speaker-1: I was seventeen, okay, I'm twenty seven. speaker-2: Okay. So ⁓ could you share a little bit about this experience and of course wh why did you leave, what happened in Venezuela, and ⁓ maybe then we can talk about the US as well. speaker-1: Well, ⁓ as you know, Venezuela was destroyed, you know, it became a really poor country, it became a really oppressive authoritarian country, ⁓ and it and it and it went from being a country that was really the richest in Latin America to being the poorest ⁓ within my lifetime. You know, ⁓ the Maduro regime and and before Maduro Chavez was elected into power in December of nineteen ninety-eight, that is a month before I was born. And They turned by nationalizing people's businesses, by imposing price controls, by giving away all the free things you can imagine, printing government money to pay for them. They created inflation, they caused shortages of basic goods, so we had to line up for food, for ⁓ you know, toilet paper, for everything you can imagine, ⁓ blackouts, lack of water in your home for several days, high crime. The the quality of life was just destroyed by these socialist policies. And the regime called it socialism of the twenty first century. And that destruction was what led me to want to study economics, ⁓ and and to leave and to study economics in the United States. And so I left in twenty sixteen, ⁓ ten years ago, and since then I've been ⁓ spreading the word about the evils of socialism and why we need to support free enterprise, because the only way people can prosper is if they're free. And the truth is, socialism destroyed Venezuela. And he has destroyed every single country that has that he has touched and been implemented in. speaker-2: That's that's very true. ⁓ do you see any parallels between what you exp experience in Venezuela and what is happening in the United States today? speaker-1: Well, I see two parallels. One is we are every year adopting more socialist policies. What do I mean by that? What is socialism? Socialism simply means government ownership or control over the means of production. And so you can have socialism either because the government takes your business or because they tax you at one hundred percent, right? So you don't keep anything. That would be essentially the same. ⁓ So steps in that direction, you know, we every year we have more support for price controls, for rent control, for capping the price of drugs because the government thinks it's too expensive. So they're gonna tell people how much they can pay. you have it in the form of now we're supporting government grocery stores in New York City. The mayor of New York wants to open several of those, just like in Venezuela, we had government grocery stores. That is not the role of government. The role of government is to simply protect us from each other, not to run businesses or give us food and water and houses. ⁓ we have a federal government that is getting so much into debt and politicians on every political party promising more welfare and more ⁓ money from the government to individuals. And and the truth is we cannot afford it. We're in an unsustainable fiscal track. And if we keep going that way, we're gonna end up broke like in Venezuela. And in Venezuela they just filled up the gap by printing money. I hope we don't do that because then we cost inflation, like in Venezuela. speaker-0: You know, it it I was at a conference in DC a few years ago. This was right in the aftermath of the two thousand eight crisis. And walking back to the hotel, we walked past the treasury building, and I'm not making this up. We heard like rave concert music coming from inside of it, and we could see like strobe lights. And I'm thinking to myself, this is like the epicenter of the global economy. And I was talking to the the guy who was with me who was also an economist. I'm like, is this really happening? Because it seem it seems to be It seems to be emblematic of what's actually occurring internationally. ⁓ to follow speaker-1: That is funny. I I love the treasury building in DC. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, they someone was enjoying it that night. ⁓ the to follow up on Leela's question, we talk about socialism as an economic failure, which it it undoubtedly is. But it doesn't seem to be a political failure for the people that use it to take power and then keep it, because you're actually weaponizing economics to to do that. And I think that's something that gets missed on people that are trying to ⁓ debate with socialists, especially when when the rare instances where that was actually allowed to happen. and I wanted to sort of ask you, based on that premise, looking at the institutional changes in Venezuela, and of course you were you were young at the time, but what was it what at what point did you realize that there was a genuine point of no return? And the follow-up to that would be what safeguards ⁓ should ⁓ should Americans take in order to protect this political movement for weakening the courts, property rights, et cetera? Because ⁓ our system is designed to be bottom up, but when you have this top down sort of ⁓ you some would call it a uniparty or just this ⁓ this state that just keeps growing and growing like a tumor. Yeah. How do you how do you actually prevent that from totally destroying the constitutional safeguards that we have? speaker-1: Okay, so you asked a lot of things, so I'm gonna break it down and then you're gonna have to repeat ⁓ the question at the end. ⁓ so I'm just gonna tell you about w the point of no return in Venezuela. ⁓ look, for some people the point of no return was when Chavez got elected. And when that happened, they left the country because they were really smart, right? They saw where this was going. ⁓ now it didn't have to end that way. I would say it was less certain that he was gonna be successful in taking over. the the state and and shaping it to his liking. But you know, as soon as Chavez got elected, he began the process to rewrite the entire constitution. And they did that within a year. and that was approved. And then there was another general election to confirm all the people in every charge in in the government. So I I would say that was a big turning point. For me when I was growing up, it was just After the 2012 ⁓ election and then the 2013 election after Chavez died, where it was so obviously rigged, I I just thought that this was never going to change because the elections were all rigged. ⁓ and a lot of people still had hope because they thought, ⁓ you know, eventually the military is gonna make a coup against the government. The military had already tried that in 2002, and after they failed, the Chavez purged the military. The military is Is the regime. The military literally runs the grocery stores and the companies that they nationalize and they steal the money and they ⁓ you know take the bribes, that they are the ones who traffic the drugs. The Chavista socialist regime was able to buy the entire structure of the state into their projects by being very successful at bribing them. ⁓ you know, everybody understands that in a democratic country. The generals are not gonna be allowed to be drug traffickers, right? Regardless of who wins any election. That's never going to be supported by voters because it's so outrageous. And so they know that, and that's why they wanna remain a dictatorship, because they're they they have too much to gain by being in in in power. so for me, I ⁓ as soon as I saw that ⁓ growing up, it it was, you know, I was twelve, thirteen years old. I knew that there was no going back and that people had to leave because this was turning into a Marxist-Leninist regime, that ⁓ you know, food production was gonna keep falling, ⁓ that people's businesses was gonna continue to be taken and the economy was going to crash and people were going to starve to death. And I didn't want to starve to death. ⁓ and some people didn't agree. Some people thought that, you know, things were gonna get better. I didn't. ⁓ I thought that the only way to end the regime was by force. ⁓ I'm from outside. and I think that that was proven ⁓ recently and we can talk about that after. And then you asked something about the US, can you remind me? speaker-0: Yeah, what safeguards should Americans defend before it gets to that point? Because you mentioned that we've adopted a lot of socialist policies, and I think if you zoom back to the nineteen sixties, ⁓ or even the nineteen thirties in some cases, ⁓ you know, the FDR FDR administration, the Roosevelt administration, ⁓ sort of started moving in this direction. And ⁓ it takes a while, it's taken a while to get to this point, and now they're openly saying it, you know, socialists are openly running as such. How do you yeah, how do you spot the the little things first and stop them when they're more stoppable? speaker-1: Well, socialism is not about black and white, it's about degrees, right? And I think in the case of the US, I think the biggest risk politically that we have constitutionally is that the Supreme Court can be packed. ⁓ and that is the really the only thing that matters, because the constitution, I think, can protect us from like Marxism-Leninism. You can't Do takings without compensation thanks to the Constitution. You can't arrest people and keep them without a trial. Like there's a lot of constitutional protections to private property, to individual rights, to freedom of expression, the Second Amendment, all of that that can keep us safe. But that only matters as long as the Constitution means what it reads and who determines that. It's the courts. And turns out that if you have 51% of Congress and the president, you can name nine more Supreme Court justices, and then you can say that the Constitution doesn't say what it says. And who are you going to appeal that to? The Supreme Court? Do you see the problem now? And and so that is my I think the biggest risk within the US constitutional system is court packing. ⁓ and I think that the only way to stop that would be to ⁓ have a constitutional amendment fixing the number of Supreme Court justices. I think ⁓ the the other risk that we face is fiscal and of voters. You see, you know, when you the there are different countries with different populations. You know, in Switzerland, they recently put a referendum that, you know, they're very direct democracy in Switzerland. That's kind of more of their system. And they put a lot of things to referendum. They have four dates of referendums every year. So they they usually make 12 questions a year, ⁓ three in each. And one of the recent referendums was about universal basic income, another one about increasing the minimum wage. And the Swiss voters rejected it. I can assure you that if we did that in the United States, it would pass. People would vote for it. Even the Republicans would vote for it. It's outrageous, right? ⁓ Heck, you know, the president is proposing five thousand dollar checks. And the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, is saying, No, I will give twelve thousand dollars with my wealth tax. So it's a race to the bottom over who's gonna give away more money. And people are so easily deceived by that. And I think that's a big problem. So we have an education problem that people should not be supporting this at all. speaker-2: These are very important points and ⁓ actually I share your optimism when it comes to the constitution. the founding fathers of this country gave this constitution to ⁓ the Americans and it has been resistant to very high level of diversity and and pressure over this past two hundred years or so. So I I share your optimism and I also share your concerns about court packing and there's a movement to keep the Supreme Court ⁓ nine. ⁓ actually and ⁓ and I hope that it's well it's going to be successful ⁓ for the reasons you you mentioned. navigating towards education and the the ⁓ intellectual elite ⁓ I I noticed that ⁓ many concerns when it comes to to Venezuela say that ⁓ it it was Chavez or later on Maduro. ⁓ I wonder, you know, it cannot be made it's it was not a one man show. Right. So there was there was a social support, an intellectual support behind this change. so what do you what do you think what role did schools and the education and the intellectual elite played in this Marxist ⁓ change in Venezuela? speaker-1: Well what I would say is the the problem for Venezuela was that even before Chavez, they had nationalized the oil industry. And that created a culture of boat buying. You know, we use the oil to redistribute, all the money comes from oil, you don't have to work, and then we give you your your check and your house and whatever, right? ⁓ but they had only messed with the oil before Chavez, ⁓ in that way. ⁓ Then during Chavez is that they just mess with everything, right? They nationalize the manufacturing, the banks, the grocery stores, the utilities, the telephone companies, everything you can imagine, the ⁓ ports, airports. And regarding with the intellectual elite, you know, in in Latin America, even to this day, people of higher education actually vote for the right, and people of lesser education vote for the left, which is what used to be like in the US too before. I'm not sure. ⁓ I wouldn't say that Chavez was elected by highly educated people. I would say the opposite at the beginning. ⁓ I would say though that there was this cultural problem because of the oil revenue that had been nationalized and people were g were accustomed to receiving handouts. And that was a problem. But but I wouldn't say that it was highly educated people who powered Chavez's ⁓ support. Base. Obvious, you know, e even Chavez, you know, Chavez might be the exception among Marxist leaders in that he was not even highly educated himself, neither was Maduro. Delce, the current one, was. She even started in Paris, has a PhD, the whole thing, right? ⁓ similar to Paul Pot or or ⁓ Kim Jonun and think ⁓ another ⁓ you know, Phil Castro who was also of the elite. But but Maduro and Chavez were not. And ⁓ So so that that is interesting, right? speaker-2: Yeah, it's very interesting. And talking about education, ⁓ you mentioned how important it is to educate young people. And I know that this was the reason why you ⁓ gave life to the Dissident Project, ⁓ which is which is a super interesting ⁓ initiative, and I would love you to talk about it a little bit. And I know that you're bringing ⁓ guests to schools who are talking about ⁓ you know, how is it to live under ⁓ an authoritarian regime or dictatorship. And ⁓ I I I agree that this is a great way to open eyes ⁓ in in a democratic country about how terrible it is in ⁓ in a dictatorship. So could you tell us a little bit about the dissident project and also what is the first hand experience that can open eyes of students or make them think about ⁓ whether socialism and communism is really that romantic beautiful thing they perceive from you know social one speaker-1: I think that America has a great asset that no other free country has, and that is that we have such a huge population of immigrants who came here seeking freedom from authoritarian countries, from countries that were ruled by dictators and by evil regimes. And those are the people who really know what it's like to live without freedom. And because we can't send Americans to those countries to suffer and learn and come back. We can't, though, expose them to the people who did and are here. And and so we should use that asset that we have so that we can preserve freedom in the United States. And so you have the two sides: the Americans learning from the people who lost their freedom abroad so that they can appreciate their freedom more, and immigrants doing their duty of protecting the freedom in the country that welcomed them. And so that is why I founded the Dissident Project, which sends immigrants from those types of authoritarian countries to speak at high schools to tell or stories. And so there are people from North Korea, from China, from Iran, from Venezuela, from Cuba, for and from countries of that sort. ⁓ you know, E Eritrea, Zimbabwe. There are countries that people don't even know about, like Eritrea, right? Eritrea is known as the North Korea of Africa. People are not allowed to move, to ⁓ leave the country, to ⁓ work on the private sector, they almost serve in the military for many, many, many years. You need a permit to walk around from city to city. It's really ⁓ dystopian, like North Korea. ⁓ there are countries like that all over the world. And I think that if Americans meet those people, I'm not saying they're gonna think America is perfect because it's not. But they're gonna think, Wow, I am really blessed, and we have something special and fragile here in the United States that we have to protect. speaker-0: Yeah, I think we had a ⁓ a little bit of just a taste of that during COVID of just the sort of crackdown, you know, mandate driven way of life. ⁓ living in California, it it was really interesting to see that play out. ⁓ but ⁓ but you're right. speaker-1: You saw people folded, they complied, they closed their businesses. A lot of people for many years thought, ⁓ in America that's never going to happen, and it did. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the unthinkable that that that becomes thinkable. It's ⁓ human nature's fascinating in that sense. And you're right. I mean, we need more we need more Daniels and Leela's. ⁓ if we have enough of you, I'm I'm very optimistic for the future. so one thing about the DSA, the the Democratic Socialists and other sort of socialist movements, it's interesting that you bring up how The ⁓ the Venezuelan case was interesting in that the intellectual elite was actually conservative. Here the it's overwhelmingly the the other way. ⁓ especially in higher education ⁓ itself. You know, it's ⁓ it's it's orthodoxy. You know, Marxism is essentially orthodoxy. ⁓ they're very good at organizing mass movements and mobilizing. And there never seems to be any sort of k like consistent counterweight to that. ⁓ you know, people leave. You would think that someplace like California would be a place where people organize, but instead they just move to Texas. And now you see, you know, is Texas going to flip and elect, you know, someone who's a a socialist by another name? ⁓ you know, you see the the the primary win ⁓ in Florida, for example, with a DSA candidate. And it makes me wonder, you know, how can opponents of this sort of Marxist Leninist thinking? Organize more effectively, but also reform schools and institutions. Because it seems like people who should know better don't really do that. They just sort of run away. ⁓ and of of course, ⁓ if you're in the US, you know, you really don't have a lot of places to run to. I mean, Switzerland's amazing, but ⁓ you know, aside from that, like how do you organize in Switzerland? It's too small. speaker-1: It's Yeah. ⁓ look, I think that the reason the DSA organizes very well is because this is a country of three hundred and forty million people, it's not hard to organize ten thousand. Okay? That's a very small share of the population. The Americans are not commies and and socialists in disguise, okay? This is a very small group of people as a share of the population who is very well organized, as you say, who mobilize, who move All their activist to one tiny race in one district so that they can have a huge impact, door knocking, and lying to voters, so that they vote for the wolf ⁓ that is dressed as a sheep, right? ⁓ and so that is what we're fighting against. And they call themselves democratic socialists, but they're not democratic. They're just democratic in the way they initially want to get into power, just like Venezuela, but then they will become dictators. That's what they themselves say. That's what socialism is. Socialism is by definition the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what Marx said. And these are not people who want to be like Norway or Sweden or Denmark. They want to be like Venezuela, which is why they travel to Venezuela to learn from the Venezuelan regime. They don't travel to Denmark to learn from the Danish welfare programs. They don't care about Europe. That's the lie they tell to the ignorant voter that opens their door to them. And we're seeing it in New York City too. You know, they come and they say they want government grocery stores. Where are the government grocery stores in Sweden, Norway, or Denmark? They don't have any. It's a lie. That's a Venezuelan and Cuban proposal. Public housing? People don't live. Do you want to live in public housing? We have public housing already in America and it's terrible. So the w we're fighting a small group of people. Don't be deceived about that. But A small group of people can lie to a large one. And our job is to educate that larger population about that. And you might say, well, we conservatives don't mobilize, they move. Well, it's it's difficult to mobilize when we have jobs, right? ⁓ the the the leftists that are part of this group, they're they're paid to do what they do. They're professional protesters, they're professional organizers. That's their job, they're funded by the Chinese. And they're funded by other ⁓ left wing billionaires around the world with the goal of destroying the United States from the inside. speaker-0: Yeah, I the you bring up the Chinese and that's an interesting point because ⁓ at NAS it's one of the things that we do a lot about is tracking ⁓ China and ⁓ other speaker-1: Yes, and I know you you get struck about the higher education donations, right? And I'll say I think we need to extend that law of disclosure not just to universities but to all nonprofits in the United States for all large foreign donations. We need that to be transparent. We need to know where the money is coming from. speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Leela's written about this. speaker-2: And Yes, and it might not be the main target ⁓ for for such laws, but I noticed that ⁓ since twenty twenty one, since many of the Chinese universities were placed on the BIS list of ⁓ the US ⁓ Treasury and Commerce Department, ⁓ since then we see that there's a lot of cooperation between Chinese high schools and US universities. So they actually brought down the the level of cooperation. And of course it might not be the main target for ⁓ policymakers, but you know, it it can be an impact ⁓ that ⁓ can cause problems later on. speaker-1: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, no, I mean, look, ⁓ the the main reason the main founder of these far left groups in America is called Neville Roy Singham. ⁓ he's an American billionaire who lives in China and his wife is the founder of Code Pink, which is this other left wing group that tries to say they're peace activists and they're just against US imperialism. They're really against America and they're pro-Russia, pro-China. pro Iran, pro North Korea, pro Maduro in Venezuela, pro Castro in Cuba. And and that is that that is who is funding it. And he lives in China specifically so that he can never be arrested by the US government when he is exposed for his crimes because there's already an investigation on him. And so we we need to keep those the we need to stop that. I mean we can't allow this CCP billionaire to destroy America. speaker-2: Yeah, one of their prominent projects is ⁓ is called China Is Not Our Enemy. I I would say China is not speaker-1: I mean like how you know, w we have the these are tax exempt groups. We need the IRS to open investigations on them and strip them of their tax exempt status if they find any violations, which I'm sure they will. speaker-0: Yeah, there there's movement in that direction. I think that movement's gonna grow. you you bring up the education in China, and I wanted to ask you, how do you educate for liberty? ⁓ you know, this and this is a question that I don't think we ask ourselves enough. ⁓ you know, I remember doing ⁓ having to create my own curriculum when I had to teach American government ⁓ in higher ed because the well the existing curriculum was so bad I had to basically create my own class. And it actually was very popular. but how do you educate for liberty? Because we don't we don't ⁓ seem to ask that enough. We we seem to have almost an anti or an aversion to ⁓ the term intellectualism or education because we think of it almost as this left wing domain, when in reality that's not. And you know speaker-1: I mean I'm very pro education. Yeah. ⁓ and you know, I think you should answer this question more than me because you're the educator. ⁓ I've only, you know, been a TA and like it's summer instructor at Columbia. ⁓ while it starts a PhD speaker-0: It starts as a T A, that's how you get ⁓ it begi it begins that way. Just give it give it a bit. No speaker-1: I love teaching. ⁓ I'll say, look, I think that ⁓ on the liberty question, I think first and experience is valuable. I think telling people about what Venezuela was like for me as a Venezuelan is is really impactful in ways that other people can't. ⁓ I think the other side is you need to touch on the common questions, you know, it's not make it not make it like a checklist of ⁓ You know, it's not a Wikipedia page. What are the actual questions students are asking about socialism? What are the questions they're actually asking about ⁓ Venezuela or about America? What are their actual problems today? Let's talk about those problems. You know, if people have an issue with say housing prices are very high, therefore I want to vote for socialism. Why are housing prices high? Are they high? Let's look at the facts. Let's look at them together. The great thing about being in a class in person is that You are there with the other person. You have immediate feedback. You are there as a team working together to find the truth. That's what I liked. At least that was my approach when I was teaching. We are here together finding the truth and discussing it. and and I bring in as many facts as I can to the table and different perspectives to it. speaker-2: It's it's a great point. And ⁓ actually talking about the truth and seeking the truth, it's you know, it's sometimes uncomfortable. And teaching and learning supposed to be sometimes uncomfortable, right? ⁓ because it's a process of struggle, but also understanding what happened in the past, what happened in the other side of the world, so you we don't have to repeat that. And I'm coming from a post-socialist country, I'm from Hungary and ⁓ I I I think that my parents' generation made a huge mistake with my generation because they didn't tell us the stories because they wanted to shield us, how terrible communism was, how terrible was ⁓ that they ⁓ you know, had to wait in lines to ⁓ get meat and if and they could could do it once a week. And if they run out of the meat then we didn't eat meat for four more week. And you know, that there are It doesn't have to be about torture, about the local KGB, about terror stories. It's just everyday things, you know, that things were not accessible, not available that were speaker-1: even those even those horrible stories need to be told, Lila. Yeah. I agree. These are important things and people need to know that there is evil in the world. speaker-2: You don't need J. Yes, I fully agree. And and talking about education and the role of, you know, parents and schools, ⁓ is is to tell these stories even if it's uncomfortable because it's part of ⁓ the education. And I think that's why your project is so valuable with the dissident project and ⁓ you know, educating speaker-1: And I and I speak at a lot of college campuses too with ⁓ Young Americans for Freedom, ⁓ YAF. ⁓ I'm going to do like ten to fifteen events this fall. And I'm also doing a lot of debates this this fall. I think that debate is super useful to to actually bring out our disagreements and do it in a civil way and and in a way that will inform people. And I'm very confident in my ideas being right, so I love ⁓ the exposure. ⁓ for people to watch it and I think it's fun too. So I think we need to do a lot more debate. And I'll say the DSA people at least they're willing to go on Fox News and debate folks too. Other folks are not as willing. speaker-2: Yeah, the debate is also important. What do you think ⁓ what is the most important lesson or what are the most important lessons ⁓ immigrants can teach to Americans? You touched upon that earlier, but if you have a you know top three priorities speaker-1: I think the number one is that liberty is not natural, ⁓ naturally occurring. We have to preserve it, we have to create it. And it's actually very difficult to create and very difficult to preserve, but very easy to destroy. ⁓ same as prosperity, because to be prosperous, you need to be free. ⁓ it's very easy to destroy ⁓ a structure, an economy, and it's very hard to rebuild, right? You know, it takes more time. to build a house than to dynamite it, right? And that's just what the economy is. It's a collection of physical structures of knowledge. It's harder to learn than to forget. ⁓ so all of these things are are lessons that I think are important. And then the other Is that because we come from a place where where where those things didn't exist, at least most immigrants do, then we have a duty to preserve that liberty here ourselves and for our posterity. ⁓ which is what the founders said in the Declaration of Independence. And and if we don't, and you know, especially, you know, immigrants who maybe don't talk about it or they even are against America, ⁓ You know, that that's you shouldn't be here, right? You you shouldn't wanna be in a place you dislike. ⁓ th that that's my take. speaker-2: Well, usually the migration is happening towards America, not from America to dictatorships. That's speaker-1: It's probably present. speaker-0: To to because you we talk about education and we talked about, you know, the the younger people a little bit. I wanted to ask what explains the r this attraction or you could say renewed attraction of socialism, ⁓ towards socialism among younger Americans who have never experienced this? Is it primarily an economic ⁓ appeal to them or is it a moral one? ⁓ if you're thinking as a young person, 'cause I think this is a distinction that ⁓ not a lot of people ask about. speaker-1: I think it's all about values and morality. Actually, I don't think it's about economic concerns. I think that's what people say, but it's not true. ⁓ it's actually similar to the fertility crisis. People say it's just too expensive to have a kid, but that's not true. People were much poorer a hundred years ago and they had more children. ⁓ it has nothing to do with with the economic issue. ⁓ of course I want people to be better off and I want things to be cheaper and people to make more money. That's a default of what I want, but that's not What's causing the rise of socialism? I think there's several causes. Number one, the Cold War ended. The people who support socialism never lived during the Cold War and they don't see the immediate threat, the nuclear danger that we had from the Soviet Union, right? ⁓ you have to remember Americans were not very anti-socialist, anti-Soviet Union during World War Two because they saw the Soviet Union as the ally against the Nazis. It took a lot of work to convince Americans that the Soviet Union was a threat. And the Soviet Union did that job for us because they invaded countries, they, you know, the stories came out, then they threatened America with nuclear weapons. ⁓ and so that that's kind of how we learned about it. That the atrocities of Mao in China killing more people than any other human being in history, 60 million in China. ⁓ so young Americans today don't know any of this. They they don't learn it, they ⁓ they don't feel the danger that ⁓ middle-aged and older people did. So that's on the one hand. On the other, the left has done an incredible job in a negative way to indoctrinate young people in the ideology of oppression. And that is a Marxist ideology. It's just applied to culture, right? In which case the oppressor isn't necessarily the business owner versus the worker. In this case it's the white man versus the black man or a man versus the woman and and so on. And their goal was exactly To support eventually Marxism. It was never about the cultural issues. it was always about destroying the United States. And I think Americans have applied that same prism of analysis of oppression to the economic issues. And they see their rent is too high, for example, in their subjective point of view or l or where they live, and therefore the oppressor is the landlord. Just like if there is there are in their view. Too many black people in jail, the oppressor is the white ⁓ race. And so they applied that same analysis tool to economics. And that is why we had to defeat woke ideology. Because the woke ideology is what was driving Marxism in America. So we need to do two things. We need to defeat this oppression, oppressor mentality. And two, we need to ⁓ actually teach people about the dangers of current socialist regimes. China is still. Ruled by the Chinese Communist Party and it's our greatest threat. The drugs that were coming across the border come from the Venezuelan socialist regime. The ⁓ you know, in in in Africa, Russia and China are are oppressing people, or China has Muslims in concentration camps. Most people don't know this. They're out there protesting for Gaza and Palestine, an issue nobody should really care deeply about. But nobody is protesting for the million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in an actual concentration camp. Because it's not about human rights, it's about brainwashing. speaker-0: Right. Or the Nigerian Christians or any other group. Yes, it's it's interesting because what when I was teaching American politics, so we I used to spend some time on socialism and do different thought experiments. And it's interesting how nobody identifies along class lines. That's what maybe the old school classic Marxists like nobody nobody identifies as a taxpayer or a middle class. That's not when you think of who who who am I in the speaker-1: The Nigerian Christians. Yeah yeah I had that device taxpayer, okay? speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, well there's that. I mean y you you you're you're American now. That's you identify as a taxpayer. speaker-1: I I don't wanna be a taxpayer, but I'm forced to be, okay? speaker-0: I know, I know. But when you think about like where am I in the world, you know, it's not an organic quite of a thing, you know, to to think in terms of class lines and that's where the old school Marxists fail, but I think like they adapted that and they had used identity to try to sneak that in. it ⁓ it it's it's interesting. ⁓ speaker-2: Well it's very pragmatic. I mean huge middle class in this country still, even if it's shrinking. So you can't really say rich versus poor because there's a lot of people in the middle. ⁓ so economy speaker-0: It's very pragmatic. speaker-1: truth is we're all super rich. I mean, people here don't know what extreme poverty is. That's true. ⁓ people are not starving in the United States. People are starving in Venezuela. speaker-2: Yeah. Probably probably voke ideology wouldn't really work in Venezuela because people have real problems. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: That's true. That's also true. ⁓ I but but I absolutely agree with what was said about they adapted the Marxists and therefore they picked other identities to hang on. ⁓ and that is what we need to defeat. speaker-0: Zooming, I guess you could say deeper, if you if you look at ⁓ some of the thinkers coming out of the Soviet Union, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Joseph de Mester, who wrote in Russia ironically, escaping from the French Revolution, ⁓ they had a a sort of common ⁓ retrospective understanding if you read their work on how ⁓ revolutionary politics was the result of a spiritual crisis. or almost a loss of religious belief or metaphysical moral underpinnings. And I wanted to ask if if that interpretation actually applies to Venezuela. speaker-1: That is such a good question. I I I would need to research this more to be honest. But Venezuela has historically been a very Catholic country. The I I do know that the regime was not the socialist regime what did adapt to the Venezuelan circumstances. And so they were never anti religion from the start, unlike the other Marxist regimes throughout history. ⁓ if anything, they tried to co opt religion. So Chavez even made ⁓ rosaries with rosary beds, right, to pray with his face instead of the Virgin Mary. Imagine what a what a heresy, idolatry, I mean all the sins from that, blasphemy, everything you can imagine. and and so that that's what they did though. They tried to adapt to the religion because they knew that outright going against it wouldn't let them win. It would be too unpopular. And that's what Marxists do, they adapt to the circumstances. And I think in the case of America they don't need to do that because religion is already on the decline in the United States. And I think that's perhaps or one of our biggest issues, ⁓ and problems. ⁓ it's a bigger issue for Europe and other countries, but it is still an issue in America. speaker-2: We see a right wing movement in ⁓ in South America, in some parts of Latin America. ⁓ what do you think? What drives this change? speaker-1: Well, I think that the rise of conservatives and libertarians in Latin America is a reaction to the destruction of socialism, simply put. ⁓ I think that Millet has been instrumental, Javier Millet, the president of Argentina, in achieving this, because all of this started with his victory in twenty twenty three. And after he won and after he immediately got results, because it's been very fast, people forget. Two and a half years since he's been in office. He has totally changed Argentina. And as a result, people in other countries in Latin America saw that and thought, wow, we are not doing very well with our leftist leaders. Argentina is doing very well with Miley. I want people like him. Now, I don't think that all of those countries have the same type of leader or they're gonna end like Argentina and do great reforms. I think they were all given the opportunity. Because of what happened in Argentina. Now it's their job to get results. And if they don't, the left is going to win again. But if they do, they're gonna keep getting re-elected. And so I hope they get results. I haven't seen the extremely positive results I've seen in Argentina elsewhere. Because I think Miley is just a different type of person who was not a politician, was not interested in even what people believed or thought. He's like, if I'm getting elected, I'm gonna do what I promised. ⁓ speaker-0: He has an economics he has an economics background, right? speaker-1: Yes, yes, he's an economist. You know, he ⁓ an Argentina was in a really dire situation. ⁓ and the Argentinian president, you know, he he just took advantage of all the powers he could to to fix the economy and he only focused on the economy, which is what matters most. ⁓ the next election that's gonna happen in Latin America that is very key is in Brazil and it's next month. if l it's Lula vs. Bolsonaro's son, Flavio Bolsonaro, ⁓ the the father was not allowed to run again, the That did you see the Supreme Court of Brazil was packed by Marxists. Literally the president is a member of the Communist Party. Imagine how insane that is. They're the same people who banned Twitter a few years ago in the entire country. That was all the Supreme Court. ⁓ they they fought with Elon Musk. And it's a key election because Lula is a very he's very much a crook. Forget about his policies. He was convicted of being ⁓ of stealing money. He was then just released on a technical like Technicality because of procedure. But he was guilty of what he did. And people are are so brainwashed to vote for him, you know? And people in America and the American media especially are pushing Bolsonaro as if he was this far-right fascist versus Lula, who is a moderate. He actually believes in democracy. Lula is a thief. Bolsonaro, what did Bolsonaro's father do when he was president? Reform pensions? And increase the number of cops to put people in jail. Is that a dictatorship? That doesn't sound like a dic that sounds like a normal conservative to me. That doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary. What is the Bolsonaro? Tax reform? Really? That that is what you have against him, against the man? That's what's authoritarian and fascistic to you? speaker-0: Yeah, the the the right word shift or y I guess I don't even say right word, but I guess this sort of light bulb of common sense that you're seeing spreading through Latin America is not getting nearly enough attention because it's one of the like great regional potentials that we're seeing. ⁓ everything from just ⁓ basic crime and you know ⁓ management like speaker-1: The crime issue is huge in Latin America. speaker-0: Yeah, and and the economic reforms and ⁓ you know what we've seen in Chile and ⁓ Peru recently, Ecuador. ⁓ it's it's really kind of fascinating ⁓ to see if that spills into, you know, Portuguese speaking Brazil. ⁓ you know, because I've been speaker-1: Millet even traveled to Brazil to campaign against Lula. speaker-0: I know, which is nuts. ⁓ you know, in the and the scandals that they have in Brazil, it's like if you think ⁓ DC is interesting, look look at look at Brazil. it ⁓ it it's it's so interesting how this rightward shift is happening ⁓ within democr like like I guess you could say institutional norms of at least democratic effort. And I I see what's happening there and then I've seen what's happened in like Iran. for example, where you've seen all of you like I think at 40,000 or so people knows for sure outside in in in in early January. ⁓ and we've seen these this sort of the Iranians literally like throwing themselves at the regime. And it it's interesting to juxtapose that with what's happened in Latin America. Why do you think there's there was an up like a physical like speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: actual uprising and multiple attempts at that in Iran as opposed to maybe Venezuela and maybe that has happened in Venezuela. I don't speaker-1: Yeah, no, it has happened many times in Venezuela. There's been massive protests in Venezuela. I have friends who've been in torture chambers. Yeah. th there is no difference. I mean in Iran the difference is that they just went out and killed them all because they kept coming out and they succeeded in killing them and stopping them. ⁓ and in Venezuela you just need to kill a few and torture a few others and then everybody else runs away. ⁓ that that's the difference. ⁓ you know, the other difference is that it's an Islamic regime versus a regular Marxist regime. But ⁓ but no, there's been in a great number of protests and mass protests and uprisings in Venezuela. speaker-0: Yeah. Doesn't get recorded as well. speaker-1: No, but you know, but but but it does. It just dies out and then you know it's the new cycle. ⁓ you know, it happened all in two thousand and two there was a coup attempt. There were mass you know, a total national strike again in two thousand and seven and nine and twenty thirteen and then twenty seventeen, twenty fourteen, twenty, you know, nineteen, then now what happened in twenty twenty four with the last Greek election. ⁓ you know, it had to hap y you know, the the People do protest in authoritarian countries. I think Lila knows this from Hungary, right? The Hungarians theater in Hungary, and then the Soviets send the tanks and kill them all. speaker-2: Yep. And making thirty, fifty thousand people leave in the country if they didn't want to be imprisoned or killed. speaker-1: Yeah. I think it was in nineteen fifty six, right? The Hungarian Uprising. Yeah. speaker-2: It was. ⁓ question to you. What do you think how did ⁓ the extraction of Maduro ⁓ change the situation in Venezuela? And what do you expect? ⁓ is Corina Machato coming and ⁓ turning the country to be a fruitful democratic society? speaker-1: I hope so. look, I think there are negotiations happening right now. And what I hope the most is that they will simply just announce the date of a presidential election for some time next year. The only thing that matters is that whatever they decide to do, the Trump administration, the Venezuelan, you know, people they have their negotiating ⁓ with with Delsey is that This there needs to be a transition to democracy before Trump leaves office. Because if Trump leaves office and the Del C regime is still in place, they're just gonna break all the agreements, they're gonna go back to sending drugs to the United States, they're gonna go back to arresting people, and it's over and we didn't achieve anything. So that's what I hope. And you know, I don't know what's gonna happen because a lot of things can happen between now and twenty twenty nine, but that's what I pray for. speaker-2: Ian, should we move to our tradition? Okay, go ahead. speaker-0: Yes we should. Is this the is this the end question? speaker-2: yeah, and we have two this time because we had two speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, so I'll ask the first one. ⁓ we had Dr. Ann Rathbone Bradley on she's a friend. She's ⁓ she's she's amazing. ⁓ and she ⁓ she's also a fan. ⁓ and ⁓ she had a question. ⁓ a degrowth mindset has become influential both on the left and as well as on in certain parts of the right. Why is deliberately limiting growth so appealing and why do people want to return the country and economy to an idealized version of the nineteen fifties, if that's actually the case. speaker-1: Well, the question of the fifties, I would say people like to idealize the past, even if it was worse than the present. And I think that's a natural human feeling. There's this study about when do you think music was best? And everybody picks their teenage years of every generation. There's no objectivity around it. There there's nothing ⁓ you know, real about the opinion. It's just whenever you were a teenager. That's your opinion. ⁓ So you know that that's that's what it is. Now, you know, soon we will be idealizing the nineteen nineties, ⁓ which I think are better to idealize than the nineteen fifties, by the way. I think the nineties were objectively very good. But I was born in ninety-nine, so that was not my teenage years. I didn't really live them. ⁓ the other thing I would say on the degrowth mindset, I think on the left is an environmental reason, is that they have these Mentality that there are limited resources, which is true that we have there there's a finite amount of things in the planet Earth. But because of that, they believe that we need to limit population growth and environmental impact because things are gonna run out, oil is gonna run out, water is gonna run out. And it's actually not going to. We're becoming more efficient every year. And as a result, we're never going to run out. If anything, we're running out of people because people are not having babies. And on the right, I wouldn't call it a degrowth mindset. I would call it a zero sum mindset on the right. They don't actually want to reduce consumption and things. They want to be richer. They just think that the way to get richer is to take from somebody else. Is that the reason we're worse off or or they think we're worse off, some people, is ⁓ the immigrant took my job, the foreign country took my trade, ⁓ you know, whatever it's foreign aid. ⁓ and it's not really how it works. There is such a thing as a positive sum. interactions when we buy things from the grocery store, we're giving them money. We're not losing to the grocery store. We're getting something in return that is more valuable than the money we gave them. We actually won from the transaction. And if you think you don't win from the grocery store, then nobody's forcing you to buy. Go and grow your own food. You're allowed to do that in the United States. speaker-0: So so this is a follow up this is a part two of Ann's question. Is growth a moral imperative? speaker-1: ⁓ that's a good question. Is growth a moral imperative? ⁓ I wonder what she thinks on that one, because this is a a question of a theology, really. ⁓ yes, I would say yes. ⁓ and I'll tell you it's because of the parable of the talents in the Bible. God actually commands us to ⁓ cultivate the earth and and do as best we can with the talents we were given. ⁓ that's what the parable of the talent teaches us, right? One of the servants was given one seed, the other two, the other ten, right? ⁓ and then the other servants doubled it, and then one servant just kept and saved his seed without growing it. And that servant was punished while the others were rewarded. ⁓ because God actually wants us to grow and to improve and participate in the process of co-creation with him. speaker-0: That's a fantastic answer. That's a that's an amazing answer. speaker-2: Yes, ⁓ total. speaker-1: I had to think about it. I actually came up with it right now. speaker-0: That's good. That's good. speaker-2: And the other question is from Stephanie Slade, ⁓ who is a journalist at Reason Magazine and also an author of ⁓ her recently published book titled Fusionism. And her question to you is we see evidence that socialism, communism has failed over the history in different parts of the world, and it keeps coming back. Why? speaker-1: I think the answer to the question of why socialism, despite its constant failures, keeps being popular is because the origin of socialism is envy. And envy is a natural human feeling that is sinful. But as long as we are fallen creatures, we will keep sinning. And so ⁓ Because we will keep sinning w there will still be people who believe in socialism unfortunately. And that's why we need to fight against it constantly. Just like we fight against the urge to sin, you know. Y you don't want to tell lies, you don't want to do wrong to somebody, ⁓ you don't wanna yell at somebody, right? Mistreat them. But sometimes we do ⁓ make mistakes, right? We can't be perfect. speaker-2: True. And what question would you ask from our next ⁓ guest, who is going to be Diana Fujka Tross? speaker-1: ⁓ yes, I think the question I would ask Diana is what does she think would need to happen in Venezuela for it to produce enough oil? How much would that need to be to affect world oil prices? and then ⁓ you know, perhaps related to that is what would it look like in America to have a real energy abundance ⁓ agenda? Like what what would be the consequences for our life? speaker-2: That's awesome. We will ask her. Daniel, thank you so very much for your time and for joining us today. speaker-1: Thank guys. speaker-0: for coming. We hope you enjoyed that new episode of Cafe Berlin and Daniel DiMartino. ⁓ Cafe Berlin is a podcast brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. If you like this content, be sure to hit like, subscribe. You can find us on any platform or podcasts are available. If you like what we do and you think that education needs help and needs reform, ⁓ we are the good guys. Please do consider becoming a member. You do not need to be an academic or teacher to join. Go to www.nas.org and we'll see you next time. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.