Latest / Thinking Class / #112 - Firas Modad - Britain Is Losing Control At Home and Abroad: Demographics, Sovereignty, And Power

Transcript

#112 - Firas Modad - Britain Is Losing Control At Home and Abroad: Demographics, Sovereignty, And Power · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and in this episode, I'm joined by Firas Modad.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Firas is an analyst and political economist focused on the Middle East and global geopolitics.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: He runs his own consultancy, Modad Geopolitics, helping companies and investors understand the commercial impact of political, economic, and security risks they face.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Firas is also a host on the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, we think out loud about Britain's internal security and the risks of social balkanization, the emergence of tiered citizenship and the limits of multicultural governance, whether remigration is politically or morally conceivable, Britain's relationship with the United States in an era of shifting power, whether a sovereign Britain can meaningfully escape the European Union's orbit, China offshoring and the long-term consequences of deindustrialization, the Middle East and the possibility of a rising Islamic imperial order, what Firas has changed his mind upon during the course of his life and why.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Classmates, this episode matters because it replaces slogans and abstractions with realism.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: At a moment when Britain's leaders appear unwilling to reckon with demographic, geopolitical, and civilizational realities, Firas offers an assessment of where the country stands and what lies ahead if current trajectories continue.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast that explores the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you value long-form historically grounded conversations about culture, politics, and civilization, then you will be right at home with Thinking Class.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can find essays, reflections, and further reading on Substack.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is my pleasure, and today I think we're going to have a very important discussion, a very timely one, because we're going to examine how the United Kingdom's security is being undermined at home and abroad.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It matters now because Britain seems to be undermined by a demographic transformation that has been precipitated by decades of mass immigration that will see the indigenous British become a minority by the 2060s, and has already led to rising sectarianism within the nation.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've also seen the offshoring of manufacturing capacity and energy capabilities over the recent decades.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And on the world stage, we have His Majesty's government, who has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius alongside financial compensation, and finds itself seemingly unable to make coherent policies in the national interest regarding European Union, the United States, the Middle East, and China.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're uniquely capable and able to answer and shed light on this situation as a geopolitical analyst, and perhaps more importantly, as an outsider.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're Lebanese, you live here in Britain, and I think that outsider's perspective is valuable to be able to highlight British and Western naivete and inject a dose of a dose of realism into the conversation.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let's begin with Britain's security crisis or crises at home, should I say.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is true to say that common in common parlance we can find Britain um being referred to as experiencing balkanization because of the impact of mass immigration.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: However, we're now finding people saying that's not quite right.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Balkanization doesn't really refer to what Britain is going to experience.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like Lebanonization.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think that change has occurred?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what is what what as a Lebanese person would a Lebanonization of Britain look and feel like?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, to be able to police a community without fear or favor, the police and the community must be seen as part of the same group sharing the same identity and values.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's the foundation of trust.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: In a diverse society, this is by definition impossible.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because what diversity means is that you have no shared definition of the common good.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: You have different identities, and so you don't agree on what is common, you have different values, and so you don't agree on what is good.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have different attachments, and therefore you have a conflict over the friend-enemy distinction.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: In that kind of environment, the police happens in one of two ways.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Either uh through brutality and repression, with an overbearing, very authoritarian state that cannot be challenged, and then you're thinking about the UAE, for example, where any infraction can be severely punished.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're thinking about Singapore, um or you're dealing with a place like Lebanon, where every time the police forces need to act, they must be cognizant of the possibility that they're upsetting the communal balance and that therefore they're risking internal conflict, meaning that they only act when there is a broad political consensus.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: But Britain's situation is even worse, because in a country like Lebanon, still, things like common murder and common theft are going to be punished equally for the most part.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in Britain, even these basics of crime aren't being policed, in part because the police have lost capability and because the police have been distracted by wokeness, but in part because you have communities like the Pakistani community that simply protect their own rapists.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you have communities that the like the black community who don't believe that their youth, who are responsible for sixty percent of stabbings in London, should be policed in a manner commensurate with that statistic.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this um hostility from the newly arrived communities towards the state that complicates the problem of policing that exists in a in any diverse society and makes everything even worse.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: In a place like Lebanon, even though security can be poor in some areas, you're not going to get away with the mass rape of girls.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you're not going to get away with petty theft in London being simply at astronomical proportions, people simply walking into a shop taking whatever they want and walking out.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: This wouldn't happen.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: But in Britain, because the local communities that have arrived are even more hostile towards the state than Lebanese communities are hostile towards the state.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of thing constantly happens and is permitted.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a political crisis between the white native population and the newly arrived communities, or at least some of them.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't a problem that applies to the Chinese, it's not a problem that really applies to the SI in the same way.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have different problems with parts of, you know, um, with with say espionage with the Chinese or or with espionage with the Indians or things of that nature.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a major political crisis between especially the black and the Muslim communities and the state and the white community that underpins the state.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this crisis makes policing even harder.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the alternative is?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of Britain allowing itself to uh drift into that um Lebanonization we've talked about, though, in some respects it almost sounds uh like it has its uh its own worse issues than what Lebanon are experiencing because actually it allows much more crime and antisocial activity to go unpunished.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's the what's the solution?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So to throw something out there, maybe this isn't a solution that was being offered, but having been acquainting myself with Lord Jonathan Sumption's work ahead of a soon-to-be-aired interview, uh he states within his recent book, The Challenges of Democracy, that we're soon going to be living in a Hobbesian world, so a very liberal world, one where you have a very authoritarian central government that will use force and repression to be able to keep uh warring groups and tribes from doing exactly that.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So is that basically where the country, if it's going to continue with its um its its current makeup composition, uh is headed?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's either you you just drift to lawlessness or you go for repressive state apparatus, which I suppose even our home secretary Shabana Mahmoud has recently said.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'll let you take it away.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Shabana Mahmoud said that she wants that when she was in the Justice Department, uh she wanted the panopticon of the state to simply be watching everything.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And she was saying that to the Tony Blair Institute, uh, which partners with Larry Allison of Oracle, who has his own political sympathies, but who is also of the view that everybody should be monitored all the time.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in a way that's the only path forward for a society like this.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you want it to work efficiently, you have to have a Dubai or you have to have a Singapore, and one of the features of those is that there is surveillance everywhere, or there is police everywhere, and there is severe punishments for all infractions.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that the liberal ideology, because it is a very sick parody of Christianity, can't equally police everyone, because they've replaced the Christian holy victim, which is Jesus Christ Himself on the cross, with these victim groups, blacks, Muslims, uh LGBT, minorities, etc.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And these groups need to be given, according to liberal ideology, more leeway and more freedom to commit crime to compensate for their lower perceived socioeconomic status.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is this conflict.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: In a country like Singapore or Dubai, the hierarchy is obvious and it's known.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: The Singaporeans are in charge of Singapore, and the Prime Minister of Singapore is in charge of the government, and power flows accordingly.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: In the UAE, the the Al-Nahyan family is at the top, uh, all of the other families are loyal to it, the foreigners are there as second, third, and fourth class citizens, depending on their race, and the the relationship is clearly understood.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: In the Christian West, this is harder because the ideology that has replaced Christianity, that's sort of wearing it like a skin suit, the leftist ideology, rejects Christ and rejects the holy victim, but instead it places alternative holy victims in his place.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so to police the black community or the Muslim community equally is an infraction against justice in that worldview.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they understand that what they need is a the dystopia that Tony Blair has always dreamt of with uh compulsory IDs and then digital IDs and so on.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: They understand that they need that, and they'll sell it to the natives saying, Oh, this is necessary for illegal immigration, this must happen for uh employment rights, this must happen for whatever reason that they make up.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: But in their worldview, somebody who shows up on a boat, by definition, has more rights than the British and receives more rights accordingly.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: He gets free healthcare, uh private healthcare sometimes, he gets a free hotel with scre uh three square meals, he doesn't have to pay taxes when working illegally, etcetera, etc., etc.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a conflict between what is needed in a diverse society, which is a very strong authoritarian system to make it function, and when that authoritarian system breaks down, for example, after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, you end up with endless wars that just don't seem to have any purpose or any reason, but yet yeah and yet they keep going.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or somehow somebody wins these wars and imposes law and order, and it is in a and it is done in an incredibly authoritarian way, meaning that you can no longer have unarmed police officers, you can no longer have policing by consent, and you cannot have policing without fear or favor.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So all of the basics that have kept Britain recognizable as unique and as British, and that have made her into an ideal for the rest of the world, are gone because of the insane demographic experiment that the leadership has been engaged in.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, you are Lebanese here living in Britain.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think people would be surprised to hear someone make the case that if Britain is going to uh remain uh or at least try to recover a sense of what it once was, both institutionally and demographically, then drastic action needs to be taken.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And re recently you've been making um quite considered pronouncements, I would say, within the public sphere, uh uh that we we call the internet, and you have um outlined what you think Britain needs to do with regards to citizenship um and its approach to distributing citizenship.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And equally you've also suggested what Britain might need to do to f with regards to um jettisoning those deemed not worthy of citizenship.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I suppose that's probably a better way to refer to remigration, or at least a more complete way of referring to remigration.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps you can outline what you think Britain needs to be able to do um with regards to citizenship and what is being referred to as remigration and deportations.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm speaking as an outsider.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I am not br I am paper British, I am not actually British.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what I say could just as easily apply to me.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: My view is that there is a fundamental difference between the English, the Welsh, the the Scots, and the Irish versus everyone else who has a piece of paper that says that they're British.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the difference is that the first groups are native and have the actual claim to that country, and it is theirs by right, and they have they had made it into a beacon for the rest of the world, whereas the others are their guests.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore they get to decide what to do with those guests, in the same way that anybody whoever stays there welcome your home can be politely asked to leave, and sometimes not so politely.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: My view on this is that uh citizenship should reflect this reality.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those of us who are in Britain and arrived after 1945 and do not have ancestral ties to Britain and to British society cannot be treated equally to those who do.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not us who built this country, it's the natives who did, and because they did such a great job, we tried to come here as guests.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: The law should reflect that, meaning that there should be two tiers of citizenship.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that Shabana Mahmoud can't remove the citizenship of a white British person just because he travelled to Russia, although it is right and just to remove the citizenship of Shabana Mahmoud herself, perhaps, or Shamima Begum, or uh any of the lads who went and fought for ISIS, or or or.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this can be done the the first step is to recognize this reality that these two groups, the ones with the ancestral claim and the ones with no ancestral claim, are not the same.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: The second step is for those with the ancestral claim to say we require our guests to contribute in a certain way, not to be a burden on us, uh, and we require them to be culturally compatible with us.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: However, they choose to define that, however, the British choose to define cultural compatible uh cultural compatibility and contribution.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the debate can be had.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Should it apply uh only to Christians?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Should it apply only to people who are and at positive over their lifetime to the exchequer?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Should there be some leeway here and there?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: That all of these debates can be had.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality has to be admitted, and as part of admitting that reality, there is the undeniable truth that this is a Christian country.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: That the reason the British could be uh so good natured about the foreigners that have arrived and often abused their hospitality is because they behaved in a Christian way even when actual Christian doctrine would have had them be more severe.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Especially in terms of punishing and deterring crime.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing in Christianity that says you don't hang criminals.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's not, you know, you absolutely do that.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you can do that to heretics, and you can do that to all kinds of others if we're going to go down that route.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um so within that thinking process, there is the recognition of those with an ancestral claim, there's a recognition of the source of values that has underpinned Britain forever, and there is a recognition that the these two things must be protected.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's the question of how do you go go about it?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at the very least you should be, over your lifetime, a net positive contributor to the state.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: At the very least, you cannot come as a guest and be an eternal burden and expect your children to be a burden and to remain a burden forever.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you don't intermarry, especially when you cheat on benefits, especially when you commit crime, etc., etc.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's a minimum level of good behavior that should be required.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you're on your fifth arrest, well, you should have been deported after the first, generously after the second or third, certainly not the twentieth.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're incapable of behaving in a way that upholds Christian values, well then there is a problem here, and there is a problem with the Muslim community, which explicitly says to you that it is here to take over.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because the nature of Islam is focused on power and on gaining temporal power over non-Muslims and on wielding that power to humiliate them.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: So there's got to be this level of honesty in the conversation, but that can't happen in a liberal world view that says somebody just needs to touch the shores of Dover, and then the state has to take care of him forever.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's absurd.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's absurd.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the more you depart from reality, the more severe their reaction eventually becomes.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Reality is is is merciless.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: It will give you enough rope to hang yourself, but you will hang.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so if this is ignored, what you end up with by 2030, 2050, 2060, pick a date.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're all you know making random predictions here.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: But what you will certainly end up with is those with an ancestral claim saying we must organize ourselves.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And be absolutely merciless because the alternative is for us to be wiped out.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when people believe that this is existential and that the political system is unwilling to yield and to respect them, they turn to violence.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's perfectly natural.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a moral comment.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so your alternatives essentially are either a sensible policy that says that there are two grades of citizenship, one ancestral and one not.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those without an ancestral claim who are not contributing, who are a bad cultural fit, who are committing crime, must leave.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can change the parameters as you see fit to achieve the level that it would be in your eyes right and just.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And people have various sympathies with the Kurds that they should have a state or shouldn't have a state.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a recognition that ethnic groups exist and that they are real.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they are the i um an essential form of social organization with or without a state, in that you have the nuclear family, you have the extended family, and then you have the nation, which is a family of families.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not of the view that every nation should have a state and the borders of every state should correspond perfectly to its nation, but I'm also not of the view that you can dismiss the relationship between the existence of a nation and the right of that nation to self-organize.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so in a country that has, you know, to continue with the Turkish example, they've got a pretty big Kurdish minority, they fought wars against them uh for four or five decades now, and the outcome of this war was okay, you get to be your own recognized national identity group while also being able to participate in the state.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's sort of becoming s similar to their relationship between Britain and Scotland or Britain and Wales.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody agrees that they're part of Great Britain and there is a high level of cooperation, but these two groups are recognized as, you know, unique groups with certain claims to their territory.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's the same everywhere else in the world.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: This recognition of national identity is there.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's what gives us an idea of common, and it is where social relationships are situated.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Who are your neighbors?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: If your neighbors are complete strangers, who can't speak the same language, who don't worship the same god, who don't celebrate the same holidays, it is going to be difficult to be good a good neighbor to them.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't understand who they are and you don't understand their world view.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: You therefore end up much more atomized and more miserable.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if we all know that we celebrate Easter and we celebrate Christmas, that facilitates social relations.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: That makes it easier for us to get along.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Most importantly, it gives us a shared sense of values.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: It means that I recognize your claim to what is your own, and you recognize my claim to what is mine.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: It means that the relationship between us isn't one of endless exploration and confusion and frustration, but one of cooperation.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've lived in a society that doesn't cooperate well, you appreciate the value of a society that does.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what's remarkable about Britain is the level of responsibility that is felt by average citizens towards the rest of their society, even when they don't actually know every member of that society.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so you could move from one part of England to the next and just get on with it.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas for me, as a Lebanese of a Druze background, if I move to a Shia area in Lebanon, that's a problem.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can move to a city where we're all sort of in this big mix, but I can't really move to a Shia village and live there and expect a happy and fruitful life.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be miserable and difficult.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Indeed, the only people who can live with pretty much every community in Lebanon are the Christians.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: The rest of the small communities don't can't get on with each other in the same way.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's much, much harder.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And even when that happens and this coexistence happens, you see immediate segregation.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: So in Beirut there are Druze areas and there are Shia areas and there are Christian areas.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Although they're all in the city, they still try to self-segregate.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you see the same thing here.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Bengalis have their own neighborhood, and they're busily looting tower hamlets.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: The Pakistanis have their own neighborhoods.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: The Jamaicans, the Africans have their own neighborhoods, the Somalis are not accepted by the rest of the Africans, etc., etc., etc.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that segregation is perfectly normal.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it happened in the days of the Irish.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Harrison in London was an Irish neighborhood, and then the Somalis showed up and the Irish left.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this need for us to be around people who share our language, who share our cultural heritage, who share our background, who share our values, is deeply ingrained.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not something that reflects a sense of supremacism.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Although, in a real sense, every group is supremacist.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I will say, well, this is who I am, and these are my traditions.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to change that.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that comes from a certain pride and love of one's own.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to call it supremacism, go ahead.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not a bad thing.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this reality that people have these identities, and that these identities also operate on the communal and the political level.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: You see it with Jewish people, you see it with Christians, you see it with black people, you see it with the with the whites, you see it with Asians, you see it all across the board.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you have a Chinatown in every major American city?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because the Chinese, like everybody else, congregate and they create something different that is uniquely Chinese.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You were talking about predictions, uh albeit arbitrary ones, about when things might get a bit tasty, so to speak.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that David Betts scenario of we're sleepwalking into civil war, and uh that ultimately at some point we will find uh the English, the British, starting to organise for their own interests the larger that um these foreign diasporas grow and also organise around their own interests.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you think, thinking just thinking about what you said about your experience since moving to Britain with regards to the um social um the the pro-social mindset that seems to be ingrained within the British?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think the reason why it is taking so long for both the British political class to allow it and the British peoples in general, though probably excluding the Celtic fringes because they've they've always had a sense of political ethnicity, but so the so the English is taking a while to form and to crystallize, is because pre-1945 the islands ultimately, though not a monoculture, had learned to live with one another, the English and the Celtic fringe, and so peace and prosperity was able to um uh uh flourish out of what was highly conflicted, well, several periods in history, and it's almost like the social uh immune system um for um foreign bodies coming into it wasn't actually prepared for the fact that this liberal mindset, which is just a natural extension of English society, um, just wasn't actually um possessed by the vast majority of the world.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so people have arrived and everyone is projecting, or many the majority for many years have projected that everything will be fine in the end, people will just become more liberal, we'll all live together, and maybe it's not such a big problem anyway.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: But is what you're saying ultimately that that immune system is going to jump into gear at some point because people will recognize when things are particularly um uh contentious demographically and politically, that there is no other solution but to rally around one's own.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, absolutely.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: You you're beginning to see that with reform in a sense, which despite the best efforts of Nigel Farage and some people around him, is still very much the party of the English.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's in a very real sense what it is.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: There was a reaction to immigration, which was expressed repeatedly in British history, from Ian O Powell through Nick Griffin, uh through everything that happened in between.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't take on any legs because the elite managed to use magic words like racist.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And to use these words and give them a moral weight that a highly moral people like the English couldn't bear to be called these words.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas now we've reached a stage where if you call someone racist, they're like, and whatever.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: The word has lost all meaning, and so the magic has lost its potency.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened was that for decades there was an assault on the value system of the country.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was an assault on Christian values and on identity or European identity, white identity, which happened pretty much throughout the West, which sort of looked at World War II and said this happened because of nationalism and dislike of the outsiders, and therefore we must attack this identity and force it to submit and prevent it from ever reforming again in a way that becomes a similar threat to Nazi Germany, which is why pretty much every conversation with the liberal ends with so you're a Nazi, which is a very stupid argument, because one can have an idea of an order of love whereby one loves one's family and then one's neighbors and then one's community and then one's nations and then outsiders, without thinking that all outsiders must be murdered.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: The two are not the same, or and without adopting nationalism or socialism, for that matter.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: You could recognize that ethnic groups have a national and natural internal affinity without being a nationalist.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You could be an imperialist, you could have the Austro-Hungarian Empire or this or the Spanish Empire, which recognized that okay, when we're ruling two Sicilies, we have to behave differently than when we're ruling Spain.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: These are different nations, etc.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's a different order.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: So recognizing this reality is is a is a politically neutral thing.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed the left recognizes it for everybody else, except whites.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And especially straight white Christian males who are ultimately the enemy.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it you know this awakening, this immune reaction is simply the awakening of healthy instincts that have been under assault by the degradation by the d d degrading and immoral liberal order that chooses to try to deny realities that cannot be denied, such as the importance of marriage and monogamy, such as the importance of having a family and children, such as the importance of your community and your society, your love for your nation, your love for those around you, etc.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: The risk is that this assault has been going on for so long, and the left is so possessed by the lies that it's been espousing, that correction can only be violent.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I say you should recognize that there are tears of citizenship and differentiate between native and non-native, that doesn't have any economic implications.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that your your your economic policy should be a socialist policy.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even advocating big end nationalism.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fine with just people people's identities being recognized within any range of potential orders.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: But this reaction is happening.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're going to be Christian about it, it's important that it happens in a Christian way.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because if all you get out of it is the sense of ethnic belonging without the moral sense that Christianity gives you, then firstly it's going to be unnecessarily violent, and secondly, it won't build a good society in the aftermath, even if you're successful.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because ethnonationalism alone as a uh political driver isn't sufficient.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have enough content, it doesn't have enough moral content within it, it doesn't have guidance on good and evil, it doesn't have guidance on family or on cooperation or how to treat your neighbors.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have a range of ethno-nationalist sects sects in the Middle East.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: The Kurds and the Druze are are two examples, and they're both quite horrible to each other.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Kurds, for all of their stories, um have in the past used the states around them to help destroy their other Kurdish enemies.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Druze, a very small community with to which I which which I originally come from, um have always had very nasty, very deadly feuds amongst each other that were incredibly immoral.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm saying here is that to restore Britain in any meaningful way, you do need to recognize tears of citizenship.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: You also need to recognize the source of moral authority that has animated Britain and made her what it is.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: People have very many theories on why Northwestern Europe has achieved so much.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of them could be that this is the part of the world that has been at least threatened from non-Christian forces for the longest.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, in all of their internal conflicts, since the conversion of the Vikings, the moral framework has been a Christian one.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that could certainly take us off down a path that will take us far away from geopolitics.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna do a clunky gear change for us from nationalism to to internationalism, so to speak.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um plenty going on at the moment.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a daily politics show, but there's there's been enough going on in the last month or so which has really highlighted uh Britain's predicament on the world stage.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So setting the scene, I think we all know Britain exited the European Union 2020 officially.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: It has since gone back and forth with getting further away from the European Union, getting closer at signing new deals.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it has um looked across the Atlantic as it always does for uh support to provide support to US interests.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: It has been referred to as a vassal state by Angus Hunton.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have a to and fro relationship with China.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: One second, we're allowing them to build telecommunications infrastructure here.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Next minute we're saying no, none of that, please.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then we're allowing them to build an embassy here with um seemingly no real security oversight, given that uh the embassy looks like it's close to uh cables, which uh would allow the Chinese to get access to any manner of state secrets and state data.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the list could go on, as well as our own entanglements in the Middle East over the decades.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let's begin with the US.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: So United States.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Starmer had previously been saying he thought there was a good relationship between he and Trump.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And recently a bit of friction's been injected into that with the Greenland affair.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Greenland for the Greenlanders, as the European Union have been have been putting it.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Trump appears, at least my take on it, is he seems to be rolling up a global American empire and focusing on hemispheric interests and then leaving these heretofore allies to their own continent.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what's going on?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're right that there is a what I would describe as there are two things happening in the United States one internal, one external.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Internally, the Republic is broken.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's irredeemably broken.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the corruption of the elites has reached such an extent that the regular legal processes are simply no longer adequate to stop Nancy Pelosi from Doing her insider trading to stop everybody in Congress from taking lobbyist money.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: Be that uh the the Zionist lobby that everybody obsesses with, which is a real thing, or be that a million and one other big business lobbies, uh, from the corn lobby to the defense industry to pharma especially, um, who have completely degraded the American system.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this has been enabled by the federalism of the United States, where you can basically get away with things in certain jurisdictions if you bribe the right people.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the result of this corruption is going to be the executive essentially stamping down and trying to say, I will ally with the public against the oligarchs in order to bring the oligarchs back in line.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the way these things always happen.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was the Caesarean Revolution, essentially.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was an alliance between the plebs and an element of the nobility against the rest of the nobility.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you're seeing.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: This imperial transition within America is mirrored by an imperial transition outside of America.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: With the Russians saying our empire extends to wherever there are Russian speakers, meaning that if there is a civil war in Ukraine between the Russian speakers and the non-Russian speakers, the Russians must take a side.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that the Baltics are at risk because they have 20-25% of their population being Russian speaking.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's being mirrored in the Middle East, but along different lines, along religious lines, where the Sunnis are saying we are going to essentially have a partnership of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for now, and maybe Turkey and maybe Egypt, in a bit to say things get decided between us big four, rather than by the smaller players like the Israelis or the Shia or the UAE.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same with China, which already dominates places like Jinjiang, which is Uyur or Tibet, and which has now set its sights on Taiwan to make sure that the Chinese nation lives under one authority.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we are already in this imperial world.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: In this world, Europe is a theater.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a player.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that applies to the United Kingdom.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: These are theaters of competition.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you see this confusion on the part of Kirstarmer because the Chinese are pulling him in one direction and the Americans are pulling him in the other.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't know who is getting bribed and by whom.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the same kind of corruption and rot that you see in the American Republic, that has rotted the Republic to its core, and that requires a transition to a more executive order, is also to be seen in all of Europe.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: You see the corruption of the EU and the way that they design regulations to protect some businesses and punish others.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: You see how captured the EU is by different lobbies.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: You see how businesses operate in Britain, where the way that the government is behaving, it's rewarding the most insane people, the net zero crowd, purely based on their politics.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: While punishing the productive people, the oil and gas guys, again because of their politics.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so this rot that's destroyed the ability of people to self-govern in the way that people grew accustomed to after the American invasions of Europe in World War I and World War II means that that old system of government can no longer exist.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we are in a transition phase towards authoritarianism.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is which authoritarianism and what kind?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the authoritarianism that says that it's fine for a third of all babies to be aborted?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine for the country to be flooded by illegal and legal migrants?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine for the natives to stop reproducing and to have no families and no hope of starting families?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it an authoritarianism that says anybody who believes the previous things is going to suffer Francoist Pinochet style consequences?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's really it.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: These two worldviews cannot coexist.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've recently discovered that in the United States there's something called the FACE Act.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Free access to clinics something act.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what this does is that it gives equal protection to abortion clinics and churches.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you view the two as equivalent, you and I are at war.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: By definition.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no hope of us having a sense of common good.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because there is no hope of us having a shared definition of good.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: And without a shared definition of common good, there can only be victory and defeat.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are therefore enemies.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: You have the same in Britain.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you pray silently outside an abortion clinic, you will be locked up.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just for praying silently.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have a demographic crisis, which you do, and a declining population, certainly, at the very least, you need to give people enough security to have families.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: At the very least.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because a falling population is an economic disaster, even if a growing population isn't always a blessing.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: For most of human history, the population was either stable or growing very, very slowly, with some catastrophic collapses here and there due to disease, war, etc.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this system doesn't allow for continued self-governance along democratic lines, because democracy assumes underneath it a very high level of trust.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: And trust is underpinned by shared values.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think praying outside an abortion clinic is a crime, we cannot have shared values.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you think aborting one third of all babies in a country is a good thing, and it's just a matter of choice, we are not on the same page.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: There is nothing that you and I will agree on in terms of good.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the weather, but that's it.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: So as this internal conflict escalates, which is coming from the loss of Christianity, either the right is going to go underground, because it is going to be so repressed that the church will have to go underground, which has happened in the past, and the church always survives.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like they found Catholics in in Japan after 500 years of repression, and they were still crypto-Catholics existing in Japan.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And their test was about Mary and ordination.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they were properly old school Catholic, and yet a remnant survived.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Either that is going to happen, or the right is going to go franco-slash pinochet against the left.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: But these are the two alternatives here.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you see these technologists pushing for the panoptica.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that if they lose a war on China, what are they going to do?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to say that the Chinese are spying on everybody, and therefore the panopticon is necessary.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that they're going to use immigration to say, well, you don't like the crime rate, therefore we need more surveillance, and you must all have digital IDs, and you must all check in with your stippate to get you with a state to get your approved portion of meat.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is the phase in which we're living.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where is Britain's role at all of this?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: The American strategy, speaking about strategy now, is focused on treating the Atlantic Ocean as Madame Nostrum, our sea.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because the main competitor of the United States is not Russia.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's China.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: What the Americans need to do to confront China is to be able to focus their assets on the Pacific.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: That means that they can't have any security threats from the Atlantic.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so you see the pressure on South Africa.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's one of the key entryways into the Atlantic.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: It needs to be in friendly hands.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's an almost impossible zone to police, the area between South Africa and the Arctic, but it's even more impossible to police with a hostile South Africa.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: You see the bailout of Argentina because it controls the Cape Horn, which is the other entryway into the Atlantic.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you see the pressure on Europe, intended to make sure that it falls in line, and that European industry is no longer crippled by the madness of European elites.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that necessary?
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because the United States accounts for around 18% of global manufacturing, China for 30%.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Europe tips the balance with another 15%, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, I can't remember off the top of my head right now, but in that range.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: So American and European industry together can exceed Chinese industry, but American industry alone cannot.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: You see the prospect for a deal with Russia, because the worst possible outcome is for Russia and China to cooperate and for the Chinese to have a monopoly, a monopoly of purchasing over Russian exports, meaning that they get Russian natural resources at a discount, meaning that it feeds their industrial machine massively.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you see the play for Venezuela, because Venezuela sits on the Caribbean, and the Caribbean through to the Gulf of America can always be navally secured, even if the Atlantic is in play, meaning that these resources need to be able to flow from South America to North America, and the pathway to do so is through the Caribbean.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it all makes sense when you understand that the Americans are thinking of the Atlantic as Marian Ostrom.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Within that, they can't have a British government friendly to China, part of the five eyes, and allowing the Chinese a super spy embassy in the center of London.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: They can't have Britain with net zero.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: They need that Britain that can build warships.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Britain is in no position to challenge the United States.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Even on demographics alone, it's in no position to do so.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, there is this massive cultural affinity that already exists.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are the children of Britain.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Who are the Americans?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: The children of the British.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the briefest definition.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so the question is: how do you make this a cooperative relationship, but also a fair and dignified one?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: As opposed to one of constant humiliation, like you had between Tony Blair and George Bush.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is that you provide wise counsel and strong industry and genuine love and partnership.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because these are at the end of the day your own children.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you wish them well.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: So this is briefly where we are globally.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of Keir Starmer counter-signaling over Greenland and all of that nonsense, it should be slightly different.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: It should be, let me try to mediate a fair agreement that respects the things, because Denmark is and and Sweden and Norway are necessary to contain Russia.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want Russia running Russia over all of the Baltic and then breaking out into the North Sea.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: That becomes a problem.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it does.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: But you also don't want to lose the Americans over something stupid like Greenland.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: If they want it, they fine, sell it to them.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Get a good deal out of it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Get a fair bargain.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like the Danes are in a position to defend it or to invest in it.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a massive financial drain on them anyway, and they can't defend it.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when you have people like Keir Starmer selling off the Chagos Islands, that kind of affirms Trump's view that he must have Greenland at all costs.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: On the on the European Union question.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in fact, before we get there, so very interesting analysis of the British relationship with the United States.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: How would you say Britain should see itself with regards to the states?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because there would be some commentators who would say that why are we all acting surprised that the US is giving us a slap down and telling us where we belong in the pecking order?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's basically what they've done since 1945.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've been the junior partner, we've been the vassal state.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um does that mean they are a foe, or is it more just that, as you've outlined, you accept that they are the senior partner?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose what I'm trying to get to, Firas, is how does a how does a sovereign Britain uh forge its path in the world?
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um without a navy, because that matters.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: And right now it's without a navy.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the they tried to send the aircraft carriers to Yemen and they struggled.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, I think they did manage to send one, but it didn't look great at all.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they failed to send both aircraft carriers to a training exercise.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when you don't have hard power, it sort of affects your position.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe if you're a man, you'll take a beating, but you can't do that as a leader of a nation, because that's highly responsible to do for your own pride.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like as a man, you could take a beating for your pride, fair enough.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: You lost the fight, but at least you lost it fair and square, and with dignity.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: As the leader of a nation, you can't do that kind of thing.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't fall under just war theory because it would be unwinnable.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the Americans have behaved as a foe, especially the liberal wing.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Especially liberal America, which has consistently tried to humiliate pretty much every proud white Christian country in the world.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: From South Africa and Rhodesia to Britain to France, and on and on it goes.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is true.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is true.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Brits and the Europeans have not done a particularly good job of showing their own dignity.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: The French have done the most to be able to act as an independent player by maintaining a fully integrated defence supply chain and an independent, a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent, meaning that they get to do things on their own if they want to, if they can.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: But Britain is not in that position.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start with, you know, before what do you want?
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with what do you need in order to get what you want.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what you need is significant military force.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then let's look at the actual threats.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a rising Islamic Empire in Turkey, centered on Turkey in partnership with Pakistan, maybe in partnership with Saudi Arabia, they're working with the Egyptians in Sudan and in Libya, which is unusual, to push out the smaller players.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: And every time the organization of the Islamic Conference has gotten together to discuss something related to the West, it has been anti-West.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because anti-Christian.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because Islam is anti-Christian.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that reality.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: And with that rising Muslim Empire, well, what if it gets its armies into Europe?
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: It already has one.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty much every Muslim in Europe will obey if for some reason the Turks call it for a jihad.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this like, where are the threats?
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then there is the Russian ambitions.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: Their ambitions don't stop in Ukraine.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: They naturally extend to the Baltics and to the Carpathian Mountains.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's when Russia decides that, okay, we're safe enough.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can bargain with them.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship, but you have to admit that their ambitions are big.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then you've got China, which literally steals all your IP, is draining the ocean of fish, is trying to break every single competitor company in the world, and it's trying to gain full dominance over the world through commerce.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, you have problems with the Americans.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are the bigger problems that you have?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: Including the time bomb at home, which is a demographic one.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: So let's like let's lay that groundwork and then think what are we going to do about Trump?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing to do is accept reality.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's the source of your nuclear deterrence because they actually control Trident.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: Most of your jets are American.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the F-35 purchases show that.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: The possibility of building independent nuclear submarines has been severely degraded and eroded, and that's a major loss.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the island is starved of energy, and the government is at war with farmers to starve it of food.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a hierarchy of love, but you also have to have a hierarchy of threats.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the Americans, as annoying as they can be, are near the bottom of that hierarchy of threats.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the EU.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: The American objective is to break up the EU.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was them that helped create it in the first place.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: But now that goddamn has become too big and it needs to go.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's suffocating Europe, it's too corrupt, it's too dishonest, and it's genuinely insane.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a genuinely insane idea.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: Call it the German Empire if you want, but then that's a Central European Empire.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: That stops at the borders of France and Italy.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Fine.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let the Germans have their empire, no problem.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um the idea that Greece and Germany should have the same monetary policy is simply madness.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or Italy.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or Spain, etc.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that the tools of monetary policy should be in the hands of German bureaucrats sitting in Brussels is also insane.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's an attack on sovereignty.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've surrendered your sovereignty on one thing, you've got to surrender it on another.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: As a vassal, you can still say I am loyal to you in your wars against external enemies, but I run my own internal affairs.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is what you would get, in fact.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's this is precisely what you would get as a vassal.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is precisely the bargain.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're my partner in defense and in foreign policy, but you run your own fiefdom.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's the fundamental relationship in a vassal to a lord.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's how it works.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: So even that has been taken away from the Europeans, let alone their immigration policy, let alone the taxation policy, the regulation, etc.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of all of this being regulated from Brussels, why shouldn't it be regulated out of DC?
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and with the Americans in an imperial mood that is focused on streamlining the industry of.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: The West to confront China, then yes, they can't have the EU in the way with stupid ideas like net zero and solar power in northern Europe.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants solar power in northern Europe?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're just mad.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what you see with the EU, and it has to go.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: It has to go.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's an authoritarian structure that is completely, it's far more authoritarian than any absolute monarch.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because no absolute monarch could survey every member of his kingdom, every subject of his kingdom, and police their speech and interfere in pretty much every commercial arrangement that they make.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's precisely what the EU does.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let alone the immorality of the ideology.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when they were trying to force down an EU constitution, the Vatican said to them, can you please include in the Constitution a nod towards Europe's Christian history?
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't say Europe is Christian.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're not asking for that much.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or the Vatican said, at the very least, acknowledge Europe's Christian heritage.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the EU was like, no.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you abandon God, we know exactly what happens.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: We know what are the consequences.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: It always ends badly.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's happened to Europe.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: When you don't believe in God, you are willing to believe anything.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have Davos and the EU talking to us about transgenderism and saying that abortion is a moral right.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: How can you supply an army if a third of your future young men are being killed in the womb?
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: How can you supply it with men?
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow these things in the minds of the elites aren't connected.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow you're not supposed to see that there's a connection between morality and strategy.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: But there is.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the um well, suppose 200 years of democracy, effectively, and uh there's certainly been um around 200 years of egalitarianism as loosed upon the world through the French Revolution.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: What we're saying here is a this is an this is an unraveling of that set of governing philosophies, and and now it's the it is the um fight to the death over what's going to replace it.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um competing groups and interests trying to gain a foothold in the new world as it is birthed.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're all living in history.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know we like to talk about history as though it's just a bunch of books and facts, and oh, it's really historical when you go on holiday here and there, but no, this is it.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is it right now.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: First, before I let you go, uh the one question that I ask all of my guests is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been an absolute, it might have been a a day, uh quote more quotidian concern.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you think differently?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I used to be an atheist from age twelve until around seven years ago, I used to be a very I used to be an atheist, and then at some point I was a pretty militant atheist.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I changed my mind on that uh very, very severely.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um with all of the zeal of the convert, I would suspect.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: What made me change my mind?
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the problem of evil and the problem of good.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's I think the the the the problem of evil is cast along the lines of if God is good, where is there evil?
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it because God is indifferent or impotent, and if so, why is he God?
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the framing of it.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I came to see it quite differently.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I came to see that the reality of evil is so um strong that I concluded that the devil is real.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's when you see the behavior of Mexican cartels of Islamic State these kinds of genuinely deeply murderous, insane, unhinged groups.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: When you see the abortion fanatics celebrating the killing of what is obviously a genetically unique and most importantly innocent individual.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_01: When you see the self-loathing that animates the left, you kind of conclude that actually these darker forces are real.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And they are not to be dismissed, and they should be fought against because if they are not, they will lead to absolute madness.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you see the madness all around you.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: We are in an age of insanity.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: We had the most abundant source of energy in the world, oil and natural gas, and decided, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want any of that.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: You had functioning societies and you decided, no, no, no, no, I have to diversify them.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: You had healthy family relations, and people said, no, we have to attack the nuclear family.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: You had Christianity, and people said, no, no, no, atheism is better.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's not real.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the problem of evil.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: The problem of good goes down to a couple of simple questions.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why is there good in the first place?
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just why is there evil, and the answer is, according to the atheist, atheists, because God doesn't exist.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really grappling with a problem.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is why do we have a moral sense to begin with?
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And why is it so different in different societies?
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it normal for the Indians to burn their widows?
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it normal for the Vikings and the Carthaginians and uh various tribes in Africa to offer human sacrifices?
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it offer why is it good to offer human sacrifices, including sacrificing children?
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Why do some African witch doctors still try to find albino Africans to sacrifice them?
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And why do we find that repulsive?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem of good.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it that we find this kind of behavior repulsive?
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is because we have been given the gift of Christianity.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is because Jesus died on the cross for us.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And everything makes sense when it comes when when you start there.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And for those who doubt, a fundamental question is do you believe that there is more to you than matter?
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: As in, are all of your feelings simply just a bunch of chemical reactions?
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is everything within you just chemistry?
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, there's nothing else there.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which to me is a proposition that doesn't make any sense anymore.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not as a father, not as a as a husband, not as a family man.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't imagine that I used to think differently.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so if there is more to you than matter, then you have a soul.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a real question as to what are you going to do with your soul and what is going to happen to it.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I came to that conclusion partly because every time I tried to analyze a problem on purely material terms, I got it wrong.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't understand human beings even politically as purely material beings, let alone socially or personally, or psychologically.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: We are not comprehensible through matter.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: We make sense with souls, we don't make sense without them.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Even on the level of political analysis, even on the level of social analysis, or what have you.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so if the soul is real, because nothing makes sense without it, then there are consequences.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: A surprising number will share a conversion story, but for us no one no one has laid out the problem of good and evil, nor even uh evangelized for the need to recognize the human soul, to re-imbue humanity with a soul and that and and what the consequences of its loss is.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And similarly, without regaling you with my own experiences of of this, is this is part of what convinced me as well, the idea that ultimately when we're all headed to the grave, whilst doing so, we should try to do it as uprightly as possible, clearing out our own inner junkyard, but also by having um no sense of good and evil, even if you can recognize it when you see it, is that it has led to a moral and cultural decay, and that by throwing away the Christian heritage, uh at least talking in British terms, that this nation developed its institutions and moral codes upon, is actually what we have done has dehumanized ourselves.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is Christianity allowed humanity to raise itself up and imbued people and peoples with a dignity, and uh that everyone was held to an account, and we were all responsible for holding ourselves to that account as well.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when the deeds are written in the book of life, that we're able to look at the creator, the judge, and say try tried to weed it out, tried to live the best I could.
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and yes, the the impact of moral relativism and cultural relativism has been unbelievably deleterious, uh, both for the way that we engage with the world, unable to spot risks uh amongst us, but also for our own societies as we've tried to tell ourselves polite fictions which are leading to rather impolite consequences, which is to put it far too politely.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um But Tiras, before I let you go, perhaps you can tell us where we can find you uh on the internet, uh, your work and whether we can expect anything from you in the coming months and years.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you can find me on uh modadgeopolitics.com.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's where I do most of my geopolitics writing with a focus on what it means for businesses, which is a strange world to inhabit.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I work with clients in banking and insurance and in all kinds of other sectors.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can also find me on the Lotus Eaters.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm there a couple of times a week, and I do a geopolitics show as well called Realpolitics, so please do check it out.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you can find me on X under my own name, Firasmod.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Firasmodad, thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we get to speak again in the future, and I beseech my listeners to go and seek you out and follow your work.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Firas.