Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Is the killing of CHARLIE KIRK another symptom of a disintegrating political SYSTEM? With Prof. Will Davies

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Is the killing of CHARLIE KIRK another symptom of a disintegrating political SYSTEM? With Prof. Will Davies · The Smart Cookies podcast

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  Professor Will Davis is a sociologist and political
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  economist, writing on a whole range of diverse
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  topics, including neoliberalism, happiness science,
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  environmental politics, and anti -expert politics.
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  He's also the author of many impactful books,
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  such as The Happiness Industry and Nervous States.
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  Professor Davis, welcome to the program. Thanks
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  for having me. This podcast is being recorded
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  two days after the shooting of conservative political
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  activist Charlie Kirk and is probably going to
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  be published sometime next week. So at this time,
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  we still don't know who the killer is and what
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  his motives were. Not that that's going to stop
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  the conspiracy mill from happily churning on.
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  People are proclaiming this killing as some sort
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  of a watershed moment in the political history
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  of the US. I mean, this stuff is already having
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  real life consequences. This is unverified now,
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  but I just saw a video of a black man being savagely
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  beaten because he apparently said, fuck. Charlie
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  Kirk. And of course, there's a healthy dose of
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  of lunatic MAGA influencers who have been calling
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  for retaliatory violence against the Democrats
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  about 20 seconds after the man got killed. On
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  the other hand, there probably isn't anything
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  as genuinely American as assassinations of high
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  profile political figures. I mean, throughout
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  its history, pick a decade and you'll have dozens
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  of senators, activists and even. presidents who
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  have been at least shot at if not killed to pick
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  from so do you think the killing of charlie kirk
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  is a genuine sign of the ground shaking in the
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  u .s and the west or are we in the more um yeah
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  are we in the more kind of more of the same kind
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  of territory and this will all blow over once
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  the dust settles so everything is about the interpretation
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  of it. And as you've already alluded to, there's
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  already some huge amount of online framing of
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  it by the right, that this is the beginning of
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  some new kind of civil war. They obviously, there's
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  a lot of voices on the MAGA rights, including
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  people like Elon Musk and others, who would welcome
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  an opportunity to initiate a more sort of I suppose,
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  a more literally violent version of the culture
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  wars, something which might give additional permission
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  to... get troops out into cities, but also particularly
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  to crack down on particular areas of higher education,
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  which has already obviously been going on. But
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  we know from the history of fascism in Italy
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  in the early 1920s and in Germany in the early
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  1930s, that these kinds of moments can be extremely
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  pivotal in terms of giving apparent empirical
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  evidence for what the far right has already been
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  claiming about the incipient revolutionary threat
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  of the radical left. I mean, this fascism begins
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  as a counter -revolutionary. mobilization against
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  some perceived insurrection coming from the left.
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  There was a key moment in the rise of Mussolini
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  in the 1920s with the Diana Theatre bombing,
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  which was a failed anarchist attempt at an assassination,
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  but which led to this martyrdom that was developed
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  by the fascists of the victims of that bombing.
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  So as to basically ram home in people's imaginations
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  that they were under imminent threat from communists.
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  And already Trump has talked about giving Charlie
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  Kirk the Medal of Freedom as a way of trying
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  to, you know, they're going to elevate him and
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  they're going to try to do what they can via
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  social media and other media that's available
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  to ensure that this does not seem like this is
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  another fairly indecipherable act of violence
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  and that it is seen as very freighted with political
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  significance. I guess that means that for those
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  who want to, you know, the problem is that the
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  way to oppose that is to try to get to the bottom
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  of what's actually happened, who the killer actually
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  was. Were there actual intentions and ideas?
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  And you'd probably discover quite late on that
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  this was a far messier, more complicated agenda
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  than the right would like there to be. I mean,
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  already yesterday, the Wall Street Journal was
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  publishing some rumour that I think is completely
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  unverified. There were these statements of gender
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  ideology on the gun itself, which in a way, I
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  mean, it made me think back to the... Christchurch
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  massacre where somebody opened fire in a mosque
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  in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was live streaming
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  himself with all of these kind of slogans from
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  outright online media and shouting, subscribe
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  to PewDiePie, the radical right gamer. I mean,
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  sometimes you get these acts of murder that are
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  extremely explicit. in their stated ideologies.
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  And of course, the right would like to find that
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  there was something like that. Unfortunately,
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  I think we need to, given the politicization
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  of the FBI and all these other things, we probably
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  need to treat all of the evidence that now comes
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  out about, because apparently just today, someone
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  has been taken into custody. I think we have
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  to be quite suspicious of what gets released
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  to the media about the identity of this person
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  and what their background was, because there's
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  going to be so much political weight placed upon
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  them being a radical left activist with a particular
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  ideological axe grind. I mean, and on the other
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  hand, do we even know about the guy who tried
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  to assassinate Trump? We still don't know about
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  his motives. And it's been like... No, I mean,
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  these things tend to be a model, really. I mean,
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  you know, it's sort of in lots of these situations.
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  I mean, whenever, you know, often people talk
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  about when someone... When someone went and opened
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  fire in a gay nightclub in Florida, that sort
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  of act gets interpreted as some kind of lone
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  wolf killer with mental health issues. So, you
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  know, there's always a sort of, you know, you
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  get these different framings get creative. But
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  normally, I think at the heart of these things
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  is someone who's got all sorts of disturbances
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  in their lives and they don't fit tidily into
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  categories. It probably doesn't help that, I
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  mean, America, like any other place, is, you
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  know, dealing with increasing mental illness
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  issues, but it doesn't have a national free health
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  care plan. And it's full of guns. And it's full
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  of guns. Yeah, it's full of guns. So that's the
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  really frightening thing. And I would, I mean,
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  I'm not saying I would be necessarily scared
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  for my life, but I mean, I think if, you know,
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  if, or maybe one would be, I don't know. But
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  I mean, if we know from the precedent of... the
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  way, say, Orban has worked in Hungary, that there
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  are particular areas of quote -unquote woke scholarship
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  that become a kind of proxy for their idea of
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  what the radical left is, in particular gender
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  studies and post -colonial studies. And I think,
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  I mean, although, of course, you know, what the
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  hell's that got to do with an assassination of
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  this guy? Well, of course, he was a turning point.
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  His organization was notorious and spread fear
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  amongst academics already for the way in which
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  it tried to kind of isolate particular individuals.
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  It created lists of people who were considered
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  to be political activists and tried to make them
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  feel afraid of being kind of exposed. afraid
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  of how conservative students might respond to
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  them and so on. So I think that there is already
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  a connection there with what's going on on campuses.
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  And we know that obviously the attempt to crack
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  down on the particular theoretical currents and
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  critical theory on campuses has always been a
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  very noted aspect of the current Trump agenda
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  and the heritage foundation ideas that have circled
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  around over recent years. I wanted to ask actually
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  this with my opener. What kind of a system are
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  we actually living in right now? Because this
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  bizarre consortium of... ill -adjusted tech bros
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  and senile octogenarian politicians running the
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  entire circus doesn't seem to resemble any sort
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  of neoliberal free market capitalism of my youth
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  anymore, not even in a fever dream. Yeah, I mean,
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  I don't have my own preferred name for it. You're
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  probably familiar with some of the names that
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  get thrown around. People talk about techno -feudalism,
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  which is... Partly, I think the appeal of the
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  concept of feudalism right now stems from various
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  things. I mean, one is that there is this extreme
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  inequality that's developing, particularly wealth
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  inequality. these kind of quasi medieval figures
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  of Bezos and Zuckerberg and so on, whose wealth
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  amounts to, is on a scale that is greater than
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  vast populations. I think the other thing is
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  the marginalization of the labor market, because
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  capitalism, a central institution of capitalism
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  by basically any account, not just a Marxist
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  one, but... Part of the question of how capitalism
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  arose in early modern times is the question of
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  how did wage labor come about? And we are clearly
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  moving in the direction of something in which
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  the labor market, based around the pricing and
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  the selling of labor, is being steadily marginalized.
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  Maybe not in the sense that people no longer...
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  sell their time for money because clearly they
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  do but that uh it is losing its i guess you could
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  say hegemonic position within the legitimation
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  and the organization of of uh of profit making
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  and of extraction um partly because we know that
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  We have all of these, you know, the owners of
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  these platforms that are now the wealthiest men
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  in the United States. They don't really generate
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  very much employment, these corporations and
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  the area where there's been. this extraordinary
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  scale of entirely speculative investment in AI
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  infrastructure and data centers to support it,
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  which there's much debate and discussion at the
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  moment as to whether or not this whole thing
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  could just kind of pop and that if it doesn't
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  deliver in any sense, then you're just going
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  to have a huge amount of overinvestment in things
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  that actually don't render themselves worthwhile.
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  So you've got an entire kind of nation at the
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  moment. international system willing this infrastructure
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  and these investments into something that will
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  work, but there's no guarantee that they will.
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  But again, that is something which is almost
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  premised on the idea that vast swathes of the
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  labor market can just be effectively kind of
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  eradicated, particularly in white collar work.
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  So there's that sort of feudal thesis. I think
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  that, and then there's a neo -feudalism, techno
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  -feudalism. I, in my own work, have written a...
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  a couple of things in the last decade. I mean,
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  some of this was in my first book, The Limits
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  of Neoliberalism, where I tried to understand
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  post -global financial crisis capitalism, that
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  is the global financial crisis of 2008, as a
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  form of neoliberalism that exists in a kind of
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  state of exception, that is without, I guess,
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  without the resources to justify itself. legally
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  um hegemonically morally and that in that sense
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  it involves constant um uh kind of operating
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  in a spirit of constant contingency um and this
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  is actually i saw that adam twos um had in a
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  recent substack essay when talking about the
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  relationship between the White House and Columbia
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  University, which is where he works, talking
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  about this not as fascism, but as a form of,
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  I can't remember the word he used, but effectively
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  a kind of constant contingent governance that
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  instead of governing via principles, rules, systems
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  and norms, which is really what capitalism is
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  built upon to some extent, it's certainly...
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  Capital and financial capital welcome predictability
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  of politics above all else. But instead, you've
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  got this kind of constant deal making. Everything
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  becomes a kind of contingent deal to be made
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  here. And the separation of politics and economics
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  kind of falls apart effectively because, you
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  know, if somebody pisses off. President Trump
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  overseas, then suddenly he might slap a tariff
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  on some business where they have some kind of
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  interest in it. So everything becomes about about
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  dealmaking, the dealmaking state. Now, that's
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  a more kind of in some ways, even more crisis
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  prone system than the one that I was. talking
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  about in relation to which was more in the sort
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  of immediate post -2008 period but i think you've
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  got elements of neoliberalism but which lacking
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  the overarching narrative which allowed um ideas
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  of of of meritocracy of competition of inequality
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  but sort of earned inequality those sorts of
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  narratives and normative and legal resources
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  that allowed neoliberalism to achieve a hegemony
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  before 2008 they've been abandoned instead what
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  you have is a more kind of nakedly um sovereignist
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  version of neoliberalism, in which some of that
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  sovereignty, I think we do have to accept as
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  some of it has sort of drifted out to these platform
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  owners that do have powers that I think... can
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  be understood more along the lines of sovereignty
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  than along the lines of economic categories.
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  I mean, obviously, it's rentier capitalism. That
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  much is clear, that the profits depend on rents
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  from property rights. But there is also something
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  that feels quasi -feudal in the sense that forms
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  of sovereignty have drifted out from the state
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  towards some of these other kind of baronial
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  figures. People talk about libertarian authoritarianism
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  as well, but I'm a little bit confused because
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  I thought the whole point of libertarianism is
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  that its most elementary guiding principle is
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  that they want the government to basically piss
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  off and, you know, let's sell off the fire department
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  and the hospitals to some monopoly tycoon. So
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  there's no interference in trade whatsoever because
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  what we have right now seems like the opposite
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  of that. Like you just explained, just some sort
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  of weird deal -making scheme. I'm just sort of
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  thinking through some different categories that
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  we can use for this. And one of the distinctions
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  that I have found quite useful in trying to understand
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  some of this in recent years is a distinction
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  between, which you find in the work of someone
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  like Michel Foucault, for instance, between sovereignty,
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  which is a kind of... heavily centralised, ultimately
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  violent power that resides in particular, that
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  is the kind of reserve of power that is manifest
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  in the ability to wage violence, to wage war,
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  to also to suspend the law, which is what Carl
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  Schmitt asserted, versus a different idea of
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  power, which is government. And government is...
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  that which operates through bureaucracies, through
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  the maintenance of data archives, through the
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  delivery and the optimization of various interventions
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  in the economy and in society and it's what allows
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  there to be things like a public health policy
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  it allows there to be uh if you have an agenda
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  for say you know the management of a of a pandemic
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  or uh the if you say we want to have you know
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  all children being able to read by a certain
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  age these sorts of things these are kind of clearly
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  political objectives but they don't work through
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  sovereignty they work through government and
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  government is is more about achieving, what Foucault
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  stressed, government is more about achieving
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  effective networks of expertise and information
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  between central bureaucratic bodies and more
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  kind of arm's length entities, such as hospitals
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  or schools, but also conscripting various alliances
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  through the forms of centres of expertise and
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  audit and regulation and so on. And I think in
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  a way... One way of understanding authoritarian
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  libertarianism, which as you say sounds like
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  a paradox, is that it is a kind of an attack
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  by sovereign power on governmental power. And
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  you can see this very clearly in, say, you know,
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  well, although Elon Musk has stood down from
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  Doge now, Doge was an instance of this. And it
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  wasn't even, I mean, it said it was going to
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  save money. It didn't even successfully save
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  any money because it attacked the tax base so
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  badly. It attacked the ability to raise taxes
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  because it was also going after the IRC, the
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  revenue raising body in the United States tax
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  office. That actually, I think fiscally, it will
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  turn out to actually be a kind of net negative.
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  But ideologically, it made it much harder. And
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  obviously, there was also the attack on USAID,
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  the ability to do development programs. You've
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  also got what Robert F. Kennedy is doing in relation
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  to public health policy, which is just kind of
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  insane. this sort of anti -vax, anti -public
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  health agenda. Meanwhile, you've got troops on
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  the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, D
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  .C. So you've got this huge assertion of one
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  kind of power, but a great withdrawal of another
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  kind of power. And there is a... There isn't
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  ideological genealogy here. I mean, there's recently
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  been some really good books on an aspect of the
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  right that was rather overlooked. People just
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  thought it was too weird and crazy. There's Quinn
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  Slobodian's book, Hayek's Bastards, which is
• 18:32
  a book about what happened to elements of the
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  neoliberal intellectual scene over the course
• 18:38
  of the, I guess, particularly after the fall
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  of communism, that the enemy of many... conservative
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  neoliberals had been defeated. And so they began
• 18:47
  to find new enemies elsewhere. And those enemies
• 18:49
  included agendas for racial equality, for gender
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  equality, agendas for, you know, to try to develop
• 19:00
  the global south and to achieve greater inequality,
• 19:03
  and also agendas around preventing climate change,
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  that these sorts of things became the new enemy.
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  And the particular factions of the libertarian
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  neoliberal right. started to mobilize against
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  that. And the key figure in much of this was
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  Murray Rothbard, who was really the leading voice
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  of what you could, well, he would have said libertarianism
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  or paleo -libertarianism, but it certainly had
• 19:27
  strong authoritarian dimensions because in order
• 19:31
  to try to... attack you know the the sources
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  of what what he would have considered to be socialism
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  inside the federal government and inside uh whatever
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  you know might be the european commission or
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  whatever it might be you need to have some quite
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  strong authoritarian instruments of power in
• 19:49
  order to attack the state so one bit of the state
• 19:51
  is attacking another bit of the state but also
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  these this this agenda was fervently anti um
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  immigration and very suspicious of racial integration
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  and of multiculturalism on the basis that, and
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  this is what Slobodian's book is very good at
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  demonstrating, that many of these people held
• 20:12
  on to quite biological racist ideas of inequality
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  and they believe that mixing and of, you know,
• 20:21
  breeding between different races was ultimately,
• 20:24
  from some kind of Darwinist perspective, was
• 20:27
  going to have negative outcomes. And clearly
• 20:31
  someone like Elon Musk now subscribes to this
• 20:33
  kind of worldview. These sorts of ideas that
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  only 15 years ago would have been considered
• 20:38
  to belong only on the worst forms of outright
• 20:42
  message boards and so on, have now got... kind
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  of roots directly to the mainstream of American
• 20:48
  politics, and I think are also circulating around
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  European politics quite a lot. The other book,
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  which is worth reading if people are interested
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  in this, is When the Clock Broke by John Gans,
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  which is also about a very similar period in
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  American history, the early 1990s, when he shows
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  that with things like the shock jocks like Rush
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  Limbaugh, the Pat Buchanan campaign for the Republican
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  nomination in 1992, and... Rothbard was also
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  sort of circling here. But you have this moment
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  where a really extreme version of what can only
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  really be described as the far right agenda suddenly
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  gets roused. It's just that it then disappears
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  again and people forget about it. And it's really
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  come back very strongly and explicitly in the
• 21:34
  last few years. What is the ultimate aim then?
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  Just like an absence of state? You said it's
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  like a part of state battling another part of
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  that same state. I guess you would say, yeah,
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  I mean, I think you could say that a restoration
• 21:51
  of both racial and gender inequality, I think
• 21:55
  a reversal of the gains of feminism and of civil
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  rights. I mean, you know. Mark Andreessen, who
• 22:04
  is a venture capitalist and the founder of the
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  first web browser, Mosaic, back in the 90s. He
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  was the founder of Substack. He was a pretty
• 22:16
  kind of centrist, liberal guy. He was sort of
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  pro -Clinton, pro -Obama, so on. And he kind
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  of got radicalized in the last few years. But
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  he wrote this techno -utopian manifesto on his
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  blog a year or two ago. That's usually a bad
• 22:29
  sign. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But he says, you know,
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  that we have it was I think it was 2023, 24.
• 22:37
  And he says it's he says this country has. I
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  can't remember how he puts it, but effectively
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  has lost its way. The years he used was over
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  the last 60 years. He said 60 years. And if you
• 22:47
  go back 60 years before, whenever that was, 2022,
• 22:50
  23, I think it was, something like that, you're
• 22:52
  back before the American Civil Rights Act. So
• 22:54
  the Civil Rights Act, which Lyndon Johnson signed
• 22:56
  in 1965, saying with the words, you know, I think
• 23:00
  I just lost the South, this famous moment in
• 23:02
  the establishment of... democracy, really, in
• 23:06
  the United States. This is something which I
• 23:08
  think could now be seen as a kind of, you know,
• 23:11
  a wrong turn by aspects of the Silicon Valley
• 23:14
  right, in a way that, you know, you only go back
• 23:16
  to the Obama years, and they wouldn't have countenanced
• 23:18
  anything of the sort. So this has happened quite
• 23:19
  quickly. But equally, I think, gender inequality,
• 23:23
  the gains of feminism, this is something, I mean,
• 23:26
  leaving aside that, obviously, there are things
• 23:28
  that they, that they would be far more explicit
• 23:32
  about in relation to gender identity and issues
• 23:36
  around trans. And those are the sorts of things
• 23:40
  where they've been much more kind of explicit
• 23:43
  and outspoken. But I think that, you know, it's
• 23:47
  becoming clear that the gains of feminism since
• 23:50
  the 1960s also need to be reversed. And I think,
• 23:53
  you know, that means that you have a restoration.
• 23:56
  And someone like J .D. Vance is relatively explicit
• 23:58
  about this, that you have a... restoration of
• 24:00
  a certain version of the patriarchal family unit
• 24:04
  as the basis for economic and independence and
• 24:08
  social care. And that way, you don't need to
• 24:10
  have those forms of government to go back to
• 24:14
  the distinction I was making earlier. But you
• 24:17
  do have a very strong form of potentially a very
• 24:20
  strong form of kind of police state and you have
• 24:22
  very strong borders and you attack. I mean, we
• 24:26
  know this is already happening. You try and attack
• 24:28
  the sources of so -called woke ideology and all
• 24:31
  sorts of areas of whether it be the funding and
• 24:34
  governance of museums and art galleries and the
• 24:36
  cultural sector. in our education and so on.
• 24:41
  And clearly, you know, there's a lot of bullying
• 24:44
  already going on in relation to higher education
• 24:46
  to try to get them to change their hiring practices
• 24:49
  and their curricula as a condition of continuing
• 24:50
  to receive federal income. And I mean, where
• 24:53
  I think, you know, where MAGA have been. you
• 24:57
  know, quite smart in some ways. And I don't think
• 24:59
  that, as I recall, I don't think this was nearly
• 25:03
  such an agenda in the first Trump administration,
• 25:05
  is the recognition that there are all sorts of
• 25:08
  parts of society that are vulnerable to fiscal
• 25:12
  disruption. And this is what Trump keeps saying,
• 25:15
  you know, we can just withdraw, we can get people
• 25:18
  to come and beg and comply with us as a condition
• 25:21
  of continuing to receive federal income. So that...
• 25:26
  I think that use of the fiscal state as a way
• 25:28
  to advance particular cultural agendas and programs
• 25:32
  is something that is, you know, clearly was planned
• 25:38
  and is a key part of their program. What's with
• 25:44
  this weird obsession with the 60s presenting
• 25:47
  as some sort of like a go -to utopia every time
• 25:51
  where everything was just perfect? I was just
• 25:52
  like watching a documentary and almost everybody
• 25:55
  that was notable was killed in the 60s. You know,
• 25:57
  JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X,
• 26:01
  Martin Luther King. It doesn't seem like a very
• 26:04
  pleasant time for anybody. It's the 50s that
• 26:08
  they want. I mean, or you could, it's either
• 26:11
  the 50s, it's either the 1950s or it's the 1850s.
• 26:13
  I mean, that's the, you know, it's like, but
• 26:15
  I mean, there is a kind of, you know, there is
• 26:17
  a sort of radical reactionary vision, which goes
• 26:21
  the whole way back to something as a pre -Civil
• 26:24
  War America. Let's say the more, slightly more,
• 26:29
  I mean, you know, after all, so. They've managed
• 26:33
  to reverse Roe v. Wade, the abortion ruling.
• 26:35
  That was early 1970s. The Civil Rights Act of
• 26:41
  1965, I think, I mean, they haven't explicitly
• 26:44
  said that they want to annul that, but it's,
• 26:46
  I mean, there's been, I mean, voter suppression
• 26:48
  in the United States has been so endemic in recent
• 26:52
  years that it's perfectly clear that racist policies
• 26:57
  around voting rights have been in effect for
• 27:01
  some, exactly, and various other ways of keeping
• 27:04
  black people from voting. Yeah, so I think 1950s,
• 27:09
  Pre -feminism, pre -civil rights, certainly pre
• 27:13
  -abortion. I think that the interpretation of
• 27:20
  the 1960s and 1970s is that there was a culture
• 27:25
  war that was led by... the kind of draft dodging
• 27:31
  middle class graduates, hippies, but maybe not
• 27:36
  even the hippies. I mean, maybe, you know, someone
• 27:38
  like Bill Clinton, you know, these sort of people
• 27:40
  who are, you know, people who are, let's just
• 27:43
  call them liberals. Hardly a revolutionary though.
• 27:45
  No, exactly. I mean, I think what they, well,
• 27:48
  so it's now the term that is. thrown around a
• 27:50
  lot is the professional managerial class which
• 27:52
  consists of people who basically went to university
• 27:55
  work in either the public sector or education
• 27:59
  or the liberal media or some other professional
• 28:05
  services. And that these people have basically
• 28:08
  kind of won over the last 60 years. It's their
• 28:12
  agenda that has basically won. And in spite of
• 28:15
  Reagan, in spite of, you know, Bush Jr. or whatever,
• 28:18
  these people have basically taken over the country
• 28:20
  and that the other side has basically been defeated
• 28:23
  over and over and over again. That's, I think,
• 28:27
  the diagnosis that the MAGA right would make.
• 28:32
  Which is not that different. I mean, just, you
• 28:33
  know, we see this elements of this in Europe.
• 28:35
  I mean, there are people around Nigel Farage
• 28:38
  in the UK and around the Brexit agenda, which
• 28:42
  would say that, you know, in some these people,
• 28:46
  a lot of them, they say they basically think
• 28:49
  that Tony Blair is almost still in power. You
• 28:51
  know, they're so sort of obsessed with a certain
• 28:53
  vision of liberal. socially liberal hegemony,
• 28:58
  that they refuse to accept that the right has
• 29:02
  even got anywhere near power for the last 40
• 29:03
  years. It's quite bizarre. Haven't the conservatives
• 29:05
  been in power for the past 14 years before liberty?
• 29:08
  Yeah, exactly. They kind of almost deny that.
• 29:10
  It's very strange. Well, they would say that...
• 29:13
  that some sort of woke elite has actually been
• 29:16
  in power because they're the ones who staff the
• 29:18
  civil service and they control the universities
• 29:20
  and the museums and the schools and all this
• 29:23
  sort of stuff, the media, BBC. Anyway, so they
• 29:27
  would say that that's what's been going on and
• 29:30
  that we've just been losing over and over and
• 29:31
  over again and now finally we're going to start
• 29:33
  fighting back and this is how we have to do it.
• 29:34
  That's roughly how the narrative works. If we
• 29:37
  go back to whatever this system that we live
• 29:40
  in now is, is there perhaps a better summary
• 29:43
  of our times than this recent cringe fest of
• 29:47
  a dinner at the White House where Mark Zuckerberg,
• 29:49
  Sam Altman from OpenAI, and the rest of these
• 29:52
  awkward CEO penguins were just pitifully groveling
• 29:55
  at the feet of the mad czar? publicly lavishing
• 29:58
  him with ever more extravagant adjectives before
• 30:01
  they were able to get a word in themselves i
• 30:04
  mean these are pretty mad scenes and we're just
• 30:06
  acting like this is the new normal now I mean,
• 30:10
  yeah, no, it's it's I don't know if you I don't
• 30:12
  think there's a I mean, other than some sort
• 30:14
  of other than monarchy or something or or just
• 30:17
  sort of it's tempting to diagnose the problem.
• 30:20
  Psychiatrically, I mean, there's clearly a kind
• 30:21
  of narcissistic personality disorder of some
• 30:23
  kind going on or possibly dementia or whatever
• 30:25
  with with Trump himself, which is which is a
• 30:28
  factor because it's clear that he's he's he's
• 30:30
  got a very slim grip on reality. So there's that.
• 30:35
  I think. Clearly, they have business interests
• 30:38
  in all of this. Apple has particular business
• 30:43
  interests in trying to avoid the tariffs in relation
• 30:47
  to its business interests in manufacturing interests
• 30:49
  in China. And they all believe that they can
• 30:56
  work with the state to pursue their interests
• 30:59
  in. artificial intelligence um and i mean in
• 31:03
  some cases in things like crypto um so this and
• 31:07
  this is the first step towards doing so i mean
• 31:09
  it's pretty humiliating that they had to get
• 31:11
  filmed doing all of that um but uh I mean, they're
• 31:16
  treating him now like a kind of, yeah, sort of
• 31:19
  medieval monarch who needs this kind of behavior
• 31:23
  as a way of beginning some kind of negotiation.
• 31:27
  It's hard to know what more to say about it than
• 31:28
  that, because it is so weird. It's clearly not
• 31:32
  normal in any sense. And it's pretty, it's hard
• 31:38
  to think how the U .S. presidency, or for that
• 31:41
  matter, kind of the U .S. corporate executive
• 31:44
  class can recover ever from that kind of spectacle,
• 31:48
  because how can anyone come along and try to
• 31:52
  sort of recreate some kind of credibility, let
• 31:56
  alone some kind of moral credibility, when these
• 32:01
  offices have been kind of sort of trashed and
• 32:04
  treated in that way? Yeah, at the end of the
• 32:08
  day, can we really talk of a system of any kind
• 32:11
  here at all? I mean, isn't this, like you said,
• 32:13
  just a bunch of greedy men suffering from narcissism
• 32:16
  disorders and delusions of grandeur? Because,
• 32:19
  for example, it doesn't look like Donald Trump
• 32:21
  has any sort of a program, really. Sure, he's
• 32:23
  got a few talking points that he keeps repeating,
• 32:25
  but we would be kind of hard -pressed to find
• 32:28
  a shred of any kind of a coherent... political
• 32:31
  thought there he's not suddenly going to pull
• 32:32
  out a quote from milton friedman out of his head
• 32:35
  or something no he won't but i think the uh you
• 32:38
  know the i think the um uh there is a background
• 32:43
  I mean, there has been a lot of thinking done
• 32:44
  about this particular this version of this Trump
• 32:47
  administration, unlike, I think, 2016. So there's
• 32:49
  the Project 2025 document, which a lot of people
• 32:53
  have studied to try and understand where these
• 32:54
  ideas came from. The agenda with tariffs, I think,
• 32:58
  has been it's not although it was kind of kind
• 33:01
  of comically, you know, there was something just
• 33:06
  sort of absurd, like a game show about the way
• 33:08
  he kind of initially unveiled it on that Freedom
• 33:09
  Day. Clearly, this is an agenda that some people
• 33:14
  have actually got a stake in to some extent.
• 33:18
  And the attempt to drastically re -engineer the
• 33:25
  federal government to shrink it, to reduce its
• 33:32
  obligations to certain sections of the population,
• 33:35
  but also to things like the environment, to the
• 33:38
  global south. There is a kind of I guess that's
• 33:41
  the America first agenda is that the U .S. federal
• 33:46
  government remains. I mean, after all, America
• 33:48
  first is is as an idea is premised on the idea
• 33:53
  that U .S. hegemony is over, that the U .S. is
• 33:57
  no longer some kind of global power. And therefore,
• 34:00
  what reserves of power it has, whether that be
• 34:02
  in the Federal Reserve or in the Pentagon or
• 34:06
  wherever else now needs to be put to the service.
• 34:10
  purely of the United States of America as a national
• 34:13
  project and that it doesn't owe anything to anyone.
• 34:16
  But that also involves obviously a shrinkage
• 34:19
  of who is considered to be a member of that national
• 34:22
  community, which is where ICE comes in and this
• 34:25
  deportation agenda and the frankly sadistic way
• 34:30
  in which that is being carried out and bragged
• 34:34
  about via the media and social media. So I think
• 34:37
  these things... There is a kind of a coherent
• 34:40
  agenda here. And some people will call it fascist.
• 34:44
  Some people will call it mercantilist. Some people
• 34:48
  will say that it's a kind of symptom of post
• 34:53
  -hegemonic decline and so on. But I think bits
• 34:58
  of it do add up. I think the curious thing is
• 35:03
  that Trump himself... has this mania and speaks
• 35:08
  incoherently, generates a lot of, I mean, he's
• 35:11
  very, very good televisual content. I mean, there's
• 35:14
  no question of that. I mean, it's very difficult
• 35:16
  not to focus on him and talk about him as we're
• 35:18
  doing right now. But yeah, that adds an element
• 35:25
  of theatre to the whole thing. But I think in
• 35:26
  the background, you could say there's something,
• 35:28
  there is something more steady and purposeful
• 35:31
  going on. Couldn't we just call this a case of
• 35:34
  the good old fashioned oligarchy? Yeah, sure.
• 35:37
  No, that's right. And I think that's what, you
• 35:38
  know, someone like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
• 35:41
  Ocasio -Cortez have. I mean, when Trump first
• 35:43
  got in, they went on their sort of stump tour
• 35:46
  of the United States trying to talk about taking
• 35:48
  on the oligarchs. So that I think that's right.
• 35:51
  And I mean, the other thing we should say about
• 35:52
  Trump is it's clear that he's going to he's exploiting
• 35:56
  his office for. private financial gain and for
• 36:01
  the gain of his family to a crazy extent. I mean,
• 36:06
  they are just raking in billions of pounds into
• 36:08
  their own private accounts through the use of
• 36:14
  the presidency as a business opportunity. I mean,
• 36:17
  he remains a kind of grubby businessman, basically,
• 36:19
  and so do his sons. So there's also that going
• 36:23
  on. I mean, there was a nice study, nice paper
• 36:27
  done. The U .S. sociologist Dylan Riley, when
• 36:30
  Trump got in initially in 2016 and people were
• 36:33
  asking, what do we say about, you know, people
• 36:35
  saying, is this populism or is it fascism or
• 36:37
  what is this? And Dylan Riley went back and read
• 36:40
  work by the great sociologist Max Weber on different
• 36:46
  forms of authority. And Weber is famous for distinguishing
• 36:49
  traditional authority from bureaucratic, from
• 36:52
  charismatic as being the kind of three different.
• 36:54
  what he called ideal types of authority. But
• 36:56
  Reilly pointed out that there is actually an
• 36:58
  additional type of authority that he thinks helps
• 37:02
  explain Trump, which is what he calls patrimonial
• 37:04
  authority, where effectively political office...
• 37:07
  uh becomes indistinguishable from the household
• 37:10
  and the the the trump family um you know which
• 37:14
  is he was in the first term he was appointing
• 37:17
  uh his daughter and to various offices but also
• 37:21
  the way his sons have always sort of hovered
• 37:23
  around him in various ways but effectively that
• 37:26
  you know the the the household and the public
• 37:30
  office, the distinction between the two blurs,
• 37:33
  it sort of dissolves, basically. And for Weber,
• 37:35
  it's a defining feature of modern public office
• 37:38
  that there is a distinction between the role
• 37:41
  you play in your office and the role you play
• 37:43
  in private. These two get kept very separate,
• 37:45
  which is why if a civil servant is found to be
• 37:48
  taking money from a private source, this is a
• 37:52
  scandal. But for Trump, it's not a scandal at
• 37:55
  all. It's just complete common sense. It is a
• 37:57
  completely obvious thing to be doing is that
• 37:59
  you're in this position. You've got this fame
• 38:01
  and you've got all of these opportunities and
• 38:03
  you just take all of them. You know, who was
• 38:04
  it? He got given that jumbo jet. I mean, that
• 38:07
  was so surreal. Do you remember? I mean, so much
• 38:09
  happens. It's easy to forget what happened like
• 38:11
  two months ago. I'm still with the golden sneakers
• 38:14
  and Trump's own cryptocurrency. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:19
  All that. I mean, it's just surreal. And there's
• 38:20
  so much of it that it's hard to keep track. But
• 38:22
  it's not, there's no sense of... that there's
• 38:25
  even anything wrong being done. And I think it's
• 38:29
  why understanding this along some pre -modern
• 38:33
  vision of patrimonial authority does at least
• 38:36
  explain what its own internal logic is. Now,
• 38:43
  I don't labor under a misapprehension that this
• 38:45
  unholy alliance between big business and the
• 38:48
  state began under Trump. It was obviously happening
• 38:51
  under the Democrats, too. But these so -called
• 38:53
  tech titans that you already mentioned, Musk,
• 38:56
  Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc., were literally posing
• 38:59
  with Trump during the inauguration, like they
• 39:02
  are part of the administration. And that was
• 39:04
  probably intended to send a pretty clear message,
• 39:07
  wasn't it? Yeah, I think. I mean, they are obviously
• 39:13
  a different type of businessman from the executives
• 39:17
  that we've seen in the last, I guess, at least
• 39:22
  the last hundred years. I mean, there are sometimes
• 39:24
  analogies made between the so -called robber
• 39:27
  barons and the people like Rockefeller and J
• 39:29
  .P. Morgan in the late 19th century, where certain
• 39:33
  individuals' wealth. took off out of all proportion
• 39:36
  to the growth in incomes and welfare anywhere
• 39:39
  else and granted them a form of political and
• 39:43
  cultural power that would not be available to
• 39:46
  just a regular kind of business executive. So
• 39:49
  they already have that kind of outsized political
• 39:52
  status as a sheer effect of levels of wealth
• 39:56
  that we've never seen before. I mean, it was
• 39:58
  just released that Elon Musk is probably going
• 40:01
  to be the first trillionaire in the planet's
• 40:03
  history. Well, I know that he and Bezos are sort
• 40:05
  of both in a bit of a race for that status. So
• 40:08
  this is pretty crazy. So there's that, which
• 40:13
  is that they do. It is a bit like having a kind
• 40:16
  of, you know, it's a bit like having a prominent
• 40:18
  dignitary from, you know, whatever, a president
• 40:22
  from another country or a previous president
• 40:23
  there. I mean, they have that kind of status.
• 40:25
  I think the other thing is we know and there's
• 40:29
  now been quite a lot written about the fact that
• 40:30
  Silicon Valley has. done a kind of 180 it's kind
• 40:35
  of pivoted uh towards um a more mega like agenda
• 40:39
  i mean i mentioned mark andreessen earlier um
• 40:42
  and that you know he's one example of that um
• 40:44
  but i mean hookerberg has sort of you know tried
• 40:49
  to renounce elements of a di diversity equality
• 40:54
  and inclusion agenda and so -called woke values
• 40:57
  um there's been some of that ideological shift
• 41:01
  going on in the background. I mean, there was
• 41:04
  the, this often gets referred to as the vibe
• 41:06
  shift, which after there was a rather silly article
• 41:10
  in the New York Times, New York Times and New
• 41:12
  York Magazine, I think early 2022, talking about
• 41:17
  the kind of basically the right wing anti -woke
• 41:22
  ideology had become kind of cool. So there was
• 41:25
  a sense that these. companies were no longer
• 41:30
  afraid of of of getting into bed with someone
• 41:33
  who might be considered well who would be considered
• 41:36
  to be a racist and a reactionary and a um uh
• 41:41
  all sorts of other things um and that they're
• 41:45
  not they they didn't feel so concerned about
• 41:48
  how that was going to harm them reputationally
• 41:50
  because one of the uh i think correct claims
• 41:55
  about what's sometimes called woke capital, is
• 41:59
  that for a good many years under Obama and afterwards,
• 42:04
  the values of the what might be called the social
• 42:10
  movement in the 1960s on gay rights, on the anti
• 42:16
  -racism, on feminism, that these values have
• 42:20
  been kind of co -opted by corporate America as
• 42:23
  a way of trying to sort of, you know, sell more.
• 42:26
  sell more goods. And this was something that
• 42:30
  many people in things like hedge funds and certain
• 42:33
  corners of Silicon Valley and venture capitalists
• 42:35
  found to be kind of ridiculous and preposterous
• 42:37
  and wanted to kind of push back against via Trump
• 42:40
  and so on. And I think that that pushback has
• 42:42
  succeeded now in the sense that. There is now
• 42:45
  a lot of talk of DEI programs being rolled back,
• 42:49
  of there was this whole thing about, you know,
• 42:50
  people taking their pronouns out of their, you
• 42:54
  know, biogs from LinkedIn and that kind of stuff
• 42:56
  as a way of trying to show that they were now
• 42:58
  with this new sort of post -woke cultural agenda.
• 43:01
  And I think, I mean, that played some role. But
• 43:04
  I mean, ultimately, people like... Ultimately,
• 43:07
  it's business self -interest for people like
• 43:09
  Zuckerberg and Bezos. Don't you think this is
• 43:10
  like pure opportunism that if the Democrats win
• 43:13
  again, a lot of these guys are just going to
• 43:16
  flip right back into their previous... No, no,
• 43:19
  sure. But I think the fact is that I think that
• 43:21
  the economic and the cultural and the political
• 43:23
  tendencies were sort of pulling... We're in alignment
• 43:28
  to some extent. I mean, this new tech bro element
• 43:32
  in the whole equation is fascinating. What do
• 43:34
  you think these fellas are... actually after,
• 43:36
  because they sure harbor some pretty strange
• 43:38
  ideas. I don't know if you've seen this, but
• 43:41
  Peter Thiel is apparently organizing a four -part
• 43:44
  lecture on the Antichrist soon, who he also recently
• 43:48
  said, I believe that it's probably Greta Thunberg.
• 43:52
  What is going on here with these people? Well,
• 43:57
  Thiel is obviously a sort of one -off, really.
• 43:59
  I mean, there's lots to be said about Thiel,
• 44:00
  and there's been lots written about Thiel, because
• 44:03
  Thiel is... in some ways, the one constant in
• 44:08
  all of this. I mean, he's stuck fairly closely
• 44:11
  to his agenda ever since being at Stanford in
• 44:15
  the late 1980s. And he's used his networks and
• 44:21
  his money to keep this kind of agenda alive.
• 44:26
  And obviously, he was a part of the PayPal mafia.
• 44:32
  He was also the person who has supported Curtis
• 44:36
  Yarvin, the near reactionary political guru.
• 44:40
  And so Thiel's moment has definitely arrived.
• 44:46
  I think Thiel would like to think of himself
• 44:52
  as a philosopher and a proper intellectual. take
• 44:57
  away all of his billions and it's not clear kind
• 44:59
  of what they would be exactly he'd be more like
• 45:01
  a kind of blogger or a sort of pamphleteer um
• 45:04
  it's not like there is that you know the people
• 45:08
  who they cling to are not always particularly
• 45:11
  sophisticated thinkers but they're extremely
• 45:13
  well capitalized ones um i mean yarvin i mean
• 45:16
  i haven't read all of the dark enlightenment
• 45:18
  stuff but i mean a lot of what he's he says and
• 45:21
  thinks seems to be fairly kind of crass kind
• 45:24
  of things that You know, you could imagine a
• 45:26
  sort of 16 year old gamer kind of coming out
• 45:28
  with quite a lot of this stuff. But what is it?
• 45:30
  What is it? Because I'm not familiar. Yeah, it's
• 45:32
  the idea that democracy is has democracy has
• 45:37
  had its day and that the corporate form, the
• 45:40
  benefit of capitalism is that there is the opportunity
• 45:44
  to exit. So if I don't like, you know, a company
• 45:49
  that I'm invested in or that I work for or a
• 45:51
  product that I'm buying and so on. What capitalism
• 45:54
  offers me is the ability to withdraw and go elsewhere.
• 45:57
  So this is a distinction that is in the ideas
• 46:00
  of the economic historian Albert Hirschman, who
• 46:03
  talks about exit and voice as two different ways
• 46:06
  of expressing discontent in economic life. And
• 46:12
  voice is what you do when you turn up to a meeting
• 46:13
  and you say, look, I think we should do things
• 46:15
  differently, like fire a trade union or something.
• 46:17
  I mean, Jarvin basically sees democracy, that
• 46:19
  democracy doesn't work. Democracy holds us all
• 46:22
  back because, and it's kind of got an air of
• 46:24
  sort of a sort of Nietzschean critique of equality
• 46:27
  about it, because in a sense, what it's not allowing
• 46:30
  to happen is the kind of flourishing of the minority
• 46:35
  of truly kind of elite or talented individuals.
• 46:37
  That sounds like a regurgitation of like Ayn
• 46:40
  Rand and Fountainhead. It's not that dissimilar,
• 46:42
  that's right. But it goes further into saying
• 46:44
  that effectively that a corporation, say take
• 46:47
  Amazon, is a little bit like a monarchy, with
• 46:51
  Jeff Bezos as the king. But there is nevertheless
• 46:55
  the opportunity for the employees to leave and
• 46:57
  go and work somewhere else. And I mean, Jarvin's
• 47:00
  vision of the international system is that you
• 47:02
  would have a kind of series of monarchical corporate
• 47:08
  entities in which people were at liberty to leave
• 47:13
  if they didn't like the way it was being run.
• 47:15
  Now, of course, that also, I mean, it's also
• 47:17
  quite racist. So there would also be, you know,
• 47:20
  there's a... I don't know exactly how it fits
• 47:21
  together with other dimensions of immigration
• 47:25
  and globalization. But there's the vision. And
• 47:30
  this is where you get the kind of, again, a kind
• 47:32
  of authoritarian libertarianism, which is the
• 47:34
  real political freedom would be the freedom to
• 47:37
  go and set up states along the lines, roughly
• 47:40
  like the founder of a Silicon Valley startup.
• 47:43
  And then people who wanted to join that. uh that
• 47:48
  state would be able to do so but on terms that
• 47:51
  were made clear from the outset i mean the other
• 47:53
  i mean quince lebodian who i mentioned earlier
• 47:55
  his book high ex -bastards he uh he has another
• 47:57
  book recently he's been very very productive
• 47:59
  in recent years called um crack up capitalism
• 48:02
  um and that is about the dreams it's it i think
• 48:06
  the subtitle is um something like capitalism
• 48:08
  and the dream of a world without democracy. And
• 48:11
  in that book, he argues that for a long time,
• 48:14
  many libertarians and neoliberals had long looked
• 48:16
  at Hong Kong as being a, and this was while Hong
• 48:19
  Kong was still a, whatever it was, a sub, whatever
• 48:24
  it was, a territory of the United Kingdom. Exactly.
• 48:27
  And it was this outpost, it was a city, effectively
• 48:31
  a city state in which capitalism governed, but
• 48:34
  it was not. It was not a democracy. It was not
• 48:37
  communist. It was a city -state that was... governed
• 48:42
  by the logic of capitalism. I mean, Singapore
• 48:46
  often gets held up by a lot of these sorts of
• 48:49
  people as being another kind of example. And
• 48:51
  increasingly at the moment, Dubai would be the
• 48:53
  other instance of this. And there is a kind of
• 48:57
  right -wing meme. I mean, particularly amongst
• 48:59
  sometimes sort of discontented in my country,
• 49:02
  in Britain, there's this thing that goes around
• 49:06
  right -wing commentators, but also some of the
• 49:08
  sort of, I guess, sort of resentful nationalists
• 49:13
  for brexit voters um that oh you know this country's
• 49:17
  this country is finished it's you know it's full
• 49:20
  of woke bullshit and it's you know it's got too
• 49:22
  much immigration i'm moving to dubai this is
• 49:24
  always the thing it's like i'm going to get to
• 49:26
  dubai because they're you know they've got proper
• 49:28
  sort of property rights low taxes um It's, you
• 49:32
  know, it's run according to transparent principles
• 49:35
  of the market and it's got better weather and
• 49:37
  that kind of stuff. So there's this sort of there's
• 49:39
  a certain sort of idea that the 20th century
• 49:42
  liberal democracy with its welfare state and
• 49:44
  its civil rights and its rule of law, this whole
• 49:47
  thing has been outmoded by the rise of platform
• 49:49
  capitalism, the rise of these kind of more nimble,
• 49:55
  low tax city states where you don't worry about.
• 50:00
  things like human rights and voice and democracy,
• 50:03
  because all of those things are holding you back.
• 50:05
  And in a way, I think this is where someone like
• 50:06
  Peter Thiel and someone like Alex Karp, who is
• 50:11
  the founder and chief executive of Palantir.
• 50:15
  which was obviously initially supported by Teal
• 50:19
  and by the CIA. That guy's terrifying. No, he
• 50:23
  is. If you read his book, Technological Republic,
• 50:25
  he basically argues that Silicon Valley has lost
• 50:30
  its way because it's become too focused on consumers
• 50:32
  and users, and it needs to start putting all
• 50:35
  of its resources behind preparing for war, basically,
• 50:40
  creating things like AI. led killer drones and
• 50:44
  this sort of thing. So, I mean, he's pretty crazy.
• 50:47
  He was also a PhD student of Habermas. He's got
• 50:50
  this weird background in German philosophy. I
• 50:54
  think he started in Germany, actually. Yeah,
• 50:56
  he did, yeah. And the book, if you read Technological
• 50:58
  Republic, he's quite keen to sort of display
• 51:01
  that he's kind of got some philosophical background.
• 51:03
  But, you know, Karp and Thiel, I think, you know,
• 51:05
  part of what drives them now is they look at
• 51:09
  China, they can see that... Chinese capitalism
• 51:12
  has achieved things over the last 20 years that
• 51:16
  US capitalism would be completely incapable of
• 51:19
  achieving in terms of the development of infrastructures
• 51:23
  and cities and new energy resources and so on.
• 51:28
  And would, I think, partly take away a lesson
• 51:31
  that this is possible because they don't have
• 51:32
  things like human rights and democracy getting
• 51:37
  in the way and that we're now in a... in a more
• 51:40
  of a sort of – something more like a kind of
• 51:42
  Schumpeterian battle between rival entrepreneurs.
• 51:50
  The global economy could be understood more along
• 51:53
  the lines of a competition between corporate
• 51:56
  forms than of different sort of polities or constitutional
• 52:00
  forms. Why do you think these guys – by the way,
• 52:04
  it was really funny how they – how they talk
• 52:07
  about Singapore and Hong Kong and what was the
• 52:11
  third one? Dubai. And these are all like non
• 52:13
  -white, non -white countries. Yeah. But why do
• 52:17
  you think these guys are latching on to these
• 52:19
  like more crackpot thinkers? Why, why aren't
• 52:22
  they reading like Adam Smith and Karl Marx? Well,
• 52:26
  Karl Marx, I think we know why they're not reading
• 52:28
  Karl Marx. Okay. I mean, I mean, Adam Smith.
• 52:35
  There's nothing they would find in Adam Smith
• 52:37
  that would be useful to them at all. But I meant
• 52:39
  what was like, even if in opposition, they seem
• 52:42
  like they haven't even read the basic stuff first.
• 52:45
  That's what I meant. I think one thing we need
• 52:48
  to understand, and Thiel is, I think, again,
• 52:50
  a kind of key, constant thread in all of this,
• 52:53
  is that they would argue that higher education,
• 52:56
  that the Western university has been captured
• 52:59
  by the left. And I guess they would say it was
• 53:01
  captured by the left. in the 1960s so you have
• 53:04
  you know like the the kind of new left was a
• 53:07
  was a product of but you know the frankfurt school
• 53:09
  would be yes exactly that would be one one and
• 53:11
  there's a whole conspiracy theory around how
• 53:12
  the frankfurt yeah yeah i'm familiar um marxism
• 53:15
  into the grave yes yeah right um and um uh and
• 53:20
  and other aspects of what they call cultural
• 53:22
  marxism of gramsci and so on but i think they
• 53:24
  would say that I mean, correctly, the American
• 53:27
  New Left is something that began on, well, it
• 53:30
  began in Berkeley. It began on campuses and it
• 53:35
  was heavily tied up with anti -Vietnam movements.
• 53:38
  I mean, obviously also with free speech movement
• 53:41
  in Berkeley. There's a kind of irony there because
• 53:44
  I think, and there are figures of the New Left
• 53:46
  who flipped wholly to the kind of libertarian
• 53:49
  right. People like David Horowitz, whose son
• 53:52
  ended up. creating the venture capital fund that
• 53:54
  Mark Andreessen works with, a text called Andreessen
• 53:57
  Horowitz. Also someone like Murray Rothbard and
• 54:02
  Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman was actually
• 54:04
  an anarchist in his youth. I think he was from
• 54:10
  Brooklyn or the Bronx. He was from New York City.
• 54:12
  And so there's some of these sort of people who
• 54:16
  sort of flip, partly because I think they see,
• 54:19
  they develop a kind of disgust with their own
• 54:21
  kind of left -wing peers. But yeah, they would
• 54:24
  say that universities have been fully co -opted
• 54:28
  by the left and therefore you have to sort of
• 54:30
  operate outside of it. And Thiel was always of
• 54:32
  that view. I mean, he was at Stanford. whenever
• 54:35
  it was late late 80s early 90s and he created
• 54:38
  a philosophy journal called the stanford review
• 54:40
  but it was very much a kind of aim to be sort
• 54:43
  of heterodox uh the capture of ideas that were
• 54:45
  not basically being given what he thought was
• 54:48
  uh proper recognition by the whatever the philosophy
• 54:51
  department or by the the by the academy um and
• 54:55
  teal had this uh i'd say if he still has it but
• 54:58
  he has these this fellowship program where he
• 55:00
  he literally pays people large sums of money
• 55:03
  to just drop out of university. I mean, he's
• 55:05
  so convinced that being at university is a kind
• 55:07
  of way of brainwashing you into woke ideology,
• 55:10
  that a lot of this is about trying to circumvent
• 55:14
  universities, farm universities, get people to
• 55:17
  get a kind of an intellectual infrastructure
• 55:20
  outside of universities. I mean, the neoliberals
• 55:24
  did something a little bit similar with things
• 55:25
  like their think tanks and Montpelier Society
• 55:27
  and so on. And it's true that someone like Friedrich
• 55:29
  Hayek, until he got to And Chicago, I mean, Hayek
• 55:34
  ended up with quite a comfortable sort of life
• 55:37
  in the later years. But he was a bit of a nomad
• 55:41
  for a while between Vienna and LSE and sort of
• 55:44
  making trips over to the United States and back
• 55:47
  and so on. So there were some commonalities there.
• 55:50
  But I think now people like Thiel and Musk and
• 55:53
  the people around MAGA would... almost distrust
• 55:58
  things that had a kind of university stamp for
• 56:00
  approval on them. So I think that's the key issue.
• 56:05
  I mean, one of the things is, I think maybe why
• 56:08
  they're not reading Adam Smith or Karl Marx to
• 56:10
  me is relatively clear. I think one of the questions
• 56:12
  is, you know, if the World Bank was to put out
• 56:16
  a document with some empirical analysis, which
• 56:19
  I'm sure it has done, showing that tariffs are
• 56:22
  going to be bad for, you know, Because ultimately,
• 56:25
  the only measure that Trump really cares about
• 56:27
  is the stock market. He doesn't really care about
• 56:29
  jobs or GDP or any of these other things. It's
• 56:31
  the stock market and asset values because he's
• 56:34
  a real estate developer. But if the World Bank
• 56:37
  was to come out and show that tariffs were going
• 56:39
  to be bad for property developers in New York
• 56:41
  City and for the stock market. Would they take
• 56:45
  that seriously or would they convince themselves
• 56:47
  that even the World Bank was woke and prejudiced
• 56:50
  and in bed with the liberals and so on? I don't
• 56:52
  know. I mean, that's the that's the interesting
• 56:53
  thing, because, you know, there's so much and
• 56:56
  a lot of it is being played out at the moment
• 56:57
  in the kind of battle against the Federal Reserve,
• 57:00
  because the Federal Reserve is a kind of bastion
• 57:02
  of a certain form of small L liberal. expertise
• 57:06
  and economic, you know, sort of financial elitism,
• 57:10
  surely there must be something that they, there
• 57:13
  must be weapons within some of these institutions
• 57:16
  that they actually want and resources and insight
• 57:18
  and knowledge. I mean, there must be a limit
• 57:21
  to their stupidity, if you like. Maybe not when
• 57:25
  it comes to health policy, and it's not clear
• 57:27
  that Robert Kennedy is going to encounter those
• 57:29
  limits. But you might think that Besant, the
• 57:33
  Treasury Secretary. would not want to engage
• 57:36
  in acts of complete sort of wanton self -destruction.
• 57:39
  But I guess we'll see. You wrote a lot about
• 57:41
  the rise of anti -expert sentiment as well as
• 57:44
  populism. How do we come to a moment where the
• 57:48
  fringe opinions of, let's say, a mixed martial
• 57:50
  arts commentator reach millions of eager ears
• 57:54
  carrying actual weight, while the opinions of
• 57:56
  the world's most eminent scientists, doctors
• 57:58
  and climatologists are literally ridiculed, dismissed
• 58:01
  or presented as part of some... crazy conspiracy.
• 58:05
  Yeah, I mean, so the most proximate answer to
• 58:08
  that question is social media, obviously, because
• 58:10
  it wasn't possible before social media for that
• 58:12
  to occur. There were always people, there were
• 58:19
  pamphleteers, there were people on soapboxes
• 58:21
  on street corners ranting and raving, and all
• 58:23
  those things were possible. But ultimately...
• 58:26
  the bottleneck of broadcast technology and print
• 58:30
  technology meant that it was not possible to
• 58:33
  reach mass audiences via these other means. I
• 58:38
  mean, I think that that's obviously one part
• 58:41
  of the answer is that it's simply now possible.
• 58:44
  I think the question is, part of this involves
• 58:48
  the question of what forms of more existential
• 58:52
  insecurity and anxiety and confusion Are people
• 58:56
  experiencing that the news as provided to them
• 59:00
  by CNN or the Financial Times or the health authorities
• 59:05
  or whatever it might be, does not satisfy that
• 59:08
  on some level that there is something that seems
• 59:11
  wrong with the world, something that seems wrong,
• 59:16
  often on a very personal level in one's own life,
• 59:19
  which is not being adequately represented or
• 59:23
  reflected by. things like, I mean, as I write
• 59:27
  about in Nervous States, things like statistics
• 59:28
  and the forms of kind of liberal empirical objectivity
• 59:34
  that can be dated back to the scientific revolution
• 59:36
  in the 17th century, that they do not satisfy
• 59:39
  the need for certain forms of truth about a world
• 59:44
  that feels out of joint in some ways. And I think
• 59:47
  in order to get heard in online spaces, such
• 59:52
  as TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube and
• 59:54
  so on, a lot of truth claims that get validated
• 59:58
  and achieve virality have to get packaged up
• 1:00:02
  in the spirit of... denunciation and of anger,
• 1:00:06
  which is that, you know, so -and -so is telling
• 1:00:09
  you something and they're wrong, or so -and -so
• 1:00:11
  claims to be good, but they're bad, or so -and
• 1:00:14
  -so is claiming that something is true, but actually
• 1:00:16
  it's false. And they're saying that something's
• 1:00:17
  false, but actually it's true. So this way of
• 1:00:20
  communicating, which... I suppose it's interesting
• 1:00:25
  because sometimes that's conspiracy theory, which
• 1:00:28
  is to say, you know, they told you that 9 -11
• 1:00:30
  was an al -Qaeda attack, but actually it wasn't.
• 1:00:32
  But it also has some of the rhetorical forms
• 1:00:35
  of what academics would call critical realism,
• 1:00:38
  because it's kind of saying, or Marxism would
• 1:00:40
  be an example of critical realism. So Marxism
• 1:00:43
  says, behind the story. about free trade actually
• 1:00:49
  lies a more true story about exploitation of
• 1:00:53
  labor from one class to the other, and that you're
• 1:00:56
  being told a lie, basically. There seems to be
• 1:00:58
  some need that maybe people have always had,
• 1:01:01
  but they feel it more intensely at certain moments
• 1:01:04
  of economic and political crisis, but a need
• 1:01:06
  to... hear and to affirm stories that have that
• 1:01:11
  structure of so -and -so says it is true, but
• 1:01:12
  it's not, or so -and -so is telling you this,
• 1:01:14
  but they're a liar. So that's clearly what someone
• 1:01:16
  like Rogan can communicate or other forms of,
• 1:01:20
  you know, sort of COVID era conspiracy theories.
• 1:01:24
  I think that we know that liberal democracies
• 1:01:29
  have suffered a major legitimation crisis that
• 1:01:32
  is much older than social media as well, which
• 1:01:35
  is captured, one of the areas where I try to
• 1:01:38
  capture this a bit in some of the writing i did
• 1:01:40
  on this is in these surveys on trust which can
• 1:01:42
  be a bit clunky but they tell you some interesting
• 1:01:44
  things um actually trust in doctors and scientists
• 1:01:49
  um and uh you know judges these are all kind
• 1:01:54
  of liberal elites the trust in these the different
• 1:01:56
  professionals has remained reasonably steady
• 1:01:58
  uh even in the united states when it comes to
• 1:02:01
  things like doctors and scientists over the last
• 1:02:03
  30 years but there's two figures in the public
• 1:02:06
  sphere where it has collapsed. And those are
• 1:02:07
  professional politicians and journalists. And
• 1:02:10
  the idea of the kind of functioning liberal public
• 1:02:15
  sphere that, you know, liberal philosophers such
• 1:02:18
  as Jürgen Habermas, to mention him again, have
• 1:02:20
  tried to defend over his long career. It's not
• 1:02:25
  possible if the mediators of that public sphere
• 1:02:29
  and the key protagonists of it are considered
• 1:02:31
  to be liars. The whole thing just doesn't work
• 1:02:33
  any longer. And in that sense, there is then
• 1:02:35
  a need for a different form of existential embedding.
• 1:02:38
  And I think that's where some of these other.
• 1:02:40
  online voices start to come in, which is to give
• 1:02:42
  people a sense of identity and security in the
• 1:02:44
  world. And even if it's palpably bullshit like
• 1:02:47
  QAnon, simply by repeating it and sharing it,
• 1:02:51
  it achieves some form of community and some form
• 1:02:53
  of coherence in a world that otherwise just seems
• 1:02:55
  utterly overwhelming and confusing. What happened
• 1:02:58
  to QAnon, by the way? There was so much talk
• 1:03:01
  about all of these revelations and predictions
• 1:03:04
  and it's very anticlimactic. Well, I know. the
• 1:03:11
  claim of QAnon was that there was an international
• 1:03:13
  network that involved lots of elites. I see what
• 1:03:18
  you did there. Well, no, but it's true. No, but
• 1:03:20
  there is an interesting issue. I mean, you know,
• 1:03:22
  this happens with a lot of conspiracy theories
• 1:03:24
  is that on some level it speaks to something
• 1:03:26
  that, I mean, I'm not saying that the QAnon was
• 1:03:28
  a direct connection to Epstein, but it is, it's,
• 1:03:32
  you know, when you look at what's now coming
• 1:03:33
  out and the birthday party, the birthday cards
• 1:03:36
  from everyone and everyone. But, you know, it's
• 1:03:40
  like, I mean, there's a very good book, which
• 1:03:43
  I'd recommend, which is Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger,
• 1:03:47
  which is about how elements of a left -wing critique
• 1:03:52
  and elements of a kind of radical right critique
• 1:03:55
  do join up in certain respects. So, for instance,
• 1:03:58
  you know, she uses examples such as that, particularly
• 1:04:00
  during COVID, there was a lot of kind of big
• 1:04:03
  tech paranoia. You know, they're trying to control
• 1:04:05
  you and your mobile phone is spreading COVID
• 1:04:07
  and this sort of stuff. Well, or, you know, the
• 1:04:11
  vaccines are going to harm your child and so
• 1:04:12
  on. But actually, there is something wrong with
• 1:04:15
  big tech and there is something wrong with big
• 1:04:17
  pharma. And, you know, there is something there
• 1:04:19
  are shady cabals of international elites. And
• 1:04:22
  I mean, it's interesting, the example that really
• 1:04:24
  jumped directly from a kind of left wing critique
• 1:04:26
  to a right wing conspiracy theory was that of
• 1:04:29
  Davos and the World Economic Forum, because.
• 1:04:31
  straight after covid uh davos its first um uh
• 1:04:35
  meeting which i guess was early 2021 or 22 had
• 1:04:39
  this phrase the great reset which was meant to
• 1:04:41
  be you know i remember that capitalism yeah and
• 1:04:43
  this term got kind of picked up by right wing
• 1:04:46
  online right wing voices all over twitter yeah
• 1:04:49
  that's right which was that um klaus schwab who
• 1:04:52
  was the uh he's the swiss founder of of the world
• 1:04:56
  economic forum and he comes from a business school
• 1:04:58
  background you know he was he became like the
• 1:05:00
  the the center of various conspiracy theories
• 1:05:02
  that were taking off um and it's interesting
• 1:05:05
  because you know i myself i mean i i was part
• 1:05:07
  of my phd i was quite interested in the world
• 1:05:09
  economic forum and i interviewed people about
• 1:05:11
  it and i was um not that i thought it was a conspiracy
• 1:05:14
  but clearly things that happened behind closed
• 1:05:16
  doors which involved Bill Gates and Bono and
• 1:05:18
  Nelson Mandela and, you know, Tony Blair, whatever,
• 1:05:22
  you know, there is something intriguing and troubling
• 1:05:25
  about a form of politics that seems completely
• 1:05:27
  opaque and immune to democratic pressure. So
• 1:05:30
  so there's something has gone got very, very
• 1:05:33
  muddled up. And there are people who I don't
• 1:05:37
  follow people like Joe Rogan, but I know I've
• 1:05:39
  heard people say that actually, you know. You
• 1:05:41
  look at, say, the power of BlackRock, the asset
• 1:05:45
  management firm in global capitalism today, where
• 1:05:47
  it owns huge swathes of the U .S. stock market
• 1:05:50
  are basically across, you know, hundreds and
• 1:05:52
  hundreds of companies all owned by a single asset
• 1:05:56
  manager. Joe Rogan. I'm told by someone I know
• 1:06:01
  who looks at corporate governance from a critical
• 1:06:03
  lens. You know, he's doing far more to try and
• 1:06:05
  alert his listeners to this sort of problem than
• 1:06:08
  a lot of sort of so -called centrist liberal
• 1:06:10
  podcasts who are just sort of thinking, oh, you
• 1:06:12
  know, Wall Street. Those are the worst. But actually
• 1:06:14
  there is. So it's not clear exactly what is an
• 1:06:18
  entirely left wing and a right wing agenda when
• 1:06:20
  it comes to this attempt to kind of unveil and
• 1:06:22
  denounce the status quo. Fair enough. I know
• 1:06:28
  you have to go. So last question, Professor,
• 1:06:30
  how the hell do we get out of this colossal bind?
• 1:06:34
  I mean, whatever we're going through right now,
• 1:06:36
  it's certainly quite an unpleasant moment. Do
• 1:06:39
  you think it would be possible to just collectively
• 1:06:42
  say, hey, guys, we should just stop everything
• 1:06:44
  we're doing right now, hold hands and walk back
• 1:06:46
  into the 90s together? No, I don't think that
• 1:06:49
  at all. I mean, I don't think that at all. No,
• 1:06:52
  I know. There goes my evening. I mean. I guess
• 1:06:56
  the governing assumption of this conversation
• 1:06:59
  has been that democratic alternatives are preferable.
• 1:07:03
  I think that we are also still living in a time
• 1:07:07
  of quite vibrant democratic activity. There is
• 1:07:15
  authoritarian threats to that democratic activity,
• 1:07:17
  but there are new parties being formed, new leaders
• 1:07:20
  coming through. there is evidence amongst younger
• 1:07:23
  generations that their values are completely
• 1:07:27
  out of kilter with a lot of where these kind
• 1:07:29
  of gerontocratic reactionary agendas are coming
• 1:07:36
  from. And I think that we have to keep on going
• 1:07:43
  through this. I think one of the things that
• 1:07:45
  worries me a bit at the moment is, and this has
• 1:07:48
  been written a bit about by various people, but...
• 1:07:51
  that if the problem that the left and the centre
• 1:07:55
  has, certainly the centre -left, the liberal
• 1:07:57
  centre, liberal left, is that it constantly is
• 1:08:01
  just defending things the whole time. It's defending
• 1:08:03
  universities. It's defending particular aspects
• 1:08:07
  of the constitution. In Britain, we have this...
• 1:08:10
  debate going on, it wasn't a debate a couple
• 1:08:13
  years ago, but it is now apparently, which is
• 1:08:14
  that should Britain withdraw from the European
• 1:08:16
  Convention on Human Rights as a way to try to
• 1:08:19
  reduce its obligations towards asylum seekers
• 1:08:23
  in particular. And one of the difficulties with
• 1:08:26
  this is that when it gets debated, the people
• 1:08:30
  who are trying to ultimately defend the rights
• 1:08:32
  of refugees end up just sort of saying, yeah,
• 1:08:35
  we must defend this piece of paper at all costs.
• 1:08:39
  It was drafted straight after, you know, this
• 1:08:42
  horrific, the horrific events of the mid 20th
• 1:08:45
  century. And we must just simply sort of stand
• 1:08:48
  by it. And you can see how to certain ears, it
• 1:08:50
  could seem very kind of conservative and in some
• 1:08:52
  ways quite unreasoning as well, because it's
• 1:08:54
  not, it doesn't, it ended up being a sort of
• 1:08:56
  a digging one's heels in, in defense of what
• 1:08:58
  already exists rather than. envisioning something
• 1:09:02
  that doesn't yet exist in the future that might
• 1:09:04
  actually be better. And that's really where I
• 1:09:06
  think things have got very, very stuck on the
• 1:09:07
  centre and left. And that's, I think, partly
• 1:09:10
  a symptom of the neoliberalism of the last 34
• 1:09:14
  years is that there's been a kind of a deadening
• 1:09:19
  of political imagination. I think that... Trump
• 1:09:24
  has demonstrated an ability to kind of disrupt
• 1:09:26
  the status quo to a greater extent than people
• 1:09:29
  realized was possible. And that, I think, is
• 1:09:32
  opening up a lot of questions elsewhere in the
• 1:09:35
  world about what's possible regarding whether
• 1:09:37
  it be central banks or national borders or, you
• 1:09:41
  know, already this whole question about DEI,
• 1:09:44
  you know, this cultural agenda inside institutions
• 1:09:46
  has gone global. That opening up, there's no
• 1:09:50
  reason why it's only the right that can kind
• 1:09:53
  of exploit some of that sort of greater political
• 1:09:57
  fluidity. So, I mean, that's, I guess, about
• 1:10:01
  as hopeful as I would get right now. But I think
• 1:10:03
  that the problem is that. As the world gets scarier,
• 1:10:07
  people go in search of more extreme sources of
• 1:10:11
  security and the quest for security becomes stronger.
• 1:10:18
  And that is a gift to authoritarianism. But,
• 1:10:20
  yeah, it's very difficult. I mean, in Britain,
• 1:10:24
  we saw this with the Brexit referendum in 2016.
• 1:10:28
  that the side that was defending openness, liberalism,
• 1:10:31
  markets, and so on, just looked like it had no
• 1:10:35
  real politics. It hadn't really learned anything
• 1:10:38
  about the state of the world. It looked just
• 1:10:40
  rigid and inflexible. And the side that was basically
• 1:10:43
  saying, well, what happens if we just blow all
• 1:10:45
  those things up, looked like it was willing to
• 1:10:47
  kind of take risks and move into the future to
• 1:10:48
  some extent. And that's a very difficult politics
• 1:10:50
  to get out of. Do you think the win of somebody
• 1:10:53
  like Zoran Mamdani in New York could be that
• 1:10:57
  watershed moment for the left? I wouldn't exaggerate
• 1:11:00
  how significant it is globally, but I do think
• 1:11:02
  that he is a lesson to lots of left -wing political...
• 1:11:05
  Yeah, for sure. I think there's a lesson to political
• 1:11:08
  leaders everywhere that he's very good at avoiding
• 1:11:12
  getting dragged into topics that he doesn't have
• 1:11:15
  anything to gain from talking about. He's very
• 1:11:17
  good at exuding optimism and hope. He doesn't
• 1:11:22
  just talk about he doesn't talk about the right
• 1:11:24
  very much, actually. He talks about what he wants
• 1:11:26
  to do rather than what they're doing. And that,
• 1:11:28
  I think, is so important. But he also he doesn't
• 1:11:31
  he doesn't you know, he might be a socialist.
• 1:11:33
  He might not be a socialist. But ultimately,
• 1:11:35
  what whether what you call him and what kind
• 1:11:38
  of ideology you might think he has is less important
• 1:11:40
  than what he's promising to do. And I think that
• 1:11:43
  is something that. left -wing parties need to
• 1:11:48
  learn from. And he makes politics look quite
• 1:11:53
  fun as well. I mean, there's a certain sort of
• 1:11:54
  affective disposition that he has that is something
• 1:11:58
  that lots of people can learn from. I mean, I
• 1:12:00
  think Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez had some of this
• 1:12:02
  as well, and actually still does. But, you know,
• 1:12:04
  there were those sorts of leaders that, you know,
• 1:12:06
  despite not having a strong left -wing history
• 1:12:09
  or socialist party history in the United States,
• 1:12:12
  it seems to... do a better job of producing these
• 1:12:15
  leaders of this generation. I mean, obviously,
• 1:12:20
  there's been the instances of things like Podemos
• 1:12:22
  and so on in Spain and so on. But I think that
• 1:12:25
  there's a charisma there and there's a willingness
• 1:12:30
  to actually talk about the things that... that
• 1:12:33
  that they want to talk about and not just get
• 1:12:35
  dragged around onto other people's topics i think
• 1:12:37
  that's so important it's very difficult particularly
• 1:12:39
  in the age of of social media which is a kind
• 1:12:41
  of reactive medium uh where uh you know you end
• 1:12:45
  up people i mean We've talked about Charlie Kirk
• 1:12:49
  earlier, but the British media has been filled
• 1:12:51
  with stuff about Charlie Kirk for the last couple
• 1:12:53
  of days. Most people had never heard of Charlie
• 1:12:55
  Kirk three days ago in this country. I mean,
• 1:12:59
  and it's sort of like. Something that the right
• 1:13:04
  wants to make the topic ends up being able to
• 1:13:07
  somehow to dominate everything else. I'm not
• 1:13:11
  saying that it's not significant, but its significance
• 1:13:12
  is being heavily inflated, given how many people
• 1:13:16
  get shot in the United States each year by the
• 1:13:18
  right. Have you seen that completely bonkers
• 1:13:21
  video of the... Members of the European Parliament
• 1:13:24
  observing a one -minute silence for Charlie Kirk?
• 1:13:26
  Oh, my God. I did not know that. I mean, that
• 1:13:28
  is insane. I mean, what the hell? I mean, that
• 1:13:30
  is... I'm leaving aside what he stands for. I
• 1:13:33
  mean... Anyway, that's just crazy. But, yeah.
• 1:13:38
  Professor, thank you so much for your time. It's
• 1:13:41
  been a pleasure. Do you have any social media
• 1:13:43
  where people can find you? I think you used to
• 1:13:45
  have a Twitter account because I was reading
• 1:13:47
  it. No, I'm on Blue Sky on Will .Davis. You switched
• 1:13:49
  that. And I have a... Okay. Yeah, and I have
• 1:13:53
  a website at williamdavis .blog. All right, perfect.
• 1:13:57
  We will link those in the description. Thanks.
• 1:14:00
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