Latest / Follow the Leighder / Inside the World's Unrecognized Countries | Eric Czuleger

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Inside the World's Unrecognized Countries | Eric Czuleger · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining me today, this one is special. This is Eric Zuleger. Welcome to the studio, Eric. Eric Czuleger: Hey, thanks for having me. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ thanks for making the time for us. Y'all listen to this resume. All right. He is a geopolitical analyst, investigative journalist and founder of Under Report, a multi-platform geopolitics brand. He's a trained intelligence analyst under George Friedman at Geopolitical Futures and holds graduate degrees from the Rand School of Public Policy and the University of Oxford. He's the author of You Are Not Here Travels Through Countries That Don't Exist. drawing on reporting from more than 45 countries. I was really, found you on TikTok, drawn to you, by your, you had a fantastic analytical video, but when I went down the rabbit hole of just researching you, you cover under-reported stories in places that are not officially recognized, a sort of statelessness, a no man's land, if you will. Can you? talk about how you got into this world travel, this 45 countries. Eric Czuleger: Yeah, I, well, first of all, thanks for having me. And also I have been admiring your work on TikTok for some time now too. So I was a Peace Corps volunteer from 2011 to 2013. And back in my day, the Peace Corps just kind of threw a dart at a map and said, hey, you're gonna go spend 27 months. living and working in that country and that map just or that that dart just so happened to hit ⁓ Albania for me, a country that I still call home more often than not. ⁓ And, you know, I spent a good deal of time living in a small ⁓ border town near Kosovo. So it's on the border of Albania and Kosovo, very small Muslim town. ⁓ And, you know, it's peace corps. the circumstances aren't exactly, ⁓ you know, New York City. So it's a really, really tiny little village that I really, you know, ended up ⁓ falling in love with in a certain respect and noticing how much, you know, as a child, like I'm a millennial, but as a child and a teen of the global war on terror, you've heard, you hear so much about Islam and what it is and, what it means in the world. And then you spend two years living in a small Islamic village and you realize that it's not that thing at all. And maybe these are not the robots that we were looking for in terms of the actors who are meaning Americans harm. And at the same time, I was there near Kosovo for the, it was the five year anniversary of Kosovo and it was the hundred year anniversary of Albania. And that's a really sort of impactful and interesting thing to witness around the same time period. ⁓ South Sudan had separated from Sudan while I was in college previously, South Ossetia ⁓ sort of separated from or was forcibly separated from the Republic of Georgia. I suppose I just started noticing that even though the United States felt like this monolithic and evanescent thing, ⁓ that really the concept of statecraft was a little bit more flexible and potentially something that we should examine because we all think that our countries are these immovable shapes ⁓ that have always been and will always be, but the reality of the... Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: is that countries come into existence and then they decay and they break apart into other countries. part of that is, I think, so wonderful. Like, I think the, you know, how I end up thinking about my own country really so largely depends on the type of day that I'm having. Like, you know, if I'm having a good day, like, you know, it's this magnificent, you know, invisible architecture of narrative that allows me to plug my own individual identity into something like well greater than myself. And it, you know, makes me responsible for ⁓ the people who come after me. And it connects me to the successes and atrocities committed by other people who are also calling themselves Americans. And then like on a bad day, it's just a subscription service that like bombs people for me for the low, low price of a third of my income. Like what? And I was accidentally born into it. And so I noticed how motivating statecraft was for people that the Coast of Our Flag could really drive people to tears or it could drive people into fits of rage depending upon what that person believes about that place. And I just... You know, for a while after Peace Corps, was thinking, like I had this sort of book in the back of my mind. ⁓ And whatever, you know, your audience has in the back of their mind is something that they've always wanted to do. Like, just start doing it because it's definitely worth it. ⁓ And I was like, you know, it would be really interesting to spend a year just living in unrecognized countries, like to spend, ⁓ gosh. to spend an entire year just in like literally not on any map because those countries don't exist on any map. ⁓ And ⁓ after my training as an intelligence analyst, they liquidated a lot of the company. And so I had a head full of knowledge about, you know, terrorism and ⁓ specifically I was looking at the Islamic State and the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq and sort of faced with that moment that I think a lot of people get into at some period where they're just like, well, if I could do anything in the world, like what would I do? And I started thinking about that book again, like, well, what would I, like, if I could live in unrecognized countries, like what would I do? And I'd already been researching the Kurdish referendum on independence so much. And I was like, I think I'd really like to go to Kurdistan and see a new country get made ⁓ because, know, wow, like what a ⁓ time. in history to be there if it happens and what a time in history to be there if it doesn't. So I just got a job teaching English in Iraqi Kurdistan and you a couple weeks later I was living in Erbil and I had begun the journey of the book which turned out to be a lot stranger than I had bargained for. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Is this to do... So you cover 45 countries. Is that all in this span of time or is this like over decades or like okay? Eric Czuleger: ⁓ no. No, no, no, no. I've lived and worked ⁓ in, think, I don't know what the number is, but lived, worked, traveled, know, gone through about ⁓ between 45 and 47 countries, maybe more now, I don't know. ⁓ But ⁓ that's the number that I trot out on Rosemase. No, specifically in the book, ⁓ I covered only five unrecognized countries. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: So I covered Iraqi Kurdistan and I was there during the referendum on independence in 2016. And so what was happening in Iraqi Kurdistan at the time was basically the Islamic State was sort of on its back foot. It was on its way out the door. Success was fairly inevitable. A coalition of over 60 countries came together to fight the Islamic State. And as a part of that, the Kurds who were living in northern Iraq ⁓ were doing a good deal of the heavy lifting in that fight. ⁓ This not only brought the Kurds into ⁓ public attention, but it also extended an enormous amount of goodwill ⁓ from ⁓ larger countries. It also, and it's not to be ignored, it also armed them. One of the difficulties that the United States has had with the Kurds traditionally is the fact that the US really enjoys using them as a proxy, but has to navigate this difficult relationship with them where they want to arm them well enough to fight on behalf of the United States, but they don't want to arm them well enough to fight for their own country. ⁓ And there is some, you know, quite a bit of goodwill towards the United States in Iraqi Kurdistan specifically, ⁓ but you know, from an analytical point of view, it's very difficult to see a future where there is an independent Kurdish state. And so going into the referendum, ⁓ anyway, they decide, hey, we're gonna have a vote and we're gonna vote ourselves free of Baghdad. And ⁓ so they vote, 92 % says, hey, we wanna have our own independent Kurdistan. for the first time. This is not including the other Kurdish regions in Syria or ⁓ Iran or Turkey, however, it's just the Iraqi Kurdistan ⁓ area. But as it turns out, Baghdad is really the only actor that has a vote because of course they're able to leverage more violent force against the Kurds. And the Kurds did in a certain way overplay the hand that they were attempting to play, was they wanted to take the region of Kirkuk with them, which larger oil producing region, traditionally Kurdish. But then during the reign of Saddam Hussein, it was Arabized, which is, you know, weirdly fancy term for just saying we kicked Kurds out and moved Arabs in. So, you know, to understand like the history of the region and the story that's connected to this region was pretty daunting for somebody ⁓ from far away, but understanding it from the ground level, that to me is kind of the critical bit. ⁓ And so after Kurdistan, I went to Kosovo ⁓ because I was actually gonna stay in Kurdistan, but I was unable to return. ⁓ Baghdad basically shut down the airspace over ⁓ Kurdistan and I had a girlfriend at the time who was living in Bulgaria. as a ⁓ Fulbright scholar. I had wanted to see her for Christmas, so I left the country, but I left it over land. And when I tried to come back in, ⁓ I was accused of being a Kurdish operative in some respect. both she and I, unfortunately, we're still very good friends today, and she's the producer of my podcast. Shout out to Savannah. I'm glad that I didn't get us both imprisoned ⁓ in Turkey. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Eric Czuleger: But I did get us both kicked out of Turkey. ⁓ So we were told to walk back to Bulgaria at like two o'clock in the morning and off we went. And I thought my book was kind of over at that point ⁓ because I was going to write it about stateless countries and I thought Kurdistan was a really great place to do it. And then I realized, well, there are other stateless countries. So I went back to Kosovo and I saw their 10 year anniversary. And I realized I could also go to a place called Transnistria. Transnistria is this sort of little sliver of land between ⁓ Ukraine and Moldova. And it's a really strange area. It's sort of like the USSR never left there. So they still have the KGB. ⁓ You still have functioning ⁓ communist-style farms. And this is right on the Dniester River, hence Transnistria. a Russian enclave protected by the Russian ⁓ army as well. And interestingly enough, I was there during the time of the Russian elections for Vladimir Putin. And of course, that's like this, again, this really strange gray area of statecraft because Russia was having elections, Russian elections in a place that is from the international communities recognized as Moldova. ⁓ but from the Russian community, it's recognized as a sort of state-building project of Russia. And Transnistria is recognized only by other state-building projects of Russia. So it's recognized by Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Just to clarify, so Transnistria is Moldova? Right, right, but that's okay, okay, but like that, no way. Eric Czuleger: Depends on who you ask. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. so if you're to look at the map, basically you'll see ⁓ this sort of dotted line ⁓ and the capital of Transnistria is a called Tiraspol. ⁓ Interesting area though. mean, was ⁓ the Russians were originally moved there by Catherine the Great, who was sort of seen as a... ⁓ a good geographic area to take over because of access to the Black Sea from the Dynastir River, well known for wine and especially cognac. then, of course, you also see some like, I love, mean, I love, I love stateless countries and I love, you know, places that are just kind of hard to get to because I think that like the places that are hard to get to, whoever you meet there had to want to get there. You know, they didn't, right, you know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, right, yeah. Eric Czuleger: anybody can accidentally end up in the Denver airport. It's really hard to end up accidentally in Terrasse Bowl, Transnistria. ⁓ And you just find these sort of cultural moments that have washed up there as well. Like there's a ⁓ renowned cognac factory there and we're sort of touring this cognac factory and this guy's like, ⁓ well, do you want to see our baseball museum? And I was like, why is there a baseball museum? in a cognac factory in Transnistria is like, well, we love baseball here because the Cubans during communism came and taught us taught us how to play baseball. And it's like the it's like the most American thing. But like you came to it from the least American way of doing it. And to this point, like there were there actually professional baseball players playing on American teams who are from Transnistria, ⁓ which is so like. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Eric Czuleger: So astounding. ⁓ And then from there I went to this place called Liberland, which is the world's first cryptocurrency-based nation. It's on an empty island between Croatia and Serbia. Yeah, it was just a... So Liberland got created because ⁓ there ⁓ was an island that was sort of declared Tirinalis. was like no man's land. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Whoa. Okay. Eric Czuleger: ⁓ at the fall of Yugoslavia. And around, can't remember the exact year, but anyway, Bitcoin starts going crazy. And a lot of the political philosophy that underlies Bitcoin too, isn't just, know, tech nerds getting rich off of nerd dollars. ⁓ There's this political philosophy around it that basically says, okay, well, you know, what happens if we disintermediate ⁓ finance from a central authority? And part of what falls out from that is ⁓ looking at how do you create this sort of like anarcho-libertarian ⁓ version of statecraft. ⁓ And then that Liberland was born. were like, look, there's this island that nobody claims and specifically nobody claims it because, you know, that was a part of the treaty that ended Yugoslavia. So like, why don't we just take our Bitcoin and go take it over? And that's what they did. ⁓ And I met them at their three year anniversary, is also a crypto conference. I kind of assumed it was like going to be some Burning Man thing. But instead, was like, you know, I met the I was just hanging out in the lobby of this like crypto conference that was also the third year anniversary of Leverland. And I'm like, you know, trying to find an official to talk to. And I'm pointing to this really regal ⁓ English Pakistani man. ⁓ And I was like, I hear you're the Secretary of State. He's like, yeah. And he's like, also the personal lieutenant to the Queen of England and the doctor. And I'm like, gee, what? This is wild. I'm like, what are we doing here? He's like, well, we're making a country. What do you think we're doing? And I was like, well, this is bizarre and fascinating. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Eric Czuleger: There's a much longer story here that people have to have to read the book to hear, but it's fairly goofy. ⁓ per, you know, as I was doing this, you know, I met all the Liberland folks and the foreign secretary, who's a guy named Tom who works for Expedia. I think he lives in Florida. I don't know. He's just a guy. ⁓ He was like, you know, where's the last stop on your stateless country tour? And I was like, well, I'm going to Somaliland. And he said, Well, we have an embassy there. And I was like, that's really strange. And I'm hard to... Yeah, absolutely. And I set it up. They asked me to be their ambassador. So when I say former ambassador in my ⁓ bio, it's kind of joking, but it's also kind of not. Like I was... Leigh/@followtheleighder: There's a crypto embassy between Liberland and Somaliland. Eric Czuleger: I was the Liberland ambassador to Somaliland and I set up their embassy in Hargeisa, Somaliland, which was a really strange set of things to do. Because I mean, I was really just, you know, a sort of like dirtbag backpacker journalist at that time. You know, I was like waiting. I was waiting to hear back from Liberland while I was like sleeping in my... Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: girlfriend's place in Bulgaria and I just hadn't heard back from them. I knew I could stay at their, at their, you know, mansion in their embassy in, in Hargeisa. ⁓ But I hadn't heard back from them and I was like, well, this is a problem ⁓ because it is kind of a problem to like have a ticket to go to Northern Somalia or Somaliland and have no idea like where to go or what to do. ⁓ And so I just bothered the president of Liberland a lot more. And eventually he was like, you know, here's the problem. Like we lost our ambassador. So like, I don't know, like, would you want to do that? And I was like, what, what do you mean? He's like, well, do you want to be the ambassador from Liberland to Somaliland? And I was like, I mean, yeah, if I can stay in the, like, is there like a couch I could sleep on? And then he's like, well, you know, you have to do some stuff for us. And I'm like, yeah, sure. What do I have to do? He's like, buy furniture. for the embassy because we don't have any. Like there's just a bed in there. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. I've never bought furniture for myself before, but I'm sure I could figure out how to buy furniture in Somalia. And then he's like, well, you also have to make diplomatic connections with the ⁓ government of Somaliland. I'm like, sure, sounds good. I can go meet the vice president of Somaliland. So I just had those two things to do. And eventually ⁓ there was a third thing that ⁓ became necessary because about two weeks into my time in Somaliland, ⁓ and this isn't really spoiling the book, ⁓ it becomes more dramatic there, but ⁓ a cyclone blew through Somaliland and it was called Cyclone Saggar. And eventually communications were restored and I got a call from the secretary of state and he said, oh, you know, this actually works out really well for us. And I'm like, I don't see how this cyclone worked out well for us. And he's like, well, like it was, I I'm fine, but like, it's, I wasn't like, yeah, this cyclone made my day. Um, he's like, well, we are the only ones with an aid team on the ground because we're the only ones who who recognized Somaliland. And I was like, that's great. Who's the team? And he's like, it's you. And I was like, ⁓ no, I really thought it wasn't gonna be. I thought there was other people here. And he's like, yeah, just go figure out how to give diplomatic aid to ⁓ help these nomads in Somaliland. And I was like, okay, sure, I'll figure that out. I feel like, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah Eric Czuleger: What ends up happening again? I'm not spoiling much. think if people read the book, they'll get a lot more details. you know, I felt really two ways about what we ended up doing because I ended up coordinating the delivery of around seven tons of food to some nomads who were ⁓ deeply affected by the cyclone. And like, I feel great about that. I'm really glad that I was able to do that. Frankly, I didn't think I could. And if it wasn't for, you know, the wonderful human beings that I was working with on the ground in Somaliland, it simply would have been impossible. ⁓ know, them working on transport and keeping me safe and all that stuff. But I think the thing that was, you know, left me with a bit of a moral nosebleed about it was the fact that we brought all this food out there into the middle of the Somali desert and ⁓ I was then we brought me out there with with my government contacts. And I found out part way through, you know, the journey is like eight hours and no roads. ⁓ That the food had already been out there and I was like, well, you know, these people are starving like you. They can just like they have the food, right? Like it's all good. And they're like, no, no, like, you know, we need to wait for you to give them the food like this is, you know, you're an ambassador like this is this is a photo opportunity. And I was like. right. This is not real. I mean, you know, quote unquote, real aid work. But like it's this is not just pure aid work. This is this is about about gaining and maintaining political power. And on the one hand, I'm really happy that we were able to bring out all that food. On the other hand, I felt pretty, ⁓ you know, I had some difficult feelings about about how this was essentially like ⁓ a direct soft power move. And one that is on behalf of a cryptocurrency based nation to the aid of, you know, one of the poorest places in the world. So yeah, I mean, largely how I feel about like that that part of the journey and that book, again, you know, kind of depends on the type of day that I'm having like Some days I'm really, really proud that that happened. And then sometimes I'm like, man, I was a political tool for Bitcoin. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. And I don't know if you can do anything with states either. At some point, it's just like we're all just human. We're all just part of the systems that we're a part of. I have looked back. Eric Czuleger: Yeah, I mean, I think that's I think that's like a really a really good and kind of like healthy way to look at it, because it's just like, I think one of the best things that I've learned is as like an analyst and, you know, now a bit more of a scholar of national security is just like, just looking at the constraints that everybody is under the constraints of of our birth and the imperatives of our birth, the the constraints and imperatives, not just physical ones, but mental and even spiritual ones. ⁓ I was recently in ⁓ northern Iraq. I was in a place called Lalish, which is the ⁓ Mecca for Yazidis, ⁓ who are a much, much maligned group by the Islamic State. ⁓ But it's a gorgeous spiritual structure. And Lalish was an incredible place. I felt really, really touched to experience it. ⁓ But, you know, I was speaking with one of the Yazidis there and she was like, yeah, well, you know, our structure, like the structure of our community is like, it's basically like three types of people. you know, we believe that these are the three types of people that everybody, you know, like it's almost like a caste system. And you have to marry within your type of person. And I think that the difficulty that we experience oftentimes as Americans is it's really, really hard for us to understand the ⁓ constraint of growing up in another country ⁓ or in another culture ⁓ or in another economy. You know, we're told from a very early age that like you can do and be anything. And to a large extent, that is very, very true. ⁓ But that's not the same thing that every other culture is taught. ⁓ And it's one of the things that makes our culture much less interoperable with other cultures. time and time again, the United States has been seemingly baffled that the Middle East doesn't want Starbucks on every corner and, you know, the air-conditioned movie theaters and shopping malls. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Hmm. Eric Czuleger: that we seem to continually offer them if only they'll elect a Jeffersonian democratically elected government that we agree with. Like, ours, like putting ourselves at this sort of like, intellectual hierarchy as the best leads to so much violence and chaos, and I think it's just a failure of cultural imagination. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Well, I'm really grateful that you brought this up because one of the things that you've studied and you talk about ⁓ on your platform, or at least I'm curious to learn more, is how religion plays out in conflict ⁓ and really specifically, how does it impact strategy and national security? Does it impact decision making? How have you seen religion play out in some of these conflicts abroad? Eric Czuleger: I feel like I've seen one of the things that I'm interested in as far as looking at how religion impacts conflict is that it is oftentimes the most visible ⁓ but least impactful ⁓ component. depending on how it's used, right? ⁓ I think, you know, looking at having grown up in America and spent a good deal of time in the Middle East, there is a sort of a valence on the Middle East or ⁓ well, one that it is a monolith, that Islam is this one huge monolithic. Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. Eric Czuleger: and that's just simply not the case. You when I was living in Erbil, I think just due to how many different cultures live on my damn block, I think I said hello to people in like five different languages. And that's not because I speak five different languages. I certainly don't. It's just because I would, you know, learn hello and what's up and like the five different cultures that were around me. So it's like, I would probably like say hello in Kurdish, Hindi, Arabic. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: ⁓ English and French, like, ⁓ no, and Assyrian. ⁓ So, ⁓ Kaldian sometimes they call it. ⁓ so like, all of those existed on my block, like, on just me walking to like, go get some groceries. ⁓ so one is this sort of failure of imagination to sort of paint all of these people as, ⁓ as Muslim. ⁓ and because of that, having a certain amount of intellectual deficiencies, ⁓ that their mapping of reality is ultimately guided by this sort of ⁓ Stone Age, or I guess Bronze Age philosophy. And that's why there's all of these troubles in the world. And I just don't think that that's fundamentally true. ⁓ I think it's the easiest thing for people to believe, especially in the West. ⁓ because it allows us one to treat an entire section of the world as the other, as the negation of our culture. And because they're the negation of our culture, they create sort of cultural boundaries that allow us to know that we're us and they're them. ⁓ And so that has some sort of functionality to it. But I think really the best way for me to conceptualize how religion works religion, ethnicity, identity, all of these things that are very, very ⁓ apparent to everybody. ⁓ Because they're so visible ⁓ and they're easy to pin things on, I think the best way to look at them is as ⁓ networks. So they're almost nodes in a network, right? And certain networks have higher throughput. And so what are they putting through these networks? Well, you can look at political power as ⁓ a way of utilizing violent force. So violence is one of the things that can be put through a network. Another one is money. Another one is attention. know, all of these things, when brought together, they're easier for them to flow within networks that have a ⁓ similar language, a similar story. a similar way of ⁓ communicating with one another, communicating value to one another. ⁓ You know, there's quite literally a halal banking system. There are specifically like Jewish and Christian systems of transferring wealth, either internationally or domestically. ⁓ You know, there are networks of communication. We even see this with the Christian right. in the United States. ⁓ You know, I was born and raised Catholic and coming into contact with some of the ideas of, I guess, the ⁓ maybe non-denominational or what I would call like the born-again Christian community, I was like, I've never heard any of these ideas before. Like, I've just never heard them. I read the same Bible and I was raised with maybe similar traditions. But my phone is complaining. So I was raised with similar traditions. But I've never seen those things before. And that's because they're in a different network. I've never been inside a mega church before and like gone to like a very good friend of mine. He was sort of raised in the mega church vibe. And he was talking about like how he was like he was played in the band. He's like I was the drummer at Big Church. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: And I was like, what's big church? He's like, well, if you grew up non-denominational Christian, you would know what big church was. Like big church is like the sort of rock and roll version of ⁓ Christianity. And I was like, this is almost unintelligable for me. It's a different culture. But that's just because it was out of my network. And the United States has leveraged these networks to great effect. Look at using the Kurds in order to fight against the Islamic State, essentially. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Eric Czuleger: One network was detached from the American system via taking out Saddam Hussein, and then the Ba'athist party ended up becoming ⁓ the foundation for the Islamic State. ⁓ And at the point that it was detached from the American network, well then now we have to figure out a way to extinguish these ideas and make sure that ours prevail. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and you're talking about religion driving some of these things and also not how how you just brought up American evangelical networks and how much these have worked very hard to get involved with with even like Israel and here we are in Iran and we still don't have a clear answer from the Pentagon from the White House from anybody. Why are tax dollars are doing what they're doing. ⁓ So can you kind of talk about how religion plays a role in ⁓ right now and geopolitics? Because it seems very strange, like you said, these ideas that I haven't heard from either. was raised Christian too. was like, where are you? Where did these come from? Eric Czuleger: So. Well, well, mean, and it's so from from my understanding and I'm I'm in no way, ⁓ you know, I'm in no way a scholar of religion. ⁓ But I think that the the best read on the study of history and the study of geopolitics, like if you're the best read on the study of history for me is like that this is the study of change. And the best read on the study of geopolitics to me is really about like how power maps onto the globe and how power moves. I think one way of thinking about how power travels along the world is... it can be pooled in certain places and it can be it's almost like water in a certain way. It can be pooled. It can be channeled. It can be concentrated and it can be networked. And I think some of the concerning ⁓ bits that I've seen recently in terms of the, I guess, US political and spiritual imagination is one, this idea that US ⁓ soldiers have been told that there is an oncoming holy war, that this is a holy war. Obviously, we've seen a good deal of ⁓ Secretary Head Seth equating the current military actions in Iran to ⁓ religious moments. Specifically, I'm thinking of the fact that when this Pilate was rescued in a totally real, absolutely definitely happened story. The first thing that the pilot sent back to the base that was going to rescue him is, God is good. Pete Hegseth goes on this story about how he crashed and then he, on Good Friday, and then he hung out in a cave and then he rose again when he was rescued on Easter Sunday. Now, first of all, this is just a really ham-fisted story and it is silly, but like, the thing is, I think that we need to be very, very careful with silly ideas because just because something's silly doesn't mean it's not super important. And I think that this is a super important moment. because what it indicates is that if that message rung as hollow or strange to you, then that message wasn't for you. That message was to the ⁓ Christian holy warrior base. The dispensationalists who see this as a completely reasonable fight to get into because what it does is it hastens the arrival ⁓ of the Messiah or the re-arrival of the Messiah. ⁓ And the really pernicious thing that I think is very dangerous is the fact that this does map closely with ⁓ some of the Jewish theology or at least some portion of ⁓ the Jewish religious community. that is looking for the return of the Messiah, specifically after the temple is built again. Now, in Jewish philosophy, from what I understand, and I'm not Jewish, but there is the thought that the Temple of Jerusalem, the Third Temple of Jerusalem, has already been built. It's a spiritual temple, and it's been built within the Jewish community itself. And then, of course, there's also the idea that they know it actually must be rebuilt physically. Now, if it's rebuilt physically, it's entirely possible that this, you know, ends up happening at the expense of holy spaces for both Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem. Obviously, well, perhaps not obviously, but like, I don't believe in any of the metaphysical parts of this. I simply don't. I don't think that ⁓ there is a messiah on the way back. ⁓ But what I think doesn't matter. What matters is the people who have that capacity to do violent force, the people who are at the ⁓ switchboard of the network, they believe it. And they're attempting right now, quite clearly, to leverage the authority of various holy books to motivate their networks to ⁓ potentially use violent force, to potentially drive financing and attention to a crusade and that will be at the expense of a great deal of innocent lives and people who simply don't believe the same things that they do. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, it's so I ⁓ posted about this a few weeks ago, like anybody who does identify as faithful to any of these Abrahamic faiths, like, should feel really upset by how much it's been exploited, like these very wealthy, powerful people who, by the way, have showed us again and again and again that they are above the law. like that rules are for us, but not for them. like, that almost behave as if they are gods, turning around and using religious language to stoke, like you said, some sort of attention, support, know, whatever. it's, I can get almost like, it should be offensive for... Eric Czuleger: Yeah. I was gonna say, you know, like I am not religious. ⁓ I'm fascinated by religion, ⁓ but I, you know, as somebody once said that was way cooler than me, faith is a gift that has not yet been bestowed upon me. So I love the concepts around it. I interact with global faiths consistently. ⁓ But looking at, it as an outsider, I think that if I am like if I'm claiming that holy book, you know, whatever it is, and I'm watching somebody take something that I feel is not only bringing me but the world a great deal of peace and community. And they're using that as a cudgel to not only run in the absolute opposite direction and make as much war and violence as, you know, humanly possible, but also to fracture society. I would be so deeply offended. That's the antithesis of what I know the faithful to be. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And you've seen so much abroad and whether it's like kind of like the stateless ⁓ unrecognized territories, but you've also been in parts that have seen a lot of conflict. What does it look like over time? How does the military and religion and people and even stability, how does religious or theocratic government and military, what does it look like ⁓ in your experience? Eric Czuleger: I think. Leigh/@followtheleighder: to go all in? Or have you seen that? Have you seen religious militias? Eric Czuleger: No, ⁓ I think that they end up becoming more ⁓ cultural. I find that ⁓ the expression of religion that I run into more often than not is a lot more quiet, lot more contemplative, and a lot more common. ⁓ You know, I think about the fact, you know, while I was the ambassador to Liberland, from Liberland to Somaliland, I had my mansion, and outside there was a guard booth, and it was Ramadan while I was serving. And my guard would come out and, you know, up his prayer rug and... take a cup of water and you know ⁓ perform his ablutions and you know pray in the yard and and then you know get back to it. ⁓ It was just a common part of his day or or seeing you know people just casually moving to and from the mosque wherever they are ⁓ hearing the like not only the call to prayer but like bells in in more Christian nations. ⁓ I, those are the places that you see actual interactions with religion. ⁓ I think, you know, they're, if not benign, they're quite positive. ⁓ But then you see the sort of fast food ⁓ Hollywood movie version of religion that is a bit perverse where you, ⁓ you know, see vague and now more explicit American phrasing of this is a holy war against, you know, ⁓ X, Y, and Z, or even looking at Islamic State propaganda. That was a thing that I did ⁓ as an intelligence analyst for a while. There's a joke in the intelligence community that like, so the Islamic State had this, I mean, honestly, really well produced magazine called Davic. And I was talking with another analyst and she was like, ⁓ well, like, Davik has like a readership of basically 80 % Islamic State and like 20 % just intelligence analysts. ⁓ And I don't like that. I've read every issue. They're pretty good. ⁓ But I was watching this one piece of Islamic State propaganda. It was a really well-produced. ⁓ And this is like, I guess it must have been 2015 YouTube. ⁓ very well produced, ⁓ you know, really ⁓ sort of crushing arguments against ⁓ American infidels, but they had nothing to do with religion as much as they had a lot to do with speaking directly to the American soldier. They were saying specifically like, look, your government doesn't care about you. ⁓ You know, there soldiers, there are, are, you know, every 17 minutes a former serviceman kills themselves. And that's because we have sort of infected the minds of the United States and you're sort of spiritually deadened by ⁓ the sort of your false holy war. Like that, I mean, those are really powerful messages. ⁓ I remember showing it to my roommate. like, this is just, this is a really, you know, active and powerful message. And I think that it's possible to sort of create these meta religions ⁓ that become an almost all encompassing philosophy. And it's something that we really have to have to guard against in the United States, right? Where you say one, ⁓ you say something, some you interact with some symbol, and then that indicates, you know, a whole other raft of political beliefs. ⁓ And that's simply not the case. ⁓ So yeah, I see religion as a point of leverage and a catalyst towards action. ⁓ But I find that the actual day-to-day practice of a faith ⁓ does not at all comport with the violent action that it is ⁓ leveraged to ⁓ inspire. I mean, in terms of your experience though, which I'm really curious about is like, you know, the Chaplain Corps, ⁓ and also something that I had heard recently, and I don't know if you would have access to it, but I've heard that recently there was a dramatic reduction in the amount of possible religion somebody could express in the American army or the larger military establishment. Is that true? And what does that necessarily portend? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, so that was announced. was initially, it was announced back in December from Hegseth. ⁓ He was gonna make the Chaplain Corps great again. That he was going to streamline faith growth. Yeah, because that was like the one thing all of us were so worried about. Eric Czuleger: Finally. That was the one thing. Yeah, I have been the biggest security threat ⁓ I've been tracking is ⁓ It's just that the chaplains got to woke Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay Right. Well, that's and and and and what is wild about this is and we can kind of I'll stop and explain it a little bit. But, you know, the American military chaplain corps has has largely always been white and Protestant Christian. But from the beginning, George Washington was very adamant that this was not a ⁓ Christian religious military, that this was like, yeah, I want you to have a minister ⁓ chaplain around. for morals, for guidance. think it'll help with prostitution and alcoholism and stuff, but like, this isn't like... Eric Czuleger: Right. Help with stopping prostitution, right? I was like, I didn't realize that was a history of that. I didn't realize they were helping prostitution. Fascinating history. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. ⁓ my gosh. Yeah. But yes. But ⁓ yeah. Well, and and really, like, in the last, like, a big hit to military chaplain corps and to military at large was the Vietnam War and the 24 hour news cycle and people did not like seeing war and how the state was legitimizing what was going on and a lot of Christian American Christian communities Felt that even if they didn't become pacifist or were outright, you know They didn't like the idea of supporting war theology. And so whether it was their own congregations and their own members ⁓ What that looked like over time was that people who would become you know ministers or chaplains, that war military chaplaincy was just not emphasized. They started going into prison or hospital or other institutions. But the evangelicals kept going, they kept going, the military, and they started wrapping in this all this theology that you're talking about, these new versions, these new ideas, these networks. Eric Czuleger: Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ that are not something that Jesus was walking around thinking about when something that Martin Luther had even thought about or Augustine or like some of these things are like this is a new story and So anyway Eric Czuleger: Well, also leveraging something like, mean, again, super not a biblical scholar in any respect, ⁓ but. leveraging the most abstract book of the Bible like Revelation and then saying, ⁓ and here's your evidence. Like, it's scanty at best, but you also have to accept at face value that you're talking about a predictive document. And I don't think the Bible claims to be a predictive document. Leigh/@followtheleighder: that, yes, that and prophecy. And then also going back to Bible as literature, it is an inconsistent document because it was written by numerous authors over time, you know what I mean? So to consider it a principled document on which you can build a constitution or a society's governance on, it's not it's not consistently principled. It I mean, even so it's a It's a whole thing and ⁓ I don't know what the original question was, sorry. Eric Czuleger: Well, and there's also, I, yeah, I think at this point, I'm just sort of like, erring my grievances with this too. But like, okay, so here's one of the things that I think, you from a strategic point of view, from a strategic point of view, God is not a ⁓ not a great asset to have on your side. Leigh/@followtheleighder: We're just chatting. Eric Czuleger: ⁓ because God, as it turns out, can be on both sides at the same time. ⁓ This is wild about religion, is that God can be on both sides. ⁓ so that's a problem from a strategic point of view. The other problem from a strategic point of view is that ⁓ if you are taking actions, You should consistently be listening to what the feedback actually is. And if you believe that no matter what happens, your God is going to see you through, well then you're going to put your assets and your people into a much more dangerous situation. So that's another strategic problem with using God as the strategy. Hope is not a strategy, as they say. ⁓ Faith is not a strategy, as they say. It also leads to just simply lazier thinking and to not treating your opponent with respect, with the respect that they are ⁓ a dangerous and capable adversary. That's certainly something that we've seen in Iran recently, where we've worked ourselves into potentially one of the worst geopolitical positions that the United States chose to be in. specifically because we underestimated not only the military capabilities of our opponent, but their spiritual and philosophical underpinnings. ⁓ You know, that's a, too much belief in your own version of reality prevents you from generating a theory of mind for somebody else's, and that makes you a shitty general. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And also you touched on the United States underestimating itself and also how the US has played a role in armed conflict and involving religion. Can you talk about how the United States, and I know these are different groups in the different parts of the same region, but can you talk about the Islamic State or the Taliban and how the United States played a role in either one of those groups? communities growing in power, not growing in power, but how did the United States impact the Islamic State and Taliban? Eric Czuleger: So in terms of, I know more about the Islamic State than I do the Taliban, so I'll speak more on them. ⁓ I think that there's a common lack of after action planning. There's a common ⁓ lack of foresight from the United States that, know, unfortunately you can set your watch by, I don't know, I've never been in these planning ⁓ cycles. So I don't know why we continually make this error, but the error looks similar. ⁓ Throughout history, the error goes like, well, we believe that that this society is antagonistic to our society, and that if left unchecked, it will eventually cross an ocean and ⁓ delete our society and you can go from containment of communism to the global war on terror ⁓ to whatever this thing in Iran is. ⁓ The only motivator that we tend to have is existential threat, existential threat, existential threat. So it motivates us to go in, ⁓ use an enormous amount of violent force, claim victory, and then leave. ⁓ And it seems that the, ⁓ that tends to create a good deal more problems ⁓ in the very near future. So with the case of the Taliban, obviously we were supporting the Northern Alliance and various groups of mujahideen against Russia in their war in Afghanistan. ⁓ But after that case, we failed to ⁓ do ⁓ the hard work of helping with institution building afterwards. We left and there was a bunch of strong men who were more than happy to take power. ⁓ And that's a huge problem. And I also do want to dispel this one sort of conspiracy theory. And that's that the US directly ⁓ contributed to the ⁓ creation of ⁓ Al-Qaeda. in the area and, you know, obviously there was a good deal of understanding that there were Arabic speakers operating in Afghanistan, ⁓ but we didn't take them seriously enough as a threat. ⁓ And because we essentially assumed they were a part of another network that was not going to be a threat to us. ⁓ And so there's this overestimation of ⁓ weaker powers and this underestimation of nascent powers that the United States consistently gets wrong. In terms of the Islamic State, I think this is more about creating the conditions that allowed that ⁓ force to thrive. We disbanded the Ba'athist army, ⁓ Nuri al-Amalaki, a Shia ⁓ representative of the Shia community who was quite close to Iran, had taken over the country. ⁓ And on top of that, ⁓ you had a bunch of disgraced ⁓ people who were now surrounded on both sides by folks that they felt were existential threats. ⁓ And not only that, but they're also trained militarily pretty darn well. So this is how you create the conditions to... created an insurgent group. Now notice at no point did I mention it was because of their specific ⁓ read of Islam. But I think it actually does bear mentioning that that read of Islam, least Wahhabist Islam, ⁓ it comes from the need to leverage religion in order to ⁓ expand a power base. So ⁓ Ibn Abid al-Wahhab, He was a Islamic reformer, want to say he was in the 1700s. He was a pretty intense dude. really like, he was like, no, like you guys are doing Islam all wrong. You have to be way more intense with it. This is like the no music, no, you know, very intense against anything that might look polytheistic. And he was actually kicked out of the village that he was living in. At this point, Saudi Arabia was sort of a loose network of Oasis towns. And at the same time, there's a guy named Ibn Abdel Saud who is living in another Oasis town. And he's like, well, you know, I want to sort of expand my power base, but I really have no religious precedent to do that because Muslims can't kill other Muslims. This is a big part of our religion. We're not allowed to do that kind of thing. And so as one thing, as things tend to happen, he suddenly finds this holy man who's apparently quite well versed and well trained. And he's like gone to like the Harvard and Oxford of Islamic schools at this point. And suddenly, ⁓ Saud had the religious precedent and the religious catalyst ⁓ to say, well, now I can wage this sort of war of conquest. And that's because of leveraging religion in order to ⁓ catalyze violent action. It's not necessarily the religion itself. It's who you are allowing to interpret that religion for you. And so it's like what you're talking about with the chaplain core, where it's like, I, you know, as somebody who's grown up in a Christian framework, I can't recognize these ideas. Like, I don't, I just don't recognize them. despite having a deal of understanding of Christianity. ⁓ And so because I can't recognize those ideas, because I don't see them appearing in the actual fundamental texts, then I'm exporting my understanding of what these spiritual instruments mean to a third party who clearly has ulterior motivations. I don't want Pete Hegseth to do my theological interpretations for me because I think he's wrong. And I think that the Protestant Reformation was really based on the fact that you do not need an interpretation layer between you and your spiritual life. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, that was very beautifully said. You crushed that. Thank you ⁓ for sharing so much about how the religious rhetoric strategy is exploitative ⁓ and how I mean, we could spend a whole other hour. Eric Czuleger: Well, because, I mean, don't you just see that as the creation of a new type of, like it's just creating a new government, right? It's just creating a new government that sucks, like that is operating off of poor ideas. Like the wonderful thing about the United States government is that you have inclusive accountability. You have the ability to say, hey, here's the information that we have, here's the decision that we took, here are the amount of people that wanted to take that decision. and hear what the effects are. That is a revolution in governance and political thinking. But the second that you shuttle decision making into the black box of, God said so, because that guy said that God said so." Suddenly we end up in a really lame governance system. Like one where the best ideas by virtue of them being got out of the decision-making process simply aren't sourced and surfaced and enacted, right? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, and then it's, there's so many waves of it. I was reading recently how coinciding over in the state of Israel was the chief rabbi of the IDF rabbinate, coinciding, like I said, with Netanyahu's rise in, what, like right around 2009, 2010, there was a different tone. of what it meant to be Jewish in the IDF and how they completely restructured within the military IDF of what it meant to be Jewish. ⁓ And it ⁓ kind of shook them, obviously it shook a lot of things up, but it became very legal. I mean, far more legalistic. had a whole bunch of people breaking down IDF as a conscripted army. most people, Eric Czuleger: Yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: are going through this service. And now they as soon as they're going into the military, they're being indoctrinated. So it's not, it's a it's a mechanism that is really quite powerful to have a conscripted army that you are mandating what it looks like to be a certain type of theology within a umbrella. It's, it begs a lot of questions about what is freedom? ⁓ What is and ⁓ How can we have freedom with religion? Eric Czuleger: Well, and there's something I wanted to bring up too about the Islamic State. ⁓ So there was a report and I wanted to pull up the exact one, but ⁓ I can't find it. ⁓ But anybody can look this up. think ⁓ there's some good research on this. But ⁓ what was found out in sort of post hoc interviews with ⁓ Islamic state fighters was that a significant percent of them, so I think it was something like only 20 to 30 % of them knew how to perform daily prayers. Like, those were not practicing Muslims. Like, they did not know how to do the most basic things in Islamic practice. There's wonderful report about that, I can't find at the moment, but it's really telling. Now, of course, we have to bound some of this with the fact that, okay, well, potentially the community of people that were interviewed for this, this is self-selected community. Maybe these were the people that surrendered, and because they surrendered, they lacked the religious zeal to make them fight harder. I don't know. But if we are saying that the community of Islamic State fighters was specifically motivated by a particular read of Islam, well, then it would stand to reason that anybody who's captured or surrendered would probably know how to do Islam, right? ⁓ And I think what you're saying with the IDF is really interesting because You know, the military, I never served in the military and certainly the Peace Corps is not as ideological an organization as the American military is. ⁓ But having known folks that have gone through the military, I think, you know, this is an incredible apparatus of thought control. And it's an incredible apparatus of thought control because frankly, it needs to be. That is how militaries have operated throughout history. ⁓ But at the same time, when you connect that with religious, ⁓ spiritual and philosophical underpinnings, you do get something truly ⁓ dangerous ⁓ and potentially more dangerous than a traditional military. And it's not just dangerous because they can fight better because God's on their side, but it's dangerous because of what I mentioned earlier, that God is just a bad strategy. God leads you into making poor choices. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And that was one of the things that the chief rabbi that took over the IDF talked about was that... ⁓ he wanted more people who were religious Zionists. And then if he wanted a strong army, he was gonna have to convert them. I mean, he didn't say it himself, but he was like, this secular Zionism is a serious issue for us. It's not enough just to have people say that they deserve homelands. Like we need to have them fully on board religiously. And I think about that, how funny that is that it's like, in order for us, to colonize and this is not shared just by the idea of this is a very common thing, but it's like how secular societies just don't typically go into colonialism. They don't have this like huge like, we need to go and wage war and violence. And like, there's this disenchantment, ⁓ but also you could. Eric Czuleger: Sure. Well, I wonder, I'm curious about pushing back on this because this is really just me thinking out loud at this point. But I wonder if ⁓ your ⁓ assessment there is that secular societies don't generally like sort of like engage in conquest the same way. I wonder if this is a bit more like McDonald's Peace Theorem. which is this idea that like no two countries with McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other. ⁓ That was disproved. It was disproved ⁓ in 2007 at the Russian invasion of South Ossetia. ⁓ But it was a great idea while it lasted. ⁓ And the reason that I sort of line these two up is like, you know, is ⁓ it the conditions or is it the cause, right? Is it the the sort of geopolitical conditions which move a country to become a colonizing force and force and then they adopt a sort of religious sentiment that allows that to to continue. That was certainly the case with the creation of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. ⁓ It's also in the the I once heard ⁓ the Bible described as storytelling that largely talks about, potentially just the Old Testament anyway, it really talks about the move from humanity, from hunter-gatherers to agrarian society. And you even see this in the story of Jacob and Esau. You have this... And then you also have the idea of people moving from... ⁓ you know, this sort of like ⁓ warrior bands to larger scaled communities. ⁓ And one great way to make sure that ⁓ your community and your ideology can scale is by making sure that people believe broadly the same thing. There is a moment where Mohammed comes back to Mecca after he's sort of like... He left for Medina and then he's come back to Mecca. You know, he's sort of waging his war of conquest. I hope this is right. So I'm totally going to like ⁓ look this up and cut it out if it's not correct. ⁓ But so my understanding is that at that point he re-enters the Kaaba, the big sort of black cube that we know from looking at videos of Mecca. He enters it and at the time since... Mecca was a trading city. The Kaaba contained almost like effigies of each of the many religions that were around the area. And it basically said, your God is here. Everybody's God is respected here, and you can all trade here. It allowed everybody to mostly be on the same network, if we're to use the network analogy. But then Muhammad enters the Kaaba and he apparently puts his staff down and like all of these effigies explode and it's like, ⁓ there's one God now. And there's so much, especially in Islam, about this move to monotheism, monotheism. There is only one God. ⁓ And I've always been really curious about why. that is so sort of front and center. I mean, this is a constant theological debate, right? It's between the Orthodox community and the Catholics, you know, are ⁓ images of saints being worshiped or are they just sort of like aspects of God? And when I think about it from a sort of strategic systems point of view, it's like having a single pointed ⁓ religion allows you to to enforce your strategic will a lot more efficiently, right? ⁓ And so I think that in looking at your idea of these wars of conquest, and oftentimes they're religiously motivated in some respect, my question is, wouldn't they need to be? Wouldn't they have to have some sort of theological basis to... unify and galvanize the action of so many disintermediated people. think the only gosh, the only one that I can think of here that might be ⁓ a good pushback against this might be like the like Alexander the Great's conquests, because he would just kind of be like, yo, you're a part of my empire now keep your religion, but like pay me. You know, From what I understand, I'm not a scholar of, I'm not a scholar at all, but I'm pretty sure he said that exact thing. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes and no. I was right there, but no, think that is a perfect point to sort of land on is, and in no way shape or form am I trying to say that secular societies immediately bring peace, obviously. And I know that, like, but that's not what I'm saying. Go ahead. Eric Czuleger: Well, yeah, yeah, well, and I also, ⁓ sorry, just because a secular society and peace. ⁓ So I'm also uniquely situated to talk about this briefly. But, you know, I live in Albania and Albania was the first atheist state for 50 years and peaceful it was not. ⁓ So under the reign of Enver Hoxha, it was an isolationist, like super hardcore communist country. that outlawed religion. It did no conquesting, I will say that. But man, it wasn't a peaceful place. And I think that ultimately comes down to, you know, and it's like such an annoying, like, you know, political philosophy 101 question of like, what is a religion? Can a state be a religion? And yeah, I'm super not prepared to delve into that, but. but it's like, you know, the difference between art and pornography, like, you know it when you see it, I guess. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, right, right. Well, and no, absolutely, secularism does not mean peace. ⁓ But on the flip side, religionizing a country or theocratic, theocratizing a country does enhance motivation to sacrifice for military. Eric Czuleger: Damn. Yeah. You know, there's an interesting thing that I'm like, it's been in my head for the last little bit, because I wrote a podcast episode about this the other day. was about how, ⁓ like how grain basically becoming an agrarian society ends up forming the foundations of the state in the first place. ⁓ And then there's this quote by Yanis Varoufakis, ⁓ Greek I guess economist that wrote techno feudalism and he talks about how power is ultimately about capturing surplus that like, you if you're in an early agrarian society, whoever has the surplus, like whoever has basically the keys to the grain and can distribute it and can, you know, X, Y, and Z, they're the king, right? There's even the hydrologic state craft theory by Whit Fogel, I think. who basically says, look, if there's ever this large hydrological project that needs, that takes some, that's difficult to bring water to people, ⁓ they'll end up with a centralized power because the centralized power is the only thing that's gonna allow people to get water, the fundamental thing that they need, right? And so I'm thinking about that concept of capturing the surplus. And I have not, I haven't drawn a good line around it just yet, but it's something I've been, you know, chewing on for a little bit. And I'm wondering what it means to capture the surplus of belief or capture the surplus of, of an agency or attention. Like, is it possible that, that now we're sort of moving into this point in history where, where the surplus is, is like our, our additional agency or our attention or even the sort of philosophical underpinnings that we need to sort of feel sane in a time that feels very disjointed. ⁓ Yeah, mean, think people, there's a very clear crisis of meaning that comes from not only a lot of the technological factors that we're dealing with right now, but... ⁓ the fact that we don't really feel a grand sense of agency as maybe like we've heard people felt before. And because of that, hands over power to people who say, know what's going on. And maybe that's the surplus that they're capturing. I don't know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: would be surplus like knowledge. know a phrase that like, kind of, you you talk about capturing the surplus is how power is accumulated. ⁓ A phrase that came up for me in my studies in theology and political history was the idea of the Protestant Reformation ⁓ now creating a sort of environment called the free market of believers. And I hadn't heard Eric Czuleger: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: free market of believers as like a sort of economic term to describe what happened with marketing and trying to attract people into the churches and it's ⁓ Eric Czuleger: Yeah, how cool. Well, and you know, this was exactly why the Jesuits, the Jesuits, the Jesuits, I can't, educated by them, the Jesuits were created. So the Jesuits were created as a response to the Protestant Reformation. And basically like they were supposed to be like, you know, these like learned Navy SEALs that were gonna go like Bible jujitsu the hell out of anybody who. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ wait. Eric Czuleger: like picked up one of Martin Luther's pamphlets or like started trying to read a Bible in their own language and they just like karate chop them out of their hands and be like, man, well, I'm gonna own you with logic and reason because I'm a Jesuit. Like that's why it was created to to recapture this free market of ⁓ religious ideology. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ Yeah. Well, Eric, this has been a fantastic conversation. mean, I hate to stop it now, but I've got to vent here in a little bit. Please, please do. Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell folks who have listened to you, to us today, how can they learn more about you, follow you, et cetera? Eric Czuleger: I'll come back anytime, this is great. Yeah, any old time. Yeah, go, obviously, so you can follow me on TikTok at the under report. has underscores between the and under and report. ⁓ So you can find me there. ⁓ You can listen to my podcast also called the under report. The podcast is really more deep dive storytelling on. These, a lot of these concepts, so this whole thing about Grain and capturing the surplus, we just did that episode last week and I'm so proud of the title. It's called Grain of Thrones. I felt my producer was like, very good. I was like, thank you. Anyway, so there's that. I do a weekly intelligence brief. So I do the sort of five stories that nobody's covering. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You Very good. Eric Czuleger: The best way to support me is to do the paid version of that. And for a limited time, I'll also send you a copy of my book, You're Not Here Travels Through Countries That Don't Exist, ⁓ if you subscribe to that. yeah, think Instagram, TikTok, it's all the same. And YouTube. And reach out anytime. I've met such great people through it, obviously. This has been an incredible conversation. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Wow, Eric. Yeah, absolutely. Eric Zuleger, folks, what a treat. What a treat. You will definitely come back. We'll have lots of conversations. I feel like we just sort of like high-fived a bunch of bullet points. like you said, we could make a podcast series out of any one of our questions today. And folks, if you've listened to this, please let me know what you think in the comments. It has been such a delight having you today, Eric. Eric Czuleger: Hell yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I really want to know my followers. What did you guys think? Did you all learn a bit? This was, we're very fortunate for all your very experience and wow, Eric, thank you. Eric Czuleger: Also do fact check all of those things. ⁓ I'm pretty sure I'm on there, yeah, if I said anything that was ⁓ nonsensical about, ⁓ especially about the religions that you are, ⁓ do let me know directly. I'm always trying to learn and make sure that I'm saying things that are accurate. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Amen. I feel like I should do that too. Just like have an asterisk. Be like, I'm trying my best. Eric Czuleger: ⁓ I did a whiteboard explaining the difference between Sunni and Shia the other day and I was like, wow, this is complex. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. my goodness. ⁓ Well, thank you. And folks, forget, like I said, let me know what you thought down in the comments and don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. ⁓ This has another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and until next time, see ya. Eric Czuleger: Bye.