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#033 - Frank Furedi - The Beginning Of A Political Revolution: What The Populist Surge In The EU Tells Us · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmate, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Dr.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Frank Faradi.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Frank is an author, social commentator, and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, author of more than 26 books.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Frank's studies have been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments in Western societies, and in recent years he's published several studies on the impact of the culture wars on family life, socialization, education, and public life.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: We cover a lot of ground in this episode, and Frank and I talk about what the recent shift toward populist sovereigntist parties in the European Parliament elections means for Europe, how it may be the beginning of a replacement of the current political class, as we spoke about in episode 10 of Thinking Class, the upcoming French presidential elections, and how feelings of estrangement and dispossession are driving this populist wave, the response of the politicians, parties, and institutions in danger of being swept up by it, and the methods they are employing in a bid to hold on to power, how Gen Z and younger generations appear to be yearning for tradition and national identity rather than naturally inclining to left liberal ideas, why the old left and old right seem to be cooperating to overthrow the current status quo, the universal recognition in Europe that the close alliance between leftism and Islam is not a good thing, whether France is skirting with civil war, the threat of financial terrorism to torpedo any Ressemblement National government, whether the attempt to keep populist parties down is delaying the inevitable, why populist parties need a coherent governing strategy should they win power to be successful in the long term, the need to preserve Western civilization and its cultural heritage, and what Frank has changed his mind on in the course of his life.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed being able to welcome Frank back onto the show.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's straight talking and he's got an uncanny ability to boil down political developments and philosophical concepts practically and in bite-sized ways.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots I can learn there.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't listened to episode 10 where Frank also features, then please do so because it's a natural precursor to this one.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And before we dive in, you'd be really helping me out if you clicked subscribe on whatever platform you are listening to or watching the show on.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because the more subscribers we have, the more guests we can attract, and the faster Thinking Class grows.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nice talking to you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You are my first repeat guest.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think in the podcasting world, I'm now officially able to call you a friend of the show.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: When we first spoke, we spoke about the ruling elite, the type that we find walking in the halls of Westminster or Brussels or across the Atlantic in Washington or in big business and NGOs, that kind of mindset.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked you whether you thought it could be reformed or to become closer to the people or whether it needed to be replaced.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you unequivocally said, there's going to be no come to Jesus moment, it needs to be replaced.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what's happened since then?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've seen earlier this month, so we're recording towards the end of June here on the 9th of June, there were the European Parliament elections.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And to put it mildly, I think we saw a huge surge in support for populist parties, and not just from boomers either.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: We had populist sovereignist parties coming first and second in 10 out of 27 EU member states, including France, Germany, and Italy.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in France, 32% of Gen Z voters voted for Marine Le Pen's Ressemblement National.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So is this the beginning of the end for what the current ruling really represents, Frank?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I wish it was, but I think there's a long way to go.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think the really exciting development is that a growing number of young people have decided to uh uh basically kick up against the status quo as it exists.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of become very cynical and distrust the old political establishment.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see that from everywhere, from Holland to Sweden to France.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can see it's a real kind of generational estrangement from the old ways.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in that respect, I think Britain is a little bit different, where it's still a bit more uh sort of static in that respect.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: But overall, there seems to be a a kind of uh recognition that uh enough is enough.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some kind of change is needed.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what you now have, I think, is a bifurcation of uh of young people, where you know some young people, particularly from the more privileged sections of society, are more likely to stay with the existing uh cultural and political establishment than the uh people that are coming from less privileged, more working class areas of society, who are really feeling the pinched and and very often feel that the cultural ideals of of society are are not the ones they would like to share, but they are ones that they are reacting against.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: The in what's resurgence is the wrong word, the surge in interest, I suppose, amongst the ideas and values that are being represented and broadcast, I suppose, like Le Pen's Ressemblement National, like increasingly reform in the UK, even if it's not necessarily in their manifesto, it's some of their sound bites.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that the youth, I suppose, which we could argue has not exactly received a strong cultural and traditional inheritance, is finding itself being drawn to those parties that are trying to talk to those things.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, I had Connor Tomlinson from the Lotus Eaters and deprogrammed on here not too long ago, and he spoke very plainly about how he and his generation, particularly those that are leaning to the more conservative values, but in general just rebelling against what the status quo is, feel totally bereft of anything to be rooted to, to be connected to.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: They see the impact that it's had on family, they see what it's had on the demographics and the cultural conflict that you see roaring up because of too much ethnic and social diversity in too short a time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that a very interesting uh development, considering most people would expect that if you've steamrolled over conservative, traditional, or even just more everyday values, that they still somehow find a way of coming through, that there seems to be something within people that yearns for them, even if there's no way of talking about them in the current status quo.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that something you see?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, even when people don't know what it is they're yearning for, uh there's a sense of of being dispossessed of something.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what they're really trying to get at and and and articulate is that they've been uh dispossessed of their cultural heritage, that they've been left with very little, uh there's very little foundation on which they can uh cultivate their identity.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's very little uh from the past that they can use that will guide them towards the future.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as a result of that, a lot of uh young people are searching for the kind of meaning that the more technocratic uh elitist cosmopolitan ideals cannot provide.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I'm experiencing everywhere in Europe is that the quest for meaning, which is always a part of the human condition, has acquired a much more politicized dynamic in the 21st century.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And this quest for meaning is one that's particularly important amongst young people because they are trying to uh develop some kind of identity, and they realize that the only option there is left is you're either off for identity politics and you become a victim, you see yourself as a member of the LGBTQ, feminist, Black Lives Matter, Hamas kind of coalition, uh, which is not attractive to a lot of people, or alternatively, you try to reach out and find something within your own tradition, within your own environment, and try to somehow uh internalize those ideals.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that kind of polarized landscape of meaning is what we're seeing, and it's something that's playing uh to the advantage of conservative and populist parties throughout Europe, because they're the only ones that are providing that kind of counter-cultural outlook for young people to uh grab onto.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that what we seem to be seeing is a mirror image, I suppose, and I and this is perhaps unsurprising because anything that comes into being often brings the opposite into being in some way.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by the mirror image is some of the things we've spoken about there have been about questions of identity.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I would also say um that I am increasingly seeing through the thoughtful young writers that lean right that they have spotted, or at least are building an argument um that is predicated not too on not too dissimilar lines to the decolonization argument, that they believe that through multiculturalism, that through diversity, equity, and inclusion, and through mass immigration, that colonization is indeed taking place, but not in the way that you would you would typically hear the argument being made.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that to be quite fascinating that that's getting the cut through, that those identity politics which were played to try to push back against things like national identity is now coming back to haunt them in some way, and perhaps we might see it continue to develop.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's early days yet, because uh, you know, whenever um you have the uh unleashing of new forms of identity uh formations uh and new ways of reacting to the world you live in, what you have is a kind of uh almost like a political cultural experiment where people are trying to desperately look around for ways in which they can um have a you know develop a sense of belonging, know you know what is it you belong to, and you know what are those ideals that uh in a sense connect you to those that are closest to you.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this attempt to uh to do that, and you also become aware of the fact that you've been uh to some extent robbed of your heritage, you've been dispossessed of so much that is uh relevant to your community and to your way of life, that you want to cross some of that back.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And just what form that will take, what shape that will take, we don't know yet, because to some extent, every generation that does that uh finds their own original way of synthesizing together these different elements that they are searching towards.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what is very exciting is that finally we have a situation where it's not just a one-way traffic, where basically it's the advocates of the culture war who are uh initiating everything, you know, laying down the law, determining what can and cannot be said.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you now have people who are themselves uh trying to develop their own cultural outlook and a certain consciousness of of belonging that is almost the very opposite.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of a there's a moral contrast that is emerging at the moment, which uh uh is is is evolving, and it's yet unclear how that will shape the future.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: But nevertheless, it is something that is unfolding before our eyes.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's also been notable, I would say, that that that movement, that movement towards uh that the synthesis uh in the new generation is also taking place across the political spectrum where prior to all of these cosmopolitan ideals, the progressive ideals taking root, you would have found anyone who would have uh considered themselves to be conservative, uh, and anyone who would have considered themselves more um social democratic would have been on total opposite sides of the spectrum.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: They might have said, okay, we agree around the communitarian aspect, but otherwise those guys are the political enemies.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas actually you find people all across the political spectrum in the United Kingdom, you'll have people like Paul Embury being able to understand why Nigel Farage is having cut through, for example.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that to be quite interesting that you know you'll have supporters of the Social Democratic Party understanding why people support reform, and then you'll have the old Blue Labour doing the same thing.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I I wonder whether that will um that will hold as things develop, but I suppose it we'll see if the if the ideological um uh exuberance of the progressive movement, if that does fall away, whether we will see um those those parties come head to head.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, it almost seems like there is there are multiple um flanks coming at this dominance dominant ideology.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is this something that you see in Europe as well?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to some extent, uh you basically have some very similar reactions.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that it works is that uh you can have big differences on taxation or differences on economic policy, on free trade or protectionism or on the welfare state.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, these are differences that are political in character.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And these are differences that are not as significant as the more foundational cultural ones, which are really about your very existence and really are about the more foundational system of meaning to which you experience life.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And given the fact that sections of the old left are uh just as much uh sort of uh just as much undermined by the um the way in which there's been attempts to undermine Western culture or their traditional ideals as as the right, uh, there's a kind of basis for uh a coalition or unity uh for some time to come.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's gonna continue.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh obviously, it it doesn't mean that there's a complete agreement.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: For example, in Germany, you know, you can have a party like the this uh party organized by Sarah Wageneck, who's a left-wing uh uh activist who uh whose party managed to do reasonably well for the very first time.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: They got almost 10% of the vote, and then you have some right-wing parties, but they have very similar policies on migration, very similar policies on the Green Deal and the environment, on some of the more uh culturally pernicious initiatives that have occurred, like gender and elsewhere.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that's gonna probably continue for some time.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually think that in the long run, what's gonna happen is that the political labels that we you and I are using and to which people identify with are themselves gonna alter because the uh classical left-right division uh or the social democratic conservative division uh doesn't really mean very much in the 21st century.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And there's going to have to be a new way in which some of the uh uh elements of organic continuity with the past, which is what conservatism was essentially about, are going to be reinvented and given shape in the period ahead.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because to a considerable extent to be a conservative now in in England or Britain, uh doesn't mean very much given what conservatism has become the way it's been, its meaning has been spoiled by the by the Tory party.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have almost like a new way of expressing yourself in these very new circumstances.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right in thinking that the acceleration of support for these populist sovereigntist parties is quite heavily linked to October the 7th and what we've seen since then?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, it's not to say that they didn't exist, that this support didn't exist before, it certainly did.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: But has there been an acceleration?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because as far as I can tell, when I look at the discourse, I see that we have people that are very concerned about the seeming alliance between those in the more progressive left and those who are supportive of political Islam and generally anti-Western civilization and everyone else who now be looking, seem to now be looking for an outlet for this sense of loss that they're feeling, which they're now seeing is is is increasing by the day, and it seems to be this urgency.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do we think that's partly what's behind it?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about Britain.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I don't see very much of that in Britain.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a bit of that, but certainly in places like France, Holland, Belgium, there is now a universal recognition that this phenomenon of Islamo-leftism, this close alliance between uh uh the politics of Hamas and the LGBTQ sort of identitarian outlook is something that people are really disturbed about.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a really big issue in France at the moment, where the election is going to take place on Sunday, where you have this uh horrible case of a 12-year-old Jewish girl being really badly raped by three boys and called dirty Jews, come and all kinds of horrible things.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you have the situation where the French right is horrified by this development and you know is determined to make this into an issue, also make anti-Semitism into a political issue, whereas the left, read by Jean-Luc Melenchon, is trying to minimize this as if it's uh uh an incident, a random incident that's got no wider kind of significance.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of uh uh extra polarization that's occurred after October 7th is really, really important in many parts of Europe.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's gonna have a more long-term legacy to it, because as you have the growing uh convergence and synthesis of Hamas type radicalism with uh you know conventional Western type of identity politics, you're gonna have this strange brew uh emerging, which a lot of people will find uh quite grotesque and unacceptable.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stay with France.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking here about Islamism, concern for Islamism, and you have written recently um about a potential civil war in France.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: At least that was the headline of one of your substacts.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not the only one who's brought that up.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Three years ago, there were 20 retired generals who you reference in one of your articles, who wrote an open letter to the French public explaining that they believed civil war was on the cards because of these republics that had developed within the towns and cities of the republic itself.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they wrote about Islamists having taken over towns and cities, and indeed, this is what the potential to-be 28-year-old Prime Minister Jordan Bardella speaks of as his own lived experience growing up in a part of Paris.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now President Macron is weighing in using the same language of civil war, but this time he's using it as though any vote for the parties to the left or right of him could lead to civil war.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find The Guardian writing just this week that France is on the brink.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that uh the rights of President Macron, the Guardian, that France is on the brink now, but it wasn't on the brink at any other point in the past due to the policies of that particular political class?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it's very interesting that Macron must have read my article on the impending civil war and wrote one himself a day later.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that basically what what what they are really saying, uh, you know, almost like kind of a um like a Freudian slip when they talk about it, is that the way they look at it is that there, you know, if you're gonna have a situation where uh someone like uh the Rassemble National is gonna win the election, or and maybe Jordan Bordell will become Prime Minister or could become Prime Minister, that's not something that they're gonna accept.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna just simply lie back and let the uh democratic course of events uh just take place.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that what they are really saying is that this is something that's so unacceptable that they will react against.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're talking about civil wars, what I'm really worried about is that their side it's it's Macron.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And all the people that are part and parcel of uh Macron's coterie, uh who have a very powerful position between the civil service and the institution of the state, but also cultural and other institutional media, I think there's a very good chance that they're gonna try to uh find a way of preventing the uh democratic process from being realized.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what they really are saying as well is that the challenge represented by um Bardello is so great uh that it to it it it it's not something that can be absorbed into normal French democratic politics, in democratic politics in the way that they define it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore I think that there's going to be this is going to be a it is a the single most important election in Europe because uh its outcome will have an impact not just on France, but also on the European Union.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: France and Germany are the two mainstains of the European Union, but it will also have a big impact on the rest of Europe, because if a movement like uh the the RN can succeed in France, then that will uh suggest to people in other parts of Europe that something similar uh uh can can work elsewhere.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I see this as being a very very much an existentialist moment.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is uh whether or not uh the will, the elect the democratic will of the people will be respected.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously it may well be the case that the very last minute or very last moment um the RM will not do as well as expected.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: But at the moment, by all accounts, uh their whole their vote is not only holding up, but is actually doing better than previously thought.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to have rhyming qualities with the lead up to the Brexit referendum where everyone was so certain that it was going to be a remain vote, and we all know what happened next.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then everyone realized they'd been living in these echo chambers, I suppose, is probably the right way of putting it.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there had been following that many years of trying to frustrate it because they just couldn't believe that this is what they had to do.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what's quite interesting is that as most people play the ostrich game and bury their heads in the sand, thinking there's no way it's going to go that way, and they don't realize that actually the common person who might not necessarily know all of the jargon from the Financial Times or the broadsheets, they have a real sense of the impact of policies and how the world's changing around them.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter what you end up telling people in the frenzied hysteria in the lead up to an election that they shouldn't vote that way because the world's going to end, they will end up voting that way to make sure that they can put a shot across the bowels in whatever way they can towards the political establishment.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we will we will see if this is what happens.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: The institutional pressures.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we've talked a little bit about the the use of language such as could there be a looming civil war to try to scare voters.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've also seen institutional pressure being placed on a potential incoming Marine Le Pen presidency.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we see this through the um central bank, the European Central Bank, where they have been playing around with bond rate prices to try to cause market instability, which sounds, without all of the background, very conspiratorial.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, it seems to be that this is the same playbook that the Bank of England used on Liz Truss for all of her faults.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: There definitely seemed to be some kind of a political establishment, uh financial establishment stitch up there to make sure she couldn't succeed with her with her market policies.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: What what what is exactly going on here and why is it that the current ruling political class will even consider doing such a thing like sending your own country in a recession recession to remain in power?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh it's a combination of a number of different things because you have the attempt by the French establishment to thwart the election of the RN.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of a domestic internal pressure.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: But then you also have, you have to remember there's also the Brussels bureaucracy, the Eurocrats there, who are no less worried about this possible development.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they've been in the forefront of using the European Central Bank uh as an in as a as a medium through which they can create a certain degree of economic instability as a way of blackmailing the French population.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what the ECB is doing is essentially sending out the message that if you dare, if you dare vote for the RN, and if you're an RN government, then we'll do our best to make sure that uh your uh economy will be in big trouble.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna make sure that uh you're gonna have to pay back your debt, you know, sort of sooner rather than later.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna ensure that, you know, in terms of uh investment possibilities, in terms of economic uh relationships, you're going to be pushed against the wall.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a classical example of uh economic terrorism in a sense, where you where where you're using your the lever of power you have over uh over the financial system, in particular the over the bond markets and elsewhere as a way of ensuring that your uh your target has got no choice but to basically give in.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a very powerful weapon.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a powerful weapon that I'm sure they'll use even if uh uh Bordella gets elected.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so they're not gonna have uh an easy time once they get elected because uh uh the European uh central bank will be demanding uh that Bordela plays according to their uh sort of playbook.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that you know we'll just have to watch.
• 28:25
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• 28:30
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• 28:38
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• 28:41
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• 28:57
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• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose one of the final strands that have been pulled on institutionally, and this isn't specific to France, but the French election was triggered by the European Parliament elections and that surge towards the popular sovereignist parties, is since then we've seen that the European Commission and uh various other um high-ranking officials from across the EU nation states who weren't part of that particular surge, they they they sit very much on the establishment, have since given Ursula von der Leyen an additional term, and they seem to be trying to frustrate any potential movement in the orientation politically, ideologically of the Commission, the European Parliament.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: How effective can that be?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Does that effectively thwart any meaningful change at that supranational EU level?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think it does because the Commission is the Commission.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh inhabited by people who are there full life.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whatever happens in in terms of any election, that's not gonna make the slightest bit of difference in terms of the composition of the uh different uh divisions within the bureaucracy.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're still going to be the same people who are committed to their own values, uh, who are institutionally loyal to the European Commission, that kind of federalist uh imperium that they've devoted their lives to.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not gonna change.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: All that can happen is that uh as you have more and more people elected who are skeptical or questioning what the European Commission does, uh that will, in a sense, temper some of their ambitions.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the best that we can hope for is that if now that you have a different composition in the parliament and you have a very clear message being sent out about uh what people in Europe want, all that we can hope for is that the Commission will step back a little bit.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we've already seen signs of that in relation to the Green Deal, the way in which they b basically said that uh certain of the uh this horrible green ideological policies that they were promoting are going to be suspended for a while.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're not going to be implemented.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think we can see potentially a little bit more of that, but by and large, the Commission is the Commission, and uh that's not gonna change unless there's a much greater uh uh political upheaval occurring through elections, which hopefully might happen in the next four or five years.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: It does seem, if you look quite far back in European politics, that this attempt to remain in power and to keep steering the same course in the face of this uh political resistance, as it were, uh in its actual sense of the word, uh that they're delaying the inevitable somewhat.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll use Hit Wilders as an example.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of the 2000s, he was obviously popular with a relatively small subset of the Dutch population, but he was considered beyond the pale outside of those circles, indeed, in the United Kingdom.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know Douglas Murray made this point recently where he spoke about how in the 2000s, when the Labour government blocked his entry into Britain as being someone who wouldn't be conducive to the social good because of his his um his policies and his thoughts on Islam and Europe, is he is now effectively the de facto head of the Netherlands government.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst he realized that he wouldn't be acceptable as a prime minister, he's effectively pulling the strings.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the trajectory that we're on, and we look at Jordan Bardella and some of the policies he he's proposed, he's already playing around with foreign nationals' children, not automatically getting nationality just because they have been born on French soil.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about, as far as I can see, he's talking about the deportation of foreign nationals who've been economically inactive for six months.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: It seems that even if there's some way of suppressing this now, there's some way of torpedoing this movement, is that if you just carry on on the status quo and you keep pushing on with all of the globalization policies, the mass immigration, all of the things we've spoken about, that in the end, the tidal wave is is coming.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just uh trying to find a way of break, they're just trying to find any way of breaking that tidal wave they can, but to limited effect.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think that it's coming whether it is slaughtered now or or not?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think what's happening, what you're describing, is that the uh attempt to put certain political parties and movements under quarantine and isolating them, and basically saying that these political parties cannot be part of respectable society.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: They cannot appear on the media, you know, they're they're not to be taken seriously as proper political actors.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, this policy, which worked for a very long time, for the last 20, 25 years, uh, basically is gradually unraveling more and more.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it means that in many parts of Europe, political parties uh that could not have a voice on the media or who were entirely isolated and basically regarded as uh as beyond the pale are now gradually coming into what is uh is a is the mainstream of political life.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's happening, but it's meeting with ferocious resistance.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you notice, but one of the ways in which there's an attempt to resist this development is to label any political party that is uh, in a sense, uh conservative or right-wing as hard right, far-right, extreme right, to try to basically demonize them and uh suggest that somehow they're not unlike the political parties that existed in Germany in the 1930s, that kind of politics of fear uh being weaponized quite systematically.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the the interesting thing is that gradually people are are become weary and skeptical of this particular ploy.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're finding is that this quarantine uh is no longer uh working.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's been it it's it's lost its effect, and therefore you you know you can no longer basically cut off these parties.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are still some parties in Europe that are that suffer from that, that haven't been able to break through because the this attempt to uh insulate society from their from their influence is still working, but it's only a matter of time before uh this basic strategy, uh what I call insulating democracy from uh people you don't like politically is going to break down.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And let's try to imagine what happens should we start seeing breakthroughs with these populist parties.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've read commentators like Thomas Fatsi, who's written numerous articles since June the 9th, the European parliamentary elections, about at least the first one was about how populist parties you could people can celebrate them getting closer to the changing of the status quo, but when they get there, they won't be able to govern and they won't do too much.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he drew out several examples of those populist insurgencies having been watered down, whether it's Georgia Maloney in Italy or whatever.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's enough of a track record to be able to say that confidently?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you agree that actually when populists win power, they don't particularly do much at all and they don't deliver on their agenda?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think Thomas is unnecessarily pessimistic.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and and maybe you can call him pessimistic, stroke, realistic in the sense that if you look at the Italian experience, uh it bears out what he's really saying, that it was very easy to capture the uh fratelli, uh the brothers of Italy, uh, partially because Italy was in an economically fragile situation with very high levels of debt, where the ECB could have a uh disproportionate amount of influence over policy making.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no doubt that whenever a populist movement comes into government, they're gonna be under enormous international pressure to fall in line and to um not to carry out the kind of policies uh that they were vetted to.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I think where where where Thomas Fazi is a little bit pessimistic is not realizing that, okay, Maloney is doing this, but then Maloney also has got a political base which expects her to deliver on a number of different issues.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a political base that isn't entirely passive and isn't just going to sit around and watch their dreams being uh betrayed.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're much more uh vociferous and active, and therefore Maloney cannot simply ignore their aspirations.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think that it may well be possible that some of the populist parties that get elected may get captured, may be forced into a corner by the way that the markets work.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: But with every single uh wave of populist movements emerging and gaining strength and acquiring greater momentum, that will be uh it will be easier for these movements to actually succeed in their ambitions.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think the real problem is not what FAZI is describing, although that is uh you know obviously a consideration.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think the real problem is that many of the populist parties uh haven't developed uh a coherent enough political program.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: They lack clarity and experience in terms of uh working out what their priorities of the state should be.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Very often what they lack also is uh a group of intellectuals and experts who they could call upon to help them uh sort of uh make decisions that are both realistic but also radical and transformative.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know that this is a concern, for example, uh for Jordan Bordello and Mary Le Pen.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things they're doing is they've spent a lot of time over the last 18 months in getting together a large group of people, maybe a couple of hundred people who have experience of office or of administration.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And basically they're saying that these people will help us if we're in power because we'll need certain positions to be filled on the civil service.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because they don't want to be uh sort of captured by the civil service and paralyzed by the civil service.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they're already thinking how can we get our own people into these uh important positions so that we have much more room to maneuver.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it politics is uh is not a black and white thing that, you know, with every success you always call the possibility of disappointment.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that you know we have to be uh realistic about, even when you're looking at these very exciting developments in Europe.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: The notion of having a governing philosophy and knowing what to do with it should you get into office, Frank, is something that I'm seeing with regards to criticism of Nigel Farage and reform is yes, he's saying all of the things that have needed to be said for so long, and he's winning all the debates.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the risk, however, being potentially it becomes a cult of personality because those who wish for there to be cut through on those points also desperately wish to see something that would make them effective in government.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: And effectively, some of his biggest critics uh that you can find in Substakistan would say there's just there is no basis that there would be no way of there's not not even any underlying governing plan or way of putting that into effect.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: And just thinking about your roots, Frank, as a Hungarian, is I suppose the likes of Marine Le Pen or any other populist sovereigntist parties, they may want to look to Victor Orban, who seems to be the well, he is the most long-standing of that ilk and has clearly been governing for a long time.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think the likes of Orban, and I suppose now we're seeing results in Argentina with Javier Millet, who's reporting that for the first time in 30 years, there's no inflation in Argentina and talks about the budgets being cut and there being a surplus and all of those things.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think these are the places which will, you know, there'll be speed dial from the new the new parties coming up saying, Victor, Javier, lend me your people.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: We need to figure out what to do if we get into power?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously, uh there's uh a lot of sense in having uh an international discussion about the experience of governing.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it makes a lot of sense for people to uh engage with each other and to learn from each other's experiences, to maybe even borrow uh some people from one another.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: That makes perfect sense.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: But and at the end of the day, uh you know, you can only learn so much from Hungary or Argentina.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: You have to develop uh a governing strategy that is organically rooted to your own society.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a problem, you know, at the moment, for example, with Farage and reform, it's not a problem because there's no danger of them getting into government or anywhere near there.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh at the moment, you know, it's just exciting to hope that they're gonna get some members of parliament and maybe form the nucleus of some kind of genuine uh political alternative, which would be uh a really, really good thing.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then we can uh address the f the absence of long term policies and and make sure that reform becomes a real political party rather than what it is now, which And a startup, basically, you know, sort of uh hopefully a successful startup.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I I I do think that uh it's worth looking at the international experience, both the good experiences, positive experiences like Hungary, but also some of the negative experiences.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think Poland is a very negative experience of failure.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you can you can see that their biggest failure wasn't just simply that they lost the election, but they didn't leave anything behind.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you kind of hope that if you do lose the democratic election, you know, you leave behind uh some influence, uh a legacy that that the next generation can build on.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't seem to exist, unfortunately, in Polish society.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of discussions that need to be had.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in particular, you know, we have to have a grown-up discussion about economic realities, you have to have a grown-up discussion, about a genuinely honest grown-up discussion about how you deal with the migration crisis, not just make uh silly promises.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to have some grown-up discussions about the uh about the environmental issues, and also in the end of the culture wars.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the most effective way of pushing back and taking back ground on this on this war where we've given up so much territory to the other side?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Frank, you've written lots about the culture war and the notion that Western civilization, the West, has been subverted.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, you sat behind James Lindsay at the European Parliament address in March of last year, where he outlined rather meticulously the social justice theories, the those who defined them, put them into practice, what they believed, the impact it's having, why we should be worried, and how they're linked to this wider ideological genus, and that this is what has let through all the various transgressive policies or uh turned a blind eye to Islamism and let progressivism run riot in our institutions.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, we've seen the lights of Ayan Hersey Ali setting up substacks like the Restoration, where she's bringing all these ideas together going, how do we get over this subversion to stop Western civilization totally collapsing?
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose there seems to be then common cause or common understanding that there has been a subversion.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: But my question to you, Frank, is this this pushback a sign that we're overcoming that?
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you believe or or could you predict that Western civilization has indeed been conquered from within and perhaps that's that, it's run its race?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, it it's funny you should say that because uh I just started working on a book on this question.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've got a book coming out in September, which uh is a prelude to that, which looks at the uh war against the past.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm really interested in is to uh provide a positive future-oriented account of what Western civilization was, what it has become, and what it could be.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there is no need for us to just give up the fight, because uh in many respects, uh there is no, you know, the the ideals that we kind of stand for are so strong and so persuasive that if you can give it a proper, clear meaning in the language of the 21st century, and if you can uh alert people to what's really happening, I think we can mobilize sufficient support so that instead of always retreating and giving way, we're able to uh, in a sense, um reappropriate uh that kind of civilizational sensibility.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is the key issue of our time, because it transcends the uh small smaller everyday issues of public life, which are obviously important for existence.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: But when you talk about existence, there's also uh a kind of uh spiritual and and and and uh symbolic existence of us as a people, of who we are, and what is this kind of uh uh foundation of meaning that we kind of uh provide us with the resources to interpret our everyday existence.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think though you know making sure that those uh ideals are rehabilitated or promoted in an accessible way is really quite important.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that now is the time to really take that civilizational battle to the other side.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of being embarrassed whenever ever people say, well, Western civilization, that's racist, you know, that's uh you know, you know, that's supremacist, all the rest of that, we've got to sort of turn the discussion around and demonstrate that this is uh this is something that has given humanity an incredible precious resource that we cannot simply abandon uh without uh very, very high cost.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a big believer in uh in fighting this battle, and I also have sufficient optimism to know that at the very least uh you know we'll end up in a much better place than we are now, even if we don't win every single battle.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that in the end we have a good chance of winning the war.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: The the costs you were talking about that come have come about from this change, this loss of connection to whatever our national heritage is might have been, is something I've felt personally, and I've recently been reading one of Peter the Hitchins, the British columnist's books, The Abolition of Britain, where he documents the change from something like the 1850s onwards, the various laws that were passed, but then as new educational methods came in.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is he puts forward that a culture, and this is what people talk about, cultures are uh are things like art and letters and language and poetry and philosophy and history.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't often talk about it that way anymore.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: He said, but in the in Britain, we saw educational reforms that ultimately got rid of everything that the last 20 generations had been built on, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Browning and Spencer.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he made the case that actually when people left school, they were so embedded in the King James Bible and all of that literary background and our national uh battles and heroes and stories that everyone knew who they were, even if they were subversive in some way, even if they were somehow trying to push back against the grain, everyone had this common frame of reference.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what I find quite interesting is that I, having learned about this post hoc, is I I felt that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I grew up with the learning a few bits here and there, but then generally reading the subversive, the multicultural texts, and I felt like I wasn't really a part of anything.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: I felt quite rootless.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I got back to Northumberland in the pandemic when I started off my own back looking into the the cultural heritage of the country, why we came to believe what we believe, the religious inheritance, the spiritual inheritance, and some of the key figures of Northumbrian history that I've started to feel wedded to the place that I was from.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't make me some kind of irrational xenophobe thinking that I was way better than everyone else because I knew this, but it actually made me feel more human.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's a cost that we never really focused on.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're so focused on either inclusion or the economic benefits of things.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't actually think about the day-to-day loss that people might feel.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's much bigger than we we give it credit for.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I see it on the streets of the towns that I live in.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: I see two schools side by side, and one seems to be this post-revolutionary school, and everyone's dressed in a way where they think they're very independent and individualist, and their green hair and they've got their shirts untucked and ties and loads of badges and crazy makeup and all those things and piercings.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the other school, and it's a private school.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not all private schools are perfect and retain that tradition, but you can see the difference between those who are still receiving some sort of traditional handing down of inheritance, and they kind of seem like they'll be natural governors and they seem more sure of themselves in the world.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't think it's just because they go to private school either.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I think these stories that we tell ourselves are incredibly important, and I find it very interesting that we see the likes of Gen Z going out and trying to find that stuff for themselves now because they feel like the rest of it, and I know it's a bit circular, I'll come back to where we started, has just not been good enough.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that's a uh an exhortation of watch watch this space where we see a reclaiming of the past.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's what we need.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: We need to, and that's why I wrote this book called The War Against the Past, Why the West Must Take Control of its History, because I feel that uh that's the big challenge that we have in terms of ensuring that there's an organic connection between our lives and those of our ancestors.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not because we want to be backward-looking, but the only way you can look towards the future is if you understand where you've come from.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, uh there is a very important uh cultural uh sort of battle here, probably the most important cultural battle, which is that we have got to find uh a way of making sure that we transmit to the younger generation those essential uh ideals that uh have come out of our common experience, because without providing that transmission of ideals, there is very it's very difficult to create the right kind of foundation for a community.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: A community is founded on a basic uh relationship, uh kind of cultural relationship between generations.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that uh uh sort of relationship is is in a sense lubricated by common ideals, common stories that have uh emerged over a long period of time.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm um for me that's a very exciting uh possibility now that uh some people by seeing what it means to be dispossessed of all of your all of the intellectual and moral resources that come from your your ancestors of not having anything to fall back upon, suddenly feel that they gotta go out and do the business themselves and and educate themselves.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're not gonna get educated in most schools, unfortunately, at the moment, certainly not in terms of uh taking our path seriously.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, and I think that that's you know a really good place to end on because that ending is really the starting point of something that could become quite exciting and and and exhilarating in the years ahead.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, before I let you go, Frank, there's a question which I've started to put forward to all of my guests since we last spoke.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that question is what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life or recently, and what was it that made you think differently?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a that's a very difficult question because I have changed my mind on a lot of a lot of a lot of different things.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that um one of the things that uh I I've changed my mind on quite a bit is on the role of tradition.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I always felt that uh partially because people who were traditionalists tended to be extremely narrow-minded in the sense that they weren't uh adding anything to that tradition, but basically just living off the past.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: I became quite dismissive of tradition for that reason, because I didn't want to be somebody that just lived off the contributions that previous generations had made.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day I just realized that actually I had to be a bit more sensitive to this development, that you know, a lot of people just weren't able to both understand their historical legacy, but also weren't in a position to make that legacy come alive.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at that point I just changed my mind that I've ever since then I've become really, really, really obsessed with uh tradition and the importance of making sure that that tradition that we come from, which has got a both a national but a civilizational dimension to it, is something that we're able to uh both keep alive but also to uh transmit to people, particularly young people around us.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Frank, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for coming back on.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to your book, War on the Past, out in September, and hope to be able to have you back to talk about it more.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I would ask all listeners, viewers, go and check out Frank's Substack, Roots and Wings.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's putting out lots of really interesting, thought-provoking stuff.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Frank, is there anything else that we can expect from you?
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I think that will be all for now.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: That keeping you that keeps you busy enough.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you very much.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: Have a nice summer.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: You too, take care.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.