Latest / Thinking Class / #134 - Frank Furedi - The West Is Crushing Democracy In The Name Of Defending It

Transcript

#134 - Frank Furedi - The West Is Crushing Democracy In The Name Of Defending It · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Frank Faradi for the third time.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Frank is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and the author of 28 books on the cultural forces shaping Western societies, including his most recent in defense of populism.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Frank is also a senior fellow at the Matthias Corvinus Collegium in Brussels, where he works alongside some of the leading thinkers in the European post-liberal space.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: In this conversation, Frank and I think out loud about the spirit of populism as cultural rescue, why the credentialized class fears it, and what repressive measures it will deploy to stop it, how anti-populists restrict democracy while claiming to defend it, why fascism and populism are not just different but opposite, why nostalgia is attacked because it underpins cultural continuity, why 60% of the crisis starts in the schools, whether assimilation is possible in a society that no longer believes in its own values, and why to be a real conservative today you must be very radical.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: As ever, I deeply enjoyed this conversation with Frank.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: You will hear that he is clear-eyed on the issues, incredibly well read, and does not err in his responses.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you find this conversation valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack, and share it with anyone who needs to hear this conversation.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the show, classmates, and now Frank Farrady.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Frank Faradi back on the show for the third time, and we're here to talk about populist parties that are on the rise, and they seem to have been on the rise for a long time in Britain, in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, you name it, they seem to be rising in the polls.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And most establishment figures default to smurring populists, and few will self-designate as a populist.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you're here to make a defense of populism.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So perhaps before we get into why it they need defending populists and populism more broadly, maybe you can describe the spirit of populism because I think it is so frequently misunderstood.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the spirit of populism is something that exists quite independent of any political movement or parties.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it it it seems to be a demand for democracy, for people wanting to have their voice being taken seriously.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It very much represents a disposition on the part of people, a disposition towards rescuing their culture.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very defensive movement because what it's trying to do is to defend a way of life that they think uh is being lost.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that defensiveness doesn't necessarily mean that people are paralyzed or or unable to move forward.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: What it really m actually means is that people mobilize because they think there is something really important and worthwhile that needs to be pre-preserved preserved.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very much what I would call an operation like of a cultural rescue, where you're trying to rescue your culture before it disappears or before it becomes corrupted by the enemies or what you perceive as the enemies of your uh basic way of life.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what would you say the cultural rescue is focused on?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what are the populists seeking to rescue from the anti-populists, let's call them?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it takes on different forms.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be anything from basically defending their right to fly the flag of their nation, because in many countries uh the national flag is regarded with um contempt.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically seen as a symbol of chauvinism and racism.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So for them, that symbol of nationhood, of patriotism, is really actually quite important.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that is done spontaneously.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that like people have read a book on donation or on nationalism, but they know that it's important for them to be part of a larger community and defending that larger community from being morally marginalized and in a sense being uh put down upon is is in the first instance quite important.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's also has got to do with maintaining the traditions of their communities, many of the rituals and forms of behavior, even the language of their parents, grandparents, their ancestors is something they would like to kind of hold on to.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also very much uh to do with the past, to make sure that the achievements of the past, the the legacy of the past of your community is somehow preserved and um and um becomes part and parcel of the life of the community.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, it's quite a big job, which is why you'll find that very often this this this defensiveness, this attempt to defend a particular way of life, becomes wrapped up in what we call a culture war because there are people who are trying to do the very opposite.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of rescuing that culture, they're trying to, in a sense, undermine it and uh almost criminalize it so it has no real presence in our everyday life.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: You spend a lot of time around establishment figures, both here in the United Kingdom but also in in Brussels with the MCC.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how would you describe the day-to-day reaction of those who are anti-populist uh with regards to the populist parties that seem to be doing so well in the polls, and as an extension of that, the people who are likely to vote for them?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think in the first instance, um the uh ruling um classes uh really fear the populist m moment.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: They really are scared of the fact that here are these millions of people who no longer listen listen to them, who no longer obey their wisdom, who on some occasions reject them, both in the polls and in other areas of life.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a kind of sense of loss and and fear on on the on their part.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, what you also have is a is a commitment to do whatever possible to destroy or marginalize this populist movement and therefore the adoption of fairly repressive authoritarian is becoming increasingly common, uh particularly in Europe, where very often governments are trying to prevent the voices of populist activists from being heard and punish people who, particularly on on online, express views that are uh opposite to theirs.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, what you have are on the one hand the supporters of populism and their opponents, and they live in a in a almost like a parallel world where they very you know very rarely talk to each other and where there is an intense level of antipathy, uh a complete lack of empathy toward one another.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the things I find very interesting is that um the supporters of populism often cannot understand why it is that they are regarded with so much hatred and contempt by their opponents here.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: What what what is it that makes their opponents um talk down to them and to treat people supporting these new parties as somehow their moral inferiors?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is a very good question.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: As you say, partly what drives the p populists are the attempts to uh rescue aspects of their own national identity, a shared history, things that they feel as though the political program of recent decades has chipped away at, if not submerged, under a new uh economic and political order.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And as you just outlined, they are frequently denounced as racists, xenophobes, authoritarian for their wish to have some sense of continuity with regards to their national identity and they don't typically refer to themselves as populists either.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh y you say that's likely because the term is associated with forms of derision.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is is there tr truth to what they are being smeared at?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if there isn't truth uh in this, uh what are the anti-populists doing uh as they're engaging in the demonization of populists?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that the anti-populists are in a fortunate position because they are the ones that get to decide uh what the narrative of populism is, in a sense they can invent uh a story of what populism is about.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at uh most academic books on the subject, and there are loads of them now, they almost repeat word for word uh their wisdom, their truth of what populists are.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And populists are invariably framed as um as ill educated, you know, unable to uh understand the complexities of the world.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: They are uh seen as being very simplistic individuals whose entire political life is devoted towards hating the elites and distinguishing themselves from the elites, or alternatively, these are people who are uh by nature, by definition, racists and xenophobes.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way that the whole thing is framed.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um in a sense, um it's not surprising, therefore, that populism is not a popular word for and people who are um deemed as populists, who are uh desi-designated as populists, very often don't think of themselves in that way.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, what they do uh believe in are very much a set of ideas that are quite s uh quite central to a populist outlook.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I charted in the book is to to some extent to rehabilitate populism by indicating that rather than being embarrassed by the negative publicity that comes from above, it's much better to embrace it and and and demonstrate to the world that actually populism is democracy in action.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's something to be proud of rather than something to be defensive about.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: How how much impact do you think the smears on those sympathetic with the spirit of populism has when it comes to voters turning up to the polls?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think it turns anyone off to be associated even indirectly with it and leads them towards voting for establishment parties, or do more and more people become a little bit like Rupert Lowe at Restore Britain and just responds with I don't care with every accusation that is thrown his way?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you have a whole range of different reactions.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have the I don't care reaction, you have the unfortunate reaction that sometimes some people figure, well, if that's if they call me uh a racist, well, I'll throw back in their face the fact that I'm a white nationalist.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like you become the mirror image of what you are accused of.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um most people actually have are indifferent to the label.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't particularly worry about the fact that they are being put down upon.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that doesn't really uh uh influence their voting behavior.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: However, having said that, the one thing that I've noticed is that when I do talk to people who are voting for populist parties, for example, when I talk to people around where I live, uh people, for example, who are very, very active in the flagging movement, putting flags up, English flags everywhere.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Very often when I introduce myself, the first thing they tell me very defensively, I'm not a racist.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they call me I'm not a racist.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the very fact that they they feel they gotta say that, you know, without me even suggesting or hinting that's what they are, indicates that this uh propaganda uh directed at them does have an effect and does make people feel quite defensive.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the way to understand it is there's a complex of reactions to very much to do with the individuals.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um I don't think anybody is left entirely untouched by this very systematically uh projected, uh almost like propaganda warfare that is being waged against the people.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: It it feels like there is a class dimension to this as well.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Those who are in the higher-ups, the well-educated, at least when it comes to the credentials of the institutions that they have been through schools and universities of are usually the ones leading the charge as to what's acceptable discourse and what isn't.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the irony which you've drawn out in your book is that anti-populists typically demonstrate concern for maintaining pluralism in society.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: They will promote anything that seems adjacent to pluralism like diversity, but then they've fail to afford space for that pluralism if it means their political adversaries get a voice in the public square.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that they see the log in their own eye as they're pointing out the spec in others?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh are they knowingly practicing the friend enemy distinction, or is this hidden in the mists of uh class um consciousness?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I don't call them well educated, I would call them the credentialized uh class of people.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think their reaction is again uh quite diverse because some of them very clearly uh have no problem about the promotion of two-tier justice, about basically indicating there's one rule for us and one rule for them, and are quite happy to use uh authoritarian and repressive measures if it allows them to get their way.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they're very manipulative in their behavior.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them are not really that consciously aware of what they are doing, they they actually believe their own uh propaganda and uh they often, you know, after a certain period of time, begin to believe that uh populist movement, people voting for populist parties, represent a genuine threat to them, their way of life.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And often when you talk to particularly young younger people, um and you kind of try to listen to see whether they're sincere in what they're saying or whether they're just making it up.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: When some of them talk about the fact that they really find the the the flag of St.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: George intimidating, they really find the Union Jack somehow oppressive, you know, sort of and you listen and you listen and you listen, you realize that they actually uh mean it to some extent.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a performative reaction, but they also mean it in that what they what they've learned from school and university is that you're expected to react with fear or you're expected to react with concern, anxiety when you see uh Union Jack waving in on a building?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: You suggest that anti-populists, the credentialized, are concerned that populists represent a threat to their way of life.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dig into that a little bit.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: What in particular do you think the credentialized class are worried about if populists were to sweep to power?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: How would it negatively impact their way of life, do you think?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think in the first instance it would mean the loss of their hegemonic role in society because at the moment they dominate the institutions of culture, education, um, entertainment completely.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as they're concerned, maintain that hegemony is really, really quite important.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in particular because they regard the populist as a threat to their system of values.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: The populist movement's uh uh ideas and their way of life directly contradicts and rejects the kind of value system that they have.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see this in over many, many issues.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: For example, at the moment we're having a debate about net zero and air conditioning, and you have a very clear defined sort of polarization in relation to that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what they're worried about is that to some extent their way of life um becomes now the one that's marginalized rather than the way around.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you saw this very, very clearly after the Brexit referendum, when suddenly these people that never used to go around with the European Union flags, started waving the European Union flag and uh ostentatiously made a big attempt to demonstrate that they're the Janya European.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like they created this identity overnight, because beforehand, before the referendum, they didn't have to do that.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that they were in charge.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: After the referendum, they knew that they lost a very important cultural battle.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at that point, you know, but when when that's realized, that's really when you begin to panic and gradually move towards more oppressive measures.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things we're now seeing, uh and this is a relatively new development, is as these populist parties get stronger and stronger, they provoke a counter-reaction, and that counter-reaction becomes increasingly more fierce and more authoritarian.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: As you were talking about constructed identity, European identity, it was almost a year after the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, I was in Berlin for a portion of that summer, and I remember in I think it was Potsdamer Platz or or one of the central squares, they had this pro-EU concert on, and it culminated in Beethoven's Ode to Joy, and there are a bunch of Europhiles on stage, and uh they've they've been handing out the European Union flags all around, and it was this confected uh display of unity, but hardly anyone joined in unless they were effectively pulled into the big circle and they were they were told still link hands.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But most people in Berlin, even Berlin, the very progressive city, looked on quite non-plussed by all of this.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh y you've talked about the repressive measures that uh typically get brought in in response to the rise of populist movements.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: The irony here again is that those who are anti-populist would typically see themselves as defenders of democracy.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: But in your assessment, you believe they restrict representative democracy, and if any movement is a a promoter of and represents the spirit of democracy, it's populism.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Talk us through that.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, it's very interesting that if you look at most of the recent publications by academics and by supporters of the European Union, the uh supporters of the anti-populist political outlook.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you read the books and what what they say about democracy, uh they either have a very limited uh narrative, a limited version of what democracy is all about, or very often they actually express a certain degree of disappointment about what democracy is, and in some cases goes so far as to suggest that somehow democracy is increasingly flawed.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So what you have is a situation where, on the one hand, they still use the rhetoric of democracy in parliament and places like that.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to their genuine uh sort of sentiment on democracy, particularly democracy in its majoritarian form, they are increasingly skeptical about for a very simple reason that democracy does not seem to work for them if democracy is seen as a kind of pragmatic way of getting yourself elected.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this situation now where the anti democratic ideal is becoming stronger and stronger.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it usually begins by calling into question referendums.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: They say referendums is somehow um not good because it allows uneducated people to make decisions about issues that are far too complex for them to understand.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, the stupidity of people is used as a rationale for not using referendums.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But now increasingly they're even not all that uh positive about representative democracy.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And very often what they say is, well, you know, democracy has got a problem because especially in our time, when people think about who they're gonna vote for, they're being subjected to fake news.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're being subjected to manipulation by Russia or somebody else.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, in their eyes, what they really are saying is that left to their own devices, ordinary people are cannot make up their own mind for themselves.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are somehow tempted and seduced by what Putin tells them to think about.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore you you have this situation where there's a a very strong, uh you know, very strong attempt all over Europe uh to increase censorship, imagining that somehow by censoring the social media, by really preventing people from expressing their their their their views by closing down discussion, you hope that in that sense populism can be marginalized and and its influence limited.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think is the future of democracy in Europe and Britain and from every angle?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: So current trajectory of technocratic governance and insulated procedures to a future where people have lost faith in democracy for all manner of reasons.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you could say that given what what has happened in the last twenty, twenty-five years, uh and which has led to this uh skeptical orientation towards democracy, you could say that well, the future looks fairly bleak, uh, and there's a danger of a managerial, bureaucratic, technocratic uh uh shift occurring within our political system.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's already happening in a lot of places.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that uh you know there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I do believe that even today, especially with the rise of uh populist movements, democracy and the moment uh democratic momentum in public life can gain greater traction.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um I'm 100% committed to this the project of of uh restoring the authority of democracy and and and of citizenship.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very important that we um are able to produce an account of democracy that goes way beyond the simple procedural notion, but it is is is very much understood as a as a way of life, because democracy only works when people live democracy, when they want to live democratically, rather than when they just simply put a ballot paper in a box.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there is that alternative, and I'm reasonably optimistic that at least in some places, not everywhere, but in some societies, that kind of democratic uh impulse that populism represents uh can surge, can continue its surge forward.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, staying on the theme of what future modes of governance might look like, or at least the future of politics might look like, technocratic governance, which we've referred to a few times, and this managerialism is pervasive across all public and private institutions.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I to the point that I can hardly imagine a future without it, what do you think that looks like?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that we've had pre-the rise of these centralized managerial states and institutions?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something different?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that rhymes with history?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: What what could a post-technocracy future look like?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, in the first instance, it it would have an anti-globalist dimension.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it would take seriously the idea of the nation-state, national boundaries, very, very important.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And also uh by implication uh popular sovereignty within the confines of a nation-state.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that what it l what it it's based upon uh is the uh role of citizens.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the stronger the moral status of citizenship, the more democracy becomes protected because the only guarantors that we have that democracy will work successfully is not a paper constitution, because a constitution these days can be very easily violated.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only guarantor that democracy will flourish is the uh quality of the people, the citizens, who are who make public life their own, because they're the ones that can easily spot whenever democratic norms are violated.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that are most likely to react against it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and as long as we avoid the problem of passivity, which has been a problem in different contexts in the past, but actually have a notion of an active citizenship, then it leads to a situation where to some extent the nature of power shifts towards citizens and and people living in society.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: That can also be assisted to some extent by the creation of certain institutions, such as having a greater uh greater investment in local government, where local government becomes generally local, allowing people to have a some kind of a direct relationship with institutions where they can see that what happens there is of direct consequence to their way of life.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there are things that one can do to assist that, but the at the end of the day, the key challenge is to ensure that the citizens uh and citizenship acquires a far more central status uh in a normative sense than it does at the moment.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Besides voting at voting booths, what do you think would precipitate that shift toward popular sovereignty, toward recognizing the the mass of us in the demos?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is it going to be the change from what is currently considered high status, credentialized, cosmopolitan, towards something else?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it that you have to manage people on the basis of them being quite careerist, give them different KPIs?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm thinking technocratically there.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to imagine a shift in which we move safely in some way from the current mode, which is clearly failing, there's a whole CV behind it, whether it's national debt ridiculously high, whether it's broken borders, law and order going down the pan, potholes not being repaired, all the rest of it, we can see that the expanding bureaucracy, technocracy is not working.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the hope that we manage to shift from one to the other peacefully, how do you change that mode of governance and those priorities toward raising up the status of the citizenry once more?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's that's a very difficult question to answer because it often it depends upon the context and the circumstances within the ch within which the change occurs.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the way that I see moving forward is at several levels.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think that uh we need to ensure that our education system uh is genuinely um an education system rather than just simply um a kind of um a babysitting operation in the way that it often is, and where where where standards of education are actually raised uh rather than it's happening at the moment where it's uh continually in decline.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Education is really important, particularly ensuring that the education system uh is very sensitive to the needs of socialization and sensitive to the fact that young people are only uh only able to be socialized successfully if their relation to their past is is is is intact and where they understand that they are part of this community that links them to their uh ancestors, to their parents, and that and there is that kind of um uh sense of duty and and commitment and courage that goes along with that in that kind of educational uh uh endeavor.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I you know, once you have younger people um not being medicalized and treated as potential patients, but seen as being uh uh people that are capable of intellectual independence, young people whose values include that of duty, responsibility, courage, values that are entirely alien to the education system at the moment, then what you're doing is you're basically creating a new class, a new group of citizens who will not be fobbed off, will not be fooled by various narratives and uh and and who'll take themselves sufficiently seriously to make sure that they make sure that their voices are heard.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And once people want their voices to be heard, it's much more difficult for that uh for the existing forms of technocratic governance to continue and to perpetuate themselves.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you're doing, in a sense, is you're you're undermining uh the power of these uh technocrats and managers from having a role in political life.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, technocrats can work in technology and managers can be managers where they're needed in a particular business.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to politics, I think what we need is a situation where political parties are continually forced to respond to popular pressure.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: On the education point, I'm not sure if you caught it, but at the very recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference, a speech was delivered by Catherine Burbel Singh, popularly known as Britain's strictest head teacher, 15 minutes long, and probably the most exercised to saw anyone on stage about not only the way in which we teach our kids, which you'd fully expect from her, but specifically about the teleology of their education, which has been baked in over recent decades, and that's specifically to do with the notion of decolonisation and particularly uh the embedding of an anti-white animus and a and a white guilt, actually, by European majorities, that is leading to the um self-hatred amongst white majorities and then a general perhaps disrespect or at least uh an ambivalence from non-white minorities uh toward those that were part of the host population.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's typically thought that those who are governing in the technocratic manner, the credentialized class, they are these uh they try they pretend upon neutrality.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, I think there is a teleology there which you can see throughout whether it's immigration policy, whether it's employment policy and law, that effectively shows that decolonization narrative.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Catherine Burble saying uh made the case that this needs to be rooted out because the only way in which we can save the West inverted commas is by saving our children.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that means forming them in all the ways you've just described, but also not teaching them to be oriented in a negative fashion toward the nations in which they live and are born in.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you subscribe to as well?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think decolonization and all of its attendant ideologies uh have been destructive to the body politic and has been leading to this rise in the populist movement?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm a big believer in decolonizing education, in a sense, by getting rid of the these anti-British colonizers, by getting rid of the attempt to colonize people's internal life by forcing them to adopt values that are antithetical, alien uh to the British way of life and to the way of life of their own communities and pre-existing generations.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a very big job there.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I I actually think that when we look at the political situation in Britain in particular, uh I would say that 60%, maybe even higher, of the challenge that we confronted with are the schools.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can't really move forward uh if education is being colonized by people who are viscerally anti-British or who are viscerally hostile to Western civilization, unless we can uh get rid of these people and basically fundamentally alter the pedagogy, uh this pedagogy of self-loathing and despair, uh nothing will change.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can win an election, you know, reform can win the election, and nothing will change, you know, no matter what kind of policies you're pursuing, as long as the cultural institutions, educational institutions remain in the hands of people who are hostile to that.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you will find that the previous government, this government has passed all these laws about gender and gender identification, about the fact that there should be separate bathrooms for women and men.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all these laws that were passed are being systematically violated in many, many places in British society, uh openly violated.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that that tells us that uh in a sense, unless you win the battle of ideas, uh don't think for one minute that just simply having new laws is going to change very much anytime soon.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is a trap commonly uh well, we find ourselves commonly falling into the trap that actually if we could just replace this government, insert whichever country you think the government is being dysfunctional in, or if we could just end this regime, then things will be okay again.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: But as you pointed out, it's not exactly like we have cultivated a citizenry that are ready for full democratic um contributions, which is to say, building their own institutions, making their own positive contributions, but also because the institutions themselves, which would be inherited by any incumbent government, as well as all the people formed in a certain way, are all going to be much the same as they were before, and it's actually a very, very long process, perhaps even a generational process.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the concerns, actually, is that there are many more people demanding change and change quickly, and there's a concern that if it doesn't somehow come in whatever, the next election cycle, there might be a fairly few despondent people checking out of the system, so to speak.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it will be written, we will we will see how things will turn out.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's think about some of the other long-term prospects within our society, specifically around the demographic transformation that's underway within Western Europe and indeed North America.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there are some who believe that um there is uh uh problems with a multicultural way of running things, which is to say there is no dominant culture uh within a nation.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then distinctions have been drawn between a multicultural society and a multi-ethnic society.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you wrote, Frank, that uh unlike a multi-ethnic society which can come together around common values, multiculturalism presumes in favour of different outlooks inhabiting the same geographical space.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And thinking out loud here, I wonder if different ethnic groups, particularly on a big diasporic level, like we see in Britain, for example, actually start out from the basis of a lack of a shared solidarity and history and indeed cultural norms and values, which may end up precipitating a multiculturalism at the population level, even if you try to govern against multiculturalism just because it's human nature, unless, of course, people marry into and join the ethnic majority that formed the nation to which they moved.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: What what what is your general view of the multi-ethnic societies that we live in?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are you typically more optimistic that we'll be able to cohere different groups of people around uh a a strong national identity?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And following on from that, uh is that true of all groups or uh are some more assimilable and and and um integrationist than others?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well the point is is that uh what's logically prior to this discussion is whether or not society uh possesses a sense of commitment and self-belief about the values, the norms that it that it has historically evolved and developed over the decades, over the generations, because if society has got a a strong commitment and really feels that being British means A, B, C, D, E, and that believing in these values is non-negotiable, then there's no problem.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's if you believe that you know that these values uh pertain uh uh to our everyday life and it's relevant for our children in the way that they were relevant to our um parents and their grandparents, then it's possible to assimilate others into our society.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that has happened in many, many occasions.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Today the real problem is that we are pretty normless as a nation.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have those norms that make us uh into a specific culture, a specific nation.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we lack that kind of solidarity and coherence which uh necessarily underpins any attempt to bring in people into our fold, any attempt to assimilate people from other cultures.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that I look at it, we just simply don't know which groups can be or cannot be assimilated.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I assume, I presume that almost all groups can be assimilated into a society if that society, first of all, demands assimilation, it's a non-negotiable uh sort of demand that uh they have to meet.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, that society robustly pursues uh its own system of values and robustly demands that other people, everybody in society lives by that.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think under those circumstances, uh it's possible for there to be a genuine melting pot in the way it once existed within the United States.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: However, if for any reason we we we give up on the idea of melting pot and we give the slightest concession to the multi-aspect of culture, multi-culture, basically saying that we don't have one culture, but we would you know we we basically celebrate all cultures in our society, then you run into massive problems.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, for me, the big problem in Britain, as in other European nations, is in the first instance a homegrown problem rather than the fact that many people coming into uh our society don't feel particularly attached to a British way of life.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because for a very good reason, if British people aren't particularly committed to their way of life, then why should somebody that comes in from Poland or comes in from Syria feel this kind of a way?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that there that's what I see as being the real problem.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And people will try to avoid it.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really addressing this because if they did, then the depths of the problem, its deep-seated character, uh would force us to take seriously this whole issue of um cultural rescue, the whole issue that somehow we gotta make a decision about what it means to be British rather than just simply playing around and avoiding it.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Cultural rescue almost for ourselves and not simply for the nation and its politics.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it to it is a good point you make.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think about my own father-in-law.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: He came in the 1970s.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Father used to work in the uh civil service for the British Empire in Uganda and uh got out before I Diameen came to power, and uh there was already a warmth towards the British people, but there was certainly An effort to become like the British, and actually, when he arrived pretty much all of the stereotypes around how the British comported themselves, their modes of dress, their manners, which had been thus for centuries, were were there.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it was quite clear what he did.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And because the numbers of people arriving were so small in comparison to the rest of the population, becoming assimilable was a much easier task, and marrying into the tribe, so to speak.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose what we have today that makes the job even harder is we have large diasporas, which even if they wanted to, we'll find it very hard in certain cities and in certain places to actually interact with the host population.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And as you've already pointed out, and we talked about institutions that are typically in a war against the past of Britain, to use your uh the title of one of your previous books, and also generally promulgating that feeling of guilt and that there's actually nothing good to pass on, and actually we ought to promote lots of other cultures.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it seems to me like we're we're we have uh decades ahead, even on an optimistic path, of trying to bring people closer together under one of these uh more coherent national identities, um, if at all, because the demographics seem to be changing so fast and at such a rate that soon there may be few people to actually learn from.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I certainly agree with the premise that a cultural rescue needs to take place, and it's not only that we expect it of the politicians, is actually we might want to go and look at what is worth r reviving from the past because hypermodernity has not seemed to serve us so well so far.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Frank, people often automatically associate populism with fascism.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: And even Pope Francis did so.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: You quoted him to say that the example of populism in the European sense of the word is fascism in 1933.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you can tell us whether populism has anything in common with fascism or whether this is uh a trope of sorts.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the interesting thing is that if you know your history, you'll know that fascists uh and the Nazis were profoundly hostile to populism.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in particular, they were profoundly hostile to um the tradition, the traditional culture which many populists uh fought for, tried to hold on to.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: They had a very modernist view of the world and um they tended to regard the past and the ch and its traditions as obstacles for creating a new Germany or creating a new Italy or what or or Spain.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: So first of all, they their view of traditionalism of culture, the preservation of a way of life, was something that was alien to them, very much so.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that on that's one reason.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the second reason uh is that fascists were profoundly anti-democratic.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we go and and and they justified their anti-democratic ethos by suggesting that the people are too stupid to know what's in their best interest, that they cannot be relied upon to make the right decision.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, their criticisms of the people was very similar to those of the anti-populists today.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and finally, if you look at the fascists, their view of the nation was very ambivalent.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Nazis were not German nationalists.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Nazis wanted to build a European empire, so their ambitions were uh an imperial one, and an imperialist ones.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, even Italy, uh, which uh had had had a certain commitment to Italianness, nevertheless was in the business under Mussolini of building an Italian empire and very much was committed to uh creating what they call a greater Italy.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: So almost every every score, fascism, contained ideals which were antithetical, almost like the polar opposite to what populism is all about.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a sign of our intellectual illiteracy and our political illiteracy that people make these uh assumptions that somehow populists are just like fascists, you know, that there's no difference, but in fact they are uh a qualitatively different kind of movement than what fascism was about.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's no continuity between them.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: And whilst I know you didn't say it explicitly, is the outline of fascism as you just described it, n maps more neatly onto the anti-populists with their romanticisation of the future dismissal of the past, uh, which is actually a very interesting observation, uh, and also attachments to supranational organizations.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I certainly know myself that nostalgia plays a large part of my political um consciousness, and it hadn't always, but it was as I started to move through my adult life, having grown up in a small um but important historically abbey town in Northumberland, where everything was safe and everyone understood one another, high trust, and there's a there's a strong identity, and then off I went out into the world, rubbed shoulders of the professional managerial class, lived in lots of the big cities, and that sense of cultural loss started to be felt more keenly through lots of the political changes that we've spoken about and the policies and all the rest of it.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's one thing I've noticed observing the political landscape, and I know you do as well, is just how frequently nostalgia is derided.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: That nostalgia is not a strategy.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we must look toward the future.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again, these are from the people who would either say they're anti-fascist or they're anti-populist, or they say populism just doesn't work.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they seem utterly incurious about what the past might be able to inform about our present, indeed our own identities and where we might go in the future.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why why specifically, because lots of people have written about nostalgia and its knee the need for it.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why specifically do you think nostalgia ends up in the crosshairs and seen uh and is used as a pejorative rather than something that can actually inform and is an intrinsic part of the human experience?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's very simple.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nostalgia underpins cultural continuity.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And cultural continuity is something that anti-populists despise because the last thing they want is for culture to reproduce itself and for uh uh an organic bond being created between the present and the past.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what where nostalgia really helps, because nostalgia creates this disposition where we always uh s check and see whether there is that kind of uh bond which which are seen as being really important for creating strong communities.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there are very good reasons why they don't like nostalgia, and that's simply because uh nostalgia as a sentiment undermines their uh the their impulse to detach present-day society from everything that has gone on beforehand.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that you know, and and I think there's one thing that is very clearly should be stated, which is often overlooked, is that although they are hostile to nostalgia and although they're hostile to cultural continuity, at the same time, they're not particularly committed to creating a new future because um by in a sense they've dug themselves into the a hole of being living in a presentist mode.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they live in the present because they've been cut off from the past.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: But once you've been cut off from the past, it's very difficult to then establish a foundation on which an orientation towards the future can be successfully forged.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: You you pointed out within your book in Defense of Populism that anti-populists are very typically concerned about the cultural loss that uh indigenous peoples across the rest of the world might face, but this isn't afforded to the Europeans, and indeed Europeans aren't considered to be indigenous to their own land, despite, for example, England being older than centuries older than when the Maoris arrived in New Zealand, and you can find cathedrals built in the 12th century older than some indigenous groups.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Do you think people see their hypocrisy there?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you think they actually believe that Europeans uh are not indigenous to the land namely because of their education.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: They've they've been propagandized so thoroughly.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, logical consistency is not a virtue that anti-populists possessed, and their capacity for inventing and creating stories is also quite formidable.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, they've been making all these claims about the fact that uh the first people in in Britain were black and that white people only came much, much later, and they make similar claims about other European nations, including Scandinavia, that s the first people in Sweden weren't blonde uh Swedes, but they were people that came from Africa or some other society and had a dark skin color.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a an interesting process whereby on the one hand you you kind of celebrate exotic small tribes in different parts of the world and see their way of life as as the model for others to suff uh to kind of follow.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, when it comes to your own nation, we uh the the the corollary of this exoticism is you basically turn your own society into this um exotic place that was somehow stolen uh or denied in subsequent centuries.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of uh capacity for inventing fantasies, I think, is is is truly formidable.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is indeed.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: But two more questions for you.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: They are penultimate questions uh before I I ask one that we we've covered before.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Two questions uh in one.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we are living in a moment, at least in Britain, where the types of decisions being made in Parliament are exactly the kind of to decisions that will continue to fuel the rise in populism.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: For example, we have found that uh Keir Starmer has secretly removed the uh legal block on illegal immigrants being able to gain citizenship in the country, so now illegal immigrants can become citizens, there will be a pathway for them.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: We are uh seeing uh failure to deport foreign criminals for many different reasons, usually because we have a legal industrial complex and various NGOs that will stop people being deported despite having committed terrible crimes.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've effectively got open borders, both for legal and illegal immigrants, and then other laws are being repealed, like the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which will continue to see the growth of tent cities in British cities, of which there are a fair few now?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think the ordinary person should do in the face of all of this?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: How do they stay sane?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the second question to that is what would you tell the incoming Prime Minister, or so it seems, Andy Burnham, uh, and any corporate CEOs who are contributing to the rise of populism with their own internal policies?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: What would you tell ordinary person on the street and high-powered people to do?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, ordinary people on the street, I would basically simply tell them to get politically active and start mobilizing, particularly active in your community when you have to face the consequences of these kinds of decisions.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, uh get politically active by joining parties that are challenging the monopoly of the legacy parties over our society.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's quite important.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care who you vote for in the end, but I do wish that the legacy parties, that's labor in particular and Tories, uh somehow continue to lose their way and and ultimately unravel, because that will create a situation where proper populist parties have got more latitude for growth.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: With the kind of CEOs and the people that have been very active in promoting migration and who are in many respects untouched by its negative consequences, there's very little I can say.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: All that I can say is that unless you uh basically take decisive steps and make a real effort to control Britain's border, um you're gonna be faced with a mega problem that isn't just simply to do with uncontrolled migration, but the very idea of security, which depends upon strong borders in the first instance, will diminish.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: You h we will then have created an insecure Britain, an insecure Britain that not only cannot deal with external threats such as Russia or other other societies, but uh but internally cannot really uh enforce law and order.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point you don't get.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you basically uh turn your eyes when you see uh illegal and criminal behavior on the borders, um and you pretend you're not really seeing it, or you kind of kind of pretend that this is not a big issue, then of course the logic of that is that when it comes to similar domestic crimes uh in our society, you will end up basically ignoring that as well.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, trust in you and trust in the police and in the institutions of the state uh will diminish quite rapidly.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not much that I can add to that.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: Final question is a question I've asked you before, but I'm wondering if you have anything else you would add to it.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's my boilerplate question for my guest, which is what you've changed your mind on during the course of your life.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: What was it that made you think differently?
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the last time, Frank, you told me that you'd actually changed your mind on the role of tradition because you thought traditionalists were were tended to be extremely narrow-minded because they didn't add anything to that tradition, but then actually what you've noticed is those who understand their historical legacy uh are actually seeking to make that historical legacy come alive, and it's up to us to transmit that inheritance to others.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's been almost two years since we last spoke, and I know you've been incredibly busy.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is that are there are there any uh dawning realizations that you've had about how the world works that you weren't anticipating since that last conversation?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the most important one is I've come to realize that um uh the problem of conservatism is is is quite a significant one because uh if you if you simply try to conserve what exists, then you end up trying to conserve things that uh are quite objectionable.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: So conservatives cannot just say, Well, we're here to conserve society in the way that it is, because to be a real conservative, you have to be very radical and challenge the status quo.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like you need to become a a very active, dissident, radical movement uh that basically decides to get to ultimately challenge and um and undermine and ultimately um get rid of so many of our conventions and institutions in the way they function uh before they can then try to reappropriate what existed prior to that.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this very interesting challenge where we gotta on the one hand um be dissidents, you know, in a in a proper sense of the term, but at the same time understand that this is logically the first step before uh Britishness and a particular way of life can again become the hegemonic force in our society.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: Frank, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on for the third time.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can buy Frank's book in defense of populism in all good bookshops.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Frank, you have written, I think, over 40 books in the course of your career, and I think I might know the answer to this question.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh can we expect anything else from you and where can people find you on the internet?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um I'm working on a few books at the moment.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't written 40 books, I've only written 28.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um pick up a place, Frank.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think the best place to find me is on my Substack, which is called Roots and Wings with Frank Ferretti.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I try to play around with ideas and experiment a little bit and try to occasionally react to what's happening uh in our time.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: So for me that's like my laboratory of ideas, where um the more people that look into it and uh talk to me about it, criticize it, question what I'm doing, the more I learn from that experience.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: Frank, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: All the best.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure, lovely to talk to you.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.